Khodasevich V. Brief biography

23.09.2019 -

He felt his calling very early, choosing literature as the main occupation of his life. Already at the age of six he composed his first poems.

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

In 1904 he entered law school. Faculty of Moscow University, in 1905 he switched to philology. faculty, but did not complete the course. At the same time he visits the Moscow Literary and Arts Institute. a circle where V. Ya. Bryusov, A. Bely, K. D. Balmont, Vyach perform reading poetry and reports. Ivanov, - a live meeting with the symbolists, literary idols of Khodasevich’s generation. The influence of symbolism, its vocabulary, and general poetic clichés marked the first book, “Youth” (1908). “Happy Little House” (1914; republished in 1922 and 1923), which received friendly criticism, was written in a different key; dedicated to Khodasevich’s second wife since 1913, Anna Ivanovna, born. Chulkova, sister of G.I. Chulkova - the heroine of the collection of poems (also contains a cycle associated with the poet’s passion for E.V. Muratova, the “princess”, ex-wife of P.P. Muratov, a friend of Khodasevich; with her he made a trip to Italy in 1911). In “Happy House,” Khodasevich opens the world of “simple” and “small” values, “the joy of simple love,” domestic serenity, “slow” life - that which will allow him to “live calmly and die wisely.” In this collection, which, like “Youth,” is not included in the Collection. poem. 1927, Khodasevich for the first time, breaking with the pomp of symbolism, turns to the poetics of Pushkin’s verse (“Elegy”, “To the Muse”).

In the 1910s, he also acted as a critic whose opinion was listened to: in addition to responses to new publications by the masters of symbolism, he reviewed collections of literary youth, cautiously welcomed the first books of A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam; singles out, regardless of literary orientation, the poetry collections of 1912-13 by N. A. Klyuev, M. A. Kuzmin, Igor Severyanin - “for a sense of modernity,” however, he soon became disillusioned with it (“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 polemics with them, the main points of Khodasevich’s historical and literary concept, dispersed across various jobs: tradition, continuity is the way of the very existence of culture, the mechanism for the transmission of cultural values; It is literary conservatism that provides the possibility of rebellion against the outdated, for the renewal of 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 called him “the most deliberate person” who forcibly subordinated his real nature to the “ideal image”. A long-term (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, committed suicide; Khodasevich would later write about this in his essay “Muni” (“Necropolis”). In 1915-17, he was most intensively engaged in translations: Polish (Z. Krasiński, A. Mickiewicz), Jewish (poems by S. Chernikhovsky, from ancient Jewish poetry), as well as Armenian and Finnish poets. His 1934 articles “Bialik” (Khodasevich noted in it the unity of “feeling and culture” and “national feeling”) 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 entering literature at its decline, Khodasevich, together with M. I. Tsvetaeva, as he wrote in his autobiographical book. in the essay “Infancy” (1933), “having come out of symbolism, they did not join anything or anyone, they remained forever alone, “wild.” Literary classifiers and compilers of anthologies don’t know where to put us.” The book “The Path of Grain”, published in 1920, is dedicated to the memory of S. Kissin), collected mainly in 1918 (republished in 1922) - evidence of Khodasevich’s literary independence and literary isolation. Starting with this collection, main theme his poetry will be the overcoming of disharmony, which is essentially irremovable. He introduces the prose of life into poetry - not depressingly expressive details, but a flow of life that overtakes and overwhelms the poet, giving birth in him, along with constant thoughts of death, a feeling of “bitter death.” The call for the transformation of this stream is obviously utopian in some poems (“Smolensk Market”), in others the poet succeeds in the “miracle of transformation” (“Noon”), but turns out to be a brief and temporary loss from “this life”; in the "Episode" it is achieved through the almost mystical separation of the soul from the corporeal shell. “The Path of Grain” includes poems written during the revolutionary years of 1917-1918: Khodasevich perceived the February and October revolution 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) of the description of the scenes of devastation in “suffering, torn to pieces and fallen” Moscow (“November 2”, “House”, “Old Woman”).

After the revolution, Khodasevich tries to fit into a new life, gives lectures about Pushkin in the literary studio at the Moscow Proletkult (prose dialogue “Headless Pushkin”, 1917, - about the importance of enlightenment), works in the theater department of the People's Commissariat for Education, in the Gorky publishing house "World Literature", " Book Chamber". He will tell 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 literary rich, not without humor in his memoir essays. 1920–30s: “White Corridor”, “Proletkult”, “Book Chamber”, etc.

At the end of 1920, Khodasevich moved to St. Petersburg, lived in the “House of Arts” (essay “Disk”, 1937), wrote poetry for “Heavy Lyre”. Speaks (together with A. A. Blok) at the celebration of Pushkin and I. F. Annensky with reports: “The Shaking Tripod” (1921) and “About Annensky” (1922), one of Khodasevich’s best literary critical essays, dedicated to the all-consuming Annensky's poetry is based on the theme of death: he reproaches the poet for his inability to undergo religious rebirth. By this time, Khodasevich had already written articles about Pushkin, “Pushkin’s Petersburg Stories” (1915) and “About the “Gavriiliad” (1918); together with “The Shaking Tripod”, the essayistic articles “Countess E. P. Rostopchina” (1908) and “Derzhavin” (1916) they will form a collection. “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: “About Pushkin”, Berlin, 1937), addressing the most diverse aspects of his work - self-repetition, favorite sounds, rhymes “blasphemy” - he tries to grasp 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 “miraculous genius” of Russia. Khodasevich was in constant spiritual communication 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, who in revenge gave a caustic, essentially parodic, portrait of Khodasevich in his book. “Between Two Revolutions” (1990); in 1923-25 he helps A. M. Gorky edit the magazine “Conversation”, lives with him and Berberova in Sorrento (October 1924 - April 1925), later Khodasevich will devote several essays to him. In 1925 he moved to Paris, where he remained until the end of his life.

Back in 1922, “Heavy Lyre” was published, full of new tragedy. As in “The Path of the Grain,” overcoming and breakthrough are the main value imperatives of Khodasevich (“Step over, jump over, / Fly over, whatever you want”), but their disruption, their return to material reality is legitimized: “God knows what you’re muttering 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 into other worlds, I remains on this side - “screaming and fighting in your world” (“From the Diary”). In Khodasevich, the eternal conflict between the poet and the world takes the form of physical incompatibility; every sound of reality, the poet’s “quiet hell,” torments, deafens and wounds 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, conducts polemics with Adamovich, strives to instill in young emigration poets the lessons of classical mastery. In Art. “Bloody 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, just as prophets are stoned and thus resurrected for the future life. In the article “Literature in Exile” (1933), he analyzes all the dramatic aspects of the existence of emigrant 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 by Veidle “ 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 linguistic coloring of the era, and the memoir prose “Necropolis” (Brussels, 1939), compiled from essays from 1925-37 , published, like the chapters of Derzhavin, in periodicals. And Derzhavin (from whose prosaisms, as well as from the “terrible poems” of E. A. Baratynsky and F. I. Tyutchev, Khodasevich traced his genealogy), shown through the rough life of his time, and the heroes of “Necropolis”, from A. Bely and A . A. Blok to Gorky, are seen not apart from, but through small everyday truths, in the “fullness of understanding.” Khodasevich turned to the ideological sources of symbolism, which take him beyond the boundaries of the literary school and direction. The essentially non-aesthetic ambition of symbolism to limitlessly expand creativity, to live according to the criteria of art, to 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 (material of creativity), exotic emotions, destructive for fragile souls (“The End of Renata” - an essay about N.N. Petrovskaya, “Muni”). The break with the classical tradition, according to Khodasevich, occurs in the post-symbolist, not symbolist, era, hence the biased assessments of the Acmeists and Gumilyov. Despite his loyalty to many of the precepts of symbolism, Khodasevich the poet, with his “spiritual undressing” and renewal of poetics, belongs to the post-symbolist period of Russian poetry.

Khodasevich’s biography is well known to all literature experts and lovers. He is a popular Russian poet, memoirist, Pushkin scholar, literary historian, and critic. He had a great influence on Russian literature in the 20th century.

Poet's family

In the biography of Khodasevich important role played by his family. His father's name was Felician Ivanovich, he came from a greatly impoverished noble family of Polish origin. Their last name was Masla-Khodasevichi; it is interesting that the hero of our article himself often called his father a Lithuanian.

Felician was a graduate of the Academy of Arts, but all his attempts to become a successful and fashionable painter ended in failure. As a result, he chose the path of a photographer. He worked in Moscow and Tula, among his famous works there are photographs of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Having earned money for the initial capital, he opened a store in Moscow, where he began selling photographic accessories. The poet himself outlined his father’s life in detail in the poem “Dactyls,” noting that he had to become a merchant solely out of necessity, but he never grumbled about it.

Khodasevich's mother, Sofya Yakovlevna, was the daughter of the popular European writer Yakov Aleksandrovich Brafman. She was 12 years younger than her husband, and they died in the same year - in 1911. Sophia's father eventually converted to Orthodoxy, devoting the rest of his life to the reform of Jewish life, approaching this issue exclusively from a Christian position. At the same time, Sophia herself was given to a Polish family as a child, in which she was raised as a devout Catholic.

Vladislav Khodasevich had an older brother named Mikhail, who became a famous and successful lawyer. It is known that Mikhail’s daughter Valentina became an artist. It was she who painted the famous portrait of the poet, who was her uncle. Describing the biography of Vladislav Khodasevich, it is worth noting that the poet, while studying at the university, lived in his brother’s house, maintaining friendly and warm relations with him until his final departure from Russia.

The poet's youth

Khodasevich was born in 1886, he was born in Moscow. In the biography of Vladislav Khodasevich, a special place was occupied by educational establishments, in which he received the basics of knowledge. In 1904, the future poet graduated from the Third Moscow Gymnasium, going for higher education to the Faculty of Law of Moscow University.

But, after studying for only a year, he decided to abandon the legal profession and transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology. With several breaks, he studied there until the spring of 1910, but was never able to complete the course. This was largely prevented by the turbulent literary life in which he found himself at the center at that time. Khodasevich’s biography lists all the main events by date. The hero of our article at that time visited the so-called Teleshov Wednesdays, visited Valery Bryusov, at Zaitsev’s evenings, and constantly visited the literary and artistic circle. It was then that Khodasevich began to publish in domestic newspapers and magazines, in particular in the Golden Fleece and Libra.

Wedding

An important event in Khodasevich’s biography is his marriage to a spectacular and pretty blonde, as he himself called her, Marina Erastovna Ryndina. They get married in 1905. Surrounding and familiar families noted that the poet’s wife was always distinguished by eccentric behavior, for example, she could appear at a party in original suit Ice with a live snake on his neck.

In the biography of the poet Khodasevich, this marriage became a bright, memorable, but short-lived episode. Already in 1907 he separated from his wife. Poems dedicated to Marina Ryndina have been preserved; most of them were included in a book called “Youth,” which was published in 1908.

Talking about the character and biography of Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich, at that time many of his acquaintances noted that he was a great dandy, for example, Don-Aminado was remembered by his full-length student uniform, a shock of thick hair cut at the back of his head, with a deliberately indifferent and cold look dark eyes.

Health problems

In 1910, a difficult time began in Khodasevich’s biography. The poet begins to suffer from lung disease, this becomes a significant reason for his trip with friends to Venice. Together with the hero of our article, Mikhail Osorgin, Pavel Muratov and his wife Evgenia are going to Italy. In Italy physical state Khodasevich is aggravated by mental suffering. First, he experiences a love drama with Ekaterina Muratova, and in 1911, the death of both parents with an interval of just a few months.

The hero of our article finds salvation in a relationship with the younger sister of the then popular poet Georgy Chulkov. They got married to Anna Chulkova-Grentsion, who was practically the same age as him, in 1917. Such facts about the biography and family of Khodasevich are known to modern researchers. The poet, to whom this article is dedicated, raised Chulkova’s son from his first marriage, the future famous film actor Edgar Garrick. He is known for his role as Charles XII in Vladimir Petrov's film epic "Peter the Great" and for the image of General Levitsky in the historical film "Heroes of Shipka" by Sergei Vasiliev.

The poet's second book

Even when briefly telling the biography of Khodasevich, it is necessary to mention his second book of poems, “Happy House,” which was published in 1914. In the six years that have passed since the release of the first collection "Youth", Khodasevich managed to become a professional writer who made his living by translating, writing feuilletons and all kinds of reviews.

When did the first one begin? World War, Khodasevich received a “white ticket”, due to health reasons he could not serve in the army, so he went to work for the periodicals “Morning of Russia”, “Russian Vedomosti”, and in 1917 he collaborated with the newspaper “New Life”. At the same time, his health was still bothering him, the hero of our article suffered from spinal tuberculosis, so he was forced to spend the summer in 1916 and 1917 in Koktebel, in the house of his friend and also a famous poet

Years of revolution

Quite a lot interesting facts in the biography of Khodasevich. For example, it is known that he enthusiastically accepted February revolution, which took place in 1917. And after the October Revolution, at first he even agreed to cooperate with the Bolshevik government. However, he quickly came to the conclusion that under this government it was impossible to conduct free and independent literary activity. After this, he decided to withdraw from political issues and write exclusively for himself.

In 1918, his new book “The Jewish Anthology” was published, which he wrote in collaboration with Leib Yaffeon. This collection includes works by young Jewish poets. At the same time, he works as a secretary in an arbitration court and conducts theoretical and practical classes in the literary studio of Proletkult.

Briefly describing Khodasevich’s biography, it should be mentioned that in 1918 he began collaborating in the theater department of the People’s Commissariat for Education, worked directly in the repertory section, then received a position as head of the Moscow department at the World Literature publishing house, which was founded by Maxim Gorky. Khodasevich also actively participates in the founding of a bookstore on shares; Muratov, Osorgin, Zaitsev and Griftsov are on duty at the counter in this shop in turn.

Moving to Petrograd

In the short biography of Vladislav Khodasevich, which is given in this article, it is necessary to note his move to Petrograd, which took place in November 1920. The poet was forced to do this because he developed an acute form of furunculosis. The disease emerged from the hunger and cold that raged in the country due to the Civil War.

In Petrograd, he was helped by Gorky, who helped him receive rations and two rooms in the writers' dormitory at the House of Arts. Khodasevich would later write an essay about this experience entitled “Disk.”

In 1920, his third collection of poetry was published, which, perhaps, becomes the most famous in his career. It's called the "Way of the Grain." It contains a poem of the same name, in which the poet describes the events of 1917. Khodasevich’s popularity has only grown since the release of this collection. The work of Khodasevich, whose biography we are now studying, for many is associated with the poems included in this collection.

New romantic relationships

At the very end of 1921, Khodasevich meets the poetess Nina Berberova, who turned out to be 15 years younger than him. He falls in love with her and in the summer of 1922 he leaves with his new muse for Berlin via Riga. Around the same time, Khodasevich’s fourth collection of poems, entitled “Heavy Lyre,” was published simultaneously in Berlin and St. Petersburg. Until 1923, the hero of our article lived in Berlin and communicated a lot with Andrei Bely.

Then for some time he neighbors with the family of Maxim Gorky, whose personality he himself values very highly. It is interesting that at the same time they speak unflatteringly about him as a writer. Khodasevich claimed that he saw authority in Gorky, but did not consider him a guarantor of his even hypothetical return to his homeland. He considers the most vulnerable qualities of his character to be his confused attitude towards truth and lies, which had a decisive influence on both his life and his work.

At the same time, Khodasevich and Gorky collaborate fruitfully, despite obvious differences in views. Together they edit the magazine "Conversation" (Shklovsky also helps them in this work), a total of six issues of this publication are published. It mainly publishes beginning Soviet authors.

Evaluating Khodasevich’s work, researchers note that it was extremely specific and concise. The poet himself was like that in life. The hero of our article loved hoaxes, constantly admiring a certain “non-writing writer.” He himself often used hoaxes as a literary device, independently exposing them after some time. For example, I once wrote several poems under someone else’s name, even inventing the 18th century Russian poet Vasily Travnikov for this purpose. Khodasevich himself wrote all of Travnikov’s poems, and then read them at literary evenings and even published a study about Travnikov in 1936. Many admired Khodasevich, who discovered one of the greatest poets of the century before last; no one even imagined that Travnikov simply did not exist in reality.

Life in exile

Speaking briefly about the biography and work of Khodasevich, it is necessary to mention that he finally understands that it is impossible to return to the USSR in 1925. At the same time, the hero of our article continues to publish in Soviet periodicals for some time; he writes feuilletons and articles about the activities of the GPU abroad. After the release of several high-profile notes on this topic, the Soviet authorities accuse him of “White Guardism.”

It came to the point that in the spring of 1925, the Soviet embassy in Rome refused to renew Khodasevich’s passport, inviting him to return to Moscow for this. The poet refuses, finally cutting off all ties with the country.

In the same year, another important event took place in the biography of the Russian poet Khodasevich - together with Berberova he moved to Paris. The hero of our article is actively published in the emigrant newspapers "Last News" and "Days". True, he left the last edition, following advice. At the beginning of 1927, Khodasevich headed the literary department of the newspaper "Vozrozhdenie". In the same year, he released “Collected Poems,” which included a new cycle called “European Night.”

After this, Khodasevich almost completely stopped writing poetry, devoting most of his time to critical research. As a result, he becomes one of the leading critics of literature in Russian diaspora. In particular, he conducts polemics with Georgiy Ivanov and Georgiy Adamovich, discussing with them about the tasks of Russian literature in emigration, as well as in general about the purpose of poetry and the crisis in which it finds itself.

Published together with his wife Berberova. They publish reviews of Soviet literature under the pseudonym Gulliver. Khodasevich and Berberova openly support the poetry group "Perekrestok" and are among the first to speak highly of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, who later becomes their close friend.

Memoirs of Khodasevich

In 1928, Khodasevich began writing his own memoirs, which are included in the book “Necropolis. Memoirs”, which was published in 1939. In them, he talks in detail about his acquaintance and relationships with Bely, Bryusov, Gumilev, Yesenin, Gorky, Sologub, and the young poet Muni, with whom they were friends in their youth.

Khodasevich also writes a biographical book "Derzhavin". He is well known as a major and scrupulous researcher of Pushkin's work. The hero of our article, having completed work on Derzhavin’s biography, planned to compose a biography of the “sun of Russian poetry,” but his sharply deteriorating health did not allow him to do this. In 1932, he wrote in a letter to Berberova that he was giving up on this work, as well as on poetry, realizing that he had nothing else left in his life. In April 1932 they separated.

On next year Khodasevich is getting married again. His new chosen one is Olga Borisovna Margolina. She is four years younger than her husband, originally from St. Petersburg. The poet lives in exile with his new wife. His situation is difficult and difficult, he communicates little with his compatriots, and keeps himself apart. In June 1939, Khodasevich died in Paris after another operation, which was supposed to maintain his health. He was buried near the French capital, in the Boulogne-Billancourt cemetery, he was 53 years old.

His last wife, Olga Margolina, did not survive her husband much. During World War II she was captured by the Germans. In 1942 she died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

With whom they lived for a long time life together, in 1936 she entered into an official marriage with the painter Nikolai Makeev; she remained on friendly terms with Khodasevich until his death. She endured the war in German-occupied Paris and divorced in 1947. In 1954, already in the USA, she married the famous music teacher and pianist Georgy Kochevitsky, and five years later she managed to obtain American citizenship.

In the 80s she divorced Kochevitsky, and in 1989 she even came to Soviet Union at the age of 88 years. She died in Philadelphia in 1993.

Before 1917

Khodasevich was born on May 16 (28), 1886 in Moscow. His father, Felician Ivanovich (c. 1834 - 1911) came from the Polish impoverished noble family of Masla-Khodasevich (sometimes Khodasevich called his father “Lithuanian”; the surname is of Belarusian origin), studied at the Academy of Arts. Cousin The poet, Nadya Khodasevich, was the wife of the outstanding artist Fernand Léger.

Young Felitsian's attempts to make a living as an artist failed, and he became a photographer, worked in Tula and Moscow, in particular, photographing Leo Tolstoy, and finally opened a photographic supplies store in Moscow. Life path father is accurately stated in Khodasevich’s poem “Dactyls”:

The poet's mother, Sofya Yakovlevna (1846-1911), was the daughter of the famous Jewish writer Yakov Aleksandrovich Brafman (1824-1879), who later converted to Orthodoxy (1858) and devoted his further life to the so-called. “reform of Jewish life” from a Christian perspective. Despite this, Sofya Yakovlevna was given to a Polish family and raised as a devout 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 subsequently, until leaving Russia, maintained warm relations with him.

In Moscow, Khodasevich’s classmate at the 3rd Moscow Gymnasium was Alexander Bryusov, brother of the poet Valery Bryusov. Viktor Hoffman studied a year older than Khodasevich, who greatly influenced the poet’s worldview. After graduating from high school, Khodasevich entered Moscow University - first (in 1904) to the Faculty of Law, and in the fall of 1905 he transferred 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 Moscow literary life: he visits Valery Bryusov and Teleshov’s “Wednesdays”, the Literary and Artistic Circle, evenings with the Zaitsevs, and is published in magazines and newspapers, including “Vesakh” and “Golden Fleece”.

In 1905 he married Marina Erastovna Ryndina. The marriage was unhappy - at the end of 1907 they separated. Some of the poems from Khodasevich’s first book of poems, “Youth” (1908), are dedicated specifically to his relationship with Marina Ryndina. According to the memoirs of Anna Khodasevich (Chulkova), the poet “was a great dandy” during these years; Don-Aminado remembered Khodasevich

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, survived a love drama with E. Muratova and death with an interval of several months by both parents. From the end of 1911, the poet established a close relationship with the younger sister of the poet Georgy Chulkov, Anna Chulkova-Grentsion (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 passed from writing “Youth” to “Happy House,” Khodasevich became a professional writer, earning a living from translations, reviews, feuilletons, etc.

During the First World War, the poet, who received a “white ticket” for health reasons, collaborated in “Russian Gazette”, “Morning of Russia”, and in 1917 - in “New Life”. Due to spinal tuberculosis, he spent the summers of 1916 and 1917 in Koktebel with the poet M. Voloshin.

After 1917

In 1917, Khodasevich enthusiastically accepted the February Revolution and initially agreed to collaborate with the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, but quickly came to the conclusion that “under the Bolsheviks, literary activity is impossible,” and decided “to write only for myself.” In 1918, together with L. Jaffe, he published the book “Jewish Anthology. Collection of young Jewish poetry"; worked as a secretary of the arbitration court, taught classes in the literary studio of the Moscow Proletkult. In 1918-19 he served in the repertory section of the theater department of the People's Commissariat for Education, in 1918-20 he headed the Moscow branch of the World Literature publishing house, founded by M. Gorky. He took part in the organization of a bookstore on shares (1918-19), where famous writers (Osorgin, Muratov, Zaitsev, B. Griftsov, etc.) were personally on duty at the counter. In March 1920, due to hunger and cold, he fell ill acute form furunculosis and in November moved to Petrograd, where, with the help of M. Gorky, he received rations and two rooms in the writers' dormitory (the famous "House of Arts", about which he later wrote the essay "Disk").

In 1920, his collection “The Path of Grain” was published with the title poem of the same name, which contains the following lines about 1917:

At this time, his poems finally became widely known, and he was recognized as one of the first modern poets. However, on June 22, 1922, Khodasevich, together with the poetess Nina Berberova (1901-1993), whom he met in December 1921, left Russia and came to Berlin through Riga. In the same year, his collection “Heavy Lyre” was published.

In 1922-1923, while 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 the weak qualities of Gorky’s character, of which he considered the most vulnerable “an extremely confused attitude towards truth and lies, which emerged very early and had a decisive impact on both his work and his entire life.” At the same time, Khodasevich and Gorky founded (with the participation of V. Shklovsky) and edited the magazine “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, suggesting that he return to Moscow. He refused, finally becoming an emigrant.

In 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova moved to Paris, the poet was published in the newspapers “Days” and “Last News”, from where he left 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 released “Collected Poems” with a new cycle “European Night”. After this, Khodasevich practically stopped writing poetry, paying attention to criticism, and soon became a leading critic of Russian literature abroad. As a critic, he conducted polemics with G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich, in particular, about the tasks of emigration literature, the purpose of poetry and its crisis. Together with Berberova, he wrote reviews of Soviet literature (signed “Gulliver”), supported the poetry group “Crossroads,” and spoke highly of the work of V. Nabokov, who became his friend.

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

Khodasevich’s position in exile was difficult, he lived separately, he preferred the suburbs to noisy Paris, he was respected as a poet and mentor of poetic youth, but was not loved. Vladislav Khodasevich died on June 14, 1939 in Paris, after surgery. He was buried on the outskirts of Paris in the Boulogne-Biancourt cemetery.

Main features of poetry and personality

Most often, the epithet “bilious” was applied to Khodasevich. Maxim Gorky said in private conversations and letters that it was anger that was the basis of his poetic gift. All memoirists write about his yellow face. He died - in a miserable hospital, in a glass cell scorched by the sun, barely covered with sheets - from liver cancer, suffering from incessant pain. Two days before his death, he told his ex-wife, writer Nina Berberova: “Only he is my brother, only he can recognize him as a person who, like me, suffered in this bed.” This remark is all about Khodasevich. But, perhaps, everything that seemed tart, even tough, in him was only his literary weapon, the forged armor with which he defended real literature in continuous battles. There is immeasurably less bile and malice in his soul than suffering and thirst for compassion. In Russia of the 20th 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 an evil critic,” said Khodasevich. - But recently I made a “calculation of conscience”, as before confession... Yes, I scolded many. But nothing came of those whom I scolded.”

Khodasevich is specific, dry and laconic. It seems that he speaks with effort, reluctantly opening 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 laconic poems:

Forehead -
Chalk.
Bel
Coffin.

Sang
Pop.
Sheaf
Strel -

Day
Holy!
Crypt

Blind.
Shadow -
In hell!

But his dryness, bileness and taciturnity remained only external. This is what his close friend Yuri Mandelstam said about Khodasevich:

Khodasevich also liked hoaxes. He admired a certain “non-writing writer”, a master at such things. He himself used hoax as a literary device, and after a while he exposed it. So he wrote several poems “on someone else’s behalf” 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 a friend of Khodasevich Muni (Kissin Samuil Viktorovich 1885 -1916). The poet read about Travnikov at a literary evening and published a study about him (1936). Listening to the poems read by Khodasevich, the enlightened society experienced both embarrassment and surprise - after all, Khodasevich opened the priceless archive of the greatest poet of the 18th century. A number of reviews appeared on Khodasevich’s article. No one could even imagine that there was no Travnikov in the world.

The influence of symbolism on Khodasevich’s lyrics

Not being rooted in Russian soil created a special psychological complex that was felt in Khodasevich’s poetry from a very early time. His early poems suggest that he was trained by Bryusov, who, not recognizing poetic insights, believed that inspiration should be strictly controlled by knowledge of the secrets of the craft, conscious choice and impeccable embodiment of the form, rhythm, and 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 help but experience his influence, even if in a student-like, imitative way. “Symbolism is true realism. Both Andrei Bely and Blok spoke about the elements they knew. Undoubtedly, if today we have learned to talk about unreal realities, the most real in reality, it is thanks to the symbolists,” he said. Khodasevich’s early poems are imbued with symbolism and are often poisoned:

The wanderer passed, leaning on his staff -
A carriage rides on red wheels -
For some reason I remembered you.
In the evening the lamp will be lit in the corridor -
I will definitely remember you.
Whatever happens on land, at sea
Or in the sky - I will remember you.

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

And again the beat of hearts is steady;
Nodding, the short-lived flame disappeared,
And I realized that I was a dead man,
And you are just my tombstone.

But still, Khodasevich always stood apart. In the autobiographical fragment “Infancy” of 1933, he gives special meaning the fact that he was “late” for the flowering of symbolism, “late to be born,” while the aesthetics of Acmeism remained distant from him, and futurism was decidedly unacceptable. Indeed, to be born in Russia at that time six years later than Blok meant entering a different literary era.

The main stages of creativity

Collection "Youth"

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

In the best poems of this book, he declared himself a poet of precise, concrete words. 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, “is not a fighter of all camps.” Khodasevich, together with M.I. Tsvetaeva, as he wrote, “having left symbolism, they did not join anything or anyone, and remained forever alone, “wild.” Literary classifiers and compilers of anthologies don’t know where to put us.”

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

Nomadic meager children are evil,
We warm our hands by the fire...
The desert is silent. Into the distance without a sound
The prickly wind drives away the ashes, -
And our songs are wickedly boring
An ulcer curls on the lips.

In general, however, “Youth” is a collection of an immature poet. The future Khodasevich can be discerned here only by the precision of words and expressions and skepticism about everything.

Collection “Happy House”

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

O boredom, skinny dog crying 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 kingdom of the dead, where he lost his beloved Eurydice forever:

And now I sing, I sing with my last strength
That life has been fully experienced,
That Eurydice is not there, that my dear friend is not there,
And the stupid tiger caresses me -

So in 1910, in “The Return of Orpheus,” Khodasevich declared his longing for harmony in a completely disharmonious world, which is devoid of any hope for happiness and harmony. In the verses of this collection one can hear the 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 characteristic of the Silver Age). There are echoes of Greek and Roman poetry, and stanzas that make you remember the romanticism of the 19th century. But these stylizations are full of concrete, visible images and details. Thus, the opening poem with the characteristic title “Star over a Palm Tree” from 1916 ends with the piercing lines:

Ah, I love roses with a lying heart
Only the one that burns with jealous fire,
What are the teeth with a blue tint?
Sly Carmen bit!

Next to the bookish, “dreamt” world, there is another, no less dear to Khodasevich’s heart - 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 saw a “golden-winged angel” in a dream.

Sentimentality, coupled with bile and proud detachment from the world, became the hallmark of Khodasevich’s poetry and determined its originality in the first post-revolutionary years.

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

Collection “The Path of Grain”

Beginning with the collection “The Path of the Grain,” the main theme of his poetry will be overcoming disharmony, which is essentially irremovable. He introduces the prose of life into poetry - not expressive details, but the flow of life, overtaking and overwhelming the poet, giving birth in him, along with constant thoughts of death, a feeling of “bitter death.” The call for the transformation of this stream is obviously utopian in some poems (“Smolensk Market”), in others the poet succeeds in the “miracle of transformation” (“Noon”), but turns out to be a short and temporary loss from “this life.” “The Path of Grain” was written in the revolutionary years of 1917-1918. Khodasevich said: “Poetry is not a document of the era, but only that 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 times.” Khodasevich also wrote about his era. The poet's early premonitions of the upheavals awaiting Russia prompted him to perceive the revolution with optimism. He saw in it an opportunity to renew folk and creative life, he believed in its humanity and anti-philistine pathos, but sobering up came very quickly. Khodasevich understood how the revolution had tormented and extinguished real Russian literature. But he did not belong to those who were “scared” of the revolution. He was not delighted with her, but he was not “afraid” of her either. The collection “The Path of Grain” expressed his belief in the resurrection of Russia after revolutionary devastation in the same way as grain, dying in the soil, is resurrected in the ear:

The sower walks 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 ground.
And where the blind worm makes its way,
It will die and sprout at the appointed time.
So my soul follows the path of grain:
Having descended into darkness, she will die - and she will come to life.
And you, my country, and you, its people,
You will die and come back to life, passing through this year, -
Because only one wisdom has been given to us:
All living things must 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 accurate and painfully sentimental, allows him to talk about the most subtle matters, while remaining ironic and restrained. Almost all the poems in this collection are structured in the same way: a deliberately mundane episode described - and a sudden, sharp ending that shifts the meaning. Thus, in the poem “Monkey,” an endlessly long description of a stuffy summer day, an organ grinder and a sad monkey is suddenly resolved with the line: “On that day war was declared.” This is typical of Khodasevich - with one laconic, almost telegraphic line, he can 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 life in the world, immediately, contrary to the feeling of love and compassion, the most inhuman thing that can happen begins, and insurmountable discord and disharmony are established in that world, which just for a moment seemed like a “choir 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 rifts, harmony seems lost forever) becomes the theme of the largest and, perhaps, strangest poem in the collection - “November 2” (1918). This describes the first day after the October battles of 1917 in Moscow. It talks about how the city hid. The author talks about two minor incidents: returning from acquaintances to whom he went to find out if they were alive, he sees in the semi-basement window a carpenter, in accordance with the spirit of the new era, painting a newly made coffin with red paint - apparently, for one of the fallen fighters for universal happiness. The author gazes intently at the boy, “about four years old,” who sits “among Moscow, suffering, torn to pieces and fallen,” and smiles to himself, to his secret thought, quietly ripening 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 naivety 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 “Gypsies” quenched my thirst that day.” A terrible confession, especially from the lips of Khodasevich, who always idolized Pushkin. Even the all-encompassing Pushkin does not help to contain the shock modern times. Khodasevich’s sober mind at times falls into dullness, into numbness, mechanically records events, but the soul does not respond to them in any way. This is the poem “The Old Woman” of 1919:

A light corpse, numb,
Covered with a white sheet,
In the same sleigh, without a coffin,
The policeman will take you away
Pushing people aside.
Speechless and cold-blooded
There will be one, and a couple of logs,
What did she bring to her house?
We will burn it in our oven.

In this poem, the hero is already completely integrated into the new reality: the “policeman” does not cause fear in him, and his own readiness to rob a corpse does not cause burning shame. Khodasevich's soul cries over the bloody collapse of the familiar world, over the destruction of morality and culture. But since the poet follows the “path of the grain,” that is, he accepts life as something independent of his desires, tries to see a higher meaning in everything, he does not protest or renounce God. He had not had the most flattering opinion of the world before. And he believes that in the storm that has broken out there must be a higher meaning, which Blok was also looking for when he called for “listening to the music of the revolution.” It is no coincidence that Khodasevich opens his next collection with the poem “Music” from 1920:

And the music seems to come from above.
Cello... and harps, maybe...
...And the sky

Just as tall and just as tall
Feathered angels shine in it.

Khodasevich’s hero hears this music “very clearly” when he is chopping wood (an activity so prosaic, so natural for those years, that one could hear some special music in it only after seeing in this chopping wood, in devastation and disaster some mysterious providence of God and incomprehensible logic). For symbolists, the personification of such craft has always been music, which does not explain anything logically, but overcomes chaos, and sometimes reveals meaning and proportionality 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 Pushkin’s era and not in Pushkin’s world. Khodasevich came out of symbolism. And he made his way to classicism through all the symbolic fogs, not to mention the Soviet era. All this explains his technical passion for “prose in life and in poetry,” as a counterbalance to the instability and inaccuracy of the poetic “beauties” of those times.

And chasing every verse through prose,
Dislocating every line,
I grafted a classic rose
To the Soviet wildcat.

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

And someone heavy lyre
He gives it to my hands through the wind.
And there is no plaster sky,
And the sun at sixteen candles.
On smooth black rocks
The feet are supported by Orpheus.

The image of the soul appears in this collection. Khodasevich’s path lies not through “soulfulness,” but through destruction, overcoming and transformation. The soul, the “bright Psyche”, for him is outside of true existence; in order to get closer to it, it must become a “spirit”, give birth to a spirit within itself. The difference between psychological and ontological principles is rarely more noticeable than in Khodasevich’s poems. 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
By what it contains - you?

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

And my misfortune doesn’t hurt her,
And she does not understand the groan of my passions.

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

The human poet is exhausted together with Psyche in anticipation of grace, but grace is not given for free. In this aspiration, in this struggle, man is condemned to death.

Until all the blood comes out of the pores,
Until your earthly eyes cry out -
You won't become a spirit...

With rare exceptions, death - the transformation of Psyche - is also the real death of a person. Khodasevich in some verses even calls her as liberation, and is even ready to “stab” another to help him. And he sends a wish to the girl from the Berlin tavern - “to get caught by a villain in a deserted grove in the evening.” At other moments, death does not seem like a way out to him, it is only a new and most severe test, the final temptation. But he also 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”.

Step over, jump over,
Fly over whatever you want -
But break free: like a stone from a sling,
A star that fell into the night...
I lost it myself - now look...
God knows what you're muttering to yourself,
Looking for pince-nez or keys.

The above seven lines are full of complex meanings. Here is a mockery of the everyday, new role of the poet: he is no longer Orpheus, but rather a city madman, muttering something under his breath at a 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. Finding the key to a new world, that is, understanding a new reality, is possible only by breaking out of it, overcoming its gravity.

The mature Khodasevich looks at things as if from above, at least from the outside. A hopeless stranger in this world, he does not want to fit into it. In the poem “In a Meeting” of 1921, the lyrical hero tries to fall asleep in order to again see in Petrovsky-Razumovsky (where the poet spent his childhood) “steam over the mirror of the pond” - at least in a dream to meet the bygone world.

But Khodasevich’s poems of the late 10s and early 20s are not just an escape from reality, but a direct denial of it. The conflict between life and existence, spirit and flesh takes on an unprecedented severity. As in the poem “From the Diary” of 1921:

Every sound torments my ears
And every ray is unbearable to the eyes.
The spirit began to erupt,
Like a tooth from under swollen gums.
It will cut through and throw it 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 to death -
Press the wound with your hands,
Scream and fight in your world.

Khodasevich sees things as they are. Without any illusions. It is no coincidence 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 someone like that?
Yellow-gray, half-gray
And all-knowing, like a snake?

The natural change of images - a pure child, an ardent young man and today, “yellow-gray, half-gray” - for Khodasevich is a consequence of tragic splits and uncompensated mental waste, the longing for integrity sounds in this poem as nowhere else in his poetry. “Everything that I so tenderly hate and love so sarcastically” is an important motive of “Heavy Lyre.” But “heaviness” is not the only key word in this book. There is also Mozart’s lightness of short poems, with plastic precision, the only stroke giving pictures of post-revolutionary, transparent and ghostly, collapsing Petersburg. The city is deserted. But the secret springs of the world are visible, the secret meaning of existence and, most importantly, Divine music is heard.

Oh, inert, beggarly poverty
My hopeless life!
Who should I tell how sorry I am?
Yourself and all these things?
And I start to sway
Hugging your knees,
And suddenly I start in poetry
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 most powerful.
And music, music, music
Is woven into my singing,
And narrow, narrow, narrow
A blade pierces me.

Sounds are truer than meaning - this is the manifesto of Khodasevich’s late poetry, which, however, never ceases to be rationally clear and almost always plot-driven. Nothing dark, fortune-telling, arbitrary. But Khodasevich is sure that the music of poetry is more important, more significant, and finally, more reliable than its crude one-dimensional meaning. Khodasevich’s poems during this period are orchestrated very richly, they have a lot of air, many vowels, there is a clear and light rhythm - this is how a person who “slipped into God’s abyss” can talk about himself and the world. The stylistic beauties so beloved by symbolists are not here, the words are very simple, but what a musical, what a clear and light sound! Still true to the classical tradition, Khodasevich boldly introduces neologisms and jargon into poetry. How calmly the poet speaks about unbearable, unthinkable things - and, in spite of everything, what joy there is in these lines:

Neither living nor singing is almost worthless:
We live in fragile rudeness.
The tailor sews, the carpenter builds:
The seams will fall apart and the house will collapse.
And only sometimes through this decay
Suddenly I hear with emotion
It contains a beating
A completely different existence.
So, spending life's boredom,
Lovingly the woman puts
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 around the same time. The worst thing is that the “pregnancy” of the first twenty turbulent years of the terrible century was resolved not by a bright future, but by a bloody catastrophe, followed by the years of the NEP - the prosperity of traders. Khodasevich realized this before many:

Enough! No need for beauty!
The vile world is not worth singing...
And there is no need for a revolution!
Her scattered army
One is crowned with an award,
One freedom - to trade.
In vain he prophesies in the square
Harmony hungry son:
He doesn't want good news
Prosperous citizen..."

Then Khodasevich draws a conclusion about his fundamental disagreement with the mob:

I love people, I love nature,
But I don't like to go for walks
And I know for sure that the people
My creations cannot be understood.

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

Cycle “European Night”

Despite this, in the emigrant environment Khodasevich for a long time I felt as much of a stranger as I did in my abandoned homeland. This is what he said about emigrant poetry: “The current situation of poetry is difficult. Of course, poetry is delight. Here we have little delight, because there is no action. Young emigrant poetry keeps complaining about boredom - this is because she is not at home, she lives in a foreign place, she finds herself outside of space - and therefore outside of time. The task of emigrant poetry is, in appearance, very thankless, because it seems conservative. The Bolsheviks strive to destroy the spiritual order inherent in Russian literature. The task of emigrant literature is to preserve this system. This task is as literary as it is political. To demand that emigrant poets write poems on political topics is, of course, nonsense. But it must demand that their creativity has Russian face. Non-Russian poetry does not and will not have a place either in Russian literature or in the future Russia itself. The role of emigrant literature is to connect the past with the future. It is necessary for our poetic past to become our present and, in a new form, our future.”

The theme of the “twilight of Europe,” which survived the collapse of a civilization that had been created over centuries, and after this the aggression of vulgarity and impersonality, dominates Khodasevich’s poetry of the emigrant period. The poems of “European Night” are painted in gloomy tones; they are dominated not even by prose, but by the bottom and underground of life. Khodasevich tries to penetrate into “someone else’s life,” the life of the “little man” of Europe, but a blank wall of misunderstanding, symbolizing not the social, but the general meaninglessness of life, rejects the poet. “European Night” is the experience of breathing in an airless space, poems written almost without taking into account the audience, response, or co-creation. This was all the more unbearable for Khodasevich because 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 his glory, 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 has been razed?”). However, even before leaving he wrote:

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

(we were talking 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 its vibrant literary environment - there was music. There was no music here. Night reigned in Europe. The vulgarity, disappointment and despair were even more obvious. If in Russia it might have seemed for some time that “the sky is pregnant with the future,” then in Europe there was no hope - complete darkness, in which speech sounds without response, for itself.

Khodasevich's muse sympathizes with all the unfortunate, disadvantaged, doomed - he himself is one of them. There are more and more cripples and beggars in his poems. Although in the most important way they are not too different from prosperous and prosperous Europeans: everyone here is doomed, everything is doomed. What difference does it make whether the injury that struck others was spiritual or physical?

It's impossible for me to be myself
I want to go crazy
When with a pregnant wife
The armless man goes to the cinema.
Why your invisible age
Sucks in such inequality
A good-natured, meek man
With an empty sleeve?

There is much more sympathy in these lines than hatred.

Feeling guilty before the whole world, Khodasevich’s lyrical hero does not for a minute give up his gift, which elevates and humiliates him at the same time.

Happy is he who falls headfirst:
The world for him, at least for a moment, is different.

The poet pays for his “soaring” in the same way as a suicide who throws himself head down from a window - with his life.

In 1923, Khodasevich wrote the poem “I get up relaxed from bed...” - about how “prickly radio rays” fly through his consciousness all night; in the chaos of dark visions he catches a harbinger of death, a pan-European, and perhaps a world catastrophe. But those who are threatened by this catastrophe themselves do not know what a dead end their lives are heading towards:

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

Addresses in Petrograd

1920-1921 - DISK - 25th October Avenue, 15;
1922 - apartment building of E. K. Barsova - Kronverksky Avenue, 23.

Addresses in Moscow

Kamergersky Lane, 6/5 - the house where V. F. Khodasevich was born

Bibliography

collection "Youth". The first book of poems. - M.: Grif Publishing House, 1908.
collection “Happy House”, 1914.
collection “From Jewish Poets”, 1918.
collection “The Path of Grain”, 1920.
collection "Heavy Lyre". The fourth book of poems 1920-1922. - M., Petrograd: State Publishing House. - 1922. - 60 p.
cycle “European Night”, 1927.
biography "Derzhavin", 1931.
collection of articles “About Pushkin”, 1937.
book of memoirs “Necropolis”, 1939.

Khodasevich V. Derzhavin. - M.: Book, 1988. - 384 p. (Writers about writers) Circulation 200,000 copies. ISBN 5-212-00073-4
Khodasevich V. Poems. - L.: Sov. writer, 1989. - 464 p. (Poet's Library, Large Series, Third Edition) Circulation 100,000 copies. ISBN 5-265-00954-X
Khodasevich V. The oscillating tripod: Favorites. - M.: Soviet writer, 1991.
Khodasevich V. Collected works in 4 volumes - M.: Soglasie, 1996-1997.
Khodasevich V. Necropolis. - M.: Vagrius, 2001. - 244 p. ISBN 5-264-00160-X
Khodasevich V. Poems. - M., 2003. - ??? With. (Poet's Library, Small Series)

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 felt his calling early, choosing literature as the main occupation of his 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 in the senior class Viktor Hoffman studied, who greatly influenced Khodasevich’s worldview.
After graduating from high school in 1904, Khodasevich entered first the Faculty of Law at Moscow University, then the Faculty of History and Philology. Khodasevich began publishing in 1905, at the same time he married Marina Erastovna Ryndina. The marriage was unhappy - at the end of 1907 they separated. Some of the poems from Khodasevich’s first book of poems, “Youth” (1908), are dedicated specifically to his relationship with Marina Ryndina.
The collections “Youth” (1908) and the later “Happy House” (1914) were well received by readers and critics. The clarity of the verse, the purity of the language, the accuracy in the transmission of thought distinguished Khodasevich from a number of new poetic names and determined his special place in Russian poetry. In the six years that passed from writing “Youth” to “Happy House,” Khodasevich became a professional writer, earning a living from translations, reviews, feuilletons, etc. In 1914, Khodasevich’s first work about Pushkin (“Pushkin’s First Step”) was published, which opened a whole series of his “Pushkiniana”. Khodasevich studied 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 Path of Grain” was published with the title poem of the same name, which contains the following lines about the year 1917: “And you, my country, and you, its people, // You will die and come to life, having passed through this year " This book put Khodasevich among the most significant poets of his time.
In 1922, a collection of Khodasevich’s poems, “Heavy Lyre,” was published, which became the last one published in Russia. On June 22 of the same year, Khodasevich, together with the poetess Nina Berberova, left Russia and arrived in Berlin through Riga. Abroad, Khodasevich collaborated for some time with M. Gorky, who invited him to jointly edit the magazine Beseda.
In 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova moved to Paris, where two years later Khodasevich released a cycle of poems, “European Night.” After this, the poet wrote less and less poetry, paying more attention to criticism. He lived a difficult life, was in need, was sick a lot, but worked hard and fruitfully. Increasingly, he acted as a prose writer, literary critic and memoirist (“Derzhavin. Biography” (1931), “About Pushkin” and “Necropolis. Memoirs” (1939)).
In recent years, Khodasevich published reviews, articles, and essays in newspapers and magazines 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, Vladislav Felitsianovich - poet (28.5. 1886, Moscow - 14.6.1939, Billancourt, near Paris). Born into the family of a Polish artist, his mother was Jewish. Higher education Khodasevich received it in Moscow. His first collections of poetry Youth(1908) and Happy House(1914) attracted the attention of Nikolai Gumilyov, mainly from the composition side. The work of Khodasevich, who was not affiliated with either the Symbolists or the Acmeists, did not find a wide response.

Vladislav Khodasevich. Documentary

He presented critical works. In 1918-19 he taught in Moscow in a studio Proletkulta. 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 Jewish poetry in his own translations and published a small but significant collection of his poems Heavy lyre(1923). Then he moved to Paris. The only collection of poems by Khodasevich published here The meeting became silent in (1927) includes his final selection of 26 poems, written between 1922 and 1926 and collected under the title European night. In 1927, Khodasevich became the leading literary critic of the magazine “Vozrozhdenie” and, with his characteristic skeptical prudence, entered into significant polemics with other emigrant 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 the German occupation, when Khodasevich’s second wife (from 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 were circulated in Samizdate.

Khodasevich is a significant poet who wrote in the style of classical Pushkin training. “He is one of the most stingy and strict poets in Russian literature” (N. Struve). Some of his works speak of the need and hunger of the revolutionary years, but in general he does not respond directly to experiences and events in the world. Peace for him means constraint, alienation, a “quiet hell” that torments an 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