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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the study of Russian Neoromanticism in its first iteration, i.e. at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Relying on the example of works in the titles of which the lexemes “Romantic” and “Neoromantic” are used and which are written by three authors, traditionally attributed to different literary movements (N. Gumilev, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Shershenevich), it is established what exactly authors and critics of the era understood as “Romantic” and/or “Neoromantic.” It turns out that for Gumilev the “Neoromantic” implies exoticism, dreaming, mysticism, as well as irony and self-reflexivity. For Tsvetaeva, Romanticism is connected with the concept of “soul” and the idea of preferring dreams and imagination to reality; at the same time, for her there is no difference between Romanticism — an eternal phenomenon, and not a stage, replaced by another stage, — and Neoromanticism. This is close to Shershenevich, who shifts the conversation about Romanticism from the historical and literary plane to the existential one and often turns Romanticism into “romance”, especially while talking about the “poet’s love”, in this context, the theme of Romanticism acquires the self-reflexive character. Ultimately, it is autometareflexivity that the three authors have in common. The “Neoromantic” acquires connotations of artificiality (and art), play, ephemerality. If historical Romanticism praised nature and naturalness, on this basis opposing Classicism, Neoromanticism, on the contrary, glorifies play and artificiality, opposing itself, being a Modernist art, to Realism.

Keywords: Romanticism, Neoromanticism, N. Gumilev, M. Tsvetaeva, V. Shershenevich, self-reflexivity, play.