Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilyov: love as eternal pain

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

An equal sign can be put between the name of Anna Akhmatova and the word "love". She loved everything in this life: the amber sea, the crane at the dilapidated well, the smell of bread and oysters in the ice. Her sublime soul rang with notes of love, which were woven into lyrical lace, making her feel and rejoice together with the poetess. But her own love story with Nikolai Gumilyov was far from romantic, but on the contrary, brought only suffering and pain.

When we knew how to fly

Their acquaintance took place in Tsarskoe Selo on New Year's Eve. Both studied at the gymnasium. Then Gumilyov just turned 17. The impressionable and emotional young man was so carried away by the work of Oscar Wilde that he tried to imitate his idol in everything: he tinted his lips and eyes, curled his hair and wore a top hat. Anya Gorenko was the complete opposite of Nikolai. She was 14 years old, she was restless, impetuous, which made her very different from her peers.

Her lively huge eyes - sometimes green when she was happy, then gray when she was sad - possessed a special magnetism that attracted the attention of young people. Black hair with straight bangs on a moon-pale face seemed to be a contrast to her inner world. Anna so inspiredly read Baudelaire from the gymnasium stage that the enchanted young man fell in love at first sight and mentally put the girl on a pedestal of unattainable height.

Now she became a deity for Nicholas, to whom he began to dedicate his poems. When a young man in love wrote about his lyrical heroine, he called her now a mermaid, now a nymph, now a witch. But the girl only flirted with Nikolai, not bringing him closer, but not pushing him away either. Then Anya was madly in love with her tutor, but with Gumilev she loved to walk around Tsarskoye Selo and take his signs of adoration.

Nikolai read poems to her, discussed with her the work of famous poets, but when he tried to confess his love to a girl, she ran away. Soon Gumilev made an offer to Anna, but she refused him. This was the first of three times that a girl rejected her loving heart. Then the future poet tried to forget his inglorious defeat and went to Paris to continue his education. He successfully studied at the Sorbonne, traveled around Italy, wrote a lot, but could not forget his beloved.

Changeable like the wind

Meanwhile, Anna rushed about and could not decide for herself whether she loved Nikolai or, simply, missed their departed youth. In her poems of that period, she confesses that "from afar she catches the sound of his steps," and insomnia became her friend. Having sent a letter to Gumilyov, in which she complained about her loneliness and despair, the girl most likely regretted it. Otherwise, she would not have looked for an excuse to refuse Nikolai again, who rushed to Crimea, where at that time the family of State Councilor Andrei Gorenko lived.

Her actions were always ahead of her thoughts. Young people were walking along the sea coast when the poet admitted that he never stopped loving Anya. But she also rejected his second offer, later explaining that she was influenced by an eerie sight - dead dolphins thrown ashore by a wave. The girl considered this an unkind sign. The re-rejected poet fell into a severe depression and decided to commit suicide by throwing himself into a lake in Tourville.

Fortunately, the desperate loser was rescued, but since then, acquaintances have begun to laugh at Gumilyov. Perhaps this gave new strength to the lover, and he sent Anna another letter with a request to marry him, but was again refused. Gumilyov saw no more reason to live: he drank a huge dose of sleeping pills in the Bois de Boulogne. But fate, in the person of a passing forester, again saved Nikolai, and in order to overcome his emotional crisis, the poet left for Africa.

Radiance of Pink Paradise

At this time, Anna's poems began to be published in St. Petersburg, which very soon gained wide popularity. The publications are published under the name of Anna Akhmatova, since the poetess had to take the surname of her great-grandmother - her strict father did not allow signing the fruits of her work with his surname, considering poetry to be an empty occupation.

Soon Gumilyov returned to his homeland, and two talented poets had to meet in literary circles against their will. Unexpectedly for everyone, Nikolai and Anna announce their engagement. The wedding took place in April 1910 in the Nicholas Cathedral on the left bank of the Dnieper. Everyone who knew this couple was sure of the fragility of their union.

But it lasted eight bitter years. Already in February of the next year, Akhmatova wrote to her friend: "It couldn't be worse. I want death. If I could cry …" The paradise that Gumilyov had promised turned into a total hell. He began to cheat on his wife, not hiding his adventures.

Probably, having achieved one goddess, his creative nature demanded a new muse. Even the birth of Leo's son did not stop Nicholas and did not save the crumbling marriage. Later, Anna Andreevna will write that Gumilyov never hid his hobbies and even, being married, remained even more a bachelor.

One soul for two

It was a very difficult time in a family of two talents. When the First World War began, Gumilyov, overwhelmed by a patriotic impulse, went to the front, and Anna Akhmatova began to have novels - one after another. She, deposed from the pedestal of veneration by her husband, is looking for love, which she has not really experienced until now. Returning home after the war, Nikolai Gumilyov parted with Anna forever.

The poetess, leaving Lyovushka in the care of her mother-in-law, connects her life with the famous expert-Egyptologist Vladimir Shileiko. Despite the fact that the marriage of Akhmatova and Gumilyov was not an example of marital fidelity and warm relations, this turn of events was a heavy blow for the poet.

He probably still loved the image he created in his youth, the embodiment of which was Anya Gorenko. Nikolai was still trying to get Anna back, he called her to go abroad and start all over again, but you cannot enter the same river twice …

After a while, Gumilyov married again, and Akhmatova was married several more times. But when her first husband was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921, she sacredly kept his manuscripts, published collections of Gumilyov's poems, and collaborated with his biographers. She always called herself the widow of Gumilyov and dedicated her lines to him until the end of her life. And in his memory she left only the light …

A novel full of incredible assumptions and idle judgments - this is exactly what the relationship between the talented Italian artist and the Russian poetess turned out to be. Anna Akhmatova and Amedeo Modigliani flamed for each other with a passion, bright and short as a candle flame.