Le langage visuel dans la peinture symboliste de Lyubov Momot: un dialogue avec la poésie contemporaine

Les interférences entre l’art pictural, la critique d’art et l’écriture poétique, ainsi que les liens du poète avec les courants artistiques de son temps furent illustrés par plusieurs artistes dont Oscar Wilde (préraphaélites, Beardsley, Degas, Pissaro), Charles Baudelaire (Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Guys ; cf. son poème Les Phares), Guillaume Apollinaire (Henri Rousseau), Aleksandr Blok (Vasnecov, Vrubel’). Ces interférences contribuent à élaborer une authentique recherche des lois qui régissent l’acte de création et la valeur art. Rosina Neginsky, poète d’origine russe, de culture anglo-française et d’expression anglaise, est à la fois auteur et objet d’étude de cet essai consacré à l’œuvre de Lyubov Momot, peintre-symboliste d’origine ukrainienne installée à Chicago. La similarité des thèmes, la circulation des métaphores picturales et verbales sont ainsi interprétées comme un dialogue inter-sémiotique entre les deux artistes contemporaines. L’auteur concentre son analyse sur le parallèle entre, d’une part, les styles et l’imaginaire de la peinture de Momot, et de l’autre, leur réfraction dans sa propre poésie. La perception de la peinture à travers le prisme de la parole poétique permet d’accéder à une nouvelle compréhension des métaphores visuelles et renforce l’acuité esthétique de la peinture. En plus de sa valeur analytique, l’essai offre la possibilité de découvrir la peinture de Luybov Momot et plusieurs poèmes inédits de Rosina Neginsky qui sortiront en novembre 2021 chez Austin Macauley Publishers à New York.

M.E. Levberg’s Play “Danton” as Perceived by А. Blok

The article considers the unpublished play by Maria Levberg, a little known female writer of the Silver Age. Aleksandr Blok praised this drama entitled Danton; thanks to his efforts, it was performed in the Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1919. Danton is discussed in several articles by Blok (Bolshoi Drama Theater in the Next Season, of 19 May 1919, Tribune (Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus)) and in his correspondence; it is also mentioned in Blok’s notebooks. The author of the article analyzes all these mentions, reconstructs the history of interactions between Blok and Levberg. Some of her letters to the poet are published here for the first time. Blok’s notes on the typed copy of Danton, preserved at the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature in Saint Petersburg, are described. The relationship between this version of the play and the version, preserved at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts in Moscow, is revealed. The author analyzes the plot and the system of characters, characterizes the concept of history expressed in Danton, and proposes the hypothesis why this play turned out to be so dear to Blok. Blok’s reviews on Danton are compared to those written by A.M. Remizov (who also welcomed the play, as well as other dramas by Levberg — Stones of Death and The Chevalier’s Epee) and by M.A. Kuzmin who displayed a more critical attitude. Finally, the place of this drama among Levberg’s works and her main themes and ideas are considered.

On the History of Aleksandr Blok Party in Arzamas Society

The paper traces the history of a short-lived Petrograd literary society “Arzamas” and analyses its connections with the Second Workshop of Poets. A special attention is paid to the Party organized by G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich on behalf of Arzamas society in May 1918. At the party L.D. Blok made her first public performance reciting Blok’s poem The Twelve. The scandal that took place during the party, demonstrated the overreaction of Blok’s contemporaries to the poem. Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Piast refused to participate in the party – for different reasons, as it is proved in paper. The paper also considers F. Sologub’s opinion of Blok’s works written on January 1918. An attempt is made to recreate Nikolay Gumilev’s attitude to the poem The Twelve.

CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION AS THE BASIS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL IN THE MYSTICAL-THEURGICAL ATTITUDES OF SYMBOLISTS

В статье ставится цель проведения сравнительного анализа мистериально-теургических учений символистов (Д.С. Мережковский, Андрей Белый, Александр Блок, Вяч. Иванов, Павел Флоренский), направленных на духовное преображение сущности мира и человека на основе конкретного и религиозного усилия по преодолению сдерживающих и тормозящих внутреннее совершенствование начал. Творческие начала мира призваны активизировать эстетический и морально-нравственный потенциал, заложенный в человечестве. The goal of the article is to conduct a comparaitive analysis of the mystery-theurgical teachings of the Symbolists (D.S. Merezhkovsky, Andrey Beliy, Aleksandr Blok, Vach. Ivanov, P. Florensky), aimed at spiritual transformation of the essence of the world and of man on the basis of a concrete and religious effort to overcome the principles that restrain and hinder internal improvement. The creative principles of the world, used by them, are designed to activate the aesthetic and moral-ethical potential inherent in humanity.

Ivanov, Viacheslav Ivanovich (1866–1949)

Viacheslav Ivanov was a leading theoretician of the symbolist literary movement and a prominent figure in the renaissance of religious thought in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. A classical scholar by training, and erudite poet by vocation, Ivanov became known as an acolyte of Nietzsche. Later, along with the other ‘younger’ symbolists Aleksandr Blok and Andrei Belyi, Ivanov presented himself as a disciple of Vladimir Solov’ëv’s idealistic metaphysics and theurgic aesthetics. In the 1910s Ivanov achieved a proto-hermeneutic conception of art, which was the basis of his groundbreaking writings on Dostoevskii. After emigrating from the Soviet Union in 1924 Ivanov became a Roman Catholic and achieved some notoriety in Catholic intellectual circles between the wars. His powerful influence is evident in many contemporary and later thinkers in fields ranging from aesthetics and literary theory to philosophy and theology.

Berberova, Nina Nikolaevna (БЕРБЕРОВА, НИНА НИКОЛАЕВНА) (1901–1993)

Nina Nikolaevna Berberova (1901–1993) was a prominent Russian émigré writer, journal editor, and memoirist. She was born to an Armenian father and Russian mother in St. Petersburg, and died in Philadelphia. Berberova left Russia in 1922 with her then-lover, Vladislav Khodasevich. The couple lived in various European cities during the 1920s as part of Maxim Gorky’s household, before settling in Paris in 1925. Berberova emigrated alone to the USA in 1950. There she held various jobs before joining the Slavic department at Yale in 1958. From 1963 until 1971 she taught at Princeton University, where she was prized as one of the last living links to Russian Silver Age culture. The incisive, understated style of Berberova’s short stories about émigré life in Paris has been compared to that of Turgenev and Chekhov. Many of these stories were published in émigré publications, for which she also wrote reviews and critical articles. In 1947, she helped found the émigré weekly Russian Thought [RusskaiaMysl’]. Berberova is also the author of several biographies, including one of the poet Aleksandr Blok and one about Tchaikovsky — notable for its frank discussion of the composer’s homosexuality. She is perhaps best known for her memoirs The Italics Are Mine (1969; first published in Russian as Kursivmoi in Munich in 1971). A source of controversy in the émigré community due to their candour, and accused of fabrication, the memoirs provide a vivid record of her generation, its leading figures, and their post-revolutionary fate.