Olga Rubinchik «Serdtse prosit roz pobleklyh…» Roses in Innokenty Annensky’s Works

In Annensky’s lyrics the rose is mentioned quite often (13 instances) though less often than lilac (18) и lily (17). However, I think that the relevance of the rose image in the art of Annensky in general (including tragedies, essays, etc.) surpasses that of all other flowers.
Roses mostly appear in the «classical» stratum of the poet’s work: they are present in some of the Euripid tragedies translated by Annensky and are especially numerous in Annensky’s original tragedies written after Euripides’ plots. The explication is obvious: antiquity that had inherited this flower from the Orient had made it part of its own mythology and culture. «…Nashe vremya ochen ravnodushno k krasote, razlitoy v proizvedeniyakh prirody, – wrote V. P. Botkin in the article «Ob upotreblenii rozy u drevnikh» (1891), – ona sdelalas dlya nas kakim-to knizhnym chuvstvom, kakim-to idealnym vzdorom, o kotorom my predostavlyaem govorit odnim poetam. <…> Nam teper dazhe kak-to trudno poverit, chto bylo takoye vremya, chto byl takoy narod, dlya kotorogo krasota, razlitaya v prirode, byla <…> samym seryeznym i glubokim chuvstvom, kotoroye narod etot vnosil vo vse svoi religioznye ponyatiya i predstavleniya». «Greki schitali rozu darom bogov, – wrote N. F. Zolotnitsky, – i znamenitaya poetessa Safo dala ey nazvaniye tsaritsy tsvetov. <…> Po slovam Anakreona, ona rodilas iz belosnezhnoy peny, pokryvavshey telo Afrodity (Venery), kogda eta boginya lyubvi vo vsey svoyey divnoy krasote vyshla posle kupanya iz morya».