Maximilian Voloshin biography briefly. Is Maximilian Voloshin worthy of anathema? Creative biography and artistic world of M
Is Maximilian Voloshin worthy of anathema?
Maximilian Voloshin. Self-portrait. 1919
De mortuis aut bene, aut male
Today, May 28 marks the 135th anniversary of his birth, and August 11 marks the 80th anniversary of the death of the famous poet and painter of the "Silver Age" Maximilian Voloshin.
The article below is a revision of my term paper written in 1995. At that time, the personality and work of Voloshin attracted me with their mysteriousness. His poems were then quoted by some clergymen (and, surprisingly, still) are quoted exactly as some kind of spiritual revelation. At the same time, the most profound and authoritative researcher of Voloshin's life and work, V. Kupchenko, called him an occultist, giving sufficient grounds for this. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since 1995, but to my surprise, Voloshin's personality and work have not yet received a spiritual assessment (from the point of view of holy Orthodoxy). This prompted me to blow off the dust from my typewritten work in order to present here its main provisions.
Maximilian Voloshin attracted people during his lifetime and still attracts people not only as a person with a remarkable intellect, a brilliant poet and artist, and finally, as a great original, but also as a teacher of life. It is very important that he is not the type of the philosopher of modern times, diligently working under the shadow and behind the reliable walls of some university, but the type of the ancient sage, the philosopher in the open.
Here is the impression he makes on some people: “Maximilian Voloshin created a world full of love and brotherhood of people of art, a unique world that one can talk about with envy and delight ...” (Lev Ozerov); “Everyone who has been in this House felt the fabulous atmosphere of universal brotherhood, when personal conflicts are erased and what remains is the unifying one – love for art, nature, neighbor…” (German Filippov). As for the worldview, E. Mendelevich defines Voloshin as a Christian, A.K. Pushkin - as a pantheist, V. Kupchenko, as mentioned above - as an occultist. However, the latter adds: “Having tried on all world religions, Western and Eastern, in his youth, Voloshin returned “home” in his mature years - to Orthodoxy ...”
How does the poet himself evaluate himself? Here are the words from his "Autobiography" of 1925: "My poetic creed - see the poem" Journeyman "... My attitude to the state - see" Leviathan ". My attitude to the world - see "Corona Astralis". The wreath of sonnets "Corona Astralis" was written in 1909. From another "Autobiography" ("Across the Seven Years"), also referring to 1925, we learn that the years of the civil war "are the most fruitful", both in terms of quality and quantity of writing. So, 1925 can be called the time that followed the peak of the flowering of Voloshin's personality. If the poet's worldview had changed by 1925, he would have recorded it, however, to assess his attitude to the world, Voloshin refers us to 1909.
Marina Tsvetaeva reports the following interesting information about him: “Max belonged to a different law than human, and we, falling into his orbit, invariably fell into his law. Max himself was a planet. And we, revolving around him, in some other, larger circle, revolved together with him around the luminary, which we did not know. Max was knowledgeable. He had a secret that he didn't tell. Everyone knew this, no one knew this secret ... "
Testimony of Ilya Ehrenburg: “Max's eyes were friendly, but somehow distant. Many considered him indifferent, cold: he looked at life interested, but from the outside. There were probably events and people that really worried him, but he did not talk about it; he counted everyone among his friends, but it seems he did not have a friend.
The philosophy of life of Maximilian Aleksandrovich sounds quite clearly in the poem "The Valor of the Poet" (1923):
Creative rhythm from the oar rowing against the current,
In the turmoil of strife and wars to comprehend integrity.
To be not a part, but all: not on one side, but on both.
The viewer is captured by the game - you are not an actor or a spectator,
You are an accomplice of fate, revealing the plot of the drama.
Beginning in 1905, Anna Rudolfovna Mintslova, a follower of theosophy, had a great influence on Voloshin. Maximilian Alexandrovich cites in detail what she read from his hand (we can treat such information as we please - it is important that the poet himself valued them very highly): “In your hand there is an extraordinary separation of the lines of the mind and heart. I have never seen such a thing. You can only live with your head. You cannot love at all. The most terrible misfortune for you will be if someone loves you, and you feel that you have nothing to answer ... It will be the most terrible thing for you if someone loves you and sees that you are completely empty. Because it is not visible from the outside. You are very artistic…”
To better understand the poet's relationship to people, it will be useful to consider his relationship to nature. He calls the earth mother, and presents himself as a mediating link between the world of matter and the world of "spirit". Here is Voloshin's appeal to the earth:
I myself am your mouth, silent as a stone!
I, too, was exhausted in the shackles of silence.
I am the light of extinct suns, I am the frozen flame of words,
Blind and dumb, wingless, like you.
Voloshin presents himself as a spokesman, a liberator of nature. This idea is confirmed by the testimony of Andrei Bely: “Voloshin himself, as a poet, a painter of the brush, a sage, who took out the style of his life from the light sketches of the Koktebel mountains, the lapping of the sea and the flowery patterns of Koktebel pebbles, stands in my memory as the embodiment of Koktebel’s idea. And his grave itself, having flown to the top of the mountain, is, as it were, an expansion into space of a self-transforming personality.
What is the idea of Koktebel? Something hidden, enclosed in the depths of matter. And here Voloshin appears as a man who speaks on behalf of nature, on behalf of the earth itself, which is why he called himself: "I am the voice of the inner keys." In his paintings, he exposes the earth - so that the forces hidden in it become visible; rarefies water and air - so that their skeletons (underwater and air currents) become visible. The desire to express the hidden essence of the elements became the need of Maximilian Alexandrovich.
The idea that Voloshin is “the embodiment of the idea of Koktebel” is also expressed by Marina Tsvetaeva, however, in other words, dedicated to the appearance of the poet: “Max was a real child, a product, a fiend of the earth. The earth opened up and gave birth to: such a completely ready-made, huge dwarf, a dense giant, a little bit of a bull, a little bit of a god, on stocky, chiseled like pins, like steel, elastic, like pillars, stable legs, with aquamarines instead of eyes, with dense forest instead of hair, with all sea and earth salts in the blood ... "
Here is the impression in the poem "Maximilian Voloshin" by Georgy Shengeli:
A huge forehead and a red explosion of curls,
And clean, like an elephant's breath ...
Then - a calm, gray-gray look.
And a small, like a model, hand.
"Well, hello, let's go to the workshop" -
And the stairs creak painfully
Under the quick run of an experienced highlander,
And in the wind the linen chiton whips,
And, completely occupying the door frame,
He turns around and waits.
I loved this moment before sunset:
All golden then seemed Max.
He willingly painted himself as Zeus,
He got mad at me once
When I said that in his features
A trace of history with Europe is noticeable.
He was so proud that the silhouette of a rock
Enclosing the blue bay from the south,
It was an exact cast from his profile.
Here we are sitting at a small table;
He puts on a shoemaker's belt
On the forehead, so that the hair does not climb into the eyes,
Leaning towards transparent watercolor
And leads with a brush - and all the same earth,
Tears of rocks and spectra of clouds and the sea,
And the glow of cosmic aurora
Lie down on paper for the umpteenth time.
There was something mysterious about this
From year to year to write the same thing:
All the same Koktebel landscapes,
But in their Heraclitean movement.
So you can suffer when you are
Sick of love for a petty actress,
And I want from a thousand guises
Catch like a real one...
(…)
Everything dilapidated, and he became weaker,
But - like a malvasia, the conversation flows:
From irrefutable paradoxes
The head starts spinning!
Here he laughs at his own wit,
Here he rounds off the phrase with a smooth gesture:
Shining like a child - but look:
Like steel, gray eyes are calm.
And it seems: isn't it all a mask?
(…)
Isn't it a mask?
What the hell mask
When to Denikin, sparkling with anger,
He enters and orders
The poet was released from prison -
And listen to the general!
In this wonderful poem, reality is mixed with myth. As follows from the story of Voloshin himself (“The Case of N.A. Marx”), he sent a letter to Denikin, there was no meeting. Why is fiction needed (I do not claim that it belongs to G. Shengeli)? To make the figure of Maximilian look more spectacular.
Quite a few compared Voloshin with Zeus, with a lion, thereby elevating him to some kind of royal dignity. And in his own poems, he looks spectacular, for example:
... And the world is like the sea before the dawn,
And I walk on the bosom of the waters,
And below me and above me
The starry sky trembles…
(1902)
When such thoughts come to someone's mind, one can speak with a high degree of certainty about the illness of the spirit, which is called "charm" in ascetic writings.
Here is a portrait of Voloshin, painted by himself, against the backdrop of the flames of the Civil War:
The people, embraced by madness,
Bangs his head against stones
And the bonds break like a demoniac...
Do not be embarrassed by this game
Builder of the Inner City...
(Poem "Petrograd", 1917)
Next example:
And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with all your might
(Poem "Civil War").
After reading these verses, the figure of the great “builder”, “prophet”, standing between two armies under crossfire, involuntarily arises in our imagination. However, the memoirs of Voloshin himself give a slightly different idea: he simply knew how to get along with both the Reds and the Whites, straighten the appropriate paper in time - so as not to be exposed to excessive danger. I say this not to condemn the poet, but to mark the line between reality and myth.
Testimony of Ivan Bunin: “Voloshin is busy trying to get out of Odessa and home to the Crimea. Yesterday he ran to us and happily told us that the matter was being arranged, and, as often happens, through a pretty woman ... I also help Voloshin get into the Crimea through the “Naval Commissioner and Commander of the Black Sea Fleet” Nemitz, who, according to Voloshin, is also a poet, “ writes rondos and triplets especially well. They are inventing some kind of secret Bolshevik mission to Sevastopol ... He was dressed like a traveler - a sailor suit, beret. In his pockets he kept a lot of different saving papers, for all cases: in case of a Bolshevik search at the exit of their Odessa port, in case of a meeting at sea with the French or volunteers - before the Bolsheviks, he had acquaintances in Odessa both in French command circles and in volunteer ".
Of course, Bunin is not impartial in his memoirs, but he is not inclined to distort the facts. There is a contradiction: on the one hand, we have before us a stern prophet, on the other, just a clever person.
Alexander Benois spoke about the pretense of Voloshin's appearance: “It is possible that “from the inside” he saw himself differently; perhaps he revered his figure for something imposing and downright "divine." The mask of the Greek deity, in any case, did not stick to him, but it was only a mask, and not his real face.
If we perceive Voloshin's appearance as a work of art, it is natural to ask the question: for what purpose was it created? And the second question: if a mask is noticeable in appearance, maybe all creativity is a kind of mask (as the theosophist Mintslova spoke about at the dawn of it)?
I will quote Alexandre Benois again: “His poems captivated me, but they did not inspire confidence in themselves, without which there can be no genuine delight. I “didn’t quite believe” him when, along the ledges of beautiful and sonorous words, he climbed to the very heights of human thought, from where only one can “talk with God” and where poetry turns into divination and broadcasting. But I can vouch for one thing: Maximilian was attracted to these "ascents" quite naturally, and it was precisely the words that attracted him. They appeared to him in fabulous variety and splendor, giving rise to those ideological selections that intoxicated him with grandeur and splendor ... The irony came from the fact that the plans and goals of Voloshin's poetry were colossal, and the realization of plans and the achievement of goals aroused feelings of a certain inconsistency. Alas, not the prophet by the grace of God, who, from the noblest motives, would like to be one, but the one who is really called to that. And homogeneous with this discord between breakthroughs, between the noble ambition (noble ambition) of Voloshin and what he was given to create, was his whole manner of being, right down to his appearance.
Contemporaries and later researchers of Voloshin's work point to his ability to be imbued with different forms of being, to express what is characteristic of various cultures of mankind. Moreover, his work did not differ in a wide variety of genres and style. If Pushkin, in his all-responsiveness, appears in the richness of his nature, Voloshin - mainly - in the richness of those forms that he reflected, in principle, the same type.
Maximilian Alexandrovich treated creativity mystically and understood it very broadly, embracing all kinds of manifestations of human life: from childbearing, from the manner of dressing, to art, science, religion (understood in its own way: namely, as a product of exclusively human creativity). In accordance with his philosophy, Voloshin saw in him (creativity) the path of matter to perfection, and here he adjoins the Neoplatonists with their abstruse mysticism.
We read in the poet's diary: “In the word there is a strong-willed element. The word is… the essence of will. It replaces reality, transfers to another area... The word is the future, not the past. Every desire is fulfilled if it is not expressed in a word. To prevent its execution, it must be said.
So, Voloshin perceives verbal creativity as a way of real impact on the world, he sees in the word the power of a magic spell. It is no coincidence that such names of poems as "The Spell" (1920), "The Spell on the Russian Land" (1920) appear. Even the words of the poem "Prayer for the City" are more reminiscent of a magic formula than a Christian prayer:
Wandering through the crossroads
I lived and died
In madness and hard brilliance
hostile eyes;
Their bitterness, their anger and torment,
Their anger, their passion,
And every trigger and hand
I wanted to curse.
My city is covered in blood
sudden battles,
Cover with your love
Ring of prayers
Gather anguish and fire them
And lift up
On outstretched hands:
Understand... sorry!
This poem is dominated not by love, but by pride. For a Christian knows that any human truth, according to the word of the prophet, is the same as a rub thrown down on a fester. What is "to cover with your love" if not the apotheosis of conceit? The Christian works by the power of God, not by his own. Here, in fact, it is not prayer, but meditation, i.e. self-hypnosis with the subsequent release of the individual will outside.
Voloshin's work is only one of the manifestations of magic in art, which is characteristic of both ancient pagan cultures and modernism. To illustrate this idea, I will quote Voloshin's dialogue with Vyacheslav Ivanov, recorded in the diary of Maximilian Alexandrovich. Voloshin defines his goal: to absorb nature, to which Ivanov replies: “Well! And we want to transform, recreate nature. We are Bryusov, Bely, me. Bryusov comes to magic. Bely created a new word for this, his own "theurgism" - the creation of deities, this is different, but in essence the same. An ape could transform into a human, and a human will one day make the same leap and become a superhuman.” Voloshin: "Either the creation of a person, or the creation of a work of art - philosophy, religion - I combine all this under one concept of art." Ivanov: “Bely, in his article on Balmont, calls him the last poet of pure art. The last of this period. You may be the first glimpse of the next period."
In the poem "Journeyman" (1917), which was identified in 1925 as a poetic "creed", it is said:
Your daring spirit knows attraction
Constellations of ruling and willing planets...
Yes, releasing
From the power of a small, unconscious "I",
You will see that all phenomena -
signs,
By which you remember yourself
And fiber after fiber you collect
The fabric of your spirit, torn by the world.
Creativity is perceived by Voloshin as a construction of personality stretched out in time and contracted in space. This poem declares the rejection of feelings, will, consciousness - so that "from the depths of silence" a "word" is born. Apparently, he calls non-material individualities “words”. And his goal is to communicate with them and receive information from them.
The poem "Apprentice" concludes with the following words:
When will you understand
That you are not a son of the earth,
But the traveler through the universes,
That suns and constellations arose
And extinguished inside you
That everywhere - both in creatures and in things - languishes
divine word,
Called them to life
That you are the liberator of divine names,
who came to call
All spirits - prisoners, bogged down in matter,
When you understand that a person is born,
To smelt out of the world
Necessity and Reason
Universe of Freedom and Love, -
Then only
You will become a Master.
The word "Master" was chosen by the satanic sect of "freemasons" to name priests of high degrees of initiation. The use of this word by Voloshin is, of course, not a coincidence.
Here is an entry from his diary dated May 28, 1905: “Last Tuesday, the 22nd, I was initiated as a Freemason. Will. Sword hit." In addition, 1905 included an appeal to Theosophy. Diary entry dated July 20, 1905: “Almost nothing was news to me. All the theosophical ideas that I recognize now have been mine for a long time. Almost since childhood, as if they were innate.
V. Kupchenko lists the books that Voloshin was reading then: Esoteric Buddhism, Kabbalah, Voice of Silence, Secret Doctrine, Light on the Path, Christian Esotericism, books on magic, astrology, spiritualism, physiognomy, palmistry, alchemy, history of religions.
In 1913, Voloshin joined the "General Anthroposophical Society", which then separated from the Theosophical Society. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who headed it, strove, like the Theosophists, to find a "synthesis of science and religion", but transferred the emphasis from Eastern teachings to Christianity. The poet takes part in the construction of the "anthroposophical temple" ("temple", as he later called it) in Dornach (Switzerland), but soon escapes from there to Paris. He could not bear any dogmas, including even anthroposophical ones, which is why later in the poem “The Ways of Cain” (1923) the poet writes:
Accepting the truth on faith -
She goes blind.
The teacher drives before him
Only a herd raped by the truth...
He left the anthroposophical sect, but remained faithful to the theosophical teaching, which he valued very highly. He believed that this doctrine stands above any religion and is the key to understanding anything. Maximilian Alexandrovich wrote: “Theosophy calls for the study of occult forces in human nature and, at the same time, recalls that at all times the normal path of moral purification, then spiritual rebirth, enlightenment, and then strength, power, the ability to apply the knowledge of hidden laws for the benefit of humanity."
In all likelihood, Voloshin ranked himself in the 3rd degree - otherwise he would not have become a prophet. Moreover, he possessed not only knowledge, but also power (from an occult, in our opinion, demonic source). There are testimonies of contemporaries about his psychic abilities.
Voloshin points out that the system of his worldview is revealed in the wreath of sonnets "Corona Astralis" (1909). These verses exude despair, close to the despair of fallen angels. Here are excerpts:
Pelid gazes sadly into the night...
But he is even sadder and sadder,
Our bitter spirit... And the memory torments us.
Our bitter spirit ... (And the memory torments us)
Our bitter spirit sprouted from the darkness like grass
It contains navi poison, grave poisons.
Time sleeps in it, as in the bowels of the pyramids.
The pain of extra-life insults smolders in us.
Sadness languishes, and the flame sharpens deafly,
And all sorrows unfurled banner
In the winds of melancholy rustles sadly.
But let the fire sting and sting
A melodious spirit strangled by bodies,
Laocoön entangled in knots
Flammable snakes, tensed ... and is silent.
And never - nor the happiness of this pain,
Neither the pride of bonds, nor the joy of bondage,
Nor our ecstasy of a hopeless prison
We will not give up Leta for all the oblivion!
Exiles, wanderers and poets -
Who longed to be, but could not become anything ...
From all sides from the mist they look at us
Pupils of strangers, always hostile eyes,
Not warmed by the light of the stars, nor by the sun,
Stir your way in the spaces of eternal darkness -
In ourselves we carry our exile -
In the worlds of love, unfaithful comets!
The images presented are reminiscent of Dennitsa's path, which, like lightning, fell from heaven into eternal darkness.
The theomachic, satanic beginning sounds in the poem "The Ways of Cain" (1915-1926). At the beginning of everything, Voloshin had a rebellion, this word is called the 1st chapter of the poem. His view of rebellion and rebellion is explained by the testimony of Anastasia Tsvetaeva, who preserved the words of the poet: “Do not forget, Asya, that there are people whose mission is the mission of denial ... Who are given to be rebellious all their lives. Riot. But this rebellion may be closer to God than faith. Do not forget that the paths to God are different. And that the way of theomachism, perhaps, is even more true than obedience to God.
In the chapter "Mutiny" Voloshin says this about the theomachist:
He affirms God by rebellion,
Creates - unbelief, builds - denial,
He is an architect
And he sculpted - death.
And clay is whirlwinds of its own spirit.
Theosophy puts the human consciousness at the head of everything, deifying it (“You are only what you think, thoughts are eternal”). Every person is recognized as "his own truth", regardless of its objective content.
Voloshin denies free will in man: “We are imprisoned in the moment. There is only one way out of it - to the past. We have been ordered to lift the veil of the future. Whoever raises and sees, he will die, i.e. will lose the illusion of free will, which is life. Illusion of the possibility of action. Mayan".
The premise - a person does not have free will - is followed by a logical conclusion: no person is responsible for any of his actions. This same conclusion leads to the following conclusions from the poet's diary below: (July 19, 1905) “From the stories about the speeches of Annie Besant. Do not be surprised if a significant and beautiful person commits deeds unworthy of him: spirit often outstrips matter. This is how he kills his shortcomings. From Oscar Wilde: "The best way to fight temptation is to give in to it." “Facts say nothing about a person. Everything is in his will. Never judge by facts and actions. (August 11, 1905) “Buddha asked the saint what he wants to be before reaching final perfection - 2 times a demon or 6 times an angel. And the saint answered: of course, 2 times by a demon. In the Christian understanding, such statements are the justification of evil, the service of evil.
If in the poem “The Ways of Cain” the facts were simply stated, which are the history of the development of civilization, we, albeit with a stretch, could say that this is an objective view of the world, and nothing more. However, Voloshin gives an assessment of the presented facts, actually justifying any rebellion as one of the ways, and, moreover, the most perfect one, of the growth of the human "spirit". Therefore, the cycle "Ways of Cain" can be called an apology for evil (in the Christian sense of it).
In chapter 9, "The Rebel" (originally titled "The Prophet"), the poet's exhortation is:
Enough for you commandments on "not":
All "do not kill", "do not do", "do not steal" -
The only commandment: "Burn!"
Your god is in you
And don't look for another
Neither in heaven nor on earth:
Check the whole outside world:
Everywhere the law, causality,
But there is no love
Its source is you!…
Run not evil, but only extinction:
Both sin and passion are flowering, not evil;
Decontamination -
Not a virtue at all.
Chapter 12, The Thanob, evaluates Christianity:
Christianity was the burning poison.
The soul stung by him rushed about
In fury and writhing, drawing
The poisoned chiton of Hercules is flesh.
The question arises: how, with such assessments, with a claim to self-deification, combined with sophisticated blasphemy, Voloshin could be classified as a Christian? Orthodoxy? We find the answer in the diary: “In the logical area of the mind, I build as many combinations as I like and throw them without regret. Everything is possible here, everything is equally important and indifferent. Brilliance is in diversity and richness. This area is not to be loved. There is no sincerity here, but only combinations and the ability to make them. I feel like a master in this area.”
Voloshin, with the help of logic, could think in various ideological systems, leaving in his mind the core of theosophical teaching. When he lived in Western Europe, his poems bore the stamp of Catholicism, as B.A. Leman: “Maximilian Voloshin is the only Russian poet who managed to understand and convey to us the complex charm of Gothic and embody in Russian verse the intoxication of the mysticism of Catholicism.”
When Voloshin thoroughly imbued with Russia, something from Orthodoxy appeared in the verses. And it's natural. Maximilian felt like a prophet, and a prophet speaks in order to be heard. In order to have a chance to be heard in a country with an Orthodox culture, it is necessary to be imbued with the beginnings (at least external ones) of this culture. This does not contradict Theosophy, since from her point of view, she is above any religion, and can correct any religion - imperceptibly - which Voloshin did in his poems. For example, in the poem "Readiness" (1921), imbued, it would seem, with the spirit of Christian self-sacrifice, there is an idea of karma that is contrary to Christianity:
Didn't I myself choose the hour of birth,
Century and kingdom, region and people,
To go through torment and baptism
Conscience, fire and water?
Voloshin expressed the theosophical idea of the self-development of the human "spirit" either through good or evil, the difference between which is completely relative, in numerous reincarnations in the image of Stenka Razin, popular in Russia, anathematized for his atrocities:
We are infected with conscience: in each
Stenke - Saint Seraphim,
Surrendered to the same hangovers and cravings
We torment with the same will.
Similar thoughts are present in other verses:
Ah, in the most inert and dark
The spirit of the world is captivated!
Driven by the scourge of passions -
Crucified seraphim
Sharpened in flesh:
They are stinged with a burning sting,
The Lord is in a hurry to burn.
There are also poems in which theosophical ideology is invisible (for example, "The Creature" - about Seraphim of Sarov). There is no contradiction here - after all, Theosophy does not set itself the goal of an open struggle against religions. She is for gradual penetration into them in order to subjugate them.
From the testimonies of contemporaries, we know that many treated Maximilian Alexandrovich Voloshin with confidence and revered him as a teacher of life. Reverence close to religious was highly desirable for Voloshin, because the prophet, what he wanted to be, needs not only to be heard, but also to be believed. We know that Maximilian was called "the peddler of ideas" and "the peddler of friends" (words by M. Tsvetaeva). Religion requires a miracle, and Voloshin gave it - as a psychic, a poet-soothsayer, a penetrating painter, a subtle psychologist. There were people who fell under his charm, his influence. But there were also those who saw the mask of a hypocrite on him. The point, it seems to me, is that, wearing any disguise, outwardly confessing any faith, he remained a Theosophist. Agreeing and imbued with sympathy for the ideas, worldview of any person, he sought trust and found support in this person, remaining, as they say, on his mind. Such behavior is called cunning or cunning.
It also extended to politics. Loudly declaring that in the Civil War he was neither for one nor for the other, but for all at once, Voloshin saw "his own truth" on both sides and was therefore able to arouse confidence in himself. But at the same time, he had his own view of events, being a member of the Masonic lodge Grand Orient of France, which cannot be called apolitical. I will quote the diary (entry dated July 12, 1905): “Yesterday in the Masonic lodge I read my report on Russia - sacred sacrifice”(highlighted by me. - o. S.K.).
Historical cataclysms, skillfully provoked, represent the best opportunity to influence mass consciousness with certain ideas, which was Voloshin's work - to "prophesy". Maximilian Alexandrovich - a poet, an artist, an unusually sympathetic person - is the mask of Voloshin the occultist.
With the seeming integrity of his nature, indefatigability in life, Voloshin resembles, for example, N.K. Roerich, artist, poet, thinker. There is also a difference: Voloshin did not leave any original philosophical (religious) treatise. Perhaps that is why he has so far escaped the fate of E.P. Blavatsky (whom he always revered) and N.K. Roerich, who were anathematized at the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in November 1994 - as preachers of theomachy, anti-Christian ideas.
Voloshin has an impact close to religious on many creative people, the best proof of which is the abundance of myths that have grown around this person: Maximilian Voloshin's peacemaking was part of his myth-making: the myth of a great, wise and kind man. His image became - through the efforts of the poet himself and his inner circle - something like an icon, with some clearly postulated characteristic features, so that images involuntarily emerge when thinking about him: a lion, Zeus, the sun, a chiton, curls and a beard, mountains , sagebrush and sea. Here is a wonderfully figurative picture that M. Tsvetaeva gives: “Voloshin died at 1 o'clock in the afternoon - at his very “own” hour. “At noon, when the sun is at its zenith, i.e. on the very top of the head, at the hour when the shadow is defeated by the body, and the body is dissolved in the body of the world - at its own time, at Voloshin's hour.
Voloshin's grave - on top of the mountain - to dominate the so-called noosphere. There is no cross on it - such is the testament. Becoming a Theosophist, he denied Christ as the only begotten Son of God. The task of the Church is to bear witness to his renunciation, i.e. anathematize - in order to stop the temptation of his work among the faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church. This will undoubtedly be a manifestation of love towards the poet himself, for the less temptation to produce his work condemned by the Church, the less he will be tortured at the truly Terrible Judgment of God.
about. Sergiy Karamyshev
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 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 Gabriac. 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 generously gifted in nature 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 "whole 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 paintings, 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.
At first, Voloshin Maximilian Aleksandrovich, a poet, did not write many poems. Almost all of them were placed in a book that appeared in 1910 ("Poems. 1900-1910"). V. Bryusov saw the hand of a "jeweler", a "real master" in it. Voloshin considered his teachers the virtuoso poetic plastics J. M. Heredia, Gauthier, and other "Parnassian" poets from France. Their works were in opposition to Verlaine's "musical" trend. 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. Most of them later entered the book of the chosen one, published in 1916 ("Iverny").
Focus on Verhaarn
One can talk for a long time about the work of such a poet as Voloshin Maximilian Aleksandrovich. The biography summarized in this article contains only the basic facts about him. It should be noted that from the beginning of the 1st World War, E. Verharn has become a clear political reference point for the poet. Bryusov's translations of him in an article of 1907 and Valery Bryusov" were subjected to crushing criticism by Maximilian. Voloshin himself translated Verhaarn "from different points of view" and "in different eras." He summed up his attitude towards him in his 1919 book "Verhaarn. 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 the poetry of Maximilian during the revolutionary times, the civil war and subsequent years. Some of the poems written at that time were published in the 1919 book Deaf and Dumb Demons, the other part was published in Berlin in 1923 under the title Poems about Terror. However, most of these works remained in manuscript.
official bullying
In 1923, the persecution of Voloshin by the state began. His name was forgotten. In the USSR, in the period from 1928 to 1961, not a single line of this poet appeared in print. When Ehrenburg in 1961 respectfully mentioned Voloshin in his memoirs, this immediately provoked a rebuke from A. Dymshits, who pointed out that Maximilian was one of the most insignificant decadents and reacted negatively to the revolution.
Return to Crimea, attempts to get into print
In the spring of 1917, Voloshin returned to the Crimea. In his autobiography of 1925, he wrote that he would not leave him again, would not emigrate anywhere, and would not be saved from anything. Earlier, he stated that he does not act on any of the fighting sides, but he 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 during the civil war. Here both white officers and red leaders found shelter and hid from persecution. Maximilian wrote about this in his 1926 poem "The Poet's House". The "Red Leader" was Bela Kun. After Wrangel was defeated, he controlled the pacification of the Crimea through organized famine and terror. Apparently, as a reward for hiding Kun under the Soviet regime, Voloshin was kept his house, and also provided relative safety. However, neither his merits, nor the troubles of the influential at that time, nor the somewhat repentant and pleading appeal to L. Kamenev, the all-powerful ideologist (in 1924), helped Maximilian break into the press.
Two directions of Voloshin's thoughts
Voloshin wrote that for him verse remains the only way to express thoughts. And they rushed him in two directions. The first is historiosophical (the fate of Russia, the works about which he often took on a conditionally religious coloring). The second is anti-historical. Here we can note the cycle "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. The general ironic tone of this cycle should be noted.
Recognized and unrecognized works
The inconsistency of thoughts characteristic of Voloshin often led to the fact that his creations were sometimes perceived as high-sounding melodic declamation ("Transubstantiation", "Holy Russia", "Kitezh", "Angel of Times", "Wild Field"), aestheticized philosophies ("Cosmos ", "Leviathan", "Thanob" and some other works from "The Ways of Cain"), pretentious stylization ("Dmetrius the Emperor", "Protopope Habakkuk", "Saint Seraphim", "The Legend of the Monk Epiphanius"). Nevertheless, it can be said that many of his revolutionary poems were recognized as capacious and accurate poetic evidence (for example, typological portraits of "Bourgeois", "Speculator", "Red Guard", etc., lyrical declarations "At the bottom of the underworld" and "Readiness ", the rhetorical masterpiece "North East" and other works).
Articles about art and painting
After the revolution, his activities 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 professionally about the fine arts. 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 brief 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 at Pushkin. It 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 Aleksandrovich. The poet, whose photo is presented below, is Nikolai Gumilyov.
They were shooting because of Lisa Dmitrieva. She studied at the course of 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 Gumilyov to a week of arrest, and Voloshin to one day.
The first wife of Maximilian Voloshin is Margarita Sabashnikova. With her, he attended lectures at the Sorbonne. This marriage, however, soon broke up - the girl fell in love with Vyacheslav Ivanov. His wife offered Sabashnikova to live together. However, the "new type" family did not take shape. His second wife was a paramedic (pictured above), who cared for Maximilian's elderly mother.
Maksimilian Voloshin, poet, artist, literary critic and art critic. His father, lawyer and collegiate adviser Alexander Kiriyenko-Voloshyn, came from a family of Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, his mother, Elena Glazer, came from Russified German nobles.
Voloshin's childhood passed in Taganrog. The father died when the boy was four years old, and the mother and son moved to Moscow.
"The end of adolescence is poisoned by the gymnasium", - wrote the poet, to whom study was not a joy. But he devoted himself to reading with rapture. First Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Gogol and Dostoevsky, later Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.
In 1893, Voloshin's mother purchased a small plot of land in the Tatar-Bulgarian village of Koktebel and transferred her 16-year-old son to a gymnasium in Feodosia. Voloshin fell in love with the Crimea and carried this feeling through his whole life.
In 1897, at the insistence of his mother, Maximilian Voloshin entered the Faculty of Law at Moscow University, but did not study for long. Having joined the All-Russian student strike, he was suspended from classes in 1899 for "negative outlook and campaigning" and sent to Feodosia.
“My family name is Kiriyenko-Voloshyn, and it comes from Zaporozhye. I know from Kostomarov that in the 16th century there was a blind bandura player Matvey Voloshin in Ukraine, who was flayed alive by the Poles for political songs, and from Frantseva’s memoirs that the name of the young man who took Pushkin to the gypsy camp was Kiriyenko- Voloshin. I wouldn't mind if they were my ancestors."
Autobiography of Maximilian Voloshin. 1925
In the next two years, Voloshin made several trips to Europe. He visited Vienna, Italy, Switzerland, Paris, Greece and Constantinople. And at the same time he changed his mind about recovering at the university and decided to engage in self-education. Wanderings and an insatiable thirst for knowledge of the surrounding world became the engine, thanks to which all the facets of Voloshin's talent were revealed.
See everything, understand everything, know everything, experience everything
All forms, all colors to absorb with your eyes,
To walk all over the earth with burning feet,
Take it all in and make it happen again.
He studied literature in the best European libraries, listened to lectures at the Sorbonne, attended drawing lessons in the Parisian workshop of the artist Elizaveta Kruglikova. By the way, he decided to take up painting in order to professionally judge other people's work. In total, he stayed abroad from 1901 to 1916, living alternately either in Europe or in the Crimea.
Most of all, he loved Paris, where he visited often. In this Mecca of art of the early twentieth century, Voloshin communicated with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writers Anatole France, Maurice Maeterlinck and Romain Rolland, artists Henri Matisse, Francois Léger, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Diego Rivera, sculptors Emile Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol. The self-taught intellectual surprised his contemporaries with his versatility. At home, he easily entered the circle of symbolist poets and avant-garde artists. In 1903, Voloshin began to build a house in Koktebel according to his own design.
“... Koktebel did not immediately enter my soul: I gradually realized it as the true home of my spirit. And it took me many years of wandering along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to understand its beauty and uniqueness ... ".
Maximilian Voloshin
In 1910, the first collection of his poems was published. In 1915 - the second - about the horrors of war. He did not accept the First World War, just as he later did not accept the revolution - "the cosmic drama of being." In Soviet Russia, his Iveria (1918) and Deaf and Dumb Demons (1919) are published. In 1923, the official persecution of the poet begins, he is no longer published.
From 1928 to 1961, not a single line of his was published in the USSR. But in addition to poetry collections, the creative baggage of Voloshin the critic contained 36 articles on Russian literature, 28 on French, 35 on Russian and French theater, 49 on events in French cultural life, 34 articles on Russian fine arts and 37 on art France.
After the revolution, Voloshin constantly lived in the Crimea. In 1924, he created the "Poet's House", reminiscent of both a medieval castle and a Mediterranean villa. The Tsvetaeva sisters, Nikolai Gumilyov, Sergei Solovyov, Korney Chukovsky, Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Grin, Alexei Tolstoy, Ilya Ehrenburg, Vladislav Khodasevich, artists Vasily Polenov, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris Kustodiev, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Aristarkh Lentulov, Alexander Benois ...
Maximilian Voloshin. Crimea. In the vicinity of Koktebel. 1910s
In the Crimea, the gift of Voloshin the artist was also truly revealed. The self-taught painter turned out to be a talented watercolorist. However, he painted his Cimmeria not from life, but according to his own method of finished image, thanks to which from under his brush came out impeccable in form and light views of the Crimea. “The landscape should depict the land on which you can walk- said Voloshin, - and the sky through which you can fly, that is, in landscapes ... you should feel the air that you want to breathe in deeply ... "
Maximilian Voloshin. Koktebel. Sunset. 1928
“Almost all of his watercolors are dedicated to the Crimea. But this is not the Crimea that any photographic camera can take, but this is some kind of idealized, synthetic Crimea, the elements of which he found around him, combining them at will, emphasizing the very thing that in the vicinity of Feodosia leads to comparison with Hellas, with the Thebaid, with some places in Spain, and in general with everything in which the beauty of the stone skeleton of our planet is especially revealed.
Art critic and artist Alexandre Benois
Maximilian Voloshin was a fan of Japanese prints. Following the example of the Japanese classics Katsushika Hokusai and Kitagawa Utamaro, he signed his watercolors with lines of his own poems. Each color for him had a special symbolic meaning: red is earth, clay, flesh, blood and passion; blue - air and spirit, thought, infinity and the unknown; yellow - the sun, light, will, self-awareness; purple - the color of prayer and mystery; green - the vegetable kingdom, hope and joy of being.
Voloshin's poems were mostly written about the places he visited during his life. Koktebel is the place where he spent his youth, and those years that he later recalled with nostalgia. He walked all over Russia: how could he not write about it.
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 see 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.
