Doomed to loneliness: why Faina Ranevskaya considered her talent a curse

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

34 years ago, on July 19, 1984, an actress who is called the legend of Soviet theater and cinema passed away - Faina Ranevskaya … She became famous not only for her undoubted acting talent, but also for her extraordinary sense of humor, which is why her name is often remembered in the context of anecdotal situations in which she often found herself, and often provoked them herself. But in fact, her life gave little reason for laughter: she spent the 87 years allotted to her almost completely alone, and she saw the reason for this in herself.

It seemed that she had doomed herself to loneliness since childhood. Faina Feldman was born in 1896 in Taganrog in the family of a wealthy manufacturer, and life promised her a comfortable existence. Her mother was a passionate admirer of Tolstoy and Chekhov and instilled this love in her daughter. In her notes, Ranevskaya recalled: "".

By the way, the pseudonym "Ranevskaya" also appeared thanks to Chekhov, by the name of the heroine from "The Cherry Orchard", although the actress later joked that "Ranevskaya" was because she always drops everything. Her family not only disapproved of her hobbies for the theater, but was categorically against it. Therefore, ties with the parents were lost. In 1915, Ranevskaya left home and moved to Moscow, and when her family emigrated in 1917, 20-year-old Faina decided to stay.

Ranevskaya could not create her own family either - she was never married and had no children. The actress said that the reason for the failures in her personal life was her awkward appearance and fanatical devotion to the theater. In the early 1960s. to Faina Ranevskaya from abroad came a sister who had lost her husband and was left alone, but in 1964 she died after a serious illness, and the actress again began to live alone.

Ranevskaya never spread about her love affairs, sometimes telling only about her first love with her inherent irony: "". When the actress was once asked about what love is, she replied, "I forgot."

Despite the irony and causticity, the actress was actually a delicate and vulnerable nature. None of those who became the object of her jokes did not suspect that such a demeanor was, rather, a defensive reaction, and that at night in her notes Ranevskaya writes: "". Or like this: "".

In the cinema and in the theater, she seemed cheerful, witty, energetic and overflowing with a thirst for life, while behind the scenes there was a feeling of total loneliness and unfulfillment in the profession: "".

When she once again heard compliments about her talent, she lamented in her notes: "". She considered her talent not a gift, but a real curse. When she was filled with armfuls of flowers after the performance, the actress sighed sadly: "".

Ranevskaya was often asked to write an autobiography or a book of memoirs. To this she replied: “If I were to write a book about myself, it would be a plaintive book. And there would be one line in it: Fate is a windy lady."

Faina Ranevskaya is credited with many aphorisms, and now it is difficult to determine whether she really was their author, just as how to establish the degree of reliability of those anecdotal situations, the character of which is called the actress: "Pioneers, go to the train …!" and other curious cases from the life of Faina Ranevskaya.