Alexey Koltsov biography. Alexey Vasilievich Koltsev

Koltsov Alexey Vasilievich is a famous national poet. Born on October 3, 1809, into a wealthy middle-class family in the city of Voronezh.

His father was a livestock trader - an intelligent, energetic, resourceful man. Koltsov’s mother was a kind woman, but completely uneducated, even illiterate. Koltsov's childhood was spent in a harsh patriarchal merchant family; the father was the only ruler of the house and kept everyone in strict obedience

ii. Only his mother knew how to get along with him and, apparently, had a more beneficial influence on the boy. Koltsov was left to his own devices. He had no peers in the family: one sister was much older than him, and his brother and other sisters were much younger. When he was 9 years old, one began to teach him to read and write.

from Voronezh seminarians. Koltsov studied diligently and successfully; bypassing the parish school, he directly entered the first class of the district school (1818), but did not stay at the school for long: after a year and 4 months, his father took him home, finding the information received by his son quite sufficient for the life for which he wanted him to live.

otovil - livestock trade. Russian spelling remained inaccessible to Koltsov forever. The school, however, brought him the benefit that he fell in love with reading. The first books he read were popular prints, various tales about Bova, about Eruslan Lazarevich, etc. He bought them with money, giving

available to him for treats and toys. Then he moved on to novels, which he obtained from his friend, Vargin, also the son of a merchant. Koltsov especially liked “The Thousand and One Nights” and “Cadmus and Harmony” by Kheraskov. In 1824, Vargin died, leaving his friend his library as an inheritance - about 70 volumes in total. By

Upon leaving school, Koltsov, presumably, began to help his father in his trading affairs and then for the first time became more closely acquainted with the village and the Don steppes. This acquaintance immediately had a strong influence on him; a world of enchanting sounds and colors opened up to him, and he absorbed them into himself, so that he could later pass them on

howls, thoughts and feelings that are dear to this world. In 1825, he was greatly impressed by the poems of I.I. that he accidentally came across. Dmitrieva; He especially liked "Ermak". He was 16 years old when he wrote his first poem, “Three Visions.” Soon after this he met Voronezh

named after bookseller Kashkin. Direct, smart and honest, Kashkin enjoyed the love of Voronezh youth; and his bookstore was a kind of club for her. He was interested in Russian literature, read a lot and, it seems, wrote poetry himself. There is reason to think that Koltsov showed him his first experiments

For 5 years, Koltsov used his library free of charge, getting acquainted with the works of Zhukovsky, Delvig, Kozlov, and Pushkin. Koltsov's poems of 1826 - 1827, with rare exceptions, represent a weak imitation of these models. At the end of the 20s, Koltsov became close to the Andes

Ray Porfirievich Srebryansky, a graduate of the Voronezh seminary, later a student at the Medical-Surgical Academy. Srebryansky himself was a poet; his poems were very famous among seminarians. One of his plays has not been forgotten to this day: the famous student song “Fast, Ka.”

to the waves, the days of our lives." In his letters to Belinsky, Koltsov more than once recalls with gratitude his friend, to whom he owed very valuable instructions, especially on the subject of verse technique, as well as a more strict choice of reading. About Koltsov’s relationship with Srebryansky testifies and Art.

their work dedicated to him ("A.P. Srebryansky", 1829). At the end of the 20s, Koltsov fell in love with the serf girl Dunyasha who lived in their house, bought by his father from one of the neighboring landowners. The father acted coolly: during one of Koltsov’s absences, Dunyasha was sold to the Don, where she soon got married. It was for

I gave Koltsov a strong blow, traces of which remained forever in his poetry. In 1829, Koltsov met Velyaminov, a professor of philosophy and physical and mathematical sciences at the Voronezh seminary, who, according to De Poulet, was a man seriously interested in literature. In the same year, through Voronezh

a certain Sukhachev, who considered himself a writer, called. Koltsov met him and gave him a notebook of his poems. Sukhachev took her with him to Moscow, and in 1830 he published some of Koltsov’s poems under his own name. A happy accident soon brought Koltsov together with N.V. Stankevich. According to Ya.

M. Neverov, Stankevich’s father, a landowner in the Voronezh province, had a distillery where local cattle traders brought their herds to feed stillage. Young Stankevich had no relations with these people. One day, going to bed, he could not call his valet for a long time. Valet in his

He told his justification that the newly arrived prasol Koltsov read them such songs at dinner that they all listened to him and could not leave him behind; he cited several couplets that remained in his memory, which made a strong impression on Stankevich. He invited Koltsov to his place to find out from

him, where he got such beautiful poems from. At Stankevich’s request, Koltsov gave him all his poems. Stankevich placed one of them in the Literary Newspaper (1831), with a letter recommending to readers “a native poet who had not studied anywhere and was busy with trade affairs on behalf of

tsa, he often writes on the road, at night, sitting on horseback." In May 1831, Koltsov went to Moscow for the first time on his father's trade and litigation matters and met there with members of Stankevich's circle, including Belinsky. In Moscow " Listka" Koltsov published a number of poems in 1831. In

In 1835, with funds raised by members of Stankevich's circle, the first book of "Poems by Alexei Koltsov" was published - a total of 18 plays selected by Stankevich from a "rather heavy notebook." It included such gems as “Don’t make noise, rye”, “Reflections of a peasant”, “Peasant feast” and others. B

Elinsky greeted this book sympathetically, recognizing in Koltsov “a small, but true talent.” Koltsov, however, still wrote only in fits and starts, devoting his energies mainly to his father’s trading affairs. Koltsov’s second trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg dates back to 1836. In Moscow he met F.N.

Glinka, Shevyrev, in St. Petersburg - with Prince Vyazemsky, with Prince Odoevsky, Zhukovsky, Pletnev, Kraevsky, Panaev and others. Everywhere he was received very kindly, some sincerely, others condescending to him, as a poet-prasol, a poet-philistine. Koltsov was well versed in how anyone related to him.

tried; He generally knew how to observe subtly and carefully. Koltsov met Pushkin in 1836. The acquaintance took place, according to A.M. Yudin, in Pushkin’s apartment, where Koltsov was invited twice. Koltsov was in awe of Pushkin. Turgenev tells how at Pletnev’s evening Koltsov was not at all

was invited to read his last thought. “Why would I start reading this, sir,” he said, “here Alexander Sergeevich just came out, and I would start reading! For mercy, sir!” N.A. Polevoy speaks of Koltsov as a “pure, kind soul”; “He warmed himself with him, as if by the fireplace.” Prince Vyazemsky characterizes him as "di

nature, modest, simple-hearted." Belinsky was absolutely delighted with Koltsov. Zhukovsky, Kraevsky, and Prince Odoevsky treated him just as well. The latter, and with them Vyazemsky, often supported him in his personal matters. or rather, their father’s affairs; thanks to them, they ended more than once.

Successfully succeeded in such lawsuits that the father, without connections, would certainly have lost. This must partly explain why his father treated him and his literary pursuits quite kindly at that time. Koltsov’s poems were eagerly published in the best metropolitan magazines (“Modern

ik", "Moscow Observer"). At home, his fame increased even more after Zhukovsky, accompanying the Heir Tsarevich on his journey across Russia, visited Voronezh (in July 1837). Everyone saw how Zhukovsky "walked on foot and carriage together with the poet-prasol." Koltsov, accompanied

I used it while sightseeing in the city. Koltsov at this time felt cramped in the family environment; he was strongly drawn to people of thought and culture, but he was too tightly connected with his entire past, both materially and spiritually, and his education still remained superficial. In Voronezh

few people understood his state of mind, especially after 1838, when Srebryansky died. He soon broke up with Kashkin. In 1838, Koltsov again went, first to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg. During this trip, he became especially close to Belinsky, who became the only person close to him.

catcher He confided all his sorrows and joys to Belinsky, made him the judge of all his new works, which he immediately sent to him. In 1838, Koltsov wrote quite a lot. This was facilitated by the cultural situation and interests of the metropolitan society in which he then moved; himself and

This is exactly how he explains the reason for his fruitful activities this year (see his letter to Belinsky dated August 16, 1840). After this trip, Koltsov’s life in Voronezh becomes even more lonely; the home environment weighs him down even more. He becomes more and more at odds with his acquaintances. Koltsov sword

talked about the role of a teacher, a leader, wanted to be a conductor of those lofty thoughts and ideas that he encountered in the mental centers of Russia; acquaintances mocked such attempts and saw him as a simple imitator. “I absolutely cannot live at home, among merchants,” he writes to Belinsky;

in other circles too... I have a very bleak future ahead of me. It seems that I can fulfill one thing with all accuracy: a crow... And, by God, I look terribly like her, all that remains is to say: she did not get to the peahens, but lagged behind the crows. Nothing more will come to me than this." Friends called Koltsov to St. Petersburg,

They suggested that he either open a book trade himself, or become the manager of Kraevsky’s office. Koltsov did not follow this advice. He knew how little is ideal in any trade, even booksellers, and quite reasonably argued to his friends that he could not withstand competition with other booksellers

and, if he conducts his affairs differently, not like a merchant. In September 1840, Koltsov again had to stay in the capitals on his father’s business. This was his last trip. Meetings with Belinsky and V. Botkin revived him a little and lifted his spirit. This time Koltsov hesitated to return home and

On a long journey from St. Petersburg, I stayed longer in Moscow. It seemed too disgusting to him to find himself again in the whirlpool of a home environment. In February 1841, Koltsov finally decided to return home. He had no money for the journey - his father did not want him to return and categorically refused to send him; had to

borrow from a friend. At home, he again plunged headlong into his father’s affairs, but the relationship between them deteriorated more and more. There were very difficult scenes that had a depressing effect on Koltsov. Soon Koltsov separated from his beloved younger sister, Anisya, in whom he had previously seen the only one in the family near

I forge his soul. The tragedy of everyday life, heavy and hopeless, emanates from his letters to Belinsky at this time. Now he will finish some new construction, put some of his father’s affairs in order and will certainly come to St. Petersburg - his father promised to give him money. But things dragged on, Koltsov became entangled in them; h

health also began to deteriorate greatly - and hope faded. For just one moment, and even then a very short one, happiness smiled on him: he passionately fell in love with Varvara Grigorievna Lebedeva, and this aroused in him faith in a better future; but due to various circumstances they were soon to separate. Bole

Koltsov's disease - consumption - began to develop rapidly. My father did not give money for treatment. Doctor I.A. Malyshev took an ardent part in Koltsov’s fate and supported his strength as best he could. In the adjacent room, the sisters were preparing for the wedding, noisy bachelorette parties were being held, and Koltsov lay seriously ill, abandoned by everyone

y; Only his mother and the old nanny looked after him. Koltsov died on October 29, 1842. Koltsov's poetry has long been defined, since the time of Belinsky, as deeply folk, or rather, even peasant. It is dominated by the same content, the same motives, the same form as in oral folk lyrics. Gr

ust-longing for a loved one, complaints about the sadness of fate, unsuccessful family life, love appeals, brave prowess - these are simple, truly folk stories that Koltsov usually sings of. It has more variations, experiences are conveyed deeper, more subtly, impulses are more passionate, colors are intensified, condensed, but the essence

still remains the same; The difference seems to be only quantitative, not qualitative. It is clear that in his poetry the nameless folk-collective creative genius found its full, direct and precise expression. Koltsov looks at everything around him with the same wide open naive eyes,

This is how the poets-creators of folk songs looked, who remained unknown precisely because they did not have time to separate themselves from the masses in their souls; they all experienced how the people themselves were both at the same time and in unison with them. A special fullness of sensation in which the individual “I” dissolves, the power of original harmony, that syncr

ethical unity, in which God, the surrounding nature and the individual person mutually and completely penetrate each other, forming something single whole - this is what is characteristic of this simple, not yet differentiated soul of a poet from the people; it is also characteristic of Koltsov. If excluded from his poetry

those imitative poems, where the motives were borrowed as if hastily from Zhukovsky, Delvig and Dmitriev, who came across by chance and were completely alien in spirit, and even “Dumas”, written under the influence of Stankevich’s circle, especially Belinsky, who vainly enlightened him about the “subject, object” and ab

Solut", then we are struck precisely by the extraordinary objectivity, the complete absence of a personal element. As if his lyrics were not at all the result of his personal experiences, but he only wanted to tell how, in general, every peasant boy or girl loves, rejoices, is sad, complains about fate or languishes in y

narrow sphere of once and for all fixed life. Here, for example, is the despair of a young man from his betrothed’s betrayal: “heavy sadness and melancholy fell on his tormented little head; mortal torment torments the soul, the soul asks to leave the body.” Or love that transforms your whole life: “together with my dear, winter seems like summer, grief is not grief, the night is clear

day, and without it there is no joy in the May morning, and in the dawn-evening, and in the oak grove - green - silk brocade." His favorite artistic techniques are the merging of two concepts or images into one ("awe-fire", "love -longing”, “sadness-longing”, “love-fire”, “love-soul”, etc.), striking contrasts (like:

“be with grief at the feast with a cheerful face”, “the sun is shining - yes in autumn”). In everything and everywhere one can see a strong, passionate nature, experiencing everything in a special way, deeply, to the point of self-forgetfulness. And yet everything personal drowns in the original synthetic integrity of the worldview, and Koltsov’s songs become typical

And. It is the typical that is most characteristic of Koltsov. And no matter how bright his colors are, and no matter how great their abundance - in each play they are new and different - the impression remains the same: these are feelings that are generally applicable to everyone and everyone, these are generic experiences, not individual, not personal. Longing

or deceived about the daring young man, turning with a prayer to the red sun, wide field, violent winds; whether the young woman laments that she was forcibly married off; whether the old man complains about his old age, the young man about his mediocre lot; Is it about how it dries like grass in autumn?

A zealous heart from the fire of love for the red maiden - in a word, about whom and whatever Koltsov sings, everywhere before us there are merged images, nameless faces; they can be characterized only in general terms, or, in extreme cases, determined by occupation or property status - if this is necessary to initiate the action

But no more, no more precise, no more detailed. The entire peasant life passes before us; in written literature Koltsov is the only singer of agricultural labor. He knows this life very well, feels with all his soul the holiness of this work, sees and feels all its complexity, delves into his thoughts and mood

tion, but always draws it in a typical, unified form. For another poet this would be a sign of weakness of creative powers; Koltsov feels here the great truth of a great talent who perceives the world as the people, the peasantry perceive it. In comparison with Koltsov’s oral folk art

a much greater variety of moments, experiences seem deeper; but still each given moment, each individual experience remains general, characteristic of the type, not of the individual. The same infantilely naive syncretic unity is reflected in Koltsov’s attitude towards nature. All life

the great dramas of his heroes and heroines certainly take place in her bosom; people with all their thoughts turn first and most willingly to it, to its phenomena, as to their friends - helpers or hindering opponents. It is clearly felt that these are not simple metaphors, not an artistic device, not a way

borrowing the colors needed for a given case. Koltsov conveys here, and again in a popular way, all the true closeness that exists between man and nature - that connection, thanks to which it is impossible to draw any sharp dividing line between them, much less oppose them. In p

Peasant life unfolds in complete harmony with nature. Not only in the sense that the plowman is dependent on her, as on his only nurse, and involuntarily must build his life, obeying her commands. Here compatibility is of a completely different kind, free and desired, like two equal companions.

cabbage soup, animated by the same thoughts and ideas. The farmer, his sivka, the field he plows, the sun warming his land, the clouds pouring “on the earth’s chest, on the broad chest, like a large tear - pouring rain,” a bird flying over a field or singing under the window of a hut, and even mute objects : With

oha, harrow, plow, sickle - all these are members of the same family, understanding each other perfectly; they all work together to create a complex and serious life. There are no inferiors or superiors here; mutual sympathy, unconsciousness, so to speak, mutual comprehension binds them together. That's why it's so naive

Such appeals as a young man to a nightingale, so that he flies away into the forests of his homeland, to chirp to his maiden soul about his longing, to tell her how without her he dries up, withers like the grass on the steppe, seem enchanting and deeply truthful - and not just beautiful. before autumn. Or a wonderful call to the field: “don’t make a noise

"with a ripe ear"; he has nothing to collect goods for, nothing to get rich for now: those clear eyes, once "full of amorous thoughts, the beautiful maiden is sleeping in the sleep of the grave," have become afraid. Or those beautiful purely folk parallels: "in bad weather the wind howls , howls - evil sadness torments the violent head"; intimate

trusting conversations with the dark night, the clear sun, with the wide steppe, the scythe-sickle, blackened, “sprinkled in boredom-sorrow with a girl’s tear.” All these creatures and objects take an active part in the life and work of the villager. Koltsov, if only he is free from reflection, has no other colors,

except those that exist in nature, near the earth, near the steppe or forest. There are none even when he is clearly distracted from peasant life, talking about himself personally, about his given moment, purely subjective state. For example, he feels cramped in a bourgeois environment, he is strongly drawn to a different, more culturally

th life; or another thing: he is terribly struck by the tragic death of Pushkin, whom he could appreciate, of course, not from a peasant point of view - the creative result is again the same folk images, the same objectivism, complete abstraction from one’s self (“In bad weather, the wind howls howls", "What a dense forest is the prize

thought"). Gleb Uspensky considers Koltsov the only singer of agricultural labor in Russian literature. This is very true: when he sings the root cause of his and the people’s integral worldview, he achieves the greatest persuasiveness and simplicity and at the same time completeness of harmony - in addition to people

and nature, and also God. In the plowman’s cherished thoughts there is chaste holiness and seriousness, which intensifies and deepens with every change in nature and in particular in the field. The rural people waited with trepidation and prayer for “the black cloud to frown, and expand, and shed a large tear - a strait

"This desired rain came - and with it three peasant peaceful thoughts. The peasant himself came up with the first two, and the implementation depends on him: “Pour the bread into bags, remove the cart and leave the village by horse-drawn cart at the right time,” but how “the third thought came to mind - they prayed to God the Lord,” - Kolts

ov doesn't speak. And that's great. It’s a sin to put it into words; here is spiritual trembling, here God’s participation begins. “As soon as it was light, everyone dispersed across the field and went for a walk after each other; scatter a handful of bread; and let’s plow the earth with plows and plow up with a crooked plow.” Bread is holy; he is God's guest; his

The Lord sends people for their work. He Himself takes care of it through His nature: “the sun sees the harvest is over,” and only then does it “go colder towards autumn.” That is why “a villager’s candle is lit in front of the icon of the Mother of God.” God is also a participant in peasant labor; He is its main participant, he penetrated everything with Himself

aying. This is how the people’s worldview, or rather their worldview, ends; This is how God, nature, and man are united into a common union. The same holiness of religiosity is felt not only in “The Harvest,” but also in “The Plowman’s Song,” in “The Reflections of a Villager,” who knows that “the land of the wet-nurse is a terrible misfortune.”

Throw a zhika, and then God will give birth, Mikola will help you collect bread from the field." There is an indication of it in "Peasant Feast." Koltsov tried to clarify this feeling of the syncretic unity of God, the cosmos and the human "I" in his famous "Dumas." his mental structure was not capable of philosophy

fsky abstract thinking. It is not surprising that as soon as he speaks the language of Stankevich or Belinsky, the fire of his poetry immediately goes out, the power of the national element trembling in his soul falls silent. He could express the harmony that he constantly felt only in images taken from life, from

surrounding nature, and not in ethereal, frozen symbols. And yet his “Thoughts” are characteristic; in the light of his truly poetic works, they also become very convincing. They contain the same idea that he tirelessly repeats: about the animation of all nature, embodying the spirit of the Divine. Vyr

whether he expresses this conviction in the terms of Schellingism, which he grasped on the fly, or in the rationalistic concepts of abstract Hegelianism, which are completely alien to his mental structure, does he modernize the slightly Christian idea of ​​the Trinity, more familiar, and therefore more understandable to him, and through it tries to

to clarify your vague thoughts, the essence remains the same everywhere: life is in everything and everywhere, and it is in God. “In the overflow of life, in the kingdom of God’s will, there is no powerless death, no soulless life!” - he says in his thought: “God’s peace.” In "The Kingdom of Thought" he lists these overflows of life. God's spirit, God

I idea lives in everything: “in the ashes, and in the fire, in the fire, in the peals of thunder; in the hidden darkness of the bottomless depths”... and even “in the silence of a silent cemetery”, “in the deep sleep of an immovable stone”, and “ in the breath of a silent blade of grass." Everywhere she is alone, this “queen of being.” "The Father of light is eternity; the Son of eternity is power;

The spirit of power is life; the world is full of life. Everywhere the Triune, who called everything to life,” is how he interprets the three hypostases of Christianity. And no matter how abstract these thoughts are, in comparison with his songs seeming completely lifeless, they still show traces of that wholeness, completed by a deep religious

a unique feeling, a worldview, which was so beautifully and so directly reflected in his truly folk works. From Belinsky’s words, Koltsov understood only what was close to him, which was quite suitable for his own worldview. This does not exhaust the meaning of Koltsov’s “Dumas”. IN

They reflect another side of his mental activity, less valuable, in a certain sense even harmful: in any case, it brought little good to him. This is the very cult of reason, the kingdom of thought, which inevitably had to act in a destructive way on the integrity of his worldview

and lead to those eternal damned questions for which there is not and cannot be a clear, consciously satisfying answer. These questions were all the more painful for Koltsov because he knew well, had experienced many times, in moments of creative delight, what joy overshadows the soul with a feeling of harmony, synthesis, pre-existing

including all kinds of world problems. His poems such as “The Grave”, “Question”, and especially “Prayer” are imbued with deep sorrow and anxiety. These are the very thoughts that Belinsky recognized as having a certain value precisely in view of the seriousness of the questions they sincerely posed. The mind is not in

able to illuminate the darkness of the grave that lies ahead of us, to answer a person what will replace him there with “a deep feeling of a cold heart, that there will be life of the spirit without this heart.” These are sinful questions: from them to complete denial is one step. That is why the last stanza of the “Prayer” sounds like such a plea of ​​despair: “Forgive me

e, Savior! a tear of my sinful evening prayer: in the darkness it shines with love for You." Koltsov in these cases seeks salvation in religion. "Before the image of the Savior" (this is the name of one of his "thoughts") he deliberately "extinguishes the candle and closes the wise book"; he must replace it with faith: “in her alone there is peace, etc.

Ishina." "Under the cross is my grave; on the cross - my love,” - this is how another disturbing poem ends: “The Last Struggle.” In these frequent fluctuations between questions-doubts and answers-decisions towards simple-hearted faith, traces of the decomposition of the original harmony are visible. Poet of the people

existence, who knew and demonstrated in most of his work such completeness of sensation, such integrity of the authentic unity of God, nature and man, Koltsov nevertheless acutely poses those questions that are conceivable only with a completely different, opposite mental structure. In this sense, in the "Dumas" there are forces

The creative activity of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov (1809–1842) is one of the most striking manifestations of what was happening in the 1830s. democratization of the ranks of writers, which, as Pushkin noted, was supposed to have “important consequences.”
In Koltsov’s poetry, for the first time, the spiritual world of the peasant was revealed from within, his deep and genuine humanity, trampled under foot by serfdom. Thus, Koltsov’s work seemed to reveal with his own eyes what, after the poet’s death, Belinsky was still forced to prove and defend, saying: “Isn’t a man a man? – But what could be interesting about a rude, uneducated person? - Like what? “His soul, mind, heart, passions, inclinations - in a word, everything is the same as in an educated person.”
Having become the first poet of the peasant world in the history of Russian poetry, Koltsov thereby expanded the social boundaries of artistically depicted reality. His work was a new and significant step forward towards the further rapprochement of art with the people.
And before Koltsov there were poets who wrote about the peasant. Even in the first decades of the 19th century. - a very remarkable symptom - a number of so-called self-taught peasant poets appear (F. Slepushkin, E. Alipanov, M. Sukhanov, etc.). But in their poems the nationality was, according to Belinsky’s definition, purely decorative (4, 160). Drawing idyllic pictures of “rural life”, they did not go further than rehashes of book poetry of that time.
Koltsov’s poetic creativity was directly related to the advanced trends of Russian social thought and literature of those years. Mastering folk song traditions and relying on the achievements of contemporary writers, Koltsov managed to find his own voice, his own methods of poetic mastery. It is not without reason that, speaking of Koltsov as an original artist of the word and defining his place among the poets of the 30s - early 40s, Belinsky argued that “after the name of Lermontov, the most brilliant poetic name in modern Russian poetry is the name of Koltsov” (4, 179). Later, Chernyshevsky would give the same high praise to Koltsov. Characterizing the post-Pushkin period in the development of Russian poetry, he wrote: “Koltsov and Lermontov appeared. All the old celebrities have faded in comparison to these new ones”; and for the progressive people of Chernyshevsky’s era this was indeed the case.
Koltsov’s creative image is inextricably linked with the peculiarities of his biography. It is not enough to see in it only a special case, a personal drama of an artist forced to submit to unfavorable everyday circumstances. Koltsov’s bitter fate crystallized the general tragedy of the people’s life of his time.
From his adolescence, Koltsov knew the hardships of life. His father, a Voronezh tradesman, strove to raise his children in his own image and likeness. A rude and domineering man, he took the future poet from the second grade of the district school and turned him into his clerk. Throughout his short life, Koltsov was forced by the will of his father to engage in his commercial affairs.
The native nature of the Voronezh region became a real school for Koltsov. He spent most of the year on endless rides on horseback. The black earth steppe with its open spaces and villages taught the poet to think broadly and freely, to see the core, deep beginning in people. The steppe became truly the poetic cradle of Koltsov.
N.V. Stankevich played an important role in Koltsov’s biography. Possessing a highly developed aesthetic taste, he immediately grasped the original character of Koltso’s talent. Through Stankevich, acquaintances were made with V. A. Zhukovsky, V. F. Odoevsky, P. A. Vyazemsky and others. At one of Zhukovsky’s literary “Saturdays” in early 1836, Koltsov met with Pushkin.
It is difficult to overestimate the role of the critic of the democrat Belinsky in the fate of Koltsov. The meeting in 1831, and then the rapprochement and, finally, the closest friendship with him, which lasted until the last days of the poet, largely determined the meaning and content of Koltsov’s entire creative life.
Belinsky for many years was the first reader, connoisseur and editor of Koltsov's works. He took part in the preparation for publication of the first collection of poems by Koltsov (1835). He was also the initiator and compiler of the subsequent publication of the poet’s works, already posthumous (1846), providing it with an extensive introduction “On the life and writings of Koltsov.” This is the first summary article about the activities of the poet Prasol and his first detailed biography.
Belinsky was not just a personal friend for Koltsov, but an ideological leader. They were brought together primarily by social and spiritual kinship. We have the right to consider both as predecessors of the galaxy of “new people” of the 1860s. Koltsov appeared in the world as if responding to Belinsky’s passionate calls for nationality in literature.
Delvig, Vyazemsky, and F. Glinka have a certain influence on the young poet. Koltsov highly appreciates Venevitinov’s work. In an eight-line poem dedicated to Venevitinov (1830), Koltsov expressed warm sympathy for the young poet in his secret longing for the “good” and “high.” Close to Koltsov and Ryleev. The lines of Koltsov’s poem “Earthly Happiness” (1830) are painted in those civic patriotic tones that were characteristic of Ryleev’s “Thoughts”. Even the very nature of exposing social injustices, not to mention the direct use of intonation, rhythm and word usage, makes one recall some poems from the Volynsky Duma.
And yet, in the development of Koltsov as a poet, the decisive role belongs to Pushkin.
The young Koltsov’s attraction to Pushkin’s poetry, to the deeply expressed in it, according to Belinsky, “the inner beauty of man and the humanity that cherishes the soul” (7, 339) was noticeably manifested in the poem “The Nightingale” (1831). By reproducing not only the theme, but also the sound side and the general stylistic and metrical structure of Pushkin’s poem “The Nightingale and the Rose,” the author apparently wanted to emphasize his dependence on the work of his beloved and great poet. However, the romance already reveals that Kol’tsov’s own soulful lyricism, that special musicality that will be characteristic of the poet’s mature mastery. It is not surprising that the poem “The Nightingale” was set to music by A. Glazunov, N. Rimsky Korsakov, A. Rubinstein, A. Gurilev and many other composers. V.V. Stasov ranked it among the “astoundingly beautiful and poetic” romances.
Mastering Pushkin's poetry helps Koltsov to work more seriously and independently on the style of his works. Getting rid of romance phraseology, elegiac formulas that filled his early poems (“I was with her,” “Come to me,” 1829; “What are you for, tender heart...”, 1830, etc.), Koltsov strives for simplicity and clarity of poetic speech.
Koltsov’s artistic sympathies are extremely constant. This applies equally to the content and poetics of his works. If we exclude the first experiments, which bear the stamp of belated sentimentalism, and the poems “for the occasion,” then everything else clearly falls into two dissimilar parts. One is a reflection on the eternal problems of human existence, the other is an image of a peasant soul. The genres – “thought” and song – are chosen accordingly.
Turning to Koltsov’s philosophical themes may seem artificial. But it was precisely the spontaneous desire to touch upon the secrets to which the merchant-philistine circle was indifferent that pushed the poet Prasol into the world of abstract ideas. Let us also not forget that in the conditions of the 30s. passion for philosophy, mainly German, took on the character of a hidden public protest: after all, thought is free, it cannot be banned!
There is no particular pretension to philosophy in Koltsov’s “thoughts.” They captivate not with their depth of insight into the essence of fundamental ideological issues, not with their “intelligence,” but, on the contrary, with their spontaneity, even some kind of naivety. Here is the thought “Man” (1836). These are more likely emotions spilling out from the depths of the soul than a strict reasoning about the contradictory nature of human actions. In “The Kingdom of Thought” (1837) we encounter a purely artistic attempt to present one of the provisions widespread in German metaphysics about the existence of a certain absolute - the infinite spiritual fundamental principle of the universe.
The artist clearly suppressed the philosopher in Koltsov. “Dumas” now retain a more historical interest - as evidence of the intense intellectual quest of the author of “Mower”, as a kind of monument to the social and aesthetic life of the 1830s.
The pinnacle of Koltsov’s creative achievements are the songs he created. Poems written in imitation of Russian folk songs appear in Russian poetry back in the 18th century. and became widespread in the first third of the 19th century. At this time, “Russian songs” by Merzlyakov, Delvig, N. Ibragimov, Shalikov, Glebov, Tsyganov, Obodovsky, Alexander Korsak and others were published and entered into the mass repertoire.
Merzlyakov, Delvig, Tsyganov and other immediate predecessors of Koltsov played an undoubted and positive role in the development of the genre of Russian book songs. Compared to the sentimentalist poets of the late 18th century. they achieved more significant results both in conveying the hero’s emotional experiences and in mastering the stylistic, intonation and rhythmic features of oral folk poetry. However, the work of even prominent masters of Russian song did not go further than external borrowing of motifs, images, and stylistic means already developed in folklore. And this could not but lead to artificiality and imitation, which is felt in the very language of the songs they composed. Some of them became popular, but their authors shunned the prose of people’s working life and spoke “only about feelings, and mostly tender and sad feelings.”
Exceptional penetration into the very depths of the folk spirit and folk psychology allowed Koltsov, as Belinsky said about him, to reveal in his songs “everything good and beautiful that, like an embryo, like a possibility, lives in the nature of the Russian peasant” (9, 532).
Koltsov revealed to Russian literature its true hero - a modest peasant on whose shoulders the whole of Russia rested. Not an invented, but a natural peasant finally took his rightful place in the gallery of poetic characters. It turned out that the soul of a simple person in a moral sense is not a dead desert, as was previously thought, that it is capable not only of vain, low passions, but also of sublime feelings. The serf peasant is shown by Koltsov not as a slave and an impersonal instrument of production, but as an ethically and aesthetically valuable individuality.
The lyrical hero of Koltsov’s poems was the forerunner of Turgenev’s peasants from “Notes of a Hunter.” Without him, the emergence of accusatory Nekrasov poetry would have been impossible.
The true nationalism of Koltsov’s creativity was most clearly manifested in his songs about peasant agricultural labor. The poet's innovation was reflected here primarily in his ability to express the people's point of view on work as a source of life, spiritual greatness, and joy. The hero of “The Plowman’s Song” (1831) “merrily” gets along with a harrow and a plow. In the poem “Harvest” (1835), the creaking of carts at harvest time is likened to music, and the stacks on the threshing floors are likened to princes.
The attitude towards work determines the physical and moral beauty that the Koltsovo peasants, for example, the hero of “Mower” (1836):
Do I have a shoulder -
Wider than grandfather;
Chest high -
My mother.
On my face
Paternal blood
Lit in milk
Red dawn.
Strength, dexterity, and passion for the very progress of the work (“Get itchy, shoulder! Swing, arm!”) reveal that “poetry of labor,” in which Gleb Uspensky saw one of the most characteristic features of Koltsov’s work. It is with difficulty that Koltsov’s lyrical hero connects the concepts of the ethical and the beautiful, thereby revealing the essential aspects of folk life and national self-awareness.
In most cases, the Koltsovo young men are seduced not so much by the practical result as by the process of labor itself, its inner beauty, the possibility of expressing one’s “I” in it. Hard physical labor, which was treated by the educated classes as pitiful and slavish - or, at best, aroused compassion for the plowman - under the pen of Koltsov the songwriter acquired a completely new property. It became that part of people's life where the latent craving of the farmer for spiritual activity found outlet. It is not the principle of immediate “benefit” that explains the peasant’s readiness to poeticize his everyday activities and the formidable forces of nature. Here the original artistic inclinations of the peasant soul made themselves felt.
Koltsov’s innovation is clearly revealed in those of his songs that tell about the difficult living conditions of the peasant. The poet was able to talk about the poor man with such emotional sorrow, with such sympathy, like none of his predecessors. Moreover, in a number of Koltsov’s poems on this topic, trends that will be characteristic of democratic poets of the 60s are already outlined. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are Koltsov’s songs “The Bitter Share” (1837), “The Thoughts of a Villager” (1837), “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837), “Crossroads” (1840), “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), etc. The author’s lyrical voice, warmed by warmth and sincere sympathy for a disadvantaged person, is heard in the poem “Village Trouble” (1838), ending with the expressive lines:
Since then I have been waiting with grief
I wander around strange corners,
I work for a day's work,
Then I wash myself with blood...
(p. 162)
At the same time, the poor man in Koltsovo songs not only complains and laments about his bitter fate. He knows how to give her a daring challenge and boldly meets any adversity. The hero of the poem “Treason of the Betrothed” (1838), shocked by what happened, sets off on the road:
It's a shame to waste time, to enjoy life,
To recount the bad news...
(p. 156)
Koltsov’s hero, being an exponent of the most essential features of the Russian character, is patient, persistent, and courageous. If misfortune befalls him, then, according to Belinsky, it is natural for him not to become dissolved in sadness, not to fall “under the burden of despair itself... and if he does fall, then calmly, with full consciousness of his fall, without resorting to false consolations, without seeking salvation in something that he did not need in his best days” (9, 533). That is why, despite all the troubles and thunderstorms that await the lyrical hero Koltsov, the main tone of his poetry remains deeply optimistic and life-affirming:
And so that with grief at the feast
Be with a cheerful face;
To go to death -
Songs to be sung by the nightingale!
(p. 176)
It is characteristic that in these words from the poem “The Path” (1839), the Soviet poet Pavel Antokolsky saw the “central nerve” of Koltsov’s talent.
The theme of will - one of the primordial themes of folk poetry - occupied a prominent place in the work of the poet Prasol. The poem “Stenka Razin” (1838) is typical in this regard. It is in organic connection with Razin’s song folklore. Here is the appeal of the good fellow to the “Mother Volga” who fed and gave him drink, and the sweeping daring of the freedom-loving hero:
Make a fuss, bad weather,
Take a walk, Mother Volga!
Take my awesome thing
Mark a wave along the shore...
(p. 169)
The very choice of Razin’s theme to a certain extent characterizes both Koltsov’s social and aesthetic views.
According to Shchedrin, Koltsov’s merit lies in the fact that he was able to reveal in the Russian powerless peasant a person deeply aware of his dignity, to notice that “burning sense of personality” that “reveals all external barriers and, like a river overflowing its banks, drowns, destroys and takes with it everything it encounters along the way.”
Depicting the people with a “hidden thought of freedom,” Koltsov believes that the best share of working people only “For the time being, fell like a stone into the water,” and the important thing is that these hopes are fueled by faith in the powerful forces hidden within the people. In the poem “In Bad Weather, the Wind...” (1839), the poet calls on the people:
Get up - with all your strength
Flap your wings:
Maybe our joy
Lives just over the mountains!
(p. 178)
The lines of Koltsov’s famous song “So the soul is torn…” (1840) are also imbued with the demand for “another life.” The poet puts his ardent desire for freedom into the romantic “Duma of the Falcon” (1840), where the poet’s own sublime dream of freedom merges with the aspirations of the enslaved masses:
Ile at the falcon
Wings are tied
Or the way for him
Are you all booked?
(p. 192)
It is not surprising that “The Falcon’s Thought” was perceived by many generations of progressive people as a song calling for the struggle for a life worthy of a person. Also noteworthy is the wide response that the poems of this song received in fiction: in the works of I. S. Turgenev, I. S. Nikitin, L. N. Trefolev, F. V. Gladkov and others.
The image of a brave and independent bird, akin to Gorky’s legendary Falcon, appears in a number of Koltsov’s poems. And he himself enters our consciousness as “the falcon of Russian poetry, whose free flight was “a call to the proud for freedom, for light.”
Koltsov often speaks of the awakening impulses for a better life among the people only in hints, but quite transparently in the context of the era. For example, in the song “I have a lot...” (1840):
But I know what
I'm looking for magic herbs;
But I know what it's about
I'm sad with myself...
(p. 207)
In some of the poet's songs, features of a certain limitation characteristic of the consciousness of the patriarchal peasantry appear. But - and this is the most important thing - despite all the doubts and rather complex ideological and moral quests of Koltsov, his best poems express a rather bold protest for that time against the “dirty” and “rude” reality of his time. Rising to the realization of the need to fight it, the poet calls in the “Message” dedicated to Belinsky (1839) to rebel in the name of the “triumph” of “new thought,” truth, reason and honor.
It can be said without exaggeration that at that time no one, except Lermontov, expressed hatred of feudal reality with such artistic force as Koltsov. Even tears, burning, poisonous tears of anger, despair, melancholy, here make Koltsov related to Lermontov. Opposing a life based on lawlessness and slavery, Koltsov states in “Reckoning with Life” (1840):
If God gave strength -
I would break you!
(p. 208)
But the parallel between “Lermontov and Koltsov” requires a deeper consideration. Being contemporaries, both poets from different points of view (but similar in the main thing - rejection of contemporary social reality) reflected the contradictions of their bitter era.
Lermontov, more clearly than others, testified to the dissatisfaction of his generation with the Nicholas regime. His work focuses on depicting the darker sides of life. Skepticism, reflection, destructive for the psyche, the poison of introspection - all these “internal illnesses” struck the best part of the noble class during the years of the Nicholas reaction.
Koltsov, on the contrary, expressed in many works the healthy, powerful forces of the nation, the national spirit, which cannot be broken even by ultra-cruel political oppression. What, in fact, changed in the usual way of life of the multi-million masses of the peasantry due to the next changes on the Russian throne? Under Nicholas I, everything in the village remained the same as it was before: hopeless poverty, aggravated by the beginning of the stratification of the rural community, the growing power of the “golden treasury”.
Lermontov in “Duma” looks with sadness at his generation, the future is depicted by the author in the darkest colors (“...either empty, or dark...”). Koltsov sees it completely differently. Embodying the inexhaustible faith of the peasant worker in the ultimate happiness of man, this eternal folk optimism, Koltsov exclaims in “The Last Struggle” (1838):
Don't threaten me with trouble,
Do not call, fate, to battle:
I'm ready to fight with you
But you can't deal with me!
(p. 167)
Koltsov's fiery lines sounded like a sharp dissonance against the background of the poetry of his era. New motives suddenly invade the lyrics of despair, despondency and melancholy. The light coloring of Koltsov’s poems is also born under the influence of their specific artistic form. The song poetics itself becomes unusually meaningful. No matter what sad things are said in the work, the rapidity of intonation, special chanting, and the originality of the melodic pattern seem to soften the drama.
The poem “Forest” (1837) is colored with high civic pathos and deep sorrow caused by the death of Pushkin. In the broadest sense of the word, this political speech can safely be placed next to such an accusatory work as Lermontov’s “Death of a Poet.” It is enough to recall the comparisons in Koltsov’s poems of those gloomy years with “black autumn” and “silent night” or read, for example, into this stanza:
He went wild, fell silent...
Only in bad weather
Howling a complaint
For timelessness...
(p. 148)
– to feel the courage of the challenge to the official government of Russia. The description of those base intrigues that were the immediate cause of the death of the great poet is noteworthy in its accuracy:
From heroic shoulders
They took off the head -
Not a big mountain
And with a straw...
(p. 149)
Family songs deserve special attention in Koltsov’s work. They reveal with great sincerity the inner world of a simple Russian woman, truthfully conveying her position in a patriarchal peasant environment. The realistic content also determined the artistic features of these songs, their close connection with folklore, in particular with family folk lyrics. This connection was manifested with particular force in Koltsov’s development of the theme of forced life with a “hateful” husband. The poet recreates a truly tragic image of a young peasant woman married against her will. The heroine of the poem “Crazy, Without Reason...” (1839) gives a new and tragic shade to the traditional saying “if you live, you fall in love”:
Well, having grown old,
Reason, advise
And with you youth
Compare without calculation!
(p. 189)
Just as deeply moving, as Belinsky wrote, “the soul-tearing complaint of a tender female soul, condemned to hopeless suffering” (9, 535), is heard in the song “Oh, why me...” (1838):
Don't let the grass grow
After autumn;
Don't let the flowers bloom
In the winter in the snow!
(p. 158)
Koltsov’s family songs are characterized by their social orientation. Expressing the high ideals of folk morality, they contained a demand for the spiritual emancipation of man. The thirst for love, independence, and will was especially clearly manifested in the song “Flight” (1838), in which the right to mutual love and personal happiness was combined with the liberation aspirations of the enslaved people.
Koltsov’s love lyrics are poetry of earthly joy, enthusiastic admiration for spiritual and physical beauty. The admiration of the beloved is also evoked by comparisons that are remarkable in their artistry in the song “The Last Kiss” (1838):
Let your face burn
Like dawn in the morning...
How beautiful is spring
You, my bride!
(pp. 159–160)
An amazingly beautiful and bright feeling is sung by Koltsov. The heroes of his songs love with all their hearts. On the most difficult days, great love illuminates the lives of disadvantaged people and gives them strength in the fight against harsh reality. The boby from the song “The wind blows in the field...” (1838) is not afraid
The share is not human,
When he loves
She's young!
(p. 166)
It is no coincidence that Chernyshevsky called Koltsov’s collection of poems a book of “pure love,” a book in which “love is the source of strength and activity.”
Koltsov’s love songs stand out for their special sincere lyricism, deep sincerity, and sometimes amazingly vivid reproduction of intimate human feelings. Such works of the poet as “It’s Time for Love” (1837), “The Sadness of a Girl” (1840), “Separation” (1840), “I Won’t Tell Anyone...” (1840) were a truly new word in the love lyrics of those years. To this it must be added that, praising the spiritual beauty of people from the people, beauty desecrated and insulted in a serf-owning society, Koltsov was able to become a unique spokesman for the liberation aspirations of his time.
The nationality of Koltsov's poetry finds expression not only in a truthful display of real life, but also in the development of appropriate artistic means. Koltsov’s songs, Belinsky wrote, “represent an amazing wealth of the most luxurious, most original images of the highest degree of Russian poetry. From this side, his language is as amazing as it is inimitable” (9, 536).
Using aesthetic techniques that have long been established in oral tradition, the poet enriches them with his own inventions. He strives to develop a system of poetic means that would allow him to convey the general pathos of his work in an “optimal mode.” Most consistent with these goals were the possibilities of a synthetic genre fusion - a semi-literary, semi-folklore “Russian song”. Symbols, rhythms, and special speech patterns outlined by the people acquired exceptional expressiveness under Koltsov’s pen.
One of the most striking manifestations of Koltsov’s skill is his ability to dramatize a lyrical theme. Penetrating deeply into folk characters, the poet shows the feelings and experiences of ordinary people through their external signs (face, movement, intonation, gesture), which introduces new poetic colors into Russian literature. This is, for example, the image of a girl’s internal state during her separation from her lover in the song “Separation” (1840). The girl’s deep emotion is conveyed here with utmost completeness:
Instantly the whole face burst into flames,
Covered with white snow...
(p. 199)
The heroine’s heartache was reflected in the very intermittency of her speech (“Don’t go, wait! Give me time...”), and in the understatement (“On you, the falcon is clear...”), and in the visible revelation of her spiritual grief (“The spirit was busy - the word froze...").
Sometimes the skill of a songwriter is manifested in extremely compressed portrait sketches. Thus, in the deeply intimate lyrical song “Don’t make noise, rye...” (1834), remembering his beloved “soul maiden,” Koltsov focuses only on her eyes:
It was sweet for me
Look into her eyes;
In eyes full
Love thoughts!
(p. 112)
An exciting image, filled with deep feeling, clearly appears before us. In the stream of surging memories, thoughts, thoughts, the poet finds that essential, fundamental thing that is especially imprinted and has become the most precious.
The usual portrait is not given in the song “It’s Time for Love” (1837):
She stands there, thinking,
Fanned with the breath of enchantment...
(p. 145)
But we well imagine the youth and beauty of a girl through the external manifestation of her spiritual movement:
The white chest is worried
What a deep river...
(ibid.)
Koltsov’s artistic originality is revealed with particular force in his landscape painting. In his poems, nature is inseparable from people and their work, from everyday human worries, joys, sorrows and thoughts. According to Saltykov Shchedrin, this is why “Koltsov is great, this is why his talent is powerful, that he never becomes attached to nature for nature’s sake, but everywhere he sees a person soaring above it.”
The pictures of his native land created by Koltsov are fresh and new. “The beautiful dawn caught fire in the sky” (“The Plowman’s Song”), and the ripening rye “Smiles at a merry day” (“Harvest”). In the poem “Why are you sleeping, peasant?..” (1839) Koltsov finds unique colors to describe late autumn:
After all, it’s already autumn in the yard
Looking through the spindle...
(p. 186)
– and Russian village winter:
Winter follows her
He walks in a warm fur coat,
The path is covered with snow,
It crunches under the sleigh.
(ibid.)
Koltsov knows how to speak in his own way about the free Russian steppe. Reading the poem “Mower” (1836), it seems that you see its entire endless expanse, breathe in the smell of its herbs and flowers. For the Koltsovo mower, it is not only spacious, but also somehow especially joyful and bright:
Oh, my steppe,
The steppe is free,
You are wide, steppe,
Spread out...
(p. 123)
In the poem “Harvest” (1835), a slowly approaching cloud darkens, grows, “is armed with thunder, storm, fire, lightning,” and then, as if after a moment’s calm, it
Up in arms -
And expanded
And hit
And it spilled
A big tear...
(p. 114)
In this stanza, consisting almost entirely of verbs, the very rhythm and selection of sounds (primarily the sonorous consonants “r” and “l”) greatly contribute to the depiction of powerful rumbles of thunder and gushing rain. The “and” sound that precedes them gives verbs especially great dynamism, breadth, and strength.
One of the features of Koltsov’s poetic mastery is the accuracy, concreteness, almost visual palpability of the image with exceptional economy and laconicism of artistic means. Having organically adopted folk song speech, the poet developed his own style corresponding to the theme, his own imagery, his own special voice.
Koltsov strives for fresh and precise words (in the sense of conveying a certain psychological state), comparisons and metaphors, akin to the very spirit of folk songwriting. This feature of Koltsov’s realistic poetics is clearly manifested in the song “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), where the author was able to simply and at the same time convey in a completely new way the bitterness of the experiences of a peasant bobyly, hidden from the eyes of people:
From the soul sometimes
Joy will burst forth -
Evil mockery
He'll be poisoned in no time.
(p. 215)
Speech elements that come directly from folklore (“And you sit, look, Smiling; And in your soul you curse the bitter Share!”) are natural and artistically justified for the poet.
We see original mastery in the instrumentation, melody, metric and rhythm of Kol’tsov’s poems. Koltsov’s widely used pentasyllabic and iambic trimeter with dactylic endings, internal rhymes, repetitions and alliteration give his poems the semantic expressiveness and musicality noted above. And when you read, for example, the song “Don’t make noise, rye...”, you clearly see that even its very size is very suitable for the sad mood with which this poem is filled:
Heavier than the mountains
Darker than midnight
Lay down on? heart
Black Duma!
(p. 112)
No less expressive is such a Koltsovo song as “The Last Kiss”. In its instrumentation, attention is drawn to the first and second lines, where the sounds “l”, “p” (“kiss, dove, caress”) are clearly heard, the third and fourth – with the sound “r” standing out in them (“Once again, hurry up, kiss me hot." Repetitions of words and internal rhymes are also found (“Don’t yearn, don’t grieve, don’t shed tears from your eyes”). All this gives the lyrical intonation of Koltsov’s songs a musicality that was so highly appreciated by M. Balakirev, who wrote his famous romance based on the words of this poem. According to C. A. Cui, the romance represents the most perfect example of merging music with text into one harmonic whole.
In general, it should be noted that Koltsov played an exceptional role in the development of national musical culture. His lines inspired the creation of wonderful works by such composers as Glinka, Varlamov, Gurilev, Dargomyzhsky, Balakirev, Rimsky Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Grechaninov, Glazunov and others.
Koltsov enriched our poetry with unartificial Russian speech. Avoiding any deliberate “beauty,” he introduces into his poems ordinary words taken from the living folk language, giving them a special poetic flavor. According to Belinsky’s definition, Koltsov’s songs “boldly included bast shoes, and torn caftans, and disheveled beards, and old onuchi - and all this dirt turned into pure gold of poetry for him” (9, 534).
Using the colloquial speech of peasants, Koltsov carefully selects the most typical things in it, which helps him more clearly express the feelings and thoughts of the people, and truthfully show the life of common people. In “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” (1837) we read:
Kaftanishka torn
You'll pull it over your shoulders,
Ruffle your beard
You'll pull your hat down,
You will become quiet
On someone else's shoulders...
(p. 153)
Koltsov is extremely characterized by the frequent use of diminutive speech forms, which are most consistent with the folk style:
Sadness fell, heavy melancholy
On a twisted head...
(p. 156)
Take my awesome thing...
(p. 169)
Proverbs and sayings, organically interspersed into the speech of his lyrical hero, are typical for Koltsov’s songs. For example, in “The Bitter Valley” (1837):
Without love, without happiness
I wander around the world:
I'll get rid of trouble -
I will meet with grief!
(p. 137)
The significance of Koltsov in the history of Russian literature is determined by his indissoluble connection with the people, which, according to Belinsky, found vivid expression in the poet’s artistic reproduction of peasant life and the character traits, mindset and feelings of ordinary Russian people. It was these most important aspects of Koltsov’s creativity that had the most fruitful impact on Russian poetry.
Based on the literary and aesthetic concept of Belinsky, the revolutionary democrats of the 60s. considered Koltsov’s poetic heritage in accordance with the new and increased demands put forward by the era for a comprehensive reflection of life in its essential manifestations.
In his first statements about Koltsov (1858), Dobrolyubov defines him as a poet who, by the very essence of his talent, was close to the people. At the same time, the critic directly and, perhaps, even overly categorically pointed out the insufficient connection between Koltsov’s works and socio-political issues. According to Dobrolyubov, “Koltsov lived the life of the people, understood its sorrows and joys, and knew how to express them. But his poetry lacks a comprehensive view; The simple class of the people appears in solitude from common interests...”
Dobrolyubov was able to highlight and highly appreciate that “real healthy” side of Koltsov’s poems, which, according to the critic, needed to be “continued and expanded.” Dobrolyubov emphasized the inextricable connection between advanced Russian poetry and Koltsovo traditions. Saltykov Shchedrin also wrote about the significance of these traditions for Russian literature: “The entire number of modern writers who have devoted their work to the fruitful development of the phenomena of Russian life are a number of successors to Koltsov’s work.”
Koltsov’s artistic heritage was especially dear to N. A. Nekrasov. Speaking about Koltsov as a truly original poet, he put him on a par with our greatest poets - Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Krylov.
In Nekrasov’s work, the theme of labor introduced into poetry by Koltsov found a further continuation. Nekrasov gave her the political edge that Koltsov lacked. Nekrasov was undoubtedly close to the folk view of the physical and spiritual beauty of working people expressed in Koltsov’s songs.
Koltsov’s experience largely prepared Nekrasov’s appeal to folklore, to the living colloquial speech of peasants. Nekrasov, to some extent, can be considered a successor to Koltsov in the field of versification. Very indicative in this regard is the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus',” in which Koltsov’s predominantly iambic trimeter with dactylic endings is widely used.
The tradition of Koltsov is also noticeable in the work of the poet of the Nekrasov camp, I. S. Nikitin. Relying on the artistic experience of his predecessors and, above all, Koltsov, he turned directly to the life of the common people, drawing themes and images from it. In Nikitin’s poems (“Made noisy, went wild...”, “Song of a Bobyl”, “Inheritance”, “A crazy merchant was driving from the fair...”, “Get rid of melancholy...”, etc.) there is a clear focus on the folk song principle, which is so fully represented. at Koltsov's.
In line with the traditions of Koltsov, the work of the poet and democrat I.Z. Surikov also develops. The influence of the author of “Mower” is felt in such well-known works as “Eh, you, share ...”, “Are you a head, little head ...”, “In the steppe”, etc. Surikov’s poem “In a green garden there is a nightingale ...” is a development of the poetic the motive of the female share, developed by Koltsov in his song “Oh, why me...”.
Traces of Koltsov’s influence are also noticeable in the works of songwriters S. F. Ryskin (1860–1895), E. A. Razorenov (1819–1891), N. A. Panov (1861–1906), etc. The problematics and poetics of Koltsov’s poems were found further development in the creative practice of S. D. Drozhzhin: the theme of peasant labor reflected in his poems genetically goes back to “The Plowman’s Song” and “The Harvest.”
Koltsov had a particularly great and fruitful influence on the artistic development of Sergei Yesenin. In the poem “Oh, Rus', flap your wings...” the poet directly writes about himself as a follower of Koltsov. The lyrical motifs and images of the Russian songbook have a direct echo in the poems of M. Isakovsky, A. Tvardovsky, N. Rylenkov and other Soviet poets, whose work is deeply and organically connected with folk song.
An innovative artist, A.V. Koltsov managed to create such original, deeply national examples of democratic poetry that his name deservedly took one of the first places among the remarkable Russian poets.

Koltsov Alexey Vasilievich (1809-1842), poet.

He received his primary education at home, under the guidance of a seminarian teacher. In 1820 he entered the Voronezh district school, but a year later the father took the boy home to accustom him to trading activities.

Koltsov made up for his lack of education by reading. First poem "Three Visions"
(1825), written in imitation of I.I. Dmitriev, the poet subsequently destroyed. In his youth, Koltsov experienced a love drama (he was separated from the serf girl he wanted to marry), and this was later reflected in his poems: love lyrics occupy a special place among the poet’s songs.

Having taken over the family business, Koltsov successfully engaged in trade. His first poetry publication in 1830 was anonymous. In 1831, during a business trip to Moscow, Koltsov, with the help of publisher and critic N.V. Stankevich, entered the literary circle. In the same year, Koltsov’s poem “Ring” (later called “Ring”) was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta.

In 1835, using money raised by subscription, Stankevich published the book “Poems of Alexei Koltsov” - the only collection of the poet’s lifetime. Critics noted the connection between Koltsov’s poems and folk songs, palpable at the figurative, thematic and linguistic levels.

The year 1836 became a turning point in the poet’s creative development. His poems were published in the magazines “Telescope”, “Son of the Fatherland”, “Moscow Observer”, etc. One of the poems was published in “Sovremennik” by A. S. Pushkin.

Alexey Vasilyevich Koltsov (1809 - 1842) - an outstanding Russian poet of the Pushkin era. Among his works, the most famous are: “Oh, don’t show a passionate smile!”, “Betrayal of your betrothed,” “A.P. Srebryansky”, “The Second Song of Likhach Kudryavich” and many others.

Biography of Alexey Vasilyevich Koltsov

The life and creative path of the famous poet is interesting and educational.

Family

Alexey Vasilyevich was born on October 15, 1809. The father of the future poet was a buyer and merchant. He was known as a competent and strict housekeeper. The mother, on the contrary, was kind in nature, but completely uneducated: she could neither read nor write. There were many children in the Koltsov family, but there were no peers of Alexei: the brothers and sisters were either much older or much younger.

The short biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov contains virtually no information about his family: there is almost no information left about this. What is known is that the father raised his children quite harshly: he did not allow pranks and was demanding even in small things. He didn’t really insist on the children’s education, but everyone had basic reading and writing skills. There is no information on how many children the Koltsovs had or how they lived.

Education

From the biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov we learn that the boy began learning to read and write (at home) at the age of nine. Studying was easy for him, he mastered many sciences. In 1820, Alyosha entered college and achieved great success in all subjects. But most of all he loved to read. The future poet began with the first thing that came to hand - with fairy tales, and a little later he switched to novels. And in 1825 he became interested in reading the poems of I. I. Dmitriev.

Alexey failed to complete the course of study: after the first year, his father decided to take his son out of school. He motivated this by the fact that without the boy’s help he could not cope with his affairs, and one year of study was quite enough. For quite a long time, Alexey was engaged in driving and selling livestock.

Creative path

His father forbade him to engage in poetry, which the boy had become interested in by that time: he demanded that he devote all his time and attention to trading. But regardless of this, Alexei, at the age of 16, nevertheless wrote his first poem - “Three Visions”. However, after some time he destroyed it, because he believed that he was imitating the style of his favorite poet. But I wanted to find my own, unique style.

Around the same time, people appeared in the biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov who helped the talented poet express his individuality.

The first person who began the creative path of the young poet was Dmitry Kashkin, a bookseller in a shop next door. He allowed Alexey to use books for free, of course, only if he treated them with care.

Koltsov showed him his first works: Kashkin was very well-read and developed and also loved to write poetry. The seller saw himself in the young poet, so he treated him well and helped him in any way he could. Thanks to this, for five years the young poet used books for free, studied and developed independently, without giving up helping his father.

Soon the poet experienced changes in his personal life: he fell in love with a girl who was a serf peasant. But their relationship is so serious that they are going to get married. However, Mr. Chance separates the couple. This drama leaves a bitter mark in the creative biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov; a brief summary of the poems of 1827 suggests that they were all dedicated to unhappy love.

In the same year, seminarian Andrei Srebryansky appeared in his life, who after a while became a close friend and mentor on his creative path. Meeting this man helped Alexey survive the breakup with his beloved. Thanks to the parting words and advice of Srebryansky, four poems were published in 1830, and the world learned that there was such a poet - Alexei Koltsov.

The main stage in the creative biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov is his acquaintance with This happened in 1831. The publicist and thinker became interested in the works of the young poet and published his poems in the newspaper. Four years later, Stankevich published the first and only collection during the author’s lifetime, “Poems of Alexei Koltsov.” After this, the author became popular even in literary circles.

Despite his creative breakthrough, Alexey did not stop working on his father’s business: he continued to travel to different cities on family matters. And fate continued to bring him together with outstanding people. Plus, the poet began collecting local folklore, wrote a lot about the life of ordinary people, peasants and their hard work.

Death of a Poet

In 1842, without surviving a terrible illness, the poet dies at the age of thirty-three. In the last years of his life, Alexey often quarrels with his father because of his negative attitude towards his work. Although during his short life he achieved quite great results: he became not only a successful livestock seller, but also a famous Russian poet, whose poems were known to absolutely everyone.

Alexey Vasilyevich was buried in the Voronezh region in the Literary Necropolis.

A monument to the poet was erected on Sovetskaya Square in the city of Voronezh, which has survived to this day.

But death did not complete the creative biography of Alexei Vasilyevich Koltsov. In 1846, a Russian actor and acquaintance of Koltsov published his poems in the newspaper Repertoire and Pantheon, thereby perpetuating the memory of his friend.

And in 1856, the popular newspaper Sovremennik published an article dedicated to the life and work of Koltsov, written by Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky.

Alexey Koltsov (1809—1842)

Alexey Vasilyevich Koltsov, the son of the prasol merchant Vasily Koltsov, was born in 1809 in Voronezh. By the will of his father, he had to continue his trading business and remain a poorly educated person: after two years of studying at a district school, Prasol took his son home and began to introduce him to trading. Young Alexei spent a lot of time traveling, moving across the steppe with herds of cattle; fate brought him together with different people and left him alone with nature for a long time. The world of Russia: its free steppes, free, dashing and forced people, their songs - the entire structure of folk life, of which Koltsov was a direct participant, awakened poetic feelings in the soul of the young man. Alexey Koltsov, a talented self-taught poet, first learned what poetry is only at the age of sixteen. Unable to continue his education, he learned the laws of versification without anyone's help and in secret from the rest of his family. In 1830, the Moscow philosopher and poet Stankevich was in Voronezh. The meeting with him helped Koltsov to establish himself in his calling. Upon returning to Moscow, Stankevich published one of Koltsov’s songs in Literaturnaya Gazeta. This was the reason for the aspiring poet’s trip to Moscow (the young Koltsov’s trips to capital cities, as a rule, were associated with the orders of the elder Koltsov; Alexei’s own funds were always meager, or rather, there were none at all - economically Koltsov was entirely He was completely dependent on his father, so he never had the opportunity to leave trade and take up literature professionally). In Moscow, Koltsov makes a friend, one of the best mentors in literature in Russia - Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky. Soon, thanks to the help of literary friends, mainly members of Stankevich’s circle, Aleksey Koltsov managed to publish a collection of poems. In 1836, another important meeting for Koltsov took place in St. Petersburg - he met A.S. Pushkin, who was very friendly with him. One of Koltsov’s poems - “Harvest” after some time Pushkin published in Sovremennik.

But the more time Koltsov devoted to poetry, the harsher and stricter his family became towards him. Gradually, in the eyes of his family, he turned into a good-for-nothing outcast, incapable of real work. Whether sadness, eternal captivity or unrequited love overcame the young poet, he soon developed consumption and died at the age of thirty-three.

Ile at the falcon

Wings are tied

Or the way for him

Are you all booked?

("Falcon's Thought")

The poetic talent of Alexei Koltsov developed simultaneously with the talent of Lermontov, and both of them marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of Russian poetry. “They were,” wrote Herzen, “two powerful voices coming from opposite sides.” Indeed, Koltsov’s poetry, organically connected with folk art, carried within itself new principles of artistic understanding of peasant labor and life and new means of poetic depiction, absolutely identical to its content. Already in the first collection of poems by Koltsov (1835), the true world of peasant life is revealed. “At least,” Belinsky argued in his article about Koltsov, “until now we had no idea about this kind of folk poetry, and only Koltsov introduced us to it.”

Koltsov’s further ideological and artistic growth was directly related to the advanced trends of social thought andthose years. Mastering folk song traditions and relying on the poetic achievements of his contemporaries, Koltsov managed to acquire his own voice, his own methods of poetic mastery. Free-loving works Pushkin deepen in Koltsov those moods of dissatisfaction with reality that were found in his work back in the late 1820s. Except Pushkin The young poet is also influenced by such poets as Delvig, Vyazemsky, Glinka. In his own way, Koltsov sympathized with Venevitinov in his secret longing for the “good” and “high”, and civic positionRyleeva.

The pinnacle of Koltsov’s creative achievements are the songs he created. Exceptional penetration into the very depths of the folk spirit and folk psychology allowed Koltsov to reveal in his songs “everything good and beautiful that, like an embryo, like a possibility, lives in the nature of the Russian peasant.” The theme of labor and will took a leading place in Koltsov’s work (“The Plowman’s Song”, 1831, “The Mower”, 1836, “Stenka Razin”, 1838, “A Whirlwind in Bad Weather”, 1839, “The Thought of the Falcon”, “So It’s Breaking”) soul", 1840).

Koltsov’s innovation is clearly revealed in songs that tell about the difficult living conditions of a peasant. Moreover, a number of his poems on this topic already outline the trends that would later be characteristic of the democratic poets of the 1860s. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are Koltsov’s songs “The Bitter Share” (1837), “The Thought of a Peasant” (1837), “Crossroads” (1840), “The Poor Man’s Share” (1841), etc.

The poem “Forest” (1837) is colored with high civic pathos and deep sorrow caused by the death of Pushkin. It is worthy of comparison with Lermontov’s “On the Death of a Poet” and is not inferior to the latter either in courage, or in depth, or in imagery. It is enough to recall the comparisons of those gloomy years with “black autumn” and “silent night” in Koltsov’s poems, or read the following stanza:

He went wild, fell silent...

Only in bad weather

Howling a complaint

For timelessness, -

in order to fully feel the courage of the challenge posed by the poet to the official government of Russia. The description of those base intrigues that were the immediate cause of the death of the great poet is also noteworthy in its accuracy:

They took off the head -

Not a big mountain

And with a straw...

Family songs and love lyrics deserve special attention in Koltsov’s work. In them, the inner world of a simple Russian woman is revealed with the utmost sincerity, and the hardships of women’s lot in a patriarchal peasant environment are truthfully conveyed. A realistic display of family relationships also determined the artistic features of Koltsovo songs, their close connection with folk poetry, in particular with family and everyday folk lyrics. This connection manifested itself with particular force in Koltsov’s development of one of the primordial themes of folk song poetry - the theme of forced life with a “hateful” husband, the eternal theme of the bride’s wedding cry. “The soul-tearing complaint of a tender female soul,” as Belinsky wrote, “condemned to hopeless suffering,” is heard in Koltsov’s songs:

Don't let the grass grow

After autumn,

Don't let the flowers bloom

In the winter in the snow!

(“Oh, why me...”, 1838)

Koltsov’s love lyrics are poetry of joy, rapturous admiration for the spiritual and physical beauty of man. Admiration for the beloved gives rise to comparisons that are remarkable in their artistry:

Let your face burn

Like dawn in the morning...

How beautiful spring is

You are my bride!

("The Last Kiss", 1838)

An amazingly beautiful and bright feeling is sung by Koltsovo. The heroes of his songs love with all their hearts. It is no coincidence that N. G. Chernyshevsky called Koltsov’s collection of poems a book of “pure love,” a book in which “love is a source of strength

and activities."

Koltsov’s love songs also stand out for their special sincere lyricism, sometimes amazing reproduction of intimate human feelings. Such works of the poet as “It’s Time for Love” (1837), “The Sadness of a Girl” (1840), “Separation” (1840), “Not I’ll tell anyone...” (1840), etc., were a truly new word in the love lyrics of those years.

The nationality of Koltsov’s poetry finds expression not only in a truthful display of real life, but also in the development of artistic means. Koltsov’s songs, Belinsky wrote, “represent an amazing wealth of the most luxurious, most original images of the highest degree.” Russian poetry. From this side, his language is as surprising as it is inimitable.”

Koltsov’s artistic heritage was especially dear to N. A. Nekrasov, in whose work many themes were further developed. Koltsov’s traditions are clearly noticeable in the works of other poets of the democratic camp - I. S. Nikitin, I. S. Surikov...

Koltsov played a particularly large and fruitful role in the artistic development of Sergei Yesenin. In the poem “O Rus', flap your wings...” the poet directly writes about himself as a follower of Koltsov.

Koltsov's themes, motifs and images are widely reflected in the works of Glinka, Varlamov, Gurilev, Dargomyzhsky, Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Grechaninov, Glazunov and many other creators of classical Russian music.