Alexander Blok

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The Russian poet Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok (1880-1921) was a leading figure in the Russian symbolist movement. His strongly rhythmic poetry is characterized by metaphysical imagery, dramatic use of legend, and responsiveness to history and to social life.

Aleksandr Blok was born in St. Petersburg on Nov. 28, 1880. His father was a professor of law, and his mother a writer and translator; Blok thus grew up in an upper-class intellectual milieu. Summers were spent at Shakhmatovo, the Bloks' country home near Moscow. There the famous chemist D. I. Mendeleev was a neighbor, and in 1903 Blok married Mendeleev's daughter.

Blok had begun to write as a boy. In 1903 some of his poems were published in D. S. Merezhkovski's magazine, the New Way. Blok's first book, the strongly symbolistic Verses about the Beautiful Lady, appeared in 1904. Although most critics ignored the volume, it was greeted enthusiastically by Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, and the "older generation" of Russian symbolists, and Blok's poetry and reviews soon appeared regularly in their magazines.

Bryusov, the editor of the Balance and a leading symbolist theorist and poet, strongly influenced Blok in the years 1903 and 1904. Under Bryusov's guidance Blok turned to themes of city life and began to use fresh rhythmic patterns and images that expressed the mysterious power of sensual love. Among his notable poems of this period are "The Swamp Demon," "The Unknown Lady," "The Night Violet," "The Snow Mask," "The Factory," and "From the Newspapers." The last two indicate Blok's growing social awareness.

By 1906, when he graduated from the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University, Blok was a recognized poet. That year Vsevolod Meyerhold directed and starred in Blok's one-act verse play, The Puppet Show. Though admired in literary circles, the play was never a popular success. Blok wrote several other plays, including the fulllength The Rose and the Cross (1913), which was based on medieval French romances. Although rehearsed by Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theater, this play was not presented.

In 1907-1908 Blok was a reviewer for the magazine Golden Fleece. His articles combined evaluations of contemporary literature with a longing for the Russian past and for a vital connection between the intelligentsia and the people. In "Russia" and "On Kulikovo Field" (both 1908), he searched for a way to bring national history to bear on the present.

Despite his feelings of personal failure, from 1909 to 1916 Blok wrote poetry of high artistic achievement. "The Terrible World," "In the Restaurant," "Night Hours," and "Dances of Death" are particularly indicative of his spiritual turmoil. Blok and his wife had a stormy marital relationship, but during a temporary reconciliation they traveled in Italy in 1909. This trip inspired Blok's exquisite cycle Italian Poems (1909).

During World War I Blok served as a clerk with a forward engineers' company. He greeted the 1917 Revolution sympathetically. Indeed, his poem The Twelve (1918), a combined lyric and narrative about 12 Red Guardsmen on city patrol, synthesizes Christian values and reformist principles. It brought Blok even wider popularity and enduring fame. The revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky remarked that although Blok was not "one of us," The Twelve was "the most significant work of our time." In his long, unfinished, autobiographical poem Retribution, Blok summarized social change at the turn of the century.

Under the Soviet government Blok was a member of the directorate of the state theaters and chairman of the Petrograd section of the Poets' Union. Hard times, political bitterness, and his own confused life made him old at 40. In one of his last published works, The Decline of Humanism (1921), he lamented the dissipation of European style and the loss of heroes who could persuade men to act rationally in true self-interest. Blok died in Petrograd on Aug. 7, 1921.

Further Reading

Many studies of Blok in Russian have recently appeared, as well as a new edition of his complete works. Studies in English are Cecil Kisch, Alexander Blok, Prophet of Revolution: A Study of His Life and Work (1960); Franklin D. Reeve, Alexander Blok: Between Image and Idea (1962); and Robin Kemball, Alexander Blok: A Study in Rhythm and Metre (1965). See also Renato Poggioli, The Poets of Russia, 1890-1930 (1960).

Additional Sources

Berberova, Nina Nikolaevna, Aleksandr Blok: a life, New York: George Braziller, 1996.

Chukovskaeei, Korneaei, Alexander Blok as man and poet, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1982.

Forsyth, James, Listening to the wind: an introduction to Alexander Blok, Oxford Eng.: W. A. Meeuws, 1977.

Mochulskiaei, K. (Konstantin), Aleksandr Blok, Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1983.

Orlov, Vladimir Nikolaevich, Hamayun, the life of Alexander Blok, Moscow: Progress, 1980.

Pyman, Avril, The life of Aleksandr Blok, Oxford Eng.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979-1980.

(1880 - 1921), poet, playwright, essayist.

Alexander Blok, one of Russia's greatest poets and a key figure in the Symbolist movement, was born in St. Petersburg in 1880, into an aristocratic family of German and Russian descent. His father was a professor of law at the University of Warsaw and a talented musician; his mother, a poet and translator. Blok's parents separated shortly after his birth; he spent his childhood with his maternal grandfather, botanist Andrei Beketov, until his mother obtained legal divorce in 1889, remarried, and brought Blok with her into her new apartment. Blok wrote verse from his early childhood on, but his serious poetry began around age eighteen. He studied law without success at the University of Petersburg, transferred to the Historical-Philosophical Division, and received his degree in 1906.

As a young writer, Blok made the acquaintance of Symbolist poets, including Vladimir Soloviev and Andrei Bely. His first poetry collection Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (Verses on a beautiful lady) was published in 1904. Inspired by a mystical experience and his relationship with Lyubov Mendeleyeva, daughter of the famous chemist, whom he married in 1903, the poems, resonant with Romantic influence, depict a woman both earthly and divine, praised and summoned by the poet. Despite the sublime character of these poems, there are early signs of rupture and disturbance; the supplicatory tone itself borders on despair.

Blok followed his first collection with the lyric drama Balaganchik (The fair show booth), staged in 1906, and his second poetry collection, Nechayannaya radost (Inadvertent joy, 1907). These propelled him to fame. From there he continued to write prolifically, developing a distinctly tumultuous and sonorous style and influencing his contemporaries profoundly. His unfinished verse epic Vozmezdie (Retribution, 1910 - 1921), occasioned by the death of his father, chronicles his family history as an allegory of Russia's eventual spiritual resurrection; the cycle Na pole Kulikovom (On the field of kulikovo, 1908), celebrates Russia's victory in 1380 over the Mongol Tatars. Yet, despite the spiritual optimism of both works, their lyrical heights coincide with expressions of despair.

Blok supported the 1917 Revolution, perceiving it as a spiritual event, a step toward a transformed Christian world. Yet his twelve-part poem Dvenadtsat (The twelve, 1918) suggests deep ambivalence. Among the most complex and controversial of Blok's works, it mixes voices and idioms (slogans, war cries, laments, wry remarks) without resolving the discord. The shifts of rhythm and diction, the mimicry of sounds, and the punctuation of the verse with diverse exclamations overwhelm the Christian motif.

Blok's disillusionment with the Soviet bureaucracy and censorship is suggested in his fierce and eloquent essay "On the Poet's Calling" (1921), at one level a short treatise on Alexander Pushkin, at another level, a discussion of the conflict between the poet ("son of harmony") and the "mob" (chern). The poet's calling, according to Blok, is to create form (cosmos) out of raw sound (chaos); this goal is opposed by the mob - the officials and bureaucrats, those committed to everyday vanities.

Blok died in 1921 from a mysterious (possibly venereal) disease, in a state of malnutrition, despair, heavy drinking, and mental illness. His work continued to be published in the Soviet Union after his death, with a marked discrepancy between official and unofficial interpretations.

Bibliography

Berberova, Nina. (1996). Aleksandr Blok: A Life, tr. Robyn Marsack. New York: George Braziller.

Blok, Alexander. (1974). Selected Poems [of] Alexander Blok, tr. John Stallworthy and Peter France. Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Chukovsky, Kornei. (1982). Alexander Blok as Man and Poet, tr. and ed. Diana Burgin and Katherine O'Connor. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.

—DIANA SENECHAL

Bibliography

See his selected poems, ed. by A. Pyman (1972); his account of his journey to Italy, ed. by L. E. Vogel (1973); studies by F. D. Reeve (1962) and R. Kemball (1965).

Quotes:

"Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!"

Alexander Blok, 1907

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Блок [] ( listen), 28 November [O.S. 16 November] 1880 – 7 August 1921) was a Russian lyrical poet.

Contents 1 Life and career 2 Work 2.1 Symbolism 3 Musical settings 4 Notes 5 External links

Life and career

Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg State University. After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the manor Shakhmatovo near Moscow, where he discovered the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, and the verse of then-obscure 19th-century poets, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet. These influences would affect his early publications, later collected in the book Ante Lucem.

In 1903 he married Lyubov (Lyuba) Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. Later, she would involve him in a complicated love-hate relationship with his fellow Symbolist Andrei Bely. To Lyuba he dedicated a cycle of poetry that made him famous, Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame (Verses About the Beautiful Lady, 1904).

Blok's few relatives live currently in Moscow, Riga, Rome and England.

Black night.
White snow.
The wind, the wind!
It will not let you go. The wind, the wind!
Through God's whole world it blows

The wind is weaving
The white snow.
Brother ice peeps from below
Stumbling and tumbling
Folk slip and fall.
God pity all!

“

”

From "The Twelve" (1918)
Trans. Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky ^[1]

Night, street and streetlight, drugstore,
The purposeless, half-dim, drab light.
For all the use live on a quarter century –
Nothing will change. There's no way out.

You'll die – and start all over, live twice,
Everything repeats itself, just as it was:
Night, the canal's rippled icy surface,
The drugstore, the street, and streetlight.

“

”

"Night, street and streetlight, drugstore..." (1912) Trans. by Alex Cigale

During the last period of his life, Blok emphasized political themes, pondering the messianic destiny of his country (Vozmezdie, 1910–21; Rodina, 1907–16; Skify, 1918). Influenced by Solovyov's doctrines, he had vague apocalyptic apprehensions and often vacillated between hope and despair. "I feel that a great event was coming, but what it was exactly was not revealed to me", he wrote in his diary during the summer of 1917. Quite unexpectedly for most of his admirers, he accepted the October Revolution as the final resolution of these apocalyptic yearnings.

By 1921 Blok had become disillusioned with the Russian Revolution. He did not write any poetry for three years. Blok complained to Maksim Gorky that his "faith in the wisdom of humanity" had ended. He explained to his friend Korney Chukovsky why he could not write poetry any more: "All sounds have stopped. Can't you hear that there are no longer any sounds?"^[2] Within a few days Blok became sick. His doctors requested that he be sent for medical treatment abroad, but he was not allowed to leave the country. Gorky pleaded for a visa. On 29 May 1921, he wrote to Anatoly Lunacharsky: "Blok is Russia's finest poet. If you forbid him to go abroad, and he dies, you and your comrades will be guilty of his death". Blok received permission only on 10 August, after his death.^[2]

Several months earlier, Blok had delivered a celebrated lecture on Alexander Pushkin, the memory of whom he believed to be capable of uniting White and Soviet Russian factions. ^[2]

Work

Blok, 1917, The Winter Palace

The idealized mystical images presented in his first book helped establish Blok as a major poet of the Russian Symbolism style. Blok's early verse is musical, but he later sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry. Poetical inspiration was natural for him, often producing unforgettable, otherworldly images out of the most banal surroundings and trivial events (Fabrika, 1903). Consequently, his mature poems are often based on the conflict between the Platonic theory of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrialism (Neznakomka, 1906).

The description of St Petersburg he crafted for his next collection of poems, The City (1904–08), was both impressionistic and eerie. Subsequent collections, Faina and the Mask of Snow, helped augment Blok's reputation. He was often compared with Alexander Pushkin, and is considered perhaps the most important poet of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. During the 1910s, Blok was admired greatly by literary colleagues, and his influence on younger poets was virtually unsurpassed. Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Nabokov wrote important verse tributes to Blok.

Portrait by Konstantin Somov, 1907

Blok expressed his opinions about the revolution by the enigmatic poem "The Twelve" (1918). The long poem exhibits "mood-creating sounds, polyphonic rhythms, and harsh, slangy language" (as the Encyclopædia Britannica termed it). It describes the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (likened to the Twelve Apostles of Christ) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. "The Twelve" alienated Blok from many of his intellectual readers (who accused him of lack of artistry), while the Bolsheviks scorned his former mysticism and aesceticism. Blok considered this poem to be his best work.^[3] Searching for modern language and new images, Blok used unusual sources for the poetry of Symbolism: urban folklore, ballads (songs of a sentimental nature) and ditties ("chastushka"). He was inspired by the popular chansonnier Mikhail Savoyarov, whose concerts during the years 1915–1920 were visited often by Blok.^[4] Academician Viktor Shklovsky noted, that the poem is written in criminal language and in ironic style, similar to Savoyarov’s couplets, by which Blok imitated the slang of 1918 Petrograd.^[5]

Symbolism

Blok considered his poetical output as composed of three volumes. The first volume is composed of his early poems about the Fair Lady. The second volume comments upon the impossibility of attaining the ideal for which he craved. The third volume, featuring his poems from pre-revolutionary years, is more lively. For Blok's poetry, colours are essential. Blue or violet is the colour of frustration, when the poet understands that his hope to see the Lady is delusive. The yellow colour of street lanterns, windows and sunsets is the colour of treason and triviality. Black hints at something terrible, dangerous but potentially capable of esoteric revelation. Russian words for yellow and black are spelled by the poet with a long O instead of YO, in order to underline "a hole inside the word".

Imitating Fyodor Tyutchev, Blok developed a complicated system of poetic symbols. In his early work, for instance, wind represents the Fair Lady's approach, whereas morning or spring is the time when their meeting is most likely to happen. Winter and night are the evil times when the poet and his lady are far away from each other. Bog and mire represent everyday life with no spiritual light from above.

Musical settings

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a late song cycle for soprano and piano trio, Seven Romances of Alexander Blok, and Arthur Lourié a choral cantata, In the Sanctuary of Golden Dreams.

Alexander Blok was a favourite poet of Georgy Sviridov; such works as "Petersburg" (a vocal poem), "Nightly Clouds" (cantata) and "Songs From Hard Times" (concerto) were written to Blok's poetry.

Notes

1. ^ Fragment from "The Twelve" re-printed in The Slavonic and East European Review Vol. 8, No. 22 (Jun., 1929), pp. 188-198
2. ^ ^{a b c} Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, 1996, ISBN 0-7126-7327-X, pp 784-785
3. ^ Pavel Fokin, Sv.Poliakova (2008). Blok without gloss. Saint Petersburg: Amphora. p. 360. 
4. ^ ed. Ouvarova (2000). «Encyclopedia of Russian Variety Art, XX century». Moscow: «Rospen». 
5. ^ [1] Viktor Shklovsky The Writing Table // The Hamburg Account: articles, memoirs, essays (1914-1933), Moscow, Sovetsky Pisatel ("Soviet Writer") publisher, 1990. ISBN 5-265-00951-5, ISBN 978-5-265-00951-7.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alexander Blok

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alexander Blok

• English translations of 4 short poems. University of Albany. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• "Died and survived" review of new works published on Blok By Simon Karlinsky. 9 May 1982 New York Times. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Essay on Blok's poem "the Twelve", Maria Carlson, University of Kansas. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Essay on Blok by Leon Trotsky. Retrieved 2010-10-28

Persondata
Name	Blok, Alexander
Alternative names	Blok, Alexandr
Short description	Poet
Date of birth	28 November 1880
Place of birth	Saint Petersburg
Date of death	1921-08-07
Place of death

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