Love polygons by Maximilian Voloshin. Voloshin's son Ilya was involved in fraud with credit cards Recognized and unrecognized works

Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (surname at birth - Kirienko-Voloshin). Born on May 16 (28), 1877 in Kyiv - died on August 11, 1932 in Koktebel (Crimea). Russian poet, translator, landscape artist, art and literary critic.

Maximilian Voloshin was born on May 16 (28 according to the new style) 1877 in Kyiv.

Father - Kirienko-Voloshin, lawyer, collegiate adviser (died in 1881).

Mother - Elena Ottobaldovna (nee Glaser) (1850-1923).

Soon after his birth, his parents separated, Maximilian was raised by his mother, with whom he was very close until the end of her life.

Early childhood was spent in Taganrog and Sevastopol.

He began receiving secondary education at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium. He did not shine with his knowledge and academic performance. He recalled: “When my mother submitted reviews of my Moscow successes to the Feodosia gymnasium, the director, the humane and elderly Vasily Ksenofontovich Vinogradov, threw up his hands and said: “Madam, we, of course, will accept your son, but I must warn you that We can’t correct idiots.”

In 1893, he and his mother moved to Koktebel in Crimea. There Maximilian went to the Feodosia Gymnasium (the building has been preserved - now it houses the Feodosia Academy of Finance and Economics). Since the walk from Koktebel to Feodosia through mountainous desert terrain was long, Voloshin lived in rented apartments in Feodosia.

The views and life attitudes of the young Maximilian Voloshin can be judged from a questionnaire that has survived to this day.

1. What is your favorite virtue? – Self-sacrifice and diligence.

2. Favorite quality in a man? – Femininity.

3. Favorite quality in a woman? - Courage.

4. Your favorite activity is Traveling and talking together.

5. A distinctive feature of your character? - Scatteredness.

6. How do you imagine happiness? - Control the crowd.

7. How do you imagine unhappiness? - Lose faith in yourself.

8. What are your favorite colors and flowers? - Blue, lily of the valley.

9. If you weren't you, what would you like to be? - Peshkovsky.

10. Where would you prefer to live? - Where I am not.

11. Who are your favorite prose writers? - Dickens, Dostoevsky.

From 1897 to 1899, Voloshin studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, was expelled “for participation in riots” with the right to reinstatement, did not continue his studies, and began self-education.

In 1899, for his active participation in the All-Russian student strike, he was expelled for a year and deported to Feodosia under the secret supervision of the police. On August 29 of the same year, he and his mother went to Europe for almost six months, on his first trip abroad.

Returning to Moscow, Voloshin passed exams at the university as an external student, transferred to the third year, and in May 1900 again set off on a two-month trip around Europe along a route he himself had developed. This time - on foot, with friends: Vasily Isheev, Leonid Kandaurov, Alexey Smirnov.

Upon his return to Russia, Maximilian Voloshin was arrested on suspicion of distributing illegal literature. From Crimea he was transported to Moscow, kept in solitary confinement for two weeks, but was soon released, deprived of the right to enter Moscow and St. Petersburg. This accelerated Voloshin’s departure to Central Asia with a survey party for the construction of the Orenburg-Tashkent railway. At that time - into voluntary exile.

In September 1900, a survey party headed by V.O. Vyazemsky, arrived in Tashkent. It includes M.A. Voloshin, who was listed as a paramedic on his ID. However, he showed such remarkable organizational abilities that when the party left for the expedition, he was appointed to the responsible position of head of the caravan and head of the camp.

He recalled: “1900, the turn of two centuries, was the year of my spiritual birth. I walked with caravans through the desert. Here Nietzsche and Vladimir Solovyov’s “Three Conversations” overtook me. They gave me the opportunity to look at the entire European culture retrospectively - from above Asian plateaus and reassess cultural values."

In Tashkent, he decides not to return to university, but to go to Europe and engage in self-education.

In the 1900s, he traveled a lot, studied in European libraries, and listened to lectures at the Sorbonne. In Paris, he also took drawing and engraving lessons from the artist E. S. Kruglikova.

Returning to Moscow at the beginning of 1903, Voloshin easily became one of the Russian Symbolists and began to actively publish. From that time on, living alternately in his homeland and in Paris, he did a lot to bring Russian and French art closer together.

Since 1904, he regularly sent correspondence from Paris to the newspaper Rus and the magazine Libra, and wrote about Russia for the French press. Later, in 1908, Polish sculptor Edward Wittig creates a large sculptural portrait of M.A. Voloshin, which was exhibited at the Autumn Salon, was purchased by the Paris City Hall and the following year was installed at 66 Exelman Boulevard, where it remains to this day.

“These years I am just an absorbing sponge. I am all eyes, all ears. I wander through countries, museums, libraries: Rome, Spain, Corsica, Andorra, Louvre, Prado, Vatican... National Library. In addition to the technique of the word, I master the technique of the brush and a pencil... Stages of the wandering of the spirit: Buddhism, Catholicism, magic, Freemasonry, occultism, theosophy, R. Steiner. A period of great personal experiences of a romantic and mystical nature," he wrote.

On March 23, 1905, in Paris he became a Freemason, having received initiation into the Masonic Lodge “Labor and True True Friends” No. 137 (Grand Lodge of France - VLF). In April of the same year he moved to Mount Sinai Lodge No. 6 (VLF).

Since 1906, after his marriage to the artist Margarita Vasilyevna Sabashnikova, he settled in St. Petersburg. In 1907, he separated from his wife and decided to leave for Koktebel. I started writing the Cimmerian Twilight series.

Since 1910, he worked on monographic articles about K. F. Bogaevsky, A. S. Golubkina, M. S. Saryan, and advocated for the artistic groups “Jack of Diamonds” and “Donkey’s Tail,” although he himself stood outside the literary and artistic groups.

With the poetess Elizaveta (Lilya) Dmitrieva, Voloshin composed a very successful literary hoax - Cherubina de Gabriac. He asked her for a petition to join the Anthroposophical Society.

The first collection “Poems. 1900-1910" was published in Moscow in 1910, when Voloshin became a prominent figure in the literary process: an influential critic and an established poet with a reputation as a "strict Parnassian."

In 1914, a book of selected articles on culture was published - “Faces of Creativity”, and in 1915 - a book of passionate poems about the horror of war - “Anno mundi ardentis 1915” (“In the year of the burning world 1915”).

At this time, he paid more and more attention to painting, painted watercolor landscapes of the Crimea, and exhibited his works at World of Art exhibitions.

On February 13, 1913, Voloshin gave a public lecture at the Polytechnic Museum “On the artistic value of Repin’s damaged painting.” In the lecture, he expressed the idea that in the painting itself “self-destructive forces lurk,” that it was its content and artistic form that caused aggression against it.

In the summer of 1914, captivated by the ideas of anthroposophy, Voloshin came to Dornach (Switzerland), where, together with like-minded people from more than 70 countries (among them Andrei Bely, Asya Turgeneva, Margarita Voloshina), he began the construction of the First Goetheanum - a cultural center founded by R. Steiner anthroposophical society. The first Goetheanum burned down on the night of December 31, 1922 to January 1, 1923.

In 1914, Voloshin wrote a letter to Russian Minister of War Sukhomlinov refusing military service and participation “in the bloody massacre” of the First World War.

After the revolution, Maximilian Voloshin finally settled in Koktebel, in a house built in 1903-1913 by his mother Elena Ottobaldovna Voloshina. Here he created many watercolors that formed his “Koktebel Suite”.

Voloshin perceived the events of 1917 and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks as a disaster, he wrote:

It's over with Russia... Lastly
We talked about her, chatted,
They slurped, drank, spat,
Got dirty in dirty squares,
Sold on the streets: shouldn't it?
Who wants lands, republics, and freedoms,
Civil rights? And the people's homeland
He was dragged out to rot like carrion.
Oh, Lord, open up, waste away,
Send fire, plagues and scourges upon us,
Germans from the west, Mongol from the east,
Give us into slavery again and forever,
To atone humbly and deeply
Judas' sin until the Last Judgment!

He often signed his watercolors: “Your wet light and matte shadows give the stones a shade of turquoise” (about the Moon); “Thinly carved distances, washed away by the light of the clouds”; "In the saffron twilight, purple hills." The inscriptions give some idea of ​​the artist’s watercolors - poetic, perfectly conveying not so much the real landscape as the mood it evokes, the endless, tireless variety of lines of the hilly “country of Cimmeria”, their soft, muted colors, the line of the sea horizon - some kind of magical, all-organizing dash , clouds melting in the ashen moonlit sky. Which allows us to attribute these harmonious landscapes to the Cimmerian school of painting.

During the Civil War, the poet tried to moderate the hostility by saving the persecuted in his house: first the Reds from the Whites, then, after the change of power, the Whites from the Reds. The letter sent by M. Voloshin in defense of O. E. Mandelstam, who was arrested by the Whites, very likely saved him from execution.

In 1924, with the approval of the People's Commissariat of Education, Voloshin turned his house in Koktebel into a free house of creativity (later the House of Creativity of the USSR Literary Fund).

Maximilian Voloshin died after a second stroke on August 11, 1932 in Koktebel and was buried on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar near Koktebel. N. Chukovsky, G. Storm, Artobolevsky, A. Gabrichevsky took part in the funeral.

Voloshin bequeathed his house to the Writers' Union.

On August 1, 1984, the grand opening of the Museum “House-Museum of Maximilian Voloshin” took place in Koktebel. On June 19, 2007, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Kyiv on the house in which Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin was born (house number 24 on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv).

The International Voloshin Competition, the International Voloshin Prize and the Voloshin September festival were established.

In 2007, the name of M. A. Voloshin was given to library No. 27, located in Novodevichy Proezd in Moscow.

Crimean alien. Voloshin's mysticism

Personal life of Maximilian Voloshin:

In his youth, he was friends with Alexandra Mikhailovna Petrova (1871-1921), the daughter of a colonel, head of the border guard in Feodosia. She became interested in spiritualism, then theosophy, and later, not without Voloshin’s participation, she came to anthroposophy.

In 1903 in Moscow, visiting the famous collector S.I. Shchukin, Maximilian met a girl who amazed him with her unique beauty, sophistication and original worldview - Margarita Vasilievna Sabashnikova. She was an artist of the Repin school, a fan of Vrubel's work. She was known in the artistic community as a fine portrait painter and colorist. In addition, she wrote poetry (worked in the direction of symbolism).

On April 12, 1906, Sabashnikova and Voloshin got married in Moscow. But the marriage turned out to be short-lived - a year later they broke up, maintaining friendly relations until the end of Voloshin’s life. One of the external reasons for the breakup was Margarita Vasilievna’s passion for Vyacheslav Ivanov, with whom the Voloshins lived next door in St. Petersburg.

In 1922 M.V. Voloshina was forced to leave Soviet Russia, settled in the south of Germany, in Stuttgart, where she lived until her death in 1976, and was engaged in spiritual painting of the Christian and anthroposophical directions.

Soon after breaking up with Sobashnikova, in 1907 Voloshin left for Koktebel. And in the summer of 1909, young poets and Elizaveta (Lilya) Dmitrieva, an ugly, lame, but very talented girl, came to him.

Soon Voloshin and Dmitrieva created the most famous literary hoax of the 20th century: Cherubina de Gabriac. Voloshin came up with a legend, a literary mask of Cherubina, and acted as an intermediary between Dmitrieva and the editor of Apollo S. Makovsky, but only Lilya wrote poetry under this pseudonym.

On November 22, 1909, a duel took place on the Black River between Voloshin and Gumilev. According to the “Confession”, written by Elizaveta Dmitrieva in 1926 shortly before her death, the main reason was the immodesty of N. Gumilyov, who talked everywhere about his affair with Cherubina de Gabriac.

Having given Gumilyov a public slap in the face in the studio of the artist Golovin, Voloshin stood up not for his literary hoax, but for the honor of a woman close to him - Elizaveta Dmitrieva.

Evgeniy Znosko-Borovsky became Gumilyov’s second. Voloshin's second was Count Alexei Tolstoy.

However, the scandalous duel brought Voloshin only ridicule: instead of a symbolic slap-challenge, Voloshin gave Gumilyov a real slap in the face, on the way to the place of the duel he lost his galosh and forced everyone to look for it, then, on principle, did not shoot at the enemy. Whereas Gumilyov shot at Voloshin twice, but did not hit. Voloshin deliberately fired into the air, and his pistol misfired twice in a row. All participants in the duel were punished with a fine of ten rubles.

After the fight, the opponents did not shake hands and did not make peace. Only in 1921, having met Gumilyov in Crimea, Voloshin responded to his handshake.

Elizaveta Dmitrieva (Cherubina de Gabriak) left Voloshin immediately after the duel and married her childhood friend, engineer Vsevolod Vasilyev. For the rest of her life (she died in 1928), she corresponded with Voloshin.

Lilya Dmitrieva (Cherubina de Gabriak)

in 1923 his mother Elena Ottobaldovna died. On March 9, 1927, Voloshin officially married Maria Stepanovna Zabolotskaya, a paramedic who helped him care for his mother in her last years of life.

It is believed that this marriage somewhat extended the life of Voloshin himself - throughout the remaining years he was ill a lot, almost never left Crimea and needed constant professional care.

Bibliography of Maximilian Voloshin:

1900-1910 - Poems
1914 - Faces of creativity
1915 - Anno mundi ardentis
1918 - Iverni: (Selected Poems)
1919 - Demons are deaf and dumb
1923 - Strife: Poems about the Revolution
1923 - Poems about terror
1946 - The Ways of Russia: Poems
1976 - Maximilian Voloshin - artist. Collection of materials
1990 - Voloshin M. Autobiography. Memories of Maximilian Voloshin
1990 - Voloshin M. About himself
2007 - Voloshin Maximilian. “I was, I am...” (Compiled by Vera Teryokhina

Paintings by Maximilian Voloshin:

1914 - “Spain. By the sea"
1914 - “Paris. Place de la Concorde at night"
1921 - “Two trees in the valley. Koktebel"
1921 - “Landscape with lake and mountains”
1925 - “Pink Twilight”
1925 - “Hills parched by the heat”
1926 - “Moon Vortex”
1926 - “Lead Light”

The image of Maximilian Voloshin is present in the 1987 film “It’s not always summer in Crimea” directed by Willen Novak. The actor played the role of the poet.

At first, Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin, a poet, wrote not many poems. Almost all of them were placed in a book that appeared in 1910 (“Poems. 1900-1910”). V. Bryusov saw in it the hand of a “jeweler”, a “real master”. Voloshin considered his teachers the virtuosos of poetic plasticity J. M. Heredia, Gautier and other “Parnassian” poets from France. Their works were in contrast to Verlaine's "musical" direction. This characteristic of Voloshin’s work can be attributed to his first collection, as well as to the second, which was compiled by Maximilian in the early 1920s and was not published. It was called "Selva oscura". It included poems created between 1910 and 1914. The main part of them was later included in the book of favorites, published in 1916 (“Iverni”).

Orientation towards Verhaeren

We can talk for a long time about the work of such a poet as Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin. The biography summarized in this article contains only basic facts about him. It should be noted that E. Verhaeren became a clear political reference point for the poet from the beginning of the 1st World War. Bryusov’s translations back in an article in 1907 and Valery Bryusov” were subjected to crushing criticism by Maximilian. Voloshin himself translated Verhaeren “from different points of view” and “in different eras.” He summed up his attitude towards him in his 1919 book “Verhaeren. Fate. Creation. Translations".

Voloshin Maximilian Aleksandrovich is a Russian poet who wrote poems about the war. Included in the 1916 collection “Anno mundi ardentis”, they are quite in tune with Verkhanov’s poetics. They processed the images and techniques of poetic rhetoric, which became a stable characteristic of all of Maximilian’s poetry during revolutionary times, the civil war and subsequent years. Some of the poems written at that time were published in the 1919 book “Deaf and Mute Demons”, another part was published in Berlin in 1923 under the title “Poems about Terror”. However, most of these works remained in manuscript.

Official persecution

In 1923, the persecution of Voloshin by the state began. His name was forgotten. In the USSR, from 1928 to 1961, not a single line of this poet appeared in print. When Ehrenburg respectfully mentioned Voloshin in his memoirs in 1961, this immediately provoked a rebuke from A. Dymshits, who pointed out that Maximilian was a decadent of the most insignificant kind and reacted negatively to the revolution.

Return to Crimea, attempts to get into print

In the spring of 1917, Voloshin returned to Crimea. In his 1925 autobiography, he wrote that he would not leave him again, would not emigrate anywhere and would not escape from anything. Previously, he stated that he does not speak on any of the fighting sides, but lives only in Russia and what is happening in it; and also wrote that he needed to stay in Russia until the end. Voloshin's house, located in Koktebel, remained hospitable to strangers during the civil war. Both white officers and red leaders found shelter here and hid from persecution. Maximilian wrote about this in his 1926 poem “The House of the Poet.” The “Red Leader” was Bela Kun. After Wrangel was defeated, he led the pacification of Crimea through organized famine and terror. Apparently, as a reward for harboring Kun under Soviet rule, Voloshin was kept his house, and relative safety was ensured. However, neither his merits, nor the efforts of an influential person at that time, nor a partially repentant and pleading appeal to L. Kamenev, the all-powerful ideologist (in 1924) helped Maximilian get into print.

Two directions of Voloshin’s thoughts

Voloshin wrote that for him poetry remains the only way to express thoughts. And they rushed towards him in two directions. The first is historiosophical (the fate of Russia, the works about which he often took on a conditionally religious overtones). The second is ahistorical. Here we can note the cycle “In the Ways of Cain,” which reflected the ideas of universal anarchism. The poet wrote that in these works he forms almost all of his social ideas, which were mostly negative. It is worth noting the general ironic tone of this cycle.

Recognized and unrecognized works

The inconsistency of thoughts characteristic of Voloshin often led to the fact that his creations were sometimes perceived as stilted melodic declamation ("Transrealization", "Holy Rus'", "Kitezh", "Angel of Times", "Wild Field"), aestheticized speculations ("Cosmos" ", "Leviathan", "Tanob" and some other works from "The Ways of Cain"), pretentious stylization ("Dmetrius the Emperor", "Archpriest Avvakum", "Saint Seraphim", "The Tale of the Monk Epiphany"). Nevertheless, it can be said that many of his poems of the revolutionary time were recognized as capacious and accurate poetic evidence (for example, typological portraits “Bourgeois”, “Speculator”, “Red Guard”, etc., lyrical declarations “At the Bottom of the Underworld” and “Readiness ", the rhetorical masterpiece "Northeast" and other works).

Articles about art and painting

After the revolution, his activity as an art critic ceased. Nevertheless, Maximilian was able to publish 34 articles on Russian fine art, as well as 37 articles on French art. His first monographic work, dedicated to Surikov, retains its significance. The book "The Spirit of the Gothic" remained unfinished. Maximilian worked on it in 1912 and 1913.

Voloshin took up painting in order to judge fine art professionally. As it turned out, he was a gifted artist. Crimean watercolor landscapes, made with poetic inscriptions, became his favorite genre. In 1932 (August 11) Maximilian Voloshin died in Koktebel. His short biography can be supplemented with information about his personal life, interesting facts from which we present below.

Interesting facts from Voloshin’s personal life

The duel between Voloshin and Nikolai Gumilyov took place on the Black River, the same one where Dantes shot Pushkin. This happened 72 years later and also because of a woman. However, fate then saved two famous poets, such as Gumilyov Nikolai Stepanovich and Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich. The poet, whose photo is presented below, is Nikolai Gumilyov.

They shot because of Liza Dmitrieva. She studied on a course in Old Spanish and Old French literature at the Sorbonne. Gumilev was the first to be captivated by this girl. He brought her to visit Voloshin in Koktebel. He seduced the girl. Nikolai Gumilyov left because he felt superfluous. However, this story continued after some time and eventually led to a duel. The court sentenced Gumilev to a week of arrest, and Voloshin to one day.

Maximilian Voloshin's first wife is Margarita Sabashnikova. He attended lectures with her at the Sorbonne. This marriage, however, soon broke up - the girl fell in love with Vyacheslav Ivanov. His wife invited Sabashnikova to live together. However, the “new type” family did not work out. His second wife was a paramedic (pictured above), who cared for Maximilian’s elderly mother.

Corporations willingly hire the offspring of influential officials. The son of the former head of the presidential administration and chairman of the board of directors of RAO UES, Alexander Voloshin, works at Converse Bank, and the Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov works at Gazprombank. Children are not hired to please their parents, banks say.

One of Conversbank’s clients told how he encountered Voloshin Jr. in the bank’s office. “He is so similar to his father in appearance and manners. They later confirmed to me that it was really him,” says Vedomosti’s interlocutor.

29-year-old Ilya Voloshin has been working as vice president of Converse Bank for six months. “Once I came to Rosbank to get a loan for my business. They recommended contacting Conversbank,” Ilya Voloshin describes his employment history. What kind of business the banker managed to build is not covered. This is how he met the chairman of the board of Conversbank, Maxim Druzhinin, who involved Voloshin in his team. Druzhinin, according to him, was attracted to Voloshin by his London education and extensive connections, which could provide the bank with an influx of clients. Voloshin Jr. is an experienced financier. Back in 1996, he worked as a securities trader at Eurotrust Bank, then at the AK&M news agency, founded by Voloshin Sr. “He was not a workaholic, but he did not take liberties,” the agency employees agreed. Vice President of Investment Promenergobank Vladimir Talaver notes that Voloshin Jr. is characterized by attentiveness and the ability to build “interesting business schemes.” “We are satisfied with his work as vice president for client business,” assured Alexander Antonov, Chairman of the Bank’s Board of Directors.

Corporations and banks willingly hire the offspring of high-ranking parents. The son of the current Prime Minister, Pyotr Fradkov, works as deputy director of the Far Eastern Shipping Company. Sergei Ivanov, the son of the Minister of Defense, is vice-president of Gazprombank, the same post at VTB is held by Sergei Matvienko, the son of the governor of St. Petersburg. The deputy chairman of the board of Rosselkhozbank is Arkady Kulik, the son of a former deputy prime minister and a famous agrarian deputy […]

The bankers do not say how much they pay the children of officials. The remuneration of the vice president for client business of a medium-sized bank the size of Converse is $150,000 per year plus a bonus, states Igor Shekhterman from RosExpert. But the issue of compensation for the “wedding general” is always decided on an individual basis, he warns.

A close friend of the Voloshin family says that Voloshin Sr. did not participate in his son’s employment: “He did not interfere in this, and in general I doubt that he knows well about the bank where Ilya works.” “I decide these issues myself,” confirms Ilya.

VTB does not comment on the situation, but a representative of Gazprombank said that the bank is satisfied with the work of its vice president. “Family ties are not included in the hiring criteria,” concludes a bank representative.

Vasily Kudinov, Ekaterina Derbilova

THE CHILD IS AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS

...I pray to become a poet.

Autobiography

On May 16, 1877, in Kyiv, on Tarasovskaya Street, a son was born into the family of Alexander Maksimovich Kirienko-Voloshin and his wife Elena Ottobaldovna, nee Glazer, who was named Maximilian. The father was thirty-nine years old, the mother twenty-seven. They had no more children. “My family name is Kirienko-Voloshin, and it comes from Zaporozhye,” wrote Maximilian Aleksandrovich forty-eight years later in his Autobiography. - I know from Kostomarov that in the 16th century there was a blind bandura player in Ukraine, Matvey Voloshin, who was flayed alive by the Poles for political songs, and from the memoirs of Frantseva that the surname of that Kishinev young man who took Pushkin to a gypsy camp was Kirienko-Voloshin. I wouldn't mind them being my ancestors."

A blind bandura player who suffered because of his love for his homeland and the political orientation of his songs... Well, a very suitable ancestor for a writer who showed rare uncompromisingness during the years of the revolution...

The other is a close acquaintance of Pushkin (according to updated data - Dmitry Kirienko-Voloshinov), a poet whose name was especially dear to Voloshin and to whom the future Koktebel resident will dedicate the following lines:

These limits are sacred because in the evening

Pushkin looked at them from the ship, on the way to Gurzuf...

But all this relationship, as they say, is unestablished. As for the immediate... The poet's father, a collegiate adviser, was a member of the Kyiv Chamber of Criminal and Civil Law. Judging by the few surviving testimonies, he was a kind, sociable person, and wrote poetry. By the way, Max’s only vague memory of his father is associated with his recitation of poems - which ones, the child, naturally, did not remember. Alexander Maksimovich died when the boy was four years old. However, he was already living separately from his family. Maximilian Voloshin writes very briefly about his ancestors: “My father was never the leader of the nobility. And he was first a peace mediator, and then a member of the court in Kyiv. My grandfather had a large estate in the Kiev province, but I don’t know who he was, and in general I don’t know my father’s relatives at all” (from an undated letter from M.V. Sabashnikova).

The child was raised by the mother, a strong-willed, widely educated woman from a family of Russified Germans. Her father was the head of the Zhitomir telegraph district. As M.A. Voloshin recalled: “My maternal grandfather was an engineer and the head of the telegraph district (something important). His father was a syndic (apparently a representative of some industrial or commercial corporation - S.P.) in some Baltic city - either Riga or Libau. And my grandmother’s father made an Italian campaign with Suvorov, and his father was someone’s life physician...” (elsewhere: “Great-great-grandfather - Sommer, a life physician, came to Russia under Anna Ioannovna”).

The best portrait of the poet’s mother, Elena Ottobaldovna, was given by Marina Tsvetaeva, who met her in Koktebel in 1911: “... hair thrown back, an eagle profile with a blue eye... Appearance clearly of German origin... the face of old Goethe... The first impression is posture. If he moves, he’ll give you a ruble... The second, which naturally follows from the first: caution. This one won’t let you down... Majesty with a small stature... Everything: a rolled-up cigarette in a silver cigarette holder, a match holder made of solid carnelian, a silver cuff of a caftan, a foot in a fabulous Kazan boot, a silver strand of hair tossed by the wind - unity. It was the body of her soul.”

Perhaps this is where Voloshin’s “Germanism” noticed by Tsvetaeva: neatness, even pedantry in habits and behavior, creative perseverance; “with clearly French sociability, there is clearly a German mode of behavior; with French quantity, there is a German quality of friendship...” Marina Ivanovna even attributes Voloshin’s pantheism to this deep Germanism: “all-divinity, all-divinity, all-divinity, - rays coming from him with such force that he himself, and in the neighborhood, us with him, included in the host - at least the younger gods...”, and mysticism: “a hidden mystic... a secret student of the secret teaching of the secret.”

However, the poet’s creative image is by no means exhausted by “Germanism”: “French in culture, Russian in soul and word, German in spirit and blood.” Mystic, pantheist, European with a Russian soul, “a non-Russian poet of the beginning,” who “became and will remain a Russian poet.” So be it... Well, how does Voloshin himself define the “past of his spirit”? Let us open the “Autobiography”, which so often comes to the aid of researchers and ordinary readers.

“I was born... on Spiritual Day, “when the earth is the birthday girl.” Hence, probably, my inclination towards a spiritual and religious perception of the world and my love for the flowering of flesh and matter in all its forms and faces. Therefore, the past of my spirit always seemed to me in the form of one of those fauns or centaurs who came to St. Jerome in the desert and received the sacrament of holy baptism. “I am a pagan in the flesh and I believe in the real existence of all pagan gods and demons - and, at the same time, I cannot think of it outside of Christ.” This recognition makes the poet’s spiritual world more understandable and close, which Marina Tsvetaeva defined as “coexistence” - well, let’s say, pagan mythology, anthroposophical knowledge, Christian esotericism, and much more.

Let's go back, however, to Max's childhood. The very first memories of life: “1 year - Kyiv. Light through colored glass." In February 1878, Alexander Maksimovich was transferred to Taganrog and appointed a member of the district court. Soon his family moves there too. “2-3 years. Taganrog. Country house. Garden. Paved path. Old toy (train). Coal miner puppy. With the nurse to the market (found the way). I caught the lizard." Indeed, in Voloshin’s house there was a legend about how a tiny child, Max, sitting in the arms or shoulders of a nanny, showed her, who took him to the market, the way home, although she had to go through alleys. And one more episode from very early childhood: “He left the garden of our dacha, where he was walking naked. Got lost. I cried." The children stuffed either gingerbread or candy into their mouths. “But before that, nothing tragic.” Quiet calm city. “Shadow of foliage, sun, flowers, silence.”

But in the life together of the Voloshin spouses, not everything was smooth. It is known that Elena Ottobaldovna, having taken two-year-old Max, left her husband (this happened in January 1880), moved to Sevastopol, and worked at the telegraph office. She was provided with housing by a friend from the Institute of Noble Maidens N.A. Lipina. “I have never lived in my homeland,” we learn from “Autobiography”. - I spent my early childhood in Taganrog and Sevastopol. I remember Sevastopol in ruins, with large trees growing from the middle of the houses: one of the very first unforgettable picturesque impressions.” Sevastopol, as these memoirs indicate, had not yet been restored by the early 1880s after the Crimean War of 1853–1856.

From the bottom of memory, something pleasant and disgusting, joyful and terrible rises to the surface of consciousness. “Descent stairs. Fisherman's house. Kazbek dog. The fisherman-owner eats chocolate. I ask. Offers it chewed from the mouth. Disgust". Sometimes I have terribly unpleasant dreams: “...the taste of horse chestnut, which fills my mouth. Disgust for pea jelly. The cook Daria, who prepared it...” I remember the sea. “Boys swimming, running from the sea across the road. An acute feeling of nakedness, exposure. It’s embarrassing and pleasant.”

Apparently, the episodes described by Marina Tsvetaeva in the essay “The Living About the Living” date back to a later time. Communicating closely with Elena Ottobaldovna in Koktebel, Marina Ivanovna more than once found herself a grateful listener to her mother’s stories about the childhood of this extremely impressionable, inventive child. Here are some very colorful scenes reproduced by Tsvetaeva: “We lived poorly, there were no toys, they were sold in different markets. We lived in poverty. Around, that is, in the city garden... - rich, happy, with guns, horses, carts, balls, whips, eternal toys of all times. And the constant question at home:

Mom, why do other boys have horses, but I don’t? They have reins with bells, but I don’t?

To which the invariable answer is:

Because they have a dad and you don't.

And after one such dad, who is not there, there is a long pause and quite clearly:

Get married.

Another case. Green yard, three-year-old Max with his mother in the yard.

Mom, please stand with your nose in the corner and don’t turn around.

It will be surprise. When I say you can, you will turn around!

Submissive mother with her aquiline nose against the stone wall. Waiting, waiting:

Max, will you be there soon? Otherwise I'm tired of it!

Now, mom! Another minute, two more. - Finally: - You can!

Turns around. Floating with a smile and thick - a three-year-old delightful muzzle.

Where's the surprise?

And I (the gasp of delight that remained with him) approached the well - I looked for a long time - I saw nothing.

You're just a nasty naughty boy! Where's the surprise?

Why didn't I fall there?

A well, as often in the south, is just a quadrangular hole in the ground, without any fence, a square of a hole... Another case. In front of five-year-old Max, the mother reads a long poem, it seems, by Maykova, on behalf of the girl, listing everything that she will not say to her beloved: “I won’t tell you how much I love you, I won’t tell you how the stars shone then, illuminating my tears, I I won’t tell you how my heart sank at the sound of steps - each time not yours, I won’t tell you how the dawn then rose,” etc., etc. Finally - the end. And the five-year-old, with a deep sigh:

Oh, what! She promised not to say anything, but she took it all and told it all!

I'll give the last case from the end. Morning. The mother, surprised by her son's long absence, enters the nursery and finds him sleeping on the windowsill.

Max, what does this mean?

Max, sobbing and yawning:

I, I didn't sleep! I was waiting! She didn't arrive!

Firebird! You forgot, you promised me if I behaved well...

Okay, Max, she will certainly arrive tomorrow, and now let’s go have tea.

The next morning - before morning, an early or very late passerby could see in the window of one of the white houses... - forehead at dawn - infant Zeus in a blanket, with another head, also curly, clinging to the foot... And the passerby could hear :

Ma-a-ma! What is this?

Your Firebird, Max, is the sun!”

Tsvetaeva draws attention to “the charming old Maxino “You” of her mother - which he adopted from her, from her address to her mother. My son and mother already had a brotherhood drink in front of me: a thirty-six-year-old with a fifty-six-year-old (sixty-three-year-old - S.P.) - and clinked glasses... with the Koktebel drink Citro, that is, simply lemonade.”

The poet’s widow, Maria Stepanovna Voloshina, recalled that in 1926, the doctor Semyon Yakovlevich Lifshits, a doctor of physics at the Moscow Higher Technical School, visited them in Koktebel, who was engaged in the dissection of “infantile traumas” and arranged peculiar psychoanalytic sessions. Maximilian Alexandrovich volunteered to be the object of these sessions and allowed the doctor to subject himself to these dubious, as Maria Stepanovna considered, experiments at least twenty times. S. Ya. Lifshits was an ardent follower of Freud. Voloshin, also familiar with the latter’s works, was always open to everything fresh, new, and interesting. As a result of the sessions, certain “dreams” arose, in which the autobiographical was mixed with the fantastic, the everyday acquired a surrealistic tint.

“Dreams: the worst: I saw myself. An ordinary boy-double. Another dream: a man leads a boy and a girl, puts them on their knees on a hill. Forces them to lift their shirts, shoots them in the stomach. Dreams of revolution." About the past or the future?.. We can talk for a long time about how important the category of “sleep” is for Voloshin - in the psychophysiological or historiosophical sense. I remember this quatrain:

I came out uninvited, I came uninvited.

I go through the world in delirium and in a dream...

Oh, how nice it is to be Max Voloshin

This humorous recording was included in the summer of 1923 in the album “Chukokkala”. And the mature, forty-six-year-old poet, who perceived human destiny and world history as a string of dreams, and himself as an interpreter of “other people’s dreams,” left it in a time that was by no means comic. However, let's return to the poet's childhood.

Presumably in December 1881, Elena Ottobaldovna left Taganrog with her son, Czech nanny Nessie, and dog Leda. Her capital, as she would later write to her son, is about one hundred rubles. In Moscow, they initially settled on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya, then moved to Medvezhiy Lane, to an apartment where, according to Max’s recollections, the wallpaper was separated “from the wall in delirium.” And again - distinct childhood memories, “snapshots” of memory: “It’s pounding in the head (the owner is walking). The puppy was crushed before our eyes. In the heat, the patient is transported to Zaichenko’s house, wearing a hood. Vaulted gate." “The madness of the uncles remains in my memory. Uncle Sasha: “You look like Raphael’s cherub.” Stains on the cabinet... His horror. Tried to jump out of the window. “On the knife!” Cut me!” Alexander Ottobaldovich Glaser was indeed seriously mentally ill. And here is a more pleasant, rather funny, memory: a visit from a family friend, an old man (in the perception of a baby) Orest Polienovich Vyazemsky. Max showed him his first drawings, of course, of people. “All the figures had phalluses. Old man Vyazemsky looked through his pince-nez: “Excessive realism” ...”

Elena Ottobaldovna gets a job in an office at the Moscow-Brest Railway. Her salary is forty rubles plus eighteen rubles of a pension for her husband plus ten rubles of benefits from the Noble Guardianship plus fifty rubles as interest on the amount (about twelve thousand rubles) that Max received as a result of a gift from his paternal grandparents - Maxim Yakovlevich , Kyiv city treasurer, state councilor, landowner, and Eupraxia Aleksandrovna Kirienko-Voloshin.

Around four or five years old - “childhood separation from mother. My mother accuses me of something. I don’t remember what. I renounce because I know that I didn’t take it, I didn’t do it. “There is no one else”... Accusation of lying. Anger. Demand to confess. (Now I remember - I took a small silver match holder.) From that moment on, I felt all my childhood love relationships were over. For life. After 40 years, when we both forgot the reason, this source of misunderstandings emerges between us in quarrels, and my mother asserts my guilt with the same passion, and I deny it with the same passion, although we both no longer remember the point of the accusation.” A childish misunderstanding, of course. But even as an adult Max, his relationship with his mother, who is smart, domineering and not disposed to tenderness, will be very difficult.

So, from the age of four, Moscow entered the life of Maximilian Voloshin, “Moscow from the background of “Boyaryna Morozova”. We lived on Novaya Sloboda near Podviski, where it was written by Surikov in a neighboring house in those years” (“Autobiography”). Indeed, V.I. Surikov’s work on this painting began in 1881. The artist lived at that time in Moscow on Dolgorukovskaya Street, next door to the Voloshins who had recently moved there, made sketches for the painting, wrote etudes. One day, while walking with his nanny, little Max saw Surikov at his easel. This meeting with great art had a great impression on the child. He devotes himself selflessly to drawing.

Years will pass, and Voloshin will turn to the artist’s work as an art critic. During meetings and conversations with the author of “Boyarina Morozova”, as a result of reflection on his paintings, the monograph “Surikov” appeared, fragments of which would be published in 1916.

Along with drawing, the boy’s interest in literature awakens, and “intoxication with poetry” arises. “I loved to recite, not yet knowing how to read,” Voloshin notes in “Autobiography.” “To do this, I constantly stood on a chair: a sense of the stage.” The boy knew by heart “The Peddlers” by Nekrasov, “The Little Humpbacked Horse” by Ershov, “The Branch of Palestine” by Lermontov, “The Battle of Poltava” by Pushkin. Moreover, as Valentina Orestovna Vyazemskaya, who knew him in his childhood, testifies, this butuz, “a handsome man in Russian taste,” “pronounced words in a peculiar way, stretching out the vowels, and the expression that he gave to what he was saying was so original that all the adults listened with interest.” " In the summer of 1882, the child himself learns to read from newspaper headlines, so that at the age of five, “independent navigation through books” begins.

Valentina Vyazemskaya was the daughter of railway engineer Orest Polienovich Vyazemsky, in whose apartment, in Vagankovo, Elena Ottobaldovna settled with her son in the spring of 1883. Max Voloshin was seven years old. He had already become acquainted with many books from his mother’s library, preferring Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, and Dahl to other authors. Even then, the originality of his nature was felt and the liveliness of his character attracted him. “I was almost twice his age,” recalls Valentina Orestovna, “...but I had more fun with him than with my peers. He had such an interesting combination of naive simplicity with a sharp mind and observation. He could immediately strike in a row either with the absurdity or with the wisdom beyond his years of his thoughts and judgments.”

Photographs of Max from this period of his life have been preserved, as well as descriptions of his appearance made by people who knew him closely. As a rule, he was dressed stylishly: in the summer, for example, he wore a sailor suit. A ruddy, freckled (freckles did not spoil him), talkative child with eyes that were sometimes thoughtful, sometimes mocking, sometimes cunning. Talkative, he, however, knew how to listen to his interlocutor. I loved looking at pictures for a long time. He enthusiastically recited “The Battle of Poltava”, “Borodino”, excerpts from “The Demon”, and pronounced the words “When he believed and loved” with extraordinary strength and persuasiveness for his age. Once, when asked what he especially liked about Poltava, he answered: “These chicks are Petrov’s nest.” And further - to “semi-sovereign ruler”. However, he naturally could not explain what all this meant. “It turned out very comical, but, in essence,” V. O. Vyazemskaya rightly notes, “in poetry, the charm of incomprehensible, that is, acting not on the conscious, but on the subconscious, lines captivates many, and in our time this is what considered poetry. And his seemingly funny words were profound.”

Young Max was very passionate and willingly participated in a recitation competition, as the same friend of his childhood recalls: “My uncle Mitrofan Dmitrievich... a man with a strong humorous streak, in order to provoke him, offered him competitions: who could say better, for example, “Borodino”... Once, when he was advised to climb onto the table for greater effect of the recitation, he, coming down after a perfectly completed task, turned to his uncle: “Well, Mitrofan Dmitrievich, now you climb onto the table.” Max Voloshin was just as passionate about food. In this regard, Elena Ottobaldovna had to limit her son, who was already inclined to be overweight. “It was terribly amusing (but also a little pathetic),” writes V. O. Vyazemskaya, “to listen to the conversations between mother and son about this: “Mom, and mom (pronounced somehow “mum”)... I want...” - “ “Well, whatever, whatever,” this original woman answered completely seriously, without a hint of a smile. At evening tea he was given 3 slices of bread and 3 pieces of sausage. First (even here a creative streak manifested itself. - S. Ya.) he ate a slice of bread without sausage, then with one piece of sausage, and finally, a solemn moment came: Max tried to attract everyone's attention and ate one slice of bread with two pieces of sausage."

Valentina Orestovna also remembered Max’s aphoristic statements and the apt characteristics he gave to people. “For example, he said about me personally: “Cardboard with a brain.” I was really in a period of philosophizing about everything at that time.” So “despite some absurdity in form, Max’s statement proved his powers of observation.”

It is not surprising that when a teacher, Nikandr Vasilievich Turkin, a student at the Konstantinovsky Land Survey Institute, was invited to the children of Orest Polienovich Vyazemsky, who were all much older than Voloshin, he began to study with Max, preparing him for admission to the gymnasium. The Moscow and Feodosia gymnasiums gave the poet little, “... melancholy and disgust for everything that is in the gymnasium and from the gymnasium,” he later complained. But young Max was lucky to have a mentor. “The beginning of learning: in addition to the usual grammars, memorizing Latin poetry, lectures on the history of religion, essays on topics that are difficult for one’s age,” conversations about spiritualism and Buddhism, about Dostoevsky; “The Odyssey” by Homer, “Don Juan” by Byron, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the myths of Ancient Greece... Of course, not everything was easy. “Everyone in the house is asleep, except Max and N.V. (Turkin - S. Ya), who sit in the next small room, Max’s “office,” and study,” Lyuba Vyazemskaya writes to her mother. - ...The intonations of Max’s voice alone, moving from the most joyful to the most desperate, are worth it! He’s terribly lazy to think and keeps trying to get around the need to use his brain.” However, the main result was still achieved. I owe my “various cultural training... to the teacher - then student N.V. Turkin,” states Voloshin in his “Autobiography.”

Being himself an original and diversely educated person, Nikandr Vasilyevich Turkin, who later became a prominent journalist and theater critic, was able to appreciate the originality of nature and his student, to notice his attraction to the unusual, bright, fantastic. “Thanks to this, he listened to Edgar Allan Poe’s reading - obviously with a mixture of horror and pleasure when Turkin read to him,” believes Valentina Vyazemskaya. - ...Turkin generally played tricks on him, and from the outside it seemed strange that Elena Ottobaldovna allowed him to do this. One must think that, on the one hand, she was very busy and was not involved in everything, and on the other, that the originality of these relationships amused her and she liked that the teacher’s tricks revealed the extraordinary abilities of the student.” However, the question is also what to name and evaluate. Can, for example, the task of describing the Caucasus “according to Pushkin” in ethnographic and geographical aspects be considered a “focus”? (Let's not forget that the student is only seven years old.)

At a young age, a predilection for the unusual and supernatural seems natural and at the same time somewhat feigned. Sitting down at the table, little Max could stretch out his hands and say: “Amen, amen, scatter, mind, my place is sacred.” He avoided some “mysterious” places in the area and cast spells. One day, while playing these very spells, Valerian, the son of the owner of the apartment, lifted him into the air, turning him upside down. Max, however, was confident and convinced others of this that he soared upward thanks to the spirits. “Watching him, we felt that it seemed interesting to him to believe in the supernatural,” Valentina Vyazemskaya expresses her hypothesis, “life with such faith seemed to him more colorful and more exciting than ordinary life... But... next to an eccentric who could be deceived by anything and over whom everyone was amused; even then there lived a smart, sober man who knew very well that he was being fooled, but was silent about it, because life, if you let your mind lead it, seemed more boring to him.” The boy loved to be the center of attention and make an impression. “Therefore, the question is who led whom by the nose: those who teased him, or he those who teased him.” Voloshin’s penchant for acting and hoaxes will manifest itself both in the gymnasium and later, in the Koktebel “wrongmaker”.

Max Voloshin's religious education during this period lags significantly behind the general intellectual one. “His mother was an intellectual of a liberal bent,” the poet’s second wife Maria Stepanovna would later note, “and she didn’t need that at all...” “This whole side didn’t touch me in childhood...” Max himself admits, who faced stages of painful, sometimes religiously -philosophical “wanderings”. At the same time, recalls V. O. Vyazemskaya, “in the morning and evening he read “Lord, have mercy on dad and mom” and ended: “and me, baby Max, and Nessie.” Hearing this, Valerian began to tell how Max would pray in the future. First: “and me, high school student Max, and Nessie,” then: “and me, student M., and N.”, and finally, when he becomes an important person: “and me, State Councilor M., and N.” "

Among the most memorable events of 1886 is the meeting at the end of summer in Kyiv with my paternal grandfather Maxim Yakovlevich Kirienko-Voloshin. What he talked about with his grandson remains unclear. It is only known that Maxim Yakovlevich developed a very original concept regarding the etymology of his last name. He claimed that “Kiriyenko” comes from the Greek “lord”, and “Voloshin” is a Zaporozhye nickname meaning “a native of Italy”. Well, let’s leave these linguistic researches of Maximilian Voloshin’s grandfather without comment. Grandmother, Eupraxia (Evgenia) Alexandrovna, a wealthy landowner who had lands in the Orenburg, Poltava and Chernigov provinces, was remembered by her grandson as an imperious, pious old woman, in whose rooms lamps were burning and crowds of hangers-on. One of her prayers began with the words: “Lord, curse...”

In the second half of May 1887, Voloshin took the entrance exam to the private gymnasium of L. I. Polivanov, and on September 1 he began classes. The children of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy also studied here, whom the impetuous Max bumped into one of the corridors. “Well, you could kill me with your head!” - the great writer joked, catching his breath. The future poet rushed further - to acquire knowledge, which at the end of the first half of the year was rated as follows: The Law of God - “excellent”; Russian language, French language, geography and drawing - “good”; Latin, penmanship and gymnastics - “satisfactory”.

The Polivanovskaya gymnasium was considered the best in Moscow, but the tuition fee (200 rubles per year) turned out to be too high for Elena Ottobaldovna. I had to transfer my son to the 1st Moscow State Gymnasium. Max passes the exam and enters second grade. As already noted, Voloshin feels out of place here. Actually, the classic situation was repeated when the creative mind does not accept the routine learning system. In the “Autobiography” we find confirmation: “These are the darkest and cramped years of life, filled with melancholy and powerless protest against indigestible and unnecessary knowledge.” Mutual understanding with the teachers was not achieved, as evidenced by Max’s mediocre, if not low, grades, including in behavior - punishment, as Voloshin himself later noted, “for objections and reasoning.” In the third grade, things went very badly, and the careless high school student was retained for the second year. “When I transferred to the Feodosiya gymnasium,” recalls Voloshin, “I had bad marks in all subjects, and a “1” in Greek. The only “3” was for behavior. Which, according to the gymnasium standards of that time, was the lowest grade with which this subject was assessed... I was filled with all sorts of interests: cultural-historical, linguistic, literary, mathematical, etc. And all this boiled down for me to an inevitable deuce for success.” Thus, the external results achieved in learning did not correspond to the potential capabilities of the young student. His reputation suffered. “When my mother submitted reviews of my Moscow successes to the Feodosia gymnasium, the director... threw up his hands and said: “Madam, we, of course, will accept your son, but I must warn you that we cannot correct idiots.”

However, the future poet treated bad grades very philosophically, not considering them a true assessment of his knowledge and abilities. His spiritual level, erudition, and inquisitive mind even then distinguished him not only among his comrades, but also among his teachers, which, by the way, is confirmed by one of his classmates, S. Poletaev: “Voloshin, already at that time at the age of 14–15, was immeasurably above us in his development, erudition and individual thinking. Only now did I understand his discussions and clashes with the teaching staff and all the misery of the teachers around us, who were in no way able to understand or support the budding talent, but who even tried to ridicule him publicly, that is, in front of the whole class. Voloshin’s strong nature, despite his obvious superiority over his comrades, found ways to get along with us, probably often very unpleasant mischievous guys for him; with philosophical calm he endured the oppression of teachers, who were so clearly inferior in their development and worldview to a 15-year-old person..."

Without forgetting about his previous passions, Max Voloshin acquires new ones. In the fall of 1890, at the age of twelve, he began to write poetry, which he would later define as “bad.” Max’s penchant for rhyming manifested itself in early childhood, when he improvised something like: “There lived a rich man with one leg laughing underground”; or regarding a birthday: “I know, I know: the sixteenth of May.” These abilities, coupled with keen observation and vivid imagination, could not help but develop in the historical and cultural atmosphere in which Voloshin lived. The then outskirts of Moscow, Vagankovo, and the forests of the Zvenigorod district, where the poet had to visit, were perceived by him as “classical places of the Russian Ile-de-France, where Pushkin spent his childhood in the village of Zakharyin, and in Semenkovo ​​(most likely Serednikovo, the Stolypins’ dacha near Moscow. - With . P.) - Lermontov." The young man loves to wander alone: ​​“As you go through the forest, some clearing: wilderness, silence, it seems there is no one in the world but you...” He spends the summer of 1890 at the dacha in Troekurov, a small village on the banks of the Setun, in which preserves the remains of an ancient manorial estate and a church built by the Troyekurov princes at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th century. Absorbing literary and geographical impressions, reading Russian classics, being carried away by Dickens, keeping childhood memories of Sevastopol in his soul, the young man experiences that 35 years later, returning in thought to these years, he will express this: “I dream about the south and pray that to become a poet."

“The feeling of variety” encourages him to participate in literary and musical evenings at the gymnasium. Max performs reading poetry. He is still embarrassed to publish his own. He prefers the works of his idols, in particular Pushkin. On January 31, 1893, a high school student poet recites the poem “To the Slanderers of Russia.” He is also close to the sentiments expressed by Pushkin in another masterpiece: “The Poet and the Crowd.” It is no coincidence that one of the early poetic sketches in Voloshin’s “First Gymnasium Notebook” contains their echoes:

Let me be ridiculed by the crowd,

Let the world despise me

Let them mock me

But I will still be a poet.

A poet with both heart and soul.

And with an unyielding head

I will go among all these troubles.

I don't care about the opinions of the world -

Empty mindless crowd.

She can't understand the poet's songs,

She doesn't understand his dreams.

Voloshin’s early, gymnasium poems bear little resemblance to those that are read by lovers of his poetry today. Although, in fairness, we note that in the above imitative verses prophetic notes are sounded. The image of the poet walking “with an unyielding head” among the troubles and “conflagrations of the world” will be repeated at a new level in poems about Russia and will be embodied in the fate of Voloshin himself, who took it upon himself to preach goodness to the “senseless crowd” engulfed in demons. Of course, the young poet is attracted not only by civil themes. “And I glorify nature, delighted,” he admits in one of his poems.

Max's passion is shared by a narrow circle of his schoolmates, in particular P. Zvolinsky and N. Davydov. The poet becomes close friends with a gifted young man, a student at the Agricultural School, Modest Sakulin. They read their own opuses to each other, talk passionately about great poetry, and even publish handwritten journals. Serious publications are still a long way off. Voloshin’s first poem would be published in Feodosia, in 1895, but the poet himself recognizes his true debut as a poetic publication in the magazine “New Way” (1903).

Max Voloshin spends the summer of 1891 partly at his dacha in the village of Matveykovo, Zvenigorod district, where his relatives, the Lyamins, live, and partly in Troekurov. Hours of walking, immersion in the natural world. The entries in the diary are written by the hand of a poet, an artist, a person who will sing the beauties of Italy, Spain, France and, of course, Eastern Crimea. In the meantime, the landscape of central Russia is being described in literature: “Huge linden trees, dark green clumsy but beautiful oaks, green pines and spruces, fir trees, weeping willows, bending over the mirror surface of the pond and bathing their sad branches in it... dilapidated stone buildings overgrown with hops and ivy and strewn with pink, red and white, strongly fragrant flowers, dodders are beautifully drawn in groups of trees, beckoning to quickly go under their shade, to the bank of a small river to escape the scorching heat...” How can one not recall his first definition of poetry: this “is harmony souls with everything around” (recorded on October 12, 1892).

The sense of humor characteristic of his nature became increasingly apparent. Longing for communication with his peers, he very peculiarly asks his mother to visit his relatives in the village of Matveykovo, which is thirty-three miles from Moscow. The young artist begins from afar:

Can I, mom, go for a walk?

But, Mom, it’s better for me to come from there by rail.

Come.

You know, mom, it’s not worth going there for one day, you have to live there for a week.

So, mom, would I rather go there too?

Go, just leave me alone!

When in Moscow, Voloshin often visits his maternal grandmother, Nadezhda Grigorievna Glazer, who can tell her grandson the bitter truth in the face (“God! How you’ve gained weight!”), She is inclined to be ironic and love to scold.

Meanwhile, some changes are taking place in the fate of Elena Ottobaldovna herself. In the fall of 1889, she met the doctor Pavel Pavlovich von Tesch, a relationship with whom a year later became close. Von Tesch (as his last name was spelled before the revolution), the father of four daughters, who has lived separately from his family for the last ten years, settles with Elena Ottobaldovna and Max in Volkonsky Lane.

This is how Elena Ottobaldovna was remembered by people who knew her closely in the mid-1880s: “... on official occasions she wore a beautifully tailored black silk dress... usually she wore a Little Russian suit with a gray zipun... She was a great debater... she rode horseback in a man's suit and... her her originality was more striking than her beauty.”

And life goes on as usual. Max Voloshin takes part in home performances at Sakulin’s apartment (scenes from “Boris Godunov” are staged), visits theaters, and reads Dostoevsky (“The Humiliated and Insulted,” “Crime and Punishment,” “The Brothers Karamazov,” “The Idiot”) and Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The History of a City”, “Pompadours and Pompadours”), writes many poems, which he tries to organize in “Gymnasium Notebooks”. In the preface to “The Chosen” (handwritten, of course), he says that he will not stop at these poems, but will go further. The author asks “everyone who reads my poems to write which ones he considers the best, and then what shortcomings he finds in them...”. And further - a very characteristic order, “that this notebook should be handled carefully and not soiled, and most importantly, that you should not write anything of your own in its margins. Please write critical comments on separate pieces of paper.” This is truly: “A learned fellow, but a pedant.” Maybe Marina Tsvetaeva is right regarding Voloshin’s “Germanism” - thoroughness and accuracy...

Max again thinks about what poetry is: “In every creature, everywhere, in all of nature, even in its lowest manifestations, there is poetry, but you just have to find it there...” And another conclusion: “The ideal of beauty is itself nature. And people in their arts only try to achieve this ideal, but they cannot...” Meanwhile, classes in the fifth grade of the gymnasium are gaining momentum. Among the educational books are “The Jugurthine War” by the Roman writer and statesman Sallust Crispus, “Anabasis” by Xenophon, “Metamorphoses” by Ovid, “The Odyssey” by Homer, a collection of Latin exercises by K. Pawlikowski and “Greek Grammar”. Voloshin delves into the historical chronicles of Shakespeare, reads “The Blind Musician” by Korolenko, and translates one of O. Barbier’s poems. Among the books in the home library, the most popular are “The French Revolution”, “Martyrs of the Colosseum” by E. Tour, “History of Russia” by A. K. Tolstoy, poems by Byron and Nekrasov, and numerous volumes by L. N. Tolstoy. Max's classmates also use Max's library. The young man, as before, does not shine in his studies: in Latin and Greek - “two”, in Russian - “three”. Elena Ottobaldovna is dissatisfied - she prohibits Sunday walks and communication with friends. Nevertheless, the young man firmly decided after high school to enter the Faculty of History and Philology, and then to become a writer or journalist.

The range of reading is increasingly expanding: Turgenev’s “The Diary of an Extra Man,” Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair,” Schiller’s “Don Carlos,” Hugo’s “Notre Dame,” Flammarion’s “In the Heavens.” About the latter, a diary entry appears (March 5, 1893): “The most interesting idea of ​​this novel is that Flammarion calls the body a “temporary shell of the soul.” This idea will be embodied many times and in different ways in Voloshin’s poetry.

However, sometimes there was no time for high matters, since Max’s “temporary shell of the soul” was attacked. Professor-biochemist S.L. Ivanov, who studied at the same gymnasium, recalls how he, along with the same tomboys, at the instigation of Voloshin’s classmate Volodya Makarov, lame from birth and, obviously, to some extent mentally unbalanced, lay in wait for the fat man and the clumsy schoolboy, pinched his soft parts and ran away. The habits of the “evil children” were soon studied by Voloshin, and retaliatory actions followed. Sergei Ivanov recalled: “...before I had time to pinch him properly, he quickly turned around and gave such a blow with his palm that I stretched out on the ground. I only remember big, round, good-natured eyes bent over me and a request to leave him alone in the future.” Perhaps this was the only case of “resistance to evil with violence” on the part of Max Voloshin; his relations with Sergei Ivanov will remain completely friendly, as well as with the same Vladimir Makarov.

On March 17, 1893, Voloshin wrote in his diary: “Today is a great day. Today it was decided that we are going to Crimea, to Feodosia, and will live there. We're going forever!.. Goodbye, Moscow! Now go south, south! To this bright, forever young, forever blooming, beautiful, wonderful south! A new, “Cimmerian” era begins in the life and work of Maximilian Voloshin.

The poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin, expelled from the university, surprised his contemporaries with the versatility of his interests. A creator who knew how to encapsulate the passions raging within within the framework of the poetic genre, in addition to painting and poetry, he wrote critical articles, was engaged in translations, and was also fond of astronomical and meteorological observations.

From the beginning of 1917, his bright life, full of stormy events and various meetings, was concentrated in Russia. At the literary evenings held by the writer in the house he personally built in Koktebel, his son Nikolai, and, and, and even, were repeatedly present.

Childhood and youth

Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin was born on May 16, 1877 in Kyiv. The poet's mother Elena Ottobaldovna was a strong-willed and original woman. Soon after the birth of her son, she separated from her husband. The woman wanted to cultivate a fighting character in Max, and the boy grew up, as Marina Tsvetaeva later said about him, “without claws,” and was peaceful and friendly towards everyone.

Maximilian Voloshin as a child with his mother

It is known that in Koktebel, where Voloshin moved with his mother at the age of 16, Elena even hired local boys to challenge Maximilian to a fight. The mother welcomed her son’s interest in the occult and was not at all upset that he always remained in the second year at the gymnasium. One of Max's teachers once said that it is impossible to teach anything to an idiot. Less than six months later, at the funeral of that same teacher, Voloshin recited his wonderful poems.

Although the writer was a student at the Faculty of Law at Moscow University from 1897 to 1899 and regularly attended lectures, he already acquired his amazingly versatile knowledge on his own. From the biography of the publicist it is known that Maximilian was never able to obtain a diploma. Expelled for participating in the riots, the guy decided not to continue his studies and engage in self-education.

Literature

Voloshin’s first book, “Poems,” was published in 1910. In the works included in the collection, the author’s desire to understand the fate of the world and the history of mankind as a whole was clearly visible. In 1916, the writer published a collection of anti-war poems “Anno mundi ardentis” (“In the year of the burning world”). In the same year he settled firmly in his beloved Koktebel, to which he later dedicated a couple of sonnets.

In 1918 and 1919, two of his new books of poetry were published - “Iverni” and “Deaf and Mute Demons”. The hand of the writer is invariably felt in every line. Voloshin’s poems dedicated to the nature of Eastern Crimea are especially colorful.

Since 1903, Voloshin has published his reports in the magazine “Scales” and the newspaper “Rus”. Subsequently, he writes articles about painting and poetry for the magazines “Golden Fleece”, “Apollo”, the newspapers “Russian Art Chronicle” and “Morning of Russia”. The total volume of works, which to this day have not lost their value, amounts to more than one volume.

In 1913, in connection with the sensational attempt on the painting “And His Son Ivan,” Voloshin spoke out against naturalism in art by publishing the brochure “About Repin.” And although after this the editors of most magazines closed their doors to him, considering the work an attack against the artist revered by the public, in 1914 a book of Maximilian’s articles “Faces of Creativity” was published.

Painting

Voloshin took up painting in order to judge fine art professionally. In the summer of 1913, he mastered the technique of tempera, and the following year he painted his first sketches in watercolor (“Spain. By the Sea”, “Paris. Place de la Concorde at night”). Poor quality watercolor paper taught Voloshin to work immediately in the right tone, without corrections or blots.

Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Biblical Land"

Each new work of Maximilian carried a particle of wisdom and love. While creating his paintings, the artist thought about the relationship between the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) and the deep meaning of the cosmos. Each landscape painted by Maximilian retained its density and texture and remained translucent even on canvas (“Landscape with a lake and mountains”, “Pink Twilight”, “Hills parched by the heat”, “Moon whirlwind”, “Lead light”).

Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Kara-Dag in the clouds"

Maximilian was inspired by the classic works of Japanese painters, as well as the paintings of his friend, the Feodosian artist Konstantin Bogaevsky, whose illustrations adorned Voloshin’s first collection of poems in 1910. Along with Emmanuel Magdesyan and Lev Lagorio, Voloshin is today considered a representative of the Cimmerian school of painting.

Personal life

His corpulence, coupled with his short stature and unruly mane of hair on his head, created a misleading impression among the opposite sex about Voloshin’s male incompetence. The women felt safe next to the eccentric writer and believed that it would not be shameful to invite a writer who bore little resemblance to a real man to take him to the bathhouse to rub his back.

Throughout his life, Voloshin took advantage of this misconception, replenishing his amorous piggy bank with new names. The critic's first wife was the artist Margarita Sabashnikova. Their romance began in Paris. Young people attended lectures at the Sorbonne, at one of which the writer noticed a girl who looked exactly like Queen Taiah.

On the day they met, the writer took his chosen one to the museum and showed her a statue of the ruler of Egypt. In letters to friends, Maximilian admitted that he could not believe that Margarita was a real person of flesh and blood. Friends in reply messages jokingly asked the amorous poet not to marry the young lady made of alabaster.

After the wedding, which took place in 1906, the lovers moved to St. Petersburg. Their neighbor was the popular poet Vyacheslav Ivanov. Symbolists gathered in the writer’s apartment every week. Voloshin and his wife were also frequent guests. While Maximilian enthusiastically recited, argued and quoted, his missus carried on quiet conversations with Ivanov. In conversations, Margarita has repeatedly stated that in her opinion, the life of a real artist should be imbued with drama and that friendly married couples are not in fashion today.

During the period when Vyacheslav and Margarita were just beginning to develop romantic feelings, Voloshin fell in love with the playwright Elizaveta Dmitrieva, with whom in 1909 he created a very successful literary hoax - the mysterious Catholic beauty Cherubina de Gabriac, whose works were published in the Apollo magazine.

The hoax lasted only 3 months, then Cherubina was exposed. In November of the same year, who at one time introduced Dmitrieva to Voloshin, in the presence of Maximilian, spoke impartially on the side of the poetess, for which he immediately received a slap in the face from the author of the poem “Venice”.

As a result, the ugly lame-legged girl became the reason why Voloshin and Gumilev had a duel on the Black River. After a scandalous fight, during which miraculously no one was injured, Maximilian’s wife informed her husband, who was immersed in a pool of amorous passions, of her intention to divorce. As it turned out later, Ivanov’s wife invited Margarita to live together, and she agreed.

In 1922, famine began in Crimea. The publicist's mother, Elena Ottobaldovna, began to noticeably lose control. Max lured paramedic Maria Zabolotskaya from a neighboring village for his beloved parent. It was this kind and sympathetic woman, who stood next to him during his mother’s funeral, that he married in March 1927.

And although the couple never managed to have children, Maria Stepanovna was next to the writer in both joy and sorrow until his death. Having been widowed, she did not change the Koktebel customs and also continued to receive traveling poets and artists in Voloshin’s house.

Death

The last years of the poet's life were full of work - Maximilian wrote and painted a lot in watercolors. In July 1932, the asthma that had long troubled the publicist was complicated by influenza and pneumonia. Voloshin died after a stroke on August 11, 1932. His grave is located on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar, located a couple of kilometers from Koktebel.

After the death of the eminent writer, the sculptor Sergei Merkurov, who created the death masks, and, took a cast from the face of the deceased Voloshin. The writer's wife, Maria Zabolotskaya, managed to preserve the creative legacy of her beloved husband. Thanks to her efforts, in August 1984, Maximilian’s house located in Crimea received the status of a museum.

Bibliography

• 1899 – “Venice”
• 1900 – “Acropolis”
• 1904 – “I walked through the night. And the flames of pale death..."
• 1905 – “Taiah”
• 1906 – “Angel of Vengeance”
• 1911 – “To Edward Wittig”
• 1915 – “To Paris”
• 1915 – “Spring”
• 1917 – “The Capture of the Tuileries”
• 1917 – “Holy Rus'”
• 1919 – “Writing about the kings of Moscow”
• 1919 – “Kitezh”
• 1922 – “Sword”
• 1922 – “Steam”
• 1924 – “Anchutke”