ARNOLD BÖCKLIN’S PICTORIAL MOTIFS IN THE POETRY OF IVAN BUNIN AND ANDREY BELY

Abstract

The article deals with the reception of Arnold Böcklin’s pictorial heritage in the Russian culture and literature of the Silver Age. It has gone through all the stages from a violent passion to cooling and almost complete oblivion. Th e focus is on the lyrics of Ivan Bunin and Andrey Bely of the 1900s. The author reveals the ways of acquaintance of the Russian public with the paintings of the Swiss painter (foreign travels, reproductions) and the peculiarities of their perception. By means of comparative analysis, the author reveals the similarities in the plots and images of some of the poems of two contemporary poets with the most famous paintings of the artist: The Island of the Dead and Th e Battle of the Centaurs. It is concluded that the culture of Russian modernism as a whole was characterized by a metaphysical interpretation of Böcklin. Bunin valued more symbolic lyrical landscapes that convey a sense of the mystical enigma of being and human life, or allegorical canvases (Oceanids), impressive because of the beauty of the plastic scene. Bely sought in the artist’s work support for the assertion of the existence of another, otherworldly reality, the realm of myth and ancient legends, and this was refl ected in his poetry. And in the symphonies, allusions to Böcklin create a satirical effect. Nevertheless, both in Bunin’s poem and in Bely’s works, we fi nd interesting examples of a modernist artistic synthesis that combines painting and literature and is aimed at spiritualizing reality, overcoming positivism and materialism. We see how the images of the Swiss artist become the language for someone else’s creative thought, fi t into a different national culture.