The work of the famous Russian poet Konstantin Balmont of the Silver Age is quite controversial in terms of direction and style. Initially, the poet was considered the first symbolist to become so famous. However, his early work can still be attributed to impressionism.
All this affected the fact that Konstantin Balmont’s poems were mainly about love, about fleeting impressions and feelings, his work seems to connect heaven and earth, and leaves a sweet aftertaste. In addition, the early poems of the symbolist Balmont were accompanied by a rather sad mood and humility of a lonely young man.
Themes of poems by Konstantin Balmont:
All further work of the poet was constantly changing. The next stage was the search for new space and emotions that could be found in the works. The transition to “Nietzschean” motifs and heroes became the reason for stormy criticism of Balmont’s poems from the outside. The last stage in the poet’s work was the transition from sad themes to brighter colors of life and emotions.
In the autumn season, there is nothing better than reading the poems of Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont.
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born on June 15, 1867 in Gumnishchi, Vladimir province. The poet's father, Dmitry Konstantinovich, a poor landowner, served in the Shuya zemstvo for half a century - as a peace mediator, justice of the peace, chairman of the congress of justices of the peace, and, finally, chairman of the district zemstvo council. Mother, Vera Nikolaevna, received an institute education, taught and treated peasants, organized amateur performances and concerts, and was published in provincial newspapers. In Shuya she was a well-known and respected person.
In 1876, Balmont was sent to the preparatory class of the Shuya gymnasium, where he studied until 1884. He was expelled from the gymnasium for belonging to a revolutionary circle. Two months later, Balmont was admitted to the Vladimir Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1886. At the Vladimir gymnasium, the young poet began his literary career - in 1885, three of his poems were published in the journal Zhivopisnoe Obozrenie. Immediately after graduating from the gymnasium, at the invitation of Balmont, he traveled through the districts of the Vladimir province: Suzdal, Shuisky, Melenkovsky and Muromsky.
After graduating from high school, Balmont entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law, a year later he was expelled for participating in student riots and deported to Shuya. He tried to continue his education at the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl, but was unsuccessful again. Balmont owed his extensive knowledge in the field of history, literature and philology only to himself.
In February 1889, K. D. Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina, daughter. The poet's parents were against it - he decided to break with his family. The marriage was unsuccessful.
Balmont finally decided to take up literature. He published his first “Collection of Poems”, published with his own money in Yaroslavl. This enterprise did not bring either creative or financial success, but the decision to continue literary studies remained unchanged.
Balmont found himself in a difficult situation: without support, without funds, he was literally starving. Fortunately, very soon there were people who took part in the fate of the aspiring poet. This is, first of all, V. G. Korolenko, whom he met back in Vladimir, as a high school student.
Another patron of Balmont was N. I. Storozhenko, a professor at Moscow University. He helped Balmont receive an order to translate two fundamental works, “The History of Scandinavian Literature” by Gorn-Schweitzer and the two-volume “History of Italian Literature” by Gaspari. The period of Balmont's professional development was between 1892 and 1894. He translates a lot: he does a complete translation of Shelley, gets the opportunity to publish in magazines and newspapers, and expands his circle of literary acquaintances.
At the beginning of 1894, Balmont’s first “real” collection of poems, “Under the Northern Sky,” was published. Balmont is already a fairly well-known writer, translator of E. Poe, Shelley, Hoffmann, Calderon.
In 1895, Balmont published a new collection of poems, “In the Boundless.”
In September 1896, he married (two years before, the poet divorced his former wife). Immediately after the wedding, the young couple went abroad.
Several years spent in Europe gave Balmont an extraordinary amount. He visited France, Spain, Holland, Italy and England. Letters from this period are filled with new impressions. Balmont spent a lot of time in libraries, improved languages, and was invited to Oxford to give lectures on the history of Russian poetry.
The collections “Under the Northern Sky”, “In the Boundless”, “Silence” are considered to be closely related in the history of Russian poetry to the earlier period of the poet’s work.
In 1900, a collection of poems, “Burning Buildings,” was published. With the appearance of this book, a new and main period of Balmont’s life and literary activity begins.
In March 1901, the poet became a true hero in St. Petersburg: he publicly read the anti-government poem “Little Sultan”, and this event had a huge political resonance. This was immediately followed by administrative repression and exile.
Since the spring of 1902, the poet lives in Paris, then moves to London and Oxford, followed by Spain, Switzerland, Mexico and the United States of America. The result of this trip, in addition to poetry, was travelogues and translations of Aztec and Mayan myths, which were compiled in the book “Snake Flowers” (1910).
At the end of 1905, the book “Fairy Tales” was published in Moscow by the Grif publishing house. It contained 71 poems. It is dedicated to Ninika - Nina Konstantinovna Balmont-Bruni, daughter of Balmont and E. A. Andreeva.
In July 1905, the poet returned to Moscow. The revolution captured him. He writes accusatory poems and collaborates in the newspaper “New Life”. But deciding that he is one of the obvious contenders for the royal reprisal, Balmont leaves for Paris. The poet left Russia for more than seven years.
During all seven years spent abroad, Balmont mostly lives in Paris, going briefly to Brittany, Norway, the Balearic Islands, Spain, Belgium, London, and Egypt. The poet retained his love of travel throughout his life, but he always clearly felt cut off from Russia.
On February 1, 1912, Balmont set off on a trip around the world: London - Plymouth - Canary Islands - South Africa - Madagascar - Tasmania - South Australia - New Zealand - Polynesia (the islands of Tonga, Samoa, Fiji) - New Guinea - Celebes, Java, Sumatra - Ceylon - India.
In February 1913, in connection with the “tercentenary of the House of Romanov,” a political amnesty was declared, and Balmont received the long-awaited opportunity to return to his homeland. He arrived in Moscow at the very beginning of May 1913. A huge crowd of people was waiting for him at the Brest station.
At the beginning of 1914, the poet again briefly went to Paris, then to Georgia, where he gave lectures. They give him a lavish reception. After Georgia, Balmont went to France, where the First World War found him. Only at the end of May 1915 did the poet manage to return to Russia.
Balmont enthusiastically accepted the February Revolution, but was soon disappointed. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks, remembering Balmont’s past liberal views, summoned him to the Cheka and asked: “Which party are you a member of?” Balmont replied: “I am a poet.”
Difficult times have come for K.D. Balmont. It was necessary to support two families: wife E. A. Andreeva and daughter Nina, who lived in Moscow, and Elena Tsvetkovskaya and daughter Mirra, who lived in Petrograd. In 1920 they moved to Moscow, which greeted them with cold and hunger. Balmont begins to worry about traveling abroad.
On May 25, 1920, Balmont and his family left Russia forever. Balmont endured separation from his homeland hard. His relationship with the Russian literary emigration was not easy. Maintained close ties with.
Balmont died (from pneumonia) on the night of December 24, 1942. To the east of Paris is Noisy-le-Grand. Here, at the local Catholic cemetery, there is a cross made of gray stone, on which is written in French: “Konstantin Balmont, Russian poet.”
Sources:
Balmont K. D. Favorites: poems, translations, articles / Konstantin Balmont; comp., intro. Art. and comment. D. G. Makogonenko. – M.: Pravda, 1991. – P. 8-20.
In August 1876, at the age of 9, K. D. Balmont entered the preparatory class of the Shuya progymnasium, which was later transformed into a gymnasium. The admissions tests were passed with a straight B. On the back of the examination paper is the poet's children's autograph - a dictation and an arithmetic problem. Balmont studied mediocrely, as can be seen from the so-called score books, in which students’ quarterly and annual grades were entered: he showed the best success in history and French, and remained in the 2nd year in the third grade. According to teachers, he was a capable boy who did not suffer from high school ambition, which is why he did not strive for good grades.
Balmont's behavior, except for the preparatory class (where there were 5), was always marked with a score of 4, probably due to the liveliness of his character. There are almost no records of behavior, and no serious misconduct was noted.
In the fall of 1884, 5 students were dismissed from the Shuya gymnasium at once, including the youngest, 17-year-old Balmont Konstantin, 7th grade, on September 18th. All these students were dismissed according to the requests of their parents - Balmont - “due to illness.” The dismissal of students followed in violation of existing rules without the participation of the pedagogical council. The director of the gymnasium, Rogozinnikov, invited the parents to take their sons out of the gymnasium, of course, under the threat of expulsion, in case of failure to comply with this requirement, with a worse certification, so the parents were forced to comply. On the same day when the students were dismissed, they were given documents and certificates of education, and all were given a lower mark in behavior - 4, and also without a pedagogical council, which had the right to certify the behavior of students. In K. Balmont's certificate No. 971, all subjects were given three grades. All his papers - certificate, birth certificate and medical certificate, by proxy of his mother, were received by his elder brother, Arkady.
What was the fault of these disciples? What was the reason for their dismissal from the gymnasium so quickly? This is what Konstantin later wrote about this.
“In 1884, when I was in the seventh grade of the gymnasium, a certain D., a writer, came to my hometown of Shuya, brought a copy of the revolutionary newspapers “Znamya and Volya” and “Narodnaya Volya”, several revolutionary brochures, and at his call they gathered in in one house, in a small number, several thoughtful high school students and several revolutionary-minded adults. D. told us that the Revolution would break out in Russia not today but tomorrow, and that for this it was only necessary to cover Russia with a network of revolutionary circles. I remember how one of my favorite comrades, the son of the city mayor (Nikolai Listratov), who was accustomed to organizing hunting trips with his comrades for ducks and woodcocks, sat on the window and, throwing up his hands, said that, of course, Russia is completely ready for the Revolution and it is necessary just to organize it, and this is not at all easy. I silently believed that all this was not simple, but very difficult, and the enterprise was stupid. But I sympathized with the idea of spreading self-development, agreed to join a revolutionary circle and undertook to keep revolutionary literature. Searches in the city followed very quickly, but in those patriarchal times the gendarmerie officer did not dare to search the houses of the two main persons of the city - the mayor and the chairman of the zemstvo government. Thus, neither I nor my friend went to prison, but were only expelled from the gymnasium, along with several others. We were soon accepted into the gymnasium, where we completed our studies under supervision.” K. Balmont's supervision also yielded positive results. He was hardly distracted from studying, studying languages, reading books, writing and translating poetry.
At the beginning of November 1884, Balmont was admitted to the 7th grade of the Vladimir provincial gymnasium. He was not silent or shy, but he was not eloquent either, and he quickly established relationships with his new comrades. He was ordered to live in Vladimir in the apartment of his strict class teacher, Greek teacher Osip Sedlak. The first half of the school year was already coming to an end, the newcomer had to quickly catch up with his peers and, at the cost of great effort, still managed to pass all the subjects successfully and on time.
And Konstantin’s first appearance in print dates back to the Vladimir period of his life. As a student in the 8th grade of the gymnasium, in 1885 he published three poems in the journal Zhivopisnoe Obozrenie (No. 48, November 2 - December 7): “The Bitterness of Flour,” “Awakening,” and “A Farewell Glance.” Of these, the first two are his own, and the third is a translation from Lenau. Signed - “Const. Balmont." This event was not particularly noticed by anyone except the class teacher, who forbade Balmont to publish until he completed his studies at the gymnasium.
On December 4, 1885, Konstantin from Vladimir writes to Nikolai Listratov, already a student at Moscow University: “I have long wanted to write to you, but I still can’t, I can’t tear myself away from science - I’m studying, brother. I was overcome by the desire to finish high school. Whether the efforts will be crowned with success and how long you will have the patience to cram is shrouded in the darkness of the unknown.<…>If I stay in May with my nose, it won’t matter. And if I get to the University, then I will live a glorious life. By the way, the future doesn’t seem to be bright: Korolenko, an employee of Rus<ской>M<ысли>" and "Sev<ерного>IN<естника>“(I tell everyone about him - he can’t get out of my head, just as he couldn’t get out of your head at the time - remember? - D-sky?) This same Korolenko, after reading my poems, found in me - imagine - talent. So my thoughts about writing are getting some support. Traces<ательно>and the study of social sciences and the study of new languages (“Swedish, Norwegian ...”) will go much faster. Maybe something will actually work out.”
“When I graduated from high school in Vladimir Gubernsky, I personally met a writer for the first time - and this writer was none other than the most honest, kindest, most delicate interlocutor I have ever met in my life, the most famous storyteller in those years, Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko. Before his arrival in Vladimir, to visit the engineer M. M. Kovalsky and his wife A. S. Kovalskaya, I gave A. S. Kovalskaya, at her request, a notebook of my poems to read. These were poems that I wrote mainly at the age of 16-17 years. She handed this notebook to Korolenko. He took it with him and later wrote me a detailed letter about my poems. He pointed out to me the wise law of creativity, which at that time of my youth I only suspected, and he clearly and poetically expressed it in such a way that the words of V. G. Korolenko were forever etched in my memory and remembered by the feeling, like the clever word of an elder whom I should obey. He wrote to me that I have many beautiful details, particulars successfully captured from the world of nature, that you need to concentrate your attention and not chase 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 imperceptibly accumulates his observations and comparisons, and then suddenly it all blossoms, just as a flower suddenly blossoms after a long, invisible period of accumulation of its strength. I remembered this golden rule and still remember it today. This flower rule would need to be placed sculpturally, pictorially and verbally above the entrance to that strict shrine called Creativity.
A feeling of gratitude tells me to say that Vladimir Galaktionovich ended his letter to me with the words: “If you can concentrate and work, we will hear something extraordinary from you over time.” Needless to say, what delight and a stream of aspirations poured into my heart from these words of Korolenko.”
Balmont graduated from the gymnasium course in 1886, in his own words, “having lived like in prison for a year and a half.” “I curse the gymnasium with all my might. “She disfigured my nervous system for a long time,” the poet later wrote.
In 1886, Balmont entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law. But the future poet periodically came to Vladimir and wrote letters to his friends.
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 Balmont is a Russian symbolist poet, essayist, prose writer and translator. He is one of the brightest representatives of Russian poetry of the Silver Age. In 1923 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
So, in front of you short biography of Balmont.
Biography of Balmont
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born on June 3, 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, in the Vladimir province. He grew up in a simple village family.
His father, Dmitry Konstantinovich, was first a judge, and then served as head of the zemstvo government.
Mother, Vera Nikolaevna, was from an intelligent family in which they paid a lot of attention. In this regard, she repeatedly organized creative evenings and staged performances at home.
Childhood and youth
His mother had a serious influence on the development of Balmont’s personality and played a big role in his biography. Thanks to his mother, the boy was well acquainted not only with literature, but also with music and literature.
Konstantin Balmont in childhood In addition to Konstantin, six more boys were born into the Balmont family. An interesting fact is that Konstantin learned to read by watching his mother teach his older brothers to read.
Initially, the Balmonts lived in the village, but when it was time to send their children to school, they decided to move to Shuya. During this period of his biography, Konstantin first became interested in poetry.
When Balmont was 10 years old, he showed his poems to his mother. After reading them, Vera Nikolaevna insisted that he stop writing poetry. The boy obeyed her and did not compose anything for the next six years.
In 1876, the first significant event occurred in Balmont’s biography. He was enrolled in a Russian gymnasium, where he proved himself to be a talented and obedient student. However, he soon got tired of adhering to discipline and obeying the teachers in everything.
Konstantin became interested in reading literature with particular zeal, reading works not only by Russian, but also by foreign authors. It is interesting that he read the books of French and German classics in the original.
Later, the careless student was expelled from the gymnasium for low grades and revolutionary sentiments.
In 1886, Konstantin Balmont went to Vladimir. There he went to study at one of the local gymnasiums. It is interesting that at this time his poems were published for the first time in one of the capital’s publications.
After graduating from high school, Balmont entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law. There he made friends with the revolutionaries of the sixties. He listened to his comrades with great interest and was imbued with revolutionary ideas.
While studying in his second year, Balmont took part in student riots. As a result, he was expelled from the university and sent back to Shuya.
Later, Konstantin Balmont entered universities more than once, but due to a nervous disorder he was unable to graduate from a single institution. Thus, the young man was left without higher education.
Balmont's creativity
Balmont published the first collection in his creative biography in 1890. But later, for some reason, he personally destroyed most of the circulation.
Feeling confident in his own abilities, he continued to engage in writing.
During the biography years 1895-1898. Balmont published 2 more collections - “In the vastness of darkness” and “Silence”.
These works also aroused admiration among critics, after which his works began to be published in various publishing houses. He was predicted to have a great future and was called one of the most promising poets of our time.
In the mid-1890s, Konstantin Balmont became better known as a symbolist poet. In his work, he admired natural phenomena, and in some cases touched upon mystical themes. This is most evident in the collection “Evil Spells,” which was banned from publication.
Having received recognition and financial independence, Balmont visited many different countries. He shared his impressions with readers in his own works.
An interesting fact is that Balmont did not like to correct text that had already been written, because he believed that the first thoughts are the strongest and most correct. In 1905, the collection “Fairy Tales” was published, which the writer dedicated to his daughter.
It is worth noting that Konstantin Dmitrievich never abandoned revolutionary ideas, which he, in fact, did not hide.
Aphorisms of Balmont, 1910 There was a case when Balmont publicly read the poem “Little Sultan”, in which the listeners easily discovered the character. After this, the poet was expelled from the city for 2 years.
Konstantin Balmont maintained friendly relations with. Like his friend, he was an ardent opponent of the monarchy, and therefore he greeted the First Russian Revolution with sincere joy.
During this period of his biography, Balmont’s poems were more reminiscent of rhymed slogans than lyrical quatrains.
When the Moscow uprising occurred in 1905, Balmont gave a speech to students. However, fearing to end up behind bars, he decided to leave his homeland.
During the period of biography from 1906 to 1913, the disgraced poet was in. He continued to write, but heard more and more criticism of his work. The prose writer was accused of writing about the same thing in his works.
Balmont himself called “Burning Buildings” his best book. Lyrics of the modern soul." It should be noted that in this work, unlike the previous ones, there were many bright and positive poems.
After returning to his homeland in 1913, Konstantin Balmont presented a 10-volume collected works. At this time, he worked hard on translations and attended many lectures.
When it took place in 1917, the poet, like many of his colleagues, greeted this event with great joy.
Balmont was confident that with the advent of the new government everything would change for the better. However, when the country was swallowed up by terrible anarchy, the poet was horrified. He described the October Revolution as “chaos” and “a hurricane of madness.”
In 1920, Konstantin Dmitrievich and his family moved to, but did not stay there long. Soon he, his wife and children, left for France again.
“Bohemian” Balmont and Sergei Gorodetsky with their spouses A. A. Gorodetskaya and E. K. Tsvetkovskaya (left), St. Petersburg, 1907 It is worth noting that Balmont no longer enjoyed authority among representatives of the Russian intelligentsia.
During his biography, Konstantin Balmont published 35 poetry collections and 20 prose books, and also translated the works of many foreign writers.
Personal life
In 1889, Konstantin Balmont took the merchant daughter Larisa Garelina as his wife. Interestingly, the mother was categorically against their wedding, but the poet was adamant.
This marriage could hardly be called happy. The wife turned out to be a very jealous and scandalous woman. She did not support her husband in his work, but rather, on the contrary, interfered with his creative aspirations.
Some biographers of the poet suggest that it was his wife who turned him to alcohol.
In the spring of 1890, Balmont decided to commit suicide by jumping from the 3rd floor. However, the suicide attempt failed and he remained alive. However, his injuries left him with a limp for the rest of his life.
In union with Garelina, he had two children. The first child died in infancy, and the second, son Nikolai, suffered from nervous disorders. Due to objective reasons, this marriage could not last long, and the family soon broke up.
The second wife in Balmont’s biography was Ekaterina Andreeva, whom he married in 1896. Andreeva was a competent, wise and attractive girl. After 5 years, their daughter Nina was born.
Balmont loved his wife and was often with her. Together with Catherine, he talked about literature and also worked on translations of texts.
In the early 1900s, on one of the streets Balmont met Elena Tsvetkovskaya, who fell in love with him at first sight. He began dating her secretly from his wife, as a result of which his illegitimate daughter Mirra was born.
However, the double life greatly depressed Balmont, which soon developed into depression. This led to the poet deciding to jump out of the window again. But, as in the first case, he remained alive.
After much thought, Balmont decided to stay with Elena and Mirra. Soon he moved with them to France. There he met Dagmar Shakhovskaya.
Shakhovskaya also played an important role in Balmont’s biography. The poet began to meet with her more and more often, until he realized that he was in love with her.
This led to the birth of two children - a boy, Georges, and a girl, Svetlana.
It is worth noting that Tsvetkovskaya loved Balmont so much that she turned a blind eye to his love affairs and never abandoned him.
Death
During his emigration to France, Konstantin Balmont constantly yearned for. Every day his health worsened, and financial problems arose.
He felt not only physical, but also mental exhaustion, and therefore could no longer engage in writing.
Balmont, forgotten by everyone, lived in a modest apartment, and except for his closest people, he communicated with almost no one.
In 1937, doctors discovered he had a mental disorder. He lived out his last years in the Russian House shelter, where he soon died.
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont died on December 23, 1942 from pneumonia at the age of 75.
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Balmont's creativity(1867-1942)
- Balmont's childhood and youth
- The beginning of Balmont's creativity
- Balmont's poetry of the early 20th century
- The image of beauty in Balmont's lyrics
- Balmont and the revolution of 1905
- Nature in Balmont's lyrics
- Features of Balmont's poetry
- Balmont as a translator
- Balmont and the October Revolution
- Balmont in exile
- Balmont's prose
- The last years of Balmont's life
In the constellation of poetic talents of the Silver Age, one of the first places belongs to K. D. Balmont. V. Bryusov wrote back in 1912: “Balmont had no equal in the art of verse in Russian literature... where others saw the limit, Balmont discovered infinity.”
However, the fate of this poet's creative legacy was not easy. For decades he was not republished in our country, but in respectable literary works and textbooks he was invariably certified as a decadent. And only the collections of selected his poems that have appeared in recent years rediscover to the modern reader a subtle and deep lyricist, a magician of verse, who had a unique sense of words and rhythm.
Throughout almost Balmont’s entire life, various kinds of legends, myths and speculations arose around his name. The poet himself was involved in the appearance of some of them. One of these myths is related to his ancestry.
1.Balmont’s childhood and youth.
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born on June 4 (16), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province, into a poor noble family. The poet himself named people from Scotland and Lithuania among his ancestors. In fact, as archival documents testify, the roots of his family tree are originally Russian. His great-great-grandfather, whose last name was Balamut, was a sergeant of one of the Life Hussar regiments during the time of Catherine the 11th, and his great-grandfather was a Kherson landowner.
For the first time, the grandfather of the future poet Konstantin Ivanovich, later a naval officer, began to bear the surname Balmont. When he was enlisted for military service as a boy, the surname Balamut, dissonant for a nobleman, was changed to Balmont. The singer himself emphatically pronounced his last name in the French manner, that is, with the emphasis on the last syllable. However, at the end of his life he reported: “My father pronounced our last name - Balmont, I began to pronounce it because of the whim of one woman - Balmont. That’s right, I think, the first one” (letter to V.V. Obolyaninov dated June 30, 1937).
During his childhood, Balmont was greatly influenced by his mother, a widely educated woman. It was she who introduced him, as he admitted, into “the world of music, literature, history, linguistics.” Reading became the boy's favorite pastime. He was brought up on the works of Russian classics. “The first poets I read,” he reported in his autobiography, “were folk songs, Nikitin, Koltsov, Nekrasov and Pushkin. Of all the poems in the world, I love Lermontov’s “Mountain Peaks” the most.”
After graduating from the Vladimir Gymnasium, Balmont entered the Faculty of Law at Moscow University, but he only had to study there for a year: in 1887, he was expelled for participating in student unrest and exiled to Shuya. An attempt to continue his studies at the Yaroslavl Demidov Lyceum was also unsuccessful. In order to gain systematic knowledge, Balmont spent a long time and persistently engaged in self-education, especially in the field of literature, history and linguistics, having perfectly studied 16 foreign languages.
Thanks to tireless work, thirst for knowledge and great curiosity, Balmont became one of the educated people of his time. It is no coincidence that already in 1897 he was invited to England, where he lectured on Russian poetry at the famous Oxford University.
A painful episode in Balmont’s life was his marriage to L. Gorelina. Balmont will later tell about the difficult and internally tense relationship with this woman, who drove her husband into a frenzy with jealousy, in the stories “The White Bride” and “March 13”. The day indicated in the title of the last work was the date of a failed suicide attempt: on March 13, 1890, K. Balmont jumped out of the third floor window of the hotel and was taken to the hospital with many fractures. The year of his stay in a hospital bed did not pass without a trace for the future poet: Balmont felt the value of life, and this mood would permeate all of his subsequent work.
2. The beginning of Balmont’s creativity.
Balmont began writing in his high school years. His acquaintance with V. G. Korolenko, and then with V. Bryusov, and joining the group of senior symbolists unusually intensified his creative energy. Collections of his poems are published one after another. (In total, the poet wrote 35 books of poetry). Balmont's name becomes famous, his books are eagerly published and sold out.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Balmont was a recognized poet, about whose work much is written and debated, from whom younger contemporaries learn the craft. A. Blok and A. Bely considered him one of their teachers. And not by chance. The ability to generously and simply enjoy life, to speak brightly, non-trivially, elegantly and beautifully about what he experienced and saw, which is characteristic of Balmont’s best poems, created for him enormous, truly all-Russian fame in the first decade of the 20th century. “Balmont captured the thoughts of everyone who really loved poetry and made everyone fall in love with his sonorous verse,” testified the same V. Bryusov.
The talent of the young poet was noticed by such a strict connoisseur of beauty as A.P. Chekhov. In 1902, he wrote to Balmont: “You know, I love your talent, and each of your books gives me a lot of pleasure and excitement.”3
The range of Balmont's lyrical experiences is wide and changeable. In the poems of the early collections “Under the Northern Sky” (1894), “In the Vast” (1895), “Silence” (1898), a contemplative mood prevails, a departure into the world of self-sufficient Beauty: “Far from the restless and hazy land // Within the bottomless mute purity//I built an airy radiant castle//Airy radiant Palace of Beauty.” The general tone of subsequent books changes and becomes life-affirming, capacious in content and meaning.
Among the symbolists, Balmont had his own position associated with a broader understanding of the symbol, which, in addition to the specific meaning, has hidden content, expressed through hints, mood, and musical sound. Of all the symbolists, he most consistently developed impressionism - the poetry of impressions.
Balmont outlined his creative program in the preface to the book of poems he translated by E. Poe and in the collection of critical articles “Mountain Peaks”: “I call symbolic poetry that kind of poetry where, in addition to specific content, there is also hidden content, connecting with it organically and intertwining with with the most delicate threads."
The task of the poet, Balmont argued, is to penetrate into the secret meaning of phenomena with the help of hints, omissions, associations, to create a special mood through the extensive use of sound writing, to recreate the flow of instant impressions and thoughts.
At the turn of the century, the themes changed and there was a search for new forms not only in literature, but also in art in general. I. Repin believed that the main principle of new poetry is “the manifestation of individual sensations of the human soul, sensations sometimes so strange, subtle and deep that only a poet dreams.”
Balmont’s next collection of poems, “Burning Buildings,” published in 1900, can serve as an excellent illustration of these words. In it, the poet reveals the souls of people of different eras and nationalities: temperamental Spaniards (“Like a Spaniard”), courageous, warlike Scythians (“Scythians”), Galician prince Dmitry the Red (“The Death of Dmitry the Red”), Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his guardsmen (“ Oprichniki"), Lermontov ("To Lermontov"), tells about the mysterious and unpredictable female soul ("Castle of Jane Valmore").
Explaining the concept of his collection, the author wrote: “This book is not in vain called the lyrics of the modern soul. Having never created in my soul an artificial love for what is now modernity and what has been repeated many times in other forms, I have never closed my ears to voices sounding from the past and the inevitable future... In this book I speak not only for myself, but and for many others."
Naturally, the central place in the gallery of images created by the poet is occupied by the image of a lyrical hero: sensitive, attentive, open to all the joys of the world, whose soul does not tolerate peace:
I want to break the azure
Calm dreams.
I want burning buildings
I want screaming storms! -
These lines from the poem “Dagger Words” determine the general tone of the collection.
Considering the indispensable quality of the human soul to be its variability and diversity (“Souls have everything”), Balmont draws diverse manifestations of human character. In his work, he paid tribute to individualism (“I hate humanity // I run away from it in a hurry // My united fatherland // My deserted soul”). However, this was nothing more than shocking and, to a certain extent, a fleeting tribute to fashion, for all of his work, with such rare exceptions, is imbued with ideas of kindness, attention to man and the world around him.
3. Balmont's poetry of the early 20th century.
In his best works, included in the collections “Let’s Be Like the Sun” (1903), “Only Love. Seven Flowers" (1903), "The Slav's Pipe" (1907), "Kissing Words" (1909), "Ash Tree" (1916), "Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon" (1917) and others. Balmont acted as an outstanding lyric poet. The diverse shades of nature recreated in his works, the ability to feel and capture “moments,” musicality and melodiousness, whimsical impressionistic sketches give his poems subtle grace and depth.
The work of the mature Balmont is imbued with and illuminated by a sublimely romantic dream of the Sun, Beauty, and the greatness of the World. He seeks to contrast the soulless civilization of the “Iron Age” with a holistic, perfect and beautiful “solar” beginning. Balmont made an attempt in his work to build a cosmogonic picture of the world, in the center of which is the supreme deity - the Sun, the source of light and joy of being. In the poem that opens the collection Let's Be Like the Sun (1903), he writes:
I came into this world to see the Sun.
And if the day goes out,
I will sing. I will sing about the Sun.
At the hour of death!
These cheerful notes color Balmont's poetry at the beginning of the 20th century. The theme of the Sun in its victory over Darkness runs through all of his work. In a notebook from 1904, the poet notes: “Fire, Earth, Water and Air are the four royal elements with which my soul invariably lives in joyful and secret contact.” Fire is Balmont's favorite element, which in his poetic consciousness is associated with the ideal of Beauty, Harmony and Creativity.
Another natural element - Water - is firmly connected with the mysterious power of love for a woman. Therefore, Balmont’s lyrical hero - “eternally young, eternally free” - is ready again and again, each time anew, to experience “her delight - rapture”, to recklessly surrender to the “intoxication of passions”. At the same time, his feeling is warmed by attention to his beloved, worship of her physical and spiritual beauty (“I will wait”, “Tenderest of all”, “In my garden”, “There is not a day that I don’t think about you”, “Separated”, “ Katerina" and others). Only in one poem - “I Want” (1902) - the poet paid tribute to eroticism.
Balmont's lyrics are hymns to the elements, earth and space, the life of nature, love and passion, a dream that carries us forward, and the creative self-affirmation of man. Generously using the colors of the impressionistic palette, he creates life-affirming, multi-colored and polyphonic poetry. It contains a feast of sensations, jubilant enjoyment of the richness of nature, a motley change of the subtlest perceptions and unstable states of mind.
The highest life value in Balmont's poetry is the moment of merging with the beauty of the world. The alternation of these beautiful moments is, according to the poet, the main content of the human personality. The lyrical hero of his poems seeks consonances, internal connections with nature, and experiences a spiritual need for unity with it:
I asked the free wind,
What should I do to be young?
The playing wind answered me:
“Be airy, like the wind, like smoke!”
When he comes into contact with the unclouded beauty of nature, the lyrical hero is overcome by a joyful, harmonious calm, and he feels the undivided fullness of life. For him, the intoxication of happiness is an introduction to eternity, for the immortality of man, the poet is convinced, lies in the immortality of an ever-living and always beautiful nature:
But, dear brother, both you and I -
We are only dreams of Beauty
Unfading flowers
Undying gardens.
This lyrical and philosophical meditation clearly reflects the meaning of the poet’s perception of the world.
He likens man to the natural elements, changeable and powerful. The state of his soul, according to Balmont, is burning, a fire of passions and feelings, quick, often almost imperceptibly replacing each other moments. Balmont's poetic world is a world of the most subtle fleeting observations, childishly fragile “feelings”. In his programmatic poem “I Know Not Wisdom...” (1902) he states:
I do not know wisdom suitable for others, I only put fleeting things into verse. In every fleeting moment I see worlds, Full of changing, rainbow-colored play.
Transience was elevated by Balmont to a philosophical principle. The fullness of human existence is revealed in every moment of his life. To be able to seize this moment, enjoy it, appreciate life - this, according to Balmont, is the meaning of human existence, the wise “covenant of existence.” The poet himself was like that. “He lived for the moment and was content with it, not embarrassed by the motley change of moments, if only to express them more fully and beautifully,” testifies Balmont’s second wife E. A. Andreeva-Balmont.
His works expressed man’s eternal aspiration for the future, the restlessness of the soul, the passionate search for truth, the craving for beauty, the “inexhaustibility of dreams”:
Moments of tender beauty
I wove a star round dance.
But the inexhaustibility of dreams
He's calling me - forward.
(“Round dance”)
4. The image of beauty in Balmont’s lyrics.
One of the central images of Balmont is the image of Beauty. He sees beauty as a goal, a symbol, and the pathos of life. His lyrical hero is directed towards her with his whole being and is confident of finding her:
We'll rush into a wonderful world
To unknown beauty.
Balmont's poeticization of the beauty and eternity of existence has a sacred character, determined by his religious consciousness, faith in the Creator, who is present in every moment, in every manifestation of living life. In the poem “Prayer,” the lyrical hero, reflecting at the hour of sunset about whose power is the development and movement of life, comes to the conclusion that the human personality is forever united with the Creator:
He who is near and far
Before Whom is your whole life,
Just like a rainbow of flow, -
Only He exists eternally - I.
Like Pushkin and Lermontov, Balmont praises the Creator for the beauty and grandeur of the universe:
I love the caverns of the mountain darkness, Where hungry eagles scream... But what is dearest to me in the world is the joy of singing your praises, Merciful God.
Glorifying the beauty and unique moments of life, the poet calls to remember and love the Creator. In the poem “The Bridge,” he argues that nature is the eternal mediator between God and man, through which the Creator reveals His greatness and love.
5. Balmont and the revolution of 1905.
The civic sentiments of the time also penetrated into Balmont's poetry. He warmly responded to the approaching revolution of 1905-1907, creating a number of popular poems: “Little Sultan” (1906), “Frankly”, “Land and Freedom”, “To the Russian Worker” (1906) and others, in which he criticizes the authorities and expresses faith in the creative forces of the Russian proletariat (“Worker, only for you, // The hope of all Russia”).
For publicly reading the poem “Little Sultan” at a charity evening, the poet was forbidden to live in capitals, capital provinces and university cities for two years, and after the defeat of the revolution, persecution by the authorities forced him to leave Russia for several years, where he returned again only after the amnesty of 1913.
6. Nature in Balmont’s lyrics.
However, social issues were not his element. Mature Balmont is primarily a singer of the human soul, love and nature. For him, nature is as rich in the shades of its states and charming with its discreet beauty as the human soul:
There is a tired tenderness in Russian nature,
The silent pain of hidden sadness,
Hopelessness of grief, voicelessness,
vastness,
Cold heights, receding distances, -
he writes in the poem “Verblessness” (1900).
The ability to vigilantly peer into the rich world of nature, to convey the diverse shades of its states and movements in close correlation with the inner world of the lyrical hero or heroine is characteristic of many of Balmont’s poems: “Birch”, “Autumn”, “Butterfly”, “Dirty”, “Seven Flowers” , “Voice of Sunset”, “Cherkeshenka”, “First Winter” and others.
In 1907, in the article “On Lyrics,” A. Blok wrote: “When you listen to Balmont, you always listen to spring.” It's right. With all the variety of themes and motives of his work, Balmont is primarily a poet of spring, the awakening of nature and the human soul, a poet of the flowering of life, uplifting spirit. These moods determined the special spirituality, impressionism, floweriness and melodiousness of his verse.
7. Features of Balmont's poetry.
The problem of artistic skill is one of the important problems of Balmont's creativity. Understanding creative talent as a gift sent from above (“among people you are the deputy of a deity”), he advocates for the writer’s increased demands on himself. For him, this is an essential condition for the “survival” of the poetic soul, the key to its creative burning and improvement of skill:
So that your dreams never fade away,
So that your soul is always alive,
Scatter gold on steel in tunes,
Pour the frozen fire into sonorous words, -
Balmont addresses his fellow writers in the poem “Sin mideo”. The poet, as a creator and singer of Beauty, should, according to Balmont, be like a luminary, “radiate the reasonable, the good, the eternal.” The work of Balmont himself is a vivid illustration of these requirements. “Poetry is internal music, externally expressed in measured speech,” Balmont believed. Assessing his own creativity, the poet, not without pride (and some narcissism), noted as one of his greatest merits his filigree work on the word and the musicality of the verse.
In the poem “I am the sophistication of Russian slow speech...” (1901) he wrote:
I am the sophistication of Russian slow speech,
Before me are other poets - forerunners,
I first discovered deviations in this speech,
Singing, angry, gentle ringing.
The musicality of Balmont's verse is given by the internal rhymes he readily uses. For example, in the poem “Fantasy” (1893), internal rhymes hold together the hemistiches and the following line:
Like living sculptures, in the sparkles of the moonlight,
The outlines of pines, spruces and birches tremble slightly.
Based on the previous hemistiches and essentially also on internal rhymes, the poem that opens the collection “In the Boundless” (1894) is built:
I dreamed of catching the passing shadows,
The fading shadows of the fading day,
I climbed the tower, and the steps trembled,
And the steps shook under my feet.
Internal rhymes were often found in Russian poetry of the first half of the 19th century. They are found in the ballads of Zhukovsky, in the poems of Pushkin and the poets of his galaxy. But by the end of the 19th century they fell out of use, and Balmont is credited with updating them.
Along with internal rhymes, Balmont widely resorted to other forms of musicality - assonance and alliteration, that is, to the consonance of vowels and consonants. This was not a discovery for Russian poetry either, but, starting with Balmont, all this came into the focus of attention. For example, the poem “Moisture” (1899) is entirely built on the internal consonance of the consonant “l”:
The oar slipped from the boat
The coolness melts gently.
"Cute! My dear!" - It’s light,
Sweet at a glance.
The magic of sounds is Balmont's element. He strove to create poetry that, without resorting to means of subject-logical influence, like music, would reveal a certain state of the soul. And he succeeded brilliantly. Annensky, Blok, Bryusov, Bely, Shmelev, Gorky more than once fell under the charm of his melodious verse, not to mention the general reading public.
Balmont's lyrics are very rich in color. “Perhaps all nature is a mosaic of flowers,” the poet argued and sought to show this in his work. His poem “Fata Morgana”, consisting of 21 poems, is a song in praise of multicolor. Each poem is dedicated to a color or combination of colors.
Many of Balmont's works are characterized by synesthesia - a fused image of color, smell and sound. The renewal of poetic speech in his work follows the path of merging verbal images with picturesque and musical ones. This is the genre specificity of his landscape lyrics, in which poetry, painting, and music come into close contact, reflecting the richness of the surrounding world and involving the reader in the color, sound and musical flow of impressions and experiences.
Balmont surprised his contemporaries with the boldness and unexpectedness of his metaphors. For him, for example, it cost nothing to say: “the aroma of the sun,” “the sound of the flute, the dawn, blue sound.” For Balmont, as for other symbolists, metaphor was the main artistic technique for transforming the phenomena of the world into a symbol. Balmont's poetic vocabulary is rich and original. He is distinguished by his sophistication and virtuosity of comparisons and especially epithets.
Balmont, who was not for nothing called the “poet of adjectives,” significantly increased the role of the epithet in Russian poetry of the early 20th century. He pumps up a multitude of definitions to the word being defined (“Over the water, over the verbless river. Verbless, voiceless, languid...”), strengthens the epithet with repetitions, internal rhyme (“If I were a ringing, brilliant, free wave...”), resorts to compound epithets (“Sadly rich colors”) and epithets-neologisms.
These features of Balmont’s poetics are also inherent in his poems for children, which made up the “Fairy Tales” cycle. They depict a living and uniquely bright world of real and fantastic creatures: the good mistress of the natural kingdom of fairies, mischievous mermaids, butterflies, wagtails, etc. The poet showed an excellent ability to penetrate into the psychology of the child reader, to freshly and colorfully show him everything that he connected by blood from birth.
Balmont's poems are bright and unique. He himself was just as bright and alive. In the memoirs of B. Zaitsev, I. Shmelev, M. Tsvetaeva, Yu. Terapiano, G. Grebenshchikov, there emerges the image of a mentally rich, sensitive, easily wounded person with amazing psychological vigilance, for whom the concepts of honor and responsibility in fulfilling his main life duty are serving art - were holy.
Balmont's role in the history of Russian poetic culture is difficult to overestimate. He was not only a virtuoso of verse (“Paganini of Russian verse” was called his contemporaries), but also a man of enormous philological culture in general, living universal knowledge.
8. Balmont as a translator.
He was one of the first among Russian poets of the early 20th century to introduce the domestic reader to many wonderful works of world poetry. Russian symbolists considered translation activity an indispensable, almost obligatory part of their own poetic creativity. People of the highest education and broad literary interests, who spoke many foreign languages, they freely navigated the development processes of contemporary European literature.
Poetic translation was a natural need for them, a primarily creative phenomenon. Merezhkovsky, Sologub, Annensky, Bely, Blok, Voloshin, Bunin and others were excellent translators. But even among them, Balmont stands out for his erudition and the scale of his poetic interests. Thanks to his translations, the Russian reader received an entire poetic library of the world. He translated widely and willingly Byron, Shelley, Wilde, Poe, Whitman, Baudelaire, Calderon, Tumanyan, Rustaveli, Bulgarian, Polish and Spanish folk tales and songs, Mayan and Aztec folklore.
Balmont traveled a lot around the world and saw a lot. He made three trips around the world, visiting the most exotic, even by today's standards, countries and seeing many corners of the earth. The poet's heart and soul were wide open to the world, its culture, and each new country left its noticeable mark on his work.
That is why Balmont told the Russian reader about many things for the first time, generously sharing his findings with him. “Balmont knew many languages besides European,” his daughter N.K. Balmont-Bruni wrote in her memoirs, “and being captivated by some work, translating it into Russian, could not be satisfied with European interlinear translations: he always enthusiastically studied something new for him tongue, trying to penetrate as deeply as possible into the secrets of its beauty.”
9. Balmont and the October Revolution.
Balmont did not accept the October Revolution, regarding it as violence against the Russian people. Here is one line from his memoirs, important for characterizing his personality: “When I, due to some false denunciation that I had praised Denikin in poetry published somewhere, was politely invited to the Cheka and, among other things, the lady investigator asked me: “Which political party do you belong to?” - I answered briefly - “Poet”.
Having suffered through the years of the civil war, he applies for a business trip abroad. In 1921, Balmont left his homeland forever. Arriving in Paris and settling with his family in a modest apartment, the poet, drowning out the acute nostalgic melancholy, works a lot and hard. But all his thoughts and works are about Russia. He dedicates all the poetry collections published abroad, “Gift to the Earth” (1921), “Mine to Her,” to this topic. Russia" (1923), "In the Spreading Distance" (1929), "Northern Lights" (1931), "The Blue Horseshoe" (1935), a book of essays "Where is my home?", which is impossible to read without deep pain.
Glory to life. There are breakthroughs of the evil one,
Long pages of blindness.
But you cannot renounce your family.
You shine for me, Russia, only you, -
he writes in the poem “Reconciliation” (1921).
10. Balmont in exile.
In the poems of his emigrant years, the poet resurrects the beauty of Russian nature (“Night Rain”, “On Sunrise”, “September”, “Taiga”), turns to the images of his family and friends dear to his heart (“Mother”, “Father”), glorifies the native word, rich and colorful Russian speech:
Language, our magnificent language.
River and steppe expanse in it,
It contains the screams of an eagle and the roar of a wolf,
The chanting, and the ringing, and the incense of pilgrimage.
It contains the cooing of a dove in the spring,
The lark takes off towards the sun - higher, higher.
Birch Grove. The light is through.
Heavenly rain spilled on the roof.
The murmur of an underground spring.
A spring ray playing on the door.
In it is the One who did not accept the swing of the sword,
And seven swords in the visionary heart...
("Russian language")
All these works could be epigraphed with the words of the poet himself: “My mourning is not meant for months, it will last for many strange years.” In 1933, in an article dedicated to I. Shmelev, he wrote: “With all our life, all our thought, all our creativity, all our memories and all our hope, we are in Russia, with Russia, wherever we are.”
An important place in Balmont’s poetic work of these years is occupied by his poems dedicated to his fellow writers - emigrant writers Kuprin, Grebenshchikov, Shmelev - whom he greatly valued and with whom he was bound by ties of close friendship. These works not only express an assessment of the writers’ creativity, but also constantly sound, varying, the main theme, sometimes obvious, sometimes deeply hidden - longing for the Motherland. Here is one of the poems about Shmelev published for the first time, to which he dedicated about 30 poetic messages, not counting poetic fragments in letters:
You filled your bins,
They contain rye, and barley, and wheat,
And the dear July darkness,
What the lightning embroiders into brocade.
You have filled your hearing spirit
Russian speech, drowsiness and mint,
You know exactly what the shepherd will say,
Joking with the little cow.
You know exactly what a blacksmith thinks,
Throwing your hammer at the anvil,
Do you know the power that thistle has?
In the garden, which has not been weeded for a long time.
You absorbed those words as a child,
What is now in the stories - like ubruses,
Bogotsvet, unfading grass,
Fresh buttercups yellow beads.
Together with the woodpecker, you are the wisdom of science
Preempted, having learned to stubbornly
Know what the right blow or sound is
They are included in the sacraments of the Temple.
And when you laugh, oh brother,
I admire your sly gaze,
After joking, you are immediately happy
Fly away for all-star glory.
And when, having exchanged longing,
We are a dream - in unforgotten places,
I'm with you - happy, different,
Where the wind in the willows remembers us.
(“Bins”)
It has already become a tradition to view Balmont’s work during his emigrant years as a gradual decline. Fortunately, this is far from the case. Such Balmont poems of recent years as “Night Rain”, “River”, “Russian Language”, “First Winter”, “Bins”, “Winter Hour”, “Let’s Fly into Summer”, “Poems about Russia” and many others can be found with there is every reason to call them masterpieces - they are so lyrical, musical, deep and perfect in content and artistic form.
These and other works of the late Balmont reveal to us new facets of his poetic talent. Many of them organically combine lyricism and epic, associated with the depiction of the everyday life of old Russia.
The poet often introduces dialogue into his works, draws characteristic signs of everyday life, lively colloquial folk speech, replete with dialectisms, with its phraseological units, lexical “flaws” that convey the character, level of culture, mood of the speaker (“Poems about Russia”, etc.).
For the first time in his work, Balmont also appears as a tragic poet. His hero does not want to resign himself to the fate of an exile living “among soulless ghosts,” but speaks about his mental pain with restraint and at the same time confidentially, hoping for mutual understanding:
Who will shake the curtain of thunder,
When he comes, he will open my eyes.
I didn't die. No. I'm alive. I miss you,
Listening to the thunderstorm...
("Who?")
11. Prose of Balmont.
K. Balmont is the author of several prose books. In his prose, as in his poetry, Balmont is primarily a lyricist. He worked in various prose genres - he wrote dozens of stories, the novel “Under the New Sickle”, acted as a critic, publicist, memoirist, but most fully expressed himself in the essay genre, which Balmont mastered even before the revolution.
During this period, 6 collections of his essays were published. The first of them, “Mountain Peaks” (1904), attracted perhaps the greatest attention from critics. A. Blok spoke of this book as “a series of bright, varied pictures, intertwined by the power of a very complete worldview.” “Mountain Peaks” is not only an essay about Calderon, Hamlet, Blake, but also a noticeable step on the path of self-knowledge of Russian symbolism.
As a continuation of “Mountain Peaks”, “White Lightnings”, published four years later, are perceived - essays about the “versatile and greedy soul of Goethe”, about the “singer of personality and life” Walt Whitman, about O. Wilde “in love with pleasure and fading in sorrow”, about the poetics of folk beliefs.
A year later, “Sea Glow” was written - a book of reflections and impressionistic sketches - “singing fictions” that arose as instant subjective responses to events in literature and life. Particular attention is paid here to Slavic culture, a topic to which Balmont would return in the 20-30s.
The next book is “Snake Flowers” (1910) - essays on the culture of ancient America, travel letters, translations. This was followed by a book of essays “The Edge of Osiris”, and a year later (1916) - “Poetry as Magic” - a small book about the meaning and image of verse, an excellent commentary on the poetic work of Balmont himself.
In France, Balmont also published the book “Air Route”, collecting stories previously published in periodicals, and adding to them several things written in exile. The second emigrant collection, “The Rustle of Terror,” was never published. “Airway” has a strong visual side, especially in episodes where experiences are difficult to express verbally. This is the description of the mysterious “music of the spheres” heard by the hero of “The Moonlight Guest”.
Balmont's prose is not psychological, but he finds his own lyrical way of conveying refined spiritual experience. All the stories in "Air Route" are autobiographical. Such is the book “Under the New Sickle” - the only novel in Balmont’s work. The narrative element in it is subordinated to the visual, but the novel is interesting with pictures of old Russia, provincial courtyard life, animated by lyrical intonations and a description of the fate of a boy “with a quiet disposition and a contemplative mind, colored by artistry.
As in the pre-revolutionary period, in emigration the main genre of Balmont the prose writer remained the essay. But now the subject matter of Balmont the essayist is fundamentally changing: he writes about literature, but more about his everyday life, which is given significance by some ordinary incident, a flashing memory. Snow in Paris, the memory of a cold and hungry winter in the Moscow region in 1919, the anniversary of separation from Moscow, a comparison of a thunderstorm with a revolution - all of this becomes the topic of the essay. Written in 1920-1923, they were collected by Balmont in the book “Where is my home?”, which he later called “essays about enslaved Russia.”
The last book of prose published during Balmont’s lifetime was “The Complicity of Souls” (Sofia, 1930). It combines 18 short lyrical essays on the topic of modern and folk poetry of the Slavs and Lithuania. The book includes Balmont's translations of poetry and prose from Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Serbian and other languages. Some of the essays are among the best in the legacy of Balmont the essayist.
12. The last years of Balmont’s life.
In 1927, the poet moved from “His Gasoline Majesty the city of Paris” to the small village of Capbreton on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Lives hard, always in need.
But still, despite all the increasingly frequent attacks of depression, he writes and translates a lot. Balmont constantly speaks about his longing for his homeland, about his desire to at least glance at it again: in poetry, during meetings with I. Shmelev, who came to Capbreton every summer to work, in letters. “I always want to go to Moscow. I think about the great joy of hearing the Russian language that I am Russian, and not a citizen of the Universe, and least of all a citizen of old, boring, gray Europe,” he admits to E. Andreeva-Balmont
Balmont called his last book of poetry “Light Service” (1937). In it, he seems to sum up the passionate worship of the Sun, Love, Beauty, “Poetry as magic.”
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