How the daughter of the great Russian composer Scriabin became a heroine of France

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

Born into a Russian family, the daughter of the famous composer Scriabin became a heroine in her life and death in France. In the forties. Ariadna Scriabin was a member of the Resistance, so she could die feeling that she had done a lot. Yet her death shocked many. The life in it seemed to be ten. But there was a bullet for each.

Child of the Decadence

When she was a teenager, she was obsessed with the idea of fulfilling the Mystery conceived by her father. Only not in India, but in Moscow. And so that with a protest message. And so that at the end of the Mystery, all the actors commit the act of self-immolation. In the actors, she and her school friends saw each other. “What is it that I will suffer, I am very glad of this, just as I am glad that I will die for the Russian People,” she wrote about her plan in a letter.

Yes, in every plan she was grand, because she was grand in her feelings. Later it turned into real deeds, and when she was a girl - a child of the Decadence - her plans were full of sacrifice. Everything seemed to her that this amazing sacrifice itself could turn the course of history.

Undoubtedly, she inherited this grandeur from her father. The composer Scriabin said about himself that if he is happy, then there will be enough happiness for the whole world, but if melancholy takes on, then it is also the size for all of humanity. By the way, his daughter, strictly speaking, did not bore his surname until his father's death: Scriabin's first wife did not give him a divorce, and although Scriabin's second marriage was no different from those formalized according to the law, the daughter bore her mother's surname. Schlözer. However, the noble German surname, perhaps, was more sonorous.

Ariadne lost her father at ten. Mother - at sixteen: then the whole family contracted typhus. Ariadne survived, her mother did not. The death of her parents only contributed to the high tragedy, grandiosity of feelings - Ariadne literally dived into high feelings and dreams, finding herself in the face of her grief.

A lot was expected from her from an early age: the daughter of a genius! She, indeed, played great music - but she embodied this in life, becoming the secretary of the music circle. From an early age she wrote poetry, and quite a level worthy for the Decadence - but it ended with a thin brochure. She also had no interest in artistry - many liked listening to her recitation of poems by classical authors. But as a result, she became famous not at all in poetry, music or on stage. For a start - the time was not right.

Russia is not her destiny

Ariadne was born in Italy in 1905. Not passing through - her parents lived there in those years. She was born in a difficult period, when her father was left without contracts, and for some time the threat of starvation hung over the family. However, the situation was resolved. After Italy, Scriabin traveled with his family, earning concerts, throughout Europe and even the United States. Ariadne saw Russia when she was five. But even there, out of habit, everyone spoke French at home: a German mother, a Russian father, a daughter born in Italy, a son born in Switzerland. Nevertheless, the family cultivated a cult of everything Russian. Patriotism with a bias towards nationalism was in vogue.

At home, Scriabin and Schlözer were constantly visited by other musicians, as well as actors and poets, whose names would later be mentioned in articles and textbooks. One of them, double bass player Sergei Koussevitsky, recalled that Ariadne looked like a small whirlwind. There was no sweetness with her. Parents were even afraid of the hot-tempered girl …

With familiar children, Ariadne usually entertained herself in one way: she staged tragedies and dramas. The performances were then shown to the parents of all the participants, as well as to the guests of the house. Moreover, Ariadne hated happy endings, but at that time it did not bother anyone: it was so fashionable. And then the First World War began. The musicians had a hard time. And from Europe news came about the plight of the Schlozers - the Germans were literally hounded in the enemy countries of Germany. There were rumors and even frankly written articles about their special brutality, cruelty, readiness to betray their homeland for the sake of their German blood … And even the fact that the Schlötsers were, rather, German Jews than Germans, saved little.

After the war and the death of her mother, Ariadne was taken by relatives in France, her younger sister - by her relatives in Belgium. Ariadne never saw Russia again. But she was imbued with the ideas of Zionism, accepted conversion, took the name Sarah (perhaps because Sarochka is almost Arochka, as her father affectionately called her) and the surname of her Jewish husband. And she gave up art completely. A new idea burned in her - Jewish brotherhood and sisterhood. She wanted to see Israel one day, a resurrected state. But … I didn't see it. If the First World War backfired on the Schlötzer for belonging to the German noble families, then the Second bore death because they were Jews by blood.

Resistance

In France, de facto, there were several non-overlapping or slightly overlapping subpopulations - for example, one of them consisted of Russian emigrants. But Ariadne preferred the "Jewish Army" - the own underground of Jews, both Russian and not. The army, of course, was engaged in the search for Jewish children who survived, not plundered into the camps (the French often sympathized with children and often sheltered them) - they were then transported to neutral Switzerland or Spain, indifferent to Jews.

But the “Army” cannot be called nonviolent. They got weapons - and used them. They considered the main target of the Gestapo agents known as "physiognomists". These kinds of agents mixed with the crowds on the streets of Paris day after day in order to spy out Jewish facial features and trace their owner - and then turn them over to the Gestapo. The shooting of several agents in Toulouse, where the Army was operating, led to the fact that the new Gestapo could not find in any way - no one wanted to risk it. Other Gestapo men were also attacked.

Ariadne's husband managed to organize an evacuation to Switzerland - Ariadne refused. She said something biting: probably "run if you want." Perhaps "I have a war here." She loved to speak bitingly, weighty, aphoristic. It remained between her and her husband. He fled, she had a war.

Meanwhile, several members of the underground were arrested in Paris. Under torture, they found out the names and addresses of the comrades-in-arms in Toulouse. Ariadne was covered with a comrade, Rauel Leon, by the collaborating police. Soon they were already three of them locked up: Tommy Bauer, another member of the resistance, came to the safe house. No one knows what flashed through Leon's head - he suddenly grabbed a bottle from the table and threw it at the machine gunner guarding them. He immediately gave a turn … Ariadne died immediately. Bauer was seriously wounded (later he was taken to the hospital and there he was terribly tortured for three days - without getting a word). Leon managed to leave - with broken legs.

Later in Israel, whom Ariadne never saw, Leon met her husband. “You killed her,” said the husband. And they never spoke again. And Ariadne is like Ariadne. She later received an award for saving at least two and a half thousand French citizens. Even a few. And in an amicable way … Applause should be. Not in Moscow, in Toulouse. Not fire, but bullets. But she gave her life to save her people - as she dreamed.

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