Acmeism is a Russian literary movement that was born in 1910 and ended at the end of World War II. Its name derives from the Greek acme (culmination). It was born in opposition to symbolism, developing a different theme and a new expressive style based on representative clarity, on the concreteness of content and on the study of the formal values of the verse.
However far from the vices of academics, the poem of the acmeists, which in its best representatives touched great dignity, could be defined as neoclassical.
The leader of the group was Nikolaj Stepanovič Gumilëv who with Sergei Mitrofanovič Gorodeckij signed the manifesto of the movement to Apollon magazine (1912); beside these, Anna Achmatova, Gumilev's wife, Osip Čmil'evič Mandel'stam and Michail Alekseevič Kuzmin were the most eminent personalities.
The acmeism, which could not keep up with events determined by the Russian revolution because of the inadequacy of its ideological components, which is breached, among other things, by futurism, represents, even more than a school, the dramatic moment of a poetic generation that in Russian literature marks the overcoming of symbolism and precedes the no less interesting and complex chapter of emigration literature.
The acmeism was linked to the poetry corporation "The Poetry Guild" (Cech poetov), born in 1911 and orbiting around the Apollo magazine. The name of the movement, which means the extreme point of expressive lucidity, alternates with that of "adamism", more appropriately desired by Gumilev and intended to mean the virile and genuine intent of a clear and clear poetic consciousness. onsciousness.
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