Flowers in Akhmatova’s works. Project on the topic "flowers in the poetry of Anna Akhmatova." White lily – purity

“Flowers and inanimate things...” Anna Akhmatova

Flowers and inanimate things
The smell in this house is pleasant.
There are piles of vegetables in the garden beds
They lie, colorful, on the black soil.

The chill is still flowing,
But the matting has been removed from the greenhouses.
There is a pond there, such a pond,
Where the mud looks like brocade.

And the boy told me, afraid,
Quite excited and quiet,
What big crucian carp lives there
And with him is a big crucian carp.

Analysis of Akhmatova’s poem “Flowers and inanimate things...”

The poem “Flowers and Inanimate Things...”, dated 1913, was created during Akhmatova’s stay in Slepnevo, an estate located in the Tver province. The poetess considered it her second home. The work talks about a rural house and describes the signs of its everyday life. In the text under consideration, Anna Andreevna reveals to readers the beauty of ordinary things and the charm of simple village life. The lyrical heroine’s gaze glides from the pile of vegetables left in the garden bed to the greenhouses from which the matting has been removed. Her attention then turns to the pond. An unremarkable body of water in Akhmatova’s text acquires a special charm, because the mud on it “looks like brocade.”

“Flowers and inanimate things...” is a statement by a poetess who realizes the beauty of rural life and is tired of the bustling city life. In her youth, Anna Andreevna often whiled away her time in the famous St. Petersburg art basement “Stray Dog”, where representatives of bohemia gathered. The cafe hosted adherents of different movements in art: futurists, acmeists, symbolists. The nature described in the poem “Flowers and Inanimate Things...” is implicitly contrasted with the artificiality of the setting of “Stray Dog” with its walls painted with birds, clouds, and plants. The final stanza of the text in question is noteworthy. A boy appears in it, living in a mysterious and slightly fairy-tale world. Informing the lyrical heroine about the inhabitants of the pond, he is worried and afraid. His feelings are extremely heightened, his faith in mysterious and unusual phenomena is unusually strong. The gentle mockery used by Akhmatova in the final quatrain was borrowed by the poetess from Andersen and Dickens. The heroine of the analyzed text respects the secret told by the boy. She is clearly impressed by the spontaneity characteristic of a boy.

Anna Andreevna included a short poem “Flowers and inanimate things...” in her second collection “Rosary Beads”. It first saw the light of day in March 1914. The Hyperborea publishing house published the book in an impressive circulation for those times - more than a thousand copies. A few months after its release, the First World War began. Akhmatova sincerely believed that because of this the collection would be lost and would not reach readers. Fortunately, she was wrong. Until 1923, the edition of “The Rosary” was reprinted eight more times.

“Flowers” ​​reveal themselves in the poetic world of Anna Akhmatova quite clearly and have repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers 1 . First of all, the increased frequency of Akhmatova’s use of the word “flowers” ​​was noted, as well as her constant mention of floral, and not only floral, plants. V.V. Korona built a table that clearly demonstrates this pattern in Akhmatova’s poetic system 2 . But, unfortunately, the table does not allow us to judge how evenly the identified frequency is distributed across the periods of Akhmatova’s creativity and whether flower imagery has constancy of functional characteristics.

In Akhmatova’s early lyrics, “flowers” ​​appear in almost every poem. These are lilies, violets, daisies, gillyflowers, dahlias, etc. In itself, the multicolor of love, and also female, poetry does not seem unusual. It can be interpreted as a tribute to the tradition of album lyrics of the 19th century (remember the “county young lady’s album”, which A. S. Pushkin good-naturedly joked about in “Eugene Onegin”) 3 , a tradition that Akhmatova took into account quite seriously, and not only in the 1910s - “The Moscow Trefoil” (1961-1963) opens with the poem “Almost in the Album” 4 .

Album culture at the beginning of the century was a living phenomenon not only among high school students and students of women's institutes 5 . During this period, it actually merged with the elite culture: “Apollo” and “World of Art” were actively decorated with vignettes with elements of floral and plant decor and other emblems traditional for girls’ albums. The emblem did not always retain the semantics assigned to it: “cedar - strength”, “cypress - sorrow”, “rose - love”, “lily of the valley - return of happiness”, etc. 6 . After all, it is not necessary to be aware of the tradition - it is important to follow it. In this context, the status that the author of “A Poem without a Hero” gives to the heroine, his contemporary of 1913 - “Institute, cousin, Juliet” - speaks of her commitment to the “secret language” of love, very often plant-floral, symbols and emblems.

The heroine of Akhmatova's early lyric poetry in love lives in the world of flower emblems and is guided by their meanings. She uses flowers to tell fortunes “for love”: “I know: when I tell fortunes, I should also pick / A delicate daisy flower.” 7 . At the same time, in a completely “institutional” way, she rhymes “daisy” with “torture”, “carnations” with “evidence”... Note that the rhymes in this case are not just banal (in the evaluative, not the terminological meaning of the word), but are determined by the appeal to a universal language - the “language of flowers”. The universality of this language can be confirmed by a fragment from P. Calderon’s play “The Steadfast Prince” translated by B. Pasternak:

(hereinafter, without special instructions, italics are mine. - M.S.).

For the lyrical heroine of “The Rosary,” the “red tulip” in the hero’s buttonhole also “implies grief.” This flower will retain its tragic meaning in Akhmatova’s lyrics to the end. In a couplet from 1959, it “multiplies” and turns black: “They were black tulips, / They were black flowers.” 9 .

We can judge that the “flower allegories” revealed their sad meaning for the lyrical heroine Akhmatova from the poem, under which there is a date indicating the era as a whole - the 1910s:

I don't like flowers - they remind me
I have funerals, weddings and balls...

Akhmatova’s heroine of the 10s could well explain the reason for her dislike of flowers with the words of the Phoenix, no less than the latter understanding the meaning of the flower as an emblem of the transience of beauty and life:

And yet, in the half-draft fragment from Akhmatov that we quoted, the heroine makes her fateful choice, and she associates this choice with loyalty to the “flower”:

But only eternal roses simple beauty,
The one that has been my joy since childhood,
It remains now the only inheritance,
Like the sounds of Mozart, like the blackness of the night.

One of the varieties of rose - eglantheria - symbolizes poetry.

In Akhmatova’s later work, the rose will really dominate 10 , apparently combining the meanings of other flowers, appearing in its original image of a “blooming rose hip,” which is at the same time an image of the word returned to its originality: “The rose hip was so fragrant, / That it even turned into a word...”. At the moment of its “frantic flowering,” the meaning of future fate will be revealed to the poet: “And I was ready to meet / the ninth wave of my destiny.” The sign of fate revealed in the “word flower” is a sign of death. The feeling of blossoming on the eve of decline determined the acmeistic feeling of culture 11 .

The controversy over the word, which developed rapidly between the Symbolists and Acmeists, was conducted, by the way, in the “language of flowers.” Speaking against the “professionalism” of the Symbolists, O. Mandelstam wrote: “A rose nods at a girl - a girl points at a rose. Nobody wants to be himself.” 12 . S. Gorodetsky convinced of the self-sufficiency of the word, using the name “rose”, which “is good in itself, with its petals, smell, color, and not with its mental likenesses, with mystical love or anything else.” 13 . But in the language of symbols, “a rose in itself” is a “mystery”, and here we are not dealing with a correspondence of meanings, but with their coincidence, confirming Mandelstam’s identity formula A=A 14 . N. Gumilyov in the article “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism,” without renouncing the “secret,” called the attempts of the Symbolists in this direction “unchaste” 15 . Perhaps this reproach was connected precisely with the fact that, as Mandelstam subtly felt, the older poets approached the “secret” professionally, and this was their unchastity. “Lilies of the valley, buttercups, love caresses” by K. Balmont may still delight someone with its sound recording technique, but the secret of the flower is lost from this technique. In addition, the Symbolists persistently and clearly demonstrated their technique, openly “fraternizing with mysticism, theosophy, and the occult.” In contrast, the Acmeists openly promised to “leave the beautiful lady Theology on her throne, and not reduce her to the level of literature...” 16 . Meanwhile, as it has now become known, there was a whole occult faction in Acmeism 17 ! According to The Secret Doctrine, "Occult law enjoins silence in the knowledge of certain secret and invisible things... which cannot be expressed by 'noisy' or public speech." 18 . The ability to embody a secret without saying it was opened up by the “language of flowers”:

The language of flowers is simple,
Choose what you want to say
Don't be verbose.
Don't repeat Easter flowers,
Do not make a bouquet so that no one can understand
And try to be gentle 19 .

So, a word - a sign - a symbol, but not in a symbolist sense. This poem by Browning, in fact, poetically illustrates the aesthetic declarations of the Acmeists. So, the word is a sign - a symbol, but not in the symbolist sense 20 , and in the primary, general cultural understanding, it turned out to be adequate to the acmeistic worldview. If in symbolism a symbol is still opposed two realities - secret and obvious, then in Acmeism, in accordance with the ancient esoteric tradition, the symbol “possessed the property of a fact” of a single “reality” 21 . And we must pay tribute to the Acmeists - they did not particularly “out loud” reveal this intention associated with the word. The commitment to floral symbolism in the poetry of the early twentieth century, both symbolist and post-symbolist, acquired the character of a trend. It can be assumed that the “Flowers of Evil” by Charles Baudelaire played a role here, under the influence of which N. Gumilyov created his “Romantic Flowers”. Floral semantics, by definition, could not be a specific property of an individual style, therefore “lilacs” by I. F. Annensky 22 , "roses" by V. Knyazev 23 , lilies and violets N. Gumilyov 24 can only partially be perceived as personification emblems - “flowers” ​​in poetry perform the function primarily not of personification, but of unification of meaning. The essence of the unification is that almost all flowers, but especially, of course, the rose, are traditional poeticisms, and in the semantic paradigm of poetry of the early twentieth century, the meaning “flower” - “poetry” - “poet” was established as stable. The generation of poets - the “flowers of evil”, romantically in love with “rose poetry”, already at this metaphorical level was doomed and tragic. It itself was aware of this. Already the older symbolists objectified this knowledge in the image of a “flower”. A. Payman writes about D. S. Merezhkovsky: “His entire generation seemed to him transitional: “Flowers without roots, / Flowers lowered into water...” 25 . To the generation that was not destined to reach the “peak of the great spring,” Akhmatova will dedicate “A Poem without a Hero,” the method of which will be compared to “unfolding a flower (in particular, a rose... which gives the reader to some extent, and, of course, completely subconscious a feeling of co-authorship, since, unwrapping a rose, we find under the plucked petal exactly the same" 26 . Note that the author is interested in the effect designed specifically for the subconscious. The effect that can give sign. At the same time, Akhmatovsky method exploits the ambivalent content of the “flower” - death and life: “under the plucked petal” - “the same.” In "Prose" Akhmatova called her poem "a grave under a mountain of flowers", and, obviously, this is not only the "princely" grave, as indicated there 27 . As for Akhmatova’s lyricism of the Acmeistic period, the abundance of flowers in its poetic “bouquet” opened up another way to realize the tendency towards “savings of visual means” (V. Nedobrovo) 28 . “Flowers” ​​freed both the author and the heroine from the need to directly name the experience, and at this level the lyrical structure of Akhmatova’s poetry came closer to the archaic, since from ancient times “... flowers were used to express feelings that, for one reason or another, could not be spoken or written.<…>A notable example is Selam, the language of flowers used in Turkish harems". It is the "spirit 29 "of the eastern harem" teased" the "Poem without a Hero" into life, which ultimately appeared before the reader "all in colors, like Botticelli's "Spring." The time of "colorlessness" of Akhmatova's lyrics of the 1920s-1930s ended in Tashkent, when the “eternal roses” were reminiscent of either the sharp smell of nettles (“And the nettles smelled like roses…”), or the ice on the branches (“…bushes of icy dazzling roses.”) Akhmatova will label the so-called “last roses” with the year 1917 (“And in secret friendship with the high ..."). And then - “no roses, no Archangel forces.” The Tashkent lyrics, which formed the first poetic context of “Poem without a Hero,” are all permeated with fragrant color: “Tashkent is blooming,” “the fields of Kashmir” are blooming, etc. etc. This context is poetically recorded in “Another Lyrical Digression”:

The whole sky is covered in red pigeons,
Grilles in windows - harem spirit…
The topic swells like a bud.
I can't leave without you, -
Fugitive, refugee, poem.

But, sure, I’ll remember on the fly,
How Tashkent burst into flames in bloom
All engulfed in white flames,
Hot, smelly, intricate,
Incredible...

And apple trees, God forgive them,
Like a crown in love trembling...

The fact that this “spirit” stirred the deepest layers of the author’s consciousness, touching the sphere of the unconscious, can be judged by the following lyrical confession:

These are your lynx eyes, Asia,
They saw something in me
They teased something hidden
And born of silence,
Both tedious and difficult,
Like the midday heat of Termez,
As if all the primordial memory is in consciousness
Hot lava flowed...

The information that this “hot lava” contained took shape in signs, the meaning of which Akhmatova’s heroine, as we already know, always knew how to read. Floral symbols dominate in Tashkent lyrics. This is no coincidence. Tashkent was called by Akhmatova “the birthplace of immortal roses.” The cycle of this period, “The Moon at its Zenith,” opens with the “name of the rose,” which stands next to the name of the poet: “Won this rose...” A. Fet. The epigraph here is a poetic line, thus “flower is a poet” and “flower is poetry” appear in their semantic monolithicity, giving the cycle a cross-cutting motif. This motif is realized consistently in the following images: 1) poppy; 2) poplar; 3) biblical daffodils; 4) pomegranate bush; 5) blossoming peach; fragrant violets; 6) flowering fence; 7) immortal roses. The flowering cycle begins with a “rose” and ends with it, for Akhmatova’s “rose” is always “eternal” and “immortal”.

The language of flowers in Akhmatova’s poetry is the language of nature. It is through nature that the heroine comprehends the secret contained in the signs revealed to her: “The ditch in the local language, / Today the one started babbling...”. And it is precisely this comprehension that determines the form of embodiment of her own words: “And I am finishing “Odd” / Again in pre-song melancholy...”. This shape is the "language of flowers":

I can see up to the middle
My poem. It's cool in there
Like in a house where there is fragrant darkness
And the windows are locked from the heat
And where not yethero,
But the roof was covered with blood.

Here the "poppy" does not represent the hero himself, but sign his presence. It is absent, as can easily be guessed from the context, due to death - “blood”. Moreover, for this reason, it is not he alone who is missing, but many from the generation of “flowers without roots...” At the moment when “the fields of Kashmir bloom,” their invisible, but tangible for people with special sensitivity turns out to be possible (and Akhmatova’s heroine has such ), presence in this world. Through the finest matter of light and smell 30 the opportunity to contact them opens up:

As if by someone's command
It immediately became in the roomlight.
There's a ghost in every house
White and light entered.
And their breath is clearer than words,
And their breath is doomed
Among the sky is burning blue
Lie on the ditch bottom.

Thus, “the ditch is babbling”, at the bottom of the ditch the heroine discovers someone’s “breath” - apparently, having drunk this “dead” water, she lets the spirit of the dead into herself. The dead begin to live in it, trying to say something to the world through it. It can be assumed that such experience and forced the heroine to a vow of his non-incarnation:

But I'm warning you
That this is the last time I live.
Not a swallow, not a maple,
Not spring water...
I won't confuse people
And visit other people's dreams
An unquenchable moan.

However, first the poet will need to fulfill his duty to the dead: before dying himself, to give them affect through yourself. Perhaps the formula “I am your voice, the heat of your breath...” is addressed not so much to the living as to the dead.

In "Poem Without a Hero" "flowers" will become signs alive the presence of words in it dead. The author informed the reader about the torment that accompanied the writing of the poem: “For 15 years, this poem, like attacks of some incurable disease, overtook me again and again... And I could not tear myself away from it, supplementing and correcting, apparently a finished thing." Vidi 31 maybe, every time there is an invasion of a new “swarm of ghosts” (“increasing the number of prototypes” 32 , - as Akhmatova put it) demanded new word.

From this point of view, it is interesting to trace the logic of the author’s modifications to the text of the work. In four editions of the poem published today 33 There is no significant change in the original plot conflict, but the theme, as the author claims, “swells like a bud.” He calls the birth of a plan “the first germ” 34 . The “plant” semantics of the poem in poems about her will receive additional confirmation: “And you returned to me famous, / A dark green branch entwined...". The mechanism of auto-meta-description in the text of the poem is carried out again through "vegetative" metaphors: "theme is a chrysanthemum" (cf.: "the idea is a sprout", "the method is a rose"). Referring to the poem in verse, the author says:

"You are growing, you are blooming..."

And yet, in the literal sense, “all in flowers,” the poem did not appear before the reader right away. From edition to edition, "flower" symbolism in the text tends to increase: 1st edition - four cases; 2 - eight; 3 - eleven; 4 - sixteen. If the main text ceases to contain so many “flowers”, the author expands its space through epigraphs and notes, in which “wet stems of New Year’s roses”, “jasmine bush”, “falling rose petals” appear in the costume of the prototype heroine - O. A Sudeikina... Obviously, over time, more and more souls dear to Akhmatova, “flying away”, looked for the form of their incarnation and found it, intertwined with the floral and floral ornament of the “Poem”.

It is important to emphasize that the chthonic semantics of the plant ("terrible festival of dead leaves", "grave needles", "crushed chrysanthemum", "snowdrop in the grave ditch") is gradually outweighed by images alive spring vegetation. “Lilac” plays a big role here. At first it was not there at all, later it only “withered in jugs,” but in the latest versions “lilac” is called three times. Moreover, of the three “lilacs” one dead(“the cemetery smelled of lilac”), and two alive(“first branch” and “armful of wet lilac”). “Moisture” here contains the semantics of “living water”, which performs a magical function revival. The idea of ​​the “victory” of life over death (“the word defeating death”), which is contained in the “vegetative” imagery, is already set by the first lines of the poem: “someone small got ready to live, / turned green, fluffed up...". This is nova vita - eternal life, the sign of which is " wet stems New Year's roses."

So, all of the above convinces us that in the text of “Poem without a Hero” and in Akhmatova’s later lyrics, “flowers” ​​are signs presence. In this case, the formula of identity “flower - poet / poetry - word” is active. This formula is extremely active in the immediate context of the poem - in the cycle “Wreath for the Dead”. In a poem dedicated to the memory of M. Bulgakov, she realizes herself literally:

Here I am for you, in exchange for grave roses,
Instead of incense incense...

The meaning of this lyrical gesture is associated not only with a tribute to the memory of the deceased, but also with the ritual act of resurrecting him in a living word. The same function is assigned to the “lily of the valley wedge” in the poem in memory of B. Pilnyak, to the “elderberry branch” - to the memory of M. Tsvetaeva, to the “spicy carnations” - to the memory of O. Mandelstam, to “all flowers” ​​- to the memory of B. Pasternak. Akhmatova’s “flowers” ​​organically fit into the logic of the form of communication with those who are “already beyond the Phlegethon”, into the ritual of transforming the dead into the living - a perishable flower into an immortal rose. The fact that such a ritual actually takes place in Akhmatova’s poetic world can be judged by the poem that plays the role of a preamble in the “Wreath for the Dead” cycle:

De profundis... My generation
Tasted little honey...
Our work was not over,
Our hours were numbered
Until the desired watershed,
Until the peak of the great spring,
Until the frantic bloom
All that was left was to breathe once...

A similar act of “calling out from the abyss” is described in the poem “In Memory of a Friend”:

...When the dawn is red like a glow,
A widow at an unmarked grave
Late spring is busy.
She is in no hurry to get up from her knees...
Will die on the kidney and stroke the grass
And he will drop a butterfly from his shoulder to the ground,
And the first dandelion will fluff up.

Here the actions of the "spring-widow" are shown as ritual action, the content of which is inhalation life into death. The alliteration “ZARYa, like ZaRevo, is red” in this and similar cases (cf.: “The poppy filled the roof with BLOOD”) is associated with the implementation of the function magic word. “Kidney”, “grass”, “dandelion”, “butterfly”, like “flowers” ​​and “maple” in “Poem without a Hero”, are those “dark souls that have flown away” (see “This is how dark souls fly away...”). 35 who were not destined to finish their earthly work, therefore there they did not deserve not only “light”, like Bulgakov’s Master, but also “peace”. They doomed themselves to this, boldly exchanging “posthumous peace” for one moment, but the most “furious” harmony:

One minute of peace
I will give you peace after death.

In “A Poem without a Hero,” the author organizes the “frantic flowering” by bringing the poetic law in line with the biological one: the snowdrop, as expected, appears first in the text, then April violets, May lilacs, autumn chrysanthemums... Only “wet roses” bloom forever, for the Word which they embody is eternal. Thus, in turn, the “biological law” is filled with spiritual content.

In order to, if not fully understand, then at least feel all the “greatness of the plan” to which “Poem without a Hero” is involved, it is necessary to take into account that the “language of flowers” ​​is not the only one in the system of ancient non-verbal languages. “The ancient peoples also had unique systems of symbols, such as sign language, the language of flowers, the language of knots, etc.<…>From the language of flowers the art of arranging bouquets was born, from the language of poses - ballet, pantomime..." 36 .

The "secret writing" of Akhmatova's poem ("This is a secret writing, a cryptogram..."), presumably, is focused on the totality of the most ancient sign complexes. Akhmatova, as is known, sought to turn the poem into a ballet, spoke about the pantomime of the poem’s texture, etc. 37 . “The ancient Greeks also had a language of stones; this is where the symbolism and associated ideas about the special properties of gems and their influence on the destinies of people came from, which have survived to this day, where garnet is a stone of fidelity, agate - health and longevity, opal - constancy, amethyst - hope, truthfulness, devotion; turquoise - caprice, ruby ​​- passion" 38 .

The detail that the author of the “Poem” emphasizes in the portrait of his heroine is the “necklace of black agates.” Without trying to guess what exactly the meaning of the stone is supposed to be here, let us note the following two, in our opinion, very characteristic points. First: in Akhmatova’s Tashkent lyrics, along with an abundance of flowers, one can also observe an abundance of gems: “From mother-of-pearl and agate...”, “... and everything burns with mother-of-pearl and jasper...”, “... the month is a diamond felucca...”, etc. Second: originally the line “In a necklace of black agates” existed in the text of the “Poem” in the following versions: “With an unforgettable pomegranate flower”, “In a necklace of black garnets” 39 . What seems significant is not so much the author’s choice between “agate” (longevity?) and “garnet” (fidelity?), but the very connection between “flower” and “stone”.

In ancient myths and legends, the connection between flowers and gems is recorded: “... it is difficult to say what is the fundamental principle. It is only known that the garnet stone is named for its similarity in color and shape to garnet grains... daisy literally translated from Latin as “pearl”, rhodonite in translation from Greek "rose" 40 .

Taking into account this initial connection, we can conclude that the semantics of “flower-word” does not conflict with the semantics of “word-stone”, but if the second is explicit in the declarations of the Acmeists (O. Mandelstam “The Morning of Acmeism”) 41 , then the second is realized implicitly, hidden, but, nevertheless, is realized: “... the beautiful lady Theology will remain on her throne,” Gumilyov writes in the article “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism,” “Acmeists do not want to raise literature into its diamond cold.” 42 .

In esoteric systems, "earth flower" is the name given to meteorites or falling stars.<…>This is the “center” - that is, the archetypal image of the soul... “Flower - center” goes back in its semantics to the Holy Grail" 43 ; The connection between the “flower” (“stone”) and the “star” is reflected in world artistic practice. As an example, let us again cite a fragment of Pasternak’s translation of P. Calderon’s play “The Steadfast Prince”:

The heroine of Akhmatova’s lyrics says the following about herself and her tragic generation:

We didn't breathe sleepy poppies,
And we don’t know our guilt.
Under what star signs
Are we born into grief?

The cycle "Cinque", which includes this poem, can also be considered as a structural link of the hypertext generated by the "Poem without a Hero". This poem became part of the author's biography in a word about those and for those who did not have time to finish their word:

What will you leave as a souvenir?
My shadow? What do you need shadow for?
Dedication to the burnt drama,
From which there are no ashes,
Or suddenly came out of the frame
New Year's scary portrait?
Or barely audible
The sound of birch embers,
Or what we didn't have time to do
Tell me about someone else's love?

Wed. with "Poem": "You ran away here from a portrait, / And an empty frame until the light..."

In "Poem Without a Hero" the "star" imagery fits organically into the floral-gem pattern: "silver moon", " like this star" - see the author's notes: "Mars on the eve of 1913", "star chamber", lists of "sorcerers, astrologers..." Finally, in one of the stanzas, highlighted in the author's italics, the heroine hears a voice that sends her the following message: " Your horoscope has long been ready". About what the "Poem" in a certain sense really represents horoscope, we can conclude if we correlate some of the signs. “Violet” and “Mars” in most traditional horoscopes are the talisman flower and the patron planet of those born under the sign of Aries. In the personal biographical meanings encrypted by Akhmatova in the “Poem”, the image represented by these signs can be associated with the person of N. S. Gumilyov, whose birthday is April 3, 1886. This, perhaps too direct, decoding seems to us acceptable in connection with the illustration of a special textures Akhmatova’s text and only taking into account the meaning that Gumilyov’s fate became for Akhmatova the embodiment of the tragic fate of an entire generation. At least, the enigmatic image in the poem in memory of B. Pilnyak from the cycle “Wreath for the Dead”, the functionality of which has already revealed itself in the poetic context, prompts us to think about the admissibility of this kind of interpretation: “ All this you alone will figure it out...” The formula “All this” is present in the text of the “Poem”, although it looks somewhat different - “About this.” The author’s emphasis is placed on it: “The poems told about this / Better than them.” One can assume that “this " - taboo name anyone or anything, what (or “who”), for one reason or another, cannot detect itself obviously. This demonstrative pronoun is used quite persistently in the cycle dedicated to the dead: " This black gentle news", " This Eurydice spinning, " This our shadows rush by", " This the voice of the divine lyre", "Here This I tell you...", " This- letter from Marina", "Let This even from another cycle...” (we have omitted examples where “this” is in a less strong position - not at the beginning, but in the middle of the line). The “solution” to what “this” is seems to be contained precisely in B’s dedication. Pilnyak - " You alone will figure it all out...":

When the sleepless darkness bubbles around,
That one is sunny, that one lily of the valley wedge
Bursts into the darkness of the December night.

Oh if this I wake the dead
Forgive me, I can’t do otherwise...

“Lily of the valley wedge” is an image that can be considered in the context of both “flower” and “star” semantics. The lily of the valley is a flower with wedge-shaped leaves, but Akhmatova’s heroine, like the addressee of her poem - the clue to the meaning of the author’s dedication not to him alone, but to all the dead - sees in the sky. In this vision, the “December darkness” is illuminated by “sunlight.” It seems that the “lily of the valley wedge” is in this case a special configuration of stars, a constellation. There really is an astral sign of a wedge shape, reminiscent of a lily of the valley flower - Y, this is the sign of Aries and the spring equinox. In universal sign systems, there is a wedge-shaped symbol that can be “inverted.” This is the / circumflex introduced by Aristotle. In poetry, the circumflex "is used to mark the rise and fall of tone when reading poetry (Greek)<…>Czech uses an inverted circumflex V. This is the so-called " wedge sign" 45 . Note that the “wedge sign”, in its inverted form, looks like a bowl. In Akhmatova’s poetry, the “chalice” is not only a sign of the poet’s fate (“That, His past cup”), but also a sign of the poet himself: “I will bow over him as over bowl...". In "Poem without a Hero" the "cup" is directly compared to the "flower":

That, His past cup;
I'll bring it to you in reality
If you want, I'll give it to you as a souvenir,
Like pure flame in clay
Ile snowdrop in the grave ditch.

In the "secret writing" of the "Poem" the "wedge sign" seems to be associated with an appeal to another ancient sign system - the writing system - cuneiform. In “Prose about the Poem” a remark was made about this: “... besides things... the Fountain House itself intervened in the matter.<…>...Some ghostly gates and golden cuneiform lanterns in Fontanka - and a Sumerian coffee house (V.K. Shileiko’s room in the outbuilding)" 46 . The name of V.K. Shileiko, a great expert in cuneiform, is not accidental in this case. The above recognition of the author of the “Poem” through biographical subtext “declassifies” one of the “secret” plans for the text of the work: “In the fall of 1918, Shileiko was preparing for publication a volume of the “Assyrian-Babylonian Epic.” This work constituted the main meaning and content of his life, and “The Sumerian coffee shop" was filled with tablets with cuneiform writing, which Shileiko translated "from the sheet" out loud, and Akhmatova wrote down the translation.<…>A.A. wrote under his dictation. I recorded for six hours straight. "World Literature" should contain a whole bunch of translations of the Assyrian epic, rewritten by the hand of A. A." 47 .

So, the fact that Akhmatova had certain knowledge in the field of cuneiform can be considered proven. This knowledge presupposed at least an awareness that “… radical changes in writing appeared with the invention of a method of pressing a “signet” sharpened in the form of a wedge. This writing was called “cuneiform.”<…>Sample cuneiform - "The Legend of Gilgamesh" 48 . Akhmatov will give the name Gilgamesh to the hero of “Poem without a Hero”: “You are Gilgamesh...”. “Gilgamesh” is one of the most ancient epic tales... Akhmatova perceived it as a kind of fundamental principle, as a starting point for world culture.<…>For Akhmatova, “Gilgamesh” remained forever associated with two names dear to her." 49 . "In 1940, she (Akhmatova. - M.S.) said to L.K. Chukovskaya: “Do you know Gilgamesh? No? It’s great. It’s even stronger than the Iliad.” Nikolai Stepanovich translated interlinearly, but V(ladimir) K(azimirovich) translated for me directly from the original - and because I can judge" 50 . It seems like it really could not only to “judge”, but also to use- at least one of the hieroglyphs - quite freely: “The most powerful ... “ankh”, which “symbolizes eternal life” 51 . This sign, consonant with Akhmatova’s name, consists of the same graphic elements from which Akhmatova made her famous painting, slightly shifting their location relative to each other: a. a. a. As a rule, three such signs were used as a painting. "In addition to aesthetic and semantic meaning, magical meaning was attributed to hieroglyphs" breathe life"in things that were depicted. The Egyptians believed that if their names were written down, they would exist in the afterlife" 52 . In stanzas not included in the main body of the work, the author emphasizes the “Egyptian” element in the image of his heroine: “But he, to my Egyptian..." 53 , perhaps hinting at her ability to “breathe life into things,” which she had already used in her lyrics: cf. about "spring-widow" - " will die on the kidney..." ("In Memory of a Friend"). "Breathing life into death" requires a certain sacrifice from the one who "breathes in." The elements in the hieroglyphic sign of Akhmatova's painting are shifted so that the cross is superimposed on the circle, which is a sign of eternity. It seems that for collective immortality of a generation, the author of "A Poem without a Hero" was ready to pay by refusing personal immortality.

The triumph of the law of collective immortality is signaled by “flowers” ​​in “Poem without a Hero.” This function is entrusted to them quite reasonably. The rationale for this high function of the “flower” in the system of universal symbols was formulated by Maurice Maeterlinck in 1904 in his work “The Mind of Flowers”: “If among the great laws weighing on us, it is difficult to guess which of them weighs most on our shoulders, then in relation there is no doubt about plants here.<…>And the energy... which emerges from the darkness of the roots to grow stronger and blossom into the color of a flower is an incomparable spectacle. All of it is expressed in one constant impulse, in the desire to conquer with height the fatal weight of depth, to deceive, to break the dark law... to conquer the space in which fate has confined it, to reach another kingdom... And the fact that the plant achieves this is as amazing as if If only we could live outside the time to which we are chained by fate. …A flower gives a person an amazing example of rebellion, courage, tirelessness…. If, in the fight against the needs that suppress us, against old age or against death, we used half the energy that a small flower develops in our garden, then it is permissible to think that our fate would be in many ways different from what it is now." 54 . This conclusion allowed the artist, who “developed the possibilities of mystery” (J. L. Borges), to consider “the problem of our immortality, in principle, solved” 55 .

M.V. Serova

Notes

1. A. A. Urban in the article “A. Akhmatova. “I don’t need odic hosts...” (Poetic structure of Russian lyrics. L., 1973. P. 254-274) considers “flowers” ​​in Akhmatova as an element of the Russian tradition landscape lyrics. S. F. Nasrulaeva in her book “Chronotope in the Early Lyrics of Anna Akhmatova” (Makhachkala, 2000) interprets the functionality of floral imagery as a device of reminiscence: the “roses” in the “Rosary”, according to the researcher, are connected with the “princely” theme in collection (p. 132). In the context of Akhmatova’s flower theme, the book by V. V. Korona “The Poetry of Anna Akhmatova” deserves special attention. The Poetics of Autovariations" (Ekaterinburg, 1999). In this unique study, the author, a biologist by profession, absolutely brilliantly showed that the structure of Akhmatova’s poetic world is a living structure, a living organism, the functioning mechanism of which is carried out according to biological, natural laws A separate chapter of the book is devoted to the image of the “rose.” V. V. Corona’s research method, which is based on Goethe’s morphogenetic method, allowed the scientist to come close to the so-called Akhmatova “secret.”
2. Crown V.V. Decree. op. pp. 202-203.
3. See about this: Smirnova N.V. Flower in Russian lyric poetry of the 19th century // News of the Ural State University. Humanitarian sciences. Release. 3. Ekaterinburg, 2000. pp. 113-121.

4. In this case, we are moving away from talking about the role of I. F. Anensky in Akhmatova’s creative biography, although the title of Akhmatova’s text (“trefoil”) clearly refers us to “The Cypress Casket.” Let us only note here the juxtaposition in the context of “flower” semantics of the compositional form “trefoil” and the genre - “Almost in an album”. A. S. Pushkin wrote about the traditional elements of this genre in “Eugene Onegin”: “Here you will certainly find / Two hearts, a torch and flowers.”
5. Russian school folklore: From evocations of the Queen of Spades to family stories / Comp. A. F. Belousov. M., 1998. pp. 12-13. See also: Belousov A.F. Institute student // School life and folklore: Educational material on Russian folklore. Part 2: Girl culture. Tallinn, 1992. pp. 119-159; Belousov A.F. Institute student in Russian literature // Tynyanov collection: Fourth Tynyanov readings. Riga, 1990. pp. 77-90.
6. Foley. J. Encyclopedia of Signs and Symbols. M., 1997. P. 399.
7. Akhmatova Anna. Collection cit.: In 6 vols. M., 1998-2001. Here and below, the texts of Akhmatova’s poems are quoted from this edition without indicating the volume and pages.
8. Calderon P. Steadfast Prince / Trans. B. Pasternak // Spanish Theater. M., 1969. P. 539. The play in Pasternak’s translation was first published in 1961. The text of Pasternak’s translation contains, in our opinion, many reminiscences (conscious or unconscious?) from Akhmatova’s poetry, for example: “In captivity can sing / Only senseless creatures...” (Pasternak/Calderon) - “And I’m not a prophetess at all... But just for me I don’t want to sing / To the sound of prison keys” (Akhmatova); “I need to know whose portrait / You held in your white hand, / Answer me, do me a favor / Or better yet, give an answer, / Whoever he is, it doesn’t matter, / The name will not lessen the shame. / Your portrait looks out of the frame, / Shaming the canvas" (Pasternak) - "You ran here from the portrait, / And the empty frame until the light / On the wall will be waiting for you... / There are scarlet spots on your cheeks; / If only you went back to the canvas..." (Akhmatova). In addition, in the text of Pasternak’s translation one can also find reminiscences from the work of other poets, the translator’s contemporaries, for example: “...Is the damned rock really weighing down on me / To be the bargaining price / Of someone’s earthly death, / To be retribution for the dead?” (Pasternak) - “Here it is. I am drunk with the wine of grace / Intoxicated and ready for death, / I am the coin with which the Creator / Buys the forgiveness of the gods” (N. Gumilyov), etc. Obviously, similar cases of “borrowing” by Pasternak from “colleagues” in the shop" and prompted Akhmatova to say in a different context: "He (Pasternak. - M.S.) didn’t think anything about other people’s poems. He simply forgot them after exactly 5 minutes, but it was very much reflected in his genius" (Akhmatova Anna, op. vol. III, p. 235).
9. In this and similar cases, it is clear that for Akhmatova it is not so much the general cultural meaning of the flower symbol that is relevant, but rather the personal content, hidden from the reader and not amenable to unambiguous decipherment.
10. On the semantics of “rose” in Akhmatova, see: Crown V.V. Decree. op. pp. 23-79.
11. See about this: Serova M.V. About one unrecorded “manifesto” of Acmeism, or Akhmatova’s version // Non-calendar XX century: Mater. All-Russian seminar May 19-21, 2000. Veliky Novgorod, 2000. pp. 72-84.
12. Mandelstam O. On the nature of the word // Mandelstam O. Word and culture. M., 1978. P. 65.
13. Gorodetsky S. Some trends in modern Russian literature // Russian literature of the twentieth century: Pre-October period. L., 1991. S. 487-488.
14. Mandelstam O. Morning of Acmeism // Decree. op. P. 172.
23. In this regard, it seems to us that the fragment of the generally interesting study by S. F. Naslulaeva, which talks about the “princely” roses in Akhmatova’s “Rosary”, is not very convincing. However, the researcher herself doubts that these are “princely” roses, and writes: “...virtually no borrowings or quotations from” Knyazevsky"We did not find the verses of the "Rosary Beads", however, in our opinion, in the poems of the 2nd section there are two key images of Knyazev's lyrics - "flowers" and "roses". We cannot categorically say this, since these images are included in the poetic Akhmatova’s system and were used by her earlier when characterizing the kingdom of love/death" (S. F. Nasrulaeva. Op. cit. P. 132).
24. See N.V. Koroleva’s commentary on this: Anna Akhmatova. Decree. op. T.I.S. 691-695. Nevertheless, there are individual cases of “personification” of the flower image in Akhmatova’s poetry (“daffodils” are associated with the personality of V. Nedobrovo, “violets” - N. Gumilyov). See about this: Serova M.V. About one unrecorded “manifesto” of Acmeism... P. 81-82.
25. Naiman A. History of Russian symbolism. M., 1998. P. 15.

26. Akhmatova Anna. Decree. op. T. III. P. 244.
27. Ibid. P. 217.
28. Nedobrovo N. Anna Akhmatova // Naiman A.G. Stories about Anna Akhmatova. M., 1989. P. 241.
29. Foley J. Decree. op. P. 398.
30. Maurice Maeterlinck attributed aromas mystical meaning, directly related to the mystery of the future and, in general, to “mystery”: “The aromas - the jewels of the air that life gives us - adorn it not without reason. It would not be surprising if the incomprehensible luxury corresponded to something deep and essential, something, as we have already said, that has not yet come rather than has already passed. It is quite possible that this feeling, the only one that is turned to the future, already perceives the most vivid manifestations of the happy and desirable forms and states of matter that are preparing we have a lot of surprises.<…>It barely guesses, and only with the help of imagination, about those deep and harmonious vapors that surround the great phenomena of atmosphere and light" (M. Maeterlinck. The Mind of Flowers. St. Petersburg, 1999. P. 88). The sensitivity of the lyrical heroine Akhmatova to the aromas of the time - the floral and perfumery smells of the era - obviously explains the desire of the author of the poem "Russian Trianon ", which can be considered as a rough sketch for "Poem without a Hero", additionally - in a specially made note - pay attention to this point:

The whole station smelled of ylang-ylang,
Not the last one that will burn someday,
And the very first, main one is the White Hall
It was a dance room - it was richly decorated,
But no one danced in that hall.

Auto. litter: The perfume was called Ilang-Ilang (beginning of the century). Let us remember the caring attitude of the heroine of “A Poem without a Hero” towards a “clogged bottle” (of perfume?) that contains the aroma of the 1913 era.
31. Akhmatova Anna. Decree. op. T. III. P. 214. He read all the scriptures together,
The depth of wisdom of all book readers;
I saw the secret, knew the secret...

“About someone who has seen everything to the ends of the world...” - this is what one could say about Nikolai Stepanovich." - Popova N. I., Rubinchik O. E. Op. op. pp. 21-22.
50. Ibid.
51. Foley J. Decree. op. P. 19.
52. Ibid. P. 22.
53. The “Egyptian” subtext in Akhmatova’s poetry is connected not only with the names of N. S. Gumilyov and V. K. Shileiko, but also with the name of Modigliani: “... Modigliani raved about Egypt. He took me to the Louvre to see the Egyptian department and assured that everything else (tout le rest) is unworthy of attention. He painted my head in the attire of Egyptian queens and dancers and seemed completely captivated by the great art of Egypt. Obviously, Egypt was his last hobby" -Akhmatova Anna. Amedeo Modigliani// Akhmatova A. Collection. cit.: In 2 vols. M., 1996. T. II. P. 145.
54. Maeterlinck M. Decree. op. pp. 11-12.
55. Ibid. P. 226. Maeterlinck’s “name” in “Poem without a Hero” can be seen in the image of the “Blue Bird” (“Soft embalmer, Blue Bird…”), which became the emblem of this writer.

“How fragrant is the tongue with precision!..”

I want to go to the roses, to that only garden,

Where the best in the world stands from the fences,

Where the statues remember me young,

And I remember them under the Neva water.

In the fragrant silence between the royal linden trees

I imagine the creaking of ship masts.

And the swan, as before, swims through the centuries,

Admiring the beauty of your double...

Flowers are present in every collection of Akhmatova: either a delicate violet, or a New Year's rose, or exquisite hyacinths, or simple dandelions. Her flowers are real, visible, and it seems that we feel their aromas, that they have a certain color.

From the collection “Evening” the poem “Evening Room”.

I speak now in those words

That they are born only once in the soul.

A bee is buzzing on a white chrysanthemum,

The old sachet smells so stuffy...

... The last ray, both yellow and heavy

Frozen in a bouquet of bright dahlias,

And as if in a dream I hear the sound of a viola

And rare harpsichord chords.

"Confusion"

Don't like it, don't want to watch?

Oh, how beautiful you are, damn you!

And I can't fly

And since childhood I was winged.

My eyes are filled with fog,

Things and faces merge,

And only a red tulip,

The tulip is in your buttonhole.

Poems "To the city of Pushkin."

Poems "To the city of Pushkin."

The leaves of this willow withered in the nineteenth century,

So that a hundredfold fresh silver shines in a line of verse.

Wild roses became purple briars,

And the lyceum anthems still sound cheerful.

Half a century has passed... Generously rewarded by wondrous fate,

In the unconsciousness of days I forgot the passage of years, -

And I won't go back there! But I’ll take Lethe with me too

Living outlines of my Tsarskoye Selo gardens.

The language of flowers makes it possible to express your intentions and feelings.

Key words:

• Azalea- devotion.

• cornflower– grace, elegance.

• Carnation- platonic love.

• Dahlia- inconstancy, caprice.

• Gerbera- secret.

• Gladiolus- consistency.

• Iris- messenger.

• Lily white- purity.

• Lotus– happiness, health, long life.

• Narcissus– selfishness,

• Palm- loyalty.

• Peony- wealth and fame.

• Ivy- loyalty.

• Sunflower- admiration.

• Rose– beauty, love, heart.

• Tulip– mutual understanding.

• Chrysanthemum- Gratitude.

The relevance of research. Flowers reveal themselves quite clearly in the poetic world of Anna Akhmatova. Some researchers have already paid attention to individual images of flowers in the poetess’s work and pointed out their significance (A.A. Urban, M.V. Serova, N.V. Smirnova, V.V. Koron). Consideration of the images of flowers in Akhmatova’s work is of interest and will help high school students better understand the essence of Akhmatova’s poetry.
The purpose of this work is to establish the symbolic meaning of flowers in Akhmatova’s work and to trace the connection between the images of flowers with the life and worldview of the poetess.
1. Study of literature on the topic of research (images of flowers in the literature of the twentieth century, biography of the poetess, research by scientists on the study of images of flowers);
2. Collection of material (working with primary sources – collections of poems by A. Akhmatova), its processing in the form of tables and diagrams;
3. Generalization of the obtained results.
Object of study: artistic detail in a poetic work.
Subject of research: images of flowers in the works of A. Akhmatova.
Hypothesis: Flowers play an important role in the life of every woman. Everyone has their own preferences - favorite flowers. There are also unloved ones. In addition, since ancient times, man has wanted to see in everything that surrounds him a certain symbolism and a certain significance for his life. This means that Akhmatova’s images of flowers in poetry have a certain symbolic content and are closely connected with her life.
Research methods: The methodological foundations of our research are biographical, comparative and historical-cultural methods. In addition, statistical analysis is used when processing the collected materials.

In Akhmatova’s poems, along with the themes of the Motherland, the Russian land, glory, power, love, the theme of flowers can be traced, drawn in her poems more like a dotted line than a solid line. But it certainly exists - flowers are present in every collection of Akhmatova: either a delicate violet, or a New Year's rose, or exquisite hyacinths, or simple dandelions. Flowers reveal themselves in the poetic world of Anna Akhmatova quite clearly and have repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers. First of all, the increased frequency of Akhmatova’s use of the word “flowers” ​​was noted, as well as her constant mention of floral, and not only floral, plants. V.V. Koron constructed a table that clearly demonstrates this pattern in Akhmatova’s poetic system. A. A. Urban in the article “A. Akhmatova. “I have no use for odic hosts...” (Poetic structure of Russian lyric poetry. Leningrad, 1973.) considers Akhmatova’s “flowers” ​​as an element of the tradition of Russian landscape lyric poetry. S. F. Nasrullaeva in her book “Chronotope in the Early Lyrics of Anna Akhmatova” (Makhachkala, 2000) interprets the functionality of floral imagery as a device of reminiscence: the “roses” in the “Rosary”, according to the researcher, are associated with the “princely” theme in the collection. Special attention in the context of floral The book by V.V. Korona “The Poetry of Anna Akhmatova” deserves a theme from Akhmatova. The Poetics of Autovariations" (Ekaterinburg, 1999). In this unique study, the author, a biologist by profession, absolutely brilliantly showed that the structure of Akhmatova's poetic world is a living structure, a living organism, the functioning mechanism of which is carried out according to biological, natural laws.
In Akhmatova's early lyrics, flowers are found in almost every poem. These are lilies, violets, daisies, gillyflowers, dahlias, etc. In itself, the multicolor of love, and also female, poetry does not seem unusual. It can be interpreted as a tribute to the tradition of album lyrics of the 19th century.
Album culture at the beginning of the 20th century was a living phenomenon not only among high school students and students of women's institutes. During this period, it actually merged with the elite culture: “Apollo” and “World of Art” were actively decorated with vignettes with elements of floral and plant decor and other emblems traditional for girls’ albums. The emblem did not always retain the semantics assigned to it: “cedar -...

M. Tsvetaeva called Akhmatova “Golden-moustached Anna of All Rus'”. And this is a surprisingly accurate definition. Listen... Do you hear the enchanting music, the endless mysterious song of the soul? Tsvetaeva’s brilliant prophecy came true: A. Akhmatova became not only a poetic, but also a moral banner of her century. In her lyrics one can feel “worldwide responsiveness”, love for the world around him, a desire to understand the laws of beauty and harmony, the laws of goodness.

Turning to the poems of A. Akhmatova, we come into contact with the world of enchanting sounds and colors, reflect on eternity, beauty and love, we inhale the aroma of poetic roses, lilies, lilacs, we feel the living soul of an unfading flower, the poetry of A. Akhmatova. It seems that we know everything about her life and work. But it only seems so. How many secrets still associated with the name of Akhmatova will be revealed to descendants! I was interested to find out how often the poet refers to the image of flowers in his poems, which ones he prefers, what semantic meaning the images of flowers carry, what is the symbolism of the image.

Topic of the research project: semantics of flowers in the poetic world of Anna Akhmatova.

Research Project Objectives:

• understand the semantic meaning of the images of flowers in Anna Akhmatova’s lyrics;
• find out what the symbolism of flower images is, their metaphorical meaning;
• find out what role images of flowers play in revealing the mental state of the lyrical heroine.

Object of study: poems by Anna Akhmatova and critical articles dedicated to the life and work of the poet.

Subject of research: the image of flowers in the poetic world of Anna Akhmatova.

Hypothesis: a deep understanding of the ideological sound of Anna Akhmatova’s poems is possible if the images of flowers are studied

Research objectives:

• understand the semantics of flower images
• understand the symbolic and metaphorical meaning of flower images

Methodological basis of the study:

• Works...
• Articles by G. M. Temnenko, N. Tatarinova

Research methods

• Theoretical - study of literature on the research topic
• Practical - analysis of Anna Akhmatova's poem

Practical significance:

• When drawing up a script for an extracurricular event based on the works of Anna Akhmatova
• Opportunity to use this project in literature lessons

Flowers in Akhmatova's early poems

The world of fragrant flowers opens up to us in Akhmatova’s lyrics. It is flowers that help to recreate the psychological state of the lyrical hero, convey a certain atmosphere of mood, emotionality of tone. These poems contain the idea of ​​the eternity of nature, its living soul. In Akhmatova’s early lyrics, “a boy plays the bagpipes, a girl weaves her wreath,” when love “casts a spell at the very heart,” the soul rejoices and seeks happiness, but even then the lyrical hero has a presentiment of his difficult fate:

I know: guessing, and I should cut off
Delicate daisy flower...

However, the role of flowers is much more significant. Let us turn to the poem “Confusion.”

Don't like it, don't want to watch?
Oh, how beautiful you are, damn you!
And I can't fly
And since childhood I was winged.
My eyes are filled with fog,
Things and faces merge,
And only a red tulip,
The tulip is in your buttonhole.

It seems that if there were no flower in this poem, it would lose its sharpness, piercingness, and frankness. It is known that the tulip is considered a symbol of declaration of love. The color red has several symbolic meanings: love, power, struggle, pride. The detail - a tulip in the buttonhole - complements the range of feelings of the poem. In addition, he absorbs the meaning of the previous lines, with his feelings and emotions, internal struggle. We notice the feeling of inevitability that torments her (“My eyes are filled with fog, things and faces merge”), anger, passion (“Oh, how beautiful you are, damned!”), wounded pride (“And I can’t take off, but since childhood was winged!”), - and all this is reflected in the red tulip.

The semantics of the flower helps to achieve a deeper and more complete understanding of this poem. The emphasized sophistication of flowers remains in the book “The Rosary” (1914), in “The White Flock” (1917). In the poems of this cycle, sophistication and simple flowers coexist: roses, lilacs, violets, immortelle, juniper. In the Rosary, flowers such as tulip, lilac, carnation, and mimosa are most often mentioned.