Acmeism

Acmeism is a current in poetry of the early twentieth century that arose as a reaction against the misty polysemy of Symbolism and proclaimed a return to clarity, objectivity, precision of image, 'beautiful clarity', and mastery of craft. The Acmeists (from the Greek acme — summit) valued earthly, material concreteness, culture, and a connection with the world artistic tradition. The aesthetic orientation of Acmeism — precision of the word, plasticity, balance — is typologically kindred to the program of the Ukrainian Neoclassicists of the 1920s, who likewise defended clarity, perfection of form, and reliance on the classical heritage. This kinship attests to the pan-European character of the search for a 'new objectivity' and a culture of verse in the poetry of the modern era, when different national schools — the Ukrainian Neoclassicism led by Mykola Zerov among them — sought a counterweight to diffuse subjectivism in clear, harmonious form.