The theme of money in the work is dowry. Moral problems in the play by A. N. Ostrovsky “Dowry. Life and customs of the province
Soviet literature
Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky
Biography
TVARDOVSKY, ALEXANDER TRIFONOVICH (1910−1971), Russian poet. Born on June 8 (21), 1910 in the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province. Tvardovsky's father, a peasant blacksmith, was dispossessed and exiled. The tragic fate of his father and other victims of collectivization is described by Tvardovsky in the poem By Right of Memory (1967−1969, published 1987).
Tvardovsky wrote poetry since childhood. In 1931, his first poem, The Path to Socialism, was published. While studying at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute, and then at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History (MIFLI), which he graduated in 1939, Tvardovsky also wrote articles. He became famous for his poem The Country of Ant (1936, State Prize, 1941), which tells the story of the peasant Nikita Morgunk’s search for a country of universal happiness.
After the release of Ant Country, one after another, collections of Tvardovsky’s poems were published: Poems (1937), The Road (1938), Rural Chronicle (1939), Zagorye (1941). In 1939-1940, Tvardovsky served in the army as a military journalist, participated in the campaign against Poland and in the Finnish campaign. During the Great Patriotic War he was a front-line correspondent for various newspapers. The poet called his lyrics of the war years “front-line chronicles,” defining with this name its content and stylistic features.
In 1941, Tvardovsky began working on the poem Vasily Terkin, to which he gave the subtitle Book about a fighter. The first chapters were published in September 1942 in the newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda; in the same year, an early version of the poem was published as a separate book. The final version was completed in 1945. In the article How “Vasily Terkin” was written, Tvardovsky wrote that the image of the main character was invented in 1939 for a permanent humorous column in the newspaper of the Leningrad Military District “On Guard of the Motherland.” The accidentally found image, Tvardovsky wrote, “captivated me completely.” The original humorous idea took the form of an epic narrative; the poem became for the author “my lyrics, my journalism, a song and a lesson, an anecdote and a saying, a heart-to-heart conversation and a remark to the occasion.” In the poem “just a guy himself,” Vasily Terkin became the main hero of the people's war. Like all the heroes of the world epic, he was granted immortality (it is no coincidence that in Terkin’s 1954 poem in the next world he finds himself in the afterlife, reminiscent of Soviet reality in its carrion) and at the same time - living optimism, making him the personification of the national spirit. The poem was a huge success among readers. Vasily Terkin became a folklore character, about which Tvardovsky remarked: “Where he came from is where he goes.” The book received both official recognition (State Prize, 1946) and high praise from contemporaries. I. Bunin wrote about it: “This is a truly rare book. What freedom, what wonderful prowess, what accuracy, precision in everything and what an extraordinary folk language - not a hitch, not a single false, ready-made, that is, literary word! Determining the main direction of his work, Tvardovsky wrote: “Personally, I will probably never be able to move away from the harsh and majestic, infinitely diverse and so little revealed in literature world of events, experiences and impressions of the war period in my entire life.” The poetic embodiment of this thought was his famous lyric poems I was killed near Rzhev... and I know, it’s not my fault... The poem about the tragic fate of the soldier Sivtsov and his family, House by the Road (1946), which Tvardovsky called a “lyrical chronicle,” is also dedicated to the military theme. In 1950, Tvardovsky was appointed editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, but in 1954 he was removed from his post for the democratic tendencies that emerged in the magazine immediately after Stalin’s death. In 1958, Tvardovsky again headed the “New World”, inviting his like-minded people - critics and editors V. Lakshina, I. Vinogradov, A. Kondratovich, A. Berzer and others. In this post, Tvardovsky, as defined by the critic I. Rostovtseva, “brought literature and creative people out of the dead ends into which History, Time, and Circumstances had driven them.” Thanks to his efforts, the works of V. Ovechkin, V. Bykov, F. Abramov, B. Mozhaev, Y. Trifonov, Y. Dombrovsky and others were published in the “New World”, which became the focus and symbol of the “Thaw”. In 1961, Tvardovsky succeeded publish A. Solzhenitsyn's story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In 1970, Tvardovsky was removed from his post as editor-in-chief. This aggravated the difficult mental situation in which he was, being, on the one hand, a major figure in the party-Soviet hierarchy, and on the other, an “unofficial oppositionist.” Despite the official recognition of the poem Beyond the Distance (1950−1960, Lenin Prize, 1961), Tvardovsky's poems By Right of Memory and Terkin in the Next World were not published. Tvardovsky died in Krasnaya Pakhra near Moscow on December 18, 1971.
Tvardovsky Alexander Trifonovich, is a famous Russian poet. He was born on June 8, 1910 in the village of Zagorye, which is located in the Smolensk region. The father of the future poet was a blacksmith, who was dispossessed during the revolution and sent into exile. Tvardovsky wrote about the fate of many victims of collectivization of that time in his work “By the Right of Memory.”
Alexander wrote poems since childhood. His first work was published in 1931. This poem was called "The Path to Socialism." During his studies at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute and the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, he did not forget to write articles. Tvardovsky became famous after the publication of his poem “The Country of Ant” among a wide range of readers.
From 1939 to 1940 he served in the army as a war journalist. He took part in campaigns against Poland and in the Finnish war. During World War II he was a front-line correspondent. Wrote articles for many newspapers. In addition, he was engaged in creativity, writing his “chronicles of the front-line years.” This title determines the content of this work. Thanks to the fact that he was the director of Novy Mir, it was possible to publish the works of many Soviet writers. And in 1961, Tvardovsky was able to publish Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” By the will of senior officials, in 1970, Tvardovsky was removed from the post of editor-in-chief. This greatly influenced the state of mind of the poet, who was both a big man in the party and an “unofficial oppositionist.” Despite the fact that his poem “Beyond the Distance” was recognized by Soviet critics and awarded the Lenin Prize in 1961, his other works were never published.
The first poems of Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky were published in Smolensk newspapers in 1925-1926, but fame came to him later, in the mid-30s, when “The Country of Ant” (1934-1936) was written and published - a poem about the fate of a peasant - individual farmer, about his difficult and difficult path to the collective farm. The poet's original talent clearly manifested itself in it.
In his works of the 30-60s. he embodied the complex, turning-point events of the time, shifts and changes in the life of the country and the people, the depth of the national historical disaster and feat in one of the most brutal wars that humanity experienced, rightfully occupying one of the leading places in the literature of the 20th century.
Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was born on June 21, 1910 on the “farmstead of the Stolpovo wasteland,” belonging to the village of Zagorye, Smolensk province, into a large large family of a peasant blacksmith. Note that later, in the 30s, the Tvardovsky family suffered a tragic fate: during collectivization they were dispossessed and exiled to the North.
From a very early age, the future poet imbibed love and respect for the land, for the hard work on it and for blacksmithing, the master of which was his father Trifon Gordeevich - a man of a very original, tough and tough character and at the same time literate, well-read, who knew by heart a lot of poems. The poet's mother, Maria Mitrofanovna, had a sensitive, impressionable soul.
As the poet later recalled in “Autobiography,” long winter evenings in their family were often devoted to reading aloud books by Pushkin and Gogol, Lermontov and Nekrasov, A.K. Tolstoy and Nikitin... It was then that a latent, irresistible craving for poetry arose in the boy’s soul, which was based on rural life itself, close to nature, as well as traits inherited from his parents.
In 1928, after a conflict and then a break with his father, Tvardovsky broke up with Zagorye and moved to Smolensk, where for a long time he could not get a job and eked out a pittance from literary earnings. Later, in 1932, he entered the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute and, while studying, traveled as a correspondent to collective farms, wrote articles and notes about changes in rural life for local newspapers. At this time, in addition to the prose story “The Diary of a Collective Farm Chairman,” he wrote the poems “The Path to Socialism” (1931) and “Introduction” (1933), in which colloquial, prosaic verse predominates, which the poet himself later called “riding with the reins lowered.” They did not become a poetic success, but played a role in the formation and rapid self-determination of his talent.
In 1936, Tvardovsky came to Moscow, entered the philological faculty of the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature (MIFLI) and in 1939 graduated with honors. That same year he was drafted into the army and in the winter of 1939/40 he participated in the war with Finland as a correspondent for a military newspaper.
From the first to the last days of the Great Patriotic War, Tvardovsky was an active participant - a special correspondent for the front-line press. Together with the active army, having started the war on the Southwestern Front, he walked along its roads from Moscow to Konigsberg.
After the war, in addition to his main literary work, poetry itself, he was for a number of years the editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, consistently defending in this post the principles of truly artistic realistic art. Heading this magazine, he contributed to the entry into literature of a number of talented writers - prose writers and poets: F. Abramov and G. Baklanov, A. Solzhenitsyn and Yu. Trifonov, A. Zhigulin and A. Prasolov, etc.
The formation and development of Tvardovsky as a poet dates back to the mid-20s. While working as a rural correspondent for Smolensk newspapers, where his notes on village life had been published since 1924, he also published his youthful, unpretentious and still imperfect poems there. In the poet’s “Autobiography” we read: “My first published poem “New Hut” appeared in the newspaper “Smolenskaya Village” in the summer of 1925. It started like this:
Smells like fresh pine resin
The yellowish walls shine.
We'll live well in the spring
Here in a new, Soviet way...”
With the appearance of “The Country of Ant” (1934-1936), which testified to the entry of its author into a period of poetic maturity, the name of Tvardovsky became widely known, and the poet himself increasingly asserted himself more and more confidently. At the same time, he wrote cycles of poems “Rural Chronicle” and “About Grandfather Danila”, poems “Mothers”, “Ivushka”, and a number of other notable works. It is around the “Country of Ant” that the emerging contradictory artistic world of Tvardovsky has been grouped since the late 20s. and before the start of the war.
Today we perceive the work of the poet of that time differently. One of the researchers’ remark about the poet’s works of the early 30s should be recognized as fair. (with certain reservations it could be extended to this entire decade): “The acute contradictions of the collectivization period in the poems are, in fact, not touched upon; the problems of the village of those years are only named, and they are solved in a superficially optimistic way.” However, it seems that this can hardly be attributed unconditionally to “The Country of Ant,” with its unique conventional design and construction, and folklore flavor, as well as to the best poems of the pre-war decade.
During the war, Tvardovsky did everything that was required for the front, often spoke in the army and front-line press: “wrote essays, poems, feuilletons, slogans, leaflets, songs, articles, notes...”, but his main work during the war years was the creation lyric-epic poem “Vasily Terkin” (1941-1945).
This, as the poet himself called it, “A Book about a Soldier,” recreates a reliable picture of front-line reality, reveals the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of a person in war. At the same time, Tvardovsky wrote a cycle of poems, “Front-line Chronicle” (1941-1945), and worked on a book of essays, “Motherland and Foreign Land” (1942-1946).
At the same time, he wrote such lyrical masterpieces as “Two Lines” (1943), “War - there is no crueler word...” (1944), “In a field dug with streams...” (1945), which were first published after the war, in the January book of the magazine “Znamya” for 1946.
Even in the first year of the war, the lyrical poem “House by the Road” (1942-1946) was started and soon after its end. “Its theme,” as the poet noted, “is war, but from a different side than in Terkin, from the side of home, family, wife and children of a soldier who survived the war. The epigraph of this book could be lines taken from it:
Come on people, never
Let's not forget about this."
In the 50s Tvardovsky created the poem “Beyond the Distance, the Distance” (1950-1960) - a kind of lyrical epic about modernity and history, about a turning point in the lives of millions of people. This is an extended lyrical monologue of a contemporary, a poetic narrative about the difficult destinies of the homeland and people, about their complex historical path, about internal processes and changes in the spiritual world of man in the 20th century.
In parallel with “Beyond the Distance, the Distance,” the poet is working on a satirical poem-fairy tale “Terkin in the Other World” (1954-1963), depicting the “inertia, bureaucracy, formalism” of our life. According to the author, “the poem “Terkin in the Other World” is not a continuation of “Vasily Terkin”, but only refers to the image of the hero of “The Book about a Fighter” to solve special problems of the satirical and journalistic genre.”
In the last years of his life, Tvardovsky wrote the lyrical poem-cycle “By the Right of Memory” (1966-1969) - a work of tragedy. This is a social and lyrical-philosophical reflection on the painful paths of history, on the fate of an individual, on the dramatic fate of one’s family, father, mother, brothers. Being deeply personal and confessional, “By the Right of Memory” at the same time expresses the people’s point of view on the tragic phenomena of the past.
Along with major lyric-epic works in the 40-60s. Tvardovsky writes poems that poignantly echo the “cruel memory” of the war (“I was killed near Rzhev,” “On the day the war ended,” “To the son of a dead warrior,” etc.), as well as a number of lyrical poems that made up the book “ From the lyrics of these years” (1967). These are concentrated, sincere and original thoughts about nature, man, homeland, history, time, life and death, the poetic word.
Written back in the late 50s. and in his own programmatic poem “The whole essence is in one single covenant...” (1958), the poet reflects on the main thing for himself in working on the word. It is about a purely personal beginning in creativity and about complete dedication in the search for a unique and individual artistic embodiment of the truth of life:
The whole point is in one single covenant:
What I will say before the time melts,
I know this better than anyone in the world -
Living and dead, only I know.
Say that word to anyone else
There's no way I could ever
Entrust. Even Leo Tolstoy -
It is forbidden. He won’t say - let him be his own god.
And I'm only mortal. I am responsible for my own,
During my lifetime I worry about one thing:
About what I know better than anyone in the world,
I want to say. And the way I want.
In Tvardovsky’s late poems, in his heartfelt, personal, deeply psychological experiences of the 60s. First of all, the complex, dramatic paths of people's history are revealed, the harsh memory of the Great Patriotic War resounds, the difficult destinies of the pre-war and post-war villages resonate with pain, evoke a heartfelt echo of events in people's life, and find a sad, wise and enlightened solution to the “eternal themes” of the lyrics.
Native nature never leaves the poet indifferent: he vigilantly notices, “how after the March snowstorms, / Fresh, transparent and light, / In April, the birch forests suddenly turned pink / Palm-like,” he hears “indistinct talk or hubbub / In the tops of centuries-old pines ” (“That sleepy noise was sweet to me...”, 1964), the lark that heralded spring reminds him of the distant time of childhood.
Often the poet constructs his philosophical thoughts about the life of people and the change of generations, about their connections and blood relationships in such a way that they grow as a natural consequence of the depiction of natural phenomena (“Trees planted by grandfather...”, 1965; “Lawn in the morning from under a typewriter ...”, 1966; “Birch”, 1966). In these poems, the fate and soul of man directly connect with the historical life of the homeland and nature, the memory of the fatherland: they reflect and refract the problems and conflicts of the era in their own way.
The theme and image of the mother occupy a special place in the poet’s work. So, already at the end of the 30s. in the poem “Mothers” (1937, first published in 1958), in the form of blank verse, not quite usual for Tvardovsky, not only childhood memory and a deep filial feeling, but also a heightened poetic ear and vigilance, and most importantly, an increasingly revealing and the growing lyrical talent of the poet. These poems are clearly psychological, as if reflected in them - in the pictures of nature, in the signs of rural life and everyday life inseparable from it - a maternal image so close to the poet’s heart appears:
And the first noise of leaves is still incomplete,
And a green trail on the grainy dew,
And the lonely knock of the roller on the river,
And the sad smell of young hay,
And the echo of a late woman's song,
And just the sky, blue sky -
They remind me of you every time.
And the feeling of filial grief sounds completely different, deeply tragic in the cycle “In Memory of the Mother” (1965), colored not only by the acute experience of irreparable personal loss, but also by the pain of nationwide suffering during the years of repression.
In the land where they were taken in droves,
Wherever there is a village nearby, let alone a city,
In the north, locked by the taiga,
All there was was cold and hunger.
But my mother certainly remembered
Let's talk a little about everything that has passed,
How she didn’t want to die there, -
The cemetery was very unpleasant.
Tvardovsky, as always in his lyrics, is extremely specific and precise, right down to the details. But here, in addition, the image itself is deeply psychologized, and literally everything is given in sensations and memories, one might say, through the eyes of the mother:
So-and-so, the dug earth is not in a row
Between centuries-old stumps and snags,
And at least somewhere far from housing,
And then there are graves right behind the barracks.
And she used to see in her dreams
Not so much a house and a yard with everyone on the right,
And that hillock is in the native side
With crosses under curly birch trees.
Such beauty and grace
In the distance is a highway, road pollen smokes.
“I’ll wake up, I’ll wake up,” the mother said, “
And behind the wall is a taiga cemetery...
In the last of the poems of this cycle: “Where are you from, / Mother, did you save this song for old age?..” - a motif and image of “crossing” that is so characteristic of the poet’s work arises, which in “The Country of Ant” was represented as a movement towards the shore.” new life”, in “Vasily Terkin” - as the tragic reality of bloody battles with the enemy; in the poems “In Memory of a Mother,” he absorbs pain and sorrow about the fate of his mother, bitter resignation with the inevitable finitude of human life:
What has been lived is lived through,
And from whom what is the demand?
Yes, it's already nearby
And the last transfer.
Water carrier,
The gray-haired old man
Take me to the other side
Side - home...
In the poet’s later lyrics, the theme of continuity of generations, memory and duty to those who died in the fight against fascism sounds with new, hard-won strength and depth, which enters with a piercing note in the poems “At night all the wounds hurt more painfully...” (1965), “I know no fault of mine...” (1966), “They lie there, deaf and dumb...” (1966).
I know it's not my fault
The fact that others did not come from the war,
The fact that they - some older, some younger -
We stayed there, and it’s not about the same thing,
That I could, but failed to save them, -
That's not what this is about, but still, still, still...
With their tragic understatement, these poems convey a stronger and deeper sense of involuntary personal guilt and responsibility for human lives cut short by the war. And this persistent pain of “cruel memory” and guilt, as one could see, applies to the poet not only to military victims and losses. At the same time, thoughts about man and time, imbued with faith in the omnipotence of human memory, turn into an affirmation of the life that a person carries and keeps within himself until the last moment.
In Tvardovsky's lyrics of the 60s. the essential qualities of his realistic style were revealed with particular completeness and force: democracy, the internal capacity of the poetic word and image, rhythm and intonation, all poetic means with external simplicity and uncomplicatedness. The poet himself saw the important advantages of this style, first of all, in the fact that it gives “reliable pictures of living life in all its imperious impressiveness.” At the same time, his later poems are characterized by psychological depth and philosophical richness.
Tvardovsky owns a number of thorough articles and speeches about poets and poetry containing mature and independent judgments about literature (“The Tale of Pushkin”, “About Bunin”, “The Poetry of Mikhail Isakovsky”, “On the Poetry of Marshak”), reviews and reviews about A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, O. Mandelstam and others, included in the book “Articles and Notes on Literature”, which went through several editions.
Continuing the traditions of Russian classics - Pushkin and Nekrasov, Tyutchev and Bunin, various traditions of folk poetry, without bypassing the experience of prominent poets of the 20th century, Tvardovsky demonstrated the possibilities of realism in the poetry of our time. His influence on contemporary and subsequent poetic development is undeniable and fruitful.
Alexander was born on June 8 (21), 1910 in the Smolensk province of the Russian Empire. It is surprising that in Tvardovsky’s biography the first poem was written so early that the boy could not even write it down, because he was not taught to read and write. The love for literature appeared in childhood: Alexander's father loved to read aloud at home the works of famous writers Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Nekrasov, Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Nikitin.
Already at the age of 14, he wrote several poems and poems on topical topics. When collectivization and dispossession took place in the country, the poet supported the process (he expressed utopian ideas in the poems “The Country of Ant” (1934-36), “The Path to Socialism” (1931)). In 1939, when the war with Finland began, A.T. Tvardovsky, as a member of the Communist Party, participated in the unification of the USSR and Belarus. Then he settled in Voronezh, continued to write, and worked for the newspaper “Red Army”.
Writer's creativity
The most famous work of Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was the poem “Vasily Terkin”. The poem brought great success to the author, as it was very relevant in wartime. The further creative period in Tvardovsky’s life was filled with philosophical thoughts, which can be traced in the lyrics of the 1960s. Tvardovsky began working for the magazine “New World” and completely revised his views on Stalin’s policies.
In 1961, impressed by Alexander Tvardovsky’s speech at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave him his story “Shch-854” (later called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”). Tvardovsky, being the editor of the magazine at that time, rated the story extremely highly, invited the author to Moscow and began to seek Khrushchev’s permission to publish this work.
At the end of the 60s, a significant event occurred in the biography of Alexander Tvardovsky - the Glavlit campaign against the magazine “New World” began. When the author was forced to leave the editorial office in 1970, part of the team left with him. The magazine was, in short, destroyed.
Death and legacy
Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky died of lung cancer on December 18, 1971, and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
Streets in Moscow, Voronezh, Novosibirsk, and Smolensk are named after the famous writer. A school was named in his honor and a monument was erected in Moscow.
Composition
Tvardovsky’s work captures the main milestones in the development of the Soviet country: collectivization, the Great Patriotic War, post-war revival. This is a poet - Soviet in essence, but at the same time, universal human problems also find a place in his poetry. His work is deeply folk, primarily in its ideological basis. The poet widely uses folk colloquial language, folklore forms, and draws his heroes in the spirit of folk poetry.
From Tvardovsky's poems one can trace the history of the country. The first poems “The Path to Socialism” and “The Country of Ant” reflected the period of collectivization. Peasant Nikita Morgunok sets off to look for that promised land, which
...in length and width - all around.
Sow one bobble
And that one is yours.
This is the ideal of peasant happiness. Tvardovsky leads Morgunka across the country, and, during the journey, observing the new things that collective farms bring with them, the hero abandons individual farming and comes to the idea that the collective farm is a peasant paradise. Tvardovsky used the travel motif, characteristic of folk art, for the same purpose as Nekrasov in his time in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'.” The poet sincerely believed that collectivization would bring happiness to the peasants. Later - in the 1960s - in the poem “By Right of Memory,” Tvardovsky, from the height of personal fate and historical experience, will comprehend collectivization, see not only the prospects that have opened up, but also the disastrous measures that were used to de-peasantize Russia.
During the Great Patriotic War, Tvardovsky created a truly folk “book about a fighter” “Vasily Terkin”. Her hero became the personification of the entire Russian nation. The commonality of Terkin's fate with the fate of the entire people is emphasized in the poem repeatedly. The image of the hero reflects the fundamental features of the Russian national character: simplicity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, courage. Perhaps Terkin’s most important quality is hard work. He, accustomed to working on a collective farm, considers war to be military labor. Terkin is capable of playing the accordion, repairing a clock, and organizing a crossing. Terkin does not lose heart even in the most difficult situations; he knows how to cheer up with a joke or a funny story.
Tvardovsky in his individual form embodied the universal inherent in the people. At the same time, the poet emphasizes that “in every company there is such a” Terkin. The Hero acts as a generalized image of a Fighter and a Man:
Sometimes serious, sometimes funny,
No matter what the rain, what the snow, -
Into battle, forward, into the utter fire
He goes, holy and sinful,
Russian miracle man.
The image of the hero merges with the image of the entire warring people. In the chapter “Death and the Warrior” Terkin overcomes even death. In such a conventional form, Tvardovsky embodied the idea of invincibility, the immortality of the people: “Terkin is not subject to death, since the war has not expired.”
The poem “Vasily Terkin” is an epic of war, since in diverse combat episodes, in various situations and scenes, an image of the people at war is created, its history is traced from retreat to victory.
In the post-war period, during the Khrushchev Thaw, Tvardovsky continues the biography of Terkin in the poem “Terkin in the Other World.” The poet wanted to cleanse the people's consciousness of totalitarian ideology. It is no coincidence that the poem begins with a dispute between the poet and the ideologically indoctrinated reader, who hears “echoes of illicit ideas” in everything, sees sedition in a literary work, without even reading it, but unconditionally believing the official assessments. Terkin turns from an epic hero into a tragic hero: having preserved his living soul in the “other world,” Terkin enters into a duel with the totalitarian system. “The Other World” is a military-bureaucratic System with a foreign asset, “Grobgazeta”, a Special Department, Organs, a Network, in which there is an excess of complete fools who did not want to resign. Terkin manages to keep his soul alive and get out of the “other world.” He performs a spiritual feat in peacetime. The return of Terkin is the finding of a way out for all living things that the dead System tried to strangle, where the dead command the living, where “the dead are responsible for the living.” If Terkin the fighter exalted his state and did everything for its victory, then the new Terkin destroys the totalitarian system that crushes people.
In the post-war period, Tvardovsky wrote the poem “House by the Road” - a lament for families that the war had scattered and destroyed. Describing the pre-war life and everyday life of the Sivtsov family, the poet shows the conditions for the formation of the heroes’ resilience and love for their Home.
This love helps Andrei, who returned from the war, to rebuild his house in the hope that his wife will return and there will be a strong and kind family again. Hope and love do not leave Anna even in the incredibly difficult conditions of a fascist concentration camp. The name “House by the Road” is symbolic - it is a house by the road of war.
The lyric epic poem “Beyond the Distance, the Distance” expands the time and space of the poet’s contemporary reality of the 1960s.
The poet turns to the past in order to compare it with the present, to see the transformations that have taken place in the country. Turning to the distances of time allows us to reflect on the fate of the Russian people, their character and traditions (chapters “Seven Thousand Rivers”, “Two Forges”, “Lights of Siberia”, “On the Angara”). In the chapter “So it Was,” Tvardovsky talks about the period of Stalin’s personality cult, about the personality type of a person that was developed at that time:
But which of us is fit to be a judge?
Decide who is right and who is wrong?
We are talking about people, and people
Don't they create gods themselves?
The poet is trying to philosophically comprehend time, to find the origins of what was happening.
In addition to temporal distances, the poet also surveys geographical distances. The poem is a kind of travel diary of a trip on the Moscow - Vladivostok train, passing through the entire country. Huge spaces run past the windows of the carriage. Having traveled across the entire country, the poet remembers his “small” homeland with extraordinary devotion and love:
From the road - across the country -
I see my father's land of Smolensk.
Another distance appears before the poet - the distance of human moral potential, the deep distance of the soul of the lyrical hero.
All three distances merge into a large symphonic work, which reveals the strength and power of the country, the beauty and heroism of the Soviet people. The poet is convinced of the historical correctness and progressiveness of our country’s path:
After a year - a year, after a milestone - a milestone,
Behind the stripe is a stripe.
The path is not easy. But the wind of the century -
He blows our sails.
Tvardovsky’s last poem was “By the Right of Memory.” This is a poem about “sleepless memory”, about everything that happened during the years of Soviet power - great and tragic, about history and eternal values. The poet wrote the poem in 1970, when they had already forgotten about the cult of personality and tried to embellish or silence the negative in the history of the Soviet country:
They tell you to forget and ask with affection
Not remembering is a memory for printing,
So that inadvertently that publicity
The uninitiated should not be confused.
Tvardovsky judges himself and the country by the highest moral standards. He sees the origins of dehumanization and betrayal in Stalin's times, when morality was turned upside down, when perjury, betrayal, and slander were considered valor, if this was done under the sign of love for the leader. The poet is sure that it is impossible to kill memory, that the people will remember their history, since
One lie is to our loss,
And only the truth comes to court!
The poem “By Right of Memory” is a bitter, dramatic work. In it, Tvardovsky tragically realized that he, too, was in error, that historical guilt lay with him:
The children became fathers long ago,
But for everyone's father
We were all responsible
And the trial lasts for decades,
And there is no end in sight.
Thus, the entire history of the country, captured in Tvardovsky’s poems, received its philosophical understanding in his last, final poem.
(1910-1971) Russian poet
Tvardovsky Alexander Trifonovich never complained about fate and even wrote in one of his poems:
No, life has not deprived me,
She didn’t spare her goodness.
Everything was given to me with interest
On the road - light and warmth.
But just like many of his contemporaries, he lived a very difficult life, which occurred during the most difficult years for Russia.
Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky was born on Smolensk land. His father was a blacksmith in the past, perhaps this is where the combination of peculiar thoroughness and unshakable integrity that has always been characteristic of Tvardovsky’s character came from. Trifon Gordeevich, the poet's father, was an extraordinary man. Through hard work, he managed to save a small amount of money, which was barely enough to make a down payment to the bank and buy a swampy plot of land in installments. The desire to escape from poverty, knowledge of literacy and even a certain erudition distinguished him from among the peasants, who either jokingly or ironically called Trifon Gordeevich “master”.
The poet's childhood occurred in the first post-revolutionary years, and in his youth he had the opportunity to learn from his own fate how collectivization was carried out. In the thirties, his father was “dispossessed” and expelled from his native village. The poet’s brother Ivan Trifonovich vividly spoke about these difficult years in his memoirs. The new masters of life did not even take into account the fact that Trifon Gordeevich, together with his family, worked the land himself and did not beg only thanks to his hard work.
The future poet became an active rural Komsomol member, and in 1924 he began sending notes to the editors of Smolensk newspapers. He wrote in them about Komsomol affairs, about various abuses committed by local authorities, which created an aura of a protector in the eyes of rural residents. And in 1925, the first poem by Alexander Tvardovsky, “New Hut,” appeared in the newspaper “Smolenskaya Village”. However, he began writing poetry even earlier and one day showed them to his teacher, who thus became the first critic of the future poet. As Tvardovsky himself later recalled, the teacher spoke very disapprovingly of his poetic experiments for the reason that the poems are very understandable, while modern literary requirements dictate that “it is impossible at any time to understand what and what is written in the poems.” The boy really wanted to conform to literary fashion, and he stubbornly tried to write in such a way that it was unclear what was written about. Fortunately, he failed to achieve this, and in the end he decided to write as it turned out. The first published poem by Alexander Tvardovsky, of course, was far from perfect, but it already showed the features that are characteristic of all his poetry. He wrote simply and clearly about what was close to him. In the twenties, he was influenced by the poetry of N. Nekrasov, which seemed to predetermine the civic pathos of his first poems.
Inspired by success, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky collected all his, as it seemed to him, “suitable” poems and went to Smolensk, to the poet Mikhail Isakovsky, who at that time worked in the editorial office of the newspaper “Working Way”. Their first meeting was the beginning of a great creative and human friendship that lasted until the end of the lives of both poets. Then a whole group of young poets gathered in Smolensk and came to regional newspapers from different villages. Mikhail Isakovsky was older than all of them, moreover, he was already a recognized poet in the region and tried as best he could to help his young colleagues in their work.
Subsequently, Alexander Tvardovsky noted that he wrote very poorly then, his poems were helpless and imitative. But the most destructive thing for him and for his other poets of the same age was the lack of general culture and education. When Tvardovsky arrived in Smolensk, he was already eighteen years old, and had only an incomplete rural school education. It was with this baggage that he entered poetry.
After several of his poems appeared in the magazine “October” and one of the critics noted them in their review. Tvardovsky arrived in Moscow, but reality turned out to be not as brilliant as it seemed from afar. In Moscow, as in Smolensk, it was difficult to get a job, and rare publications did not save the situation. Then Alexander Tvardovsky returned to Smolensk and decided to take his education seriously. He was accepted into the pedagogical institute without entrance exams, but with an obligation to study and pass all subjects for high school in a year. He not only fulfilled his obligation, but also caught up with his classmates in his first year.
During the Smolensk period, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky very keenly delved into all the processes that were taking place in the village at that time. Collectivization was already underway, his family suffered, but, sympathizing with his parents, he had no doubt about the need for change.
Alexander Tvardovsky often traveled to collective farms as a newspaper correspondent, collected material, wrote articles and stories. Then he decided to write a large work, and soon his poem “The Path to Socialism” appeared, named after the name of the collective farm in question. Despite the fact that, on the recommendation of Eduard Bagritsky, the poem was published in the Young Guard and received positive reviews from critics, it was frankly unsuccessful. As Tvardovsky himself admitted, these poems were like “riding with the reins lowered, the loss of the rhythmic discipline of the verse, simply put, not poetry.” He subsequently considered this and his second poem “Introduction,” which was published in Smolensk in 1932, as inevitable mistakes of his youth. His first big and truly successful work was his lyrical cycle “Rural Chronicle”, with which Tvardovsky declared himself in literature as a talented promising poet.
However, fame came to him only after the publication of the poem “The Country of Ant” in 1936. The plot of the poem is reminiscent of the story of Don Quixote, only with Alexander Tvardovsky, instead of a knight errant, a man who does not want to join a collective farm goes on a journey. He travels across the country on his little horse in the hope of finding a place where there are no collective farms. He, of course, does not find such a place and, having seen enough of the happy life of collective farmers, returns home convinced that there is no and cannot be a good life outside the collective farms. It is difficult to say whether Tvardovsky was being dishonest when he created this myth about the new village and the increased welfare of the peasants - after all, he could not help but see the negative that accompanied collectivization. However, in the poem everything looks decent and safe. Even nature itself rejoices in his poems and contributes its generous gift to the collective work:
They breathe with sweaty chests
Yellow Mane Oats.
Behind the open window.
In the expanse of the meadow
A well-fed horse in the night
She shook herself off silently.
Now Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky comes to Moscow as a recognized poet. By this time, he managed to complete two courses at the Pedagogical Institute in Smolensk and entered the third year at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature (MIFLI). His poems and poems are eagerly published in magazines, they are received favorably by critics, and the poet is quite happy with his life. To Tvardovsky’s credit, it should be noted that before and now he does not break ties with his family, he often visits his home, although he risks being labeled “the son of an enemy of the people.” However, this fate somehow escaped him.
In 1939, the poet graduated from MIFLI and was drafted into the army. At that time, he did not yet know that he would take off his overcoat only after the Victory. During the six years of his army life, Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky went through several wars. He took part in the Red Army's campaign in Western Belarus, after that in the Finnish War and, finally, in the Great Patriotic War. From 1940 until the Victory, the poet did not interrupt his literary studies and worked on the “Front Chronicle”. Its hero is not yet a soldier, but the same peasant, who, by the will of fate, ended up in the war. The poem “Vasily Terkin” grew out of this cycle. Its idea arose from Alexander Tvardovsky back during the Finnish war, when he, together with a group of other writers who worked in the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland,” decided to start a “corner of humor” in the newspaper and came up with a feuilleton character - Vasya Terkin, who had a huge impact among the fighters. success. But only the difficult military roads he traveled turned Terkin into a real folk hero. It is interesting to note that Tvardovsky’s new poem earned a commendable review even from such a demanding critic as Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, who, moreover, was categorically opposed to the Soviet regime.
War impressions formed the basis for Alexander Tvardovsky’s next poem, “House by the Road,” which was published in 1946. In contrast to “Terkin”, it contains a motif of inescapable sadness and grief over losses. In the same year, 1946, the poet created a kind of requiem for the dead - the poem “I was killed near Rzhev.”
In the post-war period, Alexander Tvardovsky continued to work on major works and created his main poem during this period - “Beyond the Distance - Distance.” In it, the poet strives for an honest conversation with the reader, but already understands perfectly well that this is impossible. In 1954, he began working on his next poem, “Terkin in the Other World,” a parody continuation of “Vasily Terkin,” which he completed in 1963. It was published and received the first reviews, but then they kept silent about it, as if it did not exist. A similar fate befell another Tvardovsky poem, “By the Right of Memory,” which was completed in 1969, but published in the USSR only in 1987. Realizing that he would not be allowed to tell the truth about the past, Tvardovsky stopped working on this poem. He devoted the last years of his life to lyric poetry. However, it is also felt that he is deliberately moving away from the social topic he once loved and does not write about what worries him, only because his thoughts will not reach the reader anyway. The poet feels that he is unable to change anything in this world and feels useless.
The war and post-war years largely changed the worldview of Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky, and his civic position also became different. He saw what the future had become, which in the twenties and thirties seemed bright and fair to him. And the poet tried as best he could to defend his ideals and his position.
In 1950, Alexander Tvardovsky was appointed editor-in-chief of the New World magazine, but after four years he was removed, and after another four, in 1958, he was returned. It was at this time that the “New World” became the center around which writers grouped, striving for an honest depiction of reality. At the same time, Tvardovsky managed to publish the famous story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and sought the publication of his novel “Cancer Ward.” Despite the fact that Alexander Tvardovsky himself had considerable power and influence (he was both a member of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR and a candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee), he constantly had to experience increasing pressure from conservative forces. In 1970, he was once again removed from the post of editor-in-chief, and the editorial office itself was virtually destroyed. Just a year and a half after this, the poet died. As one of the historians later wrote, “Tvardovsky’s death became a turning point for an entire period in the country’s cultural life.”