Video: Gumilyov vs Voloshin: the last duel of poets in the twentieth century
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In 1837, on the Black River near St. Petersburg, the fatal duel between Pushkin and Dantes took place. 72 years later, in the same place, Maximilian Voloshin and Nikolai Gumilyov fired pistols in the middle of the 19th century, also because of a woman. At the beginning of the twentieth century. duels were already considered an anachronism, the duels of the poets of the Silver Age, as a rule, did without bloodshed and did not reach the point of using weapons. But duel Voloshin and Gumilyov really took place and became the last duel of poets of the twentieth century.
Nikolai Gumilyov met the young poet Liza Dmitrieva in 1907 in Paris, and in the spring of 1909 they met again in St. Petersburg. Feelings flared up between them, about which Dmitrieva wrote: “It was a young ringing passion. “Without being embarrassed or concealing myself, I look into the eyes of people, I have found myself a friend from the breed of swans,” NS wrote on an album presented to me. We began to meet often, all days we were together and for each other. They wrote poetry, went to the "Tower" and returned at dawn through the waking pink city. NS asked me many times to marry him, I never agreed to that; at that time I was the bride of another."
In May 1909, Gumilyov and Dmitrieva went to Koktebel to see Maximilian Voloshin. Suddenly, a love triangle formed. The girl confessed: “Fate wanted to bring all three of us together: him, me and M. Al. - because the greatest love in my life, the most inaccessible, it was Maximilian Alexandrovich. If N. Art. was for me the bloom of spring, "boy", we were the same age, but he always seemed to me younger, then M. A. for me was somewhere far away, someone who could not turn his eyes to me, small and silent " … The "unattainable" poet responded to Dmitrieva in return, and Gumilyov had to leave Koktebel alone.
In St. Petersburg, this story had a continuation. On the pages of the new magazine Apollo, poems by the mysterious poetess Cherubina de Gabriac have appeared. Everyone has heard of her, but no one has ever seen her. As it turned out, this the loudest hoax of the Silver Age was arranged by Voloshin to draw attention to his beloved, novice poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva. The secret was revealed, and everyone learned that the mysterious foreigner with a tragic fate was in fact an ordinary Russian girl.
On November 16, 1909, Gumilev made a last attempt to return Dmitriev: the poet made another offer to her and was again refused. After that, there were rumors that Gumilyov allegedly talks in rude terms about the details of their romance with Dmitrieva. Voloshin could not help but react to this. After 2 days, he publicly gave the offender a slap in the face - this was regarded as a challenge to a duel. Alexey Tolstoy witnessed this scene, and then Voloshin's second. Later, he sided with Gumilyov: “I know and affirm that the accusation thrown at him - in pronouncing some careless words by him - was false: he did not utter these words and could not utter them. However, out of pride and contempt, he was silent, not denying the accusation, when a confrontation was arranged and he heard a lie at the confrontation, he confirmed this lie out of pride and contempt."
The duel took place on November 22, 1909. Both duelists were late: Gumilyov's car got stuck in the snow, and Voloshin lost his galosh in a snowdrift and searched for it for a long time. Gumilev demanded to shoot at a distance of five steps, until death. The seconds did not allow this, and A. Tolstoy measured 25 steps. Pistols from the time of Pushkin were not very suitable for firing in wet weather. In addition, the duelists did not know how to handle weapons properly. Both fired 2 shots: Gumilyov aimed at the enemy, but missed, and Voloshin fired into the air. At this point, the duel was stopped. Fortunately, there was no bloodshed.
The next day, all the newspapers wrote about this "ridiculous duel." The majority blamed Voloshin, but ridiculed both. Sasha Cherny called Max Voloshin Vaks Kaloshin, and this nickname instantly became known throughout St. Petersburg. Each of the duelists was punished with a fine of 10 rubles. After the incident, Dmitrieva had a creative crisis, she did not write anything for 5 years. In 1911 she got married and left for Turkestan. Reconciliation between the two poets never took place.
A the most famous Russian duels had much more sad consequences
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