Characteristic and image of Peter 1 in the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

The Bronze Horseman is perhaps Pushkin's most controversial work, permeated with deep symbolism. For centuries, historians, literary critics, and ordinary readers have been arguing, breaking spears, creating and overthrowing theories as to what, in fact, the poet wanted to say. Of particular controversy is the image of Peter 1 in the poem The Bronze Horseman.

Opposition of Peter 1 to Nicholas 1

The work was written during the reign of Nicholas 1, to which Pushkin had great complaints about government: the suppression of the Decembrist uprising, the creation of secret police, the introduction of total censorship. Therefore, many scholars see the opposition of the great reformer Peter 1 to the reactionary Nicholas 1. Also, many researchers of Pushkin’s work look at the analogies between The Bronze Horseman and the Old Testament. A series of floods in St. Petersburg, especially devastating in 1824, prompted the author to think about a global flood, therefore in the work The Bronze Horseman the image of Peter 1 is associated with a number of thinkers with the image of God (deity), who is able to create and destroy.

Grad Petrov

However, even the scene of action cannot be precisely named. We ask ourselves: "In which city does the Pushkin poem dedicated to the flood of 1824 take place?" The question seems to allow a single answer: of course, it occurs in St. Petersburg, because the image of Peter the Great in Pushkin’s art is always associated with this city. However, it is easy to see that this answer is not so logical: Petersburg has never been called Petersburg in any line of the poem! In the introduction, descriptive expressions were used: “Peter the Creation” and “City of Petrov,” in the first part the name Petrograd (“Above the clouded Petrograd ...”) and once the Petropol (“And the Peter ascended like Triton ...” ").

It turns out that there is a city, but this is not real Petersburg, but a certain mythical city of Peter. Even on this basis, researchers, the image of Peter 1 in the poem "The Bronze Horseman" is mythologized. If we examine the entire text of the poem as a whole, Petersburg is mentioned in it three times: once in the subtitle (Petersburg Story) and twice in the prose author's notes. In other words, in this way Pushkin makes it clear to us that despite the fact that “the incident described in this story is based on truth,” the city in which the action of the poem takes place is not Petersburg. More precisely, it’s not entirely Petersburg - in a sense, there are three different cities, each of which is associated with one of the characters in the work.

Proud image

The names “Peter the Creation” and “City of Petrov” correspond to Peter - the only hero of this part of the poem, and in Pushkin Peter appears as a kind of deity. We are talking about the statue depicting him, that is, the earthly incarnation of this deity. For Pushkin, the very appearance of the monument is a direct violation of the commandment "Do not make yourself an idol." Actually, this explains the poet’s contradictory attitude to the monument: in spite of all its greatness, it is terrible, and it is difficult to recognize the words about the proud image as a compliment.

The official opinion is that Pushkin ambiguously treated Peter 1 as a statesman. On the one hand, he is great: a reformer, warrior, “builder” of St. Petersburg, creator of the fleet. On the other - a formidable ruler, at times tyrant and tyrant. In the poem The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin also interpreted the image of Peter in two ways, raising him to the rank of God and demiurge at the same time.

Which side is Pushkin

A favorite argument of culturologists was the question of whom Pushkin sympathized with: the almighty deified Peter or the "little man" Eugene, personifying a simple city dweller, on whom little depends. In the poetic masterpiece The Bronze Horseman, the description of Peter 1 - the revived omnipotent monument - echoes the description of the state. And Eugene is an average citizen, a cog in a huge state machine. A philosophical contradiction arises: is the state permissible in its movement, the desire for development, to sacrifice the lives and destinies of ordinary people in order to achieve greatness, some lofty goal? Or is each person an individuality, and his personal desires should be taken into account, even to the detriment of the country's development?

Pushkin did not express his unambiguous opinion either verbally or in verse. His Peter 1 is able to both create and destroy. His Eugene is able to both love dearly (the daughter of the widow Parasha) and dissolve in the crowd, in the darkness of the city, becoming an worthless part of the gray mass. And - ultimately - die. A number of authoritative Pushkin scholars believe that the truth is somewhere in between: a state without a person does not exist, but it is impossible to observe the interests of everyone. Perhaps a poetic novel was written about this.

Peter 1

The image of Peter haunts culturologists. In the days of the USSR, dogmas were not allowed to represent the great reformer as some kind of deity, because religion was oppressed. For all, it was a “talking bronze statue” living in the sick imagination of the hero of the story Eugene. Yes, it is symbolic, but a deep analysis of the characters remained the occasion for discussions among pundits. To compare the image of Peter 1 in the poem The Bronze Horseman with biblical subjects was fraught.

But is Pushkin Peter the Great a bronze statue or a deity? In one of the Soviet editions of Pushkin’s poems to the line “Idol on a Bronze Horse” there is the following comment by the classic of Pushkin’s studies S. M. Bondi: “An idol in Pushkin’s language means“ statue. ”Meanwhile, Pushkin’s scholars noted that when the word“ idol ”is used by Pushkin in literally, and not figuratively, it almost always means a statue of God, a fact that can be seen in many verses: “Poet and crowd”, “To the nobleman”, “Vesuvius the pharynx ...” and others. Even Emperor Nicholas 1, who personally reviewed manuscript, noticed this circumstance TVO and wrote in the margin of the highest number of comments December 14 1833 Pushkin made an entry in a diary, which complained that the emperor returned poem with comments:. "The word" idol "is not missed highest censorship".

Bible motives

The echo of the images of Peter and the Bronze Horseman with biblical images literally is in the air. This is indicated by revered Pushkin scholars Brodotskaya, Arkhangelsk, Tarkhov, Scheglov and others. The poet, calling the horseman an idol and an idol, directly points to the biblical heroes. It is noted that the idea of ​​a powerful force close to God and the elements is constantly associated with the figure of Peter in Pushkin's.

Not only the image of Peter 1 in the poem "The Bronze Horseman" is associated with the biblical character. Eugene is also a direct analogue of another Old Testament character - Job. His angry words addressed to the “world builder” (the bronze horseman) correspond to Job's murmuring against God, and the formidable pursuit of the revived horseman resembles the appearance of “God in the storm” in the Book of Job.

But if Peter is the Old Testament God, and the statue of Falcone is the pagan statue that replaced him, then the flood of 1824 is a biblical flood. At least, such bold conclusions are drawn by many experts.

Punishment for sins

There is another characteristic of Peter. The Bronze Horseman would not be a great work if it could be so easily deciphered. Researchers have noticed that the rider is on the side of the irresistible force of nature as a force that punishes Eugene for sins. He himself is terrible. Darkness surrounds him, a huge and, according to the logic of Pushkin's description, evil power is hidden in him, which has raised Russia on its hind legs.

The figure of the Bronze Horseman in the poem defines the image of his historical action, the essence of which is violence, inexorability, inhumanity of unprecedented proportions in the name of realizing his grandiose plans through suffering and sacrifice. It is in the Bronze Horseman that the cause of the death of his world lies, the irreconcilable hostility of stone and water, which is unexpectedly indicated in the final entry after the utopian picture of the majestic, beautiful, blessed city mating with Russia.

Pushkin as a prophet

Rethinking the work, the thought comes that reckoning will come for evil deeds. That is, copper Peter resembles the riders of the Apocalypse, making retribution. Perhaps Pushkin hinted to Tsar Nicholas 1 about the inevitability of punishment that "having sown the wind, you will reap the storm."

Historians call the Decembrist uprising a harbinger of the 1917 revolutions. Nicholas 1 brutally suppressed dissent: some of the Decembrists were hanged, some lived out their convict lives in Siberia. However, the social processes leading to the uprising were not taken into account by the authorities. A conflict of contradictions matured, half a century later turning into the fall of tsarism. In this light, Pushkin acts as a prophet who foretold the indomitable folk element that flooded the "city of Petrov," and Peter himself, in copper guise, made retribution.

Output

The poem The Bronze Horseman is not at all simple. The image of Peter is extremely controversial, the plot at first glance is simple and understandable, but the text is filled with explicit and hidden characters. It is no accident that the work was severely censored and was not immediately published.

The poem has two main lines of its development related to the fate of the city of Peter and the fate of Eugene. In ancient myths there are many descriptions of how the Gods destroy cities, lands, people, often as a punishment for bad behavior. So in the Petersburg Story, Pushkin’s transformation of this scheme can be traced: Peter, personifying the demiurge, conceived the construction of the city solely in the name of the state good. In the transformation of nature, in the imprisonment of the Neva River into stone, an analogy is traced with the transformation of the state, with the direction of life processes in the sovereign channel.

However, the figurative-event system of the poem shows how and why creation turns into a catastrophe. And this is due to the essence of the Bronze Horseman, which is depicted by Pushkin, first of all, in the episode of the epiphany of Eugene, flowing into the scene of his pursuit by a revived statue. The city, erected on a piece of land taken from nature, eventually turned out to be flooded by the "subjugated element".

Was Pushkin a prophet? What motive motivated him to write such a complex, contradictory creation? What did he want to say to the readers? Generations of Pushkin scholars, literary critics, historians, and philosophers will still argue about this. But another thing is important - what a specific reader will take out of the poem, the very screw without which the state machine will slip.