Poet-Symbolists and their creativity

Symbolism is a literary trend that originated in France at the end of the 19th century and spread in many European countries. However, it was in Russia that symbolism became the most significant and large-scale phenomenon. Russian symbolist poets brought something new in this direction, something that their French predecessors did not have. Simultaneously with the appearance of symbolism, the Silver Age of Russian literature begins. But I must say that in Russia there was no single school of this modernist trend, there was no unity of concepts, one style. The creativity of poetic symbolists united one thing: mistrust of the ordinary word, the desire to express themselves in symbols and allegories.

The currents of symbolism

This literary trend on the worldview position and the formation time is classified into two stages. Poet-Symbolists, appearing in the 1890s, whose list includes such figures as Balmont, Gippius, Bryusov, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, are called "senior". In the 1900s, the direction was replenished with new forces that significantly changed its appearance. Debuted "younger" poets-symbolists, such as Ivanov, Blok, White. The second wave of the current is usually called the Young Symbolism.

Representatives of the "senior" school perceived this literary trend in the aesthetic sense. Balmont and Bryusov expressed the idea that the poet is primarily a creator of purely artistic and purely personal values. The "younger" poets saw the current in the religious-philosophical aspect. Philosophy, refracted in poetic consciousness, is what symbolism means, in their opinion. Poets-symbolists of the second generation are also represented by Sergei Solovyov, Innokentiy Annensky and others.

"Senior" Symbolists

In Russia this literary trend manifested itself in the late 1890s. In Moscow, at the forefront of symbolism was Valery Bryusov, and in Petersburg - Dmitry Merezhkovsky. However, the most vivid and radical representative of the early school of symbolism in the city on the Neva was Alexander Dobrolyubov. Apart from all the modernist groups, another Russian symbolist poet, Fyodor Sologub, created his own poetic world.

But, perhaps, the most readable, musical and sonorous at that time were the poems of Constantine Balmont. At the end of the 19th century, he clearly stated "a search for correspondences" between meaning, color and sound. Similar ideas were encountered by Rambo and Baudelaire, and later by many Russian poets such as Blok, Bryusov, Khlebnikov, Kuzmin. Balmont saw this search for correspondences mainly in the creation of a sound-semantic text - music that gives meaning. The poet was carried away by the sound, began to use colorful adjectives instead of verbs in his works, as a result he created, as the detractors thought, almost meaningless verses. At the same time, this phenomenon in poetry led eventually to the formation of new poetic concepts, among which melodeclamation, zaum, and sound.

"Younger" poets-symbolists

The second generation of Symbolists include poets, who first started publishing in the 1900s. Among them were as very young authors, for example, Andrei Bely, Sergei Soloviev, Alexander Blok, and respectable people, for example, the scientist Vyacheslav Ivanov, the director of the gymnasium Innokenty Annensky.

In St. Petersburg at that time, the "center" of symbolism was the apartment of V. Ivanov at the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, in which M. Kuzmin, A. Bely, A. Mintslov, V. Khlebnikov, N. Berdyaev, A. Akhmatova, A. Block, A. Lunacharsky. In Moscow poets symbolists gathered in the editorial office of the publishing house "Scorpion", whose editor-in-chief was V. Bryusov. Here the issues of the most famous symbolist publication, "Libra", were prepared. The employees of the Scorpion were such authors as K. Balmont, A. Bely, Yu. Baltrushaitis, A. Remizov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, M. Voloshin and others.

Features of Early Symbolism

In Russia, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Was a time of change, disappointment, gloomy omens and uncertainty. During this period, the approaching death of the existing socio-political system was not clearly felt. Such trends could not help influencing Russian poetry. The poems of the Symbolist poets were not homogeneous, as the poets held conflicting views. For example, such authors as D. Merezhkovsky and N. Minsky, at first were representatives of civil poetry, and later began to focus on the ideas of "religious community" and "god-building." The "older" Symbolists did not recognize the surrounding reality and told the world "no." So, Bryusov wrote: "I do not see our reality, I do not know our age ..." The early representatives of the current reality counterposed the world of creativity and dreams, in which the person becomes completely free, and they portrayed reality as dull, evil and meaningless.

Of great importance for the poets was artistic innovation - the transformation of the meanings of words, the development of rhymes, rhythms and the like. The "older" Symbolists were impressionists, eager to convey subtle nuances of impressions, moods. They have not yet used the system of symbols, but the word as such has already lost its price and has become meaningful only as a sound, musical note, link in the overall construction of the poem.

New trends

In the years 1901-1904. A new stage in the history of symbolism began, and it coincided with the revolutionary upsurge in Russia. Pessimistic moods, inspired in the 1890s, were replaced by a premonition of "unheard-of changes". At this time, young symbols appeared in the literary arena, followers of the poet Vladimir Solovyov, who saw the old world on the brink of death and said that "divine peace" should be achieved by combining the heavenly beginning of life with the material worldly. In the works of symbolist poets, landscapes often began to appear, but not as such, but as a means of revealing the mood. Thus, in verse there is a constant description of the tiringly sad Russian autumn, when the sun does not shine, or casts only faint, sad rays on the earth, the leaves rustle and quietly rustle, and everything is shrouded in flickering hazy haze.

Also the favorite motif of the "younger" symbolists was the city. They showed him as a living being with his character, with his form. Often the city appeared as a place of horror, insanity, a symbol of vice and callousness.

Symbolists and revolution

In 1905-1907, when the revolution began, symbolism again underwent changes. Many poets responded to the events that took place. Thus, Bryusov wrote a famous poem "The Coming Huns", in which he glorified the end of the old world, but he ranked himself and himself, and all the people who lived in the period of the dying, old culture. Block in his works created images of people of the new world. In 1906, Sologub published a book of poems "Homeland", and in 1907 Balmont wrote a series of poems "Songs of the Avenger" - the collection was published in Paris and banned in Russia.

The Decline of Symbolism

At that time the artistic worldview of the Symbolists changed. If before they perceived beauty as harmony, now for them it has found a connection with the folk elements, with the chaos of struggle. At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, symbolism declined and no longer gave new names. Everything viable, vigorous, young was already outside of it, although individual works were still created by poetic symbolists.

List of the main poets who represent symbolism in literature

• Innokenty Annensky;
• Jurgis Baltrušaitis ;
• Valery Bryusov;
• Zinaida Gippius;
• Fyodor Sologub;
• Konstantin Balmont;
• Alexander Tinyakov;
• Wilhelm Sorgenfrey;
• Alexander Dobrolyubov;
• Victor Strazhev;
• Andrei Bely;
• Konstantin Fofanov;
• Vyacheslav Ivanov;
• Alexander Blok;
• George Chulkov;
• Dmitry Merezhkovsky;
• Ivan Konevskaya;
• Vladimir Piast;
• Poliksena Solovyov;
• Ivan Rukavishnikov.