Alexander+Blok


 * Alexander Blok**



Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok (Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Блок, 28 November 1880 – 7 August 1921) was one of the most gifted lyrical poets produced by Russia after Alexander Pushkin.

Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were men of letters, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg State University. After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the Shakhmatovo manor near Moscow,where he discovered the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, and the verse of then-obscure 19th-century poets, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet. These influences would be fused and transformed into the harmonies of his early pieces, later collected in the book Ante Lucem.

Alexander Blok, an important poet of the 20th century, envisioned his poetical output as composed of three volumes. The first volume contains his early poems about the Fair Lady; its dominant colour is white. The second volume, dominated by the blue colour, comments upon the impossibility of reaching the ideal he craved for. The third volume, featuring his poems from pre-revolutionary years, is steeped in fiery or bloody red. In Blok's poetry, colours are essential, for they convey mystical intimations of things beyond human experience. Blue or violet is the colour of frustration, when the poet understands that his hope to see the Lady is delusive. The yellow colour of street lanterns, windows and sunsets is the colour of treason and triviality. Black hints at something terrible, dangerous but potentially capable of esoteric revelation. Russian words for yellow and black are spelled by the poet with a long O instead of YO, in order to underline "a hole inside the word"

He fell in love with Lyubov (Lyuba) Dmitrievna Mendeleeva (daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Medeleev) and married her in 1903. Later, she would involve him in a complicated love-hate relationship with his fellow Symbolist Andrey Bely. To Lyuba he dedicated a cycle of poetry that brought him fame, Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame (Verses About the Beautiful Lady, 1904). In it, he transformed his humble wife into a vision of the feminine soul and eternal womanhood (The Greek Sophia of Solovyov's teaching). Blok's few relatives currently live in Moscow, Riga, Rome and England. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Blok)

===** Works ** ===


 * Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame, 1904
 * Kniga vtoraya, 1904-08
 * Balaganchik, 1906 (play/prod.) - The Puppet Show (tr. by M. Kriger and Gleb Struve, 1949-50; Timothy C. Westphalen, in Aleksandr Blok’s Trilogy of Lyric Dramas, 2003)
 * Snezhnaja maska, 1907
 * Nechaiannaia radost', 1907
 * Korol na ploshchadi, 1907 - The King on the Square (tr. by Timothy C. Westphalen, in Aleksandr Blok’s Trilogy of Lyric Dramas, 2003)
 * O liubvi, poezii i gosudarstvennoi sluzhbe, 1907 (dramatic dialogue) - Dialogue about Love, Poetry, and Government Service
 * Pesnja sudby, 1907-1908 (play, revised 1919)
 * Liritsheskije dramy, 1908
 * Zemlja v snegu, 1908
 * Primater, 1908 (prod.)
 * Na pole Kulikovom, 1908
 * Korol' na ploshchadi, 1908
 * Liricheskie dramy, 1908
 * Strashnyi mir, 1909-16
 * Vozmezdije, 1910-21
 * Notshnyje tshasy, 1911
 * Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1911-12 (3 vols.)
 * Pljaski smerti, 1912-14
 * Roza i krest, 1912 (play) - The Rose and the Cross (tr. by Michael Green, in The Russian Symbolist Theatre: An Anthology of Plays and Critical Texts, 1986)
 * Skazki, 1913
 * Kruglyi god, 1913
 * Jamby, 1914
 * Neznakomka, 1914 (play/prod.) - The Unknown Woman (tr. by Timothy C. Westphalen, in Aleksandr Blok’s Trilogy of Lyric Dramas, 2003)
 * Stikhi o Rossii, 1916
 * Kniga pervaia, 1898-1904, 1916
 * Kniga vtoraia, 1904-1907, 1916
 * Dvenadtsat', 1918 - The Twelve and the Scythians (tr. by Jack Lindsay) / The Twelve (tr. by C.E. Bechhofer) / Blok’s "Twelve" (translated by Robin Fulton) / The Twelve and Other Poems (tr. by Peter France and Jon Stallworthy)
 * Intelligentsija i Rossija, 1918
 * Skify, 1918 - The Scythians (tr. by Jack Lindsay)
 * Solov'inyi sad, 1918
 * Iamby, 1919
 * Katilina, 1919
 * Za gran'iu proshlykh dnei, 1920
 * Sedoe utro, 1920
 * Ramzes, 1921 (play)
 * Poslednie dni imperatorskoi vlasti, 1921
 * Stikhotvoreniia, 1921
 * Kniga tret'ia, 1907-1916, 1921

Links
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/blok.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Blok http://lamochilafilosofica.blogspot.com/2010/09/en-el-restaurante-alexander-blok.html