Innokenty Fyodorovich Annensky
1855 -1909
Of particular importance in the development of Russian impressionistic poetry was the work of Annensky. Annensky influenced all the major poets of that time with their search for new poetic rhythms, the poetic word. Symbolists considered him the initiator of new Russian poetry. However, Annensky's views did not fit into the framework of the Symbolist school. The poet's work can be defined as a phenomenon of pre-symbolism. In its pathos, it is closer to the work of poets late XIX in. - Feta. Starting in the 1980s with traditional poetic forms, passing through a passion for the French parnassians, adjoining in some tendencies with Balmont and Sologub, Annensky was significantly ahead of many contemporaries in terms of development.
He is a prominent dignitary, director of the Nikolaev gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, the permanent residence of the tsar, which made Annensky's service especially difficult and responsible. He is a well-known teacher, a wonderful scientist-philologist.
The creative fate of Annensky is unusual. His name was almost unknown in literature until the 1900s. "Quiet Songs" - the first collection of his poems, written in the 80-90s, appeared in print only in 1904 (the collection was published under a pseudonym: Nick. T-o). Fame as a poet Annensky begins to acquire in Last year own life . The second and last book of his poems, The Cypress Casket, was published posthumously in 1910.
Annensky's manner of writing is sharply impressionistic; he depicts everything not as he knows it, but as it seems to him right now, at this moment. As a consistent impressionist, Annensky goes far ahead not only from Fet, but also from Balmont.
The motives of Annensky's lyrics are closed in the sphere of moods of loneliness, melancholy of being.. Therefore, so often in his poems there are images and pictures of withering, twilight, sunsets.. The poetic world of Annensky is characterized by a constant the opposition of the dream to the philistine prose of everyday life, which reminds the poet of something ghostly and nightmarish (“Sleepless Nights”). Such a contrast forms the poet's stylistic system, in which the poetically refined style coexists with deliberate prosaism. But he combined a confused perception of reality with an abstract and tragic perception of being in general.
In his poetry, deep sincerity, intimacy of experiences, even such complex ones as confusion before life and before its moments, the tragedy of unbelief, the fear of death, also find an impeccably adequate form. No hastily abandoned, unfinished poetic thought.
At the very end of life Annensky's rapprochement with literary circles is planned: Makovsky invites him to cooperate in the literary and art magazine "Apollo", which he conceived. Annensky willingly agreed to cooperate. Three of his poems and the beginning of the article "On Modern Lyricism" appeared in the very first issue. So for the first time Annensky directly participates in the contemporary literary process, revealing, despite his isolation and solitude, the acuteness of understanding the whole range of problems that concern literary modernity. At the same time, his position continues to be very peculiar, sovereign.
In the presence of some common motifs, Annensky's poetry is significantly different from the poetry of the Symbolists. His lyrical hero is a man of the real world. The personal experience of the poet is devoid of mystical pathos. Experiments with verse and poetic language are alien to him, although among the poets of the beginning of the century he was one of the greatest masters of versification.. Annensky's verse had a feature that distinguished it from the verse of the Symbolists and later attracted the close attention of acmeist poets: a combination of an elevated emotional tone and a colloquial tone, emphatically prosaic. Through the particular, the poet always shone through the general, but not in a logical manifestation, but in a kind of extra-logical juxtaposition.
Annensky's poetry is characterized by chamber refinement, isolation in a personal psychological theme.. This is the poetry of hint, reticence. But in Annensky there are no hints of a dual world, the duality characteristic of the symbolists. He only draws the instantaneous sensations of life, the spiritual movements of a person, his momentary perception of his surroundings, and thus the psychological states of the hero..
Annensky's individualism is indisputable, but distinctive: his poetry is characterized by the utmost concentration on the inner "I", the sharpness of the feeling of loneliness. But his individualism exists in dynamics and is always on the edge: in an acute intense experience of his relationship with the fact that "not-I" - the outside world, someone else's consciousness. Psychological depth and refinement, concentration in one's own "I" do not lead to egoistic self-affirmation, but, on the contrary, turn to someone else's "I", which also represents the whole world, just as tragically self-contained.
Annensky has few poems with a social theme. And in them all the same opposition of the dream of beauty and unsightly reality. The pinnacle of the social theme in his poetry was the famous poem "Old Estonians", with which the poet responded to the revolutionary events in Estonia in 1905, expressing his protest against the executions of revolutionaries and government reaction.
Annensky was the most characteristic representative of impressionist criticism in the literature of the beginning of the century. In critical articles collected in two Books of Reflections (1906, 1908), he sought to reveal the psychology of the author's work, the features of his spiritual life, to convey his personal impression of the work I. Moreover, in his critical works, the writer's democratic views and his social aspirations were more clearly expressed. As if in opposition to the Symbolists, Annensky emphasizes the social significance of art. Annensky sought to understand and show the social meaning and social significance of the work.
"Bow and Strings"
What heavy, dark delirium!
How these heights are cloudy-moon!
touch the violin for so many years
And do not recognize the strings in the light!
Who needs us? Who lit
Two yellow faces, two dull...
And suddenly I felt a bow,
That someone took and someone leaked them.
"Oh, how long ago! Through this darkness
Say one thing: are you the one, the one?"
And the strings caressed him
Ringing, but, caressing, they trembled.
"Isn't it true, never again
We won't break up? enough?.."
And the violin answered yes
But the heart of the violin was in pain.
The bow understood everything, it calmed down,
And in the violin, the echo kept everything ...
And it was a pain for them
What people thought was music.
But the man did not extinguish
Until the morning candles... And the strings sang...
Only the sun found them without strength
On a black velvet bed.
"Old hurdy-gurdy"
The sky has driven us completely crazy:
Either fire or snow blinded us,
And, snarling, retreated like a beast
April is a stubborn winter.
For a moment he falls into oblivion -
Again, the helmet is pulled over the eyebrows,
And under us departed streams,
Without singing, they will fall silent and freeze.
But the past is long forgotten
The garden is noisy, and the stone is white and booming,
And the open window looks
Like grass dressed a nook.
Only the old hurdy-gurdy chills,
And she is in the sunset of May
All does not dare evil insults,
Tenacious shaft circling and pressing.
And in no way, clinging, will not understand
This shaft, that work is useless,
That the resentment of old age grows
On the thorns from the agony of turning.
But if I understood the old shaft,
What is their fate with a hurdy-gurdy,
Is it used to sing, whirling, he stopped
Because you can’t sing without suffering? ..
"Steel Cicada"
I knew that she would return
And it will be with me - Tosca.
Ringing and smelling
With clockmaker's door...
Hearts of steel flutter
With the chirping of wings
Clutch and unhook again
The one who opened the door...
With the greedy wing of the cicada,
Impatiently beat:
Happiness, is it close, glad,
Is flour calling the end? ..
They have so much to say
Go so far...
Razno, alas! cicada,
Our paths lie.
Here you and I are just a miracle
Live with you now
Just a minute - until
The door didn't open...
Ringing and smelling
And you will be so far...
Silence will now return
And it will be with me - Tosca.
"Double"
Not me, and not him, and not you,
And the same as me, and not the same:
So we were somewhere alike,
That our features are mixed.
In doubt, the dispute still boils,
But, merged into an invisible couple,
One we live and dream
Dream of separation since then.
Hot dream worried
Deception of the second outlines,
But than I looked tirelessly,
The more I recognized myself.
Only the canopy of the night is dumb
Sometimes will reflect the sway
My and other breath,
The battle of the heart is both mine and not mine ...
And in the muddy whirling years
More and more often the question torments me:
When we are finally separated
How will I be alone?
"Poetry"
Above the heights of the fiery Sinai
To love the mist of her rays,
Pray to her, not knowing her,
The hopelessly hot
But from the azure of incense,
From the lilies of an idle crown,
Run... despising the pride of the temple
And the priest's praise
So that in the ocean of muddy distances,
In the crazy aspirations of the shrines,
Look for traces of her sandals
Between drifts of deserts.
"Petersburg"
Yellow steam of Petersburg winter,
Yellow snow sticking to the slabs...
I don't know where you are and where we are
I only know that we are tightly merged.
Did a royal decree write us?
Did the Swedes forget to sink us?
Instead of a fairy tale in the past, we have
Only the stones were terrible.
Only the stones were given to us by the sorcerer,
Yes, the Neva is brown-yellow,
Yes, deserts of mute squares,
Where people were executed before dawn.
And what did we have on earth,
How did our two-headed eagle ascend,
In dark laurels, a giant on a rock, -
Tomorrow will be child's play.
What was he formidable and bold,
Yes, his mad horse betrayed him,
The king of the snake failed to crush,
And pressed became our idol.
No Kremlins, no miracles, no shrines,
No mirages, no tears, no smile...
Only stones from frozen deserts
Yes, the consciousness of a damned mistake.
Even in May, when spilled
White night over the waves of shadow
There is no spell of spring dreams,
There is a poison of fruitless desires.
"Old Estonians"
If the nights are prison and deaf,
If dreams are cobweb and thin,
So know that the old woman is close,
Estonians are close from under Reval.
They came in - they squat so strictly,
Do not escape me from a long captivity,
Their clothes are dark and miserable,
And in each knapsack there is a log.
I know tomorrow from the painful horror
I will be different from myself...
How many times have I asked them: "Forget..."
And read them silently: "We can't."
Like the earth, these faces won't say
What is buried in the hearts of faith ...
They don't look at me - they just knit
Your stocking is endless and grey.
But courteous - crowded on the sidelines ...
Don't be afraid, sit down on the bed...
Only here is not a mistake, Estonians?
There is where I am to blame.
But they came, so let's scribble,
It's not a clock, we don't know how to tick.
Maybe you would like to cry?
So quietly, inaudibly ... whimper?
Or your eyes are swollen from the wind,
Like birch buds on graves...
You are silent, sad dolls,
Your sons... I didn't execute them...
I, on the contrary, I felt sorry for them,
Reading in compassionate newspapers,
I silently prayed for the brave
And the priest was in bright eyes.
Estonians shook their heads.
“You felt sorry for them ... What is your pity for,
If your fingers are thin,
And she never cringed?
Sleep tight, executioner with executioner!
Smile to each other more!
Well, you are gentle, you are meek, you are quiet,
In the whole world you are not guilty!
Virtue... Your virtue
We were blind knitting, but we knit ...
Wait - here loops will accumulate,
So let's think of a word, let's say ... "
Sleep has always given me sparingly,
And my webs are so thin...
But how sad...and stupid...
These obnoxious bastards...
"To the poet"
In the separate clarity of the rays
And in the chaotic fusion of visions
Always above us - the power of things
With her triad of dimensions.
And widen the brink of being
Or do you multiply forms by fiction,
But in the very I from the eyes Not I
You can't go anywhere.
That power is a beacon, she calls,
It combined god and decay,
And before her so pale
Things in art are secret.
No, don't get away from their power
Behind the magic of air spots
The verse does not beckon with depth,
It's just like a puzzle is incomprehensible.
The beauty of an open face
Pierida attracted Orpheus.
Are you worthy of a singer
Covers of puppet Isis?
Love separateness and rays
In the fragrance they created.
You are bright cups
For holistic perceptions.
Cycle "Autumn Shamrock"
You are with me again
You are with me again, friend autumn,
But through the network of your naked branches
The blue has never turned paler,
And I don’t remember the snows more deadly.
I'm sadder than your trash
And I did not see your black waters,
On your faded sky
Yellow clouds torment me divorce.
To see everything to the end, numb ...
Oh, how this air is strangely new...
You know what... I thought it hurt more
To see empty mysteries of words...
August
The rays are still burning under the vaults of the roads,
But there, between the branches, everything is deafer and dumber:
So the pale player smiles,
The day is behind us. With mist on the ground
Slowly dull calls are attracted ...
And with him everything is a stuffy feast, crushed in crystal
Still yesterday's shine, and only the asters are alive ...
Or is it a procession turning white through the sheets?
And there the lights tremble under the frosted crown,
They tremble and say: “And you? When are you?
In the copper language of the funeral languor ...
Whether the game is over, whether the tomb has sailed away,
But impressions clear up in the heart;
Oh, how I understood you: and insinuating warmth,
And the luxury of flower beds, where decay appears ...
That was on Wallen Koski
That was on Wallen Koski.
It was raining from smoky clouds,
And yellow wet boards
Fled from the sad steep.
We yawned from the cold night,
And tears were asked from the eyes;
For joy, they threw a doll to us
That morning for the fourth time.
The swollen doll dived
Obediently in a gray waterfall,
And circled for a long time at first,
Everything seemed to be pulled back.
But the foam licked in vain
Joints of pressed hands, -
Her salvation is invariable
For new and new torments.
Look, the flow is raging
Turns yellow, submissive and lethargic;
The Chukhonets was fair,
He took a half for the case.
This comedy was for me
It's hard on that gray morning.
There is such a sky
Such a play of rays
What is the resentment of the doll to the heart
Your grievances are pitiful.
Like leaves then we are sensitive:
We have a gray-haired stone, revived,
Like a child's violin, out of tune.
And deep in the heart,
That only fear was born with him,
That the world is lonely
Like an old doll in the waves...
Cycle "Dreadful Shamrock"
nightmares
"Are you waiting? Are you excited? That's bullshit.
Are you going to open the door for him? Not!
Understand: a madman is knocking on your door,
God knows where and with whom he spent the whole night,
Ragged, and his speech is wild,
And his hand is full of pebbles;
That look - another will be simple,
He will shower you with dry leaves,
Or think of kissing, and tears
Traces will remain in the confusion of braids,
If lips can hide your face,
Embarrassed and painfully crimson.
Listen! .. I only scared you:
That one is far away, he died ... I lied.
And complaints, and whispers, and knocks, -
Which we endure, whether I, whether you ...
Or whirlwinds were captured and howled?
No! You are calm ... Only at the lips
Something pale is snaking... I'm stupid...
A date here is appointed to another ...
I understand everything now: fear, languor
And the wet shine of the eyes you hide.
Are they knocking? Are they coming? She got up.
I look - I lowered the wick at the lantern,
It's pink... Let go of the braids.
Scythes soared and fell... Here's to me
It's coming... And we're on fire, in the same fire...
Here arms are wrapped around and carried away,
And the hair is pricked and caressed ...
So here he is the mind of a man, that proud man,
Not worth any trembling hearts,
No wet and pink heat!
And suddenly I became a whole other creature ...
Bed... The candle is burning. To a sad tone
The rain is babbling... I was sleeping and had a dream.
Kyiv caves
Melting green candles
The censer flickers dimly,
Something on the shoulders
It's gone to the ground now
Someone's silent mouth
They pray for breath at the stoves,
Someone, bending down, "from the cross"
Give them yellow water...
"Soon?" - Be patient, soon...
Ears filled with ringing
And the blackness of the corridor
Everything is more unresponsive and muffled ...
No, I don't, I don't!
How? No people, no way?
Extinguishes the breath of a candle?
Hush... You must crawl...
This and That
The night does not melt. The night is like a stone.
Crying melts only ice
And the flame flows through the body
Your weird flight.
But they murmur, vainly melting,
Ice caps on the head:
Do not remember them, considering
That there are only two pillows
And that you need to lie down in carbon monoxide,
In the blue mist of the fire
If the lamp beam is sick
On the slide of an axe.
But comforting until dawn
The heart is filled with drowsiness,
Everything will forgive them ... if it
Only this, not that.
Cycle "Shamrock Fading"
I love
I love the fade of the echo
After a crazy troika in the forest,
Behind the sparkle of fervent laughter
I languishingly love the strip.
Winter morning love over me
I am a lilac spill of semi-darkness,
And where the sun burned in the spring,
Only a pink reflection of winter.
I love in the pale expanse
Melted color in overflows ...
I love everything in this world
There is no consonance, no echo.
Sunset in the field
The forest is foggy in sparkles,
Faces change in the shadows
In the blue desert of heaven
The bells go to pray...
Ringing, take me!
The heart is so weak and orphan,
Dust from the sparkle of the day
Teases the possibility of the world.
What does it promise, this call?
Or we will freeze there,
Like the pearls of the islands
Are they getting cold in the blue backwaters? ..
Autumn
Four did not strike ... But the pale luminary
As soon as the domes above us gilded
And, in the faded steppe, a foggy river,
The clouds moved so smoothly above us,
And so much softness concealed their movement,
Forgetting the poison of betrayal and the flour of termination,
What the heart of music wanted for him...
But the snow lay in the mountains, and it was dead there,
And the whistling breakers cut off into the night
Stretched strings between heaven and earth...
And in the morning, someone to us, silently dispelling dreams,
He reminded me in a whisper that we were condemned.
The ridge did not move and seemed to freeze,
The night rolled on with a sense of failure
Heroes of Gumilyov's poetry
The fate of the poet Annensky Inokenty Fedorovich (1855-1909) is unique in its kind. He published his first collection of poetry (and the only one during his lifetime) at the age of 49 under the pseudonym Nick. That.
The poet at first was going to title the book "From the Cave of Polyphemus" and choose the pseudonym Utis, which means "no one" in Greek (this is how Odysseus introduced himself to the Cyclops Polyphemus). Later the collection was called "Quiet Songs". Alexander Blok, who did not know who the author of the book was, considered such anonymity doubtful. He wrote that the poet seemed to bury his face under a mask that made him get lost among the many books. Perhaps, in this modest confusion one should look for too much "painful anguish"?
The origin of the poet, early years
The future poet was born in Omsk. His parents (see the photo below) soon moved to St. Petersburg. Innokenty Annensky in his autobiography reported that his childhood passed in an environment in which landlord and bureaucratic elements were combined. From a young age he loved to study literature and history, he felt antipathy to everything banal, clear and elementary.
First verses
Innokenty Annensky began to write poetry quite early. Since the concept of "symbolism" was still unknown to him in the 1870s, he considered himself a mystic. Annensky was attracted by the "religious genre" of B. E. Murillo, a 17th-century Spanish artist. He tried to "formalize the genre with words".
The young poet, following the advice of his older brother, who was a well-known publicist and economist (N. F. Annensky), decided that it was not worth publishing before the age of 30. Therefore, his poetic experiments were not intended for publication. Innokenty Annensky wrote poems in order to hone his skills and declare himself already as a mature poet.
University studies
The study of antiquity and ancient languages during the university years supplanted writing for a while. As Innokenty Annensky admitted, during these years he wrote nothing but dissertations. "Pedagogical-administrative" activity began after university. In the opinion of fellow antique scholars, she distracted Innokenty Fedorovich from scientific studies. And those who sympathized with his poetry believed that it interfered with creativity.
Debut as a critic
Innokenty Annensky made his debut in print as a critic. He published in the 1880s and 1890s a number of articles devoted mainly to Russian literature of the 19th century. In 1906, the first "Book of Reflections" appeared, and in 1909, the second. This is a collection of criticism, which is distinguished by its impressionistic perception, Wilde's subjectivism and associative-figurative moods. Innokenty Fedorovich emphasized that he was only a reader, and not a critic at all.
Translations of French poets
Annensky, the poet, considered the French Symbolists to be his forerunners, whom he willingly translated a lot. In addition to enriching the language, he also saw their merit in increasing aesthetic sensitivity, in that they increased the scale of artistic sensations. A significant section of Annensky's first collection of poems was made up of translations of French poets. Of the Russians, Innokenty Fedorovich was closest to K. D. Balmont, who aroused reverence in the author of Quiet Songs. Annensky highly appreciated the musicality and "new flexibility" of his poetic language.
Publications in the symbolist press
Innokenty Annensky led a rather secluded literary life. During the period of onslaught and storm, he did not defend the right to exist of the "new" art. Annensky did not participate in further internal symbolist disputes either.
By 1906, the first publications of Innokenty Fedorovich in the symbolist press (the magazine "Pass") belong. In fact, his entry into the symbolist environment took place only in the last year of his life.
Last years
Critic and poet Innokenty Annensky gave lectures at the Poetry Academy. He was also a member of the "Society of Zealots of the Artistic Word", which operated under the Apollo magazine. On the pages of this magazine, Annensky published an article that can be called a program - "On Modern Lyricism."
Posthumous cult, "Cypress Casket"
A wide resonance in symbolist circles was caused by his sudden death. Innokenty Annensky died at the Tsarskoye Selo railway station. His biography ended, but his creative destiny after his death was further developed. Among young poets close to "Apollo" (mainly of the acmeist orientation, who reproached the symbolists for inattention to Annensky), his posthumous cult began to take shape. 4 months after the death of Innokenty Fedorovich, the second collection of his poems was published. The poet's son, V. I. Annensky-Krivich, who became his biographer, commentator and editor, completed the preparation of The Cypress Casket (the collection was so named because Annensky's manuscripts were kept in a cypress box). There is reason to believe that he did not always follow the author's will of his father punctually.
Innokenty Annensky, whose poems were not very popular during his lifetime, gained well-deserved fame with the release of The Cypress Casket. Blok wrote that this book penetrates deep into the heart and explains to him a lot about himself. Bryusov, who had previously drawn attention to the "freshness" of turns, comparisons, epithets, and even just the words that were chosen in the collection Quiet Songs, already noted as an undoubted advantage the impossibility of guessing the next two stanzas from Innokenty Fedorovich from the first two verses and the end works from its beginning. Krivich in 1923 published in a collection called Posthumous Poems of In. Annensky, the remaining texts of the poet.
originality
Its lyrical hero is a man who solves the "hateful rebus of being." Annensky subjected to a thorough analysis of the "I" of a person who would like to be the whole world, spill, dissolve in it, and which is tortured by the consciousness of the inevitable end, hopeless loneliness and aimless existence.
"Cunning irony" gives Annensky's poems a unique originality. According to V. Bryusov, she became the second person of Innokenty Fedorovich as a poet. The writing style of the author of "The Cypress Casket" and "Quiet Songs" is sharply impressionistic. Associative symbolism called it Annensky believed that poetry does not depict. It only hints to the reader about something that cannot be expressed in words.
Today, the work of Inokenty Fedorovich has received well-deserved fame. The school curriculum includes such a poet as Innokenty Annensky. "Among the Worlds", the analysis of which is given to schoolchildren, is perhaps his most famous poem. We also note that in addition to poetry, he wrote four plays in the spirit of Euripides on the plots of his lost tragedies.
But it's not just about the round date. A brilliant representative of the Silver Age, "the last of the Tsarskoye Selo swans", as N. Gumilyov called him, Annensky was and remains a tragic figure in Russian poetry: he did not receive recognition and glory in his time, was not understood and recognized during his lifetime. "And the one whom I consider a teacher, / like a shadow passed and did not leave a shadow ..."- said about him Akhmatova. However, in this poet, far ahead of his contemporaries, the future intonations of Blok, Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Pasternak were already guessed. Vladimir Kornilov wrote about Annensky:
Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova
from his verse they went and went crazy,
from his verse, secretly rich,
like prose writers from "The Overcoat".
This, to some extent, compensated for the lack of recognition of Annensky during his lifetime - the revenge of the future voices in poetry, in which his intonations, his notes sounded.
A Hellenistic philologist by profession, a teacher by profession, director of a gymnasium, member of the scientific committee of the Ministry of Education, an official loaded with clerical work - he was a poet alone with himself.
But moments are scattered in my idleness,
when touches are painful to the soul,
and I tremble among you, tremble for my peace,
like a match in the wind blocking his hand ...
Let it be just a moment... Don't touch me at that moment.
I grope my way then.
The high school students adored him (among them were Nikolai Gumilyov, artist Yuri Annenkov). The female students enthusiastically copied the verses of their teacher into notebooks:
The river does not yet reign
but she already melts 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.
Joyless poet
Innokenty Annensky is considered a representative of symbolism in poetry, but he was an unusual symbolist. Maybe he wasn't even quite. He did not fit into the channel of this current. Annensky's poetry, for all its intellectual complexity and allegoricalness, never suffered from incomprehensibility, isolation from life's realities, which many Symbolists sin. And he also differed from them in that he never considered himself the navel of the earth, the center of the universe, and the resentment of the doll was for him more pitiful than his own.
This theme seems to me the main one in his poetry: pity for people. It manifests itself in Annensky not directly, but somehow bashfully, indirectly, through pity and sympathy for a thing: for a doll thrown into a stream of a waterfall for fun, an old hurdy-gurdy, "which does not sweep away evil insults
", an exhaling balloon ( "still he pulls the thread and does not end the torture
"). We discover in his poems the "material world", painfully and passionately linked with human existence. An old doll, a bow and strings, a hurdy-gurdy, a pendulum and a clock, "a dark scarlet ball on a string" appear in Annensky's lyrics not just as images , allegories, but as accomplices and witnesses of the hidden tragedy of life.A person pities a thing, and it answers him with an excitedly passionate story about his own, human, suffering, revealing all the darkness and depth of torment - as deep as Annensky - before him and after him - not a single poet looked.
But if I understood the old shaft,
what is their fate with a hurdy-gurdy,
unless he sang, whirling, he stopped,
because you can't sing without suffering?
The bow understood everything. He's quiet
and the echo in the violin kept...
And it was a pain for them
what people thought was music ...
For a century now, we have been hearing this mystical music of the understatement of the human heart. All his poetry is a chronicle of the lonely soul of man. But there is no need to be afraid of "gloom" and everything that hurts us in art. There is such a beautiful word: "catharsis". Annensky's poems let us experience it.
The biography of Innokenty Annensky is extremely scarce and uncomplicated. A deep and powerful life was created in him. But even in this simple biography there were remarkable events, without the knowledge of which it is impossible to comprehend either his personality or creative way nor the strange fate of the poet.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1875, he entered the Faculty of History and Philology at St. Petersburg University, where he chose classical philology as his main specialty.
Even in the gymnasium, he was fond of ancient languages, then Greek mythology, Roman history and literature. The ancient world had a special charm for him, and he soon went into it with his head.
Due to cramped financial situation Annensky was forced to engage in tutoring. He became a home tutor to the two teenage sons of Nadezhda Khmara-Barshchevskaya, a widow who was 14 years his senior.
The age difference did not prevent the poet from falling passionately in love. He marries her and adopts her children. A year later, their son is born. However, this woman did not enrich Annensky's muse in any way, did not become for him a source of those strong experiences that their girlfriends brought into the lives of other poets. Sergei Makovsky draws in his memoirs an almost satirical portrait of her:
" Annensky's family life remained a mystery to me. His wife was a very strange figure. She seemed much older than him, bleached, creepy, ghostly, in a wig, with glued-on eyebrows. Once at the tea table I look - one eyebrow crawled up, and her whole face with a hooked nose and a sluggish lowered mouth twisted. She was always silent in front of strangers. Annensky never spoke to her. What role did she play in his life?"
O family life We know very little about Annensky. He himself did not write any memoirs or diaries, and only rare echoes of this life are occasionally found in poetry.
Here is how, for example, in this, one of his early poems:
Gentle darling of mother
then big, then naughty ...
And absently from the bowl
drink foam, and pour moisture ...
Forces and days proud of excess,
in passing, on the fly
hoppy pink drink
crush your dream.
Seeing what is impossible
neither return nor forget...
Drink hastily, drink anxiously
next to the son, maybe
bend under the influx of years,
but forgetting the taste of wine...
Out of habit, everything stretches
to the cup, drunk to the bottom.
He was good-looking. Big sad eyes, a slightly swollen mouth, betraying his softness and natural kindness. He tied a black silk tie in an old-fashioned way with a wide, double bow. In his manners - courteous, gallant, helpful, there was something from the old age.
He had a touching attitude to creativity:
But I love poetry - and feelings are not sacred.
Only a mother loves so much, and only sick children.
The names of the luminaries of symbolism then thundered not only thanks to their poems, but also to a large extent due to the behavior of the poets, their way of life, biography and legend being created before our eyes. Annensky, though he repeated more than once: "The first task of a poet is to invent himself “He couldn’t invent himself. He was genuine, both in poetry and in life. And then it was unfashionable.
I love in the pale expanse
melted light in overflows...
I love everything in this world
no consonance, no response.
He, too, had no response in this world. Aesthetes admired the exquisite form of Annensky's poetry, not noticing, not hearing their painful human drama. It's like saying with satisfaction to a cry of pain that a person has excellent vocal cords. This moral deafness of the aesthetes resented V.Khodasevich:
"What the poet shouts is his private business, they, as well-bred people, do not interfere in this. Meanwhile, each of his verses screams about the unbearable and hopeless horror of life." "After all, if you listen to it, my whole life is not life, but torment".
One of his poems is called: "A painful sonnet":
As soon as the bee buzz stopped,
already aching mosquito approached, ringing ...
What deceptions you, O heart, did not forgive
the unsettling emptiness of the day ended?
I need melted snow under the yellowness of the fire,
through the sweaty glass of the shining wearily,
and to have a strand of hair so close to me,
so close to me, having developed, trembled.
I need smoky clouds from a faded height,
swirling smoky clouds, in which there is no past,
half-closed eyes and dream music,
and the music of a dream that did not yet know the words ...
Oh give me just a moment, but in life, not in a dream,
so that I could become fire or burn in fire!
M. Voloshin wrote about Annensky: "He was a joyless poet" . It really is. The motive of loneliness, despair, melancholy is one of the main ones of the poet. He even capitalized the word Tosca. The openwork warehouse of his soul seemed incompatible with the cruel realities of life.
In the anguish of a hopeless circle
I'm going down the wrong path...
In his article "What is poetry?" Annensky says: "She is a child of death and despair." The obsessive thought of death was also noted in him by Khodasevich, who called him "Ivan Ilyich of Russian poetry." The persistent thought of death was partly due to heart disease, which constantly kept the poet in anticipation of the end, death could overtake at any moment. But still, the tragedy of his poetry was unlikely to stem from biographical reasons (in particular, from illness). Khodasevich oversimplified Annensky's pessimism, explaining his poetry by the fear of death. People of such a spiritual warehouse are not afraid of physical death. His fear is of a completely different, metaphysical order.
Now the night will come. So black are the clouds...
I'm sorry for the last evening moment:
there everything that is lived is desire and longing,
there everything that approaches is despondency and oblivion.
How strangely the garden and firmament are merged
with its harsh silence,
how the night resembles death
everything, even the faded cover.
Impossible
Annensky is afraid of death, but no less afraid of life. And he does not know: whether to hide from death in life - or to throw himself into death, escaping from life. He has almost no poems about love in the usual sense, such as Blok, Balmont, Bryusov have. There are poems addressed to women, mostly joyless, sad. female image in them is always unsteady, incorporeal, not amenable to portrait description. Nevertheless, a real prototype was often hidden under it.
Annensky met Ekaterina Mukhina shortly after he was appointed to the post of director at the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium. Her husband, a teacher of the history of new art, was a colleague of the poet. The history of their relationship can be represented in the most general terms - according to letters and poems.
"But what will I tell you, dear Lord, what will I put, what thought, what ray into your eyes that have opened to meet me, into your waiting eyes?"
Will I wake up and you are crazy
and thoughtlessly
I loved in the languid shadows of May?
crouching
to the lilac flowers
on a moonlit night, on a moonlit night in May,
I kissed your knees
unclenching and squeezing them,
in dark shadows
in the dark shadows of May?
Or am I just a silent shadow?
Ile and you are only my suffering,
expensive,
because we don't have a date
moonlit night, moonlit May night.
Annensky will write this poem "Dreams" on the Vologda train on the night of May 16-17, 1906. And a day later, on May 19, he will send a letter to Mukhina from Vologda, which is difficult to define otherwise than as a love letter, although it does not say a word about love:
" My dear, do you hear from your distance how bored I am? Do you know what boredom is? Boredom is the consciousness that you cannot get away from the cells of the verbal set, from the links of logical chains, from the obsessive embrace of this "like everyone else." God! If only for a moment of freedom, madness... If you have a flower under your hands, don't hold it, drop it as soon as possible. He will lie to you. He never lived or drank the sun's rays. Give me your hand. say goodbye."
What is happiness? Chad of insane speech?
One minute on the way
where with the kiss of a greedy meeting
merged inaudible sorry?
Or is it in the autumn rain?
In return of the day? In the closure of eyelids?
In blessings that we do not appreciate
for the ugliness of their clothes?
You say ... Here happiness beats
a wing clinging to a flower,
but a moment - and it will soar up
irrevocable and light.
And the heart, maybe dearer
conscience arrogance,
flour is sweeter if it contains
there is a subtle poison of remembrance.
Inwardly alone and aware of the tragedy of his loneliness, Annensky intensely sought a way out of it. But he did not find the strength to live. He looked with insane envy and fear at the living life passing by, and wrote bitterly:
Love is bright - it is a crystal, ether ...
Mine is loveless, trembling like a horse in soap!
To her - a poisoned feast, a fraudulent feast ...
This is a person with a split consciousness, reflective, unsure of himself, dreaming of happiness, but not daring to it, not recognizing his right to it.
Even in May, when spilled
white night over the waves of shadow,
there is no spell of spring dreams,
there is the poison of fruitless desires.
This chaste, timid heart understood love only as longing for something that had not come true. Many poems of the poet sound like a sad note of regret, regrets about a life lived incorrectly, in essence, an unlived life.
Having developed, the hair thinned out.
When I was young
for so many my mind wanted to live,
that I forgot to live.
I wanted to love, not loving,
suffer - but aside.
And I burned you, youth,
in a joyless fire.
His heart was created loving and - as is typical of people with deep feelings - shamefacedly timid in its tenderness. He himself jokingly called it "the heart of a doe." Not rich in external events, the dim measured life of Annensky hid deeply hidden passions, which only occasionally broke out in tragic, pain-filled verses. Now there is no doubt that the poet was passionately and secretly in love with the wife of his elder stepson Olga Khmara-Barshchevskaya, who often and for a long time stayed in Tsarskoye Selo. These are his lines addressed to her:
And, lilac and crushing,
so that the radiance there assures,
that somewhere there is not our connection,
but a radiant fusion.
Her letter of confession has been preserved, addressed to V.Rozanov and written 8 years after Annensky's death:
" Are you asking if I loved Innokenty Fyodorovich? God! Of course, I loved, I love ... Was I his "wife"? Unfortunately no! You see, I sincerely say “alas,” because I’m not proud of this for a moment ... Understand, dear, he didn’t want this, although, perhaps, he really loved only me ... But he could not cross ... His the thought was killing: "What am I? First I took away my mother (from my stepson), and then I will take my wife? Where can I hide from my conscience?" And so it turned out "not a connection, but a radiant fusion." Is it strange in the 20th century? wildly? But - are there still such fairy tales that life composes? .. He did not allow carnal ties ... But we married our souls ... "
This document surfaced miraculously. Olga Khmara-Barshchevskaya burned Annensky's letters. But in one of the poems of the "Cypress Casket" entitled "Intermittent Lines" with the subtitle "Separation", Annensky, in an intermittent voice, given out by a breaking rhythm, told about this secret love, drawing the drama of parting at the station with his beloved woman.
It can't be
this is a scam...
The day dragged on and on
Or, not having lived, exhausted?
This can't be...
Since then
a lump in my throat...
Nonsense...
This cannot be.
This is a forgery.
Well, I took you to the train,
back, and solo, yeah!
Here was her ringed belt,
the brooch lay - a star,
forever open bag
without a lock
and so infinitely soft,
there is a red thought in the firmware ...
Hall...
I said something soft
began to say goodbye
next to the wall clock...
Lips did not dare to open,
glued...
Both of us were scattered
both are so cold, we...
Her fingers in a black mitt are also cold...
"Well, goodbye to winter.
Just not the one, and not the other,
and not yet - after another ...
Well, dear, I'm not free ... "
- I know that you are in a dungeon ...
After she
crying quietly against the wall
and became paper-pale...
End the evil game...
What else?
Lips wanted to love passionately
and in the wind
just smile sadly...
Something in them was frozen, even dead...
God, I didn't know how ugly she was...
Now it is obvious that Annensky's magic lines, written six days before his death, about distant hands are about her:
My you, oh distant hands,
your sweet-strong clamp
I endured boredom in the cold,
I am wrapped in someone else's happiness.
But I know ... drowsy drunk,
I will throw a magic thread
and I will dream, Almeya,
words to hurt you.
(Later, under the influence of this poem, Blok would write his own lines, where the same motive is heard:
Oh, those distant hands!
In this dim life
own charm
you contribute even in separation.)
And the people around thought: a man in a case. Hero from Chekhov's Twilight. A character without deeds, a person without a destiny, but with a decent work history. But with what force sometimes the voice of love breaks out of his stanzas, in such, for example, verses as "The Shamrock of Seduction", or "The Shamrock of the Moon", or "A Jet of Mignonette in a Dark Carriage":
So silent, black and warm
mignonette-filled haze...
In blue lanterns
between sheets, on branches,
without number
wax radiance floats.
And in the garden
like crazy
chrysanthemums bloom...
While the candles float
and the lefties live
while mignonette breathes in a dream -
there is no torment, no sin, no shame ...
Here it is, this eroticism of Annensky, unfinished, but saying so much:
In March
Forget the nightingale on fragrant flowers
just don't forget the morning of love!
Yes, the revived earth in the unanimated sheets
bright black chest!
Between the rags of his snowy shirt
only once she wished -
only once did March fire drink her,
yes drunker than wine!
Only once tear off from the swollen earth
we could not envious eyes ...
And, trembling, they quickly left the garden ...
Just once... this time...
In the cycle of poems about poets, I have a poem about Annensky, in which I drew his portrait as I saw him:
An unhappy poet. Quiet, careful
one dream to the star is the only attraction ...
And it was forever impossible for him -
which is thoughtless and easy for ordinary souls.
How he was afraid to live, crushing nature in himself,
extinguishing in itself everything that torments and burns.
"Oh, if only a moment - madness and freedom!"
"But drop your flower. I know it will lie."
Loveless love. Night outpourings.
Everything was tremblingly kept by a sandalwood box.
Oh, it was not a connection - a radiant fusion,
radiance of shadows, wedding of hearts...
And life was swallowed up by divine turmoil.
And the stepson's wife to love
did not dare, in a letter later he confesses to someone:
"Was she a "wife"? Alas. I could not cross."
The impossibility of fulfilling dreams, hopes, the poet raises to the rank of creative force, makes it his sad privilege. Self-restraint, self-restraint, renunciation of almost everything that beckons white light - this is the through line of fate and creativity of I. Annensky. The poet creates the beauty of illusion. That's why it's beautiful that it's impossible: Impossible - also with a capital letter, like Tosca.
Annesky called the poem "Impossible" the key to his lyricism - this is, as it were, the apotheosis of this topic, because love in his poems is always an "unfinished", suppressed feeling. "Impossible" is an elegiac poem, sad and bright, dedicated to its title word and combines three motifs: the motif of love, death and poetry. Referring to this word, the poet says:
Without knowing, I already loved in myself
these velvet-gone sounds:
shimmering graves appeared to me
and through the twilight whitened hands.
But only in a white crown of chrysanthemums,
before the first threat of oblivion,
these "v", these "z", these "uh"
I could distinguish the breath.
If word by word that color,
falling, turns white anxiously,
there are no sad ones among the fallen,
but I love one thing - "Impossible".
It is worth quoting here Y. Nagibina:
“Annensky, like no one else, should have felt the ambiguous word “impossible”, because for him the existing was full of prohibitions. But the same word also serves to designate the highest degrees of delight, love and pain, all the tensions of the soul. And something else in this The word remains the secret of the poet, and it is impossible to penetrate into it.
Death at the train station
On December 13 (November 30), 1909, Innokenty Annensky died suddenly of a heart attack on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo railway station.
Shortly before that, he submitted his resignation. Annensky devoted 35 years to the cause of national education, but this service always weighed on him, he dreamed of the beginning of a new literary life, free from papers, from tedious trips around the impassable Vologda region and the Olenets region, when it would finally be possible to be a poet, and not a poet-official, masking the main thing in itself. But these dreams were not destined to come true.
That evening, in the society of classical philology, his report was scheduled, and in addition, he also promised his student students to visit Tsarskoye at their party before leaving. The students waited a long time for Annensky. They waited even after they were allowed to go home. Almost all of them were in love with a handsome melancholic teacher, whom they knew that he wrote poetry, and many of these poems were copied into albums. They waited for about two hours, and then the upset director appeared and said that Inokenty Fedorovich would never come again ...
The first to know about Annensky's death Block, who was at the Varshavsky railway station that evening - went to his dying father in Warsaw. And I heard how one railway worker said this to another - cheerfully, as if about some kind of curiosity ... And Blok said angrily aloud, loudly and distinctly: "Well, they missed another one ..."
I thought the heart was made of stone
That it is empty and dead:
Let fire in the heart with tongues
Looks like nothing to him.
And sure enough, it didn't hurt me.
And it hurts, just a little bit.
Still, it's better
Blow while you can blow...
The heart is dark as in the grave,
I knew that I would take a lot of fire ...
Well ... and the fire was extinguished,
And I'm dying in smoke
Annensky was buried on December 4, 1909 at the Kazan cemetery in Tsarskoye Selo. They buried not as a great poet, but as a general, state councilor. In newspaper notes about his death, poetry was not mentioned at all. Only Korney Chukovsky astutely remarked: “ How will those who understand your books laugh later, having learned that once, on the day of your death, in a vast country only your rank was remembered, and not only did they not accept the rich gifts of the poetic soul, but no one even noticed - my dear, my poor real state councilor...”
The funeral was unexpectedly crowded. He was loved by the student youth, the cathedral was packed with pupils and pupils of all ages. He was lying in a solemn, official coffin, in a general's frock coat of the Ministry of Public Education, and this seemed to be the last mockery of him - the poet.
Melted snow flew and flew,
Flaming up, blushed cheeks,
I didn't think the month was so small
And that the clouds are so smoky, far away ...
I'll leave without asking anything
Because my lot was drawn,
I didn't think the moon was beautiful
So beautiful and disturbing in the sky.
It's almost midnight. Nobody and no one
Tired of the most ghost of life,
I admire the smoke rays
There, in my deceived homeland.
His soul
Few people know that Annensky also has poems in prose that are in no way inferior to Turgenev's. One of them is called "My Soul". There he describes his own soul, which he saw in a dream. The soul was in the form of a porter who was dragging a huge bale on himself, bending under this weight.
“... And for a long, long time the soul will be on the road, and it will dream, and dreaming, dutifully pounding on the dirty ruts of the never-drying black earth ... One, two such paths, and the bag has served. Yes, and that's enough... In fact, who and why did he serve?.. My fate will be touchingly described in an instructive book worth 3 kopecks of silver. They will describe the fate of a poor sack of supple canvas that has served people. But this bag was the soul of the poet - and all the guilt of this soul consisted only in the fact that someone and somewhere condemned her to live other people's lives, to live with all sorts of squabbles and belongings, which thievishly stuffed his life, to live and not even notice when this, that at the same time she is worn out by her own, no longer shared flour.
Years have passed. Innokenty Annensky passed the most terrible test - the test of oblivion, he was not just forgotten, he was not remembered. However, Innokenty Annensky lived in almost every major Russian poet of the 20th century, he lived and influenced the quality of life and thought. The quietest, deepest world of Annensky, the sign of his verse is left on the poetry of Akhmatova and Pasternak, he was one of the closest poets of A. Tarkovsky, A. Kushner. His words, spoken in a letter to a friend, came true: "I work exclusively for the future." And it turned out that this imaginary loser is the happiest of the happy: with his life and work he conquered time. Units succeed.
Among the worlds, in the twinkling of the stars
One Star I repeat the name...
Not because I love her
But because I languish with others.
And if I doubt it is hard,
I'm looking for an answer from her alone,
Not because it is light from Her,
But because with Her there is no need for light.
I would like to say, slightly changing his verses: “Not because it is light from him, but because you don’t need light with him.”
“It is almost impossible to tell the topic of the Silver Age in 45 minutes, since it takes about five years for a philology student to begin to understand it very roughly,” said publicist and literary critic Dmitry Bykov.
One cannot but agree with this statement, because at the turn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so many undeniable talents and literary movements appeared that it is really difficult to tell about them all. This is both a representative of acmeism, and an adherent of cubo-futurism, and it should also be noted that others famous people. But from this list, one should single out the Symbolist Innokenty Annensky, who stood at the origins of the formation of trends in Russian poetry.
Childhood and youth
Innokenty Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk, which is rich in sights and cultural values (it is not for nothing that Omsk is called a "theater city"). The future poet grew up in an average and exemplary family. Innokenty's parents were not one iota close to creativity: his mother Natalia Petrovna led household, and father Fedor Nikolaevich held a high government post.
The main breadwinner in the house received the post of chairman of the Provincial Administration, so the parents and their son moved to the city of universities and scientists - Tomsk.
But in this place, about which he once spoke impartially, Innokenty did not stay long: already in 1860, because of the work of his father, the Annenskys again packed their bags and left harsh Siberia - the road lay to St. Petersburg. It is known that Fedor Nikolaevich soon became interested in a scam, so he went bankrupt, left with nothing.
As a child, Annensky was in poor health, but the boy did not remain at home schooling and went to a general education private school, and later became a student of the 2nd St. Petersburg progymnasium. Since 1869, Innokenty was on the bench of the private gymnasium of V.I. Berens, while preparing for admission to the university. In 1875, Annensky was visiting his older brother Nikolai Fedorovich, who was a journalist, economist and populist publicist.
Nikolai Fedorovich, an educated and intelligent person, influenced Innokenty and helped him in preparing for the exams. Thus, Annensky easily became a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1879. It is noteworthy that in all subjects the poet had solid "five", while in philosophy and theology there were marks one ball lower.
Further, before the ink had dried on Annensky's diploma, he began to lecture on ancient languages and Russian literature at the Gurevich gymnasium and was known among the students as the strongest teacher. Among other things, Innokenty Fedorovich served as director of the Galagan College, the eighth St. Petersburg gymnasium and the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo, where he once studied.
Literature
Innokenty Fedorovich began writing since early age. But then the poet did not know what symbolism was, therefore he considered himself a mystic. By the way, symbolism is the largest trend in literature and art, characterized by mystery, mystery, the use of allusions and metaphorical expressions. But, according to critics, the work of the genius of literature does not fit into the framework of "symbolism", but represents "pre-symbolism".
Writer Innokenty Annensky In addition, Innokenty Fedorovich tried to follow the "religious genre" of the Spanish painter of the "golden age" Bartolome Esteban Murillo. True, the writer tried to convey the expression of virgin purity, meekness and prayer tenderness with the help of words, and not brushes and paints.
It is noteworthy that Innokenty Fedorovich did not seek to show his early creative efforts to eminent writers and magazine owners. The fact is that Nikolai Fedorovich advised his younger brother to start publishing in adulthood, having established himself on life path and realizing his calling.
Therefore, the book "Quiet Songs" was published only in 1904, when Innokenty Annensky was known as a brilliant teacher and respected person. Also, the symbolist began to engage in dramaturgy, from his pen came out plays: "Melanippa the Philosopher" (1901), "King Ixion" (1902), "Laodamia" (1906) and "Famira-kifared" (1913-posthumously) in which the poet tried to imitate his favorite ancient Greek writers, and, the geniuses of ancient mythology.
In his manuscripts, Annensky adhered to impressionism: he described things not as he knew, for all phenomena and objects were inherent in the poet's vision in this moment. The main motives in the works of Innokenty Fedorovich are longing, melancholy, sadness and loneliness, which is why he so often describes cold, twilight and sunsets without excessive pretentiousness and exaltation. This trend can be seen in the poems "Snow", "Bow and Strings", "Two Loves", "Tormenting Sonnet" and other remarkable works.
Among other things, Innokenty Fedorovich added to his creative biography by translating the manuscripts of his foreign colleagues. Thanks to him, Russian-speaking readers got acquainted with the famous tragedies of Euripides, as well as with poems by Hans Muller, Christian Heine and other literary geniuses.
Annensky made a huge contribution to the world of intricate lines. For example, his poem "Bells" can be correlated with the first work in a futuristic style. The second poetic collection of Innokenty Fedorovich "Cypress Casket" brought recognition and fame to the poet, however, posthumously. It included poems "Among the Worlds", "Oreanda", "Silver Noon", "Ice Prison", "October Myth" and other works.
Personal life
Contemporaries of Innokenty Fedorovich used to say that he was a loyal and kind person. But sometimes excessive softness played a cruel joke. For example, he lost his position as director of the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo.
O personal life there is little information for the poet, because even in his works the writer rarely shared his emotional experiences and what remained under the veil of secrecy. It is known that fate brought the sophomore Annensky with the eccentric 36-year-old widow Nadezhda (Dina) Valentinovna, who came from a well-born class. The lovers immortalized their relationship by marriage, and soon a son, Valentine, was born.
Death
Innokenty Fedorovich died unexpectedly. Of course, he was in poor health, but on that fateful day, November 30 (December 13), 1909, nothing foreshadowed trouble. Annensky died of a heart attack at the age of 54, right on the steps of the Tsarskoselsky railway station (St. Petersburg).
- Once, when Innokenty Annensky was in a bad mood and was burdened with thoughts, his wife came up to him and said: “Kenechka! Why are you sitting sad? Open your mouth, I'll give you an orange!". Dina also liked to arrange dinners with her girlfriends, although Annensky shunned people and adhered to the policy of an outsider. What the poet thought about his marriage is not known for certain.
- Annensky began to publish at the age of 48, not striving for recognition and fame: the poet hid his true face, published under the pseudonym "Nik.-T-o".
- In the years of Annensky's youth, his sisters found the first attempts of the little creator. But instead of praise, the boy received a vociferous laugh, because the girls were amused by the line from the poem: "God sends her a sweet figure from heaven." This gave rise to many jokes, so Innokenty Fedorovich hid his drafts in a secluded place, afraid to present them to the public.
- The poetic collection "Cypress Casket" was named so for a reason: Innokenty had a box made of cypress wood, where the poet kept notebooks and drafts.
Quotes
“... I love it when there are children in the house
And when they cry at night
“Love is not peace, it must have a moral result, first of all for those who love.”
“But ... there are such moments,
When it's scary and empty in the chest ...
I am heavy - and dumb and bent ...
I want to be alone… go away!”
“Oh, give me eternity, and I will give eternity
For indifference to insults and years.
"There is love like smoke:
If it's tight for her, she's intoxicating,
Give her free rein and she won't be...
To be like smoke - but forever young.
Bibliography
Tragedies:
- 1901 - "Melanippa the Philosopher"
- 1902 - "King Ixion"
- 1906 - "Laodamia"
- 1906 - "Famira-kifared"
Collections of poems:
- 1904 - Quiet Songs
- 1910 - "Cypress Casket"
