What fascinates me is the poetry of the Silver Age. Culture and poetry of the Silver Age as a reflection of a turning point in the life of Russia. Acmeism in Russian poetry

1.Historical background of the Russian cultural flourishing at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries

The main currents and outstanding names of the poetry of the "Silver Age" of Russia. The Rise and Fall of Russian Culture at the Turn of the Century as a Mirror Reflection of the Tragedy of the Russian People

The meaning of poetry and literature of the "Silver Age" as a historical connection between generations and a source of creativity of our contemporaries

My generation lives at the turn of the century, just as the contemporaries of Balmont and Bryusov, Tsvetaeva and Blok lived a hundred years ago. It is no coincidence that interest in that period is still not fading, but on the contrary, it is increasing. In our time of crisis, many thoughts about the world and society, expressed in the works of the Silver Age, sound very timely and relevant to us, showing the way to those who seek and forcing the sleepers to wake up.

Many historians and researchers of the Silver Age of Russian culture give the date of its beginning as 1894. Emperor Alexander III died this year. He kept Russia in a strong monarchical bridle. “The lack of talent and flexibility in him was made up common sense and a heightened sense of responsibility. The emperor pursued a policy aimed at the inviolability of the autocracy, the suppression of revolutionary encroachments, and at the same time, his reforms contributed to the development of the economy and the strengthening of Russia. Undoubtedly, under him, as before under Alexander II, Russian culture continued to replenish the piggy bank of the Golden Pushkin Age with the works of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, L. Tolstoy, Turgenev, Ostrovsky and others. However, the main and for the most part the only direction of fiction of the second half of XIX century was critical realism. Subtle lyrical works were created by Tyutchev, Fet, Maykov, Polonsky and others, but the "Pushkin's Golden Age" ended and these were only its echoes.

“After the death of Alexander III, the dawn of a fresh, fleeting, tragically colorful era slowly dawned” (Vadim Kreid). Emperor Nicholas II came to power and “everything immediately weakened, softened, flowed in different directions. The economy reared its head. All kinds of culture woke up from a heavy sleep. Everything sparkled and began to seethe ... ". There is no firm hand of the former emperor, therefore, disturbing events begin to occur in the political and social life of the country. Hunger, social tensions result in the Khodynka disaster of 1896, student riots and demonstrations, labor unrest and strikes ... the country lives like on a volcano, which begins to boil more and more. Very characteristic of this period is one of the early poems by A. Blok “Gamayun, the prophetic bird”:

On the endless waters

Clothed in purple by sunset,

She speaks and sings

Unable to raise the wings of the troubled ...

The yoke of evil Tatars broadcasts,

Broadcasts a series of bloody executions,

And a coward, and hunger, and a fire,

The strength of the villains, the death of the right...

Embraced by eternal terror,

A beautiful face burns with love,

But things sound true

Mouths covered in blood!

The poem, in fact, is prophetic, like many of his works. In general, in the works of A. Blok, as in no other, the processes of historical upheavals of that time are reflected. Many historians equally agree that if the entire "Silver Age" is expressed in one representative, then it will be Blok. However, the impetus for the birth of a new period of Russian creativity was undoubtedly made by the West.

“At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia began to try on Western clothes. But this Westernism had a pronounced Russian specificity. Never before have Russian poets and writers traveled so much and so far: Egypt, Abyssinia. Mexico, New Zealand, India… The “Silver Age” found its ancestors and allies in the person of P. Verlaine, O. Wilde, Villon, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Ibsen and others. delirious beauty ”(S. Makovsky). It is to this period that we also owe many brilliant translations, incl. Shakespeare, Dante. In all areas of Russian culture, an extraordinary upsurge and development was observed. Cinema and theater left us Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vakhtangov; art marked by the works of Kustodiev, Repin, K. Somov, Korovin, Vrubel, Vasnetsov, music is primarily the talent of Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and others.

However, the “Silver Age” is, first of all, amazing Russian poetry: Blok, Akhmatova, Bely, Balmont, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Voloshin, Yesenin, Gumilyov, Mayakovsky, Severyanin, Khodasevich, Cherny ... they all lived and created in this iridescent paints time. Never before have so many brilliant poets appeared at the same time! And along with them, new trends, directions, searches in poetry.

"... The trends that gave rise to the "Silver Age" arose on the basis of deep disappointment in the positivist and materialistic ideology and artistic practice of the second half of the 19th century."

One of the popular currents of the beginning of the "Silver Age" was decadence - from the French decadence, decline. This art reflected the painful refinement of the end of the century, which rejected what had previously seemed unshakable, the identity of goodness and beauty. The representatives of this current of that time were D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius. Merezhkovsky's poem "Children of the Night" was perceived as a manifesto of a new generation:

Turning our eyes

To the pale east

Children of sorrow, children of the night

We are waiting for our prophet to come.

We hear the unknown

And with hope in our hearts,

Dying, we yearn

About uncreated worlds...

Decadence and Symbolism are essentially the same thing, only at different stages of development. But symbolism is the hallmark of the Silver Age! Vl. Solovyov and F. Sologub. Their work had a huge impact on the younger symbolists: A. Blok and A. Bely. For the Symbolists, who believed in the existence of another world, the world of ideas, poetry was a tool for comprehending this unknown world, and the symbol was its sign and represented the link between the two worlds.

white lily with rose

We combine with a scarlet rose -

Hearts of a prophetic dream

We gain eternal truth...

(Vladimir Solovyov)

Somewhat later than the older symbolists, poets came to poetry who understood symbolism from European positions. These were Balmont, Bryusov and Dobrolyubov. The first was a very talented poet, but he treated creativity superficially.

Evening. Seaside. Sighs of the wind.

The majestic cry of the waves.

Storm is near. Beats on the shore

Uncharmed black boat.

The latter wrote wonderful poems, but his creative period ended very quickly, Dobrolyubov stopped writing poetry and went on a wanderer, disappearing somewhere in Belovezhskaya Pushcha ... But Bryusov, having decided to become the leader of a new trend in literature, systematically walked towards this and it was his many considered the creator of the movement of Russian symbolism.

I love big houses

And the narrow streets of the city,

In the days when winter did not come,

And autumn blew cold.

Spaces love squares,

Fenced around by walls,

At an hour when there are still no lanterns,

And the embarrassed stars lit up...

Here is what Vl wrote. Khodasevich in his book of memoirs “Necropolis” about Valery Bryusov: “As a poet, many put him (Bryusov) lower than Balmont, Sologub, Blok. But Balmont, Sologub, Blok were much less writers than Bryusov…”. “In 1894-95, Bryusov published the collections “Russian Symbolists” and what seemed disparate and even accidental received organizational formalization.” Then the collections of Balmont, Bryusov began to be published, Sologub and many other poets and writers are being printed. According to A. Bely, Sologub entered the big four of the most famous writers, along with M. Gorky, L. Andreev and Kuprin. Being a symbolist, he did not fly away into space, but wrote extremely naked and realistic:

Nothing is visible in the field.

Someone calls: "Help!"

What I can?

I myself am poor and small,

I'm dead tired myself

How can I help?

The day is only good in the evening,

Life is clearer the closer to death.

Believe the wise law -

The day is only good in the evening.

In the morning despondency and lies

And swarming devils.

The day is only good in the evening,

Life is clearer the closer to death.

Despite the rejection on the part of Vl. Solovyov of Bryusov's activities, it was already impossible to stop the process. Symbolism, as an independent trend that was gaining popularity, firmly captured the minds of poets.

The highest flowering of Russian symbolism falls on the 1900s, when Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Annensky, Voloshin, and others came to literature. They are called the Young Symbolists or New Wave Symbolists. They did not accept decadence in the form proposed by the older symbolists. They defended the idea of ​​creativity as a service to a higher principle. For them, symbolism was a way of thinking, a way of life. Hence "and the cult of the creative personality propagated by them, and the inevitable aestheticism, and" art for art's sake ", which only "initiated" people can comprehend.

The greatest figure among the symbolist poets of that time is undoubtedly Alexander Blok. Soviet literary criticism, as best it could, separated Blok from symbolism, this trend was unacceptable for the Soviet government, which imposed its own political principles in creativity. But time puts everything in its place. Blok was a symbolist always, throughout his short life, from youthful poems:

Secretly splashing in me.

Thoughts false and minute

I will not give up even in a dream.

I'm waiting for a wave - a passing wave

To the radiant depth...

and to the poem "The Twelve".

“Block created intuitively ¸ and the very form of his poems, not made musical, as in Balmont’s, but naturally musical, spoke of the fact that the rhythm seems to control the poet, and he thoughtlessly and trustingly surrenders to this rhythm. A brilliant lyric poet, at the same time, as I have already mentioned, he turned out to be one of the most prophetic poets of his critical era. Blok felt both the "underground rustle of history" and "a new gust of world wind." The tragic feeling of life was inherent in Blok all his life: “The whole modern life of people is a cold horror ... horror irreparable for a long time,” he wrote in one of his letters. But the prophets are wrong. "One of the chief delusions of the poet is the worship of the Beautiful Lady." For this role, the poet chose a completely ordinary, carnal and sensual girl, to whom he devoted about 700 poems! She was “bright”, “mysterious”, “radiant”, etc. for him. But at the same time she needed the usual family life and those relationships that Blok could not give her. The first collection of the poet "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" was published in 1904. and becomes one of the main works of Russian symbolists and a masterpiece of love lyrics.

I anticipate you. Years pass by

All in the guise of one I foresee You.

The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,

And silently waiting - yearning and loving ...

The teaching of the senior mentor Vl. Solovyov about Eternal Femininity completely owns the poet. But then the theme of the city, St. Petersburg, its inhabitants, Russia enters the poems ... Social upheavals, turning points in history are constantly reflected in Blok's work:

My Rus', my life, shall we toil together?

Tsar, yes Siberia, yes Yermak, yes prison!

Oh, is it not time to part, to repent ...

To a free heart, what is your darkness for? ..

But Blok did not think of himself outside his homeland, outside the ways of his Russia:

Oh my Rus'! 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.

Blok is gradually turning from a young dreamy boy, in love and yearning, into a “gloomy wanderer”, into a “sad” person who has parted with his dream and is crushed by hopeless dull reality. He writes a cycle under the characteristic title "A Terrible World" (1909 - 1916):

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.

The revolution broke Blok as a poet. He foresaw shocks, but these shocks destroyed him. The block remained in the country. But his attempts to adapt to a new life ended in nothing, he died of "bottomless longing" (M. Gorky), from a lack of fresh air, which the new government deprived him of in 1921. Our contemporary Kornilov deduced the following: “Retribution. Russia, Gloom and Blok. The life and death of the great poet fully reflected the tragedy of the entire Russian people of that time, the time of upheavals and revolutions. Just as they reflected the unprecedented rise, flourishing of Russian culture, poetry at the beginning of the 20th century and its fall, its death with the advent of a new government, with the destruction of Russia as a state in 1917. It was the heyday of the "Silver Age" and its death.

Among the younger symbolists, in addition to Blok, the name of A. Bely (Bugaev) stands out. His poems, like Blok's work, were visionary. He, like Blok, lived in anticipation of shocks. Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Schopenhauer, and Vl. Solovyov ... Fluctuations from side to side - characteristic poet. The art he created was phantasmagoric. He liked to push the mystical and everyday, often combining them.

I can only smell Andrey Bely

I'm afraid of Andrey Bely...

I don't roam with his poems

And I do not go into their depths ...

So wrote Igor Severyanin, expressing the attitude of many readers.

Biography of Andrei Bely, however, like many of his colleagues in literary workshop reflected all the upheavals of the era. From a dandy whirling in a whirlwind of symbolism, to a pathetic creature trying to adapt to the Soviet system and perished under the iron machine of Bolshevism.

Vyacheslav Ivanov was a big name of symbolism and the Silver Age in general. Many considered him, and not Bryusov, the leader and theorist of symbolism, and not without reason. It was in his apartment that the whole color of the then poetry gathered. Ivanov knew a lot, read and wrote, being considered a complex poet. Plus, religiosity was considered one of the essential features of him as a poet. After the revolution, Ivanov tries to live in his other country, but unsuccessfully, first ends up in a psychiatric hospital, then emigrates to Italy. In the very first poem written abroad, he likens "Russia to the burnt Troy, and the fugitives from Russia to the companions of Aeneas, who carried the gods of their fathers out of the flames."

But back to the currents of the river called the Silver Age. Around 1910, a new direction appeared - acmeism. Gumilyov, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Gorodetsky, Narbut were prominent representatives of acmeism. They declared the liberation of poetry from symbolist appeals to the ideal, the return to it of clarity, materiality, "joyful admiration of being" (N. Gumilyov).

I am polite with modern life,

But there's a barrier between us

Everything that makes her haughty laugh,

My only consolation.

Victory, glory, feat - pale

Words now lost

They sound in the soul like copper thunders,

Acmeists tried to combine the subject and the poetic. In fact, they did not have such an organized trend as symbolism, it was just a group of young, talented and very different poets connected by personal friendship. They began to publish their own magazine and almanac "Workshop of Poets". Mandelstam, his first collection, published in 1913. named "Stone". The name, of course, has something in common with the Tyutchev stone, which the acmeists put at the base of their building. Nevertheless, in the early poems of Mandelstam, both symbolism and acmeism coexisted, but at the same time as calmly and without conflict as a matter of course:

No, not the moon, but a light dial

It shines on me - and why am I to blame,

What faint stars I feel the milkiness?

And Batyushkov's arrogance disgusts me:

What time is it, he was asked here,

And he answered the curious: eternity!

Blok criticized acmeism by publishing the essay "Without a deity, without inspiration." However, from all he singled out Anna Akhmatova as an exception to the rule. She is to her very last days highly appreciated the role of acmeism in her own life and in the literature of that era.

Gold rusts and steel rots,

The marble crumbles. Everything is ready for death.

The strongest thing on earth is sadness.

And more durable - the royal word.

Akhmatov's poetic casting is really a regal word with sadness in half ...

So helplessly my chest went cold,

But my steps were light.

I put on my right hand

Left hand glove...

"Emotional excitement. Trembling. The subtlest eroticism is the style of the early Akhmatova.

Undoubtedly, it was in these few years before the revolution that the works of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Gumilyov and other poets really shone with all the facets of their talent. It was the heyday, the rise, the peak. After the revolution, acmeism, like all other symbolism, officially ended, was banned and hushed up by the Soviet authorities. Akhmatova, having remained in the USSR, did not publish, quietly and silently wrote on the table, falling into a kind of shackles. Gumilyov was one of the first to be shot as an enemy of the people in August 1921, at the same time, suffocating without the air of freedom, the sick Blok died.

All the poets of the "Silver Age" in one way or another encountered the machine of Bolshevism, but, perhaps, only Mandelstam was torn to shreds by this "age - wolfhound". “It is impossible to imagine a fate worse than Mandelstam's - with constant persecution, arrests, homelessness and poverty, with madness coming close, and finally with death in a camp bath, after which his corpse, having lain in a landfill, was thrown into a common pit ... "(S. Rassadin).

Petersburg! I don't want to die yet

You have my phone number...

Almost simultaneously with acmeism at the beginning of the 20th century, another trend arose - futurism. It was represented by Khlebnikov, Kamensky, Burliuk, early Mayakovsky, Severyanin, Pasternak and others. The goal of these poets was a revolution in art. They did not recognize both the old bourgeois art and symbolism with acmeism. The Futurists relied on the language of the street, lubok, advertising, folklore and posters, and on aggressive opposition. Here is how Mayakovsky's early poems "Night" sound:

Crimson and white discarded and crumpled

Handfuls of ducats were thrown into the green,

And the black palms of the runaway windows

The early Mayakovsky is a rebel, a loud lyricist, a singer of the city ... in Soviet times - he is completely different, the leader of the masses, but tied with a rope to the new government, trying to become its poetic leader, but in the end becoming one of many, an official, a hysterics, "a bandura player on the feast of the winners ”(M. Osorgin). Reproaching S. Yesenin for cowardice, Mayakovsky himself could not coexist with the totalitarianism of the Soviet regime, cope with his personal lack of freedom and shot himself in 1930.

The real recognition came to Igor Severyanin after the criticism of Leo Tolstoy in 1910, then the great moralist did not skimp on the words: shame, depravity, vulgarity! His collections are reprinted dozens of times, breaking records 1913-1918, it was his time, the time of his fame:

The sound of airplanes! Run cars!

Express whistle! The winglet of the buoys!

Someone's been kissed here! Someone was killed there!

Pineapple in champagne is the pulse of the evenings!..

Severyanin's poetry is musical and sensual, carnival, taking into account the tastes and passions of the crowd and readers. But it all ended quickly, the revolution caught him in Estonia, where he stayed. His fame faded away, he died in poverty and oblivion.

The history of domestic futurism evolved from "a difficult interaction and struggle of four main groups: cubo-futurists (Khlebnikov, Burliuk, Mayakovsky), ego-futurists (Severyanin, Ignatiev), "Mezzanine of poetry" (Shershenevich, Ivnev), "Centrifuge" ((Pasternak, Aseev) " Disputes, hostility, sharp attacks on each other's addresses did not prevent the masters of the pen from creating and creating their masterpieces.

One of those who forever entered the history of Russian poetry, who stayed with Russia in its difficult years and tasted the Soviet era in full, was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature in 1958, Boris Pasternak. A futurist did not come out of him, just as a poet engaged by the authorities did not come out.

February. Get ink and cry!

Write about February sobbing,

While the rumbling slush

In the spring it burns black ...

These are the early lines of the poet. In the future, Pasternak, according to him, refuses the romantic manner of writing, calling himself a "witness". He really witnessed the history and life of Russia.

My sister is life and today in flood

I was hurt by the spring rain about everyone,

But people in key chains are highly squeamish

And they sting politely, like snakes in oats ...

He stayed in the country, lived with it, was left alone for the time being by the authorities, even talked to Stalin on the phone, defending Mandelstam, was a member of the Writers' Union, but he was practically not published: "fool, hero, intellectual ..." - contemptuously called him D. Poor.

I do not hold. Go do good.

Go to others. Already written Werther,

And today the air smells of death:

Open a window that open the veins ...

Pasternak died in 1960, fortunately having time to write and save his best creations. He survived in the machine of the revolution, like Akhmatova, and this amazing favor of history allowed us, the descendants, to possess the precious stones of his work.

Marina Tsvetaeva stands somewhat apart from all currents - a poetess from God, "the only one of her kind in the sublunar world" (I. Brodsky). She began to write poetry early and sparkled at the age of 16. The first collections appeared, friendship with Mandelstam, Pasternak, Akhmatova ...

In the morning blue hour

It seems like a quarter past five, -

I loved you

Anna Akhmatova.

Her poems sparkle with their "silverness":

To my poems written so early

That I did not know that I am a poet,

Escaping like spray from a fountain,

Like sparks from rockets

Bursting like little devils

In the sanctuary where sleep and incense

To my poems about youth and death,

Unread verses!

Scattered in the dust in shops

Where no one took them and does not take them,

My poems are like precious wines

Your turn will come.

She did not accept the revolution. For Tsvetaeva, she appeared in the form of a general drunken orgy. Tsvetaeva expressed her attitude to the civil war in verse:

Tonight I kiss your chest

All the round warring earth.

And then - emigration, separation, but the publication of collections of poems, "the beginning of a more rigorous, organized and less intimate poetics." “Between Soviet and Western views, Tsvetaeva became a bone of contention - she was dragged from the border of the 17th year in different directions.” But without emigration, without revolution, there would be no M. Tsvetaeva, who grew out of a romantic windy girl. After 14 years in exile, where she failed to publish almost anything, where she was not accepted by the poetic elite, except for Khodasevich, Tsvetaeva returned to the USSR. It was 1939.

Every house is alien to me, every temple is empty to me,

And everything is the same, and everything is one.

Oh, Marina Ivanovna chose a difficult time for her return. It only lasted 2 years. The totalitarian system swept away the useless fragile poetess, who, moreover, did not want to compromise with the authorities. There was no permanent housing, money, the war began, evacuation, hopelessness ... Marina Tsvetaeva passed away in August 1941.

I refuse to be.

In the bedlam of nonhumans

I refuse to live

With the wolves of the squares...

The tragedy of the Russian people at the turn of the century, when Russia collapsed under the pressure of the new government, the lives of people were not worth a penny, was fully reflected in the fate and work of the poets of the Silver Age. Until recently, the rulers of thoughts and minds, they soared high and created new trends and masterpieces, suddenly they were deprived of air and freedom of flight, brought to the line beyond which either physical death or spiritual death. This time was the rise and fall, the rise and fall of the "Silver Age".

There is a reverse side of the coin: the personal destinies and creativity of poets influenced the destinies of the people, Russia. This is a debatable point, but there is no doubt that part of the blame for the upheavals that took place in Russia falls on the intelligentsia of that time, which included our poets. Academician A. Panchenko writes that "the intelligentsia paved the way for the revolution, carried away by Marxist ideas." We see confirmation from Bryusov in those years:

I don't see our reality

I don't know our age

I hate my country

I love the ideal man.

And here are Balmont's poems about Nicholas II:

Our king...

The stench of gunpowder and smoke...

Our king is blind squalor...

Many representatives of the "Silver Age" called on people to revolt, longed for it, fanned the revolutionary fire, which burned them down. But they were children of their time, and their poetry was inextricably linked with it.

The “Silver Age” ended with the revolution?!.. Yes and no. Someone stayed at home (a smaller part): Blok, Bryusov, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak ... someone went into exile (most): Bunin, Balmont, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Shmelev, Averchenko ...

"Silverness" was reflected in the works of those poets and writers who made their debut at the beginning of the century for a long time. She helped their fellow travelers and followers, such as Bulgakov, who directly wants to be called the writer of the "Silver Age", although this is not so. The same "silverness" constantly sounds in the work of our contemporary I. Brodsky, who can rightly be called the heir to A. Akhmatova, and who died only in 1996. Here are his poems written on her 100th birthday:

Page and fire, grain and millstones,

Axes point and truncated hair -

God preserves everything; especially the words

And the spade knocks on them. Smooth and deaf

Then, that life is one, they are from mortal lips

They sound more distinct than from supernatural cotton wool.

Great soul, bow across the seas

For the fact that I found them, - you and the part of the perishable,

What sleeps in his native land, thanks to you

Finding speech gift in the deaf-mute universe.

The poetry of the "Silver Age" will undoubtedly serve our talented contemporaries for a long time as a source of strength and inspiration in their creative flights. The connection between the generations of modern Russia and Russia of the "Silver Age" is very strong and evidence of this is the many poems and songs written in our time. More and more poems are being written and dedicated to, for example, Marina Tsvetaeva:

Marina ... like the rustle of breath,

Transparent shadow in the early morning,

A mountain that reaches into the sky

A dream turned into reality.

A dream is like a window into parallelism

Attack on everything that has become boring

The dream is boundless like the sea

How grief, Marina, how grief.

How strange that we are so alike

Perhaps everything is false and yet,

Many thanks, Marina,

For everything you gave me.

(Sergey Syrtsov, Yekaterinburg)

More and more new songs appear on the verses of Severyanin, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva ... These are, for example, the well-known "The candle burned on the table ...", songs from the films of E. Ryazanov and others. Of the latter, I personally really like the music and songs of Irina Bogushevskaya, embodied in the collection "Brazilian Cruiser" (after the title of I. Severyanin's poem). As well as the collection of Alexander Novikov "Pineapples in Champagne", written to the verses of Khodasevich, Severyanin, S. Cherny, N. Gumilyov and others.

The poetry of the beginning of the 20th century now, at the beginning of the 21st century, in our turbulent times, when a new national history is being written, filled with crises, ups and downs of the economy, the search for new ways of development, the return and comprehension of forgotten cultural values, is especially relevant and valuable.

I would like to end with the poems of Nikolai Gumilyov, which sounded from the stage of the Petrograd Theater shortly after his death in 1922, as a farewell chord to the entire “Silver Age”:

This is how we get away from death, from life.

My brother, do you hear my words?

To the unearthly, to the swan homeland

On the free sea of ​​love...

References:

poetry silver culture russian

1.B. Tuh. Guide to the Silver Age. Octopus. Moscow, 2005

Y. Bezelyansky. 99 names of the Silver Age. Eksmo. Moscow, 2008

N. Barkovskaya. Poetry of the Silver Age. Yekaterinburg, 1999

M. Sokolova. World culture and art. Academy. Moscow, 2006

A. Radugin. Culturology. Biblionics. Moscow, 2005

M. Zuev. Russian history. Bustard. Moscow, 2001

A. Panchenko. On Russian history and culture. St. Petersburg, 2000

A. Zholkovsky. Wandering dreams. From the history of Russian modernism. Soviet writer. Moscow, 1992

G. Gorchakov. About Marina Tsvetaeva through the eyes of a contemporary. Moscow, 1989

M. Tsvetaeva. Poems. Kazan, 1983

O. Mandelstam. Poetry. Perm, 1990

A. Blok. Poems and poems. Contemporary. Moscow, 1987

I. Brodsky. Landscape with flood. ABC. St. Petersburg, 2012

The Silver Age of Russian poetry does not quite deserve this name. After all, the discoveries and innovations that arose at that time can rightfully be called golden. It was at that time that cinematography appeared in Russia, art reaches its highest point of dawn, the era of modernism begins - a completely new cultural phenomenon that was not understood by many, but carried wonderful ideas. Creators appeared in literature, painting and music, whose names we know today, and we study with interest the details of their lives. Despite the fact that this time was crossed out by the war and terrible revolutionary events, this does not prevent us from talking about those wonderful things that appeared then.

It is impossible to overestimate the achievements of the Silver Age. Never before in the history of culture has there been such a rich and tragic period at the same time. The life of many writers and artists was broken by the revolution, and most of them, unfortunately, could not withstand its atrocities, both in the moral and physical sense.

It all started in the 20th century, which, according to dating, coincided with the emergence of modernism. It was then that an atmosphere of incredible creative upsurge arose. At that time in Russia, people have the opportunity to get an education that has become available not only to the wealthy segments of the population. Many famous scientists make discoveries in the field of medicine, botany, unexplored secrets of space are discovered, world travel. But still, the era of the Silver Age most revealingly manifested itself in literature. It was a period when different trends arose, writers united in groups in order to create art and discuss the ripened fruits.

Naturally, it is almost impossible to single out a specific reference point for the Silver Age. At the beginning of the 20th century, authors who were still trying to maintain the spirit of realism (Chekhov, Tolstoy) maintained their strong positions and remained at the peak of popularity. But the galaxy of young writers who tried to overthrow the canons and create a new art approached with terrifying swiftness. The traditional culture had to be displaced, the classical authors eventually left the pedestal and gave way to a new trend. One can probably say that it all started in 1987, when one of the main theorists of symbolism, Solovyov, published the book Justification of the Good. It is in it that all the basic philosophical ideas that the writers of the Silver Age took as a basis are contained. But everything was not so simple. Young writers did not just appear in the cultural environment, it was a reaction to the changes that were brewing in the country. At that moment, ideas, moral values, human orientations were changing. And such a total change in all aspects of life literally forced the creative intelligentsia to talk about it.

The stages of the Silver Age can be divided into:

• -90s 19th century - the beginning of the first Russian revolution of 1905 - 1907. – there is a turn from the reaction of the 80s. to a social upsurge, accompanied by new phenomena in culture;
• -1905 - 1907, when the most important factor the cultural process became a revolution;
• -1907 - 1917 - a time of acute ideological and artistic struggle and revision of traditional values;
• -1917 - the end of the 20s. XX century, when pre-revolutionary culture, in part, preserved the traditions of the “Silver Age. Russian emigration declares itself.

currents

The Silver Age stands out very sharply against the background of all other cultural phenomena with the presence of many currents. All of them were very different from each other, but in their essence they were related, since one came from the other. Symbolism, acmeism and futurism stood out most clearly. To understand what each of the directions carried in itself, it is worth delving into the history of their occurrence.

Symbolism

1980 - mid 19th century. What was the worldview of man at that time? He was confident in himself through knowledge. The theories of Darwin, the positivism of Auguste Comte, the so-called Eurocentrism, created solid ground under their feet. But at the same time, an era of great discoveries began. Because of this, the European man could no longer feel as confident as he used to be. New inventions and changes made him feel lost in abundance. And at this moment comes the era of denial. Decadence took possession of the minds of the cultural part of the population. Then Mallarme, Verlaine and Rimbaud became popular in France - the first poets who dared to find a different way to display the world. Russian poets will very soon learn about these most important figures and begin to follow their example.

From this moment the symbolism begins. What is the main idea behind this direction? Symbolist poets argued that with the help of a symbol, you can explore the world around you. Of course, throughout the history of the world, all writers and artists have used symbolism. But modernists looked at this phenomenon differently. A symbol for them is an indication of what is beyond human understanding. The Symbolists believed that reason and rationalism could never help in comprehending the beautiful world of art. They began to focus their attention on the mystical component of their own works.

Signs:

• The main theme of their work is religion.
• The main characters of their works are now martyrs or prophets.
• Symbolism refuses a concrete representation of reality and content. It is rather a representation of the objective world with the help of symbols.
• Symbolist poets kept their distance and did not interfere in the public and political life of society.
• Their main motto was the phrase: "We attract the elect", that is, they deliberately repelled readers so as not to be a mass cultural phenomenon.

The main symbolists include such writers as:

• Bryusov,
• Balmont,
• Merezhkovsky,
• Gippius.

The aesthetics of symbolism is the aesthetics of allusion. The author does not depict the world of things, does not express his opinion, he only writes about his associations that he has with this or that subject. That is why the Symbolists valued music so much. S. Baudelaire considered symbolism as the only possible way reflections of reality.

Acmeism

Acmeism is the most mysterious phenomenon of the Silver Age. It originates in 1911. But some researchers and philologists sometimes claim that there was no acmeism at all and that it is a kind of continuation of symbolism. But there are still differences in these directions. Acmeism became a new, more recent trend and appeared at a time when symbolism began to outlive itself and a split was brewing in its midst. Young poets, who initially wanted to classify themselves as symbolists, were disappointed by this event and decided to create a new grouping. In 1911, Gumilyov organized the "Poets Workshop" when he felt that he had enough experience and strength to teach others. Gorodetsky joins him. Together, they want to attach to themselves as many "motley" poets as possible. As a result, this happened: Khlebnikov, Klyuev and Burliuk visited the “Workshop”, such writers as Mandelstam and Akhmatova came out from under the wing of Gumilyov. Young poets needed a professional environment, and they got it when they joined the "Tsekha" community.

Acmeism is a beautiful word that translates as "top" or "point". What are the main differences between symbolism and acmeism?

• First of all, it consists in the fact that the works of acmeist poets were simpler and did not carry such a deep sacred meaning as those of the symbolists. The theme of religion was not so intrusive, the theme of mysticism also faded into the background. More precisely, the acmeists wrote about the earthly, but they suggested not to forget that the unreal side also exists.
• If symbolism carried the idea of ​​​​an incomprehensible mystery, then acmeism is more of a riddle that you should think about, and you will definitely find the answer.

But the acmeists were in a hurry, and the movement did not last as long as its participants wanted. Already in the first years, a manifesto of acmeism was written, which, for all its richness, did not particularly correspond to reality. The work of the poets of the "Workshop" did not always carry all the ideas of the manifesto, and critics were very unhappy with this fact. And in 1914 the war began, and acmeism was soon forgotten, without having time to blossom.

Futurism

Futurism was not an integral aesthetic school and included various trends: cubo-futurism, ego-futurism, poetry mezzanine, etc. Its name comes from the English word "future", which means "future". David Davidovich Burliuk - one of the main representatives, the "father of futurism", as he liked to call himself, hated borrowing from the language and called the futurists "budetlyans".

Signs and features:

• Futurists, unlike other trends, focused on different types of culture. The poet has formed new role, he simultaneously became a destroyer and a creator.
• Futurism, as an avant-garde phenomenon, sought to shock the public. Marcel Duchamp, who brought a urinal to the exhibition and called it his own creation, depicting his signature on it, was the first to make such a scandalous attack on the creative intelligentsia.
• Some philologists argue that acmeism and futurism are not separate movements, but only a reaction to what representatives of symbolism did in their time. Indeed, in the poems of many symbolists, for example, in Blok or Balmont, one can find lines that sound very avant-garde.
• If the Symbolists considered music to be the main art, then the Futurists, first of all, were guided by painting. No wonder many of the poets were originally artists, for example, D. Burliuk and his brother, Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov. After all, the art of futurism is the art of depiction, the words were depicted on posters or propaganda sheets so that the public could see and remember the main message of the poets.
• The Futurists proposed to finally forget traditional art. "Throw Pushkin off the ship of modernity" is their main motto. Marinetti also called for "daily spitting on the altar of art."
• Futurists paid more attention not to symbolism, but specifically to the word. They tried to modify it, sometimes not in the most understandable and aesthetic way, in order to offend the reader. They were interested historical basis words, its phonetics. This was necessary in order for the words to literally “stick out” from the text.

The origins of Futurism were greatly influenced by the activities of the Italian Futurists, in particular by the manifesto of Filippo Tomaso Marinetti, which was written in 1910.

In 1910, a group of the Burliukov brothers, Velimir Khlebnikov and the poetess Elena Guro gathered, who, unfortunately, lived a very long time. short life, but showed great promise as a creator. They appoint the house of David Burliuk as a place for creativity and create a collection of "Judges' Garden". They printed it on the cheapest paper (wallpaper) and came to the famous "Wednesdays" to V. Ivanov. The whole evening they sat rather quietly, but they left earlier, after stuffing the same collections into the pockets of other people's coats. It is from this unusual incident, in fact, Russian futurism began.

In 1912, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" was created, which shocked readers. Half of this collection consisted of poems by V. Khlebnikov, whose work was greatly appreciated by the futurists.

Futurists called for the creation of new forms in art. The main motives of their work were:

• exaltation of one's own "I",
• fanatical worship of war and destruction,
• contempt for the bourgeoisie and weak human effeminacy.

It was important for them to attract as much attention as possible to themselves, and for this the futurists were ready for anything. They dressed in strange clothes, painted symbols on their faces, hung posters and walked around the city like that, chanting their own works. People reacted differently, someone looked admiringly, surprised at the courage of the aliens, and someone could pounce with their fists.

Imagism

Some features of this trend are very similar to futurism. The term first appeared among the English poets T. Eliot, W. Lewis, T. Hume, E. Pound and R. Aldington. They decided that poetry needed more imagery (“image” in English means “image”). They sought to create a new poetic language in which there is no place for clichéd phrases. Russian poets first learned about Imagism from Zinaida Vengerova, at that time one of the most famous literary critics. In 1915, her article "The English Futurists" was published, and then the young poets thought that they could borrow the name from the British, but at the same time create their own trend. Then the former futurist Vladimir Shershnevich in 1916 wrote the "Green Book", in which he first uses the term "Imagism" and states that the image should stand above the content of the work.

Then, in 1919, the "Declaration" of the Imagist Order was published in the Sirena magazine. It indicated the basic rules and philosophical concepts of this movement.

Imagism, like the Surrealist movement in France, was the most organized movement in existence. Its participants often held literary evenings and meetings, published a large number of collections. They published their own magazine, which was called "Hotel for travelers in the beautiful." But, despite such solidarity, the Imagist poets had completely different views on creativity. For example, the poetry of Anatoly Mariengof or Vladimir Shernevich was characterized by decadent moods, personal feelings, and pessimism. And at the same time, Sergei Yesenin was in their circle, for whom the theme of the homeland becomes a key one in his work. In part, it was the image of a simpleton peasant boy, which he himself invented in order to become more popular. After the revolution, Yesenin will completely abandon him, but the very fact of how heterogeneous the poets of this trend were, and how they approached the creation of their works, is important here.

It was this difference that eventually led to the split of Imagism into two different groups, and later the movement broke up altogether. In their circle at that time, various kinds of polemics and disputes began to arise more often. The poets contradicted each other, expressing their thoughts, and could not find a compromise that would smooth out the conflict.

egofuturism

A kind of futuristic current. Its name carries the main idea ("Egofuturism" is translated as "I am the future"). Its history began in 1911, but this trend did not last long. Igor Severyanin became the poet who decided to independently come up with his own trend and embody his idea with the help of creativity. In St. Petersburg, he opens the "Ego" circle, from which ego-futurism began. In his collection Prologue. Egofuturism. Poetry grandos. Apotheotic notebook of the third volume” the name of the movement was heard for the first time.

Severyanin himself did not draw up any manifestos and did not write a creative program for his own movement, he wrote about him like this:

Unlike the Marinetti school, I added to this word [futurism] the prefix "ego" and in brackets "universal" ... The slogans of my ego-futurism were: 1. The soul is the only truth. 2. Self-affirmation of personality. 3. Searching for the new without rejecting the old. 4. Meaningful neologisms. 5. Bold images, epithets, assonances and dissonances. 6. The fight against "stereotypes" and "screensavers". 7. Variety of meters.

In 1912, in the same St. Petersburg, the "Academy of Egopoetry" was created, to which the young and completely inexperienced G. Ivanov, Grail-Arelsky (S. Petrov) and K. Olympov joined. The leader was still Severyanin. Actually, of all the poets named above, he became the only one whose work is still not forgotten and is actively studied by philologists.

When the very young Ivan Ignatiev joined the current of egofuturism, the “Intuitive Association of Egofuturists” was created, which included P. Shirokov, V. Gnedov and D. Kryuchkov. This is how they characterized the movement of egofuturism in their manifesto: "The incessant striving of every Egoist to achieve the possibilities of the Future in the Present through the development of egoism."

Many works of ego-futurists served not for reading, but for exclusively visual perception of the text, about which the authors themselves warned in notes to poems.

Representatives

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

A poetess, translator and literary critic, her early work is usually attributed to the current of acmeism. She was one of Gumilyov's students, whom she later married. In 1966 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize. The main tragedy of her life, of course, was the revolution. The repressions took away the dearest people from her: her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, who was shot in 1921, after their divorce, the son of Lev Gumilyov, who spent more than 10 years in prison, and, finally, the third husband, Nikolai Punin, who was arrested three times, and who died in the camp in 1953. Akhmatova put all the pain of these terrible losses into the poem "Requiem", which became the most significant work in her work.

The main motives of her poems are connected with love, which manifests itself in everything. Love for the motherland, for the family. Surprisingly, despite the temptation to join the emigration, Akhmatova decides to stay in the outraged country. To save her. And many contemporaries recall that the light in the windows of her house in Petrograd inspired hope for the best in their souls.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886-1921)

Founder of the school of acmeism, prose writer, translator and literary critic. Gumilyov has always been distinguished by his fearlessness. He was not ashamed to show that he was not good at something, and this always led him to victory, even in the most hopeless situations. Very often, his figure looked rather comical, but this had a positive effect on his work. The reader could always put himself in his place and feel a certain similarity. Poetic art for Gumilyov is, first of all, a craft. He sang in his work of artists and poets who worked hard to develop their skills, because they did not believe in the triumph of a born genius. His poems are often autobiographical.

But there is a period of absolutely new poetics, when Gumilyov finds his own special style. The poem "The Lost Tram" is an emblem reminiscent of the work of C. Baudelaire. Everything earthly in the space of the poem becomes metaphysical. During this period, Gumilyov defeats himself. During the revolution, while in London, he nevertheless decides to return to Russia and, unfortunately, this decision becomes fatal for his life.

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

Tsvetaeva really did not like the use of feminitives in her address, therefore, let's say about her this way: a poet of the Silver Age, a prose writer, a translator. She was the author who cannot be attributed to a specific course of the Silver Age. She was born into a prosperous family, and childhood was the happiest period in her life. But parting with a carefree youth becomes a real tragedy. And we can notice the echoes of these experiences in all the mature poems of Tsvetaeva. Her 1910 collection, The Red-Bound Book, just describes all those beautiful, inspiring impressions of a little girl. She writes with love about children's books, music, going to the skating rink.

In life, Tsvetaeva could be called a maximalist. She always went all the way to the end. In love, she gave all of herself to the person for whom she had feelings. And then I hated it just as much. When Marina Ivanovna realized that childhood time was gone forever, she was disappointed. With the help of the main sign of her poems - a dash, she seemed to oppose two worlds. In her late poetry there is an extreme despair, God no longer exists for her, and the words about the world have too cruel a connotation.

Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky (1884-1967)

Russian poet, prose writer, playwright, critic, publicist, artist. He began to engage in creativity after rapprochement with A.A. Block. In his first experiments, he was guided by him and Andrei Bely. But, on the other hand, the young poet became close to the ordinary peasant people during his trip to the Pskov province. There he hears many songs, jokes, epics and absorbs folklore, which later will be fully reflected in his work. He is enthusiastically received in the "tower" of Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Gorodetsky for some time becomes the main guest on the famous "Wednesdays".

But later the poet began to pay too much attention to religion, and this caused a negative reaction from the symbolists. In 1911, Gorodetsky broke off relations with them and, having enlisted the support of Gumilyov, became one of the organizers of the "Workshop of Poets". In his poems, Gorodetsky called for the development of the ability to contemplate, but he tried to show this idea without excessive philosophy. Throughout his life, he did not stop working and improving his poetic language.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930)

One of the most significant poets of the 20th century, who distinguished himself in the field of cinema, drama, screenwriting. He was also an artist and magazine editor. He was a representative of futurism. Mayakovsky was a rather complex figure. His works were forcibly forced to read, and therefore the intelligentsia developed a strong dislike for everything that the poet did.

He was born in a rural area, in Georgia, and this fact radically influenced his further fate. He put more effort into getting noticed, and this was reflected in his work and in the way he knew how to present it. After imprisonment, Mayakovsky departs from political life and gives his all to art. Enters the Art Academy, where he meets D. Burliuk, and this fateful meeting forever determined the nature of his occupation. Mayakovsky was a poet-orator who tried to convey new truths to the public. Not everyone understood his work, but he did not stop confessing his love to the reader and turning his ideas to him.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1908-1916)

Russian poet, prose writer and translator, essayist, critic, literary critic. He belonged to the current of acmeism. Mandelstam becomes a mature writer quite early. But still, researchers are more interested in the later period of his work. It is surprising that he was not perceived as a poet for a long time, his works seemed to many empty imitations. But, having joined the "Workshop of Poets", he finally finds like-minded people.

Often Mandelstam relies on references to other works of classical poetry. Moreover, he does it quite subtly so that only a well-read and intelligent person can understand the true meaning. His poems seem a little dull to readers, since he did not like excessive exaltation. Reflections on God and the eternal is a frequent motif of his works, which is closely intertwined with the motif of loneliness. The author said about the process of creativity: "The poetic word is a bundle, and the meaning sticks out of it in different directions." It is these meanings that we can consider in each line of his poems.

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895-1925)

Russian poet, representative of the new peasant poetry and lyrics, and in a later period of creativity - Imagism. A poet who knew how to frame his work and surround his own figure with a veil of secrecy. That is why literary critics are still arguing about his personality. But one fact that all the poet's contemporaries spoke about is absolutely clear - he was an extraordinary person and creator. His early work is striking in its poetic maturity. But behind this lies a certain deception, when Yesenin collected the last collection of his poems, he realized that it was necessary to include in it the works that he wrote, being an experienced poet. It turns out that he himself substituted the necessary verses in his biography.

The appearance of Yesenin in the poetic circle became a real holiday, as if they were waiting for him. Therefore, he created for himself the image of a simple guy who can talk about life in the village. He was specifically interested in folklore in order to write folk poems. But by 1917 he was tired of this image and scandalously refuses it. Having entered the circle of imagists, he begins to play the role of a Moscow hooligan, and the motives of his work change dramatically.

Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922)

Russian poet and prose writer, one of the largest figures in the Russian avant-garde. He was one of the founders of Russian futurism; reformer of poetic language, experimenter in the field of word creation and zaumi, "chairman of the globe." The most interesting poet of his era. He was the main figure of Cubo-Futurism.

Despite the external image of a calm and quiet person, he was very ambitious. He tried to change the world with his poetry. Khlebnikov really wanted people to stop seeing boundaries. “Out of space and out of time” is the main motto of his life. He was trying to create a language that could bring us all together. Each of his works was an attempt to create such a language. Also, in his work, one can trace some kind of mathematics, apparently, this was influenced by the fact that he studied at the Faculty of Mathematics at Kazan University. Despite the external complexity of his poems, each one can be read between the lines and understand what exactly the poet wanted to say. Difficulties in his works are always present intentionally, so that the reader each time solves a kind of riddle while reading it.

Anatoly Borisovich Mariengof (1897-1962)

Russian poet-imaginist, art theorist, prose writer and playwright, memoirist. He wrote poetry from childhood, as he was a well-read child and was fond of Russian classics. After the appearance of the symbolists on the literary arena, he falls in love with the work of A.A. Blok. In his early works, Mariengof tried to imitate him.

But his real and full-fledged literary career began from the moment he met Yesenin. They were very friendly, their biographies literally intertwined with each other, they rented an apartment together, created together, and shared all their sorrows. After meeting Shershnevich and Ivnev, they decide to create a group of Imagists in 1919. It was a period of unprecedented creative activity in the life of Mariengof. The publication of the novels "Cynics" and "The Shaved Man" was accompanied by high-profile scandals that caused the writer a lot of inconvenience. His personality was persecuted in the USSR, his works were banned for a long time and were read only abroad. The novel "Cynics" aroused great interest among Brodsky, who wrote that this book is the best work of Russian literature.

Igor Severyanin (1887-1941)

Real name - Igor Vasilyevich Lotarev. Russian poet, representative of egofuturism. Charming and bright, even V.V. himself envied his popularity. Mayakovsky.

He was made famous by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or, more precisely, his review of the poem, which begins with the words "Put the corkscrew into the elasticity of the cork ...". That morning at Yasnaya Polyana, everyday readings aloud were held, and when Severyanin's poem was read, those present noticeably perked up and began to praise the young poet. Tolstoy was amazed at this reaction and said the words that were later replicated in all the newspapers: "Around the gallows, murders, funerals, and they have a corkscrew in a traffic jam." After that, the personality and work of Severyanin were on everyone's lips. But it was hard for him to find allies in the literary environment, he rushed between different groups and currents, and as a result decided to create his own - egofuturism. Then he proclaims the greatness of his own "I" in his work and speaks of himself as a poet who changed the course of Russian literary history.

Sofia Yakovlevna Parnok (1885-1933)

Russian translator and poet. Many called her Russian Sappho, because she was the first to speak freely about same-sex love in the Soviet space. In every line of her poems, one feels a great and reverent love for women. She was not shy about talking about her inclinations, which manifested themselves quite early. In 1914, at the evening at Adelaide Gertsyk, the poetess met Marina Tsvetaeva, and at that moment both women realized that they were in love with each other. Since then, all further work of Parnok was filled with love for Tsvetaeva. Each meeting or joint trip gave both a surge of inspiration, they wrote poems to each other in which they talked about their feelings.

Unfortunately, they were visited by thoughts that sooner or later they would have to leave. Their relationship ended with the last bitter messages in verse after one major quarrel. Despite relationships with other women, Sofia Parnok believed that it was Tsvetaeva who left a deep mark on her life and work.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

The poem ends with a couplet, which expresses the tragic inconsistency of Blok's hero:

With darkness - one -

At the thoughtful door

... boldly arouse suspicion,

How clear is the horizon!

Let's fly again!

The collection ends with the poem “The distance is blind, the days are without anger ...” This poem, in its tone, resembles a poem from the “Prayers” cycle, placed by Blok at the end of the first section of “Immobility” - “Watchmen at the entrance to the tower ...” It picks up the last lines of the “Prayer”:

And again, in a thoughtless shift

Let's fly into the sky.

What are moments of powerlessness?

Not having overcome deadly dreams!

The section "Crossroads" opens with a meaningful and frankly bold poem "Deception", far from the radiance of the first part of the collection. Instead of pink dawns, factory fumes, a red color catches the eye: a red dwarf, a red cap, a red sun: “Red slingshots are put along the streets. The soldiers are slapping…”

But I'm afraid: you will change your appearance.

The following poems increasingly develop the theme of deceit, the theme of the city, in which vice and death are concentrated. The red tones intensify even more: the bloody sun, the red limits of the city, the red janitor, the drunken scarlet water. In the poem "The city in the red limits ...", is dedicated to to the best friend To Yevgeny Ivanov, who also experienced a painful love-hate for the city of Peter, Blok exaggerates to such an extent that we no longer have a city in front of us, but a “gray-stone body” with a “dead face”, a bell with a “bloody tongue”.

The right to live

But the future inevitable path of the lyrical hero:

I hear neither sighs nor speeches,

The love story of the Knight and the Beautiful Lady is dramatic from beginning to end. At the heart of the plot movement of the first book is the initial and ever-increasing drama, which lies in the very nature of the characters, and above all in the character of the Beautiful Lady. Her appearance is changeable, she is incomprehensible. This motive was identified immediately, in the second poem of the collection “I Anticipate You…”:

Essays on Literature: What attracted me to the poetry of the Silver Age

Meet a new whirlwind of visions

Vladimir Solovyov had a great influence on the poet and his work. The idea of ​​duality, the feminine principle did not leave Blok.

POETRY OF THE “SILVER AGE”

MAIN CURRENTS AND VIEWS ON THEM.

“The Silver Age of “Russian poetry” - this name has become stable to refer to Russian poetry late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century. It was given by analogy with the golden age - so they called early XIX century, Pushkin's time. There is an extensive literature about Russian poetry of the “Silver Age” - both domestic and foreign researchers wrote a lot about it, including such prominent scientists as V.M. Zhirmunsky, V. Orlov, L.K. Dolgopolov, continue to write to M.L. Gasparov, R.D. Timenchik, N.A. Bogomolov and many others. Numerous memoirs have been published about this era - for example, V. Mayakovsky (“On the Parnassus of the Silver Age”), and Odoevtseva (“On the Banks of the Neva”), three-volume memoirs by A. Bely; The book “Memories of the Silver Age” was published.

Russian poetry of the "Silver Age" was created in the atmosphere of a general cultural upsurge as a significant part of it. It is characteristic that at the same time such brightest talents as A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, A. Bely and V. Khodasevich could create in one and the same country. This list goes on and on. In the history of world literature, this phenomenon was unique.

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

Symbolism was a heterogeneous phenomenon, uniting in its ranks poets who held the most contradictory views. Some of the symbolists, such as N.Minsky, D.Merezhkovsky, began their creative way as representatives of civil poetry, and then began to focus on the ideas of "god-building" and "religious community". The “senior symbolists” sharply denied the surrounding reality, they said “no” to the world:

I don't see our reality

I don't know our age...

(V.Ya.Bryusov)

Earthly life is only a “dream”, a “shadow” Reality is opposed to the world of dreams and creativity - a world where a person gains complete freedom:

There is only one eternal commandment - to live.

In beauty, in beauty no matter what.

(D. Merezhkovsky)

Real life is portrayed as ugly, evil, boring and meaningless. Symbolists paid special attention to artistic innovation - the transformation of the meanings of a poetic word, the development of rhythm, rhyme, etc. the “senior symbolists” do not yet create a system of symbols; They are impressionists who strive to convey the subtlest shades of moods and impressions. The word as such lost its value for the symbolists. It became valuable only as a sound, a musical note, as a link in the overall melodic construction of a poem.

The new period in the history of Russian symbolism (1901-1904) coincided with the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge in Russia. Pessimistic moods inspired by the era of reaction in the 1980s - early 1890s. and the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, give way to premonitions of “unheard of changes”. “Junior symbolists” enter the literary arena - followers of the idealist philosopher and poet Vl. Solovyov, who imagined that the old world was on the verge of complete destruction, that divine Beauty (Eternal Femininity, the Soul of the World) entered the world, which should “save the world” , connecting the heavenly (divine) beginning of life with the earthly, material, to create the “kingdom of God on earth”:

Know this: Eternal Femininity is now

He comes to earth in an incorruptible body.

In the light of the unfading new goddess

The sky merged with the abyss of water.

(Vl. Soloviev)

Love is especially attractive - eroticism in all its manifestations, starting with purely earthly voluptuousness and ending with romantic longing for the Beautiful Lady, the Lady, the Eternal Femininity, the Stranger ... Eroticism is inevitably intertwined with mystical experiences. Symbolist poets also love the landscape, but not as such, but again as a means, as a means to reveal their mood. Therefore, so often in their poems is Russian, languidly sad autumn, when there is no sun, and if there is, then with sad faded rays, the falling leaves rustle softly, everything is shrouded in a haze of a slightly waving mist. The favorite motif of the “junior symbolists” is the city. A city is a living creature with a special form, a special character, often it is a “Vampire city”, “Octopus”, a satanic obsession, a place of madness, horror; the city is a symbol of soullessness and vice. (Blok, Sologub, Bely, S. Solovyov, to a large extent Bryusov).

The years of the first Russian revolution (1905-1907) again significantly change the face of Russian symbolism. Most poets respond to revolutionary events. Blok creates images of the people of the new, popular world. V.Ya. Bryusov writes the famous poem "The Coming Huns", where he glorifies the inevitable end of the old world, to which, however, he counts himself and all the people of the old, dying culture. During the years of the revolution, F.K. Sologub creates a book of poems “Motherland” (1906), K.D. Balmont - a collection of "Songs of the Avenger" (1907), published in Paris and banned in Russia, etc.

More importantly, the years of the revolution rebuilt the symbolic artistic worldview. If earlier Beauty was understood as harmony, now it is associated with the chaos of struggle, with the elements of the people. Individualism is replaced by the search for a new personality, in which the flowering of the “I” is connected with the life of the people. The symbolism is also changing: previously associated mainly with the Christian, ancient, medieval and romantic tradition, now it turns to the heritage of the ancient “national” myth (V.I. Ivanov), to Russian folklore and Slavic mythology (A. Blok, M.M. .Gorodetsky) The mood of the symbol also becomes different. An increasingly important role in it is played by its earthly meanings: social, political, historical.

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, symbolism, as a school, was in decline. Separate works of symbolist poets appear, but his influence, as a school, has been lost. Everything young, viable, vigorous is already outside of him. Symbolism no longer gives new names.

Symbolism has outlived itself, and this outliving has gone in two directions. On the one hand, the demand for obligatory "mysticism", "disclosure of secrets", "comprehension" of the infinite eventually led to the loss of the authenticity of poetry; The “religious and mystical pathos” of the luminaries of symbolism turned out to be replaced by a kind of mystical stencil, template. On the other hand, the passion for the “musical basis” of the verse led to the creation of poetry, devoid of any logical meaning, in which the word is reduced to the role of not a musical sound, but a tin, ringing trinket.

Accordingly, the reaction against symbolism, and subsequently the struggle against it, followed the same two main lines.

On the one hand, the “acmeists” opposed the ideology of symbolism. On the other hand, in defense of the word as such, the “futurists” who were also hostile to symbolism in ideology came forward.

I will find another soul

Everything that teased, catching.

I bless the golden

The road to the sun from the worm.

(N.S. Gumilyov)

And the cuckoo clock of the night is happy

Everyone can hear their clear conversation.

I look through the crack: horse thieves

They light a fire under the hill.

(A.A. Akhmatova)

But I love casinos on the dunes

Wide view through a foggy window

And a thin beam on a crumpled tablecloth.

(O.E. Mandelstam)

These three poets, as well as S.M. Gorodetsky, M.A. Zenkevich, V.I. Naburt, in the same year called themselves acmeists (from the Greek akme - the highest degree of something, blooming time). Acceptance of the earthly world in its visible concreteness, a sharp look at the details of being, a lively and direct feeling of nature, culture, the universe and the material world, the idea of ​​the equality of all things - that was what united all six at that time. Almost all of them had previously been trained by the masters of symbolism, but at some point they decided to reject the aspiration towards “other worlds” characteristic of the symbolists and disregard for earthly, objective reality.

A distinctive feature of the poetry of acmeism is its material reality, objectivity. Acmeism loved things with the same passionate, selfless love, as symbolism loved "correspondences", mysticism, mystery. For him, everything in life was clear. To a large extent, he was the same aestheticism as symbolism, and in this respect he undoubtedly is in succession with him, but the aestheticism of acmeism is of a different order than the aestheticism of symbolism.

Acmeists liked to derive their genealogy from the Symbolist Jn. Annensky, and in this they are undoubtedly right. In. Annensky stood apart among the Symbolists. Having paid tribute to early decadentism and its moods, he almost did not reflect the ideology of late Moscow symbolism in his work, and while Balmont, and after him many other symbolist poets, got lost in “verbal balancing act”, - in the apt expression of A. Bely, drowned in the stream of formlessness and the “spirit of music” that flooded symbolic poetry, he found the strength in himself to follow a different path. The poetry of In. Annensky marked a revolution from the spirit of music and aesthetic mysticism to simplicity, conciseness and clarity of verse, to the earthly reality of themes and some earthly amistic heaviness of mood.

The clarity and simplicity of the construction of In. Annensky's verse was well mastered by the acmeists. Their verse acquired clarity of outline, logical force and material weight. Acmeism was a sharp and definite turn of Russian poetry of the twentieth century towards classicism. But it is only by turning, and not by completion - this must be kept in mind all the time, since acmeism still bore in itself many features of romantic symbolism that had not yet been completely outlived.

In general, the poetry of the acmeists was a model in most cases inferior to symbolism, but still of very high skill. This craftsmanship, in contrast to the fiery and expressiveness of the best achievements of symbolism, carried a touch of some kind of self-contained, refined aristocracy, most often (with the exception of the poetry of Akhmatova, Narbut and Gorodetsky) cold, calm and impassive.

Among the acmeists, the cult of Theophile Gauthier was especially developed, and his poem “Art”, beginning with the words “Art is the more beautiful, the more impassive the material taken”, sounded like a kind of poetic program for the older generation of the “Poets' Workshop”.

Just like symbolism, acmeism has absorbed many diverse influences and various groupings have been outlined in its environment.

It united all acmeists into one, their love for the objective, real world - not for life and its manifestations, but for objects, for things. This love manifested itself in different acmeists in different ways.

First of all, we see poets among the acmeists, whose attitude to the objects around them and admiring them bears the stamp of the same romanticism. This romanticism, however, is not mystical, but objective, and this is its fundamental difference from symbolism. Such is Gumilyov's exotic position with Africa, the Niger, the Suez Canal, marble grottoes, giraffes and elephants, Persian miniatures and the Parthenon bathed in the rays of the setting sun... Gumilyov is in love with these exotic objects of the surrounding world, pure in an earthly way, but this love is thoroughly romantic. Objectivity took the place of the mysticism of symbolism in his work. It is characteristic that in the last period of his work, in such things as The Lost Tram, The Drunken Dervish, The Sixth Sense, he again becomes close to symbolism.

There is something in the external fate of Russian futurism that is reminiscent of the fate of Russian symbolism. The same furious non-recognition at the first steps, the noise at birth (with the futurists, only much stronger, turning into a scandal). Rapid recognition of the advanced layers of literary criticism followed this, a triumph, great hopes. Sudden breakdown and fall into the abyss at the moment when it seemed unprecedented in Russian poetry opportunities and horizons.

That futurism is a significant and deep current is beyond doubt. Also, his significant external influence (in particular Mayakovsky) on the form of proletarian poetry, in the early years of its existence, is undoubted. But it is equally certain that Futurism could not bear the burden of the tasks assigned to it and completely collapsed under the blows of the revolution. The fact that the work of several futurists - Mayakovsky, Aseev and Tretyakov - in last years imbued with revolutionary ideology, speaks only of the revolutionary nature of these individual poets: having become singers of the revolution, these poets lost their futuristic essence to a large extent, and futurism as a whole did not become closer to the revolution because of this, just as symbolism and acmeism did not become revolutionary because members of the RCP and Bryusov, Sergei Gorodetsky and Vladimir Narbut became singers of the revolution, or because almost every Symbolist poet wrote one or more revolutionary poems.

Basically, Russian futurism was a purely poetic movement. In this sense, he is a logical link in the chain of those currents of poetryXXcenturies, which put purely aesthetic problems at the head of their theory and poetic creativity. In futurism, the rebellious formal revolutionary element was strong, causing a storm of indignation and "shocking the bourgeois." But this "shocking" was a phenomenon of the same order as the "shocking" that the decadents evoked in their time. In the "rebelliousness" itself, in the "shocking of the bourgeois", in the scandalous cries of the futurists, there were more aesthetic emotions than revolutionary emotions.

The starting point of the technical searches of the futurists is the dynamics of modern life, its rapid pace, the desire for maximum cost savings, “aversion to a curved line, to a spiral, to a turnstile, a tendency to a straight line. Aversion to slowness, to trifles, to verbose analyzes and explanations. Love for speed, for reduction, for summary and for synthesis: “Tell me quickly in a nutshell!” Hence - the destruction of the generally accepted syntax, the introduction of "wireless imagination", that is, "absolute freedom of images or analogies expressed by liberated words, without the wires of syntax and without any "punctuation", "condensed metaphors", "telegraphic images", "movements in two , three, four and five paces”, the destruction of quality adjectives, the use of verbs in an indefinite mood, the omission of conjunctions, and so on - in a word, everything aimed at conciseness and increasing the “speed of style”.

The main aspiration of Russian "cubo-futurism" is a reaction against the "music of the verse" of symbolism in the name of the inherent value of the word, but the word is not as a weapon for expressing a certain logical thought, as was the case with classical poets and acmeists, but the word, as such, as an end in itself. In conjunction with the recognition of the absolute individualism of the poet (the Futurists attached great importance even to the poet's handwriting and published handwritten lithographic books, and with the recognition of the role of the "creator of the myth" behind the word), this aspiration gave rise to an unprecedented word creation, which ultimately led to the theory of "abstruse language". serves as a sensational poem Kruchennyh:

Hole, bul, schyl,

shelter

skoom

you with boo,

r l ez.

Word creation was the biggest achievement of Russian futurism, its central moment. In contrast to Marinetti's futurism, Russian "cubo-futurism" represented by its brightest representatives had little to do with the city and modernity. The same romantic element was very strong in him.

She had an effect in the sweet, half-childish, gentle grumbling of Elena Guro, who doesn’t fit the “terrible” word “cubo-futurist”, and in the early things of N. Aseev, and in the rollicking Volga prowess and the ringing sunshine of V. Kamensky, and the gloomy “ spring after death "Churilin, but especially strong in V. Khlebnikov. Khlebnikov is even difficult to connect with Western futurism. He himself stubbornly replaced the word "futurism" with the word "budetlyane". Like the Russian Symbolists, he (like Kamensky, Churilin and Bozhidar) absorbed the influence of previous Russian poetry, but not the mystical poetry of Tyutchev and Vl. Solovyov, and poetry "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" and the Russian epic epic. Even the events of the most immediate, immediate modernity - the war and the NEP - are reflected in Khlebnikov's work not in futuristic poems, as in "1915" Aseev, and in the romantically stylized in the old Russian spirit the wonderful "Combat" and "Oh, good fellows, merchants."

However, Russian futurism was not limited to one "word-creation". Along with the current created by Khlebnikov, there were other elements in it. More suitable for the concept of "futurism", related to Russian futurism with its Western counterpart.

Before talking about this trend, it is necessary to single out into a special group one more variety of Russian futurism - the "Ego-Futurists", who spoke in St. Petersburg somewhat earlier than the Moscow "Cubo-Futurists". I. Severyanin, V. Gnedov, I. Ignatieva K. Olimpov G. Ivnov (later an acmeist) and the future founder of "Imagism" V. Shershenevich were at the head of this trend.

"Ego-futurism" had essentially very little in common with futurism. This trend was some mixture of epigonism of the early Petersburg decadence, bringing to the limitless limits of the "song" and "musicality" of Balmont's verse (as you know, Severyanin did not recite, but sang his poems at "poetry concerts"), some kind of salon-perfumery eroticism , turning into slight cynicism, and the assertion of extreme solipsism - extreme egocentrism (“Egoism is individualization, awareness, admiration and praise of the “I” ... “Ego-futurism is the unceasing striving of every egoist to achieve the future in the present”). This was combined with the glorification borrowed from Marinetti modern city, electricity, railways, airplanes, factories, machines (from Severyanin and especially from Shershenevich). Thus, in “ego-futurism, there was everything: both echoes of modernity, and new, albeit timid, word creation (“poetry”, “goof”, “mediocrity”, “olilien”, and so on), and successfully found new rhythms for transmission measured swaying of car springs (“Elegant Carriage” by Severyanin), and a strange for a futurist admiration for the salon poems of M. Lokhvitskaya and K. Fofanov, but most of all, love for restaurants, boudoirs of dubious growth, cafe-shantany, which became native elements for Severyanin. Apart from Igor Severyanin (soon, however, he abandoned ego-futurism), this trend did not produce a single bright poet.

Much closer to the West than Khlebnikov's futurism and Severyanin's "ego-futurism" was the bias of Russian futurism found in the work of Mayakovsky, Aseev's last period, and Sergei Tretyakov. Taking in the field of technology the free form of verse, new syntax and bold assonances instead of the strict rhymes of Khlebnikov, paying a well-known, sometimes significant tribute to word creation, this group of poets gave in their work some elements of a truly new ideology. Their work reflected the dynamics, huge scope and titanic power of the modern industrial city with its noises, noises, noises, glowing lights of factories, street bustle, restaurants, crowds of moving masses.

In recent years, Mayakovsky and some other futurists have freed themselves from hysteria and anguish. Mayakovsky writes his "orders", in which everything is vivacity, strength, calls to fight, reaching the point of aggressiveness. This mood is expressed in 1923 in the declaration of the newly organized group "Lef" ("Left Front of Art").

Not only ideologically, but also technically, all of Mayakovsky's work (with the exception of his first years), as well as the last period of the work of Aseev and Tretyakov, is already a way out of futurism, an entry on the path of a kind of neo-realism. Mayakovsky, who began under the undoubted influence of Whitman, in the last period develops completely special techniques, creating a kind of poster-hyperbolic style, restless, shouting out a short verse, sloppy, "torn lines", very successfully found to convey the rhythm and huge scope of the modern city, war, movement of millions of revolutionary masses. This is a great achievement of Mayakovsky, who has outgrown futurism, and it is quite natural that the proletarian poetry of the first years of its existence, that is, of the very period when proletarian poets fixed their attention on the motives of the revolutionary struggle, Mayakovsky's technical methods had a significant impact.

Imagism was the last notably sensational school in Russian poetry of the 20th century. This direction was created in 1919 (the first "Declaration" of Imagism is dated January 30), therefore, two years after the revolution, but in all ideology this trend did not have a revolution.

Vadim Shershenevich, a poet who began with symbolism, from poems imitating Balmont, Kuzmin and Blok, in 1912 acted as one of the leaders of ego-futurism and wrote "poets" in the spirit of Severyanin and only in the post-revolutionary years created his "Imagist" poetry.

Just like Symbolism and Futurism, Imagism originated in the West and only from there was it transplanted by Shershenevich to Russian soil. And just like Symbolism and Futurism, it differed significantly from the Imagism of Western poets.

Imagism was a reaction both against the musicality of the poetry of symbolism and against the materiality of acmeism and the word-creation of futurism. He rejected any content and ideology in poetry, putting the image at the forefront. He was proud that he "has no philosophy" and "logic of thought."

The Imagists connected their apology for the image with the speed of the pace of modern life. In their opinion, the image is the clearest, most concise, most appropriate to the age of automobiles, radiotelegraphy, and airplanes. “What is an image? the shortest distance with the highest speed. In the name of the "speed" of conveying artistic emotions, the Imagists, following the futurists, break the syntax - throw out epithets, definitions, prepositions, predicates, put verbs in an indefinite direction.

In essence, there was nothing particularly new in the techniques, as well as in their "imagery". “Imagism”, as one of the techniques of artistic creativity, was widely used not only by futurism, but also by symbolism (for example, Innokenty Annensky: “Spring does not rule yet, but the snow cup is drunk by the sun” or Mayakovsky: “A bald lantern voluptuously removed black from the street stocking"). What was new was the persistence with which the Imagists brought the image to the fore and reduced everything in poetry to it - both content and form.

Along with poets associated with certain schools, Russian poetry of the 20th century produced a significant number of poets who did not adjoin them or adjoined for a while, but did not merge with them and ultimately went their own way.

Fascination of Russian symbolism with the past -XVIIIcentury - and love for stylization was reflected in the work of M. Kuzmin, passion for the romantic 20s and 30s - in the sweet intimacy and comfort of samovars and old corners of Boris Sadovsky. The same passion for “stylization” underlies the oriental poetry of Konstantin Lipskerov, Marieta Shaginyan and in the biblical sonnets of Georgy Shengeli, in the safic stanzas of Sofia Parnok and the subtle stylized sonnets from the Pleiades cycle by Leonid Grossman.

Fascination with Slavicisms and the Old Russian song warehouse, craving for "artistic folklore" noted above as a characteristic moment of Russian symbolism, reflected in the sectarian motifs of A. Dobrolyubov and Balmont, in the popular prints of Sologub and in the ditties of V. Bryusov, in the ancient Slavic stylizations of V. Ivanov and in the entire first period of S. Gorodetsky's work, they fill the poetry of Lyubov Stolitsa, Marina Tsvetaeva and Pimen Karpov. It is just as easy to catch the echo of the poetry of the Symbolists in the hysterically expressive, nervous and sloppy, but strongly made lines of Ilya Ehrenburg, a poet who also belonged to the ranks of the Symbolists in the first period of his work.

A special place in the Russian lyrics of the twentieth century is occupied by the poetry of I. Bunin. Starting with lyric poems written under the influence of Fet, which are the only examples of a realistic depiction of the Russian village and a poor landowner's estate, in the later period of his work, Bunin became a great master of verse and created beautiful in form, classically clear, but somewhat cold poems, reminiscent of , - as he himself characterizes his work, - a sonnet carved on a snowy peak with a steel blade. V. Komarovsky, who died early, is close to Bunin in restraint, clarity and some coldness. The work of this poet, whose first speeches date back to a much later period - by 1912, bears in a certain part the features of acmeism. So it began to play a rather prominent role in the poetry of classicism, or, as it is commonly called, "Pushkinism", approximately from 1910.

Around 1910, when the bankruptcy of the Symbolist school was discovered, there was, as noted above, a reaction against Symbolism. Above, two lines were outlined along which the main forces of this reaction were directed - acmeism and futurism. However, the protest against symbolism was not limited to this. He found expression in the work of poets who did not adjoin either acmeism or futurism, but spoke out with their work in defense of the clarity, simplicity and strength of the poetic style.

Despite the conflicting views of many critics, each of these movements produced many excellent poems that will forever remain in the treasury of Russian poetry and will find their admirers among future generations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. "Anthology of Russian lyrics of the first quarter of the twentieth century."

I.S. Ezhov, E.I. Shamurin. "Amirus", 1991.

"Russian poetry of the 19th - early 20th centuries."

P. Nikolaev, A. Ovcharenko…

Publishing house "Fiction", 1987.

Encyclopedic Dictionary of a Young Literary Critic.

Publishing house "Pedagogy", 1987.

"Methodological guide to literature for applicants to universities."

I.V. Velikanova, N.E. Tropkin. Publishing house "Teacher"

Composition

The beginning of the twentieth century ... The coming whirlwind of social upheaval, it seems, must sweep away. But with the roar of weapons - the Russian-Japanese, World War I, other wars - the muses are not silent. I see, I hear, I feel the fiery hearts of poets beat, whose poems have now burst into our lives. They broke in - and are unlikely to be forgotten. The Silver Age is a time of vivid metaphors, a tireless search for the deep meaning of words, sounds, and phrases. The star, called Polynya, revealed its face to the earth - isn't it illuminating the pages of verses that have been inaccessible to us for a long time? Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak - and, of course, the great Blok - they call to us through the storms of wars and upheavals, they call us to their rich imaginative world. I admire the poetry of Boris Pasternak. I like his hearty impetuosity, kindness, spirituality, rare impressionability. Again and again I see pages in front of me, covered with his patterned and flying handwriting, as if caught by the wind. Lyrics, poems, short stories, dramatic translations, memoirs, prose, showed us a huge world of living and bright images, not always clear at once, but when reading them, they reveal what could be said just like that, with these very words. Living modernity has always been present in Pasternak's poetry - it was precisely alive, all-pervading, breathing. “And the window on the cross will squeeze the hunger of wood” - it’s hard for a superficial glance, but upon careful reading - it’s the cold of post-revolutionary winters here; a window ready to “enter” the room, “squeeze” it, and “hunger” becomes its essence, as well as the essence of those living in it. For all the originality of the poet's lyrics, readers sensitively responded even to his "ballad" lines like: "Let me in, I need to see the count", not to mention books of poems - such as "Over the Barriers", "Themes and Variations", "On Early Trains ". Reverence for the miracle of life, a sense of gratitude for it - almost main topic poems by Pasternak. He almost did not know the boundaries between animate and inanimate nature. “And you can’t cross the road beyond the tyn without trampling the universe,” the poet wrote, as if echoing Tyutchev, surrounded on all sides by the “flaming abyss”, with Fet, whose lyrics were wide open to the infinity of the universe. Rains and blizzards, winters and spring streams, the Urals and the North, the Moscow region, native to the poet, with its lilies of the valley and pines - all this entered the soul of Pasternak with a pristine purity of colors. “This is the clicking of crushed ice floes,” he writes about poetry, “the house shuddered, pouring rain” ... His world is something alive that came to life under the magic brush of the artist. “Looks, looks, sees, learns” - it was not in vain that Akhmatova described his gaze, his “understanding”, “getting used to” the world around. Questions about life and death, about art, about the self-affirmation of a person from adolescence excite Marina Tsvetaeva, whose poetry also entered my life and, I think, remained with me forever. Her poems reveal the charm of a deep and strong nature, not recognizing stereotypes, dogmas imposed by someone, extraordinary in everything, Tsvetaeva the poet is inseparable from Tsvetaeva the man. Ultimate sincerity - that's what attracts me to her poems, written "so early." Early - for our consciousness, which is not yet ready to trample on patterns. But late, very late, these lines came into the life of our country. In each - the strength of character, will, personality. And the lyrical hero, or rather, the lyrical "I" in Tsvetaeva's poems, is a strong personality, freedom-loving, endowed with the most beautiful of talents - the talent for love of life. There was no distant Yelabuga in her life, a terrible wooden beam, but it was - a passionate desire to understand, appreciate, love. Conceal everything so that people forget Like melted snow and a candle? To be in the future only a handful of dust Under the grave cross? - Don't want! - exclaims the poetess. The lyrical "I" of Tsvetaeva is a man of action, an act. A serene, calm existence is not for her. Anna Akhmatova's poems seem completely different to me. Behind her every word is that spiritual pain that the poet brings to the world, urging him to share suffering, and therefore becoming closer and dearer to every reader's heart. Akhmatova's style is that amazing simplicity that always characterizes a genuine feeling, that reticence that shocks, that laconicism that makes me peer into her lines, looking for clues to the magical harmony ringing there. Thrown. Made up word! What am I, a flower or a letter? And the eyes are already looking sternly In the darkened dressing table. The loss of a friend, a loved one - and this is expressed so succinctly that it is as if you are experiencing that lump rising to the throat that tormented the poetess at that moment. The images are light and seem to be muffled, but these are the manifestations of the true torment of the grieving soul, suppressed in themselves. At times it seemed to the poetess that she was going "to nowhere and never", that her voice would be bent and trampled. This did not happen - her poems live, her voice sounds. "Silver Age" ... Surprisingly capacious words that accurately determined the whole period of the development of Russian verse. The return of romanticism? - obviously, to some extent, and so. In general, the birth of a new generation of poets, many of whom left their homeland that rejected them, many died under the millstones civil war and Stalinist madness. But Tsvetaeva was right, exclaiming: My poems, like precious wines, - Their turn will come! And he has arrived. Many now comprehend Tsvetaeva's lines more and more deeply, discovering for themselves great truths, vigilantly, guarded for decades from prying eyes.