Fedor Sologub(real name Fedor Kuzmich Teternikov; February 17 (March 1) 1863, St. Petersburg - December 5, 1927, Leningrad) - Russian poet, writer, playwright, publicist . One of the most prominent representatives symbolism and covering all of EuropeFin de siècle.
Fedor Sologub was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a tailor, former peasant of the Poltava province K. A. Teternikov. The family lived poorly. When Fyodor's father died in 1867, his mother was hired by the Agapov family, St. Petersburg nobles, for whom she had once served. In the Agapov family, the early years of Fyodor Sologub. People in the house were interested in theater and music, there were books, and Sologub became addicted to reading early on. Knew almost everything by heart N.A. Nekrasov and valued his poetry much higher than Pushkin and Lermontov. Perhaps thanks to this, Sologub felt his poetic gift quite early.
He studied at the parish school, the St. Petersburg district school, and in 1878 Sologub entered the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute, from which he graduated four years later. During these years, Sologub translated a lot: Shakespeare, Heine, Goethe; translated poems by Hungarian and Polish poets, and the Icelandic saga “Edda”. He also tried to write prose: in 1879 he began the epic novel “Night Dew” about the destinies of three generations, as well as a theoretical study on the form of the novel. And although such a grandiose plan was not completed, it gave a lot to the young writer, being a necessary literary practice. In the last year of study, the poem “Loneliness” was begun, dedicated to N. Nekrasov.
After graduating from the institute, having defended his diploma with honors, in July 1882, Fyodor Sologub went to teach in the northern provinces - first in Krestsy, then in Velikiye Luki (in 1885) and Vytegra (in 1889) - spending a total of ten years in the province. While teaching, Sologub continued to write poetry and began work on a novel (the future “Heavy Dreams”), which took almost a decade. The young poet’s first publication was the fable “The Fox and the Hedgehog,” published in the magazine “Spring” on January 28, 1884, signed by “Ternikov”; this date marked the beginning of the literary activity of Fyodor Sologub. In subsequent years, several more poems were published in small newspapers and magazines.
In September 1892, Fyodor Sologub returned to St. Petersburg, where he was appointed as a teacher at the Rozhdestvensky City School. By this time, Sologub was already familiar with some people of the new art, first of all, with N. Minsky, one of the first Russian decadents, who at the beginning of the year handed over his poems to the editor of the Northern Messenger, A. L. Volynsky. It was at the insistence of Minsky that it was decided to give him a pseudonym; the initial version of “Sollogub” was proposed by Volynsky. The pseudonym first appeared in print in 1893 in the April issue of the magazine “Northern Herald” (it signed the poem “Creativity”). For a year and a half, it was sometimes used, sometimes not, until it finally became established. Sologub's first published story, “Ninochka's Mistake” (1894), was published under the signature “Fyodor Mokhovikov.” Without attribution in 1895-1897. Severny Vestnik published many reviews of books, mainly on pedagogy.
From the second half of the 90s, the personal contacts of the writer, who gradually entered the literary circles of St. Petersburg, also expanded. Sologub often visited the Merezhkovskys, whose regular guests were K. Balmont, A. Chekhov, and later V. Rozanov. I attended the “Wednesdays” of the “World of Art” circle, the “Fridays” of K. Sluchevsky, and finally, poetry meetings began to take place at Sologub himself on Sundays, which were attended by the first Russian decadents, Vl. Gippius, A. Dobrolyubov and I. Konevskoy.
At the end of December 1895, Fyodor Sologub’s first book was published: “Poems, book one.” Most of the poems contained in it were written in 1892-1895. (at the earliest in 1887) - in the years when the individual poetic language and basic lyrical moods were finally defined and strengthened. It was followed in 1896 by the novel “Heavy Dreams” and “Shadows” - a combined collection of stories and a second book of poems. Sologub published all three books himself in a small, although usual at that time, circulation; he also had to distribute them himself, in which he was helped with advice by L. Ya. Gurevich, publisher of the Northern Messenger.
In April 1897, a split occurred between the editors of Severny Vestnik and Sologub. The relationship was not easy before, but in last years the differences in views between the editors and the poet intensified. In December 1896, Volynsky wrote a sharp article on the new art, in which he condemned the “decadents” and welcomed the “symbolists”; Sologub was listed among the “decadents.” Sologub began collaborating with the Sever magazine. At the beginning of 1899, Sologub transferred from Rozhdestvensky to Andreevsky City School on Vasilyevsky Island. There he became not only a teacher, but also an inspector with a government-owned apartment at the school according to his status.
In 1904, the Third and Fourth Books of Poems were published, collecting poems from the turn of the century under one cover. “Collected Poems 1897-1903” was a kind of boundary between decadence and the subsequent symbolism of Sologub, in which the symbols of Sologub the poet were established. At the same time, in Sologub’s decadence and symbolism there was no sharp and disharmonious accumulation of aesthetic paradoxes or deliberate mystery or understatement. On the contrary, Sologub strove for extreme clarity and precision - both in lyricism and in prose.
By the mid-1900s. The literary circle, which met in the writer’s house on Sundays since the mid-1890s, became one of the centers of literary life in St. Petersburg. On Sundays, Sologub's conversations were exclusively literary, first at the table, then in the master's office, where poems, dramas, and stories were read. Among the visitors to Sologub’s “Sundays” were Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, A. Volynsky, A. Blok, M. Kuzmin, V. Ivanov, S. Gorodetsky, A. Remizov, K. Chukovsky, G. Chulkov ; Andrei Bely and V. Bryusov came from Moscow.
In 1904, Fyodor Sologub entered into a permanent cooperation agreement with Novosti and Birzhevaya Gazeta. It lasted just under a year, during which about seventy articles were published, and dozens more remained unpublished. The range of topics that Sologub touched on in his journalism was shaped both by his official activities and by the most pressing issues of the time: school, children, the Russo-Japanese War, the international situation, revolution, Jewish rights.
During the First Russian Revolution of 1905-06. Sologub's political tales, published in revolutionary magazines, enjoyed great success. “Fairy tales” are a special genre for Fyodor Sologub. Brief, with a simple and witty plot, often beautiful prose poems, and sometimes repulsive with their stuffy reality, they were written for adults, although Sologub liberally used children's vocabulary and techniques of children's fairy tales. In 1905, Sologub collected part of the fairy tales published by that time in the “Book of Fairy Tales” (Grif publishing house), and the “political fairy tales” written at the same time were included in the book of the same name, published in the fall of 1906. In addition to newspaper articles and “fairy tales,” Sologub responded to the revolution with his fifth book of poems, “Motherland.” It was published in April 1906.
In March 1907, Sologub managed to publish his novel “The Little Demon” (finished in 1902 and previously not fully published in the journal “Problems of Life”), the book received not only fair recognition from readers and became the object of analysis by critics, but was simply one of the most popular books of Russia. By that time, Sologub had abandoned journalism and fairy tales, concentrating on drama and a new novel, “The Legend in the Making” (“Navy Chary”). In the fall of 1907, Sologub began preparing the seventh book of poems (these were translations from Verlaine), upon the release of which he planned to publish the eighth book of poems, “The Flame Circle,” which embodied all of Sologub’s mathematical symbolism.
In the work of Sologub 1907-1912. dramaturgy was given a predominant place. His dramas, more than his fiction, were influenced by his philosophical views, and his first dramatic experience was the mystery play “Liturgy for Me” (1906). Love united with death creates a miracle in early play Sologub “The Gift of the Wise Bees” (1906), written based on the ancient myth of Laodamia and Protesilaus. In the tragedy “Victory of Death” (1907), love is used as an instrument of “magical” will. In the draft version, the tragedy was called “Victory of Love” - Sologub saw in the changing poles of opposites not an aggravation of antagonism, but an internal identity, and the poles in his works often changed (“Love and Death are one,” sound the final words in the play) . This identity of opposites was fully reproduced in the grotesque play “Vanka the Key Holder and the Page Jehan.” In a similar way, another Russian folk tale, “Night Dances,” was reworked for the stage. The premiere of the play directed by Evreinov took place on March 9, 1909 at the Liteiny Theater in St. Petersburg; The roles were played not by professional actors, but by poets, writers and artists: S. Gorodetsky, L. Bakst, I. Bilibin, M. Voloshin, B. Kustodiev, A. Remizov, N. Gumilyov, M. Kuzmin and others.
In 1908, Sologub married translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya. Their earliest, superficial, acquaintance took place in the fall of 1905 with Vyacheslav Ivanov. Then the 28-year-old translator moved to St. Petersburg from Moscow, having previously studied for four years at French higher education institutions. educational institutions. Having taken Sologub’s work closely, Chebotarevskaya did not limit herself to articles about the writer, but also began to delve into all her husband’s literary connections, trying to strengthen them, and, one might say, became his literary agent. In 1910, Sologub and Chebotarevskaya moved to house 31 on Razyezzhaya Street, where, through the efforts of Chebotarevskaya, a real salon was set up, in which, in the words of K. Erberg, “almost the entire theatrical, artistic and literary Petersburg of that time gathered.” Special evenings were held in the salon on Razyezzhaya in honor of new interesting poets - there were evenings of Anna Akhmatova, Sergei Yesenin, Igor Severyanin.
Chebotarevskaya’s creative collaboration with Fyodor Sologub was also expressed in the writing of several joint stories, articles and plays - the stories “ An old house" and "The Road to Damascus", the plays "Love over the Abyss", "The Victorious Dream" and "A Stone Thrown into the Water". Sologub and Chebotarevskaya The story “Cold Christmas Eve” generally belongs to the pen of Chebotarevskaya alone, although it was published under the name of Fyodor Sologub. Sometimes her own articles in newspapers they signed the name of Fyodor Sologub - this way they were published more willingly and, accordingly, they were paid more.
In the early 1910s, Fyodor Sologub became interested in futurism. In 1912, Sologub, mainly through Chebotarevskaya, became close to a group of St. Petersburg ego-futurists (Ivan Ignatiev, Vasilisk Gnedov, etc.). Sologub’s lyrics were consonant with the ideas of egofuturism, and Sologub and Chebotarevskaya took part with interest in the almanacs of the egofuturist publishing houses “The Enchanted Wanderer” and “Petersburg Herald”.
Against the backdrop of increased public interest in new art and in the writings of the author of “The Legend in the Making” in particular, Fyodor Sologub conceived a series of trips around the country with poetry readings and lectures on new art that promoted the principles of symbolism. After thorough preparation and the premiere of the lecture “The Art of Our Days” on March 1, 1913 in St. Petersburg, the Sologubs went on tour together with Igor Severyanin. Their trip lasted for more than a month. Russian cities. The main theses of the lecture “The Art of Our Days” were compiled by Chebotarevskaya based on the notes and writings of Sologub. At the same time, the previous works of D. Merezhkovsky, N. Minsky, V. Ivanov, A. Bely, K. Balmont and V. Bryusov were taken into account. To summarize, the trips can generally be called a success - Sologuba met with great success in many cities of Russia, especially thanks to the young students. After the lecture they came, asked questions, took autographs.
Fyodor Sologub perceived the First World War as a fatal sign that could bring many instructive, useful fruits for Russian society, as a means of awakening the consciousness of the nation in the Russian people. However, by 1917, Sologub had lost faith in such a mystical quality of war for Russia. You can trace the writer’s attitude to the war and various social issues from the articles that Sologub published weekly in the Birzhevye Vedomosti. The pathos of Sologub’s military journalism formed the basis of the lecture “Russia in Dreams and Expectations”, with which Sologub gave in 1915-1917. traveled all over Russian Empire. In addition, the poet also responded to the war with a book of poems “War” (1915) and a collection of short stories “The Ardent Year” (1916), which received extremely lukewarm reviews in the press. The poems and stories were intended to support the spirit and strengthen hope for victory, but their content turned out to be artificial, often tinged with sentimentality, so unusual for Fyodor Sologub.
Sologub met the February revolution with enthusiasm. However, Fyodor Sologub reacted to the October events that followed with unconditional hostility. In his speeches and journalism, Sologub not only opposed new government, but tried to form public opinion that could influence the Bolsheviks in the field of cultural policy. During the years of the revolution, the Moscow Book Publishing House published two new books by Fyodor Sologub: “The Scarlet Poppy” (poems, 1917) and “The Blind Butterfly” (stories, 1918).
Rejection of the surrounding situation prompted Fyodor Sologub, who was fundamentally against emigration, to apply for permission to leave several times in the period 1919-1921. Finally, permission was received, and departure to Revel was planned for September 25, 1921. However, the agonizing wait broke the psyche of Sologub’s wife. On the evening of September 23, 1921, Chebotarevskaya committed suicide by throwing herself from the Tuchkov Bridge into the Zhdanovka River. The death of his wife was a tragedy for Fyodor Sologub. Sologub will constantly turn to her memory in his work in the remaining years, writing a number of poems, united in memory of his wife, combining them into the “Anastasia” cycle. After the death of his wife, Sologub changed his mind about leaving Russia.
In mid-1921, the Soviet government issued several decrees that marked the beginning of a new era economic policy, - private trade and private enterprise were allowed. Publishing and printing activities immediately revived, and foreign contacts were restored. At the same time, new books by Fyodor Sologub appeared. The first of these books by Sologub was the novel “The Snake Charmer,” published in the early summer of 1921 in Berlin. The novel was written intermittently from 1911 to 1918 and became the last in the writer’s work.
The first post-revolutionary book of poems, “The Blue Sky,” in which Sologub selected unpublished poems from 1916–21, was published in September 1921 in Estonia; the erotic short story “The Queen of Kisses,” with illustrations by Vladimir Grigoriev, and Sologub’s last collection of stories, “Numbered Days,” were also published there. . From the end of 1921, Sologub’s books began to be published in Soviet Russia: the poetry collections “Incense” (1921), “One Love” (1921), “Road Fire” (1922), “Cathedral Blaze” (1922), “The Magical Cup” were published "(1922), the novel "The Snake Charmer" (1921), a separate illustrated edition of the short story "The Queen of Kisses" (1921), translations (Honoré de Balzac, Paul Verlaine, Heinrich von Kleist).
In the spring of 1922, Sologub turned to the poetry of Paul Verlaine, and then both new translations and corrections of those previously published in the 1908 book were made. Sologub placed some translations of Verlaine’s poems, carried out at the same time, in the anthology “Sagittarius” (1922), and a year later the second edition of the book of translations was published by the Petrograd publishing house. This book of Verlaine's translations can be conditionally called the last new book by Fyodor Sologub: all subsequent ones were reprints of previous books.
The last big event in the life of Fyodor Sologub was the celebration of his anniversary - the fortieth anniversary of literary activity - celebrated on February 11, 1924. The celebration, organized by the writer’s friends, took place in the hall of the Alexandrinsky Theater and attracted a large audience. Wreaths and telegrams of congratulations came from all cultural organizations of the USSR. E. Zamyatin, M. Kuzmin, Andrei Bely, O. Mandelstam gave speeches on stage. Among the organizers of the celebration are A. Akhmatova, A. Volynsky, Vs. Christmas. This celebration paradoxically turned out to be the farewell of Russian literature to Fyodor Sologub; no one then imagined that after the holiday not a single new book of his would be published.
In the mid-20s. Sologub returned to public speaking and reading poetry. As a rule, they took place in the form of “writers’ evenings”, where, along with Sologub, A. A. Akhmatova, E. Zamyatin, A. N. Tolstoy, M. Zoshchenko, Vs. Rozhdestvensky, K. Fedin, K. Vaginov and others. According to one of the organizers, Sologub’s name on the poster already ensured the success of the event in advance. Only at such performances could Sologub’s new poems be heard, since they did not appear in print. The poems were wonderful. Having stopped writing prose and drama, Sologub devoted himself entirely to pure lyricism.
In addition, during this period, Sologub wrote about a dozen anti-Soviet fables (in early 1925 and spring 1926), which were read only in a narrow circle. According to R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, “until the end of his days, Sologub fiercely hated the Soviet regime, and did not call the Bolsheviks anything other than “stupid-minded.” As an internal opposition to the regime (especially after the issue of emigration disappeared) there was a rejection of the new spelling and the new style of chronology in creativity and personal correspondence.
In May 1927, in the midst of work on the novel in verse “Grigory Kazarin,” Fyodor Sologub became seriously ill. Since the summer, Fyodor Kuzmich almost never got out of bed. In the fall, the disease began to worsen.
Sologub is a true son of his era, and therefore his work and fate cannot be separated from the surrounding literary process of that time. No matter how critics argue: whether his novels are symbolic or not, that is, they stand on the verge of realism - in any case, his images remain deeply symbolic. Western philosophy, popular at that time, also could not help but have a certain influence on the young movement - the Silver Age. All this is organically synthesized in the work of every symbolist. Fyodor Sologub does not stand aside here either.
Modernism declares itself as a new art that creates reality, creating a perfect spiritual personality. In this regard, the question arises about the powerlessness of the human mind. A new person appears - a hero, not constrained by such bonds. He is contradictory, unpredictable, spontaneous. In Russian modernism, trends of evil, intoxication with sin, and demonism developed. This all served as a kind of need to justify goodness.
Thus, any stories, myths, legends were folded into one sign - a symbol that implied a deep meaning. Moreover, the symbol has an infinite number of meanings. Russian symbolists introduced another feature into symbolism: the so-called inauthenticity of the world. According to this concept, human feelings give misleading ideas about the world.
As a result of such an illusory world, each person creates his own universe. And in this new symbolist world, cause-and-effect relationships in understanding the human spirit are denied. There is a bet on intuition. It is she who becomes the conductor of human reactions and actions. Understanding the elusive, intuitive, and demonic seems accessible to Sologub through art. The prosaic work of a symbolist makes it possible to become familiar with the secrets of the world and come into contact with them. An artist peering into his inner and outer the world, tries to establish an elusive connection between them. The relationship, unity and integrity of these two worlds through the writer’s reflections and comprehension form the creation of a third reality. It is populated by heroes whose features the writer can discern in modern life. “I was not put under the necessity of inventing and inventing myself; everything anecdotal, everyday and psychological in my novel is based on very accurate observations, and I had enough “nature around me” for my novel,” Sologub writes about himself.
The intention of the symbolist in general and Sologub in particular is the reconstruction of life. And who is helping them create this reconstruction? “The surface of my mirror is smooth, and its composition is pure. Measured many times and carefully tested, it has no curvature.” Here Sologub uses one of the iconic and multi-valued symbols - a mirror. There are many expressions associated with this subject: “the eyes are the mirror of the soul,” “look at yourself in the mirror.” All this suggests that no matter how crooked the mirror is, it necessarily reflects the very essence of human nature. Or another symbol - fire, this burning theme is already set in the epigraph of the work: “I wanted to burn her, the evil witch.” Fire is also a multi-valued symbol. This is also a symbol of purification; it is not without reason that candles are used in Christian and Catholic church rites. And a symbol of destruction. This theme is manifested not just in fire and combustion, but also in a fiery landscape: The garden turned yellow and was full of fruits and late flowers... The berries on the elderberry bushes turned red. Near the fence, Siberian geranium bloomed thickly - small pale pink flowers with purple veins.”
The symbol, as is known, is musical in nature. The meaning of the sound and the focus on pronunciation becomes important here. For example, the word Nedotykomka. The sounds chosen in the word symbol create the feeling that it is not real. After all, we understand: a thing exists if it can be touched; What can’t be done with Nedotikomka. “When he extended his hand to her, she ran out the door or under the closet.”
Speaking about Sologub’s work, we must not forget about its deep symbolism. If you do not pay attention to the symbols, the novel “The Little Demon” will become simply a dramatic story, full of experiences and situations, the story of a not quite normal teacher. But this is too superficial a perception, which can be correlated with post-revolutionary reviews of the novel. Symbolic images give the novel depth and relief, reflecting not only the creative ideals of Sologub himself, but also the signs of the time that gave birth to him.
Read Fyodor Sologub's 1894 poem, which has no title. It is indicated by the first line - “Restless rain...”.
"The rain is restless
It hits the glass noisily,
Like a sleepless enemy,
Howling and shedding tears.
The wind is like a tramp
Moans under the window,
And the paper rustles
Under my pen.
Random as always
This is the day
Somehow missed
And thrown into the shadows.
But there's no need for anger
Invest in the game
How the bones fall
So I take them.”
The poem is written in trochaic trimeter. This meter has its own association in Russian poetry, like almost every classical meter. This connection is not structural, but historical. It just happens that someday (especially if we are talking about a rare meter) poems appear that become an event in Russian poetry, and further poems written in the same meter are somehow associatively connected with this first prototype.
In this case, the trimeter trochee evokes the famous poem by Lermontov (Fig. 2), which in turn is a translation of Goethe’s poem. Lermontov calls this poem “From Goethe.”
Rice. 2. M. Yu. Lermontov ()
In this poem there is not only a trochaic trimeter, but also a cross rhyme. That is, this is a fairly classic stanza. Therefore, Sologub’s poem is associated primarily with the poem “From Goethe”:
"Mountain peaks
They sleep in the darkness of the night;
Quiet Valleys
Full of fresh darkness;
The road is not dusty,
The sheets don't tremble...
Wait a bit,
You too will have a rest.”
In Goethe and Lermontov we are talking primarily about reconciliation, about achieving peace, about recognizing man as part of the natural community. There is a natural philosophical view of nature. But this peace, sought and desired, which is promised in the last line, was bought at the price of death. Because the phrase sounds “You too will have a rest...”, which in this case means peace that will come only after death.
The range of themes in this poem one way or another wanders through many poems written in this meter. In the era of modernism we see a constant return to this size. For example, Balmont writes:
"There is one bliss -
Deadly peace..."
The theme of bliss, peace, but deathly peace is raised again.
Or Bryusov, who argues with Balmont and writes:
"There is no peace for the soul,
Looked the day in the eye..."
But we see that this is a theme of anxiety, silent and serene nature, partly even indifferent. The search for this peace, for which one must pay with death, will vary all the time in poems written in trochaic trimeter.
Let's look at how Sologub works with these themes and this size.
"The rain is restless
It hits the glass noisily,
Like a sleepless enemy,
Howling and shedding tears.”
The rhythm shows the alternation of different rhythmic patterns. If the first and third lines consist of long words that add a gap to the stress, and a melodic arc sounds, then the next line is full-stressed, as if it beats out a rhythm. This combination of melodic intonation and a rigidly beating rhythm creates the ragged rhythm of the poem, the constant interruption of its reading, and intonational anxiety.
Look at the grammatical forms of this passage. Pay attention to the large number of verbal forms - verbs, gerunds. In fact, every second word contains the meaning of action, energy. We see a world filled with endless work, endless action. The reader sees the rain, which is restless, which noisily hits the windows, never sleeps, howls, sheds tears. We see that the very circle of associations evoked by these words is anxiety, developing into despair. The sounds are very strong and aggressive. There is a complete feeling that beyond the threshold of the house there is a disharmonious, aggressive world filled with disturbing action.
"The wind is like a tramp,
Moans under the window,
And the paper rustles
Under my pen."
In these lines, the transition inside is very interesting - into the house, into the author’s space. We have seen in many poems a contrast between the kingdoms of the elements, which are located outside the house, and inside the house there is a refuge, a peaceful kingdom, a place where the lyrical hero can hide. In this poem, nothing like that happens, because we hear that the rain is beating restlessly, the wind is howling and shedding tears, like a tramp groaning under the window. Pay attention to what sound image is being created. And in the phrase “and the paper rustles under my pen” we hear an unpleasant rustling sound, also associated with the union "And" to the previous picture of the world. There is no contradiction between the house and what surrounds it. The whole world of the lyrical hero is filled with grinding, unpleasant sounds, filled with alarming, aggressive, almost feverish activity. This is a world of endless care and constant movement, the meaning of which we do not understand at all. The reader does not understand why the wind howls, why the rain knocks, and what this has to do with us.
In the third stanza, there is a transition from phonetic forms of onomatopoeia - junctions of consonants, which create a disharmonious sound in the previous lines, to smoother, sonorant sounds. Pay attention to verb forms. They become passive, passive:
"As always random
This is the day
Somehow missed
And thrown into the shadows."
Something stronger than the poet is doing something with his time. The day becomes a victim. Time becomes a victim of the influence of some force, aggressive, terrible, incomprehensible, which acts on this time of the lyrical hero living this day. This is a very interesting moment, because there is a contrast between the deaf and aggressive external force, the meaning of which we do not know and do not understand, and the inability to resist, the death of this human dimension, the human part of life.
Here you can already see echoes of Schopenhauer’s philosophy (Fig. 3), of which Sologub was a fan.
Rice. 3. Schopenhauer ()
Much of his poems are explained by this philosophy. Even if you don’t read Schopenhauer, it is clear that some terrible force turns out to be stronger than that the time in which the poet exists, and is stronger than his life. His day is distorted, crumpled and cast into the shadows. He lives aimlessly, there is no meaning in him. This should lead to the next round - a feeling of despair that arises in Schopenhauer and all his followers, because we will always lose the battle with this world will, with this world power. The man is too weak. What we are in the flow of is always stronger. It will crush us and throw us away. But here we see a completely different, unexpected turn of the topic. Consider it:
"But there is no need for anger
Invest in the game
How the bones fall
So I take them.”
This is where the image of the game appears. The game of dice has traditionally been a symbol of chance, the game of fate, the unpredictability of human existence, and independence from human efforts. This is a very popular image in both the literature of romanticism and the literature of modernism. Man is a plaything of fate. They play dice. Throw away his fate, which can go one way or another. And a person cannot do anything about it. Here the lyrical hero is absolutely consistently deprived of all ways to somehow interact with the world around him, to influence his own destiny. And suddenly we see that there is no need to put anger into the game - “As the bones fall, I take them.” The only way not to fall into despair is to accept the structure of the world as it exists. This world is ominous, grinding, aggressive. He is trying to break into this life and reshape it, he is trying to pull the rug out from under his feet, throw away the day and knock out the bones in order to determine what the next day will be like. But if we understand how this world works, if we feel and know that the world is irrational, indifferent to us and absolutely victorious in relation to us, then this knowledge already gives that very sought-after peace.
The last stanza is dedicated to finding peace, which combines knowledge, wisdom and a certain courage of existence in such a world.
Poems have this peculiarity - each next line adds meaning to the previous one. When we reach the end of the poem, we can go back to the beginning, because the whole meaning of the poem allows us to revisit the first lines. If we look at this poem first, we will see that, paradoxically, creativity ( “the paper rustles under my pen”) becomes part of this rebellious and troubled world. Man is not just an object of influence of these forces, he is also a participant, but only when he himself belongs to the elements. In this case - when he himself is the creator.
These are some of the associations that may arise when analyzing this poem. Perhaps it will evoke some other associations for you. The main thing is that you need to know what to look for when analyzing poems: meter, grammatical forms, rhymes, and choice of words can play a big role in establishing understanding between you and the author of the poem.
The next poem we'll look at is completely different. This is a poem by Konstantin Balmont (Fig. 4), who was also a senior symbolist, but in his style fundamentally opposed to the style of the existential poet, the singer of death, the singer of despair, the singer of the chaotic world.
Rice. 4. Konstantin Balmont ()
Balmont's world is absolutely harmonious, bright, beautiful, saturated with all colors. Balmont was very fond of poems built on alliteration and assonance.
The poem we'll talk about in this lesson is from the 1902 collection Let's Be Like the Sun.
In this poem, phonetics is much more complex. This is no longer a simple sound recording, not a simple imitation of some music. This is already an attempt to use sound as a source of meaning.
Read this poem:
Harmony of words
Were there thunders of singing passions?
And the harmony of colorful words?
Why in the language of modern people
The sound of bones being poured into a hole?
The imitation of words is like an echo of rumor,
Like the murmur of marsh grass?
Because when, young and proud,
Water appeared between the rocks,
She was not afraid to break forward,
If you stand in front of her, she will kill you.
And it kills, and floods, and runs transparently,
He only values his will.
Thus a ringing sound is born for the times to come,
For the pale tribes of today."
The very size of the poem, its stanza, the alternation of lines of tetrameter and trimeter anapest primarily refer us to the ballad genre. This is what they wrote in the 19th century. This was one of the most commonly used ballad meters.
Ballad is a narrative poem with a tragic, often criminal plot, in which we are talking about some death, death or some other tragic incident. The ballad came from folklore and was introduced into world literature romantics who studied folklore. The intense and dramatic structure of the ballad was immediately appreciated.
In addition, this poem has a very unusual rhyme pattern: a continuous alternation of masculine rhymes, where the emphasis always falls on the end of the word. This causes a rhythmic knocking sound. These rhymes are very aggressive in relation to the structure of the verse. This meter and rhyme system give the reader a certain rigidity, aggression and a certain supposed criminal plot: whose murder happened? who will die in this poem?
The choice of subject here is very curious, because the terrible event in this poem is not the death of the hero, not some kind of bloody crime, but the death of language, which occurs in modern times from Balmont’s point of view. The fading of language, its power, its colors.
It is clearly visible that the first stanza is the past, the second is the present. Look at how phonetics works, how images are connected. First stanza:
“Why in the language of departed people
Were there thunders of singing passions?
And hints of the ringing of all times and feasts,
And the harmony of colorful words?
If you look at the phonetic component of this stanza, you can see incredible phonetic richness. It involves all sounds and all their combinations. This stanza rings, bubbles a little, growls, and whistles. It is both melodic and difficult to pronounce. This is an opportunity to demonstrate all the phonetic material that is in the language.
“Why in the language of modern people
The sound of bones being poured into a hole?
You can feel the instrumentation as a hissing, whistling, disharmonious sound. The entire bright phonetic palette of the previous stanza seems to narrow down to a certain rustle and “snake hiss.” The colors fade, the sound itself is unpleasant. And the articulation is also very complex:
“The sound of bones being poured into a hole...”
Modern language is a grave for language.
Consider the line:
“The imitation of words is like the echo of rumor,
Like the murmur of swamp grass?
"Imitative Words"- this is a very interesting term in Balmont’s technique. This is not about borrowed words, although Balmont loved exotic words, and it seemed to him that every sound of a foreign word enriches the sound of Russian speech. An imitative word is a word that does not come from meaningful consumption, but is the result of thoughtless repetition. Hence the image itself "echo of rumor". The echo itself is a mechanical, automatic repetition. And rumor is the thousandth repetition of this word. That is, it is a symbol of a mechanical language that has lost its meaning, which is only a formal, meaningless repetition.
Second meaning of the term imitation of words is that, from Balmont’s point of view, ordinary, everyday language and the language of realism, which tries to get closer to everyday language, interact very simply with the outside world. There is a certain object, and there is an exact word with which we call this object. In Balmont’s mind, this word of ordinary language imitates an object, it does not add anything to this object. But why is art needed? Only in order to name, or in order to see and describe what is in this object: the essence, the associative series, the meaning, the impression that it makes on a person?
An imitative word aims only to name, to identify an object among other things that are equal. But this is not the task of art. This is a dead word for art. So this second stanza, filled with a snake thorn, is dedicated to death modern language, because he has lost his creativity, he is unable to produce new meanings. We see that the modern generation, pale and weak, drinks water from a source that existed previously, but there is no personal source from which they draw their inspiration.
The image of a source as a symbol of inspiration is very ancient; it dates back to the times of ancient mythology. We know that there was a source of Hippocrene, which burst from the blow of the winged horse Pegasus (Fig. 5) and flowed from Mount Helicon.
The famous source is the Kastalsky spring, which flowed from Mount Parnassus. Both Helicon and Parnassus were habitats of the muses. This source of inspiration, fanned ancient mythology, Balmont is very strong, powerful. He doesn't just hit - he will kill the person who gets in his way. This is creativity that knows no barriers, that does not think about sacrificing life.
In the final stanzas we see how Balmont creates the image of poetry, which is life, in contrast to the pale death of modernity, where only “the sound of bones being poured into a hole”. But this art is beautiful, it brings with it life and energy and at the same time is deadly.
In this lesson we talked about two poems, carefully analyzing their structure, words, phonetics, and stanzas. In Balmont’s poem we even see an internal phonetic composition, because it begins with full-voiced phonetics, then there is a transition to hissing and phonetic poverty, and then, when the theme of the source appears, Balmont’s favorite sound writing appears again - assonance, alliteration.
A poem is a ball from which we can pull any thread and gradually unwind it. We can start with phonetics, we can start with stanzas, we can start with the composition of words, but the main task is to be careful, read and think what semantic, emotional, figurative associations arise in each word. Analyzing a poem is a slow reading. Try to learn how to read the poems of Russian symbolism yourself.
Valery Bryusov. "Creativity", 1895
Valery Bryusov's poem (Fig. 6) “Creativity” was published in the first collection “Russian Symbolists”, which was supposed to demonstrate to the reading world that a new modernist movement had emerged in Russia.
Rice. 6. Valery Bryusov ()
This poem served as a kind of poetic manifesto.
Of course, it is far from a masterpiece. These are angular, tongue-tied, youthful poems. But the resonance of this poem was really very great. Only the lazy did not laugh at him, he was parodied. But at the same time, there is something very important in this poem, which tells us about how poems are structured in symbolism and in modernism in general. Despite the fact that the poem has become known more as an object of parody, it is useful to read. Because sometimes in such a distorted mirror you can see more than in a direct one.
Be careful when reading this poem. It has a very complex associative series.
Creation
"Shadow of Uncreated Creatures"
sways in his sleep,
Like patching blades
On an enamel wall.
Purple hands
On the enamel wall
Half-asleeply draw sounds
In a ringing silence.
And transparent kiosks,
In the ringing silence,
They grow like sparkles
Under the azure moon.
The moon rises naked
Under the azure moon...
The sound of them soaring half asleep,
Sounds caress me.
Secrets of the Created Creatures
They caress me with affection,
And the shadow of patches trembles
On the enamel wall."
The size, rhyme and stanza of this poem do not go beyond the classical ones - it is a tetrameter trochee with cross rhyme (male and female). The main thing here is the connection of images, the transition from one image to another and the violation of all logic, common sense when connecting these images. But this is precisely what Bryusov sought: an explosion of formal logic and common sense, an attempt to offer a different logic, a different type of cohesion of images.
Let's try to understand how these words fit together.
"Shadow of Uncreated Creatures"
He sways in his sleep..."
It is very difficult to imagine something more ghostly, because there is a shadow, and it sways, and this happens in a dream, and the creatures have not yet been created. That is, this is the starting point, the beginning internal wave, which will then be pretended to be a work of art. In the meantime, there is nothing. There is only a premonition - a certain shadow in a dream. Before us is the illusory quality of illusoryness.
Latania is an exotic palm tree (Fig. 7).
The passion for exoticism, which swept across Europe, including Russia, at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 19th century. 20th century, when bored Europeans suddenly felt the need for new colors, new perfumes, fabrics, exotic flowers, palm trees, passion flowers and other various beautiful plants delivered from the subtropics came into fashion. This fashion literally overwhelms houses at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 19th century. XX centuries We see in the poems of so many symbolists not only the image of these plants, because they, of course, sound on their own, their names are very exotic and suitable for poetry, they are very good with their unusual phonetics for modernist poems, but also the real passion for these plants we we see from so many memories.
The blades of the patch, the leaves of this palm that resemble hands, are reflected here on the enamel wall. We see a certain orchestration, alliteration on "l". We see something that is just emerging, that is only swaying ( "shadow of uncreated creatures") that trembles on the wall. This whole circle of associations gradually begins to create meaning.
"Purple Hands
On the enamel wall
Half-asleeply draw sounds
In a resounding silence."
You can guess why the hands are purple if you remember what patching is. Its cut leaves, which resemble fingers, are purple because they are shade. There is also a Symbolist predilection for violet-lilac tones. Remember that the classical poet Golenishchev-Kutuzov classified all poems in which he encountered the word “lilac” as symbolist.
Here the shadows begin to be perceived as hands that, trembling, draw something on the wall. It's as if they are trying to convey some meaning to us. They do not draw letters, but sounds. You've probably come across a metaphor "deafening silence" - complete absence sound, like a minus technique, as if the whole world had disappeared, and silence itself becomes sound, it itself begins to sound. “Ringing-resonant silence” - silence, which turns off all sounds, and in it some new sounds begin to be born, which we have not yet heard and which we are only seeing for now. Seeing sound is not an impossible story for Bryusov.
"And transparent kiosks,
In the ringing silence,
They grow like sparkles
Under the azure moon."
Meaning of the word "kiosk" very close to modern. This is a temporary building, a gazebo. And the intersection of these hands (blades of patching) reminds us of something openwork, a certain gazebo, a certain house, which is suddenly built from the shadows on the wall.
Bryusov repeats the same lines all the time as a leitmotif, so that the poem does not lose its rhythm, so that the feeling of music is maintained.
"The moon rises naked
Under the azure moon...
The sounds roar half asleep,
Sounds caress me."
Why does the month rise under the moon, also naked, and also under the azure moon? We see how the second reality is created, because creativity is the second reality. The sounds that begin to arise create a completely new world, and a new moon is born. Here we have a moon in the window (for some reason azure), and a new one is born. The month is naked because it was just born. This is the second, still young, just born, defenseless reality. The poet created the sounds and images that have just appeared, and they fawn on him.
In the finale, we see that those uncreated creatures that were just beginning to whisper, starting a wave within the poetic consciousness, are finally embodied.
"Secrets of Created Creatures"
They caress me with affection,
And the shadow of patches trembles
On the enamel wall."
We see the process of birth. And it doesn’t matter what exactly is born: a line, a sound, a rhythm, an image. This is the moment of the birth of the second reality, in the creation of which it is not logic that is important, but the associative chain, the ability to listen, see and grasp that second, parallel reality that this world presents to us. The world is doubling due to creativity.
Khodasevich, who knew Bryusov and his house very well, left a kind of commentary on this poem:
“The house on Tsvetnoy Boulevard was old, awkward, with a mezzanine and outbuildings, with dimly lit rooms and creaky wooden stairs. There was a hall in it, the middle part of which was separated from the side arches by two arches. Semicircular stoves were adjacent to the arches. The tiles of the stoves reflected the clawed shadows of the patching and the blue of the windows. These patches, stoves and windows provide a real transcript of one of Bryusov’s early poems, which at one time was proclaimed the height of nonsense.”
Now it’s clear what it is "enamel wall", which is mentioned in the poem. It's just a tiled stove. It is clear what blue light is - the color of windows. And what are purple hands - a reflection of the shadow of patching.
But if we assume that we don’t know any of this, it still doesn’t change much in this poem. We see how something appeared, we see the transition from silence to sound, from a flat one-dimensional reality to a double one, which is both similar and not similar to the real one. What is this if not creativity? This early, youthful manifesto of Bryusov turns out to be completely not such a meaningless, endlessly parodied poem, at which one can only laugh. If you are careful, you can always see some meaning that comes from the combination of images and its sound, even if it seems that it is absurd.
Fedor Sologub. “The gray undertick...”: analysis of the poem
In 1899, Fyodor Sologub wrote the poem “The Gray Nedotykomka.” At this time, he has been working for five years on one of his most famous works - the novel “The Little Demon.” This novel is about provincial life, about a certain high school teacher, about some events that take place among the residents of this provincial town. And suddenly, into such a measured, gray, dusty, dull life of the province, a small tornado, a creature, a nuisance, is plunged. Sologub has a poem dedicated to the appearance of this strange creature, which will be discussed further.
Nedotykomka gray
"Nedotykomka gray
Everything around me twists and turns, -
Isn't it Dashing that he'll get along with me?
Into a single deadly circle?
Nedotykomka gray
Tired with an insidious smile,
Tired of the unsteady squat, -
Help me, mysterious friend!
Nedotykomka gray
Drive away with magic spells,
Or some cherished word.
Nedotykomka gray
Let's try to find a mention of the problem in dictionaries. This word is in Dahl's dictionary:
Nedotykomka - the same as a bad person - a touchy, overly scrupulous person who does not tolerate jokes towards himself.
But we see that in this poem and in the novel “The Little Demon” this is a completely different image. We are not talking about a person, but about a certain concentrated image of evil, but not majestic, demonic, romantic evil, but petty, everyday evil, which gets under the feet of every person.
If you compare the appearance of the nedotikomka in the novel and in the poem, the first thing that catches your eye is the change in color. In the novel, the nedotikomka constantly shimmers with different colors, constantly mimics environment, it constantly flares up with fire, then turns green. It is as if she is a visitor from another world, which contains a ghostly light from another world. There is a constant leitmotif epithet in Sologub's poem "grey".
Blok wrote about the problem:
“This is both a creature and a no, so to speak. Not two, not one and a half. If you like, this is the horror of everyday vulgarity and everyday life. If you like, this is threatening fear, despondency and powerlessness.”
Let's look at the appearance of the nedotikomka in this particular poem. Gray color is, on the one hand, a color that traditionally depicts certain phenomena associated with boredom, melancholy, and dust. On the other hand, gray is the absence of color and light, it is a kind of mixture of black and white. This is the absence of colors that can somehow color the world around us, this is a minus color - a color that does not exist. If there is a color to boredom, this is it.
This poem has a very jagged rhythm. This is an alternation of two-foot and three-foot anapest. The first line seems to be highlighted intonationally. Next comes a certain narrative, which is linked by continuous rhymes, and “gray underpick” - this is each time a leitmotif repetition of what is before our eyes. But in each stanza some new feature is added to this image. Let's consider which one.
At first, we only know about the non-tick that it is gray and that “it twists and turns” and reminds the hero of dashing, grief, misfortune, which outlines a certain circle around the lyrical hero, sets a certain border. The absence of something specific is what it is grey colour. This is a current, sliding evil.
Variability and fluidity are signs of vulgar everyday evil, for example in Gogol. Everyday evil is much more subtle compared to the romantic image of the devil. This is a small domestic evil, given to each individual and accompanying him throughout his life. Here it is spinning and spinning under your feet.
“Weary with an insidious smile,
I was exhausted by the unsteady squat.”
Cunning and fragility are the very combination that makes the undershot elusive. It is not something global that we can cope with, that we can notice, but something that slips through our fingers, that spins around, that is impossible to grasp.
Here another hero of this poem appears - a certain mysterious friend to whom the hero turns for help. It is very important what kind of help he seeks:
"The gray undertick
Drive away with magic spells,
Or backhanded, or something, with blows,
Or some cherished word.”
A mysterious friend is a kind of protector who can put a barrier between this everyday, familiar, gray evil, which is evil because it makes the whole world unsteady and deprives it of colors. But this is also an evil that has its own power, which cannot be easily dealt with, and which requires both magic spells and cherished words.
In the final stanza, the nedotikomka turns out to be much stronger than both the lyrical hero and the mysterious friend. It was issued to the lyrical hero for life:
"The gray undertick
Even if you die with me, you vile one,
So that at least she is in melancholy dirge
She didn’t swear over my ashes.”
This evil is small, insignificant, but tenacious. This is all that both Sologub and his attentive reader Blok associate with everyday vulgarity, boredom and melancholy. These are the temptations, the everyday faces of evil that we face every day and from which we cannot get rid of. This is a very bright and complex image, partly connected, on the one hand, with ideas about folklore little devils that get under a person’s feet, and on the other hand, it absorbs the absence of light, the color of certainty.
Bibliography
- Chalmaev V.A., Zinin S.A. Russian literature of the twentieth century: Textbook for grade 11: In 2 parts - 5th ed. - M.: LLC 2TID " Russian word- RS", 2008.
- Agenosov V.V. . Russian literature of the twentieth century. Methodological manual - M. “Bustard”, 2002.
- Russian literature of the twentieth century. Tutorial for those entering universities - M.: academic-scientific. center "Moscow Lyceum", 1995.
- Learn by heart Valery Bryusov’s poem “Creativity.”
Fyodor Sologub (real name Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov; 1863-1927) - Russian poet, writer, playwright, publicist. One of the most prominent representatives of symbolism and the Silver Age.
Fyodor Sologub was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a tailor, former peasant of the Poltava province Kuzma Afanasyevich Teternikov. Two years later, the writer’s sister, Olga, was born. Fyodor Teternikov's childhood passed where many of the heroes of his beloved Dostoevsky were raised - at the very bottom of life. The father is the illegitimate son of a Poltava landowner and a serf. After the abolition of serfdom, Teternikov settled in St. Petersburg and took up tailoring, but his life was cut short by consumption in 1867. Fyodor's mother, left with two children in her arms, entered the service. Fyodor and his sister were almost pupils in the family of a collegiate assessor who died early, where it was customary to read, play music, and attend theaters. At the same time, the maid's children strictly had to know their place. The mother worked hard, taking out her fatigue and irritation on her children. Therefore, the lyrical hero of Teternikov’s very first poems is a barefoot, whipped boy. They spanked and beat him both at school and at home, although there was no reason - he studied well and did all the assigned work around the house.
From his very first experiments, the poet was characterized by a prosaic attitude to a lyrical plot, scenes or arguments more familiar to a realistic story or novel, attention to everyday details that are not distinguished by poetry, transparent simple comparisons. These are stories in verse, dark and heavy, in some ways close to Chekhov’s, non-poetic descriptions and feelings.
Drunkenness, gluttony, gossip, dirty connections - everything that is accepted as entertainment in a provincial town does not bypass Fedor. But with this barren life he manages to combine literary creativity. In 1884, he managed to publish the poem “The Fox and the Hedgehog” in the St. Petersburg magazine “Spring”. He dreamed of making money in literature, of writing an innovative textbook on mathematics, of how he would breathe light and love into the souls of his students. However, a gloomy life surrounds the provincial dreamer on all sides. The feeling of the heaviness and hopelessness of life - “sick days”, “barefootness”, “persistent need”, “colorless life” - is ultimately transformed in the poems of the late 80s. into semi-folklore fantasy visions - “the dashingly inevitable”, “the evil mara” (this is a Slavic witch who sucks the blood of those sleeping at night). Motives for death appear, but this is not a transition to better world, but the desire to hide, to hide from this world.
1891 can be considered a turning point in Teternikov’s fate, when he met Nikolai Maksimovich Minsky, a philosopher and symbolist poet who became seriously interested in his work. At the same time, serious changes took place in Fyodor’s life: in 1892 he became a mathematics teacher at the Rozhdestvensky City School in St. Petersburg, then moved to the St. Andrew’s School, where he later became an inspector. Now the vile province is over: the difficult life experience will be melted into prose (first of all, it will be the novel “Heavy Dreams”, 1883-1894). Teternikov becomes an employee of Severny Vestnik, Minsky introduces him to the circle of “senior symbolists”.
Now Teternikov’s literary fate is forever associated with the names of Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky. There they came up with the pseudonym “Sologub”, which became the poet’s new name. Mandelstam was surprised at Sologub, who replaced Teternikov’s “real and “similar” surname with an absurd and pretentious pseudonym.” Of course, Mandelstam, who was not burdened by his bohemian poverty, found it difficult to understand the barefoot cook’s son, who had finally donned the count’s name (albeit with one “l” - to distinguish himself).
The lyrical hero of Sologub's poetry is in many ways the little man of Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Chekhov. In his poetry one can easily find hysterical poverty, eternal fear of life, love-hate, one’s own smallness, humiliation, and sorrow. There are also images directly borrowed from Dostoevsky: for example, in the poem “Every day, at the appointed hour...” (1894) Nastasya Filippovna is depicted.
The 90s begin. XIX century - the entire Russian intelligentsia is raving about Schopenhauer. A contemptuous attitude towards life becomes an artistic factor in Sologub’s work. It leads him to the cult of death, disappearance; life seems more and more like a path of suffering.
Completed in 1894, the novel “Heavy Dreams” amazingly combines the leading traditions of Russian literature (the gymnasium teacher - an autobiographical image - is opposed to the vile provincial society) and the motives of decadence: the desire to escape from life, the perception of life as a disgusting whirlwind that has no purpose, no meaning, which, if it brings joy, is in perverted, painful forms.
The eternal teaching of Russian literature has always been extremely close to Sologub, since in his everyday life he remained largely a gymnasium teacher - strict, sarcastic, touchy... (25 years of his life were devoted to teaching). Many memoirists note his quarrelsomeness, arrogance (the origins of which lie in provincial shyness), the hypnotic effect on others, and the constant desire (and ability) to read notation.
Despite his sarcastic attitude towards the idea of changing life for the better through some kind of activity, Sologub’s inherent desire to teach, insist, and impose his point of view sometimes prevailed in Sologub, which often led him to participate in public activities (to which he was completely alien, as philosopher). Thus, in 1903, having become an employee of the “News and Exchange Newspaper” publication, Sologub devoted many articles to school topics and problems of improving education in Russia.
One of the most serious themes of his prose work is the unbearable childhood suffering for him, as for Dostoevsky. Children in Sologub's prose, as a rule, act as innocent victims of perverted torture, and adults, often teachers, are the executioners (for example, the story “The Worm”).
The novel “The Little Demon” (1892-1902), published in the journal “Questions of Life,” brought Sologub all-Russian fame. The hero of Peredonov's novel (naturally, a teacher at a provincial gymnasium) and the creepy creation of his sick imagination - Nedotykomka - became favorite characters of literary criticism. In the article “The Navy Charms of a Small Demon,” K. Chukovsky remarked about Peredonov: “He, like Sologub, like Gogol once, is sick of the world,” using the word “nausea” in relation to life 24 years before Sartre’s “Nausea” a novel that became an artistic presentation of the worldview of existentialism.
Life, so unflatteringly depicted by Sologub in the novel, hastened to take revenge on him. In 1907, his sister Olga Kuzminichna, whom he loved and revered extremely, and with whom he never parted, died. At the same time, while in service, the writer was asked to resign. In the poems of this period, a new metaphor for life appears - “Devil's Swing” (the title of the famous poem of 1907). The alternation of dark and light periods of life makes Sologub want to leave, hide, hide. It's no longer about have a wonderful life another, but about waiting for the hour when it will be possible to escape from the mediocre rotation into another, equally inhospitable monastery.
In 1908, a collection of poems, “The Flame Circle,” was published, embodying all of Sologub’s mathematical symbolism, his desire to see a sign, a drawing, a design in everything. The poet said that if he had started his life from the beginning, he would have become a specialist in mathematics or theoretical physics.
The collection “The Flame Circle”, even more than the previous one (“The Serpent”, 1907), expresses the author’s philosophical concepts in symbolic images. It consists of several story cycles expressing the “eternal return” of Schopenhauer’s philosophy and the “eternal teaching” inherent in Sologub, a student of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Gogol. He shares with the reader his life experience, his disgust and nausea and explains how to withstand it, how to get through it... The names of the cycles express the stages of the spiritual life of Sologubov’s existential person: “The Faces of Experiences” - “Earthly Imprisonment” - “Network of Death” - “Smoky Incense” - “Transfiguration” - “Silent Valley” - “United Will” - “Last Consolation”.
Meanwhile, in the same 1908, the life of Fyodor Kuzmich again entered a bright streak - he happily married Anastasia Yakovlevna Chebotarevskaya. This is a highly educated woman, writer, literary critic, translator of Maeterlinck, Stendhal, Maupassant, Mirbeau. Sologub changed his apartment, his appearance (shaved), his lifestyle (Chebotarevskaya is the owner of a social salon - visits, evenings, a vibrant social life). Together with her husband, Chebotarevskaya wrote plays, they published the magazine “Diaries of Writers,” they traveled, rushed around with various ideas, and had a wide circle of acquaintances.
Sologub’s novel-trilogy “Navy Chari” appeared in the almanac “Rosehip” (1907-1909). Critics were suspicious of this version of "Demons".
In 1911, Anastasia Chebotarevskaya published a collection of articles, lovingly compiled by her, “About Fyodor Sologub,” where among the authors were Ivanov-Razumnik, L. Shestov, Z. Gippius, I. Annensky, M. Gershenzon, M. Voloshin, Andrei Bely, G. Chulkov and others. Active social and literary activities, journalism and speeches, trips around Russia, a trip abroad with his wife, made in 1914 - all this filled Sologub’s life to the brim.
After October revolution(which, unlike the February one, he perceived very skeptically) the situation has changed. Financial difficulties arose, publishing became scarce, and the writer switched almost entirely to translations. The wife developed a mental illness - she could not stand the drastic change that had occurred in the world around her.
In 1920, Sologub asked Lenin for permission to travel abroad, but did not receive it. In September 1921, a tragedy occurred: Anastasia committed suicide by drowning herself in the river, and only months later the body was found. Many poems of 1921 are dedicated to the death of his wife (“Took away my soul...”, “No one looks in the mirror...”, “The crazy luminary of existence...”, etc.). Oddly enough, Sologub, with his almost loving attitude towards death, was not going to follow his wife; he intended to drag out the hard labor of life to the end. He learned at a young age to enjoy suffering.
At the end of his life, Sologub became involved in social activities at the Union of Leningrad Writers, even becoming chairman of the board. It is being published again, and the 40th anniversary of literary activity is widely celebrated. Soon the debilitating illness did its job; on December 5, 1927, this singer of “dead and forever weary worlds” died, as I. Ehrenburg said about him.
The peculiarities of Fyodor Sologub’s idiostyle and numerous critical analyzes have created a certain stereotype of ideas about the writer’s work: the same type of theme (“singer of death”), the monotony of the poetic means used, the monotony of techniques. And this despite the fact that the very personality of the artist and his creations received the most contradictory assessments in the reviews of his contemporaries - from enthusiastic to ironic. "... In the eyes of sophisticated modernists, in the assessment, for example, of "Scales", where he was always an honored and welcome guest, Sologub is the father of Russian modernism, a subtle and elegant writer, clearly groping for new paths in art, a rare stylist who achieves exceptional beauty, the Russian Baudelaire, etc. - for others, he is a poet-pervert, “a terrible, dislocated, distorted soul” - this is how one of the famous critics of those years, A. Izmailov, described the situation that developed around the name of Sologub at the beginning of the century. All other assessments are located at the two extremes that he stated.
Having started writing “at the same time as Chekhov,” Sologub gained popularity only in the mid-1900s. “If Sologub weren’t as talented as he is, they would pass by his works without paying attention. It’s very easy to call his novels and stories “nonsense,” antics, or even the ravings of a sick person. That’s what many did. But Sologub is talented,” asserted critic. Those who were unable to decipher the iconographic references of Sologub’s “abstruse” text were forced to admit that Sologub is “without a doubt a strong artist.”
The very image of the poet seemed mysterious to his contemporaries. “Sologub was considered a sorcerer and a sadist,” recalled N. Teffi. “They said that he was a Satanist, and this inspired horror and at the same time interest,” L. Ryndina wrote in her memoirs. Another contemporary of the writer, the symbolist poet A. Bely, admitted: “It seemed to me: he is some kind of Buddhist monk, from the Himalayas, looking at our affairs with indifference and dryness...”. The creativity of this " strange man". Here are just a few statements on this topic: “There is some kind of magic in every thing of Sologub, even the weaker ones”; “However, we don’t know him completely at all: so he is still mysterious and dark for us - this one is the most mysterious of modern writers"; "Much in him is difficult to understand..." and others. It is no coincidence that A. Izmailov, who often reviewed Sologub, elevated the artist to literary Olympus, but used an ancient irrational image-symbol to characterize the writer: "Northern Sphinx" ( this is the name of one of his articles). But Sologub was loved for his ability to ask questions. The philosopher L. Shestov, who shared with F. Sologub the fate of writers “for the few” (Izmailov), saw in his fellow author and destiny a chosen one of God: " Sologub is an oracle. His prose is not realism, but stupefying vapors, his poetry, like the answers of the Pythia, is an eternal and painful mystery." Critic V. Botsyanovsky explained the difficulty in understanding Sologub's works with this feature of the master's works. "It is difficult, and perhaps even impossible, to call in all our literature there is a writer more original and mysterious, like Fyodor Sologub... Each new story of his, each new novel, always very similar to the old one and closely connected with everything that came before, stunned to such an extent that many outright refused not only to understand, but also to interpret this author, so different from others." Sologub's contemporaries quite rightly emphasized that the writer's work cannot fit into one formula.
Sologub entered literature as a poet, but for Sologub during the period of his fame - 1907-1913 - it was prose that played a constitutive role. According to many pre-revolutionary researchers of the artist’s work, Sologub is equal to himself and his talent in both poetry and prose. “He is distinguished by the evenness of his creativity, his prose is no weaker than his poetry, and he is prolific in both areas,” A. Blok. “...His poems are truly beautiful, and his prose is fragrant...” I. Johnson admired. Sologub's prose texts were thought of as a kind of continuation and interpretation of the “primary” poetic texts. The artist's novels and stories were read by critics at the beginning of the century from the perspective of his poetry. “I make no difference between his poetry and his prose. His prose is full of the same poetry as his poems,” V. Botsyanovsky quite rightly asserted. Without denying the genetic similarity of Sologub’s prose and poetic texts, other connoisseurs of the writer’s work also noticed that the “Russian Schopenhauer” (Volynsky) was able to express “the monstrous life” (Blok) in prose more than in poetry. In his poems, Sologub, in the words of L. Shestov, “howls senselessly,” and “in prose, it’s even worse... worse than an animal scream.”
The work of this writer may, like the words of holy fools, seem funny, absurd, frivolous (Redko, Ignatov, etc.) or scary, philosophical (Bely, etc.), but it shuns labels. Meanwhile, one of them (“sick novel”), as a demonstration of his negative attitude, was immediately glued by criticism to Sologub’s most capacious and voluminous life work, which to some extent became business card poet, "The Legend in the Making". “After “Navy Charms,” Izmailov declared categorically, “there is absolutely no doubt about the painful breakdown of the author’s talent.” This loosening of the imagination, this capricious mixture of the real with pure fantasy, this scattered and nervous lapidary style, reminiscent of a careless draft or notes in a notebook - all these are undoubtedly symptoms of a sick century." One of the "experts" of Russian history and part-time connoisseur of Sologubov's creativity "interpreted" it as "criticism". It is interesting that when criticism at the beginning of the century tried to comprehend the "ugliness" and strangeness of Remizov's characters ("The Hours") within the framework of well-known ideological and artistic models, they noted in his works the influence of F. Dostoevsky and F. Sologub (apparently as the founders of “sick” prose). And the eccentricity of the external manner of depicting Remizov was also defined by the word “foolishness.” “Why act like a fool, why not speak in human language?” asked the critic Gershenzon, obviously expressing the feeling of the majority of readers Sologub and Remizov: Their own inability to appreciate originality new job F. Sologub, critics hastened to veil the non-standard model of the world he proposed by accusing the writer not only of insanity, but also of pathological inclinations.
It is surprising that some condemned the writer for a simplified or offensive recreation of the surrounding reality of the period of the first Russian revolution, while others reproached him for the absence of a legend as such in “The Legend in the Making.” “What is the “legend in the making”? How are the “navi spells” manifested? Why are these exceptionalities piled up at all, an awkward mixture of naive “intriguing” mysteries is presented?” - one of the critics did not understand. “The content, it would seem, is quite primitive and does not give anything reminiscent of legends,” stated another and advised: “If Sologub took some kind of mysterious life outside of time and space and decorated it with his imagination, then the reader could try to figure it out."
The leitmotif of the first critical reviews of “The Legend in the Making” was questions of text composition. Being, in principle, not against the artistic device itself, “weaving fantasy with realism into one continuous ball,” critics emphasized the idea of “disharmony,” the stamp of which, in their opinion, marked the style of Sologubov’s work. The main reproach was that Sologub not only weaved reality and fantasy into “one continuous ball”, but deliberately separated them. As one of the researchers of the third part of the novel noted, “Sologub’s reality and legend do not penetrate each other, but only alternate.” The semantic and compositional heterogeneity of the text was explained by the ineptitude of the author or explained by the goals of verbal shocking: “The diversity is almost intentional. Almost obvious anachronisms. Intentional mixture of tones and styles. Intentional eccentricity of the language...”. No matter what comparisons and metaphors the “incoherence” of Sologubov’s work is awarded (“...not a novel, but a pile of individual chapters and notes...”; “...as if in a movie, pictures flash before us that have no connection between ourselves..."), it is important to note the very fact that this feature of the construction of Sologub’s novel was discovered by the writer’s contemporaries.
Thus, the “relationship” that developed between The Legend in the Making and its first critics gives reason to believe that the novel was read, but not understood. The underestimation of the trilogy has distorted the picture of the development of Russian prose. But we must pay tribute to Sologub’s contemporaries: firstly, they did not remain indifferent to the master’s new book. Secondly - and this, perhaps, should be given credit to Sologubov’s opponents - the strict judges of the novel, with that sensitivity that is sometimes born of hostility, were able to feel and recognize both the main melody of the work and those side tones, the identification of which will be the task of future commentators of the trilogy Sologuba. However, having outlined the initial elements of subsequent analysis, pre-revolutionary criticism preferred to leave it to posterity to closely study, comprehend, and understand F. Sologub’s “Legend in the Making.”