It so happened that the name of Zinaida Gippius in the history of Russian literature is closely connected with the name of her husband - a talented writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky, but she herself was a talented poet and an outstanding person. Beginning with the first of her poems published in the journal "North herald" in 1888, it became clear that hiding under the signature of "Z.G." the poet - an interesting and distinctive suffering. In her poems has always been a longing for the impossible and inconceivable, rejection of monotonous everyday life, despair, hopelessness and expectation of imminent death. Purely personal feelings in her poems intertwined with the pain for the country, which, in her view, dominated unacceptable orders:
We are indignant or we playing,
Or lying - but in the heart of silence.
We have never betray:
The soul is one - and only one love is exsist.
*****
"... Not to the extent blinking slowly became like a kind of heavenly vision, amazing thinness angel in a white robe with golden flowing hair, bare arms along which fell to the floor something like not arms, not wings: Z. N . Gippius, followed behind by Merezhkovsky " (Andrew "White" Belyy).
The fact that the Bronte sisters - Emily, Charlotte and Anne - happened in the English literature, and even all together, leaving behind an impressive magnificent text layer - a unique phenomenon. And this despite the fact that women's literature - a subject that always causes heated debates: two centuries ago in an effort of women to write have seen a dangerous freedom, and this in every way obstructed. However, the desire to speak out, to explain their nature, and sometimes even convict society was above the higher beyond. And today any woman, having a sense of the word, and having a talent for writing could write freely, without fear and without paying for it is folly and madness,
"and gradually women started to put pen to paper is no longer on the "madness" or "unconscious", but from a purely practical considerations" (Virginia Woolf). Father of sisters, Patrick Bronte, was an Anglican priest and writer. Since childhood, the sisters surrounded by a great number of books purchased by their father after he became quite well-known poet and writer. Creative imagination of their father could not to be passed on to the children: a favorite pastime of girls, in addition to reading, was fantasizing and dream, invent and dream up wonderful magical worlds, and share them with each other. Notably in the fate of the Bronte sisters, and that they stay together for life, and literary fame did not change their attitudes, though history has known many cases diametrically opposed to this. The three of them have published in 1846 a collection of poems under the name of Bell brothers, and a year later - still together - prose.
Life
Published in a collection of: «Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell» (1846)
*****
Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life’s sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily
Enjoy them as they fly!
What though Death at times steps in,
And calls our Best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O’er hope, a heavy sway?
Yet Hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair!
*****
Stanzas to -
*****
Well, some may hate and some may scorn,
And some may quite forget thy name,
But my sad heart must ever mourn
Thy ruined hopes, they blighted fame!
'Twas thus I thought, an hour ago,
Even weeping o'er that wretch's woe.
One word turned back my gushing tears,
And lit my altered eye with sneers.
Then "Bless the friendly dust," I said,
"That hides the unlamented head!
Vain as thou wert, and weak as vain,
The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain,
My heart has nought akin to thine,
Thy soul is powerless over mine."
But these were thoughts that vanished too;
Unwise, unholy, and untrue:
Do I despise the timid deer
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or, hear with joy the leveret's cry
Because it cannot bravely die?
No! Then above his memory
Let pity's heart as tender be:
Say, "Earth lie lightly on that breast,
And, kind Heaven, grant that spirit rest.
*****
The Penitent
*****
I mourn with thee and yet rejoice
That thou shouldst sorrow so;
With Angel choirs I join my voice
To bless the sinner's woe.
Though friends and kindred turn away
And laugh thy grief to scorn,
I hear the great Redeemer say
'Blessed are ye that mourn'.
Hold on thy course nor deem it strange
That earthly cords are riven.
Man may lament the wondrous change
But 'There is joy in Heaven'!
*****
In the twentieth century there were two values, two names in the Russian poetry, coerced into silence all talked about the surface and the frivolity of women's poetry - Anna Akhmatova, which has already been mentioned above, and Marina Tsvetaeva. They were quite different - and internal, emotional state, and by views, and they wrote - talented, inimitable and perfectly different apart themselves. Marina Tsvetaeva whole life wanted to break away from daily routine, everyday life pressed on her, forced to suffer, and not exist there, perhaps, in the Russian literature the poet, more than longed to soar above the vain earth, which for some reason have annoying household chores, looking for money and property, and love is completely devoid of hills and purity. Even scary to imagine how difficult it was to put up with on a daily basis orders, reigning on the earth, and with iron shackles, it seemed, forever chained her poems for her. Because her every poem - is a pain, sometimes quietly looks at the reader who has taken a volume, and sometimes breaks away beyond all limits, forcing to suffer with himself.
*****
Every line - a child of love,
An illegitimate beggar.
A firstborn - left by the way
As tribute to the winds.
For my heart - hell and altar,
For my heart -Eden and after.
Who’s the Father? Maybe – a tsar,
Maybe – a tsar, maybe- an imposter.
*****
(Starry sky to starry sky, 1988..published by the American poet and translator Mary Jane White- translation from Marina Tsvetayeva's poem p.. 64)
"Remembering those already distant days in Moscow, and not knowing where is Marina Tsvetaeva, and whether she is alive, I can not say that these two poetic soul, a mother and daughter, more like two sisters, is of itself most touching vision of a complete detachment from reality and a free life among dreams, - under such conditions where others only groan, suffer, and die. The emotional power of love to love and love of beauty as it freed the two human bird pain and anguish. Hunger, cold, full detachment - and eternal chirping, and has always sprightly gait and smiling face. These were two of the ascetic, and looking at them, I once again felt not a force that has been completely extinguished " (K. Balmont).
And, finally, we got to the end of the twentieth century, and here it seems true to say about Wislawa Szymborska - winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Utopia
*****
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
(By Wislawa Szymborska From "A large number", 1976 Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh).
She was born back in 1923 (!) Year, with eight years of living in Krakow. Exactly in Krakow newspapers immediately after the victory against fashism in World War II editors began to print the poems of Pani Wislawa. The first two verses of the collection came out in 1952 and 1954 accordingly, and were very traditional, and some of them called "the social realistic". However, after 1957 Wislawa Szymborska turned to free verse, so characteristic of the poets of Europe. Despite this, the the poems of Szymborska is not lost in the crowd, because they have "specific and clear, they have no misty abstractions, deliberate set of words and phrases that are not clear to anyone other than the author, and employing only purpose to "simulate profundity" (Boris Gorobets).