He began writing poetry in childhood. The first book of poems, “Collection of Poems,” was published in Yaroslavl at the expense of the author in 1890. After the book was published, the young poet burned almost the entire small edition.

Balmont's wide popularity came quite late, and in the late 1890s he was rather known as a talented translator from Norwegian, Spanish, English and other languages.
In 1903, one of the poet’s best collections, “Let’s Be Like the Sun,” and the collection “Only Love” were published.

1905 - two collections “Liturgy of Beauty” and “Fairy Tales”.
Balmont responded to the events of the first Russian revolution with the collections “Poems” (1906) and “Songs of the Avenger” (1907).
1907 book “Firebird. Slavic flute"

collections “Birds in the Air” (1908), “Round Dance of the Times” (1908), “Green Vertograd” (1909).

author of three books containing literary critical and aesthetic articles: “Mountain Peaks” (1904), “White Lightning” (1908), “Sea Glow” (1910).
Before October Revolution Balmont creates two more truly interesting collections, “Ash” (1916) and “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon” (1917).

Symbolist Konstantin Balmont was for his contemporaries an “eternal, disturbing riddle.” His followers united in “Balmont” circles and imitated him literary style and even appearance. Many contemporaries dedicated their poems to him - Marina Tsvetaeva and Maximilian Voloshin, Igor Severyanin and Ilya Erenburg. But several people were of particular importance in the poet’s life.

"The first poets I read"

Konstantin Balmont was born in the village of Gumnishchi, Vladimir province. His father was an employee, his mother organized amateur performances and literary evenings, and appeared in the local press. The future poet Konstantin Balmont read his first books at the age of five.

When the older children had to go to school (Konstantin was the third of seven sons), the family moved to Shuya. Here Balmont entered the gymnasium, here he wrote his first poems, which were not approved by his mother: “On a bright sunny day they appeared, two poems at once, one about winter, the other about summer.” Here he joined an illegal circle that distributed proclamations of the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party in the town. The poet wrote about his revolutionary sentiments like this: “... I was happy, and I wanted everyone to feel just as good. It seemed to me that if it was good only for me and a few, it was ugly.”

Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont, father of the poet. 1890s Photo: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.

Kostya Balmont. Moscow. Photo: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.

Vera Nikolaevna Balmont, mother of the poet. 1880s Image: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.

"The Godfather" Vladimir Korolenko

In 1885, the future writer was transferred to a gymnasium in Vladimir. He published three of his poems in Zhivopisnoye Obozreniye, a then popular magazine in St. Petersburg. Balmont's literary debut went virtually unnoticed.

During this period, Konstantin Balmont met the writer Vladimir Korolenko. Later the poet called him his " godfather" Korolenko was given a notebook containing poems by Balmont and his translations by the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau.

The writer prepared a letter for high school student Konstantin Balmont with a review of his works, noted the “undoubted talent” of the aspiring poet and gave some advice: work concentratedly on his texts, look for his own individuality, and also “read, study and, more importantly, live.” .

“He wrote to me that I have many beautiful details, successfully snatched from the world of nature, that you need to concentrate your attention, and not chase after every passing moth, that you don’t need to rush your feeling with thought, but you need to trust the unconscious area of ​​​​the soul, which is imperceptibly accumulates his observations and comparisons, and then suddenly it all blossoms, like a flower blossoms after a long, invisible period of accumulation of its strength.”

In 1886, Konstantin Balmont entered the law faculty of Moscow University. But a year later he was expelled for participating in the riots and sent to Shuya.

K. D. Balmont. Portrait by Valentin Serov (1905)

Building of Moscow State University

Vladimir Korolenko. Photo: onk.su

“Russian Sappho” Mirra Lokhvitskaya

In 1889, the aspiring poet married Larisa Garelina. A year later, Konstantin Balmont published his first book, “Collection of Poems.” The publication did not arouse interest either in literary circles or among the poet’s relatives, and he burned almost the entire circulation of the book. The poet's parents actually broke off relations with him after his marriage; the financial situation of the young family was unstable. Balmont tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. After that he spent almost a year in bed. In 1892, he began translating (over half a century of literary activity, he would leave translations from almost 30 languages).

A close friend of the poet in the 1890s was Mirra (Maria) Lokhvitskaya, who was called the “Russian Sappho.” They most likely met in 1895 in Crimea (the approximate date was reconstructed from a book with a dedicatory inscription by Lokhvitskaya). The poetess was married, Konstantin Balmont was married for the second time at that time, to Ekaterina Andreeva (in 1901 their daughter Nina was born).

My earthly life is ringing,
The indistinct rustle of reeds,
They lull the sleeping swan to sleep,
My restless soul.
They flash hurriedly in the distance
In the quest of greedy ships,
Calm in the thickets of the bay,
Where sadness breathes, like the oppression of the earth.
But the sound, born from trepidation,
Slips into the rustling of the reeds,
And the awakened swan trembles,
My immortal soul
And will rush into the world of freedom,
Where the sighs of storms echo the waves,
Where in the choppy waters
Looks like eternal azure.

Mirra Lokhvitskaya. "Sleeping Swan" (1896)

White swan, pure swan,
Your dreams are always silent,
Serene silver
You glide, creating waves.
Below you is a silent depth,
No hello, no answer
But you slide, drowning
In the abyss of air and light.
Above you - bottomless ether
With the bright Morning Star.
You glide, transformed
Reflected beauty.
A symbol of passionless tenderness,
Unsaid, timid,
The ghost is feminine and beautiful
The swan is clean, the swan is white!

Konstantin Balmont. "White Swan" (1897)

For almost a decade, Lokhvitskaya and Balmont conducted a poetic dialogue, which is often called a “novel in verse.” In the work of the two poets, poems were popular that overlapped - without directly mentioning the addressee - in form or content. Sometimes the meaning of several verses became clear only when they were compared.

Soon the poets' views began to diverge. This also affected the creative correspondence, which Mirra Lokhvitskaya tried to stop. But the literary romance was interrupted only in 1905, when she died. Balmont continued to dedicate poems to her and admire her works. He told Anna Akhmatova that before meeting her he knew only two poetesses - Sappho and Mirra Lokhvitskaya. He will name his daughter from his third marriage in honor of the poetess.

Mirra Lokhvitskaya. Photo: e-reading.club

Ekaterina Andreeva. Photo: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.

Anna Akhmatova. Photo: lingar.my1.ru

“The brother of my dreams, poet and sorcerer Valery Bryusov”

In 1894, a collection of poems by Konstantin Balmont “Under northern sky", and in the same year at a meeting of the Society of Amateurs Western literature the poet met Valery Bryusov.

“For the first time he discovered “deviations” in our verse, discovered possibilities that no one suspected, unprecedented rehash of vowels, pouring into one another, like drops of moisture, like crystal ringing.”

Valery Bryusov

Their acquaintance grew into friendship: the poets often met, read new works to each other, and shared their impressions of foreign poetry. In his memoirs, Valery Bryusov wrote: “Many, very many things became clear to me, they were revealed to me only through Balmont. He taught me to understand other poets. I was one before meeting Balmont and became another after meeting him.”

Both poets tried to introduce European traditions into Russian poetry, both were symbolists. However, their communication, which lasted a total of more than a quarter of a century, did not always go smoothly: sometimes conflicts broke out leading to long disagreements, then both Balmont and Bryusov again resumed creative meetings and correspondence. The long-term “friendship-enmity” was accompanied by many poems that the poets dedicated to each other.

Valery Bryusov “K.D. Balmont"

V. Bryusov. Painting by artist M. Vrubel

Konstantin Balmont

Valery Bryusov

“The tradesman Peshkov. By pseudonym: Gorky"

In the mid-1890s, Maxim Gorky was interested in the literary experiments of the Symbolists. During this period, his correspondence communication with Konstantin Balmont began: in 1900–1901 they both published in the magazine “Life”. Balmont dedicated several poems to Gorky and wrote about his work in his articles on Russian literature.

The writers met personally in November 1901. At this time, Balmont was again expelled from St. Petersburg - for participating in a demonstration and for the poem “Little Sultan” he wrote, which contained criticism of the policies of Nicholas II. The poet went to Crimea to visit Maxim Gorky. Together they visited Leo Tolstoy in Gaspra. In a letter to the editor of Life, Vladimir Posse, Gorky wrote about his acquaintance: “I met Balmont. This neurasthenic is devilishly interesting and talented!”

Bitter! You came from the bottom
But with an indignant soul you love what is tender and refined.
There is only one sorrow in our life:
We longed for greatness, seeing the pale, unfinished

Konstantin Balmont. "Gorky"

Since 1905, Konstantin Balmont actively participated in political life country, collaborated with anti-government publications. A year later, fearing arrest, he emigrated to France. During this period, Balmont traveled and wrote a lot, and published the book “Songs of the Avenger.” The poet’s communication with Maxim Gorky practically ceased.

The poet returned to Russia in 1913, when an amnesty was declared in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The poet did not accept the October Revolution of 1917, in the book “Am I a Revolutionary or Not?” (1918) he argued that a poet should be outside the parties, but expressed a negative attitude towards the Bolsheviks. At this time, Balmont was married for the third time - to Elena Tsvetkovskaya.

In 1920, when the poet moved to Moscow with his wife and daughter Mirra, he wrote several poems dedicated to the young Union. This allowed me to go abroad, supposedly on a creative trip, but the family did not return to the USSR. At this time, relations with Maxim Gorky reached a new level: Gorky writes a letter to Romain Rolland, in which he condemns Balmont for pseudo-revolutionary poems, emigration and the complicated situation of those poets who also wanted to go abroad. The poet responds to this with the article “The Tradesman Peshkov. By pseudonym: Gorky,” which was published in the Riga newspaper Segodnya.

Konstantin Balmont is a Russian poet, translator, prose writer, critic, essayist. Bright representative Silver Age. He published 35 collections of poetry and 20 books of prose. Translated a large number of works of foreign writers. Konstantin Dmitrievich is the author of literary studies, philological treatises, and critical essays. His poems “Snowflake”, “Reeds”, “Autumn”, “Towards Winter”, “Fairy” and many others are included in the school curriculum.

Childhood and youth

Konstantin Balmont was born and lived until he was 10 years old in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province, in a poor but noble family. His father Dmitry Konstantinovich first worked as a judge, and later took the post of head of the zemstvo government. Mother Vera Nikolaevna came from a family where they loved and were passionate about literature. The woman organized literary evenings, staged plays and was published in the local newspaper.

Vera Nikolaevna knew several foreign languages, and she had a share of “freethinking”; “undesirable” people often visited their house. He later wrote that his mother not only instilled in him a love of literature, but from her he inherited his “mental structure.” In addition to Konstantin, the family had seven sons. He was third. Watching his mother teach his older brothers to read, the boy learned to read on his own at the age of 5.

A family lived in a house that stood on the river bank, surrounded by gardens. Therefore, when the time came to send their children to school, they moved to Shuya. Thus, they had to break away from nature. The boy wrote his first poems at the age of 10. But his mother did not approve of these endeavors, and he did not write anything for the next 6 years.


In 1876, Balmont was enrolled in the Shuya gymnasium. At first, Kostya showed himself to be a diligent student, but soon he got bored with it all. He became interested in reading, some books in German and French he read in the original. He was expelled from the gymnasium for bad training and revolutionary sentiments. Even then, he was a member of an illegal circle that distributed leaflets for the Narodnaya Volya party.

Konstantin moved to Vladimir and studied there until 1886. While still studying at the gymnasium, his poems were published in the capital’s magazine “Picturesque Review,” but this event went unnoticed. Afterwards he entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law. But he didn’t stay long here either.


He became close to Pyotr Nikolaev, who was a revolutionary in the sixties. Therefore, it is not surprising that after 2 years he was expelled for participating in student riots. Immediately after this incident he was expelled from Moscow to Shuya.

In 1889, Balmont decided to return to the university, but due to a nervous disorder he was again unable to complete his studies. The same fate befell him at the Demidov Lyceum legal sciences, where he entered later. After this attempt, he decided to abandon the idea of ​​getting a “government” education.

Literature

Balmont wrote his first collection of poems while he was bedridden after an unsuccessful suicide. The book was published in Yaroslavl in 1890, but later the poet himself personally destroyed the bulk of the circulation.


Nevertheless, the starting point in the poet’s work is considered to be the collection “Under the Northern Sky.” It was greeted with admiration by the public, as were his subsequent works - “In the Vastness of Darkness” and “Silence”. They eagerly began to publish it in modern magazines, Balmont became popular, he was considered the most promising of the “decadents”.

In the mid-1890s, he began to communicate closely with,. Soon Balmont becomes the most popular symbolist poet in Russia. In his poems he admires the phenomena of the world, and in some collections he openly touches on “demonic” themes. This is noticeable in Evil Spells, the circulation of which was confiscated by the authorities for censorship reasons.

Balmont travels a lot, so his work is permeated with images of exotic countries and multiculturalism. This attracts and delights readers. The poet adheres to spontaneous improvisation - he never made changes to the texts, he believed that the first creative impulse is the most correct.

Contemporaries highly appreciated “Fairy Tales,” written by Balmont in 1905. The poet dedicated this collection of fairy-tale songs to his daughter Nina.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was a revolutionary in spirit and in life. Expulsion from high school and university did not stop the poet. Once he publicly read the verse “Little Sultan”, in which everyone saw a parallel with. For this he was expelled from St. Petersburg and banned from living in university cities for 2 years.


He was an opponent of tsarism, so his participation in the First Russian Revolution was expected. At that time, he became friends with and wrote poems that were more like rhyming leaflets.

During the December Moscow uprising of 1905, Balmont speaks to students. But, fearing arrest, he was forced to leave Russia. From 1906 to 1913 he lived in France as a political emigrant. While in a kind of exile, he continues to write, but critics increasingly began to talk about the decline of Balmont’s work. In his latest works they noticed a certain pattern and self-repetition.


The poet himself considered his best book“Burning buildings. Lyrics of the modern soul." If before this collection his lyrics were filled with melancholy and melancholy, then “Burning Buildings” revealed a different side to Balmont - “sunny” and cheerful notes appeared in his work.

Returning to Russia in 1913, he published a 10-volume complete collection of works. He works on translations and gives lectures around the country. February revolution Balmont received it enthusiastically, as did the entire Russian intelligentsia. But he soon became horrified by the anarchy that was happening in the country.


When the October Revolution began, he was in St. Petersburg; in his words, it was a “hurricane of madness” and “chaos.” In 1920, the poet moved to Moscow, but soon, due to the poor health of his wife and daughter, he moved with them to France. He never returned to Russia.

In 1923, Balmont published two autobiographies - “Under the New Sickle” and “Air Route”. Until the first half of the 1930s, he traveled all over Europe, and his performances were a success among the public. But he no longer enjoyed recognition among the Russian diaspora.

The decline of his work came in 1937, when he published his last collection of poems, “Light Service.”

Personal life

In 1889, Konstantin Balmont married the daughter of an Ivanovo-Voznesensk merchant, Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina. Their mother introduced them, but when he announced his intention to marry, she spoke out against this marriage. Konstantin showed his inflexibility and even broke with his family for the sake of his beloved.


Konstantin Balmont and his first wife Larisa Garelina

As it turned out, his young wife was prone to unjustified jealousy. They always quarreled; the woman did not support him in either his literary or revolutionary endeavors. Some researchers note that it was she who introduced Balmont to wine.

On March 13, 1890, the poet decided to commit suicide - he threw himself onto the pavement from the third floor of his own apartment. But the attempt failed - he spent a year in bed, and his injuries left him lame for the rest of his life.


Married to Larisa, they had two children. Their first child died in infancy, the second - son Nikolai - was sick with a nervous disorder. As a result, Konstantin and Larisa separated, she married the journalist and writer Engelhardt.

In 1896, Balmont married for the second time. His wife was Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva. The girl was from a wealthy family - smart, educated and beautiful. Immediately after the wedding, the lovers left for France. In 1901, their daughter Nina was born. In many ways they were united literary activity, together they worked on translations.


Konstantin Balmont and his third wife Elena Tsvetkovskaya

Ekaterina Alekseevna was not a powerful person, but she dictated the lifestyle of the spouses. And everything would have been fine if Balmont had not met Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya in Paris. The girl was fascinated by the poet, looked at him as if he were a god. From now on, he either lived with his family or went on trips abroad with Catherine for a couple of months.

His family life became completely confused when Tsvetkovskaya gave birth to her daughter Mirra. This event finally tied Konstantin to Elena, but at the same time he did not want to separate from Andreeva. Mental anguish again led Balmont to suicide. He jumped out of the window, but, like last time, he survived.


As a result, he began to live in St. Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra and occasionally visited Andreeva and his daughter Nina in Moscow. They later immigrated to France. There Balmont began dating Dagmar Shakhovskaya. He did not leave the family, but met with the woman regularly and wrote letters to her daily. As a result, she bore him two children - a son, Georges, and a daughter, Svetlana.

But in the most difficult years of his life, Tsvetkovskaya was still with him. She was so devoted to him that she did not even live a year after his death, she left after him.

Death

Having moved to France, he missed Russia. But his health was deteriorating, there were financial problems, so there was no talk of returning. He lived in a cheap apartment with a broken window.


In 1937, the poet was diagnosed with mental illness. From that moment on, he no longer wrote poetry.

On December 23, 1942, he died in the Russian House shelter, near Paris, in Noisy-le-Grand. The cause of his death was pneumonia. The poet died in poverty and oblivion.

Bibliography

  • 1894 – “Under the northern sky (elegy, stanzas, sonnets)”
  • 1895 – “In the vastness of darkness”
  • 1898 – “Silence. Lyrical poems"
  • 1900 – “Burning buildings. Lyrics of the modern soul"
  • 1903 – “We will be like the sun. Book of Symbols"
  • 1903 – “Only love. Seven-flowered"
  • 1905 – “Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns"
  • 1905 – “Fairy Tales (Children's Songs)”
  • 1906 – “Evil Spells (Book of Spells)”
  • 1906 – “Poems”
  • 1907 – “Songs of the Avenger”
  • 1908 – “Birds in the Air (Singing Lines)”
  • 1909 – “Green Vertograd (Kissing Words)”
  • 1917 – “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon”
  • 1920 – “Ring”
  • 1920 – “Seven Poems”
  • 1922 – “Song of the Working Hammer”
  • 1929 – “In the widening distance (Poem about Russia)”
  • 1930 – “Complicity of Souls”
  • 1937 – “Light Service”

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born on June 3 (15), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province. Father, Dmitry Konstantinovich, served in the Shuisky district court and zemstvo, rising from a minor employee with the rank of collegiate registrar to a justice of the peace, and then to the chairman of the district zemstvo council. Mother, Vera Nikolaevna, nee Lebedeva, was an educated woman, and greatly influenced the poet’s future worldview, introducing him to the world of music, literature, and history.
In 1876-1883, Balmont studied at the Shuya gymnasium, from where he was expelled for participating in an anti-government circle. He continued his education at the Vladimir gymnasium, then in Moscow at the university, and the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl. In 1887, for participating in student unrest, he was expelled from Moscow University and exiled to Shuya. Higher education never received it, but thanks to his hard work and curiosity he became one of the most erudite and cultured people of its time. Balmont read a huge number of books every year, studied, according to various sources, from 14 to 16 languages, in addition to literature and art, he was interested in history, ethnography, and chemistry.
He began writing poetry in childhood. The first book of poems, “Collection of Poems,” was published in Yaroslavl at the expense of the author in 1890. After the book was published, the young poet burned almost the entire small edition.
The decisive time in the formation of Balmont's poetic worldview was the mid-1890s. Until now, his poems have not stood out as anything special among late populist poetry. Publication of the collections “Under the Northern Sky” (1894) and “In the Boundless” (1895), translation of two scientific works"History of Scandinavian Literature" by Horn-Schweitzer and "History Italian literature“Gaspari, acquaintance with V. Bryusov and other representatives of the new direction in art, strengthened the poet’s faith in himself and his special purpose. In 1898, Balmont published the collection “Silence,” which finally designated the author’s place in modern literature.
Balmont was destined to become one of the founders of a new direction in literature - symbolism. However, among the “senior symbolists” (D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov) and among the “younger” (A. Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov) he had his own position associated with a broader understanding symbolism as poetry, which, in addition to the specific meaning, has hidden content, expressed through hints, mood, and musical sound. Of all the symbolists, Balmont most consistently developed the impressionistic branch. His poetic world is a world of the most subtle fleeting observations, fragile feelings.
Balmont's predecessors in poetry, in his opinion, were Zhukovsky, Lermontov, Fet, Shelley and E. Poe.
Balmont's wide popularity came quite late, and in the late 1890s he was rather known as a talented translator from Norwegian, Spanish, English and other languages.
In 1903, one of the poet’s best collections, “Let’s Be Like the Sun,” and the collection “Only Love” were published. And before that, for the anti-government poem “Little Sultan”, read at literary evening in the city duma, the authorities expelled Balmont from St. Petersburg, banning him from living in other university cities. And in 1902, Balmont went abroad, finding himself a political emigrant.
In addition to almost all European countries, Balmont visited the United States of America and Mexico and in the summer of 1905 returned to Moscow, where his two collections “Liturgy of Beauty” and “Fairy Tales” were published.
Balmont responded to the events of the first Russian revolution with the collections “Poems” (1906) and “Songs of the Avenger” (1907). Fearing persecution, the poet again leaves Russia and goes to France, where he lives until 1913. From here he travels to Spain, Egypt, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Ceylon, India.
The book “Firebird” published in 1907. The Slav’s Pipe,” in which Balmont developed a national theme, did not bring him success and from that time on the gradual decline of the poet’s fame began. However, Balmont himself was not aware of his creative decline. He remains aloof from the fierce polemics between symbolists, waged on the pages of “Libra” and “The Golden Fleece”, differs from Bryusov in understanding the tasks facing modern art, and still writes a lot, easily, selflessly. One after another, the collections “Birds in the Air” (1908), “Round Dance of the Times” (1908), and “Green Vertograd” (1909) were published. A. Blok speaks about them with unusual harshness.
In May 1913, after an amnesty was declared in connection with the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty, Balmont returned to Russia and for some time found himself in the center of attention of the literary community. By this time, he was not only a famous poet, but also the author of three books containing literary, critical and aesthetic articles: “Mountain Peaks” (1904), “White Lightning” (1908), “Sea Glow” (1910).
Before the October Revolution, Balmont created two more truly interesting collections, “Ash” (1916) and “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon” (1917).
Balmont welcomed the overthrow of the autocracy, but the events that followed the revolution scared him away, and thanks to the support of A. Lunacharsky, Balmont received permission to temporarily travel abroad in June 1920. The temporary departure turned into long years of emigration for the poet.
In exile, Balmont published several collections of poetry: “A Gift to the Earth” (1921), “Haze” (1922), “Mine is for Her” (1923), “Spreading Distances” (1929), “Northern Lights” (1931), “Blue Horseshoe" (1935), "Light Service" (1936-1937).
He died on December 23, 1942 from pneumonia. He was buried in the town of Noisy-le-Grand near Paris, where he lived in recent years.

The work of the famous Russian poet Konstantin Balmont of the Silver Age is quite controversial in terms of direction and style. Initially, the poet was considered the first symbolist to become so famous. However, his early work can still be attributed to impressionism.

All this affected the fact that Konstantin Balmont’s poems were mainly about love, about fleeting impressions and feelings, his work seems to connect heaven and earth, and leaves a sweet aftertaste. In addition, the early poems of the symbolist Balmont were accompanied by a rather sad mood and humility of a lonely young man.

Themes of poems by Konstantin Balmont:

All further work of the poet was constantly changing. The next stage was the search for new space and emotions that could be found in the works. The transition to “Nietzschean” motifs and heroes became the reason for stormy criticism of Balmont’s poems from the outside. The last stage in the poet’s work was the transition from sad themes to brighter colors of life and emotions.

In the autumn season, there is nothing better than reading the poems of Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont.