Symbolism in European literature and culture. silver Age

SYMBOLISM(French symbolisme) - a literary, artistic and ideological direction in the culture of the last quarter of the 19th - the first third of the 20th century. Arose as a reaction to domination materialism , positivism and naturalism in European culture of the 19th century. He continued and developed the ideas and creative principles of the German Romantics, based on aesthetics F. Schelling , F. Schlegel , A. Schopenhauer , the mysticism of Swedenborg, the experiments of R. Wagner; at the heart of Russian symbolism early. 20th century – ideas and principles of thinking F. Nietzsche , linguistic theory of A.A. Potebnya, philosophy Vl.Soloviev . Among the sources of creative inspiration are some forms of the spiritual cultures of the East (in particular, Buddhism), and at a later stage - theosophy and anthroposophy . As a direction, symbolism developed in France, reached its peak in the 80s and 90s. 19th century The main representatives are S. Mallarmé, J. Moreas, R. Gil, A. de Renier, A. Gide, P. Claudel, Saint-Paul-Roux and others; in Belgium - M. Maeterlinck, E. Verharn, A. Mokel; in Germany and Austria - S.George, G.Hauptmann, R.Rilke, G.Hofmannstal; in Norway - G. Ibsen, K. Hamsun, A. Strindberg; in Russia - N.Minsky D.Merezhkovsky, F.Sologub, V.Bryusov, K.Balmont, A.Blok, A. Bely , Vyach.Ivanov , Ellis, Y. Baltrushaitis; in the fine arts: P. Gauguin, G. Moreau, P. Puvis de Chavannes, E. Carrière, O. Redon, M. Denis and the artists of the Nabis group, O. Rodin (France), A. Böcklin (Switzerland), G. Seganti-ni (Italy), D. G. Rossetti, E. Burne-Jones, O. Beardsley (Great Britain), J. Torop (Holland), F. Hodler (Austria), M. Vrubel, M.-K .Churlionis, V.Borisov-Musatov, artists of the Blue Rose group, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin; in music: partly C. Debussy, A. Scriabin; in the theater: P. Fora (France), G. Craig (England), F. Komissarzhevsky, partly V. Meyerhold.

The Symbolists enthusiastically accepted the ideas of the Romantics that the symbol in art contributes to the ascent from the earthly world to the heavenly, their mystical and religious understanding of poetry. Ch. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud became the direct predecessors of symbolism proper as a “school”, or direction, and Mallarme was one of the initiators of the movement and its theorist. Two main trends in symbolism can be distinguished (although in concrete creativity and even in theoretical manifestations they often coexist): the neoplatonic-Christian line (objective symbolism) and the solipsistic line (subjective symbolism). The most consistent theorists of the first trend were J. Moreas, E. Reynaud, S. Maurice, J. Vanor; among the main representatives of the second are the young A. Gide, Remy de Gourmont, G. Kahn.

Moreas actually revived the Platonic-Neoplatonic concept of art as a "tangible reflection of the original ideas" in symbols. Pictures of nature, any objects and phenomena of life, human actions and other topics, according to him, are of interest to the symbolist poet not in themselves, but only as sensually comprehended symbols expressing ideas. The artistic embodiment of these symbols requires a new poetic style (“primordial-all-encompassing”) and a special language that the Symbolists developed on the basis of Old French and folk languages. Hence the peculiar poetics of symbolism. The most complete presentation of the essence of objective symbolism was given by S. Maurice in the article "Literature of the Present Day" (1889). He is convinced that the only sources of Art are Philosophy, Tradition, Religion, Legends. Art synthesizes their experience and goes further in comprehending the spiritual Absolute. Genuine art is not fun, but “revelation”, it is “like a gate to a gaping Mystery”, is “the key that opens Eternity”, the path to Truth and “righteous Joy”. The poetry of the Symbolists is the poetry of "primordial nature", which reveals the soul and language of nature and the inner world of man. Symbolic art is called upon to restore the original unity of poetry (which is assigned the leading role), painting and music. The essence of the “universal aesthetic synthesis” lies in “the merging of the Spirit of Religion and the Spirit of Science at the festival of Beauty, imbued with the most human of desires: to find wholeness, returning to primordial simplicity” (quoted from the book: Poetry of French Symbolism. M., 1993, p. 436). This is the ideal and goal of symbolism. A number of Symbolists professed the cult of Beauty and Harmony as the main forms of God's revelation in the world. The poet is actually engaged in the secondary creation of the world, and “particles of the Divine serve as his material,” and the “Poet’s compass” is intuition, which the Symbolists considered the main engine of artistic creativity. Mallarme believed that in every, even the most insignificant thing, there is a certain hidden meaning and the purpose of poetry is to express with the help of human language, “which has acquired its original rhythm”, “the hidden meaning of the diverse being”. This function is performed in poetry by an artistic symbol, because it does not name the subject of expression itself, but only hints at it, giving the reader pleasure in the process of guessing the meaning hidden in the symbol.

The solipsistic trend in symbolism proceeded from the fact that a person deals only with a complex of sensations, ideas, ideas that he creates in himself and which have nothing to do with external being. According to Remy de Gourmont, “we know only phenomena and reason only about appearances; the truth in itself eludes us; essence is not available... I don't see what is; there is only what I see. There are as many different worlds as there are thinking people” (Le livre des masques, v. 1. P., 1896, pp. 11–12). Similar ideas in the philosophical and symbolic "Treatise on Narcissus (Theory of Symbol)" (1891) were also expressed by A. Gide. The understanding of the symbol as an artistic form of fixing the subjective ideas and experiences of the poet found expression in a number of symbolist works (V. de Lisle-Adana, R. de Gourmont, A. Jarry, etc.).

According to Maeterlinck, it is not the artist who is the creator of the symbol, but the symbol itself, as “one of the forces of nature”, is revealed in art through the medium of the artist. The symbol is a kind of mystical carrier of the secret energy of things, the eternal harmony of being, a messenger of another life, the voice of the universe. The artist must humbly give all of himself to the symbol, which with its help will reveal images that obey the universal law, but often incomprehensible even to the mind of the artist himself. The most saturated with symbolic meaning in a work of art are often outwardly the most ordinary events, phenomena, objects. Variations of this understanding of the symbol are found among many symbolists of the first direction. According to the definition of one of the theorists of symbolist aesthetics A. Mokel, a symbol is “a great image that blossoms on an Idea”; “an allegorical realization of the Idea, a tense connection between the immaterial world of laws and the sensible world of things” (Esthétique du symbolisme, Brux., 1962, p. 226). The symbolist poet and art critic A. Aurier believed that the art of the Symbolists, expressing the Idea in visible forms, is subjective in its essence, since the object is perceived in it through the spiritual world of the subject; Syntheticity and decorativeness bring the art of symbolism closer to the specific aesthetic artistic direction of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, which was called Art Nouveau in France, the Secession in Austria, Jugendstil in Germany, and Art Nouveau in Russia).

Symbolism in Russia inherited the basic principles of Western European symbolism, but rearranged individual accents and made a number of significant adjustments to it. The innovative stage of Russian symbolism falls on the beginning. 20th century and is associated with the names of the “young symbolists” Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok, Ellis (L.L. Kobylinsky). Among the features of Russian symbolism is the awareness of the Sophian principle of art (see. Sofia ) and the antinomy of "cathedral-individual", the division of symbolism into realistic and idealistic, the removal of symbolism from the sphere of art into life and the development in connection with this of the concepts of mystery and theurgy as the most important categories of aesthetics, apocalypticism and eschatologism as essential creative motives.

Symbolists enthusiastically accepted the concept of Vl. Solovyov about Sophia the Wisdom of God as a creative mediator between God and people, the main inspirer of art and an accomplice in the creative process. Solovyov's idea was especially popular about the appearance of Sophia in the guise of a beautiful Virgin, who was united by them with Goethe's ideas of the Eternally Feminine and embodied in poetry - especially Blok ("Poems about the Beautiful Lady"), Bely (4th symphony of "Bowling Blizzards", poem "First Date"), Balmont . Sophia was often considered the guarantor of the truth of poetic symbols and images, the inspirer of poetic insights and clairvoyance.

The most original version of the theory of symbolism was developed by Andrei Bely. He distinguished symbolism as a worldview and as a "school" in art. As a worldview, symbolism is still in its infancy, for it is an attribute of the future culture, the construction of which is just beginning. So far, symbolism has been most fully realized only in art as a “school”, the essence of which is reduced not so much to the development of specific creative principles and stylistic techniques of artistic expression, but to a new angle of artistic and aesthetic thinking - to the intuitive realization that all real art is symbolic. It creates artistic symbols that connect two levels of being - the "matter" of art and some other reality symbolized by art. Symbolism as a creative principle is inherent in all the main "schools": classicism, naturalism, realism, romanticism and symbolism itself as the highest form of creativity in the sense of self-reflection. The credo of artistic symbolism is the unity of form and content with their complete equality. In romanticism, form depended on content, in classicism and formalism, content depended on form. Symbolism eliminates this dependence.

Bely distinguished three main symbolist concepts: Symbol, symbolism and symbolization. Under the Symbol (with a capital letter) he understood some transcendent semantic principle, absolute Unity, which he ultimately identified with the incarnated Logos, i.e. with Christ (the article “Emblematics of Meaning”, etc.). In the universe, this absolute Symbol is revealed (and hidden at the same time) in countless symbols of the created world and works of art and culture. The Symbol (with a lowercase letter) is a “window to Eternity”, the path to the Symbol and at the same time its armor, a reliable shell. Bely paid great attention to the word as a symbol in all its aspects. I saw the essential basis of the symbolic "school" in linguistics (in particular, in the ideas of Potebnya).

Under symbolism, Bely understood the theory of symbolic creativity and at the same time this creativity itself, and the word "symbolization" denoted the realization of symbolism in art. "Art is the symbolization of values in images of reality." Artistic symbolism is “a method of expressing feelings in images” ( White A. Criticism. Aesthetics. Theory of Symbolism, vol. 2. M., 1994, p. 245, 67). Art has a religious origin, and traditional art has a religious meaning, the essence of which is esoteric, for art calls for a "transformed life." In modern times, in the age of the dominance of science and philosophy, "the essence of the religious perception of life has passed into the realm of artistic creativity," therefore, contemporary art (i.e., primarily symbolic) is the "shortest path to religion" of the future (ibid., vol. 1 , pp. 267, 380). This religion itself is focused on the improvement and transformation of man and all life, hence the ultimate goal of symbolism is to go beyond art itself for free theurgy - the creation of life with the help of the divine energy of the Symbol. In the hierarchy of creative "zones" theurgy occupies the highest step, to which the steps of artistic and religious creativity lead. The idea of theurgy, the heightened religious accentuation of art, and the generally prophetic and preaching nature of creativity, especially pronounced in Bely, significantly distinguish Russian symbolism from Western symbolism.

The leitmotif of Bely's entire theoretical and artistic work is the feeling of a global crisis of culture (intensified during World War I, when he wrote the articles "Crisis of Life", "Crisis of Culture", "Crisis of Thought" and "Crisis of Consciousness"), apocalyptic visions , awareness of the cultural and historical end. Bely believed that the apocalypse of Russian poetry was caused by the approach of the "End of World History", in which, in particular, he saw the solution to "Pushkin's and Lermontov's mysteries." Bely was overwhelmed by the eschatological aspirations of the approach of a new, more perfect stage of culture, to which the Symbolists are called upon to contribute along the paths of free theurgy, mystical and artistic creation of life.

To understand the essence of Bely's symbolism, it is important to analyze the specifics of the writer's artistic thinking, who constantly felt his deep connection with other worlds and saw the meaning of art in identifying these worlds, establishing contacts with them, in activating the ways of contemplation, improving consciousness and, ultimately, improving life itself ( theurgical aspect). The features of Bely's poetics include the complex polyphony of the three meaningful planes of being (personality, the material world outside it and the transcendent "other" reality), the apocalyptic worldview and eschatological aspirations, the real feeling of the struggle of Christ and Antichrist, Sophia and Satan in the world and in man; some “complexes” identified by Freud are strongly expressed in prose, for the later period - contacts with astral levels, the image of the world through the eyes of the “astral double”, etc.; hence the constant motives of loneliness, global incomprehensibility, mental suffering up to the feeling of being crucified in oneself, an almost paranoid atmosphere in some parts of the "symphonies", "Petersburg", "Masks". Clairvoyance and the feeling of prophetic intentions in oneself arouse Bely's increased interest in combining purely "brain" techniques with intuitive revelations, irrational moves, increase alogism (sometimes reaching the point of absurdity), associativity, synesthesia in his works. The “Dance of Self-Fulfilling Thought” (Bely) sets a crazy rhythm for many of his works, stimulates the constant change of narrative and lyrical masks, creates a “dance” of meanings with special methods of using sounds, words, phrases, speech, text in general. Bely's poetics, characterized by a sharpened spirit of experiment, influenced a number of avant-garde, modernist and postmodernist phenomena in the literature and art of the 20th century; he is considered the “father” of futurism and modernism in general, the forerunner of the formal school in literary criticism (he was the first to introduce such concepts as “technique”, “material”, “form” into the analysis of literary material) and experimental aesthetics, the largest writer of anthroposophical orientation.

One of the essential features of the aesthetics of Russian symbolism was the desire of its theorists to predict the development of art in the direction of turning into sacred mystery. Mystery was perceived as the ideal and ultimate goal of "realistic symbolism", which Vyach. Ivanov, and after him Bely, distinguished from "idealistic symbolism". The essence of the latter lies in the fact that the symbols here act only as a means of contact between people and are of a subjective-psychological nature, focused on the expression and transmission of the finest nuances of experiences. They have nothing to do with truths and Truth. In realistic symbolism, symbols are ontological - they are real themselves and lead people to even higher true realities (a realibus ad realiora - the motto of Ivanov the Symbolist). Here the symbols also connect the consciousnesses of the subjects, but in a different way - they lead them (as in the Christian liturgy) "through Augustine's transcende te ipsum" into a conciliar unity "by a common mystical vision of the objective essence, one for all" (Sobr. op., vol. 2. Brussels, 1974, p. 552). Realistic symbolism is, according to Ivanov, a form of preservation and, to some extent, development at the modern level of myth, as the deep content of a symbol, understood as reality. A true myth is devoid of any personal characteristics; it is an objective form of storage of knowledge about reality, acquired as a result of mystical experience and taken for granted until, in the act of a new breakthrough 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. Ivanov saw the super-task of symbolism in myth-making - not in the artistic processing of old myths or in writing new fantastic tales, which, in his opinion, idealistic symbolism does, but in true myth-making, which he understood as "the spiritual feat of the artist himself." The artist “must stop creating without connection with the divine all-unity, must educate himself to the possibility of creative realization of this connection. And myth, before it is experienced by all, must become an event of inner experience, personal in its arena, supra-personal in its content” (ibid., p. 558). This is the "theurgical purpose" of symbolism. Many Russian symbolists were aware that they were closely within the framework of art, and comprehended symbolism as a kind of creative system of the future, which should go beyond art. Symbolism, in their opinion, in its own way leads a person to the same goal as religion, without attempting to replace it or oust it. Ellis wrote that artistic symbolism, tearing the soul away from attachment to the purely material world and dragging it into the endless spheres of the spirit, nevertheless cannot lead it in this direction to its logical end and, as it were, keeps it halfway. In this he saw the fundamental antinomianism of symbolism, its spiritual and epistemological limitations.

A definite result of Russian symbolism summed up N. Berdyaev in "The Meaning of Creativity. The Experience of Man's Justification (1916). He fully agrees with the symbolists in understanding the symbol as the basis of any art and symbolism as its highest level. Varying their wording somewhat, he argued that "the symbol is a bridge thrown over from the creative act to the innermost ultimate reality." However, Berdyaev is convinced, there is no way to achieve this "reality" on the paths of art. In symbolism, creativity outgrows the framework of art and culture; it strives not for the values of culture, but for a new being. “Symbolism is the desire to be freed from symbolism through the realization of the symbolic nature of art. Symbolism is the crisis of cultural art, the crisis of any intermediate culture. This is its global significance. The tragedy of Christian creativity "with its transcendent longing ends in symbolism." The Symbolists became the forerunners and heralds of the “coming world era of creativity”, the creativity of life itself on new spiritual foundations. Symbolism is followed by “mystical realism”, art is followed by theurgy (Sobr. soch., vol. 2. Paris., 1985, pp. 276–277).

Symbolism had a significant impact on a number of artistic movements of the 20th century. (expressionism, futurism, surrealism, theater of the absurd, postmodernism - see. Vanguard ), on the work of a number of major writers and artists. Many theoretical discoveries of the Symbolists were reflected in major aesthetic currents. At the same time, the sharply spiritual, and often religious and mystical orientation of the majority of the Symbolists turned out to be alien to the main trend of art in the 20th century.

Literature:

1. [Aesthetic manifestos, symbolist theoretical writings] - White Andrew. Symbolism. M., 1910;

2. He is. The meadow is green. M., 1910;

3. He is. Arabesques. M., 1911;

4. He is. Symbolism as a worldview. M., 1994;

5. Literary heritage, vol. 27–28. M., 1937;

6. Baudelaire Sh. About art. M., 1986;

7. Poetry of French symbolism. Lautreamont. Songs of Maldoror. M., 1993;

8. Ellis. Russian Symbolists. Tomsk, 1996;

9. Baudelaire Ch. Curiosites aesthetics. L'art romantique et autres oeuvres critiques. P., 1962;

10. Denis M. Theories. 1890–1910 P., 1920;

11. Michael G. Message poetique du symbolisme. La doctrine symboliste, v. 1–3. P., 1947;

12. Mockel A. Esthetique du symbolism. Bruxelles, 1962;

13. Mitchell W. Les manifestes litteraires de la belle epoque. 1886–1914 Anthologie critique. P., 1966;

14. Oblomievsky D. French symbolism. Moscow, 1973;

15. Mazaev A.I. The problem of the synthesis of arts in the aesthetics of Russian symbolism. M., 1992;

16. Kryuchkova V.A. Symbolism in the visual arts. France and Belgium. 1870–1900 M., 1994;

17. Kassu J. Encyclopedia of symbolism. M., 1998;

18. Bychkov V.V. Aesthetic prophecies of Russian symbolism. - "Polygnosis", 1999, No. 1, p. 83–120;

19. He is. Symbolism in search of the spiritual. - In the book: He is. 2000 years of Christian culture sub specie aesthetica, vol. 2. M., 1999, p. 394–456;

20. Bowra C.M. The Heritage of Symbolism, v. 1–3. L., 1943;

21. Christoffel U. Malerei and Poesie. Die symbolische Kunst des 19 Jahrhunderts. Vienna, 1948;

22. Lehman A. The Symbolist Aesthetic in France 1885–1895. Oxf., 1950;

23. Holthusen J. Studien zur Asthetik und Poetik des russischen Symbolismus. Göttingen, 1957;

24. Hofstatter H.H. Symbolismus und die Kunst der Jahrhundertwende. Koln, 1965;

25. Weinberg b. The Limits of Symbolism. Chi., 1966;

26. Hofstatter H.H. Idealism und Symbilismus. Wien-Munch., 1972;

27. Cioran S. The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyj. P., 1973;

28. Julian Ph. The Symbolists. L., 1973;

29. Goldwater R. symbolism. L., 1979;

30. Pierre J. symbolism. L., Woodbury, 1979;

31. Houston J.P. French Symbolism and the Modernist Movement, Baton Rouge, La., 1980;

32. Woronzoff Al. Andrej Belyj's "Petersburg", James Joyce's "Ulysses" and the Symbolist Movement. Bern 1982;

33. Balakian A. The Fiction of the Poet: From Mallarmé to the Post-Symbolist Mode. princeton. N.J., 1992.

MODERN

Modern (French) moderne- the latest, modern) - an artistic style in European art at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. It received different names in different countries: in Russia - "modern", in France, Belgium, England - "art nouveau", in Germany - "art nouveau", in Austria-Hungary - "secession", in Italy - "liberty".
Symbolism became the aesthetic and philosophical basis of modernity.
Despite its sophistication and sophistication, Art Nouveau was focused on the mass consumer, while maintaining the principle of "art for art's sake."
Art Nouveau rethought and stylized the features of the art of different epochs, and developed its own artistic techniques based on the principles of asymmetry, ornamentality and decorativeness.
The predominant motifs of Art Nouveau are poppies, irises, lilies and other plants, snakes, lizards, swans, waves, dance, as well as the image of a woman with flying hair. The colors are dominated by cold tones. The compositional structure is characterized by an abundance of curvilinear outlines and flowing uneven contours.
Art Nouveau embraced all types of plastic arts - painting, graphics, arts and crafts, theatrical and decorative arts, and architecture.
The ideas of creating a unified artistically designed subject-domestic environment have become widespread.
Art Nouveau artists strove for universalism, engaging in various types of artistic activities. Members of the World of Art (K. Somov, N. Sapunov, M. Dobuzhinsky, S. Sudeikin and others) became prominent representatives of modernity in Russia, combining painting, graphics, arts and crafts, and sculpture in their work.

SYMBOLISM. Symbolism in literature is such a trend in which a symbol (see Symbol) is the main method of artistic depiction for an artist who, in the surrounding reality, is looking only for correspondences with the other world.

Beneath the rough crust of matter
I saw the imperishable purple, -

wrote Vladimir Solovyov, teacher of Andrei Bely and Alexander Blok. For representatives of symbolism, "everything is just a symbol." If for a realist a rose is important in itself, with its delicately silky petals, with its aroma, with its scarlet-black or rose-gold color, then for a symbolist who does not accept the world, a rose is only conceivable likeness mystical love. For the Symbolist, reality is only a springboard for jumping into the unknown. In symbolic creativity, two contents organically merge: hidden abstraction, conceivable similarity and explicit specific image.

Alexander Blok in his book "On the Current State of Russian Symbolism" connects symbolism with a certain worldview, he distinguishes between this the visible world, a rough booth, on the stage of which puppets move, and the other world, the distant shore, where the “bottomless blue eyes” of a mysterious stranger bloom, as the embodiment of something obscure, unknowable, Eternally Feminine. The symbolist poet proceeds from the opposition to this world

other worlds, his poet is not a stylist, but a priest, a prophet who is the owner of secret knowledge, with his images-symbols, like signs, he “winks” with the same mystics, who “everyone imagines the secrets of the upcoming meeting”, who are carried away by a dream to to other worlds “beyond the limit”. For poets - mystics, symbols, these are “keys mysteries”, this is “windows in eternity”, windows from this world to another. Here is no longer a literary, but a mystical-philosophical interpretation of symbolism. This interpretation is based on a break with reality, the rejection of the real visible world - a booth with its "cardboard bride" - in the words of A. Blok, or with his "disgusting", rude Aldonsa - in the words of F. Sologub. “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” (Mountain peaks, p. 76. K. Balmont ). Thus, symbolism is based on spiritual split, the opposition of two worlds and the desire to escape from this world with its struggle to another, otherworldly, unknowable world. Hiding from worldly storms and battles in a cell, having gone into a tower with colored windows, the mystic poet serenely contemplates the restless life in Buddhist peace - from the window. Where the masses bleed in struggle, there the secluded poet-dreamer creates his legend and transforms the rude Aldonsa and the Beautiful Dulcinea. He hears the noise of the surf in the shell of his symbols, and not in the face of a stormy element.

I created in my dream
World ideal nature.
Oh, how insignificant before her
Rivers and rocks and waters...

(Valery Bryusov).

The poet experiences special happiness “to leave irrevocably with the soul of his soul to that which is fleeting, which shines with joy. other being"

(K. Balmont).

Such an attitude to the surrounding life, to reality, to the visible world is far from accidental. It is significant and

characteristic of the late 19th century. “However, one cannot but admit,” writes K. Balmont, “that the closer we are to the new century, the more insistently the voices of symbolist poets are heard, the more palpable the need for more refined ways of feelings and thoughts becomes, which is a hallmark of symbolic poetry.” (Mountain Peaks, p. 76). The need to escape from reality into a world of obscure symbols, full of mystical experiences and forebodings, arose more than once among those romantics who did not accept the world, who were carried away by a dream to a blue flower, to a beautiful lady, to the eternally feminine.

The medieval romantics were replaced by the German romantics of the early 19th century. The neo-romanticism of the late 19th century, the neo-romanticism of the Symbolists: Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine, Stefan Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, C. Baudelaire, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, F. Sologub, Vladimir Solovyov are connected with the romance of Novalis; the same break with this world, the same protest against harsh reality.

If the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century is the collapse of feudalism, then the end of the 19th century is the collapse of that 3rd estate, which was nothing and became everything, and which waited for its gravedigger. The end of the 19th century is the collapse of bourgeois culture, it is the formidable approach of a new century fraught with revolutions.

The end of the 19th century, associated with the death of some classes and the rise of others, is full of anxious moods and forebodings among the representatives of the ruling classes. Those social strata to whom reality promises death respond with a denial of reality itself, since reality denies them and, in the words of Nietzsche, hasten to "cover their heads in the sand of heavenly things."

Eroded by doubts, the Hamlet of bourgeois society says to his muse: “Ophelia! retire to the monastery from the people.”

On the one hand, the fear of "barbarians", "Scythians", "the coming Huns", "the coming boor", all those who own the future of all those who bring the death of the old culture, old privileges, old

idols, and on the other hand, contempt for that obsolete ruling stratum with which the bourgeois aristocrats of the spirit are intimately connected - all this creates a transitional, unstable, intermediate position. The destruction of the old way of life, the obscurity of the new, the way of life without being leads the outgoing life to something illusory, foggy and vague. The poet rejects the despicable world, the accursed world, begins to love the "string clouds", the legend and dreams, the poetry of bleak moods and gloomy forebodings.

If the representative of the organic creative epoch and the victorious class is a realist and creates definite, clear, daytime images, then the representative of the critical epoch, the representative of the dying class, lives in the illusory world of his fantasy and clothes vague, obscure, vague ideas in symbols. On the shaky ground of the illusory and obscure, disturbing and ambiguous, symbolist poetics grows.

Symbolism and its poetics. Symbolists are reproached for the defiant darkness, for the fact that they create ciphered poetry, where words - hieroglyphs need, like rebus figures, to guess that their poetry is for the initiated, for lonely refiners. But the vagueness, vagueness, duality of experiences is also clothed in the corresponding form. If the classically clear Kuzmin speaks of klyarism - clarity in poetry, then the romantically mysterious poet occultist Andrei Bely loved the "current of darkness." The most sincere symbolist poet, Alexander Blok, "has a soul devoted to dark melodies." In A. Blok's little drama "The King in the Square", the architect's daughter addresses the prophetic poet, the poet-prophet with the words:

I sing your soul
And I love dark words.

The poet answers:

I vague I just love to talk
Soul sayings - unspeakable.

In Paul Verlaine's poetry, unsteady and obscure, like an ambiguous

Gnoconda's smile, the same dark speeches and the same vague...

As if someone's eyes shine
Through the veil..

Symbolist poets avoid bright colors and clear drawings. For them, "the best song in shades always” (Verlaine), for them “the finest colors are not in bright consonances” (K. Balmont). Refined, weary, decrepit in soul, the poets of the departing life catch with their souls "the elusive shadows of the fading day."

Colorful, precisely and clearly minted words do not satisfy symbolist poets. They need "words - chameleons", melodious, melodious words, they need songs without words. Together with Fet, they repeat many times: “oh, if it were possible to express the soul without a word,” together with Paul Verlaine, they consider the musical style to be the basis of their poetry:

Music, music above all

(Verlaine).

Symbolist poets convey their obscure moods of foreboding and vague dreams in musical consonances, “in a barely noticeable trembling strings". They embodied their dreams and insights into musical-sounding images. For Alexander Blok, this most stringed of all poets, all life is “dark music, sounding only about one star. He is always captured by one " musical theme." He says about his writing style:

Is always sing, always melodious,
Swirling in mists of verse.

Vague and foggy, unknowable, inexpressible tales of the soul cannot be conveyed in words, they can be inspired by musical consonances that set the reader in tune with the poet-priest, the poet is prophetically obscure, like the ancient Pythia.

Just as in France the marble architectural style of the classics was replaced by the pictorial style of Hugo, Flaubert, Lecomte de Lisle, Gauthier, the Goncourt brothers, who confessed their “musical deafness”, so the musical style of the Symbolists replaced the painting and plasticity of the musically deaf. blind to real life.

These guests of the heavenly side find the charm of their symbolic dreams in the beauty of musicality. In his poem "Chords" K. Balmont writes or sings:

And in silent musicality,
This new specularity
Creates their live round dance
New world unsaid
But connected with the story
In the depths of reflective waters.

When K. Balmont read his poems to Leo Tolstoy, which sang of the "flavor of the sun," Tolstoy did not understand them and said: "what lovely nonsense." The most vigilant of the realists did not understand, did not hear the most musical of the Symbolists... He had to say: "what is ringing for me", and he asked himself: "what is drawn in front of me?" The first book of poems by K. Balmont, published in 1890, was simple and understandable in Nadson's way, but not typical for the poet. Only after the translations of the most musical poets Shelley and Edgar Poe, the connoisseur of poetry A. I. Urusov revealed Balmont to K. Balmont, emphasizing to the poet his main thing: “love for the poetry of consonances, admiration for sound musicality.” This love for the poetry of consonances is characteristic of the symbolists Shelley, Edgar Poe, Stef. Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, F. Sologub and V. Bryusov. It is not for nothing that the Symbolists were passionate admirers of Wagner's music. Mallarmé, the master of the French Symbolists, liked to attend Collon's concerts in Paris, and sitting in the front row with a notebook, he gave himself up to the poetry of consonances to the music of Wagner. The young man Konevskoy, one of the first Russian Symbolists, went to Bayreuth to hear Wagner's music in the Wagner Church. Andrei Bely, in his wonderful poem The First Date, sings of the symphony concerts in Moscow, where his poetic heart flourished. When the first collections of Russian symbolists appeared in 1894, they resounded in resounding silence; the very titles spoke first of all about music: Notes, Chords, Scales, Suites, Symphonies.

For the symbolist poet, musicality, the melodiousness of the verse is in the first place, he seeks not to convince, but to tune.

Perhaps everything in the world is just a means
For brightly melodious poetry,
And I from a carefree childhood
looking for combinations words.

says the symbolist poet, who strives to give the verse a bright melodiousness, melody through a skillfully selected combination of words, letters, through the complex instrumentation of the verse and its euphony. Take the poems of Edgar Poe, translated by Balmont "Bells and Bells", "The Raven", "Annabelli" - you will immediately feel that the Symbolists created a new poetics. Edgar Poe's brilliant treatise "Philosophy of Creativity" introducing you to the workshop of creativity (see vol. II Op. Poe in Balmont's translation). Listen to the booming strikes of a large bell and the chime of small ones, and then read Balmont's poem:

Oh quiet Amsterdam
With a sad chime
old bell towers,
Why am I here, not there...

The whole poem is built on a combination of dental, smooth and palatal. The selection of letters d, t, l, m, n, w allows the poet to build his musical elegy and capture us with the melodiousness of the evening bell ringing in Amsterdam:

Where is the dreamer
Some ghost is sick.
Longing with a long groan
And eternal chime
Sings here and there:
Oh quiet Amsterdam
Oh quiet Amsterdam.

In the poems "Buttercups", "Moisture", "Reeds", "Rain" Balmont achieves extraordinary results with external musical means, sound symbolism. He was right when he exclaimed:

Who is equal to me in my melodious power?

Nobody! Nobody!

Symbolists in the field of musicality of verse, in variability, in the variety of rhythms, in the harmony of verse, opened a new page in the history of poetry, they surpassed even Fet and even Lermontov. Valery Bryusov in 1903 in the World of Art (No. 1-7, p. 35) wrote: “In Russian literature, there was no equal to Balmont in the art of verse. It might seem that in tunes

Feta Russian verse has reached extreme incorporeality, airiness. But where others saw the limit to Balmont, infinity opened up. Such a sample, unattainable in melodiousness, as Lermontov's "On the Air Ocean" completely fades before the best songs of Balmont. Valery Bryusov himself, this eternal experimenter, in his experiments and technical exercises did a lot in the field of the musical style of the Symbolists. He managed to convey the entire orchestra of urban sounds: "hums, voices, rumbles of wheels." Sometimes the purely external emphasized musicality hurts the ear unpleasantly, and the same Balmont has a lot of rude verses that look like a parody, like the famous poem:

Evening, seaside, sighs of the wind,
Majestic cry of the waves...
A storm is close, beats on the shore
Alien to charms black chuln.

All this justifies the parodies of Vl. Solovyov:

Mandrakes immanent
rustled in the reeds,
And rough and decadent
Verses in withering ears!

Unlike externally musical K. Balmont, poet Alexander Blok internally musical. He achieves musical suggestion by the musicality of the theme, composition, without emphasizing his assonances and alliterations (see these words).

The poetics of symbolism, with its allusion and suggestion, with its musical suggestion and tuning, brought poetry closer to music and introduced us to the pleasure of divination. After the Symbolists, crude, documentary, everyday naturalism does not satisfy us. The neo-realists of prose and poetry learned much from the symbolists; they loved the depth and spirituality of the images, they follow in the footsteps of A.P. Chekhov, V.G. Korolenko, Sergeev-Tsensky ...

In the article "Philosophy of Creativity" mentioned above, written about the symbolic poem "The Raven", Edgar Poe explains why his story about the Raven, who got into the room of a lonely man at night, yearning for his dead beloved, went beyond

his explicit phase, beyond real and received hidden symbolic meaning, when we see something emblematic in a crow, an image-symbol of a gloomy, never-ending memory:

Take your hard beak out of your heart
mine, where sorrow is always!
The raven croaked: - Never!

“When developing the plot, however skillful, and at least the event was painted very brightly,” writes Ed. Poe - there is always a certain rigidity, nakedness, repulsive to the artistic eye. Two things are absolutely required: firstly, a certain degree of complexity, more precisely, coordination; secondly, a certain degree of suggestibility - some, at least indefinite undercurrent in the sense. It is this latter that in a special way gives the work of art so much wealth(I take a forced term from everyday life), which we too willingly confuse with the feeling ideal"(Vol. II p. 182. Translated by Balmont). The significance of symbolism lies in the fact that it enriched poetry with new techniques, imparted deepness and suggestibility to the images, imparted melodiousness and musicality to the style. The complicated life, complex experiences of complex, not simple, differentiated personalities found their vivid expression in symbolism. Symbolism has left its mark on Russian literature as well.

SYMBOLISM(from French symbolisme, from Greek symbolon - a sign, an identifying sign) - an aesthetic trend that was formed in France in 1880–1890 and became widespread in literature, painting, music, architecture and theater in many European countries at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries . Symbolism was of great importance in Russian art of the same period, which acquired the definition of "Silver Age" in art history.

Symbol and artistic image. 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, the poets of the Mallarme group were joined by P.Valeri, A. Zhid, P. Claudel. The design of symbolism in the literary direction was greatly facilitated by P. Verlaine, who published his symbolist poems and a series of essays in the newspapers Paris Modern and La Nouvelle Rive Gauche Damned poets, as well as J.C. Huysmans who came up with a novel Vice versa. In 1886, J. Moreas placed in "Figaro" Symbolism Manifesto, in which he formulated the basic principles of the direction, based on the judgments C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarme, 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 its basic principles echoing the worldview of the symbolists and giving it additional justification.

AT Symbolist Manifesto J. Moreas determined the nature of the symbol, which replaced 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 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 conceals a whole range of meanings - sometimes opposite, multidirectional (for example, "miracle and monster" in the image of Peter in the novel Merezhkovsky Peter and Alex). Poet and symbolist theorist Vyach.Ivanov expressed the idea that the symbol marks not one, but different entities, A. Bely defined a symbol as "the connection of 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 intuitions.

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 is Ch. Baudelaire, who published a book in 1857 The flowers of Evil. 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 became the motto of symbolist quest Correspondence with the famous phrase: Sound, smell, shape, color echo. Baudelaire's theory was later illustrated by A. Rimbaud's sonnet Vowels:

« BUT» black White« E» , « And» red,« At» green,

« O» blue - the colors of a bizarre mystery ...

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 a 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 idea of \u200b\u200btaking into service the idea of \u200b\u200brefusing "eloquence", finding a crossing point between poetry and prose, was embodied by the Symbolists. 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.Moro, O.Roden, 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. Among the forerunners of French symbolism, all the major lyrics from Dante and F. Villon, before E.Po and T. Gauthier.

Belgian symbolism is represented by the figure of the greatest playwright, poet, essayist M. Maeterlinck known for the plays Blue bird, Blind,Miracle of Saint Anthony, There inside. Already the first poetry collection of Maeterlinck Greenhouses was full of vague allusions, symbols, the characters existed in the semi-fantastic setting of a glass greenhouse. According to N. Berdyaeva, Maeterlinck depicted "the eternal tragic beginning of life, cleansed of all impurities." Maeterlinck's plays were perceived by most contemporaries as puzzles that needed to be solved. M. Maeterlinck defined the principles of his work in the articles collected in the treatise Treasure of the Humble(1896). The treatise is based on the idea that life is a mystery in which a person plays a role that is inaccessible to his mind, but understandable to his inner feeling. Maeterlinck considered the main task of the playwright to be the transfer of not an action, but a state. AT Treasure of the Humble Maeterlinck put forward the principle of “second plan” dialogues: behind an apparently random dialogue, the meaning of words that initially seem insignificant is revealed. The movement of such hidden meanings made it possible to play with numerous paradoxes (the miraculousness of everyday life, the sight of the blind and the blindness of the sighted, the madness of the normal, etc.), to plunge into the world of subtle moods.

One of the most influential figures in European Symbolism was the Norwegian writer and playwright G.Ibsen. His plays Peer Gynt,Hedda Gabler,Dollhouse,Wild duck combined the concrete and the abstract. “Symbolism is a form of art that simultaneously satisfies our desire to see embodied reality and rise above it,” Ibsen defined. – Reality has a flip side, facts have a hidden meaning: they are the material embodiment of ideas, an idea is presented through a fact. Reality is a sensual image, a symbol of the invisible world. Ibsen distinguished between his art and the French version of symbolism: his dramas were built on the "idealization of matter, the transformation of the real", and not on the search for the beyond, the otherworldly. Ibsen gave a specific image, a fact a symbolic sound, raised it to the level of a mystical sign.

In English literature, symbolism is represented by the figure O. Wilde. The desire to shock the bourgeois public, the love of paradox and aphorism, the life-creating concept of art (“art does not reflect life, but creates it”), hedonism, the frequent use of fantastic, fairy-tale plots, and later “neo-Christianity” (perception of Christ as an artist) allow attribute O. Wilde to the writers of the symbolist orientation.

Symbolism gave a powerful branch in Ireland: one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, the Irishman W. B. Yeats, considered himself a Symbolist. His poetry, full of rare complexity and richness, was fed by Irish legends and myths, theosophy and mysticism. A symbol, Yeats explains, is “the only possible expression of some invisible entity, the frosted glass of a spiritual lamp.”

Creativity is also associated with symbolism. R.M. Rilke, S.George, E.Verharna, G.D.Annunzio, A. Strinberg and etc.

Symbolism is a literary trend that originated in France at the end of the 19th century and spread to many European countries. However, it was in Russia that symbolism became the most significant and large-scale phenomenon. Russian symbolist poets brought something new to this trend, something that their French predecessors did not have. Simultaneously with the advent of symbolism, the Silver Age of Russian literature begins. But I must say that in Russia there was no single school of this modernist trend, there was no unity of concepts, no single style. The work of symbolist poets was united by one thing: distrust of the ordinary word, the desire to express themselves in symbols and allegories.

Currents of symbolism

According to the ideological position and the time of formation, this is classified into two stages. Symbolist poets who appeared in the 1890s, the list of which includes such figures as Balmont, Gippius, Bryusov, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, are called "senior". The direction was replenished with new forces that significantly changed its appearance. Debuted "younger" symbolist poets, such as Ivanov, Blok, Bely. The second wave of the current is usually called young symbolism.

"Senior" symbolists

In Russia, this literary trend declared itself in the late 1890s. In Moscow, Valery Bryusov stood at the origins of symbolism, and in St. Petersburg - Dmitry Merezhkovsky. However, the most striking and radical representative of the early school of symbolism in the city on the Neva was Alexander Dobrolyubov. Separately and separately from all modernist groups, another Russian symbolist poet, Fyodor Sologub, created his poetic world.

But perhaps the most readable, musical and sonorous at that time were the poems of Konstantin Balmont. At the end of the 19th century, he clearly stated the "search for correspondences" between meaning, color and sound. Similar ideas were found in Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and later in many Russian poets, such as Blok, Bryusov, Khlebnikov, Kuzmin. Balmont saw this search for correspondences mainly in the creation of a sound-semantic text - music that gives rise to meaning. The poet became interested in sound writing, began to use colorful adjectives instead of verbs in his works, as a result of which he created, as ill-wishers believed, poems that were almost meaningless. At the same time, this phenomenon in poetry led over time to the formation of new poetic concepts, including melodeclamation, zaum, sound writing.

"Younger" symbolist poets

The second generation of symbolists includes poets who first began to publish in the 1900s. Among them were both very young authors, for example, Andrei Bely, Sergei Blok, and respectable people, for example, the scientist Vyacheslav Ivanov, the director of the gymnasium, Innokenty Annensky.

In St. Petersburg at that time, the “center” of symbolism was an apartment on the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, in which M. Kuzmin, A. Bely, A. Mintslova, V. Khlebnikov once lived, N. Berdyaev, A. Akhmatova, A. Blok , A. Lunacharsky. In Moscow, symbolist poets gathered in the editorial office of the Scorpion publishing house, whose editor-in-chief was V. Bryusov. Here they prepared issues of the most famous symbolist publication - "Scales". The employees of Scorpion were such authors as K. Balmont, A. Bely, Yu. Baltrushaitis, A. Remizov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, M. Voloshin and others.

Features of early symbolism

In Russia, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. was a time of change, disappointment, ominous omens and uncertainty. During this period, the approaching death of the existing socio-political system was clearly felt. Such trends could not help but influence Russian poetry. The poems of the Symbolist poets were heterogeneous, as the poets held divergent views. For example, such authors as D. Merezhkovsky and N. Minsky were at first representatives of civil poetry, and later began to focus on the ideas of "religious community" and "god-building". The "senior" symbolists did not recognize the surrounding reality and said "no" to the world. So, Bryusov wrote: “I don’t see our reality, I don’t know our century ...” The early representatives of the current of reality contrasted the world of creativity and dreams, in which the individual becomes completely free, and they portrayed reality as boring, evil and meaningless.

Of great importance for the poets was artistic innovation - the transformation of the meanings of words, the development of rhyme, rhythm, and the like. The "senior" symbolists were impressionists, striving to convey subtle shades of impressions and moods. They had not yet used a system of symbols, but the word as such had already lost its value and had become significant only as a sound, a musical note, a link in the general construction of a poem.

New trends

In 1901-1904. a new stage began in the history of symbolism, and it coincided with a revolutionary upsurge in Russia. The pessimistic mood inspired in the 1890s was replaced by a premonition of "unheard of changes." At that time, young symbolists appeared on the literary arena, who were followers of the poet Vladimir Solovyov, who saw the old world on the verge of destruction and said that divine beauty should “save the world” by connecting the heavenly beginning of life with the material, earthly. In the works of symbolist poets, landscapes began to appear frequently, but not as such, but as a means of revealing the mood. So, in the verses there is constantly a description of a languishingly sad Russian autumn, when the sun does not shine or throws only faded sad rays on the ground, leaves fall and rustle quietly, and everything around is shrouded in a swaying misty haze.

The city was also a favorite motif of the "younger" symbolists. They showed him as a living being with his own character, with his own form. Often the city appeared as a place of horror, madness, a symbol of vice and soullessness.

Symbolists and revolution

In the years 1905-1907, when the revolution began, symbolism again underwent changes. Many poets responded to the events that took place. Thus, Bryusov wrote the famous poem "The Coming Huns", in which he glorified the end of the old world, but included himself and all the people who lived in the period of the dying, old culture. Blok in his works created images of the people of the new world. In 1906, Sologub published a book of poems "Motherland", and in 1907 Balmont wrote a series of poems "Songs of the Avenger" - the collection was published in Paris and banned in Russia.

Decline of Symbolism

At this time, the artistic worldview of the Symbolists changed. If earlier they perceived beauty as harmony, now for them it has gained a connection with the elements of the people, with the chaos of struggle. At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, symbolism fell into decline and no longer gave new names. Everything viable, vigorous, young was already outside of him, although individual works were still created by symbolist poets.

List of major poets representing symbolism in literature

Innokenty Annensky;
Valery Bryusov;
Zinaida Gippius;
Fedor Sologub;
Konstantin Balmont;
Alexander Tinyakov;
Wilhelm Sorgenfrey;
Alexander Dobrolyubov;
Viktor Strazhev;
Andrei Bely;
Konstantin Fofanov;
Vyacheslav Ivanov;
Alexander Blok;
Georgy Chulkov;
Dmitry Merezhkovsky;
Ivan Konevskoy;
Vladimir Pyast;
Poliksena Solovieva;
Ivan Rukavishnikov.

Symbolism in literature - ideas, representatives, history

Symbolism as a literary trend arose during the beginning of the crisis in Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century and rightfully belongs to the culture of our country.

Symbolism - historical period

In Russian symbolism, there are:

"older generation" representatives: D. Merezhkovsky, A. Dobrolyubov, Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, N. Minsky, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov
"younger generation"- Young Symbolists - A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, S. Soloviev, Yu. Baltrushaitis and others.

Almost every one of these poets and writers experienced the processes of rapid growth of the spiritual self-determination of the individual, the desire to join the historical reality and put himself in the face of the elements of the people.

The Symbolists had their own publishing houses ("Scorpion", "Vulture") and magazines ("Scales", "Golden Fleece").

The main features of symbolism

Duality among the Symbolists

the idea of two worlds (real and otherworldly)
reflection of reality in symbols
a special view of intuition as an intermediary in comprehending and depicting the world
development of sound painting as a special poetic technique

mystical understanding of the world
Poetics of the diversity of content (allegory, allusions)
religious quest ("free religious feeling")
rejection of realism

Russian symbolists reinterpreted the role of the individual not only in creativity, but also in Russian reality, and life in general.

Religiosity among the Symbolists

Interest in the personality of a poet, writer, person led the poets of this direction to a kind of "expansion" of personality. Such an understanding of human individuality is characteristic of all Russian symbolists. But this was reflected in different ways - in articles, manifestos, in poetic practice.

Aesthetics of the Symbolists

Their manifestos expressed the main requirements for the new art - mystical content, the multifunctionality of the possibilities of artistic imagination and the transformation of reality.

The true personality, according to Merezhkovsky, is

it is a mystic, a creator who can directly comprehend the symbolic nature of life and the world.

At the turn of the epochs, D. Merezhkovsky was puzzled by two ideas:

« the idea of a new man»
« the idea of life-creation' - creations of the second reality.

Both of these ideas inextricably link the Symbolists with spiritual quests of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The theme of the disproportion of the Eternal Universe and the instantaneous existence of man, the world of man, characteristic of the representatives of the creative intelligentsia of the Silver Age, is present in many symbolist poets:

For example, A. Blok:

“The worlds are flying. The years are flying by. Empty / The Universe looks at us with a darkness of eyes. / And clinging to the edge of a sliding, sharp, / And listening to the always buzzing ringing, - / Are we going crazy in the change of motley / invented reasons, spaces, times .. / / When the end? An annoying sound / will not have the strength to listen without rest ... / How terrible everything is! How wild! - Give me your hand / Comrade, friend! Let's forget again./.

Characteristic features of the symbolist direction

individualism
idealism
awareness of the tragedy of the world, the crisis of Russian reality
romantic search for meaning
content and structural unity of poetry
dominance of the general over the particular
thematic cyclization of creativity of each author
poetic-philosophical mythologemes (for example, images of Sophia and Eternal Femininity by V. Solovyov)
dominant images (for example, the image of a snowstorm, blizzards by A. Blok)
playful nature of creativity and life

Thus, symbolism as such sees reality as infinite, diverse in content and form.

Our presentation on the topic

Symbol understanding

For Russian poets - representatives of this trend - it varied greatly.

Symbolist understanding of the symbol

philosophical symbolism sees in it a combination of the sensual and the spiritual (D. Merezhkovsky,).
mystical symbolism tends to the predominance of the spiritual, to achieve the kingdom of the spirit, a frantic desire for other worlds, denies sensuality as something flawed, something from which it must be freed (such is the poetic world of A. Bely).

The role of the Symbolists in creating new poetic forms, new trends and new ideas, new themes and a new understanding of life as such for the history of Russian literature, and more broadly - Russian culture, is priceless.

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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

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 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 ...

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.

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.

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