ОБ ЭВОЛЮЦИИ ОТНОШЕНИЯ АКМЕИСТОВ К НАСЛЕДИЮ СИМВОЛИЗМА

Abstract

The article analyzes a number of poems by Acmeists, representative for the philosophical and aesthetic foundations and poetics of this movement in the Russian poetry of the Silver Age. The research attention is focused on reception dynamics, in particular, the legacy of symbolism, by the poets of the acmeistic direction. Acmeism in the study is interpreted, first of all, as post-symbolism: philosophical-aesthetic and purely artistic achievements of the older poetic movement of Symbolists became a foundation for their own artistic achievements. The Acmeists’ break up with the Symbolists was never absolute. The declared opposition to Symbolism left great opportunities for attraction and reliance on previous practicies and their direct use in the process of cultural and artistic transmission. Creative strategies of Symbolism have always continued to exist within the frame of the Acmeists’ activity, and since the 1920s sometimes they even determined the nature of their art. The article analyzes in detail the selected poems by A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilev, G. Ivanov, and G. Adamovich. In the article it is established that among the “younger” acmeists (G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich), compared with the older ‘Guild poets’ (N. Gumilev and A. Akhmatova), the attraction to the creative principles approved by the Symbolist poets is increasing. Representatives of the younger acmeist group can be defined as “those who overcame Acmeism” (in analogy with the well-known title of the article by V.M. Zhirmunsky “Those who overcame Symbolism”). The essence of this overcoming consists in removing the fundamental opposition of aesthetic attitudes and poetics of two movements: the symbolist impulse to the transcendent, supported by the corresponding poetic language, and the acmeistic requirement for the tangibility, convexity, material and bodily “heaviness” of the artistic image.