About the book "poems of Russian and foreign poets". About the book "poems of Russian and foreign poets" Poetry of the 20th century in rock music

Many modern composers and performers turn to the work of Russian poets. Recently, songs based on poems by poets who worked in the 20th century have been heard especially often.

The compositions are written in completely different musical genres. But the largest number of poems turned into songs are in rock music. We can confidently say that Russian classics are truly “living and thriving” in this genre today. Many musicians explain this phenomenon by their personal relationship with a particular poet. Some of them are close to the themes of poems, while others write and perform such songs, wanting to express their respect for this or that author.

Poetry XX centuries in rock music

Diana Arbenina and Svetlana Surganova love to write musical compositions based on poems by Russian poets. Both in joint work and in individual work, the performers turn to the poems of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva. But especially often they resort to the work of the inimitable Joseph Brodsky. As members of the group “Night Snipers”, Diana Arbenina and Svetlana Surganova recorded a composition called “Save My Shadow” for his “Letters to the Wall”. After Surganova’s departure, “Night Snipers” performed a song based on Brodsky’s poem “I have always said that fate is a game,” which became known as “I’m sitting by the window,” and the group “Surganova and the Orchestra” set his poem “Isn’t it really me” to music .

Despite the fact that Brodsky himself did not like it when his poems were set to music, many musicians cannot ignore his magnificent poems and use them in their work. The group “Spleen” did not leave Joseph Brodsky unnoticed. The musicians wrote the songs “The End of a Beautiful Era” and “My Breathless Lightness” based on the poet’s famous poems.

But the most famous creation of the group “Splin” is the song “Mayak”, which was written to the tender poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky “Lilichka!” This song is heard at every concert of the Splins; themed radio stations play it endlessly. Perhaps this is the most famous song in Russian rock, written to a poem by the poet.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Despite the complex structure of Mayakovsky's poems and the difficulty of understanding them, the poet's work remains one of the most popular among musicians. In 2005, a whole project called “Living Mayakovsky” was launched. This is a musical collection consisting of compositions written to poems by the famous futurist. Over 100 different performers took part in the project. The first disc of the collection was released on April 14, 2005 - on the day of the 75th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Mayakovsky. The second disc was presented to the public on July 19, 2008 - on the poet’s 115th birthday.

Sergey Yesenin

Also, perhaps the most beloved folk poet remains in great demand for musicians. Here, of course, it is worth mentioning the group “Mongol Shuudan” with their widely known and beloved by many listeners “Moscow” based on Yesenin’s poem. Also, the poet’s works appear in almost all the works of the young talented group from Zelenograd “The Retuses”. They perform songs based on Sergei Yesenin's favorite poems in an acoustic version. The vocalist's unique voice, mannered performance and magnificent melody immediately sink into the listener's soul.

The largest project related to the work of Sergei Yesenin and rock music was the project of Alexey Gorshenev, frontman of the Kukryniksy group, called “Gorshenev - Yesenin”. It includes two albums: “The Soul of a Poet” and “The Death of a Poet.” According to Gorshenev, in this way he sought to attract people's attention to serious literature. The musician wanted to convey to the audience the lyricism and drama of the poems, their tragedy and deep meaning. And, of course, with this project he wanted to show respect, empathy and gratitude to the poet.

In 2012, the Kukryniksy group even showed the musical performance “The Life of a Poet” on stage. Alexey prepared for such a theatrical embodiment of his songs for three years. Before this, songs written to the poems of Sergei Yesenin were only occasionally performed at Kukryniksy concerts. The musician dreamed of bringing to life a program that synthesized musical and theatrical performances. And he succeeded.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Also loved by many musicians is the poetess Marina Tsvetaeva. Zemfira performed the song “I Loved You” based on her poem “Slowly and surely the gas floated through the tired room...”, directly dedicating this song to the poetess. Yuri Shevchuk did not forget about Tsvetaeva, writing the song “Roads Run Everywhere” based on one of her poems. Nezhnaya and the “Melnitsa” group set to music Marina Tsvetaeva’s poem “From Arrows and from Spells...” from the “Scythian” cycle. And even the notorious group “Leningrad” recorded the lyrical composition “Signs” based on a poem by the same poetess.

Many performers have at least once turned to the work of Russian poets. For example, the group “Billy's Band” wrote a song based on Brodsky’s poem “First a chair fell into the abyss.” Boris Grebenshchikov and “Aquarium” recorded the composition “Tarusa” for “Town” by Nikolai Zabolotsky. And the group “AuktYon” decided not to waste time on trifles and In 1995, she recorded the album “Tenant of the Peaks,” consisting entirely of songs based on poems by Velimir Khlebnikov.

It can be assumed that appealing to such a wide range of poets is characteristic of rock music precisely because of its certain “elitism” and difficulty in understanding. The fact that rock musicians perform compositions based on the works of famous poets characterizes both the current state of Russian rock and, oddly enough, the artistic world of poets of the 20th century.

On November 22, 1877, the Hungarian poet Endre Ady was born. One of his poems was set to music - this is how the Nautilus Pompilius hit “Prince of Silence” was born. We remembered what other Russian rock songs were written based on classical poems.

1. The Hungarian poet Endre Ady, who lived a short life (he died at 41), had a strong influence on the literature of his country. It is believed that it was his poetry that became the impetus for the thematic and lexical renewal of Hungarian literature. An ardent supporter of the revolution, Adi was enthusiastic about the events of 1905-1907 in Russia and called for revolution in Hungary. The poet’s spiritual strength was broken by the First World War: with its beginning, the world, in the poet’s mind, perishes in fire. Endre Ady died in 1919, a few months after the end of the war.

In 1982, aspiring rock musician Vyacheslav Butusov, almost by chance, bought a collection of Hungarian poetry at a bus stop, where, among others, poems by Endre Adi translated into Russian were published. He set the poem “Ahead of the Good Prince of Silence” to music, which became, according to Vyacheslav Butusov, that “rare case when a completely randomly taken text was combined with music.” The song “Prince of Silence” was released in 1985, and three years later the group Nautilus Pompilius recorded an album of the same name. In addition to “The Prince of Silence,” the rock band’s repertoire included two more songs based on poems by Endre Adi: “Hawk Wedding” and “Music.”

2. Russian and American poet, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, Joseph Brodsky, did not like songs for his poems. However, this did not stop the musicians: in the repertoire of many performers there are songs based on the works of Brodsky. One of the most famous among them – “I’m sitting by the window” – belongs to the rock group “Night Snipers”. Its leader Diana Arbenina set to music the poem “I have always said that fate is a game.” The song first appeared in the 1995 album “The Second Bullet”.

Joseph Brodsky wrote the poem “I always said...” in 1971. By that time, the 31-year-old poet had already been convicted by a Soviet court as a parasite, lived for two years in exile, and was then twice forcibly sent for “examination” to a mental hospital. A year later, in 1972, the KGB forced Brodsky to emigrate.

3. Songs based on classical poems are also in the repertoire of the Russian rock group “Surganova and the Orchestra”, the founder of which is former member of the “Night Snipers” Svetlana Surganova. One of these compositions is “Dear Traveler.” It is based on the poem by poetess Anna Akhmatova “Dear Traveler, You Are Far Away...”, written in 1921.

Having recorded the song, the group members brought to life another project related to the work of the poetess. In 2009, they created a collection of her poems in audiobook format, timed to coincide with the 120th anniversary of the birth of Anna Akhmatova.

4. The song “Mayak” by the St. Petersburg rock band “Splin” is named after the first four letters of the surname of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. It was his poem “Lilichka! (instead of a letter)” was set to music by the band’s leader, Alexander Vasiliev.

Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote this poem in 1916 and dedicated it, like most of his works, to Lilya Brik, with whom he had a painful relationship for many years. By the way, Lilya Brik herself, according to the recollections of contemporaries, believed that “it is useful for Volodya to suffer, he will suffer and write good poetry.”

Fans of the group “Splin” first heard the song “Mayak” on the album “Split Personality”. It’s interesting that before Alexander Vasiliev’s idea to put the poem “Lilychka!” The idea of ​​music came to the minds of the members of the Soviet musical group “Pesnyary”. In 1987, the group toured the USSR with the program “At the Top of Your Voice,” which consisted entirely of songs based on poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky.

5. The composition “Moscow” based on the verses of Sergei Yesenin, recorded by the Soviet and Russian rock group “Mongol Shuudan”, remained unknown for a long time. Valery Skoroded, the creator and permanent leader of the group, set Yesenin’s poem “Yes! Now it's decided. No return..." to music in the late 1980s. In 1994, the musicians recorded a song, calling it “Moscow,” and this is where difficulties began. No matter what radio station they brought their song to, they were answered briefly: “Unformat.” The main argument was that in “Moscow” the word “prostitute” sounds, and this was considered unacceptable. For the first time, a song based on Yesenin’s poems performed by the group “Mongol Shuudan” was heard on the radio only in 1998 - and eventually became the main radio hit of the group, the rest of whose work is obviously “unformatted”. Let us note, however, that the rock band’s repertoire also includes the song “Black Shawl” based on the poem of the same name by A.S. Pushkin.

At the turn of the 1950s - 1960s, in the wake of the “thaw”, poetic art spread to the masses: the poetic boom gave rise to a hitherto unprecedented phenomenon - performances by poets in stadiums, squares and large halls, and the author’s art that emerged at the same time the song began to blur the lines between musical and poetic art. All this anticipated the emergence of rock poetry, which was also characterized by a massive audience and the impact on the listener through music and artistic text at the same time.

Both the art song and rock poetry became possible largely thanks to the invention of the tape recorder: technological progress made it possible to overcome censorship restrictions, and now recordings of songs could be replicated without control. (Before the advent of tape recorders in the 50s, they learned how to record music on X-rays - the so-called “songs on bones”). It was in the cradle of the original song that rock poetry was born. This happened at the end of the 1960s, when both the poetry boom and the art song gradually lost their original positions.

1) Like an art song, rock - syncretic phenomenon, connecting music and poetic text. One of the founders of rock poetry, Andrei Makarevich, emphasized: “The text of a song is not the same as a poem. It is done according to different laws. Here, for complete harmony, music is also needed... The text of a song is not second-rate poetry, it is a thing that must be sung, and with a certain rhythm, in a certain state, to a certain melody. But just on paper, the lyrics of the song are only part of the whole - that’s all.”

2) As in art song, in rock poetry the author is almost always the performer. These are, for example, Boris Grebenshchikov, Andrey Makarevich, Viktor Tsoi, Yuri Shevchuk - they are the authors of music, lyrics and at the same time performers (soloists) of the groups “Aquarium”, “Time Machine”, “Kino”, “DDT”, respectively.

3) As in the art song, rock poetry touched on social and philosophical themes, which were impossible to talk about openly in fiction. Emphasized sociality and lyricism are a distinctive feature of Russian rock compared to Western rock. The sincerity of the author-performer was more credible than the position of the “official” writer. At the same time, rock music, with its special sound and harshness, emphasized the rebellious nature of rock as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

Andrey Tropillo

The first recordings of rock band albums were made by Andrei Tropillo, who worked in the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers in an audio recording circle: schoolchildren studied there during the day, and in the evenings albums of rock musicians were recorded on equipment for free.

The term “rock” as applied to musical culture in the USSR was not used for a long time, so the first rock groups were designated by the abbreviation VIA (vocal and instrumental ensemble). Only in 1980 did the official authorities admit that it was useless to fight rock culture, and at the same time the first rock club appeared in Moscow, and the country’s first rock festival, officially called “Spring Rhythms,” was held in Tbilisi.

Rock poetry as a phenomenon began to be seriously studied in the 1990s, and at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University it is included in the schedule as a separate special course “Russian-language rock poetry.”

Group "Time Machine"

The origin of rock poetry is associated with the name of the Honored Artist of Russia Andrey Vadimovich Makarevich (born 1953 in Moscow ) , who in 1969, as a student at Moscow School No. 19 and a keen Beatlemaniac, created the group "Time Machine ", which still exists today. The first composition of “MV” included classmates of Andrei Makarevich: Alexander Ivanov, Pavel Rubin, Igor Mazaev and Yuri Borzov. Subsequently, the composition was constantly changing, and today the only permanent member of the Time Machine group is Makarevich himself. In 1974, the leader of the group was expelled from the Moscow Architectural Institute for studying rock music, but subsequently recovered and graduated from the institute with a degree in Architect and Graphic Artist. In 1979, the Time Machine group received official status and in 1980 won first place at the first All-Union rock festival in Tbilisi. Together with the rock band, Makarevich starred in the films “Soul” (1982) and “Start over” (1986).

A distinctive feature of Makarevich’s work is a combination of rock music rhythms and bard song motifs, he is sometimes called the rock bard. It is no coincidence that Makarevich often performs in front of audiences only with a guitar, without the accompaniment of a band. His songs are predominantly general philosophical in theme. (“Bonfire”, “Wagon disputes”, “But the path is calling us”, “Running in circles”), although sometimes, in his own words, they try to find political overtones in songs: “Puppets”, “Turning”, “You shouldn’t bend to a changing world”. Makarevich’s lyrics are “timeless” in nature: the action takes place as if always and everywhere and at the same time nowhere and never (as the rock poet Ilya Kormiltsev said about Makarevich’s poetry), and the lyrical hero is a philosophizing, a little tired of life intellectual, prone to escapism (withdrawal from active social life). Makarevich often uses the language of allegory, “Aesopian language”, so some of his songs gravitate towards the genre of fables, didactic parables.

Boris Grebenshchikov (BG)

The second “grandfather” of Russian rock is Boris Borisovich Grebenshchikov (born 1953) , also known by the abbreviation BG, founder and leader of the Leningrad (St. Petersburg) rock band "Aquarium ", founded in 1971. The name of the group symbolized the existence of a special world for rock musicians, separated from everyone else by an invisible but insurmountable line. Grebenshchikov is also the creator of the first rock magazine “Roxy”, printed on a carbon copy typewriter and subsequently officially banned.

The group's first albums « Temptation of the Holy Aquarium», « From the other side of the mirror glass», « All brothers are sisters» (all came out in the 70s) were distributed exclusively in samizdat. The group performed illegally in the 1970s, but in 1980 they still received an invitation to a rock festival in Tbilisi. Being prone to eccentricity, Grebenshchikov, together with his musicians, staged a rather bold show on stage, in which they saw obscene hints. After this speech, Grebenshchikov, who was officially listed as a mathematician at the Research Institute of Sociology, was fired from his job, and the Aquarium group became officially banned. Only during the years of perestroika did the press begin to write about Grebenshchikov, and he himself starred in 1987-1989 in the films “Assa” and “ A black rose is an emblem of sadness, a red rose is an emblem of love.».

Albums from the late 1980s and 1990s « Equinox», « RadioSilence », « Russian album", "Favorite songs of Ramses the Fourth", "Snow Lion" were already published officially, in large numbers, and BG’s performances took place not only at all venues in the USSR-CIS, but also on television.

Grebenshchikov's poetry is emphatically informal, difficult to perceive and understand. Unlike Makarevich, with his good literary language and lack of cliches, Grebenshchikov often uses youth slang, Anglicisms, sometimes even switching to a quasi-language, as in the “song of the aliens” "Loy bykanakh". Images of mystical and religious teachings are often present (“City of Gold”) Leningrad rock as a whole is characterized by "tightness" of the artistic world: the lyrical hero is closed in on himself and remembers the outside world only when this world interferes with his inner state and imposes itself on the hero. Therefore, the position of the hero Grebenshchikov in relation to the outside world is passive-defensive. Grebenshchikov’s artistic space is a world of half-dreams that only vaguely resemble reality. Rebellion in Grebenshchikov's rock poetry is the desire not to change or destroy the established order of things, but to create your own. Thus, if Makarevich’s poetry is close to the ideas of romanticism, then Grebenshchikov’s poetry is close to the ideas of symbolism.

Victor Tsoi

Among Leningrad rock musicians, the one who stands out is Viktor Robertovich Tsoi (1962, Leningrad - 1990, Kesterciems ) , author of more than 300 songs, founder of a rock band "Movie "(original name “Garin and Hyperboloids”), which existed from 1981 to 1990. During this time, nine albums were recorded, among which those that appeared in the last three years of Viktor Tsoi’s life gained particular popularity: « Blood type», « A star called the Sun" And " Black Album» . Tsoi himself starred in several films. In the film "Needle" he played the role of a hero who alone fights evil, but wins. In the finale of the film "Assa" he starred as himself, performing the song "We are waiting for changes", which was then perceived as the anthem of perestroika. In addition, Tsoi's songs are heard in eighteen Soviet and Russian films.

Tsoi's work was given a deeper meaning by his unexpected death: he died in a car accident on August 15, 1990 in Latvia at the age of 28. The death of Tsoi created a special cult of the immortal poet and composer (“Tsoi is alive”), and his songs and film roles acquired tragic semantic overtones.

The theme of loneliness and misunderstanding predominates in his work - one of the most important in rock poetry in general. Tsoi's hero is a rebel who is fundamentally lonely. This is not an escapist intellectual, like Makarevich or Grebenshchikov, but a barely grown-up teenager. The motif of war and death heard in many songs (“Legend”, “Strange Tale”, “Blood Type”, “A Star Called the Sun”), is associated with an attempt to challenge the world, to escape from it into immortality.

Ilya Kormiltsev spoke about the poetry of Viktor Tsoi: “Tsoi’s poetry is an exact copy of a certain layer of teenage psychology. His lyrics contain maximalism, aggression, emphasis on the theme of war, and war of all against all, battles without purpose or meaning - this is the state of war, eternal opposition, in which a teenager finds himself in relation to the world.” Nevertheless, Tsoi today is the most famous and popular rock poet, whose songs are known even to those who were born years after the tragic death of the musician.

Yuri Shevchuk

Another bright representative of Leningrad rock is the leader of the group "DDT", People's Artist of Bashkiria Yuri Yulianovich Shevchuk (born 1957 in the Magadan region ) . While studying at one of the schools in the city of Ufa (the capital of Bashkiria), he showed talent as an artist and musician. He graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Ufa, worked as an art teacher, and gained fame in the 70s as a songwriter. In 1980, while working in the Ufa House of Culture, Shevchuk created the rock band “DDT”, the name of which comes from the name of the powder for combating harmful insects (dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane). Initially, the musicians performed songs of Western rock bands, but as an experiment they recorded the first album of seven songs in Russian. In 1982, the DDT group won the all-Union competition for young performers “Golden Tuning Fork”. Yuri Shevchuk was offered to record a record at the Melodiya company, but as a condition they demanded the performance of not only his own songs, but also songs of Soviet composers. Shevchuk refused this and, together with the group, went “underground”, doing only illegal performances for several years.

In 1986, Yuri Shevchuk moved to Leningrad with his family and, together with the updated composition of the DDT group, joined the Leningrad rock club. Since that time, the group has been gaining increasing popularity, performing at large concert venues and on TV. To date, the group has released 24 albums, the most famous of which are « Time», « Thaw», « I got this role», « Actress Vesna», « Black Dog Petersburg», « This is all…», « Born in USSR», « World number zero " The leader of the group starred in sixteen films (“Rock”, “Spiritual Day”, “Limita”, “Vovochka”, etc.), and Shevchuk’s songs are heard in 21 films (“Truckers”, “Gentlemen Officers”, “Vovochka”, “ Azazel”, “Generation P”, etc.).

Yuri Shevchuk is one of the best rock poets, whose texts are different high-quality poetic finishing, rich metaphorical language, unusual imagery, social and philosophical pathos. The topics of his texts are very diverse:

1) socio-political lyrics: “Motherland”, “I got this role”, “Major Boys”, “The truth is true”, “Black Dog Petersburg”, “I stopped time»;

2) a man at war: "Dead city. Christmas", "Don't Shoot", "Premonition of Civil War";

3) philosophical lyrics: “That’s All”, “You Are Not Alone”, “Crows in the Sky”;

4) religious motives: “Temple”, “I lit all the candles in the churches”, “Christmas»;

5) love: “Far, Far Away”, “Blizzard”, “Trouble”, “Eyes”.

Group "Nautilus Pompilius"

Sverdlovsk rock also played a significant role in Soviet rock culture. The best Sverdlovsk group is considered « Nautilus Pompilius» , whose leader is a graduate of the Sverdlovsk Architectural Institute, composer and poet Vyacheslav Gennadievich Butusov (born in 1961 in the Krasnoyarsk Territory) , and the author of most texts is a chemist by training Ilya Valerievich Kormiltsev (1959-2007) . The group appeared in 1982 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and existed until 1997. In the commentary to one of the first albums, the name of the group was explained as follows: “The group is named after the nudibranch, which is naturally beautiful and charming.” The group gained all-Union fame after the release of the album in 1986 « Parting» and consolidated its popularity in 1989 with the album « Prince of Silence» , which included the best songs based on Kormiltsev’s poems: “Chained,” “Khaki Ball,” “Last Letter (Goodbye America!),” “I Want to Be with You”. Unlike other rock bands that created their best in the 1980s, Butusov managed to achieve enormous creative success in the 1990s, releasing albums « Alien land» (hit - "Walking on Water (Apostle Andrew)"), « Titanic» (hits – "Tutankhamun" And "Beast") and the last successful album, released in 1995, « Wings» (hits – "Wings", "Breath" And "Man on the Moon").

The songs of Vyacheslav Butusov based on the poems of Ilya Kormiltsev are predominantly of a general philosophical nature. Butusov himself calls them parables with universal meaning. Although among the hits of the 80s there are also songs with a distinctly socio-political background: “Chained by One Chain”, “Clap-Clap”, “Khaki Ball”.

The collection of poems compiled by V. Fedorovsky will introduce readers to the work of poets who are not indifferent to nature, their native land and hometown, and people. Here we have selected the most striking and emotional works that will help you appreciate the beauty of the word, the possibility of subtle reflection of the most complex feelings through poetry. It could be something bright and joyful, something sad, unforgettable, it could be disappointment, or it could be love... for a person, a partner or for one’s homeland. And in every manifestation of these emotions through poetry, a special spirituality is felt.

This book includes 300 poems by more than a hundred poets from Russia and foreign countries. More than 70 years have passed since the death of each of them. Their surnames are listed in alphabetical order and the years of their life are indicated. Many of these poems are widely known, repeatedly quoted, and some are quite rare, which in no way detracts from their value. The compiler of this collection only wanted to arouse people’s interest in poetry, to help them understand the creativity of poets and the emotions that enrich the soul.

The work belongs to the genre of Poetry. On our website you can download the book "Poems of Russian and Foreign Poets" in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format or read online. The book's rating is 3.48 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also turn to reviews from readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In our partner's online store you can buy and read the book in paper form.