Voloshin Maximilian (years of life - 1877 - 1932) - poet, artist, art critic, literary critic. Voloshin is a pseudonym. His real name is Kiriyenko-Voloshin.
Childhood, student years
The future poet was born in Kiev in 1877, May 16 (28). His ancestors on his father were Zaporozhye Cossacks. From the mother’s side, there were Germans in the family, Russified in the 17th century. Maximilian at the age of 3 was left without a father. The childhood and adolescence of the future poet passed in Moscow. His mother in 1893 acquired a land plot located near Feodosia Koktebel. Here in 1897 Voloshin Maximilian graduated from high school. He entered Moscow University (Faculty of Law). Maximilian in his student years was drawn into revolutionary activity. He was involved in the February 1900 All-Russian student strike. As a result of this, as well as for his penchant for campaigning and “negative outlook”, Voloshin Maximilian was suspended from school.
Start 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 the "decisive moment" that determined his future spiritual life. During the construction, he felt antiquity, the East, Asia, the relativity of European culture.
However, it was precisely Maximilian’s active involvement in the achievements of the intellectual and artistic culture of Western Europe from his first travels that became the poet’s life goal. He visited in 1899-1900 in Italy, France, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Austria-Hungary. In particular, Maximilian attracted Paris. It was in him that he saw the center of European, and, therefore, universal spiritual life. Maximilian Alexandrovich, returning from Asia because of fear of further persecution, decides to go to the West.
Life in Paris, further travels, "poet's house" in Koktebel
Voloshin Maximilian (his photo is presented in this article) visited Paris repeatedly from 1901 to 1916, he lived here for a long time. In between, the poet traveled around the "ancient Mediterranean world." In addition, he visited arrivals in both Russian capitals. Voloshin at that time also lived in his "house of the poet" in Koktebel, which turned into a kind of cultural center, a resting place and a haven for the writer's elite. G. Shengeli, translator and poet, called him "Cimmerian Athens." At different times this house was visited by Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Bryusov, Alexey Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Gumilev, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, V. Khodasevich, E. Zamyatin, Vs. Ivanov, K. Chukovsky, M. Bulgakov and many other writers, artists, artists, scientists.
Voloshin - literary critic
As a literary critic, Voloshin Maximilian made his debut 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, entitled "In Defense of Hauptmann." She was signed by Max Voloshin. This article was one of the first in Russia manifestos of modernist aesthetics. After that, his other articles appeared. Altogether Voloshin wrote 36 of them - about Russian literature, 35 - about French and Russian theater, 28 - about French literature, as well as 49 articles about the events of French cultural life. They approved and proclaimed the artistic principles of modernism. Voloshin introduced new phenomena of literature in our country (first of all, the work of the so-called younger symbolists) into the context of modern European culture.
Voloshin Maksimilian Aleksandrovich, whose biography interests us, was also a literary agent, consultant, entrepreneur, solicitor and expert of the publishing houses "Grif", "Scorpion" and the Sabashnikov brothers. He called his enlightening mission Buddhism, magic, Catholicism, Theosophy, occultism, Freemasonry. Maximilian perceived all this in his work through the prism of art. In particular, he appreciated the "pathos of thought" and "the poetry of ideas," therefore his articles were like poetry, and poetry like articles (this was noted by I. Ehrenburg, who devoted an essay to him in the book "Portraits of Modern Poets" published in 1923 ) .
First poems
At first, not many poems were written by Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich, a poet. Almost all of them were placed in a book that appeared in 1910 ("Poems. 1900-1910"). The hand of the "jeweler", "real master" was seen in it by V. Bryusov. Voloshin considered Zh. M. Heredia, Gauthier, and other "Parnassians" poets from France to be their teachers of virtuosos of poetic plastic. Their works were in contrast 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. It was called "Selva oscura". It included poems created from 1910 to 1914. Most of them were later included in the book of the elect, published in 1916 ("Iverni").
Orientation to Verkharna
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 basic facts about him. It should be noted that since the beginning of the 1st World War, E. Verkharn has become a clear political reference point for the poet. Bryusov's translations of him back in the 1907 article "Emil Verharn and Valery Bryusov" were criticized by Maximilian. Voloshin himself translated Verkharn "from different points of view" and "in different eras." He summarized his attitude to him in his 1919 book Verkharn. Fate. Creativity. Translations.
Voloshin Maksimilian Aleksandrovich - Russian poet, who composed poems about the war. Included in the 1916 compilation "Anno mundi ardentis", they are quite consonant with Verkhanovian poetics. They processed the images and techniques of poetic rhetoric, which became a stable characteristic of all Maximilian poetry of revolutionary times, civil war and future years. Part of the poems written at that time was published in the 1919 book "The Deaf and Dumb", another part in 1923 was published in Berlin under the title "Poems on Terror". However, most of these works remained in the manuscript.
Official bullying
In 1923, the state began to persecute Voloshin. His name was forgotten. In the USSR, from 1928 to 1961, not a single line of this poet appeared in print. When Erenburg respectfully mentioned Voloshin in his memoirs in 1961, this immediately provoked a rebuff from A. Dymshits, who pointed out that Maximilian was a decadent of the most insignificant and reacted negatively to the revolution.
Return to Crimea, attempts to break into print
In the spring of 1917 Voloshin returned to the Crimea. In a 1925 autobiography, he wrote that he would no longer leave him, would not emigrate anywhere, and would not be saved from anything. Previously, he stated that he does not speak on any of the struggling parties, but he lives only with Russia and what is happening 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 strange. Here, white officers and red leaders found refuge and hid from persecution. Maximilian wrote about this in his 1926 poem "The House of the Poet." The "red leader" was Bela Kun. After Wrangel was defeated, he led the process of pacification of Crimea through organized famine and terror. Apparently, as a reward for harboring Kun under the Soviet regime, Voloshin kept his house and also provided relative security. However, neither his merits, nor the troubles of V. Veresaev, influential at that time, or partly repentant and imploring appeal to L. Kamenev, the omnipotent ideologist (in 1924), did not help Maximilian get into print.
Two directions of Voloshin’s thoughts
Voloshin wrote that for him, verse remains the only way to express thoughts. And they rushed at him in two directions. The first is historiosophical (the fate of Russia, the works of which often took on him a conditionally religious coloring). The second is anti-historical. Here we can note the cycle "Cain Ways", 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 high-sounding melodiclamation ("Exercise", "Holy Russia", "Kitezh", "Angel of the Times", "Wild Field"), aesthetized mentations ("Space" "," Leviathan "," Tanob "and some other works from" The Cain Ways "), pretentious stylization (" Dmetrius the Emperor "," Protopop Habakkuk "," St. Seraphim "," The Tale of the Monk Epiphanius "). Nevertheless, it can be said that many of his poems of the revolutionary time were recognized as capacious and accurate poetic evidence (for example, typological portraits of the Bourgeois, The Speculant, The Red Guard, etc., lyrical declarations "At the bottom of the underworld" and "Readiness ", the rhetorical masterpiece" North-East "and other works).
Articles about art and painting
After the revolution, his activity as an art critic ceased. Nevertheless, Maximilian was able to publish 34 articles on Russian fine art, as well as 37 articles on French art. His first monographic work, dedicated to Surikov, retains its significance. The book "The Spirit of Gothic" remained incomplete. Maximilian worked on it in 1912 and 1913.
Voloshin took up painting in order to judge professionally about art. As it turned out, he was a gifted artist. Crimean watercolor landscapes, executed 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 provide below.
Interesting facts from Voloshin's personal life
The duel of Voloshin and Nikolai Gumilyov took place on the Black River, the same one where Dantes shot Pushkin. It happened 72 years later and also because of the woman. However, fate saved then two famous poets, who were Gumilyov Nikolai Stepanovich and Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich. The poet, whose photo is presented below, is Nikolai Gumilev.
They fired because of Lisa Dmitrieva. She studied in the course of Old-Spanish and Old French literature at the Sorbonne. The first this girl was captivated by Gumilyov. He brought her to visit Voloshin in Koktebel. He seduced the girl. Nikolai Gumilev left because he felt unnecessary. However, this story continued after some time and eventually led to a duel. The court sentenced Gumilyov to a week of arrest, and Voloshin to one day.
The first wife of Maximilian Voloshin is Margarita Sabashnikova. With her, he at the Sorbonne listened to lectures. This marriage, however, soon broke up - the girl fell in love with Vyacheslav Ivanov. His wife invited Sabashnikova to live together. However, the "new type" family did not work out. His second wife was medical assistant Maria Stepanova (pictured above), who looked after the elderly mother of Maximilian.