The creative legacy of Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) includes a large corpus of original and translated poetic works, journalism, philosophical essays, literary and antiquarian monographs. Ivanov created an original version of Russian Symbolism, which combined two general trends of the Silver Age: first, to return Russian culture to the spiritual foundations of Christianity; second, to reinterpret and recreate the artistic archetypes of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. In 1900-1920 V. Ivanov actively preached the "choral" beginning of culture. He set the task of overcoming individualism through myth-creative willful art to "sobornost" — to the over-individual religious community of people. These tendencies intensified during World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. At the same time, Ivanov was engaged in educational activities, expressed in particular in translations of the tragedies of Aeschylus, the poetry of Dante, Petrarch and Michelangelo. His antiquarian works, devoted mainly to the cult of Dionysus, are closely connected with his spiritual and literary quest.

After his emigration to Italy, Ivanov took a marginal position in European thought, minimizing his communication with Russian emigrants. In 1926, he joined the Catholic Church, without breaking with Orthodoxy, and tried to convey the meaning of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's works to a Western audience. Towards the end of his life, Ivanov wrote the epic "The Story of Svetomir the Tsarevich", which was to summarize his entire work and reflect the complexity of the spiritual life of man as God's creation and the coming resurrection of Russia, "which has gone to the rest of the Lord".

The archival heritage of Vyacheslav Ivanov has been preserved in its entirety, but is concentrated in several research centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rome. The Vyacheslav Ivanov Research Center, which has digitized 95% of all the materials preserved in his apartment museum, is located in the Italian capital. In 1971-1987, thanks to the efforts of his heirs: his son Dmitry Vyacheslavovich (1912-2003) and the poet's last companion Olga Alexandrovna Shor (1894-1978): four volumes of his collected works were published. The publication of Ivanov's extensive correspondence and other materials left by him continues.

Ivanov as a symbolist poet

"Lodestars"

Ivanov's first collection of poems, "Lodestars", was long in preparation: it contained sketches and texts written before leaving for Germany and then in Berlin. The collection, "blessed" by V. S. Solovyov, was dedicated to the memory of Ivanov's mother, who had prophesied a poetic path for him. The book was published by the Suvorin's printing house in 1902, although the title page on the majority of copies is dated 1903. In literary studies, this book is placed on the same level as "Gold in Azure" by Andrei Bely and "Verses on the Beautiful Lady" by A. Blok — it was a transition to the aesthetic contemplation of the highest sphere of the spirit in Russian poetry. The poetic intentions in this book go back to the European quests of the scientist Ivanov, but his own theoretical insights are presented as deeply intimate inner experiences, in which mind and sensual flash are indistinguishable. This is where the fusion of the "native" and the "universal" comes into play. Ivanov lamented the inadequate reception of his first book, the accusations of "bookishness", "deadness", and the difficulties of language. In fact, broadening the range of lyrical experience required new means of poetic expression - a symbolic language capable of conveying religious and aesthetic universals. Ivanov immediately declared: "Poetic language must be distinguished from everyday language and approach the language of the gods - the primordial Logos. As a result, the main images-symbols of "Lodestars" are taken from the cultural baggage of "departed cultures": ancient, medieval and renaissance, while the syntax and lexicon were strongly influenced by the 18th century, and especially by Trediakovsky[2].

The German-American researcher Michael Wachtel separately raised the question of when and why Ivanov became a "symbolist"[3]. From the point of view of literary criticism, Ivanov belonged to the "young symbolists" (he was seven years older than Bryusov — the head of the Symbolist movement in Russia), but in the correspondence of Vyacheslav Ivanovich and Lydia Dmitrievna Zinovieva-Annibal this word is almost never found. From this M. Vachtel concluded that the author of "Lodestars" did not consider himself a "Symbolist" and became a Russian Symbolist when he fully defined the meaning of this concept for himself. "Lodestars" (1902-1903) and "Transparency" (1904) — Ivanov's first collections of poems - were created and prepared for publication outside any literary environment against the background of a wandering life[4][5]. At the same time, the first thinker who pointed out the closeness of Ivanov's poetry to Symbolist movement was its implacable enemy — V. S. Solovyov, who read one of his parodies of Brusov in his presence. Ivanov himself, with undoubted respect for Valery Bryusov, who introduced him to the world of Russian literature and began to print, was rather skeptical of his ideals of the innovator. Ivanov respected Brusov as an enterprising cultural figure. Ivanov also rarely used the term "decadence", and always in the sense of a negative phenomenon. The discrepancy between Ivanov and Brusov in their views on symbolism and art in general was important for the development of Russian culture in the early XX century as a whole. For example, neither Ivanov nor Zinovieva-Annibal were interested in the "new" for the sake of novelty alone. In 1902, when Vyacheslav Ivanovich was introduced to the work of Verlaine, Lydia Dmitrievna emphasized that they were "beautiful poems"; on the same basis Ivanov then praised Minsky and Balmont: he liked them for themselves, not for their "novelty". In creativity, the 30-year-old Ivanov saw (as he did much later, as an 80-year-old emigrant in Rome) the expression of universal truths rather than self-expression[6].

"Cor ardens"

Myth and music. Melopeia "The Man"

Winter Sonnets

"Roman Sonnets"

Ivanov's symbolic aesthetics

Notes

References