Unusual for Russia, the Scottish surname came to him thanks to a distant ancestor - a sailor who forever anchored off the coast of Pushkin and Lermontov. The work of Balmont Konstantin Dmitrievich in Soviet times was forgotten for obvious reasons. The country of the hammer and sickle did not need creators who worked outside socialist realism, whose lines did not broadcast about the struggle, about the heroes of war and labor ... Meanwhile, this poet, who has really powerful talent, whose exceptionally melodic poems continued the tradition of pure
poetry, wrote poems not for parties, but for people.
“To create always, to create everywhere ...”
The legacy that Balmont left us is quite voluminous and impressive: 35 collections of poems and 20 books of prose. His poems aroused admiration of compatriots for the ease of the author’s syllable. Konstantin Dmitrievich wrote a lot, however, he never “squeezed lines out of himself” and was not involved in optimizing the text with numerous edits. His poems have always been written on the first try, in one sitting. About how he created poems, Balmont told completely original - a poem.
The above is not an exaggeration. Mikhail Vasilyevich Sabashnikov, whom the poet visited in 1901, recalled that he had dozens of lines in his head, and he wrote poetry on paper immediately, without any editing. To the question of how he succeeds, Konstantin Dmitrievich answered with a disarming smile: “After all, I am a poet!”
Brief description of creativity
Literary scholars, experts in his work, talk about the formation, flourishing and decline in the level of works that Balmont created. A brief biography and creativity, however, indicate to us amazing performance (he wrote daily and always on a hunch).
The most popular works of Balmont are the collections of poems of the mature poet “Only love”, “Let’s be like the sun”, “Burning buildings”. Among the early works, the collection Silence stands out.
Balmont’s work (quoting briefly from literary scholars at the beginning of the 20th century) with a subsequent general tendency to damping the talent of the author (after the three collections mentioned above) also has a number of “gaps”. Noteworthy are “Fairy Tales” - cute children's songs written in a style later adopted by Korney Chukovsky. Also of interest are “foreign poems” created under the impression of what he saw while traveling in Egypt and Oceania.
Biography. Childhood
His father, Dmitry Konstantinovich, was a zemstvo doctor, and also owned the estate. Mother, Vera Nikolaevna (nee Lebedev), a creative person, according to the recognition of the future poet, “did more to foster a love of poetry and music” than all subsequent teachers. Konstantin became the third son in the family, where there were seven children in all, all of them sons.
Konstantin Dmitrievich had his own, special Tao (perception of life). It is no accident that Balmont’s life and work are closely related. From childhood, a powerful creative principle was laid in it, which manifested itself in the contemplation of world outlook.
From childhood, schoolboyism and loyalty were disgusted to him. Romanticism often prevailed over common sense. He never finished school (Shuysky male Heir Tsesarevich Alexei gymnasium), being expelled from grade 7 for participating in the revolutionary circle. He completed his last school course at the Vladimir Gymnasium under round-the-clock supervision of a teacher. Then he remembered only two teachers with gratitude: a teacher of history and geography and a teacher of literature.
After studying for a year at Moscow University, he was also expelled for "organizing riots", then he was expelled from the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl ...
As you can see, Konstantin Balmont did not easily begin his poetic activity . His biography and creativity is still the subject of debate between literary scholars.
Balmont personality
The personality of Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont is quite complicated. He was not "like everyone else." Exclusivity ... It can be determined even by the portrait of the poet, by his look, by posture. It immediately becomes clear: before us is not an apprentice, but a master from poetry. His personality was bright and charismatic. He was a surprisingly organic person, Balmont’s life and work are like a single inspirational impulse.
He began to write poems at 22 (for comparison, Lermontov’s first works were written at 15). Prior to this, as we already know, there was an incomplete education, as well as an unsuccessful marriage with the daughter of a Shuysky factory owner, which ended in a suicide attempt (the poet jumped out of a window on the 3rd floor onto a pavement.) The unsettled family life and the death of the first child from meningitis pushed Balmont to a rash act . His first wife Garelina Larisa Mikhailovna, the beauty of the Botticelli type, tortured him with jealousy, imbalance and neglect of dreams of great literature. He splashed out his emotions from discord (and later from divorce) with his wife in the verses “Breathed your fragrant shoulders ...”, “No, no one did so much evil to me ...”, “Oh, a woman, a child, accustomed to play ..”.
Self education
How did the young Balmont, having become an outcast due to the loyalty of the education system, turned into the most educated person, the ideologist of a new literary direction? Quoting the very same Konstantin Dmitrievich, his mind once “hooked” on one purely British word - selfhelp (self-help). Self-education. It became for Konstantin Dmitrievich a springboard to the future ...
Being by nature a true pen worker, Konstantin Dmitrievich never followed any external system imposed on him from outside and alien to his nature. Balmont’s creativity is based entirely on his passion for self-education and openness to impressions. He was attracted to literature, philology, history, philosophy, in which he was a real specialist. He loved to travel.
The beginning of the creative path
The romantic style inherent in Fet, Nadson and Pleshcheyev did not become an end in itself for Balmont (in the 70-80s of the XIX century, many poets created poems with motives of sadness, sadness, restlessness, loneliness). It turned for Konstantin Dmitrievich into the path he paved for symbolism. He will write about this a little later.
Inconsistency of self-education
The instability of self-education determines the features of Balmont's creativity. It was really a man who creates a word. Poet. And he perceived the world in the same way as the poet can see: not through analysis and reasoning, but relying only on impressions and sensations. “The first movement of the soul is the most faithful,” - this rule, developed by himself, became immutable for his whole life. It lifted him into the heights of creativity, it also ruined his talent.
The romantic hero of Balmont in the early period of his work is committed to Christian values. He, experimenting with combinations of various sounds and thoughts, erects a "cherished chapel."
However, it is obvious that under the influence of his travels of 1896-1897, as well as translations of foreign poetry, Balmont gradually comes to a different worldview.
It should be recognized that following the romantic style of Russian poets of the 80s. Balmont’s work began, briefly evaluating which, we can say that he really became the founder of symbolism in Russian poetry. The poetry collections “Silence” and “In Vastness” are considered significant for the period of the poet’s formation.
He outlined his views on symbolism in 1900 in the article "Elementary words about symbolic poetry." Symbolists, unlike realists, according to Balmont, are not just observers, they are thinkers looking into the world through the window of their dreams. Moreover, Balmont considers symbolic poetry to be the most important principles of "hidden abstraction" and "obvious beauty."
By its nature, not a gray mouse, but the leader was Balmont. A brief biography and creativity confirm this. Charisma and the natural desire for freedom ... It was these qualities that allowed him, at the peak of popularity, to "become a center of attraction" for numerous Russian balmontist societies. According to the memoirs of Ehrenburg (it was already proud later), Balmont's personality impressed even the arrogant Parisians from the fashionable Passy district.
New wings of poetry
Balmont fell in love with his future second wife Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreev at first sight. This stage in his life reflects a collection of poems "In vastness." The verses dedicated to her are numerous and original: “The Black-eyed Doe”, “Why is the Moon Always Intoxicated to Us?”, “Night Flowers”.
The lovers lived in Europe for a long time, and then, returning to Moscow, Balmont in 1898 published a collection of poems "Silence" at the Scorpion publishing house. In the collection of verses was preceded by an epigraph selected from the works of Tyutchev: "There is a certain hour of global silence." The poems in it are grouped into 12 sections, called "lyric poems." Konstantin Dmitrievich, inspired by the theosophical teachings of Blavatsky, already in this collection of verses noticeably departs from the Christian worldview.
The poet's understanding of his role in art
The Silence collection becomes the line that distinguishes Balmont as a poet who professes symbolism. Developing further the accepted vector of creativity, Konstantin Dmitrievich writes an article called the “Calderon drama of personality”, where he indirectly substantiated his departure from the classical Christian model. This was done, as always, figuratively. He considered earthly life "falling away from the bright Primordial Source."
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky talentedly presented the features of Balmont's work, his author's style. He believed that the "I" written by Balmont, in principle, does not indicate belonging to a poet, it is - initially socialized. Therefore, the verse of Konstantin Dmitrievich is unique in its penetrating lyricism, expressed in associating itself with others, which the reader invariably feels. Reading his poems, it seems that Balmont is full of light and energy, which he generously shares with others:
What Balmont presents as an optimistic narcissism is actually more altruistic than the phenomenon of public demonstration of the poets' pride in their merits, as well as their equally public hanging of laurels by themselves.
Balmont’s work, in short, in the words of Annensky, is saturated with the internal philosophical polemism laid down in it, which determines the integrity of worldview. The latter is expressed in the fact that Balmont wants to present to its reader the event comprehensively: from the perspective of the executioner, and from the perspective of the victim. He does not have an unambiguous assessment of anything; he is initially characterized by pluralism of opinions. He came to him thanks to his talent and hard work, a century ahead of the time when for developed countries this became the norm of public consciousness.
Sunny genius
The work of the poet Balmont is unique. In fact, Konstantin Dmitrievich purely formally adjoined various trends, so that it would be more convenient for him to promote his new poetic ideas, a lack of which he had never experienced. In the last decade of the 19th century, a metamorphosis occurs with the poet's work: melancholy and fleetingness give way to solar optimism.
Nominally, it is generally accepted that the style in which Konstantin Dmitrievich wrote poetry belonged to the poetic current of symbolism.
If in earlier verses the mood of Nietzscheanism was traced, then at the peak of talent development, the work of Konstantin Balmont began to differ in specific author's optimism and "sunshine", "fiery".
Alexander Blok, who is also a symbolist poet, presented a vivid description of Balmont’s work of that period in a very laconic way, saying that it is as bright and life-affirming as spring.
Peak of creativity
For the first time, Balmont’s poetic gift sounded in full force in verses from the Burning Buildings collection. There are 131 poems written during the poet’s stay in the house of S. Polyakov
All of them, according to the poet, were composed under the influence of “one mood” (Balmont did not think of creativity in a different way). "The poem should no longer be minor!" - decided Balmont. Starting with this collection, he finally departed from decadence. The poet, boldly experimenting with combinations of sounds, colors and thoughts, created the "lyrics of the modern soul", "the soul torn", "wretched, ugly."
At this time, he was in close contact with the St. Petersburg bohemia. Ekaterina Alekseevna knew one weakness behind her husband. He could not drink wine. Although Konstantin Dmitrievich was a strong, wiry physique, his nervous system (obviously torn in childhood and youth) "worked" inadequately. After the wine he was "carried" to brothels. However, as a result, he found himself in a completely miserable state: lying on the floor and paralyzed by a deep hysteria. This happened more than once during work on Burning Buildings, when he was in company with Baltrushaitis and Polyakov.
We must pay tribute to Ekaterina Alekseevna, the earthly guardian angel of her husband. She understood the essence of her husband, whom she considered honest and sincere, and who, to her chagrin, had novels. For example, as with Dagny Christensen in Paris, the poems “The Sun Has Left”, “From the Kings' Family” are dedicated to her. It is significant that the affair with the Norwegian, who worked as a Petersburg correspondent, ended with Balmont as abruptly as it began. After all, his heart still belonged to one woman - Ekaterina Andreevna, Beatrice, as he called her.
In 1903, Konstantin Dmitrievich hardly published the collection “Let’s Like the Sun”, written in 1901-1902. The hand of the master is felt in it. Note that about 10 works have not passed through censorship. Creativity of the poet Balmont, according to the censors, has become too sensual and erotic.
Literary scholars, on the other hand, believe that this collection of essays, which represents the cosmogonic model of the world to readers, is evidence of a new, highest level of development of the poet. Being on the verge of a mental break, working on the previous collection, Konstantin Dmitrievich seemed to understand that it was impossible to “live in rebellion”. The poet seeks truth at the intersection of Hinduism, paganism and Christianity. He expresses his worship of elemental objects: fire (“Hymn to the fire”), wind (“Wind”), ocean (“Appeal to the ocean”). In the same 1903, the Grif Publishing House published the third collection crowning the peak of Balmont's work, “Only Love. Seven-flare. "
Instead of a conclusion
The
paths of creativity are inscrutable
. Even for such poets, “by the grace of God,” like Balmont. Life and work are briefly characterized for him after 1903 in one word - "decline". Therefore, Alexander Blok, who in fact became the next leader of Russian symbolism, in his own way appreciated Balmont’s further (after the collection “Only Love”). He presented him with a murderous characterization, saying that there is a great Russian poet, Balmont, but no “new Balmont”.
However, not being literary scholars of the last century, we nevertheless got acquainted with the late work of Konstantin Dmitrievich. Our verdict: it’s worth reading, there are a lot of interesting things ... However, we have no motive to distrust the words of the Bloc. Indeed, from the point of view of literary criticism, Balmont as a poet is the banner of symbolism, after the collection “Only love. Seven-colored ”has exhausted itself. Therefore, it is logical on our part to complete this short story about the life and work of K. D. Balmont, the “solar genius” of Russian poetry.