The bloc's attitude to the revolution. Alexander Blok's attitude to the revolution. The wind of change. Blok's new attitude to revolution

Blok greeted the revolution with enthusiasm and rapture. A person close to the poet wrote: “He walked young, cheerful, cheerful, with shining eyes.” Among the very few representatives of the artistic and scientific intelligentsia at that time, the poet immediately declared his readiness to cooperate with the Bolsheviks, with the young Soviet government. Responding to a questionnaire from one of the bourgeois newspapers, “Can the intelligentsia work with the Bolsheviks?”, he, the only one of the participants in the questionnaire, answered: “It can and must.” When literally a few days after the October coup, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, newly created at the Second Congress of Soviets, invited Petrograd writers, artists, and theater workers to Smolny, only a few people responded to the call, and among them was Alexander Blok.
In a fiery article “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution,” written shortly after the October Revolution, Blok exclaimed: “What is planned? To remake everything. To arrange so that everything becomes new, so that our deceitful, dirty, boring, ugly life becomes fair, clean, cheerful and wonderful life... With all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness - listen to the Revolution."
He himself became all ears - and found in the music of the October Revolution a source of new inspiration. In January 1918, he created the poem "The Twelve". Having finished it, he, usually mercilessly strict with himself, wrote in his diary: “Today I am a genius.”
In “The Twelve,” Blok, with the greatest passion and tremendous skill, captured the image of a new, free, revolutionary homeland that was revealed to him in romantic snowstorms and fires. True to his original ideas about “Russia the Storm,” the poet understood and accepted the revolution as a spontaneous, unstoppable “world fire,” in the purifying fire of which the entire old world should be incinerated without a trace.
This understanding of the October Revolution determined both the strengths and weaknesses of the poem "The Twelve". It brilliantly conveys the music of the collapse of the old world that deafened the poet. The rational, constructive, creative principle of the proletarian revolution, the real content of its socialist program were not sufficiently fully and clearly reflected in the poem.
The strong, bold, fresh image of the collapsed world that Blok found is truly magnificent:
The bourgeois stands there like a hungry dog.
It stands silent, like a question.
And the old world is like a rootless dog.
Stands behind him with his tail between his legs.
The coined slogan proclaimed by Blok (which immediately appeared on posters) is remarkable for the conciseness and energy of its expression:
Revolutionary step up!
The restless enemy never sleeps!
But in the heroes of the poem - twelve Red Guards who went out to fight to the death in the name of the revolution - as they are depicted by Blok, there is more from the anarchist freemen (who also took part in the October events) than from the vanguard of the working class, which, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, ensured the victory of the proletarian revolution . However, one should not conclude from this that Blok misunderstood or overlooked something. He had his own plan: to show how the “violent will” of the people, bursting into the open, finds a path and goal in the revolution.
Having entrusted the “twelve” with the task of historical retribution over the old world, Blok did not in the least want to call into question the sincerity and strength of the revolutionary impulse of his violent heroes. Despite the dark and blind passions that nest in these people as a legacy of the slave past (this is the meaning of the episode with Petrukha’s murder of Katya), the heroism of the revolution, the struggle for a great goal raises them to the heights of moral and historical feat. This was Blok’s thought, artistically expressed in The Twelve. For him, these people were heroes of the revolution, and he gave them honor and glory - the way he saw them.
The image of Christ leading the victorious march of the Red Guards with a red flag in his hands turned out to be clear and convincing for the first readers and listeners of “The Twelve” (although many communist ideologists condemned this image). Blok proceeded from his own ideas about early Christianity as a rebellious force that in its time crushed the old pagan world. For Blok, the image of Christ - the personification of a new universal and all-human religion - served as a symbol of the universal renewal of life and in this meaning appeared in the finale of "The Twelve", signifying the idea of ​​​​that new world, in the name of which the heroes of the poem carry out their historical retribution over the forces of the old world.
Blok recognized that someone “else” had to go ahead of the Red Guards, but could not find another image of the same scale in the arsenal of artistic and historical images that he owned. But whatever the poet’s intentions, the image of Christ still introduces a certain dissonance into the simplified revolutionary music of the poem
Thus, Blok’s October poem is a work not free from serious contradictions. But great art lives not by the contradictions of the artist’s consciousness reflected in it, but by the truth that he told (could not help but tell!) to people.
In The Twelve, the main, fundamental and decisive, of course, is not Blok’s idealistic delusion, but his clear faith in the rightness of the people’s cause, not his limited understanding of the real driving forces and specific tasks of the proletarian revolution, but that high revolutionary-romantic pathos, which is entirely the poem is permeated. “They walk into the distance with a sovereign step...” - it is said about its heroes. Precisely into the distance - that is, into the distant future, and precisely with a sovereign step - that is, as new masters of life. This is the ideological center of the poem. And the poet could not know what this “future” would turn out to be.
The stamp of the turbulent revolutionary times lies on the style and language of The Twelve. In the very rhythms and intonations of the poem, in the tension and intermittency of its verse tempo, the sound of the collapse of the old world echoed. The new content also required a new poetic form, and Blok, having sharply changed his usual creative style, turned in “The Twelve” to folk, song and ditty forms of verse, to the lively, rough colloquial speech of the Petrograd street of those revolutionary days, to the language of slogans and proclamations.
Alexander Blok dreamed that his future reader (“a cheerful young man”) would forgive him for his “gloominess” and see in his poetry the triumph of goodness, light and freedom, that he would be able to draw strength for life from his poems “about the future”:
... there is an answer in my disturbing poems:
Their secret heat will help you live.
And so it happened. Like everything truly great and beautiful in art, Blok’s poetry, with its truth, sincerity, secret heat and magical music, helps and will always help people live, love, create and fight.

Essay text:

Blok expressed his attitude towards the revolution and everything that followed it in the poem Twelve, written in 1918. It was a terrible time: the Bolsheviks came to power, four years of war, devastation, murders were behind us. People who belonged to the large intelligentsia, which included Blok, perceived what was happening as a national tragedy. And against this background, Blok’s poem sounded in clear contrast, in which the poet, who quite recently wrote heartfelt lyrical poems about Russia, directly says: Let’s fire a bullet at Holy Rus'.
Contemporaries did not understand Blok and considered him a traitor to his country. However, the poet’s position is not as clear-cut as it might seem at first glance, and a more careful reading of the poem proves this.
Blok himself warned that one should not overestimate the importance of political motives in the poem Twelve; the poem is more symbolic than it seems. In the center of Blok’s poem we put a blizzard, which is the personification of the revolution. In the midst of this blizzard, snow and wind, you can hear the music of the revolution, which for him is opposed to the most terrible philistine peace and comfort. In this music he sees the possibility of the revival of Russia, the transition to a new stage of development. The bloc does not deny or approve of the riots, robberies, seething dark passions, permissiveness and anarchy that have reigned in Russia. In all this terrible and cruel present, Blok sees the cleansing of Russia. Russia must pass this time, plunging to the very bottom, into hell, into the underworld, and only after that will it ascend to heaven.
The fact that Blok sees in the revolution a transition from darkness to light is proven by the very title of the poem. Twelve is the hour of transition from one day to another, an hour that has long been considered the most mystical and mysterious of all. What was happening at that moment in Russia, too, according to Blok, emanated a certain mysticism, as if someone unknown and omnipotent at the midnight hour began to practice witchcraft.
The most mysterious image of the poem, the image of Christ walking ahead of a detachment of Red Army soldiers, is also associated with this motif. Literary scholars offer many interpretations of this image. But it seems to me that Blok’s Jesus Christ personifies the future of Russia, bright and spiritual. This is indicated by the order in which the characters appear at the end of the poem. Behind everyone trudges a mangy dog, in whose image one can easily guess the autocratic and dark past of Russia, ahead of him walks a detachment of Red Army soldiers, personifying the revolutionary present of the country, and this procession is led in a white corolla of roses by Jesus Christ, an image embodying the bright future awaiting Russia when she will rise from the hell she finds herself in.
There are other interpretations of this image. Some literary scholars believe that Jesus Christ (this version appeared due to the fact that Blok is missing one letter in the name of Jesus, and this cannot be called an accident or the necessity of the verse) is the Antichrist, leading a detachment of Red Army soldiers, and therefore the entire revolution. This interpretation is also consistent with Blok’s position regarding the revolution as a transitional period to the kingdom of God.
The poem Twelve still causes a lot of controversy among critics and readers. The plot of the poem and its images are explained in different ways. However, one thing leaves no doubt. At the time of its writing, Blok treated the revolution as a necessary evil that would help lead Russia to the true path and revive it. Then his views will change, but at that moment Blok believed in the revolution, like a sick person believes in an operation that, although it causes pain, will nevertheless save him from death.

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The problem of Blok's attitude to the revolution is complex and mysterious. On the one hand, ending “The Twelve” with the image of Christ carrying a flag, Blok makes it clear that revolution is a positive phenomenon, but despite this, in the murder scene there are notes of sincere pity and compassion for the murdered girl, who was, in general, representative of the old and outdated world. This position gives us the opportunity to assume that the poet’s understanding of the revolution was more mystical than logical. Blok saw in it not a historical phenomenon designed to liberate and make people happy, but a process of transition of the entire world into another, new state, leading to the degeneration of not only society , but also the person himself.

The construction of the poem “The Twelve” gives us a clear idea of ​​the system of the world into which the revolution came. At the beginning of the work, a description is given of What remains from the former life. These are shreds and fragments of phrases, the constant and meaningless movement of snow and wind, poverty and darkness. The main properties of the old world are its fragmentation and aimlessness, its two-coloredness. Blok clearly does not recognize the right to life for such a world. A lady, a priest, a writer are just parodies of people. Such a world is like a shell from which a chick has already hatched, that is, twelve.

They are the only force capable of moving forward among the ruins of the old. They have no purpose, but there is structure and orderliness that gives the impression of meaning. The clash between two worlds, the world of chaos and the world of order, is shown in the scene of Katka's murder.

It must be said that different parts of the poem are written in different rhythms, and the theme of twelve is accompanied by the size of a march, while the theme of Katka before what happened to her* is given in the rhythm of ditties. This reveals a fundamental difference between two systems of views, two worldviews. In the first case, when describing the twelve, their unity and determination are emphasized - the most important, in my opinion, force of the revolution. The poet cannot fail to recognize the victory of this way of life. The size of the ditties, on the contrary, convinces us of the out-of-dateness and doom of everything old, everything that was dear to the poet himself. After all, the real feeling shines through in Petka’s monologue, which carries the music of Blok’s previous poems. But at the same time, the poet understands: what happened can no longer not only be returned, but even partially resurrected. That is why Petrukha refuses her love, because “these are not such times,” there is no place for feeling in a world remade by the revolution. In such duality lies the greatest tragedy of the poet. On the one hand, he cannot remain in the old world, but at the same time he cannot go along with the twelve who deny poetry.

It turns out that Blok accepts and at the same time does not accept the revolution, recognizing its unconditional and legal right to change the universe, but not finding his place in it. It is interesting that at the end of the poem the old world is transformed into a small stray dog, tagging along with people. This indicates that the twelve have really escaped from the old cosmos and are moving in a completely different space, led by Christ himself.

The image of Christ can have many meanings, and it is not clear which of them corresponds to the poet’s intention. It seems to me that this symbol was chosen by Blok because Christ is God and the messenger of God, that is, the bearer of a higher, universal meaning, but at the same time, he is a suffering man going to Calvary. It turns out that Christ, walking ahead of the twelve with a bloody flag, not only blesses and justifies them, but also shows them the path of suffering and, perhaps, death.

Summarizing all that has been said, we can conclude that. Blok accepted and justified the revolution, but did not see either his place in the changing world or the ultimate goal of everything that was happening. For him, the destruction of the old fit into the picture of the development of life because, in his opinion, all the vulgarity and filth of the society around him could not but be destroyed, and the only force capable of purifying the universe, he saw the archaic force of the “twelve” - either workers, either a soldier, or perhaps just prisoners who had nothing in common either with himself or with the society in which he lived.

Blok perceived the October Revolution as a unique opportunity for a grandiose spiritual renewal, for building a new life according to the laws of beauty and harmony. These sentiments were reflected in the poem “The Twelve,” which the poet considered the best of everything he had written, and in the article “The Intelligentsia and. Revolution”, created simultaneously - in January 1918. In “The Twelve” Blok welcomed the collapse of the old world and the triumph of the new revolutionary element: The bourgeois stands like a hungry dog, He stands silent, like a question. And the old world, like a rootless dog, stands behind it with its tail between its legs. The poet does not idealize the twelve Red Guards - the apostles of the new faith, who resemble real criminals: “...You need an ace of diamonds on your back!” At the same time, he does not deny the possible positive significance of the revolutionary revolution that has begun, which should spread throughout the whole world: We will fan the world fire, a world fire in the blood - God bless! The Red Guards promise to “shoot a bullet” at “Holy Rus'”, proclaim freedom “without a cross”, threaten; I'll slash, slash, with a knife! You fly, bourgeois, like a sparrow! I’ll drink my blood to the sweetheart, Black-browed... And all because: “It’s boring!” And suddenly at the same time: “O Lord, rest the soul of your servant...” And suddenly it turns out that they demand God’s blessing for their bloody deed. The God-fighters, in reality, according to Blok, do God’s will, make a cleansing sacrifice in the form of the old world, a sacrifice necessary for the birth of a new world. And the poet at the end of the poem! forces Jesus Christ himself to lead the menacing procession of the twelve. The article “Intellectuals and the Revolution” helps us understand Blok’s position. Here the author of “The Twelve” states: “The scope of the Russian revolution, which wants to embrace the whole world (a true revolution cannot wish for anything less; whether this desire will come true or not is not for us to guess) is this: it cherishes the hope of raising a world cyclone, which will carry it to snow-covered countries - warm wind and delicate scent of orange groves; will moisten the sun-baked steppes of the south with cool northern rain. “Peace and brotherhood of peoples” - this is the sign under which the Russian revolution takes place. This is what her stream roars about. This is the music that he who has ears should hear.” Blok thought that he had heard the music of the revolution correctly. He called on his contemporaries: “Listen to the Revolution with all your body, with all your heart, with all your mind.” However, Blok was an honest artist, and at the end of his life, after just over three years, he began to understand that the revolution did not bring anyone the “delicate smell of orange groves” and is unlikely to bring it. But it brought not only blood and cruelty, but a huge increase in the level of unfreedom - not only political, but also creative. It was creative freedom that was especially important for Blok, and he experienced its absence most hardest. It is no coincidence that in one of his last poems, “To the Pushkin House,” the poet asked for support from his great predecessor: Pushkin! We sang secret freedom after you! Give us a hand in bad weather. Help in the silent struggle! And in the last article, “On the Appointment of a Poet,” also dedicated to Pushkin in connection with the anniversary of his death, Blok actually wrote not about Pushkin’s, but about his own destiny: “Peace and freedom. The poet needs them to free harmony. But peace and freedom are also taken away. Not external peace, but creative peace. Not childish will, not the freedom to be liberal, but creative will - secret freedom. And the poet dies because he can no longer breathe; life has lost its meaning." The revolution, which Blok welcomed in “The Twelve”, “Scythians” and in many of his articles, which he sincerely tried to serve (but not be served), ultimately deprived him of air - creative freedom and, perhaps, accelerated his death.

Block "12"

History of creation

The poem was written by Blok in January 1918, almost a year after the February Revolution, and just two months after the October Revolution.

The poem was composed in one spirit, in post-revolutionary Petrograd, frozen in the cold, in a state of some kind of semi-conscious feverish upsurge, in just a few days, and it took only one month to finalize it. Having finished the text of the poem in draft, immediately after the legendary final phrase “... in a white corolla of roses, Jesus Christ is ahead...”, Blok leaves a somewhat chaotic, but very revealing remark in his notebook of 1918, entirely dedicated to the period of the poem “The Twelve”:

A terrible noise growing in me and around me. Gogol heard this noise (to drown it out - calls for family order and Orthodoxy) ...

Today I am a genius.

Alexander Blok six months before the poem, summer 1917, Winter Palace

It is necessary to imagine very well the situation in which this work was created, which was completely unusual both for Blok and for all Russian poetry. Just two months after the Bolshevik revolution, less than a year after the general euphoria of the democratic February Revolution... A sharp uplift of spirit and at the same time fatigue after two years spent at the front, the piercing winter cold and the beginning of devastation, reprisals and robbery on the streets of the capital and - anxiety before the German troops advancing on Petrograd.

...I asked a question about how the poem Twelve was written, and Alexander Alexandrovich readily told:

The poem was written quite quickly. It was an unusually blizzard day. At first, individual stanzas were written, but not in the order in which they ended up in the final edition. Blok immediately took out a draft manuscript. I noticed that there were few crossed out lines, and options were written in the margins.

The words “Chocolate Minion ate” belong to Lyubov Dmitrievna,” said Blok. - I had “The street was chalked with a skirt”, and now skirts are worn short.

Samuel Alyansky. "Memories of Blok."

On March 3, according to the new style, the poem “The Twelve” was published, significantly, in the Social Revolutionary newspaper “Znamya Truda”, and in May it was published for the first time as a separate book. This is what the artist Yuri Annenkov, the first illustrator of the poem “The Twelve,” who communicated very closely with the poet in that year, wrote about Blok’s subtle inner mood.

...In 1917-18, Blok was undoubtedly captured by the spontaneous side of the revolution. “World fire” seemed to him a goal, not a stage. The world fire was not even a symbol of destruction for Blok: it was “the world orchestra of the people’s soul.” Street lynchings seemed to him more justifiable than legal proceedings. “Hurricane, constant companion of revolutions.” And again, and always - Music. "Music" with a capital letter. “Those who are filled with music will hear the sigh of the universal soul, if not today, then tomorrow,” said Blok back in 1909. In 1917, Blok thought he heard her. In 1918, repeating that “spirit is music,” Blok said that “revolution is music that those who have ears must hear,” and assured the intelligentsia: “Listen to the revolution with all your body, with all your heart, with all your consciousness.” This phrase was the same age as the poem “The Twelve.”

Blok said that he began writing “The Twelve” from the middle, with the words: “I’ll slash, slash with a knife!”, then he moved to the beginning and in one spirit wrote almost everything: the first eight songs of the poem. Numerical symbolism also arose from the very beginning. The fact that the Red Guard patrols actually consisted of 12 people is evidenced by both documents and memoirs (in particular, the book by John Reed). In the draft of the poem there is a note from Blok: “Twelve (people and poems).” From another note it is clear that Blok also remembered Nekrasov’s poem about Ataman Kudeyar and his twelve robbers. In the notebooks of this time, Blok writes: “The young lady behind the wall is singing. The bastard sings along with her... This is a faint shadow, the last echo of the jubilation of the bourgeoisie.” “The residents of the house continue to hiss, be cowardly and whisper rumors...” “So, the bourgeoisie will be slaughtered?” Completely in unison with Annenkov’s memoirs, written in exile almost half a century later, Blok’s words are heard in America - about himself and about his poem “The Twelve”.

...In January 1918, for the last time, I surrendered to the elements no less blindly than in January nine hundred seventh or March nine hundred fourteen. That is why I do not renounce what was written then, because it was written in accordance with the elements (with that organic sound of which he was an exponent all his life), for example, during and after the end of “The Twelve”, for several days I felt physically, auditorily, great the noise around is a continuous noise (probably the noise from the collapse of the old world). Therefore, those who see political poems in the Twelve are either very blind to art, or are sitting up to their ears in political mud, or are possessed by great malice - be they enemies or friends of my poem.

Alexander Blok. "Later Articles".

In April 1920, Blok added these words, full of internal struggle and doubt: “That is why I do not renounce what was written then, because it was written in accordance with the elements...” However, a year later, in his dying delirium, Blok demanded from his wife promises to burn and destroy every single copy of the poem “The Twelve.” This was directly related to the evolution of Blok’s attitude towards the revolution and the Bolsheviks, which he went through after creating the poem.

House on the corner of Pryazhka and Ofitserskaya, the balcony of the apartment where the poem “The Twelve” was written is visible

As if hearing the author’s doubts, immediately after publication and the first concerts, the poem was literally received with hostility by the majority of representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. Many of Blok’s former admirers, admirers, fellow travelers and even friends simply broke off all relations with him, which is fully explained by the intensity of passions (especially in the first winter months) after the Bolshevik October Revolution. At one of the rallies organized to support political prisoners, victims of Bolshevik terror, held under the title “Morning about Russia,” Akhmatova read her old, notorious poem “Prayer,” which in the new conditions received an even more sinister, mystical connotation. She performed surrounded by her friends: Olga Sudeikina danced in the same anti-Bolshevik concert, and Arthur Lurie played the piano. The bloc, of course, did not attend this meeting. Later he was told that the audience at this concert shouted at him: “Traitor!”

It is significant that Akhmatova also refused to participate in another literary evening when she learned that in the same program Lyubov Dmitrievna would recite “The Twelve”... All these events deeply wound Blok, he clearly sees that he was misunderstood and in isolation, and a hostile ring narrows around it. His brief notes about this are made, as always, in a precise and dry telegraphic style. He seems to register what is happening around himself and his poem:

Evening of "Arzamas" at the Tenishevsky School. Lyuba reads "The Twelve". Piast, Akhmatova and Sologub refused to participate in the evening.

Gumilyov argued in his circle that Blok, by writing “The Twelve,” served “the cause of the Antichrist” - “he crucified Christ a second time and once again shot the sovereign.” Vsevolod Ivanov writes in his memoirs about his meeting over a cup of tea with Admiral Kolchak and conveyed his words. “Gorky and especially Blok are talented. Very, very talented... And yet both of them, when we take Moscow, will have to be hanged...” However, at the same time as the extreme rejection of the White Guard, the poem “The Twelve” did not receive unequivocal approval from the new authorities, who at first aroused the warm sympathy of Blok himself.

…ABOUT. D. Kameneva (Commissioner of the Theater Department) told Lyuba: “Alexander Alexandrovich’s poems (“The Twelve”) are a very talented, almost brilliant depiction of reality. Anatoly Vasilyevich (Lunacharsky) will write about them, but there is no need to read them (out loud), because they praise what we, old socialists, fear most.”

Marxists are the smartest critics, and most are right to fear the Twelve. But... the artist’s “tragedy” remains a tragedy. Besides:

If there were a real clergy in Russia, and not just a class of morally stupid people of clergy, they would have long ago “taken into account” the fact that “Christ is with the Red Guards.” It is hardly possible to dispute this truth, which is simple for people who read the Gospel and thought about it...

Of the people close to Blok, literally only a few accepted and supported him. Among them: Meyerhold, Academician S. F. Oldenburg, Remizov and Yesenin. Reading “The Twelve,” even his close and old friends experienced surprise, fear, and even complete rejection of the poet’s position: it was so unexpected and completely out of touch with their surroundings. More than once Blok heard from them not only warnings, but even direct condemnation of his political “left deviation.”

But even from a purely creative point of view, this bright and generally misunderstood work immediately stood apart in Russian literature of the Silver Age. The key to a real understanding of the poem can be found in the work of the famous chansonnier and poet M. N. Savoyarov, whose concerts Blok attended dozens of times in 1915-1920 and highly valued his work. In all likelihood, Blok experienced a rather strong influence from the eccentric style of the artist and even the poet M. N. Savoyarov, which most affected his post-revolutionary work. Thus, according to Academician Shklovsky, everyone unanimously condemned the poem “The Twelve” and few people understood it precisely because they were too accustomed to taking Blok seriously and only seriously. In “The Twelve,” this portrait of revolutionary Petrograd, which Shklovsky compared with Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman,” completely new motives were heard. Shklovsky was one of the first to feel this:

Mikhail Savoyarov as a “tramp” - from a 1915 postcard

"Twelve" is an ironic thing. It is not even written in a ditty style, it is done in a “thieves’” style. The style of a street verse like Savoyard's.

Shklovsky had in mind Mikhail Savoyarov, a popular chansonnier in Petrograd in those years, who worked in the so-called “ragged genre”: he appeared on stage in the costume and makeup of a tramp. The famous Russian and later American choreographer George Balanchine forever remembered how Savoyarov sang the famous couplets “Alyosha, sha, take it a half tone lower, leave the blackamoor in charge”...

...But not only the text itself and the figurative series of poems in the mind of Blok himself were associated with the “lowered” and eccentric Savoyard style. In his opinion, reading aloud itself (or artistic recitation) should have been accompanied by intonations and facial effects corresponding to the text. Immediately after the publication of the poem, in March 1918, during a period of active readings, discussions and premiere preparation, Blok’s wife, Lyubov Dmitrievna, rehearsed the poem “The Twelve” for recitations at literary evenings and concerts. We should not forget in what conditions of a cold city, dilapidated by the revolution, these readings took place... It was at this time that Blok specially brought Lyubov Dmitrievna to Savoyard concerts in order to show exactly how and with what intonation these poems should be read, not at all the way they were read his poetry before. Repeatedly he emphasizes the importance of this issue, so that the images and intonations of the poem are, if not literally understood, then at least accurately pronounced and brought to the listener’s ear in the form in which they sounded inside his own consciousness. It was from this time that one of the characteristic and mood-indicative entries made by Blok in his diaries is dated.

...Lyuba finally saw Savoyarov, who is now touring in a “miniature” next to us. - Why measure the talent of the Alexandrinians, who always play after lunch and before dinner, in ounces, when there is real art in “miniatures”...

Another stake in the throat of the bourgeoisie, who have no idea what is at hand.

Blok himself almost never read “Twelve”, and did not know how to read. As a rule, his wife read the poem. However, if you believe the almost unanimous reviews of those who listened to “The Twelve” performed by Lyubov Dmitrievna, she read poorly, every now and then exaggerating and falling into bad theatricality. A large, seemingly bulky woman with massive arms, bare almost to the shoulders, sharply shouting and gesticulating, rushed around the stage, now sitting down, then jumping up again. It seemed to some observers that Blok was annoying and unpleasant to listen to Lyubov Dmitrievna. It is unlikely that this was actually the case, since Blok constantly advised and even showed her exactly how to read the poem. For this reason, he took Lyubov Dmitrievna to the concerts of the rude singer Savoyarov. Apparently, Blok believed that “The Twelve” should be read in exactly the same tough, eccentric manner as Savoyarov did, acting in the role of a St. Petersburg criminal or a tramp. However, Blok himself did not know how to read and did not learn. To do this, he would have to become, as he put it, “a pop poet-coupletist.”

However, not only Savoyarov. Among the verses of the poem one can often feel the intonations and even direct quotes of the “cruel romance”... (They walk without the name of the saint All twelve - into the distance. Ready for anything, Nothing is regretted...) While writing the poem, Blok reread “Faust” and sometimes through the lines of “The Twelve” Goethe's images shine through. The black poodle picked up on the road by Faust, from which Mephistopheles was born, turns out to Blok to be a “mangy dog”, personifying the symbol of the old world. (The bourgeois stands like a hungry dog, stands silent like a question. And the old world, like a rootless dog, stands behind him, tail between his legs).

Reading “The Twelve” and some of Blok’s newspaper articles written simultaneously with them, even his close and sincerely sympathetic old friends sometimes simultaneously experienced surprise, fear, and even complete rejection of the poet’s unexpected and completely out-of-the-box new position. More than once Blok heard from them both warnings and condemnation of his “left turn.”

I read You with trepidation. “Scythians” (poems) are huge and epoch-making, like the Kulikovo Field”... In my opinion, You are too carelessly taking other notes. Remember - You will “never be forgiven”... Some of Your feuilletons in “Banner of Labor” and I don’t sympathize: but I am amazed at Your courage and courage... Be wise: combine caution with courage.

And as if responding to Andrei Bely’s letter and confirming his fears, in the poems of Zinaida Gippius, directly addressed to Blok, we can see the same words: “I will not forgive, your soul is innocent. I will not forgive her - never."

Increasing devastation, turmoil and attacks from all sides lead Blok to a deepening creative crisis, depression and progressive illness. After “The Twelve” and “Scythians” (both were written in January 1918), Blok fell silent as a poet. At the end of June 1920, he himself said about himself: “Blok has forgotten to write poetry...”, and each time he answered all questions about his silence briefly:

All sounds have stopped... Don't you hear that there are no sounds?

The noise and roar of “world history” with which the poem “The Twelve” began gradually died down, giving way to silence, oppressive silence, and then death. In February 1919, Blok was arrested by the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission. He was suspected of participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. A day later, after two long interrogations, Blok was released, as Lunacharsky stood up for him. However, even these one and a half days in prison broke him. In 1920, Blok wrote in his diary: “...under the yoke of violence, human conscience becomes silent; then a person withdraws into the old; The more brazen the violence, the more firmly a person locks himself into the old. This is what happened to Europe under the yoke of war, and to Russia now.”

The poem “The Twelve,” however, managed to make a hole in the wide crowd, that crowd that had never read Blok before. This crowd recognized the poem “The Twelve” by ear as being related to it in its verbal construction, verbal phonetics, which could hardly then be called “bookish” and which rather approached the ditty form. Despite the poet’s ensuing creative silence, his popularity, thanks to the “street” phonetics of the “Twelve,” grew from day to day.

Yu. P. Annenkov “Memories of Blok.”

In the early autumn of 1918, I met Alexander Blok on Nevsky Prospect. The poet stood in front of a grocery store window, behind which hung two strips of paper. The words were brightly imprinted on them: on one - “We will fan the world fire to the grief of all bourgeois,” and on the other - “Keep your revolutionary step! The restless enemy never sleeps!” Under each of these lines there was a signature: “Alexander Blok.” The poet looked at these words, as if not recognizing them, with round, calmly anxious eyes, the gaze of which for me was always full of content that attracted me, but was difficult to explain...

I admit, it’s a joy and a surprise for us that you too have joined our struggle,” I continued with boyish self-confidence, pointing to the posters behind the window.

Yes,” Blok was embarrassed, “but in the poem these words are spoken or thought by the Red Guards.” These appeals were not written directly on my behalf,” and the poet seemed to look at me reproachfully.

Plot

The first chapter is an exhibition - the snow-covered streets of revolutionary Petrograd in the winter of 1917-1918. Several passers-by are described - a priest, a rich woman in karakul, old women. A patrol detachment of twelve revolutionaries is walking along the streets. The patrolmen discuss their former comrade Vanka, who abandoned the revolution for the taverns and became friends with the former prostitute Katka, and also sing a song about serving in the Red Guard. Suddenly, the detachment comes across a cart on which Vanka and Katka are riding. The Red Guards attack the sleigh; The cab driver manages to get out from under the fire, but Katka dies from a shot from one of the twelve. The fighter Petrukha who killed her is sad, but his comrades condemn him for this. The patrol moves on, keeping pace. A mangy dog ​​follows them, but is driven off with bayonets. Then the fighters see a vague figure ahead and try to shoot at it, but to no avail - Jesus Christ is walking ahead of them.

"The Twelve" - ​​whatever they are - is the best thing I've written. Because I lived in modernity then. This continued until the spring of 1918. And when the Red Army and socialist construction began (he seemed to put these last words in quotation marks), I could no longer. And I haven’t written since then.”

- (Georgy Petrovich Blok, “Memories of Blok”).

In Blok’s words, the “Twelve” concentrated in themselves all the power of electricity, with which the air of October was oversaturated. (Comrade, hold your rifle, don’t be afraid! Let’s fire a bullet into Holy Rus'...)

Symbolism

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The poem ends with the name of Jesus Christ, who walks ahead of twelve Red Army soldiers (their number coincides with the number of apostles). Korney Chukovsky wrote in the article “Alexander Blok as a Man and Poet”:

Gumilyov said that the end of the poem “The Twelve” (the place where Christ appears) seems to him to be artificially pasted on, that the sudden appearance of Christ is a purely literary effect. Blok listened, as always, without changing his face, but at the end of the lecture he said thoughtfully and carefully, as if listening to something: “I don’t like the end of “The Twelve” either.” I wish this ending had been different. When I finished, I myself was surprised: why Christ? But the more I looked, the more clearly I saw Christ. And then I wrote down to myself: unfortunately, Christ.

It is not surprising that it was Blok, who always had a piercing sense of St. Petersburg as a city alien and hostile to man, who managed to create a stunning picture of the post-revolutionary capital, which was on its hind legs. Petrograd in “The Twelve” is shown in a series of impressionistic sketch paintings: a biting wind swings huge political posters, snow, icy conditions, shooting and robberies in the streets. Despite the mystical image of Christ, all this looked very naturalistic, and in places even emphatically rude and vulgar. Therefore, Blok’s work was raised on the shield by both supporters and opponents of the new regime. Some saw in “The Twelve” a caricature of Bolshevik robbers. Others were shocked that the Bloc’s Red Guard criminals were being led through Petrograd by Christ himself. One writer, in a letter to his friend, was perplexed: “But here I am, and many millions of people now see something completely different, not at all what Christ taught. So why on earth would he lead this gang? If you see Blok, ask him about it.”

“...Alexander Blok could not solve his “Twelve”. My Blok formula: “canonization of the forms of gypsy romance” was recognized or not challenged by him.

In “The Twelve,” Blok started with coupletists and street talk. And, having finished the thing, he attributed Christ to it.

Christ is unacceptable to many of us, but for Blok it was a word with content. He himself was somewhat surprised at the end of this poem, but always insisted that this was exactly how it happened. The thing has, as it were, an epigraph at the back; it is unraveled at the end - unexpectedly.”

- (Viktor Shklovsky, Hamburg Account: Articles, Memoirs, Essays (1914-1933).

Ivan Bunin, attending a meeting that Moscow writers organized to read and analyze “The Twelve,” spoke:

...And then the “Great October Revolution” happened, the Bolsheviks put the ministers of the Provisional Government in the same fortress, two of them (Shingaryov and Kokoshkin) were even killed, without any interrogations, and Blok went over to the Bolsheviks, became Lunacharsky’s personal secretary, after which he wrote the brochure “Intellectuals and the Revolution”, began to demand: “Listen, listen to the music of the revolution!” and composed “The Twelve,” writing in his diary for posterity a very pathetic fiction: as if he composed “The Twelve” as if in a trance, “all the time hearing some noises - the noises of the fall of the old world.”

Isn’t it strange to you that on days like these Blok shouts at us: “Listen, listen to the music of the revolution!” and writes “The Twelve,” and in his pamphlet “Intellectuals and Revolution” assures us that the Russian people were absolutely right when they shot at the cathedrals in the Kremlin last October, proving this rightness with such a terrifying lie against the Russian clergy that I simply do not know equal: “In these cathedrals,” he says, the fat-bellied priest sold vodka for centuries, hiccupping.”

Why did Holy Rus' turn out to be a bully and a fat ass for Blok? Obviously, because the Bolsheviks, fierce enemies of the populists, placed all their revolutionary plans and hopes not on the village, not on the peasantry, but on the scum of the proletariat, on the tavern want, on the tramps, on all those whom Lenin captivated with the full permission to “plunder the loot.” " And so Blok is making fun of this shabby Russia, of the Constituent Assembly, which they promised to the people before October, but dispersed by seizing power, of the “bourgeoisie”, of the average man, of the priest.

“The Twelve” is a set of poems, ditties, sometimes tragic, sometimes dancing, but in general claiming to be something eminently Russian and folk. And all of this, first of all, is damn boring with the endless talkativeness and monotony of the same variety, boring with countless ah, ah, eh, eh, ah, ah, oh, waste, trachtakhtah... Blok decided to reproduce the people's language, people's feelings, but something came out completely popular, inept, vulgar beyond all measure

And “in the end” Blok is fooling the public with absolutely nonsense, I said in conclusion. Carried away by Katka, Blok completely forgot his original idea of ​​“shooting at Holy Rus'” and “shooting” at Katka, so the story with her, with Vanka, with the reckless drivers turned out to be the main content of “The Twelve”. Blok came to his senses only at the end of his “poem” and, in order to recover, he suffered whatever he could: here again was a “sovereign step” and some hungry dog ​​- again a dog! - and pathological blasphemy: some sweet Jesus dancing (with a bloody flag, and at the same time in a white crown of roses) ahead of these brutes, robbers and murderers.

The image of Christ and the riddle of Blok's poem "12".

More than eighty years ago A. Blok heard “the music of the revolution.” What did Blok feel, what did he experience in those difficult and difficult times for the country? It is believed that he greeted the 1917 revolution with enthusiasm and accepted it with all his heart and soul. In an effort to objectively and comprehensively consider the revolutionary events, the “defenders” of the revolution, Blok created his famous poem “The Twelve”. It was a kind of chronicle, a diary of the revolution. Many contemporaries, writers and poets did not understand Blok and considered his views a betrayal. But are those who claim that Blok acted as a “singer of the revolution” right?

The composition of the work is based on the idea of ​​dual worlds, the parallel existence of two worlds: the “old world” and the “new world”, past and future, dark and light. To convey his feelings and thoughts as fully as possible, Blok created a gallery of symbolic images.

Blok presented the “old world” - the world of patriarchal-landlord Russia - as a lady in scribbles, an old woman, a “comrade priest” and a writer. All of them are representatives of those classes that previously occupied a privileged position in society. The common, collective image of all the above figures is a hungry, homeless “mangy dog”:

The bourgeois stands there like a hungry dog,

Stands silent, like a question,

And the old world is like a rootless dog,

Stands behind him with his tail between his legs...

All of them are fragments of the past, the future of which is dark and incomprehensible. Rather, it is death - spiritual or physical. But who is opposed to them? Who is the personification of the “new” world, the guide to a new life, a new era? These are twelve Red Guards patrolling the night streets. But let's take a closer look at them: Blok does not idealize them, does not embellish the existing state of affairs:

There’s a cigar in his teeth, he’s wearing a cap,

You should have an ace of diamonds on your back!

The expression "ace of diamonds" is outdated. Previously, it was understood as a sign of a convict, a criminal. Consequently, the author draws attention to their not entirely unpleasant past: this is how it turns out further. The Red Guards are going to “fan the world fire of revolution”, to open a new era, and as a result they commit murder and robbery:

It's not a sin to have fun!

Unlock the floors -

There will be robberies soon!

Unlock the cellars -

Golotba is on the loose today!

Moreover, there is nothing sacred in these people, and “black, black anger” boils in their chests. Anger is what drives the twelve. The color of the poem is also symbolic - black. The abundance of this color in the work, it must be understood, indicates emptiness, lack of spirituality, moral and moral decay of the twelve:

And they go without the name of a saint

All twelve - into the distance.

Ready for anything

I don't regret anything.

Here they are, the defenders of the revolution! Cruel, rude, soulless convicts and criminals. But at the end of the poem the most mysterious image appears, which “ennobles” the whole gang:

With a gentle tread above the storm,

Snow scattering of pearls,

In a white corolla of roses -

Ahead is Jesus Christ.

He, judging by the context, leads a detachment of Red Guards. It can be assumed that by this the author gave the former criminals an aura of holiness, and now they are no longer “golotba”, but a new, revolutionary people. Some researchers of the poet’s work have proposed interpreting this idea more broadly. The twelve are the apostles, led by Peter. But on what basis is this idea based? Only by their number, similar to the number of apostles? Or because among them only one is singled out - Peter? Or maybe because in the finale they are led by Jesus Christ? Yes, that's why. But they are apostles of a new time, a new era, who prefer struggle instead of humility.

But Blok himself warned against hasty conclusions: one should not underestimate the political motives in the poem “12”; it is more symbolic than it might seem at first glance. Let us deal with the main, most mysterious image of the poem - the image of Christ.

Literary scholars have offered many interpretations of this image, and debate on this issue continues to this day. V. Orlov viewed Christ as the leader of the oppressed and offended, the defender of the poor and disadvantaged. L. Dolgopolov assumed that the image of Jesus symbolizes the beginning of a new era, the future of Russia is bright and spiritual. No less interesting are other points of view, opposite to those indicated above. Let's consider two of them - the most interesting. M. Voloshin proposed, in my opinion, a very original idea. In his opinion, Christ does not lead the detachment, but runs away from it, saving his life. Maybe he is even being led to be shot, executed, or to Golgotha. And the “bloody” flag in his hands is not a sign of the revolution and its victory, it is the blood of Christ on a white flag - a symbol of reconciliation and surrender. The second point of view - the point of view of P. Florensky, in my opinion, is the most successful. His idea is based on a typo made by Blok in the name of Christ - Jesus (one letter “and” is missing). It’s difficult to call it accidental or necessary. What did the author mean by this? It may be that the detachment was led not by the son of God, but by the real Antichrist. It is he who is ahead of the Red Guards and the entire revolution as a whole. He, like God, can be “...and invisible behind the blizzard” and “unharmed by a bullet.” A very reasonable theory.

Those who accept violence and terror, who are motivated only by cruelty and malice, cannot be led by the pure and bright. Such people cannot be called either apostles or saints. Of course, points of view are put forward by people. Each person, due to his life positions, beliefs and priorities, sees what he wants to see. Thus, ardent supporters of the revolution - A. Gorelov, V. Orlov, L. Dolgopolov - preferred to see in this image a symbol of the bright future of Russia. Florensky, for example, was forced to leave Russia, or rather, he was “thrown out” of it on a “philosophical ship.” That's why the point of view is the opposite.

The evolutionary path of development is always more effective than the revolutionary one. You shouldn’t, like twelve, destroy everything old without creating anything in its place. It is much better to adopt the achievements of the past and, on their basis, improve what caused dissatisfaction.

For Blok, everything is not easy even in these first months of the revolution. There are things that confuse him: he cannot help but notice them and remain indifferent. In the Ukraine, Russian soldiers fraternize with the Germans, but to the north, on the Riga front, the Germans are advancing rapidly. There is not enough bread, they shoot at night, a cannon roars in the distance. Is this really a “bloodless revolution”? Discontent is growing. Complaints are heard on the streets: “Let the Germans come soon, otherwise we will all die of hunger!” At the front, the death penalty has been restored for deserters, and no one argues with this. Censorship has been reintroduced. Finland, and then Ukraine, declare their independence. “Great Russia” is about to collapse. There is a lot of talk about Bolshevism, and two names - Lenin and Trotsky - attract the attention of Blok. He is attracted to this teaching. It excites the revolutionary people, with whom Blok sympathizes, and at the same time, like many others, he believes that all this propaganda was paid for by Germany.

A terrible drought is raging. Forests and meadows are burning in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. A dirty yellow thick fog reaches the outskirts. The harvest is dying. Sadness and anxiety hang over the country. The block is confused:

“Terrible fatigue... Everything is black again in Russia... For Russia, like for me, there is no future.”

You have to choose. In July, Lenin and Trotsky try to seize power. Despite the failure, it is clear that they do not admit defeat.

“I still “can’t choose.” Choice requires an act of will. I can only look for support for her in the sky, but the sky is empty for me now, I don’t understand anything!”

Everyone around him made their choice. The intelligentsia supports Kerensky, wanting the war to continue until Germany is defeated and Lenin and Trotsky are immediately arrested. The bloc condemns these measures; he agrees with the people, but behind the agreement there is still no deliberate and firm choice. He agrees with the people, but he is torn by doubts, contradictions, and haunted by disturbing thoughts. He clings to a feeling that had previously lived latently in him - suppressed, hidden - a mixture of contempt for the West and alienation from it. This feeling possessed him when he wrote “Scythians”.

“Now the biggest lies (the British, as well as the French and Japanese) threaten us, perhaps, more than the Germans: this is a sign that we are tired of lies. We are tired, Europe will not comprehend this, because it is simple, but in its confused brains it is dark. But, despising us more than ever, they are mortally afraid of us, I think; because we, for that matter, will easily let the yellow ones pass through us and flood with them not just the Reims Cathedral, but also all their other holy shops. We are a dam, in the dam there is a gateway, and from now on no one is ordered to open this gateway “in the consciousness of their revolutionary strength.”

Merezhkovsky strives to unite around himself everyone who still has the strength and will to defend against the “coming darkness.” Alexander Blok stays away. They are already starting to talk about his Bolshevism, but he remains indifferent. Life is getting “mean” again. Lyubov Dmitrievna is far away, she plays in Pskov, and now he knows that he cannot live without her. “Lyuba, Lyuba, Lyuba,” he writes on every page of his diary. - Lyuba, Lyuba! What will happen?.. And I was already praying to God, praying to Lyuba, thinking that I was in danger of trouble, and again it stirred: it’s time to finish.”

She comes, but what can he give her now? Confused, tired, aging - even a ray of sunlight makes him smile sadly: “Here’s a little warmth and light for me.” Lyuba has her own life, theater, success; at thirty-seven years old, he complains of back pain and talks about the approaching “quiet old age.” His health is causing more and more concern; doctors cannot determine what this incomprehensible pain in his back and legs is. He observes his illness with curiosity: “Suddenly - a few seconds - almost madness... almost unbearable.” And two days later: “Sometimes it seems to me that I might still go crazy.”

Lyubov Dmitrievna is with him, but she is bored with such a life, and she does not hide it. Summers are dry and hot, with strong thunderstorms; At midnight the electricity goes out and you have to look for candles. You can hear hysterical notes in the newspapers, especially in people. There is suffocation all around. A dull anger, alarming, oppressive, hangs over the city. The only thing missing is a reason for it to break out. “I don’t know how to amuse the little one,” he writes on August 3, “she wants to be with me, but it’s difficult for her to be with me: it’s difficult to listen to my conversations.” His despair is conveyed to Lyuba, and she speaks of “collective suicide.” “It’s too difficult, anyway, we won’t get unraveled.”

Women still flock to him. Delmas visits him; friends and strangers send him letters and declarations of love. Every night the same female shadow looms under the windows. But women no longer interest him, and if he goes to the window, it is only to listen to the approaching roar of cannonade: the Kornilov rebellion has broken out. Will he ever be able to live freely, calmly and peacefully again? Refuse service? How long will this Emergency Commission continue to work? Everything suggests that it will take a long time, and at the same time he is asked to join the Literary and Repertory Commission of the former Imperial Theaters. He has no right to refuse, and now he is already chained with double bonds to this machine, which is more bureaucratic than revolutionary.

"L. A. Delmas sent Lyuba a letter and flour on the occasion of my name day tomorrow.

Yes, “personal life” has already turned into nothing but humiliation, and this is noticeable as soon as work is interrupted.”

The war doesn't stop! Devastation is intensifying, poverty and decline are all around, everything has gone to waste. All he could do was walk in Shuvalovsky Park and swim in the lake. When he has a few free hours, he gets on the train and disappears: he drinks all night long in well-known places, where he is drawn every time when life becomes unbearable.

September. “Everything is decomposing. There is some kind of Grace in people, but mostly dishonesty. I creak under care and work. There are no gaps. Hunger and cold set in. The war does not end, but many rumors are circulating.” October! By order of Trotsky, armed workers take to the streets of St. Petersburg; Lenin delivers a fiery speech that determined the course of events. The cruiser "Aurora" enters the Neva, points its guns at the Winter Palace, and power passes into the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Icy, dark, hard winter. In the evenings, the unlit streets are empty. The prisons are overflowing with new prisoners, who were still applauded by everyone yesterday. No more connection! The city is cut off not only from the world, but also from Russia itself. There is no news from Moscow. There is complete chaos at the front, no one remembers their former allies! The Germans are advancing and nothing can stop them.

His mother receives sad news from Shakhmatov from a former employee:

“Your Excellency, Gracious Empress Alexandra Andreevna.

The property was described, the keys were taken away from me, the bread was taken away, they left me a little flour, 15 or 18 pounds. The house was destroyed. Alexander Alexandrovich's desk was opened with an ax and everything was rummaged through.

Disgrace, hooliganism cannot be described. The library door was broken down. These are not free citizens, but savages, human beasts. From now on, with my feeling, I am moving into the non-party ranks. May all 13 numbers of fighting fools be damned.

I sold the horse for 230 rubles. I’ll probably be leaving soon, if you come, please let me know in advance, because they require me to report your arrival, but I don’t want to inform on you and I’m afraid of people’s anger. There are people who feel sorry for you, and there are people who hate you.

Send a reply as soon as possible.

They played the piano, smoked, spat, put on Barin’s caps, took binoculars, knives, money, medals, and I don’t know what happened, I felt sick, I left...”

Blok did not respond to the letter. None of them visited Shakhmatovo again; in 1918, a fire destroyed the house along with books and archives. Blok's cousin, who was passing through here in 1920, did not recognize these places: everything was overgrown with thorny bushes.

However, you need to live, that is, believe in something, love someone, desire, wait, hope for at least some joy. But the soul is filled with only hatred. Hatred against those who want and cannot do anything, against the bourgeois in all guises, the bourgeois protected by the material and spiritual values ​​that he has accumulated, hatred against Merezhkovsky and Sologub, who want to keep their “hands clean”, hatred against the young lady singing stupid romances behind the partition, waiting for his “stallion”, hatred against the left Socialist Revolutionaries, to whom he joined: collaborating with the Bolsheviks, they are engaged in petty disputes on the issue of peace; hatred against Gorky's newspaper, which criticized Trotsky's policies. He would like to plug his ears so that he would not hear the outrages of the drunken crowd, which destroys and robs stores, wine cellars and gets drunk into insensibility. “Oh, bastard, my dear bastard!” He would like to no longer hear about all these senseless and stupid decrees that are unable to support at least some kind of “revolutionary order”, and does not want to know about the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, which everyone around him is scolding!

To him, who since 1907 has spoken in a number of articles about the connection between the intelligentsia and the people, one thing is clear: if the intelligentsia for a whole century longed for political changes in the country, which is indirectly hinted at by Blok’s verse - Russia, the fall of the autocracy, the coming to power of a new class, then now it must accept the October Revolution without reasoning or hesitation, recognize it and join it. This is what he writes in his last article “Intellectuals and Revolution” at the end of 1917 - so cruel and eventful. At that moment when this hated war was supposed to end, when the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was about to “reveal the true face of the people,” for the first and only time he expressed his attitude towards the October Revolution, which, according to him, he fully supported. This article and the poem “The Twelve,” written a month later, are Blok’s main works dedicated to the revolution.

“What is war? - asks Blok in the article “The Intelligentsia and the Revolution.” - These are swamps, blood, boredom. It’s hard to say which is more nauseating: bloodshed or idleness, boredom, vulgarity; the name of both is “great war”, “patriotic war”, “war for the liberation of oppressed peoples” or something else? No, under this sign you will not free anyone.

We loved these dissonances, these roars, these ringings, these unexpected transitions... in the orchestra. But if we really loved them, and not just tickled our nerves in a fashionable theater hall after dinner, we must listen and love the same sounds now, when they fly out of the world orchestra, and, listening, understand that it is about the same thing , it’s all about the same thing.”

He foresees the death of those who were hit by revolutionary upheavals. “Those of us who survive, who are not “swept away by a noisy whirlwind,” will turn out to be the rulers of innumerable spiritual treasures.”

“We are links in one chain. Or are the sins of our fathers not upon us? - If everyone doesn’t feel this, then the “best” should feel it.

The intelligentsia must avoid everything “bourgeois”, forget about themselves, and not mourn the dead: neither people, nor ideas. He calls “to listen to that great music of the future, the sounds of which fill the air, and not to look for individual shrill and false notes in the majestic roar and ringing of the world orchestra.

Why block the path to spirituality with soulfulness? Beautiful is already difficult...

With your whole body, with your whole heart, with your whole mind - listen to the music of the Revolution.”

Bely is either in St. Petersburg or somewhere unknown. Yesenin is here, sensitive, like a schoolgirl. His head is a mess, but his poetic gift is undeniable; others remain in the shadows. They say that everything is different in Moscow: Bryusov, the futurists support the new government. But Moscow is far away! And here Sologub and others are calling to sabotage the government.

Blok forces himself to listen to “this music of the revolution”; she is chasing him. Then everything disappears: the baseness of life, vulgarity, stupidity; day and night he listens carefully. And unnoticed by him, an image arises from the darkness and appears before him. It evokes horror, disgust, confusion in the poet - but not bliss and serenity: this is the image of Christ. “Sometimes I myself deeply hate this feminine ghost.” But he is unable to take his eyes off him. “If you look closely at the pillars of the snowstorm along this PATH, YOU will see “Jesus Christ.” The obsession intensifies: “That Christ is before them is certain. The point is not whether they are “worthy of Him,” but the scary thing is that He is with them again, and there is no other one yet; Do you need another -?

And he writes "Twelve". There is nothing fictional in this poem. This is exactly how they marched through St. Petersburg in the winter of 1918, day and night, in frost and snow, crashing, killing, raping, bawling songs about freedom, with a rifle on their shoulders. They could be met in the alleys around Pryazhka, along Nevsky, in the Summer Garden, on the embankments, now strewn with broken glass and stones. And ahead of the “Twelve” he saw a “feminine ghost”, as real as themselves. Blok does not understand what this ghost means. He closes his eyes, but still sees him.

The right calls it blasphemy and hates it with passion. The “leftists” - Lunacharsky, Kamenev - do not approve of this “outdated symbol.” Kamenev tells him that these poems should not be read aloud, since he supposedly sanctified what they, the old socialists, fear most. And Trotsky advises him to replace Christ with Lenin.

“Twelve” becomes his income. Every evening Lyubov Dmitrievna reads a poem in an artistic cafe, where fashionable poets and bourgeois bohemia gather, insignificant personalities, heavily made-up women come to listen to “the wife of the famous Blok, who sold himself to the Bolsheviks.” Lyuba earns money; she can’t even dream of working in the theater.

“Scythians” came out during the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty and seems to be an explanation of this treaty addressed to the allies. For Russia, the war is over, and the Bloc, filled with hope, calls on Europe to make a choice. And if not... Here he does not skimp on threats. From the depths of St. Petersburg, the half-dead Blok threatens the European “Paestums”, not yet realizing that this is his “De Profundis”.

And again Blok remembers Vladimir Solovyov. The epigraph to “Scythians” is taken from his poems:

Pan-Mongolism! Although the name is wild,
But it pleases my ears.

The poems were written on behalf of the Mongols, that is, Russians, because they are Asians. Asia is hurt by Europe; for centuries she had recognized herself as ugly, dirty, pitiful, outcast, ignorant. Europe is beautiful, neat, abundant, enlightened. But Asia, “her name is legion,” will defeat her rival with “darkness.” How to respond to the West's contempt? How can the “yellows” take revenge on the “whites”?

Everything that Russia suppressed for many centuries was heard in these lines, full of bitterness and anger. Unrequited love for this Europe, envy, the desire to unite with it, which never met a response - all this turned into persistent hatred. The jealousy of Peter the Great, Pushkin, Herzen appears in “Scythians”.

The block fully realized what the last means of struggle Russia had at its disposal: it could give way to the Asian hordes that would fall on Europe. This is the path her hatred will choose.

But what will happen to her love for the West? “Yellow” would like to become the brother of “white”; his love strangles him, he faints under its weight. This excessive and incomprehensible love for Europe is terrible; it leads to the death of the lover and the beloved. And Russia weeps, offering Europe eternal peace, which the author himself does not believe in.

In “Scythians” there is no longer Blok’s former magic. The poems are not so much beautiful as they are significant. Polemical fervor makes them imperfect; this thing can be appreciated, but cannot be truly loved.

"The Twelve" will be his first revolutionary work. This poem is marked by undeniable talent; it cleared the way for Mayakovsky’s poems, and indeed for all future revolutionary poetry. The poem is unusual and unique; Blok uses street songs and vernacular with amazing virtuosity. Just as Lermontov in his “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the young guardsman and merchant Kalashnikov” resurrected Russian epic folklore, Blok in “The Twelve” perpetuated revolutionary folklore.

In "Scythians" he tried to speak on behalf of the Russian people. Perhaps, when writing “The Twelve,” he wanted to write a folk poem. Here one senses a desire to write in a completely new way, not only to create something beautiful, but also to be useful. Everything in him and around him was shaken, and this poem (much more outdated than Blok’s most “symbolist” poems) absolutely accurately reflects his state of mind and the unforgettable image of the city in that first winter of the new era.