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ALEKSANDR BLOK AND THE RISE OF BIOGRAPHICAL SYMBOLISM Author(s): Jonathan Stone Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 54, No. 4 (WINTER 2010), pp. 626-642Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23345043Accessed: 07-11-2015 18:45 UTC

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ALEKSANDR BLOK AND THE RISE OF

BIOGRAPHICAL SYMBOLISM

Jonathan Stone, Franklin and Marshall College

The editorial offices of the Russian Symbolist journal Vesy [Libra] [1904-1909] were located in one of the most fashionable spots in Moscow— the newly built Hotel Metropol. A visitor there was greeted by a striking por trait. Karl Bauer's depiction of Nietzsche (Fig. 1), showing the late philoso pher with his eyes shut and a pained expression of distraction on his face, adorned the wall of the outer room. There is no question that Nietzsche's shade loomed over much of the philosophical and epistemological culture of Russian Symbolism, particularly of Andrei Bely and Viacheslav Ivanov. Yet it is not his "symbolic poem" of Zarathustra that would prove most influen tial in Russia, but rather his early engagement with Apollo and Dionysus.1 The lasting reverberations of Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music [1872], can be felt in the Russian Symbolists' em brace of Dionysian themes and the overtly Apollonian reaction this provoked.

Early Russian Symbolism's importation of decadent themes led to an intu itive alignment with Nietzsche's portrayal of the god of intoxication, chaos, darkness, and death. Ivanov's work on The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God, serialized in the journal Novyi put' [New Path] in 1904, solidified the

younger Symbolists' theoretical affiliation with Dionysus. The Symbolists'

lasting engagement with a discourse of masks and their belief in an illusory cover veiling reality can be traced back to their encounters with Nietzsche, and

his vision of Dionysus in particular, beginning in the 1890s.2 A key facet of

their embrace of a Dionysian aesthetic are the restrictions this places on the ac

1. There is a wealth of scholarship on Nietzsche's role in Russian culture. His influence on

the Symbolists is directly addressed by Bernice Rosenthal and Edith Clowes. The history of his

reception in Russia can be traced in Sineokaia's recent anthology. The subtitle "Symbolic

poem" [Simvolicheskaia poema] is appended to the first Russian translation of Also Sprach Zarathustra from 1898. See Davies (359).

2. See Bennett (165). Russia's introduction to Nietzsche came nearly simultaneously with its

first contact with French Symbolism. V. P. Preobrazhenskii's article "Friedrich Nietzsche: Crit

icism of Moral Altruism" was published in November 1892, just two months after Vengerova's

"Poet-Symbolists in France." See Davies (356).

SEEJ, Vol. 54, No. 4 (2010): p.626-p. 642 626



Aleksandr Blok and the Rise of Biographical Symbolism 627

... ------ -

Fig. 1. Karl Bauer's portrait ofNietzsche, from catalog appended to Vesy No. 1 (1904).

cessibility of their art. Russian Symbolism found a model in the cult of a

beauty that is comprehensible only to the indoctrinated. I contend that a belief in the Dionysian as a signal of overt insularity is central to the ways in which

Symbolism presented itself to the Russian reading public. It is thus fitting that the articles signaling the end of Russian Symbolism's literary hegemony ap peared in a journal called "ApollonThat the 1910 polemic, immediately rec

ognized as and named a crisis of Symbolism, occurred under the sign of

Apollo demonstrates the completeness with which the Symbolist aesthetic had been compromised. Russian Symbolists continued to write and publish well after the demise of Vesy, but the principles by which their aesthetic outlook was constructed and presented to its readers would be fundamentally altered in the post-1910 literary landscape. Even if Apollon is dismissed as the vehi cle of a group slightly distinct from the Symbolists (and embodying elements of their negation), no such rejoinder can be made for another publishing ven ture that arose in the aftermath of Vesy's disintegration. The publishing house



628 Slavic and East European Journal

founded by Bely and Emilii Medtner3 explicitly did not continue the pro nounced astrological trend of Vesy and its publisher Skorpion [Scorpio] (Fig. 2). Named after Apollo Musagetes (and depicting the leader of the Muses with

lyre in hand on its device, Fig. 3), Musaget represents both an extension and a reevaluation of the institutionalization and publication of Russian Symbolism.

Fig. 2. Device of Skorpion

Fig. 3. Device of Musaget

This essay will consider the implications of the infusion of the Apollonian into the editing and publication of Symbolism. As Symbolism relies heavily on the reader's pre-formed comprehension of its worldview, such an epistemolog ical shift carries deep consequences. In turning to the Symbolists' tangible out

put for a definition of "Symbolism," the post-1910 reader encounters many works that he had read before. The key difference resides in the context of pub lication for these works. The aspirations of early Skorpion to produce a broadly focused Symbolist canon are replaced by a pervasive need to historicize Sym bolism. With the displacement of Symbolism's literary predominance, Sym bolists had the opportunity to treat their work as part of a completed and his

3. I use the German spelling of the name, with which Medtner himself signed letters written

in German. He is also referred to as Emiiii Metner, reflecting the Cyrillic spelling.




torically finalized movement. Consequently, the act of rereading is integrated into the propagation of Symbolism in its post-crisis phase. I will show that the

retrospective creation of a Symbolist corpus is of fundamental relevance in the

process of defining Symbolism. By indulging the Symbolists' impulse to revisit previously published

works, Musaget fostered a new level of mediation between Symbolism and its readers. Its first books embody the process of imposing a distinct narrative structure onto existing examples of Symbolism. In 1910 it published Andrei

Bely's Simvolizm [Symbolism] and Ellis's Russkie simvolisty [Russian Sym bolists]— both works with a strong retrospective impulse. Bely's book com bines the republication of articles written over the previous decade, reaching back to his first published work from 1902, with newly written ones. The re sult is an imposing theoretical tome that ostensibly seeks to provide its read ers with a comprehensive conceptual overview of "Symbolism." Ellis also at

tempted to create an overtly accessible description of Symbolism. His

approach is to retell the careers and reconstruct the contexts in which three

key Symbolists (Konstantin Balmont, Valery Briusov, and Bely) wrote their first books. In so doing, Ellis dispelled the insularity that shrouded Symbol ism through the addition of a biographical narrative to the works themselves.

However, most notable among Musaget1 s early publications is the first book of Aleksandr Blok's Sobranie stikhotvorenii [Collected Poems, 1911], also

designated as the second edition of Blok's first published book, the 1905 Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame [ Verses on the Most Beautiful Lady], Through the

simple act of reworking his earlier book, Blok fundamentally alters its place in his oeuvre and the reader's encounter with a work of Symbolist poetry.

This new edition seeks to refashion Symbolism into a self-referential sys tem as inherent in an author's collected works. The focus is on the Symbolist as reader and editor who places his own works in a context imbued with a sense of Symbolism's completion. Possessing an aesthetic now capable of

being encompassed by a definitive gesture of summation, Symbolism could be subjected to a degree of structuring and categorization that would make it

comprehensible to a non-Symbolist reader. Other poets than Blok would also

participate in this gesture of reorienting previously published works and in

stilling a historical and biographical context into the presentation of Symbol ism. Briusov initiated his own "Complete Works" in 1913 with an aim towards descriptively and overtly cataloguing his entire poetic career. The most comprehensive and biographically organized account of this period would come in 1914-1918 with Semen Vengerov's Russian Literature of the Twentieth Century, 1890-1910, an indispensable introduction (with a number of entries authored by the poets themselves) that rendered the period accessi ble to all readers. This Apollonian transformation, an early and paradigmatic embodiment of which is seen in Blok's process of revising his debut volume, was a dramatic reversal of the insularity accompanying the pre-1910 propa




gation of Symbolism and would prove significant in the appraisal of Symbol ism by succeeding generations of Russian poets and critics. By reducing Symbolism to readily identifiable constituent parts, the Symbolist oeuvre ren dered it susceptible to those wishing to "overcome" it.4

Blok left clear instructions for Musagef s republication of his first book. In the prospectus for his collected works, he calls for the books to have gray covers undecorated save for the publisher's device.5 The import of his very specific request becomes apparent when the covers of the first and second edi tions of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame are viewed side by side (Figs. 4 and 5).

AOftb _ yikm

oirpefcpaetiofi cirumtr msmm

«<l>pruTiL,-> t^veFiSa

i9o5r

Fig. 4. Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame (1905)

a jib k ca h J1 pt bjiok'b

GOBPAHIE CTHXOTBOPEHIH khiii A ni-pbah

c t ijxm o

ripekpachofl IIA m b

(1898—1904)

KHiirOH3,UTJUfi>ClT.O c m y c a r r. t 'b *

MOCKBA. V.cmxi

Fig. 5. Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame (1911)

Vasily Vladimirov's organic design and ornate font dominate the 1905 edi

tion,6 which suggests a vastly different work than does the realization of Blok's plan for the 1911 version that wears Apollo as its badge on a plain blue-gray background with red titling. The subdued formality of Musagef s

4. The notion of "overcoming" Symbolism was advanced by Viktor Zhirmunsky in his 1916

article "Those Who Have Overcome Symbolism." 5. RGB f. 190 k.55 ed.18.

6. This edition was actually released in October of 1904. However, since 1905 is the date of

publication indicated on the cover, I will use this year to avoid the illusion of an even earlier

edition.




edition reaches well beyond the book's surface. Without rewriting the poems, Blok instituted a set of pervasive alterations to his early verse in order to

change fundamentally the way in which his poetry was read. The second edi tion was meant not merely to replace the first, but to efface it entirely. The na ture of the revisions Blok made for the Musaget publication of Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame, his programmatic early work, ally him with other Symbol ists in furthering a resituation of Russian Symbolism within a larger, more structured paradigm. Blok also seeks a way to "correct and enlarge"7 his pre viously published book by instilling into it an overt and easily identifiable bi

ographical subtext. Musaget's approach to the publication of Symbolism af fords Blok the opportunity to reconstruct the entirety of his Symbolist career in the guise of a universally accessible retrospective whole.

The creation of a coherent biographical narrative from Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame requires the dismemberment of the book's original cyclical format. In

compiling the new edition, Blok requested that the publisher of the 1905 edi

tion, S. A. Sokolov's Grif, send him the remaining fourteen unsold copies.8 At least two of these were cannibalized in the production of the second edition's

manuscript. Blok's method of preparing the manuscript for Musaget was to cut out pages from the first edition and paste them into the second.9 Blok demon strates the extent to which Russian Symbolism's original publications are de

stroyed in the post-1910 trend to add narrative linearity to the reading and ex

plication of Symbolism. Blok perpetrates this violence upon his own debut volume for the sake of elucidating its place in his personal history.10 This ges ture implies that the 1905 Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame contains the basic ele ments of a biographical reading, and Blok's task in 1911 is to prioritize, rather than invent, this approach to his poetry. While an intimate sphere of readers,

those friends and relatives to whom he mailed his first poems, could recognize the biographical precedents behind his pursuit of the Prekrasnaia Dama, the structure of the 1905 book obscures such a chronologically dependent reading of the poems. In 1911, Blok seeks to transform this purposefully impenetrable and mystically infused work, the very cover of which advertises its Dionysian

7. The title page to the 1911 Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame indicates that it is the "second edi

tion, corrected and enlarged" [izdanie vtoroe, ispravlennoe i dopolnennoe]. 8. Blok, Pis'ma (II: 105). In general, Blok's allegiances with various Symbolist presses

were remarkably fluid. Between 1905 and 1911, he published six books with six different pub lishers (Grif, Skorpion, Ory, Shipovnik, Zolotoe runo, and Musaget). The five editions of Stikhi

o Prekrasnoi Dame alone would be released by four publishing houses (1905 — Grif, 1911 and

1916—Musaget; 1918— Zemlia; 1922— Alkonost). 9. The manuscript is preserved in the extensive Musaget archive at the Russian State Li

brary (Moscow). RGB f. 190 k.9 ed.l.

10. As Nikolai Gumilev notes in his 1912 review (originally published in Apollon) of Blok's

trilogy, "A poet usually gives the public his creations. Blok gives the public himself" (131). Dmitry Maksimov identifies the notion of linear progression (a "path" [put']) as central to Blok's poetry.




abstruseness, into an ordered narrative of the young poet's physical and meta

physical loves. By dismembering his first attempt to express his encounter with the Prekrasnaia Dama, one designed for a Symbolist reader, Blok illus trates precisely how Symbolism's initial insularity must be eroded when its

purview is broadened to include the non-Symbolist reader. When the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame is rendered accessible to those unindoctrinated into Symbol ism's world of hints and half-spoken mysteries, it can survive only through the

Dionysian act of being ripped apart and reborn. The reconstituted Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame bears only a passing resem

blance to its predecessor. Blok enacts a Dionysian sacrifice of his first book, but its rebirth creates a distinctly Apollonian second edition. Blok achieves the recontextualization of his previous works, a hallmark of Musaget, by overtly shifting the register in which he intends his poetry to be read. He too

partakes of the refashioning of "Symbolism" into a more universally appre ciable worldview, a single element of a more general system of meaning. Through rereading and reediting the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame, Blok offers the Symbolist reader a more developed and contextualized view of familiar

poems (by including approximately 200 additional poems written between 1898 and 1904) and the non-Symbolist reader a heretofore unavailable insight into Symbolist aesthetics. Musagef s version of Blok's early verse levels out the differences between those two categories of reader, and, to an extent, priv ileges the latter. While in 1911 the Symbolist reader must, like Blok, undergo a process of dismantling and reconstructing his understanding of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame, the non-Symbolist reader can open the book with no such burden. The reader of the second edition is immediately presented with in structions on how to read this book.

To those who sympathize with my poetry, the inclusion of semi-juvenile or formally weak

poems in this and the following books will not seem extraneous. Many of them taken separately have no value. But every poem is necessary in the formation of a chapter; from several chap ters is formed a book; each book is part of a trilogy; I can call the entire trilogy "a novel in

verse": it is dedicated to a single circle of feelings and thoughts to which I was devoted during the first twelve years of my conscious life. (PSS 1: 179)

This often quoted foreword lays the foundation for the tripartite reorganiza tion of Blok's entire oeuvre, generally the only form in which his poetry is

reproduced in modern editions and studied by modern scholars.11 This autho

11. The standard source for modern publications of Blok's poetry is the fourth edition of his

trilogy, the last prepared in his lifetime (St. Petersburg: Alkonost, 1921-22). This was the ver

sion republished in the first attempt to produce his collected works (Berlin: Alkonost, 1923) and

in the two primary scholarly editions of his works published in the last half-century (the Col

lected Works in Eight Volumes [Sobranie sochinenii v vos'mi tomakh] from 1960 to 1963 and

the "Complete Collected Works and Letters in Twenty Volumes" [Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i

pisem v dvadtsati tomakh] initiated in 1997 and still in production). Joan Grossman is one of the

few scholars to analyze the first edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame as an independent en

tity. Consequently, she demonstrates its debt to Briusov in revelations of the elder poet's influ

ence on Blok obscured in later editions of the book (163).




rially mandated trilogy encourages the superimposition of Blok's biography onto his poetry and supplies a clear link to the reevaluation of Symbolism oc

curring on the pages of Apollon. Blok's contribution to the series of articles

comprising the "crisis of Symbolism" was "On The Contemporary State of Russian Symbolism," which appeared in Apollon (1910, No. 8). In this arti

cle, a self-proclaimed "Baedeker" to Russian Symbolism, Blok advocates a schema of Symbolism's development composed of three phases—thesis, an

tithesis, and synthesis.12 The combination of this model with the trilogy Blok advertises in the foreword to the 1911 edition of Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame leads to the assignation of "thesis" to the first volume, "antithesis" to the sec

ond, and "synthesis" to the third. Blok understands the appeal of such a strat

egy for conceptualizing his career and totaling up his poetic output. He

clearly encourages this structured and evolutionary approach to reading Sym bolism and intends for it to replace all previous published versions of his work. I acknowledge the validity of the common scholarly preference for ap proaching Blok's writings as a coherent trilogy. However, I will focus on what is lacking in this point of view, the loss of which is left largely uncom mented upon by those who read and study Blok. Having assumed the roles of both Musagef s reader and its editor, Blok himself is responsible for perpetu ating the dramatic reorientation of his audience which began in 1911. By re

vealing what he hoped to efface in this move and drawing out the major con

sequences of a transition which Blok attempted to institute quietly and

discreetly, I argue for the magnitude of the epistemological shift required of the reader in moving from the first to the second edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame. The full extent of Blok's reevaluation of the nature of

Symbolism cannot be appreciated without first considering how differently he intended his work to be read after 1910.

Blok's is not the first voice encountered in the original edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame. The two epigraphs preceding the introductory poem de marcate the book's predecessors and herald its participation in the thematic and aesthetic program of a literary group. Blok refers to Solovyov's 1894 "On Lake Saima in the Wintertime" [Na Saime zimoi] and Briusov's 1903 "To the Woman Close By" [K blizkoi], both of which pay homage to the poet's en counter with an unknown mystical figure. By opening not with his own devo tion to the Prekrasnaia Dama but with that of his maitres, Blok signals his continuation of a discourse originating with Symbolism's already acknowl

edged progenitors. The Symbolist reader's first impression of this book in

1905, from its title,13 to its cover, to the first printed verses, is saturated with

12. Blok, SS (5: 425-36). Blok focuses on the first two phases—"teza" and "antiteza," leav

ing the reader to understand Symbolism's current and final stage, synthesis, from its contempo rary state. For general discussions of Blok's place in the crisis of Symbolism see Masing-Delic, and Mints 2004.

13. The title was first applied to a cycle of poetry Blok published in Severnye tsvety [1903] and was invented by Briusov (Blok 1980, 481).




the voices and perspectives of Blok's co-visionaries rather than his own. As Blok's debut volume of poetry, the 1905 Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame embodies Russian Symbolism's web of internally resonating referentiality and advo

cacy of a self-selected reader. These attributes, orienting Blok's work within the paradigm for constructing a definition of Symbolism at its Dionysian peak, are thoroughly undone in the book's second edition. However, instead of rewriting his poetry, Blok reframes it and thus shifts the paradigm of which it partakes. The cover no longer displays the moderne preference for form over content, the title (to which the designation of "1898-1904" is appended) now distinctly indicates the book's connection with Blok's life and work, and the book's first lines, now an authorial foreword, alert the reader of the un

equivocal presence of narrative linearity and novelistic plot. In 1911, the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame belongs solely to Blok and the story it encompasses is no more or less than that of his life.

The crux of the epistemological shift separating the first and second edi tions of Blok's first book resides in the notably different strategies for read

ing each. In order to extract meaning from the 1905 edition, one must have an a priori familiarity with the new art's highly associative reliance on half

spoken allusions and hints. A reader who does not comprehend Solovyov's mystical cult of Sophia or Briusov's self-consciously Symbolist poetry knows from the opening that Blok's book is not for him. Every aspect of the book is

designed to be immediately recognizable as "Symbolism" to both the friends and enemies of the movement. And only the former were expected to read and

understand the poet's dreamlike encounters with a woman who is both real and more real at once. Blok's opening poem, titled "Introduction" [ Vstuple nie], sets the tone for the collection and establishes the relative positions of the reader, the poet, and the lyrical object. Reifying the literal Russian of its title ("a stepping into"), this poem enacts the poet's entrance into the realm of the Prekrasnaia Dama. Donning the role of the knight-minstrel on a quest for

his damsel, the poet leads the reader into the Prekrasnaia Dama's mystical world. The boundaries of this space are tangibly represented by the image of

a castle blazing in the sunset. The poem ends on a series of questions ad

dressed directly to the book's heroine, "Ty li menia na zakatakh zhdala? /

Terem zazhgla? Vorota otperla? [Was it You who awaited me at sunset? / Who

set the castle ablaze? Who opened the gates?]." This opening invokes a num

ber of images prominent in Symbolist writings. In addition to developing the

corpus of works devoted to the Divine Feminine (a project Blok saw not only in Solovyov's verse, but in Briusov's as well14), Blok clearly indicates his af

filiation with the aesthetics of the younger "Argonaut" poets grouping around

Bely. The palette of Blok's "Introduction" consists of the fiery reds of the sun

14. Joan Grossman explores the complexities of Blok's reading (and misreading) of Briusov's

Urbi et Orbi [1903],




set and the hypertrophied azure of the sky, both key elements of Bely's first

book of poetry, Zoloto v lazuri [Gold in Azure], which had been published by

Skorpion earlier in 1904.15 Blok relies on the group of readers common to his and Bely's first books to

perceive from the very opening of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame the aesthetic

and epistemological nature of its cosmology. Not only does Blok's "Introduc

tion" present the proper reader with a recognizable entrance into a known

world, but the poems immediately following it also elicit a reaction of famil

iarity from the Symbolist reader. Blok places two poems expressing the epit ome of the poet's interaction with the Prekrasnaia Dama at the head of the

book's first section. Both poems, "Predchuvstvuiu Tebia" ["I anticipate You"] and "Vkhozhu ia v temnye khramy" ["I enter the dark sanctuary"], had been

published in 1903 in prominent Symbolist venues.16 The Symbolist reader

would have already known these two works, and their themes of prescience and otherworldliness provide him with a cascade of familiar associations rather than a novel aesthetic.

The 1905 edition of Blok's first book is structured to guide the reader

through a series of encounters with the Prekrasnaia Dama. It establishes a

clear point of entrance into the world of this journey, but it also presumes a reader who recognizes that these encounters take place in the realms of both

the phenomenal and the noumenal at once. As first presented, the meaning and import of this poetry, distinctly not meant to be read as juvenilia, is re alized only by an audience that can bridge the gap between the real and the more real and occupy both sides of the symbol simultaneously. In order to accommodate such a reading, Blok fashions this book in the same cyclical manner that organized his first poems dedicated to the Prekrasnaia Dama as

published in the expressly cyclical Severnye tsvety for 1903. The poems hover around the book's heroine and are interlinked with one another

through their relative proximity to her. By relying on the oscillating near ness and distance of the poet's object as a gauge of the reader's progress throughout this work, Blok binds his Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame to a struc ture that reflects the chaotic Dionysian side of Russian Symbolism, its pri mary face in 1905.

In 1911, in contrast, the "Introduction" to the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame is the two hundred and ninety-second poem in the second edition of the book,

coming on page 192. Blok's well-wrought poem of expectation "Predchu vstvuiu Tebia" is preceded by eighty-eight other poems, and the reader must wait until page 134 before witnessing the poet's initial ecstatic meeting with the Prekrasnaia Dama in " Vkhozhu ia v temnye khramy." Hence, the mecha

15. See Lavrov 1978 and 1994, and Stone.

16. "Predchuvstvuiu Tebia" in Novyiput' [1903, No. 3] and "Vkhozhu ia v temnye khramy" in Severnye tsvety [1903].




nisms of grouping which were essential for the construction of the coherent

poetic world of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame were thoroughly wrecked in Blok's alterations for the 1911 edition. The biographical nature of this book— a consequence of the rearrangement of the poems in chronological order made prominent through the use of years as chapter headings—has been the focus of much of the critical interest in Blok's first book.17 Empowered by the addition of numerous unpublished poems to the second edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame, indicating the book's aspirations for biographical compre hensiveness, Blok's scholarly interpreters fulfill precisely the roles Blok fash ioned for his post-1910 readership. This edition generates meaning through the equation of the actions of the lyrical hero and the life of the author. All were meant to take part in this method of reading and Blok therefore facili

tates, and even provokes, this interpretation of his poetry by using his edito rial control over its organization and presentation to draw its biographical el ements to the forefront. The more orderly the grouping of the poems and the more straightforward their progression, the more accessible their biographi cal underpinnings. However, the completeness of this edition masks what is lost in its rearrangement into a linearly structured volume, one of the three volumes of the collected poetry that encompass the entirety of Blok's oeuvre.

The biographical narrative behind the poet's interaction with the Prekras naia Dama usurps Symbolist hints and intuition as the source of coherence in Blok's first book. The reader must be sensitive to the linearity of plot rather than the cyclicity of allusion in order to comprehend the work prop erly. When the book's structure no longer caters to the multi-voiced unity of

Symbolism's self-articulation as a group, such as was the norm in the Sym bolist journal, the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame becomes relatively isolated from those works which were integral for its initial readers to understand it. Blok's poetry ceases to participate in the process of definition by context

typical for the era of the Symbolist journal and retreats into the self-referen

tiality of the complete works of a single author. Consequently, the Stikhi o

Prekrasnoi Dame is palpably distanced from its own epistemological roots

and exchanges its Symbolist ellipticism for the phenomenally grounded

surety of the novel. When works of Symbolism are refashioned to fit into the confines of a

collected volume, an individual author's oeuvre, they cease to resonate with

the context which originally endowed them with their status as "Symbol ism." The group dynamic responsible for establishing Russian Symbolism's unity and coherence is lost. The second edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi

17. See Mints 1999 and Sloane. The extensive commentary to the Complete Collected Works

and Letters in Twenty Volumes (which is still ongoing, although the volumes containing all of

Blok's poetry have been published) supplies a thorough biographical context for nearly every

poem.




Dame, already crowned with the designation of "Collected Poems. Book One" [Sobranie stikhotvorenii. Kniga pervaia] on its cover, is a testament to this loss.18 The reader need not know Solovyov's work to understand Blok's engagement with the Divine Feminine; nor know Briusov's collec tions to understand the structural principles of the revised Stikhi o Prekras noi Dame\ nor Bely's mythmaking Argonaut poems to sense fully Blok's voice and themes; nor Balmont's ecstatic cult of nature to appreciate Blok's

cosmology. This epistemological reservoir, the accumulated knowledge of the Symbolist reader, supplies a distinct reading of any edition of Blok's first book, but in 1911 it is no longer a prerequisite for comprehending it nor even the most obvious or authorially sanctioned approach to the work. Blok directs the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame at the non-Symbolist reader by opening up an alternative perspective on the book independent of Symbol ism's Dionysian insularity. The "single circle of feelings and thoughts" which supply the coherence of Blok's trilogy originates solely from within the life of the poet. This circle is emphatically closed and excludes exter

nally contingent modes of interpretation.19 As Blok goes to lengths to

demonstrate, the oeuvre more resembles a novel than a poetic cycle and thus relies on the internally generated coherence inherent in novelistic form. When this formal and interpretive shift is accomplished, Blok's poetry proves to have actually always resonated with the orderly constructedness of the Apollonian.

The production of stand-alone works of Symbolism marks a significant de

velopment in the propagation of a general definition of the movement. It has entered a historically self-reflexive phase. The desire to place previously pub lished works into a new and orderly worldview facilitates the processes of

rereading and reevaluating Symbolism practiced by Musaget. The preference for the linearity of a single reading of "Symbolism" over its multi-faceted

group articulation allows for a far more passive reader of Symbolism than at

any previous moment in its appearance in Russia. The reader of Musaget can

rely on the self-contained nature of the Symbolist worldview now coming to

prominence; he can trust that each publication will supply the necessary ap paratus for reading and understanding it. Thus, while earlier Symbolist books

certainly contain autobiographical references, the degree to which these sub texts are laid out for the non-Symbolist reader, the reader not already ac

18. G. A. Tolstykh has recently argued that the genre of the "Collected Works" is a natural

development of the Symbolists' serious engagement with lyrical cycles. I concede the close re

lationship of the two forms, but claim that the acceptance of a collected works entails a signifi cant epistemological shift (on the parts of both author and reader) away from the aesthetic prin ciples responsible for the poetic cycle's dominance in early Russian Symbolism.

19. The draft of the "Foreword" to the second edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame ended with the line "the circle is closed" [kritg somknut], which was cut from the published version

(quoted in full above). See RGB f. 190 k.9 ed.l 1.7.




quainted with the familiar circles of the editorial offices and salons these

poets inhabited, is greatly altered.20 The implicit guarantee of comprehensibility embodied in the post-1910

publication of Russian Symbolism indicates the extent of the movement's cri

sis. The substantial shift in Symbolism's intended reader is one of the clear est markers of the crisis of Symbolism. By so significantly altering the me

chanics of its reception, the authors and editors responsible for shaping the

appearance of Symbolism demonstrate the dramatic reevaluation of their aes thetic. The central act of this process is of rereading, thus making Blok's 1911

Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame a model text for post-crisis Russian Symbolism. This is evident in the degree to which he disavows its interaction with its orig inal readily identifiable Symbolist context and refuses to take part in the prac tice of defining his work as Symbolism through its association with texts al

ready established as paradigmatically Symbolist. Musaget seeks to establish

a model of Symbolism expressed through isolated and self-sufficient editions

offering fully developed and well-mapped forays into the Symbolist aesthetic.

The reader of Musaget is neither required nor expected to be an active partic

ipant in the formulation of "Symbolism." As Blok's 1911 Stikhi o Prekrasnoi

Dame attests, the post-crisis reader of Symbolism could rest assured that the

formerly open-ended spiral of associations needed to inhabit a Symbolist mode of reading had been sealed shut. A single reading of a single text is suf

ficient to grasp the foundation of the post-crisis Symbolist worldview. One telling example of the critical reception of Blok's book in the very epi

center of Symbolism's crisis, the journal Apollon, records the first reverbera

tions of the epistemological shift necessary for Symbolism to engage with the

non-Symbolist reader. Vladimir Piast, who reviewed the collection in August of 1911 (just three months after it was published), lingers on one particular poem. He quotes the first poem of the book in full. This is not the "Introduc

tion" designed to facilitate a Symbolist reading of this work, but rather the sev

enteen-year-old Blok's "Let the moon shine—the night is dark" ["Pust' svetit

mesiats,—noch' temna"]. In Piast's view, "Blok is a wizard [charodei], and

such he was most likely born. From his earliest youth he knew every sorcery of words [vsiakoe koldovstvo slov]" (70). By entering Blok's first poetry

through this newly fashioned portal, Piast is following the path Blok desires his

20. Blok's poetry of his next phase (ultimately delineated as 1904-1908) demonstrates a

move towards more overtly biographical structural principles. However, this too comes to light

only in the context of his Collected Poems. Most telling in this period is the highly personal 1907 book The Snow Mask, which is closely linked to Blok's relationship with Natalia

Volokhova. The original edition, a notably intimate volume measuring just 3.5"X5", was dra

matically augmented and rendered more accessible through its placement in Blok's Collected

Poems. While no alterations were made to the content or organization of the work, it was nev

ertheless normalized and significantly contextualized by its inclusion in his oeuvre.




readers to take and to which the structure of the book offers the least resistance. He reads the poetry always aware of its place in the author's biography, always keeping its chronological markers, the dates prominently appended to many poems, in mind.21 Piast fully embraces a reading strategy that calls for the use of Blok's own juvenilia and admittedly weaker poetry to "enlarge and correct" the context needed to situate Blok's by then already iconic poems to the Prekrasnaia Dama. Piast restates Blok's justification for the volume's empha sis on comprehensiveness from the point of view of a non-Symbolist reader.

But for those who are not used to Blok's "first period," for those to whom the language of his

country has remained inaudible, for those to whom the sacred hieroglyphs of his songs have

given too meager a prophecy—for them, these less significant of his poems, these satellites and

planets, serve as able translators in this "country" and are the keys to his writings which allow

them more fully and consciously to relish its beauty and richness. (69)

For Blok's latecomers, those not nurtured within the confines of a Symbolist canon, the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame achieves coherence through meaning generated wholly internally. They need only to read Blok's poetry from start to finish to immerse themselves in the worldview upon which his works de

pend. A chronologically structured reading thus becomes a substitute for the

broadly focused encounter with Symbolism offered in the Symbolist journals. All who pick up the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame in 1911 can orient themselves to the language of Symbolism without reading anything outside the bound aries of this single text.

With the advent of Blok's biographical Symbolism, Musagef s oeuvre

proves that it can successfully supplant Skorpion''s canon as the space to which readers must turn in their search for an understanding of Symbolism. For practical reasons, reading the first edition rather than the second was not a feasible choice for most non-Symbolist readers. As Piast notes at the very opening of his review,

The publisher Musaget has released, at last, the long-awaited and desired book of Aleksandr

Blok's first poems. I say desired. That is because the first edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi

Dame has been diligently sought after by those fans of the poet who "came to him late" and

weren't able to find a copy of that little book of his poems which so quickly sold out. (68)22

21. "The poet himself having placed the date beneath some of the poems wishes, in his

words, to underscore them, that is, to indicate their significance for him" (68). In the manuscript of the second edition of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame, the most common alteration Blok makes

to pages cut out of the first edition and pasted into the second is the addition of the date of com

position. 22. This remark contains a curious contradiction of Blok's awareness that fourteen copies of

the original edition remained unsold (noted above). It provides a telling insight into the pub lisher's lack of effort to advertise and market the book beyond the insular confines Symbolist circles.




Those who had not read the first edition in 1905 were unable to access the book's initial context in either tangible or abstract terms.

By ensuring that only one version of the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame is avail able to his readers, the one reflecting his retrospective rereading of the book, Blok promotes the illusion that no other approach to Symbolism was ever

possible. The process of dismantling Russian Symbolism's delicately con structed network of interdependent associations and recasting them into im

posing tomes aspiring to comprehensiveness requires an act of forgetting. The

original space of Symbolism's publication, the academic structure of the

Symbolist journals which enabled them to cultivate and instruct a select read

ership, did not survive a crisis that irreversibly altered the landscape of read

ing and publishing Symbolism. As Blok's revisions to the Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame are meant to show, a Symbolist is born and not made, and therefore the

only instruction needed to enter into his worldview is in the intricacies of his life and not his art.

When Viktor Zhirmunsky coined the phrase "those who have overcome

Symbolism" [preodolevshie simvolizm] in 1916, he had a specific group of

poets in mind. The Acmeists, generally represented by Nikolai Gumilev, Anna Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelstam, were bred on Symbolist poetry only to reject it pointedly when coming of age. Blok's revised Stikhi o Prekrasnoi Dame is in keeping with their preference for concrete images and Apollonian structure. The Symbolists themselves are more implicated in the project of re

acting to Russian Symbolism than Zhirmunsky admits. Their systematic em brace of the Apollonian structure of the oeuvre, their reorientation towards a

non-Symbolist reader, and the new-found centrality of historical and biogra phical context for their writings reveal how, after 1910, the Symbolists them selves sought to overcome Symbolism. The practice of overcoming Symbol ism is integral not only for rejecting it, but also for the final articulation of its

self-conceptualization. No longer produced through the metonymic bonds of

explication through association, Symbolism is forever reified into a linearly structured biographical reading. The act of rereading and refashioning one's

own work is made into the vehicle for overcoming Symbolism.

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Данная статья представит Собрание стихотворений Александра Блока, сочиненных вскоре после кризиса русского символизма, как главный образец значительных изменений во взаимоотношениях символизма с читателями. С

потерей литературного первенства символизма, сами символисты смогли

взглянуть на свое творчество как на элемент завершившегося исторического периода. В результате, сам "процесс перечитывания" был включен в распро странение символизма в его посткризисной фазе. Издательство "Мусагет", основаное в 1910, сосредоточилось именно на этом элементе идейного развития символизма, что позволило символистам вернуться к ранее изданным сочинениям. Намерением такого подхода было изменение динамики отношений

между символизмом и читателями. Первая книга Собрания стихотворений (1911) Блока воплотила процесс, в котором определенные нарративные структуры накладывались на уже существуюшие образцы символизма, например "Стики о Прекрасной Даме". Сам Блок стал и читателем и редактором, который отмечал свое творчество знаком завершенности символизма. Символизм стал понятным читателю не-символисту. В релуьтате, символизм обратился к

стройной, аполлонической стороне дихотомии, которая занимала символистов в 1900-е годы. Такой подход, в полную противоположность прежнему камерному характеру символизма, стал характерным в восприятии символизма последу ющими поколениями русских поэтов и критиков.



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