Establisment of Konstantin Balmont’s literary reputation

Abstract

© 2019 Tomsk State University. All Rights Reserved. The article is devoted to the analysis of the establishment of the literary reputation of the prominent first-generation Symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. The article touches upon such issues as the problem of the poet’s literary success, dynamics of his reputation, its fluctuations, reception of Balmont’s poetry and personality in criticism and literature. The chronological scope of the research is limited to the pre-revolutionary period. The study involves a set of historical and literary sources: lifetime criticism, memoirs, correspondence, diaries, evidence of readers’ popularity (questionnaires), parodies. A considerable part of the sources is first introduced into scientific discourse. Analysis and comparison of all available sources of Balmont’s reception allow to clarify and specify the history of Balmont’s poetic success and glory from the 1890s to the 1910s. The article shows that the formation of Balmont’s literary reputation took place in the context of the growing popularity of Nietzscheanism in Russia, the growing interest in “new” poetry, the cultivation of the symbolism of creative life forms of behavior, the rapid development of the press, public attention to the poet’s personality, the desire of poetry to expand the framework of “impermeable” literary societies and circles, and to bring poetry to general readers. The author tried to reconstruct the types of Balmont’s readers and reveal reasons for their attitude to his poetry. The article contains quantitative (circulation of publications, the most popular poems among readers and writers) and qualitative (parodies, mass epigonism) indicators of Balmont’s success. It was found that there was no unity in the recognition and evaluation of Balmont’s works in the literary circle and among readers. Balmont, like other early Symbolists, was rejected in much of the criticism, and had a relatively small number of readers. But, at the beginning of the century, his fame went beyond the limits of the modernist group. He becomes the most popular modernist poet. Numerous satirical speeches about the poet (feuilletons, parodies, cartoons) made the reader’s perceive Balmont as the ultimate embodiment of egocentrism. The constant attention of critics to his poetry and personality intensified the interest of the public. According to the analysis, this interest was permanent during the pre-revolutionary period, contrary to the critics’ opinion about the decline of Balmont’s poetic talent. The author concludes that Balmont’s popularity was not as great as that of Chekhov, Gorky or L. Andreev. His fame could not be that great: the number of readers of Symbolist poetry was immeasurably smaller than that of prose writers. But it was Balmont who was the first to enter the pantheon of Russian Symbolists and gain a foothold in it. Balmont’s “case” is an example of the so-called. “accelerated” reputation, which enriched the literary process of the Silver Age.