A. Akhmatova and M. Tsvetaeva - two poetic voices of their era
Keep up with you. I am a prisoner.
You are an escort. One destiny.
And alone in the void more
The road is given to us.
M. Tsvetaeva "Akhmatova"
Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva are two prominent names in Russian poetry. They happened not only to live at the same time - the time of the collapse of the old world, but also to be the poetic voice of their difficult era.
Both poetesses began writing poetry early. Marina was six years old, and Anna was eleven, but each of them had its own tragic fate, each was looking for its own path in poetry. Tsvetaeva got acquainted with the work of Akhmatova in 1915 and immediately wrote a poem addressed to her. Tsvetaeva for a long time maintained an enthusiastic attitude towards Akhmatova, as evidenced by the letters and diaries of Marina Ivanovna. She dedicated a short cycle of poems to Anna Andreevna, in which she expressed her admiration for her:
And I give you my bell city
Akhmatova! - and your heart to boot.
Tsvetaeva addresses Akhmatova as “you”, although there was no personal communication between them, and proudly asserts:
We are crowned to be alone with you
We trample the earth, that the sky above us is the same!
By this "we" Tsvetaeva is trying to show that she also has a poetic gift and stands next to the renowned poetess.
Akhmatova favorably accepted Tsvetaeva's worship, but never particularly appreciated her work. Tsvetaeva, at the end of her life, sharply changed her attitude towards Akhmatova, declaring that everything she wrote, especially in recent years, is very weak.
The only meeting of the two poetesses took place in Moscow in June 1941 and, one must think, did not lead to mutual understanding - these women were too different in their creative aspirations and character. Indeed, Marina Tsvetaeva believed that the poet should be immersed in himself and removed from real life. By her own definition, she was a "pure lyricist" and therefore self-sufficient and egocentric. Despite this, Tsvetaeva's egocentrism was not selfishness; it was expressed in the poetess's dissimilarity to other, uncreative people. That is why we often find in Tsvetaeva's poems the opposition of "I" and "they":
Akhmatova, at first glance, was closer to real life. Having risen at the beginning of her creative career under the banner of Acmeism, she strove in her poems for substantive detailing. All sounding and colorful details were included in her poems, filling them with the living force of life:
The sultry wind blows hot,
The sun burned my hands.
Above me is an air vault,
Like blue glass.
Akhmatov's verse grew out of immediate life impressions, although these impressions were limited, especially in early work, by the concerns and interests of “their circle”.
Both Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva wrote a lot about love. Love in their work appears as a dramatic and sometimes tragic feeling:
Abandoned! Invented word -
Am I a flower or a letter?
And the eyes are already looking sternly
Into the darkened dressing table.
Akhmatova's poems about love are small stories that have no beginning or end, but still plot, like, for example, “In the Evening,” “Clasped my hands under a dark veil ...” and others. Amazing skill allowed the poetess, with the help of one seemingly insignificant detail, to create a certain mood and convey the feelings of the heroine:
So helplessly my chest grew cold
But my steps were easy.
I put it on my right hand
Left hand glove.
Here it is - an insignificant detail - an incorrectly worn glove - and before us is drawn the image of a confused and depressed woman. We understand that her beloved has abandoned her, and her life is about to collapse.
Tsvetaeva has practically no plot in her love poems, but she also writes about love not at the moment of happiness, but at a tense, dramatic moment:
Even if you fall in love with altyn, I will accept it!
An indifferent friend! - it's so strange to listen
Black midnight in someone else's house!
For a long time Akhmatova was considered the poet of one theme - love, for which she was repeatedly reproached. She began to turn to the topic of Russia more often in her later work, but this topic, in essence, is still the same theme of love - love for one's country.
Tsvetaeva lived in exile for several years. Akhmatova never left for long. However, both poetesses did not accept and did not understand the revolution. Akhmatova strove in her poems to get away from politics into the world of human feelings and relationships, and Tsvetaeva turned to the distant past, which she idealized and romanticized. In her work, one can hear a longing for heroic natures, for the ideals of chivalry, so the sword, cloak and sword become frequent images of her works. On the pages of her poems, we meet outstanding personalities of the past: Casanova, Don Juan, Napoleon, False Dmitry and, of course, the beautiful Marina Mnishek. In addition to the fact that Mniszek was Polish (and Tsvetaeva also had a piece of Polish blood), she certainly attracted Tsvetaeva by the fact that she bore her name. The poet loved her name very much and saw a special meaning in it. As you know, Marina is a Latin translation of one of the epithets of the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite. "Pelagos" (Latin - "Marina") means "sea". Tsvetaeva repeatedly revealed in her poems the poetic meaning of her name, and in it she also saw her dissimilarity from others:
Who is made of stone, who is made of clay -
And I am silver and sparkle!
I care about treason, my name is Marina,
I am the mortal foam of the sea.
For Tsvetaeva, the sea is a symbol of creativity. It is just as deep and inexhaustible. This means that a person named Marina is a special person, an artist.
Akhmatova also loved her name and considered herself worthy of a special mission. She saw in him a kind of divinity and royalty:
At that time I was staying on earth.
I was given a name at baptism - Anna,
The sweetest for human lips and hearing.
Akhmatova even called one of her collections “Anno domini”. The Latin expression meaning "in the summer of the Lord" clearly attracted the poetess by its consonance with her name Anna.
Both Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva enriched Russian poetry a lot. Akhmatova continued and developed the traditions of Russian psychological prose, being in this sense the direct heir of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Garshin. The main advantage of her poem was a strictly thought-out localized detail, sometimes carrying the whole idea. Suffice it to recall the image of a red tulip in the poem “You don’t love, you don’t want to look ...” Akhmatova, being able to use the word very subtly, introduced into poetry details from the everyday world, household interiors, prose, which helped her to create images, and most importantly, opened an internal connection between the external environment and the secret life of the heart.
The power of Tsvetaeva's poems is not in visual images, but in a bewitching stream of constantly changing, deep rhythms. Either solemnly uplifted, now colloquially everyday, now chanting-chanting, now ironically mocking, they in their richness convey the flexibility of her intonation structure, are dependent on the rhythm of her experiences. And if Akhmatova subtly feels the Russian word, then Tsvetaeva goes even deeper - she is able to perceive the language at the level of the morpheme. A classic example in this regard is the poem dedicated to Boris Pasternak:
Distances: versts, miles ...
We were set up, set up.
The prefix "races" in this poem has a special meaning. It is the skillful use of it that helps the poetess to convey the feeling of separation, separation.
Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva are original poetesses and are very different, but there are many internal similarities between them. Both of them were precisely Russian poetesses and loved Russia infinitely. Their work and fate reflected the difficult path of the Russian intelligentsia, which had to live in an era of revolutionary storms and global changes.
They met in person only once, which was preceded by their long-term communication: the poetesses corresponded, sent gifts to each other and dedicated poems. But there was literary rivalry between them, and gossip, and even resentment.
Tsvetaeva got acquainted with Akhmatova's poetry in 1912, when she read the collection "Evening".
“You can write ten volumes about Akhmatova’s little book - and you don’t add anything ... What a difficult seductive gift to poets - Anna Akhmatova”.
Marina Tsvetaeva
Ten years later, in 1922, Tsvetaeva dedicated a collection of versts to Anna Akhmatova, 11 poems in which were addressed directly to her. Marina Tsvetaeva was acutely worried about the alleged “death” of Akhmatova, the rumor of which was circulating after the arrest of Nikolai Gumilyov.
"... I will tell you that the only - with my knowledge - your friend (friend - action!) - among the poets was, with the look of a killed bull wandering around the cardboard" Poets' Cafe "..."
Marina Tsvetaeva
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, for example, the poet Georgy Adamovich, Anna Akhmatova herself did not appreciate Tsvetaeva's early poems, she spoke of them "chilly". In the 1920s, composer Arthur Lurie noted Akhmatova: “ You treat Tsvetaeva the way Chopin treated Schumann ", - bearing in mind that Schumann idolized Chopin, and that Chopin got rid of the "admirer" only with evasive remarks. And almost 40 years later, Akhmatova even answered with resentment to Adamovich's direct question about Tsvetaeva's poetry: "We are now fond of her, they love her very much, even more than Pasternak.".
But another, touching and warm, letter from Anna Akhmatova to Tsvetaeva is also known: “Dear Marina Ivanovna, for a long time I have not been so saddened by the agraphia, which I have suffered for many years, as today, when I want to talk to you. I never write to anyone, but your kind attitude is infinitely dear to me. Thank you for it and for the dedication of the poem. Until July 1, I am in St. Petersburg. I dream of reading your new poems. I kiss you and Alya. Your Akhmatova ".
In the summer of 1941, Anna Akhmatova came to "on Levine affairs" - to try to plead for her arrested son. The poetess found out that Tsvetaeva wanted to see her ( “And Boris Leonidovich [Pasternak] visited Marina after her misfortune and asked her what she would like. She answered: to see Akhmatova "), and invited her to the apartment of the writer Viktor Ardov on Bolshaya Ordynka, where she stayed herself.
The meeting took place on June 7 and 8, 1941. Very little information about her has survived. wrote sublimely: “Excitement was written on the faces of both of my guests. They met without vulgar dating procedures. It was not said either "very nice" or "so this is what you are." They just shook hands ... When Tsvetaeva was leaving, Anna Andreevna baptized her "... The publicist Lidia Chukovskaya, who also knew Akhmatova personally, recalled: “About the meeting itself, Akhmatova said only:“ She arrived and sat for seven hours. ” So they say about an uninvited and uninteresting guest. "
Akhmatova herself, according to the notes of the writer Lydia Chukovskaya, recalled her in a more prosaic way: she said that Tsvetaeva almost silently sat in the Ardovs' apartment for seven hours, and before that she was capricious that she could only travel by tram. However, the next evening Tsvetaeva again joined the company of Akhmatova, Chukovskaya and Ardov and drank wine with them.
Most likely, the "Moscow meeting" somewhat disappointed both poetesses: the path to it was too long and the expectations from the meeting were too high. In the notes of 1961, Anna Akhmatova recalled: “It’s scary to think how Marina herself would describe these meetings if she had remained alive, and I would have died on August 31, 41. It would have been a“ fragrant legend, ”as our grandfathers used to say. Maybe it would be a lament for 25 years of love, which turned out to be in vain, but in any case it would be great. Now, when she returned to her Moscow as such a queen and already forever ... I just want to recall these Two days "without a legend".
Marina Tsvetaeva got acquainted with the work of Anna Akhmatova in 1912, when she read her book "Evening", and for many years retained an enthusiastic attitude towards her. In the spring of 1917 Tsvetaeva wrote: "Everything about myself, everything about love." Yes, about myself, about love - and yet amazingly - about the silvery voice of a deer, about the dim expanses of the Ryazan province, about the swarthy heads of the Kherson temple, about the red maple leaf laid on the Song of Songs, about the air, "a gift from God" ... and so without end…. And she has one poem about young Pushkin, which covers all the research of all his biographers. Akhmatova writes about herself - about the eternal. And Akhmatova, without writing a single abstractly - public line, deepest of all - through the description of a feather on a hat - will pass on her age to descendants ... You can write 10 volumes about Akhmatova's little book - and you won't add anything .... What a difficult seductive gift for poets - Anna Akhmatova. "
The only meeting between Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva took place on June 7-8, 1941 in Moscow. From the memoirs of V.E. Ardova: “Excitement was written on the faces of both of my guests. They met without vulgar dating procedures. It was not said either "very nice" or "so this is what you are." They just shook hands ... When Tsvetaeva was leaving, Anna Andreevna baptized her. " Tsvetaeva dedicated to Akhmatova the collection "Versts", published in 1922, and 11 poems, addressed directly to Akhmatova in the collection "Versts", published a year earlier. She was later rededicated to the poem "On a Red Horse", originally dedicated to Eugene Lann. Later, on August 31 (old style) 1921, Tsvetaeva wrote to Akhmatova how grief the rumor about Akhmatova's death plunged her into, and reported: poets turned out to be Mayakovsky, with the look of a killed bull, wandering around the cardboard "Cafe of Poets" ....
Tsvetaeva wrote about Akhmatova deeply emotionally:
We are crowned to be one with you
We trample the earth, that the sky above us - too!
And the one who is mortally wounded by your fate,
Already immortal descends to death bed.
In the melodious city of my domes are burning,
And the wandering blind man glorifies the Bright Savior ...
And I give you my bell city
Akhmatova! - And my heart to boot.
“In order to say everything: the poems about Moscow that followed my St. Petersburg visit I owe Akhmatova, my love for her, my desire to give her something that is eternal love, then to give something that is more eternal than love. If I could just give her the Kremlin, I probably would not have written these poems. So, in a sense, I had a competition with Akhmatova, but “it’s not better to do it,” but it’s impossible to do it better, and it’s not better to put it at your feet. Competition? Zeal. I know that Akhmatova did not part with my handwritten poems later in 1916-17 and brought them in her purse so much that only folds and cracks remained. This story by Osip Mandelstam is one of my greatest joys in life. " Marina Tsvetaeva entered literature earlier than Anna Akhmatova - her first collection "Evening Album" was published in 1910, but in the reader's perception she retained the level of "younger contemporary, which she herself contributed a lot. Her enthusiastic adoration of "Zlotostaya Anna - of All Russia" ... seemed to suggest a certain inequality - especially since it did not evoke a response. (Akhmatova's "Late Answer" will be written in 1940, but even then it will remain unknown to the addressee).
Today we are with you, Marina,
We walk through the capital at midnight.
And behind us there are millions
And there is no more silent procession ...
And around the funeral bells
Yes Moscow wild moans
Blizzards, our sweeping trail.
The originality of the relationship between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva was perceptively defined by Ariadna Efron: “Marina Tsvetaeva was immeasurable, Anna Akhmatova was harmonious ... the immensity of one accepted (and loved) the harmony of the other, well, but harmony is not capable of perceiving immenseness." "Evening Album", "Evening" - so similar, without saying a word, they called their first books. This creative call of the two poets continued throughout their lives. It is also noteworthy that among their contemporaries Akhmatov and Tsvetaeva chose the same poets as their idols. Both had a poetic romance with Alexander Blok; they did not put any of the poets of their time so highly. An amazing combination of femininity and grace with courage and will, passion and impetuosity, with the chased filigree of verse, genuine sincerity of feeling and deep philosophical reflections on the eternal problems of life - this is what unites such distinctive, such dissimilar poets - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. “Youth always gives preference to Tsvetaeva,” writes the modern poet V. Soloukhin, “but over the years, with maturity, eyes (both souls and hearts) more and more often and confidently turn to Akhmatova. Our happiness lies in the fact that we have both ”.
Probably in the distant future and for our era, an elegant synthesis will be found. Contradictions will dull, contrasts are blurred, variegation will be reduced to unity, and from discordance you will get a "harmonious chorus." The future scientist, fascinated by harmony, will brilliantly show the "uniform style" of our time. But what a pity for our disorder, our living diversity, even our absurdity. And no "idea" will reconcile us with the transformation into masks of those faces that we knew and loved.
Complexity and inconsistency are the features of our era - we will preserve them carefully. What we value now is not the common, which unites our poets into groups and schools, not the elements of similarity - always external and meaningless. Private, personal, irreducible, separating - that's what interests us.
Marina Tsvetaeva: path to the loop
In Moscow, the domes are burning!
In Moscow - the bells are ringing!
And the tombs stand in a row,
Queens sleep in them, and kings.
Here is the storehouse of a folk song with repetitions and parallelism usual for it; The tune with "swinging" is a valiant ardor. Akhmatova is a Petersburg woman; her love for her hometown is enlightened by air sorrow. And she puts it in cold, classic lines.
But I won't trade the lush for anything
Granite city of glory and misfortune.
Tsvetaeva is always on the move; in her rhythms - rapid breathing from a fast run. She seems to be talking about something in a hurry, out of breath and waving her arms. Finish - and rush away. She is a fidget. Akhmatova - speaks slowly, in a very quiet voice: reclining motionless; chilly hands hides under his "false-classical" (in Mandelstam's words) shawl. Only in a barely noticeable intonation does a restrained feeling slip through. She is aristocratic in her weary poses. Tsvetaeva is a whirlwind, Akhmatova is silence. The face of the first and you will not see - so it is mobile, so varied its facial expressions. The second has a clean line of a frozen profile. Tsvetaeva is all in action - Akhmatova is in contemplation,
one barely smiles,
where the other roars with laughter.
Akhmatova's lyrics are elegiac through and through - suffering love, "stifling longing", the torment of the unloved or unloved, the bride's longing for the dead groom; its background is the four walls of a hateful room; excruciating ailment, bedridden. Outside the window, a blizzard - and she is alone in the approaching twilight. Tsvetaeva's poetry is full of health, filled with sultry young blood, sunny, sensual. There is frenzy, glee, hop in it.
The blood that sings like a wolf
Blood is a fierce dragon
Blood that blood with milk
He kisses the blood - forcibly.
The first is defeated, submissive, bashful, the second is the "Tsar Maiden", courageous, warlike, greedy, and in her love, persistent and domineering. Chains her fingers, strong hugs: what she grabs - will not let go. The whole world is hers; and she touches all his joys, like pearls in the palm of her hand - voluptuously and carefully. It is not enough for her and lands, and seas, and grasses, and dawn. Everything is looking for, everything is wandering in the steppes, but in the "Okyan": sharp-sighted eyes, an insatiable heart.
Akhmatova ascends the steps of initiation: from dark love to heavenly love. Her face has become thinner, like an icon-painting face, and her body is "thrown", overcome, forgotten. The past only disturbs in dreams, she is all in prayer, and lives in the "white room", in the "cell". Tsvetaeva - rooted to the ground; fell on her, fragrant and warm, and could not tear herself away. She is jubilant, blooming flesh. What does she care about Eternity, when her earthly thirst is not quenched and unquenchable.
I drink, I won't get drunk. A sigh - and a huge exhale
And blood murmuring underground rumble.
One is already in the kingdom of shadows: the other does not yet comprehend the possibility of death.
I do not accept eternity
Why was I buried?
I didn’t want to land
From my beloved land.
She loves the splendor of the church, the solemnity of the ceremony, the sweetness of prayer. She is pious, but not religious. How differently Akhmatova's and Tsvetaeva's love for Russia is expressed! The first rises to true pathos, becomes a prayer for the unfortunate "dark" homeland. She renounces everything personal, drives away from herself the last "shadows of songs and passions", for her the homeland is in the spirit and she prays
So that a cloud over dark Russia
Became a cloud in the glory of the rays.
The other has not the sorrow of the soul, but the terrible cry of the tormented body. What does it matter to her that the slain will become "God's army new warriors" - they are all her sons, her flesh. She shields them with herself, like the mother of her children, and howls with a wild animal voice over their corpses.
This lament is perhaps the strongest of everything Tsvetaeva has written:
And right and left
The throat is bloody.
And every wound:
- Mama
And only this
And clearly to me, drunk,
From the womb - and into the womb:
- Mama!
All lie in a row
- Do not separate the boundary.
Look: soldier!
Where is yours, where is a stranger?
……………………
Without will - without anger -
Lingering - stubborn -
All the way to the sky:
- Mama!
Akhmatova's art is noble and complete. Her poems are perfect in their Simplicity and subtlest grace. The poet is gifted with an amazing sense of proportion and impeccable taste. No wandering and throwing, almost no delusions. Akhmatova immediately goes on a broad path (already in her first collection "Evening" there are masterpieces) and walks along it with confident ease. Tsvetaeva, on the other hand, still cannot find herself. From amateurish, institute poems to the "evening album" (the title of her first collection), she moves to the touching details of "Magic Lantern", rushes between Bryusov and Blok, does not avoid the influence of A. Bely and Mayakovsky, falls into the extremes of the folk genre and chastushche style. She has a lot of temperament, but her taste is doubtful, and there is no sense of proportion at all. Her poems are uneven, sometimes chaotic and almost always stretched out. Her last poem: "The Tsar Maiden" perishes from verbosity. And yet this work is remarkable and her voice is not forgotten.
© Mnukhin L.A.
© FSUE "MIA" Russia Today ""
© AST Publishing House LLC
Anna Akhmatova
I taught women to speak
Foreword
"Then I thought: one crazy poet is good, two is bad."
Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova are so different and so similar.
By age - Akhmatova is only three years older: she was born in 1889, and Tsvetaeva - in 1892. By their originality - both of them have no equal. According to his biography, he lived with his homeland the most terrible years of the Civil War, the Revolution, the Great Patriotic War (though Tsvetaeva, “captured” only two months). According to women's fate, they were loved, were abandoned, fell in love and abandoned themselves, survived the prison and execution of their beloved men, gave birth and lost. By nature, they are iron and gentle, passionate and cold, vulnerable and tough. On the mind - wise and erudite. In their social circle, they were surrounded by all the "stars" of Russian literature of the early and mid-20th century: Nikolai Gumilyov, Kornei and Lydia Chukovskiy, Sergei Yesenin, Alexander Blok, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov, Faina Ranevskaya, Joseph Brodsky. By their own admission, they were persecuted and defamed by the "native" Soviet power, but ascended to heaven by true connoisseurs of art all over the world. In life, they are unhappy and tragic eternal wanderers, indifferent to things and vanity. The only difference is in the dates of death: Akhmatova survived Tsvetaeva by almost thirty years.
And how did they themselves relate to each other? According to contemporaries, 23-year-old Tsvetaeva was delighted with Akhmatova's poetry: in poetry and letters she confessed her true love to her! Anna Andreevna was very embarrassed by this, but, as Osip Mandelstam said, Akhmatova in 1916-1917 did not part with Tsvetaeva's handwritten poems and “brought them to such an extent in her purse that only folds and cracks remained”. Here are the lines dated February 11, 1915, Tsvetaeva dedicated to Anna Andreevna:
"A narrow, non-Russian camp -
Above the folios.
Shawl from Turkish countries
Fell like a mantle.
You will be transferred to one
Broken line.
Cold - in fun, heat -
In your despondency.
Your whole life is a chill.
And it will end with what is it?
Cloudy dark forehead
A young demon.
Each of the earthly
For you to play is a trifle.
And an unarmed verse
It aims at our heart.
In the morning sleepy hour,
It seems like a quarter past five
I fell in love with you
Anna Akhmatova".
“Everything about myself, everything about love,” wrote Tsvetaeva in her notebooks dated 1917, discussing Akhmatov's poetry. - Yes, about myself, about love - and yet - amazingly - about the silver voice of a deer, about the dim expanses of the Ryazan province, about the swarthy chapters of the Chersonesos temple, about the red maple leaf laid on the Song of Songs, about the air, "a gift from God" ... and so endlessly ... And she has one poem about the young Pushkin, which covers all the research of all his biographers.
Akhmatova writes about herself - about the eternal. And Akhmatova, without writing a single abstract social line, deeply - through the description of a feather on a hat - will pass on her age to descendants ... Ten volumes can be written about Akhmatova's little book. And you won't add anything ... What a difficult and seductive gift from the poets - Anna Akhmatova! "
With delight and passion, Tsvetaeva addressed Akhmatova in her letters: “ Dear Anna Andreevna! There is so much to say - and so little time! .. I do not value anything and I do not store anything, but I will take your little books in the coffin - under my pillow! You, and high from you! .. You are my favorite poet, I once - a long time ago - about six years ago - saw you in a dream - your future book: dark green, morocco, with silver - "Words zlotys ", - some ancient witchcraft, like a prayer (or rather - the opposite!) - and - waking up - I knew that you would write it ... I understand your every word: the whole flight, all the weight. "And your spurs are light ringing" - this is the most tender thing that has been said about love ... I am insatiable for your soul and letters ... M.Ts. Moscow, 26th Russian April 1921 ".
Tsvetaeva Akhmatova dedicated many poems, and Anna Andreevna - only one, and then many years later:
"Late answer
My little white hand, Warlock ...
Invisible, double, mockingbird ...
What are you hiding in the black bushes? -
Then you will hide in a leaky birdhouse,
Then you will flicker on the lost crosses,
Then you shout from the Marina tower:
“I returned home today,
Admire, dear arable land,
What happened to me.
Swallowed up loved ones abyss
And the parental house was plundered. "
Today we are with you, Marina,
We walk through the capital at midnight.
And behind us there are millions
And there is no more silent procession ...
And around the funeral bells
Yes Moscow hoarse moans
Blizzards, our covering the trail.March 16, 1940, 1961,Fountain House - Red Cavalry ".
“I didn’t dare to read it,” Anna Andreyevna confessed to the writer Lydia Chukovskaya. - And now I'm sorry. She dedicated so many poems to me. That would be the answer, even if decades later. But I did not dare because of the terrible line about my loved ones. "
And Tsvetaeva threw poems, letters, gifts at her idol. In one of her letters, for example, she admired the Akhmatov's “Lullaby” she had just read - “Far in a huge forest ...” - and argued that for one line of this poem - “I’m a bad mother” - she was ready to give everything that was still I have written it since then and will write it someday. Although already at that time, many considered her own poems about Moscow or to Blok to be unusually talented. But Akhmatova did not appreciate them. Moreover, she spoke coldly about Marina Ivanovna, got off with polite, evasive answers and remarks. For example, she did not really like the so-called “enzhambemana”, which Tsvetaeva abused every year more and more, that is, about the transfer of the logical content of a line to the beginning of the next line. "This can be done once, twice," Akhmatova agreed, "but she has it everywhere, and this technique loses all its power."
When she was asked to evaluate Tsvetaeva's work, she replied with restraint: "We are now fond of her, they love her very much, even more than Pasternak." But personally I didn’t add anything.
But her contemporaries explained Akhmatova's indifference to Tsvetaeva's poems not only by their verbal, formal makeup. “She probably didn’t like something else,” suggested Georgy Adamovich, “the demonstrative, provocative, almost annoying“ poetry ”of Tsvetaev's poetry, internal Balmontism with sharp external differences from Balmont, an unavoidable posture with undoubted sincerity, constant“ jump ”. If this is so, then not only Akhmatova was removed by this, and it was not for her alone that the work of Tsvetaeva, a man who was rarely gifted and rarely unhappy, was not entirely acceptable.
* * *
For the first time, the poetesses met only in 1941 - only two months remained before Marina Ivanovna's suicide. Then a lot of terrible things fell on her: her husband and daughter were in prison, she was tied up by the NKVD, she had nothing to live on, besides, she was apocalyptic about the outbreak of war with Germany. And she fell ill from mental anguish. And when Boris Pasternak visited her in Elabuga, she asked him to see Akhmatova. “Boris Leonidovich left Nina's phone here and asked me to call by all means,” Anna Andreevna recalled. - I called. She walked over.
- Says Akhmatova.
- I'm listening to you.
(Yes, yes, like this: she listens to me.)
- Boris Leonidovich told me that you want to see me. Where is it better for us to meet: at your place or at my place?
- I think you have.
- Then I will now call someone normal, who would explain to you how to go to me.
- Please. You just need a normal person who can explain to the abnormal.
Then I thought: one crazy poet is good, two is bad.
She arrived and sat for seven hours. The Ardovs were rich then and sent a whole calf leg to my room.
The next day the call: I want to see you again. And I was going to see Nikolai Ivanovich, in Maryina Roshcha. I gave her that phone number. In the evening she called; says: I can't go by taxi, by metro, by trolleybus, by bus - only by tram. (She was afraid of street cars, in the subway - escalators, in houses - elevators, seemed short-sighted and unprotected from the world. - Ed.)
Teddy Grits explained everything to her in detail and went out to meet her. The four of us drank wine. Teddy said there was a man sticking out at the house. I thought: what a happy life she has! Or maybe I have it? Or maybe we both? "
“It is interesting to compare with this story about meetings with Tsvetaeva the recording made by Anna Andreevna in 1962,” wrote Lydia Korneeva. - “Our first and last two-day meeting took place in June 1941 at 17 Bolshaya Ordynka Street, in the Ardovs' apartment (day one) and in Maryina Roshcha with NI Khardzhiev (day two and last). It’s scary to think how Marina herself would describe these meetings if she had remained alive, and I would have died on August 31, 41. It would have been a “fragrant legend,” as our grandfathers used to say. Maybe it would be a lament for 25 years of love, which turned out to be in vain, but in any case it would be great. Now, when she has returned to her Moscow as such a queen and already forever ... I just want to recall these Two days “without a legend”.
And later Akhmatova will write words of gratitude to Tsvetaeva: “... I never write to anyone, but your kind attitude is infinitely dear to me. Thank you for him and for the dedication of the poem ... I dream of reading your new poems ... Your Akhmatova. "
But no one was destined to read the new Tsvetaeva poems. After the start of World War II, Marina Ivanovna was sent to evacuation to the city of Elabuga in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring her of its fortress, joked: "The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself." Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva in Yelabuga on August 31, 1941, and hanged herself (according to Mark Slonim, according to K. G. Paustovsky).
“October 21 41. Anna Andreevna asks me about Tsvetaeva,” writes Lydia Chukovskaya. - I read to her what I wrote down on September 4, right after the news of the suicide. Today we walked with Anna Andreevna along the Kama, I translated her along the perch across that same puddle-ocean, through which a little more than fifty days ago I helped Marina Ivanovna to pass ...
“It’s very strange,” I said, “the same river, and a puddle, and the same thing. Two months ago, at this very place, through this very puddle, I translated Marina Ivanovna. And we talked about you. And now she is not there and we are talking about her. At the same place!
Anna Andreevna did not answer, she just looked at me with attention.
But I didn’t tell her our conversation at that time ...
(I expressed my joy to Marina Ivanovna: A. A. is not here, not in Chistopol, not in this foreign semi-Tatar village, drowning in mud, torn away from the world. nothing can. ”“ Do you think I can? ”- Marina Ivanovna interrupted me sharply)”.
* * *
Of course, two brilliant women could not help but recognize each other's extraordinary abilities. Maybe they were a little jealous, maybe a little jealous, but they certainly appreciated the poetic gift - so rare, so vulnerable and so omnipotent!
In general, it is amazing how the “Queen of Petersburg” - that was the name of the admirers of Akhmatova and “the queen of Moscow” - Tsvetaeva almost simultaneously appeared in the same time space, in one country, in neighboring cities. Apparently, God was very generous with the advent of gifted people in the XX century.
At that time I was staying on earth.
I was given a name at baptism - Anna,
The sweetest for human lips and hearing.
So wonderfully I knew earthly joy
And I counted not twelve holidays,
And as many as there were days in a year.Epic Motives, 1913
I was born the same year as Charlie Chaplin, Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, the Eiffel Tower and, I think, Eliot. This summer, Paris celebrated the centenary of the fall of the Bastille - 1889. On the night of my birth, the ancient Midsummer's night did and does<…>.
... In the family, no one, how many eyes he sees around, did not write poetry, only the first Russian poetess Anna Bunina was the aunt of my grandfather Erasmus Ivanovich Stogov. The Stogovs were poor landowners of the Mozhaisky district of the Moscow province, resettled there for the rebellion at Martha Posadnitsa. In Novgorod, they were richer and more noble.
My ancestor, Khan Akhmat, was killed at night in his tent by a bribed murderer, and this, as Karamzin narrates, ended the Mongol yoke in Russia. On this day, as in memory of a happy event, a procession of the cross went from the Sretensky monastery in Moscow. This Akhmat, as you know, was a Chingizid.
One of the Akhmatov princesses - Praskovya Yegorovna - in the 18th century married the wealthy and noble landowner of Simbirsk Motovilov. Egor Motovilov was my great-grandfather. His daughter Anna Yegorovna is my grandmother. She died when my mother was nine years old, and I was named Anna after her. From her feronnieres they made several rings with diamonds and one with an emerald, and I could not put on her thimble, although I had thin fingers.
Baptism certificate
Certificate No. 4379
By the Decree of His Imperial Majesty, from the Kherson Spiritual Consistory, as a result of the petition of the wife of the retired Captain of the 2nd rank Inna Erasmova Gorenko and on the basis of the determination held in this Consistory on April 30, 1890, this certificate was issued that the corded the metric book of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the port city of Odessa, the Kherson diocese, for one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, in the 1st part about those born, under No. 87 female, the following act is recorded: June eleventh was born, and December seventeenth Anna was baptized; her parents: Captain 2nd Rank Andrei Antoniev Gorenko and his legal wife Inna Erasmova, both Orthodox. The successors were: candidate of natural sciences Stefan Grigoriev Romanenko and the daughter of a nobleman Maria Feodorovna Waltser.
The sacrament of baptism was performed by Archpriest Evlampy Arnoldov with the psalmist Alexander Tobolin. The due stamp duty was paid by the city of Odessa. 1890 May 7 days. To believe the word "cathedral" written between the lines.
Member of the Consistory Archpriest Evlampy Arnoldov
Anna Andreevna was born on June 11 (23), 1889 near Odessa. In the family of the hereditary nobleman Andrei Antonovich Gorenko and Inna Erasmovna Stogova, in addition to Anna in the family, there were five more children: Andrei, Inna, Irina, Iya and Victor.
The marriage of Akhmatova's parents was unhappy. Andrei Antonovich lived for his own pleasure, not counting, spending his wife's money, did not deprive the attention of a single pretty young woman. Inna Erasmovna was worried about her husband's indifference both to her and to the children.
Anna Andreevna, although in the family she was considered a father's daughter for external similarities, she was always on the side of her mother.
... And a woman with transparent eyes
(Blue so deep that the sea
It is impossible not to remember, looking at them),
With a rare name and a white pen,
And the kindness that is inherited
I seemed to have received from her, -
An unnecessary gift of my cruel life ...(Prehistory, 1945)
(Interviewed by Lydia Chukovskaya, Anna Akhmatova and Valentina Sreznevskaya):
“… Yeah, your mother wasn’t able to do anything at all in life. Imagine, Lydia Korneevna, from an old noble family, and left for courses. How she was going to live is not clear.
“Not only for courses,” Anna Andreevna corrected, “she became a member of the Narodnaya Volya circle. Much more revolutionary.
- Imagine, Lydia Korneevna, a small woman, pink, with an exceptional complexion, blonde hair, with exceptional hands.
- Wonderful white hands! - put in Anna Andreevna.
- An extraordinary French language, - continued Sreznevskaya, - an ever-falling pince-nez, and nothing, well, absolutely nothing ... And your father! Handsome, tall, slender, always dressed with a needle, the top hat was slightly to one side, as was worn under Napoleon III, and he said about Napoleon's wife: "Eugene was not bad ..."
“He saw her in Constantinople,” Anna Andreevna put in, “and found that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Then the conversation turned for some reason about the hands of Nikolai Stepanovich: "Immortal hands!" - said Valeria Sergeevna.
One of the friends of Andrei Antonovich Gorenko testifies
“It was a strange family ... A lot of children. Mother, a wealthy landowner, kind, scattered to the point of stupidity, careless, always thinking about something else ... The house is a mess. They eat when they have to, there are a lot of servants, but there is no order. The governess did what they wanted. The hostess wanders like a somnambulist. Once, when moving to another house, for a long time she carried in her hands a thick bag with interest-bearing papers for several tens of thousands of rubles, and at the last minute found a suitable place for it - she put the bag in the baby bath that dangled behind the cart. When my husband found out about this, he rushed off in a cab to catch up with the dray. And his wife was surprised to see that he was worried, and even angry. "
Lydia Chukovskaya "Notes about Anna Akhmatova"
“I began to ask Anna Andreevna about her family. She is such a special person, both inside and out, that I really want to understand: is there anything in her that is generic, family, common. Can she really be like someone?
She told me about her sisters - Iya, Inna.
- Both died of tuberculosis. Iya - when she was twenty-seven years old. I, of course, would have died too, but my thyroid disease saved me - Graves is destroying tuberculosis. We had a terrible family tbc, although father and mother were perfectly healthy. (Father died of angina pectoris, mother died of pneumonia in old age.) Iya was very special, stern, strict ...
“She was like that,” Anna Andreevna continued after a pause, “what the readers always imagined me and what I never was.
I asked if Iya Andreevna liked her poems?
“No, she found them frivolous. She didn't like them. Everything is the same, everything about love and about love. - Anna Andreevna stood at the window and wiped the cups with a rough towel.
“We had no books in the house, not a single book. Only Nekrasov, a thick bound volume. Mom gave it to me to read on holidays. This book was presented to my mother by her first husband, who shot himself ... The gymnasium in Tsarskoye, where I studied, was a real bursa ... Then the gymnasium in Kiev was a little better ...
I loved poetry since childhood and I don't know where I got it from. At thirteen I already knew Baudelaire, Verlaine, and all the damned in French. I started writing poetry early, but the surprising thing is that when I had not yet written a single line, everyone around was sure that I would become a poetess. And dad even teased me like this: a decadent poetess ... "
My childhood is as unique and wonderful as the childhood of all children in the world ...
Talking about childhood is both easy and difficult. Thanks to its static nature, it is very easy to describe it, but this description too often penetrates with a sweetness that is completely alien to such an important and deep period of life as childhood. In addition, some people want to seem too unhappy in childhood, others - too happy. Both are usually nonsense. Children have nothing to compare with, and they just don't know if they are happy or unhappy. As soon as consciousness appears, a person finds himself in a completely ready and motionless world, and the most natural thing is not to believe that this world was once different. This initial picture forever remains in the soul of a person, and there are people who only believe in it, somehow hiding this oddity. Others, on the contrary, do not at all believe in the authenticity of this picture and also repeat rather absurdly: "Was it me?"
In youth and in adulthood, a person very rarely recalls his childhood. He is an active participant in life, and he is not up to it. And it seems that it will always be so. But somewhere around fifty years old, the whole beginning of life returns to him.
* * *
I was born in Sarakini's dacha (Bolshoi Fontan, 11th steam train station) near Odessa. This dacha (or rather, a hut) stood in the depths of a very narrow and downward plot of land - next to the post office. The sea coast is steep there, and the steam train's rails ran along the very edge.
My father was a retired naval mechanical engineer at the time. As a one-year-old child, I was transported north to Tsarskoe Selo. I lived there until I was sixteen.
My first memories are those of Tsarskoye Selo: the green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where the nanny took me, the hippodrome, where the little colorful horses galloped, the old station and something else that later became part of the Tsarskoye Selo Ode.
I
Horses are being led along the alley
The waves of the combed manes are long.
Oh, captivating city of mysteries,
I am sad to love you.It's strange to remember: my soul was yearning,
Choking in dying delirium
And now I have become a toy
Like my pink cockatoo friend.The chest is not compressed with a presentiment of pain,
If you want, look in the eyes.
I don't like only an hour before sunset,
Wind from the sea and the word "go away."
II
... And there is my marble counterpart,
Lost under an old maple tree
I gave my face to the waters of the lake,
Listens to green rustles.
And wash the light rains
His clotted wound ...
Cold white wait
I will become marble too.
III
The swarthy youth wandered through the alleys,
By the lakeside shores,
And the century we cherish
Barely audible rustle of steps.The needles of the pine trees are thick and prickly
They are covered with low stumps ...
Here lay his cocked hat
And a disheveled tome Guys.("In Tsarskoe Selo", 1911)
... The main place in Tsarskoe Selo was the house of the merchant Elizaveta Ivanovna Shukhardina (Shirokaya, the second house from the station, corner of Bezymyanny lane). But the first year of the century, 1900, the family lived (winter) in the Daudel house (corner of Srednyaya and Leontievskaya. There is measles and even, maybe, smallpox).