Currents in Russian literature of the early 20th century. It got its name from the Greek word “acme” (height, peak, rise, blossom). Acmeism manifested itself mainly in lyric poetry and united the poets of a new generation who replaced the Symbolists, from whom many Acmeists went through a literary school. Polemicizing with the poetry of symbolism, marked by the complexity of metaphors and aesthetic associations, the Acmeists strove for clarity of images. Hence another name - clarism (“clear”).
The most famous representatives of Acmeism are Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin, Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam. In 1911, the Acmeists created the “Workshop of Poets” association. Its name emphasized that in poetry, Acmeists rely more on skill and skill than on fleeting, momentary inspiration. The cult of craft, preached by the Acmeists, aroused rejection among the poets of the older generation (article by Alexander Alexandrovich Blok “Without deity, without inspiration”). By the end of the 1910s, the movement of Acmeism disintegrated. However, all the poets associated with him in their subsequent work remained committed to his aesthetic principles. The tradition of Acmeism turned out to be one of the most influential in Russian poetry.
The name of three literary associations located in St. Petersburg in 1911-1922. The first “Workshop of Poets” was formed by Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev and Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky in 1911 and became the center of the formation of Acmeism. Among the members of the association were M. A. Kuzmin, A. A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam, G. V. Ivanov and others. They organized meetings, published the magazine Hyperborea (1912-1913; ten issues were published) and poetic almanacs. In 1914 the association ceased to exist. In 1916, on the initiative of Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov and Georgy Viktorovich Adamovich, the second “Workshop of Poets” was created, which existed for about a year. The third “Workshop of Poets” was organized by Gumilev in 1920. Many of its participants emigrated from Russia and until the mid-1920s supported its activities in Berlin and Paris.
Since October 1912, meetings of the “Workshop of Poets” took place regularly on Fridays in the apartment of Mikhail Leonidovich Lozinsky. The editorial office of the Hyperborea magazine was also located here. In addition to Lozinsky’s apartment, the Acmeists sometimes held meetings in the house of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova in Tsarskoye Selo.
Acmeism(from the Greek akme the highest degree of something, blossoming, maturity, peak, edge) one of the modernist movements in Russian poetry of the 1910s, formed as a reaction to extremes.
Overcoming the Symbolists’ predilection for the “superreal,” polysemy and fluidity of images, and complicated metaphors, the Acmeists strove for sensual plastic-material clarity of the image and accuracy, precision of the poetic word. Their “earthly” poetry is prone to intimacy, aestheticism and poeticization of the feelings of primordial man. Acmeism was characterized by extreme apoliticality, complete indifference to the pressing problems of our time.
The Acmeists, who replaced the Symbolists, did not have a detailed philosophical and aesthetic program. But if in the poetry of symbolism the determining factor was transience, the immediacy of being, a certain mystery covered with an aura of mysticism, then as cornerstone Acmeism poetry was based on a realistic view of things. The vague instability and vagueness of symbols was replaced by precise verbal images. The word, according to Acmeists, should have acquired its original meaning.
The highest point in the hierarchy of values for them was culture, identical to universal human memory. That is why Acmeists often turn to mythological subjects and images. If the Symbolists focused their work on music, then the Acmeists focused on the spatial arts: architecture, sculpture, painting. The attraction to the three-dimensional world was expressed in the Acmeists' passion for objectivity: a colorful, sometimes exotic detail could be used for purely pictorial purposes. That is, the “overcoming” of symbolism occurred not so much in the sphere of general ideas, but in the field of poetic stylistics. In this sense, Acmeism was as conceptual as symbolism, and in this respect they are undoubtedly in continuity.
A distinctive feature of the Acmeist circle of poets was their “organizational cohesion.” Essentially, the Acmeists were not so much an organized movement with a common theoretical platform, but rather a group of talented and very different poets who were united by personal friendship. The Symbolists had nothing of the kind: Bryusov’s attempts to reunite his brothers were in vain. The same thing was observed among the futurists, despite the abundance of collective manifestos that they released. Acmeists, or as they were also called “Hyperboreans” (after the name of the printed mouthpiece of Acmeism, the magazine and publishing house “Hyperboreas”), immediately acted as a single group. They gave their union the significant name “Workshop of Poets.” And the beginning of a new trend (which later became almost “ prerequisite"the emergence of new poetic groups in Russia) was caused by a scandal.
In the fall of 1911, a “riot” broke out in the poetry salon of Vyacheslav Ivanov, the famous “Tower”, where the poetry society gathered and poetry was read and discussed. Several talented young poets defiantly left the next meeting of the Academy of Verse, outraged by the derogatory criticism of the “masters” of symbolism. Nadezhda Mandelstam describes this incident as follows: “The Prodigal Son of Gumilyov was read at the Academy of Verse, where Vyacheslav Ivanov reigned, surrounded by respectful students. He subjected the “Prodigal Son” to real defeat. The speech was so rude and harsh that Gumilev’s friends left the “Academy” and organized the “Workshop of Poets” in opposition to it.”
And a year later, in the fall of 1912, the six main members of the “Workshop” decided not only formally, but also ideologically to separate from the Symbolists. They organized a new commonwealth, calling themselves “Acmeists,” i.e., the pinnacle. At the same time, the “Workshop of Poets” as an organizational structure was preserved; the Acmeists remained in it as an internal poetic association.
The main ideas of Acmeism were set out in the programmatic articles by N. Gumilyov “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism” and S. Gorodetsky “Some Currents in Modern Russian Poetry”, published in the magazine “Apollo” (1913, No. 1), published under the editorship of S. Makovsky. The first of them said: “Symbolism is being replaced by a new direction, no matter what it is called, whether Acmeism (from the word akme the highest degree of something, 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 the case in symbolism. However, in order for this movement to establish itself in its entirety and become a worthy successor to the previous one, it is necessary that it accept its inheritance and answer all the questions it poses. The glory of the ancestors obliges, and symbolism was a worthy father.”
S. Gorodetsky believed that “symbolism, having filled the world with “correspondences,” turned it into a phantom, important only insofar as it shines through other worlds, and diminished its high intrinsic value. Among the Acmeists, the rose again became good in itself, with its petals, scent and color, and not with its conceivable likenesses with mystical love or anything else.”
In 1913, Mandelstam’s article “The Morning of Acmeism” was also written, which was published only six years later. The delay in publication was not accidental: Mandelstam’s acmeistic views significantly diverged from the declarations of Gumilyov and Gorodetsky and did not make it onto the pages of Apollo.
However, as T. Skryabina notes, “the idea of a new direction was first expressed on the pages of Apollo much earlier: in 1910, M. Kuzmin appeared in the magazine with an article “On Beautiful Clarity,” which anticipated the appearance of declarations of Acmeism. By the time the article was written, Kuzmin was already a mature man and had experience of collaboration in symbolist periodicals. Kuzmin contrasted the otherworldly and foggy revelations of the Symbolists, the “incomprehensible and dark in art” with “beautiful clarity”, “clarism” (from the Greek clarus clarity). An artist, according to Kuzmin, must bring clarity to the world, not obscure, but clarify the meaning of things, seek harmony with the environment. The philosophical and religious quest of the Symbolists did not captivate Kuzmin: the artist’s job was to concentrate on the aesthetic side of creativity and artistic skill. “The symbol, dark in its final depths,” gives way to clear structures and admiration of “lovely little things.” Kuzmin’s ideas could not help but influence the Acmeists: “beautiful clarity” turned out to be in demand by the majority of participants in the “Workshop of Poets.”
Another “harbinger” of Acmeism can be considered In. Annensky, who, formally being a symbolist, in fact only early period paid him tribute to his work. Subsequently, Annensky took a different path: the ideas of late symbolism had practically no impact on his poetry. But the simplicity and clarity of his poems were well understood by the Acmeists.
Three years after the publication of Kuzmin’s article in Apollo, the manifestos of Gumilyov and Gorodetsky appeared; from this moment it is customary to count the existence of Acmeism as an established literary movement.
Acmeism has six of the most active participants in the movement: N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, S. Gorodetsky, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut. G. Ivanov claimed the role of the “seventh Acmeist,” but such a point of view was protested by A. Akhmatova, who stated that “there were six Acmeists, and there never was a seventh.” O. Mandelstam agreed with her, who, however, believed that six was too much: “There are only six Acmeists, and among them there was one extra.” Mandelstam explained that Gorodetsky was “attracted” by Gumilev, not daring to oppose the then powerful Symbolists with only “ yellowmouths." “Gorodetsky was [by that time] a famous poet.” At different times, the following took part in the work of the “Workshop of Poets”: G. Adamovich, N. Bruni, Nas. Gippius, Vl. Gippius, G. Ivanov, N. Klyuev, M. Kuzmin, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, M. Lozinsky, V. Khlebnikov, etc. At the meetings of the “Workshop,” unlike the meetings of the Symbolists, specific issues were resolved: the “Workshop” was a school for mastering poetic skills, a professional association.
Acmeism as literary direction united exceptionally gifted poets Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, the formation of whose creative individuals took place in the atmosphere of the “Workshop of Poets”. The history of Acmeism can be considered as a kind of dialogue between these three outstanding representatives. At the same time, the Adamism of Gorodetsky, Zenkevich and Narbut, who formed the naturalistic wing of the movement, differed significantly from the “pure” Acmeism of the above-mentioned poets. The difference between the Adamists and the triad Gumilyov Akhmatova Mandelstam has been repeatedly noted in criticism.
As a literary movement, Acmeism did not last long - about two years. In February 1914, it split. The "Poets' Workshop" was closed. The Acmeists managed to publish ten issues of their magazine “Hyperborea” (editor M. Lozinsky), as well as several almanacs.
“Symbolism was fading away” Gumilyov was not mistaken in this, but he failed to form a movement as powerful as Russian symbolism. Acmeism failed to gain a foothold as the leading poetic movement. The reason for its rapid decline is said to be, among other things, “the ideological unadaptability of the movement to the conditions of a radically changed reality.” V. Bryusov noted that “the Acmeists are characterized by a gap between practice and theory,” and “their practice was purely symbolist.” It was in this that he saw the crisis of Acmeism. However, Bryusov’s statements about Acmeism were always harsh; At first he declared that “Acmeism is an invention, a whim, a metropolitan whim” and foreshadowed: “Most likely, in a year or two there will be no Acmeism left. His very name will disappear,” and in 1922, in one of his articles, he generally denies it the right to be called a direction, a school, believing that there is nothing serious and original in Acmeism and that it is “outside the mainstream of literature.”
However, attempts to resume the activities of the association were subsequently made more than once. The second “Workshop of Poets,” founded in the summer of 1916, was headed by G. Ivanov together with G. Adamovich. But it didn’t last long either. In 1920, the third “Workshop of Poets” appeared, which was Gumilyov’s last attempt to organizationally preserve the Acmeist line. Poets who consider themselves to be part of the school of Acmeism united under his wing: S. Neldichen, N. Otsup, N. Chukovsky, I. Odoevtseva, N. Berberova, Vs. Rozhdestvensky, N. Oleinikov, L. Lipavsky, K. Vatinov, V. Pozner and others. The third “Workshop of Poets” existed in Petrograd for about three years (in parallel with the “Sounding Shell” studio) until the tragic death of N. Gumilyov.
The creative destinies of poets, one way or another connected with Acmeism, developed differently: N. Klyuev subsequently declared his non-involvement in the activities of the commonwealth; G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich continued and developed many of the principles of Acmeism in emigration; Acmeism did not have any noticeable influence on V. Khlebnikov. In Soviet times, the poetic style of the Acmeists (mainly N. Gumilyov) was imitated by N. Tikhonov, E. Bagritsky, I. Selvinsky, M. Svetlov.
In comparison with other poetic movements of the Russian Silver Age, Acmeism, in many ways, is seen as a marginal phenomenon. It has no analogues in other European literatures (which cannot be said, for example, about symbolism and futurism); the more surprising are the words of Blok, Gumilyov’s literary opponent, who declared that Acmeism was just an “imported foreign thing.” After all, it was Acmeism that turned out to be extremely fruitful for Russian literature. Akhmatova and Mandelstam managed to leave behind “eternal words.” Gumilyov appears in his poems as one of the brightest personalities of the cruel times of revolutions and world wars. And today, almost a century later, interest in Acmeism has remained mainly because the work of these outstanding poets, who had a significant influence on the fate of Russian poetry of the 20th century, is associated with it.
liberation of poetry from symbolist appeals to the ideal, returning it to clarity;
rejection of mystical nebula, acceptance of the earthly world in its diversity, visible concreteness, sonority, colorfulness;
the desire to give a word a certain, precise meaning;
objectivity and clarity of images, precision of details;
appeal to a person, to the “authenticity” of his feelings;
poeticization of the world of primordial emotions, primitive biological natural principles;
echoes of past literary eras, the broadest aesthetic associations, “longing for world culture.”
MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY named after M.V. LOMONOSOV
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At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, an interesting phenomenon arose in Russian literature, later called “poetry.” silver age" It was a time of new ideas and new directions. If the 19th century nevertheless passed for the most part under the sign of the desire for realism, then a new surge of poetic creativity at the turn of the century followed a different path. This period was accompanied by the desire of contemporaries to renew the country, renew literature and with various modernist movements, as a consequence, that appeared at this time. They were very diverse both in form and content: symbolism, acmeism, futurism, imagism...
Thanks to such different directions and trends, new names appeared in Russian poetry, many of which happened to remain in it forever. The great poets of that era, starting in the depths of the modernist movement, very quickly grew out of it, amazing with their talent and versatility of creativity. This happened with Blok, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Gumilev, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Voloshin and many others.
Conventionally, the beginning of the “Silver Age” is considered to be 1892, when the ideologist and oldest participant in the Symbolist movement Dmitry Merezhkovsky read a report “On the causes of the decline and on new trends in modern Russian literature.” This is how the Symbolists made their presence known for the first time.
The beginning of the 1900s was the heyday of symbolism, but by the 1910s a crisis began in this literary movement. The attempt of the Symbolists to proclaim a literary movement and seize the artistic consciousness of the era failed. The question of the relationship of art to reality, the meaning and place of art in the development of Russian culture has been sharply raised again. national history and culture.
A new direction had to emerge, one that would pose the question of the relationship between poetry and reality in a different way. This is exactly what Acmeism became.
In 1911, among poets who sought to create a new direction in literature, the “Workshop of Poets” circle emerged, headed by Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky. The members of the “Workshop” were mainly aspiring poets: A. Akhmatova, N. Burliuk, Vas. Gippius, M. Zenkevich, Georgy Ivanov, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, M. Lozinsky, O. Mandelstam, Vl. Narbut, P. Radimov. At different times, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, N. Nedobrovo, V. Komarovsky, V. Rozhdestvensky, S. Neldichen were close to the “Workshop of Poets” and acmeism. The most prominent of the “younger” Acmeists were Georgy Ivanov and Georgy Adamovich. In total, four almanacs “The Workshop of Poets” were published (1921 - 1923, the first was called “Dragon”, the last was published in Berlin by the emigrated part of the “Workshop of Poets”).
The creation of a literary movement called “Acmeism” was officially announced on February 11, 1912 at a meeting of the “Academy of Verse”, and in No. 1 of the magazine “Apollo” for 1913 articles by Gumilyov “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism” and Gorodetsky “Some Currents in modern Russian poetry", which were considered manifestos of the new school.
In his famous article “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism” N. Gumilyov wrote: “Symbolism is being replaced by a new direction, no matter what it is called, whether acmeism (from the word acmh (“acme”) the highest degree of something, color, 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 the case in symbolism.”
The chosen name of this direction confirmed the desire of the Acmeists themselves to comprehend the heights of literary excellence. Symbolism was very closely connected with Acmeism, which its ideologists constantly emphasized, starting from symbolism in their ideas.
In the article “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism,” Gumilyov, recognizing that “symbolism was a worthy father,” stated that it “has completed its circle of development and is now falling.” Having analyzed both domestic, French and German symbolism, he concluded: “We do not agree to sacrifice other methods of influence to it (the symbol) and are looking for their complete consistency,” “It is more difficult to be an Acmeist than a symbolist, just as it is more difficult to build a cathedral than tower. And one of the principles of the new direction is to always follow the line of greatest resistance.”
Talking about the relationship between the world and human consciousness, Gumilyov demanded to “always remember the unknowable,” but at the same time “not to offend your thoughts about it with more or less probable guesses.” Having a negative attitude towards the desire of symbolism to know secret meaning existence (he remained secret for Acmeism), Gumilyov declared the “unchastity” of knowledge of the “unknowable”, the “childishly wise, painfully sweet feeling of one’s own ignorance”, the intrinsic value of the “wise and clear” reality surrounding the poet. Thus, the Acmeists in the field of theory remained on the basis of philosophical idealism. The program of acmeistic acceptance of the world was also expressed in the article by Sergei Gorodetsky “Some trends in modern Russian poetry”: “After all sorts of “rejections”, the world was irrevocably accepted by acmeism, in all its beauties and ugliness.”
Sorry, captivating moisture
And primordial fog!
There is more good in the transparent wind
For countries created for life.
The world is spacious and loud,
And he is more colorful than rainbows,
And so Adam was entrusted with it,
Inventor of names.
Name, find out, tear off the covers
And idle secrets and ancient darkness.
Here is the first feat. New feat
Sing praises to the living earth.
The main attention of the Acmeists was focused on poetry. Of course, they also had prose, but it was poetry that formed this direction. As a rule, these were small works, sometimes in the genre of sonnet or elegy.
The most important criterion was attention to the word, to the beauty of the sounding verse. There was a certain general orientation towards traditions of Russian and world art that were different from those of the Symbolists. Speaking about this, V.M. Zhirmunsky wrote in 1916: “Attention to the artistic structure of words now emphasizes not so much the importance of the melodiousness of lyrical lines, their musical effectiveness, but rather the picturesque, graphic clarity of images; the poetry of hints and moods is replaced by the art of precisely measured and balanced words... there is a possibility of rapprochement between young poetry not with the musical lyricism of the romantics, but with the clear and conscious art of French classicism and with the French 18th century, emotionally poor, always rationally in control of itself, but graphic rich variety and sophistication of visual impressions, lines, colors and shapes."
It is quite difficult to talk about general themes and stylistic features, since each outstanding poet, whose, as a rule, early poems can be attributed to Acmeism, had his own characteristic features.
In the poetry of N. Gumilyov, Acmeism is realized in the desire to discover new worlds, exotic images and subjects. The path of the poet in Gumilyov’s lyrics is the path of a warrior, a conquistador, a discoverer. The muse that inspires the poet is the Muse of Distant Journeys. The renewal of poetic imagery, respect for the “phenomenon as such” was carried out in Gumilyov’s work through travel to unknown, but very real lands. Travels in N. Gumilyov's poems carried impressions of the poet's specific expeditions to Africa and, at the same time, echoed symbolic wanderings in “other worlds.” Gumilev contrasted the transcendental worlds of the Symbolists with the continents they first discovered for Russian poetry.
A. Akhmatova’s acmeism had a different character, devoid of any attraction to exotic subjects and colorful imagery. The originality of Akhmatova’s creative style as a poet of the Acmeistic movement is the imprinting of spiritualized objectivity. Through the amazing accuracy of the material world, Akhmatova displays an entire spiritual structure. In elegantly depicted details, Akhmatova, as Mandelstam noted, gave “all the enormous complexity and psychological richness of the Russian novel of the 19th century.”
The local world of O. Mandelstam was marked by a feeling of mortal fragility before a faceless eternity. Mandelstam's Acmeism is “the complicity of beings in a conspiracy against emptiness and non-existence.” The overcoming of emptiness and non-existence takes place in culture, in the eternal creations of art: the arrow of the Gothic bell tower reproaches the sky for being empty. Among the Acmeists, Mandelstam was distinguished by an unusually keenly developed sense of historicism. The thing is inscribed in his poetry in a cultural context, in a world warmed by “secret teleological warmth”: a person was surrounded not by impersonal objects, but by “utensils”; all mentioned objects acquired biblical overtones. At the same time, Mandelstam was disgusted by the abuse of sacred vocabulary, the “inflation of sacred words” among the Symbolists.
The Adamism of S. Gorodetsky, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut, who formed the naturalistic wing of the movement, differed significantly from the Acmeism of Gumilev, Akhmatova and Mandelstam. The dissimilarity between the Adamists and the Gumilyov-Akhmatova-Mandelshtam triad has been repeatedly noted in criticism. In 1913, Narbut suggested that Zenkevich found an independent group or move “from Gumilyov” to the Cubo-Futurists. The Adamistic worldview was most fully expressed in the works of S. Gorodetsky. Gorodetsky's novel Adam described the life of a hero and heroine - “two smart animals” - in an earthly paradise. Gorodetsky tried to restore in poetry the pagan, semi-animal worldview of our ancestors: many of his poems took the form of spells, lamentations, and contained bursts of emotional imagery drawn from the distant past of everyday life. Gorodetsky’s naive Adamism and his attempts to return man to the shaggy embrace of nature could not but evoke irony among sophisticated modernists who had studied the soul of his contemporary well. Blok, in the preface to the poem Retribution, noted that the slogan of Gorodetsky and the Adamists “was a man, but some kind of different man, without humanity at all, some kind of primordial Adam.”
And yet, you can try to analyze the main features of Acmeism using the example of individual works. An example of this is Théophile Gautier’s poem “Art,” translated by Gumilyov. Théophile Gautier was generally a symbolic figure in the formation of Russian Acmeism. “Apparently, in Gautier’s aesthetic program,” writes I.A. Pankeyev, - Gumilyov was most impressed by the declarations that were close to himself: “Life is the most important quality in art; for it, everything can be forgiven”; “... less meditation, idle talk, synthetic judgments; all you need is a thing, a thing and again a thing.”
So, let's turn to the poem.
| Creation is all the more beautiful What material was taken from? More dispassionate - Poem, marble or metal. Oh bright friend, Drive away the embarrassment, Tighten the buskins. Away with easy tricks Shoe on all feet, Familiar Both beggars and gods. Sculptor, don’t pretend to be humble And a lump of limp clay, Dreaming of something else. With Parian or Carrara Fight with a piece of debris, As with the royal one Home of beauty. Wonderful dungeon! Through the Bronze of Syracuse looks The arrogant appearance of the muses. By the hand of a gentle brother Outline the slope And Apollo will come out. |
Artist! Watercolors You won't be sorry! Melt your enamel. Create green sirens With a smile on your lips, Bowed Monsters on coats of arms. In a three-tiered radiance Madonna and Christ, Latin cross. Everything is dust. - One, rejoicing, Art will not die. The people will survive. And on a simple medal, Open among the stones, Unknown kings. And the gods themselves are perishable, But the verse will not stop singing, Haughty, More powerful than copper. Mint, bend, fight, - And the unsteady sleep of dreams Will pour in Into immortal features. |
In general, we have before us a classic verse: rhyme, rhythm and poetic meter are observed everywhere. Sentences are usually simple, without complex multi-stage turns. The vocabulary is mostly neutral; in Acmeism, outdated words and high vocabulary were practically not used. However, colloquial vocabulary is also absent. There are no examples of “word creation”, neologisms, or original phraseological units. The verse is clear and understandable, but at the same time extremely beautiful.
If you look at the parts of speech, nouns and verbs predominate. There are practically no personal pronouns, since Acmeism is largely addressed to the external world, and not to the internal experiences of a person.
Various means of expression are present, but do not play a decisive role. Of all the tropes, comparison predominates.
Thus, the Acmeists created their poems not through multi-stage structures and complex images - their images are clear, and their sentences are quite simple. But they are distinguished by the desire for beauty, the sublimity of this very simplicity. And it was the Acmeists who were able to make ordinary words play in a completely new way.
Despite numerous manifestos, Acmeism still remained weakly expressed as a holistic movement. His main merit is that he was able to unite many talented poets. Over time, all of them, starting with the founder of the school, Nikolai Gumilyov, “outgrew” Acmeism and created their own special, unique style. However, this literary direction somehow helped their talent develop. And for this reason alone, Acmeism can be given an honorable place in the history of Russian literature of the early 20th century.
But nevertheless, it is possible to identify the main features of the poetry of Acmeism. Firstly, attention to the beauty of the surrounding world, to to the smallest details, to distant and unknown places. At the same time, Acmeism does not strive to understand the irrational. He remembers it, but prefers to leave it untouched. As for the stylistic features directly, this desire for simple sentences, neutral vocabulary, absence of complex phrases and a clutter of metaphors. However, at the same time, the poetry of Acmeism remains unusually bright, sonorous and beautiful.
1. Acmeism // Literary manifestos from symbolism to the present day. Comp.S. Jimbinov. – M.: Consent, 2000.
2. Acmeism, or Adamism // Literary Encyclopedia: In 11 volumes - [M.], 1929-1939. T.1
3. Gumilyov N. Heritage of symbolism and acmeism // Gumilyov N. Favorites. – M.: Veche, 2001. – 512 p. – P.367-370.
4. Zhirmunsky V.M. Overcoming symbolism: article [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http: // gumilev. ru/main. phtml? aid=5000895
5. Pankeev I.A. In the middle of the earthly journey (lit.-biographical chronicle) // Gumilyov N., Selected. – M.: Education, 1991.
6. Scriabina T. Acmeism // Encyclopedia “Around the World”: encyclopedia [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http: // www. krugosvet. ru/articles/102/1010275/1010275a1. htm
Quote by Acmeism // Literary manifestos from symbolism to the present day. Comp. S. Dzhimbinov. – M.: Consent, 2000.
Zhirmunsky V.M. Overcoming symbolism: article [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://gumilev.ru/main.phtml?aid=5000895
Pankeyev I. A. In the middle of the earthly journey (lit.-biographical chronicle) // Gumilyov N., Selected. – M.: Education, 1991. - P. 11.
Acmeism is one of the modernist movements in Russian poetry.
It was in its heyday.
The ideological inspirers of Russian acmeism are considered to be the poets N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky.
Throughout its existence, poetry has undergone many different movements and trends. In the first decade of the 20th century, as a counterweight to symbolism in Russian poetry, a new modernist direction was formed - Acmeism. Translated from Greek, this term means highest degree, peak, maturity, blossoming.
Creative people, and especially poets, are most often far from such concepts as modesty. Almost everyone considers himself a genius or at least a great talent. Thus, a group of young poets, connected not only by creativity, but also by personal friendship, were outraged by the harsh criticism of one of them, Nikolai Gumilyov, and created their own association with the somewhat artisanal name “Poets Workshop”.
But already in the name itself there is a desire to appear not just as lovers of the lyrical poetic genre, but to be artisans, professionals. Acmeists published the magazines "Hyperborea" and "Apollo". Not only poetry was published there, but also polemics were conducted with poets of other movements in the prose genre.
Acmeist poets photo
The ideological inspirers of Acmeism, Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky, published in these magazines a kind of program manifesto of the new poetic movement.
The Acmeists considered the Word to be the foundation of their poetry. The backbone of the first composition of the “Workshop of Poets” was made up not just of poets close in their ideology, but also of people connected by ties of friendship. Subsequently, the names of these poets were included in the Golden Fund of Russian Literature.
As a literary movement, Acmeism existed for just over two years. Despite all the controversial concepts of this movement, its value lies not only in the fact that it was an exclusively Russian movement, but in the fact that the work of remarkable Russian poets is associated with Acmeism, without whose work it is impossible to imagine Russian poetry of the 20th century.
30.03.2013 26913 0Lesson 22
Acmeism as a literary movement.
Origins of Acmeism
Goals : give an idea of Acmeism as a literary movement; determine the origins of Russian Acmeism; determine the role of Russian poets N. Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam and others in the development of Russian Acmeism.
Lesson progress
I. Checking homework.
Questions to check your homework:
1. What distinguishes modernism from realism?
2. What are the views of the Symbolists on the development of Russian literature?
3. How did V. Bryusov’s creativity manifest itself in the Symbolist group? (Answers based on the lecture from the previous lesson and the article “Symbolism” on pp. 22–23 in the textbook.)
II. Work on the topic of the lesson. Lecture.
Acmeism - another literary movement that arose in the early 1910s and was genetically associated with symbolism. In the 1900s, young poets attended “Ivanovo Wednesdays” - meetings in Vyach’s St. Petersburg apartment. Ivanov, which received the name “tower” among them.
In the depths of the circle in 1906–1907, a group of poets gradually formed, calling themselves the “circle of the young.” The impetus for their rapprochement was opposition to symbolist poetic practice.
On the one hand, the “young” sought to learn poetic technique from their older colleagues, but on the other hand, they would like to overcome the utopianism of symbolist theories.
In 1909, members of the “circle of young people”, in which S. Gorodetsky stood out for his activity, asked Vyach. Ivanov, I. Annensky and M. Voloshin to read a course of lectures on poetry for them.
Thus the Society of Zealots was founded artistic word", or, as the poets who studied versification began to call it, the "Poetry Academy".
In October 1911, students of the Poetry Academy founded a new literary association - the Workshop of Poets. The name of the circle, modeled on the medieval names of craft associations, indicated the attitude of the participants towards poetry as a purely professional field of activity.
The leaders of the “Workshop” were no longer the masters of symbolism, but the poets of the next generation - N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky.
In 1912, at one of the meetings of the Workshop, its participants decided to announce the emergence of a new poetic movement. Of the various names initially proposed, the somewhat presumptuous “Acmeism” (from the Greek. acme- the highest degree of something, flourishing, peak, edge). From the wide circle of participants in the “Workshop”, a narrower and more aesthetically more united group of poets emerged, who began to call themselves Acmeists. These included N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, S. Gorodetsky, O. Mandelstam. Other participants in the “Workshop” (among them G. Adamovich, G. Ivanov and others), not being true Acmeists, formed the periphery of the movement.
The first sign of the aesthetic reform of Acmeism is considered to be Kuzmin’s article “On Beautiful Clarity,” published in 1910. The article declared the stylistic principles of “beautiful clarity”: the logic of the artistic concept, the harmony of the composition, the clarity of the organization of all elements of the artistic form. Kuzmin's work called for greater normativity in creativity, rehabilitated the aesthetics of reason and harmony, and thereby opposed the extremes of symbolism.
It should be noted that among the most authoritative teachers for Acmeists were those who played a significant role in symbolism - I. Annensky, M. Kuzmin, A. Blok. This means that we can say that the Acmeists inherited the achievements of symbolism, neutralizing some of its extremes. In the programmatic article “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism,” N. Gumilyov called symbolism a “worthy father,” but emphasized that the new generation had developed a different one—“a courageously firm and clear outlook on life.”
Acmeism, according to Gumilev, is an attempt to rediscover the value of human life, abandoning the “unchaste” desire of the symbolists to know the unknowable: the simple objective world is significant in itself.
According to the theorists of Acmeism, the artistic exploration of the diverse and vibrant earthly world acquires major importance.
Supporting Gumilyov, S. Gorodetsky spoke even more categorically: “The struggle between Acmeism and symbolism... is, first of all, a struggle for this a world that sounds, is colorful, has shapes, weight and time...” This position of the Acmeist program can be illustrated by S. Gorodetsky’s poem “Adam”:
The world is spacious and loud,
And he is more colorful than rainbows,
And so Adam was entrusted with it,
Inventor of names.
Name, find out, tear off the covers
And idle secrets, and ancient darkness -
Here is the first feat. New feat -
Sing praises to the living earth.
Basically, the “overcoming” of symbolism occurred not so much in the sphere of general ideas, but in the field of poetic stylistics.
The new movement brought with it not so much a novelty of worldview as a novelty of taste sensations: such elements of form as stylistic balance, pictorial clarity of images, precisely measured composition, and precision of details were valued.
In the poems of the Acmeists, the fragile edges of things were aestheticized, and a “homely” atmosphere of admiring “cute little things” was established.
This, however, did not mean abandoning spiritual quests. Culture occupied the highest place in the hierarchy of Acmeist values. O. Mandelstam called Acmeism “longing for world culture.”
There was a special attitude towards the category memory. Memory is the most important aesthetic component in the work of the most significant artists of this movement - A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov and O. Mandelstam; it was Acmeism that advocated the need to preserve cultural values.
Acmeism was based on different cultural traditions. The objects of lyrical comprehension in Acmeism often became mythological subjects, images and motifs of painting, graphics, architecture; Literary quotations were actively used.
An outstanding hobby of the Acmeists was objectivity: any exotic detail could be used in a purely pictorial function. These are the vivid details of African exoticism in the early poems of N. Gumilyov.
For example, the giraffe, “like the colored sails of a ship,” is festively decorated in the play of color and light:
He is given graceful harmony and bliss,
And his skin is decorated with a magical pattern,
Only the moon dares to equal him,
Crushing and swaying on the moisture of wide lakes.
Acmeists have developed subtle ways of conveying the inner world of the lyrical hero. Often the state of feelings was not revealed directly; it was conveyed by a psychologically significant gesture, movement, or listing of things. A similar manner of “materialization” of experiences was characteristic, for example, of many of A. Akhmatova’s poems.
The new literary movement, which united great Russian poets, did not last long.
By the beginning of the First World War, the framework of a single poetic school became cramped for them, and individual creative aspirations took them beyond the boundaries of Acmeism.
Thus, N. Gumilyov evolved towards a religious and mystical search, which manifested itself in his last collection “Pillar of Fire” (1921), in the work of A. Akhmatova the orientation towards psychologism and moral quests became stronger, the poetry of O. Mandelstam was focused on the philosophical understanding of history and was characterized by increased associativity of figurative words.
After the start of the war, the affirmation of the highest spiritual values became the basis of the creativity of former Acmeists.
In their works, motifs of conscience, doubt, mental anxiety and even self-condemnation were persistently heard.
III. Personal message.
About the life and work of Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov (based on textbook materials, pp. 154–161).
IV. Working with the textbook.
Read the article “Acmeism”, p. 24–25. Write down in a notebook and comment on the main provisions of the articles of the theorists of acmeism Gumilyov (“The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism”) and Gorodetsky (“Some trends in modern Russian poetry”).
V. Lesson summary.
Homework:
Questions for home preparation:
1. What was the acmeistic group?
2. What are Gumilyov’s views on this new movement?
