What family was the block born into? Blok A.A

Alexander Blok was born in St. Petersburg on November 16/28, 1880. Living together Little Sasha’s parents did not work out; his mother Alexandra Andreevna left her husband Alexander Lvovich.

Sasha spent his childhood in St. Petersburg, and every summer he went to his grandfather (on his mother’s side) to the Shakhmatovo estate, which is located in the Moscow region. The boy's grandfather was a famous scientist, rector of St. Petersburg University, and his name was Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov.

Sasha started writing poetry early, he was 5 years old. I went to the gymnasium at the age of 9. He read a lot and enthusiastically and published children's handwritten magazines. In his youth, he staged amateur performances with friends. After graduating from high school, he entered St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Law (1898).

Three years later he transferred to history Faculty of Philology. In his student years, Alexander was far from politics; his hobby was ancient philosophy.

In 1903, he married his daughter, Lyubov Dmitrievna. He dedicated his first collection of poems to her - “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” At the beginning of a creative path, a passion for philosophy makes itself felt. His poems are about eternal femininity, about the soul. Alexander Blok is a romantic and symbolist.

And the revolution in Russia changed the themes of Blok’s poems. He saw destruction in the revolution, but expressed sympathy for the rebellious people. He began to write poems about nature, poems about war sound tragic.

In 1909, after burying his father, the poet began work on the poem “Retribution.” He wrote the poem until the end of his life, but did not complete it. Poverty, poverty and trouble, all this worried Blok, he was worried about society. I believed that everything would be fine in Russia, that the future would be wonderful.

In 1916, he was drafted into the army. He served as a timekeeper on road construction and did not take part in hostilities. In March '17 he returned home. In 1918, the poem “The Twelve”, the poem “Scythians” and the article “Intelligentsia and Revolution” were published. These works created the glory of the Bolshevik Blok. Well, he himself thought that the revolution would bring fair new relations to life, he believed in it. And when it started, I was very disappointed and felt great responsibility for my works of 18.

In the last years of his life, he wrote almost no poetry, he acted as a critic and publicist. Alexander Blok died on August 7, 1921 in.

Alexander Blok

Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator, literary critic; classic of Russian literature of the 20th century, one of the largest representatives of Russian symbolism

short biography

The famous Russian poet was born on November 28 (November 16, O.S.) 1880 in St. Petersburg, into an intelligent family. His father was a lawyer, a professor of law, his mother was the daughter of a university rector, a translator. Already in early childhood it became clear that the boy was gifted. At the age of five, he wrote poetry, and as a teenager, he published home magazines with his brothers. After graduating from the Vvedensky Gymnasium (1891-1898), Alexander Blok entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, but three years later he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology (Slavic-Russian department), from which he graduated in 1906.

His studies at the university marked the period of Blok’s formation as an artist, his awareness of his life’s calling. For 1901-1902 he wrote more than eight dozen poems, inspired by his love for his future wife, daughter famous chemist, L. Mendeleeva. The spring of 1902 brought acquaintance with D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius, whose influence on Blok and his creative biography turned out to be truly enormous. In 1903, in the magazine “New Way”, which they published, Blok first appeared before the public, not only as a poet, but also as a critic. In the same year, his poems were published in the “Literary and Artistic Collection: Poems by Students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University”, and the cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (almanac “Northern Flowers”) was also published, which made Blok a famous poet.

An important factor in the formation of the poet’s worldview was the revolution of 1905, which showed life from a different, more realistic side and left a noticeable imprint on his creativity. During this period, “Unexpected Joy” (1906), “Free Thoughts” (1907), “Italian Poems” (1908), “Snow Mask” (1907), “On the Kulikovo Field” (1908) were published. Begins in 1909 new page in Blok's life. After tragic events(death of the poet’s father, child of L. Mendeleeva) married couple leaves for Italy. Traveling to a country with a completely different way of life, contact with classical Italian art created in the poet’s soul a completely new attitude. Making a report on the current state of Russian symbolism in April 1910, Alexander Blok announced that a significant stage in his life and creative path had come to an end.

Thanks to receiving his father's inheritance, Blok could not think about his daily bread and completely devote himself to the implementation of large-scale literary plans. So, in 1910, he began writing an epic poem called "Retribution", which was destined to remain unfinished.

In July 1916, the poet was drafted into the army, he joined the engineering and construction squad of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and served in Belarus. The February and October revolutions became, like everyone else, the starting point of a new stage of biography. They were met by the poet not without conflicting feelings, but he civil position was to stay with the homeland in difficult times. In May 1917, Blok worked as an editor in the Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate illegal actions of former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials. In January 1918, he published a series of articles entitled “Russia and the Intelligentsia”; in the same year his famous poem “The Twelve” was published. Many fellow writers, such as D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, M. Prishvin, I. Erenburg, Vyach. Ivanov and others sharply criticized his attitude towards the Bolsheviks.

In turn, the Soviet government did not fail to use loyalty to its advantage famous poet. He needed public service as a source of income, since there was no question of earning a living from the literary field, but often appointments to various committees and commissions were made without his consent. In September 1917, Blok was a member of the Theater and Literary Commission; in the period from 1918-1919. place of service were the People's Commissariat for Education, the Union of Poets, the Union of Workers of Fiction, the publishing house " World literature"; in 1920, the poet was appointed to the position of chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets.

If at first Blok regarded his participation in the work of cultural and educational institutions as the duty of an intellectual to the people, then gradually an epiphany came to him: he understood that the gap between the cleansing revolutionary element he praised and the emerging totalitarian bureaucratic colossus was becoming deeper, and this provoked a depressive mood . It was aggravated by enormous physical and moral stress, the unsettled life in the revolutionary city, and family problems. Not only the poet’s psyche suffered: he developed asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and in the winter of 1918 he fell ill with scurvy. In February 1927, at an evening in memory of Pushkin, Blok gave a speech “On the appointment of a poet”, spoke about the “lack of air” that was destroying poets, and about the futility of attempts by the “new mob” to encroach on their freedom. It became his kind of testament as a person and writer.

In the spring of 1921, Blok asked the authorities for permission to travel to Finland for treatment, but the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks rejected the request. Lunacharsky and Gorky asked for the poet, and at the next meeting a decision was nevertheless issued to obtain an exit visa, but it could no longer save the situation. Being seriously ill, suffering severely not only from illnesses, but also from material need, on August 7, 1921, Alexander Blok died in his Petrograd apartment. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery; Later, his remains were reburied at the Volkovsky cemetery (Literatorskie Mostki).

Biography from Wikipedia

General information

Alexander Blok's father - Alexander Lvovich Blok (1852-1909), lawyer, professor at the University of Warsaw, came from a noble family, his brother Ivan Lvovich was a prominent Russian statesman.

Mother - Alexandra Andreevna, nee Beketova, (1860-1923) - daughter of the rector of St. Petersburg University A. N. Beketov. The marriage, which began when Alexandra was eighteen years old, turned out to be short-lived: after the birth of her son, she broke off relations with her husband and subsequently never resumed them. In 1889, she obtained a decree from the Synod on the dissolution of her marriage with her first husband and married guards officer F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh, leaving her son the surname of her first husband.

Nine-year-old Alexander settled with his mother and stepfather in an apartment in the barracks of the Life Grenadier Regiment, located on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, on the banks of the Bolshaya Nevka. In 1889 he was sent to the Vvedensky gymnasium. In 1897, finding himself with his mother abroad, in the German resort town of Bad Nauheim, 16-year-old Blok experienced his first strong youthful love with 37-year-old Ksenia Sadovskaya. She left a deep mark on his work. In 1897, at a funeral in St. Petersburg, he met Vladimir Solovyov.

In 1898 he graduated from high school; in the summer his passion for Lyubov Mendeleeva began; in August he entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. Three years later he transferred to the Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology, which he graduated in 1906. At the university, Blok meets Sergei Gorodetsky and Alexei Remizov.

At this time, the poet’s second cousin, later the priest Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov (junior), became one of the closest friends of the young Blok.

Blok wrote his first poems at the age of five. At the age of eight, young Alexander first meets the Kazan lyric poet, wandering peasant Gavrila Gabriev. After short conversation With Gabriev, young Alexander is finally confirmed in his desire to become a poet, which he informs his mother about the next day. At the age of 10, Alexander Blok wrote two issues of the magazine “Ship”. From 1894 to 1897, he and his brothers wrote the handwritten magazine “Vestnik”; a total of 37 issues of the magazine were published. Since childhood, Alexander Blok spent every summer on his grandfather’s Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow. 8 km away was the Boblovo estate, owned by Beketov’s friend, the great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev. At the age of 16, Blok became interested in theater. In St. Petersburg, Alexander Blok enrolled in a theater club. However, after his first success, he was no longer given roles in the theater.

In 1903, Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, daughter of D. I. Mendeleev, the heroine of his first book of poems, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.” It is known that Alexander Blok had strong feelings for his wife, but periodically maintained contact with various women: at one time it was the actress Natalya Nikolaevna Volokhova, then the opera singer Lyubov Aleksandrovna Andreeva-Delmas. Lyubov Dmitrievna also allowed herself hobbies. On this basis, Blok had a conflict with Andrei Bely, described in the play “Balaganchik”. Andrei Bely, who considered Mendeleeva the embodiment of a Beautiful Lady, was passionately in love with her, but she did not reciprocate his feelings. However, after the First World War, relations in the Blok family improved, and in recent years the poet was the faithful husband of Lyubov Dmitrievna.

In 1909, two difficult events occur in the Blok family: Lyubov Dmitrievna’s child dies and Blok’s father dies. To come to his senses, Blok and his wife go on vacation to Italy and Germany. For his Italian poetry, Blok was accepted into a society called the “Academy.” In addition to him, it included Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Innokenty Annensky.

In the summer of 1911, Blok again traveled abroad, this time to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Alexander Alexandrovich gives a negative assessment of French morals:

The inherent quality of the French (and the Bretons, it seems, predominantly) is inescapable dirt, first of all physical, and then mental. It is better not to describe the first dirt; to put it briefly, a person in any way squeamish will not agree to settle in France.

In the summer of 1913, Blok again went to France (on the advice of doctors) and again wrote about negative impressions:

Biarritz is overrun by the French petty bourgeoisie, so that even my eyes are tired of looking at ugly men and women... And in general I must say that I am very tired of France and want to return to cultural country- Russia, where there are fewer fleas, almost no French women, there is food (bread and beef), drink (tea and water); beds (not 15 arshins wide), washbasins (there are basins from which you can never empty all the water, all the dirt remains at the bottom)…

In 1912, Blok wrote the drama “Rose and Cross” about the search for the secret knowledge of the Provençal troubadour Bertrand de Born. The play was completed in January 1913, K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko liked it, but the drama was never staged in the theater.

On July 7, 1916, Blok was called up to serve in the engineering unit of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union. The poet served in Belarus. By his own admission in a letter to his mother, during the war his main interests were “food and horses.”

Revolutionary years

Blok met the February and October revolutions with mixed feelings. He refused to emigrate, believing that he should be with Russia in hard time. At the beginning of May 1917, he was hired by the “Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate illegal actions of former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials of both civil, military and naval departments” as an editor. In August, Blok began working on a manuscript, which he considered as part of the future report of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission and which was published in the magazine “Byloe” (No. 15, 1919) and in the form of a book called “The Last Days of Imperial Power” (Petrograd, 1921).

October Revolution The bloc immediately accepted it enthusiastically, but as a spontaneous uprising, a rebellion.

In January 1920, Blok’s stepfather, General Franz Kublitsky-Piottukh, whom the poet called Francis, died of pneumonia. Blok took his mother to live with him. But she and Blok’s wife did not get along with each other.

In January 1921, on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of Pushkin’s death, Blok delivered his famous speech “On the Appointment of a Poet” at the House of Writers.

Illness and death

Blok was one of those artists in Petrograd who not only accepted Soviet power, but agreed to work for her benefit. The authorities began to widely use the poet’s name for their own purposes. Throughout 1918-1920, Blok, often against his will, was appointed and elected to various positions in organizations, committees, and commissions. The constantly increasing volume of work undermined the poet's strength. Fatigue began to accumulate - Blok described his state of that period with the words “I was drunk.” This may also explain the poet’s creative silence - he wrote in a private letter in January 1919: “For almost a year now I have not belonged to myself, I have forgotten how to write poetry and think about poetry...”. Heavy workloads in Soviet institutions and living in hungry and cold revolutionary Petrograd completely undermined the poet’s health - Blok developed serious cardiovascular disease, asthma, mental disorders appeared, and scurvy began in the winter of 1920.

In the spring of 1921, Alexander Blok, together with Fyodor Sologub, asked to be issued exit visas. The issue was considered by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Exit was denied. Lunacharsky noted: “We literally, without releasing the poet and without giving him the necessary satisfactory conditions, tortured him.” A number of historians believed that V.I. Lenin and V.R. Menzhinsky played a particularly negative role in the fate of the poet, prohibiting the patient from going to a sanatorium in Finland for treatment, which, at the request of Maxim Gorky and Lunacharsky, was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee RCP(b) July 12, 1921. The permission to leave, obtained by L. B. Kamenev and A. V. Lunacharsky at a subsequent meeting of the Politburo, was signed on July 23, 1921. But since Blok’s condition worsened, on July 29, 1921, Gorky asked for permission to leave for Blok’s wife as an accompanying person. Already on August 1, permission to leave L. D. Blok was signed by Molotov, but Gorky learned about this from Lunacharsky only on August 6.

Finding himself in a difficult financial situation, he was seriously ill and on August 7, 1921, he died in his last Petrograd apartment from inflammation of the heart valves, at the age of 41. A few days before his death, a rumor spread throughout Petrograd that the poet had gone crazy. On the eve of his death, Blok raved for a long time, obsessed with a single thought: had all the copies of “The Twelve” been destroyed? However, the poet died in full consciousness, which refutes rumors about his insanity. Before his death, after receiving a negative response to a request to go abroad for treatment (dated July 12), Blok deliberately destroyed his records and refused to take food and medicine.

Alexander Blok was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery in Petrograd. The Beketov and Kachalov families are also buried there, including the poet’s grandmother Ariadna Alexandrovna, with whom he was in correspondence. The funeral service was performed by Archpriest Alexey Zapadlov on August 10 (July 28, Art. - the day of the celebration of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God) in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ.

And Smolenskaya is now the birthday girl.
Blue incense spreads over the grass.
And the singing of a funeral service flows,
Today is not sad, but bright.
...
We brought it to the Smolensk intercessor
Brought to the Blessed Virgin Mary
In your arms in a silver coffin
Our sun, extinguished in agony,
Alexandra, the pure swan.

In 1944, Blok’s ashes were reburied on the Literary Bridge at the Volkovskoye Cemetery.

Family and relatives

The poet's relatives live in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Riga, Rome, Paris and England. Until recent years, Alexander Blok’s second cousin, Ksenia Vladimirovna Beketova, lived in St. Petersburg. Among Blok's relatives - Chief Editor magazine "Our Heritage" - Vladimir Enisherlov.

The alleged son of A. Blok was journalist A. Nolle (Kuleshov).

Creation

He began to create in the spirit of symbolism (“Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, 1901-1902), the feeling of crisis of which was proclaimed in the drama “Balaganchik” (1906). Blok’s lyrics, which are similar in their “spontaneity” to music, were formed under the influence of romance. Through the deepening of social trends (the "City" cycle, 1904-1908), religious interest (the "Snow Mask" cycle, Publishing House "Ory", St. Petersburg 1907), comprehension of " scary world"(cycle of the same name 1908-1916), awareness of the tragedy of modern man (the play "Rose and Cross", 1912-1913) came to the idea of the inevitability of "retribution" (cycle of the same name 1907-1913; cycle "Iambas", 1907-1914; poem " Retribution", 1910-1921). The main themes of poetry found resolution in the cycle “Motherland” (1907-1916).

The paradoxical combination of the mystical and the everyday, the detached and the everyday is generally characteristic of Blok’s entire work as a whole. It's there distinctive feature and his mental organization, and, as a consequence, his own, Blok’s symbolism. Particularly characteristic in this regard is the classic comparison between the hazy silhouette of “The Stranger” and “drunkards with rabbit eyes,” which has become a textbook example. In general, Blok was extremely sensitive to the everyday impressions and sounds of the city around him and the artists with whom he encountered and sympathized.

Before the revolution, the musicality of Blok’s poems lulled the audience, plunging them into a kind of somnambulistic sleep. Later, the intonations of desperate, soul-grabbing gypsy songs appeared in his works (a consequence of frequent visits to cafes and concerts of this genre, especially opera performances and concerts of Lyubov Delmas, with whom Blok later had an affair).

Feature poetic style A. A. Blok is the use of metaphor

He himself recognizes the metaphorical perception of the world as the main property of a true poet, for whom the romantic transformation of the world with the help of metaphor is not an arbitrary poetic game, but a genuine insight into the mysterious essence of life

in the form of catachresis, turning into a symbol. Blok's innovative contribution is the use of the dolnik as a unit of rhythm in a poetic line.

With Blok begins... the decisive liberation of Russian verse from the principle of counting syllables in feet, the destruction of the requirement of metrical ordering of the number and arrangement of unstressed syllables in verse, canonized by Trediakovsky and Lomonosov. In this sense, all the newest Russian poets studied with Blok.

At first, the Bloc accepted both the February and October revolutions with readiness, full support and even enthusiasm, which, however, was enough for a little more than one short and difficult year of 1918. As Yu. P. Annenkov noted,

in 1917-18, Blok was undoubtedly captured by the spontaneous side of the revolution. “World fire” seemed to him a goal, not a stage. The world fire was not even a symbol of destruction for Blok: it was “the world orchestra of the people’s soul.” Street lynchings seemed to him more justifiable than legal proceedings

- (Yu. P. Annenkov, “Memories of Blok”).

This position of Blok caused harsh assessments by a number of other literary figures - in particular, I. A. Bunin:

Blok openly joined the Bolsheviks. I published an article that Kogan (P.S.) admires. The song is generally simple, but Blok is a stupid person. Russian literature has been incredibly corrupted over the past decades. The street and the crowd began to play a very important role. Everything - and literature especially - goes out onto the street, connects with it and falls under its influence. “There is a Jewish pogrom in Zhmerinka, just as there was a pogrom in Znamenka...” This is called, according to Blok, “the people are embraced by the music of the revolution - listen, listen to the music of the revolution!”

- (I. A. Bunin, “Cursed Days”).

Blok tried to comprehend the October Revolution not only in journalism, but also, which is especially significant, in his poem “The Twelve” (1918), which was unlike all his previous works. This bright and generally misunderstood work stands completely apart in Russian literature Silver Age and caused controversy and objections (both on the left and on the right) throughout the 20th century. Oddly enough, the key to a real understanding of the poem can be found in the work of the popular in pre-revolutionary Petrograd, and now almost forgotten chansonnier and poet Mikhail Savoyarov, whose “rough” work Blok highly valued and whose concerts he attended dozens of times. Judging by poetic language poem "The Twelve", Blok at least changed a lot, his post-revolutionary style became almost unrecognizable. Apparently he was influenced by a person with whom in the last pre-revolutionary years he was on friendly terms: the singer, poet and eccentric, Mikhail Savoyarov. According to Viktor Shklovsky, the poem “The Twelve” was unanimously condemned and few people understood it precisely because they were too accustomed to taking Blok seriously and only seriously:

"Twelve" is an ironic thing. It is not even written in a ditty style, it is done in a “thieves’” style. The style of a street verse like Savoyard's.

In his article, Shklovsky (according to the Hamburg account) also spoke about Savoyarov, the most popular Petrograd chansonnier in the pre-revolutionary years, who quite often (though not always) performed in the so-called “ragged genre”. Having disguised himself beyond recognition as a tramp, this rude singer appeared on stage in the stylized outfit of a typical criminal. We find direct confirmation of this thesis in Blok’s notebooks. In March 1918, when his wife, Lyubov Dmitrievna, was preparing to read the poem “The Twelve” aloud at evenings and concerts, Blok specially took her to Savoyard concerts to show her how and with what intonation these poems should be read. In an everyday, eccentric, even shocking... but not at all “symbolist”, theatrical, habitually “Blok” manner... Apparently, Blok believed that “The Twelve” should be read in exactly that tough thieves’ manner, as Savoyarov did when speaking in the role of a St. Petersburg criminal (or tramp). However, Blok himself did not know how to read in such a characteristic way and did not learn. For such a result, he himself would have to become, as he put it, “a pop poet-coupletist.” It was in this way that the poet painfully tried to distance himself from the nightmare that surrounded him in the last three years of Petrograd (and Russian) life... either criminal, or military, or some strange intertemporal...

In the poem “The Twelve,” colloquial and vulgar speech was not only introduced into the poem, but also replaced the voice of the author himself. Language style The poem “The Twelve” was perceived by contemporaries not only as deeply new, but also as the only possible one at that moment.

According to A. Remizov

When I read "The Twelve", I was struck by the verbal matter - the music of street words and expressions - scraped up with unexpected words from Blok... There are only a few book words in "The Twelve"! This is what music is, I thought. What luck Blok had: I can’t imagine it being possible to convey the street any other way. Here Blok was at the height of verbal expression.

In February 1919, Blok was arrested by the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission. He was suspected of participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. A day later, after two long interrogations, Blok was released, as Lunacharsky stood up for him. However, even these one and a half days in prison broke him. In 1920, Blok wrote in his diary:

...under the yoke of violence, human conscience becomes silent; then a person withdraws into the old; The more brazen the violence, the more firmly a person locks himself into the old. This is what happened to Europe under the yoke of war, and to Russia today.

For Blok, the rethinking of revolutionary events and the fate of Russia was accompanied by a deep creative crisis, depression and progressive illness. After the surge of January 1918, when “Scythians” and “Twelve” were created at once, Blok completely stopped writing poetry and answered all questions about his silence: “All sounds have stopped... Don’t you hear that there are no sounds?” And to the artist Annenkov, the author of cubist illustrations for the first edition of the poem “The Twelve,” he complained: “I’m suffocating, suffocating, suffocating! We are suffocating, we will all suffocate. World revolution turns into the world's angina pectoris!

The last cry of despair was the speech Blok read in February 1921 at an evening dedicated to the memory of Pushkin. This speech was listened to by both Akhmatova and Gumilyov, who came to the reading in a tailcoat, arm in arm with a lady who was shivering from the cold in a black dress with a deep neckline (the hall, as always in those years, was unheated, steam was clearly coming from everyone’s mouths) . Blok stood on the stage in a black jacket over a white turtleneck sweater, with his hands in his pockets. Quoting Pushkin’s famous line: “There is no happiness in the world, but there is peace and will...” - Blok turned to the discouraged Soviet bureaucrat sitting right there on the stage (one of those who, according to Andrei Bely’s caustic definition, “don’t write anything, only sign”) and minted:

...peace and freedom are also taken away. Not external peace, but creative peace. Not childish will, not the freedom to be liberal, but creative will - secret freedom. And the poet dies because he can no longer breathe: life has lost its meaning for him.

Blok's poetic works have been translated into many languages of the world.

Bibliography

Collected works

"Poems about a beautiful lady." - M.: “Grif”, 1905. Cover by P. A. Metzger.
"Unexpected joy." Second collection of poems. - M.: “Scorpio”, 1907
"The Earth in the Snow." Third collection of poems. - M.: “Golden Fleece”, 1907
"Snow Mask" - St. Petersburg: “Ory”, 1907
"Lyrical Dramas". - St. Petersburg: “Rosehip”, 1908. Cover by K. S. Somov.
"Night hours". The fourth collection of poems. - M.: “Musaget”, 1911
"Poems about Russia." - ed. “Fatherland”, 1915. Cover by G. I. Narbut.
Collection of poems. Book 1-3. - M.: “Musaget”, 1911-1912; 2nd ed., 1916
“Iamby”, Pg., 1919
"Beyond the days of yesteryear." - P.-Berlin: ed. Grzhebina, 1920
"Gray morning." - P.: “Alkonost”, 1920
"Twelve". - Sofia: Russian-Bulgarian Book Publishing House, 1920
Collected works of Alexander Blok. - St. Petersburg: “Alkonost”, 1922
Collected works. vol. 1-9. - Berlin: “Epoch”, 1923
Collected works. T. 1-12. - L.: ed. writers.
Collected works. T. 1-8. - M.-L.: IHL, 1960-63. 200,000 copies An additional unnumbered volume to this collection was published “ Notebooks"in 1965 - 100,000 copies.
Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - M.: Pravda, 1971. - 375,000 copies.
Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - L.: Fiction, 1980-1983, 300,000 copies.
Collected works in six volumes. T. 1-6. - M.: TERRA, 2009
Complete (academic) collection of works and letters in twenty volumes. T. 1-5, 7-8. - M., “Science”, 1997 - present. vr. (ongoing edition, volume 6 was not published, after volume 5 volumes 7 and 8 were released)
Selected works. - K.: Veselka, 1985
Notebooks. 1901-1920. - M.: IHL, 1965.

Bloc and revolution

Blok A. A. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin // Blok A. A. Collected works in 6 volumes. L.: 1982. - T.4. (Written in 1906, first published: Pass. 1907. No. 4 (February)).
The Last Days of Imperial Power: Based on unpublished documents compiled by Alexander Blok. - Petrograd: Alkonost, 1921.

Correspondence

Letters from Alexander Blok. - L.: Kolos, 1925.
Letters from Alexander Blok to his family: . T. 1-2. - M.-L.: Academia, 1927-1932.
Letters to Al. Blok to E.P. Ivanov. - M.-L., 1936.
Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Correspondence. - M., 1940.
Blok A. A. Letters to his wife // Literary inheritance. - T. 89. - M., 1978.
I visit the Kachalovs
Letters from A. A. Blok to L. A. Delmas // Zvezda. - 1970. - No. 11. - P. 190-201.

Memory

The museum-apartment of A. A. Blok in St. Petersburg is located on Dekabristov Street (formerly Ofitserskaya), 57.
State Historical, Literary and Natural Museum-Reserve of A. A. Blok in Shakhmatovo
Monument to Blok in Moscow, on Spiridonovka Street
His poem “Night, Street, Lantern, Pharmacy” was turned into a monument on one of the streets of Leiden. Blok became the third poet after Marina Tsvetaeva and William Shakespeare, whose poems were painted on the walls of houses in this city as part of the “Wall poems” cultural project.

Names given in honor of Blok

Lyceum No. 1 named after. A. Blok in the city of Solnechnogorsk.
On February 22, 1939, the former Zavodskaya Street in Leningrad, located not far from Blok’s last apartment, was renamed Alexander Blok Street.
Streets in Kyiv, Krasnogorsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ust-Abakan, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and others were named in memory of Alexander Blok populated areas states of the former USSR.
The asteroid (2540) Block is named after the poet.

In philately

In art

To mark the centenary of the poet, a television film “And the Eternal Battle... From the Life of Alexander Blok” was shot in the USSR (Alexander Ivanov-Sukharevsky starred as Blok). The image of Blok also appears in the films “Doctor Zhivago”, 2002 (played by David Fisher), “Garpastum”, 2005 (Gosha Kutsenko), “Yesenin”, 2005 (Andrei Rudensky), “The Moon at the Zenith”, 2007 (Alexander Bezrukov).

Places associated with the Block

St. Petersburg / Petrograd

November 16, 1880-1883 - “rector’s wing” of St. Petersburg Imperial University - Universitetskaya embankment, 9 (in 1974, in memory of the birth of A. A. Blok, a marble monument was opened here Memorial plaque, architect T. N. Miloradovich);
1883-1885 - apartment building- Panteleimonovskaya street, 4;
1885-1886 - apartment building - Ivanovskaya (now Socialist) street, 18;
1886-1889 - apartment building - Bolshaya Moskovskaya Street, 9;

1889-1906 - apartment of F. F. Kublitsky-Piottukh in the officer barracks of the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment - Peterburgskaya (now Petrogradskaya) embankment, 44 (a granite memorial plaque was installed in 1980, architect T. N. Miloradovich);
1902-1903 - furnished room on Serpukhovskaya Street, 10, where Blok and Mendeleeva lived before their wedding. A year later, the room had to be given up because the police demanded Blok’s passport for registration.
September 1906 - autumn 1907 - apartment building - Lakhtinskaya street, 3, apt. 44;
autumn 1907-1910 - courtyard wing of the mansion of A. I. Thomsen-Bonnara - Galernaya Street, 41;
1910-1912 - apartment building - Bolshaya Monetnaya Street, 21/9, apt. 27;
1912-1920 - apartment building of M.E. Petrovsky - Ofitserskaya Street (since 1918 - Dekabristov Street), 57, apt. 21;
1914 - Tenishevsky School in St. Petersburg. In April 1914, here, staged by V. E. Meyerhold, the premiere of the lyrical drama “The Stranger” and the third edition of Meyerhold’s interpretation of Blok’s “Balaganchik” took place, at which the poet was present.
08/6/1920 - 08/7/1921 - apartment building of M.E. Petrovsky - Dekabristov Street, 57, apt. 23 (there is a memorial plaque installed in 1946).

Moscow

Spiridonovka Street, house No. 6 - the poet lived in this house, on the 2nd floor in the winter of 1903-1904.

Belarus

In August 1916, the poet visited Belarus, when the “war with the Germans” was rolling across its territory. The poet's Polesie roads - from Parakhonsk to Luninets, then to the village of Kolby, Pinsk region. On the way to the Pinsk region, he stopped in Mogilev and Gomel, visiting the sights, especially the Rumyantsev-Paskevich Palace.

Entry in the poet’s diary: “Theme for fantastic story: “Three hours in Mogilev on the Dnieper.” Highland, white churches over the month and fast twilight.” Apparently, Blok wrote a story about Mogilev, but did not have time to publish it. Along with other manuscripts, it was destroyed in the Shakhmatovo estate during a fire in 1921.

Blok Alexander Alexandrovich Blok Alexander Alexandrovich

(1880-1921), Russian poet. Representative of Russian symbolism (“Poems about the Beautiful Lady”, 1904). The crisis of the symbolist worldview is reflected in the drama “Balaganchik” (1906). His lyrics, close in their “spontaneity” to music, were formed largely under the influence of romance. Through the deepening of social trends (the “City” cycle, 1904-08), the comprehension of the “terrible world” (the cycle of the same name, 1908-16), the awareness of the tragedy of modern man (the play “The Rose and the Cross”, 1912-13) he came to the idea of inevitability “ retribution" (cycle of the same name, 1907-13; cycle "Iambics", 1907-14; poem "Retribution", 1910-21). The main themes of poetry found resolution in the cycle “Motherland” (1907-16). He tried to comprehend the October Revolution in the poem “The Twelve” (1918) and in journalism. Disappointment in the revolution and worry about the fate of Russia was accompanied by a deep creative crisis and depression.

BLOK Alexander Alexandrovich

BLOK Alexander Alexandrovich, Russian poet.
Began in the spirit of symbolism (cm. SYMBOLISM)(“Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, 1904), the sense of crisis of which was proclaimed in the drama “Balaganchik” (1906). Blok’s lyrics, which are similar in their “spontaneity” to music, were formed under the influence of romance. Through the deepening of social trends (the “City” cycle, 1904-1908), comprehension of the “terrible world” (the cycle of the same name, 1908-1916), awareness of the tragedy of modern man (the play “Rose and Cross”, 1912-1913), he came to the idea of the inevitability of “retribution” "(cycle of the same name 1907-1913; cycle "Iambics", 1907-1914; poem "Retribution", 1910-1921). The main themes of poetry found resolution in the cycle “Motherland” (1907-1916). He tried to comprehend the October Revolution in the poem “The Twelve” (1918) and in journalism.
The rethinking of revolutionary events and the fate of Russia was accompanied by a deep creative crisis and depression.
Family. Childhood and education
Father, Alexander Lvovich Blok, is a lawyer, professor of law at the University of Warsaw, mother, Alexandra Andreevna, nee Beketova (in her second marriage, Kublitskaya-Piottukh) is a translator, daughter of the rector of St. Petersburg University A. N. Beketov (cm. BEKETOV Andrey Nikolaevich) and translator E. N. Beketova.
Blok's early years were spent in his grandfather's house. Among the most vivid childhood and adolescence impressions are the annual summer months at the Beketovs’ Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow. (cm. SHAHMATOVO). In 1897, during a trip to the resort of Bad Nauheim (Germany), he experienced his first youthful passion for K. M. Sadovskaya, to whom he dedicated a number of poems, which were later included in the Ante Lucem cycle (1898-1900) and in the collection “Beyond Past Days” (1920 ), as well as the cycle “After Twelve Years” (1909-14). After graduating from the Vvedenskaya Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, he entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University in 1898, but in 1901 he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology (graduated in 1906 in the Slavic-Russian department). Among the professors with whom Blok studied are F. F. Zelinsky, A. I. Sobolevsky, I. A. Shlyapkin, S. F. Platonov, A. I. Vvedensky, V. K. Ernstedt, B. V. Warneke . In 1903 he married the daughter of D. I. Mendeleev (cm. MENDELEEV Dmitry Ivanovich) Lyubov Dmitrievna.
Creative debut
He began writing poetry at the age of 5, but consciously following his calling began in 1900-01. The most important literary and philosophical traditions that influenced the formation creative individuality- the teachings of Plato, the lyrics and philosophy of V. S. Solovyov, the poetry of A. A. Fet. In March 1902, he met Z. N. Gippius and D. S. Merezhkovsky, who had a huge influence on him; in their magazine “New Way” (1903, No. 3) Blok’s creative debut took place - a poet and critic. In January 1903 he entered into correspondence, and in 1904 he personally met A. Bely, who became the poet closest to him among the younger Symbolists. In 1903, the “Literary and Artistic Collection: Poems of Students of the Imperial St. Petersburg University” was published, in which three poems by Blok were published; in the same year, Blok’s cycle “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (the title was proposed by V. Ya. Bryusov) was published in the 3rd book of the almanac “Northern Flowers” (cm. NORTHERN FLOWERS). In March 1904, he began work on the book “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (1904, on title page- 1905). The traditional romantic theme of love and service received in “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” that new meaningful content that was introduced into it by the ideas of Vl. Solovyov about merging with the Eternal Feminine in the Divine All-Unity, about overcoming the alienation of the individual from the world whole through love feeling. The myth of Sophia becoming a theme lyric poems, transforms beyond recognition in the inner world of the cycle traditional natural, and in particular, “lunar” symbolism and attributes (the heroine appears above, in the evening sky, she is white, a source of light, scatters pearls, floats up, disappears after sunrise, etc. .).
Participation in the literary process 1905-09
“Poems about a Beautiful Lady” revealed the tragic impracticability of “Soloviev’s” harmony of life (motives of “blasphemous” doubts about one’s own “calling” and about the beloved herself, who is capable of “changing her appearance”), putting the poet before the need to search for other, more direct relationships with the world. The events of the revolution of 1905-07 played a special role in shaping Blok’s worldview, revealing the spontaneous, catastrophic nature of existence. The theme of “the elements” (images of blizzards, blizzards, motifs of free people, vagrancy) penetrates into the lyrics of this time and becomes the leading one. The image of the central character changes dramatically: the Beautiful Lady is replaced by the demonic Stranger, Snow Mask, and the schismatic gypsy Faina. Blok is actively involved in literary everyday life, published in all symbolist magazines (“Questions of Life”, “Scales” (cm. SCALES (magazine)), “Pass”, “Golden Fleece” (cm. GOLDEN FLEECE (magazine))), almanacs, newspapers (“Word”, “Rech”, “Hour”, etc.), acts not only as a poet, but also as a playwright and literary critic (since 1907 he has led the critical department in the “Golden Fleece”), unexpectedly for fellow symbolists, revealing interest and closeness to the traditions of democratic literature.
Contacts in the literary and theatrical environment are becoming more and more diverse: Blok visits the “Circle of the Young,” which united writers close to the “new art” (V.V. Gippius, S.M. Gorodetsky, E.P. Ivanov, L.D. Semenov, A. A. Kondratiev, etc.). Since 1905 he has been visiting the “Wednesdays” on the “tower” of Vyach. I. Ivanova, from 1906 - “Saturdays” at the theater of V. F. Komissarzhevskaya, where V. E. Meyerhold staged his first play “Balaganchik” (1906). The actress of this theater N.N. Volokhova becomes the subject of his intense passion, the book of poems “Snow Mask” (1907), the cycle “Faina” (1906-08) are dedicated to her; her features - a “tall beauty” in “elastic black silks” with “shining eyes” - determine the appearance of “spontaneous” heroines in the lyrics of this period, in “The Tale of the One Who Will Not Understand Her” (1907), in the plays “The Stranger” , “The King in the Square” (both 1906), “Song of Fate” (1908). Collections of poems ("Unexpected Joy", 1907; "Earth in the Snow", 1908) and plays ("Lyrical Dramas", 1908) were published.
Blok published critical articles and gave presentations at the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Society (“Russia and the Intelligentsia”, 1908, “Elements and Culture”, 1909). The problem of “the people and the intelligentsia,” key to the creativity of this period, determines the sound of all the themes developed in his articles and poems: the crisis of individualism, the place of the artist in the modern world, etc. His poems about Russia, in particular the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” ( 1908), combine the images of the homeland and the beloved (Wife, Bride), giving patriotic motives a special intimate intonation. The controversy surrounding articles about Russia and the intelligentsia, their generally negative assessment in criticism and journalism, and Blok’s increasing awareness that a direct appeal to a wide democratic audience did not take place led him in 1909 to gradual disappointment in the results of his journalistic activities.
The crisis of symbolism and creativity 1910-17
Blok’s trip to Italy in the spring and summer of 1909 became a period of “reassessment of values.” Against the background political reaction in Russia and the atmosphere of smug European philistinism, the only saving value becomes high classical art, which, as he later recalled, “burned” him on an Italian trip. This set of sentiments is reflected not only in the cycle “Italian Poems” (1909) and the unfinished book of prose essays “Lightning of Art” (1909-20), but also in the report “On the Current State of Russian Symbolism” (April 1910). Drawing a line under the history of the development of symbolism as a strictly defined school, Blok stated the end and exhaustion of a huge stage of his own creative and life path and the need for a “spiritual diet,” “courageous discipleship,” and “self-deepening.”
Receiving an inheritance after the death of his father at the end of 1909 freed Blok for a long time from worries about literary earnings and made it possible to concentrate on a few large artistic ideas. Having withdrawn from active journalistic activity and from participating in the life of literary and theatrical bohemia, in 1910 he began to work on a large epic poem"Retribution" (was not completed). In 1912-13 he wrote the play “Rose and Cross”. After the publication of the collection “Night Hours” in 1911, Blok revised his five books of poetry into a three-volume collection of poems (vols. 1-3, 1911-12). Since that time, Blok’s poetry exists in the reader’s mind as a single “lyrical trilogy”, a unique “novel in verse”, creating a “myth of the path”. During the poet's lifetime, the three-volume set was republished in 1916 and 1918-21. In 1921 Blok began preparing a new edition, but managed to finish only the 1st volume. Each subsequent edition includes everything significant that was created between editions: the cycle “Carmen” (1914), dedicated to the singer L. A. Andreeva-Delmas, the poem “The Nightingale Garden” (1915), poems from the collections “Iambas” (1919) , "Grey Morning" (1920).
Since the fall of 1914, Blok has been working on the publication of “Poems by Apollo Grigoriev” (1916) as a compiler, author of the introductory article and commentator. On July 7, 1916 he was drafted into the army, served as a timekeeper of the 13th engineering and construction squad of the Zemstvo and City Unions near Pinsk. After February Revolution 1917 Blok returns to Petrograd and joins the Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate the crimes of the tsarist government as an editor of verbatim reports. The materials of the investigation were summarized by him in the book “The Last Days of Imperial Power” (1921, published posthumously).
Philosophy of culture and poetic creativity in 1917-21
After the October Revolution, Blok unambiguously stated his position, answering the questionnaire “Can the intelligentsia work with the Bolsheviks” - “It can and must”, publishing in January 1918 in the left-wing Socialist Revolutionary newspaper “Znamya Truda” a series of articles “Russia and the intelligentsia”, which opened with the article “ Intelligentsia and Revolution”, and a month later - the poem “The Twelve” and the poem “Scythians”. Blok’s position provoked a sharp rebuke from Z. N. Gippius, D. S. Merezhkovsky, F. Sologub, Vyach. Ivanov, G. I. Chulkova, V. Pyasta, A. A. Akhmatova, M. M. Prishvin, Yu. I. Aikhenvald, I. G. Ehrenburg and others. Bolshevik criticism, sympathetically speaking about his “merging with the people” , spoke with noticeable wariness about the alienness of the poem to Bolshevik ideas about the revolution (L. D. Trotsky, A. V. Lunacharsky, V. M. Fritsche). The figure of Christ at the end of the poem “The Twelve” caused the greatest bewilderment. However contemporary to Blok criticism did not notice the rhythmic parallelism and echo of motifs with Pushkin’s “Demons” and did not appreciate the role of the national myth of demonism for understanding the meaning of the poem.
After “The Twelve” and “Scythians,” Blok wrote comic poems “on occasion,” prepared the last edition of the “lyrical trilogy,” but did not create new original poems until 1921. At the same time, since 1918, a new upsurge in prose creativity began. The poet makes cultural and philosophical reports at meetings of the Volfila - Free Philosophical Association (“The Collapse of Humanism” - 1919, “Vladimir Solovyov and Our Days” - 1920), at the School of Journalism (“Catilina” - 1918), writes lyrical fragments (“Neither dreams, nor reality”, “Confession of a pagan”), feuilletons (“Russian dandies”, “Fellow citizens”, “Answer to the question about the red seal”). Huge number written is connected with Blok’s official activities: after the revolution, for the first time in his life, he was forced to look not only for literary income, but also for public service. In September 1917 he became a member of the Theater and Literary Commission, from the beginning of 1918 he collaborated with the Theater Department of the People's Commissariat for Education, and in April 1919 he moved to the Bolshoi Drama Theater. At the same time he becomes a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature" (cm. WORLD LITERATURE) under the leadership of M. Gorky, from 1920 - chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets.
Initially, Blok's participation in cultural and educational institutions was motivated by beliefs about the duty of the intelligentsia to the people. However, the acute discrepancy between the poet’s ideas about the “cleansing revolutionary element” and the bloody everyday life of the advancing totalitarian bureaucratic regime led to increasing disappointment in what was happening and forced the poet to again look for spiritual support. In his articles and diary entries, the motif of the catacomb existence of culture appears. Blok’s thoughts about the indestructibility of true culture and the “secret freedom” of the artist, opposing the attempts of the “new mob” to encroach on it, were expressed in his speech “On the appointment of a poet” at the evening in memory of A. S. Pushkin and in the poem “To the Pushkin House” (February 1921), which became his artistic and human testament.
In April 1921, the growing depression turned into a mental disorder, accompanied by heart disease. On August 7, Blok died. In obituaries and posthumous memoirs, his words from dedicated to Pushkin speeches about the “lack of air” that kills poets.

encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .

See what “Blok Alexander Alexandrovich” is in other dictionaries:

Alexander Blok Portrait by Konstantin Somov (1907) Birth name: Alexander Alexandrovich Blok Date of birth: November 16 (28), 1880 Place of birth: Saint Petersburg, Russian empire Date of death... Wikipedia

- (1880 1921), Russian. poet. L.'s creativity, the tragic charm of his personality and fate were of great importance for B. throughout his life. In many B.'s contemporaries evoked associations with L. He was the first to note the “Lermontov stream” in A. Blok’s poems... ... Lermontov Encyclopedia

Russian poet. Father is a professor of law at the University of Warsaw, mother is M. A. Beketova, a writer and translator. B. spent his childhood in St. Petersburg and on the Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow. Graduated... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

BLOK Alexander Alexandrovich- (18801921), Russian Soviet poet. Books of poems “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” (1904, title sheet 1905), “Unexpected Joy”, “Snow Mask” (both 1907), “Earth in the Snow” (1908), “Night Hours” (1911), “Poems about Russia” (1915), “Poems ... Literary encyclopedic dictionary

- (1880 1921) Russian poet. He began in the spirit of symbolism (Poems about a Beautiful Lady, 1904), the sense of crisis of which was proclaimed in the drama Balaganchik (1906). Blok’s lyrics, close in their spontaneity to music, were formed under the influence of romance.... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Blok, Alexander Alexandrovich, poet and critic. Born in 1880. Completed a course at St. Petersburg University in the Faculty of History and Philology. His ancestor, the doctor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, came from Mecklenburg. To his father, Alexander... ... Biographical Dictionary

- (1880 1921), poet. Born in St. Petersburg in the house of his grandfather A. N. Beketov (University Embankment, 7, in the “rector’s wing”; memorial plaque). In 1898 he graduated from the Vvedensky gymnasium, in 1906 from the historical and philological faculty of St. Petersburg... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

Blok, Alexander Alexandrovich- Alexander Aleksandrovich Blok (1880–1921) went down in the history of verse as the canonizer of dolnik and imprecise rhyme; what sounded like a harsh experiment to others began to look natural and organic to him. Subsequent experiments with more complex rhythms and... Russian poets of the Silver Age

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok. Born November 16 (28), 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire - died August 7, 1921 in Petrograd, RSFSR. Russian poet, classic of Russian literature of the 20th century, one of greatest poets Russia.

A. Blok's father is Alexander Lvovich Blok (1852-1909), lawyer, professor at the University of Warsaw.

Nine-year-old Alexander settled with his mother and stepfather in an apartment in the barracks of the Life Grenadier Regiment, located on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, on the banks of the Bolshaya Nevka. In 1889 he was sent to the Vvedensky gymnasium. In 1897, finding himself with his mother abroad, in the German resort town of Bad Nauheim, Blok experienced his first strong youthful love with Ksenia Sadovskaya. She left a deep mark on his work.

In 1897, at a funeral in St. Petersburg, he met Vl. Soloviev.

In 1898 he graduated from high school and entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. Three years later he transferred to the Slavic-Russian department of the Faculty of History and Philology, which he graduated in 1906. At the university, Blok meets Sergei Gorodetsky and Alexei Remizov.

At this time, the poet’s second cousin, later the priest Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov (junior), became one of the closest friends of the young Blok.

Blok wrote his first poems at the age of five. At the age of 10, Alexander Blok wrote two issues of the magazine “Ship”. From 1894 to 1897, he and his brothers wrote the handwritten journal “Vestnik”.

Since childhood, Alexander Blok spent every summer on his grandfather’s Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow. 8 km away was the estate of Beketov’s friend, the great Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev Boblovo. At the age of 16, Blok became interested in theater. In St. Petersburg, Alexander Blok enrolled in a theater club. However, after his first success, he was no longer given roles in the theater.

In the summer of 1911, Blok again traveled abroad, this time to France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 1912, Blok wrote the drama “Rose and Cross”. K. Stanislavsky and V. Nemirovich-Danchenko liked the play, but the drama was never staged in the theater.

Blok met the February and October revolutions with mixed feelings. He refused to emigrate, believing that he should be with Russia in difficult times. At the beginning of May 1917, he was hired by the “Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate illegal actions of former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials of both civil, military and naval departments” as an editor. In August, Blok began working on a manuscript, which he considered as part of the future report of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission and which was published in the magazine “Byloe” (No. 15, 1919) and in the form of a book called “The Last Days of Imperial Power” (Petrograd, 1921).

Blok immediately accepted the October Revolution enthusiastically, but as a spontaneous uprising, a rebellion.

At the beginning of 1920, Franz Feliksovich Kublitsky-Piottukh died from pneumonia. Blok took his mother to live with him. But she and Blok’s wife did not get along with each other.

In January 1921, on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of his death, Blok delivered his famous speech “On the Appointment of a Poet” at the House of Writers.

Blok was one of those artists in Petrograd who not only accepted Soviet power, but agreed to work for its benefit. The authorities began to widely use the poet’s name for their own purposes. During 1918-1920. Blok, often against his will, was appointed and elected to various positions in organizations, committees, and commissions. The constantly increasing volume of work undermined the poet's strength. Fatigue began to accumulate - Blok described his state of that period with the words “I was drunk.” This may also explain the poet’s creative silence - he wrote in a private letter in January 1919: “For almost a year now I have not belonged to myself, I have forgotten how to write poetry and think about poetry...”.

Heavy workloads in Soviet institutions and living in hungry and cold revolutionary Petrograd completely undermined the poet’s health - Blok developed serious cardiovascular disease, asthma, mental disorders, and scurvy began in the winter of 1920.

In the spring of 1921, Alexander Blok, together with Fyodor Sologub, asked to be issued exit visas. The issue was considered by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). Exit was denied. Lunacharsky noted: “We literally, without releasing the poet and without giving him the necessary satisfactory conditions, tortured him.” A number of historians believed that V. R. Menzhinsky played a particularly negative role in the fate of the poet, prohibiting the patient from going for treatment to a sanatorium in Finland, which, at the request of Lunacharsky, was discussed at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on July 12, 1921 of the year. Procured by L.B. Kamenev and A.V. Lunacharsky at the subsequent meeting of the Politburo, the permission to leave on July 23, 1921 was late and could no longer save the poet.

Finding himself in a difficult financial situation, he was seriously ill and died on August 7, 1921 in his last Petrograd apartment from inflammation of the heart valves. A few days before his death, a rumor spread throughout St. Petersburg that the poet had gone crazy. Indeed, on the eve of his death, Blok raved for a long time, obsessed with a single thought: had all the copies of “The Twelve” been destroyed? However, the poet died in full consciousness, which refutes rumors about his insanity. Before his death, after receiving a negative response to a request to go abroad for treatment (dated July 12), the poet deliberately destroyed his notes and refused to take food and medicine.

The poet was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox cemetery in Petrograd. The Beketov and Kachalov families are also buried there, including the poet’s grandmother Ariadna Alexandrovna, with whom he was in correspondence. The funeral service was held on August 10 (July 28, Art. Art. - the day of celebration of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God) in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. In 1944, Blok’s ashes were reburied on the Literary Bridge at the Volkovskoye Cemetery.

Alexander Blok's height: 175 centimeters.

Personal life of Alexander Blok:

In 1903, Blok married Lyubov Mendeleeva, daughter, the heroine of his first book of poems, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.”

It is known that Alexander Blok had strong feelings for his wife, but periodically maintained connections with various women: at one time it was the actress Natalya Nikolaevna Volokhova, then the opera singer Lyubov Aleksandrovna Andreeva-Delmas.

Lyubov Dmitrievna also allowed herself hobbies on the side. On this basis, Blok had a conflict with Andrei Bely, described in the play “Balaganchik”. Bely, who considered Mendeleeva the embodiment of a Beautiful Lady, was passionately in love with her, but she did not reciprocate his feelings.

After another hobby, Blok’s wife gave birth to a boy who lived only a few days. Despite the fact that this union was considered a laughing stock for all of St. Petersburg, it lasted until the poet’s death. After the First World War, relations in the Blok family improved, and in recent years the poet was the faithful husband of Lyubov Dmitrievna.

The poet's relatives live in Moscow, Riga, Rome and England. Until recent years, Alexander Blok’s second cousin, Ksenia Vladimirovna Beketova, lived in St. Petersburg. Among Blok’s relatives is the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Our Heritage” - Vladimir Enisherlov.

Blok Alexander Alexandrovich (1880─1921) - Russian poet and writer, playwright and publicist, literary critic and translator. His work belongs to the classics of Russian literature of the twentieth century.

Parents

The poet's father, Alexander Lvovich, had German roots in his family; he was a lawyer by training, worked as an assistant professor at the department state law at the University of Warsaw.

The boy’s mother, translator Alexandra Andreevna, had purely Russian roots, she was the daughter of the famous academician, rector of St. Petersburg State University Beketov A. N. In the family her name was Asya and they loved her incredibly, firstly, because she was the youngest, and secondly, for kindness, affection and a very cheerful character. Most of all, Asya loved literature, especially poetry; perhaps this love was later passed on to the future poet at the genetic level.

Blok's parents met at a dance party. Asya made a strong impression on Alexander Lvovich, he fell in love and began to look for a meeting with the girl in every possible way, frequenting the Beketovs’ house, where receptions were held on Saturdays. The relationship between Asya and Alexander Lvovich developed quite quickly; at the beginning of 1879 they got married in the university church. The groom was 9 years older than the bride; on the wedding day they immediately left for Warsaw.

Alexander Lvovich loved his wife madly, but in life he turned out to be a despot and a tyrant, his love alternated with torment and bullying. Their first child was stillborn. The woman was desperately grieving and dreamed of giving birth to a second baby as soon as possible.

When Asya was pregnant for the second time, she and her husband came to St. Petersburg to defend his dissertation. We immediately settled in her parents’ house. Having received another academic degree, Alexander Lvovich Blok returned to Warsaw alone. His wife's parents persuaded him to leave his wife with them, because in the eighth month of pregnancy it is unsafe to be afraid on trains.

Alexander Blok was born in the house of his grandfather Beketov. The boy was large and well-built; from the first day of his life he became the center of attention in the family. The father in Warsaw was immediately informed about the birth of his son. When he arrived in St. Petersburg for the Christmas holidays and stayed with the Beketovs, his whole despotic character was revealed to them. Everyone understood that Asya was hiding from her parents how she really lived with her husband.

Alexander Lvovich left alone again; it was decided that his wife, weakened by childbirth, and their tiny son would remain in their parents’ house until spring. But she never returned to her husband in Warsaw; her father insisted that her daughter and grandson remain in St. Petersburg.

The baby was restless and capricious, sometimes they could not rock him to sleep for several hours. He fell asleep only in the arms of his grandfather, who walked with his grandson in his arms and at the same time prepared for lectures at the university.

Sashenka began to walk and talk late, but every summer spent in the village of Shakhmatovo improved his health. By the age of three, the boy was so handsome that passers-by could not pass by without looking back at the child.

The future poet inherited exactly half the traits of both his father and mother in his character. Through the Blok line, Alexander inherited intelligence, depth of feelings and strong temperament. But along with these harsh traits, there were also Beketian sides in him; Alexander Blok was very generous, kind and childishly trusting.

Childhood

The boy grew up playful and interesting, but very willful; it was almost impossible to dissuade him or teach him to do anything; his mother often had to punish Sasha.

Before three years They couldn't find a suitable nanny for him. But then nanny Sonya appeared, who developed a special relationship with the child. Little Blok adored her; most of all, he liked it when the nanny read Pushkin’s fairy tales aloud to him.

He loved to play, and he absolutely did not need any companions; he was so keen on the game himself that he could run around the rooms all day long, pretending to be people, horses, or conductors. In addition to games and nanny's fairy tales, he had another strong hobby - ships, he drew them in different types and hung it all over the house, this passion remained with him for the rest of his life.

In the fourth year of his life, the boy first traveled abroad with his mother and nanny, to Trieste and Florence, where he swam a lot in the sea and sunbathed.

From there we returned to his beloved village of Shakhmatovo. While still a child, Blok studied all the surroundings here; later he would depict this place in his poem “Retribution.” He knew where mushrooms were found, lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots bloomed, where he could pick a whole basket of wild strawberries.

Little Sasha was madly in love with animals, yard dogs, hedgehogs, even insects and earthworms aroused his admiration. At the age of five, he dedicated his first poems to a gray bunny and a domestic cat.

His own father, Alexander Lvovich, came to Russia for the holidays and visited his son, but did not evoke much sympathy from the boy. The elder Blok was more concerned about getting his wife back, but she persistently asked for a divorce. Until he himself decided to remarry in Warsaw, he refused a divorce.

And already in 1889, when Alexander Blok was nine years old, my mother married for the second time the lieutenant of the grenadier regiment Kublitsky-Piottukh. She took her husband’s surname, and her son remained Blok.

They moved to the Bolshaya Nevka embankment, where there was new flat in the regimental barracks, where they lived for 15 years. The stepfather did not have any special love for his stepson, but he did not offend him either. The boy made friends with the neighboring children, and together they skated when the Nevka was covered with thick ice. At home he occupied himself with drawing and sawing, and he especially enjoyed binding books.

Gymnasium and university

In 1889, Sasha entered the Vvedensky gymnasium to study. Studying could not be called smooth, arithmetic was the worst, and he was very fond of ancient languages.
As a high school student, he was unsociable, did not like unnecessary conversations, and often wrote poetry in solitude.

Already at the age of ten he wrote two issues of the magazine “Ship”. And on final courses gymnasium, together with his cousins, he began to publish a handwritten magazine “Vestnik”. Grandfather occasionally helped his grandchildren illustrate the magazine. This publication contained poetry and prose of the young Blok, puzzles and riddles, translations from French, and even a small play “A Trip to Italy.” In one of the issues a fairy tale was published, where actors became beetles and ants. Blok mainly wrote humorous poems, but he also had a very touching poem dedicated to his mother.

Blok was not too keen on reading during his high school years, but he had favorite poets and writers:

Zhukovsky and Pushkin;
Jules Verne and Dickens;
Cooper and Mine Reid.

In his senior year, Blok became interested in theater, recited Shakespeare, joined a theater club, and even had several roles in plays.

In 1897, Alexander, his mother and aunt, went to Germany, where his mother was undergoing treatment. This is where his first love happened. Ksenia Mikhailova Sadovskaya was a secular, beautiful and pampered lady of 37 years old, the mother of a family. The young man was immediately struck by her bottomless blue eyes; passion captured him and gave him poetic inspiration.

The beauty was the first to attract the inexperienced guy. Every morning he bought and gave her roses, they rode alone in a boat, and, of course, Blok dedicated to her his most touching poems that a young poet in love could write. He signed them “mysterious K. M. S.”

Returning to Russia, in 1898 Alexander graduated from high school. Immediately he became a student Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University. After three years of study, he transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology, choosing the Slavic-Russian department. In 1906, the poet graduated from the university.

Family life

In 1903, Alexander married Mendeleev’s daughter Lyubov.

They met a long time ago, during the summer holidays in the village where the Mendeleev estate was located next to Beketovskaya. He was 14 years old then, and Lyuba was 13, they walked and played together. Their second meeting took place when Blok had just graduated from high school; this time the young people made a completely different impression on each other.

While studying at the university, Blok often visited the Mendeleevs’ home, at which time his poems appeared, which were later included in the collection “Poems about a Beautiful Lady,” he dedicated them to his future wife Lyubov.

In the year of his marriage, another significant event took place in the poet’s life; his poems began to be published in the magazine “New Path” and in the almanac “Northern Flowers”. Blok’s creativity was quickly appreciated both in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

After the wedding, the young Blocks lived in his stepfather’s house, went to Moscow for a while, and in the summer they went to Shakhmatovo. Here they began to equip their family nest with their own hands. Alexander respected him very much physical work, he even wrote in his poems about how he loves any work - “building a stove, writing poetry.” The blocks developed a luxurious garden, built a turf sofa in it, and often hosted guests. They were such a beautiful sunny couple among the wildflowers that they were even called the Princess and the Tsarevich.

They were each other's strongest loves of their lives. But their marriage turned out to be quite strange. Blok considered his wife the embodiment of Eternal femininity and did not admit that he could make carnal love with her. He had other women, Lyuba also had an affair with actor Konstantin Lavidovsky, from whom she became pregnant. Blok, who had been ill in his youth, could not have children, so he received the news of his wife’s pregnancy with joy that God would give them, free birds, a child. But this happiness was not destined to come true; the born boy died after living only eight days. Blok suffered this loss very hard and often visited the boy’s grave.

At the end of his life, the poet will say that there were two loves in his life - Lyuba and everyone else.

Creation

In 1904, the Grif publishing house published Blok’s first book, “Poems about a Beautiful Lady.”

The years 1906-1908 were marked by particular success and growth as a writer for Blok. He experienced all the events of the 1905 revolution through himself; he himself took part in demonstrations, which was reflected in a number of his works. His books come out one after another:

"Unexpected joy";
"Snow Mask";
"Earth in the Snow";
"Lyrical Dramas".

In 1909, the poet traveled through Germany and Italy, the result of this trip was the collection “Italian Poems”.

In 1912, he wrote the drama “Rose and Cross”, which was appreciated by V. Nemirovich-Danchenko and K. Stanislavsky, but this play was never staged.

In 1916, Blok served in the active army; he was assigned to Belarus in the engineering units of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union. During his service, he learned about the completed revolution, which he initially perceived with mixed feelings, but did not emigrate from the country.

This period includes such famous collections of poems as “Night Hours”, “Poems about Russia”, “Beyond Past Days”, “Gray Morning”.

Since 1918, Alexander was recruited to serve in the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry, which investigated the illegal actions of officials. Here he worked as an editor.

Revolutionary events entailed a deep creative crisis and depression for the poet. After the works “The Twelve” and “Scythians” he stopped writing poetry; in his words, “all sounds stopped.”

Illness and death

From 1918 to 1920, Blok worked a lot in various positions in committees and commissions. He was terribly tired, as the poet himself said, “I was drunk,” and his health began to decline sharply. Several diseases became worse at once: cardiovascular failure, asthma, scurvy, neurosis. On top of everything, the family had a difficult financial situation.

In the middle of the summer of 1921, the poet began to have problems with his mind: he either fell into unconsciousness or came back to life again. All this time, his wife Lyuba looked after him. Doctors suspected he had cerebral edema.

On August 7, 1921, the poet Alexander Blok died in the presence of his wife and mother. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery, and in 1944 his ashes were reburied at the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg.

The Alexander Blok Museum-Reserve has been opened in Shakhmatovo, where a monument to the poet and his Beautiful Lady has been erected.