Under the Northern Sky (poetry collection)

Under the Northern Sky
Author Konstantin Balmont
Original title Под северным небом
Country Russian Empire
Language Russian
Genre Russian Symbolism
Publication date
1894
Media type print (Hardback & Paperback)
Followed by In Boundlessness

Under the Northern Sky (Russian: Под се′верным не′бом, romanized as Pod severnym nebom) is a collection of poetry by Konstantin Balmont featuring 51 poems, first published in the early 1894 in Saint Petersburg.[1] Formally Balmont's second book, it is considered to be his debut, since all the copies of the Yaroslavl-released Collection of Poems (Сборник стихотворений, 1890) have been purchased and destroyed by the author.[2][3]

History

In December 1893 Balmont informed his friend, Nikolai Minsky in a letter: "Wrote the whole lot of the new poems and in January am going to start the process of publishing a book. Expect some chastising from my liberal friends, for there is no liberalism in them, with the 'degrading' motives aplenty."[4]

The collection's general mood was captured in an epigraph, from the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau: "All the divine things enter my life invariably accompanied by sorrow." The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary later described the book as full of "greyness, hopelessness and gloom." Yet, Balmont's misgivings proved groundless: the reaction to the publication was positive.[2][3] Critics liked the musical quality of his poetry, exquisiteness of form and the sense of tension which enlivened the general atmosphere of gloom.[5]

Notable poems

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Commentaries // Бальмонт К. Д. Избранное.". www.prosv.ru. Archived from the original on 2011-08-18. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
  2. 1 2 Makogonenko, Darya. The Life and Fate. Freface to The Selected Poems, Translations and Essays by K.D. Balmont. Pravda Publishers. 1990. // Д. Г. Макогоненко. — Жизнь и судьба. Бальмонт К. — Избранное: Стихотворения. Переводы. Статьи. — М. Правда, 1990. — ISBN 5-253-00115-8
  3. 1 2 Vengerov, Semyon. "Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont". Brockhaus and Efron / Russian Biographical Dictionary. Archived from the original on August 18, 2011. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
  4. Preface to the Poems by K.D. Balmont. Leningrad, 1969, p. 23.
  5. Stakhova, M. "Konstantin Balmont. The Lives of the Silver Age Poets // Константин Бальмонт (Судьбы поэтов серебряного века)". www.litera.ru. Archived from the original on 2011-08-18. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
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