Koktebel is a cozy picturesque bay, a turquoise sea, the ancient volcano Karadag, Cape Chameleon, a steppe with dried grass that scratches your feet, the tart smell of wormwood and... romance.
Koktebel is the poet Voloshin, the House of the Poet, his idiot friends, neighbors - Russian intellectuals, the art of the Silver Age, the spirit of creativity and passion.
Koktebel is a special style of life, communication, worldview and wide embrace of hospitality. Koktebel is an atmosphere, a state of mind, a legend. A lost legend.
Lucky was the one who caught, at least in passing, at least somehow, the real Koktebel, who “jumped on the bandwagon” of the outgoing 80s, because then it was too late, the spirit of the time of the Silver Age had disappeared. And everything was no longer the same, and everything was not the same.
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It seems to me that I managed to jump on the notorious bandwagon, to be imbued with Koktebel forever, a young, romantic girl from the Library Faculty, who grew up with a book in her hands and, probably, to people of a practical bent, seems a little out of this world....
Perhaps one day I will gather my thoughts and write how I recognized Koktebel back then, back in the “pre-Ukrainian” era. Let it be Soviet, let it be stagnant, but spiritualized. At a time when children grew up on good poetry, good literature, read from a young age, and inside many there was still a fire lit by real creators... Such as Maximilian Voloshin and his great friends who lived and worked in Koktebel - Marina Tsvetaeva , Alexei Tolstoy, Nikolai Gumelev, Osip Mandelstam, Ilya Erenburg, Mikhail Zoshchenko... What names. What time.
When we were deciding where to go on vacation this year, Koktebel seemed like an excellent choice. This is probably the first time in my life that I have returned to my favorite places from my youth. The main conclusion that I made after this trip: you cannot rely on past impressions and old memories. Everything flows, everything changes. The magical in the past turns out to be completely ordinary in the present and vice versa.
Of course, Koktebel has changed. I didn’t even feel a slight whiff of the old atmosphere here. I adore Voloshin’s Koktebel, with the charm of the Silver Age, about which I read a lot. I love Koktebel from the times of stagnation, sweet, romantic, which I myself found. The Koktebel that exists now is not familiar to me. There is neither the old spirit of creativity, nor simplicity and intelligence, nor the new resort chic and aesthetics.
We are drawn to Koktebel of bygone years,
Which is no longer in the world,
To that Koktebel, where our dear Home was waiting for us.
Oh, how long it’s been since we’ve been there!
@Igor Sanovich
What remains here from the former Koktebel? Sea, Voloshin's profile, House of the Poet. I enjoyed my three weeks of vacation contemplating these treasures. This is my post about them today. What was and what has become. My photographs from our vacation, old photographs of Koktebel from the Voloshin era, which I found on the Internet (vk.com/club34617900). Thoughts, thoughts, analogies, pain.
This is how the House of the Poet looks from the sea, from afar. The landmark is bright yellow umbrellas, and behind them is the Legend.
Upon closer inspection, you notice that over the past hundred years (which is exactly how old he turned last year, 2013), the house has not changed much.
M. Voloshin near his house
House of the Poet. OK. 1910
However, there was, of course, restoration. If you start looking at old and new photographs using the “find 10 differences” principle, you will definitely find them. But the main differences will not be in the house, but in its surroundings and people.
House of the Poet. 2014
A hundred years ago, Voloshin’s house stood almost in an open area, in front of it was a wide beach, and mountains were visible behind it. Such a simple, but healing landscape for the soul.
But the most interesting thing in old photographs is people, their faces, images, destinies... Voloshinsky house was never empty. They say that several hundred people stayed here every year. Poets, writers, musicians, artists. And they didn’t just live, they created. Although there were different things - sun, sea, cheerful company...
At the Poet's House. 1913
One day, in the summer of 1924, Andrei Bely (pseudonym of B.N. Bugaev) came to Koktebel with the goal of taking a break from the bustle of Moscow and working on his novel. But
One of the performances on Voloshin’s name day. 1926
Today, too, in Koktebel, in front of the House of the Poet, life is in full swing. Mainly commercial and completely unrelated to the Voloshin Museum.
Everything that our contemporaries could put their hands to, they did. Alas.
Fortunately, the surrounding nature remained unchanged and beautiful. The mighty Karadag has not changed,
Voloshin with Koktebel players and guests on the beach. 1906
Voloshin’s profile is still clearly visible in it. With profile another story. The poet predicted its appearance in 1918 in his poem “Koktebel”.
Initially, the cape in Koktebel Bay resembled the profile of A.S. Pushkin, who, being in these places, was very surprised by the portrait resemblance. And in 1929, after an earthquake, part of the rock broke off, the relief changed - it was as if nature had specially created a portrait-monument to Maximilian Voloshin.
Not a single photo shoot in Koktebel will ignore Voloshin’s profile. It is he who is now the calling card of Koktebel.
The sea (outwardly) is still the same.
Scene “Overseas Guest (Good News).” Koktebel, 1911
People, of course, are different... Sweet word "selfie". What books should I read? Soon we will forget how to take pictures with a camera. Why bother? Everything in between, using what’s at hand. And the young ladies
and men. It's funny even.
The beach has become much narrower these days. Civilization "ate him up." This was the coastline under Voloshin,
and here it is now. They cut it in places to the width of an umbrella... And it would be nice if they left the embankment wide, as it was in the Soviet years... No, the whole thing was built up.
Cape Chameleon, the entire Voloshin country of Cimmeria behind the back of the poet himself and his guests.
August 18, 1903
1911
Same look. And these days the sea beckons.
Cape Chameleon close up.
But this is something that didn’t exist under Voloshin, and it’s hard to even imagine how he would perceive the new Koktebel and everything that surrounds his priceless House.
The small area in front of the house-museum of M. Voloshin occupies 15 meters in width and 50 meters in length. This is the most beautiful, most ennobled place in the entire Koktebel embankment, and in all of Koktebel. I’m not saying it’s ideal, in some moments it’s even quite controversial, but there’s nothing better yet. This is probably why this place attracts people here. At any time of the day or evening during the holiday season, all the shops are busy, there is brisk trade, and people are milling around all the available attractions - the Voloshin monument and the "Clouds of Happiness" taking pictures. Sometimes, much less often, someone’s intelligent hand will take a photograph of the Poet’s House...
Notice those blue "eggs"? This is the “Cloud of Happiness” art object, a gift from the organizers of the “Jazz-Koktebel - 2012” festival to the house-museum, which intelligent people apparently could not refuse.
The purpose of the object is completely unclear. There is no particular beauty. The proposal to sit on it, like on a bench, generally seems nonsense. They even say the capacity is 6 people. Why not 15?
It is clear that this park sculpture is completely out of place and irrelevant. Yes, she is popular with children
and even some adults.
But if you think about it, it doesn’t fit at all where it was adapted.
It’s impossible to even take a proper photograph of the Voloshin monument without this aerial masterpiece getting into the frame, even if only marginally. Here you are.
A few words about the monument. This is a gift to Koktebel from the Arendt family. This family and Voloshin were connected by many years of true friendship. Authors - sculptures A.I. Grigoriev and his wife Ariadne Arendt are people who personally knew the poet.
The monument is unique, but Voloshin himself, in a sense, was original.
The inscription on the plaque on the monument: “Maximilian Voloshin 1877 - 1932.” And also lines from his poem “The Apprentice”:
When will you realize that man is born,
To melt it out of the world
Necessity and Reason -
The Universe of Freedom and Love, -
Then only
You will become a Master.
The Arendt family issued a statement against such a neighborhood. Not only was the monument itself installed not where they wanted, but they saw it in the park of the Poet’s House and without a pedestal. For me, the pedestal definitely changes the perception of the sculpture; it is difficult to “read” - it even looks comical. Moreover, due to its location - with its back to the sea - it is almost always in the shade. The poet's face, slightly thrown back, is almost invisible. See for yourself.
To place sculptures that are completely different in essence side by side is complete bad taste and absurdity, as the donors also expressed. And they are right.
At the end of the conversation about Koktebel, one of my favorite poems is Margarita Aliger “Morning Song”.
Beautiful words "A sonorous ingot of happiness - Koktebel." I think that Koktebel made many people happy. The first of these lucky ones is the Poet himself. He lived as he wanted, where he wanted. He wrote poetry, painted, worked, had fun with friends, and created his own bohemian world. At the same time, he managed to remain himself. During the revolution, he constantly helped people, sheltered both whites and reds. And as a result, he got nothing for it. Escaped the "early" years of repression. And he even helped those who fell into the clutches of the security officers. He died in 1932, having escaped the 37th year. Not all of his friends were able to escape this.
M. Voloshin and his wife in the steppe behind their house wave goodbye
Do you know the words of Agatha Christie: “Never go back to where you were happy. Until you do this, everything remains alive in your memory. If you find yourself there again, everything is destroyed”?
I don’t know if it was worth returning to Koktebel... Probably it was worth it. At least in order to understand how much I love Koktebel of bygone years, to break away from the prose of life, to be myself - young, subtle and sublime. That Koktebel is in memory, which means he is alive.
P.S. All of the above is my personal opinion (feelings). Please do not throw slippers, treat with respect.
Voloshin Maximilian Alexandrovich (1872-1933)
The creativity of M. A. Voloshin is universal. He proved himself both as an original artist and as a poet, translator, art and literary critic.
The intelligentsia of Russia in the first third of the 20th century. had in him a unique messenger, so to speak, a comprehender of all the main modern ideas, phenomena and trends in the art and literature of Europe and Russia. Voloshin's house, built by him in 1903 in Koktebel, on the eastern coast of Crimea, was a center of attraction for the Russian creative intelligentsia of that time.
In your own artistic creativity Voloshin managed to revive the tradition, rooted in Japanese landscape engraving, with new expressive means recreate the genre of landscape-meditation in watercolor. Although Voloshin studied at Moscow University for about two years (1897-99), he acquired his amazingly versatile knowledge on his own, in the 1900s. studying in depth in European libraries, listening to lectures at the Sorbonne, traveling. In Paris, he takes drawing and engraving lessons from the artist E. S. Kruglikova.
During his apprenticeship years, Voloshin strives to expand his circle of acquaintances as much as possible; he learns from everyone. It is located in the center of the artistic and intellectual life of Paris and St. Petersburg. Among the important acquaintances of those years was a meeting with the Tibetan khambulama A. Dorzhiev, theosophists A. R. Mintslova and A. Besant, and the anthroposophist R. Steiner.
Since 1903, Voloshin has published his reports in the magazine "Vesy" and the newspaper "Rus". Subsequently, he wrote articles about painting and poetry for the magazines “Golden Fleece”, “Apollo”, newspapers “Russian Art Chronicle”, “Morning of Russia”, etc. The total volume of his articles, which have not lost their value even now, amounts to more than one volume.
The period of apprenticeship ended in 1907, when thirty-year-old Voloshin, having gone through a difficult school of conflicting ideas in the capital (although he never participated in any discord), decides to leave for Koktebel.
Since 1910, he has worked a lot on monographic articles about K. F. Bogaevsky, A. S. Golubkina, M. S. Saryan, and defended the artistic associations “Jack of Diamonds” and “Donkey’s Tail” in the press.
In 1912, in connection with the sensational attempt on I. E. Repin’s painting “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan,” Voloshin spoke out against naturalism in art, against the depiction of violence. In 1913, his brochure “About Repin” was published, and the editorial offices of most magazines closed in front of him. The public perceived his speech as a personal attack against Repin, a master and academician revered by the public. However, in 1914, a book of Voloshin’s articles on culture, “Faces of Creativity,” was published. In 1916, he worked on a monofaphy about V.I. Surikov - one of best books about the artist by the power of insight into the essence of his work.
“Eh, don’t drink to the bottom of our will,
Don't tie us into a single chain!
Wide is our Wild Field,
Our Scythian steppe is deep!”
Maximilian Voloshin
Poet, literary and art critic, translator, humanist thinker and artist Maximilian Voloshin(1877-1932) was an attractive star for the generation of Silver Age writers, but an inconvenient thinker and poet for all regimes. In the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1951), Voloshin is characterized as a representative of the decadent cosmopolitan poetry of symbolism. It is argued that the Russian people knew the poet poorly and did not understand the Great October Revolution socialist revolution. In the third edition of the TSB there is a very short note about the poet, indicating several publications before 1918.
Selected poems by Voloshin were not included in the Library of Russian Soviet Poetry in fifty books “Russia is my homeland” (M., Fiction, 1967). Even during the height of Soviet Perestroika, in the published fundamental work “Russian Soviet Poetry” (M.: Publishing House “Soviet Literature”, 1990), one and a half pages out of 654 were allocated to his poetry with the following piercing lines from “Angel of Vengeance” (1906, Paris) :
“It is not the sower who reaps the thorny ear of sowing.
The one who accepts the sword will die by the sword.
Who once drank the intoxicating poison of anger,
He will become the executioner or the victim of the executioner.”
I became acquainted with individual works of the poet a long time ago; I visited the House of the Poet in Koktebel several times. But the true revelation was Maximilian Voloshin’s book “The Koktebel Shores” (1990), except for the pale printed reproductions of watercolors. The publication was prepared by the House of the Poet in Koktebel.
The first most complete, scientific with commentary, Collected Works of Maximilian Voloshin in twelve volumes, was published under the auspices of the Institute of Russian Literature ( Pushkin House) Russian Academy Sciences in 2003 - 2011 (M.: Ellis Luck) and has almost ten thousand pages.
***
Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (Kirienko-Voloshin) born on May 16, 1877 in Kyiv in the family of a lawyer. The Kiriyenko-Voloshins are Cossacks from Zaporozhye, and on their mother’s side they are Germans who have Russified since the 18th century. Soon the parents separated, and the boy remained with his mother, Elena Ottobaldovna (née Glaser, 1850-1923). The father died in 1881.
His early childhood was spent in Taganrog and Sevastopol, then in Moscow, where the boy entered the 1st Moscow Gymnasium.
In 1893, Elena Ottobaldovna, together with her common-law husband Pavel von Tesch, bought a plot of land in the Crimea in the Koktebel Valley and built a dacha, which her poet son would open to the world and make famous. Other representatives of the creative intelligentsia, including the writer-doctor Vikenty Veresaev, also purchased plots here.
Konstantin Bogaevsky In Koktebel. House of Maximilian Voloshin. 1905. Feodosia Art Gallery named after. I.K. Aivazovsky.
When Max moved with his mother to Crimea, next to the deserted and almost deserted Koktebel Valley there was the Bulgarian village of Koktebel. The boy went to the Feodosia gymnasium (now the building houses the Institute of Finance and Economics). Voloshin recalled that when his mother presented reviews of his Moscow “successes” to the Feodosia gymnasium, the director threw up his hands and said: “Madam, we, of course, will accept your son, but I must warn you that we cannot correct idiots.”
The distance from Koktebel to Feodosia by road was 20 kilometers, and the hiking trail through mountainous desert terrain, although shorter, was more dangerous for travel, and the high school student lived in rented apartments in Feodosia.
Voloshin “I found Feodosia a tiny town, nestled in the shadow of the huge Genoese towers, which still preserved proper names- Giuliana, Clementina, Constanza... on the shore of the magnificent arc of a wide bay... Genoese surnames still remained in the city... The sidewalks of Italian Street ran in arcades, like in Padua and Pisa, in the port you could hear Italian dialect and come across Italian signs of zucchini. Beyond the city began the hills, washed out, shabby, without a sign of ruins, but saturated with some kind of great historical melancholy.” The poet draws attention to the fountains, “magnificent, marble”; there are thirty-six of them, but they are “without water” - fresh water brought by ship from Yalta .
The Feodosia men's gymnasium was no worse than the Moscow gymnasiums with first-class teacher of Russian literature. Max also meets the teacher of the Feodosia women's gymnasium, Alexandra Mikhailovna Petrova, an expert in the history and culture of Crimea, with whom he will maintain friendship for many years.
The artist Aivazovsky spoke approvingly of the drawings of the talented young man. But during his high school years, books become the boy’s main passion. Of course, later he fell in love with women, but he considered them as a necessary and indispensable means for poetic inspiration.
After graduating from high school, Voloshin entered Moscow University, where he studied from 1897 to 1899 and was expelled for participating in student riots with the right of reinstatement. But Maximilian decides to engage in self-education through “mental” travel that opens up the world. For the European and Russian aristocracy, this form of education was an indispensable condition for quality education.
Voloshin participates in a scientific expedition to Central Asia, and then travels a lot around Europe (France with Corsica, Germany, Spain, including the Balearic Islands, Italy with Rome and Sardinia), meets cultural figures, visits and works in famous libraries, listens to lectures at the Sorbonne, the Higher Russian School and takes lessons drawing.
In May 1901, he, along with fellow travelers from southern France in the foothills of the eastern Pyrenees, crossed the border with tiny Andorra, which even then lived off a kind of offshore - barter “smuggling between France and Spain, exchanging bulls for cigars.”
In the autumn of 1901 in Paris, Max attended lectures at the Sorbonne and at the Higher Russian School.
As a result of his acquaintance with Europe, Voloshin formulates not only rules for the traveler: “The political development of each party is the story of the gradual discrediting of an idea, its relegation from the icy heights of absolute knowledge to the cesspool, until it becomes suitable for the home use of the crowd - this universal, eternal, all-human philistinism.”
Returning to Moscow in 1903, the poet entered the circle of Russian Symbolists and began to actively publish. He alternates between living in his homeland and in Paris, where in 1905 he became a Freemason.
Voloshin meets the Austrian occultist, esotericist and mystic Rudolf Steiner, founder of the German section of the Theosophical Society, and then the Anthroposophical Society, which attracted many to its ranks cultured people, especially impressionable women.
First hobbies and falling in love contribute to the development of the poetic gift. Olga Muromtseva, daughter of a professor at Moscow University and chairman of the First State Duma Sergei Muromtsev, Max dedicated a wonderful poem “The sky is entangled with starry wings...”.
In April 1906, Voloshin married the artist Margarita Sabashnikova (1882 - 1973) and after a honeymoon along the Danube, the newlyweds settled in St. Petersburg. As a result of their difficult relationship, they separated in 1907. Margarita met Rudolf Steiner back in 1905 and became a staunch supporter of anthroposophy. Steiner turned out to be a more practical man than the poet. A little time will pass and Voloshin’s wife Margarita Sabashnikova will see in him the ideal of her female dream. Despite this, she regularly came to the Voloshin estate in Koktebel. During the First World War, Sabashnikova lived in Switzerland, where she took part in the construction of the Goetheanum in Dornach. After February Revolution In 1917 she returned to Russia, but in 1922 she finally moved to Germany and became a famous master of religious and secular painting.
In 1907, Voloshin wrote the cycle “Cimmerian Twilight”; from 1910, as a critic, he wrote articles about K. F. Bogaevsky, A. S. Golubkina and M. S. Saryan, and advocated art groups"Jack of Diamonds" and "Donkey's Tail".
After an unsuccessful family life love interests continued, resulting in the formation of a triangle: Nikolai Gumilyov, Elizaveta Dmitrieva and Max Voloshin. It's over This in November 1909, a duel between two poets on the Black River. Almost like Pushkin, but with a successful outcome. Voloshin's second was Count Alexei Tolstoy. The reason for the duel was the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva, who, thanks to Voloshin’s literary hoax, was successfully published as Cherubina de Gabriak.
In 1910, the poet’s first collection “Poems” was published, in 1914 - the book “Faces of Creativity” (selected articles on culture), and in 1915 - a collection of poems about the horror of war - “Anno mundi ardentis” (“In the Year of the Burning World” ). At the same time, he paints watercolor Crimean landscapes and exhibits at World of Art exhibitions.
On the eve of the First World War, Voloshin leaves Koktebel for Switzerland. Fascinated by the ideas of anthroposophy, he visits Dornach, where, together with like-minded people from many countries, he begins the construction of the First Goetheanum - cultural center Anthroposophical Society founded by Steiner.
When the war began, Voloshin writes a letter to the Minister of War Russian Empire Sukhomlinov with refusal military service and participation “in the bloody massacre.”
In the fall of 1915, the poet again visited Spain and France; in April 1916, Max arrived in Petrograd, and then returned “to the homeland of the spirit” in Koktebel. 
As artist Elizaveta Krivoshapkina (1897-1988) recalled, in Koktebel in the Voloshin house “There are many small whitewashed rooms, through the windows of which you can see either Karadag or the sea... and everywhere there is a fresh sea draft and the rustling of the surf. These rooms were inhabited by a cheerful tribe of “idiots”: artists, poets and a few people of other professions. Everyone wore little clothing: barefoot or with slippers on their bare feet; women in trousers and with open heads shocked the “normal summer residents”...
***
In parallel with the Silver Age, according to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, “there was a sharp deterioration human quality and the advent of the era of “moral criminals.” The most tragic page in the fate of Crimea is approaching, occupying a special place in the Poet’s biography.
Eduard Rosenthal in the book “Max Voloshin’s Planet” (M.: Vagrius, 2000) notes: “Max Voloshin was truly convinced of his involvement in the destinies of the country, which was not very kind to him... Bolshevism, in his words, turned out to be an unexpected and deep truth about Russia, which must be connected with our entire worldview... And yet faith in Russia, in its the future was the core of his work."
***
New economic policy(NEP) of the Soviet regime gradually revived trade and the economy, but the poet does not have a permanent income. Voloshin, with the help of Veresaev, publishes three poems and a book about the artist Surikov in Moscow. The fantastic fee of 93 million rubles, which the intermediary was carrying, was “expropriated” by a swindler at the market in Kharkov. Although without thieves, due to enormous inflation, millions were quickly losing their purchasing power. Voloshin temporarily gets a job as an expert at Vneshtorg, but due to eternal altruism he loses this job too.
I had to run “institutions to take care of funerals, flour, those who were shot, the sick, those dying of hunger"(from a letter to his mother dated April 25, 1922) ... And all this to the detriment of work and severely deteriorating health (arthritis, migraines). In 1922, in Feodosia, the poet becomes close to a nurse Maria (Marusya) Zabolotskaya, who, after the death of Voloshin’s mother, moves as his wife to Koktebel.
By the mid-1920s, Maximilian Voloshin completed the fundamental work “The Ways of Cain,” which is a historiosophical and cultural study of civilization. His creative path He did not limit himself to poetry and painting, he constantly created on the boundaries of the multidimensional space of history, cultural studies, lyrics and philosophy. As researchers of his work note, here he is close to Velimir Khlebnikov, but in “in the historical and cultural context of the Silver Age they take opposite positions.”
In Voloshin's work, East and West cannot be separated. In Eurasian Russia, the poet allowed the formation of Slavia, “a Slavic southern empire, into which both the Balkan states and the regions of southern Russia will probably be drawn.” She will be "to gravitate towards Constantinople and the straits and strive to take place Byzantine Empire»
, that is, to become the Third Rome.
Among the philosophers of the Silver Age, Voloshin is close to Nikolai Berdyaev, and in his
The poet's presentation of history is largely guided by the theory of Oswald Spengler (“The Decline of Europe”). Spengler associated the decline of culture with the deepening lack of spirituality in society, the lag of moral progress with technological progress, and the growth of the world's cosmopolitan cities.
The poet Voloshin believed that only someone he met could save humanity. "flow of creative energy" the burning of human love.
In February 1924, Voloshin and Marusya Zabolotskaya, after a five-year break, traveled to Moscow and Petrograd. On April 2, the poet read his poems in the Kremlin Lev Borisovich Kamenev (Rosenfeld) and his wife Olga Davidovna (sister of Leon Trotsky). Vladimir Lenin's successor to the position of Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR, a great lover of poetry and a literature connoisseur, praised the poet and gave such a “recommendation” a letter to publishers that the naive poet, inspired by the assessment of the statesman, was cut off for several decades.
Voloshin was received by the People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, who approved the poet's requests to provide an estate in Koktebel as free writers' creative houses. In the summer of 1925 alone, 400 people stayed there, which was “already beyond human strength” for the no longer young poet.
***
A poet, like an artist, cannot create without inspiration, the source of which is often women. Voloshin once said to his neighbor in Koktebel, writer Veresaev: “Women’s beauty is a skin disease. Only a clerk can love an ideal beauty.”
Voloshin soberly described the separation from his first wife Margarita Sabashnikova, who “All my life I dreamed of having a god who would hold her hand and tell her what to do and what not to do. I've never been one. She found it in Steiner."
Only in adulthood did Voloshin meet a woman in whom he appreciated other qualities.
On March 9, 1927, the poet registered his marriage with Maria Stepanovna Zabolotskaya(1887, St. Petersburg - 1976, Koktebel), who became a real guardian angel for her husband and the House of the Poet. Her Pole father was a skilled mechanic, and her mother (née Antoniuk) came from a family of Latgalian Old Believers. They say that the third wife is from God, but Voloshin was lucky with the second. A medical professional by training, she became a museum worker, tour guide and fiction writer. The wife not only shared with the poet difficult years, starting in 1922, but preserved the House of the Poet and her husband’s creative heritage in difficult conditions. 
Since the second half of the 20s, Voloshin’s poetry has been banned, the family lives on translations, in particular, Gosizdat paid a fee for translations from Flaubert.
On September 12, 1927, the Crimean earthquake occurred. The House of the Poet, although it creaked, withstood the rampant elements. On December 9, the poet had a stroke.
Collectivization begins in the country, and the Voloshins are put on the list for dispossession. As one eyewitness recalls, fists “must have constituted at least 5 percent of all farms. In the village, no one used hired labor, there were no farm laborers at all... The list included all hardworking families that had horses or other livestock, all owners of seeders, winnowing machines and other equipment. They didn’t forget the shopkeeper Saprykin and the former owner of the “Bubny” cafe, the Greek Sinopli... The deprivation of voting rights of the priest - my grandfather, “kulak” Voloshin and many others did not excite anyone. Much more frightening was the resolution of January 30, 1930 of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on measures to liquidate kulak farms.” The poet joked sadly : “Subject to destruction as a class.”
A defender from the party workers, a journalist, was found. His intervention for some time creates “immunity” for the House of the Poet; the Koktebel shop is assigned to supply the “poet-artist Voloshin” with bread “according to the standards of the 3rd category” (300 grams per capita per day). With difficulty, but a pension is awarded.
“But death is slowly and surely approaching the poet. Lying down, he suffocates, and since July 15 he has spent his nights sitting in a chair. All his illnesses, past and present, take up arms against him: heart failure, arthritis, asthma, pneumonia, speech impairment... The kidneys are gradually failing...”
Voloshin died after a second stroke on August 11, 1932 in Koktebel and was buried on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar near Koktebel.
The grave of Maximilian and Maria Voloshin on the mountain, from which a panorama of the Kara-Dag, Koktebel valley and bay opens. It is not customary to bring flowers to the grave. It has become a tradition to lay out gravestones with pebbles from the shores of Koktebel Bay. 
http://vashsudak.com/uploads/posts/2016-03/1456831800_2016-03-01_125949.jpg
Voloshin bequeathed the house in Koktebel to the Writers' Union, but his works were not published until 1976. Some admirers of Voloshin's work were arrested during the repressions of 1936. For example, the Russian poetess Natalya Anufrieva (1905-1990) and her friend Daniil Zhukovsky were arrested following a denunciation, including for possession of Voloshin’s poems. The poetess was exiled (for a total of 16 years), and Zhukovsky was shot.
***
Researchers of Voloshin’s work have noticed that the combination of a poet and an artist in one person is not accidental, according to the Japanese interpretation: “A poem is a talking picture. A painting is a silent poem.” For the poet, Cimmeria served, first of all, as a clot of world history. His Cimmerian poems are not landscape lyrics, but a modern and eternal cast of the soul of these places. And in painting, Voloshin believed that you need to paint not what you see, but what you know.
“Maximilian Voloshin went down in the history of Russian culture as the “genius of the place”, the great Pan Koktebel, builder and owner of the House of the Poet, poet-chronicler of the era. He was called a brownie and a goblin. He is unique for his creative breadth and civic position. His historiosophy is essentially poetic geophilosophy.
On August 1, 1984, the grand opening of the “House-Museum of Maximilian Voloshin” took place in Koktebel. In 2007, a memorial plaque was installed in Kyiv on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard on the house in which the poet was born.
In memory of Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin, an outstanding poet, artist and thinker, the International Voloshin Prize was established.
References:
Maximilian Voloshin Koktebel shores: poems, drawings, watercolors, articles - Simferopol: Tavria, 1990. -248 p.
Maximilian Voloshin Poems. - L.: Soviet writer, 1977. (Library of the poet. Small series).
Maximilian Voloshin Favorites. - St. Petersburg: Diamant, 1997.
Sergey Pinaev Maximilian Voloshin, or God who has forgotten himself. - M.: Young Guard, 2005. - 661 p. (ZhZL)
Maximilian Voloshin “House of the Poet”
The door is unlocked. Cross the threshold.
My house is open to all roads.
In cool cells, whitewashed with lime,
The wind sighs, a dull roar lives
Waves rushing up onto the flat shore,
Wormwood spirit and the harsh crackling of cicadas.
And outside the window is the molten sea
Burns like brocade in the azure expanse.
The surrounding hills are devastated
The prickly sun. Silver wormwood
On the slate scales of the desert
A tuft of shaggy gray hair sticks out.
Land of graves, prayers and meditations -
She raised me at home
Sparing sowing of ailanthus and acacias
In a fence of tamarisk trees. In depth
Behind their foliage, torn by the winds,
Rocky Mountain Jagged Eye
Closed the bay with Alcaeus's verse,
Asymmetrically strict stanzas.
Here is the junction of the Caucasus and Balkan ranges,
And the coasts of these meager countries
The great pathos of the lyrics is bequeathed
From the original days when the volcano
Metal fire from the depths of deep cracks
And the smoky torch in the sky was shaking.
Over there - behind the profile of the coastal rocks,
Capturing some semblance
(My forehead, my nose, cheek and forehead),
Like a collapsed Gothic cathedral,
Sticking out with unruly teeth,
Like a fabulous basalt fire,
Widely blown stone flame,
From the gray haze, over the sea in the distance
A wall rises... But the tale of Karadag
Do not fade with a brush on paper,
Can't be expressed in a limited language.
I've seen a lot. To the divas of the universe
I paid tribute with pictures and words...
But the chest is narrow for this breathing,
My larynx is too tight for these words.
The bubbling mouths are riveted.
In the cooled depths there is darkness and silence.
But spasms and convulsions of passion
Here the entire earth has been flattened for centuries.
And the same passion, and the same gloomy genius
In the struggle of tribes and in the change of generations.
My shores are still dreaming
Tarred Achaean boats,
And the voice of Odysseus calls to the dead,
And the Cimmerian darkness
It lay on all the paths and valleys,
Blackening with black holes of unconsciousness.
River sediments to a fathom depth
Saturated with stones, shards,
Burial grounds, ashes, bones.
Swept away by the rains into one channel
And rough firings of the Neolithic,
And the shells of Milesian thin vases,
And the vertebrae of some alien races,
Whose appearance is erased and name is forgotten.
Sarmatian sword and Scythian arrow,
Olbian coat of arms, glass teardrop,
Tatarian lyote greenish-beady
They are adjacent to the Venetian bead.
And in the masonry of the walls of the cordon post
Among the cobblestones we are numb
Patterned Turkish plate
And the corner of a Byzantine capital.
What traces are there in this soil?
For the archaeologist and numismatist
From Roman plaques and Hellenic coins
Up to the Russian soldier's button!..
Here, in these folds of sea and land,
The mold did not dry out human cultures -
The space of centuries was cramped for life,
So far, we - Russia - have not arrived.
For one hundred and fifty years, since Catherine,
We have trampled the Muslim paradise,
They cut down the forests, opened up the ruins,
They plundered and ruined the region.
The orphaned saklyas gape,
Gardens have been uprooted along the slopes.
The people left. The sources have dried up.
There are no fish in the sea. There is no water in the fountains.
But the mournful face of the numb mask
Goes to the hills of Homer's country,
And pathetically naked
Her spine and muscles and ligaments.
But the shadows of those whom Ulysses called here,
They got drunk again with wine and blood
In recent tragic years.
Strife, and famine, and war,
Baptizing nations with sword and flame,
All the ancient Horror was raised from the bottom.
In those days my house, blind and desolate,
Kept the rights of refuge like a temple,
And dissolved only to fugitives,
Hiding from the noose and execution.
And the red leader and the white officer, -
Fanatics of irreconcilable faiths -
They were looking here, under the roof of the poet,
Shelter, protection and advice.
I did everything to stop my brothers
To destroy ourselves, to destroy each other,
And I myself read in the same column with others
In the bloody lists there is a proper name.
But in these days of denunciations and alarms
The lucky lot did not leave my house.
Neither the power was taken away, nor the enemy burned,
A friend did not betray, a robber did not rob.
The storm has subsided. The fire burned out.
I accepted life and this house as a gift
Unintentional, entrusted to me by fate,
As a sign that I am adopted by the earth.
Full chest to the sea, straight to the east,
Turned like a church, a workshop,
And again the human flow
It flows through the door without drying up.
Come in, my guest, shake off the dust of life
And the mold of thoughts is at my doorstep...
From the bottom of centuries he will greet you strictly
The huge face of Queen Taiakh.
My shelter is poor. And times are harsh.
But the shelves of books rise like a wall.
Here at night they talk to me
Historians, poets, theologians.
And here their voice, powerful as an organ,
Muffled speech and the quietest whisper
Not a winter hurricane can drown out
Neither the crash of the waves, nor the gloomy murmur of Pontus.
My lips have been closed for a long time... Let it go!
It is more honorable to recite it by heart
And write off secretly and furtively,
During life, be not a book, but a notebook.
And you and I - we all had the honor
“Visit the world in fatal moments”
And become sadder and sharper than we are.
I am not an outcast, but a stepson of Russia.
These days I am her silent reproach.
And he himself chose this deserted seclusion
The land of voluntary exile,
So that in the years of lies, fall and devastation
Smelt your spirit in solitude
And suffer great knowledge.
Understand the simple lesson of my land:
How Greece and Genoa passed,
So everything blows away - Europe and Russia,
Civil unrest is a combustible element
Will dispel... Will arrange a new century
In the backwaters of everyday life there are other waters...
The days fade, a man passes by,
But heaven and earth are the same from eternity.
Therefore, live for the current day.
Bless your blue eye.
Be as simple as the wind, inexhaustible as the sea,
And full of memory, like the earth.
Love the distant sail of a ship
And the song of the waves rustling in the open space.
All the thrill of life of all ages and races
Lives in you. Always. Now. Now.
25. 12. 1926
One of the remarkable representatives of the Silver Age was a multifaceted and highly original person (he was called the most eccentric Russian of the early 20th century) - Maximilian Voloshin (1877-1932). It fit very organically into that wonderful period of Russian literature, to which the words of the poetess A. Akhmatova are so suitable: “And the silver moon is bright above silver age froze...", although M. Voloshin himself did not belong to any of the movements that dominated Russian art at that time.
A talented person is talented in everything
In May 1877, in Kyiv, a son was born into the family of a collegiate adviser (VI class rank, corresponding to an army colonel) A. M. Kirienko-Voloshin and E. O. Glazer. Immediately after the birth of the child, the mother, who had absorbed the free morals of that time, left her husband, who died three years later, and never thought about him again. She raised little Max herself in accordance with her extravagant disposition. And, probably, she was right if, as a result of her upbringing, the encyclopedist Maximilian Voloshin, a qualified and talented translator, a wonderful, original poet and an amazing artist, appeared in Russia. In addition, he was an interesting literary critic. And, in confirmation of everything that was said, it was as if nature itself had created on Karadag the profile of a bearded man, to whom Maximilian Voloshin eventually became incredibly similar.
Unusual fate
And his fate was lucky. This cheerful man, the stupid hoaxer, in principle, lived until the end of his days as and where he wanted, wrote what he wanted, although he did not publish. And later, only for storing his poems, people could disappear without a trace. The Bolsheviks did not even take away his estate, which consisted of two 2-story mansions and a spacious outbuilding. And in Koktebel, right up to the death of this “shaggy Zeus”, in summer periods Hundreds of friends and friends of his friends came. Voloshin's estate was something like a free sanatorium, a creative home for poets, writers and artists.
A turning point year
Maximilian Voloshin studied at gymnasiums - one in Feodosia and two in Moscow, at Moscow University (in the law department), and everywhere he mastered science was unimportant. And then, years later, he said that the ten years spent in educational institutions, did not enrich him with a single thought, and that these were wasted years. However, he attended lecture courses that interested him at the Sorbonne and studied in the studios of artists in Paris.
In 1900, which M. Voloshin considers the year of his formation, he was expelled from Moscow to Central Asia for participating in student unrest. It was here that he decided to devote himself to art and literature, for which, in his opinion, he needed to “go to the West.”
From dropouts to encyclopedists
His biography until 1912 will be closely connected with Paris, he traveled all over Europe and visited Egypt. Over the years, the half-educated student turned into an erudite - he wandered around the cities, spending a lot of time in libraries, absorbing the culture of ancient and medieval civilizations like a sponge. He was actively engaged in translations, revealing Russian poets to the French, and French poets to his compatriots. His critical articles were intensively published in popular Russian publications, and by the time he returned to Koktebel he already had a literary name.
Talented hoaxer
But in 1913, this absolutely free man, whose views always differed from the views of those around him (and his mother’s credo was the motto: grow up as anyone, just not like the others) committed two actions, the result of which was a boycott declared on him. The first story was a talented hoax with the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva. They published a series of poems under the pseudonym Cherubina de Gabriac. The poems were wildly popular. But the exposure was also difficult, as a result, defending the woman’s honor, M. Voloshin fought a duel with N. Gumilyov. Maximilian Alexandrovich's second was Count A. Tolstoy.
Contrary to public opinion
The second story put Voloshin at odds with many of his literary friends. In February, he gave a lecture at the Polytechnic Museum, in which he dared to express his own opinion, different from everyone else, about the reason for the maniac’s attack on I. Repin’s painting “Ivan the Terrible Kills His Son.” In 1914, a book of his essays, “Faces of Creativity,” was published, which became very popular. And in 1910, the first collection of his poems was published; before that, neither M. Gorky nor V. Ivanov had published his poetry.
Plot in Crimea
Some researchers believe that even today neither the scale of the personality nor the creative heritage of the artist, poet and literary critic named Voloshin Maximilian is completely appreciated. Koktebel is inextricably linked with his name. The idea to settle there belonged to his mother. Back in 1893 (Max was 16 years old at the time), she was one of the first to buy a plot of land here by the sea, believing that only air, nature and the centuries-old history of Crimea, in which so many different cultures had left their mark, suited her priceless Maximilian, in whom so many different bloods mixed.
Legendary house
Since returning from abroad, the poet and artist has lived almost all the time on his estate, which is gradually becoming a kind of center of cultural thought in Russia. Although, according to rumors, they were not only thinking here. In the hardest years Civil War Maximilian Voloshin’s house was a shelter for all his friends, regardless of their “color” - he saved the Reds from the Whites, and the Whites from the Reds. He did not go into exile, although his friend A.K. Tolstoy in 1918 (who returned to Soviet Russia) begged him to flee abroad. Voloshin did not abandon his homeland.
Singer of Cimmeria
While in Koktebel, M. Voloshin painted a lot - according to contemporaries, two watercolors a day. Many of his works are accompanied by beautiful poetry. He was in love with his Cimmeria (among the ancient Greeks - “ Nordic countries"), wrote about her and drew her. Maximilian Voloshin painted his paintings in cycles. Some of them took part in exhibitions of artists at the World of Art. But they for a long time were not familiar to the general public, although now excellent selections, accompanied by poems, can be found in the public domain. Many of the master’s works are kept in the museum named after him and in Feodosia, in the Aivazovsky Museum.
Guardian of the Heritage
The Maximilian Voloshin Museum in his house in Koktebel opened in 1984. It owes its existence to the widow of Maximilian Aleksandrovich M. S. Voloshina (nee Zabolotskaya), who until 1976 not only lived in the former estate, but carefully preserved and collected everything that was connected with her beloved husband. She knew that someday the people of Russia would appreciate the legacy of the great artist and poet.
The annual International Maximilian Voloshin Prize for the best poetic book is presented at the museum; the days of its presentation are called Voloshin September. The poet and artist was buried nearby - on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar. Under the same slab, his wife rests next to him.
The poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin, expelled from the university, surprised his contemporaries with the versatility of his interests. A creator who knew how to encapsulate the passions raging within within the framework of the poetic genre, in addition to painting and poetry, he wrote critical articles, was engaged in translations, and was also fond of astronomical and meteorological observations.
From the beginning of 1917, his bright life, full of stormy events and various meetings, was concentrated in Russia. At the literary evenings held by the writer in the house he personally built in Koktebel, his son Nikolai, and, and, and even, were repeatedly present.
Childhood and youth
Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin was born on May 16, 1877 in Kyiv. The poet's mother Elena Ottobaldovna was a strong-willed and original woman. Soon after the birth of her son, she separated from her husband. The woman wanted to cultivate a fighting character in Max, and the boy grew up, as Marina Tsvetaeva later said about him, “without claws,” and was peaceful and friendly towards everyone.
Maximilian Voloshin as a child with his mother It is known that in Koktebel, where Voloshin moved with his mother at the age of 16, Elena even hired local boys to challenge Maximilian to a fight. The mother welcomed her son’s interest in the occult and was not at all upset that he always remained in the second year at the gymnasium. One of Max's teachers once said that it is impossible to teach anything to an idiot. Less than six months later, at the funeral of that same teacher, Voloshin recited his wonderful poems.
Although the writer was a student from 1897 to 1899 Faculty of Law Moscow University and regularly attended lectures; he already acquired his amazingly versatile knowledge on his own. From the biography of the publicist it is known that Maximilian was never able to obtain a diploma. Expelled for participating in the riots, the guy decided not to continue his studies and engage in self-education.
Literature
Voloshin’s first book, “Poems,” was published in 1910. In the works included in the collection, the author’s desire to understand the fate of the world and the history of mankind as a whole was clearly visible. In 1916, the writer published a collection of anti-war poems “Anno mundi ardentis” (“In the year of the burning world”). In the same year he settled firmly in his beloved Koktebel, to which he later dedicated a couple of sonnets.
In 1918 and 1919, two of his new books of poetry were published - “Iverni” and “Deaf and Mute Demons”. The hand of the writer is invariably felt in every line. Voloshin’s poems dedicated to the nature of Eastern Crimea are especially colorful.
Since 1903, Voloshin has published his reports in the magazine “Scales” and the newspaper “Rus”. Subsequently, he writes articles about painting and poetry for the magazines “Golden Fleece”, “Apollo”, the newspapers “Russian Art Chronicle” and “Morning of Russia”. The total volume of works, which to this day have not lost their value, amounts to more than one volume.
In 1913, in connection with the sensational attempt on the painting “And His Son Ivan,” Voloshin spoke out against naturalism in art by publishing the brochure “About Repin.” And although after this the editors of most magazines closed their doors to him, considering the work an attack against the artist revered by the public, in 1914 a book of Maximilian’s articles “Faces of Creativity” was published.
Painting
Voloshin took up painting in order to judge professionally fine arts. In the summer of 1913, he mastered the technique of tempera, and the following year he painted his first sketches in watercolor (“Spain. By the Sea”, “Paris. Place de la Concorde at night”). Bad quality watercolor paper taught Voloshin to work immediately in the right tone, without corrections or blots.
Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Biblical Land" Each new work of Maximilian carried a particle of wisdom and love. While creating his paintings, the artist thought about the relationship between the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) and the deep meaning of the cosmos. Each landscape painted by Maximilian retained its density and texture and remained translucent even on canvas (“Landscape with a lake and mountains”, “Pink Twilight”, “Hills parched by the heat”, “Moon whirlwind”, “Lead light”).
Painting by Maximilian Voloshin "Kara-Dag in the clouds" Maximilian was inspired by the classic works of Japanese painters, as well as the paintings of his friend, the Feodosian artist Konstantin Bogaevsky, whose illustrations adorned Voloshin’s first collection of poems in 1910. Along with Emmanuel Magdesyan and Lev Lagorio, Voloshin is today considered a representative of the Cimmerian school of painting.
Personal life
His corpulence, coupled with his short stature and unruly mane of hair on his head, created a misleading impression among the opposite sex about Voloshin’s male incompetence. The women felt safe next to the eccentric writer and believed that it would not be shameful to invite a writer who bore little resemblance to a real man to take him to the bathhouse to rub his back.
Throughout his life, Voloshin took advantage of this misconception, replenishing his amorous piggy bank with new names. The critic's first wife was the artist Margarita Sabashnikova. Their romance began in Paris. Young people attended lectures at the Sorbonne, at one of which the writer noticed a girl who looked exactly like Queen Taiah.
On the day they met, the writer took his chosen one to the museum and showed her a statue of the ruler of Egypt. In letters to friends, Maximilian admitted that he could not believe that Margarita was real man made of flesh and blood. Friends in reply messages jokingly asked the amorous poet not to marry the young lady made of alabaster.
After the wedding, which took place in 1906, the lovers moved to St. Petersburg. Their neighbor was the popular poet Vyacheslav Ivanov. Symbolists gathered in the writer’s apartment every week. Voloshin and his wife were also frequent guests. While Maximilian enthusiastically recited, argued and quoted, his missus carried on quiet conversations with Ivanov. In conversations, Margarita has repeatedly stated that in her opinion, the life of a real artist should be imbued with drama and that friendly married couples are not in fashion today.
During the period when Vyacheslav and Margarita were just beginning to develop romantic feelings, Voloshin fell in love with the playwright Elizaveta Dmitrieva, with whom in 1909 he created a very successful literary hoax - the mysterious Catholic beauty Cherubina de Gabriac, whose works were published in the Apollo magazine.
The hoax lasted only 3 months, then Cherubina was exposed. In November of the same year, who at one time introduced Dmitrieva to Voloshin, in the presence of Maximilian, spoke impartially on the side of the poetess, for which he immediately received a slap in the face from the author of the poem “Venice”.
As a result, the ugly lame-legged girl became the reason why Voloshin and Gumilyov had a duel on the Black River. After a scandalous fight, during which miraculously no one was injured, Maximilian’s wife informed her husband, who was immersed in a pool of amorous passions, of her intention to divorce. As it turned out later, Ivanov’s wife invited Margarita to live together, and she agreed.
In 1922, famine began in Crimea. The publicist's mother, Elena Ottobaldovna, began to noticeably lose control. Max lured paramedic Maria Zabolotskaya from a neighboring village for his beloved parent. It was this kind and sympathetic woman, who stood next to him during his mother’s funeral, that he married in March 1927.
And although the couple never managed to have children, Maria Stepanovna was next to the writer in both joy and sorrow until his death. Having been widowed, she did not change the Koktebel customs and also continued to receive traveling poets and artists in Voloshin’s house.
Death
The last years of the poet's life were full of work - Maximilian wrote and painted a lot in watercolors. In July 1932, the asthma that had long troubled the publicist was complicated by influenza and pneumonia. Voloshin died after a stroke on August 11, 1932. His grave is located on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar, located a couple of kilometers from Koktebel.
After the death of the eminent writer, the sculptor Sergei Merkurov, who created the death masks, and, took a cast from the face of the deceased Voloshin. The writer's wife, Maria Zabolotskaya, managed to preserve the creative legacy of her beloved husband. Thanks to her efforts, in August 1984, Maximilian’s house located in Crimea received the status of a museum.
Bibliography
- 1899 – “Venice”
- 1900 – “Acropolis”
- 1904 – “I walked through the night. And the flames of pale death..."
- 1905 – “Taiah”
- 1906 – “Angel of Vengeance”
- 1911 – “To Edward Wittig”
- 1915 – “To Paris”
- 1915 – “Spring”
- 1917 – “The Capture of the Tuileries”
- 1917 – “Holy Rus'”
- 1919 – “Writing about the kings of Moscow”
- 1919 – “Kitezh”
- 1922 – “Sword”
- 1922 – “Steam”
- 1924 – “Anchutka”