Music and Literature in Silver Age Russia: Mikhail Kuzmin and Alexander Scriabin.

Abstract

My dissertation explores the relationships between poetry and music in the works of two early-twentieth century Russian artists, the poet Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936) and the composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915). The development of musical thought in Russian literature, in particular the heritage of German philosophy and French Symbolist poetry, led to a privileging of music as the supreme art in the early 20th century. However, very few writers at the time had a background in the technical aspects of music. Two contemporary conservatory-trained artists worked in both music and poetry, and their attempts to merge music and literature into a type of syncretic project led to the creation of poems that were, in the Russian context, unprecedented in their use of new meters and free verse. Scriabin’s poetic Poem of Ecstasy reveals an ur-structure that provides insight into the compositional framework of his related 5th Sonata. Meanwhile Kuzmin’s songs take on new meaning when the clashes between poetic form and musical form are explored. Though greatly dissimilar in philosophy and approach, both artists found ways to incorporate their musical training into the writing of poetry in a way that both reflects and challenges the expectations of musico-poetics during the Silver Age.