A message on the topic of Symbolist poets. Symbolism. Main representatives and works. Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov

Stepan Petrovich Ilyev (1937 - 1994), Doctor of Philology, Professor at Odessa University, the world's largest researcher of the Russian Symbolist novel

A special phenomenon in world literature is the Russian symbolist novel, to the analysis of which the principles of realistic criticism are not applicable. Leading symbolist poets V.Ya. Bryusov, F.K. Sologub, D.S. Merezhkovsky and A. Bely became the authors of original novels, complex in form and content, based on the aesthetics of symbolism.

He gained the greatest fame as a novelist among symbolist poets Fedor Kuzmich Sologub (Teternikov) . In 1895 he published the novel "Heavy Dreams" , the plot scheme of which at first glance repeats the plot of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”: provincial teacher Vasily Markovich Login decides to fight world evil and, seeing the focus of the latter in the director of the gymnasium, kills him. However, if Dostoevsky’s hero comes to repentance through moral quest, then Sologub’s hero, on the contrary, comes to the denial of any moral criteria.

The realistically depicted background of the novel’s action is combined with the dreamlike element of the protagonist’s psyche. Eroticism and fears are what owns and controls Login. Half-dreams and half-dreams allow you to look into his subconscious. The hero sometimes thinks that he is walking across a bridge over a river and falling through. It is significant that the city in which Login lives is really divided into two parts by a river (just as his consciousness is split), and the banks of the river are connected by a shaky bridge. At the same time, Login himself lives “on the edge of the city, in a small house.” Claudia, who is one of the subjects of his love experiences, also lives as if on the edge - namely, by the river. The space of the novel is closed, limited, it seems that besides the city where Login lives, there is nothing else in the world. The closedness of the chronotope - a feature inherent in Dostoevsky's novels (Petersburg in Crime and Punishment, Skotoprigonyevsk in The Brothers Karamazov) - takes on a special meaning in the context of the poetics of symbolism. The hero of the novel exists in a terrible closed, and therefore self-destructive (like any closed system) world, in which there is and cannot be a place for goodness and justice, and his crime ultimately turned out to be meaningless, because the hero’s original goal is unattainable.

The greatest success in Sologub’s work was a brilliant novel "Little Demon" (1902). The central figure of the novel is the provincial teacher Peredonov, who combines the features of Chekhov's Belikov and Shchedrin's Judas. The plot of the novel is based on the hero's desire to get the position of school inspector and get married. However, Peredonov is cowardly and suspicious, and the entire course of the novel is determined by the gradual decomposition of his personality and psyche. In every resident of the town he sees something vile, harmful, base: “Everything that reached his consciousness was transformed into abomination and dirt.” Peredonov found himself in the grip of evil illusions: not only people, but also objects in the hero’s great consciousness become his enemies. He pokes out the eyes of card kings, queens and jacks so that they don’t follow him. It seems to Peredonov that he is being pursued by Nedotykomka, frightening him with her dullness and shapelessness, and in the end she becomes a symbol of the essence of the world around her. The whole world turns out to be materialized delirium, and it all ends with Peredonov killing Volodin. However, in Sologub the murder is presented as a sacrifice: Peredonov kills Volodin with a garden knife. Based on the traditions of Gogol, Sologub depicts the world of “dead souls,” whose existence is illusory. All residents of the town are masks, puppets, unaware of the meaning of their lives.

How the novelist gained European fame and Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky , whose lyrics did not have much artistic significance, but the novels were the embodiment of his philosophical views. According to Merezhkovsky, two truths are fighting in world life - heavenly and earthly, spirit and flesh, Christ and Antichrist. The first truth is embodied in a person’s desire for self-denial and merging with God. The second is in the desire for self-affirmation and deification of one’s own “I”. The tragedy of history lies in the separation of two truths, the goal is their merging.

Merezhkovsky’s historical and philosophical concept is determined by the structure trilogy "Christ and Antichrist" , in which he examines the turning points in the development of human history when the collision of two truths manifests itself with greatest force:
1) late antiquity (novel "Death of the Gods");
2) the Renaissance (novel "Resurrected Gods");
3) Peter's era (novel "Antichrist").

In the first novel, Emperor Julian seeks to stop the course of history, to save the ancient gods and the culture of perfection of the human spirit from death. But Hellas is dying, the Olympian gods have died, their temples have been destroyed, the spirit of the “rabble” and vulgarity is triumphant. At the end of the novel, the prophetic Arsikaya prophesies about the revival of the spirit of Hellas, and with this revival the second novel begins. The spirit of antiquity is resurrected, the gods of Hellas are resurrected, and Leonardo da Vinci becomes a man who synthesizes both truths of life. In the third novel, Peter I and his son Alexei are presented as bearers of two historical principles - individualistic and folk. The clash of Peter and Alexei is a clash of Flesh and Spirit. Peter is stronger - he wins, Alexey foresees the coming merger of two truths in the kingdom of the “third testament”, when the tragedy of bifurcation will be lifted.

Considered one of the best modernist novels in European literature "Petersburg" Andrey Bely (1916). Developing in it the theme of the city, outlined in the collection “Ashes,” Bely creates a world full of fantastic nightmares, perversely direct perspectives, and soulless ghost people.

In a conversation with Irina Odoevtseva, Bely emphasized: “Nowhere in the world have I been as unhappy as in St. Petersburg. I have always been drawn to St. Petersburg and pushed away from it... My Petersburg is a ghost, a vampire, materialized from yellow, rotten, feverish mists, brought by me into a system of squares, parallelepipeds, cubes and trapezoids. I populated my St. Petersburg with machine guns, the living dead. I then seemed to myself like a living dead.”

The novel consists of eight chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Each chapter is preceded by an epigraph from Pushkin’s works, and all the epigraphs are in one way or another connected with the theme of St. Petersburg, a city in which everything is subject to numbering and regulation. The royal dignitary Apollo Apollonovich Ableukhov seeks to preserve and freeze living life. For him, as for the characters of Shchedrin and Chekhov, only bureaucratic regulations have a clear meaning. Therefore, the space of the novel is made up of the ideas and fantasies of the characters: father and son Ableukhov are afraid of open spaces, and they prefer to perceive everything three-dimensional as a regulated combination of planes. The terrorist Dudkin (a parody of a revolutionary) wants to blow up flat space using a time bomb - this is a symbol of time striving for self-destruction. The image of Dudkin, grotesquely incorporating the features of terrorists from Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons,” is associated with the idea of ​​​​contrasting “revolution in the spirit” and social revolution. Bely repeatedly spoke about the untruth of the latter, putting forward the theory of the “white domino” - the theory of the spiritual transformation of man and humanity under the influence of mystical experiences.

In the novel “Petersburg” the writer emphasizes that both the Ableukhovs and Dudkin are instruments of the so-called Mongolian nihilism, destruction without creation.
The novel “Petersburg” turned out to be the last in a series of Russian symbolist novels, in which the aesthetic and social views of symbolist poets were refracted in one way or another.

The term "symbolism" comes from the Greek word for "sign" and denotes an aesthetic movement that emerged in France at the end of the 19th century and influenced all areas of art: literature, music, painting and theater. Particularly widespread

the wound received symbolism in literature.

Emergence

As noted above, symbolism in literature is associated primarily with France: a group of young poets, including Mallarmé, Moreas, Gil, de Regnault, Valéry and Claudel, announced the creation of a new direction in art. At the same time, the “Manifesto of Symbolism”, written by Moreas, was published in the magazine “Figaro” - it described the basic aesthetic principles based on the views of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Henri. In particular, the author of the Manifesto defined the nature and function of the symbol: according to Moreas, it supplanted the traditional artistic image and embodied the Idea.

Essence of the symbol

In order to talk about what symbolism is in literature, one should first of all define what a symbol is. Its main distinguishing feature is its polysemy, so it cannot be deciphered. Perhaps the most successful interpretation of this concept belongs to the Russian writer Fyodor Sologub: he called the symbol a window to infinity. A symbol contains a whole series of meanings, while an image is a single phenomenon.

Symbolism in literature

If we talk about French literature, it is necessary to name the names of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé. Charles Baudelaire owns a unique poetic motto of symbolism - the sonnet “Correspondences”; the search for correspondence formed the basis of the symbolist principle of synthesis, the desire to unite all the arts. Baudelaire's work is dominated by duality motifs: love and death, genius and illness, external and internal. Stéphane Mallarmé argued that the purpose of a writer is not to describe things, but to convey his impressions of them. His poem “Luck Never Abolishes Chance,” consisting of a single phrase typed without a single punctuation mark, gained particular popularity. Paul Verlaine also manifested symbolism in his poems. Literature, according to the poet, should be musical, because music is at the pinnacle of all arts.

Symbolism in B

elgia

When you hear the words “Belgian symbolism,” what comes to mind, first of all, is the work of Maurice Maeterlinck, the author of such famous plays as “The Blue Bird,” “The Blind,” and “In There.” His heroes exist in a semi-fantastic setting, the action of the plays is full of mysticism, magic, and hidden meanings. Maeterlinck himself, quite in the spirit of symbolism, insisted that the creator should convey not actions, but states.

Russian symbolism in literature

In Russia, this trend split into two branches - the “Old Symbolists” and the “Young Symbolists.” By the beginning of the 20th century, the movement had truly flourished, but Tyutchev and Fet are also considered the harbingers of symbolism in Russia. Also, the content and philosophical basis of Russian symbolism were influenced by the views of Vladimir Solovyov, in particular, his images of the World Soul and Eternal Femininity. These ideas were subsequently transformed in an original way into the poetry of Bely, Blok, and Gumilyov.

The theoretical, philosophical and aesthetic roots and sources of creativity of symbolist writers were very diverse. So V. Bryusov considered symbolism a purely artistic movement, Merezhkovsky relied on Christian teaching, Vyach. Ivanov sought 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 magazine “Scales”. “For us, representatives of symbolism as a harmonious worldview,” 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 the individual heroic individual with the instinctive movements of the masses, always subordinated to narrowly egoistic, 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 joined the ranks of proletarian writers, he ended as an artist, in attempts to discredit revolutionary democratic criticism and aesthetics, its great creators - Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky. The symbolists tried in every possible way to make Pushkin, Gogol, and the so-called Vyach “theirs.” Ivanov “a frightened spy on life”, Lermontov, who, according to the same Vyach. Ivanov, was the first to tremble with “a presentiment of the symbol of symbols - Eternal Femininity” in.

Associated with these attitudes is a sharp contrast between symbolism and realism. “While realist poets,” writes K. Balmont, “view the world naively, like simple observers, symbolist poets dominate the world and penetrate its mysteries.” Symbolists strive to contrast reason and intuition. “... Art there is a comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways,” says V. Bryusov and calls the works of the symbolists “mystical keys of secrets” that help a person achieve freedom.”

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

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

The platform of the “younger” symbolists is based on the idealistic philosophy of Vl. Solovyov with his idea of ​​the Third Testament and the coming of Eternal Femininity. Vl. Soloviev 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 is associated with an understanding of the role of the poet as a theurgist and clergyman. This, according to A. Bely’s explanation, contains “the connection of the peaks of symbolism as 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 the work of D. Merezhkovsky “On the causes of the decline and new trends in modern Russian literature.” This is “... mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability.”

Based on the idealistic premise of the primacy of consciousness, symbolists argue that reality, reality is the creation of the artist: My dream is all the spaces, And all the sequences, The whole world is just my decoration, My traces (F. Sologub) “Having broken the shackles of thought, to be shackled is a dream,” calls on K. Balmont. The poet’s calling is to connect the real world with the transcendental world.

The poetic declaration of symbolism is clearly expressed in Vyach's poem. Ivanova “Among the Deaf Mountains”: And I thought: “Oh genius! Like this horn, you must sing the song of the earth in order to awaken another song in your hearts. Blessed is he who hears.”

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

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

The poetry of the Symbolists 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 “ringing-resonant silence” by V. Bryusov, “And rebellion is dark in bright eyes” by Vyach. Ivanov, “dry deserts of shame” by A. Bely and by him: “Day - matte pearl - tear - flows from sunrise to sunset.” This technique is revealed very precisely in poem 3. Gippius “The Seamstress”.

There is a stamp on all phenomena.

One seems to be merged with the other.

Having accepted one thing, I try to guess behind it another, something that is hidden."

The sound expressiveness of the verse acquired very great importance in the poetry of the Symbolists, for example, in the work of F. Sologub: And two deep glasses From thin, ringing glass You put the sweet foam in the light bowl, Lila, Lila, Lila, shook Two dark scarlet glasses.

White, lily, ale gave White you were and ala... "The revolution of 1905 found a kind of refraction in the work of the Symbolists.

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

By the tenth years of the twentieth century, symbolism needed updating. “In the depths of symbolism itself,” wrote V. Bryusov in the article “The Meaning of Modern Poetry,” “new movements arose, trying to inject new strength into the decrepit organism. But these attempts were too partial, their founders were too imbued with the same school traditions for the renewal to be any significant.”

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

About the poetic flow:

Symbolism is the first and most significant of the modernist movements in Russia. Based on the time of formation and the characteristics of the ideological position in Russian symbolism, it is customary to distinguish two main stages. Poets who made their debut in the 1890s are called “senior symbolists” (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, etc.). In the 1900s, new forces joined symbolism, significantly updating the appearance of the movement (A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov, etc.). The accepted designation for the “second wave” of symbolism is “young symbolism.” The “senior” and “younger” symbolists were separated not so much by age as by the difference in worldviews and the direction of creativity.

The philosophy and aesthetics of symbolism developed under the influence of various teachings - from the views of the ancient philosopher Plato to the philosophical systems of V. Solovyov, F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson, contemporary to the symbolists. The symbolists contrasted the traditional idea of ​​understanding the world in art with the idea of ​​constructing the world in the process of creativity. Creativity in the understanding of the symbolists is a subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings, accessible only to the artist-creator. Moreover, it is impossible to rationally convey the contemplated “secrets”. According to the largest theoretician among the Symbolists, Vyach. Ivanov, poetry is “the secret writing of the ineffable.” The artist is required not only to have super-rational sensitivity, but also to have the subtlest mastery of the art of allusion: the value of poetic speech lies in “understatement,” “hiddenness of meaning.” The main means of conveying the contemplated secret meanings was the symbol.

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

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

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

Russian symbolism as a modernist movement in Russian literature

Symbolism was the first movement of modernism to emerge on Russian soil. Term "symbolism" in art was first introduced into circulation by the French poet Jean Moreas.

The prerequisites for the emergence of symbolism are in the crisis that struck Europe in the second half of the 19th century. The reassessment of the values ​​of the recent past was expressed in a rebellion against narrow materialism and naturalism, in greater freedom of religious and philosophical pursuits. Symbolism was one of the forms of overcoming positivism and a reaction to the “decline of faith.” “Matter has disappeared”, “God has died” - two postulates inscribed on the tablets of symbolism. The system of Christian values ​​on which European civilization rested was shaken, but the new “God” - faith in reason, in science - turned out to be unreliable. The loss of landmarks gave rise to a feeling of lack of support, of the ground disappearing from under one’s feet.

The symbolists contrasted the traditional knowledge of the world with the idea of ​​constructing the world in the process of creativity. Creativity in the understanding of the symbolists is a subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings accessible only to the artist - the creator. “Understatement”, “secrecy of meaning” - a symbol is the main means of conveying the contemplated secret meaning. The symbol is the central aesthetic category of the new movement.

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

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

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

In their works, the symbolists tried to depict the life of every soul - full of experiences, unclear, vague moods, subtle feelings, fleeting impressions. Symbolist poets were innovators of poetic verse, filling it with new, bright and expressive images, and sometimes, trying to achieve an original form, they went into what their critics considered a meaningless play on words and sounds. Roughly speaking, we can say that symbolism distinguishes two worlds: the world of things and the world of ideas. The symbol becomes a kind of conventional sign that connects these worlds in the meaning generated by it. There are two sides to any symbol - the signified and the signifier. This second side is turned towards the unreal world. Art is the key to the mystery.

Unlike other movements in art that use elements of their own characteristic symbolism, symbolism considers the expression of “unattainable”, sometimes mystical, Ideas, images of Eternity and Beauty to be the goal and content of its art, and the symbol, fixed in the element of artistic speech and based on its image on a polysemantic poetic word - the main, and sometimes the only possible artistic means.

One of the foundations of Russian poetry of the 20th century was Innokenty Annensky. Little known during his lifetime, exalted among a relatively small circle of poets, he was then consigned to oblivion. Even the widely used lines “Among the worlds, in the twinkling of the stars...” were publicly declared anonymous. But his poetry, his sound symbolism turned out to be an inexhaustible treasure. The world of poetry by Innokenty Annensky gave literature to Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Velimir Khlebnikov, Vladimir Mayakovsky. Not because Annensky was imitated, but because they were contained in him. His word was immediate - sharp, but premeditated and weighed; it revealed not the process of thinking, but the figurative result of thought. His thought sounded like good music. Innokenty Annensky, who in his spiritual appearance belongs to the nineties, opens the 20th century - where the stars of poetry flare up, shift, disappear, illuminate the sky again...

Among the most widely read poets are Konstantin Balmont - “the genius of a melodious dream”; Ivan Bunin, whose talent was compared to matte silver - his brilliant skill seemed cold, but during his lifetime he was called “the last classic of Russian literature”; Valery Bryusov, who had a reputation as a master; Dmitry Merezhkovsky is the first European writer in Russia; the most philosophical of the poets of the Silver Age - Vyacheslav Ivanov...

The poets of the Silver Age, even not of the first rank, were major personalities. To answer the fashionable-bohemian question: is he a genius or a madman? – as a rule, the answer was given: both a genius and a madman.

Andrei Bely impressed those around him as a prophet...

All of them, fascinated by symbolism, became prominent representatives of this most influential school.

At the turn of the century, national thinking especially intensified. Interest in history, mythology, folklore captured philosophers (V. Solovyov, N. Berdyaev, P. Florensky, etc.), musicians (S. Rachmaninov, V. Kalinnikov, A. Scriabin), painters (M. Nesterov, V.M. Vasnetsov, A.M. Vasnetsov, N.K. Roerich), writers and poets. “Back to national origins!” - was the cry of these years.

Since ancient times, the native land, its troubles and victories, anxieties and joys have been the main theme of national culture. People of art dedicated their creativity to Rus' and Russia. The first duty for us is the duty of self-knowledge - hard work to study and comprehend our past. The past, the history of Russia, its morals and customs - these are pure keys to quench the thirst for creativity. Reflections on the past, present and future of the country become the main motive in the activities of poets, writers, musicians and artists.

“My topic is standing before me, the topic of Russia. I consciously and irrevocably devote my life to this topic,” wrote Alexander Blok.

“Art outside of symbolism does not exist these days. Symbolism is synonymous with the artist,” said Alexander Blok in those years, who during his lifetime was already more than a poet for many in Russia.

Nikolay Kupreyanov. Art criticism of the early twentieth century put this name on a par with such names as V. Favorsky, A. Kravchenko, A. Ostroumova - Lebedeva. The twenties saw the heyday of Russian engraving. Engraving is a craft elevated to the rank of art. The revival of engraving, the oldest of the arts, began with the renewal of forms, with the acquisition of a new system of feelings, symbols belonging to the era. For Kupreyanov, a man who was forming in the 10s, brought up on Blok’s poetry, symbolism was not just a literary movement, but a conclusion, a mood of mind - the colloquial language of the era, time, the language in which they expressed themselves in the circle of engraved images. And engraving seems to be a kind of symbolic art. Even in his youth, wandering around old Russian cities, in addition to sketching ancient frescoes and icon painting, he became interested in village folk rituals, which later combined in his work. With the same romantic delight he became fascinated by the conventions of the “World of Art”. “I love Somov and icon painting almost equally,” he admitted in a letter to Blok. This duality of consciousness - two elements - religious and symbolic - left their mark on Kupreyanov’s work. Even earlier, his engravings are overgrown with symbols, they have not only the first, but also the background, and contain a hidden meaning. It is no coincidence that Kupreyanov began in engraving with the most intimate, most intricate genre of book sign - the bookplate. His first bookplates are signs encrypted “with seven seals”, the meaning of which cannot be found without knowledge of the Bible or a heraldic dictionary. His engraving passion for the life of Nikola can be seen as a special interest in the image of the saint named after him - Nikolai Kupreyanov. The artist looked into the engraving as if into a mirror; it gave his art a reference, a feeling of completeness.

The themes of the first engravings were motifs that were originally in an icon or in an old popular print: “King Guidon”, “King David”, “About Bova the King”, “Horsemen” (on the theme of the apocalypse) - these are the titles of his first works. Later - engraved books, like block books - “Childhood about Yegori the Brave”, “The Lives of Nikola”, “The ABC”...

In Russian symbolism there were two chronologically and conceptually independent streams (or waves): "senior symbolists"(last decade of the 19th century) and "Young Symbolists"(first decade of the 20th century).

In the early 1890s, “senior symbolists” made themselves known: Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky, Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Nikolai Maksimovich Minsky (Vilenkin), Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, Fyodor Kuzmich Sologub (Teternikov), Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, Mirra Lokhvitskaya (Maria Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya ) and others. D. Merezhkovsky and V. Bryusov became ideologists and masters of the senior symbolists.

"Senior Symbolists" are often called impressionists And decadents.

The impressionists had not yet created a system of symbols; they were not so much symbolists as impressionists, that is, they sought to convey the subtlest shades of moods, impressions, to intuitively and emotionally comprehend the beautiful and mysterious. The poetry of Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky, Konstantin Mikhailovich Fofanov, Konstantin Romanov, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont is impressionistic.

For K. Balmont, symbolism is a more “refined way of expressing feelings and thoughts.” In his works he conveys the richest range of changeable feelings, moods, and the “rainbow play” of the colors of the world. For him, art is “a powerful force that strives to guess combinations of thoughts, colors, sounds” to express the hidden principles of existence, the diversity of the world:

Decadent moods (from French. decadence"decline") were characteristic of the "senior symbolists". They were reproached for aestheticism, isolation, isolation from real life and worship of the sweet legend of art. Decadent, that is, decadent moods gave a special flavor to many poems by F. Sologub, M. Lokhvitskaya, Z. Gippius. These are moods of hopelessness, rejection of life, isolation in the world of an individual, poeticization of death. For a symbolist, death is rather a deliverance from the heaviness of the surrounding vulgar world, it is, as it were, a return to the existential world. In a poem by M. Lokhvitskaya:

She is supported by F. Sologub:

Contemporaries, not without irony perceiving these lines 1, at the same time recognized them as a sign of the times, evidence of a deep crisis. Regarding the quoted lines, one critic wrote: “One can laugh at the disheveled form of these poems, inspired by decadence, but it cannot be denied that they accurately convey the mood experienced by many.” K. Balmont argued: “A decadent is a refined artist who perishes because of his sophistication. As the word itself shows, decadents are representatives of the era of decline... They see that the evening dawn has burned out, but the dawn is still sleeping somewhere, beyond the horizon ; that is why the songs of the decadents are songs of twilight and night" ("Elementary words about symbolic poetry"). Decadent, decadent moods can be characteristic of any person in any era, but in order for them to receive public resonance in society and art, appropriate conditions are necessary.

It is very important to emphasize that when studying the history of literature, the history of a particular literary movement, there is often a danger of schematization and simplification of the literary process. But the work of any talented poet or writer is always broader and richer than any definitions, literary manifestos and dogmas. The same F. Sologub, who has gained the fame of the singer of death, also owns such works as, for example, the short fairy tale “The Key and the Master Key”:

“The master key said to her neighbor: “I’m still walking, and you’re lying down. Wherever I’ve been, and you’re at home. What are you thinking about?”

The old key said reluctantly: “There is an oak door, strong.” I locked it - I will unlock it, there will be time.

“Here,” said the master key, “you never know how many doors there are in the world!”

“I don’t need other doors,” said the key, “I don’t know how to open them.”

You can not? And I will open every door.

And she thought: it’s true that this key is stupid if it only fits one door. And the key told her:

You are a thieves' master key, and I am an honest and faithful key.

But the master key did not understand him. She didn’t know what these things were - honesty and loyalty, and she thought that the key to old age had gone out of her mind.”

And of course, the new (symbolic) trend was not without its oddities. Nebula, uncertainty, transcendence, as defined by I. Brodsky, “the whining intonations of the Symbolists,” made their poetry easily vulnerable to all kinds of parodies and poisonous critical reviews. For example, about one of V. Bryusov’s poems from the third collection “Russian Symbolists” (1895), one of the critics wrote: “... it should be noted that one poem in this collection has an undoubted and clear meaning. It is very short, just one line : “Oh, close your pale legs!” For complete clarity, one should perhaps add: “otherwise you’ll catch a cold,” but even without this, Mr. Bryusov’s advice, obviously addressed to a person suffering from anemia, is the most meaningful work of all symbolic literature, not only Russian, but also foreign ".

Oddly enough, the world literary movement of symbolism has an exact date of birth - September 18, 1886.

It was on this day that the poet Jean Moreas published the Manifesto of Symbolism on the pages of the magazine Figaro. He outlined the basic principles of symbolism and their differences from decadence.

Russian symbolism

The concept of “Russian poetry” or Russian Renaissance is inextricably linked with symbolism. The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was marked by revolution and innovation in all areas of art. Including poetry.

The “golden”, classical age was replaced by new talented writers with completely new trends. Symbolism in literature and in particular in poetry implied two directions:

• Form of a poetic work
• Worldview, philosophy, style and lifestyle

Almost all famous Russian poets of the “Silver Age” suffered from symbolism, as an obligatory childhood disease. But some were able to step over the formalism of this movement - poetic meter, poetic form, mystical and vague content and became famous poets, the pride and glory of Russian literature.

Others focused their creativity on the external attributes of symbolism and stopped in their development, reaching a dead end. Mysticism, deliberately emphasized religiosity against the backdrop of the denied moral values ​​of bourgeois society, the fetish of individualism combined with ridicule and contemptuous emphasis on the practicality of modern society, the desire to gain spiritual freedom and similar sentiments were expressed in unusual and incomprehensible poetic lines for the general public.

The early works of Merezhkovsky, Gippius, and Blok were met with hostility and ridicule. But after 10 - 15 years, these pioneers of a new movement, along with life experience that left an imprint on their worldview, acquire poetic skill. For them, poetry ceases to be exclusively art for art’s sake and, thanks to their talent, they create beautiful poems that are included in the “golden fund” of Russian poetry.

Symbolist poets

Despite all the Manifestos, program statements and declarations, fanatical adherence to the provisions of symbolism, this could not level the poets, comb them with the same brush. All of them were gifted people, bright personalities with their own individual note and distinctive timbre of poetry. Each had his own style, his own poetic range.

Balmont, the first to taste fame and popularity, is distinguished by his extraordinary melodiousness and rhythm. Bryusov, with clear stanzas as if cast from bronze, is realistic, down-to-earth and very far from mystical, otherworldly worlds. Innokenty Annensky, with a painfully subtle psychological note, does not rebel or scream, but his poems are fascinating and penetrate to the very depths of the soul. Vyacheslav Ivanov is a many-wise esthete, trying to cultivate poetry in tune with Ancient Hellas on the snowy Russian fields.

By the power of his talent, he managed to convey sadness, bright joy, bitterness, and patriotism in poems written according to the strictest canons of symbolism. Now it is impossible to imagine Russian literature without Blok’s poetry. A whole century has passed since the school of Russian symbolism ceased to exist, and we continue to admire the beautiful poems of these wonderful poets.