What does the silver age mean. Silver Age of Russian Culture

Who first began to talk about the "Silver Age", why this term was so opposed to contemporaries and when he finally became a common place - Arzamas retells the key provisions of OMI Ronen "Silver Age as intent and fiction"

The concept of "Silver Age" applied to the frontier XIX-XX centuries is one of the fundamental to describe the history of Russian culture. Today, no one may have a doubt in positive (one can even say "noble", like silver itself) the color of this phrase - opposed, by the way, such "falncable" characteristics of the same historical period in Western culture as FIN de Siècle ("End century ") or" End of an excellent era. " Number of books, articles, anthologies and hostesses, where the "silver age" appears as a well-established definition, it simply cannot count. Nevertheless, the appearance of phrases, and what the importance of contemporaries invested in it is not even a problem, but a whole detective story.

Pushkin on the lyceum exam in the royal village. Picture of Ilya Repin. 1911 Wikimedia Commons

Each time - its metal

Starting with from afar, namely from two significant examples when the properties of metals are attributed to the era. And here it is worth named antique classics (first of all Hesiod and Ovid), on the one hand, and friend and dedicator Pushkin on the "contemporary" Peter Alexandrovich Pletnev, on the other.

The first presented to themselves the history of mankind as a change of various human births (in a geyode, for example - gold, silver, copper, heroic and iron; Ovid will subsequently refuse the heroes of the century and prefer the classification only "on metals"), alternately created by the gods and with the time of the disappeared From the face of the earth.

Peter Alexandrovich Plenev's criticism is the first naming of the era of Zhukovsky, Batyushkova, Pushkin and the Baratyan "Golden Century" of Russian poetry. The definition was quickly perceived by contemporaries and by the middle of the XIX century it became a common place. In this sense, the name of the next large burst of the poetic (and not only) culture of the century "Silver" is nothing but the humiliation: silver - metal is much less noble than gold.

So it becomes clear why scientists-humanitarians who came out of the cultural boiler of the centuries of centuries, the phrase "Silver Age" was deeply pretty. Such were the critic and translator Gleb Petrovich Struve (1898-1985), Linguist Roman Osipovich Jacobson (1896-1982) and the historian of Literature Nikolai Ivanovich Hardzhiev (1903-1996). All three talked about the "silver century" with significant irritation, directly calling such a name erroneous and wrong. Conversations with strengthen and lectures of Jacobson at Harvard inspired Omry Ronen (1937-2012) for a study, where the sources and causes of the popularity of the term "Silver Century" are considered in the fascinating (almost detective) form. The present note claims only to be a popular retelling of the work of a wonderful scientist-erudite "Silver Age as intent and fiction."

Berdyaev and Memoirist Error

Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890-1939), one of the influential critics of Russian abroad and the author of one of the best "stories of Russian literature", surrounding his cultural abundance preferred to refer to the "second golden age". The same "silver", in accordance with the hierarchy of precious metals, Mirsky called the era of Feta, Nekrasov and Alexei Tolstoy, and here he coincided with the philosophers Vladimir Solovyov and Vasily Rosanov, who took the period from 1841 to 1881 for the Silver Century.

Nikolay Berdyaev Wikimedia Commons

It is even more important to indicate that Nikolay Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948), which traditionally attributed to the authorship of the term "silver age" as applied to the openings of the XIX-XX centuries, actually imagined cultural development about the same as his colleagues in the philosophical workshop . The Pushkin Epoch of Berdyaev, according to the established tradition, was called the Golden Age, and the beginning of the twentieth century with his powerful creative rise - Russian cultural (but not a religious) Renaissance. It is characteristic that the phrase "Silver Century" is not found in any Berdyaevsky text. In attributing Berdyaev, a few lines from the memoirs of the poet and the critic of Sergei Makovsky "on the Parnas of the Silver Century", published in 1962, were to blame for the dubious glory of the Flavor of the Term.

"Tomorrow of the Spirit, the desire for the" prisoner "penetrated our age," Silver Age "(so called Berdyaev, opposing Pushkinsky -" Golden "), partly under the influence of the West."

Mysterious Gleb Marev and the appearance of the term

The first writer who was going on at the turn of the century and declared his own era of the "silver age," was mysterious Gleb Marev (almost nothing, therefore it is not excluded that the name was a pseudonym). In 1913, a brochure "Allure" was published under his name. The mittens of the modern one, "which was included by the Manifest of the" Final Age of Jace ". It is there that the formulation of the metallurgical metamorphosis of Russian literature: "Pushkin - gold; symbolism - silver; Modern - Tuskombnaya Issue. "

R. V. Ivanov-Dissenter with children: Son Lv and the daughter of Irina. 1910s Russian National Library

If we take into account the quite likely parody of the writings of the Marieff, becomes a clear context, in which the original phrase "Silver Age" was used to describe modern for the writers of the era. It was in the polemic key that the philosopher and the publicist omensorily Vasilyevich Ivanov-Obesenik (1878-1946), in the article 1925, "Look and Something", poisonously mocking (under the Griboedovsky pseudonym Ippolit Udyshev) over jams, "Seraponov Brothers" "Serapionov Brothers" - Association of young Prosaikov, poets and critics, which arose in Petrograd on February 1, 1921. The members of the association were Lion Longs, Ilya Gruzvev, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Veniamin Cavery, Nikolai Nikitin, Mikhail Slonimsky, Elizaveta Polonskaya, Konstantin Fedin, Nikolay Tikhonov, Vsevolod Ivanov., acmeists and even formalists. The second period of Russian modernism, whose flourishing fell in the 1920s, Ivanov-Obsend contemptuously dubbed the "silver century", predicted further sunset of Russian culture:

Four years later, in 1929, the poet and critic Vladimir Pit (Vladimir Alekseevich Pestovsky, 1886-1940) in the preface to their memories of "Meetings" spoke about the "Silver Age" of the modern poetry to him seriously (it was possible that he did it in The procedure for a dispute with Ivanov-Obidnik) - Although very unstable and caution:

"We are far from the claim to compare our peers, the" eighties "by birth, with representatives of some" silver century "Russian, say," modernism ". However, in the middle of the eighties, a fairly significant number of people designed to "serve the muses" appeared.

The "Golden" and "Silver" century, the Pyat found in classical Russian literature - on the modern culture he tried to spread the same two-stage scheme, speaking of different generations of writers.

The silver age becomes more

"Number" magazine Imwerden.de.

The expansion of the concept of "Silver Age" belongs to the critics of Russian emigration. The first was the term, applied to the description of the entire pre-Luce Epoch of Modernism in Russia, Nikolai Avdeevich Onts (1894-1958). Initially, he only repeated the well-known thoughts of the five in Article 1933, entitled "Silver Age of Russian Poetry" and published in the popular Paris emigrant magazine "Numbers". The FCUP, in no way mentioning the five, actually borrowed from the last idea of \u200b\u200bthe two centuries of Russian modernism, but he threw out the "Golden Age" from the 20th century. Here is the harassing example of Otsupa's reasoning:

"Peace in its development by the force of a number of historical reasons was forced in a short time to carry out what was done in Europe for several centuries. Inimitable ascent of the "Golden Age" in part in part and explain. But the fact that we called the "century silver", according to strength and energy, as well as on the abundance of surprise-tel creatures, almost does not have analogy in the West: it's like an arterial phenomenon that took place in three decades in France The whole nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. "

It was this compile article that introduced the expression "Silver Century" into the lexicon of Russian literary emigration.

One of the first specified phrases picked up the famous Paris Critic Vladimir Vasilyevich Vaidla (1895-1979), who wrote in the article "Three Russia", published in 1937:

"The most striking of the newest history of Russia is that it turned out to be the possible silver age of Russian culture, which was preceded by its revolutionary collapse."

Participants of the studio "sounding sink". Photo of Moses Podrebaum. 1921 yearOn the left - Frederica and Ida Naprebaum, in the center - Nikolai Gumilev, to the right - Vera Lurier and Konstantin Vaginov, below Georgy Ivanov and Irina Odoyevtsheva. Literary Crimea / VK.com

Here the new term for the era just begins to be applied already as something obvious, although this does not mean that it was from 1937 that the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "silver century" has already become a universal property: a painful jealous OCUP in a revised version of his article, who seen the light after death, criticism Specially added words that it was his first name "for the characteristics of modernist Russian literature". And there is a reasonable question: and what about the "Figures" of the Epoch of the Silver Century thought about themselves? How did the poets themselves define themselves, represented this era? For example, Osip Mandelstam to the era of Russian modernism used the well-known term "Sturm und Drang" ("Storm and Natisk").

The phrase "Silver Century" in applied by the beginning of the 20th century is found only in two large poets (or more specifically, the poetess). In the article by Marina Tsvetaeva "Damn" printed in 1935 in the leading Paris emigrant magazine "Modern Notes", the following lines were withdrawn from publication (they were subsequently restored by researchers): "It would not be necessary for children, or, then, not We should, for us, children of silver time, about thirty Srebrenikov. "

It follows from this passage that Tsvetaeva, firstly, was familiar with the name "Silver Age"; Secondly, he perceived it with a sufficient fraction of irony (it is possible that these words were a reaction to the above arguments of the OTSUP 1933). Finally, perhaps the most famous lines from the "poems without hero" Anna Akhmatova:

On the gallery dark arc,
In summer thinly sang Flugarka,
And the silver month is bright
Over the silver century was poke.

Understanding these lines is impossible without applying to the wider context of the poet's creativity, but it does not have to doubt that the "silver age" in Akhmatova is not the definition of the era, but a clutch of a quote that carrying its own function in the artistic text. For the author "Poems without a hero", devoted to summing up, the name "Silver Age" is not the characteristic of the era, but one of its items (clearly not indisputable), these literary critics and other cultural figures.

Nevertheless, the phrase discussed quite quickly lost its initial meaning and began to be used as a classification term. Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov wrote in the preface to the poetic antholiology of the border of the ages: "The Poetics of the Silver Age", which are in question, are primarily the poetics of Russian modernism. So it is customary to call three poetic directions that announced their existence between 1890 and 1917 ... "So the definition quickly gained and was taken on faith and readers, and researchers (it is possible that for the absence of the best) and distributed to Painting, sculpture, architecture and other areas of culture.

Silver eyelids The figurative definition, which introduced N.A. Ortsup in the article of the same name (Numbers. Paris. 1933. NO 78), having in mind the fate of the Russian modernism of the beginning of the 20th century; Later, he expanded the content of the concept (OCUP N.A. contemporaries. Paris, 1961), denoting the chronological boundaries and the nature of the phenomenon born by the confrontation "realism". N.A. Bardyaev The term "Silver Age" replaced the other - "Russian cultural renaissance" ("Renaissance of the early 20th century"), since it interpreted him widely - as the awakening of the "philosophical thought, the flourishing of poetry and the aggravation of aesthetic sensitivity, religious searches" (Berdyaev N.A. Self-knowledge. Paris, 1983). S. Makovsky united poets, writers, artists, musicians with a common "cultural lift in the pre-revolutionary era" (Makovsky S. on the Parnas of the Silver Age. Munich, 1962). The determination of the silver century gradually absorbed the diversity of phenomena, becoming synonymous with all the discoveries of the culture of this time. The value of this phenomenon deeply felt Russian emigrants. In the Soviet literature, the concept of the silver century was fundamentally silent.

OILS, comparing the domestic literature of the gold (i.e. Pushkin era) and the silver age, came to the conclusion that the modern "master wins the Prophet", and all the artists created "closer to the author, more - in human growth" ("Contemporaries") . The origins of such a complex phenomenon revealed active participants in the literary process of the beginning of the 20th century I.F.annensky saw in modern times "I" - tortured by the consciousness of his hopeless loneliness, the inevitable end and aimless existence, "but in the writing state of mind, there was a saving craving for" ", Achieving" beauty, thought and suffering "(Annensky I. Favorites). A courageous deepening into the tragic dissonances of the inner being and at the same time a passionate thirst for harmony is the initial antinomy, awakening an artistic search. Its specifics have diversely identified Russian symbolists. K. Balmont discovered in the world "not the unity of the highest, and the infinity of hostile-encountered heterogeneous entities", the terrible kingdom of "overturned depths". Therefore, I called on to unravel the "invisible life for the obvious appearance", the "living essence" of phenomena, to transform them in the "spiritual depth", "into clairvoyant clock" (Balmont K. Mountain peaks). A.blok heard the "wild scream of the soul of a lonely, on a moment the Russian swamps miped over the fruitlessness" and came to the discovery, which he recognized in the works of F. Sologub, who repelled "the whole world, all the absurdity of crumpled planes and broken lines, because among them He is a transfigured person "(Collected Works: in 8 volumes, 1962. Volume 5).

The inspiration of Ambheyists N.Gumilev left a similar statement about Sologube, which "reflects the whole world, but is reflected by transformed." Even more definite Gumilev expressed his idea of \u200b\u200bthe poetic achievements of this time in the reviews on the "Cypress casket" Annensky: "He penetrates the darkest arms of the human soul"; "The question with which he addresses the reader is:" And if dirt and lowness only flour on somewhere there shining beauty? " - It's no longer a question, but an immutable truth "(Collected works: in 4 volumes Washington, 1968. Volume 4). In 1915, Sologff wrote about the latest poetry as a whole: "The art of our days ... seeks to transform the world with an effort of creative will ... self-affirmation of the personality and there is a start of the desire for the better future" (Russian thought. 1915. No 12). The aesthetic struggle of different flows was not forgotten. But she did not cancel the general trends in the development of poetic culture, which Russian emigrants understood well. They treated equal to members of opposing groups. Yesterday's comrades of Gumilev (OTSUP, Ivanov, etc.) not only allocated the figure of the block into a number of his contemporaries, but also elected his legacy point of reference to their achievements. According to G. Ivanov, the block is "one of the most striking phenomena of Russian poetry for all the time of its existence" (Ivanov. Collected Works: in 3 volumes, 1994. Volume 3). The FCUP found a considerable community between the Gumilev and the block in the area of \u200b\u200bpreserving the traditions of domestic culture: Gumilev - "Poet Deep Russian, no less than the national poet than a block" (FCUP N. Literary essays. Paris, 1961). G.Deva, uniting the uniform principles for the analysis of the creativity of the block, Sologuba, Gumilyov, Mandelstam, came to the conclusion: "The names of Pushkin, Blok, Gumileva should be our guiding stars on the path to freedom"; "The ideal of the Freedom of the artist" was stunned by Sologub and Mandelshtam, heard, "as a block, noise and germination of time" (streng about four poets. London, 1981).

Concepts of the silver century

A large temporary distance separated Russian abroad figures from their native elements. For oblivion, the flaws of concrete disputes of the past were delivered; The concepts of the silver century, a essential approach to poetry born related spiritual requests was laid. From such a position, many links of the literary process of the beginning of the century are perceived. Gumilev wrote (April 1910): symbolism "was the result of the maturity of the human spirit, which proclaimed that the world is our representation"; "Now we can not not be symbolists" (Collected Works Volume 4). And in January 1913 approved the fall of the symbolism and the victory of the aqmeism, indicating the differences between the new course from the preceding: "Large equilibrium between the subject and the object" lyrics, the development of the "newly thoughtative Syllabic system of the resentment", the coherence of "symbol art" with "other ways of poetic impact", Search for words "with a more sustainable content" (Collected Works Tom 4). Nevertheless, even in this article there is no disconnection from the sacred for symbolists of the providic appointment of creativity. Gumilev did not accept their hobbies of religion, theosophy, refused generally from the area of \u200b\u200b"unknown", "unknowable." But in his program, the path of climbing precisely for this top is: "Our debt, our will, our happiness and our tragedy - it is hourly guess what will be the next hour for us, for our business, for the whole world, and rushing his approach" ( Ibid). In a few years, the article "Reader" Gumilev claimed: "The leadership in the degeneration of a person to the highest belongs to religion and poetry." Symbolists dreamed of the awakening of the Divine began in the earthly existence. Ambamests worshiped the talent re-creating, "dissolving" in the arts imperfect, existing, by definition of Gumilyov, "the majestic ideal of life in art and for art (ibid). The parallel between the work of two directions, their expressivers - the humilev and the block is natural: they have similarly marked the highest point of their aspirations. The first wanted to come together to the world rhythm; The second is to join the music of the World Orchestra (Collected Works Volume 5). It is more difficult to rank with such a movement of futurists, with their renovation of Russian classics and modern verse masters, the distortion of grammar and the syntax of the native language, the worship of the "new topics" - "meaninglessness, secret of power of the authority" ("Sadok judges. II", 1913). But the members of the most numerous association "Gileia" called themselves "will be" will be " "Millain," V. explained Mayakovsky, are people who will. We are the day before "(Mayakovsky V. Full Collection of Works: in 13 volumes, 1955. Volume 1). In the name of the person of the future, the poet himself and most of the participants of the group are given to the "real great art of an artist who changes life in their own way and likeness" (ibid.), Dreams of the "Drawing of the Arch Republic" (ibid.) Millions of huge clean lies "(" cloud in pants ", 1915). Threatened by frightening destructions, Russian futurists are still to generally for the newest poetry of the early 20th century of the orientation, claiming the opportunity to transform the world by means of art. This "end-to-end" channel of creative searches, repeatedly and reprimanded, reported the originality of all the flows of domestic modernism, celebrated from his foreign predecessor. In particular, the art of decades was overcome, although many "older" symbolists first took his influence. The block wrote at the turn of 1901-02: "There are two kinds of decadents: good and bad: good - these are those who should not be called decades (so far only a negative definition)" (Collected Works Volume 7).

Emigrants of the first wave realized this fact deeper. V.Neshevich, having allowed controversial judgments about the position of individual poets (V. Brysov, A. Bel, Vyach.Ivanov, etc.), caught the essence of the tendency: "Symbolism very soon felt that the Decadess had a poison, wandering into his blood. All subsequent civil wars of him - were nothing more than the struggle of healthy symbolist began with patients, Deadadski (Collected Works: in 4 Tamakh, 1996, Volume 2). The interpretation of Khodasevich's "fallen" traits can be completely disseminated on dangerous manifestations in the practice of some other modernists, for example, futurists: "Decadession" "was in a hurry to turn freedom into detroteity, originality in the originality, novelty to the crushing" (ibid.). Permanent opponent Khodasevich G.Aadamovich, recognizing the Mayakovsky "talent a huge, rare", brilliant even when he "broke the Russian language in favor of his futuristic whims", one of the sacrifices of the poet (and his like-minded people) from the sacred foundations of genuine inspiration: " An exemption, the posture, a wobble, causing panibrates with the whole world and even with the everome "(Adamovich G. loneliness and freedom, 1996). Both criticism is close in understanding artistic achievements. Khodasevich saw them in the symbolist opening of the "genuine reality" by "the transformation of reality in the creative act". Adamovich pointed to the desire "from poetry to make the most important human activity, lead to the celebration", "that symbolists called the transfiguration of the world." Russian abroad figures have clarified in clashes of modernism and realism. The creators of the latest poetry, uncompromisingly denying positivism, materialism, objectivity, mockingly vulled either did not notice the modern realists. B. Zaitsev recalled the creative association organized by N.Telchev: "Wednesday" was a circle of realist writers in the opposition to the symbolists already appearing "(B. Zaitsev on the way. Paris, 1951). The formidable and ironic debate of modernism was the speech of I.A. Bunin on the 50th anniversary of the Russian Vedomosti newspaper (1913). Each party considered itself the only right, and the opposite - almost random. Otherwise, the "split" of the literary process with emigrants was regarded. Ivanov, once an active participant in the Gumilevsky "Poets Workshop", called the art of Bunin "The most stringent", "pure gold", next to which "our biased canons seem to be supreme and unnecessary speculation of the" current literary life "(collected works: in 3 volumes , 1994, volume 3). A. Kuprina in Russia was often reduced to the "singer of carp of carnivis", a vital flow, and in the emigration they appreciated the spiritual depth and innovation of his prose: "He seems to lose power over the literary laws of the novel - in fact, allows himself a greater courage of prinhibitch them ( Khodasevich V. Revival. 1932). Khodasevich compared the positions of the Bunin and early symbolism, related from this course convincingly explained to the flight of the Bunin "from Dependent," his "chastity - shame and disgust" caused by the "artistic cheap". The appearance of symbolism, however, interpreted the "most defining phenomenon of Russian poetry" of the stroke of ages: Bunin, not noticing its further discoveries, has lost many wonderful opportunities in lyrics. Khodasevich came to the conclusion: "I confess, for me in front of such verses somewhere in the distance, all the" discrepancies ", all theories, and disappears, to understand, in what Bunin rights and what is wrong, because the winners do not judge" (Collected Works Tom 2). Adamovich substantiated the naturalness and necessity of coexistence of two difficult compatible beds in the development of prose. In his thoughts, he also relied on the heritage of the Bunin and the symbolist of Merezhkovsky, constructing this comparison by the traditions of L. Tolstoy and F.Dostoevsky. For Bunin, as for his idol Tolstoy, "a person remains a man who does not dream of becoming an angel or demon," alien to "insane wandering around heavenly ether." Meriazhkovsky, submitting to the Magic of Dostoevsky, exposed his heroes "any takeoff, any fall, outside the control of the Earth and the flesh." Both types of creativity, considered Adamovich, - areometric "trends of time", as they are deepened in the secrets of spiritual being.

For the first time (mid 1950s), Russian emigrants argued the objective importance of opposing areas in the literature of the early 20th century, although their irreconcilability was discovered: the desire of modernists to transform reality to the means of art was faced with the unbelief of realists in his life-friendly function. Specific observations of artistic practition have made it possible to feel significant changes in the realism of the new era, which led the peculiarity of prose and was aware of the writers themselves. Bunin handed the alarm about the "higher matters" - "On the essence of being, about the appointment of a person on earth, about his role in the human limitless crowd" (Collected works: in 9 volumes, 1967, Volume 9). The tragic doomes on the eternal problems in the elements of everyday existence, among the indifferent human flow led to the comprehension of his mysterious "I", some unknown manifestations, self-sustaining, intuitive, difficult, sometimes not related to external impressions. The inner life acquired special scale and uniqueness. Bunin acutely experienced "blood relationship" with "Russian antiquity" and "secret madness" - thirst for beauty (ibid.). Kuprin languished with the desire to gain force, an acceptable person "in infinite check out", to embody "indescribable complex shades of moods" (collected works: in 9 volumes, 1973, volume 9). B. Zaytseva worried a dream to write "something without end and start" - "run words to express the impression of the night, trains, loneliness" (B. B. Blue Star. Tula, 1989). In the sphere of self-election, the personality was disclosed, however, a holistic peaceproofation. Moreover, as M.Voloshin assumed, the history of mankind appeared "in more precise form", when "from the inside" came to her, "the life of a billion people, vaguely robbed in us" (Voloshin M. Meshochnia of all paths, 1989).

Writers created their "second reality", woven from subjective ideas, memories, forecasts, dreamed dreams, means of expanding the meaning of the word, paint values, details. The ultimate strengthening of the copyright began in the narration reported the latter a variety of lyrical forms, identified new genre structures, an abundance of fresh style solutions. The framework of the classical prose of the 19th century was closely for the literature of the subsequent period. It merged with various trends: realism, impressionism, symbolization of ordinary phenomena, mythologization of images, romantization of heroes and circumstances. The type of artistic thinking has become synthetic.

As a complex nature of this time, this time was revealed by the figures of Russian abroad. G.struve believed: "Block," Romantic, obsessed, "" stretches to classicism "; Something similar noted by Gumilev (Collected Works, Volume 4). Realism, the attraction to the "sober will" saw K.Mochulsky in the works of Brysov (Mochulsky K. Valery Bryusov. Paris, 1962). The block in the article "On Lyrics" (1907) wrote that "the grouping of poets on schools is" Labor Celebrated ". This gaze defended the emigrants later. "Poetic Renaissance" Berdyaev called "peculiar Russian romanticism", lowering the differences in his flows ("self-knowledge"). Realists did not adopt the idea of \u200b\u200bthe transformation of peace in a creative act, but they deeply penetrated into the inner human attraction to the divine harmony, the creative, reviving the wonderful feeling. The artistic culture of the era possessed a common incentive developed. S. Makovsky combined the creativity of poets, prosaikov, musicians with one atmosphere, "rebellious, enthusiastically, wise beauty." The sophisticated mastery of writers in character, the place, the time of its heyday is inseparable from these values.

the name of the period of Russian artistic culture, which reflected the mood of the new socio-historical era of the beginning of the XX century. The most complete incarnation was received in the literature, poetry. The work of the Masters of the Silver Age is characterized by the blurring of thematic boundaries, a wide scattering of approaches and creative re-joints. As an independent phenomenon existed to the middle of the 20s.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

"SILVER AGE"

the period in the history of Russian culture from the 1890s. on start 1920s. Traditionally it was believed that the first "Silver Age" expression was first used by the poet and literary critic of the Russian emigration of N. A. Ootsup in the 1930s. But a wide fame, this expression has acquired thanks to the memoirs of art criticism and poet S. K. Makovsky "On the Parnass of the Silver Century" (1962), which attributed the creation of this concept to the philosopher N. A. Berdyaev. However, neither the FCPU, nor Berdyaev were the first: Berdyaev does not occur this expression, and the writer R. V. Ivanov-umened, first used him to Otsupa. 1920s, and then the poet and memoirist V. A. Phas in 1929

The legitimacy of the naming of the con. 19 - Nach. 20 V. "Silver Age" causes certain doubts from researchers. This expression is formed by analogy with the "golden age" of Russian poetry, which is a literary critic, friend A. S. Pushkin, P. A. Pletnev called the first decades of the 19th century. Literary critic, negatively related to the expression "Silver Age", indicated the ambiguity of which works and according to which principle should be attributed to the literature "Silver Century". In addition, the name "Silver Century" suggests that in artistic attitude, the literature of this time is inferior to the literature of the Pushkin Epoch ("Golden Age"). Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Silver eyelid is not a chronological period. At least not only the period. And this is not the amount of literary flows. Rather, the concept of "silver age" is appropriate to apply to the image of thinking.

The atmosphere of the silver century

At the end of the nineteenth - the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia experienced an intense intellectual lifting, especially brightly manifested in philosophy and poetry. Philosopher Nikolay Berdyaev (read it) called this time by Russian cultural renaissance. According to the Berdyaevsky contemporary Sergey Makovsky, it is Berdyaev who owns another, the more well-known definition of this period is "Silver Age". According to other data, the phrase "Silver Age" was first used in 1929 by the poet Nikolai Ontsu. The concept is not so much scientific, how much emotional, causing an association with another short period of the history of Russian culture - with the "golden age", the Pushkin era of Russian poetry (first third of the XIX century).

"Now it is hardly to imagine the atmosphere of that time," Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the silver century in his "philosophical autobiography" "self-knowledge." - Much of the creative rise of that time included in the further development of Russian culture and now there is a heritage of all Russian cultural people. But then was intoxication creative approach, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. During these years, Russia was sent many gifts. It was the era of waking up in Russia of independent philosophical thought, the flourishing of poetry and the exacerbation of aesthetic sensuality, religious concern and a quest, interest in mysticism and the occultism. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were opened, saw new dawns, combined the feeling of sunset and death with the hope for the transformation of life. But everything happened in a rather closed circle ... "

Silver Age as a period and thinking

The art and philosophy of the silver century were distinguished by elitism, intellectualism. Therefore, it is impossible to identify all the poetry of the late XIX - the beginning of the 20th century with the silver century. This is a narrower concept. Sometimes, however, taking an attempt to determine the essence of the ideological content of the silver century through formal signs (literary flows and groupings, socio-political subtexts and contexts), researchers mistakenly mix them. In fact, in the chronological boundaries of this period, the most different in the origin and aesthetic orientation of the phenomenon coexisted: the modernist flows, the poetry of the classical realistic tradition, the peasant, proletarian, satirical poetry ... But the silver century is not a chronological period. At least not only the period. And this is not the amount of literary flows. Rather, the concept of "Silver Age" is appropriate to apply to the image of thinking, which, being characteristic of artists who have begun among themselves, ultimately merged them in the minds of descendants to some kind of inseparable Pleiad, who formed the specific atmosphere of the Silver Age, which Berdyaev wrote about .

Poets of the Silver Century

The names of the poets who were the spiritual core of the Silver Age, everyone knows: Valery Bryusov, Fedor Sologub, Innokenty Annensky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrey White, Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Gumilyov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Igor Northgen, George Ivanov and many others.

In the most concentrated form of the atmosphere of the silver century, he received its expression in the first and a half decades of the twentieth century. It was the flourishing of the literature of Russian modern in the entire variety of his artistic, philosophical, religious searches and discoveries. World War II, the February Bourgeois-Democratic and October Socialist Revolution partly provoked, partly formed this cultural context, and in part were provoked and formed by it. Representatives of the Silver Age (and Russian Modern in general) were striving to overcome positivism, the abandonment of the heritage "Sixties", denied materialism, as well as idealistic philosophy.

The poets of the Silver Age sought to overcome the attempts of the second half of the XIX century to explain the behavior of a person with social conditions, the environment and continued the traditions of Russian poetry, for which a person was important in itself, his thoughts and feelings are important, his attitude to eternity, to God, to love and death in the philosophical, metaphysical sense. The poets of the Silver Century and in their artistic work, and in theoretical articles and statements questioned the idea of \u200b\u200bprogress for literature. For example, one of the brightest Creators of the Silver Age, Osip Mandelstam wrote that the idea of \u200b\u200bprogress is "the most disgusting type of school ignorance." And Alexander Blok in 1910 argued: "The sun of naive realism has rolled out; It is impossible to comprehend anything outside the symbolism. " The poets of the Silver Age believed in art, by virtue of the word. Therefore, for their creativity, immersing in the element of the word, the search for new means of expression. They cared not only about the sense, but also about the style - the sound, the music of the word and the full immersion in the element was important for them. This immersion led to the cult of vital formation (inseparalism of the personality of the Creator and his art). And almost always in connection with this, the poets of the Silver Age were unhappy in their personal life, and many of them were badly cumulative.

). This also includes the authors of Russian abroad, whose work is also considered in line with modernism ( cm. Literature of Russian abroad). There is a different approach seeking to consider the entire minor era as a single whole, in a complex relationship of not only different literary areas, but also all the phenomena of the cultural life of this period (art, philosophy, religious and political flows). Such an idea of \u200b\u200bthe "silver century" is distributed in recent decades both in the Western and in domestic science.

The boundaries of the denoted period are determined by different researchers in different ways. The beginning of the "Silver Century" Most scientists dating 1890s, some - 1880s. Diffuses about its end border are large (from 1913-1915 to the middle of the 20th century). However, the point of view is gradually approved that the "silver age" approached the end in the early 1920s.

In modern use, the expression "Silver Age" or does not have an estimated nature, or beetting poetications (silver as a noble metal, lunar silver, special spirituality). The initial consumption of the term was rather negative, because Silver Age, coming after gold, implies a decline, degradation, decadence. This representation dates back to antiquity, to Hesiod and Ovid, who built the cycles of human history in accordance with the change of generations of gods (in Titan, Crown Saturn was a golden age, a silver appeared in his son Zeus-Jupiter). The metaphor of the "Golden Age" as a happy pore of mankind, when the eternal spring reigned and the land itself brought the fruit, received a new development in European culture, starting with the Renaissance (primarily in pastoral literature). Therefore, the expression "silver age" should have indicated a decrease in the quality of the phenomenon, its regression. With such an understanding of the Russian literature of the Silver Age (modernism) was opposed to the "Golden Age" of Pushkin and its contemporaries as "classical" literature.

R.Ivanov-Obesenik and V.Pyast, the first to use the expression "Silver Age", did not oppose it to the "Golden Ventation" of Pushkin, and allocated in the literature began 20 in. Two poetic periods ("golden age", strong and talented poets; and "silver eyelids", poets of less strength and less). For the fifth "Silver Age" - the concept is primarily chronological, although the sequence of periods and is correlated with some decrease in the poetic level. On the contrary, Ivanov-umened uses it as an estimate. For him, the "silver age" - the decline of the "creative wave", the main signs of which is the "self-sufficient technique, lowering the spiritual take-off at the apparent increase in the technical level, the gloss of the form."

N. Ortsup, the popularizer of the term, also used it in different senses. In Article 1933, he defined the silver age not so much chronologically as well as a special type of creativity.

In the future, the concept of "silver age" was poeticized and lost negative shade. It was rethought as a figurative, poetic designation of the era, marked with a special type of creativity, a special tonality of poetry, with a shade of high tragedy and exquisite refinement. The expression "Silver Age" replaced analytical terms and provoked disputes about the unity or controversial nature of the processes of the beginning of 20 V.

The phenomenon that denotes the term "silver age" was an unprecedented cultural ascent, the tension of the creative forces, which occurred in Russia after the populist period, marked by positivism and utilitarian approach to life and art. "The decomposition of nationality" in the 1880s was accompanied by the general mood of the decline, the "end of the century". In the 1890th began overcoming the crisis. Organically having perceived the influence of European modernism (primarily symbolism), Russian culture has created its own options for "new art", denoting the birth of other cultural consciousness.

With all the difference in poetic and creative installations, the modernist flows arising in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, proceeded from one ideological root and had a lot of general features. "What united young symbols was not a common program ... But the same determination of denial and refusal from the past," no ", abandoned in the face of the fathers," wrote in his Memochi A. Bely. This definition can be extended to the entire set of areas that arose then. In contrast to the idea of \u200b\u200b"usefulness of art", they argued the internal freedom of the artist, his chosenness, even messianism, and the transformative role of art in relation to life. N. Berdyaev, who called this phenomenon "Russian Cultural Renaissance" (or "Russian Spiritual Renaissance"), described it: "Now we can definitely say that the beginning of the 20th century was marked by the Renaissance of spiritual culture, Renaissance philosophical and literary and aesthetic, exacerbation religious and mystical sensitivity. Never a Russian culture has never reached such refinement as at that time. " Unlike critics who preferred the expression "Silver Age", Berdyaev did not oppose the beginning of the 20th century. Pushkin era, and brought them closer: "It was similar to the romantic and idealistic movement of the early 19th century." He expressed the overall feeling of a fracture, the transition that reigned at the turn of 19-20 centuries: "In part of the Russian intelligentsia, the most cultural, most educated and gifted, a spiritual crisis took place, a transition to another type of culture was happening, more could be close to the first half 19th century than to the second. This spiritual crisis was associated with the decomposition of the integrity of the revolutionary intellectual world-oriented socially socially, he was a rupture with Russian "enlightenment", with positivism in the broad sense of the word, was the proclamation of rights to "otherwise". That was the liberation of the human soul from the oppression of sociality, the release of the creative forces from the oppression utility. "

Apocalyptic aspirations, a feeling of crisis, both in life and in art, were associated with the spread of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Spengler's ideas, on the one hand, and with anticipation of new revolutions, on the other. Part of the directions were fixed by the state of chaos associated with the awareness of the "end" (expressionism), part called to the update and worked for the future, which is already approaching. This concern to the future gave rise to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "new person": Nietzschean superhuman and Androgina of symbols, the new Adam Aqueists, "Will" Futurists ( cm.FUTURISM). At the same time, even inside the same direction coexisted the opposite aspirations: extreme individualism, aestheticism (in the decadent part of symbolism) and the sermon of the world soul, new Dionysia, Cattle (at the "younger" symbolists). The search for truth, the final meaning of being was poured into various forms of mysticism, the occult again entered the occult, which was popular and at the beginning of the 19th century. A characteristic expression of these sentiments was Roman V. Bruryova Fire Angel. There was an interest in the Russian sectarianism ("whipping" N. Kveva, individual motifs in poetry S.Senin, Roman Silver Pigeon White). The conversation inside itself, neoromantic to the depths of the human "I" combined with the requesting of the world in its sensually comprehected substrate. A special trend at the turn of the centuries was the new myth-making, also associated with the expectation of the emerging future, with the need to re-comprehend the human existence. The merger of domestic and existent, daily and metaphysics is distinguishable in the works of writers of different directions.

In this case, the universal was the desire to update the artistic form, to a new language development. Modernization of the verse, begun by experiments of symbolists who contributed to the poetry of rare words and combinations, it was brought to the poetic "zui" by futurists. Symbols, developing the covenants of Veline ("Music First of all!") And Mallarm (with his idea inspiring a certain mood, "suggestive" poetry), were looking for some "magic of words", in which their special, musical compounds would correlate with secret, hard-water content . Brucery described the birth of a symbolist work: "Words lose the usual meaning, the figures lose their specific meaning," there remains a means to master the elements of the soul, to give them a voluptic-sweet combinations that we call the aesthetic pleasure. " White saw in the "embodied", "live" (creative) Saving a saving principle that protects a person from death in the "epochs of the general decline": "From under the dust of the collapsed culture, we call and spell the sounds of words"; "Humanity is alive as there is a poetry of the language" ( Magic words1910). Grabbing the thesis of symbolists about the importance of the word for life, Moscow futurists, "Willland" proposed a radical approach to updating language funds. They proclaimed the value of the "selfless word", "there is a word of life and life benefits", the need for wordness, creating a new, "universal" language. V.Hlebniknikov was looking for a "magic stone to transform all Slavic words from those in others." A.Kruchenyi wrote: "Breaking words and their bizarre cunning combinations (zable language) achieved the greatest expressiveness, and this is exactly the language of the rapid modernity. V.Markovsky, who reformed poetry not so much with the help of "Zauri" as the introduction of conversational words, neologisms, expressive images, also sought to "bring the future with the help of poems." Aqmeists have already called on "Word as such" with a different meaning - in its completeness, in the unity of its shape and content, in its reality, as a material like a stone, becoming a part of the architectural structure. The clarity of the poetic image, the rejection of the nebula and mysticism of symbols and futuristic sound games, the "healthy" ratio of words and meaning - such were the requirements of Ambheyists who wanted to return poetry from the field of pure experiment to harmony and life. Another version of the creative program presented an immudy. The orientation on the bright, unexpected image and "rhythm of images" proclaimed the IMAZHINISTS in their Declaration (1919). The basis of their method was the creation of a metaphor by connecting the incompatible, remote in the meaning of concepts and objects, "the image as an endoral", "image as a topic and content".

Poetic achievements were developed and continued in prose. The technique of "Consciousness", a nonlinear story, the use of leitmotifs and installation as the principles of the organization of the text, the expressiveness and even the alogic of the images characterize the prosaic works of symbolism and expressionism ( Petersburg White Drops of blood and Shallow demon F.Sologuba, Prose E. Gablovich and L. Andreeva).

In their own way, the requirements of updating the artistic form writers who continued the tradition of realism (A.hehkhov, I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, I.Shelev, B. Zaitsev, A.N. Tolstoy), and Marxist writers (M. Gorky) . Neanalism of the beginning of the 20th century. I took the creative opening of modernists. Comprehension of being through life is the main feature of this direction. Not just to portray reality, but listen "To the mysterious rhythm, which is full of world life," to give contemporaries the necessary vital philosophy called on the theorist of "new realists" V. Series. The turn from the positivism of the "old realists" in the direction of the issues of being was combined with the change of poetics, which affected the "lyrics" of prose. However, there was also the opposite influence of realistic image, expressed in "objectivation" of poetry. So one of the essential features of this period appeared - the desire for artistic synthesis. Synthetic in nature was the desire to bring together poetry with music, with philosophy (at the symbolists), with a social gesture (in futurists).

Such processes occurred in other arts: in painting, in the theater, in architecture and in music. Thus, the symbolism corresponded to the "total", spreading to all visual and applied arts, as well as on the architecture, the style of "modern" (in France called "AR Nouveau", in Germany "Yuggendistil", in Austria, the style of "Sesisçison"). Impressionism, which arose as a course of painting, created an equally powerful direction in music, affecting the literature. The same can be said about expressionism, which gave equally significant results of painting, music, literature, dramaturgy. And this also affected the tendency to synthesis, characteristic of that time. It was not accidental that the appearance of such "synthetic" creators, as a composer and artist M. Churlenis, poets and artists Voloshin, Mayakovsky, twisted, etc.

Special flourishing worried Russian theater. Being based on its synthetic, theatrical art absorbed the influences of the literature (drama), music (opera and ballet). Through the scenography, he was associated with new art trends. The artists as A. Benua, Bakst, M. Dobzhinsky, N. Rérich appealed to the design of dramatic, opera and ballet performances. Like other arts, the theater refused dictate of life vessel.

At the same time, along with a burden to unity, there was a desire to distinguish, to a clear definition of his own creative program. Numerous "currents", groups, associations that arose inside each of the arts declared their art installations in theoretical manifestes that were no less important part of creativity than its practical manifestations. An indicative of the situation in consistently replaced by each other directions of modernist literature: each subsequent determined itself in repulsion from the previous one, was approved through denial. Axism and futurism, inheriting symbolism, opposed himself to him on different grounds, at the same time criticizing each other and all other directions: Ambamests in articles Heritage symbolism and acmeism and Morning Akmeism, Cubaturists in software manifest Silence to public taste (1912).

All these trends were reflected in philosophy and criticism.

In the same bed, the work of the first wave of emigration, who had moved to "other shores" cultural forms developed in Russia.

Thus, the turn of 19-20 centuries. It can be considered as a special stage of Russian culture, internally holistic with all the variety of its phenomena. He gave rise to a new consciousness of the "non-classical era" in Russia and the new art corresponding to it, in which the "recreation" reality was replaced by its creative "re-creation."

Tatyana Mikhailova

Silver century philosophy

Conditionally the beginning of the "silver century" in philosophy can be associated with time between two Russian revolutions. If, before the first revolution, 1905, the Russian intelligentsia was more or less in the question of the need for political reforms (belonging the form of state reign of the main reason for the unsatisfactory state of affairs in the country and society), after the introduction of the main constitutional freedoms in 1905, public minds are sent to the search for new forms of views On peace and life.

Philosophers and writers of this period for the first time comprehended the state of personal freedom and were looking for an answer to the question: "How to realize human freedom for his personal and social development?" After the revolution of 1917 and the Civil War, most of the "Silver Century" philosophers were in emigration, where their interests were increasingly focused on the religious side of the life of the Russian Orthodox community abroad. As a result, this is the phenomenon of the spiritual culture of the 20th century, as a Russian religious philosophy.

The philosophers of the silver century traditionally include N.A. Berdyaeva, S.N. Bulgakov, B.P. Evsheslavtseva, S.L. Franca, N.O. Slovsky, F.A.Stepuna, P. B. Struv, V. N. Lylein, Ivanov, E.N. Trubetskaya, Ern, Florensky, Bulgakov, etc.).

In 1907, the St. Petersburg religious and philosophical society was created. At that period, traditional topics of philosophical and religious thought were developed in new literary forms. The era of the "Silver Century" of the Russian culture is rich in the experiments of the expression of metaphysical ideas in artistic creativity. Such samples of the "literary" metaphysics are the work of two writers and professionists - D.Mezhkovsky and V.V. Rosanova.

The main tribune of the philosophers of the Silver Century is to participate in literary and philosophical journals ("Logos", "new ideas in philosophy", publishing house "way") and collections. Collection Milestones (1909) (cm.Milestones and Vekovtsy) has a pronounced worldview. Authors - M.O.Germanzz, Berdyaev, S.N. Bulgakov, A.Izgoev, B. Kistaikovsky, P. B. Strew, Frank - Want to influence the mood of the intelligentsia, to offer her new cultural, religious and metaphysical ideals. At the same time, the main criticism was subjected to the tradition of Russian radicalism. Value Vekh. As the most important document, the epoch was a peculiar change in the philosophical paradigm of Russian society. But it is necessary to take into account that the main transition to religious and philosophical views occurred from Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Frank much later, already in emigration.

The philosophers of the Silver Age were different fates: someone from them with the "white movement" left their homeland, someone was expelled from Soviet Russia and lived in emigration, someone subjected to repression and died in Stalin's years. There were those who were able to fit into the university and academic philosophical life in the USSR. But, despite this, the conditional association of these thinkers called the "silver century philosophers" on the basis of a combination of broad erudition based on the European cultural tradition, and a literary and journalistic talent.

Fedor Blucher

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