Stepan Petrovich Ilyev (1937 - 1994), Doctor of Philology, professor at Odessa University, the world's largest researcher of the Russian symbolist novel

A special phenomenon in world literature is the Russian symbolist novel, to the analysis of which the principles of realistic criticism are inapplicable. Leading symbolist poets V.Ya. Bryusov, F.K. Sologub, D.S. Merezhkovsky, A. Bely became the authors of novels, complex in form and content, based on the aesthetics of symbolism.

The most famous as a novelist among symbolist poets was Fedor Kuzmich Sologub (Teternikov) . In 1895 he published a novel "Heavy Dreams" , whose plot scheme at first glance repeats the plot of Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment": the provincial teacher Vasily Markovich Login decides to fight world evil and, seeing the focus of the latter in the director of the gymnasium, kills him. However, if the hero of Dostoevsky comes to repentance through moral quest, then the hero of Sologub, on the contrary, comes to the denial of any moral criteria whatsoever.

The realistic background of the action of the novel is combined with the dreamlike element of the psyche of the protagonist. Eroticism and fears - that's what owns and controls Login. Half-sleep-half-dreams allow you to look into his subconscious. It sometimes seems to the hero that he is walking along a bridge over a river and falls through. It is indicative that the city in which Login lives is indeed divided into two parts by a river (just as his consciousness is bifurcated), and the banks of the river are connected by a shaky bridge. At the same time, Login himself lives "on the edge of the city, in a small house." Claudia, who is one of the subjects of his love experiences, also lives, as it were, at the edge - namely, by the river. The space of the novel is closed, limited, it seems that apart from the city where Login lives, there is nothing else in the world. The closure of the chronotope, a feature inherent in Dostoevsky's novels (Petersburg in Crime and Punishment, Skotoprigonievsk in The Brothers Karamazov), acquires a special meaning in the context of symbolist poetics. The hero of the novel exists in a terrible closed, and therefore self-destructive (like any closed system) world, in which there is no and cannot be a place for goodness and justice, and his crime ultimately turned out to be meaningless, because the original goal of the hero is unattainable.

The greatest success in the work of Sologub was a brilliant novel "Little Imp" (1902). The central figure of the novel is the provincial teacher Peredonov, who combines the features of Chekhov's Belikov and Shchedrin's Jew. The plot of the novel is based on the desire of the hero to get the position of school inspector and get married. However, Peredonov is cowardly and suspicious, and the entire course of the novel is determined by the gradual disintegration of his personality and psyche. In every inhabitant of the town, he sees something vile, malicious, vile: "Everything that reached his consciousness turned into filth and filth." Peredonov found himself in the grip of evil illusions: not only people, but also objects in the big consciousness of the hero become his enemies. He gouges out the eyes of card kings, queens and jacks so that they do not follow him. It seems to Peredonov that Nedotykomka is chasing him, frightening him with her dullness and shapelessness, and in the end she becomes a symbol of the essence of the world around. The whole world turns out materialized nonsense, and everything ends with the fact that Peredonov kills Volodin. However, Sologub presents the murder as a sacrifice: Peredonov kills Volodin with a garden knife. Based on the traditions of Gogol, Sologub depicts the world of "dead souls", whose existence is illusory. All the inhabitants of the town are masks, puppets who do not realize the meaning of their lives.

How did the novelist achieve European fame and Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky , whose lyrics were not of great artistic importance, but the novels were the embodiment of his philosophical views. According to Merezhkovsky, two truths are fighting in world life - heavenly and earthly, spirit and flesh, Christ and Antichrist. The first truth is embodied in a person's desire for self-denial and merging with God. The second is in the desire for self-affirmation and deification of one's own "I". The tragedy of history is in the separation of two truths, the goal is in their merging.

The historical and philosophical concept of Merezhkovsky is determined by the structure trilogy "Christ and Antichrist" , in which he considers the turning points in the development of human history, when the clash of two truths manifests itself with the greatest force:
1) late antiquity (novel "Death of the Gods");
2) the Renaissance (novel "Resurrected Gods");
3) Peter's era (novel "Antichrist").

In the first novel, Emperor Julian seeks to stop the course of history, to save the culture of the perfection of the human spirit from the death of the ancient gods. But Hellas is dying, the Olympian gods have died, their temples have been destroyed, the spirit of "black" and vulgarity triumphs. At the end of the novel, the prophetic Arsikaya prophesies about the revival of the spirit of Hellas, and the second novel begins with this revival. The spirit of antiquity is resurrected, the gods of Hellas are resurrected, and Leonardo da Vinci becomes a man who synthesizes both life truths in himself. In the third novel, Peter I and his son Alexei are presented as carriers of two historical principles - individualistic and folk. The clash of Peter and Alexei is a clash of Flesh and Spirit. Peter is stronger - he wins, Alexei foresees the coming merger of the two truths in the realm of the "third testament", when the tragedy of splitting will be removed.

One of the best modernist novels in European literature is considered "Petersburg" Andrey Bely (1916). Developing in it the theme of the city, outlined in the Ashes collection, Bely creates a world full of fantastic nightmares, perversely direct perspectives, soulless ghost people.

In a conversation with Irina Odoevtseva, Bely emphasized: “Nowhere in the world have I been so unhappy as in St. Petersburg. I have always been drawn to Petersburg and repelled from it... My Petersburg is a ghost, a vampire, materialized from yellow, rotten, feverish fogs, which I have brought into the system of squares, parallelepipeds, cubes and trapezoids. I populated my Petersburg with machine guns, the living dead. I myself then seemed to myself a living dead.

The novel consists of eight chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Each of the chapters is preceded by an epigraph from Pushkin's works, and all the epigraphs are somehow connected with the theme of St. Petersburg, a city in which everything is subject to numbering and regulation. The royal dignitary Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov seeks to conserve, freeze living life. For him, as for the characters of Shchedrin and Chekhov, only bureaucratic prescriptions have a clear meaning. Therefore, the space of the novel is made up of the ideas and fantasies of the characters: the father and son of the Ableukhovs are afraid of open spaces, and they prefer to perceive everything voluminous as a regulated combination of planes. The terrorist Dudkin (a parody image of a revolutionary) wants to blow up flat space with the help of a time bomb - this is a symbol of time striving for self-destruction. The image of Dudkin, grotesquely incorporating the features of terrorists from Dostoevsky's novel "Demons", is associated with the idea of ​​opposing "revolution in spirit" and social revolution. Bely repeatedly spoke about the untruth of the latter, putting forward the theory of the "white domino" - the theory of the spiritual transformation of man and mankind under the influence of mystical experiences.

In the novel Petersburg, the writer emphasizes that both the Ableukhovs and Dudkin are tools of the so-called Mongolian nihilism, destruction without creation.
The novel "Petersburg" turned out to be the last in a series of Russian symbolist novels in which, in one way or another, the aesthetic and social views of symbolist poets were refracted.

The period from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century was marked by the flourishing of symbolism. This trend had a huge impact on literature, painting and music. If you want to learn more about this modernist trend, then this article is just for you!

Symbolism (from the French symbolisme and the Greek symbolon - a symbol, a sign) is a trend of modernism that has affected some types of art, such as literature, painting, music. Its main innovation is the image-symbol, which replaced the traditional artistic image. If earlier poetry or fine art were read literally and often depicted exactly what a person saw, then the new method involved the widespread use of allusions and references, as well as hidden meanings arising from the forgotten or little known essence of a phenomenon or object. Thus, the works have become more multifaceted and complex. Now they more reflected the intuition and extraordinary thinking of the creator, and not his technique or emotional charge.

The history of symbolism began in the middle of the 18th century in France. It was then that the famous French poet Stéphane Mallarmé and his colleagues decided to unite their aspirations and create a new trend in art. The first changes concerned literature. The characteristic features of symbolism, such as universalism, the presence of a symbol, two worlds, are reflected in the romantic poetry of Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and many others. Also, the scandalous exhibitions of painters who began to paint with symbols died down. But the development of the current did not stand still - changes came to the theater. Thanks to the playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the writer Maurice Maeterlinck and the poet Henrik Ibsen, the audience began to take part in the productions, there was a mixture of art forms. A secret subtext appeared in the drama, since writers from the new school did not disdain to write it. Later, changes began in music. This is noticeable in the works of Richard Wagner, Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré.

Then the symbolism went beyond the borders of France. This current is “picked up” by other European countries. At the end of the 18th century, he also came to Russia, but more on that later.

The significance of symbolism lies in the fact that this trend gave the works depth, hypertextuality, musicality; new, previously unknown methods appeared. Now poets and other artists have a different language, in which they were able to express their thoughts and feelings in a new way, not in a banal way. Author's styles have become more ornate, original and mysterious. Allegorical and Aesopian language eventually fell in love with readers, even so much so that representatives of this trend are still popular.

The term "symbolism" was first used by the French poet Jean Moréas.

As you know, symbolism is included in the global cultural phenomenon "modernism". His signs could not but affect the course. Its main characteristics are:

• A combination of several styles, trends, eclecticism - a mixture of completely different genres and styles;
• The presence of a philosophical basis;
• The search for new forms, the radical rejection of the old ones;
• Chosen, elitist character.

Modernism includes cubism (the main representative is Pablo Picasso), futurism (represented by Vladimir Mayakovsky), expressionism (Otto Dix, Edvard Munch), abstractionism (Kazimir Malevich), surrealism (Salvador Dali), conceptualism (Pierre Abelard, John of Salisbury) etc. We have a whole, you can learn more about it.

Philosophy

Symbolism in culture occupies a dual position. On the one hand, it is a turning point (a change in past norms and rules in art), and on the other hand, it has become a classic, which many creators still rely on. Moreover, his innovations were subjected to reassessment and criticism by acmeists. They promoted the naturalness and simplicity of the image, denied the richness and incomprehensibility of symbolist poetry. This trend, unlike others, considered not just the ordinary life of a person, but his difficult moments and experiences, and these topics were not close to the layman. In addition, some manifestations of the current look artificial and too aesthetic, so some artists and poets did not share the admiration of well-read intellectuals and fought to simplify art.

As for the heritage of symbolism, it is worth noting here that it was this movement that brought new ideas and images with it. It replaced insensitive and prosaic realism. Each poet tried to place the meaning of the whole work in some symbol. But it was not so easy to find and understand, so such games with the word “were to taste” are not many.

It is customary to refer to symbolist poetics:

• Sign, symbol. Each work of this trend has an extraordinary, sometimes discouraging meaning. Most often, it is associated with a symbol. The reader needs to find it and understand, parse and decode the message of the author.
• Elite character. The symbolist does not address the entire society, but to the elect, who are able to understand the idea and charm of the work.
• musical character. The main feature of the works of symbolism is musicality. Poets specifically tried to "saturate" their material with repetitions, rhythms, correct intonation and sound writing.
• Mythopoetics. Symbolism and myth are united by the fact that the meaning of the whole work lies in the symbol.

The Soviet poet and writer Andrei Bely argued that symbolism is not just a trend. This is a kind of worldview. He drew inspiration from Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and Vladimir Solovyov. Based on this, he builds a "metaphysics of symbolism", filling the elegant form with a deep philosophical meaning. He considered creativity to be new thinking, in his language he communicated with the world and comprehended the mysteries of ideas that were not previously available to mankind, which had not yet discovered symbols as a universal language.

Symbolism in art

In literature

As noted earlier, symbolism originated in France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Then the main task of this trend was to oppose classical realism and bourgeois art of that time. One of the main works of symbolism is the book of Jean Moréas "Manifesto of Symbolism" (1886). It is in it that the writer indicates the basis of the current, its norms, rules and ideas. Works such as The Damned Poets by Paul Verlaine and Conversely by Joris Carl Huysmans also reinforced the position of symbolism in literature. Every symbolist work was backed by some kind of ideological philosophy, be it Kant, Nietzsche or Schelling.

The main distinguishing feature of such literature is musicality. This is observed for the first time in Paul Verlaine's poem "Poetic Art", and later in the cycle "Songs without Words". The innovation of symbolism - a new type of versification - free verse (vers libre). An example is the works of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

In Belgium, symbolism was glorified by Maurice Maeterlinck (the treatise Treasure of the Humble, the collection Greenhouses, the plays The Blue Bird and There Inside). In Norway - Henrik Ibsen, author of the plays "A Doll's House", "Wild Duck" and "Peer Gynt". In England, Oscar Wilde, and in Ireland, William Butler Yeats. In Germany, Stefan George and in Italy, Gabriele D'Annunzio.

In painting

Symbolism in painting was opposed to realism and naturalism. In each of his paintings, the symbolist artist tried to put meaning into the symbol, caused by his imagination or mood. Almost every work has mythological overtones.

According to painters, a picture should show simple, absolute truths through a sign, a symbol that conveys the meaning more accurately and more subtle, without unnecessary colors. But they drew inspiration from everywhere: from books, hallucinations, dreams, etc. By the way, it was the Symbolists who “resurrected” the masterpieces of Bosch, a brilliant medieval artist who, with his indomitable and original fantasy, was ahead of his time for a long time.

The characteristics of this trend in painting are considered to be:

• A test of the new, previously unknown, the rejection of realistic canons;
• They express the world in non-obvious signs and allusions;
• The presence of any mystery on the canvas, a rebus that requires a solution;
• controversy;
• The silence of some moments, the conventionality of the depicted background, the emphasis is on the symbol that expresses the idea, and not on the technique.

In music

Symbolism also influenced music. One of the most prominent representatives is Alexander Nikolaevich Skryabin, a Russian pianist and composer. It is he who is the founder of the theory and concept of "color music". In his musical works, Scriabin often referred to the symbol of fire. His compositions are distinguished by their nervous, disturbing character.

The main work is considered to be "The Poem of Ecstasy" (1907).

Representatives

Painters

• Emilia Mediz-Pelikan - landscape painter, graphic artist (Austria).
• Carl Mediz is an Austrian landscape painter.
• Fernand Knopf - Belgian graphic artist, sculptor and art historian, the main representative of Belgian symbolism.
• Jean Delville is not only a painter, but also a writer, occultist and theosophist.
• James Ensor is a graphic artist and painter (Belgium).
• Émile Barthélemy Fabry is a Belgian Symbolist painter.
• Leon Spilliart - painter from Belgium
• Max Klinger is a graphic artist and sculptor from Germany.
• Franz von Stuck was a German painter and sculptor.
• Heinrich Vogeler is a German artist and philosopher, a representative of the German Jugendstil.
• Anselm von Feuerbach is one of the most significant German historical painters of the 19th century.
• Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach - German artist, representative of the Art Nouveau style.

Poets

• Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 - 1898)
• Paul Verlaine (1844 - 1896)
• Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)
• Arthur Rimbaud (1854 - 1891)
• Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949)
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874 - 1929)
• Jean Moreas (1856 - 1910)
• Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880 - 1921)
• Andrei Bely (1880 - 1934)
• Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873 - 1924)
• Konstantin Dmitrievich Bryusov (1867 - 1942)
• Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906)
• Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
• William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)
• Stefan George (1868 - 1933)
• Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863 - 1938)

Russian symbolism

Characteristics of symbolism in Russia

The period from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century in Russian literature was called the Silver Age. For forty years (from 1890 to 1930) the greatest works were created, the canons of the past were erased, the ideas and thoughts of poets changed. The Silver Age includes the following literary movements:

• Symbolism;
• Futurism;
• Acmeism;
• Imagism.

Russian symbolism is the most significant trend in the literature of that time. It is customary to distinguish two main stages of this flow:

1. From the end of the 19th century, namely from the 1890s, a group of senior symbolists was formed. Representatives: Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky.
2. From the beginning of the 20th century, a new stage begins in symbolism, which is represented by Alexander Alexandrovich Blok, Andrei Bely and others. These are the junior symbolists.

First of all, they are divided on the basis of divergence of ideas. The older symbolists were impressed by the mystical philosophy of the religious thinker Solovyov. They rejected the real world and strove for the "eternal" world - the abode of ideals and abstractions. Their position was contemplative, passive, but the new generation of creators had an active fuse to change reality and transform life.

Russian symbolism also has a solid philosophical foundation. Most often, these are the teachings of Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov, Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The main characteristics of symbolism are still the image-symbol, semantic versatility and musicality. Poets tried to rise above the world, to get away from its vulgarity and routine, helping readers in this difficult task. That is why the ideal world becomes the main object of their chanting.

The main features of symbolism are usually attributed to:

• The presence of two worlds (real and ideal);
• Musicality;
• Mysticism;
• The meaning of the work in the symbol;
• Ornate form.

Characteristics:

• Individualism;
• Idealism;
• Psychologism;
• The presence of poetic cycles;
• pathos;
• The complexity and loftiness of the content, reliance on philosophical treatises.
• Religious quest;

It is also worth noting that there are two types of symbol:

1. Mystical;
2. Philosophical.

Surprisingly, the Symbolists had their own editorial offices (for example, Scorpion, founded in 1899 by Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov and Jurgis Kazimirovich Baltrushaitis), magazines (Scales, which existed from 1904 to 1909) and communities (Resurrections). under the leadership of Fyodor Kuzmich Sologub).

Symbolism also influenced Russian painting. Religion, philosophy, mysticism became the main ideological and thematic content of the paintings. Russian artists tried to convey the essence, meaning, content, and not the correct form. One of the most prominent representatives of symbolism in painting is Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910). His most famous works are "Seated Demon" (1890), "Pearl" (1904), "Six-winged Seraphim" (1904) and others.

Poets of Russian Symbolism

1. Andrey Bely (1880 - 1934) - Russian poet, writer. His main themes were passion for women and madness as methods of combating the vulgarity and absurdity of the real world. Adhered to the ideas of subjectivism and individualism. Perceived art as a derivative of the "spirit", which is the product of intuition. He is the author of the idea that symbolism is a kind of world outlook, which was mentioned earlier. The most famous works of Andrei Bely are the symphonies "Dramatic" (1902), "Symphonic", "Return" (1905) and "Northern" (1904).
2. Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873 - 1924) - Russian poet and translator. The main themes are personality problems, mysticism, escape from the real world. Bryusov was also fond of philosophy, in particular, the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He made attempts to create a symbolist school. Significant works are "Oh, close your pale feet" (monostich, that is, a poem consisting of one line), "It's over" (1895), "Napoleon" (1901), "Images of the time" (1907 - 1914 .) and others.
3. Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (1867 - 1942) - Russian writer and poet. The main ideas of his works are an indication of the poet's lofty place in society, a demonstration of individuality and infinity. All poems are sensual and melodic. The most famous collections are "Under the Northern Sky" (1894), "Burning Buildings" (1900), "We'll Be Like the Sun" (1903).
4. Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880 - 1921) - Russian poet. One of the most famous representatives of Russian symbolism. He drew inspiration from the philosophical works of Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov. The main themes of Blok's poems are the theme of the motherland, the poet's place in society, the theme of nature and love. The most significant works are "The Stranger" (1906), Factory "(1903), the poem "The Twelve" (1918), "On the Railway" (1910) and others.

Sample Poems

• Alexander Alexandrovich Blok, "The Stranger" (1906) - this poem shows the opposition of the light and dark sides of human existence. The poet deifies a woman he does not know against the background of drunkenness and debauchery. The main symbol is the stranger herself, she personifies beauty, only she can save and illuminate the dirty and vicious world with her radiance. you can find when you follow the link.
• Alexander Alexandrovich Blok, "Factory" (1903) - in this poem, the reader is shown two worlds - the world of the rich and ordinary people. Thus, the poet wanted to show that it is precisely in such a terrible inequality that the entire Russian people find themselves. In this poem, he uses color as a symbol. The word "yellow" written not through Yo and "black" symbolize two sides of the world at once - rich and poor.
• Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, "Mason" (1901) - this poem is very similar to Blok's "Factory". There is the same theme of inequality, which is not surprising on the eve of the revolution.
• Innokenty Annensky, "Double" - in this poem the theme of a split personality or consciousness sounds.
• Andrei Bely, “Mountains in marriage crowns” (1903) - in this poem, the reader can observe the meeting of the hero, who knows the beauty of the mountains, and the beggar (according to some sources, the hero of Nietzsche’s works serves as a prototype). Here the main symbol is pineapple, it is personified with the sun.
• Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont "Appeal to the Ocean" - in it the poet describes all the power and charm of the ocean, which he compares to life itself.

Painting examples

• Carl Mediz, "Red Angel"
• Fernand Khnopff, The Art, or the Tenderness of the Sphinx
• Jean Delville, Angel of Light
• James Ensor, "Entry of Christ into Brussels"
• Leon Spilliart, Girl, Gust of Wind
• Max Klinger, Brahms Fantasy
• Franz von Stuck, "Lucifer"
• Heinrich Vogeler, "Tosca", "Farewell"

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Introduction

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century went down in history under the beautiful name of the "Silver Age". For the first time this name was proposed by the philosopher N. Berdyaev, but it finally entered the literary circulation in the 60s of the twentieth century.

The socio-political situation of that time was characterized by a deep crisis of the existing government, a stormy, restless atmosphere in the country, requiring decisive changes. Maybe that's why the paths of art and politics crossed. The "Silver Age" gave rise to the great rise of Russian culture and became the beginning of its tragic fall.

Writers and poets sought to master new artistic forms and put forward bold experimental ideas. The realistic depiction of reality ceased to satisfy the artists, and in the polemic with the classics of the 19th century, new literary trends were established: symbolism, acmeism, futurism.

The poetry of this period was characterized primarily by mysticism and crises of faith, spirituality, and conscience.

The composition of poets is wide and varied. This is a move of all representatives of modernist trends, as well as realists and authors who do not belong to any of the currents. We single out the main representatives of modernist trends: D. Merezhkovsky, V. Bryusov, A. Bely, A. Blok, N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, G. Ivanov, V. Khodasevich, I. Severyanin, V. Khlebnikov, I. Bunin, M. Tsvetaeva and others.

The poetry of the "Silver Age" strives for synthesis, for the fusion of various elements into a single whole. It is fundamentally based on musicality and painting.

Symbolists performed melodism, creating complex musical and verbal constructions.

Futurists sought to emphasize the "fluidity" of poetic speech with a peculiar performance.

Acmeists were worth a pictorial, plastic, pictorial image in poetry.

The cubo-futurists tried to create a "cubic structure of the verbal mass" for poetry.

Syntheticity was also manifested in the fact that, not content with the literary role, poets invaded other areas - philosophy, religion, occultism; burst into life itself, went out into the people, into the crowd, into the street.

Symbolism

Symbolism (from the Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) is the first and largest of the modernist movements that arose in Russia and laid the foundation for the "Silver Age". The beginning of the theoretical self-determination of symbolism was the position of D.S. Merezhkovsky. The symbolists oppose the idea of ​​constructing the world in the process of creativity to the idea of ​​knowing the world. "Creativity is higher than knowledge" - say the symbolists. “A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible in its meaning,” considered the theorist of symbolism Vyacheslav Ivanov. “A symbol is a window to infinity,” Fyodor Sologub echoed him. The poetic style of the Symbolists is intensely metaphysical, since the Symbolists use whole chains of metaphors that acquire the significance of independent lyrical themes.

Russian symbolism was born in the years of the collapse of Populism and the wide spread of pessimistic sentiments. All this led to the fact that the literature of the "Silver Age" does not raise topical social issues, but global philosophical ones. The chronological framework of Russian symbolism - 1890s - 1910. The formation of symbolism in Russia was influenced by two literary traditions:

Russian - poetry by Fet, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky's prose;

French symbolism - the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire. The main idea: art is a means of knowing the world.

The symbolism was not uniform. Schools and trends stood out in it: “senior” and “junior” symbolists.

Let's talk more about the "senior" symbolists.

At the origins of symbolism in St. Petersburg were Merezhkovsky and his wife Zinaida Gippius, Valery Bryusov - in Moscow. But the most radical and striking representative of the early St. Petersburg symbolism was Alexander Dobrolyubov, whose “decadent way of life” in his student years served to create one of the most important biographical legends of the “Silver Age”.

In Moscow, "Russian Symbolists" are published at their own expense and are met with a "cold reception" from critics; St. Petersburg was more fortunate with modernist publications - already at the end of the century there were “Northern Herald”, “World of Art” ... However, Dobrolyubov and his friend, fellow student at the gymnasium V.V. Gippius, also published the first cycles of poems at their own expense; come to Moscow and get acquainted with Bryusov. Bryusov did not have a high opinion of the art of Dobrolyubov's versification, but Alexander's personality made a strong impression on him, which left a mark on his future fate. Already in the first years of the twentieth century, as the editor of the most significant symbolist publishing house Scorpio, which appeared in Moscow, Bryusov published Dobrolyubov's poems. By his own later admission, at an early stage of his work, Bryusov received the greatest influence of all his contemporaries from Alexander Dobrolyubov and Ivan Konevsky (a young poet whose work was highly appreciated by Bryusov; died at the twenty-fourth year of his life).

Fyodor Sologub (Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov) created his own special poetic world and innovative prose independently from all modernist groupings - apart, but in such a way that it is impossible not to notice. The novel "Heavy Dreams" was written by Sologub back in the 1880s, the first verses are marked in 1878. Until the 1890s he worked as a teacher in the provinces, since 1892 he settled in St. Petersburg. Since the 1890s, a circle of friends has been gathering in the writer's house, often bringing together authors from different cities and warring publications. Already in the twentieth century, Sologub became the author of one of the most famous Russian novels of this era - The Little Demon (1907), introducing the terrible teacher Peredonov into the circle of Russian literary characters; and even later in Russia he is declared the "king of poets" ...

But, perhaps, the works of Konstantin Balmont became the most readable, most sonorous and musical poems at an early stage of Russian symbolism. Already at the end of the nineteenth century, K. Balmont most clearly declares the “search for correspondences” characteristic of the Symbolists between sound, meaning and color (such ideas and experiments are known from Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and later from many Russian poets - Bryusov, Blok, Kuzmin , Khlebnikov and others). For Balmont, as for example, for Verlaine, this search consists primarily in creating a sound-semantic fabric of the text - music that gives rise to meaning. Balmont’s passion for sound writing, colorful adjectives that displace verbs, leads to the creation of texts that are almost “meaningless”, according to ill-wishers, but this phenomenon, which is interesting in poetry, eventually leads to the emergence of new poetic concepts (sound writing, zaum, melodeclamation); Balmont is a very fruitful author - more than thirty books of poems, translations (W. Blake, E. Poe, Indian poetry and others), numerous articles.

Let's look at the poetry of K.D. Balmont on the example of the poem "I dreamed of catching the leaving shadows ...":

I dreamed of catching the departing shadows,

The fading shadows of the fading day,

I climbed the tower, and the steps trembled,

And the higher I went, the clearer they were drawn,

The clearer the outlines were drawn in the distance,

And some sounds were heard in the distance,

Around me resounded from Heaven and Earth.

The higher I climbed, the brighter they sparkled,

The brighter the heights of the dormant mountains sparkled,

And with a farewell radiance, as if caressed,

As if gently caressing a misty gaze.

And below me the night has already come,

The night has already come for the sleeping Earth,

For me, the daylight shone,

The fire luminary burned out in the distance.

I learned how to catch the shadows that are leaving

The fading shadows of a faded day,

And higher and higher I walked, and the steps trembled,

And the steps trembled under my feet.

Balmont's poem "I dreamed of catching the departing shadows ..." was written in 1895.

I believe that this poem most clearly reflects the work of Balmont and is a hymn of symbolism.

In the poem "I dreamed of catching the departing shadows ...", as you can easily see, there is both "obvious beauty" and another, hidden meaning: a hymn to the eternal aspiration of the human spirit from darkness to light.

The whole figurative structure of Balmont’s poem is built on contrasts: between the top (“And the higher I went ...”), and the bottom (“And below me ...”), heaven and earth (both of these words in the text are written with a capital letter - it means that they are given an exceptionally weighty symbolic meaning), by day (light) and darkness (extinguishing). The lyrical plot consists in the movement of the hero, removing these contrasts. Climbing the tower, the hero leaves the familiar earthly world in pursuit of new sensations that no one has experienced before. He dreams (“I caught with a dream ...”), stop the passage of time, approach eternity, in which “leaving shadows” live. He quite succeeds in this: while “for the sleeping Earth” night comes - the time of oblivion and death for the hero continues to shine, the “fire luminary”, bringing renewal and spiritual uplift, and the distant outlines of the “heights of dormant mountains” become more and more visible. Upstairs, the hero is waiting for an obscure symphony of sounds (“And some sounds were heard around ...”), which marks his complete merger with the higher world.

The majestic picture recreated in the poem is rooted in romantic ideas about a proud loner who defies earthly institutions. But here the lyrical hero enters into a confrontation no longer with society, but with universal, cosmic laws and emerges victorious (“I learned how to catch the leaving shadows ...”). Thus, Balmont alludes to the chosenness of his hero (and, ultimately, to his own chosenness by God, because for the older symbolists to whom he belonged, the thought of the high, “priestly” destiny of the poet was important).

However, the poem captivates mainly not with its idea, but with bewitching plasticity, musicality, which is created by the undulating movement of intonational ups and downs, quivering overflows of sound structure (hissing and whistling consonants, as well as sonorous "p" and "l" carry a special load), finally, the bewitching rhythm of the four-foot anapaest (in odd lines it is weighted with caesura building). This is about the language. As for the content of the poem - it is filled with deep meaning. A person goes through life higher and higher, closer and closer to his goal.

In Russia, junior symbolists are mainly called writers who published their first publications in the 1900s. Among them were really very young authors, like Sergei Solovyov, A. Bely, A. Blok, Ellis, and very respectable people, like the director of the gymnasium I. Annensky, scientist Vyacheslav Ivanov, musician and composer M. Kuzmin. In the first years of the century, representatives of the young generation of symbolists create a romantically colored circle, where the skill of future classics matures, which became known as the "Argonauts" or Argonautism. In St. Petersburg at the beginning of the century, the “tower” of Vyach is most of all suitable for the title of “center of symbolism”. Ivanov, - the famous apartment on the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, among the inhabitants of which at different times were Andrei Bely, M. Kuzmin, V. Khlebnikov, A. R. Mintslova, which was visited by A. Blok, N. Berdyaev, A. V. Lunacharsky , A. Akhmatova, "world of art" and spiritualists, anarchists and philosophers. The famous and mysterious apartment: legends tell about it, researchers study the meetings of secret communities that took place here (Haphysites, Theosophists, etc.), gendarmes organized searches and surveillance here, most of the famous poets of the era read their poems in this apartment for the first time, here for several For years, three completely unique writers lived at the same time, whose works often present fascinating puzzles for commentators and offer readers unexpected language models - this is the constant "Diotima" of the salon, Ivanov's wife, L. D. Zinovieva-Annibal, the composer Kuzmin (author of romances at first, later - novels and poetry books), and - of course the owner. The owner of the apartment himself, the author of the book "Dionysus and Dionysianism", was called the "Russian Nietzsche". With the undoubted significance and depth of influence in culture, Vyach. Ivanov remains "a semi-familiar continent"; this is partly due to his long stays abroad, and partly to the complexity of his poetic texts, which, in addition to everything, require rare erudition from the reader.

In Moscow in the 1900s, the editorial office of the Scorpion publishing house, where Valery Bryusov became the permanent editor-in-chief, was without hesitation called the authoritative center of symbolism. This publishing house prepared issues of the most famous symbolist periodical - "Scales". Among the permanent employees of the Libra were Andrey Bely, K. Balmont, Jurgis Baltrushaitis; other authors regularly collaborated - Fedor Sologub, A. Remizov, M. Voloshin, A. Blok, etc., many translations from the literature of Western modernism were published. There is an opinion that the history of "Scorpion" is the history of Russian symbolism, but this is probably an exaggeration.

Consider the poetry of the Young Symbolists on the example of A. Blok. For example, I will take one of my favorite poems by this writer, "The Stranger".

Stranger

In the evenings above the restaurants

Hot air is wild and deaf

And rules drunken shouts

Spring and pernicious spirit.

Far above the lane dust,

Over the boredom of country cottages,

Slightly gilded bakery pretzel,

And the cry of a child is heard.

And every evening, behind the barriers,

Breaking pots,

Among the ditches they walk with the ladies

Proven wits.

Oarlocks creak above the lake

And a woman screams

And in the sky, accustomed to everything

The disk is pointlessly twisted.

Reflected in my glass

And moisture tart and mysterious

Like me, humble and deaf.

And next to the neighboring tables

Sleepy lackeys stick out,

And drunkards with rabbit eyes

"In vino veritas!" scream.

And every evening, at the appointed hour

(Is this just a dream?)

Maiden's camp, seized by silks,

In the foggy window moves.

And slowly, passing among the drunk,

Always without companions, alone

Breathing in spirits and mists,

She sits by the window.

And breathe ancient beliefs

Her elastic silks

And a hat with mourning feathers

And in the rings a narrow hand.

And chained by a strange closeness,

I look behind the dark veil

And I see the enchanted shore

And the enchanted distance.

Deaf secrets are entrusted to me,

Someone's sun has been handed to me,

And all the souls of my bend

The tart wine pierced.

And ostrich feathers bowed

In my brain they sway

And bottomless blue eyes

Blooming on the far shore.

There is a treasure in my soul

And the key is entrusted only to me!

You're right, drunk monster!

I know: the truth is in wine.

This poem by Alexander Blok belongs to the period of writing “The Terrible World”, when the main thing in the perception of the world by the poet were feelings of longing, despair and disbelief. The gloomy motives of many poems of this period expressed Blok's protest against the cruelty of the terrible world, which turns all the highest and most valuable into bargaining items. It is not beauty that reigns here, but cruelty, lies and suffering, and there is no way out of this impasse. The lyrical hero surrenders to the poison of hops and violent revelry

And every evening the only friend

Reflected in my glass

And moisture tart and mysterious,

Like me, humble and deaf.

During this period, the poet breaks with his symbolist friends. His first love left him - Lyubochka, the granddaughter of the famous chemist Mendeleev, went to his close friend, the poet Andrei Bely. Blok seemed to be drowning despair in wine. But, despite this, the main theme of the poems of the period of the “Scary World” is still love. But the one about whom the poet writes his magnificent poems is no longer the former Beautiful Lady, but a fatal passion, a temptress, a destroyer. She torments and burns the poet, but he cannot escape from her power.

Even about the vulgarity and rudeness of the terrible world, Blok writes soulfully and beautifully. Although he no longer believes in love, does not believe in anything, but the image of a stranger in the poems of this period still remains beautiful. The poet hated cynicism and vulgarity, they are not in his poems.

“The Stranger” is one of the most characteristic and beautiful poems of this period. Blok describes the real world in it - a dirty street with sewers, prostitutes, a realm of deceit and vulgarity, where "tested wits" with ladies walk among the pouring slops.

In the evenings above the restaurants

Hot air is wild and deaf

And rules drunken shouts

Spring and pernicious spirit.

The lyrical hero is lonely surrounded by drunkards, he rejects this world that terrifies his soul, similar to a booth, in which there is no place for anything beautiful and holy. The world poisons him, but a stranger appears amidst this drunken frenzy, and her image awakens bright feelings, it seems that she believes in beauty. Her image is surprisingly romantic and alluring, and it is clear that faith in goodness is still alive in the poet. Vulgarity, dirt cannot tarnish the image of a stranger, reflecting Blok's dreams of pure, selfless love. And although the poem ends with the words “In vino veritas”, the image of a beautiful stranger inspires faith in the bright beginning of life.

The poem has two parts, and the main literary device is antithesis, opposition. In the first part - the dirt and vulgarity of the surrounding world, and in the second - a beautiful stranger; this composition allows you to convey the main idea of ​​Blok. The image of a stranger transforms the poet, his poems and thoughts change. In place of the everyday vocabulary of the first part, spiritualized lines come, striking in their musicality. Artistic forms are subordinated to the content of the poem, allowing them to be more deeply imbued with it. Alliterations in the description of a dirty street, heaps of rough consonant sounds are further replaced by assonances and alliterations of sonorous sounds - [p], [l], [n]. Thanks to this, the most beautiful melody of the sounding verse is created.

This poem does not leave anyone indifferent, it cannot be forgotten once read, and a beautiful image excites us. These verses touch to the depths of the soul with their melodiousness; they are like pure, magnificent music flowing from the very heart. After all, it cannot be that there is no love, there is no beauty, if there are such beautiful verses.

Symbolism (from the French word "symbolisme") is one of the largest trends in art (literature, painting, music), it arose in France in the 70-80s of the XIX century, and reached its peak in France, Belgium and Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Under the influence of this trend, many types of art have radically changed their form and content, changing the very attitude towards them. The followers of the symbolist movement, first of all, extolled the primacy of the use of symbols in art, their work was characterized by a mystical fog, a plume of mystery and mystery, the works are full of hints and understatement. The purpose of art in the concept of adherents of symbolism is the comprehension of the surrounding world at an intuitive, spiritual level of perception through symbols, which is the only correct reflection of its true essence.

For the first time, the term "symbolism" appeared in world literature and art in the manifesto of the same name by the French poet Jean Moréas "Le Symbolisme" (Figaro newspaper, 1886), which proclaimed its basic principles and ideas. The principles of the ideas of symbolism are vividly and fully reflected in the work of such famous French poets as Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé and Lautreamont.

The poetic art of the beginning of the 20th century, which was in a state of decline and had lost its energy, former strength and bright creativity due to the defeat of the ideas of revolutionary populism, urgently needed to be revived. Symbolism as a literary trend was formed as a protest against the impoverishment of the poetic power of the word, created in order to return strength and energy to poetry, to pour new, fresh words and sound into it.

The beginning of Russian symbolism, which is also considered the beginning of the Silver Age of Russian poetry, is associated with the appearance of an article by the poet, writer and literary critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky "On the Causes of Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature" (1892). And although symbolism originated in Europe, it was in Russia that it reached its peak and the Russian symbolist poets brought their original sound and something completely new, which was absent from its founders, to it.

Russian symbolists did not differ in unity of views, they did not have a common concept of artistic understanding of the reality around them, they were scattered and disunited. The only thing that united them was their unwillingness to use simple, ordinary words in their works, their worship of symbols, the use of metaphors and allegories.

Literary researchers distinguish two stages in the formation of Russian symbolism, which differ in time and in the worldview concepts of symbolist poets.

The senior symbolists who began their literary activity in the 90s of the XIX century include the works of Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub, Zinaida Gippius, for them the poet was the creator of exclusively artistic and spiritual personal values.

The founder of the St. Petersburg symbolist movement is Dmitry Merezhkovsky, his works written in the spirit of symbolism: the collection "New Poems" (1896), "Collected Poems" (1909). His work differs from other symbolist poets in that he expresses in it not his personal experiences and feelings, as Andrei Bely or Alexander Blok did, but the general mood, feelings of hope, sadness or joy of the whole society.

The most radical and striking representative of the early symbolists is the St. Petersburg poet Alexander Dobrolyubov, who was distinguished not only by his poetic work (a collection of innovative poetry "Natura naturans. Natura naturata" - "nature is generating. Nature is generated"), but by a decadent way of life, the creation of a folk religious sects of "volunteers".

The creator of his own separate poetic world, standing apart from the entire modernist trend in literature, is the poet Fyodor Sologub. His work is distinguished by such a bright eccentricity and ambiguity that there are still no single correct interpretations and explanations of the symbols and images he created. Sologub's works are imbued with the spirit of mysticism, mystery and loneliness, they both shock and attract close attention, not letting go until the last line: the poem "Loneliness", the prose epic "Night Dew", the novel "Small Demon", the poems "Devil's Swing", " One-eyed dashing."

The most impressive and vivid, full of musical sound and amazing melody were the poems of the poet Konstantin Balmont, a symbolist of the early school. In search of a correspondence between the semantic sounding, color and sound transmission of the image, he created unique semantic-sound texts-music. In them, he used such a phonetic means of enhancing artistic expressiveness as sound writing, used bright adjectives instead of verbs, creating his original poetic masterpieces, which, in the opinion of his ill-wishers, were practically meaningless: poetry collections “This is Me”, “Masterpieces”, “Romances without words”, the books “Third Guard”, “To the City and the World”, “Wreath”, “All Melodies”.

The younger symbolists, whose activity dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, are Vyacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Sergei Solovyov, Innokenty Annensky, Jurgis Baltrushaitis. This second wave of this literary trend was also called Young Symbolism. A new stage in the development of the history of symbolism coincides with the rise of the revolutionary movement in Russia, decadent pessimism and disbelief in the future are replaced by a premonition of imminent inevitable changes.

The young followers of the poet Vladimir Solovyov, who saw the world on the verge of death and said that it would be saved by divine beauty, in which the heavenly life principle would unite with the earthly one, thought about the purpose of poetry in the world around us, the place of the poet in developing historical events, the connection between the intelligentsia and the people . In the works of Alexander Blok (the poem "The Twelve") and Andrei Bely, one feels a premonition of impending, turbulent changes, an imminent catastrophe that will shake the foundations of the existing society and lead to a crisis of humanistic ideas.

It is with symbolism that the creativity, main themes and images of poetic lyrics (World Soul, Beautiful Lady, Eternal Femininity) of the outstanding Russian poet of the Silver Age Alexander Blok are connected. The influence of this literary trend and the poet's personal experiences (feelings for his wife Lyuba Mendeleeva) make his work mystical and mysterious, isolated and detached from the world. His poems, imbued with the spirit of mystery and riddles, are distinguished by ambiguity, which is achieved through the use of blurry and obscure images, fuzziness and uncertainty, the use of bright colors and colors is rejected, only shades and half-hints.

The end of the first decade of the 20th century was marked by the decline of the Symbolist movement, new names no longer appear, although individual works are still being created by the Symbolists. Symbolism as a literary trend had a huge impact on the formation and development of poetic art at the beginning of the 20th century; with its masterpieces of poetic literature, it not only significantly enriched world art, but also contributed to the expansion of the consciousness of all mankind.

Symbolism (fr. Symbolisme) is one of the largest trends in art (in literature, music and painting), which arose in France in the 1870s and 80s. and reached its greatest development at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily in France itself, Belgium and Russia. The Symbolists radically changed not only various types of art, but also the very attitude towards it. Their experimental nature, desire for innovation, cosmopolitanism and a wide range of influences have become a model for most contemporary art movements.

[edit] Terminology

Jean Moreas

The term "symbolism" in art was first coined by the French poet Jean Moréas in the manifesto of the same name - "Le Symbolisme" - published on September 18, 1886 in the newspaper "Le Figaro". In particular, the manifesto proclaimed:

Symbolic poetry is the enemy of precepts, rhetoric, false sensibility and objective descriptions; it seeks to clothe the Idea in a sensually comprehensible form, but this form is not an end in itself, it serves to express the Idea without leaving its power. On the other hand, symbolic art resists the Idea shutting itself up in itself, rejecting the magnificent robes prepared for it in the world of appearances. Pictures of nature, human deeds, all the phenomena of our life are significant for the art of symbols not in themselves, but only as tangible reflections of the first Ideas, indicating their secret affinity with them ... Symbolist synthesis should correspond to a special, primordial-wide-ranging style; hence the unaccustomed word formations, periods that are either clumsy-heavy, or captivatingly flexible, meaningful repetitions, mysterious silences, unexpected reticence - everything is bold and figurative, and as a result - a beautiful French language - ancient and new at the same time - juicy, rich and colorful ...

By that time, there was another, already stable term "decadentism", which was scornfully called the new forms in the poetry of their criticism. "Symbolism" was the first theoretical attempt by the decadents themselves, so no sharp distinctions, let alone aesthetic confrontation, were established between decadence and symbolism. However, it should be noted that in Russia in the 1890s, after the first Russian decadent writings, these terms began to be contrasted: they saw ideals and spirituality in symbolism and, accordingly, manifested it in this way, and in decadence - lack of will, immorality and passion only for external form. So, the epigram of Vladimir Solovyov is known in relation to the decadents:

Mandrakes immanent
rustled in the reeds,
And rough and decadent
Virshi - in withering ears.

Mikhail Vrubel The Swan Princess

[edit] Emergence

The basic principles of the aesthetics of symbolism first appeared in the works of French poets Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Lautreamont.

Hugo Simberg, Wounded Angel

[edit] Aesthetics

In their works, the Symbolists tried to reflect the life of every soul - full of experiences, obscure, vague moods, subtle feelings, fleeting impressions. Symbolist poets were innovators of poetic verse, filling it with new, vivid and expressive images, and sometimes, trying to achieve an original form, they went into a play of words and sounds that their critics considered senseless. Roughly speaking, we can say that symbolism distinguishes between two worlds: the world of things and the world of ideas. The symbol becomes a kind of conventional sign that connects these worlds in the sense it generates. Every symbol has two sides - the signified and the signifier. This second side is turned to the unreal world. Art is the key to the mystery.

The concept and image of the Mystery, the mysterious, the mystical, is manifested both in romanticism and in symbolism. However, romanticism, as a rule, proceeds from the fact that “the knowledge of the world is the knowledge of oneself, for man is the greatest mystery, the source of analogies for the Universe” (Novalis). Symbolists have a different understanding of the world: in their opinion, true Being, “true-existing” or Mystery, is an absolute, objective principle, to which both Beauty and the world Spirit belong.

Vyacheslav Ivanov in his work "The Testaments of Symbolism" succinctly and symbolically figuratively expressed the artistic features and aesthetic principles of the "symbolic" direction in art itself (what was said here about poetry is quite applicable to other types of art):

The special intuition and energy of the word, which is directly felt by the poet as an inscription of the inexpressible, absorbs into its sound many echoes from no one knows where and, as it were, echoes of various underground keys ...

The following lines of Konstantin Balmont, which shed light on the aesthetic principles of symbolism, are imbued with amazing magic of symbolic imagery:

Mirror to mirror, compare two reflections, and put a candle between them. Two depths without a bottom, colored by the flame of a candle, will deepen themselves, mutually deepen one another, enrich the flame of the candle and merge into one. This is the image of the verse. The two lines sing into indefiniteness and aimlessness, unrelated to each other, but colored by the same rhyme, and looking at each other, deepen themselves, connect, and form one, radiantly melodious whole. This law of the triad, the union of two through a third, is the fundamental law of our universe. Looking deeply, directing a mirror into a mirror, we will find a singing rhyme everywhere. The world is all vowel music. The whole world is a sculpted Verse. Right and left, up and down, height and depth, Sky above and Sea below, Sun by day and Moon by night, stars in the sky and flowers in the meadow, thunder clouds and mountains, the immensity of the plain and the boundlessness of thought, thunderstorms in the air and storms in soul, deafening thunder and a barely audible stream, a terrible well and a deep look - the whole world is a correspondence, order, harmony based on duality, either spreading into infinity of voices and colors, or merging into one inner hymn of the soul, into the singularity of a separate harmonic contemplation , into an all-encompassing symphony of one I, which has taken in itself an unlimited variety of right and left, top and bottom, heights and abyss. Our day is divided into two halves, in them day and night. In our day there are two bright dawns, morning and evening, we know in the night the duality of twilight, thickening and discharging, and, always relying in our being on the duality of the beginning, mixed with the end, from dawn to dawn we go into clarity, brightness, separation, expanse, into the feeling of the multiplicity of life and the diversity of individual parts of the universe, and from twilight to twilight, along the black velvet road strewn with silver stars, we go and enter the great temple of silence, into the depths of contemplation, into the consciousness of a single choir, the all-one Lad. In this world, playing day and night, we merge two into one, we always turn duality into unity, linking with our thought, with its creative touch, we connect several strings into one sounding instrument, we merge two great eternal paths of divergence into one aspiration how two separate verses, kissing in rhyme, are combined into one inseparable sonority ...

Unlike other trends in art that use elements of their own characteristic symbolism, symbolism considers the expression of "unattainable", sometimes mystical, Ideas, images of Eternity and Beauty, the goal and content of its art, and the symbol, fixed in the element of artistic speech and based in its image into a polysemantic poetic word - the main, and sometimes the only possible artistic means.

The most striking change introduced by symbolism concerns the form of the artistic embodiment of its poetics. In the context of symbolism, a work of any kind of art begins to play precisely with poetic meanings, poetry becomes a form of thinking. Prose and drama begin to sound like poetry, the visual arts paint its images, and with music, the connection of poetry becomes simply all-encompassing. Poetic images-symbols, as if rising above reality, giving a poetic associative array, are embodied by symbolist poets in a sound-written, musical form, and the sound of the poem itself is no less, if not more important for expressing the meaning of a symbol. Konstantin Balmont describes his own feelings from the sounds, which then form poetic words:

I, Yu, Yo, I - the essence of pointed, thinned A, U, O, S. I am clear, clear, bright. I am Yar. Yu - curly, like ivy and pouring into a stream. Yo - melting light honey, flax flower. And - the twist of the rut Y, the impassable rut, because it is impossible to pronounce Y, without the firm help of a consonant sound. The softened sound messages I, Yu, Yo, And always have the face of a writhing snake, or a broken line of a jet, or a bright lizard, or is it a child, a kitten, a falcon, or is it a brisk loach fish ...

However, in addition to the musical and poetic (in the broad sense) principles of the embodiment of symbolist images, the very direction of art, its goals, is changing. The artist, who plays with symbols that carry certain mysteries and poetic ambiguity, with his talent reveals in these images some eternal correspondences and interconnections of the world reflected in our minds, and this sheds light on the very mysteries and “ideas” that, ultimately, and lead us to the Truth, to the comprehension of Beauty. Balmont’s line “an instant of beauty is bottomless in meaning” remarkably generalizes both the view of the symbolists on art and their artistic methods: symbols are called upon by their meanings to express some transcendent beauty of the universe, they also conclude it in the form of their embodiment.

Summarizing, we can say that the method of symbolism involves the embodiment of the main ideas of the work in the many-valued and many-sided associative aesthetics of symbols, i.e. such images, the meaning of which is comprehensible through their direct expression by a unit of artistic (poetic, musical, pictorial, dramatic) speech, as well as through its certain properties (the sound of a poetic word, the color scheme of a pictorial image, the interval and rhythmic features of a musical motive, timbre colors etc.). The main content of a symbolic work is the eternal Ideas expressed in the figurativeness of symbols, i.e. generalized ideas about a person and his life, the highest Meaning, comprehended only in a symbol, as well as Beauty embodied in it.

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

Western European symbolism.

Symbol and artistic image. As an artistic trend, symbolism publicly announced itself in France, when a group of young poets, who in 1886 rallied around S. Mallarme, realized the unity of artistic aspirations. The group included: J. Moreas, R. Gil, Henri de Regno, S. Merrill and others. In the 1990s, P. Valery, A. Gide, P. Claudel joined the poets of the Mallarmé group. The design of symbolism in the literary direction was greatly facilitated by P. Verlaine, who published his symbolist poems and a series of essays in the newspapers Paris Modern and La Nouvelle Rive Gauche Damned poets, as well as J.C. Huysmans, who spoke with the novel Vice versa. In 1886, J. Moreas placed in "Figaro" Manifesto symbolism, in which he formulated the basic principles of the direction, based on the judgments of Ch. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, Ch. Henri. Two years after the publication of the manifesto by J. Moreas, A. Bergson published his first book On the Immediate Data of Consciousness, in which the philosophy of intuitionism was declared, which in its basic principles has something in common with the worldview of the symbolists and gives it additional justification.

AT Symbolist Manifesto J. Moreas determined the nature of the symbol, which replaced the traditional artistic image and became the main material of symbolist poetry. “Symbolist poetry is looking for a way to clothe the idea in a sensual form that would not be self-sufficient, but at the same time, serving the expression of the Idea, would retain its individuality,” Moréas wrote. A similar “sensual form” in which the Idea is clothed is a symbol.

The fundamental difference between a symbol and an artistic image is its ambiguity. The symbol cannot be deciphered by the efforts of the mind: at the last depth it is dark and not accessible to the final interpretation. On Russian soil, this feature of the symbol was successfully defined by F. Sologub: "The symbol is a window to infinity." The movement and play of semantic shades create indecipherability, the mystery of the symbol. If the image expresses a single phenomenon, then the symbol is fraught with a whole range of meanings - sometimes opposite, multidirectional (for example, "the miracle and the monster" in the image of Peter in Merezhkovsky's novel Peter and Alex). The poet and theorist of symbolism Vyach. Ivanov expressed the idea that the symbol signifies not one, but different entities, A. Bely defined the symbol as "combining the heterogeneous together." The duality of the symbol goes back to the romantic notion of two worlds, the interpenetration of two planes of being.

The multi-layered nature of the symbol, its open polysemy was based on mythological, religious, philosophical and aesthetic ideas about super-reality, incomprehensible in its essence. The theory and practice of symbolism were closely associated with the idealistic philosophy of I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, F. Schelling, as well as F. Nietzsche's reflections on the superman, being "beyond good and evil." At its core, symbolism merged with the Platonic and Christian concepts of the world, having adopted romantic traditions and new trends. Not being aware of the continuation of any particular trend in art, symbolism carried the genetic code of romanticism: the roots of symbolism are in a romantic commitment to a higher principle, an ideal world. “Pictures of nature, human actions, all the phenomena of our life are significant for the art of symbols not in themselves, but only as intangible reflections of the original ideas, indicating their secret affinity with them,” wrote J. Moreas. Hence the new tasks of art, previously assigned to science and philosophy - to approach the essence of the “most real” by creating a symbolic picture of the world, to forge the “keys of secrets”. It is the symbol, and not the exact sciences, that will allow a person to break through to the ideal essence of the world, to pass, according to Vyach. Ivanov's definition, "from the real to the real." A special role in the comprehension of superreality was assigned to poets as carriers of intuitive revelations and poetry as the fruit of superintelligent intuitions.

The formation of symbolism in France, the country in which the symbolist movement originated and flourished, is associated with the names of the largest French poets: C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud. The forerunner of symbolism in France is Ch. Baudelaire, who published a book in 1857 The flowers of Evil. In search of ways to the "ineffable", many symbolists took up Baudelaire's idea of ​​"correspondences" between colors, smells and sounds. The proximity of various experiences should, according to the symbolists, be expressed in a symbol. Baudelaire's sonnet became the motto of symbolist quest Correspondence with the famous phrase: Sound, smell, shape, color echo. Baudelaire's theory was later illustrated by A. Rimbaud's sonnet Vowels:

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

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

The search for correspondences is at the heart of the symbolist principle of synthesis, the unification of arts. The motifs of the interpenetration of love and death, genius and illness, the tragic gap between appearance and essence, contained in Baudelaire's book, became dominant in the poetry of the Symbolists.

S. Mallarme, “the last romantic and the first decadent”, insisted on the need to “inspire images”, convey not things, but your impressions of them: “To name an object means to destroy three-quarters of the pleasure of a poem, which is created for gradual guessing, to inspire it - that's the dream." Mallarme's poem Luck will never abolish chance consisted of a single phrase typed in a different script without punctuation marks. This text, according to the author's intention, made it possible to reproduce the trajectory of thought and accurately recreate the "state of the soul."

P. Verlaine in a famous poem poetic art defined the adherence to musicality as the main sign of genuine poetic creativity: "Musicality is first of all." In Verlaine's view, poetry, like music, strives for a mediumistic, non-verbal reproduction of reality. So in the 1870s, Verlaine created a cycle of poems called Songs without words. Like a musician, the symbolist poet rushes towards the elemental flow of the beyond, the energy of sounds. If the poetry of C. Baudelaire inspired the symbolists with a deep longing for harmony in a tragically divided world, then the poetry of Verlaine amazed with its musicality, elusive experiences. Following Verlaine, the idea of ​​music was used by many symbolists to denote creative mystery.

In the poetry of the brilliant young man A. Rimbaud, who first used vers libre (free verse), the symbolists adopted the idea of ​​abandoning “eloquence”, finding a crossing point between poetry and prose. Invading any, the most non-poetic spheres of life, Rimbaud achieved the effect of "natural supernaturalness" in the depiction of reality.

Symbolism in France also manifested itself in painting (G. Moreau, O. Rodin, O. Redon, M. Denis, Puvis de Chavannes, L. Levy-Durmer), music (Debussy, Ravel), theater (Poet Theater, Mixed Theater, Petit theater du Marionette), but the main element of symbolist thinking has always been lyricism. It was the French poets who formulated and embodied the main precepts of the new movement: the mastery of the creative secret through music, the deep correspondence of various sensations, the ultimate price of the creative act, the orientation towards a new intuitive-creative way of knowing reality, the transmission of elusive experiences. Among the forerunners of French symbolism, all the major lyricists from Dante and F. Villon to E. Poe and T. Gauthier were recognized.

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

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

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

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

The works of R.M. Rilke, S. George, E. Verharn, G. D. Annunzio, A. Strinberg and others are also associated with symbolism.

Prerequisites for the emergence of symbolism. The prerequisites for the emergence of symbolism are in the crisis that hit Europe in the second half of the 19th century. The reassessment of the values ​​of the recent past was expressed in a revolt against narrow materialism and naturalism, in a great freedom of religious and philosophical searches. Symbolism was one of the forms of overcoming positivism and a reaction to the "decline of faith." "Matter has disappeared", "God is dead" - two postulates inscribed on the tablets of symbolism. The system of Christian values ​​on which European civilization rested was shaken, but the new "God" - faith in reason, in science - turned out to be unreliable. The loss of landmarks gave rise to a feeling of the absence of supports, the soil that had gone from under their feet. The plays of G. Ibsen, M. Maeterlinck, A. Strinberg, the poetry of the French symbolists created an atmosphere of unsteadiness, changeability, and relativity. The Art Nouveau style in architecture and painting melted the usual forms (creations of the Spanish architect A. Gaudi), as if dissolving the outlines of objects in the air or fog (paintings by M. Denis, V. Borisov-Musatov), ​​gravitated towards a twisting, curved line.

At the end of the 19th century Europe achieved unprecedented technological progress, science gave man power over the environment and continued to develop at a gigantic pace. However, it turned out that the scientific picture of the world does not fill the voids that arise in the public consciousness, and reveals its unreliability. The limited, superficial nature of positivist ideas about the world was confirmed by a number of discoveries in the natural sciences, mainly in the field of physics and mathematics. The discovery of X-rays, radiation, the invention of wireless communication, and a little later the creation of quantum theory and the theory of relativity shook the materialistic doctrine, shook faith in the absoluteness of the laws of mechanics. The previously identified “unambiguous regularities” were subjected to a significant revision: the world turned out to be not only unknowable, but also unknowable. The awareness of the fallacy and incompleteness of the previous knowledge led to the search for new ways of comprehending reality. One of these paths - the path of creative revelation - was proposed by the symbolists, according to whom the symbol is unity and, therefore, provides a holistic view of reality. The scientific worldview was built on the sum of errors - creative knowledge can stick to a pure source of superintelligent insights.

The appearance of symbolism was also a reaction to the crisis of religion. “God is dead,” proclaimed F. Nietzsche, thereby expressing the general feeling for the frontier era of the exhaustion of the traditional dogma. Symbolism is revealed as a new type of God-seeking: religious and philosophical questions, the question of the superman - i.e. about a man who challenged his limited abilities, who stood on a par with God, is at the center of the works of many symbolist writers (G. Ibsen, D. Merezhkovsky, etc.). The turn of the century became the time of the search for absolute values, the deepest religious impressionability. Based on these experiences, the Symbolist movement attached paramount importance to the restoration of ties with the other world, which was expressed in the frequent appeal of the symbolists to the "secrets of the coffin", in the increasing role of the imaginary, the fantastic, in the fascination with mysticism, pagan cults, theosophy, occultism, magic. Symbolist aesthetics was embodied in the most unexpected forms, delving into an imaginary, transcendental world, into areas previously unexplored - sleep and death, esoteric revelations, the world of eros and magic, altered states of consciousness and vice. Myths and plots, marked by the seal of unnatural passions, disastrous charm, extreme sensuality, madness, had a special attraction for the Symbolists ( Salome O. Wilde, Fire Angel V. Bryusova, the image of Ophelia in Blok's poetry), hybrid images (a centaur, a mermaid, a snake woman), indicating the possibility of existence in two worlds.

Symbolism was also closely connected with the eschatological forebodings that seized the man of the borderline era. The expectation of the "end of the world", "the decline of Europe", the death of civilization exacerbated metaphysical moods, made spirit triumph over matter.

Russian symbolism and its forerunners. Russian symbolism, the most significant after French, was based on the same prerequisites as Western symbolism: a crisis of a positive worldview and morality, a heightened religious feeling.

Symbolism in Russia absorbed two streams - “senior symbolists” (I. Annensky, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, F. Sologub (F. Teternikov) and “young symbolists » (A. Bely (B. Bugaev), A. Blok, Vyach. Ivanov, S. Solovyov, Ellis (L. Kobylinskiy). M. Voloshin, M. Kuzmin, A. Dobrolyubov, I. Konevskaya were close to the Symbolists.

By the early 1900s, Russian symbolism had flourished and had a powerful publishing base. In the introduction of the Symbolists were: the magazine "Balance" (out. Since 1903 with the support of the entrepreneur S. Polyakov), the publishing house "Scorpio" , magazine "Golden Fleece" (published from 1905 to 1910 with the support of patron N. Ryabushinsky), publishing house "Ory" (1907-1910), "Musaget" (1910-1920), « Vulture (1903–1913), Sirin (1913–1914), Rosehip (1906–1917, founded by L. Andreev), Apollon magazine (1909–1917, editor and founder S. Makovsky).

The generally recognized forerunners of Russian symbolism are F. Tyutchev, A. Fet, Vl. Soloviev. Vyach. Ivanov called F. Tyutchev the founder of the symbolist method in Russian poetry. V. Bryusov spoke about Tyutchev as the founder of the poetry of nuances. The famous line from Tyutchev's poem Silentium (Silence) Thought spoken is a lie became the slogan of the Russian symbolists. The poet of the night knowledge of the soul, the abyss and chaos, Tyutchev turned out to be close to Russian symbolism in his striving for the irrational, inexpressible, unconscious. Tyutchev, who pointed out the path of music and nuance, symbol and dream, took Russian poetry away, according to researchers, "away from Pushkin." But it was precisely this path that was close to many Russian symbolists.

Another predecessor of the symbolists is A. Fet, who died in the year of the formation of Russian symbolism (in 1892 D. Merezhkovsky gave a lecture About the reasons decline and new trends in modern Russian literature, V. Bryusov is preparing a collection Russian Symbolists). Like F. Tyutchev, A. Fet spoke about the inexpressibility, “ineffability” of human thoughts and feelings, Fet’s dream was “poetry without words” (A. Blok rushes to the “ineffable” after Fet, Blok’s favorite word is “inexpressibly”) . I. Turgenev expected a poem from Fet, in which the last stanzas would be conveyed by the silent movement of the lips. Fet's poetry is unaccountable, it is built on an associative, "romantic" basis. Not surprisingly, Fet is one of the favorite poets of Russian modernists. Fet rejected the idea of ​​the utilitarian nature of art, limiting his poetry only to the sphere of beauty, which earned him the reputation of a "reactionary poet." This "emptiness" formed the basis of the symbolist cult of "pure creativity". Symbolists have mastered the musicality, associativity of Fet's lyrics, its suggestive nature: the poet should not portray, but inspire mood, not "convey" the image, but "open the gap to eternity" (S. Mallarmé also wrote about this). K. Balmont studied with Fet to master the music of the word, and A. Blok found subconscious revelations, mystical ecstasy in Fet's lyrics.

The content of Russian symbolism (especially the younger generation of symbolists) was noticeably influenced by the philosophy of Vl. Solovyov. As Vyach. Ivanov put it in a letter to A. Blok: "We are mysteriously baptized by Solovyov." The source of inspiration for the symbolists was the image of Hagia Sophia, sung by Solovyov. Saint Sophia Solovieva is both Old Testament wisdom and the Platonic idea of ​​wisdom, Eternal Femininity and the World Soul, the "Virgin of the Rainbow Gates" and the Immaculate Wife - a subtle invisible spiritual principle that permeates the world. The cult of Sophia was received with great trepidation by A. Blok and A. Bely. A. Blok called Sophia the Beautiful Lady, M. Voloshin saw her incarnation in the legendary Queen Taiah. The pseudonym of A. Bely (B. Bugaev) assumed the initiation of the Eternal Femininity. The “Young Symbolists” were consonant with Solovyov's lack of accountability, the appeal to the invisible, “ineffable” as the true source of being. Solovyov's poem Dear friend was perceived as the motto of the "Young Symbolists", as a set of their idealistic moods:

Dear friend, can't you see

That everything we see

Only reflections, only shadows

From invisible eyes?

Dear friend, don't you hear

That the noise of life is crackling -

Just a garbled response.

Triumphant harmonies?

Without directly affecting the ideological and figurative world of the "senior symbolists", Solovyov's philosophy, nevertheless, in many of its provisions coincided with their religious and philosophical ideas. After the establishment of the Religious-Philosophical Assemblies in 1901, Z. Gippius was struck by the commonality of thoughts in her attempts to reconcile Christianity and culture. An alarming premonition of the “end of the world”, an unprecedented upheaval in history, was contained in the work of Solovyov The Story of the Antichrist, immediately after the publication was met with incredulous ridicule. Among the Symbolists The Story of the Antichrist evoked a sympathetic response and was understood as a revelation.

Manifestos of symbolism in Russia. As a literary trend, Russian symbolism took shape in 1892, when D. Merezhkovsky released a collection Symbols and write a lecture About the reasons for the decline and new trends in modern literature. In 1893 V. Bryusov and A. Mitropolsky (Lang) prepared a collection Russian Symbolists, in which V. Bryusov speaks on behalf of a direction that does not yet exist in Russia - symbolism. Such a hoax corresponded to Bryusov's creative ambitions to become not just an outstanding poet, but the founder of an entire literary school. Bryusov saw his task as a "leader" in "creating poetry that is alien to life, embodying constructions that life cannot give." Life is only "material", a slow and sluggish process of existence, which the symbolist poet must translate into "trembling without end." Everything in life is just a means for brightly melodious verses, - Bryusov formulated the principle of self-profound, towering above the simple earthly existence of poetry. Bryusov became a master, a teacher who led a new movement. D. Merezhkovsky came forward to the role of the ideologist of the "senior symbolists".

D. Merezhkovsky outlined his theory in a report, and then in a book About the reasons decline and new trends of modern Russian literature. “Wherever we go, no matter how we hide behind the dam of scientific criticism, with all our being we feel the proximity of the mystery, the proximity of the Ocean,” wrote Merezhkovsky. Reflections on the collapse of rationalism and faith, the two pillars of European civilization, common to symbolist theorists, were supplemented by Merezhkovsky with judgments about the decline of modern literature, which abandoned the “ancient, eternal, never-dying idealism” and gave preference to Zola’s naturalism. Literature can only be revived by a rush to the unknown, the beyond, to "shrines that do not exist." Giving an objective assessment of the state of literary affairs in Russia and Europe, Merezhkovsky named the prerequisites for the victory of new literary movements: the thematic "wear and tear" of realistic literature, its deviation from the "ideal", inconsistency with the worldview of the world. The symbol, in the interpretation of Merezhkovsky, pours out from the depths of the artist's spirit. Here, Merezhkovsky identified three main elements of the new art: mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability.

The difference between realistic and symbolic art was emphasized in an article by K. Balmont Elementary Words on Symbolic Poetry. Realism is becoming obsolete, the consciousness of realists does not go beyond the framework of earthly life, "realists are caught, like a surf, by concrete life", while in art the need for more refined ways of expressing feelings and thoughts becomes more and more tangible. This need is met by the poetry of the Symbolists. Balmont's article outlined the main features of symbolic poetry: a special language rich in intonations, the ability to excite a complex mood in the soul. “Symbolism is a powerful force, striving to guess new combinations of thoughts, colors and sounds, and often guessing them with particular persuasiveness,” Balmont insisted. Unlike Merezhkovsky, Balmont saw in symbolic poetry not an introduction to the "depths of the spirit", but "announcement of the elements." The installation of involvement in the Eternal Chaos, "spontaneity" gave in Russian poetry the "Dionysian type" of lyrics, glorifying the "boundless" personality, self-lawful individuality, the need to live in the "theater of burning improvisations". A similar position was recorded in the titles of Balmont's collections. In the vastness,We will be like the sun.“Dionysianism” was also paid tribute to by A. Blok, who sang a whirlwind of “free elements”, whirling passions ( snow mask,Twelve).

For V. Bryusov, symbolism has become a way to comprehend reality - the "key of secrets." In the article Keys of secrets(1903) he wrote: “Art is the comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways. Art is what we in other fields call revelation.”

The main aspects of the new trend were formulated in the manifestos of the “senior symbolists”: the priority of spiritual idealistic values ​​(D. Merezhkovsky), the mediumistic, “spontaneous” nature of creativity (K. Balmont), art as the most reliable form of knowledge (V. Bryusov). In accordance with these provisions, the development of the work of representatives of the older generation of symbolists in Russia proceeded.

"Senior Symbolists". The symbolism of D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius was emphatically religious in nature, developed in line with the neoclassical tradition. The best poems of Merezhkovsky, included in the collections Symbols,Eternal companions, were built on "ugliness" with other people's ideas, were dedicated to the culture of bygone eras, gave a subjective reassessment of world classics. In Merezhkovsky's prose, based on large-scale cultural and historical material (the history of antiquity, the Renaissance, Russian history, the religious thought of antiquity), there is a search for the spiritual foundations of being, ideas that drive history. In the camp of Russian symbolists, Merezhkovsky represented the idea of ​​neo-Christianity, he was looking for a new Christ (not so much for the people, but for the intelligentsia) - "Jesus the Unknown".

In the "electric", according to I. Bunin, verses of Z. Gippius, in her prose, there is an inclination towards philosophical and religious issues, God-seeking. The severity of form, accuracy, movement towards classic expression, combined with religious and metaphysical sharpness, distinguished Gippius and Merezhkovsky among the “senior symbolists”. In their work, there are also many formal achievements of symbolism: mood music, freedom of colloquial intonations, the use of new poetic meters (for example, dolnik).

If D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius conceived of symbolism as the construction of an artistic and religious culture, then V. Bryusov, the founder of the symbolic movement in Russia, dreamed of creating a comprehensive artistic system, a “synthesis” of all directions. Hence the historicism and rationalism of Bryusov's poetry, the dream of the "Pantheon, the temple of all gods." The symbol, in the view of Bryusov, is a universal category that allows you to generalize all the truths that have ever existed, ideas about the world. V. Bryusov gave a compressed program of symbolism, "covenants" of the current in a poem To the young poet:

A pale young man with burning eyes,

Now I give you three covenants:

First accept: do not live in the present,

Only the future is the realm of the poet.

Remember the second: do not sympathize with anyone,

Love yourself endlessly.

Keep the third: worship art,

Only to him, undividedly, aimlessly.

The affirmation of creativity as the goal of life, the glorification of the creative personality, the aspiration from the gray everyday life of the present to the bright world of the imaginary future, dreams and fantasies - these are the postulates of symbolism in the interpretation of Bryusov. Another, scandalous poem by Bryusov Creation expressed the idea of ​​intuitiveness, unaccountability of creative impulses.

From the work of D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, V. Bryusov, the neo-romanticism of K. Balmont differed significantly. In the lyrics of K. Balmont , the singer of the vastness, - the romantic pathos of elevation above everyday life, a look at poetry as life-creation. The main thing for Balmont-symbolist was the glorification of the limitless possibilities of creative individuality, the frantic search for means of its self-expression. The admiration of the transformed, titanic personality was reflected in the attitude towards the intensity of life sensations, the expansion of emotional imagery, and the impressive geographical and temporal scope.

F. Sologub continued the line of research of the “mysterious connection” of the human soul with the disastrous beginning, begun in Russian literature by F. Dostoevsky, developed a general symbolist orientation towards understanding human nature as irrational nature. One of the main symbols in Sologub's poetry and prose was the "unsteady swing" of human states, the "heavy sleep" of consciousness, and unpredictable "transformations". Sologub's interest in the unconscious, his deepening into the secrets of mental life gave rise to the mythological imagery of his prose: so the heroine of the novel petty imp Varvara - a "centaur" with a nymph's body in flea bites and an ugly face, the three Rutilov sisters in the same novel - three moira, three graces, three charites, three Chekhov sisters. Comprehension of the dark beginnings of spiritual life, neo-mythologism are the main signs of the symbolist manner of Sologub.

A huge influence on Russian poetry of the twentieth century. rendered the psychological symbolism of I. Annensky, whose collections Quiet songs and Cypress Casket appeared at a time of crisis, the decline of the symbolist movement. In Annensky's poetry there is a colossal impulse to update not only the poetry of symbolism, but also the entire Russian lyrics - from A. Akhmatova to G. Adamovich. Annensky's symbolism was built on the "exposure effects", on complex and, at the same time, very substantive, material associations, which allows us to see in Annensky the forerunner of acmeism. “A symbolist poet,” wrote the editor of the Apollo magazine, poet and critic S. Makovsky, about I. Annensky , - takes as its starting point something physically and psychologically concrete and, without defining it, often without even naming it, depicts a series of associations. Such a poet loves to amaze with an unforeseen, sometimes mysterious combination of images and concepts, striving for the impressionistic effect of revelations. An object exposed in this way seems new to a person and, as it were, experienced for the first time. For Annensky, a symbol is not a springboard for jumping to metaphysical heights, but a means of displaying and explaining reality. In the mournful-erotic poetry of Annensky, the decadent idea of ​​“prisonness”, the melancholy of earthly existence, unsatisfied eros developed.

In the theory and artistic practice of the "senior symbolists", the latest trends were combined with the inheritance of the achievements and discoveries of Russian classics. It was within the framework of the symbolist tradition that the work of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Lermontov was comprehended with new sharpness (D. Merezhkovsky L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, M.Yu.Lermontov. Poet of superhumanity), Pushkin (article by Vl. Solovyov The fate of Pushkin; Bronze Horseman V. Bryusov), Turgenev and Goncharov ( Reflection Books I. Annensky), N. Nekrasov ( Nekrasov as a city poet V. Bryusova). Among the “Young Symbolists”, A. Bely became a brilliant researcher of Russian classics (book Gogol's poetics, numerous literary references in the novel Petersburg).

"Young Symbolists". The inspirer of the Young Symbolist wing of the movement is Muscovite A. Bely, who organized the poetic community of the Argonauts. In 1903 A. Bely published an article On Religious Experiences, in which, following D. Merezhkovsky, he insisted on the need to combine art and religion, but put forward other, more subjective and abstract tasks - “to approach the World Soul”, “to convey Her voice in lyrical changes”. In Bely's article, the landmarks of the younger generation of symbolists were clearly visible - "the two crossbars of their cross" - the cult of the mad prophet Nietzsche and the ideas of Vl. Solovyov. The mystical and religious moods of A. Bely were combined with reflections on the fate of Russia: the position of the “Young Symbolists” was distinguished by a moral connection with the homeland (A. Bely’s novels Petersburg, Moscow, article green meadow, loop on Field Kulikovo A. Blok). A. Bely, A. Blok, Vyach. Ivanov turned out to be alien to the individualistic confessions of the older symbolists, their declared titanism, supra-worldliness, a break with the "earth". It is no coincidence that A. Blok will call one of his early cycles “ Earth bubbles", borrowing this image from Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth: contact with the earthly elements is dramatic, but inevitable, the creatures of the earth, its “bubbles” are disgusting, but the task of the poet, his sacrificial purpose is to come into contact with these creatures, to descend to the dark and destructive beginnings of life.

The largest Russian poet A. Blok emerged from the environment of the "Young Symbolists", becoming, by the definition of A. Akhmatova, "the tragic tenor of the era." A. Blok considered his work as a “trilogy of incarnation” - a movement from the music of the beyond (in Poems about the Beautiful Lady), through the underworld of the material world and the whirlwind of the elements (in Bubbles of the earth,city,snow mask, scary world) to the "elementary simplicity" of human experiences ( nightingale garden,Motherland,Retribution). In 1912 Blok, drawing a line under his symbolism, wrote: "No more symbolism." According to the researchers, “the strength and value of Blok’s separation from symbolism is directly proportional to the forces that connected him in his youth with the“ new art ”. The eternal symbols captured in Blok's lyrics (the Beautiful Lady, the Stranger, the nightingale garden, the Snow Mask, the union of the Rose and the Cross, etc.) received a special, poignant sound due to the poet's sacrificial humanity.

In his poetry, A. Blok created a comprehensive system of symbols. Colors, objects, sounds, actions - everything is symbolic in Blok's poetry. So “yellow windows”, “yellow lights”, “yellow dawn” symbolize the vulgarity of everyday life, blue, purple tones (“blue cloak”, “blue, blue, blue eyes”) - the collapse of the ideal, treason, Stranger - unknown, unfamiliar to people an entity that appeared in the guise of a woman, a pharmacy is the last shelter for suicides (in the last century, first aid to drowned victims was provided in pharmacies - ambulances appeared later). The origins of Blok's symbolism are rooted in the mysticism of the Middle Ages. So yellow in the language of the culture of the Middle Ages meant the enemy, blue - betrayal. But, unlike medieval symbols, the symbols of Blok's poetry are polysemantic, paradoxical. Stranger can be interpreted both as the appearance of the Muse to the poet, and as the fall of the Beautiful Lady, turning her into “Beatrice at the tavern counter”, and as a hallucination, dream, “tavern frenzy” - all these meanings have something in common with each other, “flicker like the eyes of a beauty behind the veil.

However, ordinary readers perceived such "ambiguities" with great caution and rejection. The popular newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti published a letter from prof. P.I. Dyakov, who offered one hundred rubles to anyone who would “translate” Blok’s poem into understandable Russian You are so bright….

The symbols depict the torment of the human soul in the poetry of A. Bely (collections Urn,Ash). The rupture of modern consciousness is depicted in symbolic forms in Bely's novel Petersburg- the first Russian novel "stream of consciousness". A bomb prepared by the protagonist of the novel, Nick. Ableukhov, broken dialogues, disintegrated kinship within the “random family” of the Ableukhovs, fragments of well-known plots, the sudden birth among the swamps of an “impromptu city”, an “explosion city” in symbolic language expressed the key idea of ​​the novel - the idea of ​​disintegration, separation, undermining all ties. Bely's symbolism is a special ecstatic form of experiencing reality, "every second departures to infinity" from every word, image.

As for Blok, for Bely the most important note of creativity is love for Russia. “Our pride is that we are not Europe, or that only we are true Europe,” Bely wrote after a trip abroad.

Vyach. Ivanov most fully embodied in his work the symbolist dream of a synthesis of cultures, trying to combine Nightingaleism, renewed Christianity and the Hellenic worldview.

The artistic quests of the "Young Symbolists" were marked by enlightened mysticism, the desire to go to the "outcast villages", to follow the sacrificial path of the prophet, without turning away from the rough earthly reality.

Symbolism in the theatre. The theoretical basis of symbolism was the philosophical works of F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson, A. Schopenhauer, E. Mach, neo-Kantians. The semantic center of symbolism becomes mysticism, the allegorical background of phenomena and objects; Irrational intuition is recognized as the fundamental principle of creativity. The main theme is fate, a mysterious and inexorable fate that plays with the destinies of people and controls events. The formation of such views during this period is quite natural: psychologists say that the change of centuries is always accompanied by an increase in eschatological and mystical moods in society.

In symbolism, the rational principle is reduced; word, image, color - any specificity - in art lose their informational content; on the other hand, the background increases many times, transforming them into a mysterious allegory, accessible only to irrational perception. The “ideal” type of symbolic art can be called music, which by definition is devoid of any specifics and appeals to the subconscious of the listener. It is clear that in literature, symbolism should have originated in poetry - in a genre where the rhythm of speech and its phonetics are initially no less important than meaning, and even can prevail over meaning.

The founders of symbolism were the French poets Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé. However, the theater, as the most socially sensitive form of art, could not remain aloof from modern views. And the third founder of this trend was the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. In fact, Mallarme, in his theoretical works on symbolism, refers to the theater of the future, interpreting it as a substitute for worship, a ritual where elements of drama, poetry, music, and dance merge in an extraordinary unity.

Maeterlinck began his literary activity as a poet, publishing a collection of poems in 1887 Greenhouses. However, already in 1889 his first play appeared, Princess Malene, enthusiastically received by modernist criticism. It was in this dramatic field that he achieved the highest success - in 1911 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Maeterlinck's plays such as Blind (1890),Pelias and Melisande(1892),Death of Tentagil(1894),Sister Beatrice(1900),Miracle of Saint Anthony (1903), Blue bird(1908) and others became not only the "bible" of symbolism, but also entered the golden fund of world drama.

In the theatrical concept of symbolism, special attention was paid to the actor. The theme of disastrous fate, which controls people like puppets, was refracted in the performing arts into a denial of the personality of the actor, depersonalization of the performer and turning him into a puppet. It was this concept that was adhered to by both the theorists of symbolism (in particular, Mallarmé) and its practitioners-directors: A. Appia (Switzerland), G. Fuchs and M. Reinhardt (Germany), and in particular Gordon Craig (England), in in his productions, he consistently implemented the principle of an actor-superpuppet, a mask devoid of human emotions. (It is very symbolic that Craig published the magazine "Mask"). The symbolists categorically preferred unambiguous poetic images-signs to the multifaceted, psychologically voluminous stage character.

In its general concept, the theater of symbolism had much in common with the medieval theater and its genres - mystery, miracle, morality, and naturally tried to reconstruct these genres.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. studio theaters appeared in Paris, basing their repertoire exclusively on works of symbolism: "Theatre d" ar, "Evre", "Theatre des ar". Here, in addition to Maeterlinck's plays, works by G. Ibsen, B. Bjornson, A. Strindberg were staged , P.Kiyar, K.Mendez, poetic works of C.Baudelaire, A.Rimbaud, P.Verlaine, S.Mallarme were performed.

In Russia, the development of symbolism finds very fertile ground: general eschatological sentiments are exacerbated by the severe public reaction to the failed revolutions of 1905-1907. Pessimism, the themes of tragic loneliness and the fatality of life find a warm response in Russian literature and theater. Brilliant writers, poets and directors of the Silver Age happily plunge into the theory and practice of symbolism. Vyach. Ivanov (1909) and Vs. Meyerhold (1913) write about symbolistic theatrical aesthetics. The dramatic ideas of Maeterlinck are developed and creatively developed by V. Bryusov ( Earth, 1904); A. Blok (trilogy booth,King in the square,Stranger, 1906; Song of Destiny, 1907); F. Sologub ( death victory, 1907 and others); L. Andreev ( Human Life, 1906; King Hunger, 1908; Anatema, 1909 and others).

The period 1905-1917 includes a number of brilliant symbolist drama and opera performances staged by Meyerhold on various stages: the famous booth Blok, Death of Tentagil and Peléas and Melisande M. Maeterlinck, Eternal fairy tale S. Pshibyshevsky, Tristan and Isolde R. Wagner, Orpheus and Eurydice H.V. Gluck, Don Juan J.B. Molière, Masquerade M. Lermontova and others.

The main stronghold of Russian stage realism, the Moscow Art Theater, also turns to symbolism. In the first decade of the 20th century. Maeterlinck's one-act plays were staged at the Moscow Art Theater Blind, Unbidden and There inside; drama of life K. Hamsun, Rosmersholm G. Ibsen, Human Life and Anatema L.Andreeva. And in 1911, for a joint production with K.S. Stanislavsky and L.A. Sulerzhitsky Hamlet G.Krag was invited (in the title role - V.I.Kachalov). However, the extremely conventional aesthetics of symbolism was alien to the theater, which initially relied on the realistic sound of performances; and Kachalov's powerful psychologism turned out to be unclaimed in Craig's attitude to the actor-superpuppet. All these and subsequent symbolist performances ( Miserere S. Yushkevich, There will be joy D. Merezhkovsky, Ekaterina Ivanovna L. Andreev) at best remained only within the framework of the experiment and did not enjoy the recognition of the audience of the Moscow Art Theater, who were delighted with the productions of Chekhov, Gorky, Turgenev, Molière. The play was a happy exception. Blue bird M. Maeterlinck (staged by Stanislavsky, directors Sulerzhitsky and I.M. Moskvin, 1908). Having received the right of the first production from the author, the Moscow Art Theater transformed the heavy, semantic oversaturated symbolist dramaturgy into a subtle and naive poetic fairy tale. It is very significant that the age orientation of the audience has changed in the performance: it was addressed to children. The performance remained in the repertoire of the Art Theater for more than fifty years (in 1958, the two thousandth performance took place), and became the first spectator experience for many generations of young Muscovites.

However, the time of symbolism as an aesthetic trend was coming to an end. This was undoubtedly facilitated by the social upheavals that befell Russia: the war with Germany, the October Revolution, which marked a sharp demolition of the country's entire way of life, civil war, devastation and famine. In addition, after the revolution of 1917, public optimism and the pathos of creation became the official ideology in Russia, which fundamentally contradicted the whole trend of symbolism.

Perhaps the last Russian apologist and theorist of symbolism was Vyach. Ivanov. In 1923 he wrote a "programmatic" theatrical article Dionysus and pradionysianism, which deepens and re-emphasizes the theatrical concept of Nietzsche. Vyach is in it. Ivanov is trying to reconcile conflicting aesthetic and ideological concepts, proclaiming a new, "authentic symbolism" as a means of "restoring unity" in "the decisive moment of enthusiastic pathos." However, Ivanov's call for theatrical performances of mysteries and myth-creating mass actions, similar in perception to the liturgy, remained unclaimed. In 1924 Vyach. Ivanov emigrated to Italy.

Tatyana Shabalina

The meaning of symbolism. The heyday of Russian symbolism came in the 900s, after which the movement waned: significant works no longer appear within the framework of the school, new trends appear - acmeism and futurism, the symbolist worldview ceases to correspond to the dramatic realities of the "real, non-calendar twentieth century". Anna Akhmatova described the situation at the beginning of the 1910s in the following way: “In 1910, a crisis of symbolism was clearly indicated, and beginning poets no longer joined this trend. Some went to futurism, others to acmeism. Undoubtedly, symbolism was a phenomenon of the nineteenth century. Our rebellion against symbolism is completely justified, because we felt like people of the twentieth century and did not want to live in the previous one.

On Russian soil, such features of symbolism appeared as: the diversity of artistic thinking, the perception of art as a way of knowing, the sharpening of religious and philosophical problems, neo-romantic and neoclassical tendencies, the intensity of the worldview, neo-mythologism, the dream of art synthesis, rethinking the heritage of Russian and Western European culture, setting on the limiting price of a creative act and life-creation, deepening into the sphere of the unconscious, etc.

Numerous are the echoes of the literature of Russian symbolism with painting and music. The poetic dreams of the Symbolists find their correspondence in the “gallant” painting of K. Somov, the retrospective dreams of A. Benois, the “created legends” of M. Vrubel, in the “motives without words” of V. Borisov-Musatov, in the exquisite beauty and classical detachment of the canvases of Z. Serebryakova , "poems" by A. Scriabin.

Symbolism laid the foundation for modernist trends in the culture of the 20th century, became a renewing ferment that gave a new quality to literature, new forms of artistry. In the work of the largest writers of the 20th century, both Russian and foreign (A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Platonov, B. Pasternak, V. Nabokov, F. Kafka, D. Joyce, E. Pound, M. Proust , W. Faulkner, etc.), is the strongest influence of the modernist tradition inherited from symbolism.

Tatiana Scriabina

LITERATURE

Craig G.E. Memories, articles, letters. M, 1988
Ermilova E. Theory and figurative world of Russian symbolism. M., 1989
Dzhivilegov A., Boyadzhiev G. History of the Western European theatre. M., 1991
Khodasevich V. End of Renata/ V. Bryusov. Fire Angel. M., 1993
Encyclopedia of Symbolism: Painting, Graphics and Sculpture.LITERATURE. Music/ Comp. J. Kassu. M, 1998
Poetic currents in Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Literary manifestos and artistic practice: Reader/ Comp. A. Sokolov. M., 1998
Payman A. History of Russian symbolism. M., 1998
Basinsky P. Fedyakin S. Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th century. M., 1998
Kolobaeva L. Russian symbolism. M., 2000
French Symbolism: Dramaturgy and Theater. St. Petersburg, 2000

Symbolism

Direction in European and Russian art of the 1870-1910s; focused primarily on artistic expression through the symbol of intuitively comprehended entities and ideas, vague, often sophisticated feelings and visions. The philosophical and aesthetic principles of symbolism go back to the works of A. Schopenhauer, E. Hartmann, F. Nietzsche, and the work of R. Wagner. In an effort to penetrate the secrets of being and consciousness, to see through the visible reality the supertemporal ideal essence of the world (“from the real to the most real”) and its “imperishable”, or transcendent, Beauty, the Symbolists expressed their rejection of bourgeoisness and positivism, longing for spiritual freedom, the tragic foreboding of world socio-historical shifts. In Russia, symbolism was often conceived as "life-creation" - a sacred action that goes beyond art. The main representatives of symbolism in literature are P. Verlaine, P. Valery, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarme, M. Maeterlinck, A. A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach. I. Ivanov, F. K. Sologub; in fine arts: E. Munch, G. Moreau, M. K. Ciurlionis, M. A. Vrubel, V. E. Borisov-Musatov; close to symbolism is the work of P. Gauguin and the masters of the Nabis group, the graphics of O. Beardsley, the work of many masters of the Art Nouveau style.

Symbolism

"Armenia" - M.S. Saryan

By the end of the 19th century, an opinion was formed among artists that realism, with its critically natural reflection of reality, cannot recreate thoughts and the state of the soul, that painting should not only capture objects of the visible world, but also convey sensations of the supernatural and otherworldly. This is how symbolism was born.

Many symbolist canvases convey stories with religious and mythological overtones or address the themes of death and sin. The founders of symbolism in France are the poets Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. In Russia, this trend was represented: in poetry - Alexander Blok, in painting - Mikhail Vrubel, in music - Alexander Scriabin.

Symbolism acquired a new imagery in German art - primarily in the painting of A. Becklin. He depicted naiads, fauns and centaurs in an extremely realistic way, outside of classical plots. More straightforward and naturalistically frightening was the art of painting by F. von Stuck.

"Snow on Rue Carcel" - Paul Gauguin

Symbolists have made themselves known in Russian art since 1904, when an exhibition entitled "Scarlet Rose" was held in Saratov. It was attended by V.E. Borisov-Musatov, P.V. Kuznetsov, M.A. Vrubel, N.N. Sapunov and many others. Borisov-Musatov gravitated toward the musicality of transparent and still completely indefinite impressionistic chords. In his paintings "Tapestry" and "Reservoir" poses and gestures are devoid of any specific meaning. The East turns into a bright sunny fairy tale in the paintings of M.S. Saryan. The emotional tension of contrasting tones brings it closer to expressinism ("Heat", "Running Dog"). At the same time, the decorativeness of his works brings his creative style closer to Fauvism. The significance of the scenery is combined with grace and multicolor in the paintings of N. Sapunov. Symbolic is the unexpected effect of sadness, which is hidden in S.Yu. Sudeikina: a lady with a lute is on a tree, a dog is dancing next to a ballerina. N.P. also uses similar effects. Krymov: funny miniature houses and toy trees are filled with scary power.

In Vrubel's painting, one can feel the creative orientation of symbolism, the eternal presence of a higher spiritual principle, incomprehensible to the mind. Its symbolism, in its exquisite sad prettiness, passes into modernity.

Other artists touched by symbolism are the Frenchman Paul Gauguin, the Englishman Burne Jones, the Austrian Klimt. Symbolism began to fade at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was replaced by surrealism.