At the entrance. Analysis of the poem by N. S. Gumilyov “The Lost Tram. Analysis of Gumilyov’s poem “The Lost Tram” Gumilyov, Mashenka, you lived and sang here

I was walking down an unfamiliar street
And suddenly I heard a crow,
And the ringing of the lute, and distant thunder,
A tram was flying in front of me.

How I jumped on his bandwagon,
It was a mystery to me
There's a fiery path in the air
He left even in daylight.

He rushed like a dark, winged storm,
He got lost in the abyss of time...
Stop, driver,
Stop the carriage now!

Late. We've already rounded the wall,
We slipped through a grove of palm trees,
Across the Neva, across the Nile and Seine
We thundered across three bridges.

And, flashing by the window frame,
He cast an inquisitive glance after us
The poor old man is, of course, the same one
That he died in Beirut a year ago.

Where am I? So languid and so alarming
My heart beats in response:
“You see the station where you can
Should I buy a ticket to India of the Spirit?

Signboard... bloodshot letters
They say: “Green” - I know, here
Instead of cabbage and instead of rutabaga
They sell death's heads.

In a red shirt with a face like an udder
The executioner cut off my head too,
She lay with others
Here in a slippery box, at the very bottom.

And in the alley there is a boardwalk fence,
A house with three windows and a gray lawn...
Stop, driver,
Stop the carriage now!

Mashenka, you lived and sang here,
She wove a carpet for me, the groom,
Where is your voice and body now?
Could it be that you are dead?

How you moaned in your little room,
Me with a powdered braid
Went to introduce myself to the Empress
And I didn’t see you again.

Now I understand: our freedom
Only from there the light shines,
People and shadows stand at the entrance
To the zoological garden of the planets.

And immediately the wind is familiar and sweet
And across the bridge it flies towards me,
Horseman's hand in an iron glove
And two hooves of his horse.

The faithful stronghold of Orthodoxy
Isaac is embedded in the heights,
There I will serve a prayer service for health
Mashenki and a memorial service for me.

And yet the heart is forever gloomy,
It’s hard to breathe and it’s painful to live...
Mashenka, I never thought
How can you love and be so sad!

Analysis of the poem “The Lost Tram” by Gumilyov

The poems written during the period of “late Gumilyov” are complex and symbolic. Almost every one of them is a dive into oneself. “The Lost Tram” is one of these.

This verse is the author’s immersion into himself. Gumilyov had a negative attitude towards what was happening in the country. He was not happy with the revolution, and he believed that the country had been given over to the barbarians for torment. The name is absurd, because a tram cannot get lost, but in this poem the tram is a metaphor that implies the entire country, mired in lies and fictitious patriotism. “How I jumped on his bandwagon,” the poet notes. This is due to the fact that Gumilyov lived abroad for 10 months, and ended up in Russia by accident during the revolution and, because of his political convictions, became restricted from traveling abroad. At first, the poet did not intend to leave his homeland; on the contrary, he considered himself a witness to events that would bring real freedom to Russia, but a few years later he admitted that he would now have to live in a powerless state ruled by former peasants.

The poet goes mentally to the countries he loves, but at the same time he understands that he will not be happy even if he goes abroad. After all, memories of the horrors of the revolution will always haunt him in every corner of the world and cannot escape them.

Gumilyov assumes his death, and the executioner will be the same power of the peasants. But this one doesn’t overshadow him much. Much sadder is that his former Motherland, the former Russia, no longer exists and will never exist. And he is unable to change anything.

Mashenka, to whom the poet turns, is a collected image of that Russia before the revolution, which Gumilyov loved so much, the image of his real Motherland. And therefore he cannot come to terms with the fact that the past country cannot be returned back, but still exclaims, not believing, “Could it be that you are dead!” This suggests that Gumilyov hoped to the last that the peasant power would disappear and everything would return to its previous course, but at the same time he was well aware that nothing could be returned back.

This poem proves that Gumilyov will not participate in the farce that those same peasants called a bright future.” He demands: “Stop the tram!” But no one can stop him and the poet has to move on, bitterly realizing that the “house with three windows and a gray lawn” that flashed through the window will remain in the past forever. Only when the revolution occurred did the poet truly understand how dear that former country was to him! “I never thought it was possible to love and be sad so much.”

Maria Golikova
"The Lost Tram" by Nikolai Gumilyov. On the sources of images and paths of associations"
This poem is from Nikolai Gumilyov’s latest collection “Pillar of Fire”, one of the best in his work and one of the most famous. Literary scholars are very fond of analyzing it, which, of course, is not accidental: firstly, “The Lost Tram” attracts attention like any masterpiece, and secondly, it demonstrated Gumilyov’s truly colossal literary innovation for its time, on the one hand - and adherence to tradition on the other. And thirdly, in “The Lost Tram” Gumilyov’s references to some milestones of his life are visible, which makes us decipher the lines of this poem as if they were a disassembled puzzle, after putting it together, you can see something that previously remained hidden...
However, the legality of this approach will be discussed a little later. Before offering our own reading of this poem, let us outline the principles of approach to it. To begin with, let us turn to literary theory.
The primary task of the reader, as we know, is to try to understand the work as the author himself understood it.
In lyric poetry, in a poem, the plot-forming unit (unlike the epic and dramatic genres) is not an event, but an experience, a feeling, an emotion. In addition, the poem is metaphorical in its genre essence, and metaphor always gravitates towards a symbol, the depth of meaning of which is inexhaustible, it goes to infinity.
Consequently, to understand “The Lost Tram” as the author himself understood it does not mean searching for exact meanings for each image. On the contrary, this would be a big mistake in literary criticism, it would mean that we do not see the difference between lyrics and other types of literature at all and do not recognize the ambiguity and depth of metaphors... No, understanding a poem in this case means something completely different: an attempt to identify the context as much as possible, necessary for the manifestation of connections between the images of the poem. In other words, show the logic of this dream.
Another important point. Today, the cultural baggage of humanity is so great that around each symbol, each artistic image there is a huge field of associations, a huge prehistory and a long subsequent history. And you can talk about each image of “The Lost Tram” for a very long time, delving into interesting details and moving further and further from the poem... Where is the border at which you need to stop? Where is the criterion based on which one can separate the important from the secondary, the necessary from the unnecessary? Perhaps the only objective boundary is, again, the interconnections of images, the movement of emotions. If connections become obvious, this means that the context has been sufficiently restored. And if the appearance of this or that image is perceived as unreasonable, probably the reason for this is not in the image as such, not in its complexity, surprise or novelty, but in the fact that we have lost sight of one of the links in the semantic chain and did not catch the reasons for the appearance of this image... It should be noted that in the work of Nikolai Gumilyov in general and in “The Lost Tram” in particular, the emotional logic, the logic of development and change of images is truly impeccable - therefore, reading it from this position is very interesting.
It is worth turning to history and remembering how “The Lost Tram” was written. This is what Gumilyov’s student Irina Odoevtseva recalls:
“I picked up Gumilyov at 11 o’clock in the morning to go with him to the House of Arts.
He himself opened the kitchen door for me and was unnaturally happy about my arrival. He was in some unusually excited state. Even his eyes, usually sleepy and dull, shone strangely, as if he had a fever.
“No, we’re not going anywhere,” he said immediately. “I recently returned home and I’m terribly tired. I played cards all night and won a lot. We will stay here and drink tea.
I congratulated him on his win, but he waved his hand at me.
- Nonsense! You can congratulate me, but not on winning at all. After all, I am always lucky in cards, in war and in love.
“Is it always?...” I asked myself.
And he continued:

– You can congratulate me on the absolutely extraordinary poems that I composed while returning home. And so unexpectedly. – He thought for a moment. – I still don’t understand how this happened. I walked across the bridge over the Neva - dawn, and no one around. Empty. Only crows caw. And suddenly a tram flew past me very close. The sparks of the tram are like a fiery path at a pink dawn. I stopped. Something suddenly pierced me, it dawned on me. The wind blew in my face, and it was as if I remembered something that happened a long time ago, and at the same time, it was as if I saw what would happen next. But everything is so vague and tedious. I looked around, not understanding where I was and what was wrong with me. I stood on the bridge, holding onto the railing, then slowly moved further, home. And then it happened. I immediately found the first stanza, as if I had received it ready-made, and had not composed it myself. Listen:

I was walking down an unfamiliar street

And the ringing of lyres, and distant thunder -

A tram was flying in front of me.

I kept walking. I continued to recite line after line as if I were reading someone else's poem. Everything, everything to the end. Sit down! Sit down and listen!

I sit down right there at the kitchen table, and he, standing in front of me, excitedly reads:

It was a mystery to me.

This is not at all like his previous poems. This is something completely new, unprecedented. I am amazed, but he himself is no less amazed than me.

“It must be because I didn’t sleep all night, drank, played cards - I’m very gambling - and was extremely tired, which must be why I had such crazy inspiration.” I still can't get over it. My head is spinning. I’ll lie on the sofa in the office, and you try to boil the tea. Can you?..”

Irina Odoevtseva “On the banks of the Neva”.

It is necessary to pay attention to a very important literary fact, which some researchers, unfortunately, completely overlook: this poem was written by inspiration, in one breath. It is not at all one of those poems that are painstakingly and meticulously “constructed”, awaiting the same painstaking and meticulous analysis.

The logic of works written in one breath is always somewhat irrational and inexplicable. These, for example, are the best works of Pushkin. They are geniuses - and not a single critic in the world is able to “disassemble” them and prove, explain, and decompose them into their components of genius. This is why they are beautiful... Therefore, when encountering such works, it is advisable to approach them not with an attitude of partial analysis, but with an attitude of reading, maximum empathy and openness. To understand this poem, you need to go on a journey on the “Lost Tram” with the author and see where this path leads.

So, “The Lost Tram”:

I was walking down an unfamiliar street

And suddenly I heard a crow,

And the ringing of the lute, and distant thunder, -

A tram was flying in front of me.

How I jumped on his bandwagon,

It was a mystery to me

There's a fiery path in the air

He left even in daylight.

Stop, driver,

Stop the carriage now.

Late. We've already rounded the wall,

We slipped through a grove of palm trees,

Across the Neva, across the Nile and Seine

We thundered across three bridges.

And, flashing by the window frame,

He cast an inquisitive glance after us

The poor old man is, of course, the same one

That he died in Beirut a year ago.

My heart beats in response:

Buy a ticket to India of the Spirit?

They sell dead heads.

The executioner cut off my head too,

She lay with others

And in the alley there is a boardwalk fence,

Stop, driver,

Stop the carriage now!

She wove a carpet for me, the groom,

Me with a powdered braid

And I didn’t see you again.

Only from there the light shines,

People and shadows stand at the entrance

To the zoological garden of the planets.

And across the bridge it flies towards me

And two hooves of his horse.

The faithful stronghold of Orthodoxy

Isaac is embedded in the heights,

Mashenki and a memorial service for me.

“The Lost Tram” was written by Dolnik. Why was this particular meter chosen, and why are the uneven intervals between stressed syllables needed?

If you read “The Lost Tram” aloud, emphasizing or tapping the accents, you will hear that the rhythm of these accents is very similar to the sound of wheels hitting the joints of rails. Dolnik in “The Lost Tram” actually “voices” the movement of this tram, greatly enhancing the artistic effect...

And if we talk about the content, it immediately strikes the eye that the chronotope of the poem (the interconnection of temporal and spatial relations) is more than unusual. There are many attempts to interpret it. In order not to get confused and get lost among assumptions and conjectures, like Alice in Wonderland, it makes sense to first perceive the “logic of the dream,” the logic of the movement of the images of “The Lost Tram,” and only then interpret them. The most important thing in this process is to distinguish the source of the image from its meaning in the poem, and this meaning, in turn, is to be distinguished from the interpretations that the image creates by its appearance in the reader.

If we take, for example, the image of a tram, then its source will be, as we know from the testimony of Irina Odoevtseva and other memoirists, a real tram seen by Gumilev on the street of Petrograd in the morning; but between him and the tram from the poem (obviously of an otherworldly nature) there is a real abyss, they are simply from different worlds... We’ll talk about the influence of this image on Russian literature a little later.

The sounds accompanying the appearance of the tram, if we consider them literally, simply as sounds (the cry of birds, ringing, knocking, thunder) - are quite real; these were the sounds that accompanied the movement of any tram in Gumilyov’s time. But the wording of the poem indicates the distinctly symbolic nature of these sounds, thereby placing the entire poem into a symbolic frame of reference.

So, there are three sounds: the sound of a crow, the ringing of a lute, and distant thunder. Remember, in Mandelstam’s 1914 poem “I have not heard the stories of Ossian...” there was a “roll call of a raven and a harp”? There is a similar picture here, only with the addition of thunder. The lute in Gumilev’s world is a magical instrument; one can recall, for example, “Gondla”:

This lute always brought

Glory to the worst players

There is magical power hidden in it

Even wolves can make their hearts happy.

The lute, like the magic violin, is always a stable symbol for Gumilev of the poet’s mission (like the lyre in Pushkin’s poetry), as well as a sign of the legendary, conditionally medieval time in which a poet of any era lives. Crow's Edge - obviously: death, doom, fate, bad omen. Thunder is a war, a battle, earthly or heavenly, as well as a sign of the presence of supernatural power, as in the poem “I am polite to modern life...”:

Victory, glory, feat - pale

Words now lost

They thunder in my soul like copper thunder,

After all this, it is not surprising that the lyrical hero turns out to be a passenger on the tram against his will: “How I jumped on its bandwagon / Was a mystery to me.” This tram, which burst into reality with sounds - clear symbols of the otherworldly, represents a certain force that is much larger and more powerful than a person. It’s not for nothing that a fiery path remains in the air behind the tram... But what kind of force is this, and where is the tram going?

He rushed like a dark, winged storm,

He got lost in the abyss of time...

Stop, driver,

Stop the carriage now.

Note: there is a carriage driver, but he is indifferent and does not respond to the hero’s request to stop. And the chronotope in this stanza suddenly and terribly changes: just now the tram was on the street, albeit an unfamiliar one, and suddenly it is already rushing along “as a dark, winged storm.” The main thing, the key here, is that he “got lost in the abyss of time.”

This place provokes a variety of interpretations - from the understanding of the tram as a ghost ship (Elena Kulikova): as you know, the “Flying Dutchman” is also lost in time and rushes back and forth across the ocean... Or there is, for example, a version that in “The Lost Tram” “shows a journey through the afterlife, like Dante’s in “The Divine Comedy” (Yuri Zobnin) - the role of Virgil is played by an inexorable carriage driver, and then he is replaced by Beatrice - Mashenka... etc.

The main question that arises here has already been asked above: what is the cause and what is the effect? Where is the poet’s logic and intention, and where are our own reader’s associations? If we knew only “The Lost Tram” from Gumilyov’s entire work, we could speculate even more broadly and boldly. But we also know other verses. In the context of Gumilyov’s work, the “abyss of times” looks completely different, and this image has already been encountered in Gumilyov more than once. Here, for example, is the poem “Stockholm”:

Why did I dream about him, confused, discordant,

Born from the depths of not our times,

That dream about Stockholm, so restless,

This is almost not a happy dream...

Maybe it was a holiday, I don’t know for sure

But the bell kept ringing; the bell kept calling;

Like a powerful organ, shaken beyond measure,

The whole city was praying, humming, roaring.

I stood on the mountain, as if there were people

I wanted to preach about something,

And I saw clear quiet water,

Surrounding groves, forests and fields.

“Oh God,” I cried out in alarm, “what if

Is this country truly my homeland?

Was it not here that I loved and died here?

In this green and sunny country?

And I realized that I was lost forever

In the blind transitions of space and time,

And somewhere the native rivers flow,

To which my path is forever prohibited.

Here they are, “blind transitions of space and time,” in which the hero “got lost forever” - and it is no coincidence that the poem we are talking about is called “The Lost Tram.” The sounds also attract attention: in “Stockholm” you can also hear the ringing of a bell, a powerful hum and roar, as well as the sounds of prayer. Here one cannot help but recall the famous thesis expressed by Gumilyov in one of his “Letters on Russian Poetry”: “Poetry and religion are two sides of the same coin.” Prayer and singing of the poetic lyre, lute, and violin are almost equivalent in Gumilyov’s creative world.

Or take the poem “Egypt”. There is this stanza:

There, looking at the deserted river,

You will exclaim: “This is a dream!

I am not chained to our century,

If I see through the abyss of time.

Gumilyov wrote more than once about his out-of-dateness, “unchained to the century”:

I am polite to modern life,

But there is a barrier between us,

Everything that makes her, arrogant, laugh,

My only joy.

Notice that in the poem “I am polite to modern life...” - the sound of thunder also appears, “a thunderstorm in the trembling forests” - and the image of a prayer, albeit a prayer of savages addressed to their idol... This stable connection of images can be considered a recognizable feature of the poetic world Gumilyov.

Here we can see another very important cross-cutting motif: the motif of sleep. “This is a dream! / I’m not chained to our century...” - that’s right, the state of sleep seems to free up time, and instead of the one-dimensional familiar reality, the hero finds himself in the “abyss of time.” Here you can go even further and re-read, for example, the poem “Adam’s Dream”, in which the whole of human history turns out to be a very long dream... Or remember the poem “Eternal Memory”:

And that's all life! Whirling, singing,

Seas, deserts, cities,

Flickering reflection

Lost forever.

The flames are raging, the trumpets are blowing,

And the red horses fly,

Then exciting lips

They seem to be talking about happiness.

And here again delight and grief,

Again, as before, as always,

The sea waves its gray mane,

Deserts and cities rise.

When, finally, having risen

From sleep, I will be me again, -

A simple Indian dozing off

On a sacred evening by the stream?

“The Lost Tram” is, in this sense, also, of course, a dream. The only thing that makes the reader alarmed is that the hero dreams of his own life, rapidly rushing in front of him outside the windows of the tram.

Here one cannot help but turn to the poem “Worker,” written back in 1916, during the First World War. Here's the ending:

The bullet he cast will whistle

Above the gray, foaming Dvina,

The bullet he cast will be found

My chest, she came for me.

I'll fall, I'll be bored to death,

I will see the past in reality,

The blood will flow like a spring into the dry,

Dusty and crumpled grass.

And the Lord will reward me in full measure

For my short and bitter life.

I did this in a light gray blouse

A short old man.

“I will see the past in reality.” As you know, before death, in a few moments a person remembers with dazzling vividness, as if he sees his whole life, it rapidly flashes before him... “The Lost Tram” is a prophetic work, and not only because there is an episode of death, or rather, the execution of the hero (we will dwell on it in detail a little later), but also because this very rapid movement of the tram through the “abyss of time” looks like a detailed description of a dazzlingly vivid memory of one’s entire life before death. That is why the lyrical hero so persistently and anxiously asks the driver to stop - and that is why stopping turns out to be impossible every time...

Later in Russian literature this Gumilyov image will appear more than once. As K. Ichin pointed out, this will happen in Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” - there will be a tram that suddenly ceases to obey the driver, and a severed head... But now we would like to dwell in more detail on another famous novel. The image of a tram from Gumilyov’s poem will be very interestingly and deeply revealed in the finale of Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”, in the scene of the death of the main character (I. Smirnov noted this remarkably accurately). Yuri Zhivago dies on a tram, a thunderstorm rumbles, he looks out the window:

“Yuri Andreevich remembered school problems on calculating the time and order of trains running at different hours and traveling at different speeds, and he wanted to remember the general method of solving them, but nothing came of it, and, without completing them, he skipped over these memories to other, even more complex thoughts.

He thought about several existences developing side by side, moving at different speeds next to each other, and about when someone's fate overtakes the fate of another in life, and who outlives whom. Something like the principle of relativity presented itself to him in everyday life, but, completely confused, he abandoned these connections too.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. The unfortunate tram has once again gotten stuck on the descent from Kudrinskaya to Zoologichesky...”

It is very likely that “The Lost Tram” creatively influenced Boris Pasternak, and responded in “Doctor Zhivago” precisely with the theme and feeling of death - as well as the just cited “complex reflections” about time, “about several existences developing side by side,” about the “principle relativity on the lists of life”...

These reflections are nothing more than Gumilyov’s main artistic technique in “The Lost Tram.” A technique that was completely new to Russian poetry at that time. Valery Shubinsky rightly notes that “The Lost Tram” became the herald of “Russian semantic poetics” - which is why many did not understand it and tried to interpret it “the old fashioned way”, looking for some real prototypes for the images of the poem. So, Anna Akhmatova thought that the old man who flashed outside the window of the “lost tram”, “who died in Beirut a year ago”, was “probably a real person”... Maybe so, maybe not - in any case, in the poem this detail simply enhances the feeling of a disturbing dream. It is in a dream that the living and the dead mix so easily and naturally. How does the hero react to the appearance of the old man? He takes him for granted: “of course, the same one / Who died in Beirut a year ago.” The incredible in reality becomes self-evident in a dream.

It should be noted with sadness that some researchers today continue to engage in literal explanations of inexplicable things, going very far in their conclusions, but this approach is fundamentally wrong: several motives that are actually connected with reality in the poem are combined into an artistic whole in a whimsical way - in the same way It’s bizarre how the circumstances of daytime life are sometimes combined in a dream. A dream has a logic, only its own - and the daytime logic, the logic of reality, is unable to explain it, it can only destroy it...

“Neva, Nile and Seine” are signs of important places for Gumilyov: St. Petersburg, Egypt (and Africa in general) - and Paris. These places were significant for Gumilyov not only in life, but also in poetry. We will not dwell on them separately or give examples - this thesis is obvious and does not need proof.

Questions may arise here:

Where am I? So languid and so alarming

My heart beats in response:

Do you see the station where you can

Buy a ticket to India of the Spirit?

The lyrical hero asks this question after the speeding tram crossed the Neva, Nile and Seine. If you look for some parallels to this in reality, “interpret” this dream, it turns out that the hero asks: “Where am I?” after visiting different places in search of myself. Gumilyov himself traveled a lot, but it was St. Petersburg, Paris and Africa that turned out to be the most significant for him in terms of ideological and spiritual changes. They are the ones that are marked on his creative map more clearly and in more detail than other places...

And so, after searching for himself, searching for meaning, the lyrical hero asks the question: “Where am I?” - and his own heart answers him - “heart” in the biblical sense, the essence of a person, the voice of his soul. The heart speaks of the desire for “India of the Spirit” - that is, for spiritual reality, for spiritual realization. But the hero is not there yet, he is just getting ready to go there, wants to “buy a ticket” there... By the way, at the end of his life Gumilyov did not consider that he had already achieved something; on the contrary, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, he more than once said that he had everything ahead of him - he was just about to do the most important and significant thing... If we correlate this chain of images with reality, with real time, it turns out that the stanza about “India of the Spirit” describes not Gumilyov’s past, but the present - at that moment, that is, it describes the period when he was “The Lost Tram” was written - it corresponds to Gumilyov’s state of mind at that time... And what next? The answer is in the following verses:

Signboard... bloodshot letters

They say it’s green, I know it’s here

Instead of cabbage and instead of rutabaga

They sell dead heads.

In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,

The executioner cut off my head too,

She lay with others

Here, in a slippery box, at the very bottom.

We can talk for a long time about the sources of this image. R. D. Timenchik and S. V. Polyakova believe that its source was the work of Gauff, or more precisely, the fairy tale “Dwarf Nose”, in which the boy Jacob helped the witch carry cabbage heads - but, as it turned out, he was carrying severed human heads. In general, the mythological connection between round vegetables and the human head has been known since ancient times, and we will not dwell on it in more detail.

If we talk about the context of creativity, then this image is not new for Gumilyov; it was found, for example, in “African Hunt”: “The raid is over. At night, lying on a straw mat, I thought for a long time why I did not feel any remorse when killing animals for fun, and therefore my blood connection with the world only grew stronger from these killings. And at night I dreamed that for participating in some kind of Abyssinian palace coup, my head was cut off, and I, bleeding, applauded the executioner’s skill and rejoiced at how simple, good and not painful it all was.” For participation in a palace coup, that is, in a conspiracy...

As for the origin of this image in “The Lost Tram,” we would venture to suggest a different source of its origin, albeit associated with the same mythologeme. In the medieval Netherlands there was a legend that adults loved to tell to children who were dissatisfied with their appearance. Its essence is this: those who do not like their heads and faces can go to the city of Eeklo. There is a bakery there where they cut off people’s heads and instead put a head of cabbage on their necks to stop the bleeding (whatever, it’s the head) - and in the meantime they make another one from the cut off head, mold a new face on it, like from dough, and bake it in the oven like bread. True, no one guarantees that the updated head will be better than the previous one: it may not be baked, then it will be difficult to think, and the person will remain a fool; if the head, on the contrary, is kept in the oven, it will be “hot”, and its owner will recklessly indulge in all sorts of serious things; and also, of course, the head can bake unevenly - then it will turn out to be a freak. Dutch artists have repeatedly illustrated this legend, and in a very naturalistic and colorful way. Gumilyov, as you know, was deeply interested in fine arts, loved to go to museums - and could see one of these paintings. In addition, in his youth he himself was dissatisfied with his appearance, as many memoirists recall - so, having learned this legend, he probably remembered it.

Images can be enlarged (will open in a new window):

Cornelis van Dalem and Jan van Wechelen. The Baker of Eeklo.

1530-1573 (Flanders)

After Cornelis van Dalem and Jan van Wechelen. The legend of the baker of Eeklo.

There is no documentary evidence of this version (as well as the version about Gauff’s fairy tale); none of the memoirists wrote about it. But the similarity is very great, in these paintings there is the entire figurative series from the scene in the poem: cabbage, and baskets with “cut off” heads, and an eerie mixture of a green shop with a scaffold (it looks least like a bakery), and in the center of one of paintings - a man “with a face like an udder”, in a red shirt, with a human head in his hands...

Now let's return to the movement of images, to the logic of sleep. This stanza includes an associative chain: executioner - cut off heads - box or basket - guillotine - French Revolution - recent (for Gumilyov) revolution in Russia - revolt - “Russian revolt, senseless and merciless” - XVIII century, Pushkin, “The Captain's Daughter” ... In relation to the time of the appearance of “The Lost Tram,” the revolution had literally just happened (the poem dates back to the end of 1919, although some of Gumilev’s contemporaries attributed it to 1920 or even 1921).

By the way, in the finale of “The Captain’s Daughter” there is also a scene with the beheading: Grinev “was present at the execution of Pugachev, who recognized him in the crowd and nodded his head to him, which a minute later, dead and bloody, was shown to the people...”

And in the alley there is a boardwalk fence,

A house with three windows and a gray lawn...

Stop, driver,

Stop the carriage now!

Mashenka, you lived and sang here,

She wove a carpet for me, the groom,

Could it be that you are dead?

How you moaned in your little room,

Me with a powdered braid

I went to introduce myself to the Empress

And I didn’t see you again.

One cannot fail to note the poetic beauty of the transition from the previous stanzas about the “green shop” to the new topic - this transition is very cinematic...

And now let’s return briefly to Irina Odoevtseva’s memoirs “On the Banks of the Neva”:

“This is almost a miracle,” said Gumilyov, and I agree with him. All fifteen stanzas were composed in one morning, without changes or amendments.

However, he changed one stanza. In the first version he read:

I know, languishing in mortal melancholy,

You repeated: Come back, come back!

Me with a powdered braid

I went to introduce myself to the Empress.

How you moaned in your little room...

Mashenka was called Katenka that first morning. Katenka turned into Mashenka only a few days later, in honor of the “Captain’s Daughter,” out of love for Pushkin.

Makovsky’s guess that “Mashenka” is a memory of Gumilyov’s cousin who died early is incorrect, like most such guesses...”

Indeed, many researchers - starting with S.K. Makovsky, who was the first to make such an assumption - insist that the prototype of Mashenka was Maria Kuzmina-Karavaeva, Gumilyov’s cousin, who died early, at the age of 23, from tuberculosis.

This, again, is not a question about the image, but about the sources of the image, and here we have the right to reason only in terms of the possible, the assumed; and the assertion that the image of Mashenka specifically in the artistic world of the poem refers to Maria Kuzmina-Karavaeva - or to any other specific person (for example, to Anna Akhmatova - Yu. L. Krol's version) - seems to us at least controversial and unreasonable. This connection was not entirely obvious even to the author, hence the creative search and replacement of the heroine’s name.

After all, with any version, the question arises, where did “Katenka” come from in the original version of the poem? We don’t know this - Katenka was not among the women close to Gumilyov. This point usually causes frustration among interpreters, since it prevents them from building a consistent logical chain, showing the dependence of the poem’s images on people close to the poet, and demonstrating prototypes. But the fact is that there is no such dependence. “Katenka” could have appeared from anywhere, the impetus for the emergence of this image could have been a meeting with someone, finally, just a randomly heard name that for some reason was remembered... “The Lost Tram” in every possible way resists analysis according to the principles of “daytime logic”, the logic of reality . But in a dream it’s not even possible; combinations of dream elements are natural for the sleeper, but after the dream ends, they may seem bizarre, absurd, and strange.

If we talk not about the sources of images, but about their role in the poem, then we again see here a change in the places of the living and the dead, natural and normal, however, for this poetic “dream”, and in its own way consistent and even prophetic. We also see the antithesis, the opposition between Mashenka and the Empress, and the ensuing tragic mistake of the lyrical hero, who goes to introduce himself to the Empress without listening to Mashenka’s pleas, which leads to some kind of fatal outcome, to separation. This outcome is not described in terms of events, but in the emotions of the poem one senses the irreparability associated with the death of one of this couple - either the lyrical hero, or Mashenka - both options are heard in the text...

This can be interpreted in different ways. In any case, everything is built on an antithesis. If you look at the semantics of the images, the antithesis turns out to be approximately the following: on the one hand, the private (“in the alley there is a plank fence, / A house with three windows and a gray lawn”), personal, modest, artless, associated with love (Mashenka), and on the other – official, demanding (Empress), solemn (powdered braid), significant, prestigious, associated with power, attractive - it’s not for nothing that the hero prefers to a quiet life with Mashenka a trip to the Empress, which ultimately turns out to be disastrous... The connection with the realities of Gumilyov’s own life can be traced here, but, in our opinion, it lies not in the possible projections of the image of Mashenka on women close to Gumilyov, but in the very essence of this choice - and in accordance with some circumstances of the last years of Gumilyov’s life. However, this is a topic for a separate study and conversation.

Some researchers generally deny the connection between the 18th century theme in “The Lost Tram” and Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter” - for example, Yuri Zobnin shares this opinion. But, in our opinion, the textual connections between these works are consistent and very convincing.

In addition to the moment of Pugachev’s execution already quoted above, it is worth noting the following parallel: “And in the alley there is a plank fence, / A house with three windows and a gray lawn...” - cf. with “The Captain's Daughter”: “I looked in all directions, expecting to see formidable bastions, towers and ramparts; but I didn’t see anything except a village surrounded by a log fence...” And a little further in the story a modest “wooden house” appears.

Yuri Zobnin, calling for the external similarity of the motives of the story and the poem (we are talking, of course, only about the theme of the 18th century), points to the “inverted” plot in the poem that does not correspond to Pushkin’s story as the main argument against the connection of Gumilyov’s text with Pushkin’s text - and we We believe that this is precisely the argument for such a connection: after all, in the world of “The Lost Tram” we have already encountered similar “transformations”, such as, for example, the image of the old man “who died in Beirut a year ago.” The logic of sleep is consistently opposite to the logic of reality.

In the plot of the poem, the lyrical hero acts as if in the role of Petrusha Grinev “in reverse” - he goes to the Empress, and Mashenka asks him not to go - whereas in the story, as you know, Mashenka asks the Empress for him and thereby saves him from execution on charges in revolt. “The Empress demands you to come to court. How did she find out about you? How can you, mother, introduce yourself to the empress?” (my italics – M. G.). In Gumilyov’s poem there is almost a quotation: “I went to introduce myself to the Empress.”

Speaking of this, it is difficult to resist the temptation to go beyond the actual analysis in order to continue the logical chain and note the amazing “rhymes” between the poetic reference to “The Captain’s Daughter” and the fate of Gumilyov himself. In Pushkin’s story, Pyotr Grinev was accused of having connections with the rebels: “an officer and a nobleman feasts in a friendly manner with the rebels, accepts gifts, a fur coat, a horse and half money from the main villain”... In addition to the accusation of involvement in a conspiracy, which was brought against Nikolai Gumilyov in the summer of 1921, The Cheka accused him of accepting money from the conspirators. The situation was aggravated by the fact that he was a former officer (it is known how the Cheka treated former officers of the tsarist army), moreover, in the questionnaire Gumilyov called himself a nobleman, although formally he was not a nobleman... And the ending of his own story turned out to be directly opposite to the ending of Grinev’s story - just as, in fact, the entire reference to “The Captain’s Daughter” in “The Lost Tram” is the opposite of “The Captain’s Daughter” itself. So this episode in the poem can be considered partly prophetic. Gumilyov really “saw what would happen next”...

Let us emphasize: these thoughts are beyond the scope of analysis of the poem. These are simply associative connections, which, however, are actualized during reading and therefore also deserve attention.

The theme of the 18th century in “The Lost Tram” is perceived as a relatively independent, complete plot with its own artistic world - like the previous plot with cut off heads and a green shop. And what it has in common with the world of the poem, with the artistic whole, is, of course, emotions. The emotional connection is not broken even for a second - despite the fact that the “scenery” of the episodes, their styles change, alternate very freely... There is another equally strong connecting link, this time of a semantic nature: the painful choice facing the lyrical hero.

In “The Lost Tram,” a situation of choice already arose at the moment when the path led the hero to the station, “where you can / Buy a ticket to the India of the Spirit.” There, the choice is indicated by the wording - not “I’ll buy a ticket,” for example, but “I can buy a ticket,” which means I don’t have to buy it... And it’s not for nothing that the heart beats “languidly and anxiously”: this is a state of choice and expectation, searching for an answer, accepting something very important solutions.

Throughout the journey of The Lost Tram, the theme of choice - or the inability to make a choice - is very important and very painful. It is not for nothing that the tragic request-exclamation of the lyrical hero is repeated twice: “Stop, carriage driver, / Stop the carriage now!” This is nothing more than an attempt to make a choice - with the complete impossibility of choice.

And here, in the episode with the 18th century, the lyrical hero has a choice, but something goes wrong. This choice is much less abstract than in the episode with the “station” - despite all the surprise and abstraction of the background, it is set in the 18th century... And Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter”, which partly inspired these stanzas, by and large, is also entirely devoted to the problem of a very difficult choice and its consequences, for which one has to answer.

So, the hero yearns that he made a mistake, deciding to go “introduce himself to the Empress”, he feels something fatal in this decision - after which extraterrestrial space, space, infinity opens up before him:

Now I understand: our freedom is

Only from there the light shines,

People and shadows stand at the entrance

To the zoological garden of the planets.

This “planetary” image is one of those repeated in Gumilyov’s lyrics. I immediately remember the poem “Memory”, which opens the collection “Pillar of Fire”:

And then a strange wind will blow

And a terrible light will pour from the sky,

This Milky Way blossomed unexpectedly

A garden of dazzling planets.

The consonance with “The Lost Tram” is obvious here and does not need proof. And if we talk about the source of this image, we assume that this source is of a linguistic nature.

As you know, Gumilyov had periods when he lived for a long time in Paris, where, in addition to museums, exhibitions, theaters and literary salons, he often visited the Botanical Garden - Jardin des plantes, literally translated from French - “garden of plants”. There were not only plants, but also animals - it was also a zoological garden, a zoo. Not a single philologist, seeing the sign “Jardin des plantes”, will deny himself the pleasure of mentally turning it into the “Garden of the Planets”, substituting only one letter in the name: “Jardin des planètes”. Gumilyov loved verbal games of this kind (which can be seen at least from the methods of his teaching in literary studios). So the idea of ​​a “zoological garden of the planets” could have been born in one of these trips to the Jardin des plantes, and in the imagination and in poetry it could have turned into a picture of a cosmic scale - just like a tram, accidentally seen on a Petrograd street, turned into a “lost tram "...

Another possible source of this image is Gumilyov’s long-standing interest in astronomy and astrology and an unusual habit that he described in “Notes of a Cavalryman”: “Sometimes we stayed in the forest all night. Then, lying on my back, I spent hours looking at the countless frost-clear stars and amused myself by connecting them in my imagination with golden threads. At first it was a series of geometric drawings, similar to an unrolled Cabal scroll. Then I began to discern, as if on a woven golden carpet, various emblems, swords, crosses, cups in combinations that were incomprehensible to me, but full of inhuman meaning. Finally, the heavenly beasts loomed clearly. I saw how the Big Dipper, lowering its muzzle, sniffs at someone’s footprint, how the Scorpio moves its tail, looking for someone to sting. For a moment I was overcome with an unspeakable fear that they would look down and notice our land there. After all, then it will immediately turn into an ugly piece of matte white ice and rush out of all orbits, infecting other worlds with its horror.” In the poem “Starry Terror” this fear of the night sky and its inhabitants is conveyed even more clearly:

Black, but with white eyes,

She rushed about furiously, howling:

- Woe! Woe! Fear, noose and pit!

Where am I? what's wrong with me? red swan

Chasing me... Three-headed dragon

Sneaking... Go away, animals, animals!

Cancer, don't touch me! Hurry from Capricorn!

And at the end of the poem the old man cries:

He mourned his fall

With the steepness, bumps on your knees,

Garra and his widow, and time

Previously, when people watched

To the plain where their flock grazed,

To the water where their sail ran,

On the grass where the children played,

And not into the black sky, where they shine

Inaccessible alien stars.

In Gumilyov’s lyrics, space is always full of life, but frightening and hostile to man; it is contrasted with the world of earthly concerns with its clarity and concreteness (this sounds almost like a contrast between symbolism and acmeism). Being interested in space, peering into it and thus getting closer to it is bad, it leads to misfortune; this is unnatural for a person, contrary to his nature - although the night sky attracts...

But let’s return to “The Lost Tram.” The key in the stanza about the “zoological garden of the planets,” of course, is “our freedom - / Only the light shining from there.” The tram took the lyrical hero beyond the boundaries of earthly life. And at the entrance to the cosmic garden there are “people and shadows” - living and dead - again, not for the first time in the poem, together, on equal terms... Considering the “hostility” of space to man in other works of Gumilyov, we can conclude that this picture of the entrance to “Garden of the Planets” is also one of the symbols of death, going beyond the boundaries of earthly existence. However, in this passage, death is understood not as the cessation of life, but as an exit to a higher level of life, to a place where there are no earthly limits and boundaries, to a place where real freedom is possible. “There is no death in the blue skies,” as they say in the poem “Gondla”...

And immediately the wind is familiar and sweet,

And across the bridge it flies towards me

Horseman's hand in an iron glove

And two hooves of his horse.

The faithful stronghold of Orthodoxy

Isaac is embedded in the heights,

There I will serve a prayer service for health

Mashenki and a memorial service for me.

And yet the heart is forever gloomy,

It’s hard to breathe and it’s painful to live...

Mashenka, I never thought

That you can love and be so sad.

Here, after entering the “garden of planets”, it becomes easier to understand “a prayer for Mashenka’s health and a memorial service for me” - the bitterness of the last stanzas, the last lines, is consonant with the bitterness of the meaning... And again, for the umpteenth time, in the poem they either change places, or the living and the dead are mixed and equalized. For earthly reality, the living is always the opposite of the dead, and for the higher reality these earthly states are not so significant. As it is said in the Gospel: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for with Him all are alive” (Luke 20:38). In “The Lost Tram”, in this sense, everyone is also alive - which emphasizes the unearthly nature of its coordinate system. This is a dream, but a special dream, the kind that can be seen only once, on the border of life and death - or in a state of some kind of revelation... The genre of “The Lost Tram” could be defined as revelation.

As for the artistic type of this text as a whole, the technique of superimposing plans is found in Gumilyov not only in “The Lost Tram”. There is an even more striking example - the poem “At the Gypsies,” written, according to Odoevtseva, “ten days” after “The Lost Tram.” It is noteworthy that “At the Gypsies” is not as popular among interpreters as “The Lost Tram.” However, this is understandable: the poem “At the Gypsies” is almost completely closed on itself, its figurative system, to a much lesser extent than the figurative system of “The Lost Tram,” is addressed to the circumstances of the poet’s life, and if such appeals are present, they are reliably covered with a layer multifaceted, complex associations.

And if we turn to the literary tradition, we will find a kind of premonition of this technique among the symbolists. For example, Alexander Blok also has a poem with an overlay of different time plans, with a clearly sounding theme of death and with a vivid allusion to Pushkin, a kind of forerunner of “The Lost Tram” - “Steps of the Commander”:

It flies by, splashing lights into the night,

Black, quiet, like an owl, engine,

Quiet, heavy steps

The Commander enters the house...

Gumilyov admired this poem by Blok (despite the lack of mutual understanding in personal communication with Blok), which Irina Odoevtseva remembered. So a certain influence of “The Commander’s Steps” on “The Lost Tram” is quite possible.

At the end of the conversation about “The Lost Tram,” we would like to once again turn to Irina Odoevtseva’s memoirs “On the Banks of the Neva”:

“Gumilyov himself really appreciated Tram.”

“Not only did he climb up the stairs,” he said, “but he even jumped seven steps at once.”

- Why seven? – I was surprised.

- Well, you should know why. After all, in “Prushed Glass” you have seven coffins, seven crows, the crow cawed seven times. Seven is a magical number, and my “Tram” is a magical poem.”

How difficult it is to discover something new in the world of art. After all, it seems that everything is known about both literature and poetry. At the beginning of the twentieth century, young N.S. Gumilev and S.M. Gorodetsky dared to say yours word in literature, organizing the so-called “Workshop of Poets”, which put forward a new concept of the Acmeists, which promoted the idea of ​​balance between the “earthly” and “heavenly”, between “life” and “being”. Simply put, Acmeism dared to argue with decadent views regarding the goals of literary creativity and the subject of depiction in art. Denying the mysticism and isolation from earthly life of the Symbolists, the Acmeists, on the contrary, proclaimed the significance of human earthly life. The beauty of nature and human feelings became the subject of close attention, and therefore the poet took on the role of a singer of the sun and wind, sea and mountains, fidelity and love.

“The struggle between Acmeism and symbolism... is, first of all, a struggle for this world, sounding, colorful, having shapes, weight and time...”, “the world is irrevocably accepted by Acmeism, in all its beauties and ugliness,” wrote S. Gorodetsky.

Symbolists tried to explain realities with the help of hints and heavenly signs, while Acmeists asserted the value of earthly life as such, not requiring any decoration. The word “Acmeism” itself meant nothing more than “the highest power of something,” “blooming power.” True values, according to Acmeists, are most life, and there is no limit to its perfection.

The poets accurately conveyed the beauty of real paintings, avoiding conventions and vague symbols; the poems themselves become different, understandable, tangible, earthly.

N.S. Gumilyov always treated poetry as a craft (this corresponded to the principles of Acmeism), and therefore the “polishing” of verse, the search for exact rhymes, clear composition, truthful depiction of reality, interest in history allowed him and his fellow writers to get closer to classical examples of literature, it was not for nothing that the Acmeists were credited with reviving the “golden age” of literature.

“The Lost Tram” was included in the poet’s last collection of poems, “Pillar of Fire,” which appeared in print in August 1921.

It is Gumilyov’s favorite work and more than a lyrical message. This is, first of all, an attempt to look at your life, to understand the events of our time, and also an opportunity to correlate today with past historical phenomena. That is why the work of N.S. Gumilyov is considered so complex and ambiguous and this or that image of the poet and his symbols are still interpreted differently.

The complexity of the poem is in its composition, in the system of artistic images, intonation pattern, the author’s vision of the world, and not only

Indeed, the events in “The Lost Tram” are conventionally divided into three main plans. The first of them is a story about a real tram, which rushes along its unusual path. The second plan is fantasy with numerous symbols and an attempt to predict the future of the hero. The third is of a philosophically generalized nature. Life appears there either in the everyday life of our time, or suddenly takes us into the distant past, where Pugachev’s time is seen through the images of Pushkin’s heroes of “The Captain’s Daughter.”

The very name “Lost Tram” is unusual and ambiguous. It is most likely connected with an attempt to understand what is happening, not to get lost in the abyss of time. Both the author and his hero are looking for answers to the questions posed by yesterday and today.

At the very beginning of the work, we find ourselves with the hero on an unfamiliar street. The sounds of crows and thunder alternate with the sounds of a lute, this noisy confusion foreshadows misfortune, and subsequent visions seem to live up to expectations. What could be more terrifying than the picture of a tram rushing towards you? The hero, without realizing what is happening, jumps onto the bandwagon of the iron monster, followed by a trail of fire.

The recklessness of the madman gives way to fear and the desire to jump off the bandwagon, since the flight of the “iron bird” through the winged, dark storm causes horror, and he asks:

Stop, driver,

Stop the carriage now.

It becomes obvious that the tram itself, as well as the fact that he himself suddenly appears among the passengers, is not a coincidence of circumstances, but something more, symbolic. The narrator’s life is seen in the image of a lost tram, and his desire to jump off the “bandwagon of fate” is nothing more than an attempt to avoid losses and losses in life. This is not the first time that a person tries to argue with fate, to deceive it, to be deceitful. But it's all in vain. The hero understands this. The words sound like a sentence:

Late…

And he is forced to surrender to His Majesty Chance, becoming a passive observer of his thorny path. His own life flies past him at incredible speed, and the hero sees it from the windows of a flying car.

The artistic space of a lyrical work is almost the entire globe and part of the cosmos. It contains real pictures: the same wall, which was rounded by a speeding tram, a board fence in an alley near a house with three windows and a gray lawn. But what we saw is not limited to this. It’s as if the hero is retracing his path through the familiar places of his past travels.

It is known that N.S. Gumilev visited Africa, Asia, and Europe, in particular Paris, which is why his companion manages to recognize familiar places and those three bridges over the Nile, Seine, and Neva in the fast flight of the tram. Pictures of the past are shrouded in romance and contrast with the ordinariness of the former city landscape. That “grove of palm trees” through which they rushed is only a fleeting vision that awakens the memory of happy and serene days.

But these bright pictures are suddenly replaced by a mystical vision of a beggar old man, “who died in Beirut a year ago.” There is no time to understand how this is possible. And the anxiety that the involuntary traveler experienced at the beginning of the poem intensifies again: his heart beats anxiously, and the question: “Where am I?” - emphasizes the hopelessness and tragedy of what is happening. Looking again at the city landscape, the hero notices the very station “where you can buy a ticket to the India of the Spirit.” But soon he disappears from view, and the traveler understands: it is impossible to escape from harsh reality, it is impossible to buy a ticket to the world of dreams and happiness.

The poet invented his India of the Spirit during his travels in the Middle East, when in his youth he wanted to break through the visible and material. This is a country where you can become a “spiritual seer,” “a contemplator of the secret essence of things.” It was possible to discover the mysteries of reality and decipher secret symbols only in that country, but getting there is a pipe dream.

The terrible reality of today falls upon the hero with fantastic visions. And the more fantasy there is in the bloody city, the more recognizable it is:

Signboard, blood-filled letters

They say: “Green” - I know, here

Instead of cabbage and instead of rutabaga

They sell dead heads.

The hero feels that the journey is coming to a tragic end; today unceremoniously invades his life. The fantastic picture of what is happening is filled with terrible naturalistic details and is so similar to the pictures of revolutionary Petrograd:

In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,

The executioner cut off my head too,

She lay with others

Here in a slippery box, at the very bottom

It is not surprising that the poem does not explain why the hero’s head is “cut off”; it happens as if by itself and is reminiscent of that troubled time when the innocent were sentenced to death, writing off their terrible deeds as “revolutionary necessity”.

What we saw is similar to the events of the century before last, namely the French Revolution of 1789. N.S. Gumilyov was interested in history and saw a striking similarity between “that” and “this” revolution. The execution of Louis, Robespierre among his comrades, who so quickly turned into his executioners, this whole upside-down world invades again in a new century and in another country with other rulers.

AND that, And this the revolution is not accepted by the hero. He does not want to be a puppet in the hands of the new rulers. But the forces are not equal, and, most likely, his destiny is to become a victim. The poet remembers the formidable words of Jean Paul Marat, who back in the 18th century, foreseeing the bloody reprisals of armed sans-culottes and guardsmen, asserted: “If you need to chop off five to six thousand heads ... even twenty thousand, you cannot hesitate for a single minute!”

The ugliness of this and that lawlessness is emphasized by the color scheme: bloody and then red are by no means synonymous. Red revolutions are stained with the blood of their compatriots, and that is why the executioner with a “face like an udder” and everything he does is so disgusting.

The poet, describing the execution of the hero, seems to have a presentiment of his own imminent death. Even earlier he wrote:

And I won't die on a bed,

With a notary and a doctor,

And in some wild crevice,

Drowned in thick ivy.

How similar one vision is to another, how terrifying is the anticipation of one’s own death.

The next part of the poem is the metamorphosis of the hero, where he is no longer he, but a literary character. In the image of Pyotr Grinev, the latter tries to understand the meaning of human existence, and it turns out that his discoveries are as old as the world. In sovereign Petersburg with the “stronghold of Orthodoxy” - Isaac and the monument to Peter - there is no consolation for the thinker. The most important thing in life, it turns out, is something else: your father’s house, your beloved girl, peaceful pictures of life. That is why the words of the hero, who fears most of all that he will not have time to see his bride, and that she is not in the house where she once lived, are so helpless and humanly understandable:

Could it be that you are dead?

The hero’s suffering reaches its climax, and he comes to the temple, where he tries to cope with mental pain:

There I will serve a prayer service for health

Mashenki and a memorial service for me.

The reversal of events and an attempt to understand how it is possible: to serve a memorial service for oneself and order a health service for the most likely deceased Mashenka is in fact a hard-won decision, born in the hero’s mind after long life cataclysms. The incineration of the soul, the inability to live according to the laws of terrible realities and accept them forced the sufferer to abandon any attempts to fight for life. And only the hope that his LOVE, perhaps, is still alive, is meaning life and will to those who will remain with these values ​​after him.

The hero's gaze is now turned to where

-...It’s only from there that the light shines...,

-People and shadows stand at the entrance

To the zoological garden of the planets.

The interpretation of this artistic image is complex and ambiguous.

On the one hand, the India of the Spirit, calling with the light of hope, again appears before our eyes, but the entrance to this country is too limited, and something else is seen in this image.

Border between that And this life, where people, having crossed the line, become shadows, rather resembles God's abode. True, it is not clear why an unknown country is called the “Zoological Garden of the Planets.” Traveling through the countries of the Middle East, the poet was familiar with the Indian religion, which argued that a person is obliged to live several lives, including the life of animals. The author of “The Giraffe,” in love with the exoticism of the southern countries, perhaps, in his neighborhood of people and animals, proclaims the “equality” of all living on earth, and this slogan of equality, perhaps, can be called the most courageous and humane ever voiced.

The last lines of the poem are filled with pain and suffering. The hero admits that “the heart is forever gloomy, and it’s hard to breathe, and it’s painful to live...” But this pain is the payment for the fact that he was lucky enough to meet love, and if he is the chosen one who experienced this divine feeling, then sadness and love are hard-won HAPPINESS .

Thus, the poet dots all the i’s and, as a prophet (as Anna Akhmatova called him), affirms eternal values love for a person.

Considering the poem as a work of art, one cannot help but note the poetic talent of N. Gumilyov, who was even earlier called “the magician and secret ruler of the world.” The emotional coloring of the verse, the tragedy of what is happening, forces the reader, unbeknownst to himself, to become almost the hero himself, living several lives, able to foresee events and even his own death. The plot and composition of the poem keep the reader in suspense, and the replacement of real pictures with fantastic ones carry a deep symbolic meaning and reveal the moral and philosophical aspect of the work. The hero’s addresses to his beloved and the tender name “Mashenka” make the narrator sentimental and sensual. The reader becomes imbued with compassion for him and accepts his ideals. All the images in the poem, the fruit of the poet’s imagination, are bright, unexpected, recognizable and new. The intonation pattern is full of dynamics and tragedy. The blows of fate, the cruel tread of history, sound most clearly in the rhythms of dactyl. And sound writing (alliteration) helps to see and hear the realities of revolutionary times, to feel the hero’s experiences:

Where am I? T ak T omno and T A To T anxiously

Ser d this is mine with T teach T in about T ve T…

In to r asna r uba w ke, with a face like an udder,

head with r went down h me too...

The poetics of N. S. Gumilyov is seen as a single whole: the form of the verse is connected with the content and vice versa - the meaning of the work selects the necessary forms and with the help of them focuses the reader’s attention on the most important and essential. Returning to the personality of the poet, we notice how firm the position of the author is, affirming enduring human values, despite new ideas, revolutions, and times. The time to live is the time to do good earthly deeds, according to Gumilyov, for you are born in the likeness of God, you are born person.

Nikolai Gumilyov negatively perceived the events that took place in Russia during the October Revolution. He was sure that blood and violence would not solve the simmering problems. In his opinion, the Russian lands had an extraordinary historical and cultural inheritance, therefore, they should not have been subjected to such a barbaric division and robbery.

After the events of the autumn revolution, the state plunged into complete chaos. There was chaos all around. The absence of censorship allowed the author to publish his creative work “The Lost Tram”. It was in the text of the poem that Nikolai Gumilev expressed his position.

Using a literary device such as metaphor, the author creates a title for his poem, which, in fact, cannot exist. After all, a tram can only travel on rails. It is absolutely impossible to get lost on the intended path. It is with this image that he compares the whole of Russia, which is completely drowned in lies and lies.

The line with the author’s surprise about “how I jumped on his bandwagon” really worries the poet. Indeed, due to the peculiarities of his nature, he spent 10–11 months traveling abroad. But it was precisely at the height of the October Revolution that he found himself on the territory of his homeland and became unable to travel abroad.

In the lines of the poetic work, the reader observes the author’s dreams of wanderings and journeys to his favorite countries, which so fascinated the poet’s soul. But now, after seeing the horror that was happening in Russia, after the bloodshed and so many deaths, Gumilev is unlikely to be able to find peace of mind in a foreign land. Impressions and terrible emotions will follow him everywhere.

In the work “The Lost Tram” the reader gets acquainted with the image of Mashenka. Who is she? I think the heroine has a collective image and is compared to Russia itself, which will not come back, which seems to have died. The author absolutely does not want to take part in such lawlessness. He exclaims: “Stop the tram!” But this is no longer possible. And the sad and completely joyless journey continues... All bright images and memories will remain in the past!

“The Lost Tram” Nikolai Gumilyov

I was walking down an unfamiliar street
And suddenly I heard a crow,
And the ringing of the lute, and distant thunder,
A tram was flying in front of me.

How I jumped on his bandwagon,
It was a mystery to me
There's a fiery path in the air
He left even in daylight.

He rushed like a dark, winged storm,
He got lost in the abyss of time...
Stop, driver,
Stop the carriage now.

Late. We've already rounded the wall,
We slipped through a grove of palm trees,
Across the Neva, across the Nile and Seine
We thundered across three bridges.

And, flashing by the window frame,
He cast an inquisitive glance after us
The poor old man, of course the same one,
That he died in Beirut a year ago.

Where am I? So languid and so alarming
My heart beats in response:
Do you see the station where you can
Buy a ticket to India of the Spirit?

Signboard... bloodshot letters
They say green, I know, here
Instead of cabbage and instead of rutabaga
They sell dead heads.

In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,
The executioner cut off my head too,
She lay with others
Here, in a slippery box, at the very bottom.

And in the alley there is a boardwalk fence,
A house with three windows and a gray lawn...
Stop, driver,
Stop the carriage now!

Mashenka, you lived and sang here,
She wove a carpet for me, the groom,
Where is your voice and body now?
Could it be that you are dead?

How you moaned in your little room,
Me with a powdered braid
I went to introduce myself to the Empress
And I didn’t see you again.

Now I understand: our freedom
Only from there the light shines,
People and shadows stand at the entrance
To the zoological garden of the planets.

And immediately the wind is familiar and sweet,
And across the bridge it flies towards me
Horseman's hand in an iron glove
And two hooves of his horse.

The faithful stronghold of Orthodoxy
Isaac is embedded in the heights,
There I will serve a prayer service for health
Mashenki and a memorial service for me.

And yet the heart is forever gloomy,
It’s hard to breathe and it’s painful to live...
Mashenka, I never thought
That you can love and be so sad.

Analysis of Gumilev’s poem “The Lost Tram”

Nikolai Gumilyov perceived the October Revolution very negatively, as he was convinced that building a new state on blood and lies was unacceptable. He has repeatedly publicly spoken out about the fact that Russia, with its rich cultural and historical heritage, has been given over to be torn to pieces by barbarians, who will sooner or later destroy all the best that has been created in the country by many generations of people. After the revolution in Russia, which Gumilev loved so much, complete anarchy reigned, against the background of which civil war was a completely natural phenomenon. At that moment no one thought about the foundations of the state - there was a banal struggle for power, cruel and merciless. Therefore, there was no censorship as such in the country, and in 1919 Gumilyov managed to publish the poem “The Lost Tram,” in which he outlined his civic position.

The very title of this work is absurd, since a tram traveling on rails cannot get lost. However, the author uses this expression as a metaphor, implying that such a tram is the entire country, mired in lies, utopian ideas and pseudo-patriotism. At the same time, the poet notes that it is still a mystery to him “how I jumped on his bandwagon.” Indeed, Gumilyov, accustomed to spending 10 months a year abroad, quite by chance ended up in his homeland at the height of the revolution. And he immediately became ineligible not only because of his political convictions, but also because of his noble origin. At first, the poet did not plan to leave his homeland, believing that he was an eyewitness to historical events that would bring true freedom to his country. However, after a few years, he completely abandoned illusions, realizing that from now on he would have to live in a powerless state ruled by yesterday’s peasants.

Therefore, in his poem, Gumilyov mentally travels to the countries he loves so much and understands that even if he goes abroad, he is unlikely to be truly happy. Memories of the horrors of the Russian revolution, famine, epidemics and fratricide will haunt him even in the most heavenly corners of the world, where previously the poet could find peace and peace of mind. In this poem, Gumilev for the first time predicts his imminent death, noting that his executioner will be a representative of the so-called power of workers and peasants “in a red shirt, with a face like an udder.” This fact does not particularly bother the poet, who, after two years of permanent residence in Russia, managed to come to terms with death. What worries Gumilyov much more is that there is nothing left of the old and patriarchal country in which he was born and raised.

The unknown Mashenka, whom Nikolai Gumilyov addresses in his poem “The Lost Tram,” is a collective image of that very pre-revolutionary Russia that the poet endlessly loved. Therefore, he cannot come to terms with the idea that the past cannot be brought back, and exclaims in bewilderment: “Could it be that you are dead!”

From this work it becomes obvious that Gumilyov does not want to participate in the farce called “bright future”, which is playing out before his eyes. Therefore, the author demands: “Stop the tram!” But no one can do this, and the poet continues his joyless and aimless journey, regretting only that the “house with three windows and a gray lawn” that flashed outside his windows will forever remain in the past. The poet also realizes how dear that old Russia is to him. And, turning to her, he notes: “I never thought that it was possible to love and be sad so much.”