History of creation
Lermontov was nicknamed the poet-prophet by his contemporaries and our generation. Poems such as: “I go out alone on the road...”, “Prediction”, “Dream” - predict not only the fate of the poet himself, but also the future of Tsarist Russia. The author’s works still amaze with the depth of sensuality and accuracy of conveying the emotions and experiences of Mikhail Yuryevich.
The prophetic poem “Dream” was written on the eve of his death - in 1841. In this work, the poet literally retold his death. The poem was written down in a notebook, which was donated by his friend Vladimir Odoevsky. A friend gave it to him when the poet was leaving for his second exile in the Caucasus. He gave the notebook a punishment: fill all the pages with poems and bring it back. Unfortunately, only the first condition of the contract was fulfilled. In this exile, Lermontov was killed on Mount Mashuk in July. This work, like several others, was published posthumously in 1843 in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski.
Mystical predictions
The poem "Dream" is often attributed to predictions made by Lermontov about his own fate and the fate of Russia.
Before traveling to the Caucasus, for his second exile, the poet received from his friend, Vladimir Odoevsky, a notebook and instructions to fill it completely with poetry. In this way, close people tried to support the author and strengthen faith in his talent. Mikhail Yuryevich diligently fulfilled his friend’s wishes. After the death of the poet, the notebook was read, and a mystical prediction called “Dream” was discovered in it. The poem reeks of fatalism. Lermontov did not believe that upon returning from the Caucasus he would be able to continue his military service. He understood that his career was over. In addition, the poet sincerely believed that poems written during the period of exile would not be published, so he put all his sincerity and sarcasm into them. His relationship with the government and open opposition to the tsarist regime became an insurmountable obstacle to development. This version belongs to skeptics. However, there is another version, a mystical one. Many contemporaries noted an amazing coincidence, which consisted in the fact that the words carelessly spoken by Lermontov tended to come true. Since the poem “Dream” differs in style and composition from others recorded in poetry notebooks, it is attributed to the prediction of his own death made by the poet. After all, the poem is an accurate description of what happened on July 15, 1841 in Pyatigorsk.
The writing of the poem “Dream” was preceded by “Prediction”. In 1830, the poet wrote mystical lines that accurately describe the events of 1917. The vivid images described by Lermontov came to life during the revolution. Here is the fall of the crown from the heads of the rulers, and the people's love, which left the kings on the same day, and the bloody events of the Civil War. In the image of the “powerful man” who will come along with that dark year, many will recognize Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lermontov focuses on the leader’s cloak and “high brow,” which are recognizable by descendants from many monuments.
Genre, direction, size
Rod - lyrics. Genre: lyric poem. The literary direction of the work “Dream” is romanticism.
- The features of this artistic method include a detailed embodiment of the ideal world of the lyrical hero. In his view, that same harmony with his beloved is achieved precisely through spiritual reunification, no matter what, be it death or other obstacles. Love can overcome anything, it helps the heroes reunite. It is the dream that illustrates the romantic dream of the poet’s lyrical self.
- Mountainous terrain is also a marker of romanticism. After all, it is the exotic landscape that gives the work an atmosphere of mysticism and the unknown. Exoticism in romanticism is comparable to the unknown world in the thoughts of the hero himself, his illusion or even a ghostly incarnation.
The meter of the poem is iambic. Each foot consists of two vowels. The stress in each foot falls on the second vowel. This can be seen in the stressed vowels in the words of the first two lines. Stressed vowels are highlighted in bold:
At noon
v/nyj f
a
r/ in dol
and
/not d
a
/gesta
/
naS lead
o
m/ in the chest
and
/ lying
l
/ nedv
i
/
press
;
Image system
In the poem “Dream” by M. Yu. Lermontov there are two main images:
The main characters are contrasted with secondary characters. The “young maidens” gathered for the “evening feast” are beautiful, cheerful and carefree.
The imagery continues with the image of nature. Midday heat, hot sand, yellow mountain peaks, scorching rays of the sun - the details of the landscape complement the overall picture of the tragic events.
This is a mystical poem that describes a non-existent picture, but as if everything really happened, as if Lermontov was witnessing his own death, which would happen very soon.
At the same time, the dream that the poet is talking about also acquires a completely mystical meaning: in the first part it is the transition of the lyrical hero to another reality, in the second it is a premonition, a premonition, that is, a kind of trance.
Mikhail Yuryevich wrote “Dream” in iambic pentameter, also using cross rhyme.
Meaning of the name
The title of the poem “Dream” is directly related to the lyrical plot of the work. The dream appears both in the image of the hero and his beloved. The title is one of the main elements of the romantic beginning of the poem.
A dream in Lermontov’s poem means not only its direct meaning (what the girl dreamed), but also death - the “dead sleep” of the lyrical hero. Thus, temporary departure from the real world is a small death that transfers a person to the paranormal world, where the laws of the universe no longer apply.
It is in this world that our heroes are destined to meet for the last time. The dream connects their souls and merges into one: she mentally finds herself in the place where he fell asleep.
“Dream” (Lermontov): analysis of the poem
In the poem “Dream” by Lermontov, written in the last period of creativity (May - July 1841), love appears as a “sad dream” in which the soul is immersed “God knows what” (stanza 4). He is seen by both the lyrical hero and his beloved, one of the “young wives crowned with flowers” (stanza 3), left in his native land and separated from the subject of his thoughts (“I sat there thoughtfully alone ...” - stanza 4), located in Dagestan , that is, in the Caucasian War.
Understanding the depth of suffering is available only to those who feel a personal connection with another person. In the first of five quatrains (iambic pentameter, cross rhyme), a picture arises where the center is the lyrical hero (me, mine). In the second stanza, new details appear on the canvas, thanks to which it is perceived as a depiction of what really happened.
There have been attempts to connect the lyrical outpouring of “The Dream” with a prototypical basis in the history of literary criticism, but one can also pay attention to something else: the characteristics of the central image appear as a variation of a motif that is repeated in many of Lermontov’s poems. The lyrical hero is lonely, doomed to death, wounded in a collision with reality, burning him with its scorching touch. In the poem “Dream” by Lermontov, the analysis of which interests us, he is compared to a bleeding warrior dying on the sand near the rocks, suffering from the scorching rays of the southern sun. The palpability of this picture helps to feel the state of a person who is aware that his soul is in reality “sleeping in a dead sleep”:
Composition
The composition of the poem “Dream” is conventionally divided into two parts.
- In the first two stanzas, the picture of the death of the lyrical hero is revealed to the reader. He lies on a “ledge of rock” with a fresh wound from a shot, which continues to “smoke” and “blood flows” onto the dusty ground of Dagestan. Smoke from the wound indicates the hero's recent death. At the end of this part he falls into a “dead” sleep.
- The second part is framed by three stanzas. It begins joyfully with pictures describing his homeland, where news of the hero’s death has not yet reached. This is the compositional center of the poem. Here the image of the lyrical heroine, his beloved, appears. She seems to feel something is wrong, feels sadness that is firmly lodged in her chest. The reader is presented with a “dream within a dream” narrative form. Now the heroine dreams of what happened to her lover. She sees a “familiar” body on the bloody ground in the “valley of Dagestan.” At this moment, lovers acquire a strong spiritual connection.
The peculiarity of the composition in the poem “Dream” is that it is circular: the last stanza again returns us to the first.
Images and symbols
As already mentioned, the exotic landscape appears in the form of rocky Dagestan. It is the image of a remote place, fenced off by mountains, that symbolizes detachment from society, the motive of exile. “The ledges of rocks were crowded all around,” - with these lines the hero distances himself from the world of people, dooming himself to death alone.
The image of the hero’s dream is a clear sign of a prophecy that is destined to come true. Writers and poets often use this technique in their works. With the help of the protagonists' dreams, they reveal the hero's state of mind, his desires and thoughts, and often their fate.
In addition, in this gloomy picture there are other images-symbols that set the mood and theme of the poem.
The sun is a symbol of all living things. But, playing on the antithesis, it continues to generously blind the dead body with its rays. Thus showing that his death did not shake the world, nothing changed. The sun continues to shine as it did.
The image of the lyrical hero is colored by all the posters of romanticism: he is a lonely, brave and rejected by the whole world man, who finally left the sinful earth and went to an ideal world where there is only place for love.
Themes, mood and issues
The themes and issues of the poem “Dream” will be supplemented if there is a need for this, which should be reported to the Many-Wise Litrekon in the comments.
- The poet’s works are permeated by loneliness, which is the leitmotif and at the same time one of the themes of the work “Dream”. The description of the scorching sun, the feeling of alienation from society behind the layers of mountains and rocks - all this indicates that the hero is in Dagestan against his will. Most likely he is in exile, like Lermontov himself.
- Death is the main theme of the work “Dream”. It is directly related to the theme of love. Existing together, they seem to symbolize good and evil. The first always wins over the second, but without evil there would be no world. It is with this idea that the hero reconciles himself, fully realizing and accepting his death.
The mood of the poem “Dream” is set not only by the internal experiences of the hero and heroine, but also primarily by the landscape. Nature in the poem represents sharp, naked rocks as lonely as the hero himself. The sun rises above them, scorching all living things. The dead and dry landscape conveys the character of Lermontov’s lyrical “I”. The feeling of doom and hopelessness of the whole bouquet of emotions dies last along with the smoking body. This marks the tragic pathos of the poem.
The problem of human loneliness remains an unresolved open issue. The hero is born and dies completely alone. Even his beloved is not there, he is only in her dream, but not with her.
main idea
The main idea in the work “Dream” is tied to the spiritual unbreakable connection between two lovers. Even death is unable to stop the feeling of love that extends for kilometers. The hero dies not in the arms of the lyrical heroine, but alone. No one yet knows about his death. But even so, their mysterious intimate connection goes beyond understanding the essence of love.
The meaning of the poem “Dream” can be interpreted in another way: love and death collide with each other, and good defeats evil, because even a dead dream could not separate the protagonist from the heroine. They meet for the last time, but still sincere feelings won them the right to this meeting from death itself.
Artistic originality of the work
The terrible picture of death in the poem by M. Yu. Lermontov is not perceived as a tragedy. We feel that the hero is passing into a certain state of eternal peace.
There are no exclamatory sentences or rhetorical questions in the text. The hero dies alone, and the reader hears meager short phrases: “I lay alone,” “and the sun... burned me,” “I slept like a dead sleep.” No pain, no indignation, no despair.
Next, a cheerful feast is depicted, and again the lack of emotionality is striking: “There was a cheerful conversation about me.”
A girl in love who sees the corpse of her lover in a dream does not cry or become hysterical. The poet simply calls her dream “sad.”
Means of expression
The poetics of the work “Dream” is rich and saturated with means of expression and artistic expressions.
- Epithets
fill the atmosphere of the work with a feeling of loneliness and hopelessness: “midday heat”, “cooling stream”, “yellow peaks”, “sad dream”. - Metaphors
reveal the hero’s state of mind, the entire range of emotions of the hero on the eve of death. “The wound was smoking,” “the wound was turning black,” “the blood was flowing drop by drop,” the hero seems to be looking at himself from the outside and retelling everything that he sees and feels. The rocks can be compared to vultures who are waiting for the death of the hero in order to take him forever without a trace: “the ledges of the rocks were crowded around.”
The thought embedded in the work allows the reader to plunge headlong into the atmosphere of death and doom. This is what will happen to us when our journey ends. This awareness prompts the search for meaning in our existence. This is necessary so as not to end up just as lonely and sad. After all, it’s not too late to change everything, to turn the storyline of our lives in a different direction, to find happiness.
Author: Polina Boriskina
