Innokenty Annensky

Innokenty Fyodorovich Annenski (Russian Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский ), scientific transliteration Innokentij Fedorovic Annenskii; (Born 20 Augustjul / September 1 1855greg in Omsk, Russia, .. .. † 30 Novemberjul / December 13 1909greg in Saint Petersburg, Russia) was a Russian poet, literary critic, dramatist and translator. His work is associated with the Silver Age, because his most important creative period coincided with the time between the end of the Russian Symbolism and the beginning of new literary currents such as the Acmeism whose beginnings were influenced by him.

Life

Childhood and youth

The father, Fyodor Nikolayevich Annenski, held a high office in the government service in West Siberia. The mother, Natalya Petrovna, was descended from the family of Hannibal, from which also the Russian classic poet Alexander Pushkin had emerged. The family, which included two sons and four daughters, lived in Tomsk as Innokenty at the age of five years, seriously ill. The health consequences, a heart condition, marked his entire life.

The Annenski family moved in 1860 from Western Siberia to St. Petersburg, where Annenski his degree after graduating from high school at the Faculty of St. Petersburg University historico-philological, with his heart condition repeatedly forced him to interrupt his training. He devoted himself with great passion of classical philology, extended his studies on Russian literature and folklore, the ancient and Western European literature, linguistics, philosophy and pedagogy from.

His first, mainly held in the mystical tone poems he wrote in the early 1870s, but was while studying the density temporarily and dedicated himself to learning from fourteen languages, including French, German, English, Polish, Italian, Greek, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit and Hebrew. Annenski was considered one of the most educated people of his time. With his talent for languages, he laid the foundation for his later work as a recognized translator of French and German poetry as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verlaine, as well as the works of the Roman poet Horace and the major classical Greek tragedy writer Euripides.

1879 closed Annenski his studies. In the same year he married the older fourteen years of widowhood and mother of two sons, Nadezhda Valentinovna Chmara - Barschtschewska.

Teaching and seal

From this point Annenski took on his lifelong teaching. Financial hardships caused to remain in the state school service him for many years. He taught at the most prestigious high schools and higher education institutions, including the Nicolaevsky High School of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg, where the future Russian poet and the founder of the Acmeism, Anna Akhmatova, spent her childhood and youth. 1880 came his son Valentin in the world, later to emerge under the pseudonym W. Kriwitsch as a poet, editor and author of the biography of his father.

From the autumn of 1879 lived and taught Annenski at one of the most famous private schools, FF Bychkov, in Saint Petersburg. He was regarded as a person with unusual ideas, these were also reflected in his pedagogical activity down. He was appreciated for his kind-hearted, understanding manner and feared for his reformist approaches of humanistic education, he sought to implement in the respective educational institutions. He wrote in 1879 a series of didactic and theoretical essays, in which he contrasts the " artistic feeling: the sense of beauty, of speech and truthfulness " ( Innocent Annenskii: On questions of aesthetic element in education, in: The Russian School 1892, No. 11, p 69) and the importance of learning foreign languages ​​( Innokentij Annenskii: Pedagogičeskie pis'ma In: .. Russkaya škola 1992 No. 7-8, pp. 164) attributed special weight. The poet of the Silver Age and co-founder of Acmeism, Nikolai Gumilev, who got to know the director of the school in Tsarskoye Selo Annenskii 1903 school aged 17 years, remembered the special sense Annenskis for his pupil, which he enthusiasm for the French poetry, Language and the Russian Symbolists of the first generation as Balmont, Bryusov and Blok owed ​​( Nikolaj Gumiljov: Pis'ma o russkoj poezii Moskva, Sovremennik 1990, p 7. ).

In the 1880s Annenski published a series of essays on the poetry of JP Polonskis and Alexei K. Tolstoy (1887 ). It appeared more like Goncharov and his Oblomov or over the aesthetic conceptions Lermontov to nature. In 1891 he began his work on the complete transfer of all tragedies of Euripides, which he decorated with scientific comments and annotations. The work on the transfers he continued until his death.

In the period from 1891 to 1893 Kiev was the center of his life, where he was appointed director of the College Pawel Galagan. 1893-1896 he was determined on the basis of his liberal views to the director of the 8th High School in St. Petersburg, for which he managed to win cosmopolitan and renowned educators. In 1896 he was to Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin ) was added, where he lived with his family until his death.

In the summer of 1900 Annenski undertook a Volga boat trip to Astrakhan, then spent two weeks in Finland, the following summer, in 1901, he traveled for a longer stay with his wife to France.

1901 appeared the drama Melanhippe, the philosopher, after a lost play by Euripides. In 1902 he published the tragedy Emperor Ixion. It came out essays on the artistic idealism Gogol and Dostoevsky (1905 ).

The first and second volume of poetry

1904 was published under the pseudonym NIK. TO [ No ], the first volume of poetry Annenskis Quiet Songs [ Tichie pesni ], which contained also transfers the French Symbolists and Poète maudits ( Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine ). Even if it was not uncommon at the time, with a pseudonym approach the literary public, it sounded to a basic theme Annenskis. Once there was an anagram for the second played Annenski to the shape of Odysseus.

The poetry collection Quiet Songs met with literary critics a mixed response. Valery Bryusov, Russian Symbolist and literary critic with great influence, expressed cautious, praised, however, the musicality of the verses of " are great graphic quality, the banal afraid, leave a powerful and new impression " ( Valery Bryusov. Sredi stichov 1894-1924. Mainifesty stat'i, recenzii. Sovjetckij Pisatel ', Moskva, 1990, p 110). Alexander Blok, one of the leading symbolist, admitted that despite some critical marginal notes in his review of 1906 that " equal awakened an encounter with a stranger, his interest entirely unexpected " ( Aleksandr Blok: Sobranie sočinenij v vosmi tomach T.. 5, pp. 620 ff ) had been. He was taken to " truly new impressions " and " a novel Symbolhaltigkeit ".

1905 Annenski was relieved of his directorship at the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. Background were the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905, which also affected his relationship: his brother was arrested, he was himself accused in the riots, in which participated also the higher classes of his school to be involved. In January 1906 he was appointed inspector of the Petersburg school district. His new job was associated with many arduous missions ( such as to Vologda, Pskov, Welikije Luki ), which Annenskis poor health was not very conducive. Nevertheless, he wrote numerous publications, such as the tragedy Laodomia or Heinrich Heine and we. His translation activity was reflected in a Euripides Euripides theater band, who found among connoisseurs of his subject praise and recognition.

At the same time he gave in 1906 his literary-critical observations about Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Balmont under the title The Book of Reflections [ Kniga otraženij ] out. In 1909 the second book of reflections [ Vtoraja kniga otraženij ], a collection of articles on Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Andreyev, Heine, Henrik Ibsen and William Shakespeare. 1906-1909 appeared sporadically Annenskis poems in anthologies, newspapers and magazines.

During this time, Annenskis circle extended in the literary world. This included, inter alia, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Alexander Blok, Fyodor Sologub, Mikhail Kuzmin and Maximilian Voloshin at. The 1909 newly founded literary magazine Apollon, which became an institution of the Symbolists, Annenski won as a consultant and employee.

Seriously ill and overworked, Annenski put the editing and proofreading of his second book of poems The cypress box [ Kiparisovyj Larec ] into the hand of his son, Valentin Kriwitz.

Annenski died on November 30, 1909 on the steps of the entrance hall of the Zarskoselski Station (now Vitebsk railway station ) in St. Petersburg of a heart attack. Annenskis second volume of poetry, The cypress box [ Kiparisovyj Larec ] was published posthumously in 1909/1910.

Importance for posterity

Only after Annenskijs death, the literary public of its importance to the Russian poetry was aware. When Nikolai Gumilev it says in the posthumous review on Annenskis last book of poems The cypress boxes: "It's utter at the time that not only Russia but the whole of Europe has lost one of the greatest poets ... " ( Nikolai Gumilev: Pis'ma o russkoj poezii, Moskva Sovremennik, 1990, p 101). Maximilian Voloshin, had met Annenski beginning of March 1909 personally (in their meeting dealt with the preparation of the first editions of the literary magazine Apollon ) out hebte that no other poet would have been able so far, the " mental states such as sadness, the slowness of life, insomnia, physical pain, heart attacks, fatigue and Thither shrinkage of forces " (M. Vološin: tvorčestva Liki Leningrad 1988, p 524. ) intense to be described as Annenski.

His poetry exerted a decisive influence on the emerging after the Russian Symbolism Acmeism and Russian Futurism. Anna Akhmatova relied on Annenski, they also called their teacher in several poems, such as, inter alia, In: In the spirit Annenskis ( Podražanie Annenskomu ), 1910; The teacher ( učitel ' ), 1945, or even in Ode of Tsarskoye Selo, ( Carskosel'skaja oda ), 1961.

Works

Original editions in Russian

• Antičnaja tragedija, 1902
• Car Iksion: tragedija v pjati dejstvijach s muzykal'nymi antraktami, St. -Petersburg 1902
• Tichie pesni, under the pseudonym " NIK. TO", St. Petersburg 1904
• Kniga otraženij, St. -Petersburg 1906
• Vtoraja kniga otraženij, St. -Petersburg 1909
• Kiparisovyj Larec appeared, posthumously, St. -Petersburg 1909/1910
• Posmertnye stichi Innokentija Annenskogo: S potretom i 2 faks, edited by V. Krivić, Petersburg, 1923.
• Kiparisovy Larec: Vtoraja kniga stichov. Edited by V. Krivić, Petersburg 1923

Translations into German

• Black silhouette. Russian - German poems, translated by Adrian Wanner, with an afterword by Ulrich Schmid, Pano Verlag, Zurich 1998.
• Clouds of smoke. Bilingual, translated and with an afterword by Martina Jakobson, Edition Rugerup, Hörby / Sweden 2010, ISBN 978-91-89034-28-0

Secondary literature

• Barbara Conrad: Annenskijs poetic reflections. Munich, Fink 1976
• Isabelle Gunter man: mystery melancholy. Studies on plant Innokentij Annenskijs. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 2001
• Alexandra Ioannidou: Humaniorum studiorum cultores. The Gräkophilie in Russian literature of the turn of the century by the example of the life and work Innokentij Annenskijs and Vjacheslav Ivanov. Frankfurt, among others, Lang 1996
• Judith Olert: Platonic doctrines in I.F. Annenskijs poetry. Hamburg, Kovac 2002