Book of reflections. The second book of reflections. Annensky I.

Innocent Annensky, to which he resorted to essays, which included in two “Books of Reflections” (1906, 1909), was called intuitive, the author was accused of pretentiousness, his tongue was declared “unnecessarily tested”, and the selection of those-random. In the poet of the first row of the Silver Age, an outstanding connoisseur of ancient and Western European poetry, they wanted - since he began to talk about Russian literature - to see criticism and judged him as criticism. And he called himself not a “critic”, but a “reader”, and his look at Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Balmont and other great eyes to the highest degree of subjective reader. For the poet-impressionist Annensky thought in his essays and associations, did not give assessments-but created an impression that in itself is more important than any assessment. Nikolai Gumilyov wrote about Innocent Annensky: "It is not a feeling that the thought gives rise to, as it happens in poets at all, and the thought itself is so strong that it becomes a feeling, even alive to pain." To the essay from “Books of Reflections”, these words are fully applicable.