Boris Pasternak is not only a famous, but also a socially recognized Russian poet of the 20th century. He wrote more than 500 works. There was a time that he wrote in the direction of futurism, which is very similar to Mayakovsky, but the author got bored with the complexity of the language and the rejection of tradition, so his position changed. The style has become light and relaxed. In the poem “Being Famous is Ugly,” he talks about his point of view about literary creativity and about people who devoted themselves to art.

The poem “It’s Ugly to Be Famous” by the famous Russian poet Boris Pasternak was created in 1956. It's in the middle of it creative works from the poetry collection “When it clears up.” Then the author was subjected to numerous attacks in the press, and he was not pleased with such fame. Therefore, he warns his descendants: fame seems beautiful only when it is not there. In fact, she is disgusting.

The author in his poems touched on many various topics: love, society, time, philosophy. On at this stage of his life, Pasternak talked a lot about what the essence of creativity in the life of every poet is.

Genre, direction, size

In the poem you can see how Pasternak leads a philosophical thread and reveals all his thoughts about the goals of creativity, its process and results. Therefore, we have before us the purest philosophical lyrics.

The poem is written in constantly changing meters: spondee - pyrrhic - iambic. Cross rhyme. Pasternak uses such transitions to freely convey his thoughts, so that people, without thinking, listen to what the poet is talking about.

Images and symbols

The lyrical hero in the poem is, in fact, Pasternak himself. He's passing long haul in search of the truth, the present, something genuine, and, in the end, comes to certain conclusions and conclusions, having learned own experience the essence of fame, publicity and recognition.

The lyrical hero is peaceful and serene, his inner state has acquired harmony. He finally realized who the true creator was. Although the hero is self-confident, he never stops searching for the best ways to realize his creative thoughts.

The path and the trail are symbols of the creative and life path. The poet hides his steps in the unknown, that is, he opens new horizons to which people will come in his footsteps. This is where the call of the future leads him.

Themes and moods

The mood of the poem is solemn. The author utters truths that define the essence of his worldview.

1. Main theme – poet and poetry. The author talks about his creative path and purpose creative person. He sees it not in glory, but in discovering something new for readers, something that has not yet existed. It is necessary to leave a significant mark in the area where you realize your potential.
2. Parsnip touches the problem of dedication. Not each of us is able to sacrifice part of ourselves to ideals and aspirations. People want easy success without giving anything in return, but this achievement is shameful, according to the author.
3. The author also says about true and false confession. The poet must create “without impostor”; his place will be appreciated by history, and not by himself. You shouldn’t attribute to yourself significance that doesn’t really exist, because there’s no point in leaving behind a pile of papers if you haven’t resonated with anyone in people’s memories.
4. In the poem you can see the topic of finding yourself, your style, your direction. Only by stepping into the unknown, into new spaces at the call of the future, can you create something truly significant.
5. Also important modesty theme: you need to treat yourself and others without a vain desire to show off. Even undeniable advantages must be recognized without unnecessary bragging.
6. Moreover, in the poem important role plays fame problem. Many artists cannot stand the test of success and recognition, but it is so important to always remain yourself, without attaching importance to the frivolous and fickle love of the crowd.

main idea

The main idea of ​​the poem is that the significance of the creator depends not on the number of works he wrote, not on the shouts and adulation of the crowd, not on the recognition of power, but on how much he contributes to eternity, how valuable his creations are on the scale of history. Only the pioneers should receive the laurels of genius, because humanity follows in their footsteps.

As a mentor, Pasternak encourages writing not for fame and fortune, but for society, for his listener, for the future. The poet tramples the road into the unknown in order to lead people with him - this is the meaning of his mission. But even if he manages to do this, we must not forget about modesty. Victories, audience love, and fame must be treated adequately. There is no need to revel in this, because a poet is an artist of words, called by the future themselves, and not an impostor who does everything for his own benefit.

Means of artistic expression

For expressiveness and conveying his emotional mood, Pasternak uses verbs and participial phrases. But, in addition to them, other methods can be noted artistic expression, such as the epithets “living trace” and “single slice”.

The hero plunges into the obscurity of the future, “like the terrain hiding in the fog” - this is a comparison. The author often uses antitheses: “defeat” and “victory”, “hype” and “love of space”. Pasternak also gives special brightness to the poem thanks to phraseological units: “to be a byword on everyone’s lips,” “not to be seen in sight,” and “an inch beyond.” Behind the metaphor of “leaving gaps in fate,” the author hides a call to search for oneself, to thoughts of self-knowledge.

In the last quatrain, the poet resorts to the use of repetition, which increases the meaning of this word and gives the poem “Being Famous is Ugly” even more emotional overtones:

But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end

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Composition

“In the field of words, I love prose most of all,
but he wrote mostly poetry. Poem
Regarding prose, this is the same as a sketch
regarding the picture. Poetry seems to me
a large literary sketchbook."
B.L. Parsnip

The work of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak stands apart in the history of Russian literature. He lived and worked in a very difficult time for Russia. The old canons collapsed, the old life, people and destinies were broken... And in the midst of all this - a wonderful poet with subtle soul and a unique vision of the world. Born at a turning point in fate, Boris Pasternak managed to become one of the symbols of his century.
Poems occupy a special place in his work. Many wonderful lines came from his pen. The last collection of poems, never published during Pasternak’s lifetime, entitled “When it clears up,” contains selected works of the author. The theme of renewal and hope is clearly heard in the book, which is a reflection of the changes taking place in the country. It was in this collection that the poem “Being Famous is Ugly...” was published, which can be called a kind of set of rules for a real poet. It is in this work that Pasternak reveals his attitude towards creativity.

The poem has a programmatic meaning, as if continuing Pushkin’s appeal to the “Poet”. The lyrical hero, continuing the great poet’s thought about the artist’s independence from “people’s love,” introduces a moral assessment into his judgment:
Being famous is not nice. This is not what lifts you up. There is no need to start an archive, to tremble over manuscripts.

The goal of creativity is dedication,
Not hype, not success.
Shameful, meaningless
Be the talk of everyone.

We see that Pasternak does not accept empty, undeserved fame; it is easier for him to sink into obscurity than to be on everyone’s lips without doing anything for it. This position deserves only respect. The artist makes his lonely path “in the fog,” where “nothing can be seen,” hearing only “the call of the future” ahead. He must leave a “living trace” in modernity, which will be continued by “others”.
The unique fate of the poet is understood by Pasternak as a link between the past and the future in a single chain of art, loyalty to his calling:

And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.

Once having chosen this path, the poet should never deviate from it.
Also important work To reveal the image of the poet in Pasternak’s mind, the poem “In everything I want to get to the very essence...”, written in the same year as the first and included in the same collection, can serve.

I want to reach everything
To the very essence.
At work, looking for a way,
In heartbreak.

From this quatrain follows the aspiration of the lyrical hero, who can conditionally be equated to Pasternak himself. The desire for life, for knowledge of its secrets and mysteries, the thirst for activity and feeling. In this poem lyrical hero sets himself the almost impossible task of penetrating secret essence of life, to deduce its laws, to unravel its secrets... He is trying to grasp the “thread of destinies and events.” But the task is complicated by the fact that he strives not only to understand, but also to express in words common law being:

Oh if only I could
Although partly
I would write eight lines
About the properties of passion.

Discarding empty words, he looks for the main, fundamental ones. Isn’t this the task and goal of poetry in general and each poet in particular?.. Pasternak always believed that what is meaningful does not have to be complex. The truth of things and phenomena lies precisely in their simplicity. Hence the poet’s desire to express in eight lines the properties of passion, which for Pasternak is life, because only when a person feels does he really live. This is the recipe for penetrating the mystery of life.

The role of nature in Pasternak’s work in general and in this poem in particular is interesting. It miraculously comes to life, but not as an accumulation of living and inanimate objects of the world around us, but as embodied poetry:
I would plant poems like a garden.

With all the trembling of the veins the linden trees in them would bloom in a row,
Single file, to the back of the head.

The world of poetry and the world of nature are intertwined, and it is not entirely clear where one ends and the other begins, and the poet’s linden trees line up in orderly rows, like words in a line...

Analysis of the poem by Pasternak B.L. "It's not nice to be famous"

Poem by B.L. Pasternak's "It's Ugly to Be Famous" (1956) is one of program works in the poet's work. Its plot consists of laconic formulas that accumulate the author’s views on the life of a creative person. The author simultaneously applies the principles expressed in the poem to both himself and other writers. B.L. Pasternak talks about the inner depth of the creative act, its self-purpose. Neither fame nor success in anyone's eyes is directly related to the quality of the works created. An artist of words can only decide in the depths of his soul whether the height to which he aspired has been achieved: “The goal of creativity is dedication, not hype, not success.” In the third stanza of the poem B.L. Pasternak emphasizes the special position of the creative person in time and space. At the same time, he formulates another principle, important and necessary for a human creator: “Hear the call of the future.” Only then will the poet be able to become interesting not only to his contemporary, but also to his descendants. However, in this stanza there is also a certain mystical motive of the sacrament; the artist needs to “attract the love of space to himself.” In fact, the motive will remain unclear until the end. The “love of space” metaphor, which is quite deep in its philosophical content, can symbolize good luck, a muse that brought creative insight, and favorable life circumstances (interesting meetings with people, nature). But still, the point here is not that he should realize his place in the world. In the fourth stanza, the author talks about the combination of life and creative paths, in which the second turns out to be more important, more voluminous than the first, because it includes, absorbs it, “crossing it out in the margins.” Being a poet-philosopher, B.L. Pasternak encourages learning from nature. His lyrical hero is able, without fear of the future, to “plunge into the unknown,” just as the area hides in fog. B.L. Pasternak writes about the need for talented person do not revel in victories, but maintain personal modesty in relation to your successes. After all, the main thing is to lead other people, who will decide who in history will receive glory and who will be forgotten. B.L. Pasternak, by personal example, teaches not to prevaricate, not to become isolated in one’s experiences, to maintain a keen interest in the world around him, to love life to the very end. last hour. The theme of the purpose of the poet and poetry is deeply embedded in the Russian classical poetic tradition. In this regard, the poem by B.L. Pasternak’s “Being Famous is Ugly” creatively continues it. The poem is written in iambic tetrameter. All seven stanzas of it are connected by cross rhyme. At the same time, female and male rhymes alternate. The poem widely uses figurative and expressive means of language: phraseological units (“a parable on everyone’s lips”, “there are five behind a span”), antithesis (“defeats” - “victories”), as well as the technique of emphasizing the vertical coordinates of artistic space (“raises up ", "plunge into the unknown"), this compositional technique goes back to Tyutchev's poetic tradition and is characteristic of meditative lyrics in general. The main epithet is the epithet “living”, reinforced in the final stanza by a threefold repetition. So it's obvious. B.L. Pasternak sees the meaning of life in life itself, in living it honestly and openly. It is no coincidence that the words “should”, “must”, “must not” appear so often in the poem.

Damn you, my dears! Why this particular poem, why this particular damn lesson, on this disgusting Monday? Oh, burn in hell - I am with you.

Being famous is not nice.
This is not what lifts you up.
No need to create an archive,
Shake over manuscripts.

The goal of creativity is dedication,
Not hype, not success.
Shamefully meaning nothing
Be the talk of everyone.

Hear the call of the future.

And you have to leave spaces
In fate, and not among papers,
Places and chapters of a whole life
Crossing out in the margins.

And plunge into the unknown
And hide your steps in it,

Others on the trail

But defeat comes from victory
You don't have to differentiate yourself.

And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face

Alive and only until the end.

The poem “It’s Ugly to Be Famous” was written in 1956 and is included in Boris Pasternak’s lyrical cycle “When It Goes Wild” (1956-1959). In addition, it includes another 44 poems. The basis of this cycle of reflections on time, existence, truth, life and death, art and others philosophical topics. The release of the cycle of poems “When it clears up” is associated with the refusal in the USSR to publish the novel “Doctor Zhivago”.

The theme of the poem is philosophical.

We can say that this poem “Being Famous is Ugly” is instructive in nature, and Boris Pasternak himself plays the role of mentor. He notes that “being famous is not beautiful,” explains “the goal of creativity is dedication,” and then begins to teach in verses 3, 4, 5 about how to live, what to do

But we must live without imposture,
Live like this so that in the end
Attract the love of space to you,
Hear the call of the future.

And you have to leave spaces
In fate, and not among papers,
Places and chapters of a whole life
Crossing out in the margins.

And plunge into the unknown
And hide your steps in it,
How the area hides in the fog,
When you can't see a thing in it.

And in the last 2 stanzas, explaining, gives instructions

Others on the trail
They will pass your path by an inch,
But defeat comes from victory
You don't have to differentiate yourself.

And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.

The mood of the poem is sublime, solemn, aimed at success, desiring it. Creative life the poet was difficult, so he tried to understand why everything was happening this way, what he was doing wrong, and most importantly, how long would it still continue?

Perhaps, at the same time, he noticed that there are many in Russia who write precisely for fame, height, “noise” and “success”, at the same time not at all giving importance to what to write and what to write about.

You reread the poem and learn. You learn to understand the whole essence of writing, you learn to understand your role, not to become “noise,” but to “attract the love of space to yourself.” This poem encourages, inspires, encourages

But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.

The rhyme of the poem is cross. There are practically no epithets, personifications, metaphors or comparisons in the text. It's filled with verbs participial phrases, complex and complex sentences - the author tried to give movement to his instructions, to encourage movement, to life, because “there is no standing position: either you move forward or backward.” Frequent alliterations on hard sounds“n”, “r”, “d”, “t”, “zh” Pasternak gives his instructions firmness, steadfastness, and confidence, thereby expressing his position in life.

For an artist, the surrounding life is not only a source of inspiration and a subject of aesthetic interest. It is illuminated by his moral feeling, and she herself, in turn, conquering the artist, generates and strengthens this feeling in him. For Pasternak, the artist was always a “hostage”, but also a “debtor”, devoted to art to the end. The awareness of the specialness and chosenness of the poet’s fate also distinguishes the late Pasternak. It is multiplied by life experience, in-depth analysis and therefore truly impressive. It emphasizes and highlights moral aspect— the idea of ​​the artist’s responsibility to the whole world, to art itself and directly to people.
The deep organic nature of the theme of duty and service is confirmed in Pasternak by the variety of options for its expression. It appears in the logic of cultural-historical and evangelical comparisons - in the poem. Or it suddenly appears, on the crest of a free and broad lyrical wave, in “Earth.” Or - quite unusually - it takes on the character of almost a maxim in the poem “Being famous is ugly.”
The poem “Being Famous is Ugly” was written by a recognized master during the period of his “last songs.” It conveys the poet’s internal perception of his role, the very essence of his existence on earth.
Late academic. He spends sparingly artistic media, which are in his arsenal, but this does not make his poems drier, but only emphasizes the skill of the poet, faithful to his image of the world, different from what Soviet literature offered:

Being famous is not nice.
This is not what lifts you up.
No need to create an archive,
Shake over manuscripts.

In this poem, Pasternak contrasts his creative path the path of Vladimir, immoderately glorified after his announcement by Stalin " the best poet modernity." Well, the leader needed a “court” poet who would carry the ideological guidelines of modernity to the masses, and by the will of fate, his choice fell on famous futurist. But Pasternak was disgusted by the fate of the “famous” that befell Mayakovsky; he could not imagine life outside of secrecy and invisibility, and he always separated true poetry from near-literary vanity.
Let us note for now: it is contraindicated for a poet, as Pasternak believed, to be famous, to “keep archives”; success and hype are detrimental to his talent. In addition, the public's love is fleeting, sometimes unfair, and often subject to fashion. The poet, of course, creates for people; this is precisely the essential meaning of any creative act. But precisely, for and in the name of the people, and not for the sake of their enthusiastic assessments, and especially not for the purpose of pleasing the tastes of those in power. Pasternak treats fame as a worldly vanity; his art is akin to the mercy of the celestials who give people benefits without demanding anything in return. The poet experiences joy from creativity itself. It is his element and way of existence. He cannot help but compose; for him it means to live, pouring out his soul in sounds, filling the world with beauty.
The poet formulates the maxim: “The goal of creativity is dedication.” In the first place for Pasternak is the highest sensitivity, responsiveness to moral impressions, and not the transformation of life into the life of a poet. Actually, in Pasternak’s later poems, with their lofty, preaching assertion of duty, a decisive activation of the “I” is visible, no longer so much an eyewitness to the world process, but rather its direct accomplice. And in the poem “Being Famous is Ugly,” this activation is taken to the limit. In the subtext of the poem there is the same desire for unity characteristic of Pasternak, but, being complicated by a feeling of incomprehension, the subjective moment in the poem is obvious, it expresses itself not directly, but indirectly, through conflict. All this introduces new accents into the artist’s philosophical and aesthetic concept, but does not destroy its foundation - the affirmation of unity with the world as a life-giving and morally formative principle.
In general, the poem requires thoughtful reading in the context of all of Pasternak’s lyrics, its thematic features, philosophical orientation, specific features. About how dangerous it is to draw conclusions regarding the works of a great poet, how difficult it is to penetrate art world it is evidenced by Mandelstam’s arrogantly expressed opinion that “It’s not beautiful to be famous” “sounds like an official report.” I was wrong: what the poem doesn’t have is “officiality”; rather, it creates the impression of a teaching message, but confidential, sincere, honest, like an intimate conversation between good friends.
Pasternak's signs attract attention colloquial speech: “to shake over manuscripts”, “to be a byword on everyone’s lips”, “in the end”, “not in sight”, “an inch away”. The poet uses phraseological units and colloquial expressions, which impart special expressiveness to speech with a small volume of words and convey conversational intonation.
There is another important aspect of interpreting the poem. Although the final eight verses cannot be assigned to any specific place Holy Scripture, it should be noted that they, like the entire text, consist of biblical words. “It’s Ugly to Be Famous” is focused in content and poetics on the evangelical apostolic epistles. Pasternak, a deeply religious man who fell into the trap of atheistic Russian literature Soviet period, nevertheless, remains true to his moral principles and religious convictions and formulates those moral laws and ethical dogmas without which a true artist cannot imagine the life of a true artist.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak is a poet-philosopher, a thoughtful artist who peers interestedly into the life around him. The inquisitive mind of the poet wants to penetrate into the very essence of things, understand them and tell the world about his discoveries. In essence, the poet sums up his work with the poem “Being Famous is Ugly.” But summing up does not mean putting an end to it. The last book lyricism is not the end of Pasternak’s poetry, always looking to the future, tuned to the perception of its call:

Others on the trail
They will pass your path by an inch,
But defeat comes from victory
You don't have to differentiate yourself.

A true artist is always a pioneer. Others will follow him, perhaps without even remembering whose footsteps they are following. But can this have any significance for a poet who devotes himself entirely to creativity, without reserve, and in his self-giving is likened to Jesus Christ, performing the feat of the cross? Living like this is hard, sometimes unbearable, but such is the fate of a poet. Only then is a masterpiece of art born when the human soul is alive, when it is open to the world and people:

And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.

This is how Pasternak’s poem ends, and his final book of lyrics is imbued with the same sentiments. This is his last - no, constant, everlasting and forever living - poetic word.