What Maximilian Voloshin wrote about freedom. Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin biography

Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich - Russian landscape painter, critic, translator and poet. He traveled extensively in Egypt, Europe and Russia. During the Civil War, he tried to reconcile the conflicting parties: in his house he saved the whites from the reds and the reds from the whites. The poems of those years were filled exclusively with tragedy. Voloshin is also known as a watercolor artist. The works of Maximilian Alexandrovich are exhibited in the Feodosia Aivazovsky Gallery. The article will present his brief biography.

Childhood

Maximilian Voloshin was born in Kyiv in 1877. The boy's father worked as a collegiate adviser and lawyer. After his death in 1893, Maximilian moved with his mother to Koktebel (southeastern Crimea). In 1897, the future poet graduated from the gymnasium in Feodosia and entered Moscow University (faculty of law). Also, the young man went to Paris to take several lessons in engraving and drawing from the artist E. S. Kruglikova. In the future, Voloshin greatly regretted the years spent studying at the gymnasium and university. The knowledge gained there was completely useless to him.

Wandering years

Soon Maximilian Voloshin was expelled from Moscow for participating in student uprisings. In 1899 and 1900 he traveled extensively in Europe (Greece, Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy). Ancient monuments, medieval architecture, libraries, museums - all this was the subject of Maximilian's genuine interest. 1900 was the year of his spiritual birth: the future artist traveled with a caravan of camels through the Central Asian desert. He could look at Europe from the "height of the plateaus" and feel all the "relativity of its culture."

Maximilian Voloshin traveled for fifteen years, moving from city to city. He lived in Koktebel, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin and Paris. In those years, the hero of this article met Emile Verharn (Belgian symbolist poet). In 1919, Voloshin translated a book of his poems into Russian. In addition to Verhaarn, Maximilian also met other outstanding personalities: the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, the poet Jurgis Baltrushaitis, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, as well as the artists of the World of Art. Soon the young man began to publish in the almanacs "Vulture", "Northern Flowers" and the magazines "Apollo", "Golden Fleece", "Scales", etc. In those years, the poet was characterized by "wandering of the spirit" - from Catholicism and Buddhism to anthroposophy and theosophy. And many of his works also reflected romantic experiences (in 1906, Voloshin married the artist Margarita Sabashnikova. Their relationship was rather strained).

freemasonry

In March 1905, the hero of this article became a Freemason. The initiation took place in the lodge "Labor and True True Friends". But already in April, the poet moved to another department - "Mount Sinai".

Duel

In November 1909, Maximilian Voloshin received a challenge to a duel from Nikolai Gumilyov. The cause of the duel was the poetess E. I. Dmitrieva. Together with her, Voloshin composed a very successful literary hoax, namely, the personality of Cherubina de Gabriak. Soon there was a scandalous exposure, and Gumilyov spoke unflatteringly about Dmitrieva. Voloshin personally insulted him and received a call. In the end, both poets survived. Maximilian pulled the trigger twice, but there were misfires. Nikolai just shot up.

Creativity of Maximilian Voloshin

The hero of this article was a generously gifted person and combined different talents. In 1910 he published his first collection Poems. 1900-1910". In it, Maximilian appeared as a mature master who went through the Parnassus school and comprehended the innermost moments of the poetic craft. In the same year, two more cycles were released - "Cimmerian Spring" and "Cimmerian Twilight". In them, Voloshin turned to biblical images, as well as Slavic, Egyptian and Greek mythology. Maximilian also experimented with poetic sizes, trying to convey echoes of ancient civilizations in lines. Perhaps his most significant works of that period were the wreaths of sonnets "Lunaria" and "Star Crown". This was a new trend in Russian poetry. The works consisted of 15 sonnets: each verse of the main sonnet was the first and at the same time closing in the remaining fourteen. And the end of the latter repeated the beginning of the first, thereby forming a wreath. Maximilian Voloshin's poem "Star Crown" was dedicated to the poetess Elizaveta Vasilyeva. It was with her that he came up with the aforementioned hoax of Cherubina de Gabriac.

Lecture

In February 1913 Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich, whose poems made him famous, was invited to the Polytechnic Museum to give a public lecture. The topic was the following: "On the artistic value of the damaged painting by Repin." In the lecture, Voloshin expressed the idea that the painting itself "laid self-destructive forces", and it was the art form, as well as the content, that caused aggression against it.

Painting

Voloshin's literary and artistic criticism occupied a special place in the culture of the Silver Age. In his own essays, Maximilian Alexandrovich did not share the personality of the painter and his works. He sought to create a legend about the master, conveying to the reader his "solid face". All articles written on the topic of contemporary art, Voloshin combined in the collection "Faces of Creativity". The first part came out in 1914. Then the war began, and the poet failed to realize his plan to issue a multi-volume edition.

In addition to writing critical articles, the hero of this story himself was engaged in painting. At first it was tempera, and then Voloshin became interested in watercolor. From memory, he often painted colorful Crimean landscapes. Over the years, watercolors have become the artist's daily hobby, literally becoming his diary.

Temple construction

In the summer of 1914, Maximilian Voloshin, whose paintings were already actively discussed in the community of artists, became interested in the ideas of anthroposophy. Together with like-minded people from more than 70 countries (Margarita Voloshina, Asya Turgeneva, Andrey Bely and others), he came to Switzerland in the commune of Dornach. There, the whole company began to build the Goetheanum - the famous temple of St. John, which became a symbol of the brotherhood of religions and peoples. Voloshin worked more as an artist - he created a sketch of a curtain and cut bas-reliefs.

Rejection of service

In 1914, Maximilian Aleksandrovich wrote a letter to V. A. Sukhomlinov. In his message, the poet refused to participate in the First World War, calling it a "carnage".

Burning bush

Voloshin had a negative attitude towards the war. All his disgust resulted in the collection "In the Year of the Burning World 1915". The Civil War and the October Revolution found him in Koktebel. The poet did everything to prevent his compatriots from exterminating each other. Maximilian accepted the historical inevitability of the revolution and helped the persecuted, regardless of his "color" - "both the white officer and the red leader" found "advice, protection and refuge" in his house. In the post-revolutionary years, the poetic vector of Voloshin's work changed dramatically: impressionistic sketches and philosophical meditations were replaced by passionate reflections on the fate of the country, its election (the book of poems "The Burning Bush") and history (the poem "Russia", the collection "Deaf-Mute Demons"). And in the cycle "Ways of Cain" the hero of this article touched upon the topic of the material culture of mankind.

Violent activity

In the 1920s, Maximilian Voloshin, whose poems were becoming increasingly popular, worked closely with the new government. He worked in the field of local history, protection of monuments, public education - he traveled with inspections in the Crimea, gave lectures, etc. He repeatedly arranged exhibitions of his watercolors (including in Leningrad and Moscow). Maximilian Alexandrovich also received a safe-conduct for his house, joined the Writers' Union, he was given a pension. However, after 1919, the author's poems were hardly published in Russia.

Wedding

In 1927, the poet Maximilian Voloshin married Maria Zabolotskaya. She shared with her husband his most difficult years (1922-1932). At that time, Zabolotskaya was a support in all the endeavors of the hero of this article. After the death of Voloshin, the woman did everything to preserve his creative heritage.

"Poet's House"

Perhaps this mansion in Koktebel became the main creation of Maximilian Alexandrovich. The poet built it on the seashore in 1903. A spacious house with a tower for observing the starry sky and an art workshop soon became a place of pilgrimage for the artistic and literary intelligentsia. Altman, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Shervinsky, Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Khodasevich, Mandelstam, A. N. Tolstoy, Gumilyov, Tsvetaeva and many others stayed here. In the summer months, the number of visitors reached several hundred.

Maximilian was the soul of all the events held - catching butterflies, collecting pebbles, walking on Karadag, live pictures, charades, tournaments of poets, etc. He met his guests in sandals on his bare feet and a canvas hoodie, with a massive head of Zeus, which was decorated a wreath of wormwood.

Death

Maximilian Voloshin, whose biography was presented above, died after a second stroke in Koktebel in 1932. They decided to bury the artist on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar. After the death of the hero of this article, the regulars continued to come to the Poet's House. They were met by his widow Maria Stepanovna and tried to maintain the same atmosphere.

Memory

One part of the critics puts the poetry of Voloshin, which is very heterogeneous in value, much lower than the works of Akhmatova and Pasternak. The other recognizes the presence in them of a deep philosophical insight. In their opinion, the poems of Maximilian Alexandrovich tell readers about Russian history much more than the works of other poets. Some of Voloshin's thoughts are classified as prophetic. The depth of ideas and the integrity of the worldview of the hero of this article led to the concealment of his heritage in the USSR. From 1928 to 1961 not a single poem by the author was published. If Maximilian Aleksandrovich had not died of a stroke in 1932, he would certainly have become a victim of the Great Terror.

Koktebel, which inspired Voloshin to create many works, still keeps the memory of its famous inhabitant. On Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar is his grave. The "House of the Poet" described above has turned into a museum that attracts people from all over the world. This building reminds visitors of a hospitable host who gathered around him travelers, scientists, actors, artists and poets. At the moment, Maximilian Alexandrovich is one of the most remarkable poets of the Silver Age.

The theme of travel was raised more than once in his work: trips to Western Europe, Greece, Turkey and Egypt influenced him - he described all the countries he visited.

He also composed poems about the war, where he called on everyone (even in the years of unrest and revolutions) to remain human. In long poems about the Civil War, the poet tried to reveal the connection between what is happening in Russia and its distant, mythical past. He did not take sides, but defended both whites and reds: he defended people from politics and power.

His works about nature are closely connected with the place where he lived. The poet recreated the primeval Eastern Crimea and the semi-mythical world of Cimmeria not only in poetry, but also in paintings.

Voloshin not only painted pictures himself, but was also a true connoisseur of beauty and a truly believing person. The theme of faith first appears in the poem “Our Lady of Vladimir”: when he saw the icon of the same name in the museum, the poet was so shocked that he came to visit her for several days in a row.

Unfortunately, the poems of the great poet were not included in the school curriculum: he did not write for children. But each of you can just go to this page and read about what worried Voloshin the most: about love and poetry, about revolution and poetry, about life and death. Short or long - it does not matter, only one thing is important: this is the best that he has written in all the years.

Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich (real name Kirienko-Voloshin) (1877-1932), poet, artist.

Born May 28, 1877 in Kyiv. Voloshin's paternal ancestors were Zaporozhian Cossacks, and Russified Germans on his maternal side. After the death of his father, Maximilian and his mother lived in Moscow.

The boy studied at Moscow gymnasiums (1887-1893). In 1893 the family moved to Koktebel; in 1897 Voloshin graduated from the gymnasium in Feodosia. The image of the Eastern Crimea (Voloshin preferred its ancient Greek name - Cimmeria) runs through all the poet's work. In 1897-1900. Voloshin studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University (with interruptions, since he was expelled for participating in student unrest). In 1899 and 1900 traveled in Europe (Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Greece). In 1900, as part of a survey expedition, he wandered around Central Asia for several months, including leading “camel caravans”.

At the beginning of the XX century. Voloshin became close to the circle of symbolist poets and artists from the World of Art association. In 1910 he published his first collection Poems. 1900-1910", in which he appeared as a mature master.

In poems about Koktebel (the cycles "Cimmerian twilight" and "Cimmerian spring") the poet turns to Greek and Slavic mythology, biblical images, experiments with ancient poetic meters. Koktebel poems are consonant with Voloshin's exquisite color watercolor landscapes, which played the role of a kind of diary.

Voloshin's artistic and literary criticism occupied a special place in the culture of the Silver Age. He sought to give a three-dimensional portrait of each master, without dividing the work and the personality of the author. The articles are combined in the book Faces of Creativity (1914). Voloshin's disgust at the outbreak of the First World War found expression in the collection In the Year of the Burning Peace 1915, published in 1916).

The October Revolution and the Civil War found him in Koktebel, where he did everything
"to hinder the brothers
destroy yourself,
exterminate each other."

The poet saw his duty in helping the persecuted: "both the red leader and the white officer" found refuge under his roof.

Voloshin's poetry of the post-revolutionary years was filled with publicistically passionate reflections on the fate of Russia. The works of this time made up the collection "Deaf-Mute Demons" (1919), a book of poems "The Burning Bush", including the poem "Russia".

In the 20s. Voloshin existed in contact with the new government, worked in the field of public education, protection of monuments, and local history. He joined the Writers' Union, but his poems were practically not published in Russia. The poet's house in Koktebel, built by him in 1903, soon became a gathering place for literary youth. N. S. Gumilyov, M. I. Tsvetaeva, O. E. Mandelstam and many others have been here. In 1924, with the approval of the People's Commissariat of Education, Voloshin made it a free House of Creativity. In this house he died on August 11, 1932.

Tsvetaeva, responding to the news of the poet’s death, wrote: “Voloshin’s work is dense,
weighty, almost like the creation of matter itself, with forces that do not come from above, but are supplied by that ... burnt, dry, like flint, earth, on which he walked so much ... "

Maximilian Alexandrovich Voloshin

Voloshin (real name - Kirienko-Voloshin) Maximilian Alexandrovich (1877 - 1932), poet, critic, essayist, artist.

Born on May 16 (28 n.s.) in Kyiv. The mother, Elena Ottobaldovna (née Glaser), was engaged in education. Voloshin's father died when Maximilian was four years old.

He begins to study at the Moscow gymnasium, and finishes the gymnasium course in Feodosia. From 1890 he began to write poetry, translated by G. Heine.

In 1897 he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, but three years later he was expelled for participating in student unrest. Decides to devote himself entirely to literature and art.

In 1901 he went to Paris, listened to lectures at the Sorbonne, at the Louvre, studied a lot in libraries, traveled - Spain, Italy, the Balearic Islands. Writes poems.

In 1903 he returned to Russia, met with V. Bryusov, A. Blok, A. Bely and other figures of Russian culture. He publishes his poems in various publications. In the summer of the same year, not far from Feodosia, in the village of Koktebel, he buys land and builds a house, which very soon becomes a kind of "summer club", whose "summer family" was populous and diverse: poets, artists, scientists, people of various professions, inclinations and ages.

Voloshin was greatly influenced by his first wife, the artist M. Sabashnikova, who was passionately fond of occultism and theosophy (this influence was reflected in his poems "Blood", "Saturn", the cycle "Rouen Cathedral"). In addition to literature, Voloshin was seriously engaged in painting (his Crimean watercolors are known).

During the winter in France, as a correspondent for the magazine "Besy" he writes articles on contemporary art, reports on Parisian exhibitions, reviews of new books, published in various newspapers and magazines. One of the first he supports the work of young M. Tsvetaeva, S. Gorodetsky, M. Kuzmin and others.

In 1910, critics noted Voloshin's new book "Poems. 1900 - 1910" as an event in literary life.

Before the First World War, Voloshin published several books: translations, a collection of articles; continues to paint with passion. Just before the start of the war, he travels to Switzerland, then to Paris. His new verses show the "horror of the raging times", he protests against the world massacre in the series of articles "Paris and War".

In 1916 he returned to Koktebel, lectured on literature and art in Feodosia and Kerch.

During the February Revolution, which did not arouse "great enthusiasm" in him, Voloshin was in Moscow and performed at evenings and literary concerts. He accepted the October Revolution as a severe inevitability, as a test sent down to Russia. During the civil war, he sought to take a position "above the fray", calling "to be a man, not a citizen." Living in the Crimea, in Koktebel, where the “power” changed especially often, Voloshin saved both the “Reds” and the “Whites” from death, realizing that he was saving just a person.

After the revolution, he created a cycle of philosophical poems "The Ways of Cain" (1921 - 23), the poem "Russia" (1924), the poems "The Poet's House" (1927), "The Mother of God of Vladimir" (1929). He works a lot as an artist, participating in exhibitions in Feodosia, Odessa, Kharkov, Moscow, Leningrad. Voloshin turned his house in Koktebel into a free shelter for writers and artists, with the help of his second wife M. Zabolotskaya. In 1931 he bequeathed his house to the Writers' Union.

Voloshin died of pneumonia on August 11, 1932 in Koktebel. He was buried, as he bequeathed, on the top of the seaside hill Kuchuk-Yanyshar.

Used materials of the book: Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.

M. Voloshin in 1919.
Photo from www.day.kiev.ua

Voloshin (pseudo; real surname - Kirienko-Voloshin), Maximilian Alexandrovich 05/16/1877-08/11/1932), poet. Born in Kyiv in a noble family. Graduated from the Feodosia gymnasium. He studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, was expelled for participating in student riots. He appeared in print in 1900. He joined the Symbolists, collaborated with the magazines Libra, Golden Fleece, and in the Acmeist organ Apollon. Living in Paris for many years, he experienced a significant influence of French poets (P. Verlaine, A. Renier, etc.) and impressionist artists. He was engaged in painting (his Crimean watercolors are known). From 1917 Voloshin lived permanently in the Crimea, in Koktebel. During the civil war, he sought to take a position "above the fray", calling "to be a man, not a citizen." During the revolutionary upheavals in Russia, which Voloshin was a witness in Koktebel, he stated that “the poet’s prayer during the civil war can only be for both: when the children of the same mother kill each other, one must be with the mother, and not with one of the brothers. Motherland and becomes mainly in the poetry of Voloshin during the revolutionary years. More precisely, not the "motherland" in Nekrasov's incarnation, but the Russian Mother of God. Fierce, restless Russia appears in his poems - Russia of timelessness, where whirlwinds walk across the military field, swamp lights flicker ominously, and the body of Tsarevich Dmitry ("Dmetrius the Emperor") emerges from the earth's womb. Furious Avvakum burns alive in a log house, affirming the true faith with his death (poem "Protopop Avvakum", 1918). Stenka Razin walks around Russia, administering cruel trials against the oppressors and celebrating bloody celebrations ("Stenka's Court", 1917). The types of modernity are crowding each other: "Red Guard", "Sailor", "Bolshevik", "Bourgeois", "Speculator" (cycle "Masks"). And above these scenes of ancient times and modernity rises the face of the Mother of God, the light of life-giving love and purification: “The mystery of mysteries is incomprehensible, / The depth of the depths is boundless, / The height is unclimbable, / The joy of earthly joy, / The triumph is invincible. / Angelically gifted / Above the native land, / Burning Bush” (“Praise of the Mother of God”, 1919). The image of the Burning Bush is found more than once in Voloshin's poems of those years. According to biblical legend, this is a burning thorn bush that does not burn down and personifies the immortality of the spirit. Such, according to Voloshin, is Russia, engulfed in revolutionary flames: “We are perishing without dying, / We are baring the Spirit to ashes ...” (“Burning Bush”, 1919). Even during these years, the poet's faith in the revival of Russia remained.

The book “The Ways of Cain”, which was created in parallel with the book “The Burning Bush”, is filled with a different pathos. "This is not so much poetry as a philosophical treatise in prose slightly elevated in rhythm." Subtitle: "The tragedy of material culture." The poet traces the entire disturbing path of mankind: from the first opposition to God (“Rebellion”), from the first spark of civilization - the use of fire (“Fire”), from the first religious quest (“Magic”), from the first internal strife that began with the murder of Cain's brother (“Fist”), through the achievements of medieval and bourgeois thought (“Gunpowder”, “Steam”, “Machine”), culminating in the fact that “the machine defeated man”, and “whistle, roar, clang, movement turned the King of the universe into an oiler wheels”, through the hostile offensive of the new statehood on the individual (“Rebel”, “War”, “State”, “Leviathan”). This path ends with the poet's insight into the future - where it is not the Lord who executes the Last Judgment on everyone, but where "everyone ... judged himself" ("Judgment"). Voloshin's poetry is characterized by motifs of contemplation of nature, reflections on the course of history, the tragic fate of man and the fate of ancient cultures, usually clothed in picturesque paintings, visible, material images. Material tangibility, objectivity of the image were combined in Voloshin with the "transparency" of poetic speech, concreteness - with symbolism. Voloshin defined his style as "neo-realism", combining the achievements of symbolism and impressionism. Voloshin seeks to depict the phenomena of the modern era as if through the haze of history, “from the perspective of other centuries”, considering this the most important condition for artistic perception. The philosophical and historical orientation of Voloshin's lyrics intensified during the years of the First World War and the revolution ("Deaf and Dumb Demons", 1919). Voloshin is a translator of French poets and the author of articles on various issues of culture and art (partially collected in the book Faces of Creativity, 1914).

G. F., A. S.

Used materials from the site Great Encyclopedia of the Russian people - http://www.rusinst.ru

20th century poet

Voloshin (real name Kirienko-Voloshin) Maximilian Alexandrovich - poet.

Father - Alexander Maksimovich Kirienko-Voloshin, served as a lawyer with the rank of collegiate adviser. Mother - Elena Ottobaldovna, nee Glaser. "Kiriyenko-Voloshin - Cossacks from Zaporozhye. On the maternal side - Germans, Russified since the 18th century, ”Voloshin pointed out (“Autobiography”, 1925. RO IRLI). With a deeper penetration into his family tree, he called himself “a product of mixed blood (German, Russian, Italian-Greek)” (Memoirs ... P. 40). He did not remember his father: after a quarrel with his wife, he died in 1881. With his mother, until the end of her life, Voloshin maintained not only filial, but also creative relations. Studying as a child with a tutor, Voloshin memorized Latin verses, listened to his stories on the history of religion, and wrote essays on complex literary topics. Then he studied at the gymnasiums of Moscow and Feodosia. Moving to Koktebel in 1893, where his mother bought a plot of land that was cheap for that time, largely predetermined the creative fate of the beginning poet (his first poetic experiments - 1890, the first publication - in the collection "In Memory of V.K. Vinogradov" (Feodosia, 1895) "The historical saturation of Cimmeria and the austere landscape of Koktebel" ("Autobiography", 1925) immediately sunk into Max's soul (as Voloshin was called by relatives and friends).

According to family tradition, in 1897 Voloshin entered the law faculty of Moscow University, although he dreamed of a historical and philological one. The study was interrupted several times.

Feb. 1899 Voloshin was expelled from the university for a year for participating in "student riots" and exiled to Feodosia. After the restoration, he finally left the university and devoted himself to self-education with the feeling: “I owe neither the gymnasium nor the university either a single knowledge or a single thought” (“Autobiography”, 1925). But fruitful for the spiritual formation of Voloshin was his acquaintance with European countries, where, due to meager means, he moved on foot, spent the night in doss houses (Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Greece, Andorra, which he especially liked). No less important was the one and a half month stay in Central Asia after being expelled from the university (1899-1900). “1900, the junction of two centuries, was the year of my spiritual birth. I traveled with caravans in the desert. Here I was overtaken by Nietzsche and "Three conversations" by Vl (adimir) Solovyov. They gave me the opportunity to look at the entire European culture in retrospect - from the height of the Asian plateaus to reassess cultural values ​​... Here, a decision was made to go to the West for many years, to go through the Latin discipline of form ”(Memoirs ... P. 30, 37) .

Since 1901 Voloshin settled in Paris. His task is “to learn: art form from France, a sense of color from Paris, logic from Gothic cathedrals ... In these years, I am just an absorbent sponge, I am all eyes, all ears” (“Autobiography”, 1925 ). After the “years of wandering” (this is how Voloshin himself defined the seven years of 1898-1905), the “years of wandering” (1905-12) begin: Buddhism, Catholicism, occultism, freemasonry, anthroposophy R. Steiner. Arriving in Jan. 1905 in St. Petersburg, Voloshin witnessed Bloody Sunday, but the revolution, by his own admission, passed him by, although the poet then anticipated the impending turmoil in Russia (Angel of Vengeance, 1906, with the final lines: “Who once drank the intoxicating poison of anger, / He will become the executioner or the victim of the executioner.

Alternately living in Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Voloshin actively participates in the literary activities of Russia. The first book of his poems was published (“Poems”, 1910), he collaborated in the symbolist magazine “Bases” and the acmeists “Apollo”. Not without scandals: because of Voloshin's craving for pranks, there is a hoax with Cherubina de Gabriak, which led to his famous duel with N. Gumilyov (1909). The lecture and pamphlet "About Repin" (1913), where Voloshin rebelled against the naturalistic trend in art, turned out to be "Russian ostracism" for him - excommunication from publications.

In the summer of 1914, carried away by the ideas of anthroposophy, Voloshin arrived in Dornach (Switzerland), where, together with like-minded people, he began the construction of the Goetheanum - the church of St. John, a symbol of the brotherhood of peoples and religions. Voloshin immediately responded to the outbreak of the world war with both poetry (the book "Anno mundi ardentis", 1915) and direct statements. “This is not a war of liberation,” he wrote to his mother. “This is all invented to make it popular. Just a few octopuses (industry) are trying to trample on each other ”(quoted from: Kupriyanov I. - P. 161). He even sent a letter to the Minister of War, where he announced his refusal to serve in the tsarist army. According to relatives, “he agreed to be shot rather than kill” (Ibid., p. 175). Having delved into the foundations of Russian national self-consciousness, having completed a book about V. Surikov (published in full in 1985), in 1917 Voloshin finally settled in Koktebel. If the February Revolution was perceived by him "without much enthusiasm", and after the final disbelief in it, the October Revolution as a historical inevitability, then the fratricidal Civil War could not find justification in his heart. But it did not shake his moral foundations: “Neither the war nor the revolution frightened me and disappointed me in nothing: I expected them for a long time and in even more cruel forms ... The 19th pushed me to social activity in the only form possible with my negative attitude to any politics and to any statehood ... - to the fight against terror, regardless of its coloring" ("Autobiography", 1925). Voloshin takes a position "above the fray", saving both Reds and Whites in his house in Koktebel.

In 1920-30 he did not enter into literary battles. Died at the age of 54. He was buried on the hill Kuchuk-Yenishar near Koktebel.

In 1925, Voloshin indicated how the publication of his poetic works should be formed, and thus outlined the stages of his creative development. Books were supposed: "Years of wanderings" (1900-10); "Selva oscura" (Italian "Dark Forest" - from the first lines of Dante's "Divine Comedy" ... G.F.) (1910-14); "Burning Bush" (1914-24); "Ways of Cain" (1915-26, as a result).

Voloshin described his spiritual path before the revolution in an unpublished preface to the book of selected poems Iverni (1918): “The lyrical focus of this book is a journey. Man is a wanderer: on the earth, on the stars, on the universes. At first, the wanderer surrenders to purely impressionistic impressions of the outside world (“Wanderings”, “Paris”; hereinafter - the titles of the sections of the book. - G.F.), then moves on to a deeper and bitter feeling of mother earth (“Cimmeria”), passes through the test of the elements of water (“Love”, “Appearances”), he cognizes the fire of the inner world (“Wanderings”) and the fires of the outer world (“Armageddon”), and this path ends with the “Double Wreath” hanging in the interstellar ether. Such is the psychological blueprint of this path, passing through the tests of the elements: earth, water, fire and air ”(Poems and poems. Vol. 1. P. 390).

The poet has changed. But his main property as an artist came from a constant natural sociability and passionate temperament with a heightened sense of loneliness; from the desire to enter into the depths of the phenomenon, to become one's own in it - and at the same time preserve oneself. Regardless of the situation, he will remind one of his contemporaries (A. Bely) a Parisian-intellectual (Memoirs ... P. 140), and to another (I. Ehrenburg) - a Russian coachman (Memoirs ... P. 339). In Paris, Voloshin will meet A. France, R. Rolland, P. Picasso and will wander around the markets and cabaret. So he creates a Parisian cycle about the beauty of everyday life: “In the rain, Paris blooms, / Like a gray rose ...” (“Rain”, 1904). In the Parisian lanes, he will distinguish “mother-of-pearl blue between bronze sheets”, “and rusty spots of escaped gilding, / And the sky is gray, and the bindings of branches - / Ink-blue, like threads of dark veins.” This is not the symbolism with which the early Voloshin was always associated. Yes, he knew all the leaders of this trend, dedicated poems to them (A. Bely, Y. Baltrushaitis, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont), but he turned out to be closer to French impressionism (in painting - C. Monet, in poetry - P. Verdun) . “The talking eye,” Vyacheslav Ivanov accurately said about him. Fascinated by mystical theories, V. even embodied them in reality. “Realism is the eternal root of art, which draws its juices from the fat black soil of life...” – this is how he wrote in “Faces of Time”.

Since 1906, the Voloshin cycle "Cimmerian Twilight" began to take shape, then continued by another - "Cimmerian Spring" (1906-09; 1910-19). Peering into the Taurian landscape, Voloshin felt that history “wanders here in the shadows of the Argonauts and Odysseus ... it is in these rain-washed hills ... it is in the dug-out burial grounds of nameless tribes and peoples ... it is in these bays, where trading has never been carried out. vanity and indestructible from century to century burning human mold has been blooming for the third millennium ”(quoted from: Kupriyanov I. - P. 140). The historical landscape - that's what Voloshin discovered then for our poetry and theoretically substantiated in articles. The point is not that in the poem "Thunderstorm" mythological images from "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" come to life, but in another way: the stepped crown of mountains recalls the sacred forest of Ancient Greece ("Here was a sacred forest. Divine messenger ...", 1907 ) - in the very nature of personal experience one hears the voice of eternity, embodied concretely, sensually: “Whose bent ridge is overgrown, like with wool, with chobr? / Who is the inhabitant of these places: a monster? titanium? / It is stuffy here in cramped quarters... And there - space, freedom, / There the heavily tired Ocean breathes / And it breathes with the smell of rotting herbs and iodine ”(“ I fed it with ancient gold and bile ... ”, 1907). M. Tsvetaeva said about this as follows: “Voloshin’s creativity is dense, weighty, almost like the creativity of matter itself, with forces that do not descend from above, but are supplied by that - a little warmed through - burnt, dry as flint, the earth on which he I walked so much...” (Memoirs... P.200-201). It seems that the primitive East and the sophisticated West found a common language in the Cimmerian land.

But in Nov. 1914 in Dornach, under the pen of Voloshin, ominous lines are born: “The angel of bad weather shed fire and thunder, / Having drunk the people with painful wine ...” During the revolutionary upheavals in Russia, which Voloshin witnessed in Koktebel, he stated that “the poet’s prayer during civil war can only be for one and the other: when the children of the same mother kill each other, one must be with the mother, and not with one of the brothers. Motherland and becomes mainly in the poetry of Voloshin during the revolutionary years. More precisely, not the "motherland" in Nekrasov's incarnation, but the Russian Mother of God. Fierce, restless Russia appears in his poems - Russia of timelessness, where whirlwinds walk across the military field, swamp lights flicker ominously, and the body of Tsarevich Dmitry ("Dmetrius the Emperor") emerges from the earth's womb. Furious Avvakum burns alive in a log house, affirming the true faith with his death (poem "Protopop Avvakum", 1918). Stenka Razin walks around Russia, administering cruel trials against the oppressors and celebrating bloody celebrations ("Stenka's Court", 1917). The types of modernity are crowding each other: "Red Guard", "Sailor", "Bolshevik", "Bourgeois", "Speculator" (cycle "Masks"). And above these scenes of ancient times and modernity rises the face of the Mother of God, the light of life-giving love and purification: “The mystery of mysteries is incomprehensible. / Depth of depths boundless, / Height unsustainable, / Joy of earthly joy, / Invincible triumph. / Angelically gifted / Above the native land, / Burning Bush” (“Praise of the Mother of God”, 1919). The image of the Burning Bush is found more than once in Voloshin's poems of those years. According to biblical legend, this is a burning thorn bush that does not burn down and personifies the immortality of the spirit. Such, according to Voloshin, is Russia, engulfed in revolutionary flames: “We perish without dying, / We bare the Spirit to the ground ...” (“Burning Bush”, 1919). Even during these years, the poet's faith in the revival of Russia remained.

The book “The Ways of Cain”, which was created in parallel with the book “The Burning Bush”, is filled with a different pathos. “This is not so much poetry as a philosophical treatise in prose slightly increased in rhythm” (Rayet E. Maximilian Voloshin and his time // Poems and poems. V.1. С.XCI). Subtitle: "The tragedy of material culture." The poet traces the whole troubled path of mankind: from the first opposition to God ("Rebellion"), from the first spark of civilization - the use of fire ("Fire"), from the first religious quest ("Magic"), from the first internal strife that began with the murder of Cain's brother (“Fist”), through the achievements of medieval and bourgeois thought (“Gunpowder”, “Steam”, “Machine”), culminating in the fact that “the machine defeated man”, and “whistle, roar, clang, movement turned the King of the universe into an oiler wheels”, through the hostile offensive of the new statehood on the individual (“Rebel”, “War”, “State”, “Leviathan”). This path ends with the poet's insight into the future - where it is not the Lord who executes the Last Judgment on everyone, but where "everyone ... judged himself" ("Judgment"). It is in this - in entering the path of individual improvement, and not rational knowledge of the surrounding world (after all, “Mind is creativity inside out”), not material and technical improvement and social revolutions, but on the organic fusion of man with the primordial Cosmos (“the known world is a distortion of the world”, but “our spirit is an interplanetary rocket”), the call of the very first poem of the book is carried out: “Recreate yourself!” - the only way out of the global crisis.

The measure of art for Voloshin has always been a person. “Living about living” - this is how M. Tsvetaeva called an article about him. And Voloshin himself, in articles concentrated mainly in the book "Faces of Creativity" (1914), put the artist's personality in its psychological complexity at the forefront. Whatever and whoever he wrote about - about the poetry of Russia or the West, about Parisian art salons, about Russian icon painting or historical painting - the reader always saw the living faces of the creators with their individual features. However, this did not prevent the author from making theoretical discoveries. An example is Voloshin's book "Vasily Surikov". Written on the basis of conversations with the great national artist and recreating not only the bright character of the interlocutor, but also the everyday specifics of the Siberian environment that gave birth to him, it also marked a new method in art history: a structural study of the composition of an artistic canvas. And this is also a discovery “from within”: the work of Voloshin, a poet or critic, is inseparable from his painting. Impressionism and strict calculation distinguished both his lyrics and watercolor sketches of the Crimea. To the question: "Who is he - a poet or an artist?" - Voloshin answered: "Of course, a poet" and added at the same time: "And an artist."

Departing from literary activity in 1926, V. painted watercolors daily and presented them to numerous visitors to his home in Koktebel on the day of their departure. He did everything in the name of universal brotherhood, and his brainchild, his house, built back in 1903 according to his own plan and turned over the years either into a museum or into a creative reserve, where a workshop was located below, and heavenly bodies could be observed on the roof ; the house where writers M. Gorky and M. Bulgakov, artists K. Petrov-Vodkin and A. Benois, poets M. Tsvetaeva and A. Bely, many actors, musicians, artists, where they lived, met each other , created, - Voloshin bequeathed this house to the writers of his country a year before his death. One of Voloshin's last poems, in fact the final one, was called: "The Poet's House" (1926). His final lines are Voloshin's testament: “The whole thrill of life of all ages and races / Lives in you. Always. Now. Now".

Voloshin was strict with his poems, reserved for paintings. Perhaps only one became the subject of his pride. Verse. “Koktebel” (1918) ended with the words: “And on the rock that closed the swell of the bay, / My profile is sculpted by fate and winds.” The southern tip of one of the mountains of Karadag is strikingly similar to Voloshin's profile. He could not have imagined a better memorial. Because Nature herself put it.

G.V.Filippov

Used materials of the book: Russian literature of the XX century. Prose writers, poets, playwrights. Biobibliographic dictionary. Volume 1. p. 419-423.

Read further:

Compositions:

Poems. M., 1910;

Anno mundi ardentis. M., 1916;

Iverny. Selected Poems. M., 1918;

Poems. M., 1922;

Poems. L., 1977;

Poems and poems. SPb., 1995.

Demons are deaf. Kharkov, 1919;

Poems about terror. Berlin, 1923;

Strife: Poems about the Revolution. Lvov, 1923;

Poems. L., 1977. (B-ka poet. M. series);

Poems and poems: in 2 volumes. Paris, 1982, 1984;

Faces of creativity. L., 1988. (Literary monuments); 2nd ed., stereotype. 1989;

Autobiographical prose. Diaries. M., 1991;

House of the poet: Poems, chapters from the book "Surikov". L., 1991;

Poems and poems. SPb., 1995. (B-ka poet. B. series);

Life is infinite knowledge: Poems and poems. Prose. Memoirs of contemporaries. Dedications. M., 1995.

Literature:

Pann E. The writer's fate of Maximilian Voloshin. M., 1927;

Tsvetaeva A. Memories. M., 1971. S. 400-406, 418-442, 508;

Voloshin the artist: Sat. materials. M., 1976;

Kupriyanov I. The fate of the poet: The personality and poetry of Maximilian Voloshin. Kyiv, 1978;

Kupchenko V. Koktebel Island. M., 1981;

Voloshin readings. M., 1981;

Memories of Maximilian Voloshin. M., 1990;

Bazanov V.V. "I believe in the rightness of the supreme forces ...": Revolutionary Russia in the perception of Maximilian Voloshin // From the creative heritage of Soviet writers. L., 1991. S.7-260;

Vsekhsvyatskaya T. Years of wanderings of Maximilian Voloshin: A conversation about poetry. M., 1993;

Kupchenko V.P. The Journey of Maximilian Voloshin: Documentary Narrative. SPb., 1996.

Biography

VOLOSHIN, MAKSIMILIAN ALEKSANDROVICH (pseud.; real name Kirienko-Voloshin) (1877−1932), Russian poet, artist, literary critic, art critic. Born May 16 (28), 1877 in Kyiv, paternal ancestors - Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, maternal ancestors - Russified in the 17th century. Germans. At the age of three he was left without a father, childhood and adolescence passed in Moscow. In 1893, his mother acquired a plot of land in Koktebel (near Feodosia), where Voloshin graduated from high school in 1897. Entering the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, he became involved in revolutionary activities, for his involvement in the All-Russian student strike (February 1900), as well as for his "negative outlook" and "a tendency to all kinds of agitation" was suspended from classes. In order to avoid other consequences, in the fall of 1900 he went to work on the construction of the Tashkent-Orenburg railway. Voloshin later called this period “the decisive moment in my spiritual life. Here I felt Asia, the East, antiquity, the relativity of European culture.”

Nevertheless, it is precisely the active familiarization with the achievements of the artistic and intellectual culture of Western Europe that has become his life goal since the first travels of 1899−1900 to France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Greece. He was especially attracted to Paris, in which he saw the center of European and, therefore, universal spiritual life. Returning from Asia and fearing further persecution, Voloshin decides to "go to the West, go through the Latin discipline of form."

Voloshin lives in Paris from April 1901 to January 1903, from December 1903 to June 1906, from May 1908 to January 1909, from September 1911 to January 1912, and from January 1915 to April 1916. visits both Russian capitals and lives in his Koktebel "poet's house", which becomes a kind of cultural center, haven and resting place for the writers' elite, "Cimmerian Athens", in the words of the poet and translator G. Shengeli. At different times, V. Bryusov, Andrei Bely, M. Gorky, A. Tolstoy, N. Gumilyov, M. Tsvetaeva, O. Mandelstam, G. Ivanov, E. Zamyatin, V. Khodasevich, M. Bulgakov, K. Chukovsky and many other writers, artists, actors, scientists.

Voloshin made his debut as a literary critic: in 1899 the journal Russkaya Mysl published his small reviews without a signature, and in May 1900 a large article In Defense of Hauptmann appeared there, signed “Max. Voloshin" and is one of the first Russian manifestos of modernist aesthetics. His further articles (36 on Russian literature, 28 on French, 35 on Russian and French theatre, 49 on events in the cultural life of France) proclaim and affirm the artistic principles of modernism, introduce new phenomena in Russian literature (especially the work of the "younger" symbolists ) in the context of modern European culture. “Voloshin was needed these years,” Andrey Bely recalled, “without him, the rounder of sharp corners, I don’t know how the sharpening of opinions would have ended…”. F. Sologub called him “the questioner of this age”, and he was also called the “answering poet”. He was a literary agent, expert and intercessor, entrepreneur and consultant for the Scorpio and Grif publishing houses and the Sabashnikov brothers. Voloshin himself called his educational mission as follows: "Buddhism, Catholicism, magic, Freemasonry, occultism, theosophy ...". All this was perceived through the prism of art - the "poetry of ideas and the pathos of thought" were especially appreciated; therefore, “articles similar to poetry, poems similar to articles” were written (according to the remark of I. Ehrenburg, who dedicated an essay to Voloshin in the book Portraits of Modern Poets (1923). At first, few poems were written, and almost all of them were collected in the book Poems. 1900 −1910 (1910) The reviewer V. Bryusov saw in her “the hand of a real master”, “jeweler”, Voloshin considered his teachers the virtuosos of poetic plasticity (as opposed to the “musical”, Verlaine direction) T. Gauthier, J. M. Heredia and other French "Parnassian" poets. This self-characterization can be attributed to the first and second, unpublished (compiled in the early 1920s) collection Selva oscura, which included poems from 1910-1914: most of them were included in the book of the chosen Iverny (1916). From the beginning of the First World War, Voloshin's clear poetic reference point was E. Verhaern, whose translations by Bryusov were subjected to devastating criticism in an article by Emil Verhaern and Valery Bryusov (1907), which he himself translated drove "in different eras and from different points of view" and the attitude to which was summarized in the book by Verhaarn. Fate. Creation. Translations (1919). Quite consonant with Verhaarn's poetics are the poems about the war that made up the collection Anno mundi ardentis 1915 (1916). Here the techniques and images of that poetic rhetoric were practiced, which became a stable characteristic of Voloshin's poetry during the revolution, civil war and subsequent years. Some of the poems of that time were published in the collection Deaf and Dumb Demons (1919), some under the conditional unifying title Poems about Terror was published in Berlin in 1923; but for the most part they remained in manuscript. In the 1920s, Voloshin compiled the books The Burning Bush from them. Poems about war and revolution and the Ways of Cain. Tragedy of material culture. However, in 1923 the official persecution of Voloshin began, his name was consigned to oblivion, and from 1928 to 1961 not a single line of his appeared in print in the USSR. When in 1961 Ehrenburg respectfully mentioned Voloshin in his memoirs, this caused an immediate rebuke from A. Dymshits, who pointed out: "M. Voloshin was one of the most insignificant decadents, he ... reacted negatively to the revolution." Voloshin returned to the Crimea in the spring of 1917. “I don’t leave it anymore,” he wrote in his autobiography (1925), “I don’t escape from anyone, I don’t emigrate anywhere ...”. “Not being on any of the fighting sides,” he said earlier, “I live only in Russia and what is happening in it ... I (I know this) need to stay in Russia to the end.” His house in Koktebel remained hospitable throughout the civil war: they found shelter and even hid from persecution "both the red leader and the white officer," as he wrote in the poem The Poet's House (1926). The “Red Leader” was Bela Kun, after the defeat of Wrangel, he was in charge of pacifying the Crimea through terror and organized famine. Apparently, as a reward for his harboring Voloshin, under the Soviet regime, the house was kept and relative safety was ensured. But neither these merits, nor the efforts of the influential V. Veresaev, nor the pleading and partly repentant appeal to the all-powerful ideologist L. Kamenev (1924) helped him break into the press. "Verse remains for me the only way to express my thoughts," wrote Voloshin. His thoughts rushed in two directions: historiosophical (poems about the fate of Russia, often taking on a conditionally religious coloring) and anti-historical (the cycle of the Paths of Cain imbued with the ideas of universal anarchism: “there I formulate almost all my social ideas, mostly negative. The general tone is ironic "). The inconsistency of thoughts characteristic of Voloshin often led to the fact that his poems were perceived as high-sounding melodic declamation (Holy Russia, Transubstantiation, the Angel of Times, Kitezh, the Wild Field), pretentious stylization (The Tale of the Monk Epiphanius, Saint Seraphim, Archpriest Avvakum, Dmetrius the Emperor) or aestheticized speculations (Thanob, Leviathan, Cosmos and some other poems from the cycle of the Ways of Cain). Nevertheless, many of Voloshin's poems of the revolutionary era were recognized as accurate and capacious poetic evidence (typological portraits of the Red Guard, Speculator, Bourgeois, etc., the poetic diary of the Red Terror, the rhetorical masterpiece Severovostok and such lyrical declarations as Readiness and At the bottom of the underworld) . The activity of Voloshin as an art critic ceased after the revolution, but he managed to publish 34 articles on Russian fine art and 37 on French. His first monographic work on Surikov retains its significance. The book Spirit of the Gothic, on which Voloshin worked in 1912-1913, remained unfinished. Voloshin took up painting in order to professionally judge the fine arts - and turned out to be a gifted artist, watercolor Crimean landscapes with poetic inscriptions became his favorite genre. Voloshin died in Koktebel on August 11, 1932.

Maximilian Alexandrovich Voloshin (real name Kirienko-Voloshin) (1877-1932) - Russian poet, artist, literary critic and art historian. He comes from Kyiv. At the age of 3 he lost his father. Mother in 1893 bought land in Koktebel, so the boy studied and graduated from the local gymnasium in 1897. While studying at Moscow University as a lawyer, he joined the revolutionaries, which was the reason for his dismissal. To avoid further repressions, in 1900 he went to the construction site of the Tashkent-Orenburg railway. Here there was a turning point in the outlook of the young man.

Numerous travels around Europe with frequent stops in his beloved Paris alternate with visits to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Koktebel. As for the latter, Voloshin's house becomes a "poet's house", which gathers not only the literary elite, but also creative people.

Since 1899, Voloshin has been publishing critical articles in support of modernism. At first, Voloshin had little poetry. All of it fit in the collection "Poems 1900−1910 (1910)". Many of his works remain unpublished. But V. Bryusov was able to discern the talent.

Since 1923, Voloshin has been persona non grata. Not a single printed edition of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1961 contains a single word about Voloshin. The writer returned to Crimea in 1917 and remained to live in his "poet's house", where he received various disgraced friends and comrades. Voloshin's poetry of this period is either universally anarchic or historiosophical. As an art critic, Voloshin was exhausted after the revolution. Although he managed to print 71 articles about the fine arts of Russia and France. The monograph dedicated to Surikov is a very significant work. Voloshin worked on the work "The Spirit of the Gothic" in 1912-1913, but never completed it. Voloshin decided to paint pictures in order to plunge into the world of fine arts, but he turned out to be a rather talented artist. He liked to draw landscapes of the Crimea and leave poetic inscriptions on them. The writer died in August 1932 in Koktebel.