Current in which the word is a symbol, symbolism straddles the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It marks the beginning of the Silver Age, and leads to a new era which quickly dominates Russian literature for almost twenty years. If the symbolist current is led in France by poets such as Mallarmé, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, in Russia it exists mainly under the pen of Valéri Brioussov, Andreï Biély and Vladimir Soloviev. It is no longer a question for these poets of representing reality as realism has done until then, but of revealing the world like a prophet, exploring the mysteries that compose it, and this is only possible using a symbol.
Russian symbolism contributes to the understanding of the world. This current includes thinkers as well as philosophers. We dive back into Dostoyevsky's novels again. We are also inspired by French poets, who become a reference in Russia. From then on, art took on an immeasurable place and became essential in daily life... before experiencing rival movements.
Two contemporary movements of Symbolism were born during the Silver Age:Acmeism includes the great authors of the twentieth century who were little or not published at that time, such as Mikhail Kuzmin, recognized retrospectively as the greatest poet of the silver age. Acmeism considers the poet as a craftsman. Futurism, the second current competing with symbolism, is an anti-conformist avant-garde movement. In search of the primitive, futurism seeks to bring out “pure meaning”, and invents abstraction, as well as new objects and words, by deconstructing forms. The symbolists are no longer popular, perceived as petty bourgeois by emerging currents. Futurism makes a point of rejecting the meaning to keep only the sound, therefore the word is autonomous. This current will cross the revolution in 1917.
1910 marks the crisis of symbolism, replaced by new currents such as Cézanisme, cubisme or rayonnism, all based on the importance of form. Ten years later, constructivism, based on the principle of the word as a building block, is gaining recognition among avant-garde movements. Symbolism is dethroned.