Valery Bryusov
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov
(Russian: Вале́рий Я́ковлевич Брю́сов)
(December 13 [O.S. December 1] 1873 –
October 9, 1924) was a Russian poet,
prose writer, dramatist, translator,
critic and historian. He was one of the
principal members of the Russian
Symbolist movement.
Biography
Valery Bryusov was born on December
13, 1873 (recorded December 1, according
to the old Julian calendar) into a
merchant's family in Moscow. His parents
had little do with his upbringing, and
as a boy Bryusov was largely left to
himself. He spent a great deal of time
reading "everything that fell into [his]
hands," including the works of Charles
Darwin and Jules Verne, as well as
various materialistic and scientific
essays. The future poet received an
excellent education, studying in two
Moscow gymnasiums between 1885 and 1893.
Bryusov began his literary career in
the early 1890s while still a student at
Moscow State University with his
translations of the poetry of the French
Symbolists (Paul Verlaine, Maurice
Maeterlinck, and Stéphane Mallarmé) as
well at that of Edgar Allan Poe. Bryusov
also began to publish his own poems,
which were very much influence by the
Decadent and Symbolist movements of his
contemporary Europe.
At the time, Russian Symbolism was
still mainly a set of theories and had
few notable practitioners. Therefore, in
order to represent Symbolism as a
movement of formidable following,
Bryusov adopted numerous pen names and
published three volumes of his own
verse, entitled Russian Symbolists. An
Anthology (1894-95). Bryusov's
mystification proved successful -
several young poets were attracted to
Symbolism as the latest fashion in
Russian letters.
With the appearance of Tertia Vigilia
in 1900, he came to be revered by other
Symbolists as an authority in matters of
art. In 1904 he became the editor of the
influential literary magazine Vesy (The
Balance), which consolidated his
position in the Russian literary world.
Bryusov's mature works were notable for
their celebration of sensual pleasures
as well as their mastery of a wide range
of poetic forms, from the acrostic to
the carmina figurata.
By the 1910s, Bryusov's poetry had
begun to seem cold and strained to many
of his contemporaries. As a result, his
reputation gradually declined and, with
it, his power in the Russian literary
world. He was adamantly opposed to the
efforts of Georgy Chulkov and Vyacheslav
Ivanov to move Symbolism in the
direction of Mystical Anarchism.
Though many of his fellow Symbolists
fled Russia after the Russian Revolution
of 1917, Bryusov remained until his
death in 1924. He supported the
Bolshevik government and received a
position in the cultural ministry of the
new Soviet state. Of his activities at
this time, Clarence Brown writes:
Bryusov's review [of Osip
Mandelstam's Second Book, 1923] is not
so much a review as it is a subtle donos,
an act of political informing. When one
considers his infinitely superior gift
as a poet, Bryusov is an even more
distasteful personality than Sergey
Gorodetsky. His embrace of Bolshevism
and the new order of things was more
fervent by far than that of Mayakovsky,
the unofficial poet-laureate of the
Revolution, and his personality
incomparably more devious. ... He
invents the name 'Neo-Acmeist' for
'certain circles' (not further
specified) by whom Mandelstam had been
made 'exceedingly famous,' and
designates him as their teacher. ... No
one without access to a large research
library today could possibly discover
the identity of these utterly unknown
people, Mandelstam's 'disciples.'
According to Nadezhda Yakovlevna,
however, they were 'the most
compromising people he could think of.'
It was to be understood that Mandelstam
was not an isolated antagonist of the
'new reality' - he stood at the head of
a concerted effort. What Gumilyov [who
had been executed for alleged
participation in an anti-Soviet plot in
1921] had been, Mandelstam now was.
Literature
Prose
Bryusov most famous prose works are the
historical novels The Altar of Victory
(depicting life in Ancient Rome) and The
Fiery Angel (depicting the psychological
climate of 16th century Germany).
The latter tells the story of a
scholar and his attempts to win the love
of a young woman whose spiritual
integrity is seriously undermined by her
participation in occult practices and
her dealings with unclean forces. It
served as the basis for Sergei
Prokofiev's opera The Fiery Angel.
Translation
As a translator, Bryusov was the first
to render the works of the Belgian poet
Emile Verhaeren accessible to Russian
readers, and he was one of the major
translators of Paul Verlaine's poetry.
His most famous translations are of
Edgar Allan Poe, Romain Rolland, Maurice
Maeterlinck, Victor Hugo, Jean Racine,
Ausonius, Molière, Byron, and Oscar
Wilde. Bryusov also translated Johann
Goethe's Faust and Virgil's Aeneid.
During the 1910s, Bryusov was
especially interested in translating
Armenian poetry.
