Nadezhda Mandelstam are old friends. Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva

Mandelstam was a St. Petersburger, he didn’t know Moscow, and he didn’t like the narrow streets lined with squat mansions painted yellow, pink and light green - not a city, but some kind of cream cake...

Here is Arbat, and here is Borisoglebsky Lane... The cab driver stopped at a rather strange building at number 6: an apartment building with four apartments pretended to be a mansion. Mandelstam paid the cab driver, entered the front door, climbed the steps, holding a small, shabby suitcase in his hands and realizing that it all looked stupid. Straight from the station he goes to an unfamiliar married lady with whom he has nothing in common. What nonsense, of course she forgot about him... When the doorbell rang, a maid in a white lace apron answered him.

He bowed:

Poet Osip Mandelstam. St. Petersburg acquaintance of Maria Ivanovna...

In a small living room, the excited poet sits awkwardly on a hard sofa. The paneled door opens, and she appears - blue-eyed and golden-haired, in a dark gold long dress - this can be seen in ancient portraits, but not in the current 1916. She has a turquoise bracelet on her hand, and she smiles the same way she did in Koktebel when they first met. Then the heat was stifling, they collided at the garden gate - he politely stepped aside, she walked past without turning her head. Beautiful, tanned and alien... He thought that he could fall in love with such a woman. And it seemed like he was enchanted: later they met in St. Petersburg, they were finally introduced to each other - that’s where everything happened...

Getting up and bowing, he thought that nothing had actually happened: in St. Petersburg they talked a lot, read their poems to each other - and the fact that he was dreaming of Marina did not concern anyone but him... He had no reason go to Moscow.

Mandelstam pecked the hand extended for a kiss and heard that he was welcome and the mistress of the house often thought about him. Then he beamed: his eyes, half-closed with heavy eyelids, opened, and a blush appeared on his sunken cheeks. They went into the dining room, a coffee pot appeared, and they brought in still warm buns, butter and jam. Everything was fresh and tasty, he ate with gusto, and now Moscow no longer seemed terrible. Finishing the second bun, Mandelstam said that he had never seen such an interesting house - it looked like a box with a secret.

Tsvetaeva nodded: “Yes, that’s true. That's why we moved here. The apartment is truly extraordinary. Have you noticed how many floors there are?”

Well, of course. Your house has two floors.

It seems so if you look at it from the street. The apartment is three-story - here is the first secret of our box. But there are others... I am in love with this house and will not leave here.

Tsvetaeva and her husband Sergei Efron moved to Borisoglebsky Lane two years ago, in 1914. She immediately liked the house: one of the rooms had access to a flat roof, another had a window in the ceiling, and there were also interesting narrow staircases. Sergei wanted to look for a larger apartment, in a modern apartment building: they could afford a lot.

Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva first met in the summer of 1915 in Koktebel. At the beginning of 1916, this acquaintance was renewed - during the days of Tsvetaeva’s arrival in St. Petersburg, or rather, it was then that a real acquaintance took place, a need for communication arose, so strong that Mandelstam followed Tsvetaeva to Moscow and then came to the old capital several times over the course of six months.

The last time, in June, he came to Alexandrov, where Tsvetaeva was visiting her sister and from where he suddenly left for Crimea - he left, almost fled, so as never to seek meetings with her again. They still saw each other before Tsvetaeva left abroad (there are memoirs about this), but that was already a different time in their relationship: there was no excitement, love, mutual admiration in them, as in those “wonderful days from February to June 1916,” when Tsvetaeva “gave Moscow to Mandelstam.” The poems they wrote to each other belong to these particular months: ten poems by Tsvetaeva and three by Mandelstam. Mandelstam, in that romantic period of their acquaintance, responded to her poems with magnificent lines, imbued with a new and very strong impression of Moscow for him, which she gave to him, who came to Moscow for the first time. Cathedrals, churches, history and architecture - all the diversity of the old capital sounded a charming chord in these verses, and the shadow of a female image flickering in them - with its affinity to Moscow and Rus' - inspired both the city being surveyed and the very personally, albeit vaguely experienced history.

How much energy of getting used to the image of the St. Petersburg guest was invested by Tsvetaeva when creating her poems addressed to Mandelstam - here are the features of her external appearance (“You throw back your head / Because you are proud and a liar”, “Whose hands are gentle / Your eyelashes, ... "), and the clue to his character (an eternal child and a born poet), and the clarity of the poetic tradition that nurtured him (“Young”), and the recognition of his superiority over himself (“I know our gift is unequal, / My voice for the first time is quiet” ), and a prophetic glimpse into his future (“They will take it with their bare hands - zealous! stubborn! - / Your scream will ring the bell all night long! / They will spread your wings to all four winds...”) In the first of those addressed to Tsvetaeva “In discordant voices” girls' choir" has four stanzas, and each one ends with a line with a hint of a female addressee.

Tsvetaeva perceived the First World War as an explosion of hatred against Germany, dear to her heart since childhood. She responded to the war with poems that were sharply dissonant with the patriotic and chauvinistic sentiments of the end of 1914. She welcomed the February Revolution of 1917, as did her husband, whose parents (who died before the revolution) were Narodnaya Volya revolutionaries. She perceived the October Revolution as the triumph of destructive despotism. The years of the Civil War turned out to be very difficult for Tsvetaeva. Sergei Efron served in the White Army. Marina lived in Moscow, on Borisoglebsky Lane. In the shelter, daughter Irina died of hunger. During these years, the cycle of poems “Swan Camp” appeared, imbued with sympathy for the white movement.

Emigration

In May 1922, Tsvetaeva and her daughter Ariadna were allowed to go abroad to join her husband, who, having survived the defeat of Denikin as a white officer, had now become a student at the University of Prague. At first, Tsvetaeva and her daughter lived for a short time in Berlin, then for three years on the outskirts of Prague. The famous “Poem of the Mountain” and “Poem of the End” were written in the Czech Republic. The motifs of separation, loneliness, and misunderstanding are constant in Tsvetaeva’s lyrics of these years: the cycles “Hamlet” (1923), “Phaedra” (1923), “Ariadne” (1923).

Initially, the literary circles of the Russian emigration received Tsvetaeva with a bang, but gradually and very sharply the attitude towards her changed. Many did not like her, and not only for her conflict and independence - they did not like her, did not understand (or stopped understanding) what she wrote. Tsvetaeva was several generations ahead of the average reader. She herself bitterly but calmly stated: “Nobody needs it... Nobody needs the poet’s most intimate creation, which means the poet himself doesn’t need it either. They publish little, sympathize little, understand little, love little. There are acquaintances. But what a cold it is, what a convention, what a hanging on a thread and clinging to a straw. Everything pushes me to Russia, to which I cannot go. I'm not needed here. It’s impossible there.” In 1925, after the birth of their son George, the family moved to Paris. In Paris, Tsvetaeva was greatly influenced by the atmosphere that developed around her due to her husband’s activities. Efron was recruited by the military intelligence of the Soviet Union and participated in the conspiracy against Lev Sedov, Trotsky's son, as well as in the liquidation of Soviet agents. Causing Moscow's discontent. In May 1926, at the instigation of Boris Pasternak, Tsvetaeva began corresponding with the outstanding Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who then lived in Switzerland. Throughout the entire time spent in exile, Tsvetaeva’s correspondence with Boris Pasternak did not stop. Most of what Tsvetaeva created in exile remained unpublished. In 1928, the poetess’s last lifetime collection, “After Russia,” was published in Paris, which included poems from 1922-1925. Later, Tsvetaeva writes about it this way: “My failure in emigration is that I am not an emigrant, that I am in spirit, that is, in air and in scope - there, there, from there...”. In 1930, the poetic cycle “To Mayakovsky” was written (on the death of Vladimir Mayakovsky). Mayakovsky's suicide literally shocked Tsvetaeva. In the same year, a number of works were written on the theme of the poet’s fate: “Poems for Pushkin” (1931), “Poems for an Orphan” (1936, addressed to the emigrant poet A. S. Steiger). Creativity as hard labor, as duty and liberation is the motive of the cycle “The Table” (1933).

Since the 1930s, Tsvetaeva and her family lived in almost poverty. In the second half of the 1930s, Tsvetaeva experienced a deep creative crisis. She almost stopped writing poetry (one of the few exceptions is the cycle “Poems for the Czech Republic” (1938-1939) - a poetic protest against Hitler’s seizure of Czechoslovakia. Rejection of life and time is the leitmotif of several poems created in the mid-1930s. Tsvetaeva had a serious conflict with her daughter, who insisted, following her father, on leaving for the USSR, Ariadne left for Moscow on March 15, 1937, the first of the family to have the opportunity to return to her homeland, Efron fled from France on October 10 of the same year, having become involved in an ordered political affair. murder.

Return Tsvetaeva and her son returned to the USSR in June 1939. The daughter was arrested in August, and the husband was arrested in October. She never saw them again. Since her arrival, Tsvetaeva has been trying to publish a book of her poems. The previous book, “After Russia,” was published in 1928; the last collection of poems in Russia was published in 1922, “Versts.” A generation of readers grew up with virtually no knowledge of Tsvetaeva’s work. The exception was a few amateurs, experts, and collectors. By the beginning of 1940, a new book was compiled. It opened with poems written back in 1920 and dedicated to S.E., her husband, Sergei Efron. In a review of the book's manuscript, critic Kornely Zelinsky characterized it as “something diametrically opposed and even hostile to the ideas about the world in which Soviet people live...” The book, of course, was not published. The war has begun. Tsvetaeva was terrified for her son; the bombing that had begun caused horror. Tsvetaeva makes a sudden, spontaneous decision to evacuate to Tataria. He ends up in Yelabuga, makes an attempt to move to Chistopol, where the writers' families were mostly settled, to get a job there, at least as a dishwasher in a canteen, and to find housing. Suddenly returns to Yelabuga... In her workbook in the fall of 1940, Tsvetaeva writes: “No one sees, no one knows that I have been looking for a hook with my eyes for a year now (approximately)... I have been trying on death for a year... Nonsense ! While I am needed...but, Lord, how little, how I can’t do anything... I would like to die, but I have to live for the sake of Moore. There is no place for me in modern times. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to be.” And one more entry: “I wrote my own, I could do more, but I can’t freely...”

On August 31, 1941, Marina Ivanovna committed suicide, leaving several notes: “Purlyga! Forgive me, but things could get worse. I am seriously ill, this is no longer me. I love you madly. Understand that I couldn't live anymore. Tell dad and Alya - if you see - that you loved them until the last minute and explain that you were in a dead end.” Tsvetaeva did not know that Sergei Yakovlevich was shot in August 1941. Alya was in the camp between Kotlas and Vorkuta. In 55 she was rehabilitated and left the camps. Marina Ivanovna's son Moore (Georgiy) fought and died of wounds in the hospital.

Features of Tsvetaeva’s poetics

Love for what is not allowed, what is forbidden, runs like a red thread through all her work. She judges herself for this surrender to permissiveness, for the impossibility and unwillingness to resist what is forbidden. Her poems about death are far from just a desire to free oneself from earthly burdens, to escape from life. This is rather a judgment upon oneself.

“She had never tested a mystic before.” And the reputation of your own Seeker of Truth is too specific, capable of frightening a child. So what is it, Millena?

“This man’s consciousness is completely open, my lord, no barriers.” Your brother is telling the truth - he never intended any harm against you or your family. And he does not have any information about such plans of other people, including the Truth Seeker named Mia.

“I already knew that; I didn’t have to check it.” – Now Robin felt somewhat embarrassed. - Sorry, brother, it was stupid, of course.

Reputation change. Robin Royle Inokia's attitude towards you has improved.

Robin Royle Inokia's current attitude towards you: +70 (trust)

I responded in kind in order to finally leave this unpleasant episode in the past.

- Believe me, I understand your problems, Georg, but I can’t give you ships.

My brother and I sat in a green gazebo on the edge of a cliff. The flying palace slowly floated over the dark blue sea, taking us towards my daughter's new castle. Next to us on the table there was a whole scattering of dishes filled with all kinds of food, and in the center stood a barrel of ancient wine. Apparently, Robin was not going to go anywhere until this thirty-liter barrel was empty to the bottom.

- W-why? “My language was slightly failing me, but my mind remained clear and I didn’t lose the thread of the conversation.

- Because I promised. To my Duke. And yours too, by the way. I already pay more taxes to the Orange House than anyone else. And I want to be sure that Tessa will not be left without protection. Oh, how Paolo swore and stamped his feet... Imagine, he even insulted me!

- Can't be!

– And if not from Tessa’s fleet? There are such shipyards in the orbital belt of the planet; a ship of any size will fit. Is there anything on the slips that was recently built?

The brother waved it off:

- There is no production here. Repair docks, transshipment bases, the largest storage facilities in the entire Eighth Sector. Here, after all, the main route runs from the center of the Empire to the Orange House. Here on Tessa, huge transport starships are being unloaded. There are docks, but nothing larger than frigates have been built there for a long time.

– I’m ready to buy all the frigates! – I said.

The fat man clapped his hands, and as if out of the ground, a short man in an old-fashioned livery appeared next to the table.

“I urgently need a list of everything that was built at the warship shipyard.”

Within a minute, a flat screen was glowing in the air right above the dining table, and I was studying the not very rich selection. Eight Pyromaniacs and four more modern Hawk-class frigates. “Pyromaniacs” were priced at two hundred thousand credits, “Hawks” at three hundred and fifty thousand.

– I’m buying all these frigates! – I said.

“My prince, I want to remind you that these “Hawks” are going under contract to the kingdom of Fastel,” said Prince Robin’s assistant.

– I don’t care! We’ll build more and pay a penalty for missing deadlines, in the end. Georg needs them more.

I quickly transferred the money and said thoughtfully:

– It’s gotten a little better, but still not enough strength. Are you sure you won’t sell a single cruiser?

The servant, who had already turned off the screen and was about to leave, stopped and said with a bow:

– Your Highnesses, I apologize for interfering in your conversation, but the construction of three heavy assault cruisers is being completed at the military shipyards of the Second Citadel. They literally sent us a purchase offer two days ago because they did not agree on the price with the original customer.

– Is there more complete information about what kind of cruisers? – I perked up, as the topic turned out to be very, very relevant.

I had already thought through several tactics for myself to combat alien ships, but for this my fleet needed heavy class ships. There will be no heavy cruisers, and battles and victories can be forgotten, and my mission in the game will be a failure.

The servant turned the monitor around again and gave a full report. Three heavy assault cruisers of the Katana project were built by order of the Orange House trading company without prepayment for the purpose of resale. During the construction process, due to changes in the heavy metals market, the cost of construction increased, and the customer abandoned the deal. The degree of readiness is over 95%, the construction completion period is twenty days after payment. The latest cruisers, a formidable force in capable hands. However, the price was too high - the shipyards offered each of the three cruisers for eighty million credits, or all three in bulk for two hundred and ten million.

- Will you take it? – Robin asked, lazily sucking wine from a tall glass, and I was forced to admit to a lack of funds.

- Don't be too poor, brother. You have Tialla, which you don’t use at all. When was the last time you were on your planetoid? Five years ago? Or ten? Think for yourself - why do you need this settlement on the outskirts of the universe? You don’t have a son-heir, and your daughter-crown princess doesn’t need such a dowry. Then for the sake of those pathetic translations, what does it give? Let me buy it back at a normal price - I’ll immediately pay you the amount you would have received from Tialla in ten years! I have a son, he is entitled to property in order to retain his title.

The offer looked tempting, but I still refused. Robin began to offer other options for receiving money:

– You have a yacht full of all sorts of wonders, and you also have the right of inheritance. Many would pay you to give up your rights to the throne of the Orange House and the Empire. So come on, think, brother. After the chaos that you caused in your relationship with the Green House, you don’t even hope that they will forgive you. I am sure that they have already collected all possible dirt on you and will soon carry you to the Throne World. I'm ready to bet my best gladiator against the rusty flyer, that any day now you should expect a call to the carpet before the Emperor.

The elder brother spoke very convincingly. Moreover, his words were superimposed on a strange conviction that had not left me from the very first day in the game - it is urgent to strengthen the fleet! Just because of what? Where to get money from? I wasn’t going to give up the right to power; I didn’t even have an approximate idea of ​​the cost of “The Queen of Sin,” and I still needed it. I inquired about the cost of Tialla.

“Two hundred and fifty million,” suggested Robin, and there was not the slightest hint of alcohol in his eyes and voice. – This is slightly more than its real cost, so don’t miss out on such a lucrative offer.

– Two hundred and fifty million, as well as free repairs and modernization at your shipyards of all the ships currently in my fleet. Including these three "Katanas", which I am now going to pay for, and those ships of my fleet that have not yet managed to approach Tessa. It’s just that the remnants of the fleet should still arrive there tomorrow, and the Uukresh, with a broken engine, will generally need to be pulled here by tug for seven days.

“Okay, but only one-time repairs and modifications, and not on an ongoing basis,” Robin clarified, and I confirmed.

- Hands down! – my brother agreed, and half an hour later we were already washing the officially signed contract.

By evening, a fairly tipsy Robin unexpectedly admitted:

– You know, brother, about Tialla... I didn’t tell you, but very soon, in a couple of months at most, they will launch a new warp beacon in the Parn system. The survey ship has already delivered all the necessary equipment there, and assembly is in full swing. In two months, a short route between the Eighth Sector and the Seventh Sector will finally open, connecting two huge regions directly without entering the Empire. Just imagine, brother, what kind of ship traffic there will be, all the intermediate stations will simply become rich! So, the short road goes through Outpost 31, Closed Laboratories, Tialla and Ungai. I didn’t deceive you at all, I bought Tialla from you at a fair current price. But in a few years it would cost three times more, at least.

I just smiled and remained silent, although I thought to myself: “Well, I didn’t tell you all the information either, brother. You will be very surprised when Uukresh comes to you for repairs.”

***The purpose of the scientific work is to show how a real novel was reflected in the work of two poets.

***A little history

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva first met in the summer of 1915 in Koktebel, but this was not yet their acquaintance. They recognized each other's poems later, in Petrograd in January 1916. Mandelstam then gave Tsvetaeva his book of poems “Stone”. Tsvetaeva always highly valued his poetry and saw in it “magic,” “charm,” despite the “confusion and chaotic thought.” He captivated her with a high degree of verbal perfection. “If there is a God of poetry,” Marina wrote, “then Mandelstam is his messenger. He brings the divine voice to people with precision and clarity.” On January 20, Tsvetaeva returned to Moscow, to Borisoglebsky Lane; Mandelstam was carried away by her, went after her, and then returned, then again came to Moscow and returned back to St. Petersburg.
Many years later, Marina Ivanovna recalled: “...Wonderful days from February to June 1916, the days when I gave Mandelstam Moscow. We haven’t written so many good poems in our lives, the main thing is: it’s not so often that a poet is inspired by a poet...” Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (Khazina) very precisely defined what happened between the two poets: “Tsvetaeva, having given her friendship and Moscow, somehow disenchanted Mandelstam. It was a wonderful gift, because with St. Petersburg alone, without Moscow, there is no free breathing, there is no real feeling for Russia...”
It’s interesting that two completely different people saw each other, wanted to talk about everything - talk through poetry, talk while looking at the sky, at the Moscow domes, at the narrow streets of St. Petersburg...

***Poetry

It is known that MC Mandelstam wrote 3 poems; there are different opinions about the number of her poetic responses. However, in any case, the image that is created by her lines is truly alive: it also has features of the external appearance (“You throw back your head / Because you are proud and a liar”, “Whose gentle hands are tender / Your eyelashes, beauty.. ."), and a clue to his character (an eternal child and a born poet), and an indication of the poetic tradition that nurtured him (“Young Derzhavin”), and recognition of his superiority over himself (“I know our gift is unequal, / My voice for the first time - quiet"), and prophetic words about his fate (“They will take you with their bare hands - zealous! stubborn! - / Your scream will ring the bell all night long! / They will spread your wings to all four winds..."). The image created by Mandelstam, more “elegant,” as researcher Ronen puts it, appears in “In the Discord of the Girls’ Choir”:

1.... And in the stone arches of the Assumption Cathedral
It seems to me that the eyebrows are high and arched.
2. Within the walls of the Acropolis, sadness consumed me
By Russian name and Russian beauty.
3. ... What the blueberry sings in Orthodox hooks:
Tender Assumption - Florence in Moscow.

4. And five-domed Moscow cathedrals
With their Italian and Russian soul
Reminds me of the Aurora phenomenon,
But with a Russian name and in a fur coat.

How is Tsvetaeva’s image created? It is clear that “Russian name” and “Russian beauty” are too general, non-individual places for her to be recognized in them. “Fur coat” and “high eyebrows, arched” (also suggested by the stone arches of the arches) are such external and material signs, so indifferent to both the eyes and the heart, that if such her presence was intended as a compliment or declaration of love for a specific woman, then this woman, and even more so a woman poet (with a name, by the way, nautical, not at all stone or Russian), a woman poet who spoke of “contempt for the temporary dress of the flesh” (let alone a dress that is much more temporary - a fur coat), with good reason could feel Mandelstam’s gaze as a cold slide through the sights of the capital, in the string of which she was included - depersonalized in spite of her whole nature.
But at the same time, as if called by her last name. According to the observation of V.M. Borisov, in the line “Tender Assumption - Florence in Moscow” Florence is an etymologically accurate translation of Tsvetaeva’s surname. The American professor O. Ronen insists on the same thing - finding it worthy of special attention - who, speaking about the poetic roll call between Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva, notes: “He answered her with a charming poem about the ancient cathedrals of the 15th century in the Kremlin, about the work of Aristotle Fioravante “... ”, taking into account the “flowery” surname of his “correspondent”. It is impossible to say with certainty that this assumption is correct, but Marina Tsvetaeva has a poetic response to the line about Florence: in the poem “After a sleepless night the body weakens...” (July 19, 1916): “And in the cold it suddenly smells like Florence.”
But, unfortunately, neither the allusion itself nor its “elegance” changes the matter: Mandelstam did not address his “correspondent” with a single word, did not catch or name a single Tsvetaeva trait, looking with her at the beauty of the Kremlin cathedrals. Therefore, Tsvetaeva herself, with little right, perceived the poem “In the discordant voices of the girls’ choir” only as “cold splendor about Moscow.”
Knowing the future fate of their relationship, one can only be amazed at Mandelstam: in 1922, in a review article “Literary Moscow”, he mentioned Tsvetaeva as a true “anti-Tsvetaevite” - with hostility and irritation. By this time, he had apparently fallen out of love with everything about her, and what he had previously liked and attracted most, under the spell of which he had fallen for a while, now irritated him more sharply and more than anything else. A St. Petersburg guest, enchanted by the Moscow muse, who received the capital as a gift from her (and, which was almost inevitable in the circumstances of the winter-spring of 1916, accepted Moscow in Tsvetaev’s vision), Mandelstam, having cooled and moved away, directed the sharpest arrows of his rejection precisely at these two targets are the Moscow muse and Tsvetaev’s Moscow. He simply erased the first as non-existent: “The worst thing in literary Moscow is women’s poetry. The experience of recent years has proven that the only woman who has entered the circle of poetry as a new muse is the Russian science of poetry...” In the second, he now felt an unbearable falsity for himself, which was expressed with some even excess of negativism in his words about “the bad taste and historical falsehood of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems about Russia - pseudo-national and pseudo-Moscow.”
However, while the attitude did not change, the lines of the poem “Not Believing the Sunday Miracle” were written - the last one, addressed to Tsvetaeva in the summer of 1916, a poem no longer from Moscow, but from Koktebel and by no means cold. And the miracle of resurrection and reconciliation happened: Tsvetaeva remembered Mandelstam’s arrival in Alexandrov, where she was staying with her sister, remembered their walks in the surrounding hills, with an obligatory visit to the cemetery, which so frightened Mandelstam, remembered everything that was inspired by this farewell poem and wrote a memoir essay “The Story of One Dedication.”
Not a protocol of Moscow beauties, not a conventionally beloved female shadow lost among them, and not vague historical allusions inspired by the place of walks and the topic of conversations, that is, not those “several cold splendors about Moscow” that Tsvetaeva bitterly remembered in her notebook, but a warm human word addressed directly to her, without “elegant” allusions, revived in the summer of 1931 the atmosphere of long-standing friendship and the image of the young Mandelstam:

Not believing Sunday's miracle,
We walked to the cemetery.
- You know, the earth is everywhere for me
Reminds me of those hills...
Where Russia ends
Over the black and deaf sea.
From the monastery slopes
A wide meadow runs away.
To me from the Vladimir expanses
I really didn’t want to go south...
I kiss the tanned elbow
And a piece of wax from the forehead...
I know - he remained white
Under a dark strand of gold.
I kiss the hand where the bracelet is
The stripe is still white.
Taurida fiery summer
Works such miracles.
How soon did you become dark-skinned?
And she came to the poor Savior,
Kissed me without stopping,
And I was proud in Moscow.
All we have left is the name:
Wonderful sound, long lasting.
Press it with my palms
Sprinkled sand.

For the lyrical hero Mandelstam, the earth is a reminder of the finitude of everything in the world around us - life, relationships, “Vladimir open spaces.” He calls his beloved “a misty nun,” which reflects the complexity and contradictory nature of her inner world. Unlike the lyrical heroine Tsvetaeva, he does not see the future as bright - “that means there will be trouble”, he does not enjoy the current moment, reflecting on the eternal questions of humanity - “We only have a name left”; It would seem that there is no passion in him. But upon careful reading, it becomes clear that his boundless tenderness is expressed in his attention to the white stripe from the bracelet on her hand, in his kisses on the forehead and elbow. For the hero of the poem, what is necessary is not the world of Rus', but the world of Taurida: he does not want to go south, but, like Odysseus, he must set off on a journey; in its images, this poem is similar to “A stream of golden honey...” (“golden strand” - “ “golden fleece”, Taurida, “the sea is black and deaf” - “heavy sea waves”, “a stripe is white” - “in a room as white as a spinning wheel” and so on). Moscow is spoken of here almost ironically, as a world outside of which the beloved loses her magic, she is no longer protected by the city’s charms - “How soon you became a dark-skinned woman” (although she has a “wax forehead,” which is what the lyrical hero likes). If the Moscow world of Tsvetaeva’s heroine will be “transferred” to her daughter in the same way, then here is an attempt to “press<…>Sand being poured over.” If here “only the name remains,” then Tsvetaeva almost never uses full names. The “dark” here is not a fresh night, but a “foolish settlement” - even the motif of foolishness, which in Tsvetaev’s poems is equal in importance to the motif of death, is here rejected by the lyrical hero; the primordially Russian is contrasted with the ancient.

From Tsvetaeva’s side – the cycle “Poems about Moscow” and a number of other dedications. Marina’s poems addressed to Osip are invariably joyful, upbeat, cheerful, there is no tragedy or thoughts of separation in them:

Nobody took anything away -
It's sweet to me that we are apart!
I kiss you through hundreds
Disconnecting miles.

First of all, the assessment of Mandelstam’s talent is shocking: from the letters of the Tsvetaev family it is known that in February 1915 a poetry evening took place in the Zhukovsky house in Krechetnikovsky Lane. The invited young poets read their poems; after each performance, Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was the chief examiner and judge, “pronounced his judgment-sentence, which was accepted by everyone silently, without protest.” The judgments were categorically strict, and only Marina, who did not suffer the sour response to her poems, “resolutely and arrogantly objected. At the same time, she is absolutely indifferent whether Vyacheslav likes her poems or not.” The main thing is the spirit of contradiction, the manifestation of one’s own individuality, difference from others, and there was no question of coming to terms with someone else’s authority.
And a year after that evening, Marina, in her poem, compares Mandelstam with one of her most beloved poets, calls “her verse,” and therefore all her work “ill-mannered,” talks about the inequality of talents... These striking lines make it possible to understand Tsvetaeva’s attitude towards to his St. Petersburg guest: admiration, a vision of a “divine boy,” complete love for his work, despite the fact that Marina saw Osip’s everyday failure (entry in the diary about a visit to Alexandrov). Although there is quite a bit of autobiography in Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam’s poems dedicated to each other, Marina’s love, first of all, for the poet allows us to call their novel poetic.
Let's return to the poem “Nobody took anything away...”:

I baptize you for a terrible flight:
-Fly, young eagle!
You endured the sun without squinting, -
Is my youthful look heavy?

More tender and irrevocable
Nobody looked after you.
I kiss you - through hundreds
Years of separation.

These quatrains were written at the beginning of February 16, about a week has passed since the day of our close acquaintance, but even then they contain a prophecy: not only a great poetic path, but also a terrible ending. The non-standard nature of everything associated with Mandelstam is reflected in the emerging images: “young” is used twice with words little associated with youth – “Derzhavin” and “eagle”, symbols of something classic, unshakable - Marina connects the work of her guest with the traditions of the Golden Age , and himself – with the world “bolyar”, that is, he turns to an entire era, reviving it in the reader’s mind through several end-to-end images. You can name other oxymorons: “more tender and irrevocable”, “terrible flight” - “fly”; antithesis: “You endured the sun without squinting, Is my youthful gaze heavy?”
Marina “gave him Moscow” as a brother in creativity, although, in her opinion, superior to her in talent: “From my hands, accept the miraculous city, my strange, my beautiful brother.” The motif of a bird becomes cross-cutting: if at the beginning of the poetic dialogue it is an eagle, a royal predator that can endure everything, then in “Scattered into silver smithereens...” - “My fosterling, little swan,” for which the lyrical heroine will “pray to the saints.” It is interesting that thanks to these two poems, one can see Tsvetaeva’s ever-increasing interest in the original Russian culture in the collection “Versts”: from Derzhavin, the court poet, to folk wisdom (a broken mirror - to imminent separation).
The prophecy motif is also found in “Death by a Woman. Here's a sign...":

Will not save any songs
A heavenly gift, not the most arrogant lip cut.
That's why you love me
Which is heavenly.

Oh, your head is thrown back,
Half-closed eyes - what? - hiding.
Oh, your head will fall back -
Otherwise.

They will take it with their bare hands - zealous! stubborn!
Your cry will ring the bell all night long!
Your wings will spread to all four winds!
Seraphim! - Eaglet!

Of the portrait features, only the arrogant cut of the lips and the same, at first glance, arrogant look of half-closed eyes are depicted; comparable to the image of the beloved in the poem “Where does such tenderness come from?”: “a visiting singer”, “I knew lips more tender than yours”, “I have never listened to such hymns on a dark night”, but all this loses meaning - the lyrical heroine is conquered by the “wicked youth” and remembers only his eyelashes - “no longer.”
Tsvetaeva’s lyrical heroine explains the meeting itself by the will of fate (“What a cheerful companion this February has brought me!”), this accident allows her to see the world in a new way, to break out of the everyday, philistine scale: a walk around the city is more like a ritual with “slowly blowing smoke ", the heroes of "Solemn strangers pass through their native city" (already native for both, after all, it was a gift).
During the walk, not only the personification of the city occurs (“a river rinsing the colored beads of lanterns”), but also the resurrection of history, the events that took place in the places seen: “I will bring you to the square that saw the youth-kings...”.
In March 16, Tsvetaeva writes “Dimitri! Marina! In the world...”, pointing in this work to two destinies connected over centuries, to two names. And again, the events of the real world are explained by the “ambiguous star”, the coincidence of the birthmark “on the dark cheek” (past eras are so vivid in Marina’s mind that she even resorts to using outdated vocabulary). The lyrical heroine directly connects herself with the image of Marina Mnishek:

"I sing to you,
Your evil beauty
Face without blush.
I sin for your glory
The royal sin of pride.
Glorious is your name
I wear it nicely.”

The image of the legendary Marina contains all the qualities that Tsvetaeva admires so much, including the ability to see in the “Sun among the stars.” Expressing her readiness to share the fate of the impostor’s wife, the lyrical heroine predicts the ending of her life: “Knowing, there is nothing left to do, An angel has left her shoulder,” but it was the “charming thief” who ruined her, which means that Marina Mnishek did not suffer for her rebellious spirit - The angel left her to tell the Lord the “evil news” that her life would probably end in one of the “night towers”, past which the lyrical heroine and her “inspired friend” would be “rushed by the square.”
The final quatrain indicates that Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam walked near the Archangel Cathedral, talked about False Dmitry and Marina Mnishek, and lit a candle:

Marina! Dimitri! With peace,
Rebels, sleep, dear ones.
Over the tender angelic tomb
For you in the Arkhangelsk Cathedral
A large candle is burning.

Z. G. Mints in his article “Military Asters” comments on these allusions: “The poems of Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva are characterized not only by the interpretation of what is depicted through the elevation to historical and cultural archetypes inherent in the Acmeists. Also important are the multiplicity of interpretive codes and the use of a common language(s) by both artists, turning their work into a kind of dialogue.” In addition, Tsvetaeva also refers to various works of world literature: in one of the poems there is a mention of “The Eaglet” by Rostand, in another (“Adventurer”) - “Corinna” by J. De Staël: “They called me Corinna,
You Oswald." Zara Mints notes not only the phonetic substitution of “Marina - Corinna” and “Osip - Oswald” characteristic of futuristic literature, but also the contrast of religion of the heroes of the work, which served as a parallel to the St. Petersburg-Moscow affiliation of the poets.
Even before meeting Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam wrote “The herds graze with a cheerful neighing...”, which contains the image of an apple, which is important for the author:

I hear Augustus and at the ends of the earth
Rolling years like a sovereign apple, -

And a play on homophones: “And - the month of the Caesars - August smiled at me.”
These same images appear in Tsvetaeva’s poem of 1917:

With your imperial apple
You play like a child, August -
Like a palm, you stroke your heart
In his imperial name
August!..

Included in the dialogue with Mandelstam, this poem begins with the words: “August - asters...”. What became the special connecting factor between the two poets?
Tsvetaeva’s main gift to Mandelstam, as noted, was Moscow, whose image is quite fully depicted in a cycle of 9 poems about it.

It will be your turn:
Also - daughters
Hand over to Moscow
With gentle bitterness.

“The First Throne Capital” becomes a gift both for the daughter and for the whole world - this is the exclusivity of the poet: only he can teach to see the most familiar things in a new way. Tsvetaeva and Moscow, as A. Sahakyants writes, are an “indivisible whole,” therefore, to understand the first, it is necessary to talk about the versatility of the second.
The poet sees his beloved city, which for him is both home and a “chest” with memories, and a combination of different historical eras, from a bird’s eye view (“Clouds around, Domes around”), metaphorically stretches out his arms over it all, protecting Moscow and “lifting up the weightless tree.” This image is worth mentioning separately: it can symbolize here the poetic gift (“the best burden”), cultivated by Marina in herself, it can be a reference to her favorite tree next to the house in Trekhprudny, it can be a symbol of life in general. The speech of the lyrical heroine is filled with archaisms “sem”, “forty forty”, “free”, many words are omitted - “Early dawns on Vagankovo”, “Like the golden casket of Iverskaya burns”, which makes us guess what is said in the poem. In the cycle of poems about Moscow, there are also literary allusions: for example, the lines “Where and dead I will be happy” echo Pushkin’s “And even though an insensitive body is equally likely to decay everywhere, But closer to the sweet limit I would still like to rest” - about the fact that after physical death, love for one’s native places will remain alive. “My firstborn” is an appeal to both Alya and Moscow; Tsvetaeva seems to have a presentiment of the inevitability of future emigration. “Firstborn” is a reference to the system of succession to the throne in Rus', Russian family traditions. In addition, Tsvetaeva’s understanding of Moscow as the “firstborn” is contrasted with the perception of the capital as the “third Rome”. Forty and seven are key numbers found in many poems in the cycle. Seven is the number of the Lord, 40 is the number of days Jesus spent in the desert, according to the Gospel; the number of years that Moses led the Jewish people through the desert - that is, it is very significant in the context of Christian culture and worldview. “It will be your turn: Also - you will pass Moscow on to your daughter” - Tsvetaeva always perceived Alya as her heir, perhaps the reason lies in some biographical facts: I.V. Tsvetaev really wanted a son, he even chose the name Alexander, but a daughter was born, who all her life felt a kind of guilt before her father and wrote that “there is Alexander inside”, she combined masculine character traits, and sometimes felt like “a boy running briskly” . Perhaps that is why she rehabilitates the feminine principle, emphasizing its predominance in the image of Moscow, “bequeathing” the city to her daughter. Moscow is such a contradictory city that even the feelings associated with it are ambivalent (“tender bitterness”), but the motive of will (“free sleep”) is invariably associated with high concepts, the motive of dreams.
Moscow combines the ancient, churchly: “The domes are all around,” and the real power of love: “And you will rise, filled with wondrous powers... You will not repent that you loved me,” and elements of the military-revolutionary time: “Oh, how the roar of young soldiers is terrible in the night!”, “Oh, this roar is brutal!” Tsvetaeva proves the superiority of Moscow over St. Petersburg, emphasizing the continuity of its culture: “Praise be to Tsar Peter and to you, O Tsar! But above you, kings, are the bells.”
In the poem “From My Hands...” in relation to the word “hail,” the epithet “miraculous” is used, which mythologizes space and deprives the concept of its everyday meaning. Over the churches, the same magpies, “doves soar.” This is not only another biblical image, it is also a complete difference from Mandelstam with his “The language of a cobblestone is clearer to me than a dove.” However, here Tsvetaeva introduces him to the world of the “starry”, “Orthodox”: “Accept the five-cathedral incomparable circle, my ancient, inspired friend.” Thanks to the Church Slavonic form of the word (“to Unexpected Joy”, “red domes”), the image of the “garden” into which the lyrical heroine leads the “foreign guest”, associations with the biblical plot are inevitable (the motive of repentance is, however, in a figurative sense).
At night, Moscow changes, becoming wildly passionate (“It’s a gift that a holy view”), and the feeling is personified: “Kiss me hotly, love.”
"- Moscow! “What a huge Hospice House!” - the motif of wandering is stated in many poems of the cycle, since, firstly, it is closely related to the theme of poetic quest, and, secondly, it is one of the key ones in understanding the Russian soul.
“Colded by other people’s dimes - My eyes, moving like flames” - practically a prediction of Marina Ivanovna’s future fate: to lose all her vitality in attempts to somehow cope with the almost catastrophic situation of the family in everyday life, in hopes of any job, but these lines can be understood and as the need for humility to comprehend the highest truth. “And - the double who has groped for the double - A face will appear through the light face” - the lyrical heroine understands how different she can be, she also understands that she needs to leave only the brightest, best in herself, then the earthly face will be replaced by a “face”. In the poems of the “Russian period” in Tsvetaeva’s work, she often turns to the theme of death - this or the close one “You look like me” “To your kisses, oh, living ones, I won’t object to anything - for the first time,” where memories of what happened in life , make the motive of death high, full of light sadness for what has already passed.

And hallelujah flows
To the dark fields.
I kiss your chest
Moscow land!

The final poem of the cycle is “With a Red Brush,” which concentrates the previously encountered images:

Red brush
The rowan tree lit up.
Leaves were falling
I was born.

Hundreds argued
Kolokolov.
The day was Saturday:
John the Theologian.

To this day I
I want to gnaw
Roast rowan
Bitter brush.

The color red symbolizes blood or sacrifice; the image of a rowan tree bearing fruit in the fall becomes a symbol of the world that Marina first saw when she was born; her bitterness is mixed with tenderness (the first poem of the cycle) and with other feelings of the lyrical heroine; The ringing of hundreds of bells creates an atmosphere of annunciation, comfort, and makes the whole city feel like home. The fact that the poem is dominated by nominal or incomplete sentences speaks about the author’s character - determination, firmness.
Let us turn again to the article by Z. G. Mints: “Military asters” (that is, “asters of the military autumn”, which were mentioned above) is the completion of the dialogue between Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva. Asters of the War August are one of the memories of the high world of youth, which retained value for the late Mandelstam.<...>All this becomes a statement of the immutability of the cultural and creative position. But culture is not affirmed as personal and therefore includes the language of dialogue with Tsvetaeva as a sign of many dialogues, this culture of components.”

Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam saw the world around them completely differently and wrote about it differently, but this, most likely, became the reason for their interest in each other. Poems written during and after the novel do not so much reflect its real details, but rather reflect the inner world of the poets, their understanding of the creative path.

***Bibliography:

1. Mandelstam O.E.. Favorites. Dynamite, Golden Age, St. Petersburg, 2000.
2. Tsvetaeva M.I.. Books of poems. Ellis Luck, Moscow, 2006.
3. Mints Z. G. Blok and Russian symbolism: Selected works: In 3 books. St. Petersburg: Art - St. Petersburg, 2004. Book. 3: Poetics of Russian symbolism. pp. 314–316.
4. Kudrova I. The life of Marina Tsvetaeva. Documentary storytelling. – St. Petersburg: Zvezda magazine publishing house, 2002. – (Series: Russian poets. Life and destiny.). pp. 137-150.
5. Aizenshtein E.O. Dreams of Marina Tsvetaeva. St. Petersburg: 2003. pp. 69-71.
6. Shevelenko I.D. Tsvetaeva’s literary path: Ideology-poetics-identity of the author in the context of the era. – M.: New Literary Review, 2002. P. 119-122.
7. Saakyants A.A. Your moment, your day, your century: The Life of Marina Tsvetaeva. – M.: Agraf, 2002. – 416 p.

Not yet well known to anyone, poor and head over heels in love, the poet Osip Mandelstam arrived in Moscow on a gloomy February morning in 1916. At the station square, he called out to a cab driver - he asked for fifty dollars to get to Borisoglebsky Lane. The poet weakly bargained and gave in, thinking that this was a complete disgrace: Moscow is the same province and the cab drivers fight like in St. Petersburg...

He sat down in a cab covered with worn oilcloth, the “vanka” cracked his whip, and the stunted little horse trotted along the pavement. Mandelstam was a St. Petersburger, he didn’t know Moscow, and he didn’t like the narrow streets lined with squat mansions painted in yellow, pink and light green colors - not a city, but some kind of cream cake... Here is Arbat, and here is Borisoglebsky Lane...

The cab driver stopped at a rather strange building at number 6: an apartment building with four apartments pretended to be a mansion. Mandelstam paid the cab driver, entered the front door, climbed the steps, holding a small, shabby suitcase in his hands and realizing that it all looked stupid. Straight from the station he goes to an unfamiliar married lady with whom he has nothing in common. What nonsense, of course she forgot about him...

When the doorbell rings, a maid in a white lace apron answers him. He bowed:

Poet Osip Mandelstam. St. Petersburg acquaintance of Maria Ivanovna...

In a small living room, the excited poet sits awkwardly on a hard sofa. The paneled door opens, and she appears - blue-eyed and golden-haired, in a dark gold long dress - this can be seen in ancient portraits, but not in the current 1916. She has a turquoise bracelet on her hand, and she smiles the same way she did in Koktebel when they first met. Then the heat was stifling, they collided at the garden gate - he politely stepped aside, she walked past without turning her head. Beautiful, tanned and alien... He thought that he could fall in love with such a woman. And it seemed like he was enchanted: later they met in St. Petersburg, they were finally introduced to each other - that’s where everything happened...

Getting up and bowing, he thought that nothing had actually happened: in St. Petersburg they talked a lot, read their poems to each other - and the fact that he was dreaming of Marina did not concern anyone but him... He had no reason to go to Moscow.

Mandelstam pecked the hand extended for a kiss and heard that he was welcome and the mistress of the house often thought about him. Then he beamed: his eyes, half-closed with heavy eyelids, opened, and a blush appeared on his sunken cheeks. They went into the dining room, a coffee pot appeared, and they brought in still warm buns, butter and jam. Everything was fresh and tasty, he ate with gusto, and now Moscow no longer seemed terrible. Finishing the second bun, Mandelstam said that he had never seen such an interesting house - it looked like a box with a secret. Tsvetaeva nodded: “Yes, that’s true. That's why we moved here. The apartment is truly extraordinary. Have you noticed how many floors there are?”

Well, of course. Your house has two floors.

It seems so if you look at it from the street. The apartment is three-story - here is the first secret of our box. But there are others... I am in love with this house and will not leave here.

Tsvetaeva and her husband Sergei Efron moved to Borisoglebsky Lane two years ago, in 1914. She immediately liked the house: one of the rooms had access to a flat roof, another had a window in the ceiling, and there were also interesting narrow staircases. Sergei wanted to look for a larger apartment, in a modern apartment building: they could afford a lot. But Marina decided that she needed to live here, and he was used to obeying her. They rented out the mansion they gave her for her wedding. It was rented by a private psychiatric hospital, and Tsvetaev’s relatives decided that this was a bad sign. That house was very cozy, reminiscent of the mansion in Trekhprudny, where the Tsvetaev family lived for many years... But she was sad only about the shaggy yard dog Osman: Marina loved dogs very much, and parted with houses and things without regret. Here he and Mandelstam were similar, but in everything else there could not have been more dissimilar people in the world...

In her youth, Marina Tsvetaeva, a restless and sarcastic young lady, caused her family a lot of trouble. At that time she was a plump, round-faced, awkward creature with glasses, an ugly girl whose poems were ridiculed by her family.

The son of a small Jewish merchant who broke with the community, a master glove maker, a failed rabbi... The daughter of the creator and lifelong honorary guardian of the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts named after Alexander III, the future Pushkinsky, a famous scientist, a professor at Moscow University, an expert on antiquity... She forever ingrained herself in the hands of her father Osip Mandelstam black paint from the leathers with which he worked, the Russian Tsar would not talk to him under any circumstances - and Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev was introduced to the emperor and even gave advice to Nicholas II, who complained about the restless students:

- ...Your Majesty, young people need to look at ancient statues more often. This will bring harmony to troubled souls.

Marina’s childhood was spent in complete prosperity, a mansion in the center of Moscow, a dacha in Tarusa. Trips abroad, studying in private boarding schools in Switzerland. Osip also traveled abroad, but these were different trips - third-class carriages, the cheapest hotels and a stomach rumbling with hunger. There wasn’t enough money for his studies, his bankrupt father couldn’t help him, and Osip didn’t shine in appearance, confidence or manners either. He was a very strange young man: stooped, but at the same time holding his head high. His unusual posture made him look like a camel, his half-closed eyelids made him look like a huge dormant bird. Some admired his poems, others treated them coolly: at that time Russia was a country of great poets, the young genius did not stand out too much against this magnificent background.

In her youth, Tsvetaeva was a restless and sarcastic young lady who caused her family a lot of trouble. As a teenager, she put a “groom wanted” ad in the newspaper as a joke, and the janitor had to drive away the uninvited guests from the yard. At the same time, Marina secretly became addicted to liquor - she threw empty bottles out the window, not caring that she might hit a random passerby, or even her father returning home. At that time she was a plump, round-faced, awkward creature with glasses and straight hair sticking out in all directions - an ugly girl whose poems were ridiculed by her family.

A few years later, Tsvetaeva lost weight, her hair began to curl - she achieved this for a long time, for which she cut her hair almost bald and wore a cap. I gave up glasses, and my myopic blue eyes began to appear larger. You couldn’t call her a beauty, but people looked at her. Mandelstam was not a match for her, but they were attracted to each other not by passion, but by something that cannot be expressed in words: a feeling of a common fate, of doom lurking around the corner - a strange, weary feeling that can easily be mistaken for falling in love. But there was something else: Mandelstam was seriously interested in a charming woman, and Tsvetaeva was looking for in men what is not visible at first sight. The awkward Jewish youth seemed to her like a magical prince - a genius recognized a genius.

With Tsvetaeva’s husband it turned out differently: she imagined a dazzlingly handsome young man, one of the guests of the poet Voloshin, whom Marina met in Koktebel, as if he were a character in her poem. Sergei Efron was very handsome; those who knew him in his youth spoke of the amazing combination of clear blue eyes and golden hair: he seemed to glow. The young man’s character was amazing, his origins were romantic: Efron was the son of a young lady from the ancient noble family of Durnovo who went to the revolution and a Jew who was a Narodnaya Volya member. A talented amateur who tried his hand at acting, a sweet young man who made friends easily, he was ideal for the gloomy Marina - the external image was good, and she composed the content. Soft and friendly Sergei found himself in the role of Galatea: Tsvetaeva created him, he did not mind and tried to transform into her fantasies. She was a poetess - he also began to write, with the money they inherited, the young people organized a publishing house... From the outside, the marriage seemed happy: the newlyweds, in love with each other, needing nothing, set up a house, start a common business, they have a daughter...

The trouble is that her husband - a literary character, a radiant prince from a fairy tale - could not awaken the woman in Tsvetaeva, and she did not expect this, her ideal hero was too bright and fragile. The woman in her woke up during a bright, scandalous, short love affair that ended shortly before Mandelstam arrived in Moscow. Faithful Sergei Efron immediately came up with an unhappy romance and told everyone he could about it: he didn’t want his friends to judge Marina, and tried to take on at least part of her guilt.

Battered and devastated, Tsvetaeva returned to her husband. Now Sergei was at war, working as a nurse on a medical train and awaiting conscription: as a person with an education, he was supposed to be sent to a cadet school.

At the beginning of the war, Mandelstam, in a romantic impulse, was also eager to go to the front, but his health was not suitable for military service. In 1916, the patriotic passions of 1914 already seemed ridiculous, but when it came to the absent husband, Mandelstam felt awkward: Efron was at war, and he was sitting in his house and intended to confess his love to his wife. Approaching Arbat in a van, Mandelstam was going to tell Tsvetaeva about this right away, but now he couldn’t make up his mind. Nevertheless, it is necessary to explain his appearance: he coughed, rubbed his chin and said that he had been planning to see Moscow for a long time. Perhaps Marina Ivanovna will show him her city...

Thus began their strange romance, consisting of arrivals and departures.

How nice it is to wander around a foreign city with a woman you are in love with - charming, close and at the same time inaccessible. It intoxicates you more than wine, makes your head spin more than opium. Tsvetaeva took Mandelstam around the huge half-European, half-Asian city, and every day he fell more and more in love. They visited the Kremlin and lit a candle at the coffin of Tsarevich Dmitry, wandered along the embankments and Zamoskvorechye, sat in the park on Dog Square, and admired Moscow churches.

Moscow was not the same as it was several years ago: the city changed during the war. Many soldiers from reserve regiments appeared on the streets, factory workers angry at the whole world and evacuees from the western provinces jostled with their elbows on the trams. There was more rudeness and dirt, and the expectation of something bad was in the air. And yet Mandelstam was fascinated by the city; it seemed to him that the real, pre-Petrine, interior Russia was still alive here. He tried to explain himself many times, but nothing came of it: Tsvetaeva deftly curtailed the conversation or turned his words into a joke.

He returned to St. Petersburg - and again appeared in Moscow: his trips continued until June. Osip rushed between two cities, and this greatly burdened his skinny wallet. He tried to find a job in the Mother See, a lady he knew even recommended him to a Moscow bank, but nothing came of the idea. This continued until the summer - in June he visited Tsvetaeva near Moscow, in Alexandrov, she lived there with her daughter Ariadna and her sister’s son Andryusha.

“I like that you are not sick with me,” Tsvetaeva dedicated the poem to Mints Mavriky Aleksandrovich, the future husband of her sister Anastasia.

Mandelstam came to Alexandrov for a final, decisive explanation. He was exhausted by what had happened between them in recent months, and Marina treated him with great warmth, but without any strain. In a small house overlooking a cemetery, slopes with grazing calves and an army training ground, life went on in its once and for all established way - a poet in love was not particularly needed here. When he arrived, he was offered a walk, but Mandelstam went to sleep. He tried to sit in the only chair, but it was intended for Tsvetaev’s nephew Andryusha; others were not allowed into it. I asked for chocolate - the only bar turned out to be for children. But this can still be endured; the uncertainty in the relationship was much worse. Osip was tormented by a bad feeling.

The next morning they went for a walk. To his great horror, he had to walk through the local cemetery. Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva and two children passed a half-collapsed crypt that had grown into the ground. He saw icons sticking out of the ground and felt that there would be no good not only in their relationship, but, perhaps, in life. Mandelstam sighed:

It is still unknown what is more terrible - a naked soul or a decaying body...

Tsvetaeva shrugged her shoulders:

What do you want? Live forever? Even without hope of an end?

Ah, I don't know! I only know that I’m scared and I want to go home.

...A small, dark, thin-faced nun looked into the house. Her appearance alarmed Mandelstam:

Will she leave soon? After all, it’s uncomfortable, after all. I can definitely smell the incense.

A nun brought women's shirts she had sewn for sale. While praising her product, she used the word “whisk,” and Osip again thought this was a bad omen. Marina laughed:

Wait, buddy! When I die, it’s in this one, fortunately it’s at night, that I’ll come to you!

During their next walk, they were chased by a bull - all four ran away from it at full speed, he had never experienced such horror before. All this seemed to him mystical signs.

Meanwhile, his love affairs were going well: in Alexandrov he kissed Tsvetaeva for the first time - just recently, in St. Petersburg, Mandelstam would have been in seventh heaven. But now it looked different: a small house, ravines, bird cherry trees, women screaming as they saw off recruits to the front, a parade ground where soldiers stabbed straw effigies with bayonets, little Andryusha’s nanny with eyes like a wolf and a wolfish grin, icons sticking out of the ground , a scary nun, a bull, Marina, who for no apparent reason allowed him to approach her... Alexandrov increasingly seemed to him like some kind of creepy, enchanted place from which he wanted to escape.

He didn’t think that Marina might have gotten tired of life here, that this was his chance, which might not come again. Great poets feel differently than ordinary people; what he saw here did not seem like a long-awaited opportunity to start an affair, but a sign of trouble. Mandelstam acted like Podkolesin: he said that he was leaving for Koktebel, to see the poet Voloshin.

-...I can’t stand here anymore. And in general, it’s time to stop all this. Of course, you will accompany me to the station?

...We went to the station in a large group, with whining children and a nanny who frightened Mandelstam. After the third call, he tried to explain:

Marina Ivanovna, maybe I’m doing something stupid?

Of course... Of course not! And you can always come back...

Marina Ivanovna, I’m probably doing something stupid! I felt like this with you, like this.. I’ve never been with anyone...

The train picked up speed, the whistle swallowed the end of the phrase. Marina started to run after the carriage, but stopped at the edge of the platform. The cry of Mandelstam, waving both hands, reached her:

I really don’t want to go to Crimea!

That was the end of it. Later, in Koktebel, Tsvetaeva asked her friends not to leave her alone with Mandelstam - she did not forgive him for escaping from Aleksandrov.

She lived in house number 6 on Borisoglebsky Lane until 1922, before her departure from Russia. During the revolution, cozy housing, according to her, first turned into a cave, and then into a slum.

The mahogany furniture was burned in the potbelly stove, the clothes were sent to a flea market, the piano was exchanged for a peck of rye flour. Both Tsvetaeva’s daughters had to be sent to an orphanage. She managed to take the eldest, Ariadne, from there, but the youngest died of hunger the day before her mother had money. Tsvetaeva was saved by a miracle and the help of neighbors. Going abroad, to her husband, seemed to be the only way out - no one imagined that this would be a fatal step and that it would lead to her death...

In 1916, two doomed people were drawn to each other; with their characters, it was impossible to survive in Soviet Russia.

The idealist Mandelstam was ruined by the slap in the face that he, standing up for his wife, gave to the all-powerful “red count” and Stalin’s favorite prose writer Alexei Tolstoy. Grabbing his cheek, Tolstoy shouted: “Yes, you know that I can destroy you!” - Mandelstam was soon arrested.

Tsvetaeva returned to the USSR with her husband, who became an agent of the Cheka. He was shot, and she, poor and homeless, unable to adapt to a new life, wandered around in evacuation and committed suicide, having lost her last hope.

They wanted to demolish the house in Borisoglebsky back in 1979, but it was saved... by Tsvetaeva’s talent.

The apartments located in it turned into communal apartments. After the war, a young woman doctor, Nadezhda Ivanovna Kataeva-Lytkina, received a warrant for one of the rooms. At the front, she once accidentally came across a collection of Tsvetaeva’s poems, and from then on her life took a different path. Nadezhda Ivanovna received a second, humanitarian education and devoted her life to Tsvetaeva. When the building was declared demolished and gas, electricity and water were turned off, she refused to leave and for several years lived in a house that froze through and through in winter, with doors removed and drains knocked out. Her war with the Moscow Soviet ended miraculously: the house in Borisoglebsky became a museum, and Nadezhda Ivanovna became its director. Tsvetaeva’s spirit returned again to where the excited, confused Mandelstam, anticipating something terrible, was trying to declare his love to her.