Crazy (poem)

The storyline of the poem is a monologue of a mentally ill patient who imagined himself to be a king, to whom his relatives came to the ward (they are guests at the king’s reception) ^[3] . It begins with the line: “Sit down, I am glad to see you. Throw away all fear. ” Its visitors are the patient’s wife and her brother, whom he sometimes recognizes, then takes for foreigners or subjects, depending on whether his mind is clouded or his consciousness becomes clear ^[3] . At the beginning of the visit, the patient at the time of short-term remission begins to realize that before him is not strangers, but his wife Masha and brother-in-law Kolya. The nature of his treatment of them changes from official to intimate sincere. Talking with his wife, the patient recalls their daughter Olya, after which he says with parental tenderness:

The memories of his beloved daughter awakened a heap of diverse thoughts and feelings in the hero, his mind plunges into reflection : he realizes his illness and does not want to find it in front of his daughter, whom he misses very much, but avoids meeting with him. The hero seeks to instill confidence in the crying Masha with the hope of a favorable outcome of his treatment. At the same time, he is interested in the etiology of the disease, he wonders: is there an inevitability of the hereditary disease that his grandfather and father suffered from? The patient tries to recall the beginning of his mental illness: “How did it start? ...”, and he succeeds.

Particularly dramatic is the fact that the hero’s happiest memories are inseparable from painful pathological emotions. Bright thoughts about Olya carry him to the time when, one day in the summer heat, he and his daughter vomited cornflowers, full of fatherly happiness. Against the background of a sense of harmony of nature and the fullness of the paternal feelings of the lyrical hero, then an acute mental crisis suddenly struck ^[3] . Now the memories of that happy and at the same time dramatic episode again plunged the patient into the abyss of madness, the memory of a previous seizure passes into a new seizure. The famous “lyrical insertion”, beginning with the words “Yes, cornflowers, cornflowers ...”, is dedicated to the description of the hero’s memories, it is distinguished by another poetic size ^[4] .

The poem ends with a description of the attack of pathological aggression ^[3] : in the mind of a sick hero, the guests whom he just politely received appear to be subjects spoiled with impunity, over whom he demands harsh reprisals, his hospital ward is no longer a comfortable “kingdom”, but a cruel prison:

In the end, the sick “king” still decides that he may have mercy on his “subjects” and tells the “guard” to drive out the uninvited guests.

Metric and Building

The poem is polymetric . The work opens 41 lines of free (multi-part) iamba with free rhyme. Then comes the eight quatrains of the 3-foot dactyl with a cross rhyme (abab), male endings alternate with female. The finale of the poem is 20 lines of again free iamba. A total of ninety-three lines.

To individualize the speech characteristics of his hero, Apukhtin designed the central part of the poem as a separate poetic size. Thus, the discrepancy between the main character’s consciousness and the author’s consciousness was emphasized. Researchers note that such a technique was characteristic of the so-called fantastic poetic works. They included several “voices”. Such polyphony was used inside a single poetic monologue as a means of transmitting the patient's confused, volatile consciousness. The free iambic of the first and final stanza is interrupted by a three-foot dactyl (the so-called lyrical insert - “Yes, cornflowers, cornflowers ...”) ^[4] . According to M. L. Gasparov , the “Crazy” polymetry resembles the classical polymetry of the eighteenth century, where “one size is felt as a general background, others distinguish internal inserted pieces or, conversely, external framing”; in this text “lyrical memory“ Yes, cornflowers, cornflowers ... “[emphasized] 3-Art. dactyl on the background of delusional free iamba ” ^[5] .

Genre Features

The poem is written in the tradition of realistic literature and built as an internal dramatic monologue. Elements of rhetoric and recitation embedded in the work made it convenient for acting, designed for audiovisual perception . “The abundance of prosaisms, conversational intonation, frequent line-to-line transfers, astrophic construction of a poem - the poet uses various means to make the reader perceive the text as a lively, excited speech of the hero,” writes modern researcher M.V. Otradin ^{[1 ]} .

Researchers define the genre of a poem as a concise poetic story or a large story poem, while specifying the marginality of this genre. But such relative marginality persisted only in the 19th century; in the next century, poets successfully used the genre of a small poem, without naming the name of the literary predecessor. Such, according to the writer and literary critic Vyacheslav Kiktenko , Arseny Tarkovsky , David Samoilov , Alexander Kochetkov , Vasily Fedorov ^[2] .

Another genre definition of a poem is introduced by P. A. Gaponenko: a psychological novel in verses. Such a novel is largely connected with prose, the basis for the novel, according to the researcher, was the Russian psychological prose by F. M. Dostoevsky . The poem "Crazy" is directly related to the tradition of Dostoevsky, says Gaponenko. Like all the work of Apukhtin as a whole, he relates this poem to the field of “ pure art ” ^[6] .

The topic of insanity in literature was somehow touched upon before A.Pukhtin A.S. Pushkin , N.V. Gogol , A.I. Herzen . At the time of Apukhtin, Leo Tolstoy , Vsevolod Garshin , Anton Chekhov , Yakov Polonsky wrote about this ^[7] .

The work of Apukhtin thematically echoed in many respects with the poem by Y. P. Polonsky “Crazy”. The beginning of the Apukhtinsky “Madman” goes back to the first lines of Polonsky:

Who says I'm crazy ?! On the contrary ... - I'm the guests of the girls ... Sit down! ... It’s not a sin for you! am i really angry! I will not bite - why are you afraid! J.P. Polonsky, The Crazy Man, 1859

Sit down, I'm glad to see you. Throw away all fear And you can keep yourself free I allow you. You know the other day I was elected king popularly ... A.N. Apukhtin, “Crazy”, 1890

But if the named authors, in particular, Polonsky, had the theme of insanity considered mainly in the social aspect, then Apukhtin had no motive for social injustice. Nevertheless, as E. Khmelevskaya points out, the deep anguish of a hunted-out, intimidated litger in the early 1890s was perceived as a complaint and the groan of not only an insane person ^[7] :

Tearing all breasts from longing ...
Oh god Where do I go?
All cornflowers, cornflowers ...
How dare they laugh?

According to researcher M.V. Otradin, the explanation for what is happening Apukhtin finds not in a clash of fatal forces or in social disharmony, but in a psychological, biological field: “It is not rock that is to blame, not cruel life, but bad heredity” ^[1] .

The poem was reprinted in the author's collection in 1893, shortly before the death of Apukhtin. Due to the fact that it fell into the numerous editions of literary and artistic collections “The Reciter-Reciter” “for reading in divertissements”, “Crazy” became an extremely popular poem in both the pop and amateur repertoire of many reciting performers ^[7] . So, the performance of the poem by the famous artist Pavel Orlenev was popular . The poem was especially popular among decadent poets ^[3] . Young Alexander Blok also liked to read Crazy. In his copy of the publication of the poems of Apukhtin in 1898, the title “Crazy” is underlined. In a letter to A. V. Gippius on July 25, 1901, he wrote this: “We have to play ... a madman - in a suit and with Masha ” ^[8] .

Among those who appreciated the exclusively literary side of the work while the song form became popular, there was a well-known lawyer and literary connoisseur A. F. Koni , who called in 1921 “Crazy” along with “Requiem”, “Unfinished Monument”, “Year in the monastery” and the poem “From the papers of the prosecutor” “deep in content and excellent in verse” ^[9] .

Later, Soviet criticism noted the hopelessness, joyless, soul tearing "apukhtinskaya note" of the poem. But, in the opinion of N. P. Kolosova, “Crazy” is not a poem that represents the ready basis of the romance, such as, for example, the classic romance on Apukhtin’s poems “Nights are crazy, nights are sleepless ...”. The poem “Crazy” can be called dimensionally prosaic, with a special rhythmic intonation, the plot narrative for recitation ^[10] .

Modern researchers agree that "Crazy" is one of the most perfect poems by Alexei Apukhtin ^{[1] [2]} . Among contemporary publicists, there is also the opinion that the main theme of the poem is not psychological pathology, but biological degeneration. These arguments are inspired by the words of the lyrical hero: But still ... for what? What is our crime? .. / That my grandfather was sick, that my father was sick, / That this ghost scared me from childhood, - / So what of this? I could, finally, / Do not receive the damned inheritance ^[11] .

Apukhtin's poem and the novel by V.V. Nabokov "Luzhin's Defense"

According to the literary critic S.V. Sakun, allusions to the poem "Crazy" play a complex role in the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, " Luzhin's Defense " (1929), whose main character, the chess player Luzhin, is losing his mind. The chess line in the novel is intertwined with the musical. The first person to meet him at Luzhin’s house was a strange guest:

the elderly Princess Umanova, who was called the Queen of Spades (according to the famous opera ) ... <she> concluded from the hasty and obscure explanation of the landlady that he had something to do with literature, magazines, - the writer, in a word. “But you know that? She asked, politely engaging in a literary conversation. “From the new poetry ... a little decadent ... something about cornflowers,“ all cornflowers, cornflowers ... ””

- V.V. Nabokov, “Luzhin Defense”. Sobr. Op. in 4 volumes. T. 2. M., Pravda, 1990, pp. 74

S. V. Sakun believes that "this completely innocent image of a" courteous ", elderly princess is permeated with ominous instructions and omens for Luzhin." Involuntarily, but persistently, she develops the theme of madness before Luzhin. After all, the opera by P. I. Tchaikovsky “The Queen of Spades” (Tchaikovsky was a friend of A. N. Apukhtin) is also a work about the tragic fate of the German player. It was written and staged in the same year as Apukhtin's poem - in 1890, although the events of the novel develop far from the relevance of the emigrant decadence of 1929. Sakun writes: "And in this poem so thematically related to the novel, cornflowers bloom in a lush, but not quite characteristic color." True, in the Russian text of the novel there was no indication of the color of cornflowers, but in the English translation of “The Luzhin Defense”, Nabokov unequivocally pointed out to the English reader unfamiliar with Apukhtin’s poetry the red and yellow color of cornflowers: “And that thing, do you know it? <...> From Apukhtin - one of the new poets ... slightly decadent ... something about yellow and red cornflowers ” ^[3] .

According to the critic, the following quatrain is emotionally climactic, like an echo echoing “in the subsequent excruciating passions of the crazy Luzhin” ^[3] :

Tearing all breasts from longing ...
Oh god Where do I go?
All cornflowers, cornflowers ...
How dare they laugh?

The Apukhta poem sounds in unison and complements the history of the Luzhin tragedy, according to S.V. Sakun. Without understanding the harmony of themes, the proximity of motives, the similarity of psychological nuances and artistic images of the work of Apukhtin and the novel “Luzhin's Defense”, Nabokov’s plan cannot be fully understood, the novel needs to be compared with a poem. The points of their contact are that the crazy Apukhtin imagined himself to be a king, and the king, as S.V. Sakun writes, is a secret, but not realized passion of the crazy grandmaster Luzhin ^[3] , whom literary critic Mark Lilly in some that sense figuratively likens the king on a chessboard ^[12] .

On the whole, S.V. Sakun calls the allusion of the poem Apukhtin in the novel by V.V. Nabokov rather hidden, but intensely-additional accentuation, additionally confirming the consciousness of the protagonist struck by madness. But Luzhin, “unlike his more aggressive Apukhtinsky“ brother ”,” did not remain a patient in the hospital, which, according to the researcher, can say “only about his more sophisticated cunning characteristic of a mental patient, which is so realistically portrayed in the poem and not so clearly written out in the novel ” ^[3] .

Other Reflections in Literature and Cinema

In the autobiographical book of V. P. Kataev “Broken Life, or the Magic Horn of Oberon” in an episode of visiting Odessa cinema, Father Valentin Kataev brings his son to the cadet school to watch a film.

... And then the day came when my dad, climbing the cold front staircase of the cadet school <...> found ourselves in a huge vaulted corridor, which served both as a church, and a dining room, and a gym, and a theater, where on a small stage twice a year amateur junkers, made-up, dressed up, in false beards, mustaches and wigs, played different vaudeville like “Az and Fert”, “Groom from the Debt Office”, “ Bear ” and “ Proposal ” by Chekhov and others, and also conducted divertissements , where the same junkers recited the popul polar poems and monologues from the "reciter", such as "Crazy" Apukhtina, usually begins with the fact that a cadet-tragedian, leaning back in his chair in front of him inverted, false started trembling baritone:

“Sit down, I'm glad to see you. Drop all fear and you can keep yourself free, I allow you. You know, the other day, I was elected king popularly ... "

- Valentin Kataev, "Broken Life, or the Magic Horn of Oberon." - M., Sov. writer, 1983, p. 183.

The words of the writer Anatoly Zhigulin are also permeated with the longing of memories of childhood and mother: “There was a lot of pain in that song. About the black pool, willow, reeds. About the cornflowers that you collected for Lola in the field by the river ”from the book“ The Distant Bell ”written in 1998 ^[13] . True, in this case, as in a number of others, readers and viewers have to deal not with an authentic Apukhta text, but with a surrogate text of folkloric processing, which has become much more popular than the original poem. Персонажи романа-идиллии Александра Чудакова «Ложится мгла на старые ступени» также распевают романс «Васильки, васильки» ^[14] .

В фильме Татьяны Лиозновой « Карнавал » персонаж-провинциалка Ирины Муравьёвой Нина Соломатина пытается прочитать «Сумасшедшего» перед приёмной комиссией в театральный институт (актёры Лидия Смирнова и Владимир Балашов ) ^[15] .

Для придания впечатления «ненормальности» или чудаковатости того или иного персонажа мотив стихотворения Апухтина или народного романса использовался не только Набоковым. Так в неоконченной пьесе Александра Вампилова «Последний летний день» мотив мании величия обыгрывается в эпизоде слепого, просящего подаяние и поющего песню на стихи А. Н. Апухтина ^[16] . В фильме Алексея Германа « Хрусталёв, машину! » в квартире Шишмарёвой присутствует необычный персонаж, считающийся крупным специалистом в области геронтологии , у которого по иронии судьбы недавно была выявлена крупная раковая опухоль . Этот врач с бутафорским венком на голове читает стихи Алексея Апухтина: «Да, васильки, васильки, много мелькало их в поле…» ^[17] .

Персонаж романа Анатолия Рыбакова « Дети Арбата », студент Савелий Кусков, находится пятый месяц в Бутырской тюрьме по нелепому обвинению в намерении бежать за границу только потому, что при обыске у него нашли двадцать восемь рублей серебром. Странный студент безоговорочно признал свою мнимую вину в государственном преступлении, а на вопрос, зачем признавался, флегматично отвечал: «А как докажешь?» После двух дней совместного пребывания с ним в камере «на Сашу <Панкратова, главного героя> он произвёл впечатление человека если не окончательно свихнувшегося, то уже тронутого. Часами лежал на койке молча, неподвижно, потом вдруг вскакивал, ходил, натыкаясь на кровати, тихонько напевал: „Всё васильки, васильки, много мелькает их в поле“. И это монотонное бормотание апухтинското стихотворения усиливало ощущение ненормальности» ^[18] .

Всё стихотворение было положено на музыку для мелодекламации Н. В. Киршбаумом ^[19] , но лишь часть его — фольклоризированная версия лирической вставки «Да, васильки, васильки…» с многочисленными вариациями, — получила широкое распространение как городской романс: «Ох, васильки, васильки…», «Всё васильки, васильки…», «Ах, васильки, васильки…», «Ой, васильки, васильки…» и так далее. Эта часть стихотворения со временем стала самостоятельным фольклорным произведением, отделившись от авторского ^[21] .

Коллизии нового произведения мало повторяли сюжет А. Н. Апухтина. Более или менее неизменными остались лишь первые две строфы из лирической вставки. Полностью исчез мотив сумасшествия главного героя, вместо него появился типичный любовно-криминальный сюжет жестокого романса. По мнению А. Добрякова, фольклорно-песенная переработка настолько далеко увела произведение от оригинала, что можно говорить лишь о произвольном цитировании первоисточника ^[22] .

Образ невинной девочки Оли, папиной дочки, трансформировался в образ девушки Оли (в некоторых вариантах Лёли), то коварной изменщицы ( Нет не люблю я тебя, / быть я с тобой не мечтала ), то легкомысленной и распутной ( Оля играет тобой, / Так мне друзья сообщили. / Есть у ней милый другой <…> / Я умирал от тоски… / Ты отдавалась другому… ), но во всех вариантах мотивация её неверности, или только подозрения в неверности является причиной кровавой развязки романса, где Оля погибает от кинжала своего ревнивого возлюбленного. На груди погубленной и утопленной девушки матросы находят непонятно откуда взявшуюся надпись: «Олю (~ Лёлю) любовь загубила (~ погубила)» ^[23] .

В некоторых вариантах песни есть более подробная мотивация: Не надо так сильно любить, / Не надо так сильно влюбляться./ Любовь не умеет шутить, / Любовь не умеет смеяться (~ а только кроваво смеяться); По мнению исследователей, строки Тот же, кто крепко любил, / Того и рука погубила отсылают романс к « Балладе Редингской тюрьмы » Оскара Уайльда ^[23] .

По мнению С. Ю. Неклюдова , «вариантные изменения текста в устной традиции обычно минимальны в его начале и в наибольшей степени проявляются в его второй половине и в финале», что как раз наглядно демонстрирует пример с народной переработкой «Сумасшедшего» ^[24] . Помимо определения песни как городского романса существуют и другие жанровые определения, в частности, в качестве городской баллады ^[25] , а также застольной ^[26] или уличной песни ^[22] , мещанского романса ^[19] .

В советское время песня не получила официального признания, как, например, аналогичный романс « Окрасился месяц багрянцем », исполнявшийся Лидией Руслановой ^[25] , тем не менее, песня оставалась популярной в любительском и даже в блатном репертуаре. В 1978 году исполнитель неподцензурного русского шансона Аркадий Северный с ансамблем «Черноморская чайка» записал песню для своего шестого одесского альбома «Снова в Одессе» ^[27] . Кроме Аркадия Северного в эти годы романс также исполнял заслуженный артист России Анатолий Титов (один из его альбомов так и назывался «Ах васильки, васильки…») и некоторые другие исполнители. В постсоветское время записи песни стали более доступными. В 2010 году в серии «Антология одной песни» вышел релиз «Ой, васильки, васильки…» с одиннадцатью вариациями романса. Кроме записей А. Северного и А. Титова в сборнике представлены такие исполнители городского романса , как Борис Зорин, Элеонора Филина, группа «Ля-Миноръ», Юрий Щербаков, группа «Гурт Экспресс», ансамбль «Загадка», дуэт Я. А. Халецкого и Э. Н. Филиной , Валерий Кокшаров, театр « У Никитских ворот » ^[26] .

Романс был переведён неизвестным автором на украинский язык ^[28] .

Публикации стихотворения

• Апухтин, А. Н. Сумасшедший. Стихотворение. // Вестник Европы . — 1890, декабрь, стр. 704—706;
• Апухтин, А. Н. Сумасшедший: Сцена-монолог в стихах в 1 д. : Ред. для сцены К. И. Ванченко / (Стих. Апухтина и др.). — М.: Литография Моск. театр. биб-ки С. Ф. Рассохина, ценз. 1898. — 16 с.;
• Апухтин, А. Н. Сочинения: Стихотворения; Prose. / Comp. и подг. текстов А. Ф. Захаркина. Вступ. Art. М. В. Отрадина. Note Р. А. Шацевой. — М.: Худож. лит., 1985. — С. 221—222;
• Апухтин, А. Н. Полное собрание стихотворений / Сост., подг. текста и прим. Р. А. Шацевой. Entry статья М. В. Отрадина. - Ed. третье. — Л. : Сов. писатель, 1991. — (Биб-ка поэта. Бол. серия). ;
• Русские поэты. Антология русской поэзии в 6 т. — М.: Дет. лит., 1996;
• Золотой век. Антология русского романса. / Авт. предисл. и биогр. статей В. Калугин. — М.: Эксмо, 2006. — С. 906—910.

Bibliography

• Arkhipova A. S. How Olga died and folklore was born // "Bricks": Cultural anthropology and folklore today. Collection of articles in honor of the 65th anniversary of S. Yu. Neklyudov and the 40th anniversary of his scientific activity / Comp. A. Arkhipova, M. Gister, A. Kozmin. M .: Russian State Humanitarian University, 2008.S. 563-591. ISBN 5-7281-1042-2 , ISBN 978-5-7281-1042-2

• Variants of the lyrics of the song “All cornflowers, cornflowers” ​​with notes

• Cruel romance
• The month turned purple