Paris note

The name “Paris Note”, in all probability, was first used by Boris Poplavsky , who himself did not belong to the “Paris Note” (although he was sympathetic to many young poets of this direction). Usually they refer to a statement by Poplavsky in 1930: "There is only one Paris school, one metaphysical note that is growing all the time - solemn, bright and hopeless." Be that as it may, the combination “Parisian note” soon became a commonly used designation of the “Adamovich school” both among the followers of this poetics and among its critics.

The history of the “Paris note”, especially at the initial stages, is largely the history of the work of its founder G. Adamovich, reflecting his artistic predilections and his aesthetic and worldview searches in exile. The direction was not organized, did not leave collective declarations and literary manifestos; the “Paris note” did not have a single permanent print organ. Belonging to this direction is determined mainly on the basis of the style and subjects of the poets, as well as their personal or ideological affinity for G. Adamovich and the views expressed by him on the meaning and purpose of poetry.

Literary predecessors

In addition to George Adamovich himself, the greatest influence on the poetry of the “Paris note” was made by George Ivanov , especially his collection “Roses” (1931), which became one of the main poetry books of the Russian “first wave” emigration. Later critics, not without reason, pointed out that the whole “Paris note”, in essence, sounds like a note to the poetry of George Ivanov of this period. However, the early lyrics of Georgy Ivanov and his later experiments with surrealistic and grotesque overtones to a large extent go beyond the poetics of the “Paris note”.

For all the aesthetics of the “Paris note”, the figure of Innocent Annensky is very significant, the influence of which was significant not only for the “younger” acmeists (to which belonged to Georgi Ivanov and Georgi Adamovich), but also for many “older” acmeists. However, it was among the "younger" Acmeists that veneration of Innocent Annensky's poetry became almost cult. Georgy Adamovich’s later statement is characteristic: “How can poetry be written after Annensky?” And George Ivanov even in 1954, in a completely different era, considered it necessary to recall:

I love hopeless peace
In October - chrysanthemums in bloom,
The lights behind the misty river
Poverty dying down ...
The silence of the nameless graves
All the banalities of “Songs without words”,
That Annensky eagerly loved
What Gumilyov did not tolerate.

The emergence and development of the 1930s.

For the first time G. Adamovich spoke about the possibility of a new direction in the poetry of the Russian diaspora in 1927, when he felt the need to formulate his understanding of poetry in a polemic with V. Khodasevich and the poets of the Crossroads of the Paris literary group close to the latter. From 1930 to 1934 poets of the “Parisian Note” (along with other representatives of the Parisian “young poetry”) regularly publishes the literary journal Chisla, founded by N. Otsup , and in 1934, the short-lived journal of Meetings by G. Adamovich and M. Cantor. The verses of many of them were included in the first representative anthology of Russian foreign poetry, Anchor, prepared by G. Adamovich (together with M. Kantor) (1936). This is the period of the most intensive development of a new direction, when the first poetry collections of Anatoly Shteiger (“This Life”, 1931; “Ingratitude”, 1936) and L. Chervinskaya (“Approximations”, 1934) and the collection of Adamovich’s very characteristic in style “ In the West ”(1939).

The fate of the direction in the 1950s.

The Second World War dramatically changed the fate of Russian foreign poetry. By the early 1950s many poets of the “Paris Note” were no longer alive (including A. Steiger, I. Knorring, who died in the concentration camp of J. Mandelstam); many other poets either stopped writing poetry (like D. Knut) or dramatically changed their creative manner (like Yu. Ivask). The history of the “Paris Note” could be considered completed by 1939 if it were not for the striking entry into the literature of Igor Chinnov , one of the most significant poets of Russian emigration. Belonging to the generation of younger representatives of the “Paris Note”, he published his first collection “Monologue” only in 1950 (at the age of 41); this book, together with Chinnov’s second collection, “Lines” (1960), was the most complete continuation of the aesthetics of the “Paris note” in the post-war period and earned Chinnov a reputation as the “heir” of G. Ivanov. In later verses, the Chinnov, however, departs quite a lot from the poetics of his first collections, developing the traditions of the grotesque and more and more carried away by non-classical forms (accent verse, verbal, etc.).

By the end of the 1950s it became obvious that the “Paris note”, having exhausted itself, nevertheless deserves to be considered one of the most peculiar pages of the history of Russian poetry of the first emigration - although by no means the only page in this history.

When talking about the aesthetic principles of the “Parisian note”, they always recall the famous definition of “true poetry” given by G. Adamovich in 1930 on the pages of the journal “Numbers”:

What should be the poems? So that, like an airplane, they stretch, stretch along the ground and suddenly take off ... if not high, then with all the weight of the load. To make everything clear, and only a piercing transcendental breeze burst into the gap of meaning. So that each word means what it means, and all together are slightly doubled. To enter, like a needle, and no wounds were visible. So there was nothing to add, there was nowhere to go, so that “ah!”, “Why did you leave me?”, And in general, so that the person seemed to drink a bitter, black, ice-cold drink, the “last key” from which he would not tear himself away . The sadness of the world is entrusted to verses.

For Adamovich, the poetry of the Russian emigration should focus on the tragic experience of the “last truths”: death, despair, loneliness (cf. the characteristic name of one of the collections of his critical essays: “Loneliness and freedom”). The key words of the poetry of the “Paris note” are hopelessness , emptiness , cold , and poetry itself - a concentrated expression of skeptical stoicism. This is poetry, speaking in the hushed voice of an individual person and addressed to an individual person. The “Paris Note” is generally alien to the motives for “longing for world culture” that are so characteristic of early Acmeism, since world culture (as well as historical and geographical exotics) outside Russia is no longer perceived as a solid moral support for a dying person; all the more alien to her are appeals to a social or national community, to a political struggle or to any signs of everyday life. The poetry of the “Paris note” is ascetic, but extremely serious - humor, irony, grotesque, sarcasm are no less contraindicated for her than manifestations of pathos, excessive emotionality or political engagement.

Thematic asceticism and self-restraint are naturally combined among the poets of the “Paris note” with formal asceticism. Of the variety of opportunities that arose in Russian poetry of the Silver Age, the “Paris Note” chose mainly a classical verse (with a predominance of iamba ), with a very small admixture of the correct three-complex sizes and dolnik . In this case, small forms dominated: as a rule, a lyric poem of two or four stanzas. Other formal experiments were not encouraged, the poetry of the “Paris note” can be called neoclassical and even conservative in this sense.

The aesthetic position of G. Adamovich was fully shared by a few. Of the significant poets whose work was reduced to ascetic lyrical miniatures, full of hidden drama and in every possible way avoiding bright colors, in addition to Adamovich himself, only A. Steiger and early Chinnov can be called (although even the latter is much more optimistic in many of his poems). Close to the Parisian note in artistic techniques, but thematically more diverse and substantially less tragic J. Terapiano. Different influences crossed in D. Knut's poetry. Not only ideology but aesthetics shared the poets of Khodasevich Adamovich’s circle: for Khodasevich, the appeal to Derzhavin and Pushkin’s legacy was more essential than Annensky and Blok , poetry of the “Paris note” seemed to him (like Nabokov ) anemic, sugary and mannered, not rooted in the Russian classical tradition. Similar reproaches were expressed by poets of the older generation (in particular, Z. Gippius ), who saw in the “Paris note” the impoverishment of the traditions of Russian poetry or defeatism and “refusal to fight”.

Those poets who (especially in the younger generation, which entered the literature already outside of Russia) gravitated to formal experiments with verse and word did not accept the “Paris note”. B. Poplavsky took a special position, in some respects close to the “Paris note”, but much more prone to surreal mysticism and the renewal of poetic language. On the whole, poetry experiments by A. Prismanova were outside this poetics. Poetic avant-garde artists who rejected his neo-conservatism turned out to be sharply hostile to Adamovich’s aesthetics: in the camp of Adamovich’s implacable literary opponents (usually involved in sharp personal conflicts with him), his complete antipode M. Tsvetaeva and the “Russian surrealists” developed the poetics of absurdity Bozhnev and Yuri Odarchenko .

During Adamovich’s life, the assessment of the “Paris note” he created was, as can be seen, contradictory. Adamovich himself believed that the program he planned to create "true poetry" failed, although "the note sounded not in vain." Poetic rivals and critics from different camps saw in the poetry of the “Paris note” either pessimism and monotonous gloom, then thematic narrow-mindedness, then formal poverty and monotony. However, at the end of the 20th century it was possible to look at this direction more objectively. Researchers unanimously acknowledge the “Paris note” as a significant achievement in the poetry of the Russian diaspora; the best poems of representatives of this direction (Adamovich, Chinnov, Shteiger, Knut, etc.) demonstrate masterly mastery of the form, the ability to say a lot by few means, expressing with great artistic force the tragic tension of existence without a homeland and outside the space of familiar human connections.

• Adamovich, Georgy Viktorovich (1892-1972)
• Zakovich, Boris G. (1907-1995)
• Ivanov, Georgy Vladimirovich (1894-1958)
• Ivask, Yuri Pavlovich (1907-1986)
• Knorring, Irina Nikolaevna (1906-1943)
• Dovid Knut (1900-1955)
• Ladinsky, Antonin Petrovich (1896-1961)
• Mamchenko, Victor Andreevich (1901-1982)
• Mandelstam, Yuri Vladimirovich (1908-1943)
• Otsup, Nikolai Avdeevich (1894-1958)
• Smolensky, Vladimir Alekseevich (1901-1961)
• Stavrov, Pericles Stavrovich (1895-1955)
• Terapiano, Yuri Konstantinovich (1892-1980)
• Chervinskaya, Lidia Davydovna (1907-1988)
• Chinnov, Igor Vladimirovich (1909-1996)
• Shteiger, Anatoly Sergeevich (1907-1944)

• Adamovich G. Loneliness and freedom. - M .: Republic, 1996. ISBN 5-250-02570-6
• Therapiano U. Meetings (1926-1971). - M .: Intrada, 2002. ISBN 5-87604-056-8
• Poets of the Paris Note: Will wind up the lines in Russia ... / Comp. W. Crade - M.: Young Guard, 2003. ISBN 5-235-02525-3 ISBN 978-5-235-02525-7

• Vadim Crade What is the “Paris Note”?
• An article in the encyclopedia "Around the World"