Essay what fascinates me the poetry of the silver age. "Silver Age" of Russian poetry
The 19th century, which became a period of extraordinary rise in national culture and grandiose achievements in all areas of art, was replaced by a complex, full of dramatic events and turning points of the 20th century. The golden age of social and artistic life was replaced by the so-called silver one, which gave rise to the rapid development of Russian literature, poetry and prose in new bright trends, and subsequently became the starting point of its fall.
In this article, we will focus on the poetry of the Silver Age, consider it and talk about the main directions, such as symbolism, acmeism and futurism, each of which was distinguished by the special music of the verse and a vivid expression of the experiences and feelings of the lyrical hero.
Poetry of the Silver Age. A turning point in Russian culture and art
It is believed that the beginning of the Silver Age of Russian literature falls on 80-90 years. 19th century At this time, the works of many remarkable poets appeared: V. Bryusov, K. Ryleev, K. Balmont, I. Annensky - and writers: L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The country is going through difficult times. During the reign of Alexander I, first there is a strong patriotic upsurge during the war of 1812, and then, due to a sharp change in the previously liberal policy of the tsar, society experiences a painful loss of illusions and severe moral losses.
The poetry of the Silver Age reaches its heyday by 1915. Public life and the political situation are characterized by a deep crisis, a restless, seething atmosphere. Mass demonstrations are growing, life is being politicized and at the same time personal self-awareness is being strengthened. Society is making strenuous attempts to find a new ideal of power and social order. And poets and writers keep up with the times, mastering new art forms and offering bold ideas. The human personality begins to be realized as a unity of many principles: natural and social, biological and moral. During the years of the February, October revolutions and the Civil War, the poetry of the Silver Age is in crisis.
A. Blok's speech "On the appointment of the poet" (February 11, 1921), delivered by him at a meeting on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of the death of A. Pushkin, becomes the final chord of the Silver Age.
Characteristics of the literature of the XIX - early XX centuries.
Let's look at the features of the poetry of the Silver Age. Firstly, one of the main features of the literature of that time was a huge interest in eternal topics: the search for the meaning of the life of an individual and all of humanity as a whole, the riddles of the national character, the history of the country, the mutual influence of the worldly and spiritual, human interaction and nature. Literature at the end of the 19th century becomes more and more philosophical: the authors reveal the themes of war, revolution, personal tragedy of a person who, due to circumstances, has lost peace and inner harmony. In the works of writers and poets, a new, bold, extraordinary, resolute and often unpredictable hero is born, who stubbornly overcomes all hardships and hardships. In most works, close attention is paid to precisely how the subject perceives tragic social events through the prism of his consciousness. Secondly, a feature of poetry and prose was an intensive search for original artistic forms, as well as means of expressing feelings and emotions. Poetic form and rhyme played a particularly important role. Many authors abandoned the classical presentation of the text and invented new techniques, for example, V. Mayakovsky created his famous "ladder". Often, to achieve a special effect, the authors used speech and language anomalies, fragmentation, alogisms, and even allowed
Thirdly, the poets of the Silver Age of Russian poetry freely experimented with the artistic possibilities of the word. In an effort to express complex, often contradictory, "volatile" spiritual impulses, the writers began to treat the word in a new way, trying to convey the subtlest shades of meanings in their poems. Standard, formulaic definitions of clear objective objects: love, evil, family values, morality - began to be replaced by abstract psychological descriptions. Precise concepts gave way to hints and understatements. Such fluctuation, fluidity of verbal meaning was achieved through the brightest metaphors, which often began to be based not on the obvious similarity of objects or phenomena, but on non-obvious signs.
Fourthly, the poetry of the Silver Age is characterized by new ways of conveying thoughts and feelings of the lyrical hero. The poems of many authors began to be created using images, motifs from different cultures, as well as hidden and explicit quotations. For example, many word artists included scenes from Greek, Roman and a little later Slavic myths and traditions in their creations. In the works of M. Tsvetaeva and V. Bryusov, mythology is used to build universal psychological models that make it possible to comprehend the human personality, in particular its spiritual component. Each poet of the Silver Age is brightly individual. It is easy to understand which of them belongs to certain verses. But they all tried to make their works more tangible, alive, full of colors, so that any reader could feel every word and line.
The main directions of the poetry of the Silver Age. Symbolism
Writers and poets who opposed realism announced the creation of a new, contemporary art - modernism. There are three main poetry of the Silver Age: symbolism, acmeism, futurism. Each of them had its own striking features. Symbolism originally arose in France as a protest against the everyday display of reality and dissatisfaction with bourgeois life. The founders of this trend, including J. Morsas, believed that only with the help of a special hint - a symbol, one can comprehend the secrets of the universe. Symbolism appeared in Russia in the early 1890s. The founder of this trend was D. S. Merezhkovsky, who proclaimed in his book three main postulates of the new art: symbolization, mystical content and "expansion of artistic impressionability."
Senior and junior symbolists
The first symbolists, later named senior, were V. Ya. Bryusov, K. D. Balmont, F. K. Sologub, Z. N. Gippius, N. M. Minsky, and other poets. Their work was often characterized by a sharp denial of the surrounding reality. They portrayed real life as boring, ugly and meaningless, trying to convey the subtlest shades of their sensations.
Period from 1901 to 1904 marks the onset of a new milestone in Russian poetry. The poems of the Symbolists are imbued with a revolutionary spirit and a premonition of future changes. The younger symbolists: A. Blok, V. Ivanov, A. Bely - do not deny the world, but utopianly await its transformation, praising divine beauty, love and femininity, which will surely change reality. It is with the appearance of the younger symbolists on the literary arena that the concept of a symbol enters literature. Poets understand it as a multifaceted word that reflects the world of "heaven", the spiritual essence and at the same time the "earthly kingdom".
Symbolism during the Revolution
Poetry of the Russian Silver Age in 1905-1907. is undergoing changes. Most Symbolists, focusing on the socio-political events taking place in the country, are reconsidering their views on the world and beauty. The latter is now understood as the chaos of struggle. Poets create images of a new world that comes to replace the dying one. V. Ya. Bryusov creates the poem "The Coming Huns", A. Blok - "The Barge of Life", "Rising from the darkness of the cellars ...", etc.
The symbolism also changes. Now she turns not to the ancient heritage, but to Russian folklore, as well as Slavic mythology. After the revolution, there is a demarcation of the symbolists, who want to protect art from the revolutionary elements and, on the contrary, are actively interested in the social struggle. After 1907, the disputes of the Symbolists exhausted themselves, and imitation of the art of the past replaced it. And since 1910, Russian symbolism has been in crisis, clearly reflecting its internal inconsistency.
Acmeism in Russian poetry
In 1911, N. S. Gumilyov organized a literary group - the Workshop of Poets. It included the poets O. Mandelstam, G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich. This new direction did not reject the surrounding reality, but accepted reality as it is, asserting its value. The "Workshop of Poets" began to publish its own magazine "Hyperborea", as well as print works in "Apollo". Acmeism, originating as a literary school to find a way out of the crisis of symbolism, brought together poets very different in ideological and artistic settings.
Features of Russian futurism
The Silver Age in Russian poetry gave rise to another interesting trend called "futurism" (from Latin futurum, that is, "future"). The search for new artistic forms in the works of the brothers N. and D. Burlyukov, N. S. Goncharova, N. Kulbina, M. V. Matyushin became a prerequisite for the emergence of this trend in Russia.
In 1910, the futuristic collection "The Garden of Judges" was published, in which the works of such brightest poets as V. V. Kamensky, V. V. Khlebnikov, the Burliuk brothers, E. Guro were collected. These authors formed the core of the so-called Cubo-Futurists. Later, V. Mayakovsky joined them. In December 1912, an almanac was published - "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste". The verses of the Cubo-Futurists "Buch of the Forest", "Dead Moon", "Roaring Parnassus", "Gag" became the subject of numerous disputes. At first, they were perceived as a way to tease the habits of the reader, but a closer reading revealed a keen desire to show a new vision of the world and a special social involvement. Anti-aestheticism turned into a rejection of soulless, fake beauty, rudeness of expressions was transformed into the voice of the crowd.
egofuturists
In addition to cubofuturism, several other currents arose, including egofuturism, headed by I. Severyanin. He was joined by such poets as V. I. Gnezdov, I. V. Ignatiev, K. Olimpov and others. They created the publishing house "Petersburg Herald", published magazines and almanacs with original names: "Skycops", "Eagles over the abyss" , "Zasakhar Kry", etc. Their poems were distinguished by extravagance and were often composed of words created by themselves. In addition to the ego-futurists, there were two more groups: "Centrifuga" (B. L. Pasternak, N. N. Aseev, S. P. Bobrov) and "Mezzanine of Poetry" (R. Ivnev, S. M. Tretyakov, V. G. Sherenevich).
Instead of a conclusion
The Silver Age of Russian poetry was short-lived, but united a galaxy of the brightest, most talented poets. Many of their biographies developed tragically, because by the will of fate they had to live and work in such a fatal time for the country, a turning point in the revolutions and chaos of the post-revolutionary years, the civil war, the collapse of hopes and rebirth. Many poets died after the tragic events (V. Khlebnikov, A. Blok), many emigrated (K. Balmont, Z. Gippius, I. Severyanin, M. Tsvetaeva), some took their own lives, were shot or disappeared in Stalin's camps. But all of them managed to make a huge contribution to Russian culture and enrich it with their expressive, colorful, original works.
Composition
The beginning of the twentieth century ... The coming whirlwind of social upheaval, it seems, must sweep away. But with the roar of weapons - the Russian-Japanese, World War I, other wars - the muses are not silent. I see, I hear, I feel the fiery hearts of poets beat, whose poems have now burst into our lives. They broke in - and are unlikely to be forgotten. The Silver Age is a time of vivid metaphors, a tireless search for the deep meaning of words, sounds, and phrases. The star, called Polynya, revealed its face to the earth - isn't it illuminating the pages of verses that have been inaccessible to us for a long time? Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak - and, of course, the great Blok - they call to us through the storms of wars and upheavals, they call us to their rich imaginative world. I admire the poetry of Boris Pasternak. I like his hearty impetuosity, kindness, spirituality, rare impressionability. Again and again I see pages in front of me, covered with his patterned and flying handwriting, as if caught by the wind. Lyrics, poems, short stories, dramatic translations, memoirs, prose, showed us a huge world of living and bright images, not always clear at once, but when reading them, they reveal what could be said just like that, with these very words. Living modernity has always been present in Pasternak's poetry - it was precisely alive, all-pervading, breathing. “And the window on the cross will squeeze the hunger of wood” - it’s hard for a superficial glance, but upon careful reading - it’s the cold of post-revolutionary winters here; a window ready to “enter” the room, “squeeze” it, and “hunger” becomes its essence, as well as the essence of those living in it. For all the originality of the poet's lyrics, readers sensitively responded even to his "ballad" lines like: "Let me in, I need to see the count", not to mention books of poems - such as "Over the Barriers", "Themes and Variations", "On Early Trains ". Reverence for the miracle of life, a feeling of gratitude for it - perhaps the main theme of Pasternak's poems. He almost did not know the boundaries between animate and inanimate nature. “And you can’t cross the road beyond the tyn without trampling the universe,” the poet wrote, as if echoing Tyutchev, surrounded on all sides by the “flaming abyss”, with Fet, whose lyrics were wide open to the infinity of the universe. Rains and blizzards, winters and spring streams, the Urals and the North, the Moscow region, native to the poet, with its lilies of the valley and pines - all this entered the soul of Pasternak with a pristine purity of colors. “This is the clicking of crushed ice floes,” he writes about poetry, “the house shuddered, pouring rain” ... His world is something alive that came to life under the magic brush of the artist. “Looks, looks, sees, learns” - it was not in vain that Akhmatova described his gaze, his “understanding”, “getting used to” the world around. Questions about life and death, about art, about the self-affirmation of a person from adolescence excite Marina Tsvetaeva, whose poetry also entered my life and, I think, remained with me forever. Her poems reveal the charm of a deep and strong nature, not recognizing stereotypes, dogmas imposed by someone, extraordinary in everything, Tsvetaeva the poet is inseparable from Tsvetaeva the man. Ultimate sincerity - that's what attracts me to her poems, written "so early." Early - for our consciousness, which is not yet ready to trample on patterns. But late, very late, these lines came into the life of our country. In each - the strength of character, will, personality. And the lyrical hero, or rather, the lyrical "I" in Tsvetaeva's poems, is a strong personality, freedom-loving, endowed with the most beautiful of talents - the talent for love of life. There was no distant Yelabuga in her life, a terrible wooden beam, but there was a passionate desire to understand, appreciate, love. Conceal everything so that people forget Like melted snow and a candle? To be in the future only a handful of dust Under the grave cross? - Don't want! - exclaims the poetess. The lyrical "I" of Tsvetaeva is a man of action, an act. A serene, calm existence is not for her. Anna Akhmatova's poems seem completely different to me. Behind her every word is that spiritual pain that the poet brings to the world, urging him to share suffering, and therefore becoming closer and dearer to every reader's heart. Akhmatova's style is that amazing simplicity that always characterizes a genuine feeling, that reticence that shocks, that laconicism that makes me peer into her lines, looking for clues to the magical harmony ringing there. Thrown. Made up word! What am I, a flower or a letter? And the eyes are already looking sternly In the darkened dressing table. The loss of a friend, a loved one - and this is expressed so succinctly that it is as if you are experiencing that lump rising to the throat that tormented the poetess at that moment. The images are light and seem to be muffled, but these are the manifestations of the true torment of the grieving soul, suppressed in themselves. At times it seemed to the poetess that she was going "to nowhere and never", that her voice would be bent and trampled. This did not happen - her poems live, her voice sounds. "Silver Age" ... Surprisingly capacious words that accurately determined the whole period of the development of Russian verse. The return of romanticism? - obviously, to some extent, and so. In general, the birth of a new generation of poets, many of whom left their homeland that had rejected them, many died under the millstones of the civil war and Stalin's madness. But Tsvetaeva was right, exclaiming: My poems, like precious wines, - Their turn will come! And he has arrived. Many now comprehend Tsvetaeva's lines more and more deeply, discovering for themselves great truths, vigilantly, guarded for decades from prying eyes.
At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Russian poetry, like Western poetry, is also experiencing rapid development. It is dominated by avant-garde and modernist tendencies. Modernist period of development of Russian poetry of the late XIX - early XX centuries. called " silver age”, Russian poetic renaissance.
The ideological basis for the development of new Russian poetry was the flourishing of religious and philosophical thought, which takes place in Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The new philosophy appears as a critical reaction to the positivism of the second half of the 19th century. with his rational attitude to life as a fact of being exclusively material. The new Russian philosophy, on the contrary, was idealistic, turned to the irrational aspects of human existence and tried to synthesize the experience of science, philosophy and religion. Its main representatives include M. Fedorov, N. Berdyaev, P. Florensky, N. Lossky, S. Frank and others, among whom the outstanding Russian thinker and poet Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov had not the most direct influence on the formation of the ideological basis of Russian poetic modernism. His philosophical ideas and artistic images are at the origins of Russian poetic symbolism.
During the "Silver Age" in Russian poetry, four generations of poets clearly showed themselves: Balmontivska (who was born in the 60s and early 70s of the XIX century), Blokovsky (about 1880), Gumilevskaya (about 1886) and generation of the 90s, represented by the names of G. Ivanov, G. Adamovich, M. Tsvetaeva, R. Ivnev, S. Yesenin, V. Mayakovsky, M. Otsup, V. Shershenevich and many others. A significant number of Russian writers were forced to emigrate abroad (K. Balmont, I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, Sasha Cherny and many others). The destruction of Russian culture and poetry of the "Silver Age" was finally completed in the fall of 1922 by the forced expulsion of 160 famous scientists, writers, philosophers, journalists, and public figures from Soviet Russia abroad, which marked the beginning of the formation of a powerful emigration branch of Russian literature and culture.
Russian poetry of the "Silver Age" has become a kind of summing up the two hundred years of development of new Russian poetry. She picked up and continued the best traditions of the previous historical stages in the development of Russian poetry and at the same time turned to a significant reassessment of the values of artistic and cultural priorities that directed her development.
In the history of the development of Russian poetry of the "Silver Age", three directions most clearly manifested themselves: symbolism, acmeism, futurism. A separate place in Russian poetic modernism at the beginning of the 20th century. occupied by the so-called "new peasant" poets, as well as poets whose work does not clearly correlate with a specific artistic direction.
Symbolism. The first of the new directions appeared symbolism, which marked the beginning of the "silver age" of Russian poetry. Symbolism (Greek sutioliop - a conventional sign, a sign) is a literary trend of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the main feature of which is that a specific artistic image turns into a multi-valued symbol. Symbolism is born in France and how the literary movement was formed begins its history in 1880, when Stéphane Mallarmé starts a literary salon (the so-called "Tuesdays" of Mallarmé), in which young poets take part. Program symbolist actions take place in 1886, when Sonnets to Wagner are printed during
poems of poets (Verlaine, Mallarme, Pl, Dujardin, etc.), “Treatise on the Word” by R. Gil and an article by J. Moreas “Literary Manifesto. Symbolism."
Outstanding writers also associate their work with symbolism outside of France. In the 1880s, Belgian symbolists began their activities - the poet Emile Verhaern and the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. At the turn of the century, prominent Austrian artists associated with symbolism, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke, performed. The Polish poet Boleslav Lesmyan also belonged to the Symbolists, certain works of the German playwright Gergart Hauptmann, the English writer Oscar Wilde, and the late Henrik Ibsen correlate with the artistic principles of symbolism. Symbolism entered Ukrainian poetry with the works of M. Voronoi, O. Oles, P. Kar-Mansky, V. Pachevsky, M. Yatskiv and others. Such outstanding Ukrainian poets as M. Rylsky and Tychyna, whose "Solar Clarinets" constitute the pinnacle of Ukrainian symbolism, went through the School of Symbolism.
Symbolism opposed its aesthetic principles and poetics to realism and naturalism, directions which it emphatically rejected. Symbolists are not interested in recreating reality, the concrete and objective world, in a simple depiction of the facts of everyday life, as naturalists did. It was in their isolation from reality that the symbolist artists saw their superiority over representatives of other trends. The symbol is the foundation of the whole direction. The symbol helps the artist to find "correspondences" between phenomena, between the real and the mysterious worlds.
The starting point of Russian symbolism was the activity of two literary circles that arose almost simultaneously in Moscow and St. Petersburg on the basis of a common interest in the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, as well as the work of European symbolists. At the end of the 90s of the XIX century. both groups of symbolists united, thus creating a single literary direction of symbolism. At the same time, the publishing house "Scorpion" (1899-1916) appeared in Moscow, around which Russian symbolists were grouped. Russian symbolists are usually divided into older and younger (according to the time of their entry into literature and some difference in theoretical positions). The senior symbolists who came to literature in the 1890s include Dmitry Merezhkovsky (their main ideologist), Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub and others. The older symbolists derived the ideological basis of their views mainly from the principles of French symbolism, which they mainly focused on, although they did not completely reject the achievements of Russian idealistic thought. The younger symbolists entered literature already at the beginning of the 20th century. (Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others), were more guided by the philosophical search for the proper Russian idealistic thought and the tradition of national poetry, calling the poetry of V. Zhukovsky, F. Tyutchev and A. Fet their forerunners.
Symbolist poets compared their activities with theurgy (priesthood), and often tried to give signs of a ritual-magical text similar to spells to their poems. The content of symbolic images is primarily designed to excite in the listener's imagination a complex game of associations associated with the corresponding emotional mood and devoid of a clearly defined subject basis. The symbolists attached particular importance to the sound of the verse, its melody and sound writing, as well as rare poetic vocabulary. They compared the sound writing of verse with music, and this latter was associated for them with the pinnacle of art and the optimal means for expressing a certain symbolic content. Symbolism played an extremely important role in the development of Russian poetry of the Silver Age. He, firstly, returned to poetry that significance and that authority that it had lost in the literature of realism, oriented towards prose, and, secondly, laid down the traditions on which other directions in the development of Russian poetry grew up (perceiving or starting from them) 20th century and before acmeism and futurism.
Acmeism - a modernist trend in Russian poetry of the 1910s, united Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Gorodetsky, Georgy Ivanov, Mikhail Zenkevich, Grigory Narbut and "sympathizers" Mikhail Kuzmin, Boris Sadovskiy and other artists. Quite often, acmeists call their direction “Adamism” (from the first person, the forefather Adam, whose image in this case was associated with the expression of a natural and direct “initial” clear view of life - as opposed to symbolism abstracted from reality. Gumilyov defined Adamism as “courageously firm and a clear view of life". During the course, M. Kuzmin's term "clarism" was also used, which the poet calls "beautiful clarity" as one of the basic principles of the new poetry.
At first, the movement arose in the form of a free association of several poets who dissociated themselves from symbolism, more precisely, from Vyacheslav Ivanov's Poetry Academy in protest against his devastating criticism of Gumilev's poem The Prodigal Son (1911). The young poets created a union called the Workshop of Poets (existed in 1911-1914, then resumed its activities in 1920-1922), covering a wide poetic circle (before the Workshop of Poets, A. Blok was also included).
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“Poems about a Beautiful Lady” - early
morning dawn - those dreams and fogs,
with which the soul struggles to get
the right to live
Loneliness, darkness, silence - a closed book
Genesis... everything there... captivates with inaccessibility...
Alexander Blok
Early work of Alexander Blok. His first collection - "Poems about the Beautiful Lady." It reflected the thoughts, mood and attitude of a twenty-two-year-old youth. Just look at the photograph taken in 1904. What universal sadness in the eyes! "The tragic tenor of the era" called Alexander Blok Anna Akhmatova.
The first collection of A. Blok collected poems containing often opposite views on the world.
Vladimir Solovyov had a great influence on the poet and his work. The idea of duality, the feminine principle did not leave Blok.
The poet's desire to comprehend the world was reflected in his early lyrical works. The feminine principle rules the world, it is eternal, imperishable. According to Blok, a person in a state of love breaks through to the higher spheres of being. The love of a poet is a constant expectation.
In the first collection - admiration and service of fate to the eternal Beautiful Lady and the expectation of love. But over time comes the realization of the impossibility of meeting with the harmonization of the world that owns the universe. There is a gap between the poet and the Lady, which the poet is very hard going through. A bright dream is being replaced by hopelessness, incomprehensibility. Symbols such as a blizzard, a whirlwind, a blizzard appear. The flickering light of the lantern symbolizes the local world, white countries, dawns, azure - other places, leaving A. Blok's early lyrics. Bloody, red, crimson tones appear. The city appears before the eyes of the reader in a mystical guise. The knight's armor of the hero is replaced by a harlequin costume. Instead of a bowing monk, there is a laughing jester, a fantastic, ghostly vision: “A black man was running around the city ...” In Blok, ordinary, everyday life is intertwined with mystical, unreal.
But, despite the inconsistency of thoughts, the main motives, the views of A. Blok's early poems were preserved throughout the poet's work. The cycle of poems about the Beautiful Lady is an attempt to merge the individual soul of the poet with the soul of the world.
The collection "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" has three sections, internally interconnected; through them, as it were, the dramatic movement of the poet's creative thought is carried out: these are sections-chapters - "Stillness", "Crossroads", "Damage".
The first section, "Stillness", contains verses directly addressed to the Beautiful Lady. The title was distributed similarly to the poem by V. Solovyov “Poor friend! The path has worn you out...”:
Death and Time reign on earth, -
You do not call them masters;
Everything, whirling, disappears into the mist,
Only the sun of love is motionless.
and the very concept of “immobility” Blok puts a deep philosophical meaning, and it has many shades in his poetic allegory. The most undoubted of them expresses the idea of constancy, fidelity, knightly service, expressing the most important thing, “hidden and inexpressible”.
Oh, Holy One, how gentle are the candles,
How pleasing are Your features!
I hear neither sighs nor speeches,
But I believe: Honey - You.
“Stillness” is a poetic prologue to Blok's entire work. It is here that the story of the sacrificial love of the Knight for the Beautiful Lady is told, and at the same time it is a true story, a real, earthly story of A. Blok's love for L. D. Mendeleeva. In “Stillness”, a theme sacred to Blok is born: the poet and his ideal of the Beautiful (the fusion of Good, Beauty, Truth), to which he was faithful all his life.
The love story of the Knight and the Beautiful Lady is dramatic from beginning to end. At the heart of the plot movement of the first book is the initial and ever-increasing drama, which lies in the very nature of the characters, and above all in the character of the Beautiful Lady. Her appearance is changeable, she is incomprehensible. This motive was identified immediately, in the second poem of the collection “I Anticipate You ...”:
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
This prophetic poem is a tuning fork to all lyrics. In it, not only the future “damage” of the Beautiful Lady is “foretold” -
Audacious arouse suspicion,
Replacing the usual features at the end, -
but also the future inevitable path of the lyrical hero:
Oh, how I fall - both sadly and lowly,
Not having overcome deadly dreams!
The poem ends with a couplet, which expresses the tragic inconsistency of Blok's hero:
How clear is the horizon!
And radiance is near.
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
The poem "I kept them in the chapel of John ..." was written the day after L. D. Mendeleeva agreed to become Blok's wife. “... What has never happened before, what I have been waiting for four years ...” - Blok wrote in his diary.
And then the vaults lit up with an evening beam.
She gave me the Royal Answer.
In the second section of the collection, which Blok called "Crossroads", the tonality and rhythm change dramatically, Blok's Petersburg, his City, appears. In "Stillness" the extraordinary fusion of the poet with the natural world attracts attention. This merger is similar to I. Bunin's worldview.
"Crossroads" reflected a sharp turn in Blok's lyrics.
The section "Crossroads" opens with a meaningful and frankly bold poem "Deception", far from the radiance of the first part of the collection. Instead of pink dawns, factory fumes, a red color catches the eye: a red dwarf, a red cap, a red sun: “Red slingshots are put along the streets. The soldiers are slapping...”
The following poems increasingly develop the theme of deceit, the theme of the city, in which vice and death are concentrated. The red tones intensify even more: the bloody sun, the red limits of the city, the red janitor, the drunken scarlet water. In the poem “The City in the Red Limits...”, dedicated to his best friend Yevgeny Ivanov, who also experienced painful love-hatred for the city of Peter, Blok exaggerates to such an extent that we no longer have a city, but a “gray-stone body” with a “dead face”, a bell with a “bloody tongue”.
The poems of this section “Everyone shouted at the round tables...”, “The light in the window staggered...”, “I went out into the night...” anticipate Blok, the poet of “The Terrible World”. Here the tragic themes of the booth, harlequin, doubleness appear.
I do not believe in admiration
With darkness - one -
At the thoughtful door
The harlequin laughed.
Blok explains that duality, that is, the splitting of the human soul, crossroads, crossroads, comes from an accurate understanding of the tragic dialectic of life at the turn of the century. “Crossroads”, “Crossroads”, “Crossroads” are also synonymous with the historical milestone - the end of the 19th and the beginning of the new 20th century.
In one of his last letters, Blok said words that were prophetic for him, which can be equally applied to his past, present and future, to his whole life: “... art is where there is damage, loss, suffering, cold. This thought always guards. The title of the final section of the cycle "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" - "Damage" - contains exactly this meaning, which was mentioned in the letter.
The first poem that opens the final section of the book is "Ekklesias". This is a frank story about the inevitability of a catastrophe. The epigraph to the poem was taken by Blok from the Bible.
All wild fear is confused.
Crowded in a heap of people, animals.
And in vain close the doors
Until then, looking out the window.
The poem “I got up in the radiance ...” is a story about the tragic death of a woman.
Mommy doesn't hurt, pink kids,
Mommy lay down on the rails herself.
Good man, fat neighbor,
Thank you, thank you. Mom didn't help.
It would seem that here the Beautiful Lady disappears, giving way to the heroine of the harsh, dramatic everyday life of the city. But here is the elegy “When I go to rest from the times...” does not let this magical image be forgotten. Moreover, if we consider the work of A. Blok as a whole, then this poem is perceived as a harbinger of Blok's elegy “On valor, on exploits, on glory ...”, which opens the lyric book “Night Hours”.
The collection ends with the poem “The distance is blind, the days are without anger ...” This poem in its tone resembles the poem from the “Prayers” cycle, placed by Blok at the end of the first section of “Immobility” - “Watchmen at the entrance to the tower ...” It picks up the last lines "Prayers":
Silently tie our hands together
Let's fly into the sky.
Now in these lines the motive of eternal battle, Blok's restlessness sounds:
What are moments of powerlessness?
Time is a light smoke...
We'll spread our wings again
Let's fly again!
And again, in a thoughtless shift
dissecting the firmament,
Meet a new whirlwind of visions
Let's meet life and death!
The poem ends with a couplet, which expresses the tragic inconsistency of Blok's hero:
With darkness - one -
At the thoughtful door
... boldly arouse suspicion,
How clear is the horizon!
Let's fly again!
The collection ends with the poem “The distance is blind, the days are without anger ...” This poem, in its tone, resembles a poem from the “Prayers” cycle, placed by Blok at the end of the first section of “Immobility” - “Watchmen at the entrance to the tower ...” It picks up the last lines of the “Prayer”:
And again, in a thoughtless shift
Let's fly into the sky.
What are moments of powerlessness?
Not having overcome deadly dreams!
The section "Crossroads" opens with a meaningful and frankly bold poem "Deception", far from the radiance of the first part of the collection. Instead of pink dawns, factory fumes, a red color catches the eye: a red dwarf, a red cap, a red sun: “Red slingshots are put along the streets. The soldiers are slapping…”
But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.
The following poems increasingly develop the theme of deceit, the theme of the city, in which vice and death are concentrated. The red tones intensify even more: the bloody sun, the red limits of the city, the red janitor, the drunken scarlet water. In the poem “The City in the Red Limits ...”, dedicated to his best friend Yevgeny Ivanov, who also experienced painful love-hate for the city of Peter, Blok exaggerates to such an extent that we no longer have a city, but a “gray-stone body” with “ dead face”, a bell with a “bloody tongue”.
The right to live
But the future inevitable path of the lyrical hero:
I hear neither sighs nor speeches,
The love story of the Knight and the Beautiful Lady is dramatic from beginning to end. At the heart of the plot movement of the first book is the initial and ever-increasing drama, which lies in the very nature of the characters, and above all in the character of the Beautiful Lady. Her appearance is changeable, she is incomprehensible. This motive was identified immediately, in the second poem of the collection “I Anticipate You…”:
Essays on Literature: What attracted me to the poetry of the Silver Age
Meet a new whirlwind of visions
Vladimir Solovyov had a great influence on the poet and his work. The idea of duality, the feminine principle did not leave Blok.