What are the features of landscape descriptions in the ballad Svetlana. "Plot analysis of the ballad" Svetlana Genre and direction

The ballad "Svetlana" can rightly be considered a symbol of early Russian romanticism. The work has become so familiar to the reader, it reflects the national mentality so vividly that it is difficult to perceive it as a translation of a German ballad. Among the works of Zhukovsky, this creation is one of the best, it is no coincidence that in the literary society "Arzamas" Vasily Andreevich had the nickname "Svetlana".

In 1773, Gottfried Burger wrote his ballad "Lenora" and became the founder of this genre in Germany. Zhukovsky is interested in his work, he makes three translations of the book. In the first two experiments, the writer strives for a more national adaptation of the ballad. This is manifested even in the change of the name of the main character: in 1808 Zhukovsky gives her the name Lyudmila, and in 1812 - Svetlana. In the second transcription, the author makes a reworking of the plot on Russian soil. Later, in 1831, Zhukovsky created the third version of the ballad "Lenora" as close as possible to the original.

Zhukovsky dedicated the ballad "Svetlana" to his niece and goddaughter A.A. Protasova, it was a wedding gift: the girl was marrying his friend A. Voeikov.

Genre and direction

It is difficult to imagine the era of romanticism without the ballad genre, where the narration is presented in a melodious style, and supernatural events often occur with the hero.

Romanticism in the ballad "Svetlana" is represented quite widely. A characteristic feature of this era is the interest in folklore. In an effort to make history the most Russian, Zhukovsky does not deprive it of one of the main motives of German folk art - the kidnapping of the bride by a dead man. Thus, the fantastic in the ballad "Svetlana" belongs to two cultures: from the Russian the work received the theme of baptismal fortune-telling, and from the German - the bridegroom rising from the grave.

The ballad is rich in symbols of Russian folklore. For example, a raven is a messenger of death, a hut that gives a reference to Baba Yaga, whose dwelling is located on the border of the world of the living and the dead. The dove in the ballad symbolizes the Holy Spirit, who, like an angel, saves Svetlana from the darkness of hell. The crowing of a rooster dispels the spell of night darkness, announcing the dawn - everything returns to normal.

Another typical romanticist technique is sleep motivation. The vision puts the heroine before a choice: sincerely believe that God will help her fiancé return, or succumb to doubts and lose faith in the power of the Creator.

About what?

The essence of the ballad "Svetlana" is as follows: on Epiphany evening, girls traditionally gather to tell fortunes for their betrothed. But the heroine is not amused by this idea: she worries about her lover, who is at war. She wants to know if the groom will return, and the girl sits down for fortune-telling. She sees her beloved, the church, but then all this turns into a terrible picture: a hut, where there is a coffin with her beloved.

The plot of "Svetlana" ends prosaically: in the morning the girl wakes up from her sleep in confusion, she is frightened by an evil omen, but everything ends well: the groom returns unharmed. Here's what this piece is about.

Main characters and their characteristics

The story brings to the fore only one main character. The rest of the images in the ballad "Svetlana" are in a haze from a dream that has not dissipated, it is difficult to discern their characteristic features, because the main characters in this case are comparable to the scenery in the play, that is, they do not play an independent role.

At the very beginning of the work, Svetlana appears to the reader sad and anxious: she does not know the fate of her beloved. A girl cannot be as careless as her girlfriends, there is no place in her heart for girlish fun. For a year now, she has found the strength to righteously hope and pray that everything will be fine, but on Epiphany evening, curiosity takes precedence over righteousness - the heroine is guessing.

The characteristic of Svetlana Zhukovsky is presented as positive, not ideal, but exemplary. There is a detail in her behavior that fundamentally distinguishes her from the girls in other translations of the author himself and from the original Lenora. Upon learning of the death of her beloved, the bride does not grumble at God, but prays to the Savior. The state of mind of Svetlana at the moment of a terrible vision can be rather described as fright, but not despair. The main character is ready to come to terms with the "bitter fate", but just do not blame God for not hearing her.

Svetlana receives a reward for her perseverance - the groom returns to her: "The same love is in his eyes." A small number of lines about the groom gives reason to assume that this is a man of his word, faithful and honest. He deserves such a sincerely loving and kind bride.

Themes of the work

• Love. This theme permeates the ballad, in a way, it drives the plot, because it is love that provokes an Orthodox girl to fortune-telling. She gives strength to the bride to wait and hope for the return of the groom, perhaps Svetlana's feeling protects him from injury. The girl and her lover overcame a difficult test - separation, and their relationship only became stronger. Now ahead of them is a wedding and a long joint happiness.
• Faith. Svetlana sincerely believes in God, she has no doubt that prayer will save her lover. She saves the girl from the hellish embrace of a dead man, which Lenore, the heroine of the original ballad, could not avoid.
• Divination. This theme is presented in a very original way. Firstly, Svetlana does not observe a certain vision in the mirrors, everything that happens to her is only a dream. Secondly, the fortuneteller must remove the cross, otherwise the dark other world will not fully open to her, and our heroine - "with her cross in her hand." Thus, the girl cannot fully guess: even during this mystical sacrament, she prays.

the main idea

As you know, Zhukovsky has three options for translating Burger's ballad "Lenora", but why exactly "Svetlana" gained such popularity during the life of the writer and remains a relevant work to this day?

Perhaps the secret of the book's success is its idea and the way it is expressed. In a world where there is good and evil, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance are not easy for a person: he succumbs to excitement, doubt. But there is a way to gain confidence and inner harmony - this is faith.

Obviously, the option that has a happy ending was more attractive to the public. But it was precisely such a final that allowed Zhukovsky to more convincingly convey his author's position, because the meaning of the ballad "Svetlana" is that a person should always strive for enlightenment. The fate of the main character vividly illustrates the benefits that the saving power of sincere faith brings.

Problems

V.A. Zhukovsky, as an educated person, a teacher of Emperor Alexander II, was worried about the fact that Russians were almost never completely Orthodox. A man goes to church, but avoids a black cat, and when he returns home, having forgotten something, he looks in the mirror. Along with the Christian Easter, the pagan Maslenitsa is also celebrated, which continues to this day. Thus, religious issues come to the fore in the ballad "Svetlana".

Zhukovsky raises in the work the problem of superstitious ignorance, which has been relevant for Russians since the very moment of the adoption of Christianity. In his ballad, he drew attention to the fact that, celebrating the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, believing girls indulge in sinful fortune-telling. The author condemns this, but at the same time does not severely punish his beloved heroine. Zhukovsky only paternally scolds her: “What is your dream, Svetlana ...?”

Historicisms in Zhukovsky's "Svetlana"

The ballad "Svetlana" was written by Zhukovsky in 1812. Despite this, in general, it is read and perceived easily even today, but still contains obsolete words. It is also important to take into account the fact that Zhukovsky wrote his work at a time when the Russian literary language was still being formed, so the book contains both short forms of adjectives (wedding, tesovy) and non-vowel variants of some words (plats, gold), which gives solemnity and a certain archaism to the lyrical work.

The vocabulary of the ballad is rich in obsolete words: historicisms and archaisms.

Historicisms are words that have left the lexicon along with the named object. Here they are represented mainly by vocabulary related to the church:

many years - meaning "Many years" - a chant performed by the choir, as a rule, a cappella, on the occasion of a solemn holiday.

Podblyudny songs are ritual songs performed during divination, when a girl threw a personal item (ring, earring) into a saucer, accompanied by a special song.

Naloye is a type of reading table, also used as a stand for icons.

Zapona - white fabric, part of the priest's clothes.

Archaisms are obsolete words replaced by more modern ones:

1. ardent - fiery
2. Ryans are zealous
3. Mouth - lips
4. Founder - Founder
5. Incense - incense
6. to say - to say
7. Tesov - made from tes - specially processed thin boards
8. good - good

What does it teach?

The ballad teaches steadfastness and devotion, and most importantly, reverence for God's law. Sleep and awakening here cannot be understood only unambiguously: this is not only the physical state of a person: sleep is a delusion that excites the soul in vain. Awakening - insight, understanding of the true faith. According to the author, inner peace and harmony can be found by keeping the commandments of the Lord and firmly believing in the power of the Creator. Digressing from the Christian context, let's say that a person, according to Zhukovsky's morality, must be firm in his convictions, and doubts, constant throwing and despair can lead him to trouble and even death. Hope, perseverance and love lead to happiness, which is clearly illustrated by the example of the heroes of the ballad "Svetlana".

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Zhukovsky approved the ballad genre in Russian poetry. He introduced readers to the most outstanding examples of this genre in European literature: “The Cup”, “Knight Togenburg”, “Ivikov Cranes”, “Cassandra” by Schiller, “The Forest King” by Goethe, “Smalholm Castle” by W. Scott, “The Judgment of God on the Bishop” by Southey, “Roland the Squire” by Uhland, etc. At the same time, he created in “Lyudmila”, “S vetlane” national form of the ballad. During the debate about the essence of the new genre, in which Gnedich and Griboedov participated, Zhukovsky's name was at the center of literary disputes.

The image of Zhukovsky the “ballader” is known to us from the portrait of O. Kiprensky, where he is depicted against the backdrop of a mysterious landscape that is so frequent in his ballads: towers, castles, ditches, hills, foggy distance, and in the center is a pensive dreamer, looking up.

The aesthetics of the ballad is based on the idea of ​​a terrible event in the fate of a person, it is realized by romantics in the images of ghosts, the dead, who come to life in fobs; dead suitors galloping at night on horseback for the bride; Satan, who appears behind the soul of a sinner; villains who sold the soul of a child to the devil. The action takes place in a special semi-fantastic setting: a cemetery, open graves, cawing crows, a crimson moon illuminating dancing spirits or skeletons, a night forest, burning trees.

The poetics of the fantastic and the terrible, the atmosphere of mystery, the deliberately intricate problems of romantic ethics (justice, retribution, self-sacrifice, fidelity to duty, love and selflessness) are the main components of the new artistic world that opened up to the Russian reader in Zhukovsky's ballads.

Life as a constant opposition to fate, as a duel between a person and circumstances that prevail over him, the tragic doom of a person, the presence of the power of fate beyond the control of a person - such is the ethical and philosophical problematic of ballads.

The basis of the ballad plot lies in the overcoming of a barrier between this world and the other world by a person.

In the ballad Svetlana ”(published in the journal“ Vestnik Evropy ”in 1813) Zhukovsky made an attempt to create an independent work based in its plot on the national customs of the people - in contrast to the ballad“ Lyudmila ”, which was a free translation of the ballad of the German poet Burger“ Lenora ”. In Svetlana, the poet used an ancient belief about the divination of peasant girls on the night before Epiphany. At the beginning of the XIX century. divination has lost its original magical basis, becoming a favorite game of girls. The only way to change a girl's life in the past was her marriage, so the question of who would be her "betrothed" was very important. Zhukovsky refers only to some of the ancient girlish divination, since it is not the ethnographic completeness of the most ancient forms of ritual that is important to him, but new means for creating a national color in a poem. In the plot of “Svetlana”, girls throw a shoe over the gate, and whose of them will be picked up by the first random passerby, she will be the first to marry. Zhukovsky dedicated this ballad to his niece Alexandra Andreevna Voeikova, nee Protasova, offering it as a wedding gift.

Zhukovsky plunges into the sphere of folk legends and superstitions in the form in which they appeared in the minds of people at the beginning of the 19th century. The ballad also becomes a form of appeal of professional poets to images and plots drawn from folklore.

“Svetlana ” - an original ballad, indirectly connected with a series of European and Russian imitations of Burger's Lenore, since the plots have a similar semantic basis. Svetlana is also sad because of the long separation from her fiancé, and at midnight she wonders about the fate of her lover, wants to know how soon he will return to her. In a state of half-asleep, it seems to her that the suitors are coming to her and taking them away with them. Then they drive through the snow-covered steppe, and when they pass by the church, the heroine notices that a funeral service is taking place there. Finally, the bridegroom brings her to a secluded hut, entering which she sees a coffin, from which her dead bridegroom rises. Suddenly appeared "white dove" protects Svetlana from the dead. And then all the horrors disappear and seem to be canceled in their reality by the unexpected awakening of the heroine: she fell asleep during fortune-telling, all fears turned out to be a dream, and in reality the groom appears to her alive and unharmed, and the happiness of the meeting of the lovers becomes the plot ending of the ballad.

The structure of this ballad reflects the duality of the artistic method of this genre. At first, “Svetlana” is full of romantic pathos of mystery and miracle, and the poet subtly conveys the enthusiastic and at the same time timid state of feelings of a young soul, drawn by sweet fear to unexpected nightly events:

Shyness in her excites the chest,

She's scared to look back

Fear blurs the eyes...

A fire flared with a crackling sound,

The cricket cried plaintively,

Midnight Herald.

At the climax, the author violates the originally set national flavor, recreating a typically sentimentalist situation: a “snow-white dove”, full of exceptional sensitivity towards the girl, boldly saves her from a terrible dead man gnashing his teeth. As soon as the dove hugs her with wings, she wakes up and returns to her original reality. Such an ending extremely idealizes the situation, since it turns out that happiness accompanies everyone in reality, and misfortunes are possible only in a dream. This idealization is reinforced by a didactic summary:

Best friend to us in this life

Faith in Providence.

The blessing of the maker of the law:

Happiness is an awakening.

In contrast to Lyudmila, the heroine of the previously written ballad of the same name, which “cursed life” and “called the Creator to judgment”, Svetlana prays to the comforting angel to quench her sadness, and her requests are instantly heard. The original ballad tradition is contradicted by the rejection of fantasy, at the same time a playful and happy ending, and the introduction of real motivations. The poet removed a gloomy shade from the incident - an accidental dream temporarily overshadowed the heroine - and the tragedy (potential!) Remained unrealized. In the ballad Ludmila ” Zhukovsky pursues the idea of ​​humility more consistently. It does not have the fabulous complacency and external fantasy of heroic poems. Both heroes become toys in the hands of mysterious and merciless forces: the bride is waiting for the groom to return from the war, but after the return of the army she discovers that he is gone, and she grumbles at fate in despair. Then at night the ghost of the groom appears in front of her and takes her with him to the grave. Any moral standards known to man, in the world of a truly romantic ballad, lose their effectiveness in the face of the unknown and unknowable. In the ballad "Lyudmila" there is no promise of the triumph of justice, as was typical of folklore and educational literature of the 18th century. Lyudmila's protest causes an aggravation of punishment, a person becomes a slave of fate, to which he must humbly submit. The ending says that a person is powerless in the world of non-existence:

Zhukovsky's ballads opened up a romantic trend in Russian literature, created an original genre tradition: a fantastically tense course of events, a dramatized plot, a moralistic conclusion, and a frank conventionality of the author's position. After Zhukovsky in Russian poetry, the legendary nature of the historical-heroic plot became a necessary condition for the ballad genre.

He is one of the first Russian poets who created clear, simple and easy-to-read works. Prior to this, writers worked on the principle that the more difficult, the better. It is not easy for us to assess the scale of Vasily Andreevich's genius, because what seems quite acceptable and ordinary for us was surprising for the poet's contemporaries. In the 19th century, everyone was fond of sentimentalism, and Zhukovsky was no exception, so his work is a combination of this genre and folk.

An attempt to create a Russian folk ballad

An analysis of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana" shows that the author took the work of the German poet Burger as the basis for the plot. Vasily Andreevich always believed that Russians should learn from Western colleagues, but remake their works in accordance with folk customs and taking into account the peculiarities of the genre, the writer turned to the world of fairy tales, legends, fantasy and mysticism.

It should be noted that Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana" is completely different from other similar works. The content at first fills the reader with fear and horror from what is happening, but the end is joyful and happy. The main characters remain alive, their fate is developing remarkably, while in such famous ballads as "Lyudmila", "Forest King", there is a sense of drama.

Plot analysis of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana"

The work begins with a painting embellished by the author of the fortune-telling of girls at Christmas time. Vasily Andreevich, in order to make the image of Svetlana brighter, turned to sentimental poetry. The reader sees the girl modest, silent, sad. She grieves because she is separated from her beloved, but does not complain about her fate, but finds comfort in prayers. In the image of this girl, Zhukovsky wanted to embody the typical features inherent in the Russian people: religiosity, humility to fate, meekness.

An analysis of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana" shows that the author included features of romanticism and sentimentalism in his work. First, the girl sits in front of the mirror, wanting to see her betrothed there, then falls asleep. In a dream, she meets her fiancé, follows him, but the man seems somehow unusual. Only over time, the reader, together with Svetlana, understands that this is a dead fiance. When a girl finds herself in a hut near the coffin, she drives away otherworldly forces with her prayer, the white dove that flew onto her chest is a symbol of the Spirit of the Lord. Humility and humility will bring salvation and reward - this is the main theme of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana".

optimistic end

The work is written in a romantic-sentimental style. Romance includes a mystical dream, in which there is an image of a terrible dead groom, an ominous croak of a raven, night horse races, a dead light of the moon, a coffin in a hut, a lonely church. Sentimentalism includes the image of Svetlana's girlfriends, fortune-telling, and marriage. To emphasize this style, the poet uses nouns in a diminutive form. An analysis of Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana" shows that this work is optimistic. Whatever happens in a dream, in real life everything will be fine.

Nowhere does the originality of the creative personality of V. A. Zhukovsky appear with such vivid evidence as in ballads. It was his ballads that contributed to the exceptional popularity of this genre in Russia.

Based on the plot of the ballad of the German poet Burger "Lenora", Zhukovsky created two original works - the ballads "Lyudmila" and "Svetlana".

Not finding in Russian folklore the story of the dead groom (such a story came to Russia relatively late), the poet found such peculiar phenomena as Russian ritual poetry and Christmas divination, during which, according to popular beliefs, the bride is her future groom. Having based "Svetlana" the plot scheme of "Lenora", Zhukovsky significantly changed it, bringing it as close as possible to Russian folklore.

The ballad "Svetlana" begins with a description of Russian folk divination. The Russian atmosphere is also emphasized here by such realities as a room, a sledge, a church, a pope. The introduction itself contributes to the transfer of national color:

Once a Epiphany Eve
The girls guessed:
Shoe behind the gate
Taking off their feet, they threw ...

The author, being a great connoisseur of Russian folklore, imitates in the ballad the folk songs that the girls sang during Christmas divination on a saucer: "Blacksmith, // Forge me gold and a new crown, // Forge a golden ring." Throughout the ballad, Zhukovsky uses folk vernacular words and expressions, such as “say a word”, “lightly”, as well as phrases from folk songs (“my friend”, “the light is red”, “my beauty”).

Against this background, the appearance of a sweet, ingenuous and morally pure Svetlana looms. She is depicted either silently sad, yearning for her missing fiancé, or timidly shy, dying with fear during fortune-telling, or confusedly alarmed, not knowing what awaits her: joy or sorrow. The image of Svetlana is considered the first artistically convincing image of a Russian girl in Russian literature.

The saturation of the ballad with elements of Russian folklore is an important, but not the only feature of Zhukovsky's ballad creativity. In the presence of a pronounced realistic introduction, national Russian coloring and everyday realities, the defining pathos of the ballad is, of course, romantic. It manifests itself in the exclusivity of the event, in the rare charm of a rare heroine, a conditional landscape that emphasizes the unusualness of what is happening in time and space: “The moon shines dimly // In the dusk of fog”; “Everything around is empty”, “Around a snowstorm and a blizzard”. All the traditional signs of romanticism are present here, right down to the peculiarities of the language. Here and "black crow", and "black coffin", and "secret darkness of the coming days."

Late in the evening, the heroine of the ballad Svetlana, sitting in front of a mirror, dreams of a distant betrothed and imperceptibly falls asleep. In a dream, she has to go through several terrible moments. She sees the coffin, and in it - her fiancé. The falling asleep girl, worrying about the fate of her "dear friend", peers into the mirror, and before her eyes pass both a robber's den and a "replacement" groom, who turns out to be a murderer.

However, when Svetlana wakes up in the morning, she sees a sunny frosty landscape outside the window, hears a ringing bell, notices that a sleigh is entering the courtyard, and not a dead, but a living fiance of Svetlana is climbing onto the porch. So, everything gloomy and fantastic in the ballad is attributed by the author to the realm of sleep, and the plot gets a happy ending.

Zhukovsky replaced the real in the ballad with a hoax and gave the whole impression of fantasy. The heroine's nightmare is not a poetic joke or a parody of romantic horrors. The poet reminds the reader that life on earth is fleeting. Here Zhukovsky expresses an idea close to him of the predestination of human destiny. In Svetlana, to a lesser extent than in Lyudmila, the idea arises of the recklessness and even sinfulness of a person’s murmuring at his fate, for any sorrows and trials are sent down to him from above. The poet formulates the main idea of ​​the ballad in this way: "We are the best friend in this life // Faith in Providence."

And yet "Svetlana" is Zhukovsky's brightest ballad. Despite the fact that the author acts here as a romantic poet, moving away from the reality of life into the world of dreams and fantasy, he affirms the triumph of love over death, and the pathos of the work as a whole is joyful and optimistic.

In Zhukovsky's ballads, for the first time, the poetic and deeply dramatic world of folk legends, beliefs and tales opened up before the reader. Like his Western European counterparts in writing, the Russian poet, in turn, discovered layers of Russian folk fiction untouched by literature. Zhukovsky called them by the general term "superstitions". He highly appreciated Russian folk fiction, rightly considering it a real storehouse of plots and ideas. It was "superstition" that became the basis for the creation of the Russian national ballad.

The main artistic conflict of the ballad "Lyudmila".
"Lyudmila" is the first poem by Zhukovsky, which is a magnificent example of the romantic genre. The ballad "Lyudmila" is an example of a ballad of the initial period of romanticism. “Lyudmila” is a free translation of the ballad “Lenora” by the German poet Burger. In his version of this work, Zhukovsky gives it a greater degree of thoughtfulness and melancholy, enhances the moralistic element, affirms the idea of ​​humility before the will of God. The main idea of ​​the work is Christian in nature. It lies in the words of mother Lyudmila: “Heaven is a reward for humble retribution, hell is for rebellious hearts.” These words are the main idea of ​​the ballad. Lyudmila is punished for apostasy from the faith. Instead of a reward, eternal happiness, hell became her destiny. Lyudmila grumbled at God, and therefore died, that is, the heroine is punished for apostasy from the faith. The main motive of "Lyudmila" is the motive of fate, the inevitability of fate. Using the example of Lyudmila, the author shows that any resistance of a person to the fate prepared for him is useless and meaningless.
The very beginning of the poem clearly conveys to the reader the depth of the feelings of Lyudmila, who is waiting for her lover. She suffers from the unknown, waits, hopes, does not want to believe in the sad outcome of events.

Where are you, honey? What's wrong with you?

With alien beauty

Know in the far side

Changed, unfaithful, to me;

Ile untimely grave

Your bright gaze has been extinguished.

Lyudmila appears as a romantic heroine, whose life can be happy only if there is a loved one nearby. Without love, everything instantly loses its meaning, life becomes impossible, and the girl begins to think about death. Her very nature rebels against a cruel and unfair fate, the girl decides to grumble at her unfortunate lot, sending a protest to heaven.

Lyudmila's fiancé comes to her from that candle, taking her away with him. The poem describes a terrible mystical journey of a girl along with a dead man. The gradual forcing of an alarming, terrible, mystical situation allows the reader to feel the idea of ​​the poem as deeply as possible. The death of Lyudmila is, as it were, predetermined from the very beginning. She, in her recklessness, sent a curse to heaven, for which death was sent to her.

What, what is in the eyes of Lyudmila? ..

Oh, bride, where is your darling?

Where is your wedding crown?

Your house is a coffin; fiance is dead.

The role of landscape sketches.
As in elegies, landscape plays an important role in ballads. If in an elegy the landscape is called upon to set the reader's consciousness in the way the author needs, to prepare the reader's consciousness, then in the ballad the landscape is fundamentally different; it is intended to describe a complex, elusive transition, a border between two worlds. Zhukovsky outlines the opposition of heaven and earth, top and bottom.
The landscape reveals strange mystical changes that have taken place in the world after midnight.
The ballad "Svetlana" has a characteristic romantic landscape - evening, night, cemetery - a plot based on the mysterious and terrible (German romantics loved such plots), romantic motifs of graves, resurrecting dead, etc. All this looks partly conditional and bookish, but not at all like a book was perceived by the reader.
Interesting in the ballad "Svetlana" and colors. The entire text is permeated with white: it is, first of all, snow, the image of which arises immediately, from the first lines, the snow that Svetlana dreams of, a blizzard over the sleigh, a blizzard all around. Next is a white scarf used during divination, a table covered with a white tablecloth, a snow-white dove, and even a snowy sheet that covers the dead man. White color is associated with the name of the heroine: Svetlana, light, “white light”. Zhukovsky has white here, undoubtedly a symbol of purity and purity.

The second contrasting color in the ballad is not black, but rather dark: it is dark in the mirror, dark is the distance along which the horses rush. The black color of the terrible ballad night, the night of crimes and punishments, is softened and brightened in this ballad.

Thus, white snow, dark night and bright dots of candlelight or eyes - this is a kind of romantic background in the ballad "Svetlana".

The author's position in the ballad and ways of expressing it.
After the appearance of the 1811 ballad "Svetlana", Zhukovsky became "Svetlana's singer" for many readers. The ballad became a particularly significant fact in his own life. He not only remembers Svetlana, but also perceives Svetlana, but also perceives her as if real, dedicates poems to her, conducts friendly, sincere conversations with her:
Dear friend, be calm
Your path is safe here:
Your heart is the guardian!
Everything is given by fate in it:
It will be here for you
Luckily the leader

What is the originality of Zhukovsky's style?

For Romantic Zhukovsky, lyricism of a special song type becomes characteristic, which significantly expanded the expressive possibilities of Russian lyrics: a diverse range of moods in a song and a romance is expressed more naturally, more freely and diversely, not subject to strict genre regulation.
Zhukovsky showed himself as an artist, seeking to recreate the inner world of his hero. This is how the poet conveys Lyudmila's emotional experiences: anxiety and sadness for a sweetheart, hope for a date, sorrow, despair, joy, fear. Images and motifs complement the romantic flavor of the work: night, mirage, ghosts, shroud, grave crosses, coffin, dead man.

The romantic character of the ballad corresponds to its language. Zhukovsky often uses lyric-emotional epithets; “dear friend”, “dreary abode”, “mournful eyes”, “tender friend”. The poet refers to his favorite epithet "quiet" - "quietly rides", "quiet oak forest", "quiet choir". The ballad is characterized by interrogative-exclamatory intonations: "Is it close, dear?", "Ah, Lyudmila?"

Zhukovsky strives to give his work a folk flavor. He uses colloquial words and expressions - “passed by”, “waits, waits” and constant epithets: “greyhound horse”, “violent wind”, uses traditional fairy-tale expressions.

In the ballad "Svetlana" Zhukovsky made an attempt to create an independent work, based in its plot on the national customs of the Russian people. He used an ancient belief about the divination of peasant girls on the night before Epiphany.
Zhukovsky discovered an interest in the psychological world of his characters. In "Lyudmila" and in all subsequent works, the psychological depiction of the characters becomes deeper and more subtle. The poet seeks to recreate all the vicissitudes of Lyudmila's experiences: anxiety and sadness for the sweetheart, revived hopes for a sweet date and irrepressible sorrow, despair, bewilderment and joy, giving way to fear and mortal horror, when her beloved brings her to the cemetery, to her own grave.

By what means is the strengthening of the “Russian flavor” in the ballad “Svetlana” / in comparison with the ballad “Lyudmila” / achieved? What role do fortune-telling scenes play in the structure of the ballad?
Zhukovsky dresses both “Lyudmila” and many other bastards in song, folk clothes. In his mind - that is, the mind of a truly romantic poet - the ballad not only goes back genetically to folklore, to folk poetry, but is also inseparable from it even in its modern, purely literary forms.
Regarding Zhukovsky's ballad "Lyudmila" and Katenin's arrangement of the same poem by Burger, immediately after the publication of these works, a heated discussion broke out, in which Gnedich and Griboyedov took part. Gnedich came out in defense of "Lyudmila" Zhukovsky, Griboyedov - on the side of Katenin. The dispute was mainly around the problem of nationality. It seemed to both Katenin and his supporter Griboyedov that Zhukovsky, contrary to the original, noticeably “literaritized”, made his ballad a little popular. There is a certain amount of truth in this. “Olga” by Katenin, in comparison with “Lyudmila” by Zhukovsky, looks rougher, simpler, less literary and, accordingly, closer to Burger's ballad. But Zhukovsky did not completely neglect the folk character of Burger's Lenora. He gave only his own version of nationality, which was in full agreement with the elegiac mood of his poetry. He tried to catch and convey folk rhythms, folk song style and intonations - and he deliberately avoided those folk pre-tones and expressions that seemed to him too rough and material. Zhukovsky and his poetry were undoubtedly characterized by a craving for nationality, but his nationality always had the stamp of dreaminess and ideality.
The ballad "Svetlana" by Zhukovsky, in comparison with his own "Lyudmila", is more folk. Folk elements in it are both more visible and more organic. They are by no means reduced only to the rhythmic structure of the ballad, to his choreic folk-song verse. In "Svetlana" one can feel the general atmosphere of the nationality; it contains the features of folk life, folk rituals, slightly stylized, but basically folk style of speech and a form of expression of feelings. The feeling of the atmosphere of the nationality arises, already from the very first verses:
Once a Epiphany Eve
The girls guessed:
Shoe behind the gate
Having removed from the foot they threw;
Weed the snow; under the window
Listened; fed
Counted chicken grains;
Burning wax was drowned;
In a bowl of clean water
They put a golden ring,
Earrings are emerald;
Spread out white boards
And they sang in tune over the bowl
The songs are submissive.

Associating this ballad with Russian customs and beliefs, with the folklore, song and fairy tale tradition, the poet chose as the subject of her image the fortune-telling of a girl on Epiphany evening. The Russian atmosphere is also emphasized here by such realities as a room, a blizzard, a sledge, a church, a priest. The national-folk flavor of the ballad is also facilitated by the imitation of subservient songs following the introduction (“Blacksmith, Forge me gold and a new crown”), interspersed throughout the ballad with folk-vernacular words (“say a word”, “take out your little ring”, “lightly”, “promise”) and song expressions (“my friend”, “the light is red”, “my beauty”, “joy”, “the light of my eyes”, “in tesova gates”).

Common and different in the images of the heroines / Lyudmila and Svetlana /.
Unlike Lyudmila, Svetlana does not forget about God. Once in a hut with a dead man, she prays before the icon of the Savior, and a guardian angel in the form of a dove descends to her and saves her from the claims of the dead man.
Lyudmila, on the other hand, grumbled at God, and therefore died, that is, the heroine is punished for apostasy from the faith.
Faith in God, obedience to fate, that is, God, his will, or resistance to it are the main themes of ballads, but the conclusion from all these works is the same: a person is a slave of fate, and it is absolutely impossible to try to change, resist fate, because for resistance a person will suffer the punishment of God.

Conflict in the ballad "Svetlana".
The plot of the poem "Svetlana" is very similar to the poem "Lyudmila". But events in this poem develop differently. At the beginning of the poem, Zhukovsky shows an inconsolable girl who has been waiting for her beloved for a long time. She is afraid of the tragic outcome of events and cannot help but think of the worst.

How can I, girlfriends, sing?

Dear friend far away;

I am destined to die

In lonely sadness.

In the sadness of the girl, all the feelings that can excite a young and quivering nature seem to converge. She cannot afford to have fun, she cannot forget her sadness for a single moment. But youth, which is characterized by hopes for the best, is looking for its way out of this situation. And Svetlana decides to tell fortunes in order to find out her fate and at least for a moment see her betrothed.
The mood of the girl is conveyed very accurately: her romantic nature is waiting for a miracle, she hopes for the help of supernatural forces that can show her her future fate. When fortune-telling, Svetlana imperceptibly falls asleep. And in a dream, she finds herself in the same situation that was described in the poem "Lyudmila".

A black raven becomes an unfortunate omen, which portends sadness, a strong snowstorm, which seems to want to hide everything around under the snow. And against such an alarming and terrible background, a hut appears in which Svetlana finds her dead fiancé. The girl is saved from trouble by a white dove, which symbolizes everything bright and gives hope for salvation. Probably, the dove was sent to the obedient girl, relying on her guardian angel, as a sign from above
After her terrible dream, Svetlana wakes up alone in her room. The girl was not only given life, but also the opportunity to be happy: her betrothed returns to her. Everything gloomy, tragic, terrible turns out to be unreal, it goes into the realm of sleep:

Happiness is an awakening.

The meaning of Svetlana's dream and a happy denouement. Images-symbols, their meaning.
For the heroine of the ballad, everything bad turns out to be a dream, ends with awakening. A fairy tale - the kind of fairy tale that "Svetlana" represents - is in Zhukovsky a form of expression of faith in the good. “Where there was no miracle, it’s useless to look for the lucky one there,” Zhukovsky writes in the 1809 poem “Happiness”.
In “Svetlana” and in some other ballads, Zhukovsky’s faith in the good appears not only in a fabulous, but also partly in a religious form, but the essence of this faith is not only in religiosity, but even more in Zhukovsky’s deep humanity. At the end of the bard "Svetlana" there are words with an undoubted religious and didactic coloring:

Here are my ballads:
“The best friend to us in this life
Faith in providence.
The blessing of the maker of the law:
Here misfortune is a false dream;
Happiness is an awakening.”

The nightmare is by no means a poetic joke, not a parody of romantic horrors. The poet reminds the reader that his life on earth is short-lived, and the real and eternal in the afterlife. These words reflect both Zhukovsky's religious consciousness and his deep optimism, which is based on a strong desire for good and joy for a person.