Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich: biography, creative heritage, personal life

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Voloshin Maximilian (years of life - 1877 - 1932) - poet, artist, art critic, literary critic. Voloshin is a pseudonym. His real name is Kiriyenko-Voloshin.

Childhood, student years

The future poet was born in Kyiv in 1877, on May 16 (28). His paternal ancestors were Zaporozhye Cossacks. On the mother's side, there were Germans in the family, Russified in the 17th century. Maximilian was left without a father at the age of 3. The childhood and adolescence of the future poet passed in Moscow. His mother in 1893 acquired a land plot in Koktebel, located near Feodosia. Here in 1897 Voloshin Maximilian graduated from the gymnasium. He entered Moscow University (faculty - law). Maximilian in his student years was drawn into revolutionary activities. He was involved in the All-Russian student strike that took place in February 1900. As a result of this, as well as for a tendency to agitation and a "negative outlook," Maximilian Voloshin was suspended from school.

The start of travel

Forin order to avoid the worst consequences, he went to build a railway in the autumn of 1900. Voloshin later called this period the "decisive moment" that determined his further spiritual life. During the construction, he felt antiquity, the East, Asia, the relativity of European culture.

However, it is Maximilian's active familiarization with the achievements of the intellectual and artistic culture of Western Europe from his first travels that becomes the poet's life goal. He visited Italy, France, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Austria-Hungary in 1899-1900. Maximilian was especially drawn to Paris. It was in him that he saw the center of European, and hence the universal spiritual life. Maximilian Alexandrovich, having returned from Asia for fear of further persecution, decides to go to the West.

Life in Paris, further travels, "poet's house" in Koktebel

Voloshin Maximilian (his photo is presented in this article) visited Paris several times in the period from 1901 to 1916, lived here for a long time. In between, the poet traveled through the "ancient Mediterranean world". In addition, he visited both Russian capitals on short visits. Voloshin at that time also lived in his "poet's house" in Koktebel, which turned into a kind of cultural center, a place of rest and a haven for the writers' elite. G. Shengeli, translator and poet, called it "Cimmerian Athens". At various times, this house was visited by Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Bryusov, Alexei Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, MarinaTsvetaeva, V. Khodasevich, E. Zamyatin, Vs. Ivanov, K. Chukovsky, M. Bulgakov and many other writers, artists, artists, scientists.

Voloshin is a literary critic

Voloshin Maximilian made his debut as a literary critic in 1899. In the journal "Russian Thought" his small reviews appeared without a signature. In May 1900, the same journal published a large article en titled "In Defense of Hauptmann." It was signed "Max. Voloshin". This article was one of the first manifestos of modernist aesthetics in Russia. Since then, other articles have appeared. In total, Voloshin wrote 36 of them - about Russian literature, 35 - about French and Russian theater, 28 - about French literature, as well as 49 articles about the events of French cultural life. They approved and proclaimed the artistic principles of modernism. Voloshin introduced new phenomena in the literature of our country (first of all, the work of the so-called junior symbolists) into the context of modern European culture.

Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich, whose biography interests us, was also a literary agent, consultant, entrepreneur, intercessor and expert of the Grif, Scorpio publishing houses and the Sabashnikov brothers. He himself called his educational mission Buddhism, magic, Catholicism, theosophy, occultism, Freemasonry. Maximilian perceived all this in his work through the prism of art. In particular, he appreciated the "pathos of thought" and the "poetry of ideas", therefore the articleshis poems were like poems, and his poems were like articles (this was noted by I. Ehrenburg, who dedicated an essay to him in the book Portraits of Modern Poets published in 1923).

First verses

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").

Verhaarn Orientation

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 the 1907 article "Emil Verharn and Valery Bryusov" were subjected to crushing criticism by Maximilian. Voloshinhe himself translated Verhaarn "from different points of view" and "in different eras." He summarized his attitude towards him in his 1919 book "Verhaarn. Fate. Creativity. Translations".

Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich - 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 of 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 1925 autobiography, he wrote that he would no longer leave him, would not emigrate anywhere, and would not be saved from anything. Previously, he stated that heacts on none of the contending sides, but lives only in Russia and what happens 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 efforts of V. Veresaev, influential at that time, nor the somewhat repentant and pleading appeal to L. Kamenev, the all-powerful ideologist (in 1924), helped Maximilian break into print.

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 overall 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 speculations ("Cosmos", "Leviathan", "Thanob" and some other works from "The Ways of Cain"), pretentious stylization ("Dmetrius the Emperor", "Protopope Habakkuk", "Saint Seraphim", "The Legend of 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).

Art Articles and Painting Practice

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 aboutfine 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 very 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 Liza 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 - 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 wasparamedic Maria Stepanova (pictured above), caring for Maximilian's elderly mother.