The Silver Age of Russian poetry in brief. Collection - Silver Age of Russian Poetry
At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Russian poetry, like Western poetry, is also experiencing rapid development. It is dominated by avant-garde and modernist trends. The 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 flowering of religious and philosophical thought, which occurred in Russia at the turn of the 19th and 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 exclusively material existence. 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 a less direct influence on the formation of the ideological basis of Russian poetic modernism. His philosophical ideas and artistic images stand at the origins of Russian poetic symbolism.
During the “Silver Age”, four generations of poets clearly showed themselves in Russian poetry: Balmontivske (who was born in the 60s and early 70s of the 19th century), Blokovskoe (around 1880), Gumilevskaya (around 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 deportation from Soviet Russia abroad of 160 famous scientists, writers, philosophers, journalists, and public figures, which marked the beginning of the formation of a powerful emigration branch of Russian literature and culture.
Russian poetry of the “Silver Age” became a kind of summing up of the two hundred years of development of new Russian poetry. She picked up and continued the best traditions of 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 its development.
In the history of the development of Russian poetry of the “Silver Age,” three directions most clearly manifested themselves: symbolism, acmeism, and futurism. A special place in Russian poetic modernism of the early 20th centuries. occupied by the so-called “new peasant” poets, as well as poets whose work does not clearly correlate with a specific artistic movement.
Symbolism. The first of the new trends to appear was symbolism, which marked the beginning of the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry. Symbolism (Greek symbolism - conventional sign, sign) is a literary movement 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 begins a literary salon (the so-called “Tuesdays” of Mallarmé), in which young poets take part. Symbolist program actions took place in 1886, when “Sonnets to Wagner” were published in
seven poets (Verlaine, Mallarmé, Ple, Dujardin, etc.), “Treatise on the Word” by R. Gil and the article by J. Moreas “Literary Manifesto. Symbolism."
Outstanding writers outside France also associate their work with symbolism. In the 1880s, Belgian symbolists began their activities - the poet Emile Verhaeren and the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. At the turn of the century, outstanding Austrian artists associated with symbolism appeared - Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke. The Polish poet Boleslaw Lesmyana also belonged to the Symbolists; individual works of the German playwright Gerhart 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, studied the school of symbolism.
Symbolism contrasted its aesthetic principles and poetics with realism and naturalism, trends that it resolutely rejected. Symbolists are not interested in recreating real reality, the concrete and objective world, in simply depicting the facts of everyday life, as naturalists did. It was in their isolation from reality that symbolist artists saw their superiority over representatives of other movements. The symbol is the foundation of the entire direction. The symbol helps the artist to find “correspondences” between phenomena, between the real and 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 Scorpion publishing house (1899-1916) appeared in Moscow, around which Russian symbolists grouped. Russian symbolists are usually divided into senior and junior (according to the time of their entry into literature and some differences 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 primarily from the principles of French symbolism, which they were mainly guided by, although they did not completely reject the achievements of Russian idealistic thought. Younger symbolists entered literature already at the beginning of the 20th century. (Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others), were more focused on the philosophical search for 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 to theurgy (priesthood), and often tried to give their poems the characteristics of a ritual-magical text, similar to spells. The content of symbolic images is primarily designed to excite in the listener’s imagination a complex game of associations associated with a corresponding emotional mood and devoid of a clearly defined subject basis. Symbolists attached particular importance to the sound of verse, its melody and sound writing, as well as rare poetic vocabulary. They compared the sound recording of verse with music, and the 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 the significance and 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 (perceiving or starting from them) at the beginning XX century and before that Acmeism and Futurism.
Silver age of Russian poetry.
Silver Age- the heyday of Russian poetry at the beginning of the 20th century, characterized by the appearance of a large number of poets, poetic movements that preached a new aesthetic, different from the old ideals. The name “Silver Age” is given by analogy with the “Golden Age” (the first third of the 19th century). Philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev and writers Nikolai Otsup and Sergei Makovsky claimed the authorship of the term. The "Silver Age" lasted from 1890 to 1930.
The question of the chronological framework of this phenomenon remains controversial. If researchers are quite unanimous in defining the beginning of the “Silver Age” - this is a phenomenon at the turn of the 80s - 90s of the 19th century, then the end of this period is controversial. It can be attributed to both 1917 and 1921. Some researchers insist on the first option, believing that after 1917, with the outbreak of the Civil War, the “Silver Age” ceased to exist, although in the 1920s those who created this phenomenon with their creativity were still alive. Others believe that the Russian Silver Age was interrupted in the year of the death of Alexander Blok and the execution of Nikolai Gumilev or the suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the time frame for this period is about thirty years.
Symbolism.
The new literary movement - symbolism - was the product of a deep crisis that gripped European culture at the end of the 19th century. The crisis manifested itself in a negative assessment of progressive social ideas, in a revision of moral values, in a loss of faith in the power of the scientific subconscious, and in a passion for idealistic philosophy. Russian symbolism arose during the years of the collapse of Populism and the widespread spread of pessimistic sentiments. All this led to the fact that the literature of the “Silver Age” does not pose topical social issues, but global philosophical ones. The chronological framework of Russian symbolism is the 1890s - 1910. The development of symbolism in Russia was influenced by two literary traditions:
Domestic - poetry of Fet, Tyutchev, prose of Dostoevsky;
French symbolism - the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire. The symbolism was not uniform. It distinguished schools and movements: “senior” and “junior” symbolists.
Senior Symbolists.
St. Petersburg symbolists: D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.N. Gippius, F.K. Sologub, N.M. Minsky. At first, the work of the St. Petersburg symbolists was dominated by decadent moods and motives of disappointment. Therefore, their work is sometimes called decadent.
Moscow Symbolists: V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont.
The “older” symbolists perceived symbolism in aesthetic terms. According to Bryusov and Balmont, a poet is, first of all, a creator of purely personal and purely artistic values.
Junior Symbolists.
A.A. Blok, A. Bely, V.I. Ivanov. The “younger” symbolists perceived symbolism in philosophical and religious terms. For the “younger”, symbolism is a philosophy refracted in poetic consciousness.
Acmeism.
Acmeism (Adamism) stood out from symbolism and opposed it. The Acmeists proclaimed materiality, objectivity of themes and images, precision of words (from the standpoint of “art for art’s sake”). Its formation is connected with the activities of the poetic group “Workshop of Poets”. The founders of Acmeism were Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky. Gumilyov’s wife Anna Akhmatova, as well as Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Zenkevich, Georgy Ivanovo and others joined the flow.
Futurism.
Russian futurism.
Futurism was the first avant-garde movement in Russian literature. Assigning itself the role of a prototype of the art of the future, futurism as its main program put forward the idea of destructing cultural stereotypes and instead offered an apology for technology and urbanism as the main signs of the present and the future. Members of the St. Petersburg group “Gilea” are considered the founders of Russian futurism. “Gilea” was the most influential, but not the only association of futurists: there were also ego-futurists led by Igor Severyanin (St. Petersburg), groups “Centrifuge” and “Mezzanine of Poetry” in Moscow, groups in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Baku.
Cubofuturism.
In Russia, the “Budetlyans,” members of the poetic group “Gileya,” called themselves Cubo-Futurists. They were characterized by a demonstrative rejection of the aesthetic ideals of the past, shocking behavior, and the active use of occasionalisms. Within the framework of Cubo-Futurism, “abstruse poetry” developed. Cubo-futurist poets included Velimir Khlebnikov, Elena Guro, Davidi Nikolai Burliuki, Vasily Kamensky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexey Kruchenykh, Benedict Livshits.
Egofuturism.
In addition to general futuristic writing, egofuturism is characterized by the cultivation of refined sensations, the use of new foreign words, and ostentatious selfishness. Egofuturism was a short-term phenomenon. Most of the attention of critics and the public was transferred to Igor Severyanin, who quite early distanced himself from the collective politics of the ego-futurists, and after the revolution completely changed the style of his poetry. Most egofuturists either quickly outlived their style and moved on to other genres, or soon abandoned literature completely. In addition to Severyanin, Vadim Shershenevich, Rurik Ivnevich and others joined this movement at different times.
New Peasant Poetry.
The concept of “peasant poetry,” which has entered historical and literary usage, unites poets conventionally and reflects only some common features inherent in their worldview and poetic manner. They did not form a single creative school with a single ideological and poetic program. As a genre, “peasant poetry” was formed in the middle of the 19th century. Its largest representatives were Alexey Vasilyevich Koltsov, Ivan Savvich Nikitin and Ivan Zakharovich Surikov. They wrote about the work and life of the peasant, about the dramatic and tragic conflicts of his life. Their work reflected both the joy of the merging of workers with the natural world, and the feeling of hostility to the life of a stuffy, noisy city alien to living nature. The most famous peasant poets of the Silver Age were: Spiridon Drozhzhin, Nikolai Klyuev, Pyotr Oreshin, Sergei Klychkov. Sergei Yesenin also joined this trend.
Imagism.
Imagists stated that the purpose of creativity is to create an image. The main expressive means of imagists is metaphor, often metaphorical chains that compare various elements of two images - direct and figurative. The creative practice of imagists is characterized by outrageous and anarchic motives. The style and general behavior of Imagism was influenced by Russian Futurism. The founders of imagism are Anatoly Mariengof, Vadim Shershenevich, Sergei Yesenin. Rurik Ivnevi and Nikolai Erdman also joined imagism.
Symbolism. "Young Symbolism".
Symbolism- a direction in literature and art first appeared in France in the last quarter of the 19th century and by the end of the century had spread to most European countries. But after France, it is in Russia that symbolism is realized as the most large-scale, significant and original phenomenon in culture. Many representatives of Russian symbolism bring new ones to this direction, often having nothing in common with their French predecessors. Symbolism becomes the first significant modernist movement in Russia; simultaneously with the birth of symbolism in Russia, the Silver Age of Russian literature begins; in this era, all new poetic schools and individual innovations in literature are, at least in part, under the influence of symbolism - even outwardly hostile movements (futurists, “Forge”, etc.) largely use symbolist material and begin with denials of symbolism. But in Russian symbolism there was no unity of concepts, there was no single school, no single style; Even among the symbolism rich in originals in France, you will not find such diversity and examples so different from each other. Apart from the search for new literary perspectives in form and theme, perhaps the only thing that united the Russian Symbolists was a distrust of ordinary words, a desire to express themselves through allegories and symbols. “A thought expressed is a lie” - a verse by the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev, the predecessor of Russian symbolism.
Young Symbolists (second “generation” of Symbolists).
Younger Symbolists in Russia are mainly called writers who made their first publications in the 1900s. Among them were really very young authors, like Sergei Solovyov, A. Bely, A. Blok, Ellis, and very respectable people, like the director of the gymnasium. Annensky, scientist Vyacheslav Ivanov, musician and composer M. Kuzmin. In the first years of the century, representatives of the younger generation of symbolists created a romantically colored circle, where the skills of future classics matured, which became known as the “Argonauts” or Argonautism.
“I emphasize: in January 1901, a dangerous “mystical” firecracker was laid in us, which gave rise to so many rumors about the “Beautiful Lady”... The composition of the circle of Argonauts, students in those years, was extraordinary... Lev Lvovich Kobylinsky (“Ellis”), in the same years joined us and became the soul of the circle; he was literary and sociologically educated; an amazing improviser and mime... S. M. Solovyov, a sixth-grade high school student who surprises Bryusov, a young poet, philosopher, theologian...
…Ellis called it the circle of the Argonauts, coinciding it with an ancient myth telling about the journey on the ship “Argo” of a group of heroes to a mythical country: behind the Golden Fleece... the “Argonauts” did not have any organization; the “Argonauts” were those who became close to us, often without suspecting that they were “Argonauts”... Blok felt like an “Argonaut” during his short life in Moscow...
...and yet the “Argonauts” left some mark on the artistic culture of Moscow in the first decade of the beginning of the century; they merged with the “symbolists”, considered themselves essentially “symbolists”, wrote in symbolic journals (me, Ellis, Solovyov), but differed, so to speak, in the “style” of their identification. There was nothing of literature in them; and there was nothing of external splendor in them; and meanwhile a number of the most interesting personalities, original not in appearance, but in essence, passed through Argonautism...” (Andrei Bely, “Beginning of the Century.” - pp. 20-123).
In St. Petersburg at the beginning of the century, the “tower” of Vyach is perhaps most suitable for the title of “center of symbolism”. Ivanova, is a famous apartment on the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, among the inhabitants of which at different times were Andrei Bely, M. Kuzmin, V. Khlebnikov, A. R. Mintslova, which was visited by A. Blok, N. Berdyaev, A. V. Lunacharsky, A. Akhmatova, “world artists” and spiritualists, anarchists and philosophers. A famous and mysterious apartment: legends tell about it, researchers study the meetings of secret societies that took place here (Haphysites, Theosophists, etc.), gendarmes carried out searches and surveillance here, in this apartment most famous poets of the era read their poems publicly for the first time, here for several years, three completely unique writers lived simultaneously, whose works often present fascinating riddles for commentators and offer readers unexpected language models - this is the constant “Diotima” of the salon, Ivanov’s wife, L. D. Zinovieva-Annibal, composer Kuzmin (author of romances at first, later of novels and poetry books), and - of course the owner. The owner of the apartment himself, the author of the book “Dionysus and Dionysianism,” was called “the Russian Nietzsche.” With undoubted significance and depth of influence in culture, Vyach. Ivanov remains a “semi-familiar continent”; This is partly due to his long stays abroad, and partly to the complexity of his poetic texts, above all, requiring from the reader a rarely encountered erudition.
In Moscow in the 1900s, the editorial office of the Scorpion publishing house, where Valery Bryusov became the permanent editor-in-chief, was unhesitatingly called the authoritative center of symbolism. This publishing house prepared editions of the most famous symbolist periodical, “Scales.” Among the permanent employees of “Libra” were Andrei Bely, K. Balmont, Jurgis Baltrushaitis; Other authors regularly collaborated: Fyodor Sologub, A. Remizov, M. Voloshin, A. Blok, etc., many translations from the literature of Western modernism were published. There is an opinion that the story of “Scorpio” is the story of Russian symbolism, but this is probably an exaggeration.
The “Younger Symbolists”, following V. Solovyov, who had a serious influence on them, did not simply deny the modern world, but believed in the possibility of its miraculous transformation by Love, Beauty, Art... For the “Young Symbolists” Art, Beauty have life-creative energy, the ability to change and improve reality, which is why they received another name - theurgists (theurgy is a combination of art and religion in an effort to transform the world). This “aesthetic utopia,” however, did not last long.
The religious and philosophical ideas of V. Solovyov were adopted by the “Young Symbolist” poets, including A. Blok in his collection “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” (1904). Blok glorifies the feminine principle of love and beauty, which brings happiness to the lyrical hero and can change the world. One of Blok’s poems in this cycle is preceded by an epigraph from V. Solovyov, directly emphasizing the successive nature of Blok’s poetic philosophy:
And the heavy sleep of everyday consciousness
You will shake it off, yearning and loving.
Vl. Soloviev
I have a feeling about you. Years pass by -
All in one form I foresee you.
The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,
And I wait silently, yearning and loving.
The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near,
But I’m scared: you’ll change your appearance,
And you will arouse impudent suspicion,
Changing the usual features at the end.
Oh, how I will fall - both sadly and low,
Without overcoming deadly dreams!
How clear is the horizon! And radiance is close.
But I’m scared: You will change your appearance.
After the revolutionary events of 1905, after the revolutionary crisis, it becomes obvious that the “aesthetic revolt” of the older Symbolists and the “aesthetic utopia” of the Young Symbolists had exhausted themselves - by 1910, Symbolism as a literary movement ceased to exist.
Symbolism as a state of mind, as a literary movement with its uncertain hopes is an art that could exist at the turn of the era, when new realities are already in the air, but they have not yet been minted or realized. A. Bely, in his article “Symbolism” (1909), wrote: “Modern art is addressed to the future, but this future is hidden in us; we eavesdrop within ourselves on the trepidation of a new person; and we eavesdrop on death and decay within ourselves; we are dead men, decomposing the old life, but we are not yet born to a new life; our soul is pregnant with the future: degeneration and rebirth struggle in it... The symbolic flow of modernity also differs from the symbolism of any art in that it acts on the border of two eras: it is deadened by the evening dawn of the analytical period, it is vivified by the dawn of a new day.”
The symbolists enriched Russian poetic culture with important discoveries: they gave the poetic word previously unknown mobility and ambiguity, taught Russian poetry to discover additional shades and facets of meaning in the word; the search for symbolists in the field of poetic phonetics became fruitful (see the masterful use of assonance and effective alliteration by K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, A. Bely); the rhythmic possibilities of Russian verse were expanded, stanzas became more diverse, the cycle was discovered as a form of organization of poetic texts; despite the extremes of individualism and subjectivism, the symbolists raised the question of the role of the artist in a new way; Art, thanks to the Symbolists, became more personal.
Andrey Bely.
Andrei Bely created his own special genre - the symphony - a special type of literary presentation, primarily corresponding to the originality of his life perceptions and images. In form it is something between verse and prose. They differ from poetry in the absence of rhyme and meter. However, both seem to spontaneously flow in places. There is also a significant difference from prose in the special melodiousness of the lines. These lines are not only semantic, but also sound and musically matched to each other. This rhythm most expresses the iridescence and coherence of all the soulfulness and sincerity of the surrounding reality. This is precisely the music of life - and the music is not melodic... but the most complex symphonic. Bely believed that the symbolist poet was a link between two worlds: earthly and heavenly. Hence the new task of art: the poet must become not only an artist, but also “an organ of the world soul... a seer and secret creator of life.” That is why insights and revelations that made it possible to imagine other worlds from faint reflections were considered especially valuable.
Body of the elements. In the azure-lily petal the World is wonderful. Everything is wonderful in the fairy, veyn, serpentine World of Songs. We hung like a stream over a foamy abyss. Thoughts flow like sparkles of flying rays.
The author is able to see beauty even in the most absurd, unpretentious objects: “In an azure-lily petal.” In the first stanza, the author says that everything around is wonderful and harmonious. In the second stanza the lines “Like a stream over a foamy abyss. Thoughts flow with the sparkles of flying rays,” the author paints a picture of a stream, a waterfall cascading down into a foamy abyss, and from this thousands of small sparkling droplets scatter in different directions, and so do human thoughts.
Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov.
Ancient sayings, unusual syntax, the need to capture the most obscure meanings of a word make Ivanov’s poems very complex. Even those poems that seem very simple have many hidden meanings. But wise simplicity, which is understandable to anyone, is also found in them. Let's analyze the poem "Trinity Day".
The forester's daughter picked forget-me-nots in the sedge on Trinity Day; She wove wreaths over the river and swam in the river On Trinity Day... And she floated up like a pale mermaid in a turquoise wreath. The ax sounded loudly on the forest clearing On Trinity Day; A forester with an ax went out for a resinous pine tree on Trinity Day; He grieves and grieves and grieves the resin coffin. A candle in a small room shines in the middle of a dark forest on Trinity Day; Under the image, a faded wreath over the dead one is sad on Trinity Day. Bor whispers dully. The river rustles in the sedge...
The Silver Age is not a chronological period. At least not just the period. And this is not the sum of literary movements. Rather, the concept of “Silver Age” is appropriate to apply to a way of thinking.
Atmosphere of the Silver Age
At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Russia experienced an intense intellectual upsurge, especially clearly manifested in philosophy and poetry. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (read about him) called this time the Russian cultural renaissance. According to Berdyaev’s contemporary Sergei Makovsky, it was Berdyaev who also owned another, more well-known definition of this period - the “Silver Age”. According to other sources, the phrase “Silver Age” was first used in 1929 by the poet Nikolai Otsup. This concept is not so much scientific as it is emotional, immediately causing associations with another short period in the history of Russian culture - with the “golden age”, the Pushkin era of Russian poetry (the first third of the 19th century).
“Now it’s hard to imagine the atmosphere of that time,” Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the Silver Age in his “philosophical autobiography” “Self-Knowledge.” - Much of the creative upsurge of that time entered into the further development of Russian culture and is now the property of all Russian cultural people. But then there was the intoxication of creativity, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. During these years, many gifts were sent to Russia. This was the era of the awakening of independent philosophical thought in Russia, the flowering of poetry and the intensification of aesthetic sensuality, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were discovered, new dawns were seen, the feeling of decline and death was combined with the hope for the transformation of life. But everything happened in a rather vicious circle...”
Silver Age as a period and way of thinking
The art and philosophy of the Silver Age were characterized by elitism and intellectualism. Therefore, it is impossible to identify all the poetry of the late 19th - early 20th centuries with the Silver Age. This is a narrower concept. Sometimes, however, when attempting to determine the essence of the ideological content of the Silver Age through formal features (literary movements and groups, socio-political subtexts and contexts), researchers mistakenly confuse them. In fact, within the chronological boundaries of this period, the most diverse phenomena in origin and aesthetic orientation coexisted: modernist movements, poetry of the classical realistic tradition, peasant, proletarian, satirical poetry... But the Silver Age is not a chronological period. At least not just the period. And this is not the sum of literary movements. Rather, the concept of “Silver Age” is appropriate to apply to a way of thinking that, being characteristic of artists who were at odds with each other during their lifetime, ultimately merged them in the minds of their descendants into a kind of inseparable galaxy that formed that specific atmosphere of the Silver Age that Berdyaev wrote about .
Poets of the Silver Age
The names of the poets who formed the spiritual core of the Silver Age are known to everyone: Valery Bryusov, Fyodor Sologub, Innokenty Annensky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrei Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Gumilyov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, Georgy Ivanov and many others.
In its most concentrated form, the atmosphere of the Silver Age was expressed in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century. This was the heyday of Russian modern literature in all the diversity of its artistic, philosophical, religious searches and discoveries. The First World War, the February bourgeois-democratic and October socialist revolutions partly provoked, partly shaped this cultural context, and partly were provoked and shaped by it. Representatives of the Silver Age (and Russian modernity in general) sought to overcome positivism, reject the legacy of the “sixties,” and rejected materialism, as well as idealistic philosophy.
The poets of the Silver Age also sought to overcome the attempts of the second half of the 19th century to explain human behavior by social conditions, the environment and continued the traditions of Russian poetry, for which a person was important in himself, his thoughts and feelings, his attitude to eternity, to God, to Love were important and Death in a philosophical, metaphysical sense. Poets of the Silver Age, both in their artistic work and in theoretical articles and statements, questioned the idea of progress for literature. For example, one of the brightest creators of the Silver Age, Osip Mandelstam, wrote that the idea of progress is “the most disgusting type of school ignorance.” And Alexander Blok in 1910 argued: “The sun of naive realism has set; it is impossible to comprehend anything outside of symbolism.” The poets of the Silver Age believed in art, in the power of words. Therefore, immersion in the element of words and the search for new means of expression are indicative of their creativity. They cared not only about meaning, but also about style - sound, the music of words and complete immersion in the elements were important to them. This immersion led to the cult of life-creativity (the inseparability of the personality of the creator and his art). And almost always, because of this, the poets of the Silver Age were unhappy in their personal lives, and many of them came to a bad end.
Where did the term “Silver Age poetry” come from? What masterpieces were born at this time? What experiments did some poets resort to? How did you try to attract attention? Why were so many of them forgotten? You will learn about all this by reading this article.
Intellectual explosion
Russian poetry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is known as the poetry of the Silver Age. The term as such arose after the end of this period, in the second half of the last century. The name was formed by analogy with the term Golden Age, that is, the Pushkin era. And this is deeply symbolic, because the Silver Age of Russian poetry gave the world many bright names. The names of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Nikolai Gumilev, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak and others are associated with the poetry of the Silver Age.
The numerous and varied literary movements of the turn of the century can generally be called in one word - modernism (from the French “newest, modern”). In fact, modernism was very diverse, there were various movements in it. The most iconic of them are symbolism, acmeism, futurism, and imagism. There are also peasant poetry, satirical poetry and other movements.
Modernism in both European and Russian poetry was distinguished by the search for new forms and means of expression. It was a time of creative search, which often led to bright discoveries. But not all poets have passed the test of time; the names of many of them are known today only to philologists. Many truly talented poets over time went beyond the narrow boundaries of one or another literary movement.
At the turn of the century, Russia was experiencing a strong intellectual upsurge, which was expressed primarily in poetry and philosophy. The famous philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about this time like this: “Much of the creative upsurge of that time entered into the further development of Russian culture and is now the property of all Russian cultural people. But then there was intoxication with creative enthusiasm, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge...”
The poets of the Silver Age were greatly influenced by the philosophical teachings of Berdyaev himself, as well as Solovyov, Fedorov, Florensky with their idea of eternal divine beauty, the Soul of the World, in merging with which they saw salvation for all humanity, as well as Eternal Femininity. Let's look at each of the currents.
Symbolism. Hints and halftones
This was the first and very significant modernist movement. It originated in France and later spread to Russia. This is typical not only for literature, but also for music and painting.
There are two stages in this literary direction. The first is the “senior symbolists” (Valery Bryusov, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Konstantin Balmont and others). Their debut took place in the 1890s. A few years later, symbolism was replenished with new forces and new aesthetic views. Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Andrei Bely became “Younger Symbolists”.
According to Vyacheslav Ivanov, poetry is “the secret writing of the ineffable.” The value of creativity was seen in understatement and hints, and the symbol was supposed to convey the secret meaning.
Do you remember Blok’s famous lines from the series “Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, filled with symbols?
I enter dark temples,
I perform a poor ritual.
There I am waiting for the Beautiful Lady
In the flickering of red lamps.
In the shadow of a tall column
I'm shaking from the creaking of the doors.
And he looks into my face, illuminated,
Only an image, only a dream about Her...
In addition to the symbol that conveys the fleeting nature of existence, the symbolists attached great importance to music, which is why verbal and musical harmonies can be traced in their poems. Symbolism is characterized by broad associations with the culture of previous eras.
Symbolism enriched Russian poetry with real discoveries: the poetic word became polysemantic, new facets and additional shades were discovered in it. Symbolists used combinations of certain sounds to create an image (the so-called alliteration), as well as a variety of rhythms. An example of alliteration in Balmont is the deliberate repetition of the sound “l”:
The oar slipped from the boat,
The coolness melts gently.
But all of the above refers to the external form of the verse. And the main thing, of course, is the internal content. The symbolists posed the question of the role of the artist (in the broad sense of the word) in the life of society in a new way and made art more personal.
Acmeism. Reached the top
The term comes from the Greek akme, which means “the top, the highest degree of something.” If the Symbolists gravitated towards the super-real, the polysemy of images, then the Acmeists gravitated towards poetic precision, a minted artistic word. The Acmeists were apolitical; topical issues did not penetrate their work.
The main value for this literary movement was culture, which they identified with universal human memory. Therefore, Acmeists often turn to mythological images and plots (for example, Gumilyov - “From a bouquet of whole lilacs...” and many other poems).
In addition, they focused not on music, like the Symbolists, but on architecture, painting, sculpture - that is, what implies three-dimensionality, spatiality. Acmeists loved colorful, picturesque, even exotic details.
This literary movement included many talented poet-friends. They called their association “The Workshop of Poets.” And this was preceded by a scandal. In 1911, in the salon of Vyacheslav Ivanov, where, as usual, writers gathered to present their poems and discuss others, a conflict occurred. Several poets, offended by the criticism addressed to them, simply left. Among them was Nikolai Gumilyov, who did not like the criticism of his “Prodigal Son”. Thus, in contrast to the “Academy of Verse”, the “Workshop of Poets” was born.
The main rule of the Acmeists is the clarity of the poetic word, devoid of anything vague. Acmeism as a literary movement united very talented and original poets - Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Mandelstam. Others from the “Workshop of Poets” did not reach such a high level.
Let us remember Akhmatova’s soulful female lyrics. Take, for example, these lines:
She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
"Why are you pale today?" —
Because I am tartly sad
Got him drunk.
How can I forget? He came out staggering
The mouth twisted painfully...
I ran away without touching the railing,
I ran after him to the gate.
Gasping for breath, I shouted: “It’s a joke.
Everything that was. If you leave, I'll die."
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he told me: “Don’t stand in the wind.”
The fates of many Silver Age poets, including Anna Akhmatova, were not easy. The first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot in 1921; the second, Nikolai Panin, died in 1953 in a camp; son, Lev Gumilyov, was also imprisoned for many years.
Futurism. At the dawn of PR companies
The name of this literary movement comes from the Latin word futurum, which means “future.”
If Acmeism originated in Russia, then Italy is considered the birthplace of futurism. The ideologist of futurism, Marinetti, saw the task of futurism as follows: “daily spitting on the altar of art.” Wow statement, right? However, isn’t that what many so-called writers and artists are doing today, who pass off outright disgusting stuff as a work of art?
The futurists set an ambitious goal - to create the art of the future, and they denied all previous artistic experience. Poets wrote manifestos, read them from the stage, and then published them. Often meetings with poetry lovers ended in disputes that turned into fights. Thus, this literary movement gained fame. A familiar, as they say now, PR stunt, isn’t it? Take, for example, politicians or show business representatives who know what exactly will attract the attention of the public...
The words of the futurists were arranged completely freely, any logical connections were often broken, there was generally It’s not clear what we’re talking about, what the poet wanted to say.
To be fair, we note that shocking behavior was used by representatives of all modernist movements. At the same time, among the futurists it was in first place and manifested itself in everything - from appearance (remember Mayakovsky’s performances in his famous yellow blouse) to creativity itself.
Representatives of this literary movement in Russia are Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, David Burliuk, Alexey Kruchenykh and others. By the way, most of them were also artists, creating posters and illustrations for books.
The main features of futurism: rebellion, bold experiments in versification, the appearance of the author's neologisms - that is, words that no one had used before, various verbal experiments.
Here is one of Khlebnikov’s poems:
Bobeobi's lips sang,
Veeomi's eyes sang,
Peeee eyebrows sang,
Lieeey - the image was sung,
Gzi-gzi-gzeo the chain was sung.
So on the canvas there are some correspondences
Outside the extension lived a Face.
It is clear that such lines remained an experiment. But Mayakovsky became a phenomenon in poetry, including versification.
His famous “ladder”, that is, a special arrangement of short lines, is still popular today.
Imagism. The hobby of young Yesenin
This literary movement, born in the West, arose in Russia after 1917. The name comes from the word image, which is in both English and French and means “image”.
The first creative evening of the Imagists took place on January 29, 1919. A declaration with the basic principles of the new direction was read there, and it was signed by Sergei Yesenin, Anatoly Mariengof, Rurik Ivnev and Vadim Shershenevich, as well as two artists. The declaration emphasized that the tool of the master of art is the image and only the image. They say that he, like mothballs, saves a work from the moths of time.
Here are the lines from Mariengof:
Language
Doesn't fit into the verse
Silver bast,
A pen breaks—the poet’s faithful staff.
Come and take away the pain. I'll leave barefoot.
Come to take me away.
Imagists declared that content in a work of art is a completely unnecessary thing, if only the image could be found. But again, such statements were more shocking. After all, any poet, no matter what direction he considers himself to be, had, has and will have a desire for the imagery of the artistic word.
As we have already said, many talented poets only at first entered one or another literary movement and association, and then found their own path and style in art. So, for example, Sergei Yesenin noted in 1921 that imagism is antics for the sake of antics, and broke with this trend.
The basis of Yesenin’s unsurpassed poetry was Rus', his small homeland, folklore, and the peasant worldview.
Many literary scholars single out peasant poetry among the literary trends, whose representatives are, in addition to Yesenin, Demyan Bedny, Nikolai Klyuev and others.
One of the directions of poetry at the turn of the century is satirical poetry (Sasha Cherny, Arkady Averchenko and others).
As you can see, the poetry of the Silver Age was very diverse and included numerous literary trends. Something is irretrievably a thing of the past - just like a failed experiment. But the work of Akhmatova, Gumilyov, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak (the last two, by the way, were outside specific literary movements) and some other poets really became a bright event in Russian literature, and also had a significant influence on many modern poets.
Many poems by poets of the Silver Age are still heard by everyone today. Take, for example, Tsvetaeva’s unsolved masterpiece , which is difficult to explain logically,“I like that you are not sick with me...” - a romance known to everyone from the film “Enjoy Your Bath...”.
The fates of a number of Silver Age poets were tragic. The reasons are both personal and social. These poets went through revolutions, wars, repressions, emigration, preserving the high spirit of true poetry. The works of many of them became known to a wide circle of readers only in the 90s of the last century, since for a long time they were considered prohibited.
The Silver Age of Russian poetry dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, although its beginning is the 19th century, and all its origins are in the “Golden Age”.
In fact, this is not even a century, it is a grandiose layer, in terms of the quantitative and qualitative composition of poets, which no other century can compare with.
The term “Silver Age” itself is figurative and very conventional. It was proposed (perhaps even as a joke) by the philosopher N. Berdyaev,
but they picked it up and firmly entered the literary community in the 60s of the twentieth century. The main feature is mysticism, a crisis of faith, inner spirituality, and conscience.
Poetry was the sublimation of internal contradictions, mental disharmony, mental illness.
All the poetry of the “Silver Age”, fully embodying the heritage of the Bible, the experience of world literature, ancient mythology, in heart and soul, turned out to be closely connected with Russian folklore, local folk tales and ditties, songs and laments. However, there is an opinion that the “Silver Age”- a Western phenomenon. Perhaps he embodied the pessimism of Schopenhauer, the aestheticism of Oscar Wilde, something of Alfred de Vigny, Nietzsche's superman. There is also an assumption that this is a “quality” name. There is a golden age with A.S. Pushkin, and there is a silver age, which did not reach the golden age in quality.
Works of poets of the Silver Age.
It was a creative world full of sunshine, thirsting for beauty and self-affirmation. And although the name of this time is “silver”, undoubtedly, it was the most striking and creative milestone in Russian history.
The names of the poets who formed the spiritual basis of the Silver Age are known to everyone: Sergei Yesenin, Valery Bryusov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrei Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Marina Tsvetaeva, Igor Severyanin Boris Pasternak and many others.
The essence of the Silver Age burst out in its most intense form at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was the rise of poetry in a variety of colors and shadows - artistic, philosophical, religious. Poets fought against attempts to link human behavior with the social environment and continued the trend of Russian poetry, for which a person was important as he is, important in his attitude to the Creator, in his thoughts and feelings, his personal attitude to eternity, to Love and Death in all manifestations and meanings. Six poets of the Silver Age especially succeeded in this - V. Mayakovsky, N. Gumilyov, S. Yesenin, A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, I. Severyanin.
They firmly believed in art, in the power of words. Therefore, their work is a deep immersion in the element of the word and is puzzled by the search for new means of word expression. They respected not only the meaning, but also the style - sound, word form and complete immersion in the elements were important to them.
It was expensive. Almost all the poets of the Silver Age were unhappy in their personal lives, and many of them came to a bad end. Although, by and large, almost all poets are not very happy in their personal lives, and in life in general.
“The Silver Age of Russian Poetry” is a surprisingly complex, but at the same time amazing canvas, with origins from the 90s of the 19th century.
