ACMEISM(from the Greek akme - the highest degree, peak, flowering, blooming time) is a literary movement that opposes symbolism and arose at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia.
The formation of Acmeism is closely connected with the activities of the “Workshop of Poets” , the central figure of which was the organizer of acmeism N. Gumilyov. Contemporaries gave the term other interpretations: Vl. Piast saw its origins in the pseudonym of A. Akhmatova, which in Latin sounded like “akmatus”, some pointed to its connection with the Greek “acme” - “ point." The term acmeism was proposed in 1912 by N. Gumilev and S. Gorodetsky: in their opinion, symbolism, which was experiencing a crisis, is being replaced by a direction that generalizes the experience of its predecessors and takes the poet to new heights creative achievements. The name for the literary movement, according to A. Bely, was chosen in the heat of controversy and was not entirely justified: Vyach. Ivanov jokingly spoke about “Acmeism” and “Adamism”, N. Gumilyov picked up randomly thrown words and dubbed a group of people close to them Acmeists. yourself poets. The gifted and ambitious organizer of Acmeism dreamed of creating a “direction of directions” - a literary movement reflecting the appearance of all contemporary Russian poetry.
S. Gorodetsky and N. Gumilyov also used the term “Adamism”: the first poet, in their view, was Adam, who gave names to objects and creatures and thereby participated in the creation of the world. In Gumilyov’s definition, Adamism is “a courageously firm and clear view of the world.”
As a literary movement, Acmeism did not last long - about two years (1913–1914), but one cannot ignore its generic connections with the “Workshop of Poets,” as well as its decisive influence on the fate of Russian poetry of the twentieth century. Acmeism counted the six 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: “There were six Acmeists, and there never was a seventh.” IN different times The following people took part in the work of the “Workshop of Poets”: G. Adamovich, N. Bruni, Vas. V. Gippius, Vl. V. Gippius, G. Ivanov, N. Klyuev, M. Kuzmin, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, M. Lozinsky , S. Radlov, V. Khlebnikov. At the meetings of the “Workshop”, in contrast to the meetings of the Symbolists , specific issues were resolved: “Workshop » was a school for mastering poetic skills, a professional association. The creative destinies of poets who sympathize with Acmeism developed differently: N. Klyuev subsequently declared his non-involvement in the activities of the commonwealth, G. Adamovich and G. Ivanov continued and developed many of the principles of Acmeism in emigration; Acmeism did not have any effect on V. Khlebnikov noticeable influence.
The platform of the Acmeists was the magazine “Apollo”, edited by S. Makovsky, in which the declarations of Gumilyov and Gorodetsky were published. The program of acmeism in "Apollo" included two main provisions: firstly, concreteness, materiality, this-worldliness, and secondly, the improvement of poetic skill. The rationale for the new literary movement was given in the articles of N. Gumilyov The legacy of symbolism and acmeism(1913), S. Gorodetsky (1913), O. Mandelstam Morning of Acmeism(1913, was not published in Apollo).
However, for the first time the idea of a new direction was expressed on the pages of Apollo much earlier: in 1910 M. Kuzmin wrote an article in the magazine About beautiful clarity, which anticipated the appearance of declarations of Acmeism. By the time this article was written, Kuzmin was already a mature man and had experience of collaborating 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 is to focus on the aesthetic side of creativity and artistic skill. “The symbol, dark in its deepest depths,” gives way to clear structures and admiration for “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.”
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. In the article “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism,” N. Gumilyov drew a line under the “indisputable values and reputations” of the Symbolists. “Symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling,” stated N. Gumilyov. Poets who replace the Symbolists must declare themselves worthy successors to their predecessors, accept their legacy and answer the questions they pose. “Russian symbolism directed its main forces into the realm of the unknown. Alternately, he fraternized with mysticism, then with theosophy, then with occultism,” Gumilyov wrote. He called attempts in this direction “unchaste.” One of the main tasks of Acmeism is to straighten the tendency towards the otherworldly, characteristic of symbolism, to establish a “living balance” between the metaphysical and the earthly. The Acmeists did not renounce metaphysics: “always remember the unknowable, but do not insult your thoughts about it with more or less probable guesses” - this is the principle of Acmeism. The Acmeists did not renounce the highest reality, recognized by the symbolists as the only true one, but preferred to remain silent about it: what is unsaid must remain unsaid. Acmeism was a kind of movement towards “true symbolism”, based on attachment to everyday life, respect for simple human existence. Gumilev proposed to consider the main difference between Acmeism to be the recognition of “the intrinsic value of each phenomenon” - it is necessary to make the phenomena of the material world more tangible, even crude, freeing them from the power of foggy visions. Here Gumilev named the names of the artists most dear to Acmeism, its “cornerstones”: Shakespeare, Rabelais, Villon, T. Gautier. Shakespeare showed the inner world of a person, Rabelais - his body and physiology, Villon told us about “a life that does not doubt itself much.” T. Gaultier found “decent clothes with impeccable shapes.” The combination of these four moments in art is the ideal of creativity. Having absorbed the experience of their predecessors, the Acmeist poets begin new era“aesthetic puritanism, great demands on the poet as a creator of thought and on the word as a material of art.” Equally rejecting the utilitarian approach to art and the idea of “art for art’s sake,” the founder of Acmeism proclaimed an attitude towards poetic creativity as a “higher craft.”
S. Gorodetsky in the article Some trends in modern Russian poetry(1913) also noted the catastrophe of symbolism: the gravity of symbolism towards the “fluidity of the word”, its polysemy takes the artist away from the “calling, colorful world” into the foggy realms of fruitless wanderings. “Art is balance,” Gorodetsky asserted, “it is strength.” “The fight for our planet Earth” is the work of the poet, the search for “moments that can be eternal” is the basis of the poetic craft. The world of the Acmeists is “good in itself,” apart from its mystical “correspondences.” “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...”
Mandelstam's article was also written in 1913 Morning of Acmeism, published only six years later. The delay in publication was not accidental: Mandelstam’s acmeistic calculations significantly diverged from the declarations of Gumilyov and Gorodetsky and did not make it onto the pages of Apollo. The central metaphor of Mandelstam’s article is architecture. Poetic creativity Mandelstam likens it to construction: “We don’t fly, we climb only those towers that we ourselves can build.” Mandelstam called a collection of the same star for Acmeism and rich in the declaration of 1913 Stone. Stone is “a word as such”, waiting for its sculptor for centuries. Mandelstam likens the work of the poet to the work of a carver, an architect who hypnotizes space.
The term “word as such” was proposed by the futurists and reinterpreted by Mandelstam: for the futurists, the word is pure sound, free of meaning; Mandelstam, on the contrary, emphasizes its “heaviness”, laden with meaning. If the futurists sought to return to the foundations of nature through the sound of the word, then Mandelstam saw in understanding its meaning the path to the foundations of culture. The article also contained a polemic with the symbolists: not the musicality of speech, but the “conscious meaning”; Logos was exalted by Mandelstam. “...Love the existence of a thing more than the thing itself and your existence more than yourself - this is the highest commandment of Acmeism,” wrote Mandelstam.
The publication of articles by Gorodetsky and Gumilyov in Apollo was accompanied by a representative selection of poetic materials, which did not always correspond to the theoretical principles of Acmeism, revealing their precocity, vagueness, and weak argumentation. Acmeism as a movement did not have a sufficient theory: “the intrinsic value of a phenomenon”, “the struggle for this world” hardly seemed to be sufficient arguments for proclaiming a new literary direction. “Symbolism was fading away” - Gumilev was not mistaken in this, but he failed to form a movement as powerful as Russian symbolism.
Questions of religion and philosophy, which Acmeism shunned in theory (A. Blok blamed the Acmeists for their absence), received intense resonance in the works of N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam. The Acmeistic period of these poets lasted relatively short, after which their poetry went far into the realm of the spirit, intuitive revelations, and mystery. This largely allowed researchers, in particular the literary critic B. Eikhenbaum, to consider Acmeism as a new stage in the development of symbolist poetics, denying it independence. However, the titanic questions of the spirit, which were the focus of symbolism, were not specifically emphasized by the Acmeists. Acmeism returned the “man of normal height” to literature and spoke to the reader with normal intonation, devoid of exaltation and superhuman tension. The main achievement of Acmeism as a literary movement is the change in scale, the humanization of turn-of-the-century literature that had veered towards gigantomania. The outstanding scientist S. Averintsev wittily called Acmeism “a challenge to the spirit of the times as the spirit of utopia.” The proportionality of a person to the world, subtle psychology, conversational intonation, the search for a full-fledged word were proposed by the Acmeists in response to the supra-worldliness of the Symbolists. The stylistic wanderings of the Symbolists and Futurists were replaced by a strictness towards a single word, “chains of complex forms”, and religious and philosophical quests were replaced by a balance between metaphysics and the “here”. The Acmeists preferred the difficult service of the poet in the world to the idea of “art for art’s sake” (the highest expression of such service was the human and creative path of A. Akhmatova).
Poorly substantiated as a literary movement, Acmeism united exceptionally gifted poets - N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, the formation of whose creative individuals took place in the atmosphere of the “Poet's Workshop”, disputes about “beautiful clarity”. The history of Acmeism can be considered as a kind of dialogue between its three outstanding representatives. Subsequently, Acmeist poetics was refracted in complex and ambiguous ways in their work.
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. 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. “This couplet contains the whole woman,” she spoke of Akhmatova Song last meeting M. Tsvetaeva. In elegantly depicted details, Akhmatova, as Mandelstam noted, gave “all the enormous complexity and psychological richness of the Russian novel of the 19th century.” A. Akhmatova’s poetry was greatly influenced by the work of In. Annensky, whom Akhmatova considered “a harbinger, an omen, of what later happened to us.” The material density of the world, psychological symbolism, and the associativity of Annensky’s poetry were largely inherited by Akhmatova.
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 Gumilyov, 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 work of S. Gorodetsky. Roman Gorodetsky 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. Block 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.”
Another Adamist, M. Zenkevich, according to the apt definition of Vyach. Ivanov, “was captivated by Matter and was horrified by it.” Dialogues between man and nature were replaced in Zenkevich’s work by gloomy pictures of the present, a premonition of the impossibility of restoring the lost harmony and balance in the relationship between man and the elements.
Book by V. Narbut Hallelujah contained variations on the theme of S. Gorodetsky's poems included in the collection Willow. Unlike Gorodetsky, Narbut gravitated not towards “leaf life”, but towards depicting the unsightly, sometimes naturalistically ugly sides of reality.
Acmeism united dissimilar creative individualities, manifested itself in different ways in the “spiritualized objectivity” of A. Akhmatova, the “distant wanderings” of M. Gumilyov, the poetry of reminiscences of O. Mandelstam, pagan dialogues with nature by S. Gorodetsky, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut. The role of Acmeism is in the desire to maintain a balance between symbolism, on the one hand, and realism, on the other. In the work of the Acmeists there are numerous points of contact with the symbolists and realists (especially with the Russian psychological novel of the 19th century), but in general the representatives of Acmeism found themselves in the “middle of the contrast”, not slipping into metaphysics, but also not “mooring to the ground.”
Acmeism greatly influenced the development of Russian poetry in emigration, the “Parisian note”: among Gumilev’s students, G. Ivanov, G. Adamovich, N. Otsup, I. Odoevtseva emigrated to France. The best poets of the Russian emigration G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich developed acmeistic principles: restraint, muted intonation, expressive asceticism, subtle irony. IN Soviet Russia the manner of the Acmeists (mainly N. Gumilyov) was imitated by Nik. Tikhonov, I. Selvinsky, M. Svetlov, E. Bagritsky. Acmeism also had a significant impact on the author's song.
Tatiana Skryabina
"To the earthly source of poetic values"
Lydia Ginzburg
In 1906, Valery Bryusov stated that “the circle of development of that literary school, which is known as “ new poetry", can be considered closed."
From symbolism a new literary movement emerged - Acmeism - which contrasted itself with the first, at a time of its crisis. He reflected new aesthetic trends in the art of the “Silver Age”, although he did not completely break with symbolism. At the beginning of his creative path young poets, future acmeists, were close to symbolism, attended “Ivanovo Wednesdays” - literary meetings in the St. Petersburg apartment of Vyacheslav Ivanov, called the “tower”. In Ivanov’s “tower” classes were held for young poets, where they learned versification.
The emergence of a new movement dates back to the early 1910s. It received three non-identical names: “acmeism” (from the Greek “acme” - flowering, peak, highest degree of something, edge), “Adamism” (from the name of the first man Adam, courageous, clear, direct view of the world) and “clarism” (beautiful clarity). Each of them reflected a special facet of the aspirations of the poets of a given circle.
So, Acmeism is a modernist movement that declared concrete sensory perception outside world, returning the word to its original, non-symbolic meaning.
The formation of the platform of participants in the new movement takes place first in the “Society of Zealots” artistic word"("Poetry Academy"), and then in the "Workshop of Poets", created in 1911, where the artistic opposition was led by Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky.
“The Workshop of Poets” is a community of poets united by the feeling that symbolism has already passed its highest peak. This name dates back to the time of medieval craft associations and showed the attitude of the participants in the “guild” to poetry as a purely professional field activities. "Workshop" was a school professional excellence. The backbone of the “Workshop” was formed by young poets who had only recently begun to publish. Among them were those whose names in subsequent decades made up the glory of Russian literature.
The most prominent representatives of the new trend included Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev.
We gathered at the apartment of one of the members of the “Workshop”. Sitting in a circle, one after another they read their new poems, which they then discussed in detail. The responsibility for leading the meeting was assigned to one of the syndics - the leaders of the "Workshop".
The syndic had the right to interrupt the speech of the next speaker using a special bell if it was too general.
Among the participants of the “Workshop” “home philology” was revered. They carefully studied world poetry. It is no coincidence that in their own works one often hears someone else’s lines and many hidden quotes.
Among their literary teachers, the Acmeists singled out François Villon (with his appreciation for life), François Rabelais (with his inherent “wise physiology”), William Shakespeare (with his gift of insight into the inner world of a person), Théophile Gautier (a champion of “impeccable forms”). We should add here the poets Baratynsky, Tyutchev and Russian classical prose. The immediate predecessors of Acmeism include Innokenty Annensky, Mikhail Kuzmin, and Valery Bryusov.
In the second half of 1912, the six most active participants in the “Workshop” - Gumilyov, Gorodetsky, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Narbut and Zenkevich - held a whole series poetry evenings, where they declared their claims to lead Russian literature in a new direction.
Vladimir Narbut and Mikhail Zenkevich in their poems not only defended “everything concrete, real and vital” (as Narbut wrote in one of his notes), but also shocked the reader with an abundance of naturalistic, sometimes very unappetizing details:
And the wise slug, bent into a spiral,
Sharp, lidless eyes of vipers,
And in a closed silver circle,
How many secrets the spider weaves!
M. Zenkevich. "Man" 1909–1911
Like the futurists, Zenkevich and Narbut loved to shock the reader. Therefore, they were often called “left-wing Acmeists.” On the contrary, on the “right” in the list of Acmeists were the names of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam - two poets who were sometimes recorded as “neoclassicists”, meaning their commitment to a strict and clear (like the Russian classics) construction of poems. And, finally, the “center” in this group was occupied by two poets of the older generation - the syndics of the “Workshop of Poets” Sergei Gorodetsky and Nikolai Gumilyov (the first was close to Narbut and Zenkevich, the second to Mandelstam and Akhmatova).
These six poets were not absolute like-minded people, but seemed to embody the idea of balance between the two extreme poles of contemporary poetry - symbolism and naturalism.
The program of Acmeism was proclaimed in such manifestos as “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism” by Gumilyov (1913), “Some Trends in Modern Russian Poetry” by Gorodetsky, and “The Morning of Acmeism” by Mandelstam. In these articles, the goal of poetry was to achieve balance. “Art is a state of balance, first of all,” wrote Gorodetsky. However, between what and what did the Acmeists primarily try to maintain a “living balance”? Between “earthly” and “heavenly”, between life and being.
Worn rug under the icon
It's dark in a cool room -
wrote Anna Akhmatova in 1912.
This does not mean “a return to the material world, an object,” but a desire to balance” within one line the familiar, everyday (“Worn rug”) and the lofty, Divine (“Worn rug under the icon”).
Acmeists are interested in the real, not the other world, the beauty of life in its concrete sensory manifestations. The vagueness and hints of symbolism were contrasted with a major perception of reality, the reliability of the image, and the clarity of the composition. In some ways, the poetry of Acmeism is the revival of the “golden age”, the time of Pushkin and Baratynsky.
S. Gorodetsky, in his declaration “Some Currents in Modern Russian Poetry,” spoke out against the “blurring” of symbolism, its focus on the unknowability of the world: “The struggle between Acmeism and symbolism... is, first of all, a struggle for this world, sounding, colorful, having shapes, weight and time...", "the world is irrevocably accepted by Acmeism, in all its beauties and ugliness."
The Acmeists contrasted the image of the poet-prophet with the image of a poet-craftsman, diligently and without unnecessary pathos connecting the “earthly” with the “heavenly-spiritual”.
And I thought: I won’t flaunt
We are not prophets, not even forerunners...
O. Mandelstam. Lutheran, 1912
The organs of the new trend were the magazines “Apollo” (1909–1917), created by the writer, poet and historian Sergei Makovsky, and “Hyperborea”, founded in 1912 and headed by Mikhail Lozinsky.
The philosophical basis of the new aesthetic phenomenon was pragmatism (philosophy of action) and the ideas of the phenomenological school (which defended the “experience of objectivity”, “questioning of things”, “acceptance of the world”).
Almost the main one distinctive feature“Workshop” developed a taste for depicting earthly, everyday life. Symbolists sometimes sacrificed the external world for the sake of the inner, hidden world. The “tsehoviki” decisively made a choice in favor of a thorough and love description real “steppes, rocks and waters”.
The artistic principles of Acmeism were entrenched in his poetic practice:
1. Active acceptance of colorful and vibrant earthly life;
2. Rehabilitation of a simple objective world that has “Shapes, weight and time”;
3. Denial of transcendence and mysticism;
4. Primitive-animal, courageously firm view of the world;
5. Focus on the picturesqueness of the image;
6. Transfer of a person’s psychological states with attention to the bodily principle;
7. The expression of “longing for world culture”;
8. Attention to the specific meaning of the word;
9. Perfection of forms.
Fate literary acmeism tragic. He had to assert himself in a tense and unequal struggle. He was repeatedly persecuted and defamed. Its most prominent creators were destroyed (Narbut, Mandelstam). First world war, October events 1917, the execution of Gumilyov in 1921 put an end to the further development of Acmeism as a literary movement. However, the humanistic meaning of this movement was significant - to revive a person’s thirst for life, to restore the feeling of its beauty.
Literature
Oleg Lekmanov. Acmeism // Encyclopedia for children “Avanta+”. Volume 9. Russian literature. Part two. XX century M., 1999
N.Yu. Gryakalova. Acmeism. Peace, creativity, culture. // Russian poets " Silver Age" Volume two: Acmeists. Leningrad: Publishing house Leningrad University, 1991
30.03.2013 27475 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.
This is how the “Society of Admirers of the Artistic Word” was founded, 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: simple objective world 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 inner world 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?
The name "Acmeism" comes from the Greek. “acme” - tip, top.
The theoretical basis is the article by N. Gumilyov “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism.” Acmeists: N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, S. Gorodetsky, M. Kuzmin.
Acmeism is a modernist movement that declared a concrete sensory perception of the external world, returning the word to its original, non-symbolic meaning.
The acmeist association itself was small and existed for about two years (1913-1914).
At the beginning of their creative career, young poets, future Acmeists, were close to symbolism and attended “Ivanovo Wednesdays” - literary meetings in Vyach’s St. Petersburg apartment. Ivanov, called the “tower”. In the “tower” classes were held for young poets, where they learned poetry. In October 1911, students of this “poetry academy” founded a new literary association, “The Workshop of Poets.” “Tseh” was a school of professional excellence, and its leaders were the young poets N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky. In January 1913, they published declarations of the acmeist group in the Apollo magazine.
The new literary movement, which united great Russian poets, did not last long. The creative searches of Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Mandelstam went beyond the scope of Acmeism. But the humanistic meaning of this movement was significant - to revive a person’s thirst for life, to restore the feeling of its beauty. It also included A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut and others.
Acmeists are interested in the real, not the other world, the beauty of life in its concrete - sensual manifestations. The vagueness and hints of symbolism were contrasted with a major perception of reality, the reliability of the image, and the clarity of the composition. In some ways, the poetry of Acmeism is the revival of the “golden age,” the time of Pushkin and Baratynsky.
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.
Acmeism aesthetics:
The world must be perceived in its visible concreteness, appreciate its realities, and not tear yourself away from the ground;
We must revive the love for our body, the biological principle in man, to value man and nature;
The source of poetic values is on earth, and not in the unreal world;
In poetry, 4 principles must be fused together:
1) Shakespeare’s traditions in depicting the inner world of man;
2) Rabelais’ traditions in glorifying the body;
3) Villon’s tradition in chanting the joys of life;
4) Gautier's tradition in glorifying the power of art.
Basic principles of Acmeism:
Liberating poetry from symbolist appeals to the ideal, returning it to clarity;
Refusal of mystical nebula, acceptance of the earthly world in its diversity, visible concreteness, sonority, colorfulness;
The desire to give a word a specific, 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;
Roll call with the past literary eras, the broadest aesthetic associations, “longing for world culture.”
Distinctive features of Acmeism:
Hedonism (enjoyment of life), Adamism (animal essence), Clarism (simplicity and clarity of language);
Lyrical plot and depiction of the psychology of experience;
Conversational elements of language, dialogues, narratives.
In January 1913 Declarations from the organizers of the acmeistic group N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky appeared in the Apollo magazine. It also included Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, M. Zenkevich and others.
In the article “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism,” Gumilyov criticized the mysticism of symbolism, its fascination with the “region of the unknown.” Unlike his predecessors, the leader of the Acmeists proclaimed “the intrinsic value of each phenomenon,” in other words, the value of “all brother phenomena.” And he gave the new movement two names and interpretations: Acmeism and Adamism - “a courageously firm and clear view of life.”
Gumilyov, however, in the same article affirmed the need for Acmeists to “guess what the next hour will be for us, for our cause, for the whole world.” Consequently, he did not refuse insights into the unknown. Just as he did not deny art its “worldwide significance to ennoble human nature,” which he later wrote about in another work. The continuity between the programs of the Symbolists and Acmeists was clear
The immediate forerunner of the Acmeists was Innokenty Annensky. “The source of Gumilyov’s poetry,” wrote Akhmatova, “is not in the poems of the French Parnassians, as is commonly believed, but in Annensky. I trace my “beginning” to Annensky’s poems.” He had an amazing, acmeist-attracting gift for artistically transforming impressions of an imperfect life.
The Acmeists spun off from the Symbolists. They denied the mystical aspirations of the Symbolists. The Acmeists proclaimed the high intrinsic value of the earthly, local world, its colors and forms, called to “love the earth”, to talk as little as possible about eternity. They wanted to glorify the earthly world in all its plurality and power, in all its carnal, weighty certainty. Among the Acmeists are Gumilev, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Kuzmin, Gorodetsky.
In 1911, the “Workshop of Poets” arose in St. Petersburg - a literary association of young authors close to symbolism, but looking for new paths in literature. The name “workshop” corresponded to their view of poetry as. for a craft that requires high technology verse. The “Workshop of Poets” (1911–1914) was headed by N. Gumilev and S. Gorodetsky, the secretary was A. Akhmatova, the members included G. Adamovich, Vas. Gippius, M. Zenkevich, G. Ivanov, O. Mandelstam, V. Narbut and other poets. The emergence of the “Workshop” was preceded by the creation by the Symbolists of the “Academy of Verse”, at whose meetings young poets listened to speeches by recognized masters and analyzed poetic rhythms.
The literary organ of the “Workshop of Poets” was a thin “monthly of poetry and criticism” called “Hyperborea” (St. Petersburg, 1912–1913), whose editor-publisher was the poet M. L. Lozinsky. The magazine considered its task to continue “all the main victories of the era, known under the name of decadence or modernism,” and thus found itself confined to a narrow circle of purely aesthetic issues. Great value to reveal the creative position of a new literary group also had an artistic and literary magazine “Apollo” (St. Petersburg, 1909–1917), initially associated with the Symbolists. In 1910, an article by M. A. Kuzmin “On Beautiful Clarity” appeared in it.
Unlike the Symbolists, Kuzmin proceeded from the idea that the artist must first of all come to terms with real life- “to seek and find peace within yourself with yourself and with the world.” The goal of literature was declared to be “beautiful clarity”, or “clarismus” (from the Latin word Clarus - clear).
Where can I find a syllable to describe a walk,
Chablis on ice, toasted bread
And sweet agate ripe cherries?
These often quoted lines, which opened the cycle “Love of This Summer,” against the backdrop of symbolist poetry, sounded like a glorification of the “cheerful lightness of thoughtless living.” They were new and had a lower, “homey”, as A. Blok put it, intonation. Kuzmin looked at the world with slight irony. Life seemed to him like a theater, and art - a kind of masquerade. This was reflected in the same collection in the “Rockets” cycle. In the opening poem "Masquerade" there is a spectacle of an exquisite celebration with masks of characters from the Italian commedia dell'arte. Everything here is conventional, deceptive, fleeting and at the same time captivating with its fragile grace. In the last poem of the cycle, “Epitaph,” there are words devoid of tragic overtones about the death of a young friend, remembered for his easy attitude to life (“Who was slimmer in the figures of the minuet? Who knew better the selection of colored silks?”).
Three years after the publication of Kuzmin’s article. “On Beautiful Clarity” in the same “Apollo” (1913, No. 1) two articles appeared in which the program of a new literary movement was formulated: “The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism” by N. Gumilyov (in the table of contents of the magazine instead of the word “Heritage” there is “ Testaments") and "Some trends in modern Russian poetry" by S. Gorodetsky.
Continuously associated with symbolism (“symbolism was a worthy father,” writes Gumilev), the Acmeists wanted to rediscover the value of human existence, and if in the Symbolists’ view the world of objective phenomena was a reflection of a higher being, then the Acmeists accepted it as true reality.
Gumilyov proposed to call the new movement that replaced symbolism acmeism (from the ancient Greek word “acme”, meaning blooming power, highest degree, flourishing) or Adamism, which meant “a courageously strong and clear view of life.” Like Kuzmin, Gumilyov demanded that literature accept reality: “Always remember the unknowable, but not insult your thoughts about it with more or less probable guesses - this is the principle of Acmeism.”
About full acceptance real world Gorodetsky also wrote: “The struggle between Acmeism and symbolism, if it is a struggle and not the occupation of an abandoned fortress, is, first of all, a struggle for this world, sounding, colorful, having shapes, weight and time, for our planet Earth<…>After all sorts of “rejections,” the world was irrevocably accepted by Acmeism, in all its beauties and ugliness.” Gumilyov wrote: “As Adamists, we are a bit of forest animals”; Gorodetsky, in turn, argued that poets, like Adam, should re-experience all the charm of earthly existence. These provisions were illustrated by Gorodetsky’s poem “Adam,” published in the third issue of Apollo for the same year (p. 32):
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.
A call to poeticize primordial emotions, elemental power primitive man found in a number of Acmeists, including M. Zenkevich (“Wild Porphyra”, 1912), reflected in increased attention to the natural biological principle in man. In the preface to the poem “Retribution,” Blok ironically noted that the Acmeists’ man is devoid of signs of humanism, he is some kind of “primordial Adam.”
The poets who spoke under the banner of Acmeism were completely different from each other, nevertheless, this movement had its own generic characteristics.
Rejecting the aesthetics of symbolism and the religious and mystical hobbies of its representatives, the Acmeists were deprived of a broad perception of the world around them. The Acmeist vision of life did not touch upon the true passions of the era, its true signs and conflicts.
In the 10s. Symbolism was “overcome” not only by the Acmeists, but to a large extent by the Symbolists themselves, who had already abandoned the extremes and life limitations of their previous speeches. The Acmeists did not seem to notice this. The narrowness of the problematic, the affirmation of the intrinsic value of reality, the fascination with the external side of life, the aestheticization of recorded phenomena, so characteristic of the poetry of Acmeism, its detachment from modern social storms allowed contemporaries to say that the Acmeist path cannot become the path of Russian poetry. And it is no coincidence that it was during these years that M. Gorky wrote: “Rus' needs great poet <…>We need a democratic and romantic poet, because we, Rus', are a democratic and young country.”
Revolting against the nebulae of the “forest of symbols,” the poetry of the Acmeists gravitated toward recreating the three-dimensional world, its objectivity. She was attracted by the external, mostly aestheticized life, “the spirit of charming and airy little things” (M. Kuzmin) or the emphasized prosaism of everyday realities. These are, for example, the everyday sketches of O. Mandelstam (1913):
Snow in quiet suburbs
The wipers are raking with shovels,
I'm with the bearded men
I'm coming, a passer-by.
Women in headscarves flash by,
And the crazy mongrels yap,
And the samovars have scarlet roses
They burn in taverns and houses.
The fascination with objectivity, objective detail was so great that even the world of spiritual experiences was often figuratively embodied in the poetry of the Acmeists in some thing. In Mandelstam, an empty sea shell thrown ashore becomes a metaphor for spiritual emptiness (“Shell”). In Gumilyov’s poem “I believed, I thought...” the metaphor of a yearning heart is also objective - a porcelain bell.
Enthusiastic admiration of “little things” and their aestheticization prevented poets from seeing the world of great feelings and real life proportions. This world often looked to the Acmeists as toy-like, apolitical, and evoked the impression of artificiality and ephemerality of human suffering. Deliberate objectivity to a certain extent justified itself when the Acmeists turned to architectural and sculptural monuments of the past or created cursory sketches of pictures of life.
Based on the poetic experience of the Symbolists, the Acmeists often turned to pause and free verse, to the dolnik. The difference between the verse practice of the Acmeists and the Symbolists manifested itself not so much in rhythm as in a different attitude to the word in verse. “For Acmeists, the conscious meaning of a word, Logos, is as beautiful a form as music is for Symbolists,” Mandelstam argued in the article “The Morning of Acmeism,” written at the height of literary controversy. If among the Symbolists the meaning of an individual word is somewhat muted and subordinated to the general musical sound, then among the Acmeists the verse is closer to the colloquial structure of speech and is mainly subordinated to its meaning. In general, the poetic intonation of the Acmeists is somewhat elevated and often even pathetic. But next to it there are often reduced turns of everyday speech, like the line “Be so kind as to exchange” (Mandelshtam’s poem “Golden”). Such transitions are especially frequent and varied in Akhmatova. It was Akhmatova’s verse, enriched with the rhythm of a living language, that turned out to be the most significant contribution of Acmeism to the culture of Russian poetic speech.
