If you love so without reason analysis. Structural analysis of the poem
If you love, so without reason,
If you threaten, it’s not a joke,
If you scold, so rashly,
If you chop, it’s too bad!
If you argue, it’s too bold,
If you punish, that's the point,
If you forgive, then with all your heart,
If there is a feast, then there is a feast!
Alexey Tolstoy
The 1850s - the heyday of the poetic creativity of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Between 1851 and 1859 he wrote about nine dozen lyrical works. Then followed a very long break. The poet returned to writing poems only in the 1870s. During the most fruitful period, the popular miniature “If you love, so without reason…” (1854), first published in the Sovremennik magazine, was created. The lyrical hero of the text is a strong personality. Readers are presented with an emotional person, easily excited, but easy-going, fair, and able to have fun. He is not ready to compromise with his conscience and other people, and does not accept half measures. His energy overflows. It is precisely such men who often become leaders capable of leading entire nations. Such characters attracted Tolstoy. Strong-willed natures with an integral character, bright personalities appear in several of his works at once, mainly in those dedicated to historical events poems. Among them are Roman Galitsky, Ilya Muromets, Gakon Slepoy.
Ideal lyrical hero Tolstoy looks like himself. Until the 1850s, Alexey Konstantinovich was an extremely cheerful person and had a positive outlook on life. the world. Major moods predominate in his early works. The poet changed after he fell in love with Sofya Andreevna Miller.
Sophia Miller
Tolstoy's feeling was mutual. However, the marriage was hampered by an important circumstance - Miller's marriage. The condemnation of the world, the refusal of Sofia Andreevna’s husband to file for divorce, the possibility of only secret meetings with his beloved - all this greatly influenced both Alexei Konstantinovich himself and his work. Despite the adversities, until the end of his life the poet remained a straightforward person who did not like to compromise.
In the poem “If you love, you go crazy…” the major moods of Tolstoy’s lyrics of the 1840s are clearly visible. He has the dashing prowess and breadth of a truly Russian soul. A cheerful and cheerful rhythm is created through iambic tetrameter and cross rhyme. The main remedy also works for him artistic expression text - anaphora. The musicality of the work attracted the attention of many Russian composers to it. Among those who set Tolstoy's text to music are Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein, Caesar Antonovich Cui, and Reinhold Moritsevich Gliere.
“When you love, you go crazy…” Alexei Tolstoy
If you love, so without reason,
If you threaten, it’s not a joke,
If you scold, so rashly,
If you chop, it’s too bad!If you argue, it’s too bold,
If you punish, that's the point,
If you forgive, then with all your heart,
If there is a feast, then there is a feast!
Analysis of Tolstoy’s poem “If you love, you’ll go crazy...”
The 1850s are the heyday of the poetic creativity of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Between 1851 and 1859 he wrote about nine dozen lyrical works. Then followed a very long break. The poet returned to writing poems only in the 1870s. During the most fruitful period, the popular miniature “If you love, so without reason…” (1854), first published in the Sovremennik magazine, was created. The lyrical hero of the text is a strong personality. Readers are presented with an emotional person, easily excited, but easy-going, fair, and able to have fun. He is not ready to compromise with his conscience and other people, and does not accept half measures. His energy overflows. It is precisely such men who often become leaders capable of leading entire nations. Such characters attracted Tolstoy. Strong-willed natures with an integral character, bright personalities appear in several of his works, mainly in poems dedicated to historical events. Among them are Roman Galitsky, Ilya Muromets, Gakon Slepoy.
Tolstoy's ideal lyrical hero is similar to himself. Until the 1850s, Alexey Konstantinovich was an extremely cheerful person and had a positive outlook on the world around him. Major moods predominate in his early works. The poet changed after he fell in love with Sofya Andreevna Miller. Tolstoy's feeling was mutual. However, the marriage was hampered by an important circumstance - Miller's marriage. The condemnation of the world, the refusal of Sofia Andreevna’s husband to file for divorce, the possibility of only secret meetings with his beloved - all this greatly influenced both Alexei Konstantinovich himself and his work. Despite the adversities, until the end of his life the poet remained a straightforward person who did not like to compromise.
In the poem “If you love, you go crazy…” the major moods of Tolstoy’s lyrics of the 1840s are clearly visible. He has the dashing prowess and breadth of a truly Russian soul. A cheerful and cheerful rhythm is created through iambic tetrameter and cross rhyme. The main means of artistic expressiveness of the text – anaphora – also works for it. The musicality of the work attracted the attention of many Russian composers to it. Among those who set Tolstoy's text to music are Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein, Caesar Antonovich Cui, and Reinhold Moritsevich Gliere.
The poem appeared at a difficult time for Russia. The year is 1854, the infamous Crimean War is underway, not yet lost - but clearly no longer victorious. Russia, lagging behind in weapons and technology, fights with much more well-equipped powers with the strength of ingenuity, intelligence and courage of its people. It is these features of A.K. Tolstoy reflected in a poem.
The main theme of the work
The central theme of the eight-line is the Russian character and its features. At first glance, it seems that a certain bravura inherent in the poem and especially clearly visible in the line “If you chop, it’s like that!” Looks alien and unnecessary against the backdrop of the war and suffering that the country is undergoing.
But this, in the opinion of some researchers, is the author’s intention. Simple in form, understandable in content, the poem turned out to be equally close to both high-born noble commanders and ordinary soldiers who came from serfs. Cheerful, even to some extent mischievous, it raises morale, inspires courage and cheerfulness, and reminds that everything can be overcome - if you show that very Russian character.
Analyzing the characteristics of the Russian nation, Tolstoy in this poem emphasizes its maximalism, lack of compromise, desire to complete what was started, to bring it to extreme point- at least, if I've already gotten down to business.
Some literary critics highlight in the eight-line the characteristics of Tolstoy himself, a man who categorically does not like compromises, is straightforward and open. During Crimean War he fell ill with typhus and was unable to fulfill his dream of organizing partisan detachment and help the Russian army, but his inspiring poems made a different, also very important contribution. In the image of a brave and daring soul that emerges when reading the poem, the Russian farmer and soldier, merchant and monk, intellectual and laborer are clearly visible - each person from those who are called the salt of the earth.
The lyrical hero of the work, although impersonal, is quite clear - this is the entire Russian people, brought together into one personality, bright and unusual, endowed with individual qualities.
Structural analysis of the poem
Short - only 2 stanzas, each consisting of 1 quatrain - the poem is written in trochaic tetrameter. The rhyme is used adjacent in the first stanza, hyper-idle - in the 2nd.
Tolstoy uses colloquial vocabulary, thanks to which the work is perceived simply and understandably by absolutely everyone, from a peasant to a nobleman. There are many exclamations in the poem - this allows you to create a bravura, dashing tone of the narrative, built on anaphora.
“If you love, then without reason...” is one of the many works that express the characteristics of the Russian soul and the worldview of the Russian person.
Those who want to read the poem “If you love, so without reason” by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy will be interested in learning the history of the work. It was written in the 50s of the 19th century. Analyzing these lines we can say that the lyrical hero is completely verbal self-portrait the poet himself. He is emotional, easily excited, but, nevertheless, fair and not alien various types fun. Tolstoy's poet friends noted that this is exactly what he was like before meeting Sofia Andreevna Miller, with whom, although he was mutually in love, he could not marry her, since the woman was married. Many composers were inspired by this poem and it was set to music. Such musicality helps to learn a poem by heart.
The text of Tolstoy’s poem “If you love, so without reason,” along with the description, is available only online and can be used in middle and high schools not only in a literature lesson as an addition to it, but also as material in preparation for exams.
If you love, so without reason,
If you threaten, it’s not a joke,
If you scold, so rashly,
If you chop, it’s too bad!
If you argue, it’s too bold,
If you punish, that's the point,
If you forgive, then with all your heart,
If there is a feast, then there is a feast!
Universal brotherhood! Eternal peace! Cancellation of money! Equality, work. Wonderful, amazing International! The whole world is your Fatherland. From now on there is no property. If you have two cloaks, one will be taken away from you and given to the poor. They will leave you one pair of shoes, and if you need a box of matches, Centermatches will give it to you.
The first serious attacks of the fatal disease appeared in 1918. He feels pain in his back; when he carries firewood, his heart hurts. Beginning in 1919, in letters to his loved ones, he complained of scurvy and furunculosis, then of shortness of breath, explaining it as heart disease, but the reason was not only in his physical condition, it was deeper. He complains of deafness, although he hears well; he talks about another deafness, the one that prevents him from listening to music that has never stopped before: back in 1918 it sounded in Blok’s poems.
In Russia, the nineteenth century became the century tragic destinies, and the twentieth - a century of suicides and premature deaths. According to Blok, “Schiller’s face is the last calm, balanced face that we remember in Europe.” But among Russian poets we will not meet calm faces. The last century was especially cruel to them.