Perhaps, one cannot find a poet who would not touch the theme of love in his work. In the works of various authors, we see different faces of this feeling: love-happiness, love-suffering...

The poetic cycle of N.A. Zabolotsky " last love was completed a year before the death of the author. At the end of his life, the poet writes about immortal love. Despite the trials of life (and N.A. Zabolotsky had a lot of them), he did not lose interest in the subtlest movements of the soul. Describing in verse the love excitement of his lyrical hero, the poet encourages us to empathize with this feeling. When you read "Last Love" by Zabolotsky, you are completely immersed in the world created by the poet, you find a lot that is consonant with your feelings.

Together with the heroes of poems, we live a whole life - from youth to old age. There is everything in this life: meetings, declarations of love, parting... However, we do not have a pure narrative: the poet omits a lot, leaving only the most significant.

The lyrical heroes of Zabolotsky have no names: He and She act in verse. Calling the heroes so, the poet emphasizes the symbolism of what is happening. We are talking about two, but at the same time about all lovers. The main character, of course, is He: the story is told from his face. Fairytale heroine She appears in Thistle”, the first poem of the cycle. Like an enchanted princess, in a "high dungeon", the heroine of salvation awaits behind bars. “The sad and beautiful look of her inextinguishable eyes” shines on the hero, as if showing the way to the dungeon where “joy” is imprisoned. But not joy, but sadness sounds in this poem:

But I also live, apparently, badly,

Because I can't help her.

A deaf "wall of thistles" stood between the heroes. Despite the pain (a “wedge-shaped thorn” cuts into the hero’s heart), He goes through the “thistle” to “joy” ...

AT " Sea walk”, the second poem of the cycle, the heroes are nearby. The wave coming from the white glider is "high and light": it shields them from the world. The story continues. Magical, "outlandish", like a dream, the world appears before the heroes.

« Confession”- the third poem of the cycle “Last Love” by Zabolotsky. The hero's confession of love is perceived as deeply intimate, and at the same time something universal is inherent in him - it resonates in everyone's soul (it's not for nothing that these poems are set to music). The heroine, familiar to us from "The Thistle" and "Sea Walk", becomes closer to both the lyrical hero and the reader. She is still “bewitched”, “as if chained”, but this is no longer a fabulous beauty, but an earthly woman. Portrait features appear: “heavy eyes”, “eastern eyebrows” ... And yet there is something mysterious in her appearance, incomprehensible to the hero. This is evidenced by the metaphors and comparisons used by the author: “I was once married to the wind in the field ...”, “As if with dark sky descended ... ", "Open me the face of midnight ...".

The mysterious element of beauty bewitches the hero. He calls his beloved his “precious woman”, “crazy star”, “bitter, sweet”, “beauty”.

In the fourth verse last love”(it gave the name to the whole cycle) the two are turned “to each other forever” and have forgotten “themselves to the end”. But, foreshadowing separation, the summer of their love is leaving. Happiness, the joy of love is short-lived. You can also lose the love sent in your declining years...

The fifth poem of the cycle " Voice on the phone". Separation is only planned, but becomes a fait accompli in the sixth poem of the cycle: the heroine left the hero. His feelings reach the limit:

And my soul cries out in pain,

And my black phone is silent.

Enthusiastic love tends to swear, but "there will be no happiness until the grave." Wisdom came to the hero along with pain: parting and loneliness were inevitable...

But if there was love, can it disappear? Doesn't it lurk in us, waiting for a certain hour? In the seventh poem of the cycle, she reminds the hero of herself with a “half-dead flower”. In the paintings he passes by, artificial flowers are “in watercolor petals”. And under the feet of passers-by is a real flower, albeit “half-dead”, “without movement”, but alive! Love is alive, just look back, look, don't pass by...

« juniper bush" is the eighth poem in the cycle. Again, the "deadly needle" of love pierces the hero's chest. Thistle, juniper bush - images-symbols. Love hurts, but does that stop us? The hero goes towards love, he is attracted by the “slightly living likeness of a smile” of the heroine, which he dreamed of in a dream “in the darkness of the tree branches”. And the theme of repentance, forgiveness sounded. Yes, “the circled garden is lifeless and empty”, but “God forgive you, juniper bush! ..”.

For the hope of a new date, the meeting itself comes. The ninth poem of the cycle is called - " Meeting". The author prefaces it with an epigraph from "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy: “And a face with attentive eyes, with an effort, like a rusty door opens, smiled ...”, - Natasha Rostova, who experienced a feeling for Andrei Bolkonsky, fell in love with Pierre Bezukhov.

For the hero and heroine of Zabolotsky, the door to another life, to another world, opened. Yes, it takes more effort to rebuild a relationship than the first time, but love is worth it. And now the "unexpected" happiness becomes a reality: "Again from her eyes ... light gushed - not light, but a whole sheaf of living rays - not a sheaf, but a whole heap of spring and joy ...".

Behind conversations, smiles, exclamations, "now an unquenchable light was burning" - the light of love, the light of its beauty, which does not fade with age and sorrows. Moths fly to this "unquenchable light". To this "inextinguishable light" the human heart reaches out. And there is no need to stir up the past.

And finally " Old age"- the final poem of the cycle" Last Love ". The heroes come to an understanding of happiness. Heroes cherish the happiness of love, because they found it through pain and suffering. Having experienced a lot, He and She go through life together, supporting each other. As once, it is easy for them again, as once, "their living souls have merged into one single forever ...".

After reading these ten poems, you feel a sense of gratitude to the poet. Zabolotsky's poems convince us that true love still exists in the world, and if it has not yet visited us, do not despair - everything is still ahead.

Olga Eremina

Nikolay Zabolotsky. The cycle "Last love": experience of perception

“Enchanted, bewitched, / Once wedded with the wind in the field ...” We often hear these verses on the radio, turned by the performers into a chanson reeking of vulgarity. But the text of Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poem “Confession”, distorted, having lost one stanza, even in this case does not lose its noble-restrained sound, carries the bright energy of male admiration for secret femininity, the desire to solve the riddle female soul. The poem begins like this:

Kissed, bewitched
Once married to the wind in the field ...

From the cycle of Nikolai Zabolotsky "Last Love" (1956-1957) in school programs and textbooks on literature there are two poems: "Confession" and "Juniper Bush". But to talk about these works outside the cycle means to consider individual details of the weaving mill, when only all the details in their interaction will make it possible to see the pattern woven by the author.

This cycle can be compared with N.A. Nekrasov and with the “Denisiev cycle” by F.I. Tyutchev. According to the poems of Nekrasov and Tyutchev, one can trace the love story, penetrate into the essence of its key moments, know its triumph and drama. Of course, these cycles are of interest to us not only as evidence of the love of their authors for Avdotya Panaeva and Elena Denisyeva, but are important as artistic creations, as documents of the development of the human personality, and even - in socio-psychological terms - as a reflection of the dynamically developing relationship between men and women in general. .

However, there is a significant difference between the works of Nekrasov and Tyutchev, on the one hand, and the Zabolotsky cycle, on the other. The poems of the first two authors are combined into cycles by researchers of their work - literary critics. Zabolotsky himself combines ten poems into a single whole, creates a cycle - a circle, a ring of intertwined, intersecting images. Talking about his late feeling, the poet himself puts a capital letter - and an end to the history of love relationships.

Zabolotsky realizes "Last Love" precisely as a cycle. He places the poems not exactly in the chronology of the development of events: the poem "Meeting" is placed in the ninth number. In essence, the poet creates a novel in verse. If the love poems of Akhmatova's first books could be compared with scattered pages from various novels, then Zabolotsky's cycle is a complete and compositionally built work of art with its own idea, with the development of action and the culmination of enlightenment.

The interpretation of a lyrical work is a deeply individual process. This approach to interpretation allows the author of the article to talk about his personal associations, let the stream of consciousness into the text. AT this case this is not indiscretion, but a pattern associated with the peculiarities of the perception of lyrics.

Let's open the volume of Zabolotsky and read the cycle "Last Love" together.

The novel created by the poet begins with the poem "Thistle" - not from the picture of the first date, but from the image of an unexpectedly erupted emotional drama.

They brought a bouquet of thistles
And they put it on the table, and behold
Before me is a fire, and turmoil,
And fires crimson round dance.

The very first line causes a strange dissonance in the mind: it is not customary to create bouquets of thistles! In popular perception, this prickly weed plant, called a Tatar (Tatar), Mordvin, Murat (V.I. Dal), is connected with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200ba harmful, unclean, evil.

Obviously, it was the word “murat” that prompted Leo Tolstoy to create a poetic image of an inflexible roadside Tatar with an amazing will to live in the story “Hadji Murat”. Since then, in a mind filled with literary associations, the image of this plant has received an aura of passion and romanticism.

What is the sudden outbreak of love for the lyrical hero Zabolotsky? Thistle - devil, evil spirits, passion, a line that divides life; blaze, flashes, fire, purifying flame, which is not impure. A fatal combination of dark and high. Spiritual fire, confusion of feelings, crimson (not crimson) round dance of lights.

These stars with sharp ends
These splashes of the northern dawn
And they rattle and moan with bells,
Lanterns flashing from within.

Stars - star to star speaks- high light to which you aspire; but the stars have sharp ends that can hurt body and soul. Northern Dawn - Aurora - be the star of the north- the ribbon of dawn is spattered with stars; spray - this is when something spilled or burst - or the spray of a fountain - burst like little devils into the sanctuary, where sleep and incense ...

Thistle flowers - rattle and groan bells- the image of the Russian road - the bell is ringing- we call this moan a song ... Lanterns - night, street, lamp, pharmacy- flaring up from the inside - and only a small lamplighter ... Pushkin's melody and the endless Russian road, duty and unquenchable passion are fused together.

The very first word is a verb: have brought. Who brought? No, not me. But who brought this bouquet into my room? Why don't I have the strength to remove it? Throw out? Those who brought it have special power, giving the inevitability and the right to the tortured soul, incinerated by suffering, to experience this suddenly revealed feeling.

Listening to himself, peering into a strange bouquet, the lyrical hero sees in the flashes of opened buds the blaze of the emerging universes, clearly feels a person - a microcosm, soul and body - the embodiment of the cosmic struggle of matter and spirit.

This is also an image of the universe,
An organism woven from rays,
Battles of unfinished flaming
The blaze of raised swords.
It's a tower of rage and glory
Where a spear is attached to a spear,
Where are the bunches of flowers, blood-headed,
Cut right into my heart.

A strange bouquet evokes a dream - a true story? Nav and reality - how to distinguish them? The image of a woman - a "fairy bird" - the archetype of Russian consciousness - is associated with the image of a "high dungeon" - a tower, a tower, where the royal daughters-brides live. Black as night, the lattice blocks the path of the hero. But the hero is not a fabulous hero, Sivka-Burka will not jump to his aid.

But I also live, apparently, badly,
Because I can't help her.
And the thistle wall rises
Between me and my joy.

This bitter awareness, as an image of a sharp, wounding, piercing through (“a wedge-shaped thorn stretched out” in “The Thistle” - “pierced me with a deadly needle” in “The Juniper Bush”), runs through the entire cycle of “Last Love”.

And the last line - “the gaze of her inextinguishable eyes” - an unquenchable lamp - the eternal lamp is lit - an aura of holiness, a feeling of great mystery.

The five-foot song trochee is replaced by the three-foot anapaest of "Sea Walk" waltzing on the waves.

On a sparkling white glider
We drove into a stone grotto,
And a rock with an overturned body
Blocked the sky from us.

If you draw the storyline of the novel, then you need to write: the hero and his beloved are traveling from a city where it is difficult to meet, to the sea, to the Crimea. Banal pseudo-romantic trip? Away from your wife, to the caressing sea? For the lyrical hero of the cycle, this is not so. Every day, every glance he perceives as a bitter gift, he sees in events a reflection of eternity.

In the first poem - a look at the sky, the correlation of one's attitude with the laws of the universe, the higher laws. In the second - an appeal to water as a symbol of the subconscious, immersion in the world of reflections, an attempt to comprehend the laws of the transformation of the body and the movements of the soul.

“In the underground flickering hall”, under the overhanging inanimate mass, which suddenly became animated - the body - rocks, passions lose their heat, the human body loses weight and significance.

We ourselves have become transparent,
Like figurines made of thin mica.

The reflected world has always attracted the attention of poets and artists. Glittering, multiplying, crushing reflections in Zabolotsky acquire a metaphysical meaning. People are trying to realize themselves in reflections, and those, like finished poems, have already separated from their prototype creators, imitate, but do not copy them.

Under the great garment of the sea,
Imitating the movements of people
A whole world of glee and grief
He lived his strange life.

Human life is reflected twice - in space and in water, and the vertical of the spirit connects the two elements.

Something there was torn and boiled,
And weaved, and torn again,
And rocks overturned body
It pierced right through us.

The mystery of reflections is fascinating, but remains unsolved: the driver takes the tourists away from the grotto, and the “high and light wave” takes the lyrical hero from real life, the life of imagination and spirit - into the dream of everyday life.

And at the end of the second poem, an image appears that will also become transparent for the entire cycle - the image of a face (your face in its simple frame) as the embodiment of the life of the soul.

... And Taurida rose from the sea,
Getting closer to your face.

It is not the beloved who approaches the shores of the Crimea, but Taurida, the ancient, memory-rich land, as if alive, rises to meet the woman, as if peering into her face, trying to recognize how the streams of her consciousness are synchronized with the deep currents of the birthing earth.

The culmination of the plot part of the cycle is the poem "Confession". This is not a simple declaration of love. The woman whom the lyrical hero loves is an unusual creature. Fun and sadness are earthly feelings that a simple woman can experience. The heroine of the cycle is “not cheerful, not sad”, she is married to the wind in the field, she descends to her lover from heaven; connecting with it, he seems to be connected with the world soul. But its magical beginning is not just concealed, hidden - it is shackled - “a high dungeon / And a lattice, black as night”. Chained by whom? fate? Rock? This remains unknown, as well as who brought the bouquet of thistles.

The desire to fully reveal the true - magical, transcendental - essence (eternal femininity?) Causes passionate attempts to break the shackles. The kisses of the fairy-tale prince break the spell of a magical dream - the hero breaks the shackles with “tears and poems” that burn through not the body, but the soul.

Man is a world, a castle, a tower (open the dungeon for me, give me the radiance of the day, black-browed maiden), into which one must burst.

Open my midnight face
Let me enter these heavy eyes,
In these black eastern eyebrows,
In these hands are your half-naked.

The world of the midnight mystery does not become flat: even tears are not tears, they only seem to be, maybe they are only an echo of their own tears, and further, behind them, is another lattice, black as night ...

And again, as in the “Sea Walk”, the four-foot anapaest is circling us - this is “Last Love”. In the first three poems, we see only the lyrical hero and his beloved, but here a third person appears - an observer, a driver. And the narration is not in the first person, as before, but on behalf of the author, which makes it possible to look at the situation from the outside.

Evening. The taxi driver brings passengers to the flower garden and waits for them while they walk.

... An elderly passenger at the curtain
Stayed with my girlfriend.
And the driver through sleepy eyelids
Suddenly I noticed two strange faces,
Turned to each other forever
And completely forgotten.

I noticed not figures, not poses - faces! Faces not in love, not enthusiastic, not admired - strange. Love for heroes is not an easy flirtation, not a physiological attraction, but much more: forgetting oneself, finding the meaning of life, when a person suddenly understands: this is what the soul is for! Such love is sanctified from above.

Two foggy light lights
They came from...

The description of a magnificent flowering flower bed - “the beauty of the passing summer” - is reminiscent of early Zabolotsky's poems with his bold and eloquent comparisons. But then it was an end in itself - here it becomes a means of creating a contrast between the triumph of life, the celebration of nature and the inevitability of human grief.

The circle of flowers through which our heroes silently walk seems endless, but the driver - the observer - knows that summer is ending, "that their song has long been sung." But the heroes don't know that yet. Don't know? Why do they walk in silence?

Southern happiness is really over. Again, as in the first poem, a trochee pentameter, first-person narration, Moscow and the impossibility of meeting: “Voice on the phone”. The face lives separately - and the voice also separates from the body, as if taking on its own flesh. At first it is “vociferous, like a bird”, pure, shining like a spring. Then - "distant sobbing", "farewell to the joy of the soul." The voice is filled with repentance and disappears: “He perished in some wild field ...” And where else should the voice of the beauty, married - in the field - with the wind, disappear? But this is not a summer feather grass field - this is a field along which a blizzard walks. The black lattice of the dungeon turns into a black phone, the voice is a prisoner of the black phone, the soul - a reflection of the spirit in the body - screams in pain ...

The sixth and seventh poems lose their names, they are replaced by faceless stars. The lines are getting shorter, the poems too. The sixth is a two-foot amphibrach, the seventh is a two-foot anapaest.

“You swore to the grave // ​​To be my sweetheart” - it didn’t work out to the grave. “We have become smarter”? Happiness to the grave ... Does it happen? The motifs of water, reflections reappear, the swan - the bird of a fairy tale, dreams - floats to the ground - the love boat crashed against everyday life; the water shines lonely - let me enter into these heavy eyes - no one is reflected in it anymore - only a night star.

The triumphant flowers of the curtain fell off - only in the middle of the panel lies a half-dead flower. It lies not in the light of lights, but in the white twilight - in the white shroud - of the day - "Like your reflection // In my soul."

Thistle bouquet with wedge-shaped thorns seems to be making a comeback in Juniper Bush. Together with the lyrical hero, we again enter the bizarre interweaving of dream images, linking the beginning and end of the love story with cross-cutting motives.

I saw a juniper bush in a dream
I heard a metallic crunch in the distance,
I heard a ringing of amethyst berries,
And in a dream, in silence, I liked him.

The juniper of our Central Russian forests is a bush, the branches of which cover the road for those leaving on their last journey - the berries do not ripen. Juniper bushes of the Crimea - almost trees - sacred trees for local peoples - hot sun, fragrant cloud of resinous smells - ringing of cicadas - red-purple berries. A man walks on the grass, steps on a dry branch - the branch crunches under his foot - how does the metal crunch? The sunny blaze of raised swords, the ringing of battle - turns into destruction, into a metallic crunch ... The paired rhyme seems to shorten the verse, breathing becomes quieter and less frequent.

The thistle wall returns as a darkness of tree branches, through which “a slightly living likeness of your smile” shines through. The face is no longer visible - only a smile remains - the Cheshire cat - which lives in the mind of the lyrical hero - the value - I was satisfied that the trace of the nail was visible yesterday - it melts, as the aroma of resin dissipates.

Gotta grow your garden!

But the clouds have dispersed, the obsession is gone:

In golden skies outside my window
The clouds float by one by one
My garden that has flown around is lifeless and empty ...
God forgive you, juniper bush!

Passions subsided, forgiveness sent, love story completed. It would seem that the cycle is over. But the lyrical hero peers into his soul, into his “circled garden”, persistently asking: why? Why was this test love sent to me? If it's gone, then what's left?

The answer to this question is brought by the spiritual climax - the ninth poem "Meeting". Its epigraph is a tuning fork, according to which the most important images of the cycle are tuned: “And the face with attentive eyes, with difficulty, with effort, like a rusty door opens, smiled ...” (L. Tolstoy. “War and Peace”).

The lyrical hero - the “eternal misanthrope”, who lost faith in life, alienated from people by a series of severe trials - recalls the first meeting with a woman, thanks to which the shell of distrust cracked, and then completely dissolved in the life-giving rays of joy.

As the rusted door opens,
With difficulty, with effort, - forgetting what happened,
She, my unexpected, now
She opened her face towards me.
And light gushed out - not light, but a whole sheaf
Living rays - not a sheaf, but a whole heap
Springs and joys, and the eternal misanthrope,
I laughed...

The unquenchable light of life, sanctified by love, lit up again for the hero, took possession of his thoughts and forced him to open the window to the garden - to open his soul towards the manifestation of the world. Moths from the garden rushed towards the lampshade - I'm like a butterfly to the fire - life itself, love itself - one of them trustingly sat on the hero's shoulder: "... It was transparent, tremulous and pink."

The joy of existence is the highest unity, and analysis by an attempt to classify feelings and sensations sometimes destroys this joy.

I haven't had any questions yet.
Yes, and there was no need for them - questions.

Human actions have several levels: the level of events, plot, the essence of which is understood by everyday consciousness, and the level that leads to the existence of the World Soul. The love story of the hero at the first level ended in parting, but it raised his soul above the ordinary, helped him to recognize in himself a true person, previously hidden by a scab of distrust and grief, gave light - “a whole heap of spring and joy”. And it helps to live on - under the golden skies, where clouds float by, above the golden leaves of the alleys.

Simple, quiet, gray-haired,
He is with a stick, she is with an umbrella, -
They are golden leaves
They look, walking until dark.

This is the epilogue - the poem "Old Age". Third person narration. Autumn. Spouses who have lived together life understand each other's every look. Forgiveness and peace came to them, their souls burn "brightly and evenly." The cross of suffering they carried turned out to be life-giving.

Weak as cripples
Under the yoke of their weaknesses,
Into one forever
Their living souls merged.

Since then, these spruce and pine have been growing together. Their roots intertwined, their trunks stretched up close to the light ... A beautiful palm tree remained on a combustible cliff.

And the realization came that happiness is “only lightning, / Only a distant weak light.” Reflection of another - higher - joy. But this is not the main thing: in addition to fatalism, the poem contains a positive statement that happiness is a blue bird, a bright horse - “requires work”! Our labor, human, which alone is able to create a counterbalance to the fatal have brought.

Ring composition: the light of leaves, the image of human souls - burning candles - at the end of the poem.

The thistle's fiery confusion melted into the gold of understanding. The cycle is a circle, the novel is completed.

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Do you know anything about the Oberiuts? Or that Vasily Grossman was a famous heartthrob? Oh oh love lyrics Nikolay Zabolotsky? In any case, the poem "Confession" - for sure, is familiar to many. Or a romance in his words. Something karmic seems to me in this whole story.
In any case, it's interesting.
Look at the source, wonderful additions: photographs, romance.

“Kissed, bewitched”: to whom the poet confessed his love, to whom the lyrics were alien

The history of the creation of the poem "Kissed, bewitched ...", which has become a popular romance, is very curious. After reading it, it may seem that it was written by a young man in love with an ardent gaze. But in fact, it was written by a serious 54-year-old serious pedant with the manners and appearance of an accountant. In addition, until 1957, it was in that year that Zabolotsky created his cycle “Last Love”, intimate lyrics were completely alien to him. And suddenly, at the end of life, this marvelous lyrical cycle.
Nikolai Zabolotsky (that's right, he became Zabolotsky with an accent on the penultimate syllable only in 1925) was born on April 24, 1903 in Urzhum, Vyatka province. In his youth, he became a student at the St. Petersburg Institute named after Herzen, and as a student he became a member of the OBERIU group. The attitude towards women among the Oberiuts was purely consumerist, and Zabolotsky himself was among those who "violently scolded women." Schwartz recalled that Zabolotsky and Akhmatova simply could not stand each other. “A chicken is not a bird, a woman is not a poet,” Zabolotsky liked to repeat. disrespectful attitude towards opposite sex Zabolotsky carried it through almost his entire life and was not noticed in love lyrics.

But despite such life approaches, the marriage of Nikolai Alekseevich was successful and was very strong. He married a classmate - slender, dark-eyed, laconic, who became a wonderful wife, mother and mistress.
Zabolotsky gradually left the Oberiuts, his experiments with the word and image expanded significantly, and by the mid-1930s he became a famous poet. But the denunciation of the poet, which happened in 1938, divided his life and work into two parts. It is known that Zabolotsky was tortured during the investigation, but he never signed anything. Maybe that's why he was given the minimum five years. Many writers were crushed by the Gulag - Babel, Kharms, Mandelstam. Zabolotsky survived - according to biographers, thanks to his family and wife, who was his guardian angel.

He was exiled to Karaganda and his wife and children followed him. The poet was released only in 1946 thanks to the efforts of well-known colleagues, in particular, Fadeev. After his release, Zabolotsky was allowed to settle with his family in Moscow. He was reinstated in the Writers' Union, and the writer Ilyenkov gave him his dacha in Peredelkino. He worked hard on translations. Gradually, everything got better: publications, fame, prosperity, an apartment in Moscow and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
But in 1956, something happened that Zabolotsky did not expect at all - his wife left him. 48-year-old Ekaterina Vasilievna, who lived for many years for the sake of her husband, who did not see any care or affection from him, went to the writer and famous heartthrob Vasily Grossman. “If she had swallowed the bus,” writes Nikolai, the son of Korney Chukovsky, “Zabolotsky would have been less surprised!”

Surprise was replaced by horror. Zabolotsky was helpless, crushed and pathetic. His grief led him to Natalya Roskina, a 28-year-old lonely and intelligent woman. Confused by what had happened, he simply called a certain lady who loved his poetry. That's all he knew about her. He let the one who knew all his styles from a young age, they met and became lovers.
There were no happy ones in this triangle. And Zabolotsky himself, and his wife, and Natalya Roskina suffered in their own way. But it was the poet's personal tragedy that prompted him to create a cycle of lyrical poems "Last Love", which became one of the most talented and poignant in Russian poetry. But among all the poems included in the collection, "Confession" stands apart - a true masterpiece, a whole storm of feelings and emotions. In this poem, two women of the poet merged into one image.
Ekaterina Vasilievna returned to her husband in 1958. This year marks another famous poem N. Zabolotsky "Do not let your soul be lazy." It was written by a terminally ill person. 1.5 months after the return of his wife, Nikolai Zabolotsky died of a second heart attack.

Confession
Kissed, bewitched
Once married to the wind in the field,
All of you, as if chained,
My precious woman!
Not happy, not sad
As if descended from the dark sky,
You and my wedding song
And my star is crazy.
I will bow down on your knees
I will embrace them with fierce force,
And tears and poems
I will burn you, bitter, sweet.
Open my midnight face
Let me enter these heavy eyes,
In these black eastern eyebrows,
In these hands are your half-naked.
What will increase - will not decrease,
What will not come true - will be forgotten ...
Why are you crying, beautiful?
Or is it just my imagination?

Nikolay Zabolotsky<1957 г>

In 1956-1957. the poet creates a lyrical cycle "Last love" consisting of 10 poems. They unfold a dramatic story of the relationship of already elderly people, whose feelings have passed difficult tests. According to A.V. Makedonov, “this is a story about some kind of misfortune, a huge mental pain that divided the lovers, a temporary gap; then, after some, also painful hesitation, there is a new connection and final reconciliation...”.

In these verses, not everything is so simple and unambiguous. Perhaps, nothing is said here directly, “in open text”, and the drama of love is revealed primarily in reflection, through pictures and images of nature, not only from the inside, but often, as it were, through the eyes of a “person from outside”.

Deeply personal love experiences are invariably projected onto life surrounding nature. In the closest connection with it, the poet sees what is happening in his own heart. And therefore, already in the first poem, a simple “thistle bouquet” carries the reflections of the Universe: “These stars with sharp ends, / These sprays of the northern dawn ... / This is also an image of the universe ...” And at the same time it is a very concrete, plastic and spiritualized image the departing feeling, the inevitable parting with the beloved woman: “... Where are the bunches of flowers, blood-headed, / Directly cut into my heart”; “And a wedge-shaped thorn stretched out / In my chest, and for the last time / The sad and beautiful shines on me / The look of her inextinguishable eyes.”

And in other poems of the cycle, along with a direct direct expression of feeling (“Confession”, “You swore - to the fob ...”), it also arises and is reflected - in landscape paintings, living details of the surrounding nature, in which the poet sees “a whole world of jubilation and grief” and “a slightly living likeness of your smile” (“Sea Walk”, “Juniper Bush”).

The title and, perhaps, the key poem of the cycle - “Last Love” (“The car trembled and became ...”). It has elements of description and narrative. This is a kind of fragment of a short story, a story-sketch about the last meeting-parting of two lovers. The researchers noted the plot and figurative echo of these poems with the poem of the same name by Tyutchev from the "Denisevsky cycle" of the 1850-1860s. and Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Dog".

In Zabolotsky's poem, the action unfolds against the backdrop of an autumn landscape, still lushly blooming, but already doomed to withering nature, the change of time of day (“Two went out into the evening expanse”), the seasons (“The beauty of the passing summer / Embraced them with hundreds of arms”). These spatio-temporal images in their plastic-pictorial specifics, dynamics, psychological richness reflect the inner state of two lovers: in the way “the constellations of lights fluttered” and “the motor fluttered heavily”, one can hear the trembling of their hearts. In the bright, dazzling colors of the “leaving summer”, the flash of their late, last passion is equally reflected:

There were fire-faced elands here,
Like glasses of blood wine
And gray aquilegia sultans,
And daisies in a crown of gold.
In the inevitable premonition of grief,
Waiting for the autumn minutes
Sea of ​​momentary joy
Surrounded by lovers here.

Despite the importance of internal associative moves, the capacity of figurative details, the composition of the poem has a strict completeness. In the finale, the car that appeared already in the first stanza reappears and the “tired driver”, through whose eyes, in fact, we see this brief scene of the last meeting of lovers:

And the car was in the dark
And the motor trembled heavily,
And the driver smiled tiredly.
Lowering the glass in the cockpit.
He knew that summer was ending
That rainy days are coming.
That their song has long been sung,
That, fortunately, they did not know.

In the final poems of the cycle (“Meeting”, “Old Age”), the dramatic life conflict is resolved and the painful experiences are replaced by a feeling of enlightenment and peace. The “life-giving light of suffering” and the “distant weak light” of happiness flickering with rare lightning flashes are inextinguishable in memory, but, most importantly, all the hardest is behind: “And only their souls, like candles, / Stream the last warmth.”