The work of many poets and writers of the early twentieth century is conventionally divided into pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. It just so happened in their creative life that the era that came after the October Revolution required new themes, new rhythms and new ideas. Among those who believed in the idea of a revolutionary reorganization of society was Vladimir Mayakovsky, so many readers know him primarily as the author of “Poems about the Soviet Passport” and the poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”.
However, there were also lyrical works in his work, for example the poem “Lilichka!” , “Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva” or the poem “Cloud in Pants”. Before the revolution, Mayakovsky was one of the founders and active participants in the modernist movement of futurism. Representatives of this movement called themselves “budetlyans” - people who will be. In their manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" they called for "throwing Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy from the steamship of Modernity." After all, the new reality required new forms of expressiveness in expressing new meanings, in fact, a new language.
This ultimately led to the creation of a different versification systems– tonic, that is, based on stress. Tonic verse becomes accentuated, because the innovators found the “poetic meter of the living spoken word” closer. Modern poetry had to “break out of the prison of the book” and resound in the square, it had to shock, like the futurists themselves. Mayakovsky's early poems "Could You?" , “Here!” , "To you!" already in the title they contained a challenge to the society with which the lyrical hero found himself in conflict - the society of ordinary people, devoid of a high idea, uselessly smoking the sky.
But among the early poems of the young Mayakovsky there is one in which there is no challenge or denunciation. “Listen!”- no longer a challenge, but rather a request, even a plea. In this work, the analysis of which will be discussed, one can feel the “butterfly of a poet’s heart,” vulnerable and searching. The poem "Listen!" - this is not a pretentious appeal to the crowd, not a shocking appeal, but a request to people to stop for a moment and look at the starry sky. Of course, a phrase from this poem “After all, if the stars light up, it means someone needs it?” known to a wide range of readers, it is often parodied. But this rhetorical question makes you think about the meaning of life.
The star has always been a guiding star, it served as a beacon in the endless sea. For the poet, this image becomes a symbol: the star is the goal, that lofty idea towards which you need to go throughout your life. Aimless existence turns life into "starless flour".
Traditionally lyrical hero in poetry it is personified using the first person pronoun – “I”, as if merging with the author himself. Mayakovsky calls his hero an indefinite pronoun "somebody". Perhaps the poet does not even hope that there are still people who wanted the stars to light up, so that they would exist. At the same time, however, one can feel the hero’s hidden polemic with that same crowd of indifferent ordinary people for whom the stars are only "spit", because for him these are pearls.
Lyrical plot allows you to see a fantastic picture: a hero "rushes to God" and, afraid that I was late, “cries, kisses his sinewy hand”, asks for a star and swears that he cannot live without it. An amazing detail immediately catches your eye - "wiry hand" God. Perhaps it was important for the poet to emphasize the closeness of even the highest powers to people, because the workers - the proletariat - had sinewy hands. Or maybe this epithet, according to the author’s intention, should indicate that God also works by the sweat of his brow for our good. In any case, this detail is unusual and unique and, like many devices in Vladimir Vladimirovich’s poems, creates a bright, memorable image that distinguishes Mayakovsky’s style and remains in memory for a long time.
Having received a star and having defined a goal for himself, the hero seems to calm down and “walks calm outwardly”, but now he finds a like-minded person, yet "someone" who has more "not scary" V "blizzard of midday dust". This leaves hope that the cry of the hero's soul - “Listen!”- will not be a voice crying in the wilderness.
Ring composition The poem is determined by the repetition of the already asked question about who needs to light the stars. Only now does it contain an exclamation point and a word expressing obligation:
So this is necessary,
so that every evening
over the roofs
Did at least one star light up?!
Therefore, the last lines of the poem sound, in the words of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s contemporary Marina Tsvetaeva, as “a demand for faith and a request for love.”
One may not love Mayakovsky’s work, but it is impossible not to recognize his skill, his innovation, the universal scale of his feelings.
- “Lilichka!”, analysis of Mayakovsky’s poem
After reading Mayakovsky’s poem “Listen,” it becomes clear that this is a kind of cry from the writer’s soul. And it begins with a request addressed to the reader and other people. In his poem, he asks rhetorical questions, argues with himself, convincing through this that it is necessary to fight the powerlessness, grief and suffering that fill the whole world.
This poem became a kind of impetus for people who had somehow lost faith in themselves and lost their way. Mayakovsky introduces God into the poem, but he is not an imaginary being, but a real person with strong, working hands. It is this God who helps the lyrical hero. Also in the poem there is “they” - people who gave up their attempts to reach the stars. The poet makes a peculiar comparison, shown on the stars, because for some they are something more, called pearls, and for others, the stars mean nothing.
You can notice that the lyrical hero in this poem is very sensitive to the issues of the Earth and the situation with the world - he cares, he is trying to deal with impending problems.
When reading the poem, it is clear that the poet does not scold or teach the people, but speaks from the bottom of his heart - calmly, thereby confessing. With this tone, Mayakovsky wants to prove to the world that what is important for a person is, first of all, a dream and a goal, and then everything else. The stars in this case are the dream that every person should strive for.
In the end, when the lyrical hero achieves his dream - he gets a star, he understands that he is no longer afraid of anything.
This poem also raises the problem that a person has begun to forget why he lives, succumbing to some false ideals, losing himself.
With his work, he pushes the reader to think about the question of the meaning of life, which each person sets for himself independently.
Analysis of the poem Listen! Mayakovsky
In this poem by Mayakovsky, his author’s style is clearly manifested: a special construction of stanzas, an abundance of exclamations, energy...
Here the poet addresses the listener with “You” or the listeners: “Listen!” As often happens, Vladimir Mayakovsky uses a paradox at the heart of the verse: someone lights up the stars. This is stated as an axiom, although the reader understands that the stars glow on their own. However, this paradox deeply touches, because it is metaphorical, it is based on a comparison of a star with a light, a candle (in a church), a lighthouse. There were many legends in ancient times that a certain good deity lights this light, and another extinguishes it. Something gives birth to life, something ends it...
From such a poetic axiom the conclusion follows: who needs what the stars light up? Everything has a reason... Mayakovsky expands the reader’s consciousness, knocks him out of his usual thoughts.
And then the story of the One who needs the stars is drawn. As He runs in the blizzards of midday dust (this is how the hot sun of summer is imagined in this oxymoron) to God himself, afraid that it is too late. The petitioner even cries and kisses the hand of the Creator. (The working hand is “wiry.”) And he asks, asks for at least one star. He swears he can't handle rejection. Here the poet uses the phrase “starless torment” to mean hopeless suffering. Then his psychological state changes somewhat. Having apparently received a positive answer, he is outwardly calm - he did everything in his power. But the petitioner is still very worried. And now he tells someone that there will be a Star. Necessarily.
Where is the answer: who needs stars and why? (Mayakovsky makes it clear that he lights from the Demiurge.) Everyone probably answered for himself. And yet, in the poem there is a Petitioner who really cares. But he also speaks to someone on a first-name basis. This interlocutor really needs the light of the stars... someone shouldn't be scared. Indeed, if it is not pitch dark outside, if there is at least one asterisk (at least a ray of hope in the situation), then it is no longer so scary. You can imagine the image of a woman or child.
In the finale, all the same questions are asked again, but in a slightly different way. After all, a star always lights up (even if it is not visible from Earth), because someone needs it.
It is interesting that the atheist Mayakovsky is essentially talking about faith. The light that the Universe gives to people is equal to psychological hope. That is, the conclusion suggests itself that people need faith.
However, the questions in the poem remain rhetorical.
Analysis of the poem Listen! according to plan
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Listen!
After all, if the stars light up -
a pearl?
And, straining
in blizzards of midday dust,
rushes to God
I'm afraid I'm late
kisses his sinewy hand,
there must be a star! -
swears -
will not endure this starless torment!
walks around anxiously,
but calm on the outside.
Says to someone:
“Isn’t it okay for you now?
Not scary?
Listen!
After all, if the stars
light up -
Does that mean anyone needs this?
This means it is necessary
so that every evening
over the roofs
Did at least one star light up?!
In March 1914, the collection “The First Journal of Russian Futurists” was published with four new poems by Mayakovsky. Among them is the poem “Listen!” written in November-December 1913. In those days, the poet was working in St. Petersburg on completing and staging his first play, the tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky.” And with its tonality, mood, correlation of the feeling of love with the cosmos, with the universe, the poem is close to this play, in some ways it continues and complements it. The poem is structured as an excited monologue of a lyrical hero, looking for an answer to a vital question for him:
Listen!
After all, if the stars light up, does that mean someone needs it?
So, does anyone want them to exist?
So, someone calls these spittoons
a pearl?
The lyrical hero, formulating the main question for himself, mentally creates an image of a certain character (in the form of a third person: “to someone”, “someone”). This “someone” cannot bear the “starless torment” and for the sake of “there must be a star”, he is ready for any feats. The imagery of the poem is based on the implementation of the metaphor “the stars are lighting up.” Only a lit star gives meaning to life and is a confirmation of the presence of love, beauty, and goodness in the world. Already in the fourth verse of the first stanza, the picture begins to unfold of what kind of feats the hero is ready to perform to light the star: “struggling in the blizzards of midday dust,” he hurries to the one on whom it depends - “bursts into God.” God is given here without any authorial irony or negativity - as a higher authority to which one turns for help, with a request. At the same time, God is quite humanized - he has the “wiry hand” of a real worker. He is able to understand the state of the visitor who “bursts in” because he is “afraid that he is late,” “cries,” “begs,” “swears” (and not just humbly prays, like a “servant of God”). But the very feat of lighting a star is performed not for oneself, but for another, beloved, close (maybe a relative, or maybe just a neighbor), present in the poem as a silent observer and listener to the subsequent words of the hero: “... now nothing for you ? / Isn’t it scary?..” The final lines close the cyclic structure of the poem - the initial appeal is repeated verbatim and then the author’s statement and hope follows (without the use of a mediating hero in the third person):
So, is it necessary for at least one star to light up over the rooftops every evening?!
In a poem, the poet not only expresses his experiences, but in simple colloquial language explains his thoughts to the reader, listener, and tries to convince him with logic, example, and intonation. Hence the colloquial “after all,” and the multiple (fivefold) “means,” and the abundance of exclamation and question marks. A question that begins with the word “means” does not require a detailed answer - a short “yes” or tacit agreement is sufficient. The final lines, closing the circular construction of the work, retain the interrogative construction. But their affirmative modality is sharply increased. And not only by the logic of the previous lines, but also by its own characteristics. An additional break created a pause (“light” when repeated, highlighted in a separate line). In the last verse, the star is no longer lit by someone else (even a powerful one), but “it is necessary that” it “light up” (reflexive verb) as if by itself. And not somewhere in space in general, but “above the roofs,” that is, right here, nearby, in the city, among the people, where the poet is. For the poet himself, the final lines are no longer questions. The only question is how much his opinion about the “need” and “necessity” of the surrounding stars is shared. This ending is the semantic center of the poem. One person can “every evening” bring spiritual light to another and can dispel spiritual darkness. A burning star becomes a symbol of people’s spiritual relationships, a symbol of all-conquering love.
The poem is written in tonic verse. It has only three quatrain stanzas with cross-rhyme awaw. The poetic lines (individual verses) are quite long and most of them (except for the 2nd and 3rd in the first stanza) are additionally divided into several lines in a column. Thanks to the breakdown of lines, not only the end rhymes are emphasized, but also the words that end the lines. Thus, in the first and penultimate verses, an appeal that forms an independent line is highlighted, repeating the title - “Listen!” - and the key word of the main metaphor of the poem is “light”. In the second quatrain there is the key word “To God” and verbs that convey the hero’s tension: “cries”, “begs”, “swears”... In addition to the “main” cross-end rhymes, additional consonances are heard in the poem (“listen” - “pearl” ", "means" - "cries"...), holding the text together.
In the intonation-strophic structure of the poem “Listen!” There is another interesting feature. The end of the fourth line (verse) of the first stanza (“And, straining / in the blizzards of midday dust”) is not at the same time the end of the phrase - it continues in the second stanza. This is an interstrophic transfer, a technique that allows you to give the verse additional dynamism and emphasize the extreme emotion of the lyrical hero.
Updated: 2011-05-09
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930) is a famous poet of the Silver Age. He joined the futurist movement and was one of its ideological inspirers. In addition to poetry, he worked in prose and dramatic genres, was an artist and even acted in films. But the Many-Wise Litrekon is most impressed by his poems, especially the lyrics, and therefore he again turned his attention to the master’s poem.
In his poems and poems, Mayakovsky portrays a strong personality, independent of the opinions of others. His flashy yellow turtleneck and expressive public speeches reflected the inner world of a man of enormous scale, unprecedented energy and bright personality.
But the eccentric rebel was an unsurpassed lyricist. The lyrical hero of Mayakovsky’s poems is a kind of clumsy romantic, capable of taking his beloved with him “alone, or together with Paris.” And it is not only the feeling of love that prompts the poet to sincerely admire and contemplate. The soulful poem “Listen” is the story of a man who is curious about life. He loves her and is sincerely surprised by her every manifestation.
Date of writing the lyric poem “Listen!” - autumn 1914. At that time, the October Revolution had not yet arrived in Russia. Then Vladimir Mayakovsky was obsessed with futuristic concepts proclaiming the pathos of a bright future. He brings to the fore the cognitive personality. The lyrical hero is interested in everything, everything around him has value for building a beautiful and bright future. Even then, anti-God motifs appeared in Mayakovsky’s poetry. The poet brings human individuality to the fore, or at least equates it with the Creator.
Genre, direction, composition and size
“Listen!” reveals the features of an elegiac message, to which the very beginning of the text refers us (“Listen! After all, if the stars light up, it means someone needs it?”). We can also talk about the presence in the text of elements of the protagonist’s confessional monologue.
The poet chooses the form of a ring composition. This design feature is determined by the very beginning and ending of the text:
Listen! After all, if the stars light up, does that mean someone needs it?
“Ladder” is the form chosen by the futurist for his poem “Listen!” Imprecise rhymes are interspersed with exact cross rhymes (according to the ABAB scheme), which reveal themselves after three lines:
So, does anyone want them to exist?<…>in blizzards of midday dust; kisses his sinewy hand,<…>will not endure this starless torment! etc.
In those sections of the text where the rhyme is precise, the rhyme is feminine (the penultimate syllable is stressed).
There is no clear classical poetic meter (it is difficult to establish the presence of iambic, trochee, dactyl, anapest and amphibrachium). The futurist uses his favorite form of accent verse.
Images and symbols
The lyrical hero is in search of the main idea of life, the idea of physical phenomena occurring in nature. And the center of his interest is the stars, namely their origin. According to the main character, a thinking person, everything has a cause and effect.
The consciousness of the main character forms images of the background - he imagines how someone brave, reaching God, asks him to light the stars so that people’s souls will become lighter. That is, before us is the object of lyrical consciousness - the main character, the subjects of his imagination - an active person who turns to God for help.
In addition to these characters, the poem has the form of a message, which means that the work contains a generalized image of the interlocutor, the reader.
Theme and mood
The main theme is determined by the interpretation. By “little spitting” the poet may mean creativity, or perhaps simply the world of physical phenomena.
If stars are works of artistic creativity that the perceiving consciousness needs, be it theater, music, literature, painting, then the creative person (turned to God) creates them for the joy of the viewer (reader, listener).
If by stars we understand the world of physical, natural phenomena, then the theme of the meaning of life and the meaning of beauty in this very life comes to the fore. Stars, like everything beautiful and inspiring, fill human existence with light and warmth, harmony and inspiration, but we do not know the true nature of such things. And the task of the person of the future is to cognize it, develop an inquisitive mind and penetrate under the veil of the secrets of the universe.
main idea
The main idea of the poem is a conscious question about the origin and necessity of the stars in the sky. The poet believes that God lights the stars in the sky, but man’s task is to ask him about it. The anthropomorphic features of God indicate his equality with people: this is indicated by the “wiry hand” of the deity. A person can simply break into the Almighty, ask, touch his “wiry hand,” and the stars will appear.
The main idea is knowledge of the meaning of creativity and the meaning of life, the meaning of all the most amazing natural phenomena and their significance for the individual. The author answers the question of who lights up the stars: God. And why - because a person needs it. Everything that the Creator does, he does for our sake. Observing the starry sky can allow people to find their meaning of existence.
Means of artistic expression
The poem contains both syntactic and lexical means of expression.
The text opens with a rhetorical exclamation (a syntactic means of artistic expression): “Listen!” Then - three rhetorical questions:
After all, if the stars light up, does that mean someone needs it? So, does anyone want them to exist? /So, someone calls these spittoons a pearl?
The text also ends with a rhetorical question, forming a ring composition:
So, is it necessary for at least one star to light up over the rooftops every evening?!”
- “Listen!” is an expanded metaphor of a person’s journey to God and his comprehension of the clarity of existence.
- Metaphors: “in the blizzards of midday dust”, “someone calls these spits a pearl”, “the stars light up”. The metaphor “in the blizzards of midday dust” refers us to the image of a hot, dusty city or desert, where the wind drives columns of dust like snow dunes.
- There are few epithets, but they show vivid images: “midday dust”, “wiry hand”, “starless torment”, “anxious, but calm on the outside”.
- Once there is a comparison of stars with a pearl.
- Among other things, Mayakovsky uses the technique of unity of command (the so-called anaphora): “So, does anyone need this? So, does anyone want them to exist? So, someone calls these spittoons a pearl?” Anaphora enhances the hero’s dynamism and experiences, showing his joy of discovery.
- In addition to anaphora, homogeneous verbal predicates work on the dynamics of action: “bursts into God, is afraid that he is late, cries, kisses his sinewy hand, asks - so that there must be a star! - swears..."
Mayakovsky unusually avoids his favorite neologisms, but the intonation he chose emphasizes the purpose of the poem for reading in public.
The beginning of the new twentieth century was marked in the history of Russia by severe upheavals. Wars, revolution, famine, emigration, terror... The whole society was divided into warring parties, groups and classes. Literature and poetry, in particular, reflected, like a mirror, these seething social processes. New poetic directions emerge and develop.
Analysis of Mayakovsky's poem “Listen!” you can't start without mentioning when it was created. It was first published in one of the collections in March 1914. The whole of that time was marked by parades of manifestos and groups in which word artists declared their aesthetic and poetic principles, distinctive features, and programs. Many of them went beyond the declared framework and became iconic poets of their time. Without their creativity it would be difficult to imagine Soviet literature.
Vladimir Mayakovsky was an active participant in the first avant-garde literary movement called “Futurism”. He was part of the “Gilea” - the group of founders of this movement in Russia. Full of Mayakovsky's "Listen!" impossible without recourse to theoretical foundations. The main features of futurism are: the denial of previous literary dogmas, the creation of new poetry aimed at the future, as well as experimental rhyme, rhythm, focus on the sound of the word, pathos and shockingness.
When analyzing Mayakovsky’s poem “Listen!”, it is necessary to dwell on its theme in more detail. It begins with an appeal, which is not coincidentally included in the title. This is a desperate call. The hero-narrator observes the actions of another active hero who cares. In an effort to make someone’s life easier, he “bursts” into heaven outside of school hours, to God himself, and asks him to shine a star in the sky. Perhaps as punishment for the fact that people stopped noticing them, the stars went out?
The theme is connected with the desire of the lyrical hero to draw the attention of ordinary people living a hectic, monotonous life to the beauty of the endless night sky. This is an attempt to make them raise their heads weighed down with problems and look up, joining the secrets of the Universe.
Analysis of Mayakovsky's poem “Listen!” showed that to reveal the theme, the poet used such as unrhymed verse with a rhythmic pattern, sound writing and alliteration.
The first hero-observer does not have a portrait in the poem, but the second has very vivid characteristics, expressed by a number of verbs: analysis of Mayakovsky’s poem “Listen!” draws the reader's attention to the fact that the verbs “bursts” and “afraid” have plosive consonants “v” and “b”. They reinforce the effect of the negative emotions of pain and anguish. A similar effect is created by the consonants “p” and “ts” in the verbs “cries” and “late,” “asks” and “kisses,” “swears” and “can’t stand it.”
The poem resembles a small play, full of drama that Mayakovsky put into it. “Listen!” the analysis makes it possible to conditionally divide it into four parts. The first part is the introduction (the main question, from the first to the sixth line); the second part is the development of the plot and the climax (“begged for” star, from the sixth to the fifteenth line). The third part is the denouement (receiving confirmation from the one for whom the hero tried, from the sixteenth to the twenty-second line); the fourth part is an epilogue (repetition of the introduction question, but with an affirmative intonation, from the twenty-third to the thirtieth line).
The poem "Listen!" the poet wrote at the beginning of his creative path, at the stage of formation, development of his own literary style. But already in this small work, young Mayakovsky showed himself as an original and very subtle lyricist.
