Write a story about the construction of the Bronze Horseman. “The image of the monarch appeared in the highest perfection.” "The Bronze Horseman" by Pushkin

The poem “The Bronze Horseman” is one of Pushkin’s most capacious, mysterious and complex poems. He wrote it in the fall of 1833 in the famous Boldin. This place and time gave extraordinary inspiration to Alexander Sergeevich. The idea of ​​Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman” clearly echoes the works of writers who lived much later and dedicated their works, firstly, to the theme of St. Petersburg, and secondly, to the theme of the clash between the great power idea and the interests of the “little man.” The poem has two opposing characters and an insoluble conflict between them.

“The Bronze Horseman”: the history of the creation of the poem

Pushkin worked intensively on the poem and finished it very quickly - in just twenty-five October days. During his creative period, Alexander Sergeevich also worked on “The Queen of Spades,” which he wrote in prose, and on the poetic story “Angelo.” The stunning “Bronze Horseman” fits seamlessly into this, the history of whose creation is closely connected not only with realistic motifs and documents of the era, but also with the mythology that has developed around the great man and the city that arose according to his highest will.

Censorship restrictions and controversy surrounding the poem

“The Petersburg Tale,” as the author designated its genre, was censored by Emperor Nicholas I himself, who returned the manuscript with nine pencil marks. The disgruntled poet printed the text of the introduction to the poem “The Bronze Horseman” (the history of the creation of the poetic story is overshadowed by this fact) with eloquent voids in place of the king’s notes. Later, Pushkin nevertheless rewrote these passages, but in such a way that the meaning embedded in them did not change. Reluctantly, the sovereign allowed the publication of the poem “The Bronze Horseman.” The history of the creation of the work is also connected with the heated controversy that flared up around the poem after its publication.

Points of view of literary scholars

The controversy continues to this day. It is traditional to talk about three groups of interpreters of the poem. The first includes researchers who affirm the “state” aspect that shines in the poem “The Bronze Horseman”. This group of literary scholars, led by the author, put forward the version that Pushkin in the poem substantiated the right to carry out fateful deeds for the country, sacrificing the interests and the very life of a simple, inconspicuous person.

Humanistic interpretation

Representatives of another group, led by the poet Valery Bryusov, Professor Makagonenko and other authors, completely took the side of another character - Eugene, arguing that the death of even the most insignificant person from the point of view of the idea of ​​power cannot be justified by great achievements. This point of view is called humanistic. Many literary critics tend to evaluate the story “The Bronze Horseman” in this way; the story of the poem, the plot of which is based on the personal tragedy of a “little” man suffering from the results of a strong-willed decision by the authorities, is confirmation of this.

Eternal conflict

Representatives of the third group of researchers express a system of views about tragic unsolvability. They believe that Pushkin gave an objective picture in the story “The Bronze Horseman”. History itself has decided the eternal conflict between the “miraculous builder” Peter the Great and “poor” Eugene - an ordinary city dweller with his modest needs and dreams. Two truths - common man and statesman - remain equal in size, and neither is inferior to the other.

Terrible events and the poem “The Bronze Horseman”

The history of the creation of the poem, of course, fits firmly into the cultural and historical context of the time when it was created. Those were the times of debate about the place of personality in history and the influence of great transformations on the destinies of ordinary people. This topic worried Pushkin since the late 1820s. Taking as a basis the documentary information about the flood that happened in St. Petersburg on November 7, 1824, about which newspapers published, the brilliant poet and thinker comes to major philosophical and social generalizations. The personality of the great and brilliant reformer Peter, who “put Russia on its hind legs,” appears in the context of the personal tragedy of the insignificant official Eugene with his narrow-philistine dreams of his little happiness, which is not so unconditionally great and worthy of praise. Therefore, Pushkin’s poem “The Bronze Horseman” is not limited to odic praise of the transformer who opened the “window to Europe.”

Contrasting Petersburg

The northern capital arose thanks to the strong-willed decision of Tsar Peter the Great after the victory over the Swedes. Its founding was intended to confirm this victory, to show the strength and power of Russia, and also to open the paths of free cultural and trade exchange with European countries. The city, in which the greatness of the human spirit was felt, manifested in a strict and harmonious architectural appearance, the telling symbolism of sculptures and monuments, appears before us in the story “The Bronze Horseman”. The history of the creation of St. Petersburg is based, however, not only on greatness. Built on topi blat, which contained the bones of thousands of unknown builders, the city is engulfed in an ominous and mysterious atmosphere. Oppressive poverty, high mortality, superiority in diseases and the number of suicides - this is the other side of the magnificent crowned capital in the times about which Alexander Pushkin wrote. The two faces of the city, appearing one through the other, enhance the mythological component of the poem. The “transparent twilight” of pale city lighting gives the inhabitants the feeling that they live in some mysteriously symbolic place in which monuments and statues can come to life and move with ominous determination. And the history of the creation of the “Bronze Horseman” is also to a large extent connected with this. Pushkin, as a poet, could not help but be interested in such a transformation, which became the culmination of the plot. In the story, a cold man galloping loudly along the deserted pavement came to life. bronze monument, pursuing Eugene, distraught with grief after the loss of his beloved and the collapse of all his hopes.

Introduction idea

But before we hear how the earth shakes under the hoof of an iron horse, we have to experience the sad and cruel events that happened in the life of the unfortunate Eugene, who will blame the great Builder for building the city on lands prone to destructive floods, and also realize the bright and the majestic introduction with which the poem “The Bronze Horseman” opens.

Peter is standing on the bank of a wild river, on the waves of which a frail boat is rocking, and around him there is a rustling sound, with wretched huts of the “Chukhons” sticking out here and there. But in his mind's eye the founder northern capital already sees a “wonderful city”, rising “proudly” and “magnificently” above the granite-clad Neva, a city associated with future state successes and great achievements. Pushkin does not name Peter - the emperor is mentioned here using the pronoun “he”, and this emphasizes the ambiguity of the odic structure of the introduction. Reflecting on how Russia will someday “threaten the Swede” from here, the great figure does not at all see today’s “Finnish fisherman” who threw his “decrepit” net into the water. The Emperor sees a future in which ships are heading to rich marinas from all over the world, but does not notice those who sail in a lonely canoe and huddle in rare huts on the shore. When creating a state, the ruler forgets about those for whose sake it is created. And this painful discrepancy fuels the idea of ​​the poem “The Bronze Horseman.” Pushkin, for whom history was not just a collection of archival documents, but a bridge thrown into the present and future, feels especially keenly and expressively conveys this conflict.

Why did the bronze horseman turn out to be copper in the poet’s mouth?

The point, of course, is not only that the writers of the 19th century did not see a significant semantic difference between bronze and copper. It is deeply symbolic that this is the Bronze Horseman. The history of writing the poem in in this case closes with the biblical allegory. It is no coincidence that the poet calls the statue of Peter “an idol” and an “idol” - the authors of the Bible speak exactly the same words, telling about which the Jews worshiped instead of the Living God. Here the idol is not even gold, but only copper - this is how the author reduces the brilliance and grandeur of the image, sparkling with external dazzling luxury, but hiding inside it is not at all precious content. These are the subtexts of the story of the creation of the “Bronze Horseman”.

Pushkin cannot be suspected of unconditional sympathy for the sovereign idea. However, his attitude towards the fictional idyll constructed in Eugene’s dreams is ambiguous. The hopes and plans of the “little man” are far from deep spiritual quests, and in this Pushkin sees their limitations.

Climax and resolution of the plot

After a colorful introduction and a declaration of love for the city, Pushkin warns that what follows will be about “terrible” events. A hundred years after what happened on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, St. Petersburg official Evgeniy returns home after serving and dreams of his bride Parasha. He is no longer destined to see her, since she, like her modest house, will be carried away by the “frenzied” waters of the “enraged” Neva. When the elements fall silent, Eugene will rush to search for his beloved and make sure that she is no longer alive. His consciousness cannot withstand the blow, and the young man goes crazy. He wanders around the unpleasant city, becomes a target for ridicule from the local children, and completely forgets the way home. For his troubles, Eugene blames Peter, who built the city in an inappropriate place and thereby exposed people to mortal danger. In despair, the madman threatens the bronze idol: “Too bad for you!..” Following that inflamed consciousness, he hears a heavy and ringing “jumping” on the stones of the pavement and sees a Horseman rushing after him with an outstretched hand. After some time, Evgeniy is found dead at the threshold of his house and buried. This is how the poem ends.

Element as a full-fledged hero

What role does the element play here, which does not depend on human will and is capable of destroying everything to the ground? Researchers of the story are convinced that, by dividing people, it connects times with a certain metaphorical chain of cause and effect. It combines two plots of the story - external and internal - eventful and symbolic. as if awakening the energy of the elements, which on the external plane destroys destinies and impedes human happiness. The resolution of this conflict lies in the fact that the gap between the greatness of the sovereign's plans and the spiritual space of the personality of the common man is overcome and closed. These are the problems of Pushkin’s work “The Bronze Horseman”, the history of the creation of the poem and the beginning of the mystical series of “St. Petersburg” stories and novels with which the creators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would saturate Russian literature.

Poem and monument

The opening of the monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg took place at the end of the summer of 1782. The monument, impressive with grace and grandeur, was erected by Catherine the Second. Above creation equestrian statue French sculptors Marie Anne Collot and Russian master Fyodor Gordeev worked, who sculpted a bronze snake under the frantic hoof of Petrov's horse. A monolith, nicknamed the thunder stone, was installed at the foot of the statue; its weight was slightly less than two and a half tons (the entire monument weighs about 22 tons). From the place where the block was discovered and found suitable for the monument, the stone was carefully transported for about four months.

After the publication of Alexander Pushkin’s poem, the hero of which the poet made this particular monument, the sculpture was named the Bronze Horseman. Residents and guests of St. Petersburg have an excellent opportunity to contemplate this monument, which, without exaggeration, can be called a symbol of the city, almost in its original architectural ensemble.

Reinhold Gliere - Waltz from the ballet "The Bronze Horseman"

The monument to Peter I, a bronze monument of a rider on a rearing horse flying to the top of a cliff, better known thanks to the poem by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin as “The Bronze Horseman”, is an integral part of the architectural ensemble and one of the most striking symbols of St. Petersburg...

The location of the monument to Peter I was not chosen by chance. Nearby are the Admiralty, the building of the main legislative body founded by the emperor. Tsarist Russia- Senate.

Catherine II insisted on placing the monument in the center of Senate Square. The author of the sculpture, Etienne-Maurice Falconet, did his own thing by installing the “Bronze Horseman” closer to the Neva.

By order of Catherine II, Falconet was invited to St. Petersburg by Prince Golitsyn. Professors of the Paris Academy of Painting Diderot and Voltaire, whose taste Catherine II trusted, advised to turn to this master.

Falcone was already fifty years old. He worked at a porcelain factory, but dreamed of great and monumental art. When an invitation was received to erect a monument in Russia, Falcone, without hesitation, signed the contract on September 6, 1766. Its conditions determined: the monument to Peter should consist of “mainly an equestrian statue of colossal size.” The sculptor was offered a rather modest fee (200 thousand livres), other masters asked twice as much.

Falconet arrived in St. Petersburg with his seventeen-year-old assistant Marie-Anne Collot. The vision of the monument to Peter I by the author of the sculpture was strikingly different from the desire of the empress and the majority of the Russian nobility. Catherine II expected to see Peter I with a rod or scepter in his hand, sitting on a horse like a Roman emperor.

State Councilor Shtelin saw the figure of Peter surrounded by allegories of Prudence, Diligence, Justice and Victory. I.I. Betskoy, who supervised the construction of the monument, imagined it as a full-length figure, holding a commander’s staff in his hand.

Falconet was advised to direct the emperor's right eye to the Admiralty, and his left to the building of the Twelve Colleges. Diderot, who visited St. Petersburg in 1773, conceived a monument in the form of a fountain decorated with allegorical figures.
Falcone had something completely different in mind. He turned out to be stubborn and persistent.

The sculptor wrote:

“I will limit myself only to the statue of this hero, whom I do not interpret either as a great commander or as a winner, although he, of course, was both. The personality of the creator, legislator, benefactor of his country is much higher, and this is what needs to be shown to people. My king does not hold any rod, he extends his beneficent right hand over the country he travels around. He climbs to the top of the rock, which serves as his pedestal - this is an emblem of the difficulties he has overcome.”

Defending the right to his opinion regarding the appearance of the Falcone monument, I.I. wrote. Betsky:

“Could you imagine that the sculptor chosen to create such a significant monument would be deprived of the ability to think and that the movements of his hands would be controlled by someone else’s head, and not his own?”

Disputes also arose around the clothes of Peter I. The sculptor wrote to Diderot:
“You know that I will not dress him in Roman style, just as I would not dress Julius Caesar or Scipio in Russian.”

Falcone worked on a life-size model of the monument for three years. Work on the "Bronze Horseman" was carried out on the site of the former temporary Winter Palace Elizaveta Petrovna. In 1769, passersby could watch here as a guards officer took off on a horse onto a wooden platform and reared it. This went on for several hours a day.

Falcone sat at the window in front of the platform and carefully sketched what he saw. The horses for work on the monument were taken from the imperial stables: the horses Brilliant and Caprice. The sculptor chose the Russian “Oryol” breed for the monument.

Falconet's student Marie-Anne Collot sculpted the head of the Bronze Horseman. The sculptor himself took on this work three times, but each time Catherine II advised to remake the model. Marie herself proposed her sketch, which was accepted by the empress. For her work, the girl was accepted as a member of the Russian Academy of Arts, Catherine II assigned her a lifelong pension of 10,000 livres.

The snake under the horse’s foot was sculpted by the Russian sculptor F.G. Gordeev.

Preparing the life-size plaster model of the monument took twelve years; it was ready by 1778.

The model was open for public viewing in the workshop on the corner of Brick Lane and Bolshaya Morskaya Street. Various opinions were expressed. The Chief Prosecutor of the Synod resolutely did not accept the project. Diderot was pleased with what he saw. Catherine II turned out to be indifferent to the model of the monument - she did not like Falcone’s arbitrariness in choosing the appearance of the monument.

For a long time no one wanted to take on the task of casting the statue. Foreign craftsmen demanded too much money, and local craftsmen were frightened by its size and complexity of work. According to the sculptor’s calculations, in order to maintain the balance of the monument, the front walls of the monument had to be made very thin - no more than a centimeter. Even a specially invited foundry worker from France refused such work. He called Falcone crazy and said that there was no such example of casting in the world, that it would not succeed.

Finally, a foundry worker was found - cannon master Emelyan Khailov. Together with him, Falcone selected the alloy and made samples. In three years, the sculptor mastered casting to perfection. They began casting the Bronze Horseman in 1774.

The technology was very complex. The thickness of the front walls had to be less than the thickness of the rear ones. At the same time, the back part became heavier, which gave stability to the statue, which rested on only three points of support.

Filling the statue alone was not enough. During the first, the pipe through which hot bronze was supplied to the mold burst. The upper part of the sculpture was damaged. I had to cut it down and prepare for the second filling for another three years. This time the job was a success. In memory of her, on one of the folds of Peter I’s cloak, the sculptor left the inscription “Sculpted and cast by Etienne Falconet, a Parisian in 1778.”

The St. Petersburg Gazette wrote about these events:

“On August 24, 1775, Falconet cast a statue of Peter the Great on horseback here. The casting was successful except in places two feet by two at the top. This regrettable failure occurred through an incident that was not at all foreseeable, and therefore impossible to prevent.

The above-mentioned incident seemed so terrible that they feared that the entire building would catch fire, and, consequently, the whole business would fail. Khailov remained motionless and carried the molten metal into the mold, without losing his vigor in the least in the face of danger to his life.

Falcone, touched by such courage at the end of the case, rushed to him and kissed him with all his heart and gave him money from himself.”

According to the sculptor’s plan, the base of the monument is a natural rock in the shape of a wave. The shape of the wave serves as a reminder that it was Peter I who led Russia to the sea. The Academy of Arts began searching for the monolith stone when the model of the monument was not yet ready. A stone was needed whose height would be 11.2 meters.

The granite monolith was found in the Lakhta region, twelve miles from St. Petersburg. Once upon a time, according to local legends, lightning struck the rock, forming a crack in it. Among local residents The rock was called "Thunder Stone". That’s what they later began to call it when they installed it on the banks of the Neva under famous monument.

Split boulder - suspected fragment of Thunder Stone

The initial weight of the monolith is about 2000 tons. Catherine II announced a reward of 7,000 rubles to the one who comes up with the most effective method deliver the rock to Senate Square. From many projects, the method proposed by a certain Carbury was chosen. There were rumors that he had bought this project from some Russian merchant.

A clearing was cut from the location of the stone to the shore of the bay and the soil was strengthened. The rock was freed from excess layers, and it immediately became lighter by 600 tons. The thunder-stone was hoisted with levers onto a wooden platform resting on copper balls. These balls moved on grooved wooden rails lined with copper. The clearing was winding. Work on transporting the rock continued in both cold and hot weather.

Hundreds of people worked. Many St. Petersburg residents came to watch this action. Some of the observers collected fragments of stone and used them to make cane knobs or cufflinks. In honor of the extraordinary transport operation, Catherine II ordered the minting of a medal on which it was written “Like daring. January 20, 1770.”

The poet Vasily Rubin wrote in the same year:

The Russian Mountain, not made by hands, is here,
Hearing the voice of God from the lips of Catherine,
Came to the city of Petrov through the Neva abyss
And she fell under the feet of the Great Peter.

By the time the monument to Peter I was erected, the relationship between the sculptor and the imperial court had completely deteriorated. It got to the point that Falcone was credited with only a technical attitude towards the monument. The offended master did not wait for the opening of the monument; in September 1778, together with Marie-Anne Collot, he left for Paris.

The installation of the “Bronze Horseman” on the pedestal was supervised by the architect F.G. Gordeev. Grand opening monument to Peter I took place on August 7, 1782 (old style). The sculpture was hidden from the eyes of observers by a canvas fence depicting mountain landscapes. It had been raining since the morning, but it did not stop a significant number of people from gathering on Senate Square. By noon the clouds had cleared. The guards entered the square.

The military parade was led by Prince A.M. Golitsyn. At four o'clock, Empress Catherine II herself arrived on the boat. She climbed onto the balcony of the Senate building in a crown and purple and gave a sign for the opening of the monument. The fence fell, and to the beat of drums the regiments moved along the Neva embankment.

By order of Catherine II, the following is inscribed on the pedestal: “Catherine II to Peter I.” Thus, the Empress emphasized her commitment to Peter's reforms. Immediately after the appearance of the Bronze Horseman on Senate Square, the square was named Petrovskaya.

"Bronze Horseman" sculpture in his poem of the same name named A.S. Pushkin, although in fact it is made of bronze. This expression has become so popular that it has become almost official. And the monument to Peter I itself became one of the symbols of St. Petersburg.

The weight of the “Bronze Horseman” is 8 tons, the height is more than 5 meters.

Legend of the Bronze Horseman

Since its installation, it has become the subject of many myths and legends. Opponents of Peter himself and his reforms warned that the monument depicts the “horseman of the Apocalypse,” bringing death and suffering to the city and all of Russia. Peter's supporters said that the monument symbolizes the greatness and glory of the Russian Empire, and that Russia will remain so until the horseman leaves his pedestal.

By the way, there are also legends about the pedestal of the Bronze Horseman. According to the sculptor Falcone, it was supposed to be made in the shape of a wave. Suitable stone was found near the village of Lakhta: supposedly a local holy fool pointed out the stone. Some historians find it possible that this is exactly the stone that Peter climbed more than once during the Northern War in order to better see the location of the troops.

The fame of the Bronze Horseman spread far beyond the borders of St. Petersburg. One of the remote settlements had its own version of the origin of the monument. The version was that one day Peter the Great amused himself by jumping on his horse from one bank of the Neva to the other.

The first time he exclaimed: “Everything is God’s and mine!”, and jumped over the river. The second time he repeated: “Everything is God’s and mine!”, and again the jump was successful. However, the third time the emperor mixed up the words and said: “Everything is mine and God’s!” At that moment, God's punishment overtook him: he became petrified and forever remained a monument to himself.

The Legend of Major Baturin

During the Patriotic War of 1812, as a result of the retreat of Russian troops, there was a threat of the capture of St. Petersburg by French troops. Concerned about this prospect, Alexander I ordered particularly valuable works of art to be removed from the city.

In particular, State Secretary Molchanov was instructed to take the monument to Peter I to the Vologda province, and several thousand rubles were allocated for this. At this time, a certain Major Baturin secured a meeting with the Tsar’s personal friend, Prince Golitsyn, and told him that he and Baturin were haunted by the same dream. He sees himself on Senate Square. Peter's face turns. The horseman rides off his cliff and heads through the streets of St. Petersburg to Kamenny Island, where Alexander I then lived.

The horseman enters the courtyard of the Kamenoostrovsky Palace, from which the sovereign comes out to meet him. “Young man, what have you brought my Russia to,” Peter the Great tells him, “but as long as I’m in place, my city has nothing to fear!” Then the rider turns back, and the “heavy, ringing gallop” is heard again. Struck by Baturin’s story, Prince Golitsyn conveyed the dream to the sovereign. As a result, Alexander I reversed his decision to evacuate the monument. The monument remained in place.

There is an assumption that the legend of Major Baturin formed the basis of the plot of A. S. Pushkin’s poem “The Bronze Horseman”. There is also an assumption that the legend of Major Baturin was the reason that during the Great Patriotic War the monument remained in place and was not hidden, like other sculptures.

During the siege of Leningrad, the Bronze Horseman was covered with bags of earth and sand, lined with logs and boards.

Restorations of the monument took place in 1909 and 1976. During the last of them, the sculpture was studied using gamma rays. To do this, the space around the monument was fenced off with sandbags and concrete blocks. The cobalt gun was controlled from a nearby bus.

Thanks to this research, it turned out that the frame of the monument can still serve long years. Inside the figure was a capsule with a note about the restoration and its participants, a newspaper dated September 3, 1976.

Etienne-Maurice Falconet conceived The Bronze Horseman without a fence. But it was still created and has not survived to this day.

“Thanks to” the vandals who leave their autographs on the thunder stone and the sculpture itself, the idea of ​​restoring the fence may soon be realized.

compilation of material -

The last poem written by Pushkin in Boldin in October 1833 is the artistic result of his thoughts about the personality of Peter I, about the “St. Petersburg” period of Russian history. Two themes “met” in the poem: the theme of Peter, “the miraculous builder,” and the theme of the “simple” (“little”) man, the “insignificant hero,” which worried the poet since the late 1820s. The story of tragic fate an ordinary resident of St. Petersburg, who suffered during the flood, became plot basis for historical and philosophical generalizations related to the role of Peter in modern history Russia, with the fate of his brainchild - St. Petersburg.

“The Bronze Horseman” is one of Pushkin’s most perfect poetic works. The poem is written, like “Eugene Onegin,” in iambic tetrameter. Pay attention to the variety of its rhythms and intonations, its amazing sound design. The poet creates vivid visual and auditory images, using the richest rhythmic, intonation and sound capabilities of Russian verse (repetitions, caesuras, alliteration, assonance). Many fragments of the poem have become textbooks. We hear the festive polyphony of St. Petersburg life (“And the glitter and noise and talk of balls, / And at the hour of a bachelor’s feast / The hissing of foamy glasses / And the blue flame of punch”), we see the confused and shocked Eugene (“He stopped. / He went back and came back. / He looks... he walks... he still looks. / Here is the place where their house stands, / Here is a willow tree. There was a gate here, / They were blown away, you can see. Where is the house?”), we are deafened by “as if thunder roaring - / Heavy, ringing galloping / Along the shaken pavement.” “In terms of sound imagery, the verse of “The Bronze Horseman” has few rivals,” noted the poet V.Ya. Bryusov, a subtle researcher of Pushkin's poetry.

In a short poem (less than 500 verses) history and modernity are combined, private life hero with historical life, reality with myth. Perfection poetic forms and innovative principles of artistic embodiment of historical and modern material made “The Bronze Horseman” a unique work, a kind of “monument not made by hands” to Peter, Petersburg, the “St. Petersburg” period of Russian history.

Pushkin overcame genre canons historical poem. Peter I does not appear in the poem as a historical character (he is an “idol” - a sculpture, a deified statue), and nothing is said about the time of his reign. For Pushkin, the Peter the Great era was a long period in the history of Russia, which did not end with the death of the reformer Tsar. The poet turns not to the origins of this era, but to its results, that is, to modernity. The high historical point from which Pushkin looked at Peter was an event of the recent past - the St. Petersburg flood on November 7, 1824, “a terrible time,” which, as the poet emphasized, is “a fresh memory.” This is a living, not yet “cooled down” story.

The flood, one of many that have struck the city since its founding, is the central event of the work. The story of the flood shapes the first semantic plan of the poem is historical. The documentary nature of the story is noted in the author’s “Preface” and in the “Notes”. In one of the episodes, the “late tsar”, the unnamed Alexander I, appears. For Pushkin, the flood is not just bright historical fact. He looked at it as a kind of final “document” of the era. This is, as it were, the “last legend” in her St. Petersburg “chronicle”, begun by Peter’s decision to found a city on the Neva. The flood is the historical basis of the plot and the source of one of the conflicts of the poem - the conflict between the city and the elements.

The second semantic plan of the poem is conventionally literary, fictional- given by the subtitle: “Petersburg Tale.” Eugene - central character this story. The faces of the remaining residents of St. Petersburg are indistinguishable. These are the “people” crowding on the streets, drowning during a flood (the first part), and the cold, indifferent St. Petersburg people in the second part. The real background of the story about the fate of Evgeniy was St. Petersburg: Senate Square, the streets and the outskirts where the “dilapidated house” of Parasha stood. Pay attention to. the fact that the action in the poem was transferred to the street: during the flood, Evgeny found himself “on Petrovaya Square”, home, in his “deserted corner”, he, distraught with grief, no longer returned, becoming an inhabitant of the streets of St. Petersburg. “The Bronze Horseman” is the first urban poem in Russian literature.

Historical and conventionally literary plans dominate in realistic story telling(first and second parts).

Plays an important role third semantic plane - legendary-mythological. It is given by the title of the poem - “The Bronze Horseman”. This semantic plan interacts with the historical in the introduction, sets off the plot narrative about the flood and the fate of Eugene, reminding itself from time to time (primarily with the figure of an “idol on a bronze horse”), and dominates at the climax of the poem (the Bronze Horseman’s pursuit of Eugene). A mythological hero appears, a revived statue - the Bronze Horseman. In this episode, St. Petersburg seems to lose its real outlines, turning into a conventional, mythological space.

The Bronze Horseman is unusual literary image. It is a figurative interpretation of a sculptural composition that embodies the idea of ​​its creator, sculptor E. Falcone, but at the same time it is a grotesque, fantastic image, overcoming the boundary between the real (“plausible”) and the mythological (“wonderful”). The Bronze Horseman, awakened by the words of Eugene, falling from his pedestal, ceases to be only an “idol on a bronze horse,” that is, a monument to Peter. He becomes the mythological embodiment of the “formidable king”.

Since the founding of St. Petersburg real story the city has been interpreted in a variety of myths, legends and prophecies. The “City of Peter” was presented in them not as an ordinary city, but as the embodiment of mysterious, fatal forces. Depending on the assessment of the personality of the tsar and his reforms, these forces were understood as divine, good, gifting the Russian people with a city-paradise, or, on the contrary, as evil, demonic, and therefore anti-people.

In the XVIII - early XIX V. Two groups of myths developed in parallel, mirroring each other. In some myths, Peter was represented as the “father of the Fatherland,” a deity who founded a certain intelligent cosmos, a “glorious city,” a “dear country,” a stronghold of state and military power. These myths arose in poetry (including odes and epic poems A.P. Sumarokova, V.K. Trediakovsky, G.R. Derzhavin) and were officially encouraged. In other myths that developed in folk tales and prophecies of schismatics, Peter was the spawn of Satan, the living Antichrist, and Petersburg, founded by him, was a “non-Russian” city, a satanic chaos, doomed to inevitable extinction. If the first, semi-official, poetic myths were myths about the miraculous founding of the city, with which the “Golden Age” began in Russia, then the second, folk, were myths about its destruction or desolation. “Petersburg will be empty”, “the city will burn and drown” - this is how Peter’s opponents answered those who saw in Petersburg a man-made “northern Rome”.

Pushkin created synthetic images of Peter and St. Petersburg. In them, both mutually exclusive mythological concepts complemented each other. The poetic myth about the founding of the city is developed in the introduction, focused on literary tradition, and the myth about its destruction and flooding is in the first and second parts of the poem.

The originality of Pushkin's poem lies in the complex interaction of historical, conventionally literary and legendary-mythological semantic plans. In the introduction, the founding of the city is shown in two plans. First - legendary-mythological: Peter appears here not as a historical character, but as an unnamed hero of legend. He- founder and future builder of the city, fulfilling the will of nature itself. However, his “great thoughts” are historically specific: the city was created by the Russian Tsar “out of spite arrogant neighbor“, so that Russia could “open a window to Europe.” Historical semantic plan underlined by the words “a hundred years have passed.” But these same words envelop historical event mythological haze: in place of the story about how the “city was founded”, how it was built, there is a graphic pause, a “dash”. The emergence of the “young city” “from the darkness of the forests, from the swamps of blat” is like a miracle: the city was not built, but “ascended magnificently, proudly.” The story about the city begins in 1803 (this year St. Petersburg turned one hundred years old). Third - conventionally literary- the semantic plan appears in the poem immediately after the historically accurate picture of “darkened Petrograd” on the eve of the flood (the beginning of the first part). The author declares the conventionality of the hero’s name, hints at his “literariness” (in 1833 the first complete edition of the novel “Eugene Onegin” appeared),

Let us note that in the poem there is a change of semantic plans, and their overlap and intersection. Let us give several examples illustrating the interaction of the historical and legendary-mythological plans. The poetic “report” of the violence of the elements is interrupted by a comparison of the city (its name is replaced by a mythopoetic “pseudonym”) with a river deity (hereinafter our italics - Auto.): “the waters suddenly / Flowed into the underground cellars, / Channels rushed to the gratings, / And Petropol surfaced like Triton, / Waist-deep in water».

The enraged Neva is compared either to a frenzied “beast,” or to “thieves” climbing through the windows, or to a “villain” who burst into the village “with his ferocious gang.” The story of the flood takes on a folklore and mythological overtones. The water element evokes in the poet strong associations with rebellion and the villainous raid of robbers. In the second part, the story about the “brave merchant” is interrupted by an ironic mention of the modern myth-maker - the graphomaniac poet Khvostov, who “was already singing in immortal verse / The misfortune of the Neva banks.”

The poem has many compositional and semantic parallels. Their basis is the relationship established between the fictional hero of the poem, the water element, the city and the sculptural composition - “an idol on a bronze horse.” For example, a parallel to the “great thoughts” of the city founder (introduction) - “excitement different thoughts» Evgenia (part one). The legendary He thought about the city and state interests, Eugene - about simple, everyday things: “He will somehow arrange for himself / A humble and simple shelter / And in it he will calm Parasha.” The dreams of Peter, the “miraculous builder,” came true: the city was built, he himself became the “ruler of half the world.” Evgeniy’s dreams of family and home collapsed with the death of Parasha. In the first part, other parallels arise: between Peter and the “late tsar” (Peter’s legendary double “looked into the distance” - the tsar “in his thoughts with sorrowful eyes / looked at the evil disaster”); king and people ( sad king“he said: “The kings cannot cope with God’s elements” - the people “see God’s wrath and await execution”). The king is powerless against the elements, the distraught townspeople feel abandoned to the mercy of fate: “Alas! everything perishes: shelter and food! / Where will I get it?

Eugene, sitting “astride a marble beast” in the pose of Napoleon (“his hands clasped in a cross”), is compared with the monument to Peter:

And my back is turned to him

In the unshakable heights,

Above the indignant Neva

Standing with outstretched hand

Idol on a bronze horse.

A compositional parallel to this scene is drawn in the second part: a year later, the mad Eugene again found himself in the same “empty square” where the waves splashed during the flood:

He found himself under the pillars

Big house. On the porch

With a raised paw, as if alive,

The lions stood guard,

And right in the dark heights

Above the fenced rock

Idol with outstretched hand

Sat on a bronze horse.

In the figurative system of the poem, two seemingly opposite principles coexist - principle of similarity and principle of contrast. Parallels and comparisons not only indicate the similarities that arise between different phenomena or situations, but also reveal unresolved (and unresolvable) contradictions between them. For example, Eugene, fleeing the elements on a marble lion, is a tragicomic “double” of the guardian of the city, “an idol on a bronze horse” standing “in an unshakable height.” The parallel between them emphasizes the sharp contrast between the greatness of the “idol” raised above the city and the pitiful situation of Eugene. In the second scene, the “idol” himself becomes different: losing his greatness (“He is terrible in the surrounding darkness!”), he looks like a captive, sitting surrounded by “guard lions,” “above a fenced rock.” The “unshakable height” becomes “dark”, and the “idol” in front of which Eugene stands turns into a “proud idol”.

The majestic and “terrible” appearance of the monument in two scenes reveals the contradictions that objectively existed in Peter: the greatness of the statesman who cared for the good of Russia, and the cruelty and inhumanity of the autocrat, many of whose decrees, as Pushkin noted, were “written with a whip.” These contradictions are merged in a sculptural composition - the material “double” of Peter.

A poem is a living figurative organism that resists any unambiguous interpretations. All images of the poem are multi-valued images-symbols. The images of St. Petersburg, the Bronze Horseman, the Neva, and “poor Eugene” have independent meaning, but, unfolding in the poem, they enter into complex interaction with each other. The seemingly “cramped” space of a small poem expands.

The poet explains history and modernity, creating a capacious symbolic picture of St. Petersburg. "Grad Petrov" is not only historical scene, in which both real and fictional events unfold. St. Petersburg is a symbol of the Peter the Great era, the “Petersburg” period of Russian history. The city in Pushkin’s poem has many faces: it is both a “monument” to its founder, and a “monument” to the entire Peter the Great era, and an ordinary city in distress and busy with everyday bustle. The flood and the fate of Eugene are only part Petersburg history, one of the many stories suggested by the life of the city. For example, in the first part it is outlined, but not expanded story line, associated with the unsuccessful attempts of the military governor-general of St. Petersburg, Count M.A. Miloradovich and Adjutant General A.H. Benkendorf to help the city residents, to encourage them: “On a dangerous path among rough waters/ The generals set out / To save him and were overwhelmed with fear / And the people were drowning at home.” This was written about in the historical “news” about the St. Petersburg floods, compiled by V.N. Verkh, to which Pushkin refers in the “Preface.”

The St. Petersburg world appears in the poem as a kind of closed space. The city lives according to its own laws, outlined by its founder. It’s like a new civilization, opposed to both wild nature and the old Russia. The “Moscow” period of its history, symbolized by “old Moscow” (“porphyry-bearing widow”), is a thing of the past.

St. Petersburg is full of sharp conflicts and insoluble contradictions. A majestic but internally contradictory image of the city is created in the introduction. Pushkin emphasizes the duality of St. Petersburg: it “ascended magnificently, proudly,” but “from the darkness of the forests, from the swamp of blat.” This is a colossal city, under which there is a swamp. Conceived by Peter as a spacious place for the coming “feast,” it is cramped: along the banks of the Neva, “slender masses are crowded together.” St. Petersburg is a “military capital,” but parades and the thunder of cannon salutes make it so. This is a “stronghold” that no one storms, and the Fields of Mars - the fields of military glory - are “amusing”.

The introduction is a panegyric to state and ceremonial St. Petersburg. But the more the poet talks about the lush beauty of the city, the more it seems that it is somehow motionless, ghostly. “Ships in a crowd” are “rushing towards rich marinas,” but there are no people on the streets. The poet sees “sleeping communities / Deserted streets.” The very air of the city is “motionless”. “The running of sleighs along the wide Neva”, “and the shine and noise and talk of balls”, “the hiss of foamy glasses” - everything is beautiful, sonorous, but the faces of the city residents are not visible. There is something alarming hidden in the proud appearance of the “younger” capital. The word “love” is repeated five times in the introduction. This is a declaration of love for St. Petersburg, but it is pronounced like a spell, a compulsion to love. It seems that the poet is trying with all his might to fall in love with the beautiful city, which evokes contradictory, disturbing feelings in him.

The alarm sounds in the wish to the “city of Peter”: “Beauty, city of Petrov, and stand / Unshakable, like Russia. / May the defeated elements make peace with you / And the defeated elements...” The beauty of the stronghold city is not eternal: it stands firmly, but can be destroyed by the elements. In the very comparison of the city with Russia there is a dual meaning: here is both a recognition of the steadfastness of Russia and a feeling of the fragility of the city. For the first time, the image of the water element, which has not been completely tamed, appears: it appears as a powerful living creature. The elements were defeated, but not “pacified.” “The Finnish waves,” it turns out, have not forgotten “their enmity and their ancient captivity.” A city founded “out of spite for an arrogant neighbor” can itself be disturbed by the “vain malice” of the elements.

The introduction outlines the main principle of depicting the city, implemented in two parts of the “St. Petersburg story” - contrast. In the first part, the appearance of St. Petersburg changes, as if its mythological gilding is falling off. The “golden skies” disappear and are replaced by “the darkness of a stormy night” and “a pale day.” This is no longer a lush “young city”, “full of beauty and wonder of the land”, but “darkened Petrograd”. He is at the mercy of the “autumn cold,” the howling wind, and the “angry” rain. The city turns into a fortress, besieged by the Neva. Please note: The Neva is also part of the city. He himself harbored evil energy, which was released by the “violent foolishness” of the Finnish waves. The Neva, stopping its “sovereign flow” in the granite banks, breaks free and destroys the “strict, harmonious appearance” of St. Petersburg. It’s as if the city itself is taking itself by storm, tearing its womb apart. Everything that was hidden behind the front facade of the “city of Peter” is exposed in the introduction, as unworthy of odic delight:

Trays under a wet veil,

Wrecks of huts, logs, roofs,

Stock trade goods,

The belongings of pale poverty,

Bridges demolished by thunderstorms,

Coffins from a washed-out cemetery

Floating through the streets!

People appear on the streets, “crowd in heaps” on the banks of the Neva, the Tsar comes out onto the balcony of the Winter Palace, Eugene looks with fear at the raging waves, worrying about Parasha. The city was transformed, filled with people, ceasing to be just a museum city. The entire first part is a picture of a national disaster. Petersburg was besieged by officials, shopkeepers, and poor hut dwellers. There is no rest for the dead either. The figure of an “idol on a bronze horse” appears for the first time. A living king is powerless to resist the “divine element.” Unlike the imperturbable “idol”, he is “sad”, “confused”.

The third part shows St. Petersburg after the flood. But the city's contradictions have not only not been eliminated, but have become even more intensified. Peace and tranquility are fraught with a threat, the possibility of a new conflict with the elements (“But the victories are full of triumph, / The waves were still seething angrily, / As if there was a fire smoldering underneath them"). The outskirts of St. Petersburg, where Evgeny rushed, resembles a “battlefield” - “the view is terrible,” but the next morning “everything returned to the same order.” The city again became cold and indifferent to people. This is a city of officials, calculating merchants, “evil children” throwing stones at the mad Eugene, coachmen lashing him with whips. But this is still a “sovereign” city - an “idol on a bronze horse” hovers above it.

The line of realistic depiction of St. Petersburg and the “little” man is developed in the “Petersburg stories” of N.V. Gogol, in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky. The mythological version of the St. Petersburg theme was picked up by both Gogol and Dostoevsky, but especially by the symbolists of the early 20th century. - Andrei Bely in the novel “Petersburg” and D.S. Merezhkovsky in the novel “Peter and Alexei”.

St. Petersburg is a huge “man-made” monument to Peter I. The city’s contradictions reflect the contradictions of its founder. The poet considered Peter an exceptional person: a true hero of history, a builder, an eternal “worker” on the throne (see “Stanzas”, 1826). Peter, Pushkin emphasized, is a solid figure in which two opposite principles are combined - spontaneously revolutionary and despotic: “Peter I is simultaneously Robespierre and Napoleon, the Incarnate Revolution.”

Peter appears in the poem in his mythological “reflections” and material incarnations. It is in the legend of the founding of St. Petersburg, in the monument, in the urban environment - the “hulks of slender” palaces and towers, in the granite of the Neva banks, in the bridges, in the “warlike liveliness” of the “amusing Fields of Mars”, in the Admiralty needle, as if piercing the sky. Petersburg - as if the will and deed of Peter were embodied, turned into stone and cast iron, cast in bronze.

The images of the statues are impressive images of Pushkin's poetry. They were created in the poems “Memoirs in Tsarskoye Selo” (1814), “To the Bust of the Conqueror” (1829), “The Tsarskoye Selo Statue” (1830), “To the Artist” (1836), and images of animated statues destroying people - in tragedy " Stone Guest"(1830) and "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel" (1834). The two material “faces” of Peter I in Pushkin’s poem are his statue, “an idol on a bronze horse,” and a revived statue, the Bronze Horseman.

To understand these Pushkin images, it is necessary to take into account the sculptor’s idea, embodied in the monument to Peter itself. Monument - complex sculptural composition. Its main meaning is given by the unity of horse and rider, each of which has its own meaning. The author of the monument wanted to show “the personality of the creator, legislator, benefactor of his country.” “My king does not hold any rod,” noted Etienne-Maurice Falconet in a letter to D. Diderot, “he extends his beneficent hand over the country he travels around. He climbs to the top of the rock, which serves as his pedestal - this is an emblem of the difficulties he has overcome.”

This understanding of the role of Peter partly coincides with Pushkin’s: the poet saw in Peter a “powerful lord of fate” who was able to subjugate the spontaneous power of Russia. But his interpretation of Peter and Russia is richer and more significant than the sculptural allegory. What is given in the sculpture in the form of a statement, in Pushkin sounds like a rhetorical question that does not have a clear answer: “Isn’t it true that you are above the abyss, / At the height, with an iron bridle / You raised Russia on its hind legs?” Pay attention to the difference in intonation of the author’s speech, addressed alternately to the “idol” - Peter and to the “bronze horse” - the symbol of Russia. “He is terrible in the surrounding darkness! / What a thought on my brow! What power is hidden in him! - the poet recognizes the will and creative genius of Peter, which turned into the brutal force of the “iron bridle” that reared up Russia. “And what fire there is in this horse! / Where are you galloping, proud horse, / And where will you land your hooves?” - the exclamation is replaced by a question in which the poet’s thought is addressed not to the country bridled by Peter, but to the mystery of Russian history and to modern Russia. She continues her run, and not only natural disasters, but also popular riots disturb Peter’s “eternal sleep.”

Bronze Peter in Pushkin's poem is a symbol of state will, the energy of power, freed from human beginning. Even in the poem “Hero” (1830), Pushkin called: “Leave your heart to the hero! What / He will do without him? Tyrant...". “The idol on a bronze horse” - “the pure embodiment of autocratic power” (V.Ya. Brusov) - is devoid of a heart. He is a “miraculous builder”; at the wave of his hand, Petersburg “ascended”. But Peter's brainchild is a miracle created not for man. The autocrat opened a window to Europe. He envisioned the future Petersburg as a city-state, a symbol of autocratic power alienated from the people. Peter created a “cold” city, uncomfortable for the Russian people, elevated above him.

Having pitted the bronze Peter against the poor St. Petersburg official Eugene in the poem, Pushkin emphasized that government and man are separated by the abyss. By leveling all classes with one “club”, pacifying the human element of Russia with an “iron bridle,” Peter wanted to turn it into submissive and pliable material. Eugene was supposed to become the embodiment of the autocrat’s dream of a puppet man, deprived of historical memory, who had forgotten both “native traditions” and his “nickname” (that is, surname, family), which “in bygone times” “perhaps shone / And under the pen of Karamzin / It sounded in native legends.” The goal was partly achieved: Pushkin’s hero is a product and victim of St. Petersburg “civilization”, one of the countless number of officials without a “nickname” who “serve somewhere”, without thinking about the meaning of their service, dreaming of “philistine happiness”: a good place , home, family, well-being. In the sketches of the unfinished poem “Yezersky” (1832), which many researchers compare with “The Bronze Horseman,” Pushkin gave a detailed description of his hero, descendant noble family, who turned into an ordinary St. Petersburg official. In "The Bronze Horseman" the story is about genealogy and Everyday life Evgeniya is extremely laconic: the poet emphasized the generalized meaning of the fate of the hero of the “Petersburg story”.

But Evgeny, even in his modest desires, which separate him from the imperious Peter, is not humiliated by Pushkin. The hero of the poem - a captive of the city and the “St. Petersburg” period of Russian history - is not only a reproach to Peter and the city he created, the symbol of Russia, numb from the angry gaze of the “formidable king”. Evgeniy is the antipode of the “idol on a bronze horse.” He has what the bronze Peter lacks: heart and soul. He is capable of dreaming, grieving, “fearing” for the fate of his beloved, and exhausting himself from torment. Deep meaning the poem is that Eugene is compared not with Peter the man, but with Peter’s “idol”, with a statue. Pushkin found his “unit of measurement” of unbridled, but metal-bound power - humanity. Measured by this measure, the “idol” and the hero become closer. “Insignificant” in comparison with the real Peter, “poor Eugene,” compared with a dead statue, finds himself next to the “miraculous builder.”

The hero of the “Petersburg story”, having become a madman, lost his social certainty. Eugene, who has gone mad, “dragged out his unhappy life, neither beast nor man, / Neither this nor that, nor the inhabitant of the world, / Nor a dead ghost...”. He wanders around St. Petersburg, not noticing humiliation and human anger, deafened by the “noise of internal anxiety.” Pay attention to this remark of the poet, because it is the “noise” in Eugene’s soul, which coincided with the noise of the natural elements (“It was gloomy: / The rain was dripping, the wind howled sadly”) awakens in the madman what for Pushkin was the main sign of a person - memory : “Eugene jumped up; remembered vividly / He remembered the past horror.” It is the memory of the flood he experienced that brings him to Senate Square, where he meets the “idol on a bronze horse” for the second time.

This climactic episode The poem, which ended with the Bronze Horseman chasing the “poor madman,” is especially important for understanding the meaning of the entire work. Starting with V.G. Belinsky, it was interpreted differently by researchers. Often in the words of Eugene addressed to the bronze Peter (“Good, miraculous builder! - / He whispered, trembling angrily, - / It’s too bad for you!..”), they see a rebellion, an uprising against the “ruler of half the world” (sometimes analogies were drawn between this episode and the Decembrist uprising). In this case, the question inevitably arises: who is the winner - statehood, embodied in the “proud idol,” or humanity, embodied in Eugene?

However, it is hardly possible to consider the words of Eugene, who, having whispered them, “suddenly set off headlong / to run,” a rebellion or an uprising. The words of the mad hero are caused by the memory that has awakened in him: “Eugene shuddered. The thoughts became clearer in him.” This is not only a memory of the horror of last year's flood, but above all historical memory, seemingly etched into him by Peter’s “civilization.” Only then did Eugene recognize “the lions, and the square, and the One / Who stood motionless / In the darkness with a copper head, / The One by whose fatal will / The city was founded under the sea.” Once again, as in the introduction, the legendary “double” of Peter appears - He. The statue comes to life, what is happening loses its real features, the realistic narrative becomes a mythological story.

Like a fairy-tale, mythological hero (see, for example, “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights,” 1833), the stupid Eugene “comes to life”: “His eyes became foggy, / A flame ran through his heart, / His blood boiled.” He turns into a Man in his generic essence (note: the hero in this fragment is never called Eugene). He, "formidable king", the personification of power, and Human, having a heart and endowed with memory, inspired by the demonic power of the elements (“as if overcome by black power”), came together in a tragic confrontation. In the whisper of a man who has regained his sight, one can hear a threat and a promise of retribution, for which the revived statue, “instantly burning with anger,” punishes the “poor madman.” A “realistic” explanation of this episode impoverishes its meaning: everything that happened turns out to be a figment of the sick imagination of the insane Eugene.

In the chase scene, the second reincarnation of the “idol on a bronze horse” takes place - He turns into Horseman of the Bronze. A mechanical creature, which has become pure embodiment power that punishes even a timid threat and reminder of retribution:

And illuminated by the pale moon,

Stretching out your hand on high,

The Bronze Horseman rushes after him

On a loudly galloping horse.

The conflict is transferred to the mythological space, which emphasizes its philosophical significance. This conflict is fundamentally insoluble; there cannot be a winner or a loser. “All night”, “everywhere” behind the “poor madman” “The Bronze Horseman / Jumped with a heavy stomp,” but the “heavy, ringing galloping” does not end with anything. A senseless and fruitless chase, reminiscent of “running in place,” has a deep philosophical meaning. The contradictions between man and power cannot be resolved or disappear: man and power are always tragically connected.

This conclusion can be drawn from Pushkin’s poetic “study” of one of the episodes of the “St. Petersburg” period of Russian history. The first stone in its foundation was laid by Peter I - the “powerful lord of fate”, who built St. Petersburg and new Russia, but failed to pull a person with an “iron bridle”. Power is powerless against “human, all too human” - the heart, memory and elements human soul. Any “idol” is only a dead statue that a Man can crush or, at least, make him fall from his place in unrighteous and impotent anger.

The monument to Peter I ("Bronze Horseman") is located in the center of Senate Square. The author of the sculpture is the French sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet.
The location of the monument to Peter I was not chosen by chance. Nearby are the Admiralty, founded by the emperor, and the building of the main legislative body of tsarist Russia - the Senate. Catherine II insisted on placing the monument in the center of Senate Square. The author of the sculpture, Etienne-Maurice Falconet, did his own thing by installing the “Bronze Horseman” closer to the Neva.
By order of Catherine II, Falconet was invited to St. Petersburg by Prince Golitsyn. Professors of the Paris Academy of Painting Diderot and Voltaire, whose taste Catherine II trusted, advised to turn to this master.
Falcone was already fifty years old. He worked at a porcelain factory, but dreamed of great and monumental art. When an invitation was received to erect a monument in Russia, Falcone, without hesitation, signed the contract on September 6, 1766. Its conditions determined: the monument to Peter should consist of “mainly an equestrian statue of colossal size.” The sculptor was offered a rather modest fee (200 thousand livres), other masters asked twice as much.

Falconet arrived in St. Petersburg with his seventeen-year-old assistant Marie-Anne Collot.
The vision of the monument to Peter I by the author of the sculpture was strikingly different from the desire of the empress and the majority of the Russian nobility. Catherine II expected to see Peter I with a rod or scepter in his hand, sitting on a horse like a Roman emperor. State Councilor Shtelin saw the figure of Peter surrounded by allegories of Prudence, Diligence, Justice and Victory. I. I. Betskoy, who supervised the construction of the monument, imagined it as a full-length figure, holding a commander’s staff in his hand. Falconet was advised to direct the emperor's right eye to the Admiralty, and his left to the building of the Twelve Colleges. Diderot, who visited St. Petersburg in 1773, conceived a monument in the form of a fountain decorated with allegorical figures.
Falcone had something completely different in mind. He turned out to be stubborn and persistent. The sculptor wrote: “I will limit myself only to the statue of this hero, whom I do not interpret either as a great commander or as a winner, although he, of course, was both. The personality of the creator, legislator, benefactor of his country is much higher, and this is her and it is necessary to show it to people. My king does not hold any rod, he extends his beneficent right hand over the country he travels around. He rises to the top of the rock that serves him as a pedestal - this is an emblem of the difficulties he has conquered."

Defending the right to his opinion regarding the appearance of the monument, Falcone wrote to I. I. Betsky: “Could you imagine that a sculptor chosen to create such a significant monument would be deprived of the ability to think and that the movements of his hands would be controlled by someone else’s head, and not his your own?"
Disputes also arose around the clothes of Peter I. The sculptor wrote to Diderot: “You know that I will not dress him in the Roman style, just as I would not dress Julius Caesar or Scipio in the Russian style.”
Falcone worked on a life-size model of the monument for three years. Work on “The Bronze Horseman” was carried out on the site of the former temporary Winter Palace of Elizabeth Petrovna. In 1769, passersby could watch here as a guards officer took off on a horse onto a wooden platform and reared it. This went on for several hours a day. Falcone sat at the window in front of the platform and carefully sketched what he saw. The horses for work on the monument were taken from the imperial stables: the horses Brilliant and Caprice. The sculptor chose the Russian “Oryol” breed for the monument.

Falconet's student Marie-Anne Collot sculpted the head of the Bronze Horseman. The sculptor himself took on this work three times, but each time Catherine II advised to remake the model. Marie herself proposed her sketch, which was accepted by the empress. For her work, the girl was accepted as a member of the Russian Academy of Arts, Catherine II assigned her a lifelong pension of 10,000 livres.

The snake under the horse’s foot was sculpted by the Russian sculptor F. G. Gordeev.
Preparing the life-size plaster model of the monument took twelve years; it was ready by 1778. The model was open for public viewing in the workshop on the corner of Brick Lane and Bolshaya Morskaya Street. Various opinions were expressed. The Chief Prosecutor of the Synod resolutely did not accept the project. Diderot was pleased with what he saw. Catherine II turned out to be indifferent to the model of the monument - she did not like Falcone’s arbitrariness in choosing the appearance of the monument.
For a long time, no one wanted to take on the task of casting the statue. Foreign craftsmen demanded too much money, and local craftsmen were frightened by its size and complexity of work. According to the sculptor's calculations, in order to maintain the balance of the monument, the front walls of the monument had to be made very thin - no more than a centimeter. Even a specially invited foundry worker from France refused such work. He called Falcone crazy and said that there was no such example of casting in the world, that it would not succeed.
Finally, a foundry worker was found - cannon master Emelyan Khailov. Together with him, Falcone selected the alloy and made samples. In three years, the sculptor mastered casting to perfection. They began casting the Bronze Horseman in 1774.

The technology was very complex. The thickness of the front walls had to be less than the thickness of the rear ones. At the same time, the back part became heavier, which gave stability to the statue, which rested on only three points of support.
Filling the statue alone was not enough. During the first, the pipe through which hot bronze was supplied to the mold burst. The upper part of the sculpture was damaged. I had to cut it down and prepare for the second filling for another three years. This time the job was a success. In memory of her, on one of the folds of Peter I’s cloak, the sculptor left the inscription “Sculpted and cast by Etienne Falconet, a Parisian in 1778.”
The St. Petersburg Gazette wrote about these events: “On August 24, 1775, Falcone cast a statue of Peter the Great on horseback here. The casting was successful except in places two feet by two at the top. This regrettable failure occurred due to an incident that could have been foreseen, and therefore prevented was not at all. The above-mentioned incident seemed so terrible that they were afraid that the entire building would catch fire, and, therefore, the whole business would fail. Khailov remained motionless and carried the molten metal into the mold, without losing his cheerfulness in the least at the danger presented to him for "Falcone, touched by such courage at the end of the case, rushed to him and kissed him with all his heart and gave him money from himself."
According to the sculptor’s plan, the base of the monument is a natural rock in the shape of a wave. The shape of the wave serves as a reminder that it was Peter I who led Russia to the sea. The Academy of Arts began searching for the monolith stone when the model of the monument was not yet ready. A stone was needed whose height would be 11.2 meters.
The granite monolith was found in the Lakhta region, twelve miles from St. Petersburg. Once upon a time, according to local legends, lightning struck the rock, forming a crack in it. Among the locals, the rock was called "Thunder Stone". That’s what they later began to call it when they installed it on the banks of the Neva under the famous monument.
The initial weight of the monolith is about 2000 tons. Catherine II announced a reward of 7,000 rubles to the one who comes up with the most effective way to deliver the rock to Senate Square. From many projects, the method proposed by a certain Carbury was chosen. There were rumors that he had bought this project from some Russian merchant.
A clearing was cut from the location of the stone to the shore of the bay and the soil was strengthened. The rock was freed from excess layers, and it immediately became lighter by 600 tons. The thunder-stone was hoisted with levers onto a wooden platform resting on copper balls. These balls moved on grooved wooden rails lined with copper. The clearing was winding. Work on transporting the rock continued in both cold and hot weather. Hundreds of people worked. Many St. Petersburg residents came to watch this action. Some of the observers collected fragments of stone and used them to make cane knobs or cufflinks. In honor of the extraordinary transport operation, Catherine II ordered the minting of a medal with the inscription “Like daring. January 20, 1770.”
The rock was dragged overland for almost a year. Further along the Gulf of Finland it was transported on a barge. During transportation, dozens of stonemasons gave it the necessary shape. The rock arrived at Senate Square on September 23, 1770.

By the time the monument to Peter I was erected, the relationship between the sculptor and the imperial court had completely deteriorated. It got to the point that Falcone was credited with only a technical attitude towards the monument. The offended master did not wait for the opening of the monument; in September 1778, together with Marie-Anne Collot, he left for Paris.
The installation of the Bronze Horseman on the pedestal was supervised by the architect F. G. Gordeev.
The grand opening of the monument to Peter I took place on August 7, 1782 (old style). The sculpture was hidden from the eyes of observers by a canvas fence depicting mountain landscapes. It had been raining since the morning, but it did not stop a significant number of people from gathering on Senate Square. By noon the clouds had cleared. The guards entered the square. The military parade was led by Prince A. M. Golitsyn. At four o'clock, Empress Catherine II herself arrived on the boat. She climbed onto the balcony of the Senate building in a crown and purple and gave a sign for the opening of the monument. The fence fell, and to the beat of drums the regiments moved along the Neva embankment.
By order of Catherine II, the following is inscribed on the pedestal: “Catherine II to Peter I.” Thus, the Empress emphasized her commitment to Peter's reforms.
Immediately after the appearance of the Bronze Horseman on Senate Square, the square was named Petrovskaya.
A. S. Pushkin called the sculpture “The Bronze Horseman” in his poem of the same name. This expression has become so popular that it has become almost official. And the monument to Peter I itself became one of the symbols of St. Petersburg.
The weight of the "Bronze Horseman" is 8 tons, the height is more than 5 meters.
During the siege of Leningrad, the Bronze Horseman was covered with bags of earth and sand, lined with logs and boards.
Restorations of the monument took place in 1909 and 1976. During the last of them, the sculpture was studied using gamma rays. To do this, the space around the monument was fenced off with sandbags and concrete blocks. The cobalt gun was controlled from a nearby bus. Thanks to this research, it turned out that the frame of the monument can serve for many years to come. Inside the figure was a capsule with a note about the restoration and its participants, a newspaper dated September 3, 1976.
Currently, the Bronze Horseman is a popular place for newlyweds.
Etienne-Maurice Falconet conceived The Bronze Horseman without a fence. But it was still created and has not survived to this day. “Thanks to” the vandals who leave their autographs on the thunder stone and the sculpture itself, the idea of ​​restoring the fence may soon be realized.

The history of creation and analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman" by A.S. Pushkin

History of creation The last poem written by Pushkin in Boldin in October 1833, the artistic result of his thoughts about the personality of Peter I, about the “St. Petersburg” period of Russian history. The main themes of the poem “The Bronze Horseman” The main themes of the poem: the theme of Peter, the “wonder-working builder,” and the theme of the “simple” (“little”) man, the theme of the relationship between the common man and the authorities.

The story of the flood forms the first historical semantic plan of the poem, which is emphasized by the words “a hundred years have passed.” The story about the city begins in 1803 (this year St. Petersburg turned one hundred years old). Flood is the historical basis of the plot and the source of one of the conflicts in the poem - the conflict between the city and the elements. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

The second semantic plan of the poem is literary, fictional, given by the subtitle: “The Petersburg Tale.” Eugene is the central character of this story. The faces of the remaining residents of St. Petersburg are indistinguishable. These are the “people” crowding on the streets, drowning during a flood (the first part), and the cold, indifferent St. Petersburg people in the second part. The real background of the story about Evgeniy’s fate was St. Petersburg: Senate Square, the streets and the outskirts, where the “dilapidated house” of Evgeniy’s beloved stood. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

The Bronze Horseman, awakened by the words of Eugene, falling from his pedestal, ceases to be only an “idol on a bronze horse,” that is, a monument to Peter. He becomes the mythological embodiment of the “formidable king”. Having pitted the bronze Peter against the poor St. Petersburg official Eugene in the poem, Pushkin emphasized that state power and people are separated by an abyss. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman" The third semantic plane, the legendary-mythological one, plays an important role. It is given by the title of the poem “The Bronze Horseman”. This semantic plan interacts with the historical one in the introduction, shades the plot narrative about the flood and the fate of Eugene, and dominates at the climax of the poem (the Bronze Horseman's pursuit of Eugene). A mythological hero appears, a revived statue of the Bronze Horseman.

Evgeniy is the antipode of the “idol on a bronze horse.” He has what the bronze Peter lacks: heart and soul. He is capable of dreaming, grieving, “fearing” for the fate of his beloved, and exhausting himself from torment. The deep meaning of the poem is that Eugene is compared not with Peter the man, but with Peter’s “idol”, with the statue. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

Eugene, who has gone mad, wanders around St. Petersburg, not noticing humiliation and human anger, deafened by the “noise of internal anxiety.” It is the “noise” in Eugene’s soul, coinciding with the noise of the natural elements (“It was gloomy: / The rain was dripping, the wind howled sadly”) that awakens the memory in the madman: “Eugene jumped up; remembered vividly / He remembered the past horror.” It is the memory of the flood he experienced that brings him to Senate Square, where he meets the “idol on a bronze horse” for the second time. This is the climax of the poem. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

This climactic episode of the poem, which ended with the Bronze Horseman chasing the “poor madman,” is especially important for understanding the meaning of the entire work. Often in the words of Eugene addressed to the bronze Peter (“Good, miraculous builder! / He whispered, trembling angrily, / For you! is the winner - statehood, embodied in the “proud idol”, or humanity, embodied in Eugene? However, Eugene’s words can hardly be considered a rebellion or rebellion. The words of the mad hero are caused by the memory that has awakened in him. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

In the chase scene, the second reincarnation of the “idol on a bronze horse” takes place. He turns into the Bronze Horseman. A mechanical creature gallops after Man, having become the pure embodiment of power, punishing even a timid threat and a reminder of retribution. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"

A senseless and fruitless chase, reminiscent of “running in place,” has a deep philosophical meaning. Contradictions between man and power cannot be resolved or disappear: man and power are always tragically connected. Pushkin, recognizing the greatness of Peter, defends the right of every person to personal happiness. The clash of the “little man” - the poor official Evgeniy - with the unlimited power of the state ends in the defeat of Evgeniy. The author sympathizes with the hero, but understands that the rebellion of a loner against the lord of fate is insane and hopeless. Analysis of the poem "The Bronze Horseman"