Poet Innokenty Annensky biography. Innokenty Annensky: biography, creative heritage
4. Innokenty Annensky
Annensky is still read
Today we will talk about Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky, a symbolist poet who, along with Blok, remains, perhaps, the most read author now and today, in demand by today’s reader. Everyone recognizes the historical merits of the poems of Bryusov or Balmont, but they don’t have very many readers today, but Annensky is still read.
Comparison with Blok
In this case, it is convenient to compare with Annensky Blok according to the principle of contrast. We talked about the fact that for Blok the most important idea is the idea of the path, and, accordingly, his trilogy is three-volume and his books are compiled according to a chronological principle. Annensky composed his books completely differently, and we will talk about this today, it is very important for understanding him. Blok was extremely popular during his lifetime. As you know, his photographs were sold in bookstores as postcards.
Nobody knew Annensky. You can even test yourself now: imagine Annensky’s appearance - I’m not sure you can do it easily. However, I repeat once again, Annensky’s popularity is not comparable to Blok’s popularity, but it may approach it and, moreover, Annensky greatly influenced, perhaps even more than Blok, on the subsequent generation of poets. This is one of his important roles. It was what he did in poetry that turned out to be very important for the next generation.
Akhmatova about Annensky
Anna Akhmatova, a tireless promoter of Annensky’s work, wrote about him this way: “While Balmont and Bryusov themselves completed what they had started (although they continued to confuse provincial graphomaniacs for a long time), Annensky’s work revived with terrible force in the next generation. And, if he had not died so early, he could have seen his downpours lashing on the pages of B. Pasternak’s books, his semi-abstruse “Grandfather Lida got along…” from Khlebnikov, his raeshnik (“Balls”) from Mayakovsky, etc. I don't mean to say that everyone imitated him. But he walked along so many roads at the same time! He carried so much new in himself that all innovators turned out to be akin to him... Boris Leonidovich Pasternak<…>categorically asserted that Annensky played a big role in his work... I spoke with Osip (Akhmatova means Mandelstam, of course) about Annensky several times. And he spoke about Annensky with unfailing reverence. Whether Marina Tsvetaeva knew Annensky, I don’t know. Love and admiration for the Teacher both in Gumilev’s poetry and prose.”
Akhmatova names the names of the main post-symbolist poets, both Acmeist poets or those close to Acmeism: Mandelstam, her own, Gumilyov, and futurists: Khlebnikov, Pasternak and Mayakovsky.
She, who was jealous of Tsvetaeva, accordingly, says that Tsvetaeva may not have read Annensky, but we will still try to see that, in fact, Tsvetaeva read Annensky very carefully.
Accordingly, you and I will try to understand what was unique about Annensky’s poetry. What was in him that in his poetic manner predicted the manner of the Symbolist poets.
Biography
First, let's talk very briefly about his biography. He is older than many of the older Symbolists. He was born in 1855, in Siberia. He spent his childhood in a populist family.
His brother, Nikolai Fedorovich Annensky, was a very famous populist figure. Accordingly, on the one hand, Annensky took from him an interest in these topics, and, say, one of Annensky’s most famous poems “Old Estonian Women” can, among other things, be perceived as a social poem. On the other hand, he, as often happens with younger brothers, was repelled by what his older brother imposed on him, and his social poems are important, but they are isolated.
Initially, the main areas of his activity were two: he was a famous teacher and achieved quite high altitudes in this field, in particular, in 1895 - 1906 he was the director of the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, the same gymnasium where Gumilyov studied, and Akhmatova, when she talks about Annensky as Gumilyov’s teacher, means, of course, poetry, but she is also the most literal teacher.
Gumilyov has a wonderful poem in memory of Annensky, where he remembers how he comes to Annensky’s office. In this very office he sees a bust of Euripides. And this is also not accidental, since Annensky was one of the most famous translators of ancient authors, and his main feat was the translation of the entire Euripides. Until now, we read Euripides mainly in the translations of Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky.
He began writing poetry quite early, but at the same time they were not published. He published his first book of independent poems shortly before his death. It was called in a characteristic way- “Quiet Songs.” It was issued in 1904 and was signed by a pseudonym, a somewhat pretentious pseudonym. He signed it Nick. That.– Nikolai Timoshenko, let’s assume.
This pseudonym seemed funny and pretentious to reviewers, among whom were Blok and Bryusov. It is characteristic that they wrote about Annensky (they did not know who the author of this book was) as about a talented aspiring poet, clapped him on the shoulder, meanwhile, Annensky was older than both.
It must be said right away, this will be important in the future, that, on the one hand, this pseudonym seems self-deprecating - Nobody - on the other hand, the “antique” Annensky, of course, remembered that Nobody - that’s what Ulysses calls himself, that’s what Odysseus calls himself in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus. Accordingly, it was humiliation rather than pride. On the one hand, I am nobody, you don’t know me and are unlikely to recognize me, on the other hand, Odysseus, as we know, is one of the main Greek heroes.
I have already said that Annensky was the director of the gymnasium until 1906. Why did he stop being one? Because he was sympathetic to those students who took part in the revolution of 1905 (here perhaps his populist roots are again reflected). Then he will have all sorts of troubles, and he will cease to be the director of the gymnasium.
And he was brought into the wide world, into the white literary light of St. Petersburg, partly with the participation of Gumilyov in 1909, when the Apollo magazine was created, which opposed symbolist publications, which opposed itself to symbolist publications, and one of the important people in it who determined policy This magazine became Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov. Gumilev invited Annensky to participate in Apollo. Annensky published a large article there and published several of his poems. It seemed that a new period of his creativity was beginning. He was recognized, he argued, polemicized with the main theorists of symbolism, with such, for example, as Vyacheslav Ivanov.
But, suddenly, Annensky died, a symbolic death, so to speak, on the steps of the station, waiting for the train that was traveling to Tsarskoe Selo. For some time the body could not be identified; it did not have any documents. Why did I say that this death is symbolic? Because tragedy, the meaninglessness of life, the complexity of life, the incomprehensibility of life - this is, perhaps, main topic Annensky.
Formula of creativity
If you try, as we are doing and will continue to do, to look for some short formula in order to define Annensky’s poetry, then I would propose a formula - the poetry of painful couplings. Like few poets of his generation, he felt that all the objects around us, all phenomena, were connected by some incomprehensible ominous connection. The theme of couplings, the image of a web and other similar motifs arise all the time. Who organized this connection, who arranged it this way human life- unclear. A person or an object, because objects in Annensky’s poems play the same role as people, can only flounder in this web, in the chain of these connections.
The second book, the main book of Innokenty Annensky, published posthumously, was called “The Cypress Casket.” It was published in 1910, almost a year after his death. His son prepared it. It seems to represent a model of Annensky’s worldview.
A book of poems as a special category of modernist poetry
It must be said that such a category as a book of poetry was very important for modernists. Baratynsky, one of the main predecessors of the Symbolists, was one of the first to compose his book in such a way that it represented a complex unity; it was called “Twilight.”
Next, Bryusov and his colleagues introduced into the consciousness of the Russian reader the idea of the book as the main genre, a super-genre of Russian poetry, so important that a book of poems in this era becomes a more significant genre than a poem, not to mention a novel in verse. The reputations of poets, in many ways, were questioned or strengthened after the release of another poetry book. Symbolists looked at the book as a model of the world.
"Cypress Casket"
Annensky arranged his book “The Cypress Casket” in a complex way. Its name is enigmatic and mysterious. This is a name with the key dropped. Its meaning can be fully understood by those who know (this is again a subject name) - Annensky kept his manuscripts and his poems in a cypress casket. Let us remember that in the ancient tradition the cypress is the tree of death, so the ominous shade is also important here. The book is organized as follows. It consists of three sections:
- "Shamrocks". Poems are grouped under common names three at a time, like leaves in a trefoil.
- “Fold it.” Poems are grouped in twos.
- "Scattered sheets." Annensky combined his most diverse poems into this section.
Each motif, each word existed in some context of the poem and existed in some context of the “shamrock” or “folding”. In addition, the “shamrocks” were also connected by motifs. This section itself, in turn, was connected by motivic echoes with the section “Folding” or with the section “Scattered sheets”. If we try to draw these connections, we will see that the book is an endless interweaving of various motifs. This reflected Annensky’s worldview and attitude.
The poems were divided into “trefoils”, “foldings” or were included in the “Scattered sheets” section, not chronologically. Unlike Blok, Annensky did not arrange his poems chronologically. The idea of his poetic path was not important to him. It was important to show how thematically complex his texts are intertwined. This became very important for subsequent poets.
No one else composed his books as revolutionary as Annensky, but the whimsical arrangement of books is also characteristic of the younger generation. In addition, the role that Annensky plays with objects, things, in many ways predicted the searches of younger poets: Acmeists, for whom the thing and the subject were very important. Or Pasternak, whose world is full of objects and things. This, in many ways, came from Annensky.
Psychologism and the influence of French symbolists
Another important property of Annensky’s poetics was psychologism. It should be noted here that Annensky almost never called himself a symbolist. If he was oriented towards the Symbolists, then it was not the Russian, but the French Symbolists. When we talk about older Symbolists, we, of course, remember Western Symbolists. When we talked about Bryusov, we remembered Verlaine and Baudelaire. When we talk about Annensky, we need to remember one of the most enigmatic and mysterious symbolists - Mallarm. It is his poetic systems, it is his mystery and his psychologism, manifested through objects, that turn out to be essential for Annensky, who translated him.
Poem “Black Spring” (“Melts”)
Let's try to move on to the analysis of a specific poem, to the analysis of a specific text. This will be the poem “Black Spring” (“Melts”). Dated March 29, 1906, Totma (this is a small town near Vologda), where Annensky was sent with an inspection after he ceased to be the director of the gymnasium. This poem was included in the “spring trefoil”, that is, there were three poems, the first of which was “Black Spring”. First, let's remember the text:
Black Spring (Melts)
Under the rumble of copper - a grave-like transference was taking place, And, terribly raised, the wax nose looked out from the coffin.
Did he want to breathe there, into his empty chest?.. The last snow was dark white, And the loose path was hard,
And only the drizzle, cloudy, poured down on the decay, and the dull black spring looked into the jelly of the eyes -
From shabby roofs, from brown holes, from green faces. And there, across the dead fields, From the swollen wings of birds...
O people! Life's trail is heavy along potholed paths, But there is nothing sadder, Like the meeting of two deaths.
Analysis of the poem “Black Spring” (“Melts”)
The theme of this poem can be perfectly formulated with a quote from Annensky himself, which Lidia Yakovlevna Ginzburg (another wonderful philologist) remembered when she wrote about Annensky.
Annensky, however, says this not about himself, but about Konstantin Balmont, and he says this: “I am among nature, mystically close to him and somehow painfully and aimlessly linked to his existence.” This is how Annensky defines Balmont’s poetic world, but this applies more to his own world.
In the poem that we just read and began to analyze, this is precisely what is described I among nature, painfully linked with it. Annensky's demise of a person rhymes with the demise of winter. Individual death is projected into the objective environment, it “spreads”, “dissolves” in the death of winter, in the death of nature.
The striking similarity of the poem with Annensky’s formula, which he applied to Balmont’s work, clearly indicates the semantic complex of motives that this poem carefully avoids. Let me remind you that in the quote - “I am among nature, mystically close to him and somehow painfully and aimlessly linked to his existence” - this is very important for the quote. However, in his poem Annensky consciously does not say a word about this someone, about God.
At the same time, his poem begins promisingly, with the lines: “Under the rumble of grave-like brass // A transfer was taking place...” - we are, of course, talking about church bells. In Totma, indeed, there were a lot of churches. It would seem that from this we should move on to a conversation about the place of God in this meeting of man and nature, a dead man and a dying winter. Moreover, March 29 (the poem dates from this day) is the day falling on Lent, and the reader of Annensky should remember this. The Jewish Passover also fell on March 29, but this was not very important; Annensky might not have known about it.
Poem "Palm Week"
A year after the “Black Spring,” on April 14, 1907, Annensky will write a poem called “Palm Week.” Already from its name it is clear that it will be associated with the theme of Lent. This poem will briefly mention one of the brightest events of Great Lent - how Christ raised Lazarus. We remember that this motif was used many times in literature.
We remember that in Crime and Punishment one of the main scenes is Sonya reading a fragment about the resurrection of Lazarus to Raskolnikov. And Annensky also wrote about this poem. Let's see what kind of poem this is and how he describes this event:
Palm Week
In the yellow twilight of dead April, Saying goodbye to the starry desert, Palm Week sailed away On the last, on a dead snow floe;
She floated away in fragrant smoke, in the fading of funeral bells, from icons with deep eyes, and from Lazaruses, forgotten in a black pit.
The white moon became high on the decline, And for all whose lives are irrevocable, Hot tears floated down the willow tree On the rosy cheeks of the cherub.
Comparison of the poems “Palm Week” and “Black Spring”
We see that the key motifs of this poem resonate so clearly and so clearly that these poems could be called, as Mandelstam later said, “double poems.” Both that poem and this one depict the death of winter. In both this and this, it is represented, as usual in Annensky, by an objective motif. In this poem: “On the last, on the dead snow floe.” Again, this death is accompanied by funeral church bells: “In the fading of the funeral bells.” In the previous poem: “Under the rumble of copper - a grave.” Once again, this death is linked with the death of a person, only now it is not anonymous and someone unknown, as in that poem, but Lazarus, “forgotten in a black pit” (in the previous poem there is also a pit motif: “from brown pits”). And the life of this Lazarus turns out to be irreversible.
That is, reading the poem “Palm Week”, we can assume why religious motives were removed and eliminated from the poem “Black Spring”. If Lazarus was not resurrected, then the connection between man and nature turns out to be truly pointless. Consequently, even at the meeting of two deaths, even if it took place during Lent, this someone, God, is superfluous.
“It is not the resurrection, but the decayed corpse of Lazarus that Annensky sees in the faces of spring” - this is a quote, as Maximilian Voloshin, already mentioned by us, wrote about the poem “Palm Week”. However, Annensky does not treat the resurrection too favorably in his poems. Let us recall that already in the article “Balmont the Lyricist” cited above, it is said with bitterness: “I am in a nightmare of returns” - that is, constant returns of the Self, constant returns of the Self.
And one of the most famous poems, “That Was on Wallen-Koski,” talks about the “resurrection” of a doll, which, for entertainment, for the amusement of tourists, is methodically caught from a waterfall and then thrown into it again: “Her salvation is invariable for new and new torments."
The cycle of endless dying in “Spring Trefoil”
Now is the time to pay attention to the unemphasized, but very significant difference between the death of winter and the death of man, depicted in the “spring trefoil”. The first poem that we have just analyzed, “Black Spring,” describes the death of a person and the death of winter, and then, in the poem “Ghosts,” the death of spring is described:
The green ghost of the lilac bush clung to the window... Go away, shadows, leave the shadows, alone with me... She is motionless, she is mute, With traces of tears, With two tassels of May lilacs In the twists of her braids...
These May braids show that spring is dying, and then summer will die, and then autumn, and then winter again. A tragic ring, a cycle of endless dying - this is how Annensky describes the change of seasons.
The dead man's straight path
As for the life and posthumous path of a person, it, at least in “Black Spring,” is described not as cyclical, but as linear. Apparently, this was very important for Annensky, because in the first four stanzas of his poem and up to the final maxim, the final fifth stanza, the direct, not cyclical, but direct path of the deceased from the steps of the church to the cemetery is reproduced by various means.
The theme of linear movement began already in the second line of “Black Spring”, it began with the word “transfer”: “Under the rumble of copper - a grave transfer was happening.” The theme of transfer is syntactically supported in the poem by enjambment: “under the rumble of copper - grave” - this is in one line, and “transfer” is the beginning of the next line. And then, from stanza to stanza, Annensky also moves with the help of transference-riddles.
Why is the nose emphasized in the appearance of a deceased person? - This is the riddle of the last line of the first stanza. Because it is naturally associated with the terrible theme of breathing, which is not enough already dead to a person - this is how the first two lines of the second stanza answer. Transition - a question at the end of one stanza, an answer at the beginning of another stanza.
Why does the third line of the second stanza mention snow, which was dark white? Then,” answers the second line of the third stanza, “that this prepares the image of the meeting between the decay of man and the decay of winter, embodied precisely in the line about the last dark-white snow. Dark white snow around and the decay of a person rhymes, aligns itself in this way.
And finally, at the junction of the third and fourth stanzas, the transference technique is simply laid bare. Where did the black spring look into the jelly eyes of the dead man? – The reader asks himself in the final two lines of the third stanza. From everywhere! – The entire fourth stanza answers, or more precisely:
From shabby roofs, from brown holes, from green faces. And there, across the dead fields, From the swollen wings of birds...
This transfer technique, or one can call it the “pickup” technique, allows the reader to almost visually observe the direct and steady movement of a person and a person’s body towards the cemetery along a predetermined path laid more than once. This is where “along the rutted paths” comes from. More than once a person moves along it, but every person moves along this path, and even the wheels have made potholes in it. At one point on this path, a person who dies once meets the season of the year that endlessly dies and is resurrected for new and new torment.
Annensky’s “Mentatory Keyboard”: F.I. Tyutchev
A careful reading of this poem allows us not only to talk about the basic principles of Annensky’s poetics, but also about how Annensky sees the world, but also briefly go through, as Mandelstam said, Annensky’s “reference keyboard,” that is, talk about those main Russian writers and poets who were significant for Annensky.
The first of the names that we remember is the name of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev. Annensky uses a stable topos in his poem, an ancient topos: spring is the time of dawn, winter is the time of death, but it seems that any high school student at that time, any schoolchild in our time, cannot help but remember Tyutchev’s famous poem of 1836:
It’s not for nothing that winter is angry, its time has passed - Spring is knocking on the window and driving you out of the yard.
And everything began to fuss, Everything forced Winter out - And the larks in the sky Already started ringing the bell.
Winter is still busy and grumbling about Spring. She laughs in her eyes and only makes more noise...
The evil witch went berserk and, grabbing the snow, let it run away into a beautiful child...
Spring and grief are not enough: I washed myself in the snow And only became blush In defiance of the enemy.
We see how Annensky changes one pole to another. If Tyutchev has a blush, then Annensky has green faces, from which spring looks into the eyes of the dead.
If Tyutchev has larks in the sky, Annensky has birds with swollen wings, either crows or rooks in dead fields. In this case, an association arises with the cemetery and the scavenger birds that feed on it.
The main difference between the two poems is this: in Tyutchev’s, winter ends badly, but it still runs away, in Annensky’s, winter dies.
Another Tyutchev text that comes to mind when reading Annensky’s “Black Spring” is the poet’s poem, the first stanza of which depicts the lowering of a dead man’s body into a grave:
And the coffin was already lowered into the grave, And everyone crowded around... They jostle, breathe through force, The corruptive spirit constricts their chest...
We see the word “pernicious”, which is very important for Annensky’s poem. It will arise again in the final stanza of Tyutchev’s poem, it will appear in a completely different sense than in Annensky. In Annensky, human life and the life of nature are connected, and the death of man and the death of nature are united.
Tyutchev, in the finale of his poem, quite traditionally contrasts the momentary rapid existence of man with the eternal existence of nature:
And the sky is so imperishable and pure, So boundless above the earth... And the birds soar loudly In the blue abyss of air...
Let's pay attention - there are birds again, but not like Annensky, below, in the fields, but in the sky.
Annensky’s “Mentatory Keyboard”: N.V. Gogol
Another great Russian writer of the 19th century, whom you probably already remembered when I read the poem “Black Spring,” is Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, whose story “The Nose” was analyzed in detail by Annensky in the article opening Annensky’s “Book of Reflections.”
At the beginning of his article, Annensky calls the exact date, when Major Kovalev’s nose ran away from his face, it was March 25, that is, four days before March 29, which is the date of Annensky’s poem. Perhaps the proximity of these two dates provokes the poet to revive and animate the nose of the deceased in his poem. First this nose looks out of the coffin, then it wants to breathe into the empty chest of the deceased.
Perhaps in such an extravagant way, Annensky reminded the reader of the famous legend that accompanied Gogol, that Gogol was buried alive, in a lethargic sleep. The nose is not mentioned here by chance, perhaps because the metonymy of Gogol’s appearance is precisely the nose. Why did Annensky need Gogol’s motifs in the poem “Black Spring”? Annensky himself answers this question when he writes about Gogol. He says that Gogol is characterized by “the cruel humor of his creation, which is no longer accessible to us.” He speaks of Gogol’s “cruel humor of creation,” meaning, of course, “Portrait,” “The Nose,” and “Dead Souls.”
This is also typical for Annensky himself. Of course, we will never call the poem “Black Spring” a funny poem. We don't laugh when we read it. But Annensky’s grotesque: “And, terribly raised, the waxen nose looked out from the coffin” is balancing on the verge of the tragic and the comic, balancing on the verge of the terrible and the comic, and that is why he perhaps needed Gogol.
Annensky’s “Mentatory Keyboard”: L.N. Tolstoy and N.A. Nekrasov
There are two more names that we must definitely mention in connection with this poem. One of them is the name of the author of perhaps the most terrible story about the death of a person, at least written in the 19th century, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
In his story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” the deceased, main character is described as follows: “The dead man lay, as dead men always lie,<…>and exhibited, as the dead always exhibit, his yellow waxen forehead<…>and a protruding nose, as if pressing on upper lip" Note that Annensky wrote about Tolstoy as about Gogol “from whom the romance was burned out.”
Another name that needs to be mentioned is the name of Nikolai Nekrasov, in the thirteenth chapter of whose poem (the textbook famous poem “Frost, Red Nose”) motifs arise that echo the key motifs of our poem. These are two funeral blows, and Daria’s pale face, and a mention of the dark days awaiting her.
When we talk about Tolstoy and Nekrasov, we must remember that perhaps here we are not talking about borrowings, but about a commonality of motives that arises from a commonality of situations. Both Nekrasov, Tolstoy, and Annensky describe death and funerals.
Roll call with post-symbolists: B.L. Parsnip
Now about the roll call with post-symbolists. What we talked about at the beginning of the lecture. I hope that someone has already remembered the first poem that will be discussed now, because this is the famous programmatic poem by Boris Pasternak “February. Get some ink and cry!”, in which there are many similarities with Annensky’s poem: fields, path, birds. Finally, the title of Annensky’s poem, “Black Spring,” is found in Pasternak’s poem: “While the thundering slush burns in the black spring” is an almost direct quotation.
It is important that Pasternak polemicizes with Annensky. On the one hand, he continues it, on the other hand, he polemicizes with it, because the topos that Annensky destroys: spring is the time of ecstatic joy, spring is the time of birth, Pasternak again restores his rights.
But at the same time, he also takes into account the tragic turn of the topic, which is proposed in “Black Spring”. Let us show this using the example of only one motive. Tyutchev: “larks in the sky”, the larks took off. From Annensky: “And there, across the dead fields, from the swollen wings of birds...”, that is, the birds below. What does Pasternak have? In Pasternak, the rooks simultaneously fly up and, at the same time, reflected in the puddles, end up below:
Where, like charred pears, thousands of rooks will fall from the trees into puddles and bring down dry sadness to the bottom of your eyes.
This is an important motif, an important symbol, because birds mean joy or tragedy. In Annensky they are at the bottom, in Tyutchev they are at the top, in Pasternak they bifurcate.
In the same way, Pasternak, as he often does, has the tears with which his lyrical hero cries: “To write sobbingly about February” - the reader still does not fully understand whether these are tears of joy or tears of grief. He deliberately chooses an image of tears that works both ways.
Roll call with post-symbolists: M.I. Tsvetaeva
Another poem, apparently accidentally echoing Pasternak’s “February”, where the rhyme “spring - winter” and “tears - wheels” is also found, as in Pasternak, and, it seems, goes back to “Black Spring” and “Palm Week” Annensky, this poem “The Ice Rink Has Melted” by Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva.
I began the lecture with a quote from Akhmatova, who jealously writes that Tsvetaeva may not have read Annensky. Now we will make sure that, most likely, she read it. Here is the text of this poem with an epigraph:
The skating rink has melted... Not a delight Behind the winter silence is the sound of wheels. The soul does not need the spring, And I feel sorry for the winter to the point of tears. In winter, the sadness was one... Suddenly a new image will arise... Whose? The human soul is the same ice floe And it also melts from the rays. Let there be a hillock in the yellow buttercups! Let the snowflake sweep away the petal! - Strangely dear to the capricious soul Like a melted skating rink in a dream...
We see that Tsvetaeva writes on the same topic as Annensky: winter is dying, winter is leaving, we feel sorry for it, and there is no need for spring, “the soul does not need spring and feels sorry for winter to the point of tears,” she writes.
However, Tsvetaeva, she is already solving her own problems, which we will definitely talk about in our lectures; the early Tsvetaeva presents Annensky’s theme in a childish, infantile, almost “lisping” way. It is difficult for us to cry, we do not need to cry when we read this poem, because the tragedy is removed by the fact that it is a child looking at it.
Therefore, the poem begins with an epigraph from a private letter. Therefore, at the end of the poem an almost impossible great poet: “Let there be a hillock in the yellow buttercups!” And then even stronger, as if sentimental, taken from a children's book of that time: “Let the snowflake sweep away the petal!” And we already cease to be frightened as we were frightened in Annensky’s poem when we read it.
Note that the very abundance of objects in this poem, the very fact that Tsvetaeva solves this theme, relying precisely on objective motifs, using so densely objective motifs: yellow buttercups, a hillock, a snowflake, a petal, and, finally, the central image of the skating rink itself in in this poem, also an objective motif, seems to indicate that both Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva and other Russian symbolists read Annensky very, very carefully.
Akhmatova A., Rosary: Anno Domini; A poem without a hero. – Publisher: OLMA Media Group.
Wallen-Koski (Vallinkoski, Finnish Vallinkoski) is a waterfall on the Vuokse River in Finland.
Franz. enjambement, from enjamber - to step over, jump over.
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky - poet, playwright (September 1, 1855 Omsk - December 13, 1909 St. Petersburg). His father, a high-ranking government official, returned from Omsk to St. Petersburg in 1860, where Innokenty Fedorovich grew up and graduated from the university in 1879 (department of comparative linguistics). For most of his life he worked in a gymnasium: first in St. Petersburg, from 1891 as a director in Kyiv, from 1893 again in St. Petersburg; in 1896 he was appointed director of the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, and in 1906 he was transferred to the position of inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district.
Since the 1880s, Innokenty Annensky published philological works; from the beginning of the 1890s - regularly translated ancient Greek literature into Russian, including all 19 tragedies of Euripides (first incomplete edition - 1907). Between 1901-1906 Annensky wrote 4 tragedies on the themes Greek mythology, For example " Laodamia"(1902), but his significance in Russian literature is due to his poetic creativity. He wrote poetry since childhood, but only at the age of 49 he published his first collection" Quiet songs" (1904) under a pseudonym alluding to his position as a poet: Nik. T-o, that is, “nobody.”
Shortly before his sudden death Innokenty Annensky was nevertheless recognized as a poet: he became a contributor to the new avant-garde literary magazine "Apollo", but his second and most significant collection of poems " Cypress casket"(1910) I no longer saw. The son of Innokenty Fedorovich, philologist, (pseudonym - V. Krivich), published" Posthumous poems"(1923) by his father. Only in 1939, 1959, 1979 and 1987 did Soviet editions of Annensky's poems appear.
Literary essays about Gogol, Dostoevsky, Balmont and others, collected by the author in " Book of Reflections"(2 volumes, 1906, 1908), outline new paths for Russian literary criticism. Annensky translated not only from Greek, but also from German and, mainly, from French- modern lyrics.
Such poets as, for example, A. Blok, A. Akhmatova and S. Makovsky highly appreciated him during his lifetime, but the influence of Annensky the lyricist became noticeable only after his death. It affected, in particular, the poetry of Acmeism, then still a new movement, as well as the poetry of Futurism.
Of the Russian poets, Annensky's lyrical work was influenced by Baratynsky and Tyutchev, and of the French - Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé. It reveals the contradiction between the rich inner life the poet and his suffering from the imperfection of external existence between his reverence for the beautiful and fear for his fate in life, dark colors, melancholy, death, pessimism, dissonance predominate in him. In Annensky's poems, this personal beginning is hidden behind the metaphorical language, which is not always easy to decipher. “Aesthetics became for him a saving shield from thoughts of despair” (S. Makovsky). The imaginative world of Innokenty Annensky is close to nature and music. They are spiritualized and associated with experiences in the human soul. “Trivial everyday objects in Annensky’s defamiliarizing vision, in the “alarming emptiness,” suddenly acquire some kind of frighteningly magical dimension” (A. Wanner). His style is impressionistic and compressed; in the structure of poems and poetic cycles one can feel a conscious desire for a clear form. The rhythmic richness of his poems influenced the poetics of free verse. For the history of Russian literature, Annensky is doubly significant: he is the inspirer of the great Acmeists, A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam, and an independent personality in poetry; with its philosophical lyrics and closeness to nature belongs to symbolism.
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky - Russian poet, translator, playwright, critic, teacher - was born August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk in the family of an official. At the age of five he moved to St. Petersburg. Innokenty Annensky received his first education at a private school due to poor health. Then he studied at a pro-gymnasium from 1865 to 1868, after that - at the Behrens Gymnasium.
Big influence Annensky's personality was influenced by his brother Nikolai, with whom Innokenty began to live after the death of his parents. Annensky wrote his first poems as a child. Following the advice of his older brother, the famous economist and publicist N.F. Annensky, who believed that one should not publish until one is thirty, the young poet did not intend his poetic experiments to be published. During my university years, the study of ancient languages and antiquity temporarily replaced poetry; According to the poet, he wrote nothing except dissertations.
In 1879 graduated from St. Petersburg University. He taught ancient languages, Greek literature, and theory of literature. In 1896-1905. I. Annensky was the director of the Nikolaev Tsarskoe Selo gymnasium, and an inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district.
Annensky made his debut in print as a critic. In the 1880-90s published articles on problems of pedagogy and philology. In the 1890-1900s. completed a complete poetic translation of the tragedies of Euripides. In 1904 The first poems of I. Annensky were published.
During his lifetime, Innokenty Annensky published his only collection of poems, “Quiet Songs” ( 1904 ; under the pseudonym Nick. T-o), tragedy in verse “Melanippe the Philosopher” (published in 1901 ), “King Ixion” (published in 1902 ), "Laodamia" ( 1902 ; publ. V 1906 ), literary critical essay “The Book of Reflections” ( 1906 ), "The Second Book of Reflections" ( 1909 ). The collection “The Cypress Casket” was published posthumously ( 1910 ), bacchanalian drama “Famira-kifared” ( 1906 , publ. V 1913 ; delivered by A.Ya. Tairov, 1916 ), “Posthumous poems of John. Annensky" ( 1923 ).
Annensky led a rather “solitary” literary life: he did not defend the right of “new” art to exist during the period of “storm and stress”, and did not participate in subsequent intra-symbolist battles. His first publications on the pages of the symbolist press date back to 1906-1907(Pereval magazine), Annensky’s “entry” into the symbolist environment actually took place in Last year his life. The poet and critic gives lectures at the Poetry Academy, is a member of the Society of Admirers of the Artistic Word at the new St. Petersburg magazine Apollo, and publishes his program article “On Modern Lyricism” on its pages.
The poet's sudden death November 30 (December 13), 1909 at the Tsarskoye Selo station caused a wide resonance in symbolist circles. Among young Acmeist poets close to Apollo, who reproached the Symbolists for “overlooking” Annensky, a posthumous cult of the poet began to take shape.
Annensky's work was formed under the influence of French poetry of the late 19th century, Russian psychological prose of the 19th century and the heritage of ancient classics. Not formally belonging to the Symbolist school, I. Annensky was internally close to the Symbolists in the use of the potential polysemy of the word and the musical organization of verse. Annensky's lyrical hero, acutely aware of the tragedy of the era, consciously chooses a fight with the world doomed to defeat as the only possible way to resist its deforming influence. The interaction of the intellectual, philosophical and impressionistic principles of I. Annensky’s poetry forms a special figurative series, which combines the real and the fantastic, the subject-specific and the abstract. The emergence of new associative connections determines the cyclization that is outlined in “Quiet Songs” and becomes the main principle of grouping poems in the “Cypress Casket” (trefoils, folds).
Actively using prosaisms, Annensky was one of the first in Russian literature to create the effect of not only lexical, but also intonation-rhythmic dissonance, often emphasized graphically. The impressionistic style with an emphasis on understatement, discontinuity, and incompleteness is also characteristic of Annensky the critic. “The Book of Reflections” is not a literary critical work in the strict sense of the word, but an artistic and psychological commentary on literary classics, an attempt to discover the laws of unity of the personality of the author and the work he created. .
In his original dramas, Innokenty Annensky, preserving myth as a universal plot-forming basis, projects the problematic of his lyrics onto it, creating a synthesis of two cultural layers - ancient classics and modernism. Annensky's work largely determined the poetics of Russian Acmeism.
In terms of lexical, stylistic, and rhythmic innovations, Innokenty Annensky surpasses the psychological novelism of A.A.’s poems. Akhmatova, dialogue of cultures in the poetry of O.E. Mandelstam, the intrinsic value of the material world in the lyrics of B.L. Pasternak, rhythmic and intonation experiments by V.V. Mayakovsky and V. Khlebnikov.
Biography
Personality Inkenty Fedorovich Annensky remained largely a mystery to contemporaries. Born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk in the family of a government official. His father was the head of the Omsk department railways. When Innocent was about five years old, his father received a position as an official on special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the family returned from Siberia to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849.
Poor health, Annensky studied at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg gymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869, he studied for two and a half years at the private gymnasium of V. I. Behrens. Having lost his parents early, he often lives with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedic educated man, economist, populist, who had a great influence on Innocent.
After graduating (1879) from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, he served as a teacher of ancient languages and Russian literature, and subsequently as director of a gymnasium in Kyiv, St. Petersburg, and Tsarskoe Selo. Since 1906, inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Women's Courses. Since the early 1880s, he has appeared in print with scientific reviews, critical articles and articles on pedagogical issues. From the beginning of the 1890s, he began studying Greek tragedians; Over the course of a number of years, he completed a huge amount of work translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripidean plots and the “Bacchanalian drama” “Famira-kifared” (run in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbières, A. de Regnier, F. Jamme, etc.).
November 30 (December 11) 1909 Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo (Vitebsk) station in St. Petersburg.
Annensky's son, a philologist and poet, published his “Posthumous Poems” (1923).
Poetry
Annensky is most significant as a poet. He began writing poetry since childhood, but published them for the first time in 1904. Annensky, in his own words, was entirely indebted for his “intelligent being” to the influence of his older brother, the famous publicist-populist N.F. Annensky, and his wife, the sister of the revolutionary Tkachev. In his poetry, Annensky, as he himself says, sought to express the “urban, partly stony, museum soul” that was “tortured by Dostoevsky,” the “sick and sensitive soul of our days.” The world of the “sick soul” is the main element of Annensky’s creativity. According to fair criticism, “nothing succeeded in Annensky’s poems so vividly, so convincingly, as the description of nightmares and insomnia”; “He found thousands of shades to express the painful decline of spirit. He exhausted the curves of his neurasthenia in every possible way.” The hopeless melancholy of life and the horror of “liberating” death, the simultaneous “desire to be destroyed and the fear of dying,” rejection of reality, the desire to escape from it into the “sweet hashish” of delirium, into the “binge” of labor, into the “poison” of poetry and at the same time “ a mysterious" attachment to "everyday life", to everyday life, to the "hopeless devastation of one's vulgar world" - such is the complex and contradictory "worldview and worldview" that Annensky seeks to "instill" in his poems.
Approaching this “worldview” of all his contemporaries most of all, Annensky’s forms of verse are closest to the young period of the “Russian Symbolists”. However, the exaggerated “decadence” of the former, in which there was a lot of deliberate, invented with the special purpose of attracting attention and “shocking” the reader, is of a deeply organic nature for Annensky, who did not publish his poems. Bryusov soon moved away from his early student experiences. Annensky remained faithful to “decadence” throughout his life, “frozen in his modernism at a certain point in the early 90s,” but he brought it to perfect artistic expression. Annensky's style is brightly impressionistic, often distinguished by sophistication, standing on the verge of pretentiousness, the lush rhetoric of decadence.
Like the young Bryusov, Annensky’s poetic teachers were French poets of the second half of the 19th century - the Parnassians and the “damned”: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé. From the Parnassians, Annensky inherited their cult of poetic form, love of the word as such; Verlaine was followed in his desire for musicality, for the transformation of poetry into a “melodic rain of symbols”; following Baudelaire, he intricately intertwined in his dictionary “lofty”, “poetic” sayings with scientific terms, with ordinary, emphatically “everyday” words borrowed from the vernacular; finally, following Mallarmé, he built the main effect of his rebus poems on a deliberate obfuscation of meaning. Annensky is distinguished from the “passionate” French Parnassians by a special piercing note of pity, sounding through all his poetry. This pity is directed not at the social suffering of humanity, not even at man in general, but at nature, at the inanimate world of those suffering and languishing with “evil insults” of offended things (a watch, a doll, a barrel organ, etc.), with the images of which the poet masks his own pain and flour. And the smaller, the more insignificant, the more insignificant the “suffering” thing, the more hysterical, aching self-pity it evokes in him.
A peculiar literary destiny Annensky reminds me of fate. Like the latter, Annensky is a typical “poet for poets.” He published his only lifetime book of poetry under the characteristic pseudonym “Nick. That". And indeed, throughout almost his entire life, Annensky remained a “nobody” in literature. Only shortly before his death, his poetry gained fame in the circle of St. Petersburg poets grouped around the Apollo magazine. The death of Annensky was noted by a number of articles and obituaries, but after that his name again disappeared from the printed columns for a long time. A poem was published in the 4th book of poems by Nikolai Gumilyov “Quiver”.
Dramaturgy
Annensky wrote four plays - "Melanippe the Philosopher", "King Ixion", "Laodamia" and "Thamira the Cyfared" - in the ancient Greek spirit, based on the plots of the lost plays of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.
Translations
Annensky translated into Russian the complete collection of plays by the great Greek playwright Euripides.
Literary influence
Annensky's literary influence on the movements of Russian poetry that emerged after symbolism (Acmeism, Futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem can rightfully be called the first Russian futuristic poem written in time. Annensky's influence greatly affects Pasternak and his school and many others. In his literary critical articles, partially collected in two “Books of Reflections,” Annensky provides brilliant examples of Russian impressionistic criticism, striving for interpretation work of art through the conscious continuation of the author’s creativity within oneself. It should be noted that already in his critical-pedagogical articles of the 1880s Annensky long before the formalists, he called for a systematic study of the form of works of art in schools.
, Playwright, Critic
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky(August 20 (September 1) 1855, Omsk, Russian empire- November 30 (December 13), 1909, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) - Russian poet, playwright, translator, critic, literature and language researcher, teacher and educational administrator. Brother of N.F. Annensky.
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk, in the family of government official Fyodor Nikolaevich Annensky (died March 27, 1880) and Natalia Petrovna Annenskaya (died October 25, 1889). His father was the head of the Main Directorate Western Siberia. When Innocent was about five years old, his father received a position as an official on special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the family from Siberia returned to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849.
In poor health, Annensky studied at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg Progymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869, he studied for two and a half years at the private gymnasium of V. I. Behrens. Before entering the university, in 1875, he lived with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedic educated man, an economist, a populist, who helped younger brother in preparation for the exam and had a great influence on Innocent.
After graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University in 1879 for a long time served as a teacher of ancient languages and Russian literature at the Gurevich gymnasium. He was the director of the Galagan College in Kyiv (January 1891 - October 1893), then the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium (1893-1896) and the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo (October 16, 1896 - January 2, 1906). The excessive softness shown by him, in the opinion of his superiors, in anxious time 1905-1906, was the reason for his removal from this position. In 1906 he was transferred to St. Petersburg as a district inspector and remained in this position until 1909, when he retired shortly before his death. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Women's Courses. Since the early 1880s, he has appeared in print with scientific reviews, critical articles and articles on pedagogical issues. From the beginning of the 1890s, he began studying Greek tragedians; Over the course of a number of years, he completed a huge amount of work translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripidean plots and the “Bacchanalian drama” “Famira-kifared” (run in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbières, A. de Regnier, F. Jamme, etc.).
On November 30 (December 13), 1909, Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo station in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Kazan Cemetery in Tsarskoye Selo (now the city of Pushkin Leningrad region). Annensky's son, philologist and poet Valentin Annensky (Krivich), published his “Cypress Casket” (1910) and “Posthumous Poems” (1923).
Dramaturgy
Annensky wrote four plays - “Melanippe the Philosopher” (1901), “King Ixion” (1902), “Laodamia” (1906) and “Thamira the Cyfared” (1906, published posthumously in 1913) - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of lost plays of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.
Translations
Annensky translated into Russian the complete collection of plays by the great Greek playwright Euripides. He also performed poetic translations of works by Horace, Goethe, Muller, Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Rainier, Sully-Prudhomme, and Longfellow.
Literary influence
Annensky's literary influence on the movements of Russian poetry that emerged after symbolism (Acmeism, Futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem "Bells" can rightfully be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time of writing. Annensky's influence greatly affects Pasternak and his school, Anna Akhmatova, Georgiy Ivanov and many others. In his literary critical articles, partially collected in two “Books of Reflections,” Annensky provides brilliant examples of Russian impressionistic criticism, striving to interpret a work of art through the conscious continuation of the author’s creativity. It should be noted that already in his critical and pedagogical articles of the 1880s, Annensky, long before the formalists, called for a systematic study of the form of works of art in school.
Activity as director of a gymnasium
The position of director of the gymnasium always weighed heavily on I. F. Annensky. In a letter to A.V. Borodina in August 1900, he wrote:
You ask me: “Why don’t you leave?” Oh, how much I thought about this... How much I dreamed about it... Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult... But do you know how you think seriously? Does a staunch defender of classicism have the moral right to throw down its banner at a moment when it is surrounded on all sides by evil enemies?...
Innokenty Annensky. Favorites / Comp. I. Podolskaya. - M.: Pravda, 1987. - P. 469. - 592 p.
Professor B.E. Raikov, a former student of the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium, wrote in his memoirs about Innokenty Annensky:
...absolutely nothing was known about his poetic experiments at that time. He was known only as the author of articles and notes on philological topics, and he kept his poems to himself and did not publish anything, although he was already about forty years old at that time. We, high school students, saw in him only a tall, thin figure in a uniform, who sometimes shook a long white finger at us, but in general, stayed very far away from us and our affairs.
Annensky was a zealous defender of ancient languages and held high the banner of classicism in his gymnasium. During his time, our recreational hall was entirely painted with ancient Greek frescoes, and the schoolchildren performed plays by Sophocles and Euripides during the holidays. Greek, moreover, in antique costumes, strictly consistent with the style of the era.
Editions
- Annensky I. F. Quiet songs. - St. Petersburg, 1904. (Under the pseudonym “Nick. T-o”)
- Annensky I.F. Book of Reflections. - St. Petersburg, 1906.
- Annensky I. F. The second book of reflections. - St. Petersburg, 1909.
- Annensky I. F. Cypress casket. - St. Petersburg, 1910.
- Annensky I.F. Poems / Comp., intro. Art. and note. E. V. Ermilova. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1987. - 272 p. (Poetic Russia)
- Annensky I.F. Poems and tragedies / Introductory article, compilation, preparation. text., note. A. V. Fedorova. - L.: Sov. writer, 1990. - 640 p. (The Poet's Library. Large series. Third edition.)
- Annensky I.F. 1909: Lectures on ancient literature. St. Petersburg
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky - photo
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky - quotes
For the charm of the silver-leafed Tulips on the veil I will stand a hundred meals, I will be exhausted in fasting! 
What heavy, dark nonsense! How cloudy and lunar these heights are! Touching a violin for so many years And not recognizing the strings in the light! Who needs us? Who lit up Two yellow faces, two dull ones... And suddenly I felt a bow, That someone had taken them and someone had merged them. “Oh, how long ago! Through this darkness, say one thing: are you the one, are you the one?” And the strings caressed towards him, Ringing, but as they caressed, they trembled. “Isn’t it true that we will never part again? enough?..” And the violin answered yes, But the violin’s heart hurt. The bow understood everything, it fell silent, But in the violin it all held on... And it was torment for them, What seemed like music to people. But the man did not extinguish the candles until the morning... And the strings sang... Only the sun found them exhausted On the black velvet bed.
You are with me again, friend autumn...
What is happiness? Child of crazy speech? One minute on the way, Where with the kiss of a greedy meeting merged an inaudible forgiveness? Or is it in the autumn rain? In the return of the day? In the closure of the eyelids? In goods that we do not value For the ugliness of their clothes? You say... Here is a wing of happiness beating against a flower, But in a moment - and it will soar upward, Irreversibly and lightly. And the heart, perhaps, is dearer to the arrogance of consciousness, dearer to torment, if in it there is a subtle poison of memory.
In the separate clarity of the rays And in the fuzzy unity of visions Always above us is the power of things With its triad of dimensions. And you expand the boundaries of existence, Or you multiply forms with fiction, But in the I itself, you cannot go anywhere from the eyes of Not I. That power is a beacon, she calls, God and corruption were combined in it, And before it the secrecy of things in art is so pale. No, you can’t escape their power Behind the magic of air spots, It’s not the depth that attracts the verse, It’s only incomprehensible like a rebus. Orpheus was attracted by the beauty of his open face. Are you really worthy of a singer, the Veils of the puppet Isis? Love the separateness and rays In the aroma they give birth to. You are bowls of bright points for holistic perceptions.
