The meaning of the word poem in the dictionary of literary terms. What is a Poem? Definition Literary term poem

poem it in the modern sense, any large or medium-sized poetic work. Initially, the term was applied to the mythological heroic and didactic epic (Homer, Hesiod), but antiquity already knew the heroic poem (“The War of Mice and Frogs”), from which later burlesque and satirical poems originate. By analogy, "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" is often reckoned with the poem, which is not poetic and unique in terms of genre. Knightly novels, which arose as poetry, were not considered poems and subsequently even opposed to them as works of insufficient seriousness. However, the related "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" (12th century) by Shota Rustaveli entered the history of world literature as a poem. Varieties of medieval poems had their own genre names. In France, heroic poetic works (there are about a hundred of them in the records of the 11-14th centuries, some exceed Homer's in volume) were called chansons de geste (see) - songs about deeds; the largest - later (13-14 centuries) were influenced by courtly literature. At the turn of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance arose a poem with a title, which at that time simply meant a happy ending, - Dante's "Comedy", called by his enthusiastic fans "Divine". However, from the Renaissance to classicism, the ancient poem served as a model for poets - not so much the Iliad, but rather the Aeneid (1st century BC) by Virgil, who supposedly streamlined and improved Homer's poetics.

It was essential to comply external structure poems up to an appeal to the muse and a statement about the subject of chanting in the beginning. Renaissance poems based on violent fairy-tale fiction - “Roland in Love” (1506) by M.M. Boiardo and “Furious Roland” by L. Aristo (the turn of the 15-16th centuries) continuing this plot - were considered by contemporaries and later theorists to be novels. In the 17th century, the most original poem was Paradise Lost (1667) by J. Milton, written in blank verse. In the 18th century, a poem was created according to the ancient model, transformed according to the classic understanding; innovation beyond a certain measure was often condemned. "Henriad" (1728) Voltaire V.K. Trediakovsky assessed extremely severely in view of the implausible combination of fictitious actions of the famous historical figure, Henry IV (represented as a philosopher king, an enlightened monarch), and documentary information about him. Russian poets of the 18th century, who considered the epic poem to be the highest genre (in the West, tragedy was often preferred to it), repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to glorify Peter I in this genre. M.M. Kheraskov, who wrote several poems on other Topics; The heavy-weight "Rossiyada" (1779), which contained allusions to the recent war with Turkey - about the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, was considered the reference. The iroikokomicheskaya poem (“Elisha, or the Irritated Bacchus” by V.I. Maikov, 1771) was also unofficially recognized. Many Russians were fascinated by Voltaire's frivolous ironic poem The Virgin of Orleans (1735), published in 1755. Without her influence, Pushkin's Gavriiliada (1821) would not have appeared. Pushkin's poem "Ruslan and Ludmila" (1820) was oriented towards several traditions, most notably the Aristo tradition.

Adherents of classicism did not agree to consider it a poem. The poet left his subsequent poems without a genre subtitle or called stories. The widely spread romantic poem, the founder of the blind, J. Byron, became lyrical-epic, the plot in it is sharply weakened, as in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1809-18). Partly on the model of Byron's "Don Juan" (1818-23), it was started and called a novel in verse "Eugene Onegin" (1823-31). Such a genre definition was then an oxymoron, synthesizing the “low”, almost non-legitimized novel and the highest genre of the poem; the novel was introduced into high literature. VG Belinsky preferred to call "Eugene Onegin" a poem. After M.Yu. Lermontov, a romantic poem is the lot of epigones. I.S. Turgenev in his early poems paid tribute to both romanticism and the “natural school”. N.A. Nekrasov radically updated the poetic narrative: he “prosaicized” it, introduced a folk peasant theme, and at the end of his life he wrote a unique peasant epic poem “Who should live well in Rus'” (1863-77). He is also the creator of the first Russian lyrical plotless poems Silence (1857) and Knight for an Hour (1860). The lyricization of poems also took place in the West. S. T. Coleridge first included his "The Tale of the Old Sailor" in the collection "Lyrical Ballads" (1798), but then finalized it as a poem. In American literature, the lyricization of poems took place in the work of W. Whitman, although already "The Raven" (1845) by E. A. Po, in fact, is a small lyric poem. This genre reaches its peak in Russian silver age, is also used later: “By the Right of Memory” (1969) by A.T. Tvardovsky, “Requiem” (1935-40) by A.A. Akhmatova consist of cycles of lyrical poems that form an epic poem in spirit.

The word "poem" retained a connotation of solemnity, "highness". When N.V. Gogol applied it to satirical prose, it was partly ironic, partly an indication of a majestic idea. F. M. Dostoevsky also loved this word, also using it both ironically and seriously (the poem about the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov). Soviet writers N.F. Pogodin, A.S. Makarenko and others included the word "poem" in an extra-genre meaning in the titles of their works in order to "enhance" their sound.

The word poem comes from Greek poiema, from poieo, which means - I do, I create.

A poem (Greek póiēma, from poieo - I do, I create) is a large poetic work with a narrative or lyrical plot. The poem is also called the ancient and medieval epic ("Mahabharata", "Ramayana", "Iliad", "Odyssey"). Many of its genre varieties are known: heroic, didactic, satirical, burlesque, romantic, lyric-dramatic. The poem is also called works on a world-historical theme (Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, L. di Camões' Lusiades, T. Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated, J. Milton's Paradise Lost, Voltaire's Henriad). , “Messiad” by F. G. Klopshtok, “Rossiyada” by M. M. Kheraskov, etc.). In the past, poems with a romantic plot (The Knight in the Panther's Skin by S. Rustaveli, Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, and Furious Roland by L. Aristo) were widely used in the past.

In the era of romanticism, the poems acquire a socio-philosophical and symbolic-philosophical character ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. Byron, "The Bronze Horseman" by A. S. Pushkin, "Dzyady" by A. Mickiewicz, "Demon" by M. Yu. Lermontov, " Germany, winter fairy tale "G. Heine). For romantic poem characteristic is the image of a hero with an unusual fate, but certainly reflecting some facets of the author's spiritual world. In the second half of the 19th century, despite the decline of the genre, some outstanding works appeared, for example, G. Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" translated by I. A. Bunin. The work is based on the legends of the Indian tribes about the semi-legendary leader, the wise and beloved Hiawatha. He lived in the 15th century, before the first settlers appeared on American lands.

The poem is about how

Hiawatha labored,
to make his people happy
so that he goes to goodness and truth ...
"Your strength is only in consent,
and impotence in discord.
Reconcile, O children!
Be brothers to one another."

The poem is a complex genre, often difficult to perceive. To be convinced of this, it is enough to read a few pages of Homer's Iliad, Dante's Divine Comedy or J. V. Goethe's Faust, try to answer the question about the essence of A. S. Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman or A. A. Blok.

The poem requires knowledge historical context, makes you think about the meaning of human life, about the meaning of history. Without this, it is impossible to comprehend in its entirety such well-known poems from the school bench as “Frost, Red Nose”, “Who Lives Well in Rus'” by N. A. Nekrasov, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky and others.

What makes it possible to consider as poems many dissimilar works, sometimes having author's subtitles that do not correspond to this definition. So, “Faust” by I.V. Goethe is a tragedy, “The Bronze Horseman” by A.S. Pushkin is a Petersburg story, and “Vasily Terkin” by A.T. Tvardovsky is a book about a fighter. They are united by the breadth of coverage of the phenomena of reality, the significance of these phenomena and the magnitude of the problems. The developed narrative plan is combined in the poem with deep lyricism. A particularly complete interpenetration of the lyrical and epic principles is characteristic of the poem of the Soviet period (“Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” by V. V. Mayakovsky, “Vasily Terkin” by A. T. Tvardovsky, etc.).

Intimate experiences in the poem are correlated with great historical upheavals, private events are elevated to space scale. For example, in " The Bronze Horseman» the space of a particular city - St. Petersburg is transformed into an endless, boundless space global flood, "the last cataclysm":

Siege! attack! evil waves,
Like thieves climbing through the windows. Chelny
With a running start, glass is smashed astern.
Trays under a wet veil,
Fragments of huts, logs, roofs,
Product of thrifty trade.
Relics of pale poverty,
Storm-blown bridges
A coffin from a blurry cemetery
Float through the streets!
People
Sees God's wrath and awaits execution.

The time and space of the poem are vast and boundless.

In the Divine Comedy, first through the circles of Hell, and then through Purgatory, the author of the poem is accompanied by the great Roman poet Virgil, who lived thirteen centuries earlier than Dante. And this does not prevent Dante and his guide from communicating in the same time and space of the Divine Comedy, from making contact with sinners and the righteous of all times and peoples. concrete, real time Dante himself coexists in the poem with a completely different type of time and space of the grandiose underworld.

The problems of the most general, eternal are touched upon in each poem: death and immortality, finite and eternal, their meeting and collision is the seed from which the poem arises.

The chapter "Death and the Warrior" is central in the poem "Vasily Terkin" by A. T. Tvardovsky. It is, as it were, a poem within a poem, just like the scene of the "collision" between Eugene and the monument to Peter I in Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman. The author of the poem looks at the world from a special point of view, which allows him, a person of a particular era, to take a look at the events of his time in order to see in them something that can help highlight the essence of the era and artistically formulate this essence: Eugene and the galloping monument to Peter I, Vasily Terkin and Death.

Thus, unlike novels in verse, novels in verse, numerous imitation poems, and preliminary and laboratory poems (for example, Lermontov's early poems), a poem is always an artistic interpretation of modernity in the context of ongoing time.

Multi-plot, often multi-heroic, compositional complexity, semantic richness of both the whole and individual episodes, symbolism, originality of language and rhythm, versatility - all this makes reading the poem as difficult as it is fascinating.

What is a poem? This is a work that is located at the junction of two literary "worlds" - poetry and prose. Like prose, the poem has a narrative logic, a real story with a denouement and an epilogue. And as poetry, it conveys the depth of the subjective experiences of the hero. Many of the classics that everyone took in school were written in this genre.

Let's remember the poem Dead Souls"The pen of the Ukrainian classic - N.V. Gogol. Here, a wonderful large-scale idea resonates with the ability to find depth in a person.

Let us recall the poetry of the genius A. Pushkin - "Ruslan and Lyudmila". But besides them, there are many more interesting works.

History of the development of the genre

The poem has grown from the very first folk songs through which every nation transmitted historical events and myths to their children. This is the well-known "Iliad" and "Odyssey", and "The Song of Roland" - a French epic. In Russian culture, the progenitor of all poems was the historical song - "The Tale of Igor's Campaign".

Then the poem stood out from such syncretic art, people began to supplement these epics, introduce new heroes. Over time, new ideas and new stories appeared. New authors came up with their own stories. Then new types appeared: the burlesque poem, the heroic-comics; the life and affirmation of the people ceased to be main theme works.

So the genre developed, became deeper and more complex. The elements of the composition gradually formed. And now this direction in art is already a whole science.

Structure of a work of art

What do we know about the poem? The key feature is that the work has a clear interconnected structure.

All parts are interconnected, the hero somehow develops, passes tests. His thoughts, as well as feelings, are the focus of the narrator. And all the events around the hero, his speech - everything is conveyed by a certain poetic meter and chosen rhythm.

The elements of any work, including a poem, include dedications, epigraphs, chapters, epilogues. Speech, as well as in a story or short story, is represented by dialogues, monologues and the author's speech.

Poem. Genre features

This genre of literature has been around for a long time. What is a poem? In translation - "create", "create". By genre - a lyrical large-scale poetic work, which not only gives the reader a pleasant impression of beautiful lines, but also has a purpose and structure.

The creation of any work begins with a theme. So, the poem very well reveals both the theme and the character of the protagonist. And also the work has its own elements, a special author's style and the main idea.

The elements of the poem are:

subject;
form;
structure;
and rhythm.

Indeed, since this is a poetic genre, there must be a rhythm here; but as in a story, the plot must be respected. By choosing a topic, the poet indicates what the work is about. We will consider the poem "To whom it is good in Rus'" and known history Gogol about Chichikov and his adventures. They both have general theme.

The poem "Who is living well in Rus'?" N. Nekrasova

The writer began his work in 1863. Two years after the abolition of serfdom, and continued to work for 14 years. But he never finished his main work.

The focus is on the road, symbolizing the choice of direction in life that everyone chooses in their lives.

N. Nekrasov sought to convey authentically both the problems of the people and the best features of a simple peasant. According to the plot, the dispute that began between ordinary workers dragged on, and seven heroes went to look for at least one of those who really lived better at that time.

The poet vividly depicted both fairs and haymaking - all these mass paintings serve as a vivid confirmation of the main idea that he wanted to convey:

The people are liberated, but are the people happy?

Characters in the main work of N. Nekrasov

Here is the basis of the plot of the poem "To whom it is good to live ..." - representatives of the people walk along Russian roads, peasant men, and explore the problems of the same ordinary people.

The poet created many interesting characters, each of which is valuable as a unique literary image, and speaks on behalf of the peasants of the 19th century. This is Grigory Dobrosklonov, and Matryona Timofeevna, whom Nekrasov described with obvious gratitude to Russian women, and

Dobrosklonov is the main character who wants to act as a folk teacher and educator. Yermila, on the other hand, is a different image, he protects the peasants in his own way, going completely to his side.

Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls"

The theme of this poem echoes Nekrasov's theme. The road is also important here. The hero in the story is looking not only for money, but also for his own path.

The protagonist of the work is Chichikov. He comes to a small town with his grand plans: to earn a whole million. The hero meets with the landowners, learns their life. And the author, who leads the story, ridicules the stupid thoughts and absurd vices of the elite of that time.

Nikolai Gogol managed to convey well the social reality, the failure of the landowners as a class. And he also perfectly described the portraits of heroes, displaying them personal qualities.

Foreign classical works

Most famous poems written in the dark times of Medieval Europe are Alighieri's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Through the stories described by the talented poet Geoffrey Chaucer, we can learn about English history how different strata of society lived in this country.

After all, what is a poem - it is an epic that tells about bygone times and includes a large number of characters. D. Chaucer did an excellent job with this task. But, of course, this is an epic that is not intended for schoolchildren.

Modern views on the poem

So, it is clear that initially these were only epic works. And now? What is a poem? These are modern plot constructions, interesting images and a non-trivial approach to reality. they can place the hero in a fictional world, convey his personal suffering; describe incredibly interesting adventurous adventures.

At the disposal of the modern writer of poems great experience previous generations and modern ideas, and a variety of techniques with which the plot is combined into a single whole. But in many cases the rhythm of the verse goes to the background, and even to the third plan, as an optional element.

Conclusion

Now let's clearly define what a poem is. This is almost always a lyrical-epic voluminous work in verse. But there is also an ironically constructed story, where the author ridicules the vices of a separate class, for example.

The poem originated in antiquity. This is how the genre of Homer's works was defined (VIII-VII centuries BC). Virgil (70-19 BC) and others. To their modern form the poem came close in the first half of the 19th century.

A poem is a lyrical-epic poetic work, which depicts significant events and vivid characters, and the author's reflections accompany the story about the heroes. It has several genre varieties: heroic, historical, satirical, lyrical, dramatic, didactic, etc.

Despite the wide variety of poems composed by different authors in different eras, they also have common features. Such works are always based on a narrative (story) about an event (one or more). For example, in “The Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich...” by M. Lermontov there is the line of Kiribeevich, the tsarist guardsman, and the line of the merchant Kalashnikov, which intersect first in absentia, and then explicitly in the fistfight scene.

In the lyric-epic poem, a large role is played by lyrical hero, which is the spokesman of the author's thoughts and feelings. The lyrical hero looks at events and heroes as if from the outside, often empathizing with them. So, in M. Lermontov's poem "The Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilievich ..." this function is performed by the guslars. They express (sometimes openly, and sometimes veiled) the people's view of both events and heroes. For example, at the end of the poem one can clearly hear their sympathy for Kalashnikov and pride in him.

In the center of the story, there is usually a hero or several heroes. In the "Song ..." this is Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, and Kiribeevich, and Kalashnikov, and Alena Dmitrevna ... Most often, their images are revealed in monologues or dialogues. This allows the author to avoid detailed descriptions, to be more concise, clearer and, at the same time, saturate the narrative with emotions.

In the poem, each episode of the life of the hero or story has a certain meaning. And together they make up the content of the poem as a whole. There are three parts in Lermontov's "Song ...". In the first, the main figures are the tsar and his guardsmen. The second part reveals the way of life merchant family. The third deals with the punishment for breaking Christian laws and the role of the king. But in general, the poem tells about the national character in an era of historical upheaval.

The poem as a genre is characterized by attention to deep historical, moral and social problems. If we turn to the "Song ...", we will see its semantic capacity. Lermontov raises such problems in it: Christian law and its place in private and public life, personal honor, continuity in preserving family honor, relations between power and people, the fate of an individual in an era of historical upheaval.

The main features of the poem as a genre of literature:

lyrical-epic genre;
great piece of poetry
genre varieties (heroic, historical, etc.);
thematic variety;
the presence of a narrative part (plot);
lyrical hero expressing attitude to the story;
the image, usually among several heroes of the main one;
image universal problems against a historical background.

Greek poiema, from the Greek. poieo - I create), a large form of poetic work in the epic, lyric or lyric-epic genre. Poems from different eras are generally not the same in terms of their genre characteristics, but they have some common features: the subject of their depiction is, as a rule, a certain era, the author's judgments about which are given to the reader in the form of a story about significant events in the life of an individual, which is its typical representative (in epic and lyric-epic), or in the form of a description of one's own worldview (in lyrics); unlike poems, poems are characterized by a didactic message, since they directly (in the heroic and satirical types) or indirectly (in the lyrical type) proclaim or evaluate social ideals; they almost always have a plot, and even in lyrical poems thematically isolated fragments tend to cycle and turn into a single epic narrative.

Poems are the earliest surviving monuments ancient writing. They were and are a kind of "encyclopedias", when referring to which you can learn about the gods, rulers and heroes, get acquainted with initial stage the history of the nation, as well as with its mythological background, to comprehend the way of philosophizing peculiar to this people. These are the early examples of epic poems in many nats. literature: in India - the folk epic "Mahabharata" (not earlier than the 4th century BC) and "Ramayana" by Valmiki (not later than the 2nd century AD), in Greece - the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" by Homer (not later than the 8th century BC), in Rome - Virgil's Aeneid (1st century BC), in Iran - Firdousi's Shah-name (10-11th centuries), in Kyrgyzstan - the folk epic "Manas" (not later than the 15th century). These are epic poems, in which either various lines of a single plot associated with the figures of gods and heroes are mixed (as in Greece and Rome), or thematically isolated mythological legends, lyrical fragments, moral and philosophical reasoning, etc. are framed by an important historical narrative. (so in the East).

In ancient Europe, the genre series of mythological and heroic poems was supplemented by samples of parodic-satiric (anonymous "Batrachomyomachia", not earlier than the 5th century BC) and didactic ("Works and Days" by Hesiod, 8-7 centuries BC). e.) poetic epic. These genre forms developed in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance and later: the heroic epic poem turned into a heroic "song" with a minimum number of characters and storylines ("Beowulf", "The Song of Roland", "The Song of the Nibelungs"); its composition is reflected in imitative historical poems(in "Africa" by F. Petrarch, in "Jerusalem Liberated" by T. Tasso); the magical plot of the mythological epic was replaced by the lightened magic plot of the poetic chivalric novel (its influence will be felt in the Renaissance epic poems - in Furious Orlando by L. Ariosto and in Spencer's The Faerie Queene); the traditions of the didactic epic were preserved in allegorical poems (in the Divine Comedy by Dante, in the Triumphs by F. Petrarch); finally, in modern times, classicist poets were guided by the parodic-satirical epic, in the manner of burlesque creating iroikomic poems (“Naloy” by N. Boileau).

In the era of romanticism with its cult of lyrics, new poems appeared - lyrical-epic ("Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by J. G. Byron, the poem "Ezersky" and "novel in verse" "Eugene Onegin" by A. S. Pushkin, "Demon" M. Yu. Lermontov). In them, the epic narrative was interrupted by various detailed landscape descriptions, lyrical digressions from the plot outline in the form of author's reasoning.

In Russian literature beginning. 20th century there has been a tendency to turn the lyric-epic poem into a lyrical one. Already in A. A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”, lyrical-epic chapters (with the author’s narration and dialogues of characters) and lyrical chapters (in which the author imitates the song types of urban folklore) are distinguishable. The early poems of V. V. Mayakovsky (for example, "A Cloud in Pants") also hide the epic plot behind an alternation of diverse and dark lyrical statements. This trend will manifest itself especially clearly later, in A. A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem".