THE LAST ROMANTIC: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF ALEXANDER BLOK (1880 – 1921)
Pushkin Club Zoom event – 6.00 pm, Tuesday, 20th October 2020
NARRATIVE FINAL/21.10.2020 – to accompany the reading of the poems
SLIDE 1 – Title-page
Introduction - Significance of Blok as a poet
Many students of Russian poetry consider that Alexander Blok (1880-1921) is the greatest Russian poet since Tyutchev. He was the outstanding poet of the Russian Symbolist movement, which inspired a spectacular renaissance of art and literature during the two decades before the Revolution in 1917. And he exercised a profound influence on both his contemporaries and his successors.
He was first and foremost a lyric poet, who regarded his work as a single poetic diary. One of the most striking features of his verse is its musicality. His poetry also has great breadth - in the sense of the different keys or tones in which he could write and in the wide range of different subjects he covered.
In the course of the next hour or so, we’ll be reading 13 poems and – with these - hope to be able to give you an idea of the beauty and range of Blok’s verse.
Blok had an active literary life of only 20 years, yet managed to crowd into that short period half-a-dozen dramas (including Балаганчик/The Fairground-Booth and The Rose and the Cross); numerous critical articles and countless reviews; but most of all, over 1,000 poems.
Alexander Blok may be regarded as the first great Russian poet of the 20th century – on a par with Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva and Pasternak.
Early life
Alexander Blok was born on 16 November 1880 in St Petersburg. He was born into a family of gentry, of great intellectual and academic distinction, both on his mother’s and his father’s side. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother’s family, the Beketovs, in St Petersburg and on the family estate of SHAKHMATOVO, 40 miles outside Moscow. SLIDE 2 – Shakhmatovo
Blok’s parents separated soon after his birth. His mother and maternal grandmother were both very strong influences on his early upbringing, and he remained very close to his mother throughout his life. SLIDE 3 -Alexandra Beketova
Blok wrote later: “He was shielded from life’s coarseness // By women’s tender care” («Он был заботой женщин нежной // от грубой жизни ограждён»). SLIDE 4 – Here is the young Blok, in the company of his great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and aunt, Katya – the women who raised him.
On finishing school, Blok initially enrolled in the Faculty of Law at St Petersburg University - as he later said - “because it was the easiest”.
The summer of 1901 Blok called his "mystic summer". It was during this time that he realised how deeply in love he was with the woman who was to become his wife. This was Lyubov’ Mendeleyeva, the daughter of the great chemist, Dmitri Mendeleyev. SLIDE 5 – Lyubov' Mendeleyeva
Towards the end of the summer of 1901 Blok decided to transfer from the Faculty of Law to the Philological Faculty and devote himself to the study of literature. SLIDE 6 – St. Petersburg University, Philological Faculty
He had found his true vocation.
He married Lyubov' Mendeleyeva in 1903. SLIDE 7 – Lyubov' in a white dress
BLOK AS A ROMANTIC AND SYMBOLIST POET
General
In his own time Blok became a kind of legendary figure, an embodiment of a stereotyped picture of a poet, with his curly hair, long, lean face, dark coat and flowing tie, and his mournful, penetrating and intelligent eyes. SLIDE 8 - Blok
Romanticism
It was the critic, Viktor Zhirmunsky, who in 1921 described Blok as the «last Romantic poet». And there are many features to his verse which we readily associate with Romanticism: its beautiful lyric quality, its musicality and the constant yearning for an ultimately unattainable Ideal. Also, there is the powerful influence of the mystical-religious philosophy of Vladimir Solovyev and the Symbolist poets, Andrey Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov.
Symbolism
“Symbolism” is the name given to the romantic movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which is chiefly associated with the literatures of France and Russia. It was born of a reaction against the rationalism and materialism of the 19th century. The Symbolist poets and writers in Russia followed two main directions: the AESTHETIC and the RELIGIOUS.
The aesthetic group – who were also referred to as “the Decadents” - is generally associated with the early Symbolist poets. They regarded art as the highest form of human experience, and reacted to the utilitarian strain found in the verse of the so-called “civic poets” like Nekrasov. He is famous for his statement (made in verse): “You do not have to be a poet, but//You have to be a citizen.” Instead, the aesthetic strand of Symbolism preached art for art’s sake.
The leading lights of the religious group were the writers as Zinaida Gippius and her husband, Dmitri Merezhkovsky, along with the Symbolist poets of the younger “second generation”, Alexander Blok, Andrey Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov. For them, art was a part of a religious or mystical quest. The artist was seen as a mystic endowed with the ability to penetrate into the mysterious essence of phenomena and to hear and reproduce the “hidden music” of Nature.
However, Blok himself remained indifferent to literary groups and schools. In August 1907 he wrote to Andrey Bely: “I do not concern myself with the construction of literary and philosophical theories, and I resist and will continue to resist firmly all attempts to draw me into a school.” He was certainly not an experimentalist, in the manner of a Mayakovsky or Khlebnikov. As Mandelstam strikingly put it, “In literary matters Blok was an enlightened conservative. He was exceedingly cautious with everything concerning style, metrics or imagery: not one overt break with the past. To see Blok as an innovator in literature is to picture an English lord introducing, with great tact, a new Bill into Parliament.”
On one view, the goal of the Romantic poet is the search for the true love, the one and only love. It is this search for love, as an ideal to strive for, which can be traced as the common thread through the different stages of Blok's poetic development. It is possible to view Blok's poetic development as a series of stages in which the Ideal he seeks – in this search for love - assumes a number of different forms.
There are perhaps five such stages: (1) The Beautiful Lady; (2) The Stranger – which is linked with the motifs of The Snow Maiden and Carmen; (3) Terrible World; (4) Russia; (5) The Revolution.
In addition, I should mention the influence of the Pushkinian Tradition, which permeates Blok’s poetry through all its stages.
PREKRASNAYA DAMA/THE BEAUTIFUL LADY – FIRST STAGE
Blok's first vision of romantic love was expressed in his first volume of 105 poems, STIKHI 0 PREKRASNOY DAME /VERSES ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL LADY (1905). This vision had developed from the philosopher, Vladimir Solovyev’s idea of “the Eternal Feminine” - “das Ewig-Weibliche”/ “Vechnaya Zhenstvennost'”. SLIDE 9 – Vladimir Solovyev (1853-1900)
Influence of Vladimir Solovyev
Blok had first come across the philosopher and poet, Vladimir Solovyev, and his ideas while still in his teens. Solovyev became Blok's first spiritual mentor.
Solovyev had developed the concept of "the World Soul"/ “Mirovaya Dusha” and – as just mentioned – the idea of “the ETERNAL FEMININE”. According to Solovyev, the World Soul/the Eternal Feminine, once it had penetrated the world deeply enough, would transform and redeem it.
The Beautiful Lady
Blok’s first vision of romantic love, in the form of “The Beautiful Lady”, was inspired in part by Solovyev’s idea of the Eternal Feminine and in part by his love for his wife, Lyubov’. SLIDE 10 – Lyubov' as Ophelia
As I’ve said, Blok's first collection of verse was titled VERSES ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL LADY // СТИХИ О ПРЕКРАСНОЙ ДАМЕ, and was published in 1905, though many of the poems in it were written much earlier [(1898-1904)].
In the poems in this first volume, Blok depicts himself as the “Beautiful Lady’s” humble and obedient servant, as the Queen’s slave, servus Reginae.
But Blok's verses were also suffused with the sense that his ideal of the Beautiful Lady is utterly unattainable.
One of the most beautiful poems in this first volume is "I VISIT DARK CHURCHES" - Poem (1) - October 1902. STOP SCREEN-SHARING. READ DB
Historical events: 1904-06
Between Blok’s first and second books lies the difficult period of the years 1904 -1906. The disastrous Russo- Japanese war of 1904 had huge political repercussions on the situation in Russia. And 1905 was the year of Russia's first "social revolution". These were years which could not fail to have an impact on anyone with any sensitivity. As Blok was to recall in 1910: "As something broke in us, so something broke in Russia ... and Russia ... turned out to be our own soul".
THE STRANGER/THE SNOW-MAIDEN/CARMEN – SECOND STAGE
(Now Blok sees his Beautiful Lady in low taverns.)
In Blok's second collection of poems, UNEXPECTED JOY // НЕЧАЯННАЯ РАДОСТЬ (1907), the signs of duality discernible in his first collection intensify. For the first time, demonic elements break into his poetry.
In this second stage, the image of the heavenly Beloved has now receded into the past. Contemporary motifs begin to appear in his poems: the city at night flooded with electric lights, the noise of all-night restaurants and the faces of flesh-and-blood women.
(1) Motif of Незнакомка / The Stranger
A new image enters Blok's verse, under the name of' “THE STRANGER" / «НЕЗНАКОМКА».
Blok wrote the poem entitled “The Stranger"/«Незнакомка» (2) in April 1906. SCREEN-SHARE
SLIDE 11 - This slide shows the station restaurant in Ozerki which inspired the poem ‘The Stranger'.
SLIDE 12 -'The Stranger'
In the poem “The Stranger" (2), a woman whom the poet meets by chance in a restaurant at night is transformed into the mysterious Unknown Lady.
STOP SCREEN-SHARING.
READ The Stranger (2) LD – shortened [omit stanzas 2,3,4]
SCREEN-SHARE
SLIDE 13 [This slide – titled ‘Caught by the Blizzard’ - shows Blok dressed for winter.]
(2) Motif of Blizzard/Snow-Mask/Snow-Maiden
The image of the blizzard (metel’, v’yuga) – as a symbol of passion and of the elemental - appears frequently during Blok’s second stage. It also conveys a sense of having lost one’s way, of being without direction or purpose; and also, quite simply, of cold.
The blizzard motif is particularly powerful in "THE SNOW-MASK", a cycle of 30 lyrics written in a period of intense creativity over 16 days in December 1906/January 1907. Here the poet abandons himself to flight through the void in pursuit of his enticing Beloved. In this new feminine creation of his fantasy, the Stranger and the Beautiful Lady seem somehow to be mysteriously intertwined.
The cycle, THE SNOW-MASK, was inspired by a real woman, NATALYA VOLOKHOVA. SLIDE 14 – Natalya Volokhova
Volokhova was an actress in the company run by Vera Komissarzhevskaya - with Vsevolod Meyerhold as director and the driving force behind the company. Blok was infatuated with Volokhova, and indeed the whole SNOW- MASK cycle is dedicated to her. Blok portrayed their affair, in a number of poems, as a magnificent tragic play of self-destruction.
Blok first met Natalya in December 1906. Like Lyubov Mendeleyeva, she seems to have become for Blok a kind of medium through which metaphysical reality was revealed to him. Their stormy relationship lasted for two years. And it was the infatuation with VOLOKHOVA which played a significant part in Blok’s estrangement from his wife. However, by October 1907 Blok had already ceased to derive joy from his passion.
Poem (3) SPRING WITHOUT END, WITHOUT BOUNDS is taken from a cycle of poems titled "FAINA". This cycle was first published in March 1908. It was also dedicated to N.N. Volokhova. Poem (3) carried in manuscript the dedication “To the Woman who is poisoned by her own beauty"// «Женщине, отравленной красoтой своей». It introduces a change of mood, landscape and metre. The blizzard has ceased, and joyfully the poet greets the spring. In the last three verses, he still welcomes his mystical love. However, his love is now mixed with hate.
The first two lines of the second stanza read as follows:
“Failure, I accept you,// And success, I accept you as well!” [«Принимаю тебя, неудача,// И удача, тебе мой привет!»]
English readers will no doubt be reminded of Rudyard Kipling’s well-known poem, “If”:
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster // And treat those two impostors just the same…”. STOP SCREEN-SHARING.
READ Poem (3) LD - Spring without end, without bounds – shortened [stanzas 1, 2, 3 and 6 only]
SLIDE 15 – a dishevelled-looking Blok – the world of ‘wine, women and song’
(4) Motif of the gypsy - Carmen
The next vision which captured Blok's imagination was the wild, chaotic world of the gypsy, symbolised by the figure of Carmen. The rhythms of gypsy song and dances are heard repeatedly in his poetry between 1907 and 1914. Tormented by his conflicting emotions, Blok sought escape in wine and debauchery, and felt himself drawn irresistibly into the violent, chaotic world of the gypsy. The key elements in the Carmen theme are heat, passion and betrayal.
Poem (4) - B РЕСТОРАНЕ // In the Restaurant
As Mandelstam put it, Blok "assimilated the gypsy romance ("romans") and turned it into a language of passion, understandable to all." [Blok’s verse uncannily conjures up the bewitching world of gypsy violins and accordians.] The gypsy motif is powerfully evoked as the backdrop to the encounter which is the subject of the poem "In The Restaurant” (4).
This poem was first published in November 1911, as part of the cycle "TERRIBLE WORLD" // «Страшный мир» (Volume III). Like "The Stranger", the poem describes an incident in a restaurant which seemingly has some basis in fact. A certain Maria Nelidova later claimed that she was the woman in the poem [and that the episode had taken place in St. Petersburg’s famous restaurant, the “Villa Rode”].
However, the music of the verse, along with the colourful verbal metaphors, transmutes the actual incident into one charged with mystical suggestiveness. The poem builds up into an unforgettable climax in the final stanzas.
STOP SCREEN-SHARING. READ In The Restaurant (4) DB
SLIDE 16 – Lyubov’ Delmas as Carmen
Carmen theme (continued) – Lyubov Delmas
The development of the "gypsy theme" culminated in March 1914 in the cycle "Carmen" («Кармен»), which was written in 14 days. Like The Snow-Mask (December 1906/January 1907), the cycle was born of a "creative frenzy". The two cycles have a further affinity, in that they were both composed at times when Blok was under the spell of a fascinating woman - in 1906 NATALYA VOLOKHOVA (Snow- Mask), in 1914 Lyubov Delmas, a celebrated opera singer well-known for her interpretation of Bizet’s heroine.
SLIDE 17 – Lyubov’ Delmas (again) as Carmen
Blok saw Lyubov Delmas for the first time, singing the Carmen role, in October 1913. In March 1914 Blok became personally acquainted with Delmas. He fell in love with her as soon as he met her. For two years Blok lived under her passionate spell. We will read one of the poems inspired by her: “Snowy spring is raging” // «Бушует снежная весна» (5).
Read Poem (5) LD STOP SCREEN-SHARING.
Lyubov DELMAS was the poet’s last love. Sincere and sympathetic, she became the devoted and tender friend of Blok and his wife. She stood by them till the end of the poet’s life and offered her help in the difficult Revolutionary years that were still to come.
Penitential verse - О ДОБЛЕСТЯХ, О ПОДВИГАХ, О СЛАВЕ
The mature poetry of Blok's third volume (1907-16) contains some magnificent penitential verse, especially in the cycle “RETRIBUTION” («Возмездие», 1908 – 1913). The poem "GLORY AND FEATS OF VALOUR" (Poem 6) (30 December 1908) is a particularly moving illustration of this group. The poem is addressed to his wife, Lyubov, from whom at the time Blok was estranged.
Blok had first become estranged from his wife during the period 1906/07, following his self-destructive infatuation with Natalya Volokhova. Other relationships had followed. Lyubov then had a child by another man (it is not known who this was). Blok nevertheless accepted the child as his own. The child died after only 10 days, and Blok wrote a very moving poem in commemoration. The poem is titled «На Смерть Младенца» / “On The Death Of A Child”. Blok’s magnanimity and nobility of spirit come through very powerfully in this poem.
In the poem which we are now going to read, Glory and feats of valour (Poem (6)) Blok expresses the sorrow of parting from Lyubov’ and his acute feeling of loss. Their separation was seen by Blok as a sign that his youth, with its dreams and ideals, had come to an end.
For Blok, his wife was still inseparably associated both with his youth and with The Beautiful Lady. The third and fourth lines in stanza 4 have captured the imagination of many readers:
"Forlornly, wrapping yourself in your blue cloak,
You left home and stepped out into the damp night."
[“Ты в синий плащ печально завернулась,
В сырую ночь ты из дому ушла.»]
The sorrow and bitterness of separation or parting from a loved one are expressed with great poignancy.
Marina Tsvetaeva said that after the appearance of О доблестях, о подвигах, о славе: «Вся Россия была влюблена в синий плащ Любови Дмитриевны.» // All Russia was in love with the dark-blue cloak of Lyubov' Dmitrievna.
DB Poem (6)
READ Glory and feats of valour// О доблестяx, о подвигах, о славе
SLIDE 18 – Blok in a hat.
INTERLUDE: Journeys to Italy (and France and Germany)
Blok and his wife went abroad together twice before World War I, travelling through Germany, France and Italy.
The first journey, in 1909, inspired some of Blok’s very best verse. These are the poems which appear in the cycle "ITALIAN VERSES" (1909). The common feature of these poems is their classical restraint and solemnity. They evoke a vivid sense of history, and have a striking pictorial, even sculpturesque quality. The most famous of these are the poems "Ravenna" and “Florence”.
[Blok achieves here a perhaps unsurpassed harmony of composition, rhythm and sound.]
DESPAIR/MEANINGLESSNESS OF EXISTENCE: «Страшный мир» // TERRIBLE WORLD – THIRD STAGE
However, Blok's "Italian Journey" provided only a momentary respite from his restiveness and general dissatisfaction with himself. The third stage in Blok’s development is marked by despair, as illustrated by the section in his third volume of verse titled "TERRIBLE WORLD" // «Страшный мир» (1909-1916). These poems are full of Blok's hatred for his past, a lack of any hope about his future and a growing sense of the absurdity and futility of existence. This is especially true of the next two poems we are going to read [Poems (7) and (8)] – HOW HARD IT IS TO WALK AMONG PEOPLE (1910) and NIGHT, A STREET, A STREET-LIGHT, A PHARMACY (1912).
SLIDE 19 — A street at night
Night, a street, a street-light, a pharmacy... is one of the five poems grouped under the generic title "DANCES OF DEATH" ( «Пляски Смерти»). In this cycle, the poet portrays himself generally as "a corpse among people", for whom life and death are indistinguishable.
Night, a street, a street-light, a pharmacy is a brilliant encapsulation of the Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence. The poem is an eloquent re-statement in poetic form of the harrowing belief that mankind is doomed to a perpetual and endless repetition of the same purposeless existence.
READ How hard it is to walk among the people (7) LD; and Night, a street, a street-light, a pharmacy DB (8) STOP SCREEN-SHARING.
RUSSIA: RODINA/MY COUNTRY – FOURTH STAGE
Historical/Intellectual background
Blok was not purely an artist. He had a definite social conscience as well as an acute sense of social guilt. His active interest in the social life of his times dates from 1907-08, when he made a number of contributions to the debate that went on in the aftermath of the abortive Revolution of 1905. He was particularly interested in the role of the intelligentsia in society and in its attitudes to the popular masses.
Blok believed that in the 19th century educated European society had become overly scientific and rationalistic in its approach, thereby becoming divorced from Nature and the "Spirit of Music". The true bearers of culture, Blok proclaimed, were now the popular masses, who, unlike the intelligentsia, had continued to live in harmony with Nature's rhythms. And, like the Slavophiles in the 19th century, Blok had come to believe that Russia had a unique role to play in the salvation of the modern world.
SLIDE 20 – Poems about Russia
РОДИНА /MY COUNTRY – fourth stage (cont’d)
The views which I have just briefly outlined lead in to the fourth stage of Blok’s poetic development, which reflects his deep love of Russia. Blok's poems on Russia are to be found in the section entitled "My Country" («Родина») in Volume III of his collected works. This cycle reveals Blok's passionate emotional involvement in the destiny of his country.
The Eternal Feminine/Vechnaya Zhenstvennost ideal, which has manifested itself in various different forms, is now transformed into Blok’s culminating feminine symbol – that of Родина, his Motherland. He speaks of Russia with an unparalleled depth of feeling, as a lover speaking of his beloved. In On Kulikovo Field (9) he addresses her as his wife: “O, Rus’ moya! Zhena moya!” In these poems he vocally declares his love of Russia - for all her faults - and tries to capture her precious music. For Russia was still a bearer of music, unlike the dead civilisation of the West.
With the RODINA cycle, the Beautiful Lady and the Power of Nature are reinterpreted as "my fateful native country" // «роковая, родная страна».
The theme of Russia appears in the three poems we are going to read: ON KULIKOVO FIELD (9), RUSSIA (10) and THOSE BORN IN YEARS OF STAGNATION (11).
The first of these, ON KULIKOVO FIELD [Poem (9) – December 1908], comprises a cycle of five poems written between June and December 1908, in which Blok addresses himself to Russia’s heroic past. In this heroic past, Blok saw both signs of Russia’s future suffering and the assurance of eventual triumph. The cycle represents a mystical interpretation of the BATTLE OF KULIKOVO FIELD (1380). In this battle, the Moscow princes, under Dmitri Donskoy, defeated the Tartars under Khan Mamai.
The Kulikovo Field cycle is regarded by many as Blok's highest poetic achievement.
READ the first poem from the cycle On Kulikovo Field (9) LD
STOP SCREEN-SHARING.
The second of the poems which we are going to read on the theme of Russia is actually titled "RUSSIA" (10). In the poem, Blok turns from the heroic past to the impoverished Russia of the present and reaffirms his faith in Russia's ability to overcome her enemies and to survive.
READ Russia (10) DB
SLIDE 21 – Blok in his mature years
The third of these poems on the theme of Russia is "THOSE BORN IN YEARS OF STAGNATION" (11). This poem was written soon after the beginning of the First World War. It is dedicated to the Symbolist poet and critic, Zinaida Gippius. Gippius considered it the best poem he had written. The poet speaks here as the representative of a doomed generation, "the children of Russia's terrible years" - that is, those born in th1e 1880s.
Blok did not in fact write many poems after this: none between 1916 and 1918, and only a few between 1918 and 1921. READ Those born in years of stagnation (11) DB STOP SCREEN-SHARING
Historical events – World War I
Before we move on to the last few years of Blok's life, it is worth turning back for a moment to the historical events of the second decade of the 20th century. The First World War broke out in August 1914. This was interpreted by Blok as a further step towards the apocalyptic catastrophe which was soon to engulf the world.
Initially, Blok had no desire to fight in what seemed to him to be a senseless struggle leading to mutual destruction for both sides. Finally, though, he did in fact enlist in the Russian Army in 1916. SLIDE 22 – Blok at the front He was stationed at the front near Pskov until March 1917. Anna Akhmatova recalls how her husband, Nikolay Gumilyev, commented to her that sending Blok to the front would be “like frying nightingales.” Blok's wife worked behind the lines as a nurses’ aide. SLIDE 23– Lyubov as a nurse
PAUSE. THEN STOP SCREEN-SHARING.
In Russia itself, the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, pledging to end the war with Germany, no matter what concessions they had to make. Eventually, on 3 March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between the Bolsheviks and Germany.
The Scythians/Скифы - January 1918
The next poem we’re going to read an extract from is "The Scythians"/ «Скифы» (January 1918). Blok wrote this poem almost immediately after his famous poem, "The Twelve", on 29 and 30 January 1918. "The Twelve" is an inspirational work, a wholly spontaneous expression of Blok's poetic genius. "The Scythians", by contrast, is a rationally conceived, essentially didactic or rhetorical work. It belongs to the Russian “odic” tradition, and critics have indicated, in particular, its similarities to Pushkin's "To The Slanderers of Russia"/“Klevetnikam Rossii”.
In this poem, Blok reveals Russia’s Eastern/Scythian/Asiatic dimension. As in Pushkin's poem, the "slanderers of Russia" are the Western Powers. The poem is a solemn warning, addressed to the Revolution's Western opponents, who had been angered by the Bolshevik government’s separate peace treaty negotiations with Germany.
The poet threatens the Western powers that, unless they respond to Russia's call for peace and friendship, she will withdraw from her historical role of “buffer state” between East and West, shielding the West against aggression from the East, and leave them at the mercy of the Asiatic hordes.
We'll now READ the final stanzas of The Scythians (Poem 12) LD
SLIDE 24 – Blok in the Winter Palace
REVOLUTION – FIFTH STAGE
We now move on to the fifth stage of Blok’s poetic development, the Revolution. Blok greeted the February 1917 Revolution with undoubted enthusiasm. Then, with the Revolution of October 1917, he saw – or thought he saw - the realisation of his hopes and prophesies. Initially, he had great hopes of the Revolution. He worked for the Provisional Government’s Commission investigating the records of Tsarist Ministers, and he worked for various Soviet institutions. In 1920 he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Division of the All-Russian Union of Poets.
However, he never joined the Communist party. In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, Blok was close to the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) Party. Indeed, in February 1919 he was briefly arrested in connection with the so-called "conspiracy of the left SRs”.
The last two years of Blok's life were marked by his profound disillusionment with the reality of the Revolution. Ultimately, he came to see the Revolution as a failure, the product of abstract economic theories of bourgeois intellectuals who had no real contact with or understanding of ordinary people.
Apathy, despair, hard living conditions and a mysterious, unidentified illness led to his early death at the age of 40 on 7 August 1921. This was after all attempts by his wife and friends to obtain permission for him to go abroad to recuperate were refused by the Bolshevik Government.
Lenin personally ordered that no exit visa should be issued for Blok; he was probably afraid Blok would never return to Russia.
His death was a painful and agonising one, and he finally died after a succession of heart-attacks. The funeral rites were held in the Church of the Resurrection, in the Smolenskoye Cemetery. He had stopped writing poetry some time before his death. The “music of the world” around him simply stopped. "And the poet dies because he cannot breathe" - as Blok himself said of Pushkin in his address on the anniversary of Pushkin’s death in February 1921.
The Acmeist poet, Nikolai Gumilyev, also died in August 1921, executed by the Bolshevik regime. These two deaths had a shattering effect on literary Petrograd.
Andrey Bely announced that Blok had “choked to death” in the suffocating atmosphere of St Petersburg in 1921
SLIDE 25 – The Twelve
The Twelve/ДВЕНАДЦАТЬ - January 1918
Returning to 1917, the Revolution inspired one of Blok's greatest poems, the first - and, arguably, still - the greatest poetic work devoted to the Revolution, "The Twelve". The poem was and is Blok’s best-known work. It is considered by most to be an extraordinarily evocative and effective poem, expressing the essence of the Russian Revolution and its time. We can hardly do justice to the poem in the time available to us. But it’s worth making a few remarks. Blok’s attitude to the Revolution
First a few words about Blok’s attitude to the Revolution. Blok was criticised by many friends and admirers for his unequivocal acceptance of the Revolution at its outset. However, it is important to understand the nature of Blok’s initial support for the Revolution. At the time of the abortive Revolution of 1905, it was clear from what Blok and Andrey Bely had written at the time that the Revolution they both had in mind was spiritual and social rather than political or even civic.
Similarly, the Revolution to which Blok responded in 1917-18 was only incidentally political. Rather his idealistic hope was that it would somehow bring about the ‘spiritual transfiguration’ of Russia.
The Twelve (cont’d)
Coming back to "The Twelve", it’s a work that has always aroused controversy. The point to make about the poem, however, is that it allows of different, and mutually contradictory, interpretations.
The protagonists of the poem, the 12 Red Guardsmen, embody Blok's conception of the Russian people. Crude, violent and undisciplined, they are driven by the single desire for revenge on the bourgeoisie. One of the most remarkable features of the poem is the sudden appearance of Christ, at the very end, at the head of the column of Red Guardsmen. Blok himself was unable to explain the significance of the appearance of Christ in logical terms, but felt he had no choice in the matter.
Whatever the poem’s “real” meaning may be thought to be, it was certainly inspired by the Revolution and remains a great poem. However, it is worth noting that Blok himself eventually disowned “The Twelve” - once he had seen with his own eyes where the Revolution was heading. “I don't know 'The Twelve'” - he replied to those who praised his poem.
SLIDE 26 – Philological Faculty of St. Petersburg University – 'Pushkin House'
PUSHKINIAN TRADITION
"The Twelve" and "The Scythians" are often considered to have been the last flash of Blok's genius. However, it is better to consider the last expression of Blok's Muse to have been in his last poem “To Pushkin House" (No. 13) and in his famous speech on Pushkin, "On The Poet’s Calling"/О назначении поэта.
He wrote the poem on the same day that he made the speech - 11 February 1921. Blok delivered this speech - as Dostoevsky had done in 1880 - on the anniversary of Pushkin’s death. 1921 was the 84th anniversary. In both the poem and the speech, the poet - nobly and with great vigour - expressed his protest against tyranny and praised the "secret, inner freedom" which stands up to the power of petty totalitarianism.
Blok spoke as follows:
“What killed Pushkin was not D'Anthes’ bullet, what killed him was lack of air... There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and freedom. Peace and freedom: they are essential to the poet for the feeling of harmony. But peace and freedom too are being taken away. Not an external peace, but a creative one; not a puerile freedom, the freedom to play the liberal, but the creative freedom, the secret, inner freedom. The poet dies because he can no longer breathe: life, for him, has lost its meaning.
We are dying, but art will remain.”
And so, the poetry of Blok lives on, and through it the spirit of Pushkin. Throughout all its stages, Blok's poetry was imbued with a whole-hearted acceptance of the Pushkinian tradition. Thus, Blok's poem, «To Pushkin House», may fittingly be considered his last testament.
Conclusion
SLIDE 27 – Blok's monument in Moscow
In conclusion, we can celebrate the fact that Alexander Blok was a great lyric poet, the greatest of the Russian Symbolist poets and a poet who continued the great tradition of Russian poetry. He was the first great Russian poet of the 20th century, who exercised a profound influence on his contemporaries and successors. In the words of Anna Akhmatova, he was : “a monument to the beginning of the century” / «памятник началу века».
As Tyutchev had said of Pushkin, so Marina Tsvetaeva said of Blok: “As with a first love, Russia will never forget you in her heart.” / «Тебя, как первую любовь, России сердце не забудет.»
I think that, in the Pushkin Club, and indeed with this event being hosted by Pushkin House, we could not really end with a more fitting poem than “To Pushkin House”/ « Пушкинскому Дому».
READ “TO PUSHKIN HOUSE” (Poem 13) DB
STOP SCREEN-SHARING
At end of Alla’s reading, SCREEN-SHARE and show again SLIDE 27
(Blok’s monument in Moscow)
END