Concepts of sea and ocean as key symbols in the original works of Alexander Blok and Algernon Charles Swinburne: an analysis

Alexander Blok (1880-1921) and Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) were prominent poets of their times: Swinburne was extremely popular in the Victorian era and Blok was considered to be a genius in the Silver Age (the Russian analogue of the fin de siècle era). Swinburne can be easily called the older Symbolist contemporary of Blok; both of them were regarded as authors whose style and themes were decadent and radical. The metrical patterns of their poetry (stanza, structure, and rhyme scheme) made these two poets distinctive: Swinburne started using the poetic form called the roundel (a variation of the French Rondeau form), and Blok was one of the first Russian Symbolist poets, who wrote many of his poems using dolnik (a specific Russian poetic metre). Both Blok and Swinburne felt a keen interest in the Middle Ages (Poems and Ballads Second Series by Swinburne versus Ante Lucem and Verses About the Fair Lady by Blok) and in modern art (the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Swinburne‘s case; Blok’s adoration of the Symbolist artist Mikhail Vrubel’s paintings). As we see, Blok and Swinburne had a lot in common, but there is one thing that makes them even more similar: their attention to plots, topics and symbols connected with the sea and ocean. Our main task is to reveal this similarity and to demonstrate, how exactly this sea/ocean discourse makes their original works so modern and so classical at the same time, using examples from their original pieces