Problems of the ode “Liberty. Andrey Myasnikov Philosophy of Freedom A

Composition

I am the same as I was and will be all my life:
Not a cattle, not a tree, not a slave, but a man!
A. Radishchev

Radishchev, nurturing revolutionary ideas of overthrowing the autocracy, created the ode “Liberty.” As consistent as he was in his denial of tyranny, he was also as bold in his poetic experimentation. To glorify political and civil freedom, the poet chooses the traditional genre of ode. But what remains in it from the tradition of classicism? After all, Radishchev does not glorify an outstanding commander or a statesman, and, especially, not a monarch. The very beginning of the work is polemical:

ABOUT! blessed gift from heaven,
The source of all great things,
O liberty, liberty, priceless gift/
Let the slave sing your praises.

Pushkin, condemning both the execution by the people of the French king Louis XVI and the murder of Paul I by the conspiratorial nobles, advocates limiting autocracy by “law” - the constitution:

Come, tear off the wreath from me,
Break the pampered lyre...
I want to sing Freedom to the world,
Slay vice on the thrones...
Tyrants of the world! tremble."
And you, take courage and listen,
Arise, fallen slaves!..
Only there above the royal head
The suffering of the peoples did not end,
Where is the holy liberty strong?
Powerful combination of laws.

Radishchev, in his ode, proves the right of the people to execute the tyrant king. The people are the creator of all earthly blessings, and the king, who imagines that he is the true Lord, and not the people, is “the greatest criminal of all.”

Rejoice, the nations are riveted.
Behold nature's avenged right
The king was put on the block.

Radishchev's ode "Liberty" - the first word of Russian revolutionary poetry - contains a call for revolution and expresses it in accordance with the principles of the poet's aesthetics. A true creator, Radishchev argued, opens “various paths of knowledge” to his fellow citizens; poetry without thought is worthless - “a meager source of literature without thoughts.”
Pushkin appreciated the significance of Radishchev's poetry and his contribution to Russian literature. It is not for nothing that in the original version of Pushkin’s poem “Monument” there was a line: “following Radishchev, I glorified freedom.” In the ode “Liberty,” Alexander Sergeevich exclaims with youthful recklessness and courage:

Autocratic villain!
I hate you, your throne,
Your death, the death of children
I see it with cruel joy.
They read on your forehead
Seal of the curse of the nations.
You are the horror of the world, the shame of nature.
You are a reproach to God on earth.

Pushkin argues that only the law should prevail in life; it alone can serve as the guarantee of justice and happiness of peoples.

And learn today, O kings:
No punishment, no reward.
Neither the shelter of dungeons, nor altars
The fences are not right for you.
Bow your heads first
Under the safe canopy of the Law,
And they will become eternal guardians of the throne
Freedom and peace for the people.

The ode “Liberty” by the Russian writer and philosopher Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749 – 1802) is a vivid hymn to freedom and a call to defend it and fight tyranny, including through revolution. History is portrayed by Radishchev as a process of struggle between freedom and lack of freedom, which, however, can end either in the triumph of freedom or in its suppression

Freedom, in the terminology of the 18th century - liberty, lies at the basis of historical progress. However, this natural human right, given to him from birth, is often destroyed by the authorities seeking to enslave society and subordinate it to their will. The task of society (“the people” in Radishchev’s ode) is to defend its natural rights. Freedom is the highest, but very fragile value. You always have to fight for it. Otherwise, tyranny will destroy freedom - the light will turn “into darkness.”

Freedom is given to man from birth. This is his autonomous will, his right to think and express his thoughts freely, to realize himself the way he wishes. Here is what Radishchev writes, referring to liberty:

I have come into the light, and you are with me;
There are no rivets on your muscles;
With my free hand I can
Take the bread given for food.
I place my feet where it pleases me;
I listen to what is clear;
I broadcast what I think;
I can love and be loved;
I do good, I can be honored;
My law is my will.

Radishchev portrays freedom as a source of progress, a vector of history that gives people enlightenment and destroys the oppression that exists in society.

So the spirit of freedom, ruining
The ascended bondage oppresses,
Flying through towns and villages,
He calls everyone to greatness,
Lives, gives birth and creates,
Doesn't know the obstacles on the way
We lead with courage in the paths;
The mind thinks with him tremblingly
And the word is considered property,
Ignorance that will scatter the ashes.

But here Radishchev points to the threat to freedom, which is embodied in the supreme power. Rulers through their laws suppress freedom and enslave society. Tsar

...Dragged into the yoke of enslavement,
Clothed them in the armor of delusion,
He ordered us to fear the truth.
“This is the law of God,” the king says;
“Holy deception,” the sage cries,
People will crush what you have gained."

Power in the person of kings and rulers usurps freedom. Relying on priests, they dictate their own will to society.

We will look into the vast region,
Where a dim throne is worth slavery.
The city authorities there are all peaceful,
The king has in vain the image of the Divine.
The royal power protects the faith,
Faith asserts the power of the Tsar;
Union society is oppressed:
One strives to fetter the mind,
Another will seeks to erase;
For the common good, they say.

However, the logic of history inevitably leads to the overthrow of tyranny. The law of nature and society is the desire for freedom. Tyranny destroys itself. According to Radishchev, the greater the oppression, the greater the likelihood of uprising and revolution, a vivid description of which he gives in his ode.

This was and is the law of nature,
Never changeable
All nations are subject to Him,
He always rules invisibly;
Torment, shaking the limits,
The poisons are full of their arrows
Without knowing it, it will pierce itself;
Equality will be restored to execution;
One power, lying down, will crush;
Insult will renew the right.

Freedom is the logic of history. It's aimed at infinity. But at the same time, Radishchev warns about the dangers that can threaten freedom and that come from the authorities.

You will reach the point of perfection,
Having jumped over obstacles in the paths,
You will find bliss in cohabitation,
Having eased the unfortunate lot,
And you will shine more than the sun,
Oh liberty, liberty, may you die
With eternity you are your flight;
But the root of your blessings will be exhausted,
Freedom will turn into insolence
And the authorities will fall under the yoke.

Freedom needs to be protected, otherwise it will turn into tyranny. Radishchev's genius is that he pointed out not only the progressive development of history, but also the danger of the reverse process - social regression, which is associated with tyranny. Therefore, Radishchev calls for protecting freedom and fighting for it.

ABOUT! you happy peoples,
Where chance granted freedom!
Cherish the gift of good nature,
What the Eternal has written in the hearts.
Behold the gaping abyss, flowers
Strewn, underfoot
You are ready to swallow you.
Don't forget for a minute
That the strength of strength is fierce in weakness,
That light can be transformed into darkness.

In his ode, Radishchev also gives examples of political and spiritual progress in history, which led to the gains of greater freedom. This is the English Revolution led by Cromwell. This is the religious reformation of Luther, the geographical discoveries of Columbus, the scientific achievements of Galileo and Newton. Finally, Radishchev writes about the contemporary American Revolution and its hero Washington.

Nikolai Baev, libertarian movement “Free Radicals”

The most important milestone in the development of the odic genre was the ode “Liberty” by Radishchev. Poetry attracted Radishchev's attention throughout his life. An expert in Western European and Russian poetry, he acted as a historian of the latter, writing the first scientific essay about Lomonosov the poet, defining his place in Russian literature; its theorist - having developed issues of metrics, rhyme, poetic skill. The famous author of the revolutionary book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” was also a poet. Youthful experiences dating back to the 1770s have not reached us. The first, most important poem in his poetic heritage - the ode "Liberty" - dates back to 1781–1783. Radishchev also wrote poetry in exile - in Siberia and Nemtsov. In the last years of his life, he worked on the poems “Historical Songs”, “Bova”, “Songs Sung at Competitions”.

Radishchev's poetic heritage is not large in quantity, but the contribution of Radishchev the poet is enormous: he is the founder of Russian revolutionary poetry, its founder. For Radishchev, the writer is not only a patriot, but also a revolutionary, a “prophet of freedom,” and therefore, therefore, a political figure, a participant in the liberation movement. That is why he chooses new topics - freedom, crimes of autocracy, the right of the people to win the freedom that was forcibly taken from them. What genre should you choose for this? The lofty in classicism was ultimately determined by class ideology - everything that was dedicated to God and the king. That is why spiritual and laudatory odes were written. Lomonosov and Derzhavin overcame the genre of laudatory ode and created a new type of civil poem, glorifying the power of Russia and its people and the greatness of man. Based on these achievements, Radishchev went further.

Slavery oppresses people. Freedom inspires him, lifts him to a new, high life. “It is known that man is a free being, because he is endowed with intelligence, reason and free will; that his freedom consists in choosing the best, that he knows and chooses this best through reason, comprehends it with the help of the mind and always strives for the beautiful, majestic, high.”

Consequently, only freedom raises a person to the “beautiful and majestic”; only in the struggle for freedom does a person reveal his natural greatness and assert himself as an individual. This structure of human spiritual life was supposed to determine the style of revolutionary, high poetry in a completely new way.

Radishchev called “Liberty” an ode, radically changing the content of the traditional genre, its theme, style and composition. This poem is a work of enormous philosophical and political content, it sets out the concept of a people's revolution, welcomed the American people who won freedom from the colonial slavery of the British in the revolutionary struggle, affirmed the idea of the equality of people and their right to regain their freedom by force. Thus, Russian revolutionary thought was first expressed in poetic words.

The ode began with the hymn of Liberty. Liberty is a “priceless gift” of a person, “the source of all great deeds.” What is an “obstacle to freedom?” Laws created by the autocracy and consecrated by the church, according to which freedom was taken away from the people and plunged them into savage slavery. The people, Radishchev argues, have the right to rebel against their oppressors and oppose the monarch. At the center of the ode is the uprising of the people and the trial of the “villain” autocrat. This revealed not only the high courage of the revolutionary poet Radishchev, but also his amazing courage as a poet. Consecrated by a long tradition, praise to the monarch was the main theme of the ode. Even Lomonosov, in his reformed ode, retained this praise, although he decisively reconstructed the ode and turned it into an order to the kings. And Radishchev boldly and with wild inspiration described in an ode (!!!) how the rebels, “having chained the giant with a hundred hands,” are dragging him “to the throne where the people are seated.” And the trial of the king-tormentor, the king-villain begins:

A criminal of the power given by me!
Prophecy, villain, crowned by me,
How dare you rebel against me?

The speech of the people-judge ended with the verdict:

Villain, the fiercest of all villains!
Evil exceeds your head.
The foremost criminal of all!
Stand up, I call you to court!
………………………………………….
You dared to point a sting at me!
One death is not enough -
Die! die a hundred times over!

In the second half of the ode, Radishchev talks about the creative activity of the victorious people. The ode ends with an inspired prophecy about the future victory of the Russian revolution. Historicism helped Radishchev understand that in his contemporary conditions, victory was still impossible: “... but the hour has not yet come, destinies have not been fulfilled.” In “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” where most of the ode “Liberty” was first published, this idea was clarified - there will be a revolution: “This is not a dream, but the gaze penetrates the thick veil of time, hiding the future from our eyes; I see through the whole century".

The new content of the ode “Liberty” required the development of new vocabulary and a new style. First of all, there was a need to create a new political terminology, to define the content of the words, concepts and terms he introduced. So, for example, the term “liberty” before Radishchev was used in noble and government literature, and it was not at all associated with the concept of political and social freedom of the serf people. On the contrary, the word “liberty” expressed the “eternal” rights dear to the noble’s heart (see, for example, the decree of Peter III “On noble liberty”). This is a typical example of imposing on the words of the national language a meaning pleasing to the ruling class. Will, liberty - the cherished words of the Russian people, expressing their dream, their ideal of life, their hopes; they always meant either freedom from captivity, or freedom from any dependence, and after the establishment of serfdom - freedom from fortress and slavery. It was in this meaning that this word was heard during the days of the Pugachev uprising. This word, scorched by the fire of the uprising, filled with true national aspirations, capturing the age-old dream of millions of oppressed people, was introduced by Radishchev into literature. It was after Radishchev that the word “freedom” was finally and forever established in Russian literature as a call for revolution, for the destruction of the autocratic system, for the destruction of serfdom.

In order to convince the reader of the right of the people to judge the tsar, it was necessary not only to politically formulate the guilt of the autocrat, but also to poetically lower the image of the tsar. This is how the daring epithet appeared in the ode - “villain”, and then the strengthened one - “the fiercest villain of all villains”. Dictionaries captured the meaning of this word in that era - enemy, foe, criminal, a person subject to serious vices. At first glance, the word “villain” did not acquire any new meaning in Radishchev’s ode. It was used by the poet in the meaning of “lawbreaker,” violator of laws. Only the addressee has changed - in the practice of the literary language of the era, a person who rebelled against autocratic power was called a “villain” (as Pugachev was called in Catherine’s manifestos), and Radishchev calls a “villain” a tsar who violated the laws created by the people. As we see, the possibility of such a new, modified use of the word “villain” was determined by Radishchev’s revolutionary convictions. For him, it is not the monarch, but the people who are the creator of laws. Consequently, if a king does not observe them and uses them against the people, then he is a lawbreaker, a “villain.” In this meaning, the phrase “tsar-villain” was enshrined in the Russian liberation movement, in Russian freedom-loving poetry (see, for example, the ode “Liberty” by Pushkin). Before Radishchev, the word “villain” did not have such a meaning.

Depicting the trial of the people over the tsar, describing the uprising of the oppressed, the victory of freedom, Radishchev never once used the word “revolution” in the ode “Liberty.” Instead, we find another word - “revenge”. “This is the avenged right of nature” - this is how Radishchev calls the people’s struggle against the autocracy; in “Journey” he calls the Pugachev uprising “vengeance”. The future victory of freedom in Russia will also occur due to the fact that the peoples will “take revenge on themselves.” The word "revolution" did not gain currency in that era. Therefore, with the term “revenge,” Radishchev sought to emphasize the fair, historically logical right of those oppressed by force of arms to return the freedom taken from them. The word “revenge” appeared among other synonyms - “indignation”, “uprising”, “change”, but Radishchev always meant one thing - revolution, the armed struggle of the people for their rights, for freedom.

Radishchev also developed poetic terminology to denote the concepts - revolutionary, freedom fighter. He calls such a person an “avenger”, a “leader”, a “great man”, a “prophet of freedom”, whose inspired word gathers a “warrior army”, arms the people with “hope”, and carries them away to vengeance - revolution. It was this new poetic vocabulary that helped Radishchev express and capture his personality in revolutionary poetry. The ode “Liberty” is autobiographical; in this regard, Radishchev acted as the heir of Lomonosov and Derzhavin. But the “secret secret” of the soul of the lyrical hero of the ode appeared completely new, unprecedented before the Russian people.

A hater of slavery, a lover of freedom, he lived a united life with the world around him, his gaze as a poet and thinker pierced “the veil of time that hides the future from our eyes.” He was sad, and it was the grief of a patriot who saw the hated autocracy and slavery “as a treasure in his fatherland.” He dreamed, and it was a dream of a revolution in Russia, of the victory of the people, of “the most chosen day of all days.” With his whole life, revolutionary work, and freedom-loving poems, he brought this day closer. And his highest reward will be the grateful memory of his descendants. Let the young man who is destined to live in this distant future, coming to his grave, say:

Under the yoke of power, this one born,
Wearing gold-plated shackles,
He was the first to prophesy freedom for us.

Serfdom, the second face of the “monster,” is inextricably linked with autocracy in Russia. Radishchev exposes the inhuman essence, the irreparable, nationwide harm of serfdom in indissoluble unity both as an artist-publicist and as a political sociologist.

For Radishchev, the question of the peasant revolution includes two problems: the justice of popular indignation and its inevitability. Radishchev also gradually leads the reader to the idea of the justice of the revolution. It is based on the Enlightenment theory of the “natural” human right to self-defense, without which no living creature can do. In a normally structured society, all its members should be protected by the law, but if the law is inactive, then the right of self-defense inevitably comes into force. This right is discussed, but still briefly, in one of the first chapters (“Lyubani”).

The ode “Liberty” was written in the period from 1781 to 1783, but work on it continued until 1790, when it was published with abbreviations in “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”, in the chapter “Tver”. Its full text appeared only in 1906. The Ode was created at a time when the American Revolution had just ended and the French Revolution had begun. Its civic pathos reflects the inexorable desire of peoples to throw off feudal-absolutist oppression.

Radishchev begins his ode with the glorification of freedom, which he considers a priceless gift of nature, the “source” of “all great deeds.” In a country where the overwhelming majority of the population was in serfdom, this very thought was a challenge to the existing order. Freedom is given to every person by nature itself, the author believes, and therefore in the “natural state” people did not know any constraint and were absolutely free: “I came into the light, and you are with me; // There are no rivets on my muscles...” (T. 1. P. 1). But in the name of the common good, people united into society, limited their “will” to laws beneficial to everyone, and elected an authority that must ensure their strict implementation. Radishchev draws the good consequences of such a device: equality, abundance, justice. Religion surrounded the power of the ruler with a divine aura and thereby freed him from responsibility to the people. The monarch turns into a despot:

The loss of freedom has a detrimental effect in all areas of society: fields become empty, military valor fades, justice is violated, but history does not stand still, and despotism is not eternal. Discontent among the people is growing. The herald of freedom appears. Outrage breaks out. Here Radishchev differs sharply from European enlighteners. Rousseau in his book “The Social Contract” limits himself to only a brief remark that if the monarch elected by society violates the laws, the people have the right to terminate the social contract previously concluded with him. In what form this will happen, Russo does not disclose. Radishchev finishes everything. In his ode, the people overthrow the monarch, try him and execute him:

Not content with speculative evidence of the inevitability of revolution, Radishchev seeks to rely on the experience of history. It recalls the English Revolution of 1649, the execution of the English king. Attitudes towards Cromwell are contradictory. Radishchev glorifies him for the fact that he “executed Karl at trial” and at the same time severely condemns him for the usurpation of power. The poet's ideal is the American Revolution and its leader Washington.

Humanity, according to Radishchev, goes through a cyclical path in its development. Freedom turns into tyranny, tyranny into freedom. Radishchev himself, retelling the contents of the 38th and 39th stanzas in the chapter “Tver”, explains his thought as follows: “This is the law of nature; from torment freedom is born, from freedom slavery is born...” (Vol. 1, p. 361). Addressing the peoples who have thrown off the yoke of the despot, Radishchev calls on them to cherish their won freedom like the apple of their eye:

Despotism still triumphs in Russia. The poet and his contemporaries “weigh” the “unbearable burden of shackles.” Radishchev himself does not hope to live to see the day, but he firmly believes in its impending victory, and he would like his compatriot to say this when he comes to his grave.

In its style, the ode “Liberty” is a direct heir to Lomonosov’s laudable odes. It is written in iambic tetrameter, ten-line stanzas with the same rhyme scheme. But its content is strikingly different from Lomonosov’s odes. Radishchev does not believe in enlightened monarchs and therefore freedom and the indignation of the people against the tsar become the objects of his praise.

Before us is a variety of the odic genre of the 18th century. - a revolutionary-educational ode as one of the phenomena of educational classicism.

The purpose of the ode is to comprehend the lessons of history. The ode “Liberty” was created during the rise of the revolutionary movement in America and France. She is filled with firm faith in the triumph of liberation ideas.

TICKET 13
1. Solemn ode to M.V. Lomonosov: problematics and poetics.
By its nature and the way it exists in the cultural context of our time, Lomonosov’s solemn ode is . an oratorical genre to the same extent as a literary one. Solemn odes were created with the intention of reading aloud in front of the addressee; the poetic text of a solemn ode is designed to be a sounding speech perceived by ear. The typological features of oratorical genres in ceremonial dress are the same as in the sermon and the secular oratorical Word. First of all, this is the attachment of the thematic material of the solemn ode to a specific “occasion” - a historical incident or event of national scale.

The composition of the solemn ode is also determined by the laws of rhetoric: each odic text invariably opens and ends with appeals to the addressee. The text of the solemn ode is constructed as a system of rhetorical questions and answers, the alternation of which is due to two parallel operating settings: each individual fragment of the ode is designed to have the maximum aesthetic impact on the listener - and hence the language of the ode is oversaturated with tropes and rhetorical figures. As for the sequence of development of the odic plot (the order of individual fragments and the principles of their relationship and sequence), it is determined by the laws of formal logic, which facilitates the perception of the odic text by ear: the formulation of the thesis, proof in a system of successively changing arguments, a conclusion repeating the initial formulation. Thus, the composition of the ode is subject to the same mirror-cumulative principle as the composition of satire and their common proto-genre - sermon. Lomonosov managed to determine the relationship between the addressee and the addressee. *In classic. ode lyrical the hero is weakly expressed according to the laws of the genre. The addressee is expressed only nationally (i.e. I am Lomonosov - a Russian poet), one of the subjects of the monarch. Such static lyre. the hero is not satisfied with the author, because there is no movement here. Lomonosov, in order to evaluate the entire act of the monarch, the addressee must be the embodiment of reason, i.e. instead of static lyrical. "I", Lomonosov offers duality; a subject mind that can soar above everyone and evaluate the deeds of the monarch. Lomonosov structures the composition by changing the position of the addresser's point of view. The change of point of view is lyrical. At the same time, the hero allows him to combine specificity and delight. The description of actions is associated with the sphere of the floating mind, hence the presence of strong metaphors, hyperboles, and other images, the interweaving of tropes, the conjugation of the past, present and future. The monarch almost arrives in heaven, but the mind is lyrical. The hero may also be a monarch of a vertically structured space. Lomonosov's ode to the celebration, from the point of view of content, has classicist features, and the elements of its form are Baroque heritage. The movement of the “floating mind” suggests a complex relationship of stanzas in which the movement of thought is observed. The odic stanza has a trace. type: AbAbCCdede- (1 part – quatrain, 2 part – couplet, 3 part – quatrain). The sizes of each of these parts do not always coincide, but often predetermine the division into 2 main thoughts and one additional one. The connections between stanzas are not always immediately visible, sometimes they are images or parallels, but often you can catch the author’s movement of thought from stanza to stanza.

As odic characters, Russia, Peter I and Divine Science are united by their one and only common property: they are characters of the ode insofar as they are ideas expressing a common concept. Not a specific historical person and monarch Peter I, but the idea of an Ideal Monarch; not the state of Russia, but the idea of the Fatherland; not a specific branch of scientific knowledge, but the idea of Enlightenment - these are the true heroes of the solemn ode.

Before us is a variety of the odic genre of the 18th century. - a revolutionary-educational ode as one of the phenomena of educational classicism.