Zhukovsky, "Rural Cemetery": an analysis of the poem

In this article we will analyze the elegy, which was written in 1802 by Zhukovsky, "Rural Cemetery." This work refers to romanticism and has its characteristic features and features.

For the early Zhukovsky favorite time of day - the transition from dusk to the evening, from day to night, from darkness to dawn. At these hours and minutes a person feels that he is changing, that it is not all over yet, that life is full of mystery and unpredictable, and death, perhaps, only the passage of the soul into an unknown, different state.

The image of the cemetery

So, before you the work, created by Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, is "Rural Cemetery". The analysis of the poem begins with the main subject image, indicated in the title. A favorite place in which a romantic is given to difficult thoughts about the decay of being is a cemetery. Everything here is reminiscent of separation, of the past that reigns over people. But this does not break the heart, gently, which marks Zhukovsky ("Rural Cemetery"). The analysis of the poem allows us to notice that the memorials erected on the graves, covered with a light cool breeze, speak not only about all possible losses, but also about the fact that human suffering will certainly pass, as joy passes. In the end, there will be only a sad calm in nature.

Heroes of Elegy

Favorite hero of the romantic poet - he himself, that is, Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky. "Rural Cemetery" depicts the author's thoughts and feelings, his philosophical reflections. Who is a "singer" who does not have a special hearing, can understand the joy and pain of life, hear the voices of nature, rise above the worldly bustle to embrace the whole world in a single impulse of his soul, to unite with the Universe? The author devotes his "cemetery" meditation, like the English poet-predromantik Thomas Gray, to the memory of the "poor singer". At the same time, he deliberately makes his descriptions less visible, enhancing their emotional mood, Zhukovsky (elegy "Rural Cemetery").

Epithets in the work

In this work almost every noun has an adjective as an epithet. Such a method was not accidentally introduced into his work by Zhukovsky. "Rural Cemetery" shifts the emphasis from objects to the characteristics of the inner world. So, the stop is slow, the peasant is tired, the hut is quiet. The attention of the reader, therefore, is transferred to a non-obvious sign. This is all present in Gray. But the Russian poet is not enough: he adds two more words to his work, which indicate a state: "pales" and "lost in thought". The word "pales", it would seem, refers to the visual series. But if you imagine this, it turns out that in an objective, direct sense, this means that the day becomes brighter. And the opposite is described in the work: the approach of evening twilight. Consequently, the word "pales" means in elegy something quite different: disappears, fades, fades. Perhaps, like our very life.

Sound recording

This effect is amplified in the second stanza. Here, the visual images (although translated into another, emotional plan) are moved to the second place, yielding to its sound. The darkness in the world that the poet describes becomes impenetrable, the more lyrical the hero is guided by the sound. In the second stanza, the main artistic load falls precisely on the sound, and not on the epithets. This method is not accidentally used in his work Zhukovsky. Verse "Rural Cemetery" thanks to him becomes more expressive.

The doubling, prolonged sonorous "n", "m", as well as hissing "ni", "w" and whistling "z", "c" create the image of the dead sleep of nature. The third line of the abundance of these sounds seems to us simply onomatopoeic. However, it "works" and the creation of a certain mood, not at all peaceful and calm, which is characteristic of the first stanza, but alarming.

From the line to the line, the work that Zhukovsky wrote ("The Village Cemetery") is getting darker and gloomier. As a signal bell, at the end of the second stanza there is a word that plays the role of a kind of stylistic password in the genre of elegies: "dull". This adjective means "immersed in undivided sorrow, merged with this feeling, not knowing any other mood, completely lost hope." Almost a synonym for plaintive sound - dull, that is dreary, monophonic, wounding directly in the heart.

The conditional landscape favored by the preromancers in the third stanza deepens this mood. Wild owl, the ancient vault, the moon pouring out its light on the nature, deadly pale ... If the hut of the peasant in the first stanza was called the word "calm" and nothing broke this equanimity, then the third disturbed the "peace" of the quiet dominion of the tower.

Motive of death

We continue to describe this work, conduct its analysis. "Rural cemetery" Zhukovsky created as a reflection on the meaning of life, the decay of being. Here we are, finally, and approaching the center of elegy, tragically tense. The motive of death begins to sound more insistent in her. The author of the work, striving to strengthen the already gloomy, heavy mood, with additional means, creates drama. The "sleepy" sleep of the deceased is called. Therefore, even the hope of the future resurrection of the dead, their "awakening," is not allowed. The fifth stanza is completely constructed on a number of such negations as "neither ... nor ... nothing", and ends with a rigid formula, which says that nothing will force you to leave the coffins resting there.

The inevitability of demise for all

Developing the topic, Vasily Andreevich, and on all people, spreads his bitter conclusion that death will sooner or later affect everyone: ordinary people and kings, because even the "path of greatness" leads to the coffin.

Cruel and merciless death, as shown by its analysis. "Rural Cemetery" (Zhukovsky) describes her deeds. Death indifferently takes away tender hearts, able to love, intended to "be in a crown", but bound at the same time "misery by chains" (peasant uneducation and poverty), and the dust of one who was born in order to "win fortune" Fight the "storm of troubles."

Here the voice of the poet, who until recently sounded bitter, revealing, almost angry, suddenly softens. As if reaching a certain limit, approaching despair, the author's idea smoothly returns to the point of rest, and in fact it begins with the work that created Zhukovsky ("Rural Cemetery"). This poem, therefore, takes us to some initial state, just as life returns everything to its own place. It is no accident that the word that flashed through the echo in the first stanza ("quiet hut"), later, in the second, rejected, again takes its rightful place in the poetic language of Vasily Andreevich.

What is opposed to death?

Very contradictory work, which created Zhukovsky ("Rural Cemetery"). The poem is characterized by the fact that in it the author objects to himself. Only recently he called the sleepless sleep of the dead. That is, the poet spoke of the omnipotence of death. Suddenly he begins to reconcile with the fact that it is inevitable. The author at the same time constructs the statement in such a way that it becomes twofold - this is simultaneously a discussion about a friend-poet, irrevocably dead, and about himself, his inevitable death.

The feeling of despair now sounds sad though, but not hopeless at all. Death is omnipotent, Zhukovsky admits, but it is not omnipotent, because there is a life-giving friendship on earth, thanks to which the eternal fire of the "tender soul" is stored, for which the ashes breathe in the urn, it is akin to faith.