Two hands easily lowered by Tsvetaeva. Analysis of the poem by M. Tsvetaeva “Two hands, easily lowered...

Marina Tsvetaeva
"Two hands, easily lowered..."
Two hands, easily lowered
On a baby's head!
There were - one for each -
I was given two heads.

But both - squeezed -
Furious - as could be! -
Snatching the eldest from the darkness -
She didn’t save the youngest.

Two hands - caress - smooth
The tender heads are lush.
Two hands - and here is one of them
Overnight it turned out to be extra.

Light - on a thin neck -
Dandelion on a stem!
I still don't understand at all
That my child is in the earth.
Easter week 1920

Like tears, like the bitter tears of a mother,
In words, all the pain pours out in quiet hysteria.
And it didn’t matter how much we spent,
What is much more important is what was underestimated.

And the concrete walls are beating and collapsing
Under the wind of life, fierce in madness,
And the children's houses are made of cardboard.
Well, trouble, you sweep them away without thinking?

There is so little warmth that even a woman is weak,
She conquered the whole world with her love,
I see he’s standing there in black, with his arms crossed,
And tears flow like transparent cherries.

And word by word, humbly and prayerfully,
The singing will dispel the aching black
Tortured by the wind, worn out by the truth,
Native, distant and doomed...

“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it!” is heard.
How unfair, how stupid, how wrong!
Another pain will be tied to the thread of fate,
Another feeling is represented in verse.

Reviews

The daily audience of the portal Stikhi.ru is about 200 thousand visitors, who in total view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

That same little unhealthy child who, according to V. Zvyagintseva and M. Grineva-Kuznetsova, sometimes spent entire days alone at home while Tsvetaeva read poetry at a party. The same child whom, with the encouragement of her mother, she neglected elder sister. A child who knew how heavy a mother's hand is. A child who periodically fell asleep in a chair wrapped in a pile of rags. “Random child”, with whom Tsvetaeva was clearly burdened. The mother even found out about her death quite by accident, “having come to the Children’s Rescue League to find out about the sanatorium for Ali, and after taking her eldest daughter home, she no longer visited the shelter. She didn’t come to bury Irina, never visited her grave.

And here is the poem “Two hands, easily lowered...”. It contains grief: “I still don’t understand at all that my child is in the ground...”. Pain and pity are their own panic, but not grief from the loss of their daughter. Tsvetaeva is devastated, but cannot admit that she neglected Irina all the time. Many did not understand her, but she demanded compassion and self-pity from those around her. A mother is always a mother, no matter what difficulties and adversities happen in life. And maybe that’s why she was looking for an excuse for herself in that she saved her eldest daughter, but did not save her youngest. Efron’s sister Lilya offered to take Irina with her to the village and then keep the girl with her, but Tsvetaeva refused, and after her death she shifted all the blame onto her.

Two hands, easily lowered
On a baby's head!
There were - one for each -
I was given two heads.

But both - squeezed -
Furious - as could be! -
Snatching the eldest from the darkness -
She didn’t save the youngest.

Two hands - caress and smooth
The tender heads are lush.
Two hands - and here is one of them
Overnight it turned out to be extra.

Light - on a thin neck -
Dandelion on a stem!
I still don't understand at all
That my child is in the earth.

Marina Tsvetaeva's poems.... always come from some real fact, from something actually experienced.

V. Bryusov

Marina Tsvetaeva is an outstanding original poetess not only " silver age", but also throughout Russian literature. Her poems amaze with unprecedented depth, expressiveness of lyricism, self-repentance of the soul, tragic contradictions. These are amazingly living poems about the experience, not just about what has been suffered, but about what has shocked. Already in the first collection of poems, an eighteen-year-old girl in October 1910 defines his life and literary credo, his own dissimilarity: “All this happened. My poems are a diary, my poetry is the poetry of proper names,” the poetess will later write in the preface to the collection “From Two Books.”

In connection with what was the poem “Two hands, easily lowered”, dated 1920, created? Who is it dedicated to? I will try to answer these and other questions in my essay.

At the beginning of 1917, Tsvetaeva gave birth to her second daughter. At first she wanted to name her Anna in honor of Akhmatova, but then she changed her mind and called her Irina: “after all, fates do not repeat themselves.” Hunger, separation from her husband, who had joined the ranks of Kornilov’s army, two daughters... In the fall of 1919, in order to feed her children, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevo orphanage. But soon the seriously ill Alya (the eldest) had to be taken home, and on February 15 (16) little Irina died of hunger. That same little unhealthy child who, according to V. Zvyagintseva and M. Grineva-Kuznetsova, sometimes spent entire days alone at home while Tsvetaeva read poetry at a party. The same child who, with the encouragement of his mother, was neglected by his older sister. A child who knew how heavy a mother's hand is. A child who periodically fell asleep in a chair wrapped in a pile of rags. “Random child”, with whom Tsvetaeva was clearly burdened. The mother even found out about her death quite by accident, “having come to the Children’s Rescue League to find out about the sanatorium for Ali, and after taking her eldest daughter home, she no longer visited the shelter. She did not come to bury Irina, and never visited her graves.

And here is the poem "Two hands, easily lowered...". There is grief in it: “I still don’t understand at all that my child is in the earth...”. Pain and pity are their own panic, but not grief from the loss of their daughter. Tsvetaeva is devastated, but cannot admit that she neglected Irina all the time. Many did not understand her, but she demanded compassion and self-pity from those around her. A mother is always a mother, no matter what difficulties and adversities happen in life. And maybe that’s why she was looking for an excuse for herself in that she saved her eldest daughter, but did not save her youngest. Efron’s sister Lilya offered to take Irina with her to the village and then keep the girl with her, but Tsvetaeva refused, and after her death she shifted all the blame onto her.

The poem "Two hands, easily lowered..." is written in trochee.

Two hands, easily lowered

On a baby's head!

There were - one for each -

I was given two heads.

The rhythmic scheme of the first stanza of the poem:

- - / - - / - - /- - / - -

- - / - - / - - /- - / -

- -/ - - / - - /- - /-

- - / - -/ - - / - - / -

M. Tsvetaeva is one of the most rhythmically diverse poets (Brodsky), rhythmically rich, generous. Her verse is intermittent, uneven, full of sudden accelerations and pauses (elements of free verse):

But both - squeezed -

Furious - as could be! -

Snatching the eldest from the darkness -

She didn’t save the younger one.

Tsvetaeva’s rhythm keeps the reader in suspense: if the first quatrain is the beginning, the story that she had two daughters, then the second is a story about the struggle for the eldest, the third is the climax: the youngest died, and the fourth is the result: a call for compassion to her Tsvetaeva. As the climax builds, the intonation of the poem also changes: from slow to screaming, and then to sad - mourning.

Tsvetaeva’s rhyme is the most unmistakable way to create an artistic image. Tsvetaeva uses a “new rhyme,” as Bryusov once called it. This rhyme is imprecise, with various shifts in the location and nature of the rhyming sounds.

But both - squeezed -

Furious - as could be! -

Snatching the eldest from the darkness -

She didn’t save the younger one.

Her rhyme is a type of sound repetition. In the first stanza of the poem, these are repetitions of words: two hands - two heads, parts of the word: head - little head; in the second stanza there is a repetition of certain combinations: but with both - squeezed, squeezed - furious, squeezed - snatching, could - saved. In the third stanza there are again repetitions of combinations: lush - superfluous (consonance), in the last stanza repetitions of sounds: thin - incomprehensible (alliteration), repetitions of vowels: on the stem - in the ground (assonance). Moreover, repetitions of vowels (e, o, d, b) are characteristic of the entire poem. The root repetition found in Tsvetaeva (head - head) is a special stylistic device that enhances the expressiveness of speech (the girl is small, that’s why she has a head).

In the poem “Two hands, easily lowered...” there are also internal rhymes that run vertically:

Dandelion on a stem!

I still don't understand at all

That my child is in the earth.

Such lines divide the line into two hemistiches, highlighting each: the first is dedicated to the daughter Irina, the second to the understanding that she is no longer there.

In "Two hands, easily lowered..." meet masculine rhyme- stress on the last syllable: “... Like my child in the earth”, dactylic - stress on the third syllable from the end: “But both are squeezed...”.

Tsvetaeva, achieving maximum capacity and expressiveness of the phrase, sacrifices verbs:

Light - on a thin neck -

Dandelion is not stem!

Hence the abruptness of the transition to the sentence; she seems to be in a hurry; the “ragged syntax” of her poetic speech corresponds to the tragic reality of fate. The poem also contains a violation of the word order “There were - one for each - Two heads were given to me,” which further reveals the idea of the previous phrase (for two hands).

One of the most active parts of speech in Tsvetaeva’s poetry are adjectives (tender, lush heads, thin neck), and among the features are numerous dashes. The poetess's dashes are not at all the dashes that textbooks recommend. This sign indicates a change of pace:

But both - squeezed -

Furious - as could be!

The following word is emphasized (after all, a dash is always a short pause): “Two hands - caressing - smoothing...”, a new unusual characteristic of an object that has already been characterized is introduced (“... Light - on a thin neck...”), they are intensified images

("... But both - clamped - furious...").

Wherever intonation or meaning requires a pause, a breath, an intensified continuation, Tsvetaeva places a dash everywhere. The poetess's end of sentence sign is a break. For Tsvetaeva, feeling is primary, hence the choice between an exclamation, a question and an ellipsis. The exclamations in the first, second and last quatrains emphasize the intensity of feelings conveyed by the poetess. In the poem “Two hands, easily lowered...” there is only one comparison in relation to her youngest daughter “a dandelion on a stem” and two epithets “on a thin neck” and lush delicate heads.”

The poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva is a boundless inner world, the world of the soul, creativity and destiny. B. Pasternak, admiring Tsvetaeva’s poetic courage, remarked in a letter to her in 1926:

Listen! Poems from the other world

And Pyra during the plague.

Analysis of the poem by M. Tsvetaeva “Two hands, easily lowered...”
Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva... always start from some real fact, from something actually experienced.
V. Bryusov
Marina Tsvetaeva is an outstanding original poetess not only of the “Silver Age”, but of all Russian literature. Her poems amaze with unprecedented depth, expressiveness of lyricism, self-repentance of the soul, and tragic contradictions. These are amazingly vivid poems about what they have experienced, not just about what they have suffered, but about what has shocked them. Already in the first collection of poems, an eighteen-year-old girl in October 1910 defines her life and literary credo, her own dissimilarity. “It all happened. My poems are a diary, my poetry is the poetry of proper names,” the poetess will later write in the preface to the collection “From Two Books.”
In connection with what was the poem “Two hands, easily lowered”, dated 1920, created? Who is it dedicated to? I will try to answer these and other questions in my essay.
At the beginning of 1917, Tsvetaeva gave birth to her second daughter. At first she wanted to name her Anna in honor of Akhmatova, but then she changed her mind and called her Irina: “after all, fates do not repeat themselves.” Hunger, separation from her husband, who had joined the ranks of Kornilov’s army, two daughters... In the fall of 1919, in order to feed her children, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevo orphanage. But soon the seriously ill Alya (the eldest) had to be taken home, and on February 15 (16) little Irina died of hunger. That same little unhealthy child who, according to V. Zvyagintseva and M. Grineva-Kuznetsova, sometimes spent entire days alone at home while Tsvetaeva read poetry at a party. The same child who, with the encouragement of his mother, was neglected by his older sister. A child who knew how heavy a mother's hand is. A child who periodically fell asleep in a chair wrapped in a pile of rags. “Random child”, with whom Tsvetaeva was clearly burdened. The mother even found out about her death quite by accident, “having come to the Children’s Rescue League to find out about the sanatorium for Ali, and after taking her eldest daughter home, she never visited the shelter again. She didn’t come to bury Irina, never visited her grave.
And here is the poem “Two hands, easily lowered...”. It contains grief: “I still don’t understand at all that my child is in the ground...”. Pain and pity are their own panic, but not grief from the loss of their daughter. Tsvetaeva is devastated, but cannot admit that she neglected Irina all the time. Many did not understand her, but she demanded compassion and self-pity from those around her. A mother is always a mother, no matter what difficulties and adversities happen in life. And maybe that’s why she was looking for an excuse for herself in that she saved her eldest daughter, but did not save her youngest. Efron’s sister Lilya offered to take Irina with her to the village and then keep the girl with her, but Tsvetaeva refused, and after her death she shifted all the blame onto her.
The poem “Two hands, easily lowered...” is written in trochee.
Two hands, easily lowered
On a baby's head!
There were - one for each -
I was given two heads.
The rhythmic scheme of the first stanza of the poem:
- - / - - / - - /- - / - -
- - / - - / - - /- - / -
- -/ - - / - - /- - /-
- - / - -/ - - / - - / -
M. Tsvetaeva is one of the most rhythmically diverse poets (Brodsky), rhythmically rich, generous. Her verse is intermittent, uneven, full of sudden accelerations and pauses (elements of free verse):
But both - squeezed -
Furious - as could be! -
Snatching the eldest from the darkness -
She didn’t save the younger one.
Tsvetaeva’s rhythm keeps the reader in suspense: if the first quatrain is the beginning, the story that she had two daughters, then the second is a story about the struggle for the eldest, the third is the climax: the youngest died, and the fourth is the result: a call for compassion to her Tsvetaeva. As the climax builds, the intonation of the poem also changes: from slow to screaming, and then to sad - mourning.
Tsvetaeva’s rhyme is the most unmistakable way to create an artistic image. Tsvetaeva uses a “new rhyme,” as Bryusov once called it. This rhyme is imprecise, with various shifts in the location and nature of the rhyming sounds.
But both - squeezed -
Furious - as could be! -
Snatching the eldest from the darkness -
She didn’t save the younger one.
Her rhyme is a type of sound repetition. In the first stanza of the poem, these are repetitions of words: two hands - two heads, parts of the word: head - little head; in the second stanza there is a repetition of certain combinations: but with both - squeezed, squeezed - furious, squeezed - snatching, could - saved. In the third stanza there are again repetitions of combinations: lush - superfluous (consonance), in the last stanza repetitions of sounds: thin - incomprehensible (alliteration), repetitions of vowels: on the stem - in the ground (assonance). Moreover, repetitions of vowels (e, o, d, b) are characteristic of the entire poem. The root repetition found in Tsvetaeva (head - head) is a special stylistic device that enhances the expressiveness of speech (the girl is small, that’s why she has a head).
In the poem “Two hands, easily lowered...” there are also internal rhymes that run vertically:

Dandelion on a stem!
I still don't understand at all
That my child is in the earth.
Such lines divide the line into two hemistiches, highlighting each: the first is dedicated to the daughter Irina, the second to the understanding that she is no longer there.
In “Two hands, easily lowered...” there is a masculine rhyme - stress on the last syllable: “... Like my child in the earth”, dactylic - stress on the third syllable from the end: “But both are clamped...”.
Tsvetaeva, achieving maximum capacity and expressiveness of the phrase, sacrifices verbs:
Light - on a thin neck -
Dandelion is not stem!
Hence the abruptness of the transition to the sentence; she seems to be in a hurry; the “ragged syntax” of her poetic speech corresponds to the tragic reality of fate. The poem also contains a violation of the word order “There were - one for each - Two heads were given to me,” which further reveals the idea of the previous phrase (for two hands).
One of the most active parts of speech in Tsvetaeva’s poetry are adjectives (tender, lush heads, thin neck), and among the features are numerous dashes. The poetess's dashes are not at all the dashes that textbooks recommend. This sign indicates a change of pace:
But both - squeezed -
Furious - as could be!
The following word is emphasized (after all, a dash is always a short pause): “Two hands - caress - smooth...”, a new unusual characteristic of an object that has already been characterized is introduced (“... Light - on a thin neck...”), images are intensified
(“... But both - clamped - furious...”).
Wherever intonation or meaning requires a pause, a breath, an intensified continuation, Tsvetaeva places a dash everywhere. The poetess's end of sentence sign is a break. For Tsvetaeva, feeling is primary, hence the choice between an exclamation, a question and an ellipsis. The exclamations in the first, second and last quatrains emphasize the intensity of feelings conveyed by the poetess. In the poem “Two hands, easily lowered...” there is only one comparison in relation to her youngest daughter “a dandelion on a stem” and two epithets “on a thin neck” and lush delicate heads.”
The poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva is a boundless inner world, the world of the soul, creativity and destiny. B. Pasternak, admiring Tsvetaeva’s poetic courage, remarked in a letter to her in 1926:
Listen! Poems from the other world
Only we will read them -
As the authors of the Vedas and Testaments
And Pyra during the plague.