Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (Russian:Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Бло́к,IPA:[ɐlʲɪˈksandrɐlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕˈblok]ⓘ; 28 November [O.S. 16 November] 1880 – 7 August 1921) was a Russian lyrical poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator and literary critic.
Blok was born inSaint Petersburg, into an intellectual family of Alexander Lvovich Blok and Alexandra Andreevna Beketova. His father was a law professor inWarsaw, and his maternal grandfather,Andrey Beketov, was a famous botanist and the rector ofSaint Petersburg State University. After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the manorShakhmatovo nearMoscow, where he discovered the philosophy ofVladimir Solovyov, and the verse of then-obscure 19th-century poets,Fyodor Tyutchev andAfanasy Fet. These influences would affect his early publications, later collected in the bookAnte Lucem.
In 1903 he married the actress Lyubov (Lyuba) Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, daughter of the renowned chemistDmitri Mendeleev. Later, she would involve him in a complicated love-hate relationship with his fellow SymbolistAndrei Bely. To Lyuba he dedicated a cycle of poetry that made him famous,Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame (Verses About the Beautiful Lady, 1904).
Night, street and streetlight, drug store, The purposeless, half-dim, drab light. For all the use live on a quarter century – Nothing will change. There's no way out.
You'll die – and start all over, live twice, Everything repeats itself, just as it was: Night, the canal's rippled icy surface, The drug store, the street, and streetlight.
"Night, street and streetlight, drugstore..." (1912)Trans. by Alex Cigale
Blok enthusiastically greeted the1905 Russian Revolution.[1] During the last period of his life, Blok emphasised political themes, pondering the messianic destiny of his country (Vozmezdie, 1910–21;Rodina, 1907–16;Skify, 1918). In 1906 he wrote an encomium toMikhail Bakunin.[2] Influenced by Solovyov's doctrines, he had 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 theOctober Revolution as the final resolution of these apocalyptic yearnings.
In May 1917 Blok was appointed as astenographer for the Extraordinary Commission to investigate illegal actions ex officio Ministers[3] or to transcribe the (Thirteenth Section's) interrogations of those who knewGrigori Rasputin.[4] According toOrlando Figes he was only present at the interrogation.[5]
His poem,The Twelve, written in 1918, describes 12 Red Guards in the violent chaos of theRussian Civil War, who are likened to the Apostles, while "Ahead of them, Jesus Christ goes."[8]
Because this early show of support, Blok continued to be honoured by the Bolsheviks, despite his pre-revolutionary religious imagery, and his later disillusionment. In 1923,Leon Trotsky devoted a whole chapter of his bookLiterature and Revolution to Blok, saying that "Blok belonged to pre-October literature, but he overcame this, and entered into the sphere of October when he wroteThe Twelve. That is why he will occupy a special place in the history of Russian literature."[9] Given the official report on poetry to theFirst Congress of Soviet Writers,Nikolai Bukharin praised Blok as "a poet of tremendous power (whose) verse achieves a chiselled monumentality..." but added that "he thought that with the sign of the Cross he could bless and at the same time exorcise the image of the unfolding revolution, and he perished without having spoke his final word."[10]
By 1921 Blok had become disillusioned with the Russian Revolution. He had not written any poetry for three years. He complained toMaksim Gorky that his "faith in the wisdom of humanity" had ended, and explained to his friendKorney Chukovsky why he could not write poetry any more: "All sounds have stopped. Can't you hear that there are no longer any sounds?"[11] Within a few days Blok became sick withasthma; he had earlier developedscurvy as well. His doctors requested that he be sent abroad for medical treatment, but he was not allowed to leave the country.
Gorky pleaded for a visa on Blok's behalf. On 29 May 1921, he wrote toAnatoly 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." A resolution on departure for Blok was signed by members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on 23 July 1921. But on 29 July Gorky asked permission for Blok's wife to accompany him, since Blok's health had deteriorated sharply. Permission for Liubov' Dmitrievna Blok to leave Russia was signed by Molotov on 1 August 1921, but Gorky did not receive notification until 6 August. The permission was delivered on 10 August, but Blok had already died on 7 August.[11]
Several months earlier, Blok had delivered a celebrated lecture onAlexander Pushkin, the memory of whom he believed to be capable of unitingWhite andSoviet Russian factions.[11]
The idealized mystical images presented in his first book helped establish Blok as a major poet of theRussian Symbolism style. Blok's early verse is musical, but he later sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry. Poetical inspiration was natural for him, 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 thePlatonic theory of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrialism (The Puppet Show, 1906).
The description of St Petersburg he crafted for his next collection of poems,The City (1904–08), was both impressionistic and eerie. Subsequent collections,Faina and theMask of Snow, helped augment Blok's reputation. He was often compared withAlexander Pushkin, and is considered perhaps the most important poet of theSilver Age of Russian Poetry. During the 1910s, Blok was admired greatly by literary colleagues, and his influence on younger poets was virtually unsurpassed.Anna Akhmatova,Marina Tsvetaeva,Boris Pasternak, andVladimir Nabokov wrote important verse tributes to Blok.
Blok expressed his opinions about the revolution by the enigmatic poem "The Twelve” (1918). The long poem exhibits "mood-creating sounds, polyphonic rhythms, and harsh, slangy language" (as theEncyclopædia Britannica termed it). It describes the march of twelveBolshevik soldiers (likened to theTwelve Apostles of Christ) through the streets of revolutionaryPetrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. "The Twelve" alienated Blok from many of his intellectual readers (who accused him of lack of artistry), while the Bolsheviks scorned his former mysticism and asceticism.[12]
Searching for modern language and new images, Blok used unusual sources for the poetry ofSymbolism: urban folklore, ballads (songs of a sentimental nature) and ditties ("chastushka"). He was inspired by the popularchansonnierMikhail Savoyarov, whose concerts during the years 1915–1920 were visited often by Blok.[13] AcademicianViktor Shklovsky noted that the poem is written in criminal language and in ironic style, similar to Savoyarov'scouplets, by which Blok imitated the slang of 1918Petrograd.[14]
Mieczysław Weinberg wrote a song cycle for soprano and piano,Beyond the Border of Past Days, Op. 50.
Arthur Lourié wrote a choral cantata,In the Sanctuary of Golden Dreams.
Alexander Blok was a favourite poet ofGeorgy Sviridov; such works as "Petersburg" (a vocal poem), "Nightly Clouds" (cantata) and "Songs From Hard Times" (concerto) were written to Blok's poetry.
^McSmith, Andy (2015).Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, the Russian Masters - from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein - Under Stalin. New York: The New Press. p. 36.ISBN978-1-59558-056-6.
