The poetry of Alexandr Blok (1880-1921) marks the highest achievement of that fertile period in Russian literary history chiefly identified with the Symbolist movement. The aim of this book is to convey some idea of Blok's scope and development as a poet in a selection of fifty poems and it provides an editorial apparatus to facilitate understanding and appreciation. The visionary, mystical element is present in most of Blok's poetry, but this does not preclude a considerable evolution - from highly personal lyrics of the early cycles through the 'transitional phase' of volume II, in which new themes reflecting the poet's broadening experience of life are combined with extensive formal experimentation, to the mature verse of volume III and the climax of his development in Двенадцать, the first and still greatest poem devoted to the October Revolution. The result is some of the finest poetry in the Russian language since the death of Tyutchev (1873), and a unique record of the doubts, fears and hopes which accompanied an unusually sensitive intellectual's experience of the collapse of the world he knew and of the chaos and tensions of Russia's 'terrible years'.
Author
Aleksandr Blok (Russian: Александр Александрович Блок) was born in Saint 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 Saint Petersburg State University. After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the Shakhmatovo manor near Moscow, where he discovered the philosophy of 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. He fell in love with Lyubov (Lyuba) Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Mendeleev) 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 vision of the feminine soul and eternal womanhood (The Greek Sophia of Solovyov's teaching). Blok's few relatives currently live in Moscow, Riga, Rome and England. During the last 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. By 1921 Blok had become disillusioned with the Russian Revolution. He did not write any poetry for three years. Blok complained to Maksim Gorky that he had given up his "faith in the wisdom of humanity". He explained to his friend Korney Chukovsky why he could not write poetry any more: "All sounds have stopped. Can't you hear that there are no longer any sounds?".[2]. Within a few days Blok became sick. His doctors requested him to be sent for medical treatment abroad, but he was not allowed to leave the country. Gorky pleaded for a visa. On 29 May 1921, he wrote to Anatoly Lunacharsky: "Blok is Russia's finest poet. If you forbid him to go abroad, and he dies, you and your comrades will be guilty of his death". Blok received permission only on 10 August, after his death.[2] 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. His death and the execution of his fellow poet Nikolai Gumilev by Cheka in 1921 were seen by many as the end of the entire generation of Russians [2]. Nina Berberova, then a young girl, recalled about the mood at his funeral: "I was suddenly and sharply orphaned... The end is coming. We are lost." http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-r...
