Valery Bryusov. Creativity of the "hammerer and jeweler"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Valery Bryusov comes from a merchant family. He received an excellent education and possessed encyclopedic knowledge. In 1893, when he was 20 years old, the young man wrote his first poem “The Decadents. (end of the century).

The work breathed sympathy for French symbolism. The poet himself several years earlier wrote to the famous Verlaine that he sees his destiny in being the founder of symbolism in his homeland. Two years later, three collections "Russian Symbolists" were published, in which, under the pseudonym Valery Maslov, none other than Bryusov publishes his poems. The poet's work was ridiculed after the appearance in the almanac of the monostich "Oh close your pale legs." Not only Bryusov got it, but the whole symbolism as a whole.

Flourishing time

In 1900, the collection "Tertia Vigilia" appeared. About this time, Bryusov's contemporary Vladislav Khodasevich wrote in his memoirs that the "cutting dissonance" of the poems consisted "in a combination of decadent exoticism with the simplest Moscow philistinism." However, this did not prevent Bryusov from acquiring a retinue of admirers and imitators. He tirelessly experimented with the form and "music" of verse. his dreamwas to write a book in which samples of poetry "of all times and peoples" would sound. At the same time, in the journals of that time one could find a great many works of European poets, which were translated by Valery Bryusov.

Life and work were tightly intertwined with each other in those moments when the poet was in love. His vivid romance with Nina Petrovskaya resulted in a cycle of poems dedicated to her. The historical stylization of the "Fiery Angel" is partly dictated by the love triangle that happened between her, Bryusov and the poet Andrei Bely. Bryusov dedicated a book of poems to his other passion, Nadezhda Lvova. That was the period when the poet reigned supreme in the literary magazines Libra and Scorpio, which he himself created.

Myths. City. Revolution

The refined eroticism of mythological images gradually gave way to the sharpness of urban landscapes. The urban theme with admiration for the rumbling rhythms of the city, perhaps, was most vividly portrayed in Russian poetry by Valery Bryusov. Creativity of the writer is not exhausted in this topic by his own poems. He offers the reader a book of translations of Verhaarn's poetry, where he sees the city as "the ruler of the universe."

Another powerful source of inspiration for the poet was Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. The author of more than eighty articles about him, the editor of letters and documents related to the work of a genius, was Bryusov. The work of the poet of the period of the first Russian revolution did not remain aloof from public life. Bryusov declares his interest in the fate of the "humiliated and offended". These arefor example, the poems "The Mason" and "The Dying Bonfire". As a witness to the cruel reality of the First World War, Valery Bryusov experienced a nervous shock. His work acquired notes of tragic hopelessness in the description of the future. The poet was waiting for the decline of civilization. These sentiments were clearly heard in the books Star Mountain and Rise of the Machines.

The writer enthusiastically welcomed the Russian revolution of 1917. His civic sentiments found a place in publishing. Bryusov inspiredly led the "unions", "departments" and "committees" of the Soviet Republic and even joined the Communist Party.

Sunset

The poetic experiments of the time when Bryusov is trying, according to the apt remark of Khodasevich, “to find new sounds through a conscious cacophony”, did not find a response from the public. Watching the dreams of a new beautiful life collapse under the rule of the Bolsheviks, the poet experienced disappointment and even depression, which was partly caused by addiction to drugs. Valery Bryusov died of pneumonia at the age of fifty and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Bryusov's work is a manifesto of the boundless freedom of the artist. Assessing his controversial and innovative manner, contemporaries called the poet "a hammer and a jeweler." Undoubtedly, Valery Bryusov's remark turned out to be prophetic: “I want to live so that there are two lines about me in the history of universal literature. And they will.”