In history foreign literature Two main periods of the 20th century are distinguished - 1910-1945 and 1945-1990s, which allows us to present the literary process in its dynamics and connections with the events that determined the appearance of the era and the originality of the worldview of its contemporaries. The main ones are the two world wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, socio-political revolutions and national liberation movements, scientific and technical progress and the dehumanization of life under the onslaught of an intensively developing machine civilization.

A sense of impending change emerged in the literature in the years leading up to the First World War. This was reflected in the work of writers associated with the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. “We said to the whole era“ forgive ... ”- in these words French poet Apollinaire expressed the mood of his generation. The perception of the First World War is conveyed by the German writer Thomas Mann: "... this milestone that marked the end of one world and the beginning of something completely new." There is a process of formation of a new artistic thinking. The content and direction of the ideological and creative searches and new artistic discoveries of writers are influenced by the cataclysms of the era and the changing picture of the world. An important role is played by new knowledge about the Universe, a change in ideas about temporal and spatial extent, about a person, his psychology and memory, and the peculiarities of his worldview. The search for and approval of new means of artistic depiction in the literature of the 20th century are carried out in the context of strengthening interliterary ties, in a new way refracting the traditions of the classics of previous eras.

XX century with its accelerated pace of life, discoveries and various fields knowledge, new means of communication, advances in genetics, development air spaces, the splitting of the atom, a breakthrough into space, the development of computer technology did not justify the hopes placed on it for the prosperity of mankind. The world-shaking wars brought incalculable human and material losses; many scientific and technical discoveries were used not for the benefit of people; atomic explosions convinced of the possibility of the destruction of life on Earth; justified fears of environmentalists remained unaccounted for, which already has negative consequences. All this could not but affect the attitude of people, the fate of culture, art, the role of literature in the modern world. Writers, philosophers, sociologists of all countries of the world address these problems related to the development of civilization and the future of mankind, solving them in different ways: some in a pessimistic way, others, without denying the crises experienced by the art of the 20th century, believe in its revival. . During the First World War, Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the mechanization of life as a feature of the new century and about the crisis experienced by art (“Spirit and Machine”, 1915; “Crisis of Art”, 1918). He associated the concept of "crisis" not with the decline of art, but with its transition to a new phase, with the search for ways from the old to the new. In his public lecture delivered in Moscow on November 1, 1917, Berdyaev defined the 20th century as “the century of the crisis of art in general”: “Art has experienced many crises in its history. The transitions from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were marked by such profound crises. But what is happening to art in our era cannot be called one of the crises among others. We are present at the crisis of art in general, at the deepest upheavals in its millennial foundations. The old ideal of classically beautiful art has finally faded, and it is felt that there is no return to its images. Art convulsively seeks to transcend its limits. The boundaries separating one art from another are being violated... The problem of the relationship between art and life, creativity and being has never been so acute, there has never been such a thirst to move from the creation of works of art to the creation of life itself, a new life.

"If earlier" painting was associated with the fortress of the embodied physical world and the stability of the formed matter”, now “something opposite to the very nature of the plastic arts takes place in painting ... Picasso’s edges fluctuate physical bodies. AT contemporary art the spirit seems to be waning, and the flesh is dematerializing... The world is changing its covers... The shabby clothes of being rot and fall off.

It is important to emphasize that Berdyaev, noting the impossibility of returning to the classical norms of the old art, since the world has become different, suggests looking for new ways "to embody the new world." main task he sees art in “the preservation of the image of man, the image of the people and the image of mankind in the world whirlwind”, and the way to the new world - “in the humanization of life and the revival of spirituality”. In modern civilization "there is a dehumanization of man."

In the 1920s, the West appeared whole line works interpreting the problems of the fate of culture in modern world: "The Decline of Europe" (1918-1922) by Oswald Spengler, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1920) by Max Weber, "The Decay and Rebirth of Culture" (1923) by Albert Schweitzer, "Being and Time" (1927) by Martin Heidegger, " Dehumanization of Art" (1925) and "The Revolt of the Masses" (1928) by José Ortega y Gaceta.

The German philosopher and historian Spengler writes about the decline of the culture of countries Western Europe, about the decline of the thousand-year phase of its development. Delimiting the concepts of "culture" and "civilization", he defines them state of the art as degradation, develops the idea of ​​the loss of the highest spiritual values ​​of culture in the conditions of a rationalistic technological civilization. Spengler identifies eight cultures in world history. Each culture has its own history, lasting about a thousand years, and then, having experienced its heyday, it fades away; Western European culture is in the process of fading away.

Takes a different position German sociologist Max Weber. He believes that what is happening is not the process of the decline of culture, but the assertion in it of "universal rationalism", which is "the main core European culture". The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gaset devotes his works to the problems of dehumanization of culture and art of the 20th century, identifying historical and psychological differences between "old" and "new" art. Ortega y Gaset discusses the change in the place of culture in modern reality and a different attitude to art than before in the article "Theme of Our Time": "Art ceases to be the center of life's attraction."

In The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega, analyzing the historical situation of the 1920s, writes about the frontal offensive of “mass culture” that opposes true artistic values: “The peculiarity of our time is that ordinary souls, not being deceived by their mediocrity, fearlessly assert their right on it and impose it on everyone and everywhere ... The mass crushes everything unlike, remarkable, personal and best. Whoever is not like everyone else, who thinks differently than everyone else, runs the risk of becoming an outcast... Such is the cruel reality of our days... Europe has lost its morality... Europe is reaping the fruits of its spiritual vacillations. She is rapidly rolling down the slope of her culture, which has reached an unprecedented flowering, but has not managed to take root.

The tendencies of the fate of art in the era of scientific and technological revolution, world wars and socio-political changes revealed in philosophical and sociological works do not at all negate the importance of aesthetic searches, artistic innovations, development and renewal. best traditions in the literature of the 20th century, rich in bright names and significant creative achievements in all literary genres and genres. AT new period realism enters its development, the trends and schools of modernism, experiments of postmodernism are diverse. Literature continues its life, interacting with philosophy, science, politics, conveying the features of a difficult era, the worldview of contemporaries, the originality of artistic thinking and the artistic language of poets, prose writers, playwrights.

The realistic type of artistic thinking is determined by the level of scientific and philosophical understanding of reality, characteristic of the 20th century, and ideas about the complexity of the human personality. individual consciousness, inner world a person is interested in realist writers no less than social environment; the deepening of psychologism takes place not without the influence of Bergson's intuitionism and Freud's psychoanalysis, the discoveries and innovations of modernists are used, descriptiveness gives way to analytics. All this is manifested in the work of W. Faulkner, F. Mauriac, R. Rolland, T. Mann, JL Pirandello and many other writers associated with traditions literary classics. The forms of realistic works are enriched, the number of genre modifications of novels is growing (philosophical, science fiction, philosophical-allegorical and philosophical-psychological, political, family, utopian, epic, detective, social and historical). And always in the center of attention is a person in his diverse connections with people and life.

The 20th century is the most dynamic in history human civilization, which could not but affect the whole character of his culture, including the liter. general characteristics XX century: the triumph of science, human intelligence, the era of social storms, upheavals, paradoxes. Modern society, forming high ideals of love for a person, equality, freedom, democracy, at the same time gave rise to a simplified understanding of these values, so the processes taking place in contemporary culture, so versatile.

In the literary process of the XX century. there have been changes due to socio-economic and political reasons. Among the main features of the literature of this time can be identified:

Politicization, strengthening the connection of literary movements with various political currents,

Strengthening mutual influence and interpenetration national literatures, internationalization,

Negation literary traditions,

Intellectualization, influence philosophical ideas, the desire for scientific and philosophical analysis,

Merging and mixing of genres, variety of forms and styles,

The pursuit of the essay genre.

In the history of literature of the XX century. it is customary to single out two major period:

1) 1917-1945

2) after 1945

Features of literature of the 20th century:

1. Literature in the XX century. developed in line with two main directions - realism and modernism.

Realism allowed bold experiments, the use of new artistic techniques with one goal: a deeper understanding of reality (B. Brecht, W. Faulkner, T. Mann).

Modernism in literature is most clearly represented by the work of D. Joyce and F. Kafka, who are characterized by the idea of ​​the world as an absurd beginning, hostile to man, disbelief in man, rejection of the idea of ​​progress in all its forms, pessimism.

Of the leading literary movements of the mid-twentieth century. should be called existentialism, which as a literary trend arose in France (J-P. Sartre, A Camus).

The features of this direction are:

The assertion of a "pure" unmotivated action,

affirmation of individualism,

A reflection of the loneliness of a person in an absurd world hostile to him.

Avant-garde literature was a product of the dawning era social change and cataclysms. It was based on a categorical rejection of reality, the denial of bourgeois values ​​and an energetic breaking of traditions.

Joyce has the most famous novel- Ulysses. The action takes place on day 1, from morning to deep night. important object- City of Dublin. An elderly family man leaves home, spends the day away from home. This day is likened to the wanderings of Odysseus. The events of the myth, rearranged, form the undercurrent of the novel. This is how neo-mythologism entered literature.

Neomythologism has different manifestations. On the one hand, this is a return to literature of plots associated with ancient myths, and sometimes passed through a lot of new assimilation (“Antigone” by Jean Anouilh - the plot is the same, but cosmetics, coffee ...). On the other hand, the mythological plot may become part of the text not on purpose. For example, Garcia Márquez "100 Years of Solitude" - the motive of the flood, the motive of original sin - 2 young men competed for Ursula's heart. Jose Arcadio kills an opponent. They live almost in paradise, in Mokondo. On the other hand, Ursula and José Arcadio are close relatives and she is afraid to enter into a love affair with him, because she thinks that an ugly child will be born. Death comes with a girl who brings the bones of her ancestors in a bag. Everyone has insanity, memory loss. The eschatological motif - the end of the world - the gypsy, who brought unprecedented thoughts, leaves the book. It is said that the last of the Buendi family will read it, and at the end the storm will sweep Mokondo off the face of the earth, and read about everything that happened before.

3. Utopian and anti-utopian tendencies - are connected with the real historical experience in the 20th century. Utopia in its variety of technocratic utopia (social problems are solved by accelerating scientific and technological progress) - Aldous Huxley "Island", Ivan Efremov "Andromeda Nebula". Dystopias - Zamyatin "We", Platonov "Chevengur", Nabokov "Invitation to execution" Orwell "1984" - In Orwell's novel, the features of a police totalitarian state, as he saw it, are brought to unbearable tension Soviet Union– but the action of the novel takes place in London.

4. The novel in the 20th century - Of the genres, the novel remains, but its genre palette is changing. It becomes more diverse, uses others genre varieties. There is an interpenetration of genres. In the 20th century, the structure of the novel loses its normativity. There is a turn from the society to the individual, from the pitiful to the individual, the interest in the subject dominates. A subjective epic appears (Proust) - the individual consciousness is in the center and it is the object of research.

5. To say that the entire literary process is filled with a complex subject-rhythmic and spatio-temporal organization.

If you look for a word that characterizes key features period under review, it will be the word "crisis". Great scientific discoveries shook the classical ideas about the structure of the world, led to a paradoxical conclusion: "matter has disappeared." The new vision of the world, thus, will also determine the new face of the realism of the 20th century, which will differ significantly from the classical realism of its predecessors. Also devastating to the human spirit was a crisis of faith (“God is dead!” exclaimed Nietzsche). This led to the fact that the man of the 20th century began to increasingly experience the influence of non-religious ideas. Cult sensual pleasures, the apology of evil and death, the glorification of the self-will of the individual, the recognition of the right to violence, which turned into terror - all these features testify to the deepest crisis of consciousness.

In Russian literature of the beginning of the 20th century, a crisis of old ideas about art and a sense of the exhaustion of past development will be felt, a reassessment of values ​​will be formed.

Renewal of literature, its modernization will cause the emergence of new trends and schools. The rethinking of the old means of expression and the revival of poetry will mark the onset of the "silver age" of Russian literature. This term is associated with the name of N. Berdyaev, who used it in one of his speeches in the salon of D. Merezhkovsky. Later art critic and the editor of "Apollo" S. Makovsky consolidated this phrase by naming his book about Russian culture at the turn of the century "On Parnassus of the Silver Age." Several decades will pass and A. Akhmatova will write "... silver month bright / over silver age cold."

Chronological framework the period defined by this metaphor can be described as follows: 1892 - the exit from the era of timelessness, the beginning of a social upsurge in the country, the manifesto and collection "Symbols" by D. Merezhkovsky, the first stories of M. Gorky, etc.) - 1917. According to another point of view, the chronological end of this period can be considered 1921-1922 (the collapse of past illusions, the mass emigration of figures of Russian culture from Russia that began after the death of A. Blok and N. Gumilyov, the expulsion of a group of writers, philosophers and historians from the country).

Russian literature of the 20th century was represented by three main literary movements: realism, modernism, and the literary avant-garde. Schematically, the development of literary trends at the beginning of the century can be shown as follows:

Representatives of literary movements

Senior Symbolists: V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont, D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.N. Gippius, F.K. Sologub and others.

· God-seeking mystics: D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.N. Gippius, N. Minsky.

· Decadents-individualists: V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont, F.K. Sologub.

Junior Symbolists: A.A. Blok, Andrey Bely (B.N. Bugaev), V.I. Ivanov and others.

Acmeism: N.S. Gumilyov, A.A. Akhmatova, S.M. Gorodetsky, O.E. Mandelstam, M.A. Zenkevich, V.I. Narbut.

Cubofuturists (poets of "Gilea"): D.D. Burlyuk, V.V. Khlebnikov, V.V. Kamensky, V.V. Mayakovsky, A.E. Twisted.

Egofuturists: I. Severyanin, I. Ignatiev, K. Olimpov, V. Gnedov.

Group "Mezzanine of Poetry": V. Shershenevich, Khrisanf, R. Ivnev and others.

Association "Centrifuge": B.L. Pasternak, N.N. Aseev, S.P. Bobrov and others.

One of the most interesting phenomena in the art of the first decades of the 20th century was the revival of romantic forms, largely forgotten since the beginning of the last century. One of these forms was proposed by V.G. Korolenko, whose work continues to develop in late XIX and the first decades of the new century. Another expression of the romantic was the work of A. Green, whose works are unusual for their exoticism, flight of fancy, ineradicable dreaminess. The third form of the romantic was the work of revolutionary workers' poets (N. Nechaev, E. Tarasova, I. Privalov, A. Belozerov, F. Shkulev). Turning to marches, fables, appeals, songs, these authors poeticize heroic deed, use romantic images of a glow, a fire, a crimson dawn, a thunderstorm, a sunset, limitlessly expand the range of revolutionary vocabulary, resort to cosmic scales.

special role writers such as Maxim Gorky and L.N. played in the development of literature of the 20th century. Andreev.

Philosophy of the turn of the century:

Vl. Solovyov - "a fusion of truth, goodness and beauty", the Image of Sophia (the wisdom of God) - the heirs of the Young Symbolists (bloc).

· N. Fedorov - a call for the transformation of the world, active Christianity, the philosophy of the common cause - the heirs of the futurists (Pasternak).

· Dm. Merezhkovsky - the search for a new Christ for the intelligentsia.

· N. A. Berdyaev: the splitting of the cosmic world whole, foresaw a new religious consciousness.

· The influence of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Spengler influenced the Russian culture of that time the most.

In Russian artistic culture the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries became widespread DECADE, denoting such phenomena in art as the rejection of civic ideals and faith in reason, immersion in the sphere of individualistic experiences. These ideas were the expression social position part of the artistic intelligentsia, which tried to “get away” from the complexities of life into the world of dreams, irreality, and sometimes mysticism. But even in this way she reflected in her work crisis phenomena contemporary public life.

Decadent moods captured the figures of various artistic movements, including the realistic one. However, more often these ideas were inherent in modernist movements.

DECADENCE (French decadence; from medieval Latin decadentia - decline) - designation of a trend in literature and art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, characterized by opposition to the generally accepted "petty-bourgeois" morality, the cult of beauty as a self-sufficient value, often accompanied by the aestheticization of sin and vice, ambivalent experiences of disgust for life and refined enjoyment of it, etc. The concept of decadence is one of the central concepts in the criticism of culture by F. Nietzsche, who connected decadence with the increasing role of the intellect and the weakening of the original life instincts, "the will to power."

The concept “ MODERNISM”(French moderne - the latest, modern) included many phenomena of literature and art of the twentieth century, born at the beginning of this century, new in comparison with the realism of the previous century. However, even in the realism of this time, new artistic and aesthetic qualities appear: the “framework” of a realistic vision of life is expanding, and the search for ways of self-expression of the individual in literature and art is underway. characteristic features the arts become a synthesis, a mediated reflection of life, in contrast to the critical realism of the nineteenth century, with its inherent concrete reflection of reality. This feature of art is associated with the wide spread of neo-romanticism in literature, painting, music, the birth of a new stage realism.

Russian literature continued to play exclusively important role in cultural life countries. Directions opposed to realism began to take shape in artistic culture in the 1990s. Modernism was the most significant of them, both in terms of the time of its existence and in terms of its distribution and influence on social and cultural life. In modernist groups and trends united writers and poets, different in their ideological and artistic appearance, future fate in literature Strengthening reactionary-mystical ideas in public consciousness led to a well-known revival of anti-realist trends in artistic culture.

During the years of reaction, various modernist searches intensified, naturalism spread with its preaching of eroticism and pornography. The “rulers of souls” of a significant part of the bourgeois intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie, were not only the reactionary German philosopher F. Nietzsche, but also Russian writers like M. P. Artsybashev, A. A. Kamensky and others. These writers saw the freedom of literature, the priests of which they proclaimed themselves, primarily in the cult of the power of the “superman”, free from moral and moral and social ideals.

Deep hostility to revolutionary, democratic and humanistic ideals, reaching cynicism, was clearly manifested in Artsybashev's novel "Sanin" (1907), which was very popular as the most "fashionable" novel. His hero mocked those who are "ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the constitution." A. Kamensky was in solidarity with him, declaring that "every social feat has lost its attractiveness and beauty." Writers like Artsybashev and Kamensky openly proclaimed a break with the legacy revolutionary democrats, humanism of the progressive Russian intelligentsia.

SYMBOLISM- a trend in European and Russian art of the 1870s-1910s. Focused primarily on artistic expression through the symbol of intuitively comprehended essences and ideas, vague, often sophisticated feelings and visions. The philosophical and aesthetic principles of symbolism go back to the works of A. Schopenhauer, E. Hartmann, F. Nietzsche, and the work of R. Wagner. In an effort to penetrate the secrets of being and consciousness, to see through the visible reality the supertemporal ideal essence of the world (“from the real to the most real”) and its “imperishable”, or transcendent beauty, the Symbolists expressed their rejection of bourgeoisness and positivism, longing for spiritual freedom, the tragic foreboding of world social -historical shifts. In Russia, symbolism was often conceived as "life-creation" - a sacred action that goes beyond art. The main representatives of symbolism in literature are A. A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach. I. Ivanov, F. K. Sologub.

Russian symbolism as a literary trend developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The theoretical, philosophical and aesthetic roots and sources of creativity of writers-symbolists were very diverse. So V. Bryusov considered symbolism purely artistic direction, Merezhkovsky relied on Christian doctrine, Vyach. Ivanov was looking for theoretical support in philosophy and aesthetics ancient world refracted through the philosophy of Nietzsche; A. Bely was fond of Vl. Solovyov, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche.

The artistic and journalistic organ of the Symbolists was the journal Scales (1904-1909). “For us, representatives of symbolism, as a harmonious worldview,” wrote Ellis, “there is nothing more alien than the subordination of the idea of ​​life, inner path individual - to the external improvement of the forms of the hostel. For us, there can be no question of reconciling the path of an individual heroic individual with the instinctive movements of the masses, always subordinated to narrowly selfish, material motives.

These attitudes determined the struggle of the symbolists against democratic literature and art, which was expressed in the systematic slander of Gorky, in an effort to prove that, having become in the ranks of proletarian writers, he ended as an artist, in an attempt to discredit revolutionary democratic criticism and aesthetics, its great creators. - Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky. The Symbolists tried in every possible way to make “their own” Pushkin, Gogol, called by Vyacheslav Ivanov “a frightened spy on life”, Lermontov, who, according to the same Vyacheslav Ivanov, was the first to tremble “with a premonition of the symbol of symbols - Eternal Femininity”.

A sharp opposition between symbolism and realism is also connected with these attitudes. “While realist poets,” writes K. Balmont, “view the world naively, as mere observers, obeying its material basis, symbolist poets, recreating materiality with their complex impressionability, rule over the world and penetrate into its mysteries.” Symbolists seek to oppose reason and intuition. “... Art is the comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways”, - says V. Bryusov and calls the works of the Symbolists “mystical keys of secrets”, which help a person to reach freedom.

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

V. Ya. Bryusov (1873 - 1924) passed a complex and difficult path of ideological searches. The revolution of 1905 aroused the admiration of the poet and contributed to the beginning of his departure from symbolism. However, Bryusov did not immediately come to a new understanding of art. Bryusov's attitude to the revolution is complex and contradictory. He welcomed the cleansing forces that rose to fight the old world, but believed that they only bring the element of destruction (1905):

I see new fight in the name of a new will!

Break - I'll be with you! build - no!

The poetry of V. Bryusov of this time is characterized by the desire for a scientific understanding of life, the awakening of interest in history. A. M. Gorky highly valued the encyclopedic education of V. Ya. Bryusov, calling him the most cultured writer in Russia. Bryusov received and welcomed October revolution and actively participated in the construction of Soviet culture.

The ideological contradictions of the era (one way or another) influenced individual realist writers.

AT creative destiny L. N. Andreev (1871 - 1919), they were reflected in a well-known departure from the realistic method. However, realism as a trend in artistic culture retained its position. Russian writers continued to be interested in life in all its manifestations, fate common man important issues in public life.

The traditions of critical realism continued to be preserved and developed in the work of the largest Russian writer I. A. Bunin (1870 - 1953). The most significant of his works of that time are the stories "The Village" (1910) and "Dry Valley" (1911).

1912 was the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge in the social and political life of Russia.

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

The platform of the “younger” symbolists is based on idealistic philosophy Vl. Solovyov with his idea of ​​the Third Testament and the advent of the Eternal Feminine. Vl. Solovyov argued that the highest task of art is “... the creation of a universal spiritual organism”, which piece of art it is an image of an object and phenomenon “in the light of the future world”, which is connected with the understanding of the role of the poet as a theurgist, a clergyman. This, according to A. Bely, "combines the heights of symbolism as an art with mysticism."

The recognition that there are “other worlds”, that art should strive to express them, determines the artistic practice of symbolism in general, the three principles of which are proclaimed in D. Merezhkovsky’s work “On the Causes of the Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature”. It is “...mystical content, symbols and expansion of artistic impressionability”.

Based on the idealistic premise of the primacy of consciousness, the symbolists argue that reality, reality is the creation of an artist: My dream is all spaces, And all strings, The whole world is one of my decorations, My traces (F. Sologub) “Having broken the fetters of thought, to be shackled is a dream,” calls K. Balmont. The vocation of the poet is to connect the real world with the world beyond.

The poetic declaration of symbolism is clearly expressed in the poem by Vyach. Ivanov “Among the Deaf Mountains”: And I thought: “Oh genius! Like this horn, You must sing the song of the earth, so that in the hearts Awaken another song. Blessed is he who hears."

And from behind the mountains there was an answering voice: “Nature is a symbol, like this horn. She Sounds for an echo. And the echo is God. Blessed is he who hears the song and hears the echo.”

Symbolist poetry is poetry for the elite, for the aristocrats of the spirit. A symbol is an echo, a hint, an indication; it conveys a hidden meaning. Symbolists strive to create a complex, associative metaphor, abstract and irrational. This is V. Bryusov’s “voicing-sounding silence”, Vyacheslav Ivanov’s “And bright eyes are dark rebelliousness”, A. Bely’s “dry deserts of shame” and his own: “Day - dull pearls - a tear - flows from sunrise to sunset ". Quite accurately, this technique is revealed in the poem 3. Gippius “Seamstress”:

On all phenomena there is a seal.

One seems to merge with the other.

Having accepted one - I try to guess

Behind him is something else, something that is hidden.

Highly great importance in the poetry of the Symbolists, it acquired the sound expressiveness of the verse, for example, from F. Sologub:

And two deep glasses

From thin-voiced glass

You substituted for the light cup

And sweet lila foam,

Lila, lila, lila, rocked

Two dark scarlet glasses.

Whiter, lily, alley gave

Bela was you and ala...

The revolution of 1905 found a peculiar refraction in the work of the Symbolists.

Merezhkovsky greeted the year 1905 with horror, having witnessed with his own eyes the coming of the “coming boor” predicted by him. excitedly, with keen desire understand approached the events Block. V. Bryusov welcomed the cleansing thunderstorm.

By the tenth years of the twentieth century, symbolism needed to be updated. “In the bowels of symbolism itself,” wrote V. Bryusov in the article “The Meaning modern poetry”, - new currents arose, trying to infuse new forces into a decrepit organism. But these attempts were too partial, their initiators too imbued with the same traditions of the school, for the renovation to be of any significance.

The last pre-October decade was marked by searches in modernist art. The controversy surrounding symbolism that took place in 1910 among the artistic intelligentsia revealed its crisis. As N. S. Gumilyov put it in one of his articles, “symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling.” It was replaced by acmeism (from the Greek "acme" - highest degree something, blooming time).