Russian symbolism

Mikhail Nesterov's painting The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew (1890) is often considered to mark the inauguration of the Russian Symbolist movement.

By the mid-1890s, Russian symbolism was still mainly a set of theories and had few notable practitioners. Alexander Dobrolyubov published a book of verse in 1895, just before renouncing lay poetry in favour of wanderings from one monastery to another. Another talented author, Ivan Konevskoy, died at the age of 24. It was not until the new talent of Valery Bryusov emerged that symbolist poetry became a major movement in Russian literature. In order to represent symbolism as a movement of formidable following, Bryusov adopted numerous pen-names and published three volumes of his own verse, entitled Russian Symbolists. An Anthology (1894–95). Bryusov's mystification proved successful — several young poets were attracted to symbolism as the latest fashion in Russian letters. In addition to Bryusov, the most popular poets were Konstantin Balmont, who believed in first inspiration and sometimes intentionally left his verse unrevised, and the pessimistic Fyodor Sologub, who referred to himself as the bard of death.

Though the reputations of many of these writers had faded by the mid-20th century, the influence of the symbolist movement was nonetheless profound. This was especially true in the case of Innokenty Annensky, whose definitive collection of verse, Cypress Box, was published posthumously (1909). Sometimes cited as a Slavic counterpart to the accursed poets, Annensky managed to render into Russian the essential intonations of Baudelaire and Verlaine, while the subtle music, ominous allusions, arcane vocabulary, and the spell of minutely changing colours and odours in his poetry were all his own. His influence on the acmeist school of Russian poetry (Akhmatova, Gumilyov, Mandelshtam) was paramount.

Vsevolod Meyerhold in his production of Alexander Blok's Puppet Show (1906)

Russian symbolism really flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. Many new talents began to publish verse written in the symbolist vein. These writers were especially indebted to the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. The scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov, whose interests lay in ancient poetry, returned from Italy to establish a Dionysian club in St Petersburg. His self-proclaimed principle was to engraft "archaic Miltonic diction" to Russian poetry. Maximilian Voloshin, known best for his poetry about the Russian revolution, opened a poetic salon at his villa in the Crimea. Jurgis Baltrušaitis, a close friend of Alexander Scriabin and whose poetry is characterized by mystical philosophy and mesmerizing sounds, was active in Lithuania.

Of the new generation, two young poets, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, became the most renowned of the entire Russian symbolist movement. Alexander Blok is widely considered to be one of the leading Russian poets of the twentieth century. He was often compared with Alexander Pushkin, and the whole Silver Age of Russian Poetry was sometimes styled the "Age of Blok." His early verse is impeccably musical and rich in sound. Later, he sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry. His mature poems are often based on the conflict between the Platonic vision of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrial outskirts. They are often characterized by an idiosyncratic use of color and spelling to express meaning. One of Blok's most famous and controversial poems was "The Twelve," which described the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd in pseudo-religious terms.

Andrei Bely strove to forge a unity of prose, poetry, and music in much of his literature, as evidenced by the title of one of his early works, Symphonies in Prose. However, his fame rests primarily on post-symbolist works such as celebrated modernist novel Petersburg (1911-1913), a philosophical and spiritual work featuring a highly unorthodox narrative style, fleeting allusions and distinctive rhythmic experimentation. Vladimir Nabokov placed it second in his list of the greatest novels of the twentieth century after James Joyce's Ulysses. Other works worthy of mention include the highly influential theoretical book of essays Symbolism (1910), which was instrumental in redefining the goals of the symbolist movement, and the novel Kotik Letaev (1914-1916), which traces the first glimpses of consciousness in a new-born baby.

The city of St. Petersburg itself became one of the major symbols utilized by the second generation of Russian symbolists. Blok's verses on the imperial capital bring to life an impressionistic picture of the "city of a thousand illusions" and as a doomed world full of merchants and bourgeois figures. Various elemental forces (such as sunrises and sunsets, light and darkness, lightning and fire) assume apocalyptic qualities, serving as portents of a cataclysmic event that would change the earth and humanity forever. The Scythians and Mongols were often found in the works of these poets, serving as symbols of future catastrophic wars. Due to the eschatological tendency inherent in the Russian symbolist movement, many of them—including Blok, Bely, and Bryusov—accepted the Russian Revolution as the next evolutionary step in their nation's history.

Wassily Kandinsky's emblem of the symbolic Blue Rider (1911)

Fyodor Sologub was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose. His most famous novel, The Petty Demon (1902), was an attempt to create a living portrait of the concept known in Russian as poshlost' (an idea whose meaning lies somewhere between evil, trashy and banality or kitsch). His next large prose work, A Created Legend (a trilogy consisting of Drops of Blood, Queen Ortruda, and Smoke and Ash), contained many of the same characteristics but presented a considerably more positive and hopeful view of the world.

Valery Bryusov's novel The Fiery Angel is also well known. It tells the story of a 16th-century German scholar and his attempts to win the love of a young woman whose spiritual integrity is seriously undermined by her participation in occult practices and her dealings with unclean forces. The novel served as the basis for Sergei Prokofiev's opera The Fiery Angel.

One Russian symbolist who wrote mainly prose was Alexei Remizov.[1] Drawing on medieval Russian literature, he grotesquely combined dreams, reality and pure whimsy in his works.

Russian symbolism had begun to lose its momentum in literature by the 1920s. Its major practitioners frequently conflicted in the pages of the journals Vesy, Zolotoe runo and Pereval. Others wrestled for control of key printing houses. Meanwhile, many younger poets were drawn to the acmeist movement, which distanced itself from excesses of symbolism. Still others joined the ranks of the futurists, an iconoclastic group which sought to recreate art entirely, eschewing all aesthetic conventions.

Despite intense disapproval by the Soviet State, however, Symbolism continued to be an influence on poets like Boris Pasternak. In the Literary Gazette of September 9, 1958, the critic Viktor Pertsov denounced, "the decadent religious poetry of Pasternak, which reeks of mothballs from the Symbolist suitcase of 1908-10 manufacture."[2]