There are faces like lush portals,
Where everywhere the great is seen in the small.
There are faces - like miserable shacks,
Where the liver is cooked and the rennet is soaked.
Other cold, dead faces
Closed with bars, like a dungeon.
Others are like towers in which for a long time
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
But I once knew a small hut,
She was unprepossessing, not rich,
But from the window she looks at me
The breath of a spring day flowed.
Truly the world is both great and wonderful!
There are faces - similarities to jubilant songs.
From these notes, like the sun, shining
A song of heavenly heights has been composed.
Analysis of the poem “On the beauty of human faces” by Zabolotsky
Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky had a keen sense of people and could create a psychological portrait with incredible accuracy, relying on internal sensations and details of a person’s appearance.
For this purpose, he turns to details: the corners of the lips, dimples on the cheeks or wrinkles on the forehead, which reflect the inner world of a person. The way Zabolotsky strives to look into the souls of people, and we see this in his poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces.”
History of creation
The poem was written at the end of Zabolotsky’s writing career - in 1955. During this period, the poet experiences a creative upsurge, during which he pours out all his worldly wisdom through writing. In his works there is a subtle understanding of life and people.
The main idea of the work
The poem is based on the idea that a person's life is imprinted in his appearance. All habits, lifestyle, character traits are literally written on his face. Zabolotsky tells us that a person cannot deceive, therefore, with the help external description the poet creates an internal portrait of passers-by.
Means of expression
The poem is based on a comparison, with the help of which the author correlates portraits of people with speaking images: “like lush portals”, “like a dungeon”, “like a sun of shining notes”.
With the help of antonyms, the poet reveals the mystery of man: “the great is miraculous in the small,” and impersonal verbs testify to the pompousness and poverty of the soul: “the great is miraculous.”
The role of metaphors is one of the most significant, since vivid and symbolic images are built on them. From the words “the liver is cooked and the rennet gets wet,” the author emphasizes his negative position. After all, people with such inner world harbor dirty thoughts and thoughts. The phrase “abandoned towers” is a metaphor for devastated souls, in which only cold and darkness remain, and the words about a “window” with the “breath of a spring day” clearly indicate the spirituality of a person, whose image inspires warmth and comfort. The text also contains such epithets as: “pathetic shacks”, “lush portals”, “jubilant songs”.
Composition, genre, rhyme and meter
The poem reflects increasing emotionality, ending with the triumph of the lyrical subject: “Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” Compositionally, the text consists of two parts: the first consists of descriptions of unpleasant faces, the second - inspired and bright portraits.
“On the Beauty of Human Faces” is a thoughtful work that belongs to the genre philosophical lyrics.
It is written in amphibrachium tetrameter and contains 4 quatrains. The rhyming is adjacent: female rhymes alternate with male rhymes.
The name of Nikolai Zabolotsky is associated with the realistic tradition in literature, which was developed by poets belonging to the “Association of Real Art” group. Years of work were devoted to Detgiz, a publishing house that produces works for children, and Zabolotsky, in addition, had a pedagogical education. That is why many of his poems can be addressed and perfectly understood by children and adolescents, while they do not contain boring didacticism and answer the first philosophical questions that concern young readers.
The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” appeared at the end of Nikolai Zabolotsky’s writing career - in 1955. There was a period of “thaw”, Zabolotsky experienced a creative surge. Many lines that are on everyone’s lips were born at this time - “Ugly girl”, “Don’t let your soul be lazy”, many are united by a common theme.
The main theme of the poem
The main theme of the poem is the idea that life path, character traits, habits and inclinations - all this is literally written on a person’s face. The face does not deceive, and tells everything to a person capable of logical thinking and analysis, creating not only an external, but also an internal portrait. The ability to draw such portraits, reading the fate of the interlocutor, like a book, is called physiognomy. So, for an observant physiognomist, one person will appear pretentiously beautiful, but empty inside, another may turn out to be modest, but contain within himself the whole world. People are also like buildings, because each person “builds” his life, and everyone succeeds differently - either a luxurious castle or a shabby shack. The windows in the buildings we build are our eyes, through which we can read inner life- our thoughts, intentions, dreams, our intellect.
Zabolotsky draws these several images-buildings, resorting to extended metaphors:
It is absolutely clear that the author himself likes such discoveries - when in a “little hut” a real treasure of positive human qualities and talents is discovered. Such a “hut” can be opened again and again, and it will delight you with its versatility. Such a “hut” is inconspicuous in appearance, but an experienced person who knows how to read faces may be lucky enough to meet such a person.
The author resorts to the techniques of extended metaphor and antithesis (“portals” are contrasted with “pathetic shacks”, arrogant “towers” with small but cozy “huts”). Greatness and earthliness, talent and emptiness, warm light and cold darkness are contrasted.
Structural analysis of the poem
Among the stylistic means of artistic representation chosen by the author, one can also note anaphora (the unity of the lines “There is...” and “Where...”). With the help of anaphora, the disclosure of images is organized according to a single scheme.
Compositionally, the poem contains increasing emotionality, turning into triumph (“Truly the world is both great and wonderful!”). The author's position in the finale is expressed by the enthusiastic realization that there are many great and wonderful people in the world. You just need to find them.
The poem is written in amphibrach tetrameter and contains 4 quatrains. The rhyme is parallel, feminine, mostly accurate.
“On the beauty of human faces” Nikolai Zabolotsky
There are faces like lush portals,
Where everywhere the great is seen in the small.
There are faces - like miserable shacks,
Where the liver is cooked and the rennet is soaked.
Other cold, dead faces
Closed with bars, like a dungeon.
Others are like towers in which for a long time
Nobody lives and looks out the window.
But I once knew a small hut,
She was unprepossessing, not rich,
But from the window she looks at me
The breath of a spring day flowed.
Truly the world is both great and wonderful!
There are faces - similarities to jubilant songs.
From these notes, like the sun, shining
A song of heavenly heights has been composed.
Analysis of Zabolotsky’s poem “On the beauty of human faces”
The poet Nikolai Zabolotsky felt people very subtly and knew how to characterize them by several features or accidentally dropped phrases. However, the author believed that his face can tell the most about a person, which is very difficult to control. Indeed, the corners of the lips, wrinkles on the forehead or dimples on the cheeks indicate what emotions people experience even before they directly say so. Over the years, these emotions leave their indelible imprint on faces, which is no less fun and interesting to “read” than a fascinating book.
It is this kind of “reading” that the author talks about in his poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces.” This work was written in 1955 - at the dawn of the poet’s life. Experience and natural intuition allowed him to this moment to accurately determine the internal “content” of any interlocutor just by the movement of his eyebrows. In this poem the poet gives a classification to different people, and she turns out to be surprisingly accurate. Indeed, even today you can easily find faces “like magnificent portals”, which belong to people who are nothing special, but at the same time trying to look weightier and more significant. Another type of such individuals, according to the author, instead of faces have “the resemblance of pitiful shacks.” Unlike pompous individuals, such people are aware of their worthlessness and do not try to disguise it under smart looks and skeptically curled lips. Tower faces and dungeon faces belong to those who are almost completely closed to communication By various reasons. Alienation, arrogance, personal tragedy, self-sufficiency - all these qualities are also reflected in facial expressions and eye movements, without going unnoticed by the poet. The author himself is impressed by faces that resemble small huts, where “the breath of a spring day flowed from the windows.” Such faces, according to Zabolotsky, are like a “jubilant song” because they are filled with joy, open to everyone and so friendly that you want to look at them again and again. “From these notes, shining like the sun, a song of heavenly heights is composed,” notes the author, emphasizing that the inner, spiritual beauty of each person is always reflected on the face and is a certain barometer of the well-being of the entire society. True, not everyone knows how to “read” facial expressions and enjoy getting to know people through their faces.
The poem “On the Beauty of Human Faces” was written by Zabolotsky in 1955 and published for the first time in the magazine “ New world"for 1956, in No. 6.
In the last years of his life, Zabolotsky was extremely suspicious. He was afraid that he would be arrested again, he was afraid of his friends betraying him. It is not surprising that the poet peered into people’s faces, reading their souls and trying to find sincere ones.
Genre of the poem
The poem belongs to the genre of philosophical lyrics. The problem of true, spiritual beauty worried Zabolotsky during this period of time. For example, one of the most famous poems poet - the textbook “Ugly Girl”.
In 1954, the writer suffered his first heart attack and was faced with the insincerity and hypocrisy of his loved ones. Last years In life, he greatly appreciated everything that was real, true, including beauty.
Theme, main idea and composition
The philosophical theme is stated in the title of the poem.
The main idea: the beauty of human faces does not lie in external features, but in the soul, reflected in the gaze, in the expression.
The poem consists of four stanzas. The first two describe four types of unpleasant faces. In the third stanza a face appears that gives joy. The last stanza is a generalization: the lyrical hero is delighted with the grandeur and harmony of the universe, in which there are faces of divine, heavenly beauty, reflecting the divine nature of man.
Paths and images
The main trope of the poem is a comparison formed using the words “similarity” (2 times), “like” and “as” (1 time each).
The first type of person is “like lush portals.” With the help of antonyms in the second line, the lyrical hero reveals the “mystery” of these persons: “The great is seen in the small.” Impersonal verb“It seems” immediately reveals the “secret” of such a Significant Person (the Gogol parallel suggests itself), which consists in the fact that in fact there is no secret, there is only pompous arrogance. The “beauty” of such persons is external, hypocritical.
The other type of person is ugly even in appearance. They are like miserable shacks, but the inside is disgusting, filled with stench and dirt, offal (metaphor “the liver is boiled and the rennet gets wet”).
The second quatrain is entirely dedicated to dead faces and dead souls. Here is the third type of person: the lyrical hero characterizes them with the epithets “cold, dead.” They are compared to the closed bars of a prison. These are faces indifferent people. But there are souls that are “even deader” (and here again Gogol’s artistic logic can be traced), and this is the fourth type: abandoned towers (a fresh metaphor) of a once mighty fortress built for centuries, now, alas, meaningless and uninhabited. No one has been looking into the windows of these towers (a metaphorical image of human eyes) for a long time, because “no one lives” in the towers - and who could live there? Of course, the soul. Means, mental life of a person who is physically still alive has long ceased, and his face involuntarily betrays this death of the soul.
We see the development of the metaphor of windows (in the meaning of eyes), but in a positive sense, in the third stanza, which describes the face of a person who remains alive not only in body, but also in soul. Such a person does not build with his face fortresses with impregnable towers, there is no ostentatious grandeur in his face, his “hut” is “unpretentious” and “poor”, but the context of the entire poem gives these seemingly purely negative epithets the opposite - positive - meaning, and the metaphor The “breath of a spring day” that “flows” from the window of the hut completes the image of a delightful, spiritual face.
Finally, the fourth stanza begins with a line of faith and hope of the lyrical hero: “Truly the world is both great and wonderful!” Both epithets in this context shimmer with all shades of their meanings. These are not only evaluative epithets: “great” in the sense of greatness and “wonderful” in the sense of “beautiful.” But this is the belief that the world is so huge (“great” in the sense of size) and durable that the dull reality surrounding the lyrical hero is, as it were, very special case, caused by the current sad circumstances. Truly human faces are a miracle (and in this sense “wonderful”), they similar songs, created from notes, each of which shines, like a sun(two comparisons strung together).
Meter and rhyme
The poem is written in amphibrachic tetrameter, the rhyme is adjacent, female rhymes alternate with male rhymes.
