Abstract:
The article examines how the program of acmeism, proclaimed in the manifestos of N. Gumilev, S. Gorodetsky, O. Mandelstam, finds its practical embodiment in the early lyrics of M. Zenkevich, the representative of Adamism - the "left wing" of this poetic school. Adamism is characterized by a radical follow-up to the manifestos of N. Gumilev, S. Gorodetsky, O. Mandelstam, which emphasizes the need for aesthetic mastering of the earthly, material, objective world as opposed to the symbolist slogans of theurgy. M. Zenkevich "brings to the scene" a new hero, reflecting on his place in the universe, his nature - in the unity of the carnal / animal and spiritual.
The task of "making peace in the whole aggregate of beauties and disgraces" set by the Acmeists in the work of M. Zenkevich does not receive practical implementation. In the collection "Wild Porphyry" nature appears as a unity of "earthly and mystical", unknowable and beyond the control of man. But to adopt its laws, where "equilibrium" is achieved through the rotation of infinite destruction and creation, would mean for the lyrical subject "dissolution in matter", the loss of subjectivity.
In the second book "Under the Meat Purple" nature as the creative absolute is almost not paid attention. The same problem of natural and super-natural gets an aesthetic embodiment at the level of the microcosm, where man and woman are dual beings: "animal" nature is manifested in the erotic instincts of the first and - the physical perfection and cruelty of the second. In this case, the woman is a sacred creature (like nature in the «Wild Porphyry»), the earthly and mystical in it are merged together, and the man is sacrificed under the sign of death, sacrificing himself.
But even in these "personified" models there is obviously a disequilibrium of "earthly and mystical": a woman is partly defective as a natural being (she is barren), and a man is doomed to die in the name of Eternal Femininity.
At the same time, in the lyrics of M. Zenkevich, in the 1910s, the appearance of a new hero, "the coming Apollo," a human machine civilization free from natural determinism, begins to form. Thus, there is a rapprochement with the aesthetics of the avant-garde, where the subject challenges both nature and God, usurping the right of creation.