The turn of the 19th - 20th centuries is a special time in the history of Russia, a time when life was being rebuilt, the system of moral values ​​was changing. The key word of this time is crisis. This period had a positive effect on rapid development of literature and was called the "silver age", by analogy with the "golden age" of Russian literature. This article will examine the features of Russian symbolism that arose in Russian culture at the turn of the century.

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Definition of the term

Symbolism is direction in literature which was formed in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Together with decadence, it was the product of a deep spiritual crisis, but it was a response to the natural search for artistic truth in the direction opposite to realistic literature.

This trend has become a kind of attempt to get away from contradictions and reality into the realm of eternal themes and ideas.

The birthplace of symbolism became France. Jean Moreas in his manifesto "Le symbolisme" for the first time gives a name to a new trend from the Greek word symbolon (sign). The new direction in art relied on the works of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Vladimir Solovyov's The Soul of the World.

Symbolism became a violent reaction to the ideologicalization of art. Its representatives were guided by the experience that their predecessors had left them.

Important! This trend appeared at a difficult time and became a kind of attempt to escape from harsh reality into an ideal world. The emergence of Russian symbolism in literature is associated with the publication of a collection of Russian symbolists. It includes poems by Bryusov, Balmont and Dobrolyubov.

Main features

The new literary trend relied on the works of famous philosophers and tried to find in the human soul that place where you can hide from the frightening reality. Among the main symbolism features in Russian literature, the following are distinguished:

• The transmission of all secret meanings must be done through symbols.
• It is based on mysticism and philosophical works.
• Plurality of word meanings, associative perception.
• The works of the great classics are taken as a model.
• It is proposed to comprehend the diversity of the world through art.
• Create your own mythology.
• Particular attention to the rhythmic structure.
• The idea of ​​transforming the world with the help of art.

Features of the new literary school

Forerunners of the newfound symbolism considered to be A.A. Feta and F.I. Tyutchev. They became those who laid something new in the perception of poetic speech, the first features of the future trend. Lines from Tyutchev's poem "Silentium" became the motto of all symbolists in Russia.

The greatest contribution to understanding the new direction was made by V.Ya. Bryusov. He considered Symbolism a new literary school. He called it "poetry of hints", the purpose of which was indicated as follows: "to hypnotize the reader."

At the forefront of writers and poets comes to the fore the personality of the artist and his inner world. They destroy the concept of new criticism. Their teaching is based on domestic positions. Particular attention was paid to the predecessors of Western European realism, such as Baudelaire. At first, both Bryusov and Sologub imitated him in their work, but later they found their own perspective of literature.

Objects of the external world became symbols of any internal experiences. Russian symbolists took into account the experience of Russian and foreign literature, but it was refracted by new aesthetic requirements. This platform has absorbed all the signs of decadence.

Heterogeneity of Russian symbolism

Symbolism in the literature of the coming Silver Age was not an internally homogeneous phenomenon. At the beginning of the 1990s, two currents stood out in it: older and younger symbolist poets. A sign of older symbolism was its own special view of the social role of poetry and its content.

They argued that this literary phenomenon was a new stage in the development of the art of the word. The authors were less concerned with the very content of poetry and believed that it needed artistic renewal.

The younger representatives of the current were adherents of the philosophical and religious understanding of the world around them. They opposed the elders, but agreed only that they recognized the new design of Russian poetry and were inseparable from each other. General themes, images united critical attitude to realism. All this made possible their collaboration in the framework of the journal "Balance" in the 1900s.

Russian poets different understanding of goals and objectives Russian literature. Senior symbolists believe that the poet is the creator of an exclusively artistic value and personality. The younger ones interpreted literature as life-building, they believed that the world, which had become obsolete, would fall, and be replaced by a new one, built on high spirituality and culture. Bryusov said that all previous poetry was "the poetry of flowers", and the new one reflects shades of color.

An excellent example of the differences and similarities of Russian symbolism in the literature of the turn of the century was V. Bryusov's poem "The Younger". In it, he turns to his opponents, the Young Symbolists, and laments that he cannot see that mysticism, harmony and the possibilities of purifying the soul in which they so sacredly believe.

Important! Despite the opposition of two branches of the same literary trend, all the Symbolists were united by the themes and images of poetry, their desire to get away from.

Representatives of Russian symbolism

Among the older adherents, several representatives especially stood out: Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Dmitry Ivanovich Merezhkovsky, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, Fedor Kuzmich Sologub. Concept developers and ideological inspirers of this group of poets Bryusov and Merezhkovsky were considered.

The Young Symbolists were represented by such poets as A. Bely, A.A. Blok, V. Ivanov.

Examples of New Symbolist Themes

For representatives of the new literary school was the theme of loneliness. Only in the distance and complete solitude is the poet capable of creativity. Freedom in their understanding is freedom from society in general.

The theme of love is rethought and considered from the other side - “love is a sizzling passion”, but it is an obstacle to creativity, it weakens the love of art. Love is that feeling that leads to tragic consequences, makes you suffer. On the other hand, it is portrayed as a purely physiological attraction.

Symbolist poems open new topics:

• The theme of urbanism (singing of the city as a center of science and progress). The world is presented as two Moscow. The old one, with dark paths, the new one is the city of the future.
• The theme of anti-urbanism. The chanting of the city as a certain rejection of the former life.
• The theme of death. It was very common in symbolism. The motives for death are considered not only on a personal level, but also on a cosmic level (death of the world).

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov

Symbol theory

In the field of the artistic form of the poem, the Symbolists showed an innovative approach. He had obvious connections not only with previous literature, but also with ancient Russian and oral folk art. Their creative theory settled on the concept of a symbol. Symbols are a common technique both in folk poetry and in romantic and realistic art.

In oral folk art, a symbol is an expression of a person's naive ideas about nature. In professional literature, it is a means of expressing a social position, attitude to the surrounding world or a specific phenomenon.

Adherents of the new literary trend rethought the meaning and content of the symbol. They understood it as a kind of hieroglyph in a different reality, which is created by the imagination of an artist or philosopher. This conventional sign is realized not by reason, but by intuition. Based on this theory, symbolists believe that the visible world is not worthy of the artist's pen, it is only a nondescript copy of the mystical world, through which a symbol becomes a penetrating path.

The poet acted as a cipher the hidden meaning of the poem for allegories and images.

The painting by M. V. Nesterov “Vision to the youth Bartholomew” (1890) often illustrates the beginning of the Symbolist movement.

Features of rhythm and tropes used by symbolists

Symbolist poets considered music to be the highest form of art. They strove for the musicality of their poems. For this used traditional and non-traditional methods. They improved the traditional ones, turned to the reception of euphony (the phonetic possibilities of the language). It was used by the Symbolists to give the poem a special decorative effect, picturesqueness and euphony. In their poetry, the sound side dominates over the semantic side, the poem is moving closer to the music. The lyrical work is deliberately saturated with assonances and alliterations. Melodiousness is the main goal of creating a poem. In their works, symbolists, as representatives of the Silver Age, turn not only to, but also to the exclusion of hyphens in lines, syntactic and lexical articulation.

Active work is also being carried out in the field of the rhythm of the poem. Symbolists focus on folk system of poetry, in which the verse was more mobile and free. Appeal to vers libre, a poem that has no rhythm (A. Blok "I came ruddy from the frost"). Thanks to experiments in the field of rhythm, the conditions and prerequisites for the reform of poetic speech were created.

Important! The symbolists considered the musicality and melodiousness of a lyrical work to be the basis of life and art. The verses of all the poets of that time, with their melodiousness, are very reminiscent of a piece of music.

Silver Age. Part 1. Symbolists.

Literature of the Silver Age. Symbolism. K. Balmont.

Conclusion

Symbolism as a literary movement did not last long, it finally disintegrated by 1910. The reason was that symbolists deliberately cut themselves off from the surrounding life. They were supporters of free poetry, they did not recognize pressure, so their work was inaccessible and incomprehensible to the people. Symbolism took root in literature and the work of some poets who grew up on classical art and symbolist traditions. Therefore, the features of the disappeared symbolism in literature are still present.

"Symbolism" is a trend in European and Russian art that emerged at the turn of the 20th century, focused primarily on artistic expression through SYMBOL"things in themselves" and ideas that are beyond the limits of sensory perception. In an effort to break through the visible reality to the "hidden realities", beyond the temporal ideal essence of the world, its "imperishable" Beauty, the Symbolists expressed a longing for spiritual freedom, a tragic foreboding of world socio-historical shifts, trust in centuries-old cultural values ​​as a unifying principle.

The culture of Russian symbolism, as well as the very style of thinking of the poets and writers who formed this direction, arose and took shape at the intersection and mutual complement, outwardly opposing, but in fact firmly connected and explaining one another, lines of philosophical and aesthetic attitude to reality. It was a feeling of unprecedented novelty of everything that the turn of the century brought with it, accompanied by a feeling of trouble and instability.

Initially, symbolic poetry was formed as romantic and individualistic poetry, separating itself from the polyphony of the "street", closed in the world of personal experiences and impressions.

Those truths and criteria that were discovered and formulated in the 19th century no longer satisfied. A new concept was required that would correspond to the new time. We must pay tribute to the Symbolists - they did not join any of the stereotypes created in the 19th century. Nekrasov was dear to them, like Pushkin, Fet - like Nekrasov. And the point here is not the illegibility and omnivorousness of the symbolists. The point is the breadth of views, and most importantly, the understanding that every great personality in art has the right to his own view of the world and art. Whatever the views of their creator, the value of the works of art themselves does not lose anything from that. The main thing that the artists of the symbolic direction could not accept was complacency and tranquility, the absence of awe and burning.

Such an attitude towards the artist and his creations was also associated with the understanding that now, at this moment, at the end of the 90s of the XIX century, there is an entry into a new, disturbing and unsettled world. The artist must be imbued with both this novelty and this unsettledness, saturate his work with them, and in the end, sacrifice himself to time, to the events that are not yet visible, but which are as inevitable as the movement of time.

“In fact, symbolism has never been a school of art,” A. Bely wrote, “but it was a tendency towards a new worldview, refracting art in its own way ... And we considered new forms of art not as a change of forms alone, but as a distinct sign changes in the internal perception of the world "" Epic ". Book 3. Berlin, 1922, p. 254..

In 1900, K. Balmont gives a lecture in Paris, which he gives a demonstrative title: "Elementary words about symbolic poetry." Balmont believes that the empty space has already been filled - a new direction has emerged: symbolic poetry which is a sign of the times. From now on, there is no need to talk about any “spirit of desolation”. In the report, Balmont tried to describe the state of modern poetry with the possible breadth. He speaks of realism and symbolism as completely equal manners of world outlook. Equal in rights, but different in essence. These, he says, are two "different systems of artistic perception." “Realists are caught, like a surf, by concrete life, beyond which they see nothing, - symbolists, detached from reality, see only their dream in it, they look at life - from the window.” This is how the path of the symbolist artist is outlined: “from direct images, beautiful in their independent existence, to the spiritual ideality hidden in them, which gives them double strength” Balmont K.D. Mountain peaks. Book. 1. M. 1904, p. 75, 76, 94..

Such a view of art required a decisive restructuring of all artistic thinking. It was now based not on real correspondences of phenomena, but on associative correspondences, and the objective significance of associations was by no means considered mandatory. A. Bely wrote: “A characteristic feature of symbolism in art is the desire to use the image of reality as a means of conveying the experienced content of consciousness. The dependence of visibility images on the conditions of the perceiving consciousness transfers the center of gravity in art from the image to the way of its perception... The image, as a model of the experienced content of consciousness, is a symbol. The method of symbolizing experiences with images is symbolism” Bely A. Arabesques. Book of articles. M., 1911, p. 258..

Thus, poetic allegory is brought to the fore as the main method of creativity, when the word, without losing its usual meaning, acquires additional potential, polysemantic meanings that reveal its true “essence” of meaning.

The transformation of an artistic image into a "model of the experienced content of consciousness", that is, into a symbol, required the reader's attention to be shifted from what was expressed to what was implied. The artistic image turned out to be at the same time the image of allegory.

The very appeal to implied meanings and an imaginary world, which provided a foothold in the search for ideal means of expression, had a certain attractive force. It was she who later served as the basis for the rapprochement of the poets of symbolism with Vl. Solovyov, who seemed to some of them to be a seeker of new ways of spiritual transformation of life. Anticipating the onset of events of historical significance, feeling the beating of the underlying forces of history and not being able to interpret them, the poets of symbolism found themselves at the mercy of mystical and eschatological ** Eschatology is a religious doctrine of the final destinies of the world and man. theories. It was then that they met with Vl. Solovyov.

Of course, symbolism was based on the experience of the decadent art of the 80s, but it was a qualitatively different phenomenon. And he far from coincided with decadence in everything.

Arose in the 90s under the sign of the search for new means of poetic representation, symbolism at the beginning of the new century found ground in vague expectations of impending historical changes. The acquisition of this soil served as the basis for its further existence and development, but in a different direction. The poetry of symbolism remained fundamentally and emphatically individualistic in its content, but it received a problematic, which was now based on the perception of a particular era. On the basis of anxious expectation, there is now a sharpening of the perception of reality, which entered the consciousness and work of poets in the form of various mysterious and disturbing "signs of the times." Such a “sign” could be any phenomenon, any historical or purely everyday fact (“signs” of nature - dawns and sunsets; various kinds of meetings that were given a mystical meaning; “signs” of a state of mind - twins; “signs” of history - Scythians, Huns , Mongols, general destruction, "signs" of the Bible, which played a particularly important role - Christ, a new rebirth, white color as a symbol of the purifying nature of future changes, etc.). The cultural heritage of the past was also mastered. Facts were selected from it that could have a "prophetic" character. Both written and oral presentations were widely equipped with these facts.

By the nature of its internal connections, the poetry of symbolism developed at that time in the direction of an ever deeper transformation of direct life impressions, their mysterious understanding, the purpose of which was not to establish real connections and dependencies, but to comprehend the “hidden” meaning of things. This feature was the basis of the creative method of the poets of symbolism, their poetics, if we take these categories in conventional and common features for the whole movement.

The 900s are the time of flourishing, renewal and deepening of symbolist lyrics. No other direction in poetry could compete with symbolism during these years, either in the number of collections produced or in influence on the reading public.

Symbolism was a heterogeneous phenomenon, uniting in its ranks poets who held the most divergent views. Some of them very soon realized the futility of poetic subjectivism, others took a while. Some of them were addicted to the secret "esoteric" ** Esoteric - secret, hidden, intended exclusively for initiates. language, others avoided it. The school of Russian symbolists was, in essence, a rather motley association, especially since it included, as a rule, highly gifted people endowed with a bright individuality.

Briefly about those people who stood at the origins of symbolism, and about those poets in whose work this direction is most clearly expressed.

Some of the Symbolists, such as Nikolai Minsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, began their career as representatives of civil poetry, and then began to focus on the ideas of "god-building" and "religious society". N.Minsky after 1884 became disillusioned with the populist ideology and became a theorist and practitioner of decadent poetry, a preacher of Nietzsche's ideas and individualism. During the revolution of 1905, civic motifs reappeared in Minsky's poems. In 1905, N.Minsky published the newspaper Novaya Zhizn, which became the legal organ of the Bolsheviks. The work of D. Merezhkovsky "On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature" (1893) was an aesthetic declaration of Russian decadence. In his novels and plays, written on historical material and developing the concept of neo-Christianity, Merezhkovsky tried to comprehend world history as an eternal struggle between the "religion of the spirit" and the "religion of the flesh." Merezhkovsky is the author of the study "L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky" (1901-02), which aroused great interest among his contemporaries.

Others - for example, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont (they were sometimes called "senior symbolists") - considered symbolism as a new stage in the progressive development of art, which replaced realism, and largely proceeded from the concept of "art for art's sake". The poetry of V. Bryusov is characterized by historical and cultural problems, rationalism, completeness of images, declamatory system. In the poems of K. Balmont - the cult of I, the game of transience, the opposition to the "iron age" of the primordial integral "solar" principle; musicality.

And finally, the third - the so-called "junior" symbolists (Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov) - were adherents of the philosophical and religious understanding of the world in the spirit of the teachings of the philosopher Vl. Solovyov. If in the first collection of poetry by A. Blok "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (1903) there are often ecstatic ** Ecstatic - enthusiastic, frenzied, in a state of ecstasy. songs that the poet addressed to his Beautiful Lady, then already in the collection “Unexpected Joy” (1907) Blok clearly moves towards realism, stating in the preface to the collection: “Unexpected joy” is my image of the coming world. The early poetry of A. Bely is characterized by mystical motifs, grotesque perception of reality ("symphonies"), formal experimentation. The poetry of Vyacheslav Ivanov is focused on the cultural and philosophical problems of antiquity and the Middle Ages; the concept of creativity is religious and aesthetic.

Symbolists constantly argued with each other, trying to prove the correctness of precisely their judgments about this literary movement. So, V. Bryusov considered it as a means of creating a fundamentally new art; K. Balmont saw in him a way of comprehending the hidden, unsolved depths of the human soul; Vyacheslav Ivanov believed that symbolism would help bridge the gap between the artist and the people, and A. Bely was convinced that this was the basis on which a new art would be created that could transform the human personality.

Let us consider in more detail the work of A. Bely, as one of the leading theorists of symbolism.

Andrei Bely is an original and original poet. In his poetry, pathos and irony, everyday sketches and intimate experiences, pictures of nature and philosophical reflections coexisted in contrast. In 1904 he published a book of poems "Gold in Azure", in which he declared himself as a talented symbolist poet.

Andrei Bely, as a theorist of symbolism, reveals the meaning of his platform in this way: “symbolism, accepting the slogans of historical schools, reveals them in ... their “pluses” and “minuses”; he is the self-consciousness of creativity, like criticism; before him, it is blind: he opposes himself to "schools" where these schools violate the main slogan of the unity of form and content; romantics violate it in the direction of content experienced subjectively; sententionism - towards the content, understood in the abstract; modern classicism (passeism) violates it in the direction of form.

The unity of form and content cannot be taken ... neither by the dependence of content on form (the sin of the formalists), nor by the exclusive dependence of the method of construction on the abstractly understood content (constructivism). "Realism, romanticism ... manifestation of a single principle of creativity" - in symbolism" Bely A. Between two revolutions. M., 1990, p.193..

A significant place in the work of A. Bely was occupied by prose. He wrote the novels Silver Dove (1909), Petersburg (1913-1914), Kotik Letaev (1922), the Moscow trilogy (1926-1932), which are characterized by temporal displacements, fragmentation and fragmentary plot, free composition, deliberate use of different narrative rhythms.

The symbolism of Bely is a special symbolism that has little in common with the verbal dogma of Bryusov, or the verbosity of Blok's "Poems about the Beautiful Lady", or the impressionism of Annensky. He is all aimed at the future, he has much more in common with Tsvetaeva's verse fragmentation, with Mayakovsky's "precise and naked" speech. His poems are devoid of cipher, the cipher here has been replaced by association, which has become the main poetic means not only of Bely the poet, but also the Bely the prose writer, and even the Bely the critic and publicist. The mathematically precisely calculated use of the word and the verbal image constantly interacts in Bely with the elements of his lyrical "I", in which not only the visual, but also the musical principle dominates.

All his life, from early youth, A. Bely was possessed by one grandiose feeling - a feeling of world trouble, almost an impending "end of the world." Bely carried this feeling through his whole life, nourished his works with it, nourished with it the main, sought-after idea of ​​his whole life and his work - the idea of ​​the brotherhood of all people in the world, the idea of ​​spiritual kinship that would block all barriers, would pass over social differences and social antagonism, giving as a result the opportunity for people - each person individually and all of humanity as a whole - to preserve themselves, the individual characteristics of their nature in these terrible and fraught years.

With its eternal dissatisfaction and intensity of searching, deep humanism, moral purity and spontaneity, ethical maximalism, artistic and poetic discoveries, the depth of ideas and prophecies, the desire to find a way out of the crisis in which humanity found itself, finally, the very nature of his personality - nervous, seeking, falling into the abyss of despair, but also soaring to the heights of great insights - with all this, Bely firmly inscribed his name in the history of the twentieth century.

One of the leading places in Russian literature is rightfully occupied by Alexander Blok. Blok is a world-class lyricist. His contribution to Russian poetry is extraordinarily rich. The lyrical image of Russia, a passionate confession of bright and tragic love, the majestic rhythms of Italian poetry, the piercingly outlined face of St. Petersburg, the "tearful beauty" of the villages - all this, with the breadth and penetration of genius, Blok contained in his work.

Blok's first book, Poems about the Beautiful Lady, was published in 1904. Blok's lyrics of that time are painted in prayerful and mystical tones: the real world is opposed to the real world in it, comprehended only in secret signs and revelations, a ghostly, "other world" world. The poet was strongly influenced by the teachings of Vl. Solovyov about the “end of the world” and the “world soul”. In Russian poetry, Blok took his place as a bright representative of symbolism, although his further work overflowed all symbolic frameworks and canons.

In the second collection of poems, Unexpected Joy (1906), the poet discovered new paths for himself, which were only outlined in his first book.

Andrei Bely strove to penetrate into the cause of the sharp turning point in the poet's muse, who seemed to have just glorified "the approach of the eternally feminine beginning of life" in "elusive and tender lines." He saw her in Blok's closeness to nature, to the earth: "Unexpected joy" expresses the essence of A. Blok more deeply ... The second collection of Blok's poems is more interesting, more magnificent than the first. How surprisingly the subtlest demonism is combined here with the simple sadness of poor Russian nature, always the same, always sobbing with showers, always frightening us through tears with the grin of ravines ... Terrible, inexpressible Russian nature. And Blok understands her like no one ... "

The third collection, The Earth in the Snow (1908), was received with hostility by critics. The critics did not want or failed to understand the logic of Blok's new book.

The fourth collection "Night Hours" was published in 1911, in a very modest edition. By the time of his release, Blok was increasingly seized by a sense of alienation from literature, and until 1916 he did not publish a single book of poetry.

Difficult and confusing relations that lasted almost two decades developed between A. Blok and A. Bely.

Blok’s first verses made a huge impression on Bely: “In order to understand the impressions from these poems, one must clearly imagine that time: for us, who heeded the signs of dawn, shining on us, all the air sounded like the lines of A.A.; and it seemed that Blok wrote only what the air spoke to his consciousness; he really laid siege to the rose-gold and tense atmosphere of the era with words. Bely helped publish Blok's first book (bypassing Moscow censorship). In turn, Blok supported Bely. So he played a decisive role in the birth of Bely's main novel, Petersburg, publicly praised both Petersburg and Silver Dove.

Along with this, their relationship and correspondence reached the point of hostility; constant reproaches and accusations, hostility, caustic injections, the imposition of discussions poisoned the lives of both.

However, despite all the complexity and intricacy of creative and personal relationships, both poets continued to respect, love and appreciate each other's creativity and personality, which once again confirmed Bely's performance on Blok's death.

After the revolutionary events of 1905, contradictions intensified even more in the ranks of the Symbolists, which, in the end, led this direction to a crisis.

However, it should be noted that the Russian Symbolists made a significant contribution to the development of national culture. The most talented of them, in their own way, reflected the tragedy of the situation of a person who could not find his place in a world shaken by grandiose social conflicts, tried to find new ways for artistic understanding of the world. They own serious discoveries in the field of poetics, the rhythmic reorganization of verse, and the strengthening of the musical principle in it.

“Post-symbolistic poetry discarded the “supersensible” meanings of symbolism, but the increased ability of the word to evoke unnamed representations, to replace the missing with associations, remained. In the symbolic heritage, the most viable was the intense associativity” Ginzburg Lidia. About old and new. Articles and essays. L., 1982, p. 349..

At the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century, two new poetic movements appeared - acmeism and futurism.

Acmeists (from the Greek word "acme" - blooming time, the highest degree of something) called for the purification of poetry from philosophy and all kinds of "methodological" hobbies, from the use of vague hints and symbols, proclaiming a return to the material world and accepting it as it is there is: with its joys, vices, evil and injustice, defiantly refusing to solve social problems and asserting the principle of "art for art's sake". However, the work of such talented acmeist poets as N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, M. Kuzmin, O. Mandelstam, went beyond the theoretical principles proclaimed by them. Each of them brought into poetry his own, only his own motives and moods, his own poetic images.

Futurists came up with different views on art in general and on poetry in particular. They declared themselves opponents of modern bourgeois society, which deforms the individual, and defenders of the "natural" man, his right to free, individual development. But these statements were often reduced to an abstract declaration of individualism, freedom from moral and cultural traditions.

Unlike the acmeists, who, although opposed to symbolism, nevertheless considered themselves to a certain extent its successors, the futurists from the very beginning proclaimed a complete rejection of any literary traditions and, above all, of the classical heritage, arguing that it was hopeless. outdated. In their loud and boldly written manifestos, they glorified the new life developing under the influence of science and technological progress, rejecting everything that was "before", declared their desire to remake the world, which, from their point of view, poetry should contribute to a large extent. The Futurists sought to reify the word, to connect its sound directly with the object that it designates. This, in their opinion, should have led to the reconstruction of the natural and the creation of a new, widely accessible language capable of destroying the verbal barriers that divide people.

Futurism united different groups, among which the most famous were: cubo-futurists (V. Mayakovsky, V. Kamensky, D. Burliuk, V. Khlebnikov), ego-futurists (I. Severyanin), the Centrifuga group (N. Aseev, B. Pasternak and etc.).

Under the conditions of the revolutionary upsurge and the crisis of the autocracy, acmeism and futurism turned out to be unviable and by the end of the 1910s ceased to exist.

Among the new trends that emerged in Russian poetry during this period, a prominent place began to be occupied by a group of so-called "peasant" poets - N. Klyuev, A. Shiryaevets, S. Klychkov, P. Oreshin. For some time, S. Yesenin was close to them, who later went on an independent and wide creative path. Contemporaries saw in them nuggets, reflecting the cares and troubles of the Russian peasantry. They were also united by the commonality of some poetic devices, the widespread use of religious symbols and folklore motifs.

Among the poets of the late XIX - early XX century there were those whose work did not fit into the currents and groups that existed at that time. These are, for example, I. Bunin, who sought to continue the traditions of Russian classical poetry; I. Annensky, in some way close to the Symbolists and at the same time far from them, looking for his way in the vast poetic sea; Sasha Cherny, who called himself a "chronic" satirist, brilliantly mastered the "anti-aesthetic" means of denouncing the philistinism and narrow-mindedness; M. Tsvetaeva with her "poetic responsiveness to the new sound of the air."

The turn of the Renaissance towards religion and Christianity is characteristic of Russian literary movements of the early 20th century. Russian poets could not hold on to aestheticism; in different ways they tried to overcome individualism. The first in this direction was Merezhkovsky, then the leading representatives of Russian symbolism began to oppose catholicity to individualism, mysticism to aestheticism. Vyach. Ivanov and A. Bely were theorists of mystically colored symbolism. There was a rapprochement with the trend that emerged from Marxism and idealism.

Vyacheslav Ivanov was one of the most remarkable people of that era: the best Russian Hellenist, poet, learned philologist, specialist in Greek religion, thinker, theologian and philosopher, publicist. His “environments” on the “tower” (as Ivanov’s apartment was called) were visited by the most gifted and remarkable people of that era: poets, philosophers, scientists, artists, actors and even politicians. The most refined conversations took place on literary, philosophical, mystical, occult, religious topics, as well as social ones in the perspective of the struggle of worldviews. On the "tower" the most refined conversations of the most gifted cultural elite were conducted, and the revolution was raging below. It was two separate worlds.

Along with trends in literature, new trends in philosophy arose. The search for traditions for Russian philosophical thought began among the Slavophiles, Vl. Solovyov, and Dostoevsky. In the Salon of Merezhkovsky in St. Petersburg, Religious and Philosophical Meetings were organized, in which both representatives of literature, ill with religious anxiety, and representatives of the traditional Orthodox church hierarchy participated. Here is how N. Berdyaev described these meetings: “The problems of V. Rozanov prevailed. V. Ternavtsev, a chiliast who wrote a book about the Apocalypse, was also of great importance. We talked about the relationship of Christianity to culture. In the center was the theme of the flesh, of the field ... In the atmosphere of the Merezhkovsky salon there was something super-personal, poured into the air, some kind of unhealthy magic, which probably happens in sectarian circles, in sects of a non-rationalist and non-evangelical type. .. The Merezhkovskys always pretended to speak from a certain "we" and wanted to involve in this "we" people who were in close contact with them. D. Filosofov belonged to this "we", at one time A. Bely almost entered it. This "we" they called the secret of the three. This was how the new church of the Holy Spirit was to be formed, in which the mystery of the flesh would be revealed."

In the philosophy of Vasily Rozanov, "flesh" and "sex" meant a return to pre-Christianity, to Judaism and paganism. His religious mindset was combined with criticism of Christian asceticism, the apotheosis of the family and gender, in the elements of which Rozanov saw the basis of life. His life triumphs not through the resurrection to eternal life, but through procreation, that is, the disintegration of the personality into many new born personalities, in which the life of the family continues. Rozanov preached the religion of eternal birth. Christianity for him is the religion of death.

In the teaching of Vladimir Solovyov about the universe as "all-unity", Christian Platonism is intertwined with the ideas of new European idealism, especially F.W. Schelling, natural-science evolutionism and unorthodox mysticism (the doctrine of the "world soul", etc.). The collapse of the utopian ideal of world theocracy led to the strengthening of eschatological (about the finiteness of the world and man) sentiments. Vl. Solovyov had a great influence on Russian religious philosophy and symbolism.

Pavel Florensky developed the doctrine of Sophia (God's Wisdom) as the basis of the meaningfulness and integrity of the universe. He was the initiator of a new type of Orthodox theology, not scholastic theology, but experimental theology. Florensky was a Platonist and interpreted Plato in his own way, and later became a priest.

Sergei Bulgakov is one of the main figures of the Religious and Philosophical Society "in memory of Vladimir Solovyov". From legal Marxism, which he tried to combine with neo-Kantianism, he moved on to religious philosophy, then to Orthodox theology, and became a priest.

And, of course, Nikolai Berdyaev is a world-class figure. A person who sought to criticize and overcome any form of dogmatism, wherever they appeared, a Christian humanist who called himself a "believing freethinker." A man of tragic fate, expelled from his homeland, and all his life rooting for her soul. A man whose heritage, until recently, was studied all over the world, but not in Russia. The great philosopher, who is waiting for the return to his homeland.

Let us dwell in more detail on two currents associated with mystical and religious quests.

“One trend was represented by Orthodox religious philosophy, which, however, was not very acceptable for official ecclesiasticism. These are, first of all, S. Bulgakov, P. Florensky and those grouped around them. Another trend was represented by religious mysticism and the occult. These are A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov ... and even A. Blok, despite the fact that he was not inclined to any ideologies, the youth grouped around the Musaget publishing house, the anthroposophist ** Anthroposophy - supersensitive knowledge of the world through self-knowledge of man as a cosmic being.. One current introduced sophianism into the system of Orthodox dogma. The other current was captivated by the illogical sophianism. The cosmic allurement, characteristic of the entire epoch, was present both here and there. With the exception of S. Bulgakov, Christ and the Gospel were not at the center of these currents. P. Florensky, despite all his desire to be ultra-Orthodox, was all in cosmic seduction. The religious revival was Christian-like, Christian topics were discussed, and Christian terminology was used. But there was a strong element of pagan revival, the Hellenic spirit was stronger than the biblical messianic spirit. At a certain moment there was a mixture of different spiritual currents. The era was syncretic, it was reminiscent of the search for mysteries and neoplatonism of the Hellenistic era and German romanticism of the early 19th century. There was no real religious revival, but there was spiritual tension, religious excitement and searching. There was a new problem of religious consciousness, associated with the currents of the XIX century (Khomyakov, Dostoevsky, Vl. Soloviev). But official ecclesiasticism remained outside this problematic. There was no religious reform in the church” Berdyaev N. Self-knowledge. M., 1990, p. 152..

Much of the creative upsurge of that time entered into the further development of Russian culture and is now the property of all Russian cultured people. But then there was intoxication with creativity, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge.

In conclusion, with the words of N. Berdyaev, I would like to describe all the horror, all the tragedy of the situation in which the creators of spiritual culture, the color of the nation, the best minds not only in Russia, but also in the world, found themselves.

“The misfortune of the cultural renaissance of the beginning of the 20th century was that in it the cultural elite was isolated in a small circle and cut off from the broad social currents of that time. This had fatal consequences in the character that the Russian revolution assumed... The Russian people of that time lived on different floors and even in different centuries. The cultural renaissance did not have any wide social radiation ... Many supporters and spokesmen of the cultural renaissance remained leftist, sympathized with the revolution, but there was a cooling towards social issues, there was an absorption in new problems of a philosophical, aesthetic, religious, mystical nature, which remained alien to people, actively participating in the social movement ... The intelligentsia committed an act of suicide. In Russia, before the revolution, two races were formed, as it were. And the fault was on both sides, that is, on the figures of the Renaissance, on their social and moral indifference ...

The schism characteristic of Russian history, the schism that grew throughout the 19th century, the abyss that unfolded between the upper refined cultural layer and wide circles, folk and intellectuals, led to the fact that the Russian cultural renaissance fell into this opened abyss. The revolution began to destroy this cultural renaissance and to persecute the creators of culture... Figures of Russian spiritual culture in large part were forced to move abroad. In part, this was a retribution for the social indifference of the creators of spiritual culture” Berdyaev N. Self-knowledge. M., 1990, p. 138, 154..

Nothing | New peasant poets | Poets of "Satyricon" | Constructivists | Oberiuts | Poets beyond currents | Personalities

Silver Age. Symbolism

Symbolism (from Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) - a trend in European art of the 1870s - 1910s; one of the modernist trends in Russian poetry at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. Focused primarily on expression through symbol intuitively comprehended essences and ideas, vague, often sophisticated feelings and visions.

The very word "symbol" in traditional poetics it means "multi-valued allegory", that is, a poetic image expressing the essence of a phenomenon; in the poetry of symbolism, he conveys the individual, often momentary ideas of the poet.

The poetics of symbolism is characterized by:

• transmission of the subtlest movements of the soul;
• maximum use of sound and rhythmic means of poetry;
• exquisite imagery, musicality and lightness of style;
• poetics of allusion and allegory;
• symbolic content of ordinary words;
• attitude to the word, as to the cipher of some spiritual secret writing;
• innuendo, concealment of meaning;
• the desire to create a picture of an ideal world;
• aestheticization of death as an existential principle;
• elitism, orientation to the reader-co-author, creator.

Symbolism (from the Greek sýmbolon - sign, symbol) is a trend in European literature and art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The foundations of the aesthetics of symbolism were formed in the late 60s and 70s. in the works of French poets P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarmeu and others. As a method of artistic reflection of reality, symbolism in the images of familiar reality reveals the presence of phenomena, trends or patterns that are not directly outwardly expressed, but are very significant for the state of this reality. The symbolist artist strives to turn a concrete phenomenon of the objective environment, nature, everyday life, human relations into an image-symbol, including it in widely developed associative links with these hidden phenomena, which, as it were, fill the image, shine through it. There is an artistic combination of different planes of being: the general, the abstract is mediated in the concrete and is introduced through the image-symbol into the area accessible to emotional perception, reveals its presence and significance in the world of life reality.

The development of symbolism is affected by time, era, social moods. In Western European countries, he reflected the aggravation of social contradictions, the artist's tragic experience of the gap between the humanistic ideal and bourgeois reality.

In the works of the greatest Belgian playwright and symbolist theater theorist Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), man exists in a world where he is surrounded by hidden, invisible evil. The heroes of Maeterlinck are weak, fragile creatures, unable to defend themselves, to change life patterns that are hostile to them. But they retain in themselves the principles of humanity, spiritual beauty, faith in the ideal. This is the source of the drama and high poetic merit of Maeterlinck's plays (The Death of Tentagille, Peléas et Melisande, etc.). He created the classic form of symbolist drama with its weakened external action, intermittent dialogue full of hidden anxiety and innuendo. Every detail of the setting, gesture, intonation of the actor performed its figurative function in it, participated in the disclosure of the main theme - the struggle of life and death. The man himself became the symbol of this struggle, the surrounding world was an expression of his inner tragedy.

The Norwegian playwright G. Ibsen turns to the methods of symbolist imagery in his later plays. Without breaking with a realistic worldview, he used it to reveal the conflicts of the individualistic consciousness of his heroes, the objective laws of the catastrophes they experienced (“The Builder Solnes”, “Rosmersholm”, “When we, the dead, awaken”, etc.). Symbolism had its own effect in the works of G. Hauptmann (Germany), A. Strindberg (Sweden), W. B. Yeats (Ireland), S. Wyspiansky, S. Przybyszewski (Poland), G. D "Annunzio (Italy).

The symbolist directors P. Faure, O. Lugnier-Poe, J. Rouchet in France, A. Appiat in Switzerland, G. Craig in England, G. Fuchs, and partly M. Reinhardt in Germany sought to overcome the concreteness of everyday, naturalistic images of reality that dominated the theater of that time. For the first time, conditional scenery, techniques of a generalized, figuratively concentrated image of the environment, scene of action entered the practice of theatrical art; scenography began to be consistent with the mood of a particular fragment of the play, to activate the subconscious perception of the audience. To solve their problems, the directors combined the means of painting, architecture, music, color and light; everyday mise-en-scene was replaced by a plastically organized, static mise-en-scene. The rhythm, which reflected the hidden “life of the soul”, the tension of the “second plan” of the action, acquired great importance in the performance.

In Russia, symbolism arose later than in Western Europe, and was associated with the social upsurge caused by the revolution of 1905-1907. Russian Symbolists saw in the theater an effective means of uniting the stage and the audience in a common experience of important modern ideas and moods. Man's rush to freedom and immortality, protest against dead dogmas and traditions, against a soulless machine civilization received their tragic interpretation in the dramas "Earth" by V. Ya. Bryusov and "Tantalum" by V. I. Ivanov. The breath of the revolution is fanned by the drama of A. A. Blok "The King on the Square", in which the theme of the poet and the people, culture and the elements arises. "Balaganchik" and "Stranger" appealed to the traditions of the folk square theater, to social satire, expressed a premonition of the coming renewal of life. "Song of Destiny" reflected the difficult path of the poet-intellectual to the people. In the play The Rose and the Cross, Blok expressed a premonition of imminent historical changes.

In difficult years for Russia, art was not homogeneous. Philosophical rejection of life, in which there is no place for high spirituality, for beauty and truth, distinguished the dramas of F. K. Sologub. The theme of the sinister play of masks was developed on the basis of folklore material by A. M. Remizov. Symbolist influences affected some of the plays of L. N. Andreev, they also touched the futurists, in particular the work of the early V. V. Mayakovsky (the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky"). The Symbolists brought the contemporary scene closer to poetry, stimulated the search for a new theatrical imagery that expanded the associative content of the performance. V. E. Meyerhold was one of the first to think about how to reconcile the conventions of design, mise-en-scène with the authenticity of acting, how to overcome everyday characteristics, to raise the actor’s work to the level of high poetic generalization. In his aspirations, he does not remain alone: ​​in symbolism, something is found that is necessary for the theater as a whole.

In 1904, on the advice of A. Ya. Chekhov, K. S. Stanislavsky staged Maeterlinck’s trilogy (“Blind”, “Uninvited”, “There, inside”) at the Moscow Art Theater, trying to overcome the author’s pessimism, to express the idea that “nature eternal." In 1905, he opened the Studio Theater on Povarskaya, where, together with Meyerhold, he studied the staging possibilities of a new artistic direction. Using the techniques of symbolism in his work on the performances “Drama of Life” by K. Hamsun and “The Life of a Man” by Andreev, Stanislavsky became convinced of the need to educate a new actor capable of deeply revealing the “life of the human spirit”, began his experiments on creating a “system”. In 1908 he staged Maeterlinck's philosophical fairy tale play The Blue Bird. In this performance, which is still preserved in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theater, he showed that man's eternal striving for the ideal is the embodiment of the main law of life, the hidden and mysterious needs of the "world soul". A convinced realist, Stanislavsky never tired of repeating that he turned to symbolism only in order to deepen and enrich realistic art.

In 1906-1908. at the Drama Theater of V. F. Komissarzhevskaya in St. Petersburg, Meyerhold staged productions of Blok's Puppet Show and Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice. He studied theatricality at the square theater and the booth, turned to stylization, looked for new methods of visual-spatial solution of the performance. The essence of these searches was gradually determined for him not so much in the embodiment of symbolist ideas, but in the further development of the artistic means of modern theater, the search for new forms of acting, the relationship between the stage and the public. Meyerhold's stage experiments, which caused sharp disputes and conflicts, and then continued at the Alexandrinsky Theater, at the Studio Theater on Borodinoskaya, were of great importance in the development of directing.

The experience of theatrical symbolism was mastered by the theater of the 20th century. in its various directions.

Russian and foreign symbolism The specifics of foreign symbolism As an artistic trend, symbolism publicly announced itself in France when a group of young poets in 1886 rallied around S. Bely defined a symbol as a combination of heterogeneous things together. Not realizing the continuation of any particular trend in art, symbolism carried the genetic code of romanticism: the roots of symbolism are in romantic commitment to the highest principle of an ideal world. Pictures of nature, human deeds, all the phenomena of our life are significant for ...

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Coursework on the topic: "The peculiarities of Western European and Russian symbolism in the works of Blok and Verlaine"

Introduction

Late 19th - early 20th century in Russia, this is a time of change, uncertainty and gloomy omens, this is a time of disappointment and a sense of the approaching death of the existing socio-political system. All this could not but affect Russian poetry. It is with this that the emergence of symbolism is connected.

"Symbolism" is a trend in European and Russian art that emerged at the turn of the 20th century, focused primarily on artistic expression through the symbol of "things in themselves" and ideas that are beyond sensory perception. In an effort to break through the visible reality to the "hidden realities", the supertemporal ideal essence of the world, its "imperishable" Beauty, the Symbolists expressed their yearning for spiritual freedom.

In view of the foregoing, the topic of our course work was chosen"The Peculiarities of Western European and Russian Symbolism in the Works of Blok and Verlaine".

Relevance research lies in the need to study the features of Western European and Russian symbolism on the example of the work of Blok and Verlaine.

Object of study- symbolist tendencies in literary creativity.

Subject of study- the formation and development of symbolism in Russia and France.

Purpose of the study- to characterize the originality of Western European and Russian symbolism in the works of Blok and Verlaine.

To achieve the goal of our study, we have set the followingresearch objectives:

Consider the specifics of foreign symbolism;

Describe the features of Russian symbolism;

Explore the symbolist work of Blok;

To analyze the creative heritage of Verlaine.

Research structure.The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

Chapter 1. Russian and foreign symbolism

1. The specifics of foreign symbolism

As an artistic trend, symbolism publicly announced itself in France, when a group of young poets, who in 1886 rallied around S. Mallarme, realized the unity of artistic aspirations. The group included: J. Moreas, R. Gil, Henri de Regno, S. Merrill and others. In the 1990s, P. Valery, A. Gide, P. Claudel joined the poets of the Mallarme group. P. Verlaine, who published his symbolist poems and a series of essays Damned Poets, as well as J.C. Huysmans, who published the novel Vice versa, contributed a lot to the design of symbolism in the literary direction. In 1886, J. Moreas placed the Manifesto of Symbolism in Figaro, in which he formulated the basic principles of the direction, based on the judgments of Ch. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, Ch. Henri. Two years after the publication of the manifesto by J. Moreas, A. Bergson published his first book On the Immediate Data of Consciousness, in which the philosophy of intuitionism was declared, in basic principles echoing the symbolist worldview and giving it additional justification.

In the Symbolist Manifesto, J. Moreas defined the nature of the symbol, which supplanted the traditional artistic image and became the main material of Symbolist poetry. “Symbolist poetry is looking for a way to clothe the idea in a sensual form that would not be self-sufficient, but at the same time, serving the expression of the Idea, would retain its individuality,” Moréas wrote. A similar “sensual form” in which the Idea is clothed is a symbol.

The fundamental difference between a symbol and an artistic image is its ambiguity. The symbol cannot be deciphered by the efforts of the mind: at the last depth it is dark and not accessible to the final interpretation. On Russian soil, this feature of the symbol was successfully defined by F. Sologub: "The symbol is a window to infinity." The movement and play of semantic shades create indecipherability, the mystery of the symbol. If the image expresses a single phenomenon, then the symbol is fraught with a whole range of meanings - sometimes opposite, multidirectional (for example, "the miracle and the monster" in the image of Peter in Merezhkovsky's novel Peter and Alexei). The poet and theorist of symbolism Vyach. Ivanov expressed the idea that the symbol signifies not one, but different entities, A. Bely defined the symbol as "combining the heterogeneous together." The duality of the symbol goes back to the romantic notion of two worlds, the interpenetration of two planes of being.

The multi-layered nature of the symbol, its open polysemy was based on mythological, religious, philosophical and aesthetic ideas about super-reality, incomprehensible in its essence. The theory and practice of symbolism were closely associated with the idealistic philosophy of I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, F. Schelling, as well as F. Nietzsche's thoughts about the superman, being "beyond good and evil." At its core, symbolism merged with the Platonic and Christian concepts of the world, having adopted romantic traditions and new trends. Not being aware of the continuation of any particular trend in art, symbolism carried the genetic code of romanticism: the roots of symbolism are in a romantic commitment to a higher principle, an ideal world. “Pictures of nature, human deeds, all the phenomena of our life are significant for the art of symbols not in themselves, but only as intangible reflections of the original ideas, indicating their secret affinity with them,” wrote J. Moreas. Hence the new tasks of art, previously assigned to science and philosophy - to approach the essence of the “most real” by creating a symbolic picture of the world, to forge the “keys of secrets”. It is the symbol, and not the exact sciences, that will allow a person to break through to the ideal essence of the world, to pass, according to Vyach. Ivanov's definition, "from the real to the real." A special role in the comprehension of superreality was assigned to poets as carriers of intuitive revelations and poetry as the fruit of superintelligent influxes.

The formation of symbolism in France, the country in which the symbolist movement originated and flourished, is associated with the names of the largest French poets: C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud. The forerunner of symbolism in France was Charles Baudelaire, who published the book Flowers of Evil in 1857. In search of paths to the "ineffable", many symbolists took up Baudelaire's idea of ​​"correspondences" between colors, smells and sounds. The proximity of various experiences should, according to the symbolists, be expressed in a symbol. Baudelaire's sonnet Correspondence with the famous phrase became the motto of symbolist searches: Sound, smell, form, color echo. Baudelaire's theory was later illustrated by A. Rimbaud's sonnet Vowels:

"A" black, white "E", "I" red, "U" green,

"O" blue - the colors of a bizarre riddle ...

The search for correspondences is at the heart of the symbolist principle of synthesis, the unification of arts. The motifs of the interpenetration of love and death, genius and illness, the tragic gap between appearance and essence, contained in Baudelaire's book, became dominant in the poetry of the Symbolists.

S. Mallarme, “the last romantic and the first decadent”, insisted on the need to “inspire images”, convey not things, but your impressions of them: “To name an object means to destroy three-quarters of the pleasure of a poem, which is created for gradual guessing, to inspire it - that's the dream." Mallarme's poem Luck will never abolish chance consisted of a single phrase typed in a different script without punctuation marks. This text, according to the author's intention, made it possible to reproduce the trajectory of thought and accurately recreate the "state of the soul".

P. Verlaine in the famous poem Poetic Art defined the adherence to musicality as the main sign of genuine poetic creativity: “Musicality is first of all”. In Verlaine's view, poetry, like music, strives for a mediumistic, non-verbal reproduction of reality. So in the 1870s, Verlaine created a cycle of poems called Songs without Words. Like a musician, the symbolist poet rushes towards the elemental flow of the beyond, the energy of sounds. If the poetry of C. Baudelaire inspired the symbolists with a deep longing for harmony in a tragically divided world, then the poetry of Verlaine amazed with its musicality, elusive experiences. Following Verlaine, the idea of ​​music was used by many symbolists to denote creative mystery.

In the poetry of the brilliant young man A. Rimbaud, who first used vers libre (free verse), the symbolists adopted the idea of ​​abandoning “eloquence”, finding a crossing point between poetry and prose. Invading any, the most non-poetic spheres of life, Rimbaud achieved the effect of "natural supernaturalness" in the depiction of reality.

Symbolism in France also manifested itself in painting (G. Moreau, O. Rodin, O. Redon, M. Denis, Puvis de Chavannes, L. Levy-Durmer), music (Debussy, Ravel), theater (Poet Theater, Mixed Theater, Petit theater du Marionette), but the main element of symbolist thinking has always been lyricism. It was the French poets who formulated and embodied the main precepts of the new movement: the mastery of the creative secret through music, the deep correspondence of various sensations, the ultimate price of the creative act, the orientation towards a new intuitive-creative way of knowing reality, the transmission of elusive experiences.

1. Russian symbolism and its features

Symbolism is a trend of modernism, which is characterized by "three main elements of the new art: mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability ...", "a new combination of thoughts, colors and sounds"; the main principle of symbolism is the artistic expression through the symbol of the essence of objects and ideas that are beyond sensory perception.

Symbolism (from French simbolism, from Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) appeared in France in the late 60s and early 70s. 19th century (initially in literature, and then in other arts - visual, musical, theatrical) and soon included other cultural phenomena - philosophy, religion, mythology. The favorite topics addressed by the symbolists were death, love, suffering, the expectation of any events. Scenes of gospel history, half-mythical-half-historical events of the Middle Ages, ancient mythology prevailed among the plots.

Russian symbolist writers are traditionally divided into "senior" and "junior".

The elders - the so-called "decadents" - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub - reflected in their work the features of pan-European pan-aestheticism.

The younger symbolists - Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov - in addition to aestheticism, embodied in their work the aesthetic utopia of the search for the mystical Eternal Femininity.

We are captive animals

Silently locked doors

We dare not open them.

If the heart is true to the legends,

Consoling ourselves by barking, we bark.

What is in the menagerie is stinking and nasty,

We forgot a long time ago, we don't know.

The heart is accustomed to repetitions, -

Monotonous and boring cuckoo.

Everything in the menagerie is impersonal, usually.

We have not longed for freedom for a long time.

We are captive animals

The doors are firmly closed

We dare not open them.

F. Sologub

The concept of theurgy is connected with the process of creating symbolic forms in art. The origin of the word "theurgy" comes from the Greek teourgiya, which means a divine act, sacred ritual, mystery. In the era of antiquity, theurgy was understood as the communication of people with the world of the gods in the process of special ritual actions.

The problem of theurgical creativity, in which the deep connection of symbolism with the sphere of the sacred, was expressed, worried V.S. Soloviev. He argued that the art of the future must create a new connection with religion. This connection should be freer than it exists in the sacred art of Orthodoxy. In restoring the connection between art and religion on a fundamentally new basis, V.S. Solovyov sees a theurgical beginning. Theurgy is understood by him as a process of co-creation of the artist with God. Understanding theurgy in the works of V.S. Solovyov found a lively response in the works of religious thinkers of the early twentieth century: P.A. Florensky, N.A. Berdyaeva, E.M. Trubetskoy, S.N. Bulgakov and others, as well as in poetry and literary-critical works of Russian symbolist poets of the early twentieth century: Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maximilian Voloshin, etc.

These thinkers and poets felt the deep connection between symbolism and the sacred.

The history of Russian symbolism, covering various aspects of the phenomenon of Russian culture of the late XX - early XX century, including symbolism, was written by the English researcher A. Payman.

The disclosure of this issue is essential for understanding the complexity and diversity of the aesthetic process and artistic creativity in general.

The Russian symbolism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was immediately preceded by the symbolism of icon painting, which had a great influence on the formation of the aesthetic views of Russian religious philosophers and art theorists. At the same time, Western European symbolism, in the person of the “accursed poets” of France P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarme, primarily adopted the ideas of irrationalist philosophers of the second half of the 19th century - representatives of the philosophy of life. These ideas were not associated with any particular religion. On the contrary, they proclaimed the "death of God" and "loyalty to the earth."

Representatives of European irrationalism of the 19th century, in particular

F. Nietzsche, sought to create a new religion from art. This religion should not be a religion that proclaims the one God as the highest sacred value, but a religion of a superman who is connected with the earth and the bodily principle. This religion established fundamentally new symbols, which, according to F. Nietzsche, should express the new true meaning of things. The symbolism of F. Nietzsche had a subjective, individual character. In form and content, it opposed the symbols of the previous stage in the development of culture, since the old symbols were largely associated with traditional religion.

Russian symbolist poets Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely, following F. Nietzsche, proceeded from the fact that the destruction of traditional religion is an objective process. But their interpretation of the "art-religion" of the future differed significantly from Nietzsche's. They saw the possibility of a religious renewal on the paths of the revival of the art of antiquity and the Middle Ages, art that speaks the language of a myth-symbol. Possessing a significant potential of the sacred and preserving itself in artistic forms accessible to the understanding mind, the art of past eras, according to symbolist theorists, can be revived in a new historical context, in contrast to the dead religion of antiquity, and the spiritual atmosphere of the Middle Ages that has gone down in history.

This is exactly what happened already once during the Renaissance, when the sacred beginning of past eras, having transformed into an aesthetic one, became the basis on which the great art of the European Renaissance was formed and developed. As unattainable examples of theurgical creativity, the works of art of antiquity embodied the foundation, thanks to which it became possible to preserve for many years the sacredness of the art of the Christian Middle Ages, which was already depleting in the aesthetic sense. This is what led to the unattainable rise of European culture in the Renaissance, synthesizing ancient symbolism and Christian sacredness.

The Russian symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov comes to theurgy through the comprehension of the cosmos through the artistic expressive possibilities of art. According to him, in art, along with the symbol, such phenomena as myth and mystery play the most important role. IN AND. Ivanov emphasizes the deep connection that exists between a symbol and a myth, and the process of symbolic creativity is considered by him as myth-making: “Approaching the goal of the most complete symbolic disclosure of reality is myth-making. Realistic symbolism follows the path of the symbol to the myth; the myth is already contained in the symbol, it is immanent to it; contemplation of the symbol reveals the myth in the symbol.

The myth, in the understanding of Vyacheslav Ivanov, is devoid of any personal characteristics. This is an objective form of preserving knowledge about reality, found as a result of mystical experience and taken for granted until, in the act of a new breakthrough of consciousness to the same reality, new knowledge of a higher level is discovered about it. Then the old myth is removed by the new one, which takes its place in the religious consciousness and in the spiritual experience of people. Vyacheslav Ivanov connects myth-making with "the sincere feat of the artist himself."

According to V.I. Ivanov, the first condition for true myth-making is “the spiritual feat of the artist himself”. IN AND. Ivanov says that the artist "should stop creating without connection with the divine all-unity, he must educate himself to the possibility of creative realization of this connection" . As V.I. Ivanov: “Before it is experienced by everyone, a myth must become an event of inner experience, personal in its arena, supra-personal in its content.” This is the “theurgical goal” of symbolism, which many Russian symbolists of the “Silver Age” dreamed of.

Russian symbolists proceed from the fact that the search for a way out of the crisis leads to a person's awareness of his possibilities, which appear before him on two paths potentially open to humanity from the beginning of its existence. As Vyacheslav Ivanov emphasizes, one of them is erroneous, magical, the second is true, theurgic. The first way is connected with the fact that the artist tries to breathe "magic life" into his creation through magic spells and thereby commits a "crime", since he transgresses the "reserved limit" of his abilities. This path ultimately leads to the destruction of art, to its transformation into an abstraction completely divorced from real life. The second way was in theurgical creativity, in which the artist could realize himself precisely as a co-creator of God, as a conductor of the divine idea and revive the reality embodied in artistic creativity with his work. It is the second path that signifies the creation of the living. This path is the path of theurgical symbolist creativity. Since Vyacheslav Ivanov considers works of ancient art to be the highest example of symbolist creativity, he puts the ideal image of Aphrodite on a par with the “miracle-working icon”. Symbolist art, according to the concept of Vyacheslav Ivanov, is one of the essential forms of the influence of higher realities on lower ones.

The problem of theurgical creativity was connected with the symbolic aspect of the nature of the sacred in another representative of Russian symbolism - A. Bely. Unlike Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was an adherent of ancient art, Andrey Bely's theurgy is predominantly oriented towards Christian values. Andrei Bely considers the internal engine of theurgic creativity to be precisely the Good, which, as it were, instills in the theurgist. For Andrey Bely, theurgy is the goal towards which all culture in its historical development and art as part of it is directed. He considers symbolism as the highest achievement of art. According to the concept of Andrei Bely, symbolism reveals the content of human history and culture as a desire to embody the transcendent Symbol in real life. This is how theurgic symbolization appears to him, the highest stage of which is the creation of life. The task of the theurgists is to bring real life as close as possible to this “norm”, which is possible only on the basis of a new understanding of Christianity.

Thus, the sacred, as a spiritual principle, seeks to be preserved in new forms that are adequate to the worldview of the twentieth century. The high spiritual content of art is ensured as a result of the recoding of the sacred as religious into aesthetic, which ensures the search for an artistic form in art that is adequate to the spiritual situation of the era.

“The Symbolist poets, with their characteristic sensitivity, felt that Russia was flying into the abyss, that the old Russia was ending and a new Russia, still unknown, should arise,” said the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. Eschatological predictions, thoughts excited everyone, “the death of Russia”, “the edge of history”, “the end of culture” - these statements sounded like an alarming alarm. As in the painting by Leon Bakst “The Death of Atlantis”, in the prophecies of many an impulse, anxiety, doubts breathe. The impending catastrophe is seen as a mystical insight, destined above:

Already the curtain is trembling before the start of the drama ...

Already someone in the dark, all-seeing like an owl,

Draws circles and builds pentagrams

And whispers prophetic spells and words.

A symbol for symbolists is not a commonly understood sign. It differs from a realistic image in that it conveys not the objective essence of the phenomenon, but the poet's individual idea of ​​the world, most often vague and indefinite. The symbol transforms the "rough and poor life" into a "sweet legend".

Russian symbolism arose as an integral trend, but refracted into bright, independent, dissimilar individuals. If the coloring of F. Sologub's poetry is gloomy and tragic, then the worldview of the early Balmont, on the contrary, is permeated with the sun, optimistic.

The literary life of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the Silver Age was in full swing and concentrated on the "Tower" by V. Ivanov and in the salon of Gippius-Merezhkovsky: individuals developed, intertwined, repulsed in heated discussions, philosophical disputes, impromptu lessons and lectures. It was in the process of these living mutual intersections that new trends and schools departed from symbolism - acmeism, headed by N. Gumilyov, and ego-futurism, represented primarily by the word creator I. Severyanin.

Acmeists (Greek acme - the highest degree of something, blooming power) opposed themselves to symbolism, criticized the vagueness and unsteadiness of the symbolist language and image. They preached a clear, fresh and "simple" poetic language, where words would directly and clearly name objects, and would not refer, as in symbolism, to "mysterious worlds".

Indefinite, beautiful, sublime symbols, understatement and underexpression were replaced by simple objects, caricature compositions, sharp, sharp, material signs of the world. Poets - innovators (N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, V. Narbut, M. Kuzmin) felt themselves the creators of fresh words and not so much prophets as masters in the "working room of poetry" (the expression of I. Annensky). No wonder the community united around the acmeists called itself the guild of poets: an indication of the earthly background of creativity, the possibility of a collective inspired effort in poetic art.

As you can see, the Russian poetry of the "Silver Age" has come a long way in a very short time. She threw her seeds into the future. The thread of legends and traditions did not break. The poetry of the turn of the century, the poetry of the "Silver Age" is the most complex cultural phenomenon, the interest in which is just beginning to wake up. Ahead of us are waiting for new and new discoveries.

The poetry of the "Silver Age" reflected in itself, in its large and small magic mirrors, the complex and ambiguous process of the socio-political, spiritual, moral, aesthetic and cultural development of Russia in a period marked by three revolutions, a world war and an especially terrible for us internal war. , civil. In this process, captured by poetry, there are ups and downs, light and dark, dramatic sides, but in its depths it is a tragic process. And although time pushed aside this amazing layer of poetry of the Silver Age, it radiates its energy to this day. The Russian "Silver Age" is unique. Never - neither before nor after - has there been in Russia such agitation of consciousness, such tension of searches and aspirations, as when, according to an eyewitness, one line of Blok meant more and was more urgent than the entire content of "thick" magazines. The light of these unforgettable dawns will forever remain in the history of Russia.

Chapter 2. Symbolism of Blok and Verlaine

2.1. The specifics of Blok's creativity

The work of Alexander Blok - one of the most prominent representatives

The Silver Age - demonstrates the complexity of the religious and philosophical searches of its time: In my superstitious prayer / I seek protection from Christ, / But because of the hypocritical mask / False lips laugh. His idiostyle was formed under the influence of many extra-linguistic factors, such as education, upbringing in a patriarchal Becket family, the religious and philosophical beliefs of the poet (in particular, the fascination with the works of Vl. Solovyov), as well as the imagery and symbolism of thinking, characteristic of the Silver Age word artists.

The lyrics of A. Blok are saturated with the ideas of mystical religious teachings that were widespread at the beginning of the 20th century. So, the poems about the Beautiful Lady refer to Soloviev's images of the divine Sophia Wisdom, the World Soul, Eternal Femininity, the Virgin of the Rainbow Gates. In Blok's interpretation, the image of the World Soul - the spiritual beginning of the Universe, designed to save the world and endow it with divine harmony - merges with the image of an ideal woman and becomes very personal, reflecting not only the religious and philosophical views of the poet, but also his attitude to love. Therefore, in the poems of A. Blok after 1901, when the poet discovered the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov, the appeal to the divine Beautiful Lady merges with a prayer:

They will be terrible, they will be unspeakable

Unearthly face masks...

I will cry out to You: "Hosanna!"

Crazy, prostrate prostrate.

"You are holy, but I do not believe You..."

Of course, A. Blok's poetry also reflects traditional Orthodox ideas and images. The core of the religious concept sphere of Blok's works are the concepts of God, Soul, Faith, Church and Christ.

Significant for the poet's idiostyle is also the concept of the Beautiful Lady, which can be attributed to secondary religious concepts.

The concept of Christ was singled out as the core of Blok's religious concept sphere, since it is he who expresses the supermoral values ​​of the author.

This concept is characterized by capacity and ambiguity: its significant part is the concept of Russian Christ, but in the author's idiostyle it acquires other characteristics, sometimes opposite to the evaluative and semantic content of the concept Russian Christ. The most important property of this concept is the use by its author in order to characterize the personal qualities and mental state of the lyrical hero:

Yes. You are native Galilee

I am the unresurrected Christ.

"You left, and I'm in the desert..."

The pronominal verbalizers of the concept Christos "He" / "His", quite often used by the poet, deserve special attention:

And He comes from a smoky distance;

And angels with swords are with Him;

Like we read in books

Missing and not believing them.

"Dream"

The use of personal pronouns and their onymization endows the concept

Christ with additional meanings, indicating his special significance for the author. Deliberately "avoiding" direct nomination, the poet creates a certain mystical image of Christ, an image-mystery. In the poem "Dream" the name of Christ is not mentioned, and the reader can "decipher" it thanks to indirect indications: Resurrection, angels with swords, an ancient crypt, etc.

The analysis of lexical units that verbalize the religious concepts God, Soul, Faith and Church in the works of A. Blok made it possible to identify such features:

1) The concept of God in the poetry of A. Blok is motivated by an abstract concept, and its anthropomorphic characteristics, characteristic of the Russian naive picture of the world, appear irregularly and are of a metaphorical nature.

2) The concept of the Soul in the works of A. Blok does not always have a religious connotation. Its direct nomination is most often used in the meanings of “the inner, mental world of a person”, “man”, “a supernatural, intangible immortal principle in a person that continues to live after his death”, which is due to its close connection with the concept of Man. However, the last interpretation of this lexeme points to the sacred nature of the soul as a link between man and God:

I will ascend with an imperishable soul

On unknown wings.

Blessed are the pure in heart -

See God in the sky. "A new brilliance poured out the sky ..."

3) The concept of the Church, represented in the works of A. Blok by a large number of various verbalizers, acquires several specific connotations: the temple in Blok's works becomes a mysterious, mystical place where the lyrical hero meets surreal beings (ghost, Beautiful Lady). The verbalizer of this concept, the lexeme "monastery", endows the concept with special, individual author's meanings, in which the idea of ​​seclusion, voluntary renunciation of the world is realized: You yourself will come to my cell / And wake me up from sleep.

4) The same symbolic meaning is fulfilled in the idiostyle of A. Blok by the lexeme "monk", verbalizing the concept of the clergyman. Like many block concepts, it is characterized by ambiguity. Some of his verbalizers have a negative assessment and are used to create a picture of Russian peasant life (“pop”, “priest”), others are stylistically neutral and call the subject of a religious rite (“priest”), others acquire a symbolic meaning (“monk”, “priest”). ").

5) The concept of Faith is realized in the poetry of A. Blok through two ideas: faith, as a natural mental state of a person, and religion. At the same time, the value component of the concept is expressed in the first understanding of faith, which the poet considers a necessary condition for the inner harmony of a person. Proceeding from this, A. Blok opposes unbelief to faith as an inharmonious, restless state of mind:

Or in a moment of disbelief

Did he send me relief?

“Slowly at the church doors…”

In Blok's idea of ​​religion, the value component is weakened. The poet does not clearly express his belonging to Orthodoxy. N. A. Berdyaev noted that “Blok always stubbornly resisted all dogmatic teachings and theories, the dogmatics of Orthodoxy and Catholicism, the dogmatics of Merezhkovsky, the dogmatics of R. Steiner and the numerous dogmatics of Vyach. Ivanova. His concept of honesty included resistance to dogma ... But his lyrics are connected with the search for God and the Kingdom of God. Therefore, in the poetry of Alexander Blok there are practically no names of religious denominations, and the lexeme "Orthodox" is used only as part of the stable phrase "Orthodox Russia". The Christian position of the author is expressed through an invaluable opposition of the concepts of faith - other faith, Christianity - paganism.

The concepts of Devil and Sin are axiologically opposed to the above concepts. In A. Blok's poetic picture of the world, they are on the periphery of the religious concept sphere.

How the evaluative concept of Sin is used in Blok's works

to characterize and evaluate the inner world, feelings, actions of a person. So, sinful, or sinful, can be dreams, thoughts, poems, songs, laughter, soul.

In the poetry of A. Blok there is no differentiation of human sins: they are not concretized and are not evaluated as “light” or “serious”. There is also no connection between the Blok concept and the internal form of direct nomination (“burning of conscience”), and, consequently, the desire of a linguistic personality to justify a sinful act or delegate responsibility for its commission to an infernal being, which is typical for the Russian naive picture of the world.

In addition, in the works of the poet, Sin is closely connected with the concept of Love and is understood not so much as a heavy burden of guilt, but as an integral part of pleasure. Therefore, along with the epithets mortal and vile, Blok's poems use such characteristics of Sin as secret and innocent:

Sin while you're worried

Your innocent sins

While the beauty is being conjured

Your sinful verses.

"The Life of My Buddy"

Thus, in the religious picture of the world of A. Blok, the ideas of canonical Orthodoxy, religious sectarianism and philosophical and religious teachings of the late 19th - early 20th centuries were intertwined.

The active functioning of verbalizers of religious concepts in the poet's works (we analyzed about 1000 microcontexts) and the filling of these concepts with individual authorial meanings testify to their importance in A. Blok's idiostyle.

2.2. Symbolist legacy of Verlaine

One of the most musical poets of France is Paul Verlaine. Softened, as in ancient folk lamentations, mournfully witchcraft, wavy flowing melody of his poems sometimes pushes the content content into the shadows. And at the same time, Verlaine is aptly observant. As if by chance, he sketches a sketch, giving it an airy lightness, involving the things he barely mentioned in a swift whirling-flickering. In Verlaine's poems, one can hear, according to M. Gorky, “the cry, despair, pain of a sensitive and tender soul that yearns for purity, seeks God and does not find it.” A city dweller in all his habits and tastes, even when he gets into nature, Verlaine owned the secret, according to B. Pasternak, to be "supernaturally natural in colloquial terms."

Here are some of his poems.

Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l'automne

Blessed mon cour

D'une langueur

Monoton.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

sonne l'heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

Qui m'importe

De çà, de là,

Pareil a la

Feuille morte.

Autumn Song. per. A. Revich

Autumn in tears

Violins dreary

crying out loud,

So monotonous

Sighs and groans -

My heart is bleeding.

Throat squeezed,

struck sadly

Tough hour.

Remember when you're sad

Days that have passed -

Tears from eyes.

No return for me

Drives somewhere

Rushing without roads -

Flying with the wind

Plucked in the thicket

Il pleure dans mon cœur

Comme il pleut sur la ville;

Quelle est cette langueur

Qui penetre mon cœur?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie

Par terre et sur les toits!

Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie

Ô le chant de la pluie!

Il pleure sans raison

Dans ce cœur qui s'éco e ure.

Quoi! Nulletrahison?...

Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine

De ne savoir pourquoi

Sans amour and sans haine

Mon cœur a tant de peine!

*** Translated by B. Pasternak

And in the heart of raster.

And rain in the morning.

From where, right,

Such a blues?

Oh dear rain,

Your rustle is an excuse

The soul of mediocre

Cry out loud.

Where is the twist

And hearts of widowhood?

Blues for no reason

And from nothing.

blues from nowhere

But that and the melancholy

When it's not bad

And not for good.

Consider in detail the following poem by Verlaine.

“Today,” writes in the “Prologue” to the “Saturnian Verses” a beginner

P. Verlaine, - destroyed the original, but worn out over the past centuries, the union of action (l’Action) and dream (le Rêve)”, that is, poetry: “action, which in ancient times tuned the song mode of the lyre, now, imbued with anxiety, intoxicated covered with the soot of an agitated century” remains alien to the poetic word.

P. Verlaine says that changes have taken place in the effective sphere that have essentially transformed it, and this has catastrophic consequences for poetry. In what light, in the context of the poetic word, should attempts be made to conceive of precisely this sphere as a legislative one for art?

In the poem "Mandolin" Verlaine exquisitely recreates the aesthetic positions of a bygone era. In particular, the pinnacle achievement of the gallant age, created by the French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), the genre of “gallant festivities” (Les fetes galantes) finds its direct reflection. The image of social pastime in the open air, where lovers are united by the sounds of music and fun, is permeated by Watteau with subtle nuances of mood, aimed at creating a common poetic atmosphere, which gives the “gallant celebration” a touch of an unreal, elusive mirage.

In an effort to recreate the atmosphere of a “gallant festivity,” Verlaine opens the poem with a direct quote from the title of Watteau’s painting “Givers of Serenades” (the hero of the canvas is Mezettin playing music on a mandolin); the poet populates the poem with the masks of the Italian comedy dell`arte, which enjoyed undoubted popularity in the 18th century, admires the smallest details of their elegant outfits (“silk jackets”, “long dresses with trains”).

However, in addition to the above external attributes, Verlaine uniquely embodies a certain “intriguing duality” inherent in the gallant era, the uncertainty of the boundaries between the theatrical-illusory and the real world.

It should be noted the exceptional musicality of the poem, which, in addition to the exquisite instrumentation emphasized by literary critics, is created by characteristic phrases directly related to sound ("les donneures de sérénades" - "givers of serenades", "la mandoline jase" - "mandolin chirps", "les belles écouteuses" - "beautiful listeners", "les ramures chanteuses" - "singing branches").

Les donneures de serenades

Et les belles ecouteuses

Changent des propos fades

Sous les ramures chanteuse.

C'est Tircis et c'est Aminte,

Et c'est l'éternel Clitandre.

Et c'est Damis qui pour mainte

Cruelle fait maint vers tendre.

Leurs courtes vestes de soi,

Leurs longues robes and queues,

Leur elegance, leur joie

Et leurs molles ombres bleues

Tourbillonnent dans l'exstase

D'une lune rose et grise,

Et la mandoline jase

Parmi les frissons de brise.

Serenade givers

And their wonderful listeners

Exchanging tasteless speeches

Under the singing branches

This is Tirsis and this is Amant,

And this is the eternal Klitander.

And this is Damis, who for many

The cruel writes many tender verses.

Their little jackets of silk

Their long dresses with trains,

Their elegance, their fun,

And their soft blue shadows

Spinning in ecstasy

The moons are pink and grey,

And the mandolin chirps

In the wind.

The ephemerality and irreality of the scenery created by the poet is directly manifested on the verge of the third and final fourth stanza of the poem. Here, the "cheerful" and "elegant" characters turn out to be only "soft blue shadows" circling to the accompaniment of the mandolin, which for a moment came to life in the poet's imagination.

Conclusion

The Crisis of Symbolism in the 1910s-1911s gave rise to a new poetic school, proceeding from the fact that the beyond - the ideal of the Symbolists - cannot be comprehended, no matter how original the attempts to do so may be. So, on the literary scene, instead of renewed romanticism, which was the literary ideal of the symbolist, the rehabilitation of French classicism with its refined severity and elegant simplicity is affirmed. This means that symbolism is being replaced by a new direction. The historical significance of symbolism is great. The Symbolists sensitively captured and expressed the disturbing, tragic forebodings of social catastrophes and upheavals at the beginning of our century. Their poems capture a romantic impulse towards a world order where spiritual freedom and unity of people would reign.

Symbolism features:

• The simplest individualism of symbolism, its interest in the problem of personality.
• Escape from real life to a fictional world, the opposition of life and death.
• The desire to generalize.
• A vivid identification of the life position, attitude of the author.
• The poetics of conventions and parables, the great role of sounds, rhythm, which are called upon to replace the exact meaning of the word.

The best works of luminaries of Russian and foreign symbolism are now of great aesthetic value. Symbolism brought forward the creators-artists of the all-European, world scale. They were poets and prose writers, and at the same time philosophers, thinkers, high scholars, people of extensive knowledge. They refreshed and updated the poetic language, enriching the forms of verse, its rhythm, vocabulary, colors. They kind of instilled in us a new poetic vision, taught us to perceive and evaluate poetry more voluminously, deeper, more sensitively.

List of used literature

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17343.		DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPUTER UNIT OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC POSITIONING SYSTEM	588.92KB
	A detailed comparison of commercial electromagnetic positioning systems has been made. Such components of electromagnetic positioning systems as inductors are calculated, necessary measurements and calculations are made. The calculation of the influence of the magnetic field induction under the conditions of paired operation of inductors at the same frequency, depending on the distance
9707.		DESIGN OF RELAY PROTECTION AND AUTOMATION OF THE UNIT GENERATOR - TRANSFORMER	600.58KB
	The explanatory note to this work contains 82 typewritten pages. The text of the explanatory note contains the result of calculating the parameters of the power plant with the choice of main and auxiliary electrical equipment, switching equipment, and the calculation of short-circuit currents. Contains the calculation of the digital protection settings of the generator-transformer unit
14193.		Development of the process control system for the reactor block of the diesel fuel hydrotreatment unit	69.24KB
	General characteristics and description of the scheme of the technological process. Analysis of the process as an object of automation. Selection of parameters for control, regulation, signaling, emergency protection (ESD) and control and SIS algorithms
13806.		Development of a corporate block, corporate website and recommendations for promotion on the Internet	1.43MB
	In the age of the rapid development of computer technology, mankind has great opportunities for the development of communication methods that simplify the process of searching and exchanging information. To date, in order to obtain complete information on any issue, people do not have to visit libraries to consult with specialists, or to independently investigate this issue, it is enough just ...
2194.		Basic concepts of the psychology of creativity	225.11KB
	Creativity from English. Initially, creativity was considered as a function of the intellect and the level of development of the intellect was identified with the level of creativity. Subsequently, it turned out that the level of intelligence correlates with creativity up to a certain limit, and too high intelligence hinders creativity. At present, creativity is considered as a function of a holistic personality that is not reducible to intelligence and depends on the whole complex of its psychological characteristics.
2174.		Features of scientific and technical creativity	5.79KB
	The ability to see something that does not fit within the previously learned. The ability to encode information in the nervous system. The ability to curtail mental operations. A person has the ability to collapse a long chain of reasoning and replace them with one generalizing operation.
11242.		Psychological resources of creativity in the structure of dyssynchrony of the gifted	6.88KB
	Among the diverse scientific searches related to the study of giftedness, it seems to us interesting and necessary to study the intuitive and discursive components of thinking. Our main hypothesis is the assumption that the presence of a dissynchronous ratio of these components in the subject sets the impulse for creative thinking...