The bird is one of the most common poetic images and symbols in literature and folklore. This is a creature of the natural world, which is given something that has always been inaccessible to man - the ability to fly. The image of a bird has always been associated with the idea of an ideal beginning-harmony, freedom, height, movement.
In his works, Turgenev makes extensive use of this image, filling it with deep content. The motif of movement and flight is the main one in the composition of the story "Ghosts". This becomes apparent when a flying flock of cranes appears in the story: "Large beautiful birds (there were only thirteen of them) flew in a triangle, sharply and rarely flapping their convex wings. With their heads and legs stretched out tightly, their chests thrust out sharply, they were rushing uncontrollably and so fast that the air whistled around them. It was wonderful to see at such a height, at such a distance from all living things, such a hot, strong life, such a steady will. Without ceasing to cross the space triumphantly, the cranes occasionally called to each other with the foremost comrade, with the leader, and there was something proud, important, something indestructibly self-confident in these loud exclamations, in this cloudless conversation. "We'll probably make it, even if it's difficult," they seemed to say, encouraging each other. And then it occurred to me that such people as these birds were, in Russia-where in Russia! there is not much in the whole world" (Cited in: Turgenev I. S. Poln. sobr. soch. i pis'mov: V 28 t. M.-L., 1960-1968. Vol. IX. pp. 103-104; further only volume and p.).
"Big beautiful birds" is a symbol of the integrity of the spirit, unity and inflexibility of the will, a state that is usually inaccessible to Turgenev's hero. Dreaming of combining the mind and will in one person, Turgenev could not create such a hero, because he did not see him in real life.
In "Enough", the image of migratory birds flying high in the ...
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