The symbolic images of A. A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve” have caused and continue to cause a lot of controversy. There are many interpretations of them, but it must be said that there cannot be an exhaustive logical decoding of these images for the reason that these are images symbolic, which means they are so polysemantic that, most likely, they are inexhaustible in their meanings and shades of meaning.
And the least productive attempts seem to be to approach the solution to these images from the point of view of any political concepts and considerations. The bloc was far from politics, as he himself stated more than once. And in the poem “The Twelve” he appears more than ever, first of all, as “a poet by God’s will and a man of fearless sincerity,” in the words of M. Gorky.
But there is one feature of Blok’s work that can help in perceiving and interpreting the meaning of the symbolic images of the poem. It is known that Blok himself considered his poetry (three volumes) as a single whole, one work unfolded in time, as a “trilogy of incarnation.” “Everything written is a continuation of the first, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” wrote Blok. Also in one of the letters to A. Bely about the awareness of his path: “I know for sure ... that I am consciously walking along my path, destined for me, and I must follow it steadily.” This feature of Blok’s lyrics was studied by D.E. Maksimov in his work “The Idea of the Path in Blok’s Poetic Consciousness.”
Indeed, there are cross-cutting images-symbols in Blok’s poetry that originate in the first volume and permeate the entire “trilogy”, deepening, expanding, transforming and acquiring new spiritual meanings, new shades of meaning. Blok does not include the poem “The Twelve” in the “trilogy”, but it is it that is the completion ways Blok. All the symbolic images of the poem have gone through this long path of end-to-end images, nurtured and suffered through all the creative and life experience poet.
Let's look at the main ones. This is the image of the city, the image of the blizzard, the snowstorm, the image of the twelve and the image of Christ.
Image cities appears for the first time in the famous poem “Factory” (1 volume, 1903). The dramatically changed range of subjects (“bolts,” “gates,” “coolies”) and the color scheme (“zholty,” “black someone”) are immediately perceived as symbols of some sinister force. The city is undoubtedly a world of evil. But it is precisely from this descent of the poet to earth, to people, that the theme in Blok’s work begins, without which there would be no humanism in his subsequent work.
The poems “We were going to attack...”, “Rally”, “Hanging over the world city...”, and the entire “City” cycle begin to sound like anxiety for the future.
Letters to friends are also saturated with anxiety. June 25, 1905 From Shakhmatov to E. Ivanov Blok writes about the “anger” boiling towards St. Petersburg: “... we live every day - in horror, stench and despair, in factory smoke, in the crackle of prodigal smiles, in the blush of disgusting cars... St. Petersburg is a gigantic public house." Hatred of the beloved city (Blok’s expression) is caused by the fact that the city, like all culture, is becoming more and more iron, more and more machine-like. But it was here, in the city, Blok believes, that “the crust has hardened least of all over ... the earthly element - the element of the people.” “The fire is close - I don’t know what kind,” Blok writes to Ivanov.
And Blok was not mistaken: the fire of the elements will burst out right here, so the background of the plot of the poem “The Twelve” will be a city recognizable as Petrograd.
Images of a blizzard, a snowstorm (“wind, wind all over God’s world”, “some kind of blizzard broke out, oh blizzard, oh blizzard”, “oh, what a blizzard, save us!”, etc.) usually do not cause any particular discrepancies : the wild natural elements symbolize the wildness of another, popular, revolutionary element. But they also have another meaning. From the “Snow Mask” cycle of 1907 (when Blok, in his words, also “blindly surrendered to the elements”), we know what danger these blizzard, snowy images pose:
And again, again snow
Covered your tracks...
There is no escape from the blizzards,
And it’s fun for me to die...
...disappearing in snowstorms.
And on this path covered with snow
If you get up, you won’t leave...
They are capable of sweeping path hero, take away from ways, they are symbols off-road. For the hero of “The Snow Mask,” leaving the path means death. The same warning sounds from blizzard images - images of off-road - in the poem “The Twelve”. Where do “twelve people go”?
In the back streets,
Where one blizzard gathers dust,
Yes, downy snowdrifts -
You can't drag your boot...
And there is no way. Its direction is unknown to those walking. The author of the poem did not know him either. The question of where the path of the rebels will lie is one of the main ones in the poem.
In general, the poem “The Twelve” contains more questions than answers.
There is no doubt that the walking “twelve people” (“twelve”, “all twelve” - this is how the heroes of the poem are called by Blok) represent in the poem people. Blok does not call them Red Guards:
Forward, forward, forward,
Working people!
Yes, rude, yes, dark people reduced to an inhuman state. For the first time, “people”, “people”, “beggars” will appear in the same “Factory”, a poem from 1903. And since then, the pain for these humiliated, deceived, beggars will never leave the poet. The twelve are those who “rose from the darkness of the cellars” (1904), “went on the attack” (1905), giving their lives, dying for others, equally disadvantaged. These are those about whom Blok reflects with such pain, hope and anxiety in the articles “The People and the Intelligentsia”, “Elements and Culture”, “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution”. These are those other, “spontaneous people” who live in harmony with the natural elements. Blok expected from these people the imminent approach of a thunderstorm, a fiery element, and asked in alarm: “... what is the fire that is rushing out? Is it like the one that devastated Calabria, or is it a cleansing fire? (Art. “Element and culture”). In the Notebooks we read: “And the elements are coming. What kind of fire will splash out from under this bark - destructive or saving? And will we have the right to say that this fire is generally destructive if it only us will he destroy (the intelligentsia)?
Note that in the poem “The Twelve” the question of where (to what final goal) and against whom the twelve are going, who is the “restless”, “fierce enemy”, who is “close”, “is about to wake up” will remain completely unresolved ”, but never appears in the poem:
Their rifles are steel
On invisible enemy.
The symbolic image of “twelve” is difficult to interpret. Twelve apostles, disciples of Christ?
But on one of the pages of the draft manuscript of the poem there is a note from the author on the side: “And there were these robbers... There lived twelve robbers...”.
Images of the apostles and disciples of Christ are absent from Blok’s other artistic works; they appear only in Blok’s diary entry dated January 7, 1918 (i.e., around the time when the poem “The Twelve” was created) in the outline of the plan conceived, but not realized play about Jesus Christ. These sketches provide interesting material for thinking about the topic, but do not contain an answer to our question. And we cannot give an answer without having an idea of the image of Christ, which in the poem is inseparable from the twelve.
The most heated debate both in Blok’s time and in our time is, of course, caused by the image of Christ, crowning this great poem. Blok’s path to Christ is a very difficult path: from complete rejection to acquisition. In a letter to E.P. Ivanov (a close friend, a deeply religious person) on June 15, 1904 from Shakhmatovo, Blok, apparently continuing a recent oral conversation about Christ, writes: “We both complain about the impoverishment of the soul. But under no circumstances, I tell you now definitively, will I go to Christ for healing. I him Don't know And didn't know never…". And in a letter dated June 25, he once again confirms: “The fire is close again, I don’t know what kind. The old is crumbling. I will never accept Christ."
What scares Blok so much? Blok never theorized about the Beautiful Lady (“ Think in this direction (about Her) seems to me the least possible. I feel her How do you feel most often,” he wrote to Bely, who theorized). Blok does not give any theoretical logical answer this time, about Christ. We can get some idea of Blok’s attitude towards Christ only from artistic images, which are also not very amenable to logical solution. There are only four poems by Blok in which the image of Christ appears. First of all, this is a poem written in 1905 with a dedication to Evgeniy Ivanov “Here he is – Christ – in chains and roses...”. In the notes to the poem there is an indication from Blok himself: “The poem is inspired by those features of the Russian landscape that found their best expression in Nesterov.”
Here he is - Christ - in chains and roses
Behind the bars of my prison.
Here is a meek lamb in white robes
He came and looked out the prison window.
In a simple setting of the blue sky
His icon looks out the window.
A poor artist created the sky.
But the face and the blue sky are one.
United, bright, a little sad -
Behind him comes the grain,
There is a cabbage garden on a hillock,
And birches and fir trees are running into the ravine.
And everything is so close and so far,
What you can't achieve by standing next to each other
And you will not comprehend the blue eye,
Until you become like the path yourself...
Until you are the same beggar,
You won’t lie down, trampled, in a remote ravine,
You won’t forget about everything, and you won’t stop loving everything.
And you will not fade like dead grain.
The poem, as we see, is not visual in Blok’s way, picturesque, but not musical (written by a dolnik, so the musical melody is erased). We remember that for Blok everything is not musical - someone else's for him. Why is Christ unacceptable? Apparently, in him Blok sees the danger of losing his individuality, becoming “like everyone else,” disappearing, simply dissolving in this “wretched,” silent space for him (since it is devoid of It). (The space will sound on its own like the Russian space in “Autumn Will”).
But already in 1907, in the poem “When the foliage is damp and rusty” (the first part of the poem “Autumn Love”), Blok will discover the main thing in Christ that will lead the poet out of the vicious circle of loneliness: Christ is where there is pain and suffering (not for themselves!) for something loved and dear (“native space”) are experienced as the agony of the cross, like carrying a cross (“I don’t know how to love you and I carefully carry my cross...” poem “Motherland”). Christ is where there is a readiness for self-sacrifice for the sake of others, for “crucifixion.”
That is why Christ is ahead of those walking along the revolutionary streets of Petrograd - ahead of the people. We usually talk a lot about the plot of the poem, about those “grimaces of the revolution” that Blok so clearly spoke about in the article “Intellectuals and Revolution”. But we rarely quote other lines:
How did our guys go?
To serve in the Red Guard -
To serve in the Red Guard -
I'm going to lay down my head!
Not only “twelve people go for themselves”, they go to accept suffering “for their friends”, to give their lives for the same disadvantaged, in order to “redo everything. Arrange so that everything becomes new; so that our deceitful, dirty, boring, ugly life becomes fair, clean, cheerful and wonderful life“, as Blok wrote in the article “Intellectuals and Revolution”. “There is no doubt that Christ goes before them,” Blok wrote in his notebook on February 18, 1918. “The point is not whether they are “worthy of Him,” but the scary thing is that He is with them again, and there is no other one yet; Do you need another -?
In these terrible but beautiful moments, they (the twelve) are His disciples.
Blok was not alone in resorting to evangelical mythologizing of the revolution. Its own mythology of the revolution is presented both in the works of A. Bely and in the works of S. Yesenin. The scale of the tragedy of what was happening was such that it found moral justification only through the prism of the gospel story. And when we see Christ “ahead with a bloody flag,” we involuntarily remember the procession to Golgotha: isn’t this a new cross, a crucifix – this “bloody flag”?
The image of Christ in the poem “The Twelve” is an image that has absorbed all the most insoluble questions, the poet’s most secret thoughts about the past, present and future. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the theme of retribution, a cross-cutting theme that ran through all of Blok’s work and sounded in the poem as an echo of the Last Judgment. Even in the notebook on August 8, 1902, there is an entry: “We will all change soon, in the blink of an eye, by the last trumpet.” Blok’s poem “Dream” from 1910 contains the lines:
And He comes from the smoky distance;
And angels with swords are with him;
Just like in the books we read,
Missing and not believing them.
“...After all, we are responsible for the past?... Or do the sins of our fathers not fall on us? - Blok asks in the article “Intellectuals and Revolution”, seeing in the heroes of his poem “with steel rifles” and such judges with swords who administer their “Last Judgment”, their retribution.
This is how it ends path Blok, the path that he himself called “incarnation,” the path of searching for an ideal for everyone. And Blok finds such an ideal in the guise of Christ, as our classic writers of the 19th century traditionally found it. In Blok’s artistic consciousness, Christ, who loves, sacrifices himself, accepts the crucifixion for others - this Christ is with Russia, with the people, with the revolution.
In this acceptance of Christ, Blok’s long-term hopes for what he said in the first volume are resolved:
...you have to cry, sing, go,
So that to the paradise of my overseas songs
The beaten paths have opened, -
referring to the world of the Beautiful Lady, which the poet called “life is beautiful, free and bright.”
“Revolution is: I am not alone, but we,” he writes in notebooks. And one cannot help but recall another dream of Blok, which came true here, at the pinnacle of creativity:
And everything is no longer mine, but ours,
And the connection with the world was established...
Symbolic images in A. Blok’s poem “The Twelve”.
Report
teacher of Russian language and literature
MBOU "Nikolsko-Vyazemskaya Secondary School"
Shvydkoy Nelly Stepanovna
From the above it is clear that an artistic image is nothing more than a special means used not for copying objects, but for encoding generalized experiences. Consequently, it is a special sign (symbol), the meaning (meaning) of which is one or another generalized experience. In this regard, there is a fundamental similarity between a painting and a musical work. An expressive combination of graphic and color elements is as much a carrier of human experience as an expressive combination of sounds. Therefore, any artistic image in the field of painting (if it is truly artistic) has a kind of “musicality”. The famous American painter Whistler drew attention to this: “Nature conceals in its colors and forms the content of all kinds of paintings, like the key to all musical notes. But the artist’s task is to understand this content with understanding, select and combine, and in this way create beautiful - just as a musician connects notes and forms chords and thus creates great harmonies from the chaos of sounds." It has been written more than once about the “musicality” of lines: “When, by the will of the master of the Parthenon frieze, the clothes of the gods are folded into amazing lines, we experience something similar to as if we were listening to music: and here the inner experience follows directly the movement of the lines.”
And Muter, as if hinting at Schopenhauer’s erroneous opposition of music to painting, very clearly explained this side of the matter using the example of Böcklin’s work; noting that Böcklin “discovered the musical insight hidden in the colors.” He “created colorful symphonies, like the sounds of a stormy orchestra,” “the colors laugh, triumph, blissfully.”
From what has been said, it follows that not a single artistic image, be it the most “abstract” or the most “realistic,” as an integral formation, has an objective analogue in reality and therefore is neither a direct nor an indirect copy of any real object. So one of the founders of abstract painting of the 20th century. The Dutch artist Mondrian completely in vain boarded up the window of his Parisian atelier so that the beautiful view of Paris would not encourage him to “copy reality”: the synthesis of elements based on Gestalt, as a rule, gives something that does not exist in reality. At the same time, the most amazing paradox artistic creativity is that the more accurately the elements and gestalt copy reality, the further, generally speaking, the result of their synthesis departs from this reality. A convincing illustration of this paradox is the symbolic images of Böcklin and the surrealistic images of Dali.
Contrary to popular belief, a realistic image is no less symbolic than an “abstract” one (not to mention classicism, romanticism, expressionism and surrealism). It is enough to refer to “Portrait of Bertin the Elder” by Ingres, the history of whose creation we know for sure. Ingres searched long and painfully for the most expressive composition of the portrait to accurately convey the feelings that the image of the powerful head of the French political press of the July Monarchy era evoked in him. To adequately express the emotional impression made by a person with such political weight, it was necessary to find a special combination of pose, posture, costume, hairstyle, head angle, facial expression, hand placement, etc., including the appropriate setting (background). After many unsuccessful attempts, Ingres found a combination in which the sitting pose of the person being portrayed (sitting, as it were, “on a throne”!) and the arrangement of the fingers of the right hand, reminiscent of the talons of an eagle, ready to plunge into the next victim, give special expressiveness to the image. Consequently, Bertin’s deeply realistic image turned out to be not a copy real person, but “an amazing synthesis of strictly thought-out and selected observations with a sense of freedom and naturalness in the interpretation of the model.” The portrait made a very strong impression on his contemporaries: everyone was amazed at the “resemblance” to the original. At the same time, no one has ever observed in the original a simultaneous combination of all those features mentioned above. In light of the above, it is easy to understand that the audience mistakenly took the special code for designating a generally valid feeling for a copy of the corresponding object.
Thus, being a code for an emotional attitude towards a certain object, an artistic image thereby encodes the object of an emotional attitude. Thanks to this, the image, in addition to its direct meaning (emotional attitude), also has an indirect meaning (the object of this attitude). Let us note that in the case of the specified object, again, it is not copying that takes place, but encoding. Therefore, the image of Bertin, as depicted in Ingres’s portrait, is by no means a more or less accurate copy of the real Bertin. Such an illusion arises only when one ignores the fact that this image appeared as a result of the synthesis of elements and gestalt. It would be a copy if the said synthesis did not take place. This is a very delicate moment, which once again shows that it is impossible to understand the essence artistic image, if you don’t know the general “mechanism” of its creation. If there may still be any doubts about such a “mechanism” in the absence of knowledge of the history of the creation of the painting in the case of “Portrait of Bertin,” then they lose all ground when we study the history of the creation of Courbet’s “Atelier.” Here, it would seem that the most realistic genre scene is a product of the artist’s very complex creative imagination and, as the author himself reports, has a deep symbolic meaning.
We have already seen that there are four types of objects of emotional attitude (real, abstract, fantastic and meta-objects). Therefore, the symbolic functions of the image in relation to the object of emotional relationship are determined by the nature of this object. Since such objects are divided primarily into concrete (real and fantastic) and abstract (different degrees of abstraction), an artistic image in relation to these objects can appear in one of three forms: 1) isomorpheme; 2) metaphor; 3) allegory.
In the first case, we are dealing with a structural copy of an object. This means that the method of connecting the elements of the image and the method of connecting the elements of the object are the same, although the elements of the image and the object may differ very significantly. They say that the image in this case is isomorphic to the object. Ingres's Portrait of Bertin and Courbet's Atelier are classic examples of isomorphemes. 
Consequently, an image is an isomorpheme if it denotes: a) a very specific object (real or fantastic) and b) has structural similarity with the designated object.
One of the most expressive isomorphems in the history of painting is the use by artists in some paintings of the symbolic meaning of blindness. Perhaps the most profound images of this type were created in classical painting by P. Bruegel, and in modernist painting by Picasso. In P. Bruegel’s “Parable of the Blind,” a stunningly powerful expression, a chain of blind people led by a drunken guide into the abyss becomes a symbol of the spiritual blindness of humanity, moving, thanks to its vices and the vices of its leaders, towards a global catastrophe. On the contrary, in Picasso’s paintings of the “blue” period there are often images of blind beggars, whose blindness has the exact opposite meaning. Now this is a symbol not of spiritual blindness, but of spiritual insight - a kind of emotional clairvoyance that allows you to “look” into the very essence of things. Such physically blind people are in reality spiritually "sighted" and they are contrasted with the physically sighted who are in fact spiritually blind. Looking at the faces of such blind people, one gets the impression that they “... something is born in the depths of the spirit, perhaps that same “inner eye” (V.B.) painfully appears, for the sake of which it would not be a pity to go blind” (Dmitrieva N.A. Picasso. M., 1971.P.19). They are spiritually “sighted” because their experiences are connected not with the deceptive appearance of things, but with the essence of them. The physical blindness of such blind people expresses the idea that their gaze is directed not to the external, but to the internal. Their “eyelessness” resembles the “eyelessness” of Buddhist statues, in which it symbolizes withdrawal from the outside world into oneself (self-contemplation). This sounds in unison with the legend about Democritus blinding himself so that one could escape from the vain “variegation” of phenomena and focus on their unobservable essence.
Apparently, having in mind precisely the emotional attitude towards essence, Picasso once expressed the seemingly monstrous idea that artists, like goldfinches, should gouge out their eyes so that “they sing better.” When an artist, choosing a sighted person as a gestalt, mentally “gouges out” his eyes, he creates a typical isomorpheme: the blind person becomes a structural copy of the sighted person. In the history of painting, more extravagant cases of isomorphemes are known. As such, we can cite genital isomorphemes in classical and modernist painting, traditionally symbols of erotic desires and devilish temptations. In these compositions, the structural similarity with the object of emotional relationship is more or less obvious, although it may require some effort from people with insufficient imagination.
If not only the elements, but also the structure of the image does not coincide with the structure of the object of the emotional relationship, then the image becomes what is commonly called a metaphor (“allegory”). The simplest manifestation of the latter is the representation of people in the form of animals, for example, a strong and brave person in the form of a lion, and a cunning and resourceful person in the form of a fox. Here the object of emotional attitude can be specific people. In more difficult cases the role of such an object can be a specific social institution or even an entire state.
There is a well-known story about how the Neapolitan king ordered the founder Italian painting Renaissance Giotto (1276-1337) painting that would have depicted his kingdom. 
To the great amazement of the king, instead of a wide panorama of his possessions, so to speak, from a bird's eye view with many cities and towns, Giotto depicted a donkey loaded with a heavy pack, at whose feet lay another newer pack. The donkey stupidly and lustfully sniffed at the new pack, clearly wanting to get it. And on both packs there was clearly a crown and a scepter. When the king asked what all this meant, Giotto replied that such is the state and such are its subjects, always dissatisfied with the old ruler and eager to get a new one.
Here the object of the metaphor is a real single object (the Kingdom of Naples). But the role of such an object may be an equally concrete, but fantastic object. A very striking illustration of such a more complex metaphor is one of the images of the devil in Bosch’s famous triptych “The Garden of Pleasures,” as well as the image of the “Last Judgment” in one of the frescoes of the same Giotto.
An empty bud with thorns with red berries emanating from it symbolizes one of the manifestations of the devil. The fact is that, according to medieval beliefs, an empty cavity (shell, hollow, etc.) serves as a prototype of Satan; red berries are a symbol of the devil's temptation that leads to sin, and thorns are a prototype of the danger with which this temptation and this sin are associated. So that the viewer has no doubt about who he is dealing with, the entire structure is crowned by an owl with a truly satanic look...
The image of the "Last Judgment" in Giotto's interpretation - in the form of an angel rolling up the heavens - has an absolutely stunning power of laconic expressiveness! It is difficult to come up with a more accurate, capacious and deep, both ideologically and emotionally, allegorical formula than the one proposed by Giotto. The emotional attitude towards the biblical image of the “Last Judgment” is extremely sparingly and at the same time deadly accurately characterized.
One should not think that metaphor is characteristic only of old-fashioned classical painting. A striking example of metaphor in modernist painting can be, in particular, the image of a burning giraffe in some of Dali’s compositions, which symbolizes the approach of the Second World War.
When an artistic image turns out to be a symbol of an abstract object, then it becomes what has long been called an allegory. At the same time, different degrees of abstraction of the object of emotional relationship provide food for allegories of varying degrees of complexity.
One of the oldest and simplest cases of using this concept is the allegory of, so to speak, “enlightenment” (in the figurative and literal sense), created by the poetic fantasy of the ancient Greeks. 
She represents Apollo - the god of knowledge and light - striking with his luminous arrows ("rays of knowledge", "light of truth") Python - a symbol of ignorance and darkness. It is not for nothing that Hegel mentioned this allegory in his Lectures on Aesthetics.
A more complex illustration of the concept of allegory can be found in famous painting Botticelli "Slander". Botticelli wrote it under the impression of the Roman historian Lucian’s description of a painting on a similar theme created by the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles.
There are 10 characters in the film, divided into 3 groups. On the right, Ignorance and Suspicion whisper something to the Ruler that should make him believe Slander. The central group represents Slander, pulling the hair of the Slandered One, led by Envy and accompanied by Lies and Deceit. The last group consists of gloomy Repentance and naked Truth, symbolizing the exposure of Slander. Thus, the plot of the picture is the history of Slander from its inception to its exposure (the potential appearance of Slander in the right group, its actual presence in the central one and its disappearance in the left).
It is easy to notice that the viewer is dealing here with a multi-stage allegory, which consists of a whole complex of elementary allegories. Only two characters out of ten symbolize people (the Ruler and the Slandered). Seven are abstract symbols human qualities and corresponding abstract actions (suspicion in general, envy in general, deception in general, etc.). Finally, the last character out of ten encodes a meta-object (truth). The synthetic allegory coincides with the plot of the picture. This is precisely the story of Slander (with a capital S!). However, the viewer would make a serious mistake if he identified this allegory with the actual content of the picture. From what was stated earlier it follows that the described allegory is only a code (sign, symbol) of the artist’s emotional relationship to a very subtle “abstract” object, which cannot be “depicted”, but can only be designated. We are talking about the history of slander (with a small letter!) as such, slander in general, that is, in fact, about the emotional attitude to a certain pattern of human behavior that operates in different eras and in different countries.
An analysis of Botticelli's "Slander" shows that one of the most suitable abstract objects that the allegory encodes are certain generalized qualities of a person. 
Thus, such transparent allegories of the 19th century Symbolists appear. as, for example, "Hope" by Puy de Chavannes and "Faith" by Burne-Jones. Nadezhda is depicted as a fragile girl with a young tree in her hand, and Vera as a girl with a lamp in her right hand, at whose feet a dragon is dying (“unbelief”), and a snake is crawling along her left hand (“doubt”). Changes in generalized human qualities can, as a kind of “abstract” events, in turn, provide food for new experiences and, thanks to this, become objects of special emotional relationships. Then the well-known "Broken Jug" Dream appears. The girl mourns the jug, but Diderot explains: “Don’t think that we are talking about the jug... Young girls mourn more, and not without reason.”
Thus, this elegant allegory, executed in the best traditions of the Rococo style, has as its object the “loss of innocence” as such, the “loss of innocence” in general. Allegories acquire a much more complex character in modernist painting (especially in surrealism), where they become mysterious puzzles that require special art historical analysis to be deciphered. For example, some of Dali’s portraits feature images of something like kebab or bacon, which at first causes complete bewilderment. However, from the comments of the artist himself, we can conclude that such images symbolize either “the desire to eat someone” or “the desire to be eaten by someone” (see, for example, “Gala with a kebab on the shoulder” and “Soft self-portrait with bacon ". 
In the first case we are dealing with an allegory of, so to speak, the “burden of love,” and in the second, the “burden of popularity.”
Finally, the most highest degree An allegory reaches complexity when the artistic image indirectly encodes a meta-object. We have already become acquainted with the allegorical “depiction” of dialectics in Veronese. From everything that has been said, it follows that the described allegory is a special code to designate the artist’s emotional attitude to such a meta-object as dialectics. Moreover, a meta-object is not amenable to any kind of “image”, but can only be designated (encoded). Dali went even further: he painted a picture that was supposed to convey his emotional attitude towards the irrational (the “unconscious” in Freud’s sense), and considered in general (the irrational as such, the irrational in general). Moreover, he decided to convey in the film an emotional attitude towards his own intention to “reveal” this irrational and make it accessible to the viewer. As a result, one of the few fairly transparent surreal allegories appeared: Dali the child lifts the “veil” (as if removing the “skin”), hiding the irrational in the form of a dog dozing under water (fig.). Of course, the “transparency” of this allegory is relative, because it depends on understanding the symbolic meaning of the key element - the dog. But if this element is deciphered, then it immediately becomes clear that this picture is an allegory of Dali’s entire life and all of his work.
As the history of painting shows, the symbolic structure of a fairly complex artistic image is a very branched and intricate hierarchy of isomorphemes, metaphors and allegories. 
There are, for example, combined symbolic images that combine isomorpheme and metaphor or isomorpheme and allegory. An illustration of the first option can be the famous “Lady with an Ermine” (1483) by Leonardo, which is a portrait of the favorite of the Duke of Milan, Louis Moreau, Cecilia Gallerani. The very fact that the person being portrayed is holding in her hands, instead of a submissive cat, an animal with such a restless disposition as an ermine, is already somewhat alarming. Even more surprising is the strange similarity of the outlines of the ermine’s muzzle with the outlines of the face of the person being portrayed. However, if we take into account the “royal” nature of the ermine, the stern and cruel character of the Milanese ruler and the secular qualities of Cecilia, who repeatedly tamed the indomitable temper of the Duke not only with her love, but also with her enchanting playing of the harp, then the meaning of Leonardo’s elegant metaphor becomes completely transparent.
An equally effective illustration of the combination of isomorpheme and allegory is the portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, the favorite of the Florentine Duke Lodovic the Magnificent, by Piero di Cosimo. The viewer's attention is immediately drawn to the unusual snake necklace. 
It was this that apparently confused the famous Mannerist artist and the first historian of Italian Renaissance painting, Vasari, who decided that the painting depicted the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, who, as we know, committed suicide with a snake bite.
Meanwhile, there was some truth in this mistake. It was no coincidence that Cleopatra chose this particular method of committing suicide: according to Egyptian belief, a snake bite grants immortality. A snake biting its own tail has always been considered a symbol of eternity. From here it is not difficult to guess that in the image of a snake necklace we are dealing with a peculiar allegory of immortality - the immortality of the beauty that lived a very bright, but very short (23 years) life...
The viewer encounters a real bacchanalia of isomorphems, metaphors and allegories when he begins to look at such grandiose compositions as, for example, “The Garden of Pleasures” by Bosch, “Flemish Proverbs” by P. Bruegel or “A second before waking up after a bumblebee flies around a pomegranate fruit” by Dali. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the differences between isoforme, metaphor and allegory are, generally speaking, relative and they can transform into each other. The same image in relation to one object can be a metaphor, and in relation to another - an allegory, and vice versa. For example, Botticelli's "Slander", as we showed earlier, is an allegory because it expresses an emotional attitude towards an "abstract" object. But a similar image of “Slander” by Apelles played the role of a metaphor, for Apelles expressed in his picture an emotional attitude to a very specific event in his life - his false accusation of high treason.
So far we have talked about the plot symbolism of the artistic image. Now it’s time to discuss the so-called formal symbolism of this image. The latter is a more subtle thing and less accessible to understanding even by a viewer with a well-trained eye. We will consider the symbolic meaning of the following formal components of the pictorial image: a) lines; b) forms; c) light; d) colors; d) prospects. The peculiarity of formal symbolism is that all of these components can acquire an independent conventional meaning, independent of their belonging to a particular object.
An excellent example of a purely conventional and therefore symbolic use of a line is given to us by Japanese artist XV century Shosshu in his famous landscape "Winter". Against the background of a winter landscape, a vertical zigzag line rises from the ground to the sky - like a crack in a transparent surface. The viewer seems to feel the “crackling frost” in the still air. Shosshu introduces this element into the composition as a kind of graphic accompaniment to a completely realistic depiction of the landscape. This is not like the unnaturally angular outline of the girl’s figure in Puy de Chavannes’s “Nadezhda,” which emphasizes the “fragility” of Nadezhda. In Chavannes, the line is part of the subject. In Shosshu it acquires an independent existence. A naive viewer may ask: “Why is this necessary? The line should be an element of the drawing!” The answer is: the mood created by a “non-objective” line is different from the mood initiated by a materialized line. 
Therefore, if the artist refuses an autonomous (independent) line, he conveys a different mood. So in order to get ahead of the first mood, it is necessary to learn to correctly perceive the “pointless” line, that is, to realize its conditional, symbolic meaning.
As for the form, here the symbolism has become even more widespread. For a long time, the quadrangle was considered a symbol of earthly life, the triangle - a symbol of heavenly existence as the antipode to earthly existence (in particular, as a symbol of the trinity), and the circle - a symbol of infinity and eternity: “Symbols of higher reality are often perceived in geometric form. For example, the triangle served with ancient times as mystical and magic symbol and he... often aroused in the viewer a feeling of wariness and even fear." Perhaps the symbolism of these geometric forms was most vividly embodied in Kandinsky’s numerous “abstract” compositions. The function of the circle in Kandinsky as a symbol of the absolute and transcendental has been repeatedly noted in art history literature ( The One, Tao, etc.): The circle is the synthesis of the greatest opposites. It unites the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in balance. Of the three primary forms (triangle, square, circle), it points most clearly to the fourth dimension... The circle is a link with space. In 1925, in one of his letters, Kandinsky speaks of the “romanticism of the circle.”
We have already noted in connection with the allegory of the Enlightenment and the image of Apollo the symbolic meaning of light as a source of truth. This ancient symbolism of light was further developed in Christian tradition, acquiring a particularly refined form in the work of Rembrandt. Light began to be interpreted not only as a source of truth, but also as a source of “divine grace” (the so-called “ascetic truth”, or ideal). Therefore, Rembrandt moved from external illumination of objects to their internal glow. Objects in his paintings, as a rule, glow not with reflected light, but with their own light. This is achieved by two techniques: eliminating shadows (or reducing them) and the appearance of the most bright light within the boundaries of the subject. As a result, his objects emit “divine light sent to the earth and ennobling it with its presence.”
The symbolism of graphic elements paved the way for more complex and deep color symbolism. We encounter its simplest manifestation already in the coloring of the clothes of Raphael’s Madonnas, built on a simple combination of local red and blue. The red color symbolizes royal power in this case, and the blue color symbolizes the divine principle (“heavenly power”). The combination of red and blue thus becomes a symbol of divine power, which requires reverent attitude. These colors acquire a significantly different meaning from Bosch in his “Garden of Pleasures”. The entire central part of the triptych is dotted with red and blue berries and buds. 
Here, the red color symbolizes voluptuousness (sensual love that leads to temptation), and blue symbolizes poison (spiritual “poisoning” that sensual love leads to).
This relatively simple symbolism takes on a more complex character in modernist painting. Thus, in Picasso’s paintings of the “blue” period, blue becomes a symbol of loneliness and sadness, melancholy and despair. A viewer with a realistic attitude is usually perplexed why the film has such an “unnatural” coloring. He may even think that the artist simply does not know how to use paints (a bad colorist). On the contrary, in Modigliani, in his piercing orange nudes, the viewer no longer encounters minor, but major symbolism of color: now the “unnatural” color symbolizes erotic passion. But, perhaps, the most sensational case of a purely conventional (symbolic) use of color was “The Tower of Blue Horses” by F. Marc and “The Bathing of the Red Horse” by Petrov-Vodkin.
One should not think that only realists considered it impossible for blue or red horses to exist. Even such a bold experimenter in the field of color as Renoir once authoritatively declared: “Believe me, there are no blue horses in the world!” In contrast to this, according to Kandinsky, the blue horse became a symbol of “heavenly energy” that determines the existence and evolution of the Universe. The red horse, as already noted, perhaps unexpectedly for the artist himself, became a symbol of the impending revolution in one of the largest countries in the world (The symbolism of color has a long tradition in religious art. Thus, the golden color of Buddha symbolizes the radiation of grace / goodness /, and blue for Krishna - absorption of world poison /evil/ in order to deliver people from it. In line with the Christian tradition, red is interpreted as a symbol of the desire for good; green - a symbol of being “beyond good and evil” /see/. ., for example, Florensky P.A. Collected works Paris: YMCA Press, 1985. T.1.S.59-62/).
Now we come to the most difficult issue, which is related to the symbolic meaning of the perspective used in the picture. As we have already seen, even the use of linear perspective does not aim to achieve a simple optical illusion of depth. Alberti already noted that it is necessary to use the laws of optics to achieve special expressiveness of the artistic image. Knowledge of the laws of optics is not necessary in order to turn painting into the science of representation: “Knowledge of the laws of optics can enable the artist to more effectively express his feelings.” 
It was Masaccio and Van Eyck, and then Leonardo and Dürer, who fully used linear perspective as an effective means of creating a special spirituality of artistic images to give mystical scenes the illusion of reality.
The question arises, what is the specificity of that expressiveness that was associated with the illusion of depth. Here it is necessary to distinguish between two tasks: 1) searching for an effective means of conveying the expressiveness of the human body; 2) search for an effective means of conveying the expressiveness of a person’s spiritual aspirations. The first problem was solved in the Renaissance (XV-XVI centuries), the second - in the era of romanticism (XIX centuries).
As for the expressiveness of the human body, it is significantly related to its movements. The latter require three-dimensional spaces to fully reveal their expressiveness (two-dimensional space significantly constrains freedom of movement and impoverishes the range of possible angles). That is why anyone who considered it necessary to show the expressiveness of the body had to resort to linear perspective. The importance that Renaissance artists attached to the expressiveness of the human body can be seen from the following episode. When Italian artist Signorelli's son died, the grief-stricken father tore off part of his son's skin in order to better examine the “beauty” of his muscles. This sounds monstrous from the point of view of a modern moralist, but it was quite natural in an era when the expressiveness of the body was elevated, one might say, into a religious cult. The contemplation of the naked muscles of his dead son could be a consolation for the artist father. The fact is that it was Signorelli who brought to the end the art of linear perspective, showing to the fullest extent the connection between the expressiveness of the body and its movements. Since movement allows you to see the body in different angles, it becomes possible to choose from many angles the one that is most expressive.
It is not difficult to guess that the use of an artistic image with a linear perspective is associated with giving this image the character of an isomorpheme. Indeed, in this case, the perspective of the image coincides with the visible perspective of the real object, the emotional attitude towards which should be conveyed in the picture. But this means that the image turns out to be a structural (and only structural!) copy of the real object. This web-like "copy" is actually a symbol not only of the emotions aroused by the object, but also of the object itself. In other words, although the optical illusion of depth between the elements of the image coincides with a similar illusion of depth between the elements of the object, we should not forget that the elements of the image (in whole or in part) do not coincide with the elements of the object.
The difficulty of realizing the symbolic nature of linear perspective is associated only with the coding of a real object. If we are talking about coding fantastic or abstract objects, then there is no difficulty. When, for example, the famous Belgian surrealist Delvaux's nude beauties wander in mysterious solitude through the streets of deserted cities, it is immediately clear that here linear perspective only encodes the artist's emotional attitude to a dream or obsession, and therefore such a fantastic object as a dream or such abstract object as an obsession.
Thus, any difficulties in understanding the symbolism of linear perspective arise only if the image plays the role of an isomorpheme. When we use it as a metaphor or allegory, then the symbolic nature of this perspective is beyond any doubt. Can there be any doubt about the completely conventional (purely symbolic) character of linear perspective in Botticelli's "Calumina"?
As already mentioned, the romantics of the 19th century. gave linear perspective a new symbolic meaning, significantly different from the Renaissance one. 
It manifested itself with particular force in the work of one of the leaders of the German romantic painting K. Friedrich (1774-1840). In his landscape compositions, small figures of people are contrasted with the vast space with an endless horizon stretching into the distance.
They usually have their backs turned to the viewer and their gaze is romantically directed into the endless distance. As O. Spengler aptly noted, here the figure of a man is a symbol of his body, and the space into which the character’s gaze is directed is a symbol of his “Faustian” soul. Thus, linear perspective becomes a kind of code for the spiritual aspirations of the individual towards a distant and unattainable ideal. In other words, the third dimension ("depth") now takes on a completely new meaning - it symbolizes time. So, according to O. Spengler, in the image of the romantic landscape “Faustian Soul”, in the stream of all-consuming time, one tries to “embrace the immensity.”
If there are still possible doubts regarding linear perspective regarding its symbolic nature, then they are completely dispelled when we move on to such types of perspective as reverse and spherical (diagram 1(a) and (b)). As you know, a characteristic feature of reverse perspective is that the vanishing point of parallel lines (perpendicular to the surface of the picture), here, unlike linear perspective, is not behind the picture, but in front of it.
We encounter excellent examples of reverse perspective in Russian icon painting.
Almost reverse perspective manifests itself in the fact that an object is simultaneously visible from different sides, which contradicts the laws of optics. But an artistic image with a reverse perspective seems to say to the viewer: “So much the worse for these laws!” That's why art exists, to go beyond those disabilities that science provides, and to reveal such expressive possibilities that science does not dare to dream of.
The symbolism of reverse perspective lies in the fact that it encodes not the viewer’s aspiration towards the ideal (as is, for example, the case with linear perspective in a romantic landscape), but, on the contrary, the ideal’s aspiration towards the viewer. Linear perspective seems to “draw” the viewer into the space of the picture; the opposite “pushes” the characters towards the viewer - the viewer, as it were, becomes an accomplice of what is happening in the film. The purpose of such construction of an artistic image is to arouse in the viewer awe in relation to what is happening in the picture. If the elements of the image, according to the artist’s plan, have a magical character and that is why they are called upon to arouse the specified feeling in the viewer, then they should not obey the laws of ordinary (“earthly”) perspective: they should not be visible only partially, should not obscure each other, not should decrease with increasing distance to them, etc. Consequently, the use of reverse perspective, in particular in icon painting, was not a simple consequence of the inability to build linear perspective, but the inability to do this itself is explained by the reluctance to use it due to the fact that it was not suitable for expressing the corresponding feelings. To put it simply, it was inadequate to the prevailing mood of the era. The history of painting shows that when the need arose to express the feelings associated with linear perspective, artists have always mastered it. Suffice it to recall Anaxagoras and Agatharchus, who used this perspective back in the 5th century. BC As for the spherical (planetary) perspective, Bosch, for example, symbolizes the anomalousness of the earthly world in comparison with the divine: “The earthly world was only a crooked mirror (V.B.) of the divine world, its optical illusion". It is curious that Bosch used spherical perspective only in scenes of earthly life; in scenes of heaven and hell, he resorted to parallel (axonometric) perspective with elements of linear perspective. Spherical perspective became quite widespread in modernist painting of the twentieth century, mainly in formism (for example, in the still lifes of Petrov-Vodkin) and expressionism (for example, in the urban landscapes of Gross).
The purpose of its use was to show the new expressive possibilities that the deformed earthly world contains. In particular, in expressionistic compositions it often symbolizes the feeling of an impending apocalyptic catastrophe. Thus, the expressiveness of paintings can be enhanced or weakened by moving from one type of perspective to another.
An analysis of the nature of an artistic image cannot be completed until comparative analysis artistic images with scientific images and symbols and it is not shown how the first differ from the second. This is a rather subtle and delicate issue that will require the reader's intense attention. The main differences between artistic images and symbols and scientific images and symbols are as follows:
1) As you know, a scientific sign (term) and the meaning of this sign (idea or concept) do not coincide. For example, the visual representation of a crystal has nothing to do with the word "crystal". An artistic image, as we have seen, necessarily represents some symbol. It follows that the coincidence of the image and the sign is a characteristic feature of the artistic image.
2) Due to the coincidence of the artistic image and the artistic symbol, this image cannot coincide with the meaning of the artistic symbol, in contrast to the scientific image, which coincides with the meaning of the scientific symbol. As was shown earlier, the meaning of an artistic symbol is experience (feeling, emotion). At the same time, a visual representation or an abstract concept appears as the meaning of a scientific symbol. Hence, artistic symbol unlike the scientific one, it has not a rational, but an irrational (emotional) meaning.
3) Artistic symbols, like scientific ones, are capable of generalization. But the nature of artistic generalization differs significantly from scientific generalization. If scientific symbols denote the general in objects or in ideas and concepts, then artistic symbols denote the general in emotions.
4) Scientific symbols are conventional, i.e. are the result of an agreement (“convention”) between specialists. One and the same scientific image, generally speaking, can be denoted by different symbols. As is well known, scientific terminology is not a matter of truth, but of convenience. In the case of artistic symbols, we are faced with a completely different situation. If between scientifically and the symbol denoting it does not have the necessary unambiguous connection (since we are talking about a convention), then there is a strictly unambiguous connection between the artistic image and the emotion it expresses. We cannot express the experiences encoded in Leonardo's Last Supper or Picasso's Guernica in any other way than those provided by these paintings. Changing the code in this case leads to a significant modification of the experiences themselves.
Thus, the specificity of artistic symbols is that they are not conventional, but unique. So in art we encounter a completely unusual and paradoxical situation from a scientific point of view - the non-conventionality of the sign. It is the uniqueness of artistic symbols that gives original works of art such value, as opposed to copies.
5) If the criterion for the truth of a scientific image is its correspondence, ultimately, to some real object, then the criterion for the “truth” (“authenticity”) of an artistic image will be the correspondence (“adequacy”) of the experience it expresses to the experience of the artist himself. In other words, the degree of “truth” of an artistic image is determined by the degree of its expressiveness. Consequently, “truth” in art means sincerity, and “error” means falsehood. Therefore, the criterion of truth in art differs significantly from that in science.
6) A scientific symbol by itself (as such) does not carry any rational information: such information is contained only in its meaning. So, for example, by studying the structure of the word “crystal”, one cannot learn anything about crystals. This is a consequence of the fact that the scientific symbol does not coincide with the scientific image. In contrast, an artistic symbol, coinciding with an artistic image, sometimes contains very valuable rational information.
On one fresco in one of the Scandinavian temples of the 11th century. a picture of a turkey was discovered. Based on this, it was concluded that Columbus was not the discoverer of America. IN seascapes Dutch marine painter of the 17th century. The ships were depicted so accurately and in such detail that Peter I taught Russian sailors in seafaring using these images. Based on paintings by an Italian artist of the 18th century. Canaletto, who depicted the historical center of Warsaw with great accuracy, restored many buildings in this center that were destroyed during the Second World War.
However, the specified rational information that can be extracted from an artistic symbol (image) has nothing to do with its true meaning- express the artist’s emotional attitude towards a certain object. It turns out to be, so to speak, a by-product (and, to a large extent, accidental) of such an expression. The rational information that an artistic symbol carries (as opposed to a scientific one) often masks its true meaning and gives rise to an unreasonable rapprochement between the artistic image and the scientific one, contributing to naturalistic illusions.
Symbolic images and their meaning in the poem of Block TwelveSymbolic images and their meaning in Blok’s poem “The Twelve”
Blok’s poem “Twelve” cannot be considered a work dedicated exclusively to October Revolution, without perceiving what is hidden behind the symbols, without giving importance to the issues that were raised in it by the author. Alexander Alexandrovich used symbols in order to convey deep meaning to the most ordinary, seemingly meaningless scenes. Blok used many symbols in his poem: names, numbers, and colors.
The leitmotif of the poem appears from the first bars: in the gap and opposition of “white” and “black”. Two opposite colors, I think, can only mean a split, a division. Black color is the color of a vague, dark beginning. White color symbolizes purity, spirituality, it is the color of the future. The poem contains phrases: black sky, black anger, white rose. I think that the “black sky” hanging over the city is akin to the “black anger” accumulated in the hearts of the “twelve”. Here one can discern a long-standing resentment, pain, hatred towards the “old” world.
Anger, sad anger.
Boiling in my chest
Black anger, holy anger...
The color red also appears in the poem. It symbolizes blood, fire. Blok reflects on the possibility of human rebirth in the cleansing fire of revolution. Revolution for the author is the birth of harmony from chaos. The number twelve is also symbolic. Twelve is the number of the apostles of Christ, the number of jurors in court, the number of people in the detachments that patrolled Petrograd. The main characters of the poem are unthinkable in this era, the era of revolution. Twelve walkers, the beginnings of a new consciousness, are contrasted with the embodiment of the “old” world - “the bourgeois at the crossroads”, “the lady in astrakhan fur”, “the writer is in turmoil”. “The Twelve” symbolizes, I think, the revolution itself, striving to get rid of the past, moving rapidly forward, destroying all its enemies.
Revolutionary step up!
The restless enemy never sleeps!
Comrade, hold the rifle, don’t be afraid!
Let's fire a bullet into Holy Rus'...
“The hungry beggar dog” symbolizes the “old”, passing world in the poem. We see that this dog pursues the “twelve” everywhere, just as the old world pursues new system, revolution. From this we can conclude that supporters of the new time cannot yet get rid of the remnants of the past. Blok also does not make predictions about what the future will be, although he realizes that it will not be rosy:
Ahead is a cold snowdrift,
-Who else is there? Come out!
Only a poor dog is hungry
He hobbles behind.
-Get off, you scoundrel!
I'll tickle you with a bayonet!
The old world is like a mangy dog,
If you fail, I'll beat you up!
The image of Christ is also symbolic in the poem. Jesus Christ is the messenger of new human relationships, an exponent of purity, holiness and purifying suffering. For Blok, his “twelve” are real heroes, since they are the executors of a great mission, carrying out a holy cause - a revolution. As a symbolist and mystic, the author expresses the holiness of the revolution religiously. Emphasizing the holiness of the revolution, its cleansing power, Blok places the invisible walking Christ before these “twelve”. According to Blok, the Red Guards, despite the spontaneity of their movement, were subsequently reborn and became apostles of the new faith.
So they walk with a sovereign step -
Behind is a hungry dog,
Ahead - with a bloody flag,
And invisible behind the blizzard,
And unharmed by a bullet,
With a gentle tread above the storm,
Snow scattering of pearls,
In a white corolla of roses -
Ahead is Jesus Christ.
Literary symbolism can subtly express the hero’s sympathy or personal view of something important. Blok uses it in its entirety. The poem “The Twelve” is full of mysteries and revelations; it makes you think about every word, every sign, in order to correctly decipher it. This work well illustrates the work of A. Blok, who rightfully takes his place among the symbolists.
Symbolic image
Along with the mimetic aspect of art, Byzantine thinkers, both ecclesiastical and secular, paid considerable attention to its symbolic meaning and symbolic images. In this they relied, on the one hand, on the traditions of ancient allegory, and on the other, on the rich experience of Judeo-Christian exegesis. Artistic practice provided a variety of material for reflection in this direction. In Byzantium throughout history, secular allegorical art of the Hellenistic type existed. Early Christian images, as a rule, had a symbolic-allegorical character, and individual allegorical elements of these images were then preserved in the iconography of mature Byzantine and all Orthodox church art. And it itself, especially icon painting, developed mainly along the path of creating not illusionistic illustrations of Scripture, but complex, multi-valued symbolic images that required deep penetration into their innermost meaning. In addition, the actual mimetic images in Byzantium had, as a rule, not only a literal, but also a figurative meaning.
One of the main forms of thinking in Byzantine culture was the principle of allegory. It well expressed the spirit of the times and indirectly served as a sign of high education. Allegories were used in their writings and oral speeches both secular and clergy. For a more expressive and effective presentation of their thoughts, writers and historians of the X-XII centuries. often resorted to the technique of describing fictional paintings with subsequent interpretation of their allegorical meaning. Nikita Choniates, for example, uses a similar technique. In his “Chronography” he describes an allegorical picture, allegedly depicted at the direction of Andronikos Komnenos on the outer wall of the Temple of the Forty Martyrs: “<…>in a huge painting he (Andronicus. - V.B.) depicted himself not in royal vestments and not in golden imperial attire, but in the guise of a poor farmer, in blue clothes that went down to the waist, and in white boots that reached to the knees . This farmer had a heavy and large crooked scythe in his hand, and he, bending down, seemed to be catching with it the most beautiful young man, visible only up to the neck and shoulders. With this picture he clearly revealed his lawless deeds to passers-by, preached loudly and made it appear that he had killed the heir to the throne and, along with his power, appropriated his bride to himself” (Andr. Sotp. II6).
An allegorical perception of art was also characteristic of many Christian church writers of Byzantium. Characteristic in this regard is the description and at the same time interpretation by the early Byzantine author Eusebius Pamphilus of a painting placed above the entrance to the imperial palace: “In the painting, put on display for everyone to see, high above the entrance to the royal palace, he (Emperor Constantine - V.B.) depicted above with the head of his own image a saving sign, and under his feet in the image of a dragon falling into the abyss - a hostile and warlike beast, through the tyranny of the atheists, persecuting the Church of God; for the Scriptures in the books of the divine prophets call him a dragon and a treacherous serpent. Therefore, through the image of a dragon written in wax under the feet of him and his children, struck by an arrow in the very belly and cast into the abyss of the sea, the king pointed out to everyone the secret enemy of the human race, whom he represented as cast down into the abyss of destruction by the power of the saving sign that was above his head. And all this was depicted in the picture with colored paints. I am amazed at the high wisdom of the king: he, as if by divine inspiration, drew exactly what the prophets once announced about this beast, who said that God would raise a great and terrible sword against the dragon, the escaping serpent, and destroy him in the sea. Having drawn these images, the king, through painting, presented a faithful imitation of the truth” (Vit. Const. Ill 3).
So, quite in the spirit of the classical ancient tradition, painting is called an imitation of truth. However, now truth is understood not as a picture of the visible forms of the material world, but as a certain spiritual, noumenal content, which Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and early Christians spoke about at that time. Imitation of truth is interpreted by the church historian Eusebius as a symbolic and allegorical image. For him, a pictorial image is an almost literal illustration of an allegorical text, and therefore the technique of traditional interpretation of biblical texts is transferred to it.
Judging by Eusebius’ description, the painting had two main pictorial levels. Its central part was occupied by a “portrait” image of Constantine and his sons, usual for the imperial culture of Rome, and as if outside the frame of the family portrait (above and below it) the symbols of Christ (apparently a cross) and Satan (a serpent or dragon) were depicted. It is important to note that the Christian writer is not interested in the central “portrait” part of the image, but in the “peripheral,” symbolic, and it is in this, and not in the illusionistic portrait of the emperor, that he sees “imitation of the truth.” In this description, the path to a new understanding of the essence of fine art is already clearly visible.
Seeing a non-literal allegorical, hidden meaning in a text or work of art is, in general, a characteristic feature of any religious worldview. And in this regard, Byzantine Christianity is not original. In this case, we are interested in specific forms and methods of symbolic understanding of art. Along with the ancient allegory, we find in the same Eusebius, for example, a completely different turn of symbolic thinking. Having described the temple in Tire in sufficient detail, emphasizing the “brilliant beauty” and “inexpressible grandeur” of the entire building and the “extraordinary grace” of its individual parts, Eusebius points out that such a temple serves to glorify and adorn the Christian Church. First of all, those who are accustomed to fixing their minds “on appearance alone” are surprised by him. However, “the miracle of miracles are the prototypes and their spiritual prototypes and divine models, the images of the divine and mental home in our souls.” The soul itself appears to Eusebius as the house and temple of God, higher and more perfect than the material temple.
In addition, the entire society of people, the entire society, appears in the understanding of Eusebius as a living temple. The builder of this temple is the Son of God himself, who likened some people to the fence of the temple, placed others like external columns, endowed others with the functions of the vestibule of the temple, established others as the main pillars inside the temple, etc. In short, “gathering the living from everywhere and everywhere.” , solid and strong souls, He built them into a great and royal house, full of splendor and light inside and outside.” This entire temple and its parts are filled with deep spiritual content for Eusebius, for its builder “with every part of the temple expressed the clarity and brilliance of the truth in all its fullness and diversity,” establishing “on earth a mental image of what is on the other side of the heavenly spheres.”
The world of created existence appears in Eusebius as a system of temples reflecting spiritual truths, and above all, a temple of spiritual beings that constantly glorify the Creator. The main temple of the system is the Universe and human society as a whole; Next comes the soul of each person as the temple of God, and, finally, the church building itself, created specifically as a place of worship. All these temples perform the same functions - worshiping God, honoring him and glorifying him.
Thus, quite traditional for ancient world An in-depth understanding of works of art developed in the early Byzantine period among one of the first Christian writers into a new, philosophically and theologically rich theory of art, in fact, into a philosophy of art, which in many ways anticipated the artistic practice of the Middle Ages.
As another example of a symbolic understanding of architecture, we can point to the 6th century Syrian hymn dedicated to the temple at Edessa. Describing this apparently small, square-shaped, domed structure, the author of the hymn focuses not on the design features of the temple, but on its symbolic significance both as a whole and individual architectural elements. What is remarkable to the author is precisely the fact that such a “small-sized structure contains a huge world.” “Its vault extends like the heavens - without columns, curved and closed and, moreover, decorated with a golden mosaic like the vault of heaven with shining stars. Its high dome is comparable to the “sky of heavens”; he is like a helmet, and his upper part rests on the bottom.<…>The temple has identical facades on each side. The form of all three is one, just as the form of the Holy Trinity is one. Moreover, a single light illuminates the choir through three open windows, proclaiming the mystery of the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit." The remaining windows, bringing light to everyone present in the temple, are represented by the author of the hymn as apostles, prophets, martyrs and other saints: the five doors of the temple are likened to the five intelligent virgins with lamps from the gospel parable, the columns symbolize the apostles, and the bishop’s throne and the nine steps leading to it “represent the throne of Christ and the nine ranks of angels." “Great are the mysteries of this temple,” it is sung at the end of the hymn, “both in heaven and on earth: in it the highest Trinity and the mercy of the Savior are figuratively represented.”
The building of the temple appears to the author of the hymn as a complex image of the cosmos (material and spiritual), and the Christian community (in its historical existence), and the Christian God himself. Ekphrasis here consists of two levels: figurative and symbolic. The figurative interpretation gravitates toward late antique allegory and is built primarily on visual associations and analogies. For him, the understanding of domed architecture as an image of the visible material cosmos (the earth and the firmament with luminaries) becomes stable and traditional. Sign-symbolic interpretation develops mainly in the traditions of Christian interpretation of biblical texts. These two levels, or two types, appear in one form or another in many Byzantine descriptions of works of art.
Byzantine poet of the 10th century. John the Geometer, in his poetic descriptions of Christian churches, weaves together a figurative and symbolic understanding of architecture. On the one hand, he sees in the temple “an imitation of the universe” in all its diverse beauty. Here is the sky with its stars, and the ether, and the endless expanses of the sea, and water streams pouring down from the mountains, and the whole earth is like a beautiful garden of unfading flowers. On the other hand, architectural images clearly reveal to him the entire “mental cosmos” headed by Christ. It is in the temple, according to John, that the unity (and union) of two worlds (cosmos) - earthly and heavenly - is realized:
The figurative and symbolic levels of John’s interpretation of the temple space are not just possible options approach to understanding the Christian temple, but both are necessary to reveal the full spiritual content, the deep meaning of the architectural image. Its essence, as can be seen from the poem of John the Geometer (and here he follows the tradition already established in the Byzantine world), is that for people the temple is the center of unity of the spiritual and material worlds, the focus of all beauties.
In post-iconoclastic Byzantium, the figurative-symbolic approach extended to painting. The already mentioned Nikolai Mesarit saw two levels in the wall paintings of churches: pictorial, phenomenal, and semantic, noumenal. He explains this by describing the image “The Raising of Lazarus”: “The right hand (of Jesus. - V.B.) is stretched out, on the one hand, to the phenomenon - to the tomb containing the body of Lazarus, on the other - to the noumenon - to hell, now the fourth day as having consumed his soul” (26). Everyone sees the phenomenon (the coffin) depicted on the wall of the temple, but the noumenon (hell) remains behind the image; it can only be represented in the mind by a trained viewer.
For an educated Byzantine, the phenomenal level of painting was most often of interest only insofar as it contained and expressed a hidden meaning, comprehended only by the mind. Its always assumed presence allowed the medieval artist to create a phenomenal level, or a visually expressive series, according to the highest artistic and aesthetic standards, and the viewer to openly enjoy the beauty of temple painting. Now, in the eyes of Christian ideologists, it did not contradict, as it seemed to many early Christian Fathers of the Church, the spirit of the official religion; on the contrary, it actively served it, expressing in artistic and aesthetic form the foundations of the medieval worldview.
Any, even seemingly insignificant, element of the phenomenal level of the image was endowed with deep meaning and was presented as a sign or symbol of some position of religious doctrine. So, for example, the blue, and not golden, color of Pantocrator’s clothes, according to Mesarita, “calls on everyone with the hand of the artist” not to wear luxurious clothes made of expensive multi-colored fabrics, but to follow the Apostle Paul, who exhorted fellow believers to dress modestly.
Ptokrator, Mesarit further explains, is depicted in such a way that it is perceived differently by different groups of viewers. His gaze is directed at everyone at once and at each individual. He looks “favorably and friendly at those who have a clear conscience and pours the sweetness of humility into the souls of the pure in heart and the poor in spirit,” and for the one who does evil, the eyes of the Almighty “sparkle angrily,” aloof and hostile, he sees his face “angry, terrible and full of menace." The right hand of Pantocrator blesses those walking the right way and warns those who turn away from it, keeps them from an unrighteous lifestyle (14). Painting can convey in one image the opposite states of the inner world of the depicted character, focused on different people. The specificity of the perception of the image by different groups of spectators, developed in his time by Maximus the Confessor for the liturgical image, which we will talk about later, is now applied by Mesarit to the pictorial image.
In the picture, as in the biblical text, there are no minor elements or details. If the artist wrote them, it means that he endowed them with some kind of meaning, and the viewer (like the reader of sacred texts) is obliged to understand it, if not in its entirety, but at least to realize its presence. Religious utilitarianism and the spirit of global symbolism, characteristic of medieval aesthetics, did not allow either the master or the viewer of that time to allow the presence of random (even the most insignificant) elements in the image.
Often carried away, as we have already seen, by describing the realistic details of the image, Mesarit never forgets about the noumenal level, towards the expression of which, in his deep conviction, the entire pictorial system of painting is oriented. Realistic elements are significant primarily as expressers of some other meaning. The expressive poses of the students in the Transfiguration emphasize, according to Nikolai, the unusualness of the event; he reports about the miraculous resurrection of Lazarus or the walk of Christ on the waters not only in direct text, but also by describing the reaction of the surrounding characters to these phenomena; Mesarit does not forget to interpret the episode with Peter cutting off the ear of the slave Malchus during the capture of Christ and the subsequent miracle of healing the slave by Jesus as the healing of the slave from spiritual blindness, etc. To emphasize the originality of the events depicted, Metropolitan Nicholas sometimes resorts to paradoxes traditional for Byzantine culture. Continuing, for example, the biblical tradition, he invites readers to see the voice coming from heaven in the Transfiguration. Above the heads of the depicted figures, he writes, “directly in heaven nothing else is visible except that voice with which God the Father confirmed the truth of sonship” on the Jordan. “See how a voice from the top of the dome, as if from heaven, falls like a life-giving rain on the still dry and unfruitful souls of young men, so that during times of heat and thirst, that is, doubts about the passion and resurrection, they do not find themselves in danger of unexpected misfortune” (16 ). Let us leave it to art historians to decide whether the master of the Church of the Holy Apostles tried to depict this voice in any way. Most likely, we are talking about the text on the image itself or about the rays of golden light. It is important for us that the educated Byzantine hierarch of the 12th century. I wanted to see this voice not only with my physical vision (which is very problematic), but first of all with the gaze of my mind. Mesarit remembers the latter throughout the entire description of the mosaics.
The symbolic understanding of art arose in Byzantium, as has already been pointed out, not out of nowhere. It was based, on the one hand, on the centuries-old artistic practice of early Christian and Byzantine art proper, and on the other hand, on the theological and philosophical theory of symbolism, which was quite thoroughly and deeply developed in Byzantium. When developing it, the Byzantine Church Fathers actively used the experience of the Greco-Roman philosophical and philological traditions, especially Neoplatonism, the exegesis of the Hebrew sages, Philo of Alexandria and the early Christians. Patristic symbolism included a whole series although similar, but inadequate concepts, such as image , image , similarity , symbol , sign , which in Byzantine culture were directly related to the sphere of art.
We find interesting thoughts about the image and symbol in the Bishop of Cyrrhus Theodoret (5th century), who paid a lot of attention to the figurative and symbolic interpretation of the texts of the Holy Scripture, believing that biblical symbolism goes back to God himself. “Since the nature of God is formless and ugly, invisible and immense, and it is completely impossible to create an image of such an essence, he commanded that symbols of his greatest gifts be placed inside the ark. The tablets meant the law, the rod - the priesthood, manna - food in the desert and bread not made by hands. And purification was a symbol of prophecy, because from there there were prophecies” (Quaest. in Exod. 60). These divine institutions inspired Christian theorists and practitioners of the symbolic interpretation of the texts of Scripture and the entire Universe as a whole.
The greatest theologian of the 4th century paid special attention to the image. Gregory of Nyssa. In literary and pictorial images, that is, in images of art, he clearly distinguished between the external form of a work and its content, which he called a “mental image,” an idea. Thus, in his opinion, in biblical texts there is a fiery love for divine beauty conveyed by the power of “mental images” contained in descriptions of sensory pleasures. In painting and verbal arts, the viewer or reader should not stop at contemplating the color spots covering the picture, or the “verbal colors” of the text, but should strive to see the idea (eidos) that the artist conveyed with the help of these colors.
Following Plotinus, Gregory does not condemn works of art as unworthy copies or “shadows of shadows.” On the contrary, in their ability to preserve and transmit “mental images” he saw the dignity and justification for the existence of art. It was this function of art that turned out to be fundamental and significant for Christianity. At the same time, Gregory of Nyssa saw it both in the verbal arts, and in painting and music, putting all these types of art on the same level and evaluating only by the ability to embody and convey “mental images”, eidos.
Gregory of Nyssa’s judgments about the image largely prepared the theory of the greatest thinker at the turn of the 5th-6th centuries, the author of the “Areopagitik” (texts signed with the name of the legendary disciple of the Apostle Paul Dionysius the Areopagite), or Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, as he is more often called in modern science. On their basis, he made deep philosophical and theological conclusions that had a significant impact on Christian medieval theology, philosophy, and aesthetics. The geoseological justification for the theory of symbol and image by the author of the Areopagitik was the idea that in the hierarchical system of transferring knowledge from God to man, it is necessary to carry out a qualitative transformation of it at the boundary of “heaven - earth”. Here an essential change occurs in the bearer of knowledge: from the spiritual (the lowest level of the heavenly hierarchy) it turns into a materialized one (the highest level of the earthly hierarchy). A special kind of “light information” (fotodosia - “light giving”) is hidden here under the veil of images, symbols, signs.
In Pseudo-Dionysius, the symbol acts as the most general philosophical and theological category, including image, sign, image, beauty, a number of other concepts, as well as many objects and phenomena real life and especially cult practices as their specific manifestations in one area or another. In a letter to Titus (Ep. IX), a summary of the lost treatise “Symbolic Theology,” the author of the Areopagitik points out that there are two ways of transmitting knowledge of truth: “One is unspoken and secret, the other is explicit and easily knowable; the first is symbolic and mysterious, the second is philosophical and publicly accessible” (Ep. IX1). The highest unspoken truth is conveyed only in the first way, which is why the ancient sages constantly used “mysterious and bold allegories,” where the unspoken was closely intertwined with the expressed (Ibid.). If a philosophical judgment contains a formal logical truth, then a symbolic image contains an incomprehensible truth. All knowledge about the highest truths is contained in symbols, “for it is impossible for our mind to rise to the immaterial imitation and contemplation of the heavenly hierarchies except through the medium of its inherent material guidance, believing visible beauties the image of invisible beauty, sensual fragrances - the imprint of spiritual penetrations, material lamps - the image of immaterial illumination, extensive sacred teachings - the fullness of spiritual contemplation, the orders of local decorations - a hint of the harmony and orderliness of the divine, the reception of the divine Eucharist - the possession of Jesus; in short, everything about heavenly beings is super-decently conveyed to us in symbols” (CH13). The texts of Scripture, various images, and sacred Tradition are symbolic. The names of the members of the human body may be used as symbols to denote spiritual or divine powers; to describe the properties of the heavenly ranks, designations of the properties of almost all objects of the material world are often used.
Symbols and conventional signs arose, according to Pseudo-Dionysius, not for their own sake, but with a specific, and, moreover, contradictory purpose: to simultaneously reveal and hide the truth. On the one hand, the symbol serves to designate, depict and thereby reveal the incomprehensible, ugly and infinite in the finite, sensually perceived (for those who know how to perceive this symbol). On the other hand, it is a shell, cover and reliable protection unspoken truth from the eyes and ears of the “first person you meet”, unworthy of knowing the truth.
What in a symbol allows these mutually exclusive goals to be achieved? Apparently, there are special forms of storing truth in it. The Areopagite refers to such forms, in particular, as “beauty hidden inside” the symbol and leading to the comprehension of the super-essential, spiritual light (Er. IX 1; 2). So, the non-conceptual meaning of a symbol is perceived by those striving to comprehend it, first of all, purely emotionally in the form of “beauty” and “light”. However, we are not talking about the external beauty of forms, but about a certain generalized spiritual beauty contained in any symbols - verbal, pictorial, musical, object, cult, etc. This beauty is revealed only to those who “know how to see.” Therefore, it is necessary to teach people this “seeing” of the symbol.
Pseudo-Dionysius himself considers it his direct task to explain, to the best of his ability, “the whole variety of symbolic sacred images,” for without such an explanation many symbols seem to be “incredibly fantastic nonsense” (Ep. IX 1). Thus, God and his properties can be symbolically expressed by anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images, in the form of plants and stones; God is endowed with women's jewelry, barbaric weapons, and the attributes of artisans and artists; he is even depicted as a bitter drunkard. But in understanding symbols one should not stop at the surface; it is necessary to penetrate them to the very depths. At the same time, none of them should be neglected, since in their visible features they show “images of unspeakable and amazing sights” (Ep. IX 2).
Each symbol (= sign = image) can have a number of meanings depending on the context in which it is used and on the personal properties (“nature”) of the contemplator. However, even with this polysemy, “sacred symbols should not be confused with each other”; each of them must be understood in accordance with its own reasons and his being. Complete knowledge of the symbol leads to inexhaustible exquisite pleasure from contemplating the indescribable perfection of divine wisdom (Ep. IX 5), that is, practically, to the aesthetic completion of the process of knowledge.
The symbol is understood by the author of the Areopagitik in several aspects. First of all, he is a bearer of knowledge that can be contained in him: a) in a symbolic form, and then its content is accessible only to initiates; b) in a figurative form, understandable in general to all people of a given culture and realized primarily in art; and c) directly, when the symbol not only denotes, but also “really represents” what it denotes. The third aspect was only outlined by Pseudo-Dionysius and developed by subsequent thinkers in connection with liturgical symbolism. This symbolism largely determined the attitude of Orthodoxy as a whole towards the icon, which actively functioned both in the temple action and throughout Orthodox culture, and more on this later.
The author of the Areopagitik himself dwells in more detail on the theory of the image. Images, in his opinion, are necessary to introduce a person “ineffably and incomprehensibly to the unspeakable and unknowable” (DN11), so that he “through sensory objects ascends to the spiritual and through symbolic sacred images - to the simple perfection of the heavenly hierarchy”, “which has no sensory image" (SN 13).
The Areopagite develops a harmonious hierarchy of images, with the help of which true knowledge is transmitted from the level of the heavenly world to the level of human existence. Literary and pictorial images occupy their specific place in it - at the level of the sacraments, that is, somewhere between the heavenly and earthly (church) levels of the hierarchy. The “immaterial” rank of hierarchy is depicted in them through “material images” and “collections of images” (SN 13). Depending on the way these “figurative structures” are organized, the meaning of the same “sacred images” can be different. Accordingly, knowledge in this system is multi-valued. Its quality and quantity also depend on the subjects of perception (“in accordance with each person’s ability for divine insights.” - CH IX 2).
The polysemantic image was the main element in the system of Byzantine knowledge. In the understanding of the Fathers of the Church, not only the sacred hierarchy, but also the entire structure of the universe is permeated with the intuition of the image. An image is the most important way of communication and correlation between fundamentally incompatible and incoherent levels of being and super-being.
Pseudo-Dionysius, relying on his system of designating God, distinguished two methods of depicting spiritual entities and, accordingly, two types of images that differ in character and principles of isomorphism - similar, “similar” and “dissimilar” (SNII3).
The first method is based on cataphatic (affirmative) theology and is still in line with classical philosophy and aesthetics. It consists in “capturing and revealing spiritual essences in images that correspond to them and, if possible, related, borrowing these images from beings that we highly reverence, as if immaterial and higher” (SN II2); that is, “similar” images must represent a set of highly positive properties, characteristics and qualities inherent in objects and phenomena of the material world. They are called upon to represent certain perfect in all respects, depictable (in words, paints or stone) images - the ideal limits of the conceivable perfection of the created world. For Pseudo-Dionysius, all “visible beauties” and positive evaluative characteristics are concentrated in “similar” images. In this regard, God is called “word”, “mind”, “beauty”, “light”, “life”, etc. However, these images, despite all their ideality and sublimity, are truly “far from resembling a deity. For it is above every being and life; cannot be any light, and every word and mind is incomparably removed from resemblance to it” (SN II3). Compared to God, even these “visible beauties”, the most revered by people, are “unworthy images” (Ibid.).
The author of the Areopagitik values “unlike resemblances” (SN II4), which he develops in line with apophatic theology, much more highly, believing that “if in relation to divine objects negative designations are closer to the truth than affirmative ones, then for revealing the invisible and inexpressible it is more dissimilar images are suitable” (CH II3). Here Pseudo-Dionysius continues the line of the Alexandrian theological school, based on Philo (Origen, Gregory of Nyssa). He draws theoretical conclusions based on the extensive exegetical material of this school, which confirms the vitality of its traditions for the entire Byzantine culture.
Dissimilar images must be built on principles diametrically opposed to ancient ideals. In them, according to Pseudo-Dionysius, there should be a complete absence of properties perceived by people as noble, beautiful, light-like, harmonious, etc., so that a person, contemplating the image, does not imagine the archetype as similar to rough material forms (even if among people they are considered the noblest) and did not stop his mind on them. To depict higher spiritual beings, it is better to borrow images from low and despised objects, such as animals, plants, stones and even worms (SNII5), while divine objects depicted in this way are given, according to the Areopagite, much more glory. This interesting theological-aesthetic concept is not his invention. It goes back to early Christian symbolism.
The idea of great figurative and symbolic significance of insignificant, nondescript and even ugly objects and phenomena is often found among early Christian thinkers, who expressed the aspirations of the “nondescript”, disadvantaged part of the population of the Roman Empire. It fit well into the radical revaluation of many traditional ancient values carried out by early Christianity. Everything considered valuable in the world of the Roman aristocracy (including wealth, jewelry, external beauty and significance, ancient art), lost its meaning in the eyes of early Christians, and everything unprepossessing and despised by Rome was endowed with high spiritual meaning. Hence the fairly widespread ideas about the nondescript appearance of Christ, characteristic of the first centuries of Christianity.
Pseudo-Dionysius, in the system of his antinomian thinking, came to the conscious use of the law of contrast to express sublime phenomena. Dissimilar images have a special kind of sign-symbolic nature. Imitating low objects of the material world, they must carry in such an unworthy form information that has nothing to do with these objects. By the very “inconsistency of images”, dissimilar images amaze the viewer (or listener) and orient him towards something opposite to what is depicted - towards absolute spirituality. Because everything related to spiritual beings, Pseudo-Dionysius emphasizes, should be understood in a completely different, as a rule, diametrically opposite sense than it is usually thought of in relation to objects of the material world. All carnal, sensual and even obscene phenomena, desires and objects can mean in this regard phenomena of the highest spirituality. Thus, in descriptions of spiritual beings, anger means “a strong movement of the mind,” lust means love for the spiritual, the desire for contemplation and unification with the highest truth, light, beauty, etc. (SN II4).
Dissimilar images, in the view of the Areopagite, should “by the very dissimilarity of the signs excite and elevate the soul” (SN II3). Hence the images themselves are called elevating (apagogical) by Pseudo-Dionysius. The idea of elevating (?????????) the human spirit with the help of an image to Truth and Archetype became from that time one of the leading ideas of Byzantine culture. Such ideas opened up unlimited possibilities for the development of Christian symbolic and allegorical art in all its forms and substantiated the need for its existence in Christian culture.
Canon 82 of the Council of Trullo abolished allegorical depictions of Christ, but it had virtually no effect on the general spirit of symbolism in Byzantine culture in general and in artistic practice, in particular. And although the polemics of iconoclasts and icon-worshipers revolved around mimetic images, and it is with them that the main theoretical research of the defenders of icons is connected, they could not do without understanding and the symbolic basis of the pictorial image. The very conventional symbolic spirit of the cult images of the Byzantines did not allow many of them to dwell only on the visible surface of these images.
One of the active defenders of icons, the famous theologian, philosopher and church poet John of Damascus (c. 650 - d. before 754), following Pseudo-Dionysius, considered the main function of symbolic images to be apagogic - elevating the human spirit to “smart contemplation” of the archetype itself, its knowledge and unity with him. These ideas were also close to the fighters for icon veneration of the next generation. Thus, Patriarch Nicephorus (d. c. 829) convinced the iconoclasts that symbolic images were given to us by “divine grace” and paternal wisdom to raise our minds to contemplate the properties of symbolically depicted spiritual entities and imitate them as far as possible.
In general, the Byzantine theory of symbol united the main spheres of Christian spiritual culture - ontology, epistemology, religion, art, literature, ethics. And this unification was carried out, which is characteristic of Byzantine culture, on the basis of the religious and aesthetic significance of the symbol. Performing a wide variety of functions in spiritual culture, the symbol or image was ultimately turned to the innermost foundations of the human spirit, to its universal source. By this very appeal and penetration into the deep world, inaccessible to the superficial observer, the symbol aroused spiritual pleasure, testifying to consonance, agreement, connection at the essential level of the subject of perception (man) with the object expressed in the symbol or image, ultimately - of man with God.
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The magazine “Scales”, under the leadership of Bryusov, fiercely opposed Gorky, while Gorky, noting his alienness to the literary position of the Symbolists (they are “disgustingly proud,” “cold,” and “too spectators of life”), at the same time appreciated their professional artistic skill. “You know,” he wrote to L. Andreev in 1907, “that in this public I appreciate its love of words, respect its keen interest in literature, recognize its serious cultural merit - it enriched the language with a mass of new phrases, it created a wonderful verse and - for all this I cannot help but say - thank you, from the bottom of my heart - thank you for what, over time, history will tell them.”
The poetics of the symbolists is associated with a metaphorical perception of the world. Metaphor in their poetry usually goes beyond the narrow meaning of a single image and receives further independent development, subordinating other details arising from it, or even becomes the basis of the whole poetic work. Thus, Bryusov’s poem “To Damascus” is based on an expanded metaphor of passion-sacred action.
In Annensky's poetry, the metaphor of heartache as an expression of mental anguish was deployed more than once. In “The Gas Butterfly” the heart is the flame of a street gas lamp, a butterfly ready to fall “from the flickering lines of existence.” The poetic images here are objective and at the same time, having received metaphorical development, are translated into a symbolic plane. The metaphorical “resentment of a doll” thrown into a waterfall for fun symbolizes Annensky’s loneliness and mutual alienation in the human world (“That was on Wallen-Koski”).
The metaphorical nature of Symbolist poetry was so strong that the words in it often lost their objective meaning. In Blok’s series “Snow Mask” poetic images love passion, expressed in the metaphors of “blizzard”, “fire”, “wine”, “bonfire”, are so connected together that they enter into complete contradiction with the direct meaning of these words, creating new ideas (“She was a living fire of snow and wine”). Researchers of Blok's work call him a poet of metaphor.
The complexity of the image in the poetics of symbolism corresponds to “mystery,” “mystery,” and understatement in the development of the lyrical theme. Such alarming understatement is characteristic to a certain extent of all symbolists. Along with metaphors, younger symbolists widely used “shaky”, obscured symbols, which served as a hint of another, higher or ideal existence. “A symbol is only a true symbol,” wrote Ivanov, “when it is inexhaustible and limitless in its meaning.”<...>It has many faces, many meanings and is always dark in its final depths.”
The ambiguity of the artistic image was enhanced by a broad appeal to myth; the mythologization of life phenomena expressed one of the essential features of symbolist poetics. Symbolists saw in myth the highest aesthetic, even super-aesthetic value. “We are following the path of symbol to myth,” Vyach asserted. Ivanov, who spoke with the utopian idea of myth-making as a national art that transforms the world. For him, “myth is a postulate of worldly consciousness.”
The “myths” of the Symbolists are far from genuine myths as a historically conditioned, naive, imaginative and unconsciously artistic representation of the world. In the article “The Magic of the Word,” Bely explained: “When I say: “The moon is a white horn,” of course, with my consciousness I do not affirm the existence of a mythical animal, whose horn in the form of a month I see in the sky; but in the deepest essence of my creative self-affirmation I cannot help but believe in the existence of some reality, the symbol or reflection of which is the metaphorical image I created. Poetic speech is directly related to mythical creativity; the desire for a figurative combination of words is a fundamental feature of poetry.”
Each of the Symbolists had their own circle of “myths” or key symbolic images. Such, for example, is the myth of Sologub - the evil Serpent or Dragon soaring in the sky.
Symbolists often resorted to high style. One of his expressions was the abundance of archaisms, taken to the extreme in the poems of Ivanov, a poet-philologist. His poems were often so overloaded with them and so confused in their syntax that they became a favorite target of parodists. “As long as Ivanov Vyacheslav lives in the pits, Tredyakovsky, cheered up, magics,” wrote A. A. Izmailov.
The unusualness of the poetic language of the Symbolists corresponds to its sound: frequent alliteration, melodic song or romance intonation, and a variety of rhythms. The initiator of the renewal of the sound structure of Russian poetry at the turn of the century was Balmont. Bryusov and Blok contributed a lot to updating the poetic language.
The unusual nature of the poetic language of the Symbolists was emphasized by the titles of their books. “Natura naturans. Natura naturata” - words from Spinoza’s “Ethics” are entitled in the book of poems by A. M. Dobrolyubov. “Me eum esse” (“This is me”), “Tertia vigilia” (“The Third Watch”), “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and the World”) - these are the Latin titles of Bryusov’s poetry collections. One of his early books bears the French title: “Chefs d’oeuvre” (“Masterpieces”); the other is Greek: “Stephanos” (“Wreath”). “Cor ardens” (“Flaming Heart”) is the title of Vyach’s book. Ivanova.
Symbolist poetry also often contains epigraphs borrowed from the works of foreign authors or from ancient philosophical and religious texts. Numerous epigraphs in the poetry of Vyach. Ivanov give her the imprint of “learnedness” with a certain dedication to higher knowledge.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.