Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Silver Century of Russian literature (A. A. Blok, members of the literary society “Argonavt”)

The article for the first time systematizes facts containing the information about the English Pre-Raphaelite artist and writer Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the influence of his activity on the formation and development of artistic peculiarities of the Russian symbolist writers - A. A. Blok and members of the literary society “Argonavt” - young A.Bely, Ellis (L. L. Kobylinsky), S. M. Solovyev (younger). A great amount of memoir, diary and epistolary sources are used; they help to recreate various events evaluated by different contemporaries. It is noted that A. A. Blok and members of the literary society “Argonavt” were interested in Dante Gabriel Rossetti first of all as an artist and only then as a poet. It is pointed out that the English Pre-Raphaelite artist’s creative activity influenced the formation of the Russian symbolist writers’ views, ideas about the influence of art on the inner world of a person, widened possibilities of learning the soul of a person.