Childhood and youth K. Balmont at the age of 4 years. 1875 BALMONT Konstantin Dmitrievich was born on June 3 (15), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province, in the family of a zemstvo leader. The formation of Balmont's personality went through the stages traditional for the offspring of the landlord "nests" of the last third of the 19th century. “My best teachers in poetry were the estate, the garden, streams, marsh lakes, the rustle of leaves, butterflies, birds and dawns,” the writer said about himself in the 1910s. Like hundreds of boys of his generation, Balmont early becomes infected with revolutionary and rebellious moods. In 1884 he was even expelled from the gymnasium for participating in a "revolutionary circle". In 1886 he graduated from the gymnasium in Vladimir and immediately entered the law faculty of Moscow University. A year later, he was also expelled from the university - for participating in student riots. A short exile to his native Shuya follows, then restoration at the university. But Balmont did not complete the full course: in 1889 he dropped out of school for the sake of studying literature. In March 1890, he experienced an acute nervous breakdown for the first time and tried to commit suicide.
CHILDHOOD How delightful this nonsense is, the sound of childish words. There is no premeditation, there is in the words of shackles. Immediately - the Sun and the Moon, stars and flowers. The whole Universe is visible, there is darkness in it. All that was is here now, all that will be is here. Why are you, the World, for us - e child, the whole?
Personal life of L. M. Garelin One of the most dramatic pages in the life of Konstantin Balmont was the story of his relationship with his first wife, Larisa Garelina. This marriage for both spouses turned into a painful life, demonic, according to the poet, and even a devilish face. At the beginning of 1890, after living for four weeks, a girl, their first child, died of meningitis. The second child, son Nikolai, suffered from a mental illness. Life was complicated by the suspicious, jealous attitude of the wife towards her husband, her addiction to alcohol. The wife did not sympathize with either the literary aspirations or the revolutionary moods of her husband and was prone to quarrels. Poverty oppressed. There was no commonality in vital interests. In desperation, Balmont decided to commit suicide. On March 13, 1890, he is thrown out of the window of the third floor of a Moscow hotel. Fortunately, the poet did not die.
The poet's second wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva-Balmont, a relative of the famous Moscow publishers Sabashnikovs, came from a wealthy merchant family (the Andreevs owned colonial goods shops) and was distinguished by a rare education. Contemporaries also noted the external attractiveness of this tall and slender young woman "with beautiful black eyes." With Ekaterina Alekseevna, Konstantin Balmont was united by a common literary interest; the couple made a lot of joint translations, in particular, Gerhard Hauptmann and Odd Nansen. In 1901, the daughter of Ninika, Nina, was born in the family. Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva
In the early 1900s in Paris, Balmont met Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya (1880-1943), the daughter of General K. G. Tsvetkovsky, then a student at the Sorbonne Faculty of Mathematics and a passionate admirer of his poetry. The latter, "not strong in character, ... with her whole being was involved in the whirlpool of the poet's folly", each word of which "sounded to her like the voice of God". Balmont, judging by some of his letters, in particular to Bryusov, was not in love with Tsvetkovskaya, but soon began to feel the need for her as a truly faithful, devoted friend. Gradually, the "spheres of influence" were divided: Balmont either lived with his family, or left with Elena; for example, in 1905 they left for three months in Mexico. The poet's family life was completely confused after E.K. Tsvetkovskaya had a daughter in December 1907, who was named Mirra - in memory of Mirra Lokhvitskaya, the poetess, with whom he had complex and deep feelings. The appearance of the child finally tied Balmont to Elena Konstantinovna, but at the same time he did not want to leave Ekaterina Alekseevna either. Mental anguish led to a breakdown: in 1909, Balmont made a new suicide attempt, again jumped out of the window and survived again. Until 1917, Balmont lived in St. Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra, coming from time to time to Moscow to Andreeva and daughter Nina.
Creativity Balmont's poetry, unlike many other symbolist colleagues, is optimistic, bright, far from mysticism, fatal omens and other disturbing moods that permeated the work of contemporaries. In the USSR, the "bourgeois poet" Balmont was forgotten for many years. If his poetry was remembered, then it was far from the best poems and only with revealing purposes - as an example of "decadence". Now it is obvious that Balmont was an outstanding representative of the "silver age of Russian literature", and his poetry still pleases grateful readers.
Symbolist poets, in the words of Balmont himself, "are always fanned by breaths coming from the realm of the beyond." They had a tendency to strive for what is not. And this desire was elevated to the rank of philosophy. Similar trends came from the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, the influence of which was experienced by all of Western Europe in the last third of the 19th century. The task of Schopenhauer's philosophy was to free a person from passions, to renounce life. All this is reflected in Balmont's poetry. The motives of his lyrics are built on the opposition of some eternal concepts: eternity-instant, death-immortality. The main images-symbols of his poetry are the Sun, the Moon, Time, etc.
Symbols of K. Balmont Speaking about the symbols in Balmont's lyrics, it should be said that the image-symbol of the Moon plays a great role in his poetry. The moon is a symbol of silence, it subjugates all living things: Let us praise, brothers, the kingdom of the moon, Her beam of dreams sent down, The dominion of great silence. The moon is a symbol of femininity. It is not surprising that Balmont used it in his work, because one of the principles of symbolism was the idea of eternal femininity. We obey, we bow Before the queen of silence, And in our dreams we fall lightly in love At the behest of the moon. Balmont has a few more poems where the moon appears precisely as a symbol of silence, for example "Moon Silence": "In the forest, silence arose from the Moon."
In the forest, silence arose from the moon, But the trembling of the string is clearly seen, And the domineering light descends from above. What a sleepy beauty above the forest, How clearly the smallest feature is seen, How that pine and that one freezes stiffly. Airy-white motionless clouds, A mirror-royal cold river, And the distance of heaven is deep in moisture. The trembling of the string is incessant, The airiness of silence is inviolable, The influence of the moon is inexhaustible. Words of love are always incoherent, They tremble, they are diamond, Like a star in the morning hour; They murmur like a key in the desert, From the beginning of the world until now, And they will always be the first; Always splitting, everywhere whole, Like light, like air, boundless, Light, like bursts in reeds, Like the flapping of an intoxicated bird, With another bird intertwined In flight, in the clouds.
The last years of his life In 1940-1942, Balmont did not leave Noisy-le-Grand; here, in the Russian House shelter, he died on the night of December 23, 1942 from pneumonia. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery, under a gray stone tombstone with the inscription: "Constantin Balmont, poète russe" ("Konstantin Balmont, Russian poet"). Several people came from Paris to say goodbye to the poet: B.K. Zaitsev with his wife, the widow of Y. Baltrushaitis, two or three acquaintances and daughter Mirra. Irina Odoevtseva recalled that “... it was raining heavily. When the coffin was lowered into the grave, it turned out to be filled with water, and the coffin floated up. He had to be held up with a pole while the grave was being filled up. The French public learned about the poet's death from an article in the pro-Hitler Paris Gazette, which made, "as was then customary, a thorough reprimand to the late poet for having once supported the revolutionaries" [. Since the late 1960s Balmont's poems in the USSR began to be printed in anthologies. In 1984, a large collection of selected works was published.
Memory On May 12, 2011, a monument to Konstantin Balmont was unveiled in Vilnius (Lithuania). On November 29, 2013, a memorial plaque to Balmont was unveiled in Moscow at 15 Bolshoy Nikolopeskovsky Lane, building 1 (on the house where he lived for the last five years before leaving abroad). Architect M. Corsi, sculptor A. Taratynov. The relief on the board is made according to the portrait by Valentin Serov in 1905.
Interesting facts Many biographers of the poet consider the number 42 fateful for him: in 1942, his first wife, Lisa Garelina, died; at 42, Balmont visited Egypt, which he had dreamed of since childhood; at 42, he experienced a creative crisis; he was born 42 years after the Decembrist uprising and all his life he regretted that he was not with them on Senate Square. Balmont passed away in 1942. K. D. Balmont told in his autobiography that he began to fall in love very early: “The first passionate thought about a woman was at the age of five, the first real love was nine years old, the first passion was fourteen years old,” he wrote. “Wandering through countless cities, I am always delighted with one thing - love,” the poet later admitted in one of his poems. Valery Bryusov, analyzing his work, wrote: “Balmont’s poetry glorifies and glorifies all the rites of love, all its rainbow. Balmont himself says that, following the paths of love, he can achieve “too much - everything!”
Thank you for your attention! Completed by students of the 11th grade: Danilova Maria, Lukina Kristina, Mikhailova Ekaterina, Yamadinova Ekaterina.
The writing
A symbol is a kind of code that cannot be revealed the first time. Semantic shades can vary, creating a mystery. A symbol is always multi-valued, and many of its meanings can be opposed to each other. He can unite in himself that which is actually impossible to unite. Andrei Bely called this "combining the heterogeneous together."
The dual meaning of the symbol gave rise to the idea of two worlds: the real world and the beyond. And these worlds do not exist separately from each other, but interpenetrate. The ambiguity of the symbol is based on religious and mythological ideas about another reality, another world. It was this understanding of the symbol that formed the basis of symbolism. As a literary movement, it originated in the 1870s. in Europe. Symbolism combined the ideas of Christianity and the ideas of Plato, mixing them with romantic traditions. Thus, symbolism takes its origins in the romantic tradition, and therefore in the 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. Symbolism set itself the task of forging the "keys of secrets". There is a treasure in my soul, And the key is entrusted only to me! - these words of A. Blok are quite applicable to all Russian symbolists.
Russian symbolism adopted Western aesthetics to a greater extent, but was revised by Vl. Solovyov in his teaching "On the Soul of the World". Symbolist poetry is distinguished by its desire for a different reality, where silence, silence, fantasy, beauty and harmony reign. All this was equally characteristic of Konstantin Balmont, a poet and one of the founders of Russian symbolism. Balmont occupied a prominent place among the poets of the Silver Age and, according to V. Bryusov, "for a decade ... reigned indivisibly over Russian poetry."
Symbolist poets, in the words of Balmont himself, "are always fanned by breaths coming from the realm of the beyond." They had a tendency to strive for what is not. And this desire was elevated to the rank of philosophy. Similar trends came from the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, the influence of which was experienced by all of Western Europe in the last third of the 19th century. The task of Schopenhauer's philosophy was to free a person from passions, to renounce life. All this is reflected in Balmont's poetry. The motives of his lyrics are built on the opposition of some eternal concepts: eternity-instant, death-immortality. The main images-symbols of his poetry are the Sun, the Moon, Time, etc.
And in the soul there will be no reproach, I comprehended in a fleeting hint, I heard a mysterious call, Infinity of mute voices. It was revealed to me that there is no Time, That the patterns of the planets are motionless, That Immortality leads to Death, That Immortality awaits beyond Death.
A great influence on Balmont's poetry was his passion for theosophy, namely the teachings of Helena Blavatsky. The poet was greatly impressed by her book "The Voice of Silence", which he called "the morning star of my inner flowering." Many of the ideas of this book are reflected in the poet's poems (collection "Silence"):
Between the ice wiped, sleeping in the silence of the seas Silent dead ship skeletons. The wind is fast, touching the sails.
Away in a hurry in fright, rushes to heaven. It rushes - and does not dare to beat the firmament with its breath, Everywhere seeing only - pallor, cold, death. Like sarcophagi, blocky ice A long crowd rose from the water. White snow falls, curls over the wave, Filling the air with dead whiteness. Flakes curl, curl like flocks of birds. The kingdom of the white death has no boundaries anywhere. What are you looking for here, ejections of swells, Silent skeletons of dead ships?
Speaking about the symbols in Balmont's lyrics, it should be said that the image-symbol of the Moon plays a great role in his poetry. The moon is a symbol of silence, it subjugates all living things: Let us praise, brothers, the kingdom of the moon, Her beam of dreams sent down, The dominion of great silence.
The moon is a symbol of femininity. It is not surprising that Balmont used it in his work, because one of the principles of symbolism was the idea of eternal femininity. We obey, we bow Before the queen of silence, And in our dreams we fall lightly in love At the behest of the moon.
Balmont has a few more poems where the moon appears precisely as a symbol of silence, for example, "Moon Silence": "In the forest, silence arose from the Moon."
The mirror was no less significant symbol for the symbolists. This is not just a symbol, but a “symbol of symbols”, as it is capable of reflecting. The moon is also a mirror because it reflects sunlight.
The four elements - earth, water, fire and air - were no less important to the symbolists. Balmont wrote in his notebook: “Fire, Water, Earth and Air are the four royal Elements with which my soul invariably lives in joyful and secret contact. None of the sensations! I cannot separate from them and always remember their Quadruple. Fire is the all-encompassing triple element, flame, light and warmth, the triple and sevenfold element, the most beautiful of all. Water is the element of affection and love, the depth is enticing, her voice is a wet kiss. Air is an all-round cradle-grave, a sarcophagus-alcove, the lightest breath of Eternity and an invisible chronicle that is open to the eyes of the soul. The Earth is a black setting of a dazzling diamond, and the Earth is a heavenly Emerald, a precious stone of Life, a spring Morning, a gentle flowering Garden. I love all the elements equally, at least in different ways. And I know that each element is caressing, like a lullaby, and terrible, like the noise of approaching enemy squads, like explosions and peals of devilish laughter ... I love all the Elements, and my creativity lives on them.
Symbolist poetry is filled with hidden meanings and signs. “A symbol is a window to infinity,” said F. Sologub. “In addition to the specific content, there is also a hidden content that organically connects with it and intertwines with it with the most tender threads,” said Balmont.
Features of symbolism (on the example of the poem by K. Balmont "I dreamed of catching the leaving shadows ...")
Borisovskaya E.O.,
Before proceeding to the analysis of Balmont's poem, one must remember what symbolism carries in itself and what features it has.
Symbolism is usually called a literary movement in Russia, which arose in the early 90s of the XIX century. It is based on the philosophical ideas of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, as well as the teachings of V.S. Solovyov about the Soul of the world. The symbolists opposed the idea of creating worlds in the process of creation to the traditional way of cognizing reality. Therefore, creativity in the understanding of the Symbolists - the contemplation of "secret meanings" - is available only to the poet-creator. The symbol becomes the central aesthetic category of this literary movement.
Symbolism features:
- · The musicality of the verse, the development of sound recording;
- · Elevation themes;
- Polysemy, vagueness of images;
- · Understatement, allegory, allusions;
- · Having the idea of two worlds;
- Reflection of reality through symbols;
- · Religious pursuits;
- · The idea of the World Soul.
We can see most of these features of symbolism in the poem of the senior representative of the symbolic movement K. Balmont "I dreamed of catching the departing shadows ...".
I dreamed of catching the departing shadows,
And the higher I went, the clearer they were drawn,
The clearer the outlines were drawn in the distance,
And some sounds were heard around,
Around me resounded from Heaven and Earth.
The higher I climbed, the brighter they sparkled,
And below me the night has already come,
The night has already come for the sleeping Earth,
For me, the daylight shone,
The fire luminary burned out in the distance.
I learned how to catch the shadows that are leaving
The fading shadows of a faded day,
And higher and higher I walked, and the steps trembled,
And the steps trembled under my feet.
Balmont's poem "I dreamed of catching the departing shadows ..." was written in 1895.
It most clearly reflects the work of Balmont and is a hymn of symbolism. The key motif in the poem is the motif of the path. It is known that the motive of the path is one of the most important archetypal motives of symbolism. It is no coincidence that this poem is placed at the beginning of the book "In the Vastness" and is italicized. L.E. Lyapin believes that these poems are programmatic for Balmont. Therefore, in my opinion, the features of symbolism should be revealed precisely on the example of this poem.
symbolism poem balmont soul
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A feature of symbolism in Russian literature |
Its disclosure in the poem by K. Balmont |
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1. The musicality of the verse. |
This poem captivates with charming plasticity, musicality, which is created by the wave-like movement of intonational ups and downs. Of particular importance is the presence in the poem of hissing and whistling consonants, as well as sonorous "r" and "l", which create the musicality of the poem. The rhythm of the poem creates its meter: a four-foot anapaest, which in odd lines is weighted with caesura buildup. In this poem, the poet used the techniques inherent in music - rhythmic repetitions, many internal rhymes: v I dreamed of catching the departing shadows, The fading shadows of the fading day, I climbed the tower, and the steps trembled, And the steps trembled under my foot .... v The higher I ascended, the brighter they sparkled, The brighter the heights of the dormant mountains sparkled, And with a farewell radiance, as if caressed, As if gently caressing a misty gaze. |
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2. Sublime themes |
The author talks about his creative achievements. But he does it so masterfully that at first it is quite difficult to guess the true meaning of the work. Balmont describes his arrival in the world of literature with a certain degree of irony, noting: "I climbed the tower, and the steps trembled, and the steps trembled under my foot." However, in the general context of the poem, this phrase indicates that the poet was confidently moving towards his goal and dreamed of achieving fame at any cost. "And the higher I went, the clearer they were drawn, the clearer the outlines were drawn in the distance." If expressed in the figurative language of symbolism, then from the heights to which the poet aspired, he was truly breathtaking. The higher he climbed the ladder of poetic success, the less attention he paid to those who tried to put him in their unfriendly statements. “And below me, the night has already come,” - this is exactly how the poet speaks unflatteringly about the people who tried to prevent him from becoming famous. The poet admits that he "learned how to catch the departing shadows", that is, he honed his literary skills so much that he learned to stop the moments of the past in poetry. |
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While reading this, the thought arises: isn’t the poet describing the posthumous path of a person? The sounds reaching him are unclear, they come from Heaven and Earth. "And with a farewell radiance..." Here are the words that lead us to this thought about the passage of the posthumous path by the lyrical hero. Night has fallen below, hiding everything earthly, but for the lyrical hero the Sun shines, however, it burns out in the distance. Another interpretation is also possible: the lyrical hero is a loner who defies earthly institutions. He enters into a confrontation no longer with society, but with universal, cosmic laws and emerges victorious ("I learned how to catch the leaving shadows ..."). Thus, Balmont hints at the chosenness of his hero by God (and, ultimately, his own chosenness by God, because for the older symbolists to whom he belonged, the thought of the high, "priestly" destiny of the poet was important). |
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7. Having the idea of two worlds |
Balmont's poem is built on the antithesis: between the top ("And the higher I went ..."), and the bottom ("And below me ..."), heaven and earth, day (light) and darkness (extinction). Through the world of fantasies and dreams of the hero seeps the real world, over which the hero wants to rise lyrically. The lyrical plot consists in the movement of the hero, removing these contrasts. Climbing the tower, the hero leaves the familiar earthly world in pursuit of new sensations that no one has experienced before. The poet is trying to know some truth. And at the end of the poem we see that he managed to do it, he found what he was looking for. |
The author of this poem was admired - "genius". He was overthrown - "poetic chatter." They teased him. He was studied. They were admired. And there is still no unequivocal point of view on K. D. Balmont, a poet, translator, essayist, a great master of Russian literature. His contemporary A. Blok, who paid tribute to symbolism in his youth, said amazing words about him: “When you listen to Balmont, you always listen to spring.” His first books were published at the time when Russian symbolism was born. Balmont was destined to become one of its leaders, who considered themselves born "for sweet sounds and prayers." The collections "Burning Buildings" and "Silence" glorified the poet. Balmont was thrown from rebellion to reconciliation, from agreement to protest. For example, the poem that brought him wide fame is “The Little Sultan”, written in the wake of the March events of 1901. A violent feeling of anger aroused in his heart the repressions of the tsarist government against the student demonstration:
That was in Turkey, where conscience is an empty thing,
Where the fist, the whip, the scimitar reign.
Two or three zeros, four scoundrels
And stupid little Sultan...
Nicholas II was easily recognized in the Sultan - and the young poet was expelled from St. Petersburg, a dossier was brought on him. In the preface to the second edition of the collection Burning Buildings, Balmont stated: “In previous books, I showed what a poet who loves music can do with the Russian language ...”. Balmont, as a symbolist, was looking for direct correspondences between sound and meaning: "A black boat alien to charms." He was musically gifted. Music overwhelms everything, floods at Balmont. On his poems, as on notes, you can put musical signs. About five hundred romances were created based on his poems. V. Mayakovsky, in his characteristic manner, said: "Balmont's poems seem to me smooth and measured, like rocking chairs and Turkish sofas."
It was important for Balmont to feel the obvious or hidden presence of the sun in everything. In 1903, a book appeared, which is the rise of the poet - “We will be like the sun”:
I don't believe in the black beginning
May the foremother of our life is Night,
Only the sun answered the heart,
And always runs away from the shadow.
The theme of the sun went through all of Balmont's work. The sun, as it were, became a sign of division: some are for, others are against. Together with Balmont was A. Bely: "For the sun, for the sun, loving freedom, let's rush off into the blue expanse!" Z. Gippius was against: "We will not be like the sun." Balmont's poetry is the poetry of allusions, symbols, sound writing, musicality. The image is given a mysterious and mystical shade. Balmont shows a focus on his I, his spiritual world, not looking for contact with anyone. He was faithful to the principle formulated by Goethe: "I sing like a bird sings." Therefore, etude, transience is one of the properties of poetry:
I do not know wisdom suitable for others,
Only transiences I put into verse.
In every evanescence I see worlds,
Full of changeable rainbow play.
His creative method was impressionism. The poet was called that: some - an impressionist, others - a decadent, others ... Balmont balanced between extremes all his life:
I am a sudden break.
I am the playing thunder
I am a clear stream
I am for everyone and no one.
He declares the spontaneity of creativity:
Laws are not for me, since I am a genius. I saw you, so what do I need you for? Creativity does not require impressions...
Another feature of Balmont's poetry is color. He loved color epithets: "Red sail in the blue sea, in the blue sea ..." The poet paid special attention to rhyme and did not limit himself to well-known poetic forms, he came up with new rhymes, extra-long sizes:
I am the sophistication of Russian slow speech,
Before me are other poets - forerunners ...
The years of emigration became a difficult test for the poet. Nostalgia corroded the soul, undermined spiritual and physical strength, poured out into verses filled with pain and confusion:
... The shadow of Mecca, and Damascus, and Baghdad, -
I do not sing the cherished words,
And I don't need anything in Paris.
I need only one word: Moscow.
The essay-reflection "Moscow in Paris" echoes this poem. And in it appears, like a fabulous Kitezh, “an immense city of white stone. Moscow ... "And the poet's soul yearns in it, listens to the" echo of the harmonica "that resounded" somewhere behind the distant hill "," to the bronze strings ", ringing" in a certain underground ", to every rustle, rustle ... In every sound it seems his dear and distant Russia ... It was during the years of longing for Russia that he created strong poems, life tore off the poet's tailcoat with an orchid in his buttonhole, which were not in his work:
The tide is gone and I'm like a ghost
Among the sea shells I walk along the bottom.
And in the poem "Who?" he's writing:
I didn't die. No. I'm alive. Longing…
In 1926 he admitted, thinking about Russia:
I lived it. And I live for her.
I love, like the best sound, Moscow!
Speaking of Balmont, it is impossible not to mention that he is perhaps the only Russian lyric poet whose primary creative method was impressionism, a colorful and passionate reproduction of quivering, sometimes fleeting impressions associated with the knowledge of the natural world and the world of one's own soul. His best poems enchant with their musicality, sincerity and freshness of lyrical feeling, genuine sadness and almost feminine tenderness. Saying goodbye to life, the sun, poetry, the sick poor poet (he died in 1942 in Nazi-occupied Paris) said that he would rise from the earth along the Milky Way and be swallowed up by eternity:
Enough I've been on this shore
And to be on it yet - how rock can I accept.
But, solar singer, like the sun, on the run,
Having accomplished the cherished, I guard the hour of the night,
To be in the Milky Way, where new stars are conceived.
The dream of space, of eternity was for him also a dream of immortality.
I am red, I am blond, I am Russian,
I know both wisdom and nonsense.
I'm walking along a narrow path,
I will come - like a wide dawn.
Balmont became the first representative of symbolism in poetry, who received all-Russian fame. It was noted, however, that his work as a whole was not purely symbolist; neither was the poet a “decadent” in the full sense of the word: decadence for him “…served not only and not so much as a form of aesthetic attitude to life, but as a convenient shell for creating the image of the creator of new art.” The first collections of Balmont, with all the abundance of decadent-symbolist signs in them, were attributed by literary critics to impressionism, a trend in art that aimed to convey fleeting, unsteady impressions. Basically, these were “purely romantic poems, as if opposing heaven and earth, calling to the distant, unearthly”, saturated with motifs consonant with the work of A. N. Pleshcheev or S. Ya. Nadson. It was noted that the mood of "sadness, some kind of orphanhood, homelessness" that dominated Balmont's early poems were echoes of the former "thoughts of the sick, tired generation of the intelligentsia." The poet himself noted that his work began "with sadness, depression and twilight", "under the northern sky". The lyrical hero of Balmont's early works (according to A. Izmailov) is "a meek and meek young man, imbued with the most well-intentioned and moderate feelings."
Collections "In the vastness" (1895) and "Silence. Lyric Poems" (1898) were marked by an active search for "new space, new freedom". The main ideas for these books were the ideas of the transience of being and the variability of the world. The author paid increased attention to the technique of verse, demonstrating a clear passion for sound writing and musicality. Symbolism in his understanding was primarily a means of searching for "new combinations of thoughts, colors and sounds", a method of building "from the sounds, syllables and words of his native speech a cherished chapel, where everything is full of profound meaning and penetration." Symbolic poetry “speaks its own special language, and this language is rich in intonations, like music and painting, it excites a complex mood in the soul, more than any other kind of poetry, it touches our sound and visual impressions,” Balmont wrote in the book “Mountain Peaks” . The poet also shared the idea, which was part of the general system of symbolist views, that the sound matter of a word is invested with a high meaning; like any materiality, - "represents from the spiritual substance."
The presence of new, "Nietzschean" motives and heroes ("natural genius", "unlike a person", torn "beyond the limits" and even "beyond - both truth and lies") critics noted already in the collection "Silence". It is believed that Silence is the best of Balmont's first three books. “It seemed to me that the collection bears the imprint of an increasingly stronger style. Your own, Balmont style and color,” Prince Urusov wrote to the poet in 1898. The impressions from the travels of 1896-1897, which occupied a significant place in the book ("Dead Ships", "Chords", "In front of the picture of El Greco", "In Oxford", "Near Madrid", "To Shelley") were not simple descriptions, but they expressed the desire to get used to the spirit of a foreign or bygone civilization, a foreign country, to identify themselves "either with a novice of Brahma, or with some priest from the country of the Aztecs." “I merge with everyone every moment,” Balmont declared. “The poet is an element. He likes to take on the most diverse faces, and in each face he is self-identical. He clings lovingly to everything, and everything enters his soul, like the sun, moisture and air enter a plant… The poet is open to the world…”, he wrote.
At the turn of the century, the general tone of Balmont's poetry changed dramatically: moods of despondency and hopelessness gave way to bright colors, imagery, filled with "frantic joy, the pressure of violent forces." Beginning in 1900, the “elegiac” hero of Balmont turned into his own opposite: an active personality, “almost with orgiastic passion affirming in this world the aspiration to the Sun, fire, light”; a special place in the Balmont hierarchy of images was occupied by Fire as a manifestation of cosmic forces. Being for some time the leader of the “new poetry”, Balmont willingly formulated its principles: the symbolist poets, in his words, “are fanned with breaths coming from the realm of the beyond”, they, “recreating materiality with their complex impressionability, rule over the world and penetrate into his mysteries.
The collections Burning Buildings (1900) and Let's Be Like the Sun (1902), as well as the book Only Love (1903), are considered the strongest in Balmont's literary legacy. Researchers noted the presence of prophetic notes here, regarding the image of “burning buildings” as a symbol of “alarm in the air, a sign of impulse, movement” (“Scream of the sentinel”). The main motives here were "sunshine", the desire for constant renewal, the thirst to "stop the moment". “When you listen to Balmont, you always listen to spring,” wrote A. A. Blok. An essentially new factor in Russian poetry was Balmont's eroticism. The poems “She surrendered herself without reproach ...” and “I want to be bold ...” became his most popular works; they taught “if not to love, then, in any case, to write about love in a ‘new’ spirit.” And yet, recognizing in Balmont the leader of symbolism, the researchers noted: “the mask of elemental genius adopted by him, egocentrism, reaching narcissism, on the one hand, and eternal sun worship, fidelity to a dream, the search for beauty and perfection, on the other, allow us to speak of him as about a neo-romantic poet. After Burning Buildings, both critics and readers began to perceive Balmont as an innovator who opened up new possibilities for Russian verse, expanding its figurativeness. Many drew attention to the shocking component of his work: almost frenzied expressions of determination and energy, craving for the use of "dagger words". Prince AI Urusov called "Burning Buildings" a "psychiatric document." E. V. Anichkov regarded Balmont’s program collections as “moral, artistic and simply physical liberation from the former mournful school of Russian poetry, which tied poetry to the hardships of the native public.” It was noted that "proud optimism, the life-affirming pathos of Balmont's lyrics, the desire for freedom from the shackles imposed by society, and a return to the fundamental principles of being" were perceived by readers "not just as an aesthetic phenomenon, but as a new worldview."
Fairy Tales (1905) - a collection of children's fairy tale songs-stylizations, dedicated to daughter Nina, received high marks from contemporaries. “In Fairy Tales, the spring of Balmont's creativity again beats with a stream of clear, crystal, melodious. In these "children's songs" everything that is most valuable in his poetry came to life, what was given to it as a heavenly gift, in which is its best eternal glory. These are gentle, airy songs that create their own music. They look like the silver ringing of pensive bells, "narrow-bottomed, multi-colored on a stamen under the window," wrote Valery Bryusov.
Among the best “foreign” poems, critics noted the cycle of poems about Egypt “Extinct Volcanoes”, “Memories of an Evening in Amsterdam”, noted by Maxim Gorky, “Quiet” (about the islands in the Pacific Ocean) and “Iceland”, which was highly appreciated by Bryusov. Being in constant search for "new combinations of thoughts, colors and sounds" and the approval of "striking" images, the poet believed that he was creating "lyrics of the modern soul", a soul that has "many faces". Transferring heroes in time and space, over many epochs (“Scythians”, “Oprichniki”, “In the Dead Days” and so on), he affirmed the image of a “spontaneous genius”, “superman” (“Oh, bliss to be strong and proud and forever free!" - "Albatross").
One of the fundamental principles of Balmont's philosophy in the years of his creative heyday was the affirmation of the equality of the sublime and the base, the beautiful and the ugly, characteristic of the decadent worldview as a whole. A significant place in the poet's work was occupied by the "reality of conscience", in which a kind of war against integrity took place, the polarization of opposing forces, their "justification" ("The whole world must be justified / So that one can live! ..", "But I love the unaccountable, and delight, and shame. / And the space of the marsh, and the height of the mountains"). Balmont could admire the scorpion with its "pride and desire for freedom", bless the cripples, "crooked cacti", "snakes and lizards outcast childbirth." At the same time, the sincerity of Balmont's "demonism", expressed in demonstrative submission to the elements of passions, was not questioned. According to Balmont, the poet is "an inspired demigod", "the genius of a melodious dream".
Balmont's poetic creativity was spontaneous and subject to the dictates of the moment. In the miniature “How I Write Poems,” he admitted: “... I don’t think about poetry and, really, I never compose.” Once written, he never corrected, did not edit, believing that the first impulse is the most correct, he wrote continuously, and very much. The poet believed that only a moment, always unique and inimitable, reveals the truth, makes it possible to “see the far distance” (“I don’t know wisdom suitable for others, / I put only transiences into verse. / In each fleetingness I see worlds, / Full of changeable rainbow play"). Balmont's wife E. A. Andreeva also wrote about this: “He lived in the moment and was content with it, not embarrassed by the colorful change of moments, if only to express them more fully and more beautifully. He either sang of Evil, then Good, then he leaned towards paganism, then he bowed before Christianity. She told how one day, noticing from the window of the apartment a cart of hay riding down the street, Balmont immediately created the poem “In the Capital”; how suddenly the sound of raindrops falling from the roof gave rise to completed stanzas in him. Self-characterization: “I am a cloud, I am a breath of a breeze,” given in the book “Under the Northern Sky”, Balmont tried to match until the end of his life.
Many found the melodic repetition technique developed by Balmont to be unusually effective (“I dreamed of catching the departing shadows. / The departing shadows of the fading day. / I climbed the tower, and the steps trembled, / And the steps trembled under my foot”). It was noted that Balmont was able to “repeat a single word in such a way that a bewitching power awakened in it” (“But even at the hour before drowsiness, between the rocks born again / I will see the sun, the sun, the sun is red like blood”). Balmont developed his own style of colorful epithet, introduced into wide use such nouns as “lights”, “dusks”, “smoke”, “bottomless”, “transiency”, continued, following the traditions of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Gnedich, experiment with merging individual epithets in clusters (“joyfully-expanded rivers”, “their every look is calculated-truthful”, “the trees are so gloomy-strangely silent”). Not everyone accepted these innovations, but Innokenty Annensky, objecting to Balmont's critics, argued that his “refinement ... is far from pretentiousness. A rare poet so freely and easily solves the most complex rhythmic problems and, avoiding banality, is as alien to artificiality as Balmont is, "equally alien to provincialism and Fet's German stylelessness." According to the critic, it was this poet who “brought out of the numbness of singular forms” a whole series of abstractions, which in his interpretation “lit up and became more airy”.
Everyone, even skeptics, noted the rare musicality that sounded in sharp contrast to the “anemic magazine poetry” of the end of the previous century as an undoubted merit of his poems. As if re-discovering before the reader the beauty and inherent value of the word, its, in the words of Annensky, "musical potency", Balmont largely corresponded to the motto proclaimed by Paul Verlaine: "Music is first of all." Valery Bryusov, who in the early years was strongly influenced by Balmont, wrote that Balmont fell in love with all lovers of poetry "with his sonorous melodious verse", that "there were no equals to Balmont in the art of verse in Russian literature." “I have a calm conviction that before me, in general, they didn’t know how to write sonorous poems in Russia,” such was the poet’s brief assessment of his own contribution to literature made in those years.
Along with the merits, contemporary critics of Balmont found many shortcomings in his work. Yu. I. Aikhenvald called Balmont’s work uneven, who, along with poems “which are captivating with the musical flexibility of their size, the richness of their psychological scale,” found in the poet “such stanzas that are verbose and unpleasantly noisy, even dissonant, which are far from poetry and reveal breakthroughs and gaps in rational, rhetorical prose. According to Dmitry Mirsky, "most of what he wrote can be safely discarded as unnecessary, including all the poems after 1905, and all prose without exception - the most languid, pompous and meaningless in Russian literature." Although “in terms of sound, Balmont really surpassed all Russian poets,” he is also distinguished by “a complete lack of a sense of the Russian language, which, apparently, is explained by the Westernizing nature of his poetry. His poems sound foreign. Even the best ones sound like translations.”
The researchers noted that Balmont's poetry, built on spectacular verbal and musical consonances, conveyed the atmosphere and mood well, but at the same time the drawing, the plasticity of images suffered, the outlines of the depicted object were foggy and blurred. It was noted that the novelty of poetic means, which Balmont was proud of, was only relative. “Balmont’s verse is a verse of our past, improved, refined, but, in essence, all the same,” wrote Valery Bryusov in 1912. The declared “desire to get used to the spirit of a foreign or bygone civilization, a foreign country” was interpreted by some as a claim to universality; it was believed that the latter is a consequence of the lack of "a single creative core in the soul, the lack of integrity, which many and many symbolists suffered from." Andrei Bely spoke of "the pettiness of his 'daring'", "the ugliness of his 'freedom'", a tendency to "constant lies to himself, which has already become the truth for his soul." Later, Vladimir Mayakovsky called Balmont and Igor Severyanin "molasses manufacturers."
Andrei Bely (1880-1934)
Born into a mathematician's family Nikolai Vasilyevich Bugaev (1837-1903), Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, and his wife Alexandra Dmitrievna, nee Egorova(1858-1922). Until the age of twenty-six he lived in the very center of Moscow, on the Arbat; in the apartment where he spent his childhood and youth, there is currently a memorial apartment. Bugaev Sr. had wide acquaintances among the representatives of the old Moscow professors; Leo Tolstoy visited the house.
AT 1891- 1899gg. Boris Bugaev studied at the famous Gymnasium L. I. Polivanov , where in the last classes he became interested in Buddhism, occultism, while studying literature. Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Nietzsche had a special influence on Boris at that time. Here he awakened an interest in poetry, especially in the French and Russian symbolists (Balmont, Bryusov, Merezhkovsky). In 1895 he became close friends with Sergei Solovyov and his parents, Mikhail Sergeyevich and Olga Mikhailovna, and soon with Mikhail Sergeyevich's brother, the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov.
In 1899, at the insistence of his father, he entered the natural department Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, Moscow University . From his youth, he tried to combine artistic and mystical moods with positivism, with the desire for the exact sciences. At the university, he works on invertebrate zoology, studies Darwin, chemistry, but does not miss a single issue of the World of Art. In the autumn of 1899, Boris, in his words, "gives himself entirely to the phrase, the syllable."
In December 1901, Bely met the "senior symbolists" - Bryusov, Merezhkovsky and Gippius. In the autumn of 1903, a literary circle was organized around Andrei Bely, called the Argonauts. In 1904, the "Argonauts" gathered at Astrov's apartment. At one of the meetings of the circle, it was proposed to publish a literary and philosophical collection called "Free Conscience", and in 1906 two books of this collection were published.
In 1903, Bely entered into correspondence with Alexander Blok, and a year later they met personally. Before that, in 1903, he graduated with honors from the university, but in the fall of 1904 he entered Faculty of History and Philology of the University by choosing a leader B. A. Fokhta ; however, in 1905 he stopped attending classes, in 1906 he filed a request for expulsion and began to collaborate in " scales "(1904-1909).
After a painful break with Blok, Bely lived abroad for half a year. In April 1909, the poet became close to Asya Turgeneva (1890-1966) and together with her in 1911 made a series of trips through Sicily - Tunisia - Egypt - Palestine (described in "Travel Notes"). In 1910, Bugaev, relying on his mastery of mathematical methods, lectured young poets on prosody - according to D. Mirsky, "the date from which the very existence of Russian poetry as a branch of science can be counted."
In 1912, in Berlin, he met Rudolf Steiner, became his student and devoted himself without hesitation to his apprenticeship and anthroposophy. In fact, moving away from the former circle of writers, he worked on prose works. When the war of 1914 broke out, Steiner and his students, including Andrei Bely, were in Dornach, Switzerland, where the construction of the Goetheanum began. This temple was built by the students and followers of Steiner with their own hands. In Bern, on March 23, 1914, Anna Alekseevna Turgeneva married Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev. Before the start of the First World War, A. Bely visited the grave of Friedrich Nietzsche in the village of Röcken near Leipzig and Cape Arkona on the island of Rügen.
In 1916, B. N. Bugaev was summoned to Russia “to check his attitude to military service” and arrived in Russia in a roundabout way through France, England, Norway and Sweden. His wife did not follow him. After the October Revolution, he taught classes in the theory of poetry and prose at the Moscow Proletkult among young proletarian writers.
From the end of 1919, Bely thought about returning to his wife in Dornach, he was released abroad only at the beginning of September 1921. From the explanation with Asya, it became clear that the continuation of a joint family life was impossible. Vladislav Khodasevich and other memoirists remembered his broken, buffoonish behavior, “dancing” the tragedy in Berlin bars: “his foxtrot is pure whipping: not even a whistle, but a Christ dance” (Tsvetaeva).
In October 1923, Bely unexpectedly returned to Moscow to fetch his girlfriend Claudia Vasilyeva. “Bely is a dead man, and in no spirit will he rise again,” wrote Leon Trotsky, the all-powerful at the time, in Pravda. In March 1925 he rented two rooms in Kuchin near Moscow. The writer died in the arms of his wife Claudia Nikolaevna on January 8, 1934 from a stroke - a consequence of a sunstroke that happened to him in Koktebel. This fate was predicted by him in the collection Ashes (1907):
I believed in the golden gleam
He died from solar arrows.
I measured the century with the thought,
And he couldn't live his life.
Osip Mandelstam responded to the news of Bely's death with a poetic cycle beginning with the lines: "Blue eyes and a hot frontal bone - The youthful anger of the world beckoned you ..." The newspaper Izvestia published Bely's obituary, authored by B. L. Pasternak and B. A Pilnyak, in which Bely, who was not a central or significant figure in the emerging Soviet literature, was called a "genius" three times. The authorities ordered that his brain be removed and transferred to the Human Brain Institute for safekeeping.
Literary debut - "Symphony (2nd, dramatic)" (M., 1902). It was followed by the "Northern Symphony (1st, heroic)" (1904), "Return" (1905), "Blizzard Cup" (1908) in the individual genre of lyrical rhythmic prose with characteristic mystical motives and a grotesque perception of reality. Entering the circle of symbolists, he participated in the magazines "World of Art", "New Way", "Scales", "Golden Fleece", "Pass". An early collection of poems, Gold in Azure (1904), is notable for its formal experimentation and characteristic symbolist motifs. After returning from abroad, he published collections of poems "Ashes" (1909; the tragedy of rural Russia), "Urn" (1909), the novel "Silver Dove" (1909; published in 1910), essays "The Tragedy of Creativity. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy" (1911).
The results of his own literary-critical activity, partly symbolism in general, are summed up in the collections of articles "Symbolism" (1910; also includes poetry works), "Green Meadow" (1910; includes critical and polemical articles, essays on Russian and foreign writers), " Arabesques" (1911). In 1914-1915, the first edition of the novel "Petersburg" was published, which is the second part of the trilogy "East or West". In the novel "Petersburg" (1913-14; revised abridged edition 1922) a symbolized and satirical image of Russian statehood. The first in a planned series of autobiographical novels is "Kotik Letaev" (1914-15, separate edition 1922); the series was continued by the novel The Baptized Chinese (1921; separate ed. 1927). In 1915 he wrote a study "Rudolf Steiner and Goethe in the worldview of modernity" (Moscow, 1917)
The understanding of the First World War as a manifestation of the general crisis of Western civilization is reflected in the cycle "On the Pass" ("I. Crisis of Life", 1918; "II. Crisis of Thought", 1918; "III. Crisis of Culture", 1918). The perception of the life-giving element of the revolution as a saving way out of this crisis is in the essay "Revolution and Culture" (1917), the poem "Christ is Risen" (1918), the collection of poems "Star" (1922). Also in 1922, in Berlin, he published the "sound poem" "Glossolalia", where, based on the teachings of R. Steiner and the method of comparative historical linguistics, he developed the theme of creating a universe from sounds. Upon his return to Soviet Russia (1923), he creates the novel dilogy "Moscow" ("Moscow Eccentric", "Moscow Under Attack"; 1926), the novel "Masks" (1932), writes memoirs - "Memories of Blok" (1922-23) and the memoir trilogy At the Turn of Two Centuries (1930), The Beginning of the Century (1933), Between Two Revolutions (1934).
Among the last works of Andrei Bely are the theoretical and literary studies "Rhythm as Dialectics and The Bronze Horseman" (1929) and "Gogol's Mastery" (1934), which allowed V. V. Nabokov to call him "the genius of corrosiveness"
Novels
· « "Silver dove. A story in 7 chapters ", 1917
· "Kotik Letaev" 1915.
· "Baptized Chinese". "Notes of Dreamers" 1921);
· "Moscow eccentric" 1927.
· "Moscow under attack, 1927.
· "Masks. Roman", were published in January 1933.
