Konstantin Balmont

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Konstantin Balmont : biography

1867 – 23 December 1942

In the late 1902 Burning Buildings came out and Balmont became Russia’s number one 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 (Budem kak solntse. Kniga simvolov) had enormous success and in retrospect is seen as his strongest one. Alexander Blok called it "unique in its unfathomable richness".

In the summer of 1903 Balmont visited Moscow, then moved to the Baltic shore to work on his next book. The collection of poetry called Only Love (Tolko lyubov, 1903) couldn’t possibly surpass any of his two previous masterpieces but added to the cult of Balmont.V.Y.Bryusov’s letters to P.P.Pertsov. Мoscow, 1927, p. 78 "Russia was passionately in love with him. Young men whispered his verses to their loved ones, schoolgirls scribbled them down to fill their 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 depths of his soul"..

In 1904–1905 Scorpion published the two-volume set of Balmont’s best work. It was followed by Lithurgy of Beauty. Hymns for Elements (Liturgiya krasoty. Stikhiynye gimny) and Fairies’ Tales (Feinye skazki, 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 (Novaya zhizn) and Paris-based Red Banner (Krasnoye znamya) 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 regarded the poet as ‘dangerous political activist’ and was making efforts to trace his every move in the West, of which there were many.

1906–1917

Balmont’s next two books collected pieces written during and in the wake of the First Russian revolution events. Poems (Stikhotvorenya, 1906) were immediately confiscated by the police; Songs of the Avenger (Pesni mstitelya, 1907), containing direct calls for assassination of the Tzar ("You should be killed, you’ve become everyone’s grief". – To Nicolas the Last) were banned in Russia and came out in Paris. Another one, Vile Charms (Zlyiye tchary, 1906), was banned for its 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-orientated Firebird. Slav’s Svirel (Zhar-ptitsa. Svirel slavyanina, 1907), Hortus conclusus. Words Like Kisses (Zelyony vertograd. Slova potseluinyie, 1909) and Ancient Calls (Zovy drevnosty, 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 (Gornyie vershiny, 1904), White Heat Lightnings (Belyie zarnitsy, 1908) and The Luminous Sea (Morskoye svetchenyie, 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 (Zmeinyie tsvety. 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 where he found himself in the center of public attention, a hero of banquets, ceremonies and extravagant celebrations. 1914 saw the beginning of the Complete Balmont in ten volumes publication which continued in the course of the next seven years.