Olga Razumikhina is a graduate of the Literary Institute named after. A. M. Gorky, book reviewer and proofreader, as well as a tutor in Russian language and literature. Every week she comments on works that students in grades 9-11 take.
The column “To help schoolchildren” will be useful both for those who simply want to refresh their memory of the plot of a particular book, and for those who look deeper. O. Razumikhina’s materials contain historical information, references to the works of literary scholars, as well as indications of interesting details and “Easter eggs” in the texts of writers of the 18th-20th centuries.
Text: Olga Razumikhina
Silver Age of Poetry
The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries in Russia is usually called the “Silver Age of Russian Literature.” Why Silver, you ask? Because the “Golden Age” is called another era - the time when A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, N. V. Gogol worked. Initially, this term, coined by the critic M.A. Antonovich , applied only to the first half of the 19th century, but then “captured” I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, and A.A. Fet with F.I. Tyutchev.
True, in those days, poets and writers for the most part did not become the founders of literary movements and did not draw up manifestos. Yes, the early poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov can be attributed to romanticism, but it appeared in the West even before the future geniuses took up the pen; then realism triumphed, and some critics, such as F.V. Bulgarin , contemptuously called the works created in line with this trend “naturalistic,” pointing out that the writers, in their opinion, were too carried away by the everyday description of “dirty” scenes from everyday life. But the poets of the Silver Age formed trends more than consciously - and each of them had their own ideology and artistic principles.
Essay on the topic: “Silver Age” of Russian poetry
The “Silver Age” of Russian poetry is usually called the period from the 80-90s of the 19th century to the 30-40s of the 20th century. At this time, Russian literature is experiencing its second peak: new themes, names, images, styles and directions.
The main characteristic feature of the Silver Age can be called a gravitation towards innovation. This applies to both form and content. The figurative system also changed depending on the direction.
(Konstantin Balmont)
Symbolism is considered the main direction of the Silver Age. Its main features are depth, philosophy, decadence. All words in the symbolist texts are figurative. Symbolist poets (Fet, Tyutchev, Gippius, Bryusov, Balmont, Blok) value polysemantic words, so they often use them in a wide variety of combinations (metaphors, allegories, comparisons, parallelism).
(Alexander Blok)
Symbolist poetry is a combination of complex images and themes. The most common theme is the poet and poetry. Symbolists praised the beauty of poetry, considered it the most valuable art and said that poetry should be aesthetic. The main images are the image of a dream, the image of a poet, the image of eternal femininity, the image of a perfect world.
(Nikolai Gumilyov)
The second movement of the Silver Age is Acmeism. Unlike the Symbolists, the Acmeists (Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Ivanov, Gumilyov) did not advocate symbolism, but materiality, precision of meaning and objectivity.
(Anna Akhmatova)
The theme of Acmeism was fully consistent with these principles; the main ones were: the theme of earthly beauty, the theme of the spiritual world of man (his experiences, feelings, emotions). Acmeists often turned to biblical and mythological images and subjects.
(Vladimir Mayakovsky)
The next movement - futurism - was especially loved by contemporaries. It was an avant-garde movement that declared: “There are no borders!” The main images of futurism were the image of one’s higher self, the motive of worshiping destruction, the image of the despicable bourgeoisie and the image of a person of fine mental organization. Since futurism gravitated towards painting, poets (Mayakovsky, Severyanin, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Kamensky) attached great importance to form: author’s neologisms appeared, the outdated system of constructing phrases and rhymes was harshly criticized.
(Sergey Yesenin)
New peasant poetry as a movement took one of the leading positions in the literature of the Silver Age. Poets of this movement (Yesenin, Klyuev, Klychkov) paid special attention to images and themes, namely the theme of rural Russia, the image of Mother Nature, folklore images and motifs.
The Silver Age of Russian poetry can rightfully be called an expressive and dazzling time. This period gave literature a sensual, bold and bright lyrical hero in a turbulent atmosphere. The poetry of the Silver Age was greatly influenced by revolution, war, and personality crisis. The poetry of this time is extraordinary, unpredictable, the main image of the Silver Age is a man who has lost everything, but overcomes adversity with his head held high.
Imagism
The movement that lasted the shortest time, perhaps, in the Silver Age was imagism, a direction whose representatives saw the primary task in creating a system of images that could shake the reader’s imagination, making him seem to see a vivid picture before his eyes. The “Order of Imagists” was founded in 1918 by A. B. Mariengof , author of “A Novel Without Lies” and “Cynics.” The most famous participant in the association was S. A. Yesenin . The poet, best known for the poems “The Golden Grove Dissuaded,” “Letter to a Woman,” and “Now We Are Leaving Little by Little,” while he was an Imagist, wrote a theoretical work, “The Keys of Mary” (1918), which began like this:
Ornament is music. The rows of its lines in the most wonderful and very subtle distributions are similar to the melody of some eternal song before the universe. His images and figures are some kind of continuous worship of those living at every hour and in every place. But no one has merged with it so beautifully <...> as our ancient Rus', where almost every thing, through every sound, tells us with signs that here we are only on the way, <...> that somewhere in the distance, under the ice of our muscular sensations, the heavenly siren sings to us and that beyond the flurry of our earthly events the shore is not far away.
In this article (where the word “Mary” means “soul”) Yesenin tried to explain the importance of ornament for Russian and world culture in general, as well as to develop a unique classification of images, where the most valuable find was the “angelic” image. However, it was not entirely clear. So, given the highly controversial ideological component of the movement, it is not surprising that imagism did not become such a famous movement as symbolism or acmeism. However, he still brought many masterpieces to the treasury of Russian classics. Just look at Yesenin’s lines from the unfinished poem “It’s good for them to stand and watch”:
That's why on September morning
On dry and cold loam,
My head smashed against the fence,
The rowan berries are drenched in blood.
My Silver Age
During these years, many gifts were sent to Russia... N.A. Berdyaev. The Silver Age lasted in Russian literature for about 25 years. In general, the Silver Age is the period of spiritual and cultural rise that began in Russia in the 1890s and ended after the October Revolution. This short period of time gave the world outstanding figures in a variety of fields - literature, philosophy, painting, architecture, music, theater. Among them we can name such names as I.F. Annensky, D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.I. Gippius, A.A. Blok, A.A. Akhmatova, A. Bely, V.S. Soloviev, N.A. Berdyaev, A. Benois, M.V. Dobuzhinsky, S.P. Diaghilev... And, perhaps, if the definition of “golden age” had not already been used in relation to Pushkin’s time, then this is exactly what this period would have been called. At the same time, the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries was one of the most dramatic periods of Russian history. The Russo-Japanese War, the 1905 Revolution, the First World War, the February Revolution and, finally, October 1917. All this fell to the lot of the Silver Age. That is why its representatives are characterized by a feeling of anxiety, a premonition of impending upheavals, of something terrible, dark, approaching Russia. This state was expressed unusually vividly by A. Blok in the poem “Retribution”: The twentieth century... is even more homeless, The darkness is even more terrible than life (Lucifer’s Shadow has fallen even blacker and larger). And in this time of spiritual restlessness, the figures of the “Silver Age” were engaged in deep moral quests, affirming the primacy of spiritual values and the need for spiritual transformation of man in the face of future catastrophes. The era of the Silver Age presented many with a difficult choice between life and death, but all this was burdened with a moral choice. Someone, like A. Blok, called for listening to the “music of the revolution.” It was during the revolution that the great poet saw the following picture: In a white corolla of roses - Jesus Christ is ahead. Many could not forgive Blok for this position in life. Thus, Z. Gippius did not even shake hands with the poet in farewell, because in her eyes such a gesture was a betrayal of the Motherland. The tragedy of the era was simply in the air. Hence the fascination of many prominent people of that time with mysticism, occultism, and religion. Z. Gippius wrote about her feeling of the coming “era of change”: Oh, my incomprehensible anxiety! She's getting more tormented day by day. And I know: the sorrow that is now at the threshold, All this sorrow is not only for me. Of course, the Silver Age is not only a historical period, but also people, faces of a bygone era. One of the most interesting poets of that time for me is Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius. She began her literary career in the December book of the St. Petersburg magazine “Severny Vestnik” (1888). In Gippius's early poems, notes of melancholy, sorrow, pessimism, disbelief in life, and longing for death are clearly heard. In 1889, Gippius married D.S. Merezhkovsky. This marriage turned out to be a decisive event in the life of each of them. The guise of a “decadent Madonna”, in which Gippius showed herself to society, was not only a manifestation of her characteristic artistry. This image was a protective shell for Zinaida Ivanovna, which focused attention on appearance and hid the intimate layers of the poetess’ soul from prying eyes. It seems to me that behind this external presentation of oneself there was hidden a deep philosophical sophistication and femininity. In addition to the faces of a bygone era, the memory of the Silver Age is carefully preserved by the ancient front and baroque balconies of St. Petersburg houses. One of the centers of literary and artistic life of that period was the Merezhkovsky salon. For almost a quarter of a century, this family lived in a house widely known in St. Petersburg as the “Muruzi House.” This huge, five-story apartment building, which once belonged to Prince A.D. Muruzi, and today stands on the corner of Liteiny Prospekt and Pestel Street. In addition to this salon, such addresses were known as Tavricheskaya, 25 - the “tower” of Vyacheslav Ivanov; 7th line of Vasilyevsky Island, 20 – apartment of Fyodor Sologub and many others. All these places remind us of the era of the Silver Age, of the people who once inhabited them. All of them, as if following the instructions of Z. Gippius, remain silent and bear the stamp of times.
Essay: Poets of the Silver Age
(318 words) The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is a period when Russia stood on the threshold of colossal changes and upheavals: revolutions, the First World War, a scientific and technological leap: all this undoubtedly influenced the work of the poets of that time. Lyrics take on fresh forms, new trends and avant-garde movements are formed. Of course, eternal themes such as love, life and death, nature, friendship, the place of man in the world are invariably touched upon by the authors, but the style of their poetry changes.
During this period, four main literary movements arose in which the work of the Silver Age poets developed: symbolism, acmeism, futurism, and imagism. Let's take a closer look at the poetry of their main representatives.
Symbolist poets perceived the world around them as a kind of ephemeral image that does not have unambiguous, objective properties. Here the word-symbol is the main element of the reflection of reality, which, in its paradoxical nature, did not have specific forms. In addition, if we talk about the general mood that prevails in symbolism, it is often doom, presented as an aesthetics of pessimism. The main representatives of this trend in Russia are considered to be Konstantin Balmont, Zinaida Gippius, Valery Bryusov, Fyodor Sologub, Dmitry Merezhkovsky - “senior” symbolists; Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Andrei Bely - “younger symbolists”.
Radically opposite ideas were embodied in Acmeism: the world is material, the images are accurate and understandable. Poets sought to show the beauty of things, phenomena, the human soul in simple words and images. Their poems are not overloaded with figurative language. Acmeists include Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Gorodetsky.
Futurism, which embodies a rebellious spirit, has become an original phenomenon in poetry. Poets of this movement rejected old norms, traditions, foundations; they broke the usual rules of versification, experimented with rhyme and rhythm, and actively used occasionalisms. Futurists were Igor Severyanin, Velimir Khlebnikov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexey Kruchenykh.
The main means of expressiveness in Imagist poetry is metaphor, and the goal is to create bright and catchy images and scandalous motives. Imagist poets include Anatoly Mariengof, Sergei Yesenin, Vadim Shershenevich.
However, there were poets of the Silver Age whose work developed outside of literary movements and associations, for example, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Ivan Bunin, Maximilian Voloshin.
We can say that the poetry of the Silver Age was marked by a change in paradigms, which became a certain basis for the development of a completely new idea of versification and perception of the world.
Author: Lyubov Bogdanova
Interesting? Save it on your wall!
Essay on history on the topic of culture of the Silver Age
The Silver Age in the history of Russian art is a period of the highest rise, which, perhaps, can be compared with the rise of French art of the era of impressionism. A new style in Russian art emerged in the 80s. XIX century heavily influenced by French Impressionism. Its heyday marked the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. And by the end of the 10s. In the twentieth century, the Art Nouveau style in Russian art, with which the Silver Age is associated, is giving way to new directions.
For several decades after its decline, Silver Age art was perceived as decadent and tasteless. But towards the end of the second millennium, estimates began to change. The fact is that there are two types of flowering of spiritual culture. The first is characterized by powerful innovations and great achievements. Vivid examples of this are the Greek classics of the 5th–4th centuries. BC. and especially the European Renaissance. The golden age of Russian culture is the 19th century: A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, A.A. Ivanov, P.I. Tchaikovsky, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky and many others. The second type is distinguished by the grace and sophistication of the values it creates, it does not like too bright light and is associated with the moon, which, in turn, is traditionally identified with silver and femininity (as opposed to masculine sunshine and gold). The art of the Silver Age obviously belongs to the second type.
The Silver Age in Russian culture is an expansive concept. This is not only the painting and architecture of modernism, not only the symbolist theater, which embodied the idea of a synthesis of arts, when artists and composers worked on staging a play together with directors and actors, it is also the literature of symbolism, and especially poetry, which entered the history of world literature under the name “ poetry of the Silver Age." And besides everything else, this is the style of the era, this is a way of life.
Back in the middle of the 19th century. Representatives of romanticism dreamed of creating a unified style that could surround a person with beauty and thereby transform life. To transform the world through the means of art - this was the task set before the creators of beauty by Richard Wagner and the Pre-Raphaelites. And already at the end of the 19th century. Oscar Wilde argued that “life imitates art rather than the art of living.” There was a clear theatricalization of behavior and life, the game began to determine not only the nature of artistic culture, but also the lifestyle of its creators.
Making a poem out of your life was a super task that the heroes of the Silver Age set for themselves. The poet Vladislav Khodasevich explains it this way: “The Symbolists, first of all, did not want to separate the writer from the person, the literary biography from the personal one. Symbolism did not want to be only an art school, a literary movement. All the time he strived to become a creative method in life, and this was his deepest, perhaps impossible, truth; and in this constant striving, essentially his entire history took place. It was a series of attempts, sometimes truly heroic, to find an impeccably true fusion of life and creativity, a kind of philosophical stone of art.”
There were also shadow sides to this endeavor. Excessively mannered speech and gestures, shocking costumes, drugs, spiritualism - at the turn of the century, all these were signs of being chosen and gave rise to a kind of snobbery.
The literary and artistic bohemia, which sharply contrasted itself with the masses, sought novelty, unusualness, and acute experiences. One of the ways to overcome the everyday life was the occult in its most diverse manifestations. Magic, spiritualism and theosophy attracted neo-romantic symbolists not only as colorful material for works of art, but also as real ways to expand their own spiritual horizons. Mastering magical knowledge, they believed, ultimately makes a person a god, and this path is absolutely individual for everyone.
A new generation of literary and artistic intelligentsia has emerged in Russia; she was noticeably different from the generation of the “sixties” not only in her creative interests; The external differences were also striking. Miriskusniks, Goluborozovists, Symbolists, Acmeists paid serious attention to costume and general appearance. This trend is called Russian dandyism; it is typical for people of clearly Western orientation.
“It is impossible to imagine K.A. Somov, a recognized master of gallant scenes,” writes Yu.B. Demidenko, “who carefully and lovingly recreated in his paintings “the spirit of charming and airy little things,” dressed in a dull old-fashioned frock coat or a dark work blouse. He wore specially cut frock coats and extremely elegant ties.” M. Vrubel and V. Borisov-Musatov, L. Bakst, S. Diaghilev and other world artists dressed no less elegantly. There is a lot of evidence of this. But Mikhail Kuzmin is rightfully considered the king of St. Petersburg aesthetes of the Silver Age. The white stone one did not lag behind; many employees of the editorial offices of the magazines “Golden Fleece” and “Libra” also had every right to be called Russian dandies.
