Symbolism as a literary trend - abstract. School encyclopedia Traits of symbolism in literature

The turn of the 19th - 20th centuries is a special time in the history of Russia, a time when life was rebuilt, the system of moral values changed. The key word of this time is crisis. This period had a beneficial effect on rapid development of literature and was named the "Silver Age", by analogy with the "Golden Age" of Russian literature. This article will examine the features of Russian symbolism that arose in Russian culture at the turn of the century.

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Definition of the term

Symbolism is direction in literature, which was formed in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Together with decadence, it was the product of a deep spiritual crisis, but it was a response to the natural search for artistic truth in the direction opposite to realistic literature.

This movement became a kind of attempt to get away from contradictions and reality into the realm of eternal themes and ideas.

Homeland of symbolism became France. Jean Moreas, in his manifesto "Le symbolisme", for the first time gives the name to a new trend from the Greek word symbolon (sign). The new direction in art was based on the works of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, "The Soul of the World" by Vladimir Soloviev.

Symbolism became a violent reaction to the ideologization of art. Its representatives were guided by the experience that their predecessors left them.

Important! This current appeared at a difficult time and became a kind of attempt to escape from the harsh reality into an ideal world. The emergence of Russian Symbolism in literature is associated with the publication of a collection of Russian Symbolists. It includes poems by Bryusov, Balmont and Dobrolyubov.

The main signs

The new literary movement relied on the works of famous philosophers and tried to find in the human soul a place where you can hide from the frightening reality. Among the main features of symbolism in Russian literature, the following are distinguished:

All secret meanings must be conveyed through symbols.
It is based on mysticism and philosophical works.
The plurality of meanings of words, associative perception.
The works of the great classics are taken as a model.
It is proposed to comprehend the diversity of the world through art.
Creation of your own mythology.
Special attention to the rhythmic structure.
The idea of transforming the world through art.

Features of the new literary school

The forerunners of the newfound symbolism it is considered A.A. Fet and F.I. Tyutchev. They became those who laid something new in the perception of poetic speech, the first features of the future trend. Lines from Tyutchev's poem "Silentium" became the motto of all Symbolists in Russia.

The greatest contribution to the comprehension of the new direction was made by V.Ya. Bryusov. He saw symbolism as a new literary school. He called it "hint poetry", the purpose of which was designated as follows: "Hypnotize the reader."

In the foreground among writers and poets, the personality of the artist and his inner world. They destroy the concept of new criticism. Their teaching is based on domestic positions. Particular attention was paid to the predecessors of Western European realism such as Baudelaire. At first, both Bryusov and Sologub imitated him in their work, but later they found their own perspective of literature.

Objects of the outside world became symbols of some kind of inner experience. Russian Symbolists took into account the experience of Russian and foreign literature, but it was refracted by new aesthetic requirements. This platform has absorbed all the signs of decadence.

The heterogeneity of Russian symbolism

Symbolism in the literature of the coming Silver Age was not an internally homogeneous phenomenon. At the beginning of the 90s, two currents stand out in it: the older and younger symbolist poets. A sign of older symbolism was its own special view of the social role of poetry and its content.

They argued that this literary phenomenon was a new stage in the development of the art of words. The authors were less concerned with the very content of poetry and believed that it needed artistic renewal.

The younger representatives of the current were adherents of a philosophical and religious understanding of the surrounding world. They opposed the elders, but agreed only that they recognized the new design of Russian poetry and were inseparable from each other. General themes, images united critical attitude to realism. All this made possible their collaboration in the framework of the magazine "Vesy" in 1900.

Russian poets understood goals and objectives differently Russian literature. Senior Symbolists believe that the poet is a creator of exclusively artistic value and personality. The younger ones interpreted literature as life-building, they believed that a world that had outlived itself would fall, and a new one would come to replace it, built on high spirituality and culture. Bryusov said that all previous poetry was "the poetry of flowers," and the new one reflects shades of color.

An excellent example of the differences and similarities of Russian symbolism in the literature of the turn of the century was V. Bryusov's poem "The Younger". In it, he turns to his opponents, the young symbols, and laments that he cannot see that mysticism, harmony and the possibilities of cleansing the soul in which they so sacredly believe.

Important! Despite the opposition of the two branches of the same literary direction, all the Symbolists were united by the themes and images of poetry, their desire to get away from it.

Representatives of Russian Symbolism

Among the senior adherents, several representatives stood out: Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Dmitry Ivanovich Merezhkovsky, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, Fyodor Kuzmich Sologub. Concept developers and ideological inspirers of this group of poets were considered Bryusov and Merezhkovsky.

The "Young Symbols" were represented by such poets as A. Bely, A. Blok, V. Ivanov.

Examples of new symbolist themes

For representatives of the new literary school, there was the theme of loneliness is characteristic... Only in the distance and in complete solitude is the poet capable of creativity. Freedom in their understanding is freedom from society in general.

The theme of love is rethought and viewed from the other side - "love is an incinerating passion", but it is an obstacle on the way to creativity, it weakens the love for art. Love is the feeling that leads to tragic consequences, makes you suffer. On the other hand, it is portrayed as a purely physiological attraction.

Symbolist poems discover new topics:

The theme of urbanism (glorification of the city as a center of science and progress). The world is presented as two Moscow. Old, with dark paths, new - the city of the future.
Anti-urbanism theme. Glorification of the city as a certain rejection from the old life.
Death theme. It was very common in symbolism. The motives of death are considered not only in the personal plane, but also in the cosmic one (the death of the world).

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov

Symbol theory

In the field of the artistic form of the poem, the Symbolists took an innovative approach. He had obvious connections not only with previous literature, but also with ancient Russian and oral folk art. Their creative theory took root on the concept of a symbol. Symbols are a common technique both in folk poetry and in romantic and realistic art.

In oral folk art, a symbol is an expression of a person's naive ideas about nature. In professional literature, it is a means of expressing a social position, attitude to the surrounding world or a specific phenomenon.

The adherents of the new literary movement rethought the meaning and content of the symbol. They understood it as a kind of hieroglyph in another reality, which is created by the imagination of an artist or philosopher. This conventional sign is recognized not by reason, but by intuition. Based on this theory, the Symbolists believe that the visible world is not worthy of the artist's pen, it is just a nondescript copy of the mystical world, through penetration into which the symbol becomes.

The poet acted as a cipher, hiding the meaning of a poem behind allegories and images.

The painting of MV Nesterov "Vision to the youth Bartholomew" (1890) often illustrates the beginning of the Symbolist movement.

Features of rhythm and tropes used by symbolists

The Symbolist poets considered music to be the highest art form. They strove for the musicality of their poems. For this traditional and non-traditional techniques were used... They improved the traditional ones, turned to the reception of euphony (phonetic capabilities of the language). She was used by the Symbolists in order to give the poem a special decorative effect, picturesqueness and euphony. In their poetry, the sound side dominates the semantic side, the poem approaches the music. The lyrical work is deliberately saturated with assonances and alliterations. Melodiousness is the main goal of creating a poem. In their creations, the Symbolists, as representatives of the Silver Age, refer not only to, but also to the elimination of line breaks, syntactic and lexical division.

Active work is being carried out in the field of the rhythm of the poem. Symbolists are guided by folk system of versification, in which the verse was more mobile and free. An appeal to free verse, a poem that has no rhythm (A. Blok "I came rosy from the cold"). Thanks to experiments in the field of rhythm, conditions and prerequisites were created for the reform of poetic speech.

Important! The symbolists considered the musicality and melodiousness of a lyrical work to be the basis of life and art. The poems of all poets of that time with their melodiousness are very reminiscent of a musical work.

Silver Age. Part 1. Symbolists.

Literature of the Silver Age. Symbolism. K. Balmont.

Conclusion

Symbolism as a literary movement did not last long; it finally disintegrated by 1910. The reason was that the symbolists deliberately detached themselves from the surrounding life... They were supporters of free poetry, did not recognize pressure, so their work was inaccessible and incomprehensible to the people. Symbolism took root in the literature and work of some poets who grew up in classical art and the traditions of symbolism. Therefore, the features of the disappeared symbolism in literature are still present.

2. Symbolism as a literary trend. Senior Symbolists: circles, representatives, different understanding of symbolism.

Symbolism- the first and most significant of the modernist movements in Russia. According to the time of formation and according to the peculiarities of the worldview position in Russian symbolism, it is customary to distinguish two main stages. The poets who made their debut in the 1890s are called “senior symbolists” (V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, 3. Gippius, F. Sologub, etc.). In the 1900s, new forces poured into symbolism, significantly renewing the appearance of the current (A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov, etc.). The accepted designation for the "second wave" of symbolism is "young symbolism". The “older” and “younger” symbolists were separated not so much by age as by the difference in attitude and direction of creativity.

The philosophy and aesthetics of Symbolism evolved under the influence of various teachings - from the views of the ancient philosopher Plato to the contemporary Symbolists of the philosophical systems of V. Solovyov, F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson. The symbolists opposed the traditional idea of knowing the world in art to the idea of constructing the world in the process of creativity. Creativity in the understanding of the Symbolists is a subconscious-intuitive contemplation of secret meanings, accessible only to the artist-creator. Moreover, it is impossible to rationally convey the contemplated "secrets". According to the largest theoretician among the Symbolists, Vyach. Ivanov, poetry is "the secret writing of the ineffable." From the artist is required not only super-rational sensitivity, but the subtlest mastery of the art of hint: the value of poetic speech is in "understatement", "concealment of meaning." The main means of conveying the contemplated secret meanings and the symbol was called.

Category music- the second most important (after the symbol) in the aesthetics and poetic practice of the new trend. This concept was used by the Symbolists in two different aspects - general outlook and technical. In the first, general philosophical meaning, music for them is not a sound rhythmically organized sequence, but a universal metaphysical energy, the fundamental principle of all creativity. In the second, technical meaning, music is significant for the Symbolists as the verbal texture of verse permeated with sound and rhythmic combinations, that is, as the maximum use of musical compositional principles in poetry. The poems of the Symbolists are sometimes constructed as a bewitching stream of verbal and musical accords and roll calls.

Symbolism has enriched Russian poetic culture with many discoveries. The symbolists gave the poetic word a previously unknown mobility and polysemy, taught Russian poetry to discover additional shades and facets of meaning in the word. Their searches in the field of poetic phonetics turned out to be fruitful: K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, I. Annensky, A. Blok, A. Bely were masters of expressive assonance and effective alliteration. The rhythmic possibilities of Russian verse have expanded, the stanza has become more diverse. However, the main merit of this literary movement is not associated with formal innovations.

Symbolism tried to create a new philosophy of culture, strove, after going through a painful period of revaluation of values, to develop a new universal worldview. Having overcome the extremes of individualism and subjectivism, the Symbolists at the dawn of the new century raised the question of the social role of the artist in a new way, began to move towards the creation of such forms of art, the experience of which could unite people again. With the outward manifestations of elitism and formalism, symbolism has managed in practice to fill work with an artistic form with new content and, most importantly, to make art more personal and personalistic.

Symbolism is characterized by:

A form of decadence

Worship of individualism,

Preaching personality.

The poet should strive to depict the path of ascent to other worlds. The knowledge of realists does not penetrate into these worlds. They have a rational, horizontal understanding of the world. The so-called causal relationships.

3 stages of development:

1.1890s The period of decadence. First Manifesto Lecture by Dm. Merezhkovsky "On the causes of decline and new trends in Russian literature." The basic principles are as follows:

Mystical content

The symbolism of images

The concept of a double world (the earthly world, the empirical world is reality; the other world is superreality). Merezhkovsky, Gippius (Anton Krainy), Nikolai Minsky. At this time, the first symbolist magazine, The World of Art, appeared.

2.1900s The flourishing of Russian symbolism. All major manifestos appear. Magazines: "Libra", "New Way", "Apollo", "Questions of Life", "Golden Fleece" (aimed at antiquity). Balmont, Bryusov, Sologub, Ivanov.

3.1910s The crisis of Russian symbolism. The current gives way to acmeism.

The Parnassian poets are also called (Parnassus is a Greek mountain where muses, poets lived, nearby Mount Gerricon, where inspiration existed).

Senior Symbolists ". Senior Russian Symbolists ( 1890s) at first met with criticism and the reading public mainly rejection and ridicule. As the most convincing and original phenomenon, Russian symbolism made itself felt at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the arrival of a new generation, with their interest in nationality and Russian song, with their more sensitive and organic appeal to Russian literary traditions. The first signs of the symbolist movement in Russia were Dmitry Merezhkovsky's treatise “On the causes of decline and new trends in modern Russian literature” (1892), his collection of poems “Symbols”, as well as the books of Minsky “In the Light of Conscience” and A. Volynsky “Russian Critics” ... In the same period of time - in 1894-1895 - three collections "Russian Symbolists" were published, in which the poems of their publisher, the young poet Valery Bryusov, were printed. The initial books of poems by Konstantin Balmont - "Under the northern sky", "In the vastness" were also adjacent here. They also gradually crystallized a symbolist view of the poetic word.

The symbolism of D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius bore an emphatically religious character, developed in line with the neoclassical tradition. The best poems of Merezhkovsky included in the collections Symbols,Eternal companions, were built on the "ugliness" with other people's ideas, were devoted to the culture of bygone eras, gave a subjective reassessment of the world classics. In Merezhkovsky's prose on a large-scale cultural and historical material (history of antiquity, the Renaissance, Russian history, religious thought of antiquity) - the search for the spiritual foundations of being, ideas driving history. In the camp of Russian Symbolists, Merezhkovsky presented the idea of neo-Christianity, looking for a new Christ (not so much for the people as for the intelligentsia) - "Jesus the Unknown."

In the "electric", according to I. Bunin, poems of Z. Gippius, in her prose - a gravitation towards philosophical and religious problems, God-seeking. Austerity of form, precision, movement towards classical expression in combination with religious-metaphysical acuteness distinguished Gippius and Merezhkovsky among the "senior Symbolists". In their work there are many formal achievements of symbolism: music of moods, freedom of colloquial intonations, the use of new poetic dimensions (for example, dolnik).

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

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

Neo-romanticism of K. Balmont significantly differed from the works of D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, V. Brusov. In the lyrics of K. Balmont , the singer of vastness, - the romantic pathos of elevation above everyday life, a look at poetry as a creation of life. The main thing for the Symbolist Balmont was the glorification of the boundless possibilities of creative individuality, the frenzied search for the means of its self-expression. Admiration for the transformed, titanic personality affected the attitude towards the intensity of life sensations, the expansion of emotional imagery, and an impressive geographical and temporal scope.

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

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

In the theory and artistic practice of the "senior symbolists", the latest trends were combined with the inheritance of the achievements and discoveries of the Russian classics. It was within the framework of the symbolist tradition that the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Lermontov (D. Merezhkovsky L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, M.Yu. Lermontov. The poet of superhumanity), Pushkin (article by V.L. Soloviev The fate of Pushkin; Bronze Horseman Brusov), Turgenev and Goncharov ( Reflection books Annensky), N. Nekrasov ( Nekrasov as a poet of the city Bryusov). Among the "young symbolists" A. Bely became a brilliant researcher of Russian classics (book Poetics of Gogol, numerous literary reminiscences in the novel Petersburg).

Silver Age. Symbolism

Symbolism (from Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) - a trend in European art in the 1870s - 1910s; one of the modernist trends in Russian poetry at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. Focuses primarily on expressing through symbol intuitively comprehended essences and ideas, vague, often sophisticated feelings and visions.

The word itself "symbol" in traditional poetics means "polysemous allegory", that is, a poetic image that expresses the essence of a phenomenon; in the poetry of symbolism, he conveys the individual, often momentary representations of the poet.

The poetics of symbolism are characterized by:

transmission of the subtlest movements of the soul;
maximum use of sound and rhythmic means of poetry;
exquisite imagery, musicality and lightness of the syllable;
the poetics of hints and allegories;
symbolic content of everyday words;
the attitude to the word as to the cipher of some spiritual secret writing;
understatement, concealment of meaning;
striving to create a picture of an ideal world;
aestheticization of death as an existential principle;
elitism, orientation towards the reader-co-author, the creator.

Symbolism is one of the most complex and contradictory trends in Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The origins of symbolism were quite diverse, various writers came to it in deeply individual ways, giving this trend an extreme variegation, when even the recognized "leaders" of it sometimes decisively disagreed with each other in defining the "method of pure symbolism."

On the one hand, the Symbolists relied on the idealistic ideas of Plato and liked to express them in Goethean words: "Everything that is transitory is only a symbol." For them, everything became mystical, disturbingly unclear. On each object "a reflection, an oblique refracted ray of the divine" falls. Each event of earthly life only denotes, symbolizes something that is happening in another, ideal, other world. Life itself, according to the apt definition of the modern researcher LK Dolgopolov, was presented to the Symbolists “in the form of some kind of outer cover, concealing in its depths something more important, formidable and chaotic, but invisible to the“ simple eye ”Dolgopolov LK. History of Russian poetry in 2 volumes. T. 2. - L .: Nauka, 1969. - p. 257.

All this, it seemed, should have taken them far - and some of them did - from the "base" reality with its topical anxieties, needs and concerns. But, on the other hand, for all their repulsion from the surrounding life, the Symbolists were in fact the product of a certain era, its “children”. At the door stood an era of gigantic social upheavals, wars and revolutions, and the Symbolists already felt some "tremors", although they interpreted them in a religious and mystical spirit. In a surprising way, symbolism and realism will be combined in the work of A. Blok.

Russian symbolism adopted a number of aesthetic and philosophical attitudes from the West, but revised them through the teachings of Vl. Solovyov "about the soul of the world." Russian symbolist poets with painful tension experienced the problem of personality and history, their “mysterious connection” with eternity, with the essence of the universal “world process”. The inner world of a person for them is an indicator of the general tragic state of the "terrible world" of Russian reality, doomed to death. Symbolism included two generations of poets. The first included D. S. Merezhkovsky, V. Ya. Bryusov. K. D. Balmont. In the second - A. A. Blok, A. Bely, V. I. Ivanov.

As a dominant feature of Russian symbolism, one can single out its "panaestheticism", which is quite clearly manifested both in the implicit (artistic creativity) and in the explicit (critical-theoretical program) aesthetics of the direction, and in its subject matter, and in its relation to tradition, modern reality and culture.

The term "pan-aestheticism" (as the dominant feature of the "picture of the world" and the poetics of symbolism) is in no way synonymous with "aesthetics" and an apology for Beauty. We are talking about the perception and artistic reconstruction of the world as, basically, an "aesthetic phenomenon" and in the light of certain aesthetic ideas, for example, in artistic or critical-theoretical oppositions: beauty - ugliness; harmony - disharmony; space - chaos; art ("dream") - "the prose of life"; creativity is the non-creative world of "philistinism", etc.

Symbolist "panaestheticism" in Russian literature manifested itself in three main variants:

· "Panaesthetic" principle is sharply opposed to any extra-aesthetic reality and is its "antipode", "rebellion" against it. Its only embodiment is the inner world of "I";
· The world of the “panaesthetic” is thought of as utopian - as a force that transforms extra-aesthetic reality (in the latter, as a rule, in this case, its potential involvement in the high principles of being is emphasized). Beauty forms a new world, where Good will also enter; objective truth is unconditionally accepted as "the truth about Beauty" - the basis of the universe;
· The “panaesthetic” in the forms of beauty and harmony is expected as the highest value, but its opposition to “reality” is noticeably weakened, since the “beautiful” is either fenced off from the extra-aesthetic reality, avoids it, living by its own laws, or in the most “sweet life” it is found features of the aesthetic; the questions of the correlation of Beauty with Good and with "ontological" truth, as a rule, are not raised.

It is easy to see that the first of these subsystems ("rebellious panaestheticism") is realized by "decadence", the second ("utopian panaestheticism") - by the creativity of the "younger Symbolists", the third ("self-valuable aestheticism") - by that "modernist" periphery of symbolism, which is associated with the concept of "pure" Beauty.

DS Merezhkovsky (1866-1941) was one of the first to substantiate the need to choose between the art of "artistic materialism" and the art of "passionate ideal impulses of spirit"; he made his choice unconditionally in favor of the latter. The reason for the decline of literature, he considered the dominance of the realistic method, proclaimed "pure" art, its content - a mystical plot and the messianic role of culture, a grotesque perception of reality. Merezhkovsky believes that true art should include complex symbols, mystical content, new means of artistic influence. Poetry begins where there is an impulse to the ideal meaning of eternal images

KD Balmont views art in the same spirit. He defines symbolism in poetry as poetry in which two contents organically, not forcibly merge: latent abstraction and obvious beauty. Poetry is where there is an impulse for a new combination of colors and sounds in their irresistible persuasiveness. Balmont's poetry is characterized by self-affirmation of a strong personality, an enthusiastic reflection of nature, confusion of thought, and an egoistic code of chosenness.

V. Ya. Bryusov is one of the central figures of Russian symbolism. In his poetry and theoretical works, this trend appears in the most complete, detailed and grounded form. He is convinced that genuine art is elitist. It cannot be accessible and understandable to everyone. Only a sage can truly understand an artist. V. Bryusov put an emphasis on the autonomy of art, on its independence both from science and rational knowledge, as well as from religion and mysticism, he considers symbolism only as art, seeing in it a special method. The content of his poetry is the theme of leaving this world, immersion in the inner world, impulses to the transcendent, unearthly world, insight and foreboding

Second generation of Symbolists , relying on the teachings of Vl. Solovyov on "positive All-unity", made noticeable changes in the concept of symbolism, which ceases to be a purely aesthetic phenomenon and only art. It acquires a religious and philosophical dimension, and comes closer to mysticism and occultism.

The revolution was reflected not only in a sharp change in the theme of symbolism, in the emergence of social, everyday, socio-historical and national themes. This is how Z. G. Mints writes about the influence of the revolution on symbolism: “It is essential that not only some layers of the symbolist“ picture of the world ”are noticeably transformed in these years, but also a new type of“ panaesthetic ”worldview is created, radically changes as an explicit as well as implicit poetics, including the nature of symbolization, specific forms of "life-creation" arise, etc. " Mints Z. G. Blok and Russian Symbolism. // Mints Z.G. Selected works: In 3 vols. - Book 3: Poetics of Russian Symbolism. - SPb .: Art, 2004. - P. 182 However, the mechanism of evolution during the transition from the symbolism of the beginning of the century to the symbolism of the era of the revolution is somewhat different than in the cases described above. There is no change in the dominant subsystem of symbolism here: evolution takes the form of a deep restructuring of the “aesthetic utopia”.

The transition from premonitions of "unheard of changes" and "unprecedented rebellions" to immersion in these "changes" and "rebellions" as in today's reality presents a choice - you need:

· Either identify what is happening with the embodiment of "harmony in the world", with the "synthesis" already taking place today,
Or move away from revolutionary reality without recognizing the emerging Beauty in it,
· Or, finally, somehow change the content of your “panaesthetic” ideal, bringing it closer to what is really happening in Russia.

The first is characteristic, for example, for some of the attempts of the Bloc of 1904 - early 1905 to comprehend the revolution, in the spirit of his lyric poetry of 1901-1902, as the descent of the Beautiful Lady to the earth (the poem "Her Arrival"); however, these attempts, due to their obvious naivety and inconsistency with what is happening, have not received widespread acceptance.

Symbolism is the current of modernism, which is characterized by "three main elements of new art: mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability ...", "a new combination of thoughts, colors and sounds"; the main principle of symbolism is artistic expression through the symbol of the essence of objects and ideas that are beyond sensory perception.

Symbolism (from the French. Simbolism, from the Greek. Simbolon - sign, symbol) appeared in France in the late 60s - early 70s. 19th century (initially in literature, and then in other types of art - visual, musical, theatrical) and soon included other cultural phenomena - philosophy, religion, mythology. The favorite topics addressed by the Symbolists were death, love, suffering, the expectation of any events. Among the plots, scenes from the Gospel history, semi-mythical-semi-historical events of the Middle Ages, and ancient mythology prevailed.

Russian literary symbolists are traditionally divided into "senior" and "junior".

The elders - the so-called "decadents" - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub - reflected in their work the features of pan-European pan-aestheticism.

The younger Symbolists - Alexander Blok, Andrey Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov - in addition to aestheticism, embodied in their work the aesthetic utopia of the search for mystical Eternal Femininity.

The doors are deafly locked

We dare not open them.

If the heart is true to tradition,

Consoled in barking, we bark.

What is smelly and nasty in the menagerie,

We have forgotten a long time ago, we do not know.

The heart is accustomed to repetitions, -

Kukuem monotonously and boringly.

Everything in the menagerie is impersonal, usually.

We have not longed for freedom for a long time.

The doors are locked tight

We dare not open them.

F. Sologub

The concept of theurgy is associated with the process of creating symbolic forms in art. The origin of the word "theurgy" comes from the Greek teourgiya, which means a divine act, a sacred ritual, a mystery. In the era of antiquity, theurgy was understood as the communication of people with the world of the gods in the process of special ritual actions.

The problem of theurgic creativity, which expresses the deep connection of symbolism with the sphere of the sacred, worried V.S. Solovyov. He argued that the art of the future should create a new connection with religion. This connection should be freer than it exists in the sacred art of Orthodoxy. In restoring the connection between art and religion on a fundamentally new basis, V.S. Solovyov sees the theurgic principle. Theurgy is understood by him as the process of the artist's co-creation with God. Understanding of theurgy in the works of V.S. Solovyov found a lively response in the works of religious thinkers of the early twentieth century: P.A. Florensky, N.A. Berdyaeva, E.M. Trubetskoy, S.N. Bulgakov and others, as well as in poetry and literary-critical works of Russian symbolist poets of the early twentieth century: Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maximilian Voloshin, etc.

These thinkers and poets felt the deep connection that exists between symbolism and the sacred.

The history of Russian symbolism, covering various aspects of the phenomenon of Russian culture in the late 20th - early 20th centuries, including Symbolism, was written by the English researcher A. Payman.

Disclosure of this issue is essential for understanding the complexity and diversity of the aesthetic process and artistic creation in general.

The Russian symbolism of the late 19th - early 20th centuries was immediately preceded by the symbolism of icon painting, which had a great influence on the formation of the aesthetic views of Russian religious philosophers and art theorists. At the same time, Western European symbolism in the person of the “damned poets” of France P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarmé took primarily the ideas of the irrationalist philosophers of the second half of the 19th century - representatives of the philosophy of life. These ideas were not associated with any particular religion. On the contrary, they proclaimed "the death of God" and "faithfulness to the earth."

Representatives of European irrationalism of the 19th century, in particular

F. Nietzsche, sought to create a new religion out of art. This religion should not be a religion that proclaims one God as the highest sacred value, but the religion of a superman who is connected with the earth and the bodily principle. This religion established fundamentally new symbols, which, according to F. Nietzsche, should express the new true meaning of things. F. Nietzsche's symbolism had a subjective, individual character. In form and content, it opposed the symbolism of the previous stage of cultural development, since the old symbols were largely associated with traditional religion.

The Russian symbolist poets Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely, following F. Nietzsche, proceeded from the assumption that the destruction of traditional religion is an objective process. But their interpretation of the "art-religion" of the future was significantly different from the Nietzschean. They saw the possibility of religious renewal along the path of the revival of the art of antiquity and the Middle Ages, art speaking in the language of a myth-symbol. Possessing a significant potential of the sacred and preserving itself in artistic forms accessible to the understanding mind, the art of past eras, according to the theorists of symbolism, can be revived in a new historical context, in contrast to the religion of antiquity that has become dead, and the spiritual atmosphere of the Middle Ages that has gone into history.

This is exactly what happened once in the Renaissance, when the sacred beginning of the past eras, transformed into the aesthetic, became the basis on which the great art of the European Renaissance was formed and developed. As unattainable examples of theurgic creativity, works of art of antiquity embodied the basis, thanks to which it became possible to preserve the sacredness of the art of the Christian Middle Ages, which was already depleting in the aesthetic sense, for many years. This is what led to the unattainable rise of European culture in the Renaissance, synthesizing ancient symbolism and Christian sacredness.

The Russian symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov comes to theurgy through the comprehension of the cosmos through the artistically expressive possibilities of art. According to him, in art, along with the symbol, such phenomena as myth and mystery play an important role. IN AND. Ivanov emphasizes the deep connection that exists between symbol and myth, and the process of simovistic creativity itself is considered by him as myth-making: “Approaching the goal of the most complete symbolic disclosure of reality is myth-making. Realistic symbolism follows the path of symbol to myth; the myth is already contained in the symbol, it is immanent in it; contemplation of the symbol reveals the myth in the symbol ”.

The myth, in the understanding of Vyacheslav Ivanov, is devoid of any personal characteristics. This is an objective form of preserving knowledge about reality, found as a result of mystical experience and taken on faith until, in the act of a new breakthrough of consciousness to the same reality, a new knowledge of a higher level is discovered about it. Then the old myth is removed by the new one, which takes its place in the religious consciousness and in the spiritual experience of people. Vyacheslav Ivanov connects with myth-making "the sincere feat of the artist himself."

According to V.I. Ivanov, the first condition for true myth-making is "the spiritual feat of the artist himself." IN AND. Ivanov says that the artist "must stop creating outside the connection with the divine total-unity, must educate himself to the possibility of creative realization of this connection." As V.I. Ivanov: "And the myth, before it is experienced by everyone, must become an event of internal experience, personal in its arena, superpersonal in its content." This is the “theurgic goal” of Symbolism, which many Russian Symbolists of the “Silver Age” dreamed of.

Russian Symbolists proceed from the fact that the search for a way out of the crisis leads to a person's awareness of his capabilities, which appear before him on two paths, potentially open to humanity from the beginning of its existence. As Vyacheslav Ivanov emphasizes, one of them is erroneous, magical, the second is true, theurgic. The first way is connected with the fact that the artist tries to breathe “magical life” into his creation by means of magic spells and thereby commits a “crime”, since he transcends the “reserved limit” of his capabilities. This path ultimately leads to the destruction of art, to its transformation into an abstraction completely divorced from real life. The second way consisted in theurgic creativity, in which the artist could realize himself precisely as a co-creator of God, as a conductor of the divine idea and revive with his work the reality embodied in artistic creation. It is the second path that means the creation of the living. This path is the path of theurgic symbolist creativity. Since Vyacheslav Ivanov considers the works of ancient art to be the highest example of symbolist creativity, he places the ideal image of Aphrodite on a par with the “miraculous icon”. Symbolist art, according to the concept of Vyacheslav Ivanov, is one of the essential forms of influence of higher realities on lower ones.

The problem of theurgic creativity was associated with the symbolic aspect of the nature of the sacred, and in the case of another representative of Russian symbolism, A. Bely. Unlike Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was an adherent of ancient art, Andrei Bely's theurgy was predominantly focused on Christian values. Andrei Bely considers the Goodness to be the inner motive force of theurgic creativity, which, as it were, infuses the theurgist. For Andrei Bely, theurgy is the goal towards which the whole culture in its historical development and art, as a part of it, is directed. He sees symbolism as the highest achievement of art. According to Andrei Bely's concept, symbolism reveals the content of human history and culture as a desire to embody the transcendental Symbol in real life. This is how theurgic symbolization appears to him, the highest stage of which is the creation of life. The task of the theurgists is to bring real life as close as possible to this “norm”, which is possible only on the basis of a new understanding of Christianity.

Thus, the sacred as a spiritual principle seeks to be preserved already in new forms that are adequate to the worldview of the twentieth century. The high spiritual content of art is ensured as a result of the conversion of the sacred as religious into the aesthetic, due to which the search for an artistic form adequate to the spiritual situation of the era is ensured in art.

“The Symbolist poets, with their characteristic sensitivity, felt that Russia was flying into the abyss, that old Russia was ending and a new Russia, still unknown, should emerge,” said the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. Eschatological predictions, thoughts worried everyone, “the death of Russia”, “the edge of history”, “the end of culture” - these statements sounded like an alarming alarm bell. As in the painting by Leon Bakst “The Death of Atlantis”, the prophecies of many breathe impulse, anxiety, doubts. The impending catastrophe is seen by the mystical insight outlined above:

The curtain is already trembling before the start of the drama ...

Someone in the dark, all-seeing as an owl,

Draws circles and builds pentagrams

And whispers prophetic spells and words.

A symbol for the Symbolists is not a generally understood sign. It differs from the realistic image in that it conveys not the objective essence of the phenomenon, but the poet's individual idea of the world, most often vague and indefinite. The symbol transforms "rough and poor life" into a "sweet legend".

Russian symbolism emerged as an integral direction, but refracted in bright, independent, dissimilar individuals. If the coloring of F. Sologub's poetry is gloomy and tragic, then the perception of the early Balmont, on the contrary, is penetrated by the sun, optimistic.

The literary life of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the Silver Age was in full swing and concentrated on the "Tower" of V. Ivanov and in the salon of Gippius-Merezhkovsky: individualities developed, intertwined, repelled in heated discussions, philosophical debates, impromptu lessons and lectures. It was in the process of these living inter-intersections that new trends and schools departed from symbolism - acmeism, of which N. Gumilyov became the head, and ego-futurism, represented primarily by the word-creator I. Severyanin.

Acmeists (Greek acme - the highest degree of anything, blooming power) opposed themselves to symbolism, criticized the nebulousness and fragility of the symbolist language and image. They preached a clear, fresh and "simple" poetic language, where words would directly and clearly name objects, and would not refer, as in symbolism, to "mysterious worlds."

Vague, beautiful, sublime symbols, understatement and under-expression were replaced by simple objects, caricatured compositions, sharp, sharp, material signs of the world. Poets - innovators (N. Gumilev, S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, V. Narbut, M. Kuzmin) felt themselves to be creators of fresh words and not so much prophets as masters in the "working room of poetry" (the expression of I. Annensky). It is not for nothing that the community united around the Acmeists called itself the workshop of poets: an indication of the earthly background of creativity, the possibility of collective inspirational efforts in the art of poetry.

As you can see, the Russian poetry of the "Silver Age" has come a long way in a very short time. She sowed her seeds into the future. The thread of legends and traditions has not been broken. The poetry of the turn of the century, the poetry of the "Silver Age" is a complex cultural phenomenon, interest in which is just beginning to wake up. New and new discoveries await us ahead.

The poetry of the "Silver Age" reflected in itself, in its large and small magic mirrors, the complex and ambiguous process of the socio-political, spiritual, moral, aesthetic and cultural development of Russia in the period marked by three revolutions, the world war and especially terrible for us - the internal war , civil. In this process, captured in poetry, there are ups and downs, light and dark, dramatic sides, but deep down it is a tragic process. And although time has pushed aside this amazing layer of poetry of the "Silver Age", but it radiates its energy to this day. The Russian "Silver Age" is unique. Never before or after has there been such agitation of consciousness, such tension of searches and aspirations in Russia, as when, according to an eyewitness, one line of Blok meant more and was more urgent than the entire content of "thick" magazines. The light of these unforgettable dawns will forever remain in the history of Russia.

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