Natalia Krandievskaya and Alexei Tolstoy: "After us, there will remain what they call - a miracle, art, beauty "

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

It seemed difficult to find on earth two people as different as the poet Natalya Krandievskaya and the writer Alexei Tolstoy. They lived in parallel worlds, but were so tightly connected that it seemed impossible to break these ties.

Christmas miracle

Natalya Krandievskaya married Fyodor Volkenstein immediately after graduating from the gymnasium, gave birth to a son, Fefa, but there was neither spiritual closeness nor special feelings in her marriage. She wrote poetry since the age of 14, and after marriage she was not going to stop in literary work. Her husband did not share her passion for rhyming, Natalia more and more often left with her son to Moscow, to her parents. It was in Moscow that she met Alexei Tolstoy, on Christmas Eve 1913.

He asked if she was afraid of death. Natalya Krandievskaya replied that she was rather not afraid. For some reason, he said that she was afraid of herself, but advised her to overcome herself. And he gave her a parting gilded nut from the tree.

Alexei Tolstoy was also married for the second time, to Sophia Dymshits. However, the marriage did not work out either. Alexey Nikolaevich was too greedy for life in all its sensual manifestations.

Before the official acquaintance, Natalya often saw Tolstoy, already successful by that time. At premieres, social events. But it seemed impossible for her even to approach this important, pompous writer. After they met, it turned out that he was not afraid, since he himself seems to be a vulgar person in her presence.

Strange romance

Alexei Nikolaevich began to pay visits to Natalya Vasilievna, conducting completely uncomfortable, embarrassing conversations with her. She could answer him sharply, and then cry all night.

In 1914, he went to the front as a correspondent, having managed to divorce Sophia before that. And a few after his official divorce, all of Moscow was already talking about the writer's new passion - the 17-year-old ballerina Margarita Kandaurova.

The most interesting thing is that Natasha Krandievskaya's father thought that Tolstoy was caring for his daughter. She received postcards from the front from him all the time. And then he shared with her his torment about the relationship with Margarita. She seemed to him an unearthly moon flower, but he was an ordinary man who did not have the puzzle of his relationship with Margarita. Natalya asked what he was doing next to her, and not next to the bride. To which Tolstoy replied in surprise that Margarita had rehearsals in the morning. However, the ballerina herself was not at all going to marry Tolstoy, and therefore he received a decisive refusal.

He visited Natalya more and more often. Finally, her husband noticed the increased attention from the writer and asked a direct question whether "this Tolstoy" was in love with her. After she saw her husband to Petersburg, she found Tolstoy at home.

On December 7, 1914, Natalya Krandievskaya and Alexei Tolstoy became husband and wife, not officially, but in fact. And he wrote her touching letters every day, full of passion, happy hopes, love. She received a divorce from her first husband only three years later, when she and Alexei Nikolaevich had a son, Nikita. The very next day after the divorce, they were married in church.

Precious sacrifice

She sincerely tried to be a good wife. In them there was at the same time a unity of feelings and a lack of understanding of each other's positions in life. They loved but never really got close.

Natalia devoted herself entirely to her family, husband, children. She became for Alexei Nikolaevich an assistant, listener, wife and personal secretary. Alexei appreciated all her impulses and wrote that he wants everything in this life only with her, alone he wants nothing.

After that there was a revolution and emigration to Europe, where the spouses were incredibly poor and were interrupted only by the earnings of Natasha, who sheathed wealthy Russian emigrants.

Already there, first in Paris, and then in Berlin, there was a crack between the spouses. And it became wider and wider every day. He painted from her the image of Katya in "Walking through the agony", as if predetermining her fate.

Then there was the epoch-making return of the Tolstoy family to Russia. Alexei Nikolaevich became the favorite of the rulers, the writer No. 2. The first place was taken by Maxim Gorky.

The more popular, wealthy, and satiated Tolstoy became, the less he felt in his once adored Natasha. The dinners at the Tolstoy estate were legendary. The guests confessed afterwards that even before the revolution they had never seen such feasts and such wealth.

Arriving in the summer of 1935 from Europe gloomy, he gave up that he no longer had a personal life. There is only work. And Natasha realized that he had received a refusal from Nadezhda Peshkova, the niece of Maxim Gorky, whom he was seeking.

She gathered the children and left for Leningrad. As it turned out, forever. She hoped that everything would still be formed, even prepared an office for him in their new apartment.

Alexei Tolstoy, the day before his death, confessed to his daughter Marianna that he would never have destroyed his family if Tusya had not moved to Leningrad. So two loving hearts remained to rotate in parallel orbits …

Natalia Krandievskaya and Alexei Tolstoy could not save their feelings. Probably, the hard time left its mark on people. Also, something did not work out in life for