Konstantin Balmont
Encyclopedia
Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont ( — December 23, 1942) was a Russian
symbolist
poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry
.
, then of Vladimir
Guberniya
(now of Ivanovskaya oblast), the third of the seven sons of Russian nobleman, lawyer and senior state official Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont and Vera Nikolayevna (nee Le′bedeva) The latter, having come from a family of military men where enthusiasm for literature and theater was almost hereditary, had the most profound influence over her son: she introduced him to the world of music, history and folklore. Vera Nikolayevna knew several foreign languages and often received guests who might have been deemed 'politically risque' at the time. It was from her that Konstantin Balmont, as he later remembered, inherited 'tempestuousness of character' and rebel-rouser mentality.
Balmont who learned reading at the age of five (watching secretly his elder brother’s family lessons) cited Pushkin, Nekrasov, Koltsov and Nikitin
as his first favorites. He insisted, though, that "the family house, the garden, creeks, marshy lakes, whispering leaves, butterflies, birds and sunrises" were his first poetry teachers. Ten years spent in his family’s Gumnishchi estate Balmont always remembered with great love and warmth, referring to the place as "a tiny kingdom of silent comfort".
In 1876 the family moved to the town of Shuya where Vera Nikolayevna owned a two-storey, rather decrepit-looking house. A ten year old Konstantin joined the preparatory class of a local gymnasium, an institution he later described rather hatefully as "the home of decadence and capitalism, able only of air and river contamination".
It was here at school that, rather vexed with the educational system's restrictions, he became interested in French and German poetry and started writing verses of his own. His first two poems, though, were criticized by his mother in such a harsh manner that for the next six years he made no attempts to repeat this first poetic venture What he became involved in instead was an illegal circle (formed by students and some traveling teachers) which printed and distributed Narodnaya Volya
proclamations. "I was happy and I wanted everybody to be happy. The fact that only a minority, me included, was entitled to such happiness, was for me outrageous", he later wrote, explaining his early enchantment with revolutionary activities.
Mother transferred her son to another gymnasium, in Vladimir, but here the boy had to live in the house of a Greek teacher who took upon himself a duty of a warden, bringing much psychological suffering to a disgruntled youth. In the late 1885 Balmont made his publishing debut: three of his poems appeared in a popular St. Petersburg magazine Zhivopisnoye obozrenye. This event (as a latter day biographer put it) "has been noticed by nobody except for his (tor)mentor" whose ultimatum included a veto on any further publications until the graduation day. Balmont was graduated in 1886 году., having spent «one and a half years in a prison-like conditions» «Gimnasium I curse with all my might. It ruined my nervous system completely», the poet remembered in 1923.
In 1886 Balmont joined the Law school of the Moscow University where he socialised a lot with leftist activists (among them P. F. Nikolayev). Next year Balmont was arrested for participation in the students' demonstrations (the unrest was triggered by a new set of rules for students introduced by the authorities), spent three days in prison, then expelled from the University and sent back home to Shuya.
In 1889 Balmont returned to the University but soon quit again due to nervous breakdown. He joined Demidov
sky Law college in Yaroslavl
but after having been expelled in September 1890 decided that of formal education he’d had enough. «I simply couldn’t bring myself to studying law, what with living so intensely with true passions of my heart and being deeply involved in studying German literature», he wrote in 1911. At least one family member supported his decision: it was an elder brother, infatuated in the same way with studying philosophy Otherwise, "…at the age of 13 I learned the English word self-help, fell in love with the intellectual work and went on with it until my dying days", Balmont wrote in th 1930s.
, a well-known writer who, on receiving a couple of years earlier a hand-written note-book (sent to him by Konstantin’s classmates) sent a schoolboy a letter containing serious and favourable critical analysis, where he spoke of the young autor’s rare eye for small detail but also of the lack of concentration and general hastiness. "He wrote that… one is not to chase every fleeting moth; not to whip one’s emotions up with one’s thought, but rather trust and rely upon this unconscious part of human soul which accumulates all the live impressions and later ensures the young flower blossoming into full swing", Balmont remembered. "Should you learn to concentrate and work methodically, in due time we’ll hear of your having turned into something quite extraordinary", were the last words of this remarkable letter. Much impressed with the famous writer’s magnanimity, Balmont later credited Korolenko as being his 'literary Godfather'. meanwhile, the debut collection made no impact whatsoever. Disgusted both with the book and the lack of public attention, the poet collected and burnt all of its copies. In 1888-89 he translated and published a selection of German Romantic poetry, in 1890 and 1891 he worked on translations from French symbolist poetry.
In Мarch 1890 a near fatal accident happened: Balmont attempted suicide by jumping off the 3rd storey window. He survived, but broke his leg and received multiple injuries which left him bed-ridden for a year. It was said at the time that the immediate impulse for the suicide attempt was provided by Tolstoy
’s Kreytzerova Sonata, but there was more rational reason for it: falling apart was his marriage that caused among other things (like growing penchant towards alcoholism) the rift with parents who left him without financial support. The year of recuperation, though, became an important turning point, causing "the unusual mental agitation and the ensuing rush of cheerfulness". It was then that Balmont recognized ‘life’s sacred value’ and clearly envisaged his ‘poetic mission’.
After the divorce Balmont for some time was destitute, none of the literary journals being interested in his own work. "My first book of course was a total failure. People dear to me with their negativism made this fiasco even less bearable", he wrote in 1903., meaning apparently Larissa, but also his University friends who scorned the debut collection for being ‘reactionary’ and its author, for "abandoning the ideals of social struggle". Again, Korolenko came to help. "The poor guy is very shy; a simple attention to his work would make great difference", he wrote to Mikhail Albov
, one of Severny Vestnik
editors in September 1891.
Professor Nikolay Storozhenko of Moscow University provided the struggling poet with some more of the practical help. "If it was not for him I would have died of hunger. He gave me a fatherly helping hand", the latter remembered. Professor accepted Balmont's article on Shelley and introduced the young author to the influential Severny Vestnik clique in October 1892 when he made his first trip to the capital. Here he met for the first time Nikolay Minsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky
and Zinaida Gippius
(although the latter’s cool animosity rather spoiled young man’s overall enthusiasm). Even more importantly, Storozhenko introduced Balmont to K.T. Soldatenkov, a respected publisher who commissioned him to translate two fundamental works on the history of German and Italiam literature. Those books, published in 1894-1895, "fed me for three years, making it possible for me to fulfil all my poetic ambitions”, balmont wrote in 1922. All the while he continued to translate Shelley
and Edgar Allan Poe
. His translations of Poe's ballads and short stories are still regarded as exemplary.
Another crucial figure who helped the poet was a renown philanthropist Prince Alexandr Urusov, an expert in West European literature, who financed the publication of two of the Poe’s books. In 1894 in the student’s Circle of West European Literature fans Balmont met Valery Bryusov
, his future best friend. The latter was deeply impressed by the young poet’s "personalty and his fanatical passion for poetry".
In 1895 Balmont met Jurgis Baltrušaitis
, a poet who in the 1919 played crucial role in helping him leave the Soviet Russia. Even more significant was his friendship with Sergey Poliakov, a man of many trades and talents (known as, among other things, Knut Hamsun
’s Russian translator) a shrewd entrepreneur who at the time was the financial backer and nominal editor of the symbolist magazine Vesy
, whose true editor was Bryusov, and five years later would found the Scorpion publishing house. All the while Balmont was engaged in intensive self-educating prosess: he learned several languages, read extensively and became an expert in various subjects from Spanish painting to the Chinese culture.
In 1896 Balmont married Yekaterina Andre′eva, a fellow translator whose placid, rational character provided a counter-balance to his own flashy emotionalism. The couple went abroad to travel through Western Europe.. In Spring 1897 Balmont was invited to the Oxford University to read lectures on Russian poetry. "For the first time ever I’ve been given the opportunity to live my life totally according to my intellectual and aesthetic interests. This wealth of arts, poetry and philosophy treasures I’ll never get enough of", he wrote in a letter to critic Akim Volynsky. European impressions and reminiscences formed the essence of Balmont’s third collection The Silence (Тишина, 1898) which was lauded by contemporary critics as the poet's best effort to date.
The book in question was Burning Buildings (Горящие здания, 1900), a collection of radically innovative verse, generally regarded as an apex of the poet’s legacy. The essence of it according to the author was the "longing for inner liberation and self-understanding". In 1901, sending a copy to Leo Tolstoy, he wrote in the accompanying letter: "This book is a prolonged scream of a soul caught in the process of being torn apart. One might call this soul low or ugly. But I won't disclaim not a single page of it as long I keep this love for ugliness which is as strong in me as my love of harmony”. The Burning Buildings made Balmont the leader of the Russian Symbolism. From then on "for a decade he was hovering above everybody else in the Russian poetry. Others either meekly followed him or were struggling painfully to free themselves from his overbearing influence”, wrote Bryusov.
Despite continuous partying (in the company of S. Polyakov and friends) Balmont’s flow of creative output in those years was virtually ceaseless. "Something new came to me, something more complex than I could have even envisaged. I churn out one page after another, hastily, desperately trying to avoid mistakes… How unpredictable one’s soul is! Just one more look inside, and you see new horizons. I feel like I’ve struck a goldmine. Should I remain on it, I’ll make a book that will never die", he wrote to Y. Yasinsky in 1900. By the time his most famous book was published (in the late 1902) he was already a literary celebrity in Russia, regarded by many as the most important poet of his generation. Let Us Be Like the Sun. The Book of Symbols (Будем как солнце. Книга символов) had enormous success and in retrospect is seen as his strongest. Alexander Blok
called it "unique in its unfathomable richness".
In March 1901 Balmont made himself quite a name in the St.-Petersburg revolutionary circles.. First he took part in the student demonstration on the Kazansky Sobor square which was violently disrupted by the police and Cossacks. Then several days later he went up stage of the literary event which was held in the Russian State Duma
building and read his freshly written poem Little Sultan, a vitriolic swipe at Tzar Nicolas The 2nd
. The hand-written version of it became widely popular, even V.I. Lenin was, reportedly, much impressed. As a result, Balmont was deported from the capital with an official 3-year ban on living in the University cities. Almost immediately he flew to Paris and spent 1902 traveling from one West European country to another with lectures.
In summer 1903 Balmont visited Moscow, then moved to the Baltic
shore to work on his next book. The collection of poetry called Only Love (Только любовь, 1903) couldn’t possibly surpass any of his two previous masterpieces, but added to the cult of Balmont. "Russia was passionately in love with him. Young men whispered his verses to their loved ones, schoolgirls scribbled them down, filling notebooks", Teffi remembered. Many established poets – Mirra Lokhvitskaya
, Valery Bryusov
, Andrey Bely, Vyach. Ivanov
, Maximilian Voloshin
and Sergey Gorodetsky among them – treated him (in the words of Darya Makogonenko, a modern researcher) as a "genius… doomed to rise high above the world by submerging himself totally into the depths of his soul"..
In 1904-1905 the Scorpio published the two-volume set of Balmont’s best work. It was followed by Lithurgy of Beauty. Hymns of Elements (Литургия красоты. Стихийные гимны) and Fairies’ Tales (Фейные сказки, both 1905): the first one was created much under the impression of the Russian-Japanese war, the second was a children’s book written for daughter Nina Balmont. Back from his trip to Mexico
and California
Balmont became involved in the 1905 street unrest, reading poems on barricades and (according to Y.Andreeva) "carrying a pistol in the pocket wherever he went". Now friends with Maxim Gorky
, he contributed both to the latter’s New Life (Новая жизнь) and Paris-based Red Banner (Красное знамя) radical newspapers. In December 31, 1905 he flew to Paris so as to avoid arrest. Balmont’s posing as a political immigrant was ridiculed in Russia, but many years later archive researchers found conclusive evidence for the fact that the Russian secret police held the poet under the 'dangerous political activist' file and tried to trace his every move in the West, of which there were many.
In 1907-1912 Balmont travelled continuously. Different brands of ethnic folklore and esoteric ideas formed the basis of his next books: Snakes’ Flowers (Змеиные цветы. 1910), White Architect (1914) and The Osiris Land (1914). "I want to enrich my mind, for too many personal things’ been jamming it off over the years", he explained. In 1913 the political amnesty (declared in time for the Romanovs’ 300 years Jubilee) made it possible for Balmont to return home. Once again he was in the center of public attention, a hero of banquets, ceremonies and extravagant celebrations. In 1914 the publication of the Complete Balmont in ten volumes began and continued for the next seven years.
Touring Russia and abroad, he continued translating – among other things, Hindu
, Georgian
and Japan
ese folklore originals. As the World War I
broke out the poet happened to be in France; he had to make a trip through Britain
, Norway
and Sweden
to finally return home in May 1915. By this time Balmont has discovered for himself a new genre in poetry: he wrote 255 sonnet
s which were published under the title Sonnets of the Sun, the Moon and the Honey (Сонеты cолнца, мёда и луны, 1917). This, along with Fraxinus. The Visions of a Tree (Ясень. Видение древа, 1916), was moderately successful in Russia, but still critics deplored "overall monotony and banality of linguistic decorativeness" his verse was still being apparently plagued by.
and even became the member of the Society of ProletArt, but soon got disillusioned, joined the Cadet party
and praised Lavr Kornilov
in one of the newspaper articles.. The October revolution
horrified Balmont and made him repudiate many of his views of the past. Being the 'absolute freedom' idea apologist, he condemned the dictatorship of proletariat doctrine as destructive and suppressive. Still, in his Revolutionary: Am I or Am I Not? autobiographical essay Balmont argued that poet should keep away from political parties and keep "his individual trajectory which is more akin to a comet’s than that of a planet".
The 1918-1919 were years of enormous hardships for Balmont who, now living in Petrograd with his third wife Yelena Tsvetkovskaya (and their daughter Mirra), had to support Yekaterina Andreeva (and Nina) whom he from time to time visited in Moscow. It was at this time that he struck close friendship with Marina Tsvetayeva, another poet virtually on the verge of physical collapse. Unwilling to collaborate with the Bolsheviks (whose "hands were smeared in blood", as he declared openly at one of the literary meetings) he still occasionally had to. In 1920 A.Lunacharsky (much under the pressure of poet J.Baltrushaitis, then the head of Lithuania
n diplomatic mission in Moscow) gave Balmont a permission to leave the country. B. Zaitsev later opined that what Baltrushaitis did was actually save Balmont's life. For, according to S.Litovtsev (a Russian critic who lived in immigration) at one of Cheka
secret meetings the fate of Balmont was discussed: "those demanding him being put to a firing squad happened to be in minority at the time", and he was let be for a while. On May 25 Balmont and his family left Russia for good.
In Paris Balmont found himself in an ideological crossfire. Radical Russian émigrés saw his too easy an exit suspicious and started insinuations about him being a Communist sympathizer. In a way Lunacharsky with his apologetic article ensuring the public at home that Balmont’s stance wasn’t in any way anti-Bolshevist played up to these suspicions. Balmont himself did have negative things to say of the Bolshevist Russia which in the Soviet press was seen as proof of “treacherousness” of a poet, who “having been sent to the West on a mission to collect the revolutionary poetry of common people” has misused the trust of the Soviet government”. On the other hand, condemning repressions in Russia, Balmont criticized the West too, speaking of many things that abhorred him there. What caused him most trouble, though, was his longing for Russia. "There wasn’t another Russian poet in exile who’d suffer so painfully his being severed from his roots", wrote Yuri Terapiano
. For Balmont his European experience was "life among aliens". "Russia is all I want. Emptiness, emptiness everywhere. Spirituality here in Europe there is none", he wrote in December 1921 to Ye. Andreeva.
In 1921 Balmont moved out of Paris into the province where he and his family rented houses, mostly in Brittany, Vendée
and Gironde
. In 1926 he moved to Bordeaux
. In the late 1920s Balmont's criticism of both the Soviet Russia and the leftist Western elite (Romain Rolland
in particular), showing indifference, as he saw it, to the suffering of the Russian people, was becoming more pronounced. Great Britain’s acknowledgement of the legitimacy of (in Balmont's words) "the international gang of bandits who seized power in Moscow and St. Petersburg, weakened by our military defeat" has rendered "a fatal blow to the last remnants of honesty in the post-War Europe". All the while, unlike his conservative friend Ivan Shmelyov
, Balmont’s politics were liberal: he detested fascism and right-wing nationalist ideas. At the same time he shied the Russian ex-Socialists (like Kerensky and Fondaminsky
) and expressed horror at France’s enchantment with Socialism. The similarity of his views and those of Ivan Bunin was quite obvious; the two (never friends on the personal level) were speaking in one voice on many occasions.
In immigration Balmont continued to write a lot. He published several books of poetry: A Gift to Earth (Дар Земле) and Lightened Hour (Светлый час, both 1921), Haze (Марево, 1922), Mine to hers. Poems of Russia (Моё — ей. Стихи о России, 1923), Stretching Horizons (В раздвинутой дали, 1929), Northern Lights (Северное сияние, 1933), Blue Horseshoe (Голубая подкова) and Serving the Light (Светослужение, both 1937). He released autobiographies and memoirs: Under the New Sickle (Под новым серпом), The Airy Path (Воздушный путь, both in 1923) and Where Is My Home? (Где мой дом?, Prague, 1924). Balmont’s latter days poetry was not popular with his contemporaries: Vladimir Nabokov
called the Balmont’s verse "jarring" and "it's new melodies false". Nina Berberova
argued that Balmont totally exhausted his muse while in Russia and none of his latter work was worthy. Modern critics assess Balmont’s last books more favourably, as lacking in flamboyance, but being more accessible and having more depth. Poet Nikolay Bannikov called Pines in Dunes (Дюнные сосны) and Russian Language (Русский язык) "little masterpieces". In the late 1920s Balmont was still touring, reading lectures (in Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Lithuania) and translated a lot. Returning to Russia became his idée fix which never transpired.
In the early 1930s life for Balmont became hard, as financial support from Czech and Yugoslav governments' literary funds ceased. The poet who had to support three women (of whom daughter Mirra’s erratic behavior was a constant source of trouble) has fallen into poverty. Ivan Shmelyov provided moral support and addressed philanthropers; professor Vladimir Zeeler was the one person who regularly provided financial help. Things worsened in 1932 when it became clear that Balmont was suffering from mental illness (triggered to some extent, apparently, by his 1920s alcohol abuse). He never lost neither his mind, nor a sense of humor. Of a car accident which left him with some bruises and a costume spoiled, he wrote to a friend in 1936: "The quality of life of a Russian immigrant is such that the thought of what would be more profitable to lose: trousers or legs on which they are usually on, becomes a serious dilemma". In April 1936 the group of Russian writers and musicians abroad celebrated the 50th anniversary of Balmont's literary career by staging a charity event; among the organizers and contributors were Ivan Shmelyov, Ivan Bunin, Boris Zaitsev, Sergei Rachmaninoff
and Mark Aldanov
. In 1939-1940 the Russian Nazis in Paris tried to bring up the poet's "revolutionary past" to the attention of their German masters, but the latter (according to Yu. Terapiano) showed total indifference to the fact. Balmont died on December 23, 1942 in the Russian House asylum, due to complications of pneumonia. He was buried in Noisy-le-Grand
's catholic cemetery, with four words engraved on a grey tomb: "Constantin Balmont, poète russe". Few people were present, among them Boris Zaitsev, daughter Mirra and Jurgis Baltrushaitis’ widow.
There’s been certainly more to the poet’s real personality than drunken escapades or impulsive follies he’s gained notoriety for. Poet Andrey Bely spoke of Balmont as of a lonely and vulnerable man, totally out of touch with the real world. Inconsistency marred his creativity too: “He’s failed to connect and harmonize those riches he’s been given by nature, aimlessly spending his spiritual treasures”, Bely argued. Duality was intrinsic to Balmont and the way he looked. According to Bely,
"Balmont was a poseur and reasons for this were obvious. Ever crowded by worshippers, he was trying to bear himself in a manner he saw as befitting a great poet, casting his head back, furrowing his brow... It was laughter that gave him away… This childish laughter could say a lot of the nature of those ridiculous shenanigans of his. Exactly like a child, he was always moved by a momentary impulse", wrote Teffi. Close friend Valery Bryusov explained quirks and deviations in Balmont’s ways by "the deep poetic nature of his self". "He lives in a poet’s way finding in every moment of life’s its total richness. That is why one shouldn’t judge him by common criteria", Bryusov wrote.
Many remembered Balmont as extraordinary warm and humane person. Piotr Pertsov who knew him from the late teenage years, wrote of Balmont as of "very nice, friendly and considerate young man". Marina Tsvetayeva who was Balmont’s close friend in the years when both suffered from hunger and cold, insisted that the poet was "a kind of man who’d give any one in need his last bread, his last log of wood". Mark Talov, a Soviet translator who in the 1920s found himself penniless in Paris, remembered how often, having made a visit to Balmont he was finding money in his coat’s pockets afterwards; the poet (who was very poor himself) preferred the anonymous way of help so as not to confuse a visitor.
For some Balmont’s childishness was an affectation. Others saw it as genuine and true. Boris Zaitsev thought Valentin Serov
’s portrait was closest in depicting Balmont’s brisky, slightly belligerent character. "Cheerful, easy to burst out, ready to retort sharply or effusively. Among birds he’d have been colourful chantecler
, greeting daylight and life", Zaitsev wrote.
Outward bohemianism aside, Balmont had always been a hard worker, highly proficient and prolific. Wherever he went, he never stopped learning, seeping in not just impressions but myriads of facts concerning the place’s history and culture. Eccentric to many, he seemed rational and logical to some. Publisher Sergey Sabashnikov remembered the poet as "accurate, punctual, pedantic and never sloven… Such accuracy made Balmont a very welcome client", Sabashnikov added.
n (probably Scottish
) ancestry. In his 1903 short autobiography the poet wrote:
There is a less exotic alternative version of this, championed by the poet's second wife Yekaterina Andreeva. According to her Memoirs, Balmont’s grand-grandfather on his father’s side Ivan Andreevich Balamut (a Ukrainian surname, meaning “rebel-rouser”) served as a cavalry
sergeant
in Catherine the Great’s Imperial Guard regiment (Andreeva insisted she saw the original parchment-written document that's been kept in the family archives). A landowner in Kherson
, Southern Ukraine, Ivan Balamut has got his name somehow modified into Balmont. This second version has its own detractors, though. According to T. Alexandrova, an authority on M.Lokhvitskaya and Balmont, "It would be more than natural for a foreign name to be transformed by common people of rural area into a folkish, recognizable version, but certainly not vice versa".
Dmitry Konstantinovich, Vera Nikolayevna and all of their relatives pronounced the surname as Ba′lmont, first syllable stressed. The poet insisted that he personally (and officially) changed his surname into Balmo′nt and asked to pronounce it thus. He cited "a certain woman’s whimsy" as the only reason for this change.
beauty (
Birth of Venus
serving here for a point of reference). The poet’s mother who initially helped the two young people’s being acquainted forbode her son to marry the girl, but Balmont was adamant and even had to sever all ties with his family to implement his decision. This marriage was doomed from the very start. Garelina was variously described as a neurasthenic who "gave love of a truly demonic nature", sympatyhized with neither his literary ambitions nor revolutionary inclinations, was suffering from bouts of violent jealousy and was, in fact, responsible for his well-publicized alcohol-related abuses (the latter fact Balmont corroborated in his autobiographical poem Forest Fires). The poet’s first suicidal attempt on March 13, 1890, was believed to have been directly linked with his personal life's catastrophes. The couple's first son died in infancy, the second, Nikolai, was known to have suffered from mental illness. Later some critics warned against demonizing Larissa Garelina’s character: they reminded that years later she married a well-known Russian journalist and literature historian Nikolai Engelgardt and with him enjoyed a perfectly normal family life. Their daughter Anna Engelgardt became the second wife of poet Nikolai Gumilyov.
Yekaterina Alekse′evna Andre′eva (1967-1952), the poet’s second wife, came from rich traders’ family, related to Sabashikovs, a well-known Moscow-based publishers’ clan. Contemporaries remembered her as an exceptionally well-educated woman, tall, elegant and slender, somewhat aloof, strong-minded and attractive. Andreeva was (according to her Memoirs) passionately (and unrequitedly) in love with Prince Alexandr Urusov and for a while never even noticed infatuated Balmont’s passes. The latter prevailed, finally she fell for him and on September 27, 1896, the couple married and instantly left for France (one reason being the fact that the husband was still not officially divorced at the time). Andreeva and Balmont have had much in common: they even formed a working tandem translating collectively the works of Gerhart Hauptmann
, Oscar Wilde
and others. Andreeva, according to Boris Zaitsev, was a leading force in the family and while with her the poet was "in strong, healthy and loving hands", well disciplined and leading a hard-working man’s life. In 1901 daughter Nina Balmont (later Bruni, died in Moscow in 1989 году) was born; for her the poet wrote A Fairy's Tale, the book of children's verses in 1905.
In the early 1900 while in Paris Balmont met Yelena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya (1880–1943), general K. G. Tzvetkovsky's daughter, who was at the time studying mathematics in Sorbonne
and was the poet's ardent fan. Balmont, as some of his letters suggested, has never been in love with her, but soon found himself in many ways dependent on a girl who proved to be a loyal, devoted friend. Balmont's family life's got seriously complicated after Tsvetkovskaya in 1907 gave birth to a daughter. Balmont called her Mirra in memory of a poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya
who died in 1905 and whom he had passionate, mostly platonic relations with. Torn apart between the two families, in 1909 Balmont attempted suicide for the second time (jumping off the window) and again survived. Up until 1917 he lived in St.-Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra, occasionally visiting Yekaterina and Nina in Moscow. While in immigration Balmont continued to correspond with Andreeva until 1934 (when such links between relatives were officially banned in the USSR).
Teffi thus described Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya: "He with his head held high, a true Fame’s laurels bearer, neck wrapped in a black tie of a kind Lermontov might have found useful but nobody would even dream of wearing today. Lynx’ eyes, mane of long reddish hair. Followed by a shadow, Yelena: small, thin, dark-skinned creature who was obviously depending in life on two strong things: tea and her love." The couple, according to Teffi, communicated in strange and pretentious manner. "She was always calling him 'a poet', never – 'my husband'. A simple phrase: 'My husband asks for a drink' in their special argot would turn into something like: 'A poet is willing to appease his thirst'." Unlike Andreeva, Yelena Tsvetkovskaya was totally helpless in domestic life and had no influence whatsoever over Balmont whom she felt as her duty to follow wherever he went to drink, spending nights by his side, never being able to root him out. "Small wonder that, leading such a life, at 40 she looked like a very old woman", Teffi attested.
The last woman Balmont has been romantically linked with was Dagmar Shakhovska′ya (1893–1967), an Estonian baroness. The lovers met rarely but had two children: George (1922-194?) and Svetlana (b.1925). Balmont wrote to her almost daily, all in all 858 of his letters and postcards remained. Still, it was Yelena Tsvetkovskaya who was beside him till the last. She died in 1943, a year after her husband. Mirra Balmont (in marriage Boychenko, then Autina) published poetry as Aglaya Gamayun. She died in Paris in 1970.
, Nikolai Obukhov
, Sergei Prokofiev
, Sergei Rachmaninoff
, Maximilian Steinberg
, Igor Stravinsky
, and Sergei Taneyev
.
One of his best known works is his free Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe
's The Bells
, which formed the basis of Rachmaninoff's choral symphony of the same name
, Op. 35.
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry
Silver Age of Russian Poetry
Silver Age is a term traditionally applied by Russian philologists to the first two decades of the 20th century. It was an exceptionally creative period in the history of Russian poetry, on par with the Golden Age a century earlier...
.
Biography
Konstantin Balmont was born in v. Gumnishchi, ShuyaShuya
Shuya is the third largest town in Ivanovo Oblast, Russia; located on the Teza River. Population: -History:The first record of Shuya is dated by 1393. Since 1403, the area was held by a branch of the House of Suzdal, which got their name "Shuysky" after the town. In 1539, the town was sacked by...
, then of Vladimir
Vladimir
Vladimir is a city and the administrative center of Vladimir Oblast, Russia, located on the Klyazma River, to the east of Moscow along the M7 motorway. Population:...
Guberniya
Guberniya
A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...
(now of Ivanovskaya oblast), the third of the seven sons of Russian nobleman, lawyer and senior state official Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont and Vera Nikolayevna (nee Le′bedeva) The latter, having come from a family of military men where enthusiasm for literature and theater was almost hereditary, had the most profound influence over her son: she introduced him to the world of music, history and folklore. Vera Nikolayevna knew several foreign languages and often received guests who might have been deemed 'politically risque' at the time. It was from her that Konstantin Balmont, as he later remembered, inherited 'tempestuousness of character' and rebel-rouser mentality.
Balmont who learned reading at the age of five (watching secretly his elder brother’s family lessons) cited Pushkin, Nekrasov, Koltsov and Nikitin
Ivan Savvich Nikitin
Ivan Savvich Nikitin Born in Voronezh into a merchant family, Nikitin was educated in a seminary until 1843. His father's violence and alcoholism brought the family to ruin and forced young Ivan to provide for the household by becoming an innkeeper...
as his first favorites. He insisted, though, that "the family house, the garden, creeks, marshy lakes, whispering leaves, butterflies, birds and sunrises" were his first poetry teachers. Ten years spent in his family’s Gumnishchi estate Balmont always remembered with great love and warmth, referring to the place as "a tiny kingdom of silent comfort".
In 1876 the family moved to the town of Shuya where Vera Nikolayevna owned a two-storey, rather decrepit-looking house. A ten year old Konstantin joined the preparatory class of a local gymnasium, an institution he later described rather hatefully as "the home of decadence and capitalism, able only of air and river contamination".
It was here at school that, rather vexed with the educational system's restrictions, he became interested in French and German poetry and started writing verses of his own. His first two poems, though, were criticized by his mother in such a harsh manner that for the next six years he made no attempts to repeat this first poetic venture What he became involved in instead was an illegal circle (formed by students and some traveling teachers) which printed and distributed Narodnaya Volya
Narodnaya Volya
Narodnaya Volya was aRussian left-wing terrorist organization, best known for the successful assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. It created a centralized and well disguised organization in a time of diverse liberation movements in Russia...
proclamations. "I was happy and I wanted everybody to be happy. The fact that only a minority, me included, was entitled to such happiness, was for me outrageous", he later wrote, explaining his early enchantment with revolutionary activities.
Mother transferred her son to another gymnasium, in Vladimir, but here the boy had to live in the house of a Greek teacher who took upon himself a duty of a warden, bringing much psychological suffering to a disgruntled youth. In the late 1885 Balmont made his publishing debut: three of his poems appeared in a popular St. Petersburg magazine Zhivopisnoye obozrenye. This event (as a latter day biographer put it) "has been noticed by nobody except for his (tor)mentor" whose ultimatum included a veto on any further publications until the graduation day. Balmont was graduated in 1886 году., having spent «one and a half years in a prison-like conditions» «Gimnasium I curse with all my might. It ruined my nervous system completely», the poet remembered in 1923.
In 1886 Balmont joined the Law school of the Moscow University where he socialised a lot with leftist activists (among them P. F. Nikolayev). Next year Balmont was arrested for participation in the students' demonstrations (the unrest was triggered by a new set of rules for students introduced by the authorities), spent three days in prison, then expelled from the University and sent back home to Shuya.
In 1889 Balmont returned to the University but soon quit again due to nervous breakdown. He joined Demidov
Demidov
The Demidov family, also Demidoff, were an influential Russian merchant, industrialist and later chivalry family, possibly second only to the Tsar himself in wealth during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-History:...
sky Law college in Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located northeast of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. It is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities...
but after having been expelled in September 1890 decided that of formal education he’d had enough. «I simply couldn’t bring myself to studying law, what with living so intensely with true passions of my heart and being deeply involved in studying German literature», he wrote in 1911. At least one family member supported his decision: it was an elder brother, infatuated in the same way with studying philosophy Otherwise, "…at the age of 13 I learned the English word self-help, fell in love with the intellectual work and went on with it until my dying days", Balmont wrote in th 1930s.
Debut
In 1889 Balmont married Larissa Garelina, a daughter of local factory-owner. The marriage proved to be unhappy one: two tempestuous characters clashed. Next year he released a self-financed book called simply Poetry Collection (Сборник стихотворений), some of his pieces, published in 1885 here included. In many ways the instigating factor was V.G. KorolenkoVladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko was a Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, journalist, human rights activist and humanitarian. His short stories were known for their harsh description of nature based on his experience of exile in Siberia...
, a well-known writer who, on receiving a couple of years earlier a hand-written note-book (sent to him by Konstantin’s classmates) sent a schoolboy a letter containing serious and favourable critical analysis, where he spoke of the young autor’s rare eye for small detail but also of the lack of concentration and general hastiness. "He wrote that… one is not to chase every fleeting moth; not to whip one’s emotions up with one’s thought, but rather trust and rely upon this unconscious part of human soul which accumulates all the live impressions and later ensures the young flower
In Мarch 1890 a near fatal accident happened: Balmont attempted suicide by jumping off the 3rd storey window. He survived, but broke his leg and received multiple injuries which left him bed-ridden for a year. It was said at the time that the immediate impulse for the suicide attempt was provided by Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
’s Kreytzerova Sonata, but there was more rational reason for it: falling apart was his marriage that caused among other things (like growing penchant towards alcoholism) the rift with parents who left him without financial support. The year of recuperation, though, became an important turning point, causing "the unusual mental agitation and the ensuing rush of cheerfulness". It was then that Balmont recognized ‘life’s sacred value’ and clearly envisaged his ‘poetic mission’.
After the divorce Balmont for some time was destitute, none of the literary journals being interested in his own work. "My first book of course was a total failure. People dear to me with their negativism made this fiasco even less bearable", he wrote in 1903., meaning apparently Larissa, but also his University friends who scorned the debut collection for being ‘reactionary’ and its author, for "abandoning the ideals of social struggle". Again, Korolenko came to help. "The poor guy is very shy; a simple attention to his work would make great difference", he wrote to Mikhail Albov
Mikhail Albov
-Biography:Albov was born in St Petersburg in 1851. From an early age he showed a love for reading. He was especially interested in foreign works such as Robinson Crusoe and David Copperfield. Nikolay Gogol's novel Dead Souls also made a deep impression on him...
, one of Severny Vestnik
Severny Vestnik
Severny Vestnik was an influential Russian literary magazine founded in Saint Petersburg in 1885 by Anna Yevreinova, who stayed with it until 1889.-History:...
editors in September 1891.
Professor Nikolay Storozhenko of Moscow University provided the struggling poet with some more of the practical help. "If it was not for him I would have died of hunger. He gave me a fatherly helping hand", the latter remembered. Professor accepted Balmont's article on Shelley and introduced the young author to the influential Severny Vestnik clique in October 1892 when he made his first trip to the capital. Here he met for the first time Nikolay Minsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Merezhkovsky
Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, , 1865, St Petersburg – December 9, 1941, Paris) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his poet wife Zinaida...
and Zinaida Gippius
Zinaida Gippius
Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius, was a Russian poet, playwright, editor, short story writer and religious thinker, regarded as a co-founder of Russian symbolism and seen as "one of the most enigmatic and intelligent women of her time in Russia"....
(although the latter’s cool animosity rather spoiled young man’s overall enthusiasm). Even more importantly, Storozhenko introduced Balmont to K.T. Soldatenkov, a respected publisher who commissioned him to translate two fundamental works on the history of German and Italiam literature. Those books, published in 1894-1895, "fed me for three years, making it possible for me to fulfil all my poetic ambitions”, balmont wrote in 1922. All the while he continued to translate Shelley
Shelley
-Meaning:In many baby name books, Shelley is listed as meaning "From the meadow on the ledge" or "clearing on a bank". It is Old English in origin. As with many other names , Shelley is today a name given almost exclusively to girls after historically being male...
and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. His translations of Poe's ballads and short stories are still regarded as exemplary.
Another crucial figure who helped the poet was a renown philanthropist Prince Alexandr Urusov, an expert in West European literature, who financed the publication of two of the Poe’s books. In 1894 in the student’s Circle of West European Literature fans Balmont met Valery Bryusov
Valery Bryusov
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement.-Biography:...
, his future best friend. The latter was deeply impressed by the young poet’s "personalty and his fanatical passion for poetry".
1893-1899
In December 1893 Balmont informed Minsky in a letter: "I’ve written a series of my own verse and in January I'm going to begin the publishing process. I anticipate my liberal friends will be outraged for there’s no liberalism in this whatsoever, while ‘corrupting influences’ are there aplenty". The book, Under the Northern Sky (Под северным небом) came out in 1894 and was favorably received by both public and critics. It is regarded as Balmont's first 'real' book and a starting point in his literary career. Prince Urusov declared himself a fan while critics noted, on the one hand, popular 'current' themes' dominance (laments on 'greyness' of life, etc), on the other, young author’s individuality, exquisiteness of form and technical versatility. The second collection, In Limitless Darkness (В безбрежности мрака, 1895) was seen as a much stronger effort. It was here that Balmont started his experiments with the Russian language's musical and rhythmical structures which soon made him famous. With mainstream critics the book was unpopular, but Russian cultural elite embraced the innovator and soon he was welcome in all the major literary journals.In 1895 Balmont met Jurgis Baltrušaitis
Jurgis Baltrušaitis
Jurgis Baltrušaitis was a Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator, who wrote his works in Lithuanian and Russian. In addition to his important contributions to Lithuanian literature, he was noted as a political activist and diplomat...
, a poet who in the 1919 played crucial role in helping him leave the Soviet Russia. Even more significant was his friendship with Sergey Poliakov, a man of many trades and talents (known as, among other things, Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
’s Russian translator) a shrewd entrepreneur who at the time was the financial backer and nominal editor of the symbolist magazine Vesy
Vesy
Vesy , was a Russian symbolist magazine published in Moscow from 1904 to 1909, with the financial backing of philanthropist S. A. Polyakov. It was edited by the major symbolist writer Valery Bryusov.-History:...
, whose true editor was Bryusov, and five years later would found the Scorpion publishing house. All the while Balmont was engaged in intensive self-educating prosess: he learned several languages, read extensively and became an expert in various subjects from Spanish painting to the Chinese culture.
In 1896 Balmont married Yekaterina Andre′eva, a fellow translator whose placid, rational character provided a counter-balance to his own flashy emotionalism. The couple went abroad to travel through Western Europe.. In Spring 1897 Balmont was invited to the Oxford University to read lectures on Russian poetry. "For the first time ever I’ve been given the opportunity to live my life totally according to my intellectual and aesthetic interests. This wealth of arts, poetry and philosophy treasures I’ll never get enough of", he wrote in a letter to critic Akim Volynsky. European impressions and reminiscences formed the essence of Balmont’s third collection The Silence (Тишина, 1898) which was lauded by contemporary critics as the poet's best effort to date.
1900-1905
For two years he was continuously on the move, then settled at S. Polyakov’s Banki estate to concentrate on his next piece of work. In the late 1899 he wrote to poet Lyudmila Vilkina:The book in question was Burning Buildings (Горящие здания, 1900), a collection of radically innovative verse, generally regarded as an apex of the poet’s legacy. The essence of it according to the author was the "longing for inner liberation and self-understanding". In 1901, sending a copy to Leo Tolstoy, he wrote in the accompanying letter: "This book is a prolonged scream of a soul caught in the process of being torn apart. One might call this soul low or ugly. But I won't disclaim not a single page of it as long I keep this love for ugliness which is as strong in me as my love of harmony”. The Burning Buildings made Balmont the leader of the Russian Symbolism. From then on "for a decade he was hovering above everybody else in the Russian poetry. Others either meekly followed him or were struggling painfully to free themselves from his overbearing influence”, wrote Bryusov.
Despite continuous partying (in the company of S. Polyakov and friends) Balmont’s flow of creative output in those years was virtually ceaseless. "Something new came to me, something more complex than I could have even envisaged. I churn out one page after another, hastily, desperately trying to avoid mistakes… How unpredictable one’s soul is! Just one more look inside, and you see new horizons. I feel like I’ve struck a goldmine. Should I remain on it, I’ll make a book that will never die", he wrote to Y. Yasinsky in 1900. By the time his most famous book was published (in the late 1902) he was already a literary celebrity in Russia, regarded by many as the most important poet of his generation. Let Us Be Like the Sun. The Book of Symbols (Будем как солнце. Книга символов) had enormous success and in retrospect is seen as his strongest. Alexander Blok
Alexander Blok
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet.-Life and career:Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg...
called it "unique in its unfathomable richness".
In March 1901 Balmont made himself quite a name in the St.-Petersburg revolutionary circles.. First he took part in the student demonstration on the Kazansky Sobor square which was violently disrupted by the police and Cossacks. Then several days later he went up stage of the literary event which was held in the Russian State Duma
Duma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
building and read his freshly written poem Little Sultan, a vitriolic swipe at Tzar Nicolas The 2nd
Nicholas II of Russia
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
. The hand-written version of it became widely popular, even V.I. Lenin was, reportedly, much impressed. As a result, Balmont was deported from the capital with an official 3-year ban on living in the University cities. Almost immediately he flew to Paris and spent 1902 traveling from one West European country to another with lectures.
In summer 1903 Balmont visited Moscow, then moved to the Baltic
Baltic
-Northern Europe:* The Baltic Sea* Baltic states : Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia* The Baltic region, an ambiguous term referring to the general area surrounding the Baltic Sea...
shore to work on his next book. The collection of poetry called Only Love (Только любовь, 1903) couldn’t possibly surpass any of his two previous masterpieces, but added to the cult of Balmont. "Russia was passionately in love with him. Young men whispered his verses to their loved ones, schoolgirls scribbled them down, filling notebooks", Teffi remembered. Many established poets – Mirra Lokhvitskaya
Mirra Lokhvitskaya
Mirra Lokhvitskaya was a Russian poet who rose to fame in the late 1890s and, due to the flamboyantly erotic sensuality of her works, was regarded as the "Russian Sappho" by her contemporaries...
, Valery Bryusov
Valery Bryusov
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement.-Biography:...
, Andrey Bely, Vyach. Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov was a Russian poet and playwright associated with the Russian Symbolist movement. He was also a philosopher, translator, and literary critic.-Early life:...
, Maximilian Voloshin
Maximilian Voloshin
Maximilian Alexandrovich Kirienko-Voloshin was a Russian poet and famous Freemason. He was one of the significant representatives of the Symbolist movement in Russian culture and literature...
and Sergey Gorodetsky among them – treated him (in the words of Darya Makogonenko, a modern researcher) as a "genius… doomed to rise high above the world by submerging himself totally into the depths of his soul"..
In 1904-1905 the Scorpio published the two-volume set of Balmont’s best work. It was followed by Lithurgy of Beauty. Hymns of Elements (Литургия красоты. Стихийные гимны) and Fairies’ Tales (Фейные сказки, both 1905): the first one was created much under the impression of the Russian-Japanese war, the second was a children’s book written for daughter Nina Balmont. Back from his trip to Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
Balmont became involved in the 1905 street unrest, reading poems on barricades and (according to Y.Andreeva) "carrying a pistol in the pocket wherever he went". Now friends with Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, he contributed both to the latter’s New Life (Новая жизнь) and Paris-based Red Banner (Красное знамя) radical newspapers. In December 31, 1905 he flew to Paris so as to avoid arrest. Balmont’s posing as a political immigrant was ridiculed in Russia, but many years later archive researchers found conclusive evidence for the fact that the Russian secret police held the poet under the 'dangerous political activist' file and tried to trace his every move in the West, of which there were many.
1906-1917
His next two books comprised all of the pieces that’s been written during and in the wake of the First Russian revolution events. Poems (Стихотворения, St.Pbg, 1906) were immediately confiscated by the police; Songs of the Avenger (Песни мстителя, Paris, 1907) were banned in Russia, what with direct calls for assassination of Tzar ("You should be killed, you’ve become everyone’s grief". - To Nicolas the Last) being there present. Another one, Vile Charms (Злые чары, 1906), was banned for the allegedly anti-religious sentiments. None of this fuss, though, could make up for the fact that the poet's muse mysteriously abandoned him: both critics and fellow poets (close friend Brysov among them) saw these forays into socio-political spheres as total failures. Russian folklore-oriented Firebird. Slav’s Svirel (Жар-птица. Свирель славянина, 1907), Hortus conclusus. Kisses-like words (Зеленый вертоград. Слова поцелуйные, 1909) and Ancient Calls (Зовы древности, 1909), even if radically different, bore the same sign of deep artistic crisis, of which the poet himself, apparently, was totally unaware. Most notable Balmont's work of the time, three non-poetry books – Mountain Peaks (Горные вершины, 1904), White Heat Lightnings (Белые зарницы, 1908) and The Luminous Sea (Морское свечение, 1910), - were collections of essays on Russian and foreign authors.In 1907-1912 Balmont travelled continuously. Different brands of ethnic folklore and esoteric ideas formed the basis of his next books: Snakes’ Flowers (Змеиные цветы. 1910), White Architect (1914) and The Osiris Land (1914). "I want to enrich my mind, for too many personal things’ been jamming it off over the years", he explained. In 1913 the political amnesty (declared in time for the Romanovs’ 300 years Jubilee) made it possible for Balmont to return home. Once again he was in the center of public attention, a hero of banquets, ceremonies and extravagant celebrations. In 1914 the publication of the Complete Balmont in ten volumes began and continued for the next seven years.
Touring Russia and abroad, he continued translating – among other things, Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
, Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese folklore originals. As the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out the poet happened to be in France; he had to make a trip through Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
to finally return home in May 1915. By this time Balmont has discovered for himself a new genre in poetry: he wrote 255 sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s which were published under the title Sonnets of the Sun, the Moon and the Honey (Сонеты cолнца, мёда и луны, 1917). This, along with Fraxinus. The Visions of a Tree (Ясень. Видение древа, 1916), was moderately successful in Russia, but still critics deplored "overall monotony and banality of linguistic decorativeness" his verse was still being apparently plagued by.
1917-1942
Balmont welcomed the February RevolutionFebruary Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
and even became the member of the Society of ProletArt, but soon got disillusioned, joined the Cadet party
Constitutional Democratic party
The Constitutional Democratic Party was a liberal political party in the Russian Empire. Party members were called Kadets, from the abbreviation K-D of the party name...
and praised Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War...
in one of the newspaper articles.. The October revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
horrified Balmont and made him repudiate many of his views of the past. Being the 'absolute freedom' idea apologist, he condemned the dictatorship of proletariat doctrine as destructive and suppressive. Still, in his Revolutionary: Am I or Am I Not? autobiographical essay Balmont argued that poet should keep away from political parties and keep "his individual trajectory which is more akin to a comet’s than that of a planet".
The 1918-1919 were years of enormous hardships for Balmont who, now living in Petrograd with his third wife Yelena Tsvetkovskaya (and their daughter Mirra), had to support Yekaterina Andreeva (and Nina) whom he from time to time visited in Moscow. It was at this time that he struck close friendship with Marina Tsvetayeva, another poet virtually on the verge of physical collapse. Unwilling to collaborate with the Bolsheviks (whose "hands were smeared in blood", as he declared openly at one of the literary meetings) he still occasionally had to. In 1920 A.Lunacharsky (much under the pressure of poet J.Baltrushaitis, then the head of Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n diplomatic mission in Moscow) gave Balmont a permission to leave the country. B. Zaitsev later opined that what Baltrushaitis did was actually save Balmont's life. For, according to S.Litovtsev (a Russian critic who lived in immigration) at one of Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
secret meetings the fate of Balmont was discussed: "those demanding him being put to a firing squad happened to be in minority at the time", and he was let be for a while. On May 25 Balmont and his family left Russia for good.
In Paris Balmont found himself in an ideological crossfire. Radical Russian émigrés saw his too easy an exit suspicious and started insinuations about him being a Communist sympathizer. In a way Lunacharsky with his apologetic article ensuring the public at home that Balmont’s stance wasn’t in any way anti-Bolshevist played up to these suspicions. Balmont himself did have negative things to say of the Bolshevist Russia which in the Soviet press was seen as proof of “treacherousness” of a poet, who “having been sent to the West on a mission to collect the revolutionary poetry of common people” has misused the trust of the Soviet government”. On the other hand, condemning repressions in Russia, Balmont criticized the West too, speaking of many things that abhorred him there. What caused him most trouble, though, was his longing for Russia. "There wasn’t another Russian poet in exile who’d suffer so painfully his being severed from his roots", wrote Yuri Terapiano
Yuri Terapiano
Yuri Terapiano was a Russian poet, writer, translator, literary critic and prominent figure in the White émigré's cultural life...
. For Balmont his European experience was "life among aliens". "Russia is all I want. Emptiness, emptiness everywhere. Spirituality here in Europe there is none", he wrote in December 1921 to Ye. Andreeva.
In 1921 Balmont moved out of Paris into the province where he and his family rented houses, mostly in Brittany, Vendée
Vendée
The Vendée is a department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region in west central France, on the Atlantic Ocean. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the south-eastern part of the department.-History:...
and Gironde
Gironde
For the Revolutionary party, see Girondists.Gironde is a common name for the Gironde estuary, where the mouths of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers merge, and for a department in the Aquitaine region situated in southwest France.-History:...
. In 1926 he moved to Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
. In the late 1920s Balmont's criticism of both the Soviet Russia and the leftist Western elite (Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
in particular), showing indifference, as he saw it, to the suffering of the Russian people, was becoming more pronounced. Great Britain’s acknowledgement of the legitimacy of (in Balmont's words) "the international gang of bandits who seized power in Moscow and St. Petersburg, weakened by our military defeat" has rendered "a fatal blow to the last remnants of honesty in the post-War Europe". All the while, unlike his conservative friend Ivan Shmelyov
Ivan Shmelyov
Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelyov was a Russian émigré writer best known for his full-blooded idyllic recreations of the pre-revolutionary past spent in the merchant district of Moscow...
, Balmont’s politics were liberal: he detested fascism and right-wing nationalist ideas. At the same time he shied the Russian ex-Socialists (like Kerensky and Fondaminsky
Ilya Fondaminsky
Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky was a Jewish Russian author and political activist, in 1910s one of the leaders of the ultra left SR party, in 1917 a senior member of the Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional government.In 1918 Fondaminsky took part...
) and expressed horror at France’s enchantment with Socialism. The similarity of his views and those of Ivan Bunin was quite obvious; the two (never friends on the personal level) were speaking in one voice on many occasions.
In immigration Balmont continued to write a lot. He published several books of poetry: A Gift to Earth (Дар Земле) and Lightened Hour (Светлый час, both 1921), Haze (Марево, 1922), Mine to hers. Poems of Russia (Моё — ей. Стихи о России, 1923), Stretching Horizons (В раздвинутой дали, 1929), Northern Lights (Северное сияние, 1933), Blue Horseshoe (Голубая подкова) and Serving the Light (Светослужение, both 1937). He released autobiographies and memoirs: Under the New Sickle (Под новым серпом), The Airy Path (Воздушный путь, both in 1923) and Where Is My Home? (Где мой дом?, Prague, 1924). Balmont’s latter days poetry was not popular with his contemporaries: Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
called the Balmont’s verse "jarring" and "it's new melodies false". Nina Berberova
Nina Berberova
Nina Nikolayevna Berberova was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of Russian exiles in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia and died in Philadelphia.-Biographical Sketch:...
argued that Balmont totally exhausted his muse while in Russia and none of his latter work was worthy. Modern critics assess Balmont’s last books more favourably, as lacking in flamboyance, but being more accessible and having more depth. Poet Nikolay Bannikov called Pines in Dunes (Дюнные сосны) and Russian Language (Русский язык) "little masterpieces". In the late 1920s Balmont was still touring, reading lectures (in Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Lithuania) and translated a lot. Returning to Russia became his idée fix which never transpired.
In the early 1930s life for Balmont became hard, as financial support from Czech and Yugoslav governments' literary funds ceased. The poet who had to support three women (of whom daughter Mirra’s erratic behavior was a constant source of trouble) has fallen into poverty. Ivan Shmelyov provided moral support and addressed philanthropers; professor Vladimir Zeeler was the one person who regularly provided financial help. Things worsened in 1932 when it became clear that Balmont was suffering from mental illness (triggered to some extent, apparently, by his 1920s alcohol abuse). He never lost neither his mind, nor a sense of humor. Of a car accident which left him with some bruises and a costume spoiled, he wrote to a friend in 1936: "The quality of life of a Russian immigrant is such that the thought of what would be more profitable to lose: trousers or legs on which they are usually on, becomes a serious dilemma". In April 1936 the group of Russian writers and musicians abroad celebrated the 50th anniversary of Balmont's literary career by staging a charity event; among the organizers and contributors were Ivan Shmelyov, Ivan Bunin, Boris Zaitsev, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
and Mark Aldanov
Mark Aldanov
Mark Aldanov was a Russian emigrant writer, known for his historical novels.Mark Landau was born in Kiev in the family of a rich Jewish industrialist. He graduated the physical-mathematical and law departments of Kiev University. He published serious research papers in chemistry. In 1919 he...
. In 1939-1940 the Russian Nazis in Paris tried to bring up the poet's "revolutionary past" to the attention of their German masters, but the latter (according to Yu. Terapiano) showed total indifference to the fact. Balmont died on December 23, 1942 in the Russian House asylum, due to complications of pneumonia. He was buried in Noisy-le-Grand
Noisy-le-Grand
Noisy-le-Grand is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.The commune of Noisy-le-Grand is part of the sector of Porte de Paris, one of the four sectors of the "new town" of Marne-la-Vallée.-Name:...
's catholic cemetery, with four words engraved on a grey tomb: "Constantin Balmont, poète russe". Few people were present, among them Boris Zaitsev, daughter Mirra and Jurgis Baltrushaitis’ widow.
Personality
Konstantin Balmont’s been characterized variously as theatrical, pretentious and outright egotistical, his behaviour being more often than not erratic and irrational. He could sprawl himself on a cobbled street of Paris to make an upcoming fiacre stop abruptly, or, dressed in a coat and hat, enter a pond at night so as "to experience something new and express this in poetry". What fans saw as the whimsies of a genius, others treated as cheap posturing aiming to impress. Boris Zaitsev remembered how his wife became duly appalled when Balmont (who was a neighbour) once asked her: "Vera, would you prefer a poet coming to Boris’ room by air, by-passing banal trails of the real world?" - We knew of one of his earlier attempts of the kind and were grateful for his visits having being made through banal and natural ways", Zaitsev added. Ridiculing good-humouredly his neighbour’s vain eccentricities, he remembered episodes when Balmont "could be altogether different person: very sad and very simple".There’s been certainly more to the poet’s real personality than drunken escapades or impulsive follies he’s gained notoriety for. Poet Andrey Bely spoke of Balmont as of a lonely and vulnerable man, totally out of touch with the real world. Inconsistency marred his creativity too: “He’s failed to connect and harmonize those riches he’s been given by nature, aimlessly spending his spiritual treasures”, Bely argued. Duality was intrinsic to Balmont and the way he looked. According to Bely,
"Balmont was a poseur and reasons for this were obvious. Ever crowded by worshippers, he was trying to bear himself in a manner he saw as befitting a great poet, casting his head back, furrowing his brow... It was laughter that gave him away… This childish laughter could say a lot of the nature of those ridiculous shenanigans of his. Exactly like a child, he was always moved by a momentary impulse", wrote Teffi. Close friend Valery Bryusov explained quirks and deviations in Balmont’s ways by "the deep poetic nature of his self". "He lives in a poet’s way finding in every moment of life’s its total richness. That is why one shouldn’t judge him by common criteria", Bryusov wrote.
Many remembered Balmont as extraordinary warm and humane person. Piotr Pertsov who knew him from the late teenage years, wrote of Balmont as of "very nice, friendly and considerate young man". Marina Tsvetayeva who was Balmont’s close friend in the years when both suffered from hunger and cold, insisted that the poet was "a kind of man who’d give any one in need his last bread, his last log of wood". Mark Talov, a Soviet translator who in the 1920s found himself penniless in Paris, remembered how often, having made a visit to Balmont he was finding money in his coat’s pockets afterwards; the poet (who was very poor himself) preferred the anonymous way of help so as not to confuse a visitor.
For some Balmont’s childishness was an affectation. Others saw it as genuine and true. Boris Zaitsev thought Valentin Serov
Valentin Serov
Valentin Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian painter, and one of the premier portrait artists of his era.-Youth and education:...
’s portrait was closest in depicting Balmont’s brisky, slightly belligerent character. "Cheerful, easy to burst out, ready to retort sharply or effusively. Among birds he’d have been colourful chantecler
Chantecler (chicken)
The Chantecler is a breed of chicken originating in Canada. One of only two native Canadian breeds , the Chantecler was developed in the early 20th century, at the Abbey of Notre-Dame du Lac in Oka, Quebec...
, greeting daylight and life", Zaitsev wrote.
Outward bohemianism aside, Balmont had always been a hard worker, highly proficient and prolific. Wherever he went, he never stopped learning, seeping in not just impressions but myriads of facts concerning the place’s history and culture. Eccentric to many, he seemed rational and logical to some. Publisher Sergey Sabashnikov remembered the poet as "accurate, punctual, pedantic and never sloven… Such accuracy made Balmont a very welcome client", Sabashnikov added.
Family
There is an element of controversy regarding Konstantin Balmont’s (and his second name’s) origins. The common knowledge is that his father Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont (1835—1907) was a noble man of a ScandinaviaScandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
n (probably Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
) ancestry. In his 1903 short autobiography the poet wrote:
There is a less exotic alternative version of this, championed by the poet's second wife Yekaterina Andreeva. According to her Memoirs, Balmont’s grand-grandfather on his father’s side Ivan Andreevich Balamut (a Ukrainian surname, meaning “rebel-rouser”) served as a cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
sergeant
Sergeant
Sergeant is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, "one who serves", through the French term Sergent....
in Catherine the Great’s Imperial Guard regiment (Andreeva insisted she saw the original parchment-written document that's been kept in the family archives). A landowner in Kherson
Kherson
Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kherson Oblast , and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry...
, Southern Ukraine, Ivan Balamut has got his name somehow modified into Balmont. This second version has its own detractors, though. According to T. Alexandrova, an authority on M.Lokhvitskaya and Balmont, "It would be more than natural for a foreign name to be transformed by common people of rural area into a folkish, recognizable version, but certainly not vice versa".
Dmitry Konstantinovich, Vera Nikolayevna and all of their relatives pronounced the surname as Ba′lmont, first syllable stressed. The poet insisted that he personally (and officially) changed his surname into Balmo′nt and asked to pronounce it thus. He cited "a certain woman’s whimsy" as the only reason for this change.
Private life
In 1889 Balmont married Larissa Mikha′ilovna Gare′lina, the Shuya factory-owner’s daughter, described as "a BotticellianSandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
beauty (
Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore...
serving here for a point of reference). The poet’s mother who initially helped the two young people’s being acquainted forbode her son to marry the girl, but Balmont was adamant and even had to sever all ties with his family to implement his decision. This marriage was doomed from the very start. Garelina was variously described as a neurasthenic who "gave
Yekaterina Alekse′evna Andre′eva (1967-1952), the poet’s second wife, came from rich traders’ family, related to Sabashikovs, a well-known Moscow-based publishers’ clan. Contemporaries remembered her as an exceptionally well-educated woman, tall, elegant and slender, somewhat aloof, strong-minded and attractive. Andreeva was (according to her Memoirs) passionately (and unrequitedly) in love with Prince Alexandr Urusov and for a while never even noticed infatuated Balmont’s passes. The latter prevailed, finally she fell for him and on September 27, 1896, the couple married and instantly left for France (one reason being the fact that the husband was still not officially divorced at the time). Andreeva and Balmont have had much in common: they even formed a working tandem translating collectively the works of Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
and others. Andreeva, according to Boris Zaitsev, was a leading force in the family and while with her the poet was "in strong, healthy and loving hands", well disciplined and leading a hard-working man’s life. In 1901 daughter Nina Balmont (later Bruni, died in Moscow in 1989 году) was born; for her the poet wrote A Fairy's Tale, the book of children's verses in 1905.
In the early 1900 while in Paris Balmont met Yelena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya (1880–1943), general K. G. Tzvetkovsky's daughter, who was at the time studying mathematics in Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
and was the poet's ardent fan. Balmont, as some of his letters suggested, has never been in love with her, but soon found himself in many ways dependent on a girl who proved to be a loyal, devoted friend. Balmont's family life's got seriously complicated after Tsvetkovskaya in 1907 gave birth to a daughter. Balmont called her Mirra in memory of a poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya
Mirra Lokhvitskaya
Mirra Lokhvitskaya was a Russian poet who rose to fame in the late 1890s and, due to the flamboyantly erotic sensuality of her works, was regarded as the "Russian Sappho" by her contemporaries...
who died in 1905 and whom he had passionate, mostly platonic relations with. Torn apart between the two families, in 1909 Balmont attempted suicide for the second time (jumping off the window) and again survived. Up until 1917 he lived in St.-Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra, occasionally visiting Yekaterina and Nina in Moscow. While in immigration Balmont continued to correspond with Andreeva until 1934 (when such links between relatives were officially banned in the USSR).
Teffi thus described Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya: "He
The last woman Balmont has been romantically linked with was Dagmar Shakhovska′ya (1893–1967), an Estonian baroness. The lovers met rarely but had two children: George (1922-194?) and Svetlana (b.1925). Balmont wrote to her almost daily, all in all 858 of his letters and postcards remained. Still, it was Yelena Tsvetkovskaya who was beside him till the last. She died in 1943, a year after her husband. Mirra Balmont (in marriage Boychenko, then Autina) published poetry as Aglaya Gamayun. She died in Paris in 1970.
Cultural references
Many Russian composers set Balmont's poetry to music: Mikhail Gnessin, Nikolai MyaskovskyNikolai Myaskovsky
Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of the Soviet symphony".-Early years and first important works:...
, Nikolai Obukhov
Nikolai Obukhov
Nikolai Borisovich Obukhov was a modernist and mystic Russian composer, active mainly in France. An avant-garde figure who took as his point of departure the late music of Scriabin, he fled Russia along with his family after the Bolshevik Revolution, settling in Paris...
, Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, Maximilian Steinberg
Maximilian Steinberg
Maximilian Osseyevich Steinberg was a Russian composer of classical music born in what is now Lithuania.-Life:...
, Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, and Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Taneyev
Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...
.
One of his best known works is his free Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's The Bells
The Bells
"The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the diacopic repetition of the word "bells." The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling...
, which formed the basis of Rachmaninoff's choral symphony of the same name
The Bells (Rachmaninoff)
The Bells , Op. 35, is a choral symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff, written in 1913. The words are from the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, very freely translated into Russian by the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. The traditional Gregorian melody Dies Irae is used frequently throughout the work...
, Op. 35.
External links
- Collection of Poems by Konstantin Balmont (English Translations)
- Konstantin Balmont. Poems Some biographical details
- Songs by Balmont composed and performed by Zlata Razdolina - http://razdolina.hypermart.net//page5.htm
- English translations by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky, 1921
- English translations of 4 poems along with a collection of links
- Guide to Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal'mont's correspondence with Ruth Bailey at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Konstantin Balmont, in wikilivres.info