Russian Symbolism Research Articles

Лингвоцентричная поэзия в США и в России: траектории взаимодействия

To date, it becomes obvious that “language writing” is one of the largest trends in American literature and poetic thought of the last decades, and among the avant-garde trends, it is probably the most significant, extensive and innovative. American literature has spawned several significant schools and communities over the 20th century, from Imagists and beatniks to the San Francisco Renaissance and the New York school. Language poetry in this row, on the one hand, is an equally powerful literary movement (in the number of authors, published books, magazines, etc.), but on the other hand it is marked not so much by collectively shared aesthetic principles (as in the case of objectivists or Black Mountain poets), as by the general ideology of poetic work with language as a social institution and an aesthetic medium. The paper analyzes the points of divergencies and convergencies in American and Russian “language-centered writing.” The linguistic concepts of Russian Futurism (“the word as such,” “language breeding,” etc.) and Russian Symbolism (A. Bely’s “poetry of language”) have made their way — through the theory of Russian Formalism — to the theories of American language poets of the 1970s. The study looks more closely into how this cultural transfer exactly happened. Apart from that, this study juxtaposes the language-related concepts in the theory and practice of Russian Conceptualists and Metarealists, on the one hand, and the conceptual writing of American language poetry. These literary movements, as this paper claims, are part of the general linguistic turn which manifested itself in poetic theory and experiment in several phases over the 20th century.

In memoriam: Magnus Ljunggren (October 25, 1942 – June 19, 2022)

This is an obituary for Prof. Magnus Ljunggren of the University of Gothenburg (Göteborgs universitet), a distinguished expert in Russian Symbolism and Andrey Bely’s novel Petersburg , who was also an active supporter of the Russian dissident movement and an unequivocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime. KEYWORDS: Magnus Ljunggren (1942—2022), obituary.

«Нетварная твердь»: Вяч. Иванов и С. Булгаков (об одном стихотворении)

Russian symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov and religious philosopher Sergius Bulgakov were connected by formal relations and friendship in 1905–1918. In 1914 Ivanov published the poem “Mother” (“Te glyby chto nezhno zasypali grob...”), with a dedication to Bulgakov. The article discusses this poem and its draft version, which allows to trace the movement of the poet’s creative thought. The biographical context is the death of Bulgakov’s mother — he described his intimate experience in the “Unfading Light” (“Svet Nevecherniy”). Special attention is paid to the symbols and motifs typical to Ivanov’s poetics: the firmament, the sun-heart and the motive of transparency. An idea, common both for Ivanov and Bulgakov, is that of some preworld feminine principle that appears in their texts under different names: as Sophia, the Soul of the World, Great Mother, Mother Earth. They are also united by the special attitude towards death which is understood in a Christian way — as a birth into a new life and just a step on the path of resurrection. The intertextual connections of the poem with the philosophical and theological works by Bulgakov may be considered as a result of mutual influence and their reliance on common sources.

The clash between the sinister and the sublime in Strindberg’s The Father and Miss Julie

The article deals with naturalistic dramas by August Strindberg from the 1880s, namely his famous The Father and Miss Julie. Special attention is given to their stage history in different countries throughout the past century. The authors examine The Father and Miss Julie through the lens of how various ostents of the sinister and the sublime manifest themselves through the fabric of the playwright’s renowned plays from the pre-Inferno period. The two dramas are put in the wide context of Strindberg’s oeuvre where the opposition of low and higher appetences within a human being are often rendered as the clash between the feminine and the masculine. In addition to the above, the article draws attention to the ways of how the two dramas by Strindberg were received in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, especially by the Russian symbolist Alexander Blok. In addition to that the article includes valuable material on a number of theatre productions of The Father and Miss Julie as well on the reviews of some productions. In order to draw their conclusions the authors examine thoroughly the main characters of the plays. Thus, it becomes obvious that throughout the decades the Captain and miss Julie could be interpreted quite differently both by the scholars and by the directors. In a essayistic manner the article touches upon the question of the nature of Strindberg’s rampageous concern with the strife between the sexes as well as upon his so called misogyny.

Ibsen, Blok and Russian revolution (on connections between the poem The Twelve and the double-drama Emperor and Galilean)

The article deals with relations between Alexandr Blok’s poem The Twelve (1918) and Henrik Ibsen’s “world-historical drama” Emperor and Galilean (1873). Proceeding from the Christian paradoxical discourse after the Norwegian playwright, the poet radicalizes it so much that the bounds of traditional Christian worldview are broken down. In the poem, one can notice a rather complex indirect connection with the paradoxical discourse of both Dostoevsky (whose Christian identity is difficult to question) and Ibsen, especially beloved by Blok, in whose system of views it is important to notice the Lutheran dominant, implicitly referring to some Gnostic views that have quite logically been actualized in European culture of the last two centuries. The similarity between works so different, at first glance, as The Twelve and Ibsen’s double- drama, deserves attention: in both cases, Christ appears ghostly, not in the flesh, in Blok — invisible to all the characters, in Ibsen — as visible only to very few. In both cases, he brings retribution — a theme equally important both in Ibsen’s work and in Blok’s poem. Both the Norwegian playwright and the Russian symbolist poet interpret world history from the standpoint of religious and metaphysical paradoxicalism. Ibsen’s hero who renounced Christ begins the most brutal, bloody persecution of the Christian Church in order to destroy Christianity (Blok’s Red Guards shooting at both “Holy Russia” and the invisible Christ for them create a kind of parallel for him in this case), but achieves the goal opposite to his intentions — he cleanses Christianity and thereby saves it. The same can be said about Ibsen’s Julian that was said by Blok about the Red Guard — this is “water” to the mill of the Christian church. We do not know whether Blok think of Emperor and Galilean when working at his poem, but the parallels are obvious and remarkable.

Роман «Москва» Андрея Белого в диалоге с австрийской литературой ХХ века (на примере романа Г. Майринка «Голем»)

The article identifies typological parallels between Andrei Bely and G. Meyrink based on their similar worldviews: Bely, the ideologist of Russian Symbolism, was an adept of Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy; Gustav Meyrink, an outstanding representative of the Prague School, had an intense interest in occultism and mysticism. Both factors - the aesthetic representation of unconsciousness in fiction and the appellation to mystic and occult experience - bring together Bely’s novel Moscow (1926-1932) and Meyrink’s The Golem (1915). The interest to the oeuvre of both writers emerges in the period of breaking the old paradigm, the epoch of methodological impasse, and the search for new heuristic opportunities of text interpretation. The article reveals the common features of oneyropoetics in both novels and the typological proximity of the “characters of the way” (Ivan Korobkin and Athanasius Pernat) in the aspect of life creation (Bely) and in overcoming the “golemic” aspect and creating “Higher Self’ (Meyrink), raising the problem of the ambivalent finals. Architectonically, both novels are a two-layer text for a “mass” reader on the one hand and a special “initiated” reader on the other. The demonic urban spaces of Moscow and Prague take on the shape of a utopian city, undergoing transformed through the character’s mysterial suffering and becoming the final of their way (initiation) to “Higher Self.” The ideological centre of the novels is the concept of personality; namely, awareness and overcoming the “rapture” (“golemic nature”) by the character in Austrian (Prague) novel and responsibility for a scientific discovery and desire to “warm the Universe” by the character of the Russian novel, which results in his search for a spiritual integrity. Dreams as a bright epitomy of linguistic experiment serve for the plot formation in Moscow and accompany the character, the scientist, throughout his entire spiritual way. The Golem has a frame composition where dreaming and identification of the narrator with Pernat, who passed a mysterial way, become his spiritual experience and initiation. The present study is intended to show the opportunities of “comparative poetics”, which allows to correlate the oeuvre of both writers who fit stadially in the Expressionist Aesthetic and in more epochal sense - in the poetics of art modality (Samson Broytman). The author declares no conflicts of interests.

“Blue Rose” Movement: Twenty-First Century. Moscow Symbolism in the Light of Recent Studies

The article traces the history of perception and study of the masters of the “Blue Rose” as a symbolist movement in the Russian art of the early twentieth century. The versatile sphere of expression of the leading representatives of the “second wave” of Russian Symbolism, traditionally associated with the Moscow decadence of the 1900s, is subjected to more thorough and differentiated analysis in the context of recent research. If the first art historians of the “Blue Rose” group phenomenon concentrated on movement’s generalized description, nowadays the program aspects of the Blue Rose aesthetics are being explored in details, the poorly studied artists’ creative biographies are brought up to date. The growing archive base allows us to take a new look at the key moments of “Blue Rose” poetics’ formation and its involvement in the development of modernism, indicating a new stage in the study of the works of Moscow symbolists.

Новое об Артуре Хоминском. (Письма к М.П. Алексееву)

Arthur Sigismundovich Khominsky (1888 — after 1917) was a Kyiv poet and prose writer, the author of five poetry collections and a prose book “The Comfort of Jenkini” (1914). He called himself the founder of the “Alexander Blok Society” in Kyiv, sometimes being more radical in his own creative experiments than Russian symbolism Maitre. Together with Mikhail P. Aleхeev and the poet Maxim F. Rylsky they organized the literary group “Kyiv Anthropophages”, which existed in 1914–1915. The article and comment are attached to the publication of Arthur Khominsky’s creative heritage from the archive of Aleхeev who became an Academician later. Hitherto unknown Khominsky's letters to Aleхeev as well as his poetic and prose texts not only help to complete his image as an extraordinary author but contain interesting facts about literary life of the 1910s.

Self-Immolation as a Metaphor and Act in the Subcultures of the Late Russian Empire

This article examines the historical continuity between the self-immolations of the Old Believers and the radical aspirations of Russian revolutionary intellectuals, the aesthetics of sacrifice in the civil poetry of the 1880s, and the Russian modernism and avant-garde of the early twentieth century. The relevance of the article is due to its search for a metaphor that unites different spheres of Russian political and cultural life at the turn of the century. The author analyses self-immolation as a metaphor in the essays of G. Fedotov and D. Merezhkovsky, the paintings of G. Myasoedov and I. Repin, the poems of S. Nadson, K. Fofanov, V. Bryusov, N. Klyuev, V. Ivanov, and A. Blok, and the novels of M. Gorky and A. N. Tolstoy. The extreme symbolism of self-sacrifice united different strata of Russian culture, primarily the subcultures of the narodniks and literary bohemians. The most detailed metaphor of the creative and comprehensive ritualisation of intellectual subcultures is provided in O. Mandelstam’s memoirs The Noise of Time. Virtual self-immolation could become real, as when M. Grachevsky and M. Vetrova committed suicide in prison by self-immolation. The methodology of this article is based on historical and comparative analysis of poetic metaphors, characters, and visual motifs of paintings on historical topics and the socio-psychological attitudes of political radicals as manifestations of a ritual-like self-sacrifice plot. Even though self-immolations among Old Believers had almost completely stopped, the phenomenon was a challenge for Russian intellectuals. It turned into a metaphor in both the aesthetics of Russian political poetry and Russian symbolism. The cult of self-immolation in lyrical poetry found reflection in the extremely intense psycho-emotional and creative sentiments of biographical authors and their characters, where self-immolation is portrayed as the most perfect form of self-destruction. During and after the revolution, Russian philosophers and writers used this metaphor to condemn the Russian mentality and analyse the failure of the Russian intelligentsia’s mission to enlighten the people.

Մարտիրոս Սարյանի «Գիսաստղը»

Martiros Saryan’s "Fairy Tales and Dreams" series, in terms of the subject matter, pictorial language and aesthetic views, fully corresponds to the art of the younger generation of Russian Symbolism. The artist’s work of that period is characterized by mysterious plots, “wandering” images and recurring themes, giving rise to various interpretations. Such is "Comet", created in 1907. The key to the symbolism of this work is semantic analysis of the one-eyed figure and that of the gazelle, which are central to the composition. Some of Saryan’s notes and the parallels with the symbolistic thinking of the time, allow us to conclude that the gazelle symbolizes Nature as the Creator, while the one-eyed figure embodies Poet with universal knowledge. Martiros Saryan’s "Comet" asserts the unbreakable bond between Nature and Man, the artist's love and respect for nature and faith in man.

Crisis in the modernist period

This article glances at the crisis in general and its interpretations exemplified by the creative legacy of Dmitry Merezhkovsky, one of the brightest representatives of Russian symbolism. History shows that the crisis had a manifold influence both on social development and all spheres of human activity and changed the character of communications and the vector of development of spiritual culture and civilization. Such transformations explain the strong interest of Russian and foreign researchers in studying this phenomenon, its characteristics, and role in social processes. Focusing on the interpretation of crisis as a socio-cultural phenomenon and as a contradiction between culture and civilization, which manifested distinctively over the period of modernism and Russian symbolism. Not only did Merezhkovsky create his classification of crisis based on historical-cultural analysis and project the historical experience on the then-current cultural situation but also tried to forecast the future with his vision of overcoming the crisis.

Bulgarian Modernist Publications in the Database “Books in Russian Published Abroad, 1927—1991”

The article is devoted to the reflection of Bulgarian literary modernism of the 20th century in Bulgarian publications in Russian. The relevance of the article is supported by the fragmentary assimilation of Bulgarian modernism by Russian literary studies, which is insufficient to carry out the necessary completeness of the intercultural dialogue, given that the Bulgarian modernists largely focused in their work on the achievements of Russian symbolism and the Silver Age as a whole. The author traces the local features of the development of modernism in Bulgaria, which determine the validity of including in it the trends of symbolism and expressionism, often appearing in Bulgarian literature in syncretism. The article concretizes the stylistic and thematic uniformity of a number of Bulgarian literary phenomena of the 20th century, which proves the self-sufficiency of Bulgarian modernism as a full-fledged trend. Based on the material of Russian-language publications issued in Bulgaria and reflected in the database of the Bibliography Department of the Russian State Library “Books in Russian Published Abroad, 1927—1991”, the article identifies the main representatives of Bulgarian literary modernism: P. Todorov, P. Yavorov, A. Dalchev, A. Strashimirov, N. Furnadzhiev, A. Karalichev, D. Debelyanov, G. Milev, N. Rainov, T. Trayanov. The author attempts to determine a specific place for each of them within the framework of the considered trend. On the basis of individual and collective publications identified when accessing the specified database, the article outlines the main features of the creative method and style of each of the authors under consideration, which are supported by examples from the texts. The author draws conclusions about the degree of completeness of Bulgarian modernism adaptation for Russian-speaking readers, which remains insufficient due to the limited number of translations, the tendentious selection of works for translation in the light of the ideological restrictions of the Soviet era, the disregard of a number of leading authors, and the lack of modern reprints and popularization of the accumulated body of translations.

The North-South Civilizational Divide in Osip Mandelstam’s Philosophical and Literary Works

The article discusses the problem of cultural and civilizational self-identification in the works of Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam. According to the family legend, the Mandelstam family descended from Spanish Jews who fled from Spanish kings’ persecution, and then moved, in search of better life, further and further to the north of Europe, until they finally settled in the Russian Empire. In our view, young Osip Mandelstam was formed as a poet in the traditions of the literature of the “Russian North,” derived from Gavriil Derzhavin, Prince Peter Vyazemsky, Anton Delvig, and Alexander Pushkin. Mandelstam was a direct literary follower of the Russian symbolist poet of Swedish origin, I.I. Oreus (who published under the pseudonym of “Ivan Konevskoy”). The name of Oreus-Konevskoy, his magical poetic style, the circumstances of his death, and finally, his romantic grave on the steep bank of the Latvian river Aa (Gauja) – became truly iconic phenomena of the Russian Silver Age. Oreus-Konevskoy had a great influence not only on young Mandelstam’s verse (some of his famous poems are direct “literary duels” with the Teacher) but also on Alexander Blok, Valery Bryusov, and early Boris Pasternak. The author of the article analyzes how in the first post-revolutionary years Osip Mandelstam tried to become one of the theorists of the Soviet “Northern” literature. In the author’s view, when the repressive nature of the new regime became obvious and the “NorthernPetersburgian” Russia showed its totalitarian-Bolshevik appearance, there started a radical turn in Mandelstam’s self-consciousness, which led to an attempt to form a new personal identity, as a person belonging to the “cultural South,” who tragically found himself in the “barbaric North.”

Русский символизм Серебряного века: философская лирика как эстетическая проблема

The research objective is as follows: to identify specificity of philosophical lyrics as an aesthetic phenomenon in the Russian symbolist poetry of the Silver Age. The article clarifies the role of philosophical lyrics as a means to express existence, reveals its formal (poetical symbol) and meaningful (concept of two triads) aspects. Scientific originality of the paper lies in the fact that the researcher examines philosophical lyrics, a poorly investigated phenomenon of the Russian symbolist poetry. Contrary to previous studies focused on analysing the status of poetry in general, the article considers the status of philosophical lyrics in the Russian symbolism. The research findings are as follows: the author proves that philosophical lyrics most accurately describe the most complicated phenomena and conceptions, being a universal pattern through which human existential nature manifests itself.

Motifs of “the North” in Young Osip Mandelstam’s Philosophical–Poetic Works

ABSTRACT This article examines the problem of cultural–civilizational self-identification in the early philosophical–poetic works of Osip Emil’evich Mandelstam (1891–1938). The author argues that Mandelstam as a poet was shaped by the literary traditions of “Russian northernness,” which begins with Gavriil Derzhavin and Prince Pyotr Viazemskii. Mandelstam was a direct literary disciple of the Russian Symbolist poet of Swedish origins I.I. Oreus (under the literary pseudonym “Ivan Konevskoi”), who also greatly influenced the work of Aleksandr Blok, Valery Bryusov, and the early Boris Pasternak. The author of this article believes that after the revolution, when “northerner-Petersburg” Russia acquired a Bolshevik appearance, a radical shift began in Mandelstam’s self-consciousness, leading to his attempt to form a new personal self-identification as a man of the cultural “South” who tragically found himself in the barbaric “North.”

The Russian Symbolist Viacheslav Ivanov on Aesthetic Experience as Religious

Viacheslav Ivanov (1866, Moscow–1949, Rome) is one of the most prominent Russian symbolist poets and a leading theorist of symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article demonstrates that Ivanov understood art (and, more broadly, aesthetic experience) as one of the most effective forms of contact between the human being and the spiritual world, as well as with its first cause. Ivanov distinguishes between three “aesthetic principles” of the universe, which all together constitute “the beautiful”—the sublime, beauty, and the chaotic—and links them to the three stages of being of the artist in the process of creative activity. The artist first passes through the chthonian, subconscious stage of demonic chaos. Next, artists undergo the process of ascent into the ideal, spiritual sphere, where they gain experience, which cannot be expressed in words. After that, the process of the descent of the artist towards the earth takes place, where artists attempt to express in the form of artistic symbols the experience that they have acquired. Ivanov sees the artistic symbol as a materially given structure, which nevertheless cannot be described in words. This structure not only expresses a spiritual essence, but also really and energetically manifests it. Hence, Ivanov sees the creator of high, symbolic art (“realist symbolism”) as an artist-theurge (theurgy is the art of the future, of the future mystery on the basis of a synthesis of the arts that receives divine assistance), who contributes to the augmentation of being. For the recipient, the artistic symbol is anagogical (from the Greek ἀναγογή, “leading up”). It leads one up from the real world to a more real one (a realibus ad realiora). According to Ivanov, both the symbol and its content, myth, are of divine origin; they are “embodiments of the divine truth.” Therefore, high art is one of the principal ways of one’s ascent to spiritual reality by means of sensory reality.

Из воспоминаний Л.Я. Гуревич о журнале «Северный вестник». Статья первая

The journal “Severny Vestnik” (1891 –1898), around which relatively young Petersburg writers — A. Volynsky, N. Minsky, D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius, F. Sologub — were grouped in the last years of the 19th century, was of exceptional importance for the early stage of Russian Symbolism. The publication presents new archival materials on the history of the journal: an article “Symbolism of the 1890s and the journal 'Severny Vestnik'” by L.Ya. Gurevich, prepared for an unpublished collection of articles “Russian Symbolism” edited by N.K. Gudzii and read in the form of a report at a meeting of the Literary Subsection of the State Academy of Arts, as well as the minutes of the meeting dated May 14, 1926 with the discussion of this report. An addition to L. Gurevich’s article is her notes (1897 –1898), which record the real and biographical context of the publication of “Severny Vestnik” from the moment the journal passed into her hands until it was closed, as well as her plan for reorganizing the journal. These materials will be presented in the second part of the publication. Documents introduced into scientific circulation allow expanding the range of sources for studying the history of “Severny Vestnik” and early Russian Symbolism.

Идея русского символизма о синтезе культурных форм в контексте культуры постмодерна

The relevance of the topic is due to the attention to trends in the development of culture. The synthesis of cultural forms is one of the important factors in the dynamics of culture. The teaching of Russian symbolism about the synthesis of cultures was analyzed in the scientifi c literature of the entire twentieth century. The novelty of the research is to compare the idea of art synthesis in the early twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries. Two aspects of the idea of synthesis are considered: 1) the relevance of the idea of art synthesis in the postmodern era; 2) music and the visual series as organizing centers of art synthesis in the era of information technology. The purpose of this article is to examine the teaching of Russian symbolism about the integration of various forms of art and the features of synthesis in the postmodern era. The idea of integrating cultural forms was one of the key elements in Russian symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century and was interpreted as a real prospect for the development of culture. In a broad sense, synthesis in symbolism meant the integrity of life, the integration of all spheres of human activity, the “organic connection” of cultures of the past and present. The synthesis can be realized on the basis of the art of symbolism, which can create a new culture. The synthesis of arts was understood as the beginning of the formation of a new culture. The core of the synthesis of arts, the symbolists saw music. Postmodern art is characterized by synthetism. Computer and information technologies create new forms of synthetic media art. The video series becomes the center of integration construction of postmodern audiovisual culture forms. The symbolist idea of the synthesis of arts as the beginning of cultural change in the postmodern era remains a utopian project. But the creation of new art forms in postmodern culture i s based on integration. New technologies are becoming a factor that determines the specifi cs of the synthesis of arts and infl uences the dynamics of culture. Both in Russian symbolism and in modern art, the goal of art synthesis is to present an integral image of the world, to form a system of worldview attitudes.

Неопубликованная диссертация Леонида Долгополова о поэмах Блока «Возмездие» и «Двенадцать»

Russian Modernism scholar Leonid Konstantinovich Dolgolopov (1928 –1995), known for his studies on Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, completed his PhD thesis on Blok’s narrative poems “Retribution” and “The Twelve” in 1960, received his degree in 1962, but never published the text (now in the author’s possession). Its major parts were published as papers, its principal propositions and conclusions were developed in Dolgopolov’s later research works, but the thesis was never printed as a whole, and, from the author’s point of view, is worth being published as a valuable source for history of literary studies on Russian Symbolism as well as an original work useful and readable even now. The article presents Dolgopolov’s unpublished PhD thesis. Chapter One deals with “Retribution” and presents a comprehensive study of the poem’s plan, plot, and literary history, its genre peculiarities and historical scenes. Chapter Two analyzes evolution of Blok’s political views during the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917 and also its reflection in Blok’s lyric poems of this period. Chapter Three is the first of Dolgopolov’s numerous studies on “The Twelve”, the work he considered to be Blok’s highest literary achievement. Dolgopolov analyzed the poem’s ideas and images (especially Jesus Christ), its formal and rythmic novelty, its place among other contempopary poetical works on Russian revolution.

МИХАИЛ ВРУБЕЛЬ В ПОИСКАХ «СТИЛЬНО ПРЕКРАСНОГО». БИОГРАФИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

The article is a conceptual exploration of the life and creative path of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) in the context of the individual characteristics of his personality. The relevance of this study is determined by the need to find new conceptual angles in the field of understanding the idealistic component of M.A. Vrubel's work, i.e. in the field of his iconographic poetics. The visual myth-making of the artist, who drew on authentic spiritual prototypes, defined the leading role of Vrubel not only in Russian Symbolism and Modernism, but also in Modernism as a whole. The linking of the biographical aspect with M.A. Vrubel's poetic thinking, examined through the prism of “pure art”, i.e. in the context of the idea of the legitimacy of the independent existence of the self-contained reality of the work, can give entirely new accents of understanding the deep origins and potential meanings of the artist's work at the present stage of development of art history.