Symbolism in art. Mysticism in a Christian way, or who can see angels “Senior Symbolists” and “Young Symbolists”

“The Silver Age of Russian Poetry” - Bobeobi's lips sang. Acmeism (akme-clarity) 1910-1921. Sergei Yesenin 1895 - 1925. Now I have become stingier in my desires, My life? Nikolai Gumilyov 1886 - 1921. As if I rode on a pink horse in the echoing early spring. 1917. K. Balmont. A. Blok. Decadence -. Silver Age Decadence Modernism Symbolism Acmeism Futurism Imagism.

“Poets of the Silver Age of Poetry” - “The rowan tree was lit with a red brush...”. Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev 1847-1913. A. Akhmatova 5. M. Tsvetaeva 11. 1. I. Annensky 7. N. Gumilev 2. K. Balmont 8. I. Severyanin 3. V. Bryusov 9. S. Klychkov 4. M. Voloshin 10. M. I Tsvetaeva. Creativity of M.I. Tsvetaeva. “I was there too, a passerby! "I like…". Poets of the Silver Age.

“The work of poets of the Silver Age” - Nikolai Gumilyov (1886-1921). I achieved everything myself, through independent work. The beginning of the 20th century - rapprochement with Gippius, Merezhkovsky, Bely, Bryusov, Balmont. Homework for the holidays. Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky (1865-1941). Born in the Olonets province into a peasant family. The revolution found in Estonia a lack of orders for collections and concerts.

"Poets of the 20th century" - Symbolism. I will not reveal my divine nature to anyone. A page from V. Khlebnikov’s book “Razin”. Everyone go to the call of the star, Look, I am burning before you. Why could only a futurist poet write THIS? Maximilian Voloshin, or simply Max. Find and read poems by V. Khlebnikov “The Spell of Laughter”, “Bobeobi Sang Lips”, etc.

"Symbolism" - Ideas of symbolism. Bryusov created his own style - sonorous, embossed, picturesque. In the USSR, the “bourgeois poet” Balmont was forgotten for many years. The purpose of art is an intuitive comprehension of the world through symbols. D.Merezhkovsky V.Bryusov K.Balmont Z.Gippius F.Sologub M.Kuzmin. Russian prose writer and poet; one of the notable representatives of the older generation of symbolists.

“Acmeism” - Romance, heroism, exoticism. Adamism Adam is a traveler, a conquistador, a man of strong will. A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut. 1911 – literary association “Workshop of Poets” Leaders of the “Workshop”: N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky 1913 “Apollo” magazine - declaration of the acmeistic group.

There are a total of 16 presentations in the topic

Mysticism is one of the most interesting and intriguing modern genres. Its components are strange events and inexplicable phenomena, signs of the other world and chilling creatures that appear out of nowhere. And fear is the fear of the unknown, the supernatural, which defies logical explanation.

Mysticism tickles the nerves and fascinates, which attracts the attention of readers. And it creates problems for writers, because it’s not so easy to create horror and scare with words.

Genre features of mysticism

There aren't many of them. Let's try to list basic:

The idea and plot are based on the theme of death (otherworldly).
Heroes and characters are either owners of supernatural (psychic) abilities, or representatives of the other world (ghosts, demons).
Dual world is a combination of reality and unreality, where reality predominates, and the unreal world adds an illogical poignancy to familiar phenomena.
Often, mysterious events and manifestations of the other world are designed solely for the reader’s faith in the supernatural and are not explained in any way.
The atmosphere of the story and the details of the surroundings are implicated in fear, which is “derived” from real and logical things - the creaking of floorboards or the howling of the wind outside the window.

The main character in mysticism is fear. And not only, but also the reader’s fear, as well as your own. To authentically write a frightening scene, you need to understand how fear affects a person. And you yourself need to be afraid of what you write about. Therefore, descriptions of monsters, ghosts or night cemeteries alone will not do.

Without a premonition of something terrible, without a feeling of an unknown and terrible danger from which you cannot hide or protect yourself in the usual ways (with the same stool or a pistol), a mystical phenomenon will simply be an element of the surroundings - strange, but not scary at all.

How the plot of a mystical story is built

In outline the plot of almost every mystical story consists of following steps:

the hero imagined something strange (and the day before he had had strange dreams, and the cat stubbornly hissed at someone in the corner);
the hero begins to come up with explanations from the logical to the otherworldly, one more terrible than the other, and he himself escalates the situation;
the cat stubbornly continues to hiss for several days now, and strange things seem to happen, despite running to the church and holy water in every corner;
out of fear, the hero becomes slightly inadequate, flinches at every rustle, sleeps poorly and himself looks for the “otherworldly” in his own home;
the priest’s arrival calms both the cat and the hero, and nothing happens for a couple of days;
and suddenly, one moonlit night, when the hero is sleeping peacefully...

And this is where the fun begins!

General mood and increasing tension in the story

In mysticism, of course, there must be a lot of inexplicable and frighteningly strange things, but all strange things must be logically included in the plot, therefore fears must have a logical basis.

If the hero, for example, has been afraid of ghosts all his life, a little background is needed - why they scare him terribly even in adulthood.

Thus, if you are not afraid to take on such a difficult genre... then be afraid! Be afraid in every scene – for the hero and his sanity, for the lives of the characters. And, of course, be afraid of what you write about, because the most reliable fear is the one that you know firsthand, which you have experienced and felt. And if you are not afraid to be afraid and are not afraid of what lives inside you... Good luck in writing a mystical story!

If you want to try your hand at writing mystery, come to the OPEN trial course "Keys to Mysticism: How to Write Books in the Mystical Genre"(subscription form at the very bottom).

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From the history of symbolism

Symbolism (from the Greek sumbolon - “sign”, “symbol”) is an international phenomenon in literature that has become widespread in Europe. The foundations of the aesthetics of symbolism were formed in France in the 60-70s of the 19th century in the works of Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé. Trying to comprehend the secret in the universe, trying to penetrate the subconscious, where ordinary language is powerless, symbolists turn to emotions, feelings, intuition, and not to reason. In Russia, symbolism was formed in the early 1890s and existed until approximately 1917. In the development of Russian symbolism, two stages are distinguished: “senior symbolists” and “young symbolists” at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. Historical events of this time invade people's daily lives, breaking the usual foundations. Everything has changed in Russia: political beliefs, moral principles, culture, art. New aesthetic phenomena arise against the backdrop of a strong rise in philosophical thought. A system of views is born, called “decadence” (from the French “decline”). Poetry developed especially dynamically at this time, which later received the name “poetic renaissance” or “Silver Age”.

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Symbolism as a worldviewRealists are always simple observers, symbolists are always thinkers. K. Balmont

The theoretical foundations of Russian symbolism were formulated by the literary critic and poet D. Merezhkovsky in the book “On the Causes of Decline and New Trends in Modern Russian Literature” (1893), in the article by K. Balmont “Elementary words about symbolist poetry”, in the work of Vyacheslav Ivanov “Thoughts about symbolism." Three main components of the new movement: mystical content, symbols, expansion of artistic impressionability. Symbolists widely used motifs and images from different cultures. Greek and Roman mythologies were favorite sources.

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Mystical content

At the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. Electricity and steam heating appeared, scientists are making great discoveries in medicine, but wars do not stop, there is no cure for cruelty, envy and loneliness. Russia was experiencing a crisis. Interest in the mysterious and mystical is growing. “And here modern people stand, defenseless, face to face with unspeakable darkness... Wherever we go, wherever we hide behind the dam of scientific criticism, with our whole being we feel the closeness of the mystery, the ocean,” wrote D. Merezhkovsky in his book. Mystical content is declared to be the main subject of the new art. The abstract is sweet to me. Through him I create life... I love everything solitary, I love the implicit. I am a slave to my mysterious, extraordinary dreams... Z. Gippius “Inscription on a book” 1896

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The symbol is the key to the secret. Where there is no secret in feeling, there is no art. For whom everything in the world is simple, understandable, comprehensible, he cannot be an artist. B, Bryusov “Keys of Secrets”

Symbol is the main category of Symbolist poetics. A symbol is a sign of a different reality. Symbols are designed to help penetrate into the essence of hidden phenomena. The symbol increases and expands the meaning of each word. Context plays an important role in understanding symbols. The symbol is associated with the area of the secret. The symbol invites the reader to co-creation. The poet in his poems addresses the “initiates.” The secrets of created creatures caress me with affection, And the shadow of patches trembles on the enamel wall. V. Bryusov “Creativity” 1895

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From the “Explanatory Dictionary” of the Symbolists

Evening is a symbol of mystery and mystical charms. Smoke is a symbol of unknowability, mystery. The earth is a gray ordinariness. A boat, a canoe is a symbol of earthly existence. Night is the dark mystery of existence. Sleep is a sweet moment of revelation. The sun is a distant light, an incomprehensible ideal. Twilight is a crack between worlds. Death is deliverance from the heaviness of the vulgar world.

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Expansion of artistic impressionability And I call the dreamers... I am not calling you! K. Balmont

A symbol, expanding the meaning of a word, becomes the most important means of conveying the feeling and mood of the author’s intention. The listener or reader perceives the text in all its ambiguity. Co-creation begins. Words-symbols awaken in the reader his own thoughts and feelings. Each symbolist poet has his own path in art, but they are all united by the worship of high dreams and feelings, the desire to change the world, to make it beautiful. I do not know wisdom suitable for others, I only impart verse to fleeting things. In every fleetingness I see worlds, Full of variability of rainbow play. Do not curse, wise ones, what do you care about me? I'm just a cloud full of fire. I'm just a cloud. You see: I’m floating. And I call the dreamers... I’m not calling you! K. Balmont 1902

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Poetics of Symbolism

Poems of Russian symbolists are “poetry of shades” (V. Bryusov). The symbol as the main category is the link between the material and ideal world. The worldview can shrink within a symbol or expand to the Universe. The reader is given the opportunity to complete only the image outlined by the poet. The artistic image is relegated to the background, as is the direct meaning of the word. The image is absent as a visual reality. Striving for musicality and harmony. Musicality is the most important principle of symbolism. Freedom of perception by the reader of images and symbols. Mobility and ambiguity of the word. The rhythmic possibilities of Russian verse have been expanded.

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"Senior Symbolists" and "Young Symbolists"

In the early 1890s, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub, Zinaida Gippius and others announced new ways of developing literature. Hopelessness, denial of existing existence, isolation, loneliness and insecurity, increased attention to mystical philosophy and aesthetic modernism - direct path to symbolism. The "Senior Symbolists" are often called impressionists and decadents. In 1901 - 1905, “young symbolists” Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Sergei Solovyov and others declared themselves in poetic circles. Followers of the philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov, they argued that the world would be saved by Divine beauty, Eternal femininity. Divine beauty is harmony between the spiritual and the material, between the external and the internal. The “Young Symbolists,” denying the modern world, believed in its transformation with the help of Love, Beauty, and Art.

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Glossary

Decadence (from the French “decline”) is a general designation for crisis phenomena in the art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modernism (the newest) is a philosophical and aesthetic movement based on the denial of the traditions of classical culture and the desire to create a fundamentally new art. Poetics (poetic art) is the doctrine of the construction of different types of literary works (the poetics of the novel, the poetics of Pushkin). Renaissance (from the French “rebirth”) - the Renaissance era was marked by great discoveries, as well as the awakening of interest in literature and art. “Silver Age” - the concept goes back to ancient literature. Geosid believed that the life of mankind begins with the “Golden” Age and ends with the “Iron” Age. In the modern historical and literary tradition, the Pushkin era is considered to be the “golden age” (P.A. Vyazemsky “Three Ages of Poets”), and the time of 1890 – 1920 – the “silver age”. An artistic image is one of the means of knowing and changing the world, a synthetic form of reflection and expression of feelings, thoughts, and aesthetic emotions of the artist. The artistic image refers to spiritual human activity.

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Literature

The Silver Age of Russian Poetry: Problems, documents. M., 1996. Russian poetry of the Silver Age. 1890 - 1917. M., 1993. Ermilova E.V. Theory and figurative world of Russian symbolism. M., 1989. A.A. Murashov. The all-pervading magic of words. Russian language and literature. 1991. V. P. Kryuchkov. Russian poetry of the 20th century. Saratov, 2002.

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Symbolism (from the French symbolisme - sign, omen, attribute) is an artistic movement in European and Russian literature (the last third of the 19th - early 20th centuries).

Symbolism arose in France in the 1870s (as an opposition to naturalism and realism) in the works of poets P. Verlaine (collections “Gallant Celebrations”, “Romances Without Words”, “Wisdom”), S. Mallarmé (collection “Poems”, poems “Herodias”, “Luck will never abolish chance”), A. Rimbaud (ballad “Drunk Ship”, sonnet “Vowels”, collection “Last Poems”) and others.

In subsequent years, symbolism was developed in Belgium in the works of M. Maeterlinck (fairy tale plays “Princess Malene”, “Peléas and Melisande”, “The Death of Tentajille”), E. Verhaeren (collections “Evenings”, “Crashes”, “Black Torches” "), in Germany in the lyrics of S. Georg (collections “The Seventh Ring”, “Star of the Union”, “New Kingdom”), in Austria in the poetry of R. M. Rilke (collection “New Poems”), in England in the works of O Wilde (fairy tale “The Happy Prince”, novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, short stories).

Feeling the hostility of the surrounding real environment, fearing a social and spiritual crisis, feeling powerless before the rough, cruel world and its laws, the symbolists sought to escape from reality into another, otherworldly, other world or into the depths of their spiritual, inner life.

For symbolists, the laws of social life remain incomprehensible, so they spoke about the unknowability of the world, which means that the essence of poetry for them is in the unspoken, supersensible.

The symbolists proceeded from the fact that true reality is inaccessible to reason and is comprehended only in an intuitive-ecstatic way, which is seen in mysticism. Turning primarily not to reason, but to feelings, emotions, intuition, they wanted to penetrate the sphere of the subconscious, to comprehend the secrets of the universe.

For symbolists, intuition and the subconscious were more important than reason and logic. They declared this sphere of the subconscious, the secret of the world, that is, mystical content, to be the main subject of the new art.

The main means of expressing mystical content becomes a symbol. In other words, the artistic image in art has become a model, a sign of a new reality.

The symbol was intended to help penetrate into the essence of hidden phenomena. The symbol connected earthly existence with the transcendental world (inaccessible to consciousness), with the depths of the spirit and soul, with the eternal, and was a form of communion with the Mystery.

Unlike the realists, who operated with typical images in which the generalization is objective, the symbol recorded the artist’s extremely subjective attitude to the world.

The symbol expanded the meaning, meaning of an ordinary word, logical definition and concept, and this led to the expansion of artistic impressionability - the presence in the text of fleeting, elusive details, impressions, hints.

The philosophical and aesthetic principles of symbolism go back to the works of A. Schopenhauer with his universal pessimism, despair, powerlessness of reason, view of “the world as an abode of suffering”, E. Hartmann, who considered the basis of existence to be an absolutely unconscious spiritual principle - the world will, F. Nietzsche, who saw the reason for the decline of culture is the spiritual and physical degradation of modern man, who has turned into mediocrity, a herd; Nietzsche put forward an individualistic cult of a strong personality - a “superman”, free from any morality and duties to others, called upon to command the herd. The German philosopher, asserting the secondary nature of reason, emphasized its subordination to will and instincts.

In Russia, symbolism emerged in the early 1890s in the works of D. S. Merezhkovsky (collections “Poems”, “Symbols”, novels “Christ and Antichrist”, “The Kingdom of Evil”), Z. N. Gippius (“Collected Poems” , collections of stories “The Scarlet Sword”, “Moon Ants”, the novel “Devil’s Doll”), V. Ya. Bryusov (collections “Russian Symbolists”, “The Third Watch”, “To the City and the World”, “Wreath”, novels “Fiery angel”, “Altar of Victory”), K. D. Balmont (collections “Under the Northern Sky”, “In the Vast”, “Silence”, “Burning Buildings”, “Let’s Be Like the Sun”, “Only Love”, “Liturgy of Beauty” "), F. K. Sologub (collection “The Flame Circle”, novels “Little Demon”, “The Legend in the Making”, collections of stories “The Sting of Death”, “Decomposing Masks”). These writers received the name “senior” symbolists in literary criticism.

In the early 1900s, “younger” symbolists entered literature, significant representatives of which were A. A. Blok (“Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” the collection “Night Hours,” the drama “Balaganchik,” the play “Rose and Cross,” poems “Retribution”, “Night Violet”, cycles “City”, “Scary World”, “Bubbles of the Earth”, “Iambics”, “Black Blood”, “Dance of Death”), Andrei Bely (collections “Gold in Azure”, “ Ashes”, “Urna”, poems “Funeral”, “Christ is Risen”, novel “Petersburg”), S. M. Solovyov (collections “Flowers and Incense”, “April”, “The Princess’s Flower Garden”, “Return to the Father’s House” "), V. I. Ivanov (collections "The Helmsman of the Stars", "Transparency", "Tender Secret", poems "Prometheus", "Infancy", the book "Eros"). These artists relied on the religious-mystical philosophy of V. S. Solovyov, who argued that divine Beauty (the Soul of the world, the Eternal Femininity) would descend into the world of evil, which should “save the world” by connecting the heavenly, divine principle of life with the earthly, material.

These two groups of Russian symbolists, although they belonged to the same direction, represented a different combination of philosophical and aesthetic positions and artistic individualities. If, for example, for the “older” symbolism is, first of all, the opportunity to create new, purely artistic values, then for the “young symbolists” new art should become theurgy, that is, a divine action, a miracle, a type of magic with the help of which it is possible to change the course of events, subordinating the actions of gods and spirits to his will.

Theurgy was perceived as a spiritual step leading to harmony and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. If the “older” symbolists, who considered themselves the harbingers of a new world, were characterized by pessimistic, even apocalyptic moods - despondency, fear of life, spiritual emptiness, a feeling of complete loss in a hostile world, disbelief in the ability of a person to change the world and change for the better, feelings endless fatigue and hopeless despair, prediction of the inevitable death of humanity, poeticization of death, the “younger” not only considered themselves harbingers of a new world, but also its witnesses: for them, a new world will be born at the moment of the mystical synthesis of heaven and earth, at the moment of the inevitable descent to earth Eternal Beauty.

At the same time, they sought to merge with nature, which already lives in the expectation of the Eternal Feminine and with which the symbolists associated creative inspiration and familiarity with the truth.

In this regard, it should be noted the interest of symbolists in mythology and myth-making, the desire to revive in modern man the psychological experiences of a person belonging to different eras - antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. For symbolists, mythology is outside of history; it is connected not with time, but with eternity. Myths and legends are always modern, fascinating and beautiful.

All symbolists were characterized by preaching the intrinsic value of art (“art for art’s sake”), its independence from life, the affirmation of pure aestheticism, extreme individualism (interest in the problem of the individual protesting against a society that dooms him to death).

The Symbolists were distinguished by experiments in the field of form of artistic text, a penchant for free verse, free verse, and prose verse. Among the genres, short lyric poems predominated, conveying fleeting intimate experiences. Music, the fundamental basis of their creativity, had a special significance (primarily philosophical) for the Symbolists. In terms of importance, music occupied second place (after symbol) in the aesthetics of symbolism.

The poetics of conventions, hints, omissions, allegories, arbitrariness of associative connections, frequent repetitions of words and entire lines, variation of motives, complicated metaphorical language means, sound, rhythm, intonation of the verse were intended to replace the exact, direct meaning of the word (the predominance of sound over meaning); speech expression, which was usually taken to the maximum limit, made lyrical creativity related to music.

What was important to the symbolists was not so much words as the music of words. Poems were usually constructed as a bewitching verbal and musical flow, the image was shrouded in a mystical haze, its contours and boundaries were erased. Symbolist poets did not strive to be generally understandable; they turned to a selected reader, a reader-creator, a reader-co-author, wanting to awaken in him his own thoughts and feelings, to help him comprehend the “superreal.”

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, symbolism as a movement was experiencing a deep internal crisis; in fact, it had exhausted itself, turning into vulgar beauty, pretentiousness and falsehood. It became obvious that art should be closer to life. Two new trends in modernism emerge - Acmeism and Futurism.

Introduction to literary criticism (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin, etc.) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005