Fantasy meeting of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva in Yelabuga.
From the film by Dmitry Tomashpolsky.

On June 7 (1941) Marina Tsvetaeva finally met Anna Akhmatova. A long-term dream, gradually cooling down, turned into curiosity, no longer illuminated by love, especially since last autumn Tsvetaeva criticized the last Akhmatov's book ... However, Marina Ivanovna still had a desire to meet. Pasternak knew about this. Hearing from him that Tsvetaeva wanted to see her, Akhmatova invited her to the Ardovs, where she was staying: Bolshaya Ordynka, seventeen, apartment thirteen, second floor, a tiny room, nicknamed "the closet" where Akhmatova lived. The owner, having taken part in the first remarks, tactfully left, and the content of the conversation, which lasted several hours (Tsvetaeva came in the afternoon), remained forever a secret. In the evening, Akhmatova was supposed to go to the theater (according to another version, she went to the theater the next day). Be that as it may, the meeting of the poets continued on the eighth of June - whether by mutual desire or at the initiative of Marina Ivanovna, we do not know. Akhmatova visited N.I. Khardzhiev that day. He then lived in Maryina Roshcha, in Aleksandrovsky lane, house forty-three, apartment four. The house was two-storey, wooden, barrack-like - like everything else in that alley. There, on the first floor of a four-room "communal apartment", in a small (also!) Room with a window to the courtyard, this meeting took place on a cloudy day - in the presence of the owner and T. S. Grits, who brought Tsvetaeva there (with him, as well as with Khardzhiev, she was introduced by Kruchenykh). Aren't these little rooms significant - and in general these miserable circumstances of the meetings of the two best poets of Russia?

Khardzhiev recalls that Akhmatova was more silent, while Tsvetaeva, on the contrary, talked a lot, moreover, "she often got up from her chair and managed to easily and freely walk around my eight-meter room." She talked about Khlebnikov, whose unpublished works were released last year by Khardzhiev and Grits; about Pasternak, who allegedly avoids her and whom she has not seen for a year and a half; about Western European cinema; about painting. Bitterness, intolerance, self-will sounded in her voice. After the meeting, Akhmatova, not without humor, noticed that, in comparison with Tsvetaeva, she was a "heifer", unwittingly shading her outward serenity, simplicity, and femininity with these words. Her grief (she fought for her repressed son) was deeply hidden; she did not allow herself to be unhappy. Tsvetaeva, too, did not throw out tragic circumstances; but she could not hide her innate (and now aggravated) condition: the troubles of her own birth into the world. She was nervous, angular, tortured, which contrasted with the same unfortunate, poor, homeless, fearful of surveillance, but invariably regal and harmonious "Muse of crying." In a word, two different breeds met, two different essences, poetic and human, and an inevitable mutual repulsion occurred. About twenty years later, Akhmatova wrote that she just wanted, "without a legend", "to remember these two days." And what if Tsvetaeva had recorded the meeting, then “it would have been a 'fragrant legend,' as our grandfathers said. Maybe it would be a lament for 25 years of love, which turned out to be in vain, but in any case it would be great. "

Of course, both were shackled, especially on the second day, in the presence of others. Akhmatova later regretted that she had not read Tsvetaeva's poem of last year, "Invisible Woman, Double, Mockingbird ..." “I did not dare to read it,” she told L. K. Chukovskaya in 1956. - And now I'm sorry. She dedicated so many poems to me. That would be the answer, even if decades later. But I didn’t dare because of a terrible line about loved ones ”(“ Loved ones were swallowed up by the abyss. ”- AS).

According to Akhmatova, Ariadna Efron subsequently wrote down that Marina Ivanovna rewrote several poems for Anna Andreevna and donated typographic prints of Poem of the Mountain and Poem of the End - all perished during one of the searches. However, later Akhmatova said that Tsvetaeva gave her the Poem of Air, and she read Tsvetaeva's first draft of Poem without a Hero.

It is symbolic: both poets wanted to acquaint each other with their most cherished things. But ... understanding did not arise. Nineteen years later, Akhmatova, after rereading The Poem of Air, wrote down:

“Marina went into madness ... She felt cramped within the framework of Poetry ... One element was not enough for her, and she retired to another or to others. Pasternak - on the contrary: he returned (in 1941 - the Peredelkino cycle) from his Pasternak zaumi into the framework of ordinary (if poetry can be ordinary) Poetry ... "

Akhmatova did not want to follow Tsvetaeva into “another element” and called Tsvetaeva’s attempt to penetrate the spirit of the Poet, which was rushing into the skies, “crazy”. But Tsvetaeva did not accept Akhmatov's poem either. She listened to the lines composed by this "lady" - for that is how she spoke of the "Tsarskoye Selo Muse" - where, in the words of Akhmatova herself, "very deeply and very skillfully hidden fragments of Requiem" sounded (but she had no idea about this thing!). And to the poems, where the shadows of the last century flashed, “the thirteenth year harlequinade”, remained deaf. “When in June 1941 I read a piece of the poem (the first draft) to M Ts,” Akhmatova recalled, “she said rather caustically:“ You must have great courage to write about the Harlequins, Columbines and Pierrot in 41, ”obviously believing that that the poem is a world of art stylization in the spirit of Benoit and Somov ... ".

In Akhmatova's poem Tsvetaeva did not deduct the tragic nature of time, the tragic nature of the running of time.

In Tsvetaeva's poem, Akhmatova did not perceive the tragic nature of the poet's life in the world.

So this non-meeting happened - in everyday life. And in being - a collision of two principles: Apollonian and Dionysian ...

© Mnukhin L.A.

© FSUE "MIA" Russia Today ""

© AST Publishing House LLC

Anna Akhmatova
I taught women to speak

Foreword

"Then I thought: one crazy poet is good, two is bad."

Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova are so different and so similar.

By age - Akhmatova is only three years older: she was born in 1889, and Tsvetaeva - in 1892. By their originality - both of them have no equal. According to his biography, he lived with his homeland the most terrible years of the Civil War, the Revolution, the Great Patriotic War (though Tsvetaeva, “captured” only two months). According to women's fate, they were loved, were abandoned, fell in love and abandoned themselves, survived the prison and execution of their beloved men, gave birth and lost. By nature, they are iron and gentle, passionate and cold, vulnerable and tough. On the mind - wise and erudite. In their social circle, they were surrounded by all the "stars" of Russian literature of the early and mid-20th century: Nikolai Gumilyov, Kornei and Lydia Chukovskiy, Sergei Yesenin, Alexander Blok, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov, Faina Ranevskaya, Joseph Brodsky. By their own admission, they were persecuted and defamed by the "native" Soviet power, but ascended to heaven by true connoisseurs of art all over the world. In life, they are unhappy and tragic eternal wanderers, indifferent to things and vanity. The only difference is in the dates of death: Akhmatova survived Tsvetaeva by almost thirty years.

And how did they themselves relate to each other? According to contemporaries, 23-year-old Tsvetaeva was delighted with Akhmatova's poetry: in poetry and letters she confessed her true love to her! Anna Andreevna was very embarrassed by this, but, as Osip Mandelstam said, Akhmatova in 1916-1917 did not part with Tsvetaeva's handwritten poems and “brought them to such an extent in her purse that only folds and cracks remained”. Here are the lines dated February 11, 1915, Tsvetaeva dedicated to Anna Andreevna:

"A narrow, non-Russian camp -
Above the folios.
Shawl from Turkish countries
Fell like a mantle.
You will be transferred to one
Broken line.
Cold - in fun, heat -
In your despondency.
Your whole life is a chill.
And it will end with what is it?
Cloudy dark forehead
A young demon.
Each of the earthly
For you to play is a trifle.
And an unarmed verse
It aims at our heart.
In the morning sleepy hour,
It seems like a quarter past five
I fell in love with you
Anna Akhmatova".

“Everything about myself, everything about love,” wrote Tsvetaeva in her notebooks dated 1917, discussing Akhmatov's poetry. - Yes, about myself, about love - and yet - amazingly - about the silver voice of a deer, about the dim expanses of the Ryazan province, about the swarthy chapters of the Chersonesos temple, about the red maple leaf laid on the Song of Songs, about the air, "a gift from God" ... and so endlessly ... And she has one poem about the young Pushkin, which covers all the research of all his biographers.

Akhmatova writes about herself - about the eternal. And Akhmatova, without writing a single abstract social line, deeply - through the description of a feather on a hat - will pass on her age to descendants ... Ten volumes can be written about Akhmatova's little book. And you won't add anything ... What a difficult and seductive gift from the poets - Anna Akhmatova! "

With delight and passion, Tsvetaeva addressed Akhmatova in her letters: “ Dear Anna Andreevna! There is so much to say - and so little time! .. I value nothing and keep nothing, but I will take your little books in the coffin - under my pillow! You, and high from you! .. You are my favorite poet, I once - a long time ago - about six years ago - saw you in a dream - your future book: dark green, morocco, with silver - "Words zlotys ", - some ancient witchcraft, like a prayer (or rather - the opposite!) - and - waking up - I knew that you would write it ... I understand your every word: the whole flight, all the weight. "And your spurs are light ringing" - this is the most tender thing that has been said about love ... I am insatiable for your soul and letters ... M.Ts. Moscow, 26th Russian April 1921 ".

Tsvetaeva Akhmatova dedicated many poems, and Anna Andreevna - only one, and then many years later:

"Late answer

My little white hand, Warlock ...

Invisible, double, mockingbird ...
What are you hiding in the black bushes? -
Then you will hide in a leaky birdhouse,
Then you will flicker on the lost crosses,
Then you shout from the Marina tower:
“I returned home today,
Admire, dear arable land,
What happened to me.
Swallowed up loved ones abyss
And the parental house was plundered. "
Today we are with you, Marina,
We walk through the capital at midnight.
And behind us there are millions
And there is no more silent procession ...
And around the funeral bells
Yes Moscow hoarse moans
Blizzards, our covering the trail.

March 16, 1940, 1961,

Fountain House - Red Cavalry ".

“I didn’t dare to read it,” Anna Andreyevna confessed to the writer Lydia Chukovskaya. - And now I'm sorry. She dedicated so many poems to me. That would be the answer, even if decades later. But I did not dare because of the terrible line about my loved ones. "

And Tsvetaeva threw poems, letters, gifts at her idol. In one of her letters, for example, she admired the Akhmatov's “Lullaby” she had just read - “Far in a huge forest ...” - and argued that for one line of this poem - “I’m a bad mother” - she was ready to give everything that was still Since then she has written and will write again someday. Although already at that time, many considered her own poems about Moscow or to Blok to be unusually talented. But Akhmatova did not appreciate them. Moreover, she spoke coldly about Marina Ivanovna, got off with polite, evasive answers and remarks. For example, she did not really like the so-called “enzhambemana”, which Tsvetaeva abused every year more and more, that is, about the transfer of the logical content of a line to the beginning of the next line. "This can be done once, twice," Akhmatova agreed, "but she has it everywhere, and this technique loses all its power."

When she was asked to evaluate Tsvetaeva's work, she replied with restraint: "We are now fond of her, they love her very much, even more than Pasternak." But personally I didn’t add anything.

But her contemporaries explained Akhmatova's indifference to Tsvetaeva's poems not only by their verbal, formal makeup. “She probably didn’t like something else,” suggested Georgy Adamovich, “the demonstrative, provocative, almost annoying“ poetry ”of Tsvetaev's poetry, internal Balmontism with sharp external differences from Balmont, an unavoidable posture with undoubted sincerity, constant“ jump ”. If this is so, then not only Akhmatova was removed by this and it was not for her alone that the work of Tsvetaeva, a man who was rarely gifted and rarely unhappy, was not entirely acceptable.

* * *

For the first time, the poetesses met only in 1941 - only two months remained before Marina Ivanovna's suicide. Then a lot of terrible things fell on her: her husband and daughter were in prison, she was tied up by the NKVD, she had nothing to live on, besides, she was apocalyptic about the outbreak of war with Germany. And she fell ill from mental anguish. And when Boris Pasternak visited her in Elabuga, she asked him to see Akhmatova. “Boris Leonidovich left Nina's phone here and asked me to call by all means,” Anna Andreevna recalled. - I called. She walked over.

- Says Akhmatova.

- I'm listening to you.

(Yes, yes, like this: she listens to me.)

- Boris Leonidovich told me that you want to see me. Where is it better for us to meet: at your place or at my place?

- I think you have.

- Then I will now call someone normal, who would explain to you how to go to me.

- Please. You just need a normal person who can explain to the abnormal.

Then I thought: one crazy poet is good, two is bad.

She arrived and sat for seven hours. The Ardovs were rich then and sent a whole calf leg to my room.

The next day the call: I want to see you again. And I was going to see Nikolai Ivanovich, in Maryina Roshcha. I gave her that phone number. In the evening she called; says: I can't go by taxi, by metro, by trolleybus, by bus - only by tram. (She was afraid of street cars, in the subway - escalators, in houses - elevators, seemed short-sighted and unprotected from the world. - Ed.)

Teddy Grits explained everything to her in detail and went out to meet her. The four of us drank wine. Teddy said there was a man sticking out at the house. I thought: what a happy life she has! Or maybe I have it? Or maybe we both? "

“It is interesting to compare with this story about meetings with Tsvetaeva the recording made by Anna Andreevna in 1962,” wrote Lydia Korneeva. - “Our first and last two-day meeting took place in June 1941 at 17 Bolshaya Ordynka Street, in the Ardovs' apartment (day one) and in Maryina Roshcha with NI Khardzhiev (second and last day). It’s scary to think how Marina herself would describe these meetings if she had remained alive, and I would have died on August 31, 41. It would have been a “fragrant legend,” as our grandfathers used to say. Maybe it would be a lament for 25 years of love, which turned out to be in vain, but in any case it would be great. Now, when she has returned to her Moscow as such a queen and already forever ... I just want to recall these Two days “without a legend”.

And later Akhmatova will write words of gratitude to Tsvetaeva: “... I never write to anyone, but your kind attitude is infinitely dear to me. Thank you for him and for the dedication of the poem ... I dream of reading your new poems ... Your Akhmatova. "

But no one was destined to read the new Tsvetaeva poems. After the start of World War II, Marina Ivanovna was sent to evacuation to the city of Elabuga in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring her of its fortress, joked: "The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself." Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva in Yelabuga on August 31, 1941, and hanged herself (according to Mark Slonim, according to K. G. Paustovsky).

“October 21 41. Anna Andreevna asks me about Tsvetaeva,” writes Lydia Chukovskaya. - I read to her what I wrote down on September 4, right after the news of the suicide. Today we walked with Anna Andreevna along the Kama, I translated her along the perch across that very puddle-ocean, through which a little more than fifty days ago I helped Marina Ivanovna to pass ...

“It’s very strange,” I said, “the same river, and a puddle, and the same thing. Two months ago, at this very place, through this very puddle, I translated Marina Ivanovna. And we talked about you. And now she is not there and we are talking about her. At the same place!

Anna Andreevna did not answer, she just looked at me with attention.

But I didn’t tell her our conversation at that time ...

(I expressed my joy to Marina Ivanovna: A. A. is not here, not in Chistopol, not in this foreign semi-Tatar village, drowning in mud, torn away from the world. nothing can. ”“ Do you think I can? ”- Marina Ivanovna interrupted me sharply)”.

* * *

Of course, two brilliant women could not help but recognize each other's extraordinary abilities. Maybe they were a little jealous, maybe they were a little jealous, but they certainly appreciated the poetic gift - so rare, so vulnerable and so omnipotent!

In general, it is amazing how the “Queen of Petersburg” - that was the name of the admirers of Akhmatova and “the queen of Moscow” - Tsvetaeva almost simultaneously appeared in the same time space, in one country, in neighboring cities. Apparently, God was very generous with the advent of gifted people in the XX century.

At that time I was staying on earth.
I was given a name at baptism - Anna,
The sweetest for human lips and hearing.
So wonderfully I knew earthly joy
And I counted not twelve holidays,
And as many as there were days in a year.

Epic Motives, 1913

I was born the same year as Charlie Chaplin, Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, the Eiffel Tower and, I think, Eliot. This summer, Paris celebrated the centenary of the fall of the Bastille - 1889. On the night of my birth, the ancient Midsummer's night did and does<…>.

... In the family, no one, how many eyes he sees around, did not write poetry, only the first Russian poetess Anna Bunina was the aunt of my grandfather Erasmus Ivanovich Stogov. The Stogovs were poor landowners of the Mozhaisky district of the Moscow province, resettled there for the rebellion at Martha Posadnitsa. In Novgorod, they were richer and more noble.

My ancestor, Khan Akhmat, was killed at night in his tent by a bribed murderer, and this, as Karamzin narrates, ended the Mongol yoke in Russia. On this day, as in memory of a happy event, a procession of the cross went from the Sretensky monastery in Moscow. This Akhmat, as you know, was a Chingizid.

One of the Akhmatov princesses - Praskovya Yegorovna - in the 18th century married the wealthy and noble landowner of Simbirsk Motovilov. Egor Motovilov was my great-grandfather. His daughter Anna Yegorovna is my grandmother. She died when my mother was nine years old, and I was named Anna after her. From her feronnieres they made several rings with diamonds and one with an emerald, and I could not put on her thimble, although I had thin fingers.

Baptism certificate

Certificate No. 4379

By the Decree of His Imperial Majesty, from the Kherson Spiritual Consistory, as a result of the petition of the wife of the retired Captain of the 2nd rank Inna Erasmova Gorenko and on the basis of the determination held in this Consistory on April 30, 1890, this certificate was issued that the corded the metric book of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the port city of Odessa, the Kherson diocese, for one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, in the 1st part about those born, under No. 87 female, the following act is recorded: June eleventh was born, and December seventeenth Anna was baptized; her parents: Captain 2nd Rank Andrei Antoniev Gorenko and his legal wife Inna Erasmova, both Orthodox. The successors were: candidate of natural sciences Stefan Grigoriev Romanenko and the daughter of a nobleman Maria Feodorovna Waltser.

The sacrament of baptism was performed by Archpriest Evlampy Arnoldov with the psalmist Alexander Tobolin. The due stamp duty was paid by the city of Odessa. 1890 May 7 days. To believe the word "cathedral" written between the lines.

Member of the Consistory Archpriest Evlampy Arnoldov

Anna Andreevna was born on June 11 (23), 1889 near Odessa. In the family of the hereditary nobleman Andrei Antonovich Gorenko and Inna Erasmovna Stogova, in addition to Anna in the family, there were five more children: Andrei, Inna, Irina, Iya and Victor.

The marriage of Akhmatova's parents was unhappy. Andrei Antonovich lived for his own pleasure, not counting, spending his wife's money, did not deprive the attention of a single pretty young woman. Inna Erasmovna was worried about her husband's indifference both to her and to the children.

Anna Andreevna, although in the family she was considered a father's daughter for external similarities, she was always on the side of her mother.

... And a woman with transparent eyes
(Blue so deep that the sea
It is impossible not to remember, looking at them),
With a rare name and a white pen,
And the kindness that is inherited
I seemed to have received from her, -
An unnecessary gift of my cruel life ...

(Prehistory, 1945)

(Interviewed by Lydia Chukovskaya, Anna Akhmatova and Valentina Sreznevskaya):

“… Yeah, your mother wasn’t able to do anything at all in life. Imagine, Lydia Korneevna, from an old noble family, and left for courses. How she was going to live is not clear.

“Not only for courses,” Anna Andreevna corrected, “she became a member of the Narodnaya Volya circle. Much more revolutionary.

- Imagine, Lydia Korneevna, a small woman, pink, with an exceptional complexion, blonde hair, with exceptional hands.

- Wonderful white hands! - put in Anna Andreevna.

- An extraordinary French language, - continued Sreznevskaya, - an ever-falling pince-nez, and nothing, well, absolutely nothing ... And your father! Handsome, tall, slender, always dressed with a needle, the top hat was slightly to one side, as was worn under Napoleon III, and he said about Napoleon's wife: "Eugene was not bad ..."

“He saw her in Constantinople,” Anna Andreevna put in, “and found that she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Then the conversation turned for some reason about the hands of Nikolai Stepanovich: "Immortal hands!" - said Valeria Sergeevna.

One of the friends of Andrei Antonovich Gorenko testifies

“It was a strange family ... A lot of children. Mother, a wealthy landowner, kind, scattered to the point of stupidity, careless, always thinking about something else ... The house is a mess. They eat when they have to, there are a lot of servants, but there is no order. The governess did what they wanted. The hostess wanders like a somnambulist. Once, when moving to another house, for a long time she carried in her hands a thick bag with interest-bearing papers for several tens of thousands of rubles, and at the last minute found a suitable place for it - she put the bag in the baby bath that dangled behind the cart. When my husband found out about this, he rushed off in a cab to catch up with the dray. And his wife was surprised to see that he was worried, and even angry. "

Lydia Chukovskaya "Notes about Anna Akhmatova"

“I began to ask Anna Andreevna about her family. She is such a special person, both inside and out, that I really want to understand: is there anything in her that is generic, family, common. Can she really be like someone?

She told me about her sisters - Iya, Inna.

- Both died of tuberculosis. Iya - when she was twenty-seven years old. I, of course, would have died too, but my thyroid disease saved me - Graves is destroying tuberculosis. We had a terrible family tbc, although father and mother were perfectly healthy. (Father died of angina pectoris, mother died of pneumonia in old age.) Iya was very special, stern, strict ...

“She was like that,” Anna Andreevna continued after a pause, “what the readers always imagined me and what I never was.

I asked if Iya Andreevna liked her poems?

“No, she found them frivolous. She didn't like them. Everything is the same, everything about love and about love. - Anna Andreevna stood at the window and wiped the cups with a rough towel.

“We had no books in the house, not a single book. Only Nekrasov, a thick bound volume. Mom gave it to me to read on holidays. This book was presented to my mother by her first husband, who shot himself ... The gymnasium in Tsarskoye, where I studied, was a real bursa ... Then the gymnasium in Kiev was a little better ...

I loved poetry since childhood and I don't know where I got it from. At thirteen I already knew Baudelaire, Verlaine, and all the damned in French. I started writing poetry early, but the surprising thing is that when I had not yet written a single line, everyone around was sure that I would become a poetess. And dad even teased me like this: a decadent poetess ... "

My childhood is as unique and wonderful as the childhood of all children in the world ...

Talking about childhood is both easy and difficult. Thanks to its static nature, it is very easy to describe it, but this description too often penetrates with a sweetness that is completely alien to such an important and deep period of life as childhood. In addition, some people want to seem too unhappy in childhood, others - too happy. Both are usually nonsense. Children have nothing to compare with, and they just don't know if they are happy or unhappy. As soon as consciousness appears, a person finds himself in a completely ready and motionless world, and the most natural thing is not to believe that this world was once different. This initial picture forever remains in the soul of a person, and there are people who only believe in it, somehow hiding this oddity. Others, on the contrary, do not at all believe in the authenticity of this picture and also repeat rather absurdly: "Was it me?"

In youth and in adulthood, a person very rarely recalls his childhood. He is an active participant in life, and he is not up to it. And it seems that it will always be so. But somewhere around fifty years old, the whole beginning of life returns to him.

* * *

I was born in Sarakini's dacha (Bolshoi Fontan, 11th steam train station) near Odessa. This dacha (or rather, a hut) stood in the depths of a very narrow and downward plot of land - next to the post office. The sea coast is steep there, and the steam train's rails ran along the very edge.

My father was a retired naval mechanical engineer at the time. As a one-year-old child, I was transported north to Tsarskoe Selo. I lived there until I was sixteen.

My first memories are those of Tsarskoye Selo: the green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where the nanny took me, the hippodrome, where the little colorful horses galloped, the old station and something else that later became part of the Tsarskoye Selo Ode.

I

Horses are being led along the alley
The waves of the combed manes are long.
Oh, captivating city of mysteries,
I am sad to love you.

It's strange to remember: my soul was yearning,
Choking in dying delirium
And now I have become a toy
Like my pink cockatoo friend.

The chest is not compressed with a presentiment of pain,
If you want, look in the eyes.
I don't like only an hour before sunset,
Wind from the sea and the word "go away."

II

... And there is my marble counterpart,
Lost under an old maple tree
I gave my face to the waters of the lake,
Listens to green rustles.
And wash the light rains
His clotted wound ...
Cold white wait
I will become marble too.

III

The swarthy youth wandered through the alleys,
By the lakeside shores,
And the century we cherish
Barely audible rustle of steps.

The needles of the pine trees are thick and prickly
They are covered with low stumps ...
Here lay his cocked hat
And a disheveled tome Guys.

("In Tsarskoe Selo", 1911)

... The main place in Tsarskoe Selo was the house of the merchant Elizaveta Ivanovna Shukhardina (Shirokaya, the second house from the station, corner of Bezymyanny lane). But the first year of the century, 1900, the family lived (winter) in the Daudel house (corner of Srednyaya and Leontievskaya. There is measles and even, maybe, smallpox).

24. M. Tsvetaeva and A. Akhmatova. The nature of similarity and dissimilarity

Two women, women - POETS, not poetesses. Both insisted on this: Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. Until they have not yet been given to rise to any female name in literature. The childhood of the one and the other was sad: “And no pink childhood,” said Akhmatova, “Tsvetaeva could have said the same. And in general, the fate of both fell hard, many losses.

Tsvetaeva was carried away by her poetry, as well as the person behind the poetry. She created for herself the image of a "fatal beauty", called her "The Muse of Weeping" and "Chrysostom Anna of All Russia." Subsequently, when Tsvetaeva writes her enthusiastic letters, Akhmatova will treat them with her usual restraint.

Well-known Russian emigre researcher of literature Konstantin Mochulsky said well about the poetic and psychological difference between the two - back in 1923:

“Tsvetaeva is always on the move; in her rhythms - rapid breathing from a fast run. She seems to be talking about something in a hurry, out of breath and waving her arms. Finish - and rush away. She is a fidget. Akhmatova - speaks slowly, in a very quiet voice; reclining motionless; he hides his chilly hands under a "pseudo-classical" (in Mandelstam's words) shawl. Only in a barely noticeable intonation does a restrained feeling slip through. She is aristocratic in her weary poses. Tsvetaeva is a whirlwind, Akhmatova is silence ... Tsvetaeva is all in action - Akhmatova is in contemplation ... ".

Both have a big place in their work - the theme of love. poets often talk about one thing, albeit in different ways. A common motive sounds in the lyrics of A. Akhmatova and M. Tsvetaeva, the attitude of one and the other lyric heroine to the rival: indifference, a sense of proud female superiority, but not envy and not jealousy of her - "a simple woman", "the dust of the market" (M. Tsvetaeva ), "fool" (A. Akhmatova). The word love for Marina Tsvetaeva was associated with the words of Alexander Blok: secret heat. Secret heat is a state of the heart, soul, - of the whole human being. This is burning, service, incessant excitement, confusion of feelings. But the most comprehensive word is still love. the peculiarity of the perception of the lyrics of M. Tsvetaeva lies in the fact that she is credited with a masculine, strong principle. the shades of feeling of the lyric heroine A. Akhmatova come from the understanding of love as passion, love as a struggle, a duel of souls. In the love lyrics of M. Tsvetaeva, the soul of a lyric heroine is not "equivalent", there is no struggle, a duel, there is only self-giving of oneself to a loved one. He is "desired", "pitiful", "sick"!

Tsvetaev and Akhmatov, who had reached their heyday by the 1920s (Akhmatova's poems "White flock", 1917, "Plantain", 1921, "Anno Domini", 1922), it is impossible not to compare in love lyrics. It is noteworthy that no one has ever reproached the heroine Akhmatova with egocentrism, although she can start a dialogue with her lover with the following remark: “Are you obedient? You are crazy!". And on the contrary, egocentrism is the core of all Tsvetaeva's creativity, but in her theme of love, as a reflection of the age-old female share, the motive of sacrifice and obedience is absolutized: “They ... they hung a millstone around my neck”, “I will not get out of obedience”, “Nailed to a pillory ... I kiss the hand that hits me ”; or on behalf of women of all times suffering in love, a bitter questioning cry - "My dear, what have I done to you?" In his address to his beloved, who will come at least a hundred years later, there is a story about how "... I begged for letters from everyone, / To kiss at night."

In the lyrics of A. Akhmatova, a man plays a very often suffering role. He is "tortured owlet", "toy boy", "restless". The trouble of love may happen to him. The lyrical heroine of M. Tsvetaeva says: "... not a single lover has brought my chambers out to me." For the lyrics of M. Tsvetaeva, the law is that the torment of love, suffering is only a woman's share. The topic of separation, breakup has been covered repeatedly, in many ways. And the plots are similar, but Akhmatova invariably encloses even the most tragic feelings, even the boiling lava of passion and pain, in a granite frame of verse. Tsvetaeva, on the other hand, would write about her lyrics later: “I have always fought - and shattered to smithereens ... and all my poems are the very same silver bounces of the heart”.

It is interesting that Akhmatova's first collection is "Evening", and Tsvetaeva's is "Evening Album" (verses by 15-17 year old Tsvetaeva)

Both loved and wrote about Russia. The confusion and pain of a tragic period in the life of Russia penetrate into their poems. For Akhmatova, these are notes of anxiety and sadness, pangs of conscience, a constant feeling of confusion within and pain for the fate of the Motherland. Tsvetaeva has a boil of passions, constant contrasts and an acute premonition of death. Akhmatova is increasingly hearing the traditional prayer style for women's poetry, and she prays for the fate of her country. In Tsvetaeva, especially during the period of emigration, one can hear hatred for everything that so turned the era, and at the same time, the unbearable pain of separation from her beloved land.

If Akhmatova grew into a poet of Russia, if she carried her own era (she was then called “The Epoch”), then Tsvetaeva the poet turned into, as it were, a “citizen of the Universe”.

Both studied Pushkin. For A - and this work will correspond to her nature: unhurried deliberation, comparison of various sources, and, of course, many important and subtle discoveries.

Marina Tsvetaeva will deal with the Pushkin theme a little later, without studying Pushkin as deeply as Akhmatova. Her judgments, "formulas" are merciless, biased; Akhmatov's observations are restrained, although not dispassionate; behind every thought is a mountain of processed, considered sources. Although both were diametrically opposite "Pushkinists" (Tsvetaeva was very irritating to Akhmatova in this respect), they were related by their dislike for Natalya Nikolaevna Pushkina (Goncharova).

They met in person only once, which was preceded by their long-term communication: the poetesses corresponded, sent gifts to each other and dedicated poems. But there was literary rivalry between them, and gossip, and even resentment.

Tsvetaeva got acquainted with Akhmatova's poetry in 1912, when she read the collection "Evening".

“You can write ten volumes about Akhmatova’s little book - and you don’t add anything ... What a difficult seductive gift to poets - Anna Akhmatova”.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Ten years later, in 1922, Tsvetaeva dedicated a collection of versts to Anna Akhmatova, 11 poems in which were addressed directly to her. Marina Tsvetaeva was acutely worried about the alleged “death” of Akhmatova, the rumor of which was circulating after the arrest of Nikolai Gumilyov.

"... I will tell you that the only - with my knowledge - your friend (friend - action!) - among the poets was, with the look of a killed bull wandering around the cardboard" Poets' Cafe "..."

Marina Tsvetaeva

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, for example, the poet Georgy Adamovich, Anna Akhmatova herself did not appreciate Tsvetaeva's early poems, she spoke of them "chilly". In the 1920s, composer Arthur Lurie noted Akhmatova: “ You treat Tsvetaeva the way Chopin treated Schumann ", - bearing in mind that Schumann idolized Chopin, and that Chopin got rid of the "admirer" only with evasive remarks. And almost 40 years later, Akhmatova even answered with resentment to Adamovich's direct question about Tsvetaeva's poetry: "We are now fond of her, they love her very much, even more than Pasternak.".

But another, touching and warm, letter from Anna Akhmatova to Tsvetaeva is also known: “Dear Marina Ivanovna, for a long time I have not been so saddened by the agraphia, which I have suffered for many years, as today, when I want to talk to you. I never write to anyone, but your kind attitude is infinitely dear to me. Thank you for it and for the dedication of the poem. Until July 1, I am in St. Petersburg. I dream of reading your new poems. I kiss you and Alya. Your Akhmatova ".

In the summer of 1941, Anna Akhmatova came to "on Levine affairs" - to try to plead for her arrested son. The poetess found out that Tsvetaeva wanted to see her ( “And Boris Leonidovich [Pasternak] visited Marina after her misfortune and asked her what she would like. She answered: to see Akhmatova "), and invited her to the apartment of the writer Viktor Ardov on Bolshaya Ordynka, where she stayed herself.

The meeting took place on June 7 and 8, 1941. Very little information about her has survived. wrote sublimely: “Excitement was written on the faces of both of my guests. They met without vulgar dating procedures. It was not said either "very nice" or "so this is what you are." They just shook hands ... When Tsvetaeva was leaving, Anna Andreevna baptized her "... The publicist Lidia Chukovskaya, who also knew Akhmatova personally, recalled: “About the meeting itself, Akhmatova said only:“ She arrived and sat for seven hours. ” So they say about an uninvited and uninteresting guest. "

Akhmatova herself, according to the notes of the writer Lydia Chukovskaya, recalled her in a more prosaic way: she said that Tsvetaeva almost silently sat in the Ardovs' apartment for seven hours, and before that she was capricious that she could only travel by tram. However, the next evening Tsvetaeva again joined the company of Akhmatova, Chukovskaya and Ardov and drank wine with them.

Most likely, the "Moscow meeting" somewhat disappointed both poetesses: the path to it was too long and the expectations from the meeting were too high. In the notes of 1961, Anna Akhmatova recalled: “It’s scary to think how Marina herself would describe these meetings if she had remained alive, and I would have died on August 31, 41. It would have been a“ fragrant legend, ”as our grandfathers used to say. Maybe it would be a lament for 25 years of love, which turned out to be in vain, but in any case it would be great. Now, when she returned to her Moscow as such a queen and already forever ... I just want to recall these Two days "without a legend".