Who Gumilev considers the predecessors of the Acmeists. The Crisis of Symbolism. New trends in modernist literature. Acmeism. Kuzmin, S. M. Gorodetsky, N. S. Gumilyov, O. E. Mandelstam, A. A. Akhmatova, Vl. F. Khodasevich, G. Adamovich, G. V. Ivanov

Plan

1. Theoretical foundations of acmeism.

2. Literary - critical activity of N. Gumilyov.

3. Bibliography

1. Theoretical foundations of acmeism

Symbolism and acmeism, futurism and egofuturism and many other trends belong to the era of the Silver Age. "And although we call this time the silver, and not the golden age, perhaps it was the most creative era in Russian history"(Kreid 10). Acmeists (from the Greek word "acme" - blooming time, the highest degree of something) called for the purification of poetry from philosophy and all kinds of "methodological" hobbies, from the use of vague allusions and symbols, proclaiming a return to the material world and accepting it as it is: with its joys, vices, evil and injustice, defiantly refusing to solve social problems and asserting the principle of “art for art's sake.” In 1912, a new literary movement declared itself with the collection "Hyperborea", calling itself acmeism Acmeism arises at a time when the symbolist school was at an end, arises on the platform of the denial of individual program provisions of symbolism and, in particular, its mystical aspirations.

However, acmeism owes its birth primarily to symbolism, and N. Gumilyov rightly calls his brothers "heirs of a worthy father." The poets S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut became "brothers" of N. Gumilyov, who united in the group "Workshop of Poets" In 1911-1914, they had, in addition to the Apollo magazine , published by S. Makovsky, had their own printed organs - the journal "Hyperborea" and various almanacs. The organizers of the group and the theorists of the new trend were Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky. Contrasting themselves with symbolism, the acmeists proclaimed the high inherent value of the earthly, local world, its colors and forms. S. Gorodetsky wrote: “After all the “rejections”, the world is irrevocably accepted by acmeism, in the totality of beauties and ugliness ... If this is a struggle with symbolism, and not the occupation of an abandoned fortress, this is, first of all, a struggle for this world, sounding, colorful having shape, weight and time, for our planet Earth". So, one of the first commandments of the acmeists is the worship of the Earth, the Sun, Nature. From it follows the second, close to it: the affirmation of the primitive principle in man, the glorification of his opposition to nature. M. Zenkevich wrote: "Modern man felt like a beast, Adam, who looked around with the same clear, vigilant eye, accepted everything he saw, and sang hallelujah to life and the world." Each of the acmeists considered it his duty to glorify the first man - Adam - and glorified - N. Gumilyov saw in him the beginning that challenges even the gods:

In a harsh share, be stubborn,

Be gloomy, pale and bent,

And do not grieve for those fruits,

Unsophisticated and despicable...

Adam is found in Gumilyov's poetry either in the form of an exotic conquistador, conqueror of the seas ("Journey to China"), or in the form of a white conqueror, superman, "paladin of the Green Temple", "royal dog, filibuster", which goes "impudent way", " brushing off shreds of foam from high over the knee boots with the blows of a cane. S. Gorodetsky in his poem "Adam" instructs the first man "a spacious and polyphonic world", he must "sing praises to the living earth." At the very beginning of the path, some representatives of the new trend even suggested calling it Adamism.

The third commandment of the acmeists also correlates with the first two: the assertion of extreme individualism is associated with the image of a person who is cut off from his homeland, this is the one who dares, who seeks, who is sick of the countries of his fathers. In S. Gorodetsky, such a hero appears in the form of a primitive savage:

I am young, free, full and cheerful

I go to the steppes, I sing to the steppes.

Gradually formed his own poetic style. The poems of the acmeists were distinguished by conciseness, compactness of the word, a strict balance of a dense, cast stanza, loving treatment of an epithet, visible concreteness and plasticity at its best. Moreover, each of the poets of the "Workshop" at the same time carried into great poetry a purely individual principle. The tragedy of Gumilyov's worldview was combined with his love for the Earth, a free feeling was tested by literary discipline, devotion to art, and was put above all else by the poet.

So, the acmeists were aware of themselves as the heirs of symbolism, using its achievements to create new values. What exactly was the ideological "legacy" of the Symbolists that turned out to be relevant for the Acmeists? “Acmeists began to write poems that seemed independent and new, but in such a way that a well-read person could easily guess in their words and phrases references either to Pushkin or Dante. This is literature based on literature. The Futurists acted differently: they did everything possible, to seem absolutely new, unprecedented ... It was necessary to write poetry as if it were the first poetry in the world, as if it were the work of the first person on the bare earth. . One of the central ideas of romanticism and its heir - symbolism - is the idea of two worlds. The essence of this idea is the existence of two realities, one way or another connected with each other. There is God, which means that there is also a "hierarchy in the world of phenomena", there is an "intrinsic value" of each thing. Everything gets meaning and value: all phenomena find their place: everything is weighty, everything is dense. The balance of forces in the world is the stability of images in poetry. In poetry, the laws of composition are established, because the world has been built. The daring of the myth-makers and theomachists are replaced by the chastity of a believing architect: "it is more difficult to build a cathedral than a tower." Gumilyov began his article "The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism" with a statement prepared by his other articles - that "symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling ... Symbolism is being replaced by a new direction, no matter how it is called, whether acmeism (from the word ... - the highest degree of something, color, blooming time), or Adamism (a courageous, firm and clear outlook on life), in any case, requiring a greater balance of power and a more accurate knowledge of the relationship between subject and object than was in symbolism. ". Recognizing the achievements of symbolism, Gumilyov categorically rejected not only Russian symbolism, but also French and German, which, in his opinion, followed dogmas too much, which deprived him of the opportunity "to feel the intrinsic value of each phenomenon." The category of culture remains the central category of the acmeist worldview, suffice it to recall Mandelstam's famous definition of acmeism as longing for world culture. However, in contrast to the symbolist understanding of culture, it appears for them not so much as the creation of a person, but as the discovery of the original meaning in the world around. In this case, a person is not a creator who denies the Creator by his own existence, but that part of the Providence, thanks to which the meaning of everything that exists is revealed. From Gumilyov's negative assessments, a program of acmeism emerged: firstly, no mysticism, no fraternization with the other world; secondly, accuracy in correspondence of words to the subject of imagination; thirdly, an equal attitude in the artistic sense to all moments of life, small, large, insignificant or great - with the aim of objectively artistic completeness of embracing the world. “We feel like phenomena among phenomena,” the latter, according to A.I. Pavlovsky, "contains a sermon of detachment from any assessments, especially the judgment of reality.". As we have already said, the manifestos of the acmeists were the most explicit expression of their worldview. However, reflective understanding does not always correspond to the real state of affairs, moreover, manifestos reflect not only the beliefs of poets, but also the circumstances of the literary process.

2. Literary - critical activity of N. Gumilyov

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was not only an outstanding poet, but also a subtle, insightful literary critic. In the years in which he lived, this was no exception. The beginning of the 20th century was at the same time the heyday of Russian poetry, and the time of constantly emerging literary manifestos, proclaiming the program of new poetic schools, the time of highly professional critical analysis and evaluation of works of classical and modern poetry - Russian and world. As critics and theorists of art, almost all of Gumilyov's more or less prominent contemporary poets acted in Russia - I. F. Annensky, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Z. N. Gippius, V. Ya. Bryusov, K. D. Balmont , A. A. Blok, Vyach. Ivanov, A. Bely, M. A. Kuzmin, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Khodasevich, M. A. Voloshin and many others.

Having begun his critical activity as a reviewer of poetry books in the Rech newspaper in the late 1890s, Gumilyov continued it from 1909 to 1916 in the Apollo magazine. His articles, published here from issue to issue in the section of the journal "Letters on Russian Poetry", constituted a kind of cycle. It outlines a broad picture of the development of Russian poetry of this time (and not only in the person of its primary representatives, but also poets of the second and even third row). In the same years, Gumilyov's first articles were published on the theoretical issues of Russian poetry and Russian verse, including the famous article "The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism" (1913) - one of the two main theoretical manifestos of the direction in poetry defended by Gumilyov, which for a long time the name “Acmeism” proposed by him was fixed, a direction that Gumilyov and his poetic friends and like-minded people sought to oppose to symbolism. In addition to Apollo, Gumilyov acted as a critic in the organ of the Workshop of Poets - the journal Hyperborea, a "monthly journal of poetry and criticism", which was published in 1912-1913. edited by his friend M. L. Lozinsky (later a famous poet-translator). On Literary Critical Articles and Reviews by Gumilyov in Scientific and Popular Science Literature on Russian Poetry of the 20th Century. Much has been written, both here and abroad. But the traditional drawback of almost all works on this topic is that they are completely subordinated to one (albeit significant enough to characterize Gumilyov's position) problem "Gumilyov and acmeism." Meanwhile, although Gumilyov was the leader of acmeism (and the majority of his followers and students looked at him in the same way), Gumilyov's poetry is too large and original a phenomenon to put an equal sign between his artistic work and the literary program of acmeism.

Gumilyov began his literary-critical activity with reviews of books published in 1908 and subsequent years. For the most part, these were poetry collections of both the symbolist poets of the older and younger generations already recognized by that time (Bryusov, Sologub, Balmont, A. Bely, etc.), and poetic youth beginning in those years. However, sometimes young Gumilyov also turned to a critical assessment of prose - I.F. Annensky's "Second Book of Reflections", the stories of M. Kuzmin and S. Auslender, etc. But the main attention of Gumilyov-critic from his first steps in this area belonged to poetry: intensely searching for his own path in art (which, as we know, was not easy for him), Gumilyov carefully peered into the face of each of his contemporary poets, trying, on the one hand, to find in their life and artistic quests close to himself , and on the other - to find out for themselves and strictly evaluate the merits and demerits of their works.

Having grown up and developed in an era of high development of Russian poetic culture, Gumilyov looked at this culture as the greatest value and was inspired by the idea of its further support and development. Moreover, unlike the Symbolist poets, Gumilyov's ideal was not the musical melodiousness of the verse, the fragility and indeterminacy of words and images (saturated in the poetry of the Symbolists with "double meaning", because their goal was to draw the reader's attention not only to the world of external, visually perceived phenomena, but also to the world of other deeper layers of human existence standing behind them), but the strict objectivity, the utmost clarity and expressiveness of the verse, with the equally strict, chased simplicity of its external compositional construction and decoration.

Answering in 1919 a well-known questionnaire by K. I. Chukovsky (“Nekrasov and Us”) about his attitude towards Nekrasov, Gumilyov frankly executed himself for “aestheticism”, which prevented him in his early years from appreciating the significance of Nekrasov’s poetry. And remembering that in his life there was a time (“from 14 to 16 years old”) when Nekrasov’s poetry was dearer to him than the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov, and that it was Nekrasov who first “awakened” in him “the idea of the possibility of an active interest of the individual in society ”, “interest in the revolution”, Gumilyov expressed bitter regret that the influence of Nekrasov, “unfortunately”, was not reflected in his later poetic work (3.74).

This is not enough. In his last remarkable article, "Baudelaire's Poetry", written in 1920 on behalf of the publishing house "Vsemirnaya Literatura" (the collection of Baudelaire's poems, for which this article was written, remained unpublished at that time), Gumilyov wrote about the culture of the 19th century: " The nineteenth century, so zealously humiliated and humiliated, was par excellence a heroic age. Forgetting God and forgotten by God, man became attached to the only thing left for him, to the earth, and she demanded from him not only love, but also action. In all areas of creativity there was an extraordinary upsurge. People remembered exactly how little else they had done, and set to work feverishly and at the same time systematically. The periodic table of elements was only a belated symbol of this work. “What hasn't been discovered yet?” the researchers vyingly asked, just as knights used to ask about monsters and villains, and rushed to each other wherever there was even the slightest possibility of creativity. A whole series of new sciences appeared, the old ones received an unexpected direction. The forests and deserts of Africa, Asia and America revealed their age-old secrets to travelers, and a handful of daredevils, as in the sixteenth century, captured huge exotic kingdoms. In the bowels of European society, Lassalle and Marx discovered a new powerful explosive force - the proletariat. In literature, three great currents, romanticism, realism and symbolism, took their place along with classicism that reigned for centuries.

It is not difficult to see that Gumilyov here, in the spirit of Blok's calls (although he could not read his articles), examines the development of world culture in the 19th century. in a “single powerful stream”, trying to discover in the movement of its individual areas the links between them general patterns. At the same time, literature and the public, the path traversed by poetry, science and social thought of the 19th century, are considered by Gumilyov as part of a single, common “heroic” work of human thought and creativity in its nature.

Thus, we see that in the last period of his life Gumilyov came close to understanding the unity and interconnection of all aspects of human culture - including "poetry" and "publicity" - to which Blok called him. In the poetry of Nekrasov, as well as in the poetry of Baudelaire, Coleridge, Southey, Voltaire (and other poets whom he turned to in the last years of his life), Gumilev managed to capture not only the features common to the era that gave rise to the work of each of them, the presence in their lives and poetry that leads beyond the limits of the world only one poetic word, wider philosophical and socio-historical interests. Understanding the high purpose of poetry and the poetic word, designed by their impact on the world and man to contribute to the transformation of life, but subjected to grinding and depreciation as a result of the tragic in its consequences, the general decline and grinding of modern life and culture,

Gumilyov's path, in essence, led him from "overcoming symbolism" (in the words of V. M. Zhirmunsky) to "overcoming acmeism." However, he approached the last stage of this path (which turned out to be the highest stage in the development of Gumilyov - a poet and a person) only at the end of his life. The mask of the poet - "esthete" and "snob", lover of "romantic flowers" and "pearls" of "pure" poetry - was asleep, revealing a living human face hidden under it.

Nevertheless, one should not think that Gumilyov's "later" work is separated by some "iron wall" from the early one. With an in-depth, attentive attitude to his poems, articles and reviews of the 1900-1910s, one can already find moments in them that anticipate Gumilyov's later poetic rise. This fully applies to "Letters on Russian Poetry" and other literary-critical and theoretical articles by Gumilyov.

Very often the horizons of the author of the Letters on Russian Poetry, as Blok rightly felt, were extremely narrowed not only in an aesthetic but also in a historical sense. Gumilyov considers the work of contemporary Russian poets, as a rule, in the context of the development of Russian poetry late XIX-early 20th century In these cases, the question of the traditions of great classical Russian 19th poetry in. and their significance for the poetry of the 20th century. almost completely out of his field of vision. Repeating phrases, quite hackneyed in that era, that symbolism freed Russian poetry from the “Babylonian captivity” of “ideological and biased”, Gumilyov is ready to ascribe to Bryusov the role of a kind of poetic “Peter the Great”, who made a revolution, widely opening the “window” for the Russian reader "to the West, and introduced him to the work of the French "Parnassian" and Symbolist poets, whose achievements he learned, enriching their artistic palette, both his own and other Symbolist poets (235; letter VI). In accordance with this tendency of his views, Gumilyov strives in his Letters to talk about poetry - and only about poetry, persistently avoiding everything that leads beyond its limits. But it is characteristic that the already young Gumilyov is ready to trace the genealogy of Russian poetry not only from the West, but also from the East, believing that the historical position of Russia between East and West makes the poetic world of both the West and the East equally dear to Russian poets (297-298; letter XVII). At the same time, in 1912, he was ready to see in Klyuev "the herald of a new force, folk culture”, called to say in life and in poetry its new word, expressing not only the “Byzantine consciousness of the golden hierarchy”, but also the “Slavic feeling of the bright equality of all people” (282-283, 299; letters XV and XVII).

If Gumilev's declaration is to be believed, he would like to remain merely a judge and connoisseur of verse. But the fresh air of real life constantly breaks into his characteristics of poets and works that attract his attention. And then the figures of these poets, their human appearance and their creations come to life for us. These creations are revealed to the gaze of modern man in all the real historical complexity of their content and form.

Gumilyov begins his article "The Life of Verse" (1910) with an appeal to the dispute between the supporters of "pure" art and the champions of the thesis "art for life." However, pointing out that “this dispute has been going on for many centuries” and has not yet led to any definite results, and each of these two opinions has its supporters and spokesmen, Gumilyov proves that the very question in the dispute was raised incorrectly by both sides. And this is precisely the reason for its centuries-old unresolved, for each phenomenon simultaneously has the “right ... to be valuable in itself”, without needing an external, alien justification of its existence and at the same time has “another right, a higher one - to serve others” ( also self-valuable) phenomena of life. In other words, Gumilyov argues that every phenomenon of life - including poetry - is included in a wider, general connection of things, and therefore should be considered not only as something separate, isolated from the totality of other phenomena of life, but also in its solidarity. with them, which does not depend on our subjective desires and inclinations, but exists independently of the latter, as an inevitable and inevitable property of the real world surrounding a person.

Thus, a true work of poetry, according to Gumilyov, is saturated with the power of "living life." It is born, lives and dies like living beings warmed by human blood, and exerts a strong influence on people with its content and form. Without this impact on other people, there is no poetry. “Art, having been born from life, again goes to her, not like a penny day laborer, not like a grumpy grouch, but like an equal to an equal.”

The next speech of Gumilyov, the theoretician of poetry, after The Life of Poems, was his famous manifesto directed against Russian symbolism, The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism (printed next to another manifesto by S. M. Gorodetsky).

Gumilyov began the treatise with a statement, prepared by his previous articles, that "symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling." At the same time, and this is extremely important to emphasize, he gives a differentiated assessment of French, German and Russian symbolism, characterizing them (this circumstance has so far, as a rule, escaped the attention of the researchers of Gumilev's article) as three different steps that successively replaced each other. in the development of literature of the XX century. French symbolism, according to Gumilyov, was "the ancestor of all symbolism." But at the same time, in the person of Verlaine and Mallarmé, he "brought to the fore purely literary tasks." His historical achievements are also connected with their solution (the development of free verse, the musical "unsteadiness" of the syllable, the attraction to metaphorical language and the "theory of correspondences" - "the symbolic fusion of images and things"). However, having generated in French literature "an aristocratic thirst for the rare and elusive", symbolism saved French poetry from the influence of naturalism that threatened its development, but did not go further than the development of representatives of "purely literary tasks" that completely occupied it.

It should also be emphasized that, while approving the program of acmeism as a poetic direction, called by history change symbolism, Gumilyov highly appreciates the poetic heritage of the symbolists, urging his followers to take into account the integral achievements of the symbolists in the field of poetry and rely on them in their work - overcoming symbolism - without which the acmeists could not become worthy successors of the symbolists.

Gumilyov's last three theoretical and literary experiments are "The Reader", "Anatomy of a Poem" and a treatise on poetic translation, written for the collective collection of articles "Principles of Literary Translation", prepared in connection with the need to streamline the work undertaken on the initiative of M. Gorky by the publishing house "World literature” work on translating a huge number of works of foreign classics and laying a strict scientific basis under it (in addition to Gumilyov, articles by K. I. Chukovsky and F. D. Batyushkov, a Western literary critic, professor) were published in the named collection), separated from his articles in 1910 -1913 for almost a whole decade. All of them were written in the last years of the poet's life, in! 917-1921. During this period, Gumilyov dreamed, as already noted above, to carry out the idea that had arisen with him earlier, in connection with performances in the Society of Zealots of the Russian Word, and then in the Poets' Workshop, to create a single, harmonious work devoted to the problems of poetry and the theory of verse, work, summarizing his reflections in this area. Various materials have come down to us related to the preparation of this work, which Gumilyov was going to call "Theory of Integral Poetics" in 1917 - its general plan and "summary of poetry" (1914?), which is an excerpt from lectures on poetic technique symbolists and futurists.

The articles "The Reader" and "Anatomy of a Poem" partially repeat each other. It is possible that they were conceived by Gumilyov as two chronologically different versions (or two interrelated parts) of the introduction to The Theory of Integral Poetics. Gumilyov summarizes here the basic convictions to which his reflections on the essence of poetry and his own poetic experience led. However, many of the initial provisions of these articles formed in the author's head earlier and were first expressed more fluently in the "Letters on Russian Poetry" and articles of 1910-1913.

In the essay Anatomy of a Poem, Gumilyov not only proceeds from Coleridge's formula (also quoted in the article "The Reader"), according to which "poetry is the best words in the best order" (185, 179), but also announces it after A. A. Potebney "a phenomenon of language or a special form of speech" (186). Poetics, according to Gumilyov, is by no means reduced to poetic "phonetics", "stylistics" and "composition", but includes the doctrine of "eidology" - about traditional poetic themes and ideas. With its main requirement, acmeism as a literary trend, Gumilyov claims, “shows equal attention to all four sections” (187-188). So, on the one hand, every moment of the sound of a word and every poetic stroke have an expressive character, affect the perception of a poem, and on the other hand, a word (or poem), devoid of expressiveness and meaning, is not a living and spiritualized, but a stillborn phenomenon. , because it does not express the face of the speaker and at the same time does not say anything to the listener (or reader).

A similar thought is expressed by the article "Reader". The poet in moments of creativity should be “the owner of some sensation, before him unconscious and valuable. This gives rise to a sense of catastrophe in him, it seems to him that he is saying his last and most important thing, without knowing what the earth should not have been born. This is a very special feeling, sometimes filling with such trepidation that it would interfere with speaking, if it were not for the accompanying feeling of victory, the consciousness that you create perfect combinations of words, similar to those that once resurrected the dead, destroyed walls.

The last words of the above fragment directly resonate with the cited poem "The Word", imbued with that high consciousness of the prophetic mission of the poet and poetry, which was born in Gumilyov after October, in the conditions of the highest tension of the spiritual forces of the poet, born then cleansing and at the same time harsh and cruel years. Concluding the article, Gumilyov analyzes different types of readers, repeating his favorite idea that a constant study of poetic technique is necessary for a poet who wants to achieve full poetic maturity. At the same time, he stipulates that not a single book on poetics (including the treatise conceived by him) “will teach you to write poetry, just as an astronomy textbook will not teach you how to create celestial bodies. However, for poets, it can also serve to check their already written things and at the moment preceding creativity, it will make it possible to weigh whether the feeling is sufficiently saturated, the image has matured and the excitement is strong, or is it better not to give yourself free will and save strength for a better moment, "for" you should write not when you can, but when you should »

In an article on the principles of poetic translation (1920), Gumilyov summarized his experience as a brilliant poet-translator. The finest master of translation, he substantiated in it the ideal of the most adequate poetic translation, reproducing the nature of the author's interpretation of "eternal" poetic images, the "undercurrent of the theme", as well as the number of lines, meter and size, the nature of rhymes and the dictionary of the original, its "special techniques ' and 'tone transitions'. This article largely laid the theoretical foundation of that remarkable school of translators of the 1920s, the founders of which were Gumilyov and his closest friend and like-minded person in the field of theory and practice of literary translation M. L. Lozinsky. Of particular interest is Gumilyov's attempt to define the "soul" of each of the main dimensions of Russian verse, which makes it the most suitable for solving those artistic tasks that the poet pursues when using it. Living in 1906-1908. in Paris, Gumilyov is widely attached to the French artistic culture. Prior to his trip to Paris, he, by his own admission in a letter to Bryusov, was not fluent enough in French, was at least fully acquainted among French-speaking writers only with the work of Maeterlinck (and even that he read mainly in Russian). In Paris, Gumilyov mastered the French language, immersed himself in the vibrant artistic life of Paris. Following Bryusov and Annensky, he takes on the mission to expand and enrich the Russian reader's acquaintance with French art and poetry, gradually advancing in its study from the work of his contemporaries and their immediate predecessors - symbolist poets and Parnassians - to its more distant sources.

The most fruitful period of Gumilyov's historical and literary studies was the beginning of 1918-1921. At this time, the range of his historical and literary interests expanded, and his historical and literary studies went hand in hand with intensive publishing and translation activities. In 1918, Gumilyov translated from the French translation of P. Dorma the ancient Babylonian epic "Gilgamesh", which he prefaces with an introductory note explaining the nature and method of his poetic reconstruction of the original. In a concise and laconic (posthumously published) preface to the translation of "Matrona from Ephesus", Petroniy Gumilyov seeks to introduce both the figure of the author of this "nasty but funny gossip" and herself, as a prototype of the genre of the short story, which later received the widest development in the literature of modern times ( from the era of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the present day), into the world-historical context, noting in it the features that foreshadow the "pessimistic realism" of Maupassant. We have already mentioned Gumilyov's preface, written for a collection of translations of French folk songs, prepared by the publishing house World Literature. The critic here gives a capacious and meaningful characterization of French folk poetry, trying to reconcile those two opposite answers that the comparative historical literary science of the 19th century. gave a question about the reasons that led to similar motifs that unite folk songs, poems and fairy tales from different countries and peoples: this similarity, according to Gumilyov, could be due to the fact that in different geographical and ethnic environments “the human mind encountered the same provisions , thoughts ”, giving rise to the same plots, and the result of heterogeneous “communication of peoples among themselves”, borrowing song plots and motives from each other by wandering singers, as intermediaries between whom a certain place was occupied by “literate monks”, willingly informing poor blind poets and to other wanderers "stories composed by specialist poets"

For the publishing house "World Literature" Gumilyov also wrote the prefaces to the "Poem of the Old Sailor" translated by him by T. Coleridge, as well as to the collection of translations of ballads compiled by him of another English romantic poet of the early 19th century. R. Southey. Both of these poets of the so-called lake school were widely known in their time in Russia - classical translations from R. Southey were created by A. Zhukovsky and A. S. Pushkin. Both Coleridge's Poem about the Old Sailor, dedicated to the themes of sea wanderings and dangers, life and death, and Southey's epic ballads were in tune with the nature of Gumilyov's own talent; as a translator, he generally gravitated toward translating works that were close to him in their spiritual structure (this applies not only to the works of Gautier, Coleridge and Southey, but also to the poems of F. Villon, L. de Lisle, J. Moreas, the sonnets of J. M. Heredia, some of which were brilliantly translated by Gumilyov, Voltaire's Virgin of Orleans, in the translation of which he took part in the last years of his life). As can be seen from Gumilyov's preface to Gauthier's "Enamels and Cameos", the work of the poets of the "lake school" attracted his attention already at that time, but he could devote time to preparing Russian editions of their works and express his attitude towards them in articles specially dedicated to them. only in the post-revolutionary years. Of particular interest to Gumilyov's sketches about Coleridge and Southey are the autobiographical overtones that are clearly felt in them - Gumilyov mentally correlates his troubled fate with the life of these poets, and their poetics and creative aspirations with the poetics of the acmeists. "Poems about an old sailor" is a statement that Gumilyov backs up with a brilliant analysis of her poetic structure. In these words, the attentive reader cannot help but be struck by a direct echo of the above characterization of Gauguin contained in one of Gumilyov's earliest articles. This roll call testifies to the extraordinary stability of the main core of his poetic worldview (although this stability did not interfere with the indirect and complex path of Gumilyov's creative development as a poet). At the same time, in the articles about Coleridge and Southey, one feels that they are designed for the needs of a new reader, in whose mind the revolutionary years and events he has recently experienced are alive.

As prefaces to the books of the Gorky publishing house "World Literature", two other historical and literary articles of the late Gumilyov were also written - short biography and a creative portrait of A. K. Tolstoy (where the author set himself only a very modest goal to give a public, popular scientific description of the main works of the poet, without going beyond the firmly established and well-known) and the posthumously published excellent article "The Poetry of Baudelaire" (1920), cited above. In it, Baudelaire's work is considered in the context of not only poetry, but also science and social thought of the 19th century, and Baudelaire is characterized as a poet-"explorer" and "conqueror", "one of the greatest poets" of his era, who became "the organ of speech of all existing "and gave humanity a" new thrill "(in the words of V. Hugo). “To the art of creating poetry,” he added “the art of creating one’s own poetic image, made up of the sum of the masks put on by the poet” - “the aristocrat of the spirit”, “blasphemer” and “all-man”, who knows both “dazzling flashes of beauty”, and “all the shame of everyday cityscapes". The article about Baudelaire adequately completes the long and fruitful work of Gumilyov, a historian and translator of French poetry, who made a significant contribution to acquainting the Russian reader with the cultural values of the peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Bibliography

1. Avtonomova N.S. Returning to the basics // Questions of Philosophy - 1999 - No. 3 - P. 45

2. Gumilyov N.S. The legacy of symbolism and acmeism // Letters on Russian poetry. - M.: Sovremennik, 1990 - p.235

3. Keldysh V. At the turn of the epochs // Questions of Literature, 1993 - No. 2 - P. 26

4. Nikolai Gumilyov. Research and materials. Bibliography. - St. Petersburg: "Science", 1994. - 55p..

5. Pavlovsky A.I. Nikolai Gumilyov // Questions of Literature - 2003 - No. 10 - P.19

6. Freelender G. N. S. Gumilyov - critic and theorist of poetry.: M., 1999

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Abstract on the topic

"Acmeism. Gumilyov"

Acmeism

Acmeism in Russian literature arose as a reaction to the crisis of symbolism, the ideals of which no longer corresponded to the demands of the time. The desire for universal transformations, mystical experiences, the search for the innermost secrets of the soul are a thing of the past. Skeptical people are beginning to talk about the “symbolic fog”. The cosmic worldview in the minds of many authors gives way to an interest in the manifestations of real life and its beauty. Saying goodbye to symbolism, S. Gorodetsky wrote:

Sorry, captivating moisture

And primeval fog!

There is more goodness in the transparent wind

For the countries created for life...

Name, recognize, rip off the covers

And idle secrets and decrepit haze.

Here is the first feat. New feat -

Sing praises to the living earth. 1909

S. Gorodetsky and N. Gumilyov create a new literary trend - acmeism. N. Gumilev wrote about him like this: “A new direction is replacing symbolism, no matter how it is called, whether acmeism (from the Greek. akme -- the highest degree of something, a color, a blooming time), or Adamism (a courageously firm and clear view of life), - in any case, requiring a greater balance of power and a more accurate knowledge of the relationship between subject and object than was in symbolism. However, in order for this current to assert itself in its entirety and be a worthy successor to the previous one, it is necessary that it accept its legacy and answer all the questions posed by it. The glory of the ancestors obliges, and symbolism was a worthy father.

Acmeism, like symbolism, did not accept gray everyday life and revolutionary explosions. The Association "Workshop of Poets" included S. Gorodetsky, N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, M. Kuzmin, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut. The very name "Workshop" was chosen in defiance of the symbolist "God's chosenness of the poet", sounded mundane, assuming in poets, first of all, workers, workers. N. Gumilyov proposed to abandon the continuous symbolization of the world. O. Mandelstam spoke about the return to the word of objective gravity, “thingness”. The common goal of the Acmeists was to "sing praise to the living earth."

Acmeists saw real, true beauty in the past. They revived ancient genres: pastoral, idyll, madrigal, etc. The main printed organ of the acmeists was the Apollo magazine (1909), conceived as an example of clarity, harmony, proportion, harmony.

In their poetry, acmeists sometimes created artificial worlds filled with exotic beauty. As in a kaleidoscope, they alternate between antique vases, bronze candlesticks, court ladies, southern countries, walks, everyday scenes. Both poets and artists of the "World of Art" (K. Somov, A. Benois, L. Bakst, S. Sudeikin, etc.) were primarily interested in the "aesthetics" of history, and not in the laws of its development. So, A. Benois wrote: «... I completely moved into the past ... Behind the trees, bronzes, vases of Versailles, I somehow stopped seeing our streets, policemen, butchers and hooligans. In the theatrical world of acmeists, sometimes there were no contradictions and problems.

Where can I find a syllable to describe the walk,

Chablis on ice, toasted bread

And ripe sweet agate cherries?

………………………………………

The spirit of trifles, lovely and airy,

Love of the nights, sometimes stinging, sometimes stuffy.

Cheerful lightness of thoughtless living!

Ah, I am faithful, far from obedient miracles,

Your flowers, cheerful land!

M- Kuzmin. "Where can I find a syllable?" 1906

In the poems of A. Akhmatova, S. Gorodetsky, N. Gumilyov, sad notes, disturbing forebodings slipped, the motive of death sounded. Contrasting themselves with the symbolists, the acmeists often went even further away from real life.

Representatives of acmeism (as well as symbolism) were mostly talented individuals. Only at the birth of this literary trend did they follow its aesthetic canons. Further, the creativity of each of them developed in accordance with the characteristics of individual talent and their own outlook on life. In the poetry of N. Gumilyov, for example, the features of symbolism were still preserved. S. Gorodetsky and A. Akhmatova already in their early work gravitated towards the realistic style of creativity. The world of M. Kuzmin is a “sweet, fragile world of riddles”, masquerade, gallantry of the 18th century, games of love, description of “charming little things”, enjoyment of “thoughtless living”. O. Mandelstam, creating a dramatically intense philosophical lyrics, sought to update the language of poetry, realizing the grandeur of historical changes, went, according to literature researcher V. Zhirmunsky, "to poetics of complex and abstract parables. A. Blok called the work of A. Akhmatova an exception, who was close to the principles of realistic writing, who continued the traditions of Russian classical poetry.

Nikolai Gumilyov

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov was born on April 3 (15), 1886 in Kronstadt, where his father, Stepan Yakovlevich, who graduated from the gymnasium in Ryazan and Moscow University in the medical faculty, served as a ship's doctor. According to some reports, the father's family came from a clergy rank, which can be indirectly confirmed by the surname (from the Latin word humilis, "humble"), but the poet's grandfather, Yakov Stepanovich, was a landowner, the owner of a small Berezka estate in the Ryazan province, where the Gumilyov family sometimes spent the summer. B. P. Kozmin, without indicating the source, says that the young N. S. Gumilyov, who was then fond of socialism and read Marx (he was at that time a Tiflis gymnasium student - that means it was between 1901 and 1903), was engaged in agitation among millers, and this caused complications with the governor. Berezki were later sold, and a small estate near St. Petersburg was bought in their place.

Gumilyov's mother, Anna Ivanovna, nee Lvova, sister of Admiral L.I. Lvov, was the second wife of S.Ya. and more than twenty years younger than her husband. The poet had an older brother, Dmitry, and a half-sister, Alexandra, in the marriage of Sverchkov. The mother outlived both sons, but the exact year of her death has not been established.

Gumilyov was still a child when his father retired and the family moved to Tsarskoye Selo. Gumilyov began his education at home, and then studied at the Gurevich gymnasium, but in 1900 the family moved to Tiflis, and he entered the 4th grade of the 2nd gymnasium, and then transferred to the 1st. But the stay in Tiflis was short-lived. In 1903, the family returned to Tsarskoye Selo, and the poet entered the 7th grade of the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, the director of which at that time was and until 1906 the famous poet Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky remained. The latter is usually credited with a great influence on the poetic development of Gumilyov, who, in any case, placed Annensky very highly as a poet. Apparently, Gumilev began to write poetry (and stories) very early, when he was only eight years old. His first appearance in print dates back to the time when the family lived in Tiflis: on September 8, 1902, his poem “I fled from the cities to the forest ...” was published in the newspaper “Tiflis Leaf” (this poem was not found by us, unfortunately, ).

According to all reports, Gumilyov did not study well, especially in mathematics, and he graduated from the gymnasium late, only in 1906. But a year before graduating from high school, he published his first collection of poems called The Way of the Conquistadors, with an epigraph from the then hardly known to many, and later so famous French writer Andre Gide, whom he obviously read in the original. Valery Bryusov wrote about this first collection of Gumilyov’s youthful poems in Libra that it was full of “rehashings and imitations” and repeats all the main commandments of decadence, which struck with their courage and novelty in the West twenty years, and in Russia ten years before. (Just ten years before the publication of Gumilyov's book, Bryusov himself made a sensation by releasing his collections "Russian Symbolists"). Nevertheless, Bryusov considered it necessary to add: “But the book also contains several beautiful poems, really successful images. Let us assume that she is only the path of a new conquistador and that his victories and conquests lie ahead. Gumilyov himself never republished The Way of the Conquistadors again and, looking at this book, obviously, as a sin of youth, he omitted it when counting his collections of poems (which is why he called “Alien Sky” in 1912 the third book of poems, while in fact actually she was fourth).

From the biographical data on Gumilyov, it is not clear what he did immediately after graduating from the gymnasium. A. A. Gumilyova, mentioning that her husband, after graduating from the gymnasium, at the request of his father entered the Naval Corps and spent one summer at sea, adds: “And the poet, at the insistence of his father, had to enter the university,” and further says that he decided to go to Paris and study at the Sorbonne. According to Kozmin's dictionary, Gumilyov entered St. Petersburg University much later, in 1912, studied Old French literature at the Romano-Germanic department, but did not finish the course. He really went to Paris and spent 1907-1908 abroad, listening to lectures on French literature at the Sorbonne. If we take this fact into account, it is striking how, in 1917, when he again came to France, he wrote French poorly, both from the point of view of grammar and even from the point of view of spelling (however, S. K. Makovsky says that he and in Russian spelling, and especially punctuation, was far from firm): his poor knowledge of the French language is evidenced by Gumilyov's handwritten memorandum stored in my archive on the recruitment of volunteers in Abyssinia for the Allied army, as well as his own translations of his poems into French.

In Paris, Gumilyov took it into his head to publish a small literary magazine called Sirius, in which he published his own poems and stories under the pseudonyms Anatoly Grant and K-o, as well as the first poems of Anna Andreevna Gorenko, who soon became his wife and became famous under name of Anna Akhmatova - they had known each other since Tsarskoye Selo. One of the memos about Gumilyov, written shortly after his death, quotes a letter from Akhmatova to an unknown person, written from Kyiv and dated March 13, 1907, where she wrote: “Why did Gumilyov take on Sirius? This surprises me and puts me in an unusually cheerful mood. How many misfortunes our Mikola endured, and all in vain! Have you noticed that the employees are almost all as famous and respectable as I am? I think that an eclipse from the Lord has found on Gumilyov. It happens. 3 Unfortunately, even in Paris it turned out to be impossible to find a set of "Sirius" (only three thin issues of the magazine were published), and from Gumilev's printed there, we have the opportunity to give in this edition only one poem and part of one "poem in prose". Whether there were any other employees in the journal besides Akhmatova and Gumilyov, who was hiding under various pseudonyms, remains unclear.

In Paris, in 1908, Gumilyov published his second book of poems, Romantic Flowers. From Paris he made his first trip to Africa in 1907. Apparently, this journey was undertaken against the will of the father, at least this is how A. A. Gumilyova writes about this:

About this dream of his [to go to Africa] ... the poet wrote to his father, but his father categorically stated that he would not receive any money or his blessing for such (at that time) "extravagant trip" until he graduated from the university. Nevertheless, Kolya, in spite of everything, set off in 1907, saving the necessary funds from his parents' monthly pay. Subsequently, the poet enthusiastically told about everything he saw: - how he spent the night in the hold of the steamer with the pilgrims, how he shared their meager meal with them, how he was arrested in Trouville for trying to get on the steamer and ride "hare". This journey was hidden from the parents, and they learned about it only after the fact. The poet wrote letters to his parents in advance, and his friends carefully sent them every ten days from Paris.

Perhaps not everything is accurate in this story: for example, it remains unclear why, on the way to Africa, Gumilyov ended up in Trouville (in Normandy) and was arrested there - it is possible that two different episodes are confused here - but we still we cite the story of A. A. Gumilyova, since no other memories seem to have been preserved about this first trip of the poet to Africa.

In 1908 Gumilev returned to Russia. Now he already had some literary name. Bryusov again wrote about the Romantic Flowers published in Paris in Libra (1908,? 3, pp. 77-78). In this book, he saw a big step forward compared to The Way. He wrote:

... you see that the author worked hard and hard on his verse. There are no traces of the former negligence of sizes, carelessness of rhymes, inaccuracy of images. N. Gumilyov's poems are now beautiful, elegant, and for the most part interesting in form; now he sharply and definitely draws his images and chooses epithets with great thoughtfulness and refinement. Often his hand is still cheating on him, [but?] he is a serious worker who understands what he wants and knows how to achieve what he achieves.

Bryusov correctly noted that Gumilyov was more successful in “objective” lyrics, where the poet himself disappears behind the images drawn by Him, where more is given to the eye than to hearing. In poetry, where it is necessary to convey inner experiences with the music of verse and the charm of words, N. Gumilyov often lacks the power of direct suggestion. He is a little parnassian in his poetry, a poet of the Lecomte de Lisle type...

Bryusov ended his review like this:

Of course, despite some successful plays, Romantic Flowers is only a student's book. But I would like to believe that N. Gumilyov belongs to the number of writers who develop slowly, and for that very reason rise high. Perhaps, continuing to work with the stubbornness as now, he will be able to go much further than we have planned, he will discover in himself possibilities that we do not suspect.

In this assumption, Bryusov turned out to be absolutely right. Since Bryusov was considered a strict and demanding critic, such a review should have inspired Gumilyov. A little later, reviewing in "Balance" (1909, ? 7) one magazine in which Gumilev's poems were published, which later became part of "Pearls", Sergei Solovyov said that sometimes Gumilev "comes across cast stanzas that betray Bryusov's school," and also wrote about the influence of Lecomte de Lisle on him.

Between 1908 and 1910. Gumilyov makes literary acquaintances and enters the literary life of the capital. Living in Tsarskoye Selo, he communicates a lot with I. F. Annensky. In 1909, he met S.K. Makovsky and introduced the latter to Annensky, who for a short time became one of the pillars of the Apollo magazine founded by Makovsky. The magazine began to appear in October 1909, and on November 30 of the same year, Annensky died suddenly of a heart attack at the Tsarskoselsky railway station in St. Petersburg. Gumilyov himself from the very beginning became one of Makovsky's main assistants in the magazine, his most active collaborator and sworn poetic critic. From year to year he published his "Letters on Russian Poetry" in "Apollo". Only sometimes he was replaced in this role by others, for example, Vyacheslav Ivanov and M. A. Kuzmin, and during the war years, when he was at the front, by Georgy Ivanov.

In the spring of 1910, Gumilyov's father died, having been seriously ill for a long time. A little later in the same year, on April 25, Gumilyov married Anna Andreevna Gorenko. After the wedding, the young people left for Paris. In the autumn of the same year, Gumilyov undertook a new trip to Africa, this time visiting the most inaccessible places in Abyssinia. In 1910, the third book of Gumilyov's poems was published, which brought him wide fame - "Pearls". Gumilyov dedicated this book to Bryusov, calling him his teacher. In a review published in "Russian Thought" (1910, book 7), Bryusov himself wrote about "Pearls" that Gumilev's poetry lives in an imaginary and almost ghostly world. He somehow eschews modernity, he himself creates countries for himself and inhabits them with creatures created by him: people, animals, demons. In these countries - one might say, in these worlds - phenomena are subject not to the usual laws of nature, but to new ones, which the poet ordered to exist; and people in them live and act not according to the laws of ordinary psychology, but according to strange, inexplicable whims prompted by the author's prompter.

Speaking about the poems from Romantic Flowers included in the book by Gumilyov, Bryusov noted that there the fantasy is even freer, the images are even more ghostly, the psychology is even more bizarre. But this does not mean that the author's youthful poems express his soul more fully. On the contrary, it should be noted that in his new poems he largely freed himself from the extremes of his first creations and learned to close his dreams into more definite outlines. His visions over the years have acquired more plasticity, bulge. At the same time, his verse has also clearly grown stronger. A student of I. Annensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov and the poet to whom "Pearls" are dedicated [vol. e. Bryusov himself], N. Gumilyov is slowly but surely moving towards full mastery in the field of form. Nearly all of his poems are written in fine, deliberate, and refined-sounding verse. N. Gumilyov did not create any new style of writing, but, borrowing the techniques of poetic technique from his predecessors, he managed to improve, develop, deepen them, which, perhaps, should be recognized as even more merit than the search for new forms, which too often leads to deplorable failures.

Vyacheslav Ivanov at the same time in "Apollo" (1910,? 7) wrote about Gumilyov about "Pearls", as a student of Bryusov, spoke about his "closed stanzas" and "haughty stanzas", about his exotic romanticism. In Gumilyov's poetry, he still saw only "opportunities" and "hints", but even then it seemed to him that Gumilyov could develop in a different direction than his "mentor" and "Virgil": such poems as "Journey to China" or "Marquis de Carabas” (“incomparable idyll”) show, Ivanov wrote, that “Gumilyov sometimes gets drunk with a dream more cheerfully and more carelessly than Bryusov, sober in the very ecstasy.” Your long and interesting review Ivanov ended with the following prediction:

... when the real experience of the soul, bought by suffering and love, breaks the veils that still envelop the real reality of the world before the poet’s gaze, then “land and water” will separate in it, Then his lyrical epic will become an objective epic, and pure lyrics - his hidden lyricism, - - then for the first time it will belong to life.

By 1910-1912. include the memoirs of Mrs. V. Nevedomskaya about Gumilyov. She and her young husband were the owners of the Podobino estate, an old noble nest six miles from the much more modest Slepnev, where Gumilyov and his wife spent the summer after returning from their honeymoon. That summer, the Nevedomskys got to know them and met almost daily. Nevedomskaya recalls how inventive Gumilyov was in inventing various games. Using the rather large stable of the Nevedomskys, he came up with a game of "circus".

Nikolai Stepanovich, as a matter of fact, did not know how to ride a horse, but he had a complete absence of fear. He mounted any horse, stood on the saddle and did the most puzzling exercises. The height of the barrier never stopped him, and more than once he fell with his horse.

The circus program also included dancing on a tightrope, walking on a wheel, etc. Akhmatova acted like a “snake woman”: she had amazing flexibility - she easily put her foot behind her neck, touched her heels with the back of her head, while maintaining the strict face of a novice . Gumilyov himself, as the director of the circus, performed in his great-grandfather's tailcoat and top hat, taken from a chest in the attic. I remember once we drove in a cavalcade of about ten people to the neighboring county, where we were not known. It was in Petrovka, in the hayfield. The peasants surrounded us and began to ask - who are we? Gumilyov, without hesitation, replied that we were a traveling circus and were going to a fair in a neighboring county town to give a performance. The peasants asked us to show our art, and we went through our entire “program” before them. The audience was delighted, and someone began to collect coppers in our favor. Here we were confused and hastily disappeared.

Nevedomskaya also talks about the game of “types” invented by Gumilyov, in which each of the players portrayed a certain image or type, for example, “Don Quixote” or “Gossip”, or “The Great Schemer”, or “A person who tells everyone the truth in eyes", and had to play his role in Everyday life. At the same time, the assigned roles could not correspond at all and even contradict the real character of this “actor”. As a result, sometimes acute situations arose. The older generation was critical of this game, while the young "was fascinated precisely by the well-known riskiness of the game." On this occasion, Ms. Nevedomskaya says that in Gumilyov's character "there was a trait that forced him to seek and create risky situations, even if only psychologically," although he also had an attraction to purely physical danger.

Recalling the autumn of 1911, Ms. Nevedomskaya tells of a play that Gumilyov composed for the inhabitants of Podobin to perform when persistent rains drove them into the house.5 Gumilyov was not only an author, but also a director. Mrs Nevedomskaya writes:

His enthusiasm and whimsical imagination subjugated us completely and we dutifully reproduced the images that he inspired in us. All the figures of this play are schematic, as are the images of Gumilyov's poems and poems. After all, N. S. schematized and sharpened the living people he encountered, applying to the type of interlocutor, to his “horse”, conducting a conversation in such a way that the person became embossed; at the same time, the "stylized object" did not even notice that N. S. was "styling" it all the time.

In 1911, the Gumilyovs had a son, Lev. The same year marks the birth of the Guild of Poets, a literary organization that initially united very diverse poets (Vyacheslav Ivanov Bloks also belonged to it), but soon gave impetus to the emergence of acmeism, which, as a literary trend, opposed itself to symbolism. This is not the place to talk about it in detail. Let us only recall that the famous dispute about symbolism dates back to 1910. In the Society of Zealots of the Artistic Word created under Apollo, reports were read on the symbolism of Vyacheslav Ivanov and Alexander Blok. Both of these reports were printed in? 8 "Apollo" (1910). And in the next issue appeared a short and caustic answer to them by V. Ya. Bryusov, entitled "On the speech of the slave, in defense of poetry." There was a crisis inside symbolism, and two an extra year later, on the pages of that “Apollo” (1913, 1), Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky, in articles that were in the nature of literary manifestos, proclaimed acmeism or adamism, which was replacing symbolism. Gumilyov became the recognized leader of acmeism (who at the same time opposed himself to the futurism that had arisen shortly before), and Apollo was his organ. The Guild of Poets turned into an organization of acmeist poets, and under it a small magazine "Hyperborea" appeared, published in 1912-1913, and a publishing house of the same name.

The acmeism proclaimed by Gumilyov in his own work was most fully and clearly expressed in the collection “Alien Sky” published at that time (1912), where Gumilyov included four poems by Theophile Gauthier, one of the four poets - very different from each other - - which the acmeists proclaimed as their models. One of the four poems by Gauthier included in "Alien Sky" ("Art") can be regarded as a kind of acmeist creed. Two years after that, Gumilyov released whole volume translations from Gauthier - "Enamels and Cameos" (1914). Although S.K. Makovsky, in his study of Gumilyov, says that insufficient familiarity with the French language sometimes let Gumilyov down in these translations, another connoisseur of French literature, who himself became a French essayist and critic, the late A. Ya. Levinson, wrote in an obituary Gumilyov:

Until now, it seems to me that the best monument of this time in Gumilyov's life is the priceless translation of "Enamels and Cameos", truly a miracle of reincarnation in the guise of his beloved Gauthier. It is impossible to imagine, given the fundamental difference in the versification of French and Russian, in the natural rhythm and articulation of both languages, a more striking impression of the identity of both texts. And do not think that such a complete analogy can be achieved only by deliberation and perfection of texture, by the development of a craft; here you need a deeper comprehension, poetic brotherhood with foreign poets.6

During these years preceding the World War, Gumilyov lived an intense life: "Apollo", the Poet's Workshop, "Hyperborea", literary meetings on the tower at Vyacheslav Ivanov, night gatherings in the "Stray Dog", which Anna Akhmatova and told in "Petersburg Winters" Georgy Ivanov. But not only that, but also a trip to Italy in 1912, the fruit of which was a series of poems originally published in Russian Thought by P. B. Struve (of which Gumilyov and Akhmatova became regular contributors during these years) and in other journals , and then included for the most part in the book "Quiver"; and a new trip in 1913 to Africa, this time arranged as a scientific expedition, with an order from the Academy of Sciences (on this trip, Gumilyov was accompanied by his seventeen-year-old nephew, Nikolai Leonidovich Sverchkov). Gumilyov wrote about this trip to Africa (and perhaps partly about the previous ones) in the “Iambic Pentameters” published for the first time in Apollo:

But the months went by

I swam and took away the tusks of elephants,

Paintings by Abyssinian masters,

Panther furs - I liked their spots -

And what was previously incomprehensible,

Contempt for the world and fatigue of dreams.

Gumilyov spoke about his hunting exploits in Africa in an essay that will be included in the last volume of our Collected Works, along with other Gumilyov's prose.

“Iambic Pentameters” is one of Gumilyov’s most personal and autobiographical poems, who until then struck with his “objectivity, his “impersonality” in verse. The bitter lines in these “Iambas” are clearly addressed to A.A. this time in their relationship a deep and irreparable crack:

I know life has failed... and you,

You, for whom I sought in the Levant

The imperishable purple of royal robes,

I lost you like Damayanti

Once lost crazy Nal.

Bones flew up, ringing like steel,

Bones fell - and there was sadness.

You said thoughtfully, sternly:

“I believed, I loved too much,

And I'm leaving, not believing, not loving,

And before the face of the All-seeing God,

Maybe destroying yourself

Forever I renounce you." --

I didn't dare to kiss your hair

Not even to squeeze cold, thin hands.

I was ugly to myself, like a spider,

I was frightened and tormented by every sound.

And you left in a simple and dark dress,

Similar to the ancient Crucifix.

The time has not yet come to talk about this personal drama of Gumilyov except in the words of his own poems: we do not know all its vicissitudes, and A. A. Akhmatova is still alive, who has not said anything about it in print.

Of the individual events in Gumilyov's life in this pre-war period - a period that his literary friends recalled a lot - we can mention his duel with Maximilian Voloshin, associated with Voloshin's fictional "Cherubina de Gabriak" and its poems. About this duel - the call took place in the studio of the artist A. Ya. Golovin with a large crowd of guests - S.K. Makovsky told in some detail (see his book "On the Parnassus of the Silver Age"), and a former witness also told me about it call BV Anrep.

All this was put to an end in July 1914, when Gabriel's shot rang out in distant Sarajevo. Princip, and then all of Europe, was engulfed by the fire of war, and from it began that tragic era that we are living through during its time. About this July, Akhmatova wrote:

Smells like burning. four weeks

Dry peat burns in swamps.

Even the birds didn't sing today

And the aspen no longer trembles.

The sun has become the disgrace of God,

The rain has not sprinkled the fields since Easter.

A one-legged passer-by came

And one in the yard said:

“A terrible time is approaching. Soon

It will become crowded from fresh graves.

Wait for famine, and a coward, and pestilence,

And eclipses of heavenly bodies.

Only our land will not be divided

For your amusement adversary:

The virgin will spread white

Over great sorrows boards.

The patriotic impulse then swept over everything Russian society. But perhaps the only one among any prominent Russian writers, Gumilyov responded to the war that had befallen the country effectively, and almost immediately (August 24) signed up as a volunteer. He himself, in a later version of the Iambic Pentameter already mentioned, said it best:

And in the roar of the human crowd,

In the hum of passing guns,

In the silent call of the battle trumpet

I suddenly heard the song of my destiny

And ran where the people ran,

Dutifully repeating: wake up, wake up.

The soldiers sang loudly, and the words

They were indistinct, their heart caught:

-- "Hurry forward! A grave is a grave!

Fresh grass will be our bed,

And the canopy is green foliage,

An ally is the Arkhangelsk force. --

So sweetly this song flowed, beckoning,

That I went and accepted me

And they gave me a rifle and a horse,

And a field full of mighty enemies,

Buzzing menacingly bombs and melodious bullets,

And the sky in lightning and red clouds.

And the soul is burned with happiness

Since then; full of fun

And clarity, and wisdom, about God

She talks to the stars

The voice of God hears in military alarm

And God calls his roads.

In several of Gumilyov's poems about the war, included in the collection "Kolchan" (1916) - perhaps the best in all "military" poetry in Russian literature, not only romantic-patriotic, but also Gumilyov's deeply religious perception of the war was affected. Speaking in his already cited obituary of Gumilyov about his attitude to the war, A. Ya. Levinson wrote: He accepted the war with complete simplicity, with straightforward ardor. He was, perhaps, one of those few people in Russia whose soul the war found in the greatest combat readiness. His patriotism was as unconditional as his religious confession was unclouded. I have not seen a man whose nature would have been more alien to doubt, just as utterly, rarely, humor was alien to him. His mind, dogmatic and stubborn, did not know any duality.

N. A. Otsup, in his preface to Gumilev’s Chosen One (Paris, 1959), noted the closeness of Gumilev’s military poems to the poems of the French Catholic poet Charles Peguy, who also took the war religiously and was killed at the front in 1914.

In the appendix to this essay, the reader will find Gumilyov's Service Record. In it, in bare facts and bureaucratic formulas, the military suffering and the heroic deed of Gumilyov are captured. Two soldier Georges during the first fifteen months of the war speak for themselves. Gumilyov himself, poetically recreating and re-living his life in a wonderful poem "Memory" (which the reader will find in the second volume of our collection), said this about it:

He knew the pangs of hunger and thirst,

A disturbing dream, an endless path,

But Saint George touched twice

Bullet untouched chest.

During the war years, Gumilyov dropped out of the literary environment and life and stopped writing "Letters on Russian Poetry" for "Apollo" (but in the morning edition of the newspaper "Birzhevye Vedomosti" his "Notes of a Cavalryman" were published at one time). From his track record it follows that until 1916 he was never even on vacation. But in 1916, he spent several months in St. Petersburg, being seconded to hold an officer's exam at the Nikolaev Cavalry School. For some reason, Gumilyov did not pass this exam and did not receive promotion to the next rank after ensign.

How Gumilyov reacted to the February Revolution, we do not know. Perhaps, with the beginning of the collapse in the army, it was connected with the fact that he “begged off” to the front to the allies and in May 1917 went to the West through Finland, Sweden and Norway. Apparently, it was supposed that he would proceed to the Thessaloniki front and be assigned to the expeditionary force of General Franchet d-Espere, but he was stuck in Paris. On the way to Paris, Gumilyov spent some time in London, where B. V. Anrep, his St. Petersburg acquaintance and Apollo employee, introduced him to literary circles. Thus, he took him to Lady Ottoline Morrell, who lived in the country and in whose house famous writers, including D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, often gathered. The notebooks preserved in Gumilyov's London archive contain a number of literary addresses, as well as many titles of books - on English and other literature - that Gumilyov was going to read or purchase. These notes reflect Gumilyov's interest in Oriental literature, and it is possible that either during this first stay in London, or during a longer way back(between January and April 1918) he met the famous English translator of Chinese poetry, Arthur Waley, who worked at the British Museum. Gumilyov began translating Chinese poets in Paris. We know quite a bit about Gumilyov's life in Paris, which lasted six months (from July 1917 to January 1918). According to the well-known artist M.F. Larionov (in a private letter to me), Gumilyov's greatest passion during his Parisian period was oriental poetry, and he collected everything related to it. With Larionov and his wife, N. S. Goncharova, who lived at that time in Paris, Gumilev talked a lot, and the London album of Gumilev’s poems that I now own is illustrated with their drawings in colors (there is also one drawing by D. S. Stelletsky). Recalling Gumilyov's stay in Paris, M.F. Larionov wrote to me:

“In general, he was a fidget. Paris knew well and had an amazing ability to navigate. Half of our conversations were about Annensky and Gerard de Nerval. I had an oddity in the Tuileries to sit on a bronze lion, which is lonely hidden in the greenery at the end of the garden, almost by the Louvre.

From other Russian acquaintances of Gumilyov, it is known about his meetings with the poet K. N. Ldov (Rosenblum), who had long lived abroad, whose letter to Gumilyov from Paris to London, with poems enclosed in it, has been preserved among the papers handed over to me by B. V. Anrep.8

But although Larionov speaks of Oriental literature as Gumilyov's main passion in Paris, we also know about his other Parisian passion - about his love for the young Elena D., a half-Russian, half-French woman who later married an American. About this "love of the unfortunate Gumilyov in the year of the fourth world war", as he himself described it, speaks of a whole cycle of his poems recorded in the album of Elena D., whom he called his "blue star", and printed according to the text of this album - already after his death - in the collection "To the Blue Star" (1923). Many of these poems were recorded by Gumilev in his London album, sometimes in new versions.

A short period abroad turned out to be creatively productive in Gumilyov's life. In addition to the poems "K. blue star” and translations of Eastern poets who compiled the book “The Porcelain Pavilion”, Gumilyov conceived and began writing in Paris and continued his “Byzantine” tragedy “The Poisoned Tunic” in London. The interesting unfinished story “Merry Brothers” dates back to the same time, although it is possible that Gumilyov began work on it back in Russia. It may seem strange that while Sweden, and Norway, and the North Sea, which he saw passing through, inspired him with poems (these poems were included in the book The Bonfire, 1918), neither Paris nor London, where he stayed for quite a long time , by themselves left no traces in his poetry, except for the mentions of the Parisian streets in the love poems of the album "To the Blue Star".

Very little is known about Gumilyov's military service during this time, about what his duties as an officer were. I have already mentioned the memorandum drawn up by Gumilyov on the recruitment of volunteers among the Abyssinians for the Allied army. Whether this memorandum was presented to its intended destination, that is, to the French High Command or the War Office, we do not know. Perhaps a search in the French military archives will give an answer to this question. Gumilev, in any case, considered himself an expert on Abyssinia. Although Georgy Ivanov, who knew Gumilyov well, in his memoirs of him says that he spoke of Africa contemptuously and once in response to the question of what he experienced when he saw the Sahara for the first time, he answered: “I did not notice her. I sat on a camel and read Ronsard,” this answer should be considered, perhaps, panache. Whether Gumilyov noticed the Sahara or did not notice it, he sang it in a long poem and even predicted the time when

... to our green and old world

Ravenous flocks of sands rush wildly

From the burning young Sahara.

The Mediterranean Sea they will fall asleep,

And Paris, and Moscow, and Athens,

And we will believe in heavenly lights,

Bedouins on their camels.

And when at last the ships of the Martians

The earth will have a ball,

They will see a solid, golden ocean

And they will give him a name: Sahara.

Gumilyov's poems about Africa (in the book "The Tent") speak of the magical charm that this continent had for him - he called it a "giant pear" hanging "on a tree of ancient Eurasia." Gumilyov also recalled Africa in Paris during the days of his forced inactivity there in 1917. He decided to use his love for her and his acquaintance with her in the interests of the allied cause. Hence - his note on Abyssinia, in which he reports data on the various tribes inhabiting it and characterizes them in terms of their military potential. The reader will find this note in an appendix to one of the subsequent volumes of our collection.

The appendix to this essay contains documents never before published, shedding some light on the circumstances under which Gumilyov left Paris in January 1918 and moved to London. He seemed to have a serious intention of going to the Mesopotamian front and fighting in the English army. In London, he acquired from a certain Arundel del Re, who was later a teacher of Italian at Oxford University (I met him when I was my student there, but, unfortunately, had no idea that he knew Gumilyov), letters to to Italian writers and journalists (including the famous Giovanni Papini) - in case he had to stay in Italy along the way: these letters were preserved in notebooks in my archive. It is possible that there were some obstacles from the British side in sending Gumilyov to the Middle East due to the fact that by that time Russia had dropped out of the war. When leaving Paris, Gumilyov was provided with a salary until April 1918, as well as funds for returning to Russia. Whether he seriously considered staying in England we do not know. Hardly, although in February 1918 he apparently made an attempt to find a job in London (see about this in the documents attached to this essay, II, 8). Obviously, nothing came of this attempt. Gumilyov left London in April 1918: among his London papers was preserved a bill dated April 10 for a room he occupied in a modest hotel near the British Museum and the present building of the University of London, on Guilford Street via Murmansk:. In May 1918, Gumilyov was already in revolutionary Petrograd.

In the same year, he divorced A. A. Akhmatova, and the following year he married Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, the daughter of an Orientalist professor, whom S. K. Makovsky described as "a pretty, but mentally insignificant girl." In 1920, the Gumilyovs, according to A. A. Gumilyova, had a daughter, Elena. About her fate, as well as about the fate of her mother, I never had to meet any mention. As for the son of A. A. Akhmatova, in the thirties he gained a reputation as a talented young historian, and he seemed to choose the history of Central Asia as his specialty. Later, under circumstances still not fully elucidated, he was arrested and exiled. More recently, in the journal Novy Mir (1961, No. 12), among the letters of the late A. A. Fadeev printed there, his appeal to the Soviet Chief Military Prosecutor's Office was printed, dated March 2, 1956, that is, two months before Fadeev's suicide. Fadeev sent a letter to A. A. Akhmatova to the prosecutor’s office and asked to “speed up the consideration of the case” of her son, pointing out that “certain circles of the scientific and literary intelligentsia doubt the justice of his isolation.” Fadeev ended his address with the following words:

When considering the case of L. N. Gumilyov, it is also necessary to take into account that (despite the fact that he was only 9 years old when his father N. Gumilyov was no more) he, Lev Gumilyov, as the son of N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova, always could provide "convenient" material for all careerist and hostile elements to raise any accusations against him.

I think that there is a full opportunity to understand his case objectively.

Although explanatory comments were given to other letters immediately printed by certain S. Preobrazhensky, this, in a certain sense, Fadeev's unprecedented appeal, which he signed with his title of deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was left without any explanation. It is known, however, that shortly after this, L. N. Gumilyov was released from "isolation" (as Fadeev delicately put it) and began working in the Asian department of the Hermitage. In 1960, the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR published a solid work by L. N. Gumilyov on the history of the early Huns (“Xiongnu: Central Asia in ancient times”). But in 1961, rumors (perhaps incorrect) about the new arrest of L. N. Gumilyov reached abroad.

Returning to Soviet Russia, N. S. Gumilyov plunged into the then feverish literary atmosphere of revolutionary Petrograd. Like many other writers, he began teaching and lecturing at the Institute of Art History and at various studios that arose at that time - at the Living Word, at the Baltic Fleet studio, in Proletkult. He also took a close part in the editorial board of the World Literature publishing house, founded on the initiative of M. Gorky, and, together with A. A. Blok and M. L. Lozinsky, became one of the editors of the poetic series. Under his editorship, in 1919 and later, S. Coleridge's "The Poem of the Old Sailor" in his, Gumilyov's, translation, Robert Southey's "Ballads" (the preface and part of the translations belonged to Gumilyov) and "The Ballads of Robin Hood" (some of the translations also belonged to Gumilyov; the foreword was written by Gorky). The Babylonian epic about Gilgamesh was also published in Gumilyov's translation with his own short preface and introduction by the Assyriologist V. K. Shileiko, who became the second husband of A. A. Akhmatova. Together with F. D. Batyushkov and K. I. Chukovsky, Gumilyov compiled a book on the principles of literary translation. In 1918, shortly after returning to Russia, he conceived the idea of republishing some of his pre-revolutionary poetry collections: new, revised editions of Romantic Flowers and Pearls appeared; were announced, but "Alien Sky" and "Quiver" did not come out. In the same year, the sixth collection of poems by Gumilyov, The Bonfire, was published, containing poems from 1916-1917, as well as the African poem Mick and the already mentioned Porcelain Pavilion. The years 1919 and 1920 were the years when publishing activity almost completely stopped, and in 1921 the last two collections of Gumilev's poems were published - "Tent" (poems about Africa) and "Pillar of Fire".

In addition, Gumilyov actively participated in literary politics. Together with N. Otsup, G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich, he revived the Workshop of Poets, which was supposed to be "non-partisan", not purely Acmeist, but a number of poets refused to enter it, and Khodasevich ended up leaving. Khodasevich's departure was partly due to the fact that a coup had taken place in the St. Petersburg branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets, and Gumilyov was elected chairman in place of Blok. In this regard, much and very contradictory was written about the hostile relations between Gumilyov and Blok in these last two years of the life of both, but this page literary history is still not fully disclosed, and this issue is not the place to touch on this issue.

Gumilyov from the very beginning did not hide his negative attitude towards the Bolshevik regime. A. Ya. Levinson, who met with him in World Literature, where for more than two years they were united by a “common. the labor of planting the spiritual culture of the West on the ruins of Russian life,” he recalled this time in 1922:

Anyone who has experienced “cultural” work in the Soviets knows all the bitterness of useless efforts, all the doom of the fight against the bestial enmity of the masters of life, but nevertheless we lived with this magnanimous illusion in these years, hoping that Byron and Flaubert, penetrating the masses at least for glory Bolshevik "bluff" will fruitfully shake more than one soul. I was then able to appreciate the vastness of Gumilyov's knowledge in the field of European poetry, the extraordinary intensity and quality of his work, and especially his pedagogical gift. The "Studio of World Literature" was his main department; here he minted the rules of his poetics, which he willingly gave the form of "commandments" ... In our public life, limited to meetings of the editorial board, he defended the dignity of the writer with extreme harshness and fearlessness. Even in the name of our violated prerogatives and the inalienable rights of the spirit, I even dreamed of appealing to all the writers of the West; waiting for salvation and protection from there.

He almost did not talk about politics: once and for all, with indignation and disgust, the regime rejected, as it were, did not exist for him. (My discharge. - G.S.).

It is hardly correct to think, as many have argued, that it was Gumilyov's "naive" and somewhat old-fashioned, traditional monarchism. A negative attitude towards the new regime was then common to a significant part of the Russian intelligentsia, and it especially intensified after the repressions that followed the assassination attempt on Lenin and the murder of Uritsky, committed by the poet Leonid Kannegisser. But then fear seized many. Gumilyov was distinguished from many by his courage, his fearlessness, his desire for risk and his desire for effectiveness. Just as it seems wrong to portray Gumilyov as a naive (or naive) monarchist, it is just as wrong to think that he was involved in the so-called Tagantsev conspiracy more or less by accident. There is no reason to think that Gumilyov returned to Russia in the spring of 1918 with the conscious intention of investing in the counter-revolutionary struggle, but there is every reason to believe that if he had been in Russia at the end of 1917, he would have found himself in the ranks of the White Movement. We do not know the exact birth of Gumilyov in the Tagantsev case, and far from enough is known about this case itself. But we know that Gumilyov was familiar with one of the leaders of the "conspiracy", professor - statesman N.I. Lazarevsky, even before leaving Russia in 1917.

Gumilyov was arrested on August 3, 1921, four days before the death of A. A. Blok. Both V. F. Khodasevich and G. V. Ivanov in their memoirs say that some provocateur played a role in Gumilyov's death. According to Khodasevich, this provocateur was brought from Moscow by their mutual friend, whom Khodasevich characterizes as a man of great talent and great frivolity, who "lived... and lied." Gumilyov liked the “provocateur”, who called himself a novice poet, young, pleasant in manner, generous with gifts, liked him very much, and they began to see each other often. Gorky later said that the testimony of this man figured in the Gumilev case and that he was "sent". G. Ivanov connected the provocateur with Gumilyov's trip to the Crimea in the summer of 1921 on the train of Admiral Nemits and described him as follows: “He was tall, thin, with a cheerful look and an open youthful face. He bore the name of a well-known maritime family and was himself a sailor - he was promoted to midshipman shortly before the revolution. In addition to these disposing qualities, this “pleasant in every way” young man wrote poetry, imitating Gumilyov very well.” According to Ivanov, "the provocateur was made exactly to order in order to endear Gumilyov." Although in the story. Ivanov has details that Khodasevich does not have, it seems that we are talking about the same person.

Khodasevich, on the other hand, left the most detailed and accurate account of the last hours Gumilyov spent at large. He wrote in his memoirs:

At the end of the summer, I began to gather in the village to rest. On Wednesday, August 3rd, I was to leave. On the evening before my departure, I went to say goodbye to some of the neighbors in the House of Arts. Already at ten o'clock I knocked on Gumilev's door. He was at home, resting after the lecture.

We were on good terms, but there was no shortness between us. And so, just as two and a half years ago I was surprised by the too official reception from Gumilyov, so now I did not know what to attribute the extraordinary vivacity with which he was delighted at my arrival. He showed some kind of special even warmth, as if it were not characteristic of him at all. I also had to go to Baroness V. I. Ikskul, who lived on the floor below. But every time I got up to leave, Gumilyov began to beg: "Sit still." So I did not get to Varvara Ivanovna, after spending hours with Gumilyov until two in the morning. He was unusually cheerful. He spoke a lot, on various topics. For some reason, I only remember his story about his stay in the Tsarskoye Selo infirmary, about Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Grand Duchesses. Then Gumilyov began to assure me that he was destined to live a very long time - "at least until ninety years old." He kept repeating:

Certainly up to ninety years, certainly no less.

Until then, I was going to write a pile of books. Reproached me:

Here, we are the same age as you, but look: I, really, have ten years of milk. It's all because I love youth. I play hide-and-seek with my students - and played today. And therefore I will certainly live to be ninety years old, and you will turn sour in five years.

And he, laughing, showed me how in five years I would be hunched over, dragging my feet, and how he would act "well done."

Saying goodbye, I asked permission to bring him some things for safekeeping the next day. When in the morning, at the appointed hour, I approached the doors of Gumilyov with my things, no one answered my knock. In the dining room, the attendant Yefim said that at night Gumilyov was arrested and taken away. So, I was the last one to see him in the wild. In his exaggerated joy at my coming, there must have been a presentiment that he would not see anyone after me.

The story of Georgy Ivanov diverges from the story of Khodasevich (in an article about Gumilyov in the 6th notebook of the Renaissance, November-December 1949). According to Ivanov, on the day of his arrest, Gumilyov returned home at about two in the morning, having spent the whole evening in the studio, among poetic youth. Ivanov refers to the students, who said that on that evening Gumilyov was especially lively and in a good mood, and therefore sat up for so long. Several young ladies and young people who saw Gumilyov off allegedly saw a car waiting at the entrance to the House of Arts, but no one paid attention to it - in those days, Ivanov writes, cars ceased to be "simultaneously both a curiosity and a monster." From Ivanov's story, it turns out that it was Cheka's car, and the people who arrived in it were waiting for Gumilyov in his room with a search and arrest warrant.

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Introduction

1. Acmeism.

Acmeism arose in the 1910s in a "circle of young" poets who were at first close to symbolism. The impetus for their rapprochement was opposition to symbolic poetic practice, the desire to overcome the speculation and utopianism of symbolic theories.

Acmeists proclaimed as their principles:

the liberation of poetry from symbolist appeals to the ideal, the return to it of clarity, materiality, "joyful admiration of being";

the desire to give the word a certain exact meaning, to base works on specific figurativeness, the requirement of "beautiful clarity";

appeal to a person to the "authenticity of his feelings"; poeticization of the world of primordial emotions, primitive - biological natural principle, prehistoric life of the Earth and man.

In October 1911, a new literary association was founded - the Workshop of Poets. The name of the circle indicated the attitude of the participants to poetry as a purely professional field of activity. The "workshop" was a school of formal craftsmanship, indifferent to the peculiarities of the worldview of the participants. N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky became the leaders of the "Workshop".

From a wide circle of participants in the "Workshop" a narrower and more aesthetically cohesive group stood out: N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, S. Gorodetsky, O. Mandelstam, M. Zenkevich and V. Narbut. They formed the core of the Acmeists. Other participants in the "Workshop" (among them G. Adamovich, G. Ivanov, M. Lozinsky and others), not being orthodox acmeists, represented the periphery of the current. Acmeists published ten issues of their journal "Hyperborea" (editor M. Lozinsky), as well as several almanacs "Workshop of Poets".

The main significance in the poetry of acmeism is the artistic development of the diverse and vibrant earthly world. Acmeists valued such elements of form as stylistic balance, pictorial clarity of images, precisely measured composition, and sharpness of details. In their poems, the fragile facets of things were aestheticized, a "homely" atmosphere of admiring "cute little things" was affirmed.

Acmeists have developed subtle ways of conveying the inner world of a lyrical hero. Often the state of feelings was not revealed directly, it was conveyed by a psychologically significant gesture, by listing things. Such a manner of "materialization" of experiences was characteristic, for example, of many poems by A. Akhmatova.

The close attention of the acmeists to the material, material world did not mean their abandonment of spiritual searches. Over time, especially after the outbreak of the First World War, the establishment of the highest spiritual values became the basis of the work of the former acmeists. The motifs of conscience, doubt, spiritual anxiety and even self-condemnation sounded persistently (N. Gumilyov's poem "The Word", 1921). Culture occupied the highest place in the hierarchy of acmeistic values. "Longing for world culture" called acmeism O. Mandelstam. If the symbolists justified culture by goals external to it (for them it is a means of transforming life), and the futurists strove for its applied use (accepted it to the extent of material utility), then for the acmeists culture was an end in itself.

Related to this is a special relationship to the category of memory. Memory is the most important ethical component in the work of the three most significant representatives of acmeism - A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov and O. Mandelstam. In the era of futuristic rebellion against traditions, acmeism advocated the preservation of cultural values, because world culture was for them identical to the common memory of mankind.

The acmeist program briefly rallied the most significant poets of this movement. By the beginning of World War I, the framework of a single poetic school turned out to be tight for them, and each of the acmeists went his own way. a similar evolution, associated with overcoming the aesthetic doctrine of the current, was also characteristic of the leader of acmeism N. Gumilyov. On the early stage the formation of acmeism, a significant influence on the new generation of poets was exerted by the views and creative practice of M.A. Kuzmin, who, along with I.F. Annensky, one of the "teachers" of the acmeists. To feel the essence of the stylistic reform proposed by the acmeists, a consistent appeal to the work of the leader of the new trend N. Gumilyov will help.

2. Creativity of Nikolai Gumilyov

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov lived a very bright, but short, forcibly interrupted life. Indiscriminately accused of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, he was shot. He died on a creative take-off, full of bright ideas, a recognized poet, a theoretician of verse, an active figure in the literary front.

And for more than six decades, his works were not reprinted, a severe ban was imposed on everything he created. The very name of Gumilyov was passed over in silence. It was only in 1987 that it became possible to speak openly about his innocence.

Gumilyov's whole life, right up to his tragic death, is unusual, fascinating, testifies to the rare courage and fortitude of an amazing personality. Moreover, her formation proceeded in a calm, unremarkable atmosphere. Gumilyov found tests for himself.

The future poet was born into the family of a ship's doctor in Kronstadt. He studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium. In 1900-1903. lived in Georgia, where his father was appointed. Upon the return of his family, he continued his studies at the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, which he graduated in 1906. However, already at that time he gave himself up to his passion for poetry.

The first poem is published in the "Tiflis Leaflet" (1902), and in 1905 - a whole book of poems "The Way of the Conquistadors". Since then, as he himself later noted, he has been completely taken over by "the pleasure of creativity, so divinely complex and joyfully difficult."

Creative imagination awakened in Gumilyov a thirst for knowledge of the world. He goes to Paris to study French literature. But he leaves the Sorbonne and goes, despite the strict ban of his father, to Africa. dream to see mysterious lands changes all previous plans. The first trip (1907) was followed by three more in the period from 1908 to 1913, the last as part of an ethnographic expedition organized by Gumilyov himself.

In Africa, he experienced many hardships, illnesses, he went to dangerous, death-threatening trials of his own free will. As a result, he brought valuable materials from Abyssinia for the St. Petersburg Museum of Ethnography.

It is usually believed that Gumilyov strove only for the exotic. Wanderlust, most likely, was secondary. He explained it to V. Bryusov as follows: "... I'm thinking of leaving for six months in Abyssinia in order to find new words in a new environment." Gumilev constantly thought about the maturity of poetic vision.

First world war volunteered for the front. In correspondence from the place of hostilities, he reflected their tragic essence. He did not consider it necessary to protect himself and participated in the most important maneuvers. In May 1917, he left of his own accord for the Thessaloniki (Greece) operation of the Entente.

Gumilyov returned to his homeland only in April 1918. And he immediately joined the intense activity of creating a new culture: he lectured at the Institute of Art History, worked on the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature", in a seminar of proletarian poets, and in many other areas of culture.

A life oversaturated with events did not prevent the rapid development and flowering of a rare talent. One after another, Gumilyov's poetry collections are published: 1905 - "The Way of the Conquistadors", 1908 - "Romantic Flowers", 1910 - "Pearls", 1912 - "Alien Sky", 1916 - "Quiver", 1918 - "Bonfire", "Porcelain Pavilion "and the poem "Mick", 1921 - "Tent" and "Pillar of Fire".

Gumilyov also wrote prose, dramas, kept a kind of chronicle of poetry, studied the theory of verse, responded to the phenomena of art in other countries. How he managed to fit all this into some fifteen years remains a secret. But he managed and immediately attracted the attention of famous literary figures.

The thirst for discovery of unknown beauty was still not satisfied. Bright, mature poems collected in the book "Pearls" are devoted to this cherished theme. From the glorification of romantic ideals, the poet came to the topic of quests, his own and universal. "The feeling of the way" (Blok's definition; here the artists called to each other, although they are looking for different things) is imbued with the collection "Pearls". Its very name comes from the image of beautiful countries: "Where no human foot has gone, / Where giants live in sunny groves / And pearls shine in clear water." The discovery of values justifies and spiritualizes life. Pearls became a symbol of these values. And the symbol of the search is a journey. This is how Gumilyov reacted to the spiritual atmosphere of his time, when the definition of a new position was the main thing.

As before, the lyrical hero of the poet is inexhaustibly courageous. On the way: a bare cliff with a dragon - his “sigh” is a fiery tornado. But the conqueror of peaks does not know retreats: “Better is blind Nothing, / Than golden Yesterday...” Therefore, the flight of a proud eagle so attracts. The author's fantasy, as it were, completes the perspective of his movement - "not knowing decay, he flew forward":

He died, yes! But he couldn't fall

Entering the circles of planetary movement,

The bottomless mouth gaped below,

But the forces of attraction were weak.

A small cycle "Captains", about which so many unfair judgments were expressed, born to the same striving forward, the same admiration for the feat:

“No one trembles before a thunderstorm,

Not one will turn the sails.

Gumilyov cherishes the deeds of unforgettable travelers: Gonzalvo and Cook, Laperouse and de Gama ... With their names, the poetry of great discoveries, the unbending fortitude of everyone, “who dares, who wants, who seeks” (isn’t it necessary to see here the reason for the severity, previously sociologically interpreted: “Or, having discovered a riot on board, / A pistol rips out from behind a belt”?).

In "Pearls" there are exact realities, say, in the picture of the coastal life of sailors ("Captains"). However, distracting from the boring present, the poet is looking for consonance with the rich world of accomplishments and freely moves his gaze in space and time. Images of different centuries and countries appear, in particular, those put in the titles of poems: “The Old Conquistador”, “Barbarians”, “Knight with a Chain”, “Journey to China”. It is the movement forward that gives the author confidence in the chosen idea of the path. And also - the form of expression.

Feelable in the "Pearls" and tragic motives - unknown enemies, "monstrous grief." Such is the power of the inglorious surrounding. His poisons penetrate the consciousness of the lyrical hero. The “always patterned garden of the soul” turns into a hanging garden, where the face of the moon, not the sun, leans so terribly, so low.

Tests of love are filled with deep bitterness. Now it is not betrayal that frightens, as in early poems, but the loss of “the ability to fly”: signs of “dead languishing boredom”; “kisses are stained with blood”; the desire to "bewitch gardens painful distance"; in death to find "islands of perfect happiness."

Truly Gumilyov's is boldly manifested - the search for a country of happiness even beyond the line of being. The darker the impressions, the stronger the attraction to the light. The lyrical hero strives for extremely strong trials: "I will once again burn with the intoxicating life of fire." Creativity is also a kind of self-immolation: "Here, own a magic violin, look into the eyes of monsters / And die a glorious death, a terrible death of a violinist."

In the article “The Life of the Poetry,” Gumilyov wrote: “By gesture in a poem, I mean such an arrangement of words, a selection of vowels and consonants, accelerations and decelerations of rhythm, that the reader of the poem involuntarily becomes the hero’s pose, experiences the same as the poet himself ... » Gumilyov possessed such skill.

The tireless search determined Gumilev's active position in the literary environment. He soon became a prominent contributor to the Apollon magazine, organized the Poets Workshop, and in 1913, together with S. Gorodetsky, formed a group of acmeists.

The most acmeistic collection "Alien Sky" (1912) was also a logical continuation of the previous ones, but a continuation of a different aspiration, other plans.

In the "foreign sky" the restless spirit of search is again felt. The collection included small poems "The Prodigal Son" and "The Discovery of America". It would seem that they were written on a truly Gumilev theme, but how it has changed!

Next to Columbus in the "Discovery of America" stood no less significant heroine - the Muse of Far Wanderings. The author is now fascinated not by the greatness of the deed, but by its meaning and the soul of the chosen one of fate. Perhaps for the first time there is no harmony in the inner appearance of the heroes-travelers. Let's compare the internal state of Columbus before and after his journey: He sees a miracle with a spiritual eye.

The whole world, unknown to the prophets,

What lies in the abyss of blue,

Where the west meets the east.

And then Columbus about himself: I am a shell, but without pearls,

I am the stream that has been dammed.

Dropped, now no longer needed.

"Like a lover, for the game of another

He is abandoned by the Muse of Far Wanderings.

The analogy with the aspirations of the artist is unconditional and sad. There is no "pearl", the minx muse has left the bold one. The poet thinks about the purpose of the search.

The time of youthful illusions has passed. Yes, and the turn of the late 1900s - early 1910s. was a difficult, turning point for many. Gumilev also felt this. Back in the spring of 1909, he said in connection with a book of critical articles by I. Annensky: “The world has become larger than a person. An adult (how many of them?) Is glad to fight. He is flexible, he is strong, he believes in his right to find a land where he could live. In addition, he strove for creativity. In "Alien Sky" - a clear attempt to establish the true values of existence, the desired harmony.

Gumilyov is attracted by the phenomenon of life. She is presented in an unusual and capacious image - "with an ironic grin, the king-child on the skin of a lion, forgetting toys between his white tired hands." Mysterious, complex, contradictory and alluring life. But her essence eludes. Rejecting the unsteady light of unknown "pearls", the poet nevertheless finds himself in the grip of his former ideas - about a saving movement to distant limits: We go through foggy years,

Vaguely feeling the wind of roses,

Ages, spaces, nature

Reclaim ancient Rhodes.

But what about the meaning of human existence? Gumilyov finds the answer to this question for himself in Theophile Gauthier. In the article dedicated to him, the Russian poet highlights principles close to both of them: to avoid “both accidental, concrete, and vague, abstract”; to know "the majestic ideal of life in art and for art." The unsolvable turns out to be the prerogative of artistic practice. In "Alien Sky" Gumilyov includes a selection of Gauthier's poems in his translation. Among them are inspired lines about imperishable beauty created by man. Here's an idea for the ages:

All dust. - One, rejoicing,

Art will not die.

The people will survive.

This is how the ideas of "Acmeism" matured. And in poetry, the "immortal features" of what he saw and experienced were cast. Including in Africa. The collection includes "Abyssinian Songs": "Military", "Five Bulls", "Slave", "Zanzibar Girls", etc. In them, unlike other poems, there are many juicy realities: everyday, social. The exception is understandable. "Songs" creatively interpreted the folklore works of the Abyssinians. In general, the path from life observation to Gumilev's image is very difficult.

The artist's attention to the environment has always been heightened.

Once he said: “A poet must have a Plushkin economy. And the string will come in handy. Nothing should go to waste. All for poetry. The ability to keep even a "rope" is clearly felt in the "African Diary", stories, a direct response to the events of the First World War - "Notes of a Cavalryman". But, according to Gumilyov, "poetry is one thing, and life is another." There is a similar statement in Art (from Gauthier's translations):

"Creating the more beautiful,

Than taken material

Fearless."

So he was in Gumilev's lyrics. Concrete signs disappeared, the glance embraced the general, significant. But the author's feelings, born of living impressions, gained flexibility and strength, gave birth to bold associations, an attraction to other calls of the world, and the image acquired a visible "thingness".

The collection of poems Quiver (1916) did not forgive Gumilyov for many years, accusing him of chauvinism. Gumilyov had motives for the victorious struggle with Germany, asceticism on the battlefield, as, indeed, for other writers of that time. Patriotic sentiments were close to many. A number of facts of the poet's biography were also negatively perceived: voluntary entry into the army, heroism shown at the front, the desire to participate in the actions of the Entente against the Austro-German-Bulgarian troops in the Greek port of Thessaloniki, etc. ”:“ In the silent call of the war tube / I suddenly heard the song of my fate ... ”Gumilyov regarded his participation in the war as the highest mission, fought, according to eyewitnesses, with enviable calm courage, was awarded two crosses. But after all, such behavior testified not only to an ideological position, but also to a moral, patriotic one. As for the desire to change the place of military activity, the power of the Muse of Far Wanderings again affected here.

In the Notes of a Cavalryman, Gumilyov revealed all the hardships of war, the horror of death, the torments of the home front. Nevertheless, it was not this knowledge that formed the basis of the collection. Seeing the people's troubles, Gumilyov came to a broad conclusion: "The spirit<...>as real as our body, only infinitely stronger than it.”

Similar inner insights of the lyrical hero are attracted by Quiver. B. Eikhenbaum vigilantly saw in him the "mystery of the spirit", although he attributed it only to the military era. The philosophical and aesthetic sound of the poems was, of course, richer.

Back in 1912, Gumilyov said heartfeltly about Blok: two sphinxes “make him“ sing and cry ”with their unsolvable riddles: Russia and his own soul.” "Mysterious Russia" in "Quiver" also raises painful questions. But the poet, considering himself "not a tragic hero" - "more ironic and drier", comprehends only his attitude towards her:

Oh, Russia, the sorceress is harsh,

You will take yours everywhere.

Run? But do you like new

Will you live without you?

Is there a connection between Gumilyov's spiritual quest, depicted in Quiver, and his subsequent behavior in life?

Apparently, there is, although complex, elusive. The thirst for new, unusual experiences draws Gumilyov to Thessaloniki, where he leaves in May 1917. He also dreams of a longer journey - to Africa. It seems impossible to explain all this only by the desire for exoticism. After all, it is no coincidence that Gumilyov travels in a roundabout way - through Finland, Sweden, and many countries. It is indicative and something else. After not getting to Thessaloniki, he lives comfortably in Paris, then in London, he returns to the revolutionary cold and hungry Petrograd in 1918. The homeland of a harsh, critical era was perceived, probably, as the deepest source of self-knowledge of a creative person. No wonder Gumilev said: "Everyone, all of us, despite decadence, symbolism, acmeism, and so on, are primarily Russian poets." It was in Russia that the best collection of poems Pillar of Fire (1921) was written.

Gumilev did not immediately come to the lyrics of the Pillar of Fire. A significant milestone after the "Quiver" were the works of his Paris and London albums, published in "Bonfire" (1918). Already here the author's thoughts about his own worldview predominate. He proceeds from the "smallest" observations - behind the trees, "orange-red sky", "honey-smelling meadow", "sick" river in the ice drift. The rare expressiveness of the "landscape" delights. But it is by no means nature itself that captivates the poet. Instantly, before our eyes, the secret of a bright sketch is revealed. It is this that clarifies the true purpose of the verses. Is it possible, for example, to doubt the courage of a person, having heard his call to the “meager” land: “And become, as you are, a star, / pierced through and through by Fire!”? Everywhere he looks for opportunities to "rush off in pursuit of the world." As if the former dreamy, romantic hero of Gumilyov returned to the pages of a new book. No, this is the impression of a minute. A mature, sad comprehension of existence and one's place in it is the epicenter of the "Bonfire". Now, perhaps, it is possible to explain why the long journey called the poet. The poem "Great Memory" contains an antinomy: And here is the whole life!

Whirling, singing,

Seas, deserts, cities,

flickering reflection

Lost forever.

And here again delight and grief,

Again, as before, as always,

The sea waves its gray mane,

Deserts and cities rise.

The hero wants to return the “lost forever” to humanity, not to miss something real and unknown in the inner being of people. Therefore, he calls himself a "gloomy wanderer" who "must go again, must see." Under this sign are meetings with Switzerland, the Norwegian mountains, the North Sea, a garden in Cairo. And on a material basis, capacious, generalizing images of sad wandering are formed: wandering - “like along the channels of dried up rivers”, “blind transitions of spaces and times”. Even in the cycle of love lyrics (D. Gumilev experienced an unhappy love for Elena in Paris), the same motives are read. The beloved leads "the heart to heights", "scattering stars and flowers." Nowhere, as here, did not sound such a sweet delight in front of a woman. But happiness - only in a dream, delirious. But really - longing for the unattainable:

Here I stand at your door,

No other way was given to me.

Even though I know I won't dare

Never enter this door.

Immeasurably deeper, more multifaceted and fearless, already familiar spiritual collisions are embodied in the works of the Pillar of Fire. Each of them is a pearl. It is quite possible to say that with his word the poet created this treasure he had been looking for for a long time. Such a judgment does not contradict the general concept of the collection, where creativity is assigned the role of sacred rites. There is no gap between the desired and the accomplished for the artist.

Poems are born of eternal problems - the meaning of life and happiness, the contradiction of the soul and body, the ideal and reality. Appeal to them informs poetry of majestic rigor, preciseness of sound, wisdom of the parable, aphoristic accuracy. In a seemingly rich combination of these features, another one is organically woven. It comes from a warm, excited human voice. More often - the author himself in an uninhibited lyrical monologue. Sometimes - objectified, although very unusual, "heroes". The emotional coloring of a complex philosophical search makes it, the search, a part of the living world, causing excited empathy.

Reading the Pillar of Fire awakens the feeling of ascending to many heights. It is impossible to say which dynamic turns of the author's thought are more disturbing in "Memory", "Forest", "Soul and Body". Already the introductory stanza of "Memory" strikes our thought with a bitter generalization: Only snakes shed their skins.

So that the soul grows old and grows,

We, alas, are not like snakes,

We change souls, not bodies.

The reader is then shocked by the poet's confession of his past. But at the same time a painful thought about the imperfection of human destinies. These first nine heartfelt quatrains suddenly move to a theme-transforming chord: I am a gloomy and stubborn architect

Temple that rises in darkness

I was jealous for the glory of the Father

As in heaven and on earth.

And from him - to the dream of the flourishing of the earth, his native country. And here, however, there is no end yet. The final lines, partially repeating the original ones, carry a new sad meaning - a sense of the temporal limitations of human life. The poem, like many others in the collection, has a symphonic development.

Gumilyov achieves rare expressiveness by combining incompatible elements. The forest in the lyrical work of the same name is uniquely bizarre. Giants, dwarfs, lions live in it, a "woman with a cat's head" appears. This is “a country that you can’t dream about even in a dream.” However, a cat-headed creature is given communion by an ordinary curee. Fishermen and... peers of France are mentioned next to the giants. What is this - a return to the phantasmagoria of the early Gumilev romance? No, the fantastic was filmed by the author: “Perhaps that forest is my soul...” Such bold associations are undertaken to embody the complex intricate inner impulses. In "Elephant" the title image is connected with something difficult to connect - the experience of love. She appears in two guises: imprisoned “in a tight cage” and strong, like that elephant “that once carried Hannibal to the quivering Rome.” "The Lost Tram" symbolizes the insane, fatal movement to "nowhere". And it is furnished with frightening details of the dead kingdom. Moreover, sensory-changing mental states are closely linked with it. This is how the tragedy of human existence as a whole and of a particular person is conveyed. Gumilev used the right of the artist with enviable freedom, and most importantly, achieving the magnetic force of influence.

The poet, as it were, was constantly pushing the narrow boundaries of the poem. Unexpected endings played a special role. The triptych "Soul and Body" seems to continue the familiar theme of "The Quiver" - only with new creative energy. And in the end - the unforeseen: all human impulses, including spiritual ones, turn out to be a “weak reflection” of higher consciousness. "The Sixth Sense" immediately captivates with the contrast between the meager comforts of people and genuine beauty, poetry. It seems that the effect has been achieved. Suddenly, in the last stanza, the thought breaks out to other frontiers:

So, century after century - soon, Lord? -

Under the scalpel of nature and art,

Our spirit screams, the flesh languishes,

Giving birth to an organ for the sixth sense.

Linear images by a wonderful combination of the simplest words-concepts also lead our thoughts to distant horizons. It is impossible to react differently to such finds as the "scalpel of nature and art", "the ticket to India of the Spirit", "the garden of dazzling planets", "Persian diseased turquoise"...

The secrets of poetic witchcraft in the Pillar of Fire are innumerable. But they arise along the same path, difficult in their main goal - to penetrate into the origins of human nature, the desired prospects of life, into the essence of being. Gumilyov's attitude was far from optimistic. A personal loneliness had taken its toll, which he could never avoid or overcome. Public position not found. The turning points of the revolutionary time exacerbated past disappointments in private life and in the whole world. The author of the “Pillar of Fire” captured the painful experiences in the ingenious and simple image of the “lost tram”:

He raced like a dark, winged storm,

He got lost in the abyss of time...

Stop, wagon driver,

Stop the car now.

The "pillar of fire" nevertheless concealed in its depths admiration for the bright, beautiful feelings, the free flight of beauty, love, poetry. Gloomy forces are everywhere perceived as an unacceptable barrier to spiritual ascent:

Where all the sparkle, all the movement,

Singing all - we live there with you;

Here everything is just our reflection

Filled with a rotting pond.

The poet expressed an unattainable dream, a thirst for happiness not yet born by man. Ideas about the limits of being are boldly moved apart.

Gumilyov taught and, I think, taught his readers to remember and love "All the cruel, sweet life,

All native, strange land ... ".

He saw both life and the earth as boundless, beckoning with their distances. Apparently, that's why he returned to his African impressions ("Tent", 1921). And, without getting to China, he made an arrangement of Chinese poets (The Porcelain Pavilion, 1918).

In "Bonfire" and "Pillar of Fire" they found "touches to the world of the mysterious", "bursts into the world of the unknowable". Probably, this meant Gumilyov's attraction to “his inexpressible nickname” hidden in spiritual recesses. But in this way, most likely, the opposite of limited human powers, a symbol of unprecedented ideals, was expressed. They are akin to images of divine stars, sky, planets. With some "cosmic" associations, the poems of the collections expressed the aspirations of a completely earthly nature. And yet, it is hardly possible to speak, as it is allowed now, even of Gumilyov's late work as "realistic poetry." Here, too, he retained the romantic exclusivity, the quirkiness of spiritual metamorphoses. But it is precisely in this way that the poet's word is infinitely dear to us.

Literature

Avtonomova N.S. Returning to the basics / Questions of Philosophy -1999-№3- P.25-32

Gumilyov N.S. The legacy of symbolism and acmeism / Letters on Russian poetry. - M.: Sovremennik, 1990 - 301s.

Keldysh V. At the turn of the epochs // Questions of Literature - 2001- No. 2 - P.15-28

Nikolai Gumilyov. Research and materials. Bibliography. - St. Petersburg: "Science", 1994-55s.

Pavlovsky A.I. Nikolai Gumilyov / Questions of Literature - 1996 - №10 - C.30-39

Freelender G. N. S. Gumilyov - critic and theorist of poetry.: M .: Education, 1999-351s.

It is widely believed among the general public that the new Russian belles-lettres are in decline. The last name that is pronounced with conviction by people who are completely outside of literature is the name of Leo Tolstoy. Everything later—alas, even Chekhov—is at least debatable; most of the writers, about whom critics have spoken a lot, behind whom there are dozens of years of literary work, are simply unknown by name outside of that relatively narrow circle of people that constitutes the "intelligentsia". Perhaps even this cannot be said; there are people who consider themselves intelligent and have a right to it, who, however, do not know at all the names of many "famous" modern writers.

It will be objected to me that the opinion of the large public, like fame, is “smoke”. But there is no smoke without fire; I do not want to evaluate a fact that is indisputable to me; the reasons for this fact are incalculable; I want to point out only one of them, perhaps not the primary one; but it's time to point it out.

This reason is the branching of the flow of Russian literature into small arms, the ever-growing specialization, in particular, the separation of poetry and prose; it was already foreseen in the forties of the last century, but it is especially clearly reflected in some literary phenomena of the present day. No matter how poetry and prose relate to each other, one thing can be said with certainty: we often see that a prose writer who looks down on poetry, who knows little about it and considers it a “toy” and “luxury” (sixties leaven), could to master prose better than he owns, and vice versa: a poet who is condescending to “contemptible prose” somehow loses ground, becomes dead and speaks in an incomplete voice, even with talent. Our prose writers - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky - did not look down on poetry; our poets - Tyutchev, Fet - did not look down on prose. Nothing to say, of course, about Pushkin and Lermontov.

Poetry and prose, both in ancient Russia and in the new one, formed a single stream that carried on its waves, very restless, but very powerful, the precious burden of Russian culture. In recent times, this stream shows a tendency to break up into separate streams. The phenomenon is formidable, but, of course, temporary, like a food rationing system. The stream, breaking into streams, can lose strength and not carry the precious burden, leaving it to be plundered by predators, which we have always had and have enough.

Russia is a young country, and its culture is a synthetic culture. A Russian artist cannot and should not be a "specialist". The writer must remember the painter, the architect, the musician; even more so - a prose writer about a poet and a poet about a prose writer. We have countless examples of communication (not necessarily personal) that is beneficial for the culture; the most famous are Pushkin and Glinka, Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, Lermontov and Rubinstein, Gogol and Ivanov, Tolstoy and Fet.

Just as painting, music, prose, poetry are inseparable in Russia, philosophy, religion, society, even politics are inseparable from them and from each other. Together they form a single powerful stream that carries the precious burden of national culture. Word and idea become paint and building; church ritual finds an echo in music; Glinka and Tchaikovsky bring Ruslan to the surface and queen of spades”, Gogol and Dostoevsky - Russian elders and K. Leontiev, Roerich and Remizov - their native antiquity. These are signs of strength and youth; the opposite are signs of fatigue and decrepitude. When they start talking about "art for art's sake", and then soon about literary types and types, about "purely literary" tasks, about the special place that poetry occupies, etc., etc., - this may sometimes curious, but no longer nutritious and vital. We are accustomed to okroshka, botvinia and pancakes, and only gourmets will like French weed with vinegar in the form of a separate dish. So "pure poetry" only for a moment arouses interest and controversy among "specialists"; these disputes die out as quickly as they flared up, and after them only one soreness remains; and the “large public”, which does not take any part in this and is not obliged to understand, but demands only real living works of art, with a superior instinct, guesses that things are not entirely safe in literature, and begins to relate to the latest literature in a completely different way than to the old literature.

Increasing fragmentation into schools and directions, increasing specialization are signs of such trouble. About one of these newest "directions", if it can be called a trend, I will speak.

2

An article by N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky about a new trend in poetry appeared in the Apollo magazine in 1913; both articles said that symbolism had died and that it was being replaced by a new direction, which should be a worthy successor to its worthy father.

In N. Gumilyov's article, on the very first page, it is indicated that "the ancestor of all symbolism as a school is French symbolism" and that he "brought to the fore purely literary tasks: free verse, a more peculiar and unsteady style, metaphor and the theory of correspondences." Apparently, N. Gumilyov believed that the Russians had also "put forward" some "purely literary tasks" and was even inclined to regard this with some sort of approval. In general, N. Gumilyov, as they say, “jumped off the stove”; he mistook Moscow and St. Petersburg for Paris, was completely and instantly convinced of this identity, and began to talk loudly and cheekily, in semi-professional, semi-professional language, with shy Russian writers about their "formal achievements," as it is now customary to express it; for some of which he encouraged and patted them on the back, but mostly blamed them. Most of N. Gumilyov's interlocutors were occupied with thoughts of a completely different kind: a terrible decay was felt in society, there was a smell of a thunderstorm in the air, some big events were brewing; therefore, N. Gumilyov somehow did not object energetically, especially since he did not listen to anyone at all, being convinced, for example, that Russian and French symbolism had something in common. It never occurred to him that there had never been any purely "literary" schools in Russia, there could not be, and hopefully there would not be for a long time to come; that Russia is a country younger than France, that its literature has its own traditions, that it is closely connected with the public, with philosophy, with journalism, in short, N. Gumilyov neglected everything that for a Russian twice two is four. In particular, he did not inquire about the fact that the literary movement, which by coincidence bore the same Greek name "symbolism" as the French literary movement, was inextricably linked with questions of religion, philosophy and society; by that time, it had indeed “completed the circle of its development,” but for reasons by no means the same as N. Gumilyov imagined.

These reasons were that the writers, united under the sign of "symbolism", at that time diverged among themselves in their views and worldviews; they were surrounded by a crowd of epigones who tried to sell precious utensils in the market and exchange them for small coins; on the one hand, the most prominent figures of symbolism, like V. Bryusov and his associates, tried to push the philosophical and religious trend into some kind of school framework (this was something Gumilyov could understand); on the other hand, the street broke in more and more importunately; in a word, there was the usual Russian “argument between the Slavs among themselves” - “an unresolvable question” for Gumilyov, the dispute was essentially over, the temple of symbolism was empty, its treasures (by no means “purely literary”) were carefully carried away by a few; and they parted silently and sadly on their lonely paths.

It was then that Gumilyov and Gorodetsky appeared, who “replaced” (?!) symbolism brought with them a new direction: “acmeism” (“from the word “acme” - the highest step of something, color, blooming time”) or “ adamism” (“a courageously firm and clear outlook on life”). Why such a view is called "Adamism" I do not quite understand, but, in any case, it is to be welcomed; only, unfortunately, this only, in my opinion, sensible idea in N. Gumilyov's article was borrowed by him from me; more than two years before the articles by Gumilyov and Gorodetsky, Vyach. Ivanov guessed about the near future of our literature on the pages of the same "Apollo"; Then I expressed this idea.

N. Gumilyov characterized the “new” direction by the fact that “acmeists strive to break the fetters of the meter by skipping syllables” (which, incidentally, poets have been doing in Russia for a hundred years), “more than ever they freely rearrange stresses” (?), They are used to “bold turns of thought” (!), are looking for new words in lively folk speech (!), have “bright irony that does not undermine the roots of faith” (this is prudent!), and do not agree to “sacrifice the symbol of all other ways of poetic influence "(Who, besides N. Gumilyov, would it occur to him to see in a symbol a "method of poetic influence"? And how is a symbol - for example, a cross - "affects poetically"? - I can’t explain this).

Whatever the word, then pearl. Further, in a short, but rather dry and boring article by Gumilyov, among some maxims and paradoxes of a completely non-Russian type (“We would not dare to force the atom to bow to God if it were not in its nature”, “Death is a curtain separating us actors from the audience"; or a kind warning: "Of course, the Beautiful Lady Theology remains on her throne", etc.) one can find statements like the following: "As Adamists, we are a bit of forest animals" ”!”), or: “The unknowable by the very meaning of this word cannot be known” (“You can’t embrace the immense,” K. Prutkov also said), and: “All attempts in this direction are unchaste” (sic!).

S. Gorodetsky, a poet much less rational and more direct than N. Gumilyov, was significantly inferior to him in the field of reasoning. Having become famous shortly before his “Adamistic” outing with the mystical-anarchist argument “because how could it be otherwise?” , he, in the article following Gumilev's article, spun unimaginable, semi-solemn, semi-swinging nonsense, with overexposures, with the most comical passages, etc. His article, however, favorably differed from Gumilev's article in its amusingness: he is direct and simple, as it always was it is his nature to declare that there was actually nothing in the world until the “new Adam” came and “sang alleluia to life and the world.”

This is how the "Acmeists" were born; they took “Shakespeare, Rabelais, Villon and T. Gautier” with them on the road and began to print books of poems in their “Poets' Workshop” and acmeist reviews in the Apollo magazine. It must be said that the first articles of the acmeists were modest: they bowed in front of symbolism, pointed out that “futurists, ego-futurists, etc. - hyenas following the lion", etc. Soon, however, one of the acmeists, it seems, Gumilyov himself, noticed that no one puts obstacles to him, and wrote in brackets, in the form of an explanation for the word "acmeism": " full flowering of physical and spiritual strength. This definitely did not strike anyone, because in those days larger events took place: Igor Severyanin proclaimed that he was “a genius intoxicated with his victory”, and the futurists smashed several decanters on the heads of the first row public, especially wishing to be “shocked”; therefore, the definition of acmeism even lagged behind the spirit of the new time, ahead of only the former naive writers who self-determined according to worldviews (Slavophiles, Westerners, realists, symbolists); it never occurred to any of them to talk about their genius and their physical strength; the latter were considered a "private affair" of everyone, and genius and spirituality were left to be judged by others.

All these sins would be forgiven to acmeists for good poetry. But the trouble is that a dozen or two small collections, published by them before the war, in those years when literally hundreds of collections of poems were lying around on the book market, do not shine with special merits, with few exceptions. Beginning poets, published by the Acmeists, were printed neater than many and were internally more literary, more educated, more decent than others; but this is not praise. The real exception among them was one Anna Akhmatova; I don’t know if she considered herself an “Acmeist”; in any case, "the flowering of physical and spiritual strength" in her tired, sickly, feminine and introspective manner could not be found. Chukovsky until recently defined her poetry as ascetic and monastic in essence. They responded to the voice of Akhmatova, as they once responded to the fresh voice of S. Gorodetsky, regardless of his "mystical anarchism", as they responded to the voice of the author of "The Boiling Cup", regardless of his "ego-futurism", and to the voice of the author somewhat rude and strong poems, regardless of beating decanters on the heads of the public, from the yellow jacket, swearing and "futurism". There was something cold and foreign in Gumilyov's own verses, which made it difficult to listen to him; the rest, very discordant, were just beginning, and it was still impossible to say anything positive about them.

3

The war dragged on, the revolution came; Futurism was the first "school" that wished to resurrect and made itself felt. The resurrection turned out to be unsuccessful, despite the fact that futurism temporarily became an official art. Life took its toll, the ugly heaps of cubes and triangles were asked to be removed; now they only occasionally and bashfully show off on broken houses; "abstruse" words are preserved only in the names public institutions. Several poets and artists from the Futurists turned out to be really poets and artists, they began to write and draw properly; absurdities were forgotten, but once, before the war, they stopped and irritated attention for a minute; for Russian Futurism was the prophet and forerunner of those terrible caricatures and absurdities that the epoch of war and revolution revealed to us; he reflected in his foggy mirror a kind of cheerful horror that sits in the Russian soul and about which many "sharp" and very smart people did not guess. In this respect, Russian futurism is infinitely more significant, deeper, more organic, more vital than "acmeism"; the latter reflected absolutely nothing in itself, for it did not carry in itself any native “storms and onslaughts”, but was an imported “foreign thing”. "New Adam" sang his "alleluia" not too loudly, without disturbing anyone, without drawing attention to himself and remaining within the "purely literary" limits.

It seemed that in 1914 the new Adam naturally went back to where he came from; for - inter arma musae silent. But 6 years passed, and Adam appeared again. The resurrected “Poets Workshop” released the almanac “Dragon”, in which the whole highlight lies in the workshop “Acmeism”, because the names of N. Gumilyov and some old and new poets clearly prevail over the names of “just poets”; the latter, by the way, are represented by random and uncharacteristic things.

I would not like to review the almanac in detail - this is a thankless task: the Dragon does not blaze with flames. The general impression is that people are sitting in his womb, in no way similar to each other; some of them are undoubtedly gifted, which, however, manifested itself more on the pages of other publications. In The Dragon, everyone tries their best to be like each other; this they do not succeed at all, but it hampers their movements and drowns out their voices.

The key to the strange strained posture taken by young poets, it seems to me, should be sought in Gumilyov's article entitled "Anatomy of a Poem"; the article deserves as much attention as the old Apollo article; this time it is written in an imperative, teacher-like tone that brooks no objection. Even N. Gumilyov lays responsibility for a possible error in the quotation on the author of the quotation, Archpriest Avvakum; for he obviously cannot make a mistake.

N. Gumilyov broadcasts: “The poet is the one who takes into account all the laws that govern the complex of words he has taken. One who takes into account only a part of these laws will be a prose writer, and one who takes into account nothing but the ideological content of words and their combinations will be a writer, a creator of business prose.

It's creepy. Until now, we thought quite differently: that there must certainly be something festive in the poet; that a poet needs inspiration; that the poet goes "on the free road, where his free mind leads" , and much more, different, sometimes directly opposite, but always less boring and less gloomy than N. Gumilyov's given definition.

It goes on to say that each poem should be examined from the point of view of phonetics, style, composition and "eidolology". The last word is incomprehensible to me, like the name of the fourth dish for Truffaldino in Goldoni's comedy "The Servant of Two Masters"). But the first three are enough to scare. From the further words of N. Gumilyov it follows that “really great works of poetry”, like “poems of Homer and The Divine Comedy”, “pay equal attention to all four parts”; "major" poetic directions - usually only two; smaller ones - only to one; one "acmeism" puts forward the main requirement "equal attention to all four departments."

Comparing Gumilyov's old and new judgments about poetry, we can draw the following conclusion: a poet is much better than a prose writer, and even more so a writer, because he knows how to take into account formal laws, while those cannot; better than all poets - acmeist; for he, being in the prime of his physical and spiritual powers, evenly pays attention to phonetics, stylistics, composition and "eidolology", which only fit Homer and Dante, but beyond the strength of even "major" poetic trends.

I do not know how the reader looks at this matter; maybe he doesn't care; but it doesn't matter to me. I want to shout that Dante is worse than a newspaper chronicler who does not know the laws; that the poet in general is a creature deprived of God, and that “verses in in large numbers an unbearable thing,” as one clever man of letters once said; that it’s time to close this shop altogether, saving perhaps Demyan Bedny and Nadson as the most tolerable examples of poets.

When you drop all these bitter jokes, it becomes sad; for N. Gumilyov and some other "acmeists", undoubtedly gifted, drown themselves in a cold swamp of soulless theories and all kinds of formalism; they sleep in deep, dreamless sleep; they do not have and do not want to have a shadow of an idea about Russian life and about the life of the world in general; in their poetry (and consequently in themselves as well) they hush up the most important thing, the only thing of value: the soul.

If only they all untied their hands, if only for a moment they became clumsy, uncouth, even ugly, and therefore more like their own country, crippled, burned by turmoil, torn apart by devastation! No, they won’t want to and they won’t be able to; they want to be noble foreigners, guilds and guilds; in any case, it will be possible to speak seriously with each and every one of them only when they leave their "workshops", renounce formalism, curse all "eidolologies" and become themselves.