He got his Scottish surname, unusual for Russia, thanks to a distant ancestor - a sailor who forever cast anchor off the coast of Pushkin and Lermontov. The work of Balmont Konstantin Dmitrievich was consigned to oblivion during Soviet times for obvious reasons. The country of the hammer and sickle did not need creators who worked outside of socialist realism, whose lines did not speak about struggle, about heroes of war and labor... Meanwhile, this poet, who has a truly powerful talent, whose exceptionally melodic poems continued the tradition of a pure, not for parties, but for the people.
"Create always, create everywhere..."
The legacy that Balmont left us is quite voluminous and impressive: 35 collections of poetry and 20 books of prose. His poems aroused the admiration of his compatriots for the ease of the author's style. Konstantin Dmitrievich wrote a lot, but he never “tormented lines out of himself” and did not optimize the text with numerous edits. His poems were always written on the first try, in one sitting. Balmont spoke about how he created poetry in a completely original way - in a poem.
The above is not an exaggeration. Mikhail Vasilyevich Sabashnikov, with whom the poet stayed in 1901, recalled that dozens of lines were formed in his head, and he wrote poems on paper immediately, without a single edit. When asked how he succeeds, Konstantin Dmitrievich answered with a disarming smile: “After all, I’m a poet!”
Brief description of creativity
Literary scholars, experts on his work, talk about the formation, flourishing and decline of the level of the works that Balmont created. A short biography and creativity indicate to us, however, an amazing capacity for work (he wrote daily and always on a whim).
Balmont’s most popular works are the collections of poems by the mature poet “Only Love,” “Let’s Be Like the Sun,” and “Burning Buildings.” Among the early works, the collection “Silence” stands out.
Balmont’s work (briefly quoting literary critics of the early 20th century), with the subsequent general tendency towards the attenuation of the author’s talent (after the three above-mentioned collections), also has a number of “highlights”. Worth noting are “Fairy Tales” - cute children's songs written in a style later adopted by Korney Chukovsky. Also interesting are the “foreign poems” created under the impression of what he saw during his travels in Egypt and Oceania.
Biography. Childhood
His father, Dmitry Konstantinovich, was a zemstvo doctor and also owned an estate. His mother (nee Lebedeva), a creative person, according to the future poet, “did more to cultivate a love for poetry and music” than all subsequent teachers. Konstantin became the third son in a family where there were seven children in total, all of them sons.
Konstantin Dmitrievich had his own special tao (perception of life). It is no coincidence that Balmont’s life and work are closely related. Since childhood, a powerful creative principle was instilled in him, which manifested itself in a contemplative worldview.
Since childhood, he had been disgusted by schoolwork and loyalty. Romanticism often prevailed over common sense. He never finished school (the Shuya male heir to Tsarevich Alexei gymnasium), having been expelled from the 7th grade for participating in a revolutionary circle. He completed his last school year at the Vladimir Gymnasium under the round-the-clock supervision of a teacher. He later remembered only two teachers with gratitude: a history and geography teacher and a literature teacher.
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 we can see, Konstantin did not begin his poetic career easily, and his work is still the subject of controversy among literary scholars.
Balmont's personality
The personality of Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont is quite complex. He was not “like everyone else.” Exclusivity... It can be determined even by the portrait of the poet, by his gaze, by his posture. It immediately becomes clear: before us is not an apprentice, but a master of poetry. His personality was bright and charismatic. He was an amazingly organic person; Balmont’s life and work are like a single inspired impulse.
He began writing poems at the age of 22 (for comparison, Lermontov’s first works were written at the age of 15). Before this, as we already know, there was an incomplete education, as well as an unsuccessful marriage with the daughter of a Shuya factory owner, which ended in a suicide attempt (the poet jumped out of a 3rd floor window onto the pavement.) Balmont was pushed by the unsettled family life and the death of his first child from meningitis. His first wife Garelina Larisa Mikhailovna, a beauty of the Botticelli type, tormented him with jealousy, imbalance and disdain for dreams of great literature. He poured out his emotions from the discord (and later from divorce) with his wife in the poems “Your fragrant shoulders were breathing...”, “No, no one did so much harm to me...”, “Oh, woman, child, accustomed to playing...”.
Self-education
How did young Balmont, having become an outcast due to his loyalty to the education system, turn into an educated person, an ideologist of the new? Quoting Konstantin Dmitrievich himself, his mind once “hooked” on one purely British word - selfhelp (self-help). Self-education. It became for Konstantin Dmitrievich a springboard into the future...
Being by his nature a true worker of the pen, Konstantin Dmitrievich never followed any external system imposed on him from the outside and alien to his nature. Balmont's creativity is entirely based 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 a creative journey
Inherent in Fet, Nadson and Pleshcheev, it did not become an end in itself for Balmont (in the 70-80s of the 19th century, many poets created poems with motifs of sadness, sadness, restlessness, and loneliness). For Konstantin Dmitrievich it turned into the road to symbolism he paved. He will write about this a little later.
Unconventional self-education
Unconventional self-education determines the characteristics of Balmont’s work. This was truly a man who created with words. Poet. And he perceived the world in the same way as a poet can see it: not with the help of analysis and reasoning, but relying only on impressions and sensations. “The first movement of the soul is the most correct,” this rule, developed by him himself, became immutable for his entire life. It raised him to the heights of creativity, but it also ruined his talent.
The romantic hero of Balmont in the early period of his work was 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 assessing which, we can say that he really became the founder of symbolism in Russian poetry. The collections of poetry “Silence” and “In the Boundless” are considered significant for the period of the poet’s formation.
He outlined his views on symbolism in 1900 in the article “Elementary Words on Symbolic Poetry.” Symbolists, unlike realists, according to Balmont, are not just observers, they are thinkers looking at the world through the window of their dreams. At the same time, Balmont considers the most important principles in symbolic poetry to be “hidden abstraction” and “obvious beauty.”
By nature, Balmont was not a gray mouse, but a leader. A short biography and creativity confirm this. Charisma and a natural desire for freedom... It was these qualities that allowed him, at the peak of his popularity, to “become the center of attraction” for numerous Balmontist societies in Russia. According to Ehrenburg’s recollections (this was much 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 Andreeva at first sight. This stage in his life is reflected in the collection of poems “In the Vast.” The poems dedicated to her are numerous and original: “Black-eyed Doe”, “Why does the moon always intoxicate 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” in the Scorpio publishing house. In the collection, the poems were preceded by an epigraph selected from Tyutchev’s works: “There is a certain hour of universal silence.” The poems in it are grouped into 12 sections called “lyrical poems.” Konstantin Dmitrievich, inspired by the theosophical teachings of Blavatsky, already in this collection of poems noticeably departs from the Christian worldview.
The poet's understanding of his role in art
The collection “Silence” becomes a facet that distinguishes Balmont as a poet professing symbolism. Further developing the accepted vector of creativity, Konstantin Dmitrievich writes an article called “Calderon's drama of personality,” where he indirectly justified his departure from the classical Christian model. This was done, as always, figuratively. He considered earthly life to be “a falling away from the bright Source.”
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky talentedly presented the features of Balmont’s work and his author’s style. He believed that “I”, written by Balmont, does not fundamentally indicate belonging to the poet, it is initially socialized. Therefore, Konstantin Dmitrievich’s poem is unique in its soulful lyricism, expressed in associating oneself with others, which the reader invariably feels. Reading his poems, it seems that Balmont is filled with light and energy, which he generously shares with others:
What Balmont presents as optimistic narcissism is in fact more altruistic than the phenomenon of the public demonstration of poets’ pride in their merits, as well as their equally public hanging of laurels on themselves.
Balmont's work, to put it briefly in the words of Annensky, is saturated with the internal philosophical polemicism inherent in it, which determines the integrity of the worldview. The latter is expressed in the fact that Balmont wants to present the event to his reader comprehensively: both from the position of the executioner and from the position of the victim. He does not have an unambiguous assessment of anything; he is initially characterized by a pluralism of opinions. He came to it thanks to his talent and hard work, a whole century ahead of the time when this became the norm of social consciousness for developed countries.
Sunny genius
The work of the poet Balmont is unique. In fact, Konstantin Dmitrievich purely formally joined various movements, so that it would be more convenient for him to promote his new poetic ideas, which he never lacked. In the last decade of the 19th century, a metamorphosis occurred in the poet’s work: melancholy and transience give way to sunny optimism.
If in earlier poems the mood of Nietzscheanism could be traced, then at the peak of the development of talent, the work of Konstantin Balmont began to be distinguished by the author’s specific optimism and “sunshine”, “fieryness”.
Alexander Blok, who is also a symbolist poet, presented a vivid description of Balmont’s work of that period very succinctly, saying that it was as bright and life-affirming as spring.
Peak of creative powers
Balmont’s poetic gift sounded in full force for the first time in poems from the collection “Burning Buildings.” It contains 131 poems written during the poet’s stay in S.V. Polyakov’s house.
All of them, as the poet claimed, were composed under the influence of “one mood” (Balmont did not think of creativity any other way). “The poem should no longer be in a minor key!” - Balmont decided. Starting with this collection, he finally moved away from decadence. The poet, boldly experimenting with combinations of sounds, colors and thoughts, created “lyrics of the modern soul”, “torn soul”, “wretched, ugly”.
At this time he was in close communication with St. Petersburg bohemia. I knew one weakness for my husband. He couldn't drink wine. Although Konstantin Dmitrievich had a strong, wiry build, his nervous system (obviously damaged in childhood and youth) “worked” inadequately. After drinking wine, he “carried” through brothels. However, as a result, he found himself in a completely pitiful state: lying on the floor and paralyzed by deep hysteria. This happened more than once while working 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 the most honest and sincere and who, to her chagrin, had affairs. For example, as with Dagny Christensen in Paris, the poems “The Sun Withdrew” and “From the Line of Kings” are dedicated to her. It is significant that Balmont’s affair with a Norwegian woman, who worked as a St. Petersburg correspondent, ended 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 published with difficulty the collection “Let’s Be Like the Sun,” written in 1901-1902. You can feel the hand of a master in it. Note that about 10 works did not pass the censorship. The work of the poet Balmont, according to censors, has become overly sensual and erotic.
Literary scholars believe that this collection of works, which presents readers with a cosmogonic model of the world, is evidence of a new, highest level of development of the poet. Being on the verge of a mental break while working on the previous collection, Konstantin Dmitrievich seemed to understand that it was impossible to “live by rebellion.” The poet seeks truth at the intersection of Hinduism, paganism and Christianity. He expresses his worship of elemental objects: fire ("Hymn to Fire"), wind ("Wind"), the ocean ("Appeal to the Ocean"). In the same 1903, the publishing house “Grif” published the third collection, crowning the peak of Balmont’s creativity, “Only Love. Seven-flowered garden."
Instead of a conclusion
Inscrutable even for such poets “by the grace of God” as Balmont. His life and work after 1903 are briefly characterized in one word - “recession.” Therefore, Alexander Blok, who essentially became the next leader of Russian symbolism, assessed Balmont’s further (after the collection “Only Love”) in his own way. He presented him with a damning description, saying that there is a great Russian poet Balmont, but there is no “new Balmont”.
However, not being literary scholars of the last century, we nevertheless became acquainted with the late work of Konstantin Dmitrievich. Our verdict: it’s worth reading, there’s a lot of interesting stuff there... However, we have no reason to be distrustful of Blok’s words. Indeed, from the point of view of literary criticism, Balmont as a poet is the banner of symbolism, after the collection “Only Love. Seven-flowered" has exhausted itself. Therefore, it is logical on our part to conclude this short story about the life and work of K. D. Balmont, the “sunny genius” of Russian poetry.
He began writing poetry in childhood. The first book of poems, “Collection of Poems,” was published in Yaroslavl at the expense of the author in 1890. After the book was published, the young poet burned almost the entire small edition.
Balmont's wide popularity came quite late, and in the late 1890s he was rather known as a talented translator from Norwegian, Spanish, English and other languages.
In 1903, one of the poet’s best collections, “Let’s Be Like the Sun,” and the collection “Only Love” were published.
1905 - two collections “Liturgy of Beauty” and “Fairy Tales”.
Balmont responded to the events of the first Russian revolution with the collections “Poems” (1906) and “Songs of the Avenger” (1907).
1907 book “Firebird. Slavic flute"
collections “Birds in the Air” (1908), “Round Dance of the Times” (1908), “Green Vertograd” (1909).
author of three books containing literary critical and aesthetic articles: “Mountain Peaks” (1904), “White Lightning” (1908), “Sea Glow” (1910).
Before the October Revolution, Balmont created two more truly interesting collections, “Ash” (1916) and “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon” (1917).
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born on June 3 (15), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province. Father, Dmitry Konstantinovich, served in the Shuisky district court and zemstvo, rising from a minor employee with the rank of collegiate registrar to a justice of the peace, and then to the chairman of the district zemstvo council. Mother, Vera Nikolaevna, nee Lebedeva, was an educated woman, and greatly influenced the poet’s future worldview, introducing him to the world of music, literature, and history.
In 1876-1883, Balmont studied at the Shuya gymnasium, from where he was expelled for participating in an anti-government circle. He continued his education at the Vladimir gymnasium, then in Moscow at the university, and the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl. In 1887, for participating in student unrest, he was expelled from Moscow University and exiled to Shuya. He never received a higher education, but thanks to his hard work and curiosity he became one of the most erudite and cultured people of his time. Balmont read a huge number of books every year, studied, according to various sources, from 14 to 16 languages, in addition to literature and art, he was interested in history, ethnography, and chemistry.
He began writing poetry in childhood. The first book of poems, “Collection of Poems,” was published in Yaroslavl at the expense of the author in 1890. After the book was published, the young poet burned almost the entire small edition.
The decisive time in the formation of Balmont's poetic worldview was the mid-1890s. Until now, his poems have not stood out as anything special among late populist poetry. Publication of the collections “Under the Northern Sky” (1894) and “In the Boundless” (1895), translation of two scientific works “History of Scandinavian Literature” by Horn-Schweitzer and “History of Italian Literature” by Gaspari, acquaintance with V. Bryusov and other representatives of the new direction in art, strengthened the poet’s faith in himself and his special purpose. In 1898, Balmont published the collection “Silence,” which finally marked the author’s place in modern literature.
Balmont was destined to become one of the founders of a new direction in literature - symbolism. However, among the “senior symbolists” (D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov) and among the “younger” (A. Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov) he had his own position associated with a broader understanding symbolism as poetry, which, in addition to the specific meaning, has hidden content, expressed through hints, mood, and musical sound. Of all the symbolists, Balmont most consistently developed the impressionistic branch. His poetic world is a world of the most subtle fleeting observations, fragile feelings.
Balmont's predecessors in poetry, in his opinion, were Zhukovsky, Lermontov, Fet, Shelley and E. Poe.
Balmont's wide popularity came quite late, and in the late 1890s he was rather known as a talented translator from Norwegian, Spanish, English and other languages.
In 1903, one of the poet’s best collections, “Let’s Be Like the Sun,” and the collection “Only Love” were published. And before that, for the anti-government poem “Little Sultan”, read at a literary evening in the city duma, the authorities expelled Balmont from St. Petersburg, banning him from living in other university cities. And in 1902, Balmont went abroad, finding himself a political emigrant.
In addition to almost all European countries, Balmont visited the United States of America and Mexico and in the summer of 1905 returned to Moscow, where his two collections “Liturgy of Beauty” and “Fairy Tales” were published.
Balmont responded to the events of the first Russian revolution with the collections “Poems” (1906) and “Songs of the Avenger” (1907). Fearing persecution, the poet again leaves Russia and goes to France, where he lives until 1913. From here he travels to Spain, Egypt, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Ceylon, and India.
The book “Firebird” published in 1907. The Slav’s Pipe,” in which Balmont developed a national theme, did not bring him success and from that time on the gradual decline of the poet’s fame began. However, Balmont himself was not aware of his creative decline. He remains aloof from the fierce polemics between symbolists waged on the pages of “Libra” and “The Golden Fleece”, differs from Bryusov in understanding the tasks facing modern art, and still writes a lot, easily, selflessly. One after another, the collections “Birds in the Air” (1908), “Round Dance of the Times” (1908), and “Green Vertograd” (1909) were published. A. Blok speaks about them with unusual harshness.
In May 1913, after an amnesty was declared in connection with the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty, Balmont returned to Russia and for some time found himself in the center of attention of the literary community. By this time, he was not only a famous poet, but also the author of three books containing literary, critical and aesthetic articles: “Mountain Peaks” (1904), “White Lightning” (1908), “Sea Glow” (1910).
Before the October Revolution, Balmont created two more truly interesting collections, “Ash” (1916) and “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon” (1917).
Balmont welcomed the overthrow of the autocracy, but the events that followed the revolution scared him away, and thanks to the support of A. Lunacharsky, Balmont received permission to temporarily travel abroad in June 1920. The temporary departure turned into long years of emigration for the poet.
In exile, Balmont published several collections of poetry: “A Gift to the Earth” (1921), “Haze” (1922), “Mine is for Her” (1923), “Spreading Distances” (1929), “Northern Lights” (1931), “Blue Horseshoe" (1935), "Light Service" (1936-1937).
He died on December 23, 1942 from pneumonia. He was buried in the town of Noisy-le-Grand near Paris, where he lived in recent years.
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (June 3, 1867, village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province - December 23, 1942, Noisy-le-Grand, France) - symbolist poet, translator, essayist, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian poetry of the Silver Age. He published 35 collections of poetry, 20 books of prose, and translated from many languages. Author of autobiographical prose, memoirs, philological treatises, historical and literary studies and critical essays.
Konstantin Balmont was born on June 3 (15), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province, the third of seven sons.
It is known that the poet’s grandfather was a naval officer.
Father Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont (1835-1907) served in the Shuya district court and zemstvo: first as a collegiate registrar, then as a justice of the peace, and finally as chairman of the district zemstvo council.
Mother Vera Nikolaevna, née Lebedeva, came from a colonel’s family, in which they loved literature and studied it professionally. She appeared in the local press, organized literary evenings and amateur performances. She had a strong influence on the worldview of the future poet, introducing him to the world of music, literature, history, and was the first to teach him to comprehend “the beauty of the female soul.”
Vera Nikolaevna knew foreign languages well, read a lot and “was not a stranger to some freethinking”: “unreliable” guests were received in the house. It was from his mother that Balmont, as he himself wrote, inherited “unbridledness and passion” and his entire “mental structure.”
The future poet learned to read on his own at the age of five, watching his mother, who taught her older brother to read and write. The touched father gave Konstantin his first book on this occasion, “something about the savages of the Oceanians.” The mother introduced her son to examples of the best poetry.
When the time came to send the older children to school, the family moved to Shuya. Moving to the city did not mean a break from nature: the Balmonts’ house, surrounded by an extensive garden, stood on the picturesque bank of the Teza River; Father, a lover of hunting, often went to Gumnishchi, and Konstantin accompanied him more often than others.
In 1876, Balmont entered the preparatory class of the Shuya gymnasium, which he later called “a nest of decadence and capitalists, whose factories spoiled the air and water in the river.” At first the boy made progress, but soon he became bored with his studies, and his performance decreased, but the time came for binge reading, and he read French and German works in the original. Impressed by what he read, he began writing poetry himself at the age of ten. “On a bright sunny day they appeared, two poems at once, one about winter, the other about summer”, he recalled. These poetic endeavors, however, were criticized by his mother, and the boy did not attempt to repeat his poetic experiment for six years.
Balmont was forced to leave the seventh grade in 1884 because he belonged to an illegal circle, which consisted of high school students, visiting students and teachers, and was engaged in printing and distributing proclamations of the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party in Shuya. The poet subsequently explained the background to this early revolutionary mood as follows: “I was happy, and I wanted everyone to feel just as good. It seemed to me that if it was good only for me and a few, it was ugly.”.
Through the efforts of his mother, Balmont was transferred to the gymnasium in the city of Vladimir. But here he had to live in the apartment of a Greek teacher, who zealously performed the duties of a “supervisor.”
At the end of 1885, Balmont's literary debut took place. Three of his poems were published in the popular St. Petersburg magazine “Picturesque Review” (November 2 - December 7). This event was not noticed by anyone except the mentor, who forbade Balmont to publish until he completed his studies at the gymnasium.
The young poet’s acquaintance with V. G. Korolenko dates back to this time. The famous writer, having received a notebook with his poems from Balmont’s comrades at the gymnasium, took them seriously and wrote a detailed letter to the gymnasium student - a favorable mentoring review.
In 1886, Konstantin Balmont entered the law faculty of Moscow University, where he became close to P. F. Nikolaev, a revolutionary of the sixties. But already in 1887, for participating in riots (associated with the introduction of a new university charter, which students considered reactionary), Balmont was expelled, arrested and sent to Butyrka prison for three days, and then deported to Shuya without trial.
In 1889, Balmont returned to the university, but due to severe nervous exhaustion he was unable to study, either there or at the Yaroslavl Demidov Lyceum of Legal Sciences, where he successfully entered. In September 1890, he was expelled from the lyceum and abandoned his attempts to obtain a “government education.”
In 1889, Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina, daughter of an Ivanovo-Voznesensk merchant. A year later, in Yaroslavl, with his own funds, he published his first "Collection of poems"- some of the youthful works included in the book were published back in 1885. However, the debut collection of 1890 did not arouse interest, close people did not accept it, and soon after its release the poet burned almost the entire small edition.
In March 1890, an incident occurred that left an imprint on Balmont’s entire subsequent life: he tried to commit suicide, jumped out of a third floor window, received serious fractures and spent a year in bed.
It was believed that despair from his family and financial situation pushed him to such an act: his marriage quarreled Balmont with his parents and deprived him of financial support, but the immediate impetus was the “Kreutzer Sonata” he had read shortly before. The year spent in bed, as the poet himself recalled, turned out to be creatively very fruitful and entailed.
“an unprecedented flowering of mental excitement and cheerfulness” “In a long year, when I, lying in bed, no longer expected that I would ever get up, I learned from the early morning chirping of sparrows outside the window and from the moon rays passing through the window into my room, and from all the steps that reached up to my hearing, the great fairy tale of life, understood the sacred inviolability of life. And when I finally got up, my soul became free, like the wind in a field, no one any longer had power over it except a creative dream, and creativity blossomed wildly.”.
For some time after his illness, Balmont, who by this time had separated from his wife, lived in poverty. According to his own recollections, he spent months “I didn’t know what it was to be full, and I went to bakeries to admire the rolls and breads through the glass”.
Moscow University professor N.I. Storozhenko also provided Balmont with enormous assistance.
In 1887-1889, the poet actively translated German and French authors, then in 1892-1894 he began working on the works of Percy Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. It is this period that is considered the time of his creative development.
Professor Storozhenko, in addition, introduced Balmont to the editorial board of Severny Vestnik, around which poets of the new direction were grouped.
On the basis of his translation activities, Balmont became close to the philanthropist, an expert in Western European literature, Prince A. N. Urusov, who greatly contributed to expanding the literary horizons of the young poet. With the help of a patron of the arts, Balmont published two books of translations of Edgar Allan Poe (“Ballads and Fantasies”, “Mysterious Stories”).
In September 1894, in the student “Circle of Lovers of Western European Literature,” Balmont met V. Ya. Bryusov, who later became his closest friend. Bryusov wrote about the “exceptional” impression that the poet’s personality and his “frenzied love for poetry” made on him.
Collection "Under the Northern Sky", published in 1894, is considered to be the starting point of Balmont’s creative path. The book received a wide response, and reviews were mostly positive.
If the debut in 1894 was not distinguished by originality, then in the second collection "In the Vast"(1895) Balmont began searching for “new space, new freedom”, the possibilities of combining the poetic word with melody.
The 1890s were a period of active creative work for Balmont in a wide variety of fields of knowledge. The poet, who had a phenomenal capacity for work, mastered “many languages one after another, reveling in his work like a man possessed... he read entire libraries of books, starting with treatises on his favorite Spanish painting and ending with studies on the Chinese language and Sanskrit.”
He enthusiastically studied the history of Russia, books on natural sciences and folk art. Already in his mature years, addressing aspiring writers with instructions, he wrote that a debutant needs “to be able to sit over a philosophical book and an English dictionary and Spanish grammar on a spring day, when you really want to ride a boat and maybe kiss someone. Be able to read 100, 300, and 3,000 books, including many, many boring ones. To love not only joy, but also pain. Silently cherish within yourself not only happiness, but also the melancholy that pierces your heart.”.
By 1895, Balmont met Jurgis Baltrushaitis, which gradually grew into a friendship that lasted many years, and S. A. Polyakov, an educated Moscow merchant, mathematician and polyglot, translator of Knut Hamsun. It was Polyakov, the publisher of the modernist magazine “Vesy”, who five years later established the symbolist publishing house “Scorpion”, where Balmont’s best books were published.
In 1896, Balmont married translator E. A. Andreeva and went with his wife to Western Europe. Several years spent abroad provided the aspiring writer, who was interested, in addition to his main subject, in history, religion and philosophy, with enormous opportunities. He visited France, Holland, Spain, Italy, spending a lot of time in libraries, improving his knowledge of languages.
In 1899, K. Balmont was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.
In 1901, an event occurred that had a significant impact on the life and work of Balmont and made him “a true hero in St. Petersburg.” In March, he took part in a mass student demonstration on the square near the Kazan Cathedral, the main demand of which was the abolition of the decree on sending unreliable students to military service. The demonstration was dispersed by the police and Cossacks, and there were casualties among its participants.
On March 14, Balmont spoke at a literary evening in the hall of the City Duma and read a poem "Little Sultan", which in a veiled form criticized the regime of terror in Russia and its organizer, Nicholas II (“That was in Turkey, where conscience is an empty thing, there reigns a fist, a whip, a scimitar, two or three zeros, four scoundrels and a stupid little sultan”). The poem went around and was going to be published in the Iskra newspaper.
By decision of the “special meeting” the poet was expelled from St. Petersburg, deprived of the right to reside in capital and university cities for three years.
In the summer of 1903, Balmont returned to Moscow, then headed to the Baltic coast, where he began writing poetry, which was included in the collection “Only Love.”
After spending the autumn and winter in Moscow, at the beginning of 1904 Balmont again found himself in Europe (Spain, Switzerland, after returning to Moscow - France), where he often acted as a lecturer.
The poetry circles of the Balmontists that were created during these years tried to imitate the idol not only in poetic self-expression, but also in life.
Already in 1896, Valery Bryusov wrote about the “Balmont school,” including, in particular, Mirra Lokhvitskaya among it.
Many poets (including Lokhvitskaya, Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, M. A. Voloshin, S. M. Gorodetsky) dedicated poems to him, seeing in him a “spontaneous genius,” the eternally free Arigon, doomed to rise above the world and completely immersed “in the revelations of his bottomless soul.”
In 1906, Balmont wrote the poem “Our Tsar” about Emperor Nicholas II:
Our king is Mukden, our king is Tsushima,
Our king is a bloody stain,
The stench of gunpowder and smoke,
In which the mind is dark...
Our king is a blind misery,
Prison and whip, trial, execution,
The hanged king is twice as low,
What he promised, but didn’t dare give.
He is a coward, he feels with hesitation,
But it will happen, the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign - Khodynka,
He will end up standing on the scaffold.
Another poem from the same cycle - “To Nicholas the Last” - ended with the words: “You must be killed, you have become a disaster for everyone.”
In 1904-1905, the Scorpion publishing house published a collection of Balmont's poems in two volumes.
In January 1905, the poet took a trip to Mexico, from where he went to California. The poet's travel notes and essays, along with his free adaptations of Indian cosmogonic myths and legends, were later included in “Snake Flowers” (1910). This period of Balmont’s creativity ended with the release of the collection "Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns"(1905), largely inspired by the events of the Russo-Japanese War.
In 1905, Balmont returned to Russia and took an active part in political life. In December, the poet, in his own words, “took some part in the armed uprising of Moscow, mostly through poetry.” Having become close to Maxim Gorky, Balmont began active collaboration with the Social Democratic newspaper “New Life” and the Parisian magazine “Red Banner”, which was published by A. V. Amphiteatrov.
In December, during the days of the Moscow uprising, Balmont often visited the streets, carried a loaded revolver in his pocket, and made speeches to students. He even expected reprisals against himself, as it seemed to him, a complete revolutionary. His passion for the revolution was sincere, although, as the future showed, shallow. Fearing arrest, on the night of 1906 the poet hastily left for Paris.
In 1906, Balmont settled in Paris, considering himself a political emigrant. He settled in the quiet Parisian quarter of Passy, but spent most of his time traveling long distances.
Two collections of 1906-1907 were compiled from works in which K. Balmont directly responded to the events of the first Russian revolution. The book “Poems” (St. Petersburg, 1906) was confiscated by the police. “Songs of the Avenger” (Paris, 1907) was banned for distribution in Russia.
In the spring of 1907, Balmont visited the Balearic Islands, at the end of 1909 he visited Egypt, writing a series of essays that later formed the book “The Land of Osiris” (1914), in 1912 he made a trip to the southern countries, which lasted 11 months, visiting the Canary Islands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Ceylon, India. Oceania and communication with the inhabitants of the islands of New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga made a particularly deep impression on him.
On March 11, 1912, at a meeting of the Neophilological Society at St. Petersburg University on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of literary activity in the presence of more than 1000 people gathered K. D. Balmont was proclaimed a great Russian poet.
In 1913, political emigrants on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov were granted an amnesty, and on May 5, 1913, Balmont returned to Moscow. A solemn public meeting was arranged for him at the Brest railway station in Moscow. The gendarmes forbade the poet to address the public who greeted him with a speech. Instead, according to press reports at the time, he scattered fresh lilies of the valley among the crowd.
In honor of the poet’s return, ceremonial receptions were held at the Society of Free Aesthetics and the Literary and Artistic Circle.
In 1914, the publication of Balmont's complete collection of poems in ten volumes was completed, which lasted seven years. At the same time he published a collection of poetry "White architect. The Mystery of the Four Lamps"- your impressions of Oceania.
At the beginning of 1914, the poet returned to Paris, then in April he went to Georgia, where he received a magnificent reception (in particular, a greeting from Akaki Tsereteli, the patriarch of Georgian literature) and gave a course of lectures that had great success. The poet began to study the Georgian language and took up translation Shota Rustaveli's poem "The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger".
From Georgia, Balmont returned to France, where the outbreak of the First World War found him. Only at the end of May 1915, by a roundabout route - through England, Norway and Sweden - did the poet return to Russia. At the end of September, Balmont went on a two-month trip to the cities of Russia with lectures, and a year later he repeated the tour, which turned out to be longer and ended in the Far East, from where he briefly left for Japan in May 1916.
In 1915, Balmont’s theoretical sketch was published "Poetry as Magic"- a kind of continuation of the 1900 declaration “Elementary words on symbolic poetry.” In this treatise on the essence and purpose of lyric poetry, the poet attributed to the word “incantatory magical power” and even “physical power.”
Balmont welcomed the February Revolution, began collaborating in the Society of Proletarian Arts, but soon became disillusioned with the new government and joined the Cadet Party, which demanded the continuation of the war to a victorious end.
Having received, at the request of Jurgis Baltrushaitis, from A.V. Lunacharsky permission to temporarily go abroad on a business trip, together with his wife, daughter and distant relative A.N. Ivanova, Balmont left Russia forever on May 25, 1920 and reached Paris through Revel.
In Paris, Balmont and his family settled in a small furnished apartment.
The poet immediately found himself between two fires. On the one hand, the emigrant community suspected him of being a Soviet sympathizer.
On the other hand, the Soviet press began to “brand him as a crafty deceiver” who “at the cost of lies” achieved freedom for himself and abused the trust of the Soviet government, which generously released him to the West “to study the revolutionary creativity of the masses.”
Soon Balmont left Paris and settled in the town of Capbreton in the province of Brittany, where he spent 1921-1922.
In 1924 he lived in the Lower Charente (Chateillon), in 1925 in the Vendée (Saint-Gilles-sur-Vie), and until the late autumn of 1926 in the Gironde (Lacano-Océan).
At the beginning of November 1926, after leaving Lacanau, Balmont and his wife went to Bordeaux. Balmont often rented a villa in Capbreton, where he communicated with many Russians and lived intermittently until the end of 1931, spending here not only the summer but also the winter months.
Balmont unambiguously stated his attitude towards Soviet Russia soon after he left the country.
“The Russian people are truly tired of their misfortunes and, most importantly, of the unscrupulous, endless lies of merciless, evil rulers,” he wrote in 1921.
In the article "Bloody Liars" the poet spoke about the ups and downs of his life in Moscow in 1917-1920. In emigrant periodicals of the early 1920s, his poetic lines about “the actors of Satan”, about the “blood-drunk” Russian land, about the “days of humiliation of Russia”, about the “red drops” that went into the Russian land regularly appeared. A number of these poems were included in the collection "Haze"(Paris, 1922) - the poet’s first emigrant book.
In 1923, K. D. Balmont, simultaneously with M. Gorky and I. A. Bunin, was nominated by R. Rolland for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1927, in a journalistic article "A Little Zoology for Little Red Riding Hood" Balmont reacted to the scandalous speech of the Soviet plenipotentiary representative in Poland D.V. Bogomolov, who at the reception stated that Adam Mickiewicz in his famous poem “To Muscovite Friends” (the generally accepted translation of the title is “Russian Friends”) allegedly addressed the future - to modern Bolshevik Russia. In the same year, an anonymous appeal “To the Writers of the World” was published in Paris, signed “Group of Russian Writers. Russia, May 1927."
Unlike his friend, who gravitated towards the “right” direction, Balmont generally adhered to “left”, liberal-democratic views, was critical of ideas, did not accept “conciliatory” tendencies (smenovekhism, Eurasianism, and so on), radical political movements (fascism). At the same time, he shunned the former socialists - A.F. Kerensky, I.I. Fondaminsky and watched with horror the “leftward movement” of Western Europe in the 1920-1930s.
Balmont was outraged by the indifference of Western European writers to what was happening in the USSR, and this feeling was superimposed on the general disappointment with the entire Western way of life.
It was generally accepted that emigration was a sign of decline for Balmont. This opinion, shared by many Russian emigrant poets, was subsequently disputed more than once. In different countries during these years, Balmont published books of poems “Gift to the Earth”, “Bright Hour” (1921), “Haze” (1922), “Mine is for her. Poems about Russia" (1923), "In the widening distance" (1929), "Northern Lights" (1933), "Blue Horseshoe", "Light Service" (1937).
In 1923, he published books of autobiographical prose, “Under the New Sickle” and “Air Route,” and in 1924 he published a book of memoirs, “Where is My Home?” (Prague, 1924), wrote documentary essays “Torch in the Night” and “White Dream” about his experiences in the winter of 1919 in revolutionary Russia. Balmont made long lecture tours in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, in the summer of 1930 he made a trip to Lithuania, while simultaneously translating West Slavic poetry, but the main theme of Balmont’s works during these years remained Russia: memories of it and longing for what was lost.
In 1932, it became clear that the poet was suffering from a serious mental illness. From August 1932 to May 1935, the Balmonts lived in Clamart near Paris, in poverty. In the spring of 1935, Balmont was admitted to the clinic.
In April 1936, Parisian Russian writers celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Balmont's writing with a creative evening designed to raise funds to help the sick poet. The committee for organizing the evening entitled “Writers for Poets” included famous figures of Russian culture: I. S. Shmelev, M. Aldanov, I. A. Bunin, B. K. Zaitsev, A. N. Benois, A. T. Grechaninov, P. N. Milyukov, S. V. Rachmaninov.
At the end of 1936, Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya moved to Noisy-le-Grand near Paris. The last years of his life, the poet alternately stayed in a charity home for Russians, which was maintained by M. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, and in a cheap furnished apartment. In hours of enlightenment, when mental illness subsided, Balmont, according to the recollections of those who knew him, with a feeling of happiness opened the volume of “War and Peace” or re-read his old books; He had not been able to write for a long time.
In 1940-1942, Balmont did not leave Noisy-le-Grand. Here, in the Russian House shelter, he died on the night of December 23, 1942 from pneumonia. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery, under a gray stone tombstone with the inscription: “Constantin Balmont, poète russe” (“Konstantin Balmont, Russian poet”).
Several people came from Paris to say goodbye to the poet: B.K. Zaitsev and his wife, the widow of Yu. Baltrushaitis, two or three acquaintances and daughter Mirra.
The French public learned about the poet's death from an article in the pro-Hitler Parisian Messenger, which gave, as was then customary, a thorough reprimand to the late poet for the fact that at one time he supported the revolutionaries.
Since the late 1960s. Balmont's poems began to be published in anthologies in the USSR. In 1984, a large collection of selected works was published.
Personal life of Konstantin Balmont
Balmont said in his autobiography that he began to fall in love very early: “The first passionate thought about a woman was at the age of five, the first real love was at the age of nine, the first passion was at the age of fourteen.”
“Wandering through countless cities, I am always delighted with one thing - love,” the poet admitted in one of his poems.
In 1889, Konstantin Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina, the daughter of a Shuya manufacturer, “a beautiful young lady of the Botticelli type.” The mother, who facilitated the acquaintance, sharply opposed the marriage, but the young man was adamant in his decision and decided to break with his family.
“I was not yet twenty-two years old when I... married a beautiful girl, and we left in early spring, or rather at the end of winter, to the Caucasus, to the Kabardian region, and from there along the Georgian Military Road to blessed Tiflis and Transcaucasia,” - he wrote later.
But the honeymoon trip did not become a prologue to a happy family life.
Researchers often write about Garelina as a neurasthenic nature, who showed love to Balmont “in a demonic face, even a devilish one,” and tormented him with jealousy. It is generally accepted that it was she who turned him to wine, as evidenced by the poet’s confessional poem “Forest Fire.”
The wife did not sympathize with either the literary aspirations or the revolutionary sentiments of her husband and was prone to quarrels. In many ways, it was the painful relationship with Garelina that pushed Balmont to attempt suicide on the morning of March 13, 1890. Soon after his recovery, which was only partial - the lameness remained with him for the rest of his life - Balmont broke up with L. Garelina.
The first child born in this marriage died, the second - son Nikolai - subsequently suffered from a nervous disorder.
Having separated from the poet, Larisa Mikhailovna married the journalist and literary historian N.A. Engelhardt and lived peacefully with him for many years. Her daughter from this marriage, Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, became the second wife of Nikolai Gumilyov.
The poet's second wife Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva-Balmont(1867-1952), a relative of the famous Moscow publishers Sabashnikovs, came from a wealthy merchant family (the Andreevs owned colonial goods shops) and was distinguished by rare education.
Contemporaries also noted the external attractiveness of this tall and slender young woman “with beautiful black eyes.” For a long time she was unrequitedly in love with A.I. Urusov. Balmont, as Andreeva recalled, quickly became interested in her, but did not reciprocate for a long time. When the latter arose, it turned out that the poet was married: then the parents forbade their daughter to meet her lover. However, Ekaterina Alekseevna, enlightened in the “newest spirit,” looked at the rituals as a formality and soon moved in with the poet.
The divorce proceedings, allowing Garelina to enter into a second marriage, forbade her husband to marry forever, but, having found an old document where the groom was listed as unmarried, the lovers got married on September 27, 1896, and the next day they went abroad to France.
Balmont and E. A. Andreeva were united by a common literary interest; the couple carried out many joint translations, in particular of Gerhart Hauptmann and Odd Nansen.
In 1901, their daughter Ninika was born - Nina Konstantinovna Balmont-Bruni (died in Moscow in 1989), to whom the poet dedicated the collection “Fairy Tales”.
In the early 1900s in Paris, Balmont met Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya(1880-1943), daughter of General K. G. Tsvetkovsky, then a student at the Faculty of Mathematics at the Sorbonne and a passionate admirer of his poetry. Balmont, judging by some of his letters, was not in love with Tsvetkovskaya, but soon began to feel the need for her as a truly faithful, devoted friend.
Gradually, the “spheres of influence” divided: Balmont either lived with his family or left with Elena. For example, in 1905 they went to Mexico for three months.
The poet's family life became completely confused after E.K. Tsvetkovskaya gave birth to a daughter in December 1907, who was named Mirra - in memory of Mirra Lokhvitskaya, a poetess with whom he had complex and deep feelings. The appearance of the child finally tied Balmont to Elena Konstantinovna, but at the same time he did not want to leave Ekaterina Alekseevna.
Mental anguish led to a breakdown: in 1909, Balmont made a new suicide attempt, again jumped out of the window and again survived. Until 1917, Balmont lived in St. Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra, coming from time to time to Moscow to visit Andreeva and his daughter Nina.
Balmont emigrated from Russia with his third (common-law) wife E.K. Tsvetkovskaya and daughter Mirra.
However, he did not break off friendly relations with Andreeva. Only in 1934, when Soviet citizens were prohibited from corresponding with relatives and friends living abroad, was this connection interrupted.
Unlike E. A. Andreeva, Elena Konstantinovna was “helpless in everyday life and could not organize her life in any way.” She considered it her duty to follow Balmont everywhere: eyewitnesses recalled how she, “having abandoned her child at home, followed her husband somewhere to a tavern and could not get him out of there for 24 hours.”
E.K. Tsvetkovskaya turned out to be not the poet’s last love. In Paris, he resumed his acquaintance with the princess, which began in March 1919. Dagmar Shakhovskoy(1893-1967). “One of my dear ones, half-Swedish, half-Polish, Princess Dagmar Shakhovskaya, nee Baroness Lilienfeld, Russified, more than once sang Estonian songs to me,” - this is how Balmont characterized his beloved in one of his letters.
Shakhovskaya gave birth to Balmont two children - Georgy (Georges) (1922-1943) and Svetlana (b. 1925).
The poet could not leave his family; meeting Shakhovskaya only occasionally, he wrote to her often, almost daily, declaring his love over and over again, talking about his impressions and plans. 858 of his letters and postcards have survived.
Balmont's feelings were reflected in many of his later poems and the novel “Under the New Sickle” (1923). Be that as it may, it was not D. Shakhovskaya, but E. Tsvetkovskaya who spent the last, most disastrous years of his life with Balmont. She died in 1943, a year after the poet's death.
Mirra Konstantinovna Balmont (in her marriage - Boychenko, in her second marriage - Autina) wrote poetry and published in the 1920s under the pseudonym Aglaya Gamayun. She died in Noisy-le-Grand in 1970.
Works by Konstantin Balmont
“Collection of poems” (Yaroslavl, 1890)
“Under the northern sky (elegy, stanzas, sonnets)” (St. Petersburg, 1894)
“In the vastness of darkness” (Moscow, 1895 and 1896)
"Silence. Lyrical poems" (St. Petersburg, 1898)
“Burning buildings. Lyrics of the modern soul" (Moscow, 1900)
“We will be like the sun. Book of Symbols" (Moscow, 1903)
"Only love. Seven-flowered" (M., "Grif", 1903)
"Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns" (M., "Grif", 1905)
“Fairy Tales (Children's Songs)” (M., “Grif”, 1905)
"Collected Poems" M., 1905; 2nd ed. M., 1908.
“Evil Spells (Book of Spells)” (M., “Golden Fleece”, 1906)
"Poems" (1906)
“The Firebird (Slavic Pipe)” (M., “Scorpio”, 1907)
"Liturgy of Beauty (Spontaneous Hymns)" (1907)
"Songs of the Avenger" (1907)
“Three Flowerings (Theater of Youth and Beauty)” (1907)
"Only love". 2nd ed.(1908)
“Round Dance of the Times (Vseglasnost)” (M., 1909)
"Birds in the Air (Singing Lines)" (1908)
“Green Vertograd (Kissing Words)” (St. Petersburg, “Rosehip”, 1909)
“Links. Selected Poems. 1890-1912" (M.: Scorpion, 1913)
“The White Architect (The Mystery of the Four Lamps)” (1914)
“Ash (Vision of a tree)” (Moscow, ed. Nekrasov, 1916)
"Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon" (1917; Berlin, 1921)
“Collected lyrics” (Books 1-2, 4-6. M., 1917-1918)
“Ring” (M., 1920)
“Seven Poems” (M., “Zadruga”, 1920)
"Selected Poems" (New York, 1920)
“Solar yarn. Izbornik" (1890-1918) (M., published by Sabashnikov, 1921)
"Gamajun" (Stockholm, "Northern Lights", 1921)
“Gift to the Earth” (Paris, “Russian Land”, 1921)
"Bright Hour" (Paris, 1921)
“Song of the Working Hammer” (M., 1922)
"Haze" (Paris, 1922)
“Under the New Sickle” (Berlin, Slovo, 1923)
“Mine - Her (Russia)” (Prague, “Flame”, 1924)
“In the widening distance (Poem about Russia)” (Belgrade, 1929)
"Complicity of Souls" (1930)
“Northern Lights” (Poems about Lithuania and Rus') (Paris, 1931)
"Blue Horseshoe" (Poems about Siberia) (1937)
"Light Service" (Harbin, 1937)
Collections of articles and essays by Konstantin Balmont
“Mountain Peaks” (Moscow, 1904; book one)
“Calls of Antiquity. Hymns, songs and plans of the ancients" (Pb., 1908, Berlin, 1923)
“Snake Flowers” (“Travel Letters from Mexico”, M., Scorpio, 1910)
"Sea Glow" (1910)
“Glow of Dawn” (1912)
"The Land of Osiris" Egyptian essays. (M., 1914)
“Poetry as magic” (M., Scorpio, 1915)
“Light and sound in nature and Scriabin’s light symphony” (1917)
"Where is my house?" (Paris, 1924)
Symbolist Konstantin Balmont was for his contemporaries an “eternal, disturbing riddle.” His followers united in “Balmont” circles and imitated his literary style and even appearance. Many contemporaries dedicated their poems to him - Marina Tsvetaeva and Maximilian Voloshin, Igor Severyanin and Ilya Erenburg. But several people were of particular importance in the poet’s life.
"The first poets I read"
Konstantin Balmont was born in the village of Gumnishchi, Vladimir province. His father was an employee, his mother organized amateur performances and literary evenings, and appeared in the local press. The future poet Konstantin Balmont read his first books at the age of five.
When the older children had to go to school (Konstantin was the third of seven sons), the family moved to Shuya. Here Balmont entered the gymnasium, here he wrote his first poems, which were not approved by his mother: “On a bright sunny day they appeared, two poems at once, one about winter, the other about summer.” Here he joined an illegal circle that distributed proclamations of the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party in the town. The poet wrote about his revolutionary sentiments like this: “... I was happy, and I wanted everyone to feel just as good. It seemed to me that if it was good only for me and a few, it was ugly.”
Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont, father of the poet. 1890s Photo: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.
Kostya Balmont. Moscow. Photo: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.
Vera Nikolaevna Balmont, mother of the poet. 1880s Image: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.
"The Godfather" Vladimir Korolenko
In 1885, the future writer was transferred to a gymnasium in Vladimir. He published three of his poems in Zhivopisnoye Obozreniye, a then popular magazine in St. Petersburg. Balmont's literary debut went virtually unnoticed.
During this period, Konstantin Balmont met the writer Vladimir Korolenko. The poet later called him his “godfather.” Korolenko was given a notebook containing poems by Balmont and his translations by the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau.
The writer prepared a letter for high school student Konstantin Balmont with a review of his works, noted the “undoubted talent” of the aspiring poet and gave some advice: work concentratedly on his texts, look for his own individuality, and also “read, study and, more importantly, live.” .
“He wrote to me that I have many beautiful details, successfully snatched from the world of nature, that you need to concentrate your attention, and not chase after every passing moth, that you don’t need to rush your feeling with thought, but you need to trust the unconscious area of the soul, which is imperceptibly accumulates his observations and comparisons, and then suddenly it all blossoms, like a flower blossoms after a long, invisible period of accumulation of its strength.”
In 1886, Konstantin Balmont entered the law faculty of Moscow University. But a year later he was expelled for participating in the riots and sent to Shuya.
K. D. Balmont. Portrait by Valentin Serov (1905)
Building of Moscow State University
Vladimir Korolenko. Photo: onk.su
“Russian Sappho” Mirra Lokhvitskaya
In 1889, the aspiring poet married Larisa Garelina. A year later, Konstantin Balmont published his first book, “Collection of Poems.” The publication did not arouse interest either in literary circles or among the poet’s relatives, and he burned almost the entire circulation of the book. The poet's parents actually broke off relations with him after his marriage; the financial situation of the young family was unstable. Balmont tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. After that he spent almost a year in bed. In 1892, he began translating (over half a century of literary activity, he would leave translations from almost 30 languages).
A close friend of the poet in the 1890s was Mirra (Maria) Lokhvitskaya, who was called the “Russian Sappho.” They most likely met in 1895 in Crimea (the approximate date was reconstructed from a book with a dedicatory inscription by Lokhvitskaya). The poetess was married, Konstantin Balmont was married for the second time at that time, to Ekaterina Andreeva (in 1901 their daughter Nina was born).
My earthly life is ringing,
The indistinct rustle of reeds,
They lull the sleeping swan to sleep,
My troubled soul.
They flash hurriedly in the distance
In the quest of greedy ships,
Calm in the thickets of the bay,
Where sadness breathes, like the oppression of the earth.
But the sound, born from trepidation,
Slips into the rustling of the reeds,
And the awakened swan trembles,
My immortal soul
And will rush into the world of freedom,
Where the sighs of storms echo the waves,
Where in the choppy waters
Looks like eternal azure.Mirra Lokhvitskaya. "Sleeping Swan" (1896)
White swan, pure swan,
Your dreams are always silent,
Serene silver
You glide, creating waves.
Below you is a silent depth,
No hello, no answer,
But you slide, drowning
In the abyss of air and light.
Above you - bottomless ether
With the bright Morning Star.
You glide, transformed
Reflected beauty.
A symbol of passionless tenderness,
Unsaid, timid,
The ghost is feminine and beautiful
The swan is clean, the swan is white!Konstantin Balmont. "White Swan" (1897)
For almost a decade, Lokhvitskaya and Balmont conducted a poetic dialogue, which is often called a “novel in verse.” In the work of the two poets, poems were popular that overlapped - without directly mentioning the addressee - in form or content. Sometimes the meaning of several verses became clear only when they were compared.
Soon the poets' views began to diverge. This also affected the creative correspondence, which Mirra Lokhvitskaya tried to stop. But the literary romance was interrupted only in 1905, when she died. Balmont continued to dedicate poems to her and admire her works. He told Anna Akhmatova that before meeting her he knew only two poetesses - Sappho and Mirra Lokhvitskaya. He will name his daughter from his third marriage in honor of the poetess.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya. Photo: e-reading.club
Ekaterina Andreeva. Photo: P. V. Kupriyanovsky, N. A. Molchanova. “Balmont.. “Sunny genius” of Russian literature.” Editor L. S. Kalyuzhnaya. M.: Young Guard, 2014. 384 p.
Anna Akhmatova. Photo: lingar.my1.ru
“The brother of my dreams, poet and sorcerer Valery Bryusov”
In 1894, a collection of poems by Konstantin Balmont, “Under the Northern Sky,” was published, and in the same year, at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Western Literature, the poet met Valery Bryusov.
“For the first time, he discovered “deviations” in our verse, discovered possibilities that no one suspected, unprecedented rehash of vowels, pouring into one another, like drops of moisture, like crystal ringing.”
Valery Bryusov
Their acquaintance grew into friendship: the poets often met, read new works to each other, and shared their impressions of foreign poetry. In his memoirs, Valery Bryusov wrote: “Many, very many things became clear to me, they were revealed to me only through Balmont. He taught me to understand other poets. I was one before meeting Balmont and became another after meeting him.”
Both poets tried to introduce European traditions into Russian poetry, both were symbolists. However, their communication, which lasted a total of more than a quarter of a century, did not always go smoothly: sometimes conflicts broke out leading to long disagreements, then both Balmont and Bryusov again resumed creative meetings and correspondence. The long-term “friendship-enmity” was accompanied by many poems that the poets dedicated to each other.
Valery Bryusov “K.D. Balmont"
V. Bryusov. Painting by artist M. Vrubel
Konstantin Balmont
Valery Bryusov
“The tradesman Peshkov. By pseudonym: Gorky"
In the mid-1890s, Maxim Gorky was interested in the literary experiments of the Symbolists. During this period, his correspondence communication with Konstantin Balmont began: in 1900–1901 they both published in the magazine “Life”. Balmont dedicated several poems to Gorky and wrote about his work in his articles on Russian literature.
The writers met personally in November 1901. At this time, Balmont was again expelled from St. Petersburg - for participating in a demonstration and for the poem “Little Sultan” he wrote, which contained criticism of the policies of Nicholas II. The poet went to Crimea to visit Maxim Gorky. Together they visited Leo Tolstoy in Gaspra. In a letter to the editor of Life, Vladimir Posse, Gorky wrote about his acquaintance: “I met Balmont. This neurasthenic is devilishly interesting and talented!”
Bitter! You came from the bottom
But with an indignant soul you love what is tender and refined.
There is only one sorrow in our life:
We longed for greatness, seeing the pale, unfinishedKonstantin Balmont. "Gorky"
Since 1905, Konstantin Balmont actively participated in the political life of the country and collaborated with anti-government publications. A year later, fearing arrest, he emigrated to France. During this period, Balmont traveled and wrote a lot, and published the book “Songs of the Avenger.” The poet’s communication with Maxim Gorky practically ceased.
The poet returned to Russia in 1913, when an amnesty was declared in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The poet did not accept the October Revolution of 1917, in the book “Am I a Revolutionary or Not?” (1918) he argued that a poet should be outside the parties, but expressed a negative attitude towards the Bolsheviks. At this time, Balmont was married for the third time - to Elena Tsvetkovskaya.
In 1920, when the poet moved to Moscow with his wife and daughter Mirra, he wrote several poems dedicated to the young Union. This allowed me to go abroad, supposedly on a creative business trip, but the family did not return to the USSR. At this time, relations with Maxim Gorky reached a new level: Gorky writes a letter to Romain Rolland, in which he condemns Balmont for pseudo-revolutionary poems, emigration and the complicated situation of those poets who also wanted to go abroad. The poet responds to this with the article “The Tradesman Peshkov. By pseudonym: Gorky,” which was published in the Riga newspaper Segodnya.
