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

Currents of symbolism

Based on the ideological position and time of formation, this is classified into two stages. The symbolist poets who appeared in the 1890s, the list of which includes such figures as Balmont, Gippius, Bryusov, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, are called “seniors.” The direction was replenished with new forces, which significantly changed its appearance. “Younger” symbolist poets such as Ivanov, Blok, and Bely made their debut. The second wave of the movement is usually called young symbolism.

"Senior" Symbolists

In Russia, this literary movement made itself known in the late 1890s. In Moscow, Valery Bryusov stood at the origins of symbolism, and in St. Petersburg - Dmitry Merezhkovsky. However, the most striking 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 Konstantin Balmont. At the end of the 19th century, he clearly stated the “search for correspondences” between meaning, color and sound. Similar ideas were found in Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and subsequently in many Russian poets, such as Blok, Bryusov, Khlebnikov, Kuzmin. Balmont saw this search for correspondence mainly in the creation of a sound-semantic text - music that gives birth to meaning. The poet became interested in sound writing and began to use colorful adjectives instead of verbs in his works, as a result of which he created, as his ill-wishers believed, poems that were almost meaningless. At the same time, this phenomenon in poetry led over time to the formation of new poetic concepts, including melodic recitation, zaum, and sound writing.

"Younger" symbolist poets

The second generation of Symbolists includes poets who first began publishing in the 1900s. Among them were both very young authors, for example, Andrei Bely, Sergei 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 an apartment on the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, in which M. Kuzmin, A. Bely, A. Mintslova, V. Khlebnikov once lived, and N. Berdyaev, A. Akhmatova, A. Blok visited , A. Lunacharsky. In Moscow, symbolist poets gathered in the editorial office of the Scorpion publishing house, whose editor-in-chief was V. Bryusov. Issues of the most famous symbolist publication, “Scales,” were prepared here. Scorpio's employees included such authors as K. Balmont, A. Bely, Y. 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. became a time of change, disappointment, gloomy omens and uncertainty. During this period, the approaching death of the existing socio-political system could not have been more clearly felt. Such trends could not but influence Russian poetry. The poems of the Symbolist poets were heterogeneous, since the poets held conflicting views. For example, such authors as D. Merezhkovsky and N. Minsky were at first representatives of civil poetry, and later began to focus on the ideas of the “religious community” and “God-building.” The “older” symbolists did not recognize the surrounding reality and said “no” to the world. Thus, Bryusov wrote: “I don’t see our reality, I don’t know our century...” Early representatives of the reality movement contrasted the world of creativity and dreams, in which the individual becomes completely free, and they portrayed reality as boring, evil and meaningless.

Artistic innovation was of great importance for poets - the transformation of word meanings, the development of rhyme, rhythm, and the like. The “senior” symbolists were impressionists, striving to convey subtle shades of impressions and moods. They had not yet used a system of symbols, but the word as such had already lost its value and became significant only as a sound, a musical note, a link in the overall construction of the poem.

New trends

In 1901-1904. A new stage in the history of symbolism began, and it coincided with the revolutionary upsurge in Russia. The pessimistic sentiments inspired in the 1890s were replaced by a premonition of “unheard-of changes.” At this time, Young Symbolists appeared on the literary arena, followers of the poet Vladimir Solovyov, who saw the old world on the verge of destruction and said that divine beauty should “save the world” by combining the heavenly beginning of life with the material, earthly. Landscapes began to appear frequently in the works of symbolist poets, but not as such, but as a means of revealing mood. Thus, in poems one constantly encounters a description of the languidly sad Russian autumn, when the sun does not shine or casts only faded sad rays on the ground, leaves fall and quietly rustle, and everything around is shrouded in a swaying foggy haze.

Also, the favorite motif of the “younger” Symbolists was the city. They showed him as a living being with his own character, with his own form. The city was often presented as a place of horror, madness, a symbol of vice and soullessness.

Symbolists and revolution

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

Decline of Symbolism

At this time, the artistic worldview of the Symbolists changed. If earlier they perceived beauty as harmony, now for them it has acquired a connection with the elements of the people, with the chaos of struggle. At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, symbolism fell into decline and no longer gave new names. Everything viable, vigorous, and young was already outside of him, although individual works were still created by symbolist poets.

List of major poets representing symbolism in literature

Symbolism was the most significant phenomenon in the poetry of the “Silver Age”. Having emerged in the 1890s as a protest against positivism and “wingless realism,” symbolism was an aesthetic attempt to escape from the contradictions of reality into the realm of eternal ideas, to create a supra-real world. The theoretical foundations of symbolism were given by D.S. Merezhkovsky in his 1892 lecture “On the causes of the decline and new trends in modern Russian literature.” Symbolists argued for three main elements: mystical content; symbols that naturally arise from the depths of the artist’s soul; refined ways of expressing feelings and thoughts. The goal of symbolism was the rise to an “ideal human culture,” which can be achieved through a synthesis of the arts. The key concept of symbolism was the symbol. A symbol is a polysemantic allegory that contains the prospect of unfolding meanings. In a compressed form, the symbol reflects the true, hidden essence of life. Vyach. Ivanov wrote: “A symbol is only a true symbol when it is inexhaustible and limitless in its meaning. He has many faces, many thoughts and is always dark in the last depths.” But a symbol is also a full-fledged image; it can be perceived without the meanings it contains.

There were two branches in Russian symbolism - “senior symbolists” (late 1890s) and young symbolists (early 1900s). The “elders” associated art with the search for God, with religious ideas (D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, F. Sologub). In their poetry, they developed motifs of loneliness, the fatal duality of man, the unknowability of reality, and withdrawal into the world of premonitions.

“Younger” symbolists (A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov) are looking for its secret meaning in the real. Their symbols, which outwardly did not indicate a connection with reality, were supposed to reflect reality, cognizable not by reason, but intuitively. The philosophical basis of the “younger symbolists” were the ideas of Vladimir Solovyov, who believed that the world is ruled by the World Soul. She is embodied in the image of Eternal Femininity, to which the poet must strive and try to express it. The symbolists proceeded in their work from the idea of ​​two worlds: the real world only bears the imprints of eternal entities, the true world. Material from the site

The poetry of the Symbolists is distinguished by its special tonality, vivid emotionality, and musicality. It creates its own system of images - the Beautiful Lady, Eternal Femininity, Soul of the World. A vocabulary of its own is developing, where the words “mystery”, “spirit”, “music”, “eternity”, “dream”, “foggy ghost”, etc. are often used. Each symbolist had his own circle of key symbolic images.

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Silver Age. Symbolism

Symbolism (from Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) - a movement in European art of the 1870s - 1910s; one of the modernist movements in Russian poetry at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. Focuses primarily on expression through symbol intuitively comprehended entities and ideas, vague, often sophisticated feelings and visions.

The word itself "symbol" in traditional poetics it means “multi-valued allegory,” that is, a poetic image that expresses the essence of a phenomenon; in the poetry of symbolism, he conveys the individual, often momentary ideas of the poet.

The poetics of symbolism is 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 style;
• poetics of allusion and allegory;
• symbolic content of everyday words;
• attitude to the word as a cipher of some spiritual secret writing;
• understatement, concealment of meaning;
• the desire to create a picture of an ideal world;
• aestheticization of death as an existential principle;
• elitism, focus on the reader-co-author, creator.

The term "symbolism" comes from the Greek word for "sign" and denotes an aesthetic movement that emerged in France at the end of the 19th century and influenced all areas of art: literature, music, painting and theater. Particularly widespread

the wound received symbolism in literature.

Emergence

As noted above, symbolism in literature is associated primarily with France: a group of young poets, including Mallarmé, Moreas, Gil, de Regnault, Valéry and Claudel, announced the creation of a new direction in art. At the same time, the “Manifesto of Symbolism”, written by Moreas, was published in the magazine “Figaro” - it described the basic aesthetic principles based on the views of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Henri. In particular, the author of the Manifesto defined the nature and function of the symbol: according to Moreas, it supplanted the traditional artistic image and embodied the Idea.

Essence of the symbol

In order to talk about what symbolism is in literature, one should first of all define what a symbol is. Its main distinguishing feature is its polysemy, so it cannot be deciphered. Perhaps the most successful interpretation of this concept belongs to the Russian writer Fyodor Sologub: he called the symbol a window to infinity. A symbol contains a whole series of meanings, while an image is a single phenomenon.

Symbolism in literature

If we talk about French literature, it is necessary to name the names of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé. Charles Baudelaire owns a unique poetic motto of symbolism - the sonnet “Correspondences”; the search for correspondence formed the basis of the symbolist principle of synthesis, the desire to unite all the arts. Baudelaire's work is dominated by duality motifs: love and death, genius and illness, external and internal. Stéphane Mallarmé argued that the purpose of a writer is not to describe things, but to convey his impressions of them. His poem “Luck Never Abolishes Chance,” consisting of a single phrase typed without a single punctuation mark, gained particular popularity. Paul Verlaine also manifested symbolism in his poems. Literature, according to the poet, should be musical, because music is at the pinnacle of all arts.

Symbolism in B

elgia

When you hear the words “Belgian symbolism,” what comes to mind, first of all, is the work of Maurice Maeterlinck, the author of such famous plays as “The Blue Bird,” “The Blind,” and “In There.” His heroes exist in a semi-fantastic setting, the action of the plays is full of mysticism, magic, and hidden meanings. Maeterlinck himself, quite in the spirit of symbolism, insisted that the creator should convey not actions, but states.

Russian symbolism in literature

In Russia, this trend split into two branches - the “Old Symbolists” and the “Young Symbolists.” By the beginning of the 20th century, the movement had truly flourished, but Tyutchev and Fet are also considered the harbingers of symbolism in Russia. Also, the content and philosophical basis of Russian symbolism were influenced by the views of Vladimir Solovyov, in particular, his images of the World Soul and Eternal Femininity. These ideas were subsequently transformed in an original way into the poetry of Bely, Blok, and Gumilyov.

Plan.

I. Introduction.

II. Main content.

1. History of Russian symbolism.

2. Symbolism and decadence.

3. Specificity of views (features of symbolism).

4. Currents.

5. Famous symbolists:

a) Bryusov;

b) Balmont;

d) Merezhkovsky;

e) Gippius;

III. Conclusion (The meaning of symbolism).

Introduction.

The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. in Russia, this is a time of change, uncertainty and gloomy omens, this is a time of disappointment and a feeling of the approaching death of the existing socio-political system. All this could not but affect Russian poetry. The emergence of symbolism is connected with this.

“SYMBOLISM” is a movement in European and Russian art that emerged at the turn of the 20th century, focused primarily on artistic expression through the SYMBOL of “things in themselves” and ideas that are beyond sensory perception. Striving to break through visible reality to “hidden realities”, the super-temporal ideal essence of the world, its “imperishable” Beauty, the symbolists expressed a longing for spiritual freedom.

Symbolism in Russia developed along two lines, which often intersected and intertwined with each other among many of the largest symbolists: 1. symbolism as an artistic movement and 2. symbolism as a worldview, a worldview, a unique philosophy of life. The interweaving of these lines was especially complex for Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely, with a clear predominance of the second line.

Symbolism had a wide peripheral zone: many major poets joined the Symbolist school, without being considered its orthodox adherents and without professing its program. Let's name at least Maximilian Voloshin and Mikhail Kuzmin. The influence of the Symbolists was also noticeable on young poets who were members of other circles and schools.

First of all, the concept of the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry is associated with symbolism. With this name, it is as if one recalls the golden age of literature, the time of Pushkin, that has passed into the past. They call the time at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Russian Renaissance. “In Russia at the beginning of the century there was a real cultural renaissance,” wrote the philosopher Berdyaev. “Only those who lived at that time know what a creative upsurge we experienced, what a breath of spirit swept through Russian souls. Russia experienced a flowering of poetry and philosophy, experienced intense religious quests, mystical and occult moods.” In fact: in Russia at that time Leo Tolstoy and Chekhov, Gorky and Bunin, Kuprin and Leonid Andreev worked; Surikov and Vrubel, Repin and Serov, Nesterov and Kustodiev, Vasnetsov and Benois, Konenkov and Roerich worked in the visual arts; in music and theater - Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, Stanislavsky and Kommisarzhevskaya, Chaliapin and Nezhdanova, Sobinov and Kachalov, Moskvin and Mikhail Chekhov, Anna Pavlova and Karsavina.

In my essay, I would like to consider the main views of the symbolists, and become more familiar with the currents of symbolism. I would like to know why the school of symbolism fell, despite the popularity of this literary movement.

History of Russian symbolism.

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 Minsky’s books “In the Light of Conscience” and A. Volynsky “Russian Critics” . During the same period of time - in 1894–1895 - three collections “Russian Symbolists” were published, in which poems of their publisher, the young poet Valery Bryusov, were published. This also included the initial books of poems by Konstantin Balmont - “Under the Northern Sky”, “In the Boundless”. In them, too, the symbolist view of the poetic word gradually crystallized.

Symbolism did not arise in Russia in isolation from the West. Russian symbolists were to a certain extent influenced by French poetry (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé), and English and German, where symbolism manifested itself in poetry a decade earlier. Russian symbolists caught echoes of the philosophy of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. However, they resolutely denied their fundamental dependence on Western European literature. They looked for their roots in Russian poetry - in the books of Tyutchev, Fet, Fofanov, extending their related claims even to Pushkin and Lermontov. Balmont, for example, believed that symbolism has existed in world literature for a long time. In his opinion, the symbolists were Calderon and Blake, Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, Heinrich Ibsen and Emil Verhaeren. One thing is certain: in Russian poetry, especially in Tyutchev and Fet, there were seeds that sprouted in the work of the Symbolists. And the fact that the symbolist movement, having arisen, did not die, did not disappear before its time, but developed, drawing new forces into its channel, testifies to the national soil, to certain of its roots in the spiritual culture of Russia. Russian symbolism differed sharply from Western symbolism in its entire appearance - spirituality, diversity of creative units, the height and richness of its achievements.

At first, in the nineties, the poems of the Symbolists, with their unusual phrases and images for the public, were often subject to ridicule and even mockery. Symbolist poets were given the title of decadents, meaning by this term decadent moods of hopelessness, a sense of rejection of life, and pronounced individualism. Traits of both can be easily detected in the young Balmont - motifs of melancholy and depression are characteristic of his early books, just as demonstrative individualism is characteristic of Bryusov’s initial poems; The Symbolists grew up in a certain atmosphere and largely bore its stamp. But already by the first years of the twentieth century, symbolism as a literary movement, as a school, stood out with all certainty, in all its facets. It was already difficult to confuse him with other phenomena in art; he already had his own poetic structure, his own aesthetics and poetics, his own teaching. The year 1900 can be considered the milestone when symbolism established its special face in poetry - this year saw the publication of mature symbolist books, brightly colored by the author’s individuality: “Tertia Vigilia” (“The Third Watch”) by Bryusov and “Burning Buildings” by Balmont.

The arrival of the “second wave” of symbolism foreshadowed the emergence of contradictions in their camp. It was the poets of the “second wave,” the Young Symbolists, who developed theurgic ideas. The crack passed, first of all, between the generations of Symbolists - the older ones, “which included, in addition to Bryusov, Balmont, Minsky, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Sologub, and the younger ones (Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Blok, S. Solovyov). The revolution of 1905, during which the symbolists took completely different ideological positions, aggravated their contradictions. By 1910, a clear split had emerged between the Symbolists. In March of this year, first in Moscow, his son-in-law in St. Petersburg, at the Society of Admirers of the Artistic Word, Vyacheslav Ivanov read his report “Testaments of Symbolism.” Blok, and later Bely, came out in support of Ivanov. Vyacheslav Ivanov brought to the fore as the main task of the symbolist movement its theurgic effect, “life-building”, “transformation of life”. Bryusov called theurgists to be creators of poetry and nothing more, he declared that symbolism “wanted to be and has always been only art.” Theurgical poets, he noted, tend to deprive poetry of its freedom, its “autonomy.” Bryusov increasingly distanced himself from Ivanov’s mysticism, for which Andrei Bely accused him of betraying symbolism. The Symbolist debate of 1910 was perceived by many not only as a crisis, but also as the collapse of the Symbolist school. There is a regrouping of forces and splitting in it. In the 1910s, young people left the ranks of the Symbolists, forming an association of Acmeists who opposed themselves to the Symbolist school. The futurists made a noisy appearance in the literary arena, unleashing a hail of ridicule and mockery on the symbolists. Bryusov later wrote that symbolism in those years lost its dynamics and became ossified; the school “frozen in its traditions, lagged behind the pace of life.” Symbolism, as a school, fell into decay and did not give new names.

Literary historians date the final fall of the Symbolist school in different ways: some date it to 1910, others to the early twenties. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that symbolism as a movement in Russian literature disappeared with the advent of the revolutionary year 1917.

Symbolism has outlived itself, and this obsolescence has gone in two directions. On the one hand, the requirement of mandatory “mysticism”, “revelation of secrets”, “comprehension” of the infinite in the finite led to the loss of the authenticity of poetry; The “religious and mystical pathos” of the luminaries of symbolism turned out to be replaced by a kind of mystical stencil, template. On the other hand, the fascination with the “musical basis” of verse led to the creation of poetry devoid of any logical meaning, in which the word was reduced to the role of no longer a musical sound, but a tin, ringing trinket.

Accordingly, the reaction against symbolism, and subsequently the fight against it, followed the same two main lines.

On the one hand, the “Acmeists” opposed the ideology of symbolism. On the other hand, “futurists” who were also ideologically hostile to symbolism came out in defense of the word as such. However, the protest against symbolism did not stop there. It found its expression in the work of poets who were not affiliated with either Acmeism or Futurism, but who through their creativity defended the clarity, simplicity and strength of the poetic style.

Despite the conflicting views of many critics, the movement produced many excellent poems that will forever remain in the treasury of Russian poetry and will find their admirers among subsequent generations.

Symbolism and decadence.

From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the “newest” decadent, modernist movements, sharply opposed to revolutionary and democratic literature, became widespread. The most significant of them were symbolism, acmeism and futurism. The term “decadence” (from the French word decadence - decline) in the 90s was more widespread than “modernism”, but modern literary criticism increasingly speaks of modernism as a general concept that covers all decadent movements - symbolism, acmeism and futurism. This is also justified by the fact that the term “decadence” at the beginning of the century was used in two senses - as the name of one of the movements within symbolism and as a generalized characteristic of all decadent, mystical and aesthetic movements. The convenience of the term “modernism”, as a more clear and generalizing one, is also obvious because groups such as Acmeism and Futurism subjectively disavowed decadence as a literary school in every possible way and even fought against it, although, of course, this detracted from their decadent essence didn't disappear at all.