Describe the main directions of poetry of the Silver Age. Silver age of Russian culture. Acmeism. Reached the top
literary trendsAndcurrents
XVII-Х1Х CENTURY
Classicism - a direction in the literature of the 17th - early 19th centuries, guided by the aesthetic standards of ancient art. The main idea is the assertion of the priority of reason. Aesthetics is based on the principle of rationalism: a work of art must be reasonably constructed, logically verified, must capture the enduring, essential properties of things. The works of classicism are characterized by high civic themes, strict observance of certain creative norms and rules, reflection of life in ideal images gravitating towards a universal model. (G. Derzhavin, I. Krylov, M. Lomonosov, V. Trediakovsky,D. Fonvizin).
Sentimentalism - the literary movement of the second half of the 18th century, which approved feeling, and not reason, as the dominant of the human personality. The hero of sentimentalism is a “feeling person”, his emotional world is diverse and mobile, and the wealth of the inner world is recognized for every person, regardless of his class affiliation. (I. M. Karamzin."Letters from a Russian Traveler", "Poor Liza" ) .
Romanticism - literary movement that emerged at the beginning of the 19th century. The fundamental principle for romanticism was the principle of romantic duality, which implies a sharp opposition of the hero, his ideal, to the world around him. The incompatibility of the ideal and reality was expressed in the departure of romantics from modern topics to the world of history, traditions and legends, dreams, dreams, fantasies, exotic countries. Romanticism has a particular interest in the individual. The romantic hero is characterized by proud loneliness, disappointment, a tragic attitude and at the same time rebelliousness and rebellious spirit. (A. S. Pushkin."KavKazakh prisoner, « Gypsies»; M. Yu. Lermontov.« Mtsyri»; M. Gorky.« Song about the Falcon”, “Old Woman Izergil”).
Realism - a literary trend that established itself in Russian literature at the beginning of the 19th century and passed through the entire 20th century. Realism affirms the priority of the cognitive possibilities of literature, its ability to explore reality. The most important subject of artistic research is the relationship between character and circumstances, the formation of characters under the influence of the environment. Human behavior, according to realist writers, depends on external circumstances, which, however, does not negate his ability to oppose them with his will. This determined the central conflict - the conflict of personality and circumstances. Realist writers depict reality in development, in dynamics, presenting stable, typical phenomena in their uniquely individual incarnation. (A. S. Pushkin."Eugene Onegin"; novels I. S. Turgeneva, L. N. Tolstogo, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. M. Gorky,stories I. A. Bunina,A. I. Kuprin; N. A. Nekrasovand etc.).
Critical Realism - the literary direction, which is a child of the previous one, existed from the beginning of the 19th century to its end. It bears the main signs of realism, but differs in a deeper, critical, sometimes sarcastic author's look ( N. V. Gogol"Dead Souls"; Saltykov-Shchedrin)
XXCENTURY
Modernism - a literary trend in the first half of the 20th century that opposed realism and united many movements and schools with a very diverse aesthetic orientation. Instead of a rigid connection between characters and circumstances, modernism affirms the self-worth and self-sufficiency of the human personality, its irreducibility to a tiresome series of causes and effects.
avant-garde - a trend in literature and art of the 20th century, uniting various trends, united in their aesthetic radicalism (surrealism, drama of the absurd, "new novel", in Russian literature -futurism). Genetically connected with modernism, but absolutizes and takes its desire for artistic renewal to the extreme.
Decadence (decadence) - a certain state of mind, a crisis type of consciousness, expressed in a feeling of despair, impotence, mental fatigue with the obligatory elements of narcissism and aestheticization of self-destruction of the individual. Decadent-in-the-mood works aestheticize fading away, a break with traditional morality, and the will to die. The decadent attitude was reflected in the works of writers of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. F. Sologuba, 3. Gippius, L. Andreeva, and etc.
Symbolism - pan-European, and in Russian literature - the first and most significant modernist trend. The roots of symbolism are connected with romanticism, with the idea of two worlds. 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. The meaning of creativity is the subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings, accessible only to the artist-creator. The main means of transmitting rationally unknowable secret meanings is the symbol (signs) ("senior symbolists": V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, 3. Gippius, F. Sologub;"young symbolists": A. Block,A. Bely, V. Ivanov, dramas by L. Andreev).
Acmeism - a current of Russian modernism that arose as a reaction to the extremes of symbolism with its persistent tendency to perceive reality as a distorted likeness of higher entities. The main significance in the work of acmeists is the artistic development of the diverse and vibrant earthly world, the transfer of the inner world of man, the assertion of culture as the highest value. Acmeistic poetry is characterized by stylistic balance, pictorial clarity of images, precisely adjusted composition, and sharpness of details. (N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetscue, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut).
Futurism - an avant-garde movement that arose almost simultaneously in Italy and Russia. The main feature is the preaching of the overthrow of past traditions, the crushing of the old aesthetics, the desire to create a new art, the art of the future, capable of transforming the world. The main technical principle is the principle of "shift", manifested in the lexical renewal of the poetic language by introducing vulgarisms, technical terms, neologisms into it, in violation of the laws of lexical word compatibility, in bold experiments in the field of syntax and word formation (V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, I. Severyanin and etc.).
Expressionism - modernist trend that was formed in 1910 - 1920s in Germany. The expressionists sought not so much to depict the world as to express their idea of the troubles of the world and the suppression of the human personality. The style of expressionism is determined by the rationalism of constructions, the tendency to abstraction, the sharp emotionality of the statements of the author and characters, the abundant use of fantasy and the grotesque. In Russian literature, the influence of expressionism manifested itself in the work of L. Andreeva, E. Zamyatina, A. Platone and etc.
Postmodernism - a complex set of worldview attitudes and cultural reactions in the era of ideological and aesthetic pluralism (the end of the 20th century). Postmodern thinking is fundamentally anti-hierarchical, opposes the idea of worldview integrity, rejects the possibility of mastering reality with the help of a single method or language of description. Writers - postmodernists consider literature, first of all, a fact of language, and therefore do not hide, but emphasize the "literary" nature of their works, combine the style of different genres and different literary eras in one text (A. Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, D. A. Prigov, V. PeLevin, Wen. Erofeev and etc.).
The purpose of this lesson is to understand how different branches of modernism differed from each other.
The main content of the current of symbolism is an attempt to find new expressions of language, the creation of a new philosophy in literature. Symbolists considered to remind that the world is not simple and understandable, but filled with meaning, the depth of which is impossible to find.
Acmeism arose as a way to drag poetry from the heavens of symbolism to earth. The teacher invites students to compare the work of the symbolists and acmeists.
The main theme of the next direction of modernism - futurism - is the desire to see the future in modernity, to mark the gap between them.
All these areas of modernism introduced radical updates to the language, marked the collapse of eras, and emphasized that the old literature could not express the spirit of modernity.
Topic: Russian literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries.
Lesson: The main currents of Russian modernism: symbolism, acmeism, futurism
Modernism is a single artistic stream. The branches of modernism: symbolism, acmeism and futurism - had their own characteristics.
Symbolism as a literary movement originated in France in the 80s. 19th century The basis of the artistic method of French symbolism is sharply subjective sensationalism (sensuality). The Symbolists reproduced reality as a stream of sensations. Poetry avoids generalizations, looking not for the typical, but for the individual, the only one of its kind.
Poetry takes on the character of improvisation, fixing "pure impressions". The object loses its clear outline, dissolves in a stream of disparate sensations, qualities; the dominant role is played by the epithet, a colorful spot. Emotion becomes objectless and "inexpressible". Poetry strives to enhance sensual richness and emotional impact. A self-sustaining form is cultivated. Representatives of French symbolism are P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, J. Laforgue.
The dominant genre of symbolism was "pure" lyrics, the novel, short story, drama become lyrical.
In Russia, symbolism arose in the 90s. 19th century and at its initial stage (K. D. Balmont, early V. Ya. Bryusov and A. Dobrolyubov, and later - B. Zaitsev, I. F. Annensky, Remizov) develops a style of decadent impressionism, similar to French symbolism.
Russian Symbolists of the 1900s (V. Ivanov, A. Bely, A. A. Blok, as well as D. S. Merezhkovsky, S. Solovyov and others), trying to overcome pessimism, passivity, proclaimed the slogan of effective art, the predominance of creativity over knowledge.
The material world is drawn by the symbolists as a mask through which the otherworldly shines through. Dualism finds expression in the two-dimensional composition of novels, dramas and "symphonies". The world of real phenomena, everyday life or conditional fantasy is depicted grotesquely, discredited in the light of "transcendental irony". Situations, images, their movement acquire a double meaning: in terms of what is depicted and in terms of what is marked.
A symbol is a bundle of meanings that diverge in different directions. The task of the symbol_ is to present correspondences.
The poem (Baudelaire, "Correspondences" translated by K. Balmont) shows an example of traditional semantic connections that give rise to symbols.
Nature is a strict temple, where the system of living columns
Sometimes a slightly intelligible sound stealthily drops;
He wanders through the forests of symbols, drowns in their thickets
An embarrassed person, touched by their gaze.
Like an echo of echoes in one unclear chord,
Where everything is one, light and darkness at night,
Fragrances and sounds and colors
It combines in harmony with a consonant.
There is a virgin smell; like a meadow, it is pure and holy,
Like a child's body, the high sound of an oboe;
And there is a solemn, depraved aroma -
Fusion of incense and amber and benzoic:
In it, the infinite is suddenly available to us,
It contains the highest thoughts of delight and the best feelings of ecstasy!
Symbolism also creates its own words - symbols. First, high poetic words are used for such symbols, then simple ones. Symbolists believed that it was impossible to exhaust the meaning of a symbol.
Symbolism avoids the logical disclosure of the topic, referring to the symbolism of sensual forms, the elements of which receive a special semantic richness. Logically inexpressible "secret" meanings "shine" through the material world of art. Putting forward sensory elements, symbolism departs at the same time from the impressionistic contemplation of disparate and self-contained sensory impressions, into the motley stream of which symbolization introduces a certain integrity, unity and continuity.
The task of the symbolists is to show that the world is full of secrets that cannot be discovered.
The lyrics of symbolism are often dramatized or acquire epic features, revealing the structure of "generally significant" symbols, rethinking the images of ancient and Christian mythology. The genre of a religious poem, a symbolically interpreted legend, was created (S. Solovyov, D. S. Merezhkovsky). The poem loses its intimacy, becomes like a sermon, a prophecy (V. Ivanov, A. Bely).
German symbolism of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. (S. Gheorghe and his Group, R. Demel and other poets) was the ideological mouthpiece of the reactionary bloc of the Junkers and the big industrial bourgeoisie. In German symbolism, aggressive and tonic aspirations, attempts to combat their own decadence, a desire to dissociate themselves from decadence and impressionism stand out in relief. The consciousness of decadence, the end of culture, German symbolism tries to resolve in a tragic life-affirmation, in a kind of "heroics" of decline. In the struggle against materialism, resorting to symbolism, myth, German symbolism does not come to a sharply pronounced metaphysical dualism, it retains Nietzsche's "loyalty to the earth" (Nietzsche, George, Demel).
New modernist movement acmeism, appeared in Russian poetry in the 1910s. as opposed to extreme symbolism. Translated from Greek, the word "akme" means the highest degree of something, flourishing, maturity. Acmeists advocated returning images and words to their original meaning, for art for the sake of art, for the poeticization of human feelings. The rejection of mysticism - this was the main feature of the acmeists.
For symbolists, the main thing is rhythm and music, the sound of a word, then for acmeists it is form and eternity, objectivity.
In 1912, the poets S. Gorodetsky, N. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam, V. Narbut, A. Akhmatova, M. Zenkevich and some others united in the "Poets' Workshop" circle.
The founders of acmeism were N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky. Acmeists called their work the highest point of achieving artistic truth. They did not deny symbolism, but were against the fact that the symbolists paid so much attention to the world of the mysterious and unknown. Acmeists pointed out that the unknowable, in the very meaning of the word, cannot be known. Hence the desire of the Acmeists to free literature from those obscurities that were cultivated by the Symbolists, and to restore its clarity and accessibility. Acmeists tried with all their might to bring literature back to life, to things, to man, to nature. So, Gumilyov turned to the description of exotic animals and nature, Zenkevich - to the prehistoric life of the earth and man, Narbut - to everyday life, Anna Akhmatova - to in-depth love experiences.
The desire for nature, for the "earth" led the acmeists to a naturalistic style, to concrete imagery, objective realism, which determined a number of artistic techniques. In the poetry of acmeists, “heavy, weighty words” prevail, the number of nouns significantly exceeds the number of verbs.
Having made this reform, the Acmeists otherwise agreed with the Symbolists, declaring themselves to be their students. The other world for acmeists remains true; only they do not make it the center of their poetry, although the latter is sometimes not alien to mystical elements. Gumilyov's works "The Lost Tram" and "At the Gypsies" are completely permeated with mysticism, and in Akhmatova's collections, like "The Rosary", love-religious experiences predominate.
A. Akhmatova's poem "The Song of the Last Meeting":
So helplessly my chest went cold,
But my steps were light.
I put on my right hand
Left hand glove.
It seemed that many steps
And I knew there were only three of them!
Acmeists returned everyday scenes.
Acmeists were by no means revolutionaries in relation to symbolism, they never considered themselves as such; they set as their main task only smoothing out contradictions, introducing amendments.
In the part where the acmeists rebelled against the mysticism of symbolism, they did not oppose the latter to the real real life. Rejecting mysticism as the main leitmotif of creativity, acmeists began to fetishize things as such, not being able to synthetically approach reality, to understand its dynamics. For acmeists, the things of reality matter in themselves, in a static state. They admire individual objects of being, and perceive them as they are, without criticism, without trying to understand them in a relationship, but directly, in an animal way.
Basic principles of acmeism:
Rejection of symbolist appeals to the ideal, mystical nebula;
Acceptance of the earthly world as it is, in all its beauty and diversity;
Returning the word to its original meaning;
Image of a person with his true feelings;
Poeticization of the world;
Inclusion in poetry of associations with previous eras.
Rice. 6. Umberto Boccioni. The street goes into the house ()
Acmeism did not last very long, but made a great contribution to the development of poetry.
Futurism(in translation means the future) - one of the currents of modernism, which originated in the 1910s. It is most clearly represented in the literature of Italy and Russia. On February 20, 1909, an article by T. F. Marinetti "Manifesto of Futurism" appeared in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. Marinetti in his manifesto called for abandoning the spiritual and cultural values of the past and building a new art. The main task of the futurists is to mark the gap between the present and the future, to destroy everything old and build a new one. Provocations entered their lives. They opposed bourgeois society.
In Russia, Marinetti's article was already published on March 8, 1909 and marked the beginning of the development of their own futurism. The founders of the new trend in Russian literature were the brothers D. and N. Burliuk, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, A. Exter, N. Kulbin. In 1910, one of the first futuristic poems by V. Khlebnikov, The Spell of Laughter, appeared in the collection The Impressionist Studio. In the same year, a collection of futurist poets, The Garden of Judges, was published. It contained poems by D. Burliuk, N. Burliuk, E. Guro, V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky.
Futurists also invented new words.
Evening. Shadows.
Canopy. Leni.
We sat, drinking in the evening.
In each eye is a running deer.
Futurists are deforming their language and grammar. Words are piled on top of each other, hurrying to convey the momentary feelings of the author, so the work looks like a telegraphic text. Futurists abandoned syntax and strophics, invented new words that, in their opinion, better and more fully reflected reality.
The seemingly meaningless title of the collection was given by the futurists special meaning. The cage for them symbolized the cage into which the poets were driven, and they called themselves judges.
In 1910, the Cubo-Futurists formed a group. It consisted of the Burliuk brothers, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky, E. Guro, A. E. Kruchenykh. Cubo-futurists came out in defense of the word as such, "words are higher than meaning", "abstruse words". Cubo-futurists destroyed Russian grammar, replaced phrases with a combination of sounds. They believed that the more clutter in a sentence, the better.
In 1911, I. Severyanin was one of the first in Russia to proclaim himself an ego-futurist. To the term "futurism" he added the word "ego". Egofuturism can literally be translated as "I am the future." A circle of followers of ego-futurism rallied around I. Severyanin, in January 1912 they proclaimed themselves the "Academy of Ego Poetry." Egofuturists have enriched their vocabulary with a large number of foreign words and neoplasms.
In 1912, the Futurists united around the publishing house "Petersburg Herald". The group included: D. Kryuchkov, I. Severyanin, K. Olimpov, P. Shirokov, R. Ivnev, V. Gnedov, V. Shershenevich.
In Russia, the futurists called themselves "budetlyans", poets of the future. The futurists, captured by dynamism, were no longer satisfied with the syntax and lexicon of the previous era, when there were no cars, no telephones, no phonographs, no cinemas, no airplanes, no electric railways, no skyscrapers, no subways. A poet filled with a new sense of the world has a wireless imagination. The poet puts fleeting sensations into the heap of words.
Futurists were passionate about politics.
All these directions radically renew the language, the feeling that the old literature cannot express the spirit of modernity.
Bibliography
1. Chalmaev V.A., Zinin S.A. Russian literature of the twentieth century.: Textbook for grade 11: In 2 hours - 5th ed. - M .: OOO 2TID " Russian word– RS”, 2008.
2. Agenosov V.V. . Russian literature of the 20th century. Toolkit M. Bustard, 2002
3. Russian literature of the 20th century. Tutorial for applicants to universities M. uch.-scient. Center "Moscow Lyceum", 1995.
Spreadsheets and presentations
Literature in tables and diagrams ().
"Poets of Poetry of the Silver Age" - Poets of the Silver Age. Wedding of Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron. Marina Tsvetaeva. Poetry of the Silver Age. 1. I. Annensky 7. N. Gumilyov 2. K. Balmont 8. I. Severyanin 3. V. Bryusov 9. S. Klychkov 4. M. Voloshin 10. Creativity of M.I. Tsvetaeva. Anastasia and Marina Tsvetaeva. Passerby, stop!”. "I like…".
"Acmeism" - Article by N. Gumilyov "The legacy of symbolism and acmeism" Criticism of symbolism for mysticism Proclamation of "the intrinsic value of each phenomenon." S. Gorodetsky "Some currents in modern Russian poetry" Criticism of the "blurring" of symbolism, installation on the unknowability of the world. Romance, heroism, exoticism. Adamism Adam is a traveler, a conquistador, a man of strong will.
"Symbolism in literature" - The symbol increases, expands the meaning of each word. The poet in his poems refers to the "initiates". "Senior Symbolists" and "Young Symbolists". K. Balmont 1902. From the history of symbolism. Everything has changed in Russia: political beliefs, moral principles, culture, art. Context plays an important role in understanding symbols.
"Poets of the 20th century" - Konstantin Balmont. Read in the Reader, part 1, an excerpt from the treatise of the futurists "Slap in the Face of Public Taste". In what lines does the poet's longing for the otherworldly sound? I. Severyanin. F. Sologub. Why? A. Vertinsky. E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva. The main milestones of the Silver Age: How does the logical stress in the line change?
"Directions of the Silver Age" - The main directions of the poetry of the Silver Age. A. Mezhirov. They exclaimed: "Futurist!" And they banged their heads... He left a standard sheet With non-standard words. What thought? Mountain air is clean and fresh With real words. I. Levitan "Golden Autumn". Place and time of occurrence Goals and objectives Motto Character traits Representatives.
"Symbolism" - Bryusov has always been close to the social and civil theme. My beloved fatherland - My desert soul. Collection of poems "Alexandrian Songs" (1921), "Trout breaks the ice" (1929). Moscow wing headed by V. Bryusov. Vocal works (many on own texts), music for drama theatre.
There are 12 presentations in total in the topic
Silver Age in Russian Literature
The Russian poetic “silver age” traditionally fits into the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, its source is the 19th century, and it has all its roots in the “golden age”, in the work of A.S. Pushkin, in the legacy of Pushkin’s galaxy, in Tyutchev’s philosophy, into the impressionistic lyrics of Fet, into Nekrasov's proseisms, into the lines of K. Sluchevsky, full of tragic psychologism and vague forebodings. In other words, the 1990s began leafing through draft copies of books that soon formed the library of the 20th century. Since the 90s, literary sowing began, which brought shoots.
The term “Silver Age” itself is very conditional and covers a phenomenon with controversial outlines and uneven relief. For the first time this name was proposed by the philosopher N. Berdyaev, but it finally entered the literary circulation in the 60s of this century.
The poetry of this century was characterized primarily by mysticism and a crisis of faith, spirituality, and conscience. The lines became the sublimation of mental illness, mental disharmony, internal chaos and confusion.
All the poetry of the "Silver Age", greedily absorbing the heritage of the Bible, ancient mythology, the experience of European and world literature, is closely connected with Russian folklore, with its songs, lamentations, legends and ditties.
However, it is sometimes said that the “Silver Age” is a Westernizing phenomenon. Indeed, he chose as his guidelines the aestheticism of Oscar Wilde, the individualistic spiritualism of Alfred de Vigny, the pessimism of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's superman. The "Silver Age" found its ancestors and allies in various European countries and in different centuries: Villon, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Novalis, Shelley, Calderon, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, d'Annuzio, Gauthier, Baudelaire, Verharne.
In other words, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries there was a reassessment of values from the standpoint of Europeanism. But in the light of the new era, which was the exact opposite of the one that it replaced, the national, literary and folklore treasures appeared in a different, brighter than ever light.
It was a creative space full of sunshine, bright and life-giving, longing for beauty and self-affirmation. And although we call this time the "silver" and not the "golden age", perhaps it was the most creative era in Russian history.
“Silver Age” is perceived by most readers as a metaphor for good, beloved writers of the early 20th century. Depending on personal taste, there may be A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, D. Merezhkovsky and I. Bunin, N. Gumilyov and S. Yesenin, A. Akhmatova and A. Kruchenykh, F. Sologub and A. Kuprin.
“School literary criticism” for completeness of the picture is added by the named list of M. Gorky and a number of writers of the “Znanevites”
(artists grouped around the Gorky publishing house "Knowledge").
With this understanding, the Silver Age becomes synonymous with the long-existing and much more scientific concept of "literature of the late XIX - early XX century."
The poetry of the Silver Age can be divided into several main currents such as: Symbolism. (D. Merezhkovsky,
K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, A. Bely), Pre-acmeism. Acmeism.(M. Kuzmin, N. Gumilyov,
A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam),
“ Peasant literature ” (N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin)
silver age futurists(I. Severyanin, V. Khlebnikov)
SYMBOLISM
Russian symbolism as a literary trend developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The theoretical, philosophical and aesthetic roots and sources of creativity of writers-symbolists were very diverse. So V. Bryusov considered symbolism a purely artistic direction, Merezhkovsky relied on Christian teaching, Vyach. Ivanov was looking for theoretical support in the philosophy and aesthetics of the ancient world, refracted through the philosophy of Nietzsche; A. Bely was fond of Vl. Solovyov, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche.
The artistic and journalistic organ of the Symbolists was the journal Scales (1904 - 1909). “For us, representatives symbolism, as a coherent world outlook, - wrote Ellis, - there is nothing more alien than the subordination of the idea of life, the inner path of the individual - to the external improvement of the forms of community life. For us, there can be no question of reconciling the path of an individual heroic individual with the instinctive movements of the masses, always subordinated to narrowly selfish, material motives.
These attitudes determined the struggle of the symbolists against democratic literature and art, which was expressed in the systematic slander of Gorky, in an effort to prove that, having become in the ranks of proletarian writers, he ended as an artist, in an attempt to discredit revolutionary democratic criticism and aesthetics, its great creators. - Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky. The Symbolists tried in every possible way to make Pushkin, Gogol, called Vyach. Ivanov "a frightened spy of life", Lermontov, who, according to the same Vyach. Ivanov, the first one trembled with “a presentiment of the symbol of symbols – Eternal Femininity” c.
A sharp opposition between symbolism and realism is also connected with these attitudes. “While realist poets,” writes K. Balmont, “view the world naively, as mere observers, obeying its material basis, symbolist poets, recreating materiality with their complex impressionability, rule over the world and penetrate into its mysteries.” The Symbolists seek to oppose reason and intuition: "... Art is the comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways," asserts V. Bryusov and calls the works of the Symbolists "mystical keys of secrets" that help a person reach freedom."
The legacy of the Symbolists is represented by poetry, prose, and drama. However, the most characteristic is poetry.
Complex and hard way V. Ya. Bryusov (1873 - 1924) passed the ideological search. The revolution of 1905 aroused the admiration of the poet and contributed to the beginning of his departure from symbolism. However, Bryusov did not immediately come to a new understanding of art. Bryusov's attitude to the revolution is complex and contradictory. He welcomed the cleansing forces that rose to fight the old world, but believed that they only bring the element of destruction:
I see a new fight in the name of a new will!
Break - I'll be with you! build - no!
The poetry of V. Bryusov of this time is characterized by the desire for a scientific understanding of life, the awakening of interest in history. A. M. Gorky highly valued the encyclopedic education of V. Ya. Bryusov, calling him the most cultured writer in Rus'. Bryusov accepted and welcomed the October Revolution and actively participated in the construction of Soviet culture.
The ideological contradictions of the era (one way or another) influenced individual realist writers. IN creative destiny L. N. Andreev (1871 - 1919), they were reflected in a well-known departure from the realistic method. However, realism as a direction in artistic culture retained his position. Russian writers continued to be interested in life in all its manifestations, the fate of the common man, and the important problems of social life.
The traditions of critical realism continued to be preserved and developed in the work of the greatest Russian writer I. A. Bunin (1870 - 1953). The most significant of his works of that time are the stories "The Village" (1910) and "Dry Valley" (1911).
1912 was the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge in the social and political life of Russia.
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 “younger” 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 Eternal Femininity.Vl. Solovyov argued that the highest task of art is “... the creation of a universal spiritual organism”, that a work of art is an image of an object and phenomenon “in the light of the future world”, which explains 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."
The recognition that there are “other worlds”, that art should strive to express them, determines the artistic practice of symbolism as a whole, the three principles of which are proclaimed in D. Merezhkovsky’s work “On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature”. This is “... mystical content, symbols and expansion of artistic impressionability” .
Based on the idealistic premise of the primacy of consciousness, the symbolists argue that reality, reality is the creation of the artist:
My dream - and all spaces
And all the lines
The whole world is one of my decorations,
My footprints
(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.
The poetic declaration of symbolism is clearly expressed in the poem by Vyach. Ivanov "Among the Deaf Mountains":
And I thought: “Oh genius! Like this horn
You must sing the song of the earth, so that in the hearts
Wake up another song. Blessed is he who hears."
And from behind the mountains came the answering voice:
“Nature is a symbol, like this horn. She
Sounds like an echo. And the echo is God.
Blessed is he who hears the song and hears the echo.”
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 dawn” 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".
On all phenomena there is a seal.
One seems to merge with the other.
Having accepted one - I try to guess
Behind him is another What is hidden ".
Very great importance in the poetry of the Symbolists, it acquired the sound expressiveness of the verse, for example, from F. Sologub:
And two deep glasses
From thin-voiced glass
You substituted for the light cup
And sweet lila foam,
Lila, lila, lila, rocked
Two dark scarlet glasses.
Whiter, lily, alley gave
Bela was you and ala... "
The revolution of 1905 found a peculiar refraction 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,” V. Bryusov wrote 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 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.” He was replaced acmeizl~(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.
ACMEISM
Acmeists, in contrast to the symbolist nebula, proclaimed the cult of real earthly existence, "a courageously firm and clear outlook on life." But at the same time, they tried to affirm, first of all, the aesthetic-hedonistic function of art, evading social problems in their poetry. In the aesthetics of acmeism, decadent tendencies were clearly expressed, and philosophical idealism remained its theoretical basis. However, among the acmeists there were poets who in their work were able to go beyond this “platform” and acquire new ideological and artistic qualities (A. A. Akhmatova, S. M. Gorodetsky, M. A. Zenkevich).
In 1912, with the collection “Hyperborea”, a new literary movement declared itself, giving itself the name acmeism (from the Greek acme, which means the highest degree of something, the time of flowering). The “shop of poets”, as its representatives called themselves, included N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, S. Gorodetsky, G. Ivanov, M. Zenkevich and others. M. Kuzmin, M. Voloshin also joined this direction. , V. Khodasevich and others.
Acmeists considered themselves the heirs of " worthy father”- symbolism, which, in the words of N. Gumilyov, “... has completed its circle of development and is now falling”. Approving the bestial, primitive principle (they also called themselves Adamists), the Acmeists continued to “remember the unknowable” and in its name proclaimed any refusal to fight for changing life. “To rebel in the name of other conditions of being here, where there is death,” writes N. Gumilyov in his work “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism,” “is just as strange as a prisoner breaking a wall when there is an open door in front of him.”
S. Gorodetsky also affirms the same: “After all the “rejections”, the world is irrevocably accepted by acmeism, in the totality of beauties and ugliness.” Modern man felt like a beast, “deprived of both claws and wool” (M. Zenkevich “Wild Porphyry”), Adam, who “... looked around with the same clear, keen eye, accepted everything he saw, and sang hallelujah to life and the world ".
And at that same time, the acmeists constantly sound notes of doom and longing. The work of A. A. Akhmatova (A. A. Gorenko, 1889 - 1966) occupies a special place in the poetry of acmeism. Her first poetry collection “Evening” was published in 1912. Critics immediately noted the distinctive features of her poetry: restraint of intonations, emphasized intimacy of themes, psychologism. Akhmatova's early poetry is deeply lyrical and emotional. With her love for man, her faith in his spiritual powers and possibilities, she clearly departed from the acmeist idea of “original Adam”. The main part of the work of A. A. Akhmatova falls on the Soviet period.
The first collections by A. Akhmatova "Evening" (1912) and "Rosary" (1914) brought her great fame. A closed, narrow intimate world is displayed in her work, painted in tones of sadness and sadness:
I do not ask for wisdom or strength.
Oh, just let me warm myself by the fire!
I'm cold... Winged or wingless,
The merry god will not visit me."
The theme of love, the main and only one, is directly related to suffering (which is due to the facts of the biography of the petess):
Let it lie like a tombstone
On the life of my love."
Characterizing early work A. Akhmatova, Al. Surkov says that she appears “... as a poet of a sharply defined poetic individuality and strong lyrical talent ... emphatically “feminine” intimate lyrical experiences ...”.
A. Akhmatova understands that “we live solemnly and difficultly”, that “somewhere there is a simple life and light”, but she does not want to give up this life:
Yes, I loved them those gatherings of the night
Ice glasses on a small table,
Over black coffee odorous, thin steam,
Fireplace red heavy, winter heat,
The gaiety of a caustic literary joke
And a friend's first look, helpless and creepy."
The acmeists sought to return to the image its living concreteness, objectivity, to free it from mystical encryption, about which O. Mandelstam spoke very angrily, assuring that the Russian symbolists “... sealed all the words, all the images, destining them exclusively for liturgical use. It turned out to be extremely uncomfortable - neither pass, nor stand up, nor sit down. You can't dine on a table, because it's not just a table. It’s stupid to light a fire, because this, perhaps, means such that you yourself will not be happy later. ”
And at the same time, acmeists argue that their images are sharply different from realistic ones, because, in the words of S. Gorodetsky, they “... are born for the first time” “as hitherto unseen, but now real phenomena.” This determines the sophistication and peculiar mannerism of the acmeistic image, no matter how deliberate animal wildness it appears. For example, Voloshin:
People are animals, people are reptiles,
Like a hundred-eyed evil spider,
They entwine their glances."
The range of these images is narrowed, which achieves extreme beauty, and which allows you to achieve ever greater sophistication when describing it:
Slower snow hive
More transparent than crystal windows,
And a turquoise veil
Carelessly thrown on a chair.
Fabric intoxicated with itself
Indulged in the caress of light,
She experiences summer
As if untouched by winter.
And if in ice diamonds
Eternity frost flows,
Here - flutter dragonflies
fast living blue-eyed."
(O. Mandelstam)
Significant in its artistic value is the literary heritage of N. S. Gumilyov. Exotic and historical themes prevailed in his work, he was a singer of a “strong personality”. Gumilyov played a large role in the development of the form of verse, which was distinguished by its sharpness and accuracy.
In vain did the Acmeists dissociate themselves so sharply from the Symbolists. We meet the same “other worlds” and longing for them in their poetry. Thus, N. Gumilyov, who hailed the imperialist war as a “holy” cause, asserting that “seraphim, clear and winged, visible behind the shoulders of warriors,” a year later wrote poems about the end of the world, about the death of civilization:
Monsters are heard peaceful roars,
Suddenly, the rain is pouring down,
And everyone tightens up the fat ones
Light green horsetails.
Once a proud and brave conqueror understands the destroyer
the destructiveness of the enmity that has engulfed mankind:
Not all equals? Let the time roll
We understood you, Earth:
You're just a gloomy porter
At the entrance to God's fields.
This explains their rejection of the Great October Socialist Revolution. But their fate was not uniform. Some of them emigrated; N. Gumilyov allegedly "took an active part in the counter-revolutionary conspiracy" and was shot. In the poem "Worker" he predicted his end at the hands of the proletarian, who cast a bullet, "which will separate me from the earth."
And the Lord will reward me in full
For my short and short century.
I did it in a light gray blouse
Low an old man.
Such poets as S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, V. Narbut, M. Zenkevich could not emigrate.
For example, A. Akhmatova, who did not understand and did not accept the revolution, refused to leave her homeland:
He said: "Come here,
Leave your land deaf and sinful,
Leave Russia forever.
I will wash the blood from your hands,
I will take out black shame from my heart,
I will cover with a new name
The pain of defeat and resentment.
But indifferent and calm
I covered my ears with my hands
She did not immediately return to creativity. But Great Patriotic War reawakened in her a poet, a patriot poet, confident in the victory of his Motherland (“My-zhestvo”, “Oath”, etc.). A. Akhmatova wrote in her autobiography that for her in poetry “... my connection with time, with new life my people."
FUTURISM
Simultaneously with acmeism in 1910 - 1912. arose futurism. Like other modernist currents, it was internally contradictory. The most significant of the futuristic groups, which later received the name of cubo-futurism, united such poets as D. D. Burliuk, V. V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, V. V. Kamensky, V. V. Mayakovsky, and some others. A variety of futurism was the ego-futurism of I. Severyanin (I. V. Lotarev, 1887 - 1941). The Soviet poets N. N. Aseev and B. L. Pasternak began their creative career in a group of futurists called “Centrifuga”.
Futurism proclaimed a revolution of form, independent of content, the absolute freedom of poetic speech. Futurists abandoned literary traditions. In their manifesto with the shocking title "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste", published in a collection with the same name in 1912, they called for Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy to be thrown off the "Steamboat of Modernity". A. Kruchenykh defended the poet's right to create an “abstruse” language that does not have a specific meaning. In his writings, Russian speech was indeed replaced by a meaningless set of words. However, V. Khlebnikov (1885 - 1922), V.V. Kamensky (1884 - 1961) managed in their creative practice to carry out interesting experiments in the field of the word, which had a beneficial effect on Russian and Soviet poetry.
Among the futurist poets, the creative path of V. V. Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930) began. His first poems appeared in print in 1912. From the very beginning, Mayakovsky stood out in the poetry of Futurism, introducing his own theme into it. He always spoke not only against "all sorts of junk", but also for the creation of a new one in public life.
In the years leading up to the Great October Revolution, Mayakovsky was a passionate revolutionary romantic, an accuser of the realm of the "fat", foreseeing a revolutionary thunderstorm. The pathos of the denial of the entire system of capitalist relations, the humanistic faith in man sounded with great force in his poems “A Cloud in Pants”, “Flute-Spine”, “War and Peace”, “Man”. The theme of the poem "A Cloud in Pants", published in 1915 in a truncated form by censorship, Mayakovsky later defined as four cries of "down": "Down with your love!", "Down with your art!", "Down with your system!" , “Down with your religion!” He was the first of the poets who showed in his works the truth of the new society.
In the Russian poetry of the pre-revolutionary years there were bright individualities that are difficult to attribute to a particular literary trend. Such are M. A. Voloshin (1877 - 1932) and M. I. Tsvetaeva (1892 - 1941).
After 1910, another trend arose - futurism, which sharply opposed itself not only to the literature of the past, but also to the literature of the present, which entered the world with the desire to overthrow everything and everything. This nihilism was also manifested in the external design of futuristic collections, which were printed on wrapping paper or the reverse side of the wallpaper, and in the titles - "Mare's Milk", "Dead Moon", etc.
In the first collection “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (1912), a declaration signed by D. Burliuk, A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky was published. In it, the Futurists asserted themselves and only themselves as the only spokesmen for their era. They demanded “Give up Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and so on. and so on. from the Steamboat of our time”, they denied at the same time “Balmont’s perfumery fornication”, talked about the “dirty mucus of books written by the endless Leonid Andreevs”, indiscriminately discounted Gorky, Kuprin, Blok, etc.
Rejecting everything, they affirmed “The lightning of the new coming Beauty of the Self-valuable (self-sufficient) Word”. Unlike Mayakovsky, they did not try to overthrow the existing system, but only sought to update the forms of reproduction of modern life.
The basis of Italian futurism with his the slogan “war is the only hygiene of the world” was weakened in the Russian version, but, as V. Bryusov notes in the article “The Meaning of Modern Poetry”, this ideology “... appeared between the lines, and the masses of readers instinctively shunned this poetry.”
“For the first time, the Futurists raised the form to its proper height,” asserts V. Shershenevich, “giving it the value of an end in itself, the main element of a poetic work. They completely rejected the verses that are written for the idea.” This explains the emergence of a huge number of declared formal principles, such as: “In the name of freedom of individual case, we deny spelling” or “We have destroyed punctuation marks, than the role of the verbal mass is put forward and realized for the first time” (“Judges’ Garden”).
Futurist theorist V. Khlebnikov proclaims that the language of the world's future "will be a 'transrational' language." The word loses its semantic meaning, acquiring a subjective coloring: “We understand vowels as time and space (the nature of aspiration), consonants - paint, sound, smell.” V. Khlebnikov, seeking to expand the boundaries of the language and its possibilities, proposes the creation of new words based on the root feature, for example:
(roots: chur... and charm...)
We are enchanted and shy.
Enchanted there, avoiding here, Now churahar, then charahar, Here churil, there charil.
From the churyn, the gaze of the charyn.
There is a churavel, there is a charavel.
Charari! Churari!
Churel! Charel!
Chares and chures.
And shy away and shy away."
Futurists oppose deliberate de-aestheticization to the emphasized aestheticism of the poetry of the Symbolists and especially the Acmeists. So, in D. Burliuk, “poetry is a frayed girl”, “the soul is a tavern, and the sky is a tear”, in V. Shershenevich “in a spitting park”, a naked woman wants to “squeeze milk out of her saggy breasts”. In the review “The Year of Russian Poetry” (1914), V. Bryusov, noting the deliberate rudeness of the Futurists’ poems, rightly notes: “It is not enough to vilify everything that was, and everything that is outside your circle with swear words, in order to already find something new.”
He points out that all their innovations are imaginary, because we met with some of them among the poets of the 18th century, with others at Pushkin and Virgil, that the theory of sounds - colors was developed by T. Gauthier.
It is curious that with all the denials of other trends in art, the futurists feel their continuity from symbolism.
It is curious that A. Blok, who followed the work of Severyanin with interest, says with concern: “He has no theme,” and V. Bryusov, in an article of 1915 dedicated to Severyanin, points out: “Lack of knowledge and inability to think belittle the poetry of Igor Severyanin and extremely narrow its horizon. He reproaches the poet for bad taste, vulgarity, and especially sharply criticizes his military poems, which make a “painful impression”, “breaking the cheap applause of the public.”
A. Blok doubted back in 1912: “I’m afraid about the modernists that they no rod, but only - talented curls around, emptiness.
Russian culture on the eve of the Great October Revolution was the result of a complex and long journey. Distinctive features democratism, high humanism and genuine nationalism have always remained in it, despite periods of cruel government reaction, when progressive thought, advanced culture were suppressed in every possible way.
richest cultural heritage pre-revolutionary times, cultural values created over the centuries constitute the golden fund of our national culture
Velimir Khlebnikov
(Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov)
28.X. (09.XI.)1885-28.VI.1922
Khlebnikov attracted attention and aroused interest with his original personality, struck by his worldview and independence of views, rare for his age. He gets acquainted with the circle of metropolitan modernist poets (including Gumilyov and Kuzmin, whom he calls “his teacher”), visits the “bath” Vyach, famous in the artistic life of St. Petersburg of those years. Ivanov, where writers, philosophers, artists, musicians, artists gathered.
In 1910-1914, his poems, poems, dramas, prose were published, including such well-known ones as the poem "Crane", the poem "Maria Vechora", the play "Marquise Deses". In Kherson, the first brochure of the poet with mathematical and linguistic experiments "Teacher and Student" was published. A scientist and a science fiction writer, a poet and a publicist, he is completely absorbed in creative work. The poems "Rural Charm", "Forest Horror", etc., the play "Mistake of Death" were written. The books “Roar! Gloves. 1908 - 1914", "Creations" (Volume 1). In 1916, together with N. Aseev, he issued a declaration "The Trumpet of the Martians", in which Khlebnikov's division of mankind into "inventors" and "purchasers" was formulated. The main characters of his poetry were Time and the Word, it was through Time, fixed by the Word and turned into a spatial fragment, that the philosophical unity of “space-time” was realized for him. O. Mandelstam wrote: “Khlebnikov fiddles with words like a mole, meanwhile he dug passages in the earth for the future for a whole century ...” In 1920 he lives in Kharkov, writes a lot: “War in a mousetrap”, “Ladomir”, “ Three Sisters”, “Scratch in the Sky”, etc. In the city theater of Kharkov, Khlebnikov was elected “Chairman of the Globe”, with the participation of Yesenin and Mariengof.
The work of V. Khlebnikov is divided into three parts: theoretical studies in the field of style and illustrations for them, poetic creativity and comic poems. Unfortunately, the boundaries between them are drawn extremely carelessly, and often a beautiful poem is spoiled by an admixture of an unexpected and awkward joke or word formation that is still far from thought out.
Very sensitive to the roots of words, Viktor Khlebnikov deliberately neglects inflections, sometimes discarding them completely, sometimes changing them beyond recognition. He believes that each vowel contains not only an action, but also its direction: thus, the bull is the one who strikes, the side is that which is struck; beaver - what they hunt for, babr (tiger) - the one who hunts, etc.
Taking the root of a word and adding arbitrary inflections to it, he creates new words. So, from the root "sme", he produces "smekhachi", "smeevo", "smeyunchiki", "to laugh", etc.
As a poet, Viktor Khlebnikov incantably loves nature. He is never satisfied with what he has. His deer turns into a carnivorous beast, he sees dead birds come to life on the ladies' hats at the "opening day", how clothes fall off people and turn - woolen into sheep, linen into blue flowers of flax.
Osip Mandelstam was born in 1891 into a Jewish family. From his mother, Mandelstam inherited, along with a predisposition to heart disease and musicality, a heightened sense of the sounds of the Russian language.
Mandelstam, being a Jew, chooses to be a Russian poet - not just "Russian-speaking", but precisely Russian. And this decision is not so self-evident: the beginning of the century in Russia is a time of rapid development of Jewish literature, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, and, to some extent, in Russian. Combining Jewry and Russia, Mandelstam's poetry carries universalism, combining national Russian Orthodoxy and the national practice of the Jews.
My staff, my freedom -
core of life,
Soon the truth of the people
Will my truth become?
I did not bow to the earth
Before I found myself
Staff took, cheered
And went to distant Rome.
And the snow on the black fields
Will never melt
And the sadness of my family
I'm still a stranger.
The first Russian revolution and the events accompanying it, for the Mandelstam generation, coincided with the entry into life. During this period, Mandelstam became interested in politics, but then, at the turning point from adolescence to youth, he left politics for the sake of poetry.
Mandelstam avoids words that are too conspicuous: he has neither the revelry of exquisite archaisms, like Vyacheslav Ivanov, nor the injection of vulgarisms, like Mayakovsky's, nor the abundance of neologisms, like Tsvetaeva's, nor the influx of everyday phrases and catchphrases, like Pasternak's.
There are chaste charms -
High way, deep world,
Far from ethereal lyres
Lars installed by me.
At carefully washed niches
At watchful sunsets
I listen to my penates
Always ecstatic silence.
The beginning of the First World War - the turn of the times:
My age, my beast, who can
look into your pupils
And glue with his blood
Two centuries of vertebrae?
Mandelstam notes that the time has passed for the final farewell to the Russia of Alexander (Alexander III and Alexander Pushkin), European, classical, architectural Russia. But before its end, it is precisely the doomed "greatness", namely the "historical forms and ideas" that surround the poet's mind. He must be convinced of their internal emptiness - not from external events, but from the internal experience of efforts to sympathize with the “sovereign world”, to feel into its system. He says goodbye to him in his own way, sorting through old motives, putting them in order, compiling a catalog for them by means of poetry. In the Mandelstam cipher system, the doomed Petersburg, precisely in its capacity as the imperial capital, is equivalent to that Judea, about which it is said that, having crucified Christ, “petrified” and is associated with the holy apostate and perishing Jerusalem. The colors that characterize the basis of grace Judaism are black and yellow. So these are the colors that characterize the St. Petersburg “sovereign world” (the colors of the Russian imperial standard).
The most significant of Mandelstam's responses to the 1917 revolution was the poem "The Twilight of Freedom". It is very difficult to bring it under the rubric of "accepting" or "not accepting" the revolution in a trivial sense, but the theme of despair is very loud in it:
Let us glorify, brothers, the twilight of freedom,
Great twilight year!
In the boiling night waters
The heavy forest is lowered.
You rise in deaf years, -
O sun, judge, people.
Let's glorify the fatal burden
Which the people's leader takes in tears.
Let us glorify the power of the gloomy burden,
Her unbearable oppression.
Who has a heart - he must hear the time,
As your ship sinks.
We are fighting legions
They tied the swallows - and now
The sun is not visible; all elements
Twittering, moving, living;
Through the nets - thick twilight -
The sun is not visible, and the earth is floating.
Well, let's try: huge, clumsy,
Squeaky steering wheel.
The earth is floating. Take heart, men.
Like a plow, dividing the ocean,
We will remember in the letey cold,
That the earth cost us ten heavens.
In this report, I tried to talk about the most interesting writers and their works. I deliberately chose writers not as famous as, for example: I. Bunin and N. Gumilyov, A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin and A. Akhmatova, A. Kuprin. But no less brilliant and famous in their time.
Poets of the Silver Age (Nikolai Gumilyov)
The "Silver Age" in Russian literature is the period of creativity of the main representatives of modernism, the period of the emergence of many talented authors. Conventionally, the year 1892 is considered the beginning of the "silver yoke", but its actual end came with the October Revolution.
Modernist poets denied social values and tried to create poetry designed to promote the spiritual development of man. One of the most famous trends in modernist literature was acmeism. Acmeists proclaimed the liberation of poetry from symbolist impulses to the "ideal" and called for a return from the ambiguity of images to the material world, object, "nature". But their poetry was also characterized by a tendency to aestheticism, to the poeticization of feelings. This is clearly seen in the work of a prominent representative of acmeism, one of the best Russian poets of the early 20th century, Nikolai Gumilyov, whose poems amaze us with the beauty of the word, the loftiness of the created images.
Gumilyov himself called his poetry the muse of distant wanderings, the poet was faithful to her until the end of his days. The famous ballad "Captains" from the collection of poems "Pearls", which brought Gumilyov wide fame, is a hymn to people who challenge fate and the elements. The poet appears before us as a singer of the romance of distant wanderings, courage, risk, courage:
The swift-winged ones are led by captains --
Discoverers of new lands
Who is not afraid of hurricanes
Who has known the maelstroms and stranded.
Whose is not the dust of lost charters
--
The chest is soaked with the salt of the sea,
Who is the needle on the torn map
Marks his audacious path.
Even in the military lyrics of Nikolai Gumilyov, one can find romantic motives. Here is an excerpt from a poem included in the Quiver collection:
And bloody weeks
Dazzling and light
Above me, shrapnel is torn,
The blades of the birds take off faster.
I scream and my voice is wild
It's copper hitting copper
I, the bearer of a great thought,
I can't, I can't die.
Like thunder hammers
Or the waters of angry seas,
Golden heart of Russia
Beats rhythmically in my chest.
The romanticization of the battle, the feat was a feature of Gumilyov - a poet and a man with a pronounced rare chivalrous beginning both in poetry and in life. Contemporaries called Gumilyov a poet-warrior. One of them wrote: "He accepted the war with simplicity ... with straightforward fervor. He was, perhaps, one of those few people in Russia whose soul the war found in the greatest combat readiness." As you know, during the First World War, Nikolai Gumilyov volunteered to go to the front. From his prose and poetry, we can judge that the poet not only romanticized the military feat, but also saw and realized the whole horror of the war.
In the collection "Kolchan" a new theme for Gumilyov begins to emerge - the theme of Russia. Completely new motifs sound here - the creations and genius of Andrei Rublev and the bloody bunch of mountain ash, ice drift on the Neva and Ancient Rus'. He gradually expands his themes, and in some poems he reaches the deepest insight, as if predicting his own fate:
He stands before a fiery mountain,
A short old man.
A calm look seems submissive
From the blinking of reddish eyelids.
All his comrades fell asleep,
Only he does not sleep alone yet:
He is all busy casting a bullet,
That will separate me from the earth.
The last lifetime collections of poems by N. Gumilyov were published in 1921 - these are "Tent" (African poems) and "Pillar of Fire". In them we see a new Gumilyov, whose poetic art was enriched by the simplicity of high wisdom, pure colors, and the masterful use of prosaic everyday and fantastic details. In the work of Nikolai Gumilyov, we find a reflection of the world around us in all its colors. In his poetry - exotic landscapes and customs of Africa. The poet penetrates deeply into the world of legends and traditions of Abyssinia, Rome, Egypt:
I know funny tales of mysterious lines
Pro black maiden, about the passion of the young leader,
You don't want to believe in anything but rain.
You are crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams.
Gumilyov Nikolay 
Stepanovich
N. S. Gumilyov was born in Kronstadt in the family of a military doctor. In 1906 he received a certificate of graduation from the Nikolaev Tsarkoselskaya gymnasium, the director of which was I. F. Annensky. In 1905, the first collection of the poet, The Path of the Conquistadors, was published, which attracted the attention of V. Ya. Bryusov. The characters in the collection seem to have come from the pages of adventure novels from the era of the conquest of America, which the poet read in his adolescence. Identifies with them lyrical hero- "a conquistador in an iron shell." The originality of the collection, saturated with common literary passages and poetic conventions, was given by the features that prevailed in Gumilyov's life behavior: love for the exotic, the romance of a feat, the will to live and create.
In 1907, Gumilyov left for Paris to continue his education at the Sorbonne, where he listened to lectures on French literature. He follows the artistic life of France with interest, establishes correspondence with V. Ya. Bryusov, and publishes the Sirius magazine. In Paris, in 1908, Gumilyov's second collection Romantic Flowers was published, where the reader was again expected to meet with literary and historical exoticism, but the subtle irony that touched individual poems translates the conventional methods of romanticism into a playful plan and thereby outlines the contours of the author's positions. Gumilyov works hard on poetry, achieving its "flexibility", "confident rigor", as he wrote in his program poem "To the Poet", and in the manner of "introducing realism of descriptions into the most fantastic plots" he follows the traditions of Leconte de Lisle, the French parnassian poet , considering such a path "salvation" from the symbolist "nebulae". According to I. F. Annensky, this "book reflected not only the search for beauty, but also the beauty of the search."
In the autumn of 1908 Gumilev made his first trip to Africa, to Egypt. The African continent captivated the poet: he becomes the discoverer of the African theme in Russian poetry. Acquaintance with Africa "from the inside" turned out to be especially fruitful during the following travels, in the winter of 1909-1910 and 1910-1911. in Abyssinia, the impressions of which were reflected in the cycle "Abyssinian Songs" (collection "Alien Sky").
Since September 1909, Gumilyov became a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. In 1910, the collection "Pearls" was published with a dedication to the "teacher" - V. Ya. Bryusov. The venerable poet responded with a review, where he noted that Gumilyov "lives in an imaginary and almost ghostly world ... he creates countries for himself and inhabits them with creatures created by him: people, animals, demons." Gumilyov does not leave the heroes of his early books, but they have changed markedly. In his poetry, psychologism is intensified, instead of "masks" people appear with their own characters and passions. Attention was also drawn to the confidence with which the poet went to mastering the skill of poetry.
In the early 1910s, Gumilyov was already a prominent figure in St. Petersburg literary circles. He is a member of the "young" editorial office of the journal "Apollo", where he regularly publishes "Letters on Russian Poetry" - literary critical studies, which are a new type of "objective" review. At the end of 1911, he headed the "Workshop of Poets", around which a group of like-minded people formed, and acted as the ideological inspirer of a new literary trend - acmeism, the basic principles of which he proclaimed in the manifesto article "The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism". A poetic illustration for theoretical calculations was his collection "Alien Sky" (1912) - the pinnacle of Gumilev's "objective" lyrics. According to M. A. Kuzmin, the most important thing in the collection is the identification of the lyrical hero with Adam, the first person. The acmeist poet is like Adam, the discoverer of the world of things. He gives things "virgin names", fresh in their originality, freed from the old poetic contexts. Gumilyov formulated not only a new concept of the poetic word, but also his understanding of man as a being who is aware of his natural givenness, "wise physiology" and accepts the fullness of the surrounding being.
With the outbreak of World War I, Gumilyov volunteered for the front. In the newspaper "Birzhevye Vedomosti" he publishes chronicle essays "Notes of a Cavalryman". In 1916, the book "Quiver" was published, which differed from the previous ones primarily by expanding the thematic range. Italian travel sketches side by side with meditative poems of philosophical and existential content. Here, for the first time, the Russian theme begins to sound, the poet's soul responds to the pain of his native country, devastated by the war. His gaze, turned to reality, acquires the ability to see through it. The poems included in the collection "Bonfire" (1918) reflected the intensity of the poet's spiritual search. As the philosophical nature of Gumilyov's poetry deepens, the world in his poems appears more and more as a divine cosmos ("Trees", "Nature"). He is disturbed by "eternal" themes: life and death, the perishability of the body and the immortality of the spirit, the otherness of the soul.
Gumilyov was not an eyewitness to the revolutionary events of 1917. At that time, he was abroad as part of the Russian expeditionary force: in Paris, then in London. His creative pursuits of this period were marked by an interest in Eastern culture. Gumilev compiled his collection The Porcelain Pavilion (1918) from free transcriptions of French translations of Chinese classical poetry (Li Bo, Du Fu, and others). The "oriental" style was perceived by Gumilyov as a kind of school of "verbal economy", poetic "simplicity, clarity and authenticity", which corresponded to his aesthetic attitudes.
Returning to Russia in 1918, Gumilyov immediately, with his characteristic energy, is included in the literary life of Petrograd. He is a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature", under his editorship and in his translation the Babylonian epic "Gilgamesh", the works of R. Southey, G. Heine, S. T. Coleridge are published. He lectures on the theory of verse and translation at various institutions, and runs the "Sounding Shell" studio for young poets. According to one of the poet's contemporaries, critic A. Ya. Levinson, "the young people were drawn to him from all sides, admiringly submitting to the despotism of the young master, who owns the philosopher's stone of poetry..."
In January 1921, Gumilyov was elected chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets. Comes out in the same year last book- "Pillar of Fire". Now the poet is delving into the philosophical understanding of the problems of memory, creative immortality, the fate of the poetic word. Individual life force, which fed Gumilyov's poetic energy before, merges with the supra-individual. The hero of his lyrics reflects on the unknowable and, enriched with inner spiritual experience, rushes to the "India of the Spirit". This was not a return to the circles of symbolism, but it is clear that Gumilyov found in his worldview a place for those achievements of symbolism, which, as it seemed to him at the time of the acmeist "Sturm und Drang" a, led "into the realm of the unknown". , which sounds in Gumilyov's last poems, enhances the motives of empathy and compassion and gives them a universal and at the same time deeply personal meaning.
Gumilyov's life was tragically interrupted: he was executed as a participant in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, which, as it has now become known, was fabricated. In the minds of Gumilyov's contemporaries, his fate evoked associations with the fate of the poet of another era - Andre Chenier, who was executed by the Jacobins during the French Revolution.
"Silver Age" of Russian literature
| Composition V. Bryusov, N. Gumilyov, V. Mayakovsky The 19th century, the "golden age" of Russian literature, was ending, and the 20th century began. This turning point went down in history under the beautiful name of the "Silver Age". He gave rise to the great rise of Russian culture and became the beginning of its tragic fall. The beginning of the "Silver Age" is usually attributed to the 90s of the XIX century, when the poems of V. Bryusov, I. Annensky, K. Balmont and other remarkable poets appeared. The heyday of the "Silver Age" is considered 1915 - the time of its highest rise and end. The socio-political situation of that time was characterized by a deep crisis of the existing government, a stormy, restless atmosphere in the country, requiring decisive changes. Maybe that's why the paths of art and politics crossed. Just as society was intensely looking for ways to a new social order, writers and poets strove to master new artistic forms and put forward bold experimental ideas. The realistic depiction of reality ceased to satisfy the artists, and in the polemic with the classics of the 19th century, new literary trends were established: symbolism, acmeism, futurism. They offered different ways comprehension of being, but each of them was distinguished by the extraordinary music of the verse, the original expression of the feelings and experiences of the lyrical hero, and the aspiration to the future. One of the first literary movements was symbolism, which united such different poets as K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, A. Bely and others. to express the moods, feelings and thoughts of the poet. Moreover, truth, insight can appear in the artist not as a result of reflection, but at the moment of creative ecstasy, as if sent down to him from above. Symbolist poets were carried away by the dream, asking global questions about how to save humanity, how to restore faith in God, achieve harmony, merging with the Soul of the World, Eternal Femininity, Beauty and Love. V. Bryusov becomes a recognized meter of symbolism, embodied in his poems not only the formal innovative achievements of this movement, but also its ideas. A kind of creative manifesto of Bryusov was a small poem "To the Young Poet", which was perceived by contemporaries as a program of symbolism. A pale young man with burning eyes, Remember the second: do not sympathize with anyone, Of course, the creative declaration proclaimed by the poet is not exhausted by the content of this poem. Bryusov's poetry is multifaceted, multifaceted and polyphonic, like the life it reflects. He possessed a rare gift to accurately convey every mood, every movement of the soul. Perhaps the main feature of his poetry lies in the precisely found combination of form and content. And I want all my dreams The difficult goal expressed by Bryusov in "Sonnet to Form", I think, has been achieved. And this is confirmed by his amazing poetry. In the poem "Creativity" Bryusov managed to convey the feeling of the first, still semi-conscious stage of creativity, when the future work still looms "through the magic crystal". Shadow of Uncreated Creatures purple hands The Symbolists viewed life as the life of the Poet. Concentration on oneself is characteristic of the work of the remarkable symbolist poet K. Balmont. He himself was the meaning, theme, image and purpose of his poems. I. Ehrenburg very accurately noticed this feature of his poetry: "Balmont did not notice anything in the world, except for his own soul." Indeed, the external world existed for him only so that he could express his poetic "I". I hate humanity The poet did not tire of following the unexpected turns of his soul, his changing impressions. Balmont tried to capture in the image, in words, the running moments, the flying time, raising transience into a philosophical principle. I do not know wisdom suitable for others, The meaning of these lines, probably, is that a person must live every moment in which the fullness of his being is revealed. And the artist's task is to wrest this moment from eternity and capture it in words. Symbolist poets were able to express their era in poetry with its instability, unsteadiness, transitivity. Just as the rejection of realism gave birth to symbolism, a new literary movement - acmeism - arose in the course of the polemic with symbolism. He rejected the craving of symbolism for the unknown, focusing on the world of his own soul. Acmeism, according to Gumilyov, was not supposed to strive for the unknowable, but to turn to what can be understood, that is, to reality, trying to capture the diversity of the world as fully as possible. With such a view, the acmeist artist, unlike the symbolists, becomes involved in the world rhythm, although he gives an assessment of the phenomena depicted. In general, when you try to understand the essence of the program of acmeism, you encounter obvious contradictions and inconsistencies. In my opinion, Bryusov is right when he advised Gumilyov, Gorodetsky and Akhmatova "to abandon the fruitless pretension to form some kind of school of acmeism" and write good poetry instead. Indeed, now, at the end of the 20th century, the name of acmeism has been preserved only because the work of such outstanding poets as N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam is associated with it. Gumilyov's early poems amaze with their romantic masculinity, the energy of rhythm, and emotional intensity. In his famous "Captains" the whole world appears as an arena of struggle, constant risk, the highest tension of forces on the verge of life and death. Let the sea rage and lash In these lines one hears a bold challenge to the elements and fate, they are opposed to risk-taking, courage and fearlessness. Exotic landscapes and customs of Africa, jungles, deserts, wild animals, the mysterious Lake Chad - all this wonderful world embodied in the collection "Romantic Flowers". No, this is not book romance. One gets the impression that the poet himself is invisibly present and involved in the verses. So deep is his penetration into the world of legends and legends of Abyssinia, Rome, Egypt and other exotic countries for a European. But for all the virtuosity of the depiction of reality, social motives are extremely rare in Gumilyov and other acmeist poets. Acmeism was characterized by extreme apoliticality, complete indifference to the topical problems of our time. This is probably why acmeism had to give way to a new literary trend - futurism, which was distinguished by revolutionary rebellion, oppositional disposition against bourgeois society, its morality, aesthetic tastes, and the entire system of social relations. No wonder the first collection of futurists, who consider themselves poets of the future, bore the obviously defiant title "Slap in the face of public taste." Mayakovsky's early work was associated with futurism. In his youthful poems, one can feel the desire of the novice poet to amaze the reader with the novelty, unusualness of his vision of the world. And Mayakovsky really succeeded. For example, in the poem "Night" he uses an unexpected comparison, likening the illuminated windows to the player's hand with a fan of cards. Therefore, in the mind of the reader, the image of a city-player arises, obsessed with temptations, hopes, and a thirst for pleasure. But the dawn, extinguishing the lanterns, "kings in the crown of gas", dispels the night mirage. Crimson and white discarded and crumpled, Yes, these lines are not at all similar to the verses of classical poets. They clearly show the creative declaration of the futurists, who deny the art of the past. Such poets as V. Mayakovsky, V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky guessed the special spiritual state of their time in the union of poetry and struggle and tried to find new rhythms and images for the poetic embodiment of the seething revolutionary life. The fates of the remarkable poets of the "Silver Age" developed differently. Someone could not bear life in an inhospitable homeland, someone, like Gumilyov, was shot without guilt, someone, like Akhmatova, remained in his native land until his last days, having experienced all the troubles and sorrows with her, someone put "a bullet point at his end" like Mayakovsky. But all of them created a real miracle at the beginning of the 20th century - the "silver age" of Russian poetry. |
Analysis of the poem by N. Gumilyov "Giraffe"
Nikolai Gumilyov combined courage, courage, poetic ability to predict the future, childish curiosity for the world and a passion for travel. The poet managed to put these qualities and abilities into a poetic form.
Gumilyov was always attracted by exotic places and beautiful, music-sounding names, bright, almost colorless paintings. It was in the collection "Romantic Flowers" that the poem "Giraffe" (1907) was included, which for a long time became Gumilyov's "calling card" in Russian literature.
Nikolai Gumilyov from early youth attached exceptional importance to the composition of the work, its plot completeness. The poet called himself a "master of a fairy tale", combining in his poems dazzlingly bright, rapidly changing pictures with an extraordinary melody and musicality of the narration.
Exquisite giraffe roams.
The reader is transferred to the most exotic continent - Africa. Gumilyov writes seemingly absolutely unreal pictures:
In his fairy-tale poem, the poet compares two spaces, distant on the scale of human consciousness and very close on the scale of the Earth. About the space that is "here", the poet says almost nothing, and this is not necessary. There is only a "heavy fog" that we inhale every minute. In the world we live in, only sadness and tears remain. This leads us to believe that heaven on Earth is impossible. Nikolai Gumilyov tries to prove the opposite: "... far, far away, on Lake Chad // An exquisite giraffe roams." Usually the expression "far, far" is written with a hyphen and refers to something that is completely unattainable. However, the poet, perhaps with some degree of irony, focuses the reader's attention on whether this continent is really so far away. It is known that Gumilev had a chance to visit Africa, to see with his own eyes the beauties he described (the poem "Giraffe" was written before Gumilev's first trip to Africa).
The world in which the reader lives is completely colorless, life here seems to flow in gray tones. On Lake Chad, like a precious diamond, the world glistens and shimmers. Nikolai Gumilyov, like other acmeist poets, uses objects in his works, not specific colors, giving the reader the opportunity to imagine one or another shade in his imagination: the skin of a giraffe, which is decorated with a magical pattern, seems to me bright orange with red-brown spots , the dark blue color of the water surface, on which moonlight glare spreads like a golden fan, bright orange sails of a ship sailing during sunset. Unlike the world we are accustomed to, in this space the air is fresh and clean, it absorbs the vapors from Lake Chad, the "smell of inconceivable herbs"...
Nikolai Gumilyov did not accidentally choose the giraffe in this poem. Standing firmly on its feet, with a long neck and a "magic pattern" on the skin, the giraffe has become the hero of many songs and poems. Perhaps one can draw a parallel between this exotic animal and man: he is just as calm, stately and gracefully built. It is also human nature to exalt oneself over all living beings. However, if peacefulness, "graceful harmony and bliss" are given to a giraffe by nature, then a person by nature is created to fight primarily with his own kind.
Analysis of the poem by N.S. Gumilyov "Giraffe"
In 1908, the second book of Nikolai Gumilyov, Romantic Flowers, was published in Paris, which was favorably evaluated by Valery Bryusov. It was in this book that the poem "Giraffe" was first published.
The poem consists of five quatrains (twenty lines). The idea of the poem is to describe the beauties and wonders of Africa. Gumilyov talks in great detail, multicolored and visibly about the landscapes of a hot country. Nikolai Stepanovich actually observed this splendor, because he visited Africa three times!
In his poem, the author uses the antithesis technique, but not specific, but implied. A person whose eye is accustomed to the Russian landscape paints a picture of an exotic country so visibly.
The story is about a "refined giraffe". The giraffe is the epitome of beautiful reality. Gumilyov uses vivid epithets to emphasize the unusualness of the African landscape: an exquisite giraffe, graceful harmony, a magical pattern, a marble grotto, mysterious countries, unthinkable grasses. The comparison is also used:
“Away, he is like the colored sails of a ship,
And his run is smooth, like a joyful bird flight.
The author addresses the whole poem to his beloved in order to improve her mood, to distract her from sad thoughts in rainy weather. But it doesn't work. It not only does not distract, but, on the contrary, enhances sadness precisely from the feeling of the opposite. The tale exacerbates the loneliness of the characters.
This is especially emphasized by the last stanza. The arrangement of punctuation marks suggests that the author failed to cheer up the girl:
"Listen: Far, far away on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams.
"You are crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams.
The person pauses for no reason. This suggests that he is no longer in the mood to talk.
Creativity of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov.
N. S. Gumilyov was born in 1886 in the city of Kronstadt in the family of a military doctor. At the age of twenty, he received a certificate (triples in all the exact sciences, fours in the humanities, five only in logic) about the end of the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, the director of which was Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky. At the insistence of his father and of his own free will, he entered the Naval Corps.
While still a high school student, Gumilyov published his first collection of poems - “The Way of the Conquistadors” in 1905. But he preferred not to remember it, never republished it, and even omitted it when counting his own collections. In this book, traces of a wide variety of influences are visible: from Nietzsche, who glorified a strong man, a creator who proudly accepts a tragic fate, to a contemporary of Gumilyov French writer Andre Gide, whose words “I became a nomad to voluptuously touch everything that wanders!” taken as an epigraph.
Critics believed that there were many poetic clichés in The Way of the Conquistadors. However, behind a variety of influences - Western aesthetes and Russian symbolists - we can distinguish our own author's voice. Already in this first book, Gumilyov's constant lyrical hero appears - a conqueror, a wanderer, a sage, a soldier who trustingly and joyfully learns the world. This hero opposes both modernity with its everyday life, and the hero of decadent verses.
Innokenty Annensky joyfully greeted this book (“... my sunset is cold and smoky / Looks at the dawn with joy”). Bryusov, whose influence on the novice poet was undoubtedly, although he noted in his review “rehashings and imitations, far from always successful”, wrote an encouraging letter to the author.
However, after a year he leaves maritime school m goes to study in Paris, at the Sorbonne University. Such an act at that time is difficult to explain. The ship's doctor's son, who always dreamed of distant sea voyages, suddenly abandons his dream, leaves a military career, although in spirit and temperament of his character, habits and family tradition, Nikolai is a military man, a campaigner, in the best sense of the word, a man of honor and duty. Of course, studying in Paris is prestigious and honorable, but not for a military officer, in whose family people in civilian clothes were treated condescendingly. In Paris, Gumilyov did not show any particular diligence or interest in the sciences; subsequently, for this reason, he was expelled from a prestigious educational institution.
At the Sorbonne, Nikolai wrote a lot, studied poetic technique, trying to develop his own style. The young Gumilyov's requirements for verse are energy, clarity and clarity of expression, the return of the original meaning and brilliance to such concepts as duty, honor and heroism.
The collection, published in Paris in 1908, Gumilyov called "Romantic Flowers". According to many literary critics, most of the landscapes in verse are bookish, the motives are borrowed. But the love for exotic places and beautiful, music-sounding names, bright, almost colorless painting are unborrowed. It was in "Romantic Flowers" - that is, before Gumilev's first travels to Africa - that the poem "Giraffe" (1907) was included, which for a long time became Gumilev's "calling card" in Russian literature.
A certain fabulousness in the poem "Giraffe" is manifested from the first lines:
Listen: far, far, on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams.
The reader is transferred to the most exotic continent - Africa. Gumilyov writes seemingly absolutely unreal pictures:
In the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship,
And his run is smooth, like a joyful bird flight...
The human imagination simply does not fit the possibility of the existence of such beauties on Earth. The poet invites the reader to look at the world differently, to understand that "the earth sees many wonderful things", and a person, if desired, is able to see the same thing. The poet invites us to cleanse ourselves of the "heavy fog" that we have been inhaling for so long, and to realize that the world is huge and that there are still paradises on Earth.
Turning to a mysterious woman, whom we can only judge from the position of the author, the lyrical hero is in dialogue with the reader, one of the listeners of his exotic tale. A woman immersed in her worries, sad, does not want to believe in anything - why not a reader? Reading this or that poem, we willy-nilly express our opinion about the work, criticize it in one way or another, do not always agree with the poet's opinion, and sometimes do not understand it at all. Nikolai Gumilyov gives the reader the opportunity to observe the dialogue between the poet and the reader (listener of his poems) from the outside.
Ring framing is typical for any fairy tale. As a rule, where the action began, there it ends. However, in this case, it seems that the poet can talk about this exotic continent again and again, draw magnificent, bright pictures sunny country, revealing in its inhabitants more and more new, previously unseen features. The ring frame demonstrates the poet's desire to talk about "heaven on Earth" again and again in order to make the reader look at the world differently.
In his fairy-tale poem, the poet compares two spaces, distant on the scale of human consciousness and very close on the scale of the Earth. About the space that is "here", the poet says almost nothing, and this is not necessary. There is only a "heavy fog" that we inhale every minute. In the world we live in, only sadness and tears remain. This leads us to believe that heaven on Earth is impossible. Nikolai Gumilyov tries to prove the opposite: "... far, far away, on Lake Chad / An exquisite giraffe roams." Usually the expression "far, far" is written with a hyphen and refers to something that is completely unattainable. However, the poet, perhaps with some degree of irony, focuses the reader's attention on whether this continent is really so far away. It is known that Gumilev had a chance to visit Africa, to see with his own eyes the beauties he described (the poem "Giraffe" was written before Gumilev's first trip to Africa).
The world in which the reader lives is completely colorless, life here seems to flow in gray tones. On Lake Chad, like a precious diamond, the world glistens and shimmers. Nikolai Gumilyov, like other acmeist poets, uses in his works not specific colors, but objects, giving the reader the opportunity to imagine one or another shade in his imagination: the skin of a giraffe, which is decorated with a magical pattern, appears bright orange with red-brown spots, the dark blue color of the water surface, on which the lunar glare spreads like a golden fan, the bright orange sails of a ship sailing during sunset. Unlike the world we are accustomed to, in this space the air is fresh and clean, it absorbs the vapors from Lake Chad, the "smell of inconceivable herbs"...
The lyrical hero seems to be so passionate about this world, its rich color palette, exotic smells and sounds, which is ready to tirelessly talk about the vast expanses of the earth. This inextinguishable enthusiasm is certainly passed on to the reader.
Nikolai Gumilyov did not accidentally choose the giraffe in this poem. Standing firmly on its feet, with a long neck and a "magic pattern" on the skin, the giraffe has become the hero of many songs and poems. Perhaps one can draw a parallel between this exotic animal and man: he is just as calm, stately and gracefully built. It is also human nature to exalt oneself over all living beings. However, if peacefulness, "graceful harmony and bliss" are given to a giraffe by nature, then a person by nature is created to fight primarily with his own kind.
The exoticism inherent in the giraffe fits very organically into the context of a fairy tale story about a distant land. One of the most remarkable means of creating the image of this exotic animal is the method of comparison: the magical pattern of the skin of a giraffe is compared with the brilliance of the night star, "in the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship," "and its run is smooth, like a joyful bird's flight."
The melody of the poem is akin to the calmness and grace of a giraffe. The sounds are unnaturally lingering, melodic, complement the fabulous description, give the story a touch of magic. Rhythmically, Gumilyov uses amphibrach pentameter, rhyming lines with masculine rhyme (with the accent on the last syllable). This, combined with voiced consonants, allows the author to more colorfully describe the exquisite world of African fairy tales.
In "Romantic Flowers" another feature of Gumilyov's poetry was also manifested - a love for rapidly developing heroic or adventurous plots. Gumilyov is a master of fairy tales, short stories, he is attracted by famous historical plots, violent passions, spectacular and sudden endings. From early youth, he attached exceptional importance to the composition of the poem, its plot completeness. Finally, already in this collection, Gumilyov developed his own methods of poetic writing. For example, he fell in love with feminine rhyme. Usually Russian poems are built on the alternation of male and female rhymes. Gumilyov in many poems uses only female. This is how a melodious monotony, musicality of the narration, smoothness is achieved:
Following Sinbad the Sailor
In foreign countries I collected gold pieces
And wandered on unfamiliar waters,
Where, splitting, the glare of the sun was burning [“The Eagle of Sinbad”, 1907]
No wonder V. Bryusov wrote about "Romantic Flowers" that Gumilyov's poems "are now beautiful, elegant and, for the most part, interesting in form."
On his first visit to Paris, Gumilyov sent poems to Moscow, to the main magazine of the Symbolists, Libra. At the same time, he began publishing his own magazine, Sirius, which promoted "new values for a refined worldview and old values in a new aspect."
It is also curious that he became interested in traveling, but not in abstract trips beyond distant seas, but in traveling to a specific country - Abyssinia (Ethiopia). A country that is unremarkable, impoverished and with a very tense military-political situation. Then this part of the black continent was torn apart by England, France and Italy. In a word, the background was not the most suitable for a romantic trip. But there may be several reasons for the explanation: Abyssinia is the country of the ancestors of the great Pushkin, and black Abyssinians were then mostly Orthodox people. Although his father refused to provide money, Nicholas made several trips to Abyssinia.
Leaving the Sorbonne in 1908, Gumilyov returned to St. Petersburg and completely devoted himself to creativity, actively communicating in the literary environment. In 1908, he started his own magazine - Ostrov. It can be assumed that the title was supposed to emphasize the remoteness of Gumilyov and other authors of the journal from their contemporary writers. On the second issue the magazine burst. But later, Gumilyov met the critic Sergei Makovsky, whom he managed to ignite with the idea of creating a new magazine. This is how “Apollo” appeared - one of the most interesting Russian literary magazines of the beginning of the century, in which the declarations of the acmeists were soon published. He publishes in it not only his poems, but also acts as a literary critic. Gumilyov wrote excellent analytical articles on the work of his contemporaries: A. Blok, I. Bunin, V. Bryusov, K. Balmonte, A. Bely, N. Klyuev, O. Mandelstam, M. Tsvetaeva.
In 1910, returning from Africa, Nikolai published the book "Pearls". The poem, as is usually the case with symbolists (and in "Pearls" he still follows the poetics of symbolism), has many meanings. We can say that it is about the inaccessibility of a harsh and proud life for those who are accustomed to bliss and luxury, or about the unfulfillment of any dream. It can also be interpreted as an eternal conflict between the male and female principles: the female is untrue and changeable, the male is free and lonely. It can be assumed that in the image of the queen calling on heroes, Gumilyov symbolically depicted modern poetry, which is tired of decadent passions and wants something alive, even rude and barbaric.
Gumilyov is categorically not satisfied with the shrinking, meager Russian and European reality of the beginning of the century. He is not interested in everyday life (everyday stories are rare and taken more from books than from life), love is most often painful. Another thing is a journey, in which there is always a place for the sudden and mysterious. The true manifesto of the mature Gumilyov is "Journey to China" (1910):
What anguish gnaws at our hearts,
What are we trying to be?
The best girl can't give
More than what she has.
We all knew evil grief,
Threw all the cherished paradise
All of us, comrades, believe in the sea,
We can sail to distant China.
The main thing for Gumilyov is a deadly craving for danger and novelty, an eternal delight in the unknown.
Beginning with "Pearls", Gumilyov's poetry is an attempt to break through beyond the visible and the material. The flesh for the lyrical hero Gumilyov is a prison. He proudly says: “I am not chained to our age, / If I see through the abyss of time.” The visible world is only a screen of another reality. That is why Akhmatova called Gumilyov a "visionary" (a contemplator of the secret essence of things). The country referred to in “Journey to China” is least of all literal China, rather a symbol of mystery, dissimilarity to what surrounds the heroes of the poem.
His favorite hunters of the unknown have learned to recognize the limits of their capabilities, their impotence. They are ready to admit that
…there are other areas in the world
The moon of agonizing languor.
For higher power, supreme prowess
They are forever unattainable. ["Captain", 1909]
In the same year, Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov entered into a marriage alliance, they had known each other since Tsarskoye Selo, and their fates crossed many times, for example, in Paris, where Gumilyov, being a student at the Sorbonne, managed to publish a small magazine Sirius. Anna Akhmatova published in it, although she was very skeptical about the venture of her close friend. The magazine soon fell apart. But this episode from Gumilyov's life characterizes him not only as a poet, dreamer, traveler, but also as a person who wants to do business.
Immediately after the wedding, the young went on a trip to Paris and returned to Russia only in the fall, almost six months later. And no matter how strange it may seem, almost immediately after returning to the capital, Gumilyov quite unexpectedly, leaving his young wife at home, leaves again for distant Abyssinia. This country mysteriously strangely attracts the poet, thereby giving rise to various rumors and interpretations.
In St. Petersburg, Gumilyov often visited Vyacheslav Ivanov's "Tower", read his poems there. Ivanov, the theorist of symbolism, took care of young writers, but at the same time he imposed his tastes on them. In 1911 Gumilyov broke with Ivanov, for symbolism, in his opinion, had outlived itself.
In the same year, Gumilyov, together with the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, created a new literary group - the Workshop of Poets. In its very name, the approach to poetry that was originally inherent in Gumilyov was manifested. According to Gumilyov, a poet must be a professional, a craftsman and a minter of verse.
In February 1912, in the editorial office of Apollo, Gumilyov announced the birth of a new literary movement, which, after rather heated debate, was given the name "Acmeism". In the work “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism”, Gumilyov spoke about the fundamental difference between this trend and symbolism: “Russian symbolism directed its main forces into the area of the unknown.” Angels, demons, spirits, Gumilyov wrote, should not "outweigh other ... images". It is with the acmeists that the ecstasy of real landscape, architecture, taste, and smell returns to Russian verse. No matter how different the acmeists are from each other, they all had in common the desire to return the word to its original meaning, to saturate it with concrete content, blurred by symbolist poets.
In the first collections of Gumilyov, there are very few external signs of the years when they were written. There is almost no social problem, there is no hint of the events that worried contemporaries ... And at the same time, his poems add a lot to the palette of the Russian “Silver Age” - they are saturated with the same expectation of great changes, the same fatigue from the old, the premonition of the coming of some then a new, unprecedented, harsh and pure life.
Gumilyov's first acmeist book - "Alien Sky" (1912). Its author is a strict, wise poet who has abandoned many illusions, whose Africa acquires quite concrete and even everyday features. But the main thing is that the book called “Alien Sky” actually speaks not so much about Africa or Europe, but about Russia, which was previously quite rare in his poems.
I am sad from the book, yearning for the moon,
Maybe I don't need a hero at all
Here they are walking along the alley, so strangely tender,
A schoolboy with a schoolgirl, like Daphnis and Chloe. [“Modernity”, 1911-1912]
His subsequent collections (Kolchan, 1915; Pillar of Fire, 1921) cannot do without poems about Russia. If for Blok holiness and brutality in Russian life were inseparable, mutually conditioned, then Gumilyov, with his sober, purely rational mind, could in his mind separate rebellious, spontaneous Russia from the rich, powerful and patriarchal Russian state.
Rus' raves about God, red flame,
Where you can see angels through the smoke...
They dutifully believe in signs,
Loving yours, living yours. ["Old Estates", 1913]
“They” are the inhabitants of deep Rus', who are remembered by the poet on the estate of the Gumilyovs in Slepnev. No less sincere admiration for the old, grandfather's Russia and in the poem "Gorodok" (1916):
The cross is lifted over the church
A symbol of clear, Fatherly power,
And destroys the raspberry ring
Speech wise, human.
Savagery and self-forgetfulness, the spontaneity of Russian life appear to Gumilyov as the demonic face of his Motherland.
This path is light and darkness,
The whistle of robbers in the fields,
Quarrels, bloody fights
In terrible, like dreams, taverns. ["The Man", 1917]
This demonic face of Russia sometimes makes Gumilyov admire it poetically (as in the poem “The Man”, which is imbued with a premonition of a great storm, which is clearly inspired by the image of Grigory Rasputin). However, more often such a Russia - wild, brutal - causes rejection and rejection in him:
Forgive us, stinking and blind,
Forgive the humiliated to the end!
We lie on the dung and weep
Unwilling God's way.
…………………………………………….....
Here you are calling: “Where is sister Russia,
Where is she, beloved always?
Look up: in the constellation Serpent
A new star has lit up. ["France", 1918]
But Gumilyov also saw another, angelic face - monarchical Russia, the stronghold of Orthodoxy and, in general, the stronghold of the spirit, steadily and widely moving towards the light. Gumilyov believed that his homeland could, after passing through a cleansing storm, shine with a new light.
I know in this town
Human life is real
Like a boat on a river
To the goal of the driven outgoing. ["Gorodok", 1916]
The First World War seemed to Gumilyov such a cleansing storm. Hence the conviction that he should be in the army. However, the poet was prepared for such a step with his whole life, with all his views. And Nikolai, who fell ill on every journey, already in August 1914 went to the front as a volunteer. Adventurism, the desire to test oneself with the proximity of danger, the longing to serve a lofty ideal (this time - Russia), for the proud and joyful challenge that a warrior throws down to death - everything pushed him to war. He ended up in a cavalry reconnaissance platoon, where raids were made behind enemy lines at a constant risk to life. He managed to perceive trench everyday life romantically:
And it's so sweet to dress up Victory,
Like a girl in pearls
Walking on a smoke trail
Retreating enemy. [“Offensive”, 1914]
However, the war paid him in return: he was never wounded (although he often caught a cold), his comrades adored him, the command celebrated with awards and new ranks, and women - friends and admirers - recalled that the uniform suited him more than a civilian suit.
Gumilyov was a brave fighter - at the very end of 1914 he received the St. George Cross of the IV degree and the rank of corporal for the courage and courage shown in intelligence. In 1915, for distinction, he was awarded the St. George Cross of the III degree, and he became a non-commissioned officer. Nikolai actively wrote at the front; in 1916, friends help him publish a new collection, Quiver.
In May 1917, Gumilyov was assigned to a special expeditionary corps of the Russian army stationed in Paris. It was here, in the military attache, that Gumilyov would carry out a number of special assignments not only for the Russian command, but also prepare documents for the mobilization department of the joint headquarters of the allied forces in Paris. You can find many documents of that time similar in style to Gumilyov's style, but all of them are labeled with the mysterious “4 departments”.
In the summer of the same year, Gumilyov got stuck in Paris on his way to one of the European fronts, and then left for London, where he was actively engaged in creativity. In 1918 he returned to Petrograd.
Craving for the old way of life, order, loyalty to the laws of noble honor and service to the Fatherland - this is what distinguished Gumilyov in the troubled times of the seventeenth year and civil war. Speaking to revolutionary sailors, he defiantly read: “I gave him a Belgian pistol and a portrait of my sovereign” - one of his African poems. But the general upsurge seized, seared him too. Gumilyov did not accept Bolshevism - for the poet he was just the embodiment of the demonic face of Russia. A consistent aristocrat in everything (however, he rather played aristocracy - but after all, his whole life was built according to the laws of art!), Gumilyov hated the “Russian rebellion”. But he largely understood the reasons for the uprising and hoped that Russia would eventually find its original, wide and clear path. And therefore, Gumilyov believed, it was necessary to serve any Russia - he considered emigration a shame.
And Gumilyov gave lectures to the workers, gathered the “Sounding Shell” circle, where he taught the young to write and understand poetry, translated for the publishing house “World Literature”, published book after book. Gumilyov's friends and students - K. Chukovsky, V. Khodasevich, A. Akhmatova, G. Ivanov, O. Mandelstam and his other contemporaries - are unanimous: the poet has never been so free and at the same time harmonious, ambiguous and clear.
At the turn of epochs, life is more mysterious than ever: everything is permeated with mysticism. The theme of the mature Gumilyov is the clash of reason, duty and honor with the elements of fire and death, which endlessly attracted him - the poet, but also promised death to him - the soldier. This attitude to modernity - love-hate, jubilation-rejection - was akin to his attitude towards a woman (“And it’s sweet for me - don’t cry, dear, - / To know that you poisoned me”).
Poetry collections “The Bonfire”, “Pillar of Fire”, “To the Blue Star” (1923; prepared and published posthumously by friends) are full of masterpieces that mark a completely new stage Gumilyov's creativity. Anna Akhmatova called Gumilyov a “prophet” for a reason. He also predicted his own execution:
In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,
The executioner also cut off my head,
She lay with the others
Here in a slippery box, at the very bottom. ["Lost tram", 1919 (?)]
This is one of Gumilyov's favorite poems. For the first time here, Gumilyov's hero is not a conquering traveler, not a winner, and not even a philosopher who steadfastly accepts the misfortunes that rain down on him, but a man shocked by the abundance of deaths, exhausted, who has lost all support. He seemed to get lost in the "abyss of time", in the labyrinths of crimes and villainy - and each coup turns into the loss of his beloved. Never before had Gumilyov had such a helpless, humanly simple intonation:
Mashenka, you lived and sang here,
I, the groom, weaved a carpet,
Where is your voice and body now
Could it be that you are dead!
The lyrical hero of Gumilyov is served by the image of sovereign Petersburg with the “stronghold of Orthodoxy” - Isaac and the monument to Peter. But what can become a support for a thinker and a poet does not console a person:
And yet forever the heart is gloomy,
And it's hard to breathe, and it hurts to live ...
Masha, I never thought
What can be so love and sadness.
Late Gumilyov is full of love and compassion, shocking and audacity of youth are in the past. But there is no need to talk about peace. The poet felt that a great upheaval was brewing, that humanity was on the threshold of new era, - and painfully experienced the invasion of this unknown:
As once in overgrown horsetails
Roared from the consciousness of impotence
The creature is slippery, feeling on the shoulders
Wings that have not yet appeared, -
So century after century - soon, Lord? -
Under the scalpel of nature and art
Our spirit screams, the flesh languishes,
Giving birth to an organ for the sixth sense. [“The Sixth Sense”, 1919 (?)]
This feeling of a great promise, a certain threshold, leaves the reader with the whole suddenly cut short life of Gumilyov.
On August 3, 1921, Gumilyov was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy in the “Tagantsev Case”, and already on August 24, by the decision of Petrgubchek, he was sentenced to capital punishment - execution.
Then in August 1921, Gumilyov was defended by famous people of their time, who wrote a letter to the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, in which they petitioned for the release of N. S. Gumilyov under their guarantee. But this letter could not change anything, since it was received only on September 4, and the decision of Petrgubchek took place on August 24.
For seven decades, his poems were distributed in Russia in lists, and were published only abroad. But Gumilyov nourished Russian poetry with his cheerfulness, the strength of passions, and his readiness for trials. For many years he taught readers to maintain dignity in all circumstances, to remain themselves regardless of the outcome of the battle and face life directly:
But when bullets whistle around
When the waves break the sides
I teach them how not to be afraid
Don't be afraid and do what needs to be done.
…………………………………………...........
And when their last hour comes,
Smooth red fog will cover the eyes,
I'll teach them to remember right away
All the cruel, sweet life
All native, strange land
And standing before the face of God
With simple and wise words,
Wait quietly for His judgment. [“My Readers”, 1921]
GIRAFFE
Today, I see your eyes are especially sad
And the arms are especially thin, hugging their knees.
Listen: far, far, on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams.
Graceful harmony and bliss is given to him,
And his skin is decorated with a magic pattern,
With whom only the moon dares to equal,
Crushing and swaying on the moisture of wide lakes.
In the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship,
And his run is smooth, like a joyful bird flight.
I know that the earth sees many wonderful things,
When at sunset he hides in a marble grotto.
I know funny tales of mysterious countries
About the black maiden, about the passion of the young leader,
But you inhaled the heavy mist for too long,
You don't want to believe in anything but rain.
And how can I tell you about the tropical garden,
About slender palm trees, about the smell of unimaginable herbs.
You are crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad
Exquisite giraffe roams.
Each poem by Gumilyov opens up a new facet of the poet's views, his moods, his vision of the world. Content and refined style Gumilyov's poems help us to feel the fullness of life. They are confirmation that a person himself can create a bright, colorful world, leaving the gray everyday life. An excellent artist, Nikolai Gumilyov left an interesting legacy and had a significant impact on the development of Russian poetry.
The first lines of the poem reveal a rather bleak picture before us. We see a sad girl, she probably sits by the window, pulling her knees up to her chest, and through a veil of tears looks out into the street. Nearby is a lyrical hero who, trying to console and entertain her, leads a story about distant Africa, about Lake Chad. So adults, trying to console the child, tell about wonderful lands...
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov was born on April 15 (3 according to the old style) in Kronstadt in April 1886 in the family of a ship's doctor. He spent his childhood in Tsarskoe Selo, where in 1903 he entered the gymnasium, the director of which was the famous poet Innokenty Annensky. After graduating from the gymnasium, Gumilev went to Paris, to the Sorbonne. By this time, he was already the author of the book "The Way of the Conquistadors", noticed by one of the legislators of Russian symbolism, Valery Bryusov. In Paris, he published the Sirius magazine, actively communicated with French and Russian writers, and was in intensive correspondence with Bryusov, to whom he sent his poems, articles, and stories. During these years he twice visited Africa.
In 1908, Gumilyov's second poetic book, Romantic Flowers, was published with a dedication to his future wife Anna Gorenko (who later became the poetess Anna Akhmatova).
Returning to Russia, Gumilyov lives in Tsarskoye Selo, studies at the Faculty of Law, then at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, but never finishes the course. He enters the literary life of the capital, is published in various magazines. Since 1909, Gumilyov has become one of the main contributors to the Apollon magazine, where he maintains the Letters on Russian Poetry section.
He goes on a long journey through Africa, returns to Russia in 1910, releases the collection "Pearls", which made him famous poet, and marries Anna Gorenko. Soon Gumilyov again went to Africa, in Abyssinia he recorded local folklore, communicated with local residents, got acquainted with life and art.
In 1911–1912 Gumilyov departs from symbolism. Together with the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, he organized the "Workshop of Poets", in the depths of which the program of a new literary trend, acmeism, was born. A poetic illustration for theoretical calculations was the collection "Alien Sky", which many considered the best in Gumilyov's work.
In 1912, Gumilyov and Akhmatova gave birth to a son, Leo.
In 1914, in the very first days of the World War, the poet volunteered for the front, despite the fact that he was completely exempt from military service. By the beginning of 1915, Gumilyov had already been awarded two St. George's Crosses. In 1917, he ended up in Paris, then in London, in the military attache of the special expeditionary corps of the Russian army, which was part of the Entente joint command. Here, according to some biographers, Gumilyov performed some special tasks. During the war years, he did not stop his literary activity: the collection "Quiver" was published, the plays "Gondla" and "Poisoned Tunic", a series of essays "Notes of a Cavalier" and other works were written.
In 1918 Gumilyov returned to Russia and became one of the prominent figures in the literary life of Petrograd. He publishes a lot, works at the World Literature publishing house, lectures, directs the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets, works with young poets in the Sounding Shell studio.
In 1918, Gumilyov divorced Akhmatova, and in 1919 he married a second time, to Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt. They have a daughter, Elena. Anna Engelhardt-Gumilyova is dedicated to the collection of poems "The Pillar of Fire", the announcement of the release of which appeared after the death of the poet.
On August 3, 1921, Gumilyov was arrested on charges of participating in the anti-Soviet conspiracy of Professor Tagantsev (this case, according to most researchers today, was fabricated). According to the verdict of the court, he was shot. The exact date of the execution is not known. According to Akhmatova, the execution took place near Bernhardovka near Petrograd. The poet's grave has not been found.
Gumilyov died in the prime of his creative life. In the minds of contemporaries, his fate evoked associations with the fate of the poet of another era - Andre Chenier, who was executed by the Jacobins during the French Revolution. For sixty-five years, Gumilev's name remained under the strictest official ban.
Literature of the 20th century
“Our time is difficult for a pen...”
V.V. Mayakovsky
“Not a single world literature of the 20th century, except for Russian, knew such an extensive list of untimely, early deceased masters of culture ...”
V.A. Chalmaev
"The 20th century has broken us all..."
M.I. Tsvetaeva
Historical situation in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century
The last years of the 19th century became a turning point for Russian and Western cultures.. Since the 1890s and up to the October Revolution of 1917 Literally all aspects of Russian life have changed ranging from economics, politics and science to technology, culture and art.
The new stage of historical and cultural development was incredibly dynamic and at the same time extremely dramatic. It can be said that At a critical time, Russia was ahead of other countries in terms of the pace and depth of change, as well as the colossal nature of internal conflicts.
revolutions
- Historical upheavals in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century (in addition to world ones)
- First Russian Revolution
- February bourgeois-democratic revolution
- October socialist revolution
Nikolai Berdyaev (Russian religious and political philosopher)
"It was the era of the awakening of independent philosophical thought in Russia, the flowering of poetry and the sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult."
nineteenth century
Fragments of superstitions fell to dust,
Science has turned the dream into truth:
In steam, in the telegraph, in the phonograph, in the telephone,
Knowing the composition of stars and the life of bacteria.
The ancient world led to the eternal secrets of the thread;
The new world has given the mind power over nature;
Ages of struggle crowned everyone with freedom.
What remains is to combine knowledge with mystery.
We're nearing the end and a new era
Do not drown out the aspirations for a higher sphere .
(V. Bryusov)
Russian literature at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries is called silver age .
(1895 - 1920)
"Beginning" of the Silver Age
- The beginning of the "Silver Age" of Russian poetry is considered article by D. Merezhkovsky "Symbols".
- The father of the "term" is a Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev who called the "Silver Age" reflection, the revival of the "golden age ».
- One of the most likely reasons is crisis of the era, tense historical situation.
Modernism is the general name for various trends in art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which proclaimed a break with realism, the rejection of old forms and the search for new aesthetic principles.
At this time, the realistic era of Russian culture is replaced by modernist .
Modernism - the general name of different trends in art of the late 19th - early 20th century., who proclaimed a break with realism, a rejection of old forms and a search for new aesthetic principles.
All modernist trends are very different, have different ideals, pursue different goals, but they agree on one : work on the rhythm, word, bring the game of sounds to perfection.
Literature of the early 20th century
modernism
imagism
symbolism
futurism
acmeism
Table "Silver Age"
Name + y.y.
Representatives
Characteristics, features
Symbolism
from gr. symbolon - "sign, symbol".
1870-1920s
Symbolism as a trend was born in France in the 60s and 70s. 19th century .
The origins of Russian symbolism
France 1860-70s.
Charles Baudelaire
Arthur Rimbaud
Paul Verlaine
Stéphane Mallarmé
The founder of symbolism - Charles Baudelaire
Representatives
France 1860-70s.
F. Sologub
Z. Gippius
D. Merezhkovsky
K. Balmont
V. Bryusov
V. Ivanov
A. Bely
A. Blok
Symbolism features
- Symbol - an image that has an unlimited number of meanings, it conveys not the objective essence of the phenomenon, but the poet's individual idea of the world; image that requires the reader co-creation .
- Art is not a depiction of reality, but " comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways" (V.Ya. Bryusov) – through spiritual experience human and creative intuition of the artist.
- The world is unknowable. It is rationally possible to comprehend only the lower forms of life, and not the "higher reality" (the area " absolute ideas", "world soul")
- Antithesis of two worlds– real and ideal*
- sound recording .
- Poetry gravitates to music . Musicality- the highest form of sound manifestation.
- Color Significance. Each color has a meaning.
- Questions about the fate of Russia.
- Ideal Eternal Femininity(philosophy of V. Solovyov).
- Love is an unearthly feeling, it cannot be experienced bodily.
- Genres: sonnet, rondo
Acmeism
( from the Greek akme - "the highest degree",
"top", "flowering", "blooming time")
Acmeism arose in Russia in the 1910s
Representatives of acmeism
N. Gumilyov
A. Akhmatova
O. Mandelstam
S. Gorodetsky
Features of acmeism
- Acmeism out of symbolism and was his opposition »
- Criticism of the nebulous language of the Symbolists. Return to material the world, the subject, the exact meaning of the word.
- Rejection of secrecy, nebulae, polysemy.
- The world is material, objective, you need to look for values in the world and capture them with the help of accurate and understandable images .
- Cult " wonderful clarity »: poetry must be understood, the images are clear.
- The refinement of the details that create a specific picture words " with more stable content »
- Main genre - madrigal- a short piece of music and poetry love-lyrical content .
- Love is an earthly feeling, and not "the insight into other worlds."
Futurism
(from lat. futurum - future)
1912-1916
Futurism was born in Italy
in the 1910-1915s.
Representatives of futurism
V. Mayakovsky
V. Kamensky
V. Khlebnikov
D. Burliuk
I. Severyanin
Features of futurism
- Rejection of the traditional literature (" Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and so on. from the Steamboat of our time").
- Denial of the past in the name of the present and the present - in the name of the future.
- Motive - longing for the future, the destruction of the "old shackles" and standards, poetic clichés.
- chanting technological progress, y urbanization
- Rebel Poet, creator new reality. Courage, audacity.
- "Impatience" with the existing language, word creation, the creation of one's own language. Sound has its own meaning. The word becomes a sign.
- Sharp rejection of the ordinary, as well as the "ordinary secondness" of other poets.
- Literary experiments with genres, forms, poetic meters, etc.
- Metaphorization of reality. outrageous as a form of creativity.
The worldview of the futurists
- world of the future(“bedetlyane”) is the goal of life today.
- chanting technological progress, industrial city
- bow before action, movement, speed, strength and aggression
- Poet - creator of the world, language .
K. Malevich. Grinder
From the manifest:
We gave an example of a different sound and phrase: Hole, bul, schyl, shelter skoom you with boo r l ez(By the way, there is more Russian national in this five-verse line than in all of Pushkin's poetry).
The poem by A. Kruchenykh is the first example of new poetry
Imagism
from English. and fr. image - "image"
Image ism arose in England, USA
(i.e. English-speaking countries).
* Image inism – in Russia .
Representatives of Imagism
V. Shershenevich
S. Yesenin
A. Mariengof
Features of Imagism
- The main goal of this movement was image of the world just like that what he really looked like .
- proclaimed intrinsic value of the poetic image as such
- Skill comes first correctly and beautifully create images and not just words.
- Each the word is an image.
- « Eating" the way of meaning, image is more important than meaning which he can carry. Creation - " image directory ».
- The main thing - metaphor .
- Speeches against the politicization of art .
- Frequent genre - free verse, "free" from time signature, rhythm, etc.
Beyond literary styles and directions
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva
September 26 (October 8), 1892, Moscow, Russian empire- August 31, 1941, Yelabuga, USSR) - Russian poet, prose writer, translator, one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century.
