Universitetskaya Embankment, 11, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 199034
The famous poet Alexander Blok graduated from Saint Petersburg University at the beginning of the 20th century. He started at the Faculty of Law but finished university as a student of Philology. In his letters, he sometimes mentioned the time he spent within the university walls.
Like today's students who move from school to university, Alexander Blok was amazed by the freedom that higher education grants after the exhausting rote learning at school.
“University is, of course, much more interesting, and besides, there is a very strong feeling of freedom, which I, however, do not abuse and attend lectures diligently” (Letter to his father, 18.10.1898).
Admit it, diligently attending lectures nowadays is more of a rarity than a usual student habit.
However, not even a couple of years pass before “everything falls into place”: “I almost never go to university anymore, which seems right to me on the grounds that I am in my second year of the second course, and besides, listening to lectures is useless for me, probably due, among other things, to my poor memory for things of this kind” (Letter to his father, 01.12.1900).
However, Blok did take his exams properly. “At the political economy exam, I sat trembling because I knew nothing... When I, trembling with fear, approached Georgievsky and drew a ticket, Georgievsky asked me what a ‘market’ is. I answered: ‘A sphere of sales’; the professor highly valued such an answer and did not tolerate when he was told that the market is a ‘place of sales.’ I knew this firmly. For this, Georgievsky immediately let me go, giving me a five” (Diary, 17(30).08.1918).
Blok showed no inclination towards legal sciences and decided to transfer to the Faculty of Philology, for which he submitted a petition to the rector in his third year. In the autumn of 1901, this transfer took place. He began to get acquainted with the Petersburg literary elite. In 1902, he befriended Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Valery Bryusov published Alexander Blok’s poems in the almanac “Northern Flowers.”
Blok immediately enrolled in the Slavic-Russian department of the Historical-Philological Faculty. His choice, wavering between the classical department and the Slavic-Russian one, was only finalized by the third year. Among the professors whose lectures Blok attended, Professor Zelinsky was especially popular among students. Professor Zelinsky was a widely educated classical philologist and by 1901 was already a skilled lecturer with his “artistic” manner of presentation, not unfamiliar with rhetoric. He saw “the predominant significance of antiquity in that it was the progenitor of those ideas by which we still live.” Blok, who was intensely developing his worldview, searching for an explanation for everything he felt and “knew” in the surrounding reality, was able to appreciate such a “modern” approach of Zelinsky to antiquity.
Studying at the Philological Faculty went much more cheerfully for Blok, and the only obstacle to gaining knowledge was the ever-growing student “pre-revolutionary” unrest. “In our university (which was closed on February 6) terrible things are happening: at a meeting they demanded an active strike, and the very next day ‘from above’ classes were stopped” (Letter to his father, 08.11.1902).
Closer to the end of his studies, however, the university walls began to feel cramped for Blok. “At university, I mostly listened to Polish language and Russian literature. Now I have to present a report on the Slavic language, which has long been troubling me. In general, I gladly see the end of the university course because I often see in it something deeply alien to me and hard for me to endure...” (Letter to his father, 30.12.1903).
According to Blok’s contemporaries, he prepared very thoroughly for his final exams, which was reflected in the results. “Today my exams ended. I hasten to inform you of this. I managed to finish with the highest distinction, receiving four ‘very good’ marks in oral exams and a perfect ‘very good’ in written exams” (Letter to his father, 05.05.1906).
https://kudago.com/spb/list/peterburg-bloka/
https://www.examen.ru/news-and-articles/news/aleksandr-blok-v-sankt-peterburgskom-universitete/
