1. First poetic experiences.
2. The main features of Khodasevich's lyrics.
3. "The Way of Grain" and "Heavy Lyre".
4. Creativity in emigration.

“The word is stronger than anything,” says Khodasevich, and for him it is a sacred means of liberation: a miracle of inspiration for Khodasevich is above all a miracle of spiritual growth.
S. Ya. Parnok

VF Khodasevich was born in Moscow in 1886, in the family of an artist and photographer from impoverished Lithuanian nobles, who was lucky enough to capture Leo Tolstoy himself for history. Khodasevich's mother was the daughter of the famous writer Ya. A. Brafman. The family consisted of five brothers and two sisters. The boy is still in early age He began to write poetry - he was six years old. He soon realized that this was his calling. They recall a funny incident that happened to the poet in childhood - a guest at the age of seven in the summer at his uncle's dacha, he learned that the poet A. N. Maikov lives nearby. Khodasevich went to him, got acquainted with the poet and read his poems with expression. Since then he has been proud. considered himself an acquaintance of the poet Maykov.

The youngest and favorite child, he learned to read early. He received his education at the Moscow gymnasium, where he was friends with V. Ya. Bryusov's brother, Alexander. Then he studied at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, at the Faculty of History and Philology, but did not graduate from the university. At the age of eighteen, Khodasevich married M. E. Ryndina, a spectacular girl from a wealthy family. In 1905, his poems were first published, and soon the collection of poems Youth (1908) was published, in which his feelings for his wife were poured out. Judging by the verses, this love could not be called mutual.

My days have stretched out
Without love, without strength, without complaint...
If we were to cry, there would be no tears.
My days have stretched out.
Deafened by the silence
I hear years of bats,
I hear the rustle of spider paws
Behind my back.

Already in this collection, the main properties of Khodasevich's poetry were visible - accuracy, clarity, purity of language, the classical traditional poetic form. Critics singled him out from the mass of poets and concluded that much can be expected from him in the future. The circle of his contacts at that time was V. Ya. Bryusov, A. Bely, Ellis. Divorced from his wife at the end of 1907, she married S. K. Makovsky, the publisher of the Apollo magazine, - Khodasevich settled in furnished rooms. In 1910 he left for Venice, worked there, giving tours of museums and churches, and returned with new poems. Many of them a little later, in 1914, were included in the second collection of poems "Happy House".

See how our night is empty and silent:
Autumn stars pensive network
Calls to live in peace and die wisely,
It's easy to get off the last cliff
Into the meek valley.

The first two collections of the poet are usually attributed to decadent lyrics, they were marked by special attention from the acmeists. Khodasevich considered A.A. Blok his main teacher. Blok and Bely determined his literary path, as did the fate of many other young poets. In the early collections of Khodasevich, the influence of Blok's poems about the Beautiful Lady is clearly traced.

The poet meets his second life partner, Anna, the ex-wife of his friend A. Ya. Bryusov. At the same time, the first work about A. S. Pushkin, “Pushkin’s First Step,” was published - the beginning of his Pushkinian, the theme of his whole life. “He loved Pushkin as a living person, and every line, every word and the slightest experience of Pushkin gave him great pleasure,” recalled his wife A. I. Chulkova. Vladislav Khodasevich becomes a professional writer. One after another, his literary works come out - "Russian Poetry" (1914), "Igor Severyanin and Futurism" (1914), "Deceived Hopes" (1915), "Pushkin's Petersburg Tales" (1915), "Derzhavin" (1916), "On New Poems" (1916), "On "Gavriiliade"" (1918).

Khodasevich works at the Polza publishing house, translating Polish authors - A. Mickiewicz, V. Reymont, S. Pshibyshevsky. He visits the literary circle of Bryusov, where symbolists gather, and also happens on the “environments” of the realistic direction with N. D. Teleshev. Showing interest in many literary groups, Khodasevich always kept to himself. The poet publishes a lot in the anthology of the publishing house "Musaget", in the journals "Russian Thought", "Apollo", "Northern Notes", "Vulture".

The revolution - both February and October - Khodasevich accepted with joy, joined the Writers' Union, participated in revolutionary publications, collaborated with the Bolsheviks, despite the disapproval of many colleagues. Soon the poet saw the light and changed his attitude towards the new system to the opposite, he had no illusions. He is seized by misanthropy, he wants to escape from reality, but where? The year 1920 was marked for Vladislav Felitsianovich by the publication of the book “The Way of Grain”, the third collection of poems dedicated to the memory of S. V. Kissin, the tragically deceased husband of Khodasevich’s sister, his only close friend. This book put him on a par with well-known contemporaries. The main idea of ​​the collection is contained in the poem of the same name: Russia will die and rise again just like a grain sprouts in the earth.

The sower passes along even furrows.
His father and grandfather followed the same paths.
The grain sparkles with gold in his hand,
But it must fall into the black earth.
And where the blind worm makes its way,
It will eventually die and grow.
So my soul goes the way of grain:
Having descended into darkness, she will die - and she will come to life.
And you, my country, and you, its people,
You will die and live, passing through this year,
Then, that wisdom alone is given to us:
Everything that lives should follow the path of grain.

The poet expressed the entire pathos of his work in four lines:

Fly, my boat, fly,
Rolling and not looking for salvation.
He's not on that path.
Where does the inspiration go...

Researchers consider this post-revolutionary collection to be the most important in the work of Khodasevich. In it, the poet, remaining "behind the text", evaluates what is happening from the point of view of history, rising above time, reflecting on the patterns of development of society, analyzing social and moral problems.

The image of the house runs through all the work of the poet, starting from the first collections, and ending with the theme of homelessness, loneliness in emigration. The hearth house from "The Happy House", the family house in the collection "The Way of Grain" later turns into a "card" house in "Heavy Lyre". The fragility of the surrounding world, destruction - the leitmotif of the poet's work. "Heavy Lyre" (1922) - the last collection of Khodasevich's poems, released before emigration. The author called this book the final poetic work. It is dominated by the theme of the collapse of illusory happiness, the fragility of the world as a result of human interference. Another change of orientations and values ​​leads to destruction. Once again, we notice that Khodasevich had no illusions about people and was skeptical about life.

With his third wife, N.N. Berberova, Khodasevich emigrated to Latvia, Germany, and Italy. His third marriage lasted about ten years. Abroad Khodasevich, under the tutelage of M. Gorky, edits the magazine "Conversation", in 1925 he moves to Paris forever, works as a prose writer, memoirist, literary critic (writes the books "Derzhavin. Biography", "About Pushkin". "Necropolis. Memoirs", " Bloody food", "Literature in exile", "Pan Tadeusz". These are the best artistic biographies. Khodasevich's political views since 1925 are on the side of the white emigrants. He criticizes the Soviet system and the Western bourgeoisie. Khodasevich's life in exile, like his other compatriots, He was ill, but did not stop working hard Thanks to the memoirs and criticism of Khodasevich, now we learn more about his famous contemporaries - M. Gorky, A. A. Blok, A. Bely, N. S. Gumilyov, V. Ya Bryusov.

In 1926 he stopped publishing in the newspaper " Last news". A year later, Khodasevich released the European Night cycle. Gradually, poetry disappears from his work, replaced by criticism, polemics with G. V. Adamovich in emigre publications. In the 30s, Khodasevich was overtaken by disappointment in everything - in literature, the political life of emigration, in the USSR - he refuses to return to his homeland. In exile, he marries again. Khodasevich's fourth wife, a Jewess, died in a concentration camp. He himself died before the war began, in 1939, in a Paris hospital for the poor, after a major operation. In the year of his death, his "Necropolis" was published - the best, according to critics, memoirs in Russian literature.

Khodasevich was born on May 16 (28), 1886 in Moscow. His father, Felician Ivanovich (c. 1834-1911), came from an impoverished Lithuanian noble family, studied at the Academy of Arts. Young Felician's attempts to earn a living as an artist failed, and he became a photographer, working in Tula and Moscow, photographing Leo Tolstoy in particular, and finally opening a photographic supplies store in Moscow. life path father is accurately described in Khodasevich's poem "Dactyls": "My father was six-fingered. On a fabric stretched tightly, / Bruni taught him to drive with a soft brush ... / Having become a merchant out of need - never a hint, not a word / He did not remember, did not grumble. Only loved to be quiet…

The poet's mother, Sofya Yakovlevna (1846-1911), was the daughter of the famous Jewish writer Yakov Alexandrovich Brafman (1824-1879), who later converted to Orthodoxy (1858) and devoted his later life to the so-called. "reform of Jewish way of life" from Christian positions. Despite this, Sofya Yakovlevna was given to a Polish family and brought up as a zealous Catholic. Khodasevich himself was baptized into Catholicism.

The poet's elder brother, Mikhail Felitsianovich (1865-1925) became a famous lawyer, his daughter, artist Valentina Khodasevich (1894-1970), in particular, painted a portrait of her uncle Vladislav. The poet lived in his brother's house while studying at the university and later, until his departure from Russia, maintained warm relations with him.

In Moscow, Khodasevich's classmate at the Third Moscow Gymnasium was Alexander Yakovlevich Bryusov, brother of the poet Valery Bryusov. A year older than Khodasevich, Viktor Hoffman studied, who greatly influenced the poet's worldview. After graduating from the gymnasium, Khodasevich entered Moscow University - first (in 1904) at the Faculty of Law, and in the fall of 1905 he moved to the Faculty of History and Philology, where he studied intermittently until the spring of 1910, but did not complete the course. Since the mid-1900s, Khodasevich has been in the thick of literary Moscow life: he visits Valery Bryusov and Teleshov's "environments", the Literary and Art Circle, parties at the Zaitsevs, is published in magazines and newspapers, including "Vesakh" and "Golden Fleece".

In 1905 he marries Marina Erastovna Ryndina. The marriage was unhappy - already at the end of 1907 they broke up. Part of the poems from Khodasevich's first book of poems "Youth" (1908) is dedicated specifically to relations with Marina Ryndina. According to the memoirs of Anna Khodasevich (Chulkova), the poet in those years "was a big dandy", Don-Aminado Khodasevich was remembered "in a long-sleeved student uniform, with a black mop of thick, thin hair trimmed at the back of his head, as if smeared with lamp oil, with yellow, without a single blood, a face with a cold, deliberately indifferent look of intelligent dark eyes, straight, improbably thin ... ".

In 1910-11, Khodasevich suffered from lung disease, which was the reason for his trip with friends (M. Osorgin, B. Zaitsev, P. Muratov and his wife Evgenia, etc.) to Venice, experienced a love drama with E. Muratova and death with an interval of several months of both parents. From the end of 1911, the poet established a close relationship with the younger sister of the poet Georgy Chulkov, Anna Chulkova-Grenzion (1887-1964): in 1917 they got married.

Khodasevich's next book was published only in 1914 and was called "Happy House". In the six years that have passed from writing "Youth" to "Happy House", Khodasevich became a professional writer, earning a living by translations, reviews, feuilletons, etc. During the First World War, the poet, who received a "white ticket" for health reasons, collaborated in "Russian Vedomosti", "Morning of Russia", in 1917 - in the "New Life". Due to tuberculosis of the spine, he spent the summers of 1916 and 1917 in Koktebel with the poet M. Voloshin.

1917-1939

In 1917, Khodasevich enthusiastically accepted the February Revolution and at first agreed to cooperate with the Bolsheviks after October revolution, but quickly comes to the conclusion that "under the Bolsheviks, literary activity is impossible," and decides "to write only for himself." In 1918, together with L. Yaffe, he published the book "Jewish Anthology. Collection of Young Jewish Poetry"; works as a secretary of the arbitration court, conducts classes in the literary studio of the Moscow Proletkult. In 1918-19 he served in the repertory section of the theatrical department of the People's Commissariat of Education, in 1918-20 he was in charge of the Moscow branch of the publishing house "World Literature", founded by M. Gorky. He takes part in the organization of a bookshop on shares (1918-19), where famous writers (Osorgin, Muratov, Zaitsev, B. Griftsov, etc.) were personally on duty behind the counter. In March 1920, due to hunger and cold, he falls ill acute form furunculosis and in November he will move to Petrograd, where, with the help of M. Gorky, he receives rations and two rooms in a writers' hostel (the famous "House of Arts", about which he will later write an essay "Disk").

In 1920, his collection "The Way of Grain" was published with the title poem of the same name, in which there are such lines about 1917: "And you, my country, and you, its people, / You will die and revive, having passed through this year." At this time, his poems finally become widely known, he is recognized as one of the first modern poets. Nevertheless, on June 22, 1922, Khodasevich, together with the poetess Nina Berberova (1901-1993), whom he met in December 1921, leaves Russia and ends up in Berlin through Riga. In the same year, his collection "Heavy Lyre" was published.

In 1922-1923, living in Berlin, he communicated a lot with Andrei Bely, in 1922-1925 (with interruptions) he lived in the family of M. Gorky, whom he highly valued as a person (but not as a writer), recognized his authority, saw in him guarantor of a hypothetical return to his homeland, but he also knew Gorky's weak character traits, of which he considered the most vulnerable "an extremely confused attitude to truth and lies, which emerged very early and had a decisive impact both on his work and on his whole life." At the same time, Khodasevich and Gorky founded (with the participation of V. Shklovsky) and edited the journal "Conversation" (six issues were published), where Soviet authors were published.

By 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova realized that returning to the USSR, and most importantly, life there, was now impossible for them. Khodasevich published feuilletons about Soviet literature and articles about the activities of the GPU abroad in several publications, after which the Soviet press accused the poet of "White Guardism". In March 1925, the Soviet embassy in Rome refused to renew Khodasevich's passport, offering to return to Moscow. He refused, finally becoming an emigrant.

In 1925, Khodasevich and Berberova moved to Paris, the poet is published in the newspapers "Days" and "Latest News", from where he leaves at the insistence of P. Milyukov. From February 1927 until the end of his life, he headed the literary department of the Vozrozhdenie newspaper. In the same year he published "Collected Poems" with a new cycle "European Night". After that, Khodasevich practically stopped writing poetry, paying attention to criticism, and soon became the leading critic of Russian literature abroad. As a critic, he argues with G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich, in particular, about the tasks of emigration literature, about the purpose of poetry and its crisis. Together with Berberova, she writes reviews of Soviet literature (signed "Gulliver"), supports the "Crossroads" poetic group, speaks highly of the work of V. Nabokov, who becomes his friend.

From 1928, Khodasevich worked on memoirs: they were included in the book "Necropolis. Memoirs" (1939) - about Bryusov, Bely, a close friend of the young poet Muni, Gumilyov, Sologub, Yesenin, Gorky, etc. He writes the biographical book "Derzhavin", but Khodasevich abandoned his intention to write a biography of Pushkin due to deteriorating health (“Now I put an end to this, as well as to poetry. Now I have nothing,” he wrote on 19/7/1932 to Berberova, who left Khodasevich to N. Makeev). In 1933 he married Olga Margolina (1890-1942), who later died in Auschwitz.

The position of Khodasevich in exile was difficult, he lived apart, he preferred the suburbs to noisy Paris, he was respected as a poet and mentor of poetic youth, but they did not like him. Vladislav Khodasevich died on June 14, 1939 in Paris, after an operation. He was buried on the outskirts of Paris at the Boulogne-Biancourt cemetery.

Main features of poetry and personality

Most often, the epithet "bilious" was applied to Khodasevich. Maxim Gorky in private conversations and letters said that it was anger that was the basis of his poetic gift. All memoirists write about his yellow face. He was dying - in a beggarly hospital, in a glass cage heated by the sun, barely hung with sheets - from liver cancer, tormented by incessant pain. Two days before his death, he told his ex-wife, writer Nina Berberova: "Only that is my brother, only that I can recognize as a person who, like me, suffered in this bed." In this remark, the whole Khodasevich. But, perhaps, everything that seemed tart, even harsh in him, was only his literary weapon, forged armor, with which he defended real literature in continuous battles. Bile and malice in his soul is immeasurably less than suffering and thirst for compassion. In Russia of the XX century. it is difficult to find a poet who would look at the world so soberly, so squeamishly, with such disgust - and so strictly follow his laws in it, both literary and moral. "I am considered an evil critic," said Khodasevich. But of those whom he scolded, nothing came of any of them."

Khodasevich is specific, dry and laconic. It seems that he speaks with an effort, reluctantly parting his lips. Perhaps the brevity of Khodasevich's poems, their dry laconicism is a direct consequence of unprecedented concentration, dedication and responsibility. Here is one of his most concise poems:

Forehead -
Chalk.
Bel
Coffin.

sang
Pop.
Sheaf
Arrows -

Day
Holy!
Crypt
Blind.

Shadow -
In hell

But his dryness, biliousness and reticence remained only external. This is how his close friend Yuri Mandelstam spoke about Khodasevich:

In public, Khodasevich was often restrained and rather dry. He liked to be silent, to laugh it off. By his own admission, "he learned to be silent and joke in response to tragic conversations." These jokes are usually without a smile. But when he smiled, the smile was infectious. Under the glasses of the "serious writer," the sly lights of a mischievous boy lit up in the eyes. He also rejoiced at other people's jokes. He laughed, internally shaking: his shoulders trembled. He grasped the sharpness on the fly, developed and supplemented it. In general, witticisms and jokes, even unsuccessful ones, I always appreciated. "There is no living thing without a joke," he said more than once.

Khodasevich also liked hoaxes. He admired a certain "non-writing writer", a master of such things. He himself used hoax as a literary device, after a while he exposed it. So he wrote several poems "on behalf of someone else" and even invented the forgotten poet of the 18th century Vasily Travnikov, composing all his poems for him, with the exception of one ("O heart, dusty ear"), written by friend Khodasevich Muni. (Kissin Samuil Viktorovich 1885-1916) The poet read about Travnikov at a literary evening and published a study about him (1936). Listening to the poems read by Khodasevich, the enlightened society experienced both embarrassment and surprise, because Khodasevich opened an invaluable archive of the greatest poet of the 18th century. A number of reviews appeared on Khodasevich's article. No one could have imagined that there was no Travnikov in the world.

The influence of symbolism on Khodasevich's lyrics

Rootlessness in Russian soil created a special psychological complex, which was felt in Khodasevich's poetry from the earliest time. His early poems allow us to say that he went through the training of Bryusov, who, not recognizing poetic insights, believed that inspiration should be tightly controlled by knowledge of the secrets of the craft, conscious choice and impeccable embodiment of the form, rhythm, pattern of the verse. The young man Khodasevich observed the flowering of symbolism, he was brought up on symbolism, grew up under its moods, was illuminated by its light and is associated with its names. It is clear that the young poet could not but experience his influence, even if it was studently, imitatively. “Symbolism is true realism. Both Andrei Bely and Blok talked about the elements they were guided by. Undoubtedly, if today we have learned to talk about unreal realities, the most real in reality, it is thanks to the symbolists,” he said. The early poems of Khodasevich are imbued with symbolism and often poisoned:

The wanderer passed, leaning on a staff -

A cab rides on red wheels -
For some reason I remember you.
In the evening, the lamp will be lit in the corridor -
I will definitely remember you.
So that it does not happen on land, at sea
Or in the sky - I remember you.

On this path of repeating banalities and romantic poses, chanting femme fatales and hellish passions, Khodasevich, with his natural biliousness and causticity, sometimes did not avoid the clichés characteristic of low-flying poetry:

And again the beat of hearts is even;
Nodding, the short-lived flame disappeared,
And I realized that I am a dead man,
And you're just my tombstone.

But still, Khodasevich always stood apart. In the autobiographical fragment "Infancy" of 1933, he attaches particular importance to the fact that he was "late" to the flowering of symbolism, "late to be born", while the aesthetics of acmeism remained distant to him, and futurism was resolutely unacceptable. Indeed, to be born in what was then Russia six years later than Blok meant falling into a different literary era.

Collection "Youth"

Khodasevich published his first book, Molodist, in 1908 at the Grif publishing house. So he said about her later: “The first review of my book was remembered by me for the rest of my life. I learned it word for word. It began like this: “There is such a vile vulture bird. She feeds on carrion. Recently, this pretty bird hatched a new rotten egg. ”Although, in general, the book was received kindly.

In the best poems of this book, he declared himself a poet of the precise, concrete word. Subsequently, the acmeists treated the poetic word in approximately the same way, but their characteristic intoxication with joy, masculinity, and love is completely alien to Khodasevich. He remained aloof from all literary movements and trends, in and of itself, "not a fighter of all camps." Khodasevich, together with M. I. Tsvetaeva, as he wrote, “leaving symbolism, they did not join anything or anyone, they remained forever alone,“ wild. Literary classifiers and anthologists don't know where to stick us."

The feeling of hopeless alienness in the world and non-belonging to any camp is expressed in Khodasevich more vividly than in any of his contemporaries. He was not shielded from reality by any group philosophy, he was not fenced off by literary manifestos, he looked at the world soberly, coldly and sternly. And that is why the feeling of orphanhood, loneliness, rejection owned him already in 1907:

Nomadic meager children are evil,
We warm our hands by the fire...
The desert is silent. Far away without a sound
The prickly wind drives the dust, -
And our songs are evil boredom
The ulcer is crooked on the lips.

On the whole, however, "Youth" is a collection of a still immature poet. The future Khodasevich is guessed here only by the accuracy of words and expressions and skepticism about everything and everyone.

Collection "Happy House"

Much more from the real Khodasevich - in any case, from his poetic intonation - in the collection "Happy House". The torn, chopped intonation, which Khodasevich begins to use in his poems, suggests the open disgust with which he throws these words into the face of time. Hence the somewhat ironic, bilious sound of his verse.

Oh boredom, skinny dog ​​that calls to the moon!
You are the wind of time whistling in my ears!

The poet on earth is like the singer Orpheus, who returned to the deserted world from the realm of the dead, where he forever lost his beloved Eurydice:

And now I sing, I sing with the last strength
That life is fully lived,
That there is no Eurydice, that there is no dear friend,
And the stupid tiger caresses me -

So in 1910, in "The Return of Orpheus", Khodasevich declared his longing for harmony in a thoroughly disharmonic world, which is devoid of any hope for happiness and harmony. In the verses of this collection one can hear longing for the all-understanding, all-seeing God, for whom Orpheus sings, but he has no hope that his earthly voice will be heard.

In "Happy House" Khodasevich paid a generous tribute to stylization (which is generally typical for silver age). Here are echoes of Greek and Roman poetry, and stanzas that make one recall the romanticism of the 19th century. But these stylizations are saturated with concrete, visible images and details. So the opening poem with the characteristic title "The Star over the Palm Tree" of 1916 ends with poignant lines:

Oh, from roses I love with a deceitful heart
Only the one that burns with jealous fire,
That teeth with a blue tint
Sly Carmen bit!

Next to the world of books, "dream" there is another, no less dear to the heart of Khodasevich - the world of memories of his childhood. "Happy House" ends with the poem "Paradise" - about longing for a children's, toy, Christmas paradise, where a happy child dreamed of a "golden-winged angel" in a dream.

Sentimentality, coupled with acrimony and proud non-participation in the world, became the hallmark of Khodasevich's poetry and determined its originality in the first post-revolutionary years.

By this time, Khodasevich has two idols. He said: "There was Pushkin and there was Blok. Everything else is in between!"

Collection "The way of grain"

Starting with the collection "The Way of the Grain", the main theme of his poetry will be the overcoming of disharmony, essentially unremovable. He introduces the prose of life into poetry - not expressive details, but a life stream that overtakes and overwhelms the poet, giving birth in him, along with constant thoughts about death, a feeling of "bitter death". The call for the transformation of this stream, in some verses, is deliberately utopian ("Smolensk Market"), in others, the poet succeeds in the "miracle of transformation" ("Noon"), but turns out to be a brief and temporary drop out of "this life". "The Way of the Grain" was written in the revolutionary years of 1917-1918. Khodasevich said: "Poetry is not a document of the era, but only poetry that is close to the era is alive. Blok understood this and not without reason called for" listening to the music of the revolution ". It’s not about the revolution, but about the music of the time.” Khodasevich also wrote about his era. anti-philistine pathos, but sobering up came very quickly. Khodasevich understood how the revolution had tormented, how the real Russian literature had been extinguished. But he did not belong to those who were "scared" of the revolution. He was not delighted with it, but he was not "afraid" either The collection "The Way of the Grain" expressed his belief in the resurrection of Russia after the revolutionary devastation in the same way that the grain, dying in the soil, is resurrected in the ear:

The sower passes along even furrows.
His father and grandfather followed the same paths.
The grain sparkles with gold in his hand,
But it must fall into the black earth.
And where the blind worm makes its way,
It will eventually die and grow.
So my soul goes along the path of grain:
Descending into darkness, she will die, and she will come to life.
And you, my country, and you, its people,
You will die and live, having passed through this year, -
Then, that wisdom alone is given to us:
All living things should follow the path of grain.

Here Khodasevich is already a mature master: he has developed his own poetic language, and his view of things, fearlessly precise and painfully sentimental, allows him to speak about the most subtle matters, remaining ironic and restrained. Almost all the poems in this collection are constructed in the same way: a deliberately mundanely described episode - and a sudden, sharp, meaning-shifting finale. So, in the poem "Monkey" an infinitely long description of stuffy summer day, an organ grinder and a sad monkey are suddenly resolved by the line: "On that day war was declared." This is typical for Khodasevich - in one laconic, almost telegraphic line, turn inside out or transform the entire poem. As soon as the lyrical hero was visited by a feeling of unity and brotherhood of all living things in the world - right there, contrary to the feeling of love and compassion, the most inhumane thing that can happen begins, and insurmountable discord and disharmony is established in that world that just for a moment seemed to be "a chorus of luminaries and the waves of the sea, the winds and the spheres."

The same feeling of the collapse of harmony, the search for a new meaning and its impossibility (in times of historical breaks, harmony seems to be lost forever) become the theme of the largest and most, perhaps, the strangest poem in the collection - "November 2" (1918). It describes the first day after the October battles of 1917 in Moscow. It talks about how the city hid. The author tells about two minor incidents: returning from acquaintances to whom he went to find out if they were alive, he sees a carpenter in the basement window, in accordance with the spirit of the new era, painting a freshly made coffin with red paint - apparently, for one of the fallen fighters for universal happiness. The author gazes intently at the boy, "a four-year-old butuz", who sits "among Moscow, suffering, torn to pieces and fallen," and smiles at himself, at his secret thought, quietly maturing under his eyebrowless forehead. The only one who looks happy and peaceful in Moscow in 1917 is a four-year-old boy. Only children with their naivete and fanatics with their unreasoning ideology can be cheerful these days. "For the first time in my life," says Khodasevich, "neither Mozart and Salieri, nor The Gypsies quenched my thirst that day." A terrible confession, especially from the lips of Khodasevich, who always idolized Pushkin. The sober mind of Khodasevich at times falls into stupefaction, into a stupor, mechanically fixes events, but the soul does not respond to them in any way. Such is the poem "The Old Woman" of 1919:

Light corpse, stiff,
Covered with a white sheet,
In the same sleigh, without a coffin,
The policeman will take away
Shouldered the people.
Unspoken and cold-blooded
He will be - and a couple of logs,
What did she bring to her house?
We'll burn it in our oven.

In this poem, the hero is already fully inscribed in the new reality: the "policeman" does not cause fear in him, and his own willingness to rob the corpse - a burning shame. The soul of Khodasevich cries over the bloody disintegration of the familiar world, over the destruction of morality and culture. But since the poet follows the "path of grain", that is, he accepts life as something independent of his desires, he tries to see the highest meaning in everything, he does not protest and does not renounce God. He had not the most flattering opinion of the world before. And he believes that in the coming storm there must be a higher meaning, which Blok was also looking for, calling for "listening to the music of the revolution." It is no coincidence that Khodasevich opens his next collection with the poem "Music" of 1920:

And the music comes from above.
Cello... and harps, maybe...
...and the sky

The same high and the same
In it feathered angels shine.

The hero of Khodasevich hears this music “quite clearly” when he is chopping firewood (an occupation so prosaic, so natural for those years that one could hear some special music in it only when one saw in this chopping firewood, in devastation and catastrophe some mysterious providence of God and incomprehensible logic). For the Symbolists, the embodiment of such a craft has always been music, which does not explain anything logically, but overcomes chaos, and sometimes reveals meaning and proportion in chaos itself. Feathered angels shining in the frosty sky - this is the truth of suffering and courage that was revealed to Khodasevich, and from the height of this Divine music, he no longer despises, but pities everyone who does not hear it.

Collection "Heavy lyre"

During this period, Khodasevich's poetry began to increasingly acquire the character of classicism. Khodasevich's style is connected with Pushkin's style. But his classicism is of a secondary order, for it was not born in the Pushkin era and not in the Pushkin world. Khodasevich came out of symbolism. And to classicism, he made his way through all the symbolic fogs, not to mention the Soviet era. All this explains his technical predilection for "prose in life and in poetry", as a counterbalance to the fluctuation and inaccuracy of the poetic "beauties" of those times.

And every verse driving through prose,
twisting every line,
Instilled a classic rose
To the Soviet wild.

At the same time, lyricism, both explicit and hidden, begins to disappear from his poetry. Khodasevich did not want to give him power over himself, over verse. He preferred another, "heavy gift" to the light breath of lyrics.

And someone heavy lyre
Gives me in the hands through the wind.
And there is no stucco sky
And the sun in sixteen candles.
On smooth black rocks
Feet rests - Orpheus.

In this collection appears the image of the soul. Khodasevich's path lies not through "soulfulness", but through destruction, overcoming and transformation. The soul, "bright Psyche", for him is outside of true being, in order to approach him, it must become a "spirit", give birth to a spirit in itself. The difference between psychological and ontological principles is rarely more noticeable than in Khodasevich's poetry. The soul itself is not capable of captivating and bewitching him.

And how can I not love myself
The vessel is fragile, ugly,
But precious and happy
What he contains - you?

But the fact of the matter is that the "simple soul" does not even understand why the poet loves her.

And from my misfortune it does not hurt her,
And she does not understand the groan of my passions.

It is limited by itself, alien to the world and even to its owner. True, the spirit sleeps in it, but it has not yet been born. The poet feels the presence of this principle in himself, connecting him with life and with the world.

The poet-man is exhausted along with Psyche in anticipation of grace, but grace is not given in vain. Man in this striving, in this struggle is condemned to death.

Until all the blood comes out of the pores
Until you cry earthly eyes -
Don't become a spirit...

With rare exceptions, death - the transformation of Psyche - is also the real death of a person. Khodasevich in other verses even calls her as liberation, and is even ready to "stab" another with a knife to help him. And he sends a wish to a girl from a Berlin tavern - "the villain gets caught in a deserted grove in the evening." In other moments, even death does not seem to him a way out, it is only a new and most severe test, the last test. But he accepts this temptation without seeking salvation. Poetry leads to death and only through death - to true birth. This is the ontological truth for Khodasevich. Overcoming reality becomes the main theme of the collection "Heavy Lyre".

Jump over, jump over
Fly over, over what you want -
But break out: with a stone from a sling,
A star in the night...
I lost it myself - now look ...
God knows what you're mumbling to yourself
Looking for pince-nez or keys.

These seven lines are full of complex meanings. Here is a mockery of the everyday, new role of the poet: this is no longer Orpheus, but rather a city madman, muttering something under his breath at the locked door. But "I lost it myself - now look for it ..." - the line is clearly not only about keys or pince-nez in the literal sense. You can find the key to the new world, that is, understand the new reality, only by breaking out of it, overcoming its attraction.

Mature Khodasevich looks at things as if from above, in any case - from the outside. Hopelessly alien in this world, he does not want to fit into it. In the poem "In the meeting" of 1921, the lyrical hero tries to fall asleep in order to see again in Petrovsky-Razumovsky (where the poet spent his childhood) "steam above the mirror of the pond" - at least in a dream to meet with the bygone world.

But not just an escape from reality, but a direct denial of it, Khodasevich's poems of the late 10s - early 20s respond. The conflict of everyday life and being, spirit and flesh acquires an unprecedented acuteness. As in the poem "From the diary" of 1921:

Every sound torments my hearing
And every ray is unbearable to the eyes.
The spirit began to erupt
Like a tooth from under swollen gums.
Cut through - and throw away.
worn out shell,
Thousand-eyed - will sink into the night,
Not on this gray night.
And I'll stay here lying -
A banker stabbed by an opash, -
Pinch the wound with your hands
Scream and fight in your world.

Khodasevich sees things as they are. Without any illusions. It is no accident that he owns the most merciless self-portrait in Russian poetry:

Me, me, me What a wild word!
Is that one over there really me?
Did mom love this?
Yellow-gray, semi-gray
And omniscient like a snake?

The natural change of images - a pure child, an ardent youth and today's, "yellow-gray, half-gray" - for Khodasevich is a consequence of the tragic split and uncompensated spiritual waste, the longing for wholeness sounds in this poem like nowhere else in his poetry. "Everything that I hate so dearly and love so caustically" - that is the important motive of the "Heavy Lyre". But "gravity" is not the only key word in this book. There is also the Mozartian lightness of short poems, with plastic precision, with a single touch, giving pictures of post-revolutionary, transparent and ghostly, collapsing St. Petersburg. The city is deserted. But the secret springs of the world are visible, the secret meaning of being, and, most importantly, Divine music is heard.

Oh, inert, impoverished poverty
My hopeless life!
Who can I tell how sorry
Yourself and all these things?
And I start to swing
hugging your knees,
And suddenly I start with verses
Talk to yourself in oblivion.
Incoherent, passionate speeches!
You can't understand anything about them.
But the sounds are truer than the meaning,
And the word is the strongest.
And music, music, music
Weaves into my singing,
And narrow, narrow, narrow
The blade pierces me.

Sounds are more truthful than meaning - this is the manifesto of Khodasevich's late poetry, which, however, does not cease to be rationally clear and almost always plot-driven. Nothing dark, guesswork, arbitrary. But Khodasevich is sure that the music of the verse is more important, more significant, finally, more reliable than its rough one-dimensional meaning. Khodasevich's poems during this period are very richly orchestrated, they have a lot of air, a lot of vowels, there is a clear and easy rhythm - this is how a person who "slipped into God's abyss" can speak about himself and the world. There are no stylistic beauties so beloved by the Symbolists, the words are the simplest, but what a musical, what a clear and light sound! Still faithful to the classical tradition, Khodasevich boldly introduces neologisms and jargon into his poems. How calmly the poet speaks about things unbearable, unthinkable - and, in spite of everything, what joy in these lines:

It's almost not worth living or singing:
We live in fragile rudeness.
The tailor sews, the carpenter builds:
The seams will unravel, the house will collapse.
And only sometimes through this decay
Suddenly I hear tenderly
It contains a beating
A completely different existence.
So, spending life bored,
Lovingly woman lays
Your excited hand
On a heavily swollen belly.

The image of a pregnant woman (as well as the image of a nurse) is often found in Khodasevich's poetry. This is not only a symbol of a living and natural connection with the roots, but also a symbolic image of an era that bears the future. "And the sky is pregnant with the future," Mandelstam wrote at about the same time. The most terrible thing is that the "pregnancy" of the first twenty turbulent years of the terrible century was resolved not with a bright future, but with a bloody catastrophe, followed by the years of the New Economic Policy - the prosperity of the merchants. Khodasevich understood this before many:

Enough! Beauty is not necessary!
The vile world is not worth the songs ...
And there is no need for a revolution!
Her scattered army
One is crowned with an award,
One freedom is to trade.
Here he prophesies in the square
Harmony's hungry son:
He does not want good news
Prosperous Citizen...

At the same time, Khodasevich draws a conclusion about his fundamental non-merger with the rabble:

I love people, I love nature,
But I don't like to go for a walk
And I know for sure that the people
My creations are incomprehensible.

However, Khodasevich considered mob only those who strive to "understand poetry" and dispose of it, those who arrogate to themselves the right to speak on behalf of the people, those who want to rule music in their name. Actually, he perceived the people differently - with love and gratitude.

Cycle "European night"

Despite this, in the emigrant environment, Khodasevich for a long time felt like a stranger, just like in his abandoned homeland. Here is what he said about émigré poetry: “The current situation of poetry is difficult. Of course, poetry is delight. Here we have little enthusiasm, because there is no action. in a foreign place, she found herself out of space - and therefore out of time. The work of émigré poetry is very ungrateful in appearance, because it seems conservative. The Bolsheviks strive to destroy the spiritual system inherent in Russian literature. The task of emigre literature is to preserve this system. This task is just as literary as well as political. To demand that émigré poets write poetry on political themes is, of course, nonsense. But it must be demanded that their work have a Russian face. There is no non-Russian poetry and there will be no place either in Russian literature or in future Russia itself "The role of emigre literature is to connect the past with the future. Our poetic past must become our present and, in a new form, our future."

The theme of the "twilight of Europe", which survived the collapse of a civilization that was created over the centuries, and after that - the aggression of vulgarity and impersonality, dominates the poetry of Khodasevich during the emigrant period. The poems of the "European Night" are painted in gloomy tones, they are dominated not even by prose, but by the bottom and underground of life. Khodasevich is trying to penetrate into the "alien life", the life of the "little man" of Europe, but the blank wall of misunderstanding, symbolizing not social, but the general meaninglessness of life, rejects the poet. "European Night" - the experience of breathing in an airless space, poems written almost without counting on the audience, on response, on co-creation. This was all the more unbearable for Khodasevich, since he was leaving Russia as a recognized poet, and recognition came to him late, just on the eve of his departure. He left at the zenith of fame, firmly hoping to return, but a year later he realized that there would be nowhere to return (this feeling is best formulated by Marina Tsvetaeva: "... is it possible to return to a house that is hidden?"). However, even before leaving, he wrote:

And I take my Russia with me
I carry in a travel bag

(it was about eight volumes of Pushkin). Perhaps the exile for Khodasevich was not as tragic as for others - because he was a stranger, and youth is equally irrevocable both in Russia and in Europe. But in hungry and impoverished Russia - in her living literary environment - there was music. There was no music here. Night reigned in Europe. Vulgarity, disappointment and despair were even more obvious. If in Russia, even for a while, one could imagine that "the sky is pregnant with the future," then in Europe there were no hopes - complete darkness, in which speech sounds without a response, for itself.

Muse Khodasevich sympathizes with all the unfortunate, destitute, doomed - he himself is one of them. There are more and more cripples and beggars in his poems. Although in the most important thing they are not too different from prosperous and prosperous Europeans: everyone here is doomed, everything is doomed. What's the difference - spiritual, whether the physical injury struck others.

I can't be myself
I want to go crazy
When with a pregnant wife
Goes armless into the cinema.
Why your inconspicuous age
Dragging in such an inequality
A harmless, humble person
With an empty sleeve?

There is much more sympathy in these lines than hatred.

Feeling guilty before the whole world, the lyrical hero of Khodasevich never for a moment refuses his gift, which elevates and humiliates him at the same time.

Happy is he who falls upside down:
The world for him, even for a moment, is different.

For his "soaring" the poet pays in the same way as a suicide who threw himself out of the window upside down - with his life.

In 1923, Khodasevich wrote the poem "I Get Up Relaxed From My Bed..." - about how "spiky radio rays" fly through his mind all night long, in the chaos of dark visions he catches a harbinger of death, a pan-European, and perhaps even world catastrophe. But those who are threatened by this catastrophe do not themselves know what dead end their lives are heading into:

Oh if you only knew
Europe's dark sons,
What other rays are you
Imperceptibly pierced!

Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (1886-1939) - author of the books: "Youth" (1908), "Happy House" (1914), "The Way of Grain" (1920), "Heavy Lyre" (1922), "Collected Poems" (1927) ), "Derzhavin" (1931), a collection of articles "About Pushkin" (1937), "Necropolis" (1939) and numerous literary, historical and critical articles. A poet of extraordinary depth, a true master of Russian prose, a serious historian of literature, an outstanding literary critic, for whom “literature was everything or almost everything” (M. Aldanov), for many years remained one of the most “unread” authors of the Russian diaspora, and not only in Russia, but throughout the world.
I think that only a few of my contemporaries in their youth were familiar with the work of the poet - emigrant Vladislav Khodasevich. In those days, even Bunin was not held in high esteem.
As a reader who has not been professionally associated with poetry in my life, the name of Vladislav Khodasevich came to my attention only in the early 60s of the last century. Then in the magazine New world” published the memoirs of the Soviet artist Valentina Mikhailovna Khodasevich, who at one time was part of the close circle of M. Gorky. In her memoirs, her father's brother, the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, was mentioned more than once.
The first and only Soviet edition of a collection of his poems took place in the 60s of the last century - more than 20 years after his death.
The name of Vladislav Khodasevich - "a decadent poet, an emigrant" - was mentioned in the 8th volume of the Concise Literary Encyclopedia (Moscow, 1975). In the Soviet encyclopedic dictionary(Moscow, 1981), there was no place for Vladislav Khodasevich.
I first read Khodasevich's poems only at the end of the 80s of the last century. They were a discovery for me, gave rise to a response, a sense of coincidence: I like it and it's good, wonderful!

The star burns, the ether trembles,
Night lurks in the spans of arches.
How not to love the whole world,
Incredible Your gift?

You gave me five wrong feelings
You gave me time and space
Plays in the haze of arts
My soul is inconstancy.

And I create from nothing
Your seas, deserts, mountains,
All the glory of your sun
So blinding eyes.

And I destroy suddenly jokingly
All this pompous absurdity
How a small child destroys
A fortress built from maps.
1921

After I read the book of memoirs of the poet's wife - Nina Berberova - "My Cursive", completed by her back in 1966, but first published in Moscow in 1996, my interest in Khodasevich increased - not only in his work, but also in his extraordinary personality, to his fate.

It is difficult to select something from all that was created by him - everything is admirable. My selection is dictated only by my own feelings, by what especially struck me, what I remember.

I know poetry is always subjective. It is known, for example, that Bunin did not like Blok. But, nevertheless, Blok remained a Blok. Poetry for one poet does not necessarily mean the same thing as for another. I fully agree with those who say: Khodasevich is one of the great Russian poets of his - our time, and remains so to this day.

MONUMENT.

The end is in me, the beginning is in me.
I perfect so little!
But still I am a strong link:
This happiness has been given to me.
In Russia new, but great,
They will put up my two-faced idol
At the crossroads of two roads
Where is time, wind and sand...
1928, Paris.

Vladislav Khodasevich did not belong to the poets - innovators, to the symbolists, futurists. He wrote in the traditional form. For him - the origins, samples of poetry - Derzhavin, Pushkin.

Treasured hours of solitude!
I cherish your every moment like a grain;
In the darkness of the soul let it sprout
A mysterious escape of inspiration.
1915

I'm going to take a deep breath
Swamps of Petrov's evaporation,
And it's easy for me from hunger
And fun with inspiration.
1921

Jump over, jump over
Fly, re-whatever you want -
But break out: with a stone from a sling,
A star that broke into the night ...
I lost it myself - now look ...

God knows what you're mumbling to yourself
Looking for pince-nez or keys.
1921-22

Yes Yes! In blind and tender passion
Get over it, burn it out
tear your heart apart like a letter
Go crazy, then die.

So what? move grave stone
Again you have to over yourself
Again to love and kick your leg
Moonlight blue on stage.
1922

I used to think: for the sake of a moment
And a year, and two, and I will give my life ...
The price does not know the rogue
To your stray dimes.

Now I don't hate myself.
I'm getting old, I'm hunched over - but I'm saving
All the things I hate so dearly
And I love it so much.
1922

Adriatic waves!
...............................Oh, Brenta!...
..................................."Eugene Onegin"

Brenta, red-haired river!
How many times have you been sung
How many times have they flown to you
Inspirational dreams -
Just because the name is loud
Brenta, red-haired river,
A false image of beauty!

I used to be in a hurry
look into your ebb,
Winged and happy
Inspiration of love.
But the retribution was bitter
Brenta, I looked once
In your muddy jets.

Since then I love Brent
lonely wanderings,
Frequent rain dripping
Yes on bent shoulders
Raincoat made of wet tarpaulin.
Since then I love Brent
Prose in life and in poetry.
1923

While the soul is in a youthful impulse,
Bare her without sin,
Fearlessly trust the chatty strings
Her holy rebellions.
.......................................
And in the end find out how wonderful
All of a sudden to understand in a new way,
How delightful and difficult
Get used to the word - shut up.
1924

No, do not understand, do not unravel:
Damn or grace, -
But we are given to sing and die,
And the song with death is one.
When and the best moments
We sacrifice the sounds -
Well? Are we dying from drunkenness?
Or will we eat from death?

We don't have simple happiness.
To that which is born with a song,
Destined to die in song.
1926-27

Undoubtedly, Khodasevich is traditional. But what is the secret of its modern sound? I think - in conciseness, in aphorism, in the richness of the verse deep meaning, content. And this was achieved by them with small means, laconic.

BLIND

Feeling the road with a stick
Wandering at random blind,
Carefully puts foot
And mumbles to himself.
And on the thorns of the blind
The whole world is displayed:
House, meadow, fence, cow,
Pieces of blue sky
Everything he can't see.
1922

With a roar flew past quiet stations
Trains full of people
And vaguely flashed faces, guns, knapsacks,
Tin kettles, horse blankets.
1915

In the worries of every day
I live - and the soul is under a bushel
By some fiery miracle
Lives apart from me.
…………………………
1917

Khodasevich's literary and historical articles about Derzhavin and Pushkin are the Poet's prose, Poetry in prose. Much of what Khodasevich once wrote is no longer something new or unknown to us today. But his formulations, the charm of thoughts and the relevance of prophecies that continue to come true to this day are attracted..

DERZHAVIN

To the 100th anniversary of his death (1916)
(Excerpt)

“First as an administrator, then as a poet, Derzhavin worked tirelessly. The "beautiful" was one of his tools - and not a flattering courtier, but a tall poet scattered the diamonds of the beautiful with a generous hand, caring little about the reasons for his generosity. He knew that beauty would always remain so. His inspiration ignited from a small spark:

Empty houses, empty groves,
There is a void in our hearts.
As in the middle of the night
Silence slumbers in the woods.
All nature is sad
The darkness of fear dispels
Horror walks in the footsteps;
If the winds didn't sound
And the streams did not murmur
The image of death would be ripe for us.

oscillating tripod

(Excerpt)
.......................... ("And in childish playfulness your tripod shakes" -
. last line of Pushkin's sonnet
(“Poet do not value the love of the people.”)

“Oh, the blood, inescapable connection of Russian culture with Pushkin will never be broken. Only she will get a new shade. Both we and our descendants will not stop walking on the land inherited from Pushkin, because we have nowhere to go from it. But it will be delimited and plowed up in a different way many more times. And the very name of the one who gave this land and watered it with his blood will sometimes be forgotten.
Relegated to the "smoke of centuries", Pushkin will rise there in a gigantic way. National pride in him will pour out into indestructible, copper forms, but future generations will not know that close proximity, that sincere tenderness with which we loved Pushkin. This happiness will not be given to them. They will no longer see Pushkin's face the way we saw him. This mysterious face, the face of a demigod, will change, as sometimes it seems as if the bronze face of a statue is changing. And who knows what future people will read on it, what discoveries they will make in the world created by Pushkin? Perhaps they will figure out what we have not figured out. But much of what we saw and loved, they will no longer see ... "
.....................................
“... The story is generally uncomfortable. And there is no protection from the fates. ... the desire to make the day of Pushkin's death a day of national celebration, I think, is partly prompted by the same presentiment: we agree on what name we should go around, how we should call to each other in the impending darkness.
1921 Petersburg.

The personality of the poet, of course, lies in his work. But the descriptions of the character and personality of Vladislav Khodasevich by his contemporaries are also extremely interesting, sometimes very contradictory.

Vladimir Veidle, a friend of Khodasevich, wrote in 1961:
“It was claimed that he had a “difficult character”. Moreover: they called him evil, intolerant, vengeful. I testify: he was kind, though not good-natured, and compassionate, almost beyond measure. There was nothing heavy about him; his character was not difficult, but difficult, even more difficult for himself than for others. This difficulty arose, on the one hand, from the fact that he was extremely truthful and honest, and also endowed, in addition to his gift, with a penetrating, sober mind, not prone to any illusions, and on the other hand, from the fact that he accepted literature he is no less serious than life, at least his own.”
"Khodasevich remained a poet when his poetry fell silent."
(Collection "Vladislav Khodasevich. Along the boulevards" Moscow, 1996. p23)

Marina Tsvetaeva, after repeated meetings in Prague with Vladislav Khodasevich and Nina Berberova, on July 25, 1923, in a letter to her friend literary critic A.V. Bahrahu wrote:
“...Khodasevich is boring! His last poems about abstruseness ... are a direct challenge to Pasternak and me .... (referring to his verses of 1923 “God lives! Clever, but not abstruse…”). And Khodasevich ... not a man at all, but a little imp, a snake, a boa. He is sharp-angry and petty-angry, he is a wasp, or a lancet, in general, something insect-medical, a small poison ...
... I love Pasternak, Mandelstam ... Akhmatova and Blok. Khodasevich is too beaded work for me. God be with him, God bless him and give him more reasonable (reverse: abstruse!) rhymes and Ning.
Give my regards back to him."

Khodasevich was personally acquainted with Maxim Gorky for seven years, and for a total of one and a half years he lived with him under the same roof.
At Gorky's invitation, Khodasevich lived with him in Germany, and in early October 1923 he came to Gorky in Sorrento, where they lived together until April 18, 1925. They didn't see each other again apparently, due to differences in views on what is happening in Russia.

From Gorky's letter to M.F. Andreeva dated July 13, 1925:
“... My “friend” Khodasevich also ended up in the Milyukov newspaper, he writes there very poorly, illiterately and strainedly. He reproaches the communists for not creating Belfast in Russia. Oh, how tired of all this! (M.F. Andreeva. Moscow, 1961 p. 306).
After the death of Gorky, in his essay about him, Khodasevich highly appreciated Gorky's genuine modesty, all his sincere manifestations and friendly understanding in relation to others and personally to him - Khodasevich.
When he read to Gorky his memoirs about Valery Bryusov, then “... Gorky said, after a pause:
You wrote cruelly, but excellently. When I die, please write about me.
- All right, Alexei Maksimovich.
- Don't forget?
- I won't forget!
Paris, 1936. Khodasevich. "Necropolis". SPb.2001. page 255.

And Khodasevich fulfilled his promise to Gorky.

The theme of love is present in many of his poems - there is a search for love, an expectation of love, there is irony, there is a half-joke and sadness. But the theme of loneliness, unrequited love has been heard since the beginning of his work. And he does not have poems about happy love.
I think he was not one of those people who are able to be happy. After all
happiness is not for everyone.

AT DUSK

Snowy twilight. Dali foggy.
The roofs run like ridges.
Colors sunset, pink-strange,
They float above the domes.

So quiet, so quiet, and sad, and sweet,
Watching the lights from the windows ...
The ringing of bells pours in blissfully ...
I cry that people are alone ...

Forever alone, with bored torments,
Just like me, just like the one
Who consoles himself with sad sounds,
There, behind the wall, he sings.
1904

"WHITE TOWERS"
.......................................
Sad evening and bright sky.
There is a shiny ball in the ring of fog.
Dark waters - a double sky ...
And I was young - and I became old.
.......................................
White towers! You - I know - are close,
But they are invisible to me, and I am alone ...
... Lips fell so close, close
To the dewy grasses of damp hollows...
1905

APPROACH

Oh, in your soul you have an immensely dear,
Painfully familiar to me.
Only for a moment it lit up, and again - different,
Flew away, gliding, in silence.
…………
Here! And no! But I know, I know
The heart was instantly light ...
I was close to blooming Paradise...
And my! And yours! - And it's gone!
1905

IN THE EVENING BLUE

Evening windows pearl light
Frozen, motionless, on the floor,
Threw unnecessary shine to the faces
And he sharpened the needle in the heart.

We were protected by a heavy row
People and walls - and again, and again
What an irresistible look
With a sting, subtle poison
Tired love has drunk!

Words and vows and hugs
What a tight circle closed
And in a hating shrug
How painful, painful - fingers!

But no, we will not break the silence,
To curse your fate, mine,
Only silently, clenching our teeth, we strangle
Again crept up to the souls
Love is the evening snake.
1907

.....................................
You are free! After all, only passion
Invariably chains multiplies!
If you want to fall
Who can hold you?

Just a momentary stream
The pain of parting breaks out.
At this moment, can I
Whisper my wishes?
1907

ON A WALK

Evil words welled up like tears.
A twig slapped my face.
You smiled insultingly and caustically,
Insulted calmly, and subtly, and aptly.

I silently parted the thick bushes,
Silently you passed unbowed.
Dropped my wildflowers...
Evil words welled up like tears.
1907

From a poem dedicated to Andrei Bely:

...................................
In the heart of the Poet for bitter tenderness
Dark wine pours out blood ...
The most drunken pain - Hopelessness,
The most strict story - Love!

STROLL

It's good that in this world
There are magical nights
The measured creak of tall pines,
Smell of cumin and chamomile
And the moon.
It's good that in this world
There are still quirks of the heart,
That the princess, though she does not love,
Lets go straight to the lips
Kiss.
..............................
It's good to think with a smile, think,
That the princess (though she does not love!)
Will not forget the moonlit night,
Neither me nor kisses -
Never!
1910

Thank the gods princess
For the clarity of the sky, the greenness of the waters,
For the fact that the sun is daily
His makes a turn;

For being a thin emerald
The star rolled into the reeds,
For the fact that there is no end to whims
Your changing soul;

Because you, princess, in the world
Like a wild rose you bloom
And only in my, perhaps, lyre
You will survive your short time.
1912

Oblivion - consciousness - oblivion ...
And the heart, bloody miser,
Everything accumulates earthly moments
In a huge lead chest.
1916

And now - to Nina Berberova, to her book "My Italics" Moscow. 1996

“Khodasevich had long hair, straight, black, cut in a bracket ... From the first minute he gave the impression of a man of our time, partly even wounded by our time - and perhaps to death. Now, forty years later, "our time" has other overtones than it had in the years of my youth, then it was: the collapse of the old Russia, war communism, NEP, as a concession to the revolution - petty bourgeoisie; in literature - the end of symbolism, the pressure of futurism, - through futurism - the pressure of politics into art. The figure of Khodasevich appeared before me against the background of all this, as if completely inscribed in the cold and darkness of the coming days. ”(p. 165)

“The change in our relations was associated for me with the meeting of the new, 1922…”

“Thin and weak physically, Khodasevich suddenly began to show incongruity with his physical condition energy for our trip abroad… made the decision to leave Russia, but, of course, did not foresee then that he was leaving forever. He made his choice. But only a few years later did the second: do not return. I followed him. If we had not met and decided then to “be together” and “survive”, he would undoubtedly have remained in Russia - there is not even the slightest chance that he would legally go abroad alone. He would probably have been exiled to Berlin at the end of the summer of 1922, along with a group of Berdyaev, Kuskova, Evreinov, and professors: his name, as we learned later, was on the list of those expelled. It goes without saying that I would have stayed in St. Petersburg. Having made his choice for himself and me, he made it so that we ended up together and survived the terror of the thirties, in which both would almost certainly have died ... My choice was him, and my decision was to follow him. We can now say that we saved each other.

“We talked with him about other unfinished poems and that I could, perhaps, continue one of his poems that he had just begun, which he could not complete in any way:

Here is the story. She appeared to me
Clearly and clearly all
While in my hand lay
Your obedient hand.

I took paper and pencil and, as the train moved slowly from one border control to another, I added my four lines to those four lines:

So from your hot hand
I was bleeding into mine.
And I became alive and sighted.
And that was your love.

“... my happiness with him was not quite of the nature that is usually defined in words: joy, light, bliss, well-being, pleasure, peace. It consisted in something else: in the fact that I felt life next to him more strongly, I felt alive more sharply than before meeting him, that I burned with life in its contrasts ... ”(p. 279)

“Ten years of living together, next to and together with another person, “he” and “I”, who think of themselves as “we”. The experience of connecting "him" and "me", where there was not much that happens to others, where some elements that make up family life other people. I am constantly aware of the absence of these elements…” (p. 387)

“Khodasevich in Paris, exhausted by insomnia, ... says that he cannot live without not writing, that he can write only in Russia, that he cannot be without Russia, that he can neither live nor write in Russia, - and begs me to die with him."

It was hard "to share grievances, to share insomnia ..." (258 - 259)

“I can’t leave Khodasevich for more than an hour: he can throw himself out the window, he can open the gas.”(263)

It was dark outside.
A window banged somewhere under the roof.
The light flashed, the curtain flew up,
A quick shadow fell from the wall -
Happy is he who falls upside down:
The world for him, even for a moment, is different.
1922

Don't wait, don't trust, don't believe
Everything will be the same as now.
Tired eyes close,
In verse, perhaps, fortune-tellers,
But remember that the time will come -
And shave your neck for an axe.
1923

………
but even in a dream there is no rest for the soul:
she dreams of reality, disturbing, earthly,
and through my own sleep I hear delirium,
day life with difficulty remembering ...
1926

“A prisoner of his youth, and sometimes her slave ... he overlooked a lot, or did not see much, obsessed with terrible fatigue and pessimism, and a sense of the tragic meaning of the universe ...” (p. 270)

“Something slowly, barely noticeable, began to deteriorate, wear out, see through, first in me, then, for almost two years, around me, between him and me ...” (p. 394)

“And I know now what I didn’t know then: that I can’t live with one person all my life, that I can’t make him the center of the world forever ...” (p. 395)

“In 1932, when I left our Biyankur apartment forever, one not too evil wit talked about it like this
- She cooked borscht for him for three days and darned all the socks, and then left ...
It was almost true.” (p. 391)

“Now I knew that I was going to leave him, and I knew that I had to do it as soon as possible, not to wait too long, because I wanted to go to no one, and if this life goes on, then the day will come when I I will go to someone, and it will be much harder for him. I did not dare to impose this burden on him ...
I was not deceived when I thought about all this. His first question was:
- To whom?
And at that moment, more than ever, I felt the enormous, light happiness of a clear conscience:
- To no one.
But a few days later he asked again:
- To whom?.....
It was the end of April 1932.” (pp. 396-397)

No, not a Scottish queen
You died for me
Another memorable day
Another, close tune
You revived the trace in my heart.
He flickered, he's gone.
But for a moment's dominion
Above the illumined soul
For tenderness, for similarity -
Be happy! The Lord is with you!
1937 Paris.

“He fell ill at the end of January 1939.
“... by the end of March, he became much worse. The pain started...
…even the pupils of his eyes shone yellow-green, not to mention his hair. His legs were thin as chips. There was anguish, torment, horror in the face ...
He no longer cared what was going on in the world. Only irony remained, a well-aimed word, but his appearance was so sad and terrible that it was impossible to smile at his jokes ... "

Last meeting:
“It was on Friday, June 9th at 2pm……
"To be somewhere," he said, bursting into tears, "and not know anything about you!"
I wanted to say something to him, to console him, but he continued:
- I know, I'm just a hindrance in your life ... But to be somewhere, in a place where I will never know anything about you ... Only about you ... Only about you ... only I love you ... All the time about you, in the afternoon and at night about you alone ... you know yourself ... How will I be without you? ... Where will I be? ... Well, it doesn’t matter. Only you be happy and healthy ... Now goodbye .... ”(p. 419)

In December 1940, Berberova “I dreamed of Khodasevich… He was with long hair, thin, translucent, a “spirit” light, graceful and young… I sat very close, took his thin hand, light as a feather, and said:
- Well, tell me if you can, how are you?
He made a funny grimace, and I understood from it that he was not bad, shivered and answered, dragging on a cigarette:
- Do you know how to tell you? Sometimes it’s hard…” (pp. 462-463)

BY THE GRAIN

The sower passes along even furrows.
His father and grandfather followed the same paths.

The grain sparkles with gold in his hand,
But it must fall into the black earth.

And where the blind worm makes its way,
It will eventually die and grow.

So my soul goes the way of grain:
Descending into darkness, she will die, and she will come to life.

And you, my country, and you, its people,
You will die and live, having passed through this year, -

Then, that wisdom alone is given to us:
Everything that lives should follow the path of grain.
December 23, 1917

All about Khodasevich on the Internet:
http://zhurnal.lib.ru/k/koncheew/hodas.shtml
http://old.russ.ru/netcult/20021220n.html
http://www.krugosvet.ru/articles/72/1007292/1007292a1.htm

Biography

KHODASEVICH Vladislav Felitsianovich, Russian poet, critic, memoirist.

Father - a native of a Polish noble family, mother - the daughter of a Jew who converted from Judaism to Orthodoxy - was brought up in a Polish family as a zealous Catholic; Khodasevich was also baptized a Catholic. As a child, he was fond of ballet, which he was forced to leave due to poor health. From 1903 he lived in the house of his brother, the famous lawyer M. F. Khodasevich, the father of the artist Valentina Khodasevich.

Youth. In the circle of symbolists

In 1904 he entered the law school. Faculty of Moscow University, in 1905 switched to philological. faculty, but did not complete the course. Then he visits the Moscow literary and arts. a circle where V. Ya. Bryusov, A. Bely, K. D. Balmont, Vyach. Ivanov, is a live meeting with symbolists, literary idols of Khodasevich's generation. The influence of symbolism, its dictionary, general poetic clichés marked the first book "Youth" (M., 1908.

The Happy House (Moscow, 1914; republished in 1922 and 1923) was written in a different tone, and received favorable criticism; dedicated to the second wife of Khodasevich since 1913 Anna Ivanovna, nee. Chulkova, sister of G. I. Chulkov, the heroine of the collection of poems (also contains a cycle associated with the passion of the poet E. V. Muratova, the “princess”, ex-wife of P. P. Muratov, a friend of Khodasevich; with her he made a trip to Italy in 1911). In The Happy House, Khodasevich discovers the world of "simple" and "small" values, "the joy of simple love", domestic serenity, "slow" life - that will allow him to "live in peace and die wisely." In this collection, not included, like Molodist, in Sobr. poem. 1927, Khodasevich for the first time, breaking with the loftiness of symbolism, turns to the poetics of Pushkin's verse ("Elegy", "To the Muse").

critical experiences. Change of affection

In the 1910s, he also acts as a critic, whose opinion is listened to: in addition to responses to new editions of the masters of symbolism, he reviews collections of literary youth, cautiously welcomes the first books of A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam; highlights, regardless of literary orientation, poetry collections of 1912−13 N. A. Klyuev, M. A. Kuzmin, Igor Severyanin - “for a sense of modernity”, however, he soon becomes disappointed in him (“Russian Poetry”, 1914; “Igor Severyanin and Futurism", 1914; "Deceived Hopes", 1915; "On New Poems", 1916). Khodasevich opposes the programmatic statements of the acmeists (noting the "vigilance" and "own appearance" of N. S. Gumilyov's "Alien Sky", the authenticity of Akhmatova's talent) and, especially, the futurists. In polemics with them, the main points of the historical and literary concept of Khodasevich, dispersed over various works, were formed: tradition, continuity is the way of the very existence of culture, the mechanism for the transmission of cultural values; it is literary conservatism that makes it possible to revolt against the obsolete, for the renewal of literary means, without destroying the cultural milieu.

In the mid 1910s. the attitude towards Bryusov changes: in a 1916 review of his book The Seven Colors of the Rainbow, Khodasevich calls him "the most deliberate person" who forcibly subordinated his real nature to the "ideal image" (see the essay "Bryusov" in "Necropolis"). Long-term (since 1904) relationship connect Khodasevich with Andrei Bely, he saw in him a man "marked ... by undoubted genius" (Sobr. soch., vol. 2, p. 288), in 1915, through the poet B. A. Sadovsky, he approaches MO Gershenzon, his "teacher and friend."

Bitter loss. Disease

In 1916, his close friend Muni (S. V. Kissin), a failed poet, crushed by a simple life, seen without the usual symbolist doubling, commits suicide; Khodasevich would later write about this in the essay "Muni" ("Necropolis"). In 1915−17 he was most intensively engaged in translations: Polish (3. Krasiński, A. Mickiewicz), Jewish (poems by S. Chernichovsky, from ancient Jewish poetry), as well as Armenian and Finnish poets. His 1934 articles "Bialik" (Khodasevich noted in it the fusion of "feelings and culture" and "feelings of the national") and "Pan Tadeusz" are connected with translations. In 1916 he fell ill with tuberculosis of the spine, spent the summers of 1916 and 1917 in Koktebel, living in the house of M. A. Voloshin.

Faith in renewal. "The Way of the Grain"

Creatively brought up in an atmosphere of symbolism, but entered the literature at its end, Khodasevich, together with M. I. Tsvetaeva, as he wrote in his autobiographical. essay “Infancy” (1933), “leaving symbolism, they did not join anything or anyone, they remained forever alone,“ wild ”. Literary classifiers and anthologists do not know where to stick us” (“The Oscillating Tripod”, p. 255). The book The Way of the Grain, published in 1920, is dedicated to the memory of S. Kissin), collected mainly in 1918 (reprinted: Pg., 1922) - evidence of Khodasevich's literary independence and literary isolation. Starting with this collection, the main theme of his poetry will be the overcoming of disharmony, essentially irremovable. He introduces the prose of life into poetry - not degradingly expressive details, but a life stream that overtakes and overwhelms the poet, giving birth in him, along with constant thoughts about death, a feeling of "bitter death". The call for the transformation of this stream, in some verses, is deliberately utopian (“Smolensk Market”), in others, the poet succeeds in “miracle of transformation” (“Noon”), but turns out to be a brief and temporary drop out of “this life”; in "Episode" it is achieved through an almost mystical separation of the soul from the body. "The Way of the Grain" includes poems written in the revolutionary 1917-1918: the revolution, February and October, Khodasevich perceived as an opportunity to renew the people's and creative life, he believed in its humanity and anti-philistine pathos, it was this subtext that determined the epic tone (with internal tension) descriptions of pictures of devastation in “suffering, torn and fallen” Moscow (“November 2nd”, “House”, “Old Woman”).

Searching for a place in the new Russia

After the revolution, Khodasevich tries to fit into new life, lectures about Pushkin in the literary studio at the Moscow Proletkult (prose dialogue "Headless Pushkin", 1917, - on the importance of enlightenment), works in the theater department of the People's Commissariat of Education, in the Gorky publishing house "World Literature", "Book Chamber". About the hungry, almost without means of subsistence Moscow life of the post-revolutionary years, complicated by long-term illnesses (Khodasevich suffered from furunculosis), but rich in literature, he will tell, not without humor, in his memoirs, Ser. 1920-30s: "White Corridor", "Proletkult", "Book Chamber", etc.

At the end of 1920, Khodasevich moved to St. Petersburg, lived in the "House of Arts" (feature "Disk", 1937), wrote poetry for the "Heavy Lyre". Performs (together with A. A. Blok) at the celebration of Pushkin and I. F. Annensky with reports: "The Oscillating Tripod" (1921) and "On Annensky" (1922), one of Khodasevich's best literary-critical essays devoted to the all-consuming in Annensky's poetry on the theme of death: he reproaches the poet for his inability to regenerate religiously. By this time, Khodasevich had already written articles about Pushkin, “Pushkin's St. Petersburg Tales” (1915) and “On the Gavriiliade” (1918); together with "The Oscillating Tripod", essay articles "Countess E. P. Rostopchina" (1908) and "Derzhavin" (1916), they will make up a collection of articles. "Articles about Russian. poetry" (Pg., 1922).

Wreath to Pushkin

Pushkin's world and the biography of the poet will always attract Khodasevich: in the book. "The Poetic Economy of Pushkin" (L., 1924; published "in a distorted form" "without the participation of the author"; revised edition: "On Pushkin", Berlin, 1937), referring to the most diverse aspects of his work - self-repetitions, favorite sounds, rhymes "blasphemy" - he tries to catch the hidden biographical subtext in them, to unravel the way of translating biographical raw materials into a poetic plot and the very secret of the personality of Pushkin, the "miracle-working genius" of Russia. Khodasevich was in constant spiritual communion with Pushkin, creatively removed from him.

Emigration. In the circle of A. M. Gorky

In June 1922, Khodasevich, together with N. N. Berberova, who became his wife, left Russia, lived in Berlin, collaborated in Berlin newspapers and magazines; in 1923 there was a break with A. Bely, in retaliation he gave a caustic, essentially parodic, portrait of Khodasevich in his book. "Between two revolutions" (M., 1990, p. 221−224); in 1923−25 helps A. M. Gorky edit the journal "Conversation", lives with him and Berberova in Sorrento (October 1924 - April 1925), later Khodasevich will devote several essays to him. In 1925 he moved to Paris, where he remained until the end of his life.

Through the thick of life

Back in 1922, The Heavy Lyre (M.-Pg.; Berlin updated edition - 1923) was published, full of a new tragedy. As in “The Way of the Grain”, overcoming, breaking through are the main value imperatives of Khodasevich (“Step over, jump over, / Fly over, over what you want”), but their breakdown, their return to material reality is legitimized: “God knows what you mutter to yourself , / Looking for pince-nez or keys." The soul and biographical self of the poet are stratified, they belong to different worlds, and when the first one rushes to other worlds, I remain on this side - “shout and fight in your world” (“From the diary”). The eternal conflict between the poet and the world in Khodasevich takes the form of physical incompatibility; every sound of reality, the "quiet hell" of the poet, torments, deafens and stings him.

About Russia

A special place in the book and in Khodasevich's poetry is occupied by verse. “Not by a Mother, but by a Tula Peasant Woman… I Have Been Nurtured,” dedicated to the poet’s wet nurse, whose gratitude develops into a manifesto of Khodasevich’s literary self-determination; Russian commitment. language and culture gives the "torturous right" to "love and curse" Russia.

"European night"

Life in emigration is accompanied by constant lack of money and exhausting literary work, difficult relations with emigrant writers, first due to proximity to Gorky. Khodasevich published a lot in the journal Sovremennye Zapiski and in the newspaper Vozrozhdenie, where since 1927 he has been in charge of the department of literary chronicles. In exile, Khodasevich developed a reputation as a picky critic and a quarrelsome person, a bilious and poisonous skeptic. In 1927, "Collected Poems" (Paris) was published, including the last small book "European Night", with a striking poem "In front of the mirror" ("I, I, I. What a wild word! / Is that one over there - it's me?", 1924). The natural change of images - a pure child, an ardent youth and today's, "bilious gray, half-gray / And omniscient, like a snake" - for Khodasevich is a consequence of a tragic split and uncompensated spiritual waste; longing for wholeness sounds in this poem like nowhere else in his poetry. On the whole, the poems of "European Night" are painted in gloomy tones, they are dominated not even by prose, but by the bottom and underground of life ("Underground"). He is trying to penetrate into the “alien life”, the life of the “little man” of Europe, but the blank wall of misunderstanding, symbolizing not the social, but the general meaninglessness of life, rejects the poet.

After 1928, Khodasevich almost never wrote poetry; on them, as well as on other “proud ideas” (including the biography of Pushkin, which he never wrote), he puts a “cross”: “now I have nothing” - he writes in August 1932 to Berberova, who left him in the same year; in 1933 he marries O. B. Margolina.

sensitive tuning fork

Khodasevich becomes one of the leading critics of emigration, responds to all significant publications abroad and in Soviet Russia, including books by G. V. Ivanov, M. A. Aldanov, I. A. Bunin, V. V. Nabokov, Z. N. Gippius, M. M. Zoshchenko, M. A. Bulgakova, leads a polemic with Adamovich, seeks to instill in the young poets of emigration the lessons of classical skill. In Art. "Blood Food" (1932) considers the history of Russian literature as "the history of the destruction of Russian writers", coming to a paradoxical conclusion: writers are destroyed in Russia, as prophets are stoned and thus resurrected to the life to come. In the article “Literature in Exile” (1933), he analyzes all the dramatic aspects of the existence of emigre literature, states the crisis of poetry in the article of the same name (1934), linking it with the “lack of worldview” and the general crisis of European culture (see also the review of the book. Weidle “ The Dying of Art", 1938).

creative testament

The last period of creativity ended with the release of two prose books - a vivid artistic biography "Derzhavin" (Paris, 1931), written in the language of Pushkin's prose, using the language color of the era, and memoir prose "Necropolis" (Brussels, 1939), compiled from essays 1925−37 published, like the chapters of Derzhavin, in periodicals. And Derzhavin (from whose prosaisms, as well as from the "terrible verses" of E. A. Baratynsky and F. I. Tyutchev, Khodasevich led his genealogy), shown through the rough life of his time, and the heroes of "Necropolis", from A. Bely and A. A. Blok to Gorky, are seen not apart from, but through the small worldly truths, in the “fullness of understanding”. Khodasevich turned to the ideological origins of symbolism, leading him beyond the limits of the literary school and direction. The non-aesthetic, in essence, swing of symbolism to limitlessly expand creativity, live according to the criteria of art, fuse life and creativity - determined the “truth” of symbolism (first of all, the inseparability of creativity from fate) and its vices: an ethically unlimited cult of personality, artificial tension, the pursuit of experiences (the material of creativity), exotic emotions, destructive for fragile souls (“The End of Renata” - an essay about N. N. Petrovskaya, “Muni”). The break with the classical tradition, according to Khodasevich, comes in the post-symbolist, and not the symbolist era (Bocharov, Plots ..., pp. 439-440), hence the biased assessments of the acmeists and Gumilyov. Despite being faithful to many precepts of symbolism, Khodasevich the poet, with his "spiritual stripping" and renewal of poetics, belongs to the post-symbolist period of Russian poetry.

Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich - Russian poet, critic (1886 - 1939), born May 16, 1986 in Moscow. His father was an artist and came from a noble Polish family, his mother was the daughter of a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy from Judaism. She was brought up as a Catholic in a Polish family, so Khodasewicz was also baptized as a Catholic. As a child, Vladislav Felitsianovich was fond of ballet, but due to health problems, he was forced to leave these classes.

In 1904 Khodasevich entered Moscow University. At first he studied at the Faculty of Law, and in 1905 he transferred to the Philological Faculty, but he never completed the course. At the same time, the poet visited the Moscow literary and artistic circle, in which he met his literary idols, such as V. Ya. Bryusov, A. Bely and K. D. Balmont. Under the influence of symbolism, Khodasevich's first book, Youth, was published in 1908.

In the 1910s, the writer acted as a critic. Many listen to his opinion. In addition to reviews of new editions of the masters of symbolism, he also reviews collections of literary youth.

At the end of 1920 Khodasevich moved to Petersburg. There he lived in the "House of Arts" and wrote works for the collection "Heavy Lyre" and makes presentations at literary events. In June 1922, Khodasevich, together with his wife, N.N. Berberova, emigrated to Germany. He lived in Berlin and worked for Berlin newspapers and magazines.

Khodasevich Vladislav Felitsianovich

Khodasevich Vladislav Felitsianovich (1886 - 1939), poet, prose writer, literary critic.

Born on May 16 (28 N. S.) in Moscow in the artist's family. Very early he felt his vocation, choosing literature as the main occupation of life. Already at the age of six he composed his first poems.

In 1904 he graduated from the gymnasium and entered first the law faculty of Moscow University, then - the historical and philological. He began to publish in 1905. The first books of poems - "Youth" (1908) and "Happy House" (1914) - were well received by readers and critics. The clarity of the verse, the purity of the language, the accuracy in the transmission of thought singled out Khodasevich from a number of new poetic names and determined him. special place in Russian poetry.

In 1920, Khodasevich's third book of poems, The Way of Grain, appeared, putting the author among the most significant poets of his time. The fourth book of Khodasevich's poems, The Heavy Lyre, was the last one published in Russia.

Having gone abroad in 1922, the poet was for some time under the influence of M. Gorky, who attracted him to the joint editing of the journal Beseda. In 1925 Khodasevich left for Paris, where he remained until the end of his life. He lives hard, needs, gets sick a lot, but he works hard and fruitfully. Increasingly, he appears as a prose writer, literary critic and memoirist: “Derzhavin. Biography” (1931), “About Pushkin” and “Necropolis. Memories" (1939).

V last years published in newspapers and magazines reviews, articles, essays about outstanding contemporaries - Gorky, Blok, Bely and many others. He translated poetry and prose of Polish, French, Armenian and other writers. V. Khodasevich died in Paris on June 14, 1939.

Brief biography from the book: Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.