Towards the Communicative Strategies of Russian Modernism: the Poetic Correspondence of V. Bryusov and A. Bely

Kartasheva Anna Olegovna Postgraduate, Moscow University named after A.S. Griboedov 111024, Russia, Moscow, Highway Enthusiasts str., 21 Anna.kartasheva@internet.ru Other publications by this author     Kikhnei Lyubov' Gennad'evna Doctor of Philology Professor, Chair for History of Journalism and Literature, Moscow University named after A.S. Griboedov 111024, Russia, Moscow, Moscow, highway Enthusiasts, 21 lgkihney@yandex.ru

Osipova Ol'ga Ivanovna ORCID: 0000-0001-6783-9378 Doctor of Philology Associate professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Languages, Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries University 690087, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Lugovaya str., 52 b, office 320 osipova.oi@dgtru.ru

In the atmosphere of the literary struggle of the Silver Age, the interest of symbolists in the genre of the epistle is particularly growing. Moreover, the symbolists' messages often formed whole cycles addressed both to a specific poet and to a group of like-minded people or opponents. These are the cycles of "Odes and Messages", "Close Ones", "Messages" by V. Bryusov; the cycle of "Messages" by A. Blok; cycles by A. Bely, addressed to Bryusov; as well as the cycles of Vyach. Ivanov - "Contemporaries", "Comrades", "A. Blok", "Lyre and Axis" and a number of others. The very fact of the cyclization of the messages indicates that the poets consciously resorted to this genre. Cycles of various messages were new genre formations. They, as a rule, were connected by a single author's attitude, end-to-end motives and possessed a certain aesthetic integrity and completeness.

The uniqueness of the genre of the message among symbolists can be revealed when considering it in the context of their literary life (personal communication, private correspondence). Symbolists are characterized by a "panaesthetism" of the worldview, ideas about the "theurgic" mission of art ^{[1, 241-242]}. The "literary" model of behavior and the poet's behavior in life were considered as identical concepts, the line between art and life was erased: the real act was interpreted as a fact of art, and the "artistic" behavior as part of a personal biography. If the Romantics of the last century still perceived art in a detached way (they did not identify it with real life), then for the symbolists it was an inseparable vital element and became a natural form of both creative and personal communication.

The message, as a means of poetic communication of symbolists (in cases where it assumed a specific author and addressee), breaks up into several subtypes, depending on the nature of the dialogical contact between the author and the addressee (constituting the genre), on the roles attributed to them, on the specific target setting of poetic writing. There are three types of dialogical relations between the author and the individual addressee in the messages. The first type involves a monological disclosure of the author's "I" (autocharacteristics, declaration of views). The addressee is not figuratively embodied here, remaining outside the framework of the message, he serves only as an object of the author's influence. In the second type of relationship, on the contrary, the main emphasis is on the figurative disclosure of the addressee, on commenting on his life and creative position. The author plays the role of a "narrator" here. The third type is based on the dialogical contact between the author and the addressee already within the message. Therefore, both the author and the addressee are revealed here (in a figurative reflection or in the presentation of their points of view), and the artistic idea of the message is embodied through the conjugation or opposition of these two principles.

It is significant that Valery Bryusov was characterized by the first type of relationship during the formation of symbolism. He often positioned the addressee as an object of influence, suggestion (recall his message to the "Young Poet") or a "listener" to whom he expounds his philosophy of life or aesthetic principles. Cf. the message "3.N. Gippius" (1901):

The Unshakable Truth

I don't believe it for a long time,

And all the seas, all the marinas

I love, I love equally.

I want to swim everywhere

Free Rook,

And the Lord and the Devil

I want to glorify...

^{[9, 354—355]}

Of course, Bryusov also takes into account the addressee's position. Moreover, such messages are usually included in the context of previous meetings or correspondence between both artists, which is often reflected in the subtext of the message (understood only by the two of them). So, for example, the quoted message was a response to one of the conversations between Bryusov and Gippius, in which the topics of religion and art were touched upon. In addition, it, as 3.N. Gippius recalled, was also a solution to one of the particular versification tasks that they touched upon in this conversation (they talked about how difficult it is to find a rhyme for the word "truth") ^{[9, 617-619]}.

His messages, with their external proteism, often have an edifying orientation, Bryusov sets the task of convincing the addressee of the correctness of his judgments, refuting the opponent's point of view.

The communicative attitude of Andrei Bely's messages differs sharply from the ethical and aesthetic proteism and the "teaching" intention of V. Bryusov's messages. His messages can be attributed to the third type (within the framework of the proposed classification). Bely appears in poems addressed to his literary associates as a bearer of a clearly defined vital, ideological, philosophical position, deeply convinced of its absolute significance. Moreover, he identifies his position with the highest values of being, i.e. he acts as a proselyte and preacher of a certain doctrine. In the Argonautic period, the communicative intention of young symbolism is much more pronounced in White. If the early Block gives the embodiment of the ideal of Solovyovism ("Poems about a Beautiful Lady"), then Andrei Bely gives a platform: he turns the Solovyov concept not as a teaching about the ideal, closed in itself, but as a life-creating idea capable of rallying people eager for a "feat". In an effort to connect great artists with a single platform, he addresses messages to K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, A. Blok, S. Solovyov, Ellis. In these addresses, Bely tries to clothe his sermon in aesthetic "clothes" attractive to the addressees, giving portrait characteristics of the correspondents and resorting to copious allusions from their work.

Such a dialogical position is much more vulnerable than others, primarily because it does not take into account the existence of other people's consciousnesses with different ideological values. The author's circular and at the same time egocentric consciousness seeks to impose its own ideas on the interlocutor, to put him before a choice: "his own or someone else's."

It is quite natural that a collision with another lyrical and philosophical attitude turns into a profound crisis for him.

From this point of view, it is interesting to consider the poetic correspondence of Valery Bryusov and Andrei Bely. The substantive dominant of this correspondence was the idea of the connection, in fact, the non-separateness of the artist's life and creative behavior. Researchers have repeatedly noted the desire to create a semantic center around creativity, this feature is determined by special forms of self-expression and self-consciousness, absorbing moral-ethetic, socio-philosophical, religious-mythological aspects into the sphere of influence. In this sense, the communicative strategies of the authors of symbolism are aimed at the connection between texts, complex associativity, symbolism and metaphoricity.

The "mental duel" between Bryusov and Bely, their ideological and philosophical-ethical confrontation, the "current dialectic" of complex relationships and mutual assessments of two major artists that do not fit into the narrow framework of unambiguous definitions, were expressed with the greatest clarity precisely in the messages exchanged by the poets. Contemporaries of the Silver Age noted that for Bryusov it was primarily a game of a magician: "Other symbolists were drawn to mysticism – Bryusov, for knowledge, fun or out of curiosity, could engage in "occult sciences", Bondage, Black Mass – but he was infinitely far from mysticism" ^{[2, 231]}.

In the epistles to Andrei Bely, Bryusov appears in the guise of a "magician", a "demon", which is characteristic of the style of life relations of poets in 1903-1904 and was partially inspired by the poetic portraits and characteristics given to Bryusov by Bely in the titles and in the texts of the poems addressed to him. An important point for understanding the authors' communicative intentions is that, in parallel with poetic texts, one can find intonationally similar statements both in the diary entries of poets and in their memoirs, for example, in Bely: "Cold, terrible relations are established with Bryusov, in addition: I feel that some door that hitherto separated me from the underworld – swung open: as if a corridor had formed between me and hell..." ^{[3, 102][1]}. Bryusov of those years is perceived by White as "an opponent, an ally, an enemy, a friend, a symbolist" ^{[5, 473]}. Bryusov himself writes about his relationship with A. Bely in 1904-1905: "The connection remained only with Bely, but rather the connection of two enemies" ^{[5, 136]}.

Bryusov of those years in the perception of his contemporaries was a poet-"magician", which to a certain extent was caused by Bryusov's fascination in those years with spiritualism, "occult sciences", interest in everything secret, "infernal". And Bely, with his messages, contributed to the canonization of this "disguise" of the artist.

So, in 1903, Bely dedicated a message to Bryusov (in the almanac "Vulture") under the title "Valery Bryusov", which was included in the collection "Gold in Azure" under the title "Magician":

In the crown of fire, above the realm of boredom,

exalted above time,—

a frozen magician with folded hands,

the prophet of an untimely spring.

^{[6, 117]}

In a letter to E.K. Medtner dated July 25, 1903, Andrei Bely gives a justification for his poetic interpretation of the "master": "Among the official exponents of magism, with conscious acting retouching themselves in front of society, the palm belongs, of course, to Bryusov, who "plays the role" with feeling, with pathos, fulfilling his mission (the mission of an ostentatious magician) in front of the whole of Russia, and, of course, deserves respect and recognition for this, because he is a lightning rod that takes the lion's share of dirt, insults on itself, teaching our muzhikishly surprised crowd not to be surprised. I don't know if they characterize him clearly, but an sich Bryusov is understandable and close to me in his own way. That's why in my poem I tried to give an image of Bryusov's ideas and prototype" ^{[7, 332-333]}. Thus, for Bely, this "mask" of Bryusov also had a social significance ^{[8, 85-87]}.

Bryusov's first epistle to Andrei Bely (1903), which was later included in the collection Stephanos, was a response to Bely's "Gold in Azure". In the poem, as the commentators of the correspondence between Bryusov and Bely point out, "for the first time an opposition is outlined, which acquired certainty in the subsequent personal relationships of the poets" ^{[7, 334]} and was most clearly reflected in their further exchange of messages.

The poetic images of the message enter into intertextual connections with Bely's poems from the collection "Gold in Azure" ("Magician" with dedication to "V.Ya. Bryusov", "On the Mountains", "Gnome", etc.), the motives of these poems are picked up and continued in it. Bryusov, borrowing from White some images that characterize himself, redirects them to White. This happens, for example, in the poem "The Magician". Looking ahead, we note that the interpretation of Bryusov's image as a magician will be further developed and justified in the subsequent messages of Bely, written in 1904.

Bely calls Bryusov a prophet, "exalted above time" ("the prophet of an untimely spring"), standing in a "cold height", "on a cliff". Bryusov, in his message, resorts to the inversion of the figurative system of Bely's poem. "Muddy heights", "otherworldliness", "prophecy" — all these attributes taken from White and related to Bryusov have been transferred to the Bryusov message and are already attributes of White. This is a kind of veiled polemical technique that Bryusov often used in ideological and literary disputes with Bely.  The researchers note that the difference of views on art has always been recognized by poets, but this did not prevent them from working in Libra, positioning the magazine as a mouthpiece for new art, and only after 1904 began a conscious sharpening of contradictions, reinforced also by the personal vicissitudes of the poets' lives, who turned out to be lovers of one woman.

The poetic communication of the masters of symbolism appears as a kind of epistolary "novel" built on the same key images reflected in the title complexes of the poems.

Bryusov's first epistle to Andrei Bely (1903) can be regarded as the beginning and – at the same time – as the prologue of this novel in letters. "Loneliness in the abyss" ("how deaf it is in the abysses, where loneliness is" ^{[9, 353]}) is a symbolic reflection of Bryusov's mental state of 1903-1904. The motif of "loneliness" in the epistle precedes the retrospective motif of "faith" ("I believed many things before I was delirious" ^{[9, 353]}). Themes of loneliness, faith and disbelief, and spiritual confusion resound in Bryusov's lyrics of 1900-1903 ("Don Juan", 1900; "To the Portrait of M. Y. Lermontov", 1900; "Dreaming", 1900-1901; "Prodigal Son", 1903, etc.). But there this theme unfolds indirectly, through the images of Lermontov, the evangelical prodigal son, Don Juan, etc.

Bryusov, according to Bely's memoirs, before "Urbi et Orbi" had no faith that one of the symbolists was capable of a feat, and therefore had no faith in the very idea of life creation. We find evidence of this in Bely's comment to Bryusov's letter after August 12, 1904, reflected in his memoirs: "He, Bryusov, was a conscious contradiction with a frank refusal to find a way out, not finding it, but admitting that maybe there is a way out if so, let them show him: feel it, assess it busily" ^{[3, 151]}. Hence the slogan of "pure art" cultivated by him: "Only literature!" The message to "Andrey Bely" reveals the psychological background of the aesthetic and vital concept of Bryusov, the essence of which he expressed in lines in the "abstract" message "To the poet": "Maybe everything in life is just a means / For bright singing verses" ^{[9, 447]}. In this context, it becomes clear why Bryusov in the early 1900s with the same fervor "glorifies" (i.e. "sculpts in the word") "both the Lord and the devil". In many ways, such "panaesthetism" is determined by the peculiarities of the poet's worldview formed by education, about which he says in his memoirs: "I was diligently protected from fairy tales and all sorts of "devilry". But I learned about Darwin's ideas and the principles of materialism before I learned multiplication. Needless to say, there was no mention of religion in our house: faith in God seemed to me the same prejudice as faith in brownies and mermaids" ^{[10, 66]}.

With his first collection of poems, "Gold in Azure," Bely declared a different attitude to life, associated with a premonition of great social changes and with the hope of the future renewal of the world. In the collection, the images of the dawn, the sky, the sun, etc. reflected the mystical aspirations of the symbolists of the second wave, the Argonauts, who were distinguished, as T. Khmelnitskaya writes, by "collective search for ideal freedom and spiritual purification of life, illusory life creation, divorced from the concrete social and national soil" ^{[11, 16]}. And in this context, Bryusov's message was, as it were, a "test" of Bely, the truth of his insights, the strength of his faith. The message unfolds in three time planes – past, present and future. In the past – the faith of the lyrical hero-author of "many", which cost him bitter disappointments ("... the delirium of falling in love, / Burned with fire drenched in blood" ^{[9, 353]}). In the present – the path of the soul from the loneliness of disbelief to the hope of a new faith:

How deaf in the abysses, where loneliness,

Where the twilight froze milky-blue...

But the voice again! Prophecies are called!

On the muddy heights, the chasubles are turning black!

^{[9, 353]}

Through the reminiscence "the robes are turning black" (borrowed from Bely's poem "The Magician": Cf.:          I'm in the whistle of time streams / My < ...> the cloak of rebelliously tearing ^{[6, 117]}.) Bryusov gives a mythologized portrait of White.

From the very beginning, Bryusov compositionally "traced" the vertical: White – "on muddy heights", the author – "in the abysses". The message contains a dialogue that is conceptually important for Bryusov. To the author's question: "Brother, what do you see?" – the answer follows, based on the intertextual use of key images from "Gold in Azure":

"In the radiance of the sky – wine and gold! –

How bright the distance is! How magnificent the evening is!"

^{[9, 353]}

The meaning of this "answer" is in the addressee's involvement in the world harmony that opens up to him through various "light" symbols, in the discovery of their new perspectives. Then the motive of the "new" faith develops ("surrendering again") – as an ascent from the abyss of "unbelief and loneliness" to the "steep", from where the "out-of-the-world" voice of the lyrical hero of "Gold in Azure" is heard. But the symbolic ascent – a new faith in the ideals of White – is overshadowed by the shadow of suspicion, distrust of the addressee and his prophecies. This is partly caused by the romantic irony of the author of the collection "Gold in Azure", the bifurcation of the figurative structure of Bely's poems, for which "both the ugly-grotesque appearance of the phenomenon and its "bright essence" appear at the same time.

In Bryusov's message, irony is presented again through allusions (but of a different order) from the collection "Gold in Azure":

My hands are cut by prickly flowers,

I hear the laughter of the underground dwarves.

^{[9, 353]}

Thus, the author embodies in the artistic fabric of the message accompanying the mystical insights of White motives of disbelief, irony and even mockery of the "shrines", motivating their own skepticism and doubts.

Hence the paradoxical nature of the mysterious, at first glance, final lines of the message, which sound like a threat:

I believed a lot of things. I've cursed a lot,

I took revenge on the infidels in my hour with a dagger.

^{[9, 353]}

The image of the author is demonized in the last lines, this is the avenger hero. Thus, the spiritual "I" of the author is characterized by an interweaving of faith-doubts about White's "epiphanies", as well as a secret suspicion of White's apostasy from his own ideals ("I took revenge on the infidels"). Bely himself perceived these verses as follows: "In the verses dedicated to me, he <i.e. Bryusov – L. K., A.K., O.O.> threatens me: if I accept "silver coins", then the dagger awaits me" ^{[3, 147]}. It means that Bely correlated this message with the gospel legend about the betrayal of Judas (New Testament allusions of the same order will be in Bryusov's epistle to Bely in 1909).

In light of this, the commentators of the correspondence between Bely and Bryusov that "Bely perceived this poem exclusively on a personal level, linking it with the aggravation of relations between him, Bryusov and N.I. Petrovskaya [see podr.: 7, 334], seems unnecessarily categorical. The first Bryusov's message to White was executed (and perceived) in a philosophical and ideological way, and the personal, vitally concrete plan of the poets' relations was more clearly embodied in Bryusov's messages "Balder Loki" (1904), "Balder II" (1905) and in White's response to "An Old Enemy" (1904).

In the poem "Balder Loki", the mythologized plot reflects the real life confrontation and ideological and philosophical confrontation between Bryusov and Bely. Balder and Loki, as you know, are heroes of Scandinavian myths. Balder is the young son of Odin, the "light" god; in myths he played the role of a passive victim. Loki is marked by features of demonism, spontaneity; in myths, he is characterized by the role of quarreling with the gods [see: 12, 81-82]. In the message, White – Balder is endowed with integrity, radiance, he is the bearer of the light principles of the world, is attached to world harmony:

Light Balder! towards me

You, like the sun, shine a face.

How will I answer your rays?

Scorched, I drooped.

I'll run up to the snow, on the steep:

You're laughing from a height!

I'll be a crimson cloud:

You shine like a star!

^{[9, 388]}

Bryusov's perception of the addressee was affected by the concept of "light" of White, dating back to the philosophy of V. Solovyov and reflected in "Gold in Azure". Bryusov, on the contrary, embodies the "dark beginning" in this message ("Twilight, twilight – for me"). He puts on a demonic mask, as it were, and ends the poem with threats to Balder, a prophecy about his death – that is, the death of the bright beginning of the world, "heavenly forces", and about the victory of darkness:

But Nerta the Wise has appeared to me

The Ghost of Future Times,

On you, O golden-haired one,

The magic bow is pointed.

<...>

I'll give the blind man an arrow, —

You will cry out from the burning pain,

Suddenly plunged into darkness!

^{[9, 389]}

In the light of his philosophical constructions, Bely perceived Bryusov's message as an attack on his life foundations. And he responds to him with a poetic message to the "Ancient Enemy" (1904), asserting the victory of "light" over "darkness", his worldview over Bryusovsky. 

You're over the gorge, mountain demon,

He flapped his wing and obscured the light.

And in a black cloud, the enemy is stubborn,

Standing. I knew there was no mercy –

And the hand has been cultivated – and the oblak is white

In the azure, he took me to the azure...

Back on the air, free, bold.

Washed by tenderness grew.

<...>

You got up like dust. But dust, but soot

The fire will burn, the thunder will disperse.

No, you won't take off: aimlessly clap

With his disheveled wing,

My armor is on fire.

The spear is for me – molnya. The sun is a shield.

Do not approach: in anger, I am

The storm will incinerate you.

^{[6, 465]}

Bely attached a mystical, "conjuring" meaning to this message; his sending to Bryusov was supposed to take away the "diabolical" obsession of the addressee from him: "While I was writing, I felt: an otherworldly force was running through me; and I knew: on a piece of paper, sending a well–deserved inevitable blow (right in the chest), weaning Bryusov from black magic – once forever, the power of light rumbled in me" ^{[4, 387]}.

In the epistles of the poets, a psychological duel is played out. Such an attitude on the part of Bryusov was the fulfillment of the role he had assumed. But it also had a deep inner opposition of his entire worldview system to the ethical and aesthetic views of A. Bely. This poetic correspondence reflected not only the painful personal struggle of Bely with Bryusov, but also the opposition of the young symbolists to the decadence of the "elders", the idea of which Bely associated with the name of Bryusov. Confirmation of this is a letter to Bryusov (about September 28, 1905), in which White formulates the differences between decadents and symbolists: "Was my joining you based on literary acquaintance, and not on community in the active work of creativity — not forms of art, but forms of life (by the way, art). <...> Both <i.e. Bryusov and Balmont – L. K., A. K., O.O.> you are dogmatists. Both of you are still in the old one. You treat the "new" with only "minus" signs. <...> I am not with you. <...> Maybe you will smile at the naivety of my words: to look for authenticity, communication, soul is old, boring, not practical: But I declare, I only want the human, and if I am talking about the unspoken, I hope to find it in what I have said. I 'm looking for symbols ... you decompose the symbol. You are not symbolists. I'm human. The person in me was trampled in your circle, turned into an "Arabesque". <...> From the outside we are taken for one. I declare that I have nothing in common with you" ^{[7, 387-389]}. As we can see, an important feature of the communicative strategy of modernism is outlined here: the fate of the direction is decided not only in the manifestos of senior and junior symbolists, not only in a poetic duel, but also on the pages of private correspondence, which determines the significance of the role of the creator as the arbiter of the fate of the aesthetic direction.

This kind of spiritual duel of poets was completed by Bryusov's message to "Balder II" (with a meaningful epigraph from 3.N. Gippius: "I greet you, my defeat"), in the plot of which the personal conflict of the poets, the complex, complicated relationship between Bryusov, Bely and N. Petrovskaya is retrospectively reflected:

I don't know who won among us!

It must be you, son of light, you!

And I, submissively meet

All hopeless dreams.

His and I marked with a sign

The one for whom the battle was erected,

I fell on her soul with darkness

And he plunged into the abyss after himself.

But in the very horror of the falls,

At the bottom of despair and darkness,

Your far beam scattered the shadows,

And we looked into the heavens! ...

^{[7, 338]}

Each of the correspondents connects his image (and the image of the addressee) with some essential features of the universe (White is the embodiment of the bright beginning of the world, Bryusov is the dark one). Bryusov, as it were, tries on the mask of a mountain demon, a magician who "tests" his addressee. Since the poem was not published, there is an assumption that White did not know about it.

In February 1904, A. Bely wrote a number of poems, mentioning later of which in the "Material for Biography", he noted the influence of Bryusov's poetics on his work: "I am writing several passages of poetry dedicated to Bryusov, and I am surprised to see from them that there is no trace left of the rhythms of "Gold in Azure"; I feel the influence of Bryusov's poetry on myself painfully; something is definitely breaking in me in this influence; I can call February the burnout of "Gold in Azure" in "Ashes" ^{[7, 334-335]}. The new 1908 poem "The Magician" (cf. The 1904 epistle of the same name) vividly reflects White's new perception of Bryusov's magical appearance.

A stubborn magician who comprehended numbers

And the stars are a magical pattern,

You are here: darkness is hanging over the eye...

Heavy, burnt eyes.

<...>

You know: the world, the fate of the denouement,

The current is fast Godin –

Only your dreams are an empty dance;

But you are in the world, and you are alone...

^{[6, 282-283]}

As if the result of the seven-year polemic of the writers were the last message of V. Bryusov to Bely (1909) and the answer to it by A. Bely. In the Bryusov epistle, the poetic characteristics of the poets' relations are developed, which are regarded as "the way to heights". In this message Bryusov analyzes their secret enmity and secret closeness:

We were not called by the Messenger of God

In their hour, as brothers, from the nets.

And for a long time they were unlike

The bends of our two paths

^{[9, 540]}

The plot of the poem is based on Gospel allusions. Cf.: "Passing near the sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, named Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting nets into the sea; for they were fishermen, and he said to them: Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Mt IV: 18-19).

Bryusov believes that he and Bely were originally brothers, "apostles of the new faith", but as if they had not been reincarnated ("... the messenger of God did not call"). The key to this poem is in Bryusov's letter to Andrei Bely (after August 12, 1904). In this letter, Bryusov raises the question of the social significance of art, about the appointment of a modern artist: "There is not enough will in us for a feat. What we all crave is a feat, and none of us dares to do it. Hence everything. Our ideal is asceticism, but we timidly retreat before it and we ourselves are aware of our betrayal, and this consciousness in a thousand different forms takes revenge on us. Betrayal of the Gospel covenant: "Who will love mother and father more than me..." <...> And we who have come for a feat, we who seek delight, obediently remain in the four conditions of "secular life... and we dutifully repeat the words that have lost both their primary and even their secondary meaning. We habitually lie to ourselves and others. And suddenly we are surprised that it is not given to us to work miracles, it is not given to us to shine! <...> Yes, I know, a different life will come for people... – life when everything will be "rapture and frenzy". <...> We cannot contain all this completeness now. But we can foresee it, we can take it into ourselves as much as we can, and we don't want to. <...> We don't dare. It is fair that we also bear the penalty" ^{[7, 378-379]}.

The final message of V. Bryusov "To Andrey Bely", on the one hand, gives a retrospective characterization of the author's previous worldview, on the other hand, analyzes the "bends of two paths" – his path and the path of the addressee. He notes their already initial dissimilarity; "And for a long time the Bends of our two paths were dissimilar" ^{[9, 540]}. But, according to Bryusov, they, although in different ways, but both went "to heights":

You were madness and faith

On the height of the Tabor is erected;

Like Dante, a fierce panther

I was driven to the mountainside.

^{[9, 540]}

In the response poem "The Meeting", addressed to Bryusov, White also symbolically depicts their former struggle and the positive that they both learned from this struggle:

"High art science

And the haze of desert rocks

We got it," you told me:

A fratricidal hand

I happily pressed it to my chest.

<...>

We don't have to go back with Vysya:

We are looking at the same peaks.

^{[6, 285]}

Reconciliation in the duel has come, the inseparable connection of the two poets, their poetic dialogue generated a new dialogical genre of poetic message, absorbing a set of near-literary, biographical meanings, mythological, archetypal connotations.

Thus, the communicative strategy of the poetic correspondence between Bryusov and Bely is based on a number of aspects. First of all, the philosophical and aesthetic confrontation between the two poets is obvious. In Bryusov's "attacks" on Bely's life position, his deep disbelief in the theurgical mission of the Young symbolists, whose "prophecies" are objectively false, since they never come to life. But if Bely, judging by the general tone of his messages, took these epistolary passages seriously – in the spirit of his eschatological constructions, then in Bryusov's messages there is a certain touch of literary and psychological play. This game is especially noticeable at the time of work on the novel "The Fiery Angel", when, according to contemporaries, the author put psychological experiments on the participants, checking the vitality of the text with life. Subsequently, Bely will say that only after reading the novel did he understand the game in which he was assigned the main role against his will, and realized the events of which he turned out to be the hero. The installation of symbolist art on erasing the boundaries between art and life was reflected more vividly than ever in the poetic communication of the two poets.

Setting up a dialogue raises not only the biographical and metaphysical layer of the "novel in verse", but also reveals the level of associations and symbols, the deciphering of which allows you to see hidden artistic meanings. The mythological background of the messages is determined by the eschatological myth of the murder of Balder. At the same time, both poets try on the masks of the gods, updating their functions with some changes. The mask of the Loki-trickster, which has no clear moral ideas and boundaries, fell well on the face of Bryusov, whose contemporaries noted his dark, demonic "I" – an image so reverently supported by him. By the way, just like Loki, whose tricks became a catalyst for the actions of the gods of Asgard, Bryusov played an active role in the literary life of Moscow.  Balder, as an image embodying purity and light, suited A. White (here the poet's pseudonym and his philosophical and poetic searches are played out). Preserving the traditional interpretation of the heroes of Scandinavian mythology, endowing their literary image with the features of gods, the poets reproduce the archetypal conflict of good and evil, expressed in the confrontation of dark and light principles.

The works of poets turn out to be strategically homogeneous due to the dominant genre setting for dialogue with the addressee, which allows identifying these poems as messages.

It should be especially noted that philosophical and aesthetic attitudes determine the choice of the role of the author and addressee (brother, enemy, theurgist, prophet, magician, trickster, messenger of heaven or demon), which are indexed in the header complexes of messages and carry not only aesthetic, but also a providential-magical charge, realized in behavioral models and the works of both poets.

The main thing in this case is a principled willingness to recognize the interlocutor's right to a special role, which is in a certain value relationship with its own role. It also turns out to be significant that the very system of roles, which almost always have a mythological projection, is not pre-defined. The correlative choice of roles is created directly in the process of epistolary communication, designed for the addressee predisposed to such a "game". At the same time, the header complex acquires the function of a symbolic and mythological convolution, which sets an associative series for the interpretation of texts.  Moreover, the functional purpose of writing in verse correlates with the type of title (nominal, biographical-oriented, or mythologized, oriented to a particular cultural role). Symbolist messages could take on the functions of reflecting vital biographical relationships, aesthetic manifesto, lyrical portrait, literary review, creative and metaphysical polemics.

You can simply select and copy link from below text field.