In early 1917, Tsvetaeva gave birth to a 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 joined the army of Kornilov, two daughters ... In the fall of 1919, in order to feed the children, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevsky orphanage. But soon, seriously ill Alya (the eldest) had to be taken home, and on February 15 (16) little Irina died of starvation.

That very little unhealthy child, who, according to V. Zvyagintseva and M. Grineva-Kuznetsova, sometimes spent whole days alone at home, while Tsvetaeva read poetry at a party. The same child who, with the encouragement of her mother, was neglected by her older sister. A child who knew how heavy a mother's hand was. A child who periodically fell asleep in an armchair wrapped in a pile of rags. "Random child", which Tsvetaeva was clearly burdened with. 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 orphanage. I did not come to bury Irina, I never visited her graves.

And here is the poem "Two hands, lightly lowered ...". There is grief in him: "I still do not understand at all that my child is in the earth ...". Pain and pity are their own panic, but not grief over the loss of their daughter. Tsvetaeva is devastated, but cannot admit that she neglected Irina all along. Many did not understand her, and she demanded compassion and self-pity from those around her. A mother is always a mother, no matter what difficulties and hardships fall in life. And maybe that's why she was looking for an excuse for herself that she saved her eldest daughter, but did not save her youngest. Efron's sister Lily offered to take Irina with her to the village, and then leave the girl with her, but Tsvetaeva refused, and after her death she shifted all the blame on her.

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

But both - clamped -
Furious - as she could! -
Snatching the elder from the darkness -
Didn't save the little one.

Two hands - caress, smooth
Delicate heads are lush.
Two hands - and here is one of them
The night turned out to be too much.

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

Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva .... are always sent from some real fact from something really 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, tragic contradictions. These are surprisingly lively verses about the experience, not just about the suffering, but about the shocking. Already in the first collection of poems, an eighteen-year-old girl in October 1910 defines her life and literary credo, her own otherness. "All this was. My poems are a diary, my poetry is the poetry of proper names," the poetess would later write in the preface to the collection "From Two Books."

In connection with what was the poem "Two hands, lightly lowered", dated 1920, created? To whom is it dedicated? I will try to answer these and other questions in my essay.

In early 1917, Tsvetaeva gave birth to a second daughter. At first she wanted to name her Anna in honor of Akhmatova, but then she changed her mind and named her Irina: "after all, fate does not repeat itself." Hunger, separation from her husband, who joined the army of Kornilov, two daughters ... In the fall of 1919, in order to feed the children, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevsky orphanage. But soon, seriously ill Alya (the eldest) had to be taken home, and on February 15 (16) little Irina died of starvation. That very little unhealthy child, who, according to V. Zvyagintseva and M. Grineva-Kuznetsova, sometimes spent whole days alone at home, while Tsvetaeva read poetry at a party. The same child who, with the encouragement of her mother, was neglected by her older sister. A child who knew how heavy a mother's hand was. A child who periodically fell asleep in an armchair wrapped in a pile of rags. "Random child", which Tsvetaeva was clearly burdened with. 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 she took her eldest daughter home, she never visited the orphanage. She didn’t come to bury Irina, she never visited her graves.

And here is the poem "Two hands, lightly lowered ...". There is grief in him: "I still do not understand at all that my child is in the earth ...". Pain and pity - its own panic, but not grief from the loss of a daughter. Tsvetaeva is devastated, but cannot admit that she neglected Irina all along. Many did not understand her, and she demanded compassion and self-pity from those around her. A mother is always a mother, no matter what difficulties and hardships fall in life. And maybe that's why she was looking for an excuse for herself that she saved her eldest daughter, but did not save her youngest. Efron's sister Lily offered to take Irina with her to the village, and then leave the girl with her, but Tsvetaeva refused, and after her death she shifted all the blame on her.

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

Two hands, lightly lowered

On a baby's head!

There were - one for each -

I have been 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 and generous. Her verse is discontinuous, uneven, full of sudden accelerations and pauses (elements of free verse):

But both - clamped -

Furious - as she could! -

Snatching the elder from the darkness -

Didn't save the little one.

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

Rhyme at Tsvetaeva is the most unmistakable way to create artistic image. Tsvetaeva uses the "new rhyme," as Bryusov once called it. This rhyme is imprecise, with various shifts in the arrangement and nature of the rhyming sounds.

But both - clamped -

Furious - as she could! -

Snatching the elder from the darkness -

Didn't save the little one.

Her rhyme is a kind of sound repetitions. 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, the repetition of certain combinations: but both - clamped, clamped - furious, clamped - snatching out, could - saved. In the third stanza, repetitions of combinations are again: lush - superfluous (consonance), in the last stanza, repetitions of sounds: thin - incomprehensible (alliteration), repetitions of vowels: on the stem - in the ground (assonances). 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, lightly lowered ..." there are also internal rhymes tending vertically:

Dandelion on a stem!

I still don't quite understand

That my child is in the ground.

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

In "Two hands, lightly lowered ..." there are masculine rhymes - stress on the last syllable: "... Like my child in the ground", dactylic - stress on the third syllable from the end: "But both - clamped ...".

Tsvetaeva, seeking the ultimate capacity and expressiveness of the phrase, sacrifices verbs:

Light - on a thin neck -

Dandelion is not a stalk!

Hence the sharpness of the transition to the sentence, she seems to be in a hurry, the "torn syntax" of her poetic speech corresponds to the tragic reality of fate. In the poem there is also a violation of the word order "There were - one for each - Two heads were given to me", which reveals the idea of ​​the previous phrase (for two hands) more deeply.

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

But both - clamped -

Furious - as she could!

The following word is underlined (after all, a dash is always a small pause): "Two hands - caress - smooth ...", a new unusual characteristic of an object already characterized ("... Light - on a thin neck ....") is injected images

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

Wherever intonation or meaning needs a pause, a breath, an intensified continuation, Tsvetaeva puts a dash everywhere. The end-of-sentence sign for the poetess 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 quatrain emphasize the intensity of feelings conveyed by the poetess. In the poem "Two hands, lightly 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 tender lush heads.

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

Listen! Poems from beyond

And Feast during the plague.

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

But both - clamped -
Furious - as she could! -
Snatching the elder from the darkness -
Didn't save the little one.

Two hands - caress - smooth
Delicate heads are lush.
Two hands - and here is one of them
The night turned out to be too much.

Light - on a thin neck -
Dandelion on a stem!
I still don't quite understand
That my child is in the ground.
Easter Week 1920

Like tears, like mother's bitter tears,
In words, all the pain pours in a quiet hysteria.
And it didn't matter how much you spent
Much more important - what was not measured.

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

So little warmth that even a woman is weak,
Conquering the whole world with her love,
Standing, I see, in black, and arms crossed,
And tears flow like transparent cherries.

And word by word, humbly and prayerfully,
Melodiously dispel the aching black
Tormented by the wind, worn out by the truth,
Native, distant and doomed ...

“I don’t believe, I don’t believe, I don’t believe!”, - one hears.
How unfair, how stupid, how wrong!
Another pain will be strung on the thread of fate,
Another feeling is represented by verses.

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Analysis of the poem by M. Tsvetaeva “Two hands, lightly lowered ...”
Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva…. always start from some real fact, from something really 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, tragic contradictions. These are surprisingly lively verses about the experience, not just about the suffering, but about the shocking. Already in the first collection of poems, an eighteen-year-old girl in October 1910 defines her life and literary credo, her own otherness. “It was all. My poems are a diary, my poetry is the poetry of proper names,” the poetess would later write in the preface to the collection “From Two Books”.
In connection with what was the poem "Two hands, lightly lowered", dated 1920, created? To whom is it dedicated? I will try to answer these and other questions in my essay.
In early 1917, Tsvetaeva gave birth to a 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 joined the army of Kornilov, two daughters ... In the fall of 1919, in order to feed the children, Tsvetaeva sent them to the Kuntsevsky orphanage. But soon, seriously ill Alya (the eldest) had to be taken home, and on February 15 (16) little Irina died of starvation. That very little unhealthy child, who, according to V. Zvyagintseva and M. Grineva-Kuznetsova, sometimes spent whole days alone at home, while Tsvetaeva read poetry at a party. The same child who, with the encouragement of her mother, was neglected by her older sister. A child who knew how heavy a mother's hand was. A child who periodically fell asleep in an armchair wrapped in a pile of rags. "Random child", which Tsvetaeva was clearly burdened with. 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 orphanage. I did not come to bury Irina, I never visited her graves.
And here is the poem "Two hands, lightly lowered ...". There is grief in him: "I still do not understand at all that my child is in the earth ...". Pain and pity - its own panic, but not grief from the loss of a daughter. Tsvetaeva is devastated, but cannot admit that she neglected Irina all along. Many did not understand her, and she demanded compassion and self-pity from those around her. A mother is always a mother, no matter what difficulties and hardships fall in life. And maybe that's why she was looking for an excuse for herself that she saved her eldest daughter, but did not save her youngest. Efron's sister Lily offered to take Irina with her to the village, and then leave the girl with her, but Tsvetaeva refused, and after her death she shifted all the blame on her.
The poem "Two hands, lightly lowered ..." is written in chorea.
Two hands, lightly lowered
On a baby's head!
There were - one for each -
I have been 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 and generous. Her verse is discontinuous, uneven, full of sudden accelerations and pauses (elements of free verse):
But both - clamped -
Furious - as she could! -
Snatching the elder from the darkness -
Didn't save the little one.
The rhythm of Tsvetaeva keeps the reader in suspense: if the first quatrain is a plot, a story that she had two daughters, then the second is a story about the struggle for the eldest, the third is the culmination: the youngest died, and the fourth is the result: a call for compassion to her Tsvetaeva. As the climax grows, the intonation of the poem also changes: from slow to screaming, and then to sad - mourning.
Rhyme at Tsvetaeva is the most unmistakable way to create an artistic image. Tsvetaeva uses the "new rhyme," as Bryusov once called it. This rhyme is imprecise, with various shifts in the arrangement and nature of the rhyming sounds.
But both - clamped -
Furious - as she could! -
Snatching the elder from the darkness -
Didn't save the little one.
Her rhyme is a kind of sound repetitions. 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, the repetition of certain combinations: but both - clamped, clamped - furious, clamped - snatching, could - saved. In the third stanza, repetitions of combinations are again: lush - superfluous (consonance), in the last stanza, repetitions of sounds: thin - incomprehensible (alliteration), repetitions of vowels: on the stem - in the ground (assonances). 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, lightly lowered ..." there are also internal rhymes tending vertically:

Dandelion on a stem!
I still don't quite understand
That my child is in the ground.
Such lines divide the line into two half-verses, highlighting each: the first is dedicated to daughter Irina, the second - to understanding - that she is no longer there.
In “Two hands, lightly lowered ...”, there is a masculine rhyme - stress on the last syllable: “... What is my child in the ground”, dactylic - stress on the third syllable from the end: “But both - clamped ...”.
Tsvetaeva, seeking the ultimate capacity and expressiveness of the phrase, sacrifices verbs:
Light - on a thin neck -
Dandelion is not a stalk!
Hence the sharpness of the transition to the sentence, she seems to be in a hurry, the "torn syntax" of her poetic speech corresponds to the tragic reality of fate. There is also a violation of the word order in the poem “There were - one for each - Two heads were given to me”, which reveals the idea of ​​the previous phrase (for two hands) more deeply.
One of the most active parts of speech in Tsvetaeva's poetry is adjectives (delicate, lush heads, a thin neck), and among the features are numerous dashes. The poet's dashes are not at all the dashes that textbooks recommend. This sign indicates a change of pace:
But both - clamped -
Furious - as she could!
The following word is emphasized (after all, a dash is always a small pause): “Two hands - caress - smooth ...”, a new unusual characteristic of an object already characterized (“... Light - on a thin neck ....”) is introduced, images are forced
(“... But both - clamped - furious ...”).
Wherever intonation or meaning needs a pause, a breath, an intensified continuation, Tsvetaeva puts a dash everywhere. The end-of-sentence sign for the poetess 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 quatrain emphasize the intensity of feelings conveyed by the poetess. In the poem "Two hands, lightly 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 tender lush heads.
The poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva is a boundless inner world, the world of the soul, creativity and destiny. B. Pasternak, admiring the poetic courage of Tsvetaeva, in a letter to her in 1926, noted:
Listen! Poems from beyond
We will only read them -
As the authors of the Vedas and Testaments
And Feast during the plague.