Alexander Blok's name is directly connected with one of the most interesting periods of Russian literature - the Silver Age, romantic, sublime-beautiful and equally tragic. His "Stranger" entered the treasury of our classics as a visiting card of the poet, as a symbol of the dramatic incompatibility of a high dream, an ideal and a mundane vulgar reality. This conflict, the inability to reconcile the "white rose with the black toad," as the contemporary Blok wrote, the great Esenin, has caused the internal contradictions of many creative personalities, the contradictions of tragic and insoluble. The author of The Stranger himself did not escape them either.
A little about the history of creation
The beginning of the new century was perceived with suspicion and distrust by Blok. "Stranger", entering the poetic cycle "The Piglet Sang on the Bridge", which is part of the cycle "Scary World", as vividly reflects the tragic worldview of the poet. The first Russian revolution and its cruel suppression, the ideas of mysticism that are hovering in the air, the intense spiritual search for the Russian intelligentsia, which is striving to get out of the crisis - these are the socio-political prerequisites for the creation of the work. However, not only the cruel chains of the soulless world hold their throats. The emotional drama of a personal nature is experienced by Blok. "Stranger" was written under the impression of his break with his wife, Lyubov Dmitrievna. Their difficult relations, in which Alexander Alexandrovich himself was largely to blame, once tried to substitute a literary and philosophical idea for living reality, real feelings and family life, finally reached a dead end. Lyubov Dmitrievna was carried away by her friend and brother's husband, Boris Bugaev, whose writers' pseudonym (Andrei Bely) rattled literary Moscow and Petersburg. Her departure was extremely painful, as Blok often recalled. "Stranger" tells of the state of hopelessness and despair, lack of restraint, homelessness that embraced the poet. He wanders around the cheap pubs of Petersburg, visits the station restaurant Ozerkov - a small country village near the northern capital. As if losing someone, Blok sits at the tables for hours, reluctantly pouring the glass over the glass and peering into the surrounding life. And it is repulsively ugly and went: drunkards "with the eyes of rabbits", vulgar "ladies" with a squeal instead of laughter, "experienced", ie, jaded wits with their stupid, meaningless jokes. And over the whole world of cynicism, venality, stupidity, depravity, the moon, a symbol of poetry, romanticism, creativity, floats indifferently. In such circumstances, the poet lives, himself likening himself to the inhabitants of this terrible world. And yet there is something that differs from all of them Blok: Stranger, Mysterious Virgo, who is to him and which none of the regulars of taverns and pubs can see. His muse, mystery, dream, his savior, a mirage, which, for all its ghostly nature, still does not allow it to sink to the bottom, to disappear completely.
Who is she - a mysterious virgin?
And really, who is she - "Stranger"? The block died down, the text of which is known to every literate person, unwittingly, encoded in the spirit of symbolism. His main character is perceived as a phantom, and as a very real, though somewhat embellished romantic entourage lady. The prototype of the Woman in the Shelk is, undoubtedly, the heroine of Kramskoy's painting "The Unknown" - the same mysterious, subtle and beautiful. And the Swan Princess-Vrubel-the poet especially loved this painting. The photo of the picture adorned Blok's office in Shakhmatovo. Legendary, beautifully tragic female images of Dostoevsky's novels, and especially Nastasya Filippovna of the Idiot, are also recognizable in the poem. And, of course, the new muse, to whom Alexander Block has dedicated his strict knightly love, Natalia Volokhova, a stranger in a snow mask from a blizzard. All of them, each in its own way, were transformed in the poetic consciousness of Alexander Alexandrovich, due to which we can enjoy the sublime-beautiful lines of his amazing poem.
The poem "Stranger" is almost 107 years old. A lot, is not it? And it, like a good wine, does not age with time and is still loved by connoisseurs of true Poetry.