Russian Cultural Renaissance Nikolai Berdyaev

Introduction

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia experienced an intense intellectual upsurge, especially vividly manifested in philosophy and poetry. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev called this time the Russian cultural renaissance. It is Berdyaev who owns another, more well-known definition of this period - the “Silver Age”. According to others, the phrase "Silver Age" was first used in 1929 by the poet Nikolai Otsup. The concept is not so much a scientific one as an emotional one that immediately evokes associations with another short period in the history of Russian culture — the “golden age”, the Pushkin era of Russian poetry (the first third of the XIX century).

“Now it’s hard to imagine the atmosphere of that time,” Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the Silver Age in his “philosophical autobiography” “Self-knowledge”. - Much of the creative upswing of that time was included in the further development of Russian culture and now there is the wealth of all Russian cultural people. But then there was a drunkenness of creative inspiration, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. During these years, Russia was sent many gifts. It was the epoch of the awakening in Russia of independent philosophical thought, the flowering of poetry and the aggravation of aesthetic sensuality, religious anxiety and search, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were discovered, new dawns were seen, they combined the feeling of sunset and doom with the hope of transforming life. But everything happened in a rather closed circle ... "

The art and philosophy of the Silver Age was distinguished by its elitism and intellectualism. Therefore, it is impossible to identify all the poetry of the late XIX - early XX century with the Silver Age. This is a narrower concept. Sometimes, though, trying to determine the essence of the ideological content of the Silver Age through formal features (literary movements and groups, socio-political implications and contexts), researchers mistakenly mix them. In fact, within the chronological boundaries of this period, the most diverse phenomena of origin and aesthetic orientation coexisted: modernist trends, poetry of the classical realistic tradition, peasant, proletarian, satirical poetry ... But the Silver Age is not a chronological period. At least not just the period. And this is not the sum of literary movements. Rather, the concept of "Silver Age" is appropriate to apply to the way of thinking, which, being characteristic of artists who were at enmity with each other, ultimately merged them in the consciousness of descendants into a kind of inseparable pleiuda that formed the specific atmosphere of the Silver Age, which Berdyaev wrote .

The names of the poets who made up the spiritual core of the Silver Age are known to everyone: Valery Bryusov, Fyodor Sologub, Innokentiy Annensky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrey Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, Boris Pasternak , Georgy Ivanov and many others.

In its most concentrated form, the atmosphere of the Silver Age was expressed in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century. It was the heyday of the literature of Russian modernity in all the diversity of its artistic, philosophical, religious searches and discoveries. The First World War, the February bourgeois-democratic and the October socialist revolutions partly provoked, partly formed this cultural context, and partly were provoked and formed by him. The representatives of the Silver Age sought to overcome positivism, denied materialism, as well as idealistic philosophy.

The poets of the Silver Age sought to overcome as well the attempts of the second half of the XIX century to explain human behavior by social conditions, environment and continued the traditions of Russian poetry, for which man was important in itself, his thoughts and feelings, his attitude to eternity, to God, to Love and Death in a philosophical, metaphysical sense. The poets of the Silver Age both in their artistic creation and in theoretical articles and statements questioned the idea of ​​progress for literature. For example, one of the brightest creators of the Silver Age, Osip Mandelstam, wrote that the idea of ​​progress is “the most disgusting kind of school ignorance”. And Alexander Blok in 1910 stated: “The sun of naive realism has set; to comprehend anything outside of symbolism is impossible. " The poets of the Silver Age believed in art, by virtue of the word. Therefore, for their creativity it is indicative of immersion in the element of the word, the search for new means of expression. They cared not only about the sense, but also about the style - for them the sound, the music of the word and the complete immersion in the elements were important. This immersion led to a cult of life-creation (the inseparability of the creator’s personality and his art). And almost always in connection with this, the poets of the Silver Age were unhappy in their personal lives, and many of them ended badly.

1. Concept and basic styles

1.1 What is the “Silver Age”?

The Silver Age is one of the main, key periods of Russian poetry, covering the period of the end of the XIX beginning of the XX century. Disputes about who first used this term are still going on. Some believe that the “Silver Age” belongs to Nikolai Avdeevich Otsup, a well-known critic. Others are inclined to believe that the term was introduced thanks to the poet Sergei Makovsky. But there are also options for Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev, the famous Russian philosopher, Razumnikov Vasilyevich Ivanov, Russian literary critic, and poet Vladimir Alekseevich Piast. But one thing is certain: the definition was invented by analogy with another, no less important period, the Golden Age of Russian literature.

As for the time frame of the period, they are conditional, since it is difficult to establish the exact dates for the birth of the Silver Age of poetry. The beginning is usually associated with the work of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok and his symbolism. The end is attributed to the date of execution of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov and the death of the previously mentioned Block. Although the echoes of this period can be found in the works of other famous Russian poets Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam.

Symbolism, imagism, futurism and acmeism are the main currents of the Silver Age. All of them belong to such a trend in art as modernism.

The basic philosophy of modernism was the idea of ​​positivism, that is, hope and faith in the new in the new time, in the new life, in the formation of the newest / modern. People believed that they were born for something high, they have their own purpose, which they must embody. Now culture is aimed at eternal development, constant progress. But all this philosophy collapsed with the advent of war. It was they who forever changed the outlook and attitude of people.

1.2 Futurism

Futurism is one of the trends of modernism, which is an integral part of the Russian avant-garde. For the first time this term appeared in the manifesto "A slap in the face of public taste," written by members of the St. Petersburg group "Gilea." It consisted of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vasily Kamensky, Velimir Khlebnikov and other authors, who were often called “bylovelya.”

The ancestor of futurism consider Paris, but its founder is from Italy. However, it was in France in 1909 that the manifesto of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was published, which taunted the place of this trend in literature. Further, futurism "reached" and to other countries. Marinetti formed the views, ideas and thoughts. He was an eccentric millionaire, most fond of cars and women. However, after the accident, when a man lay for several hours next to the pulsating heart of the engine, he decided to sing the beauty of the industrial city, the melody of a rumbling car, the poetics of progress. Now, the ideal for a person was not the surrounding natural world, but the urban landscape, the noise and roar of a bustling metropolis. The Italian also admired the exact sciences and invented composing poems with the help of formulas and graphs, created a new size “ladder”, etc. However, his poetry turned out to be something like a regular manifesto, a theoretical and lifeless rebellion against the old ideologies. From the artistic point of view, a breakthrough in futurism was made not by its founder, but by a Russian admirer of his discovery - Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1910, a new literary movement comes to Russia. Here it is represented by the four most influential groups:

 Moscow Centrifuge Group (Nikolai Aseev, Boris Pasternak, etc.);

 The previously mentioned Petersburg group Gileya;

 Petersburg Egofuturists Moscow Group under the control of Petersburg Herald Publishing House (Igor Severyanin, Konstantin Olimpov, etc.);

 Moscow group "Moscow Egofuturists" under the control of the publishing house "Mezzanine of Art" (Boris Lavrenev, Vadim Shershenevich, etc.).

Since all these groups had a huge impact on futurism, it developed unevenly. Such branches as ego-futurism and cubofuturism appeared.

Futurism influenced not only literature. He had a great influence on painting. A characteristic feature of such canvases is the cult of progress and protest against traditional artistic canons. This current combines the features of cubism and expressionism. The first exhibition took place in 1912. Then in Paris they showed pictures of various vehicles (cars, airplanes, etc.). Futurist artists believed that technology would take a leading position in the future. The main innovative step was the attempt to portray the movement in statics.