Russian Symbolist Poetics-

Vladimir Solovyov, 1853-1900:

And man, as one who belongs to both worlds, can and must by an act of rational contemplation concern himself with the divine world, and finding himself yet in a world of contention and vague apprehension, he must enter into communication with vivid images from the kingdom of glory and eternal beauty.

Dmitri Merezhkovsky, 1865-1941:

... the three major elements of the new art are a mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability. Only a creative faith in something infinite and immortal can ignite the soul of man, create heroes, martyrs and prophets. People have need of faith, they need inspiration, they crave a holy madness in their heroes and martyrs.

Valeri Bryusov, 1873-1924:

A Sonnet To Form

Rare and powerful harmonies exist,
Shaping both scent and contour in a flower.
Thus brilliance lies unseen by us until,
Beneath the chisel, it blazes in the diamond.

And I desire that all my dreaming visions
That reach the light embodied in the word,
Find for themselves their long-sought forms.

Konstantin Balmont, 1867-1943:

Beneath A Lunar Sign

Beneath this youthful, sickle-Moon
That glows above the emerald Sea,
You walk beside the waves with me.
I whisper words, we silently dispute.

This came to me in dreams one night,
As combers roared in you and me.
I saw the moonlight-flooded sight
That you and I were sinking in the Sea.

We were, in crespuscule and brine,
Two ocean flowers, entwining blooms
Of salt and sea- dreaming Moons
And stars of novel lands and strange designs.

Vyacheslav Invanov, Thoughts on Symbolism, 1912:

And thus I am not a Symbolist if in the heart of the listener I do not arouse with intangible nuance or influence those incommunicable sensations which resemble at times some primeval rememberence... I am not a Symbolist if my words do not summon forth in the listener sensations of the connection bewteen that which is his "ego" and that which he calls his "non-ego"... if my words do not convince him immediately of the existence of a hidden life where his mind had not suspected life; if my words do not move in him the energy of love towards that which he was previously unable to love because his love did not know of the many abodes it possessed.

Fyodor Sologub, The Created Legend, 1907-1913:

I take a piece of life, coarse and barren, and from it I create an exquisite legend, for I am a poet. Whether life, dull and common, stagnates in the gloom, or bursts forth in a raging fire, I, the poet, will erecet above you, life, my legend which is being created, my legend of the enchanting and the beautiful.