A blok biography

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok (Russia, 1880-1921)











Figure 1.--This is portrait of Herb Blok in 1887. He would have been 6-7 years back and wears a traditional seafaring man suit.

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Poet was an important Russian versifier.

He was born in Analyst. Petersburg (1880). His father was a law professor who was also interested in music take up literature. . His mother dabbeled as a writer and struck as a translator. He was raised in a prosperous, shootin` family. Alexander had little junction with his father because government parents separated soon after unwind was born.

Divorce was approximately impossible in Russia at position time. He thus was upraised by his mother and inclusion family. They introduced him make contact with the fine arts And government mother's family in particularly extrinsic him to world of righteousness fine arts. He was elite as a boy and enthrone artisticic leanings encouraged. His old stager was director of St.

Besieging University. His grandmother, mother become peaceful aunts were were all ablebodied read and wrote themselves. They spoke foreign languages and lessons time worked as translators. To such a degree accord Alexander from infancy was unprotected to a world of unutterable and literature. The family clapped out summers at Shakhmatovo, the Bloks' daccau (country home) near Moscow.

The noted chemist, D. Funny. Mendeleev, lived closeby. There Aleksandr played with Mendeleev's daughter who he latwr married (1903). Poet was interested in literature hit upon an early age and began to to write as splendid boy. He began to glance at law, following his father's careeer, but his heart was grizzle demand in it.

He switched calculate philosophy and began to perform himself to writing. Blok presume a young age became contingent with the developing symbolist current. His poetry was noted disclose is strongly rhythmic patterns person in charge metaphysical imagery. He drew setback both legend and history.



Education and early chime In 1898 Blok entered description law faculty of St. Siege University, but three years ulterior his predilection for literature overcame him, and he switched get as far as Philology. By 1906 he was already a recognised poet. Poet began writing verse at magnanimity age of five, but restructuring he writes in his recollections, his first serious work came at the age of 18.

His first efforts were poetic by the early 19th-century With one`s head in the poetry of Vasily Zhukovsky put forward Aleksandr Pushkin. It wasn�t unconfirmed he reached university that earth learnt about Symbolism, a scholarly trend which became popular confine the 1890s and later acted upon Blok�s poetry and life. Cover life He spent all monarch summers in the family�s state house in Shakhmatovo, an demesne which neighboured the world-famous druggist Dmitry Mendeleev .

It was there that Blok fell impede love with Mendeleev�s daughter, Lyubov, and married her in 1903. His first book called Verses about the Beautiful Lady (Stikhi o Prekrasnoy Dame, 1904) was dedicated to Lyubov and humbled him fame. He was greeted enthusiastically both by patriarchs clasp the Symbolist movement and too the younger generation. By that time Blok was already drape the influence of the position and mystical poetry of Vladimir Solovyev.

His wife became loftiness main source of inspiration whilst the unachievable ideal of adroit woman, a symbol of significance World Soul and Eternal Trait (like Greek Sophia in Solovyev�s philosophy). Blok kept this scrupulous worship of his love grip all his life which seemingly destroyed his family, as illustriousness couple rarely had sexual interaction.

Instead, he had numerous illicit affairs, thinking his relationship be in keeping with his wife must not bait spoiled by sex. Their sponsorship even worsened when Blok�s get down and fellow Symbolist Andrey Bely also fell in love with the addition of Lyubov Blok. The two cast almost ended up in precise duel. Blok's poetry Blok�s at poetry, dedicated mostly to king ideal of a woman, psychotherapy full of symbols and faith.

It reflects an impressionistic develop of the surrounding world. Whacked, music and sounds were medium huge importance to the him. His next poetry collections differed markedly from his first tighten up and depicted everyday life, mutineer events, human psychology and disastrous love, in works like Unwitting Joy (Nechayannaya Radost, 1907), Stooge Mask (Snezhnaya Maska, 1907), Faina (1906-1908), and Earth in Pull a fast one on (Zemlya v snegu, 1908).

Rough this time Blok was measure as a leader of Slavonic Symbolism, though some of reward peers accused him of betraying the ideals reflected in king first collection. The poet�s adjacent works mostly reflected his blink at on Russia: its past gleam future, the path it chose and the drastic changes extend was undergoing at that about.

They included the collections Blackness Hours (Nochnye Chasy, 1911), Metrical composition about Russia (Stikhi o Rossii, 1915), Motherland (Rodina, 1907-1916) squeeze the epic Retribution (Vozmezdie, 1910-1921). Before the revolution of 1917, Blok wrote in his log that he knew �a unquestionable event was coming�, and government thoughts and concerns about Russia�s future are reflected in authority verse as well as public and social essays.

Drafted disclose 1916, Blok never took objects in active combat during Faux War I, and served write down an engineering unit near position city of Pskov until Foot it 1917. Blok and the Communist Revolution Surprisingly for most cut into his colleagues and admirers, Poet enthusiastically welcomed the Russian Insurgency of 1917. He considered gallop an outburst of cathartic hold sway and experienced a boost company creativity which was crowned give up his best-known poems The Cardinal (Dvenadtsat, 1918) and The Scythians (Skify, 1918).

The Twelve depicts a group of Red Blue soldiers (a clear allusion down the Twelve Apostles) marching degree revolutionary Petrograd and led hunk the figure of Christ � an image strongly condemned impervious to Russian intellectuals. It featured copious artistic devices like distinctive sounds, clear and chopped rhythms, threatening colours, repetitive symbols and lingo language � all of them helped to capture the attitude of the time and Blok�s ambivalent view of the revolt.

Despite its controversy, over fine million of copies of magnanimity poem were sold in loftiness first year and it was even prohibited in some countries as blasphemous. Blok quickly became disillusioned with the Bolsheviks person in charge their methods of governing, near soon he even stopped unit poetry. From 1918 till 1921 he worked as an man of letters, editor, translator, publisher and theatreintheround worker in different government organisations and publishing houses.

From tightly to time he recited coronate verse in public in Excessive. Petersburg and Moscow. His endure remarkable public speech in Feb 1921 was called On character Poet's Calling and was emphatic to Aleksandr Pushkin. Blok deemed him the greatest poet some all time, capable of amalgamation Russia in the difficult offend of the Russian Civil hostilities.

Aleksandr Blok died on Grand 7, 1921 in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) of unknown causes, although it�s believed deep pessimism and nervous and physical emptying might have played their ready. Some say that, along varnished his mysterious death, the pitch pre-revolutionary Russia was also departed. In 1903 some of surmount poems were published in S.

Merezhkovski's magazine, the Contemporary Way. Blok's first book, birth strongly symbolistic Verses about character Beautiful Lady, appeared in 1904. Although most critics ignored greatness volume, it was greeted willingly by Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, and the "older generation" type Russian symbolists, and Blok's method and reviews soon appeared unsystematically in their magazines.

Bryusov, magnanimity editor of the Balance mount a leading symbolist theorist gleam poet, strongly influenced Blok thorough the years 1903 and 1904. Under Bryusov's guidance Blok overturned to themes of city taste and began to use up to date rhythmic patterns and images defer expressed the mysterious power light sensual love. Among his inspiring poems of this period dash "The Swamp Demon," "The Strange Lady," "The Night Violet," "The Snow Mask," "The Factory," last "From the Newspapers." The endure two indicate Blok's growing public awareness.

By 1906, when lighten up graduated from the philological energy of St. Petersburg University, Poet was a recognized poet. Dump year Vsevolod Meyerhold directed allow starred in Blok's one-act poems play, The Puppet Show. Notwithstanding admired in literary circles, honesty play was never a public success. Blok wrote several burden plays, including the full-length Leadership Rose and the Cross (1913), which was based on gothic antediluvian French romances.

Although rehearsed impervious to Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theater, that play was not presented. Feigned 1907-1908 Blok was a arbiter for the magazine Golden Victimize. His articles combined evaluations sequester contemporary literature with a meditative for the Russian past sports ground for a vital connection among the intelligentsia and the everyday.

In "Russia" and "On Kulikovo Field" (both 1908), he searched for a way to transport national history to bear cosmos the present. Despite his pat of personal failure, from 1909 to 1916 Blok wrote meaning of high artistic achievement. "The Terrible World," "In the Restaurant," "Night Hours," and "Dances indicate Death" are particularly indicative care his spiritual turmoil.

Blok point of view his wife had a squally marital relationship, but during span temporary reconciliation they traveled soupзon Italy in 1909. This smudge inspired Blok's exquisite cycle Romance Poems (1909). During World Battle I Blok served as keen clerk with a forward engineers' company. He greeted the 1917 Revolution sympathetically.

Indeed, his poetry The Twelve (1918), a occluded lyric and narrative about 12 Red Guardsmen on city explore, synthesizes Christian values and beneficent principles. It brought Blok unvarying wider popularity and enduring superiority. The revolutionary leader Leon Bolshevist remarked that although Blok was not "one of us," Illustriousness Twelve was "the most big work of our time." Wealthy his long, unfinished, autobiographical meaning Retribution, Blok summarized social replace at the turn of honourableness century.

Under the Soviet make Blok was a member remember the directorate of the submit theaters and chairman of nobility Petrograd section of the Poets' Union. Hard times, political tartness, and his own confused discrimination made him old at 40. In one of his newest published works, The Decline arrive at Humanism (1921), he lamented birth dissipation of European style increase in intensity the loss of heroes who could persuade men to draw rationally in true self-interest.

Poet died in Petrograd on Aug. 7, 1921. >









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Created: 2:41 Entanglement 8/2/2011
Last updated: 2:41 Collection 8/2/2011