, Playwright , Critic

Innokenty Fyodorovich Annensky(August 20 (September 1), 1855, Omsk, Russian Empire - November 30 (December 13), 1909, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) - Russian poet, playwright, translator, critic, researcher of literature and language, teacher and administrative figure in education. Brother of N. F. Annensky.

Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk, in the family of the state official Fyodor Nikolaevich Annensky (died March 27, 1880) and Natalia Petrovna Annenskaya (died October 25, 1889). His father was the head of the department of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. When Innokenty was about five years old, his father received a position as an official for special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the family returned from Siberia to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849.

Poor health, Annensky studied at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg progymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869, he studied for two and a half years at the private gymnasium of V. I. Berens. Before entering the university, in 1875, he lived with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedically educated person, an economist, a populist, who helped his younger brother in preparing for the exam and had a great influence on Innokenty.

After graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University in 1879, he served for a long time as a teacher of ancient languages ​​and Russian literature at the Gurevich Gymnasium. He was the director of the Galagan College in Kyiv (January 1891 - October 1893), then the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium (1893-1896) and the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo (October 16, 1896 - January 2, 1906). The excessive softness shown by him, according to the authorities, in the troubled times of 1905-1906, was the reason for his removal from this post. In 1906, he was transferred to St. Petersburg as a district inspector and remained in this position until 1909, when he retired shortly before his death. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Women's Courses. From the beginning of the 1880s, he appeared in print with scientific reviews, critical articles and articles on pedagogical issues. From the beginning of the 1890s, he began to study Greek tragedians; over the course of a number of years, he performed a tremendous job of translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripides' plots and the "Bacchic drama" Famira-kifared (played in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French Symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbière, A. de Regnier, F. Jamm and others).

On November 30 (December 13), 1909, Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoselsky railway station in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Kazan cemetery in Tsarskoye Selo (now the city of Pushkin, Leningrad Region). Annensky's son, philologist and poet Valentin Annensky (Krivich), published his Cypress Casket (1910) and Posthumous Poems (1923).

Dramaturgy

Annensky wrote four plays - "Melanippa the Philosopher" (1901), "King Ixion" (1902), "Laodamia" (1906) and "Famira-kifared" (1906, published posthumously in 1913) - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of the lost plays by Euripides and in imitation of his manner.

Translations

Annensky translated into Russian the complete collection of plays by the great Greek playwright Euripides. He also performed poetic translations of works by Horace, Goethe, Muller, Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Renier, Sully-Prudhomme, Longfellow.

Literary influence

Annensky's literary influence on the currents of Russian poetry that arose after symbolism (acmeism, futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem "The Bells" can rightly be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time. Annensky's influence strongly affects Pasternak and his school, Anna Akhmatova, Georgy Ivanov and many others. In his literary-critical articles, partly collected in two "Books of Reflections", Annensky gives brilliant examples of Russian impressionist criticism, striving to interpret a work of art by consciously continuing the author's work in himself. It should be noted that already in his critical and pedagogical articles of the 1880s, Annensky, long before the formalists, called for a systematic study of the form of works of art in schools.

Activity as director of the gymnasium

The position of director of the gymnasium always weighed on I. F. Annensky. In a letter to A.V. Borodina in August 1900, he wrote:

You ask me: "Why don't you leave?" Oh, how much I thought about it... How much I dreamed about it... Maybe it wouldn't be so difficult... But you know what do you think seriously? Does a convinced defender of classicism have a moral right to throw down its banner at a moment when it is surrounded on all sides by evil enemies?...

Innokenty Annensky. Favorites / Comp. I. Podolskaya. - M.: Pravda, 1987. - S. 469. - 592 p.

Professor B. E. Raikov, a former student of the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium, wrote in his memoirs about Innokenty Annensky:

... absolutely nothing was known about his poetic experiments at that time. He was known only as the author of articles and notes on philological topics, and he kept his poems to himself and did not publish anything, although at that time he was already about forty years old. We schoolboys saw in him only a tall, thin figure in a uniform, who sometimes threatened us with a long white finger, but in general kept very far from us and our affairs.

Annensky was a zealous defender of ancient languages ​​and held high the banner of classicism in his gymnasium. Under him, our recreational hall was all painted with ancient Greek frescoes, and at the holidays the schoolchildren played the plays of Sophocles and Euripides in Greek, moreover, in antique costumes, strictly sustained in the style of the era.

Editions

• Annensky I.F. Quiet songs. - St. Petersburg, 1904. (Under the pseudonym "Nick. T-o")
• Annensky I. F. The book of reflections. - St. Petersburg, 1906.
• Annensky I. F. The second book of reflections. - St. Petersburg, 1909.
• Annensky I.F. Cypress casket. - St. Petersburg, 1910.
• Annensky I. F. Poems / Comp., entry. Art. and note. E. V. Ermilova. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1987. - 272 p. (Poetic Russia)
• Annensky I.F. Poems and tragedies / Introductory article, comp., prepared. text., note. A. V. Fedorova. - L.: Owls. writer, 1990. - 640 p. (Library of the poet. Large series. Third edition.)
• Annensky I. F. 1909: Lectures on ancient literature. SPb.

Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky - photo

Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky - quotes

For a charm of silver-leaved tulips on a veil I will stand a hundred dinners, I will be exhausted in fasting!

What heavy, dark delirium! How these heights are cloudy-moon! To touch the violin for so many years And not to recognize the strings by the light! Who needs us? Who lit Two yellow faces, two sad... And suddenly felt a bow, That someone took and someone merged them. “Oh, how long ago! Through this darkness Say one thing: are you the one, are you the one? And the strings caressed him, Ringing, but, caressing, they trembled. “Isn’t it true that we will never part again? enough?..” And the violin answered yes, But the heart of the violin was in pain. The bow understood everything, it calmed down, And in the violin it all held ... And it was torment for them, What people thought was music. But the man did not extinguish the candles until the morning... And the strings sang... Only the sun found them without strength On the black velvet of the bed.

You are with me again, friend autumn ...

What is happiness? Chad of insane speech? One minute on the way, Where with the kiss of a greedy meeting Merged inaudible sorry? Or is it in the autumn rain? In return of the day? In the closure of eyelids? In goods that we do not appreciate For the ugliness of their clothes? You say... Here happiness beats A clinging wing to a flower, But in a moment - and it will soar up Irrevocably and lightly. And the heart, perhaps, is sweeter The arrogance of consciousness, Sweeter is the torment, if there is a subtle poison of remembrance in it.

In the separate clarity of the rays And in the chaotic fusion of visions Always above us - the power of things With its triad of dimensions. And you widen the brink of being, Or you multiply the forms with fiction, But in the very I, from the eyes of Not I, You cannot go anywhere. That power is a beacon, she calls, God and decay were combined in it, And in front of it, so pale Is the concealment of things in art. No, do not get away from their power Behind the magic of air spots, The verse does not beckon with depth, It is only incomprehensible like a rebus. The beauty of an open face Attracted Orpheus pieris. Are you really worthy of a singer, Covers of puppet Isis? Love separateness and rays In the fragrance born by them. You are the bowl of bright points For integral perceptions.

Annensky Innokenty Fedorovich (1855-1909) - Russian poet, writer, critic, translator, playwright. He did a lot of research on the Russian language and literature, worked as the director of the men's gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo.

Childhood

Innokenty was born on September 1, 1855 in the west of Siberia in the city of Omsk. Six years earlier, the Annensky family moved here from St. Petersburg due to the appointment of the head of the family to a new position.

In 1856, the boy was baptized in the Omsk Fortress-Cathedral-Resurrection Church. The ceremony was conducted by Archpriest Stefan Znamensky, who in the same year baptized Mikhail Vrubel, who later became a great Russian artist, in this church.

Pope Innokenty, Annensky Fyodor Nikolaevich, was in the service of the state as a high-ranking official. My father first worked in the Main Directorate of Western Siberia as an adviser to the Omsk branch of the guardianship society for prisons. He later took over as head of this department.

Mother, Annenskaya Natalya Petrovna (maiden name Karamolina), was engaged in raising six children. The future poet had four older sisters Natasha (1840), Alexandra (1842), Maria (1850), Lyubov (1852) and brother Nikolai (1843), who later became a well-known Russian public figure, journalist, translator, publicist, economist.

The maternal grandmother was the wife of one of the sons of Abram Petrovich Gannibal (Pushkin's great-grandfather A.S.)

In Omsk, the Annensky family occupied a large one-story wooden house with all the necessary office space, a garden and a plot of land. In those days, this was considered the norm for a large family and the position of state councilor in which the father served (this rank was equated to the rank of general). When, in the late 1850s, their father was transferred to the city of Tomsk, the Annenskys sold their house for seven and a half thousand silver rubles. Mother believed that this spacious and comfortable room could house the city hospital.

Innokenty's early childhood years were spent in Siberia under the supervision of a nanny and a French governess, who was involved in the education of his older sisters.

In 1860, the father of the family was again promoted, appointed to the Ministry of the Interior as an official for special assignments. In connection with this appointment, the Annenskys moved from Tomsk to St. Petersburg. In the same year, the five-year-old Innokenty suffered a long and severe heart disease, which left an indelible mark on his health for the rest of his life. Since then, the boy clearly remembered that, compared to his peers, he grew up sickly and weak, remaining far behind them in physical development.

Studies

The environment in which Innokenty grew up contributed to the fact that he had an early desire for reading and the sciences. He had practically no comrades; children's outdoor and noisy games that boys of his age were fond of were not interested in Innocent due to health reasons. He was brought up in a female environment, he began to study early and was never burdened by this. Studying was easy for him. Having learned to read under the guidance of his elder sister, Innokenty began to read everything that was allowed to him according to his age.

In St. Petersburg, the Annensky family lived on Sands. Not far from their house there was a school, to which the parents sent their ten-year-old son to prepare for entering the gymnasium. The boy studied at school for two years, and his elder brother Nikolai taught him the first lessons in Latin grammar.

In 1867, a new men's gymnasium No. 2 was opened on the 5th Rozhdestvenskaya Street in St. Petersburg, where Innokenty successfully passed the entrance exams and was enrolled as an incoming student of the second grade. He studied well, most of all he liked the Russian language and geography. However, in the spring, studies had to be interrupted due to illness. For the summer, the family went to the suburbs of St. Petersburg, where the young man managed to improve his health in the fresh air, and in the fall he returned to the gymnasium.

In 1869, Innokenty entered the private gymnasium of V. I. Berens, where he studied for two and a half years. But here, too, studies constantly had to be interrupted due to illness and trips for treatment to Staraya Russian mineral waters. The elder brother Nikolai, with whom Innokenty lived most of the time, helped to improve his knowledge. With his help, in 1875, the young Annensky passed the exams for the full gymnasium as an external student, received a certificate of maturity and became a student at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University.

He studied at the Department of Literature, specialized in ancient literature, learned fourteen languages, including such complex ones as Hebrew and Sanskrit. In 1879, Annensky graduated from his studies and received the title of candidate, he was awarded to graduates whose theses were of particular value to science.

Teaching activity

After graduating from the university, Innokenty Fedorovich took up pedagogical work. In the gymnasiums of St. Petersburg, he taught Greek and Latin, at the higher women's (Bestuzhev) courses he lectured on the theory of literature. He needed to provide for a young family, so Annensky took 56 gymnasium lessons a week, which undermined his already poor health.

In 1891, Innokenty Fedorovich became the director of the Kyiv Gymnasium College.

In 1893 he headed the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium.

In 1896 he was appointed head of the Nikolaev Gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo. He remained in this position until 1906. Then his superiors decided that in the troubled times of 1905-1906, Annensky proved to be excessively soft, for this reason he was removed from the post of director of the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium and appointed district inspector. In this position, he worked until 1909, resigning shortly before his death.

Literary activity

Innokenty Annensky never considered teaching the main business of his life. His heart was in literature. He translated into Russian nineteen plays of the great tragedian of Ancient Greece, Euripides, in addition to translation, he provided them with articles and commentaries. He also wrote translations of Horatio, Heine, Longfellow, famous French lyricists - Charles Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Leconte de Lisle, Verlaine, Mallarmé.

Annensky worked a lot as a literary critic. He wrote essays on the works of Gogol, Chekhov, Lermontov, Gorky, Maikov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev. He did not bypass foreign literature - Ibsen, Balmonte, Shakespeare.

A little imitating the manner of Euripides, Annensky wrote several plays:

• 1901 - "Melanippa the Philosopher";
• 1902 - "King Ixion";
• 1906 - "Laodamia";
• 1906 - "Famira-kifared".

Since 1881, he published his articles in which he considered pedagogical problems. Annensky argued that native speech should play a primary role in the education of students. His pedagogical work had a beneficial effect on a number of well-known Russian poets. Among them is Nikolai Gumilyov, who studied at the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo and took his first steps in the world of poetry under the impression of a personal acquaintance with Annensky.

Innokenty Fedorovich was most strict about his own poetry. He began to write from the school years, and only decades later he ventured to present his works to readers. It didn’t even fit in my head that this state councilor in an impeccable uniform and with the same manners could contrast so sharply with a wild, lonely, secretive human soul, which was killed by unbearable longing. This is how Innokenty revealed himself in his poems. As if two people lived in it, not intersecting with each other.

The only poetic collection “Quiet Songs” published during the life of Innokenty Fedorovich was published in 1904, but did not become an event in literary life. It was released under the pseudonym "Nick. That." Annensky came up with such a pseudonym for himself with double intent. Firstly, all these letters were taken from his name, and secondly, this is how Odysseus called himself when he got into the cave of Polyphemus.

A year after his death, the second book of poems "Cypress Casket" was published, which completely changed the opinion about Annensky. He began to be called a subtle critic and an exceptional erudite, an original, unlike any other, true poet.

This frivolous disregard for the living expresses the general Russian grief. How great people are not appreciated while they live. And only when they leave, the world begins, having realized it, to weave wreaths for them ... After many years, they will say about his poetry that "in Russian literature there are no poems quieter, more sober, more honest."

Personal life

In 1877, the poet fell passionately in love with Khmara-Barshchevskaya Nadezhda Valentinovna.

The widow had two teenage children and was fourteen years older than Annensky. Innokenty affectionately called her Dina and wrote to his sister Lyubov in a letter how extraordinarily good his chosen one was, what beautiful light ash hair she had, a clear mind, attractive grace. Dina also loved Annensky very much and was jealous of him no less.

When Innokenty graduated from the university, they got married. In 1880, their boy Valentin was born. In the future, he also became a poet and philologist, it is Annensky's son who has the merit in publishing two collections of his father's poetry after his death.

In 1909, heart disease worsened from overwork at Innokenty Fedorovich. He died suddenly of a heart attack on December 11, 1909, right on the steps of the Tsarskoselsky railway station. Least of all, the poet wanted such an end, he even wrote lines on this subject, which later became an aphorism: “I would not want to die suddenly. It's like leaving a restaurant without paying."

He was buried in Tsarskoe Selo at the Kazan cemetery.

Annensky Innokenty Fedorovich was born in Omsk in 1855 in the family of an important government official. In 1860, my father received a new appointment, and the whole family moved to St. Petersburg.

Education

At first, Annensky studied at a private school (due to poor health), then at the 2nd St. Petersburg gymnasium, then again at a private school. He was helped to enter the university by his elder brother Nikolai Annensky, an outstanding encyclopedist, economist, populist.

In 1875 he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, and in 1879 he graduated with honors and began teaching. Annensky worked in both public and private schools. Usually he either taught Russian literature, or history, or ancient languages. Even then, it was clear to everyone that this man was a big fan of classicism in its purest form.

Peak teaching career

Annensky managed to work as a teacher of the Russian language, literature, history, ancient languages ​​in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kyiv, but in 1896 he was appointed director of the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo. The students adored him, although they considered him a big eccentric, but in 1906 the authorities considered him too soft and fired him. Annensky was very upset by the dismissal, because he really loved his job very much.

Creative activity

After his dismissal from the gymnasium, Annensky worked as a district inspector, but at the same time he managed to make translations from ancient Greek and French (he translated Euripides, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud), published several collections of poems, and wrote critical articles. Annensky's work was highly appreciated by his contemporaries, he was considered perhaps the best translator in St. Petersburg and a connoisseur of Russian literature. He was a recognized authority on classicism and classical education.

Death

Annensky died suddenly of a heart attack in 1909. He was buried in Tsarskoye Selo (now it is the city of Pushkin). His son, also a famous poet, did everything so that his father's poems and his dramatic works were published, he also published the first short biography of Annensky I.F. and a biography of his brother Annensky N.F.

Other biography options

• Annensky was a great admirer of ancient Greek playwrights. During his leadership of the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo, he did everything to ensure that the students had an excellent command of the ancient Greek language.
• It is interesting that for a long time Annensky's close friends did not know anything about his plays, designed in the spirit of Euripides, and about his poems. Annensky hid his poetic and dramatic talent. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, he was a rather modest person. Meanwhile, Annensky was considered a genius by many recognized classics of Russian literature. Anna Akhmatova loved him very much, Pasternak admired him.
• Annensky's poem "The Bells" is considered the first futuristic Russian poem. Annensky's poem "Among the Worlds" (considered one of the best poems in Russian literature) was set to music written by A. Vertinsky.
• In addition to ancient languages ​​and French, Annensky also knew German and English. He translated a lot of Goethe, Müller, Heine. From ancient Roman (Latin), he translated the works of Horace.

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Biography

Personality Inkenty Fedorovich Annensky remained largely a mystery to contemporaries. Born August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk in the family of a government official. His father was the head of the Omsk Railway Department. When Innokenty was about five years old, his father received a position as an official for special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the family returned from Siberia to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849.

Poor health, Annensky studies at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg progymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869, he studied at the private gymnasium of V. I. Berens for two and a half years. Having lost his parents early, he often lives with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedically educated person, an economist, a populist, who had a great influence on Innokenty.

After graduating (1879) from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, he served as a teacher of ancient languages ​​and Russian literature, later director of a gymnasium in Kyiv, St. Petersburg, and Tsarskoye Selo. Since 1906, inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Women's Courses. From the beginning of the 1880s, he appeared in print with scientific reviews, critical articles and articles on pedagogical issues. From the beginning of the 1890s, he began to study Greek tragedians; over the course of a number of years, he performed a tremendous job of translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripides' plots and the "Bacchic drama" Famira-kifared (played in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French Symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbière, A. de Regnier, F. Jamm and others).

November 30 (December 11), 1909 Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoselsky (Vitebsky) railway station in St. Petersburg.

Annensky's son, a philologist and poet, published his Posthumous Poems (1923).

Poetry

Annensky is most significant as a poet. He began to write poetry from childhood, but published them for the first time in 1904. Annensky, in his own words, owed his "intelligent being" to the influence of his older brother, the famous populist publicist N. F. Annensky, and his wife, the sister of the revolutionary Tkachev. In his poetry, Annensky, as he himself says, sought to express the “urban, partly stone, museum soul”, which was “tortured by Dostoevsky”, “the sick and sensitive soul of our days”. The world of the "sick soul" is the main element of Annensky's work. According to the fair indications of criticism, "nothing succeeded in Annensky's poetry as vividly, so convincingly as the description of nightmares and insomnia"; “To express the painful decline of the spirit, he found thousands of shades. He told the curves of his neurasthenia in every possible way. The hopeless longing of life and the horror of “liberating” death, the simultaneous “desire to annihilate and the fear of dying”, rejection of reality, the desire to escape from it into the “sweet hashish” of delirium, into the “binge” of labor, into the “poison” of poetry and at the same time “ mysterious" attachment to "everyday life", to everyday life, to "the hopeless ruin of his vulgar world" - such is the complex and contradictory "worldview and worldview" that Annensky seeks to "inspire" with his poems.

Approaching this "worldview" of all his contemporaries most of all to, the forms of verse Annensky is closest to the young period of the "Russian Symbolists". However, the exaggerated "decadentism" of the former, in which there was a lot of deliberate, invented with the special purpose of attracting attention, "shocking" the reader, who did not publish his poems in Annensky, is deeply organic in nature. Bryusov soon departed from his early student experiences. Annensky remained faithful to "decadentism" throughout his life, "froze in his modernism at a certain point in the early 1990s", but on the other hand he brought it to perfect artistic expression. Annensky's style is brightly impressionistic, often distinguished by sophistication, standing on the verge of pretentiousness, lush rhetoric of decadence.

Like the young Bryusov, Annensky's poetic teachers were French poets of the second half of the 19th century - the Parnassians and the "damned": Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé. From the Parnassians, Annensky inherited their cult of poetic form, love for the word as such; Verlaine followed in his striving for musicality, for the transformation of poetry into a "melodic rain of symbols"; following Baudelaire, he whimsically intertwined in his dictionary "high", "poetic" sayings with scientific terms, with ordinary, emphatically "everyday" words borrowed from vernacular; finally, following Mallarmé, he built the main effect of his rebus poems on a conscious obscuration of meaning. Annensky is distinguished from the "passionless" French parnassians by a special piercing note of pity, which sounds through all his poetry. This pity is directed not at the social suffering of mankind, not even at a person in general, but at nature, at the inanimate world of offended things suffering and languishing with “evil insults” (watches, dolls, barrel organ, etc.), with the images of which the poet masks his own pain and flour. And the smaller, insignificant, insignificant the “suffering” thing is, the more hysterical, aching self-pity it causes in him.

Peculiar literary destiny Annensky reminiscent of fate. Like the latter, Annensky is a typical "poet for poets". He published his only lifetime book of poems under the characteristic pseudonym “Nick. That". Indeed, for almost his entire life, Annensky remained a “nobody” in literature. Only shortly before his death did his poetry gain popularity in the circle of St. Petersburg poets, grouped around the Apollo magazine. Annensky's death was marked by a number of articles and obituaries, but after that his name again disappears from the printed columns for a long time.

Dramaturgy

Annensky wrote four plays - "Melanippa the Philosopher", "King Ixion", "Laodamia" and "Famira-kifared" - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of the lost plays of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.

Translations

Annensky translated into Russian the complete collection of plays by the great Greek playwright Euripides.

Literary influence

Annensky's literary influence on the currents of Russian poetry that arose after symbolism (acmeism, futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem can rightfully be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time. Annensky's influence strongly affects Pasternak and his school and many others. In his literary-critical articles, partly collected in two "Books of Reflections", Annensky gives brilliant examples of Russian impressionist criticism, striving to interpret a work of art by consciously continuing the author's work in himself. It should be noted that already in his critical pedagogical articles of the 1880s Annensky long before the formalists, he called for a systematic study of the form of works of art in the school.

Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky (1855-1909) - Russian playwright, poet, translator, critic, researcher of literature and language, director of the male gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo. Brother of N. F. Annensky.

Childhood and youth

Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk, in the family of the state official Fyodor Nikolaevich Annensky (died March 27, 1880) and Natalia Petrovna Annenskaya (died October 25, 1889). His father was the head of the department of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. When Innokenty was about five years old, his father received a position as an official for special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the family returned from Siberia to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849. As a child, Innokenty was a very weak and sickly boy.

Annensky studied at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg progymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869, he studied for two and a half years at the private gymnasium of V. I. Berens. Before entering the university, in 1875, he lived with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedically educated person, an economist, a populist, who helped his younger brother in preparing for the exam and had a great influence on Innokenty.

Activity as director of the gymnasium

After graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University in 1879, he served for a long time as a teacher of ancient languages ​​and Russian literature at the Gurevich Gymnasium. He served as director of the Galagan College in Kyiv (January 1891 - October 1893), then the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium (1893-1896) and the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo (October 16, 1896 - January 2, 1906). The excessive softness shown by him, according to his superiors, during the troubled times of 1905-1906, was the reason for his dismissal from this post. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Women's Courses.

The position of director of the gymnasium always weighed on I. F. Annensky. In a letter to A.V. Borodina in August 1900, he wrote: You ask me: “Why don’t you leave?” Oh, how much I thought about it... How much I dreamed about it... Maybe it wouldn't be so difficult... But you know what do you think seriously? Does a convinced defender of classicism have a moral right to throw down its banner at a moment when it is surrounded on all sides by evil enemies? ... - Innokenty Annensky. Favorites / Comp. I. Podolskaya. - M.: Pravda, 1987. - S. 469. - 592 p.

From 1906 to 1909 he held the position of district inspector in St. Petersburg, and shortly before his death he retired.

Literary and translation activities

The creative biography of Innokenty Annensky begins in the early 1880s, when Annensky appears in print with scientific reviews, critical articles, as well as articles on pedagogical issues.

From the beginning of the 1890s, he began to study Greek tragedians; over the course of a number of years, he performed a tremendous job of translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripides' plots and the "Bacchic drama" Famira-kifared (played in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French Symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbière, A. de Regnier, F. Jamm and others). The first book of poems Quiet Songs was released in 1904 under the pseudonym Nick. T-o”, imitating the abbreviated name and surname, but developing into the word “No one” (this name was presented to Polyphemus by Odysseus).

Annensky wrote four plays - "Melanippa the Philosopher" (1901), "King Ixion" (1902), "Laodamia" (1906) and "Famira-kifared" (1906, published posthumously in 1913) - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of the lost tragedies of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.

Innocent Annesky translated into Russian all 18 tragedies that have come down to us by the great ancient Greek playwright Euripides. He also performed verse translations of works by Horace, Goethe, Muller, Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Renier, Sully-Prudhomme, Longfellow.

On November 30 (December 13), 1909, Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoselsky railway station in St. Petersburg from a heart attack. He was buried at the Kazan cemetery in Tsarskoye Selo (now the city of Pushkin, Leningrad Region). Annensky's son, philologist and poet Valentin Annensky (Krivich), published his Cypress Casket (1910) and Posthumous Poems (1923).

Literary influence

Annensky's literary influence on the currents of Russian poetry that arose after symbolism (acmeism, futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem "The Bells" can rightly be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time. His poem "Among the Worlds" is one of the masterpieces of Russian poetry; it formed the basis of romances written by A. Vertinsky and A. Sukhanov. Annensky's influence strongly affects Pasternak and his school, Anna Akhmatova, Georgy Ivanov and many others. In his literary-critical articles, partly collected in two "Books of Reflections", Annensky gives brilliant examples of Russian impressionist criticism, striving to interpret a work of art by consciously continuing the author's work in himself. It should be noted that already in his critical and pedagogical articles of the 1880s, Annensky, long before the formalists, called for a systematic study of the form of works of art in schools.

Memories of Annensky

Professor B. E. Raikov, a former student of the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium, wrote in his memoirs about Innokenty Annensky:

... absolutely nothing was known about his poetic experiments at that time. He was known only as the author of articles and notes on philological topics, and he kept his poems to himself and did not publish anything, although at that time he was already about forty years old. We schoolboys saw in him only a tall, thin figure in a uniform, who sometimes threatened us with a long white finger, but in general kept very far from us and our affairs.

Annensky was a zealous defender of ancient languages ​​and held high the banner of classicism in his gymnasium. Under him, our recreational hall was all painted with ancient Greek frescoes, and at the holidays the schoolchildren played the plays of Sophocles and Euripides in Greek, moreover, in antique costumes, strictly sustained in the style of the era.

In the city of Pushkin on Naberezhnaya Street at house number 12 in 2009, a memorial plaque was installed (sculptor V.V. Zaiko) with the text: “In this house from 1896 to 1905 the poet Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky lived and worked at the Imperial Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium.”