Brief characteristics of the block. Brief biography of Alexander Blok
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok. Passport photo. 1910s
"Poems about a beautiful lady"
In 1898, Alexander Blok entered the university and studied there for quite a long time, because he transferred from the Faculty of Law to the Faculty of Philology; Therefore, he received his diploma only in 1906, when he was already a famous poet. He began writing poetry very early. In 1900 he was already an original poet, both in style and in essence. At first his poems were not published. Only in 1903 several poems were published in Merezhkovsky's magazine New way. In 1904 they were published as a separate book called Poems about a beautiful lady. Blok always insisted that his poetry could only be truly understood and appreciated by those who sympathized with his mysticism. This statement is especially true when it comes to his first book. If the reader does not understand the mystical “background”, the poems will seem to him simply verbal music. To be understood, these verses must be interpreted. This, however, is not a very difficult task if you use Blok’s own article On the current state of Russian symbolism(1910) - his very important self-disclosure - and a detailed commentary by Andrei Bely in his wonderful Memories of Blok.
Poems about a beautiful lady- a mystical “love story” with the Person, whom Blok identified with the heroine Three visions Solovyov - Sophia, Divine wisdom, the female hypostasis of the Divine. Blok’s friends are mystics, and he himself always insisted that these Poetry is the most important part of his work, and although the average reader may prefer the powerful poetry of his third volume, these early Poetry, of course, are very interesting and biographically important. Despite the influence of Vladimir Solovyov (material) and Zinaida Gippius (metric form), they are quite original and stylistically strangely mature for a 20-22 year old. The main feature of this poetry is complete freedom from everything sensual and concrete. This is a vagueness of words that acts on the unprepared reader simply like verbal music. Like no other, this poetry answers Verlaine's rule: " de la musique avant toute chose"("music, music first of all!"). There is nothing in the world" plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air” (“more vague and more soluble in the air”) than this collection. Later in the play Stranger Blok forces the Poet (who is undoubtedly a self-parody) to read his poems to the sex in the tavern, and he makes his verdict: “It’s unclear, sir, but very sophisticated, sir!” Apart from a few initiates, the attitude of his then fans towards Blok was in many ways similar to the attitude of gender.
Block. Biography, lyrics. Video tutorial
The further popularity of his early poetry (contained in the first volume of his works) was precisely caused by the craze for poetry that would be as pure and free of content as music.
At first, only a few appreciated Blok’s poetry. Critics either did not pay attention to her, or treated her with ridicule and indignation, which was the common lot of symbolists. They began to read Blok much later. But literary circles immediately understood the significance of the new poet: Bryusov and Merezhkovsky received him very warmly. The younger Symbolists went even further in their enthusiasm: two young Muscovites, Andrei Bely and Sergei Solovyov (son of M. S. Solovyov) saw in his poetry a message close to their own spiritual mood. Blok became for them a prophet and seer, almost the founder of a new religion. These young mystics with ardent faith expected a new religious revelation, and Blok’s ethereal poetry seemed to them the Annunciation of a new era. In their Memories Bely describes the tense atmosphere of mystical expectation in which the young Bloks (the poet and his wife, L. D. Mendeleeva), himself and Sergei Solovyov lived in 1903–1904.
"Stranger"
But this did not last long. Poems about a beautiful lady were still being published, the Blocists were in complete ecstasy, when suddenly Blok’s visionary world changed dramatically. The “beautiful lady” refused her admirer. The world was empty for him, the skies were covered with clouds and darkened. Rejected by his mystical beloved, the poet turned to the earth. This turn made Blok more unhappy and probably a worse person than he was, but a greater poet. Only then did his poetry acquire universal interest and become understandable not only to a select few. She became more earthly, but at first his earth was not material. His sky-fed style, upon first contact with brute reality, immediately dematerialized it. His world in 1904-1906. - a curtain of mirages thrown over a more real, but invisible heaven. His style, ethereal and purely musical, was perfect for depicting the fogs and mirages of St. Petersburg, an illusory city that disturbed the imagination of Gogol, Grigoriev, and Dostoevsky. This romantic Petersburg, a dream emerging in the unreal hazy atmosphere of the northern Neva swamps, became the basis of Blok’s poetry as soon as he touched the ground after his first mystical flights. "Beautiful Lady" disappears from his poems. She is replaced by the Stranger, also immaterial, but a passionate, ever-present vision with which he is obsessed throughout the entire second volume (1904–1908). It appears with particular clarity in the poet’s most famous poem (perhaps after Twelve the most famous), written in 1906, characterized by a combination of realistic irony and romantic lyricism. The poem begins with a grotesque and ironic image of a summer cottage near St. Petersburg. In this den of seething vulgarity, where “tested wits” walk with ladies and “drunkards with rabbit eyes in wine veritas they scream,” the Stranger appears (see the full text and analysis of this poem).
...And every evening, at the appointed hour
(Or am I just dreaming?),
The girl's figure, captured by silks,
A window moves through a foggy window.
And slowly, walking between the drunken,
Always without companions, alone,
Breathing spirits and mists,
She sits by the window.
And they breathe ancient beliefs
Her elastic silks
And a hat with mourning feathers,
And in the rings there is a narrow hand.
And chained by a strange intimacy,
I look behind the dark veil,
And I see the enchanted shore
And the enchanted distance.
Silent secrets have been entrusted to me,
Someone's sun was handed to me,
And all the souls of my bend
Tart wine pierced.
And bowed ostrich feathers
My brain is swinging,
And blue bottomless eyes
They bloom on the far shore.
There's a treasure in my soul
And the key is entrusted only to me!
You're right, drunken monster!
I know: the truth is in the wine.
Block. Lyrics. Second volume. Video tutorial
"Bubbles of the Earth"
A whole series of charming poems dates back to the same period, where Blok demonstrates an unexpected gift for cozy and playful humor. It is named after a quote from Macbeth – Earth Bubbles. These are poems about simple playful spirits living in fields and forests. Few of Blok's poems have won more sympathy for him than Swamp priest, mysterious, mischievous, good-natured, created by his imagination, who, towering a finger, stands on a hummock
And quietly prays
Raising my hat
For the stem that bends,
For a sick animal paw,
And for the Pope.
Blok and the Revolution of 1905
Like most symbolists, Blok welcomed revolution of 1905. He joined the mystical anarchists. Once he even carried a red flag. The degeneration of the revolution into anarchy and collapse intensified his pessimism, and feelings of hopelessness and despondency took possession of his soul. His poetry became forever an expression of the “fatal emptiness” (which he speaks of in poems of 1912), familiar to many people of his generation. This “emptiness” is akin to what Leonid Andreev experienced. The difference is that Blok is a genius and a man of incommensurable culture and that he knew a state of mystical bliss that Andreev did not even suspect about.
Blok's dramas
The impotent desire to return to the Radiant Presence from which he had been expelled, and the bitter resentment at how the “Beautiful Lady” treated him, became the plot of his “lyrical dramas” written in 1906-1907. – Showcase And Strangers, which can be considered among his earliest and most enchanting masterpieces. Showcase- harlequinade. It was staged in 1907 and ran for quite a long time. He made an unforgettable impression on those who saw him. It contains a lot of Blok’s best lyrics, but essentially it is a satire, a parody, and, moreover, a darkly blasphemous one. This is a parody of Blok’s own mysticism and a satire of his own hopes and expectations. His friends - Bely and Sergei Solovyov - perceived this not only as an insult to themselves, but also as an insult to their common faith in Sophia - Divine Wisdom. This entailed the alienation of his Moscow friends from Blok, and the next period became for him a time of gloomy loneliness. For most readers, terrible pessimism Showcase hidden behind its lyrical charm and capricious symbolism. But in fact, this is one of the darkest and most blasphemous plays ever written by a poet anywhere.
For an analysis of the drama “The Stranger”, see a separate article on our website. From then on, Blok’s work was filled with wine, women and gypsy songs - and all this against the backdrop of passionate despair and hopeless longing for the forever lost vision of the “Beautiful Lady”. Passionate and hopeless disappointment - this is now the atmosphere of Blok’s poetry. Only occasionally is he pulled out of constant despondency by a whirlwind of earthly passion. Such a whirlwind affected the cycle Snow mask; This ecstatic, lyrical fugue was written in the early days of 1907.
The third volume of Blok's lyrics
Blok's genius reaches maturity by 1908. Poems written over the next eight years were included in the third volume, which, together with the poem Twelve is undoubtedly the largest of what has been created by the Russian poet over the past eighty years. Blok was not a man of great intelligence or great moral strength. He was not, in essence, a great master. His art is passive and involuntary. He is more a recorder of poetic experience than a builder of poetic buildings. What makes him great is the presence of an overwhelming poetic spirit, as if appearing from other worlds. He himself described his creative process in one of his most remarkable poems - Artist(1913) as a completely passive state, very close to the mystical ecstasy as described by the great Western (Spanish and German) mystics. Ecstasy is preceded by a state of melancholy boredom and prostration; then comes an inexplicable bliss from the wind blowing from other spheres, to which the poet surrenders weakly and obediently. But ecstasy is hampered by the “creative mind,” which forcibly imprisons the “light, kind, free bird”—the bird of inspiration—in the shackles of form; and when the work of art is ready, then for the poet it is dead, and he again falls into his former state of devastated boredom.
Block. Lyrics. Third volume. Video tutorial
In the third volume, Blok's style pulsates more fully and powerfully than in his earlier works. It is more intense and full-blooded. But, as in early things, it depends heavily on the subtlest, subtlest features of language, sound, associations. Dejection and despair expressed in a poem dating to this time Dance of Death, are characteristic of most of Blok’s poems after 1907.
Blok's theme of Russia
But sometimes, for a while, it seems that Blok has discovered for himself some kind of ray of hope that will replace “The Beautiful Lady” - and this is love for Russia. It was a strange love, perfectly aware of the vile and base traits of the beloved and yet sometimes reaching real paroxysms of passion. The image of Russia became identified in his imagination with the Stranger - the mysterious woman of his dreams - and with the passionate, divided women of Dostoevsky: Nastasya Filippovna ( Idiot) and Grushenka ( Brothers Karamazov). Another symbol and mystical reflection of Russia is the blizzard, the blizzard, which in Snow mask was a symbol of cold and burning storms of carnal passion and which becomes the main background of the poem Twelve. The Russian wind of passions is again associated with the gypsy choirs of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Even before Blok, many great Russian writers (including Derzhavin, Tolstoy and Leskov) knew the charm and splendor of gypsy choirs. In the mid-nineteenth century there lived a brilliant and not fully manifested poet Apollo Grigoriev, whose soul was filled with gypsy poetry. He wrote several extraordinary songs that were appropriated by the gypsies, although they forgot the very name of Apollo Grigoriev. Blok practically discovered Grigoriev the poet (he was well known as a critic) and “raised him.” He published a collection of poems by Grigoriev (1915), to which he wrote a preface - one of the few prose articles worthy of the great poet. In it he nobly pays tribute to his forgotten predecessor.
Blok’s love for Russia was expressed in an acute feeling of its destinies, which sometimes reached the point of a truly prophetic gift. In this regard, the lyrical fugue On the Kulikovo field(1908) is particularly noteworthy: it is full of gloomy, ominous forebodings of the coming catastrophes of 1914 and 1917. Another remarkable poem (written in August 1914) fully reveals this strange love for one's country. They begin with the words:
Sin shamelessly, restlessly,
Losing count of the nights and days,
And, with a head heavy with drunkenness,
Walk aside into God's temple.
Yes, and so, my Russia,
You are dearer to me from all over the world.
It is impossible to talk in detail about all of Blok’s poems written between 1908 and 1916. It will be enough to name a few unforgettable masterpieces, such as Humiliation(1911) – about the humiliation of corrupt love; Commander's steps(1912), one of the best poems of retribution ever written; a terrible cry of despair - Voice from the choir(1914); And Nightingale Garden, in style “more classical” and stricter than most of his lyric poems, a symbolic poem that unexpectedly brings to mind another great symbolic poem - My life Chekhov.
"Retribution"
In addition to lyric poems, the third volume includes two larger works of the same time: the poem Retribution and lyrical tragedy Rose and cross.
Retribution was started in 1910 under the impression of the death of his father. According to the plan, it was supposed to consist of three parts, but only the first was completely completed. In style it is realism, an attempt to approach the method of Pushkin and Lermontov. This is the story of his father and himself, and Blok intended to create a thing of great significance, illustrating the laws of heredity and showing the progressive decay of the old regime in Russia. He failed to cope with this task, and overall the poem was not a success. However, there are strong and beautiful parts in it. The beginning of the second chapter reveals Blok's unexpected gift of broad historical vision: this is a magnificent synthetic sketch of Russian life under Alexander III, which could be quoted in all Russian history textbooks.
In the same month when they were written Twelve(January 1918), Blok wrote Skifov(see full text and analysis), a tense rhetorical invective against Western peoples who do not want to conclude the peace proposed by the Bolsheviks. This is very eloquent, but not very clever, and in any case much lower in level than Twelve.
This was Blok's last poem. The new government, which valued its few intelligent allies, kept Blok busy, and for three whole years he worked on all sorts of cultural and translation endeavors, led by Gorky and Lunacharsky. After Twelve his revolutionary enthusiasm subsided and was replaced by passive despondency, where even the wind of inspiration did not penetrate. He tried to continue working on Retribution, but nothing came of it. He was dead tired - and empty.
Unlike many other writers, he did not suffer from hunger and cold because the Bolsheviks took care of him, but he was dead long before his death. This is the impression that everyone who remembers Blok had at this time. However, the attitude of the communist authorities towards him was not always friendly. In February 1919, Blok was arrested by the Petrogradskaya Cheka on charges of counter-revolutionary conspiracy. A day later, after two long interrogations, Blok was released, as Lunacharsky stood up for him. However, even these one and a half days in prison broke him. He died of heart disease on August 9, 1921. Twelve glorified him more than all the previous ones, but leftist literary schools in the last years of Blok’s life unanimously overthrew him. His death was the signal for his recognition as one of the nation's greatest poets.
There is and cannot be any doubt that Blok is a great poet. But for all his greatness, he is undoubtedly an unhealthy, sickly poet, the greatest and most typical representative of a generation whose best sons were stricken with despair and, unable to overcome their pessimism, either fell into a dangerous and ambiguous mysticism, or found oblivion in a whirlwind of passions.
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was born on November 28, 1880 in St. Petersburg. His father was a lawyer, in addition to this he was a teacher at the University of Warsaw. Mother - Alexandra Beketova, was the daughter of the rector of one of the St. Petersburg universities. Soon after Alexander's birth, the parents broke off their relationship and the son began to live with his mother. Soon the mother remarried officer F.F. Kublitsky-Piottukha, the family began to live in the guards barracks.
In 1889 he began studying at the Vvedenskaya Gymnasium. When he went abroad in 1897 to one of the German resort towns, he experienced his first love for Ksenia Sadovskaya. A year later, after graduating from high school, he fell in love with Lyubov Mendeleeva, who later became his wife. Blok entered the Faculty of Law, but later changed his mind and began studying at the Faculty of History and Philology, from which he graduated in 1906.
The poet's literary path began in childhood. At the age of 10, young Blok began publishing his own handwritten magazines. From the age of 16 he attended a theater group, but he was practically not given roles. In 1901 he published his first collection of poems, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” which was written in the genre of symbolism. Over the years, his work evolved, and he began to raise such topics as human social life (“City” 1904-1908), religiosity (“Snow Mask” 1907), philosophy of life (“Scary World” 1908-1916), patriotism (“Motherland” ” 1907-1916)
After receiving higher education, Alexander Blok traveled abroad a lot, sometimes living there for months. It is characteristic that he spoke negatively about France and other European countries. The poet did not like the culture and customs of these countries.
The February and October revolutions had a significant impact on Blok's work and life. He had ambiguous thoughts about these events, but unlike other artists, he not only did not oppose the new government, but also supported it in every possible way, although later it seemed to him a mistake. The difficult financial situation and constant exhaustion negatively affected Blok’s health and he began to get sick. The new government, represented by the Politburo, refused to give permission to travel to Finland in order to begin treatment there. On August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok died from prolonged inflammation of the heart. Many famous personalities in Petrograd attended his funeral. In 1941, his ashes were again buried on the Literatorskie Mostki at the Volkovskoye cemetery.
Biography and creativity
In 1880, on November 28 (16), a son was born into the cultured St. Petersburg family of nobles Alexander Blok and Alexandra Beketova. The boy was named Sasha. Family happiness did not last long; the parents soon separated. Sasha's mother remarried and Blok grew up with his stepfather.
The family of the future poet spent the winter in his native St. Petersburg, and went to Shakhmatovo for the summer. The estate of Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov, Blok’s maternal grandfather, became for Sasha a window into the wonderful world of Russian nature.
The boy rode horseback, spent hours in the garden and happily tinkered with various domestic animals. Thus, from early childhood, Sasha learned to feel and love his native land.
The first experience of versification took place at the age of five. And at the age of nine, Blok entered the gymnasium. From an early age, Sasha, who was partial to reading, became interested in publishing. Ten-year-old Blok published a couple of issues of the handwritten magazine “Ship”, and at the age of 14, together with his brothers, he published “Vestnik”.
In 1898, after finishing his studies at the gymnasium, Alexander decides to devote his life to the study of law. But, after studying law for three years at St. Petersburg University, he became interested in ancient philosophy and moved to the Faculty of History and Philology.
Blok met the beginning of the twentieth century in the creative circle of the brightest writers of our time. Fet, Solovyov, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Bryusov accepted the twenty-year-old talented young man into the arms of cultural St. Petersburg.
Blok became passionately interested in Russian symbolism. The first poems were published by the publishing house “New Way”; later the poet’s works were published in the almanac “Northern Flowers”.
The Beketovs' neighbors were the Mendeleevs. The daughter of the great chemist, Lyubov Dmitrievna, became for the poet not only his beloved girl, but also his muse. In 1903, Mendeleeva became his wife.
Blok is at the very beginning of his amazing creativity. In the same year, his poetic cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, dedicated to his wife, was published. The poet, filled with love, imagines a woman as a wonderful spring of light and purity, admiring the great power of true love, capable of uniting the whole world in one person.
The events of 1905-1907 and the First World War pressed the poet’s lyrical mood. Blok thought about the problems of society; he was concerned about the embodiment of the theme of the creator against the backdrop of existing reality. In the poet’s work, the homeland is like a loving wife, which is why patriotism acquired individuality and depth.
The year 1909 became tragic for the Blok family. The father and newborn child of Alexander Alexandrovich and Lyubov Dmitrievna died. At the same time, the poet conceived the poem “Retribution,” the work on which was never completed.
What was happening in Russia gloomily echoed the poet’s personal experiences, but Blok sincerely believed in the bright future of his native country.
1916 became the year of military service for the poet. He did not take part in hostilities; he served as a timekeeper.
Blok met the 1917 revolution with hope for changes for the better. The inspiration lasted for at most a year, presenting the public in 1918 with the controversial poem “The Twelve,” the article “Intellectuals and Revolution” and the poem “Scythians.”
With these works, the poet showed that he accepted Bolshevik Russia and was ready to live and work in a renewed country.
This allowed the new government to fully exploit the name of the famous poet. The poet no longer belonged to himself.
Heart pain, asthma, and nervous disorders became constant companions of the poet, who was loaded with everyday hardships, financial problems and constant work.
Blok tried to obtain permission to travel to Finland to rest and improve his health, especially since in 1920 he fell ill with scurvy.
Gorky, Lunacharsky and Kamenev asked for the poet. But the application was approved too late. On August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok passed away.
Very briefly by date
On November 16, 1880, the writer was born in the city of St. Petersburg. Born into a cultured family of a professor and writer.
In 1889 he was sent to a gymnasium and graduated in 1898.
Blok also graduated from the Institute of Law and History and Philology.
Blok began writing his first poems at the age of five. As a teenager, he was involved in acting.
At the age of 23 he married the daughter of the scientist Mendeleev, L.D. Mendeleeva. There was a quarrel with Andrei Bely over Mrs. Mendeleeva.
In 1904, a collection of poems by Alexander Blok was published and it was called “poems about a beautiful lady.”
A few years later, Blok and his wife managed to relax in Spain and Germany.
During the period of his creative activity, he was accepted by the “academy” society. Where were the wealthy, future famous creative figures?
Blok’s most famous work is “Night, Street, Lantern, Pharmacy.”
The dawn of the writer came in 1912-1914. The block mostly did not travel. During this time he worked in a publishing house.
The block was very sick. He was not allowed to go abroad for treatment. So in the end, in poverty and hunger, the writer died in 1921 from heart disease.
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Photo from 1903
unknown
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok born in 1880, November 16 in St. Petersburg. His parents, Alexander Lvovich and Alexandra Andreevna, were considered a family of high culture.
After the birth of their son, the married couple did not live together - Alexander Alexandrovich’s mother broke off relations with her husband and did not resume them after that. In 1889, she was able to obtain official permission to divorce, and after that she married the guard officer Kublitsky-Piottukh for the second time. It was decided to leave the son's surname unchanged.
Then Alexander Blok was 9 years old, and he and his mother and stepfather moved into his apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, near the picturesque bank of the Bolshaya Nevka.
The education of Alexander Alexandrovich begins in 1889, when he was sent straight to the 2nd grade of the gymnasium in Vedene, where he received knowledge until 1898. After high school, Alexander Blok entered St. Petersburg University, where he received two diplomas in succession - the first from the Faculty of Law, and the second diploma in historical and philological directions.
The rector of the university where Alexander Alexandrovich studied was his grandfather Beketov.
The first poems from Blok’s pen were found at the age of five. But then writing was prohibited for him. The desire to plunge into creativity absorbed him day after day, and the sixteen-year-old Blok began to actively engage in acting, quickly wanting to conquer the big stage.
The year 1903 became the year of Blok’s personal life. He takes as his wife the daughter of the popular scientist Dmitry Mendeleev - Lyubov Dmitrievna. His close friend, A. Bely, was also in love with Lyubov, and because of the wedding they had a fight for life.
Passing the year for the family, 1904 becomes the year of A. Blok’s creativity. Blok publishes his works for the first time in a small collection called “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.”
Five years later, Blok and his wife go on vacation to cities in Italy and Germany, and his work passes into the hands of the Academy society.
His early works for children and youth appeared in the style of symbolism. Further, growing up and changing his worldview, Blok began to reflect in his poems the social position of peasants and ordinary people. He had to endure a tragic human role, which was described in the work “The Rose and the Cross”; after this period of his life, his work becomes more retributive. Alexander’s most popular work is “Night, Street, Lantern, Pharmacy.” His collections were not deprived of children's poetry.
Years of the Revolution Alexander Blok decided not to leave anywhere, and began a career in one of the publishing houses in Petrograd. The events of the revolutionary years were also reflected in Blok’s works.
For several years before his death, Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was quite often and severely ill. To his request to leave the state for treatment in a hospital, the political bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (Bolsheviks) responded with an unequivocal refusal. A letter with such a decision greatly affected his health and mood, and Alexander completely refused medications and food, destroyed all notes, as well as records. For the last year, Alexander was delirious and asked to destroy his revolutionary poem “The Twelve.”
The last thing Alexander Alexandrovich Blok saw was Petrograd. There, on August 7, 1921, he died due to a heart attack.
The boy was sent to the St. Petersburg Vvedenskaya Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1898.
In 1898, Alexander Blok entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, but in 1901 he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology, from which he graduated in 1906 in the Slavic-Russian department.
From the beginning of the 1900s, Alexander Blok became close to the symbolists Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius in St. Petersburg, and with Valery Bryusov and Andrei Bely in Moscow.
In 1903, the first selection of Blok’s poems, “From Dedications,” appeared in the magazine “New Way”, headed by the Merezhkovskys. In the same year, a cycle of poems was published in the almanac “Northern Flowers” under the title “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (the title was suggested by Bryusov).
The events of the revolution of 1905-1907 played a special role in shaping Blok’s worldview, revealing the spontaneous, catastrophic nature of existence. In the lyrics of this time, the theme of the “elements” became the leading one - images of a blizzard, blizzard, motifs of free people, vagrancy. The Beautiful Lady is replaced by the demonic Stranger, Snow Mask, and the schismatic gypsy Faina. Blok published in the symbolist magazines “Questions of Life”, “Scales”, “Pereval”, “Golden Fleece”, in the latter he led the critical department from 1907.
In 1907, Blok’s collection “Unexpected Joy” was published in Moscow, in St. Petersburg - the cycle of poems “Snow Mask”, in 1908 in Moscow - the third collection of poems “Earth in the Snow” and a translation of Grillparzer’s tragedy “Foremother” with an introductory article and notes. In 1908, he turned to the theater and wrote “lyrical dramas” - “Balaganchik”, “King in the Square”, “Stranger”.
A trip to Italy in the spring and summer of 1909 became a period of “revaluation of values” for Blok. The impressions he gained from this journey were embodied in the cycle “Italian Poems”.
In 1909, having received an inheritance after the death of his father, he was freed for a long time from worries about literary earnings and focused on major artistic plans. In 1910, he began working on the great epic poem "Retribution" (which was not completed). In 1912-1913 he wrote the play "Rose and Cross". After the publication of the collection "Night Hours" in 1911, Blok revised his five books of poetry into a three-volume collection of poems (1911-1912). During the poet's lifetime, the three-volume set was republished in 1916 and in 1918-1921.
Since the autumn of 1914, Blok worked on the publication of “Poems by Apollo Grigoriev” (1916) as a compiler, author of the introductory article and commentator.
In July 1916, during the First World War, he was drafted into the army and served as a timekeeper of the 13th engineering and construction squad of the Zemsky and City Unions near Pinsk (now a city in Belarus).
After the February Revolution of 1917, Blok returned to Petrograd, where, as an editor of verbatim reports, he became a member of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate the crimes of the tsarist government. The materials of the investigation were summarized by him in the book “The Last Days of Imperial Power” (1921).
The October Revolution causes a new spiritual rise of the poet and civic activity. In January 1918, the poems “The Twelve” and “Scythians” were created.
After “The Twelve” and “Scythians,” Alexander Blok wrote comic poems “for the occasion,” prepared the latest edition of the “lyrical trilogy,” but did not create new original poems until 1921. During this period, the poet made cultural and philosophical reports at meetings of the Volfila - Free Philosophical Association, at the School of Journalism, wrote lyrical fragments “Neither Dreams nor Reality” and “Confession of a Pagan”, feuilletons “Russian Dandies”, “Fellow Citizens”, “Answer to the Question of red seal."
A huge amount of what he wrote was related to Blok’s official activities: after the October Revolution of 1917, for the first time in his life he was forced to seek not only literary income, but also public service. In September 1917, he became a member of the Theater and Literary Commission, from the beginning of 1918 he collaborated with the Theater Department of the People's Commissariat for Education, and in April 1919 he moved to the Bolshoi Drama Theater. At the same time, he worked as a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature" under the leadership of Maxim Gorky, and from 1920 he was chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets.
Initially, Blok's participation in cultural and educational institutions was motivated by beliefs about the duty of the intelligentsia to the people. But the discrepancy between the poet’s ideas about the “cleansing revolutionary element” and the bloody everyday life of the advancing regime led him to disappointment in what was happening. In his articles and diary entries, the motif of the catacomb existence of culture appeared. Blok’s thoughts about the indestructibility of true culture and the “secret freedom” of the artist were expressed in his speech “On the Appointment of a Poet” at an evening in memory of Alexander Pushkin and in the poem “To the Pushkin House” (February 1921), which became his artistic and human testament.
In the spring of 1921, Alexander Blok asked to be given an exit visa to Finland for treatment in a sanatorium. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), at whose meeting this issue was discussed, refused to allow Blok to leave.
In April 1921, the poet's growing depression turned into a mental disorder accompanied by heart disease. On August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok died in Petrograd. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery; in 1944, the poet’s ashes were transferred to the Literary Bridge at the Volkovsky cemetery.
Since 1903, Alexander Blok was married to Lyubov Mendeleeva (1882-1939), the daughter of the famous chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, to whom the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” was dedicated. After the poet’s death, she became interested in classical ballet and taught the history of ballet at the Choreographic School at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater (now the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet). She described her life with the poet in the book “Both true stories and fables about Blok and about herself.”
In 1980, in the house on Dekabristov Street, where the poet lived and died for the last nine years, the museum-apartment of Alexander Blok was opened.
In 1984, in the Shakhmatovo estate, where Blok spent his childhood and youth, as well as in the neighboring estates of Boblovo and Tarakanovo, Solnechnogorsk district, Moscow region, the State Museum-Reserve of D.I. Mendeleev and A.A. Blok.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
Creativity of A. Blok (early period)
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1. First poetic experiments. Features of symbolism in the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.”
The first childhood impressions of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok are associated with the house of his maternal grandfather, the rector of St. Petersburg University, the famous botanist A.N. Beketova. (After the birth of the child, Blok’s mother did not return to her husband, and later divorced him and married F.F. Kublitsky-Piottukh; the poet almost did not know his father, professor of law at the University of Warsaw A.L. Blok).
“Beketovsky House” for Blok is a world of great significance, love and bright memories preserved forever. Therefore, he becomes the prototype of one of the key symbols of Blok’s creativity, that “only one in the world” House that must be abandoned in the name of the sorrowful, but high-goal “earthly journey.”
An important feature of the Beketovs’ life is the intensity of their spiritual quest and high culture. His grandfather was a scientist and public figure, his grandmother was a translator from English, French and other European languages, his two aunts were a poet and a writer-translator, the future biographer of Blok, his mother was also engaged in literary work - all these were gifted people, widely educated, who loved and who understood the word. Blok owes this upbringing to the fact that he lived from early childhood in an atmosphere of vivid cultural impressions. Particularly important for him were the “lyrical waves that flowed” from Russian poetry of the 19th century. – Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Tyutchev, Polonsky.
Blok’s first poetic experiments (1898 - 1900), partially combined by him later into the cycle “Autelucem” (“Before the Light” in Latin), speak of his blood connection with Russian lyrics and the importance for him of the European poetic tradition (G. Heine, V .Shakespeare). Young Blok's perception of the world was determined mainly by romantic influences (the opposition of earth and sky; apology for passion and friendship, metaphorism of style).
But already in his early work one can see originality, bright lyricism, a tendency towards a maximalist heightened worldview, a vague but deep faith in the lofty goals of poetry.
In 1901 – 1902 Blok's circle of life impressions expands significantly. Home and book influences are supplemented by still unclear, but powerful impulses coming from reality itself, from the new century. The most important event of these years, which left an imprint on the poet’s entire life and work, would be his dramatic feeling for his future wife L.D. Mendeleeva.
Blok's Beautiful Lady, Stranger, well known to us from lyrical cycles and individual poems, are poetic portraits of actress Lyubov Mendeleeva, the eldest daughter of the famous chemist.
In the summer of 1989, 15-year-old Lyuba Mendeleeva, who dreamed of a stage, invited her brothers and sisters to organize an amateur theater on the Boblovo family estate. Her idea was supported with enthusiasm, since the usual summer fun was rather boring. There weren’t enough actors for the production, and then it was decided to invite 17-year-old Sasha Blok from neighboring Shakhmatovo - Lyuba had known him since childhood.
They first met many years ago in the building of St. Petersburg University. Blok and his mother then lived in the family of his grandfather, the rector of the university Beketov. Their apartment was located in the courtyard of the main university building, on the Neva embankment. There Sasha first saw a little blue-eyed girl in a plush coat and a fluffy hat, from under which thick golden curls spilled out. The nanny said to say hello, and Sasha gently shook the girl’s hand in a white furry mitten. The poet later wrote a poem inspired by this meeting:
How slim you are in a red fur coat,
With a bow in a braid,
If you laugh, your lips will tremble,
Eyelashes will tremble...
Then they often met at the dacha. The younger Mendeleevs found it easy and fun with Sasha, and they happily invited him to take part in the play. The most successful performance staged that year in the hay barn of the Mendeleev estate was “Hamlet” - with Blok in the role of the Danish prince and Love - Ophelia. Their romance began with this production. The lovers continued to meet in St. Petersburg. In August 1903 they got married in the “dark village church” in Tarakanovo.
The young couple settled with the mother of the poet Alexander Alexandrovich and her second husband Kublitsky-Piottukh. Blok continued to study at the university, and Lyubov, having completed the Bestuzhev courses, improved her acting skills. Life under the same roof with her domineering mother-in-law turned out to be a difficult test for Lyubov Dmitrievna. In addition, the couple were strapped for money. Their financial well-being depended on their parents, and they barely made ends meet.
Among like-minded writers, Mendeleev was surrounded by worship and sincere admiration. It seemed to them an unattainable, sublime ideal that fed Blok’s creative genius. However, Lyubov Dmitrievna was burdened by this state of affairs. The ambitious, gifted woman wanted to be given credit not only as the poet’s companion and muse, but also as a talented actress.
It was customary among Blok’s friends to show Lyubov Dmitrievna signs of attention. Therefore, at first the couple did not pay attention to the courtship of Andrei Bely. The poet's intentions, on the contrary, were the most serious. He convinced Mendeleev to give up everything and leave with him.
Bely was persistent, ardent, and so unlike the cold Blok, restrained in his manifestations of passion. The husband bowed to her, dedicated delightful lines, but, descending from the poetic Olympus into everyday life, he seemed to forget that his wife was not an ephemeral deity at all, but an ordinary woman of flesh and blood. Therefore, a hasty and dramatic affair with Andrei Bely was predetermined. Having become his mistress, Mendeleeva and her husband hastily left for Shakhmatovo.
Lyubov Dmitrievna needed solitude and peace to sort out her feelings. Only one thing was clear - there was no return to the old life. Mendeleeva announced that she would need time to make a decision, and then the relations between the people who made up the fatal triangle reached extreme tension. A painful break with Bely soon followed. Lyubov Dmitrievna, after painful thoughts, decided not to change anything in her life. Her feelings for her husband were still sincere and deep, and the momentary weakness that pushed Bely into the arms brought bitter disappointment - like Blok, Bely was more of a poet than a man.
Remaining devoted to her family and her beloved profession, Lyubov Dmitrievna and her husband went through the most difficult trials - civil war, revolution, famine. When the poet fell ill, Lyubov Dmitrievna sold her theatrical wardrobe, collection of antique lace, and library. She selflessly looked after her husband, remaining by his side until his last breath. And years later after the death of Alexander Blok she said: “... everything in life is over... My heart is already on the other side of life and inextricably with it.”
In 1904 The collection “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” is published, dedicated to L.D. Mendeleeva, is an original lyrical cycle, in which the poet’s romantic moods and his connection with symbolism were uniquely refracted.
The key to interpreting the motley life and cultural impressions for the author of the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” was the poetry of Vladimir Solovyov, which took possession of his being in connection with acute mystical romantic experiences. Through Solovyov's lyrics, Blok establishes Platonic and romantic ideas of “two worlds” - the opposition of “earth” and “sky,” material and spiritual.
For the young Blok, the jubilant joy of being, the breath of the earth - colorful and polyphonic, the glorification of earthly life, nature, and passion are especially important. Most clearly, Blok’s closeness to Solovyov’s tradition is revealed through the connection of his poetic ideal with the most important image of the Soul of the world for both philosophy and Solovyov’s poetry.
The poems of the cycle are multifaceted; they are works of intimate, landscape, and less often philosophical lyrics. But to the extent that what is depicted is involved in the deep layers of content, in myth, the plot, description, vocabulary - in a word, the entire figurative system of the cycle represents a chain of symbols. None of these plans exist separately; each of them seems to “shine through” the others in any detail of the narrative.
Both romantic writers and V. Solovyov poetically declared the idea of the polysemy of the image. Blok, one of the very first poets, expressed it through the very structure of his images - symbols and the entire cycle - myth. Conceptualized as a myth, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” present stories about the secrets of the world order and the formation of the world.
Love is embodied in the motive of the Meeting of the lyrical hero and the Lady. The story of the Meeting, which should transform the world and the hero, destroy the power of time (“to unite tomorrow and yesterday with fire”), create the kingdom of God on earth (“where the sky returned to the earth”) - this is the lyrical plot of the cycle.
In the program poem “I have a presentiment of you. The years are passing by..." - this combination of fiery faith in the immutability of the Lady ("All in one form I foresee You") and horror of "transformation" ("But I am afraid: You will change your appearance") is especially noticeable.
Partial transformation of the world and the “I” does not happen in the cycle. Having incarnated, the Lady, as the poet feared, turns out to be different: faceless, not heavenly, and the Meeting becomes a Pseudo-Meeting. Poems about the Beautiful Lady are by no means the debut of a newcomer; this first collection of poetry by Blok immediately introduced him to the world of great Russian poetry.
2. Blok's lyrics during the years of the first Russian revolution.
In 1903 - 1906. Blok more and more often turns to social poetry and its realistic tendencies. In the poem “Factory” (1903), the theme of popular suffering comes to the fore. Now the world turns out to be divided not into “heaven” and “earth,” but into those who are hidden behind the yellow windows, forcing people to “bend their weary backs,” and into the poor people. Intonations of sympathy for the “poor” are clearly heard in the work.
Civil poetry was an important step in the artist’s understanding of the world, and the new perception was reflected not only in poems with social themes, but in changing the general position of the poet.
Blok felt the spirit of the revolutionary era, first of all, as anti-dogmatic, dogma-destroying. It is no coincidence that it was in 1903 - 1906. separated from the mysticism of V. Solovyov.
A new poetic symbol characterizing the deep nature of existence - “element” - appears in close connection with the moods and views of other Russian symbolists and, above all, with the views of V. Ivanov. “Element” has been perceived by Blok since 1905 as the beginning of movement, constant destruction and creation, unchanged only in its endless variability. Motifs of the spontaneity of Russian life and revolution are widespread in Russian literature at the beginning of the 20th century.
3. The originality of the solution to the theme of love in the “Snow Mask” cycle.
“Element,” unlike the “Soul of the World,” cannot exist as a pure idea: it is inseparable from earthly incarnations. The general appearance of Blok's lyrics changed sharply and unexpectedly. The character of the lyrical experience changes completely: instead of knightly worship of the Lady, there is an earthly passion for the “many”, for the “stranger” encountered in the world of the big city. The new look of the love theme is caused by many reasons: global ideological, social (growing interest in city life, in the “bottom” of the city), biographical (the complexity and drama of Blok’s relationship with his wife).
The motifs of “wild passion” find their peak expression in the cycle “Snow Mask” (1908). Blok increasingly depicts “people of nature,” endowed with the attractive features of the elements. It is no coincidence that the heroine of the lyrics of these years is often a fiery and passionate daughter of the people (“Rided along the wild steppe”). Subsequently, Blok begins to treat his work of this period of “antithesis” very warily, sometimes piercingly feeling the “abyss” that lie in wait for a person on the paths of passive self-giving to the “elements”. Blok constantly feels an alarming need to look for some new paths, new high ideals. In the significant poem “The Stranger” (1906), the lyrical hero excitedly peers at a beautiful visitor to a country restaurant, trying in vain to find out who is in front of him: the embodiment of high beauty, the image of “ancient beliefs” or the stranger - a woman from the world of drunkards with “rabbit eyes”? but, despite the bitter irony of the final lines, the overall emotional mood of the poem is still not in the affirmation of an illusory truth, but in a complex combination of admiration for beauty, exciting feelings of the mystery of life and the tireless need to unravel it.
And slowly, walking between the drunken,
Always without companions, alone
Breathing spirits and mists
She sits by the window.
And they breathe ancient beliefs
Her elastic silks
And a hat with mourning feathers,
And in the rings there is a narrow hand.
And chained by a strange intimacy,
I look behind the dark veil
And I see the enchanted shore
And the enchanted distance.
The new worldview gave rise to changes in poetics. The pull back to the harmonious world of the Beautiful Lady is combined in Blok’s work of these years with criticism of Solovyov’s utopianism and mysticism, and the influence of Russian and European modernism is combined with the first appeals to the realistic tradition (Dostoevsky, Gogol, L. Tolstoy).
Literature:
1. Bely Andrey. Memories of Blok. – M., 1995.
2. Orlov V. Alexander Blok. Essays on creativity. – M., 1986.
3. Payman A. Origins of Russian symbolism / Authorized translation from English. V.V. Isaakovich. – M., 2000.
4. Soloviev B. The poet and his feat. The creative path of A. Blok. – M., 1971.
5. Sokolov A.G. History of Russian literature of the late XIX – early XX centuries. – M., 1999.
6. Timofeev L.I. The work of Alexander Blok. – M., 1963.
7. Trifonov. Russian literature of the 20th century: Reader. Any edition.
8. Reader of critical materials: Russian literature at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. – M., 1999.
