List of famous Russian poets of the Silver Age. See what “Russian poets of the Silver Age” are in other dictionaries. Features of Russian poetry of the Silver Age

The end of the old century and the beginning of the new, the contradictory era of decline and prosperity - this is the time that gives birth to geniuses. Outstanding poets of the Silver Age: Osip Mandelstam, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Vladislav Khodasevich, Andrei Bely, Igor Severyanin, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Gumilev and many others, during their lifetimes often irreconcilably quarreled with each other on the basis of divergent opinions about the prospects for the development of Russian philosophical thought, religion and their influence on art. However, over time, all these names merged for us into a single symbol of a beautiful and turbulent era. Their work began to be designated by a single concept - “poets of the Silver Age”. Not every contemporary of ours will understand what is the fundamental difference between the concepts of the philosophy of art of that time, and why they received such a sonorous general name.

The concept of “Silver Age” associatively refers us to the poetry of the “Golden” century - the first third of the 19th century, when Alexander Pushkin and his classmates worked. These rebels and upstarts (in the eyes of respectable citizens) turned out to be geniuses who transformed the cultural and political face of Russia. The heirs to this grandiose revolution were the Russian poets of the Silver Age. But if the creators of Pushkin’s era gave birth to a new form of Russian literature, created a euphonious modern language, then at the end of the 19th century people of art encroached on the inner content of the word, began to experiment with meaning and sound, trying to penetrate the innermost secrets of the language, its psychological essence, the secrets of emotional influence .

Intense struggle, a feeling of decline and hope for revival, a challenge to outdated traditions, a search for new ways of artistic expression, interest in taboo topics, occultism, religion, mysticism - the poets of the Silver Age tried to reflect all this in their work. A new awakening of Russia, a premonition of a catastrophe, a passionate desire to live and a feeling of hopelessness gave rise to hitherto unprecedented forms of poetic art. A destructive large-scale war, in which chemical weapons were involved, called into question the main value - the sanctity of human life, thereby undermining all moral foundations.

European democratic revolutions, a series of revolutionary events within Russia, were partly provoked and partly themselves were shaped by new cultural and philosophical movements. Modernism in art became a reflection of that era, and the poets of the Silver Age expressed in amazing poems the self-perception of a person afraid of being crushed by the technogenic hydra of progress. Dadaism was born - one of the popular movements of that time. E. Golyshev, V. Kandinsky - followers of Hugo Bahl, who appeared on stage in a suit made from a piece of aluminum pipe and read rhythmic and meaningless sets of letter combinations, firmly believed that new times do not require the use of old words - technological progress has destroyed the harmony of meaning and sound, from now on every spoken sound will influence a person’s emotions and that’s enough. This is how poems in the “yes-yes” style appeared.

The categorical denial of previous values and the inescapable force forced new poets to seek solace in the world of fantasy and symbols. Symbolist poets of the Silver Age (O. Mandelstam, A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva) believed in the power of words and denied the influence of progress on literature. With their poems they affirmed the idea that only by plunging into one’s own and finding there symbols expressing the eternal ideas of God, Soul, Love and Death can a person be reborn to a new life.

The Silver Age of Russian poetry cannot be considered a chronological period in which only one new thing was formed. It is an era of powerful intellectual upsurge, which gave rise to many concepts for the development of art: acmeism, futurism, imagism, dadaism, new peasant poetry, etc. All of them significantly influenced the formation of new art, changing ideas about man’s place in the world, about Progress, about God and about the Soul.

The poets of the Silver Age founded a new movement in literature at the end of the nineteenth century. At that moment, impending changes were already felt in the atmosphere and it is not surprising that in the current situation new stars appeared in the poetic firmament of Russia.

During this period, such great poets and poetesses as Blok, Gumilev, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Bely and many others became famous.

The main themes of their poems were the ideas of moral quest and spiritual perfection in difficult times for the fatherland. This article will provide a brief overview of the literary movements of this period and their representatives.

Silver Age of Russian Poetry

This is a period whose time boundaries begin at the end of the 19th century and end with the end of the October Revolution (early 20th century). This period lasted a total of twenty-seven years and coincided with the heyday of the Art Nouveau era.

The definition of “silver” came into use only in the second half of the twentieth century, and in European culture the designated period is known as the “fin de siècle” (“end of the century”).

The concept of “silver” was formed under the influence of Russian emigration, which is not at all surprising, since many great minds left Russia after the change of power in 1917.

One can trace an analogy with the “golden age” - the so-called Pushkin era (the first third of the nineteenth century). In comparison with the golden age, the silver age symbolizes decline, degradation and decadence; it also abounds in poems and poems about love, but they are characterized by strong eroticism.

Poets and poetesses of the Silver Age - alphabetical list

Famous figures of the poetic era are briefly presented in the list.

The most prominent representatives of the trend, loved by many, are considered:

Tsvetaeva Marina.
Akhmatova Anna.
Blok Alexander.
Bunin Ivan.
Pasternak Boris.
Yesenin Sergey.
Mayakovsky Vladimir.
Bryusov Valery.

It was their works that became symbols of the Silver Age. Even in school textbooks for children one can find their best works, and the older the student becomes, the more deeply the life and work of poets is studied.

Literary movements of the Silver Age

The Silver Age includes different trends and directions. Sometimes, during their creative career, authors identified themselves first with one style, then with another.

The main directions are as follows:

symbolism;
futurism;
Acmeism;
imagism.

Symbolism and its main features

Symbolism appeared as a manifestation of depressive moods in the culture of the late nineteenth century. At this moment, peasant ideas are coming to an end in Russia and idealistic philosophy is becoming more and more popular.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880 - 1921) - Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator, literary critic.

Symbolism, in turn, is divided into two subtypes:

senior symbolists;
junior symbolists.

Symbolist poets in Russian literature

The younger symbolists include Blok, Bely and Ivanov, who perceived symbolism as a philosophy. The elders include Bryusov, Balmont, Sologub and Minsky.

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873 - 1924) - Russian poet, prose writer, playwright, translator, literary critic, literary critic and historian.

These poets considered symbolism as something aesthetic and depicted a depressive atmosphere in their poems.

Futurism and its signs

The main idea of futurism is the idea of a future where the emphasis is on urbanization and technological progress. Representatives of futurism, through their creativity, also promoted the idea of the collapse of stereotypes in culture.

Russian futurist poets

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930) - Russian Soviet poet. In addition to poetry, he clearly distinguished himself as a playwright, screenwriter, film director, film actor, artist, editor of the magazines “LEF” (“Left Front”), “New LEF”.

Futurism is quite heterogeneous; it is divided into several subtypes:

Cubofuturism– rejection of past stereotypes, shocking and use of occasionalisms. The main representatives are:
- Guro;
- Mayakovsky;
- Livshits;
- Kamensky;
- Twisted.
Egofuturism– he is characterized by egoism, the use of neologisms, and acute sensations. Top personalities:
- Northerner;
- Shershenevich;
- Ivnev.

Peasant poetry- this group stands out conditionally, since the poets did not consider themselves to be part of such a movement and did not create any associations. But you can notice common features inherent in their works, for example, a connection with nature and people.

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin (1895 - 1925) - Russian poet, representative of new peasant poetry and lyrics, and in a later period of creativity - imagism.

Main representatives:

Klyuev;
Yesenin;
Klychkov;
Oreshin.

Acmeism and its basic principles

This is the current of symbolism in poetry emphasizes the material over the spiritual, clearly delineates images and uses the precision of words. It was established largely thanks to the poetic association “Workshop of Poets”.

Acmeists of the Silver Age

It is believed that it was the representatives of Acmeism who created the most beautiful and piercing poems.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886 - 1921) - Russian poet, founder of the school of Acmeism, prose writer, translator and literary critic.

The founders of the movement are considered to be Gumilyov and Gorodetsky. Later they were joined by Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Zenkevich and Ivanov.

Imagism and its main features

Imagism is a literary movement that arose in the post-revolutionary period in Russia. The main feature of imagism is creating images through metaphors and metaphorical chains, comparing direct and figurative.

Vadim Gabrielevich Shershenevich (1893 - 1942) - Russian poet, translator, one of the founders and main theorists of imagism.

Although this trend arose just two years after the revolution, in its content and direction it had nothing in common with the revolution. This was the last sensational school of Russian poetry of the 20th century.

Imagists of the Silver Age and their works

Often in the poems and love lyrics of the Imagists one can see the ideas of anarchism and shockingness.

V. G. Shershenevich, collection “Romantic Powder. Poets. Opus 8th", 1913

Most popular figures:

Shershenevich - began as a futurist, later a subverter and critic of futurism, a fierce propagandist of imagism, the ideological leader of the entire movement;
Mariengorf;
Ivnev;
Erdman.

Conclusion

The poets of the Silver Age are united not only by their brilliant creativity, permeated with decadent ideas, but also by a difficult fate. Through the analysis of their works, one can trace turning points in the history of Russia and the world.

It is worth noting that it was in this century that women were recognized as full-fledged artists, and women's poetry was gaining popularity. For example, Anna Akhmatova first published her collection “Evening” in 1912.

The Silver Age of Russian poetry is closely connected with the philosophy and history of the era because the attention of the intelligentsia was switched from social and political issues to mysticism and issues of spirituality.

Report:

“Favorite writers of the “Silver Age” and their works.”

Teacher: Pomaz N. B.

Student: Mostyaev N.I. (gr. 19PV-901P)

MGKIP

Moscow 2002

“Silver Age” is perceived by most readers as a metaphor for good, beloved writers of the early 20th century. Depending on personal taste, A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, D. Merezhkovsky and I. Bunin, N. Gumilyov and S. Yesenin, A. Akhmatova and A. Kruchenykh, F. Sologub and A. Kuprin may appear here.

“School literary criticism” is added to complete the picture by the aforementioned list of M. Gorky and a number of “Znanievtsev” writers

(artists grouped around the Gorky publishing house “Znanie”).

With this understanding, the Silver Age becomes synonymous with the long-existing and much more scientific concept of “literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.”

The poetry of the Silver Age can be divided into several main movements such as: Symbolism. (D. Merezhkovsky,

K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, A. Bely), Pre-Acmeism. Acmeism.(M. Kuzmin, N. Gumilev,

A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam),

“ Peasant literature ” (N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin)

Futurists of the Silver Age(I. Severyanin, V. Khlebnikov)

Igor Severyanin (I.V. Lotarev 1887 - 1941)

Since 1913, the collection “Loud Boiling Cup” (reprinted 9 times until 1915) has been included in the great literature. The first was followed by other books of poetry: “Zlatolira” (1914), “Pineapples in Champagne” (1915), “Victoria Regia” (1915), “Poetic Intermission” (1915), “Unanswered Toast” (1916). During these years, I. Severyanin became a fashionable “singer,” but assessed this soberly, calling it “ambiguous glory.”

I. Severyanin’s search for new poetic forms (an important part of the aesthetic program) is closely “linked” to urban realities:

Friends! But if the day is deadly

The last giant will fall,

Then your gentle one, your only one,

I will take you to Berlin!

In these poems, the poet was what the public wanted to see him. He dissolved in the tastes of a certain contingent of lovers of extravagant, exalted poetry, people who fenced themselves off from impending turbulent events. A characteristic mutual influence: the public created Northerner, and he formed his audience, not always caring about the quality of his poetic influence. “... wasn’t I the one who sang vice/For dozens of years...”, he writes in the poem “Sunny Savage” (1924), overestimating his early work.

The rejection of bourgeois reality is wittily expressed: “The shine and ringing of a career is a ruble, / And the passport of the mind is a diploma.”

These motives brought I. Severyanin closer to the Cubo-Futuralists. However he considered the essence of his creativity to be his own fantasy -“my whims, my magical surprises.” The emphasis was placed on the “ego”, i.e. “I” of the poet. From here flowed a stream of his self-aggrandizement: “I am a Northern genius”; “I fulfilled my task by conquering literature,” which caused many criticisms from my contemporaries.

The word “genius,” however, referred not so much to the personality of the author, who also felt his weakness, but to him as the bearer of the “universal soul.” The main search is the search for natural beauty:“I go to nature as if to a monastery.” Therefore, life is revealed to them as “lilac hope,” “a hymn to jasmine nights,” unity with “a spring apple tree in unmelting snow.”

The lyrical hero experiences something unknown to anyone: “I am drawn by the river, the lilac blossom, / I am blazing with the sun, I am pouring with the moon...” And nature bestows its secret.

Here is one of the main postulates of Severyanin’s lyrics: to surprise - with unexpected turns of meaning, with limitless possibilities of word formation. And - a constant claim to originality, although always supported by taste and stylistic diversity:

We do not tolerate cheap copies

Their familiar tones,

And amazing utopias

We are waiting like pink elephants...

Velimir Khlebnikov
(Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov)
28.X. (09.XI.)1885-28.VI.1922
Khlebnikov attracted attention and aroused interest with his original personality, striking with his worldview and independence of views, rare for his age. He meets a circle of metropolitan modernist poets (including Gumilyov and Kuzmin, whom he calls “my teacher”), and visits Vyach’s famous “bathhouse” in the artistic life of St. Petersburg in those years. Ivanov, where writers, philosophers, artists, musicians, and actors gathered.
In 1910-1914, his poems, poems, dramas, prose were published, including such famous ones as the poem “Crane”, the poem “Maria Vechora”, the play “Marquise of Deses”. The poet’s first brochure with mathematical and linguistic experiments, “Teacher and Student,” was published in Kherson. A scientist and science fiction writer, poet and publicist, he is completely absorbed in creative work. The poems “Rural Charm”, “Forest Horror”, etc., and the play “The Mistake of Death” were written. The books “Roar! Gloves. 1908 - 1914", "Creations" (Volume 1). In 1916, together with N. Aseev, he issued the declaration “Trumpet of the Martians,” in which Khlebnikov’s division of humanity into “inventors” and “acquirers” was formulated. The main characters of his poetry were Time and the Word; it was through Time, fixed by the Word and transformed into a spatial fragment, that the philosophical unity of “space-time” was realized for him. O. Mandelstam wrote: “Khlebnikov fiddles with words like a mole, meanwhile he dug passages in the ground for the future for a whole century...” In 1920 he lived in Kharkov, wrote a lot: “War in a mousetrap”, “Ladomir”, “ Three Sisters”, “A Scratch on the Sky”, etc. In the city theater of Kharkov, the “buffoonish” election of Khlebnikov as “Chairman of the Globe” takes place, with the participation of Yesenin and Mariengof.
The work of V. Khlebnikov falls into three parts: theoretical studies in the field of style and illustrations for them, poetic creativity and comic poems. Unfortunately, the boundaries between them are drawn extremely carelessly, and often a wonderful poem is spoiled by an admixture of unexpected and awkward jokes or word formations that are far from thought out.

Very sensitive to the roots of words, Viktor Khlebnikov deliberately neglects inflections, sometimes discarding them completely, sometimes changing them beyond recognition. He believes that each vowel contains not only the action, but also its direction: thus, the bull is the one who hits, the side is what is hit; beaver is what is hunted, babr (tiger) is the one who hunts, etc.
Taking the root of a word and attaching arbitrary inflections to it, he creates new words. So, from the root “sme” he produces “smekhachi”, “smeevo”, “smeyunchi-ki”, “to laugh”, etc.

As a poet, Viktor Khlebnikov has an incandescent love for nature. He is never happy with what he has. His deer turns into a carnivorous beast, he sees how at the “vernissage” dead birds on ladies’ hats come to life, how people’s clothes fall off and turn - wool into sheep, linen into blue flax flowers.

Osip Mandelstam was born in 1891 into a Jewish family. From his mother, Mandelstam inherited, along with a predisposition to heart disease and musicality, a heightened sense of the sounds of the Russian language.

Mandelstam, being a Jew, chooses to be a Russian poet - not just “Russian-speaking,” but precisely Russian. And this decision is not so self-evident: the beginning of the century in Russia was a time of rapid development of Jewish literature, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, and, partly, in Russian. Combining Jewry and Russia, Mandelstam’s poetry carries universalism, combining national Russian Orthodoxy and the national practicalism of Jews.

My staff, my freedom -

The core of existence

Will the people's truth soon

Will the truth become mine?

I didn't bow to the ground

Before I found myself;

He took the staff and had fun

And he went to distant Rome.

And the snow on the black fields

They will never melt

And the sadness of my family

It's still foreign to me.

For Mandelstam's generation, the first Russian revolution and the events accompanying it coincided with the entry into life. During this period, Mandelstam became interested in politics, but then, at the turning point from adolescence to youth, he left politics for poetry.

Mandelstam avoids words that are too conspicuous: he has neither the revelry of refined archaisms, like Vyacheslav Ivanov, nor the intensification of vulgarisms, like Mayakovsky, nor the abundance of neologisms, like Tsvetaeva, nor the influx of everyday expressions and words, like Pasternak.

There are chaste charms -

High harmony, deep peace,

Far from the ethereal lyres

Larks installed by me.

In thoroughly washed niches

During the hours of attentive sunsets

I listen to my penates

Always rapturous silence.

The beginning of the First World War - the turn of time:

My age, my beast, who can

Look into your pupils

And with his blood he will glue

Two centuries of vertebrae?

Mandelstam notes that the time has passed for the final farewell to Alexander’s Russia (Alexander III and Alexander Pushkin), European, classical, architectural Russia. But before its end, it is precisely doomed “greatness,” precisely “historical forms and ideas” that surround the poet’s mind. He must be convinced of their internal emptiness - not from external events, but from the internal experience of efforts to sympathize with the “sovereign world”, to feel into its structure. He says goodbye to him in his own way, sorting through old motifs, putting them in order, compiling a kind of catalog for them through the means of poetry. In Mandelstam’s cipher system, doomed Petersburg, precisely in its capacity as the imperial capital, is equivalent to that Judea, about which it is said that, having crucified Christ, it “petrified” and is associated with the holy apostate and perishing Jerusalem. The colors that characterize the basis of grace-filled Judaism are black and yellow. So these are the colors that characterize the St. Petersburg “sovereign world” (the colors of the Russian imperial standard).

The definition “Silver Age” was first used to characterize the peak manifestations of culture at the beginning of the twentieth century (Bely, Blok, Annensky, Akhmatova and others). Gradually, this term began to be used to refer to the entire culture of the turn of the century. The Silver Age and the culture of the turn of the century are intersecting phenomena, but do not coincide either in the composition of cultural representatives (Gorky, Mayakovsky) or in the time frame (the traditions of the Silver Age were not broken off in 1917, they were continued by Akhmatova, B.L. Pasternak, M. Voloshin, M. Tsvetaeva).

Not all writers, artists and thinkers who lived and worked at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries are representatives of the culture of the Silver Age. Among the poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were those whose work did not fit into the currents and groups that existed at that time. Such are, for example, I. Annensky, in some ways close to the Symbolists and at the same time far from them, looking for his way in a huge poetic sea; Sasha Cherny, Marina Tsvetaeva.

V.S. Solovyov’s contribution to the philosophy, aesthetics and poetry of the Silver Age, to the formation of Russian symbolism and its artistic system is generally recognized, while the philosopher himself sharply criticized the activities of the first Russian symbolists and “Mirskusnik”, dissociated himself from modernist philosophy and poetry. Such symbolic figures of Russian “art for art’s sake” as A. Maikov, A. Fet, A. K. Tolstoy were felt as predecessors and sometimes representatives of the poetry of the Silver Age, despite their pronounced artistic and aesthetic traditionalism and archaism of philosophical and political views and poetic preferences.

F. Tyutchev and K. Leontyev, who were tendentious to the extreme, were often seen as “insiders” in the Silver Age, who did not even live to see the period that received this name, but became famous for their conservatism, opposition to revolutionary democracy, and socialist ideals.

In 1917, V.V. Rozanov accused Russian literature of ruining Russia, becoming perhaps its most important “destroyer.” But it only recorded the disappearance of a single frame of reference, within the framework of which until now the self-identification of Russian life had taken place.

The powerful movement of critical realism continued to dominate in literature, but modernism also became widespread. Modernist movements acquired their significance to the extent that they were able to respond in one way or another to calls to conduct a merciless critique of the outdated autocracy started by the imperialists of the World War, to accept the February and then the October Revolutions of 1917. The process of “decomposition” began in lyric poetry with the loosening of the poetic word and the release in it of many equal meanings. But as for the modernist breakdown of Russian classical versification, the renewal of rhyme, experimentation in the field of stylistics and vocabulary, these formalistic hobbies characterize all movements of poetry of the early twentieth century and their value was measured by the ability to move away from the deliberate abstruseness in these quests, to come to the clarity that helped find a reader, meet mutual attraction and support on his part.

In the 1890s, new literary trends from Western Europe began to penetrate into Russia, and poetry began to claim the role of expressing the feelings, aspirations and mindsets of the younger generation, while crowding out prose.

Poets began to call themselves “new,” emphasizing their ideology, which was new to the traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century. During these years, the trend of modernism had not yet been determined and not yet fully formed.

After the whole era of Russian realism of the 19th century, which exposed the burning problems of existence and, further, with the cruelty of a positivist natural scientist, observed and analyzed social ulcers and diseases, unclouded aestheticism, poetic contemplation and moral integrity, the perception of life as a “difficult harmony” of the Pushkin era seemed not so too naive and simple. In any case, they appeared to be much deeper and more enduring cultural phenomena than social denunciations and descriptions of everyday life, the theory of the “environment,” democratic and radical ideas for the reconstruction of society that shook the second half of the 19th century.

In the phenomenon of “pure art” from Pushkin to Fet, the figures of the Silver Age were especially attracted by their artistic ambiguity and broad associativity, which made it possible to symbolically interpret images and plots, ideas and pictures of the world; their timeless sound, which made it possible to interpret them as the embodiment of eternity or the periodic repetition of history.

The Russian Silver Age turned to examples of the classical era of Russian literature, and at the same time other cultural eras, in its own way interpreting and evaluating the works of Pushkin and Tyutchev, Gogol and Lermontov, Nekrasov and Fet and other classics, not at all in order to repeat them in new historical context. Writers of the Silver Age sought to achieve the same universality, perfection, harmony in their system of values and meanings in order to revive aesthetic, religious, philosophical and intellectual ideals and values that had fallen out of the cultural life of the Russian intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th century, especially the radically minded intelligentsia.

The combination of creative orientation towards the peaks of spiritual culture of the 19th century as the unconditional reference values and norms of national culture with the desire to radically revise and modernize the values of the past, to build on previous norms, to develop a new, fundamentally neoclassical approach to culture gave rise to the beginning of acute contradictions that created internal tension of the era of Russian cultural renaissance. On the one hand, it was literature that claimed to be classic and went back to the unshakable tradition of Russian classics; on the other, it was a “new classic” designed to replace the “old classics”. The literature of the Silver Age faced two paths - either, continuing to develop the classics, simultaneously rethink them and transform them in the spirit of modernity (as the Symbolists and their immediate successors the Acmeists did), or demonstratively overthrow them from their once unshakable pedestal, thereby establishing themselves as deniers of the classics , as poets of the future (futurists).

However, in both the first case (Symbolists) and the second (Acmeists), “neoclassicism” was so new, so negated the classics, that it could no longer be considered a classic (even a new one) and treated the real classics rather as non-classics. Indirectly, this duality (modern - both classic and non-classical) was reflected in the name of the culture at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the “Silver Age”: as classic as the “Golden Age”, but classic in a different way, creatively, at least with a demonstrative loss in price. However, for the Russian avant-garde, which either declared the overthrow of the classics in principle (V. Khlebnikov, D. Burliuk), or ironically stylized it, this was not enough, and the Silver Age did not exist for it - neither in relation to the Golden Age, nor in itself .

As during the “golden”, Pushkin, age, literature claimed the role of the spiritual and moral shepherd of Russian society. At the beginning of the twentieth century, outstanding works were created by the classics of Russian literature: L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, V.G. Korolenko, A.I. Kuprin, A.M. Gorky, M.M. Prishvin. Dozens of stars of the first magnitude also lit up in the firmament of poetry: K.D. Balmont, A.A. Blok, N.S. Gumilev, the very young M.I. Tsvetaeva, S.A. Yesenin, A.A. Akhmatova.

Writers and poets of the Silver Age, unlike their predecessors, paid close attention to the literature of the West. They chose new literary trends as their guide: the aestheticism of O. Wilde, the pessimism of A. Schopenhauer, the symbolism of Baudelaire. At the same time, the figures of the Silver Age took a new look at the artistic heritage of Russian culture. Another passion of this time, reflected in literature, painting, and poetry, was a sincere and deep interest in Slavic mythology and Russian folklore.

In the creative environment of the Silver Age, neo-romantic sentiments and concepts were widespread, emphasizing the exclusivity of events, actions and ideas; the gap between a sublime poetic dream and a mundane and vulgar reality; contradictions between appearance and internal content. A striking example of neo-romanticism in the culture of the Silver Age is the work of M. Gorky, L. Andreev, N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky, M. Tsvetaeva... However, we see individual neo-romantic features in the activities and lives of almost all representatives of the Silver Age from I. Annensky to O .Mandelshtam, from Z. Gippius to B. Pasternak.

The tasks of creative self-awareness of artists and thinkers of that time, and at the same time - creative rethinking and renewal of previously established cultural traditions began to come to the forefront of culture.

Thus, the ground arose for a new cultural synthesis associated with the symbolic interpretation of everything - art, philosophy, religion, politics, behavior itself, activity, reality.

art culture literature architecture

Acmeism, imagism, symbolism, futurism are literary movements that emerged in Russian poetry at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Which Russian poets of the Silver Age are their most prominent representatives, and who forever became one of the most important pages of poetry of the last century, without belonging to any of the modernist movements? Read on.

Alexander Blok

Alexander Blok is a poet of the Silver Age, whose work, full of mystical symbols and mysteries, still continues to attract more and more new fans.

Throughout 1908-1916, the theme of the Motherland was the main one for Blok. Moreover, Blok argued: the poet must identify himself with his native land, imagine it as if it were some kind of living organism with which he is inextricably linked.

Blok was also concerned about the study of the human soul. He very often wrote his works in the first person, passing all the plots through himself - as if dissolving his own “I” in many others. It didn’t matter whether he wrote about biblical, real-life or fictional characters, he imagined himself in their place and tried to experience all the emotions with them. So he writes the cycle of poems “Scary World”.

Another, no less important theme of Blok’s work is love. In the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” he dedicated poems to the Beautiful Lady, the expectation of her ideal of beauty. And in the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” Blok even compared the image of Rus' with the image of a woman.

Alexander Blok, like the Silver Age poets Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont and others, belonged to the modernist movement of symbolism. Some of the most famous works of Alexander Blok are also the poem “The Twelve”, the cycle of poems “Motherland”, the poems “Stranger”, “About valor, about exploits, about glory...”, “Night, street, lantern, pharmacy” and others .

Anna Akhmatova

The next poet of the Silver Age is Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. While still a child, little Anna Gorenko (the real name of the poetess) dreamed of writing poetry. During her life, she had the opportunity to see two different Russias - the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods, while in her work she sought to protect and preserve the traditions of classical Russian culture.

Thanks to her own restraint, femininity and apolitical creativity, Akhmatova’s persona ideally embodied the tragic spirit of Russia in the 20th century. Like the Silver Age poets Nikolai Gumilyov, Mikhail Zenkevich, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Lozinsky and others, at one time the poetess joined the literary movement of the Silver Age called Acmeism.

Akhmatova’s work was characterized by reflections on life, love, the beauty of nature, and history. But the main one was still the theme of love, which allowed the poetess to create a special female image, with inner strength, versatility, firmness, but at the same time tenderness. Akhmatova’s poetic heroine is always straightforward, there is no affectation in her, and she openly shares personal tragedies and experiences with the reader.

Another important lyric theme for Akhmatova is love for the Motherland. She considered thoughts about leaving Russia unworthy for someone who is called a poet (she talks about this, for example, in the poem “I am not with those who abandoned the earth...”) - in her opinion, poets are soul and heart must be tied to their land and to their people.

Particularly popular are Akhmatova’s poems “I have learned to live simply, wisely...”, “I am not asking for your love...”, “I clenched my hands under a dark veil...”, “Like a heavy huge hammer...” and the poem “ Requiem".

Sergey Yesenin

Sergei Yesenin is a poet of the Silver Age who, despite his short creative activity (he passed away when he was only thirty years old), managed to leave a rich poetic legacy. In it, Yesenin managed to vividly portray peasant Russia, which he madly loved.

The poet gave the theme of the Motherland a central place in his work. He was called the singer of peasant Rus'. Every now and then he returned in poems to the village of Konstantinovo, where he was born and lived, sang the beauty of Russian nature and peasant life. But after the revolution, everything became different: Yesenin could not accept Soviet Russia. At that time, he wrote almost nothing about the peasantry and his native village, but turned mainly in his poetry to the theme of love, which, nevertheless, continues to be intertwined with the theme of the Motherland.

After moving to Moscow, Yesenin was accepted into their ranks by poets who belonged to a literary movement called imagism. During that period, he wrote one of his most famous creations - “Confession of a Hooligan.” The best poems of Sergei Yesenin are also considered “Letter to a Woman”, “I have only one fun left...”, “Go away, my dear Rus'...”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”, “Goodbye, my friend , goodbye...", "You don't love me, you don't regret me..." and many others.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

The scale of this poet’s creative personality is difficult to deny. The first stage of Mayakovsky's creativity is characterized by futuristic ideas. He himself and the poets David Burliuk, Alexey Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov created a manifesto of Cubo-Futurism, a modernist literary movement of the Silver Age, called “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.” This movement meant a creative figure, in particular a poet, as a fighter for the future, which was art.

However, after the revolution, a new stage began in Mayakovsky’s work - the Soviet one. Mayakovsky looked back at pre-revolutionary Russia with hatred. His poems were filled with a thirst for the destruction of the old way of life and the creation of a new one. He considers inaction and indifference to be a terrible sin; only forward movement and struggle were his motto.

Mayakovsky's main theme was not only revolution, but also love - often they were even intertwined with each other in strange ways. It can be argued that the lyrical hero of almost all his love poems was the maximalist author himself. Mayakovsky did not know how and did not want to retain within himself the feelings that he always boldly expressed in his work, often even exaggerating them, which contributed to the transformation of love poems into social poems.

Mayakovsky’s most famous poems: “Here!”, “Could you?”, “Listen!”, “To you,” “What is good and what is bad,” “Loves? Does not love? I’m wringing my hands…”, “Lilichka”, “Cloud in Pants”, “Attitude towards the Young Lady”.

Marina Tsvetaeva

One of the most beautiful pages of Russian poetry of the 20th century is the work of Marina Tsvetaeva. Her poems were surprisingly lively, bright and sincere, almost always aimed at creating a dialogue: in them Tsvetaeva addressed all her readers, contemporaries and those who would later turn to her work.

The theme of creativity ran like a red thread through the poetess’s works. From the poems “Roland’s Horn” and “Poets” one can understand Tsvetaeva’s thought: despite the fact that they have readers, poets, like many creative individuals, are inherently alone. The poetess was not afraid to openly admire the work of her colleagues, and even recognized Alexander Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova as her inspirations. But Tsvetaeva’s concept of a muse is extremely rare - she is more grateful to her own work for her creativity than to her.

One of the main themes of Marina Tsvetaeva’s work is the theme of love and human relationships. Moreover, while many other poets were quite enthusiastic individuals, Tsvetaeva dedicated almost all her poems about love to only one person - her own husband. These poems are similar to all other works of the poetess - just as sincere, strong and emotional.

Tsvetaeva did not belong to any of the popular modernist movements of the Silver Age. Today she is known for many poems, for example, “To my poems written so early...”, “Byron”, “Anna Akhmatova”, “Books in red binding”, “I wear his ring with defiance...”, “I like that you It’s not me who are sick...", "Under the caress of a plush blanket..." and others.

We invite you to watch the following video about the Silver Age of Russian poetry, which covers the literary trends of that period in more detail: