Biography

VOLOSHIN, MAXIMILIAN ALEXANDROVICH (pseud.; real surname Kirienko-Voloshin) (1877−1932), Russian poet, artist, literary critic, art critic. Born on May 16 (28), 1877 in Kyiv, his paternal ancestors were Zaporozhye Cossacks, and his maternal ancestors were Russified in the 17th century. Germans. At the age of three he was left without a father; his childhood and adolescence were spent in Moscow. In 1893, his mother purchased a plot of land in Koktebel (near Feodosia), where Voloshin graduated from high school in 1897. Having entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, I became involved in revolutionary activity, for involvement in the All-Russian student strike (February 1900), as well as for a “negative worldview” and “a penchant for all kinds of agitation”, he was suspended from classes. In order to avoid other consequences, he went in the fall of 1900 as workers to 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 involvement in the achievements of the artistic and intellectual culture of Western Europe that becomes his life goal starting with the first travels 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. In between, he wanders “within the ancient Mediterranean world,” visits both Russian capitals on visits and lives in his Koktebel “house of the poet,” which becomes a kind of cultural center, a haven and resting place for the literary elite, “Cimmerian Athens,” in the words of the poet and translator G. Shengeli. IN different time V. Bryusov, Andrei Bely, M. Gorky, A. Tolstoy, N. Gumilev, M. Tsvetaeva, O. Mandelstam, G. Ivanov, E. Zamyatin, V. Khodasevich, M. Bulgakov, K. Chukovsky and many visited there other writers, artists, performers, scientists.

Voloshin made his debut as a literary critic: in 1899 the magazine “Russian Thought” published his small reviews without a signature, in May 1900 a large article appeared there in Defense of Hauptmann, signed “Max. Voloshin" and represents one of the first Russian manifestos of modernist aesthetics. His further articles (36 on Russian literature, 28 on French, 35 on Russian and French theater, 49 on events in the cultural life of France) proclaim and affirm the artistic principles of modernism, introduce new phenomena of Russian literature (especially the work of “younger” symbolists ) in the context of modern European culture. “Voloshin was needed these years,” recalled Andrei Bely, “without him, the rounder sharp corners, I don’t know how the sharpening of opinions would end...” F. Sologub called him “the questioner of this century,” and he was also called the “poet-answerer.” He was a literary agent, expert and advocate, entrepreneur and consultant for the Scorpion, 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 valued; therefore, “articles similar to poems, poems similar to articles” were written (according to the remark of I. Ehrenburg, who dedicated an essay to Voloshin in the book Portraits modern poets(1923). At first, few poems were written, and almost all of them were collected in the book Poems. 1900−1910 (1910). Reviewer V. Bryusov saw in it “the hand of a real master”, a “jeweler”; Voloshin considered his teachers to be the virtuosos of poetic plasticity (as opposed to the “musical”, Verlaine movement) T. Gautier, J. M. Heredia and other French “Parnassian” poets. This self-characteristic 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 selected Iverni (1916). Since the beginning of the First World War, Voloshin’s clear poetic reference point has been E. Verhaerne, whose translations by Bryusov were subjected to crushing criticism in the article Emil Verhaerne and Valery Bryusov (1907), whom he himself translated “in different eras and from different points of view” and his attitude towards which was summarized in the book by Verhaerne. Fate. Creation. Translations (1919). The poems about war that made up the collection Anno mundi ardentis 1915 (1916) are quite in tune with Verhaeren’s poetics. Here the techniques and images of that poetic rhetoric were worked out, 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 Mute Demons (1919), some - under the conventional unifying title Poems about Terror, published in Berlin in 1923; but for the most part they remained in manuscript. In the 1920s, Voloshin compiled them into the books The Burning Bush. Poems about war and revolution and the Ways of Cain. The 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 the press 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 Crimea in the spring of 1917. “I’m not leaving it anymore,” he wrote in his autobiography (1925), “I’m not saving myself from anyone, I’m not emigrating anywhere...” “Not being on any of the fighting sides,” he stated 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: “both the red leader and white officer", as he wrote in the poem House of the Poet (1926). The “Red Leader” was Bela Kun, who, after the defeat of Wrangel, led the pacification of Crimea through terror and organized famine. Apparently, as a reward for harboring him, Voloshin’s house was preserved under Soviet rule 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 get into print. “Poem remains for me the only way to express thoughts,” Voloshin wrote. His thoughts rushed in two directions: historiosophical (poems about the fate of Russia, often taking on a conditionally religious overtones) and anti-historical (the cycle The Ways 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 stilted melodic declamation (Holy Rus', Transubstantiation, Angel of the Times, Kitezh, Wild Field), pretentious stylization (The Tale of the Monk Epiphanius, Saint Seraphim, Archpriest Avvakum, Demetrius the Emperor) or aestheticized speculations (Tanob, Leviathan, Cosmos and some other poems from the cycle In the Ways of Cain). Nevertheless, many of Voloshin’s poems from the revolutionary era have received recognition as accurate and succinct poetic evidence (typological portraits of the Red Guard, Speculator, Bourgeois, etc., a poetic diary of the Red Terror, the rhetorical masterpiece Northeast and such lyrical declarations as Readiness and At the Bottom of Hell) . Voloshin's activities as an art critic ceased after the revolution, but he managed to publish 34 articles on Russian fine art and 37 on French art. His first monographic work on Surikov remains significant. The book The Spirit of the Gothic, on which Voloshin worked in 1912-1913, remained unfinished. Voloshin took up painting in order to judge the fine arts professionally, and turned out to be a gifted artist; his favorite genre was watercolor Crimean landscapes with poetic inscriptions. Voloshin died in Koktebel on August 11, 1932.

Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin ( real name Kiriyenko-Voloshin (1877-1932) - Russian poet, artist, literary critic and art critic. He is originally from Kyiv. At the age of 3, he lost his father. His mother bought land in Koktebel in 1893, so the boy studied and graduated from the local gymnasium in 1897. While studying at Moscow University to become a lawyer, he joined the revolutionaries, which was the reason for his suspension from classes. To avoid further repression, in 1900 he went to the construction of the Tashkent-Orenburg railway. Here there was a turning point in the young man’s worldview.

Numerous trips 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 the “house of the poet”, in which not only the literary elite gathers, but also creative people.

Since 1899, Voloshin has published critical articles in support of modernism. At first, Voloshin had little poetry. All of it was included in the collection “Poems 1900−1910 (1910).” Many creations remained unpublished. But V. Bryusov managed to discern talent.

Since 1923, Voloshin has been persona non grata. Not in any print publication Soviet Union from 1928 to 1961 there is not a 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 after the revolution, Voloshin was exhausted. Although he did manage to publish 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 art, and turned out to be quite a talented artist. He loved to paint landscapes of Crimea and leave poetic inscriptions on them. The writer died in August 1932 in Koktebel.

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 around Western Europe, Greece, Turkey and Egypt - he described all the countries he visited.

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

His works about nature are closely related to the place where he lived. The poet recreated the pristine 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 religious 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 went on a date with her for several days in a row.

Unfortunately, the poems of the great poet were not included in school curriculum: He didn't write for children. But each of you can simply go to this page and read about what worried Voloshin most: about love and poetry, about revolution and poetry, about life and death. Short or long - it doesn’t matter, only one thing matters: this is the best thing he has written in all his years.

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

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

Childhood and youth

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


Maximilian Voloshin as a child with his mother

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


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

Literature

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


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


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


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

Painting

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


Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Biblical Land"

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


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

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

Personal life

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

Death

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


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

Bibliography

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

A photograph of the poet taken in Odessa by photographer Maslov.

Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (real name Kirienko-Voloshin) is a poet, translator, literary critic, essayist, art critic, and artist.

Maximilian spent his childhood in Moscow, where the family lived from 1881 to 1893. At the same time he wrote his first poems.

In 1893 the family moved to Crimea. Maximilian’s mother bought a plot of land in Koktebel, where the family lived permanently.

In 1897, Maximilian graduated from a gymnasium in the city of Feodosia. In the same year, M. Voloshin moved to Moscow and entered the law faculty of the university.

In 1903, the first publication of M.A.’s poems took place. Voloshin.

The first and only recording of M. Voloshin reading poetry was in April 1924 (M. Voloshin read two poems: “The Burning Bush” and “Every day it’s getting quieter and getting quieter”).

“With the head of Zeus and the body of a bear,” - this is how Valentin Kataev unfriendly, but truthfully, gave an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bMaximilian Voloshin’s appearance. Like, there was such an aesthetic, average sybarite poet who fell out of the era and was forgotten by almost everyone. In his time he preached fashionable truths, like Moses who descended from Sinai. What remains is a house - something like a museum, and a grave, attractive to holidaymakers, where it is customary to bring strange sea pebbles instead of flowers. Yes, there was a well-organized official oblivion; Voloshin was not published in the USSR for decades, because he did not fit into the well-planned literary framework. But everyone came, the “pilgrims” went to his Koktebel house and there copied poems in tune with his soul from four weighty typewritten collections bound in canvas.

Portrait of M. Voloshin by A. Golovin

Today, without Voloshin, there is no mention of Silver Age, his poetry collections and volumes of prose are published, watercolors and memoirs are published, and not only in his homeland. In 1984, the French publishing house “YMCA-PRESS” published almost full meeting poems and poems with extensive commentary. Nowadays (June-July 2010), as part of the “France-Russia” year, the exhibition “Voloshin in Paris” has been opened on Sulpice Square in the French capital. And this is quite understandable - Voloshin considered Paris his spiritual homeland, lived there several times and for a long time. It is believed that Russian museums owe a wonderful collection of new French art to Voloshin, since the collector and philanthropist Sergei Shchukin trusted his taste, erudition and insight. Voloshin's erudition and contacts were immense. He communicated with Balmont, Bely, Benois, Bryusov, Blok, Merezhkovsky, Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, Gumilev, Tsvetaeva, Surikov, Saryan. Let's add Modigliani, Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Rodin, Steiner. His portraits were created by such famous contemporaries as Golovin, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Vereisky, Kruglikova, Petrov-Vodkin, Diego Rivera. For a hundred years now, one of the corners of Paris has been decorated with a sculptural portrait of the poet, made by Edward Wittig. However, Voloshin was not only a poet, but also a translator, literary critic, essayist, art critic and, of course, an artist. He seemed interested in everything in the world, from archeology and geography to magic, occultism, Freemasonry and theosophy. He owned a colossal library:

Portrait of Voloshin by D. Rivera. Paris, 1916

Shelves of books rise like a wall.

Here at night they talk to me

Historians, poets, theologians.

The world war and revolution destroyed the concepts of previous and customary values. “Our age is sick with neurasthenia,” declared Voloshin, who remained Robinson in his own artistic and poetic world, imbued with high morality and humanism. But even the undemanding poet had to think about a way to survive. “I decided to go to Odessa to give lectures, hoping to earn money. I had Tsetlins in Odessa, who called me to their place.”

And so, at the end of January of the chaotic year of 1919, Voloshin came to our city and stayed at Nezhinskaya, 36, with his still Parisian friends Maria and Mikhail Tsetlin. “I came to Odessa as the last concentration of Russian culture and intellectual life.” This was the last stop before the Great Exodus. Against the backdrop of a motley intervention, unemployment, typhus and half-starvation, the city was flooded with refugees from the Soviet Republic: industrialists, financiers, officials, speculators, full-blown banditry flourished, but at the same time cultural life was seething. A. Tolstoy, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, Teffi, G. Shengeli, I. Bunin, V. Doroshevich, T. Shchepkina-Kupernik, A. Vertinsky, I. Kremer were here. I. Poddubny spoke. Dozens of newspapers and magazines were published. Were going to literary evenings Adalis, Bagritsky, Bisk, Grossman, Inber, Kataev, Shishova, Fioletov, Olesha, Babajan.

Voloshin reads poetry at meetings and clubs, participates in debates, makes reports at the Literary-Artistic and Religious-Philosophical Societies, publishes in the press, speaks in the “Oral Newspaper” of the Union of Journalists, prepares a collection of his translations from E. Verhaeren for the publishing house “Omphalos” " He also “enthusiastically” translates A. de Regnier and communicates friendly with young Odessa poets. Y. Olesha writes: “He treated us, young poets, condescendingly<...>He read poetry excellently<...>Who did he sympathize with? What did he want for his homeland? He didn’t answer those questions then.” However, Voloshin’s answers were: “A person is more important to me than his convictions” and “I have a claim to be the author of my own social system.”


Self-portrait, 1919

In Bunin’s tenacious memory, Voloshin from 1919 was preserved like this: “...speaks to greatest hunt and a lot, he’s all beaming with sociability, goodwill towards everything and everyone, pleasure from everyone and everything - not only from what surrounds him in this bright, crowded and warm dining room, but even from everything that is huge and terrible , what is happening in the world in general and in dark, creepy Odessa, in particular, already close to the arrival of the Bolsheviks. At the same time, he is dressed very poorly - his brown velvet blouse is so worn out, his black trousers are so shiny and his shoes are broken<...>He suffered great need at that time.” In the collections of the Koktebel House Museum there was found a photograph of the poet taken in Odessa by photographer Maslov.

On the day the Bolsheviks arrived, April 4, Voloshin accompanied Alexei Tolstoy into emigration, but he himself refused to leave, explaining: “... when a mother is sick, her children stay with her.” May Day was approaching and Voloshin decided to participate in the festive decoration of the city, offering to decorate the streets with colored banners with geometric shapes and poetic quotes, however new government reminded him of publications in the Socialist Revolutionary press and removed him from the team of artists.

Portrait of Voloshin by G. Vereisky

I wanted to go home, to Koktebel. Voloshin uses his acquaintance with the chairman of the Odessa Cheka and receives permission to travel to Crimea. But how? A man of incredible biography, Rear Admiral Alexander Nemitz, comes to the rescue and allocates the only available oak tree “Cossack” with three sailors-chekists, sent supposedly to communicate with Sevastopol.

And behind is the city,

All in a red frenzy

Spilled banners

All inflamed with anger and fear,

Chill of rumors, trembling of expectations,

Tormented by hunger, pestilence, blood,

Where late spring slides stealthily

In transparent lace of acacias and flowers...

The four days of sailing were not calm, the sea was blocked by French destroyers, and one of the officers landed on a suspicious oak tree. Voloshin spoke to him without an interpreter, introduced himself as a refugee, and along the way it turned out that he had mutual acquaintances in Paris, and everything, in general, worked out. The little boat reached the Crimean shores, where, to begin with, it was fired from machine guns. And Voloshin translated for Henri de Regnier.


House-Museum of M. Voloshin in Koktebel

There are many impressions left about the extraordinary personality of the poet and artist. He excited and amazed not only his friends, but even his enemies. It’s funny that some of Voloshin’s traits from the Civil War period can be discerned in Professor Maxim Gornostaev from Konstantin Trenev’s very revolutionary play “Yarovaya Love,” created in the mid-1920s. Lives in Crimea, but also appeared in Odessa, Soviet authority gave him a safe conduct for his house and books. Character traits appearance - beard and wild hairstyle. His wife calls him “Max.” Therefore, the daring revolutionary sailor Shvandya is convinced that this is either Karl Marx, or, in extreme cases, his younger brother. One of Gornostaev’s remarks contained the following Voloshin motif: “Man has been working for tens of thousands of years. He grew from a half-beast to a demigod. He crawled out of the cave on all fours, and now flew up to the sky. His voice can be heard thousands of miles away. Is this a man or a god? It turns out it's all a ghost. We are the same half-beasts.”



Grave of M.A. Voloshin in Koktebel. Photos were taken by S. Kalmykov with an interval of 45 years.

Portrait of Voloshin by Petrov-Vodkin

So is the unique poet and artist only a thing of the past? Judge for yourself. In Odessa in 2002-2003. two amazing books were published under the auspices of the World Club of Odessans - a reprint edition of the rare poetry collection “Ark” (Feodosia, 1920) with a poem by Voloshin and his beautifully published poem “Saint Seraphim”. The memorial plaque was installed in Kyiv, where Maximilian Voloshin was born. Quite recently, a monument was erected to him in Koktebel.

Voloshin bequeathed his house to the Writers' Union.

Sergey Kalmykov, local historian

Maximilian Voloshin is a rebel and pacifist.
Not everyone is familiar with the work and biography of the poet and artist M. Voloshin. We will not find his poems in textbooks, we will not see his paintings on the covers of books. But there is such a corner of the earth where everything speaks about this person - this is the village of Koktebel, which is located in Crimea, not far from the city of Feodosia. Here he spent almost his entire life, here he created and created. He burst into the history of poetry as a fearless citizen and pacifist.
Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin was born in Kyiv 16 May 1877 of the year. He was raised only by his mother, Elena Ottobaldovna, from a family of Russified Germans; she divorced the boy’s father shortly after his birth. She was a strong-willed, strict, domineering woman, which cannot be said about her son, a peace-loving, calm, good-natured person. His mother tried to develop a fighting character in him.
IN 1893 year, the poet's mother buys a plot of land in Koktebel and moves there with her son. Maximilian studies at a gymnasium, which is located in Feodosia, and comes to his mother only on vacation.
After finishing school in 1897 Voloshin entered Moscow University at the Faculty of Law. After studying 2 years he was expelled: for his freethinking, for his interest in the books of K. Marx, for his hostility to the authorities, and later he was deprived of the right to enter any other universities in Russia. After these events, he decides to go to Europe and engages in self-education: listening to lectures in Sarbon, studying drawing and engraving in Paris.
WITH 1903 By 1913 For years he has been interested in watercolors, painting a lot of landscapes, developing his own style in painting.
IN 1906 year he marries the artist M.V. Sabashnikova and moved to St. Petersburg, but this marriage was short-lived, literally a year later in 1907 year he returns to Koktebel to settle here forever. There, on his mother's plot of land, near the sea, he builds himself a two-story house. His work begins on the cycle “Cimmerian Twilight” (he liked to call Crimea “Cimmeria”). In his new house A lot of famous and famous guests come: Nikolai Gumilyov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam, Valery Bryusov. Everyone relaxed, swam in the sea, enjoyed nature, and in the evenings they recited poems and acted out plays.
His first book of essays is published in 1910 year and has the title “Poems 1900- 1910". IN 1916 Another collection of poems was published this year.
IN 1914 year, being a principled pacifist, he writes a letter of refusal military service to the Russian Minister of Military Affairs himself.
The Civil War left a heavy imprint on his life; he did not recognize any authority, thereby helping to hide in his house, either white or red, risking his own life. He found his name on the lists of Crimeans sentenced to death by Wrangel’s men.
After the civil war, he was constantly attacked by the new government, demanding that he be evicted from his home; magazines mocked him, calling him a “counter-revolutionary.”
IN 1919 year, the last lifetime book of poems published in his homeland was published, after which 60 For years they seemed to have forgotten about him.
In March 1927 years married Maria Stepanovna Zabolotskaya. He met her back in 1922 year. She worked as a paramedic in a neighboring village and helped him take care of his “surrendering” mother. This woman was with him until the end of his days, she outlived him by many years, but with the same enthusiasm she continued to look after the house, did not change the orders and foundations that existed there, writers, poets, and all creative people came there all the time .
IN 1929 Voloshin suffered his first stroke and practically stopped creative work.
In August 1932 year he had a second stroke, after which he dies. Voloshin was buried on Mount Kuchuk-Yenishar, which offers a beautiful view of Koktebel and Karadag (an extinct volcano) with the profile of the poet.