On the eve of the new year 2008 in Moscow, on the 115th anniversary of the birth of Marina Tsvetaeva, a monument to the poetess was erected. His place is Borisoglebsky Lane, opposite her house-museum. By the way, the monument was cast in bronze at the expense of the Moscow Department of Culture, as well as sponsors. The question hung by itself: a belated recognition, a tribute of respect, or the rehabilitation of dissident patriots?
So who was "the most extraordinary poet of the twentieth century" for the Russians? “What did Tsvetaeva read to you when she came back from her funeral?”
... Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow on September 26, 1892. Her youth passed in Borisoglebsky Lane. As a poet, prose writer and playwright, she took place in Moscow. And she settled scores with herself in Yelabuga (now Tatarstan) on August 31 in the difficult year of 1941. Her grave in Yelabuga was lost. Only the books of those people who knew, loved, studied her remained a monument to her.
The poetess passed away indefatigable. Half a century later, in 1990, Patriarch Alexy II gave his blessing for her funeral, while funerals for suicides in the Russian Orthodox Church are strictly prohibited. What made it possible to make an exception for her? "People's love," the patriarch replied.
Tsvetaeva was not born a “simple Russian” girl: her father was an art professor, the creator of a museum of fine arts, her mother was a pianist, a student of the famous A. Rubinstein, and her grandfather was a famous historian. Because of her mother's consumption, Tsvetaeva lived for a long time in Italy, Switzerland, Germany; received an excellent education in the boarding schools of Lausanne and Freiburg. Young Marina was fluent in French and German, took a course in French literature at the Sorbonne. That is why the girl began to write poetry at the age of 6 at the same time in Russian, German and French.
She left three posthumous notes: an official one, with the words "dear comrades", the second - to the poet Aseev, where she begged to adopt a 16-year-old son and teach him (which Aseev did not do!) And to her teenage son herself - that she was in a dead end and, alas, sees no way out ...
A week before her suicide, Tsvetaeva wrote a statement asking her to be hired as a dishwasher in an opening enterprise, but the canteen was opened in the winter of 1943, when Tsvetaeva was not alive. Her son was first evacuated to Tashkent, then called to the front, where he, large and unsportsmanlike, was killed in battle at the end of the war.
... The family of the emigrant Tsvetaeva was reunited in Russia on the eve of the Great Patriotic War, in June 1939. Husband, Sergei Efron, with his daughter Alya, returned to his homeland a little earlier, in 1937. They spoke of him as a "scout confused in the West." According to the official version, S. Efron, in order to return to the USSR, accepted an offer to cooperate with the NKVD abroad. And then he became involved in a contract political assassination, which is why he fled from France to Moscow. In the summer of 1939, after him and her daughter, Tsvetaeva returned with her son Georgy.
Soon, real hell began in the family of the repatriate Tsvetaeva: daughter Alya was taken to the NKVD as a spy, then Sergey, her beloved husband, and even with a mockery: "waiting for something - an order, but received - a warrant." The daughter and husband were arrested: Efron was shot in 1941, the daughter was rehabilitated after 15 years of repression. Tsvetaeva herself could neither find a job nor find housing, no one printed her works. According to close people, she and her son were literally starving.
“The White Guards have returned,” they whispered about Efron and Tsvetaeva. And ... off and on: prison lines and chores, tantrums, fear for herself and the children, as for the last breadwinner, tormented by the unknown ahead, she felt like in a terrible meat grinder ...
She was a passionate mother, but she didn’t experience harmony here either: she lost her youngest daughter in the civil war, then she made an idol out of her son, adored him literally tyrannically, and the “idol” took it and became obstinate, ambitious, asked not to overfeed with maternal love.
All two years in Russia, they quarreled with their son, shouting loudly in French. By the way, Efron with fatherly sarcasm called the boy "Marin" - precisely because he was similar to his mother in temperament and "nervousness", that is, sensuality. Tsvetaeva wanted to raise a genius from her son, but she could not do the simplest, she simply could not taught him to live among people on an equal footing.Departing from life, his mother left him an outcast in a strange world.
Why did Moscow greet Tsvetaeva with caution? And it's not just a "Parisian", not just "from the former"! Namely, branded. There is a version that it was the brothers “in the poetic workshop” who were afraid of the return of the poetess. Even Pasternak, with whom she had a stormy epistolary romance, pushed her far. And not only "politically", but also in a masculine way. Moreover, at a very long distance: he was afraid of a possible “fire”, it was he who once in the heat of the moment said: they say, at Marina and the kerogas is burning with the “Siegfried flame”. And so it is impossible!
After returning to her homeland, Tsvetaeva prepares a collection of poems for publication, translates a lot, but no one prints it.
"Poor elegance" - so called behind the eyes of Tsvetaeva in the last time of her life. In appearance, she was always like a mouse: gray, discreet, in low heels, with a huge belt and amber beads, exquisite silver bracelets on her wrists, with a short haircut. And the eyes are green. Literally like a gooseberry. And the gait is firm, almost masculine. Tsvetaeva seemed to always overcome something: she was afraid of street cars, escalators in the subway, elevators in houses, she always seemed to be short-sighted, out of this world, very unprotected.
The war declared in 1941 and the prospect of falling into the Nazi yoke horrified her even more, much more than Stalin's! And she believed in the victory of Russia with difficulty. On June 22, the day the war was declared, Tsvetaeva uttered a strange phrase: "I would exchange with Mayakovsky." And she also said this: “A person needs a little: a piece of solid earth to put his foot on and stay on it. That's all".
Judging the reasons for her suicide is apparently nonsense. Only she herself, forever silent, knew about this.
Here are brief milestones in the biography of the poetess. During the revolutionary period, until 1922, she lived in Moscow with her children, while her husband, officer Efron, fought in the White Army. Since 1922, the family emigrated: they lived for a short time in Berlin, for 3 years - in Prague, from 1925 the “Paris period” began, marked by a complete lack of money, household disorder, difficult relations with Russian emigration, at that time the hostility of criticism towards her increased. The family's living conditions abroad were incredibly difficult. At home, it's even harder.
Tsvetaeva grew up in a democratic family. And if the revolution of 1917 became the guiding force for such as Mayakovsky, Blok, Yesenin and others, then 1917 appeared differently to M. Tsvetaeva.
Her attitude to the revolution was ambiguous; trying to find something heroic in the white army, where her husband served, she at the same time understood the hopelessness of the counter-revolutionary movement. At that time, her circle of acquaintances was very rich. These are Balmont, Blok, Akhmatova, Voloshin, Kuzmin, Remizov, Bely, Bryusov, Yesenin, Antokolsky, Mandelstam, Lunacharsky, with whom he performs at concerts. And this is also the widest circle of actors - the students of E. Vakhtangov.
There is evidence that even at the age of 17, Marina tried to commit suicide. She even wrote a farewell letter to her sister Anastasia, which came to her 32 years later. Here is what her sister wrote in her memoirs: “Marina wrote about the impossibility of living on, said goodbye and asked me to distribute her favorite books and engravings - then there was a list and enumeration of persons. I remember the lines addressed to me personally: “Never regret anything, do not count and do not be afraid, otherwise you will have to suffer as much later as I did. "Then followed a request in her memory to sing our favorite songs in the spring evenings.
These lines especially stuck in my memory: “If only the rope would not break. And then underweight-Xia is disgusting, right? sister wrote. I remember these lines verbatim. And remember that I would always understand you if I were with you. ”And a signature.
Further, in order not to be reproached for plagiarism, I quote, close to the text, scattered excerpts from the book of Tsvetaeva's sister, Anastasia. "On February 1, 1925, Marina's son Georgy was born ("Mur" - short for "Purlyk", who survived until his end. A dream come true! A mother's pride. But at the age of 10, Marina wrote about him: "Mentally undeveloped ..."
War. Evacuation. Marina took the declaration of war, which suddenly broke out on the territory of her homeland, where she could hope to hide from what she experienced in the West, much harder than others. She expected that the war would not come here. Marina was seized by what is called a panic horror. She rushed away from Moscow to save Moore from the danger of incendiary bombs, which he put out. Shuddering, she said: "If I knew that he was killed, I would not hesitate to throw myself out of the window" (they lived on the seventh floor of the house 14/5 on Pokrovsky Boulevard). But the most incendiary force matured in George: the thirst to free himself from maternal care, to live as he wants.
And here is how others said: “... Tsvetaeva came to Yelabuga, begging not to be separated from her son, children of this age were sent to evacuation from their parents separately. The son was not taken away. What next to this are all the difficulties of life? But he rebelled. He did not want to live in Yelabuga. She took him out of Moscow against his will. He had his own circle, friends and girlfriends there. He was rude. Marina endured his rudeness with a frozen mother's heart. How terrible it was to imagine him without her worries in the days of the war!
The son could not live without her help. He didn't understand people. In Yelabuga, he became friends with two men who came from nowhere, and much older than him. He did not want to listen to his mother, did not want to treat his bad leg. He argued at every turn. She got used to his tone, and for the last two years without a father she tolerated it. They talked about Marina's extraordinary patience with him. Everyone said that "she loved him slavishly."
Before him, her pride humbled. He had to be grown at all costs, squeezing himself into a lump. She remembered herself at his age: wasn't she the same? “He is young, it will all pass,” she answered the surprised remarks of her acquaintances, how she, the mother, endures such treatment with herself. The last decisive push was the threat of Moore, who shouted at her in despair: "Well, one of us will be carried out of here feet first!" "Me!" - sighed in her. Their "together" is over! He doesn't need her anymore! She bothers him...
All ties with life were severed. She no longer wrote poems, and they would have meant nothing next to fear for Moore. Another fear consumed her: if the war did not end soon, Moore would be taken to war. Yes, the thought of suicide had been with her for a long time, and she wrote about it. But there is a huge distance between thought and action.
In 1940, she writes: "I've been trying on death for a year now. But for now, I'm needed." It was on this need that she rested. Marina would never leave Moore by her will, no matter how hard it was for her. For years, Marina tried her eyes on the hooks on the ceiling, but the hour came when it was necessary not to think, but to act. And a nail was enough." The mercilessly rude words of a 16-year-old son sounded in Marina's motherhood - an order of death - to herself.
To her son’s reproaches that she did not know how to achieve anything, to get settled, she, in bitter arrogance, pride flashed for a moment, threw to her son: “So, in your opinion, there is nothing left for me but suicide?”
The son replied: "Yes, in my opinion, there is nothing else left for you!" It was not just the insolence of the boy! Shocked by her departure, he will not repeat her step. May he live, young branch!
... She remembered herself from the age of 17, her suicide attempt. He was - a chip from her.
Biography and episodes of life Marina Tsvetaeva. When born and died Marina Tsvetaeva, memorable places and dates of important events in her life. Quotes of the poetess, Photo and video.
Years of life of Marina Tsvetaeva:
born September 28, 1892, died August 31, 1941
Epitaph
"And loved, and loved,
Frozen over the line
Just didn't stop
At the edge of the river.
Late for the show
And late for the grave
And under the stone at Marina
A dream filled with sadness.
Only birds fly by
Above her head
Only the lines grow
Between flowers and grass.
From a poem by Zoya Yashchenko dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva
Biography
Marina Tsvetaeva, one of the most prominent Russian poets, was born into the family of a professor at Moscow University, later the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts, a philologist and art critic. Tsvetaeva's mother was a musician, a student of N. Rubinstein, and wanted her daughter to follow in her footsteps. But already at the age of six, Marina began to write poetry, including in French and German. Marina studied at a private women's gymnasium, then continued her studies in Lausanne and Freiburg im Breisgau.
Having released the first collection of poems at her own expense, eighteen-year-old Marina Tsvetaeva attracted the attention of the largest poets of Russia of that time: N. Gumilyov, V. Bryusov. The poetess became her own in a creative environment, participated in literary studios, several times visited M. Voloshin in Koktebel. She writes a lot, meets her future husband; it seems that life favors the poetess.
But then a fateful meeting with the poetess Sofia Parnok takes place, and Tsvetaeva leaves her husband and plunges into a relationship for two years, which she will later call the “first disaster” in her life. And then others will follow, and no longer of a private order: the Civil War begins. Three-year-old daughter Irina dies of hunger, her husband fights in the White Guard, is defeated along with Denikin and emigrates to Germany. A few years later, Tsvetaeva is allowed to go to him - and a painful life in a foreign land begins.
Marina Tsvetaeva did not "take root" away from her homeland. Her poetry of this period did not find a response in the hearts of emigrants. True, works in prose gained fame: “My Pushkin”, “The Tale of Sonechka”, memoirs of contemporary poets. And only by prose Tsvetaeva actually saves her family from starvation: her husband is sick, her daughter earns a penny by embroidery, her son is still too small.
The daughter and husband of Tsvetaeva return to Russia in 1937, the poetess joins them two years later - and they are arrested by the NKVD. Ariadna Tsvetaeva spent 15 years in the camp and exile, Sergei Efron was shot. Tsvetaeva barely makes a living translating, but a new war begins, and she and her son are evacuated to Yelabuga. The shocks and losses of recent years, unemployment and illness turn out to be too heavy a burden, and Marina Tsvetaeva commits suicide by hanging herself.
The exact place where Tsvetaeva is buried is unknown. In 1960, the sister of the poetess Anastasia erected the first monument among the graves of the unknown, and today this place is considered the "official" grave of Marina Tsvetaeva. In 1990, Patriarch Alexy II gave special permission for the funeral of a suicide, and it was held on the fiftieth anniversary of her death.
life line
September 28, 1892 Date of birth of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva.
1910 The first publication of the collection of poems "Evening Album" at his own expense.
1912 Wedding with Sergei Efron and the birth of Ariadne's daughter. Release of the second collection "Magic Lamp".
1913 The third collection of Tsvetaeva's poems - "From two books" - has been released.
1914 Meeting with Sofia Parnok.
1916 Moving to Aleksandrov to my sister Anastasia. Return to husband.
1917 Birth of daughter Irina.
1922 Moving to her husband in Europe. Life in Berlin and Prague.
1925 Birth of son George.
1928 The release in Paris of the last lifetime collection of poems "After Russia".
1939 Return to Russia.
August 31, 1941 Date of death of Marina Tsvetaeva.
September 2, 1941 The funeral of Tsvetaeva in Yelabuga.
Memorable places
1. Moscow house, where Tsvetaeva lived in 1911-1912. (lane Sivtsev Vrazhek, 19).
2. Museum of Tsvetaeva in Moscow, in the house where she settled in 1914 after her marriage and lived until her departure abroad in 1922, at Borisoglebsky per., 6.
3. Pragerplatz square, where in the 1920s. the literary elite of the Russian emigration, including M. Tsvetaeva, gathered in the Pragerdile cafe. Here was the "Prague Boarding House", in which the poetess settled after meeting with her husband in Berlin.
4. The house where Tsvetaeva and her husband rented a room in Prague in 1923-1924 (51 Swedish Street).
5. House in Paris, where Tsvetaeva lived from 1934 to 1938 (street Jean-Baptiste Poten, 65).
6. House-Museum of Tsvetaeva in Korolev (Bolshevo), where the poetess lived at the NKVD dacha in 1939.
7. House number 20 on Malaya Pokrovskaya Street (then - number 10 on Voroshilov Street) in Yelabuga, where Tsvetaeva lived in her last years and died.
Episodes of life
Two of Russia's greatest poets, Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, met only once. Tsvetaeva highly appreciated Akhmatova's work since 1912, dedicated a cycle of poems to her, wrote enthusiastic letters. They met only in 1941, when Akhmatova came to Moscow in the hope of helping her arrested son. Tsvetaeva visited her, and the poetesses talked for seven hours in a row, but what remains unknown.
Before her death, Tsvetaeva left three notes in the pockets of her apron, and all of them were about her sixteen-year-old son, Mura. The first was addressed to him, the other two to friends and other evacuees. Tsvetaeva asked to take care of her son and teach him, she wrote that he would disappear with her. Moore survived his mother by only three years - he died at the front.
"Conditional" grave of Tsvetaeva in Yelabuga
Testaments
"Do not be too angry with your parents - remember that they were you, and you will be them."
"Never say that everyone does it: everyone always does it badly - since they are so readily referred to."
“At some second of the way, the target begins to fly at us. The only thought is: don't evade."
“The soul is a sail. Wind is life.
Tamara Gverdtsiteli sings a song based on Tsvetaeva's poems "Prayer"
condolences
“She was some kind of God's child in the human world. And this world cut and wounded her with its corners.
Writer and memoirist Roman Gul
“She was protected by the stern pride of the defeated, who has nothing left but pride, and who saves this last guarantee so as not to touch the ground with both shoulder blades.”
Writer Romain Rolland
“The pathos of all the work of Tsvetaeva, first of all, is in defending her high mission to be a poet on earth. In this mission, her path from the very beginning to the end was heroic. It was this heroism that brought her to Yelabuga - where, saving her pride and the right not to curse everyone, she found her tragic end on August 31, 1941.
Literary critic Genrikh Gorchakov, author of the book “About Marina Tsvetaeva. Through the Eyes of a Contemporary"
Biography of Marina Tsvetaeva
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva, made by Aida Lisenkova-Hanemeyer (b. 1966).
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva by Boris Fedorovich Chaliapin (1904-1979).
Part 1. Origins
The biography of Marina Tsvetaeva, if considered without regard to the perception of life events by the poet himself, does not make sense. Marina Ivanovna initially conceived poetry collections as a diary of her soul.
Later, her work, enhanced by memoirs and prose, acquires an additional meaning and scale of the historical chronicle: the First World War, the October Revolution, the white emigration and the Stalin era.
Events through which she passed as if through a system, leaving scars, bruises and bruises in her soul.
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva, made by Georgy Georgievich Shishkin (b. 1948).
She carefully dates each of her poems, and according to the dates, like stones, you can go through her whole life until the last death and funeral on her own, still alive, “I set the table for six.”
In poetry, this is a unique case. According to the dates of poems and prose, it is possible to restore not only the external pattern of the poet's biography, but also the life of the soul. You can trace how the poetics, style, style, philosophy of life changed.
Marina Ivanovna was not religious in the traditional sense of the word. She was closer to the pagan perception and sense of the world, although she knew biblical history very well and operated on it organically and naturally.
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva from the cycle "Poets of Russia", made by the artist Arkady Efimovich Egutkin
She listened. This is the most accurate description of her way of poetic understanding of the world.
She, listening, could catch the most subtle, hidden shades and meanings in the language and the world, embodying them in sound and word.
Her perception of the world, the way of hearing it can only be compared with the method of the German philosopher, a contemporary of Marina Ivanovna, Martin Heidegger. He argued that language has its own philosophical reserve and meaning, which both tried to capture and make explicit.
We can say that this was a great merit of the father of Marina Ivanovna. If you look at the photo where the father and daughter are together, then their faces are so similar that they are almost indistinguishable.
Father and daughter: Marina and Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaeva. 1905 (Marina is 13 years old)
The folk genes of the father and his research related to myths, antiquity, art and language worked beyond and above their heads, capturing not only the father, but also his daughters. Both Marina and Anastasia became writers, albeit with different levels of talent and genius. Marina Ivanovna's father, a well-known philologist, art critic and scientist Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev, was not very concerned about raising his four children, including two - Marina and Anastasia - from second marriage.
Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev,
For him, the main concern has always been work: the construction of the Museum of Art, the selection of materials and museum exposition, philological research. Devoted to work and work, spontaneous and deep bearer of folk culture and tradition, a man of soft Russian soul, he influenced Marina no less (if not more) than a mother who devoted herself entirely to the upbringing of children and the family.
Grand opening of the Pushkin Museum May 31, 1912. Nicholas II with his family. Right and below - the founder of the museum Ivan Tsvetaev.
The son, grandson and great-grandson of a priest who graduated from a theological seminary, Ivan Vladimirovich, however, was not a fanatically devoted person to Orthodoxy: he died without a priest and blessing, and the professor’s favorite saying was “There is enough room for everyone under heaven.”
The father communicated with the best people of that time, traveled and lived abroad with his family for a long time, where the girls studied at the best educational institutions, Marina was surrounded by an unusual world of art and literature from childhood. The world of heroes and gods of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, biblical characters, German and French romantics, the language of France, Italy, Germany. The atmosphere in which Marina lived and grew up was saturated with world culture. In this world and among these heroes, she was at home and in her element.
Stepashkin Viktor Alekseevich
Stepashkin Viktor Alekseevich
It is also necessary to take into account the family relationship with Dmitry Ilovaisky, a famous Russian historian, on whose books almost all of Russia was brought up. He was the same fanatic of Russian history and daily, painstaking work, like Ivan Vladimirovich.
Dmitry Ilovaisky, historian. Father of the first wife Tsvetaeva I.V.
Ilovaisky was a very peculiar person who loved only his grandchildren, the children of Ivan Vladimirovich from his first marriage.
Coming to his son-in-law's house, he looked at the children as objects, and not as living people. He outlived all his wives and children, except for the only one - Olga, who fled to Siberia with a Jew, which she never was forgiven.
The millions that Ilovaisky earned through his labors and which he was in no hurry to give to his children went to the Bolsheviks. His daughter Varvara, having married Ivan Vladimirovich and having given birth to two children for him, until the end of her life remained the only love of Marina's father.
Varvara Dmitrievna Ilovaiskaya, the first wife of Tsvetaeva I.V.
But the main thing in the house for Marina and Anastasia was still her mother.
She was a woman of tremendous talent, a brilliant pianist who had never played on a public stage, whose “music dripped from her hands”, hearing whose play one could “fall unconscious from a chair, forgetting everything in the world”; she had the ability for languages and painting, a brilliant memory, a magnificent style. She infinitely loved Turgenev, Heine, German romantic poets, Shakespeare, and - she recognized the primacy of music, art over everything else in life ...
Maria Alexandrovna Main was the only daughter in a Russified Polish-German family.
Her mother died when she was 3 weeks old. The girl was brought up by her father, Alexander Danilovich Maine, and a Swiss Bonne, Susanna Davydovna, whom she called aunt. The governess was sensitive, eccentric and infinitely devoted to her "Manya" and her father (Already in old age, Alexander Danilovich married her).
Alexander Danilovich Main and Susanna Davydovna
The house of the father (director of the Land Bank) was full of comfort, the walls were hung with paintings, Masha had a beautiful piano. The father adored his daughter, but was extremely demanding and despotic.
On the altar of parental love, he, as usual, put his own child, who certainly had to meet all his dreams and hopes.
The kindest but limited Susanna Davydovna could not and did not know how to protect Masha from her father's severity. The girl grew up alone. She was not sent to a boarding school or a gymnasium, she had no friends and comrades.
“Mother's life is a closed, fantastic, painful, childish, bookish life. For seven years, she knew world history and mythology, raved about heroes, played the piano superbly ... "
The Lonely Tree Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)
Masha (ironically she inherited her father's harshness and pedantry) becomes exalted, dreams of extraordinary feelings and actions. Romanticism and Chivalry - these are her icons, her ideals. The girl pours out all her dreams and desires in music and in a diary - these are her only friends...
"On a sailing ship" Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840
And against this background He appears (his name remains unknown). The classic version - she was 17, they met at the ball ... Masha fell in love, as a passionate, temperamental nature living in a world of romantic dreams can love. There were meetings, rides on moonlit nights... Love was deep and mutual, they probably could be happy, but - He was married.
"Two looking at the moon" Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840
The father, of course, considered these meetings unacceptable, unheard of insolence and demanded their immediate cessation. Alexander Danilovich did not categorically recognize divorce, considering it a sin. And the daughter obeyed...
Strange ... Her character was rebellious, sharp. Or maybe she rebelled, but was defeated? .. Most likely, her lover reasonably took the side of her father, and the girl was forced to accept.
But for the rest of her life, she did not stop remembering and loving the hero of her youthful novel. “So loving, as I loved him, I will no longer be in my life. And if I know what love and happiness are, then I owe it to him ... "
"Penitent Mary Magdalene" Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840
Waterfalls of unrealized feelings fell on the piano keyboard ... “In music, I live by you, from every chord all my dear past sounds to me! Feel..."
Her performance was fantastic in terms of its emotional impact on those who heard it. She had “music flowing from her hands” ... “Brilliant!! .. But if you play like that, you will not only burn yourself, but also burn our entire boarding house!” at the end of your life).
Maria Alexandrovna felt her vocation for music, she could become a famous musician, play in concerts - but for her father this path was also categorically unacceptable. "Free artist" - in his circle it sounded almost indecent. And the daughter obeys again ...
Why? .. Perhaps the strict father's upbringing had an effect. In the life of her daughter Marina, these "brakes" will no longer exist ...
Twice broken dreams, twice whipped "No!", twice unfulfilled hopes ... It hurts to imagine what revolutions blazed in the girl's soul. Fearing for the reputation of the family, the father was in a hurry to marry Masha - he was very worried about her constant "departure" from real life into the world of fictitious images and fantasies ..
"Woman Before Sunrise"
Masha thinks about the inevitable marriage almost with disgust: “The time will come, you willy-nilly give up your ideals and take up the broom ...”
Despite her appearance, she could count on a brilliant party, as the daughter of a rich and famous man in Moscow. But the girl (an idealist!) decided to settle accounts with fate in a peculiar way: to marry like a skete, like a fire. For this purpose, she chose Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev, a widower professor, twice her age, with two children, old-fashioned and ugly ...
Maria went into marriage under the flags of Romanticism and Chivalry, she set herself two tasks: to replace mothers for orphaned children and to become a faithful assistant to a learned husband. She hoped in this way (by such obedience?) to overcome and get rid of her emotional drama.
Valeria and Andrey Tsvetaev
Obedience by marriage was too hard. Ivan Vladimirovich was in love with his late wife, and could not hide his longing for her.
“We were married at the coffin,” Maria later said. How could she think that she would be jealous of her unloved husband for the memory of her predecessor, struggle with this painful feeling, understand the absurdity of the situation and not cope with it?? ..
“First love, eternal love, eternal longing of my father. The beloved wife of the unloved, who loved another ”(according to family tradition, Varvara Dmitrievna loved another, and she married Tsvetaeva, obeying the will of her father).
This portrait was commissioned by I.V. Tsvetaeva was painted in the house during his second wife, and then he was solemnly hanged in the hall (!).
In the evenings, waves and rivers of music flowed in the house. Maria Alexandrovna played all night long, "covering and flooding" everything around. “Mother gave us water from the opened vein of Lyrica ...”
What was she hiding in this passionate, selfless game? Memories of love? Her eternal inaudible presence, her breath behind her shoulders?.. Or the gnawing pangs of jealousy?..
The romanticism of his wife was alien to Ivan Vladimirovich. Tsvetaev was a quiet man, deeply immersed in his studies of ancient culture, and the music that flooded the house most likely interfered with him. But - he learned not to hear it.
His life is "quiet heroism", hiding behind external detachment and concentration. Her life is a voluntary emotional self-immolation. “There was a lot of grief! Mom and dad were completely different people. Everyone has their own wound in the heart. Lives went side by side, not merging.
Maria Alexandrovna actively helped her husband, a professor, in the realization of his old dream: the creation of a Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. “We can say that this was a complete and proud dissolution in the affairs of her husband.”
In fact, she simply found for herself that niche, that looking glass that she was looking for, and from which her father once pulled her out with difficulty - she plunged into the world of art she adored ... She fenced herself off from the real world with its real problems such as raising children.
Anastasia and Marina Tsvetaeva
In 1893, at her husband's lectures, Maria accidentally met him...
How her heart must have been pounding!
To the on-duty question about life, happiness, and so on, Maria Alexandrovna answered: “My daughter is a year old, she is very large and smart, and I am completely happy.”
“God, how at that moment she should have hated me, smart and big, for the fact that I am not his daughter!” Marina Tsvetaeva later wrote ...
Maria Alexandrovna died at the age of 38, in July 1906.
“I only feel sorry for the music and the sun,” she said before going into oblivion. About children, about her husband - not a word ...
"Cross and cathedral in the mountains" Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840
What did she put on the altar of her love? .. her children .... Warmth and attention, which they did not receive. Marina and Asya were left to their own devices. "Brakes" were not installed by anyone. Girls received an excellent education and development, but remained unloved, undereducated. That is why one of the personality traits of the great poetess was named as follows: "Disregard for any human norms."
In a word, Marina grew up as an unloved child, gaining love all her life, which she was not given in childhood. And she responded to love so strongly that her partners could not stand the heat of passion and left.
Maria Alexandrovna's father was a very kind person, he loved his grandchildren, not dividing them into relatives and non-relatives, unlike Ilovaisky. And he always brought them many gifts.
And another trait inherited from the mother, dislike for money. Money in the Tsvetaevs' house has always been considered dirt, after which you need to wash your hands thoroughly.
Work, chivalrous nobility, devotion, difficulties and culture - this is the soil that gave us, according to Joseph Brodsky, the most brilliant poet of the 20th century - Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva.
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva, made by Boris Semenovich Ilyukhin (b. 1947), working in the genre of postal miniature.
Part 2. Opened the veins ....
The biography of Marina Tsvetaeva developed the way she wanted. She wanted, by and large, to overcome time and history, although she said that you can’t jump out of time.
All the poems of the poet are addressed not to contemporaries, but to descendants. Starting from the first "My poems, like precious wines, / Their turn will come" and to the last "The twentieth century - he, / And I - until every century."
She has always lived a double life. One - ordinary, family, household, female. The other is invisible, hidden from prying eyes, the life of her soul and creativity.
Breeding them, she considered the first "an obstacle to the Councils", preventing the poet from becoming a poet. Biological life is an endless obstacle, because “Life is a place where one cannot live”, “for for everyone who is not a bastard”, life is a Jewish quarter.
Life is only raw material, which the poet, artist, writer, etc., transforms into poems, paintings and books by processing. And the more difficult the conditions, the more favorable they are for creativity. So, she said, the navigator prays, and so the creator should pray:
“God send me a coast to push off, a shoal to take off, a flurry to resist.” This is how the holy ascetics prayed that God would send them trials, considering themselves abandoned by the Creator when they were not.
All experiences, misfortunes, sufferings, which seem to be an obstacle to a non-artist, are fertile material for a creator. The non-creator lives the whole life of the one that is, the creator - the one that should be.
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva by Magda Maximilianovna Nakhman-Acharia (?).
Creativity is "the overworking, grinding of life - the happiest." Life is the material that one must have in order to have something to grow from for poetry. Only in this quality life has meaning. Real life is not what it is, but what should ideally be.
The idealism of Tsvetaeva, instilled by her mother, was expressed in nobility and chivalry, from which grew a rejection of everyday life, hatred of the bourgeoisie, money, winners, satiety, prosperity and bourgeoisness. The reverse side of hatred was love for the defeated, the un-prosperous, the un-successful.
Portrait of M.I. Tsvetaeva, made by Anna Nesterova (?)
Pushkin's "Mercy called for the fallen" in Tsvetaevsky's world became not just mercy, but rightness and kinship by blood: "Right, once he fell", "Right, once offended", "Son, once in the blood."
With such an understanding of life, she did not fit anywhere, into any poetic and political get-togethers, she was a stranger everywhere and was pushed out from everywhere. It would be a stranger even in our time, with the erection of happiness, success and prosperity on a podium.
Her passion, "immensity", an unquenchable thirst for love did not fit into the usual standards. She was too much in everything: she loved too much, she hated too much, she demanded too much, in everything she reached the limit, the maximum, the Absolute.
Tsvetaeva is a poet of the limit. Hence her love for the number "seven", meaning completeness, and for the word "circle", which completes everything, including her round loneliness.
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was born on the twenty-sixth of September or the eighth of October (according to New Style), 1892. Born into a family that was permeated by world culture. She was full of her words and concepts, plots and characters and freely operated with them.
Often Marina Ivanovna used legends and myths as forms in which she put her content through obstinacy and independence, arguing, denying and entering into a dialogue with the content that had developed before her.
Strict rules and a clear routine reigned in the house: it was not allowed to eat even a sandwich at an inopportune time. Father and mother were emotionally distant from each other, and Marina felt these relationships, suffering from the coldness of her mother, the detachment of her father and loneliness in the family.
From the age of four, her mother began to teach her to play the piano, every day she had to spend four hours learning the scales. At the age of five, her first poem was written, and instead of a piano, she dreamed of only one thing - to have a blank sheet of paper, which her mother did not give her.
Marina Tsvetaeva in 1893.
The habit of work, strict discipline developed since childhood, the living example of her parents made her a workaholic: throughout her life she always and everywhere followed the same rule - to sit down at the table every day and write.
In less than thirty writing years, Tsvetaeva wrote seventeen poems, fifty works of prose, eight plays, more than eight hundred poems and more than a thousand letters. Dislike for everyday life was aggravated by the fact that he distracted her from the table.
Marina studied abroad, in the best institutions in Europe, where the family lived for a long time due to her mother's illness, and in the best gymnasiums in Moscow. But in the gymnasium she was not distinguished by zeal, and she was periodically expelled.
This was facilitated by the obstinacy and independence of the girl's character. At the age of eighteen, she could not finish the gymnasium in any way, and her father was depressed by the death of his wife and did little to raise his daughters.
At the age of seventeen, Marina decided at her own expense to publish the first poetry collection "Evening Album", which contains the first, still children's, poems. But even then, many famous poets noted the unusualness of the young talent, the originality and freshness of the collection
Marina especially became friends with Maximilian Voloshin, to whom she came at her eighteen to stay for the summer.
There was a meeting with Sergei Efron, her future husband.
Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva. Moscow, 1911
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron was born on September 26, 1893 in Moscow; repressed, shot on August 16, 1941 in Moscow.
Russian publicist, writer, officer of the White Army, Markovian, pioneer, agent of the NKVD.
His parents were fond of revolutionary ideas, but when the civil war began, he went to fight on the side of the White Guards.
At the age of nineteen, Marina gets married and then, no matter what happens to her, no matter what feelings and hobbies she experiences, she remains with her husband until the end. Soon they have a daughter, whom Marina named Ariadna, although Sergei was against this name.
Despite the fact that Tsvetaeva sincerely loved her husband, already 2 years after the birth of her daughter, she plunges headlong into a new romance, and with a woman - Sofia Parnok, also a translator and poetess.
Sofia Parnok
Efron very painfully experienced his wife's infatuation, but forgave, in 1916, after a violent passion, numerous quarrels and reconciliations, Marina finally broke up with Parnok and returned to her husband and daughter.
In the foreground, from left to right: Sergei Efron, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Sokolov. Koktebel, 1913.
Then the second daughter, Irina, was born, very painful and not so beloved. The war began, Sergei from Koktebel goes to the front as a volunteer. Marina goes to Moscow to reunite with Sergei later, but these plans were not destined to come true. They lose each other for many years
In revolutionary Moscow, hunger, cold, everything that could be used as firewood went into action. She tries to work, but survived only five and a half months, recalling with horror both that work and that time. At work, she just sat, because she was not given any work, in fact, she only took away precious time that could be devoted to poetry.
Hunger forced her to send the girls to an orphanage: she was told that they were fed there, but in reality everything was stolen, and the children were dying of hunger. Arriving at the shelter, she saw that Irina was practically dying, and Ariadna, barely alive, she was taking and nursing.
Marina Tsvetaeva with her daughter Ariadna (Alei). 1916
1. From left to right (sitting): Anastasia Tsvetaeva with her son Andrey, Marina Tsvetaeva with her daughter Ariadna.
Standing behind: Sergei Efron (left) and Anastasia's second husband, Mavriky Mints. Alexandrov, 1916.
2. Daughters of Marina Tsvetaeva: Irina Efron (left) and Ariadna Efron (Alya). 1919.
Marina Ivanovna believed that Irina's death lay on her conscience and the feeling of guilt did not leave her, although she tried to justify herself by saying that her strength would not be enough for two. She loved Ariadne to the point of madness, just as she later loved her son to madness.
Some believe that Ariadne was saved from her mother's suffocating love by a craving for her father and his Bolshevik ideas. The son, too, suffocated in her arms.
Ariadna (left) and Irina Efron. 1919.
Marina Tsvetaeva was saved by frenzied energy, a passion for limits, a pagan thirst for life, which demanded a way out. Even in that difficult and hungry time, she loved, was fond of, nursed her daughter, and she still had the strength to write poetry and engage in a hated life.
The truth about that time is described with amazing force by Marina in the story "About Sonechka", which, according to Dmitry Bykov, is the best book written about the revolution, including Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago".
Marina Tsvetaeva did not accept the revolution. In 1922, having learned that her husband was alive and in the Czech Republic, she, albeit with difficulty, obtained permission to go to her husband, and left for a long seventeen years, only to return later, but to the USSR, and not to Russia, and not for life, but for certain death.
Ending
As soon as she crossed the border and ended up in the West, she broke into two parts: before and after.
A fracture that hurt for the rest of his life. From a cheerful, full of energy and optimism woman, she gradually becomes a disillusioned and tragic figure.
So, on the fifteenth of May of the twenty-second year, Marina Ivanovna and her daughter ended up in Berlin, where her husband was supposed to meet them.
The meeting was not as joyful as we would like. This is understandable. They separated in 1914 after living together for only two years.
And everything was supposed to start again, but again and still did not work. Everyone lived during this time a long and full of trials life: she was already thirty, he was a little less.
She lost her daughter Irina, the second daughter grew up without a father and she had a difficult relationship with her mother.
During this time, Marina published two more poetry collections, she became famous, unlike Sergei, who was known only as Tsvetaeva's husband. She had more than one love affair, she survived the hunger and cold of the terrible revolutionary years.
He went through the civil war, but did not return to Russia, he remained to study at the University of Prague. Everyone had their own life. The love that once united them was gone. The family had to be rebuilt.
When Efron arrived, it became clear that they had become strangers, and in order not to hurt anyone, he returned to Prague. But Marina goes after him, trying to improve relations.
Jan Vochoc (1865-1920)
Prague at that time was the student capital of the Russian emigration, many of them settled here. The reunion of the Efron family nevertheless took place, they began to look for an apartment, which was not so easy. At first they lived with Sergei in a hostel, then Marina and Alya moved to a village, not far from the city, Sergei remained in the hostel.
Far left - Marina Tsvetaeva. Behind stands on the left - Sergei Efron. Right: Konstantin Rodzevich. Prague, 1923.
Life was terrible and primitive, requiring a lot of time, Sergei received benefits from the Czech government, which they lived on. The whole burden of life fell on the shoulders of little Ali, Marina Ivanovna wrote to earn money.
Marina Tsvetaeva and Ariadna Efron. Prague, 1924
Poetics becomes more contrasting, more complex: Tsvetaeva splits words into separate syllables and sounds, immersing them in the root system of the language. Her style is becoming more and more like the style of Mayakovsky.
Marina Ivanovna listens to the meanings that grow from repetitions of sounds and syllables, she combines Christianity and paganism, faith and unbelief, folk elements and folklore with classical culture and myth.
Marina Tsvetaeva 1924
She is a poet of meanings and limits, rings and circles. Starting the poem with a thesis, Tsvetaeva further unfolds it and loops it. And the more complex her verse and syllable becomes, the more difficult it is to understand.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
She dreamed of meeting Pasternak, but when the meeting took place (in Paris), Marina realized that they were completely different people: he was a more down to earth person, less heroic and less idealistic than her, and he liked women of a completely different type.
In Prague, she met Rodzevich, a friend of Sergei. It was a fatal meeting. They began a stormy romance. But Rodzevich soon got tired of her passion and hypertonia of feelings, he wanted a simple, ordinary life: marriage, family, children.
Konstantin Boleslavovich Rodzevich
Sergey suggested a divorce, but Marina Tsvetaeva never thought about a divorce from Sergey, she just needed new impressions, the energy of love, new relationships for poetic inspiration. Sergei understood this and, fearing that she would commit suicide, remained.
Marina Tsvetaeva and Ariadna Efron. Prague, 1925 Ariadne Efron (Alya), daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva.
A year later, Marina became pregnant, in February 1925 the long-awaited son was born. Marina never forgot that her mother was expecting a son, and she passionately dreamed of a son too. Now the name was chosen by Sergei. Marina wanted Boris, her husband insisted on George. But Marina Ivanovna never called her son by that name. For her, he was always Moore.
Sergei Efron, Marina Tsvetaeva with George (Moore) and Ariadna Efron. Vshenory (Czech Republic), 1925
She doted on the child. In her memoirs, Tsvetaeva wrote that Aley was proud, and Mura loved. Indeed, he was the dream of her whole life. She bathed him, swaddled him, did not let anyone near him, said that he would be only hers and no one else. And she really did everything he wanted.
Marina Tsvetaeva and Moore (Georgy Efron). Meudon, 1928. Author of the photo - N.P. Gronsky
Moore and Ariadne Efron
After giving birth, she wrote the poem “Pied Piper”, amazing in intensity and relevance, providence, in which the Bolsheviks and the International are shown in the form of rats who only want what to eat. But they devour the inhabitants of Hammeln, the city of self-satisfied bourgeois and vulgar people, who also only care about food.
Personal life of Marina Tsvetaeva was filled with stormy romances, but with only one man - Sergei Efron, she tied her fate with a legal marriage. They met in 1911 in a romantic place - Koktebel, where eighteen-year-old Marina was visiting her close friend Maximilian Voloshin, and Sergei came to recover from consumption. At the beginning of the next year, they got married, and in the same year their first daughter, Ariadne, was born.
Tsvetaeva was a very passionate woman, and, despite the fact that she sincerely loved her husband, there was a place in her biography for other hobbies. Two years after Ariadne was born, Marina Ivanovna became seriously interested in the poetess Sofia Parnok. Efron knew about this affair and was very worried, but found the strength to forgive his wife.
In the photo - Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergey Efron
After a series of high-profile scandals, she returned to the family, and Parnok was deleted from the personal life of Marina Tsvetaeva. A year later, the second daughter of the poetess, Irina, was born, but with her birth the baby disappointed her mother, who wholeheartedly wanted to give birth to a son. It happened in 1917, and from that moment a black streak began in the life of the poetess and her family. Sergei Efron went to the front to fight on the side of the White Army, and after the final defeat of it by the Bolsheviks, he emigrated, and Marina Ivanovna remained in Moscow with her children. They lived in dire need, the poetess sold personal belongings to feed the children, but there was still not enough money, and Tsvetaeva gave her daughters to an orphanage, but this did not save the younger Irina - she died of starvation in the orphanage.
While the poetess's husband lived in exile, Marina Ivanovna had several novels in her life, the most romantic of which was an affair with Boris Pasternak, which lasted for ten whole years. It was a novel in letters, which continued after Tsvetaeva's departure to her husband in Berlin in 1922. When the family of the poetess moved to the Czech Republic, a new love came into the personal life of Marina Tsvetaeva - to Konstantin Rodzevich. A joyful event also took place there - Marina Ivanovna gave birth to her husband's son George.
In the photo - Marina Ivanovna with her son George
Almost before the war, Marina Tsvetaeva and Efron returned to Russia, where they were later arrested, first the daughter of the poetess Ariadne, and then her husband Sergei Efron. These events knocked down Marina Ivanovna, besides, she had a difficult relationship with her son, which also did not add optimism to her. In 1941, she, along with George, was evacuated to Yelabuga, where she committed suicide by hanging herself in the hallway of the house allocated by him and his son for settlement.
For 15 days in the evacuation, she did not even have time to unpack her luggage, but how much she survived, how many offices she went around in search of work and housing, how many famous people she asked for help. Alas, no one could save her from the last step. She was buried almost half a century later, calling the tragedy of her death "murder from the regime."
On the last journey
The chronicle of the Yelabuga period of Marina Tsvetaeva's life was restored only in the 21st century, when researchers gained access to the poet's archive and the diaries of her son Georgy Efron were published.
Marina Tsvetaeva, 1940, Moscow. Photo:
Marina Ivanovna with her 16-year-old son, whom she called Mur, arrived in Yelabuga on a steamer on August 17, 1941. The journey took 10 days, Moore wrote that he had to sleep sitting up, in the dark and stink. While waiting for registration, we spent the night in a library technical school. In a small house on the street. Voroshilov, 10, moved only on August 21.
The Brodelshchikovs gave the guests not even a room, but a corner - part of the room behind the partition. The mistress's name was Anastasia Ivanovna, like her younger sister Tsvetaeva, and the poet took this as a good sign. She just sat down on the sofa: “That's it, I'm tired. I won't go any further."
But I had to walk a lot. The hostess recalled that Marina Ivanovna left home every day in search of work. Even on the ship, it became clear that many of the evacuees had support - relatives, money. Tsvetaeva was left alone. Winter was ahead, and with her she had only 600 rubles. What to live on? Where to look for a job? Like a saving straw, she seized on the words of Flora Leites, the wife of the writer Alexander Leites. She promised to apply for a residence permit in Chistopol and report by telegram, but there was still no news.
With this ticket, Tsvetaeva and her son boarded the steamer to Yelabuga Photo: courtesy of Yelabuga Museum-Reserve
Tsvetaeva was confused. Nobody needed her knowledge of French in Yelabuga. Moore described her ordeals in his diary: “... mother was in the City Council, and work is not expected for her; the only opportunity so far is to be a translator from German in the NKVD, but the mother does not want this position. He himself was also looking for a job, but everywhere they paid a penny. The evacuated women and teenage children got a job, and Marina Ivanovna kept repeating: “I can’t do anything, I can only wash the dishes.”
“Her mood is disgusting, the most pessimistic,” Moore continued. - Offer her a place as a teacher; but what the hell will she bring up? She doesn't understand any of this. Her mood is suicidal: "money is melting, there is no work."
Who needs poetry?
Without waiting for the telegram, on August 24, Tsvetaeva went to Chistopol, where influential writers lived. She talked with Lydia Chukovskaya, went to Nikolai Aseev, whom she then asked in a suicide note to accept Moore into the family and love him like a son, spent the night with the wife of Konstantin Paustovsky.
She hoped that she would be accepted as a dishwasher, but it was not easy to get this job, because during the war, many people wanted to be closer to the kitchen, to food. Contemporaries only shrugged their shoulders, saying, how to explain to Tsvetaeva that the place of the scrubber in the kitchen is more enviable than the place of the poet?
The last days of Marina Tsvetaeva passed in this house in Yelabuga Photo courtesy of Yelabuga Museum-Reserve
On the way, the poet took a skein of good French wool, which she sold for the price of a kilogram of potatoes. It wouldn't even occur to her to bargain. She never adapted to Soviet realities: “I won’t be able to live in this country.” Only two years have passed since she returned to the Soviet Union. During this time, she survived the arrest of her daughter Ariadne and husband Sergei Efron. The cup of grief, fear and despair was overflowing, because since the civil war she knew what hunger, cold and the death of a child are. Troubles and suffering led to the fact that at 48 she looked like an old woman. Those who saw her in those days said that her hair and face were colorless, she herself was gray.
The tragedy was also in the fact that she could not take root even in the writing environment, critics argued that her poems were alien to the Soviet reader. Even Moore wrote: "... mother's poems - completely and totally divorced from life." For her, writing meant living, but: “Who needs my poems now?” She consciously decided: “I wrote my own, I could have done more, but I can’t freely ...”. Although the creative fire has not died down: “How many lines have passed! I don't write down anything. With this, it's over."
Flora Leites recalled: “The door opened, and a woman entered, almost imperceptible, in an old brown suit and a brown beret ... I was just shocked ...“ You are Marina Tsvetaeva! She leaned back slightly from my attack and asked: “Does anyone here know me?” And I answered: “The mountain grieved (and the mountains with clay / Bitter mourn during the hours of separation) ...”. Her eyes lit up instantly.
"Better Without Me"
On August 26, the council of evacuees allowed Tsvetaeva to register in Chistopol, it remained to find a room. But, having returned to Yelabuga, she suddenly changed her mind about leaving. On August 30, Moore wrote: “Mother is like a pinwheel: she doesn’t know at all whether she should stay here or move to Chistopol. She is trying to get a “decisive word” from me, but I refuse to pronounce this “decisive word” ... Let her figure it out herself.
June 18, 1941. From left to right Marina Tsvetaeva, Lydia Libedinskaya, Alexey Kruchenykh, Georgy Efron Photo: courtesy of Yelabuga Museum-Reserve
Moore wrote that in the last days the mother was not herself, she asked to be released. The hostess heard them quarreling, but did not understand the reasons: they spoke French. Tsvetaeva, behind whom the train of a White emigrant and a White Guard, the wife and mother of the enemies of the people, still stretched, was afraid to harm Moore - thin and weak, but not allowing himself to complain. She believed that if she was not in her son’s biography, then it would be better for him, because “children are not responsible for their parents” ...
On August 31, Marina Ivanovna was left alone in the Brodelshchikovs' house, saying she was unwell. Georgy and his landlady went on Sunday to clear a place for the airfield. The owner and his little grandson went fishing.
She was discovered by her mistress, returning from work, in the hallway of the house on a beam. There is a legend that on that fateful day the poet used a rope given to her by Boris Pasternak to bundle her luggage.
The notebook that was found in Marina Ivanovna's apron before the funeral Photo: courtesy of Yelabuga Museum-Reserve
There were three suicide notes addressed to the evacuated writers, son and Nikolai Aseev, but they do not reveal the reasons: "<ПИСАТЕЛЯМ>Dear comrades! Don't leave Moore... Don't bury him alive! Check it out well." She was buried on September 2, and a couple of days later Moore was in Chistopol. Critic Yuri Osnos helped the young man get there. But the mother's hopes for Nikolai Aseev did not materialize: Moore spent less than a month in the boarding school of the Litfond, and then returned to Moscow. Then there were evacuation to Tashkent, study at the Literary Institute and mobilization. On July 7, 1944, he was mortally wounded in one of his first battles.
Cross at the Yelabuga cemetery. 1960 Photo: courtesy of Yelabuga Museum-Reserve
The grave of Tsvetaeva was lost during the war years. The original location is unknown, but there is a symbolic burial. In 1990, Marina Tsvetaeva was buried in absentia at the Intercession Cathedral in Yelabuga with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus'. At the funeral, her suicide was called "murder by the regime."
The memorial complex of M. Tsvetaeva in Yelabuga includes the Literary Museum, the House of Memory, the Library of the Silver Age, etc. The house on the street. Voroshilov, 10, preserved. Among the exhibits is a small French notebook, which the carpenter who made the coffin took out of the pocket of Tsvetaeva's apron. It was handed over to Yelabuga by Bella Akhmadulina. On the last page - one word "Mordovia". Its meaning remains a mystery. Of the items of the Tsvetaeva family in the exposition of the Literary Museum - a large porcelain dish, a screw nutcracker, silver teaspoons, which Marina Ivanovna tried in vain to exchange or sell. And also French note paper and a strand of hair in a paper bag with the inscription "mother's hair": the curl was cut off by the daughter Ariadne, leaving France.
"AIF-Kazan" thanks the Elabuga State Museum-Reserve for their help in preparing the material.