Arnold Böcklin’s Pictorial Motifs in the Poetry of Russian Modernism

Abstract

The work of the Swiss artist Arnold Böklin (1827–1901) is a bright page of European culture. His painting “Island of the Dead” for several decades in the early 20th century was a favorite canvas of the Russian intelligentsia. The article attempts to consider the evolution of the perception of Böklin’s painting in the era of Russian Art Nouveau in poetry, criticism and public consciousness. The main material of the study is the lyrics of K. Fofanov, A. Fedorov, N. Klyuev, I. Bunin, Andrei Bely, I. Ehrenburg, Sasha Cherny, I. Savin and A. Tarkovsky. Fofanov and Klyuev saw in the painting of the artist a deep reflection of their thoughts about the succession of birth and death in the life of each person and in the fate of all mankind. Fedorov turns to the images of Böklin to create his own version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Bunin was attracted by the lyrics of nature, mood landscapes expressing the eternal beauty of the universe. Andrei Bely was interested in Böklin’s experiments in pictorial mythopoetics related to his own searches. In the poetry of I. Savin and Tarkovsky’s “Island of the Dead” changes its symbolic content: from a symbol of the greatness of death, it becomes a sad monument to Russian pre-revolutionary life, washed away by a wave of historical cataclysms.

Keywords

• a. böcklin
• “island of the dead
• ” ancient mythology
• pictorial motifs
• lyrics
• russian modernism
• symbolism
• reception
• ecphrasism