Themes of poems by N.A. Zabolotsky is diverse. He can be called a philosophical poet and singer of nature. He has many faces, like life. But the main thing is that the poems of N.A. Zabolotsky make you think about good and evil, hatred and love, beauty...

...what is beauty

And why do people deify her?

She is a vessel in which there is emptiness,

Or a fire flickering in a vessel?

The eternal question sounding in “The Ugly Girl” is illuminated somewhat differently in the poem “On Beauty human faces", which was written in the same 1955.

“Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” - with these words the poet completes the image of the gallery of human portraits. ON THE. Zabolotsky does not talk about people, he draws faces, behind which there is character and behavior. Descriptions. The data given by the author are surprisingly accurate. Everyone can see their reflection or characteristics of friends and loved ones in them. Before us are faces “like lush portals”, “like miserable hovels”, “dead faces”. faces “like towers,” “like jubilant songs.” This picture once again affirms the theme of diversity and peace. But questions immediately arise: “Are they all beautiful? And what is true beauty?

ON THE. Zabolotsky gives the answers. For him there is almost no difference between faces like a miserable hovel or a magnificent portal:

...cold, dead faces

Closed with bars, like a dungeon.

Alien to him are “...towers, in which for a long time ‘No one lives or looks out the window.”

The tone of the poem changes when the author paints the opposite picture:

But I once knew a small hut.

She was unprepossessing, not rich,

But from the window she looks at me

Breath flowed spring day.

Movement, warmth, and joy come into the work with these lines.

Thus, the poem is built on opposition (lush portals - miserable hovels, towers - a small hut, a dungeon - the sun). The antithesis separates greatness and baseness, light and darkness, talent and mediocrity.

The author claims: inner beauty, “like the sun,” can make even the “smallest hut” attractive. Thanks to her, a “song of heavenly heights” is compiled, capable of making the world wonderful and great. The word “similarity” and the cognates “similar” and “likeness” run through the entire poem as a refrain. With their help the topic is true and false beauty is revealed most fully. This cannot be real, it is only an imitation, a fake that cannot replace the original.

An important function in the first four lines is performed by anaphora (“There is..”, “Where...”), which helps to reveal images according to a single scheme: complex sentences with subordinate clauses:

There are faces like lush portals,

Where everywhere the great is seen in the small.

There are faces - like miserable shacks,

Where the liver is boiled and the rennet is soaked

In the next four lines special role is given over to comparisons (“like a prison,” “like towers”), creating a gloomy picture of external greatness that cannot replace internal harmony.

The emotional mood changes completely in the next eight lines. This is largely due to the diversity expressive means: personification (“breath of a spring day”), epithets (“jubilant”, “shining”), comparison (“like the sun”), metaphor (“song of heavenly heights”). Here a lyrical hero appears, who immediately from the kaleidoscope of faces singles out the main thing, truly beautiful, capable of bringing the purity and freshness of a “spring day” into the lives of those around him, illuminating “like the sun,” and composing a song of “heavenly heights.”

So, what is beauty? I look at the portrait of a serious, no longer young man. Tired look, high forehead, compressed lips, wrinkles in the corners of the mouth. “Ugly...” - I would probably say that if I didn’t know that in front of me was N.A. Zabolotsky. But I know and am sure: a person who wrote such amazing poetry cannot be ugly. It’s not about appearance - it’s just a “vessel.” What’s important is the “fire flickering in the vessel.”

Having survived many difficult situations- exile to the camps, separation from his wife, - N. Zabolotsky learned to subtly sense human nature. He could guess what the other person was thinking by his facial expression or intonation. IN mature age the poet wrote the work “On the Beauty of Human Faces” (1955).

The theme of the poem is the human face as a mirror of the soul. The poet claims that the sculptor of our faces is an internal state that can give greatness or pitifulness. Reading the work carefully, it is not difficult to guess which forms are the ideal of beauty for the author himself.

The key images of the verse are human faces. The author creates a whole gallery of them, drawing parallels with architectural structures magnificent portals, miserable hovels, dungeons and towers. N. Zabolotsky describes human loneliness in an original way: “Others are like towers in which for a long time // No one lives or looks out the window.” It seems that in the lines of the poem the faces lose their human appearance, turning into masks.

Among all the “houses”-guises, N. Zabolotsky singles out the “small hut”. She is not distinguished by beauty or elegance, but emits the “breath of a spring day,” which seems to hint at spiritual wealth. Finally, the poet talks about faces like songs, which emit notes like the sun. The last two types of faces are the standard of beauty for the author, although he does not say this directly.

The work “On the Beauty of Human Faces” by N. Zabolotsky is built on contrast: “pathetic” - “great”, “unpretentious” - “like jubilant songs”. Between opposing images, the author tries to maintain a smooth transition, which can be observed between faces in a crowd of people. He does not criticize ugly “huts”, realizing that very often appearance is the result of life circumstances.

Main artistic medium There is a metaphor in the work. In almost every line, the author creates a metaphorical image of a house, symbolizing a face. Comparisons also play an important role, performing in this verse the same functions as a metaphor: “faces like lush portals”, “... faces closed with bars, like a dungeon.” Additional trope - epithets: “small hut”, hut “neokasista, not rich”, “pathetic shack”. They help clarify details, convey the author’s thoughts more clearly, and realize the idea.

The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” is not divided into stanzas, although in terms of meaning, quatrains are clearly distinguished in it. This composition probably symbolizes the totality different persons, which we can observe every day. The rhyme in the verse is parallel, the meter is amphibrachic tetrameter. The calm intonation pattern of the work is interrupted only once by an exclamation expressing the author’s admiration. The rhythmic and intonation organization of the text is harmoniously intertwined with its content and composition.

N. Zabolotsky’s verse “On the beauty of human faces” reveals eternal theme the interdependence of soul and appearance, but the author does not follow the paths trodden by other writers, clothing his thoughts in an original artistic form.

Poem by N. A. Zabolotsky “On the beauty of human faces” (perception, interpretation, evaluation)

The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” was written in 1955. During this period, Zabolotsky's lyrics are filled with a philosophical understanding of existence; in his poems he reflects on eternal human values - good and evil, love and beauty. Poems can definitely be called poetry of thought - intense, even somewhat rationalistic.

In the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” two parts are contrasted with each other. In the first, the poet talks about the types of human faces, the features of which can reveal the character of their owner. Thus, “faces like magnificent portals” talk about people preoccupied with their own greatness, hiding their own insignificance behind external brightness. Others, on the contrary, are “like miserable shacks.” People with such faces evoke pity, oppressed by poverty, life's hardships and humiliation; they were unable to maintain a sense of self-worth. Rejection from lyrical hero evoke “cold, dead faces”, whose owners hide their souls from the world behind “bars”, and who knows what thoughts and feelings can be born in the “dungeons” of such a person.

Others are like towers in which no one has lived or looked out the window for a long time. Not a house, not a dwelling, but precisely towers - empty, booming towers. The associations evoked by these lines evoke horror, creating the image of a gloomy, soulless person who carries a hidden threat.

All the faces described in the first part of the poem are compared by the poet to architectural structures: lush portals masking poverty spiritual world their owners, the bars of dungeons that hide anger, the empty towers that leave no hope for humanity. But they also lack the “semblance of miserable shacks” human beauty, people who have lost self-respect and pride cannot be beautiful in their pathetic aspirations, devoid of even a hint of spirituality.

The true beauty of a person, according to the poet, lies only in the “movement of the soul,” the constant desire for self-development, the wealth of feelings and thoughts, sincerity in all human manifestations. Which is revealed in the second part of the poem, which is in every way opposed to the first. The “small hut,” which is “unpretentious” and “not rich,” seems to be close in external description to the “miserable shacks,” but if in the shacks “the liver is boiled and the rennet gets wet,” then from the window of the hut “the breath of a spring day flowed.” What is meant here is the eternal spiritual youth of a person whose face is like a “hut”, the purity of his thoughts, the warmth of his soul.

The absence of external pomp and empty pomposity is emphasized by diminutive words: “hut”, “window”.

The culmination of the poem is in the last stanza, which begins with an exclamation about how “the world is both great and wonderful!” And in this statement there is not only admiration for the boundless beauty of the surrounding world, but also a comparison of it with the beauty of the spiritual world, inherent in spiritualized people, whose “faces are like jubilant songs” - the most beautiful faces for the lyrical hero of the poem. It is from such people that “the song of heavenly heights is composed,” that is, life harmony.

If the first part of the poem, in which words such as portal, shacks, towers, dungeons are heard, creates a somewhat depressing atmosphere, then the second, filled with the sun, shining notes, heavenly heights evokes joyful feelings and creates a feeling of spaciousness, true beauty.

Continuing the traditions of Russian literature, Zabolotsky considered in his works the problem of external beauty, which often hides spiritual poverty, and internal beauty - the beauty of the human soul, which can hide behind an unremarkable appearance, but manifest itself in every feature, every movement of the human face. The poem makes it quite clear author's position a person who most of all respects the beauty and richness of the inner world of people.

Analysis of the poem by N. A. Zabolotsky “On the beauty of human faces.”

The poet was always concerned with the question of what is more important in a person: his appearance, his cover, or his soul, inner world. The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces,” written in 1955, is dedicated to this topic. The word beauty is already in the title. What beauty does the poet value in people?

The poem can be divided into two parts. The first part is the lyrical hero’s reflection on the beauty of human faces: “There are faces like lush portals, Where everywhere the great appears in the small.”

In these lines, the poet uses unusual metaphors and comparisons. The portal is the main entrance big building, its façade. Let us pay attention to the epithet “lush” - elegant, beautiful. Not always appearance you can judge a person. After all, for beautiful face, fashionable clothes can hide spiritual squalor. It is no coincidence that the poet uses antonyms: “the great is seen in the small.”

Next comes a comparison contrasted with the first: “There are faces like miserable shacks, Where the liver is boiled and the rennet gets wet.” The epithet creates an unsightly picture, emphasizing poverty and squalor: “a pitiful shack.” But here we see not only external poverty, but also internal, spiritual emptiness. The identical construction of sentences in this quatrain (syntactic parallelism) and anaphora are used to strengthen and highlight the antithesis.

The next quatrain continues the author's philosophical reflections. The pronouns “other - other” are symbolic and emphasize monotony. Let us pay attention to the epithets “cold, dead faces” and the metaphor-comparison “closed with bars, like dungeons.” Such people, according to the author, are closed in on themselves, never share their problems with others: “Others are like towers in which no one lives for a long time and no one looks out the window.”

The abandoned castle is empty. Such a comparison emphasizes a person’s loss of dreams and hope. He does not try to change anything in his life, does not strive for the better. The second part is opposed to the first in emotional terms. The conjunction “but” emphasizes the antithesis. Bright epithets “spring day”, “jubilant songs”, “shining notes” change the mood of the poem, it becomes sunny and joyful. Despite the fact that the small hut is “unprepossessing and not rich,” it radiates light. The exclamatory sentence emphasizes this mood: “Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” For the poet, the main thing is the spiritual beauty of a person, his inner world, what he lives by: “There are faces - the likeness of jubilant songs, From these, like the sun, shining notes, a song of heavenly heights is composed.”

These lines express the idea of the poem. It is precisely such people, simple, open, cheerful, that attract the poet. It is these faces that the poet considers truly beautiful.

The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” was written by Zabolotsky in 1955 and published for the first time in the magazine “ New world"for 1956, in No. 6.

In the last years of his life, Zabolotsky was extremely suspicious. He was afraid that he would be arrested again, he was afraid of his friends betraying him. It is not surprising that the poet peered into people’s faces, reading their souls and trying to find sincere ones.

Genre of the poem

The poem belongs to the genre philosophical lyrics. The problem is true spiritual beauty worried Zabolotsky during this period of time. For example, one of the most famous poems poet - the textbook “Ugly Girl”.

In 1954, the writer suffered his first heart attack and was faced with the insincerity and hypocrisy of his loved ones. Last years In life, he greatly appreciated everything that was real, true, including beauty.

Theme, main idea and composition

The philosophical theme is stated in the title of the poem.

The main idea: the beauty of human faces lies not in external features, but in the soul, reflected in the gaze, in the expression.

The poem consists of four stanzas. The first two describe four types of unpleasant faces. In the third stanza a face appears that gives joy. The last stanza is a generalization: the lyrical hero is delighted with the grandeur and harmony of the universe, in which there are faces of divine, heavenly beauty, reflecting the divine nature of man.

Paths and images

The main trope of the poem is a comparison formed using the words “similarity” (2 times), “like” and “as” (1 time each).

The first type of person is “like lush portals.” With the help of antonyms in the second line, the lyrical hero reveals the “mystery” of these persons: “The great is seen in the small.” The impersonal verb “it seems” immediately reveals the “secret” of such Significant Person(the Gogol parallel suggests itself), consisting in the fact that in fact there is no secret, there is only pompous arrogance. The “beauty” of such persons is external, hypocritical.

The other type of person is ugly even in appearance. They are like miserable shacks, but the inside is disgusting, filled with stench and dirt, offal (metaphor “the liver is boiled and the rennet gets wet”).

The second quatrain is entirely dedicated to dead faces and dead souls. Here is the third type of person: the lyrical hero characterizes them with the epithets “cold, dead.” They are compared to the closed bars of a prison. These are faces indifferent people. But there are souls that are “even deader” (and here again Gogol’s artistic logic), and this is the fourth type: abandoned towers (a fresh metaphor) of a once mighty fortress built for centuries, now, alas, meaningless and uninhabited. Through the windows of these towers (metaphorical image human eyes) no one has been watching for a long time, because “no one lives” in the towers - and who could live there? Of course, the soul. This means that the spiritual life of a person who is physically still alive has long ceased, and his face involuntarily betrays this death of the soul.

We see the development of the metaphor of windows (in the meaning of eyes), but in a positive sense, in the third stanza, which describes the face of a person who remains alive not only in body, but also in soul. Such a person does not build with his face fortresses with impregnable towers, there is no ostentatious grandeur in his face, his “hut” is “unpretentious” and “poor”, but the context of the entire poem gives these seemingly purely negative epithets the opposite - positive - meaning, and the metaphor The “breath of a spring day” that “flows” from the window of the hut completes the image of a delightful, spiritual face.

Finally, the fourth stanza begins with a line of faith and hope of the lyrical hero: “Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” Both epithets in this context shimmer with all shades of their meanings. These are not only evaluative epithets: “great” in the sense of greatness and “wonderful” in the sense of “beautiful.” But this is the belief that the world is so huge (“great” in the sense of size) and durable that the dull reality surrounding the lyrical hero is, as it were, a very special case caused by current sad circumstances. Truly human faces are a miracle (and in this sense “wonderful”), they similar songs, created from notes, each of which shines, like a sun(two comparisons strung together).