Audrey Sander

"Awakening" by Alexander Pushkin
( https://www.poetryloverspage.com/yevgeny/pushkin/awakening.html )

O dreams, my dreams,
Where is your sweetness?
Where are you,
Joy of nightly fleetness?
They’re gone away –
My fancies, gay,
And now alone
In darkness grown
I, sleepless, stay.

A mute night hovers  
My bed above
In a flash lone 
Turned cool and gone
Dreams of my love, 
Like a tense crowd.
But still heart beats 
The longings’ sound
And catches bits
Of dreams around.

Love, hear my plea,
Hark to my prayer:
Send back to me 
Your visions, fair,
And by morn sky,
Again enchanted,
Let . . . Let me die 
Still unawaken’d.

https://stockfresh.com/image/1908863/helping-hands

The image above demonstrates the longing the author displays in the poem for dreams rich with love, 

substance, and sweetness.

Alexander Pushkin's parents endorsed French culture and taught Alexander and his sister the French

language, though they were Russian. He wrote 130 poems between 1814 and 1817, while still in school,

but they were never published because they were seen as too wildly inappropriate.

 In May of 1820, he was banished from St. Petersburg for writing numerous political poems as a 

member of a secret society that contributed to the start of a Russian revolution.

Pushkin was transferred to Kishinyov, where he had multiple affairs with the wife of his superior general,

Count Vorontsov. He finally settled down from all of the gambling and one-night stands in 1831, when 

Alexander married 16 year old Nathalie Goncharova.

The speaker is sleepless in bed questioning why he's not having dreams full with joy, love, and warmth. 

He is longing for visions of love and happiness that will fill his lonely sleepless nights.

The identity of the speaker is lost; lost of joy, affection, and mere quality human interaction. The speaker

also hints at internalized anxiety from not having adequate love, either in his dreams or in reality.

Love "like a tense crowd" demonstrates how chaotic, yet meaningful, a connection can be when compared

with a concept that isn't necessarily related to the topic. Personification gives off how strongly of an 

imprint love and dreams leave on the speaker. "O dreams, my dreams, where is your sweetness? Where are

you?" tells the reader that the speaker feels lost or confused and therefore calls out to dreams themselves

to ask them where they are, and "love hear my plea...send [back] to me," lets the reader in on the speaker's 

desperation without love. Contrast of the quiet sleepless night and the beating of the speaker's heart when 

he catches glimpses of love-filled dreams show the further confusion and disorientation the poet feels 

when lying restless in bed.

 The rhyme scheme in "Awakening" does not remain entirely consistent throughout the poem, presenting

an incomplete feeling. The construction of the poem in this form establishes the idea that the speaker is 

also inconsistent himself, and is not completely aware of what his experience is or why he's experiencing 

what he is.

The tone initially presented at the beginning of the poem is an edgy state of yearning and shifts into a more

chilling buoyant attitude as the speaker imagines dreams of love. The end of the poem an even more 

desperate tone than the rest of the poem when the speaker calls out in his silence for enchanted visions of

love. The overall tone of the poem very clearly reflects the general state of the poet at the time of his 

creating it, as hinted by the specific word choice of the piece.

 Dreams and love are both concepts that no human can control, and are nevertheless strongly craved for,

 but in the absence of these notions one can find hope and satisfaction if they simply conceptualize the 

ideas or feelings being right in front of them.