Russian symbolism was an intellectual and
artistic movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defi ...
predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It arose separately from
European symbolism, emphasizing
mysticism and
ostranenie.
Literature
Influences
Primary influences on the movement weren't merely western writers such as
Brix Anthony Pace
Degrees Brix (symbol °Bx) is a measure of the dissolved solids in a liquid, and is commonly used to measure dissolved sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution and represents the strength ...
,
Paul Verlaine,
Maurice Maeterlinck,
Stéphane Mallarmé, French symbolist and
decadent poets (such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire),
Oscar Wilde,
D'Annunzio,
Joris-Karl Huysmans, the operas of
Richard Wagner, the dramas of
Henrik Ibsen or the broader philosophy of
Arthur Schopenhauer and
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
.
According to the experienced Belgian slavist Emmanuel Waegemans, "who was and still is indeed considered to be the expert par excellence in Russian literature and culture from the eighteenth-century onwards" Russian thinkers themselves contributed largely to this movement: such examples would be the
irrationalistic and
mystical poetry and philosophy of
Fyodor Tyutchev and
Vladimir Solovyov or
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novels.
Rise of symbolism - The older generation
By the mid-1890s, Russian symbolism was still mainly a set of theories and had few notable practitioners. A few of the first practices of Russian symbolism include:
*
Aleksandr Dobrolyubov
Published a book of verse in 1895, just before renouncing lay poetry in favour of wanderings from one monastery to another.
*
Ivan Konevskoy
Another talented author in the early vein of Russian symbolism, who died at the bare age of 24.
*
Nikolai Minsky
The man by whom the movement was inaugurated via his article "The Ancient Debate" (1884)
*
Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Considered to be the 'father' of
Russian Symbolism. His book ''On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature'' (1893). Just as
Nikolai Minsky, he promoted extreme
individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
and deified the act of creation.
Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky ( rus, Дми́трий Серге́евич Мережко́вский, p=ˈdmʲitrʲɪj sʲɪrˈɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ mʲɪrʲɪˈʂkofskʲɪj; – December 9, 1941) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, ...
was known for his poetry as well as a series of novels on ''god-men'', among whom he counted
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and relig ...
,
Joan of Arc,
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His '' Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ...
,
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...
,
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...
and (later)
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
.
* Merezhkovsky's wife,
Zinaida Gippius, also a major poet in the early days of the symbolist movement - together with the untimely deceased Ivan Konevskoy and Aleksandr Dobrolyubov part of the so-called metaphysical symbolists - opened a salon in
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, which came to be known as the "headquarters of Russian
decadence".
*
Valery Bryusov
It was not until the new talent of
Valery Bryusov emerged that symbolist poetry became a major movement in Russian literature. In order to represent symbolism as a movement of formidable following, Bryusov adopted numerous pen-names and published three volumes of his own verse, entitled ''Russian Symbolists. An Anthology'' (1894–95). Bryusov's mystification proved successful — several young poets were attracted to symbolism as the latest fashion in Russian letters. His novel ''
The Fiery Angel'' is also well known. It tells the story of a 16th-century German scholar and his attempts to win the love of a young woman whose spiritual integrity is seriously undermined by her participation in occult practices and her dealings with unclean forces. The novel served as the basis for
Sergei Prokofiev's
opera ''
The Fiery Angel''.
*
Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont ( rus, Константи́н Дми́триевич Бальмо́нт, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin ˈdmʲitrʲɪjɪvʲɪdʑ bɐlʲˈmont, a=Konstantin Dmitriyevich Bal'mont.ru.vorb.oga; – 23 December 1942) was a Rus ...
Considered to be one of the most popular poets, who believed in first inspiration and sometimes intentionally left his verse unrevised. In many regards looked upon as the antipode of Valery Bryusov. Considering its variability and diversity to be an indispensable quality of the human soul (“There is everything in the souls”), Balmont draws diverse manifestations of the human character. In his work, he paid tribute to individualism (“I hate humanity / / I run away from him in a hurry / / My only fatherland / / My desert soul”). However, this was nothing more than outrageous and, to a certain extent, a fleeting tribute to fashion, because all his work, with such rare exceptions, is imbued with ideas of kindness, attention to man and the world around him.
*
Fyodor Sologub
The pessimistic Russian symbolist writer, who referred to himself as the ''bard of death''. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of ''
fin de siècle'' literature and philosophy into Russian prose. His most famous novel, ''
The Petty Demon
''The Petty Demon'' (russian: Мелкий бес, Melkiy bes), also translated as ''The Little Demon'', is a Symbolist novel by Russian writer Fyodor Sologub. It was published in a standalone edition in 1907 and quickly became popular, having te ...
'' (1905), was an attempt to create a living portrait of the concept known in Russian as ''
poshlost'
''Poshlost'' or ''Poshlost' '' ( rus , по́шлость , p= ˈpoʂləsʲtʲ) is a Russian word for a particular negative human character trait or man-made thing or idea. It has been cited as an example of a so-called untranslatable word, as ...
'' (an idea whose meaning lies somewhere between evil, trashy and banality or
kitsch
Kitsch ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly-eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste.
The avant-garde opposed kitsch as melodramatic and superficial affiliation wi ...
). His next large prose work, ''A Created Legend'' (a trilogy consisting of ''Drops of Blood,'' ''Queen Ortruda,'' and ''Smoke and Ash''), contained many of the same characteristics but presented a considerably more positive and hopeful view of the world.
*
Alexei Remizov
A Russian symbolist who wrote mainly prose. Drawing on medieval Russian literature, he grotesquely combined dreams, reality and pure whimsy in his works.
Though the reputations of many of these writers had faded by the mid-20th century, the influence of the symbolist movement was nonetheless profound. This was especially true in the case of
Innokenty Annensky, whose definitive collection of verse, ''Cypress Box'', was published posthumously (1909). Sometimes cited as a Slavic counterpart to the
accursed poets, Annensky managed to render into Russian the essential intonations of
Baudelaire and
Verlaine, while the subtle music, ominous allusions, arcane vocabulary, and the spell of minutely changing colours and odours in his poetry were all his own. His influence on the
acmeist school of Russian poetry (
Akhmatova,
Gumilyov,
Mandelshtam) was paramount.
Younger generation: Ivanov, Blok, Bely
Russian symbolism really flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. Many new talents began to publish verse written in the symbolist vein. These writers were especially indebted to the philosopher
Vladimir Solovyov. The scholar
Vyacheslav Ivanov, whose interests lay in ancient poetry, returned from Italy to establish a ''
Dionysian
The Apollonian and the Dionysian are philosophical and literary concepts represented by a duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Its popularization is widely attributed to the work ''The Birth of Tragedy'' by ...
'' club in St Petersburg. His self-proclaimed principle was to engraft "archaic
Miltonic
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
diction" to Russian poetry.
Maximilian Voloshin
Maximilian Alexandrovich Kirienko-Voloshin (russian: Максимилиа́н Алекса́ндрович Кирие́нко-Воло́шин; May 28, Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O.S._May_16.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ...
, known best for his poetry about the Russian revolution, opened a poetic salon at his villa in the
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a p ...
.
Jurgis Baltrušaitis, a close friend of
Alexander Scriabin and whose poetry is characterized by mystical philosophy and mesmerizing sounds, was active in Lithuania.
Of the new generation, two young poets, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, became the most renowned of the entire Russian symbolist movement.
Alexander Blok is widely considered to be one of the leading Russian poets of the twentieth century. He was often compared with Alexander Pushkin, and the whole
Silver Age of Russian Poetry was sometimes styled the "Age of Blok." His early verse is impeccably musical and rich in sound. Later, he sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry. His mature poems are often based on the conflict between the Platonic vision of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrial outskirts. They are often characterized by an idiosyncratic use of color and spelling to express meaning. One of Blok's most famous and controversial poems was "The Twelve," which described the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers through the streets of revolutionary
Petrograd in pseudo-religious terms.
Andrei Bely strove to forge a unity of prose, poetry, and music in much of his literature, as evidenced by the title of one of his early works, ''Symphonies in Prose''. However, his fame rests primarily on post-symbolist works such as celebrated
modernist novel ''
Petersburg ''(1911-1913), a philosophical and spiritual work featuring a highly unorthodox narrative style, fleeting allusions and distinctive rhythmic experimentation.
Vladimir Nabokov placed it second in his list of the greatest novels of the twentieth century after
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
's ''
Ulysses''. Other works worthy of mention include the highly influential theoretical book of essays ''Symbolism'' (1910), which was instrumental in redefining the goals of the symbolist movement, and the novel ''Kotik Letaev'' (1914-1916), which traces the first glimpses of consciousness in a new-born baby.
The city of
St. Petersburg itself became one of the major symbols utilized by the second generation of Russian symbolists. Blok's verses on the imperial capital bring to life an
impressionistic picture of the "city of a thousand illusions" and as a doomed world full of merchants and
bourgeois figures. Various elemental forces (such as sunrises and sunsets, light and darkness, lightning and fire) assume apocalyptic qualities, serving as portents of a cataclysmic event that would change the earth and humanity forever. The
Scythians
The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern
* : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Cent ...
and
Mongols
The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal member ...
were often found in the works of these poets, serving as symbols of future catastrophic wars. Due to the
eschatological tendency inherent in the Russian symbolist movement, many of them—including Blok, Bely, and Bryusov—accepted the
Russian Revolution as the next evolutionary step in their nation's history.
Decline of the movement
Russian symbolism had begun to lose its momentum in literature by the 1920s as many younger poets were drawn to the
acmeist movement, which distanced itself from excesses of symbolism, or joined the
futurists
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
, an iconoclastic group which sought to recreate art entirely, eschewing all aesthetic conventions.
Despite intense disapproval by the Soviet State, however, Symbolism continued to be an influence on poets like
Boris Pasternak. In the ''Literary Gazette'' of September 9, 1958, the critic Viktor Pertsov denounced, "the decadent religious poetry of Pasternak, which reeks of mothballs from the Symbolist suitcase of 1908-10 manufacture."
Visual arts
Probably the most important Russian symbolist painter was
Mikhail Vrubel, who achieved fame with a large
mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
-like canvas ''
The Demon Seated
''The Demon Seated'' (russian: Демон сидящий) is an 1890 symbolist piece by Russian artist Mikhail Vrubel.Sara Elizabeth Hecker''Dueling Demons: Mikhail Vrubel's Demon Seated and Demon Downcast'' - Art in Russia Art in Russia, 2012-0 ...
'' (1890) and went mad while working on the dynamic and sinister
The Demon Downcast
''The Demon Downcast'' (russian: Демон поверженный) is a piece by the Russian painter Mikhail Vrubel, created around 1901-1902.
Description
The painting was made on canvas with oil. Its background is a mountainous area in a sc ...
(1902).
Other symbolist painters associated with the ''
World of Art'' magazine were
Victor Borisov-Musatov and
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, followers of
Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French painter known for his mural painting, who came to be known as "the painter for France". He became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Bea ...
;
Mikhail Nesterov
Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov (russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров; – 18 October 1942) was a Russian and Soviet painter; associated with the Peredvizhniki and Mir Iskusstva. He was one of the first exponents of ...
, who painted religious subjects from medieval Russian history;
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, with his "urbanistic phantasms", and
Nicholas Roerich, whose paintings have been described as hermetic, or esoteric. The tradition of Russian symbolism in the late Soviet period was renewed by
Konstantin Vasilyev
Konstantín Alexeyevich Vasilyev (russian: Константи́н Алексе́евич Васи́льев; September 3, 1942 – October 29, 1976) was a Russian symbolist painter, who left more than 400 paintings and drawings. His range of w ...
, whose style was greatly influenced by the Russian Neo-romantic painter
Viktor Vasnetsov, as well as
Mikhail Nesterov
Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov (russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров; – 18 October 1942) was a Russian and Soviet painter; associated with the Peredvizhniki and Mir Iskusstva. He was one of the first exponents of ...
and
Nicholas Roerich.
.
Music and theatre
The foremost symbolist composer was
Alexander Scriabin who in his
''First Symphony'' praised art as a kind of religion.
''Le Divin Poème'' (1902-1904) sought to express "the evolution of the human spirit from
pantheism
Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ...
to unity with the universe."
''Prométhée'' (1910), given in 1915 in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, was accompanied by elaborately selected colour projections on a screen.
In Scriabin's synthetic performances music, poetry, dancing, colours, and scents were used so as to bring about "supreme, final ecstasy."
Andrey Bely
Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev ( rus, Бори́с Никола́евич Буга́ев, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ bʊˈɡajɪf, a=Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev.ru.vorb.oga), better known by the pen name Andrei Bely or Biely ( rus, Андре ...
and
Wassily Kandinsky articulated similar ideas on the "stage fusion of all arts."
As to more traditional theatre,
Paul Schmidt an influential translator, has written that ''
The Cherry Orchard'' and some other late plays of
Anton Chekhov show the influence of the Symbolist movement.
[''The Plays of Anton Chekhov'', trans. Paul Schmidt (1997)] Their first production by
Constantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( Alekseyev; russian: Константин Сергеевич Станиславский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈgʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Russian Soviet Fe ...
was as realistic as possible. Stanislavski collaborated with the English
theatre practitioner Edward Gordon Craig on a significant
production of ''Hamlet'' in 1911–12, which experimented with symbolist
monodrama
A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.
In opera
In opera, a monodrama was originally a melodrama with one role such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's '' Pygmalion'', which w ...
as a basis for its staging. Two years later, Stanislavski won international acclaim when he staged
Maurice Maeterlinck's ''
The Blue Bird'' in the
Moscow Art Theatre.
Nikolai Evreinov was one of a number of writers who developed a symbolist theory of theatre. Evreinov insisted that everything around us is "theatre" and that nature is full of theatrical conventions, for example, desert flowers
mimicking stones, mice feigning death in order to escape cats' claws, and the complicated dances of some birds. Theatre, for Evreinov, was a universal symbol of existence.
References
Bibliography
Friedman, Julia ''Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism: Alexei Remizov's Synthetic Art'', Northwestern University Press, 2010. (Trade Cloth)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Symbolism, Russian
Russian art movements
Russian literary movements
Russian
Russian symbolism