Silver age. Silver age of Russian culture

The Silver Age is not a chronological period. At least not only 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.

Atmosphere of the Silver Age

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia experienced an intense intellectual upsurge, which was especially pronounced in philosophy and poetry. Philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (read about him) called this time the Russian cultural renaissance. According to Berdyaev's contemporary Sergei Makovsky, it is Berdyaev who owns another, more well-known definition of this period - the "Silver Age". According to other sources, the phrase "Silver Age" was first used in 1929 by the poet Nikolai Otsup. This concept is not so much scientific as emotional, immediately evoking associations with another short period in the history of Russian culture - with the "golden age", the Pushkin era of Russian poetry (the first third of the 19th century).

“Now it is difficult to imagine the atmosphere of that time,” Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about the Silver Age in his “philosophical autobiography” “Self-Knowledge”. - Much of the creative upsurge of that time was included in the further development of Russian culture and now is the property of all Russian cultured people. But then there was an intoxication with a creative upsurge, novelty, tension, struggle, challenge. During these years, many gifts were sent to Russia. It was the era of the awakening of independent philosophical thought in Russia, the flowering of poetry and the sharpening of aesthetic sensibility, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were discovered, new dawns were seen, the feeling of decline and death was combined with the hope of the transformation of life. But everything happened in a rather vicious circle ... "

The Silver Age as a period and way of thinking

The art and philosophy of the Silver Age were distinguished by 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, however, when attempting to determine the essence of the ideological content of the Silver Age through formal features (literary movements and groupings, socio-political subtexts and contexts), researchers mistakenly confuse them. In fact, within the chronological boundaries of this period, the most diverse phenomena in origin and aesthetic orientation coexisted: modernist movements, poetry of the classical realistic tradition, peasant, proletarian, satirical poetry ... But the Silver Age is not a chronological period. At least not only the period. And this is not the sum of literary movements. Rather, the concept of the “Silver Age” is appropriate to apply to the way of thinking, which, being characteristic of artists who were at enmity with each other during their lifetime, ultimately merged them in the minds of their descendants into some kind of inseparable galaxy that formed that specific atmosphere of the Silver Age that Berdyaev wrote about. .

Poets of the Silver Age

The names of the poets who made up the spiritual core of the Silver Age are known to everyone: Valery Bryusov, Fedor Sologub, Innokenty Annensky, Alexander Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Andrei Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Gumilyov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Igor Severyanin, 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 Russian modern literature in all its diversity of artistic, philosophical, religious searches and discoveries. World War I, the February bourgeois-democratic and October socialist revolutions partly provoked, partly shaped this cultural context, and partly were provoked and shaped by it. Representatives of the Silver Age (and Russian modernity in general) sought to overcome positivism, reject the legacy of the "sixties", denied materialism, as well as idealistic philosophy.

The poets of the Silver Age also sought to overcome the attempts of the second half of the 19th century to explain human behavior by social conditions, environment, and continued the traditions of Russian poetry, for which a person was important in itself, his thoughts and feelings, his attitude to eternity, to God, to Love are important. and Death in the philosophical, metaphysical sense. The poets of the Silver Age, both in their artistic work 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; it is impossible to comprehend anything outside of symbolism. Poets of the Silver Age believed in art, in the power of the word. Therefore, for their creativity, immersion in the element of the word, the search for new means of expression is indicative. They cared not only about the meaning, but also about the style - the sound, the music of the word and complete immersion in the elements were important for them. This immersion led to the cult of life-creation (the inseparability of the personality of the creator 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.

Late XIX - early XX centuries. - a period that went down in history under the name of the Silver Age of Russian culture. This was most clearly manifested in Russian poetry, literature and art. N. A. Berdyaev called this rapid rise in all areas of culture “the Russian cultural renaissance”.

The State of Society in the Last Years of the Russian Empire

At the end of XIX - beginning of XX centuries. Russia's development was extremely uneven. Huge successes in the development of science, technology, and industry were intertwined with the backwardness and illiteracy of the vast majority of the population.

The 20th century drew a sharp line between “old” and “new” culture. The First World War further complicated the situation.

Culture of the Silver Age

At the beginning of the 20th century, critical realism remained the leading trend in literature. At the same time, the search for new forms leads to the emergence of completely new trends.

Rice. 1. Black square. K. Malevich. 1915.

The creative elite saw World War I as an omen of the imminent end of the world. The themes of world cataclysms, sadness, melancholy, uselessness of life are becoming popular.

TOP 5 articleswho read along with this

Many poets and writers, indeed, very plausibly predicted the future Civil War and the victory of the Bolsheviks.

Briefly about the Silver Age of Russian culture, the following table tells:

Table “Silver Age of Russian Culture”

Rice. 2. Heroic lope. V. M. Vasnetsov. 1914.

In the era of the Silver Age, Russian theater and ballet achieve great success:

• In 1898, the Moscow Art Theater was founded, headed by K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.
• “Russian Seasons” abroad with the participation of A. P. Pavlova, M. F. Kshesinskaya, M. I. Fokin became a real triumph of Russian ballet.

Rice. 3. A. P. Pavlova. 1912

Silver age in world history

The Silver Age was of great importance for the development of world culture. Russia has proved to the whole world that it still claims to be a great cultural power.

Nevertheless, the era of the “cultural renaissance” was the last conquest of the collapsing Russian Empire. The October Revolution put an end to the Silver Age.

What have we learned?

The golden age of Russian culture at the end of the 19th century was replaced by the Silver. This era, which lasted until October 1917, was marked by the emergence of a huge number of brilliant figures of culture and art. The cultural conquests of the Silver Age are highly respected throughout the world.

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The “Silver Age” is primarily a literary metaphor, designed to designate a period favorable for creativity, the heyday of art, but marked by sad forebodings and longing for the “golden age” of humanity, as well as the fear of an imminent collapse of idealistic ideas.

The idea of ​​"ages of mankind" from the point of view of the mythological tradition differs from the chronology in science. In mythology, it is believed that at first there was a happy and cloudless "golden age", followed by a "silver", and only after it the age of wars and disasters begins, i.e. "iron".

The "Silver Age" in Russia is called the end of the 19th century. and the first two decades of the 20th century. At this time, the entire national culture experienced a period of special upsurge, which, as it were, picked up the traditions of Pushkin's "golden age", this time of modernity, associated with a premonition of imminent upheavals, wars, revolutions that were supposed to sum up the era of classicism.

The Russian "Silver Age" was also called in the French manner "belle e?poque" - i.e. "beautiful era", associated with the gallant 18th century, the Rococo style, whose culture was also formed in anticipation of collapse and upheaval. Game, escape to a fictional world.

Stylization, the creation of one's own artistic reality on the basis of favorite examples of art, which is very far from real reality, are the main properties of idealistic art. This was the work of most of the artists of the association "World of Art" (in St. Petersburg) and the poets of the "Silver Age".

The term "silver age" is most often used in combination with "poetry of the silver age". This concept includes not only famous poets, but also hundreds of amateurs who created an atmosphere conducive to their appearance.

In general, the Silver Age is characterized by the presence of a large layer of an enlightened society, the emergence of a large number of educated art lovers in the broad sense of the word. Some amateurs later became professionals themselves, while the other part of them made up the so-called audience - they were listeners, readers, spectators, critics.

Nikolai Berdyaev said that much of the creative rise of the "Silver Age" became the basis for the further development of Russian culture and is the property of all the cultural people of Russia. That time was characterized by novelty, struggle, tension, challenge.

The "Silver Age" was the era of the awakening of free philosophical thought in Russia, the flourishing of poetic creativity and the intensification of aesthetic sensibility, religious quest, and a high interest in the occult and mysticism. At this time, new figures appeared in art, previously unknown sources of creative life were discovered. But all this activity took place in a rather closed circle.

The spiritual core of the poets of the "Silver Age" were:

Valery Bryusov, Innokenty Annensky, Fyodor Sologub, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Maximilian Voloshin, Anna Akhmatova, Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Gumilyov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Igor Severyanin, Georgy Ivanov, Boris Pasternak and many others.

http://istoria.neznaka.ru

The Silver Age is the figurative definition introduced by N.A. Otsup in the article of the same name (Numbers. Paris. 1933. No 78), referring to the fate of Russian modernism at the beginning of the 20th century; later he expanded the content of the concept (Otsup N.A. Contemporaries. Paris, 1961), denoting the chronological boundaries and the nature of the phenomenon born of opposition to "realism". N.A. Berdyaev replaced the term "Silver Age" with another - "Russian cultural renaissance"(“Renaissance of the early 20th century”), since he interpreted it broadly - as the awakening of “philosophical thought, the flowering of poetry and the sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity, religious quest” (Berdyaev N.A. Self-knowledge. Paris, 1983). S. Makovsky united poets, writers, artists, musicians with a common "cultural upsurge in the pre-revolutionary era" (Makovsky S. On the Parnassus of the Silver Age. Munich, 1962). The definition of the Silver Age gradually absorbed the diversity of phenomena, becoming synonymous with all the discoveries of the culture of this time. The significance of this phenomenon was deeply felt by Russian emigrants. In Soviet literary criticism, the concept of the Silver Age was fundamentally hushed up.

Otsup, comparing the domestic literature of the Golden Age (that is, the Pushkin era) and the Silver Age, came to the conclusion that the modern "master defeats the prophet", and everything created by the artists is "closer to the author, more - in human growth" ("Contemporaries") . The origins of such a complex phenomenon were revealed by active participants in the literary process of the early 20th century. I.F. Annensky saw in modernity the “I” - tortured by the consciousness of his hopeless loneliness, inevitable end and aimless existence”, but in a shaky state of mind he found a saving craving for “the creative spirit of man ", reaching "beauty by thought and suffering" (Annensky I. Selected). Courageous deepening into the tragic dissonances of inner being and at the same time a passionate thirst for harmony - this is the original antinomy that awakened the artistic search. Its specificity was defined in various ways by Russian symbolists. K. Balmont discovered in the world "not the unity of the Supreme, but the infinity of hostile-colliding heterogeneous entities", the terrible realm of "overturned depths". Therefore, he called for unraveling the “invisible life behind the obvious appearance”, the “living essence” of phenomena, transforming them in the “spiritual depth”, “into a clairvoyant clock” (Balmont K. Mountain peaks). A. Blok heard “the wild cry of a lonely soul, hanging for a moment over the barrenness of Russian swamps” and came to a discovery that he recognized in the work of F. Sologub, who reflected “the whole world, all the absurdity of crumpled planes and broken lines, because among them a transformed face appears to him ”(Collected Works: In 8 volumes, 1962. Volume 5).

The inspirer of the acmeists, N. Gumilyov, left a similar statement about Sologub, in whom "the whole world is reflected, but it is reflected transformed." Gumilyov expressed his idea of ​​the poetic achievements of that time even more clearly in his review of Annensky's "Cypress Casket": "it penetrates into the darkest nooks and crannies of the human soul"; “The question with which he addresses the reader: “And if dirt and meanness are only flour for shining beauty somewhere?” - for him it is no longer a question, but an indisputable truth ”(Collected Works: In 4 volumes Washington, 1968. Volume 4). In 1915, Sologub wrote about the latest poetry in general: “The art of our days ... strives to transform the world by the effort of the creative will ... Self-affirmation of the individual is the beginning of the desire for a better future” (Russian Thought. 1915. No 12). The aesthetic struggle of different currents was not forgotten at all. But she did not cancel the general trends in the development of poetic culture, which was well understood by Russian emigrants. They addressed the members of the opposing groups as equals. Gumilyov's yesterday's associates (Otsup, G. Ivanov and others) not only singled out the figure of Blok among his contemporaries, but also chose his legacy as the starting point of their achievements. According to G. Ivanov, Blok is “one of the most striking phenomena of Russian poetry throughout its existence” (Ivanov G. Collected Works: In 3 volumes, 1994. Volume 3). Otsup found a considerable commonality between Gumilyov and Blok in the field of preserving the traditions of national culture: Gumilyov is “a deeply Russian poet, no less a national poet than Blok was” (Otsup N. Literary essays. Paris, 1961). G. Struve, uniting the works of Blok, Sologub, Gumilyov, Mandelstam, by common principles of analysis, came to the conclusion: “The names of Pushkin, Blok, Gumilyov should be our guiding stars on the path to freedom”; “the ideal of freedom of the artist” was gained through suffering by Sologub and Mandelstam, who heard “like Blok, the noise and sprouting of time” (Struve G. O four poets. London, 1981).

Silver age concepts

A large time distance separated the figures of the Russian diaspora from their native element. The flaws of concrete disputes of the past were consigned to oblivion; the essential approach to poetry, born of related spiritual demands, was put at the basis of the concepts of the Silver Age. From this position, many links in the literary process of the beginning of the century are perceived differently. Gumilyov wrote (April 1910): symbolism "was a consequence of the maturity of the human spirit, which proclaimed that the world is our idea"; "Now we can't help being Symbolists" (Collected Works Volume 4). And in January 1913, he approved the fall of symbolism and the victory of acmeism, pointing out the differences between the new trend and the previous one: “greater balance between subject and object” of lyrics, the development of “a newly thought out syllabic system of versification”, the consistency of the “art of the symbol” with “other ways of poetic influence”, search for words "with more stable content" (Collected Works Volume 4). Nevertheless, even in this article there is no separation from the visionary purpose of creativity, sacred to the Symbolists. Gumilyov did not accept their enthusiasm for religion, theosophy, and generally abandoned the area of ​​the "unknown", "unknowable". But in his program he outlined the path of ascent precisely to this peak: “Our duty, our will, our happiness and our tragedy is to guess every hour what will be the next hour for us, for our cause, for the whole world, and to hasten its approach” ( ibid.). A few years later, in the article "Reader" Gumilyov stated: "The leadership in the degeneration of a person into a higher type belongs to religion and poetry." Symbolists dreamed of the awakening of the divine principle in earthly existence. Acmeists worshiped talent, recreating, “dissolving” in art the imperfect, existing, according to Gumilyov’s definition, “the majestic ideal of life in art and for art (Ibid.). The parallel between the creativity of the two trends, their spokesmen - Gumilyov and Blok is natural: they similarly marked the highest point of their aspirations. The first wanted to partake "of the world rhythm"; the second is to join the music of the "world orchestra" (Collected Works Volume 5). It is more difficult to classify the Futurists as such a movement, with their denigration of the Russian classics and modern masters of verse, the distortion of the grammar and syntax of the native language, the worship of "new themes" - "meaninglessness, secretly imperious uselessness" ("The Garden of Judges. II", 1913). But the members of the most numerous association "Hilea" called themselves "budetlyans". “Budetlyane,” explained V. Mayakovsky, these are the people who will be. We are on the eve ”(Mayakovsky V. Complete works: In 13 volumes, 1955. Volume 1). In the name of the man of the future, the poet himself and most of the group members praised “the real great art of the artist, who changes life in his own image and likeness” (Ibid.), with dreams of “the architect’s drawing” (Ibid.) in his hands, predetermining the future when they triumph “ millions of huge pure loves ”(“ Cloud in Pants ”, 1915). Threatening with frightening destruction, the Russian futurists nevertheless gravitated toward the direction common to the latest poetry of the early 20th century, asserting the possibility of transforming the world by means of art. This “cross-cutting” channel of creative searches, expressed repeatedly and at different times, gave originality to all currents of domestic modernism, which dissociated itself from its foreign predecessor. In particular, the temptation of decadence was overcome, although many "senior" symbolists at first perceived its influence. Blok wrote at the turn of 1901-02: “There are two kinds of decadents: good and bad: good ones are those who should not be called decadents (so far only a negative definition)” (Collected Works Volume 7).

The emigrants of the first wave realized this fact more deeply. V. Khodasevich, having made controversial judgments about the position of individual poets (V. Bryusov, A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, etc.), caught the essence of the trend: “Symbolism very soon felt that decadence was a poison roaming in its blood. All his subsequent civil wars were nothing more than a struggle of healthy symbolist principles with sick, decadent ones ”(Collected Works: In 4 volumes, 1996, Volume 2). Khodasevich’s interpretation of “decadative” traits can be fully extended to dangerous manifestations in the practice of some other modernists, for example, futurists: “the demon of decadence” “hurried to turn freedom into unbridledness, originality into originality, novelty into antics” (Ibid.). Khodasevich’s constant opponent G. Adamovich, recognizing Mayakovsky’s “huge, rare talent”, brilliant even when he “broke the Russian language to please his futuristic whims”, similarly interpreted the poet’s (and his associates’) deviations from the sacred foundations of genuine inspiration: “ Cheerfulness, posture, stilted, defiant familiarity with the whole world and even with eternity itself ”(Adamovich G. Loneliness and Freedom, 1996). Both critics are close in understanding artistic achievements. Khodasevich saw them in the symbolist discovery of "true reality" by "transforming reality in a creative act." Adamovich pointed to the desire to "make the most important human deed out of poetry, lead to triumph", "what the Symbolists called the transformation of the world." Figures of the Russian diaspora have clarified a lot in the clashes of modernism and realism. The creators of the latest poetry, uncompromisingly denying positivism, materialism, objectivism, mockingly stung or did not notice their contemporary realists. B. Zaitsev recalled the creative association organized by N. Teleshev: “Sreda” was a circle of realist writers, in contrast to the symbolists who had already appeared” (Zaitsev B. On the way. Paris, 1951). A formidable and ironic debunking of modernism was the speech of I.A. Bunin at the 50th anniversary of the newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti (1913). Each side considered itself the only right, and the opposite - almost random. The “bifurcation” of the literary process by emigrants was regarded differently. G. Ivanov, once an active participant in Gumilev's "Poets' Workshop", called Bunin's art "the most strict", "pure gold", next to which "our biased canons seem to be idle and unnecessary conjectures" of the "current literary life" (Collected Works: In 3 volumes , 1994, Volume 3). A. Kuprin in Russia was often relegated to a “singer of carnal urges”, a life stream, and in emigration they appreciated the spiritual depth and innovation of his prose: he “as if losing power over the literary laws of the novel - in fact, he allows himself great courage to neglect them ( Khodasevich V. Renaissance. 1932). Khodasevich compared the positions of Bunin and early symbolism, convincingly explained the dissociation from this trend by Bunin's flight "from decadentism", his "chastity - shame and disgust", caused by "artistic cheapness". However, he interpreted the appearance of symbolism as the “most defining phenomenon of Russian poetry” at the turn of the century: Bunin, not noticing its further discoveries, lost many wonderful possibilities in lyrics. Khodasevich came to the conclusion: “I confess that for me, in front of such verses, all “differences”, all theories, recede somewhere into the distance, and there is no desire to figure out what Bunin is right and what is wrong, because the winners are not judged ”(Collected Works Vol. 2). Adamovich substantiated the naturalness and necessity of the coexistence of two hardly compatible channels in the development of prose. In his reflections, he also relied on the heritage of Bunin and the symbolist Merezhkovsky, adding to this comparison the traditions of L. Tolstoy and F. Dostoevsky, respectively. For Bunin, as well as for his idol Tolstoy, "a man remains a man, not dreaming of becoming an angel or a demon", avoiding "crazy wanderings through the heavenly ether." Merezhkovsky, obeying the magic of Dostoevsky, subjected his heroes to "any rise, any fall, beyond the control of earth and flesh." Both types of creativity, Adamovich considered, are equal "trends of the time", as they are deepened into the secrets of spiritual life.

For the first time (mid-1950s), Russian emigrants asserted the objective significance of the opposing trends in the literature of the early 20th century, although their irreconcilability was revealed: the desire of modernists to transform reality by means of art collided with the disbelief of realists in its life-building function. Specific observations of artistic practice made it possible to feel significant changes in the realism of the new era, which determined the originality of prose and was realized by the writers themselves. Bunin conveyed anxiety about "higher questions" - "about the essence of being, about the purpose of man on earth, about his role in the human boundless crowd" (Collected Works: In 9 volumes, 1967, Volume 9). The tragic doom to eternal problems in the elements of everyday existence, among the indifferent human flow, led to the comprehension of one’s mysterious “I”, some of its unknown manifestations, self-awareness, intuitive, hard to grasp, sometimes not connected with external impressions. The inner life acquired a special scale and originality. Bunin acutely experienced "blood kinship" with "Russian antiquity" and "secret madness" - a thirst for beauty (Ibid.). Kuprin was languishing with a desire to gain strength that lifts a person “to an infinite height”, to embody “indescribably complex shades of moods” (Collected Works: In 9 volumes, 1973, Volume 9). B. Zaitsev was excited by the dream to write "something without end and beginning" - "by running words to express the impression of night, train, loneliness" (Zaitsev B. Blue Star. Tula, 1989). In the sphere of the well-being of the individual, however, an integral world condition was revealed. Moreover, as M. Voloshin suggested, the history of mankind appeared “in a more accurate form”, when they approached it “from the inside”, realized “the life of a billion people, vaguely rumbled in us” (Voloshin M. The Center of All Ways, 1989).

Writers created their own "second reality", woven from subjective ideas, memories, forecasts, uninhibited dreams, by means of expanding the meaning of the word, the meaning of paint, details. The ultimate intensification of the author's principle in the narrative gave the latter a rare variety of lyrical forms, determined new genre structures, and an abundance of fresh stylistic solutions. The framework of classical prose of the 19th century turned out to be cramped for the literature of the subsequent period. Different trends merged in it: realism, impressionism, symbolization of ordinary phenomena, mythologization of images, romanticization of heroes and circumstances. The type of artistic thinking has become synthetic.

The same complex nature of the poetry of this time was revealed by the figures of the Russian diaspora. G. Struve believed: “Blok, “romantic, obsessed”, “reaches for classicism”; Gumilyov noted something similar (Collected Works, Volume 4). K. Mochulsky saw realism, an attraction to a “sober will” in the work of Bryusov (Mochulsky K. Valery Bryusov. Paris, 1962). Blok in the article "On Lyrics" (1907) wrote that "the grouping of poets according to schools is" idle labor ". This view was defended years later by emigrants. Berdyaev called the “poetic renaissance” “a kind of Russian romanticism”, omitting the differences of its currents (“Self-knowledge”). Realists did not accept the idea of ​​transforming the world in a creative act, but they deeply penetrated into the inner human attraction to divine harmony, a creative, reviving beautiful feeling. The artistic culture of the era had a general stimulus developed. S. Makovsky united the work of poets, prose writers, musicians with one atmosphere, "rebellious, God-seeking, delusional beauty." The refined craftsmanship of writers in character, place, and time of their heyday is inseparable from these values.

The concepts of "Russian literature of the early 20th century" and "Silver Age" are by no means identical.. The first presupposes a direct, changeable, contradictory process of the formation of a new type of verbal art. The Silver Age reveals its essence, the result of individual searches, the experience of numerous trends, the highest meaning of aesthetic achievements, comprehended years later by Russian emigrants.

Who was the first to start talking about the "Silver Age", why this term was so disgusting to contemporaries and when it finally became a commonplace - Arzamas retells the key points of Omri Ronen's work "The Silver Age as intent and fiction"

Applied to the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, the concept of "Silver Age" is one of the fundamental for describing the history of Russian culture. Today, no one can doubt the positive (one might even say “noble”, like silver itself) coloring of this phrase - opposed, by the way, to such “decadent” characteristics of the same historical period in Western culture as fin de siècle (“the end century") or "the end of a beautiful era." The number of books, articles, anthologies and anthologies, where the "Silver Age" appears as an established definition, simply cannot be counted. Nevertheless, the appearance of the phrase, and the meaning that contemporaries invested in it, is not even a problem, but a whole detective story.

Every time has its own metal

It is worth starting from afar, namely, with two significant examples when the properties of metals are attributed to an era. And here it is worth mentioning the ancient classics (primarily Hesiod and Ovid), on the one hand, and Pushkin's friend and co-editor on Sovremennik, Pyotr Aleksandrovich Pletnev, on the other.

The first imagined the history of mankind as a succession of various human races (in Hesiod, for example, gold, silver, copper, heroic and iron; Ovid would subsequently abandon the age of heroes and prefer the classification only “according to metals”), alternately created by the gods and eventually disappearing off the face of the earth.

The critic Pyotr Aleksandrovich Pletnev first called the era of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin and Baratynsky the "golden age" of Russian poetry. The definition was quickly accepted by contemporaries and by the middle of the 19th century it had become a commonplace. In this sense, calling the next great surge of poetic (and not only) culture the "silver" age is nothing but humiliation: silver is a metal much less noble than gold.

So it becomes clear why the humanities scholars, who emerged from the cultural cauldron of the turn of the century, were deeply disgusted by the phrase “silver age”. These were the critic and translator Gleb Petrovich Struve (1898-1985), the linguist Roman Osipovich Yakobson (1896-1982) and the literary historian Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev (1903-1996). All three spoke of the "Silver Age" with considerable irritation, directly calling such a name erroneous and incorrect. Conversations with Struve and Jacobson's lectures at Harvard inspired Omri Ronen (1937-2012) to explore the origins and reasons for the rise of the term "Silver Age" in a fascinating (almost detective) way. This note only claims to be a popular retelling of the work of the remarkable scholar-erudite "The Silver Age as Intention and Fiction."

Berdyaev and the memoirist's mistake

Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890-1939), one of the most influential critics of the Russian diaspora and the author of one of the best "History of Russian Literature", preferred to call the cultural abundance surrounding him the "second golden age". In accordance with the hierarchy of precious metals, Mirsky called the era of Fet, Nekrasov and Alexei Tolstoy the “silver age”, and here he coincided with the philosophers Vladimir Solovyov and Vasily Rozanov, who allotted for the “silver age” a period from approximately 1841 to 1881.

It is even more important to point out that Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948), who is traditionally credited with the authorship of the term "Silver Age" in relation to the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, actually imagined cultural development in much the same way as his colleagues in the philosophical workshop . According to the established tradition, Berdyaev called the Pushkin era the golden age, and the beginning of the 20th century, with its powerful creative upsurge, the Russian cultural (but by no means religious) renaissance. It is characteristic that the phrase "silver age" is not found in any of Berdyaev's texts. In attributing to Berdyaev the dubious fame of the discoverer of the term, several lines from the memoirs of the poet and critic Sergei Makovsky "On the Parnassus of the Silver Age", published in 1962, are to blame:

“The languor of the spirit, the desire for the “beyond” has permeated our age, the “Silver Age” (as Berdyaev called it, as opposed to Pushkin’s “Golden Age”), partly under the influence of the West.”

The mysterious Gleb Marev and the emergence of the term

The very first writer who worked at the turn of the century and declared his own era the "Silver Age" was the mysterious Gleb Marev (almost nothing is known about him, so it is possible that the name was a pseudonym). In 1913, under his name, the pamphlet “Vsedury. Gauntlet with Modernity”, which included the manifesto of the “End Age of Poesi”. It is there that the formulation of the metallurgical metamorphoses of Russian literature is contained: “Pushkin is gold; symbolism - silver; modernity is a dull-coppered omnipotence.

If we take into account the quite probable parodic nature of Marev's work, it becomes clear the context in which the phrase "Silver Age" was originally used to describe the modern era for writers. It was in a polemical vein that the philosopher and publicist Razumnik Vasilievich Ivanov-Razumnik (1878-1946) spoke, in the article of 1925 "The Look and Something" poisonously mocking (under the pseudonym of Griboedov Ippolit Udushyev) over Zamyatin, "Serapion Brothers" "Serapion Brothers" - an association of young prose writers, poets and critics, which arose in Petrograd on February 1, 1921. The members of the association were Lev Lunts, Ilya Gruzdev, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Veniamin Kaverin, Nikolai Nikitin, Mikhail Slonimsky, Elizaveta Polonskaya, Konstantin Fedin, Nikolai Tikhonov, Vsevolod Ivanov., acmeists and even formalists. The second period of Russian modernism, which flourished in the 1920s, Ivanov-Razumnik contemptuously dubbed the "Silver Age", predicting the further decline of Russian culture:

Four years later, in 1929, the poet and critic Vladimir Pyast (Vladimir Alekseevich Pestovsky, 1886-1940), in the preface to his memoirs "Meetings", spoke seriously about the "silver age" of contemporary poetry (it is possible that he did this in the order of the dispute with Ivanov-Razumnik) - although very inconsistently and prudently:

“We are far from claiming to compare our peers, “eighties” by birth, with representatives of some kind of “Silver Age” of Russian, say, “modernism”. However, in the mid-eighties, a fairly significant number of people were born who were called to “serve the muses.”

Piast also found the "golden" and "silver" ages in classical Russian literature - he tried to project the same two-stage scheme onto contemporary culture, speaking of different generations of writers.

The Silver Age is getting bigger

The expansion of the scope of the concept of "Silver Age" belongs to the critics of the Russian emigration. The first to spread the term, applying it to the description of the entire pre-revolutionary era of modernism in Russia, was Nikolai Avdeevich Otsup (1894-1958). Initially, he only repeated Piast's well-known thoughts in a 1933 article entitled "The Silver Age of Russian Poetry" and published in the popular Parisian émigré magazine Chisla. Otsup, without mentioning Piast in any way, actually borrowed from the latter the idea of ​​two centuries of Russian modernism, but threw out the “golden age” from the 20th century. Here is a typical example of Otsup's reasoning:

“Belated in its development, Russia, due to a number of historical reasons, was forced to carry out in a short time what had been done in Europe for several centuries. The inimitable rise of the "golden age" is partly explained by this. But what we have called the “Silver Age”, in terms of strength and energy, as well as the abundance of amazing creatures, has almost no analogy in the West: these are, as it were, phenomena squeezed into three decades, which occupied, for example, in France throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

It was this compilation article that introduced the expression "silver age" into the lexicon of the Russian literary emigration.

One of the first to pick up this phrase was the well-known Parisian critic Vladimir Vasilievich Veidle (1895-1979), who wrote in his article “Three Russias” published in 1937:

“The most striking thing in the recent history of Russia is that that silver age of Russian culture, which preceded its revolutionary collapse, turned out to be possible.”

Here the new term for the era is just beginning to be used as something obvious, although this does not mean that it was from 1937 that the idea of ​​the “Silver Age” has already become public property: the morbidly jealous Otsup in a revised version of his article, which was published after the death of the critic , specially added the words that it was he who first owned the name "to characterize modernist Russian literature." And here a reasonable question arises: what did the “figures” of the “Silver Age” era think about themselves? How did the poets themselves define themselves, representing this era? For example, Osip Mandelstam applied the well-known term “Sturm und Drang” (“Storm and Drang”) to the era of Russian modernism.

The phrase "silver age" as applied to the beginning of the 20th century is found only in two major poets (or rather, poetesses). In Marina Tsvetaeva's article "The Devil", published in 1935 in the leading Parisian émigré magazine Sovremennye Zapiski, the following lines were removed during publication (they were later restored by researchers): we, the children of the silver age, need about thirty pieces of silver.”

From this passage it follows that Tsvetaeva, firstly, was familiar with the name "Silver Age"; secondly, she perceived it with a sufficient degree of irony (it is possible that these words were a reaction to the above reasoning of Otsup in 1933). Finally, perhaps the most famous are the lines from Anna Akhmatova's Poem Without a Hero:

On Galernaya arch darkened,
In Summer, the weather vane sang subtly,
And the silver moon is bright
Frozen over the Silver Age.

Understanding these lines is impossible without referring to the broader context of the poet's work, but there is no doubt that Akhmatova's "Silver Age" is not a definition of an era, but a common quotation that has its own function in a literary text. For the author of “A Poem without a Hero”, dedicated to summarizing the results, the name “Silver Age” is not a characteristic of the era, but one of its names (obviously not indisputable) given by literary critics and other cultural figures.

Nevertheless, the phrase under discussion quickly lost its original meaning and began to be used as a classification term. Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov wrote in the preface to the poetic anthology of the turn of the century: “The poetics of the Silver Age in question is, first of all, the poetics of Russian modernism. This is how it is customary to call three poetic trends that announced their existence between 1890 and 1917 ... ”So the definition quickly took hold and was accepted on faith by both readers and researchers (it is possible that for lack of a better one) and spread to painting, sculpture, architecture and other areas of culture.