The period of the Silver Age years. "Silver Age" of Russian poetry

15.10.2019

The definition “Silver Age” was first used to characterize the peak manifestations of culture at the beginning of the twentieth century (Bely, Blok, Annensky, Akhmatova and others). Gradually, this term began to be used to refer to the entire culture of the turn of the century. The Silver Age and the culture of the turn of the century are intersecting phenomena, but do not coincide either in the composition of cultural representatives (Gorky, Mayakovsky) or in the time frame (the traditions of the Silver Age were not broken off in 1917, they were continued by Akhmatova, B.L. Pasternak, M. Voloshin, M. Tsvetaeva).

Not all writers, artists and thinkers who lived and worked at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries are representatives of the culture of the Silver Age. Among the poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were those whose work did not fit into the currents and groups that existed at that time. Such are, for example, I. Annensky, in some ways close to the Symbolists and at the same time far from them, looking for his way in a huge poetic sea; Sasha Cherny, Marina Tsvetaeva.

V.S. Solovyov’s contribution to the philosophy, aesthetics and poetry of the Silver Age, to the formation of Russian symbolism and its artistic system is generally recognized, while the philosopher himself sharply criticized the activities of the first Russian symbolists and “Mirskusnik”, dissociated himself from modernist philosophy and poetry. Such symbolic figures of Russian “art for art’s sake” as A. Maikov, A. Fet, A. K. Tolstoy were felt as predecessors and sometimes representatives of the poetry of the Silver Age, despite their pronounced artistic and aesthetic traditionalism and archaism of philosophical and political views and poetic preferences.

F. Tyutchev and K. Leontiev, who were tendentious to the extreme, were often seen as “insiders” in the Silver Age, who did not even live to see the period that received this name, but became famous for their conservatism, opposition to revolutionary democracy, and socialist ideals.

In 1917, V.V. Rozanov accused Russian literature of ruining Russia, becoming perhaps its most important “destroyer.” But it only recorded the disappearance of a single frame of reference, within the framework of which until now the self-identification of Russian life had taken place.

A powerful trend continued to dominate in literature critical realism, however, modernism also became widespread. Modernist movements acquired their significance to the extent that they were able to respond in one way or another to calls to conduct a merciless critique of the outdated autocracy started by the imperialists of the World War, to accept the February and then the October Revolutions of 1917. The process of “decomposition” began in the lyrics with the loosening poetic word and releasing in it a set of equal values. But as for the modernist breakdown of Russian classical versification, the renewal of rhyme, experimentation in the field of stylistics and vocabulary, these formalistic hobbies characterize all movements of poetry of the early twentieth century and their value was measured by the ability to move away from the deliberate abstruseness in these quests, to come to the clarity that helped find a reader, meet mutual attraction and support on his part.

In the 1890s, new literary trends from Western Europe began to penetrate into Russia, and poetry began to claim the role of expressing the feelings, aspirations and mindsets of the younger generation, while crowding out prose.

Poets began to call themselves “new,” emphasizing their ideology, which was new to the traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century. During these years, the trend of modernism had not yet been determined and not yet fully formed.

After the whole era of Russian realism of the 19th century, which exposed the burning problems of existence and, further, with the cruelty of a positivist natural scientist, observed and analyzed social ulcers and diseases, unclouded aestheticism, poetic contemplation and moral integrity, the perception of life as a “difficult harmony” of the Pushkin era seemed not so already naive and simple. In any case, they appeared to be much deeper and more enduring cultural phenomena than social denunciations and descriptions of everyday life, the theory of the “environment,” democratic and radical ideas for the reconstruction of society that shook the second half of the 19th century.

In the phenomenon " pure art“From Pushkin to Fet, figures of the Silver Age were especially attracted by their artistic ambiguity and broad associativity, which made it possible to symbolically interpret images and plots, ideas and pictures of the world; their timeless sound, which made it possible to interpret them as the embodiment of eternity or the periodic repetition of history.

The Russian Silver Age turned to examples of the classical era of Russian literature, and at the same time other cultural eras, in its own way interpreting and evaluating the works of Pushkin and Tyutchev, Gogol and Lermontov, Nekrasov and Fet and other classics, not at all in order to repeat them in new historical context. Writers of the Silver Age sought to achieve the same universality, perfection, harmony in their system of values and meanings in order to revive aesthetic, religious, philosophical and intellectual ideals and values that had fallen out of the cultural life of the Russian intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th century, especially the radically minded intelligentsia.

The combination of creative orientation towards the peaks of spiritual culture of the 19th century as the unconditional reference values and norms of national culture with the desire to radically revise and modernize the values of the past, to build on previous norms, to develop a new, fundamentally neoclassical approach to culture gave rise to the beginning of acute contradictions that created internal tension of the era of Russian cultural renaissance. On the one hand, it was literature that claimed to be classic and went back to the unshakable tradition of Russian classics; on the other hand, it was “ new classic”, designed to replace the “old classics”. The literature of the Silver Age faced two paths - either, continuing to develop the classics, simultaneously rethink them and transform them in the spirit of modernity (as the Symbolists and their immediate successors the Acmeists did), or demonstratively overthrow them from their once unshakable pedestal, thereby establishing themselves as deniers of the classics , as poets of the future (futurists).

However, both in the first case (the Symbolists) and in the second (the Acmeists), “neoclassicism” was so new, so negated the classics, that it could no longer be considered a classic (even a new one) and treated the real classics rather as non-classics. Indirectly, this duality (modernity is both classic and non-classical) was reflected in the name of the culture at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the “Silver Age”: just as classic as the “Golden Age”, but classic in a different way, creatively, even with a demonstrative loss in price. However, for the Russian avant-garde, which either declared the overthrow of the classics in principle (V. Khlebnikov, D. Burliuk), or ironically stylized it, this was not enough, and the Silver Age did not exist for it - neither in relation to the Golden Age, nor in itself .

As during the “golden”, Pushkin, age, literature claimed the role of the spiritual and moral shepherd of Russian society. At the beginning of the twentieth century, outstanding works were created by the classics of Russian literature: L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, V.G. Korolenko, A.I. Kuprin, A.M. Gorky, M.M. Prishvin. Dozens of stars of the first magnitude also lit up in the firmament of poetry: K.D. Balmont, A.A. Blok, N.S. Gumilev, the very young M.I. Tsvetaeva, S.A. Yesenin, A.A. Akhmatova.

Writers and poets of the Silver Age, unlike their predecessors, paid close attention to the literature of the West. They chose new ones as their guide literary trends: aestheticism of O. Wilde, pessimism of A. Schopenhauer, symbolism of Baudelaire. At the same time, the figures of the Silver Age took a new look at artistic heritage Russian culture. Another passion of this time, reflected in literature, painting, and poetry, was a sincere and deep interest in Slavic mythology and Russian folklore.

In the creative environment of the Silver Age, neo-romantic sentiments and concepts were widespread, emphasizing the exclusivity of events, actions and ideas; the gap between a sublime poetic dream and a mundane and vulgar reality; contradictions between appearance and internal content. A striking example of neo-romanticism in the culture of the Silver Age is the work of M. Gorky, L. Andreev, N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky, M. Tsvetaeva... However, we see individual neo-romantic features in the activities and lives of almost all representatives of the Silver Age from I. Annensky to O .Mandelshtam, from Z. Gippius to B. Pasternak.

The tasks of creative self-awareness of artists and thinkers of that time, and at the same time - creative rethinking and renewal of previously established cultural traditions began to come to the forefront of culture.

Thus, the ground arose for a new cultural synthesis associated with the symbolic interpretation of everything - art, philosophy, religion, politics, behavior itself, activity, reality.

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Silver Age in Russian literature

Russian poetic “ silver age” traditionally fits into the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, its origin is the 19th century, and all its roots go back to the “golden age”, to the work of A.S. Pushkin, to the legacy of Pushkin’s galaxy, to Tyutchev’s philosophy, to the impressionistic lyrics of Fet, in Nekrasov’s prosaisms, in the border lines, full of tragic psychologism and vague forebodings, by K. Sluchevsky. In other words, the 90s began to leaf through the drafts of books that would soon make up the library of the 20th century. Since the 90s, literary sowing began, which brought shoots.

The term “Silver Age” itself is very conditional and covers a phenomenon with controversial outlines and uneven relief. This name was first proposed by the philosopher N. Berdyaev, but it finally entered literary circulation in the 60s of this century.

The poetry of this century was characterized primarily by mysticism and a crisis of faith, spirituality, and conscience. The lines became a sublimation of mental illness, mental disharmony, internal chaos and confusion.

All the poetry of the “Silver Age”, greedily absorbing the heritage of the Bible, ancient mythology, the experience of European and world literature, is closely connected with Russian folklore, with its songs, laments, tales and ditties.

However, they sometimes say that the “Silver Age” is a Westernization phenomenon. Indeed, he chose as his reference points the aestheticism of Oscar Wilde, the individualistic spiritualism of Alfred de Vigny, the pessimism of Schopenhauer, and the superman of Nietzsche. The “Silver Age” found its ancestors and allies in various countries of Europe and in different centuries: Villon, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Novalis, Shelley, Calderon, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, d'Annuzio, Gautier, Baudelaire, Verhaeren.

In other words, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries there was a reassessment of values from the perspective of Europeanism. But in the light new era, which was the complete opposite of the one it replaced, national, literary and folk treasures appeared in a different light, brighter than ever.

It was a creative space full of sunshine, bright and life-giving, thirsting for beauty and self-affirmation. And although we call this time the “silver” and not the “golden age,” perhaps it was the most creative era in Russian history.

“Silver Age” is perceived by most readers as a metaphor for good, beloved writers of the early 20th century. Depending on personal taste, A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, D. Merezhkovsky and I. Bunin, N. Gumilev and S. Yesenin, A. Akhmatova and A. Kruchenykh, F. Sologub and A. Kuprin may appear here.

“School literary criticism” is added to complete the picture by the aforementioned list of M. Gorky and a number of “Znanievtsev” writers

(artists grouped around the Gorky publishing house “Znanie”).

With this understanding, the Silver Age becomes synonymous with the long-existing and much more scientific concept of “literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.”

The poetry of the Silver Age can be divided into several main movements such as: Symbolism. (D. Merezhkovsky,

K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, A. Bely), Pre-Acmeism. Acmeism.(M. Kuzmin, N. Gumilev,

A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam),

“ Peasant literature ” (N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin)

Futurists of the Silver Age(I. Severyanin, V. Khlebnikov)

SYMBOLISM

Russian symbolism as a literary movement emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The theoretical, philosophical and aesthetic roots and sources of creativity of symbolist writers were very diverse. So V. Bryusov considered symbolism purely artistic direction, Merezhkovsky relied on Christian teaching, Vyach. Ivanov sought theoretical support in the philosophy and aesthetics of the ancient world, refracted through the philosophy of Nietzsche; A. Bely was fond of Vl. Solovyov, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche.

The artistic and journalistic organ of the Symbolists was the magazine “Scales” (1904 – 1909). “For us, representatives symbolism, As a harmonious worldview, Ellis wrote, there is nothing more alien than the subordination of the idea of life, the inner path of the individual, to the external improvement of the forms of community life. For us there can be no question of reconciling the path of the individual heroic individual with the instinctive movements of the masses, always subordinated to narrowly egoistic, material motives.”

These attitudes determined the struggle of the Symbolists against democratic literature and art, which was expressed in the systematic slander of Gorky, in an effort to prove that, having joined the ranks of proletarian writers, he ended as an artist, in attempts to discredit revolutionary democratic criticism and aesthetics, its great creators - Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky. The symbolists tried in every possible way to make Pushkin, Gogol, and the so-called Vyach “theirs.” Ivanov “a frightened spy on life,” Lermontov, who, according to the same Vyach. Ivanov, was the first to tremble with “a presentiment of the symbol of symbols - Eternal Femininity” in.

Associated with these attitudes is a sharp contrast between symbolism and realism. “Whereas realist poets,” writes K. Balmont, “view the world naively, like simple observers, submitting to its material basis, symbolist poets, re-creating materiality with their complex impressionability, dominate the world and penetrate its mysteries.” Symbolists strive to contrast reason and intuition. “...Art is the comprehension of the world in other, non-rational ways,” says V. Bryusov and calls the works of the symbolists “mystical keys of secrets” that help a person achieve freedom.”

The legacy of the Symbolists is represented by poetry, prose, and drama. However, poetry is most characteristic.

V. Ya. Bryusov (1873 – 1924) went through a complex and difficult path of ideological quest. The revolution of 1905 aroused the admiration of the poet and contributed to the beginning of his departure from symbolism. However, Bryusov did not immediately come to a new understanding of art. Bryusov’s attitude towards the revolution is complex and contradictory. He welcomed the cleansing forces that had risen to fight the old world, but believed that they only brought the elements of destruction:

I see a new battle in the name of a new will!

Break - I will be with you! build - no!

The poetry of V. Bryusov of this time is characterized by the desire for a scientific understanding of life and the awakening of interest in history. A. M. Gorky highly valued the encyclopedic education of V. Ya. Bryusov, calling him the most cultural writer in Rus'. Bryusov accepted and welcomed the October Revolution and actively participated in the construction of Soviet culture.

The ideological contradictions of the era (one way or another) influenced individual realist writers. In the creative life of L.N. Andreev (1871 - 1919) they affected a certain departure from the realistic method. However, realism as a direction in artistic culture has retained its position. Russian writers continued to be interested in life in all its manifestations, the fate of the common man, and important problems of public life.

The traditions of critical realism continued to be preserved and developed in the works of the greatest Russian writer I. A. Bunin (1870 - 1953). His most significant works of that time are the stories “Village” (1910) and “Sukhodol” (1911).

The year 1912 marked the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge in the socio-political life of Russia.

D. Merezhkovsky, F. Sologub, Z. Gippius, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont and others are a group of “senior” symbolists who were the founders of the movement. In the early 900s, a group of “younger” symbolists emerged - A. Bely, S. Solovyov, Vyach. Ivanov, A. Blok and others.

The platform of the “younger” symbolists is based on the idealistic philosophy of Vl. Solovyov with his idea of the Third Testament and the coming of Eternal Femininity.Vl. Soloviev argued that the highest task of art is “... the creation of a universal spiritual organism,” that a work of art is an image of an object and phenomenon “in the light of the future world,” which is associated with an understanding of the role of the poet as a theurgist and clergyman. This, as explained by A. Bely, contains “the combination of the peaks of symbolism as art with mysticism.”

The recognition that there are “other worlds”, that art should strive to express them, determines the artistic practice of symbolism as a whole, the three principles of which are proclaimed in the work of D. Merezhkovsky “On the causes of the decline and new trends in modern Russian literature.” This is “...mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability” .

Based on the idealistic premise of the primacy of consciousness, symbolists argue that reality, reality, is the creation of the artist:

My dream - and all the spaces,

And all the successions

The whole world is just my decoration,

My tracks

(F. Sologub)

“Having broken the shackles of thought, being shackled is a dream,” calls on K. Balmont. The poet’s calling is to connect the real world with the transcendental world.

The poetic declaration of symbolism is clearly expressed in Vyach's poem. Ivanov “Among the Deaf Mountains”:

And I thought: “Oh genius! Like this horn,

You must sing the song of the earth, so that in your hearts

Wake up a different song. Blessed is he who hears.”

And from behind the mountains an answering voice sounded:

“Nature is a symbol, like this horn. She

Sounds for echo. And the echo is God.

Blessed is he who hears the song and hears the echo."

The poetry of the Symbolists is poetry for the elite, for the aristocrats of the spirit.

A symbol is an echo, a hint, an indication; it conveys a hidden meaning.

Symbolists strive to create a complex, associative metaphor, abstract and irrational. This is “ringing-resonant silence” by V. Bryusov, “And rebellion is dark in bright eyes” by Vyach. Ivanov, “dry deserts of dawn” by A. Bely and by him: “Day - matte pearl - tear - flows from sunrise to sunset.” This technique is revealed very precisely in poem 3. Gippius “The Seamstress”.

Silver Age in Russian literature

The Russian poetic “silver age” traditionally fits into the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, its origin is the 19th century, and all its roots go back to the “golden age”, to the work of A.S. Pushkin, to the legacy of Pushkin’s galaxy, to Tyutchev’s philosophy, into the impressionistic lyrics of Fet, into Nekrasov’s prose, into the frontier lines of K. Sluchevsky, full of tragic psychologism and vague forebodings. In other words, the 90s began to leaf through the drafts of books that would soon make up the library of the 20th century. Since the 90s, literary sowing began, which brought shoots.

However, they sometimes say that the “Silver Age” is a Westernization phenomenon. Indeed, he chose as his reference points the aestheticism of Oscar Wilde, the individualistic spiritualism of Alfred de Vigny, the pessimism of Schopenhauer, and the superman of Nietzsche. The “Silver Age” found its ancestors and allies in various European countries and in different centuries: Villon, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Novalis, Shelley, Calderon, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, d'Annuzio, Gautier, Baudelaire, Verhaeren.

In other words, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries there was a reassessment of values from the perspective of Europeanism. But in the light of a new era, which was the complete opposite of the one it replaced, national, literary and folklore treasures appeared in a different light, brighter than ever.

“School literary criticism” is added to complete the picture by the aforementioned list of M. Gorky and a number of “Znanievtsev” writers

(artists grouped around the Gorky publishing house “Znanie”).

With this understanding, the Silver Age becomes synonymous with the long-existing and much more scientific concept of “literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.”

The poetry of the Silver Age can be divided into several main movements such as: Symbolism. (D. Merezhkovsky,

K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, A. Bely), Pre-Acmeism. Acmeism.(M. Kuzmin, N. Gumilev,

A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam),

“ Peasant literature ” (N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin)

Futurists of the Silver Age(I. Severyanin, V. Khlebnikov)

SYMBOLISM

Russian symbolism as a literary movement emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The theoretical, philosophical and aesthetic roots and sources of creativity of symbolist writers were very diverse. So V. Bryusov considered symbolism a purely artistic movement, Merezhkovsky relied on Christian teaching, Vyach. Ivanov sought theoretical support in the philosophy and aesthetics of the ancient world, refracted through the philosophy of Nietzsche; A. Bely was fond of Vl. Solovyov, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche.

The legacy of the Symbolists is represented by poetry, prose, and drama. However, poetry is most characteristic.

I see a new battle in the name of a new will!

Break - I will be with you! build - no!

The year 1912 marked the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge in the socio-political life of Russia.

Based on the idealistic premise of the primacy of consciousness, symbolists argue that reality, reality, is the creation of the artist:

My dream - and all the spaces,

And all the successions

The whole world is just my decoration,

My tracks

(F. Sologub)

“Having broken the shackles of thought, being shackled is a dream,” calls on K. Balmont. The poet’s calling is to connect the real world with the transcendental world.

The poetic declaration of symbolism is clearly expressed in Vyach's poem. Ivanov “Among the Deaf Mountains”:

And I thought: “Oh genius! Like this horn,

You must sing the song of the earth, so that in your hearts

Wake up a different song. Blessed is he who hears.”

And from behind the mountains an answering voice sounded:

“Nature is a symbol, like this horn. She

Sounds for echo. And the echo is God.

Blessed is he who hears the song and hears the echo."

The poetry of the Symbolists is poetry for the elite, for the aristocrats of the spirit.

A symbol is an echo, a hint, an indication; it conveys a hidden meaning.

There is a stamp on all phenomena.

One seems to be merged with the other.

Having accepted one thing, I try to guess

Behind him is something else, What hidden."

The sound expressiveness of verse acquired very great importance in the poetry of the Symbolists, for example, in F. Sologub:

And two deep glasses

From thin-sounding glass

You put it to the bright cup

And the sweet foam poured out,

Leela, Leela, Leela, rocked

Two dark scarlet glasses.

Whiter, lily, whiter

You were white and ala..."

The revolution of 1905 found a unique refraction in the work of the Symbolists.

Merezhkovsky greeted 1905 with horror, having witnessed with his own eyes the coming of the “coming boor” he had predicted. Excitedly, with a keen desire to understand, Blok approached the events. V. Bryusov welcomed the cleansing thunderstorm.

By the tenth years of the twentieth century, symbolism needed updating. “In the depths of symbolism itself,” wrote V. Bryusov in the article “The Meaning of Modern Poetry,” “new movements arose, trying to infuse new strength into the decrepit organism. But these attempts were too partial, their founders were too imbued with the same school traditions for the renewal to be any significant.”

The last decade before October was marked by quests in modernist art. The controversy surrounding symbolism that took place in 1910 among the artistic intelligentsia revealed its crisis. As N.S. Gumilev put it in one of his articles, “symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling.” He was replaced by acmeizl~(from the Greek “acme” - the highest degree of something, a blooming time). The founders of Acmeism are considered to be N. S. Gumilev (1886 - 1921) and S. M. Gorodetsky (1884 - 1967). The new poetic group included A. A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam, M. A. Zenkevich, M. A. Kuzmin and others.

ACMEISM

The Acmeists, in contrast to the symbolist vagueness, proclaimed the cult of real earthly existence, “a courageously firm and clear view of life.” But at the same time, they tried to establish primarily the aesthetic-hedonistic function of art, evading social problems in their poetry. Decadent tendencies were clearly expressed in the aesthetics of Acmeism, and theoretical basis his philosophical idealism remained. However, among the Acmeists there were poets who, in their work, were able to go beyond the framework of this “platform” and acquire new ideological and artistic qualities (A. A. Akhmatova, S. M. Gorodetsky, M. A. Zenkevich).

In 1912, a new literary movement announced itself with the collection “Hyperborea”, which appropriated the name Acmeism (from Greek acme, which means the highest degree of something, the time of flourishing). “The Workshop of Poets,” as its representatives called themselves, included N. Gumilev, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, S. Gorodetsky, G. Ivanov, M. Zenkevich and others. M. Kuzmin, M. Voloshin also joined this direction , V. Khodasevich et al.

The Acmeists considered themselves the heirs of a “worthy father” - symbolism, which, in the words of N. Gumilyov, “...has completed its circle of development and is now falling.” Affirming the bestial, primitive principle (they also called themselves Adamists), the Acmeists continued to “remember the unknowable” and in its name proclaimed any renunciation of the struggle to change life. “To rebel in the name of other conditions of existence here, where there is death,” writes N. Gumilev in his work “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism,” “is as strange as a prisoner breaking a wall when there is an open door in front of him.”

S. Gorodetsky also asserts this: “After all the “rejections,” the world was irrevocably accepted by Acmeism, in all its beauties and ugliness.” Modern man felt like a beast, “devoid of both claws and fur” (M. Zenkevich “Wild Porphyry”), Adam, who “... looked around with the same clear, keen eye, accepted everything he saw, and sang hallelujah to life and the world "

And then same Acmeists constantly sound notes of doom and melancholy. The work of A. A. Akhmatova (A. A. Gorenko, 1889 - 1966) occupies a special place in the poetry of Acmeism. Her first collection of poetry, “Evening,” was published in 1912. Critics immediately noted the distinctive features of her poetry: restraint of intonation, emphasized intimacy of subject matter, psychologism. Akhmatova's early poetry is deeply lyrical and emotional. With her love for man, faith in his spiritual powers and capabilities, she clearly departed from the Acmeistic idea of the “primordial Adam.” The main part of A. A. Akhmatova’s creativity falls on the Soviet period.

A. Akhmatova’s first collections “Evening” (1912) and “Rosary” (1914) brought her great fame. A closed, narrow intimate world is reflected in her work, painted in tones of sadness and sadness:

I'm not asking for wisdom or strength.

Oh, just let me warm myself by the fire!

I'm cold... Winged or wingless,

The gay god will not visit me."

The theme of love, the main and only one, is directly related to suffering (which is due to the facts of the pathess’s biography):

Let it lie like a tombstone

On my life love."

Characterizing the early work of A. Akhmatova, Al. Surkov says that she appears “... as a poet of sharply defined poetic individuality and strong lyrical talent... emphatically “feminine” intimate lyrical experiences...”.

A. Akhmatova understands that “we live solemnly and difficultly,” that “somewhere there is a simple life and light,” but she does not want to give up this life:

Yes, I loved them those night gatherings -

There are ice glasses on the small table,

Above the black coffee there is a fragrant, thin steam,

The red fireplace is heavy, winter heat,

The hilarity of a caustic literary joke

And the friend's first glance, helpless and creepy."

The Acmeists sought to return the image to its living concreteness, objectivity, to free it from mystical encryptedness, about which O. Mandelstam spoke very angrily, assuring that the Russian symbolists “... sealed all the words, all the images, destining them exclusively for liturgical use. It turned out to be extremely uncomfortable - I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t sit down. You can't dine on a table, because it's not just a table. It’s a shame to light a fire, because it might mean something that you yourself won’t be happy with.”

And at the same time, Acmeists claim that their images are sharply different from realistic ones, because, in the words of S. Gorodetsky, they “... are born for the first time” “as hitherto unseen, but from now on real phenomena.” This determines the sophistication and peculiar mannerism of the Acmeistic image, no matter how deliberate bestial savagery it may appear. For example, from Voloshin:

People are animals, people are reptiles,

Like a hundred-eyed evil spider,

They entwine glances into rings."

The circle of these images is narrowed, which achieves extreme beauty, and which makes it possible to achieve greater sophistication when describing it:

Slower the snow hive,

Crystal is clearer than a window,

And a turquoise veil

Carelessly thrown on a chair.

Fabric, intoxicated with itself,

Pampered by the caress of light,

She's experiencing summer

As if untouched in winter.

And if in icy diamonds

Frost flows forever,

Here - flutter dragonflies

Fast-living, blue-eyed."

(O. Mandelstam)

Significant in its artistic value literary heritage N. S. Gumileva. His work was dominated by exotic and historical themes, and he was a singer of “strong personality.” Gumilev played a large role in the development of the form of verse, which was distinguished by precision and accuracy.

It was in vain that the Acmeists so sharply dissociated themselves from the Symbolists. We find the same “other worlds” and longing for them in their poetry. Thus, N. Gumilyov, who welcomed the imperialist war as a “sacred” cause, asserting that “seraphim, clear and winged, are visible behind the shoulders of warriors,” a year later wrote poems about the end of the world, about the death of civilization:

The peaceful roars of monsters are heard,

Suddenly the rains pour down furiously,

And everyone is tightening their fat

Light green horsetails.

The once proud and brave conqueror understands the destructive

the destructiveness of the enmity that has engulfed humanity:

Isn't that all equals? Let time roll on

We understood you, Earth:

You're just a gloomy gatekeeper

At the entrance to God's fields.

This explains their rejection of the Great October Socialist Revolution. But their fate was not the same. Some of them emigrated; N. Gumilyov allegedly “took an active part in the counter-revolutionary conspiracy” and was shot. In the poem “Worker,” he predicted his end at the hands of a proletarian who cast a bullet, “which will separate me from the earth.”

And the Lord will reward me in full measure

For my short and short life.

I did this in a light gray blouse

A short old man.

Such poets as S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, V. Narbut, M. Zenkevich were unable to emigrate.

For example, A. Akhmatova, who did not understand and did not accept the revolution, refused to leave her homeland:

He said: “Come here,

Leave your land deaf and sinful,

Leave Russia forever.

I will wash the blood from your hands,

I will take the black shame out of my heart,

I'll cover it with a new name

The pain of defeat and resentment.”

But indifferent and calm

I covered my ears with my hands,

She did not immediately return to creativity. But Great Patriotic War again awakened the poet in her, a patriotic poet, confident in the victory of her Motherland (“My-gesture”, “Oath”, etc.). A. Akhmatova wrote in her autobiography that for her in poetry “... my connection with time, with the new life of my people.”

FUTURISM

Simultaneously with Acmeism in 1910 - 1912. arose futurism. Like other modernist movements, it was internally contradictory. The most significant of the futurist groups, which later received the name cubo-futurism, united such poets as D. D. Burliuk, V. V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, V. V. Kamensky, V. V. Mayakovsky, and some others. A type of futurism was the egofuturism of I. Severyanin (I.V. Lotarev, 1887 - 1941). In the group of futurists called “Centrifuge,” Soviet poets N. N. Aseev and B. L. Pasternak began their creative careers.

Futurism proclaimed a revolution of form, independent of content, absolute freedom of poetic speech. Futurists rejected literary traditions. In their manifesto with the shocking title “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste,” published in a collection of the same name in 1912, they called for throwing Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy off the “Steamboat of Modernity.” A. Kruchenykh defended the poet’s right to create an “abstruse” language that does not have a specific meaning. In his writings, Russian speech was indeed replaced by a meaningless set of words. However, V. Khlebnikov (1885 - 1922), V.V. Kamensky (1884 - 1961) managed in their creative practice to carry out interesting experiments in the field of words, which had a beneficial effect on Russian and Soviet poetry.

Among the futurist poets, the creative path of V. V. Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930) began. His first poems appeared in print in 1912. From the very beginning, Mayakovsky stood out in the poetry of Futurism, introducing his own theme into it. He always spoke out not only against “all sorts of old things,” but also for the creation of something new in public life.

In the years preceding the Great October Revolution, Mayakovsky was a passionate revolutionary romantic, an exposer of the kingdom of the “fat”, anticipating a revolutionary storm. The pathos of negation of the entire system of capitalist relations, humanistic faith in man sounded with enormous force in his poems “Cloud in Pants”, “Spine Flute”, “War and Peace”, “Man”. The theme of the poem “A Cloud in Pants,” published in 1915 in a censored form, was subsequently defined by Mayakovsky as four cries of “down with”: “Down with your love!”, “Down with your art!”, “Down with your system!” , “Down with your religion!” He was the first of the poets who showed in his works the truth of the new society.

In Russian poetry of the pre-revolutionary years there were bright individuals who are difficult to attribute to a specific literary movement. These are M. A. Voloshin (1877 - 1932) and M. I. Tsvetaeva (1892 - 1941).

After 1910, another direction emerged - futurism, which sharply contrasted itself not only with the literature of the past, but also with the literature of the present, entering the world with the desire to overthrow everything and everyone. This nihilism was manifested in the external design of futuristic collections, which were printed on wrapping paper or the back of wallpaper, and in the titles - “Mares’ Milk”, “Dead Moon”, etc.

In the first collection, “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (1912), a declaration was published, signed by D. Burliuk, A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky. In it, the futurists asserted themselves and only themselves as the only exponents of their era. They demanded “Throw away Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. and so on. from the Steamboat of Modernity,” they at the same time denied the “perfume fornication of Balmont,” spoke about the “dirty slime of books written by the endless Leonid Andreevs,” and indiscriminately discounted Gorky, Kuprin, Blok, etc.

Rejecting everything, they affirmed “Dawns of the new coming Beauty of the Self-Valuable (Self-Valuable) Word.” Unlike Mayakovsky, they did not try to overthrow the existing system, but sought only to update the forms of reproduction of modern life.

The basis of Italian futurism with his the slogan “war is the only hygiene of the world” was weakened in the Russian version, but, as V. Bryusov notes in the article “The Meaning of Modern Poetry,” this ideology “... appeared between the lines, and the masses of readers instinctively shunned this poetry.”

“Futurists were the first to raise form to the proper height,” says V. Shershenevich, “giving it the meaning of an end in itself, the main element of a poetic work. They have completely rejected poetry that is written for an idea.” This explains the emergence of a huge number of declared formal principles, such as: “In the name of personal freedom, we deny spelling” or “We have destroyed punctuation marks, - which is why the role of the verbal mass was put forward for the first time and realized” (“Tank of Judges”).

The futurist theorist V. Khlebnikov proclaims that the language of the future “will be an abstruse language.” The word is deprived of its semantic meaning, acquiring a subjective coloring: “We understand vowels as time and space (the nature of aspiration), consonants – paint, sound, smell.” V. Khlebnikov, trying to expand the boundaries of language and its capabilities, proposes the creation of new words based on root characteristics, for example:

(roots: chur... and char...)

We are enchanted and shunned.

Enchanted there, shunned here, Now a churakhar, now a churakhar, Here a churil, there a churil.

From the churyn the gaze of the enchantress.

There is churavel, there is churavel.

Charari! Churari!

Churel! Charel!

Chares and chures.

And shun and be enchanted."

The futurists contrast the emphasized aestheticism of the poetry of the Symbolists and especially the Acmeists with deliberate de-aestheticization. So, in D. Burliuk, “poetry is a shabby girl,” “the soul is a tavern, and the sky is trash,” in V. Shershenevich, “in a spit-stained park,” a naked woman wants to “squeeze milk from saggy breasts.” In the review “The Year of Russian Poetry” (1914), V. Bryusov, noting the deliberate rudeness of the futurists’ poems, rightly notes: “It is not enough to vilify with abusive words everything that happened and everything that exists outside one’s circle in order to find something new.”

He points out that all their innovations are imaginary, because we encountered some of them in the poets of the 18th century, others in Pushkin and Virgil, and that the theory of sounds and colors was developed by T. Gautier.

It is curious that, despite all the denials of other movements in art, the futurists feel their continuity from symbolism.

It is curious that A. Blok, who followed Severyanin’s work with interest, says with concern: “He has no theme,” and V. Bryusov, in an article in 1915 dedicated to Severyanin, points out: “Lack of knowledge and inability to think belittle the poetry of Igor Severyanin and extremely narrow its horizon.” He reproaches the poet for bad taste, vulgarity, and especially sharply criticizes his war poems, which make a “painful impression”, “winning cheap applause from the public.”

A. Blok had his doubts back in 1912: “I’m afraid about the modernists that they no rod but only talented curls around, emptiness.”

Russian culture on the eve of the Great October Revolution was the result of a complex and enormous path. Distinctive features it has always remained democracy, high humanism and genuine nationality, despite periods of cruel government reaction, when progressive thought and advanced culture were suppressed in every possible way.

The richest cultural heritage of pre-revolutionary times, cultural values created over centuries constitute the golden fund of our national culture

Velimir Khlebnikov
(Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov)
28.X. (09.XI.)1885-28.VI.1922
Khlebnikov attracted attention and aroused interest with his original personality, striking with his worldview and independence of views, rare for his age. He meets a circle of metropolitan modernist poets (including Gumilyov and Kuzmin, whom he calls “my teacher”), and visits Vyach’s famous “bathhouse” in the artistic life of St. Petersburg in those years. Ivanov, where writers, philosophers, artists, musicians, and actors gathered.
In 1910-1914, his poems, poems, dramas, prose were published, including such famous ones as the poem “Crane”, the poem “Maria Vechora”, the play “Marquise of Deses”. The poet’s first brochure with mathematical and linguistic experiments, “Teacher and Student,” was published in Kherson. A scientist and science fiction writer, poet and publicist, he is completely absorbed in creative work. The poems “Rural Charm”, “Forest Horror”, etc., and the play “The Mistake of Death” were written. The books “Roar! Gloves. 1908 - 1914", "Creations" (Volume 1). In 1916, together with N. Aseev, he issued the declaration “The Trumpet of the Martians,” in which Khlebnikov’s division of humanity into “inventors” and “acquirers” was formulated. The main characters of his poetry were Time and the Word; it was through Time, fixed by the Word and transformed into a spatial fragment, that the philosophical unity of “space-time” was realized for him. O. Mandelstam wrote: “Khlebnikov fiddles with words like a mole, meanwhile he dug passages in the ground for the future for a whole century...” In 1920 he lived in Kharkov, wrote a lot: “War in a mousetrap”, “Ladomir”, “ Three Sisters”, “A Scratch on the Sky”, etc. In the city theater of Kharkov, the “buffoonish” election of Khlebnikov as “Chairman of the Globe” takes place, with the participation of Yesenin and Mariengof.
The work of V. Khlebnikov falls into three parts: theoretical research in the field of style and illustration, poetic creativity and comic poems. Unfortunately, the boundaries between them are drawn extremely carelessly, and often a wonderful poem is spoiled by an admixture of unexpected and awkward jokes or word formations that are far from thought out.

Very sensitive to the roots of words, Viktor Khlebnikov deliberately neglects inflections, sometimes discarding them completely, sometimes changing them beyond recognition. He believes that each vowel contains not only the action, but also its direction: thus, the bull is the one who hits, the side is what is hit; beaver is what is hunted, babr (tiger) is the one who hunts, etc.
Taking the root of a word and attaching arbitrary inflections to it, he creates new words. So, from the root “sme” he produces “smekhachi”, “smeevo”, “smeyunchi-ki”, “to laugh”, etc.

As a poet, Viktor Khlebnikov has an incandescent love for nature. He is never happy with what he has. His deer turns into a carnivorous beast, he sees how at the “vernissage” dead birds on ladies’ hats come to life, how people’s clothes fall off and turn - wool into sheep, linen into blue flax flowers.

Osip Mandelstam was born in 1891 into a Jewish family. From his mother, Mandelstam inherited, along with a predisposition to heart disease and musicality, a heightened sense of the sounds of the Russian language.

Mandelstam, being a Jew, chooses to be a Russian poet - not just “Russian-speaking,” but precisely Russian. And this decision is not so self-evident: the beginning of the century in Russia was a time of rapid development of Jewish literature, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, and, partly, in Russian. Combining Jewry and Russia, Mandelstam’s poetry carries universalism, combining national Russian Orthodoxy and the national practicalism of the Jews.

My staff, my freedom -

The core of existence

Will the people's truth soon

Will the truth become mine?

I didn't bow to the ground

Before I found myself;

He took the staff and had fun

And he went to distant Rome.

And the snow on the black fields

They will never melt

And the sadness of my family

It's still foreign to me.

For Mandelstam's generation, the first Russian revolution and the events accompanying it coincided with the entry into life. During this period, Mandelstam became interested in politics, but then, at the turning point from adolescence to youth, he left politics for poetry.

Mandelstam avoids words that are too conspicuous: he has neither the revelry of refined archaisms, like Vyacheslav Ivanov, nor the intensification of vulgarisms, like Mayakovsky, nor the abundance of neologisms, like Tsvetaeva, nor the influx of everyday expressions and words, like Pasternak.

There are chaste charms -

High harmony, deep peace,

Far from the ethereal lyres

Larks installed by me.

In thoroughly washed niches

During the hours of attentive sunsets

I'm listening to my penates

Always rapturous silence.

The beginning of the First World War - the turn of time:

My age, my beast, who can

Look into your pupils

And with his blood he will glue

Two centuries of vertebrae?

Mandelstam notes that the time has passed for the final farewell to Alexander's Russia (Alexander III and Alexander Pushkin), European, classical, architectural Russia. But before its end, it is precisely doomed “greatness,” precisely “historical forms and ideas” that surround the poet’s mind. He must be convinced of their internal emptiness - not from external events, but from the internal experience of efforts to sympathize with the “sovereign world”, to feel into its structure. He says goodbye to him in his own way, sorting through old motifs, putting them in order, compiling a kind of catalog for them through the means of poetry. In Mandelstam’s cipher system, doomed Petersburg, precisely in its capacity as the imperial capital, is equivalent to that Judea, about which it is said that, having crucified Christ, it “petrified” and is associated with the holy apostate and perishing Jerusalem. The colors that characterize the basis of grace-filled Judaism are black and yellow. So these are the colors that characterize the St. Petersburg “sovereign world” (the colors of the Russian imperial standard).

The most significant of Mandelstam's responses to the 1917 revolution was the poem “Twilight of Freedom.” It is very difficult to subsume it under the rubric of “acceptance” or “non-acceptance” of the revolution in a trivial sense, but the theme of despair sounds very loudly in it:

Let us glorify, brothers, the twilight of freedom,

Great twilight year!

Into the boiling night waters

The heavy forest of nets is lowered.

You rise in the dark years, -

Oh, sun, judge, people.

Let us glorify the fatal burden,

Which the people's leader takes in tears.

Let us glorify the power of the gloomy burden,

Her unbearable oppression.

Whoever has a heart must hear, time,

As your ship goes down.

We are fighting legions

They tied up the swallows - and here they are

The sun is not visible; all the elements

Chirps, moves, lives;

Through the networks - thick twilight -

The sun is not visible and the earth is floating.

Well, let's try: huge, clumsy,

Creaky steering wheel.

The earth is floating. Take heart, men.

Dividing the ocean like a plow,

We will remember even in the Lethean cold,

That the earth cost us ten heavens.

In this report, I tried to talk about the most interesting writers and their works. I deliberately chose writers who were not as famous as, for example: I. Bunin and N. Gumilyov, A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin and A. Akhmatova, A. Kuprin. But no less brilliant and famous in their time.

Poets of the “Silver Age” (Nikolai Gumilyov)

The “Silver Age” in Russian literature is the period of creativity of the main representatives of modernism, the period of the appearance of many talented authors. Conventionally, the beginning of the “silver age” is considered to be 1892, but its actual end came with the October Revolution.
Modernist poets rejected social values and tried to create poetry designed to promote spiritual development person. One of the most famous movements in modernist literature was Acmeism. The Acmeists proclaimed the liberation of poetry from symbolist impulses towards the “ideal” and called for a return from the polysemy of images to the material world, object, “nature”. But their poetry also had a tendency towards aestheticism, towards the poeticization of feelings. This is clearly seen in the work of a prominent representative of Acmeism, one of the best Russian poets of the early 20th century, Nikolai Gumilyov, whose poems amaze us with the beauty of the word and the sublimity of the created images.
Gumilyov himself called his poetry the muse of distant travels; the poet was faithful to it until the end of his days. The famous ballad “Captains” from the collection of poems “Pearls”, which brought Gumilyov wide fame, is a hymn to people who challenge fate and the elements. The poet appears before us as a singer of the romance of distant travels, courage, risk, courage:

The swift-winged ones are led by captains -
Discoverers of new lands,
For those who are not afraid of hurricanes,
Who has experienced malstroms and shoals.
Whose is not the dust of lost charters --
The chest is soaked with the salt of the sea,
Who is the needle on the torn map
Marks his daring path.

Even in the military lyrics of Nikolai Gumilyov one can find romantic motives. Here is an excerpt from a poem included in the collection “Quiver”:

And blood-drenched weeks
Dazzling and light
Shrapnel is exploding above me,
Blades fly faster than birds.
I scream and my voice is wild
This is copper hitting copper,
I, the bearer of great thought,
I can't, I can't die.
Like thunder hammers
Or the waters of angry seas,
Golden Heart of Russia
Beats rhythmically in my chest.

Romanticization of battle and feat was a feature of Gumilyov - a poet and a man with a clearly expressed rare knightly principle both in poetry and in life. Contemporaries called Gumilyov a poet-warrior. One of them wrote: “He accepted the war with simplicity... with straightforward fervor. He was, perhaps, one of those few people in Russia whose soul the war found in the greatest combat readiness.” As you know, during the First World War Nikolai Gumilyov volunteered to go to the front. From his prose and poetry we can judge that the poet not only romanticized military feats, but also saw and realized the full horror of war.
In the collection "Quiver" a new theme for Gumilyov begins to emerge - the theme of Russia. Completely new motives sound here - the creations and genius of Andrei Rublev and a bloody bunch of rowan trees, ice drift on the Neva and ancient Rus'. He gradually expands his themes, and in some poems reaches the deepest insight, as if predicting his own fate:

He stands before a red-hot forge,
A short old man.
A calm look seems submissive
From the blinking of reddish eyelids.
All his comrades fell asleep
He's the only one still awake:
He's all busy casting a bullet,
What will separate me from the earth.

The last lifetime collections of poems by N. Gumilyov were published in 1921 - these are “Tent” (African poems) and “Pillar of Fire”. In them we see a new Gumilyov, whose poetic art was enriched by the simplicity of high wisdom, pure colors, and the masterful use of prosaic, everyday and fantastic details. In the works of Nikolai Gumilyov we find a reflection of the world around us in all its colors. His poetry contains exotic landscapes and customs of Africa. The poet penetrates deeply into the world of legends and traditions of Abyssinia, Rome, Egypt:

I know funny tales of mysterious lines
About the black maiden, about the passion of the young leader,
You don't want to believe in anything other than rain.

Are you crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad
An exquisite giraffe wanders.

Gumilev Nikolay Stepanovich

N. S. Gumilyov was born in Kronstadt in the family of a military doctor. In 1906 he received a certificate of graduation from the Nikolaev Tsarkoye Selo Gymnasium, the director of which was I. F. Annensky. In 1905, the poet’s first collection, “The Path of the Conquistadors,” was published, which attracted the attention of V. Ya. Bryusov. The characters in the collection seem to have come from the pages of adventure novels from the era of the conquest of America, which the poet read in his adolescence. The lyrical hero identifies himself with them - “a conquistador in an iron shell.” The originality of the collection, replete with common literary passages and poetic conventions, was given by the traits that prevailed in Gumilyov’s life behavior: love of the exotic, romance of heroism, will to life and creativity.

In 1907, Gumilev left for Paris to continue his education at the Sorbonne, where he attended lectures on French literature. He follows the artistic life of France with interest, establishes correspondence with V. Ya. Bryusov, and publishes the magazine "Sirius". In Paris in 1908, Gumilyov’s second collection “Romantic Flowers” was published, where the reader was again expected to meet with literary and historical exoticism, however, the subtle irony that touched individual poems translates the conventional techniques of romanticism into a game plan and thereby outlines the contours of the author’s positions. Gumilyov works hard on the verse, achieving its “flexibility”, “confident rigor”, as he wrote in his programmatic poem “To the Poet”, and in the manner of “introducing the realism of descriptions into the most fantastic plots” he follows the traditions of Leconte de Lisle, the French poet-Parnassian , considering this path to be “salvation” from symbolist “nebulae”. According to I. F. Annensky, this “book reflected not only the search for beauty, but also the beauty of the search.”

In the fall of 1908, Gumilev made his first trip to Africa, to Egypt. The African continent captivated the poet: he became the pioneer of the African theme in Russian poetry. Acquaintance with Africa “from the inside” turned out to be especially fruitful during the following travels, in the winter of 1909 - 1910 and 1910 - 1911. in Abyssinia, the impressions of which were reflected in the cycle “Abyssinian Songs” (collection “Alien Sky”).

Since September 1909, Gumilyov became a student at the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. In 1910, the collection “Pearls” was published with a dedication to the “teacher” - V. Ya. Bryusov. The venerable poet responded with a review, where he noted that Gumilyov “lives in an imaginary and almost ghostly world... he himself creates countries for himself and populates them with creatures he himself created: people, animals, demons.” Gumilyov does not abandon the heroes of his early books, but they have changed noticeably. In his poetry, psychologism intensifies; instead of “masks,” people with their own characters and passions appear. What also attracted attention was the confidence with which the poet moved toward mastering the art of poetry.

At the beginning of the 1910s, Gumilyov was already a prominent figure in St. Petersburg literary circles. He is a member of the “young” editorial staff of the magazine “Apollo”, where he regularly publishes “Letters about Russian Poetry” - literary-critical studies that represent new type"objective" review. At the end of 1911, he headed the “Workshop of Poets”, around which a group of like-minded people formed, and acted as the ideological inspirer of a new literary movement - Acmeism, the basic principles of which were proclaimed by him in the manifesto article “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism”. A poetic illustration of his theoretical ideas was his collection “Alien Sky” (1912) - the pinnacle of Gumilyov’s “objective” lyrics. According to M.A. Kuzmin, the most important thing in the collection is the identification of the lyrical hero with Adam, the first man. The Acmeist poet is like Adam, the discoverer of the world of things. He gives things “virgin names”, fresh in their primordial nature, freed from previous poetic contexts. Gumilyov formulated not only a new concept of the poetic word, but also his understanding of man as a being aware of his natural reality, “wise physiology” and accepting into himself the fullness of the existence around him.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Gumilyov volunteered for the front. In the newspaper "Birzhevye Vedomosti" he publishes chronicle essays "Notes of a Cavalryman". In 1916, the book “Quiver” was published, differing from previous ones primarily in the expansion of the thematic range. Italian travel sketches coexist with meditative poems with philosophical and existential content. Here the Russian theme begins to sound for the first time, the poet’s soul responds to the pain of his native country, devastated by the war. His gaze, turned to reality, acquires the ability to see through it. The poems included in the collection "Bonfire" (1918) reflected the intensity of the poet's spiritual quest. As the philosophy of Gumilyov's poetry deepens, the world in his poems increasingly appears as a divine cosmos (“Trees”, “Nature”). He is concerned about “eternal” themes: life and death, the corruption of the body and the immortality of the spirit, the otherness of the soul.

Gumilyov was not an eyewitness to the revolutionary events of 1917. At that time, he was abroad as part of the Russian expeditionary force: in Paris, then in London. His creative quest of this period is marked by an interest in eastern culture. Gumilyov compiled his collection “The Porcelain Pavilion” (1918) from free transcriptions of French translations of Chinese classical poetry (Li Bo, Du Fu, etc.). The “oriental” style was perceived by Gumilyov as a unique school of “verbal economy”, poetic “simplicity, clarity and authenticity”, which corresponded to his aesthetic principles.

Returning to Russia in 1918, Gumilyov immediately, with his characteristic energy, became involved in the literary life of Petrograd. He is a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature", under his editorship and in his translation the Babylonian epic "Gilgamesh", the works of R. Southey, G. Heine, S. T. Coleridge are published. He lectures on the theory of verse and translation at various institutions, and runs the studio of young poets "Sounding Shell". According to one of the poet’s contemporaries, critic A. Ya. Levinson, “young people were drawn to him from all sides, admiringly submitting to the despotism of the young master, who wielded the philosopher’s stone of poetry...”

In January 1921, Gumilyov was elected chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets. In the same year, the last book, “The Pillar of Fire,” was published. Now the poet goes deeper into philosophical understanding problems of memory, creative immortality, the fate of the poetic word. The individual vitality that fed Gumilyov’s poetic energy earlier merges with the supra-individual one. The hero of his lyrics reflects on the unknowable and, enriched by internal spiritual experience, rushes into the “India of the Spirit.” This was not a return to the circles of symbolism, but it is clear that Gumilyov found a place in his worldview for those achievements of symbolism, which, as it seemed to him at the time of the Acmeist “Sturm und Drang” a, led “into the realm of the unknown.” The theme of familiarization with world life , sounding in Gumilyov’s last poems, strengthens the motives of empathy and compassion and gives them a universal and at the same time deeply personal meaning.

Gumilyov's life was tragically interrupted: he was executed as a participant in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, which, as it now became known, was fabricated. In the minds of Gumilev's contemporaries, his fate evoked associations with the fate of a poet of another era - Andre Chenier, executed by the Jacobins during the Great French Revolution.

"Silver Age" of Russian literature

Composition

V. Bryusov, N. Gumilev, V. Mayakovsky

The 19th century, the “golden age” of Russian literature, ended, and the 20th century began. This turning point went down in history under the beautiful name of the “Silver Age”. It gave birth to the great rise of Russian culture and became the beginning of its tragic fall. The beginning of the “Silver Age” is usually attributed to the 90s XIX century when the poems of V. Bryusov, I. Annensky, K. Balmont and others appeared wonderful poets. The heyday of the “Silver Age” is considered to be 1915 - the time of its greatest rise and end. The socio-political situation of this time was characterized by a deep crisis of the existing government, a stormy, restless atmosphere in the country requiring decisive changes. Maybe that’s why the paths of art and politics crossed. Just as society was intensely searching for ways to a new social system, writers and poets sought to master new artistic forms and put forward bold experimental ideas. The realistic depiction of reality ceased to satisfy artists, and in polemics with the classics of the 19th century, new literary movements were established: symbolism, acmeism, futurism. They offered different ways of comprehending existence, but each of them was distinguished by the extraordinary music of the verse, the original expression of the feelings and experiences of the lyrical hero, and a focus on the future.

One of the first literary movements was symbolism, which united such different poets as K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, A. Bely and others. The theorists of symbolism believed that the artist should create new art with the help of images-symbols that will help in a more refined and generalized way express the poet’s moods, feelings and thoughts. Moreover, truth and insight can appear in an artist not as a result of reflection, but at a moment of creative ecstasy, as if sent to him from above. Symbolist poets carried their dreams upward, asking global questions about how to save humanity, how to restore faith in God, achieve harmony, merging with the Soul of the World, Eternal Femininity, Beauty and Love.

V. Bryusov became the recognized meter of symbolism, embodying in his poems not only the formal innovative achievements of this movement, but also its ideas. Bryusov’s original creative manifesto was a small poem “To the Young Poet,” which was perceived by contemporaries as a program of symbolism.

A pale young man with a burning gaze,
Now I give you three covenants:
First accept: don’t live in the present,
Only the future is the domain of the poet.

Remember the second: don’t sympathize with anyone,
Love yourself infinitely.
Keep the third: worship art,
Only to him, thoughtlessly, aimlessly.

Of course, the creative declaration proclaimed by the poet is not limited to the content of this poem. Bryusov's poetry is multifaceted, multifaceted and polyphonic, like the life it reflects. He had the rare gift of amazingly accurately conveying every mood, every movement of the soul. Perhaps the main feature of his poetry lies in the precisely found combination of form and content.

And I want all my dreams to
Having reached the word and the light,
We found the traits we wanted.

The difficult goal expressed by Bryusov in “Sonnet to Form,” I think, was achieved. And this is confirmed by his amazing poetry. In the poem “Creativity,” Bryusov managed to convey the feeling of the first, still semi-conscious stage of creativity, when the future work is still vaguely looming “through a magic crystal.”

Shadow of the Uncreated Creatures
sways in his sleep,
Like patching blades
On an enamel wall.

Purple hands
On the enamel wall
Half-asleeply draw sounds
In a ringing silence.

The Symbolists viewed life as the life of a Poet. Focus on oneself is characteristic of the work of the remarkable symbolist poet K. Balmont. He himself was the meaning, theme, image and purpose of his poems. I. Ehrenburg very accurately noticed this feature of his poetry: “Balmont noticed nothing in the world except his own soul.” Indeed, the external world existed for him only so that he could express his poetic self.

I hate humanity
I run away from him in a hurry.
My united fatherland -
My desert soul.

The poet never tired of following the unexpected turns of his soul, his changeable impressions. Balmont tried to capture fleeting moments, flying time in images and words, elevating fleetingness to a philosophical principle.

I do not know wisdom suitable for others,
I compose only fleeting moments into verse.
In every fleeting moment I see worlds,
Full of changing rainbow play.

The meaning of these lines is probably that a person should live every moment, in which the fullness of his being is revealed. And the artist’s task is to snatch this moment from eternity and capture it in words. Symbolist poets were able to express their era in poetry with its instability, instability, and transition.

Just as the denial of realism gave rise to symbolism, a new literary movement - Acmeism - arose in the course of polemics with symbolism. He rejected the craving of symbolism for the unknown, the focus on the world of his own soul. Acmeism, according to Gumilev, should not strive for the unknowable, but turn to what can be understood, that is, to real reality, trying to embrace the diversity of the world as fully as possible. With this view, the Acmeist artist, unlike the Symbolists, becomes involved in the world rhythm, although he gives assessments to the phenomena depicted. In general, when you try to understand the essence of the program of Acmeism, you are faced with obvious contradictions and inconsistency. In my opinion, Bryusov was right when he advised Gumilyov, Gorodetsky and Akhmatova to “give up the fruitless claim to form some kind of school of Acmeism,” and instead write good poetry. Indeed, now, at the end of the 20th century, the name of Acmeism has been preserved only because the creativity of such outstanding poets, like N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam.

Gumilev's early poems amaze with their romantic masculinity, energy of rhythm, and emotional intensity. In his famous "Captains" the whole world appears as an arena of struggle, constant risk, the highest tension of forces on the brink of life and death.

Let the sea go crazy and whip,
The crests of the waves rose into the sky -
No one trembles before a thunderstorm,
Not one will furl the sails.

In these lines one can hear a bold challenge to the elements and fate; they are contrasted with a willingness to take risks, courage and fearlessness. Exotic landscapes and customs of Africa, jungles, deserts, wild animals, the mysterious Lake Chad - this whole wonderful world is embodied in the collection "Romantic Flowers". No, this is not book romance. It seems that the poet himself is invisibly present and involved in the poems. His penetration into the world of legends and traditions of Abyssinia, Rome, Egypt and other countries exotic for Europeans is so deep. But with all the virtuosity of the depiction of reality social motives are extremely rare in Gumilyov and other Acmeist poets. Acmeism was characterized by extreme apoliticality, complete indifference to the pressing problems of our time.

This is probably why Acmeism had to give way to a new literary movement - futurism, which was distinguished by revolutionary rebellion, oppositional sentiment against bourgeois society, its morality, aesthetic tastes, and the entire system of social relations. It is not for nothing that the first collection of futurists, who considered themselves poets of the future, bore the obviously provocative title “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.” Mayakovsky's early work was associated with futurism. In his youthful poems one can feel the desire of the aspiring poet to amaze the reader with the novelty and unusualness of his vision of the world. And Mayakovsky really succeeded. For example, in the poem "Night" he uses an unexpected simile, likening the illuminated windows to a player's hand with a fan of cards. Therefore, in the reader’s mind, an image appears of a city-player, obsessed with temptations, hopes, and a thirst for pleasure. But the dawn, extinguishing the lanterns, “kings in the crown of gas,” dispels the night mirage.

The crimson and white are discarded and crumpled,
they threw handfuls of ducats into the green,
And the black palms of the converging windows
burning yellow cards were handed out.

Yes, these lines are not at all similar to the poems of the classical poets. They clearly show the creative declaration of the futurists who deny the art of the past. Poets such as V. Mayakovsky, V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky, discerned in the union of poetry and struggle the special spiritual state of their time and tried to find new rhythms and images for the poetic embodiment of the seething revolutionary life.

The fates of the remarkable poets of the “Silver Age” turned out differently. Some could not endure life in their inhospitable homeland, some, like Gumilyov, were shot without guilt, some, like Akhmatova, remained in their native land until their last days, experiencing all the troubles and sorrows with it, some put the “bullet point at its end”, like Mayakovsky. But they all created a real miracle at the beginning of the 20th century - the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry.

Analysis of N. Gumilyov's poem "Giraffe"

Nikolai Gumilyov combined courage, courage, a poetic ability to predict the future, a childish curiosity about the world and a passion for travel. The poet managed to put these qualities and abilities into poetic form.

Gumilyov was always attracted to exotic places and beautiful, music-sounding names, bright, almost shadeless painting. It was in the collection "Romantic Flowers" that the poem "Giraffe" (1907) was included, which for a long time became " business card"Gumilyov in Russian literature.

From his early youth, Nikolai Gumilyov attached exceptional importance to the composition of a work and its plot completeness. The poet called himself a “master of fairy tales,” combining in his poems dazzlingly bright, rapidly changing pictures with extraordinary melody and musicality of narration.

An exquisite giraffe wanders.

The reader is transported to the most exotic continent - Africa. Gumilyov paints seemingly absolutely unrealistic pictures:

In his fabulous poem, the poet compares two spaces, distant on the scale of human consciousness and very close on the scale of the Earth. The poet says almost nothing about the space that is “here”, and this is not necessary. There is only a “heavy fog” here, which we inhale every minute. In the world where we live, there is only sadness and tears left. This leads us to believe that heaven on Earth is impossible. Nikolai Gumilyov is trying to prove the opposite: “...far, far away, on Lake Chad // An exquisite giraffe wanders.” Usually the expression “far, far away” is written with a hyphen and names something completely unattainable. However, the poet, perhaps with some degree of irony, focuses the reader’s attention on whether this continent is really so far away. It is known that Gumilyov had a chance to visit Africa, to see with his own eyes the beauties he described (the poem “Giraffe” was written before Gumilyov’s first trip to Africa).

The world in which the reader lives is completely colorless; life here seems to flow in gray tones. On Lake Chad, like a precious diamond, the world sparkles and shimmers. Nikolai Gumilyov, like other Acmeist poets, uses in his works not specific colors, but objects, giving the reader the opportunity to imagine one or another shade in his imagination: the skin of a giraffe, which is decorated with a magical pattern, seems to me bright orange with red-brown spots , the dark blue color of the water surface, on which moonlight flares spread out like a golden fan, the bright orange sails of a ship sailing during sunset. Unlike the world to which we are accustomed, in this space the air is fresh and clean, it absorbs evaporation from Lake Chad, “the smell of unimaginable herbs”...

It was no coincidence that Nikolai Gumilyov chose the giraffe in this poem. Standing firmly on its feet, with a long neck and a “magic pattern” on its skin, the giraffe has become the hero of many songs and poems. Perhaps we can draw a parallel between this exotic animal and a human being: he is also calm, stately and gracefully built. Man also tends to exalt himself above all living beings. However, if the giraffe is peaceful, “graceful harmony and bliss” are given by nature, then man by nature is created to fight primarily with his own kind.

Analysis of the poem by N.S. Gumilyov "Giraffe"
In 1908, Nikolai Gumilyov’s second book, “Romantic Flowers,” was published in Paris, which was favorably assessed by Valery Bryusov. It was in this book that the poem “Giraffe” was first published.
The poem consists of five quatrains (twenty lines). The idea of the poem is to describe the beauties and wonders of Africa. Gumilev talks in great detail, colorfully and visually about the landscapes of the hot country. Nikolai Stepanovich actually observed this splendor, because he visited Africa three times!
In his poem, the author uses the technique of antithesis, but not specific, but implied. A man whose eye is accustomed to the Russian landscape paints a picture of an exotic country so clearly.
The story is about an “exquisite giraffe”. The giraffe is the embodiment of beautiful reality. Gumilyov uses vivid epithets to emphasize the unusualness of the African landscape: an exquisite giraffe, graceful harmony, a magical pattern, a marble grotto, mysterious countries, unimaginable herbs. Comparison is also used:
“In the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship,
And his run is smooth, like the joyful flight of a bird.”
The author addresses the entire poem to his beloved in order to improve her mood and distract her from sad thoughts in rainy weather. But it doesn't work. Not only does it not distract, but, on the contrary, it intensifies sadness precisely from the feeling of the opposite. The fairy tale aggravates the loneliness of the characters.
This is especially emphasized by the last stanza. The placement of punctuation marks suggests that the author failed to cheer up the girl:
"Listen: Far, far away on Lake Chad
The giraffe wanders exquisitely.”
“Are you crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad
The giraffe wanders exquisitely.”
The person takes an unjustified pause. This suggests that he is no longer in the mood to talk.

The work of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov.

N. S. Gumilyov was born in 1886 in the city of Kronstadt in the family of a military doctor. At the age of twenty, he received a certificate (C in all exact sciences, B in the humanities, A only in logic) about graduating from the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium, the director of which was Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky. At the insistence of his father and of his own free will, he entered the Naval Corps.

While still a high school student, Gumilyov published his first collection of poems, “The Path of the Conquistadors” in 1905. But he preferred not to remember it, never republished it and even omitted it when counting his own collections. This book shows traces of a wide variety of influences: from Nietzsche, who glorified strong man, a creator who proudly accepted his tragic fate, to Gumilyov’s contemporary French writer Andre Gide, whose words “I became a nomad in order to voluptuously touch everything that nomads!” taken as an epigraph.

Critics believed that “The Way of the Conquistadors” contained many poetic clichés. However, behind the most diverse influences - Western aesthetes and Russian symbolists - we can discern our own authorial voice. Already in this first book, Gumilyov’s constant lyrical hero appears - a conqueror, wanderer, sage, soldier who trustingly and joyfully learns about the world. This hero opposes both modernity with its everyday life, and the hero of decadent poems.

This book was greeted joyfully by Innokenty Annensky (“...my cold, smoky sunset / Looks at the dawn with joy”). Bryusov, whose influence on the aspiring poet was undoubtedly, although he noted in his review “repeats and imitations, not always successful,” wrote an encouraging letter to the author.

However, a year later he left the naval school and went to study in Paris, at the Sorbonne University. Such an act was quite difficult to explain at that time. The son of a ship's doctor, who always dreamed of long sea voyages, suddenly gives up his dream, leaves his military career, although in spirit and character, habits and family tradition, Nikolai is a military man, a servant, in the best sense of the word, a man of honor and duty . Of course, studying in Paris is prestigious and honorable, but not for a military officer, in whose family people in civilian clothes were treated leniently. In Paris, Gumilyov did not show any particular diligence or interest in science; later, for this reason, he was expelled from a prestigious educational institution.

At the Sorbonne, Nikolai wrote a lot, studied poetic technique, trying to develop his own style. The young Gumilyov’s requirements for poetry are energy, clarity and clarity of expression, the return of the original meaning and brilliance to such concepts as duty, honor and heroism.

The collection, published in Paris in 1908, was called “Romantic Flowers” by Gumilyov. According to many literary scholars, most landscapes in poetry are bookish, the motives are borrowed. But the love for exotic places and beautiful, music-sounding names, bright, almost shadeless painting, are not borrowed. It was in “Romantic Flowers” - that is, before Gumilyov’s first travels to Africa - that the poem “Giraffe” (1907) was included, which for a long time became Gumilyov’s “calling card” in Russian literature.

A certain fabulousness in the poem “Giraffe” appears from the first lines:

Listen: far, far away, on Lake Chad
An exquisite giraffe wanders.

The reader is transported to the most exotic continent - Africa. Gumilyov paints seemingly absolutely unrealistic pictures:

In the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship,
And his run is smooth, like a joyful bird's flight...

The human imagination simply cannot comprehend the possibility of such beauty existing on Earth. The poet invites the reader to look at the world differently, to understand that “the earth sees many wonderful things,” and a person, if desired, is able to see the same thing. The poet invites us to clear ourselves of the “heavy fog” that we have been breathing in for so long, and to realize that the world is huge and that there are still paradises left on Earth.

Addressing a mysterious woman, about whom we can only judge from the position of the author, the lyrical hero conducts a dialogue with the reader, one of the listeners of his exotic fairy tale. A woman, immersed in her worries, sad, does not want to believe in anything - why not the reader? Reading this or that poem, we willy-nilly express our opinion about the work, criticize it to one degree or another, do not always agree with the poet’s opinion, and sometimes do not understand it at all. Nikolai Gumilyov gives the reader the opportunity to observe the dialogue between the poet and the reader (listener of his poems) from the outside.

A ring frame is typical for any fairy tale. As a rule, where the action begins is where it ends. However, in in this case one gets the impression that the poet can talk about this exotic continent again and again, paint lush, bright pictures of a sunny country, revealing more and more new, previously unseen features in its inhabitants. The ring frame demonstrates the poet’s desire to talk about “heaven on Earth” again and again in order to make the reader look at the world differently.

In his fabulous poem, the poet compares two spaces, distant on the scale of human consciousness and very close on the scale of the Earth. The poet says almost nothing about the space that is “here”, and this is not necessary. There is only a “heavy fog” here, which we inhale every minute. In the world where we live, there is only sadness and tears left. This leads us to believe that heaven on Earth is impossible. Nikolai Gumilyov is trying to prove the opposite: “...far, far away, on Lake Chad / An exquisite giraffe wanders.” Usually the expression “far, far away” is written with a hyphen and names something completely unattainable. However, the poet, perhaps with some degree of irony, focuses the reader’s attention on whether this continent is really so far away. It is known that Gumilyov had a chance to visit Africa, to see with his own eyes the beauties he described (the poem “Giraffe” was written before Gumilyov’s first trip to Africa).

The world in which the reader lives is completely colorless; life here seems to flow in gray tones. On Lake Chad, like a precious diamond, the world sparkles and shimmers. Nikolai Gumilyov, like other acmeist poets, uses in his works not specific colors, but objects, giving the reader the opportunity to imagine one or another shade in his imagination: the skin of a giraffe, which is decorated with a magical pattern, appears bright orange with red-brown spots, the dark blue color of the water surface, on which moonlight flares spread out like a golden fan, the bright orange sails of a ship sailing during sunset. Unlike the world to which we are accustomed, in this space the air is fresh and clean, it absorbs evaporation from Lake Chad, “the smell of unimaginable herbs”...

The lyrical hero seems to be so captivated by this world, its rich color palette, exotic smells and sounds, that he is ready to tirelessly talk about the endless expanses of the earth. This unquenchable enthusiasm is certainly transmitted to the reader.

The exoticism inherent in the giraffe fits very organically into the context of a fairy-tale story about a distant land. One of the most remarkable means of creating the image of this exotic animal is the technique of comparison: the magical pattern of the giraffe’s skin is compared with the shine of the night luminary, “in the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship,” “and its run is smooth, like a joyful bird’s flight.”

The melody of the poem is akin to the calmness and grace of a giraffe. The sounds are unnaturally drawn-out, melodic, complement the fairy-tale description, and give the story a touch of magic. Rhythmically, Gumilev uses amphibrachic pentameter, rhyming lines using a masculine rhyme (with stress on the last syllable). This, combined with voiced consonants, allows the author to more colorfully describe the exquisite world of African fairy tales.

“Romantic Flowers” also revealed another feature of Gumilyov’s poetry - his love for rapidly developing heroic or adventurous plots. Gumilyov is a master of fairy tales and short stories; he is attracted by famous historical plots, violent passions, and spectacular and sudden endings. From his early youth, he attached exceptional importance to the composition of a poem and its plot completeness. Finally, already in this collection Gumilyov developed his own methods of poetic writing. For example, he fell in love with women's rhyme. Typically, Russian poetry is built on the alternation of male and female rhymes. Gumilyov in many poems uses only the female one. This is how a melodious monotony, musicality of the narrative, and smoothness are achieved:

Following Sinbad the Sailor
In foreign countries I collected ducats
And wandered through unfamiliar waters,
Where, fragmented, the glare of the sun glowed [“The Eagle of Sinbad”, 1907]

It is not for nothing that V. Bryusov wrote about “Romantic Flowers” that Gumilyov’s poems “are now beautiful, elegant and, for the most part, interesting in form.”

On his first visit to Paris, Gumilyov sent poems to Moscow, to the main Symbolist magazine “Scales”. At the same time, he began publishing his own magazine, “Sirius,” promoting “new values for a refined worldview and old values in a new aspect.”

It is also curious that he became interested in travel, but not in abstract trips to distant seas, but in a trip to a specific country - Abyssinia (Ethiopia). A country that is unremarkable, poor and with a very tense military-political situation. Then this piece of the dark continent was torn between England, France and Italy. In short, the background was not the most suitable for a romantic trip. But there may be several reasons for the explanation: Abyssinia is the country of the ancestors of the great Pushkin, and the black Abyssinians were then mostly Orthodox people. Although his father refused to provide money, Nikolai made several trips to Abyssinia.

Leaving the Sorbonne in 1908, Gumilyov returned to St. Petersburg and completely devoted himself to creativity, actively communicating in the literary environment. In 1908, he started his own magazine - “Island”. It can be assumed that the name was supposed to emphasize the distance between Gumilyov and other authors of the magazine from their contemporary writers. On the second issue the magazine burst. But later Gumilyov met the critic Sergei Makovsky, whom he managed to spark with the idea of creating a new magazine. This is how “Apollo” appeared - one of the most interesting Russian literary magazines of the beginning of the century, in which the declarations of the Acmeists were soon published. He publishes not only his poems there, but also acts as a literary critic. From the pen of Gumilev come excellent analytical articles about the work of his contemporaries: A. Blok, I. Bunin, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, A. Bel, N. Klyuev, O. Mandelstam, M. Tsvetaeva.

In 1910, having returned from Africa, Nikolai published the book “Pearls”. The poem, as is usually the case with symbolists (and in “Pearls” he also follows the poetics of symbolism), has many meanings. We can say that it is about the inaccessibility of a harsh and proud life for those who are accustomed to bliss and luxury, or about the impossibility of any dream. It can also be interpreted as an eternal conflict between the masculine and feminine principles: the feminine is unfaithful and changeable, the masculine is free and lonely. It can be assumed that in the image of the queen calling for heroes, Gumilyov symbolically depicted modern poetry, which is tired of decadent passions and wants something living, even if crude and barbaric.

Gumilyov is categorically not satisfied with the shrinking, meager Russian and even European reality of the beginning of the century. He is not interested in everyday life (everyday stories are rare and taken more from books than from life), love is most often painful. A different matter is a journey, in which there is always a place for the unexpected and mysterious. The true manifesto of the mature Gumilyov becomes “Travel to China” (1910):

Why is the melancholy gnawing at our hearts?
Why are we torturing existence?
The best girl can't give
More than what she has.

We have all known evil grief,
Everyone abandoned their cherished paradise,
We all, comrades, believe in the sea,
We can sail to distant China.

The main thing for Gumilyov is a mortal craving for danger and novelty, an eternal delight in the unknown.

Starting from “Pearls,” Gumilyov’s poetry is an attempt to break through the visible and material. For the lyrical hero Gumilyov, flesh is a prison. He proudly says: “I am not chained to our century, / If I see through the abyss of times.” Visible world– only a screen for another reality. That is why Akhmatova called Gumilyov a “visionary” (a contemplator of the secret essence of things). The country referred to in “Journey to China” is least of all literal China, rather a symbol of mystery, difference from what surrounds the heroes of the poem.

His favorite hunters of the unknown learned to recognize the limits of their capabilities, their powerlessness. They are already ready to admit that

...there are other areas in the world
The moon of painful torment.
For higher power, supreme valor
They are forever unattainable. [“Captain”, 1909]

In the same year, Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov entered into a marriage; they had known each other since Tsarskoe Selo, and their destinies crossed many times, for example, in Paris, where Gumilyov, as a student at the Sorbonne, managed to publish a small magazine “Sirius”. Anna Akhmatova published in it, although she was very skeptical about her close friend’s idea. The magazine soon collapsed. But this episode from the life of Gumilyov characterizes him not only as a poet, dreamer, traveler, but also as a person who wants to do business.

Immediately after the wedding, the young couple went on a trip to Paris and returned to Russia only in the fall, almost six months later. And strange as it may seem, almost immediately upon returning to the capital, Gumilyov, completely unexpectedly, leaving his young wife at home, left again for distant Abyssinia. This country mysteriously attracts the poet, thereby giving rise to various rumors and interpretations.

In St. Petersburg, Gumilyov often visited Vyacheslav Ivanov’s “Tower” and read his poems there. Ivanov, a symbolist theorist, patronized young writers, but at the same time imposed his tastes on them. In 1911, Gumilyov broke with Ivanov, because symbolism, in his opinion, had outlived its usefulness.

In the same year, Gumilyov, together with the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, created a new literary group - “Poets Workshop”. Its very name revealed Gumilyov’s initially inherent approach to poetry. According to Gumilyov, a poet must be a professional, an artisan and a miner of verse.

In February 1912, in the editorial office of Apollo, Gumilyov announced the birth of a new literary movement, which, after quite heated debate, was given the name “Acmeism.” In his work “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism,” Gumilyov spoke about the fundamental difference between this movement and symbolism: “Russian symbolism directed its main forces into the realm of the unknown.” Angels, demons, spirits, wrote Gumilyov, should not “outweigh other... images.” It was with the Acmeists that the rapture of real landscape, architecture, taste, and smell returned to Russian verse. No matter how different the Acmeists were from each other, they were all united by the desire to return the word to its original meaning, to saturate it with specific content, blurred by the symbolist poets.

In Gumilyov's first collections there are very few external signs of the years in which they were written. Almost absent social issues, there is not even a hint of the events that worried his contemporaries... And at the same time, his poems add a lot to the palette of the Russian “Silver Age” - they are imbued with the same expectation of great changes, the same fatigue from the old, the anticipation of the arrival of some new, unprecedented , harsh and pure life.

Gumilyov’s first acmeistic book is “Alien Sky” (1912). Its author is a strict, wise poet who has abandoned many illusions, whose Africa takes on very specific and even everyday features. But the main thing is that the book, called “Alien Sky,” actually speaks not so much about Africa or Europe, but about Russia, which was previously present quite rarely in his poems.

I'm sad from the book, I'm languishing from the moon,
Maybe I don’t need a hero at all,
Here they are walking along the alley, so strangely tender,
A schoolboy with a schoolgirl, like Daphnis and Chloe. [“Modernity”, 1911-1912]

His subsequent collections (“Quiver,” 1915; “Pillar of Fire,” 1921) are not complete without poems about Russia. If for Blok, holiness and brutality in Russian life were inseparable and mutually conditioned, then Gumilev, with his sober, purely rational mind, could in his mind separate rebellious, spontaneous Russia from the rich, powerful and patriarchal Russian state.

Rus' is raving about God, red flame,
Where you can see angels through the smoke...
They obediently believe the signs,
Loving yours, living yours. [“Old estates”, 1913]

“They” are the inhabitants of deep Rus', who are remembered by the poet from the Gumilyov estate in Slepnev. No less sincere admiration for old, grandfatherly Russia is found in the poem “Town” (1916):

The cross is raised over the church,
A symbol of clear, Fatherly power,
And the raspberry ringing ruins
Speech wise, human.

Wildness and selflessness, the spontaneity of Russian life appear to Gumilyov as the demonic face of his Motherland.

This path is light and dark,
A robber whistle in the fields,
Quarrels, bloody fights
In taverns as scary as dreams. [“The Man”, 1917]

This demonic face of Russia sometimes makes Gumilyov poetically admire it (as in the poem “The Peasant”, permeated with a premonition of a great storm, which is clearly inspired by the image of Grigory Rasputin). However, more often such a Russia - wild, brutal - causes him rejection and rejection:

Forgive us, stinking and blind,
Forgive the humiliated to the end!
We lie on the floor and cry,
Not wanting God's way.
…………………………………………….....
So you call: “Where is sister Russia,
Where is she, my beloved always?”
Look up: in the constellation Serpent
A new star has lit up. [“France”, 1918]

But Gumilyov also saw another, angelic face - monarchical Russia, a stronghold of Orthodoxy and in general a stronghold of the spirit, steadily and widely moving towards the light. Gumilyov believed that his homeland could, after going through a cleansing storm, shine with a new light.

I know, in this town -
Human life is real
Like a boat on the river
Leaving towards the target of the follower. [“Town”, 1916]

The First World War seemed to Gumilev to be such a cleansing storm. Hence the conviction that he should be in the army. However, the poet was prepared for such a step with all his life, with all his views. And Nikolai, who fell ill on every trip, already in August 1914 went to the front line as a volunteer. Adventurism, the desire to test himself by the proximity of danger, the longing for serving a high ideal (this time - Russia), for the proud and joyful challenge that a warrior poses to death - everything pushed him to war. He ended up in a mounted reconnaissance platoon, where raids behind enemy lines were carried out at constant risk to life. He managed to perceive everyday life in the trenches romantically:

And it’s so sweet to dress up Victory,
Like a girl in pearls,
Following a trail of smoke
Retreating enemy. [“Offensive”, 1914]

However, the war paid him back: he was never wounded (although he often caught a cold), his comrades adored him, the command rewarded him with awards and new ranks, and women - friends and admirers - recalled that the uniform suited him better than a civilian suit.

Gumilyov was a brave fighter - at the very end of 1914, he received the St. George Cross, IV degree, and the rank of corporal for his courage and courage shown in reconnaissance. In 1915, for his distinction, he was awarded the St. George Cross, III degree, and he became a non-commissioned officer. Nikolai wrote actively at the front; in 1916, his friends helped him publish a new collection, “Quiver.”

In May 1917, Gumilyov was assigned to a special expeditionary force of the Russian army, stationed in Paris. It is here, in the military attachate, that Gumilyov will carry out a number of special assignments not only from the Russian command, but will also prepare documents for the mobilization department of the joint headquarters of the allied forces in Paris. You can find many documents of that time similar in writing style to Gumilyov’s style, but all of them are classified as the mysterious “4th department”.

In the summer of the same year, Gumilyov, on the way to one of the European fronts, got stuck in Paris, and then went to London, where he was actively engaged in creativity. In 1918 he returned to Petrograd.

A craving for the old way of life, order, loyalty to the laws of noble honor and service to the Fatherland - this is what distinguished Gumilyov in the troubled times of the seventeenth year and Civil War. Speaking to the revolutionary sailors, he defiantly read: “I Belgian gave him a pistol and a portrait of my sovereign” - one of his African poems. But the general upsurge captured and scorched him too. Gumilyov did not accept Bolshevism - for the poet he was precisely the embodiment of the demonic face of Russia. A consistent aristocrat in everything (however, he rather played at aristocracy - but his whole life was built according to the laws of art!), Gumilyov hated the “Russian revolt”. But he largely understood the reasons for the uprising and hoped that Russia would eventually return to its original, broad and clear path. Therefore, Gumilyov believed, one must serve any Russia - he considered emigration a disgrace.

And Gumilyov gave lectures to the workers, gathered the “Sounding Shell” circle, where he taught young people to write and understand poetry, translated for the publishing house “World Literature,” and published book after book. Gumilyov's friends and students - K. Chukovsky, V. Khodasevich, A. Akhmatova, G. Ivanov, O. Mandelstam and his other contemporaries - are unanimous: never before has a poet been so free and at the same time harmonious, ambiguous and clear.

At the turn of epochs, life is more mysterious than ever: everything is permeated with mysticism. The theme of the mature Gumilyov is the clash of reason, duty and honor with the elements of fire and death, which endlessly attracted him, the poet, but also promised death to him, the soldier. This attitude towards modernity - love-hate, jubilation-rejection - was akin to his attitude towards a woman (“And it’s sweet to me - don’t cry, dear - / To know that you poisoned me”).

The collections of poetry “Bonfire”, “Pillar of Fire”, “To the Blue Star” (1923; prepared and published posthumously by friends) are full of masterpieces that mark a completely new stage in Gumilyov’s creativity. It was not for nothing that Anna Akhmatova called Gumilyov a “prophet”. He also predicted his own execution:

In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,
The executioner cut off my head too,
She lay with others
Here in a slippery box, at the very bottom. ["The Lost Tram", 1919(?)]

This is one of Gumilyov’s favorite poems. For the first time here, Gumilyov’s hero is not a traveler-conqueror, not a winner, or even a philosopher who steadfastly accepts the misfortunes falling on him, but a man shocked by the abundance of deaths, an exhausted man who has lost all support. It’s as if he got lost in the “abyss of time,” in the labyrinths of crimes and atrocities - and every revolution results in the loss of his beloved. Never before has Gumilyov had such a helpless, humanly simple intonation:

Mashenka, you lived and sang here,
She wove a carpet for me, the groom,
Where is your voice and body now?
Could it be that you are dead?

Gumilyov’s lyrical hero is the image of sovereign Petersburg with the “stronghold of Orthodoxy” - Isaac and the monument to Peter. But what can become a support for a thinker and poet does not console a person:

And yet the heart is forever gloomy,
It’s hard to breathe and it’s painful to live...
Mashenka, I never thought
That you can love and be so sad.

Late Gumilyov is full of love and compassion, the shockingness and audacity of his youth are a thing of the past. But there is no need to talk about peace. The poet felt that a great revolution was brewing, that humanity was standing at the threshold of a new era, and he was painfully worried about the invasion of this unknown:

As once in the overgrown horsetails
Roared from the consciousness of powerlessness
The creature is slippery, sensing on the shoulders
Wings that have not yet appeared -

So century after century - how soon, Lord? -
Under the scalpel of nature and art
Our spirit screams, our flesh faints,
Giving birth to an organ for the sixth sense. [“The Sixth Sense”, 1919 (?)]

This feeling of great promise, of a certain threshold, is left in the reader’s mind by Gumilyov’s entire suddenly cut short life.

On August 3, 1921, Gumilyov was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy in the “Tagantsev Case”, and on August 24, by decision of Petrgubchek, he was sentenced to capital punishment - execution.

Then, in August 1921, famous people of their time came out in defense of Gumilyov, who wrote a letter to the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, in which they petitioned for the release of N.S. Gumilyov under their guarantee. But this letter could not change anything, since it was received only on September 4, and Petrgubcek’s decision took place on August 24.

For seven decades, his poems were distributed in Russia in lists, but were published only abroad. But Gumilyov nourished Russian poetry with his cheerfulness, strength of passions, and readiness for challenges. For many years he taught readers to maintain dignity in any circumstances, to remain themselves regardless of the outcome of the battle and to face life straight in the face:

But when bullets whiz around,
When the waves break the sides,
I teach them how not to be afraid
Don't be afraid and do what you need to do.
…………………………………………...........
And when their last hour comes,
A smooth red fog will cover your eyes,
I'll teach them to remember right away
All my cruel, sweet life,
All my native, strange land
And, appearing before the face of God
With simple and wise words,
Wait calmly for His judgment. [“My Readers”, 1921]

GIRAFFE

Today, I see, your look is especially sad
And the arms are especially thin, hugging the knees.
Listen: far, far away, on Lake Chad
An exquisite giraffe wanders.

He is given graceful harmony and bliss,
And his skin is decorated with a magical pattern,
Only the moon dares to equal him,
Crushing and swaying on the moisture of wide lakes.

In the distance it is like the colored sails of a ship,
And his run is smooth, like a joyful bird's flight.
I know that the earth sees many wonderful things,
When at sunset he hides in a marble grotto.

I know funny tales of mysterious countries
About the black maiden, about the passion of the young leader,
But you've been breathing in the heavy fog for too long,
You don't want to believe in anything other than rain.

And how can I tell you about the tropical garden,
About slender palm trees, about the smell of incredible herbs.
Are you crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad
An exquisite giraffe wanders.

Each poem by Gumilev opens up a new facet of the poet’s views, his moods, and his vision of the world. The content and exquisite style of Gumilyov's poems help us feel the fullness of life. They are confirmation that a person himself can create a bright, colorful world, moving away from the gray everyday life. An excellent artist, Nikolai Gumilyov left an interesting legacy, significant influence on the development of Russian poetry.

The first lines of the poem reveal a rather bleak picture. We see a sad girl, she is probably sitting by the window, with her knees pulled up to her chest, and through a veil of tears she looks at the street. Nearby is a lyrical hero who, trying to console and entertain her, tells a story about distant Africa, about Lake Chad. So adults, trying to console the child, tell about wonderful lands...

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov was born on April 15 (3 according to the old style) in Kronstadt in the family of a ship’s doctor. He spent his childhood years in Tsarskoe Selo, here in 1903 he entered the gymnasium, the director of which was the famous poet Innokenty Annensky. After graduating from high school, Gumilyov went to Paris, to the Sorbonne. By this time, he was already the author of the book “The Path of the Conquistadors,” noted by one of the legislators of Russian symbolism, Valery Bryusov. In Paris, he published the magazine “Sirius”, actively communicated with French and Russian writers, and was in intensive correspondence with Bryusov, to whom he sent his poems, articles, and stories. During these years he visited Africa twice.

In 1908, Gumilyov’s second poetic book, “Romantic Flowers,” was published with a dedication to his future wife Anna Gorenko (who later became the poetess Anna Akhmatova).
Returning to Russia, Gumilyov lives in Tsarskoye Selo, studies law, then the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, but never completes the course. He enters the literary life of the capital and is published in various magazines. Since 1909, Gumilyov became one of the main employees of the Apollo magazine, where he ran the section “Letters on Russian Poetry.”

He goes on a long trip to Africa, returns to Russia in 1910, publishes the collection “Pearls”, which made him famous poet, and marries Anna Gorenko. Soon Gumilev went to Africa again, in Abyssinia he recorded local folklore, communicated with local residents, and became acquainted with everyday life and art.

In 1911–1912 Gumilev moves away from symbolism. Together with the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, he organized the “Workshop of Poets”, in the depths of which the program of a new literary movement - Acmeism - was born. A poetic illustration of the theoretical calculations was the collection “Alien Sky,” which many considered the best in Gumilyov’s work.

In 1912, Gumilyov and Akhmatova had a son, Lev.

In 1914, in the very first days of the World War, the poet volunteered for the front - despite the fact that he was completely freed from military service. By the beginning of 1915, Gumilyov had already been awarded two St. George Crosses. In 1917, he ended up in Paris, then in London, in the military attachate of the special expeditionary force of the Russian army, which was part of the joint command of the Entente. Here, according to some biographers, Gumilyov performed some special tasks. During the war, he did not stop his literary activity: the collection “Quiver” was published, the plays “Gondla” and “The Poisoned Tunic”, a series of essays “Notes of a Cavalryman” and other works were written.

In 1918, Gumilyov returned to Russia and became one of the prominent figures in literary life Petrograd. He publishes a lot, works at the World Literature publishing house, gives lectures, heads the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets, and works with young poets in the Sounding Shell studio.

In 1918, Gumilyov divorced Akhmatova, and in 1919 he married a second time, to Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt. Their daughter Elena is born. The collection of poems “Pillar of Fire” is dedicated to Anna Engelhardt-Gumileva, the publication of which appeared after the poet’s death.

On August 3, 1921, Gumilyov was arrested on charges of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy by Professor Tagantsev (this case, as most researchers believe today, was fabricated). According to the court's verdict, he was shot. The exact date of the execution is not known. According to Akhmatova, the execution took place near Berngardovka near Petrograd. The poet's grave has not been found.
Gumilev died in the prime of his creative powers. In the minds of his contemporaries, his fate evoked associations with the fate of a poet of another era - Andre Chenier, executed by the Jacobins during the Great French Revolution. For sixty-five years, Gumilyov's name remained under the strictest official ban.

The literature of the Silver Age is a worthy successor of the Golden Age, its classical trends and traditions. It also opens up many new literary movements, artistic techniques, but most importantly, it has given talented writers and poets the opportunity to show their capabilities and show their talent. The change from one era to another presupposes not only the inheritance of previous achievements, but also, to some extent, the negation of the old, its rethinking. The 20th century gives rise to completely new literary movements, which include, in particular, avant-gardeism, socialist realism and modernism. Previous art systems– somehow realism and romanticism still remained popular and in demand among readers.

The development of literature of the 20th century was significantly influenced by the political situation in the country, the established culture, as well as various philosophical trends - on the one hand, these were the ideas of Russian religious philosophy, on the other, the works of Marxist ideology in close connection with Bolshevik politics.

The new political system and the idea of Marxism inherent in it led to strict censorship in all areas cultural life, including in literature. In this regard, it ceases to be a single whole and is divided into several streams: Soviet literature, emigrant literature, prohibited literature. The reader of that time could not even imagine the full scale of national literature, the directions of which were completely isolated from each other. Fortunately, today there is an opportunity to get acquainted and thoroughly study all the richness and great diversity of Russian literature of the 20th century.

In the process of formation and development of Silver Age literature, it is customary to distinguish the following four periods:

end of the 19th century – beginning of the 20th century
20-30s of the XX century
1940s – mid-1950s
mid 50s – 1990s.

One of the central themes of literary works of that time is the theme of the Motherland, the fate of Russia, which found itself at the crossroads of eras. Particular interest arises in the problem of human nature, the question of national life and national character. Solutions to these problems are presented by writers of different directions in different ways. Realists adhere to social aspects, and also actively use concrete historical techniques to study the subject of interest to them. This approach was followed by such famous figures as I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, I. Shmelev and others.

Modernist writers solved the problem differently - using philosophical laws and elements of fantasy, thereby moving as far as possible from the realities of simple life. Symbolists represented by F. Sologub and A. Bely also offered their own answers to the questions posed in the literature of the 20th century. Representatives of expressionism in the person of L. Andreev and other famous authors were also engaged in the same thing.

In a young and seething stream artistic images and the brilliant ideas of the writer’s thought, a completely new hero is born, a “continuously growing” man, forced to fight and win in an ongoing war with his oppressive and overwhelming environment. This is the very classic character of Maxim Gorky - the hero of socialist realism.

The 20th century marked the peak of the rise of social literature, in which almost every aspect of social life has a deep philosophical meaning and is of a global spiritual nature.

The main characteristic features of Silver Age literature are the following:

Addressing eternal questions: discussions about the meaning of life, the place of each person in society and all humanity as a whole; essence national character; religion; relationship between man and nature.

Search and discovery of new artistic means and techniques;

The emergence of new literary movements, far from realism: modernism, avant-garde;

Movement towards the maximum convergence of literary genres, rethinking the classical types of the genre, giving them new meaning and content.

Jumping - report on physical education
A jump can be called a whole process that proceeds in the following order: the animal, using the strength of its lower limbs, pushes off from the ground, then moves in the air for some distance. Life and creativity of Daniil Granina
Daniil Aleksandrovich Granin is a famous Soviet writer and screenwriter. In addition to his creative activities, Granin was a public figure and was awarded both State Awards of the USSR

The Silver Age is not chronological period. At least not just the period. And this is not the sum of literary movements. Rather, the concept of “Silver Age” is appropriate to apply to a way of thinking.

Atmosphere of the Silver Age

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Russia experienced an intense intellectual upsurge, especially clearly manifested in philosophy and poetry. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (read about him) called this time the Russian cultural renaissance. According to Berdyaev’s contemporary Sergei Makovsky, it was Berdyaev who also owned another, more well-known definition of this period - the “Silver Age”. According to other sources, the phrase “Silver Age” was first used in 1929 by the poet Nikolai Otsup. This concept is not so much scientific as it is emotional, immediately causing associations with another short period in the history of Russian culture - with the “golden age”, the Pushkin era of Russian poetry (the first third of the 19th century).

“Now it’s hard to imagine the atmosphere of that time,” Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the Silver Age in his “philosophical autobiography” “Self-Knowledge.” - Much of the creative upsurge of that time was included in further development Russian culture is still the property of all Russians cultured people. But then there was the intoxication of creativity, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. During these years, many gifts were sent to Russia. This was the era of the awakening of independent philosophical thought in Russia, the flowering of poetry and the intensification of aesthetic sensuality, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were discovered, new dawns were seen, the feeling of decline and death was combined with the hope for the transformation of life. But everything happened in a rather vicious circle...”

Silver Age as a period and way of thinking

The art and philosophy of the Silver Age were characterized by elitism and intellectualism. Therefore, it is impossible to identify all the poetry of the late 19th - early 20th centuries with the Silver Age. This is a narrower concept. Sometimes, however, when attempting to determine the essence of the ideological content of the Silver Age through formal features (literary movements and groups, socio-political subtexts and contexts), researchers mistakenly confuse them. In fact, within the chronological boundaries of this period, the most diverse phenomena in origin and aesthetic orientation coexisted: modernist movements, poetry of the classical realistic tradition, peasant, proletarian, satirical poetry... But the Silver Age is not a chronological period. At least not just the period. And this is not the sum of literary movements. Rather, the concept of “Silver Age” is appropriate to apply to a way of thinking that, being characteristic of artists who were at enmity with each other during their lifetime, ultimately merged them in the minds of their descendants into a certain inseparable galaxy that formed that specific atmosphere of the Silver Age, which Berdyaev wrote about .

Poets of the Silver Age

The names of the poets who formed the spiritual core of the Silver Age are known to everyone: Valery Bryusov, Fyodor Sologub, Innokenty Annensky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrei Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Gumilyov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, Georgy Ivanov and many others.

In its most concentrated form, the atmosphere of the Silver Age was expressed in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century. This was the heyday of Russian modern literature in all the diversity of its artistic, philosophical, religious searches and discoveries. World War I, February bourgeois-democratic and October socialist revolution partly provoked, partly shaped this cultural context, and were partly provoked and shaped by him. Representatives of the Silver Age (and Russian modernity in general) sought to overcome positivism, reject the legacy of the “sixties,” and rejected materialism, as well as idealistic philosophy.

The poets of the Silver Age also sought to overcome the attempts of the second half of the 19th century to explain human behavior by social conditions, environment and continued the traditions of Russian poetry, for which a person was important in himself, his thoughts and feelings, his attitude to eternity, to God, to Love were important and Death in a philosophical, metaphysical sense. Poets of the Silver Age and in their own artistic creativity, and in theoretical articles and statements questioned the idea of progress for literature. For example, one of the brightest creators of the Silver Age, Osip Mandelstam, wrote that the idea of progress is “the most disgusting type of school ignorance.” And Alexander Blok in 1910 argued: “The sun of naive realism has set; it is impossible to comprehend anything outside of symbolism.” The poets of the Silver Age believed in art, in the power of words. Therefore, immersion in the element of words and the search for new means of expression are indicative of their creativity. They cared not only about meaning, but also about style - sound, the music of words and complete immersion in the elements were important to them. This immersion led to the cult of life-creativity (the inseparability of the personality of the creator and his art). And almost always, because of this, the poets of the Silver Age were unhappy in their personal lives, and many of them came to a bad end.