Hope sweet childishly breathing. Nothingness awaits me beyond the grave. Control questions and tasks

“Reason and Love” (1814), “Despondency” (1816), “The daylight went out ...” (1820), “Breaking sweet baby hope ...” (1823), “To the sea” (1824), “ K *** "(" I remember a wonderful moment ... ") (1825), "Under the blue sky of my native country ..." (1826), "On the hills of Georgia lies the darkness of the night ..." (1829), "I loved you ..." (1829), "Madona" (1830).

In Pushkin's lyceum lyrics, love was depicted in hedonistic colors close to Batyushkov's tradition ("Reason and Love", 1814, "To the Beauty Who Snuffed Tobacco", 1814, "Cherry", 1815) and in Zhukovsky's elegiac interpretation ("Despondency", 1816, "Desire", 1816, "Awakening", 1816). The motive of love joys and comforts, immodest desires is replaced in 1816-1817 by motives of love disappointment, love sadness, despondency.

The civic motives that captivate the young Pushkin after the Lyceum seem to crowd out the motives of love: it is no coincidence that in the poem “To Chaadaev” (1818) love (along with hope, “quiet glory”) is called “deceit”; the poet is absorbed in the theme of freedom. But this period did not last long. Soon the theme of love sounded in Pushkin's work with renewed vigor.

In 1820 an elegy was written in the south "The light of day has gone out..." where the love motive turned out to be intricately connected with the Byronic motives of disappointment in life, romantic flight from the homeland. In this lyrical masterpiece by Pushkin, romantic disappointment is filled, however, with a humane content. The beautiful human soul, under the influence of memories of the past, agitates, “boils and freezes”, rushes from movement to dead rest, and then back to movement. Before us is a man who, no matter how much suffering he endures in his homeland, cannot leave it without regret. This is where the deep excitement of the soul, echoing the excitement of the sea, comes from. This excitement is conveyed by the peculiar whimsical rhythm and stanza of the poem, the refrain "Noise, noise, obedient sail, / Wave under me, gloomy ocean."

Night, sea, ship - this situation allowed the hero not to be ashamed of his feelings. He is excited by the surging memories, as once by the events themselves ("tears were born in his eyes again").

Time and distance enlightened the memory of the hero. His past became clearer to him; in memories it is easier to separate the true from the false. This is the nature of memory. False, unreal things are forgotten: “minute friends”, “young traitors”, whom he, it turns out, did not love ... But it turned out that the main thing that cannot be forgotten, “healed”: “nothing has healed the deep wounds of love” - truly valuable I remember and still hurt, excite. This poem is about the moments of a person's insight, when he understands himself, people, when he sees the world as a whole.

Of all life's charms, love is perhaps the most important. In Pushkin's poem "Sweet infantile hope breathing...” (1823) most tragically expressed is the romantic rejection of everything around, which so tormented the poet during the deep spiritual crisis of the early 1820s. The spiritual anguish is so strong that a person is ready to “crush” his own life, which seems to be an “ugly idol”, ready to part with it voluntarily. Doubts, unbelief torment a person; “Infantile” hope, bright faith is unable to resist cold reason: “My mind persists, it despises hope...” But life, devoid of high hope, still retains the last support. The meaning of existence is to keep love in yourself:

And I want to live long, so that the image is cute for a long time

Lurking and burning in my sad soul.

The beloved image burns in the soul of the hero, like a fire, and the hero strives to keep such a life for his beloved longer, to live long. In his soul, the “cute image” lives, lurks and burns. This is the only reason for the existence of the "dull" soul of the romantic hero.

Wonderful message of Pushkin "To sea"(1824) - about freedom. But it turns out that freedom is not the most important human value. Love was stronger

Enchanted by mighty passion,

I stayed on the coast...

The spell of this love deprives the hero of the opportunity to answer the "call" of the sea-friend. And the person, as it were, confesses to the elements, tells her about what the sea cannot know about - about the powerful attachment of one person to another, about a close soul that cannot be replaced by all the blessings of the world.

A masterpiece of Pushkin's love lyrics of the Mikhailovsky period - a poem "K***" ("I remember a wonderful moment...")- inspired by a meeting with Anna Kern in 1825, when she came to visit nearby Trigorskoye. He had already met her six years ago, in 1819, in St. Petersburg, at the Olenins' house. And then she made the strongest impression on him, comparable to a vision, a miracle. The composition of the poem is subject to the development of the history of the human soul, the true content of which is ... love. Each stanza is a stage in the inner evolution of the hero, and the whole poem as a whole is a story about how love heals a person's soul.

The first stanza of the poem depicts the birth of love, which is comparable to divine revelation, a dazzling light in the darkness that suddenly flashed before the eyes and transformed both the human soul and everything around:

I remember a wonderful moment:

You appeared before me

Like a fleeting vision

Like a genius of pure beauty.

In this "you" there is a feeling of warm, enthusiastic closeness to the one whose appearance is like a miracle.

This miracle lasted one "instant" - and now it is gone - it is fleeting. However, this idea is devoid of tragedy in Pushkin, the emphasis is on the joy of the existence of a miracle. Zhukovsky's expression "the genius of pure beauty", which became a comparison in Pushkin, means "the spirit of pure beauty." He appeared in the form of a beautiful woman.

The miracle of that distant "moment" powerfully influenced the person. No longer seeing this woman, he “for a long time” remembered her. The “tender voice” (as if the musical side of her image) remained in the memory, and “lovely features were dreamed of.” A dream as a continuation of "vision" is the form in which the desired image appears. It is not necessarily a dream as such. Perhaps here is a daydream, as the embodiment of the freedom of the soul, the right to love, which no one can take away from a person.

And now it seems that the “years”, “storms, a rebellious impulse” destroyed “old dreams”. Oblivion has come. Surprisingly, this period of oblivion, this life “in the darkness of confinement”, life “without life”, these “quietly” dragging days are not rejected, not cursed by Pushkin. This is also life, otherwise instead of “quietly” he would use a harsher word that rejects this life. And yet she is "without a deity", "without inspiration", and a person is unable to put up with this meaningless existence.

Perhaps the most interesting fragment of the poem is the realization of the reasons for the hero's rebirth. There are different opinions on this matter, different options for reading the penultimate stanza, but the proposed B.V. Tomashevsky seems to us preferable. The scientist believes that the resurrection of love is explained by the state of the human soul:

An awakening came to the soul: And here again you appeared, Like a fleeting knowledge, Like a genius of pure beauty.

The time has come for the soul of man, a mysterious and independent substance, to wake up. In this state, a person gained the ability to see beauty. For his heart, not only “life, and tears, and love”, but also “deity and inspiration” were “resurrected”. It has long been noted that some of Pushkin's epistolary assessments of Anna Kern are scathing and negative. It is not worth seeing the insincerity of Pushkin the poet in all this: the miracle lasted only one moment, the image of a real woman miraculously melted in the crucible of poetry...

The motive of a bright memory of past love sounds in a poem "On the hills of Georgia lies the darkness of the night...". In 1829, after an unsuccessful matchmaking with Natalya Goncharova, Pushkin went to the Caucasus, to the war zone. Everything around is permeated with the memory of the abandoned beloved:

On the hills of Georgia lies the darkness of the night;

Noisy Aragva before me. I'm sad and easy; my sadness is light;

My sadness is full of you, You, only you... My despondency

Nothing torments, disturbs, And the heart burns again and loves - because

That it cannot love.

The sadness of the poet has nothing painful, painful. It seems to fill with light (“light”) the surrounding “night mist”. All the blissful and sublime nature of Georgia, the sound of the river embody this sad and bright memory. The expression of this reconciling beginning of love is the harmonious musicality of the sound structure of the poem. The uniform alternation of iambic six-foot and four-foot iamb, as well as the alliteration, which is not immediately evident - the repetition of a smooth "r" and sonorant consonants "m", "n" and "l" - are similar to the quiet murmur of a water stream, the measured movement of which becomes here the expression of the soul life. Love in this poem is a need and the highest manifestation of the human heart. The heart "burns and loves", and the light of this fire also colors the atmosphere of the poem, determines its optimistic sound.

To Anna Olenina, Pushkin's Petersburg passion, another famous poem is addressed - "I loved you..."(1829). It seems that the feeling depicted in it is really in the past, but the very next phrase sounds like an involuntary confession: “Love is still, perhaps, / In my soul, it has not completely died out ...” The lyrical hero seems to balance between the past and the present, feels how love slips away, albeit sad, “silent”, “hopeless”, but still very necessary for the soul. It is she, love, that gives strength to self-denial (“I don’t want to sadden you with anything”), frees you from feelings of jealousy and, finally, allows you to rise to the blessing of your beloved woman:

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly, How God forbid you be loved to be different.

In a sonnet "Madona"(1830) it is not the delights and vicissitudes of love that are sung about, but the providence of the Creator, who sent down comfort and joy to the worker amidst his “slow labors”. “The purest charm of the purest example” - such is Natalya Goncharova, the “Madona” of the poet. Note that it is not the beauty, but the beauty of the soul that is dear to the bride for the head of the future family. The divine meaning of family happiness was expressed by Pushkin in this restrained and sublime poem.

Love as the joy and sorrow of life in Pushkin's lyceum lyrics gives way to love as hard to comprehend authenticity amidst deceit. This is the only meaning of being in the midst of general disappointment. Only in love is the divine meaning manifested as a miracle. It gives a new, exciting quality to the environment. True love is humane, purified by suffering, and makes a person's life partaker of a lofty meaning.

Control questions and tasks

1. What is the influence of K.N. Batyushkov and V.A. Zhukovsky on Pushkin's love lyrics?

2. What romantic ideas are included in the poem "The daylight went out ..."? How are they related to love motives?

3. Re-read the poem "Breaking sweet infantile hope ...". What pessimistic motives sound in the poem? How is love interpreted in this poem?

4. What real events served as the basis for writing the poem “K ***” (“I remember a wonderful moment ...”)? What is the meaning of the motives of miracle, moment, vision, beauty, time in the poem? How does the image-experience develop in him?

5. What are the main motives of the poem "On the hills of Georgia lies the darkness of the night ..."? To whom is this poem dedicated?

6. Reread the poem "I loved you ...". To whom is it dedicated? What is the significance of past and present motives? What is the content of the anaphora? What is the concept of love in this poem?

7. Who is the poem "Madona" dedicated to? What are the main ideas and tone of the poem?

8. Summarize the motives and ideas that are characteristic of Pushkin's love lyrics.

Nothingness awaits me beyond the grave
/ in search of truth /

To the already said reflections on life after death, I want to add a spontaneously written essay, as a response to the categorical statement of Konstantin Nikolayevich Skorupsky, whom for brevity I will call Koniskor, like Vikniksor (Viktor Nikolayevich Sorokin), the founder of the Dostoevsky School (SHKID) in the hope that he without offense will perceive such an appeal and only in the format of this essay. So, my friend and opponent Coniscor, a person in the full sense of the word is not ordinary, in one impromptu, but friendly dispute on a topic partly initiated by me - about God, spirituality and the meaning of life, as an irrefutable argument about the absence of anything after death and any afterlife there, referred to the authority of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, reading from memory a line from his poem:
- Breathing sweet baby hope ... nothingness awaits me beyond the grave ...
I should have guessed that Pushkin and, accordingly, Koniscor, by "insignificance" meant "non-existence", the second, outdated meaning of "insignificance", which was rare, but still in use during Pushkin's time. In 1863, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal, in the first edition of his "Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language", the first dictionary in Russia, he gave the word "insignificance" a new interpretation, as "extreme insignificance, lack of content, extreme misery of someone, etc.", which has become the main one to date.
By the way, V.I.Dal was familiar and even friendly with A.S. Pushkin, but he hardly advised him on the etymology of “insignificance”. On Conixscore's cunningly victorious smile, that argument was over. However, I was in no hurry to admit defeat and undertook a small study, which I offer to the attention of the reader. Of course, it began with the search and reading of the poem itself. I quote it in full:
Breathing sweet childish hope,
When I believed that there was once a soul,
Fleeing from decay, takes away eternal thoughts,
And memory, and love in the depths are endless, -
I swear! long ago I would have left this world:
I would crush life, ugly idol
And flew away to the land of freedom, pleasures,
To a country where there is no death, where there is no
prejudice.
Where thought alone floats in heavenly purity...
But in vain I indulge in a deceptive dream;
My mind persists, despises hope...
Nothingness awaits me beyond the grave...
How, nothing! Not a thought, not a first love!
I'm scared! .. And I look at life sad again,
And I want to live long, so that the image is cute for a long time
Lurking and burning in my sad soul.

I am not a great connoisseur of poetry, and in particular the poetry of Pushkin, although for me he was and remains the most beloved poet, along with M.Yu. Lermontov. Therefore, I cannot fully decide on an independent analysis of poems, especially his lyrical creations, to which the poem "Breaking sweet hope of a child" belongs. But since in our dispute with my friend Koniskor it is impossible to do without an analysis of Pushkin’s thoughts on earthly life and death, I will enlist the assistance of the Pushkin scholar S.A. when the poet was 24 years old.
Kibalnik's word:
"Poetic thought in all poems (including in" sweet hope ..., my note), revolves around the theme of the immortality of the human soul. “Pushkin begins with the theme of posthumous existence, or more precisely, with the theme of non-existence:
You are an incomprehensible darkness to the heart,
Shelter of despair of the blind,
Nothing! empty ghost,
I don't want your cover...
This theme of non-existence ("insignificance") is developed in further verses and evokes the opposite theme, which Pushkin considers not as a religious dogma, but as a creation of poetic fantasy.
Pushkin developed a romantic notion of the victory of love over death, that the immortal soul will retain "dear memory" beyond the grave.
The most pessimistic version of the theme was developed in the poem "Breaking sweet hope of a child." A different existence is depicted in a romantic way, as an ideal world of “freedom, pleasures”, but the mind of the lyrical hero suggests that “insignificance” awaits him beyond the grave; this gives rise in the hero to the desire to live in order to preserve the image of his beloved.
But already in the poem “Breaking sweet hope of a child,” the poet refuses to believe in the immortality of the soul: “my mind persists, despises hope.” But the main thing is not even immortality itself, but the preservation by the soul of its former, earthly sensations, without which immortality has no meaning.
A train of thought close to Pushkin's is presented even in the famous monologue of Hamlet from Shakespeare's tragedy, which begins with the words "To be or not to be?...:
What dreams in that mortal dream will dream,
When was the veil of earthly feeling removed?
Who would agree groaning under the burden of life to trudge,
Whenever the unknown after death,
Fear of a country from where none
Did not return, did not bend the will
It is better to put up with the familiar evil,
Than flight to the unfamiliar seek.
Shakespeare also refers to the removal of "the veil of earthly feelings in a death dream", but then follows the idea that only fear of this unknown stops many from "putting up" with their earthly share.
I thank Kibalnik for his analysis, shortened by me, and I will summarize it in relation to the context of the topic of my work. The first conclusion, which, as I think, my friend Koniskor will note with satisfaction, is that Pushkin really means "non-existence" when speaking of "insignificance" and, as Kibalnik notes, develops it in further verses. However, what the Pushkin scholar does not say: the poet’s attempts to look into oblivion, now with hope, now with despair, does not mean at all that Pushkin, just like his brilliant fellow writers Goethe and Shakespeare, completely deny the possibility of the existence of the posthumous world. Another thing is that all of them, in the images of the lyrical heroes of their poetic creations, as a rule, young romantics in love, experience a strong attachment to the land on which their beloved lives, where "where eternal light burns, where happiness is true, immutable ..." , and at the same time, having no idea how that world of "non-existence" looks like, they are afraid of it. This was well said by Goethe through the mouth of Faust, who, like the nameless hero in Pushkin, is full of aspirations to "the world of a new unknown life":
But two souls live in me
And both are not at odds with each other
One, like the passion of love, ardent
And greedily clings to the earth entirely,
The other is all for the clouds
So it would have rushed out of the body.
Oh, if not in the realm of dreams,
And in fact, the whirlwind of heaven
Take me somewhere
To the world of a new life unknown!
At the same time, Faust is aware of his connection only with the earthly world: only in it is he able to experience any feelings:
- But I'm indifferent to the afterlife.
In the hour when this light is destroyed, I will not establish kinship with that light.
I am the son of the earth. Rejoicings and torments
I test it on her alone.
In that bitter hour when I leave her,
I don't care if the grass doesn't grow
And I don't care about the other world,
No matter how the feelings are called,
Not curious where its limits
And is there, in that kingdom, up and down.-
Shakespeare rightly noted that fear of the uncertainty of the posthumous world, the uncertainty of non-existence, stops many from “putting up” with their earthly share.
Another brilliant colleague and successor of Pushkin also speaks of "insignificance", and I cannot resist the temptation to involve Misha Lermontov in our literary-interactive discourse as an alternative expert in our study. Do not rush to accuse me of being familiar with Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, who was born in 1814 and survived A.S. Pushkin by only four years. At the time (1829) in which Lermontov participates in our study as himself, he was only 15 years old. At this age, a very young boy wrote the poem "Monologue", which I offer to the attention of the reader, along with an excerpt from the analysis of the poem attached to it (the author of the analysis is not specified).

Monologue
Believe me, nothingness is good in this world.
Why deep knowledge, thirst for glory,
Talent and passionate love of freedom,
When we can't use them.
We, the children of the north, are like local plants,
Blooms for a short time, fades quickly...
Like the winter sun in the gray sky,
So cloudy is our life. So short
Its monotonous flow...
And it seems stuffy at home,
And the heart is heavy, and the soul yearns ...
Knowing neither love nor sweet friendship,
Amid empty storms our youth languishes,
And quickly the poison darkens her anger,
And the cup of cold life is bitter to us;
And nothing makes the soul happy. 1829

“Lermontov was struck by the fact that representatives of noble families, who so enthusiastically talk about high matters, do not even have a small share of those benefactors who declare. That is why the poet wrote the poem “Monologue”, which echoes his later work “Duma” and denounces representatives new generation, which are alien to such concepts as honor, justice and loyalty.
Lermontov begins his reasoning with the assertion that "insignificance is good in the highest society," and this is true. To people devoid of any principles, which, according to the poet, is a hallmark of his contemporaries, society is condescending and even patronizing. It is for this reason that the author asks the question: “What is the use of deep knowledge, a thirst for fame, talent and an ardent love of freedom when we cannot use them?”
As you can see, the word "insignificance" has already been used in a new meaning, indicated in Dahl's dictionary. It is not difficult to see that in Lermontov's sarcasm, who defined "insignificance as a boon in this world", and in Pushkin, who at the age of 24 continued to "breathe with sweet hope as an infant" and, whose only lack of faith in the fact that his soul " Having escaped from corruption, it carries away thoughts that are eternal, and memory and love into the abysses are endless, "- saved from" the crushing of life, an ugly idol "- there is something in common, connecting two alternative concepts of one word" insignificance ".
Let's conduct a thought experiment: let's replace the word "insignificance" with the obsolete "non-existence" in the poem "sweet breathing hope" and read it. The line that puzzled me would sound like this: - Non-existence awaits me beyond the grave. At first glance, in such a reading, the poem as a whole would be more convincing and intelligible for those who have forgotten or did not know at all the outdated meaning of the word "insignificance", or those like me who take words literally in their direct, generally accepted meaning. However, Alexander Sergeevich, who would not have reached into his pocket for a word, but also into a dictionary, especially since the first dictionary of his friend Dahl appeared only more than twenty years after Pushkin's death, knew the word "non-existence " and its meaning, but used precisely "insignificance", perfectly understanding its true meaning, which was only written down by Dahl, but not invented by him. I will leave my thoughts on this for later, but for now I will continue the experiment with the replacement of this word in the "monologue" of young Lermontov. Then the beginning of his poem would sound like this:
- Believe me, non-existence is good in this world -
Agree that this line and all subsequent ones would lose all meaning, and certainly the meaning that, according to analysts of the young poet's work (and in my opinion, too), he put into it. For now, let's wait a little with the results of our research and read another poem by Pushkin, written by him in 1828, on his birthday, May 26, but published in 1830, at a time when he was already recognized as the master of Russian literature.
A gift in vain, a gift random,
Life, why are you given to me?
Ile why the fate of the mystery
Are you sentenced to death?
Who got me hostile power
Called out of nothingness
Filled my soul with passion
Doubt aroused the mind? ..
There is no goal in front of me:
The heart is empty, the mind is empty,
And makes me sad
The monotonous noise of life.
As we can see, five years after writing "sweet infantile hope" Pushkin, although he came out of a young age for a poet, was still in the grip of quivering thoughts and sadness, obviously exacerbated by the December events of 1825 and discouraged by the fact that someone endowed with hostile power, called him out of "insignificance", for a while, filling him with his former passion and reviving past doubts in him. Disappointment came quickly. Again, he did not see a goal in front of him, he felt emptiness in his heart, idleness of mind and depressing melancholy of the monotony of that world from which he had gone into oblivion.
And here, continuing our experiment and replacing "insignificance" with "non-existence", I remain in the same bewilderment as before, which, it seems to me, is quite resolvable if we pay attention to the fact that neither Pushkin nor Lermontov there is no word "non-existence" in the poems, despite the fact that, albeit not often, this outdated synonym for "insignificance" could be heard in colloquial speech. Question: in what sense did it (non-existence) participate in the conversation. The fact is that in all dictionaries, starting with Dahl's dictionaries, this word stands apart, without indicating any etymological connection with the word "insignificance" and is everywhere interpreted as: non-existence, absence of being, or simply as nothing.

These dotted lines mean that all further text - the fruit of a rather dense three-day work, turned out to be erased as a result of my lack of elementary computer literacy. It was all the more annoying that it was the last third of the study that I typed on the keyboard, as they say, cleanly, without any preliminary handwritten outlines.
In the end, resigned, I made several attempts to restore what was lost from memory, but alas ... After re-reading the saved text, I realized that it was time to wrap up, in other words, to sum up (synonymous with the word "round off") my, so to speak, research .
I looked again at those surviving, fixed in computer memory, excerpts from articles by professional researchers of Pushkin's work. One of them caught my eye just in time, because it was a development of the thoughts that I came to on my own, but contained a new observation for me, valuable in that it supplemented the final conclusion of this essay. It is this excerpt from Vladimir Tsivunin's article: "Pushkin, I want to understand you," read immediately after my explanation.
"Not in vain, not by accident
Life is given to me by God,
the meticulous Metropolitan Filaret corrected Pushkin's mistakes. Pushkin sighed contritely, hesitated, and remained at his own interest. The circles of poetry and religion did not coincide by that time."
(Abram Tertz, "Walks with Pushkin").
With such a peculiar epigraph, the author preceded his article, in which he expressed "A few more thoughts on the poetic correspondence between Pushkin and Metropolitan Filaret." We are talking about the poetic response of the Moscow Metropolitan Philaret to the poem "A gift in vain, a random gift"....................................................
- "Who is me hostile power
Called out of nothingness
Filled my soul with passion
Doubt aroused the mind? ..
This is not even a murmur, this, it would seem, is a real rebellion! Of course, one can see in this poem a murmur against the Creator himself (giving life), for which the metropolitan reproached the poet. And I was not too lazy to write a poetic review. Of course, this was not writing - just a reworking of Pushkin's lines:
Not in vain, not by accident
God gave me life...
I myself by wayward power
Evil from the dark abyss called...
Is it exactly against the Creator? So it turns out if the word "insignificance" means non-existence. Pushkin comes across just such a meaning. But there is also another, by the way, more familiar to us: "insignificance" - something small, meaningless, invaluable, not worth attention. It is in this sense that this word is used, for example, in Pushkin's note "On the insignificance of Russian literature."
Why not assume that by "an appeal from nothingness" Pushkin meant not life as such, but his acquisition (discovery in himself) of talent - an acquisition associated with many temptations? Without this, and, you see, we would have managed to live a quiet life, like, for example, the life of the kindest Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, without tormenting ourselves with doubts about how exactly he, Pushkin, should dispose of his talent.

Next, I take the floor again and finally come to the conclusion. The result of this impromptu research is that Pushkin and Lermontov used the word "insignificance" in the meaning indicated in Dahl's dictionaries. Since both of Pushkin's poems were written by him in the first person, there is every reason to believe that the poet is talking about himself, and he is afraid of the "insignificance" waiting behind the coffin, in which there is neither thought nor love. But he is also afraid of returning to life, of appearing, in Lermontov's words, in "the world around here," which he sees as "an ugly idol." But unlike Lermontov, who, with youthful maximalism, with bitter irony, gives a description of the insignificance of this world, through listing his "good deeds", "exhausted by the poison of malice", Pushkin is not so categorical, he is careful in expressions and, using twice, in both verses , he makes the same word "insignificance" so that the poems do not lose their meaning from understanding it in an outdated meaning, "non-existence". Such a dual interpretation does not give me the moral right to consider myself the winner in our virtual dispute with Konstantin Nikolayevich, but there is no reason to consider myself defeated, especially since I have indirect confirmation of my rightness from Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin himself, who said:
No, all of me will not die - the soul is in the cherished lyre
My ashes will survive and decay will run away -
And I will be glorious as long as in the sublunar world
At least one piit will live.

Afterword.

I wrote this essay not to convince or prove my case in a dispute that did not exist, but in order, guided by the idea that has taken possession of me lately, to use the material of the "research" underlying it to develop this idea. , which, as the subtitle of the entire work says, is "in search of truth." Having known it, a person will gain the ability to choose his life path in life and, thereby, will actually determine the area of ​​the posthumous existence of his spiritual essence (soul). Whether his soul will fall into “insignificance” will largely depend on the correct choice, where it will be doomed to complete oblivion in the quagmire of “non-existence”, which not only linguistically, but also physically express the essence of two definitions of one concept. Or his "soul, having escaped from decay, will carry away thoughts, memory, and love into the abysses of endless, - into the realm of immortality, into the abode of eternal being.