Page:Modern Russian Poetry.djvu/21

Rh detractors persisted in the term. Anti-social prejudice, a toying with satanism, and concentration on sex were but a temporary phase. The decadent aspect of Russian modernism is best exemplified by Sologub, an exasperated solipsist, living in a sick, fantasmal world.

The heterogeneity and complexity of the movement can hardly be exaggerated. Each writer is a law unto himself. Yet all share a fevered intensity and the literary method of symbolism. To the true symbolist the measure of a verse echoes the song the morning stars sing together. He posits a correspondence between sensuous and mystic realities, using imagery as the sign of a remote and transcendent significance. It remained for the following generation thus to develop the religious implications of the theory. As for Balmont, with his fluent spontaneity, and Brusov, in his more slow and solid achievement, they are chiefly concerned with problems of form and with the cult of a beauty founded upon a flight from reality. This holds good for the sinister magic of Sologub in his early work. All three, especially Brusov, are conscious craftsmen, with an authentic musical gift. They have greatly enriched the medium which they employ.

While the symbolist school united the best talents, there were of course poets who remained extra muros. The most important of them is Bunin, a lyricist of rare economy and sensitiveness to color. He carries on the classic tradition, remote from the violences and vagaries of his fellows.

A curious incident in the history of Russian symbolism is the career of Alexander Dobrolubov. One of the earliest disciples of the French décadents, he ended as a