Blok in 1907

Alexander Blok (Александр Александрович Блок, November 28 [O.S. November 16] 1880 – August 7, 1921), was perhaps the most gifted lyrical poet produced by Russia after Alexander Pushkin.^[1] The portrait of Alexander Blok by Konstantin Somov (1907), now in the Tretyakov Gallery. ... The portrait of Alexander Blok by Konstantin Somov (1907), now in the Tretyakov Gallery. ... November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Old Style or O.S. is a designation indicating that a date conforms to the Julian calendar, formerly in use in many countries, rather than the Gregorian calendar, currently in use in most countries. ... Year 1880 (MDCCCLXXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar). ... August 7 is the 219th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (220th in leap years), with 146 days remaining. ... // Jorge Luis Borges, writer and poet, returns to Buenos Aires after a period living in Europe. ... Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин, IPA: ,  ) (June 6 [O.S. May 26] 1799 – February 10 [O.S. January 29] 1837) was a Russian Romantic author who is considered to be the greatest Russian poet[1][2][3][4] and the founder of modern Russian literature. ...

Early life and influences

Blok was born in St Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were men of letters, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of the Saint Petersburg University. After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the Shakhmatovo manor near Moscow, where he discovered the philosophy of his uncle Vladimir Solovyov, and the verse of then-obscure 19th-century poets, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet. These influences would be fused and transformed into the harmonies of his early pieces, later collected in the book Ante Lucem. Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербу́рг, English transliteration: Sankt-Peterburg), colloquially known as Питер (transliterated Piter), formerly known as Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991) and... Lady Justice or Justitia is a personification of the moral force that underlies the legal system (particularly in Western art). ... Motto: Contemnit procellas (It defies the storms) Semper invicta (Always invincible) Coordinates: Country Poland Voivodeship Masovia Powiat city county Gmina Warszawa Districts 18 boroughs City Rights turn of the 13th century Government  - Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (PO) Area  - City 516. ... Saint Petersburg State University (Санкт-Петербургский Государственный Университет) is one of the oldest Russian educational institutions, established in the city of Saint Petersburg on January 28, 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great. ... Solnechnogorsk (Russian: Солнечного́рск) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, an administrative center of Solnechnogorsky District. ... Location Position of Moscow in Europe Government Country District Subdivision Russia Central Federal District Federal City Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov Geographical characteristics Area  - City 1,081 km² Population  - City (2007)    - Density 10,469,000   9684. ... Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (Владимир Сергеевич Соловьёв) (1853 - 1900) was a Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer, literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century. ... Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (Russian: Федор Иванович Тютчев) (December 5 [O.S. November 23] 1803 - July 27 [O.S. July 15] 1873) is generally considered the last of three great Romantic poets of Russia, following Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov. ... Fets portrait by Ilya Repin. ...

He fell in love with Lyubov (Lyuba) Mendeleeva (the great chemist's daughter) and married her in 1903. Later, she would involve him in a complicated love-hate relationship with his fellow Symbolist Andrey Bely. To Lyuba he dedicated a cycle of poetry that brought him fame, Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame (Verses About the Beautiful Lady, 1904). In it, he transformed his humble wife into a timeless vision of the feminine soul and eternal womanhood (The Greek Sophia of Solovyov's teaching). Mendeleyevs portrait by Ilya Repin. ... 1900 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Friday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... Boris Budaev Andrei Bely (Андрей Белый) was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (1880 - 1934), a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. ... See also: 1903 in literature, other events of 1904, 1905 in literature, list of years in literature. ...

Blok's early poetry

Alexander Blok

The idealized mystical images present in his first book helped establish Blok as a leader of the Russian Symbolist movement. Blok's early verse is impeccably musical and rich in sound, but he later sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry. Poetical inspiration came to him naturally, often producing unforgettable, otherworldly images out of the most banal surroundings and trivial events (Fabrika, 1903). Consequently, his mature poems are often based on the conflict between the Platonic vision of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrial outskirts (Neznakomka, 1906). Image File history File links 180px-Alexander-Blok_1921_foto_Nappelbaum_MS.jpg Summary Russian wikipedia Licensing Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1. ... Image File history File links 180px-Alexander-Blok_1921_foto_Nappelbaum_MS.jpg Summary Russian wikipedia Licensing Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1. ... Mikhail Nesterovs painting Vision to Youth Bartholomew (1890) is often taken as a starting point of Russian Symbolism. ... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ... Humans have perceived the rose as a natural beauty as evidenced in social media. ...

The image of St Petersburg he crafted for his next collection of poems, The City (1904-08), was both impressionistic and eerie. Subsequent collections, Faina and the Mask of Snow, helped augment Blok's reputation to fabulous dimensions. He was often compared with Alexander Pushkin, and the whole Silver Age of Russian Poetry was sometimes styled the "Age of Blok". In the 1910s, Blok was almost universally admired by literary colleagues, and his influence on younger poets was virtually unsurpassed. Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, and Vladimir Nabokov wrote important verse tributes to Blok. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин, IPA: ,  ) (June 6 [O.S. May 26] 1799 – February 10 [O.S. January 29] 1837) was a Russian Romantic author who is considered to be the greatest Russian poet[1][2][3][4] and the founder of modern Russian literature. ... Silver Age is a term traditionally applied by Russian philologists to the first two decades of the 20th century. ... Akhmatova in the 1920s Anna Akhmatova (Russian: , real name А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко) (June 23, 1889 [O.S. June 11] — March 5, 1966) was the pen name of Anna Andreevna Gorenko, the leader and the heart and soul of St Petersburg tradition of Russian poetry in the course of half a century. ... Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (Russian: ) (October 9, 1892 – August 31, 1941) was a Russian poet and writer. ... Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Russian: ) (February 10 [O.S. January 29] 1890 – May 30, 1960) was a Nobel Prize winner Russian poet, writer best known in the West for his epic novel Doctor Zhivago, a tragedy whose events span the last period of Czarist Russia and the early days of the... Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced ) (April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899, Saint Petersburg – July 2, 1977, Montreux) was a Russian-American author. ...

Revolution in rhythm and subject matter

Title page of Blok's book Theatre (1909).

During the later period of his life, Blok concentrated primarily on political themes, pondering the messianic destiny of his country (Vozmezdie, 1910-21; Rodina, 1907-16; Skify, 1918). Influenced by Solovyov's doctrines, he was full of vague apocalyptic apprehensions and often vacillated between hope and despair. "I feel that a great event was coming, but what it was exactly was not revealed to me", he wrote in his diary during the summer of 1917. Quite unexpectedly for most of his admirers, he accepted the October Revolution as the final resolution of these apocalyptic yearnings. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (550x716, 52 KB)Title page of Alexander Bloks book Theatre (1909)> as designed by Konstantin Somov. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (550x716, 52 KB)Title page of Alexander Bloks book Theatre (1909)> as designed by Konstantin Somov. ... Look up Apocalypse in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... “Red October” redirects here. ...

Blok expressed his views on the revolution in the enigmatic The Twelve (1918). The long poem, with its "mood-creating sounds, polyphonic rhythms, and harsh, slangy language" (as the Encyclopædia Britannica termed it), is one of the most controversial in the whole corpus of the Russian poetry. It describes the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (likened to the Twelve Apostles who followed Christ) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. The Twelve (Russian: Двенадцать) is a controversial long poem by Aleksandr Blok. ... The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general encyclopedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. ... Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union. ... Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... “Apostle” redirects here. ... Christ is the English translation of the Greek word (Christós), which literally means The Anointed One. ... Saint Petersburg  listen (Russian: Санкт-Петербу́рг, English transliteration: Sankt-Peterburg), colloquially known as Питер (transliterated Piter), formerly known as Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991...

The Twelve promptly alienated Blok from a mass of his intellectual followers (who accused him of appallingly bad taste), while the Bolsheviks scorned his former mysticism and aesceticism. He slid into a state of depression and withdrew from the public eye. The true cause of Blok's death at the age of 40 is still disputed. Some say that he died from the famine caused by the Russian Civil War. Others still attribute his death to what they ambiguously call a "lack of air." Several months earlier, Blok had delivered a celebrated lecture on Pushkin, whom he believed to be an iconic figure capable of uniting White and Red Russia. Combatants Red Army (Bolsheviks) White Army (Monarchists, SRs, Anti-Communists) Green Army (Peasants and Nationalists) Black Army (Anarchists) Commanders Leon Trotsky Mikhail Tukhachevsky Semyon Budyonny Lavr Kornilov, Alexander Kolchak, Anton Denikin, Pyotr Wrangel Alexander Antonov, Nikifor Grigoriev Nestor Makhno Strength 5,427,273 (peak) +1,000,000 Casualties 939,755...

Symbolism of Alexander Blok

Alexander Blok, on all accounts one of the most important poets of the century, envisioned his poetical output as composed of three volumes. The first volume contains his early poems about the Fair Lady; its dominant colour is white. The second volume, dominated by the blue colour, comments upon the impossibility of reaching the ideal he craved for. The third volume, featuring his poems from pre-revolutionary years, is steeped in fiery or bloody red.

In Blok's poetry, colours are essential, for they convey mystical intimations of things beyond human experience. Blue or violet is the colour of frustration, when the poet understands that his hope to see the Lady is delusive. The yellow colour of street lanterns, windows and sunsets is the colour of treason and triviality. Black hints at something terrible, dangerous but potentially capable of esoteric revelation. Russian words for yellow and black are spelled by the poet with a long O instead of YO, in order to underline "a hole inside the word". Color is an important part of the visual arts. ... Revelation is an uncovering or disclosure via communication from the divine of something that has been partially or wholly hidden or unknown. ...

Following on the footsteps of Fyodor Tyutchev, Blok developed a complicated system of poetic symbols. In his early work, for instance, wind stands for the Fair Lady's approach, whereas morning or spring is the time when their meeting is most likely to happen. Winter and night are the evil times when the poet and his lady are far away from each other. Bog and mire stand for everyday life with no spiritual light from above.

"Night, street, lamp, drugstore" (1912)

Blok's poem Night, street, lamp, drugstore on a wall in Leiden.

Plain word-by-word translation to English: Download high resolution version (1577x1180, 228 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1577x1180, 228 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Leyden redirects here. ...

(Written on October 10, 1912. source: [1])

A more artistic translation by Kathy Sowa:

 Alexander Blok (translated from the Russian by Alec Vagapov) *** 

The girl was singing in a church choir,
About the weary abroad, far away,
About the ships in the sea, so dire,,
And those who'd forgotten their happy day,

So sweet was her voice flying up into highness
With shimmering beam on her shoulder of white,
And every one listened watching from darkness,
The way the white garment was singing in light.,

And every one thought that the joy was there,,
That the ships were all in a quiet bay,,
And the weary people abroad, full of care,
Were now all blessed with a happy day.

The voice was sweet, and the beam was shining,,
And only up there at the royal rack,
A child, conversant with secret, was crying,
That nobody, really, would ever come back.,

August, 1903,

Notes

1. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, 2006. Article "Russia".

external link: http://zhurnal.lib.ru/w/wagapow_a/blok.shtml ...

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Author:Alexander Blok

Collection of Alexander Blok's Poems in English Translated from the Russian by Alec Vagapov: http://vagalecs.narod.ru/blok-engl.htm Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ...

Bilingual Version of Alexander Blok's Poems Translated from the Russian by Alec Vagapov: http://zhurnal.lib.ru/w/wagapow_a/blok.shtml

Alice Koonen reading Blok's poem

• Leon Trotsky's article on Alexander Blok
• In Defense of A. Blok by Nikolai Berdyaev