Innokenti Fyodorovich Annensky

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Innokenti Annenski

Innokenti Fjodorowitsch Annenski ( Russian Иннокентий Фёдорович Анненский ), scientific transliteration Innokentij Fëdorovič Annenskij ; (* August 20 July / September 1,  1855 greg. In Omsk ; † November 30 July / December 13,  1909 greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian poet , literary critic, playwright and translator. His work is assigned to the Silver Age because his most important creative phase fell between the end of Russian symbolism and the beginning of new literary trends such as acmeism , the beginnings of which were significantly influenced by him.

Life

Childhood and youth

The father, Fyodor Nikolayevich Annensky, held a high position in the civil service in West Siberia . The mother, Natalja Petrovna, came from the Hannibal family , from which the Russian classical poet Alexander Pushkin also emerged. The family, which included two sons and four daughters, was living in Tomsk when Innokenti fell seriously ill at the age of five. The health consequences, a heart condition, shaped his entire life.

The Annenski family moved from Western Siberia to Saint Petersburg in 1860 , where Annenski completed his studies at the historical-philological faculty of the Petersburg University after graduating from high school , where his heart disease repeatedly forced him to interrupt his education. He devoted himself with great passion to classical philology, expanding his studies to include Russian literature and folklore, ancient and Western European literature, linguistics, philosophy and pedagogy.

He wrote his first poems, mainly in a mystical tone, in the early 1870s, but temporarily gave up poetry during his studies and devoted himself to learning fourteen foreign languages, including French, German, English, Polish, Italian, Greek, ancient Greek and Sanskrit and Hebrew. Annenski was considered one of the most educated personalities of his time. With his talent for languages, he laid the foundation for his later activity as a recognized translator of French and German poetry such as Baudelaire , Rimbaud , Mallarmé , Verlaine and the works of the important Roman poet Horace and the classical Greek tragedy poet Euripides .

In 1879 Annenski finished his studies. In the same year he married the widow and mother of two sons, Nadezhda Valentinovna Chmara-Barschtschewska, who was fourteen years older than him.

Teaching and poetry

From this point on, Annenski took up his lifelong teaching activity. Financial difficulties caused him to remain in the state school service for many years. He taught at the most prestigious grammar schools and higher educational institutions, including the Nikolaevsky grammar school in Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg, where Anna Akmeism , who later became a Russian poet and founder of acmeism , spent her childhood and youth. In 1880 his son Valentin was born, who later emerged under the pseudonym W. Kriwitsch as a poet, editor and author of his father's biography.

From the autumn of 1879 Annenski lived and taught at one of the most famous private high schools, FF Bytschkow, in Saint Petersburg. He was considered a personality with unusual ideas, which were also reflected in his educational work. He was valued for his kind-hearted, understanding manner and feared for his reformatory approaches to humanistic education, which he also tried to implement in the respective educational institutions. From 1879 he wrote a series of didactic-theoretical essays in which he addressed the "artistic feeling: the feeling for beauty, speech and truthfulness" (Innokentij Annenskij: On questions of the aesthetic element in education, In: Die Russisch Schule 1892 , No. 11, p. 69) and the importance of learning foreign languages ​​(Innokentij Annenskij: Pedagogičeskie pis'ma. In: Russkaja škola 1992. No. 7–8, p. 164) attached particular importance. The poet of the Silver Age and co-founder of Akmeism, Nikolai Gumiljow , who got to know Annensky in 1903 at the school age of 17 as director of the high school in Tsarskoye Selo, remembered Annenski's special feeling for his pupil, for whom he had an enthusiasm for French poetry , Language and the Russian symbolists of the first generation such as Balmont , Brjussow and Blok (Nikolaj Gumiljov: Pis'ma o russkoj poezii. Moskva, Sovremennik 1990, p. 7).

In the 1880s Annensky published a series of treatises on the poetry of JP Polonski and Alexei K. Tolstoy (1887). Others appeared, such as Goncharov and his Oblomow or On Lermontov's aesthetic views on nature . From 1891 he began his work on the complete transmission of all the tragedies of Euripides , which he provided with scientific comments and annotations. He continued working on the transmissions until the end of his life.

In the period from 1891 to 1893, Kiev was his center of life, where he was appointed director of the college Pawel Galagan. 1893-1896, because of his liberal views, he was appointed director of the 8th grammar school in Saint Petersburg , for which he succeeded in attracting well-known and cosmopolitan teachers. In 1896 he was transferred to Tsarskoye Selo (today: Pushkin ), where he lived with his family until his death.

In the summer of 1900 Annensky went on a Volga ship trip to Astrakhan , then spent two weeks in Finland , and the following summer, 1901, he and his wife traveled to France for a longer stay .

In 1901 the drama Melanhippe, the philosopher , appeared based on a lost drama by Euripides. In 1902 he published the tragedy Emperor Ixion . There were essays on the artistic idealism Gogol and Dostojewski (1905).

First and second volume of poetry

1904 appeared under the pseudonym NIK. TO [Nobody] the first volume of poetry by Annenski's Stille Lieder [Tichie pesni], which also contained transcriptions of the French symbolists and poète maudits (Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle , Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine). Even if it was not uncommon at the time to approach the literary public with a pseudonym, it touched on a basic theme of Annenski. On the one hand it was an anagram , on the other hand Annenski alluded to the figure of Odysseus .

The poetry book Stille Lieder met with a mixed response from literary critics. Valeri Brjussow , Russian symbolist and literary critic with great influence, expressed himself cautiously, but praised the musicality of the verses, which are “extremely pictorial, eschew the banal, leave a powerful and new impression” (Valerij Brjusov: Sredi stichov. 1894–1924 . Mainifesty, stat'i, recenzii. Sovjetckij pisatel ', Moskva 1990, p. 110). Alexander Blok , one of the leading symbolists, admitted in his review of 1906, despite a few critical marginal comments, that "like an encounter with a stranger, his interest aroused completely unexpectedly" (Aleksandr Blok: Sobranie sočinenij v vosmi tomach. T. 5, p. 620 ff.). He encountered “truly new impressions” and “a new kind of symbolism”.

In 1905 Annenski was relieved of his post as director of the high school in Tsarskoye Selo. The background was the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905 , which also affected his relatives: his brother was arrested and he was accused of being involved in the unrest in which the upper classes of his grammar school also took part. In January 1906 he was appointed inspector of the St. Petersburg School District. His new job involved many arduous business trips (such as to Vologda , Pskow , Velikije Luki ), which was not particularly beneficial for Annenski's poor health. Nevertheless, he wrote numerous publications, such as the tragedy Laodomia or Heinrich Heine and us . His translation work was reflected in a Euripides volume Euripides Theater , which received praise and recognition among connoisseurs of his subject.

At the same time in 1906 he published his critical literary reflections on Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Turgenew , Lev Tolstoy , Chekhov and Balmont under the title Das Buch der Spiegelungen [Kniga otraženij]. The second book of reflections [Vtoraja kniga otraženij] followed in 1909 , a collection of articles on Lermontow, Dostojewski, Andrejew , Heine, Henrik Ibsen and William Shakespeare . Between 1906 and 1909 Annenski's poems appeared in anthologies, newspapers and magazines.

During this time Annenski's circle of friends in the literary world expanded. This included u. a. Vyacheslav Ivanov , Alexander Blok, Fyodor Sologub , Michail Kuzmin and Maximilian Woloschin . The literary magazine Apollon , which was newly founded in 1909 and became a symbolist institution, won Annenski as a consultant and collaborator.

Seriously ill and overworked, Annenski put the editing and editing of his second volume of poetry, The Cypress Box [Kiparissowy larez], into the hands of his son, Valentin Krivich.

Annensky died of a heart attack on November 30, 1909 on the steps of the entrance hall of the Tsarskoselsky train station (today: Vitebsk train station ) in Saint Petersburg. Annenski's second volume of poems, The Cypress Box , was published posthumously in 1909/1910.

Significance for posterity

Memorial stone to Annensky in Omsk , Russia

It was only after Annensky's death that the literary public became aware of its importance for Russian poetry. Nikolai Gumiljow's posthumous review of Annenski's last volume of poems, Das Zypressenkkasten, says: “It is time to say that not only Russia, but all of Europe has lost one of the greatest poets…” (Nikolaj Gumiljow: Pis'ma o russkoj poezii , Moskva Sovremennik, 1990, p. 101). Maximilian Woloschin, who got to know Annensky personally at the beginning of March 1909 (their meeting was about the preparation of the first issues of the literary magazine Apollon ) emphasized that no other poet had been able to deal with the "mental states such as melancholy, the slowness of life, insomnia, physical pain, heart attacks, fatigue and the waning of strength ”(M. Vološin: Liki tvorčestva. Leningrad 1988, p. 524) more intensely than Annenski.

His poetry had a decisive influence on acmeism and Russian futurism, which emerged after Russian symbolism . Anna Akhmatova referred to Annensky, whom she referred to in several poems as her teacher, as u. a. in: In the spirit of Annenski (Podražanie Annenskomu), 1910; The teacher (Učitel '), 1945, or also in Ode von Tsarskoje Selo , (Carskosel'skaja oda), 1961.

Works (selection)

Original editions in Russian

  • Меланиппа - Философ. Трагедия Иннокентия Анненского. St.-Petersburg 1901, ( digitized version ).
  • Царь Иксион. Трагедия в пяти действиях с музыкальными антрактами. St.-Petersburg 1902, ( digitized version ).
  • Тихие песни. St. Petersburg 1904, (under the pseudonym "Ник. Т-о". Digitized version ).
  • Книга отражений. St.-Petersburg 1906, ( digitized version ).
  • Вторая книга отражений. St.-Petersburg 1909, ( digitized version ).
  • Кипарисовый ларец. Вторая книга стихов (посмертная). Moscow 1910, (published posthumously, digitized ).

Translations into German

  • Black silhouette. Poems Russian - German. Translated by Adrian Wanner. With an afterword by Ulrich Schmid. Pano-Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-907576-02-0 .
  • Cloud smoke. Poems. Translated from Russian and edited by Martina Jakobson. Edition Rugerup, Hörby / Sweden 2010, ISBN 978-91-89034-28-0 (text in German and Russian in Cyrillic script).

Secondary literature

  • Barbara Conrad: IF Annenskijs poetic reflections (= Forum slavicum. Vol. 39). Fink, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7705-1362-2 (At the same time: Heidelberg, University, dissertation, 1971: Basics of an interpretation of the poetic work of Innokentij Fedorovič Annenskij. ).
  • Isabelle Guntermann: The Mystery of Melancholy. Studies on the work of Innokentij Annenskij (= building blocks for Slavic philology and cultural history. Series A: Slavic research. NF vol. 35). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2001, ISBN 3-412-03901-2 (also: Bochum, University, dissertation, 2000).
  • Alexandra Ioannidou: Humaniorum studiorum cultores. Graecophilia in Russian literature at the turn of the century using the example of the life and work of Innokentij Annenskijs and Vjacheslav Ivanovs (= Heidelberg publications on Slavic Studies. B: Literary Studies Series. Vol. 2). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1996, ISBN 3-631-46176-3 (At the same time: Heidelberg, University, dissertation, 1992).
  • Judith Olert: Platonic teachings in IF Annenskij's poetry. An intertextual investigation (= series of publications Studies on Slavic Studies. Vol. 3). Kovač, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8300-0782-5 (also: Mainz, University, dissertation, 2002).

Web links

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