St Petersburg of Alexander Blok

The city of St Petersburg is closely connected with the life and work of Alexander Blok. The historian Nikolay Antsyferov said, “One can’t find any of Blok’s poems devoted entirely to the description of the city itself, or its particular places. However, there were no other contemporary poets in whose works St Petersburg occupied such an important place”.

Visitors to the exhibition in Alexander Blok Museum will be able to read and to listen to oral recordings of the poet’s verses, diary entries and notes about St Petersburg. The exhibition will be accompanied with a cycle of lyrical romances by Georgy Sviridov, based on Blok’s verses “St Petersburg”.

Items fr om the collection of State Museum of the History of St Petersburg summon up the atmosphere of St Petersburg at the turn of the 20th century – the city where Alexander Blok was born, where he lived and worked, and where he died.

The exhibition incorporates photographs, postcards, engravings and drawings, telling the story of Blok’s favourite places in St Petersburg. Authentic items of that time: an old gramophone, that could be found in many city taverns, street-organs, which were often seen in well-type St Petersburg courtyards, medical devices of the early 20th century and many other exhibits remind of the cycles of Blok’s poems Gorod (The City) and Strashnyi Mir (The Terrible World), wh ere the poem “Night, street and streetlight, drugstore…” is included.

Everybody knows that Alexander Blok was an enthusiastic theatre-goer, and he enjoyed going to the cinema and circus as well. Movies of the early 20thcentury are screened at the exhibition. Theatre posters, posters of the amusement park, the People’s house, to the Modern Circus, etc. are on display.

A guidebook around the St Petersburg of Alexander Blok was published to accompany the exhibition.