Photograph of Alexander Blok.
Alexander Blok

Overview

Alexander Blok (Александр Александрович Блок, – August 7, 1921), was perhaps the most gifted lyrical poet produced by Russia after Alexander Pushkin.

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 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 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.

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).

Blok's early poetry

The idealized mystical images presented 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).

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.

Revolution in rhythm and subject matter

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.

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 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.

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".

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)

Plain word-by-word translation to English:

(Written on October 10, 1912. source: http://www.litera.ru:8080/stixiya/authors/blok/noch-ulica-fonar.html)

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,

External links

* Biografía y poemas de Alexander Blok

Collection of Alexander Blok's Poems in English Translated from the Russian by Alec Vagapov: http://vagalecs.narod.ru/blok-engl.htm

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
Who is Alexander Blok connected to?
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This biography says:

...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.

That biography says:

...In 1910, she married the boyish poet Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of the World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.

This biography says:

...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.

That biography says:

...During the 1910s, Somov executed a number of rococo harlequin scenes and illustrations to the poems by Alexander Blok. Many of his works were exihibited abroad, especially in Germany, where the first monograph on him was published in 1909...

That biography says:

...His early poetry was inspired by Russian folklore. In 1915, he moved to St Petersburg, where he became acquainted with fellow-poets Alexander Blok, Sergei Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Andrey Bely. It was in St. Petersburg that he became well known in literature circles...

That biography says:

...In comparison with Tolstoy, whose characters are realistic, the characters of Dostoevsky are usually more symbolic of the ideas they represent, thus Dostoevsky is often cited as one of the forerunners of Literary Symbolism in specific Russian Symbolism (see Alexander Blok)....

This biography says:

Alexander Blok (Александр Александрович Блок, – August 7, 1921), was perhaps the most gifted lyrical poet produced by Russia after Alexander Pushkin.

That biography says:

...His divorce and the surrounding controversy contributed to his failure to be admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences (despite his international fame by that time). His daughter from his second marriage, Lyubov, became the wife of the famous Russian poet Alexander Blok. His other children were son Vladimir (a sailor, he took part in the notable Eastern journey of Nicholas II) and daughter Olga, from his first marriage to Feozva, and son Ivan and a pair of twins from Anna...

This biography says:

...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...

That biography says:

...Fet was never a popular poet during his lifetime. But he had a profound influence on the Russian Symbolists, especially Innokenty Annensky and Alexander Blok, and as such is firmly established among all-time Russian greats.

That biography says:

...Tolstoi's early short stories were panned by Alexander Blok and other leading critics of the time for their excessive naturalism, wanton eroticism, and general lack of taste in the manner of Mikhail Artsybashev...

This biography says:

...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...

That biography says:

...Unsurprisingly, it was not until 20th century that Tyutchev was rediscovered and hailed as a great poet by the Russian Symbolists such as Andrey Bely and Alexander Blok.

That biography says:

...His plays include the monodramas The Presentation of Love (1910) and In the Stage-Wings of the Soul (1911), the tragi-farce A Merry Death (1908, based on Alexander Blok's The Puppet Show), and The Chief Thing (1921); the last two of which were heavily indebted to the commedia...

That biography says:

...Although his poems are said to continue the 19th-century traditions of the Parnassian poets, they are steeped in oriental mysticism and sparkle with striking, carefully chosen epithets. Vladimir Nabokov was a great admirer of Bunin's verse, comparing him with Alexander Blok, but scorned his prose....

This biography says:

...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.

That biography says:

...Although invited to become a scholar, he decided against making philosophy a profession and returned to Moscow in 1914. His first poetry collection, influenced by Alexander Blok and the Russian Futurists, was published later the same year....

This biography says:

...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.

That biography says:

...Vera's death of smallpox during a tour in Central Asia shocked many of her admirers and occasioned some poignant lyrics from Alexander Blok. One of major St Petersburg theatres still bears her name....

That biography says:

...Frank, the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and also on the poetry and theory of Russian symbolism, viz. Andrei Belyi, Alexander Blok Solovyov's nephew, and others.

That biography says:

*1956-9 Soldier Ivan (Russian: Иван-солдат opera in three acts after motifs from Russian folk fairy tales *1964 Le soleil des Incas (Солнце инков — The Sun of Incas), text by Gabriela Mistral for soprano, flute, oboe, horn, trumpet, two pianos, percussion, violin and cello *1964 Italian Songs, text by Alexander Blok for soprano, flute, horn, violin and harpsichord *1966 Les pleurs (Плачи — Lamentations), text of Russian folksongs for soprano, piano and three percussionists *1968 Ode (in Memory of Che Guevara) for clarinet, piano and percussion *1968 Musique Romantique (Романтическая музыка — Romantic Music) for oboe, harp and string trio *1968 Autumn (Осень) after Velemir Khlebnikov for thirteen solo voices *1969 String Trio *1969 Wind Quintet *1969 Silhouettes for flute, two pianos and percussion *1969 Chant des Oiseaux (Пение птиц) for prepared piano (or harpsichord) and tape *1969 DSCH for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano *1970 Two Songs after poems by Ivan Bunin for soprano and piano *1970 Peinture (Живопись — Painting) for orchestra *1970 Sonata for alto saxophone and piano *1971 Piano Trio *1972 Cello Concerto *1973 La vie en rouge (Жизнь в красном цвете — The Life in Red), text by Boris Vian for solo voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion *1974 Piano Concerto *1974 Signes en blanc (Знаки на белом — The Sighs on White) for piano *1975 Flute Concerto *1977 Violin Concerto *1977 Concerto Piccolo for saxophone and six percussionists *1980 Requiem after liturgian texts and poems by Francisco Tanzer for soprano, tenor, mixed chorus and orchestra *1981 L'écume des jours (Пена дней — The Foam of Days), an opera after Boris Vian *1982 Tod ist ein langer Schlaf (Смерть - это долгий сон — Death is a Long Sleep) - Variations on Haydn's Canon for cello and orchestra *1982 Chamber Symphony No...

That biography says:

...Anna Golubkina died in 1927, while working on the sculpture of Alexander Blok. She had surgery and was forbidden to handle heavy items. However, work on the large wooden sculpture required a lot of physical effort...

That biography says:

...Back in Russia, Chukovsky started translating from English and published several analyses of contemporary European authors, which brought him in touch with leading personalities of Russian literature and secured the friendship of Alexander Blok. His influence on Russian literary society of 1890s is immortalized by satirical verses of Sasha Cherny Korney Belinsky (allusion on the famous critic Vissarion Belinsky)...

That biography says:

...Petersburg, introducing classical plays in an innovative manner, and staging works of controversial contemporary authors like Fyodor Sologub, Zinaida Gippius, and Alexander Blok. In these plays Meyerhold tried to return to acting in the traditions of Commedia dell'arte, rethinking them for the contemporary theatrical reality...

That biography says:

...Maxim Gorky's fairy-tale book, "Samovar", published in 1917 was his first work as a book designer. His recognition as a book illustrator came in the wake of his most known work - designing Alexander Blok's poem, The Twelve, published in 1918 and gone through three printings within a year. In the next few years Annenkov designed numerous books for Petrograd authors (Mikhail Kuzmin and Aleksey Remizov, to name a few)...
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