Vladislav Khodasevich short biography. Biography of Khodasevich V.F.

Khodasevich, Vladislav Felitsianovich - poet (May 28, 1886, Moscow - June 14, 1939, Billancourt, near Paris). Born into the family of a Polish artist, his mother is Jewish. Higher education Khodasevich received in Moscow. His first collections of poetry Youth(1908) and happy house(1914) attracted the attention of Nikolai Gumilyov, mainly from the side of composition. The work of Khodasevich, who did not adjoin either the Symbolists or the Acmeists, did not find a wide response.

Vladislav Khodasevich. Documentary

He delivered critical papers. In 1918-19 he taught in Moscow in the studio Proletcult. In 1920-22 he lived in Petrograd. Of the collections of Khodasevich's poems published in Russia, the most significant is By way of grain(1920), here he expresses hope for the revival of Russia after its death in the revolution.

In 1922 Khodasevich, together with his wife, a writer N. Berberova emigrated to Berlin. There he published an anthology of Hebrew poetry in his own translations and published a small but substantial collection of his poems. heavy lyre(1923). Then he moved to Paris. The only collection of Khodasevich's poems published here Collection of poems in (1927) includes his last selection of 26 poems, written by him between 1922 and 1926 and collected under the title european night. In 1927, Khodasevich became the leading literary critic of the Vozrozhdeniye magazine and, with his characteristic skeptical prudence, entered into significant controversy with other emigre critics, for example, Adamovich.

At this time, he wrote very few poems, it is possible that some of them were in the archive seized during German occupation, when Khodasevich's second wife (since 1933), Jewish Olga Margolina, who died in a concentration camp, was also arrested. In the USSR in 1963, only a few of the poems of Khodasevich, who categorically rejected the Soviet system, were published, but selections of his poems went to samizdat.

Khodasevich is a significant poet who wrote in the style of classical Pushkin's training. “He is one of the meanest and most strict poets in Russian literature to himself” (N. Struve). Some of his works speak of the need and hunger of the revolutionary years, but on the whole he does not react directly to experiences and events in the world. The world for him means constraint, alienation, "quiet hell", which torments the initially free soul. At the same time, he constantly includes earthly existence in a cycle of multiple repeated incarnations - obviously, under the influence of anthroposophy, as

MAIN DATES IN THE LIFE AND CREATIVITY OF V. F. KHODASEVICH

1886, 16 (28) May - in Moscow, in Kamergersky lane, in the family of a merchant of the 2nd guild Felitsian Ivanovich Khodasevich and his wife Sofya Yakovlevna, nee Brafman, the son Vladislav was born. Autumn - the family moved to Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 14.

1890–1893 - Vladislav's passion for ballet; first poetic experiences.

1894 - begins to attend a private school L. N. Valitskaya on Maroseyka.

1896, Spring - taking exams at the Third Moscow Gymnasium.

June July - first visit to Petersburg. Lives with his parents at a dacha in Siverskaya. Meeting with A. N. Maikov.

Early 1900s - passion for dancing, systematic visits to dance evenings.

Acquaintance with the "decadent" literature. Rapprochement with G. I. Yarkho, G. A. Malitsky, A. Ya. Bryusov, the poet’s brother; personal acquaintance with V. Ya. Bryusov.

1902 - rapprochement with V. V. Hoffman. Acquaintance with S. A. Sokolov and N. I. Petrovskaya.

6 September - Khodasevich's father was expelled from the merchants of the 2nd guild and ranked among the Moscow philistines.

1903 - Vladislav moves from his parents to his brother Mikhail. The first surviving literary and theoretical text was written - the gymnasium essay "Is it true that striving is better than achieving."

1904 - composed the first surviving poems.

May - finishes his studies at the gymnasium.

September - enters the Faculty of Law of Moscow University.

Autumn- begins to visit the "Wednesdays" of V. Ya. Bryusov. Acquaintance with Andrei Bely.

Second half of the year- acquaintance and the beginning of an affair with M. E. Ryndina.

December - lives in Lidin, the estate of I. A. Tarletsky, uncle Ryndina.

1905 - debuts in print as a poet (Almanac "Vulture", No. 3) and as a critic ("Scales", No. 5; "Art", 1905, No. 4-6). Acts as a secretary for his brother Michael.

May - August- lives in Linda.

September- transferred at the university to the Faculty of History and Philology.

The end of the year- meets S. V. Kissin.

1906 - collaborates in the magazine "Golden Fleece" and unsuccessfully tries to get a job there as a secretary.

The end of the year- Works as a secretary in the magazine "Pass". Moves closer to S. V. Kissin.

1907, April - acquaintance of M. E. Khodasevich-Ryndina with S. K. Makovsky; the beginning of a family crisis.

June July- lives in Linda.

August - October- leaves Lidin for Roslavl, then lives in St. Petersburg; returns to Moscow with Andrei Bely.

September - expelled from the university for failure to pay fees.

1908 - settles in furnished rooms "Balchug". Translates prose from Polish for the Polza publishing house. Begins systematic cooperation in the newspapers "Rul", "Moskovskaya Gazeta", "Morning of Russia", "Northern Vestnik", "Early Morning", etc.

February - the book of poems "Youth" was published, which caused a number of contradictory reviews.

October- is being restored at the Faculty of History and Philology of the University.

1909 - resumption of communication with A. Ya. Bryusov. Acquaintance with A. I. Grentsion (nee Chulkova). Break with S. A. Sokolov-Krechetov.

1910, April- Acquaintance and the beginning of an affair with E. V. Muratova.

September - again expelled from the university for non-payment of fees.

The end of the year- ill with tuberculosis.

1911, June August - travel to Italy for treatment; lives in Nervi with E. V. Muratova, then in Venice.

October - A. I. Grentsion moves to Khodasevich in Balchug.

November 8 - V. Ya. Bryusov visits Khodasevich and Grentzion and introduces them to N. I. Lvov.

1912 - draws closer to B. A. Sadovsky.

May - begins work on the translation from Polish of the collected works of Z. Krasinsky for the publishing house of K. Nekrasov (the publication did not take place).

December - begins to write a literary chronicle in the newspaper Russkaya Rumor.

1913, Spring - working on a biography of Paul I (remained unfulfilled).

December- after a three-year penance after a divorce from his first wife, he marries A. I. Grentzion.

1914, February- A book of poems "Happy House" is published, which caused numerous responses in the press.

April 29 - article "Igor Severyanin and Futurism" begins cooperation with the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti".

First half of the year- the anthology "Russian Lyrics" compiled by Khodasevich is published.

July 19- the beginning of the First World War. Soon A. Ya. Bryusov and S. V. Kissin are called up for military service. The latter receives the position of an official of the sanitary department.

End of summer - beginning of autumn - AI Khodasevich gets a job in the Moscow city government.

1915 - translates poems for "foreign" anthologies.

Beginning of the year- the anthology "War in Russian Lyrics" compiled by Khodasevich is published.

March - publishes in the third issue of "Apollo" his first article on Pushkin's studies "Pushkin's St. Petersburg Tales".

May June- acquaintance with M. O. Gershenzon.

June July- lives with her stepson Garrick and the family of brother Michael in Rauhal (Finland).

September 17- at the birthday party of the poetess L. N. Capitals, she gets injured, which led to a spinal disease.

1916, Spring - Khodasevich is diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis.

April May- the scandal associated with the publications of A. I. Tinyakov in Zemshchina, and the correspondence on this occasion with B. A. Sadovsky. May - collects money for treatment in the Crimea.

June 4–5 - departs from Moscow to Simferopol, and from there to Koktebel, where he meets with O. E. Mandelstam and M. A. Voloshin.

21st of June- settles in the Koktebel house of Voloshin. Meet Yu. O. Obolensky, S. Ya. Efron; participates in poetry readings in Feodosia; writes an article "Derzhavin".

Early July - improved health status; Evpatoria doctor Karkhov states the absence of tuberculosis.

August- AI Khodasevich comes to Koktebel to her husband.

September- return to Moscow; settles in a semi-basement on Plyushchikha, in the 7th Rostovsky lane.

1917 , March - participates in organizational meetings of the Moscow Writers' Club.

September - as an editor and one of the translators, he begins to work on the "Jewish Anthology".

October 27 - November 2- street fighting between supporters of the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks, reflected in Khodasevich's poem "November 2".

December- is experiencing financial difficulties; M. O. Gershenzon and A. N. Tolstoy organize a literary evening in favor of Khodasevich.

1918, first half of the year- serves as secretary of arbitration courts at the Labor Commissariat of the Moscow Region, then, on the instructions of V.P. Nogin, prepares materials for the labor code.

Spring- takes part in the evenings of Jewish culture in Moscow.

July - The Jewish Anthology is published.

Summer- participates in the creation of the Writers' Union; acts as a co-founder of the Bookstore under the Union of Writers.

Summer autumn - serves in the theater department of the Moscow City Council, then the People's Commissariat for Education.

Autumn - begins teaching at Proletkult.

October- a trip to Petrograd. Meets M. Gorky and N. S. Gumilyov. Appointed head of the Moscow branch of the publishing house "World Literature".

1919, early summer- suffers from "Spanish".

July - They are trying to "compact" the Khodaseviches; the poet turns to L. B. Kamenev for help.

November- Head of the Moscow branch of the All-Russian Book Chamber.

1920, January- the first edition of the poetry collection "The Way of Grain".

Spring- seriously ill with furunculosis. With the help of Kamenev, he is trying to find a new building for the Book Chamber and World Literature.

End of June- The Moscow branch of the All-Russian Book Chamber was abolished.

July - September- rests in the "health resort for overworked mental workers" in the 3rd Neopalimovsky lane.

September - drafted into the army; with the help of A. M. Gorky, he was released from conscription. Receives an offer to move to Petrograd.

October- sends his wife to Petrograd "for reconnaissance." Corresponds with P. E. Shchegolev about the possibility of working in the Pushkin House.

November December - lives in Petrograd on Sadovaya, 13, with the antiquary Savostin.

1921, January - settles in the House of Arts on the Moika. Participates in the third workshop of poets.

February- Included in the Board of the Union of Poets. Leaves the Workshop of Poets. Participates in Pushkin evenings at the House of Writers and at the university.

End of September - Khodasevich's return to Petrograd. The threat looming over the Petrograd Union of Poets because of the memorial service for Gumilyov.

Second half of October- at the suggestion of Khodasevich, the Petrograd Union of Poets is liquidated.

December - The second edition of the collection "The Way of Grain".

First decade of December - A. I. Khodasevich leaves for Detskoye Selo in a sanatorium.

1922, January- the beginning of Khodasevich's affair with Berberova.

about overseas travel.

End of June - beginning of November - lives in Berlin; closely communicates with Andrey Bely; visits Gorky several times in Geringsdorf; meets Sh. Chernikhovsky. The Z. I. Grzhebin Publishing House publishes the books “From Jewish Poets” and the second edition of “Happy House”.

The beginning of November- Khodasevich and Berberova move to Saarov.

December- the collection "Heavy lyre" is published.

1923, January - in the USSR, harsh reviews of the "Heavy Lyre" appear (N. Aseev in "LEF" and S. Rodov in "On Post").

July - the journal "Conversation" begins to appear "with the closest participation" of Gorky, Khodasevich, A. Bely, V. Shklovsky, B. Adler and F. Brown.

October- A. Bely's return to Russia; during a farewell dinner, a quarrel occurs between him and Khodasevich, which led to the termination of relations.

November 4- Khodasevich and Berberova leave for Prague, where they communicate with M. Tsvetaeva and R. Yakobson.

During a year- the third edition of "Happy House" and the second edition of "From Jewish Poets" are published. Works on the translation of Sh. Chernikhovsky's poem "Elka's Wedding".

1924, January - Khodasevich begins negotiations on the publication of Pushkin's Poetic Economy.

April 24- Khodasevich appeals to AI Khodasevich with a request to file an application for the dissolution of their marriage.

April May- presumably at this time, Khodasevich and Berberova straighten out "Nansen" passports, keeping Soviet ones as well.

End of April - July - sharp newspaper controversy with A. I. Kuprin. The Leningrad publishing house Mysl publishes an incomplete edition of Pushkin's Poetic Economy.

July 31 - Khodasevich and Berberova leave Paris for London, and from there to Northern Ireland.

August 2 - they arrive in Hollywood, in the vicinity of Belfast, where they settle with N. M. Cook, Berberova's cousin.

Aug. Sept- Khodasevich meets D. Stevens; visits the shipyards of Belfast.

September 26- Khodasevich and Berberova leave for the mainland; spend six days in Paris, then arrive in Rome.

1925, February 22- in the newspaper "Days" Khodasevich's article "Mr. Rodov" is published, which caused a strong reaction in the USSR.

March- the publication of "Conversations" (at Nos. 6–7) is discontinued.

Early April - The Soviet embassy in Rome refuses to renew Khodasevich and Berberova's travel passports.

May 25- in the newspaper Latest news”appears the essay “Belfast”, which became the occasion for an epistolary polemic with Gorky.

August- Stops correspondence with Gorky.

September- Becomes a permanent employee of the "Days".

October December - controversy with I. Ehrenburg in connection with the "deliberate typo" in his novel "Rvach". In the course of the controversy, Khodasevich officially announces his unwillingness to return to the USSR.

During a year- rapprochement with V. V. Veidle, D. S. Merezhkovsky, Z. N. Gippius.

1926, January- Khodasevich and Berberova settle at 14 Lambardy Street (Paris).

January February- last letters to Leningrad to AI Khodasevich (signed by V. Medvedev).

October- Khodasevich's cooperation in the "Days" is terminated. In Sovremennye zapiski (book XXIX) he publishes a sharp review of the Versty magazine and the Eurasian movement, which caused a long controversy.

The end of the year - begins to communicate with I. A. Bunin.

1927, February 5th- speaks at the founding meeting of the "Green Lamp" society.

February 10- The article "The Ninetieth Anniversary" begins cooperation in the newspaper "Vozrozhdenie".

April 11- with the article "Demons" begins a long-term controversy between Khodasevich and G.V. Adamovich.

August- change of edition of "Renaissance"; Khodasevich gets his own newspaper cellar twice a month.

September - published "Collected Poems".

October - a sharp polemic with V. Dalin because of Khodasevich's note "Maxim Gorky and the USSR."

1928, February- in "Modern notes" (book XXXIV) there is an article by V. Veidle "Poetry of V. Khodasevich".

March 8- in the "Latest News" there is an article by G.V. Ivanov "In Defense of Khodasevich" - a veiled pamphlet against the poet.

July 1 - August 29- Resting with Berberova in the vicinity of Cannes. Visits the Bunins in Grasse.

Autumn - Khodasevich and Berberova move to Biyankur.

1929, January - begins work on the book "Derzhavin". During this and next year, he publishes fragments in Renaissance and Sovremennye Zapiski.

1930 - the first year when Khodasevich did not write a single poem.

2nd of March - Vozrozhdenie publishes an article by V. Veidle in connection with the 25th anniversary of Khodasevich's literary work.

June- lives in a Russian boarding house in Arti (Arthies) northwest of Paris; travels there in the next two years.

August- Khodasevich and Berberova are resting on the Riviera (together with Weidle). The magazine "Numbers" (No. 2-3) published an article by A. Kondratiev (G. V. Ivanov) "On the anniversary of V. Khodasevich", which caused a literary scandal.

October 11- places in "Vozrozhdenie" a review of V. Nabokov's "Defense of Luzhin", containing a sharp attack against G. V. Ivanov.

1931, February Murr, Khodasevich's favorite cat, dies.

March- Derzhavin comes out.

April- begins to work on "The Life of Vasily Travnikov".

April - July - works (in Paris and in Arty) on a biography of Pushkin, but stops work due to lack of time, necessary literature and other sources. Publishes first chapters in Renaissance (April 26 and June 4).

June July- the beginning of the correspondence with O. B. Margolina.

October 12–19 - the beginning of the memoir book "Infancy", on which Khodasevich has been working for a year, is published in "Renaissance".

Paris, but soon ceases to participate in his work.

March, April- discussion with G. V. Adamovich about the poetry of the "Paris Note".

1936, February 8 - performs together with V. V. Nabokov in the Musée Sosial society; reads The Life of Vasily Travnikov.

1937, February- Khodasevich's book "About Pushkin" is published.

November - the last discussion with Adamovich (in connection with the collection "Circle"),

1938 - the last poem (“Is it not an iambic tetrameter ...”).

1939, January- onset of terminal illness (liver cancer).

Spring -"Necropolis" comes out.

May - examination at the Brousset hospital.

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND WORK OF AA MEZRINA 1853 - was born in the settlement of Dymkovo in the family of blacksmith AL Nikulin. 1896 - participation in the All-Russian exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. 1900 - participation in the World Exhibition in Paris. 1908 - acquaintance with A. I. Denshin. 1917 - exit

The main dates of life and work 1938, January 25 - was born at 9:40 in the maternity hospital on Third Meshchanskaya Street, 61/2. Mother, Nina Maksimovna Vysotskaya (before the marriage of Seregina), is a referent-translator. Father, Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, - military signalman. 1941 - together with his mother

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND WORK OF VV VERESHCHAGIN 1842, October 14 (26) - birth in Cherepovets, Novgorod province, in the family of Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin, son of Vasily, the district marshal of the nobility. 1850, end of December - admission to the Alexander Cadet Corps in

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1475, March 6 - In the family of Lodovico Buonarroti in Caprese (in the Casentino region), not far from Florence, Michelangelo was born. 1488, April - 1492 - Given by his father to study the famous Florentine artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. From him in a year

The main dates of life and work 1883, April 30 - Yaroslav Gashek was born in Prague. 1893 - admitted to the gymnasium on Zhitnaya Street. 1898, February 12 - leaves the gymnasium. 1899 - enters the Prague Commercial School. 1900, summer - wandering around Slovakia. 1901 , January 26 - in the newspaper "Parody sheets"

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY A. I. KUPRINA 26.VIII (7.IX) 1870 - was born in the village of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a petty official, clerk in the office of the conciliator. End of 1873 - January 1874 - after death of her husband (1871) mother Kuprina Lyubov Alekseevna

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1930, September 15 - in Georgia, in the city of Gori, Merab Konstantinovich Mamardashvili was born. 1934 - the Mamardashvili family moves to Russia: Mera-ba's father, Konstantin Nikolayevich, is sent to study at the Leningrad Military-Political Academy. 1938 -

MAIN DATES OF LIFE AND CREATIVITY 1856, August 27 - Ivan Yakovlevich Franko was born in the village of Naguevichi, Drogobych district, in the family of a rural blacksmith.

Khodasevich was born on May 16 (28), 1886 in Moscow. His father, Felician Ivanovich (c. 1834-1911), came from an impoverished Lithuanian noble family, studied at the Academy of Arts. Young Felician's attempts to earn a living as an artist failed, and he became a photographer, working in Tula and Moscow, photographing Leo Tolstoy in particular, and finally opening a photographic supplies store in Moscow. life path father is accurately described in Khodasevich's poem "Dactyls": "My father was six-fingered. On a fabric stretched tightly, / Bruni taught him to drive with a soft brush ... / Having become a merchant out of necessity - never a hint, not a word / He did not remember, did not grumble. Only loved to be quiet…

The poet's mother, Sofya Yakovlevna (1846-1911), was the daughter of the famous Jewish writer Yakov Alexandrovich Brafman (1824-1879), who later converted to Orthodoxy (1858) and devoted his later life to the so-called. "reform of Jewish way of life" from Christian positions. Despite this, Sofya Yakovlevna was given to a Polish family and brought up as a zealous Catholic. Khodasevich himself was baptized into Catholicism.

The poet's elder brother, Mikhail Felitsianovich (1865-1925) became a famous lawyer, his daughter, artist Valentina Khodasevich (1894-1970), in particular, painted a portrait of her uncle Vladislav. The poet lived in his brother's house while studying at the university and later, until his departure from Russia, maintained warm relations with him.

In Moscow, Khodasevich's classmate at the Third Moscow Gymnasium was Alexander Yakovlevich Bryusov, brother of the poet Valery Bryusov. A year older than Khodasevich, Viktor Hoffman studied, who greatly influenced the poet's worldview. After graduating from the gymnasium, Khodasevich entered Moscow University - first (in 1904) at the Faculty of Law, and in the fall of 1905 he moved to the Faculty of History and Philology, where he studied intermittently until the spring of 1910, but did not complete the course. Since the mid-1900s, Khodasevich has been in the thick of literary Moscow life: he visits Valery Bryusov and the Teleshov "environments", the Literary and Art Circle, parties at the Zaitsevs, is published in magazines and newspapers, including "Vesakh" and "Golden Fleece".

In 1905 he marries Marina Erastovna Ryndina. The marriage was unhappy - already at the end of 1907 they broke up. Part of the poems from Khodasevich's first book of poems "Youth" (1908) is dedicated specifically to relations with Marina Ryndina. According to the memoirs of Anna Khodasevich (Chulkova), the poet in those years "was a big dandy", Don-Aminado Khodasevich was remembered "in a long-sleeved student uniform, with a black mop of thick, thin hair trimmed at the back of his head, as if smeared with lamp oil, with yellow, without a single blood, a face with a cold, deliberately indifferent look of intelligent dark eyes, straight, improbably thin ... ".

In 1910-11, Khodasevich suffered from lung disease, which was the reason for his trip with friends (M. Osorgin, B. Zaitsev, P. Muratov and his wife Evgenia, etc.) to Venice, experienced a love drama with E. Muratova and death with an interval of several months of both parents. From the end of 1911, the poet established a close relationship with the younger sister of the poet Georgy Chulkov, Anna Chulkova-Grentzion (1887-1964): in 1917 they got married.

Khodasevich's next book was published only in 1914 and was called "Happy House". In the six years that have passed from writing "Youth" to "Happy House", Khodasevich became a professional writer, earning a living by translations, reviews, feuilletons, etc. During the First World War, the poet, who received a "white ticket" for health reasons, collaborated in "Russian Vedomosti", "Morning of Russia", in 1917 - in the "New Life". Due to tuberculosis of the spine, he spent the summers of 1916 and 1917 in Koktebel with the poet M. Voloshin.

1917-1939

In 1917, Khodasevich enthusiastically accepted February revolution and at first agrees to cooperate with the Bolsheviks after October revolution, but quickly comes to the conclusion that "under the Bolsheviks, literary activity is impossible," and decides "to write only for himself." In 1918, together with L. Yaffe, he published the book "Jewish Anthology. Collection of Young Jewish Poetry"; works as a secretary of the arbitration court, conducts classes in the literary studio of the Moscow Proletkult. In 1918-19 he served in the repertory section of the theatrical department of the People's Commissariat of Education, in 1918-20 he was in charge of the Moscow branch of the publishing house "World Literature", founded by M. Gorky. Takes part in the organization of a bookshop on shares (1918-19), where famous writers(Osorgin, Muratov, Zaitsev, B. Griftsov and others) were personally on duty behind the counter. In March 1920, due to hunger and cold, he fell ill with an acute form of furunculosis and in November he moved to Petrograd, where, with the help of M. Gorky, he received rations and two rooms in a writers' hostel (the famous "House of Arts", about which he would later write an essay "Disk" ).

In 1920, his collection "The Way of Grain" was published with the title poem of the same name, in which there are such lines about 1917: "And you, my country, and you, its people, / You will die and revive, having passed through this year." At this time, his poems finally become widely known, he is recognized as one of the first modern poets. Nevertheless, on June 22, 1922, Khodasevich, together with the poetess Nina Berberova (1901-1993), whom he met in December 1921, leaves Russia and ends up in Berlin through Riga. In the same year, his collection "Heavy Lyre" was published.

In 1922-1923, living in Berlin, he communicated a lot with Andrei Bely, in 1922-1925 (with interruptions) he lived in the family of M. Gorky, whom he highly valued as a person (but not as a writer), recognized his authority, saw in him guarantor of a hypothetical return to his homeland, but he also knew Gorky's weak character traits, of which he considered the most vulnerable "an extremely confused attitude to truth and lies, which emerged very early and had a decisive impact both on his work and on his whole life." At the same time, Khodasevich and Gorky founded (with the participation of V. Shklovsky) and edited the journal "Conversation" (six issues were published), where Soviet authors were published.

By 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova realized that returning to the USSR, and most importantly, life there, was now impossible for them. Khodasevich published feuilletons about Soviet literature and articles about the activities of the GPU abroad in several publications, after which the Soviet press accused the poet of "White Guardism". In March 1925, the Soviet embassy in Rome refused to renew Khodasevich's passport, offering to return to Moscow. He refused, finally becoming an emigrant.

In 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova moved to Paris, the poet is published in the newspapers "Days" and "Latest News", from where he leaves at the insistence of P. Milyukov. From February 1927 until the end of his life, he headed the literary department of the Vozrozhdenie newspaper. In the same year he published "Collected Poems" with a new cycle "European Night". After that, Khodasevich practically stopped writing poetry, paying attention to criticism, and soon became the leading critic of Russian literature abroad. As a critic, he argues with G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich, in particular, about the tasks of emigration literature, about the purpose of poetry and its crisis. Together with Berberova, she writes reviews of Soviet literature (signed "Gulliver"), supports the "Crossroads" poetic group, speaks highly of the work of V. Nabokov, who becomes his friend.

From 1928, Khodasevich worked on memoirs: they were included in the book "Necropolis. Memoirs" (1939) - about Bryusov, Bely, a close friend of the young poet Muni, Gumilyov, Sologub, Yesenin, Gorky, etc. He writes the biographical book "Derzhavin", but Khodasevich abandoned his intention to write a biography of Pushkin due to deteriorating health (“Now I put an end to this, as well as to poetry. Now I have nothing,” he wrote on 19/7/1932 to Berberova, who left Khodasevich to N. Makeev). In 1933 he married Olga Margolina (1890-1942), who later died in Auschwitz.

The position of Khodasevich in exile was difficult, he lived apart, he preferred the suburbs to noisy Paris, he was respected as a poet and mentor of poetic youth, but they did not like him. Vladislav Khodasevich died on June 14, 1939 in Paris, after an operation. He was buried on the outskirts of Paris at the Boulogne-Biancourt cemetery.

Main features of poetry and personality

Most often, the epithet "bilious" was applied to Khodasevich. Maxim Gorky in private conversations and letters said that it was anger that was the basis of his poetic gift. All memoirists write about his yellow face. He was dying - in a beggarly hospital, in a glass cage heated by the sun, barely hung with sheets - from liver cancer, tormented by incessant pain. Two days before his death, he told his ex-wife, writer Nina Berberova: "Only that is my brother, only that I can recognize as a person who, like me, suffered in this bed." In this remark, the whole Khodasevich. But, perhaps, everything that seemed tart, even harsh in him, was only his literary weapon, forged armor, with which he defended real literature in continuous battles. Bile and malice in his soul is immeasurably less than suffering and thirst for compassion. In Russia of the XX century. it is difficult to find a poet who would look at the world so soberly, so squeamishly, with such disgust - and so strictly follow his laws in it, both literary and moral. "I am considered angry critic- said Khodasevich. - But recently I made a “count of conscience”, as before confession ... Yes, I scolded many. But from those whom I scolded, nothing came of it.

Khodasevich is specific, dry and laconic. It seems that he speaks with an effort, reluctantly parting his lips. Perhaps the brevity of Khodasevich's poems, their dry laconicism is a direct consequence of unprecedented concentration, dedication and responsibility. Here is one of his most concise poems:

Forehead -
A piece of chalk.
Bel
Coffin.

sang
Pop.
Sheaf
Arrows -

Day
Holy!
Crypt
Blind.

Shadow -
In hell

But his dryness, biliousness and reticence remained only external. This is how his close friend Yuri Mandelstam spoke about Khodasevich:

In public, Khodasevich was often restrained and rather dry. He liked to be silent, to laugh it off. By his own admission, "he learned to be silent and joke in response to tragic conversations." These jokes are usually without a smile. But when he smiled, the smile was infectious. Under the glasses of the "serious writer," the sly lights of a mischievous boy lit up in the eyes. He also rejoiced at other people's jokes. He laughed, internally shaking: his shoulders trembled. He grasped the sharpness on the fly, developed and supplemented it. In general, witticisms and jokes, even unsuccessful ones, I always appreciated. "There is no living thing without a joke," he said more than once.

Khodasevich also liked hoaxes. He admired a certain "non-writing writer", a master of such things. He himself used hoax, as literary device, after a while exposed it. So he wrote several poems "on behalf of someone else" and even invented the forgotten poet of the 18th century Vasily Travnikov, composing all his poems for him, with the exception of one ("O heart, dusty ear"), written by friend Khodasevich Muni. (Kissin Samuil Viktorovich 1885-1916) The poet read about Travnikov on literary evening and published a study about him (1936). Listening to the poems read by Khodasevich, the enlightened society experienced both embarrassment and surprise, because Khodasevich opened an invaluable archive of the greatest poet of the 18th century. A number of reviews appeared on Khodasevich's article. No one could have imagined that there was no Travnikov in the world.

The influence of symbolism on Khodasevich's lyrics

Rootlessness in Russian soil created a special psychological complex, which was felt in Khodasevich's poetry from the earliest time. His early poems allow us to say that he went through the training of Bryusov, who, not recognizing poetic insights, believed that inspiration should be tightly controlled by knowledge of the secrets of the craft, conscious choice and impeccable embodiment of the form, rhythm, pattern of the verse. The young man Khodasevich observed the flowering of symbolism, he was brought up on symbolism, grew up under its moods, was illuminated by its light and is associated with its names. It is clear that the young poet could not but experience his influence, even if it was studently, imitatively. “Symbolism is true realism. Both Andrei Bely and Blok talked about the elements they were guided by. Undoubtedly, if today we have learned to talk about unreal realities, the most real in reality, it is thanks to the symbolists,” he said. The early poems of Khodasevich are imbued with symbolism and often poisoned:

The wanderer passed, leaning on a staff -

A cab rides on red wheels -
For some reason I remember you.
In the evening, the lamp will be lit in the corridor -
I will definitely remember you.
So that it does not happen on land, at sea
Or in the sky - I remember you.

On this path of repeating banalities and romantic poses, chanting femme fatales and hellish passions, Khodasevich, with his natural biliousness and causticity, sometimes did not avoid the clichés characteristic of low-flying poetry:

And again the beat of hearts is even;
Nodding, the short-lived flame disappeared,
And I realized that I am a dead man,
And you're just my tombstone.

But still, Khodasevich always stood apart. In the autobiographical fragment "Infancy" of 1933, he attaches particular importance to the fact that he was "late" to the flowering of symbolism, "late to be born", while the aesthetics of acmeism remained distant to him, and futurism was resolutely unacceptable. Indeed, to be born in what was then Russia six years later than Blok meant falling into a different literary era.

Collection "Youth"

Khodasevich published his first book, Molodist, in 1908 at the Grif publishing house. So he said about her later: “The first review of my book was remembered by me for the rest of my life. I learned it word for word. It began like this: “There is such a vile vulture bird. She feeds on carrion. Recently, this pretty bird hatched a new rotten egg. ”Although, in general, the book was received kindly.

In the best poems of this book, he declared himself a poet of the precise, concrete word. Subsequently, the acmeists treated the poetic word in approximately the same way, but their characteristic intoxication with joy, masculinity, and love is completely alien to Khodasevich. He stayed away from everyone literary movements and directions, in itself, "all camps are not a fighter." Khodasevich, together with M. I. Tsvetaeva, as he wrote, “leaving symbolism, they did not join anything or anyone, they remained forever alone,“ wild. Literary classifiers and anthologists don't know where to stick us."

The feeling of hopeless alienness in the world and non-belonging to any camp is expressed in Khodasevich more vividly than in any of his contemporaries. He was not shielded from reality by any group philosophy, he was not fenced off by literary manifestos, he looked at the world soberly, coldly and sternly. And that is why the feeling of orphanhood, loneliness, rejection owned him already in 1907:

Nomadic meager children are evil,
We warm our hands by the fire...
The desert is silent. Far away without a sound
The prickly wind drives the dust, -
And our songs are evil boredom
The ulcer is crooked on the lips.

On the whole, however, "Youth" is a collection of a still immature poet. The future Khodasevich is guessed here only by the accuracy of words and expressions and skepticism about everything and everything.

Collection "Happy house"

Much more from the real Khodasevich - in any case, from his poetic intonation - in the collection "Happy House". The torn, chopped intonation, which Khodasevich begins to use in his poems, suggests the open disgust with which he throws these words into the face of time. Hence the somewhat ironic, bilious sound of his verse.

Oh boredom, skinny dog ​​that calls to the moon!
You are the wind of time whistling in my ears!

The poet on earth is like the singer Orpheus, who returned to the deserted world from the realm of the dead, where he forever lost his beloved Eurydice:

And now I sing, I sing with the last strength
That life is fully lived,
That there is no Eurydice, that there is no dear friend,
And the stupid tiger caresses me -

So in 1910, in "The Return of Orpheus", Khodasevich declared his longing for harmony in a thoroughly disharmonic world, which is devoid of any hope for happiness and harmony. In the verses of this collection one can hear longing for the all-understanding, all-seeing God, for whom Orpheus sings, but he has no hope that his earthly voice will be heard.

In "Happy House" Khodasevich paid a generous tribute to stylization (which is generally typical of the Silver Age). Here are echoes of Greek and Roman poetry, and stanzas that make one recall the romanticism of the 19th century. But these stylizations are saturated with concrete, visible images and details. So the opening poem with the characteristic title "The Star over the Palm Tree" of 1916 ends with poignant lines:

Oh, from roses I love with a deceitful heart
Only the one that burns with jealous fire,
That teeth with a blue tint
Sly Carmen bit!

Next to the world of books, "dream" there is another, no less dear to the heart of Khodasevich - the world of memories of his childhood. "Happy House" ends with the poem "Paradise" - about longing for a children's, toy, Christmas paradise, where a happy child dreamed of a "golden-winged angel" in a dream.

Sentimentality, coupled with acrimony and proud non-participation in the world, became the hallmark of Khodasevich's poetry and determined its originality in the first post-revolutionary years.

By this time, Khodasevich has two idols. He said: "There was Pushkin and there was Blok. Everything else is in between!"

Collection "The way of grain"

Starting with the collection "The Way of the Grain", main theme his poetry will be the overcoming of disharmony, essentially irremovable. He introduces the prose of life into poetry - not expressive details, but a life stream that overtakes and overwhelms the poet, giving birth in him, along with constant thoughts about death, a feeling of "bitter death". The call for the transformation of this stream, in some verses, is deliberately utopian ("Smolensk Market"), in others, the poet succeeds in the "miracle of transformation" ("Noon"), but turns out to be a brief and temporary drop out of "this life". "The Way of the Grain" was written in the revolutionary years of 1917-1918. Khodasevich said: "Poetry is not a document of the era, but only poetry that is close to the era is alive. Blok understood this and not without reason called for" listening to the music of the revolution ". It’s not about the revolution, but about the music of the time.” Khodasevich also wrote about his era. anti-philistine pathos, but sobering up came very quickly. Khodasevich understood how the revolution had tormented, how the real Russian literature had been extinguished. But he did not belong to those who were "scared" of the revolution. He was not delighted with it, but he was not "afraid" either The collection "The Way of the Grain" expressed his belief in the resurrection of Russia after the revolutionary devastation in the same way that the grain, dying in the soil, is resurrected in the ear:

The sower passes along even furrows.
His father and grandfather followed the same paths.
The grain sparkles with gold in his hand,
But it must fall into the black earth.
And where the blind worm makes its way,
It will eventually die and grow.
So my soul goes along the path of grain:
Descending into darkness, she will die, and she will come to life.
And you, my country, and you, its people,
You will die and live, having passed through this year, -
Then, that wisdom alone is given to us:
All living things should follow the path of grain.

Here Khodasevich is already a mature master: he has developed his own poetic language, and his view of things, fearlessly precise and painfully sentimental, allows him to speak about the most subtle matters, remaining ironic and restrained. Almost all the poems in this collection are constructed in the same way: a deliberately mundanely described episode - and a sudden, sharp, meaning-shifting finale. So, in the poem "Monkey" an infinitely long description of a stuffy summer day, an organ grinder and a sad monkey suddenly resolves with the line: "On that day war was declared." This is typical for Khodasevich - in one laconic, almost telegraphic line, turn inside out or transform the entire poem. As soon as the lyrical hero was visited by a feeling of unity and brotherhood of all living things in the world - right there, contrary to the feeling of love and compassion, the most inhumane thing that can happen begins, and insurmountable discord and disharmony is established in that world that just for a moment seemed to be "a chorus of luminaries and the waves of the sea, the winds and the spheres."

The same feeling of the collapse of harmony, the search for a new meaning and its impossibility (in times of historical breaks, harmony seems to be lost forever) become the theme of the biggest and most, perhaps, strange poem in the collection - "November 2" (1918). It describes the first day after the October battles of 1917 in Moscow. It talks about how the city hid. The author tells about two minor incidents: returning from acquaintances to whom he went to find out if they were alive, he sees a carpenter in the basement window, in accordance with the spirit of the new era, painting a freshly made coffin with red paint - apparently, for one of the fallen fighters for universal happiness. The author gazes intently at the boy, "a four-year-old butuz", who sits "among Moscow, suffering, torn to pieces and fallen," and smiles at himself, at his secret thought, quietly maturing under his eyebrowless forehead. The only one who looks happy and peaceful in Moscow in 1917 is a four-year-old boy. Only children with their naivete and fanatics with their unreasoning ideology can be cheerful these days. "For the first time in my life," says Khodasevich, "neither Mozart and Salieri, nor The Gypsies quenched my thirst that day." A terrible confession, especially from the lips of Khodasevich, who always idolized Pushkin. The sober mind of Khodasevich at times falls into stupefaction, into a stupor, mechanically fixes events, but the soul does not respond to them in any way. Such is the poem "The Old Woman" of 1919:

Light corpse, stiff,
Covered with a white sheet,
In the same sleigh, without a coffin,
The policeman will take away
Shouldered the people.
Unspoken and cold-blooded
He will be - and a couple of logs,
What did she bring to her house?
We'll burn it in our oven.

In this poem, the hero is already fully inscribed in the new reality: the "policeman" does not cause fear in him, and his own willingness to rob the corpse - a burning shame. The soul of Khodasevich cries over the bloody disintegration of the familiar world, over the destruction of morality and culture. But since the poet follows the "path of grain", that is, he accepts life as something independent of his desires, he tries to see the highest meaning in everything, he does not protest and does not renounce God. He had not the most flattering opinion of the world before. And he believes that in the coming storm there must be a higher meaning, which Blok was also looking for, calling for "listening to the music of the revolution." It is no coincidence that Khodasevich opens his next collection with the poem "Music" of 1920:

And the music comes from above.
Cello... and harps, maybe...
...and the sky

The same high and the same
In it feathered angels shine.

The hero of Khodasevich hears this music “quite clearly” when he is chopping firewood (an occupation so prosaic, so natural for those years that one could hear some special music in it only when one saw in this chopping firewood, in devastation and catastrophe some mysterious providence of God and incomprehensible logic). For the Symbolists, the embodiment of such a craft has always been music, which does not explain anything logically, but overcomes chaos, and sometimes reveals meaning and proportion in chaos itself. Feathered angels shining in the frosty sky - this is the truth of suffering and courage that was revealed to Khodasevich, and from the height of this Divine music, he no longer despises, but pities everyone who does not hear it.

Collection "Heavy lyre"

During this period, Khodasevich's poetry began to increasingly acquire the character of classicism. Khodasevich's style is connected with Pushkin's style. But his classicism is of a secondary order, for it was not born in the Pushkin era and not in the Pushkin world. Khodasevich came out of symbolism. And to classicism, he made his way through all the symbolic fogs, not to mention the Soviet era. All this explains his technical predilection for "prose in life and in poetry", as a counterbalance to the fluctuation and inaccuracy of the poetic "beauties" of those times.

And every verse driving through prose,
twisting every line,
Instilled a classic rose
To the Soviet wild.

At the same time, lyricism, both explicit and hidden, begins to disappear from his poetry. Khodasevich did not want to give him power over himself, over verse. He preferred another, "heavy gift" to the light breath of lyrics.

And someone heavy lyre
Gives me in the hands through the wind.
And there is no stucco sky
And the sun in sixteen candles.
On smooth black rocks
Feet rests - Orpheus.

In this collection appears the image of the soul. Khodasevich's path lies not through "soulfulness", but through destruction, overcoming and transformation. The soul, "bright Psyche", for him is outside of true being, in order to approach him, it must become a "spirit", give birth to a spirit in itself. The difference between psychological and ontological principles is rarely more noticeable than in Khodasevich's poetry. The soul itself is not capable of captivating and bewitching him.

And how can I not love myself
The vessel is fragile, ugly,
But precious and happy
What he contains - you?

But the fact of the matter is that the "simple soul" does not even understand why the poet loves her.

And from my misfortune it does not hurt her,
And she does not understand the groan of my passions.

It is limited by itself, alien to the world and even to its owner. True, the spirit sleeps in it, but it has not yet been born. The poet feels the presence of this principle in himself, connecting him with life and with the world.

The poet-man is exhausted along with Psyche in anticipation of grace, but grace is not given in vain. Man in this striving, in this struggle is condemned to death.

Until all the blood comes out of the pores
Until you cry earthly eyes -
Don't become a spirit...

With rare exceptions, death - the transfiguration of Psyche - is also real death person. Khodasevich in other verses even calls her as liberation, and is even ready to "stab" another with a knife to help him. And he sends a wish to a girl from a Berlin tavern - "the villain gets caught in a deserted grove in the evening." In other moments, even death does not seem to him a way out, it is only a new and most severe test, the last test. But he accepts this temptation without seeking salvation. Poetry leads to death and only through death - to true birth. This is the ontological truth for Khodasevich. Overcoming reality becomes the main theme of the collection "Heavy Lyre".

Jump over, jump over
Fly over, over what you want -
But break out: with a stone from a sling,
A star in the night...
I lost it myself - now look ...
God knows what you're mumbling to yourself
Looking for pince-nez or keys.

These seven lines are full of complex meanings. Here is a mockery of the everyday, new role of the poet: this is no longer Orpheus, but rather a city madman, muttering something under his breath at the locked door. But "I lost it myself - now look for it ..." - the line is clearly not only about keys or pince-nez in the literal sense. You can find the key to the new world, that is, understand the new reality, only by breaking out of it, overcoming its attraction.

Mature Khodasevich looks at things as if from above, in any case - from the outside. Hopelessly alien in this world, he does not want to fit into it. In the poem "In the meeting" of 1921, the lyrical hero tries to fall asleep in order to see again in Petrovsky-Razumovsky (where the poet spent his childhood) "steam above the mirror of the pond" - at least in a dream to meet with the bygone world.

But not just an escape from reality, but a direct denial of it, Khodasevich's poems of the late 10s - early 20s respond. The conflict of everyday life and being, spirit and flesh acquires an unprecedented acuteness. As in the poem "From the diary" of 1921:

Every sound torments my hearing
And every ray is unbearable to the eyes.
The spirit began to erupt
Like a tooth from under swollen gums.
Cut through - and throw away.
worn out shell,
Thousand-eyed - will sink into the night,
Not on this gray night.
And I'll stay here lying -
A banker stabbed by an opash, -
Pinch the wound with your hands
Scream and fight in your world.

Khodasevich sees things as they are. Without any illusions. It is no accident that he owns the most merciless self-portrait in Russian poetry:

Me, me, me What a wild word!
Is that one over there really me?
Did mom love this?
Yellow-gray, semi-gray
And omniscient like a snake?

The natural change of images - a pure child, an ardent youth and today's, "yellow-gray, half-gray" - for Khodasevich is a consequence of the tragic split and uncompensated spiritual waste, the longing for wholeness sounds in this poem like nowhere else in his poetry. "Everything that I hate so dearly and love so caustically" - that is the important motive of the "Heavy Lyre". But "gravity" is not the only key word in this book. There is also the Mozartian lightness of short poems, with plastic precision, with a single stroke, giving pictures of post-revolutionary, transparent and ghostly, collapsing St. Petersburg. The city is deserted. But the secret springs of the world are visible, secret meaning being and, most importantly, Divine music is heard.

Oh, inert, impoverished poverty
My hopeless life!
Who can I tell how sorry
Yourself and all these things?
And I start to swing
hugging your knees,
And suddenly I start with verses
Talk to yourself in oblivion.
Incoherent, passionate speeches!
You can't understand anything about them.
But the sounds are truer than the meaning,
And the word is the strongest.
And music, music, music
Weaves into my singing,
And narrow, narrow, narrow
The blade pierces me.

Sounds are more truthful than meaning - this is the manifesto of Khodasevich's late poetry, which, however, does not cease to be rationally clear and almost always plot. Nothing dark, guesswork, arbitrary. But Khodasevich is sure that the music of the verse is more important, more significant, finally, more reliable than its crude one-dimensional meaning. Khodasevich's poems during this period are very richly orchestrated, they have a lot of air, a lot of vowels, there is a clear and easy rhythm - this is how a person who "slipped into God's abyss" can speak about himself and the world. There are no stylistic beauties so beloved by the Symbolists, the words are the simplest, but what a musical, what a clear and light sound! Still faithful to the classical tradition, Khodasevich boldly introduces neologisms and jargon into his poems. How calmly the poet speaks about things unbearable, unthinkable - and, in spite of everything, what joy in these lines:

It's almost not worth living or singing:
We live in fragile rudeness.
The tailor sews, the carpenter builds:
The seams will unravel, the house will collapse.
And only sometimes through this decay
Suddenly I hear tenderly
It contains a beating
A completely different existence.
So, spending life bored,
Lovingly woman lays
Your excited hand
On a heavily swollen belly.

The image of a pregnant woman (as well as the image of a nurse) is often found in Khodasevich's poetry. This is not only a symbol of a living and natural connection with the roots, but also a symbolic image of an era that bears the future. "And the sky is pregnant with the future," Mandelstam wrote at about the same time. The worst thing is that the "pregnancy" of the first twenty turbulent years of the terrible century was resolved not with a bright future, but with a bloody catastrophe, followed by the years of the NEP - the prosperity of the merchants. Khodasevich understood this before many:

Enough! Beauty is not necessary!
The vile world is not worth the songs ...
And there is no need for a revolution!
Her scattered army
One is crowned with an award,
One freedom is to trade.
Here he prophesies in the square
Harmony's hungry son:
He does not want good news
Prosperous Citizen...

At the same time, Khodasevich draws a conclusion about his fundamental non-merger with the rabble:

I love people, I love nature,
But I don't like to go for a walk
And I know for sure that the people
My creations are incomprehensible.

However, Khodasevich considered mob only those who strive to "understand poetry" and dispose of it, those who arrogate to themselves the right to speak on behalf of the people, those who want to rule music in their name. Actually, he perceived the people differently - with love and gratitude.

Cycle "European night"

Despite this, in the emigrant environment, Khodasevich for a long time felt like a stranger, just like in his abandoned homeland. Here is what he said about émigré poetry: “The current situation of poetry is difficult. Of course, poetry is delight. Here we have little enthusiasm, because there is no action. in a foreign place, she found herself out of space - and therefore out of time. The work of emigre poetry is very ungrateful in appearance, because it seems conservative. The Bolsheviks strive to destroy the spiritual system inherent in Russian literature. The task of emigre literature is to preserve this system. This task is just as literary as well as political. To demand that émigré poets write poetry on political themes is, of course, nonsense. But it must be demanded that their work have a Russian face. There is no non-Russian poetry and there will be no place either in Russian literature or in future Russia itself "The role of émigré literature is to connect the past with the future. It is necessary that our poetic past become our present and - in new form- the future."

The theme of "the twilight of Europe", which survived the collapse of civilization, created over the centuries, and after that - the aggression of vulgarity and impersonality, dominates the poetry of Khodasevich's emigrant period. The poems of the "European Night" are painted in gloomy tones, they are dominated not even by prose, but by the bottom and underground of life. Khodasevich is trying to penetrate into the "alien life", the life of the "little man" of Europe, but the blank wall of misunderstanding, symbolizing not the social, but the general meaninglessness of life, rejects the poet. "European Night" - the experience of breathing in an airless space, poems written almost without counting on the audience, on response, on co-creation. This was all the more unbearable for Khodasevich, since he was leaving Russia as a recognized poet, and recognition came to him late, just on the eve of his departure. He left at the zenith of fame, firmly hoping to return, but a year later he realized that there would be nowhere to return (this feeling is best formulated by Marina Tsvetaeva: "... is it possible to return to a house that is hidden?"). However, even before leaving, he wrote:

And I take my Russia with me
I carry in a travel bag

(it was about eight volumes of Pushkin). Perhaps the exile for Khodasevich was not as tragic as for others - because he was a stranger, and youth is equally irrevocable both in Russia and in Europe. But in hungry and impoverished Russia - in her living literary environment - there was music. There was no music here. Night reigned in Europe. Vulgarity, disappointment and despair were even more obvious. If in Russia, even for a while, one could imagine that "the sky is pregnant with the future," then in Europe there were no hopes - complete darkness, in which speech sounds without a response, for itself.

Muse Khodasevich sympathizes with all the unfortunate, destitute, doomed - he himself is one of them. There are more and more cripples and beggars in his poems. Although in the most important thing they are not too different from prosperous and prosperous Europeans: everyone here is doomed, everything is doomed. What's the difference - spiritual, whether the physical injury struck others.

I can't be myself
I want to go crazy
When with a pregnant wife
Goes armless into the cinema.
Why your inconspicuous age
Dragging in such an inequality
A harmless, humble person
With an empty sleeve?

There is much more sympathy in these lines than hatred.

Feeling guilty before the whole world, the lyrical hero of Khodasevich never for a moment refuses his gift, which elevates and humiliates him at the same time.

Happy is he who falls upside down:
The world for him, even for a moment, is different.

For his "soaring" the poet pays in the same way as a suicide who threw himself out of the window upside down - with his life.

In 1923, Khodasevich wrote the poem "I Get Up Relaxed From My Bed..." - about how "spiky radio rays" fly through his mind all night long, in the chaos of dark visions he catches a harbinger of death, a pan-European, and perhaps even world catastrophe. But those who are threatened by this catastrophe do not themselves know what dead end their lives are heading into:

Oh if you only knew
Europe's dark sons,
What other rays are you
Imperceptibly pierced!

Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (1886-1939) - Russian poet, prose writer, literary critic.
Khodasevich was born into the family of an artist-photographer. The poet's mother, Sofya Yakovlevna, was the daughter of the famous Jewish writer Ya. A. Brafman. Khodasevich early felt his vocation, choosing literature as the main occupation of life. Already at the age of six he composed his first poems.
He studied at the Third Moscow Gymnasium, where his classmate was the brother of the poet Valery Bryusov, and Viktor Hoffman studied in the senior class, who greatly influenced Khodasevich's worldview.
After graduating from the gymnasium in 1904, Khodasevich first entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, then the Faculty of History and Philology. Khodasevich began to print in 1905, at the same time he married Marina Erastovna Ryndina. The marriage was unhappy - already at the end of 1907 they broke up. Part of the poems from Khodasevich's first book of poems "Youth" (1908) is dedicated specifically to relations with Marina Ryndina.
The collections "Youth" (1908) and the later "Happy House" (1914), which were released later, were well received by readers and critics. The clarity of the verse, the purity of the language, the accuracy in the transmission of thought singled out Khodasevich from a number of new poetic names and determined his special place in Russian poetry. In the six years that have passed from writing Molodist to The Happy House, Khodasevich became a professional writer, earning a living by translations, reviews, feuilletons, etc. In 1914, Khodasevich's first work on Pushkin was published ("Pushkin's First Step"), which opened a whole series of his "Pushkiniana". Khodasevich has been studying the life and work of the great Russian poet all his life.
In 1917, Khodasevich enthusiastically accepted the February Revolution and initially agreed to cooperate with the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. In 1920, Khodasevich's third collection, "The Way of Grain," was published with the title poem of the same name, which contains the following lines about 1917: "And you, my country, and you, its people, // You will die and revive, having passed through this year ". This book put forward Khodasevich among the most significant poets of his time.
In 1922, a collection of poems by Khodasevich "Heavy Lyre" was published, which became the last published in Russia. On June 22 of the same year, Khodasevich, together with the poetess Nina Berberova, left Russia and ended up in Berlin through Riga. Abroad, Khodasevich collaborated for some time with M. Gorky, who attracted him to the joint editing of the Conversation magazine.
In 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova moved to Paris, where two years later Khodasevich published a cycle of poems called European Night. After that, the poet wrote less and less poetry, paying more attention to criticism. He lived hard, he was in need, he was sick a lot, but he worked hard and fruitfully. Increasingly, he acted as a prose writer, literary critic and memoir (“Derzhavin. Biography” (1931), “About Pushkin” and “Necropolis. Memoirs” (1939)).
IN last years Khodasevich published in newspapers and magazines reviews, articles, essays about outstanding contemporaries - Gorky, Blok, Bely and many others. He translated poetry and prose of Polish, French, Armenian and other writers.
Vladislav Khodasevich died in Paris on June 14, 1939.

Khodasevich

Father - a native of a Polish noble family, mother - the daughter of a Jew who converted from Judaism to Orthodoxy - was brought up in a Polish family as a zealous Catholic; Khodasevich was also baptized a Catholic. As a child, he was fond of ballet, which he was forced to leave due to poor health. From 1903 he lived in the house of his brother, the famous lawyer M. F. Khodasevich, the father of the artist Valentina Khodasevich

In 1904 he entered the law school. Faculty of Moscow University, in 1905 switched to philological. faculty, but did not complete the course. Then he visits the Moscow literary and arts. a circle where V. Ya. Bryusov, A. Bely, K. D. Balmont, Vyach. Ivanov, is a live meeting with symbolists, literary idols of Khodasevich's generation. The influence of symbolism, its vocabulary, and general poetic clichés marked the first book, Youth (1908). The Happy House (1914; republished in 1922 and 1923) was written in a different tone and received favorable criticism; dedicated to the second wife of Khodasevich since 1913 Anna Ivanovna, nee. Chulkova, sister of G. I. Chulkov - the heroine of the collection of poems (also contains a cycle associated with the passion of the poet E. V. Muratova, "princess", ex-wife P. P. Muratov, a friend of Khodasevich; with her he made a trip to Italy in 1911). In The Happy House, Khodasevich discovers the world of "simple" and "small" values, "the joy of simple love", domestic serenity, "slow" life - that will allow him to "live in peace and die wisely." In this collection, not included, like Molodist, in Sobr. verse. 1927, Khodasevich for the first time, breaking with the loftiness of symbolism, turns to the poetics of Pushkin's verse ("Elegy", "To the Muse").

In the 1910s, he also acts as a critic, whose opinion is listened to: in addition to responses to new editions of the masters of symbolism, he reviews collections of literary youth, cautiously welcomes the first books of A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam; highlights, regardless of literary orientation, poetry collections of 1912-13 by N. A. Klyuev, M. A. Kuzmin, Igor Severyanin - “for a sense of modernity”, however, he soon becomes disappointed in him (“Russian Poetry”, 1914; “Igor Severyanin and Futurism", 1914; "Deceived Hopes", 1915; "On New Poems", 1916). Khodasevich opposes the programmatic statements of the acmeists (noting the "vigilance" and "own appearance" of N. S. Gumilyov's "Alien Sky", the authenticity of Akhmatova's talent) and, especially, the futurists. In controversy with them, the main points of the historical and literary concept of Khodasevich, dispersed throughout various jobs: tradition, continuity is a way of the very existence of culture, a mechanism for the transfer of cultural values; It is precisely literary conservatism that makes it possible to revolt against the obsolete, for renewal. literary means without destroying the cultural environment.

In the mid 1910s. the attitude towards Bryusov changes: in a 1916 review of his book “Seven Colors of the Rainbow”, Khodasevich calls him “the most intentional person”, who forcibly subordinated his true nature to the “ideal image”. A long (since 1904) relationship connects Khodasevich with Andrei Bely, he saw in him a man "marked ... by undoubted genius", in 1915 through the poet B. A. Sadovsky he became close to M. O. Gershenzon, his "teacher and friend" .

In 1916, his close friend Muni (S. V. Kissin), a failed poet, crushed by a simple life, seen without the usual symbolist doubling, commits suicide; Khodasevich would later write about this in the essay "Muni" ("Necropolis"). In 1915-17, he was most intensively engaged in translations: Polish (3. Krasinsky, A. Mickiewicz), Jewish (poems by S. Chernichovsky, from ancient Jewish poetry), as well as Armenian and Finnish poets. His 1934 articles "Bialik" (Khodasevich noted in it the fusion of "feelings and culture" and "feelings of the national") and "Pan Tadeusz" are associated with translations. In 1916 he fell ill with spinal tuberculosis, spent the summers of 1916 and 1917 in Koktebel, living in the house of M. A. Voloshin.

Creatively brought up in an atmosphere of symbolism, but entered the literature at its end, Khodasevich, together with M.I. Tsvetaeva, as he wrote in his autobiographical. essay “Infancy” (1933), “leaving symbolism, they did not join anything or anyone, they remained forever alone,“ wild ”. Literary classifiers and anthologists don't know where to stick us." The book The Way of the Grain, published in 1920, is dedicated to the memory of S. Kissin), collected mainly in 1918 (republished in 1922), is evidence of Khodasevich's literary independence and literary isolation. Starting with this collection, the main theme of his poetry will be the overcoming of disharmony, essentially irremovable. He introduces the prose of life into poetry - not degradingly expressive details, but a life stream that overtakes and overwhelms the poet, giving birth in him, along with constant thoughts about death, a feeling of "bitter death". The call for the transformation of this stream, in some verses, is deliberately utopian (“Smolensk market”), in others the poet succeeds in “miracle of transformation” (“Noon”), but turns out to be a brief and temporary drop out of “this life”; in "Episode" it is achieved through an almost mystical separation of the soul from the body. "The Way of the Grain" includes poems written in the revolutionary 1917-1918: the revolution, February and October, Khodasevich perceived as an opportunity to renew the people's and creative life, he believed in its humanity and anti-philistine pathos, it was this subtext that determined the epic tone (with internal tension) descriptions of pictures of devastation in “suffering, torn and fallen” Moscow (“November 2nd”, “House”, “Old Woman”).

After the revolution, Khodasevich tries to fit into a new life, lectures about Pushkin in the literary studio at the Moscow Proletkult (the prose dialogue Headless Pushkin, 1917, about the importance of enlightenment), works in the theater department of the People's Commissariat of Education, in the Gorky publishing house World Literature, " Book Chamber. About the hungry, almost without means of subsistence Moscow life of the post-revolutionary years, complicated by long-term illnesses (Khodasevich suffered from furunculosis), but rich in literature, he will tell, not without humor, in his memoirs, Ser. 1920–30s: White Corridor, Proletkult, Book Chamber, etc.

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At the end of 1920, Khodasevich moved to St. Petersburg, lived in the "House of Arts" (feature "Disk", 1937), wrote poetry for the "Heavy Lyre". Performs (together with A. A. Blok) at the celebration of Pushkin and I. F. Annensky with reports: “The Oscillating Tripod” (1921) and “On Annensky” (1922), one of the best literary and critical essays of Khodasevich, dedicated to the all-consuming Annensky's poetry on the theme of death: he reproaches the poet for his inability to regenerate religiously. By this time, Khodasevich had already written articles about Pushkin, “Pushkin's St. Petersburg Tales” (1915) and “On the Gavriiliade” (1918); together with "The Oscillating Tripod", the essay articles "Countess E. P. Rostopchina" (1908) and "Derzhavin" (1916) they will constitute a collection of articles. "Articles about Russian. poetry" (1922).

Pushkin's world and the biography of the poet will always attract Khodasevich: in the book. “The Poetic Economy of Pushkin” (L., 1924; published “in a distorted form” “without the participation of the author”; revised edition: “On Pushkin”, Berlin, 1937), referring to the most diverse aspects of his work - self-repetitions, favorite sounds, rhymes "blasphemy" - he tries to catch the hidden biographical subtext in them, to unravel the way of translating biographical raw materials into a poetic plot and the very secret of the personality of Pushkin, the "miracle-working genius" of Russia. Khodasevich was in constant spiritual fellowship with Pushkin, creatively removed from him.

In June 1922, Khodasevich, together with N. N. Berberova, who became his wife, left Russia, lived in Berlin, collaborated in Berlin newspapers and magazines; in 1923 there was a break with A. Bely, in retaliation he gave a caustic, essentially parodic, portrait of Khodasevich in his book. "Between two revolutions" (1990); in 1923-25, he helped A. M. Gorky edit the journal Beseda, lived with him and Berberova in Sorrento (October 1924 - April 1925), later Khodasevich would devote several essays to him. In 1925 he moved to Paris, where he remained until the end of his life.

Back in 1922, the Heavy Lyre was published, full of a new tragedy. As in “The Way of the Grain”, overcoming, breaking through are the main value imperatives of Khodasevich (“Step over, jump, / Fly over, over what you want”), but their breakdown, their return to material reality is legitimized: “God knows what you mutter to yourself , / Looking for pince-nez or keys." The soul and biographical self of the poet are stratified, they belong different worlds and when the first rushes to other worlds, I remain on this side - “shouting and fighting in your world” (“From the diary”). The eternal conflict between the poet and the world in Khodasevich takes the form of physical incompatibility; every sound of reality, the "quiet hell" of the poet, torments, deafens and stings him.

Khodasevich becomes one of the leading critics of emigration, responds to all significant publications abroad and in Soviet Russia, including books by G. V. Ivanov, M. A. Aldanov, I. A. Bunin, V. V. Nabokov, Z. N. Gippius, M. M. Zoshchenko, M. A. Bulgakova, leads a polemic with Adamovich, seeks to instill in the young poets of emigration the lessons of classical skill. In Art. "Blood Food" (1932) considers the history of Russian literature as "the history of the destruction of Russian writers", coming to a paradoxical conclusion: writers are destroyed in Russia, as prophets are stoned and thus resurrected to the life to come. In the article “Literature in Exile” (1933), he analyzes all the dramatic aspects of the existence of emigre literature, states the crisis of poetry in the article of the same name (1934), linking it with the “lack of worldview” and the general crisis of European culture (see also the review of the book. Weidle “ The Dying of Art", 1938).

The last period of creativity ended with the release of two prose books - a vivid artistic biography "Derzhavin" (Paris, 1931), written in the language of Pushkin's prose, using the language color of the era, and memoir prose "Necropolis" (Brussels, 1939), compiled from essays 1925-37 published, like the chapters of Derzhavin, in periodicals. And Derzhavin (from whose proseisms, as well as from the "terrible verses" of E. A. Baratynsky and F. I. Tyutchev, Khodasevich led his genealogy), shown through the rough life of his time, and the heroes of the "Necropolis", from A. Bely and A. A. Blok to Gorky, are seen not apart from, but through the small worldly truths, in the “fullness of understanding”. Khodasevich turned to the ideological origins of symbolism, leading him beyond the limits of the literary school and direction. The non-aesthetic, in essence, swing of symbolism to limitlessly expand creativity, live according to the criteria of art, fuse life and creativity - determined the “truth” of symbolism (first of all, the inseparability of creativity from fate) and its vices: an ethically unlimited cult of personality, artificial tension, the pursuit of experiences (the material of creativity), exotic emotions, destructive for fragile souls (“The End of Renata” - an essay about N.N. Petrovskaya, “Muni”). Gap with classical tradition, according to Khodasevich, comes in a post-symbolist, and not a symbolist era, hence the biased assessments of the acmeists and Gumilyov. Despite being faithful to many precepts of symbolism, Khodasevich the poet, with his "spiritual stripping" and renewal of poetics, belongs to the post-symbolist period of Russian poetry.