Artistic performance of the creativity of Russian symbols

The work of many outstanding symbolist artists develops according to their own laws, not at all in the vein of official concepts, and sometimes parallel to each other.

In certain periods, the works of Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Valery

Bryusov, Fedor Sologub developed in a direction diametrically opposed to the general evolution of symbolism: from the «Solovyov» mystical utopia to «decadent» skepticism, irony and immersion in the world of dogmatic reality.

Important for us is the side of Bryusov's creativity of 1900-1906. - the image of the hero of his lyrics.

The hero of Bryusov, like all the symbolists of these years, is connected with the solution of the «eternal» romantic problem of «I» and «others», like the problems of «poet and people», «art and revolution». Heroic, active, in love with life and therefore «psychologically consonant» era, the lyrical «I» is connected with the poetic ideal of Bryusov:

Maybe it's the last time

I choose my own way,

At the far tower a late hour

It rang. It's time to go, I know.

My new path, the last path,

You again lead into the depths of the gorges!

I'm not destined to rest

In the fields of spring, under the noise of merrymaking! (The Last Way [4,467])

Bryusov as a whole is alien to the young symbolic utopia of the transfiguration of the world Beauty and the concept of the path has his own interpretation:

Long distance, long distance, long distance, long distance.

I whispered this, or spoke with wheels?

Run away! forget! die! relax!

Something long, long again untied. [4,466]

Otherwise, A. Blok and A. Bely went to the revolution and self-knowledge of their place in it. Their paths, having a single genesis, but different internal impulses, diverge quite early.

The publication in 1904 of the collections «Poems on the Beautiful Lady» and «Gold in the Lazuri» was not only the introduction of symbolists of the "second wave" into literature, but also a new discovery of «pre-revolution» in art.

Having given in 1901-1902. tribute to the motives of «witchcraft» as an artistic, and then a life transformation of reality, Blok felt his role differently in the depths of his experience of the world. The poet («I») for Blok, first of all, is a Witness in the world. This self-perception was for him original.

Hence the completely different experience of the tragedy of image-symbols. True, for both artists the creative crisis did not become a crisis of creative activity: both of them during the years of the revolution and subsequent years grow into great poets of Russian symbolism. But their ways diverge with each passing year, and in Blok's understanding the path is nothing more than the deliverance from pain and the hardships of life:

We are tired. That's enough. Forward and Forward

Nature brought us unceasingly ...

We went back: leaving the sunrise a little,

We are again under the rays of sunrise ...

All the way of life we have gone to the end, -

And the end was the beginning ...

But the dependency of the creator has left us,

That once our way was decorated

The myth of Blok's path is part of the mythologized conception of his creative evolution, which, in turn, is part of the «global» myth of the «path of peace». And here reflects the dialectical nature of Blok's views, his aspiration for historicism.

For Andrei Bely, the world of «extinct dawns» until almost the end of the 1900s. remained the only and terrible reality. So he perceived the events of his complex destiny, and the revolution of 1905-1907, and the subsequent reaction.

Hence the universality for the White motive of death: the city that is being shot in the days of the revolution is dying («The Funeral», 1906), the old, local Russia is dying, Russia's peasants and vagrants are dying on their hopeless expanses (the cycle «Goremyks» and others in the collection «Ashes» , 1909). The poet also perishes and the unrecognized hero.

The tragedy of Bely's lyrics is not his «weak side» : it is on the basis of «rejection of the world» that his images grow. Only in the late 1900's - early 1910's. White again finds those living words that he, an artist, must tell the world:

Measured faithful feet

Spaces scattered form.

On a hard, like a stone road

The rattle mumbles, it thunders.

So that the swearing is not seen dry,

Housing around me, like a coward, -

And far - and far - and far -

Along the dusty road, getting .

Unlike A. Blok and A. Beloy, Fedor Sologub supports the criticism of the early 1900s. version of the immutability of his work. This trait in many ways becomes an objective property of the writer's creativity

The «idea of the path» and the real evolution of the writer differ significantly. The latter, naturally, is determined not by mythological, but by historical and historical-literary regularities. Therefore, in the movement of artists as diverse as Blok and Sologub, there is much in common. The real movement of the evolution of artists turned out to be much more dynamic, even the «myth about the triad».

But at the same time, the mythological conception of the «path» and the real evolution are closely linked by a two-way communication. This connection is determined by the fact that the «idea of the road» has the same historical, biographical, cultural and ideological origins as other ideas of the writer, and therefore also «works» in the same direction:

I went out early on the road

And by noon I'm tired,

Disappointed little by little

And the child of life is intoxicated.

In my heart my dream is to turn off the road,

Where the stones are sharp,

So tired of my legs, -

But I'm not happy with rest.

Blok and Sologub, developing the opposite tendencies laid down in the Solov'ev «myth of synthesis» - the idea of movement and the notion of «immovability» of the foundations of being, - naturally came: one to the poetically conscious stimulation of one's own evolution, the other to ignoring it (at the extreme in some periods), the recognition of its «non-existent» or even of hiding its movement from itself and the reader.

The idea of the path (as well as its negation) is one of the forms of selfknowledge by the artist of his work. In particular, F. Sologub, creating and actively supporting the version of his «immutability», certainly felt the real «one-shot» of his talent. On the contrary, A. Blok, describing his «path among revolutions» as a «right path», feels his social and artistic fruitfulness, the progressive character of his own development.