1. Characteristic features of Blok’s poetry.
2. Blok’s early work.
3. The image of the homeland in Blok’s poetry.
4. The theme of revolution in the life and work of the poet.
5. “Twelve” - retribution to the old world.

You gave me anxiety
And the ability to write poetry...
A. A. Akhmatova

These sparse lines from Akhmatova, dedicated to A. A. Blok, very accurately express the style and manner of the poet’s work. Indeed, Blok’s poetic skill is amazing, and the magic of his poetic lines, where there is mystery, deep meaning, and a feeling of anxiety, is remembered forever. In some ways, this is a tribute to his belonging to the symbolist movement in poetry. But, like any great artist, Blok’s work outgrows the boundaries of any direction.

Blok began his journey in poetry as a symbolist. For poets who considered themselves to be part of this movement, their work was characterized by: a search for new themes, a demonstration of individualism, mysticism, the unreal and irrational, and an interest in turning points in historical eras. The conventional image of reality was conveyed by symbols in which a special mystical meaning was invested. The poet belonged to the so-called Young Symbolists, although this division is quite arbitrary. Blok went down in literary history as an outstanding lyric poet. Having started his poetic path with a book of mystical poems, Blok went through a difficult creative path to reality, to revolution. We can say that all the lyrics of A. A. Blok are a poetic diary of the life of a Russian person at the turn of the century.

A. A. Blok (1880-1921) was born into an intelligentsia family. His father Alexander Lvovich descended from the doctor J. von Blok, who came to Russia in the mid-18th century from Mecklenburg, and was a professor at the University of Warsaw in the department of public law. The mother of the future poet Alexandra Andreevna, due to her husband’s despotic character, was forced to leave him even before the birth of her son. Blok spent his childhood and youth in the house of his grandfather Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov, rector of St. Petersburg University, in his stepfather’s house and in the Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow. Literary work was encouraged in the liberal Beketov family. This atmosphere early awakened in him an irresistible desire for poetry.

Blok’s early work includes a book of poems, published in 1904 and called “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” The entire cycle of poems is devoted to the disclosure and comprehension of this image, which had a real prototype. Here a special world of a man in love, a poet in love, opens up, in which he appears as a knight who devotes his life to serving his lady and worships the ideal of beauty, harmony and femininity.

The bulk of Blok's work dates back to the pre-revolutionary period, when the contradictions of life were exposed, stability and peace disappeared. In such a situation, all human feelings become insincere and false, when a person feels loneliness and encounters misunderstanding from others. The only bright feeling for Blok remains love for the Motherland. The poet has repeatedly repeated that all of his work is about Russia: “I consciously and irrevocably devote my life to this topic... After all, here is life or death, happiness or destruction.” The poems “Rus”, “Russia”, and the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” were written on this topic.

The image of the fatherland is revealed in an original way in the poem “Rus” (1906). In it, Rus' appears as a mystery, which is determined by the ring composition of the poem. The secret of Rus' is “where diverse peoples from land to land, from valley to valley lead night dances under the glow of burning villages.” The solution to the mystery lies in the “living soul” of the people, which has not lost its “original purity” in the vast expanses. To comprehend it, it is necessary to live one life with the people.

In search of an ideal and a path to the future, Blok turns to Russia’s past, to its origins. It is in the past that the poet is looking for a life-giving force that allows Rus' not to be afraid of the “darkness - nightly and foreign” that guides its path. He speaks simply and without beauty about the fate of his homeland:

Centuries pass, war roars
There is a rebellion, villages are burning,
And you are still the same, my country,
In tear-stained and ancient beauty.

Blok always listened sensitively to the beat of life and showed the deepest interest in the fate of Russia, in the fate of the people. His work reflects many aspects of the diverse and endlessly changing Russian life. Of particular importance are poems where a comprehensive image of the homeland appears before us and where the poet emphasizes his inextricable connection with it. In poems created during the years of the first Russian revolution, he anticipates a new “fire” in 1917 that will change the fate of Russia:

I see far over Russia
A wide and quiet fire...

Attitudes towards Russia and its perception changed, but Blok carried his love for it throughout his life. This feeling saved him during the terrible years of mental crisis and despair. Blok was responsible for creating a special image of the Motherland - the image of a beautiful woman, a beloved bride. This is a woman with “rogue beauty”, tied in a “patterned dress up to her eyebrows”:

Oh, my Rus'! My wife!
To the point of pain
The long way is clear to us!..
And there is no end!

“Immense spaces”, “wind songs”, “distant roads”, “remote troikas”, “loose ruts”, “foggy distances”, “sky-lighted edge among smoky spots” - this is Blok’s unique Russia. Like many poets who were alien to the revolution, but who accepted it, he was waiting for changes, hoping that with the advent of 1917 “light will overcome darkness.”

The poet perceived the events of the revolution as a manifestation of the people's destructive element, as the struggle of people of a new formation against the hated kingdom of historical stagnation and social lawlessness. Blok himself suffered during the revolution (the peasants burned his estate in Shakhmatovo, including the famous rich library collected by many generations of his ancestors), but he was able to understand something else - the people’s patience had run out.

The evolution of the poet's worldview was embodied in his mature work. The poem “The Twelve” is one of the most characteristic works of Russian poetry of the early 20th century. It can be called a diary of revolutionary events. The work is based on conflict, the struggle of “two worlds.” Therefore, the poem is built on contrasts: “Black evening. / White snow. / Wind, wind! / The man can’t stand on his feet!” This feeling of spontaneity and unpredictability is common to many poets and writers of the Silver Age. The poet stands for creation in the revolution, and not for a senseless and merciless rebellion, which A.S. Pushkin warned Russia against. Blok interprets poetry, the romantic triumph of the revolution in the Christian understanding - “with a gentle tread above the snow, a scattering of pearls in the snow, in a white corolla of roses - in front is Jesus Christ.”

In this interpretation, the revolution, born and brought by those who “need an ace of diamonds on their back,” nevertheless leads to goodness and justice. Not belonging to the “revolutionary class”, not being a comrade-in-arms of the Bolsheviks, not a “proletarian” writer, “coming from the lower classes,” Blok accepted the revolution. But as a fatal inevitability, as an inevitable event, as a conscious choice of the Russian intelligentsia, thereby bringing a national tragedy closer.

In the poem “The Twelve,” the revolution is perceived by Blok as retribution against the old world, the former ruling class, and a refined elite that had become separated from the people.

A. A. Blok, in my opinion, managed to accurately and vividly capture both the image of Russia and the revolutionary era in his small and, at first glance, difficult to perceive work. M. Gorky called him “a man of fearless sincerity,” and K. A. Fedin, after the death of the 40-year-old poet, said that “there will no longer be such courage and such longing for the truth of the future as A. Blok showed.”

The life of one of the most famous poets of the Silver Age, Alexander Blok, is a series of extraordinary events. In a sense, it echoes the creative biography of his great contemporary -.

Brief biography of Blok

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was born on November 16, 1880 in St. Petersburg. The parents of the future poet were very educated people belonging to the intelligentsia.

His father, Alexander Lvovich Blok, taught at the University of Warsaw as a professor, and his mother, Alexandra Andreevna Beketova, worked as a translator.

However, their marriage did not last long and was officially dissolved by the Holy Synod. After this, little Sasha lived with his mother, who soon married guard officer Kublitsky-Piottukh.

Childhood and youth

Alexander Blok spent his entire childhood in his grandfather’s house and carried warm memories of the time spent there throughout his life.

Alexander Blok

The relationship between Blok and his mother was very warm and open. It was thanks to Alexandra Andreevna that Sasha was able to familiarize himself with the works of Baudelaire, Fet, Verlaine and other famous poets.

Mom and her young son jointly mastered new trends in philosophy and poetry, and also had fascinating conversations about political and cultural innovations.

As a result of this, it was Blok’s mother who initially showed his poems and was interested in her opinion regarding his own creativity.

In 1889, as a teenager, Sasha studied at the Vvedenskaya gymnasium. When he turned 16, he and his mother went to the German resort of Bad Nauheim.

While still a teenager, Blok once saw Ksenia Sadovskaya and fell in love with her at first sight. But since this woman was 37 years old, there could be no question of their relationship.

However, Sadovskaya impressed the young Blok so much that in the future she became a real muse for him, thanks to which the poet managed to write many of his works.

By the way, in Blok’s biography the image of a woman is constantly intertwined, and, one way or another, appears in many of his works.

In 1898, Alexander Blok completed his studies at the gymnasium and entered the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University. After 3 years, he decided to transfer to the historical and philological department.

In 1906, Blok completed his studies at the university, and met Sergei Gorodetsky, Alexei Remizov and Sergei Solovyov, who was his second cousin.

The beginning of creativity

Blok wrote his first works at the age of five. This is not surprising, because from childhood he continuously read, visited theaters and was interested in. While still a teenager, he and his brothers began writing a handwritten journal.

In 1903, Alexander Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, who was the daughter of the famous scientist -. The ardent love disappeared almost immediately after the wedding.

The relationship between the spouses was quite tense, almost the same as that with his wife.

However, after the First World War, relations in the Block family improved.

The beginning of Blok’s active creativity is the period from 1900-1901. At this time, Alexander became a true admirer of the work of Vladimir Solovyov, who played a significant role in the biography of Blok in general, and the formation of his personality in particular.

In addition, Blok had the opportunity to meet Dmitry Merezhkovsky (see) and, in whose publishing house, under the name “New Path,” Alexander Alexandrovich first began publishing.

At the beginning of his creative career, Blok was interested in literary symbolism. This movement, which influenced all types of culture, was distinguished by innovation, a desire for experimentation and a love of mystery.

After Blok began to be published in the New Way, his works began to be published in the Moscow almanac Northern Flowers.

Blok constantly attended the circle of young admirers of Vladimir Solovyov, which took place in Moscow. The role of a kind of leader of this circle was the young poet Andrei Bely.

All members of the literary circle admired the work of Blok, with whom Bely himself became very close friends. However, this is not surprising, because he was passionately in love with the wife of Alexander Blok.

In 1903, a whole series of works by Alexander Blok, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” was published. Three poems by the young poet were included in a collection of works by students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University.

In his writings, Blok considered a woman as a source of purity and light. He also discussed how a genuine feeling of love can bring an individual person closer to the world as a whole.

Revolution 1905-1907

Revolutionary events became for Alexander Blok the personification of the spontaneous and chaotic nature of existence, and quite strongly influenced his biography in general, and his creative views in particular. Love lyrics faded into the background.

Alexander Alexandrovich also proved himself as a playwright when he wrote his first play “Balaganchik”. It was staged on the theater stage in 1906.

Despite the fact that Blok loved his wife, he allowed himself to show feelings for other women. For example, he felt passion for actress N.N. Volokhova. The image of this girl formed the basis of many of his philosophical poems.

It was to her that Blok dedicated the “Faina” cycle and the book “Snow Mask,” and it was also from her that he copied the heroines of the plays “The King in the Square” and “Song of Fate.”

To be fair, it should be noted that Blok’s wife also indulged in hobbies. An interesting fact is that because of this, Blok had an acute conflict with Andrei Bely.

At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the main theme of Alexander Alexandrovich’s works was the problem of the relationship between the common people and the intelligentsia in society.

In the poems written during this period, one can notice a clear crisis of individualism and attempts to determine the place of the creator in real life.

At the same time, Blok compared his homeland with the image of a loving wife, as a result of which his patriotic poems acquired a special and deep individuality.

Refusal of symbolism

In 1909, two tragedies occurred at once in the biography of Alexander Blok: his father and a newborn child from his wife Lyubov Dmitrievna died.

To recover from the shock, he and his wife leave for Italy. This trip made the poet rethink life values. The cycle “Italian Poems” tells about his internal struggle, as well as notes from the book “Lightning of Art”.

As a result of long reflection, Blok came to the conclusion that symbolism had lost interest for him and now he was more attracted to self-absorption and a “spiritual diet.”

Due to changes in his creative biography, he concentrates on serious literary works and engages less and less in journalistic work. Moreover, he practically never appears at social events.

In 1910, the poet began to compose the poem “Retribution” and finish it, which he never managed to complete.

In the summer of 1911, Blok again traveled abroad, this time to, and. Alexander Alexandrovich gives a negative assessment of French morals:

The inherent quality of the French (and the Bretons, it seems, predominantly) is inescapable dirt, first of all physical, and then mental. It is better not to describe the first dirt; to put it briefly, a person in any way squeamish will not agree to settle in France.

In the same year he published collected works in 3 volumes.

In the summer of 1913, Blok again went to France (on the advice of doctors) and again wrote about negative impressions:

Biarritz is overrun by the French petty bourgeoisie, so that even my eyes are tired of looking at ugly men and women... And in general, I must say that I am very tired of France and want to return to a cultural country - Russia, where there are fewer fleas, almost no French women, there is food (bread and beef), drink (tea and water); beds (not 15 arshins wide), washbasins (there are basins from which you can never empty all the water, all the dirt remains at the bottom)…

In 1912-1913 from his pen comes the famous play “Rose and Cross”.

October Revolution

During this period, many famous poets and writers of the time, such as Dmitry Merezhkovsky and others, reacted very negatively to the arrival of the Bolsheviks.

However, Blok did not see anything wrong with the Soviet government and even agreed to cooperate with it. Thanks to this, the name of the famous poet was continuously used by new government leaders for selfish purposes.

At this time, Blok wrote the poem “Scythians” and the famous poem “The Twelve”.

Personal life

The only wife in Blok’s biography was Lyubov Mendeleev, whom he sincerely loved. His wife was his support and source of inspiration.


Alexander Blok and his wife - Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva

However, the writer’s idea of ​​marriage was quite unique. For example, he was categorically against intimacy, praising spiritual love and feelings.

It was also quite natural for Blok to fall in love with other women, although his only love continued to be his wife. However, Blok’s wife also allowed herself to have affairs with other men.

Unfortunately, no offspring appeared in the Blok family. And although Lyubov gave birth to Alexander one child, he turned out to be weak and died very soon.

Death of poet

After the October Revolution, the poet’s life began to decline, both spiritually and physically. Overloaded with various jobs and not belonging to himself, he began to get sick often.

He developed asthma, cardiovascular disease, and also began to have mental disorders. In 1920, Blok fell ill with scurvy.

On August 7, 1921, due to endless illnesses and financial difficulties, Alexander Alexandrovich Blok died in his St. Petersburg apartment. The cause of the poet's death was inflammation of the heart valves. The block was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox cemetery.

Shortly before his death, he tried to obtain permission to travel abroad for treatment. However, it was not possible to obtain the permission that he himself sought.

Alexander Blok is considered one of the most significant figures in Russian poetry, who made a significant contribution to the cultural heritage of his people.

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Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was born and raised in a highly cultured noble-intellectual family. His father, Alexander Lvovich, descended from the doctor Johann von Bloch, who came to Russia in the mid-18th century from Mecklenburg, and was a professor at the University of Warsaw in the department of public law. According to his son, he was also a capable musician, a literature connoisseur and a subtle stylist. However, his despotic character became the reason that the mother of the future poet, Alexandra Andreevna, was forced to leave her husband even before the birth of her son. Thus, Blok’s childhood and youth were spent first in the St. Petersburg “rector’s house” (his grandfather, Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov, was a botanist professor and rector of St. Petersburg University), then, after his mother’s second marriage, in the house of his stepfather, officer Franz Feliksovich Kublitsky-Piottukh , and every summer - in Beketov’s Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow.

In the liberal and “people-loving” Beketov family, many were engaged in literary work. Blok’s grandfather was the author of not only solid works, but also many popular science essays. Grandmother, Elizaveta Grigorievna, spent her entire life translating scientific and artistic works. “The list of her works is enormous,” the grandson later recalled. Her daughters, Blok’s mother and his aunts, were also systematically engaged in literary work.

The atmosphere of literary interests very early awakened in him an irresistible craving for poetry. Thanks to the memories of M. A. Beketova, Blok’s children’s poems, written by him at the age of five, have come down to us. However, a serious turn to poetic creativity, largely connected with the young Blok’s passion for the poetry of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet, Polonsky, falls on the years when he graduated from the gymnasium and entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University in 1898 (in 1901 he switched to Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology and successfully completed it in 1906).

Blok's lyrics are a unique phenomenon. With all the diversity of its problematics and artistic solutions, with all the differences between the early poems and subsequent ones, it appears as a single whole, as one work unfolded in time, as a reflection of the “path” traveled by the poet. Blok himself pointed out this feature.

Let us repeat that in 1910-1911, while preparing his first collection of poems for publication, Blok arranged them in three books. The poet retained this three-volume division in two subsequent editions (1916 and 1918-1921), although the author made significant changes within the volumes. In their final form, the three volumes include 18 lyrical cycles (“countries of the soul,” as the poet puts it). In the preface to the first edition of “Collected Poems,” Blok emphasized the unity of his plan: “Each poem is necessary to form a chapter (i.e., a cycle. - Ed.); a book is compiled from several chapters; each book is part of a trilogy; I can call the entire trilogy a “novel in verse.” And a few months later, in a letter to Andrei Bely, he reveals the main meaning of the stages of the path he has passed and the content of each of the books of the trilogy: “... this is my path, now that he passed, I am firmly convinced that this is due and that all the poems together are a “trilogy of incarnation” (from a moment of too bright light - through the necessary swampy forest - to despair, curses, “retribution * and ... - to the birth of a “social” man , an artist who courageously faces the world..,).”

The first volume (1898-1903) included three cycles. The first of them - “Ante lucem” (“Before the light”) - is, as it were, a preview of the difficult path ahead. The general romantic mood of the cycle also predetermined the young poet’s antinomian attitude towards life. At one extreme are the motives of gloomy disappointment, which seem so unnatural for a nineteen-year-old boy: “I am an old soul. Some kind of black lot - // My long journey.” Or: “I laugh at the pitiful crowd // And I don’t give them a sigh.” But on the other hand there is a desire for life, acceptance of it:

I strive for luxurious will,

I'm rushing to the beautiful side,

Where in a wide open field

It’s good, like in a wonderful dream, -

and awareness of the poet’s high mission, his future triumph:

But the poet is approaching the song,

Strives, drawn by the truth,

And suddenly a new light appears

Beyond the distance, previously unknown...

The central cycle of the first volume is “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” This is that “moment of too bright light” about which Blok wrote to A. Bely. This cycle reflected the young poet’s love for his future wife L. D. Mendeleeva and his passion for the philosophical ideas of Vl. Solovyova. What was closest to him at that time was the philosopher’s teaching about the existence of the Soul of the World, or the Eternal Feminine, which can reconcile “earth” and “heaven” and save the world, which is on the verge of disaster, through its spiritual renewal. The philosopher's idea that love for the world itself is revealed through love for a woman received a lively response from the romantic poet.

Solovyov’s ideas of “two worlds,” the combination of the material and the spiritual, were embodied in the cycle through a diverse system of symbols. The heroine's appearance is multifaceted. On the one hand, this is a very real, “earthly” woman. “She is slender and tall, // Always arrogant and stern.” The hero sees her “every day from afar.” On the other hand, before us is the heavenly, mystical image of the “Virgin”, “Dawn”, “Majestic Eternal Wife”, “Saint”. “Clear”, “Incomprehensible”... The same can be said about the hero of the cycle. “I am young, and fresh, and in love,” is a completely “earthly” self-description. And then he is a “joyless and dark monk” or “youth” lighting candles. To enhance the mystical impression, Blok generously uses epithets, such as “ghostly”, “unknown shadows” or “unknown sounds”, “unearthly hopes” or “unearthly visions”, “ineffable beauty”, “incomprehensible mystery”, “sadness” unspoken hints”, etc.

Thus, the story of earthly, very real love is transformed into a romantic-symbolic mystical-philosophical myth. It has its own plot and its own plot. The basis of the plot is the opposition of the “earthly” (lyrical hero) to the “heavenly” (Beautiful Lady) and at the same time the desire for their connection, “meeting”, as a result of which the transformation of the world, complete harmony, should occur. However, the lyrical plot complicates and dramatizes the plot. From poem to poem there is a change in the hero’s mood: bright hopes - and doubts about them, expectation of love - and fear of its collapse, faith in the immutability of the Virgin’s appearance - and the assumption that it can be distorted (“But I’m afraid: you will change your appearance” ).

Dramatic tension is also inherent in the cycle that concludes the first volume with the significant title “Crossroads”. The theme of the Beautiful Lady continues to be heard in this cycle, but something new also arises here: a qualitatively different connection with “everyday life”, attention to human grief, social issues (“Factory”, “From the Newspapers”, “A sick man trudged along the shore... ." and etc.). “Crossroads” outlines the possibility of future changes in the poet’s work, which will clearly manifest themselves in the second volume.

The lyrics of the second volume (1904-1908) reflected significant changes in Blok’s worldview. The social upsurge, which at that time embraced the broadest strata of the Russian people, had a decisive influence on Blok. He moves away from the mysticism of Vl. Solovyov, from the hoped-for ideal of world harmony, but not because this ideal became untenable for the poet. For him, he forever remained the “thesis” from which his path began. But the events of the surrounding life powerfully invade the poet’s consciousness, requiring their own understanding. He perceives them as a dynamic principle, an “element” that comes into conflict with the “unperturbed” Soul of the World, as an “antithesis” opposing the “thesis”, and plunges into the complex and contradictory world of human passions, suffering, and struggle.

A kind of prologue to the second volume is the cycle “Bubbles of the Earth”. The poet unexpectedly and polemically turns to the image of “low-lying” nature: “the eternity of swamps,” “rusty hummocks and stumps,” and the fantastic fairy-tale creatures that inhabit them. He could say, together with his kindest “swamp priest”:

My soul is glad

To every reptile

And to every beast

And about all faith, -

recognizing the regularity of the existence of this elemental world and the right of its inhabitants to honor “their field Christ.”

In the next two cycles (“Miscellaneous Poems” and “City”), the scope of the phenomena of reality expands immeasurably. The poet plunges into the anxious, acutely conflicted world of everyday life, feeling himself involved in everything that happens. These are the events of the revolution, which he perceived, like other symbolists, as a manifestation of the people’s destructive element, as the struggle of people of a new formation against the hated kingdom of social lawlessness, violence and vulgarity. To one degree or another, this position is reflected in the poems “We were going to attack. Straight to the chest...”, “Rising from the darkness of the cellars...”, “Meeting”, “Fed”, etc. It is characteristic, however, that the lyrical hero, despite all his solidarity with those who speak out in defense of the oppressed, does not consider himself worthy to be in their ranks:

They are far away

They swim merrily.

Only you and me

That's right, they won't take it!

(The boat of life has become...)

On such a painful note, one of the main problems for him begins to sound in Blok’s lyrics - the people and the intelligentsia.

In addition to motives associated with revolutionary events, the above-mentioned cycles reflect many other aspects of the diverse and endlessly changing Russian life. But poems where the poet develops a “wide-ranging” image of his homeland and emphasizes his inextricable connection with it acquire special significance. In the first of them (“Autumn Will”, 1905), Lermontov’s traditions are clearly visible. In the poem “Motherland,” Lermontov called his love for the fatherland “strange” because it diverges from traditional “patriotism.” What was dear to him was “not glory bought with blood,” but “the cold silence of the steppes” and “the trembling lights of sad villages.” The same is Blok’s love: “I will cry over the sadness of your fields, // I will love your open space forever...” - with the difference, perhaps, that for him it is more intimate, more personal. It is no coincidence that the image of the homeland “flows” here into the image of a woman (“And in the distance, in the distance, // Your patterned, your colored sleeve waves invitingly”), a technique that will be repeated in Blok’s later poems about the homeland. Blok’s hero is not a random passer-by, but one of the sons of Russia, walking a “familiar” path and participating in the bitter fate of those who “die without loving,” but who strive to merge with their homeland: “Shelter you in the vast distances! // How to live and cry without you!”

Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator, literary critic; classic of Russian literature of the 20th century, one of the largest representatives of Russian symbolism

Alexander Blok

short biography

The famous Russian poet was born on November 28 (November 16, O.S.) 1880 in St. Petersburg, into an intelligent family. His father was a lawyer, a professor of law, his mother was the daughter of a university rector, a translator. Already in early childhood it became clear that the boy was gifted. At the age of five, he wrote poetry, and as a teenager, he published home magazines with his brothers. After graduating from the Vvedensky Gymnasium (1891-1898), Alexander Blok entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, but three years later he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology (Slavic-Russian department), from which he graduated in 1906.

His studies at the university marked the period of Blok’s formation as an artist, his awareness of his life’s calling. For 1901-1902 he wrote more than eight dozen poems, inspired by his love for his future wife, the daughter of the famous chemist, L. Mendeleeva. The spring of 1902 brought acquaintance with D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius, whose influence on Blok and his creative biography turned out to be truly enormous. In 1903, in the magazine “New Way”, which they published, Blok first appeared before the public, not only as a poet, but also as a critic. In the same year, his poems were published in the “Literary and Artistic Collection: Poems by Students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University”, and the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (almanac “Northern Flowers”) was also published, which made Blok a famous poet.

An important factor in the formation of the poet’s worldview was the revolution of 1905, which showed life from a different, more realistic side and left a noticeable imprint on his creativity. During this period, “Unexpected Joy” (1906), “Free Thoughts” (1907), “Italian Poems” (1908), “Snow Mask” (1907), “On the Kulikovo Field” (1908) were published. In 1909, a new page in Blok’s life began. After tragic events (the death of the poet’s father, L. Mendeleeva’s child), the couple leaves for Italy. Traveling to a country with a completely different way of life, contact with classical Italian art created a completely new mood in the poet’s soul. Making a report on the current state of Russian symbolism in April 1910, Alexander Blok announced that a significant stage in his life and creative path had come to an end.

Thanks to receiving his father's inheritance, Blok could not think about his daily bread and completely devote himself to the implementation of large-scale literary plans. So, in 1910, he began writing an epic poem called "Retribution", which was destined to remain unfinished.

In July 1916, the poet was drafted into the army, he joined the engineering and construction squad of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and served in Belarus. The February and October revolutions became, like everyone else, the starting point of a new stage of biography. They were met by the poet not without conflicting feelings, but his civic position was to stay with his homeland in difficult times. In May 1917, Blok worked as an editor in the Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate illegal actions of former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials. In January 1918, he published a series of articles entitled “Russia and the Intelligentsia”; in the same year his famous poem “The Twelve” was published. Many fellow writers, such as D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, M. Prishvin, I. Erenburg, Vyach. Ivanov and others sharply criticized his attitude towards the Bolsheviks.

In turn, the Soviet government did not fail to take advantage of the loyalty of the famous poet. He needed public service as a source of income, since there was no question of earning a living from the literary field, but often appointments to various committees and commissions were made without his consent. In September 1917, Blok was a member of the Theater and Literary Commission; in the period from 1918-1919. place of service were the People's Commissariat for Education, the Union of Poets, the Union of Workers of Fiction, and the publishing house "World Literature"; in 1920, the poet was appointed to the position of chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets.

If at first Blok regarded his participation in the work of cultural and educational institutions as the duty of an intellectual to the people, then gradually an epiphany came to him: he understood that the gap between the cleansing revolutionary element he praised and the emerging totalitarian bureaucratic colossus was becoming deeper, and this provoked a depressive mood . It was aggravated by enormous physical and moral stress, the unsettled life in the revolutionary city, and family problems. Not only the poet’s psyche suffered: he developed asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and in the winter of 1918 he fell ill with scurvy. In February 1927, at an evening in memory of Pushkin, Blok gave a speech “On the appointment of a poet”, spoke about the “lack of air” that was destroying poets, and about the futility of attempts by the “new mob” to encroach on their freedom. It became his kind of testament as a person and writer.

In the spring of 1921, Blok asked the authorities for permission to travel to Finland for treatment, but the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks rejected the request. Lunacharsky and Gorky asked for the poet, and at the next meeting a decision was nevertheless issued to obtain an exit visa, but it could no longer save the situation. Being seriously ill, suffering severely not only from illnesses, but also from material need, on August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok died in his Petrograd apartment. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery; Later, his remains were reburied at the Volkovsky cemetery (Literatorskie Mostki).

Biography from Wikipedia

General information

Alexander Blok's father - Alexander Lvovich Blok (1852-1909), lawyer, professor at the University of Warsaw, came from a noble family, his brother Ivan Lvovich was a prominent Russian statesman.

Mother - Alexandra Andreevna, nee Beketova, (1860-1923) - daughter of the rector of St. Petersburg University A. N. Beketov. The marriage, which began when Alexandra was eighteen years old, turned out to be short-lived: after the birth of her son, she broke off relations with her husband and subsequently never resumed them. In 1889, she obtained a decree from the Synod on the dissolution of her marriage with her first husband and married guards officer F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, leaving her son the surname of her first husband.

Nine-year-old Alexander settled with his mother and stepfather in an apartment in the barracks of the Life Grenadier Regiment, located on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, on the banks of the Bolshaya Nevka. In 1889 he was sent to the Vvedensky gymnasium. In 1897, finding himself with his mother abroad, in the German resort town of Bad Nauheim, 16-year-old Blok experienced his first strong youthful love with 37-year-old Ksenia Sadovskaya. She left a deep mark on his work. In 1897, at a funeral in St. Petersburg, he met Vladimir Solovyov.

In 1898 he graduated from high school; in the summer his passion for Lyubov Mendeleeva began; in August he entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. Three years later he transferred to the Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology, which he graduated in 1906. At the university, Blok meets Sergei Gorodetsky and Alexei Remizov.

At this time, the poet’s second cousin, later the priest Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov (junior), became one of the closest friends of the young Blok.

Blok wrote his first poems at the age of five. At the age of eight, young Alexander first meets the Kazan lyric poet, wandering peasant Gavrila Gabriev. After a short conversation with Gabriev, young Alexander finally confirms his desire to become a poet, which he reports to his mother the next day. At the age of 10, Alexander Blok wrote two issues of the magazine “Ship”. From 1894 to 1897, he and his brothers wrote the handwritten magazine “Vestnik”; a total of 37 issues of the magazine were published. Since childhood, Alexander Blok spent every summer on his grandfather’s Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow. 8 km away was the Boblovo estate, owned by Beketov’s friend, the great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev. At the age of 16, Blok became interested in theater. In St. Petersburg, Alexander Blok enrolled in a theater club. However, after his first success, he was no longer given roles in the theater.

In 1903, Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, daughter of D. I. Mendeleev, the heroine of his first book of poems, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” It is known that Alexander Blok had strong feelings for his wife, but periodically maintained connections with various women: at one time it was the actress Natalya Nikolaevna Volokhova, then the opera singer Lyubov Aleksandrovna Andreeva-Delmas. Lyubov Dmitrievna also allowed herself hobbies. On this basis, Blok had a conflict with Andrei Bely, described in the play “Balaganchik”. Andrei Bely, who considered Mendeleeva the embodiment of a Beautiful Lady, was passionately in love with her, but she did not reciprocate his feelings. However, after the First World War, relations in the Blok family improved, and in recent years the poet was the faithful husband of Lyubov Dmitrievna.

In 1909, two difficult events occur in the Blok family: Lyubov Dmitrievna’s child dies and Blok’s father dies. To come to his senses, Blok and his wife go on vacation to Italy and Germany. For his Italian poetry, Blok was accepted into a society called the “Academy.” In addition to him, it included Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Innokenty Annensky.

In the summer of 1911, Blok again traveled abroad, this time to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Alexander Alexandrovich gives a negative assessment of French morals:

The inherent quality of the French (and the Bretons, it seems, predominantly) is inescapable dirt, first of all physical, and then mental. It is better not to describe the first dirt; to put it briefly, a person in any way squeamish will not agree to settle in France.

In the summer of 1913, Blok again went to France (on the advice of doctors) and again wrote about negative impressions:

Biarritz is overrun by the French petty bourgeoisie, so that even my eyes are tired of looking at ugly men and women... And in general, I must say that I am very tired of France and want to return to a cultural country - Russia, where there are fewer fleas, almost no French women, there is food (bread and beef), drink (tea and water); beds (not 15 arshins wide), washbasins (there are basins from which you can never empty all the water, all the dirt remains at the bottom)…

In 1912, Blok wrote the drama “Rose and Cross” about the search for the secret knowledge of the Provençal troubadour Bertrand de Born. The play was completed in January 1913, K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko liked it, but the drama was never staged in the theater.

On July 7, 1916, Blok was called up to serve in the engineering unit of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union. The poet served in Belarus. By his own admission in a letter to his mother, during the war his main interests were “food and horses.”

Revolutionary years

Blok met the February and October revolutions with mixed feelings. He refused to emigrate, believing that he should be with Russia in difficult times. At the beginning of May 1917, he was hired by the “Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate illegal actions of former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials of both civil, military and naval departments” as an editor. In August, Blok began working on a manuscript, which he considered as part of the future report of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission and which was published in the magazine “Byloe” (No. 15, 1919) and in the form of a book called “The Last Days of Imperial Power” (Petrograd, 1921).

Blok immediately accepted the October Revolution enthusiastically, but as a spontaneous uprising, a rebellion.

In January 1920, Blok’s stepfather, General Franz Kublitsky-Piottukh, whom the poet called Franz, died of pneumonia. Blok took his mother to live with him. But she and Blok’s wife did not get along with each other.

In January 1921, on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of Pushkin’s death, Blok delivered his famous speech “On the Appointment of a Poet” at the House of Writers.

Illness and death

Blok was one of those artists in Petrograd who not only accepted Soviet power, but agreed to work for its benefit. The authorities began to widely use the poet’s name for their own purposes. Throughout 1918-1920, Blok, often against his will, was appointed and elected to various positions in organizations, committees, and commissions. The constantly increasing volume of work undermined the poet's strength. Fatigue began to accumulate - Blok described his state of that period with the words “I was drunk.” This may also explain the poet’s creative silence - he wrote in a private letter in January 1919: “For almost a year now I have not belonged to myself, I have forgotten how to write poetry and think about poetry...”. Heavy workloads in Soviet institutions and living in hungry and cold revolutionary Petrograd completely undermined the poet’s health - Blok developed serious cardiovascular disease, asthma, mental disorders, and scurvy began in the winter of 1920.

In the spring of 1921, Alexander Blok, together with Fyodor Sologub, asked to be issued exit visas. The issue was considered by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Exit was denied. Lunacharsky noted: “We literally, without releasing the poet and without giving him the necessary satisfactory conditions, tortured him.” A number of historians believed that V.I. Lenin and V.R. Menzhinsky played a particularly negative role in the fate of the poet, prohibiting the patient from going to a sanatorium in Finland for treatment, which, at the request of Maxim Gorky and Lunacharsky, was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee RCP(b) July 12, 1921. The exit permit obtained by L. B. Kamenev and A. V. Lunacharsky at a subsequent meeting of the Politburo was signed on July 23, 1921. But since Blok’s condition worsened, on July 29, 1921, Gorky asked for permission to leave for Blok’s wife as an accompanying person. Already on August 1, permission to leave L. D. Blok was signed by Molotov, but Gorky learned about this from Lunacharsky only on August 6.

Finding himself in a difficult financial situation, he was seriously ill and on August 7, 1921, he died in his last Petrograd apartment from inflammation of the heart valves, at the age of 41. A few days before his death, a rumor spread throughout Petrograd that the poet had gone crazy. On the eve of his death, Blok raved for a long time, obsessed with a single thought: had all the copies of “The Twelve” been destroyed? However, the poet died in full consciousness, which refutes rumors about his insanity. Before his death, after receiving a negative response to a request to go abroad for treatment (dated July 12), Blok deliberately destroyed his records and refused to take food and medicine.

Alexander Blok was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery in Petrograd. The Beketov and Kachalov families are also buried there, including the poet’s grandmother Ariadna Alexandrovna, with whom he was in correspondence. The funeral service was performed by Archpriest Alexey Zapadlov on August 10 (July 28, Art. - the day of the celebration of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God) in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ.

And Smolenskaya is now the birthday girl.
Blue incense spreads over the grass.
And the singing of a funeral service flows,
Today is not sad, but bright.
...
We brought it to the Smolensk intercessor
Brought to the Blessed Virgin Mary
In your arms in a silver coffin
Our sun, extinguished in agony,
Alexandra, the pure swan.

In 1944, Blok’s ashes were reburied on the Literary Bridge at the Volkovskoye Cemetery.

Family and relatives

The poet's relatives live in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Riga, Rome, Paris and England. Until recent years, Alexander Blok’s second cousin, Ksenia Vladimirovna Beketova, lived in St. Petersburg. Among Blok’s relatives is the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Our Heritage” - Vladimir Enisherlov.

The alleged son of A. Blok was journalist A. Nolle (Kuleshov).

Creation

He began to create in the spirit of symbolism (“Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, 1901-1902), the feeling of crisis of which was proclaimed in the drama “Balaganchik” (1906). Blok’s lyrics, which are similar in their “spontaneity” to music, were formed under the influence of romance. Through the deepening of social trends (the "City" cycle, 1904-1908), religious interest (the "Snow Mask" cycle, Publishing House "Ory", St. Petersburg 1907), understanding the "terrible world" (cycle of the same name 1908-1916), awareness the tragedy of modern man (the play “The Rose and the Cross”, 1912-1913) came to the idea of ​​the inevitability of “retribution” (the cycle of the same name 1907-1913; the cycle “Iambics”, 1907-1914; the poem “Retribution”, 1910-1921). The main themes of poetry found resolution in the cycle “Motherland” (1907-1916).

The paradoxical combination of the mystical and the everyday, the detached and the everyday is generally characteristic of Blok’s entire work as a whole. This is a distinctive feature of his mental organization, and, as a consequence, of his own, Blok’s symbolism. Particularly characteristic in this regard is the classic comparison between the hazy silhouette of “The Stranger” and “drunkards with rabbit eyes,” which has become a textbook example. In general, Blok was extremely sensitive to the everyday impressions and sounds of the city around him and the artists with whom he encountered and sympathized.

Before the revolution, the musicality of Blok’s poems lulled the audience, plunging them into a kind of somnambulistic sleep. Later, the intonations of desperate, soul-grabbing gypsy songs appeared in his works (a consequence of frequent visits to cafes and concerts of this genre, especially opera performances and concerts of Lyubov Delmas, with whom Blok later had an affair).

A feature of A. A. Blok’s poetic style is the use of metaphor

He himself recognizes the metaphorical perception of the world as the main property of a true poet, for whom the romantic transformation of the world with the help of metaphor is not an arbitrary poetic game, but a genuine insight into the mysterious essence of life

in the form of catachresis, turning into a symbol. Blok's innovative contribution is the use of the dolnik as a unit of rhythm in a poetic line.

With Blok begins... the decisive liberation of Russian verse from the principle of counting syllables in feet, the destruction of the requirement of metrical ordering of the number and arrangement of unstressed syllables in verse, canonized by Trediakovsky and Lomonosov. In this sense, all the newest Russian poets studied with Blok.

At first, the Bloc accepted both the February and October revolutions with readiness, full support and even enthusiasm, which, however, was enough for a little more than one short and difficult year of 1918. As Yu. P. Annenkov noted,

in 1917-18, Blok was undoubtedly captured by the spontaneous side of the revolution. “World fire” seemed to him a goal, not a stage. The world fire was not even a symbol of destruction for Blok: it was “the world orchestra of the people’s soul.” Street lynchings seemed to him more justifiable than legal proceedings

- (Yu. P. Annenkov, “Memories of Blok”).

This position of Blok caused harsh assessments by a number of other literary figures - in particular, I. A. Bunin:

Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan (P.S.) admires. The song is generally simple, but Blok is a stupid person. Russian literature has been incredibly corrupted over the past decades. The street and the crowd began to play a very important role. Everything - and literature especially - goes out onto the street, connects with it and falls under its influence. “There is a Jewish pogrom in Zhmerinka, just as there was a pogrom in Znamenka...” This is called, according to Blok, “the people are embraced by the music of the revolution - listen, listen to the music of the revolution!”

- (I. A. Bunin, “Cursed Days”).

Blok tried to comprehend the October Revolution not only in journalism, but also, which is especially significant, in his poem “The Twelve” (1918), which was unlike all his previous works. This striking and generally misunderstood work stands completely apart in Russian literature of the Silver Age and caused controversy and objections (both left and right) throughout the 20th century. Oddly enough, the key to a real understanding of the poem can be found in the work of the popular in pre-revolutionary Petrograd, and now almost forgotten chansonnier and poet Mikhail Savoyarov, whose “rough” work Blok highly valued and whose concerts he attended dozens of times. Judging by the poetic language of the poem “The Twelve,” Blok has at least changed a lot, his post-revolutionary style has become almost unrecognizable. Apparently he was influenced by a person with whom in the last pre-revolutionary years he was on friendly terms: the singer, poet and eccentric, Mikhail Savoyarov. According to Viktor Shklovsky, the poem “The Twelve” was unanimously condemned and few people understood it precisely because they were too accustomed to taking Blok seriously and only seriously:

"Twelve" is an ironic thing. It is not even written in a ditty style, it is done in a “thieves’” style. The style of a street verse like Savoyard's.

In his article, Shklovsky (according to the Hamburg account) also spoke about Savoyarov, the most popular Petrograd chansonnier in the pre-revolutionary years, who quite often (though not always) performed in the so-called “ragged genre”. Having disguised himself beyond recognition as a tramp, this rude singer appeared on stage in the stylized outfit of a typical criminal. We find direct confirmation of this thesis in Blok’s notebooks. In March 1918, when his wife, Lyubov Dmitrievna, was preparing to read the poem “The Twelve” aloud at evenings and concerts, Blok specially took her to Savoyard concerts to show her how and with what intonation these poems should be read. In an everyday, eccentric, even shocking... but not at all “symbolist”, theatrical, habitually “Blok” manner... Apparently, Blok believed that “The Twelve” should be read in exactly that tough thieves’ manner, as Savoyarov did when speaking in the role of a St. Petersburg criminal (or tramp). However, Blok himself did not know how to read in such a characteristic way and did not learn. For such a result, he himself would have to become, as he put it, “a pop poet-coupletist.” It was in this way that the poet painfully tried to distance himself from the nightmare that surrounded him in the last three years of Petrograd (and Russian) life... either criminal, or military, or some strange intertemporal...

In the poem “The Twelve,” colloquial and vulgar speech was not only introduced into the poem, but also replaced the voice of the author himself. The linguistic style of the poem “The Twelve” was perceived by contemporaries not only as deeply new, but also as the only one possible at that moment.

According to A. Remizov

When I read “The Twelve”, I was struck by the verbal matter - the music of street words and expressions - scraping up unexpected words from Blok... There are only a few book words in “The Twelve”! This is what music is, I thought. What luck Blok had: I can’t imagine it being possible to convey the street any other way. Here Blok was at the height of verbal expression.

In February 1919, Blok was arrested by the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission. He was suspected of participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. A day later, after two long interrogations, Blok was released, as Lunacharsky stood up for him. However, even these one and a half days in prison broke him. In 1920, Blok wrote in his diary:

...under the yoke of violence, human conscience becomes silent; then a person withdraws into the old; The more brazen the violence, the more firmly a person locks himself into the old. This is what happened to Europe under the yoke of war, and to Russia today.

For Blok, the rethinking of revolutionary events and the fate of Russia was accompanied by a deep creative crisis, depression and progressive illness. After the surge of January 1918, when “Scythians” and “Twelve” were created at once, Blok completely stopped writing poetry and answered all questions about his silence: “All sounds have stopped... Don’t you hear that there are no sounds?” And to the artist Annenkov, the author of cubist illustrations for the first edition of the poem “The Twelve,” he complained: “I’m suffocating, suffocating, suffocating! We are suffocating, we will all suffocate. The world revolution is turning into a world angina pectoris!

The last cry of despair was the speech Blok read in February 1921 at an evening dedicated to the memory of Pushkin. This speech was listened to by both Akhmatova and Gumilev, who came to the reading in a tailcoat, arm in arm with a lady who was shivering from the cold in a black dress with a deep neckline (the hall, as always in those years, was unheated, steam was clearly coming from everyone’s mouths) . Blok stood on the stage in a black jacket over a white turtleneck sweater, with his hands in his pockets. Quoting Pushkin’s famous line: “There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and will...” - Blok turned to the discouraged Soviet bureaucrat sitting right there on the stage (one of those who, according to Andrei Bely’s caustic definition, “don’t write anything, only sign”) and minted:

...peace and freedom are also taken away. Not external peace, but creative peace. Not childish will, not the freedom to be liberal, but creative will - secret freedom. And the poet dies because he can no longer breathe: life has lost its meaning for him.

Blok's poetic works have been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

Bibliography

Collected works

  • "Poems about a beautiful lady." - M.: “Grif”, 1905. Cover by P. A. Metzger.
  • "Unexpected joy." Second collection of poems. - M.: “Scorpio”, 1907
  • "The Earth in the Snow." Third collection of poems. - M.: “Golden Fleece”, 1907
  • "Snow Mask" - St. Petersburg: “Ory”, 1907
  • "Lyrical Dramas". - St. Petersburg: “Rosehip”, 1908. Cover by K. S. Somov.
  • "Night hours". The fourth collection of poems. - M.: “Musaget”, 1911
  • "Poems about Russia." - ed. “Fatherland”, 1915. Cover by G. I. Narbut.
  • Collection of poems. Book 1-3. - M.: “Musaget”, 1911-1912; 2nd ed., 1916
  • “Iamby”, Pg., 1919
  • "Beyond the days of yesteryear." - P.-Berlin: ed. Grzhebina, 1920
  • "Gray morning." - P.: “Alkonost”, 1920
  • "Twelve". - Sofia: Russian-Bulgarian Book Publishing House, 1920
  • Collected works of Alexander Blok. - St. Petersburg: “Alkonost”, 1922
  • Collected works. vol. 1-9. - Berlin: “Epoch”, 1923
  • Collected works. T. 1-12. - L.: ed. writers.
  • Collected works. T. 1-8. - M.-L.: IHL, 1960-63. 200,000 copies An additional unnumbered volume to this collection was published in 1965, “Notebooks” - 100,000 copies.
  • Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - M.: Pravda, 1971. - 375,000 copies.
  • Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - L.: Fiction, 1980-1983, 300,000 copies.
  • Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - M.: TERRA, 2009
  • Complete (academic) collection of works and letters in twenty volumes. T. 1-5, 7-8. - M., “Science”, 1997 - present. vr. (ongoing edition, volume 6 was not published, after volume 5 volumes 7 and 8 were released)
  • Selected works. - K.: Veselka, 1985
  • Notebooks. 1901-1920. - M.: IHL, 1965.

Bloc and revolution

  • Blok A. A. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin // Blok A. A. Collected works in 6 volumes. L.: 1982. - T.4. (Written in 1906, first published: Pass. 1907. No. 4 (February)).
  • The Last Days of Imperial Power: Based on unpublished documents compiled by Alexander Blok. - Petrograd: Alkonost, 1921.

Correspondence

  • Letters from Alexander Blok. - L.: Kolos, 1925.
  • Letters from Alexander Blok to his family: . T. 1-2. - M.-L.: Academia, 1927-1932.
  • Letters to Al. Blok to E.P. Ivanov. - M.-L., 1936.
  • Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Correspondence. - M., 1940.
  • Blok A. A. Letters to his wife // Literary inheritance. - T. 89. - M., 1978.
  • I visit the Kachalovs
  • Letters from A. A. Blok to L. A. Delmas // Zvezda. - 1970. - No. 11. - P. 190-201.

Memory

  • The museum-apartment of A. A. Blok in St. Petersburg is located on Dekabristov Street (formerly Ofitserskaya), 57.
  • State Historical, Literary and Natural Museum-Reserve of A. A. Blok in Shakhmatovo
  • Monument to Blok in Moscow, on Spiridonovka Street
  • His poem “Night, Street, Lantern, Pharmacy” was turned into a monument on one of the streets of Leiden. Blok became the third poet after

And Alexander Blok wrote his first poems even before the gymnasium. At the age of 14 he published the handwritten magazine “Vestnik”, at 17 he staged plays on the stage of a home theater and acted in them, at 22 he published his poems in Valery Bryusov’s anthology “Northern Flowers”. The creator of the poetic and mysterious image of the Beautiful Lady, the author of critical articles, Blok became one of the most famous poets of the Silver Age.

Young publisher and playwright

Alexander Blok was born on November 28, 1880 in St. Petersburg. His father, Alexander Blok Sr., was a nobleman and private associate professor at the Department of Public Law at the University of Warsaw, and his mother Alexandra was the daughter of the rector of St. Petersburg University Andrei Beketov. After the birth of their son, Blok’s parents separated. In 1883–1884, Alexander Blok lived abroad, in Italy, with his mother, aunt and grandmother. Officially, the marriage of Blok’s parents was dissolved by the Synod in 1889. At the same time, the mother remarried - to guard officer Franz Kublicki-Piottukh.

Mother of the poet Alexandra Blok. 1880. Warsaw. Photo: wikipedia.org

Alexander Blok with his mother and stepfather. 1895. Petersburg. Photo: liveinternet.ru

Alexander Blok in childhood. Photo: poradu.pp.ua

In 1891, Alexander Blok was sent straight to the second grade of the Vvedenskaya gymnasium. By that time, the boy had already tried to compose - both prose and poetry. In 1894, Blok began publishing the magazine Vestnik, and the whole family took part in his literary game. The editorial team included two cousins, a second cousin and a mother. Grandmother Elizaveta Beketova wrote stories, grandfather Andrei Beketov illustrated materials. A total of 37 issues of Vestnik were published. In addition to poems and articles, Alexander Blok composed a novel for him in the style of Main Reed: it was published in the first eight issues of the magazine.

In 1897, Blok went with his mother to Germany, to the resort town of Bad Nauheim. Here he first truly fell in love - with the wife of the state councilor Ksenia Sadovskaya. Blok at that time was 17 years old, his beloved was 37. The poet dedicated the poem “Night has descended to earth” to Sadovskaya. You and I are alone,” which became the first autobiographical work in his lyrics.

Their meetings were rare: Blok’s mother was categorically against her son’s communication with an adult married lady. However, the young poet’s passion did not leave him in St. Petersburg, where he met his lady love several times.

In 1898, Alexander Blok graduated from high school, and in August of the same year he entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. However, jurisprudence did not attract the young poet. He became interested in theater. Blok spent almost every holiday on his grandfather’s estate, Shakhmatovo. In the neighboring Boblovo estate in the summer of 1899, he staged performances - “Boris Godunov”, “Hamlet”, “The Stone Guest”. And he played them himself.

Poems about a beautiful lady

Alexander Blok and his wife Lyubov Mendeleeva. Photo: radiodacha.ru

Andrey Bely. Photo: lifo.gr

Three years later, Blok transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology. He began to get acquainted with the St. Petersburg literary elite. In 1902, he became friends with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Valery Bryusov placed the poems of Alexander Blok in the almanac “Northern Flowers”.

In 1903, Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, the Beautiful Lady of Blok’s love lyrics. They had known each other for eight years at that time; Blok had been in love for about five years. Soon the series “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” was published in “Northern Flowers” ​​- the name for it was suggested by Bryusov.

In 1904 in Moscow, Blok met Andrei Bely (Boris Bugaev), who became his “sworn friend”: Bely was in love with Lyubov Mendeleeva. Blok idolized and extolled his wife and was proud of their spiritual relationship. However, this did not stop him from regularly having affairs - with actress Natalya Volokhova, opera singer Lyubov Andreeva-Delmas. The poet first quarreled with Andrei Bely, then made peace again. They criticized each other, mutually admired each other's creativity and challenged each other to a duel.

In 1905, Russia was rocked by the first revolution. It was also reflected in the work of Alexander Blok. New motifs appeared in his lyrics - blizzards, blizzards, elements. In 1907, the poet completed the cycle “Snow Mask”, the dramas “Stranger” and “Balaganchik”. Blok was published in Symbolist publications - “Questions of Life”, “Scales”, “Pass”. In the magazine “Golden Fleece” in 1907, the poet began running a critical section. A year later, Blok’s third collection, “Earth in Poems,” was published.

Society of Artistic Word Devotees

Alexander Blok as Hamlet. 1898. Boblovo. Photo: drug-gorod.ru

Lyubov Mendeleeva as Ophelia. 1898. Boblovo. Photo: liveinternet.ru

Alexander Blok as King Claudius and Lyubov Mendeleeva as Ophelia in a home performance of Hamlet. 1898. Boblovo. Photo: liveinternet.ru

In 1909, Alexander Blok’s father and adopted son died - Lyubov Mendeleeva gave birth to him from the actor Davidovsky. To recover from the shocks, the poet and his wife went on a trip to Italy and Germany. Based on his impressions from the trip, Alexander Blok wrote the cycle “Italian Poems”.

After the publication of the cycle, Blok was accepted into the “Academy of Verse,” also known as the “Society of Admirers of the Artistic Word.” It was organized by Vyacheslav Ivanov at the Apollo magazine, and also included Innokenty Annensky and Valery Bryusov.

In 1911, Blok again traveled abroad - this time to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The poet did not like it in France.

“The inherent quality of the French (and the Bretons, it seems, predominantly) is inescapable dirt, first of all physical, and then mental. It is better not to describe the first dirt; to put it briefly, a person in any way squeamish will not agree to settle in France.”

Alexander Blok

In the same year, his next collection of poems, “Night Hours,” was published. A year later, Alexander Blok completed the play “Rose and Cross” and compiled a three-volume collection of poems from his five collections. During the poet's lifetime it was republished twice. Blok wrote literary and critical articles, gave reports, and gave lectures.

At the end of 1912, Alexander Blok undertook to rewrite The Rose and the Cross. He finished it in January 1913, and in April he read it at the Society of Poets and personally to Stanislavsky. In August, the drama was published in the Sirin almanac. However, the play was not staged soon - only a few years later at the Moscow Art Theater.

In December 1913, Blok personally met Anna Akhmatova - she came to visit him, bringing with her Blok’s three-volume work. The poet signed the first two volumes "Akhmatova - Blok", in the third he entered a pre-prepared madrigal, which was later included in all collections of his poems - “Beauty is scary - they will tell you”.

In 1916, Blok was called up to serve as a timekeeper in the engineering unit of the All-Russian Union. The troops were based in Belarus.

“I went wild, I spent half a day riding with a horse through forests, fields and swamps, almost unwashed; then we drink samovars of tea, scold the authorities, doze or fall asleep, write in the office, sometimes we sit on the rubble and look at the pigs and geese.”

"Art and Revolution"

Alexander Blok, Fyodor Sologub and Georgy Chulkov. 1908. Photo: wikipedia.org

Alexander Blok (second from right) as a member of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission of the Provisional Government. 1917. Photo: arzamas.academy

Blok's attitude towards the revolution changed over time. At first he accepted her with delight and refused to emigrate. Blok was hired to work in “An extraordinary commission of inquiry to investigate illegal actions of former ministers, chief executives and other senior officials of both civil, military and naval departments”- for the position of editor. At the beginning of 1918, the poet wrote the poem “The Twelve” and “Scythians”. His articles were published in a separate collection - “Art and Revolution”. Blok made reports at the Free Philosophical Association, prepared his trilogy for republication, and was a member of the Theater and Literary Commission and the editorial board of the World Literature publishing house.

In February 1919, Blok was arrested on charges of having connections with the Left Social Revolutionaries. However, two days later they were released - through the efforts of Anatoly Lunacharsky. In August of the same year, a new collection of poems, “Iambas,” was published, and Blok was appointed a member of the board of the Literary Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education. He worked a lot and was very tired. In one of his letters the poet wrote: “It’s been almost a year since I’ve belonged to myself, I’ve forgotten how to write poetry and think about poetry...” Blok's health was deteriorating. However, he continued to write and perform, and in 1920 he prepared a collection of lyrics, Gray Morning. On February 5, 1921, the poem “To the Pushkin House” appeared, and on February 11 at the House of Writers, at an evening dedicated to Pushkin, Blok delivered the famous speech “On the Appointment of a Poet.”

In the spring of 1921, Alexander Blok asked for a visa for treatment abroad, but was refused. Then a drama unfolded with a huge number of characters, in the center of which was a terminally ill poet. On May 29, Maxim Gorky wrote a letter to Lunacharsky about the need to release Blok to Finland for treatment. On June 18, Blok destroyed part of the archives, and on July 3, several notebooks. Lunacharsky and Kamenev obtained permission to leave on July 23. But Blok’s condition worsened, and on July 29, Gorky again wrote a petition - so that Blok’s wife would be allowed to accompany him. On August 1, the documents were signed, but Gorky learned about this only five days later. It was late: on the morning of August 7, Alexander Blok died in his apartment in Petrograd. The poet was buried at the Smolensk cemetery.