Russian poetry of the 20th century poets. Russian poetry of the XX century

Introduction. Russian literature of the 20th century has an extremely complex, even tragic, history. This is due to the fundamental changes in the life of the country that began at the turn of the century. Russia has experienced three revolutions: 1905, February and October 1917; Russian-Japanese war World War I; Civil War The internal political situation in our country at that time was extremely difficult.

The turn of the century was marked by significant scientific discoveries. They overturned ideas about the knowability of the world. This led to the search for an explanation of new phenomena through religion, mysticism. Philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev described this time as follows: “It was the era of awakening in Russia of independent philosophical thought, the flowering of poetry and the sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were discovered…”. So, one dominant worldview has been replaced by a diversity of opinions and ideas in all areas of life.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy L. N. Tolstoy. Portrait by I. E. Repin.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov The main themes of creativity are the ideological searches of the intelligentsia, dissatisfaction with the philistine existence of some, spiritual "humility" in front of the vulgarity of the lives of others ("A boring story", 1889; "Duel", 1891; "House with a mezzanine", 1896; "Ionych", 1898 ; "Lady with a dog", 1899).

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin BUNIN Ivan Alekseevich (), Russian writer, honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1909). In 1920 he emigrated.

Alexander Blok (symbolist) Alexander Blok. Portrait of the work of I. K. Parkhomenko year.

Andrei Bely (symbolism) WHITE Andrei (pseudo Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev) (), Russian writer. One of the leading figures of symbolism. Early poetry is characterized by mystical motifs, grotesque perception of reality ("symphonies"), formal experimentation (collection "Gold in Azure", 1904). In the collection "Ashes" (1909) the tragedy of rural Russia. In the novel "Petersburg" (revised edition in 1922) a symbolic and satirical image of Russian statehood.

Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova (Acmeists) Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov with their little son, the future famous historian L. N. Gumilyov

Khlebnikov Velimir (futurist) KHLEBNIKOV Velimir (real name Viktor Vladimirovich) (), Russian poet, one of the key figures of the avant-garde.

Vladimir Mayakovsky MAYAKOVSKY Vladimir Vladimirovich, Russian poet, one of the brightest representatives of avant-garde art of the 1990s.

Marina Tsvetaeva TsVETAEVA Marina Ivanovna (), Russian poetess. Daughter of I. V. Tsvetaeva. Romantic maximalism, the motives of loneliness, the tragic doom of love, the rejection of everyday life (collections "Versta", 1921, "Craft", 1923, "After Russia", 1928; satirical poem "The Pied Piper", 1925, "Poem of the End", both 1926) .

Sergey Yesenin (Imagist) Yesenin Sergey Alexandrovich (), Russian poet. From the first collections ("Radunitsa", 1916; "Rural Book of Hours", 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of a deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Russia, an expert in the folk language and folk soul. He was a member of a group of imagists

Alexei Remizov REMIZOV Alexei Mikhailovich (), Russian writer. The search for an archaic style focused on literature and the oral word of pre-Petrine Russia. The book of legends, apocrypha (“Limonar, that is: Spiritual Meadow”, 1907), the novels “The Pond” (1908), “The Word of the Destruction of the Russian Land” (1918). In 1921 he emigrated.

Mark Aldanov ALDANOV Mark Aleksandrovich (real name Landau), Russian writer; novelist and essayist; one of the most widely read (and translated into foreign languages) writers of the first Russian emigration, who gained fame thanks to his historical novels covering the events of two centuries of Russian and European history (from the middle of the 18th century).

Maxim Gorky GORKY Maxim (real name and surname Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov) (), Russian writer, publicist.

Mikhail Sholokhov SHOLOKHOV Mikhail Alexandrovich (), Russian writer, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), twice Hero of the Socialist, Labor (1967, 1980).

Nikolai Ostrovsky OSTROVSKII Nikolai Alekseevich (), Russian writer. Member of the Civil War; was badly wounded. Blind and bedridden, Ostrovsky created the novel How the Steel Was Tempered (; some chapters were not censored) about the formation of Soviet power and the heroic life of the Komsomol member Pavel Korchagin (an image that largely determined the type of positive hero of socialist realism literature). The novel "Born by the Storm" (1936, not completed).

Alexander Tvardovsky TVARDOVSKY Alexander Trifonovich (), Russian poet, editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine (,). The poem "Vasily Terkin" () is a vivid embodiment of the Russian character and popular feelings of the era of the Great Patriotic War

Konstantin Simonov SIMONOV Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich (), Russian writer, public figure, Hero of Socialist Labor (1974).

Evgeny Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich (), Russian playwright. Saturated with acutely topical social and political content, caustic irony, fairy tale plays based on the works of H. K. Andersen "The Naked King" (1934), "Shadow" (1940); satirical plays Dragon (1944), Ordinary Miracle (1956); plays for children, stories, scripts.

Vasily Shukshin Vasily Makarovich Shukshin (October 1974), Russian writer, film director, actor. Honored Art Worker of Russia (1969). In stories (collection "Villagers", 1963, "There, in the distance", 1968, "Characters", 1973), the novel "Lubavins" (parts 1-2,) and films ("Such a guy lives", 1964, " Stoves and benches”, 1972, “Kalina Krasnaya”, 1974

Russian literature of the 20th century has a tragic history. At the age of 20, writers (Bunin, Kuprin, Shmelev) left Russia and were expelled. The destructive effect of censorship: the public persecution of artists of the word (Bulgakov, Pilnyak) Since the beginning of the 1930s, the tendency to bring literature to a single artistic method - socialist realism - has become more and more pronounced. In the 1930s, the process of physical extermination of writers began: N. Klyuev, O. Mandelstam, I. Babel, I. Kataev, B. Pilnyak were shot and died in the camps. Prezentacii.com

I decided, while I still have the strength, and while the newspaper "Day of Literature" with a creak, but it comes out, in spite of all ill-wishers, to continue summing up the literary results of the twentieth century. This time I want to offer readers a list of the 50 best Russian poets. Moreover, I think that, on the whole, the twentieth century in Russian literature is no weaker than our golden nineteenth century. Both in prose and in poetry. Of course, no matter how strictly you select the best Russian poets, there are so many of them and they are so different that there will still be no absolutely exact list. Someone will have to be omitted, choosing the most worthy in each poetic direction, in each literary era. As they say, all the geniuses are there, there are at most five or six of them, but there are about two hundred bright, talented poets in Russia of the twentieth century, how to choose fifty of them? The most difficult task. Guaranteed reproaches and bewilderment.
I will try to present all the tendencies of poetic Russia, all the main directions of Russian poetry. Gaps are inevitable, but as was the case with the discussion of the best Russian prose a year ago on the pages of our newspaper, I hope readers will dispute, suggest some alternative names, and a reader's own alternative list will appear, which we will also publish. Yevgeny Yevtushenko is not alone in determining the tastes of our readers by imposing his "Strophes of the Century".
Naturally, this is my personal biased list. But, I will note without false modesty (so far one of the leading critics of Russia): I hope my professional opinion means something.
Some readers may be indignant: as close as possible, in one list, put the brilliant poet Alexander Blok and, for example, the same Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
But, if we proceed only from the significance of names, from the highest quality of texts, then we can stop at the first thirty years of the twentieth century and get a very worthy list of 50 poets as a result. And then - do not continue.
It was possible to stop all world literature at the ancient period, ending with the "Bible". Hardly anything new has been said since then about man and the world.
Naturally, I tried to represent all periods of the twentieth century. Here is the Silver Age, here is military poetry, you can’t get away from the pop poetry of the “sixties”, balancing it with deep Russian “quiet lyrics”.
Of course, as an avid Russian patriot, I could make a list of the top 50 based on my own patriotic views. And this would also be a worthy list, from Alexander Blok and Nikolai Klyuev to Nikolai Rubtsov and Yuri Kuznetsov. But is it necessary to consciously impoverish our poetry? This is all our Russian heritage. These are the faces of our Russian culture in all its diversity. All poetic disputes and discussions are also ours. Let literary historians sort out the sharp controversy between Alexander Blok and Nikolai Gumilyov, between Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin, between Georgy Adamovich and Vladislav Khodasevich. We will read their brilliant poems.
I think that any other critic, of any direction and of any age, who has started something similar, will repeat the same names for a good two-thirds, only strengthening certain notes in the overall score. There are even plenty of absolute geniuses in Russia of the 20th century. From Blok and Yesenin, Mayakovsky and Tsvetaeva to Brodsky and Kuznetsov. Even the third row of our literature of the twentieth century would suit many European countries. Let other Russophobic or excessively pessimistic critics declare the complete exhaustion of our literature, the current poetic or prosaic emptiness. Completeness. In the same way, at the beginning of the century, all the books of poetry by Nikolai Gumilyov or Marina Tsvetaeva were scolded, Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev were reproached for decadence. The dogs are barking, and the caravan of Russian literature is moving forward, and does not notice this barking at all.
There were many great writers in Russia, equally noticeable both in their prose and in poetry. I was forced, with rare exceptions, not to include them in my poetic list, because they are adequately represented in my own ranks of the best Russian prose writers. These are Ivan Bunin, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Vladimir Nabokov, and Fyodor Sologub, and Andrey Platonov. I made an exception only for Andrei Bely, without whose poetry the overall picture would have been skewed, despite the fact that I could not pass by the brilliant novel "Petersburg". And for Konstantin Simonov, whose prose books I was simply forced to add to the alternative list by the readers of the newspaper, but without the poems "Wait for me ..." or "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ..." it is impossible to imagine our military poetry. And for Boris Pasternak, of course, first of all, a poet, but his sensational and Noble novel "Doctor Zhivago" became a sign of his time, which you cannot pass by. But in the list of the best poets, he has the right place.
By the way, I’ll immediately point out the so-called “conspiracy of the elite intelligentsia”, which imposed the famous “four” on the whole world: Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam ... Undoubtedly, these are wonderful Russian poets of the twentieth century, and they, of course, exist on my list. But it is also undoubted that Alexander Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov and Nikolai Zabolotsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin, Pavel Vasiliev and Alexander Tvardovsky... Such "fours" could be picked up in Russian poetry from a dozen, why are we, by someone's malicious intent, revolving around only one of them? For some reason, in literature, the number four has some kind of magic. Four leading futurists, four acmeists, four imaginists. Could represent all Russian poetry of the twentieth century and our four "B": Blok, Bely, Balmont, Bryusov ...
However, in the same way, in the second half of the twentieth century, our liberal literary scholars and critics imposed on the whole world another well-known "four": Andrei Voznesensky, Bulat Okudzhava, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Bella Akhmadulina, naturally, not noticing either Nikolai Rubtsov, or Yuri Kuznetsov, or Tatyana Glushkov, nor Gleb Gorbovsky. They miscalculated in only one thing: they did not notice the future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. Moreover, Joseph Brodsky did everything to point out to the entire literary world, already in his Nobel status, the false liberalism and Khlestakovism, the poetic pettiness of Yevtushenko and Voznesensky ... Maybe it will be enough for today's young and talented poets to squeeze into the new elite "four".
My list is far from elitist. First, 50 poets is not a group. Secondly, the list is made up of the best, most talented and brightest poets of various trends. Thirdly, he may be consciously somewhat provocative in order to hear the most diverse opinions of readers.
Of course, the closer to modernity, to the end of the twentieth century, the more controversial figures appear. Not everything has settled down, not everything has been weeded out. More flavor. But here already, I hope, my critical intuition, my literary feeling will help me.
So, reader, I bring to your attention 50 leading, most talented Russian poets of the twentieth century. I look forward to comments and business advice on the forum of the Zavtra newspaper: http://zavtra.ru or on our email address: [email protected]

1. Konstantin SLUCHEVSKY. This is undoubtedly the most original poet of the previous nineteenth century, a nobleman, guardsman, chamberlain, who made his debut in Nekrasov's Sovremennik in 1860. He was, as it were, ahead of his time, becoming the forerunner of the Russian Symbolists, perhaps that is why he was given the chance to crawl into the 20th century. On the eve of the century, Konstantin Sluchevsky, already at the age of sixty, published a six-volume collection of works, which so struck the older symbolists. At the beginning of the 20th century, he became close to Balmont and Bryusov, who willingly began to publish the aging poet of dissonances in their editions of the Symbolists. The last cycles of poems were published in 1903 in Russkiy vestnik. He died in Petersburg in 1904. Sluchevsky, as it were, connected two eras - the Golden and Silver Ages.
On a wonderful day, the sky is blue
was light;
They sounded from the church, shaking the tower,
Bells…
And whatever sound, then new visions
Incorporeal forces...
They made their descent to earth
Above the railing...

2. K.R. Alas, due to his court status, the Grand Duke did not have the right to indulge in literature. Therefore, Konstantin Konstantinovich ROMANOV stopped only at the initials, publishing his collections of poems without too much fiction "Poems by K.R.", "New Poems by K.R." etc. His poems were loved by the best Russian composers, including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who set many of them to music. Shortly before his death (and the Grand Duke died in 1915) he released a mystery based on the gospel story "King of the Jews".
When there is no urine to bear the cross,
When sadness cannot be overcome
We raise our eyes to heaven
Praying day and night
For the Lord to have mercy...

3. Innokenty ANNENSKY. Perhaps the first outstanding poet of the twentieth century.
His first collection of poems, Silent Songs, was published in 1904. The second, posthumous - "Cypress Casket", in 1910. All his life he worked in gymnasiums, taught ancient culture, Russian language and literature. In Tsarskoe Selo he was the director of the gymnasium and taught languages ​​to the young Nikolai Gumilyov. His poems had a huge impact on all Russian poetry of the twentieth century. Georgy Adamovich wrote: "Annensky is the only possible contender, together with Blok, for the Russian poetic throne since the death of Tyutchev and Nekrasov!" He boldly combined the psychology of the novel with high lyrics, for which he was called by the philosopher Georgy Fedotov "Chekhov in verse."
The river does not yet reign
But she is already drowning the blue ice;
The clouds are not melting yet
But the sun will finish the snow cup.

Through the pretend door
You disturb the heart with a rustle ...
You do not love yet, but believe:
You can't help but love...

4. Alexander BLOCK. In my opinion, the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century, a poetic pinnacle, like Alexander Pushkin in the 19th century. Whatever he wrote about: “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” or the heroic-romantic cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”, programmatic for early symbolism, full of foreboding new rebellious days; whether he analyzed folk mythology in "The Poetry of Conspiracies and Spells" or created his famous "Scythians" and the poem "The Twelve", he, like Pushkin, determined with his poems not only poetry, but also the history of Russia. He could indulge in trifles, he could be mistaken in something, but the secret higher purpose of poetry never left him. Like Pushkin, he is clearly underestimated in world poetry; like Russia itself, it is an eternal riddle for the world.
Oh, my Russia! My wife! To pain
We have a long way to go!
Our path is an arrow of the Tatar ancient will
Pierced us in the chest.

Our path is steppe, our path is in boundless anguish,
In your anguish. Oh Rus!
And even the darkness - night and foreign -
I'm not afraid…

5. Andrey BELIY. The most daring among the Symbolists, a deep mystic, very subtly feeling the word in all its manifestations. Growing up in a respectable professorial environment, he himself was close to "mystical anarchism." Like Blok, he wrote the poem "Christ is Risen" in 1918. Where his Christ is also easily correlated with the revolution. Andrei Bely was torn all his life between epico-romantic psychological prose and fantasy cosmogonic poetry. Unlike many others, it turned out to be a winner in both genres. His poetry, however, like prose, is always musical.
Cry, storm element,
In pillars of thunderous fire!
Russia, Russia, Russia -
Go crazy burning me!

In your fatal ruins
In your deaf depths -
Winged spirits flow
Your lucid dreams.

6. Konstantin BALMONT. He started out as a populist poet. Later, after meeting Valery Bryusov, he joined the Symbolists. Life was perceived as a dream. "In a haze of soft gold", or "in a golden mist". Many people were amazed at the rhythmic expressiveness of his verse. As Balmont himself wrote: "I have a calm conviction that before me, in general, they did not know how to write sonorous poetry in Russia." With an undoubted element of self-exaltation, characteristic not only of the symbolists, but of all the poetry of the Silver Age, in essence, Balmont was right:
I am the sophistication of Russian slow speech,
Before me are other poets - forerunners.
I first discovered in this speech deviations,
Perepevnye, angry, gentle ringing ...

7. Valery BRYUSOV. A clear ideologue of Russian symbolism. So he called his first three collections "Russian Symbolists" (1894-1895). He considered it his task "to express subtle, barely perceptible moods ..." For a long time he was considered the leader of a new poetic school. He became famous for his defiant poem for that time, "Oh, close your pale legs ..." He led the Symbolist magazine "Balance", developing both individualism and aestheticism in poetry. He promoted the theory of free art, as opposed to the populists. One of his best collections remains "City and Peace" ("Urbi et Orbi") (1903). As Alexander Blok wrote: "A number of unprecedented revelations, insights read brilliant ..."
A pale young man with burning eyes,
Now I give you three covenants:
First accept: do not live in the present,
Only the future is the realm of the poet.

Remember the second: do not sympathize with anyone,
Love yourself endlessly.
Keep the third: worship art,
Only to him, recklessly, aimlessly ...

8. Vyacheslav IVANOV. Even without his poetry, he remained in the history of literature as the famous "Ivanov Tower", where all famous poets, artists, philosophers gathered. A representative of the so-called religious symbolism, a connoisseur of antiquity. It is no coincidence that in 1924 he moved to Rome, where he lived until the end of his days. He believed that "the highest reality flows through the symbol." I consider his best collections of poems "Cor ardens" (1911) and "Tender Secret" (1912), where he combines the symbols of Christianity, "higher reality", love and death. In symbolism he saw the highest manifestation of the personality of the poet.
I drink slowly the honey sun light,
Thickening, like the bottom of a farewell ringing;
And the spirit was bright with sadness,
All completeness, no name.

9. Nikolay GUMILEV. One of my most favorite poets. I put his work above all the famous four, including above the work of his first wife Anna Akhmatova. If Alexander Blok is Pushkin of the 20th century, then Nikolai Gumilyov, I think, is comparable to Mikhail Lermontov. Romantic, hero, man of honor. He could have died in a duel, he could have died in the First World War, where he volunteered, although he was released for health reasons, at a time when Vladimir Mayakovsky and others found a place for themselves in the rear infirmaries. In 1918, when the first wave of emigration from Russia had already begun, he returned to it through Murmansk. He was shot on false charges of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy in 1921.
I also love his early "Romantic Flowers", his "Way of the Conquistadors", his "Captains", "Pillar of Fire", "Quiver". I admire the perfection of his late, mature poetry. In fact, he was the founder of acmeism, its main representative. He had a passion for adventure, courage and a high sense of honor. As a young man, until the end of his life he raved about wanderings: both real (through his beloved Africa), and imaginary, desired (for example, "Journey to China", "Porcelain Pavilion"). He managed to reach his poetic heights in poems of recent years, such as "The Sixth Sense", "The Lost Tram", "My Readers".
Where I am? So languid and so anxious
My heart beats in response:
You see the station where you can
Buy a ticket to the India of the Spirit.

Signboard... Bloodshot letters
They say - green - I know, here
Instead of cabbage and instead of swede
Dead heads for sale.

In a red shirt. With a face like an udder
The executioner also cut off my head,
She lay with others
Here, in a slippery box, at the very bottom ...

10. Anna Akhmatova. She went from an early passion for symbolism, then, together with her husband Nikolai Gumilyov, entered the group of acmeists, then on her own way, coming to lyrical epic, to tragedy and nationality in the highest sense of the word. "I was then with my people, Where my people, unfortunately, were..." Anna Akhmatova's voice remains courageous both during the years of repression ("Requiem") and during the war ("Courage", "Oath"). From intimate experiences and love passions of early poetry, it eventually grows to high tragedy, becoming the voice of the people.
We know what's on the scales now
And what is happening now.
The hour of courage has struck on our clocks,
And courage will not leave us.

It's not scary to lie down under the bullets of the dead,
It is not bitter to be homeless. -
And we will save you, Russian speech,
Great Russian word.

We'll carry you free and clean
And we will give to our grandchildren, and we will save from captivity
Forever!

11. Marina TSVETAEVA. The most brilliant poetess of Russia. A combination of antiquity and avant-garde, universality and Russianness. Combination of tragic romanticism with folk tales and folklore. Marina Tsvetaeva wrote: "folk element"? I myself am the people ... "And she was more right than many other poets. An undoubted masterpiece of the twenties was her collection of poems" Milestones "She sang the white army in the Swan Camp, and at the same time represented Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1928 in Paris, to to whom she was more creatively close than many of his associates.Sensual, extremely sincere lyricist and at the same time always a civil poet.All her life she was looking for the ultimate truth, and with it she passed away, forever remaining in Russian poetry.
I baptize you for a terrible flight:
Fly, young eagle!
You endured the sun without squinting, -
Is my youthful look heavy?

Tender and irrevocable
No one was looking after you...
I kiss you - through the hundreds
Separating years.

12. Osip MANDELSHTAM. He started as a symbolist, close to Vyacheslav Ivanov, but soon, with the formation of the Gumilev circle of acmeists, he sharply broke with the symbolists. Nikolai Gumilyov wrote that Mandelstam "opened the doors to his poetry for all the phenomena of life, living in time, and not just in eternity or a moment." He plays with epochs, uniting them in his poems, bringing together the distant, and all the most alien begins to serve in his poems of time. With him, the Russian language becomes high antiquity. At any time, fearing neither the power nor the evil winds of another space, he does not betray himself. Mandelstam is one of the first to challenge Stalin "We live without smelling the country under us ...", but he also wrote, perhaps, one of the best poems dedicated to him. Until the end of his life, "the earth is the last weapon" of the poet.
Depriving me of the seas, takeoff and expansion,
And giving the foot the emphasis of violent earth,
What have you achieved? Brilliant calculation:
You couldn't take away the moving lips...

13. Boris PASTERNAK. The result of the pre-revolutionary years for the poet was the collection "Over the Barriers. Poems of Different Years" (1929), for which he reworked all his best early poems from the period of passion for futurism. He appreciated Blok, but bowed before Mayakovsky. His best poems seemed to absorb life. On the one hand, "What, dear, do we have the Millennium in the yard?" On the other hand, until the end of his days he actively responded to the existence of his terrible time, wrote historical and revolutionary poems, in "The High Illness" he recalls Lenin, and the sensational novel "Doctor Zhivago" itself is one of the faces of the twentieth century. However, in my opinion, "Poems from the novel" is much stronger than the novel itself. After Ivan Bunin - the second Russian Nobel Prize winner, however, largely for political reasons.
We were human. We are eras.
We were shot down, and rushes in a caravan,
Like a tundra under tender sighs
And pistons and sleepers rush.
Let's fly, break in and touch,
Let's spin in a whirlwind of crows ...

14. Nikolay Klyuev. My great Olonets countryman. The proletarian poet V. Kirillov, who seemed to be alien to him, wrote in the years when both Sergey Yesenin and Pyotr Oreshin renounced Klyuev, “The sad genius of my land ...” really sad prophet of Russia. In the poem "Pogorelshchina", the songwriter Nikolai testifies to the whole world about the greatest beauty of "Miracle Russia" burnt by the "human rabble". I appreciated him in his Arkhangelsk exile and in many respects distant to him Joseph Brodsky. As Nikolai Tryapkin, the successor of his ancient Russian mode, wrote, "the jet of the invisible well" of Klyuev's poetry continues to flow with a quiet ringing today. This is a true apostle of Russian folk poetry. The great Klyuev poem "Pogorelshchina" was published after the poet's death in Tomsk in 1937.
And over Russia branches and multiplies
Babylon board border ...
Rise, shine, burn
Maternal prophetic darkness...

15. Sergei Yesenin. The long-awaited miracle of the twentieth century in Russian poetry. Yesenin's classic love lyrics are as penetrating as the lyrics of Dante and Heine. The tragic poetry of his last years gives an ominous red glow to the whole century. That's really who was equal to his people and in its joys, and in its misfortunes. And no matter how hard he sometimes tries to abandon his "country of birch calico", plunge into the abyss of his "black man", the light from his poetry does not disappear until the end of his life, and he becomes a piercing lonely singer of Russia doomed to misfortunes and tragedies of the entire twentieth century . Those who recognize him as the poetic pinnacle of the Russian century are hardly mistaken. Unless Alexander Blok is equal to him.
Mysterious world, my ancient world,
You, like the wind, calmed down and sat down.
Here they squeezed the village by the neck
Stone arms of the highway.

So scared in the snow
There was a ringing horror.
Hello you, my black death,
I'm going out to meet you!

16. Igor SEVERYANIN. Many will consider his name superfluous in the list of 50 poets of the twentieth century. In fact, he did not reach the heavenly heights of Blok and Yesenin, he was not as tragic and thunderous as Mayakovsky, but with all the desire, his name cannot be removed from the poetry of the twentieth century. Severyanin is unique just like his "Pineapples in Champagne", "I am a genius, Igor Severyanin ..." This enchanting combination of futurism and symbolism, nationality and variety was later repeated only by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I often visit the Estonian manor Toila, where the poet spent almost the entire post-revolutionary period of his life, and I am amazed at the abyss between his two lives: noisy, burlesque, variety, champagne in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and calm, meditative, lonely in charming, but deaf Estonian shtetl. It seems that no one prevented the poet from leaving Toila for Prague, Berlin, Paris and other noisy centers of Russian emigration, where success awaited him again. Even in provincial Tallinn, the king of poets had nothing to do with his loudly boiling poetry, to say nothing of a deaf peasant manor. The northerner did not want to leave. Back in the early twenties, he occasionally traveled with concerts in Europe, then stopped. And he wrote good poems imbued with love for Russia in his house. However, he comes from the Vologda hinterland. Therefore, the pseudonym: Severyanin.
In those days when dreams swarmed
In the hearts of people, transparent and clear,
How good, how fresh were the roses
My love, and glory, and spring!

Summers have passed, and tears are pouring everywhere ...
There is neither a country, nor those who lived in the country ...
How good, how fresh roses are now
Memories of the past day!

But the days go by - the storms are already subsiding.
Back to home Russia is looking for paths…
How good, how fresh the roses will be,
My country has thrown me into a coffin!

17. Velimir KHLEBNIKOV. The most Russian of all avant-garde artists in Russian poetry. Living, as it were, inside the Russian language, in the pagan past of ancient Russia. Connoisseur of mythology, Slavic history and folklore. The word itself became the meaning of his poetry, fascinated all lovers and connoisseurs of the Russian language. Blessed prophet of Russian poetry, utopian dreamer. From an early zaum, he goes to the co-creation of the Russian language. His language experiments influenced the poetry of Mayakovsky and Pasternak, Tsvetaeva and Zabolotsky. It was believed that he is a "poet for poets", but many of his poetic finds delight all ordinary connoisseurs of poetry.
Today I will go again
There, for life, for bargaining, for the market,
And I will lead an army of songs
With the surf of the market in a duel!

18. Vladimir MAYAKOVSKY. A gem of Russian poetry of the 20th century. Doesn't fit into any format. Neither Soviet nor anti-Soviet. They admire him, but they constantly try to chop off, castrate somewhere. Perhaps the most famous of Russian poets for the whole world. Recently he appeared in a TV show dedicated to his work, and was amazed at what narrow limits they want to drive him into today. Separate his "real poetry" from everything supposedly superficial, in this case - Soviet. And he was always real in everything, that's why he left tragically, like a real poet who does not fit into any framework. I think that he has a real one - and "Could you play a nocturne On a flute of drainpipes?", And amazing love lyrics, and "After all, if the stars are lit, it means that someone needs it ...", but do the current aesthetes do not feel the scope and power of the poems "Good" and "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"? "Two in a room, me and Lenin A photograph on a white wall..." One may not agree with this or that meaning of his poems, but one cannot but admire the spirit of a rebel and reformer, "an agitator, a bawler, a ringleader..."
I know the power of words, I know the words of alarm.
They are not the ones that the lodges applaud.
From such words the coffin breaks
Walk with four of your oak legs.
Sometimes they get thrown out. Not printed, not published.
But the word rushes, tightening the girths,
Ages are ringing, and trains are crawling
Lick poetry's callused hands...

19. Nikolay ZABOLOTSKY. I consider Nikolai Zabolotsky the most underestimated of the Russian geniuses of the twentieth century. I appreciate his poetry above the poetry of the famous "four". Started as an Oberiut, and even wrote the band's most important manifestos. The influence of the poetics of the latest Russian avant-garde of the twenties - the Oberiut one, was reflected in his famous "Columns", published in 1929. But in the same year, the poem "The Triumph of Agriculture" was begun. Any poetic genius - from Blok to Mayakovsky, from Yesenin to Gumilyov - quickly outgrows the framework of the groups nurtured by him (Symbolists, Futurists, Acmeists, Imagists, Oberiuts). The same thing happened with Zabolotsky. I decided to write a set of Russian epics, like Lönrot with his Kalevala, unfortunately, the plan did not materialize. His grotesque helped him to better see the fullness of life, to avoid excessive pathos. I would compare his poetry with the painting of Pavel Filonov, with whom they were well acquainted. This humanization of all living things, natural pantheism give volume and grandeur of the idea even to seemingly comic, ironic verses. He easily combined nationality and philosophy.
Somewhere in a field near Magadan,
In the midst of dangers and troubles
In the fumes of frozen fog
They followed the sledges.

From soldiers. From their tinned throats
From bandits of a gang of thieves
Only the neighborhood was saved here
Yes, outfits in the city for flour.

So they walked in their pea coats -
Two unfortunate Russian old men.
Remembering native huts
And longing for them from afar ...

20. Daniil KHARMS. He started together with Alexander Vvedensky in a group of wise men, then became one of the organizers of OBERIU (the association of the only real art), the soul of this association. During his lifetime, he published mainly his wonderful children's poems. He died during the blockade of Leningrad in a prison psychiatric hospital.
Already the dawn removes the stars and puts out the lights on Nevsky Prospekt,
Already the conductor in the tram scolds the drunk for the fifth time,
The Neva cough has already woken up and is choking the old man by the throat.
And I write poems to Natasha and do not close my bright eyes.

21. Pavel Vasiliev. The poet is bright, with a huge energy of verse, spontaneous, like Russia itself. His poetry, like Cossack lava, rushed across the steppe. He gained popularity as a truly folk poet, the successor of Yesenin's line, but time was already moving in the other direction. He died in the camp at the age of 27. Alas, among those who called him a bully and almost a fascist was Maxim Gorky. The powerful, emotional lyrical-epic elements of "Songs about the death of the Cossack army" or "Salt Riot" did not fit into the new content of the era. Like almost all the great poets of Russia, Pavel Vasiliev did not finish his song to the end.
Parent steppe, accept mine,
Hearts stained with bright blood
Steppe song! Leaning towards the headboard
All your herbs, I sing you alone!

To the melodious sound I turn,
His silver will not tarnish,
So invest, O steppe, in your son's hand
Crooked hawk feather.

22. Georgy IVANOV. His lyrics are one of the pinnacles of twentieth-century poetry. His "piece of eternity". On the one hand, extreme emigrant pessimism - "he lived a meaningless life In the wind and in the south", on the other hand, the foresight that in the future he "will return to Russia in poetry." Hopelessly devoted to Russia, but where is his Russia? "And only in Kolyma and Solovki is Russia the one that will live for centuries." He began to write back in Russia, but he became a truly great poet already in exile. A stern monument to all of Russia in the 20th century. It is no coincidence that he was considered the black demon of Russian poetry, who created "unnecessary masterpieces out of the void." This is the Paris disintegration of the Russian atom.
It's good that there is no King.
It's good that there is no Russia.
It's good that there is no God.

Only yellow dawn.
Only ice stars.
Only millions of years...

23. Arseny NESMELOV. On the other side of the world, far from both Russia and Paris, a bright, but the same tragic star of the Russian Far Eastern emigration as Georgy Ivanov's, rose - the poetry of Kappel's officer Arseniy Nesmelov. He lived in Harbin, where his best books of poetry were published. He was called "Boyan of Russian Harbin". Ends his life as a poetic ideologist of Russian fascism. Konstantin Rodzaevsky wrote in the preface to Nesmelov's book of poems "Only such": "New people who have decided to build their Russia at all costs are looking for new poems to embody in verse their will to live - the will to win. This poetry is the poetry of strong-willed nationalism: poems about the motherland and the struggle for it.
Russia! From a terrible delirium
A two-year fatal struggle
Your golden victory
He enthrones the golden...

Under the sign of great fortune
The last days are passing by
And again the old tasks
Their lights lit up.

Steppe snowy spaces,
Lesov blue line ...
Planned the motto of the All-Slavic
On the ringing metal of the shield...

24. Boris POPLAVSKY. "The Prince of Montparnasse" - in the apt expression of the poet Nikolai Otsup, jarred many with some kind of wild mixture of originality and depravity. But as Dmitry Merezhkovsky argued, Poplavsky's talent alone would be enough to justify the entire literary emigration. Even his most irreconcilable opponent, Gleb Struve, wrote: “If we were to make a questionnaire among Parisian writers and critics about the most significant poet of the younger emigre generation, there is no doubt that the majority of votes would be cast for Poplavsky ...” He, a risky, nervous adventurer, with difficulty perceived by the poets of the first emigration, not wanting to consider him his successor. And yet, he was. He was a poet by birth, by the structure of the soul. Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky was born in Moscow on May 24, 1903, died in Paris on October 9, 1935, almost reaching the age of Christ. Whether this poisoning was accidental, no one knows, but it was natural. Emigration did not see the meaning of life outside the homeland.
Christmas, Christmas!
Why such silence?
Why is everything dark and outlined clearly everywhere?
Behind the wall New Year.
The sound of belated trams
It fades in the distance, rising to the North Star.
How clean and empty!
How indifferent everything is in the world!
Everything is frozen like ice.
Everyone turned to the moon for a long time ...

25. Eduard BAGRITSKY. I remember when I was collecting the poetry of the Russian avant-garde, I came across the first Odessa almanacs "Auto in the Clouds", "Silver Trumpets". There he found a very young futuristic Bagritsky. But another poet came from Odessa to Moscow, a brilliant imitator, a romantic, a bird-catcher. A cruel, by the way, profession, akin to an executioner. The birder will imitate the singing of any bird, and then lure a free bird into a cage. However, Eduard Bagritsky does not hide his gift as a birder. "How I, born of a Jew, Circumcised on the seventh day, Became a bird-catcher - I don't know myself..." The bird-catcher knows and feels nature, knows and feels poetry, knows and feels beauty... The beauty of a young noblewoman who once rejected him. And takes it by force. However, he was a bright birder.
I take you for being timid
Was my age, for being shy.
For the shame of my homeless ancestors,
for a random bird chirping!

I take you as revenge on the world
From which I could not get out!
Take me to empty bowels
Where the grass cannot grow,
Maybe my night seed
Will fertilize your desert...

26. Ilya SELVINSKY. He, too, was, as it were, from the breed of "bird-catchers." But, amazingly, being in some sense the executioners of Nikolai Gumilyov, both Bagritsky and Selvinsky learned a lot from him, and imitated him for a long time. Even in my youth, being carried away by the Russian avant-garde, I, of course, read the poems of the leader of the constructivists, Ilya Selvinsky. The poem "Ulyalaevshchina" especially fell on his soul. I don’t know why, but Bagritsky in his “Duma about Opanas” and Selvinsky, also a southerner, sang in their poems the violent elemental Makhnovism, which, if they fell into her hands, would have finished them off. Ilya Selvinsky was a master, lived a long time, wrote a lot, but still his early poems remained unsurpassed. As the same Bagritsky wrote in his poems about the idols of the 20th years: "And in the travel bag - matches and tobacco, Tikhonov, Selvinsky, Pasternak ..."
Chieftains in the hollow, chieftains on the river
Putnikov for zebras: "Whose are you, boy, huh?"
The Steppe splashed with robbers, like grasshoppers,
Yes, I was just waiting for the leader.

Ulyalayev buv is so - verified viko,
Dirka in the pid beard tai in the ear of the serg -
Zrodu ne bacheno such a person,
Yak toy Ulyalayev Serga.

27. Alexander TVARDOVSKY. His "Book about a fighter" immediately became a world event. She was recognized by the stern Ivan Bunin. "Vasily Terkin" overshadowed both "Country Ant" and "Beyond the distance". It was in the thirties that a new rural poetry came into being, different from the poetry of Yesenin and Klyuev. I think its most talented representatives were Tvardovsky and Isakovsky, Fatyanov and Yashin, Smelyakov and Dmitry Kedrin. They were the builders of the new. Perhaps this was the best thing that Soviet literature created. But it is characteristic that at the end of life everyone was drawn to what they themselves destroyed. It is no coincidence that the last feat of Alexander Tvardovsky is to help, as the editor of Novy Mir, the rise of rural prose and quiet lyrics.
I know it's not my fault
The fact that others did not come from the war,
The fact that they - who is older, who is younger -
Stayed there, and it's not about the same thing,
That I could, but could not save, -
It's not about that, but still, still, still...

28. Mikhail ISAKOVSKY. He certainly said to himself: "I lost my peasant rights, But I remained a village forever..." together with his songs, defending his native land during the war, he restored the broken connection with the land, with the people. It's time to tell the truth. Tvardovsky writes to him: “For me, first of all, your rare among our brethren, almost unparalleled, as it were, innate truthfulness was a model ...” The people immediately sensed it in the songs “Katyusha”, “Give me an accordion in my hands”, “ In the forest near the front" ... But the bitter "Enemies burned their own hut" became a real masterpiece of Russian song poetry.
A.T. Tvardovsky wrote about Isakovsky's songs: "The words of Isakovsky's songs are, with few exceptions, poems that have an independent content and sound, a living poetic organism, by itself, as it were, suggesting the melody with which he is destined to merge and exist together. Isakovsky is not an" author texts" and not a "songwriter", but a poet whose poems are organically inherent in the beginning of song, which, by the way, has always been one of the most characteristic features of Russian lyrics.
Enemies burned their own hut,
They killed his entire family.
Where should the soldier go now?
To whom to bear their sorrow?

A soldier went in deep sorrow
At the crossroads of two roads
Found a soldier in a wide field
Grass overgrown hillock.

There is a soldier - and like clods
Stuck in his throat.
The soldier said: "Meet, Praskovya,
Hero - her husband.

Prepare a meal for the guest
Lay a wide table in the hut, -
Your day, your holiday of return
I came to you to celebrate ... "

Nobody answered the soldier
Nobody met him
And only a warm summer wind
Grass grave rocked ...

29. Ivan ELAGIN. From the powerful Far Eastern poetic clan of the Elagins-Matveevs. Grandfather N.P. Matveev wrote poetry and short stories. Father is a bright futurist Venedikt March, about whom I once wrote at the time of my avant-garde youth. Our author, the wonderful poetess Novella Matveeva, Elagin's cousin, is from the same family. Yes, and his wife Olga Anstey was a good poetess of the second emigration. I met her in New York, asked about her husband. And yet, in his poetic family, and in the poetry of the second emigration, and in general in Russian poetry, Ivan Elagin is a star of the first magnitude. All writers of the second post-war emigration took pseudonyms for themselves, fearing extradition to Stalin in accordance with the Yalta agreements. Matveev became Elagin, remembering the Elagin Bridge in St. Petersburg.
But he never forgot about Russian culture, he was a traditionalist. For all his universality, he considered himself a national Russian poet: "Not in a dark barn on straw, Not somewhere in the attic, - As in my father's ancestral house, I live in the Russian language ..." If the second emigration gave only Ivan Elagin, it would already that would justify itself.
My life has not been a failure
Although I did not walk on red carpets,
And he walked like a wandering organ grinder,
In strangers unfamiliar yards.

Fly me around the world with a fragment,
Walk around the world to my heart's content
Before the Russian regiment
I'll ever fall as a star ...

30. Dmitry KLENOVSKY. The last Russian acmeist. The last Tsarskoye Selo poet, head over heels in love with Gumilyov. And never forgave his executioners. As the poet began to publish in Russia, the first book of poems "Palette" was published in 1917. But his talent really blossomed in emigration, in Germany, where he moved from Russia in 1942. He is widely published in exile, and along with Elagin becomes the leader of the literary second wave from the "DP Archipelago". He tries not to break with Russia in his poetry: "I serve you with a high word, In a foreign land I serve you ..." He continued the classical line of Russian poetry.
At the turn of the last days
I do not need anything else,
It's cold around me
My transparent autumn.

Falls blue dusk
On heavy eyelids
And it's so good to be forever
Alone with yourself.

31. Yaroslav SMELYAKOV. Even those who did not know such a word "poetry" loved his poetry. “If I get sick, I won’t go to the doctors ...”, or “The good girl Lida lives on Yuzhnaya Street ...” Simple, understandable and so close to everyone. It remains a mystery why such a simple poet, beloved by the people, has such a difficult fate. One camp, the second camp, and so four terms ... However, the camps did not change his naive and simple soul. He did not even write about them, he did not touch his soul. He did not continue our Silver Age, but he did not reject it either. He was devoid of tragedy and full of love. In essence, he was born for happiness, so it came to him in poetry, and therefore in life. What about camps?
If I get sick.
I won't go to the doctors
I turn to friends
(Do not think that this is delirious):
Lay down the steppe for me,
Curtain my windows with mist
Put at the head
Night star...

32. Arseny TARKOVSKY. The poet published his first poems back in 1926, but then for several decades he went into oriental translations, where he achieved both recognition and success. But all these state prizes and awards ended when they read the poet's bitter confession: "Why did I sell my best years for other people's words? Oh, oriental translations, How your head hurts." The poet fought, was seriously wounded, wrote heartfelt poems: "My Russia, Russia, home, land and mother ..." His poem about the Russian land is somewhat comparable to the poem "The People" by Joseph Brodsky. Vadim Kozhinov classified him as a "neoclassic" who continued the classical tradition of Russian poetry. Anna Akhmatova wrote: "This new voice in Russian poetry will sound for a long time..." So it sounds, pure and sublime.
For the fact that in the world I lived clumsily,
For the fact that I did not serve you with falsehood,
For having a non-mortal body,
I am involved in your wondrous fate.

To you, weary, hands will stretch
With such painful love to hug,
I will go again for Velikiye Luki,
So that I can take the pains of the cross again.

And the dirt on your roads is not sweet,
And your skinny clay is salty.
You will be kept by the tears of a soldier
And widow's mortal sorrow is strong.

33. Konstantin SIMONOV. Whatever he wrote about, he was always a winner, just like Sergei Mikhalkov. He has always been a winner in life. But, despite all his high positions and connection with the authorities, he knew how to write real poetry and prose. And he did not stray from the high rhythm, as Nikolai Tikhonov, Ilya Selvinsky, Sergey Narovchatov did. But, speaking of the poetry of Konstantin Simonov, first of all, you remember the war. For it is no longer poetry, something higher. Like air, like a blood transfusion for the wounded. Like life itself. “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region…”, “The major brought the boy on a gun carriage…”, “Attack”, the furious “Kill him!”, and, of course, sounding like the prayer of every soldier “Wait for me”.
Later he switched to prose and also achieved great success, most notably The Living and the Dead. But forever, remembering Konstantin Simonov, you remember him "Wait for me, and I'll be back":
Wait for me and I will come back.
Just wait a lot
Wait for sadness
yellow rain,

Wait for the snow to come
Wait when it's hot
Wait when others are not expected
Forgetting yesterday.

Wait when from distant places
Letters will not come
Wait until you get bored
To all who are waiting together.
......
Wait for me and I will come back,
All deaths out of spite.
Who did not wait for me, let him
He will say: - Lucky.

Do not understand those who did not wait for them,
Like in the middle of a fire
Waiting for your
You saved me

How I survived, we will know
Only you and I -
You just knew how to wait
Like no one else.

34. Vasily FYODOROV. Siberian folk poet. Lively and wise, daring, original. In some ways, he continued the line of his fellow countrymen Sergei Markov and Leonid Martynov. First of all, he became famous for his poems "Sold Venus", "The Marriage of Don Juan", "Wild Honey", "White Grove", "Protopope Habakkuk" ... Of the lyrical poems, his collection "Not to the left of the heart" caused great controversy. His lyrics were almost always civil and sharply polemical. "Hearts that are not occupied by us, Without delay, our enemy will take..." Or: "History is tired of the war, But it will not get tired of fighting the war! .." He had a great influence on young Siberian poets.
We argued
0 sense of beauty,
And he said with the innocence of a baby:
- I'm for the art of the left. And you?
- For the left...
But not to the left of the heart.

35. Boris Slutsky. Master of severe realism. Always, since childhood, highly appreciated his poetry. In his attitude to both poetry and reality, he is in many ways similar to Mayakovsky, but not in form, not in style, but in the monumentality and tragedy of the verse. He saw the whole truth of the war, but many could learn from his dedication even today. This is a true lyrical epic of the twentieth century. Merciless to himself and to his poetry. His front-line poems are comparable to those of Alexander Tvardovsky. His poetry was perhaps the greatest influence on the subsequent generation of young poets of various views.
The soldier is lying.
He could lie otherwise
He could lie with his wife in his bed,
He could not tear the blood-soaked moss,
He could…
Could he? Like? Really?
No, he couldn't.
The military registration and enlistment office sent him subpoenas.
Officers were walking beside him, walking.
In the rear, the tribunal pounded with a typewriter.
And if he hadn't knocked, could he?
Hardly.
He has no agenda, he would have gone himself.
And not for fear - for conscience and honor.
A soldier is lying - in the blood lies, in a large one.
And he doesn't want to complain...

36. David SAMOILOV. I visited him in Pärnu, in an Estonian town, where he fenced himself off from the Moscow poetic bustle and petty literary skirmishes and squabbles. Yes, and Estonian fortresses and knightly castles corresponded to his historical poems. Paradoxically, they were close in age and similar in poetic thinking - Vasily Fedorov and David Samoilov. The same love for Russian and world history, often even similar stories, for example, about Don Juan. And where there is history, there inevitably appears high philosophicity, a certain meditativeness, a tendency to reflect ...
And yet, I value David Samoilov above all else, like almost all the poets of the military generation, his military poems. First of all, his classic - "Forties, fatal ..." In my opinion, our military poetry is a unique phenomenon in world poetry. Take and publish the best military poems of all our poets together.
forties, fatal,
military and frontline
Where are the funeral notices
And echelon interchanges.

Rolled rails hum.
Spacious. Cold. High.
And fire victims, fire victims
Wandering from west to east...

37. Nikolay TRYAPKIN. This remarkable poet was the symbol of The Day newspaper. He came to us every day, we helped him in all troubles and printed all his poems. And what was left, he carried it to Our Contemporary. In fact, he has always been out of time and space. Our brownie, and for whom the goblin. He began to write poetry in the Russian North, where he worked for a long time, where he established himself as a poet. He never paid attention to censorship, but surprisingly, the censorship did not pay attention to him either. His prayers were heard and printed even in the Stalin years. I think this is the last Russian folk poet, because there is no longer that people, nor that language.
No, I did not come out of the people.
Oh black boned breed
From your cool kind
I didn't go anywhere...

38. Andrey Voznesensky. The most talented poet, but all his life playing according to the laws of show business. It is unlikely that he was cunning when he wrote. When he sang of the October Revolution and when he cursed, when he destroyed the tsar and when he glorified him. Poet of the fleeting time. What time lives, the poet also lives. Perhaps for this he was hated by Joseph Brodsky, calling him a fake avant-garde artist. He was the singer of the thaw in Russia, but he was also the singer of the USSR in the West, he could be the singer of the monarchy, now he is the singer of capitalism with a cracked voice. (When they compile an anthology of poems about the Soviet Union and the Communists, there will be no place for poets of quiet lyrics, but the poems of Voznesensky, Yevtushenko and other sixties will occupy a prominent place.) A brilliant master of verse. Perhaps everyone will find in Voznesensky a verse that is consonant with him. Sometimes Voznesensky, as a talented poet, has a nostalgia for traditional national values, and then poems like "Sang Tvardovsky in Florence at night" are born. A great poet who has not acquired the greatness of the idea.
They lie that Lenin was in exile.
(Who is outside the homeland is an emigrant).
All Russia, river, hot
He carried in himself like a talent! ..

In a jalopy, like a devil in a flask,
isolated, unkind,
Among the great powers...
The head of emigration passed by -
Tsar!
Emigrants settled in Zimny.
And in Russia the heart itself -
Beat in the city with a distant name
Longjumeau…

39. Yevgeny YEVTUSHENKO. Leader of the poetic thaw. Perhaps Yevtushenko in poetry and the recently deceased Aksyonov in prose determined the entire direction of the thaw. But with the end of the thaw, he did not go into exile, but became the plenipotentiary of Soviet poetry throughout the world, the plenipotentiary of the free Soviet word. Traveled more than 80 countries, was a personal friend of the security officers and the Central Committee. He did not write for the intelligentsia, he wrote for the whole people, he wrote brightly, figuratively, with talent, and if he continued the line of Sergei Yesenin, Pavel Vasiliev, Alexander Tvardovsky, he would have been a poet of all Russia for a good half century. It was not spontaneous freedom that ruined him (as if Yesenin or Vasiliev were deprived of this spontaneous freedom), it was the desire to smile at everyone - from Stalin to Yeltsin, the desire to be glorified in the West. That's how he stood all his life vraskoryachku. He wrote masterpieces, for example, "Do the Russians Want Wars", and then there are chapters from the "Bratskaya Hydroelectric Power Station". In an effort to embrace and accept everything, he fell into superficiality. And we used to argue at the Literary Institute who would be the first to celebrate Kennedy's death or Gagarin's flight - Yevtushenko or Voznesensky? Nowhere to go, they were the two main state poets of the Brezhnev era. Unfortunately, both, as poets, died before their physical death. I remembered his poem from Kazan University about liberals. Just about our time. Replace Shchedrin with Yuri Petukhov or Yuri Mukhin, and everything is the same. If only one pig grunted?!
Hey liberals! Showed off for so long
And you are so confused, sirs!
What is the weather like in the empire today?
Civil Twilight.

When they covered Shchedrin's magazine
The rulers of the city of Glupov
Shchedrin chuckled: "Well, at least one
The liberal pig grunted ... "

Farewell, "Domestic Notes"!
The female students withered, colleagues turned sour.
What is the current picture in the empire?
Tina…

40. Bella AKHMADULINA. I do not hide, one of my favorite poetesses, about which we argued a lot with Tatyana Glushkova. Being one of the sixties, Bella Akhmadulina never fell into the extreme of superficiality and inclusiveness, did not skip around the world, resigning herself to all the authorities. She always painted herself, her world, her vision of time. The beauty of Russian poetry itself was above all the shifts of time. The rhythm and melody of her verse are always varied. She highly values ​​friendship and does not betray even former friends. She has compassion and pity, for which she is adored by many readers. And this most poetic dreamer calls herself almost a simple storyteller. Its essence is in the poem "The Tale of the Rain".
The old syllable attracts me.
There is charm in ancient speech.
She happens to be our words
And more modern and sharper ...

41. Vladimir VYSOTSKY. Like Alexander Fatyanov and Mikhail Isakovsky, he entered great poetry with his songs. From the generation of children of the war, "children of 1937". He already treated the sixties with irony, he was a singer of timelessness, only dreaming of the heroic eras of the war, Chelyuskinites, great ideas. But fragments of the great style of Soviet poetry were firmly embedded in him. And therefore his favorite song is "Get up, the country is huge." Through all the irony one feels nostalgia for greatness, for heroism, for scale. So he exalted climbers, then artists, then sailors. He laughed at the vulgarity and sobbed at the departed heroes. Dreamed of spring Russia. That's why he was - the bard of all Russia.
In the blue sky, pierced by bell towers, -
Copper bell, copper bell
Whether rejoiced, or angry ...
Domes in Russia are covered with pure gold -
So that the Lord notices more often.
I stand, as before an eternal riddle,
Before the great and fabulous country -
Before salty-but bitter-sour-sweet,
Blue, spring, rye ...

42. Joseph BRODSKY. Poet of great talent. Born by Russian culture and continuing its traditions, from Derzhavin to Batyushkov, from Tsvetaeva to Zabolotsky. Undoubtedly, he was an imperial poet until the end of his days, rushing around the triangle of three great empires: Russian, Roman and American. He was close to Akhmatova, but her poetry was alien to Brodsky. Delicate enough in everyday life, in poetry he was adamant and firm. I knew him in St. Petersburg, visited him in one and a half rooms, and I note that in terms of characters, as in something and poetry, they are close to Yuri Kuznetsov, but maybe that's why they never communicated with each other. Gorgeous are his love lyrics dedicated to his Beatrice, the Leningrad artist Marina Basmanova. Until the end of his life, both in Russia and in exile in America, he considered himself an exclusively Russian poet. Yes, and in everyday life he admitted that "I am Russian, although a Jew ..." Everywhere he promoted Russian culture. He acutely experienced the separation of Ukraine from Russia and Ukrainian nationalist attacks against Russians. He wrote: "It's not for us, katsaps, to accuse them of treason. ... Only when you come to die, bullies, You will wheeze, scratching the edge of the mattress, lines from Alexander, and not Taras's nonsense." He himself considered himself a stepson of Russian culture, but I think Russia adopted him long ago. Anna Akhmatova called his poem “The People” brilliant: “Either I don’t understand anything, or it’s brilliant like poetry, but in the sense of the moral path, this is what Dostoevsky talks about in The House of the Dead: not a shadow of anger or arrogance, which he orders to be afraid of. Fedor Mikhailovich...
My people, who do not bow their heads,
My people, who have preserved the habit of grass:
In the hour of death, clutching grains in handfuls,
Having retained the ability to grow on the northern stone ...

... I fall down to the people, I fall down to the great river.
I drink a great speech, dissolve in its language.
I fall to the river, endlessly flowing along the eyes
Through the centuries, right in us, past us, beyond us.

43. Gleb GORBOVSKII. One of the most famous and talented living Russian poets. As Joseph Brodsky used to say: "Of course, this is a more talented poet than, say, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky, Rozhdestvensky, anyone." And later, in a conversation with S. Volkov: "If that anthology (of Russian poetry of the twentieth century. - V.B.) that you are talking about includes Klyuev's Pogorelshchina or, say, Gorbovsky's poems, then Babi Yar "There's nothing to do there." He became famous for his thieves' songs "I'm sitting on the bunk, like a king on a name day ..." or "Oh you, breasts, oh you, breasts, women's people wear you ...", but the most penetrating, not just lyrical, but also philosophical poems, close to the Tyutchev tradition , extol the most subtle connoisseurs of poetry. For all his freedom in life and in poetry, he is a consistent patriot and statesman, which always amazes St. Petersburg liberals. A man out of everyday life, lives in some kind of closet, but he doesn’t seem to need more.
Russia. Volnitsa. Prison.
Temple on the pool. Faith in the word.
And there is no grave mound
At Gumilyov.

Mystery. Woe from the mind.
People's prison. Nations drama.
And there is no grave mound
At Mandelstam.

Patience. Long winter
Longer than in the revival of faith ...
But - there is no grave mound
And ... at Homer.

44. Nikolay RUBTSOV. It is natural in Russian classical poetry. He is unexpected and hardly fits into the poetry of his generation. They were waiting for him, but they were not waiting for him. The fate of Nikolai Rubtsov is the fate of all of Russia. How he hated his disorder, his orphanhood, his nomadic life. And with bright lyrical verses he denied his own drunkenness, his discomfort, his orphanhood. He, perhaps even unconsciously, threw out his powerful challenge to those forces that doomed his Russia to lack of spirituality and despondency.
Russia, Russia - wherever I look ...
For all your suffering and struggles -
I love yours, Russia, antiquity,
Your lights, graveyards and prayers,
I love your huts and flowers,
And skies burning with heat
And the whisper of willows by the muddy water,
I love forever, until eternal rest ...
Russia, Russia! Save yourself, save yourself!
Look again into your forests and valleys
They came from all sides,
Other times Tatars and Mongols.
They carry a black cross on their flags,
They baptized the sky with crosses,
And it's not the forests that I see around,
And the forest of crosses in the vicinity of Russia ...

45. Yuri Kuznetsov. In my opinion, this is the last great poet of the past century. It was not Russian poetry that ended with him (I am an optimist and I believe that great poets have always been and will always be), but that Russian traditional poetry that dominated us. Perhaps the national tradition most vividly expressed by Yuri Kuznetsov left along with old Russia, along with its bearers, such as Nikolai Tryapkin and Yuri Kuznetsov. For me, Yuri Kuznetsov is a poet of global significance, world culture, and even world avant-garde. They left almost simultaneously - two world counterweights in Russian poetry: Yuri Kuznetsov and Joseph Brodsky. The mediocrity of both the liberals and the patriots has become easier to breathe. Yuri Kuznetsov and Dante, and Homer, and the Olympic gods were peers, interlocutors - it was the poetry of world ideas and world elements: "We will gallop to France-city On the ruins of great ideas.<...>But no one will mourn other people's sacred stones. Except for us ... "At the same time, from the world Olympic heights, from the heights of the world avant-garde, he boldly descended into folklore, found a place for himself in the Russian tradition. As Evgeny Rein said: "He is one of the most tragic poets of Russia from Simeon of Polotsk to the present day. And therefore that part of Russian history, about which it was once said that Moscow is the Third Rome, ends with the great appearance of Kuznetsov ... "
I drank from my father's skull
For truth on earth
For the fairy tale of a Russian face
And the right path in the darkness.
The sun and moon rose
And clinked glasses with me.
And I repeated the names
Forgotten by the earth.

46. ​​Oleg CHUKHONTSEV. Pochvennik by conviction, by birth, by his poetics. I am sure, if it were not for the absolutely stupid reprisal of censorship because of his "Narrative of Kurbsky", he would have been a regular author of "Our Contemporary", be friends with Nikolai Rubtsov and Nikolai Tryapkin (although I think he treats them well anyway). And if this love for Russia is a bit transverse, so the authors of Our Contemporary hate our native nonsense and all sorts of leaden abominations. And censorship got them no less. From the sixties, he is as far away as from the poets of "quiet lyrics". Lone transverse soil. This led to some of his quiet anger both in relation to Russia and in relation to people.
Forgive me, dear country,
For being so hateful.
Forgive me, dear foreign land,
For biting the tongue.
While vile times
I am your diameter, fatherland ...

47. Stanislav KUNYAEV. I see an example of a clear contradiction between his inner poetics, life mentality and the role of a quiet lyricist, taken on under the influence of Vadim Kozhinov. It seems to me that the poet Stanislav Kunyaev continues the line of Vladimir Mayakovsky much more confidently than Sergei Yesenin. I think that Stanislav's first teacher, Boris Slutsky, was more correct in his observations. "Kindness must be with fists" - this is both the poetic style and the life motto of Kunyaev. Movement, action, hunting, swiftness, how quiet it is. Bet on Russian national poetry. "Kindness must be with fists" not only made the poet famous, but also determined his style, his tough strong-willed beginning.
Good must be with fists.
Good must be harsh
to fly wool in tufts
from everyone who climbs for good.
Kindness is not pity or weakness.
Good crush the castles of shackles.
Good is not slush and not holiness,
no absolution.
Being kind is not always convenient
to accept not only the conclusion
that is fractional, fractional, good-good
knew how to work a machine gun,
what is the meaning of history in the end
in good action alone -
gently kneel
good not surrendered good!

48. Tatyana GLUSHKOVA. Poetess of the last term. She DID NOT WISH TO LIVE on a "rag of power". She did not try to remake herself for a different Russia, to find a new breath in the poetry of the third millennium. I preferred to stay in the great and tragic twentieth century. All her disputes with her former friends were extremely sincere, because she expected from them the same literature of the last term, the same last, final words with which she lived in recent years, which she uttered, shouted, waited for apocalyptic visions, waited for intransigence towards the destroyers of the Motherland, and without waiting, she turned away from them. From her point of view, she was absolutely right. She, as a faithful warrior of pagan times, wished to be buried along with her Lord, whose name is the Soviet Power. First of all, singing his great Song to him. A song about the Great Power, about the Great Time.
When my homeland was gone,
I haven't heard anything about it:
So, protected by God, she was ill! -
So that I would not be bitter and sicker ...
When my homeland was gone,
I was there, where not a grain of light:
Shielded, rejected, reprimanded -
Ile burned to ashen coals.
When my homeland was gone,
At the gates of hell I then knocked:
Take me!.. If only I would rise
My country is out of its weakness.
When my homeland was gone,
The one who came to us from Nazareth,
Orphaned no less than a poet
The last terms of my Motherland.

49. Timur ZULFIKAROV. Many will be surprised by my choice. Not so widely known, insufficient number of readers. But, like Velimir Khlebnikov in his time, Timur Zulfikarov occupies his own poetic universe, and you cannot confuse him with anyone. It is even difficult to name what traditions gave birth to it. Here you have the East, and the West, and the fiery ancient pagan Russia. He is both the finest esthete and an epic singer. Unless he takes his songs from folklore - he composes folklore himself. When necessary, he writes simply and understandably even to a village grandmother; when the Samarkand heat burns in his poems, the air of his poems thickens and burns. He is the most ancient archaist in the world, even before the written era. He is an amazing innovator of verse, playing with both the word and every sound like a magician.
Ah, let's go to Russia to cry
Above our huts
beaten to death alive, boarded up,
buried in mugs.
Where are our old mothers,
grandmothers in clean coffin dresses,
with the Gospels in the nursing hands of the departed
lie unmourned, unseasoned, unburied.
Let's go to Russia to cry.
Where only in the golden falling groves
meekly wanders, the Mother of God marches.
Yes, in your vast omophorion
collects furiously golden leaf fall.
Yes, the huts are full
where they already rise from the sleep of death,
resurrect old women saints
ready for the kingdom of heaven.
Aki butterflies flying
from sacred hidden cocoons.
Let's go to Russia to rejoice.
Russia - the Kingdom of Heaven of God
already on earth is not earthly ...

50. Leonid Gubanov. He was perceived in this way - as a barbarian of Russian poetry, despite all his numerous references to Verlaine and Rimbaud, to Pushkin and Lermontov. He lived exclusively in the world of poetry, in the world of Russian poetry, but the liberty of his dealing with the word, and with rhythm, and with images was such that all previous poetic experience seemed to disappear, and he again remained alone with the world of primacy: the primacy of the word, the primacy of man. "Across Russia, flocks, flocks ... And on my back, as if, the mustard plasters of revolts are burning. And the banks of rebellion are stinging hard ... They look at the city, their mouths gaping, And envy, like a puppy, in my chest. And I, like Russia, - Everything ahead. Everything is ahead! .." Leonid Gubanov was too national Russian poet, even when he cursed with his own people and was impudent with his own saints. He was too Orthodox, especially in his later years, to appeal to Western Slavists. They recoiled from Gubanov like the devil from incense: they smelled of someone else's spirit. "And, remembering all the tears and begging, An Orthodox cloud will float up And tell me - Your Majesty, Alien sky is on our side ..." No, all the glory of Leonid Gubanov was and remains inside Russia.
Canvas 37 by 37,
The frame is the same size.
We are not dying of cancer
And not from old age at all ...
When heartburn torments the case
And they draw colors with warm flesh,
They go into the night from their wives and money
On the full moon of canvases.
Yes! Smear the world! Yes!
The blood of the veins!
Forgetting betrayals, dreams, vows.
And die from century to century
On the blue hands of the easel!

Vladimir Bondarenko

slide 2

Introduction

Russian literature of the 20th century has an extremely complex, even tragic, history. This is due to the fundamental changes in the life of the country that began at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

• Russia has experienced three revolutions: 1905, February and October 1917;
• Russian-Japanese war 1904-1905;
• the First World War 1914-1918;
• Civil War

The internal political situation in our country at that time was extremely difficult.

slide 3

The turn of the century was marked by significant scientific discoveries. They overturned ideas about the knowability of the world. This led to the search for an explanation of new phenomena through religion, mysticism.

The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev described this time as follows:

“It was the era of the awakening in Russia of independent philosophical thought, the flowering of poetry and the sharpening of aesthetic sensitivity, religious anxiety and quest, interest in mysticism and the occult. New souls appeared, new sources of creative life were discovered…”.

So, one dominant worldview has been replaced by a diversity of opinions and ideas in all areas of life.

slide 4

Directions in the literature of the twentieth century

• Realism (Tolstoy L.N., Chekhov A.P., Korolenko V.G., Kuprin A.I., Bunin I.A. Gorky A.M. and others.
• Modernism
• Symbolism (V. Bryusov, A. Blok)
• Acmeism (N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova)
• Futurism (V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky)
• Imagism (S. Yesenin).

slide 5

Working with the textbook

Task: open the textbook on page 29 “Literature of the 20th century. Strokes for a portrait.
Reading in paragraphs with stops to view the demo material.
So .... The twentieth century is a century of military and revolutionary upheavals ....

slide 6

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

• L. N. Tolstoy. Job portrait
• I. E. Repina. 1887

Slide 7

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The main themes of creativity are the ideological searches of the intelligentsia, dissatisfaction with the philistine existence of some, spiritual "humility" in front of the vulgarity of the lives of others ("A Boring Story", 1889; "Duel", 1891; "A House with a Mezzanine", 1896; "Ionych", 1898; " Lady with a dog, 1899).

Slide 8

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (1870-1953), Russian writer, honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1909). In 1920 he emigrated.

Slide 9

Alexander Blok (symbolist)

Alexander Blok. Portrait by I. K. Parkhomenko. 1910

Slide 10

Andrei Bely (symbolism)

BELY Andrey (pseudo-Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev) (1880-1934), Russian writer. One of the leading figures of symbolism. Early poetry is characterized by mystical motifs, grotesque perception of reality ("symphonies"), formal experimentation (collection "Gold in Azure", 1904). In the collection "Ashes" (1909) the tragedy of rural Russia. In the novel "Petersburg" (1913-14, revised edition in 1922), a symbolized and satirical image of Russian statehood.

slide 11

Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova (acmeists)

Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov with their little son, the future famous historian LN Gumilyov. 1915.

slide 12

Khlebnikov Velimir (futurist)

KHLEBNIKOV Velimir (real name Viktor Vladimirovich) (1885-1922), Russian poet, one of the key figures of the avant-garde.

slide 13

Vladimir Mayakovsky

MAYAKOVSKY Vladimir Vladimirovich (July 7 (19), 1893, Baghdadi village, Kutaisi province - April 14, 1930), Moscow, Russian poet, one of the brightest representatives of avant-garde art of the 1910-1920s.

Slide 14

Marina Tsvetaeva

TsVETAEVA Marina Ivanovna (1892-1941), Russian poetess. Daughter of I. V. Tsvetaeva. Romantic maximalism, the motives of loneliness, the tragic doom of love, the rejection of everyday life (collections "Mile", 1921, "Craft", 1923, "After Russia", 1928; satirical poem "The Pied Piper", 1925, "Poem of the End", both - 1926 ).

slide 15

Sergei Yesenin (Imagist)

Yesenin Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925), Russian poet. From the first collections ("Radunitsa", 1916; "Rural Book of Hours", 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of a deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Russia, an expert in the folk language and folk soul. In 1919-23 he was a member of a group of Imagists

slide 16

Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKOV Vladimir Vladimirovich (April 12 (24), 1899, St. Petersburg - July 3, 1977, Montreux, Switzerland), Russian and American writer; prose writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, translator.

Slide 17

Alexey Remizov

REMIZOV Alexei Mikhailovich (1877-1957), Russian writer. The search for an archaic style focused on literature and the oral word of pre-Petrine Russia. The book of legends, apocrypha (“Limonar, that is: Spiritual Meadow”, 1907), the novels “The Pond” (1908), “The Word of the Destruction of the Russian Land” (1918). In 1921 he emigrated.

Slide 18

Mark Aldanov

ALDANOV Mark Alexandrovich (real name Landau), Russian writer; novelist and essayist; one of the most widely read (and translated into foreign languages) writers of the first Russian emigration, who gained fame thanks to his historical novels covering the events of two centuries of Russian and European history (from the middle of the 18th century).

Slide 19

Maksim Gorky

GORKY Maxim (real name and surname Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov) (1868-1936), Russian writer, publicist.

Slide 20

Mikhail Sholokhov

SHOLOKHOV Mikhail Alexandrovich (1905-84), Russian writer, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939), twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1967, 1980).

slide 21

Nikolai Ostrovsky

OSTROVSKY Nikolai Alekseevich (1904-1936), Russian writer. Member of the Civil War; was badly wounded. Blind, bedridden, Ostrovsky created the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” (1932-1934; some chapters were not censored) - about the formation of Soviet power and the heroic life of Komsomol member Pavel Korchagin (an image that largely determined the type of positive hero of socialist realism literature ). The novel "Born by the Storm" (1936, not completed).

slide 22

Alexander Tvardovsky

Tvardovsky Alexander Trifonovich (1910-71), Russian poet, editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine (1950-54, 1958-70). The poem "Vasily Terkin" (1941-45) is a vivid embodiment of the Russian character and popular feelings of the era of the Great Patriotic War

slide 23

Konstantin Simonov

SIMONOV Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich (1915-79), Russian writer, public figure, Hero of Socialist Labor (1974).

slide 24

Yuri Bondarev

BONDAREV Yuri Vasilyevich (b. March 15, 1924), Russian writer, Hero of Socialist Labor (1984); Lenin Prize (1972), USSR State Prizes (1977, 1983).

Slide 25

Evgeny Schwartz

SCHWARTZ Evgeny Lvovich (1896-1958), Russian playwright. Saturated with acutely topical social and political content, caustic irony, fairy tale plays based on the works of H. K. Andersen "The Naked King" (1934), "Shadow" (1940); satirical plays Dragon (1944), Ordinary Miracle (1956); plays for children, stories, scripts.

Attention!

Ekaterina Likovskaya

what is born of the earth - then goes into the earth,
everything that wandered, finds a home again,
every mermaid dreams of sea foam,
every octave dreams of a note "to".
Yes, everything will return - this is the law of nature.
to a boy in a colorful jacket - a kite.
what is born by water will go under water.
that is born of the soul -
stays in it.

Long live the world in which

Hello patterned path
twisted like a ribbon of lace.

no one needs anyone!

Unweaving knots, arguably
preparing a second skin.

Long live the world in which
no one owes anyone!

A stitch that has become a mountain path,
another one that became a river.

Long live the world in which
nothing is easier.

One hundred stories drawn
and there is no favorite among them.

Long live the world in which
I don't need a name anymore
sounding too proud.

Let it be named
you - this world in which
nothing is new.

You are your own height and root,
you are your own cloak and spin.

Long live the world in which
you no longer know fear.

Higher and higher the fog swirls,
it's getting harder
breathe, and other people's faces
are getting paler.

Everything below the cardboard city
under a dead rock looms.

Long live the world in which
no one cries for anyone.

The cold flows through my collar,
the wind closes my eyelids.

Long live the world in which
we're all leaving forever

where is death, which is like the sea,
kisses softly on the lips.

Long live the world in which
nobody loves nobody
no one hurt anyone,
no one has power over anyone

no one is happiness.

And after - on a branch of crows,
sits, tearing his throat:

Long live the world in which,
long live the world in which!

Long live the world in which,

long live the world in which,
long live the world in which

SPELL

Tell me, candle, about love and sadness.
Do not guess, I wish to tell fortunes now,
I'm standing on the edge. You melt the edges.
We are both in silence. Only you only me.

Human, bitter fate across
from above gave me strength in the amount of three.
These elementals until the Day of Judgment
and protect, and nourish promised me.

Strength first - from the first word with me,
the strength of bitter wormwood and forest paths,
the power of a twig, a grain, a strand of hair
or - wax pierced with a sharp needle.

Pestilence to call and cattle to ruin-heal.
This force is the mighty force of the Earth.

And the second element is at the heart of the foundations,
let's call it the liquid substance of dreams,
where I have conversations not only with people,
it is a strange spring reflecting the world.

The third power is in you. primordial fire,
warmth and peace - carefully, do not touch -
tamed titan. And I don't want to know
what happens when a candle is knocked over.

Oh, don't fool your brains with a vision, a shadow,
Only you can help me today
only you only me. We are both in silence.
Three - I already have.
Give me a fourth.

That fourth power is Air and Spirit,
to bind together the power of the two,
to let me into a dream, where is my witchcraft
create the old world and complete it,
and fill with energy, life, fire,

and then, praising the Four,
I will enter all doors, I will melt in everything,
I can break this circle and start...
But for this - fulfill the request, candle:

take me all, to the end, to the end
and wipe impatience, bitterness from the face,
I want to learn your silence
and calm flame
like outside.

© Ekaterina Likovskaya

Alexander Filatov

Goodbye

There are no complaints about buttons - they are sewn tightly,
Another thing is white light - one tablet,
The second glass, the fourth day of sleepless vigils -
And instead of the world, the rubbish of mismatches.
A veil of indistinct dance dances in the eyes,
Here is Goodbye country, I am goodbye,
It warms here after all the somersaults
Hot breath of rebellious asphalt.

When clearing the fog - much clearer
That only the Ocean is important, and only with Her,
And the rest is carried away by gray waves -
Fog and space in Africa albino.

Sausage thoughts - from the mind do not knit knitting needles,
The wheels have nothing to catch on in the fog,
Everything is out of place - an inadequate picture:
I rushed up and became superficial, like mud,

I rushed up and broke away from the upside down -
Not life and not even a sketch - an oblique collage,
Where the universe sways like a drunk.
Oh, goodbye, I want to go to other countries!

So, the result: the soul is waiting in Paris, and the body
Not just a little crawled, not sweaty
Fly so high that you fall low
A red-hot brain does not pull correspondence.

Triggers cocked states. It's time.
The wake-up call will drive away the gloom from the platform.
The world will stop on schedule.
And Goodbye will hear "Goodbye!"

© Alexander Filatov

Polina Sineva

Eurydice

You either flashed ahead, in the crowd, then disappeared from view.
From the north, ice was again moving towards the mainland.
Thrace, Crete, Sumer and dark Atlantis
went under the water and again came out from under the water.

The hot sand of the desert burned my feet.
The militant Horde swept past.
Behind were Mecca, Turin, California, their shrines.
Maybe I don't? It was never?

The hysterical dogs of the convoy barked in.
Ladoga, terrible ice cracked under me.
And I really wanted white ... No, not white - blue.
Remember, you promised.

I made bread with the taste of earth and snow,
tomorrow with the taste of bread and quinoa.
I lagged behind to give birth to a new man
and with him in her arms again caught up with your tracks.

All this was a long time ago. How the planet has grown!
Our children are scattered on the sides of the Earth.
How many times have you passed the end of the world -
and we haven't arrived yet.

Somewhere in the gardens, August is probably ripening with an apple,
the water from the well breathes cold in the morning.
Life never passes. Life passes. No, it seemed.
It's scary: suddenly I will never grow old and die.

Somewhere in a forgotten house, the clocks turn the arrows,
on the floorboards - the light of the day passing into eternity ...
Please turn around - I don't care what happens.
Look at me.

Things

The abyss of a clean slate shines,
and the day is bright, blinding and ominous.
But viscous, thick blackness,
as truth, stands behind every thing.

When they came into being,
when they snarled like beasts,
I saw that things are doors,
closed up holes in the void.

Their ribs, their peeling mouths
bristling in cardboard and plywood,
screaming for touch and size
forcing the pupil to stupidity.

The varnish fades and the glue shows through,
and there, inside - sand, grass and clay,
steps, night, and the smell of mothballs,
and again the door, and the back door behind it.

© Polina Sineva

Sima Radchenko

Neighbor

After all, the point, you yourself understand, is not
that he won't play in his A minor,
not bark in the hearts, dissatisfied with the cat,
who screams heart-rendingly in the corridor,
and it's not what the plumber said
squeezing the grinder in shaking fingers,
that the dead man lay for a week,
until his guests missed
(Yes, yes, not relatives, but his sidekick -
when he didn't call for a bottle on Saturday),
and in the fact that he lay, he lay like that,
while you got up and went to work,
while I was studying etude with my child,
and so - without end, in the usual circle.
And you returned to warmth and comfort,
and we loved each other in the evenings.

Invisible

Suddenly, the lights went out in the house. There is no light - and there is nothing to do either ...
The parents held a council. In the end, there were candles on the shelf.
The fire made its way as a weak sprout through the thickness of the night, weightless and thin.
And in the dark, viscous and thick, it suddenly turned out: there is a child in the house.

It turned out that he had been there for a long time, and he spoke well, and about many things,
but somehow it was not up to him - "go away and do not interfere, for God's sake."
But this evening, in the fragile silence, dad could not bury himself in the TV.
And fabulous shadows ran up the wall and walked along the cornices.

And my mother did not stand by the stove, and did not order the toys to be put away.
And fabulous fairies and cats circled the sofa and pillows,
without unclenching strong paws and hands - and in a waltz, and at a gallop, and skipping!
And mom and dad suddenly turned into a simple girl and boy ...

He told them everything, and they had never heard anything like it.
About how motley herds roam over the veil of the glow of the night,
that the neighbors have a baby who cries if the dreams are bad,
about the fact that if you listen carefully, then dashing warrior drops will jump from the roofs,
about the fact that in the evenings the backs of the planets are covered with a twilight haze ...

And in the morning ... in the morning they gave light again. And the child became invisible again.

© Sima Radchenko

Dana Sideros

Excerpt from "Rush Hour"

I dream big
black heart of the industrial zone,
glass snowball
in the withering light of night lamps.
I see him, a stranger
he sows minutes like seeds,
April minutes
buries
in prickly empty January.

I dream
how does he water
frozen ground in July
mine, unhappy, hot,
thoughtless, colorful.
I see through the earth
minutes doze in it like bullets,
molded and crumpled
seeds of war.

I dream:
my seeds
grow a sazhen
from bullets turn into bombs,
toss and turn, sing,
and the first shimmering day
breaks through at midnight and soot,
burning with green fire
the January patient is uncomfortable.

And noisy crowns of weeks
explode
and soar
on slender trunks,
shine, breathe and speak.
Honey days bloom
my unlived may,
unfulfilled June,
not last October.

This is where I always wake up
with a vague sense of loss
and after all day don't know
where to stick yourself.

Well, what do you want to ask?
Would I like them back?
Yah…

© Dana Sideros

Ilya Turkov

I go out, outside - chime
grouchy rain permeates the evening,
he is old and gray, and it seems that he is eternal,
and it doesn't seem to stop.

I'm standing on the street and the street is empty
streams flow down the deserts of windows,
and the world is already habitually quiet and wet,
uglier than a fallen leaf.

Almost indistinguishable from the ground
thick mixture above the horizon.
Such is the landscape of the epoch and season.
A passer-by appears in the distance.

And then the second one appears
both hunched over, without looking back,
followed by dozens
the same. Endless build.

Tired infantry to nowhere
walking on broken sidewalks
a drunkard from a bar adjoins them,
and more and more water pours from the sky.

Workers, hangers and junkies
in the company of politicians, lawyers,
priests, poets, atheists,
friends, lovers, enemies
already very close to me,
and whether it's cold, or humidity,
but for some reason it became very scary,
as if there is nothing worse.
I stand. They are equal to me.
Up close, they are more clumsy, stooped.
I hear every voice in this hum
in many ways very similar to silence.

© Ilya Turkov

Alexey Tsvetkov

Tousled ice is being raked from the platform
More persistent than mouse fuss.
Under the frozen dome your plane
Turned on the side lights.

I look, between melancholy, initially simple,
And shyness is strange for two,
How are you, without saying goodbye, a green star
Rise above my world.

Above the dark planet in the arteries of the rivers
Confusion shakes the scales.
In the control room, the eyelid pulses,
Scattered for days and hours.

In the smoky hall, the scoreboard flashes.
Silence grows from the hum.
Window opening splits the wing
On two dissimilar windows.

And you have to wipe off the feverish sweat
And paint life forever
As if forever in my firmament
Your star did not rise.

open the hydrant and the water is solid
neither wash their faces nor collect buckets
and the pump gnawed the belts
blunt crowbar does not take a pickaxe
because as death water is strong
cancel it altogether

all the events in it were reflected separately
at least throw a piano at a neighbor from the balcony
he is as good as new
and the tongue in the mouth is unbearably white
you can see we drank diluted chalk
and now we eat it

useless sound from the water arose
air does not pass into a deaf reed
your flute choked
granite will ring along the edges of the bucket
but there's no harm in frozen time
for plants stars and beasts

because the calcareous brain is blind
because the world is mountain wax
hardening without difficulty
and in the well circle more true than you
forever reflected his features
this stone water

© Alexey Tsvetkov

Anton Sergeev

Perhaps now the mechanism is broken
And it became clear: winter without end.
From somewhere the train leaves for Lhasa,
And here it’s snowing, and it’s tearing off your head,

The head is swept and circling by the wind,
A snowstorm blows snowflakes under the crown of the head,
You won't have time to step out the door yet -
Spat utterly in the morning blizzard.

My head is so full in the morning
Let's say that you suddenly find yourself somewhere,
Let's say - a bistro, and chewing biscuits,
And creams are whiter than the snows of Tibet,

And the tablecloth turns white, it turns white in the eyes,
Winter licks the cornea with its tongue,
Carries you up to your neck in a snowdrift,
And, as if from an old dream, hearing:

"Come here, to the free cash desk" -
It will seem: the roads are drowning in the snow,
"Last! The last train to Lhasa!”
Now do not have time. And involuntarily shudder

The hurricane will sweep away the weather vanes and roofs,
Pull the cables on Bankovsky with a wild boom -
Rip out the throats of the griffins -
heart-rending blood
Golden-winged ones will go out without a tongue;
Silent and wild
Silently howl,
Fall into the water
And the stone will squander the water,
If fragile,
If with a crystal ringing
Accidentally break the axis of the earth,
If the sadly earth string bursts
And the air will spread freely and terribly ...

Do not withdraw - you hear, do not - hand.
It hurts and more than seriously.

Circling the bridge over the canal
There are animals on it
What do pom-pom lanterns grow from their heads,
Saved at some distance on the roof is also circling.
In incessant whirling, the whole city groans,
Moans, spins, endures -
Where to go.
In secret:
Rotation is the basis
The beauty of dynamic transformations,
Eternity of the eternal
And the simplicity of the simple.
And what is all this garbage to spin on,
So that cats on Bankovsky would be nice?
Continuous and subtle
Heart to Heart
The axis of the earth goes through our hands.

The ball was presented for the fifth summer of life.
Tennis ball - bouncy, cheerful, bright.
You can confess: you were glad for him, like a schizo.
Actually, what? Like an ordinary kid to a gift.

If in the yard - always with it in your pocket.
A round rubber friend is a must
In every game. He flew through the windows - normal,
He scared the cats and jumped funny through the puddles.

Adults ate, laughed, fished -
We went to the lake somehow at the end of the week,
Tennis ball accidentally jumped into the bushes
And was forever lost to you.

Past business - roared into the pillow at night,
Mother promised to buy a constructor in aprashka,
I did not understand the reasons, the depths of sadness:
The ball is lonely, dark and scary there.

He grew up, got stronger and left the country a long time ago,
Children's troubles are now funny to remember.
Hule: successful, married and in general - a winner! —
Life flows measuredly, clearly, smoothly.

Just grab (oh, Brodsky) your knees with your hand,
You smoke half the night, you slowly suck beer,
Knowing that somewhere on the other side of the universe
The ball still lies alone in the nettles.

Evening in the river drowned the sound
Sleepy cars and lit the lights
Soft and moist. moon circle
Hanging on an alder branch. Not

No sighs, no longing.
Just a vague sadness-shadow,
Like a premonition of those years
What has not passed yet; those

Failed dreams, meetings,
For which he is still alive.
Every word is yours, speech
Quiet river and slope of willows

Just for the sake of
Evening once thickened the distance,
And he warmed your hands
Who hopelessly waited for you

Who made his way to you, sang
Your songs and moaned away
Your pain and sins, deeds
Free, involuntary. look: here

Evening in the river drowned the sound
Sleepy cars and turned on the lights.
Listen with your hands to the warmth of your hands
A friend who doesn't exist... doesn't exist.

The great Russian writer Maxim Gorky said that "great impulses of spirit, minds and hearts of true artists are captured in the literature of the 19th century." This was reflected in the work of writers of the 20th century. After the revolution of 1905, the First World War and the Civil War, the world seemed to begin to disintegrate. Social disharmony has set in, and literature takes on the task of bringing back everything that was. In Russia, independent philosophical thought began to awaken, new trends in art appeared, writers and poets of the 20th century overestimated values ​​and abandoned the old morality.

What is it, literature at the turn of the century?

Classicism in art was replaced by modernism, which can be divided into several branches: symbolism, acmeism, futurism, imagism. Realism continued to flourish, in which the inner world of a person was depicted in accordance with his social position; socialist realism did not allow criticism of the authorities, so the writers in their work tried not to raise political problems. The golden age was followed by the silver age with its bold new ideas and diverse themes. The 20th century was written in accordance with a certain trend and style: for Mayakovsky, writing with a ladder is typical, for Khlebnikov - his numerous occasionalisms, for Severyanin - an unusual rhyme.

From Futurism to Socialist Realism

In symbolism, the poet focuses his attention on a certain symbol, a hint, so the meaning of the work can be ambiguous. The main representatives were Zinaida Gippius, Alexander Blok. They were in constant search for eternal ideals, while turning to mysticism. In 1910, a crisis of symbolism began - all ideas were already sorted out, and the reader did not find anything new in the poems.

In futurism, old traditions were completely denied. In translation, the term means "the art of the future", the writers attracted the public with shocking, rudeness and clarity. The poems of the representatives of this trend - Vladimir Mayakovsky and Osip Mandelstam - are distinguished by their original composition and occasionalisms (author's words).

Socialist realism set itself the task of educating the working people in the spirit of socialism. The writers depicted the specific situation in society in revolutionary development. Of the poets, Marina Tsvetaeva especially stood out, and of the prose writers - Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, Evgeny Zamyatin.

From acmeism to new peasant lyrics

Imagism arose in Russia in the first years after the revolution. Despite this, Sergei Yesenin and Anatoly Mariengof did not reflect socio-political ideas in their work. Representatives of this trend argued that poems should be figurative, so they did not skimp on metaphors, epithets and other means of artistic expression.

Representatives of the new peasant lyrics turned to folklore traditions in their works, admired the village life. Such was the Russian poet of the 20th century Sergei Yesenin. His poems are pure and sincere, and the author described nature and simple human happiness in them, referring to the traditions of Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov. After the 1917 revolution, short-lived enthusiasm gave way to disappointment.

The term "acmeism" in translation means "blooming time". Poets of the 20th century Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam returned to the past of Russia in their work and welcomed the joyful admiration of life, clarity of thought, simplicity and conciseness. They seemed to retreat from difficulties, smoothly drifting with the flow, assuring that the unknowable cannot be known.

Philosophical and psychological richness of Bunin's lyrics

Ivan Alekseevich was a poet living at the junction of two eras, therefore, some experiences associated with the advent of the new time were reflected in his work, nevertheless, he continued the Pushkin tradition. In the poem "Evening" he conveys to the reader the idea that happiness does not lie in material values, but in human existence: "I see, I hear, I am happy - everything is in me." In other works, the lyrical hero allows himself to reflect on the transience of life, which becomes a reason for sadness.

Bunin is engaged in writing in Russia and abroad, where many poets of the early 20th century went after the revolution. In Paris, he feels like a stranger - "the bird has a nest, the beast has a hole", and he lost his native land. Bunin finds his salvation in talent: in 1933 he received the Nobel Prize, and in Russia he is considered an enemy of the people, but they do not stop publishing.

Sensual lyricist, poet and brawler

Sergei Yesenin was an imaginist and did not create new terms, but revived dead words, enclosing them in vivid poetic images. From the school bench, he became famous as a mischievous person and carried this quality through his whole life, was a frequenter of taverns, and was famous for his love affairs. Nevertheless, he passionately loved his homeland: “I will sing with all my being of the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name“ Rus ”- many poets of the 20th century shared his admiration for his native land. Yesenina reveals the problem of human existence. After 1917, the poet is disappointed in the revolution, because instead of the long-awaited paradise, life became like hell.

Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...

Alexander Blok - the brightest Russian poet of the 20th century, who wrote in the direction of "symbolism". It is interesting to observe how the female image evolves from collection to collection: from the Beautiful Lady to the ardent Carmen. If at first he deifies the object of his love, faithfully serves him and does not dare to discredit, later the girls seem to him more mundane creatures. Through the wonderful world of romanticism, he finds meaning, having gone through life's difficulties, he responds in his poems to events of social importance. In the poem "The Twelve" he conveys the idea that the revolution is not the end of the world, and its main goal is the destruction of the old and the creation of a new world. Readers remember Blok as the author of the poem "Night, street, lamp, pharmacy ...", in which he thinks about the meaning of life.

Two female writers

Philosophers and poets of the 20th century were predominantly male, and their talent was revealed thanks to the so-called muses. Women created themselves, under the influence of their own mood, and the most prominent poets of the Silver Age were Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. The first was the wife of Nikolai Gumilyov, and the famous historian Anna Akhmatova was born in their union. Anna Akhmatova did not show interest in exquisite stanzas - her poems could not be put to music, they were rare. The predominance of yellow and gray in the description, the poorness and dimness of objects make readers sad and allow them to reveal the true mood of the poetess, who survived the execution of her husband.

The fate of Marina Tsvetaeva is tragic. She committed suicide, and two months after her death, her husband was shot. Readers will always remember her as a small fair-haired woman connected with nature by blood ties. Especially often in her work appears the rowan berry, which forever entered the heraldry of her poetry: "The rowan was lit with a red brush. The leaves were falling. I was born."

How unusual are the poems of poets of the 19th and 20th centuries?

In the new century, the masters of the pen and the word approved new forms and themes of their works. Poems-messages to other poets or friends remained relevant. Imagist Vadim Shershenevich surprises with his work "Toast". He does not place a single punctuation mark in it, does not leave spaces between words, but his originality lies elsewhere: looking through the text with your eyes from line to line, you can see how some capital letters stand out among other words, forming a message: Valery Bryusov from the author .

we all look like rollerblades

to fall down lightly now

rushing and oar

ladies lorryingtotmennonus

our ger

and wedearShowersAshiprom

looking for the south july in all the shape

rushForceopenTokclipper

we know we know that all the young men

And All Almost Saying Ruby Beards

Claiming thisAshkupunsha

drink with joyzabryusova

The work of poets of the 20th century is striking in its originality. Vladimir Mayakovsky is also remembered for the fact that he created a new form of stanza - "ladder". The poet wrote poems for any reason, but spoke little about love; he was studied as an unsurpassed classic, printed in millions, the public fell in love with him for outrageous and innovative.

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