Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich: biography, creative heritage, personal life

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

Childhood, student years

The future poet was born in Kiev in 1877, on May 16 (28). His father's ancestors were Zaporozhye Cossacks. From the mother's side there were Germans who were Russified in the 17th century. Maximilian was left without a father in 3 years. In Moscow, the childhood and adolescence of the future poet passed. In 1893 his mother purchased a plot of land located near Feodosia Koktebel. Here in 1897 Voloshin Maximilian graduated from the gymnasium. He enrolled in Moscow University (faculty - legal). Maximilian in his student years was involved in revolutionary activity. He was involved in the February 1900 All-Russian student strike. As a result of this, as well as his propensity for agitation and a "negative world outlook," Voloshin Maximilian was suspended from his studies.

Beginning of travel

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

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

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

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

Voloshin is a literary critic

As a literary critic Voloshin Maximilian debuted in 1899. In the journal "Russian thought" appeared his small reviews without a signature. In May 1900, a large article was published in the same journal under the title "In defense of the Hauptmann." It was signed "Max Voloshin". This article was one of the first manifestations of modernist aesthetics in Russia. After that, his other articles appeared. In total, Voloshin wrote 36 of them on Russian literature, 35 on French and Russian theater, 28 on French literature, and 49 articles on the events of French cultural life. In them, the artistic principles of modernism were affirmed and proclaimed. Voloshin introduced new phenomena in the literature of our country (above all, the work of the so-called junior symbolists) into the context of modern European culture.

Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich, whose biography interests us, was also a literary agent, consultant, entrepreneur, intercessor and expert of Grif, Scorpion and Sabashnikov brothers. He called his enlightenment mission itself Buddhism, magic, Catholicism, theosophy, occultism, Freemasonry. All this Maximilian perceived in his work through the prism of art. In particular, he appreciated the "pathos of thought" and the "poetry of ideas", so his articles were similar to poetry, and poetry to articles (this was noted by I. Ehrenburg, who devoted an essay to him in the book "Portraits of Contemporary Poets", published in 1923 ) .

The First Poems

At first, not many poems were written by Maximilian Voloshin, a poet. Almost all of them were placed in a book that appeared in 1910 ("Poems, 1900-1910"). The hand of the "jeweler", "the real master" saw in her V. Bryusov. Voloshin regarded as his teachers virtuosos of the poetic plastics of JM Heredia, Gautier and other poets, "Parnassians" from France. Their works were in balance with Verlaine's "musical" direction. This characteristic of Voloshin's work can be attributed to his first collection, as well as to the second, which was compiled by Maximilian in the early 1920s and was not published. He was called "Selva oscura". It included poems created during the period from 1910 to 1914. The bulk of them came later in the book of the chosen, published in 1916 ("Iverni").

Orientation to Verhaeren

You can talk for a long time about the work of such a poet as Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich. The biography summarized in this article contains only the basic facts about it. It should be noted that the clear political direction of the poet is from the beginning of World War I. E. Verharn. Bryusov translations of it in the article of 1907 "Emil Verharn and Valery Bryusov" were subjected to crushing criticism of Maximilian. Voloshin himself translated Verharn "from different points of view" and "in different epochs". He summed up his attitude to him in his book "Verharn. Fate, Creativity, Translation."

Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich is a Russian poet who composed poems about the war. Included in the collection of 1916 "Anno mundi ardentis", they are quite in tune with Verkhanov's poetics. They processed images and techniques of poetic rhetoric, which became a stable characteristic of Maximilian's entire poetry of revolutionary times, civil war and later years. Part of the poems written at that time was published in the book 1919 "Demons deaf-mute," another part in 1923 was published in Berlin under the title "Poems of Terror." However, for the most part, these works remained in the manuscript.

Official harassment

In 1923, Voloshin was persecuted by the state. His name was forgotten. In the USSR in the period from 1928 to 1961, not a single line of this poet appeared in the press. When Ehrenburg respectfully mentioned Voloshin in his memoirs in 1961, this immediately evoked the rebuke of A. Dymshits, who pointed out that Maximilian was the decadent of the most insignificant and had a negative attitude toward the revolution.

Return to Crimea, attempts to break into the press

In the spring of 1917 Voloshin returned to the Crimea. In the autobiography of 1925, he wrote that he would not leave him any more, he did not emigrate anywhere and could not be saved from anything. Previously, he stated that he does not speak on any of the fighting sides, but he lives only in Russia and in it; And also wrote that he needed to stay in Russia until the end. House Voloshin, located in Koktebel, during the civil war remained hospitable. Here, shelter was found and white officers and red leaders were hiding from persecution. Maximilian wrote about this in his poem "The House of the Poet" in his 1926 poem. "Red leader" was Bela Kun. After Wrangel was defeated, he managed, through organized hunger and terror, to subdue the Crimea. Apparently, as a reward for the harboring of Kuhn under Soviet power, Voloshin retained the house, and also provided relative security. However, neither his services nor the troubles of V. Veresaev, the influential at the time, partly repentant and appealing appeal to L. Kamenev, the all-powerful ideologist (in 1924) did not help Maximilian make his way to the press.

Two Directions of Voloshin's Thoughts

Voloshin wrote that for him the verse remains the only way of expressing thoughts. And they rushed at him in two directions. The first is the historiosophical one (the fate of Russia, the product of which was often conditional religious in him). The second is antihistorical. Here you can note the cycle "The ways of Cain," which reflected the ideas of universal anarchism. The poet wrote that in these works he forms almost all of his social ideas, which were mostly negative. It should be noted the general ironic tone of this cycle.

Recognized and unrecognized works

The inconsistency of thoughts characteristic of Voloshin often led to the fact that his creations were sometimes perceived as lofty melodeclamation ("Transubstantiation", "Holy Russia", "Kitezh", "Angel of Times", "Wild Field"), aesthetic reasoning ("Cosmos" "," Leviathan "," Tanob "and some other works from the" Paths of Cain "), pretentious stylization (" Dimitrius-emperor "," Protopop Avvakum "," Saint Seraphim "," The Tale of the Monk Epiphany "). Nevertheless, it can be said that many of his poems of revolutionary time were recognized as capacious and accurate poetic evidence (for example, typological portraits of "Burzhuy", "Speculator", "Krasnogvardeets", etc., lyrical declarations "At the bottom of the underworld" and "Readiness" ", Rhetorical masterpiece" Northeast "and other works).

Articles about art and painting

After the revolution, his work as an art critic stopped. Nevertheless, Maximilian was able to publish 34 articles on Russian fine arts, as well as 37 articles on French art. His first monographic work, dedicated to Surikov, retains its significance. The book "Spirit of Gothic" remained unfinished. Over it, Maximilian worked in 1912 and 1913.

Voloshin took up painting in order to judge professionally about the fine arts. As it turned out, he was a gifted artist. Crimean watercolor landscapes, made with poetic inscriptions, became his favorite genre. In 1932 (August 11) Maximilian Voloshin died in Koktebel. A brief biography of him can be supplemented by information about his personal life, interesting facts from which we give below.

Interesting facts from Voloshin's personal life

The duel of Voloshin and Nikolai Gumilev took place on the Black River, the very one where Dantes fired at Pushkin. It happened 72 years later and also because of the woman. However, fate saved then two famous poets, such as Gumilev Nikolai Stepanovich and Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich. The poet, whose photo is presented below, is Nikolai Gumilev.

They were shooting because of Lisa Dmitrieva. She studied the course of Old Spanish and Old French literature in the Sorbonne. The first to capture this girl was Gumilev. He brought her on a visit to Voloshin in Koktebel. He seduced the girl. Nikolai Gumilev left, because he felt unnecessary. However, this story after a while continued and resulted in a duel. The court sentenced Gumilyov to the week of arrest, and Voloshin - to one day.

The first wife of Maximilian Voloshin is Margarita Sabashnikova. With it, he attended lectures at the Sorbonne. This marriage, however, soon disintegrated - the girl fell in love with Vyacheslav Ivanov. His wife invited Sabashnikova to live together. However, the family of the "new type" did not work out. His second wife was a paramedic Maria Stepanova (pictured above), who took care of the elderly mother of Maximilian.