The Twelve

The Twelve is a controversial long poem by Aleksandr Blok. Written early in 1918, the poem was one of the first poetic responses to the October Revolution of 1917. Background The poem describes the march of twelve Red Guards (likened to the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. The mood of the Twelve as conveyed by the poem oscillates from base and even sadistic aggression towards everything perceived bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, to strict discipline and sense of "revolutionary duty." A prostitute who is found with Ivan, who is from the same background as the Twelve but is in no revolutionary mood, is killed by one of the Twelve (Peter), who appears unusually struck by the accident and later reveals to his comrades that he had been in love with the woman. However, after the others remind him that in these revolutionary times one's personal tragedies are nothing, the murderer regains his determination and continues the march. In the last stanza of the poem, most controversially, a figure of Jesus Christ is seen in the snowstorm, heading the march of the Twelve. The Twelve, with its "mood-creating sounds, polyphonic rhythms, and harsh, slangy language" (as the Encyclopædia Britannica termed it), promptly alienated Blok from a mass of his admirers. Accusations ranged from appallingly bad taste to servility before the new Bolshevik authorities and betraying his former ideals. On the other hand, most Bolsheviks scorned Blok's mysticism and asceticism and especially the mention of Christ. Immediately following the publication (3 March 1918) in the socialist revolutionary newspaper "Banner of Labor", the poem was attacked by almost the whole of the Russian intelligentsia. Many of the former admirers, colleagues and even friends of Blok broke off their relationship with him. According to academic Shklovsky few comprehended The Twelve and condemned it because everyone was used to take Blok seriously only. The Twelve, a portrayal of criminal revolutionary Petrograd, which was compared by Shklovsky to The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin, had brand new images. He noted "The Twelve is an ironical work. It’s written not even with folk rhyme but with "flash" language. A Savoyarov style of street trolls".