Acmeism , or the Guild of Poets , was a modernist transient poetic school, which emerged c. 1911 or in 1912 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky . Their ideals were compactness of form and clarity of expression. The term was coined after the Greek word ἀκμή ( akmē ), i.e., "the best age of man".
20-621: The acmeist mood was first announced by Mikhail Kuzmin in his 1910 essay "Concerning Beautiful Clarity". The acmeists contrasted the ideal of Apollonian clarity (hence the name of their journal, Apollon ) to " Dionysian frenzy" propagated by the Russian symbolist poets like Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov . To the Symbolists' preoccupation with "intimations through symbols" they preferred "direct expression through images". In his later manifesto "The Morning of Acmeism" (1913), Osip Mandelstam defined
40-569: A 1923 review she took as condescending, and she made him a prototype of one of the villains in her "Poem Without a Hero". ) The last volume of poetry Kuzmin published during his lifetime was The Trout Breaks the Ice (1929), a cycle of narrative poetry . In the 1920s and 1930s Kuzmin made his living primarily as a literary translator, most notably of Shakespeare 's plays. He died in poverty in Leningrad . Contemporary poet and critic Alexei Purin thinks
60-681: A celebrated meeting place for artists and writers. Mandelstam's collection of poems Stone (1912) is considered the movement's finest accomplishment. Amongst the major acmeist poets, each interpreted acmeism in a different stylistic light, from Akhmatova's intimate poems on topics of love and relationships to Gumilev's narrative verse. This article about a literary movement is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Mikhail Kuzmin Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin ( Russian : Михаи́л Алексе́евич Кузми́н ) (October 18 [ O.S. October 6] 1872 – March 1, 1936)
80-478: A poet, in 1913. The two men lived together with Yurkun's mother, and Yurkun’s wife, Olga Arbenina, joined them, for a short while. Kuzmin and Yurkun's relationship lasted until Kuzmin's death. Kuzmin died in 1936 of pneumonia, two years before Yurkun and many other writers were arrested under the Stalinist regime and shot. Kuzmin's association with the Symbolists was never definitive, and in 1910 he helped give rise to
100-482: A wide variety of translations. Vesy was lavishly designed and illustrated, often by artists of the World of Art movement. Bryusov's critical writing offered models of clarity and skill, and his scholarly editorial approach had a major impact on Russian editorial practice in the early twentieth century. Eventually the magazine served as a medium for disputes between symbolists like Bely and Ivanov who wanted to make symbolism
120-609: A young man was the polyglot Germanophile aristocrat Georgy Chicherin (who later entered the diplomatic service and after the October Revolution became People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs), a passionate supporter of Wagner and Nietzsche . Another strong influence was his travels, first to Egypt and Italy and then to northern Russia, where he was deeply impressed by the Old Believers . Settling down in St. Petersburg, he became close to
140-430: Is captivating. How sweet it is to read a classical poet living in our midst, to experience a Goethean blend of "form" and "content," to be persuaded that the soul is not a substance made of metaphysical cotton, but rather the carefree, gentle Psyche. Kuzmin's poems not only lend themselves easily to memorization, but also to recall, as it were (the impression of recollection after the very first reading), and they float up to
160-499: The Acmeist movement with his essay "O prekrasnoi yasnosti" (On beautiful clarity), in which he attacked "incomprehensible, dark cosmic trappings" and urged writers to be "logical in the conception, the construction of the work, the syntax... love the word, like Flaubert , be economical in means and niggardly in words, precise and genuine -- and you will find the secret of an amazing thing — beautiful clarity — which I would call clarism." He
180-494: The beginning of the twentieth century took the first and decisive step away from this 'like everyone' — in the direction of psychologically interpreted details and the everyday word, in the direction of living intonation — a step to be compared, perhaps, only with the Pushkin revolution. All succeeding Russian lyric poetry is unimaginable without it." Mandelstam, in his 1916 review "On Contemporary Poetry," wrote: Kuzmin's classicism
200-454: The circle around Mir iskusstva (World of Art). His first published writings appeared in 1905 and attracted the attention of Valery Bryusov , who invited him to contribute to his influential literary magazine Vesy (The Balance), the center of the Symbolist movement, where in 1906 he published his verse cycle "Alexandrian Songs" (modeled on Les Chansons de Bilitis , by Pierre Louÿs ) and
220-473: The first Russian novel with a homosexual theme, Wings , which instantly achieved notoriety and made him a widely popular writer. In 1908 appeared his first collection of poetry, Seti (Nets), which was also widely acclaimed. In the words of Roberta Reeder, "His poetry is erudite and the themes range from Ancient Greece and Alexandria to modern-day Petersburg." In 1908 he was living with Sergei Sudeikin and his first wife Olga Glebova, whom he had married just
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#1733084764675240-677: The movement as "a yearning for world culture ". As a " neo-classical form of modernism ", which essentialized "poetic craft and cultural continuity", the Guild of Poets placed Alexander Pope , Théophile Gautier , Rudyard Kipling , Innokentiy Annensky , and the Parnassian poets among their predecessors. Major poets in this school include Osip Mandelstam , Nikolay Gumilev , Mikhail Kuzmin , Anna Akhmatova , and Georgiy Ivanov . The group originally met in The Stray Dog Cafe, St. Petersburg , then
260-401: The openly "tragic," socially oriented tradition of Russian literature has been exhausted and it needed to reorient itself along the more personal and artistic tradition exemplified by Kuzmin and Vladimir Nabokov . He quotes Innokenty Annensky as saying it was important to avoid "the persistent embrace of the 'like everyone'" and writes: "It is precisely the poetry of Annensky and Kuzmin that at
280-661: The sky, like manna into the mouths of the Israelites in the desert." But he did not give up music; he composed the music for Meyerhold 's famous 1906 production of Alexander Blok 's play Balaganchik (The Fair Show Booth), and his songs were popular among the Petersburg elite: "He sang them, accompanying himself on the piano, first in various salons, including Ivanov 's Tower, and then at The Stray Dog . Kuzmin liked to say of his work that 'it's only little music, but it has its poison.'" One of his closest friends and major influences as
300-571: The surface as if out of oblivion (Classicism)... And in his essay "A Letter about Russian Poetry" (1922), he said "Kuzmin brought dissident songs from the Volga shores, an Italian comedy from his own native Rome, and the entire history of European culture insofar as it had become music—from Giorgione's "Concert" at the Pitti Palace to the most recent tone poems of Debussy." Vesy Vesy ( Russian : Весы́ ; English: The Balance or The Scales )
320-533: The year before; when Olga discovered her husband was having an affair with Kuzmin, she insisted Kuzmin move out. "But in spite of this contretemps, Kuzmin, Sudeikin, and Glebova continued to maintain a productive, professional relationship, collaborating on many ventures—plays, musical evenings, poetry declamations—especially at the St. Petersburg cabarets." Kuzmin was also one of the favorite poets of Sudeikin's second wife, Vera , and her published album contains several of his manuscript poems. Kuzmin met Yuri Yurkun ,
340-635: Was a Russian symbolist magazine published in Moscow from 1904 to 1909, with the financial backing of philanthropist S. A. Polyakov. It was edited by the major symbolist writer Valery Bryusov . Vesy was the leading literary magazine of the Russian symbolist movement. The first issue featured Bryusov's The Keys of Mysteries , a major statement of symbolist doctrine. It reported on contemporary art and literature in Western Europe, and had many foreign correspondents. It
360-623: Was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry . Born into a noble family in Yaroslavl , Kuzmin grew up in St. Petersburg and studied music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov . He did not graduate, however, later explaining his move towards poetry thus: "It's easier and simpler. Poetry falls ready-made from
380-570: Was no more a member of the group than he had been of the Symbolists, but he was personally associated with a number of them; in the years 1910-12 he lived in the famous apartment (called the Tower) of Vyacheslav Ivanov , who was another formative influence on the Acmeists, and he was a friend of Anna Akhmatova , for whose first book of poetry, Vecher [Evening], he wrote a flattering preface. (In later years Kuzmin incurred Akhmatova's enmity, probably because of
400-535: Was originally created as a magazine of criticism and information, but in 1906 it was expanded to include poetry and prose. Vesy published the works of all the major Russian symbolists, including Alexander Blok , Andrei Bely , Zinaida Gippius , Konstantin Balmont , Fyodor Sologub , Vyacheslav Ivanov , and those of Bryusov himself, along with the works of other major writers close to the symbolist movement, like Maximilian Voloshin and Mikhail Kuzmin . Vesy also published
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