4. Innokenty Annensky
Annensky is still read
Today we will talk about Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky, a symbolist poet who, along with Blok, remains, perhaps, the most read author now and today, in demand by today’s reader. Everyone recognizes the historical merits of the poems of Bryusov or Balmont, but they don’t have very many readers today, but Annensky is still read.
Comparison with Blok
In this case, it is convenient to compare with Annensky Blok according to the principle of contrast. We talked about the fact that for Blok the most important idea is the idea of the path, and, accordingly, his trilogy is three-volume and his books are compiled according to a chronological principle. Annensky composed his books completely differently, and we will talk about this today, it is very important for understanding him. Blok was extremely popular during his lifetime. As you know, his photographs were sold in bookstores as postcards.
Nobody knew Annensky. You can even test yourself now: imagine Annensky’s appearance - I’m not sure you can do it easily. However, I repeat once again, Annensky’s popularity is not comparable to Blok’s popularity, but it may approach it and, moreover, Annensky greatly influenced, perhaps even more than Blok, on the subsequent generation of poets. This is one of his important roles. It was what he did in poetry that turned out to be very important for the next generation.
Akhmatova about Annensky
Anna Akhmatova, a tireless promoter of Annensky’s work, wrote about him this way: “While Balmont and Bryusov themselves completed what they had started (although they continued to confuse provincial graphomaniacs for a long time), Annensky’s work revived with terrible force in the next generation. And, if he had not died so early, he could have seen his downpours lashing on the pages of B. Pasternak’s books, his semi-abstruse “Grandfather Lida got along…” from Khlebnikov, his raeshnik (“Balls”) from Mayakovsky, etc. I don't mean to say that everyone imitated him. But he walked along so many roads at the same time! He carried so much new in himself that all innovators turned out to be akin to him... Boris Leonidovich Pasternak<…>categorically asserted that Annensky played a big role in his work... I spoke with Osip (Akhmatova means Mandelstam, of course) about Annensky several times. And he spoke about Annensky with unfailing reverence. Whether Marina Tsvetaeva knew Annensky, I don’t know. Love and admiration for the Teacher both in Gumilev’s poetry and prose.”
Akhmatova names the names of the main post-symbolist poets, both Acmeist poets or those close to Acmeism: Mandelstam, her own, Gumilyov, and futurists: Khlebnikov, Pasternak and Mayakovsky.
She, who was jealous of Tsvetaeva, accordingly, says that Tsvetaeva may not have read Annensky, but we will still try to see that, in fact, Tsvetaeva read Annensky very carefully.
Accordingly, you and I will try to understand what was unique about Annensky’s poetry. What was in him that in his poetic manner predicted the manner of the Symbolist poets.
Biography
First, let's talk very briefly about his biography. He is older than many of the older Symbolists. He was born in 1855, in Siberia. He spent his childhood in a populist family.
His brother, Nikolai Fedorovich Annensky, was a very famous populist figure. Accordingly, on the one hand, Annensky took from him an interest in these topics, and, say, one of Annensky’s most famous poems “Old Estonian Women” can, among other things, be perceived as a social poem. On the other hand, he, as often happens with younger brothers, was repelled by what his older brother imposed on him, and his social poems are important, but they are isolated.
Initially, the main areas of his activity were two: he was a famous teacher and reached quite great heights in this field, in particular, in 1895 - 1906 he was the director of the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, the same gymnasium where Gumilyov studied, and Akhmatov, when she speaks of Annensky as Gumilyov’s teacher; she means, of course, poetry, but she is also the most literal teacher.
Gumilyov has a wonderful poem in memory of Annensky, where he remembers how he comes to Annensky’s office. In this very office he sees a bust of Euripides. And this is also not accidental, since Annensky was one of the most famous translators of ancient authors, and his main feat was the translation of the entire Euripides. Until now, we read Euripides mainly in the translations of Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky.
He began writing poetry quite early, but at the same time they were not published. He published his first book of independent poems shortly before his death. It was called in a characteristic way - “Quiet Songs”. It was issued in 1904 and was signed by a pseudonym, a somewhat pretentious pseudonym. He signed it Nick. That.– Nikolai Timoshenko, let’s assume.
This pseudonym seemed funny and pretentious to reviewers, among whom were Blok and Bryusov. It is characteristic that they wrote about Annensky (they did not know who the author of this book was) as about a talented aspiring poet, clapped him on the shoulder, meanwhile, Annensky was older than both.
It must be said right away, this will be important in the future, that, on the one hand, this pseudonym seems self-deprecating - Nobody - on the other hand, the “antique” Annensky, of course, remembered that Nobody - that’s what Ulysses calls himself, that’s what Odysseus calls himself in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus. Accordingly, it was humiliation rather than pride. On the one hand, I am a nobody, you don’t know me and are unlikely to recognize me, on the other hand, Odysseus, as we know, is one of the main Greek heroes.
I have already said that Annensky was the director of the gymnasium until 1906. Why did he stop being one? Because he was sympathetic to those students who took part in the revolution of 1905 (here perhaps his populist roots are again reflected). Then he will have all sorts of troubles, and he will cease to be the director of the gymnasium.
And he was brought into the wide world, into the white literary light of St. Petersburg, partly with the participation of Gumilyov in 1909, when the Apollo magazine was created, which opposed symbolist publications, which opposed itself to symbolist publications, and one of the important people in it who determined policy This magazine became Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov. Gumilev invited Annensky to participate in Apollo. Annensky published a large article there and published several of his poems. It seemed that a new period of his creativity was beginning. He was recognized, he argued, polemicized with the main theorists of symbolism, with such, for example, as Vyacheslav Ivanov.
But, suddenly, Annensky died, a symbolic death, so to speak, on the steps of the station, waiting for the train that was traveling to Tsarskoe Selo. For some time the body could not be identified; it did not have any documents. Why did I say that this death is symbolic? Because tragedy, the meaninglessness of life, the complexity of life, the incomprehensibility of life - this is perhaps Annensky’s main theme.
Formula of creativity
If you try, as we are doing and will continue to do, to look for some short formula in order to define Annensky’s poetry, then I would propose a formula - the poetry of painful couplings. Like few poets of his generation, he felt that all the objects around us, all phenomena, were connected by some incomprehensible ominous connection. The theme of couplings, the image of a web and other similar motifs arise all the time. It is unclear who organized this connection, who arranged human life this way. A person or an object, because objects in Annensky’s poems play the same role as people, can only flounder in this web, in the chain of these connections.
The second book, the main book of Innokenty Annensky, published posthumously, was called “The Cypress Casket.” It was published in 1910, almost a year after his death. His son prepared it. It seems to represent a model of Annensky’s worldview.
A book of poems as a special category of modernist poetry
It must be said that such a category as a book of poetry was very important for modernists. Baratynsky, one of the main predecessors of the Symbolists, was one of the first to compose his book in such a way that it represented a complex unity; it was called “Twilight.”
Next, Bryusov and his colleagues introduced into the consciousness of the Russian reader the idea of the book as the main genre, a super-genre of Russian poetry, so important that a book of poems in this era becomes a more significant genre than a poem, not to mention a novel in verse. The reputations of poets, in many ways, were questioned or strengthened after the release of another poetry book. Symbolists looked at the book as a model of the world.
"Cypress Casket"
Annensky arranged his book “The Cypress Casket” in a complex way. Its name is enigmatic and mysterious. This is a name with the key dropped. Its meaning can be fully understood by those who know (this is again a subject name) - Annensky kept his manuscripts and his poems in a cypress casket. Let us remember that in the ancient tradition the cypress is the tree of death, so the ominous shade is also important here. The book is organized as follows. It consists of three sections:
- "Shamrocks". The poems are grouped under general titles in groups of three, like leaves in a trefoil.
- “Fold it.” Poems are grouped in twos.
- "Scattered sheets." Annensky combined his most diverse poems into this section.
Each motif, each word existed in some context of the poem and existed in some context of the “shamrock” or “folding”. In addition, the “shamrocks” were also connected by motifs. This section itself, in turn, was connected by motivic echoes with the section “Folding” or with the section “Scattered sheets”. If we try to draw these connections, we will see that the book is an endless interweaving of various motifs. This reflected Annensky’s worldview and attitude.
The poems were divided into “trefoils”, “foldings” or were included in the “Scattered sheets” section, not chronologically. Unlike Blok, Annensky did not arrange his poems chronologically. The idea of his poetic path was not important to him. It was important to show how thematically complex his texts are intertwined. This became very important for subsequent poets.
No one else composed his books as revolutionary as Annensky, but the whimsical arrangement of books is also characteristic of the younger generation. In addition, the role that Annensky plays with objects, things, in many ways predicted the searches of younger poets: Acmeists, for whom the thing and the subject were very important. Or Pasternak, whose world is full of objects and things. This, in many ways, came from Annensky.
Psychologism and the influence of French symbolists
Another important property of Annensky’s poetics was psychologism. It should be noted here that Annensky almost never called himself a symbolist. If he was oriented towards the Symbolists, then it was not the Russian, but the French Symbolists. When we talk about older Symbolists, we, of course, remember Western Symbolists. When we talked about Bryusov, we remembered Verlaine and Baudelaire. When we talk about Annensky, we need to remember one of the most enigmatic and mysterious symbolists - Mallarm. It is his poetic systems, it is his mystery and his psychologism, manifested through objects, that turn out to be essential for Annensky, who translated him.
Poem “Black Spring” (“Melts”)
Let's try to move on to the analysis of a specific poem, to the analysis of a specific text. This will be the poem “Black Spring” (“Melts”). Dated March 29, 1906, Totma (this is a small town near Vologda), where Annensky was sent with an inspection after he ceased to be the director of the gymnasium. This poem was included in the “spring trefoil”, that is, there were three poems, the first of which was “Black Spring”. First, let's remember the text:
Black Spring (Melts)
Under the rumble of copper - a grave-like transference was taking place, And, terribly raised, the wax nose looked out from the coffin.
Did he want to breathe there, into his empty chest?.. The last snow was dark white, And the loose path was hard,
And only the drizzle, cloudy, poured down on the decay, and the dull black spring looked into the jelly of the eyes -
From shabby roofs, from brown holes, from green faces. And there, across the dead fields, From the swollen wings of birds...
O people! Life's trail is heavy along potholed paths, But there is nothing sadder, Like the meeting of two deaths.
Analysis of the poem “Black Spring” (“Melts”)
The theme of this poem can be perfectly formulated with a quote from Annensky himself, which Lidia Yakovlevna Ginzburg (another wonderful philologist) remembered when she wrote about Annensky.
Annensky, however, says this not about himself, but about Konstantin Balmont, and he says this: “I am among nature, mystically close to him and somehow painfully and aimlessly linked to his existence.” This is how Annensky defines Balmont’s poetic world, but this applies more to his own world.
In the poem that we just read and began to analyze, this is precisely what is described I among nature, painfully linked with it. Annensky's demise of a person rhymes with the demise of winter. Individual death is projected into the objective environment, it “spreads”, “dissolves” in the death of winter, in the death of nature.
The striking similarity of the poem with Annensky’s formula, which he applied to Balmont’s work, clearly indicates the semantic complex of motives that this poem carefully avoids. Let me remind you that in the quote - “I am among nature, mystically close to him and somehow painfully and aimlessly linked to his existence” - this is very important for the quote. However, in his poem Annensky consciously does not say a word about this someone, about God.
At the same time, his poem begins promisingly, with the lines: “Under the rumble of grave-like brass // The transfer was taking place...” - we are, of course, talking about church bells. In Totma, indeed, there were a lot of churches. It would seem that from this we should move on to a conversation about the place of God in this meeting of man and nature, a dead man and a dying winter. Moreover, March 29 (the poem dates from this day) is a day falling during Lent, and the reader of Annensky should remember this. The Jewish Passover also fell on March 29, but this was not very important; Annensky might not have known about it.
Poem "Palm Week"
A year after the “Black Spring,” on April 14, 1907, Annensky will write a poem called “Palm Week.” Already from its name it is clear that it will be associated with the theme of Lent. This poem will briefly mention one of the brightest events of Great Lent - how Christ raised Lazarus. We remember that this motif was used many times in literature.
We remember that in Crime and Punishment one of the main scenes is Sonya reading a fragment about the resurrection of Lazarus to Raskolnikov. And Annensky also wrote about this poem. Let's see what kind of poem this is and how he describes this event:
Palm Week
In the yellow twilight of dead April, Saying goodbye to the starry desert, Palm Week sailed away On the last, on a dead snow floe;
She floated away in fragrant smoke, in the fading of funeral bells, from icons with deep eyes, and from Lazaruses, forgotten in a black pit.
The white moon became high on the decline, And for all whose lives are irrevocable, Hot tears floated down the willow tree On the rosy cheeks of the cherub.
Comparison of the poems “Palm Week” and “Black Spring”
We see that the key motifs of this poem resonate so clearly and so clearly that these poems could be called, as Mandelstam later said, “double poems.” Both that poem and this one depict the death of winter. In both this and this, it is represented, as usual in Annensky, by an objective motif. In this poem: “On the last, on the dead snow floe.” Again, this death is accompanied by funeral church bells: “In the fading of the funeral bells.” In the previous poem: “Under the rumble of copper - a grave.” Once again, this death is linked with the death of a person, only now it is not anonymous and someone unknown, as in that poem, but Lazarus, “forgotten in a black pit” (in the previous poem there is also a pit motif: “from brown pits”). And the life of this Lazarus turns out to be irreversible.
That is, reading the poem “Palm Week”, we can assume why religious motives were removed and eliminated from the poem “Black Spring”. If Lazarus was not resurrected, then the connection between man and nature turns out to be truly pointless. Consequently, even at the meeting of two deaths, even if it took place during Lent, this someone, God, is superfluous.
“It is not the resurrection, but the decayed corpse of Lazarus that Annensky sees in the faces of spring” - this is a quote, as Maximilian Voloshin, already mentioned by us, wrote about the poem “Palm Week”. However, Annensky does not treat the resurrection too favorably in his poems. Let us recall that already in the article “Balmont the Lyricist” cited above, it is said with bitterness: “I am in a nightmare of returns” - that is, constant returns of the Self, constant returns of the Self.
And one of the most famous poems, “That Was on Wallen-Koski,” talks about the “resurrection” of a doll, which, for entertainment, for the amusement of tourists, is methodically caught from a waterfall and then thrown into it again: “Her salvation is invariable for new and new torments."
The cycle of endless dying in “Spring Trefoil”
Now is the time to pay attention to the unemphasized, but very significant difference between the death of winter and the death of man, depicted in the “spring trefoil”. The first poem that we have just analyzed, “Black Spring,” describes the death of a person and the death of winter, and then, in the poem “Ghosts,” the death of spring is described:
The green ghost of the lilac bush clung to the window... Go away, shadows, leave the shadows, alone with me... She is motionless, she is mute, With traces of tears, With two tassels of May lilacs In the twists of her braids...
These May braids show that spring is dying, and then summer will die, and then autumn, and then winter again. A tragic ring, a cycle of endless dying - this is how Annensky describes the change of seasons.
The dead man's straight path
As for the life and posthumous path of a person, it, at least in “Black Spring,” is described not as cyclical, but as linear. Apparently, this was very important for Annensky, because in the first four stanzas of his poem and up to the final maxim, the final fifth stanza, the direct, not cyclical, but direct path of the deceased from the steps of the church to the cemetery is reproduced by various means.
The theme of linear movement began already in the second line of “Black Spring”, it began with the word “transfer”: “Under the rumble of copper - a grave transfer was happening.” The theme of transfer is syntactically supported in the poem by enjambment: “under the rumble of copper - grave” - this is in one line, and “transfer” is the beginning of the next line. And then, from stanza to stanza, Annensky also moves with the help of transference-riddles.
Why is the nose emphasized in the appearance of a deceased person? - This is the riddle of the last line of the first stanza. Because it is naturally associated with the terrible theme of breathing, which an already dead person lacks - this is how the first two lines of the second stanza answer. Transition - a question at the end of one stanza, an answer at the beginning of another stanza.
Why does the third line of the second stanza mention snow, which was dark white? Then,” answers the second line of the third stanza, “that this prepares the image of the meeting between the decay of man and the decay of winter, embodied precisely in the line about the last dark-white snow. Dark white snow around and the decay of a person rhymes, aligns itself in this way.
And finally, at the junction of the third and fourth stanzas, the transference technique is simply laid bare. Where did the black spring look into the jelly eyes of the dead man? – The reader asks himself in the final two lines of the third stanza. From everywhere! – The entire fourth stanza answers, or more precisely:
From shabby roofs, from brown holes, from green faces. And there, across the dead fields, From the swollen wings of birds...
This transfer technique, or one can call it the “pickup” technique, allows the reader to almost visually observe the direct and steady movement of a person and a person’s body towards the cemetery along a predetermined path laid more than once. This is where “along the rutted paths” comes from. More than once a person moves along it, but every person moves along this path, and even the wheels have made potholes in it. At one point on this path, a person who dies once meets the season of the year that endlessly dies and is resurrected for new and new torment.
Annensky’s “Mentatory Keyboard”: F.I. Tyutchev
A careful reading of this poem allows us not only to talk about the basic principles of Annensky’s poetics, about how Annensky sees the world around him, but also to briefly go through, as Mandelstam said, Annensky’s “reference keyboard,” that is, to talk about those main Russian writers and poets who which were significant for Annensky.
The first of the names that we remember is the name of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev. Annensky uses a stable topos in his poem, an ancient topos: spring is the time of dawn, winter is the time of death, but it seems that any high school student at that time, any schoolchild in our time, cannot help but remember Tyutchev’s famous poem of 1836:
It’s not for nothing that winter is angry, its time has passed - Spring is knocking on the window and driving you out of the yard.
And everything began to fuss, Everything forced Winter out - And the larks in the sky Already started ringing the bell.
Winter is still busy and grumbling about Spring. She laughs in her eyes and only makes more noise...
The evil witch went berserk and, grabbing the snow, let it run away into a beautiful child...
Spring and grief are not enough: I washed myself in the snow And only became blush In defiance of the enemy.
We see how Annensky changes one pole to another. If Tyutchev has a blush, then Annensky has green faces, from which spring looks into the eyes of the dead.
If Tyutchev has larks in the sky, Annensky has birds with swollen wings, either crows or rooks in dead fields. In this case, an association arises with the cemetery and the scavenger birds that feed on it.
The main difference between the two poems is this: in Tyutchev’s, winter ends badly, but it still runs away, in Annensky’s, winter dies.
Another Tyutchev text that comes to mind when reading Annensky’s “Black Spring” is the poet’s poem, the first stanza of which depicts the lowering of a dead man’s body into a grave:
And the coffin has already been lowered into the grave, And everyone has crowded around... They jostle, breathe through force, A corruptive spirit constricts their chest...
We see the word “pernicious”, which is very important for Annensky’s poem. It will arise again in the final stanza of Tyutchev’s poem, it will appear in a completely different sense than in Annensky. In Annensky, human life and the life of nature are connected, and the death of man and the death of nature are united.
Tyutchev, in the finale of his poem, quite traditionally contrasts the momentary rapid existence of man with the eternal existence of nature:
And the sky is so imperishable and pure, So boundless above the earth... And the birds soar loudly In the blue abyss of air...
Let us pay attention - there are birds again, but not like Annensky’s, below, in the fields, but in the sky.
Annensky’s “Mentatory Keyboard”: N.V. Gogol
Another great Russian writer of the 19th century, whom you probably already remembered when I read the poem “Black Spring,” is Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, whose story “The Nose” was analyzed in detail by Annensky in the article opening Annensky’s “Book of Reflections.”
At the beginning of his article, Annensky names the exact date when Major Kovalev’s nose ran away from his face, this is March 25, that is, four days before March 29, which is the date of Annensky’s poem. Perhaps the proximity of these two dates provokes the poet to revive and animate the nose of the deceased in his poem. First this nose looks out of the coffin, then it wants to breathe into the empty chest of the deceased.
Perhaps in such an extravagant way, Annensky reminded the reader of the famous legend that accompanied Gogol, that Gogol was buried alive, in a lethargic sleep. The nose is not mentioned here by chance, perhaps because the metonymy of Gogol’s appearance is precisely the nose. Why did Annensky need Gogol’s motifs in the poem “Black Spring”? Annensky himself answers this question when he writes about Gogol. He says that Gogol is characterized by “the cruel humor of his creation, which is no longer accessible to us.” He speaks of Gogol’s “cruel humor of creation,” meaning, of course, “Portrait,” “The Nose,” and “Dead Souls.”
This is also typical for Annensky himself. Of course, we will never call the poem “Black Spring” a funny poem. We don't laugh when we read it. But Annensky’s grotesque: “And, terribly raised, the waxen nose looked out from the coffin” is balancing on the verge of the tragic and the comic, balancing on the verge of the terrible and the comic, and that is why he perhaps needed Gogol.
Annensky’s “Mentatory Keyboard”: L.N. Tolstoy and N.A. Nekrasov
There are two more names that we must definitely mention in connection with this poem. One of them is the name of the author of perhaps the most terrible story about the death of a person, at least written in the 19th century, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
In his story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” the deceased main character is described as follows: “The dead man lay, as dead men always lie,<…>and exhibited, as the dead always exhibit, his yellow waxen forehead<…>and a protruding nose, as if pressing on the upper lip.” Note that Annensky wrote about Tolstoy as about Gogol “from whom the romance was burned out.”
Another name that needs to be mentioned is the name of Nikolai Nekrasov, in the thirteenth chapter of whose poem (the textbook famous poem “Frost, Red Nose”) motifs arise that echo the key motifs of our poem. These are two funeral blows, and Daria’s pale face, and a mention of the dark days awaiting her.
When we talk about Tolstoy and Nekrasov, we must remember that perhaps here we are not talking about borrowings, but about a commonality of motives that arises from a commonality of situations. Both Nekrasov, Tolstoy, and Annensky describe death and funerals.
Roll call with post-symbolists: B.L. Parsnip
Now about the roll call with post-symbolists. What we talked about at the beginning of the lecture. I hope that someone has already remembered the first poem that will be discussed now, because this is the famous programmatic poem by Boris Pasternak “February. Get some ink and cry!”, in which there are many similarities with Annensky’s poem: fields, path, birds. Finally, the title of Annensky’s poem, “Black Spring,” is found in Pasternak’s poem: “While the thundering slush burns in the black spring” is an almost direct quotation.
It is important that Pasternak polemicizes with Annensky. On the one hand, he continues it, on the other hand, he polemicizes with it, because the topos that Annensky destroys: spring is the time of ecstatic joy, spring is the time of birth, Pasternak again restores his rights.
But at the same time, he also takes into account the tragic turn of the topic, which is proposed in “Black Spring”. Let us show this using the example of only one motive. Tyutchev: “larks in the sky”, the larks took off. From Annensky: “And there, across the dead fields, from the swollen wings of birds...”, that is, the birds below. What does Pasternak have? In Pasternak, the rooks simultaneously fly up and, at the same time, reflected in the puddles, end up below:
Where, like charred pears, thousands of rooks will fall from the trees into puddles and bring down dry sadness to the bottom of your eyes.
This is an important motif, an important symbol, because birds mean joy or tragedy. In Annensky they are at the bottom, in Tyutchev they are at the top, in Pasternak they bifurcate.
In the same way, Pasternak, as he often does, has the tears with which his lyrical hero cries: “To write sobbingly about February” - the reader still does not fully understand whether these are tears of joy or tears of grief. He deliberately chooses an image of tears that works both ways.
Roll call with post-symbolists: M.I. Tsvetaeva
Another poem, apparently accidentally echoing Pasternak’s “February”, where the rhyme “spring - winter” and “tears - wheels” is also found, as in Pasternak, and, it seems, goes back to “Black Spring” and “Palm Week” Annensky, this poem “The Ice Rink Has Melted” by Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva.
I began the lecture with a quote from Akhmatova, who jealously writes that Tsvetaeva may not have read Annensky. Now we will make sure that, most likely, she read it. Here is the text of this poem with an epigraph:
The skating rink has melted... Not a delight Behind the winter silence is the sound of wheels. The soul does not need the spring, And I feel sorry for the winter to the point of tears. In winter, the sadness was one... Suddenly a new image will arise... Whose? The human soul is the same ice floe And it also melts from the rays. Let there be a hillock in the yellow buttercups! Let the snowflake sweep away the petal! - Strangely dear to the capricious soul Like a melted skating rink in a dream...
We see that Tsvetaeva writes on the same topic as Annensky: winter is dying, winter is leaving, we feel sorry for it, and there is no need for spring, “the soul does not need spring and feels sorry for winter to the point of tears,” she writes.
However, Tsvetaeva, she is already solving her own problems, which we will definitely talk about in our lectures; the early Tsvetaeva presents Annensky’s theme in a childish, infantile, almost “lisp” key. It is difficult for us to cry, we do not need to cry when we read this poem, because the tragedy is removed by the fact that it is a child looking at it.
Therefore, the poem begins with an epigraph from a private letter. Therefore, at the end of the poem there appears, almost impossible for a great poet: “Let there be a hillock in the yellow buttercups!” And then even stronger, as if sentimental, taken from a children's book of that time: “Let the snowflake sweep away the petal!” And we already cease to be frightened as we were frightened in Annensky’s poem when we read it.
Note that the very abundance of objects in this poem, the very fact that Tsvetaeva solves this theme, relying precisely on objective motifs, using so densely objective motifs: yellow buttercups, a hillock, a snowflake, a petal, and, finally, the central image of the skating rink itself in in this poem, also an objective motif, seems to indicate that both Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva and other Russian symbolists read Annensky very, very carefully.
Akhmatova A., Rosary: Anno Domini; A poem without a hero. – Publisher: OLMA Media Group.
Wallen-Koski (Vallinkoski, Finnish Vallinkoski) is a waterfall on the Vuokse River in Finland.
Franz. enjambement, from enjamber - to step over, jump over.
The fate of the poet Inokenty Fedorovich Annensky (1855-1909) is unique in its kind. He published his first poetry collection (and only one during his lifetime) at the age of 49 under the pseudonym Nick. That.
The poet was initially going to title the book “From the Cave of Polyphemus” and choose the pseudonym Utis, which means “nobody” in Greek (this is how Odysseus introduced himself to the Cyclops Polyphemus). Later the collection was called "Quiet Songs". Alexander Blok, who did not know who the author of the book was, considered such anonymity questionable. He wrote that the poet seemed to be burying his face under a mask, which made him get lost among many books. Perhaps, in this modest confusion we should look for an overly “painful tear”?
Origin of the poet, early years
The future poet was born in Omsk. His parents (see photo below) soon moved to St. Petersburg. Innokenty Annensky reported in his autobiography that he spent his childhood in an environment in which landowner and bureaucratic elements were combined. From a young age, he loved to study literature and history, and felt antipathy to everything banal, clear and elementary.
First poems
Innokenty Annensky began writing poetry quite early. Since the concept of "symbolism" was still unknown to him in the 1870s, he considered himself a mystic. Annensky was attracted to the “religious genre” of B. E. Murillo, a 17th-century Spanish artist. He tried to “formulate this genre in words.”
The young poet, following the advice of his older brother, who was a famous publicist and economist (N.F. Annensky), decided that he should not publish before the age of 30. Therefore, his poetic experiments were not intended for publication. Innokenty Annensky wrote poems in order to hone his skills and declare himself as a mature poet.
University studies
The study of antiquity and ancient languages during university years replaced writing for a time. As Innokenty Annensky admitted, during these years he wrote nothing but dissertations. “Pedagogical-administrative” activities began after university. According to fellow antique scholars, she distracted Innokenty Fedorovich from his scientific studies. And those who sympathized with his poetry believed that it interfered with creativity.
Debut as a critic
Innokenty Annensky made his debut in print as a critic. He published a number of articles in the 1880-1890s, mainly devoted to Russian literature of the 19th century. The first “Book of Reflections” appeared in 1906, and the second in 1909. This is a collection of criticism, which is distinguished by impressionistic perception, Wildean subjectivism and associative-figurative moods. Innokenty Fedorovich emphasized that he was only a reader, and not a critic at all.
Translations of French poets
Annensky the poet considered the French symbolists to be his forerunners, whom he willingly and widely translated. In addition to enriching the language, he also saw their merit in increasing aesthetic sensitivity, in the fact that they increased the scale of artistic sensations. A significant section of Annensky's first collection of poems consisted of translations of French poets. Of the Russians, the closest to Innokenty Fedorovich was K. D. Balmont, who aroused awe in the author of “Quiet Songs.” Annensky highly valued the musicality and “new flexibility” of his poetic language.
Publications in the symbolist press
Innokenty Annensky led a rather secluded literary life. During the period of onslaught and storm, he did not defend the right to the existence of “new” art. Annensky did not participate in further intra-Symbolist disputes.
The first publications of Innokenty Fedorovich in the symbolist press date back to 1906 (the magazine "Pereval"). In fact, his entry into the Symbolist environment took place only in the last year of his life.
Last years
The critic and poet Innokenty Annensky gave lectures at the Poetry Academy. He was also a member of the “Society of Admirers of the Artistic Word,” which operated under the Apollo magazine. On the pages of this magazine, Annensky published an article that can be called programmatic - “On modern lyricism.”
Posthumous cult, "Cypress Casket"
His sudden death caused a wide resonance in Symbolist circles. Innokenty Annensky died near the Tsarskoye Selo station. His biography ended, but his creative destiny after death received further development. Among young poets close to “Apollo” (mostly of an Acmeist orientation, who reproached the Symbolists for not paying attention to Annensky), his posthumous cult began to take shape. 4 months after the death of Innokenty Fedorovich, the second collection of his poems was published. The poet's son, V. I. Annensky-Krivich, who became his biographer, commentator and editor, completed the preparation of the "Cypress Casket" (the collection was so named because Annensky's manuscripts were kept in a cypress box). There is reason to believe that he did not always follow his father’s author’s will punctually.
Innokenty Annensky, whose poems were not very popular during his lifetime, gained well-deserved fame with the release of The Cypress Casket. Blok wrote that this book penetrates deep into the heart and explains to him a lot about himself. Bryusov, who had previously paid attention to the “freshness” of phrases, comparisons, epithets and even just words that were chosen in the collection “Quiet Songs,” noted as an undoubted advantage the inability to guess Innokenty Fedorovich’s next two stanzas from the first two verses and the end works at its beginning. In 1923, Krivich published the remaining texts of the poet in a collection entitled “Posthumous Poems of In. Annensky”.
Originality
His lyrical hero is a man who solves the “hateful puzzle of existence.” Annensky thoroughly analyzes the “I” of a person, which would like to be the whole world, to spread out, to dissolve in it, and which is tormented by the consciousness of the inevitable end, hopeless loneliness and aimless existence.
“Cunning irony” gives Annensky’s poems a unique uniqueness. According to V. Bryusov, she became the second person of Innokenty Fedorovich as a poet. The writing style of the author of "The Cypress Casket" and "Quiet Songs" is sharply impressionistic. Annensky called it associative symbolism; he believed that poetry does not depict. It only hints to the reader what cannot be expressed in words.
Today, the work of Inokenty Fedorovich has received well-deserved fame. The school curriculum includes such a poet as Innokenty Annensky. “Among the Worlds,” which schoolchildren are asked to analyze, is perhaps his most famous poem. Let us also note that in addition to poetry, he wrote four plays in the spirit of Euripides based on the plots of his lost tragedies.
Innokenty Annensky (1855-1909)
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in the city of Omsk into the family of an official Fedor Nikolaevich Annensky, who at that time held the post of head of the department of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. Soon the Annenskys moved to Tomsk (father was appointed to the post of chairman of the Provincial Administration), and in 1860 they returned to St. Petersburg. Initially, life in the capital was going well, except for the serious illness of five-year-old Innocent, as a result of which Annensky had a complication that affected his heart. Fyodor Nikolaevich took the post of official of special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but that was where his career ended. Wanting to get rich, he allowed himself to be drawn into dubious financial enterprises, but failed: Fyodor Nikolaevich went bankrupt, was dismissed in 1874, and soon suffered from apoplexy. Need came to the family of the ruined official. Apparently, it was poverty that was the reason that Innokenty Fedorovich was forced to interrupt his studies at the gymnasium. In 1875, Annensky passed the matriculation exams. During these difficult years for the family, his elder brother took care of Innocent. Nikolai Fedorovich Annensky, a Russian intellectual - publicist, scientist, public figure, and his wife Alexandra Nikitichna, teacher and children's writer, professed the ideals of populism of the “generation of the sixties”; The same ideals were to some extent adopted by the younger Annensky. According to Innokenty Fedorovich himself, he was “entirely indebted for his intelligent existence” to them (his elder brother and his wife). Annensky entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, from which he successfully graduated in 1879. In the same year, he married a young woman, Nadezhda (Dina) Valentinovna Khmara-Barshchevskaya, who was several years older than him and had two sons from his first marriage.
Already while studying at the university, Annensky began to write poetry, but his unusually strict strictness towards his own work led to many years of “silence” of this extremely gifted poet. Only in the forty-eighth year of his life did Annensky decide to bring his poetic works to the attention of readers, and even then he hid under a pseudonym mask and, like Odysseus once in the cave of Polyphemus, called himself the name Nobody. Collection of poems “Quiet Songs” was published in 1904. By this time, Annensky was well known in Russian literary circles as a teacher, critic and translator.
After graduating from the university, Annensky taught ancient languages, ancient literature, the Russian language, as well as the theory of literature in gymnasiums and at the Higher Women's Courses. In 1896, he was appointed director of the Nikolaev Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. He worked at the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium until 1906, when he was fired from the post of director in connection with his intercession for high school students who took part in political protests in 1905. Annensky was transferred to the position of inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district. His new responsibilities included regular inspection of educational institutions located in the district cities of the St. Petersburg province. Frequent and tiring trips for Annensky, then already an elderly man with a heart condition, had an adverse effect on his already weak health. In the fall of 1908, Annensky was able to return to teaching: he was invited to lecture on the history of ancient Greek literature at the Higher Historical and Literary Courses of N.P. Raev. Now Annensky constantly traveled from Tsarskoe Selo, which he did not want to part with, to St. Petersburg. Finally, in October 1909, Annensky resigned, which was accepted on November 20. But on the evening of November 30, 1909, at the station (Vitebsk station in St. Petersburg), Annensky died suddenly (para-lich of the heart). His funeral took place on December 4 in Tsarskoe Selo. Many of his followers in literature, students and friends came to see off the teacher and poet on his final journey. How the young Nikolai Gumilyov perceived Annensky’s death as a personal grief.
Expert in ancient and Western European poetry of the 18th - 19th centuries, Annensky in the 1880-1890s. often gave critical reviews and articles, many of them rather resembled original impressionistic sketches or essays (“Book of Reflections”, Vol. 1-2, 1906-1909). At the same time, he translated the tragedies of Euripides, German and French poets: Goethe, Heine, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle.
In the early 1900s. Annensky's own poems appear in print for the first time. In addition to “Silent Songs,” he publishes plays: tragedies based on ancient mythology - “Melanippe the Philosopher” (1901), “King Ixion” (1902) and “Laodamia” (1906); the fourth - “Famira-kifared” - was published posthumously in 1913. in 1916 staged. In Annensky’s biography, much happened “posthumously”: the publication of his poems was posthumous, and his recognition as a poet was also posthumous.
All of Annensky’s work, according to A. A. Blok, bore “the stamp of fragile subtlety and real poetic flair.” In his poetic works, Annensky tried to capture and show the nature of the internal discord of the individual, the possibility of the disintegration of human consciousness under the pressure of the “incomprehensible” and “comprehensible” (real city at the turn of the era) reality. A master of impressionistic sketches, portraits, and landscapes, Annensky knew how to create artistic images in poetry that were close to Gogol and Dostoevsky - realistic and phantasmagoric at the same time, sometimes somewhat reminiscent of either the delirium of a madman or a terrible dream. But the restrained tone accompanying the event, the simple and clear, sometimes everyday syllable of the verse, the absence of false pathos gave Annensky’s poetry amazing authenticity, “an incredible closeness of experience.” Trying to characterize the distinctive features of Annensky’s poetic gift, Nikolai Gumilyov, who repeatedly turned to the creative heritage of his teacher and older friend, wrote: “ I. Annensky... is powerful not so much in Male power as in Human power. For him, it is not a feeling that gives rise to a thought, as is generally the case with poets, but the thought itself grows so strong that it becomes a feeling, alive to the point of pain.».
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky (1855-1909) - Russian playwright, poet, translator, critic, literature and language researcher, director of the Tsarskoye Selo men's gymnasium. Brother of N.F. Annensky.
Childhood and adolescence
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in Omsk, in the family of government official Fyodor Nikolaevich Annensky (died March 27, 1880) and Natalia Petrovna Annenskaya (died October 25, 1889). His father was the head of a department of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. When Innocent was about five years old, his father received the position of an official on special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the family from Siberia returned to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849. As a child, Innocent was a very weak and sickly boy.
Annensky studied at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg Progymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869, he studied for two and a half years at the private gymnasium of V. I. Behrens. Before entering the university, in 1875, he lived with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedic educated man, an economist, a populist, who helped his younger brother prepare for the exam and had a great influence on Innocent.
Activity as director of a gymnasium
After graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University in 1879, he served for a long time as a teacher of ancient languages and Russian literature at the Gurevich gymnasium. He held the position of director of the Galagan College in Kyiv (January 1891 - October 1893), then the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium (1893-1896) and the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo (October 16, 1896 - January 2, 1906). The excessive gentleness he showed, in the opinion of his superiors, during the troubled time of 1905-1906 was the reason for his dismissal from this position. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Women's Courses.
The position of director of the gymnasium always weighed heavily on I.F. Annensky. In a letter to A.V. Borodina in August 1900, he wrote: You ask me: “Why don’t you leave?” Oh, how much I thought about this... How much I dreamed about it... Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult... But do you know how you think seriously? Does a staunch defender of classicism have the moral right to throw down its banner at a moment when it is surrounded on all sides by evil enemies?... - Innokenty Annensky. Favorites / Comp. I. Podolskaya. - M.: Pravda, 1987. - P. 469. - 592 p.
From 1906 to 1909 he held the position of district inspector in St. Petersburg, and shortly before his death he retired.
Literary and translation activities
The creative biography of Innokenty Annensky begins in the early 1880s, when Annensky appears in print with scientific reviews, critical articles, as well as articles on pedagogical issues.
From the beginning of the 1890s, he began studying Greek tragedians; Over the course of a number of years, he completed a huge amount of work translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripidean plots and the “Bacchanalian drama” “Famira the Cyfared” (performed in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbières, A. de Regnier, F. Jamme, etc.). He published his first book of poems, “Quiet Songs,” in 1904 under the pseudonym “Nick. T-o”, which imitated the abbreviated first and last name, but formed the word “Nobody” (this was the name Odysseus introduced himself to Polyphemus).
Annensky wrote four plays - “Melanippe the Philosopher” (1901), “King Ixion” (1902), “Laodamia” (1906) and “Famira the Cyfared” (1906, published posthumously in 1913) - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of lost the tragedies of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.
Innocent Annesky translated into Russian all 18 tragedies of the great ancient Greek playwright Euripides that have come down to us. He also performed poetic translations of works by Horace, Goethe, Müller, Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Rainier, Sully-Prudhomme, and Longfellow.
On November 30 (December 13), 1909, Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo station in St. Petersburg from a heart attack. He was buried at the Kazan cemetery in Tsarskoe Selo (now the city of Pushkin, Leningrad region). Annensky's son, philologist and poet Valentin Annensky (Krivich), published his “Cypress Casket” (1910) and “Posthumous Poems” (1923).
Literary influence
Annensky's literary influence on the movements of Russian poetry that emerged after symbolism (Acmeism, Futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem "Bells" can rightfully be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time of writing. His poem “Among the Worlds” is one of the masterpieces of Russian poetry; it formed the basis of romances written by A. Vertinsky and A. Sukhanov. Annensky's influence greatly affects Pasternak and his school, Anna Akhmatova, Georgiy Ivanov and many others. In his literary critical articles, partially collected in two “Books of Reflections,” Annensky provides brilliant examples of Russian impressionistic criticism, striving to interpret a work of art through the conscious continuation of the author’s creativity. It should be noted that already in his critical and pedagogical articles of the 1880s, Annensky, long before the formalists, called for a systematic study of the form of works of art in school.
Memories of Annensky
Professor B.E. Raikov, a former student of the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium, wrote in his memoirs about Innokenty Annensky:
...absolutely nothing was known about his poetic experiments at that time. He was known only as the author of articles and notes on philological topics, and he kept his poems to himself and did not publish anything, although he was already about forty years old at that time. We, high school students, saw in him only a tall, thin figure in a uniform, who sometimes shook a long white finger at us, but in general, stayed very far away from us and our affairs.
Annensky was a zealous defender of ancient languages and held high the banner of classicism in his gymnasium. Under him, our recreational hall was entirely painted with ancient Greek frescoes, and the schoolchildren performed plays by Sophocles and Euripides in Greek during the holidays, moreover, in antique costumes, strictly consistent with the style of the era.
In the city of Pushkin on Naberezhnaya Street at house No. 12 in 2009, a memorial plaque was installed (sculptor V.V. Zaiko) with the text: “In this house from 1896 to 1905 the poet Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky lived and worked at the Imperial Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium.”
Annensky Innokenty Fedorovich (1855-1909) - Russian poet, writer, critic, translator, playwright. He did a lot of research into the Russian language and literature, and worked as the director of a men's gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo.
Childhood
Innocent was born on September 1, 1855 in western Siberia in the city of Omsk. Six years earlier, the Annensky family moved here from St. Petersburg due to the appointment of the head of the family to a new position.
In 1856, the boy was baptized in the Omsk Fortress-Cathedral-Resurrection Church. The ceremony was conducted by Archpriest Stefan Znamensky, who in the same year baptized Mikhail Vrubel, who later became a great Russian artist, in this church.
Pope Innocent, Fyodor Nikolaevich Annensky, was a high-ranking official in the service of the state. My father first worked in the Main Directorate of Western Siberia as an adviser to the Omsk branch of the Trusteeship Society for Prisons. He later took over as head of this department.
Mother, Annenskaya Natalya Petrovna (maiden name Karamolina), was raising six children. The future poet had four more older sisters Natasha (1840), Alexandra (1842), Maria (1850), Lyubov (1852) and a brother Nikolai (1843), who later became a famous Russian public figure, journalist, translator, publicist, and economist.
The maternal grandmother was the wife of one of the sons of Abram Petrovich Hannibal (great-grandfather of A.S. Pushkin)
In Omsk, the Annensky family occupied a large one-story wooden house with all the required service premises, a garden and a plot of land. In those days, this was considered the norm for a large family and the position of state councilor in which the father served (this rank was equivalent to the rank of general). When at the end of the 1850s their father was transferred to the city of Tomsk for service, the Annenskys sold their house for seven and a half thousand silver rubles. The mother believed that a city hospital could be located in this spacious and comfortable room.
Innocent's early childhood years were spent in Siberia under the supervision of a French nanny and governess, who raised his older sisters.
In 1860, the father of the family was promoted again, appointed as an official for special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In connection with this appointment, the Annenskys moved from Tomsk to St. Petersburg. In the same year, five-year-old Innocent suffered a long and serious heart disease, which left an indelible mark on his health for the rest of his life. Since then, the boy clearly remembered that, compared to his peers, he grew up sickly and weak, remaining far behind them in physical development.
Studies
The environment in which Innocent grew up contributed to his early desire for reading and science. He had practically no friends; children's active and noisy games, which boys of his age were fond of, were not interested in Innokenty due to his health. He was brought up in a female environment, began studying early and was never burdened by it. Studying came easy to him. Having learned to read under the guidance of his older sister, Innocent began to read everything that was allowed to him according to his age.
In St. Petersburg, the Annensky family lived on Peski. Not far from their home there was a school where the parents sent their ten-year-old son to prepare for entering the gymnasium. The boy studied at school for two years, and his first lessons in Latin grammar were taught to him by his older brother Nikolai.
In 1867, a new men's gymnasium No. 2 was opened on 5th Rozhdestvenskaya Street in St. Petersburg, where Innokenty successfully passed the entrance exams and was enrolled as an incoming second-grade student. He studied well, most of all he liked the Russian language and geography. However, in the spring I had to interrupt my studies due to illness. For the summer, the family went to the suburban environs of St. Petersburg, where in the clean air the young man managed to improve his health, and in the fall he returned to the gymnasium.
In 1869, Innokenty entered the private gymnasium of V.I. Behrens, where he studied for two and a half years. But even here, studies constantly had to be interrupted due to illness and trips to the Starorussian mineral waters for treatment. My elder brother Nikolai, with whom Innokenty lived most of the time, helped improve his knowledge. With his help, in 1875, young Annensky passed the exams for a full gymnasium course as an external student, received a certificate of maturity and became a student at the Faculty of History and Philology at St. Petersburg University.
He studied at the department of literature, specialized in ancient literature, learned fourteen languages, including such complex ones as Hebrew and Sanskrit. In 1879, Annensky completed his studies and received the title of candidate; it was awarded to graduates whose diploma works were of particular value for science.
Teaching activities
After graduating from university, Innokenty Fedorovich took up teaching work. In St. Petersburg gymnasiums, he taught Greek and Latin, and at the higher women's (Bestuzhev) courses he lectured on the theory of literature. He needed to provide for his young family, so Annensky took 56 gymnasium lessons a week, thereby undermining his already poor health.
In 1891, Innokenty Fedorovich became the director of the Kyiv Gymnasium College.
In 1893 he headed the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium.
In 1896, he was appointed head of the Nikolaev Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. He remained in this position until 1906. Then his superiors decided that during the troubled times of 1905-1906, Annensky showed himself to be too soft, for this reason he was removed from his post as director of the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium and appointed district inspector. He worked in this position until 1909, retiring shortly before his death.
Literary activity
Innokenty Annensky never considered teaching the main work of his life. His heart belonged to literature. He translated into Russian nineteen plays by the great tragedian of Ancient Greece Euripides; in addition to the translation, he provided them with articles and commentaries. He also penned translations of Horatio, Heine, Longfellow, and famous French lyricists - Charles Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lecomte de Lisle, Verlaine, Mallarmé.
Annensky worked a lot as a literary critic. He wrote essays about the works of Gogol, Chekhov, Lermontov, Gorky, Maikov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev. He also did not ignore foreign literature - Ibsen, Balmonte, Shakespeare.
Slightly imitating the manner of Euripides, Annensky wrote several plays:
- 1901 – “Melanippe the Philosopher”;
- 1902 – “King Ixion”;
- 1906 – “Laodamia”;
- 1906 – “Famira-kifared”.
Since 1881, he published his articles in which he considered pedagogical problems. Annensky argued that the primary role in the education of students should be played by their native speech. His pedagogical works had a beneficial influence on a number of famous Russian poets. Among them is Nikolai Gumilyov, who studied at the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo and took his first steps in the world of poetry under the impression of his personal acquaintance with Annensky.
Innokenty Fedorovich treated his own poetry most strictly. He began writing when he was still in high school, and only decades later did he dare to present his works to readers. It didn’t even fit into my head that this state councilor in an impeccable uniform and with the same manners could contrast so sharply with the wild, lonely, secretive human soul, which was killed by unbearable melancholy. This is exactly how Innocent revealed himself in his poems. It was as if two people lived in it, not intersecting with each other.
The only collection of poetry published during Innokenty Fedorovich’s lifetime, “Quiet Songs,” was published in 1904, but did not become an event in literary life. He was released under the pseudonym “Nick.” That." Annensky came up with such a pseudonym for himself with double intent. Firstly, all these letters were taken from his name, and secondly, this is what Odysseus called himself when he got into the cave of Polyphemus.
A year after his death, the second book of poems, “The Cypress Casket,” was published, which completely changed the opinion about Annensky. They began to call him a subtle critic and an exceptional erudite, an original, true poet unlike others.
This frivolous disregard for the living expresses the general Russian grief. How great people are not appreciated while they live. And only when they leave, the world, having come to its senses, begins to weave wreaths for them... Many years later they will say about his poetry that “there are no quieter, more sober, more honest poems in Russian literature.”
Personal life
In 1877, the poet fell passionately in love with Nadezhda Valentinovna Khmara-Barshchevskaya.
The widow had two teenage children and was fourteen years older than Annensky. Innokenty affectionately called her Dina and wrote to his sister Lyubov in a letter how unusually beautiful his chosen one was, what beautiful ash-blond hair she had, a clear mind, and attractive grace. Dina also loved Annensky very much and was no less jealous of him.
When Innocent graduated from university, they got married. In 1880, their boy Valentin was born. In the future, he also became a poet and philologist; it was Annensky’s son who was credited with publishing two collections of his father’s poetry after his death.
In 1909, Innokenty Fedorovich’s heart disease worsened from overexertion at work. He died suddenly of a heart attack on December 11, 1909, right on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo station. The last thing the poet wanted was such an end; he even wrote lines on this topic that later became an aphorism: “I wouldn’t want to die suddenly. It’s like leaving a restaurant without paying.”
He was buried in Tsarskoye Selo at the Kazan cemetery.
