Alexander Blok was born on November 16 (28), 1880 in St. Petersburg in a family of intellectuals, lawyer Alexander Lvovich and writer Alexandra Andreevna. Many of Blok's ancestors were professional writers and scientists, and in the family circle of Alexander, where he spent his early childhood, there was often talk about classical literature and poetry. The boy showed a penchant for creativity at the age of five, when he wrote his first poems.

Blok's parents quickly separated, in 1889 his mother remarried - to the guards officer F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, fortunately, leaving the boy's father's surname. Nine-year-old Alexander moved with his mother to the Grenadier barracks, to his stepfather, and he was immediately sent to study at the Vvedensky gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1898. From his youth, Alexander began to engage in "serious writing", as well as theater. For a while, he even thought about an acting career and played in the St. Petersburg Drama Circle, but his literary vocation outweighed his penchant for dramatic art.

After the gymnasium, the young man “rather unconsciously” entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, but, never carried away by this science, he quickly lost interest. Three years after starting his studies at the university, Alexander transferred to the Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology. In 1903, he married Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, the daughter of a Russian scientist, and in the same year the young man made his debut as a poet in the St. Petersburg magazine "New Way" and the Moscow "Northern Flowers" with a cycle of poems "From Dedications".

Alexander himself positioned himself as a symbolist poet and quickly found friends among representatives of this literary movement. The following year, Alexander Blok's first book, Poems about a Beautiful Lady, was published, dedicated to his wife and muse and full of romantic mysticism. But the revolution of 1905 completely changed the style of the poet, forced him to follow the political events in the country and turn to the ideals of socialism. In 1906, after Alexander received his diploma, the mature period of his work began.

"Evening" presents a selection of the seven best poems by one of the most talented poets of the Silver Age:

1. “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy”, October 10, 1912, from the cycle “A terrible world”, the subcycle “Dance of death”

Night, street, lamp, pharmacy,
A meaningless and dim light.
Live at least a quarter of a century -
Everything will be like this. There is no exit.

If you die, you start over again
And everything will repeat, as of old:
Night, icy ripples of the channel,
Pharmacy, street, lamp.

In the evenings above the restaurants
Hot air is wild and deaf
And rules drunken shouts
Spring and pernicious spirit.

Far away, above the dust of the alley,
Over the boredom of country cottages,
Slightly gilded bakery pretzel,
And the cry of a child is heard.

And every evening, behind the barriers,
Breaking pots,
Among the ditches they walk with the ladies
Proven wits.

Oarlocks creak above the lake,
And a woman screams
And in the sky, accustomed to everything,
The disk is pointlessly twisted.

And every evening the only friend
Reflected in my glass
And moisture tart and mysterious,
Like me, humble and stunned.

And next to the neighboring tables
Sleepy lackeys stick out,
And drunkards with rabbit eyes
"In vino veritas!" scream.

And every evening, at the appointed hour
(Is this just a dream?)
Maiden's camp, seized by silks,
In the foggy window moves.

And slowly, passing among the drunk,
Always without companions, alone,
Breathing in spirits and mists,
She sits by the window.

And breathe ancient beliefs
Her elastic silks
And a hat with mourning feathers
And in the rings a narrow hand.

And chained by a strange closeness,
I look behind the dark veil
And I see the enchanted shore
And the enchanted distance.

Deaf secrets are entrusted to me,
Someone's sun has been handed to me,
And all the souls of my bend
The tart wine pierced.

And bowed ostrich feathers
In my brain they sway
And bottomless blue eyes
Blooming on the far shore.

There is a treasure in my soul
And the key is entrusted only to me!
You're right, drunk monster!
I know: the truth is in wine.

Pan-Mongolism! Though the name is wild
But it pleases my ears.
Vladimir Solovyov

Millions - you. Us - darkness, and darkness, and darkness.
Try it, fight with us!
Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians
With slanting and greedy eyes!

For you - centuries, for us - a single hour.
We, like obedient serfs,
Held a shield between two hostile races
Mongols and Europe!

For centuries, centuries, your old forge forged
And drowned out the thunder, avalanches,
And failure was a wild tale for you
And Lisbon and Messina!

You have looked to the East for hundreds of years
Saving and melting our pearls,
And you, mocking, considered only the term,
When to point the cannons!

Here is the time. Trouble beats with wings
And every day resentment multiplies,
And the day will come - there will be no trace
From your Paestums, perhaps!

Oh old world! Until you die
While you languish in sweet flour,
Stop, wise one like Oedipus,
Before the Sphinx with an ancient riddle!

Russia - Sphinx. Rejoicing and mourning
And covered in black blood
She looks, looks, looks at you
With hate and with love...

Yes, love like our blood loves,
None of you love!
Have you forgotten that there is love in the world,
Which burns and destroys!

We love everything - and the heat of cold numbers,
And the gift of divine visions
Everything is clear to us - and the sharp Gallic meaning,
And the gloomy German genius...

We remember everything - Parisian streets hell,
And the Venetian coolness,
Lemon groves distant aroma,
And the smoky masses of Cologne...

We love the flesh - and its taste, and color,
And stuffy, mortal flesh smell...
Are we guilty if your skeleton crunches
In our heavy, tender paws?

We are used to grabbing by the bridle
Zealous horses playing
Break horses heavy sacrum,
And to pacify the obstinate slaves...

Come visit us! From the horrors of war
Come to peaceful embrace!
Before it's too late - the old sword in the scabbard,
Comrades! We will become brothers!

And if not, we have nothing to lose,
And treachery is available to us!
Ages, centuries will curse you
Sick late offspring!

We are wide through the wilds and forests
Pretty before Europe
Let's part! We will turn to you
With your Asian face!

Go everyone, go to the Urals!
We clear the battlefield
Steel machines, where the integral breathes,
With the Mongolian wild horde!

But we ourselves are no longer a shield for you,
From now on, we will not enter the battle ourselves,
We will see how the mortal battle is in full swing,
With your narrow eyes.

Let's not move when the ferocious Hun
In the pockets of corpses will fumble,
Burn the city, and drive the herd to the church,
And fry the meat of the white brothers!...

For the last time - come to your senses, old world!
To the fraternal feast of labor and peace,
For the last time to a bright fraternal feast
Calling the barbarian lyre!

4. "The girl sang in the church choir", August 1905, not included in the cycle

The girl sang in the church choir
About all the tired in a foreign land,
About all the ships that have gone to sea,
About all those who have forgotten their joy.

And it seemed to everyone that there would be joy,
That in a quiet backwater all the ships
That in a foreign land tired people
They got a bright life.

5. Sub-cycle "On the field of Kulikovo", June-December 1908, from the cycle "Motherland" (excerpt)

The river spread out. Flowing, sad lazily
And washes the shore.
Over the meager clay of the yellow cliff
Haystacks are sad in the steppe.

Oh, my Russia! My wife! To pain
We have a long way to go!
Our path is an arrow of the Tatar ancient will
Pierced us in the chest.

Our path is steppe, our path is in boundless anguish -
In your anguish, oh, Russia!
And even the darkness - night and foreign -
I'm not afraid.

Let the night Let's go home. Let's light up the bonfires
Steppe distance.
The holy banner will flash in the steppe smoke
And the steel of the Khan's saber...

And eternal battle! Rest only in our dreams
Through blood and dust...
Flying, flying steppe mare
And crushes the feather grass...

And there is no end! Miles are flashing, steep ...
Stop!
Frightened clouds are coming,
Sunset in blood!
Sunset in blood! Blood flows from the heart!
Cry, heart, cry...
There is no rest! steppe mare
Rushing jump!

Maria Pavlovna Ivanova
Under the embankment, in the unmowed ditch,
Lies and looks, as if alive,
In a colored scarf, thrown on braids,
Beautiful and young.

It happened that she walked with a dignified gait
To the noise and whistle behind the nearby forest.
Bypassing the whole long platform,
Waited, worried, under a canopy.

Three bright eyes oncoming -
Delicate blush, cooler curl:
Perhaps one of the travelers
Take a closer look out the windows...

The carriages were moving along the usual line,
They trembled and creaked;
Silent yellow and blue;
In green wept and sang.

Get up sleepy behind the glass
And cast an even glance
Platform, garden with faded bushes,
Her, the gendarme is next to her ...

Only once a hussar, with a careless hand
Leaning on scarlet velvet,
Slipped over her with a gentle smile,
Slipped - and the train rushed off into the distance.

So rushed useless youth,
In empty dreams, exhausted ...
Longing road, iron
She whistled, breaking her heart ...

Yes, the heart has been taken out for a long time!
So many bows have been given
So many greedy glances thrown
Into the deserted eyes of the wagons...

Don't approach her with questions
You do not care, but she is enough:
Love, dirt or wheels
She is crushed - everything hurts.

7. “How hard it is for a dead man among people ...”, February 19, 1912, from the cycle “A Terrible World”, the subcycle “Dance of Death”

How hard it is for a dead man among people
Live and passionate to pretend!
But it is necessary, it is necessary to rub into society,
Hiding the clang of bones for a career...

The living sleep. Dead man rises from the grave
And he goes to the bank, and goes to the court, to the senate ...
The whiter the night, the blacker the anger,
And the feathers creak triumphantly.

The dead man has been working on the report all day.
Presence ends. And so -
He whispers, wagging his backside,
A scabrous anecdote for the Senator ...

It's already evening. Light rain splattered with mud
Passers-by, and houses, and other nonsense ...
And the dead man - to another disgrace
The Grinder is carrying a taxi.

In the hall crowded and multi-columned
Dead man rushes. He wears an elegant tailcoat.
They give him a benevolent smile
The hostess is a fool and the husband is a fool.

He was exhausted from the day of bureaucratic boredom,
But the clang of bones is drowned out by music...
He firmly shakes friendly hands -
Alive, he must seem alive!

Only at the column will meet eyes
With a friend - she, like him, is dead.
Behind their conventionally secular speeches
Do you hear the real words:

"Tired friend, I feel strange in this hall." -
"Weary friend, the grave is cold." -
"It's midnight." - "Yes, but you didn't invite
Waltz NN. She's in love with you..."

And there - NN is already looking for a passionate look
Him, him - with excitement in the blood ...
In her face, girlishly beautiful,
The senseless delight of living love...

He whispers meaningless words to her,
captivating words for the living,
And he looks at how his shoulders turn pink,
The way her head rested on her shoulder...

And the sharp poison of habitual secular anger
With unearthly anger he squanders...
“How smart he is! How he is in love with me!

Blok began to compose his poems at a young age: from poem to poem, his talent only became stronger. The first poems were inspired by Vasnetsov's paintings depicting the prophetic birds of ancient Russian legends: Sirin, Alkonost, Gamayun. And if you look more deeply, then these poems were about life, about time, about the Motherland and Russia: they only speak about it in a large and symbolic way.

After the revolution, the theme of two Russias emerges in the poet's work: autocratic and popular. Russia for the poet is a huge, native creature, similar to a person, but more comfortable and affectionate. All works are imbued with love for the motherland, for his country: therefore, the events of the revolution are too hard for him. Hunger, poverty and defeat cause Blok to dislike lyrics: and he begins to create only satirical poems with poisonous mockery.

In the plays (dramas) that were released at that time, one feels bitter disappointment from the imperfection of the world and deceived hopes.

Alexander Blok also wrote works of a historical nature: the most famous of them are the poems of the Kulikovo battle cycle. The Battle of Kulikovo for the poet is a historical fact that gives reason to reflect on the present and future of Russia.

But his best poems are dedicated to the Beautiful Lady, to whom the knight (monk, youth, poet) aspires. There is a lot behind this desire: a mystical comprehension of God, the search for a life path, the pursuit of an ideal, beauty, and many other shades. Even descriptions of nature are not given by themselves. Dawn, stars and the sun are synonyms for the Beautiful Lady, morning and spring are the time of hope for a meeting, winter and night are separation and evil. The theme of love permeates all the work of the poet.

The famous poet of the Silver Age also had an interest in children's literature, wrote many poems, some of which were included in collections of poems for children.

Blok's work is multifaceted: he wrote about Italy and St. Petersburg, about poetry, about time and death, about music and friendship. He dedicated his poems to his mother, God, woman, Pushkin, Shakhmatov, Mendeleeva. Look at the lyric works on this page - and choose those that will awaken your soul and give you the pleasure of the Word.

Blok Alexander Alexandrovich (1880 - 1921) - a poet, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian symbolism.

According to his father, a professor of law, a descendant of a Russified native of Germany, a court physician (he entered Russia in the middle of the 18th century). By mother - from the Russian noble family of the Beketovs. The descendants of the doctor Blok belonged to the wealthy, but eventually impoverished service nobility. Maternal great-grandfather was "a great gentleman and a very rich landowner", who lost almost all his fortune in old age. From both parents, B. inherited intellectual talent, a penchant for studying literature, art, science, but along with this, an undoubted mental burden: his paternal grandfather died in a psychiatric hospital; the character of the father was distinguished by oddities that stood on the verge of mental illness, and sometimes stepped over her. This forced the poet's mother to leave her husband shortly after his birth; the latter herself was repeatedly treated in a hospital for the mentally ill; finally, B. himself, towards the end of his life, developed a special severe neuropsychic condition - psychosthenia; a month before his death, his mind began to cloud. B.'s early childhood passed in the family of his maternal grandfather, a well-known botanist, public figure and champion of women's education, rector of St. Petersburg University A. N. Beketov. Little B. spent the winter in the "rector's house" in St. Petersburg, the summer - "in the old grandfathers park", "in the fragrant wilderness of a small estate" - his grandfather's estate near Moscow, the village of Shakhmatovo. After the second marriage of his mother to an officer, F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, nine-year-old B. moved with his mother to his stepfather's apartment, to the barracks located in the factory district. At the end of the gymnasium, which repelled B. from himself, in his own words, with his "terrible plebeianism" that did not correspond to his "thoughts, manners and feelings," B. entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University; from the third year he moved to the Faculty of History and Philology, which he graduated in 1906. In the gymnasium and in the early years of the university, B. was very fond of the theater, "preparing to be an actor." "Composing poems" began, in his own words, "almost from the age of five"; "serious writing began around the age of 18." Even before their appearance in print, B.'s poems were widely circulated in small circles of predominantly Moscow youth, united by the name and ideas of the recently deceased philosopher and poet Vl. Solovyov. In these circles, the young man B. was already inclined to be considered "the first of the Russian poets of our time." For the first time, B.'s poems were published in 1903, in the St. Petersburg magazine Merezhkovsky "New Way" and at the same time in Moscow, in the almanac "Northern Flowers", publishing house "Scorpion". In the same 1903, B. married the daughter of a university friend of his grandfather, his neighbor in Shakhmatov, the famous chemist Mendeleev, L. D. Mendeleeva. By the same time, there is a personal acquaintance and close rapprochement of B. with Andrei Bely and the last mystical-minded circle of "Argonauts" headed by the last, a somewhat earlier rapprochement with the Merezhkovskys, acquaintance with Bryusov and the Moscow Symbolists. The revolution of 1905 immediately seized Byelorussia; in one of the street demonstrations, he carried a red banner in front of the crowd. The poet, however, quickly cooled off; "in the revolution - in his own words - he did not go," nevertheless, the events of 1904-1905 left their mark on B.: he wrote several poems on revolutionary themes, the lyrical drama "The King in the Square." It is important that from this very time, "indifference to the surrounding life" was replaced in him, according to the biographer, by "a lively interest in everything that happens." At the end of 1904, the Grif publishing house published B.'s first collection of poems, Poems about the Beautiful Lady. For fear of difficulties on the part of spiritual censorship, the collection was passed through the provincial censorship in Nizhny Novgorod. "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" were enthusiastically received in the circles of "Solovievites" and "Argonauts"; however, it was not this collection that brought B. wide popularity, but the second book of poems - Unexpected Joy, in particular the lyrical drama Puppet Show (it was staged in 1906 by Meyerhold at the Kommissarzhevskaya Theater). By this time, B. becomes a professional writer: he collaborates in a number of magazines, publishes poetry, articles, reviews, publishes collection after collection of his new works. Lives B. in St. Petersburg, revolving Ch. arr. among the literary intelligentsia - representatives and supporters of the "new art" ("Wednesdays" by Vyacheslav Ivanov, a religious and philosophical society) and in circles of theatrical and artistic bohemia (the Kommissarzhevskaya theater, etc.). In addition to traveling with his mother to Germany (Bad-Nauheim) B. made three trips abroad - to Italy, Brittany and the south of France. As a result of these travels, the Italian Poems, the drama The Rose and the Cross, and the poem The Nightingale Garden arose in succession. In 1916, Blok published, under his own editorship and with an introductory article, a collection of poems by Apollon Grigoriev. Shortly thereafter, B. was called up for military service, but thanks to the efforts of his friends, he was appointed not to the army in the field, but as a timekeeper of the engineering and construction team of the Union of Zemstvos and cities. At the front (near Pinsk) B. remained until March 1917. Returning to St. Petersburg, he worked in the Extraordinary Investigation Commission under the Provisional Government: he edited the transcripts of the testimony of former tsarist ministers. B. met the February Revolution with joyful hopes. The October Revolution - enthusiastically. B.'s revolutionary mood reached its highest upsurge in January 1918, when he wrote the famous, translated into many languages, poem "The Twelve", the poem "Scythians" and the article "Intelligentsia and Revolution", in which B. called on his fellow intellectuals " with all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness" to listen to "the great music of the future", "the majestic roar and ringing of the world orchestra" - "to listen to the Revolution". All these works B. were published in the publications of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries; not being a member of their party, he especially sympathized with them at that time. One of the first among writers, B. begins to work in Soviet institutions: he chairs the repertoire section of the TEO, is a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature" (edits Heine's works). Since 1919 he has been working as chairman of the director's department of the Bolshoi Drama Theatre. In 1919 he took a close part in the organization of the "Free Philosophical Association" (Wolfila), in 1920 - in the organization Peter. Department of the All-Russian Union of Poets, the chairman of which at one time is. Works on the board of the Writers' Union. The years following 1919 were marked in B. by a sharp decline in mood, apathy, depression, and gloomy despair. At the same time, B.'s physical condition worsened. In May 1921, B. fell ill with inflammation of the heart valves. Aug 7 1921 he died.

My mother's family is involved in literature and science. My grandfather, Andrey Nikolaevich Beketov, a botanist, was the rector of St. Petersburg University in his best years (and I was born in the "rector's house"). The St. Petersburg Higher Women's Courses, called "Bestuzhev" (named after K. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin), owe their existence mainly to my grandfather.

He belonged to those idealists of pure water, whom our time almost does not know. Actually, we no longer understand the peculiar and often anecdotal stories about such sixties noblemen as Saltykov-Shchedrin or my grandfather, about their attitude towards Emperor Alexander II, about meetings of the Literary Fund, about Borel dinners, about good French and Russian, about the student youth in the late seventies. This whole epoch of Russian history has gone irrevocably, its pathos has been lost, and the very rhythm would seem to us extremely unhurried.

In his village of Shakhmatovo (Klin district, Moscow province), my grandfather went out to the peasants on the porch, shaking his handkerchief; for exactly the same reason that I. S. Turgenev, talking with his serfs, embarrassedly chipped off pieces of paint from the entrance, promising to give everything they asked, just to get rid of it.

Meeting a man he knew, my grandfather took him by the shoulder and began his speech with the words: "Eh bien, mon petit ..." ["Well, dear ..." (French).].

Sometimes the conversation ended there. My favorite interlocutors were the notorious swindlers and rogues I remember: the old Jacob Fidele [Jacob the Faithful (French.)], who plundered half of our household utensils, and the robber Fyodor Kuranov (nicknamed quran), who, they say, had a murder in his soul; his face was always blue-purple - from vodka, and sometimes - in blood; he died in a fistfight. Both were really smart people and very likeable; I, like my grandfather, loved them, and they both felt sympathy for me until their death.

Once my grandfather, seeing that a peasant was carrying a birch tree from the forest on his shoulder, said to him: "You are tired, let me help you." At the same time, the obvious circumstance that the birch was cut down in our forest did not even occur to him. My own memories of my grandfather are very good; we spent hours wandering with him through meadows, swamps and wilds; sometimes they traveled dozens of versts, getting lost in the forest; dug up with roots grasses and cereals for a botanical collection; at the same time, he named the plants and, identifying them, taught me the rudiments of botany, so that even now I remember many botanical names. I remember how we rejoiced when we found a special flower of an early pear tree, a species unknown to the Moscow flora, and the smallest undersized fern; I still look for this fern every year on that same mountain, but I never find it - obviously, it was sown by accident and then degenerated.

All this refers to the deaf times that came after the events of March 1, 1881. My grandfather continued to teach a course in botany at St. Petersburg University until his illness; in the summer of 1897 he was stricken with paralysis, he lived another five years without a tongue, he was carried in a chair. He died on July 1, 1902 in Shakhmatovo. They brought him to Petersburg to bury him; among those who met the body at the station was Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev.

Dmitry Ivanovich played a very important role in the Beketov family. Both my grandfather and grandmother were friends with him. Mendeleev and my grandfather, shortly after the liberation of the peasants, traveled together to the Moscow province and bought two estates in the Klin district - in the neighborhood: Mendeleev's Boblovo lies seven miles from Shakhmatov, I was there in childhood, and in my youth I began to visit there often. The eldest daughter of Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev from his second marriage - Lyubov Dmitrievna - became my bride. In 1903, we married her in the church of the village of Tarakanova, which is located between Shakhmatov and Boblov.

My grandfather's wife, my grandmother, Elizaveta Grigorievna, is the daughter of the famous traveler and explorer of Central Asia, Grigory Silych Korelin. All her life she worked on compilations and translations of scientific and artistic works; the list of her works is enormous; in recent years she made up to 200 printed sheets a year; she was very well-read and spoke several languages; her worldview was surprisingly lively and original, her style was figurative, her language was precise and bold, denouncing the Cossack breed. Some of her many translations are still the best.

Her translated poems were published in Sovremennik, under the pseudonym E. B., and in Herbel's English Poets, without a name. She translated many works by Buckle, Bram, Darwin, Huxley, Moore (the poem "Lalla Rook"), Beecher Stowe, Goldsmith, Stanley, Thackeray, Dickens, W. Scott, Bret Hart, Georges Sand, Balzac, V. Hugo, Flaubert, Maupassant, Rousseau, Lesage. This list of authors is far from complete. Wages have always been low. Now these hundreds of thousands of volumes have been sold in cheap editions, and someone familiar with antique prices knows how expensive even the so-called "144 volumes" (published by G. Panteleev), which contain many translations of E. G. Beketova and her daughters, are now. A characteristic page in the history of Russian education.

My grandmother was less able to abstract and "refined", her language was too lapidary, it had a lot of everyday things. An unusually distinct character was combined in her with a clear thought, like summer village mornings, on which she sat down to work until dawn. For many years I vaguely remember how I remember everything childish, her voice, the hoop, on which bright woolen flowers grow with extraordinary speed, colorful patchwork quilts sewn from scraps that no one needs and carefully collected - and in all this - some kind of irrevocable health and fun that left our family with her. She knew how to enjoy just the sun, just good weather, even in the very last years, when she was tormented by illnesses and doctors, known and unknown, who performed painful and senseless experiments on her. All this did not kill her indomitable vitality.

This vitality and vitality also penetrated literary tastes; with all the subtleties of artistic understanding, she said that "Goethe's secret adviser wrote the second part of Faust to surprise the thoughtful Germans." She also hated Tolstoy's moral sermons. All this fit in with fiery romance, sometimes turning into old sentimentality. She loved music and poetry, she wrote me half-joking poems, in which, however, sad notes sounded at times:

So, awake in the hours of the night
And loving the young grandson,
The old woman-grandmother is not the first time
I wrote stanzas for you.

She skillfully read aloud the scenes of Sleptsov and Ostrovsky, the colorful stories of Chekhov. One of her last works was the translation of two stories by Chekhov into French (for "Revue des deux Mondes"). Chekhov sent her a sweet note of thanks.

Unfortunately, my grandmother never wrote her memoirs. I have only a short outline of her notes; she knew personally many of our writers, met with Gogol, the Dostoevsky brothers, Ap. Grigoriev, Tolstoy, Polonsky, Maikov. I cherish the copy of the English novel that F. M. Dostoevsky personally gave her for translation. This translation was published in Vremya.

My grandmother died exactly three months after my grandfather, on October 1, 1902. From grandfathers inherited a love of literature and an unsullied understanding of its high value of their daughter - my mother and her two sisters. All three were translated from foreign languages. The eldest was famous - Ekaterina Andreevna (by her husband - Krasnova). She owns two independent books, Stories and Poems, published after her death (May 4, 1892) (the latter book was awarded an honorary review by the Academy of Sciences). Her original story "Not Fate" was published in Vestnik Evropy. She translated from French (Montesquieu, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre), Spanish (Espronceda, Baker, Perez Galdos, an article about Pardo Basan), reworked English stories for children (Stevenson, Haggart; published by Suvorin in "Cheap Library").

My mother, Alexandra Andreevna (after her second husband - Kublitskaya-Piottukh), translated and translates from French - poetry and prose (Balzac, V. Hugo, Flaubert, Zola, Musset, Erkman-Chatrian, Daudet, Bodelaire, Verlaine, Richepin). In her youth, she wrote poetry, but printed - only for children.

Maria Andreevna Beketova has translated and is translating from Polish (Sienkiewicz and many others), German (Hoffmann), French (Balzac, Musset). She owns popular adaptations (Jules Verne, Silvio Pellico), biographies (Andersen), monographs for the people (Holland, History of England, etc.). Musset's "Karmozina" was recently presented in the theater for workers in her translation.

Literature played a small role in my father's family. My grandfather is a Lutheran, a descendant of the physician Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, a native of Mecklenburg (the progenitor, the life surgeon Ivan Blok, was elevated to the Russian nobility under Paul I). My grandfather was married to the daughter of the Novgorod governor - Ariadna Alexandrovna Cherkasova.

My father, Alexander Lvovich Blok, was a professor at Warsaw University in the department of state law; he died on December 1, 1909. Special scholarship far from exhausts his activities, as well as his aspirations, perhaps less scientific than artistic. His fate is full of complex contradictions, rather unusual and gloomy. In his entire life he published only two small books (not counting lithographed lectures) and for the last twenty years he has been working on an essay on the classification of sciences. An outstanding musician, a connoisseur of fine literature and a subtle stylist, my father considered himself a student of Flaubert. The latter was the main reason why he wrote so little and did not complete the main work of his life: he was unable to fit his incessantly developing ideas into those concise forms that he was looking for; there was something convulsive and terrible in this search for compressed forms, as in his whole mental and physical appearance. I didn't meet him much, but I remember him vividly.

My childhood was spent in my mother's family. It was here that the word was loved and understood; the family was dominated, in general, by the old concepts of literary values ​​and ideals. Speaking vulgarly, in Verlaine, eloquence [eloquence (French)] prevailed here; my mother alone was characterized by constant rebellion and anxiety about the new, and my aspirations for musique [music - fr.] found support from her. However, no one in the family ever pursued me, everyone just loved and spoiled me. I am deeply indebted to the sweet old eloquence for the fact that literature began for me not with Verlaine and not with decadence in general. Zhukovsky was my first inspiration. From early childhood, I remember the lyrical waves that constantly came over me, barely connected with anyone else's name. Do you remember the name of Polonsky and the first impression of his stanzas:

I dream: I am fresh and young,
I'm in love. Dreams are boiling.
Luxurious cold from the dawn
Penetrates the garden.

There were no life experiences for a long time. I vaguely remember large St. Petersburg apartments with a mass of people, with a nanny, toys and Christmas trees - and the fragrant wilderness of our small estate. It was only about 15 years old that the first definite dreams of love were born, and next - bouts of despair and irony, which found their way out many years later - in my first dramatic experience "Balaganchik", lyrical scenes). I began to "compose" almost from the age of five. Much later, my cousins ​​and second cousins ​​and I founded the journal "Vestnik", in one copy ; there I was an editor and an active collaborator for three years.

Serious writing began when I was about 18 years old. For three or four years I showed my writings only to my mother and aunt. All of these were lyrical poems, and by the time my first book "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" came out, they had accumulated up to 800, not counting the adolescent ones. Only about 100 of them were included in the book. After that, I printed and still print some of the old ones in magazines and newspapers.

Family traditions and my closed life contributed to the fact that I did not know a single line of the so-called "new poetry" until the first courses of the university. Here, in connection with acute mystical and romantic experiences, the poetry of Vladimir Solovyov took possession of my whole being. Until now, the mysticism with which the air of the last years of the old and the first years of the new century was saturated was incomprehensible to me; I was disturbed by the signs that I saw in nature, but I considered all this "subjective" and carefully protected from everyone. Outwardly, I was then preparing to become an actor, enthusiastically recited Maikov, Fet, Polonsky, Apukhtin, played amateur performances, in the house of my future bride, Hamlet, Chatsky, the Miserly Knight and ... vaudeville. The sober and healthy people who then surrounded me seem to have saved me then from the infection of mystical quackery, which a few years later became fashionable in some literary circles. Fortunately and unfortunately together, such a "fashion" came, as it always happens, precisely when everything was determined internally; when the elements raging underground rushed out, there was a crowd of lovers of easy mystical profit.

Subsequently, I also paid tribute to this new blasphemous "trend"; but all this already goes beyond the "autobiography". I can refer those who are interested to my poems and to the article "On the current state of Russian symbolism" (Apollo magazine, 1910). Now I will go back.

From complete ignorance and inability to communicate with the world, an anecdote happened to me, which I recall with pleasure and gratitude: once on a rainy autumn day (if I’m not mistaken, in 1900) I went with poems to an old acquaintance of our family, Viktor Petrovich Ostrogorsky , now deceased. At that time he edited the World of God. Without saying who sent me to him, I excitedly gave him two small poems inspired by Sirin, Alkonost and Gamayun V. Vasnetsov. After running through the verses, he said: "Shame on you, young man, to do this when God knows what's going on at the university!" - and sent me out with ferocious good nature. Then it was insulting, but now it is more pleasant to remember this than about many later praises.

After this incident, I did not go anywhere for a long time, until in 1902 I was sent to V. Nikolsky, who then edited a student collection together with Repin. A year after that, I began to publish "seriously". The first who drew attention to my poems from outside were Mikhail Sergeevich and Olga Mikhailovna Solovyov (my mother's cousin). My first things appeared in 1903 in the journal "New Way" and, almost simultaneously, in the almanac "Northern Flowers".

For seventeen years of my life I lived in the barracks of the L.-Gds. Grenadier Regiment (when I was nine years old, my mother married for the second time, to F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, who served in the regiment). After graduating from the course in St. Petersburg. Vvedenskaya (now - Emperor Peter the Great) gymnasium, I entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University rather unconsciously, and only when I entered the third year did I realize that I was completely alien to legal science. In 1901, an exceptionally important year for me and deciding my fate, I transferred to the philological faculty, the course of which I completed, passing the state exam in the spring of 1906 (in the Slavic-Russian department).

The university did not play a particularly important role in my life, but higher education gave, in any case, some mental discipline and certain skills that help me a lot both in historical and literary, and in my own critical experiments, and even in artistic work (materials for the drama "Rose and Cross"). Over the years, I appreciate more and more what the university has given me in the person of my respected professors - A. I. Sobolevsky, I. A. Shlyapkin, S. F. Platonov, A. I. Vvedensky and F. F. Zelinsky. If I manage to collect a book of my works and articles, which are scattered in considerable numbers in different publications, but need strong revision, I will be indebted to the university for a share of the scientific character that is contained in them.

In fact, only after the end of the "university" course did my "independent" life begin. Continuing to write lyrical poems, which, since 1897, can be regarded as a diary, it was in the year of my graduation at the university that I wrote my first plays in dramatic form; The main themes of my articles (apart from purely literary ones) were and remain themes about the "intelligentsia and the people", about the theater and about Russian symbolism (not only in the sense of the literary school).

Each year of my conscious life is sharply painted for me with its own special color. Of the events, phenomena and trends that have particularly strongly influenced me in one way or another, I must mention: a meeting with Vl. Solovyov, whom I saw only from a distance; acquaintance with M. S. and O. M. Solovyov, Z. N. and D. S. Merezhkovsky, and with A. Bely; events of 1904 - 1905; acquaintance with the theatrical environment, which began in the theater of the late V. F. Komissarzhevskaya; the extreme decline in literary morals and the beginning of "factory" literature associated with the events of 1905; acquaintance with the works of the late August Strindberg (initially through the poet Vl. Piast); three foreign trips: I was in Italy - northern (Venice, Ravenna, Milan) and middle (Florence, Pisa, Perugia and many other cities and towns of Umbria), in France (in the north of Brittany, in the Pyrenees - in the vicinity of Biarritz; several times lived in Paris), in Belgium and Holland; in addition, for some reason, every six years of my life I was led to return to Bad Nauheim (Hessen-Nassau), with which I have special memories.

This spring (1915) I would have to return there for the fourth time; but the general and higher mysticism of war intervened in the personal and lower mysticism of my trips to Bad Nauheim.