They are considered the founders of Western European symbolism. Symbolism in literature

SYMBOLISM(French symbolisme) - a literary, artistic and ideological movement in the culture of the last quarter of the 19th - first third of the 20th century. Arose as a reaction to domination materialism , positivism and naturalism in European culture of the 19th century. He continued and developed the ideas and creative principles of the German romantics, based on the aesthetics F. Schelling , F. Schlegel , A. Schopenhauer , the mysticism of Swedenborg, the experiments of R. Wagner; at the heart of early Russian symbolism. XX century – ideas and principles of thinking F. Nietzsche , linguistic theory by A.A. Potebnya, philosophy Vl.Solovieva . Among the sources creative inspiration- some forms of spiritual cultures of the East (in particular, Buddhism), and at a later stage - theosophy And anthroposophy . As a movement, symbolism developed in France and reached its peak in the 80s and 90s. 19th century The main representatives are S. Mallarmé, J. Moreas, R. Gil, A. de Regnier, A. Gide, P. Claudel, Saint-Pol-Roux and others; in Belgium - M. Maeterlinck, E. Verharn, A. Mokel; in Germany and Austria - S. Georg, G. Hauptmann, R. Rilke, G. Hofmannsthal; in Norway - G. Ibsen, K. Hamsun, A. Strindberg; in Russia - N. Minsky, D. Merezhkovsky, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, A. Blok, A. Bely , Vyach.Ivanov , Ellis, J. Baltrusaitis; in fine arts: P. Gauguin, G. Moreau, P. Puvis de Chavannes, E. Carrière, O. Redon, M. Denis and the artists of the “Nabi” group, O. Rodin (France), A. Böcklin (Switzerland), G.Seganti-ni (Italy), D.G.Rossetti, E.Burn-Jones, O.Beardsley (Great Britain), J.Torop (Holland), F.Hodler (Austria), M.Vrubel, M.-K .Ciurlionis, V.Borisov-Musatov, artists of the Blue Rose group, K.S.Petrov-Vodkin; in music: partly by K. Debussy, A. Scriabin; in the theater: P. Faure (France), G. Craig (England), F. Komissarzhevsky, partly V. Meyerhold.

The symbolists enthusiastically accepted the ideas of the romantics that the symbol in art promotes the ascent from the earthly world to the heavenly one, their mystical and religious understanding of poetry. The direct predecessors of symbolism itself as a “school” or direction were C. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, and one of the initiators of the movement and its theorist was Mallarmé. Two main trends in symbolism can be distinguished (although in specific works and even in theoretical manifestations they often coexist): the Neoplatonic-Christian line (objective symbolism) and the solipsistic line (subjective symbolism). The most consistent theorists of the first trend were J. Moreas, E. Reynaud, C. Maurice, J. Vanor; Among the main representatives of the second are the young A. Gide, Remy de Gourmont, G. Kan.

Moreas actually revived the Platonic-Neoplatonic concept of art as a “tangible reflection of primary ideas” in symbols. Pictures of nature, any objects and phenomena of life, human actions and other topics, according to him, are of interest to the symbolist poet not in themselves, but only as sensually comprehended symbols expressing ideas. For the artistic embodiment of these symbols, a new poetic style (“primordial all-encompassing”) and a special language, which the symbolists developed on the basis of ancient French and folk languages, are needed. Hence the peculiar poetics of symbolism. The most complete presentation of the essence of objective symbolism was given by C. Maurice in the article “Literature of the present day” (1889). He is convinced that the only sources of Art are Philosophy, Tradition, Religion, Legends. Art synthesizes their experience and goes further in comprehending the spiritual Absolute. True art is not fun, but “revelation”, it is “like the gate to the gaping Mystery”, is “the key that opens Eternity”, the path to Truth and “righteous Joy”. The poetry of the Symbolists is the poetry of the “primordial”, revealing the soul and language of nature and inner world person. Symbolic art is intended to restore the original unity of poetry (which plays a leading role), painting and music. The essence of the “universal aesthetic synthesis” is “the fusion of the Spirit of Religion and the Spirit of Science at a festival of Beauty, imbued with the most human of desires: to gain wholeness by returning to pristine simplicity” (quoted from the book: Poetry of French Symbolism. M., 1993, p. 436). This is the ideal and goal of symbolism. A number of symbolists professed the cult of Beauty and Harmony as the main forms of the revelation of God in the world. The poet is actually engaged in the secondary creation of the world, and “the particles of the Divine serve as his material,” and the “Poet’s compass” is intuition, which the symbolists considered the main engine of artistic creativity. Mallarmé believed that in every, even the most insignificant thing, there is a certain hidden meaning and the goal of poetry is to express, with the help of human language, “which has acquired its original rhythm,” “the hidden meaning of diverse existence.” This function is performed in poetry by an artistic symbol, for it does not name the subject of expression itself, but only hints at it, giving the reader pleasure in the process of guessing the meaning hidden in the symbol.

The solipsistic trend in symbolism proceeded from the fact that a person deals only with a complex of sensations, ideas, ideas that he creates within himself and which have nothing to do with external existence. According to Remy de Gourmont, “we know only phenomena and reason only about appearances; the truth in itself eludes us; the essence is inaccessible... I do not see what is; there is only what I see. There are as many different worlds as there are thinking people” (Le livre des masques, v. 1. P., 1896, p. 11–12). Similar ideas were expressed by A. Gide in the philosophical and symbolic “Treatise on Narcissus (Theory of Symbol)” (1891). The understanding of the symbol as an artistic form of recording the subjective ideas and experiences of the poet was expressed in a number of symbolist works (V. de Lisle-Adan, R. de Gourmont, A. Jarry, etc.).

According to Maeterlinck, it is not the artist who is the creator of the symbol, but the symbol itself, as “one of the forces of nature,” is revealed in art through the medium of the artist. The symbol is a kind of mystical carrier of the hidden energy of things, the eternal harmony of being, a messenger of another life, the voice of the universe. The artist must humbly devote himself entirely to the symbol, which with its help will reveal images that obey the universal law, but are often incomprehensible even to the mind of the artist himself. The most saturated with symbolic meaning in a work of art are often the most outwardly ordinary events, phenomena, objects. Variations of this understanding of the symbol are found among many symbolists of the first direction. According to the definition of one of the theorists of symbolist aesthetics, A. Mokel, a symbol is “a great image that blossoms on the Idea”; “an allegorical realization of the Idea, a tense connection between the immaterial world of laws and the sensory world of things” (Esthétique du symbolisme, Brux., 1962, p. 226). The symbolist poet and art critic A. Aurier believed that the art of the symbolists, expressing the Idea in visible forms, is subjective in its essence, since the object is perceived in it through the spiritual world of the subject; syntheticity and decorativeness bring the art of symbolism closer to the specific aesthetic artistic movement of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which in France was called Art Nouveau, in Austria - Secession, in Germany - Jugendstil, in Russia - Art Nouveau).

Symbolism in Russia inherited the basic principles of Western European symbolism, but rearranged certain accents and made a number of significant adjustments to it. The innovative stage of Russian symbolism occurred in the beginning. 20th century and is associated with the names of the “Young Symbolists” Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok, Ellis (L.L. Kobylinsky). Among the features of Russian symbolism is the awareness of the Sophia origin of art (see. Sofia ) and the antinomy “conciliar-individual”, the division of symbolism into realistic and idealistic, the removal of symbolism from the sphere of art into life and the development in connection with this of the concepts of mystery and theurgy as the most important categories of aesthetics, apocalypticism and eschatologism as essential creative motives.

The symbolists enthusiastically accepted Vl. Solovyov’s concept of Sophia the Wisdom of God as a creative mediator between God and people, the main inspirer of art and an accomplice in the creative process. Solovyov’s idea was especially popular O the appearance of Sophia in the guise of a beautiful Virgin, which was combined by them with Goethe’s ideas of the Eternal Feminine and embodied in poetry - especially by Blok (“Poems about a Beautiful Lady”), Bely (4th symphony of “The Blizzard Cup”, poem “First Date”), Balmont . Sophia was often considered the guarantor of the truth of poetic symbols and images, the inspirer of poetic insights and clairvoyance.

The most original version of the theory of symbolism was developed by Andrei Bely. He distinguished symbolism as a worldview and as a “school” in art. As a worldview, symbolism is still in its infancy, for it is part of a future culture, the construction of which is just beginning. So far, symbolism has been most fully realized only in art as a “school”, the essence of which comes down not so much to the development of specific creative principles and stylistic techniques of artistic expression, but to a new perspective of artistic and aesthetic thinking - to the intuitive awareness that all real art is symbolic. It creates artistic symbols that connect two levels of existence - the “matter” of art and some other reality symbolized by art. Symbolism as a creative principle is inherent in all the main “schools”: classicism, naturalism, realism, romanticism and symbolism itself as the highest form of creativity in the sense of self-reflection. The credo of artistic symbolism is the unity of form and content with their complete equality. In romanticism, form depended on content; in classicism and formalism, content depended on form. Symbolism eliminates this dependence.

Bely distinguished three main symbolist concepts: Symbol, symbolism and symbolization. By Symbol (with a capital letter) he understood a certain transcendental semantic principle, absolute Unity, which he ultimately identified with the incarnate Logos, i.e. with Christ (article “Emblematics of meaning”, etc.). In the universe, this absolute Symbol is revealed (and hidden at the same time) in countless symbols of the created world and works of art and culture. The Symbol (with a lowercase letter) is a “window to Eternity,” the path to the Symbol and at the same time its armor, a reliable shell. Bely paid great attention to the word as a symbol in all its aspects. He saw the essential basis of the symbolic “school” in linguistics (in particular, in the ideas of Potebnya).

By symbolism, Bely understood the theory of symbolic creativity and at the same time this creativity itself, and the word “symbolization” meant the implementation of symbolism in art. “Art is the symbolization of values ​​in images of reality.” Artistic symbolism is “a method of expressing experiences in images” ( Bely A. Criticism. Aesthetics. Theory of symbolism, vol. 2. M., 1994, p. 245, 67). Art has religious background, and traditional art has a religious meaning, the essence of which is esoteric, for art calls for a “transformed life.” In modern times, in the age of the dominance of science and philosophy, “the essence of the religious perception of life moved into the field of artistic creativity,” therefore modern art (i.e., symbolic first of all) is the “shortest path to religion” of the future (ibid., vol. 1 , pp. 267, 380). This religion itself is focused on the improvement and transformation of man and all life, hence the ultimate goal of symbolism is to go beyond the limits of art itself for free theurgy - the creation of life with the help of the divine energy of the Symbol. In the hierarchy of creative “zones,” theurgy occupies the highest level, to which the stages of artistic and religious creativity lead. The idea of ​​theurgy, the increased religious emphasis of art and the generally prophetic and preaching nature of creativity, especially pronounced in Bely, significantly distinguish Russian symbolism from Western.

The leitmotif of Bely’s entire theoretical and artistic work is a feeling of a global crisis of culture (intensified during the First World War, when he wrote the articles “Crisis of Life”, “Crisis of Culture”, “Crisis of Thought” and “Crisis of Consciousness”), apocalyptic visions , awareness of the cultural and historical end. Bely believed that the apocalypse of Russian poetry was caused by the approach of the “End of World History,” in which, in particular, he saw the solution to “Pushkin and Lermontov’s mysteries.” Bely was overwhelmed by eschatological aspirations of the approach of a new, more perfect stage of culture, which the Symbolists were called upon to promote on the paths of free theurgy, mystical and artistic creativity of life.

To understand the essence of Bely’s symbolism, it is important to analyze the specifics of the artistic thinking of the writer, who constantly felt his deep connection with other worlds and saw the meaning of art in identifying these worlds, establishing contacts with them, in activating the ways of contemplation, improving consciousness and, ultimately, improving life itself ( theurgic aspect). The features of Bely’s poetics include a complex polyphony of three meaningful planes of existence (personality, the material world outside of it and the transcendental “other” reality), an apocalyptic worldview and eschatological aspirations, a real sense of the struggle between Christ and the Antichrist, Sophia and Satan in the world and in man; in prose, some of the “complexes” identified by Freud are strongly expressed; for the later period – contacts with astral levels, the image of the world through the eyes of an “astral double”, etc.; hence the constant motifs of loneliness, global incomprehensibility, mental suffering up to the feeling of crucification of oneself in oneself, an almost paranoid atmosphere in some parts of the “symphonies”, “Petersburg”, “Masks”. Clairvoyance and the feeling within oneself of prophetic intentions arouse in Bely an increased interest in combining purely “cerebral” techniques with intuitive revelations, irrational moves, and enhance alogism (sometimes reaching the point of absurdity), associativity, and synesthesia in his works. “The dance of self-fulfilling thought” (Bely) sets a crazy rhythm for many of his works, stimulates the constant change of narrative and lyrical masks, creates a “dance” of meanings with special techniques of using sounds, words, phrases, speech, and text in general. Bely's poetics, distinguished by a heightened spirit of experiment, influenced a number of avant-garde, modernist and postmodernist phenomena in literature and art of the 20th century; he is considered the “father” of futurism and modernism in general, the forerunner of the formal school in literary criticism (he was the first to introduce such concepts as “technique”, “material”, “form” into the analysis of literary material) and experimental aesthetics, the largest writer of anthroposophical orientation.

One of the significant features of the aesthetics of Russian symbolism was the desire of its theorists to predict the development of art in the direction of becoming a sacred mystery. Mystery was perceived as the ideal and ultimate goal of “realistic symbolism,” which Vyach. Ivanov, and after him Bely, distinguished from “idealistic symbolism.” The essence of the latter is that symbols here act only as a means of contact between people and are of a subjective psychological nature, focused on expressing and conveying the subtlest nuances of experiences. They have nothing to do with truths and Truth. In realistic symbolism, symbols are ontological - they themselves are real and lead people to even higher true realities (a realibus ad realiora - the motto of Ivanov the symbolist). Here the symbols also connect the consciousnesses of the subjects, but in a different way - they bring them (as in Christian worship) “through Augustine’s transcende te ipsum” into a conciliar unity “by a common mystical vision of an objective essence common to all” (Collected works, vol. 2. Brussels, 1974, p. 552). Realistic symbolism is, according to Ivanov, a form of preservation and, to some extent, development modern level myth as the deep content of a symbol, understood as reality. A true myth is devoid of any personal characteristics; it is an objective form of storing knowledge about reality, acquired as a result of mystical experience and taken for granted until, in the act of a new breakthrough to the same reality, new knowledge of a higher level is revealed about it. Then the old myth is removed by a new one, which takes its place in the religious consciousness and in the spiritual experience of people. Ivanov saw the ultimate task of symbolism in myth-making - not in artistic treatment old myths or in writing new fantastic tales, which, in his opinion, is what idealistic symbolism does, and in true myth-making, which he understood as “the spiritual feat of the artist himself.” The artist “must stop creating outside of connection with divine unity, must educate himself to the possibilities of creative realization of this connection. And a myth, before it is experienced by everyone, must become an event of internal experience, personal in its arena, superpersonal in its content” (ibid., p. 558). This is the “theurgic goal” of symbolism. Many Russian symbolists realized that they were cramped within the framework of art, and conceptualized symbolism as a kind of creative system of the future, which should go beyond the boundaries of art. Symbolism, in their opinion, in its own way leads a person to the same goal as religion, without attempting to replace it or supplant it. Ellis wrote that artistic symbolism, tearing the soul away from attachment to a purely material world and drawing it into the endless spheres of the spirit, nevertheless cannot lead it in this direction to its logical end and, as it were, keeps it halfway. In this he saw the fundamental antinomianism of symbolism, its spiritual and epistemological limitations.

A definite conclusion has been brought to Russian symbolism N. Berdyaev in the work “The Meaning of Creativity. The experience of human justification" (1916). He completely agrees with the symbolists in understanding the symbol as the basis of any art and symbolism - as its highest level. Slightly varying their formulations, he argued that “a symbol is a bridge thrown from the creative act to the ultimate hidden reality.” However, Berdyaev is convinced that there is no way to achieve this “reality” through the paths of art. In symbolism, creativity outgrows the boundaries of art and culture; it strives not for the values ​​of culture, but for a new being. “Symbolism is the desire to free oneself from symbolism through awareness of the symbolic nature of art. Symbolism is a crisis of cultural art, a crisis of every middle culture. This is its global significance.” The tragedy of Christian creativity “with its transcendental melancholy ends in symbolism.” The symbolists became the forerunners and heralds of the “coming world era of creativity,” the creativity of life itself on new spiritual foundations. Symbolism is followed by “mystical realism”, and art by theurgy (Collected works, vol. 2. Paris., 1985, pp. 276–277).

Symbolism had a significant influence on a number of artistic movements of the 20th century. (expressionism, futurism, surrealism, theater of the absurd, postmodernism - see Vanguard ), on the work of a number of major writers and artists. Many theoretical discoveries of the symbolists were reflected in major aesthetic movements. At the same time, the intensely spiritual and often religious-mystical orientation of the majority of symbolists turned out to be alien to the main trend of art of the 20th century.

Literature:

1. [Aesthetic manifestos, theoretical works of symbolists] – Bely Andrey. Symbolism. M., 1910;

2. It's him. The meadow is green. M., 1910;

3. It's him. Arabesque. M., 1911;

4. It's him. Symbolism as a worldview. M., 1994;

5. Literary heritage, vol. 27–28. M., 1937;

6. Baudelaire S. About art. M., 1986;

7. Poetry of French symbolism. Lautreamont. Songs of Maldoror. M., 1993;

8. Ellis. Russian Symbolists. Tomsk, 1996;

9. Baudelaire Ch. Curiosités esthétiques. L'art romantique et autres oeuvres critiques. P., 1962;

10. Denis M. Theories. 1890–1910. P., 1920;

11. Michael G. Message poetique du symbolisme. La doctrine symboliste, v. 1–3. P., 1947;

12. Mokel A. Esthetique du symbolisme. Bruxelles, 1962;

13. Mitchell W. Les manifestes littéraires de la belle époque. 1886–1914. Anthologie critique. P., 1966;

14. Oblomievsky D. French symbolism. M., 1973;

15. Mazaev A.I. The problem of the synthesis of arts in the aesthetics of Russian symbolism. M., 1992;

16. Kryuchkova V.A. Symbolism in fine arts. France and Belgium. 1870–1900. M., 1994;

17. Kassu J. Encyclopedia of Symbolism. M., 1998;

18. Bychkov V.V. Aesthetic prophecies of Russian symbolism. – “Polygnosis”, 1999, No. 1, p. 83–120;

19. It's him. Symbolism in search of the spiritual. - In the book: It's him. 2000 years of Christian culture sub specie aesthetica, vol. 2. M., 1999, p. 394–456;

20. Bowra C.M. The Heritage of Symbolism, v. 1–3. L., 1943;

21. Christoffel U. Malerei und Poesie. Die symbolische Kunst des 19 Jahrhunderts. Wien, 1948;

22. Lehmann A. The Symbolist Aesthetic in France 1885–1895. Oxf., 1950;

23. Holthusen J. Studien zur Ästhetik und Poetik des russischen Symbolismus. Göttingen, 1957;

24. Hofstätter H.H. Symbolismus und die Kunst der Jahrhundertwende. Köln, 1965;

25. Weinberg B. The Limits of Symbolism. Chi., 1966;

26. Hofstätter H.H. Idealismus und Symbilismus. Wien–Münch., 1972;

27. Cioran S. The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrej Belyj. P., 1973;

28. Julian Ph. The Symbolists. L., 1973;

29. Goldwater R. Symbolism. L., 1979;

30. Pierre J. Symbolism. L., Woodbury, 1979;

31. Houston J.P. French Symbolism and the Modernist Movement, Baton Rouge, La., 1980;

32. Woronzoff Al. Andrej Belyj’s “Petersburg”, James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and the Symbolist Movement. Bern, 1982;

33. Balakian A. The Fiction of the Poet: From Mallarmé to the Post-Symbolist Mode. Princeton. N.J., 1992.

1.2 Russian symbolism and its features

Symbolism is a movement of modernism, which is characterized by “three main elements of new art: mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability...”, “a new combination of thoughts, colors and sounds”; The basic principle of symbolism is the artistic expression through a symbol of the essence of objects and ideas that are beyond sensory perception.

Symbolism (from the French simbolism, from the Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) appeared in France in the late 60s - early 70s. 19th century (initially in literature, and then in other types of art - visual, musical, theatrical) and soon included other cultural phenomena - philosophy, religion, mythology. The favorite themes that the symbolists addressed were death, love, suffering, and anticipation of certain events. The subjects were dominated by scenes from gospel history, semi-mythical and semi-historical events of the Middle Ages, and ancient mythology.

Russian symbolist writers are traditionally divided into “senior” and “younger”.

The elders - the so-called "decadents" - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub - reflected in their work the features of pan-European panaestheticism.

The younger symbolists - Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov - in addition to aestheticism, embodied in their work the aesthetic utopia of the search for the mystical Eternal Femininity.

The doors are tightly locked,

We don't dare open them.

If the heart is true to legends,

Consoled by barking, we bark.

What is stinking and nasty in the menagerie,

We forgot a long time ago, we don’t know.

The heart is accustomed to repetition, -

We cuckoo monotonously and boringly.

Everything in the menagerie is impersonal, usually.

We have not longed for freedom for a long time.

The doors are tightly locked,

We don't dare open them.

F. Sologub

The concept of theurgy is associated with the process of creating symbolic forms in art. The word “theurgy” derives its origin from the Greek teourgiya, which means divine act, sacred ritual, mystery. In the era of antiquity, theurgy was understood as the communication of people with the world of the gods in the process of special ritual actions.

The problem of theurgic creativity, which expresses the deep connection of symbolism with the sphere of the sacred, worried V.S. Solovyova. He argued that the art of the future must create a new connection with religion. This connection should be freer than it exists in the sacred art of Orthodoxy. In restoring the connection between art and religion on a fundamentally new basis, V.S. Solovyov sees a theurgic principle. Theurgy is understood by him as a process of co-creation between the artist and God. Understanding of theurgy in the works of V.S. Solovyov found a lively response in the works of religious thinkers of the early twentieth century: P.A. Florensky, N.A. Berdyaeva, E.M. Trubetskoy, S.N. Bulgakov and others, as well as in the poems and literary critical works of Russian symbolist poets of the early twentieth century: Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maximilian Voloshin and others.

These thinkers and poets felt the deep connection that existed between symbolism and the sacred.

The history of Russian symbolism, covering various aspects of the phenomenon of Russian culture of the late twentieth and early twentieth centuries, including symbolism, was written by the English researcher A. Pyman.

Disclosure of this issue is essential for understanding the complexity and diversity of the aesthetic process and artistic creativity in general.

Russian symbolism of the late 19th - early 20th centuries was immediately preceded in time by the symbolism of icon painting, which had a great influence on the formation of the aesthetic views of Russian religious philosophers and art theorists. At the same time, Western European symbolism, represented by the “damned poets” of France P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarmé, primarily adopted the ideas of irrationalist philosophers of the second half of the 19th century - representatives of the philosophy of life. These ideas were not associated with any particular religion. On the contrary, they proclaimed the “death of God” and “loyalty to the earth.”

Representatives of European irrationalism of the 19th century, in particular

F. Nietzsche, sought to create a new religion out of art. This religion should not be a religion that proclaims one God as the highest sacred value, but a religion of a superman who is connected with the earth and the physical principle. This religion established fundamentally new symbols, which, according to F. Nietzsche, should express the new true meaning of things. The symbolism of F. Nietzsche had a subjective, individual character. In form and content, it opposed the symbolism of the previous stage of cultural development, since the old symbols were largely associated with traditional religion.

Russian symbolist poets Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely, following F. Nietzsche, proceeded from the fact that the destruction of traditional religion is an objective process. But their interpretation of the “art-religion” of the future differed significantly from Nietzsche’s. They saw the possibility of religious renewal through the revival of the art of antiquity and the Middle Ages, art that spoke the language of myth and symbol. Possessing significant sacred potential and preserving itself in artistic forms accessible to the understanding mind, the art of past eras, according to theorists of symbolism, can be reborn in a new historical context, in contrast to the dead religion of antiquity, and the spiritual atmosphere of the Middle Ages that has become a thing of history.

This is exactly what happened once during the Renaissance, when the sacred beginning of past eras, transformed into the aesthetic, became the basis on which the great art of the European Renaissance was formed and developed. As unattainable examples of theurgic creativity, works of art of antiquity embodied the foundation thanks to which it became possible to preserve for many years the sacredness of the art of the Christian Middle Ages, already depleted in an aesthetic sense. This is what led to the unattainable rise of European culture during the Renaissance, synthesizing ancient symbolism and Christian sacredness.

Russian symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov comes to theurgy through understanding the cosmos through the artistic expressive capabilities of art. According to his statements, in art the most important role is played, along with the symbol, by such phenomena as myth and mystery. IN AND. Ivanov emphasizes the deep connection that exists between symbol and myth, and the process of symbolistic creativity itself is considered by him as myth-making: “Approaching the goal of the most complete symbolic disclosure of reality is myth-making. Realistic symbolism follows the path of symbol to myth; the myth is already contained in the symbol, it is immanent to it; contemplation of a symbol reveals the myth in the symbol.”

Myth, in the understanding of Vyacheslav Ivanov, is devoid of any personal characteristics. This is an objective form of preserving knowledge about reality, found as a result of mystical experience and accepted on faith until, in the act of a new breakthrough of consciousness to the same reality, new knowledge of a higher level is discovered about it. Then the old myth is removed by a new one, which takes its place in the religious consciousness and in the spiritual experience of people. Vyacheslav Ivanov connects “the sincere feat of the artist himself” with myth-making.

According to V.I. Ivanov, the first condition for true myth-making is “the spiritual feat of the artist himself.” IN AND. Ivanov says that the artist “must stop creating outside of connection with the divine unity, must educate himself to the possibilities of creative realization of this connection.” As noted by V.I. Ivanov: “And a myth, before it is experienced by everyone, must become an event of internal experience, personal in its arena, superpersonal in its content.” This is the “theurgic goal” of symbolism, which many Russian symbolists of the “Silver Age” dreamed of.

Russian symbolists proceed from the fact that the search for a way out of the crisis leads to a person’s awareness of his opportunities, which appear before him on two paths potentially open to humanity from the beginning of its existence. As Vyacheslav Ivanov emphasizes, one of them is erroneous, magical, the second is true, theurgic. The first way is connected with the fact that the artist tries to breathe “magical life” into his creation through magical spells and thereby commits a “crime”, since he violates the “protected limit” of his capabilities. This path ultimately leads to the destruction of art, to its transformation into an abstraction completely divorced from real life. The second path was theurgic creativity, in which the artist could realize himself precisely as a co-creator of God, as a conductor of the divine idea and revive with his work the reality embodied in artistic creativity. It is the second path that means the creation of living things. This path is the path of theurgic symbolist creativity. Since Vyacheslav Ivanov considers works of ancient art to be the highest example of symbolist creativity, he puts the ideal image of Aphrodite on a par with the “miraculous icon”. Symbolist art, according to the concept of Vyacheslav Ivanov, is one of the essential forms of influence of higher realities on lower ones.

The problem of theurgic creativity was associated with the symbolic aspect of the nature of the sacred in another representative of Russian symbolism - A. Bely. Unlike Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was an adherent of ancient art, Andrei Bely’s theurgy is primarily focused on Christian values. Andrei Bely considers the internal engine of theurgic creativity to be Good, which, as it were, inhabits the theurgist. For Andrei Bely, theurgy is the goal towards which all culture is directed in its historical development and art as part of it. He views symbolism as the highest achievement of art. According to the concept of Andrei Bely, symbolism reveals the content of human history and culture as the desire for the embodiment of a transcendental Symbol in real life. This is how he sees theurgic symbolization, the highest stage of which is the creation of life. The task of theurgists is to bring as close as possible real life to this “norm,” which is only possible on the basis of a newly understood Christianity.

Thus, the sacred as a spiritual principle strives to be preserved in new forms that are adequate to the worldview of the twentieth century. The high spiritual content of art is ensured as a result of the recoding of the sacred as religious into the aesthetic, due to which the search for an artistic form in art that is adequate to the spiritual situation of the era is ensured.

“The symbolist poets, with their characteristic sensitivity, felt that Russia was flying into the abyss, that old Russia was ending and should arise new Russia, still unknown” - this is what philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev said. Eschatological predictions and thoughts worried everyone, “the death of Russia”, “the end of history”, “the end of culture” - these statements sounded like an alarm bell. As in Leon Bakst’s painting “The Death of Atlantis,” the prophecies of many breathe impulse, anxiety, and doubt. The impending catastrophe is seen by the mystical illumination destined above:

The curtain is already trembling before the drama begins...

Someone in the dark, all-seeing like an owl,

Draws circles and builds pentagrams,

And whispers prophetic spells and words.

A symbol for symbolists is not a generally understood sign. It differs from the realistic image in that it conveys not the objective essence of the phenomenon, but the poet’s individual idea of ​​the world, most often vague and indefinite. The symbol transforms "rough and poor life" into "sweet legend."

Russian symbolism arose as a whole movement, but was refracted into bright, independent, dissimilar individuals. If the coloring of F. Sologub’s poetry is gloomy and tragic, then the worldview of early Balmont, on the contrary, is permeated with sunshine and optimism.

The literary life of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the Silver Age was in full swing and concentrated on V. Ivanov’s “Tower” and in the Gippius-Merezhkovsky salon: individualities developed, intertwined, and repelled each other in heated discussions, philosophical disputes, impromptu lessons and lectures. It was in the process of these living mutual intersections that new movements and schools moved away from symbolism - Acmeism, the head of which was N. Gumilyov, and ego-futurism, represented primarily by the word-maker I. Severyanin.

The Acmeists (Greek acme - the highest degree of something, a blooming power) opposed themselves to symbolism, criticized the vagueness and instability of the symbolist language and image. They preached a clear, fresh and “simple” poetic language, where words would directly and clearly name objects, and would not, as in symbolism, refer to “mysterious worlds.”

Vague, beautiful, sublime symbols, understatement and underexpression were replaced by simple objects, caricature compositions, sharp, sharp, material signs of the world. Innovative poets (N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, V. Narbut, M. Kuzmin) felt themselves to be creators of fresh words and not so much prophets as masters in the “workroom of poetry” (I. Annensky). It is not for nothing that the community united around the Acmeists called itself a guild of poets: an indication of the earthly background of creativity, of the possibility of collective inspired effort in poetic art.

As we see, Russian poetry of the “Silver Age” has come a long way in a very short time. She was planting her seeds into the future. The thread of legends and traditions has not been broken. Poetry at the turn of the century, the poetry of the “Silver Age” is a most complex cultural phenomenon, interest in which is only just beginning to awaken. More and more discoveries await us ahead.

The poetry of the “Silver Age” reflected in itself, in its large and small magic mirrors, the complex and ambiguous process of socio-political, spiritual, moral, aesthetic and cultural development of Russia in a period marked by three revolutions, a world war and especially terrible for us - the internal war , civil. In this process, captured by poetry, there are ups and downs, light and dark, dramatic sides, but in its depths it is a tragic process. And although time has pushed aside this amazing layer of “Silver Age” poetry, it radiates its energy to this day. Russian " silver Age"Unique. Never before, nor since, has there been such agitation of consciousness in Russia, such tension of quests and aspirations, as when, according to an eyewitness, one line of Blok meant more and was more urgent than the entire content of “thick” magazines. The light of these unforgettable dawns will forever remain in the history of Russia.

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Symbolism (from the Greek sýmbolon - sign, symbol) is a movement in European literature and art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The foundations of the aesthetics of symbolism were formed in the late 60s and 70s. in the works of French poets P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarmeau and others. As a method of artistic reflection of reality, symbolism in images of familiar reality reveals the presence of phenomena, trends or patterns that are not directly externally expressed, but are very significant for the state of this reality. The symbolist artist strives to transform a specific phenomenon of the objective environment, nature, everyday life, human relations into an image-symbol, including it in widely developed associative connections with these hidden phenomena, which seem to fill the image and shine through it. There is an artistic combination of different planes of existence: the general, the abstract is mediated in the concrete and is introduced through an image-symbol into an area accessible to emotional perception, revealing its presence and meaning in the world of vital reality.

The development of symbolism is affected by time, era, and public sentiment. In Western European countries, he reflected the aggravation of social contradictions, the artist’s tragic experience of the gap between the humanistic ideal and bourgeois reality.

In the works of the greatest Belgian playwright and symbolist theater theorist Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), man exists in a world where he is surrounded by a hidden, invisible evil. Maeterlinck's heroes are weak, fragile creatures, unable to protect themselves or change the laws of life that are hostile to them. But they retain within themselves the principles of humanity, spiritual beauty, and faith in the ideal. This is the source of the drama and high poetic merits of Maeterlinck’s plays (“The Death of Tentagille”, “Peléas and Melisande”, etc.). He created the classic form of symbolist drama with its weakened external action, intermittent dialogue full of hidden anxiety and understatement. Every detail of the setting, gesture, and intonation of the actor performed its own figurative function in it, participated in the disclosure main topic- the struggle of life and death. The man himself became the symbol of this struggle, the world was an expression of his inner tragedy.

The Norwegian playwright G. Ibsen turns to the techniques of symbolist imagery in his later plays. Without breaking with the realistic worldview, he used it to reveal the conflicts of the individualistic consciousness of his heroes, the objective pattern of the catastrophes they experienced (“The Builder Solnes”, “Rosmersholm”, “When We, the Dead, Awaken”, etc.). Symbolism had its own impact in the works of G. Hauptmann (Germany), A. Strindberg (Sweden), W. B. Yeats (Ireland), S. Wyspianski, S. Przybyszewski (Poland), G. D "Annunzio (Italy).

Symbolist directors P. Faure, O. Lunier-Poe, J. Roucheu in France, A. Appiah in Switzerland, G. Craig in England, G. Fuchs, and partly M. Reinhardt in Germany, sought in their performances to overcome the concreteness of the everyday, naturalistic depictions of reality that dominated the theater of that time. For the first time, the practice of performing arts included conventional scenery, techniques of a generalized, figuratively concentrated image of the environment, the scene of action; scenography began to be consistent with the mood of a particular fragment of the play, activating the subconscious perception of the audience. To solve their problems, the directors combined the means of painting, architecture, music, color and light; the everyday mise-en-scène was replaced by a plastically organized, static mise-en-scène. Rhythm acquired great importance in the performance, reflecting the hidden “life of the soul”, the tension of the “background” of the action.

In Russia, symbolism arose later than in Western Europe, and was associated with the social upsurge caused by the revolution of 1905-1907. Russian symbolists saw in the theater an effective means of uniting the stage and spectators in the common experience of important modern ideas and moods. Man's impulse towards freedom and immortality, a protest against dead dogmas and traditions, against a spiritual machine civilization received its tragic interpretation in the dramas “Earth” by V. Ya. Bryusov and “Tantalus” by V. I. Ivanov. The breath of revolution fills the drama of A. A. Blok “The King in the Square”, in which the theme of the poet and the people, culture and the elements arises. “Balaganchik” and “Stranger” turned to the traditions of folk square theater, to social satire, and expressed a premonition of the coming renewal of life. “Song of Fate” reflected the difficult path of the intellectual poet to the people. In the play “Rose and Cross” Blok expressed a feeling of imminent historical changes.

During the difficult years for Russia, art was not homogeneous. Philosophical rejection of life, in which there is no place for high spirituality, for beauty and truth, distinguished the dramas of F. K. Sologub. The theme of the sinister play of masks was developed on folklore material by A. M. Remizov. Symbolist influences were felt in some of L. N. Andreev’s plays; they also affected the futurists, in particular the work of the early V. V. Mayakovsky (the tragedy “Vladimir Mayakovsky”). The symbolists brought the contemporary stage closer to poetry and stimulated the search for new theatrical imagery that expanded the associative content of the performance. V. E. Meyerhold was one of the first to think about how to reconcile the conventionality of design and mise-en-scène with the authenticity of the acting, how to overcome everyday specificity, and elevate the actor’s creativity to the level of high poetic generalization. In his aspirations, he does not remain alone: ​​in symbolism something needed by the theater as a whole is discovered.

In 1904, on the advice of A. Ya. Chekhov, K. S. Stanislavsky staged Maeterlinck’s trilogy (“The Blind,” “Uninvited,” “Inside”) at the Moscow Art Theater, trying to overcome the author’s pessimism and express the idea that “nature eternal." In 1905, he opened the Studio Theater on Povarskaya, where, together with Meyerhold, he studied the production possibilities of the new artistic direction. Using the techniques of symbolism in his work on the plays “The Drama of Life” by K. Hamsun and “The Life of Man” by Andreev, Stanislavsky became convinced of the need to educate a new actor capable of deeply revealing the “life of the human spirit”, and began his experiments in creating a “system”. In 1908, he staged Maeterlinck’s philosophical play-fairy tale “The Blue Bird.” In this performance, which is still preserved in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theater, he showed that man’s eternal striving for the ideal is the embodiment of the main law of life, the hidden and mysterious needs of the “world soul”. A convinced realist, Stanislavsky never tired of repeating that he turned to symbolism only in order to deepen and enrich realistic art.

In 1906-1908 At the V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Drama Theater in St. Petersburg, Meyerhold staged productions of Blok’s “Showroom” and “Sister Beatrice” by Maeterlinck. He learned theatricality from the square theater and the booth, turned to stylization, and looked for new techniques for visual-spatial solutions to the performance. The essence of these quests gradually became clear to him not so much in the embodiment of symbolist ideas, but in the further development of artistic means of modern theater, the search for new forms of acting, the relationship between the stage and the public. Meyerhold's stage experiments, which caused heated debates and conflicts, and were then continued at the Alexandrinsky Theater and at the Studio Theater on Borodinskaya, had great importance in the development of directing.

The experience of theatrical symbolism was mastered by the theater of the 20th century. in its most varied directions.

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

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

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

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

The turn of the 19th – 20th centuries is a special time in the history of Russia, a time when life was restructured and the system of moral values ​​changed. The key word of this time is crisis. This period had a beneficial effect on rapid development of literature and was called the “Silver Age”, by analogy with the “Golden Age” of Russian literature. This article will examine the features of Russian symbolism that arose in Russian culture at the turn of the century.

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Definition of the term

Symbolism is direction in literature, which formed in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Together with decadence, it was the product of a deep spiritual crisis, but was a response to the natural search for artistic truth in the direction opposite to realistic literature.

This movement became a kind of attempt to escape from contradictions and reality into the realm of eternal themes and ideas.

The birthplace of symbolism became France. Jean Moreas in his manifesto “Le symbolisme” first gives the name to the new movement from the Greek word symbolon (sign). The new direction in art was based on the works of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, and “The Soul of the World” by Vladimir Solovyov.

Symbolism became a violent reaction to the ideologicalization of art. Its representatives were guided by the experience left to them by their predecessors.

Important! This trend appeared in difficult times and became a kind of attempt to escape from harsh reality into an ideal world. The emergence of Russian symbolism in literature is associated with the publication of a collection of Russian symbolists. It included poems by Bryusov, Balmont and Dobrolyubov.

Main features

The new literary movement relied on the works of famous philosophers and tried to find in the human soul a place where one could hide from the frightening reality. Among the main features of symbolism in Russian literature the following are distinguished:

• The transmission of all secret meanings must be done through symbols.
• It is based on mysticism and philosophical works.
• Multiple meanings of words, associative perception.
• The works of great classics are taken as a model.
• It is proposed to comprehend the diversity of the world through art.
• Creating your own mythology.
• Special attention to the rhythmic structure.
• The idea of ​​transforming the world through art.

Features of the new literary school

The predecessors of the new symbolism it is generally accepted A.A. Fet and F.I. Tyutcheva. They became those who laid down something new in the perception of poetic speech, the first features of the future movement. Lines from Tyutchev’s poem “Silentium” became the motto of all symbolists in Russia.

The greatest contribution to understanding the new direction was made by V.Ya. Bryusov. He considered symbolism a new literary school. He called it “poetry of hints,” the purpose of which was stated as follows: “To hypnotize the reader.”

Writers and poets come to the fore the personality of the artist and his inner world. They destroy the concept of New Criticism. Their teaching is based on domestic positions. Particular attention was paid to the predecessors of Western European realism, such as Baudelaire. At first, both Bryusov and Sologub imitated him in their work, but later they found their own literary perspective.

Objects of the external world became symbols of some internal experiences. Russian symbolists took into account the experience of Russian and foreign literature, but it was refracted by new aesthetic requirements. This platform has absorbed all the signs of decadence.

Heterogeneity of Russian symbolism

Symbolism in the literature of the emerging Silver Age was not an internally homogeneous phenomenon. In the early 90s, two movements stood out in it: older and younger Symbolist poets. A sign of older symbolism was its special view of the social role of poetry and its content.

They argued that this literary phenomenon became a new stage in the development of the art of words. The authors were less concerned with the very content of poetry and believed that it needed artistic renewal.

Younger representatives of the movement were adherents of a philosophical and religious understanding of the world around them. They opposed their elders, but agreed only on the fact that they recognized the new design of Russian poetry and were inseparable from each other. General themes, images united critical attitude to realism. All this made their collaboration possible within the framework of the Libra magazine in 1900.

Russian poets had different understandings of goals and objectives Russian literature. The older Symbolists believe that the poet is a creator of purely artistic value and personality. The younger ones interpreted literature as life-building; they believed that the world, which had outlived its usefulness, would fall, and would be replaced by a new one, built on high spirituality and culture. Bryusov said that all previous poetry was “the poetry of flowers,” and the new one reflects shades of color.

An excellent example of the differences and similarities of Russian symbolism in the literature of the turn of the century was the poem “The Younger” by V. Bryusov. In it, he addresses his opponents, the Young Symbolists, and laments the fact that he cannot see the mysticism, harmony and possibilities of purifying the soul in which they so sacredly believe.

Important! Despite the confrontation between two branches of one literary movement, all Symbolists were united by the themes and images of poetry, their desire to get away from.

Representatives of Russian symbolism

Among the senior adherents, several representatives especially stood out: Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Dmitry Ivanovich Merezhkovsky, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, Fyodor Kuzmich Sologub. Concept developers and ideological inspirers of this group of poets Bryusov and Merezhkovsky were considered.

“Young Symbolists” were represented by such poets as A. Bely, A.A. Blok, V. Ivanov.

Examples of new Symbolist themes

For representatives of the new literary school there was characteristic theme of loneliness. Only in remoteness and complete solitude is a poet capable of creativity. Freedom in their understanding is freedom from society in general.

The theme of love is rethought and viewed from the other side - “love is a sizzling passion,” but it is an obstacle to creativity, it weakens the love for art. Love is a feeling that leads to tragic consequences and makes you suffer. On the other hand, it is portrayed as a purely physiological attraction.

Poems of the Symbolists open new topics:

• The theme of urbanism (celebration of the city as a center of science and progress). The world appears as two Moscows. The old one, with dark paths, the new one is the city of the future.
• The theme of anti-urbanism. The glorification of the city as a certain rejection of the old life.
• Theme of death. It was very common in symbolism. The motives for death are considered not only on a personal level, but also on a cosmic level (the death of the world).

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov

Symbol theory

In the field of the artistic form of poetry, the Symbolists showed an innovative approach. It had obvious connections not only with previous literature, but also with ancient Russian and oral folk art. Their creative theory was based on the concept of symbol. Symbols are a common technique both in folk poetry and in romantic and realistic art.

In oral folk art, a symbol is an expression of man’s naive ideas about nature. In professional literature, it is a means of expressing a social position, attitude towards the surrounding world or a specific phenomenon.

Adherents of the new literary movement rethought the meaning and content of the symbol. They understood it as a kind of hieroglyph in another reality, which is created by the imagination of an artist or philosopher. This conventional sign is recognized not by reason, but by intuition. Based on this theory, symbolists believe that the visible world is not worthy of the artist’s pen, it is only an inconspicuous copy of the mystical world, through penetration into which a symbol becomes.

The poet acted as a cryptographer, hiding the meaning of the poem behind allegories and images.

The painting “Vision to the Youth Bartholomew” (1890) by M. V. Nesterov often illustrates the beginning of the Symbolist movement.

Features of rhythm and tropes used by symbolists

Symbolist poets considered music the highest form of art. They strove for the musicality of their poems. For this traditional and non-traditional techniques were used. They improved the traditional ones and turned to the technique of euphony (the phonetic capabilities of the language). The Symbolists used it to give the poem a special decorativeness, picturesqueness and euphony. In their poetry sound side dominates the semantic, the poem comes closer to the music. The lyrical work is deliberately saturated with assonance and alliteration. Melodiousness is the main goal of creating a poem. In their creations, symbolists, as representatives of the Silver Age, turn not only to, but also to the elimination of line breaks, syntactic and lexical division.

Active work is also being done in the area of ​​poem rhythm. Symbolists focus on folk system of versification, in which the verse was more mobile and free. An appeal to free verse, a poem that has no rhythm (A. Blok “I came ruddy from the frost”). Thanks to experiments in the field of rhythm, the conditions and prerequisites were created for the reform of poetic speech.

Important! Symbolists considered the musicality and melodiousness of a lyrical work to be the basis of life and art. The poems of all the poets of that time, with their melodiousness, are very reminiscent of a piece of music.

Silver Age. Part 1. Symbolists.

Literature of the Silver Age. Symbolism. K. Balmont.

Conclusion

Symbolism as a literary movement did not last long; it finally collapsed by 1910. The reason was that Symbolists deliberately cut themselves off from the life around them. They were supporters of free poetry and did not recognize pressure, so their work was inaccessible and incomprehensible to the people. Symbolism took root in literature and the work of some poets who grew up on classical art and the traditions of symbolism. Therefore, the features of disappeared symbolism are still present in literature.