"Damned days"- this is how I. A. Bunin, who lived in exile, described the events of 1918. Alexander Blok had a different opinion. He saw the revolution turning point in the life of Russia, which entails the collapse of old moral foundations and the emergence of a new worldview.
Absorbed by the idea of becoming new, better life in the country, in January 1918, Blok wrote one of his most striking works - the poem "The Twelve", which embodied the unstoppable power of the revolution, sweeping away the remnants of the former life in its path.
The image of the old and new world in the poem was created by the author in some special way, full of hidden philosophical meaning form. Each image that appears before the reader symbolizes the social face of a social class or the ideological coloring of an ongoing historical event.
The old world is symbolized by several images shown in a mockingly contemptuous light. The image of a bourgeois at a crossroads, with his nose buried in his collar, symbolizes the once powerful, but now helpless in the face of new strength bourgeoisie.
Hidden under the image of the writer creative intelligentsia who did not accept the revolution. "Russia is dead!" - says the writer, and his words reflected the opinions of many representatives of this social group, who saw the death of their country in the events taking place.
The church, which has lost its former power, is also symbolically shown. The author presents to our gaze the image of a priest walking stealthily, “with his side behind the snowdrift,” who in former times “walked forward with his belly, and his belly shone like a cross at the people.” Now the “comrade priest” is deprived of both the cross and his former arrogance.
Lady in karakul - a symbol of secular noble society:
Here is the lady in karakul
Turned up to another:
We cried and cried...
Slipped
And - bam - she stretched out!
This episode, in my opinion, expressed Blok’s opinion about the weak character and inability of the pampered aristocracy to a new life.
All the above images show that old world defeated, only pitiful shadows of its former greatness remained.
The bourgeois stands there like a hungry dog,
It stands silent, like a question.
And the old world is like a rootless dog,
Stands behind him with his tail between his legs.
The poem received a completely different artistic embodiment new world. Its main representatives are twelve Red Army soldiers. The image of this detachment, in my opinion, is a reflection of the real face of the revolution. “I need an ace of diamonds on my back!”, “Lock the floors, now there will be robberies!”, “I’ll slash with a knife, slash!” - such lines found in the poem speak, in my opinion, more about anarchy than about the struggle of the proletariat for a better life. In the conversations of the Red Army soldiers there are never exclamations like: “We are ours, we will build a new world!” One can only discern deep contempt and hatred for everything “old”.
The scale of the revolution is emphasized by images of the raging forces of nature: a raging blizzard, swirling snow, a black sky. The wind is especially widely symbolized by the elemental power of ongoing events:
Wind, wind!
The man is not standing on his feet.
Wind, wind -
All over God's world!
And finally, one of the main ones in the poem “The Twelve” is the image of Christ. Existence this image in the poem can be interpreted in different ways. Personally, I believe that it symbolizes the “god of slaves”, leading the former slaves of the old world and blessing them to fight their oppressors. The name of Jesus Christ is spelled incorrectly in the poem. In my opinion, the author did this to emphasize that what is meant here is not the god of the old world, but the god of the new, working Russia.
In general, it can be said about the work that Blok managed to create in a small poem a rather impressive picture of life, giving an idea of the events of those years in revolutionary Russia and their ideological orientation. A masterfully constructed composition, uniquely selected images and symbols rightfully make the poem “The Twelve” one of best works in the works of Alexander Blok.
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok created the poem “The Twelve” shortly after October Revolution, in January 1918. Thus, the work became immediate
and a spontaneous response to the changes taking place in Russian society and reflected the author’s first, emotional impressions of the revolution. Despite the fact that the poem was written in a very short period of time, “The Twelve” is unusually solid work of art, striking in its harmony and musicality. Having finished the poem, Blok himself exclaimed: “Today I am a genius!”
The main conflict of the poem lies in the confrontation between the old, outgoing world of Tsarist Russia, and the new order caused by the revolution. The image of the old world is depicted satirically and consists of portraits of passers-by whom twelve Red Army soldiers meet on the streets of the city. These characters complain about the revolution, fearing it. The new order is alien to them.
- Oh, Mother Intercessor!
- Oh, the Bolsheviks will drive you into a coffin!
Before us is a writer whispering in fear:
- Traitors!
- Russia is dead!
Here comes “comrade priest”, next to “the lady in karakul”. These characters are depicted with a certain amount of irony. Pop recalls how satisfying and calm his life used to be:
Do you remember how it used to be
He walked forward with his belly,
And the cross shone
Belly on the people?
On the one hand, the heroes symbolizing the passing past are drawn by the author with irony. They are cowardly, pathetic, insignificant. Looking at them, the old world seems
not worth regretting. However, the old woman, looking at the poster, does not think about the victory of the revolution, she is not worried about her fate, but about the poor and hungry children.
The author does not feel sorry for the old world. The image of a bourgeois becomes a symbol of a bygone era. The bourgeois is compared to a hungry dog with its tail between its legs in fear. The poet does not accept his cowardice and indecision. Such a world is doomed to disappear. The new world is depicted by Blok in more detail. It is symbolized by a detachment of twelve Red Army soldiers. Undoubtedly
they represent a serious force, uncontrollable and powerful. Neither wind nor snow can stop them.
The wind is blowing, the snow is fluttering.
Twelve people are walking.
Representatives of the new order new government, the creators of a new life are yesterday’s workers and peasants, perhaps convicts. Most of these people do not know fear, sympathy, regret, or moral hesitation. They are ready to fight for their future with arms in hand, without thinking about the random victims of such a struggle.
Such unlimited freedom, permissiveness, lack of moral boundaries and the presence of weapons that can be used at any moment without hesitation leads to
murder.
Where's Katka? - Dead, dead!
Shot in the head!
However, there is a place for humanity among the Red Army soldiers. A. A. Blok sympathizes with Petrukha, who killed his unfaithful mistress Katka. His regrets are sincere and cause
empathy.
However, very soon Petrukha recovered from his act and was again ready to fight for revolutionary ideals. Not accepting the outdated old way of life, Blok does not idealize the revolutionary present. Achieving a new order at any cost, lack of moral guidelines is in no way welcomed by the poet. It seems that the present consists of uncertainty, disorder, chaos, and people are lost in this whirlpool. It is no coincidence that twelve Red Army soldiers are constantly surrounded by wind and blizzard, night and darkness. ... go without a name. saint
All twelve are off into the distance.
Ready for anything
No regrets...
The symbolism of color also emphasizes the author’s perception of current events. Twelve Red Army soldiers are accompanied by black and red colors, darkness and blood, evil and
murder. It seems that there is no light in this darkness. Despite the rather gloomy mood of the work, at the end of the poem there is hope for a better future, hope that in the new world there will be a place for humanity, spirituality, and morality. These concepts are associated with the bright image of Jesus Christ, which, however, is still far away.
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Summary of a literature lesson in 11th grade.
Lesson topic : “Old” and “new” worlds in the poem “The Twelve” by A. Blok.
Purpose of the lesson : analyze the poem “The Twelve” by A. Blok.
Tasks:
Educational:introduce students to A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”, explain the symbolism of the images, and connect the poem with the historical and cultural heritage;
Educational: improve skills in analyzing a lyric work;
Educational:instill love for the Motherland and a tolerant attitude towards its history.
Lesson type : A lesson in mastering new knowledge with elements of comparative analysis.
Equipment: text of the poem “The Twelve”, presentation for the lesson (in Power Point), drawings by Yu. Annenkov for the poem.
Epigraph: "The Twelve" - whatever they are - is the best thing I've written. Because I lived in modernity then. This continued until the spring of 1918. And when the Red Army and socialist construction began, I couldn’t do it anymore. And I haven’t written since then. (A. Blok)
Lesson progress
I. Organizational stage.
II. Announcement of the topic and objectives of the lesson, goal setting.
III. Motivation for learning activities.
Teacher's word. We observed and discussed how Blok’s personality was developing, and we got to know him as a symbolist poet. We read “Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, “Stranger”. We discussed the theme of Russia in the poet’s work. We noticed that in the poem “On railway“Blok, in the guise of his heroine, conveyed not only dramatic fate one simple woman, but also the tragic fate of all of Russia.
Blok's poem was written in January 1918. It was a terrible time: behind 4 years of war, the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks coming to power, and finally the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the first Russian parliament. The intellectuals of the circle to which Blok belonged perceived all these events as a national tragedy, as the death of the Russian land. After October 1917, Blok initially believed in the “cleansing power of revolution.” He took upon himself the burden of the contradictions of the era and sought to embody them in poetry.
“He walked around young, cheerful, with shining gases, and listened to the “music of the revolution”, to the noise from the fall of the old world, which was constantly heard in his ears, according to his own testimony,” recalled his aunt M.A. Beketova .
All of Blok’s speeches in print and before various audiences are imbued with the awareness of the artist’s extreme responsibility to humanity, which is experiencing a colossal world-historical shift. He was confident that the situation could be positively influenced.
It was at this time that the poet experienced his last creative takeoff, creating during January 1918. their famous works: article “Intellectuals and Revolution”, poem “The Twelve”, poem “Scythians”. Why does a poet-nobleman, an esthete write a poem about the revolution? After all, revolution is violence, blood, death.
Let us turn to the memoirs of K. Chukovsky: “The lordly skills of his old noble family were ennobled by the high culture of all its members, who from generation to generation laboriously served the sciences... Blok also received an old noble education..., his grandfather was a professor and his father-in-law was a professor, and that’s all his aunts and mother were all writers, they lived by books, they prayed for books... His biography is serene, and in his poetry there is a fever of horror. Even in silence he sensed a catastrophe... All his life he felt doomed to death, thrown out of his native comfort... If not in his biography, then in his work, he rejected everything prosperous and from his youth became a poet of discomfort, trouble, death... All his work was saturated an apocalyptic feeling of the end - the inevitable end, already at the door...
Since 1905, Blok spent twelve years only talking about the catastrophe. And it’s remarkable that not only was he not afraid of her, but the further he went, the more passionately he called for her. Only in the revolution did he see salvation from his “cautious melancholy.” He called for revolution loudly and demandingly:
Hey, get up and catch fire and burn!
Hey, raise your trusty hammer
So that a living being is split by lightning
There was darkness where you couldn’t see anything!
No one believed in the power of the revolution as much as Blok. She seemed omnipotent to him. He made enormous demands on her and had no doubt that she would fulfill them. If only she would come, she wouldn’t deceive. Blok believed that life was secretly beautiful. We do not see its beauty, because it is polluted with all sorts of rubbish. The revolution will burn this rubbish, and life will appear before us as beauty. Blok didn’t want anything less. No half gifts: all or nothing. What did he want from the revolution? Above all, he wanted her to transform people. So that people become people. The poet believed that in the fire of the revolution the mob would be transformed into the people.
Conversation with students.
The revolution has happened. How did she change people? What did the poet see?
(On February 18, 1918, the poem “The Twelve” was published in the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper “Znamya Truda”, and in May it was published as a separate book).
– What is a poem as a genre of literary work?
(Poem - narrative work in verse, usually on a historical or legendary topic, i.e. This plot work as opposed to a lyric poem)
IV. The stage of acquiring new knowledge.
The teacher reads the poem aloud and conducts a conversation with the class, during which a logical-semantic diagram is drawn up.
– Why did the poem get such a name? (the poem got its name from the number of 12 apostles of Christ, 12 main Red Guard characters, 12 chapters of the work).
The appearance in the poem of a collective, a kind of collective image twelve Red Guards are natural. Blok wanted to show the collective, “swarm” (in the words of L. Tolstoy) consciousness and collective will, which replaced the individual principle. “With all your body, with all your heart, with all your mind – listen to the revolution!” Blok believes that it is the Russian intelligentsia, and not the bourgeoisie, that is capable of accepting and understanding the revolution. And he contrasts the intelligentsia with the bourgeoisie: “They have never dreamed of any music except pianos.” It was this position that predetermined satirical image the bourgeoisie, the “outgoing world” (we will designate it as the “old world”).
V. Problematic question:
How are the “old” and “new” worlds interconnected in the poem “The Twelve”? Whose side is A. Blok on?
VI. Research learning technology. Work in groups:
1 group working on search author's attitude to the “old world”, its descriptions in the poem,
2nd group will present us with the “new world” described in the work.
Group 1 message:
– Which of the heroes can be attributed to the old world?
In the first chapter of the poem we see: the old woman will not understand that the Constituent Assembly is not a king. “An old lady, like a chicken,” writes Blok about her, symbolizing the philistine principle.
Who else belongs to the “old world”? How does A. Blok describe it? Let's highlight keywords and expressions:
The man can't stand on his feet...
Slips - oh, poor thing!..
The old woman is killing herself - crying,
He won't understand what it means
What is this poster for...
And everyone is undressed, barefoot...
Old lady, like a chicken...
Oh, the Bolsheviks will drive you into a coffin!..
And the bourgeois at the crossroads
He hid his nose in his collar.
Bourgeois at the crossroads...
Who is this? - Long hair
Traitors!
Russia is dead!
Must be a writer -
Vitia...
That today is not cheerful,
Comrade pop?
There's a lady in karakul
Turned up to another:
We cried and cried...
“All power to the Constituent Assembly!”
And we had a meeting...
Resolved:
For a while - ten, at night - twenty-five...
And don’t take less from anyone...
One tramp
Slouching...
Hey, poor guy!
What's ahead?..
Anger, sad anger
It's boiling in my chest...
Black anger, holy anger...
The general mood that permeates the description of the “old world”: sadness, cold, hunger, anger... If you look at how many heroes this world represents, and add to them the “rootless dog” that appears at the end of the poem, you get a symbolic, meaningful number: twelve .
So, the “old world”:
1) old lady,
2) bourgeois at the crossroads,
3) writer - vitija,
4) comrade priest,
5) lady in karakul,
6) 5 prostitutes,
11) tramp,
12) a rootless dog.
Message 2 groups:
– Who makes up the “new world”?
First of all, the “Old World” is contrasted with twelve Red Guards, with whom the idea of the “new” world is connected. The block describes them like this:
The wind is blowing, the snow is fluttering.
Twelve people are walking.
Rifles black belts
All around - lights, lights, lights...
There is a cigarette in his teeth, he has taken a cap,
You need the Ace of Diamonds on your back!
Freedom, freedom,
Eh, eh, without a cross!
Universal hatred, readiness to fight the enemy, spurring vigilance, and distrust constitute the revolutionary consciousness of the detachment. Therefore, the center of the poem is the permissiveness of bloody massacres, the devaluation of life, freedom “without a cross”).
Working with the class.
-What about Katka and Vanka? What place do they occupy in the poem?
They cannot be attributed to either one or the other world. They occupy a kind of intermediate position between two worlds. The fact is that against the background of the image of the revolution, Blok shows a love story, the story of the death of the heroine. The poet was concerned about Katka’s appearance: “Katka is a healthy, thick-faced, passionate, snub-nosed Russian girl; fresh, simple, - kind - swears great, sheds tears over novels, kisses desperately...” “Fat-faced” is very important, because it emphasizes a certain virginity of her nature. In the sixth chapter, Katka dies, Petrukha, the “poor murderer,” mourns her, but other Red Guards pull him back, the “bitch,” and together they all go on a robbery spree.
So, Katka and Vanka form their own world, an intermediate one, in which the most important thing is love, not revolution.
– In the blizzard, “they walk without the name of a saint...” twelve Red Army soldiers (“new world”), behind them trudges a “hungry dog,” personifying the “old world,” and in front is Christ.
– Why Christ?
Some perceive Jesus Christ as an attempt to sanctify the cause of the revolution, others - as blasphemy. Blok himself was surprised: why Christ? But he couldn’t help himself: he saw Jesus Christ. In March 1918, the poet writes in his diary: “Did I praise?” (meaning the Bolsheviks). I just stated a fact: if you look closely at the pillars of the snowstorm along this path, you will see Jesus Christ. But sometimes I myself deeply hate this feminine image.”
Teaching technology based on schematic and symbolic models (reference diagrams).
Schematically, the “worlds” can be depicted as follows (write in notebooks):
"old world"
(old woman, bourgeois at the crossroads, writer-vitia, comrade priest,
lady in karakul, 5 prostitutes, tramp, rootless dog)
"intermediate world"
"new world" (12 Red Guards)
The “intermediate world” reaches out to the “new world”, but it still has a lot of the “old world”.
The poem ends with the words:
So they walk with a sovereign step -
Behind is a hungry dog.
Ahead - with a bloody flag,
And invisible behind the blizzard,
And unharmed by a bullet,
With a gentle tread above the storm,
Snow scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses -
Ahead is Jesus Christ.
What did the poet want to say with this? Blok did not answer this question. Let's try to figure it out.
Jesus Christ is a symbol of goodness and justice. But now this image is losing its traditional meaning. In addition, He is “invisible behind the blizzard,” so it turns out that goodness and justice are the eternal companions of humanity in both the “old” and the “new” worlds.
Teacher's word: It should also be noted that the number 12 is associated with both worlds. And what is the “new” world if not a reflection of the “old”? But it was not such a world and not such people that Blok dreamed of. The revolution that the poet dreamed of did not change people, but destroyed the traditional order, destroyed faith in both God and the meaning of Existence. It is no coincidence that in his dying delirium Blok demanded from his wife a promise to burn every single copy of the poem “12”.
After the creation of the poem, great changes occurred in Blok’s worldview. This was reflected in his report “The Collapse of Humanism,” which was read in 1919. in the publishing house “ World literature" “But peace and freedom are also taken away... And the poet dies, because he can no longer breathe”; life has lost its meaning. The report was dedicated to A.S. Pushkin and timed to coincide with the “annual commemoration”. Blok wrote not only about Pushkin, but also about himself: “The lack of air killed him.”
VII. Using case technologies.
Case question:
Explain how the idea of the poem is related to the landscape?
The snowstorm of the revolution begins from the very first lines of the poem; and from its very first lines the black sky and white snow- as if symbols of the duality that is happening in the world, that is happening in every soul.
Black evening
White snow.
Wind, wind!
A man can't stand on his feet...
Thus, two internal motives pass through the entire poem, intertwined. Black evening - blood, dirt, crime; white snow - tha new truth, which goes into the world through the same people. And if the poet had limited himself to only one topic, had painted only the “black” shell of the revolution or only its “white” essence, he would have been enthusiastically received in one or another of those camps into which Russia was then split. But the poet is equally far from both bright praise and dark blasphemy; it gives a dual, intertwined truth in one picture. The contrast of the two colors emphasizes the uncompromising confrontation between the warring forces.And against this background, under the looming black sky, under the falling white snow, “twelve people are walking...”
The chaos of events, the chaos of a blizzard, the chaos of an indignant element, through which one can see fragments of rushing faces, positions, actions, absurd in their fragmentation, but connected by a common flight through the wind and snow. The poet paints a picture of revolutionary Petrograd. There is a huge poster “All power to the Constituent Assembly!”, and a “cheerful comrade priest”, and an old woman who “won’t understand what this means, what is such a poster for, such a huge flap”, and a “lady in karakul” mourning Russia , and the angrily hissing “writer, vita”... And all this is so petty, so far from the great things that are happening in the world, so wretched that “malice” against it all can be considered “holy malice.” And all these events unfold against the backdrop of a snowstorm - a symbol of confusion and chaos.
Case assignment:
Compare Yu. Annenkov’s illustrations and the text of the poem.
VIII. Reflection.
Let's get back to the problematic issue:
How is the “old” world presented in the poem “The Twelve” by A. Blok?
What do the 12 Red Guards symbolize?
Whose side is the poet on?
What is the role of landscape in the work?
What new have you learned about A. Blok’s personality and his lyrics?
IX. Summing up.
So, “The Twelve” is a poem about revolutionary Petrograd, a poem about blood, about dirt, about crime, about the fall of man. This is in one sense. And in the other - about the revolution, about the fact that through people stained with blood in the world is coming the good news of human liberation.
X. Evaluation.
The students themselves evaluate the work of the groups. Celebrate positive aspects work, point out shortcomings and ways to eliminate them.
XI. Homework announcement:
- Write out symbolic images from the text of the poem.
- Analyze the final chapter of the poem and answer the question: “How is the theme of Russia’s historical path resolved in Blok’s poem. "Twelve".
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Blok’s poem “The Twelve” fully reflects the poet’s attitude towards the 1917 revolution. In this work in best traditions symbolism, he describes his, largely objective, vision of the revolutionary era, represented by two opposing worlds - old and new. And the new world must invariably win.
The poet introduces us to the old world in the first chapter of the poem, which is a kind of prologue. Blok brings an old woman onto the stage, scolding the Bolsheviks. In her opinion, they spent huge amount fabric that would make a lot of foot wraps for the undressed and shoeless, on a worthless poster: “All power to the constituent assembly!” And why does she need this poster with the slogan, because she still won’t understand it.
Then, following the old woman, a “bourgeois at the crossroads” appears, his nose hidden in his collar from the frost. Then we hear someone “speaking in a low voice”:
Next, “comrade priest” appears, for some reason “cheerful.” Then a “lady in karakul” talking to another, prostitutes discussing at their meeting how much to charge from whom... And, finally, a tramp asking for bread. In fact, this is where the description of the old world ends, but only externally, since behind the simple listing of heroes, firstly, there is a deep ideological meaning, secondly, echoes of this same old world will be heard throughout the entire poem.
So, the poet does not give us an extensive, lengthy description of the old world and its representatives due to the limited scope of the narrative due to the poetic genre. But, at the same time, the extreme conciseness of the images allows him to emphasize the main idea - the old world no longer exists as a single whole, its time has passed, on the “ruins of civilization” only a few of its representatives are located, and even those are not the brightest. The poet highlights this idea with the author’s remarks: “Who is this?”, “Here is the long-awaited one...”, “There’s a lady in karakul.”
Blok introduces features of irony into the narrative about representatives of the old world, using reduced colloquial vocabulary: “belly”, “bang - stretched out”, “chicken”. The poet laughs at a society that is rotten to the core, because he is sure that there is no future for it. The symbol of the old world in the prologue is the color black, which is contrasted with the color white - the symbol of the new world.
Already in the second chapter of the poem there is a mention of Katka and Vanka - two more representatives of the old world. Moreover, the girl was not like that from the beginning. Katka was the beloved of the Red Army soldier Petrukha, but, succumbing to the temptations of bourgeois society, she became a fallen woman. We learn about this from the fifth chapter, when Petrukha, jealous and angry, talks about her fornication with officers, cadets, and then with ordinary soldiers.
The representative of a dying bourgeois society, the tempting demon for Katka, is the soldier Vanka. But this again is not the best representative of the old world. His physiognomy (not even his face) is “stupid”, he is “broad-shouldered” and “spoken,” and this indicates his development. Petrukha understands this, and therefore his resentment towards Katya due to the fact that she did not see this leads to a tragic outcome love line narratives.
So, we can conclude that the old world in the poem, despite the fact that it is dying, brings enormous suffering to people striving for a better life. And although these people do not yet see where they need to strive, they realize quite clearly that first they must overcome the old world. This idea of the struggle between the new and the old is constantly seen in the refrain:
Revolutionary step up!
The restless enemy never sleeps!
Holy Rus' is an image of an old society becoming obsolete. The following lines are filled with calls to fight him:
Comrade, hold the rifle, don’t be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet into Holy Rus' -
And again here the poet uses reduced vocabulary to emphasize the decline in the former authority of “Holy Rus'”.
In the ninth chapter, the image of the old world is finally debunked:
The bourgeois stands there like a hungry dog,
Stands silent, like a question,
And the old world is like a rootless dog,
Stands behind it with his tail between his legs.
If in the first chapter the old society was represented human images, then now the image of the bourgeois is completely replaced by the image of a rootless, beaten dog, which, as we will see in the twelfth chapter - the epilogue, trudges behind twelve Red Army soldiers - representatives of the new world. Such a denouement, according to Blok, was inevitable, because ahead of the apostles of the new world Jesus Christ appeared “in a white crown of roses” - a symbol of harmony, purity, renewal. This is an image of that bright life to which, even if only subconsciously, people strive. Therefore, the old world will inevitably sooner or later become obsolete, like a “hungry dog.”
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One of the most significant works of literature of the twentieth century is the work of A. Blok “”. In terms of genre, this poem can be classified as lyrical-dramatic. Creative work consists of twelve chapters.
In the first chapter we are introduced to a detachment of Red Army soldiers. It consisted of twelve people who gathered together and set out to decide their destiny. One of winter evenings, when a storm triumphs outside the window and a cold wind pierces through, and the actions of the first chapter take place.
After describing the inclement weather, the author moves on to creating figures of the old, obsolete world. An old woman is wailing in front of us. We hear a negative attitude towards both the revolution and the Bolsheviks. Then the reader gets acquainted with the person of the bourgeois and the writer “Vitya”. They communicate in a low voice, because gone are the days when you could freely express your thoughts.
In the writer’s words one can feel bitterness and despair, complete rejection of the new government.
The “comrade priest” is also an interesting person. Of course for church man- such a nickname is a real humiliation. The author combines two societies here – both the new (in the word “comrade”) and the old.
The next person, “the lady in astrakhan fur,” completes the description of the old world.
The created images were representatives of that old, outgoing world. And they were all residents of the previous society, but had absolutely nothing in common with each other. They have different roles, various positions. The only thing that became common was the fear of the coming of a new world and a new government.
A. Blok is trying to show readers how much the change of power knocks the inhabitants of the old world off their support and from their solid path. The author accepted the revolution as a necessary procedure that, sooner or later, had to happen in Russia. He repeatedly notes that it will bring painful changes, because in essence, it cannot be an idyll. Most society will definitely take advantage of the disordered state in Russia and try to grab a tidbit for itself.
In the poem “The Twelve” we meet the image of a dog. He is cold and hungry. Based on the fact that Blok was an extraordinary symbolist, I think the image of the animal represents the old world. He constantly trails behind a detachment of twelve heroes, he pursues them. The image of a dog also appears in last chapters. The Red Army soldiers are ready to drive him away with a bayonet, to drive him away. In the terms of the poem, the hungry dog more than once open form is compared to the old world, which has long since become obsolete. But the dog can still bare his teeth. This means that the old world still feels its strength and may object. Only now the squad of heroes bravely moves forward, not paying attention to obstacles. There is a new world ahead, Jesus is waiting ahead of them. It is a symbol of faith and holiness of the idea. At the end of the poem, the old dog evokes only pity in the reader. He is incapable of anything else.
