Gertsyk Adelaida Kazimirovna (married Zhukovskaya) (02/16/1874-06/25/1925), poet, prose writer, translator. Born in the city of Alexandrov, Moscow province. in the family of a railway engineer who came from a Russified Polish noble family. She spent her childhood in Aleksandrov, and from 1898 she lived in Moscow and Sudak, where the Gertsyk family bought a house. She grew up as an introverted, thoughtful child, prone to introspection, and created in her imagination her own fantasy world. Received a multilateral humanitarian education. In her youth she made several trips to Western Europe.
The name Gertsyk appeared in print at the very beginning of the century as a translator of the works of J. Ruskin, F. Nietzsche and the author of literary critical and memoir essays (“The Religion of Beauty” about J. Ruskin, 1902, etc.), published in various magazines. Since 1905, Gertsyk collaborated as an author of reviews in the Symbolist magazine “Scales” under the pseudonym. Sirin.
In 1907 she married D.E. Zhukovsky, a scientist, publisher, and translator of philosophical literature. Many writers and philosophers gathered in Gertsyk’s apartment; Gertsyk’s close friends were S. Bulgakov, M. Voloshin, Vyach. Ivanov, M. Tsvetaeva.
The first significant publication of Gertsyk’s poems was the “Golden Key” cycle in the Symbolist almanac “Flower Garden Or. Koshnitsa first" (St. Petersburg, 1907). The early poems are characterized by states of languor, spiritual search, loneliness (“I am only a sister to all living things”). The poems are full of religious and philosophical symbolism, but in form they are close to the poetics of women's folklore: lamentations, lamentations, songs. Reality is mythologized, the poet is immersed in the world of signs and symbols, full of internal meaning. Refined World lyrical heroine, the melodiousness of Gertsyk’s poetry was noted by Balmont, Voloshin, Bryusov, Vyach. Ivanov. Best Poems early period included in Gertsyk’s only book “Poems” (1910).
The period 1910-17, when Gertsyk published in the magazine “Northern Notes”, “Almanac of the Muses”, etc., was characterized by attempts to find unity with existence through aesthetic pathos. At the same time, Gertsyk’s lyrics become more substantive (“Perhaps I am now approaching my homeland, / Listening to legends, / Recognizing shrines?” (“I have no homeland...”, 1912). The theme of poetry as service to the Creator arises (“I have no homeland...”, 1912). Bless me to serve you with words...”, 1911), of tireless vigilance of spirit. Gertsyk’s long religious quest leads her to the Orthodox Church.
Gertsyk's pre-revolutionary prose - essays on the formation of a child's personality, essays about a number of writers - is autobiographical and deeply psychological ("From the world of children's games", 1906; "About what did not happen", 1911, etc.).
Years of revolution and civil war Gertsyk spends time in Crimea, experiencing the Red Terror, arrests and executions of loved ones, and famine that almost claimed the lives of children. In Jan. 1921 Gertsyk was arrested and spent several weeks in a basement prison in Sudak, where she created a cycle of poems “Basement”. Later, in 1924-25, she wrote “Basement Sketches” (partially published by B.K. Zaitsev in the Riga magazine “Chimes.” 1926. No. 25-27).
The last period is the most important for internal development and for Gertsyk’s poetry, when her best poems were created. “In essence, she has always been a poet-saint. Invisible by herself, with a lack of pronunciation, a lack of hearing, A. Gertsyk was - great modesty, purity and spiritual depth,” wrote B.K. Zaitsev (“The Shining Path”). S. N. Bulgakov recalled that Gertsyk was filled with inner light, which, due to suffering, only became brighter and purer. This inner light Gertsyk illuminates both poetry and prose of the last period.
The theme of “Basement Sketches” is the borderline state of people on the verge of death, when temporary, earthly desires and worries go away, and the Truth of the Gospel is revealed to a person. By saying goodbye to each other on earth, people become “brothers in eternity.” Tragic scenes designed in a strict, restrained style. Everything that happens prompts the author to think: “Are we relying too much on ourselves? Aren’t we too rarely turning our thoughts to the invisible, timeless power?” (essay “Todesreif” (ready to die)).
The same motives of life on the verge of death, premonitions of an imminent transition to another world, are also heard in Gertsyk’s poetry of these years, which can be described as rare for the 20th century. "Christian lyrics". The path of the Poet, following Pushkin’s “Prophet,” is interpreted as following God’s call: “Go forward without lighting the lamp, / So that every day through the centuries does not fade!” (Sonnets, 1919). The experience of guilt, melancholy, despair are resolved in the sweetness of sacrifice to Christ. In a world where it has become “deserted and harsh,” the belief that “there is no death” is growing stronger (“What a joy it is to remove the shackles...”, 1924-25). Suffering elevated and purified the soul of the poetess. Poems from this period “are religious hymns. This is a great acceptance of all disasters and suffering, the greatest affirmation of humility and love for God” (B. Zaitsev. The Bright Path).
A. Lyubomudrov
Materials used Great Encyclopedia Russian people.
Gertsyk Adelaida Kazimirovna was born into the family of a railway engineer, a descendant of an impoverished noble family, in which Polish-Lithuanian and German-Swedish roots were intertwined. My father was a railway engineer, the head of the section of the Moscow-Yaroslavl railway under construction railway and due to the nature of his work, the family often moved from place to place. Adelaide lost her mother early and grew up under the guidance of teachers, received an excellent home education, knew five well foreign languages, including Italian and Polish. Adelaide’s education ended with a gymnasium in Moscow and was supplemented in the future self-study philosophy, history of art and literature.
She began publishing in 1899 as a translator and author of short literary critical and memoir essays, in particular about J. Ruskin; Gertsyk published a translation of his book “Walking in Florence: Notes on Christian Art” in 1901. She is also known for her translations (together with her sister) of the works of F. Nietzsche: “Twilight of the Gods” (1900), “Untimely Thoughts” (1905) and his poems . Soil for lyric poems Gertsyk of that time became her affair with A. M. Bobrishchev-Pushkin - a lawyer and poet, a man much older than Adelaide Gertsyk, married to another woman. Love for him greatly influenced her future creative development. In 1903, in Germany, Bobrishchev-Pushkin died. Having suffered a severe shock in connection with this, A. Gertsyk lost her hearing to a significant extent.
Adelaide Gertsyk appeared in print as a translator and author of literary critical essays: since 1904, she collaborated with the symbolist magazine “Scales”, publishing literature reviews and reviews of new books. In 1907, in the symbolist almanac “Flower Garden Or. Koshnitsa first” the first publication of Gertsyk’s poems took place. Subsequently, these poems were reprinted in the only lifetime collection “Poems,” published in 1910. Gertsyk’s poetry was influenced by the works of mystical philosophers (especially Francis of Assisi), the idea of “Eternal Femininity,” Maeterlinck’s aesthetics, as well as the idea of conciliarity, which brings the poetess closer to .
In 1908, Gertsyk married D. E. Zhukovsky, a scientist, publisher, translator of philosophical literature; actively helped him in the publication of the journal “Questions of Philosophy”. He writes a lot of poetry and prose and is published in periodicals. In 1909, their first-born Daniel appeared in Freiburg (their second son Nikita was born in 1913)
Adelaide Gertsyk met the revolution in Sudak, where she experienced not only hunger and poverty, but also imprisonment, which was later described to her in the “Basement Sketches” series.
June 25, 1925 Adelaide Gertsyk died in Sudak. She was buried there, but the poetess’s grave has not survived.
In winter Moscow 1911, in the apartment of the publisher Dm. Zhukovsky in Krechetnikovsky Lane there was a meeting of three poets who had just published their first collections: Voloshin, Tsvetaeva and Adelaide Gertsyk. Maximilian Voloshin was known in Moscow as a discoverer of talent and, with the enthusiasm of an addicted person, he immediately brought 18-year-old Marina Tsvetaeva to meet the hostess and poetess Adelaida Kazimirovna Gertsyk-Zhukovskaya.
Marina later recalled this meeting: “Max (Voloshin) described her to me: deaf, ugly, middle-aged, irresistible: She loves poetry, is waiting for me to come to her. She came and saw - only irresistible. We became passionate friends.” Adelaide Kazimirovna was then about thirty-five years old. The concept of age is too arbitrary: for us, thirty-five is the age of prime, but at the beginning of the 20th century the concepts were different. Or maybe that’s what Marina judged with the maximalism of her eighteenth birthday, leaving, however, the epithet: “irresistible.”
For Tsvetaeva, every word meant a lot. What did she want to say with this epithet about Adelaide Gertsyk-Zhukovskaya, whose name is almost forgotten in the world of poetry? Let's try to guess:
Adelaida Kazimirovna Gertsyk was born in January 1874 (date of birth is not established) in the city of Alexandrov, Moscow province, in the family of a railway engineer, a descendant of the impoverished Polish noble family of Kazimir Gertsyk. Ada and her sister Evgenia lost their mother early, grew up under the guidance of teachers and a governess, but their home education was serious - only the girls knew five languages, among them Italian and Polish.
According to the memoirs of Evgenia Kazimirovna, Ada grew up as a thoughtful, reserved child and showed great persistence in learning. The poet and populist M.A. prepared her to enter the Moscow noble boarding school. Karlin, who instilled in her a taste for writing. The teacher and student sat for hours in classroom, each writing his own. Already in childhood, the main character traits of Adelaide appeared: thoughtfulness, seriousness, the ability and ability to speak with everyone and empathy for the grief of others as if it were your own.
The poetess herself, prone to introspection, later wrote in her articles on child psychology (“From the world of children’s games.” Children's world" and others published in various magazines of that time - "Russian School", "Northern Notes"), raised the question of what role his childhood games play in the formation of a person, how character and individuality can manifest themselves in this. And she believed that games and the entire structure of childhood is the fundamental material of character, the “ovary of the future” of a person. last year life, there are lines:
Frolicking, they hurry, - push - and out of the vessel
Everything poured out: And the mind at the same time:
But everything they touch is a miracle -
Everything turns into wine.
It plays, wanders with them,
They get drunk and we get drunk:
And everything becomes paler, more and more elusive
Traces of spilled wisdom
"Children" 1925 Crimea.
The name of Adelaide Gertsyk appeared in periodicals at the very beginning of the century as a translator and author of short literary critical and memoir essays published in thick and serious magazines. The very first publication was an essay about J. Ruskin “The Religion of Beauty”, published in the Russian Library magazine "in 1899. In 1901, her translation of Ruskin's book "Walks in Florence. Notes on Christian Art" was published.
Adelaida Kazimirovna is also known as a translator (together with her sister) of Nietzsche’s most popular works in Russia: “Twilight of the Gods” and “Untimely Thoughts” (1900-1905). She also translated Nietzsche’s poems into Russian, which was noted by both critics and the public. Since 1905, Adelaida Kazimirovna collaborated with Valery Bryusov’s magazine “Scales”. Her publications and reviews in the “New Books” section appeared under the pseudonym V Sirin, thus famous - Nabokov’s. What kind of crossings of destinies do not happen in literary world!
The poetess's first significant poetic publication appeared in 1907 in the large Symbolist almanac "Flower garden Or. Koshnitsa first." and met with an enthusiastic response among symbolist poets, and not only others. The poetess was called half-jokingly - half-seriously: “a sibyl, a prophetess, a prophetess - there were so many mystical - fairy-tale motifs, predictions, premonitions in the poems. The tragedy of a lonely, searching soul, lost in the open-heartedness and skepticism of the world, subtlety lyrical descriptions, the rhythm of Gertsyk’s poetry, all this was noted in reviews and responses to the publication of her poems and the release of the first (and only!) book “Poems of 1910” (106 pages). Vyacheslav Ivanov wrote in his sonnet, characterizing the work of A. Gertsyk, giving him psychological assessment:
So you glide, alien to the joy of the maidens,
Locked in love and anger on your lips,
Deaf and mute and hidden shadow.
Deep and sleepless springs,
Listening with your heart to the roar and singing,
To suddenly burst into tears about the captivity of earthly shackles.
V. Ivanov. Sonnet.
In 1908, Adelaide Gertsyk married Dmitry Evgenievich Zhukovsky, a scientist, publisher, and translator of philosophical literature. Since 1905, Dmitry Zhukovsky published the magazine “Questions of Life” in St. Petersburg, the editors of which collaborated: N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, Dm. Merezhkovsky, Vyach. Ivanov, A, Blok, A Bely, F. Sologub. The main work of Dmitry Zhukovsky's life is as a biologist by training! - was a publication of philosophical literature. He published more than 20 books, including "History new philosophy" Kuno Fischer, the works of Nietzsche, articles by Vladimir Solovyov.. Adelaida Kazimirovna helped him actively and a lot: with translations, proofreading, selection of material: And their house in Moscow, in Krechetnikovsky Lane, became famous in the early 1910s for literary and philosophical salon
Adelaida Kazimirovna continued to write poetry, hiding them in the table, and raised two sons:
In appearance ordinary life socialite Moscow lady with receptions, breakfasts, music playing, evening conversations in the living room with lit candles. She knitted openwork scarves that looked like a necklace or a thin net, listened to the conversations of her guests, rarely spoke herself, because deafness was developing more and more, about which she was a little embarrassed . There was, perhaps, nothing special about her. Only the eyes - huge, almost always sad, glittered in the uncertain light of the candles, betraying the intensity of the inner, spiritual work, which did not stop for a minute.
In 1925, Sergei Nikolavich Bulgakov, having learned about the death of Adelaide Kazimirovna, wrote the following lines to her sister Evgenia from exile in Paris:
“For a long time, long ago, back in Moscow, I had a feeling about her that she did not know sin, stood not above it, but somehow outside it. And this was her strength, wisdom, charm, gentleness, inspiration. Where can I find words to thank her for everything she gave me during these for many years- sympathy, understanding, inspiration and not only for me, but for everyone I came into contact with?! I don’t even know, I can’t imagine that there were blind people who didn’t notice her, but to notice her meant to love her, to be illuminated by her light...
I saw her in last time in Simferopol, in the twentieth year. She changed a lot, grew old, but her inner light remained the same, only it shone even purer and brighter. She accompanied me to the post office, I somehow knew that I was seeing her for the last time, that in I won't see you in this world. Her letters were always joy, consolation, light. The more the depths of my heart were revealed to me along my path, the more radiant her image became. I loved everything about her: her voice and deafness, her look, her special diction. First of all, I loved her work most of all, then she herself was needed and important to me with the marvelous inexhaustible creativity of life, the genius of her heart...” (S.N. Bulgakov From a letter to Evg. Gertsyk, 1925. Paris.)
It was this genius of the heart, inner light, inexhaustible thirst for life and “creativity of life” that gave Adelaide Gertsyk the strength to survive during the difficult years of the revolution and save her family from starvation. They lived at that time in Crimea, in the city of Sudak. Little is known about how and what. Adelaida Kazimirovna’s husband, a professor at Simferopol University, lost his job and was among those dispossessed due to his origin, like the whole family. A small estate was confiscated or requisitioned new government. In 1921-22, Adelaida Kazimirovna was arrested and spent several months in the basement prison of the city of Sudak. Then she will describe these months in her famous " Basement Essays", published posthumously in the Riga magazine "Perezvony" in 1926. In Russia, these essays became known only in 1991, and only in fragments.
What are they about?: About executions, the cold of death, obscurity, backbreaking work, losses and fears. Yes, it seems about this: But also about many other things. About what, in addition to physical essence suffering is also its highest spiritual essence, which reveals to the heart the true value of life, existence, pain, creativity:
“After all, all our suffering and desires and everything that we endure here are all within the framework of time.. Throw it away and everything disappears. And you see this, that, that which time obscured.. Eternity. The Spirit.. of God.” (From essay "Sentenced to Death")
B Pasternak, who became acquainted with the work of Adelaide Kazimirovna Gertsyk in the thirties, said: Of course, poetic experience she had it before, but if it had been mixed with the bitterness of that life that came late, before death, then all this would have elevated her to God knows where "B Pasternak. (From a conversation with the son of A. Gertsyk - Daniil Zhukovsky, author of extensive, hitherto unpublished memoirs.)
Certainly. God always knows where to exalt his chosen ones. It’s just that at the place of their earthly peace sometimes there remains neither a cross, nor a stone, nor an inscription.
“And death came - and did not recognize death,” Voloshin bitterly wrote in a poem in memory of A. Gertsyk. In this way she was akin to Marina Tsvetaeva, who had once been fascinated by her: deaf, middle-aged, irresistible. She left us her poems in which: “thoughts, whispers, visions, // they learn again that there is no death.”
And one more verse from the miraculously surviving verses:
How do I know if I'll get an answer?
Will these letters be read?
But it’s sweet to me before dawn
Wake up native names.
Simferopol 1924 -25
The letters have been read. This means that the answer has been received. It doesn’t matter that he went to the heights of the stars.
Or maybe in the Crimean winds that blow on the Sudgei plains as freely as in the expanses of the sea. They blow, as if whispering something... Maybe lines of poetry?
P.S. Adelaida Kazimirovna Gertsyk Zhukovskaya died on June 25, 1925 (new style) in Sudak, Crimea. The burial site has not survived.
Most of Adelaide Gertsyk-Zhukovskaya's works are unknown and unpublished to this day. The only source of information about Gertsyk is “Dictionary of Russian Writers before 1917, volume 1. and material from the magazine “Our Heritage” © 4. 1991 “The color of the soul was hot” Publication by T.N. Zhukovskaya.
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Adelaida Kazimirovna Gertsyk (married Zhukovskaya; February 16, 1874, Alexandrov, Vladimir province - June 25, 1925, Sudak, Crimea) - Russian poetess, prose writer, translator.
She was born into the family of a railway engineer, a descendant of an impoverished Polish noble family. She grew up and was raised together with her younger sister Evgenia. The girls lost their mother early, grew up under the guidance of teachers, received an excellent education at home, and knew five foreign languages well, including Italian and Polish. Adelaide's education ended at the gymnasium and was further supplemented by independent study of philosophy, history of art and literature.
I just fell asleep on the coastal sand,
I haven't forgotten, I haven't forgotten anything,
In the sparkling heights and in the gentle surf
I hear all those things, all about those things that have passed.
Gertsyk Adelaida Kazimirovna
She began publishing in 1899 as a translator and author of short literary critical and memoir essays, in particular about J. Ruskin; Gertsyk published a translation of his book “Walking in Florence: Notes on Christian Art” in 1901. She is also known for her translations (together with her sister) of the works of F. Nietzsche: “Twilight of the Gods” (1900), “Untimely Thoughts” (1905) and his poems . Since 1904 he has collaborated with Valery Bryusov’s symbolist magazine “Scales”, publishing literary reviews and reviews of new books.
The first publication of poems was in the symbolist almanac “Flower Garden Or. Koshnitsa first" (1907). The poems, which were subsequently included in Gertsyk’s only collection, “Poems” (1910), met with an enthusiastic response in the Symbolist environment and were awarded highly appreciated Vyach. Ivanov, who noted the closeness of Adelaide Gertsyk’s poetry to folklore, “cries and lamentations, whispers and slander, love spells and lullabies... We are talking about atavistically surviving lyrical energy.” Signs of ancient, forgotten rituals, divination, and sacraments performed in the poems of the collection serve as a backdrop for the expression of the heroine’s lyrical feelings, although in this “spontaneous” lyrics traces of folklore stylization, characteristic of Russian symbolism, are obvious.
In 1908 she married D. E. Zhukovsky, a scientist, publisher, translator of philosophical literature; actively helped him in the publication of the journal “Questions of Philosophy”. He writes a lot of poetry and prose and is published in periodicals.
Adelaide Gertsyk met the revolution in Sudak, where she experienced not only hunger and poverty, but also imprisonment, which was later described to her in the “Basement Sketches” series.
Books appeared on my night table- The books of Thomas à Kempis “On the Imitation of Christ” (St. Petersburg, 1898) are listed; John Chrysostom “Invisible Warfare” (St. Petersburg, 1898); M. Collins “Light on the Path” (Kaluga, 1905). Thomas a à Kempis (c. 1380–1471) - religious thinker close to the German-Dutch pre-Reformation currents of European thought; John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) - one of the fathers of Eastern christian church; Mabel Collins - English theosophical writer.
...strange strong woman - according to the description, this could be Sofya Vladimirovna Gerye (about her, see p. 525).
I have a friend... in my head I have long conversations with him- This mental dialogue could have happened to the theologian, future priest S. N. Bulgakov.
Eckhart Johann Meister (c. 1260–1327) - German thinker, representative of philosophical mysticism late Middle Ages in Europe.
St. Teresa- Teresa de Avila.
...poems for her- see present. ed. poem “Oh, sisters, turn your eyes to the right...” (1912).
The essays were written in the last year of the poetess’s life, in the winter of 1924–1925, four years after A. Gertsyk served three weeks (January 9–21, 1921) in a Bolshevik basement prison in Sudak.
Doctor historical sciences, TNU professor S. B. Filimonov, studying the cases of those repressed in the KGB archives of Simferopol, published interrogation reports and established prototypes of some of the characters in “Basement Sketches.” See: Filimonov S.B. Secrets of judicial investigation cases. Simferopol, Tavria-Plus, 2000.
...Count K.- Kapnist Rostislav Rostislavovich (1875–1921), count, owner of land in Sudak, agronomist by training. R.R. Kapnist was in the basement from December 23, 1920, and was shot on January 13, 1921.
Mother and daughter
Emma Fedorovna Narvut. Tanya- the prototypes of the heroes of this essay were the residents of Sudak Kryzhanovsky: Emilia Nikolaevna, a 63-year-old widow, and her daughter Olga Alekseevna. The latter’s friend Nina Anatolyevna Romanovskaya, the granddaughter of the commandant of the Sudak fortress, went into exile in February 1920.
APPLICATION
Vyacheslav Ivanov. "Is it the rustling of snakes, or the whisper of the Sibyl..."
For the first time: Flower garden Or.
Maximilian Voloshin. “I mixed up the solitaire cards...”
Dating of the poem in M. Voloshin’s collection “Book One. Years of wandering. Poems 1900–1910" (M., 1910) is inaccurate, because in a letter to A.M. Petrova on December 17 (4), 1908, he writes: “Here are a few stanzas that I wrote a month ago.” A. Gertsyk, in one of his letters to Voloshin, recalls “an autumn day in Versailles”; this circumstance indirectly confirms the dating: autumn 1908. Ile de France- the hereditary possession of the Capetians, which became the basis and center of the French state; province including Paris. Grail- in medieval Western European legends - a sacred vessel (a cup with the blood of Christ). Monsalvat -“mountain of salvation” in the Breton cycle of legends with a castle where the Holy Grail is kept. Meganom - cape between Sudak and Koktebel.
Polyxena Solovyova. The power of rain
For the first time: P. Solovyova. Evening. St. Petersburg, 1914. The poet and publisher Polixena Sergeevna Solovyova (1867–1924) usually lived in the Crimea, in Koktebel, in the summer, and visited the Gertsyks in Sudak.
Sofia Parnok. “Without a staff and a wanderer’s knapsack...”
The poem was included in Sofia Parnok’s collection “Music” (M., 1926). A. Gertsyk published a review of S. Parnok’s first collection “Poems” (St. Petersburg, 1916) in “Northern Notes” (1916, no. 2, pp. 226–229). Parnok and the Gertsyk sisters were more closely connected by the post-revolutionary years (1917–1921) in Sudak. See letters from S. Parnok to E.K. Gertsyk (De visu, 1994, 5/6, pp. 11–28).
Maximilian Voloshin. Adelaide Gertsyk
The poem was written in February 1929 at the request of E. K. Gertsyk to write “a few lines” for A. Gertsyk’s evening in Paris. “It seems to me that she is similar, and this is what I wanted most,” wrote Voloshin. Having received the poem, E. K. Gertsyk wrote on March 23, 1929: “The very first (4) lines in the poems about Hell sounded alien to me, not about her, but then there is such an internal growth that the entire second part of the verse (especially from here: blind ...) as a single, truly lyrical takeoff. ... this is a revelation about her and precisely what you guessed with some kind of lyrical impulse akin to her.” On May 8, 1929, Voloshin wrote to her in response to criticism: “Thank you for all the words you say about my poems in memory of Hell. Kaz. But let me disagree with you on two points. The first lines - about truth - are necessary. This is the first thing that usually hits Hell. Kaz. At least in the way she conveyed to others what she heard. She saw and heard so much differently that this was the first impression of her unusual creature. But for you, of course, it was not there. “Parquets Hall” - necessary artistically as a contrast with last stanzas. And in the end, in fact (as far as I remember your Moscow apartments different eras) is not so wrong. This antithesis of the situation is needed.”
Maximilian Voloshin. Revelations of children's games
The article (“Golden Fleece”, 1907, no. 11–12, pp. 68–75) is a response to the publication of A. Gertsyk’s essay “From the world of children’s games.” Voloshin quotes from the article by A. Gertsyk with some inaccuracies; A. Gertsyk writes to him: “We all liked your article “Revelations in Children's Games” very much; It proves to me once again your ability to “create legends” and transform a dull stone into a transparent diamond.” Voloshin’s thoughts on the importance of children’s games in raising a child and the influence of these games on the rest of his life echo the article by R. Steiner “Raising a child with esoteric point vision" ("Bulletin of Theosophy", 1908, books 9–10).
Later Voloshin turned to poetic creativity A. Gertsyk in his articles: in the article “WOMAN’S POETRY” the poetry of A. Gertsyk with its “Sibylline whispers, rustling of steppe grasses and ancient laments” is mentioned (“Morning of Russia”, 1910, December 11, No. 323). And in the article “VOICES OF POETS”: “The voice is the most captivating and most elusive thing in a person. The voice is the inner cast of the soul. Each soul has its own basic tone, and each voice has its own basic intonation. The elusiveness of this intonation, the impossibility of grasping it, fixing it, describing it constitute the charm of the voice...<…>whispers, rustles and autumn silks of Adelaide Gertsyk...” (“Speech”, 1917, June 4, No. 129).
Caliban- a character in Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". An excerpt from Kenneth Grahame’s book “The Golden Age” (St. Petersburg, 1898) is quoted here.
...Flaubert's Anthony - This refers to the philosophical drama of G. Flaubert “The Temptation of Saint Anthony”.
"Bhavat Gita" - ancient Indian philosophical poem. At that time there was no Russian translation of the poem; Voloshin was familiar with its French translation.
"If you don't become like children..."- “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Gospel of Matthew, XVIII, 3).
“If you say to the mountain with faith: come to me...”- Inaccurate quotation from the Gospel of Matthew, XVII, 20.
Konstantin Balmont. Sybil
The article was published in the magazine “Golden Fleece”, 1909, No. 10. Probably, the meeting of K. Balmont with A. Gertsyk at the beginning of 1909 in Paris is described. On February 4, 1909, A. Gertsyk wrote to her sister: “I saw Balmont 3 times, and I think that we would have gotten along if not for my condition (I avoided all dates) and not for his drinking. He disappeared twice for several days and was brought in unconscious. The last difficult impression of Paris was when I met him in the evening on the street and before my eyes a car almost crushed him” (Sisters Gertsyk. Letters. St. Petersburg, Inapress, 2002, p. 185).
