Bryusov's message is brief. Valery Bryusov

Sergei Rachmaninov and Mikhail Gnesin, Alexander Grechaninov and Reingold Gliere wrote music for Valery Bryusov's poems. However, the poet not only wrote poetry - he created plays and translated foreign authors, published magazines and led a literary institute. Valery Bryusov became one of the founders of Russian symbolism.

"Huge bags of scribbled paper"

Valery Bryusov was born in 1873 into a Moscow merchant family. He was the grandson of the poet Alexander Bakulin, author of The Fables of a Provincial.

At the age of four, Bryusov learned to read and literally settled in his parents' library. He studied the biographies of great people and foreign classics, read tabloid novels and scientific literature. The poet recalled his childhood: “From fairy tales, from any “devilry” I was diligently protected. But I learned about the ideas of Darwin and the principles of materialism before I learned multiplication. I did not know classical literature well: I did not read either Tolstoy, or Turgenev, or even Pushkin; of all the poets in our house, an exception was made only for Nekrasov, and as a boy I knew most of his poems by heart ". Bryusov was also fond of scientific experiments: he conducted simple chemical and physical experiments and studied the nature of various phenomena from books. Even at preschool age, the boy wrote the first comedy - "The Frog".

At the age of 11, Valery Bryusov became a student of the Kreyman private gymnasium - after the exam, he was accepted immediately into the second grade. At home, he grew up without comrades, did not know simple children's games, and his passion for science and literature alienated him even more from his classmates. However, later Bryusov became close with other young lovers of reading, together they began to publish a handwritten magazine "Beginning". During these years, the novice writer tried his hand at prose and poetry, translated ancient and contemporary authors. However, Bryusov's first publication was a completely ordinary article - at the age of 13 he appeared on the pages of the Russkiy Sport magazine in support of a sweepstakes at the races.

“I started new works all the time. I wrote poetry, so much so that I soon filled up the thick Poesie notebook that had been given to me. I have tried all forms - sonnets, tetracins, octaves, triolets, rondos, all sizes. I wrote dramas, short stories, novels... Every day carried me further and further. On the way to the gymnasium, I pondered new works, in the evening, instead of learning lessons, I wrote ... huge packages scribbled paper."

The magazine "Beginning" was published for several years, and after that the students abandoned this idea. Bryusov resumed his editorial activity when he was 16 years old. He began to issue a handwritten "Leaf of the V class" at school. The newspaper criticized the gymnasium rules, so soon the freethinker student was forced to move to another educational institution. He continued to study at the Polivanov gymnasium.

Dedication to "Eternity and Art"

In the 1890s, Valery Bryusov became interested in the work of Pushkin and the French Symbolists - Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Stefan Mallarmé. In 1893 he wrote a letter to Verlaine, in which he called himself the founder of Russian symbolism. In the same year, Bryusov created the drama "The Decadents (End of the Century)" - she talked about some of the facts of the biography of the French poet.

In 1893, Bryusov entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. He studied history and philosophy, art and literature. The young poet devoted a lot of time to foreign languages ​​- sometimes only to read foreign authors in the original.

Bryusov wrote in his diary: “If I could live a hundred lives, they would not satiate all the thirst for knowledge that burns me”.

Already in the second year of study, the poet published his first collection "Chefs d'oeuvre" - "Masterpieces". In the preface, he wrote: “Printing my book today, I do not expect it to be properly assessed ... I do not bequeath this book to my contemporaries and not even to humanity, but to eternity and art.” Critics were skeptical of the poems, including because of the high-profile title of the book. Two years later, the second collection was released - "This is me." Urban, historical and scientific motives appeared in it. The next book - a collection of poems "The Third Guard" with historical and mythological plots - was dedicated by the poet to Konstantin Balmont. The poet published his works in many Moscow and St. Petersburg magazines, worked in the Moscow publishing house "Scorpion".

In 1897 Valery Bryusov got married. His chosen one was Joanna Runt, the young governess of the poet's sisters. The poet wrote in his diary: “The weeks leading up to the wedding are not recorded. This is because they were weeks of happiness. How can I write now if I can only define my state with the word “bliss”? I'm almost ashamed to make such a confession, but what? That's it". Joanna Runt was very sensitive to Bryusov's manuscripts, before the wedding she did not allow them to be thrown away during cleaning, and after that she became a real keeper of Bryusov's works.

Valery Bryusov and his wife, Ioanna Bryusova (née Runt). 1899 Photo: M.Zolotareva

Valery Bryusov with his wife Ioanna Matveevna

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Valery Bryusov became close to other symbolists - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Fyodor Sologub. In 1901, their first joint almanac "Northern Flowers" was published - it was then that symbolism became an established literary trend. Poets and writers arranged literary meetings in the Gippius circle, on “Wednesdays” with Bryusov, as well as with his friend Alexander Miropolsky (Lang). Quite often, seances that were fashionable in those years were held here. Lights were dimmed in the rooms and "spirits" were called in, which moved furniture and even "wrote" mysterious texts - of course, with someone else's hand.

In 1903, Bryusov published the book "City and the World", and in 1906 - the collection "Wreath". The "Wreath" includes works of several previous years - mythological, lyrical, as well as those dedicated to the revolution and war. Parallel to literary creativity the poet publishes the symbolist magazine "Scales", heads the department literary criticism in the journal "Russian Thought", writes plays, prose, translates foreign authors.

Correspondent, translator, professor

During the First World War, Valery Bryusov worked as a war correspondent for the Russkiye Vedomosti newspaper. But the patriotic sentiments of the first years of the war quickly faded. Ioanna Bryusova recalled that he "returned deeply disappointed by the war, no longer having the slightest desire to see the battlefield." During this period, Bryusov's critical poems appeared, but they remained unpublished.

During these years, Valery Bryusov focused not on the plots of his new poems, but on the form of verse and poetic technique. He selected refined rhymes, wrote classical French ballads, studied the techniques of the poets of the Alexandrian school. Bryusov became a virtuoso of improvisation: he created a classical sonnet for a record a short time. Bryusov created one wreath of sonnets from fifteen works by Bryusov in just seven hours.

In 1915, by order of the Moscow Armenian Committee, Valery Bryusov began to prepare a collection of national poetry. The anthology covered one and a half thousand years of Armenian history. The poet was also involved in the organization of work, and translations, and editing the book, and preparing it for publication. When the collection came out, Bryusov wrote several articles about Armenian culture and the book Chronicle of the Historical Destinies of the Armenian People. Later he received the title of People's Poet of Armenia.

After the revolution, Valery Bryusov became a civil servant. At first, he led the Committee for the Registration of the Press, worked at the State Publishing House, was chairman of the presidium of the All-Russian Union of Poets, and helped prepare the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. In 1921, Anatoly Lunacharsky suggested that Bryusov organize the Higher Literary and Art Institute. Until the end of his life, the poet remained his rector and professor.

In 1924, the poet died - he died of pneumonia. Valery Bryusov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

aliases: Valery Maslov, Aurelius, Bakulin, Nellie

Russian poet, prose writer, playwright, translator, literary critic, literary critic and historian; one of the founders of Russian symbolism

Valery Bryusov

short biography

Bryusov Valery Yakovlevich- famous Russian poet, one of the founders of Russian symbolism, prose writer, playwright, literary critic, critic, translator. The Moscow merchant family, in which he was born on December 13 (December 1, O.S.), 1873, did not pay much attention to the upbringing of his son. Most often, Valery was left to himself, so he had the opportunity to read everything that was at hand, starting with scientific articles and ending with tabloid novels. The first poem was written by him at the age of 8, and the first publication of Bryusov took place in the magazine for children "Sincere Word" when the boy was 11 years old. Not particularly concerned with their son, the parents nevertheless provided him with a good education. From 1885 to 1893 He studied at two private gymnasiums. As a 13-year-old teenager, Bryusov already realized that his life calling was connected with poetry.

In the early 90s. Bryusov became seriously interested in the French Symbolists, who, by his own admission, discovered new world, spurred on the creativity of another sample. In a letter written in 1893 to Verlaine, the young Bryusov positions himself as the founder of a new literary movement in Russia, and names its dissemination as his mission. Between 1893 and 1899 he was a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. During 1894-1895 he published three collections under the title "Russian Symbolists", most of the poems in which were written by himself. In 1895, his debut "personal" collection appeared - "Masterpieces", which caused fire with a pretentious title, which critics considered inappropriate to the content.

After graduating from the university in 1899, Bryusov got the opportunity to devote himself completely to creativity. The second half of the 90s is marked in his biography by a rapprochement with symbolist poets. In 1899, Bryusov was among the initiators and leaders of the new Scorpion publishing house, which rallied supporters of the movement around itself. In 1897, Bryusov married Ioanna Runt, who until the death of the poet was his faithful friend and assistant.

In 1900, the book "The Third Watch" was published, written in line with symbolism, which opened a new stage in creative biography Bryusov. In 1901 to 1905, Bryusov was directly involved in the creation of the almanac "Northern Flowers", from 1904 to 1909 he was the editor of the main central printed organ of the Symbolists - the magazine "Scales". The significance of Bryusov's activities for Russian modernism and symbolism in particular is difficult to overestimate. Both the publication he headed and he himself were known as great literary authorities, Bryusov was called the master, the priest of culture.

Bryusov considered the collection "Wreath", which was written in the conditions of the revolutionary events of 1905, to be the apogee of his work. In 1909, the publication of "Balance" was stopped, and by the next year there was a noticeable decrease in the activity of the symbolism movement. Bryusov no longer positions himself as the leader of this trend, does not lead a literary struggle for the right to exist, his position becomes more balanced. Period 1910-1914 Literary critics call Bryusov's crisis both spiritual and creative. When did the first World War, in 1914 he was sent to the front as a war correspondent for Russkiye Vedomosti.

With the advent of the Bolsheviks to power, a new life and creative stage began. V.Ya. Bryusov develops a vigorous activity, striving to be at the forefront everywhere. In 1917-1919. he was the head of the Committee for the Registration of the Press, in 1918-1919. - Head of the Moscow Library Department at the People's Commissariat for Education, in 1919-1921. he is the chairman of the Presidium of the All-Russian Union of Poets (the poet's entry into the Bolshevik Party in 1919 contributed to his stay in this post). There were such episodes in his biography as work in the State Publishing House, head of the literary sub-department of art education at the People's Commissariat of Education, membership in the state academic council, professorship at Moscow State University. In 1921, Valery Yakovlevich became the organizer of the Higher Literary and Art Institute, of which he was a professor and rector until the end of his life. Bryusov was the editor of the Department of Literature, Art and Linguistics in the team preparing the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

Remained active creative activity, yet his revolution-inspired creative experiments remained equally misunderstood by modernists and the general public. Nevertheless, on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1923, the Soviet government presented the poet with a diploma for services to the country. Death overtook Bryusov on October 9, 1924. The cause was croupous pneumonia, probably aggravated by the writer's long years of addiction to drugs. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Biography from Wikipedia

creative path

Childhood

Valery Bryusov was born on December 1 (13), 1873 in Moscow, into a merchant family. The future emperor of symbolism was on the maternal side the grandson of the merchant and poet-fabulist Alexander Yakovlevich Bakulin, who published in the 1840s. collection "Fables of a provincial" (Bryusov signed some of his works with the name of his grandfather).

Valery's grandfather, Kuzma Andreevich, the ancestor of the Bryusovs, was a serf of the landowner Bruce. In 1859, he bought himself free and moved from Kostroma to Moscow, where he started a trading business and bought a house on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. The poet was born in this house and lived until 1910.

Bryusov's father, Yakov Kuzmich Bryusov (1848-1907), sympathized with the ideas of the populist revolutionaries; he published poems in magazines; in 1884, Yakov Bryusov sent to the magazine "Sincere Word" written by his son "Letter to the Editor", describing summer rest Bryusov family. "Letter" was published (No. 16, 1884).

Carried away by the races, the father squandered his entire fortune on the sweepstakes; he became interested in racing and his son, whose first independent publication (in the journal "Russian Sport" for 1889) is an article in defense of the sweepstakes. Parents did little to educate Valery, and the boy was left to his own devices; much attention in the Bryusov family was paid to “the principles of materialism and atheism”, so Valery was strictly forbidden to read religious literature (“From fairy tales, from any“ devilry ”, I was diligently guarded. But I learned about Darwin’s ideas and the principles of materialism before I learned to multiply " , - recalled Bryusov); but at the same time, no other restrictions were imposed on the young man’s reading circle, therefore, among the “friends” of his early years were both natural science literature and “French boulevard novels”, books by Jules Verne and Mine Reed and scientific articles - the word “everything that came across under the arm." Wherein future poet received a good education - he studied at two Moscow gymnasiums: from 1885 to 1889 - at the private classical gymnasium of F. I. Kreiman (he was expelled for promoting atheistic ideas) and in 1890-1893 - at the private gymnasium of L. I. Polivanov; the last teacher had a significant influence on the young poet; in his last years at the gymnasium, Bryusov was fond of mathematics.

entry into literature. "Decadentism" of the 1890s

Already at the age of 13, Bryusov linked his future with poetry. Bryusov's earliest known poetic experiments date back to 1881; a little later his first (rather unskilful) stories appeared. While studying at the Kreyman gymnasium, Bryusov composed poetry and published a handwritten journal. In adolescence, Bryusov considered Nekrasov his literary idol, then he was fascinated by Nadson's poetry.

By the beginning of the 1890s, the time had come for Bryusov's passion for the works of the French Symbolists - Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé. “Acquaintance in the early 90s with the poetry of Verlaine and Mallarmé, and soon Baudelaire, opened up a new world for me. Under the impression of their work, those of my poems that first appeared in print were created, ”recalls Bryusov. In 1893, he wrote a letter (the first known) to Verlaine, in which he spoke of his mission to spread symbolism in Russia and presented himself as the founder of this new literary movement for Russia.

In the 1890s, Bryusov wrote several articles on French poets. Admiring Verlaine, at the end of 1893 he created the drama The Decadents. (End of the Century)", which tells about the short happiness of the famous French symbolist with Mathilde Mote and touches on Verlaine's relationship with Arthur Rimbaud. Between 1894 and 1895 he published (under the pseudonym Valery Maslov) three collections entitled "Russian Symbolists", which included many of his own poems (including under various pseudonyms); most of them were written under the influence of French Symbolists. In addition to Bryusov's, the collections widely represented the poems of his friend A. A. Miropolsky ( real name Lang), as well as the mystic poet A. M. Dobrolyubov. In the third issue of "Russian Symbolists" Bryusov's one-line poem "O close your pale feet" was placed, which quickly gained fame and ensured the rejection of criticism and the Homeric laughter of the public in relation to the collections. For a long time, the name of Bryusov, not only among the bourgeoisie, but also among the traditional, “professorial”, “ideological” intelligentsia, was associated precisely with this work - the “literary circle” (in the words of S. A. Vengerov). The literary critic Vladimir Solovyov, who wrote a witty review of the collection for Vestnik Evropy, treated the first works of the Russian decadents with irony (Soloviev also owns several well-known parodies of the style of the Russian Symbolists). However, later Bryusov himself spoke of these first collections in the following way:

I remember these books
Like half asleep a recent day
We were bold, there were children,
Everything seemed bright to us.
Now in the soul and silence and shadow.
The first step is far
Five fleeting years are like five centuries.

Collection "Tertia Vigilia", 1900

In 1893, Bryusov entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, where he studied on the same course with the famous literary historian Vladimir Savodnik. His main interests in his student years were history, philosophy, literature, art, and languages. “... If I could live a hundred lives, they would not satisfy all the thirst for knowledge that burns me,” the poet noted in his diary. In his youth, Bryusov was also fond of theater and performed on the stage of the Moscow German Club; here he met Natalya Alexandrovna Daruzes (she performed on stage under the surname Raevskaya), who soon became the poet's lover (Bryusov's first love, Elena Kraskova, died suddenly from smallpox in the spring of 1893; many of Bryusov's poems of 1892-1893 are dedicated to her). Daruzes Bryusov experienced love for "Tala" until 1895.

In the same year, the first collection of exclusively Bryusov's poems appeared - "Chefs d'oeuvre" ("Masterpieces"); The name of the collection itself caused attacks from the press, which, according to critics, did not correspond to the content of the collection (narcissism was characteristic of Bryusov in the 1890s; for example, in 1898 the poet wrote in his diary: “My youth is the youth of a genius. I lived and acted in such a way that only great deeds can justify my behavior. Moreover, in the preface to the collection, the author states: “Printing my book today, I do not expect it to be properly assessed either by critics or by the public. I do not bequeath this book to my contemporaries and not even to humanity, but to eternity and art. As for "Chefs d'oeuvre", and in general for Bryusov's early work, the theme of the struggle against the decrepit, obsolete world of the patriarchal merchant class, the desire to escape from "everyday reality" - to a new world, which was drawn to him in the works of French symbolists, is characteristic. The principle of "art for art's sake", detachment from the "outside world", characteristic of all Bryusov's lyrics, was already reflected in the poems of the collection "Chefs d'oeuvre". In this collection, Bryusov is generally a "lonely dreamer", cold and indifferent to people. Sometimes his desire to break away from the world comes to those of suicide, "the last verses." At the same time, Bryusov is constantly looking for new forms of verse, creating exotic rhymes, unusual images. See for example:

Shadow of Uncreated Creatures
Swaying in a dream
Like blades of patching
On the enamel wall.

purple hands
On the enamel wall
Sleepily draw sounds
In the resounding silence...

In the poems of the collection one can feel the strong influence of Verlaine.

In the next collection - "Me eum esse" ("This is me", 1897), Bryusov progressed slightly compared to "Chefs d'oeuvre"; in "Me eum esse" we still see the author as a cold dreamer, detached from the "outside" world, dirty, insignificant, hated by the poet. The period "Chefs d'oeuvre" and "Me eum esse" Bryusov himself later called "decadent". The most famous poem is "Me eum esse" - "To a young poet"; it opens the collection.

In his youth, Bryusov was already developing the theory of symbolism: “The new direction in poetry is organically connected with the former ones. It’s just that new wine requires new skins,” he wrote in 1894 to the young poet F. E. Zarin (Talin).

After graduating from the university in 1899, Bryusov devoted himself entirely to literature. For several years he worked in P. I. Bartenev's magazine "Russian Archive".

In the second half of the 1890s, Bryusov became close friends with symbolist poets, in particular, with K. D. Balmont (acquaintance with him dates back to 1894; it soon turned into a friendship that did not stop until Balmont’s emigration), became one of the initiators and the leaders of the Scorpion publishing house founded in 1899 by S. A. Polyakov, which united supporters of the “new art”.

In 1897, Bryusov married Joanna Runt. She was the companion and closest assistant of the poet until his death.

1900s

"Tertia Vigilia"

In 1900, the collection Tertia Vigilia (Third Guard) was published in Scorpio, which opened a new - "urban" stage in Bryusov's work. The collection is dedicated to K. D. Balmont, whom the author endowed with the “eye of a convict” and noted as follows: “But I love you - that you are all a lie.” A significant place in the collection is occupied by historical and mythological poetry; Bryusov's inspirations were, as noted by S. A. Vengerov, "the Scythians, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, Ramesses II, Orpheus, Cassandra, Alexander the Great, Amalthea, Cleopatra, Dante, Bayazet, Vikings, Ursa Major."

In later collections, mythological themes gradually fade, giving way to the ideas of urbanism - Bryusov glorifies the pace of life in a big city, its social contradictions, the urban landscape, even tram bells and dirty snow piled up in heaps. The poet from the "desert of loneliness" returns to the world of people; he seems to be regaining his "father's house"; the environment that nurtured him is destroyed, and now, in the place of "dark shops and barns," shining cities of the present and future("The dream of the prison will dissipate in the light, and the world will reach the predicted paradise"). One of the first Russian poets, Bryusov, fully revealed the urban theme (although elements of "urban lyrics" can be found long before Bryusov - for example, in Pushkin's " The Bronze Horseman", in some poems by N. A. Nekrasov). Even poems about nature, of which there are few in the collection, sound “from the mouth of a city dweller” (“Electric Monthly Light”, etc.). The Third Watch also contains several translations of poems by Verhaern, whose admiration for his work followed admiration for the music and "fuzzy images" of Verlaine's poetry.

At this time, Bryusov was already preparing a whole book of translations of Verharn's lyrics - "Poems about Modernity." The poet is carried away not only by the growth of the city: he is excited by the very premonition of impending changes, the formation of a new culture - the culture of the City; the latter should become the "king of the universe" - and the poet is already bowing before him, ready to "throw into dust" in order to open "the path to victories." This is the key theme of the Tertia Vigilia collection.

A characteristic feature of Bryusov's poetics from this period is stylistic inclusiveness, encyclopedism and experimentation, he was a connoisseur of all types of poetry (he visits "Fridays of K. K. Sluchevsky"), a collector of "all tunes" (the title of one of his collections). He speaks about this in the preface to Tertia Vigilia: “I equally love the faithful reflections of the visible nature in Pushkin or Maikov, and the impulses to express the supersensible, the superearthly in Tyutchev or Fet, and the mental reflections of Baratynsky, and the passionate speeches of a civil poet, say, Nekrasov. The stylization of a variety of poetic manners, Russian and foreign (up to the “song of the Australian savages”) is Bryusov’s favorite pastime, he even prepared an anthology “Dreams of Humanity”, which is a stylization (or translations) of poetic styles of all eras. This feature of Bryusov's work evoked the most polarizing responses; its supporters (primarily symbolists, but also such acmeist students of Bryusov as Nikolai Gumilyov) saw in this the “Pushkin” trait, “proteism”, a sign of erudition and poetic power, critics (July Aikhenvald, Vladislav Khodasevich) criticized such stylizations as a sign "omnivorous", "heartlessness" and "cold experimentation".

"Urbi et Orbi"

Consciousness of loneliness, contempt for humanity, a premonition of inevitable oblivion (characteristic poems - “In the days of desolation” (1899), “Like otherworldly shadows” (1900)) are reflected in the collection “Urbi et Orbi” (“City and the world”), published in 1903; Bryusov is no longer inspired by synthetic images: more and more often the poet turns to the "civilian" theme. A classic example of civil lyrics (and perhaps the most famous in the collection) is the poem "The Mason". For himself, Bryusov chooses among all life paths"the path of labor, like a different path", in order to discover the secrets of "a wise and simple life." Interest in reality - knowing suffering and need - is expressed in the "urban folk" "chastushkas" presented in the "Songs" section. The "Songs" are written in a lifelike way, in a "popular" form; they attracted a lot of attention from critics, who, however, were mostly skeptical of these works, calling Bryusov's "pseudo-folk ditties" "falsification". The urban theme is more developed here than in Tertia Vigilia; the poet draws with separate strokes the life of a big city in all its manifestations: so, we see the feelings of the worker (“And every night I regularly stand here under the window, and my heart is grateful that I see your icon lamp”), and the true experiences of the inhabitant “at home with red flashlight."

In a few poems, far-fetched self-adoration is visible (“And the virgins and young men stood up, meeting, crowning me like a king”), while in others - erotomania, voluptuousness (the section “Ballads” is largely filled with such poems). The theme of love receives a remarkable development in the section "Elegies"; love becomes a sacrament, a “religious sacrament.” If in all previous collections Bryusov took only timid steps along the path of New Poetry, then in the collection "Urbi et Orbi" he is a master who has already found his calling, determined his path; it was after the release of "Urbi et Orbi" that Bryusov became the recognized leader of Russian symbolism. The collection had a particularly great influence on the young symbolists - Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Sergei Solovyov.

The apotheosis of capitalist culture is the poem "The Bled Horse". In it, the reader is presented with a full of anxiety, intense life of the city. The city with its "roars" and "nonsense" erases the impending face of death, the end from its streets - and continues to live with the same furious, "noisy" tension.

Themes and moods in the work of this period

The great mood of the times Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905 (poems "To fellow citizens", "To Pacific Ocean”) were replaced by Bryusov’s period of belief in the inevitable death of the urban world, the decline of the arts, the onset of the “era of damage”. Bryusov sees in the future only the times of "last days", "last desolations". These sentiments reached their peak during the First Russian Revolution; they are clearly expressed in Bryusov's drama The Earth (1904, included in the collection The Earth's Axis), which describes the future death of all mankind; then - in the poem "The Coming Huns" (1905); in 1906, Bryusov wrote the short story "The Last Martyrs", describing last days the life of the Russian intelligentsia participating in a crazy erotic orgy in the face of death. The mood of "Earth" (a work of "extremely high", according to Blok's definition) is on the whole pessimistic. The future of our planet is presented, the era of the completed capitalist world, where there is no connection with the earth, with the expanses of nature, and where humanity is steadily degenerating under the “artificial light” of the “world of machines”. The only way out for humanity in the current situation is collective suicide, which is the finale of the drama. Despite the tragic ending, the play occasionally still contains hopeful notes; so, in the final scene, a believer in the "rebirth of mankind" appears and in new life youth; according to it, only true humanity is entrusted with the life of the earth, and people who decide to die a “proud death” are only an “unfortunate crowd” lost in life, a branch torn from their tree. However, decadent moods only intensified in the subsequent years of the poet's life. Periods of complete dispassion are replaced by Bryusov’s lyrics of unquenched painful passions (“I love in the eyes of those swollen”, 1899; “In the gambling house”, 1905; “In the brothel”, 1905, and many others).

«Στεφανος»

Bryusov's next collection was "Στεφανος" ("Wreath"), written during the most violent revolutionary events of 1905 (released in December 1905); the poet himself considered him the pinnacle of his poetic creativity(““Wreath” completed my poetry, put on it truly a “wreath”,” writes Bryusov). Bryusov's civic lyrics flourish brightly in it, which began to appear in the Urbi et Orbi collection. Only the cycles "Driven from Hell" and "Moments" are dedicated to love. Bryusov sings the “hymn of glory” to the “coming Huns”, knowing full well that they are going to destroy the culture of the contemporary world, that this world is doomed and that he, the poet, is its inseparable part. Bryusov, who came from the Russian peasantry, who was under the "master's yoke", was well acquainted with rural life. Peasant images appear even in the early - "decadent" - period of Bryusov's lyrics. Throughout the 1890s, the poet turned to the "peasant" theme more and more often. And even during the period of worship of the city, Bryusov sometimes has the motive of "escape" from the noisy streets to the bosom of nature. A person is free only in nature - in the city he only feels like a prisoner, a “slave of stones” and dreams of the future destruction of cities, the onset of “wild will”. According to Bryusov, the revolution was inevitable. “Oh, it’s not the Chinese who are beaten in Tianjin who will come, but those who are more terrible, trampled down in mines and squeezed into factories ... I call them, because they are inevitable,” the poet writes to four Symbolists in 1900, after Vladimir Solovyov’s “Three Conversations” . The divergence of views on the revolution among the symbolists thus began already at the turn of the century. Bryusov himself feels himself a slave to bourgeois culture, the culture of the city, and his own cultural construction is the construction of the same prison that is presented in the poem "The Mason". Similar in spirit to "The Bricklayer" and the poem "Rowers of the Trireme" (1905). The poems "Dagger" (1903), "Satisfied" (1905) - poems of the "songwriter" of the growing revolution, ready to meet its overthrow with a "welcome anthem".

Leader of symbolism

The organizational role of Bryusov in Russian symbolism and in general in Russian modernism is very significant. The Libra, headed by him, became the most thorough in the selection of material and an authoritative modernist magazine (opposing the eclectic and not having a clear program of the Pass and the Golden Fleece). Bryusov influenced the work of many younger poets with advice and criticism, almost all of them go through the stage of one or another “imitation of Bryusov”. He enjoyed great prestige both among his peers-symbolists, and among literary youth, had a reputation as a strict impeccable "master", creating poetry as a "magician", "priest" of culture, and among acmeists (Nikolai Gumilyov, Zenkevich, Mandelstam), and futurists ( Pasternak, Shershenevich and others). Literary critic Mikhail Gasparov assesses the role of Bryusov in Russian modernist culture as the role of a "defeated teacher of victorious students" who influenced the work of an entire generation. Bryusov was not without a sense of "jealousy" for the new generation of Symbolists.

Bryusov also took an active part in the life of the Moscow literary and artistic circle, in particular, he was its director (since 1908). Collaborated in the magazine New way"(in 1903, he became the editorial secretary).

1910s

Valery Bryusov. Portrait by S. V. Malyutin. 1913

The Scales magazine ceases publication in 1909; by 1910 the activity of Russian symbolism as a movement was declining. In this regard, Bryusov ceases to act as a figure in the literary struggle and the leader of a particular direction, taking a more balanced, "academic" position. From the beginning of the 1910s, he paid considerable attention to prose (the novel The Altar of Victory), criticism (work in Russkaya Mysl, the journal Art in Southern Russia), and Pushkin studies. In 1913, the poet experiences a personal tragedy caused by a painful romance for both with the young poetess Nadezhda Lvova and her suicide. In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Bryusov went to the front as a war correspondent for Russkiye Vedomosti. It should be noted the growth of patriotic sentiments in the lyrics of Bryusov in 1914-1916.

1910-1914 and, in particular, 1914-1916, many researchers consider the period of spiritual and, as a result, creative crisis of the poet. Already the collections of the late 1900s - "The Earth's Axis" (a prose collection of stories, 1907), "All the Melodies" (1909) - were criticized as weaker than "Stephanos", they basically repeat the former "tunics"; thoughts about the frailty of all things intensify, the poet’s spiritual fatigue manifests itself (poems “The Dying Bonfire”, 1908; “The Demon of Suicide”, 1910). In the collections “Mirror of Shadows” (1912), “Seven Colors of the Rainbow” (1916), the author’s calls to oneself to “continue”, “swim further”, etc., which betray this crisis, become frequent, occasionally images of a hero, a worker appear. In 1916, Bryusov published a stylized continuation of Pushkin's poem "Egyptian Nights", which caused an extremely mixed reaction from critics. Reviews of 1916-1917 (who wrote under the pseudonym Andrey Polyanin Sofia Parnok, Georgy Ivanov, etc.) note self-repetitions, breakdowns in poetic technique and taste, hyperbolic self-praise (“Monument”, etc.) in “Seven Colors of the Rainbow”, come to the conclusion about the exhaustion of Bryusov's talent.

With an attempt to get out of the crisis and find a new style, researchers of Bryusov's work associate such an interesting experiment of the poet as a literary hoax - the collection "Nelli's Poems" (1913) dedicated to Nadezhda Lvova and the "Nelli's New Poems" (1914-1916) that continued it (1914-1916, remained unpublished under author's life). These poems are written on behalf of a “chic” urban courtesan, carried away by fashion trends, a kind of female counterpart of the lyrical hero Igor Severyanin, poetics reveals - along with the characteristic signs of Bryusov's style, thanks to which the hoax was soon exposed - the influence of Severyanin and futurism, to which Bryusov refers with interest.

Bryusov and the revolution

In 1917, the poet defended Maxim Gorky, who had been criticized by the Provisional Government.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Bryusov actively participated in the literary and publishing life of Moscow, worked in various Soviet institutions. The poet was still faithful to his desire to be the first in any business started. From 1917 to 1919 he headed the Committee for the Registration of the Press (since January 1918 - the Moscow branch of the Russian Book Chamber); from 1918 to 1919 he was in charge of the Moscow Library Department at the People's Commissariat of Education;. from 1919 to 1921 he was chairman of the Presidium of the All-Russian Union of Poets (as such, he led poetry evenings of Moscow poets of various groups at the Polytechnic Museum). In 1919 Bryusov became a member of the RCP(b). He worked at the State Publishing House, headed the literary sub-department of the Department of Art Education at the People's Commissariat for Education, was a member of the State Academic Council, a professor at Moscow State University (since 1921); from the end of 1922 - head of the Department of Art Education of the Glavprofobra; in 1921 he organized the Higher Literary and Art Institute (VLHI) and remained its rector and professor until the end of his life. Bryusov was also a member of the Moscow Council. He took an active part in the preparation of the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (he was the editor of the department of literature, art and linguistics; the first volume was published after the death of Bryusov).

In 1923, in connection with the fiftieth anniversary, Bryusov received a letter from the Soviet government, which noted the poet's numerous merits "to the whole country" and expressed "gratitude from the workers' and peasants' government."

Late creativity

After the revolution, Bryusov continued his active creative activity. In October, the poet saw the banner of a new, transformed world, capable of destroying bourgeois-capitalist culture, the "slave" of which the poet considered himself earlier; now he can "resurrect life." Some post-revolutionary poems are enthusiastic hymns to "dazzling October"; in some of his poems, he glorifies the revolution in one voice with Marxist poets - in particular, “Work”, “Responses”, “To the Brothers-Intellectuals”, “Only Russian”) Having become the founder of the “Russian literary Leniniana”, Bryusov neglected the “precepts”, set out by him back in 1896 in the poem "To the Young Poet" - "do not live in the present", "worship art."

Despite all his aspirations to become part of the new era, Bryusov could not become a “poet of the New Life”. In the 1920s (in the collections "Dali" (1922), "Mea" ("Hurry!", 1924)) he radically renews his poetics, using rhythm overloaded with accents, abundant alliteration, ragged syntax, neologisms (again, as in the era of Nelly's Poems, using the experience of futurism); Vladislav Khodasevich, who is generally critical of Bryusov, not without sympathy evaluates this period as an attempt to find “new sounds” through “conscious cacophony”. These poems are saturated with social motives, the pathos of "scientific" (in the spirit of Rene Gil's "scientific poetry", which Bryusov was interested in even before the revolution: "The World of the Electron", 1922, "The World of N-Dimensions", 1924), exotic terms and proper names(the author provided many of them with detailed comments). M. L. Gasparov, who studied it in detail, called the manner of the late Bryusov “academic avant-garde”. In some texts, notes of disappointment with one's past and present life, even with the revolution itself, appear (the poem "House of Visions" is especially characteristic). In his experiment, Bryusov was alone: ​​in the era of building a new, Soviet poetry, Bryusov's experiments were considered too complex and "incomprehensible to the masses"; representatives of modernist poetics also reacted negatively to them.

Death

On October 9, 1924, Bryusov died in his Moscow apartment from lobar pneumonia. The poet was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in the capital.

The main features of Bryusov's work

In Bryusov's poems, the reader is faced with opposite principles: life-affirming - love, calls for "conquest" of life by labor, for the struggle for existence, for creation - and pessimistic (death is bliss, "sweet nirvana", therefore the desire for death is above all; suicide is "seductive", and insane orgies are "the secret pleasures of artificial edens"). And the main actor in Bryusov's poetry there is either a brave, courageous fighter, or a man who is desperate in life, who sees no other way but the way to death (such, in particular, are the already mentioned "Nellie's Poems", the work of a courtesan with a "selfish soul").

Bryusov's moods are sometimes contradictory; they replace each other without transitions. In his poetry, Bryusov either strives for innovation, or again goes back to the time-tested forms of the classics. Despite the desire for classical forms, Bryusov's work is still not Empire, but Art Nouveau, which has absorbed contradictory qualities. In it, we see a fusion of qualities that are difficult to combine. According to Andrei Bely's characterization, Valery Bryusov is a "poet of marble and bronze"; at the same time, S. A. Vengerov considered Bryusov a poet of "solemnity par excellence." According to L. Kamenev, Bryusov is a "hammer fighter and jeweler."

Bryusov's versification

Valery Bryusov made a great contribution to the development of the form of verse, actively used inaccurate rhymes, "free verse" in the spirit of Verhaarn, developed "long" meters (iambic 12-foot with internal rhymes: "Near the sluggish Nile, where Lake Merida is, in the kingdom fiery Ra // you loved me for a long time, like Osiris Isis, friend, queen and sister ... ", the famous 7-foot trochee without caesura in "The Pale Horse": "The street was like a storm. Crowds passed // As if they were pursued by the inevitable Rock ... "), used line alternations different meters(the so-called "linear logaeda": "My lips are approaching // To your lips ..."). These experiments were fruitfully received by the younger poets. In the 1890s, in parallel with Zinaida, Gippius Bryusov developed tonic verse (dolnik is a term that he introduced into Russian poetry in an article of 1918), but, unlike Gippius and subsequently Blok, he gave few memorable examples to this verse in the future. rarely addressed: the most famous dolniks of Bryusov are The Coming Huns (1904) and The Third Autumn (1920). In 1918, Bryusov published the collection "Experiments ...", which did not set creative tasks and was specially dedicated to the most diverse experiments in the field of verse (extra-long line endings, figured poetry, etc.). In the 1920s, Bryusov taught versification at various institutes, some of his courses were published.

Bryusov in different genres

Bryusov tried his hand at many literary genres.

Prose

The most famous historical novels by Bryusov are The Altar of Victory, which describes the life and customs of Rome in the 4th century AD. e., and - in particular - the "Fiery Angel". In the latter, the psychology of the time being described (Germany of the 16th century) is superbly displayed, the mood of the era is accurately conveyed; based on the "Fiery Angel" Sergei Prokofiev wrote the opera of the same name. The motives of Bryusov's novels fully correspond to the motives of the author's poetic works; Like poetry, Bryusov's novels describe the era of the collapse of the old world, depict its individual representatives who paused in thought before the arrival of the new world, supported by fresh, revitalizing forces.

Bryusov's original short stories, built on the principle of two worlds, were compiled in the collection The Earth's Axis (1907). In the short story cycle "Nights and Days" Bryusov gives himself up to the "philosophy of the moment", the "religion of passion". Bryusov wrote and fantastic works- this is the novel "Mountain of the Stars", the stories "Rise of the Machines" (1908) and "Mutiny of the Machines" (1914), the story "The First Interplanetary", the anti-utopia "Republic of the Southern Cross" (1904-05). Noteworthy is the story "The Betrothal of Dasha", in which the author portrays his father, Yakov Bryusov, who was involved in the liberal social movement of the 1860s. The story "The Last Pages from a Woman's Diary" also received considerable attention from critics.

Translations

As a translator, Bryusov did a lot for Russian literature. He opened to the Russian reader the work of the famous Belgian urban poet Emile Verhaern, was the first translator of the poems of Paul Verlaine. Bryusov's translations of works by Edgar Allan Poe (poems), Romain Rolland ("Liliuli"), Maurice Maeterlinck ("Pelleas and Melesande", "Massacre of the Innocents"), Victor Hugo, Racine, Ausonius, Molière ("Amphitryon"), Byron, Oscar Wilde ("The Duchess of Padua", "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"). Bryusov completely translated Goethe's Faust, Virgil's Aeneid. In the 1910s, Bryusov was fascinated by the poetry of Armenia, translated many poems by Armenian poets and compiled the fundamental collection "Poetry of Armenia from ancient times to the present day", for which he was awarded the title of People's Poet of Armenia in 1923, Yerevan Linguistic University bears his name.

Bryusov was a translation theorist; some of his ideas are still relevant today, the review of "Verhaarn on a Procrustean bed" (1923), etc.

Criticism and literary criticism

As a literary critic, Valery Bryusov began to speak as early as 1893, when he selected poems by novice poets (the same, however, as he himself) for the first collection, Russian Symbolists. The most complete collection of Bryusov's critical articles is Far and Near. In his critical articles, Bryusov not only revealed the theory of symbolism, but also made statements about the dependence of form on content in literature; Poetry, according to Bryusov, "can and should" be learned, because it is a craft that has an important educational value. According to Bryusov, separation from reality is fatal for the artist. Bryusov's works on versification are interesting ("Fundamentals of versification", etc.). Bryusov was sympathetic to the work of proletarian poets, which is expressed in his articles "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Russian Poetry", "Synthetics of Poetry".

Of Bryusov's literary works, the most famous are his works devoted to the biography and work of Alexander Pushkin (works on Pushkin's versification, "Pushkin's Letters to Pushkin", "Pushkin in the Crimea", "Pushkin's Relations with the Government", "Pushkin's Lyceum Poems". In the latter The work contains newly discovered and restored texts by Pushkin the lyceum student). Several articles ("Pushkin and serfdom", an article on Pushkin's poetic technique, etc.) were written by Bryusov for the collected works of the great Russian poet (Brockhaus edition). Bryusov studied the work of Nikolai Gogol (which was expressed in his speech "Incinerated"), Baratynsky, Fyodor Tyutchev (Bryusov actually opened the work of this talented poet to Russian society), Alexei Tolstoy.

Bryusov-journalist

Bryusov began his journalistic activity in the journal, far from literary storms - "Russian Archive", where from the end of the 1890s he went through the school of scientific publishing under the guidance of a prominent historian and editor of the journal Bartenev, and from 1900 to 1903 he was the secretary of the editorial board of the journal. Published in Yasinsky's Monthly Works (1900-1902).

Later, Bryusov became the main character in the journal Scales (1904-1909), the main organ of Russian symbolism. Bryusov put all his energy into editorial work. Bryusov was both the principal author and editor of Vyesov. In addition to him, Andrey Bely, Konstantin Balmont, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maximilian Voloshin, Mikhail Kuzmin were published there. Bryusov also directed the publishing house "Scorpion" and participated in the publication of the almanac of this publishing house "Northern Flowers" (published in 1901-1903, 1905 and 1911).

The experience of Bryusov as an editor was taken into account by Struve when he invited the poet to edit the literary department of the oldest Moscow magazine Russkaya Mysl in 1910. Bryusov saw his mission as a literary editor in the continuation of the traditions of Libra. Soon, Bryusov, in addition to fiction, began to oversee the bibliography and criticism of the magazine. With the advent of a new literary editor, Alexei Tolstoy, Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Alexander Grin, Alexei Remizov, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov appear on the pages of the magazine. Contemporaries were ironic that the Struve monthly was published as if it were "anniversary issues of Russian symbolism." However, friction soon emerged between Struve and Bryusov: the December 1910 issue of Russian Thought was arrested for pornography. The reason is Bryusov's story "The Last Pages from a Woman's Diary". The end of Bryusov's editorship took place at the end of 1912. One of the reasons was Struve's refusal to publish Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg, who considered the novel a creative failure - Bryusov insisted on printing the novel. Bryusov remains an employee of the magazine as a critic until 1914.

In 1915, Maxim Gorky invited Bryusov to collaborate in the newly opened Chronicle magazine.

Bryusov-editor

Bryusov was engaged in editorial activities - under his control, the collected works of Karolina Pavlova, several editions of Pushkin's works were published. He began editing the complete works of Pushkin (the work, which ended on the first volume, included the addition of unfinished works).

Bryusov's aliases

When working on the collections "Russian Symbolists" (1894-1895), Bryusov used many pseudonyms. The function of the pseudonym here is not to hide the true name of the author, but to mystify the reader. The poet, as editor of collections, sought to create the impression a large number his like-minded people and followers, allegedly he had in these publications, and thus increase their social significance. This is the uniqueness of the use of pseudonyms by Bryusov.

• Aurelius
• Br., Val.
• Br-ov, V.
• Bakulin, W.
• V. B.
• V. Ya. B.
• Verigin A.
• Galakhov, Anatoly

• Harmodius
• Darov, W.
• I. A.
• K.K.K.
• L. R.
• Latnik
• M.P.
• Maslov, V. A.
• Muscovite
• Nellie

• Pentaur
• Sbirko, D.
• Sozontov, K.
• Spassky
• Comrade German
• Tourist
• Fox, Z.
• Enrico

Bryusov and philately

Bryusov collected postage stamps, the subject of his collection were the stamps of all countries. He specialized in the stamps of the colonies of European states. In November 1923, he joined the All-Russian Society of Philatelists and was elected honorary chairman of the editorial board of the VOF. In January 1924, he was included in the editorial board of the Soviet Philatelist magazine.

Selected Quotes

• Talent, even genius, will honestly give only slow success if given it. It is not enough! It is not enough for me. We must choose otherwise ... Find a guiding star in the fog. And I see it: it's decadent. Yes! Whatever you say, whether it is false, whether it is ridiculous, but it goes forward, develops, and the future will belong to it, especially when it finds a worthy leader. And I will be the leader! Yes I! (March 4, 1893, diary).
• My youth is the youth of a genius. I have lived and acted in such a way that only great deeds can justify my behavior. (Ibid., 1898).

• Brother - Alexander (1885-1966) - professor of art history, employee of the Historical Museum, participant in the search for the Amber Room.
• Sister - Lydia - the wife of the poet Samuil Kissin.
• Sister - Nadezhda (1881-1951) - musicologist-folklorist, teacher (from 1921 to 1943) and vice-rector (1922-28) of the Moscow State Conservatory.
• In the early 1910s, Bryusov, Vyach. Ivanov, Andrei Bely and A. S. Petrovsky made up the ephemeral Masonic lodge Lucifer, established by the so-called. "Moscow center" (presumably, the Rosicrucian chapter / Astrea /) and abolished immediately after its foundation for its connection with anthroposophists. Probably, this kind of phenomena cannot be fully regarded as an indicator of the affiliation of these cultural figures to the movement of free masons, however, this fact is captured in the annals of such a movement.
• In 1924, shortly before his death, Valery Bryusov posed for the young sculptor Nina Niss-Goldman. Now this portrait is in the Russian Museum of St. Petersburg in the collection of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s.

In other arts

• Bryusov's poem "The Pied Piper" was set to music by Sergei Rachmaninov (as part of a cycle of romances Op. 38); the music of the romance “is distinguished by its sharpness and bizarre angularity of outlines” (Yu. Keldysh).
• The symphonic dithyramb "Vrubel" to the words of Bryusov was written by Mikhail Gnesin.
• Some of Bryusov's poems were set to music by composers Vladimir Rebikov, Sergei Vasilenko, Mikhail Ivanov-Boretsky, Alexander Grechaninov, Reingold Gliere, Alexander Krein and others.

Compositions

• “Decadents. (End of the century)." Drama, 1893.
• "Juvenilia" - "Youthful", 1894.
• "Chefs d'oeuvre" - "Masterpieces", M., 1895-600 copies; 2nd ed. M., 1896-600 copies.
• "Me eum esse" - "It's me", M., t-type. Mamontov, 1897-600 copies.
• "On Art", M., t-type. Mamontova, 1899. - 500 copies.
• "Tertia Vigilia" - "The Third Guard", M., Scorpio, 1900-1200 copies.
• "Urbi et Orbi" - "To the City and the World", M., Scorpion, 1903-1200 copies.
• "Stephanos" - "Wreath", M., Scorpio, 1906-2000 copies.
• "Earth's axis", M., 1907; 2nd ed. - M., 1910; 3rd ed. M., 1911.
• "Fiery Angel" (historical novel), M., 1908, 1909.
• "Incinerated", M., 1909, 2nd ed. M., "Scorpio", 1910.
• “All tunes”, (“Ways and crossroads”, vol. 3) M., 1909-2000 copies.
• "F. I. Tyutchev. The meaning of his work", 1911.
• Far and Near: Articles and Notes on Russian Poets from Tyutchev to the Present Day. - M.: "Scorpion", 1912., 2000 copies, 214 p.
• "Mirror of shadows", M., "Scorpio", 1912, 214 p.
• "Altar of Victory", 1913.
• "Outside my window" M., Scorpion, 1913.
• "Nights and days" M., 1913.
• "Seven Colors of the Rainbow", 1915.
• "Betrothal of Dasha" M., 1915.
• "Selected Poems. 1897-1915". M., 1915; 2nd ed. 1916; 3rd ed. 1918.
• "Jupiter defeated", 1916.
• "Rhea Sylvia", M., 1916, 1917.
• "Egyptian Nights" M., 1916.
• "The Ninth Stone", 1917.
• "How to end the war". M., 1917.
• “Experiments in metrics and rhythm, in euphony and consonance, in stanza and forms”, M., Helikon, 1918.
• "Chronicle of the historical destinies of the Armenian people". M., 1918.
• "A Short Course in the Science of Verse". M., 1919.
• "Last dreams", M., Creativity, 1920.
• "In such days", M., Gosizdat, 1921.
• "Dali", M., Gosizdat, 1922.
• "Krugozor", M., Gosizdat, 1922.
• "Mig", Berlin, ed. Grzhebina, 1922.
• "Mea" - "Hurry!", M., GIZ, 1924.
• Autobiography // Russian literature of the XX century. 1890-1914 / Ed. S. A. Vengerova. - M.: 1914. - T. 1.
• Fundamentals of poetry. M., GIZ, 1924.
• From my life. My youth. Memory. - M., 1927.
• Diaries. M.: ed. M. and S. Sabashnikov, 1927 (reprinted: M.: OLMA-PRESS, 2002.).
• Letters of V. Ya. Bryusov to P. P. Pertsov (1894-1896) (On the history of early symbolism). - M.: 1927.
• My Pushkin. M., 1929.
• Valery Bryusov, Nina Petrovskaya. Correspondence (1904-1913). - M.: New Literary Review, 2004. - 776 p.,

meetings

• Complete works and translations - only vols. 1-4, 12, 13, 15, 21 were published - were published in St. Petersburg in 1913-1914 (Sirin publishing house).
• Ways and crossroads. T. 1-3. M., 1908-1909.
• Selected works in 3 volumes - M .: Goslitizdat, 1926.
• Selected works in 2 volumes - M .: Goslitizdat, 1955.
• Collected works in 7 volumes - M., 1973-1975 (the most complete at the moment).
• Unpublished poems. - M.: GIHL, 1935.
• Poems and poems. - L .: Soviet writer, 1961.
• Works in 2 volumes - M .: Fiction, 1987. - 400,000 copies.

Translations

• "Romances without words" (translations of Verlaine's poems). - M., 1895.

Memory

In Krasnodar, a street and a passage are named after V. Ya. Bryusov.

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was born on December 1 (December 13 according to the new style) in 1873 in Moscow. Parents took up his education early, and by the age of eight the boy began to write poetry. From early childhood, parents allowed Valery to read everything except religious literature, raising him in the spirit of atheism. This was the reason for Bryusov's expulsion from the private Kreiman gymnasium in 1889, for promoting atheism. In the same year, 1889, his first article was published in the Russian Sport magazine. He studied at the first gymnasium for four years from 1885. During his studies, he published a handwritten journal and wrote poetry. After being expelled from the Kreiman gymnasium, he goes to study at the private Polivanov gymnasium, which he successfully graduates in 1893. Closer to the end of the gymnasium, Valery Yakovlevich begins to get involved in mathematics. During his studies, he discovered French symbolist poets. Verlaine's influence found echoes in many of Bryusov's poems. In 1893 he wrote the drama The Decadents (End of the Century) about the life of Verlaine. In the same year, he entered Moscow University at the Faculty of History and Philology, which he successfully graduated in 1899. During his studies, in 1897, he married Ioanna Matveevna Runt (1876-1965), with whom he would live until the end of his days. The first fame comes after the publication of collections of poems "Russian Symbolists" in 1899.
After graduating from university, he completely devoted himself to his favorite pastime - literature. He began working in the Russian Archive magazine. In 1899 he became one of the initiators of the creation of the Scorpion publishing house. The beginning of the twentieth century is the peak of the poet's work. At this time, collections of poems "City and Peace", "Wreath", the drama "Earth", "Fiery Angel" are published. Bryusov considered his collection "Wreath" to be the pinnacle of his work. In 1904, he began publishing the journal Scales. Since 1910, a spiritual crisis sets in, and many of his works are criticized. During the same period, he was published in the journal "Russian Thought" and "Art in Southern Russia" with critical articles.
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov meets the revolution with enthusiasm and almost immediately begins to work for public service. He worked in the Committee for the Registration of the Press, then in the Moscow Library Department, became a member of the Moscow Council, and was chairman of the All-Russian Union of Poets. In 1920 he joined the CPSU(b). In 1921, Bryusov organized the Higher Literary and Art Institute, where he would be rector and professor until his death. In the same year he became a professor at Moscow State University. AT last years his life continues to write and tries to create a new direction in poetry. He is also engaged in scientific activity and criticism.
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov died on October 9, 1924 in Moscow. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Bryusov Valery Yakovlevich is a famous Russian poet, one of the founders of Russian symbolism, prose writer, playwright, literary critic, critic, translator. The Moscow merchant family, in which he was born on December 13 (December 1, O.S.), 1873, did not pay much attention to the upbringing of his son. Most often, Valery was left to himself, so he had the opportunity to read everything that was at hand, starting with scientific articles and ending with tabloid novels. The first poem was written by him at the age of 8, and the first publication of Bryusov took place in the magazine for children "Sincere Word" when the boy was 11 years old. Not particularly concerned with their son, the parents nevertheless provided him with a good education. From 1885 to 1893 He studied at two private gymnasiums. As a 13-year-old teenager, Bryusov already realized that his life calling was connected with poetry.

In the early 90s. Bryusov was seriously carried away by the French Symbolists, who, by his own admission, opened up a new world, inspired a different type of creativity. In a letter written in 1893 to Verlaine, the young Bryusov positions himself as the founder of a new literary movement in Russia, and names its dissemination as his mission. Between 1893 and 1899 he was a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. During 1894-1895 he published three collections under the title "Russian Symbolists", most of the poems in which were written by himself. In 1895, his debut "personal" collection appeared - "Masterpieces", which caused fire with a pretentious title, which critics considered inappropriate to the content.

After graduating from the university in 1899, Bryusov got the opportunity to devote himself completely to creativity. The second half of the 90s is marked in his biography by a rapprochement with symbolist poets. In 1899, Bryusov was among the initiators and leaders of the new Scorpion publishing house, which rallied supporters of the movement around itself. In 1897, Bryusov married Ioanna Runt, who until the death of the poet was his faithful friend and assistant.

In 1900, the book "The Third Guard" was published, written in line with symbolism, which opened a new stage in Bryusov's creative biography. In 1901 to 1905, Bryusov was directly involved in the creation of the almanac "Northern Flowers", from 1904 to 1909 he was the editor of the main central printed organ of the Symbolists - the magazine "Scales". The significance of Bryusov's activities for Russian modernism and symbolism in particular is difficult to overestimate. Both the publication he headed and he himself were known as great literary authorities, Bryusov was called the master, the priest of culture.

Bryusov considered the collection "Wreath", which was written in the conditions of the revolutionary events of 1905, to be the apogee of his work. In 1909, the publication of "Balance" was stopped, and by the next year there was a noticeable decrease in the activity of the symbolism movement. Bryusov no longer positions himself as the leader of this trend, does not lead a literary struggle for the right to exist, his position becomes more balanced. Period 1910-1914 Literary critics call Bryusov's crisis both spiritual and creative. When the First World War began, in 1914 he was sent to the front as a war correspondent for Russkiye Vedomosti.

With the advent of the Bolsheviks to power, a new life and creative stage began. V.Ya. Bryusov develops a vigorous activity, striving to be at the forefront everywhere. In 1917-1919. he was the head of the Committee for the Registration of the Press, in 1918-1919. - Head of the Moscow Library Department at the People's Commissariat for Education, in 1919-1921. he is the chairman of the Presidium of the All-Russian Union of Poets (the poet's entry into the Bolshevik Party in 1919 contributed to his stay in this post). There were such episodes in his biography as work in the State Publishing House, head of the literary sub-department of art education at the People's Commissariat of Education, membership in the state academic council, professorship at Moscow State University. In 1921, Valery Yakovlevich became the organizer of the Higher Literary and Art Institute, of which he was a professor and rector until the end of his life. Bryusov was the editor of the Department of Literature, Art and Linguistics in the team preparing the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

Creative activity also remained active, but his creative experiments inspired by the revolution remained equally little understood by both supporters of modernism and the general public. Nevertheless, on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1923, the Soviet government presented the poet with a diploma for services to the country. Death overtook Bryusov on October 9, 1924. The cause was croupous pneumonia, probably aggravated by the writer's long years of addiction to drugs. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Valery Bryusov is an outstanding Russian poet of the Silver Age. But the nature of his activity was not limited to versification. He established himself as a talented prose writer, journalist and literary critic. Along with this, Bryusov was very successful in literary translations. And his organizational skills found their application in editorial work.

The poet's family

A brief biography of Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov is impossible without a story about the poet's family. This is necessary in order to find an explanation for the presence of many talents concentrated in one person. And the family of Valery Bryusov was the foundation on which his versatile personality was formed.

So, Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, was born in 1873, on December 1 (13), in the family of a wealthy merchant, which was famous for outstanding people. The poet's maternal grandfather, Alexander Yakovlevich Bakulin, was a merchant and poet-fabulist from a very wealthy merchant family in the city of Yelets. Along with countless fables, grandfather's archive contained novels, short stories, poems, lyrical poems written by him without hope for a reader.

Selflessly devoted to literature and dreaming of devoting himself entirely to it, Alexander Yakovlevich was forced to engage in merchant affairs all his life in order to be able to adequately support his family. Many years later, the famous grandson will sign some of his works with the name of his grandfather.

On the father's side, Valery Bryusov had an equally remarkable grandfather. Kuzma Andreevich was a serf of the then famous landowner Bruce. Hence the surname. In 1859, my grandfather bought a free estate from the landowner, left Kostroma and moved to Moscow. In the capital, Kuzma Andreevich became a successful merchant and bought a house on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, in which his later famous grandson, Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, was born and lived for a long time.

Valery Yakovlevich's father, Yakov Kuzmich Bryusov, also a merchant and poet, published in small editions. It was the father who sent the first poem of his son, which was printed, to the editor of one of the magazines. The poem was called "Letter to the Editor", Valery was then 11 years old.

Bryusov's sister, Nadezhda Yakovlevna (1881-1951), like many in the family, was a creative and musically gifted person. She became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. She has several scientific works on musical pedagogy and folk music. And the younger brother of Valery Bryusov, (1885-1966), was an archaeologist and doctor of historical sciences, who wrote works on the history of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

The childhood of the poet

Continuing the description short biography Bryusov Valery Yakovlevich, it is necessary to note the childhood of the poet. As a child, Valery Bryusov was left to his own devices, as his parents did not pay attention to raising their offspring. special attention. However, children were strictly forbidden to read religious literature because their parents were staunch atheists and materialists. Subsequently, Bryusov recalled that his parents introduced him to the principles of materialism and the ideas of Darwin before they taught him to count. Any other literature in the family was allowed, so the young Bryusov absorbed everything: from the works of Jules Verne to tabloid novels.

All their children, including Valery, were given an excellent education by their parents. In 1885, at the age of eleven, he began studying at the private classical gymnasium of F.I. Kreiman, and immediately in the second grade. At first, young Bryusov had a very difficult time: he endured ridicule from classmates and had difficulty getting used to restrictions and order. However, very soon he won the favor of his comrades with his intelligence and talent as a storyteller. Valery could retell whole books with interest and enthusiasm, gathering many listeners around him. But for freethinking and atheistic views in 1889, the schoolboy Bryusov was expelled.

Then he is studying at another private gymnasium. This educational institution is owned by a certain L. I. Polivanov, a great teacher, whose mentoring had an invaluable influence on the worldview of the young Bryusov. In 1893, he successfully completed his studies at the gymnasium and entered the Faculty of History and Philology at Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1899.

First literary experience

Already at the age of thirteen, Valery was sure that he would become a famous poet. Studying at the Kreyman gymnasium, young Bryusov writes pretty good poetry and publishes a handwritten magazine. At the same time, his first experience in writing prose happened. True, the early stories were a bit angular.

As a teenager, Bryusov was passionately fascinated by the poetry of Nekrasov and Nadson. Later, with the same passion, he reads the works of Mallarmé, Verlaine and Baudelaire, who opened the world of French symbolism to the young poet.

Under the pseudonym Valery Maslov in 1894-1895. Bryusov publishes three collections "Russian Symbolists", where he publishes his poems under various pseudonyms. Along with poems, Bryusov included in the collections the works of his friend A. A. Miropolsky and the opium lover, mystic poet A. M. Dobrolyubov. The collections were ridiculed by critics, but this did not deter Bryusov from writing poetry in the spirit of symbolism, but rather the opposite.

Youth of a genius

Continuing the description of a brief biography of Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, it is necessary to note the release of the first collection of poems by the young poet (Bryusov was 22 at that time). He called his collection "Masterpieces", which again caused chuckles and attacks from critics, according to whom the title was contrary to the content.

Youthful audacity, narcissism and arrogance were characteristic of the poet Bryusov of that time. “My youth is the youth of a genius. I lived and acted in such a way that only great deeds can justify my behavior, ”the young poet wrote in personal diary confident in its exclusivity.

Detachment from the world and the desire to hide from the dull everyday existence can be traced in the poems of the first collection, and in Bryusov's lyrics in general. However, it would be unfair not to note the constant search for new poetic forms, attempts to create unusual rhymes and vivid images.

Decadence: a classic of symbolism

The life and work of Valery Bryusov did not always go smoothly. The scandalous atmosphere around the release of the collection "Masterpieces" and the shocking nature of some poems drew attention to a new trend in poetry. And Bryusov became known in poetic circles as a propagandist and organizer of symbolism in Russia.

The decadent period in Bryusov's work ends with the release of the second collection of poems "This is me" in 1897. Here the young poet still appears as a cold dreamer, estranged from an insignificant, hated world.

But gradually a rethinking of his work comes to him. Bryusov saw heroism and loftiness, mystery and tragedy everywhere. His poems acquire a certain clarity when, in late XIX century in literature there are significant changes and symbolism is seen as a self-sufficient trend.

The release of the following collections ("Third Guard" - 1900, "To the City and the World" - 1903, "Wreath" - 1906) revealed the direction of Bryusov's poetry towards the French "Parnassus", the distinctive features of which were historical and mythological storylines, the hardness of genre forms, the plasticity of versification, a penchant for the exotic. Much in Bryusov's poetry was also from French symbolism with a mass of poetic shades, moods and uncertainties.

The collection "Mirror of Shadows", published in 1912, was distinguished by a noticeable simplification of forms. But the nature of the poet prevailed, and Bryusov's later work is again directed towards the complication of style, urbanism, scientific and historicism, as well as the poet's confidence in the existence of many truths in poetic art.

Extrapoetic activity

When describing a brief biography of Bryusov Valery Yakovlevich, it is necessary to touch on some important points. After graduating from the university in 1899, Valery Yakovlevich worked in the Russian Archive magazine. In the same year, he headed the Scorpio publishing house, whose task was to unite representatives of the new art. And in 1904, Bryusov became the editor of the journal Scales, which became the flagship of Russian symbolism.

At this time, Valery Yakovlevich wrote many critical, theoretical, scientific articles on various topics. After the abolition of the journal "Vesy" in 1909, he headed the department of literary criticism in the journal "Russian Thought".

Then there was the revolution of 1905. Bryusov took it as an inevitability. At this time, he wrote a number of historical novels and translated. After the October Revolution, he actively cooperated with the Soviet authorities and even joined the Bolshevik Party in 1920.

In 1917, Valery Bryusov headed the committee for the registration of the press, was in charge of scientific libraries and literature. department of the People's Commissariat for Education. He holds high positions in the State Academic Council and lectures at Moscow State University.

In 1921, Bryusov organized the Higher Literary and Art Institute and became its first rector. At the same time, he teaches at the Institute of the Word and the Communist Academy.

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov died in his Moscow apartment in 1924, on October 9, from lobar pneumonia. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.