Innokenty Annensky
Encyclopedia
Innokentiy Fyodorovich Annensky (September 1, 1855 N.S. Omsk
Omsk
-History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...

–December 13, 1909 N.S. Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

) was a poet, critic and translator, representative of the first wave of Russian Symbolism
Russian Symbolism
Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, and was mostly known for its contributions to Russian poetry.-Russian symbolism in...

. Sometimes cited as a Slavic counterpart to the poètes maudits
Poète maudit
A poète maudit is a poet living a life outside or against society. Abuse of drugs and alcohol, insanity, crime, violence, and in general any societal sin, often resulting in an early death are typical elements of the biography of a poète maudit....

, Annensky managed to render into Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 the essential intonations of Baudelaire and Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...

, while the subtle music, ominous allusions, arcane vocabulary, the spell of minutely changing colours and odours were all his own. His influence on the first post-Symbolist generation of poets (Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...

, Gumilyov
Nikolay Gumilyov
Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilev was an influential Russian poet who founded the acmeism movement.-Early life and poems:Nikolai was born in the town of Kronstadt on Kotlin Island, into the family of Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilev , a naval physician, and Anna Ivanovna L'vova . His childhood nickname was...

, Mandelshtam) was paramount.

Biography

Annensky was born into the family of a public official in Omsk
Omsk
-History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...

 on September 1 N.S. 1855. In 1860, while still a child, he was taken to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

. Innokenty lost his parents early on, and was raised in the family of his older brother, Nikolai Annensky
Nikolai Annensky
Nikolai Feodorovich Annensky was a Russian economist, statistician and politician. He was a member of the populist movement and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party before becoming one of the founders of the Russian Popular Socialist Party in 1906.-Biography:Annensky was born in St. Petersburg and...

, a prominent Narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...

 and political activist.

In 1879, Innokenty graduated from the philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 department of St. Petersburg University
Saint Petersburg State University
Saint Petersburg State University is a Russian federal state-owned higher education institution based in Saint Petersburg and one of the oldest and largest universities in Russia....

, where he concentrated on Historical-comparative linguistics. He became a teacher, and taught classical languages and ancient literature studies in a gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 in Tsarskoe Selo. He served as the Director of this school from 1886 until his death in 1909. Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...

 graduated from this school, and called Annensky "my only teacher," as did Nikolai Gumilev, who called him "the last of Tsarskoe Selo's swans."

Like Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...

 before him, Annensky was somewhat reluctant to publish his original poems and first gained renown with his masterful translations of Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

 and the French Symbolists. From 1890 until his death in 1909, he translated from Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 all the works of Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

. At the beginning of the 1900s, Annensky wrote a series of tragedies modelled after those of ancient Greece: Melanippa-filosof (1901), Tsar Iksion (1903), Laodamia (1906). Some of these works were dedicated to his colleague, Faddei Zielinski
Faddei Zielinski
Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński ; September 14, 1859, Kiev Guberniya, Russia–May 8, 1944, Bavaria, Germany): was a polish prominent classical philologist, historian, translator of Sophocles, Euripides and other classical authors into Russian...

, who would later write his obituary.
As a literary critic, Annensky published The Book of Reflections, two volumes of essays on Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

, Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...

, Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov .- Biography :Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times...

, and, his favourite, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. His essays were sometimes termed "critical prose" because of the artistic value of these texts. During his last months, Annensky worked as an editor of Sergei Makovsky
Sergei Makovsky
Sergey Konstantinovich Makovsky , a son of the painter Konstantin Makovsky, was a poet, arts critic, and organiser of many art expositions.From 1909 to 1917 he edited and published the Appolon arts magazine in Saint Petersburg.-Further reading:...

's journal Apollon, in which he published some essays on poetry theory. Nikolai Gumilev valued these theoretical works very highly and considered Annensky to be the first true acmeist
Acmeist poetry
Acmeism, or the Guild of Poets, was a transient poetic school which emerged in 1910 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky. The term was coined after the Greek word acme, i.e., "the best age of man"....

.

In literary history, Annensky is remembered primarily as a poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. He started writing poetry in the 1870s but did not publish it. He followed the advice of his older brother, Nikolay, not to publish anything until he is 35. His first collection of poems, entitled Quiet Songs, was published in 1904 under the pseudonym Nik. T.-o (i.e., "No one" in Russian). It gained moderate praise from leading Symbolists, many of whom didn't suspect that Annensky was the author. His second book, Cypress Box, was much more important. The poet died just days before its projected publication. Many of his unpublished pieces were edited in the 1920s by his stepson, Valentin Krivich, who was a minor poet.

On December 13 N.S. 1909, Innokenty Annensky died from a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 at the Tsarskoe Selo railway station in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

. His death was linked to family difficulties. Many of his finest pieces (e.g., Stansy, Dalnie Ruki) were actually inspired by Annensky's unrequited love for his daughter-in-law.

Assessment


Annensky's best poems are intricate and obscure: the images are meant to evoke (rather than to record) subtle associations of half-forgotten memories. He once said that the most important thing in poetry is a thread that would bind all the rambling associations into a tightly structured short poem. Aleksander Blok called him a necrophiliac poet, with death being his only theme . While this assessment may appear harsh and far-fetched, it is true that Annensky alluded to death in the sinister odours he cites in many of his poems.

Legacy

  • A minor planet
    Minor planet
    An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...

     3724 Annenskij
    3724 Annenskij
    3724 Annenskij is a main-belt asteroid discovered on December 23, 1979 by Zhuravleva, L. at Nauchnyj.- External links :*...

    , discovered by Soviet
    Soviet Union
    The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

     astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova
    Lyudmila Zhuravlyova
    Lyudmila Vasilyevna Zhuravleva is a Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian astronomer.She works at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.She also serves as president...

     in 1979 is named after him.
  • Memorial stone to Innokenty Annensky in Omsk
    Omsk
    -History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...

    , Russia (established in 2008).

External links

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