The fate of the poet Annensky Inokenty Fedorovich (1855-1909) is unique in its kind. He published his first collection of poetry (and the only one during his lifetime) at the age of 49 under the pseudonym Nick. That.

The poet was initially going to title the book "From the Cave of Polyphemus" and choose the pseudonym Utis, which means "nobody" in Greek (this is how Odysseus introduced himself to the Cyclops Polyphemus). Later the collection was named "Quiet Songs". Alexander Blok, who did not know who the author of the book was, considered such anonymity questionable. He wrote that the poet seemed to be burying his face under a mask that made him get lost among many books. Perhaps, in this modest confusion, one should look for too "painful anguish"?

The origin of the poet, early years

The future poet was born in Omsk. His parents (see the photo below) soon moved to St. Petersburg. Innokenty Annensky in his autobiography reported that he spent his childhood in an environment in which landlord and bureaucratic elements were combined. From a young age he loved to study literature and history, felt an antipathy to everything banally clear and elementary.

First verses

Innokenty Annensky began to write poetry quite early. Since the concept of "symbolism" was still unknown to him in the 1870s, he considered himself a mystic. Annensky was attracted by the "religious genre" of B. E. Murillo, a Spanish artist of the 17th century. He tried to form this genre with words.

The young poet, following the advice of his older brother, who was a well-known publicist and economist (N.F. Annensky), decided that it was not worth publishing until the age of 30. Therefore, his poetic experiments were not intended for printing. Innokenty Annensky wrote poems in order to hone his skills and declare himself already as a mature poet.

University studies

The study of antiquity and ancient languages ​​during the university years temporarily supplanted writing. As Innokenty Annensky admitted, during these years he did not write anything except dissertations. "Pedagogical and administrative" activity began after the university. In the opinion of colleagues from antiquity, she distracted Innokenty Fedorovich from scientific studies. And those who sympathized with his poetry believed that it interfered with creativity.

Debut as a critic

Innokenty Annensky made his debut in print as a critic. He published a number of articles in the 1880s and 1890s, mainly devoted to Russian literature of the 19th century. In 1906, the first "Book of Reflections" appeared, and in 1909 - the second. This is a collection of criticism, which is distinguished by impressionistic perception, Wilde's subjectivism and associative-figurative moods. Innokenty Fyodorovich emphasized that he was only a reader and not a critic at all.

Translations by French poets

Annensky the poet considered his forerunners to be the French Symbolists, whom he willingly and translated a lot. In addition to enriching the language, he also saw their merit in increasing aesthetic sensitivity, in the fact that they increased the scale of artistic sensations. An important section of Annensky's first collection of poems was made up of translations of French poets. Of the Russians, Innokenty Fyodorovich was closest to KD Balmont, who evoked awe in the author of Quiet Songs. Annensky highly appreciated the musicality and "new flexibility" of his poetic language.

Publications in the symbolist press

Innokenty Annensky led a rather secluded literary life. During the period of onslaught and storm, he did not defend the right to the existence of a "new" art. Annensky also did not participate in further internal symbolic disputes.

The first publications of Innokenty Fyodorovich in the Symbolist press ("Pereval" magazine) date back to 1906. In fact, his entry into the symbolist environment took place only in the last year of his life.

Last years

The critic and poet Innokenty Annensky gave lectures at the Poetic Academy. He was also a member of the Society of Artistic Adherents, which operated under the Apollo magazine. Annensky published an article on the pages of this magazine, which can be called a programmatic one, "On modern lyricism."

Posthumous Cult, "Cypress Casket"

His sudden death caused wide resonance in Symbolist circles. Innokenty Annensky died at the Tsarskoye Selo station. His biography ended, but his creative destiny after death was further developed. Among young poets close to Apollo (mainly of an acmeistic orientation, who reproached the Symbolists for not paying attention to Annensky), his posthumous cult began to take shape. Four months after the death of Innokenty Fedorovich, the second collection of his poems was published. The poet's son, V. I. Annensky-Krivich, who became his biographer, commentator and editor, completed the preparation of the "Cypress Casket" (the collection was named so because Annensky's manuscripts were kept in a cypress casket). There is reason to believe that he did not always follow the author's will of his father punctually.

Innokenty Annensky, whose poems were not very popular during his lifetime, gained well-deserved fame with the release of The Cypress Casket. Blok wrote that this book penetrates deep into the heart and explains to him a lot about himself. Bryusov, who earlier drew attention to the "freshness" of phrases, comparisons, epithets and even simple words that were chosen in the collection "Quiet Songs", already noted as an undoubted merit the impossibility of guessing the next two stanzas from the first two verses in Innokenty Fedorovich and the end works at its beginning. Krivich in 1923 published in a collection entitled "Posthumous Poems of In. Annensky", the remaining texts of the poet.

Originality

His lyrical hero is a man who solves the "hateful rebus of being." Annensky subjects to a careful analysis of the "I" of a person who would like to be the whole world, to spill over, to dissolve in it, and who is tormented by the consciousness of an inevitable end, hopeless loneliness and aimless existence.

Annensky's poems are given a unique originality by the "crafty irony". According to V. Bryusov, she became the second person of Innokenty Fedorovich as a poet. The writing style of the author of "The Cypress Casket" and "Quiet Songs" is sharply impressionistic. Annensky called it associative symbolism and believed that poetry does not depict. It only hints to the reader about things that cannot be expressed in words.

Today, the work of Inokenty Fedorovich has received well-deserved fame. The school curriculum includes such a poet as Innokenty Annensky. Among the worlds, the analysis of which students are asked to carry out, is perhaps his most famous poem. Note also that in addition to poetry, he wrote four plays in the spirit of Euripides on the subjects of his lost tragedies.

Innokenty Annensky (1855-1909)

Innokenty Fyodorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1), 1855 in the city of Omsk in the family of the official Fyodor Nikolayevich Annensky, who at that time was the head of the department of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. Soon the Annenskys moved to Tomsk (their father was appointed chairman of the Provincial Administration), and in 1860 they returned to St. Petersburg. Initially, life in the capital was going well, except for the serious illness of five-year-old Innokenty, as a result of which An-nensky had a complication that affected his heart. Fyodor Nikolayevich took the post of an official for special assignments in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but that was the end of his career. Wanting to get rich, he allowed himself to be drawn into dubious financial enterprises, but failed: Fyodor Nikolayevich went bankrupt, was fired in 1874, and soon he suffered a stroke. A need came to the family of the ruined official. Apparently, it was poverty that was the reason that Innokenty Fedorovich was forced to interrupt his studies at the gymnasium. In 1875 Annensky passed the exams for a certificate of maturity. In these difficult years for the family, his elder brother took care of Innokentiya. Nikolai Fedorovich Annensky, Russian intellectual - publicist, scientist, public figure, and his wife Alexandra Nikitichna, teacher and children's writer, professed the ideals of populism of the "generation of the sixties"; the younger Annensky adopted the same ideals to some extent. According to Innokenty Fedorovich himself, he was "wholly indebted to them (to his elder brother and his wife), an intelligent being." Annensky entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, which he successfully graduated in 1879. In the same year, he married a young woman - Nadezhda (Dina) Valentinovna Khmara-Barshchevskaya, who was several years older than him and had two sons from the first marriage.

Already during his studies at the university Annensky began to write poetry, however, an unusually strict exactingness in relation to his own work led to many years of "silence" of this extremely gifted poet. Only at the forty-eighth year of his life, Annensky decided to bring his poetic works to the readers' judgment, and even then he hid under a pseudonym mask and, like Odysseus once in the cave of Polyphemus, called himself the name Nobody. Collection of poems "Quiet Songs" was published in 1904. By this time Annensky was well known in the literary circles of Russia as a teacher, critic and translator.

After graduating from the university, Annensky taught ancient languages, ancient literature, Russian, as well as the theory of literature in gymnasiums and at the Higher Courses for Women. In 1896 he was appointed director of the Nikolaev gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. In the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, he worked until 1906, when he was dismissed from the post of director in connection with the intercession for high school students - participants in political speeches in 1905. Annensky was transferred to the post of inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district. Among his new responsibilities was the regular inspection of educational institutions located in the county towns of the Petersburg province. Frequent and tiring for Annensky, then already a middle-aged man with a sick heart, trips adversely affected his already poor health. In the fall of 1908, Annensky was able to return to teaching: he was invited to lecture on the history of ancient Greek literature at the Higher Historical and Literary Courses of NP Raev. Now Annensky constantly traveled from Tsarskoye Selo, which he did not want to part with, to Petersburg. Finally, in October 1909, Annensky resigned, which was accepted on 20 November. But on the evening of November 30, 1909, at the railway station (Vitebsky railway station in St. Petersburg), Annensky died suddenly (para-lich of the heart). His funeral took place on December 4 in Tsarskoe Selo. In the last path of the teacher and poet came to spend many of his followers in literature, students and friends. The young Nikolai Gumilev took the death of Annensky as a personal grief.

A connoisseur of antique and Western European poetry of the 18th - 19th centuries, Annensky in the 1880s - 1890s. often made critical reviews and articles, many of them more likely resembled a kind of impressionistic etudes or essays ("Book of Reflections", T. 1-2, 1906-1909). At the same time, he translated the tragedies of Euripides, German and French poets: Goethe, Heine, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle.

In the early 1900s. Annensky's own poems appear in print for the first time. In addition to "Quiet Songs", he publishes plays: tragedies on the subjects of ancient mythology - "Melanippe the Philosopher" (1901), "King Ixion" (1902) and "Laodamia" (1906); the fourth - "Famira-kifared" - was published posthumously in 1913. iv1916 staged on stage. In Annensky's biography, much happened “posthumously”: the publication of his poems was posthumous, and his recognition as a poet became posthumous.

All of Annensky's work, according to A. A. Blok, was "stamped with fragile subtlety and real poetic flair." In his poetic works, Annensky tried to capture and show the nature of the internal disorder of the personality, the possibility of the disintegration of human consciousness under the pressure of "incomprehensible" and "comprehensible" (a real city at the turn of epochs) reality. A master of impressionistic sketches, portraits, landscapes, Annensky was able to create artistic images in poetry that were close to Gogol and Dostoevsky - realistic and phantasmagoric at the same time, sometimes somewhat reminiscent of either the delirium of a madman, or a nightmare. But the restrained tone accompanying the event, the simple and clear, sometimes everyday syllable of the verse, the absence of false pathetics gave Annensky's poetry an amazing authenticity, "an incredible closeness of experiences." Trying to characterize the distinctive features of Annensky's poetic gift, Nikolai Gumilyov, who repeatedly turned to the creative heritage of his teacher and senior friend, wrote: “ I. Annensky ... mighty power is not so much Male as Human. For him, it is not a feeling that gives rise to thought, as is generally the case with poets, but the thought itself grows so strong that it becomes a feeling, alive to the point of pain.».

Dramaturgy

Translations

Literary influence

(August 20 (September 1) 1855, Omsk, Russian Empire - November 30 (December 13) 1909, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) - Russian poet, playwright, translator. Brother of N.F. Annensky.

Biography

Innokenty Fyodorovich Annensky was born on August 20 (September 1) 1855 in Omsk in the family of the state official Fyodor Nikolaevich Annensky (died on March 27, 1880) and Natalia Petrovna Annenskaya (died on October 25, 1889). His father was the head of the department of the Main Directorate of Western Siberia. When Innokenty was about five years old, his father got a job as a special assignment officer in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the family returned from Siberia to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849.

In poor health, Annensky studied at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg Gymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869 he studied at the private gymnasium of V.I. Berens for two and a half years. Before entering the university, in 1875, he lived with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedically educated man, economist, populist, who helped his younger brother in preparing for the exam and had a great influence on Innokenty.

After graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University in 1879, he served as a teacher of ancient languages ​​and Russian literature. He was the director of the board of Galagan in Kiev, then the VIII gymnasium in St. Petersburg and the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. Excessive softness, shown by him, in the opinion of his superiors, in the alarming time of 1905 - 1906, was the reason for his removal from this post. In 1906 he was transferred to St. Petersburg as a district inspector and remained in this position until 1909, when he retired shortly before his death. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Courses for Women. He published scientific reviews, critical articles and articles on pedagogical issues in the press since the early 1880s. From the beginning of the 1890s he began to study the Greek tragedians; over the course of a number of years he performed a tremendous job of translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time he wrote several original tragedies on Euripides' plots and the "Bacchic drama" Famira-Kifarad (staged in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbières, A. de Rainier, F. Jamm, etc.).

On November 30 (December 13), 1909, Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo railway station in St. Petersburg.

Annensky's son, philologist and poet Valentin Annensky-Krivich, published his Posthumous Poems (1923).

Poetry

Annensky is most significant as a poet. He began to write poems from childhood, but published them for the first time in 1904. Annensky, in his own words, owed his "intelligent being" to the influence of his elder brother, the famous publicist-populist NF Annensky, and his wife, the revolutionary sister Tkachev. In his poetry, Annensky, as he himself says, strove to express the "urban, partly stone, museum soul" that was "tortured by Dostoevsky", "the sick and sensitive soul of our days." The world of the "sick soul" is the main element of Annensky's work. According to the just indications of criticism, "nothing succeeded in Annensky's poems so vividly, so convincingly, as the description of nightmares and insomnia"; “He found thousands of shades to express the painful discouragement. He made every effort to use the curves of his neurasthenia. " The hopeless longing of life and the horror of the “liberating” death, the simultaneous “desire to be destroyed and the fear of dying”, rejection of reality, the desire to escape from it into the “sweet hashish” of delirium, into the “binge” of labor, into the “poison” of poetry, and at the same time “ mysterious "attachment to" everyday life ", to everyday life, to" the hopeless ruin of one's vulgar world "- such is the complex and contradictory" worldview and worldview "that Annensky seeks to" inspire "with his poems.

Approaching this "worldview" of all his contemporaries most of all to Fyodor Sologub, Annensky's verse forms are closest to the young Bryusov of the period of "Russian Symbolists". However, the exaggerated "decadence" of Bryusov's first poems, in which there was a lot of deliberate, invented with a special purpose to attract attention, "shock" the reader, who did not publish his poems by Annensky, is deeply organic in nature. Bryusov soon abandoned his early student experiences. Annensky remained faithful to "decadence" throughout his life, "froze in his modernism at a certain point in the early 90s", but he also brought it to a perfect artistic expression. Annensky's style is brightly impressionistic, often distinguished by sophistication, standing on the verge of pretentiousness, the magnificent rhetoric of décadence.

Like the young Bryusov, Annensky's poetic teachers were French poets of the second half of the 19th century - the Parnassians and the "damned": Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé. Annensky inherited from the Parnassians their cult of poetic form, love for the word as such; Verlaine followed in his quest for musicality, for the transformation of poetry into a "melodic rain of symbols"; following Baudelaire, he fancifully intertwined in his dictionary "high", "poetic" expressions with scientific terms, with ordinary, emphatically "everyday" words borrowed from the vernacular; and finally, following Mallarmé, he built the main effect of his rebus-poems on the conscious obscuring of the meaning. Annensky is distinguished from the "dispassionate" French Parnassians by a special piercing note of pity, sounding through all of his poetry. This pity is directed not at the social suffering of mankind, not even at a person in general, but at nature, at the inanimate world of offended things suffering and languishing with "evil grievances" (a watch, a doll, a barrel organ, etc.), with the images of which the poet masks his own pain and flour. And the less, the more insignificant, the more insignificant the "suffering" thing, the more hysterical, pinching self-pity it evokes in him.

Strongly different from other poems by Annensky is his poem "Old Estonians" (From the poems of a nightmarish conscience) - a response to the shooting on October 16, 1905, of a demonstration in Revel (Tallinn). It differs in its poetic power from many poems written by other poets, poems that were inspired by the events of the first Russian revolution.

The peculiar literary fate of Annensky is reminiscent of the fate of Tyutchev. Like the latter, Annensky is a typical “poet for poets”. He published his only lifetime book of poetry under the characteristic pseudonym “Nick. That". And indeed, during almost his entire life Annensky remained "nobody" in literature. Only shortly before his death did his poetry become famous in the circle of St. Petersburg poets, grouped around the magazine Apollo. The death of Annensky was marked by a number of articles and obituaries, but after that his name again disappears from the printed columns for a long time. In the 4th book of poems by Nikolai Gumilyov "Quiver" the poem "In memory of Annensky" is published.

Dramaturgy

Annensky wrote four plays - "Melanippe the Philosopher", "King Ixion", "Laodamia" and "Famira-Kifared" - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of the lost plays of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.

Translations

Annensky translated into Russian a complete collection of plays by the great Greek playwright Euripides. He also performed poetic translations of works by Horace, Goethe, Müller, Heine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Rainier.

Literary influence

Annensky's literary influence on the currents of Russian poetry that emerged after symbolism (acmeism, futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem "Bells" can rightfully be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time of writing. Annensky's influence strongly affects Pasternak and his school and many others. In his literary-critical articles, partially collected in two "Books of Reflections", Annensky provides brilliant examples of Russian impressionist criticism, striving to interpret a work of art by consciously continuing the author's work in himself. It should be noted that already in his critical pedagogical articles of the 1880s, Annensky, long before the formalists, called for a systematic study of the form of works of art at school.

Biography

Personality Innkentiy Fedorovich Annensky remained largely a mystery to contemporaries. Born on August 20 (September 1) 1855 in Omsk in the family of a government official. His father was the head of the Omsk Railway Department. When Innokenty was about five years old, his father got a job as a special assignment officer in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the family from Siberia returned to St. Petersburg, which they had previously left in 1849.

In poor health, Annensky studies at a private school, then at the 2nd St. Petersburg Gymnasium (1865-1868). Since 1869 he has been studying at the private gymnasium of V. I. Berens for two and a half years. Having lost his parents early, he often lives with his older brother Nikolai, an encyclopedically educated man, economist, populist, who had a great influence on Innokenty.

After graduating from (1879) the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, he served as a teacher of ancient languages ​​and Russian literature, later director of a gymnasium in Kiev, St. Petersburg, Tsarskoe Selo. Since 1906, an inspector of the St. Petersburg educational district. He lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Courses for Women. He published scientific reviews, critical articles and articles on pedagogical issues in the press since the early 1880s. From the beginning of the 1890s he began to study the Greek tragedians; over the course of a number of years he performed a tremendous job of translating into Russian and commenting on the entire theater of Euripides. At the same time, he wrote several original tragedies based on Euripides' plots and the "Bacchic drama" Famira-Kifarad (staged in the 1916-1917 season on the stage of the Chamber Theater). He translated French symbolist poets (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Corbières, A. de Rainier, F. Jamm, etc.).

November 30 / December 11, 1909 Annensky died suddenly on the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo (Vitebsk) railway station in St. Petersburg.

Annensky's son, philologist and poet, published his Posthumous Poems (1923).

Poetry

Annensky is most significant as a poet. He began to write poems from childhood, but published them for the first time in 1904. Annensky, in his own words, owed his "intelligent being" to the influence of his elder brother, the famous publicist-populist NF Annensky, and his wife, the revolutionary sister Tkachev. In his poetry, Annensky, as he himself says, strove to express the "urban, partly stone, museum soul" that was "tortured by Dostoevsky", "the sick and sensitive soul of our days." The world of the "sick soul" is the main element of Annensky's work. According to the just indications of criticism, "nothing succeeded in Annensky's poems so vividly, so convincingly, as the description of nightmares and insomnia"; “He found thousands of shades to express the painful discouragement. He made every effort to use the curves of his neurasthenia. " The hopeless longing of life and the horror of the “liberating” death, the simultaneous “desire to be destroyed and the fear of dying”, rejection of reality, the desire to escape from it into the “sweet hashish” of delirium, into the “binge” of labor, into the “poison” of poetry, and at the same time “ mysterious "attachment to" everyday life ", to everyday life, to" the hopeless ruin of one's vulgar world "- such is the complex and contradictory" worldview and worldview "that Annensky seeks to" inspire "with his poems.

Approaching this "worldview" of all his contemporaries most of all to, the forms of verse Annensky is closest to the young period of "Russian Symbolists". However, the exaggerated "decadence" of the former, in which there was a lot of deliberate, invented with a special purpose to attract attention, "shock" the reader who did not publish his poems Annensky is deeply organic in nature. Bryusov soon abandoned his early student experiences. Annensky remained faithful to "decadence" throughout his life, "froze in his modernism at a certain point in the early 90s", but he also brought it to a perfect artistic expression. Annensky's style is brightly impressionistic, often distinguished by sophistication, standing on the verge of pretentiousness, the splendid rhetoric of decadence.

Like the young Bryusov, Annensky's poetic teachers were French poets of the second half of the 19th century - the Parnassians and the "damned": Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé. Annensky inherited from the Parnassians their cult of poetic form, love for the word as such; Verlaine followed in his quest for musicality, for the transformation of poetry into a "melodic rain of symbols"; following Baudelaire, he fancifully intertwined in his dictionary "high", "poetic" expressions with scientific terms, with ordinary, emphatically "everyday" words borrowed from the vernacular; and finally, following Mallarme, he built the main effect of his poems-rebuses on the conscious obscuring of the meaning. Annensky is distinguished from the "dispassionate" French Parnassians by a special piercing note of pity, sounding through all of his poetry. This pity is directed not at the social suffering of mankind, not even at a person in general, but at nature, at the inanimate world of offended things suffering and languishing with "evil grievances" (a watch, a doll, a barrel organ, etc.), with the images of which the poet masks his own pain and flour. And the less, the more insignificant, the more insignificant the "suffering" thing, the more hysterical, pinching self-pity it evokes in him.

A peculiar literary fate Annensky resembles fate. Like the latter, Annensky is a typical “poet for poets”. He published his only lifetime book of poetry under the characteristic pseudonym “Nick. That". And indeed, during almost his entire life Annensky remained "nobody" in literature. Only shortly before his death did his poetry become famous in the circle of St. Petersburg poets, grouped around the magazine Apollo. The death of Annensky was marked by a number of articles and obituaries, but after that his name again disappears from the printed columns for a long time. In the 4th book of poems by Nikolai Gumilyov, "The Quiver", a poem was published.

Dramaturgy

Annensky wrote four plays - "Melanippe the Philosopher", "King Ixion", "Laodamia" and "Famira-Kifared" - in the ancient Greek spirit on the plots of the lost plays of Euripides and in imitation of his manner.

Translations

Annensky translated into Russian a complete collection of plays by the great Greek playwright Euripides.

Literary influence

Annensky's literary influence on the currents of Russian poetry that emerged after symbolism (acmeism, futurism) is very great. Annensky's poem can rightfully be called the first Russian futuristic poem in time of writing. Annensky's influence strongly affects Pasternak and his school and many others. In his literary-critical articles, partially collected in two "Books of Reflections", Annensky provides brilliant examples of Russian impressionist criticism, striving to interpret a work of art by consciously continuing the author's work in himself. It should be noted that already in his critical pedagogical articles of the 1880s Annensky long before the formalists, he called for a systematic study of the form of works of art at school.

Innokenty Annensky is a famous poet and playwright of the Silver Age. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, he became famous as a translator and critic. Innokenty Fedorovich ...

From Masterweb

Innokenty Annensky is a famous poet and playwright of the Silver Age. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, he became famous as a translator and critic. Innokenty Fedorovich stood at the origins of the birth of symbolism in Russian poetry.

Childhood

The famous symbolist poet Innokenty Annensky was born in early September 1855 in the city of Omsk, which is rich in cultural values ​​and sights. It is known that Omsk is also called a theatrical city. And this significantly affected the education and formation of the future poet.

The family in which the future Symbolist poet was born was considered exemplary. The parents of the famous poet of the Silver Age did not have any special merits. Parents had nothing to do with poetry either. So, the poet's mother, Natalia Petrovna, was only engaged in raising children and housekeeping. Father, Fedor Nikolaevich, held a responsible and high state post.

When the father of the future Symbolist poet received a new position in Tomsk, the whole family moved there for permanent residence. Fyodor Nikolaevich was offered the post of chairman of the Provincial Administration. He could not refuse such a promotion. But even in the city of scientists and universities, the Annensky family did not stay long.

It so happened that in 1860 the Annensky family moved to St. Petersburg. It is known that the father of the future poet was a gambling man and, carried away by some regular scam, he went broke, leaving his son no fortune.

Education

In childhood, Innokenty Annensky, whose biography is full of events, was a boy with poor health. He was often ill, but his parents still decided not to leave him homeschooled, but sent him to a private comprehensive school. After moving to St. Petersburg, he immediately entered the Second Gymnasium of St. Petersburg.

But already in 1869 Innokenty Annensky studied at the private gymnasium of V.I.Berens. At the same time, he is preparing for the university entrance exams. In 1875 he settled with his older brother, who was a journalist and economist. He had a tremendous influence on the views of the future Symbolist poet. Brother helped Innokenty prepare for the exams.

Therefore, Innokenty Fedorovich easily and successfully passed the entrance exams to the St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of History and Philology. In 1879 he had already graduated, having only "fives" in almost all subjects. There were also "fours", but only in two subjects: theology and philosophy.

Teaching activities

Innokenty Annensky starts working immediately after successfully graduating from the university. He chooses a career as a teacher and gets a job at the Gurevich gymnasium, where he reads the finest lectures on Russian literature and ancient languages. His knowledge and erudition surprised both students and teachers. Innokenty Fedorovich was considered by all students to be the strongest teacher.

But the Symbolist poet did more than lecture at the gymnasium. So, he soon took the post of director of the board of Galagan, and then also became the director of the eighth gymnasium in St. Petersburg. Annensky, a young and successful teacher, was soon offered to take the post of director of the famous gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo, where the famous Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin had once studied.

Poetic activity

Annensky Innokenty Fedorovich began to write his poetic works at an early age. He believed that all his poems are mystical. But he did not know that in literature and in art there is such a direction as symbolism. And yet, his literary works belong to symbolism, since everything is surrounded by mystery and mystery in them, many lines contain metaphors or even hints that should be unraveled and understood.

Still, literary critics are inclined to believe that Annensky's work goes beyond the scope of symbolism. They argue that this is most likely a pre-symbolism.

Innocent Annensky in some of his works also tried to follow the religious genre, choosing the Spanish artist of the golden age Bartolome Esteban Murillo as his idols. In his works, the Symbolist poet tried to convey virgin purity and meekness, tenderness and peace. But for this he used not brushes and paints, like his idol, but words.

Following the advice of his elder brother, Innokenty Annensky, whose brief biography helps to understand his work, did not seek to publish his works. He did not even seek to show his poems to famous writers in order to hear their opinions. Nikolai Fedorovich, the poet's brother, advised him to first establish himself a little in life, and only then, when he understands what his vocation is, it will be possible to study poetry and print his poems.

That is why the first book of the poet Annensky was published only in 1904, when he was already a brilliant teacher and was respected in society. But his collection "Quiet Songs" was met with enthusiasm.

The main motives of all the works of the famous symbolist poet are loneliness, longing, sadness and melancholy. That is why, in many of his poetic and dramatic works, one can find a description of either twilight, or cold, or sunset.

The poet talks about this in his poems such as "Two Love", "Bow and Strings" and others. Mysteriously and sadly, Innokenty Annensky described reality. "Snow" is one of the works of the symbolist poet, which is unusual and interesting in its plot, where the poet's favorite season is adjacent to death. A clean and beautiful winter helps to see poverty and poverty.

The famous poet and translator made a huge contribution to the development of literature. Thus, Innokenty Annensky's poem "Bells" can be attributed to the first futuristic works. The fame and popularity of the talented poet was brought by his poetry collection "Cypress Casket", which was published after his death.

Annensky - playwright

The Symbolist poet wrote not only poems, but also was engaged in drama. In his plays, he tried to imitate the writers of Ancient Egypt, whom he studied well and fell in love with. The works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus evoked particular trepidation in him.

The first play was written by Innokenty Fedorovich in 1901. The next year, the piece “Melanippe the Philosopher” was followed by the play “King Ixion”. In 1906, the Symbolist poet wrote the play "Laodamia", but the work "Famira-Kafarad" was published after the poet's death, in 1913.

In all his works, Innokenty Annensky, whose work is diverse and interesting, tried to adhere to impressionism. Everything that he saw around, the poet tried to describe the real, the way he saw and remembered everything.

Translation activity

Innokenty Annensky, whose poems are mysterious and enigmatic, was also engaged in translation. So, he translated the famous tragedies of Euripides, as well as the poems of such foreign poets as Johann Goethe, Christian Hein, Horace, Hans Müller, etc.

Personal life

Little is known about the personal life of the famous poet. Contemporaries described him as a gentle and kind person. But these character traits did not help him, but only hindered him. Out of his kindness, he lost the excellent position of the headmaster of the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. The poet never spoke about his personal life in his works.

But it is known that in the second year of university he met Nadezhda Valentinovna. She was already a widow, and even older than the poet. But this did not stop the lovers from getting married soon. It is known that at that time Nadezhda was already 36 years old, she came from a noble class. In this marriage, a son, Valentin, was born.

Death of poet

From early childhood, the poet's health was poor. But he died unexpectedly. It happened in December 1909 when he was climbing the stairs. On one of the steps of the Tsarskoye Selo station, he felt bad.

The poet died quickly. Doctors have established death from a heart attack. He turned 54 at that time.

It is known that Annensky's wife loved to arrange dinners and often invited her friends to visit. Innokenty Fedorovich was usually always in a bad mood at such moments, as he loved loneliness and avoided people.

The Symbolist poet began to publish his works late. When his first collection of poems came out of print, Annensky was already 48 years old. But he did not strive for fame and popularity, so he published his works under the pseudonym "Nick something".

The first readers in the early childhood of the poet were his sisters, who found a notebook with his first poems and began to laugh and tease Innocent. After that, the boy tried to hide his drafts in such a secluded place that no one would find them. After the jokes that his sisters generously gave him, he was afraid to show anyone else his first poetry.

It was this story with the sisters that led to the fact that the last collection of his poems, which was published after the poet's death, is called "The Cypress Casket". It is known that Innokenty Fedorovich had a beautiful box made of cypress wood. It was in it that he kept all his drafts and notebooks, where he wrote down his poems.

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