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Art of Western Europe in the late XIX - early XX century. European modernity and symbolism - origins and foundations The founders of Western European symbolism are considered

23.03.2022

1. Symbolism as an artistic movement

2. The concept of a symbol and its significance for symbolism

3. The formation of symbolism

3.1 Western European symbolism

3.2 Symbolism in France

3.3 Symbolism in Western Europe

4. Symbolism in Russia

5. The role of symbolism in modern culture

Conclusion

The development of the history of world culture (the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the 20th century and the turn of the 20th-21st centuries) can be viewed as an endless chain of novels and partings of “high literature” with the theme of capitalist society. Thus, the turn of the 19th-20th centuries was characterized by the emergence of two key trends for all subsequent literature - naturalism and symbolism.

French naturalism, represented by the names of such prominent novelists as Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, the Brothers Jules and Edmond Goncourt, perceived the human personality as absolutely dependent on heredity, the environment in which it was formed, and the "moment" - that specific socio-political situation in which it exists and operates at the moment. Thus, naturalist writers were the most meticulous writers of everyday life in capitalist society at the end of the 19th century. On this issue, they were opposed by the French symbolist poets - Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stefan Mallarmé and many others, who categorically refused to recognize the influence of the modern socio-political situation on the human personality and opposed the world of "pure art" and poetic fiction.

SYMBOLISM (from French symbolisme, from Greek symbolon - a sign, an identifying sign) is an aesthetic trend that was formed in France in 1880-1890 and became widespread in literature, painting, music, architecture and theater in many European countries at the turn of the 19-20s centuries Symbolism was of great importance in Russian art of the same period, which acquired the definition of "Silver Age" in art history.

The symbolists believed that it was the symbol, and not the exact sciences, that would allow a person to break through to the ideal essence of the world, to go "from the real to the real." A special role in the comprehension of superreality was assigned to poets as carriers of intuitive revelations and poetry as the fruit of superintelligent intuitions. The emancipation of the language, the destruction of the usual relationship between the sign and the denotation, the multi-layered nature of the symbol, which carries diverse and often opposite meanings, led to the dispersion of meanings and turned the symbolist work into a “multiplicity madness”, in which things, phenomena, impressions and visions. The only thing that gave integrity at every moment to the splitting text was the unique, inimitable vision of the poet.

The removal of the writer from the cultural tradition, the deprivation of the language of its communicative function, the all-consuming subjectivity inevitably led to the hermeticism of symbolist literature and required a special reader. The Symbolists modeled for themselves his image, and this became one of their most original achievements. It was created by J.-C. Huysmans in the novel “On the contrary”: the virtual reader is in the same situation as the poet, he hides from the world and nature and lives in aesthetic solitude, both spatial (in a distant estate) and temporal ( renouncing the artistic experience of the past); through a magical creation, he enters into a spiritual cooperation with its author, into an intellectual union, so that the process of symbolist creativity is not limited to the work of a magical writer, but continues in the deciphering of his text by an ideal reader. There are very few such connoisseurs, congenial to the poet, there are no more than ten of them in the entire universe. But such a limited number does not confuse the Symbolists, for this is the number of the most chosen, and there is not one among them who would have his own kind.

Speaking of symbolism, one cannot fail to mention its central concept symbol, because it was from him that the name of this trend in art came from. It must be said that symbolism is a complex phenomenon. Its complexity and inconsistency are due, first of all, to the fact that different poets and writers put different content into the concept of a symbol.

The very name of the symbol comes from the Greek word symbolon, which translates as a sign, an identification sign. In art, a symbol is interpreted as a universal aesthetic category, which is revealed through comparison with adjacent categories of an artistic image, on the one hand, and a sign and allegory, on the other. In a broad sense, it can be said that a symbol is an image taken in the aspect of its symbolism, and that it is a sign, and that it is a sign endowed with all the organicity and inexhaustible ambiguity of the image.

Every symbol is an image; but the category of the symbol points to the image going beyond its own limits, to the presence of a certain meaning, inseparably merged with the image. The objective image and the deep meaning appear in the structure of the symbol as two poles, unthinkable, however, one without the other, but divorced from each other, so that in the tension between them the symbol is revealed. I must say that even the founders of symbolism interpreted the symbol in different ways.

In the Symbolist Manifesto, J. Moreas defined the nature of the symbol, which supplanted the traditional artistic image and became the main material of Symbolist poetry. “Symbolist poetry is looking for a way to clothe the idea in a sensual form that would not be self-sufficient, but at the same time, serving the expression of the Idea, would retain its individuality,” Moréas wrote. A similar “sensual form” in which the Idea is clothed is a symbol.

The fundamental difference between a symbol and an artistic image is its ambiguity. The symbol cannot be deciphered by the efforts of the mind: at the last depth it is dark and not accessible to the final interpretation. The symbol is a window to infinity. The movement and play of semantic shades create indecipherability, the mystery of the symbol. If the image expresses a single phenomenon, then the symbol is fraught with a whole range of meanings - sometimes opposite, multidirectional. The duality of the symbol goes back to the romantic notion of two worlds, the interpenetration of two planes of being.

The multi-layered nature of the symbol, its open polysemy was based on mythological, religious, philosophical and aesthetic ideas about super-reality, incomprehensible in its essence.

The theory and practice of symbolism were closely associated with the idealistic philosophy of I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, F. Schelling, as well as F. Nietzsche's reflections on the superman, being "beyond good and evil." At its core, symbolism merged with the Platonic and Christian concepts of the world, having adopted romantic traditions and new trends.

its unreliability. The limitedness, superficiality of ideas about the world was confirmed by a number of natural scientific discoveries, mainly in the field of physics and mathematics. The discovery of X-rays, radiation, the invention of wireless communication, and a little later the creation of quantum theory and the theory of relativity shook the materialistic doctrine, shook faith in the absoluteness of the laws of mechanics. The previously identified “unambiguous regularities” were subjected to a significant revision: the world turned out to be not only unknowable, but also unknowable. The awareness of the fallacy and incompleteness of the previous knowledge led to the search for new ways of comprehending reality.

One of these paths - the path of creative revelation - was proposed by the symbolists, according to whom the symbol is unity and, therefore, provides a holistic view of reality. The scientific worldview was based on the sum of errors - creative knowledge can adhere to a pure source of superintelligent insights.

The appearance of symbolism was also a reaction to the crisis of religion. "God is dead," F. Nietzsche proclaimed, thus expressing the common sense of the borderline era of the exhaustion of the traditional dogma. Symbolism is revealed as a new type of God-seeking: religious and philosophical questions, the question of the superman - about a person who has challenged his limited abilities. Based on these experiences, the Symbolist movement attached primary importance to the restoration of ties with the other world, which was expressed in the frequent appeal of the symbolists to the "secrets of the coffin", in the increasing role of the imaginary, the fantastic, in the fascination with mysticism, pagan cults, theosophy, occultism, magic. Symbolist aesthetics was embodied in the most unexpected forms, delving into an imaginary, transcendent world, into areas that had not been explored before - sleep and death, esoteric revelations, the world of eros and magic, altered states of consciousness and vice.

Symbolism was also closely connected with the eschatological forebodings that seized the man of the borderline era. The expectation of the "end of the world", "the decline of Europe", the death of civilization exacerbated metaphysical moods, made spirit triumph over matter.

Among the important ideas of this time are the following:

Darwinism (a trend named after Charles Darwin, a scientist). According to this idea, a person is determined by his environment and heredity, and he is no longer a "copy of God";

The pessimism of culture (according to Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher and writer) is based on the notion that there are no longer religious ties, there is no overwhelming meaning, there is a reassessment of all values around. Most people are interested in nihilism;

Psychoanalysis (according to Sigmund Freud, psychologist), aimed at discovering the subconscious, interpreting dreams, studying and understanding one's own Self.

The turn of the century was the time of the search for absolute values.

Symbolism as an artistic movement

French naturalism, represented by the names of such prominent novelists as Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, the Brothers Jules and Edmond Goncourt, perceived the human personality as absolutely dependent on heredity, the environment in which it was formed, and the "moment" - that particular socio-political situation in which it exists and operates at the moment. Thus, naturalist writers were the most meticulous writers of everyday life in capitalist society at the end of the 19th century. On this issue, they were opposed by the French symbolist poets - Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stefan Mallarmé and many others, who categorically refused to recognize the influence of the modern socio-political situation on the human personality and opposed the world of "pure art" and poetic fiction.

SYMBOLISM (from French symbolisme, from Greek symbolon - a sign, an identifying sign) is an aesthetic movement that was formed in France in 1880-1890 and became widespread in literature, painting, music, architecture and theater in many European countries at the turn of the 19-20s centuries Symbolism was of great importance in Russian art of the same period, which acquired the definition of "Silver Age" in art history.

The concept of a symbol and its significance for symbolism

In the Symbolist Manifesto, J. Moreas defined the nature of the symbol, which supplanted the traditional artistic image and became the main material of symbolist poetry. “Symbolist poetry is looking for a way to clothe the idea in a sensual form that would not be self-sufficient, but at the same time, serving the expression of the Idea, would retain its individuality,” Moréas wrote. A similar "sensual form" in which the Idea is clothed is a symbol.

The multi-layered nature of the symbol, its open polysemy was based on mythological, religious, philosophical and aesthetic ideas about super-reality, incomprehensible in its essence.

Not being aware of the continuation of any particular trend in art, symbolism carried the genetic code of romanticism: the roots of symbolism are in a romantic commitment to a higher principle, an ideal world. “Pictures of nature, human deeds, all the phenomena of our life are significant for the art of symbols not in themselves, but only as intangible reflections of the original ideas, indicating their secret affinity with them,” wrote J. Moreas. Hence the new tasks of art, previously assigned to science and philosophy - to approach the essence of the "most real" by creating a symbolic picture of the world, to forge the "keys of secrets".

Formation symbolism

1 Western European symbolism

As an artistic trend, symbolism publicly announced itself in France, when a group of young poets, who in 1886 rallied around S. Mallarme, realized the unity of artistic aspirations. The group included: J. Moreas, R. Gil, Henri de Regno, S. Merrill and others. In the 1990s, P. Valery, A. Gide, P. Claudel joined the poets of the Mallarmé group. P. Verlaine, who published his symbolist poems and a series of essays “Damned Poets”, as well as J.K. Huysmans, who came out with the novel "On the contrary". In 1886, J. Moreas placed the Manifesto of Symbolism in Figaro, in which he formulated the basic principles of the direction, based on the judgments of C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, C. Henri. Two years after the publication of the manifesto by J. Moréas, A. Bergson published his first book “On the Immediate Data of Consciousness”, in which the philosophy of intuitionism was declared, which in its basic principles resonates with the symbolist worldview and gives it additional justification.

2 Symbolism in France

The formation of symbolism in France - the country in which the symbolist movement originated and flourished - is associated with the names of the largest French poets: C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud. The forerunner of symbolism in France was Charles Baudelaire, who published the book Flowers of Evil in 1857. In search of ways to the "ineffable", many symbolists took up Baudelaire's idea of "correspondences" between colors, smells and sounds. The proximity of various experiences should, according to the symbolists, be expressed in a symbol. Baudelaire's sonnet "Correspondences" became the motto of symbolist quests with the famous phrase: "Sound, smell, form, color echo." The search for correspondences is at the heart of the symbolist principle of synthesis, the unification of arts.

S. Mallarme, “the last romantic and the first decadent”, insisted on the need to “inspire images”, convey not things, but your impressions of them: “To name an object means to destroy three-quarters of the pleasure of a poem, which is created for gradual guessing, to inspire it - that's the dream."

P. Verlaine in the famous poem "Poetic Art" defined the adherence to musicality as the main sign of genuine poetic creativity: "Musicality is first of all." In Verlaine's view, poetry, like music, strives for a mediumistic, non-verbal reproduction of reality. Like a musician, the symbolist poet rushes towards the elemental flow of the beyond, the energy of sounds. If the poetry of C. Baudelaire inspired the symbolists with a deep longing for harmony in a tragically divided world, then the poetry of Verlaine amazed with its musicality, subtle feelings. Following Verlaine, the idea of music was used by many symbolists to denote creative mystery.

The poetry of the brilliant young man A. Rimbaud, who first used free verse (free verse), embodied the idea of renouncing "eloquence" adopted by the Symbolists, finding a crossing point between poetry and prose. Invading any, the most non-poetic spheres of life, Rimbaud achieved the effect of "natural supernaturalness" in the depiction of reality.

Symbolism in France also manifested itself in painting (G. Moreau, O. Rodin, O. Redon, M. Denis, Puvis de Chavannes, L. Levy-Durmer), music (Debussy, Ravel), theater (Poet Theater, Mixed Theater, Petit theater du Marionette), but the main element of symbolist thinking has always been lyricism. It was the French poets who formulated and embodied the main precepts of the new movement: the mastery of the creative secret through music, the deep correspondence of various sensations, the ultimate price of the creative act, the orientation towards a new intuitive-creative way of knowing reality, the transmission of elusive experiences. Among the forerunners of French symbolism, all the major lyricists from Dante and F. Villon to E. Poe and T. Gauthier were recognized.

3 Symbolism in Western Europe

Belgian symbolism is represented by the figure of the greatest playwright, poet, essayist M. Maeterlinck, known for his plays The Blue Bird, The Blind, The Miracle of St. Anthony, There, Inside. According to N. Berdyaev, Maeterlinck depicted "the eternal tragic beginning of life, cleansed of all impurities." Maeterlinck's plays were perceived by most contemporaries as puzzles that needed to be solved. M. Maeterlinck defined the principles of his work in the articles collected in the treatise Treasure of the Humble (1896). The treatise is based on the idea that life is a mystery in which a person plays a role that is inaccessible to his mind, but understandable to his inner feeling. Maeterlinck considered the main task of the playwright to be the transfer of not an action, but a state. In The Treasure of the Humble, Maeterlinck put forward the principle of “secondary” dialogues: behind an apparently random dialogue, the meaning of words that initially seem insignificant is revealed. The movement of such hidden meanings made it possible to play with numerous paradoxes (the miraculousness of everyday life, the sight of the blind and the blindness of the sighted, the madness of the normal, etc.), to plunge into the world of subtle moods.

One of the most influential figures of European symbolism was the Norwegian writer and playwright G. Ibsen. His plays Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House, The Wild Duck combined the concrete and the abstract. “Symbolism is a form of art that simultaneously satisfies our desire to see embodied reality and rise above it,” Ibsen defined. - Reality has a flip side, facts have a hidden meaning: they are the material embodiment of ideas, an idea is presented through a fact. Reality is a sensual image, a symbol of the invisible world. Ibsen distinguished between his art and the French version of symbolism: his dramas were built on the "idealization of matter, the transformation of the real", and not on the search for the beyond, the otherworldly. Ibsen gave a specific image, a fact a symbolic sound, raised it to the level of a mystical sign.

In English literature, symbolism is represented by the figure of O. Wilde. The desire to shock the bourgeois public, the love of paradox and aphorism, the life-creating concept of art (“art does not reflect life, but creates it”), hedonism, the frequent use of fantastic, fairy-tale plots, and later “neo-Christianity” (perception of Christ as an artist) allow attribute O. Wilde to the writers of the symbolist orientation.

Symbolism gave a powerful branch in Ireland: one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, the Irishman W.B. Yeats considered himself a Symbolist. His poetry, full of rare complexity and richness, was fed by Irish legends and myths, theosophy and mysticism. A symbol, Yeats explains, is "the only possible expression of some invisible entity, the frosted glass of a spiritual lamp."

The works of R.M. Rilke, S. George, E. Verharn, G.D. are also associated with symbolism. Annunzio, A. Strinberg and others.

Symbolism in Russia

After the defeat of the Revolution of 1905-07. in Russia, decadent moods were especially widespread.

Decadence (French decadence, from late Latin decadentia - decline), the general name for the crisis phenomena of bourgeois culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked by moods of hopelessness, rejection of life, and individualism. A number of features of the decadent mentality also distinguish some areas of art, which are united by the term modernism.

A complex and contradictory phenomenon, decadence has its origin in the crisis of bourgeois consciousness, the confusion of many artists before the sharp antagonisms of social reality, before the revolution, in which they saw only the destructive force of history. From the point of view of the decadents, any concept of social progress, any form of social-class struggle pursues grossly utilitarian goals and must be rejected. "The greatest historical movements of mankind seem to them to be profoundly 'petty-bourgeois' in nature." The refusal of art from political and civic themes and motives was considered by the decadents to be a manifestation of the freedom of creativity. The decadent understanding of individual freedom is inseparable from the aestheticization of individualism, and the cult of beauty as the highest value is often imbued with immorality; constant for the decadents are the motives of non-existence and death.

As a characteristic trend of the time, decadence cannot be attributed entirely to any particular one or several trends in art. The rejection of reality, the motives of despair and all-negation, longing for spiritual ideals, which took artistically expressive forms among major artists captured by decadent moods, aroused sympathy and support from realist writers who retained faith in the values of bourgeois humanism (T. Mann, R. Martin du Gahr, W. Faulkner).

In Russia, decadence was reflected in the work of symbolist poets (first of all, the so-called "senior" symbolists of the 1890s: N. Minsky, the decadents Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, then V. Bryusov, K. Balmont), in a number of works L. N. Andreev, in the works of F. Sologub and especially in the naturalistic prose of M. P. Artsybashev, A. P. Kamensky and others.

The heyday of Russian symbolism came in the 900s, after which the movement waned: significant works no longer appear within the framework of the school, new trends appear - acmeism and futurism, the symbolist worldview ceases to correspond to the dramatic realities of the "real, non-calendar twentieth century". Anna Akhmatova described the situation at the beginning of the 1910s as follows: “In 1910, a crisis of symbolism clearly emerged, and the beginning poets no longer joined this trend. Some went to futurism, others - to acmeism.<…>Undoubtedly, symbolism was a phenomenon of the nineteenth century. Our rebellion against symbolism is completely justified, because we felt like people of the twentieth century and did not want to live in the previous one.

Only those authors who dealt with the problems of a single class pleasing to the new government, the proletariat, got into Soviet textbooks of literature. All the other classes were admitted to "high art" only from the point of view of exposing their viciousness (aristocracy), passivity (intelligentsia) and outright hostility (bourgeoisie) in building a new society - classless and, by and large, non-economic communism. Naturally, with this approach, many authors frankly misrepresented, while others - champions of "pure art", not at all concerned with economic and class problems - were simply thrown out of Soviet literary history or declared "decadent followers of idealistic philosophy."

Despite this, such features of symbolism appeared on Russian soil, such as: the diversity of artistic thinking, the perception of art as a way of knowing, the sharpening of religious and philosophical problems, neo-romantic and neoclassical tendencies, the intensity of the worldview, neo-mythologism, the dream of a synthesis of arts, rethinking the heritage of Russian and Western European culture, installation on the marginal price of the creative act and life-creation, deepening into the sphere of the unconscious, etc.

Numerous are the echoes of the literature of Russian symbolism with painting and music. The poetic dreams of the Symbolists find their correspondence in the “gallant” painting of K. Somov, the retrospective dreams of A. Benois, the “created legends” of M. Vrubel, in the “motives without words” of V. Borisov-Musatov, in the exquisite beauty and classical detachment of the canvases of Z. Serebryakova , "poems" by A. Scriabin.

The main place in the movement of artistic symbolism rightfully belongs to M.A. Vrubel, who absorbed all the contradictions, all the depth of brilliant insights and tragic prophecies of the time. In his spiritual visions, he often outstripped the discoveries of literary and philosophical thought, with his formal innovations he laid the foundations for the plastic features of modernity. In his graphic heritage, as well as in all his work, the task of synthesis dominates, equally manifested both in the desire to create a stylistic unity of all the visual arts, the construction of a new artistic space, and in ideological "pan-aestheticism".

Symbolism in the dense space of art of the late 19th - early 20th century took shape in parallel with the development of other important artistic processes in Russian culture. Its national feature was a complex structure of relationships, when the common soil of densely mixed ideas of European and Russian philosophical and aesthetic thought equally nourished both symbolism (late compared to Western European) and the direction of the Russian avant-garde. It is not for nothing that the categories of synthesis, intuitionism, insight, cardinal in the creative method of symbolism, have become one of the fundamental ones in the art of the avant-garde.

In this situation, artistic symbolism, which adopted the aesthetic program of Russian literary symbolism and was distinguished by great heterogeneity (we note that all the major avant-garde masters experienced its influence in the early stages of their work), did not put forward the problem of form.

At the turn of the century, Russian art overcame national boundaries and became a world-class phenomenon. It used all the richness of world and its own cultural traditions for the formation of domestic modernity. The artistic language of Art Nouveau in Russia manifested itself both in a pan-European version (“floreal”) and in a bouquet of “neo-styles”. The impulsive and variable nature of the development of Russian culture was clearly manifested in a mixture of styles, schools and trends of the Silver Age. None of the mentioned directions of painting disappeared with the appearance on the scene of a powerful avant-garde movement. Only the leader has changed.

Art Nouveau acted as a powerful unifying movement of culture based on the synthesis of the arts, primarily music, painting, theater. He had every chance of becoming a real "Big style" of the era. Synthetism of the Silver Age served as an accelerator for the development of a type of new culture.

Conclusion

Symbolism as an artistic movement arose in Europe in the 60s and 70s. and quickly covered all areas of creativity from music to philosophy and architecture, becoming the universal language of culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries. A new artistic wave spread throughout Europe, captured both Americas and Russia. With the emergence of the current of symbolism, Russian literature immediately found itself in the mainstream of the pan-European cultural process. Poetic symbolism in Russia, Jugendstil in Germany, the Art Nouveau movement in France, European and Russian Art Nouveau - all these are phenomena of the same order. The movement towards a new language of culture was pan-European, and Russia was among its leaders.

Symbolism laid the foundation for modernist trends in the culture of the 20th century, became a renewing ferment that gave a new quality to literature, new forms of artistry. In the work of the largest writers of the 20th century, both Russian and foreign (A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Platonov, B. Pasternak, V. Nabokov, F. Kafka, D. Joyce, E. Pound, M. Proust , W. Faulkner, etc.), - the strongest influence of the modernist tradition inherited from symbolism.

Symbolism turned out to be a new worldview. It turned out that the era of a certain breakdown of past values could not be satisfied with a formal, logical, rational approach. She needed a new method. And accordingly, this method gave rise to a new unit - a symbol. Thus, symbolism not only brought the symbol into the toolkit of modernity, it also drew attention to the possible path after the symbol, to the intuitive path, and not just the rational one. However, each won piece of intuitive knowledge as a result, as a rule, is rationalized, because they tell about it, call for it. The new that symbolism brings can be seen in the connection to modern problems of the whole variety of past cultures.

This is, as it were, an attempt to illuminate the deepest contradictions of modern culture with the colored rays of diverse cultures; “Now we seem to be living through the whole past: India, Persia, Egypt, like Greece, like the Middle Ages, come to life, epochs that are closer to us are rushing past us. They say that during the important hours of life, a person's whole life flies before the spiritual gaze of a person; now the whole life of mankind flies before us; we conclude from this that an important hour of his life has struck for all mankind. We really feel something new; but we feel it in the old; in the overwhelming abundance of the old - the novelty of the so-called symbolism "

This is a paradoxical statement - the most "modern" direction for that period sees its novelty in clear references to the past. But it reflects the actual inclusion in the "data bank" of the symbolism of all epochs and all peoples. Another explanation for this phenomenon may be that symbolism, in a certain sense, reaches the meta level, giving rise not only to texts, but also to their theory, and such “self-descriptions” to a large extent crystallize around themselves not only their own reality, but also any other.

Thus, the change in worldview foundations at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. combined with creative searches in the field of artistic language. The most full-blooded result of the changes was expressed in the formation of the aesthetic system of symbolism, which became the impetus for the renewal of all spheres of culture. The pinnacle of the poetry of symbolism falls on the generation of A.A. Blok and A. Bely, when the artistic language of the new art was developed on the basis of retrospectivism, the synthesis of various areas of creativity, and the orientation towards co-authorship of the creator and consumer of a cultural product.

Symbolism played the role of a formative, carrying aesthetic construction for the entire Russian culture of the early twentieth century. All other aesthetic schools, in fact, either continued and developed the principles of symbolism, or competed with it.

Bibliography

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3. History of Russian literature: XX century: Silver Age / Ed. J. Niva et al. M., 1995.

4. Mikhailovsky B.V. Russian literature of the twentieth century: From the 90s. 19th century until 1917 - L. 1989.

5. Nolman M.L. Charles Baudelaire. Fate. Aesthetics. Style. M., 1979.

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Symbolism in literature - ideas, representatives, history

Symbolism as a literary trend arose during the beginning of the crisis in Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century and rightfully belongs to the culture of our country.

Symbolism - historical period

In Russian symbolism, there are:

"the older generation" representatives: D. Merezhkovsky, A. Dobrolyubov, Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, N. Minsky, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov
"younger generation"- Young Symbolists - A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, S. Soloviev, Yu. Baltrushaitis and others.

Almost every one of these poets and writers experienced the processes of rapid growth of the spiritual self-determination of the individual, the desire to join the historical reality and put himself in the face of the elements of the people.

The Symbolists had their own publishing houses ("Scorpion", "Vulture") and magazines ("Scales", "Golden Fleece").

The main features of symbolism

Duality among the Symbolists

the idea of two worlds (real and otherworldly)
reflection of reality in symbols
a special view of intuition as an intermediary in comprehending and depicting the world
development of sound painting as a special poetic technique

mystical understanding of the world
Poetics of the diversity of content (allegory, allusions)
religious quest ("free religious feeling")
rejection of realism

Russian symbolists reinterpreted the role of the individual not only in creativity, but also in Russian reality, and life in general.

Religiosity among the Symbolists

Interest in the personality of a poet, writer, person led the poets of this trend to a kind of "expansion" of personality. Such an understanding of human individuality is characteristic of all Russian symbolists. But this was reflected in different ways - in articles, manifestos, in poetic practice.

Aesthetics of the Symbolists

Their manifestos expressed the main requirements for the new art - mystical content, the multifunctionality of the possibilities of artistic imagination and the transformation of reality.

The true personality, according to Merezhkovsky, is

this is the mystic, the creator, who is given to directly comprehend the symbolic nature of life and the world.

At the turn of the epochs, D. Merezhkovsky was puzzled by two ideas:

« the idea of a new man»
« the idea of life-creation' - creations of the second reality.

Both of these ideas inextricably link the Symbolists with spiritual quests of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The theme of the disproportion of the Eternal Universe and the instantaneous existence of man, the world of man, characteristic of the representatives of the creative intelligentsia of the Silver Age, is present in many symbolist poets:

For example, A. Blok:

“The worlds are flying. The years are flying by. Empty / The universe looks at us with a darkness of eyes. / And clinging to the edge of a sliding, sharp, / And listening to the always buzzing ringing, - / Are we going crazy in the change of motley / invented reasons, spaces, times .. / / When the end? An annoying sound / will not have the strength to listen without rest ... / How terrible everything is! How wild! - Give me your hand / Comrade, friend! Let's forget again./.

Characteristic features of the symbolist direction

individualism
idealism
awareness of the tragedy of the world, the crisis of Russian reality
romantic search for meaning
content and structural unity of poetry
dominance of the general over the particular
thematic cyclization of creativity of each author
poetic-philosophical mythologems (for example, images of Sophia and Eternal Femininity by V. Solovyov)
dominant images (for example, the image of a snowstorm, blizzards by A. Blok)
playful nature of creativity and life

Thus, symbolism as such sees reality as infinite, diverse in content and form.

Our presentation on the topic

Symbol understanding

For Russian poets - representatives of this trend - it varied greatly.

Symbolist understanding of the symbol

philosophical symbolism sees in it a combination of the sensual and the spiritual (D. Merezhkovsky,).
mystical symbolism tends to the predominance of the spiritual, to achieve the kingdom of the spirit, a frantic desire for other worlds, denies sensuality as something flawed, something from which it must be freed (such is the poetic world of A. Bely).

The role of the Symbolists in creating new poetic forms, new trends and new ideas, new themes and a new understanding of life as such for the history of Russian literature, and more broadly - Russian culture, is priceless.

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Silver Age. Symbolism

Symbolism (from Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) - a trend in European art of the 1870s - 1910s; one of the modernist trends in Russian poetry at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. Focused primarily on expression through symbol intuitively comprehended essences and ideas, vague, often sophisticated feelings and visions.

The very word "symbol" in traditional poetics it means "multi-valued allegory", that is, a poetic image expressing the essence of a phenomenon; in the poetry of symbolism, he conveys the individual, often momentary ideas of the poet.

The poetics of symbolism is characterized by:

transmission of the subtlest movements of the soul;
maximum use of sound and rhythmic means of poetry;
exquisite imagery, musicality and lightness of style;
poetics of allusion and allegory;
symbolic content of ordinary words;
attitude to the word, as to the cipher of some spiritual secret writing;
innuendo, concealment of meaning;
the desire to create a picture of an ideal world;
aestheticization of death as an existential principle;
elitism, orientation to the reader-co-author, creator.

Symbolism is a literary trend that originated in France at the end of the 19th century and spread to many European countries. However, it was in Russia that symbolism became the most significant and large-scale phenomenon. Russian symbolist poets brought something new to this trend, something that their French predecessors did not have. Simultaneously with the advent of symbolism, the Silver Age of Russian literature begins. But I must say that in Russia there was no single school of this modernist trend, there was no unity of concepts, no single style. The work of symbolist poets was united by one thing: distrust of the ordinary word, the desire to express themselves in symbols and allegories.

Currents of symbolism

According to the ideological position and the time of formation, this is classified into two stages. Symbolist poets who appeared in the 1890s, the list of which includes such figures as Balmont, Gippius, Bryusov, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, are called "senior". The direction was replenished with new forces that significantly changed its appearance. Debuted "younger" symbolist poets, such as Ivanov, Blok, Bely. The second wave of the current is usually called young symbolism.

"Senior" symbolists

In Russia, this literary trend declared itself in the late 1890s. In Moscow, Valery Bryusov stood at the origins of symbolism, and in St. Petersburg - Dmitry Merezhkovsky. However, the most striking and radical representative of the early school of symbolism in the city on the Neva was Alexander Dobrolyubov. Separately and separately from all modernist groups, another Russian symbolist poet, Fyodor Sologub, created his poetic world.

But perhaps the most readable, musical and sonorous at that time were the poems of Konstantin Balmont. At the end of the 19th century, he clearly stated the "search for correspondences" between meaning, color and sound. Similar ideas were found in Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and later in many Russian poets, such as Blok, Bryusov, Khlebnikov, Kuzmin. Balmont saw this search for correspondences mainly in the creation of a sound-semantic text - music that gives rise to meaning. The poet became interested in sound writing, began to use colorful adjectives instead of verbs in his works, as a result of which he created, as ill-wishers believed, poems that were almost meaningless. At the same time, this phenomenon in poetry led over time to the formation of new poetic concepts, including melodeclamation, zaum, sound writing.

"Younger" symbolist poets

The second generation of symbolists includes poets who first began to publish in the 1900s. Among them were both very young authors, for example, Andrei Bely, Sergei Blok, and respectable people, for example, the scientist Vyacheslav Ivanov, director of the gymnasium Innokenty Annensky.

In St. Petersburg at that time, the "center" of symbolism was an apartment on the corner of Tavricheskaya Street, in which M. Kuzmin, A. Bely, A. Mintslova, V. Khlebnikov lived, N. Berdyaev, A. Akhmatova, A. Blok , A. Lunacharsky. In Moscow, symbolist poets gathered in the editorial office of the Scorpion publishing house, whose editor-in-chief was V. Bryusov. Here they prepared issues of the most famous symbolist publication - "Scales". The employees of Scorpion were such authors as K. Balmont, A. Bely, Yu. Baltrushaitis, A. Remizov, F. Sologub, A. Blok, M. Voloshin and others.

Features of early symbolism

In Russia, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. was a time of change, disappointment, ominous omens and uncertainty. During this period, the approaching death of the existing socio-political system was clearly felt. Such trends could not help but influence Russian poetry. The poems of the Symbolist poets were heterogeneous, as the poets held divergent views. For example, such authors as D. Merezhkovsky and N. Minsky were at first representatives of civil poetry, and later began to focus on the ideas of "religious community" and "god-building". The "senior" symbolists did not recognize the surrounding reality and said "no" to the world. So, Bryusov wrote: “I don’t see our reality, I don’t know our century ...” The early representatives of the current of reality contrasted the world of creativity and dreams, in which the individual becomes completely free, and they portrayed reality as boring, evil and meaningless.

Of great importance for the poets was artistic innovation - the transformation of the meanings of words, the development of rhyme, rhythm, and the like. The "senior" symbolists were impressionists, striving to convey subtle shades of impressions and moods. They had not yet used a system of symbols, but the word as such had already lost its value and had become significant only as a sound, a musical note, a link in the general construction of a poem.

New trends

In 1901-1904. a new stage began in the history of symbolism, and it coincided with a revolutionary upsurge in Russia. The pessimistic mood inspired in the 1890s was replaced by a premonition of "unheard of changes." At that time, young symbolists appeared on the literary arena, who were followers of the poet Vladimir Solovyov, who saw the old world on the verge of destruction and said that divine beauty should “save the world” by connecting the heavenly beginning of life with the material, earthly. In the works of symbolist poets, landscapes began to appear frequently, but not as such, but as a means of revealing the mood. So, in the verses there is constantly a description of a languishingly sad Russian autumn, when the sun does not shine or throws only faded sad rays on the ground, leaves fall and rustle quietly, and everything around is shrouded in a swaying misty haze.

The city was also a favorite motif of the "younger" symbolists. They showed him as a living being with his own character, with his own form. Often the city appeared as a place of horror, madness, a symbol of vice and soullessness.

Symbolists and revolution

In the years 1905-1907, when the revolution began, symbolism again underwent changes. Many poets responded to the events that took place. Thus, Bryusov wrote the famous poem "The Coming Huns", in which he glorified the end of the old world, but included himself and all the people who lived in the period of the dying, old culture. Blok in his works created images of the people of the new world. In 1906, Sologub published a book of poems "Motherland", and in 1907 Balmont wrote a series of poems "Songs of the Avenger" - the collection was published in Paris and banned in Russia.

Decline of Symbolism

At this time, the artistic worldview of the Symbolists changed. If earlier they perceived beauty as harmony, now for them it has gained a connection with the elements of the people, with the chaos of struggle. At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, symbolism fell into decline and no longer gave new names. Everything viable, vigorous, young was already outside of him, although individual works were still created by symbolist poets.

List of major poets representing symbolism in literature

Innokenty Annensky;
Valery Bryusov;
Zinaida Gippius;
Fedor Sologub;
Konstantin Balmont;
Alexander Tinyakov;
Wilhelm Sorgenfrey;
Alexander Dobrolyubov;
Viktor Strazhev;
Andrei Bely;
Konstantin Fofanov;
Vyacheslav Ivanov;
Alexander Blok;
Georgy Chulkov;
Dmitry Merezhkovsky;
Ivan Konevskoy;
Vladimir Pyast;
Poliksena Solovieva;
Ivan Rukavishnikov.