The last years of the life of a block. Alexander Blok: poetry, creativity, biography, interesting facts from life. Rejection of symbolism

Blok Alexander Alexandrovich (1880-1921) - Russian poet and writer, playwright and publicist, literary critic and translator. His work belongs to the classics of Russian literature of the twentieth century.

Parents

The poet's father, Alexander Lvovich, had German roots in his family, he was a lawyer by education, worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Public Law at Warsaw University.

The boy's mother, translator Alexandra Andreevna, had purely Russian roots, she was the daughter of a famous academician, rector of the St. state university Beketova A. N. In the family she was called Asya and loved incredibly, firstly, because she was the youngest, and secondly, for kindness, affection and a very cheerful character. Most of all, Asya loved literature, especially poetry, perhaps this love was later transferred to the future poet at the genetic level.

Block's parents met at a dance party. Asya made a strong impression on Alexander Lvovich, he fell in love and began to look for meetings with the girl in every possible way, he often visited the Beketovs' house, where receptions were held on Saturdays. The relationship between Asya and Alexander Lvovich developed quite quickly, at the beginning of 1879 they got married in the university church. The groom was 9 years older than the bride, on the wedding day they immediately left for Warsaw.

Alexander Lvovich loved his wife madly, but in life he turned out to be a despot and tyrant, his love alternated with torment and bullying. Their first child was stillborn. The woman grieved desperately and dreamed of giving birth to a second baby as soon as possible.

When Asya was pregnant for the second time, she and her husband came to St. Petersburg to defend his dissertation. Settled immediately in the house of her parents. Having received another degree, Alexander Lvovich Blok returned to Warsaw alone. His wife's parents persuaded him to leave his wife with them, because at the eighth month of pregnancy it is not safe to be cowardly on trains.

In the house of his grandfather Beketov, Alexander Blok was born. The boy was large and well-built, from the first day of his life he became the center of attention in the family. The father was immediately informed in Warsaw about the birth of his son. When he arrived in St. Petersburg for the Christmas holidays and stayed with the Beketovs, all of his despotic character was revealed to them. Everyone understood that Asya hid from her parents how she actually lived with her husband.

Alexander Lvovich again left alone, it was decided that his wife, weakened by childbirth, with her tiny son, would remain in the parents' house until spring. But she never returned to her husband in Warsaw, her father insisted that her daughter and grandson stay in St. Petersburg.

The kid was restless and capricious, sometimes he could not be rocked for several hours. He fell asleep only in the arms of his grandfather, who walked with his grandson in his arms and at the same time prepared for lectures at the university.

Sashenka began to walk and talk late, but every summer spent in the village of Shakhmatovo added to his health. By the age of three, the boy was so pretty that passers-by could not pass by without looking back at the child.

The future poet inherited exactly in half the features of both his father and mother in his character. Through the line of Bloks, Alexander got the mind, the depth of feelings and the strongest temperament. But along with these harsh features, Becket's sides were also present in him, Alexander Blok was very generous, kind and childishly trusting.

Childhood

The boy grew up frisky and interesting, but very self-willed, it was almost impossible to dissuade or accustom him to anything, his mother often had to punish Sasha.

Until the age of three, they could not find a suitable nanny for him. But then the nanny Sonya appeared, who had a special relationship with the child. Little Blok adored her, most of all he liked it when the nanny read Pushkin's fairy tales aloud to him.

He loved to play very much, while he absolutely did not need comrades, he was so fond of playing himself that he could run around the rooms all day, depicting people, horses, conductors. In addition to games and nanny's fairy tales, he had another strong hobby - ships, he painted them in different types and hung all over the house, this passion remained with him for life.

In the fourth year of his life, the boy first traveled abroad with his mother and nanny, in Trieste and Florence, where he swam a lot in the sea and sunbathed.

From there we returned to his beloved village of Shakhmatovo. As a child, Blok explored all the surroundings here, later he will display this place in his poem "Retribution". He knew where mushrooms are found, lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots bloom, where you can pick up a whole basket of wild strawberries.

Little Sasha was madly in love with animals, yard dogs, hedgehogs, even insects and earthworms aroused admiration in him. At the age of five, he dedicated his first poems to a gray hare and a domestic cat.

His own father, Alexander Lvovich, came to Russia for the holidays, visited his son, but did not cause much sympathy in the boy. Senior Blok was more concerned about getting his wife back, but she insistently asked for a divorce. Until he himself decided to remarry in Warsaw, he refused to divorce.

And already in 1889, when Alexander Blok was nine years old, my mother married a second lieutenant of the grenadier regiment Kublitsky-Piottuch. She took her husband's surname, the son remained Blok.

They moved to the Bolshaya Nevka embankment, there was a new apartment in the regimental barracks, where they lived for 15 years. The stepfather did not have much love for his stepson, but he did not offend him either. The boy made friends with the neighboring children, together they skated when the Nevka was covered with thick ice. At home, he was engaged in drawing and sawing, he especially liked to bind books.

Gymnasium and University

In 1889, Sasha entered the Vvedensky gymnasium. Studying could not be called even, arithmetic was given worst of all, he was very fond of ancient languages.
As a high school student, he was unsociable, did not like unnecessary conversations, often in seclusion, wrote poetry.

Already at the age of ten, he wrote two issues of the Ship magazine. And in the last years of the gymnasium, together with his cousins, he began to publish the handwritten journal Vestnik. Grandfather occasionally helped his grandchildren to illustrate the magazine. This edition contained the poetry and prose of the young Blok, rebuses and riddles, translations from French, and even a small play, A Trip to Italy. In one of the issues, a fairy tale was published, where the characters were beetles and ants. Basically, Blok wrote humorous poems, but he also had a very touching poem dedicated to his mother.

Blok was not fond of reading too much in his gymnasium years, but he had favorite poets and writers:

Zhukovsky and Pushkin;
Jules Verne and Dickens;
Cooper and Mine Reid.

In his senior years, Blok became interested in theater, recited Shakespeare, enrolled in a theater group, and even had several roles in performances.

In 1897, Alexander, with his mother and aunt, went to Germany, where his mother was undergoing treatment. This is where his first love happened. Ksenia Mikhailova Sadovskaya was a secular, beautiful and pampered lady of 37 years old, the mother of a family. The young man was instantly struck by her bottomless blue eyes, passion captured him and gave him poetic inspiration.

Beauty first began to lure an inexperienced guy. Every morning he bought and gave her roses, they rode alone in a boat, and, of course, Blok dedicated his most touching poems to her that a young poet in love could write. He signed them "mysterious K.M.S."

Returning to Russia, in 1898 Alexander graduated from the gymnasium. Immediately he became a law student at St. Petersburg University. After three years of study, he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology, choosing the Slavic-Russian department. In 1906, the poet graduated from the university.

Family life

In 1903, Alexander married Mendeleev's daughter, Lyubov.

They met a long time ago, during the summer holidays in the village, where the Mendeleev estate was located next to Beketovskaya. He was then 14 years old, and Lyuba - 13, together they walked and played. Their second meeting took place when Blok had just graduated from the gymnasium, this time the young people made a completely different impression on each other.

While studying at the university, Blok often visited the Mendeleevs at home, at which time his poems appeared, which were later included in the collection “Poems about the Beautiful Lady”, he dedicated them to his future wife Lyubov.

In the year of his marriage, another significant event took place in the life of the poet, his poems began to be published in the magazine "New Way" and in the almanac "Northern Flowers". Blok's work was quickly appreciated both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow.

After the wedding, the young Blocks lived in his stepfather's house, went to Moscow for a while, and in the summer they left for Shakhmatovo. Here they began to equip their family nest with their own hands. Alexander greatly respected physical labor, he even wrote in his poems about how he loves any work - “what to lay down the stove, what to write poetry.” Blocks arranged a chic garden, built a turf sofa in it, and often hosted guests. They were such a beautiful sunny couple among the wild flowers that they were even called Princess and Tsarevich.

They were for each other the strongest love of all life. But their marriage turned out to be rather strange. Blok considered his wife the embodiment of eternal femininity and did not allow that he could make carnal love with her. He had other women, Lyuba also had an affair with actor Konstantin Lavidovsky, from whom she became pregnant. Blok, who had been ill in his youth, could not have children, therefore he took the news of his wife's pregnancy with joy that God would give them, free birds, a child. But this happiness was not destined to come true, the born boy died, having lived only eight days. Blok suffered this loss very hard and often visited the boy's grave.

At the end of his life, the poet will say that there were two loves in his life - Lyuba and everyone else.

Creation

In 1904, the Grif publishing house published Blok's first book, Poems about the Beautiful Lady.

The years 1906-1908 were marked by Blok's particular success and growth as a writer. He missed all the events of the 1905 revolution through himself, he himself took part in demonstrations, which was reflected in a number of his works. One after another, his books are published:

"Unexpected joy";
"Snow mask";
"Earth in the snow";
"Lyric Drama".

In 1909, the poet traveled to Germany and Italy, the result of this trip was the collection "Italian Poems".

In 1912, he wrote the drama "Rose and Cross", which was appreciated by V. Nemirovich-Danchenko and K. Stanislavsky, but this play was never staged.

In 1916, Blok served in the army, he was assigned to Belarus in the engineering units of the All-Russian Zemsky Union. During the service, he learned about the revolution that had taken place, which at first he perceived with mixed feelings, but did not emigrate from the country.

During this period, such famous collections of poems as "Night Hours", "Poems about Russia", "Beyond the Past Days", "Gray Morning" fall.

Since 1918, Alexander was accepted into the service of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry, which investigated the illegal actions of officials. Here he worked as an editor.

The revolutionary events led to a deep creative crisis and depression in the poet. After the works "The Twelve" and "Scythians" he stopped writing poetry, in his words, "all sounds ceased."

Illness and death

From 1918 to 1920, Blok worked very hard in various positions in committees and commissions. He was terribly tired, as the poet himself said, “they drank me,” his health declined sharply. Several diseases became aggravated at once: cardiovascular insufficiency, asthma, scurvy, neurosis. In addition to everything, the family was in a difficult financial situation.

In the middle of the summer of 1921, the poet began to have mental problems: he either fell into unconsciousness or returned to life again. All this time, his wife Luba took care of him. Doctors suspected he had cerebral edema.

On August 7, 1921, the poet Alexander Blok died in the presence of his wife and mother. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery, and in 1944 his ashes were reburied at the Volkovsky cemetery in St. Petersburg.

A museum-reserve of Alexander Blok has been opened in Shakhmatovo, where a monument to the poet and his Beautiful Lady has been erected.

Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator, literary critic; classic of Russian literature of the XX century, one of the largest representatives of Russian symbolism

Alexander Blok

short biography

The famous Russian poet was born on November 28 (November 16, O.S.) 1880 in St. Petersburg, in an intelligent family. His father was a lawyer, law professor, his mother was the daughter of a university rector, a translator. Already in early childhood it became clear that the boy was gifted. At the age of five, he wrote poetry, as a teenager, published home magazines with his brothers. After graduating from the Vvedensky gymnasium (1891-1898), Alexander Blok entered the Faculty of Law Petersburg University, but three years later he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology (Slavic-Russian Department), from which he graduated in 1906.

While studying at the university, the period of Blok's formation as an artist, his awareness of his life's calling, fell. For 1901-1902 he wrote more than eight dozen poems, inspired by love for his future wife, the daughter of the famous chemist, L. Mendeleeva. The spring of 1902 brought acquaintance with D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius, whose influence on Blok, his creative biography turned out to be really huge. In 1903, in the magazine " New way”, which they published, Blok first appeared before the public, not only as a poet, but also as a critic. In the same year, his poems were published in the "Literary and Artistic Collection: Poems of Students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University", and the cycle "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (almanac "Northern Flowers") was published, which made Blok a famous poet.

An important factor in the formation of the poet's worldview was the revolution of 1905, which showed life from a different, more realistic side and left a noticeable imprint on creativity. During this period, Unexpected Joy (1906), Free Thoughts (1907), Italian Poems (1908), Snow Mask (1907), On the Kulikovo Field (1908) were published. In 1909 begins new page in Blok's life. After the tragic events (the death of the poet's father, the child of L. Mendeleeva), the couple leaves for Italy. Traveling to a country with a completely different way of life, contact with classical Italian art created a completely new mood in the poet's soul. Making a report in April 1910 on the current state of Russian symbolism, Alexander Blok announced that a significant stage in his life and work had come to an end.

Thanks to the receipt of his father's inheritance, Blok could not think about his daily bread and devote himself entirely to the implementation of large-scale literary ideas. So, in 1910, he began to write an epic poem called "Retribution", which was destined to remain unfinished.

In July 1916, the poet was drafted into the army, he ended up in the engineering and construction team of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and served in Belarus. The February and October revolutions, like everyone else, became the starting point for a new stage in his biography. They were met by the poet not without conflicting feelings, but his civic position was to stay together with his homeland in difficult times. In May 1917, Blok worked as an editor in the Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate the illegal actions of former ministers, chief executives and other senior officials. In January 1918 he published a series of articles entitled "Russia and the Intelligentsia"; in the same year his famous poem "The Twelve" was published. Many fellow writers, such as D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, M. Prishvin, I. Ehrenburg, Vyach. Ivanov and others, sharply criticized his attitude towards the Bolsheviks.

In turn, the Soviet authorities did not fail to turn the loyalty of the famous poet to their advantage. He needed public service as a source of income, since it was out of the question to feed on earnings in the literary field, however, appointments to various committees and commissions were often made without his consent. In September 1917 Blok was a member of the Theatrical and Literary Commission; in the period from 1918-1919. the place of service was the People's Commissariat of Education, the Union of Poets, the Union of Workers of Fiction, the publishing house "World Literature"; in 1920, the poet was appointed to the post of chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets.

If at first Blok regarded his participation in the work of cultural and educational institutions as a debt of an intellectual to the people, then gradually an epiphany came to him: he understood that the gulf between the cleansing revolutionary elements he praised and the emerging totalitarian bureaucratic colossus was getting deeper, and this provoked a depressive mood. . He was aggravated by a huge physical and moral stress, the disorder of life in a revolutionary city, and family problems. Not only the poet's psyche suffered: he developed asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and in the winter of 1918 he fell ill with scurvy. In February 1927, at an evening in memory of Pushkin, Blok delivered a speech “On the Appointment of a Poet”, spoke about the “lack of air” that was ruining poets, about the futility of attempts by the “new mob” to encroach on their freedom. She became his kind of testament as a person and a writer.

In the spring of 1921, Blok applied to the authorities for permission to travel to Finland for treatment, but the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks rejected the request. Lunacharsky and Gorky asked for the poet, and at the next meeting, nevertheless, a decision to obtain an exit visa was issued, but it could no longer save the situation. Being seriously ill, suffering severely not only from ailments, but also from material need, on August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok died in his Petrograd apartment. They buried him at the Smolensk cemetery; later, his remains were reburied at the Volkovskoye cemetery (Literatorskie Mostki).

Biography from Wikipedia

General information

Alexander Blok's father - Alexander Lvovich Blok (1852-1909), lawyer, professor at Warsaw University, came from noble family, his brother Ivan Lvovich was a prominent Russian statesman.

Mother - Alexandra Andreevna, nee Beketova, (1860-1923) - daughter of the rector of St. Petersburg University A. N. Beketov. The marriage, which began when Alexandra was eighteen years old, turned out to be short-lived: after the birth of her son, she broke off relations with her husband and subsequently did not renew them. In 1889, she obtained a decree of the Synod on the dissolution of marriage with her first husband and married a guards officer F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, while leaving her son the name of her first husband.

Nine-year-old Alexander settled with his mother and stepfather in an apartment in the barracks of the Life Grenadier Regiment, located on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, on the banks of the Bolshaya Nevka. In 1889 he was sent to the Vvedensky gymnasium. In 1897, having found himself abroad with his mother, in the German resort town of Bad Nauheim, the 16-year-old Blok experienced his first strong youthful love for the 37-year-old Xenia Sadovskaya. She left a deep mark on his work. In 1897, at a funeral in St. Petersburg, he met with Vladimir Solovyov.

In 1898 he graduated from the gymnasium, in the summer his passion for Lyubov Mendeleeva begins; in August he entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. Three years later he transferred to the Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology, from which he graduated in 1906. At the university, Blok met Sergei Gorodetsky and Alexei Remizov.

At this time, the poet's second cousin, later the priest Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov (junior), became one of the closest friends of the young Blok.

Blok wrote his first poems at the age of five. At the age of eight, young Alexander first meets the Kazan lyric poet, wandering peasant Gavrila Gabriyev. After a brief conversation with Gabriev, young Alexander finally affirms his desire to become a poet, about which he informs his mother the next day. At the age of 10, Alexander Blok wrote two issues of the Ship magazine. From 1894 to 1897, together with his brothers, he wrote the handwritten journal Vestnik, a total of 37 issues of the journal were published. Since childhood, Alexander Blok spent every summer in the estate of his grandfather Shakhmatovo near Moscow. 8 km away was the Boblovo estate, owned by Beketov's friend, the great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev. At the age of 16, Blok became interested in theater. In St. Petersburg, Alexander Blok signed up for a theater group. However, after the first success of roles in the theater, he was no longer given.

In 1903, Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, daughter of D. I. Mendeleev, the heroine of his first book of poems, Poems about the Beautiful Lady. It is known that Alexander Blok had strong feelings for his wife, but periodically kept in touch with various women: at one time it was the actress Natalya Nikolaevna Volokhova, then the opera singer Lyubov Aleksandrovna Andreeva-Delmas. Lyubov Dmitrievna also allowed herself hobbies. On this basis, Blok had a conflict with Andrei Bely, described in the play "Balaganchik". Andrei Bely, who considered Mendeleev the embodiment of the Beautiful Lady, was passionately in love with her, but she did not reciprocate. However, after the First World War, relations in the Blok family improved, and in recent years the poet was the faithful husband of Lyubov Dmitrievna.

In 1909, two difficult events take place in the Blok family: the child of Lyubov Dmitrievna dies and the father of Blok dies. To recover, Blok and his wife leave to rest in Italy and Germany. For Italian poetry, Blok was accepted into a society called the Academy. In addition to him, it included Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Innokenty Annensky.

In the summer of 1911 Blok traveled abroad again, this time to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Alexander Alexandrovich gives a negative assessment of French morals:

An integral quality of the French (and the Bretons, it seems, par excellence) is the impenetrable dirt, first of all, physical, and then spiritual. It is better not to describe the first dirt; in short, a person of any squeamishness will not agree to settle in France.

In the summer of 1913, Blok again went to France (on the advice of doctors) and again wrote about his negative impressions:

Biarritz is flooded with the French petty bourgeoisie, so that even my eyes are tired of looking at ugly men and women ... In general, I must say that I am very tired of France and I want to return to cultural country- Russia, where there are fewer fleas, almost no French women, food (bread and beef), drink (tea and water); beds (not 15 arshins wide), washstands (there are basins from which you can never pour out all the water, all the dirt remains at the bottom) ...

In 1912, Blok wrote the drama "The Rose and the Cross" about the search for the innermost knowledge of the Provencal troubadour Bertrand de Born. The play was completed in January 1913, K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko liked it, but the drama was never staged in the theater.

On July 7, 1916, Blok was called to serve in the engineering unit of the All-Russian Zemsky Union. The poet served in Belarus. By his own admission in a letter to his mother, during the war his main interests were "food and horses."

Revolutionary years

Blok met the February and October revolutions with mixed feelings. He refused to emigrate, believing that he should be with Russia in difficult times. In early May 1917, he was hired by the "Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate the illegal actions of former ministers, chief executives and other senior officials of both civil and military and naval departments" as an editor. In August, Blok began to work on a manuscript, which he considered as part of the future report of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission and which was published in the journal Byloe (No. 15, 1919) and in the form of a book called The Last Days of Imperial Power (Petrograd, 1921).

Blok immediately accepted the October Revolution enthusiastically, but as a spontaneous uprising, a revolt.

In January 1920, Blok's stepfather, General Franz Kublicki-Piottuch, whom the poet called Francis, died of pneumonia. Blok took his mother to live with him. But she and Blok's wife did not get along with each other.

In January 1921, on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of Pushkin's death, Blok delivered his famous speech "On the Appointment of a Poet" at the House of Writers.

Illness and death

Blok was one of those artists of Petrograd who not only accepted Soviet power but agreed to work for her. The authorities began to widely use the name of the poet for their own purposes. During 1918-1920, Blok, often against his will, was appointed and elected to various positions in organizations, committees, and commissions. The ever-increasing volume of work undermined the strength of the poet. Fatigue began to accumulate - Blok described his condition of that period with the words "I was drunk." This, perhaps, also explains the creative silence of the poet - he wrote in a private letter in January 1919: "For almost a year since I did not belong to myself, I forgot how to write poetry and think about poetry ...". Heavy workloads in Soviet institutions and living in a hungry and cold revolutionary Petrograd completely undermined the poet's health - Blok developed a serious cardiovascular disease, asthma, mental disorders appeared, and scurvy began in the winter of 1920.

In the spring of 1921, Alexander Blok, together with Fyodor Sologub, asked for exit visas. The issue was considered by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). The exit was denied. Lunacharsky noted: “We literally tortured him without releasing the poet and at the same time without giving him the necessary satisfactory conditions.” A number of historians believed that V. I. Lenin and V. R. Menzhinsky played a particularly negative role in the fate of the poet, forbidding the patient to travel to a sanatorium in Finland for treatment, which, at the request of Maxim Gorky and Lunacharsky, was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee RCP(b) July 12, 1921. The exit permit obtained by L. B. Kamenev and A. V. Lunacharsky at a subsequent meeting of the Politburo was signed on July 23, 1921. But since Blok's condition worsened, on July 29, 1921, Gorky asked permission to leave for Blok's wife as an accompanying person. Already on August 1, L. D. Blok's permission to leave was signed by Molotov, but Gorky only learned about this from Lunacharsky on August 6.

Finding himself in a difficult financial situation, he was seriously ill and on August 7, 1921, he died in his last Petrograd apartment from inflammation of the heart valves, at the age of 41. A few days before his death, a rumor spread around Petrograd that the poet had gone mad. On the eve of his death, Blok raved for a long time, obsessed with a single thought: were all copies of the Twelve destroyed. However, the poet died in full consciousness, which refutes the rumors about his insanity. Before his death, after receiving a negative response to a request to travel abroad for treatment (dated July 12), Blok deliberately destroyed his notes, refused to take food and medicine.

Alexander Blok was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery in Petrograd. The families of the Beketovs and Kachalovs are also buried there, including the poet's grandmother Ariadna Alexandrovna, with whom he was in correspondence. The funeral service was performed by Archpriest Alexei Zapadalov on August 10 (July 28, old style - the day of the celebration of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God) in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ.

And Smolenskaya is now a birthday girl.
Blue incense spreads over the grass.
And the dirge song flows,
Not sad now, but bright.
...
We brought the Smolensk intercessor
Brought to the Blessed Virgin Mary
On the hands in a silver coffin
Our sun, extinguished in flour,
Alexander, pure swan.

In 1944, Blok's ashes were reburied at Literary bridges at the Volkovskoye cemetery.

Family and relatives

The poet's relatives live in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Riga, Rome, Paris and England. Before recent years Alexander Blok's second cousin, Ksenia Vladimirovna Beketova, lived in St. Petersburg. Among Blok's relatives is Vladimir Yenisherlov, editor-in-chief of Our Heritage magazine.

The supposed son of A. Blok was the journalist A. Nolle (Kuleshov).

Creation

He began to create in the spirit of symbolism ("Poems about the Beautiful Lady", 1901-1902), the feeling of the crisis of which he proclaimed in the drama "Puppet Show" (1906). Blok's lyrics, close to music in their "spontaneity", were formed under the influence of the romance. Through the recess social trends(cycle "City", 1904-1908), religious interest (cycle "Snow Mask", Ed. "Ory", St. Petersburg 1907), understanding the "terrible world" (the cycle of the same name 1908-1916), awareness of the tragedy of modern man ( the play "The Rose and the Cross", 1912-1913) came to the idea of the inevitability of "retribution" (the cycle of the same name, 1907-1913; the cycle "Yamba", 1907-1914; the poem "Retribution", 1910-1921). The main themes of poetry were resolved in the Motherland cycle (1907-1916).

The paradoxical combination of the mystical and the mundane, the detached and the everyday is generally characteristic of Blok's entire work as a whole. This is a distinctive feature of his mental organization, and, as a consequence, of his own, Blok's symbolism. Particularly characteristic in this regard is the classic juxtaposition of the foggy silhouette of the “Stranger” and “drunkards with rabbit eyes,” which has become a textbook. In general, Blok was extremely sensitive to the everyday impressions and sounds of the city around him and the artists he encountered and sympathized with.

Before the revolution, the musicality of Blok's poems lulled the audience, plunging them into a kind of somnambulistic dream. Later, intonations of desperate, soul-grabbing gypsy songs appeared in his works (a consequence of frequent visits to cafes and concerts of this genre, especially opera performances and concerts of Lyubov Delmas, with whom Blok subsequently had an affair).

A feature of the poetic style of A. A. Blok is the use of metaphor

He himself recognizes the metaphorical perception of the world as the main property of a true poet, for whom the romantic transformation of the world with the help of metaphor is not an arbitrary poetic game, but a genuine insight into the mysterious essence of life.

in the form of catachresis, turning into a symbol. Blok's innovative contribution is the use of the dolnik as a unit of rhythm in a line of poetry.

With Blok begins ... a decisive liberation of Russian verse from the principle of counting syllables in footsteps, the destruction of the canonized requirement of Trediakovsky and Lomonosov to metrically order the number and arrangement of unstressed syllables in verse. In this sense, all the latest Russian poets learned from Blok.

At first, Blok accepted both the February and October revolutions with readiness, full support, and even enthusiasm, which, however, was enough for a little more than one short and difficult 1918. As Yu. P. Annenkov noted,

in 1917-18, Blok was undoubtedly captured by the spontaneous side of the revolution. "World fire" seemed to him a goal, not a stage. For Blok, the world fire was not even a symbol of destruction: it was a "world orchestra folk soul". Street lynching seemed to him more justified than a trial

- (Yu. P. Annenkov, "Memories of Blok").

This position of Blok caused sharp assessments of a number of other literary figures - in particular, I. A. Bunin:

Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan admires (P.S.). The song is generally simple, and Blok is a stupid person. Russian literature has been extraordinarily corrupted in recent decades. The street, the crowd began to play a very big role. Everything - and especially literature - goes out into the street, connects with it and falls under its influence. “There is a Jewish pogrom in Zhmerynka, just as there was a pogrom in Znamenka…” This is called, according to Blok, “the people are embraced by the music of the revolution—listen, listen to the music of the revolution!”

- (I. A. Bunin, "Cursed Days").

Blok tried to comprehend the October Revolution not only in journalism, but also, which is especially significant, in his poem The Twelve (1918), unlike all previous works. This bright and generally misunderstood work stands completely apart in the Russian literature of the Silver Age and caused controversy and objections (both left and right) throughout the 20th century. Oddly enough, but the key to a real understanding of the poem can be found in the work of the popular in pre-revolutionary Petrograd, and now almost forgotten chansonnier and poet Mikhail Savoyarov, whose “rough” work Blok highly appreciated and whose concerts he attended dozens of times. Judging by the poetic language of the poem "The Twelve", Blok at least changed a lot, his post-revolutionary style became almost unrecognizable. Apparently he experienced the influence of a man with whom he was on friendly terms in the last pre-revolutionary years: a singer, poet and eccentric, Mikhail Savoyarov. According to Viktor Shklovsky, everyone unanimously condemned the poem "The Twelve" and few people understood it precisely because Blok was too accustomed to be taken seriously and only seriously:

"Twelve" is an ironic thing. It is not even written in a ditty style, it is made in a “thieves” style. The style of a street verse like Savoyarov's.

In his article, Shklovsky (according to the Hamburg account) also spoke about Savoyarov, the most popular Petrograd chansonnier in the pre-revolutionary years, who quite often (though not always) performed in the so-called "torn genre". Disguised beyond recognition as a tramp, this rude coupletist appeared on stage in a stylized outfit of a typical criminal. We find direct confirmation of this thesis in Blok's notebooks. In March 1918, when his wife, Lyubov Dmitrievna, was preparing to read the poem "The Twelve" aloud at evenings and concerts, Blok specially took her to Savoyar concerts to show how and with what intonation these poems should be read. In everyday, eccentric, even shocking ... but not at all "symbolist", theatrical, habitually "Blok's" manner ... Apparently, Blok believed that it was necessary to read "The Twelve" in that harsh thieves' manner, as Savoyarov did when speaking in the role of a St. Petersburg criminal (or tramp). However, Blok himself in such a characteristic way could not read and did not learn. For such a result, he himself would have to become, as he put it, "a variety poet-coupletist." It was in this way that the poet painfully tried to distance himself from the nightmare of the Petrograd (and Russian) life that surrounded him in the last three years ... either criminal, or military, or some strange between times ...

In the poem "The Twelve" colloquial and vulgar speech was not only introduced into the poem, but also replaced the voice of the author himself. The language style of the poem "The Twelve" was perceived by contemporaries not only as deeply new, but also as the only one possible at that moment.

According to A. Remizov

When I read "The Twelve", I was struck by the verbal matter - the music of street words and expressions - scraped up words unexpected from Blok ... In "The Twelve" there are only a few book words! This is music, I thought. What luck fell to Blok: I can’t imagine it possible to convey the street in a different way. Here Blok was at the height of verbal expression.

In February 1919 Blok was arrested by the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission. He was suspected of participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. A day later, after two long interrogations, Blok was nevertheless released, since Lunacharsky stood up for him. However, even these one and a half days of prison broke him. In 1920 Blok wrote in his diary:

... under the yoke of violence, human conscience falls silent; then the person closes in the old; the more insolent the violence, the more firmly the person closes in the old. This is what happened to Europe under the yoke of war, and to Russia today.

The rethinking of the revolutionary events and the fate of Russia was accompanied by a deep creative crisis for Blok, depression and a progressive illness. After the surge of January 1918, when the Scythians and The Twelve were created at once, Blok completely stopped writing poetry and answered all questions about his silence: “All sounds have stopped ... Don’t you hear that there are no sounds?” And to the artist Annenkov, the author of cubist illustrations for the first edition of the poem "The Twelve", he complained: "I am suffocating, suffocating, suffocating! We suffocate, we all suffocate. world revolution turns into the world's angina pectoris!".

The last cry of despair was the speech read by Blok in February 1921 at an evening dedicated to the memory of Pushkin. This speech was listened to by both Akhmatova and Gumilyov, who appeared at the reading in a tailcoat, arm in arm with a lady shivering from the cold in a black dress with a deep neckline (the hall, as always in those years, was unheated, steam was clearly coming from everyone’s mouth) . Block stood on the stage in a black jacket over a white turtleneck sweater, his hands in his pockets. Quoting Pushkin’s famous line: “There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and freedom…” - Blok turned to the discouraged Soviet bureaucrat sitting right there on the stage (one of those who, according to Andrei Bely’s caustic definition, “do not write anything, only sign”) and minted:

... peace and will are also taken away. Not external peace, but creative. Not childish will, not freedom to be liberal, but creative will - secret freedom. And the poet dies, because he has nothing to breathe: life has lost its meaning for him.

Blok's poetic works have been translated into many languages of the world.

Bibliography

Collected works

"Poems about a beautiful lady." - M .: "Vulture", 1905. Cover by P. A. Metzger.
"Unexpected Joy" Second collection of poems. - M.: "Scorpio", 1907
"Earth in the snow". Third collection of poems. - M.: "Golden Fleece", 1907
"Snow Mask" - St. Petersburg: "Ory", 1907
"Lyric Drama". - St. Petersburg: Rosehip, 1908. Cover by K. S. Somov.
"Night hours". Fourth collection of poems. - M.: "Musaget", 1911
"Poems about Russia". - ed. Fatherland, 1915. Cover by G. I. Narbut.
Collection of poems. Book. 1-3. - M.: "Musaget", 1911-1912; 2nd ed., 1916
"Yamby", Pg., 1919
"Beyond the Past" - P.-Berlin: ed. Grzhebina, 1920
"Grey morning". - P .: "Alkonost", 1920
"Twelve". - Sofia: Russian-Bulgarian publishing house, 1920
Collected works of Alexander Blok. - Petersburg: "Alkonost", 1922
Collected works. v. 1-9. - Berlin: "Epoch", 1923
Collected works. T. 1-12. - L .: ed. writers.
Collected works. T. 1-8. - M.-L.: IHL, 1960-63. 200,000 copies An additional unnumbered volume to this collection was published in 1965 in Notebooks - 100,000 copies.
Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - M.: Pravda, 1971. - 375,000 copies.
Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - L.: Fiction, 1980-1983, 300,000 copies.
Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - M.: TERRA, 2009
Complete (academic) collected works and letters in twenty volumes. T. 1-5, 7-8. - M., "Science", 1997 - present. temp. (continuing edition, volume 6 was not published, after the 5th volume, vol. 7 and vol. 8 were released)
Selected works. - K.: Veselka, 1985
Notebooks. 1901-1920. - M.: IHL, 1965.

Bloc and revolution

Blok A. A. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin // Blok A. A. Collected works in 6 volumes. L.: 1982. - V.4. (Written in 1906, first published: Pass. 1907. No. 4 (February)).
The Last Days of Imperial Power: Based on unpublished documents compiled by Alexander Blok. - Petrograd: Alkonost, 1921.

Correspondence

Letters from Alexander Blok. - L .: Kolos, 1925.
Letters of Alexander Blok to relatives: . T. 1-2. - M.-L.: Academia, 1927-1932.
Letters from Al. Blok to E.P. Ivanov. - M.-L., 1936.
Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Correspondence. - M., 1940.
Blok A. A. Letters to his wife // Literary heritage. - T. 89. - M., 1978.
I visit the Kachalovs
Letters from A. A. Blok to L. A. Delmas // Zvezda. - 1970. - No. 11. - S. 190-201.

Memory

The museum-apartment of A. A. Blok in St. Petersburg is located on Decembrists Street (former Officerskaya), 57.
State Historical, Literary and Natural Museum-Reserve of A. A. Blok in Shakhmatovo
Monument to Blok in Moscow, on Spiridonovka street
His poem "Night, street, lantern, pharmacy" is turned into a monument on one of the streets of Leiden. Blok became the third poet after

(457 words) The junction of the 19th and 20th centuries was not without a significant phenomenon. They became Alexander Alexandrovich Blok, an epoch-making poet, a bright star of symbolism.

The poet was born in the union of Alexander Lvovich Blok and Alexandra Andreevna Beketova in 1880. The marriage of the assistant professor and the rector's daughter was not destined to be happy, even the birth of a son did not improve the situation. Nine years later, Alexander's parents officially divorced.

Blok's childhood years were spent abroad and on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The summer of the future poet took place in the suburbs in the estate of his grandfather.

Education and creative path

The best thing young Alexander Blok can be described as a person distinguished by the breadth of knowledge and hobbies. At the age of five, he began to compose poetry. The Vvedenskaya gymnasium accepted the boy immediately into the second grade.

His literary talent required willpower, and the fourteen-year-old Blok created the home magazine Vestnik. It was a kind of game that all family members were passionate about: mother, cousins, grandmother and grandfather. Alexander was attracted by the stage, but he was not destined to become an actor. In the year of majority, he graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology.

Personal life and "Beautiful Lady"

At the age of seventeen, the young man was struck by love for the first time. But this feeling has one detail: his chosen one, Ksenia Sadovskaya, was the same age as Blok's mother. This novel was initially doomed, but nevertheless became a red thread in the poet's work.

Alexander's first hobby shocked his mother, so in many ways she influenced his relationship with Lyubov Mendeleeva. The denouement of the new novel was an unsuccessful marriage. Blok's reverence for his wife was combined with betrayal, he only admired her, but was not physically close, but he was looking for acquaintances with girls of easy virtue. The young woman herself also did not lag behind her husband. In the end, the couple reconciled, and Lyubov Mendeleev became the same Beautiful Lady, to whom the poet dedicated a cycle of poems.

Creation

Since Alexander was a non-standard personality, his creative genius joined symbolism. Everyday life, mysticism, everyday life and folklore - everything coexisted in his creations.

Alexander Alexandrovich was worried about all aspects of life: from reflections on love and the beauty of nature to acute social problems. Metaphor added a special touch to his work. Blok proved to be a remarkable poet, playwright and publicist.

Relation to the revolution

Alexander Blok was one of the people who expected colossal changes from the revolution. He believed that what was happening should make life better, but coups love blood. The "childish" delight of the poet was replaced by awareness and disgust.

We have described this in detail using the example of his poem "12". This work is a stain on the work of the writer. The hasty adoption of the October Revolution prompted Blok to write it. The intelligentsia unanimously condemned the poem, as did the author himself, but later, when he asked before his death to destroy all copies of the book.

Blok Alexander Alexandrovich was born in St. Petersburg on November 28, 1880. His father was Alexander Lvovich Blok, who worked as a professor at Warsaw University, and his mother was the translator Alexandra Andreevna Beketova, whose father was the rector of St. Petersburg University.

The mother of the future poet married her first husband at the age of eighteen, and soon after the birth of the boy, she decided to break all ties with her unloved husband. Subsequently, the poet's parents practically did not communicate with each other.

In those days, divorces were rare and condemned by society, but in 1889, the self-sufficient and purposeful Alexandra Blok ensured that the Holy Governing Synod officially terminated her marriage to Alexander Lvovich. Soon after that, the daughter of the famous Russian botanist remarried for true love: an officer of the guard Kublitsky-Piottukh. Alexandra Andreevna did not change her son's surname to her own or to the intricate surname of her stepfather, and the future poet remained Blok.

Sasha spent his childhood years in his grandfather's house. In the summer he left for Shakhmatovo for a long time and carried warm memories of the time spent there throughout his life. Moreover, Alexander Blok lived with his mother and her new husband on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

Between the future poet and his mother there has always been an incomprehensible spiritual connection. It was she who opened the works of Baudelaire, Polonsky, Verlaine, Fet and other famous poets to Sasha. Alexandra Andreevna and her young son studied together new trends in philosophy and poetry, carried on enthusiastic conversations about the latest political and cultural news. Subsequently, Alexander Blok first of all read his works to his mother and it was from her that he sought consolation, understanding and support.

In 1889, the boy began to study at the Vvedensky gymnasium. Some time later, when Sasha was already 16 years old, he went on a trip abroad with his mother and spent some time in the city of Bad Nauheim, a popular German resort of those times. Despite his young age, on vacation he selflessly fell in love with Ksenia Sadovskaya, who at that time was 37 years old. Naturally, there was no talk of any relationship between a teenager and an adult woman. However, the charming Ksenia Sadovskaya, her image, imprinted in Blok's memory, later became his inspiration when writing many works.

In 1898, Alexander completed his studies at the gymnasium and successfully passed entrance exams Petersburg University, choosing law for his career. Three years after that, he nevertheless transferred to the historical and philological department, choosing for himself the Slavic-Russian direction. The poet completed his studies at the university in 1906. At the time of receipt higher education he met Alexei Remizov, Sergei Gorodetsky, and also became friends with Sergei Solovyov, who was his second cousin.

The beginning of creativity

The Blok family, especially on the maternal side, continued a highly cultured family, which could not but affect Alexander. From a young age, he enthusiastically read numerous books, was fond of the theater and even attended the corresponding circle in St. Petersburg, and also tried his hand at poetry. The boy wrote his first uncomplicated works at the age of five, and as a teenager, in the company of his brothers, he enthusiastically engaged in writing a handwritten magazine.

An important event in the early 1900s for Alexander Alexandrovich was his marriage to Lyubov Mendeleeva, who was the daughter of an eminent Russian scientist. The relationship between the young spouses was complex and peculiar, but filled with love and passion. Lyubov Dmitrievna also became a source of inspiration and a prototype for a number of characters in the poet's works.

You can talk about a full-fledged creative career of Blok starting from 1900-1901. At that time, Alexander Alexandrovich became an even more devoted admirer of the work of Afanasy Fet, as well as the lyrics and even the teachings of Plato. In addition, fate brought him together with Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, in whose journal, under the name "New Way", Blok took his first steps as a poet and critic.

At an early stage of his creative development Alexander Alexandrovich realized that the direction in literature close to his liking was symbolism. This movement, which pierced all varieties of culture, was distinguished by innovation, a desire for experimentation, a love of mystery and understatement. In St. Petersburg, the symbolists close to him in spirit were the above-mentioned Gippius and Merezhkovsky, and in Moscow - Valery Bryusov. It is noteworthy that around the time when Blok began to publish in the St. Petersburg "New Way", his works began to be printed in the Moscow almanac called "Northern Flowers".

A special place in the heart of Alexander Blok was occupied by a circle of young admirers and followers of Vladimir Solovyov, organized in Moscow. The role of a kind of leader of this circle was assumed by Andrei Bely, at that time an aspiring prose writer and poet. Andrei became a close friend of Alexander Alexandrovich, and members of the literary circle became one of the most devoted and enthusiastic admirers of his work.

In 1903, in the almanac "Northern Flowers", a cycle of Blok's works entitled "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" was printed. At the same time, three poems by the young rhymer were included in the collection of works by students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University. In his first famous cycle, Blok presents a woman as a natural source of light and purity, and raises the question of how much a real love feeling brings an individual person closer to the whole world.

Revolution of 1905-1907

The revolutionary events became for Alexander Alexandrovich the personification of the spontaneous, disordered nature of life and quite significantly influenced his creative views. The beautiful Lady in his thoughts and poems was replaced by the images of a blizzard, snowstorm and vagrancy, the bold and ambiguous Faina, the Snow Mask and the Stranger. Love poems faded into the background.

Dramaturgy and interaction with the theater at that time also fascinated the poet. The first play, written by Alexander Alexandrovich, was called "Balaganchik" and was composed by Vsevolod Meyerhold in the theater of Vera Komissarzhevskaya in 1906.

At the same time, Blok, who, idolizing his wife, did not refuse the opportunity to have tender feelings for other women, inflamed with passion for N.N. Volokhova, theater actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya. The image of the beautiful Volokhova soon filled Blok's philosophical poems: it was to her that the poet dedicated the cycle "Faina" and the book "Snow Mask", the heroines of the plays "Song of Fate" and "The King on the Square" were copied from her.

In the late 1900s, the main theme of Blok's work was the problem of the relationship between the common people and the intelligentsia in the domestic society. In the poems of this period, one can trace a vivid crisis of individualism and attempts to determine the place of the creator in the real world. At the same time, Alexander Alexandrovich associated the Motherland with the image of his beloved wife, which is why his patriotic poems acquired a special, deeply personal individuality.

Rejection of symbolism

The year 1909 was very difficult for Alexander Blok: his father died that year, with whom he still maintained a fairly warm relationship, as well as the newborn child of the poet and his wife Lyudmila. However, the impressive legacy that Alexander Blok Sr. left to his son allowed him to forget about financial difficulties and focus on major creative projects.

In the same year, the poet visited Italy, and the foreign atmosphere further pushed him to reassess the values that had developed earlier. This internal struggle is told in the cycle “Italian Poems”, as well as prose essays from the book “Lightning of Art”. In the end, Blok came to the conclusion that symbolism, as a school with strictly defined rules, had exhausted itself for him, and from now on he felt the need for self-deepening and a “spiritual diet”.

Focusing on great literary works, Alexander Alexandrovich gradually began to devote less and less time to journalistic work and appearances at diverse events that were in vogue among the poetic bohemia of those times.

In 1910, the author began to compose an epic poem called "Retribution", which he was not destined to finish. Between 1912 and 1913 he wrote the well-known play The Rose and the Cross. And in 1911, Blok, taking as a basis five of his books with poetry, compiled a collection of works in three volumes, which was reprinted several times.

October Revolution

Soviet power did not cause such a negative attitude in Alexander Blok as in many other poets " silver age". At a time when Julius Aikhenvald, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and many others criticized the Bolsheviks who came to power with might and main, Blok agreed to cooperate with the new government leadership.

The name of the poet, who by that time was quite well known to the public, was actively used by the authorities for their own purposes. Among other things, Alexander Alexandrovich was constantly appointed to positions of no interest to him in various commissions and institutions.

It was during that period that the poem "Scythians" and the famous poem "The Twelve" were written. The last image of the "Twelve": Jesus Christ, who was at the head of a procession of twelve soldiers of the Red Army - caused a real resonance in the literary world. Although this work is now considered one of the best creations of the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry, most of Blok’s contemporaries spoke about the poem, especially about the image of Jesus, in an extremely negative way.

Personal life

The first and only wife of Blok is Lyubov Mendeleev, with whom he was madly in love and whom he considered his real destiny. The wife was support and support for the writer, as well as an unchanging muse.

However, the poet's ideas about marriage were rather peculiar: firstly, he was categorically against bodily intimacy, singing spiritual love. Secondly, until the last years of his life, Blok did not consider it shameful to fall in love with other representatives of the fair sex, although his women never mattered to him as much as his wife. However, Lyubov Mendeleev also allowed herself to be carried away by other men.

The children of the Blok couple, alas, did not appear: the child, born after one of the few joint nights of Alexander and Lyubov, turned out to be too weak and did not survive. Nevertheless, Blok left quite a lot of relatives both in Russia and in Europe.

Death of poet

After the October Revolution, there were by no means only Interesting Facts from the life of Alexander Alexandrovich. Loaded with an incredible amount of duties, not belonging to himself, he began to get very sick. Blok developed asthma, cardiovascular disease, and mental disorders began to form. In 1920, the author fell ill with scurvy.

At the same time, the poet was also going through a period of financial difficulties.

Exhausted by poverty and numerous illnesses, he passed away on August 7, 1921, while in his apartment in St. Petersburg. The cause of death is inflammation of the heart valves. The funeral and burial service of the poet was performed by Archpriest Alexei Zapadalov, Blok's grave is located at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery.

Shortly before his death, the writer tried to get permission to travel abroad for treatment, but he was refused. They say that after that, Blok, being in a sober mind and sound mind, destroyed his notes and, in principle, did not take any medicine, or even food. For a long time there were also rumors that before his death, Alexander Alexandrovich went crazy and raved about whether all copies of his poem "The Twelve" had been destroyed. However, these rumors have not been confirmed.

Alexander Blok is considered one of the most brilliant representatives of Russian poetry. His large works, as well as small poems (“Factory”, “Night street lamp pharmacy”, “In a restaurant”, “Dilapidated hut” and others), have become part of the cultural heritage of our people.

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 the birth of Alexander, the parents broke off their relationship and the son began to live with his mother. Soon, the mother remarried officer F.F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, the family began to live in the guards barracks.

Since 1889 he began to study at the Vvedensky gymnasium. When he went abroad in 1897 to one of the German resort towns, he experienced his first love for Xenia 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 literary path of the poet began from childhood. At 10 young block started publishing his own handwritten journals. 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 the social life of a person (“City” 1904-1908), religiosity (“Snow Mask” 1907), philosophy of life (“Terrible World” 1908-1916), patriotism (“Motherland ” 1907-1916)

After graduating, Alexander Blok traveled abroad extensively, 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.

February and October Revolution 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 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 of prolonged inflammation of the heart. Many well-known personalities in Petrograd attended his funeral. In 1941, his ashes were again buried at the Literary Bridges at the Volkovskoye cemetery.

Biography and creativity

In 1880, on November 28 (16), a son was born in a cultural St. Petersburg family of noblemen Alexander Blok and Alexandra Beketova. The boy was named Sasha. Family happiness did not last long, the parents soon broke up. 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, disappeared for hours in the garden and happily fiddled with various domestic animals. So from the very 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 not indifferent to reading, became interested in publishing himself. The 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 the "Bulletin".

In 1898, after studying 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.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Blok met in the creative circle of bright writers of our time. Fet, Solovyov, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Bryusov accepted the twenty-year-old talented young man into the arms of cultural Petersburg.

Blok was passionately carried away by Russian symbolism. The first poems were published by the Novy Put publishing house, later the poet's works were published by the almanac Northern Flowers.

The Beketovs' neighbors were the Mendeleevs. The daughter of the great scientist-chemist, Lyubov Dmitrievna, became for the poet not only a beloved girl, but also a muse. In 1903, Mendeleeva became his wife.

Block at the very beginning of his amazing work. In the same year, his poetic cycle "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" was released, dedicated to his wife. The poet, filled with love, presents a woman as a wonderful source of light and purity, admires the great power of true love that can unite the whole world in one person.

Events of 1905-1907 and the First World War pressed the lyrical mood of the poet. Blok thought about the problems of society, he is concerned about the embodiment of the theme of the creator against the background of the existing reality. The motherland in the poet's work is like a loving wife, from which patriotism acquired individuality and depth.

The year 1909 was 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 personal experiences of the poet, but Blok sincerely believed in the bright future of his native country.

1916 was the year of military service for the poet. He did not take part in hostilities, he served as a timekeeper.

Blok met the revolution of 1917 with the hope of a change for the better. The inspiration lasted for a year, giving the public in 1918 the controversial poem "The Twelve", the article "Intelligentsia 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.

Heartaches, asthma, nervous disorders became constant companions of the poet loaded with everyday hardships, financial problems and constant work.

Blok tried to get permission to travel to Finland in order 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 petition was approved too late. On August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok died.

Very short dates

On November 16, 1880, a writer was born in the city of St. Petersburg. Was born in cultural family professors and writers.

In 1889 he was sent to the gymnasium, graduated from it in 1898.

Blok also graduated from the Institute of Law and the Faculty of History and Philology.

Blok began writing his first poems from the age of five. As a teenager, he was engaged 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 because of Mrs. Mendeleeva.

In 1904, a collection of poems by Alexander Blok was born and it was called "poems about a beautiful lady."

Blok and his wife, a few years later, managed to relax in Spain and Germany.

During his creative activity, was adopted by the "academy" society. Where were the wealthy, in the future well-known creative figures.

Blok's most famous work is "night, street, lantern, pharmacy."

The writer's dawn came in 1912-1914. Block basically did not travel. This time he worked in a publishing house.

The block was very sick. He was not released for treatment abroad. So in the end, in poverty and hunger, the writer died in 1921 from heart disease.

Biography by dates and interesting facts. The most important thing.

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