Analysis of Zabolotsky's poem about the beauty of human faces.

"On the beauty of human faces"

Russia has long been famous for its poets, true masters of words. The names of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet, Yesenin and other equally talented people are known throughout the world. One of the masters of words who lived in the twentieth century was the poet N. A. Zabolotsky. His work is as multifaceted as life. Unusual images, the magical melody of the verse are what attracts us to his poetry. Zabolotsky passed away very young, in the prime of his creative powers, but left a magnificent legacy for his descendants. The themes of his work are very diverse.

In the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” II.L. Zabolotsky is a master of psychological portraiture. The different human faces he described in this work correspond to different types of characters. Through the external mood and emotional expression of N.A.’s face. Zabolotsky strives to look into a person’s soul, to see his inner essence. The poet compares faces with houses: some are magnificent portals, others are miserable shacks. The technique of contrast helps the author to more clearly outline the differences between people. Some are sublime and purposeful, filled with life plans, others are wretched and pitiful, and others generally look aloof: all in themselves, closed to others.
Among the many different faces-houses N.A. Zabolotsky finds one unsightly, poor hut. But from her window flows the “breath of a spring day.”
The poem ends with an optimistic ending: “There are faces - the likeness of jubilant songs. From these notes, shining like the sun, a song of heavenly heights is composed.”

ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF HUMAN FACES

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 cooked and the rennet is soaked.
Other cold, dead faces
Closed with bars, like a dungeon.
Others are like towers in which for a long time
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
But I once knew a small hut,
She was unprepossessing, not rich,
But from the window she looks at me
The breath of a spring day flowed.
Truly the world is both great and wonderful!
There are faces - similarities to jubilant songs.
From these notes, like the sun, shining
A song of heavenly heights has been composed.

Read by People's Artist of Russia Mikhail Kozakov.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Kozakov (October 14, 1934, Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR - April 22, 2011, Ramat Gan, Israel - Soviet, Russian and Israeli director, theater and film actor. People's Artist of the RSFSR (1980). Laureate of the USSR State Prize.

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 the poems of N.A. Zabolotsky is forced to think about good and evil, hatred and love, beauty...

...what beauty is

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 posed in “The Ugly Girl” is illuminated somewhat differently in the poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces,” which was written in the same year, nineteen fifty-five.

“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. The descriptions given by the author are surprisingly accurate. Everyone can see in them their own reflection or characteristics of friends and loved ones. 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 the diversity of the world. 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. These

...cold, dead faces

Closed with bars, like a dungeon.

Alien to him and

...towers in which for a long time

Nobody lives and looks out the window.

There is no life in these faces; it is not for nothing that an important characteristic here are epithets with a negative connotation (“pathetic,” “cold, dead”).

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

The breath of a spring day flowed.

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

Thus, the poem is built on opposition (lush portals - miserable shacks, 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 its cognates “similar”, “likeness” run through the entire poem as a refrain. With their help, the theme of 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 cooked and the rennet is soaked.

In the next four lines, a special role is given 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 variety of 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 N.A. was in front of me. 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 is important is the “fire flickering in the vessel.”

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

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky had a keen sense of people and with incredible accuracy could create a psychological portrait, relying on internal sensations and details of a person’s appearance.

For this purpose, he turns to details: the corners of the lips, dimples on the cheeks or wrinkles on the forehead, which reflect the inner world of a person. The way Zabolotsky strives to look into the souls of people, and we see this in his poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces.”

History of creation

The poem was written at the end of Zabolotsky’s writing career - in 1955. During this period, the poet experiences a creative upsurge, during which he pours out all his worldly wisdom through writing. In his works there is a subtle understanding of life and people.

The main idea of the work

The poem is based on the idea that a person's life is imprinted in his appearance. All habits, lifestyle, character traits are literally written on his face. Zabolotsky tells us that a face cannot deceive, therefore, with the help of an external description, the poet creates an internal portrait of passers-by.

Means of expression

The poem is based on a comparison, with the help of which the author correlates portraits of people with speaking images: “like lush portals,” “like a dungeon,” “like the sun of shining notes.”

With the help of antonyms, the poet reveals the mystery of man: “the great is miraculous in the small,” and impersonal verbs testify to the pompousness and poverty of the soul: “the great is miraculous.”

The role of metaphors is one of the most significant, since vivid and symbolic images are built on them. From the words “the liver is cooked and the rennet gets wet,” the author emphasizes his negative position. After all, people with such an inner world harbor dirty thoughts and thoughts. The phrase “abandoned towers” is a metaphor for devastated souls, in which only cold and darkness remain, and the words about a “window” with the “breath of a spring day” clearly indicate the spirituality of a person, whose image inspires warmth and comfort. The text also contains such epithets as: “pathetic shacks”, “lush portals”, “jubilant songs”.

Composition, genre, rhyme and meter

The poem reflects increasing emotionality, ending with the triumph of the lyrical subject: “Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” Compositionally, the text consists of two parts: the first consists of descriptions of unpleasant faces, the second - inspired and bright portraits.

“On the Beauty of Human Faces” is a thoughtful work that belongs to the genre of philosophical lyrics.

It is written in amphibrachium tetrameter and contains 4 quatrains. The rhyming is adjacent: female rhymes alternate with male rhymes.

The author in his poem lists the types of human faces using comparisons, personifications and metaphors. The poem consists of 16 lines and 7 sentences. It speaks of the author’s ability to think philosophically, his powers of observation, his ability to see what others do not notice. In total, the author presents 6 types of human faces, 6 human characters.

The first type of persons is considered by the author as those who promise some kind of greatness. The narrator compares them with “magnificent portals”, sees them as mysterious and incomprehensible, even great. But when you get to know such people better, you see that there is nothing unusual or great in him, which is why the author uses the word “it seems.” This speaks of the deception that lies within these types of persons.

The second type of person is compared to “pathetic shacks.” Such faces look sad. People with such faces suffer from unfulfilled desires, they are dissatisfied with their lives, and therefore the author says that liver and rennet are cooked in such “shacks”. There are dark circles under the eyes of such people, the skin of their faces is yellow and flaccid. These people are sick. It is very difficult to cure them of the disease of melancholy and sadness and all this is reflected on the face.

The third type of person belongs to people with a tough and stern character. These people are secretive, they experience everything within themselves, not letting anyone close to their hearts. The author calls the faces of such people cold and dead, and their eyes as windows that are covered with bars. The author compares the souls of such people to dungeons.

The author calls the fourth type of person inaccessible, like towers. People with such faces are very arrogant; they do not see those around them as worthy of themselves, considering themselves superior in everything. Such people are very vain, but when someone still manages to recognize the essence of these people, it becomes clear that they are empty, there is nothing remarkable or precious about them.

The author loves the fifth type of face and remembers it with warmth. He devotes more lines to him than to the first. He compares this face to a poor, unremarkable hut. Such people's faces may not be very beautiful, they may have wrinkles, but their amazing eyes sparkle on a spring day. Their kind, warm look makes people feel good. Usually such people have a rich inner world and good character traits. Due to these advantages they become very attractive.

The author admires the sixth type of person, but no longer says that he has met such people or communicated with them. People like this are very rare. The author compares their faces with jubilant songs, the sun and music reaching to heaven. These people are usually very pure and sinless, they live exalted lives and inspire others to think about something sublime and beautiful. These are the kind of people everyone wants to have as friends; some people want to look up to them. They are wonderful in every way.

Analysis of the poem About the beauty of human faces according to plan

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The name of Nikolai Zabolotsky is associated with the realistic tradition in literature, which was developed by poets belonging to the “Association of Real Art” group. Years of work were devoted to Detgiz, a publishing house that produces works for children, and Zabolotsky, in addition, had a pedagogical education. That is why many of his poems can be addressed and perfectly understood by children and adolescents, while they do not contain boring didacticism and answer the first philosophical questions that concern young readers.

The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” appeared at the end of Nikolai Zabolotsky’s writing career - in 1955. There was a period of “thaw”, Zabolotsky experienced a creative surge. Many lines that are on everyone’s lips were born at this time - “Ugly girl”, “Don’t let your soul be lazy”, many are united by a common theme.

The main theme of the poem

The main theme of the poem is the idea that the path of life, character traits, habits and inclinations - all this is literally written on a person’s face. The face does not deceive, and tells everything to a person capable of logical thinking and analysis, creating not only an external, but also an internal portrait. The ability to draw such portraits, reading the fate of the interlocutor, like a book, is called physiognomy. So, for an observant physiognomist, one person will appear pretentiously beautiful, but empty inside, another may turn out to be modest, but contain the whole world. People are also like buildings, because each person “builds” his life, and everyone succeeds differently - either a luxurious castle or a shabby shack. The windows in the buildings we build are our eyes, through which we can read our inner life - our thoughts, intentions, dreams, our intellect.

Zabolotsky draws these several images-buildings, resorting to extended metaphors:

It is absolutely clear that the author himself likes such discoveries - when in a “little hut” a real treasure of positive human qualities and talents is discovered. Such a “hut” can be opened again and again, and it will delight you with its versatility. Such a “hut” is inconspicuous in appearance, but an experienced person who knows how to read faces may be lucky enough to meet such a person.

The author resorts to the techniques of extended metaphor and antithesis (“portals” are contrasted with “pathetic shacks”, arrogant “towers” with small but cozy “huts”). Greatness and earthliness, talent and emptiness, warm light and cold darkness are contrasted.

Structural analysis of the poem

Among the stylistic means of artistic representation chosen by the author, one can also note anaphora (the unity of the lines “There is...” and “Where...”). With the help of anaphora, the disclosure of images is organized according to a single scheme.

Compositionally, the poem contains increasing emotionality, turning into triumph (“Truly the world is both great and wonderful!”). The author's position in the finale is expressed by the enthusiastic realization that there are many great and wonderful people in the world. You just need to find them.

The poem is written in amphibrach tetrameter and contains 4 quatrains. The rhyme is parallel, feminine, mostly accurate.