Gumilyov's first collection. Nikolai Gumilyov: short biography, personal life. Biblical motifs in Gumilyov's lyrics

Brief Biography of Nikolai Gumilyov (1 option)

Gumilev Nikolai Stepanovich (1886 - 1921) - Russian poet, prose writer, literary critic, translator, representative of the “Silver Age” literature, founder of the school of Russian Acmeism.

Childhood and first works

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was born on April 3 (15), 1886 in Kronstadt, in the family of a ship’s doctor. The future writer spent his childhood first in Tsarskoe Selo, and then in the city of Tiflis. In 1902, Gumilyov’s first poem “I fled to the forest from the cities...” was published.

In 1903, Nikolai Stepanovich entered the 7th grade of the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium. In the same year, the writer met his future wife, Anna Gorenko (Akhmatova). In 1905, a most important event occurred in Gumilyov’s short biography - the poet’s first collection, “The Path of the Conquistadors,” was published.

Mature creativity. Trips

After graduating from high school in 1906, Gumilyov went to Paris and entered the Sorbonne. While in France, Nikolai Stepanovich tried to publish the magazine “Sirius” (1907), an exquisite magazine for those times. In 1908, the writer’s second collection, “Romantic Flowers,” dedicated to Anna Akhmatova, was published. This book marked the beginning of Gumilyov's mature work.

Nikolai Stepanovich returns to Russia, but soon leaves again. The writer visits Sinop, Istanbul, Greece, Egypt, and African countries with expeditions.

In 1909, Gumilyov entered St. Petersburg University, first to the Faculty of Law, but then transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology. The writer takes an active part in the creation of the Apollo magazine. In 1910, the collection “Pearls” was published, which received positive reviews from V. Ivanov, I. Annensky, V. Bryusov. The book includes the famous work of the writer “Captains”.

In April 1910, Gumilev married Anna Akhmatova.

“The Workshop of Poets” and Acmeism. First World War

In 1911, with the participation of Gumilev, the poetic association “Workshop of Poets” was created, which included O. Mandelstam, S. Gorodetsky, V. Narbut, M. Zenkevich, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva. In 1912, Nikolai Stepanovich announced the emergence of a new artistic movement, Acmeism, and soon the magazine “Hyperborea” was created, and Gumilyov’s collection “Alien Sky” was published. In 1913, the writer again went to the East.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Gumilev, whose biography was already full of extraordinary events, voluntarily went to the front and was awarded two St. George's Crosses for his bravery. While serving in Paris in 1917, the poet fell in love with Helene du Boucher and dedicated a collection of poems, To the Blue Star, to her.

Post-war years. Death

In 1918, Gumilyov returned to Russia. In August of the same year, the writer divorced Akhmatova.

In 1919–1920, the poet worked at the World Literature publishing house, taught, and translated from English and French. In 1919 he married Anna Engelhardt, daughter of N. Engelhardt. Gumilyov's poems from the collection “Pillar of Fire” (1921) are dedicated to his second wife.

In August 1921, Nikolai Gumilev was arrested on charges of participation in the anti-government “Tagantsev conspiracy.” Three weeks later he was sentenced to death, executed the very next day. The exact date of execution and burial place of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov are unknown.

Interesting Facts

In 1909, Gumilev took part in an absurd duel with M. Voloshin because Nikolai Stepanovich spoke unflatteringly about the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva. Both poets did not want to shoot themselves, Gumilev fired into the air, Voloshin’s pistol misfired.
In 1916, Gumilyov was enlisted in the special Fifth Alexandria Hussar Regiment, whose soldiers took part in the most fierce battles near Dvinsk.
Anna Akhmatova always criticized Gumilyov's poetry. This often led to the poet burning his works.
For a long time, Gumilyov's works were not published. The poet was rehabilitated only in 1992.
Two documentaries were made about Gumilyov’s life – “Testament” (2011) and “New Version. Gumilyov against dictatorship" (2009)

Brief Biography of Nikolai Gumilyov (2 version)

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov can be called an Acmeist poet. His short life was full of interesting events, but ended tragically. He was born in 1886 in the city of Kronstadt, where his father worked as a doctor. Nikolai had an older brother, Dmitry, and the age difference between them was two years. The author's family is noble.

As a child, the poet was a sickly child, but this did not stop him from leading an active life and making friends with his peers. Some say that he wrote his very first quatrain at the age of six, and his first verses at twelve. He received his education in gymnasiums and graduated in 1906. We can say that he studied poorly and received only one “A” in the subject “logic” in his certificate. And once he was even expelled, but then kept for a second year.
While still in seventh grade, Nikolai met Anna Gorenko (Anna Akhmatova), who in the future would become his life partner.

After finishing his studies at the gymnasium, the poet went to France, where he studied the culture of the country. While living in Paris, Gumilev was engaged in publishing a magazine.

In addition to France, he visited Greece, Italy, Turkey and Egypt. And besides this, as part of the expedition he visited Africa, where he was 4 times during the entire period, he really liked it. It can be said that the poet was also a researcher, and upon his arrival from Africa he brought many interesting specimens to the museum. While in Egypt, Gumilev studied at the university at the Faculty of Law.

The first collection of poems was published in 1905, and this was a very important event in the author’s life. He dedicated a collection of poems to his wife, which was published in 1908 and was called “Romantic Flowers.”

The poet constantly improved his level and at the same time he became acquainted with the works of well-known authors at that time, drawing from them all the most necessary and interesting things. In 1909, the poet took part in a duel with his friend M. Voloshin, and both of them remain alive. The reason for the duel was Elizaveta Dmitrieva, a young poetess who liked Gumilyov, but preferred his friend M. Voloshin. This is precisely what caused the duel.

When the First World War began, Gumilyov volunteered to go to the front and for his bravery and courage was awarded two St. George Crosses, of which he was proud. His brother Dmitry also went to war with him and died in 1922.
From 1917 to 1918, Nikolai lived in Greece, and when he returned, he set to work. During this time he actively worked as a translator.

In 1921, on August 3, Nikolai Stepanovich was arrested for participation in a conspiracy and on August 24 he was sentenced to death. This is how the life of the poet, researcher and officer ended tragically. Numerous friends of Gumilyov tried to free him, but they failed. Gumilev was rehabilitated in 1992. However, it is still unknown where Gumilyov was buried after the execution.

In 1919, the poet married Anna Engelhard and in the same year their daughter Elena was born.

Gumilyov's last book was published in 1921. Critics say that this was the author's best work.

Gumilev had many famous works and collections. These include a collection of poems on a military theme “Quiver”, a collection of poems “Bonfire”, poems about his travels in Africa called “Tent”. They said about the last collection that it was a manual on geography, but only in poetry. And, probably, the collection “Pillar of Fire” can be called the best work. The author most of all preferred to write about love and life, about death and art.

In October 1911, a new literary association, the “Workshop of Poets,” was founded, whose leaders were N.S. Gumilev and S.M. Gorodetsky. The name of the circle indicated the attitude of the participants towards poetry as a purely professional field of activity. “The Workshop” was a school of formal mastery, indifferent to the peculiarities of the worldview of the participants.

The work of the outstanding poet, one of the founders of the “Workshop of Poets,” became an example of overcoming the aesthetic doctrine of Acmeism.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov was born on April 3, 1886 in Kronstadt into the family of a naval doctor. Previously, the future poet spent his childhood in Tsarskoye Selo, where his parents moved after his father’s dismissal from military service. There he studied at the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, whose director was I.F. Annensky. At this time, Nikolai's friendship began, first with Andrei Gorenko, and then with his sister Anna, the future poetess Akhmatova, to whom he began to dedicate his lyrical poems.

Gumilyov began writing poetry at the age of twelve and published his first story in a handwritten gymnasium journal. When his family moved to the Caucasus in 1900, he enthusiastically wrote poems about Georgia and early love. Gumilyov’s first poem, published in the Tiflis newspaper (1902), is of a romantic nature and depicts a lyrical hero rushing from the “cities into the desert”, who is attracted by the restless “people with a fiery soul” and with a “thirst for good” (“I ran into the forest from the cities...").

Gumilyov began his journey in literature at the time of the heyday of symbolist poetry. It is not surprising that in his early lyrics there is a very noticeable dependence on symbolism. It is interesting that the future Acmeist did not follow in his work the chronologically closest generation of Young Symbolists, but was guided by the poetic practice of the older Symbolists, primarily K.D. Balmont and V.Ya. Bryusova. From the first, in Gumilyov’s early poems - the decorativeness of landscapes and a general craving for catchy external effects, from the second, the aspiring poet was brought together by the apology of a strong personality, reliance on solid qualities of character.

However, even against the background of Bryusov’s lyrical heroics, the position of early Gumilyov was distinguished by special energy. For his lyrical hero there is no gap between reality and dreams: Gumilyov asserts the priority of daring dreams and free imagination. His early lyrics are devoid of tragic notes; moreover, Gumilev is characterized by restraint in the manifestation of any emotions: he assessed a purely personal, confessional tone at that time as neurasthenia. The lyrical experience in his poetic world is certainly objectified, the mood is conveyed by visual images, ordered into a harmonious, “picturesque” composition.

Gumilyov and the poets of his generation trusted sensory perception, primarily visual, much more. The evolution of early Gumilev is the gradual consolidation of precisely this stylistic quality: the use of the visual properties of the image, the rehabilitation of a single thing, important not only as a sign of mental movements or metaphysical insights, but also (and sometimes primarily) as a colorful component of the overall decoration.

In 1905, in St. Petersburg, Gumilyov published his first collection of poems, “The Path of the Conquistadors.” This youthful collection perfectly reflected the romantic mood and emerging heroic character of the author: the book was dedicated to brave and strong heroes, cheerfully walking towards dangers, “leaning towards abysses and abysses.” The poet glorifies a strong-willed personality, expresses his dream of feat and heroism. He finds for himself a kind of poetic mask - a conquistador, a brave conqueror of distant lands (“Sonnet”). The author considered this poem programmatic. In it, he likens himself to the ancient conquerors exploring new earthly spaces: “Like a conquistador in an iron shell, / I set out on the road...”. The poem glorifies a courageous duel with death and tireless movement towards the intended goal. Written in the form of a sonnet, it is interesting because it glorifies bold risk, courage, and overcoming obstacles. At the same time, Gumilyov’s hero is devoid of gloomy seriousness and menacing concentration: he walks “merrily,” “laughing” at adversity, resting “in a joyful garden.”

But another theme is revealed in the poem, its other plan is revealed in it. Gumilyov also referred to the “conquistadors” as conquerors who “filled the treasury of poetry with gold bars and diamond tiaras.” The poem, therefore, speaks of the discovery of new poetic continents, of courage in mastering new themes, forms, and aesthetic principles.

The collection was noticed by the most prominent symbolist poet V. Bryusov, who published a review of the first experience of the novice author in his magazine “Scales”. This review, which inspired the young man, became the reason for the active correspondence between the poets, and Gumilyov’s further growth was largely determined by the influence of V. Bryusov, whom the young author called his teacher.

In 1906, Gumilev graduated from high school and then spent about three years in Paris, where he published the magazine “Sirius”, wrote a number of short stories (“Princess Zara”, “The Golden Knight”, “The Violin of Stradivarius”) and published a collection of poems “Romantic Flowers” ( 1908). The collection contains poems dedicated to Cairo sailors and children, Lake Chad, rhinoceros, jaguar, and giraffe. But what is especially important is that the poet learns to portray these heroes of his lyrics objectively, volumetrically, and vividly (“Hyena”, “Giraffe”). V. Bryusov highly appreciates the collection that Gumilyov “definitely draws her images.”

Upon returning to Russia (1908), Gumilyov entered St. Petersburg University, actively collaborated in newspaper and magazine periodicals, and founded the “Academy of Verse” for young poets. In 1909-1913 he made three trips to Africa. In 1910 he married A.A. Gorenko.

Gumilev continued his poetic development in the next collection “Pearl” (1910), dedicated to V. Bryusov. This is also a book of romantic poems. Intensifying the picturesqueness of his poems, Gumilyov often starts from works of fine art (“Portrait of a Man”, “Beatrice”), which encourage him to be descriptive. Another source of imagery are literary subjects (“Don Juan”) and motifs from the poems of the Symbolists (Balmont, Bryusov).

It is impossible not to note in the collection the greater elasticity of the verse, the refinement of poetic thought, which will later be felt in “Captains”. Gumilyov timidly outlined the paths that would lead him to the collections “Alien Sky” and “Bonfire”.

In the early 1910s. Gumilyov became the founder of a new literary movement - Acmeism. The principles of Acmeism were largely the result of Gumilyov’s theoretical understanding of his own poetic practice. The key categories in Acmeism turned out to be the categories of autonomy, balance, and specificity. The “scene of action” of the lyrical works of the Acmeists is earthly life, the source of eventfulness is the activity of man himself. The lyrical hero of the acmeistic period of Gumilyov’s work is not a passive contemplator of life’s mysteries, but an organizer and discoverer of earthly beauty.

From the lush rhetoric and decorative floweriness of his first collections, Gumilyov gradually moves to epigrammatic rigor and clarity, to a balance of lyricism and epic descriptiveness.

For 1911 - 1912 There was a period of organizational unity and creative flowering of Acmeism. At this time, Gumilyov published his most “acmeistic” collection of poems - “Alien Sky” (1912). Here one feels moderation of expression, verbal discipline, balance of feeling and image, content and form. The book includes the poet's poems, published in 1910-1911 in Apollo.

It must be said that romantic motifs are still noticeable in the collection. In the book as a whole, the acmeistic features of N. Gumilyov’s poetry were clearly reflected: bright figurativeness, narration, a tendency to reveal the objective world, weakened musical and emotional principles, emphasized dispassion, expressiveness of descriptions, the plurality of faces of the lyrical hero, a clear view of the world, an Adamistic worldview, classical rigor of style, balance of volumes, precision of detail. To support and strengthen the acmeistic tendency of his collection, N. Gumilyov included translations of five poems by Théophile Gautier. The book also includes the “Abyssinian Songs” cycle, which shows how Gumilev’s approach to conveying the exotic world has changed significantly. Standing out in the collection are the poems “The Discovery of America” and “The Prodigal Son,” as well as the one-act play “Don Juan in Egypt.”

In the collection one can feel the author's obvious departure from the Russian theme. However, Gumilev dedicated one of the sections of the book to his compatriot Anna Akhmatova, who in 1910 became the poet’s wife. To the seventeen poems of this section, one more can be added - “From the Lair of the Serpent,” which ends the first part of the collection.

The collection “Alien Sky” evoked many positive responses, making the name of its author widely known and earning him a reputation as a master.

One of the main characteristics of Gumilyov’s work can be called the cult of courageous risk, which is embodied in his works of many genres. These are essays about a trip to Africa (1913-1914), “African Diary” (1913), stories “African Hunt” (1916) and “Forest Devil” (1917).

With the outbreak of the First World War, the poet volunteered for the Uhlan regiment and was awarded two St. George's Crosses for his participation in hostilities. The poet spoke about his participation in battles in “Notes of a Cavalryman” (1915-1916).

Life-affirming pathos lives in the new collection of poems “Quiver” (1916), published at the height of the First World War.

In the collection “Bonfire” (1918), which includes poems created in 1916-1917, the poet continues to explore the layers of world culture. This time he turns to ancient art, creating a hymn to the Nike of Samothrace, located in the Louvre, representing her “with her arms outstretched forward.” In the same book of poems, Gumilyov recreates Norway in his imagination, correlating its people and landscapes with the images of Ibsen and Grieg; Sweden and its “confused, discordant Stockholm.” But here the Russian theme also matures. Many features of this collection can be found in the poem “Autumn”. Naturally, among the poems about native expanses, rowan autumn, “honey-smelling meadows” of childhood, lines appear about the art of monks and the insights of Andrei Rublev, his icons and frescoes.

Revolutionary events in Russia found N. Gumilyov in France. From there he moved to England, to London, where he worked on the story “The Merry Brothers”. During this period, he took a new approach to literary issues, believing that Russian writers had already overcome the period of rhetorical poetry, and now the time had come for verbal economy, simplicity, clarity and reliability.

Returning to Petrograd through Scandinavia in 1918, Gumilyov energetically became involved in the then turbulent literary life, from which he had been torn off for a long time by the war. He spoke openly about his monarchical preferences and did not seem to notice the dramatic changes in the country. He had a hard time with the collapse of his first family, but intense creative work helped him heal his mental wound. The poet publishes a new poem - "Mick" - on an African theme, re-publishes early collections of poetry, works enthusiastically at the World Literature publishing house, where Gorky was attracted and where he heads the French department; he himself organizes several publishing houses, recreates the “Workshop of Poets”, and manages its branch, the “Sounding Shell”; creates the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets, becoming its chairman.

The last three years of the poet's life (1918-1921) were unusually fruitful creatively. Gumilyov translates a lot, speaks at evenings reading his poems, theoretically comprehends the practice of Acmeism, publishes the collection “Tent” in Sevastopol, again dedicated to the African theme (this was the last book published during the author’s lifetime), creates “The Poem of the Beginning” (1919-1921 ), in which he addresses the philosophical and cosmogonic theme.

The poet is preparing for publication a new significant collection of poems, “The Pillar of Fire.” It includes works created during the last three years of the poet’s life, mainly of a philosophical nature (“Memory”, “Soul and Body”, “The Sixth Sense”, etc.). The title of the collection, dedicated to Gumilyov’s second wife Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, goes back to biblical imagery, the Old Testament “Book of Nehemiah.”

Among the best poems in the new book is “The Lost Tram,” the most famous and at the same time complex and mysterious work.

Gumilyov’s prediction of “his” unusual death is amazing:

“And I will not die on a bed,

With a notary and a doctor,

And in some wild crevice,

Drowned in thick ivy..."

confirmed.

On August 3, 1921, he was arrested by the Cheka, accused of participating in the counter-revolutionary Tagantsev conspiracy, and on August 24, he was shot along with sixty others involved in this case. However, no documentary evidence of this participation was found in the surviving investigation materials.

After the death of the poet, his lyrical collection “To the Blue Star” (1923), a book of Gumilev’s prose “Shadow from a Palm Tree” (1922), and much later - collections of his poems, plays and stories, books about him and his work were published.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gumilyov made a huge contribution to the development of Russian poetry. His traditions were continued by N. Tikhonov, E. Bagritsky, V. Rozhdestvensky, V. Sayanov, B. Kornilov, A. Dementyev.

Creativity of N. Gumilyov

In the works of many poets of the early twentieth century. there is a certain collective image, one way or another connected with the different channels of their searches. The ideal of N. Gumilyov is symbolically expressed in the guise of the fantastic heroine of the poem “The Discovery of America” - the Muse of Distant Journeys. The artist’s unstoppable wanderings were changeable and heterogeneous, but it was they who determined his life, art, and romantic attitude. The movement towards the alluring distances was, however, forcibly interrupted. Indiscriminately accused of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, Gumilyov was shot in 1921. Only more than six decades later it became possible to openly acknowledge this crime.

Gumilyov was born into the family of a ship's doctor in Kronstadt. He studied at the Tsarskoe Selo gymnasium. Then he left for a short time (1900-1903) (father’s new appointment) to Georgia. Returning, in 1906 he graduated from the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium. However, staying there was no longer ordinary. The interests and activities that were natural for the young man were immediately pushed aside by his intense inner life. Everything was determined by the early awakening, exciting calling of the poet. Back in 1902, the Tiflis Leaflet published Gumilyov’s first poem - “I fled to the forest from the cities...”.

The events and facts of Gumilyov’s biography vividly testify to his rare courage and thirst for knowledge of the world. After graduating from high school, he went to Paris to study French literature, but soon left the Sorbonne, going to Africa, despite his father’s ban. The dream of seeing mysterious, uncivilized lands took possession of the poet. On his first trip, Gumilyov visited only the cities: Istanbul, Izmir, Port Said, Cairo. But the experience left an indelible mark on my soul. On this mysterious land for a European, he endured many hardships and voluntary risky, sometimes deadly trials, and as a result brought valuable materials for the St. Petersburg Museum of Ethnography. During the First World War, he volunteered for the front, where he did not consider it necessary to protect himself, and participated in the most difficult maneuvers. In May 1917, he left of his own free will for the Entente operation in Thessaloniki (Greece), with the hope (unfulfilled) of being in Africa again. Returning from Europe to dilapidated, hungry and cold Petrograd in 1918 was also a necessary stage for Gumilyov in understanding himself and life.

The greedy desire for travel and danger was still secondary, arising from an all-pervading passion for literary creativity. In a letter to V. Bryusov, Gumilyov explained the purpose of the trip to Abyssinia: “to find new words in a new environment.” He thought constantly and fruitfully about the maturity of poetic vision and skill.

Gumilyov’s artistic talent can most accurately be described as a bold exploration of the always mysterious, boundless, wonderful country of Russian literature. The variety of paths laid here is amazing. Gumilyov is the author of collections of lyrics, poems, dramas, sketches, stories, essays, literary critical and journalistic articles, works on the theory of verse, reviews of foreign art phenomena... And the development of Gumilyov’s most native element of self-expression - poetry - is marked by unprecedented intensity. One after another (starting from his high school days) his books were published: 1905 - “The Way of the Conquistadors”; 1908 – “Romantic Flowers”; 1910 – “Pearls”; 1912 – “Alien Sky”; 1916 – “Quiver”; 1918 – “Bonfire”, “Porcelain Pavilion” and the poem “Mick”; 1921 – “Tent” and “Pillar of Fire.”

And this entire array of creative achievements is “packed” into some fifteen years.

V. Bryusov saw in Gumilyov’s first youth collection a “new school” of poetry, but reproached him for imitating the Symbolists. The values of love and beauty extolled by the author were reminiscent of the ideals of his older contemporaries, but were defended “with thunder and sword.” The courageous intonations and willpower were new, and the new images of the Beautiful drawn from their legends were addressed to the earthly needs of man. The image of the conquistadors becomes only a symbol of the conquest of beauty and love.

“Romantic Flowers” is filled with sad feelings: the fragility of high impulses, the illusory nature of happiness. However, here too the power of aspirations wins - to transform existing things according to the will of the author. “I created my own dream,” said the poet. And he created it, correlating life phenomena, but looking beyond the line of their possible existence (the source of romantic imagery). The ecstasy of dreams and desires perfectly corresponds to the title of the collection.

The third, mature book of “Pearls” largely clarified the artist’s position. It was here that the motive for the search finally emerged - a “sense of the path”, now directed not to subjective depths, but outward. However, such “objectification” is very conditional, since a “country” of spiritual existence is being acquired. Therefore, it is as if the specific theme of the journey (here it is visibly expressed for the first time) symbolizes the road of aesthetic quest. The very image of pearls is drawn from an unprecedentedly beautiful land: “Where no human foot has gone, | Where giants live in sunny groves! | And pearls shine in the clear water.” The discovery of hitherto unknown values inspires and justifies life.

In such an atmosphere, the need arises to understand and affirm a personality capable of powerful achievements. On the way, the conqueror of peaks knows no retreats: “Better is blind Nothing, | Than golden yesterday.” The flight of a black eagle attracts the eye with its dizzying height, and the author’s imagination completes this perspective - “not knowing decay, he flew forward”:

He died, yes! But he couldn't fall

Having entered the circles of planetary movement,

The bottomless maw gaped below,

But the gravitational forces were weak.

The truly Gumilevian - the search for Light beyond the line of being - is boldly demonstrated. Even the Dead, given over to the fire, is capable of a daring desire: “I will burn one more time | The intoxicating life of fire." Creativity is proclaimed as a form of self-immolation: “Here, wield the magic violin, look into the eyes of monsters | And die a glorious death, the terrible death of a violinist” (“The Magic Violin”).

The figurative structure is woven from familiar realities. Nevertheless, they, having different origins and contrasting ones, are so correlated with each other, and most importantly, their properties and functions are so freely imagined that a fantastic world arises, conveying “super-terrestrial” in strength and character to the ideal. The “I” of the subject is rarely manifested openly, but any of the embodied “persons” are conveyed his utmost emotions and aspirations. Everything is transformed by the will of the poet.

In the short series “Captains” there is an everyday flavor, say, in the coastal life of seafarers. The figures of famous travelers appear here: Gonzalvo and Cook, La Perouse and Vasco da Gama. With rare skill, the appearance of each hero is recreated through the colorful details of the robe (“pinkish cuffs”, “gold lace”). But all this is only the external, thematic layer of the cycle, which allows us to richly and visibly express the internal one. He is chanting the feat: “No one trembles before a thunderstorm, | Not one will furl the sails." And in glorifying the unbending strength of spirit of all, “who dares, who wants, who seeks.” Even in justifying their severity (previously crudely sociologically interpreted):

Or, having discovered a riot on board,

A pistol bursts from his belt,

So gold falls from the lace,

From pinkish Braband cuffs.

The entire collection is imbued with strong-willed intonation and a self-burning thirst to discover unknown potentialities in oneself, a person, and life. It does not at all follow from this that Gumilyov is betrayed by an invigorating mood. Tests on the chosen path are not compatible with them. Tragic motives are born of a collision with “monstrous grief” and unknown enemies. The boring, stagnant reality is painful. Her poisons penetrate the heart of the lyrical hero. The “always patterned garden of the soul”, once colored with romantic colors, turns into a hanging, gloomy one, where the face of the night luminary, the moon, leans low and scary. But the courage of search is defended with all the more passion.

In the article “The Life of Verse,” Gumilyov pointed out the need for a special “arrangement of words, repetition of vowels and consonants, acceleration and deceleration of rhythm” so that the reader “experiences the same as the poet himself.” In "Pearls" such skill reached brilliance.

The “stringy” anapaests in the “Magic Violin” section convey the fatigue that has gripped the musician. The iambs of the first poem “Captains” are electrifying with energetic intonation. The condensation of similar or contrasting features recreates the specific atmosphere of different eras and countries in “The Old Conquistador”, “Barbarians”, “Knight with a Chain”, “Journey in China”. On the other hand, the author constantly expands the content of each work through associations. Sometimes with their previous images (“garden of the soul”, conquistador, flight, fire, etc.). Often with historical and cultural phenomena. The Balzac accent appears with the mention of “shagreen bindings.” The creativity and personality of romantic composers (most likely Schumann) suggest a lot in “Mastro”. The captain with the face of Cain deepens the theme of the Flying Dutchman. Gumilev’s alliterations are absolutely amazing: the fear of falling is conveyed by “z-z-z” - “bottomless gaped below”, the melodiousness of the violin is conveyed by the combination “vl” - “own the magic”. The poet will develop what he found here in many ways in his subsequent work.

In the spring of 1909, Gumilyov said about his cherished desire: “The world has become larger than man. An adult (are there many of them?) is happy to fight. He is flexible, he is strong, he believes in his right to find a land where he can live.” The joy of struggle manifested itself in active literary and organizational activities. In 1910, Gumilyov created the “Workshop of Poets,” uniting a large group of like-minded people to resolve professional issues. In 1913, together with S. Gorodetsky, he formed an association of Acmeists. The search for “earth” in its generalized sense determined a new stage in Gumilyov’s poetry, clearly visible in the book “Alien Sky.”

The Discovery of America appeared here. The Muse of Distant Journeys stood next to Columbus. But she doesn’t just captivate her with travel; under her light wings, Columbus finds a previously unknown, beautiful land:

He sees a miracle with his spiritual eye,

A whole world unknown to the prophets,

What lies in the blue abysses,

Where the west meets the east.

A mysterious part of the world has been discovered. However, her gifts are not mastered: Columbus returns to the Old World. And a feeling of deep dissatisfaction covers yesterday’s winner:

I am a shell, but without pearls,

I am the stream that was dammed

Deflated, now no longer needed.

“Like a lover, another to play | He is abandoned by the Muse of Wanderings." The analogy with the disappointments of the artist is unconditional and sad. The “pearl” that shines in the inner eye, no, the flighty Muse has abandoned the one who has lost his “jewel.” The poet thinks about the purpose of the search.

Gumilyov sought to understand the phenomenon of life. She appears in an unusual and capacious image - “with an ironic grin, a child king on the skin of a lion, forgetting toys between his white tired hands.” Life is natural and strong, complex and contradictory. But its essence escapes. Having rejected the deceptive shine of “pearls,” the lyrical hero still finds his “land.” She is truly inexhaustibly rich; most importantly, she always needs a person who gives her new breath. Thus, in the subtext (not directly named), a sacred concept arises - service to culture, harmonization of its contemporary state for the author. The ancient world, long gone into the past, was chosen as the ideal:

We're walking through the foggy years

Vaguely feeling the scent of roses,

In centuries, in spaces, in nature

Conquer ancient Rhodes.

The path laid out in time connects the past and the future with the feat of a personality creating beauty.

With such a majestic goal, acquiring fresh impressions, forms, and words becomes urgently necessary. Gumilyov reflects the “immortal features” of what he saw and experienced. Including in Africa. The collection includes Abyssinian songs based on local folklore (“Military”, “Five Bulls”, “Slave”, “Zanzibar Girls”, etc.). The natural, social, everyday flavor is reproduced here. Exoticism, however, provides not just unexpected images and details, but an understanding of spiritual features close to the author: strong, natural feelings, merging with nature, imaginative thinking. The artist absorbed the living juices of primitive culture.

Gumilyov considered art to be the true “country” of his “dwelling”; He named the French poet Théophile Gautier as an idol in this “promised land”. In an article dedicated to him, he highlighted the creative aspirations characteristic of both of them: to avoid “both the random, concrete, and the vague, abstract”; to know the “majestic ideal of life in art and for art.” Beauty, elusive in everyday existence, is comprehended only by the artist and only for the further development of creativity and the enrichment of spiritual culture. “Alien Sky” includes a selection of Gautier’s lyrics translated by Gumilyov. Among them are lines of admiration for the human gift of creating the Beautiful:

Everything is dust. - One, rejoicing,

Art will not die

The people will survive.

The problem of artistic mastery therefore acquired a fundamental character. On the one hand, Gumilyov worships the sharpness of vision, turned to the diversity of existence: “Poets should have a Plyushkin economy. And the rope will come in handy.” On the other hand, he believed: “poems are one thing, but life is another.” The concept of mastery has traditionally been associated with the achievement of perfect forms, with the global question of transforming realities into a value worthy of art. In Gautier's translations this resulted in an aphoristic statement:

Making things more beautiful

What material was taken from?

More dispassionate.

The meaning of being-creativity was found. Gumilyov wanted to develop the truth he had suffered through in collaboration with like-minded people. This is how the idea of their unification under the banner of Acmeism arose.

The relationship between life and art in Gumilyov’s poetry clearly appears in the book “Quiver”. His observations and experiences during the First World War were reflected here. At the front, Gumilev fought, according to eyewitnesses, with enviable calm courage, for which he was awarded two St. George Crosses. And for his patriotism, the poet was accused of chauvinism for many years. Particularly indignant was a line from the poem “Iambic Pentameter”: “In the silent call of the battle trumpet | I suddenly heard the song of my destiny...” Whereas it was a sincere and moral confession. Gumilyov still considered the tests a necessary school of growth, now needed not only by him but by the whole country. In merging with it, he opened up new horizons for understanding the world and man. The lyrics of "Quiver" allow us to see how such a process took place.

Russia awakened painful questions. Considering himself “not a tragic hero” - “more ironic and drier,” the poet comprehended only his attitude towards his homeland:

Oh, Rus', harsh sorceress,

You will take yours everywhere.

Run? But do you like new things?

Or can you live without you?

In the “lair of fire” a union with the “severe sorceress” appears:

Golden heart of Russia

Beats rhythmically in my chest...

That's why: “...death is clear and simple: | Here a comrade grieves over the fallen | And kisses him on the mouth.” Bitter times give a truly simple and great feeling of mutual understanding. This is the everyday meaning, by the way, slightly outlined in poetry, of the experience. There is also a deep, philosophical one, corresponding to the needs of life.

In the prose “Notes of a Cavalryman,” Gumilyov revealed all the hardships of war, the horror of death, and the torment of the rear. Nevertheless, it was not this knowledge that formed the basis of the Quiver. Seeing the people's troubles, Gumilyov came to a broad conclusion: “The spirit is as real as our body, only infinitely stronger than it.” This idea received artistic development.

In suffering, a person’s wise demands on himself grow: “how could we have lived in peace before...”. From here arises the truly Gumilevian theme of soul and body. There is no confrontation between them yet:

The spirit blossoms like the rose of May,

Like fire it rips through the darkness

The body doesn't understand anything

Blindly obeys him.

In “The Quiver” spiritual power is expressed in many ways: “the soul goes everything, burns with its destiny...”, “everything is contained within a person who loves the world”; “the sun of the spirit, ah, without setting, the earth cannot overcome it.”

The Muse of Far Wanderings now awakens not by the call of spaces and times, but by the self-deepening of the personality, its “fire-breathing conversation,” “pacification of tired flesh.” But such a “journey” can be even more difficult and responsible. The supposedly inherent myopia of everyone is severely debunked: “We never understood | Something worth understanding"; “And the former dark burden | Continues to live in the present." Gumilyov turns to mythology and the works of deceased masters. But only in order to verify my search for the Beautiful in the human soul in the experience of others. It is related to art. The artist is given a lofty goal - to compose “inspired poems, unchaining the sleep of the elements” (alliteration emphasizing the contrast). Among the deaf, the unsighted:

And a symbol of mountain greatness,

Like some kind of benevolent covenant,

High tongue-tied

It is granted to you, poet.

Opposite states ultimately turn out to be the fruits of the same “garden of the soul.” There are no painful struggles, no duality here. But the principles that disagree with each other are divided by a sharp line into light and darkness. Dissonances are embodied with penetration into the real, visible world and through the means of unbridled fantasy. The usual smells are clearly felt: “tar, and dust, and grass”, “the earth smells temptingly of decay”; one sees: “dazzling heights”, “wild beauty of the steppe expanses”, “mystery of the forest wilderness”. And next to it is the amazing - “the unsteady distances of mirrors”, “Satan in unbearable brilliance”, humane in suffering, the “once terrible” eyes of the mythical Medusa. And everywhere: “Colors, colors – bright and clean.” The diverse origins are organized by the author’s coined thought. “Now my voice is slow and measured” - the poet’s own confession. The highest demands are strictly and meticulously comprehended at a turning point.

Thinking about the “sun of the spirit” and human internal contrasts led Gumilyov to summing up his personal life results. They were expressed in the poems of “Bonfire,” which included lyrics from the Paris and London albums created in the capitals of France and England when Gumilyov participated in the Entente operation.

The author seemed to proceed from the “smallest” observations - of trees, “orange-red sky”, “honey-smelling ray”, “sick” in an ice-drifted river. The expressiveness of the landscape is unique here. But it was not only nature that attracted Gumilyov. He revealed the secret of a bright sketch that explained his worldview. The poet still gravitated toward the idea of transforming things, which one can be sure of after hearing his passionate appeal to the meager earth, almost a spell: “And become, as you are, a star, | Fire permeated through and through!” Everywhere he looked for an opportunity to “rush after the light.” It’s as if Gumilyov’s young, dreamy hero has returned to the pages of a new book. No, that didn't happen. A mature and sad comprehension of one’s place in the world is the epicenter of “Bonfire.”

Now we can understand in a new way why the long road called to the poet, what its danger was. The poem “Eternal Memory” contains an antinomy:

And that's all life! Whirling, singing, And here again delight and grief,

Seas, deserts, cities, Again, as before, as always,

The flickering reflection of the sea waves its gray mane,

Lost forever. Deserts and cities rise.

The beacon of finding the way never goes out, as it promises to return “what is lost forever.” Therefore, the lyrical hero calls himself a “gloomy wanderer” who “must travel again, must see.” Under this sign, encounters with Switzerland, the Norwegian mountains, the North Sea, and a garden in Cairo appear. And on this material basis, capacious, generalizing images of sad wandering are formed: wandering, “as if along the beds of dried up rivers,” “blind transitions of space and time.”

Similar motives are read in love lyrics. The beloved leads “the heart to heights,” “scattering stars and flowers.” Nowhere, as here, did such sweet delight in front of a woman sound. But happiness is only in a dream, in delirium. But in reality - longing for the incomprehensible:

Here I stand before your door,

There is no other way given to me,

Even though I know that I wouldn't dare

Never enter this door.

The spiritual collisions in the works of “The Pillar of Fire” are immeasurably deeper, more multifaceted and more fearless. Each of them is a pearl. It is quite possible to say that the poet created this long-sought treasure with his own words. Which does not contradict the general concept of the collection, where creativity is given the role of a sacred rite. There is no gap between what is desired and what is accomplished for an artist.

The poems are born of eternal problems - the meaning of life and happiness, the contradictions of soul and body, ideal and reality. Addressing them imparts to poetry a majestic rigor, the wisdom of a parable, and an aphoristic sound. But everything is colored with warm human intonation and confessional sincerity. The individual and the general, a strict thought about the world and reverent personal confessions merge together.

Reading “The Pillar of Fire” evokes a feeling of ascending to great heights. It is impossible to determine which of the dynamic “turns” is more exciting in “Memory”, “Forest”, “Soul and Body”, “The Sixth Sense”. Each time a new “layer of being” opens up.

The opening stanza of “Memory” is alarming with a bitter observation and warning:

Only snakes shed their skins

So that the soul ages and grows.

Unfortunately, we are not like snakes,

We change souls, not bodies.

Then readers are captivated by the poet’s confession about his past. But at the same time there is a painful thought about the imperfection and precariousness of human destinies. These nine heartfelt quatrains unexpectedly lead to a stern chord that transforms the theme:

I am a gloomy and stubborn architect

A temple rising in the darkness.

I was jealous of the glory of the Father,

As in heaven and on earth.

And from him - to the reverent dream of the flourishing of the earth, the country. However, it is not completed here either. The final lines, partially repeating the initial ones, carry a new sad feeling of the temporary limitations of human life. The poem has a symphonic development, like many other collections.

Gumilyov achieves rare expressiveness by combining incompatible elements. The forest in the lyrical creation of the same name is uniquely bizarre. In it, which “you can’t even dream about,” live giants, dwarfs, lions, “women with cat heads” and... ordinary fishermen, priests appear. It seems that the poet has returned to his early phantasmagoria. But here the fantastic is easily removed: “Maybe that forest is my soul...”

To embody complex, confusing, sometimes incomprehensible internal impulses, such bold figurative comparisons were made. In “The Little Elephant” the title character is associated with hard-to-associate experiences of love. But such a correlation turns out to be necessary to reveal the two hypostases of this feeling: imprisoned “in a tight cage” and strong, sweeping away all obstacles, like that elephant “that once carried Hannibal to the trembling Rome.” The ambiguity of each phenomenon is captured and deepened in a specific, material form.

Gumilyov created capacious symbols born of his imagination - for centuries. “The Lost Tram” symbolizes the crazy and fatal movement of history into nowhere. And it is furnished with terrifying details of the dead kingdom. Sensually changeable (fear, suffering, tenderness for a loved one) states of mind are painfully linked to it. The tragedy of humanity and personality is conveyed, which could not be more clearly expressed and interpreted in the strange image of a “lost tram.”

The poet seemed to constantly push the boundaries of the text. Unexpected endings played a special role. The triptych “Soul and Body” seemed to continue the familiar theme of “The Quiver,” although with a new twist (the dispute between the soul and the body for power over a person). And in the end, the unexpected suddenly arises: all the motivations of people turn out to be a “faint reflection” of a higher consciousness. “The Sixth Sense” immediately captivates you with the contrast between meager pleasures and true beauty, love, and poetry. The effect seems to have been achieved. Suddenly, in the last stanza, the thought breaks out to other boundaries - to the dream of the transformation of human nature:

So century after century - how soon, Lord? –

Under the scalpel of nature and art

Our spirit screams, our flesh faints,

Giving birth to an organ for the sixth sense.

The most complex, difficult to embody phenomena appear in line-by-line images, where ordinary subject details are combined with generalized, sometimes abstract concepts. Each of these images acquired an independent meaning: “a scalpel of nature and art”, “a ticket to India of the Spirit”, “a garden of dazzling planets...”.

The secrets of poetic “witchcraft” in “The Pillar of Fire” are countless. But it is necessary on the chosen path: to discover the essence and prospects of spiritual existence in strict, “pure” artistic forms. During his courageous rise to these heights, Gumilyov was very far from complacency. The painful feeling of the irresistible surrounding imperfection was excruciating. The cataclysms of the revolutionary period greatly intensified the tragic forebodings. They resulted in “The Lost Tram”:

He rushed like a storm, dark, winged,

He got lost in the abyss of time...

Stop, driver,

Stop the carriage now.

The “Pillar of Fire”, however, melted in its depths the worship of light and beauty. The poet’s art made it possible to affirm these principles without the slightest shade of speculativeness or idealization. In the Second Canzone we read:

Where all the sparkle, all the movement,

Sing that's it, you and I live there;

Here is only our reflection.

He laid down a rotting pond.

Gumilyov taught and, I think, taught his readers to remember and love “All the cruel, sweet life! | All my native, terrible land...” He saw both life and earth as endless, alluring distances, which helped to “predict” an experience unborn by humanity, following his “inexpressible nickname.” The romantic exclusivity of revealed spiritual movements and metamorphoses provided such an opportunity. It is precisely in this way that the poetic heritage of N. Gumilyov is infinitely dear to us.

Bibliography

Gumilyov N. The legacy of symbolism and acmeism // Russian literature of the twentieth century. Pre-October period / Comp. N.A. Trifonov. - M., 1960.

Russian literature: XX century: Reference book. Materials: Book. For students of Art. classes/ Comp. L.A. Smirnova. – M.: Education, 1995.

Luknitskaya V.K. Nikolai Gumilyov: The life of a poet based on materials from the home archives of the Luknitsky family. – L., 1990.

Tutoring

Need help studying a topic?

Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

Nikolai GUMILEV (1886-1921)

Gumilyov's childhood and youth.
Gumilyov's early work.
Travels in the works of Gumilyov.
Gumilev and Akhmatova.
Gumilyov's love lyrics.
Philosophical lyrics of Gumilyov.
Gumilev and the First World War.
War in the works of Gumilyov.
The theme of Russia in the works of Gumilyov.
Dramaturgy of Gumilyov.
Gumilyov and the revolution.
Biblical motifs in Gumilyov's lyrics.
Arrest and execution of Gumilyov.

The legacy of N. S. Gumilyov, a poet of rare individuality, only recently, after many years of oblivion, came to the reader. His poetry attracts with its novelty and acuteness of feelings, excited thought, graphic clarity and rigor of the poetic design.

Gumilyov's childhood and youth.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov was born on April 3 (15), 1886 in Kronstadt in the family of a naval doctor. Soon his father retired, and the family moved to Tsarskoye Selo. Here, in 1903, Gumilyov entered the 7th grade of the gymnasium, the director of which was the wonderful poet and teacher I. F. Annensky, who had a huge influence on his student. Gumilyov wrote about the role of I. Annensky in his fate in his 1906 poem “In Memory of Annensky”:

To such unexpected and melodious nonsense,

Bringing people's minds with me,

Innokenty Annensky was the last

From Tsarskoye Selo swans.

After graduating from high school, Gumilyov went to Paris, where he attended lectures on French literature at the Sorbonne University and studied painting. Returning to Russia in May 1908, Gumilyov devoted himself entirely to creative work, establishing himself as an outstanding poet and critic, a theorist of verse, and the author of the now widely known book of art criticism, “Letters on Russian Poetry.”

2. Gumilyov’s early work.

Gumilyov began writing poetry when he was still in high school. In 1905, the 19-year-old poet published his first collection, “The Path of the Conquistadors.” Soon, in 1908, the second, “Romantic Flowers,” followed, and then the third, “Pearls” (1910), which brought him wide fame.

At the very beginning of his creative career, N. Gumilyov joined the Young Symbolists. However, he became disillusioned with this movement quite early and became the founder of Acmeism. At the same time, he continued to treat the Symbolists with due respect, as worthy teachers and predecessors, virtuosos of the artistic form. In 1913, in one of his program articles “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism,” Gumilev, stating that “symbolism has completed its circle of development and is now falling,” added: “Symbolism was a worthy father.”

Gumilyov's early poems are dominated by an apology for the strong-willed principle, romanticized ideas about a strong personality who decisively asserts himself in the fight against enemies (“Pompeii among the pirates”), in tropical countries, in Africa and South America.

The heroes of these works are powerful, cruel, but also courageous, although soulless conquerors, conquistadors, discoverers of new lands, each of them in a moment of danger, hesitation and doubt

Or, having discovered a riot on Borg,

A pistol bursts from his belt,

So that gold falls from the lace,

From pinkish Brabant cuffs.

The quoted lines are taken from the ballad “Captains”, included in the collection “Pearls”. They very clearly characterize Gumilyov’s poetic sympathies for people of this type,

Whose is not the dust of lost charters -

The chest is soaked with the salt of the sea,

Who is the needle on the torn map

Marks his daring path.

The fresh wind of real art fills the “sails” of such poems, which are certainly associated with the romantic tradition of Kipling and Stevenson.

3. Travels in the works of Gumilyov.

Gumilyov traveled a lot. A voluntary wanderer and pilgrim, he traveled and walked thousands of miles, visited the impenetrable jungles of Central Africa, languished with thirst in the sands of the Sahara, got stuck in the swamps of Northern Abyssinia, touched the ruins of Mesopotamia with his hands... And it is no coincidence that exoticism became not only the theme of Gumilyov’s poems: it the very style of his works is imbued. He called his poetry the Muse of Far Travels, and remained faithful to it until the end of his days. With everything there is a lotThe image of the themes and philosophical depth of the late Gumilyov, poems about his travels and wanderings cast a very special light on his entire work.

The African theme occupies a leading place in Gumilyov's early poetry. Poems about Africa, so distant and mysterious in the minds of readers at the beginning of the century, gave a special originality to Gumilyov’s work. The poet's African poems are a tribute to his deep love for this continent and its people. Africa in his poetry is covered in romance and full of attractive power: “The heart of Africa is full of singing and flaming” (“Niger”). This is a magical country, full of charm and surprises (“Abyssinia”, “Red Sea”, “African Night”, etc.).

Deafened by the roar and stomping,

Cloaked in flames and smoke,

About you, my Africa, in a whisper

The seraphim speak in the skies.

One can only admire the love of the Russian poet-traveler for this continent. He visited Africa as a true friend and ethnographer. It is no coincidence that in distant Ethiopia they still keep a good memory of N. Gumilyov.

Glorifying the discoverers and conquerors of distant lands, the poet did not shy away from depicting the destinies of the peoples they conquered. Such, for example, is the poem “Slave” (1911), in which slave slaves dream of piercing the body of their European oppressor with a knife. In the poem “Egypt”, the author’s sympathy is evoked not by the rulers of the country - the British, but by its true masters, those

Who leads the Black buffaloes into the field with a plow or harrow?

Gumilyov's works about Africa are characterized by vivid imagery and poetry. Often even a simple geographical name (“Sudan”, “Zambezi”, “Abyssinia”, “Niger”, etc.) entails a whole chain of various pictures and associations. Full of secrets and exoticism, sultry air and unknown plants, amazing birds and animals, the African world in Gumilyov’s poems captivates with its generosity of sounds and colors, multicolor palette:

All day above the water, like a flock of dragonflies,

Golden flying fish are visible,

At the sandy, sickle-curved spits,

The shallows are like flowers, green and red.

("Red sea").

Gumilyov’s first poem “Mick”, a colorful story about a little Abyssinian captive named Mick, his friendship with an old baboon and a white boy Louis, and their joint escape to the city of monkeys, was evidence of the poet’s deep and devoted love for the distant African continent.

As the leader of Acmeism, Gumilev demanded great formal skill from poets. In his treatise “The Life of Verse,” he argued that in order to live through the ages, a poem, in addition to thought and feeling, must have “the softness of the outlines of a young body ... and the clarity of a statue illuminated by the sun; simplicity - for her alone the future is open, and - sophistication, as a living recognition of continuity from all the joys and sorrows of past centuries...” His own poetry is characterized by precise verse, harmonious composition, and emphasized rigor in the selection and combination of words.

In the poem “To the Poet” (1908), Gumilev expressed his creative credo this way:

Let your verse be flexible and resilient,

Like the poplar of a green valley,

Like the chest of the earth where the plow has plunged,

Like a girl who has never known a man.

Take care of confident rigor,

Your verse should neither flutter nor beat.

Although the muse has light steps

She is a goddess, not a dancer.

There is clearly a echo here with Pushkin, who also considered art to be the highest sphere of spiritual existence, a shrine, a temple, which should be entered with deep reverence:

The service of the muses does not tolerate vanity, the Beautiful must be majestic.

Already the poet’s first poems are replete with vivid comparisons, original epithets and metaphors, emphasizing the diversity of the world, its beauty and variability:

And the sun is lush in the distance

Dreamed of dreams of abundance,

And kissed the face of the earth

In the languor of sweet impotence.

And in the evenings in the sky

Scarlet clothes were burning,

And stained, in tears,

The Doves of Hope Wept

("Autumn Song")

Gumilev is primarily an epic poet, his favorite genre is the ballad with its energetic rhythm. At the same time, the exotic, pathetically elevated poetry of early Gumilyov is sometimes somewhat cold.

4. Gumilyov and Akhmatova.

Changes in his work occur in the 1910s. And they are largely connected with personal circumstances: with meeting and then marrying A. Akhmatova (then Anna Gorenko). Gumilyov met her back in 1903, at the skating rink, fell in love, proposed several times, but received consent to marriage only in the spring of 1910. Gumilev will write about it like this: From the lair of the serpent, From the city of Kyiv, I took not a wife, but a sorceress. And I thought - a funny one, I guessed - a wayward one, A cheerful songbird.

If you call, he winces, If you hug him, he puffs up, And the moon comes out, and he becomes languid, And he looks and groans, As if he’s burying Someone, and he wants to drown himself. (“From the Lair of the Serpent”)

After the release of the collection “Pearls,” Gumilev firmly secured the title of a recognized master of poetry. As before, his many works reek of exoticism, unusual and unfamiliar images of Africa, dear to his heart. But now the dreams and feelings of the lyrical hero become more tangible and earthly. (In the 1910s, love lyrics and poetry of emotional movements began to appear in the poet’s work; there was a desire to penetrate into the inner world of his characters, previously battened down by a hard shell of inaccessibility and power, and especially into the soul of the lyrical hero. This did not always work out successfully, for Gumilyov resorted to some poems on this topic have a false romantic surroundings, such as:

I approached, and then instantly,

Like an animal, fear grabbed hold of me:

I met a hyena's head

On slender girlish shoulders.

But in Gumilyov’s poetry there are many poems that can rightfully be called masterpieces, the theme of love sounds so deeply and piercingly in them. Such, for example, is the poem “About You” (1916), permeated with deep feeling, it sounds like the apotheosis of a beloved:

About you, about you, about you,

Nothing, nothing about me!

In human dark fate

You are a winged call to the heights.

Your noble heart -

Like a coat of arms of bygone times.

Existence is illuminated by it

All earthly, all wingless tribes.

If the stars are clear and proud,

They will turn away from our land,

She has two top stars:

These are your brave eyes.

Or here is the poem “To a Girl” (1911), dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Masha Kuzmina-Karavaeva, the poet’s cousin on her mother’s side:

I don't like languor

of your crossed arms,

And calm modesty,

And bashful fear.

The heroine of Turgenev's novels,

You are arrogant, gentle and pure,

There is so much of stormless autumn in you

From the alley where the sheets are circling.

Many of Gumilev’s poems reflected his deep feeling for Anna Akhmatova: “Ballad”, “Poisoned”, “Beast Tamer”, “By the Fireplace”, “One Evening”, “She”, etc. Such, for example, is beautifully created by the master poet the image of a wife and poet from the poem “She”:

I know a woman: silence,

Fatigue is bitter from words

Lives in a mysterious flicker

Her dilated pupils.

Her soul is open greedily

Only the copper music of verse,

Before a distant and joyful life

Arrogant and deaf.

She is bright in the hours of languor

And holds lightning in his hand,

And her dreams are as clear as shadows

On the heavenly fiery sand.

5. Love lyrics by Gumilyov.

The best works of Gumilev’s love lyrics should also include the poems “When I was in love”, “You couldn’t or didn’t want to”, “You regretted it, you forgave”, “Everything is pure for a pure look” and others. Gumilyov's love appears in a variety of manifestations: sometimes as a “tender friend” and at the same time a “merciless enemy” (“Scattering Stars”), sometimes like a “winged call to heights” (“About You”). “Only love remains for me...”, the poet confesses in the poems “Canzone One” and “Canzone Two”, where he comes to the conclusion that the most gratifying thing in the world is “the trembling of our dear eyelashes//And the smile of our beloved lips.”

Gumilyov's lyrics present a rich gallery of female characters and types: fallen, chaste, royally inaccessible and inviting, humble and proud. Among them: a passionate eastern queen (“Barbarians”), a mysterious sorceress (“The Witch”), the beautiful Beatrice, who left paradise for her beloved (“Beatrice”) and others.

The poet lovingly draws a noble appearancea woman who knows how to forgive insults and generously give joy, understand the storms and doubts crowding in the soul of her chosen one, filled with deep gratitude “for the dazzling happiness // To be with you at least sometimes.” The poeticization of women also revealed the knightly nature of Gumilyov’s personality.

6. Philosophical lyrics of Gumilyov.

In the best poems of the collection “Pearls,” the pattern of Gumilev’s verse is clear and deliberately simple. The poet creates visible pictures:

I look at the melting block,

To the reflection of pink lightning,

And my smart cat catches fish

And lures birds into the net.

The poetic picture of the world in Gumilyov’s poems attracts with its specificity and tangibility of images. The poet even materializes music. He sees, for example, how

The sounds rushed and shouted Like a vision, like giants, And rushed about in the echoing hall, And dropped diamonds.

The “diamonds” of words and sounds of Gumilyov’s best poems are exceptionally colorful and dynamic. His poetic world is extremely picturesque, full of expression and love of life. Clear and elastic rhythm, bright, sometimes excessive imagery are combined in his poetry with classical harmony, precision, and thoughtfulness of form, which adequately embodies the richness of the content.

In his poetic depiction of life and man, N. Gumilyov was able to rise to the depths of philosophical thoughts and generalizations, revealing almost Pushkin or Tyutchev strength. He thought a lot about the world, about God, about the purpose of man. And these thoughts were reflected in various ways in his work. The poet was convinced that in everything and always “the Lord’s word nourishes us better than bread.” It is no coincidence that a significant part of his poetic heritage consists of poems and poems inspired by gospel stories and images, imbued with love for Jesus Christ.

Christ was Gumilyov's moral and ethical ideal, and the New Testament was a reference book. Gospel stories, parables, instructions are inspired by Gumilyov’s poem “The Prodigal Son”, the poems “Christ”, “Gates of Paradise”, “Paradise”, “Christmas in Abyssinia”, “Your Temple. Lord, in heaven..." and others. Reading these works, one cannot help but notice what an intense struggle takes place in the soul of his lyrical hero, how he rushes between opposing feelings: pride and humility.

The foundations of the Orthodox faith were laid in the minds of the future poet as a child. He was raised in a religious family. His mother was a true believer. Anna Gumileva, the wife of the poet’s older brother, recalls: “The children were brought up in the strict rules of the Orthodox religion. Mother often came with them to the chapel to light a candle, which Kolya liked. Kolya loved to go to church, light a candle, and sometimes prayed for a long time in front of the icon of the Savior. From childhood he was religious and remained the same until the end of his days - a deeply religious Christian.”

His student Irina Odoevtseva, who knew the poet well, writes in her book “On the Banks of the Neva” about Gumilyov’s visits to church services and his convinced religiosity. Nikolai Gumilyov’s religiosity helps us understand a lot about his character and creativity.

Gumilyov’s thoughts about God are inseparable from thoughts about man, his place in the world. The poet’s worldview concept received extremely clear expression in the final stanza of the poetic short story “Fra Beato Angelico”:

There is God, there is peace, they live forever,

And people's lives are instantaneous and miserable.

But a person contains everything within himself.

Who loves the world and believes in God.

All the poet’s work is the glorification of man, the capabilities of his spirit and willpower. Gumilyov was passionately in love with life, with its diverse manifestations. And he sought to convey this love to the reader, to make him a “knight of happiness,” because happiness, he is convinced, depends, first of all, on the person himself.

In the poem “Knight of Fortune” he writes:

How easy it is to breathe in this world!

Tell me who is dissatisfied with life.

Tell me who takes a deep breath

I am free to make everyone happy.

Let him come, I'll tell him

About a girl with green eyes.

About the blue morning darkness.

Pierced by rays and poetry.

Let him come. I have to tell

I have to tell it again and again.

How sweet it is to live, how sweet it is to win

The sea and girls, enemies and the word.

And if he still doesn’t understand.

My beautiful one will not accept faith

And he will complain in turn

To the world's sorrow, to the pain - to the barrier!

It was a symbol of faith. He categorically did not accept pessimism, despondency, dissatisfaction with life, “world sorrow”.It was not for nothing that Gumilyov was called a poet-warrior. Traveling and testing himself with danger were his passion. He wrote prophetically about himself:

I I won't die in bed

With a notary and a doctor,

And in some wild crevice.

Drowned in thick ivy ( "Me and you).

7. Gumilyov and the First World War.

When the First World War began, Gumilyov volunteered to go to the front. His bravery and contempt for death became legendary. Two soldier's Georges are the highest awards for a warrior and serve as the best confirmation of his courage. Gumilyov spoke about episodes of his military life in “Notes of a Cavalryman” in 1915 and in a number of poems in the collection “Quiver”. As if summing up his military fate, he wrote in the poem “Memory”:

He knew the pangs of cold and thirst.

An anxious dream, an endless journey.

But Saint George touched twice

I shoot the untouched breast.

We cannot agree with those who consider Gumilyov’s war poems to be chauvinistic, glorifying the “sacred cause of war.” The poet saw and realized the tragedy of the war. In one of his poems’he wrote;

And the second year is drawing to a close. But banners also fly. And war also violently mocks our wisdom.

8. War in the works of Gumilyov.

Gumilyov was attracted by the vivid romanticization of the feat, for he was a man of a knightly soul. War in his depiction appears as a phenomenon akin to a rebellious, destructive, disastrous verse. That is why we so often see in his poems the likening of battle to a thunderstorm. The lyrical hero of these works plunges into the fiery element of battle without fear or despondency, although he understands that death awaits him at every step:

She is everywhere - and in the glow of a fire,

And in the dark, unexpected and close.

Then on the horse of a Hungarian hussar,

And then with the gun of a Tyrolean shooter.

Courageous overcoming of physical difficulties and suffering, fear of death, the triumph of the spirit over the body became one of the main themes of N. Gumilyov’s works about the war. He considered the victory of the spirit over the body to be the main condition for the creative perception of existence. In “Notes of a Cavalryman” Gumilyov wrote: “I find it hard to believe that a person who dines every day and sleeps every night could contribute anything to the treasury of the culture of the spirit. Only fasting and vigil, even if they are involuntary, awaken in a person special powers that were previously dormant.” The same thoughts permeate the poet’s poems:

The spirit blossoms like the rose of May.

Like fire, it tears through the darkness.

Body, not understanding anything

She boldly obeys him.

The fear of death, the poet claims, is overcome in the souls of Russian soldiers by the awareness of the need to defend the independence of the Motherland.

9. The theme of Russia in the works of Gumilyov.

The theme of Russia runs like a red thread through almost all of Gumilyov’s work. He had every right to say:

Golden heart of Russia

Beats rhythmically in my chest.

But this theme manifested itself especially intensely in the cycle of poems about the war, participation in which for the heroes of his works is a righteous and holy deed. That's why

Seraphim, clear and winged.

The warriors are visible behind their shoulders.

For their exploits in the name of the Motherland, Russian warriors are blessed by higher powers. That is why the presence of such Christian images is so organic in Gumilyov’s works. In the poem "Iambic Pentameter" he states:

And the soul is burned with happiness

Ever since then; drunk with joy

Both clarity and wisdom; about God

She talks to the stars,

The voice of God is heard in military alarm

And he calls his roads God's.

Gumilyov's heroes fight “for the sake of life on earth.”This idea is affirmed with particular persistence in art.desire for the “Newborn”, imbued with ChristiansChinese motives of sacrifice for the sake of the happiness of futuregenerations. The author is convinced that he was born. to the roarbaby tools -

...will be God's favorite,

He will understand his triumph.

He must. We fought a lot

And we suffered for him.

Gumilev's poems about the war are evidence of the further growth of his creative talent. The poet still loves “the splendor of lush words,” but at the same time he has become more selective in his choice of vocabulary and combines the former desire for emotional intensity and brightness with the graphic clarity of the artistic image and depth of thought. Recalling the famous picture of a battle from the poem “War”, striking with its unusual and surprisingly accurate metaphorical series, simplicity and clarity of figurative words:

Like a dog on a heavy chain,

A machine gun barks behind the forest,

And the shrapnel buzzes like bees

Collecting bright red honey.

We will find in the poet’s poems many accurately noted details that make the world of his war poems at the same time palpably earthly and uniquely lyrical:

Here is a priest in a cassock with holes in it

He rapturously sings a psalm.

Here they play a majestic tune

Over a barely noticeable hill.

And a field full of mighty enemies. Bombs buzzing menacingly and bullets singing, And the sky is filled with lightning and menacing clouds.

The collection “Quiver”, published during the First World War, includes not only poems that convey the human condition in war. No less important in this book is the depiction of the inner world of the lyrical hero, as well as the desire to capture a wide variety of life situations and events. Many poems reflect important stages of the poet’s life: farewell to his gymnasium youth (“In Memory of Annensky”), a trip to Italy (“Venice”, “Pisa”), memories of past travels (“African Night”), about home and family ( "Old estates"), etc.

10. Gumilyov’s dramaturgy.

Gumilyov also tried his hand at drama. In 1912-1913, three of his one-act plays in verse appeared one after another: “Don Juan in Egypt”, “The Game”, “Actaeon”. In the first of them, recreating the classic image of Don Juan, the author transfers the action to the conditions of modern times. Don Juan appears in Gumilev's portrayal as a spiritually rich personality, head and shoulders above his antipode, the learned pragmatist Leporello.

In the play “The Game” we also have a situation of acute confrontation: the young beggar romantic Count, who is trying to regain the possession of his ancestors, is contrasted with the cold and cynical old royalist. The work ends tragically: the collapse of dreams and hopes leads the Count to suicide. The author's sympathies are entirely given here to people like the dreamer Count.

In “Actaeon,” Gumilev reinterpreted the ancient Greek and Roman myths about the goddess of the hunt Diana, the hunter Actaeon and the legendary king Cadmus - warrior, architect, worker and creator, founder of the city of Thebes. Skillful contamination of ancient myths allowed the author to clearly highlight positive characters - Actaeon and Cadmus, and to recreate life situations full of drama and poetry of feelings.

During the war years, Gumilyov wrote a dramatic poem in four acts, “Gondla,” in which the physically weak but powerful in spirit medieval Irish skald Gondla is depicted with sympathy.

Gumilyov also wrote the historical play “The Poisoned Tunic” (1918), which tells the story of the life of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. As in previous works, the main pathos of this play lies in the idea of the confrontation between nobility and baseness, good and evil.

Gumilyov’s last dramatic experience was the prose drama “The Rhino Hunt” (1920) about the life of a primitive tribe. In bright colors, the author recreates exotic images of savage hunters, their dangerous existence, and the first steps towards understanding themselves and the world around them.

11. Gumilev and the revolution.

The October Revolution found Gumilyov abroad, where he was sent in May 1917 by the military department. He lived in Paris and London, translating oriental poets. In May 1918, he returned to revolutionary Petrograd and, despite family troubles (divorce from A. Akhmatova), poverty and hunger, he worked together with Gorky, Blok, K. Chukovsky at the World Literature publishing house, and gave lectures in literary studios.

During these years (1918-1921), the poet’s last three lifetime collections were published: “The Bonfire” (1918), “Tent” (1920) and “Pillar of Fire” (1921). They testified to the further evolution of Gumilyov’s creativity, his desire to comprehend life in its various manifestations. He is concerned with the theme of love (“About You”, “Dream”, “Ezbekiye”), national culture and history (“Andrei Rublev”), native nature (“Ice drift”, “Forest”, “Autumn”), everyday life (“Russian estate").

It is not the new “screaming Russia” that is dear to Gumilyov the poet, but the old, pre-revolutionary one, where “human life is real”, and in the bazaar they “preach the word of God” (“Gorodok”). The lyrical hero of these poems cherishes the quiet, measured life of people, in which there are no wars and revolutions, where

The cross is raised over the church

A symbol of clear, paternal power.

And the raspberry ringing buzzes

Speech wise, human.

(“Cities”).

There is in these lines, with their inexpressible longing for the lost Russia, something of Bunin, Shmelev, Rachmaninov and Levitan.In “Bonfire” for the first time Gumilev appears the image of a simple man, a Russian peasant with his

With a glance, a childish smile,

With such a mischievous speech, -

And on the valiant chest

The cross shone golden.

(“Mules”).

12. Biblical motifs in Gumilyov’s lyrics.

The title of the collection, “Pillar of Fire,” is taken from the Old Testament. Turning to the fundamentals of existence, the poet imbued many of his works with biblical motifs. He writes especially a lot about the meaning of human existence. Reflecting on the earthly path of man, on eternal values, on the soul, on death and immortality, Gumilev pays a lot of attention to the problems of artistic creativity. Creativity for him is a sacrifice, self-purification, ascent to Golgotha, a divine act of the highest manifestation of the human “I”:

True creativity, Gumilev argues, following the traditions of patristic literature, is always from God, the result of the interaction of divine grace and human free will, even if the author himself is not aware of this. Poetic talent, bestowed from above “as a kind of gracious covenant,” is an obligation to serve people honestly and sacrificially:

And a symbol of mountain greatness.

Like some kind of benevolent covenant

High tongue-tied

It is granted to you, poet.

The same idea is heard in the poem “The Sixth Sense”:

So, century after century - soon. Lord?

Under the scalpel of nature and art

Our spirit screams, our flesh is exhausted.

Giving birth to an organ for the sixth sense.

In recent collections, Gumilyov has grown into a great and demanding artist. Gumilev considered work on the content and form of works to be the primary task of every poet. It is not for nothing that one of his articles devoted to the problems of artistic creativity is called “Anatomy of a Poem.”

In the poem “Memory,” Gumilyov defines the meaning of his life and creative activity as follows:

I'm a gloomy and stubborn architect

Temple rising in the darkness

I was jealous of my father's glory,

As in heaven and on earth.

The heart will be tormented by flames

Until the day when they rise, they are clear,

Walls of the new Jerusalem

On the fields of my native country.

Never tired of reminding his readers of the biblical truth that “in the beginning was the Word,” Gumilyov, with his poems, sings a majestic hymn to the Word. There were times, the poet claims, when “the sun was stopped with a word // Cities were destroyed with a word.” He elevates the Word - Logos above the “low life”, kneels before it as a Master, always ready for creative learning from the classics, for obedience and feat.

Gumilyov's aesthetic and spiritual reference point is Pushkin's creativity with its clarity, accuracy, depth and harmony of artistic image. This is especially noticeable in his latest collections, which reflect the colorful and complex dynamics of existence with truly philosophical depth. In the poem-testament “To My Readers” (1921), included in the collection “Pillar of Fire,” Gumilyov is full of desire calmly and wisely:

...Immediately remember

All my cruel, sweet life, -

All my native, strange land

And standing before the face of God

With simple and wise words.

Wait calmly for His judgment.

At the same time, in a number of poems in the collection “Pillar of Fire,” the joy of accepting life and falling in love with the beauty of God’s world is interspersed with anxious forebodings associated with the social situation in the country and with one’s own destiny.

Like many other outstanding Russian poets, Gumilyov was endowed with the gift of foresight of his fate. His poem “Worker” is deeply shocking, the hero of which casts a bullet that will bring death to the poet:

The bullet he cast will whistle

Above the gray, foaming Dvina.

The bullet he cast will be found

My chest, she came for me.

And the Lord will reward me in full measure

For my short and bitter life.

I did this in a light gray blouse,

A short old man.

In the last months of Gumilyov’s life, the feeling of imminent death did not leave him. I. Odoevtseva writes about this in her memoirs, reproducing episodes of their visit to the Znamenskaya Church in Petrograd in the fall of 1920 and the subsequent conversation in the poet’s apartment over a cup of tea: “Sometimes it seems to me,” he says slowly, “that I, too, will not escape the common fate, that my end will be terrible. Just recently, a week ago, I had a dream. No, I don't remember him. But when I woke up, I felt clearly that I had very little time to live, a few months, no more. And that I will die very terribly.”

This conversation took place on October 15, 1920. And in January of the following year, in the first issue of the magazine “House of Art”, N. Gumilev’s poem “The Lost Tram” was published, in which he allegorically depicts revolutionary Russia in the form of a tram rushing into obscurity and sweeping away everything in its path.

“The Lost Tram” is one of the most mysterious poems, which has not yet received a convincing interpretation. In his own deep and original way, from the position of Christian eschatology, the poet develops here the eternal theme of world art - the theme of death and immortality.

The poem recreates the state when a person, according to Christian doctrine, is between physical death and the resurrection of the soul. For Gumilyov, death is the end of his earthly journey and at the same time the beginning of a new, afterlife. In the poem, she is personified by a carriage driver who takes the lyrical hero away from earthly life in a strange, fantastic hearse - a tram that has the ability to move on land and in the air, in space and time. The image of a tram is romanticized and takes on the features of a cosmic body rushing at colossal speed into infinite space. This is a symbol of the poet’s fate in its earthly and transcendental dimensions.

To depict the movement to the afterlife, the author uses the traditional motif of travel in religious literature. Time in the poem is open to eternity, combining the past, present and future.

The work captures many biographical details of the lyrical hero's life, provides a retrospective overview of the most important events of his life, and shows the transphysical wanderings of his spirit. All of them are presented in an allegorical and surreal light. Thus, the bridges over the Neva, Nile, Seine, through which the tram is carried, evoke associations with a bridge leading, according to popular beliefs, to the other world, and the rivers themselves can be considered as an analogue of the river of oblivion, which the soul of the deceased must overcome in the afterlife journey.

The path to the Kingdom of the Spirit, where the soul of the lyrical hero strives, is complicated by wanderings and throwing in time dimensions. The posthumous fate of the lyrical hero is, as it were, programmed by earthly life, and the tram, lost “in the abyss of time,” on a new, metaphysical turn, seems to repeat the poet’s lifetime wanderings. Carrying out intense spiritual work to re-evaluate his earthly life, the lyrical hero hopes for eternal and endless life, for the acquisition of the kingdom of God, “India of the Spirit.” The Orthodox memorial service in St. Isaac's Cathedral is an important step towards this.

The faithful stronghold of Orthodoxy

Isaac is embedded in the heights.

There I will serve a prayer service for health

Mashenki and a memorial service for me.

13. Arrest and execution of Gumilyov.

The funeral service was already approaching. In the same year, 1921, on the initiative of Zinoviev, the Petrograd Cheka inspired the so-called “Tagantsev case,” named after its organizer, Professor V.N. Tagantsev, who, together with his like-minded people, was allegedly plotting a counter-revolutionary coup. The Cheka investigator, Y. Agranov, who led the case, brought to justice more than 200 people, among whom were famous scientists, writers, artists and public figures.

On August 3, N. Gumilyov, who had recently been elected chairman of the Petrograd Union of Poets, was also arrested. Gumilyov was charged with the fact that when one of his old acquaintances invited him to join this organization, he refused, but did not report this proposal to the authorities.

The code of honor, as well as his civic position, did not allow him to do this: according to the testimony of the writer A. Amfiteatrov, who knew him well, N. Gumilyov “was a strong monarchist. Not loud, but not at all hiding. In the last book of his poems, already published under Soviet fear, he did not hesitate to publish a small poem about how, while traveling in Africa, he visited the prophet-demigod “Mahdi” and -

I gave him a gun

And a portrait of my Emperor.

This must have been where he stumbled, already being under arrest.” On August 24, the Petrograd Cheka sentenced 61 people to death, including N. Gumilyov. The poet was shot on August 25, 1921 at one of the stations of the Irinovskaya railway near Leningrad.

As V. Soloukhin writes in his “Pebbles on the Palms”: “The artist Yuri Pavlovich Annenkov testifies that Gumilyov, an officer, twice Knight of St. George, a brilliant poet, smiled while being executed.

It is known from other sources that Zinoviev crawled on the floor during execution and licked the boots of the security officers with his slobbering mouth. And this creature and scum killed the Russian knight Gumilyov!”

Nikolai Gumilyov’s life was cut short at the age of 35, in the prime of his extraordinary talent. How many wonderful works could have come from his talented pen!

N. S. Gumilev can rightfully be called one of the poets of the Russian spiritual and national revival. The lines of his poem “Sun of the Spirit” sound like a prophecy filled with optimism:

I feel like it will be autumn soon.

The sunny labors will end,

And people will be relieved of their spirit

Golden, ripe fruits.

This confidence breathes through the entire work of this remarkable poet, which is gaining more and more fame. According to the fair statement of G. Adamovich, “the name of Gumilyov has become famous. His poems are read not only by literary specialists or poets; “The ordinary reader” reads them and learns to love these poems - courageous, intelligent, slender, noble - in the best sense of the word.”

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (1886-1921) - poet, organizer and theorist of Acmeism. Born on July 3 (15), 1886 in the family of a military doctor. The poet spent his childhood in Tsarskoe Selo, where the family moved after his father’s resignation. He received his initial education at a gymnasium headed by the famous poet In. Annensky, which he graduated in 1906. In 1905, the poet’s first collection of poems, “The Path of the Conquistadors,” was published, which was noticed by Bryusov.

Gumilev received further education at the Sorbonne (Paris), where he studied French literature. At this time, the second collection of poems, “Romantic Flowers,” was published, dedicated to his future wife A. A. Gorenko, known under the pseudonym Akhmatova. In 1908, Gumilev made his first trip to Africa, which would be followed by his visits there in 1910 and 1913. From these expeditions he brought a lot of materials for the ethnography museum, but the real purpose of his trips was “to find new words in a new environment.”

Returning to Russia, the poet became close to the publisher of the Apollo magazine S.K. Makovsky. V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, A. Blok and others collaborated with this magazine. Gumilyov became a poetry critic of the magazine, his articles were subsequently published as a separate book, “Letters on Russian Poetry” (1923). The poet became famous thanks to his third collection of poems, “Pearls” (1910), dedicated to V. Bryusov. It was in this collection that the artistic originality of the poet’s talent, who formulated the aesthetic program of Acmeism, was revealed. Gumilyov’s rejection of the “nebulae” of symbolism was supported by M. Kuzmin, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam and others. In 1911, these poets created the literary association “The Workshop of Poets.”

At the end of 1912, Gumilev delivered a keynote speech for the Acmeists - “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism.” In the same year, a collection of his poems, “Alien Sky,” was published, in the traditions of Acmeism.

During the First World War, Gumilyov served in the army, going from a volunteer to an ensign, and became a holder of two St. George's crosses. An enthusiastic attitude towards the war was expressed in the collection “Quiver” (1916). On behalf of the Provisional Government, Gumilyov ended up in France in the spring of 1917 and returned to Russia only after the October Revolution.

The last collections of poems “Bonfire” (1918), “Tent” (1921) and the posthumously published “Pillar of Fire” reflected the poet’s thoughts about his fate in the transitional era. Gumilev considered the harsh everyday life of Russia to be a road to nowhere, calling the movement along it a “lost tram.” In these collections the poet returns to symbolism. The aesthetics of Acmeism was unable to express the confusion of the human spirit in an era of change.

Gumilyov was arrested on August 3, 1921 on charges of participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and was soon shot.

Gumilyov's first collection. Nikolai Gumilyov: short biography, personal life. Biblical motifs in Gumilyov's lyrics

Tutoring

Alexander the Great - short biography The decline of the empire of Alexander the Great

Nikolay Gumilyov: short biography, personal life