What is a sonnet? A poem is a sonnet. The authors of sonnets

A favorite of poets and admirers of poetry, the sonnet leads its ancestry from the works of the Provencal troubadours, who created secular lyrics and were the first to compose songs in the national language, and not in Latin. The name of the genre goes back to the Provençal word sonet - a sonorous, sonorous song.

What is a sonnet? History of occurrence

The Albigensian wars (1209-1229) that swept the south of France forced many troubadours to move to Sicily, where in the 1200's in Naples, at the court of the patron and poet Friedrich II, a school of poetry was formed. Its representatives contributed to the transformation of the sonnet - in Italian it was already called sonetto - in the leading genre of his work. Sicilian poets used the Tuscan dialect, which already at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries formed the basis of the Italian literary language. Many geniuses of the Renaissance wrote sonnets: Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio, Pierre de Ronsard, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare ... And each of them brought something new into the content of the poems.

Form features

The classic sonnet consists of fourteen stanzas. In the era of the Italian and French Renaissance, poets wrote poems in the form of two quatrains (quatrains) and two tertzines (three-verse), and in the English period - three quatrains and one couplet.

The poem-sonnet is incredibly musical, which is why it's easy for him to compose music. A certain rhythm was achieved due to the alternation of male and female rhyme, when the stress falls on the latter and, accordingly, on the penultimate syllables. The researchers found that the classical sonnet contains 154 syllables, but not all poets observed this tradition. Italy, France and England are the three cradles of the development of this poetic form. The authors of sonnets - people from every country - made some changes in form and composition.

Wreath of Sonnets

This particular form of the poem originated in Italy in the 13th century. It has 15 sonnets, and in the latter is the main theme and idea of the remaining fourteen. For this reason, the authors started work from the end. In the fifteenth sonnet, the first two stanzas are important, and by tradition, the first sonnet must necessarily begin with the first line of the latter and end with the second. No less interesting are the other parts of the poem-wreath. In the remaining thirteen sonnets, the last line of the previous must necessarily be the first line of the next.

Of the Russian poets in the history of world literature, the names of Vyacheslav Ivanov and Valery Bryusov were remembered. They knew perfectly well what a sonnet is, so they showed interest in the wreath of sonnets. In Russia, this form of writing originated in the 18th century. Genius Valery Bryusov was a master of this genre and strictly observed the established foundations. His last poem from the wreath of sonnets ("The Fatal Series") begins with lines:

"I had to call fourteen

Names of loved ones, memorable, alive! "

To make the composition of the genre more understandable, it is necessary to conduct a small analysis. Traditionally, the final sonnet begins the first sonnet, and ends - the second; The third sonnet begins with the last line of the previous one, in this case - "names of loved ones, memorable, alive!" It can be argued that Valery Bryusov has achieved perfection in this genre. To date, literary scholars have counted 150 wreaths of sonnets of Russian poets, and in the world poetry there are about 600 of them.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). The Italian Renaissance

He was called the first man of the Renaissance and the founder of classical philology. Francesco Petrarca was educated as a lawyer, became a priest, but did not live by the principle of theocentrism. Petrarch traveled all over Europe, while in the service of the cardinal, began his literary career in the village of Vaucluse in the south of France. All his life he interpreted ancient manuscripts and preferred antique classics - Virgil and Cicero. Many of his poems, including sonnets, Petrarch placed in the collection "Kanzonere", which in literal translation means "Book of Songs." In 1341, for his literary merits, he was crowned with a laurel crown.

Features of creativity

The main feature of Petrarch is to love and be loved, but this love must concern not only the woman, but also friends, relatives, nature. He reflected this idea in his work. His book "Kanzonere" refers to the museum of Laure de Nov, the daughter of a knight. The collection was written almost all of life and had two editions. Sonnets of the first book are called "On the life of Laura", the second - "To the death of Laura." In total there are 366 poems in the collection. In Petrarch's 317 sonnets, the temporal dynamics of the senses are traced. In "Canzonier" the author sees the task of poetry in chanting a beautiful and cruel Madonna. He idealizes Laura, but she does not lose her real characteristics either. The lyrical hero experiences all the hardships of unrequited love and is tormented that he has to violate the sacred vow. The most famous sonnet of the author is 61, in which he is happy every minute spent with his lover:

"Blessed is the day, the month, the summer, the hour
And a moment, when my eyes met those eyes! "

Petrarch's collection is a poetic confession in which he expresses his inner freedom and spiritual independence. He experiences, but does not regret about love. He seems to justify himself and glorify the earthly passion, for without love humanity can not exist. The verse-sonnet reflects this idea, and the poets of a later time continue to support it.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). The Italian Renaissance

The great writer of the Renaissance (best known for his work "Decameron") was an illegitimate child, so initially he was treated with contempt, but the talent won, and the young poet was recognized. Petrarch's death so touched Boccaccio that he wrote a sonnet in his honor, in which he revealed the thought of the frailty of earthly life.

"To Sennuccio, to Chino joined,

And to Dante you, and before you

Then the hidden from us appeared visibly. "

Giovanni Boccaccio dedicated sonnets to Dante Alighieri and other geniuses, and most importantly to women. His beloved, he called one name - Fiametta, but his love is not as sublime as that of Petrarch, but more mundane. He slightly changes the genre of the sonnet and sings the beauty of the face, hair, cheeks, lips, writes about his attraction to the beauty and describes the physiological needs. The dodger and darling of women expected a severe fate: disappointed in the nature of beautiful creatures and having suffered a betrayal, Boccaccio in 1362 took a spiritual order.

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). French Renaissance

Born into a family of well-to-do and notable parents, Pierre de Ronsard had every opportunity to get a good education. In 1542 he gave meager French poetry new rhymes and rhymes, for which he was deservedly called "the king of poets." Alas, for his successes he brutally paid and lost his hearing, but he was not left with a thirst for self-improvement. The advanced ancient poets he considered Horace and Virgil. Pierre de Ronsard was guided by the work of his predecessors: he knew what a sonnet was, and described the beauty of women, their love for them. The poet had three muse: Cassandra, Marie and Elena. In one of the sonnets he confesses his love for a dark-haired and brown-eyed maiden and assures her that neither the red-haired nor the light-eyed will ever evoke bright feelings in him:

"I glow in the brown eyes with a living fire,
I do not want to see gray eyes ... "

Translations sonnets of this author were performed by Russian writers of the twentieth century - Wilhelm Levik and Vladimir Nabokov.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The English Revival

In addition to the magnificent comedies and tragedies that are included in the treasury of world literature, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, which are of particular interest to contemporary literary critics. His works were said that "with this key he opened his heart". In some sonnets the writer shared his emotional experiences, while in others he was restrained, dramatic. Shakespeare devoted fourteen-verse poems to his friend and Smugly Lady. Each number has its own number, therefore it is not difficult to reveal the gradation of the author's feelings: if in the first works the lyrical hero admires beauty, then after the 17th sonnet, pleas for reciprocity come. In the poems under number 27-28 this feeling is no longer a joy, but an obsession.

Shakespeare's sonnets were written not only on love topics: sometimes the author acts as a philosopher dreaming of immortality, and condemns vices. Nevertheless, a woman for him is a perfect being, and he confidently asserts that beauty is destined to save the world. In the famous sonnet, Shakespeare admires the earthy beauty of her lover: her eyes are not like stars, her complexion is far from the color of a tender rose, but in the last couplet he says:

"And yet she will give in to those hardly,

Whom in the comparisons of lush slander. "

Italian, French and English sonnets: similarities and differences

The Renaissance presented mankind with many masterpieces of literature. Beginning in Italy in the thirteenth century, a little later the era passed to France, and two centuries later - to England. Each writer, being a native of a particular country, brought some changes to the sonnet's form, but the most urgent topic remained unchanged: the chanting of the beauty of a woman and the love of her.

In the classic Italian sonnet, the quatrains were written for two rhymes, the tertiary was allowed to be written for two or three, and alternations of male and female rhymes were optional. In other words, the stress in the stanza could fall both on the last and the penultimate syllable.

In France, a ban was imposed on the repetition of words and the use of inaccurate rhyme. The quatrains from the terrets were strictly separated from each other syntactically. Poets of the Renaissance from France wrote sonnets as a ten-syllable.

In England, innovation was introduced. The poets knew what a sonnet was, but instead of its usual form, consisting of two quatrains and two tercets, there were three quatrains and one couplet. The final stanzas were considered key and contained an expressive aphoristic maxim. The table shows normalized variations of rhymes in different countries.

Sonnet today

The fourteen-verse original form of the verse has successfully evolved into the work of contemporary writers. In the twentieth century, the most common was the French model. After Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak brilliantly translated Shakespeare's sonnets, the authors were interested in the English form. The latter is in demand even now. Despite the fact that all sonnets were translated by outstanding geniuses of literature, interest in this genre remains relevant so far: in 2009, Alexander Sharakshane published a collection of translations of all Shakespeare's sonnets.