The main schools and trends 1. Symbolism: Frans von Stuck (Germany) Klimt and Schiele (Austria) 2. The work of artists of the Pont-Aven school (1885): Paul Gauguin (France) 3. The work of Fauvist artists: Henri Matisse, Rousseau (France) ) 4. Aubrey Beardsley (England) Main character COLOR

Franz von Stuck, 1863 -1928 German painter, sculptor Representative of Art Nouveau, one of the founders of the Munich Secession (1892). Main works: "Salome", "Kiss of the Sphinx", "Sin", "Lucifer"

Secession is German. Sezession, from lat. secessio - withdrawal, separation, isolation), the name of a number of German and Austrian art societies, K. 19 - early. 20th century ; reject academic doctrines; uphold the modernist style.

GUSTAV KLIMT, 1862-1918 One of the most refined artists of the Art Nouveau era, an Austrian painter, one of the founders and presidents of the Vienna Secession At the beginning of the 20th century, his frankly erotic paintings shocked the refined Viennese public.

Albert Aurier - poet and critic, author of the symbolism program in Western European culture 1886 - "Manifesto of Symbolism in Literature"; 1891 - "Manifesto of Symbolism in Painting" Requirements for art: 1. Art must be symbolic, decorative and subjective. 2. Art rejects the principle of plein air painting. 3. Write from MEMORY

Paul Gauguin - "synthetism" The main features of the style: flatness of the image, decorativeness, generalization. The composition is static. Main works: “Jacob wrestling with an angel” - a picturesque manifesto of synthetism, “The Day of the Deity”, “Who are we? Where are we from? Where are we going? » - picture-testament

“You can always find solace in the primitive” - Paul Gauguin sincerity, purity, spontaneity, proximity to the origins - nature

Riddles of color Primary colors: blue, yellow, red Composite (complex colors): purple, green, orange 1829 - the discovery of the complementary color law of Goethe and Delacroix

Impressionism 1874 1. Artists mark on canvas the emerging optical impression 2. True reproduction of reality is based on what the artist sees, not on what he knows. 3. The world is not being, the world is becoming.

1874 -1886: The Salon of the Rejected, 8 exhibitions Claude Monet Édouard Manet Auguste Renoir Paul Cezanne Edgar Degas Alfred Sisley Claude Pissarro “Today they try to explain everything, but if a picture can be explained, it is no longer art. Can I tell you what two qualities art should have? It must be indescribable and inimitable "- Renoir

Degas Edgar (1834-1917) painter, graphic artist and sculptor Studied at the Parisian School of Fine Arts. He professed a principle opposite to impressionism: "observe without drawing, draw without observing." He introduced new subjects into painting: everyday life, the backstage side of the holiday ...

"Bathroom" 1885,

"Star" 1877, Musee d'Orsay, Paris

"Combing her hair woman" 1885, Hermitage, St. Petersburg

"Ballerina and a woman with an umbrella" 1882

"Ballerinas bowing" 1885

Auguste Renoir (1841 -1919) painter, graphic artist and sculptor In his youth he worked as a porcelain painter, painted curtains and fans In 1862 -1864 Renoir studied in Paris at the School of Fine Arts Main subjects: theater, nude ("nude"), everyday life

"After bathing" 1888

"Naked woman sitting on a couch" 1876

"Umbrellas" 1881 -1886 National Gallery, London

"Jeanne Samary" 1877, Museum. A. S. Pushkin

"Lodge" 1874

Neo-impressionism, from 1885 Georges Pierre Seurat - "pointillism", the founder of neo-impressionism. Paul Signac - Pointillism. A major theorist on the decomposition of color into its constituent parts. The main work is "From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism". Works in the genre of "marina"

Symbolism Symbolism (Greek simbolon - sign, symbol) - one of the largest movements
in art, characterized by experimentation, the desire for
innovation, the use of symbols, innuendo, hints,
mystery and mystery.
In their works, the symbolists tried to reflect the life of every soul -
full of experiences, vague, vague moods, subtle feelings, fleeting
impressions.
It originated in France in the 1870-1880s and reached its greatest development in
at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily in France itself, Belgium and Russia.
This trend in Russia deserves special attention, where it
used Western ideas, but offered its own distinctive features and
characteristics. This includes communication with the people and the state and appeal to
other historical eras.

Symbolism and other currents

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Acmeism. Appeared from symbolism, but opposed him. Direction
foresaw materiality, simplicity of images and high accuracy of the word;
Futurism. The basis was the rejection of diverse cultural
stereotypes and their destruction. Technology and processes play an important role
urbanization, which saw the future of the world;
Cubofuturism. Characterized by the rejection of the ideals of the past and the orientation
for the future;
Egofuturism. This area is characterized by the use of new
foreign words, cultivation of pure feelings and sensations,
demonstration of self-love;
Imagism. The basis is the creation of a certain image. Main
expressive means that was used for this is
metaphor. The direction is characterized by the use of anarchist ideas and
outrageous.

Characteristic features of symbolism

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Innovation and desire for experimentation;
Mysteriousness, ambiguity and understatement;
Love, death, suffering - the so-called eternal themes, the main
motives of symbolism in fine arts;
Appeal to allegory, mythological and biblical subjects;
The presence in the picture of symbols that refer the viewer to others
sources of knowledge;
Simplified, generalized image;
Clear contours of details;
Large space of monophonic background of the picture.

John Everett Millais. Ophelia. Tate Gallery, London. 1852

Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Beloved. Tate Gallery, London. 1865 - 1866

Puvis de Chavannes (1824 - 1898)

Character traits:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
One of the founders of symbolism;
Rigid organization of composition and placement of figures in the landscape
parallel plans;
Plots are determined by man's eternal occupations;
P. Puvis de Chavannes method: sketches from nature - stylization and generalization
- tight outline - onion skinning - distribution of thumbnails
on the canvas (determining the place of the figure as a whole);
A clear silhouette, a special meaning of the contour;
The line is the main shaping element.

Hope. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. 1871

Hope. Walters Gallery, Baltimore. 1872

Saint Genevieve contemplating Paris. Panel from the cycle “The Life of Saint Genevieve”. Pantheon, Paris. 1874 - 1898

Sacred grove, beloved by the muses and the arts. Art Institute, Chicago. 1884 - 1889

Poor fisherman. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. 1881

Girls by the sea. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. 1879

Paul Gauguin. Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1897 - 1898

Paul Gauguin. Yellow Christ. Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo. 1889

Paul Gauguin. Green Christ. Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels. 1889

Group "Nabi" (1890 - 1905)

Group founders Paul Serusier, Pierre Bonnard, Jean Edouard Vuillard, Paul
Elie Ranson and Maurice Denis.
All of them were fond of the work of Paul Gauguin, sought to find their way into
art and wanted to make creativity not only work, but also a style
life.
The group's work was close to literary symbolism And
characterized by the predominance of color, decorative
generalization of forms, soft musicality of rhythms, planar
stylization of art motifs different peoples: French folk
art, Japanese prints and Italian primitivists.

Paul Eli Ranson. Landscape of the Prophet. 1890

Paul Serusier. Mascot. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. 1888

Pierre Bonnard. Party of croquet. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. 1892

Maurice Denis. Landscape with green trees. Private collection. 1893

Jean Edouard Vuillard. In the room. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. 1904

Gustave Moreau (1826 - 1898)

Character traits:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Mythological and biblical themes in creativity;
The principle of "beautiful inertia" - all the characters in the picture must
portrayed in a state of deep self-absorption;
The principle of "necessary splendor" - the picture must be for
the viewer, first of all, with a fantastic vision, the beauty of which gives
pleasure;
Bright colors and play of light;
Ornaments and decorative details.

Oedipus and the Sphinx. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 1864

Phenomenon. Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris. OK. 1875

Unicorns. Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris. OK. 1885

Jupiter and Semele. Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris. OK. 1894

Odilon Redon (1840 - 1916)

Character traits:
1. One of the founders of symbolism and the Society of Independent
2.
3.
4.
5.
artists";
"Black" and "color" periods of creativity;
The harbinger of irrealism in painting and art, addressed to
the human psyche;
The works reflected the creations of his imagination;
Strived to find such a form of artistic expression,
which could awaken in the viewer the thought and desire for
introspection.

Spirit. Keeper of the waters 1878

Player. From the series “In a dream”. 1879

Smiling spider. Louvre, Paris. 1881

light profile. Private collection. 1881 - 1886

Parsifal. 1891

Christ of the Sacred Heart. Louvre, Paris. OK. 1895

Birth of Venus. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. OK. 1910

Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944)

Character traits:
1. Most of his life he worked on a large
2.
3.
4.
5.
cycle "about love, life and death", which he called "Frieze
life";
Rigid color contrast and sharpness of shapes;
The rhythm of the composition;
Developed his own style;
Favorite symbols: fair-haired girl - a flower in white
clothes, a red-haired vampire woman and a grieving mother.

Symbolism (from the Greek sýmbolon - sign, symbol) is a trend in European literature and art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The foundations of the aesthetics of symbolism were formed in the late 60s and 70s. in the works of French poets P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarmeu and others. As a method of artistic reflection of reality, symbolism in the images of familiar reality reveals the presence of phenomena, trends or patterns that are not directly outwardly expressed, but are very significant for the state of this reality. The symbolist artist seeks to transform a concrete phenomenon of the objective environment, nature, life, human relations into an image-symbol, including it in widely developed associative connections with these hidden phenomena, which, as it were, fill the image, shine through it. There is an artistic combination of different planes of being: the general, the abstract is mediated in the concrete and is introduced through the image-symbol into the area accessible to emotional perception, reveals its presence and significance in the world of life reality.

The development of symbolism is affected by time, era, social moods. in the west European countries Ah, he reflected the aggravation of social contradictions, the artist's tragic experience of the gap between the humanistic ideal and bourgeois reality.

In the works of the greatest Belgian playwright and symbolist theater theorist Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), man exists in a world where he is surrounded by hidden, invisible evil. The heroes of Maeterlinck are weak, fragile creatures, unable to defend themselves, to change life patterns that are hostile to them. But they retain in themselves the principles of humanity, spiritual beauty, faith in the ideal. This is the source of the drama and high poetic merit of Maeterlinck's plays (The Death of Tentagille, Peléas et Melisande, etc.). He created the classic form of symbolist drama with its weakened external action, intermittent dialogue full of hidden anxiety and innuendo. Every detail of the situation, gesture, intonation of the actor performed its figurative function in it, participated in the disclosure main theme- the struggle of life and death. The symbol of this struggle was the man himself, the world was the expression of his inner tragedy.

The Norwegian playwright G. Ibsen turns to the methods of symbolist imagery in his later plays. Without breaking with a realistic worldview, he used it to reveal the conflicts of the individualistic consciousness of his heroes, the objective laws of the catastrophes they experienced (“The Builder Solnes”, “Rosmersholm”, “When we, the dead, awaken”, etc.). Symbolism had its own effect in the works of G. Hauptmann (Germany), A. Strindberg (Sweden), W. B. Yeats (Ireland), S. Wyspiansky, S. Przybyszewski (Poland), G. D "Annunzio (Italy).

The symbolist directors P. Faure, O. Lugnier-Poe, J. Rousche in France, A. Appiah in Switzerland, G. Craig in England, G. Fuchs, and partly M. Reinhardt in Germany sought in their performances to overcome the concreteness of everyday, naturalistic images of reality that dominated the theater of that time. For the first time, conditional scenery, techniques of a generalized, figuratively concentrated image of the environment, scene of action entered the practice of theatrical art; scenography began to be consistent with the mood of a particular fragment of the play, to activate the subconscious perception of the audience. To solve their problems, the directors combined the means of painting, architecture, music, color and light; everyday mise-en-scene was replaced by a plastically organized, static mise-en-scene. The rhythm, which reflected the hidden “life of the soul”, the tension of the “second plan” of the action, acquired great importance in the performance.

In Russia, symbolism arose later than in Western Europe, and was associated with the social upsurge caused by the revolution of 1905-1907. Russian Symbolists saw in the theater an effective means of uniting the stage and the audience in a common experience of important modern ideas and moods. Man's rush to freedom and immortality, protest against dead dogmas and traditions, against a soulless machine civilization received their tragic interpretation in the dramas "Earth" by V. Ya. Bryusov and "Tantalus" by V. I. Ivanov. The breath of the revolution is fanned by the drama of A. A. Blok "The King on the Square", in which the theme of the poet and the people, culture and the elements arises. "Balaganchik" and "Stranger" appealed to the traditions of the folk square theater, to social satire, expressed a premonition of the coming renewal of life. "Song of Destiny" reflected the difficult path of the poet-intellectual to the people. In the play The Rose and the Cross, Blok expressed a premonition of imminent historical changes.

In difficult years for Russia, art was not homogeneous. Philosophical rejection of life, in which there is no place for high spirituality, for beauty and truth, distinguished the dramas of F. K. Sologub. The theme of the sinister play of masks was developed on the basis of folklore material by A. M. Remizov. Symbolist influences affected some of the plays of L. N. Andreev, they also touched the futurists, in particular the work of the early V. V. Mayakovsky (the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky"). The Symbolists brought the contemporary scene closer to poetry, stimulated the search for a new theatrical imagery that expanded the associative content of the performance. V. E. Meyerhold was one of the first to think about how to reconcile the conventions of design, mise-en-scène with the authenticity of acting, how to overcome everyday characteristics, to raise the actor’s work to the level of high poetic generalization. In his aspirations, he does not remain alone: ​​in symbolism, something is found that is necessary for the theater as a whole.

In 1904, on the advice of A. Ya. Chekhov, K. S. Stanislavsky staged Maeterlinck’s trilogy (“Blind”, “Uninvited”, “There, inside”) at the Moscow Art Theater, trying to overcome the author’s pessimism, to express the idea that “nature eternal." In 1905, he opened the Studio Theater on Povarskaya, where, together with Meyerhold, he studied the staging possibilities of a new artistic direction. Using the techniques of symbolism in his work on the performances “Drama of Life” by K. Hamsun and “The Life of a Man” by Andreev, Stanislavsky became convinced of the need to educate a new actor capable of deeply revealing the “life of the human spirit”, began his experiments on creating a “system”. In 1908 he staged Maeterlinck's philosophical fairy tale play The Blue Bird. In this performance, which is still preserved in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theater, he showed that man's eternal striving for the ideal is the embodiment of the main law of life, the hidden and mysterious needs of the "world soul". A convinced realist, Stanislavsky never tired of repeating that he turned to symbolism only in order to deepen and enrich realistic art.

In 1906-1908. at the Drama Theater of V. F. Komissarzhevskaya in St. Petersburg, Meyerhold staged productions of Blok's Puppet Show and Maeterlinck's Sister Beatrice. He studied theatricality at the square theater and the booth, turned to stylization, looked for new methods of visual-spatial solution of the performance. The essence of these searches was gradually determined for him not so much in the embodiment of symbolist ideas, but in the further development artistic means modern theater, the search for new forms of acting, the relationship between the stage and the public. The stage experiments of Meyerhold, which caused sharp disputes and conflicts, were then continued at the Alexandrinsky Theater, at the Studio Theater on Borodinoskaya, had great importance in the development of directing.

The experience of theatrical symbolism was mastered by the theater of the 20th century. in its various directions.

MODERN

Modern (French) moderne- the latest, modern) - an artistic style in European art at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. It received different names in different countries: in Russia - "modern", in France, Belgium, England - "art nouveau", in Germany - "art nouveau", in Austria-Hungary - "secession", in Italy - "liberty".
Symbolism became the aesthetic and philosophical basis of modernity.
Despite its sophistication and sophistication, Art Nouveau was focused on the mass consumer, while maintaining the principle of "art for art's sake."
Art Nouveau rethought and stylized the features of the art of different epochs, and developed its own artistic techniques based on the principles of asymmetry, ornamentality and decorativeness.
The predominant motifs of Art Nouveau are poppies, irises, lilies and other plants, snakes, lizards, swans, waves, dance, as well as the image of a woman with flying hair. The colors are dominated by cold tones. The compositional structure is characterized by an abundance of curvilinear outlines and flowing uneven contours.
Art Nouveau embraced all types of plastic arts - painting, graphics, arts and crafts, theatrical and decorative arts, architecture.
The ideas of creating a unified artistically designed subject-domestic environment have become widespread.
Art Nouveau artists strove for universalism, engaging in various types of artistic activities. Members of the World of Art (K. Somov, N. Sapunov, M. Dobuzhinsky, S. Sudeikin and others) who combined painting, graphics, arts and crafts, and sculpture became prominent representatives of modernity in Russia.

SYMBOLISM. Symbolism in literature is such a trend in which a symbol (see Symbol) is the main method of artistic depiction for an artist who, in the surrounding reality, is looking only for correspondences with the other world.

Beneath the rough crust of matter
I saw the imperishable purple, -

wrote Vladimir Solovyov, teacher of Andrei Bely and Alexander Blok. For representatives of symbolism, "everything is just a symbol." If for a realist a rose is important in itself, with its delicately silky petals, with its aroma, with its scarlet-black or rose-gold color, then for a symbolist who does not accept the world, a rose is only conceivable likeness mystical love. For the Symbolist, reality is only a springboard for jumping into the unknown. In symbolic creativity, two contents organically merge: hidden abstraction, conceivable similarity and explicit specific image.

Alexander Blok in his book "On state of the art Russian symbolism" connects symbolism with a certain worldview, he distinguishes between this the visible world, a rough booth, on the stage of which puppets move, and the other world, the distant shore, where the “bottomless blue eyes” of a mysterious stranger bloom, as the embodiment of something obscure, unknowable, Eternally Feminine. The symbolist poet proceeds from the opposition to this world

other worlds, his poet is not a stylist, but a priest, a prophet who is the owner of secret knowledge, with his images-symbols, like signs, he “winks” with the same mystics, who “all imagine the secrets of the coming meeting”, who are carried away by a dream to to other worlds “beyond the limit”. For poets - mystics, symbols, these are “keys mysteries”, this is “windows in eternity”, windows from this world to another. Here is no longer a literary, but a mystical-philosophical interpretation of symbolism. This interpretation is based on a break with reality, the rejection of the real visible world - a booth with its "cardboard bride" - in the words of A. Blok, or with his "disgusting", rude Aldonsa - in the words of F. Sologub. “Realists are captured, like a surf, by concrete life, beyond which they see nothing, - symbolists, detached from reality, see only their dream in it, they look at life from the window” (Mountain peaks, p. 76. K. Balmont ). Thus, symbolism is based on spiritual split, the opposition of two worlds and the desire to escape from this world with its struggle to another, otherworldly, unknowable world. Hiding from worldly storms and battles in a cell, having gone into a tower with colored windows, the mystic poet serenely contemplates the restless life in Buddhist peace - from the window. Where the masses bleed in struggle, there the secluded poet-dreamer creates his legend and transforms the rude Aldonsa and the Beautiful Dulcinea. He hears the noise of the surf in the shell of his symbols, and not in the face of a stormy element.

I created in my dream
Peace ideal nature.
Oh, how insignificant before her
Rivers and rocks and waters...

(Valery Bryusov).

The poet experiences special happiness “to leave irrevocably with the soul of his soul to that which is fleeting, which shines with joy. other being"

(K. Balmont).

Such an attitude to the surrounding life, to reality, to visible world far from accidental. It is significant and

characteristic of the late 19th century. “However, one cannot but admit,” writes K. Balmont, “that the closer we are to the new century, the more insistently the voices of symbolist poets are heard, the more palpable the need for more refined ways of feelings and thoughts becomes, which is a hallmark of symbolic poetry.” (Mountain Peaks, p. 76). The need to escape from reality into a world of obscure symbols, full of mystical experiences and forebodings, arose more than once among those romantics who did not accept the world, who were carried away by a dream to a blue flower, to a beautiful lady, to the eternally feminine.

The medieval romantics were replaced by the German romantics of the early 19th century. The neo-romanticism of the late 19th century, the neo-romanticism of the Symbolists: Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine, Stefan Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, C. Baudelaire, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, F. Sologub, Vladimir Solovyov are connected with the romance of Novalis; the same break with this world, the same protest against harsh reality.

If the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century is the collapse of feudalism, then the end of the 19th century is the collapse of that 3rd estate, which was nothing and became everything, and which waited for its gravedigger. The end of the 19th century is the collapse of bourgeois culture, it is the formidable approach of a new century fraught with revolutions.

The end of the 19th century, associated with the death of some classes and the rise of others, is full of anxious moods and forebodings among the representatives of the ruling classes. Those social strata to whom reality promises death respond with a denial of reality itself, since reality denies them and, in the words of Nietzsche, hasten to "cover their heads in the sand of heavenly things."

Eroded by doubts, the Hamlet of bourgeois society says to his muse: “Ophelia! retire to the monastery from the people.”

On the one hand, the fear of "barbarians", "Scythians", "the coming Huns", "the coming boor", all those who own the future of all those who bring the death of the old culture, old privileges, old

idols, and on the other hand, contempt for that obsolete ruling stratum with which the bourgeois aristocrats of the spirit are intimately connected - all this creates a transitional, unstable, intermediate position. The destruction of the old way of life, the obscurity of the new, the way of life without being leads the outgoing life to something illusory, foggy and vague. The poet rejects the despicable world, the accursed world, begins to love the "string clouds", the legend and dreams, the poetry of bleak moods and gloomy forebodings.

If the representative of the organic creative epoch and the victorious class is a realist and creates definite, clear, daytime images, then the representative of the critical epoch, the representative of the dying class, lives in the illusory world of his fantasy and clothes vague, obscure, vague ideas in symbols. On the shaky ground of the illusory and obscure, disturbing and ambiguous, symbolist poetics grows.

Symbolism and its poetics. Symbolists are reproached for the defiant darkness, for the fact that they create ciphered poetry, where words - hieroglyphs need, like rebus figures, to guess that their poetry is for the initiated, for lonely refiners. But the vagueness, vagueness, duality of experiences is also clothed in the corresponding form. If the classically clear Kuzmin speaks of klyarism - clarity in poetry, then the romantically mysterious poet occultist Andrei Bely loved the "current of darkness." The most sincere symbolist poet, Alexander Blok, "has a soul devoted to dark melodies." In A. Blok's little drama "The King in the Square", the architect's daughter addresses the prophetic poet, the poet-prophet with the words:

I sing your soul
And I love dark words.

The poet answers:

I vague I just love to talk
Soul sayings - unspeakable.

In Paul Verlaine's poetry, unsteady and obscure, like an ambiguous

Gnoconda's smile, the same dark speeches and the same vague...

As if someone's eyes shine
Through the veil..

Symbolist poets avoid bright colors and clear drawings. For them, "the best song in shades always” (Verlaine), for them “the finest colors are not in bright consonances” (K. Balmont). Refined, weary, decrepit in soul, the poets of the departing life catch with their souls "the elusive shadows of the fading day."

Colorful, precisely and clearly minted words do not satisfy symbolist poets. They need "words - chameleons", melodious, melodious words, they need songs without words. Together with Fet, they repeat many times: “oh, if it were possible to express the soul without a word,” together with Paul Verlaine, they consider the musical style to be the basis of their poetry:

Music, music above all

(Verlaine).

Symbolist poets convey their obscure moods of foreboding and vague dreams in musical consonances, “in a barely noticeable trembling strings". They embodied their dreams and insights into musical-sounding images. For Alexander Blok, this most stringed of all poets, all life is “dark music, sounding only about one star. He is always captured by one " musical theme." He says about his writing style:

Is always sing, always melodious,
Swirling in mists of verse.

Vague and foggy, unknowable, inexpressible tales of the soul cannot be conveyed in words, they can be inspired by musical consonances that set the reader in tune with the poet-priest, the poet is prophetically obscure, like the ancient Pythia.

Just as in France the marble architectural style of the classics was replaced by the pictorial style of Hugo, Flaubert, Lecomte de Lisle, Gauthier, the Goncourt brothers, who confessed their “musical deafness”, so the musical style of the Symbolists replaced the painting and plasticity of the musically deaf. blind to real life.

These guests of the heavenly side find the charm of their symbolic dreams in the beauty of musicality. In his poem "Chords" K. Balmont writes or sings:

And in silent musicality,
This new specularity
Creates their live round dance
New world unsaid,
But connected with the story
In the depths of reflective waters.

When K. Balmont read his poems to Leo Tolstoy, which sang of the "flavor of the sun," Tolstoy did not understand them and said: "what lovely nonsense." The most vigilant of the realists did not understand, did not hear the most musical of the Symbolists... He had to say: "what is ringing for me", and he asked himself: "what is drawn in front of me?" The first book of poems by K. Balmont, published in 1890, was simple and understandable in Nadson's way, but not typical for the poet. Only after the translations of the most musical poets Shelley and Edgar Poe, the connoisseur of poetry A. I. Urusov revealed Balmont to K. Balmont, emphasizing to the poet his main thing: “love for the poetry of consonances, admiration for sound musicality.” This love for the poetry of consonances is characteristic of the symbolists Shelley, Edgar Poe, Stef. Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, F. Sologub and V. Bryusov. It is not for nothing that the Symbolists were passionate admirers of Wagner's music. Mallarmé, the master of the French Symbolists, liked to attend Collon's concerts in Paris, and sitting in the front row with a notebook, he gave himself up to the poetry of consonances to the music of Wagner. The young man Konevskoy, one of the first Russian Symbolists, went to Bayreuth to hear Wagner's music in the Wagner Church. Andrei Bely, in his wonderful poem The First Date, sings of the symphony concerts in Moscow, where his poetic heart flourished. When the first collections of Russian symbolists appeared in 1894, they resounded in resounding silence; the very titles spoke first of all about music: Notes, Chords, Scales, Suites, Symphonies.

For the symbolist poet, musicality, the melodiousness of the verse is in the first place, he seeks not to convince, but to tune.

Perhaps everything in the world is just a means
For brightly melodious poetry,
And I from a carefree childhood
seeking combinations words.

says the symbolist poet, striving to convey to the verse a bright melodiousness, melody through a skillfully selected combination of words, letters, through the complex instrumentation of the verse and its euphony. Take the poems of Edgar Poe, translated by Balmont "Bells and Bells", "The Raven", "Annabelli" - you will immediately feel that the Symbolists created a new poetics. Edgar Poe's brilliant treatise "Philosophy of Creativity" introducing you to the workshop of creativity (see vol. II Op. Poe in Balmont's translation). Listen to the booming strikes of a large bell and the chime of small ones, and then read Balmont's poem:

Oh quiet Amsterdam
With a sad chime
old bell towers,
Why am I here, not there...

The whole poem is built on a combination of dental, smooth and palatal. The selection of letters d, t, l, m, n, w allows the poet to build his musical elegy and capture us with the melodiousness of the evening bell ringing in Amsterdam:

Where is the dreamer
Some ghost is sick.
Longing with a long groan
And eternal chime
Sings here and there:
Oh quiet Amsterdam
Oh quiet Amsterdam.

In the poems "Buttercups", "Moisture", "Reeds", "Rain" Balmont achieves extraordinary results with external musical means, sound symbolism. He was right when he exclaimed:

Who is equal to me in my melodious power?

None! None!

Symbolists in the field of musicality of verse, in variability, in the variety of rhythms, in the euphony of verse, opened a new page in the history of poetry, they surpassed even Fet and even Lermontov. Valery Bryusov in 1903 in the World of Art (No. 1-7, p. 35) wrote: “In Russian literature, there was no equal to Balmont in the art of verse. It might seem that in tunes

Feta Russian verse has reached extreme incorporeality, airiness. But where others saw the limit to Balmont, infinity opened up. Such a sample, unattainable in melodiousness, as Lermontov's "On the Air Ocean" completely fades before the best songs of Balmont. Valery Bryusov himself, this eternal experimenter, in his experiments and technical exercises did a lot in the field of the musical style of the Symbolists. He managed to convey the entire orchestra of urban sounds: "hums, voices, rumbles of wheels." Sometimes the purely external emphasized musicality hurts the ear unpleasantly, and the same Balmont has a lot of rude verses that look like a parody, like the famous poem:

Evening, seaside, sighs of the wind,
Majestic cry of the waves...
A storm is close, beats on the shore
Alien to charms black chuln.

All this justifies the parodies of Vl. Solovyov:

Mandrakes immanent
rustled in the reeds,
And rough and decadent
Verses in withering ears!

Unlike externally musical K. Balmont, poet Alexander Blok internally musical. He achieves musical suggestion by the musicality of the theme, composition, without emphasizing his assonances and alliterations (see these words).

The poetics of symbolism, with its allusion and suggestion, with its musical suggestion and tuning, brought poetry closer to music and introduced us to the pleasure of divination. After the Symbolists, crude, documentary, everyday naturalism does not satisfy us. The neo-realists of prose and poetry learned much from the symbolists; they loved the depth and spirituality of the images, they follow in the footsteps of A.P. Chekhov, V.G. Korolenko, Sergeev-Tsensky ...

In the article "Philosophy of Creativity" mentioned above, written about the symbolic poem "The Raven", Edgar Poe explains why his story about the Raven, who got into the room of a lonely man at night, yearning for his dead beloved, went beyond

his explicit phase, beyond real and received hidden symbolic meaning, when we see something emblematic in a crow, an image-symbol of a gloomy, never-ending memory:

Take your hard beak out of your heart
mine, where sorrow is always!
The raven croaked: - Never!

“When developing the plot, however skillful, and at least the event was painted very brightly,” writes Ed. Poe - there is always a certain rigidity, nakedness, repulsive to the artistic eye. Two things are absolutely required: firstly, a certain degree of complexity, more precisely, coordination; secondly, a certain degree of suggestibility - some, at least indefinite undercurrent in the sense. It is this latter that in a special way gives the work of art so much wealth(I take a forced term from everyday life), which we too willingly confuse with the feeling ideal"(Vol. II p. 182. Translated by Balmont). The significance of symbolism lies in the fact that it enriched poetry with new techniques, imparted deepness and suggestibility to the images, imparted melodiousness and musicality to the style. The complicated life, complex experiences of complex, not simple, differentiated personalities found their vivid expression in symbolism. Symbolism has left its mark on Russian literature as well.

SYMBOLISM(from French symbolisme, from Greek symbolon - a sign, an identifying sign) - an aesthetic trend that was formed in France in 1880–1890 and became widespread in literature, painting, music, architecture and theater in many European countries at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries . Symbolism was of great importance in Russian art of the same period, which acquired the definition of "Silver Age" in art history.

Symbol and artistic image. As an artistic trend, symbolism publicly announced itself in France, when a group of young poets, who in 1886 rallied around S. Mallarme, realized the unity of artistic aspirations. The group included: J. Moreas, R. Gil, Henri de Regno, S. Merrill and others. In the 1990s, the poets of the Mallarme group were joined by P.Valeri, A. Zhid, P. Claudel. The design of symbolism in the literary direction was greatly facilitated by P. Verlaine, who published his symbolist poems and a series of essays in the newspapers Paris Modern and La Nouvelle Rive Gauche Damned poets, as well as J.C. Huysmans who came up with a novel Vice versa. In 1886, J. Moreas placed in "Figaro" Symbolism Manifesto, in which he formulated the basic principles of the direction, based on the judgments C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarme, P. Verlaine, Ch.Henri. Two years after the publication of the manifesto by J. Moreas A. Bergson published his first book On the Immediate Data of Consciousness, in which the philosophy of intuitionism was declared, which in its basic principles has something in common with the worldview of the symbolists and gives it additional justification.

IN Symbolist Manifesto J. Moreas determined the nature of the symbol, which replaced the traditional artistic image and became the main material of symbolist poetry. “Symbolist poetry is looking for a way to clothe the idea in a sensual form that would not be self-sufficient, but at the same time, serving the expression of the Idea, would retain its individuality,” Moréas wrote. A similar “sensual form” in which the Idea is clothed is a symbol.

The fundamental difference between a symbol and an artistic image is its ambiguity. The symbol cannot be deciphered by the efforts of the mind: at the last depth it is dark and not accessible to the final interpretation. On Russian soil, this feature of the symbol was successfully defined F. Sologub: "The symbol is a window to infinity." The movement and play of semantic shades create indecipherability, the mystery of the symbol. If the image expresses a single phenomenon, then the symbol conceals a whole range of meanings - sometimes opposite, multidirectional (for example, "miracle and monster" in the image of Peter in the novel Merezhkovsky Peter and Alex). Poet and symbolist theorist Vyach.Ivanov expressed the idea that the symbol marks not one, but different entities, A. Bely defined a symbol as "the connection of the heterogeneous together." The duality of the symbol goes back to the romantic notion of two worlds, the interpenetration of two planes of being.

The multi-layered nature of the symbol, its open polysemy was based on mythological, religious, philosophical and aesthetic ideas about super-reality, incomprehensible in its essence. The theory and practice of symbolism were closely associated with the idealistic philosophy of I. Kant, A. Schopenhauer, F. Schelling, as well as F. Nietzsche's thoughts about the superman, being "beyond good and evil." At its core, symbolism merged with the Platonic and Christian concepts of the world, having adopted romantic traditions and new trends. Not being aware of the continuation of any particular trend in art, symbolism carried the genetic code of romanticism: the roots of symbolism are in a romantic commitment to a higher principle, an ideal world. “Pictures of nature, human deeds, all the phenomena of our life are significant for the art of symbols not in themselves, but only as intangible reflections of the original ideas, indicating their secret affinity with them,” wrote J. Moreas. Hence the new tasks of art, previously assigned to science and philosophy - to approach the essence of the “most real” by creating a symbolic picture of the world, to forge the “keys of secrets”. It is the symbol, and not the exact sciences, that will allow a person to break through to the ideal essence of the world, to pass, according to Vyach. Ivanov's definition, "from the real to the real." A special role in the comprehension of superreality was assigned to poets as carriers of intuitive revelations and poetry as the fruit of superintelligent intuitions.

The formation of Symbolism in France, the country in which the Symbolist movement originated and flourished, is associated with the names of the largest French poets: C. Baudelaire, S. Mallarmé, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud. The forerunner of symbolism in France is Ch. Baudelaire, who published a book in 1857 The flowers of Evil. In search of ways to the "ineffable", many symbolists took up Baudelaire's idea of ​​"correspondences" between colors, smells and sounds. The proximity of various experiences should, according to the symbolists, be expressed in a symbol. Baudelaire's sonnet became the motto of symbolist quest Correspondence with the famous phrase: Sound, smell, shape, color echo. Baudelaire's theory was later illustrated by A. Rimbaud's sonnet Vowels:

« BUT» black White« E» , « AND» Red,« At» green,

« ABOUT» blue - the colors of a bizarre mystery ...

The search for correspondences is at the heart of the symbolist principle of synthesis, the unification of arts. The motifs of the interpenetration of love and death, genius and illness, the tragic gap between appearance and essence, contained in Baudelaire's book, became dominant in the poetry of the Symbolists.

S. Mallarme, “the last romantic and the first decadent”, insisted on the need to “inspire images”, convey not things, but your impressions of them: “To name an object means to destroy three-quarters of the pleasure of a poem, which is created for gradual guessing, to inspire it - that's the dream." Mallarme's poem Luck will never abolish chance consisted of a single phrase typed in a different script without punctuation marks. This text, according to the author's intention, made it possible to reproduce the trajectory of thought and accurately recreate the "state of the soul."

P. Verlaine in a famous poem poetic art defined the adherence to musicality as the main sign of genuine poetic creativity: "Musicality is first of all." In Verlaine's view, poetry, like music, strives for a mediumistic, non-verbal reproduction of reality. So in the 1870s, Verlaine created a cycle of poems called Songs without words. Like a musician, the symbolist poet rushes towards the elemental flow of the beyond, the energy of sounds. If the poetry of C. Baudelaire inspired the symbolists with a deep longing for harmony in a tragically divided world, then the poetry of Verlaine amazed with its musicality, elusive experiences. Following Verlaine, the idea of ​​music was used by many symbolists to denote creative mystery.

In the poetry of the brilliant young man A. Rimbaud, who first used vers libre (free verse), the symbolists adopted the idea of ​​abandoning “eloquence”, finding a crossing point between poetry and prose. Invading any, the most non-poetic spheres of life, Rimbaud achieved the effect of "natural supernaturalness" in the depiction of reality.

Symbolism in France also manifested itself in painting ( G. Moreau, O.Roden, O. Redon, M. Denis, Puvis de Chavannes, L. Levy-Durmer), music ( Debussy, Ravel), theater (Poet Theater, Mixed Theater, Petit Theater du Marionette), but the main element of symbolist thinking has always been lyricism. It was the French poets who formulated and embodied the main precepts of the new movement: the mastery of the creative secret through music, the deep correspondence of various sensations, the ultimate price of the creative act, the orientation towards a new intuitive-creative way of knowing reality, the transmission of elusive experiences. Among the forerunners of French symbolism, all the major lyrics from Dante and F. Villon, before E.Po And T. Gauthier.

Belgian symbolism is represented by the figure of the greatest playwright, poet, essayist M. Maeterlinck known for the plays Blue bird, Blind,Miracle of Saint Anthony, There inside. Already the first poetry collection of Maeterlinck Greenhouses was full of vague allusions, symbols, the characters existed in the semi-fantastic setting of a glass greenhouse. According to N. Berdyaeva, Maeterlinck depicted "the eternal tragic beginning of life, cleansed of all impurities." Maeterlinck's plays were perceived by most contemporaries as puzzles that needed to be solved. M. Maeterlinck defined the principles of his work in the articles collected in the treatise Treasure of the Humble(1896). The treatise is based on the idea that life is a mystery in which a person plays a role that is inaccessible to his mind, but understandable to his inner feeling. Maeterlinck considered the main task of the playwright to be the transfer of not an action, but a state. IN Treasure of the Humble Maeterlinck put forward the principle of “second plan” dialogues: behind an apparently random dialogue, the meaning of words that initially seem insignificant is revealed. The movement of such hidden meanings made it possible to play with numerous paradoxes (the miraculousness of everyday life, the sight of the blind and the blindness of the sighted, the madness of the normal, etc.), to plunge into the world of subtle moods.

One of the most influential figures in European Symbolism was the Norwegian writer and playwright G.Ibsen. His plays Peer Gynt,Hedda Gabler,Dollhouse,Wild duck combined the concrete and the abstract. “Symbolism is a form of art that simultaneously satisfies our desire to see embodied reality and rise above it,” Ibsen defined. – Reality has a flip side, facts have a hidden meaning: they are the material embodiment of ideas, an idea is presented through a fact. Reality is a sensual image, a symbol of the invisible world. Ibsen distinguished between his art and the French version of symbolism: his dramas were built on "the idealization of matter, the transformation of the real", and not on the search for the beyond, the otherworldly. Ibsen gave a specific image, a fact a symbolic sound, raised it to the level of a mystical sign.

In English literature, symbolism is represented by the figure O. Wilde. The desire to shock the bourgeois public, the love of paradox and aphorism, the life-creating concept of art (“art does not reflect life, but creates it”), hedonism, the frequent use of fantastic, fairy-tale plots, and later “neo-Christianity” (perception of Christ as an artist) allow attribute O. Wilde to the writers of the symbolist orientation.

Symbolism gave a powerful branch in Ireland: one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, the Irishman W. B. Yeats, considered himself a symbolist. His poetry, full of rare complexity and richness, was fed by Irish legends and myths, theosophy and mysticism. A symbol, Yeats explains, is “the only possible expression of some invisible entity, the frosted glass of a spiritual lamp.”

Creativity is also associated with symbolism. R.M. Rilke, S.George, E.Verharna, G.D.Annunzio, A. Strinberg and etc.

Symbolism in literature - ideas, representatives, history

Symbolism as a literary trend arose during the beginning of the crisis in Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century and rightfully belongs to the culture of our country.

Symbolism - historical period

In Russian symbolism, there are:

• "the older generation" representatives: D. Merezhkovsky, A. Dobrolyubov, Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, N. Minsky, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov
• "younger generation"- Young Symbolists - A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, S. Soloviev, Yu. Baltrushaitis and others.

Almost every one of these poets and writers experienced the processes of rapid growth of the spiritual self-determination of the individual, the desire to join the historical reality and put himself in the face of the elements of the people.

The Symbolists had their own publishing houses ("Scorpion", "Vulture") and magazines ("Scales", "Golden Fleece").

The main features of symbolism

Duality among the Symbolists

• the idea of ​​two worlds (real and otherworldly)
• reflection of reality in symbols
• a special view of intuition as an intermediary in comprehending and depicting the world
• development of sound painting as a special poetic technique

• mystical understanding of the world
• Poetics of the diversity of content (allegory, allusions)
• religious quest ("free religious feeling")
• rejection of realism

Russian symbolists reinterpreted the role of the individual not only in creativity, but also in Russian reality, and life in general.

Religiosity among the Symbolists

Interest in the personality of a poet, writer, person led the poets of this direction to a kind of "expansion" of personality. Such an understanding of human individuality is characteristic of all Russian symbolists. But this was reflected in different ways - in articles, manifestos, in poetic practice.

Aesthetics of the Symbolists

Their manifestos expressed the main requirements for the new art - mystical content, the multifunctionality of the possibilities of artistic imagination and the transformation of reality.

The true personality, according to Merezhkovsky, is

this is the mystic, the creator, who is given to directly comprehend the symbolic nature of life and the world.

At the turn of the epochs, D. Merezhkovsky was puzzled by two ideas:

• « the idea of ​​a new man»
• « the idea of ​​life-creation' - creations of the second reality.

Both of these ideas inextricably link the Symbolists with spiritual quests of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The theme of the disproportion of the Eternal Universe and the instantaneous existence of man, the world of man, characteristic of the representatives of the creative intelligentsia of the Silver Age, is present in many symbolist poets:

For example, A. Blok:

“The worlds are flying. The years are flying by. Empty / The universe looks at us with a darkness of eyes. / And clinging to the edge of a sliding, sharp, / And listening to the always buzzing ringing, - / Are we going crazy in the change of motley / invented reasons, spaces, times .. / / When the end? An annoying sound / will not have the strength to listen without rest ... / How terrible everything is! How wild! - Give me your hand / Comrade, friend! Let's forget again./.

Characteristic features of the symbolist direction

• individualism
• idealism
• awareness of the tragedy of the world, the crisis of Russian reality
• romantic search for meaning
• content and structural unity of poetry
• dominance of the general over the particular
• thematic cyclization of creativity of each author
• poetic-philosophical mythologems (for example, images of Sophia and Eternal Femininity by V. Solovyov)
• dominant images (for example, the image of a snowstorm, blizzards by A. Blok)
• playful nature of creativity and life

Thus, symbolism as such sees reality as infinite, diverse in content and form.

Our presentation on the topic

Symbol understanding

For Russian poets - representatives of this trend - it varied greatly.

Symbolist understanding of the symbol

• philosophical symbolism sees in it a combination of the sensual and the spiritual (D. Merezhkovsky,).
• mystical symbolism tends to the predominance of the spiritual, to achieve the kingdom of the spirit, a frantic desire for other worlds, denies sensuality as something flawed, something from which it must be freed (such is the poetic world of A. Bely).

The role of the Symbolists in creating new poetic forms, new trends and new ideas, new themes and a new understanding of life as such for the history of Russian literature, and more broadly - Russian culture, is priceless.

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