In Russia, the name of symbolism is associated with something for which you can give your life and even your soul.

The work of acmeists and futurists is still perceived as a living value and influences the modern Russian literary process. A different fate befell symbolism, the eldest and in some respects the most deserving of the three great schools of Russian poetry of the early 20th century. The symbolist language early "turned into a dead dialect". After the 10s, it was used either by notorious epigones, or by poets who, for one reason or another, found themselves outside of literature (such as Daniil Andreev). "Old school coinage worn out"; the largest symbolists in their later works transformed the traditional symbolist poetics beyond recognition.

The crisis - perhaps even the death of symbolism - is usually associated with 1910, when a dispute broke out between its masters, which gave rise to a number of significant theoretical formulations. By this time, "Scales" and "Golden Fleece" had ceased their publication; their place was taken by "Apollo", which designated new era Russian culture; a whole generation of young poets came forward, from Akhmatova to Mayakovsky, who, as it soon became clear, belonged to the future. The dispute divided the symbolists into two camps - "aesthetes" and "philosophers" ("theurgists"); but both of them gradually began to fade into the background of the literary and cultural scene.

The dramatic history of the collapse of Russian symbolism has not been studied enough. It is generally recognized that Vyacheslav Ivanov, the most serious theorist and the most unusual, "exotic" poet of the Symbolist school, played an important role in this. But, perhaps, those moments of his theoretical views and poetic practice, which, marking the crisis of symbolism, have indirectly turned out to be fruitful for the development of Russian culture, have not yet been fully explored.

Ivanov was the instigator of the 1910 discussion. As you know, it began with two of his reports, later revised into the article "The Testaments of Symbolism" ("Apollo", 1910, No. 8). Blok's parallel report "On the Current State of Russian Symbolism" appeared in the same issue of Apollo. (Compare Blok’s self-critical remark in a letter to Yevgeny Znosko-Borovsky dated April 12, 1910: “Another thing is the report of Vyach. Ivanovich, to which I only answered: there - mathematical formula, here is a student's drawing".) The speeches of Ivanov and Blok provoked an immoderately harsh reaction from Bryusov. In his diary, Bryusov writes about Ivanov in this regard: “His main idea is that art should serve religion. I objected sharply. Hence the spat. For Vyach. Ivanov stood Bely and Ellis. Broke up with Vyach. Iv. cold" . The side of Ivanov was taken by the authors who considered Vladimir Solovyov their forerunner and largely proceeded from his positions on the meaning of art. Bryusov's position was sympathized with by many young poets who gravitated toward clarism and acmeism (and soon outgrew Bryusov's schemes).

Almost all the main ideas of the "Testaments of Symbolism" were expressed by Ivanov long before 1910 (cf. his articles "The Poet and the Mob", 1904; "Spear of Athena", 1904; "Symbolism of Aesthetic Principles", 1905; "The Crisis of Individualism", 1905; " About a cheerful craft and smart fun", 1907; "Two elements in modern symbolism", 1908). The split in 1910 was not caused by the fact that Ivanov took a new position or formulated it more clearly than before. More important is the fact that at this time, according to Dmitry Maksimov’s accurate remark, “entropic processes were taking place in the literature of symbolism” - the assimilation of symbolist poetics by mass culture, personal strife, etc. It is also significant that Bryusov’s position became more distinct (which soon revealed its little productivity). Paradoxically, Ivanov's propositions (and his very poetics) ultimately turned out to be more important - even for currents that announced their break with the "mystical nebulae" of symbolism - than Bryusov's outwardly attractive propositions. They entered the flesh and blood of Russian literature, although perhaps in an unexpected way for Ivanov himself.

It is usually believed that Bryusov, in the 1910 discussion, defended purely aesthetic principles, based on the practice of Western (primarily French) symbolism; Ivanov and his supporters, relying on the traditions of German romantic philosophy and Russian religious thought, set extraliterary tasks for symbolism. A superficial reading of Ivanov's and Bryusov's articles that does not take into account the context, as it were, confirms this view. Ivanov writes:

“Symbolism seems to be a prelude to that hypothetically conceivable, actually religious era of language, when it will embrace two separate speeches: speech about empirical things and relations and speech about objects and relations of a different order, opening up in inner experience - the hieratic speech of prophecy” .

The first speech is defined as logical, the second as mythological, ascending to the sacred language of the priests. According to Ivanov, poetry focused on this - apparently feasible only in the ideal - prophetic speech, should contribute to the transformation of the world, which will lead to some eschatological state (in the spirit of the predictions of Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Fedorov). The poet is obliged to be “a religious organizer of life, an interpreter and strengthener of the divine connection of being, a theurgist” (cf. later with Mandelstam: “The word in the Hellenistic understanding is active flesh, resolving into an event”). The triumvirate of Ivanov, Bely and Blok calls their symbolism "realistic", "true" - as opposed to the "idealistic", "subjective", "decorative" symbolism of Bryusov or Balmont. Ivanov repeatedly emphasized that "true" symbolism goes far beyond the literary movement and is present in any large-scale work of any era. Its roots in the Russian tradition, according to the article "Testaments of Symbolism", are seen in Zhukovsky, Pushkin and many other writers, but its potential was sufficiently realized only by Tyutchev, who felt the need for "double vision" and "another poetic language".

It has been repeatedly said that the Ivanov concept was refracted in a peculiar way Russian idea"public service art". Later, his concept was even associated with the Soviet “art for the masses” (as well as the Ivanovo “orchestras” with the soviets). I would like to call such a realization of Ivanov's theoretical constructions parodic - if it were not so tragic; and it is not surprising that Ivanov, unlike Bely, took it with horror. Against this background, Bryusov's conception can be understood as a completely constructive defense of the autonomy of art. However, it seems to us that both concepts should be looked at from a slightly different angle.

First of all, Ivanov perceives art as a system that is in constant - and fruitful - interaction with other sign systems of culture. For Bryusov, art is self-contained and self-sufficient; Ivanov puts forward much more modern idea open art. It is permissible to say that Bryusov confines himself to art as syntax, while Ivanov vividly feels its semantic and pragmatic aspects. If Bryusov's approach is known to have influenced Russian formalism, Ivanov's approach to some extent heralds the semiotic school.

There is no doubt that Ivanov was a man of religious consciousness (and that the crisis of the poetics of symbolism is connected with the crisis of religion, characteristic of the 20th century). But religious consciousness for Ivanov (as earlier for Dostoevsky) was expressed primarily in the principle of dialogue, interaction, connection (that which etymologically defines the word religion). Ivanov's work is distinguished by rare unity and even some monotony:

“[...] The whole diverse swarm of his poems and hymns, his sonnets and canzones, his epic legends, his capricious “poems in case”, his tragedies written in ancient meters, are involuntarily and immutably arranged architectonically, and his visions themselves merge into a single orderly system."

But this system is built on antinomies, on internal clashes and disputes, on dialectical transitions.

At the deepest level, the problem of dialogue is posed by Ivanov's famous formula "You Are" (cf. the 1907 article under this title). Listening to himself, a person finds on last line a certain "You" - an interlocutor, a partner, a superpersonal force - and thereby overcomes his "cellularity" (at the same time, the God-bearer who entered into a conversation with "You" is at the same time a debater, a theomachist). At the next level, the dialogue takes place between the various layers of a single personality; this is what in the article "Nietzsche and Dionysus" (1904) is defined by the words "the game of self-search, self-stalking, self-evasion, a vivid sense of one's inner wanderings in oneself and encounters with oneself." In the dialogue - which should eventually turn into a religious, “cathedral” connection - there are also personalities separated from each other, “fragmented consciousnesses”. It could be said that the almost untranslatable term "sobornost" in Ivanov's understanding is tantamount to the term "dialogue" extended to a theologeme. Different genres, different spheres of culture, systems of thinking and being separated in time and space (what in general can be called languages) enter into a dialogue. All of them recode each other, clear through each other. Poems are translated into the language of tragedy, tragedy into the language of scientific description, scientific and philosophical construction - into the language of the text of life (for example, the connection with Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal is clarified through correlation with the Dionysian complex; marriage to Vera Shvarsalon implements the theme "culture as a cult of memory"). The personality itself becomes sign(“Do the signs dream of the poet? / Or the sign - the poet?”). Diachrony overturns into synchrony: for example, the ancient ritual is not only correlated, but almost identified with Christian dogma (cf. Ivanov's teaching on Antirroya - the movement from the future into the past). Ivanov is characterized by an “ecumenical” sense of world culture as a single whole (see in this regard Mandelstam’s well-known remarks in the 1923 article “Storm and Onslaught”) - Time loses its unidirectionality and is interpreted in spatial terms - in particular, in the spatial symbolism of ascent - descent, apparently correlated with the mythology of the "world tree". This defines the densely Russian and at the same time exotic language of Ivanov's poems, and it also foreshadows to a large extent a post-symbolist poetics.

The dialogic principle that permeates Ivanov's work sometimes reveals itself in a rather unexpected way. For example, it is connected with the fact that Ivanov felt the need to write in many languages ​​- Russian, German, Greek, Latin, etc. We find an exceptionally expressive example of "internal dialogue" in Ivanov's diaries, dating from the same year 1910 and symbolist discussion: the conversation with oneself in these diaries often turns into a conversation with Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, who died in 1907, and even the handwriting changes at the transition points. Leaving aside any medical and even more parapsychological explanations of this fact, we note that it expresses in a non-trivial way the basic principle of Ivanov's thought: "To be is to be together."

In everyday behavior, Ivanov was also characterized by an attitude towards his interlocutor. His thought most fully unfolded in a Socratic, calm and friendly dispute, taking into account and reconciling antithetical points of view.

“Unlike Andrei Bely, like a fire-breathing volcano spewing his thoughts in front of you, and unlike thousands of brilliant Russian debaters-talkers, Vyacheslav Ivanov loved and knew how to listen to other people's thoughts.”

Perhaps the best example of this is Correspondence from Two Corners (1921). The positions of Ivanov and his interlocutor Mikhail Gershenzon here seem completely irreconcilable. At the same time, Gershenzon acts as a "monologue", who fundamentally does not want to listen to other people's ideas and include them in the circle of his experience. Ivanov confines himself to intonations of calm conviction (“Yes, we agreed that truth should not be forced”), tries to penetrate what sounds “between the lines, in the inner tone and rhythm of words”, to find in Gershenzon’s position a certain aspect of truth that is subject to inclusion in a larger synthesis (“But suddenly your voice joins mine”). Through dialogue, penetration into the interlocutor's symbolic world, careful inclusion of elements of someone else's speech into his speech, Ivanov seeks to overcome, in his own words, the main lie of "our dismembered and scattered cultural era powerless to give birth to a conciliar consciousness. Sobornost turns out to be a counterbalance to spiritual entropy and alienation.

The pluralistic position of Ivanov is opposite to the "monistic" position of Bryusov (contemporaries noted the authoritarian and dictatorial character of Bryusov, contrasting it with the symposial character of Ivanov). It is not without interest that in his article “On the “slavish speech”, in defense of poetry”, Bryusov shines precisely with his unwillingness to listen to his interlocutors - he literally reads their metaphors, which thereby turn into absurdities, allows flat-ironic attacks, etc. Incidentally, this cardinal difference between the “models of the world” of Bryusov and Ivanov influenced their biographical texts, including their political fate: the esthete and “aristocrat of the spirit” Bryusov found modus vivendi With Soviet power, which ultimately turned out to be unacceptable for Ivanov, who preserved the traditions of the Russian public and people's love.

In connection with the problem recoding, apparently, Ivanov's understanding of the symbol should be considered. The symbol - "contradictory sign" - acquires different interpretations in different spheres of consciousness and is translated into the language of various myths. Myth, according to the article “Testaments of Symbolism”, is a dynamic mode of a symbol, built on a verb, action, event, which tends to be recoded into a life act (cf. acorn").

Zara Mints noted not so long ago that symbolism was an expansion of artistic methods of cognition into traditionally scientific fields. But here, too, the difference between Bryusov and Ivanov should be emphasized. Bryusov, with positivist (or Victorian) straightforwardness, believed that symbolism is indeed an analogue or even a type of science, "knowledge of secret truths" that are inaccessible to the uninitiated gaze. Ivanov wrote to him on February 19, 1904:

« Keys of Secrets assume as a secret some truth - an object of knowledge. Myth-making itself imposes its own truth; it does not at all test the correspondence of its objective essence of things. It embodies the postulates of consciousness and, affirming, creates. Therefore, art for me is predominantly creativity, if you like - peacemaking - an act of self-affirmation and will-action, and not knowledge (what is faith)! ..] ".

Ivanov contrasts the flat epistemological understanding of art with a much more modern understanding, where the signified does not oppose consciousness as something external, but is created in action, in mutual recoding and reinterpretation. sign systems. For Bryusov, the symbol has a limited number of interpretations; for Ivanov, it constantly acquires meaning, being refracted in various areas of culture and passing from era to era. The process of recoding leads to an avalanche-like increase in meaning (cf. modern semiotic ideas). According to Ivanov, which is already beyond the bounds of science, the endless mutual recoding of idiolects, languages, and cultures should lead to some final Meaning, defined in religious (Soloviev's) terms; “mirror of mirrors”, - art, - “pointed at the mirrors of fragmented consciousnesses, restores the original truth of the reflected”. At this stage, language is replaced by apophatic silence; but this step belongs to the realm of eschatology, and not to the realm of experience available here and now.

Thus, in the dispute of 1910, it is not so much about the autonomy of literature (or its subordination to extraliterary tasks), but about the recognition (or non-recognition) of the dialogic principle in culture, the principle organic connection all its parts. This was well understood by Blok, who wrote in his transcript of the Ivanov report: "Poetry is only part of the whole."

It is against the background of the dialogic principle and the desire to remove antinomies that one should consider the words about “double vision”, which is necessary for a true symbolist: the artist unites the worlds of day and night, consciousness and subconsciousness, microcosm and macrocosm, separated in everyday thinking. Theurgical speech, according to Ivanov, does not cancel the former speech, but includes it (the logical overcomes and surpasses itself in the dialogic); poetry of decorative symbolism enters integral part into the poetry of true symbolism. The article “Testaments of Symbolism”, as usual with Ivanov, is triadic: the assertion of the freedom of the artist (thesis) turns either into the nihilism of Blok and Bely, or into the religious action of Dobrolyubov and Merezhkovsky, or into the elegant mastery of the clarists (antithesis); the synthesis is theurgical art, but it also includes the former elements (in particular, formal craftsmanship "educates strict taste, artistic exactingness, a sense of responsibility and careful restraint in dealing with antiquity and newness"). Ivanov's "monomyth" - Dionysus, - according to Omri Ronen, is a symbol of a symbol; it can also be called the myth of a myth, a metamyth, because it denotes the very fact of mediation, the unification of opposites, the dialogue of antinomic principles.

The dialogical principle is refracted, probably, in any artistic text Ivanova. But it is difficult to find a more typical example of the practical implementation of Ivanov's theory than the "Wreath of Sonnets", written in the spring of 1909 and published shortly before the article "Testaments of Symbolism" in the same "Apollo" (No. 5, 1910). This cycle (incidentally, somewhat violating the strict canon of the wreath of sonnets) is based on the sonnet "Love" from the collection Pilot Stars (1903). "Love" is a series of symbols; these symbols are expressed in metaphorical comparisons (almost devoid of verbs), each of which describes the meeting and merging of two personalities (or, from another point of view, the union of male and female principles in the androgynous Sphinx). "Wreath of Sonnets" unfolds these symbols in myth- a complex and even incomprehensible story, the essence of which is the transition from the pagan oak, the world tree (first two lines) to the Christian cross (last line). The principle of dialogue is underlined by two epigraphs - from Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal and from himself. The semantic key of the cycle is the word two (both) found in any of the 14 sonnets several times, and in the entire wreath - 51 times (cf. also the words double, two-vowel, two-stinger, two-light, two-pillar). In the verses, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Germanic, Slavic, Christian mythologemes are connected and echoed, revealing their closeness; the very interweaving of lines, characteristic of a wreath of sonnets, can be perceived as some icon of the interlacing of diverse sign systems. Finally, in the cycle there is a dialogue with layers of Russian poetry preceding in time. It contains references to the Tale of Igor's Campaign ( cry from the mountain of two winds banners - banners say), to Batyushkov (Ossian motif of burning oaks), etc.; but the most obvious, of course, is Pushkin's overtones. The themes fundamental to the cycle are connected with Pushkin's "Prophet" eyes, mouth, chest, heart etc.; there are also numerous transformed quotations like mountain ice (heavenly flight of angels), a two-stinged arrow ... of a snake knot (sting of a wise snake), fire-verb (burn with a verb). This multi-layered structure was undoubtedly perceived by Ivanov - and probably by some of his contemporaries - as a harbinger of the future. prophetic poetic language.

It is unlikely that anyone will deny that Ivanov is a greater and more original poet than Bryusov, who defended poetry from Ivanov's "non-literary claims." Nevertheless, Ivanov, who foresaw and partly realized many new poetic possibilities, was still fettered by the established "academic", "Alexandrian" language of the beginning of the century. The style of his articles, not devoid of mannerisms, also provoked opposition - cf. Block's characteristic remark on August 1, 1907:

“My disagreement with Vyach. Ivanov in terminology and pathos(especially the last one). His terms may offend me. Myth, catholicity, barbarism. Why not say it easier?

Characteristic - and very profound - is also Ivanov's own remark: a true symbolist cares only "to firmly establish a certain general principle. This principle is the symbolism of all true art […], - at least with time it turned out that it was we, who approved it, who were, at the same time, the least worthy of its spokesmen.

One way or another, the dialogism and pluralism of the Ivanov model of the world became dominant in Russian culture of the post-symbolist period. Ivanov's word is material, like the word of the acmeists, and often strange, like the word of the futurists. The typological - and often, apparently, genetic - connection with Ivanov is noticeable in the syncretic and synchronizing mythologism of Khlebnikov, in the Dionysian frenzy of Tsvetaeva, in Kuzmin's striving for the accuracy of realities, in the cult of memory and quotation in Akhmatova and Mandelstam. Ivanov's moral pathos, leading to the identification of the poetic text and life, was revived in the best Russian poetry of the 1930s and is present in it to this day. Last but not least (5) - Ivanov's theoretical constructions became one of the starting points for Mikhail Bakhtin (whose ideas influenced modern Russian thought). If Russian symbolism died after the discussions of 1910, thanks to Vyacheslav Ivanov, it died like a grain, about which it was once said that it would "bring much fruit."

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In addition to the increasingly noticeable ideological and aesthetic delimitation in the camp of the Symbolists, in addition to the feeling by the Symbolists themselves that they had outgrown the framework of the direction they created and that there was no longer a need for a closed group association, the crisis of Symbolism in the late 1900s. also contributed to the emergence a large number imitators of symbolist poetry. The symbolism of the old type, with its penetration into "other worlds", with its vague allegory, favorite images and vocabulary, turned into a bargaining chip, became available to untalented and untalented authors.

The epigones, whose poems found their way into the press and abundantly settled in the archives of Libra, were perceived by Bryusov, Ellis and other symbolists as a kind of poetic nightmare. And if Nadson gave rise to Nadsonism, and Balmont to Balmontism, then symbolism, in turn, began to evoke a pseudo-symbolist wave that vulgarized it.

For Bryusov, who closely followed what was being done in Russian poetry, there was no doubt that symbolism as a literary trend was becoming obsolete. O. Mandelstam rightly wrote: "... Russian symbolism shouted so much and loudly about the 'inexpressible' that this 'inexpressible' went from hand to hand like paper money." It is characteristic that the work of the Symbolists attracted the attention of a wide range of readers when they turned to national problems, when their work sounded not “beyond”, but quite “earthly” theme - Russia.

In 1909, the journals Libra and Golden Fleece announced that they had ceased publication, as they had completed their main task - to spread the ideas of symbolism and lead the literary movement of the new time.

But no matter how the Symbolists spoke about their victory, it was obvious that some of them were beginning to move away from their early ideological and artistic beliefs. The struggle that the symbolists waged with the realists, and above all with Gorky and his comrades-in-arms, the Znanevites, was a struggle to decide which path (“we” or Gorky, in Bryusov’s view) would take modern literature. The closure of the journals, which testified to the crisis, and not to the victory of symbolism over realism opposing it, caused the appearance in the press of a number of articles that posed the question: “to be or not to be” symbolism?

Quite characteristic is the discussion between the Symbolists themselves, which unfolded on the pages of the Apollo magazine (1910, Nos. 8, 9) and showed that the question of a new stage in the development of symbolism cannot be resolved without clarifying the fundamental question of the relationship of art to reality.

Vyach. Ivanov and Blok believed that the modern crisis of symbolism does not mean the collapse of its philosophical, mystical and aesthetic foundations. Ivanov's article "The Precepts of Symbolism" (his article and Blok's article were read earlier as reports) confirmed the interpretation of symbolism as a philosophical and religious art and defended an understanding of its role as life-building. Symbolism could not be only art, Ivanov declared.

In the article "On the Current State of Russian Symbolism", Blok supported the pathos of Ivanov's article on symbolism as theurgic poetry and linked its modifications with changes in "other worlds".

For Bryusov, symbolism was a significant, but already passed, stage in the history of literature. In 1906-1907. he says that he is tired of the symbolists, that what his comrades in Libra write about no longer interests him. However, considering himself the leader of a new direction, Bryusov nevertheless continued to support these years and tried in every possible way to stimulate the activities of his associates.

Bryusov began his career with the assertion that symbolism is a literary school. He maintained this assertion in the future. Thus, in 1906, Bryusov wrote: “The programs of real, not fictitious literary schools always display on their banner precisely literary principles, artistic precepts. Romanticism was a struggle against the conventions and narrow rules of pseudo-classicism; realism demanded a truthful depiction of contemporary reality; symbolism brought the idea of ​​a symbol as a new means of representation<...>To unite works of art on grounds that have nothing to do with art means to renounce art, it means to become like the “Wanderers” and apologists for “utilitarian” poetry.”

In response to the speeches of Ivanov and Blok in defense of symbolism, Bryusov publishes the article “On the “slavish speech”, in defense of poetry”, reaffirming his understanding of symbolism as a literary school, as a special artistic method and reiterating that literature should not be directly subordinate to the public, religion or mysticism.

Soon, Blok would come to the conclusion that symbolism as a certain philosophical and aesthetic doctrine is becoming more and more creative personality. “It's time to untie my hands, I'm not a schoolboy anymore. No more symbolism,” he wrote in his diary on February 10, 1913.95 Reflections on the world universe do not disappear, but “earthly” historicism comes to the fore more and more clearly, which intensifies reflections on the connection between the individual and the era, about responsibility, the duty of the individual before his time and people. For Blok, both the Spirit of world music and the reality itself, in which he catches the approach of a new storm, are now aesthetically valuable. Hence Blok's increasingly insistent appeal to the traditions of Russian literature, to realistic aesthetics, unthinkable in isolation from materialistic ethics.

Until October, only Ivanov remained unchanged in his adherence to philosophical and religious symbolism. The former Solovyovite Bely, who is unusually fast and "dynamically" changing in his views on symbolism, now introduces a new hobby into him - R. Steiner's anthroposophy.

Those who did not leave Symbolism united in 1912 in the new organ "Works and Days", but it quickly ceased its activities.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983

The most important historical events 1900s - the Russo-Japanese War and the ensuing revolution of 1905-1907. Its influence affects all the events of the cultural life of this time. It is very important that, thanks to the tsar's manifesto of October 17, 1905, Russia receives unprecedented freedom of speech and the press: periodicals and art publications are freed from preliminary censorship, new magazines (including many satirical ones), newspapers, almanacs appear one after another. Literature reacts to revolutionary cataclysms in many ways. First, there are direct reflections of what is happening in works of art: M. Gorky’s novel “Mother”, Leonid Andreev’s stories “The Governor”, ​​“The Story of the Seven Hanged Men”, poems by N. Minsky “Hymn of the Workers”, A. Blok “Rally”, “Is everything calm among the people?..”, “Political fairy tales” by F. Sologub. Almost all Russian writers at first reacted to the revolutionary events with unanimous sympathy, collaborated in the radical press, even in the legal Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn. And only later came the understanding that the revolution had hardly affected the broad masses of the people, or that popular uprisings could be in the nature of senseless destruction, lynching, and even Black Hundred pogroms.

But, in addition to direct reflections of revolutionary events in literature, there were also more complex, indirect effects of the revolution on literature. The Russian Revolution made it especially obvious that the basis of both natural and historical national existence is an element that does not obey the laws of reason and logic. Hence - the most important role of the motifs of fire, fire, blizzard, wind in the poetry of this time (the collection “We Will Be Like the Sun” by K. Balmont, the poetic cycles “Snow Mask” and “Spell by Fire and Darkness” by Blok, “symphony” by Andrei Bely “Blizzard Cup ”). The revolution forced writers to think about the deep laws of Russian history (D. Merezhkovsky's novels "Peter and Alexei", ​​"December 14", "Alexander I", Blok's cycle "On the Kulikovo Field"), to turn again to the study of Russian folklore - the key to understanding the national character (collections of Sergei Gorodetsky "Yar" and "Perun", a collection of Alexei Remizov "Salting", etc.).

But it is even more important that the approach of revolutionary cataclysms was comprehended by many artists of that time as a sign of apocalyptic, eschatological events: the revolution was presented primarily as a “revolution of the spirit”, as a future radical renewal of not only social, but also universal being. This attitude entailed a new attitude towards life and art. Instead of the typical 1890s departure from a rough and cruel life into Beauty, into art, the artists of the 1900s strive to actively influence life, to transfer the laws of artistic creativity to the creativity of life as a whole.

Exercise

List the most important historical events of the early 1900s.

Name the works in which the events of the first Russian revolution are directly reflected.

What is the role of revolutionary events in the profound changes in the thematic repertoire in Russian literature of that time?

What is the novelty of solving the question of the relationship between literature and life in the works of writers of the new literary generation?

“Senior" and "junior" symbolists. The 1900s are the heyday of all literary schools that arose in the 1890s. Russian symbolism reaches a real maturity. A second generation of symbolists appears in literature. In 1903-1905, the first collections of poetry by Alexander Blok (“Poems about the Beautiful Lady”), Andrei Bely (Boris Bugaev) (“Gold in Azure”), Vyacheslav Ivanov (“Helding Stars”), and others were published. Criticism quickly assimilates the division of the symbolists on the "senior"(D.Merezhkovsky, Z.Gippius, N.Minsky, V.Bryusov, F.Sologub, K.Balmont) and "juniors".

It is, of course, not about the age of the writers. Vyacheslav Ivanov is older than Bryusov, but belongs to the “younger” generation. This means, firstly, the time when writers made their debut in literature, and secondly, the differences in the aesthetic program. For the “senior” symbolists, the idea of ​​an intrinsically valuable art, free from utilitarian purposes, was extremely important. In the 1900s, this idea began to become obsolete even in the eyes of some “seniors”: the Merezhkkovskys put forward the idea of ​​combining religious quests and public service, socio-political issues, art and religion. On their initiative, the Religious and Philosophical Meetings were organized in St. Petersburg in 1902 - the first attempt at a dialogue between the intelligentsia and the clergy on issues of freedom of belief, the relationship between culture and religion.

From the very beginning, the "younger" Symbolists treated art differently: they sought to subordinate art to more general life tasks. True, they understood “vital tasks” in a completely different way than generations of democrats, populists, and Marxist revolutionaries. It was not about politics, not about social or public issues. They aspired to a religious transformation of life according to the laws of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. As the younger member of the Symbolist movement, the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, wrote, “Symbolism did not want to be only an art school, a literary movement. All the time he tried to become a life-creative method, and in that was his deepest, perhaps unrealizable truth, but in the constant striving for this truth, in essence, his entire history flowed. It was a series of attempts, sometimes truly heroic, to find a fusion of life and creativity, a kind of philosophical stone of creativity.”

Their spiritual teacher was a Russian philosopher and poet Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov(1853-1900). He did not consider himself a symbolist, but his lyrics and aesthetics had a huge impact on a whole generation of poets, he gave them a special language: a set of plots, images, myths.

According to the teachings of Solovyov, modern humanity is going through a period of general disunity, the world has fallen away from God and is in the grip of evil. The reason lies in the depths of cosmic history, when the Soul of the world, the Eternal Femininity, Sophia-Wisdom, wanted to create not from God, but from herself, created an imperfect world of evil and herself became its prisoner. Now humanity and each person individually will have to go anew from the universal separation and chaos to unity with God, to save the captive Soul of the world, the Eternal Femininity from the power of evil.

The path to this salvation is love, which makes it possible to reveal in the beloved being, in the natural world, the hidden sophianic principle. This mythopoetic plot underlies the first collections of junior symbolists - “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” by A. Blok, “Gold in Azure” by Andrei Bely.

But it is not enough to embody the plot of the meeting with the Eternal Feminine in literature, it is much more important for the followers of Vladimir Solovyov to subordinate life to this task. In the context of this plot, Blok's relationship with his future wife Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, the mystical love of young Andrei Bely with the wife of a wealthy manufacturer, patron of arts Margarita Kirillovna Morozova, whom he saw at a concert and bombarded with anonymous letters for several months, were perceived.

In 1903, a circle of “Argonauts” arose in Moscow, which included the poet Andrei Bely, the nephew of the philosopher Sergei Solovyov, Ellis, but at the same time their classmates at Moscow University, who had nothing to do with art: the ability to create life was valued by the “Argonauts” no less maybe more than the ability to create works of art. Friendly letters, conversations, walks along the Arbat and in the vicinity of the Novodevichy Convent, where Vl. Solovyov, contemplation of the extraordinary evening "dawns", which were seen as an omen of future "unheard of changes", the transformation of life - all this was as important as poetry, music, painting.

In 1905, the poet and symbolist theorist Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (1866-1949) returned to Russia from a long trip abroad. Together with his wife, an aspiring writer, Lidia Zinovieva-Annibal, they rent a large apartment on the top floor of an apartment building on Tavricheskaya Street and organize evenings on Wednesdays that bring together writers, artists, musicians, actors, philosophers, and even politicians. Ivanovo "Wednesdays" get the name of evenings on the "tower": on the top floor the apartment was semicircular, and directly from the apartment one could go to the roof of the building, fenced with bars. Literary readings, musical evenings were held at the “tower”, aesthetic and philosophical treatises were read, art was argued, performances were staged that could hardly be called amateur: after all, professional writers, directors and actors took part in their writing and staging. Ivanov himself dreamed of a new theatre, where the boundary between the stage and the audience would be destroyed once and for all, where the creation of new forms of art would simultaneously become a search for new forms of life. He encouraged collective forms of creativity, sought to attract young artists to the "tower", spoke of the need for spiritual apprenticeship.

In preaching the creativity of life - life creation and the main difference between the “senior” and “junior” symbolists was rooted.

Exercise

Which symbolist poets debuted in the early 1900s? Name their first poetry collections.

Why were these symbolists called "junior"? What signs distinguish them from the "senior"?

What is the difference between the ideas about "life tasks" among the Symbolists and those of the Democrats, Narodniks, Marxists?

What is the teaching of Vl. Solovyov about Eternal Femininity and the Soul of the World?

How did Solovyov's teaching affect the work and life of the "younger" symbolists?

Name the "life-creating" circles that arose in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Who was in them?

Symbolist journals. In 1900, the Scorpion publishing house appeared in Moscow, founded on the initiative of V. Bryusov and K. Balmont with the money of the philanthropist, Moscow industrialist and amateur writer S.A. Polyakov. Now the Symbolists could organize a wide edition of their works. They started with the release of the almanac "Northern Flowers", named so in memory of the almanac of Pushkin's time. In 1904, the first symbolist literary-critical journal, Scales, appeared. Valery Bryusov became the soul of the journal, its de facto leader and editor-in-chief (officially S.A. Polyakov was the editor-publisher). For the first time, all adherents of symbolism were able to unite around the magazine. For the first two years, Scales was a critical and bibliographic journal. Bryusov organized a wide network of correspondents who worked in European countries and acquaints the Russian reader with all the notable novelties of modern European culture. Lyrical and journalistic articles, essays, and philosophical studies were also published.

Since 1906, poems, stories, novels, plays, translations of the Symbolists began to be published in the journal. It was on the pages of Libra that the articles by Vyacheslav Ivanov (“The Poet and the Mob”, “Nietzsche and Dionysus”), the most important theoretical articles by Bryusov (“Keys of Secrets”), the novel by V. Bryusov “The Fiery Angel”, the story by Andrei Bely “Silver dove”, Blok’s drama “The Stranger”. Symbolist poetry was especially vividly represented - poems and poems by Bryusov, Balmont, Sologub, Blok, Bely - here not a single Russian literary magazine could compare with Libra. Like World of Art, Scales was a thin magazine. Elegant headpieces, vignettes, reproductions of contemporary modernist artists (L.S. Bakst, V.E. Borisov-Musatov, N.K. Roerich, French artists Odilon Redon, Charles Lacoste, etc. participated in the design of the magazine) were made by “Scales” a true work of literary art.

In 1906, another symbolist magazine appeared in St. Petersburg - "The Golden Fleece". It was published with the money of the millionaire Nikolai Ryabushinsky. Unlike Polyakov, who only nominally managed Vesami, Ryabushinsky had considerable ambitions and laid claim to the sole management of the journal. He had no talent, but he tried to write poetry and prose, and was engaged in painting. He spared no money for the magazine. The writers were paid large fees, and at first almost all the Symbolists were willing to publish in the magazine.

Unlike the exquisitely modest Scales, The Golden Fleece impressed with merchant luxury: an unusually large format, satin paper, rich illustrations that occupy half of the magazine, text in Russian and French, golden trim. At first, this was perhaps the only difference between the magazines. “Scales” laughed at tasteless luxury (Gippius compared the appearance of “Run” with “the richest Moscow wedding”, there were also sharper accusations of vulgarity, banality, lack of culture).

However, in 1906, several scandals with Ryabushinsky occurred in the editorial office of the Golden Fleece, after which many Moscow symbolists - Bryusov, Bely, stopped publishing in the magazine, and the Merezhkovskys also left them. Since the beginning of 1907, significant changes have taken place in the journal. Alexander Blok was invited to conduct critical reviews in the journal. Articles by Vyach. Ivanov on the theory of symbolism.

The preaching of overcoming individualism, "sobornost", sympathetic attention to the work of knowledge writers, to the specifics of Russian culture, to the problem of the tragic gap between the people and the intelligentsia, the desire to overcome the "directive" framework - all this was little like the commitment of "Libra" to the idea of ​​free and intrinsic art. A controversy began between the journals, which lasted almost three years and ended only with the closure of both journals in 1909.

Exercise

Name the first symbolist magazine in Russia. Who published it, who collaborated in it?

How has the content of the journal changed as it has evolved?

When did the second symbolist journal originate? Who published it? How did it differ from the "Scales"?

Which symbolist changed the ideological program of the Golden Fleece?

Circle of Knowledge Writers. In 1899, in Moscow, a small group of young writers, as well as lovers of literature and art, began to gather on Wednesdays at the apartment of the writer Nikolai Dmitrievich Teleshov. Among them were the brothers Ivan and Julius Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Vikenty Veresaev, Leonid Andreev, the Wanderer, a little later Gorky joined them. The meetings were attended by artists, musicians, artists - V.I. Kachalov, F.I. Chaliapin, I.I. Levitan. At the meetings of the circle, unpublished works of its members were read and discussed. It was here that Gorky first read his play At the Bottom.

The circle did not have any clearly stated aesthetic program. However, it was obvious that all its participants were realist writers with democratic convictions, and - to one degree or another - sympathy for the revolutionary ideology, with an interest in social problems.

At first, the circle did not have its own publishing house, or at least its own printed organ. They were actively published in the magazine "Life", but it was soon banned. The Kurier newspaper, which published their stories widely, could still print only poems, short stories, or essays, but not novels or major plays. The situation changed radically only in 1900, when the St. Petersburg book publishing house “Knowledge”, which had previously published only popular books on natural science, pedagogy, and art, reorganized its activities and attracted Gorky to cooperate. Since that time, Znanie began to publish works of art by the participants of Sred, and since 1903, under the leadership of Gorky, collections of the Znanie partnership began to form.

The form of the collection - unlike the magazine - was convenient for its organizers, since the collections were freed from prior censorship, did not depend on subscribers, on the policy of a particular magazine, and assumed greater freedom for writers. The collections of the “Knowledge” partnership were published in huge circulations and were very popular with readers. It was these collections that became the printed platform for the participants in Sred. Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Kuprin's The Duel, Andreev's The Life of Vasily Thebesky, Gorky's plays and his novel Mother, Bunin's poems and stories were printed here. The more popular the collections became, the more the names of those who published them were associated with them - “Sredovites” began to be called “Znanie”.

Exercise

Name the writers, artists, actors who visited N. Teleshov's "environments". Did this circle have an aesthetic program?

In what newspapers and magazines did the participants of the “Wednesdays” appear?

What role did M. Gorky play in organizing the new publishing house?

Why did the Znanie publishing house choose for itself the form of collections, and not a magazine?

16. Junior Symbolists. general characteristics young symbolism. Understanding the symbol (articles by A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov).

In the early 1900s, a group of "junior" symbolists emerged - A. Bely, S. Solovyov, Vyach. Ivanov, "A. Blok and others.

It is based on the idealistic philosophy of Vl. Solovyov with his idea of ​​the Third Testament and the advent of the Eternal Feminine. Vl. Solovyov argued that the highest task of art is “... the creation of a universal spiritual organism”, which the artist. Prod. it is an image of an object and a phenomenon “in the light of the future world”, with which the understanding of the role of the poet as a theurgist, a clergyman is connected. This is the connection of the heights of symbolism as art with mysticism.”

there are “other worlds”, art should strive to express them, determines the artistic practice of symbolism as a whole, the three principles of which are proclaimed in the work of D. Merezhkovsky “On the causes of the decline and new trends in modern Russian literature” . It is “...mystical content, symbols and expansion of artistic impressionability”.

Symbolists claim that reality, reality is the creation of an artist: The vocation of a poet is to connect the real world with the world beyond.

The poetic declaration is expressed in the verse of Vyach. Ivanov "Among the Deaf Mountains".

Symbolist poetry is poetry for the elite, for the aristocrats of the spirit.

A symbol is an echo, a hint, an indication; it conveys a hidden meaning.

Symbolists strive to create a complex, associative metaphor, abstract and irrational. This is “sonorous-sounding silence” by V. Bryusov, “And bright eyes are dark rebelliousness” by Vyach. Ivanov, “dry deserts of shame” by A. Bely and by him: “Day - dull pearls - a tear - flows from sunrise to sunset”. Quite accurately, this technique is revealed in the poem 3. Gippius "Seamstress".

The sound expressiveness of the verse, for example, in the work of F. Sologub, acquired a very great importance in the poetry of the Symbolists.

The revolution of 1905 found its reflection in the work of the Symbolists.

Merezhkovsky greeted the year 1905 with horror, having witnessed with his own eyes the coming of the “coming boor” predicted by him. Blok approached the events excitedly, with a keen desire to understand. V. Bryusov welcomed the cleansing thunderstorm.

By the tenth years of the twentieth century, symbolism needed to be updated. “In the depths of symbolism itself,” wrote V. Bryusov in the article “The Meaning of Modern Poetry”, “new trends arose that tried to infuse new forces into a decrepit organism. But these attempts were too partial, their initiators too imbued with the same traditions of the school, for the renovation to be of any significance.

The controversy surrounding symbolism that took place in 1910 among the artistic intelligentsia revealed its crisis. As N. S. Gumilyov put it in one of his articles, “symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling.” It was replaced by acmeism ~ (from the Greek "acme" - highest degree something, blooming time).

V. Ivanov - "The Testaments of Symbolism" 1910. poetry is the source of intuitive knowledge, symbols are the means of this knowledge. Tyutchev is the founder of true symbolism.

A. Blok - “On the current state of Russian symbolism.” You can only be born a symbolist. The symbol is born when the souls of several people realize that each person has an inner world, a treasure. The artist must be reverent, knowing what he is worth mixing art with life. The artist must stay common man.

Vyach. Ivanov - the task of the symbolists is to move away from the “individual”, intimate in art, to create a folk, synthetic art that will retreat from illusions and mark objective realities. The poet should not strive for solitude, he must become the "voice of the people." Ivanov rejects the "Parnassian" principle of art for art's sake and moves on to religious, realistic (as opposed to idealistic) symbolism. In lyrics, metaphor as the main poetic device should be replaced by religious myth, which is the highest reality of the human spirit; according to Ivanov, the real task of the symbolist poet is to provide this replacement.

for him, symbolism and realism as methods coincide. the point of such a coincidence is the basis of all creativity, according to Bely. Symbol, symbolism, symbolization is one of the greatest achievements of the human genius.

It is symbolization that enables the artist to penetrate into the essence of phenomena, to reveal their true essence. The world is not amenable to logical interpretation; intuitive insight into the essence of the world is important. Therefore, Bely's heroes are not only literary characters, but also "conventional signs" of psychological generalizations.



The legacy of the Symbolists is represented by poetry, prose, and drama. However, the most characteristic is poetry.

D. Merezhkovsky, F. Sologub, Z. Gippius, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont and others are a group of “senior” symbolists who were the initiators of the movement. In the early 900s, a group of "junior" symbolists emerged - A. Bely, S. Solovyov, Vyach. Ivanov, "A. Blok and others.

The basis of the platform of the “younger” symbolists is the idealistic philosophy of Vl. Solovyov with his idea of ​​the Third Testament and the advent of the Eternal Feminine. Vl. Solovyov argued that the highest task of art is “... the creation of a universal spiritual organism”, that piece of art it is an image of an object and phenomenon “in the light of the future world”, which is connected with the understanding of the role of the poet as a theurgist, a clergyman. This, according to A. Bely, "combines the heights of symbolism as an art with mysticism" .

Based on the idealistic premise of the primacy of consciousness, the symbolists argue that reality, reality is the creation of an artist: My dream is all spaces, And all strings, The whole world is one of my decorations, My traces (F. Sologub) “Having broken the fetters of thought, to be shackled is a dream,” calls K. Balmont. The vocation of the poet is to connect the real world with the world beyond.

And from behind the mountains there was an answering voice: “Nature is a symbol, like this horn. She Sounds for an echo. And the echo is God.

Blessed is he who hears the song and hears the echo.”

A symbol is an echo, a hint, an indication; it conveys a hidden meaning.

Symbolists strive to create a complex, associative metaphor, abstract and irrational.

By the tenth years of the twentieth century, symbolism needed to be updated. “In the depths of symbolism itself,” V. Bryusov wrote in the article “The Meaning of Modern Poetry,” new currents arose that tried to infuse new forces into a decrepit organism. But these attempts were too partial, their initiators were too imbued with the same traditions of the school, so that the renewal could be of any significance.

The last pre-October decade was marked by searches in modernist art. The controversy surrounding symbolism that took place in 1910 among the artistic intelligentsia revealed its crisis. As N. S. Gumilyov put it in one of his articles, “symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling.” It was replaced by akmeizl ~ (from the Greek “acme” - the highest degree of something, the flowering time). N. S. Gumilyov (1886 - 1921) and S. M. Gorodetsky (1884 - 1967) are considered the founders of acmeism. The new poetic group included A. A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam, M. A. Zenkevich, M. A. Kuzmin and others.

About the poetic flow:

Symbolism is the first and most significant of the modernist movements in Russia. By the time of formation and by the peculiarities of the worldview position in Russian symbolism, it is customary to distinguish two main stages. The poets who debuted in the 1890s are called “senior symbolists” (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, and others). In the 1900s, new forces poured into symbolism, significantly updating the appearance of the current (A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov, and others). The accepted designation for the "second wave" of symbolism is "young symbolism". The "senior" and "junior" symbolists were separated not so much by age as by the difference in worldviews and the direction of creativity.

The philosophy and aesthetics of symbolism was formed under the influence of various teachings - from the views of the ancient philosopher Plato to the modern symbolist philosophical systems of V. Solovyov, F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson. The traditional idea of ​​knowing the world in art was opposed by the Symbolists to the idea of ​​constructing the world in the process of creativity. Creativity in the understanding of the Symbolists is a subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings, accessible only to the artist-creator. Moreover, it is impossible to rationally convey the contemplated "secrets". According to the largest theorist among the Symbolists, Vyach. Ivanov, poetry is "the cryptography of the inexpressible". The artist needs not only super-rational sensitivity, but the finest mastery of the art of allusion: the value of poetic speech lies in “understatement”, “concealment of meaning”. The main means to convey contemplated secret meanings was the symbol.

The category of music is the second most important (after the symbol) in the aesthetics and poetic practice of the new movement. This concept was used by symbolists in two different aspects - worldview and technical. In the first, general philosophical sense, music for them is not a rhythmically organized sound sequence, but a universal metaphysical energy, the fundamental principle of all creativity. In the second, technical meaning, music is significant for the Symbolists as the verbal texture of the verse, permeated with sound and rhythmic combinations, that is, as the maximum use of musical compositional principles in poetry. Symbolist poems are sometimes built as a bewitching stream of verbal-musical consonances and echoes.

Symbolism has enriched Russian poetic culture with many discoveries. Symbolists gave the poetic word previously unknown mobility and ambiguity, taught Russian poetry to discover additional shades and facets of meaning in the word. Their searches in the field of poetic phonetics turned out to be fruitful: K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, I. Annensky, A. Blok, A. Bely were masters of expressive assonance and spectacular alliteration. The rhythmic possibilities of Russian verse expanded, and the stanza became more diverse. However, the main merit of this literary trend is not associated with formal innovations.

Symbolism tried to create a new philosophy of culture, sought, after a painful period of reassessment of values, to develop a new universal worldview. Having overcome the extremes of individualism and subjectivism, at the dawn of the new century, the Symbolists raised the question of the social role of the artist in a new way, began to move towards the creation of such forms of art, the experience of which could unite people again. With external manifestations of elitism and formalism, symbolism managed in practice to fill the work with the art form with new content and, most importantly, to make art more personal, personalistic.

Russian symbolism as a modernist trend in Russian literature

Symbolism was the first trend of modernism that arose on Russian soil. The term "symbolism" in art was first coined by the French poet Jean Moréas.

The prerequisites for the emergence of symbolism are in the crisis that struck Europe in the second half of the 19th century. The reassessment of the values ​​of the recent past was expressed in a revolt against narrow materialism and naturalism, in a great freedom of religious and philosophical searches. Symbolism was one of the forms of overcoming positivism and a reaction to the "decline of faith." "Matter has disappeared", "God is dead" - two postulates inscribed on the tablets of symbolism. The system of Christian values ​​on which European civilization rested was shaken, but the new "God" - faith in reason, in science - turned out to be unreliable. The loss of landmarks gave rise to a feeling of the absence of supports, the soil that had gone from under their feet.

The symbolists opposed the idea of ​​constructing the world in the process of creativity to the traditional knowledge of the world. Creativity in the understanding of the symbolists is a subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings that are accessible only to the artist-creator. “Innuendo”, “concealment of meaning” - a symbol is the main means of conveying the contemplated secret meaning. The symbol is the central aesthetic category of the new trend.

“A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible in its meaning,” considered the theorist of symbolism Vyacheslav Ivanov.

“A symbol is a window to infinity,” Fyodor Sologub echoed him.

Symbolism in Russia absorbed two streams - "senior symbolists" (I. Annensky, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, F. Sologub (F. Teternikov) and "young symbolists" (A .Bely (B.Bugaev), A.Blok, Vyach.Ivanov, S.Soloviev.

In their works, the Symbolists tried to reflect the life of every soul - full of experiences, obscure, vague moods, subtle feelings fleeting impressions. Symbolist poets were innovators of poetic verse, filling it with new, vivid and expressive images, and sometimes, trying to achieve an original form, they went into a play of words and sounds considered senseless by their critics. Roughly speaking, we can say that symbolism distinguishes between two worlds: the world of things and the world of ideas. The symbol becomes a kind of conventional sign that connects these worlds in the sense it generates. Every symbol has two sides - the signified and the signifier. This second side is turned to the unreal world. Art is the key to the mystery.

Unlike other trends in art that use elements of their characteristic symbolism, symbolism considers the expression of "unattainable", sometimes mystical, Ideas, images of Eternity and Beauty, the goal and content of its art, and the symbol fixed in the element artistic speech and in its image based on the many-valued poetic word, - the main, and sometimes the only possible artistic means.

The past, the history of Russia, its manners and customs - these are the pure keys to quench the thirst for creativity. Reflections on the past, present and future of the country become the main motive in the activities of poets, writers, musicians and artists.

3. "Poems about a beautiful lady" - the first stage of the "Blok's Incarnation Trilogy. Biographical and philosophical foundations of the cycle

Initial period creative way A. Blok is marked by a passionate expectation of universal renewal. In "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (1897-1904), mystical dreams about the ideal, the idea-dream of grandiose events, the expectation of "firestorms" and upheavals sound. The poet's mature poems are increasingly permeated with a sense of the need to establish new relationships with reality. In a letter to S.M. Solovyov of March 8, 1904, A. Blok admits: “Something breaks in me, and a new one comes in a positive sense, and for me this is desirable, as when less often.”

In "Poems and the Beautiful Lady" the original property of Blok's perception of the world is outlined - the sincerity of experiences. The poet is not afraid of reproaches for the frankness of the poetic representation of the intimate world, arguing that only love is the source of knowledge of the world: "... Only a lover has the right to be called a man." Feeling, the poet convinces, abolishes egoism, brings the person closer to the absolute categories of Beauty and Goodness, reveals the divine essence of the universe and the value of human life.

In the cycle “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”, the poet revives the ideal of medieval chivalry, affirms the idea of ​​a feat in the name of feeling. The lyrical hero revises the traditions of medieval literature. The theme of feat receives a new sound in Blok's poetry: the courageous service to the ideal is replaced by motives of intuitively inspired penetration into the miracle of love, expectation and foreboding of a "secret union" with the sensual nature of the universe.

Blok did not immediately find the name of the cycle and, accordingly, the book of his poems. The theme was clear from the start - the Eternal Feminine; she saw the key to life and all its laws. She came from Goethe and Vladimir Solovyov.

Initially, Blok also wanted to name a collection of the most intimate poems - "On the Eternally Feminine."

This is how the name of the collection was born, which immediately brought the young poet to the forefront of Russian literature. Vladimir Solovyov's Eternal Femininity also appeared in different guises. Her main hypostasis, of course, is Sophia the Wisdom of God - the embodiment of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Developing Dostoevsky's idea "Beauty will save the world", Solovyov argued: "... In the end, Eternal beauty will be fruitful, and the salvation of the world will come out of it." In poetry, on this basis, a whole system of imperishable images was developed - the Virgin of the Rainbow Gates, the Eternal Friend, the Radiant Friend, etc., which became the supporting categories of Russian symbolism. Blok continued to comprehend the concept of Eternal Femininity. In his poems, under the influence of the first love, Solovyov's Eternal Friend turned into the Beautiful Lady and the Maiden-Dawn-Kupina, under whose name Blok's future wife, the daughter of the great Mendeleev, Lyubov Dmitrievna, appears:

"Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is a poetic diary of the formation of Blok's sublime feeling. Oh, that was truly unearthly love! A true symbol of love! Knowing his future wife from childhood, he really became interested in her only at the age of 19, inviting him to play the role of Ophelia in an amateur performance in the summer at the dacha, where he himself played Hamlet (since then, the theme of Hamlet - Ophelia has become the leitmotif of his work). Four years of quivering love - all of it, as in the palm of your hand, in "Poems about the Beautiful Lady." And not only in poetry. Their letters of that time deserve to be on a par with the correspondence of Abelard and Heloise.

On August 17, 1903 they got married. For Blok's work, this event turned into an act of universal significance. He always cosmicized his beloved:

I believe in the Sun of the Covenant,

I see dawns in the distance.

Waiting for universal light

From the spring land "..."

of inscrutable light

The jets trembled.

I believe in the Sun of the Covenant.

I see your eyes.

The block cosmicizes any phenomena of nature and life. The starry night acquires special meaning - the cosmic symbol of cosmic Love. At the same time, the starry sky is personified: the beloved becomes a star, the eyes of the lover turn into stars:

But these verses will be written later and are dedicated to another woman. Blok's relationship with his wife, which at first developed so romantically, turned into a personal tragedy. Even before her marriage, Lyuba Mendeleeva became a universal symbol not only for her husband, but also for his friends, which led to sharp conflicts, even a duel with Andrei Bely (fortunately for Russian culture, it did not take place). However, the eternal contradiction between the dream and reality - Blok himself and his Beautiful Lady - soon made clear: she turned out to be far from the created poetic ideal, and besides, she was also an unfaithful wife.

His own, Blok's, was clearly and peculiarly manifested in the collection “Poems about the Beautiful Lady, the poet's love diary. Individualism, gloomy loneliness, which permeate a number of poems in the first collection, here acquires a mystical-elegiac coloring, conveying a special attitude of the poet, who lived by mystical premonitions and expectations. The illusory idea of ​​life is further affirmed in the "extremely important" year for Blok in 1900, when he became acquainted with the philosophy and poetry of Vl. Solovyov, who preached the idea of ​​the end of the universe, leading away from the world of reality, developing the theme of "the otherworldly world".

Blok was especially influenced by the idea of ​​the World Soul, or Eternal Femininity, borrowed in turn from German poets, representatives of the Jena school of romantics (Novalis, Tiek, etc.), who considered everything earthly through its relation to the heavenly, eternal, infinite. Blok most actively accepted the Yenese thesis that in individual love world love is manifested and love for the world itself is revealed through love for a woman.

In "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" we meet with images in which the idea of ​​the World Soul is embodied, concretized (in this case, this term is very relative) in such mystical-romantic images as the Eternally Young Lady, the Lady of the Universe, the Beautiful Lady, the Wife, etc. Blok, perhaps even more insistently than Solovyov, pursues the dualistic idea of ​​the earthly world, in which his young man finds himself, and the unearthly world, where she goes.

The real prototype of the heroine of "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" was L. D. Mendeleeva, but there is nothing real in the verses. There is not even an image, there is only an idea. The poeticization of the beloved is raised to the level of a reverent prayer of an earthly youth to an unearthly lady:

I enter dark temples

I perform a poor ritual.

I'm waiting there beautiful lady

In the flickering of red lamps ...

Oh I'm used to these robes

Majestic Eternal Wife!

Smiles, fairy tales and dreams run high on the cornices.

("I enter dark temples")

The fictional world in "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" is opposed to the events of reality, which the poet recreates in abstract or extremely generalized images. And yet, in understanding the connections with the world, Blok shows some shift. If earlier the view of the world and oneself was only gloomy, then in the second collection there is a dream of a different life, a vague hope for a connection with the world, albeit through an unearthly image of the Virgin - Beauty:

You will pass here, you will touch a cold stone,

Dressed in the strange holiness of the ages,

And maybe you will drop the flower of spring ...

... I am illumined - I am waiting for your steps.

("Unfaithful daytime shadows run")

4. Cycles "City" and "Snow Mask" as characteristic works of the second stage of Blok's evolution

Path lyrical hero Blok can be conditionally defined as a movement from the ideal of first love into the world of material passions to the experience of the synthesis of matter and spirit. These milestones correspond to the three books in which the poet himself grouped his poems. In the second book, which reflects the period of antithesis in Blok's work in relation to the attitude of the times of the "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", he placed one of his most controversial works - the Snow Mask cycle. In it, the lyrical hero, having experienced the loss of ideal love, descends from the high heavens of the spiritual into the chaos of the material, trying to rethink the world around him.

According to the plan of Alexander Blok, his poetic work was to be ordered into a single book - the "humanization trilogy": "from a moment of too bright light - through the necessary swampy forest to despair, curses," retribution "and to the birth of a "public" person, an artist, courageously looking into the face of the world, having received the right to study forms, peer into the contours of “good” and “evil” - at the cost of losing a part of the soul ”(A.B.). This is how the poet himself explained the concept of “humanization”, for many decades giving ground to Soviet literary criticism to interpret his creative and life path as an evolution from a mystic to a citizen.

At first glance, the "Snow Mask" is a poetic monument to one of Blok's loves, one of the incarnations of the Eternal Feminine - a constant image in his work. But this is only the external, worldly side of the cycle. The complexity and ambiguity of this cycle determines its "middle" position in Blok's literary heritage, to which he himself gave an indication. It is noteworthy how many different ratings the "Snow Mask" received - from the assertion that this is the weakest thing in Blok's work, and if he were the author of only this book, then there could be no question of that exceptional place in Russian poetry, which is inherent in it (Vl. Piast), - until the definition of the "Snow Mask" as a masterpiece of masterpieces. “The perfection of the verse is bewitching, the form of each poem individually and of the whole cycle as a whole is incomparable, the rhythm is unique in its expressiveness, the emotional intensity reaches the limit. Here ... Blok is the greatest poet since the time of Lermontov ”(D. Andreev). Perhaps such a scatter of opinions will be repeated only once - about the poem "The Twelve". In fact, these two works are very connected with each other, “The Snow Mask” is the roots of “The Twelve”, it is in this cycle that Alexander Alexandrovich for the first time exchanges the harmony of sound, verse and worldview for assonances unknown to him, but perceptible by his sensitive poetic ear, metamorphosis of life. In 1907, he began "descending the ladder of substitutions" (which does not quite correlate with his skill as a poet, because Blok did not write himself after "Poems about the Beautiful Lady"), and the "Snow Mask" cycle is "a document of the moral fall of the poet" . In 1907, he had an affair with a real woman, but for more high level- it was an affair with those whirling forces that would eventually deprive him of air and force him to "listen with all his heart to the music of the revolution."

Having analyzed the symbolism of the Snow Mask, it is obvious that her superreal heroine is an openly infernal being. The white element of winter, captivating the lyrical hero, clearly echoes the apocalyptic Whiteness of the Bride from the 1st volume. As you know, initially white was the color of mourning and sorrow. The bride-girl was considered dead for her kind, so the Slavs dressed the brides in a white outfit. In addition, her face was covered (like that of a dead woman) with a thick scarf (now a veil). Thus, the girl dies in her family, and the groom transfers the “dead” to his family, where she is reborn again. In turn, in the funeral rite for the unmarried / unmarried, there were fragments of the wedding reality. This relationship is explained by the fact that both the wedding and the funeral were key milestones in human existence, symbolizing the transition from one state to another.

In addition, the motives for death are obvious in the last poem of the Doomed cycle: literally - in the lines "And with cold spectators / Betrayed to the White Death" and metaphorically - at the beginning of the verse: "Here I was taken out of life / by snowy silver paths." If we recall that in the "Snow Mask" sledges are repeatedly mentioned, then it can be argued that these paths are a trace from the sleigh.

"City" coverage of the phenomena of reality expands immeasurably. The poet plunges into the disturbing, highly conflicted world of everyday life, feeling himself involved in everything that happens. These are the events of the revolution, which he perceived, like other symbolists, as a manifestation of the destructive elements of the people, as the struggle of people of a new formation with the hated kingdom of social lawlessness, violence and vulgarity. To one degree or another, this position is reflected in the poems “We went to the attack. Right in the chest”, “Rising from the darkness of the cellars”, “Rally”, “Fed” and others. It is characteristic, however, that the lyrical hero, with all his solidarity with those who defend the oppressed, does not consider himself worthy to be in their ranks

Plunging into the elements of everyday life, Blok also creates a number of poems, which the researchers of his work call the “attic cycle”: “Cold day”, “In October”, “Night. The city calmed down”, “I am within four walls - killed // by Earthly care and need”, “Windows to the courtyard”, “I walk, I wander downcast”, “In the attic”, etc. The lyrical hero of the cycle is a representative of the urban lower classes, one of many “humiliated and insulted”, inhabitant of city cellars and attics. The very names and beginnings of the poems, and to an even greater extent the details of the situation surrounding the hero (“stinking doors”, “low ceiling”, “spitting corner”, “tin roofs”, “yard well”, etc.), seem unexpected in the lips of the singer Beautiful Lady. But here's what is even more surprising: the hero of the "attic cycle", for all his outward dissimilarity to the author, is perceived by us precisely as the spokesman for the author's "I". And this is not an actor's device of the poet playing the appropriate role. Here, an essential feature of Blok's lyricism was manifested, which he not only recognized, but also actively defended: a host of other demanding and ungrateful selves. And again: “A writer who believes in his vocation, no matter how big this writer may be, compares himself with his homeland, believing that he is ill with her illnesses, and crucifies with her.” Thus, the self-disclosure of the Blok's lyrical hero in a number of cases occurs through "dissolving himself" into other people's "I", through his "co-crucification" with these other people's "I", due to which he finds himself.

In the city, the lyrical hero of Alexander Blok finds the ghostly ideal of the Stranger - an ideal that exists only in the soul of the poet:

There is a treasure in my soul

And the key is entrusted only to me!

The stranger and the "drunkards with the eyes of rabbits" are the two realities that are combined in the soul of the lyrical hero.

With surprising constancy, the motif of death appears in the verses of this cycle. Life is compared to a wax doll, the hero lives in a constant premonition of the cessation of life, the coming of the power of chaos. The poet feels “the approaching rumble of a distant uprising”, expects a breakthrough of the elements.

The "Snow Mask" cycle is divided into two equally important sub-cycles: "Snows" and "Masks". Snow is the personification of a whirlwind, elements, unlimitedness, chaos. The mask appears because in the world whirlpool a person gradually loses his face

5. The image of the Demon in the verses of the "antithesis" period

The hero of Blok's "Scary World" cycle appears before us in different guises, but the important thing is that he is merged with the "terrible world", became a part of it, having fallen under the influence of earthly vices and having lost everything human in himself. Now he himself becomes an evil, demonic creature, like his counterparts: a vampire who destroys his beloved, Don Juan, who seduces women, a "beggar fool", symbolizing spiritual emptiness, a "living" dead man, a demon. In the image of the Demon, the opposition of "earthly-heavenly", "good-evil" of the first cycles of poems is transformed in Blok's work. In Blok's understanding of this image, there are features of Hoffmann, and this is primarily the problem of generic sin. It was most fully embodied by Hoffmann in the novel Elixirs of the Devil.

A demon, a creature of "unknown breed, but male, who seduces women and

destroying them with his love,” according to Etkind, entered Blok’s mind as early as childhood, since this is how the future poet perceived his father. With this paternal, demonic beginning in his soul, Blok tried to fight on a symbolic level. As a result, a special type of duality appeared in Blok's work - son-father, ancestor and descendant. This opposition is manifested in Blok's poem "Retribution". Blok's image of a demon gradually becomes more complex, he loses his demonism, "humanizes", becomes earthly. The article “In Memory of Vrubel” contains a hint at comparing the Demon with Christ: “It was he [Vrubel] who once painted a head of unheard-of beauty; maybe the one that failed in Leonardo's Last Supper." These words, apparently, reflect the legend of Leonardo da Vinci, who allegedly depicted on the fresco not Christ, but the Antichrist. Probably, Hoffmann was familiar with this legend, because. Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter of the Italian Renaissance (1452-1519), he introduces as a character in his novel Elixirs of the Devil.

The theme of the terrible world sounds in the third volume of A. Blok's poems, in the cycle of the same name (1910-1916). But this theme is a cross-cutting one in the lyrics of the symbolist poet. It is present in both the first and second volumes. Often these motives are interpreted as a denunciation of bourgeois society, but this is not entirely true. This is only the outer, visible side of the "terrible world." Its deep essence is much more important for the poet. A person living in a terrible world experiences its pernicious influence.

The theme of the poems changes radically compared to the initial stage of the poet's work. The block here touches upon the problem of the city, its lack of spirituality, the theme of social contradictions. Elements, destructive passions take possession of a person. In the poems devoted to the theme of the "terrible world", one can feel the experience of Blok's personal fate. The tragic tone of the works gradually deepened. The hero seemed to absorb tragic dissonances, ugly changes in the world around him into his soul. The internal clash of purity and beauty, followed by the "desecration" of all precepts, is brought here to the limit. Therefore, the cycle opens with the fiery lines “To the Muse”, combining the incompatible: miracle and hell, “curse of beauty” and “terrible caresses”.

The poet proceeded in his works from a feeling of dissatisfaction: "The soul wants to love one beautiful thing, but poor people are so imperfect and there is so little beauty in them." Sometimes the poems of this cycle are perceived as separate, independent chapters in a holistic work: “Dances of Death”, “The Life of My Friend”, “Black Blood”. The sequence of their placement is logical: in the first - a picture of the meaningless existence of a "terrible world", in the second - the fate of one person, in the third - the internal state of a devastated person. This poem by Blok makes a strong impression. It contains a frantic monologue of a man wounded by carnal, base passion - "black blood". This is the story of two heroes. Each of the poems conveys abrupt changes in the development of their relationship. Before us are nine scenes - nine flashes in the confrontation with the dark instinct. The end of the poem is tragic, bloody - the murder of a beloved. Blok embodied here not a clash of purity with vice, but a gradual poisoning with "black blood".

In the "terrible world" all human manifestations go out. And the poet's whole heart longs for the rebirth of the individual. The soul of the lyrical hero tragically experiences the state of his own sinfulness, unbelief, emptiness, mortal fatigue. In this world there are no naturalness, healthy human feelings. There is no love in this world. There is only a "bitter passion, like wormwood", "low passion" ("Humiliation", "On the Islands", "In a Restaurant", "Black Blood").

The lyrical hero of the "Scary World" cycle wastes the treasures of his soul: he is either a Lermontov demon, bringing death to himself and others ("Demon"), then he is an "aging young man" ("Double"). The technique of "doubling" formed the basis of the tragic-satirical cycle "The Life of My Friend" (1913-1915). This is the story of a man who "in the quiet madness" of dull, joyless everyday life squandered the riches of his soul. The tragic worldview of most of the works of this cycle finds extreme expression in those where the laws of the "terrible world" acquire cosmic proportions. The motives of hopelessness, the fatal cycle of life are heard in the poems “The worlds are flying. Years fly, Empty”, “Night, street, lamp, pharmacy…”).

One of Blok's leading motives is the deadening of the world of urban civilization. A laconic expressive image of this civilization appears in the poem "Factory", even the color ("Zholty") here symbolizes the monotony and madness of the world. The idea of ​​the fatal cycle of life, of its hopelessness, is surprisingly simple and strongly expressed in the famous octet "Night, street, lamp, pharmacy" (1912). This is facilitated by his ring composition, accurate, capacious epithets (“meaningless and dim light”), unusual bold hyperbole (“If you die, you start again from the beginning”).

The lyrical hero realizes the search for personal happiness as sinful. After all, happiness in the "terrible world" is fraught with spiritual callousness, moral deafness. One of the most revealing poems in this regard is "The Stranger" (1904-1908). The genre of this work is a story in verse. The plot is a meeting in a country restaurant. At the same time, all visible images of the material world in Blok acquire symbolic overtones. The story of a restaurant meeting turns into a story about a man oppressed by the vulgarity of the world around him, his desire to free himself from it. The poet vividly describes the social background of the restaurant: "female squealing", "drunkards with rabbit eyes". There are few details, but they are expressive. They serve as a means of revealing the soul of a lyrical hero. The details of everyday life are conjugated with the landscape (“spring decaying spirit”). This is a kind of symbol of the dark beginning, which clouds the consciousness of man. All this gives rise to a feeling of discord, disharmony of being. With the advent of the Stranger, a person forgets about the terrible world, and the “enchanted coast” opens up to him. However, the scary world does not disappear. The duality of consciousness, the two worlds in which the hero finds himself, make the poem tragic.

The theme of the terrible world is continued by the cycles "Retribution" and "Yamba". Many poems of "Retribution" reflect specific events and emotional upheavals of the poet ("About valor, about exploits, about glory", "On the death of a baby").

Saying “no” to the dark present, A. Blok is convinced that the collapse of the old foundations of life is inevitable. He does not recognize the triumph of the "terrible world" over people and does not capitulate to it. It is no coincidence that the poet said: “The difficult must be overcome. And after him will be a clear day. Thus, the theme of the "terrible world" is an important stage in the creative path of A. Blok. This theme reflected the acute social contradictions of that time, the deep philosophical contradictions of the era.