Returning to Russia at the dawn of perestroika, she connected our everyday life with the distant, almost unreal Silver Age. And she also drew a line under this century, passing away a few years later. This is already enough for her name to be inscribed in the history of literature.

"NINETEEN YEARS OF JASMIN"

The sensational memoirs connect Odoevtseva with the Neva and the Seine, but its first river was the Daugava, Western Dvina, on the banks of which she was born in ... This is where the riddles begin. Reference books give her date of birth as July 1895, but she herself different time I was talking about March or September. And in Petrograd in the early 20s, having entered the creative environment, she reduced herself to six years and wrote in verse about "nineteen jasmine years." Already in her old age, she claimed that she aged herself on purpose in order to get with her husband to a nursing home.

It is difficult to find out the truth - Irina Odoevtseva's metric has not yet been found in the archives.

More precisely, Iraida Gustavovna Geinike, as her real name was. Father Gustav-Adolf Traugotovich was a Livonian German, his mother was the daughter of a Russian merchant. The poetess claimed that her name was Irina Odoevtseva, from which the pseudonym of her daughter allegedly came from. But it is quite possible that Irina-Iraida invented the pseudonym herself: in her memoirs she shamelessly misrepresented dates, names, lines of poetry...

"I write not about myself, but about those whom I was given to know ...". She did it so brightly and with such love that mistakes can be forgiven.

SUMMER SHOES IN A BAG

Her creative nature was torn to the capital. And early marriage in quiet Riga promised the traditional triad "kinder - kuche - kirche". And if not for the first World War... With the approach of the front, the family moved to Petrograd, having bought a large apartment on Basseynaya (now Nekrasov Street). True, her husband Sergei Popov got lost somewhere along the way ...

“A good man ... then married his mistress, whose husband shot himself,” she would drop indifferently many years later in her memoirs. Formally, they divorced only in 1921, and communicated later, she even dedicated the first collection of poems "Court of Miracles" to him. But in the boil of the revolution, Irina was captured not at all by family passions.

"I write not about myself, but about those whom I was given to know..."

Performances, concerts, poetry readings went on in a continuous series, despite the war, and then the revolution. It was only in 1918 that the Petrograd intelligentsia discovered that food had disappeared from the stores, the houses had ceased to be heated and illuminated, and the capital was suddenly transferred to Moscow.

But life has become even more interesting!

Irina did not remember what she ate or ate at all. Together with her friends, she ran to balls in huge unheated mansions, fearlessly wandered around the city at night in her mother's fur coat and felt boots, with a bag in which the only summer shoes lay. To stand out from the background of others, she wore a large black bow ( "I'm a little poetess with a huge bow"- perhaps her most famous lines). But even without a bow, she was adorned with red curls and slightly squinting green eyes, because of which she compared herself to a cat all her life.

The father returned to Latvia, which became independent, the mother died of typhus, two dozen guests were moved into their Petrograd apartment, leaving Irina - the "bourgeois woman" - the smallest room. But she never complained, cheered up and encouraged others to the best of her ability. And in any company her bursting laughter sounded.

Some random guest wondered for a long time where they poured it: "This girl definitely pecked, you won't be so cheerful without wine!"

GUMILEV'S FIRST STUDENT

At the end of 1918, she signed up for classes at the Living Word Institute. I went to the first lecture of Nikolai Gumilyov with bated breath: a hero, a lion hunter, the husband of Anna Akhmatova. And she froze: how ugly he is, how he does not look like a poet! Gumilyov sat straight as a stick, and in a wooden voice said that poetry is the same science as mathematics, and that it cannot be learned without reading Kara's multi-volume "Naturphilosophy".

Then it turned out that this was his first lecture in his life, and out of fear he said everything that came to mind.

She decided to show the master her poems, of course, weak and imitative, and he mercilessly scolded them. She cried, decided not to go to Gumilyov's classes, but in the end she admitted he was right and burned the notebook with poems in the stove. And then the day came when the mentor praised her. And a few days later, having met after class, he offered to conduct. By that time, he had broken up with Akhmatova, married Anna Engelhardt and sent his wife and little daughter to their relatives in Bezhetsk.

Since then, the teacher and student constantly walked together. She visited Gumilyov on Preobrazhenskaya more than once. "Write a ballad about me," he once asked; she will fulfill this request much later, in Paris. Another time he predicted: "You will soon be famous."

Gumilyov introduced her to all Petersburg celebrities, from Blok to Mandelstam. And only Akhmatova took up arms against Odoevtseva, until the end of her life called her an intriguer and mediocrity, assured that Gumilyov courted her exclusively in defiance ex-wife: "In fact, he did not love anyone but me."

Gumilyov really perceived Irina more as a friend, and she was not passionate about him: "As a man, he was not attractive to me." But they didn't really believe in it. Anna Engelhardt was also alarmed and, after her husband's death, she considered it necessary to assert her rights: "I am a widow, and she is only the first student!"

Everyone called her the first student of Gumilyov, and Korney Chukovsky even suggested that she wear a poster with these words around her neck.

She herself admitted: “I was always saved by my character. I am by nature happy man. Usually they talk about happiness either in the past or in the future tense. I feel the fullness of life always."

MEETING WITH GEORGY IVANOV

The famous poet Georgy Ivanov in his memoirs made up even more about himself than Odoevtseva. But it was he who helped her become famous. In April 1920, at Gumilyov's apartment, his students read poetry to Andrei Bely, who had arrived from Europe. Odoevtseva's teacher suggested reading "The Ballad of Crushed Glass" - a scary story about a merchant who sold crushed glass instead of salt and was punished for it otherworldly forces. Moreover, earlier the master rejected this simple, almost childish thing in style, hiding it in a folder called "The mass grave of losers." And now I got it from there...

Odoevtseva, stammering with fear, read it. And Ivanov, who was present at the party, suddenly burst into stormy compliments: "You yourself wrote this?! It can't be! This is what is needed now - a modern ballad!"

He also reproduced praise in the press, after which Odoevtseva woke up famous. Georgy Adamovich recalled: “Who among those who attended then Petersburg literary meetings does not remember on the stage a slender, blond, young woman, almost a girl with a huge black bow in her hair, singsong, cheerfully and hastily, slightly grassing, reading poetry, making everyone smile without exceptions, even people who lost the habit of smiling in those years?

All I had was luck, fun
And the guiding star is fate.
Glory touched fleetingly
My semi-childish forehead...

Now Ivanov was escorting her home. Gumilyov endured this in silence. Yes, and he was fascinated by not personal affairs. And then came August 1921, black for literary Petrograd: first Blok's funeral, then a memorial service for Gumilyov, who was shot and buried in an unknown place. And in next month Odoevtseva became the wife of Georgy Ivanov.

Many years later, she will write: “If I were asked which of the people I met in my life I consider the most wonderful, it would be difficult for me to answer - there were too many of them. But I know for sure that Georgy Ivanov was one of the most wonderful of them ".

"YOU SUDDENLY WENT OUT, Merry and Alive..."

Ivanov was among those who voluntarily followed those who were forcibly deported from Russia on the "philosophical ship". Abroad, Irina Odoevtseva met those whom she did not have time to recognize at home - Balmont, Igor Severyanin, Sergei Yesenin ... The couple rented two rooms in the center of Paris, having no other worries than taking care of each other. George, true to his habit, did not work. The money that the wealthy Gustav Geinike sent from Riga was quickly squandered by the mismanaged couple. Irina had to take over the maintenance of a small family.

Once in Riga, she proudly declared to the publisher of the newspaper "Segodnya" Milrud: "I am the poet Irina Odoevtseva and I do not write stories!" In Paris, I had to part with pride. From 1926, she abandoned poetry and began to write stories. One of the first, "The Shooting Star", was liked by Bunin, who was stingy with praise, who added in a conversation: "They say that this Odoevtseva charm is so pretty." The stories were followed by novels - "Angel of Death", "Isolde", "Mirror", scolded by critics. Anglophile Nabokov reproached that the author does not know English life (and how should she know?). Milyukov, with all the strictness of the Cadet, declared: "It's time to tell the talented young writer what's next - a dead end." Mark Slonim noted that she "cannot keep on the line separating tabloid literature from mere literature" ...

From 1926, she abandoned poetry and began to write stories. One of the first, "The Shooting Star", was liked by Bunin, who was stingy with praise

However, emigrants, especially women, willingly read her novels. She changed herself in a European manner, turning from a curly doll with a bow into a short-haired "lady vamp" from Hollywood films. Nabokov quipped that she did not distinguish golf from bridge - to spite him, she mastered both of these games.

In 1932 her father died, leaving his daughter great fortune. Tired of poverty, the spouses rent a huge apartment in the Bois de Boulogne area, buy furniture and gold, and travel around the world. And this is where longing falls on them - either for their homeland, or for a bygone youth ...

It was during these years that Ivanov wrote his most hopeless poems and scandalous memoirs, because of which many pillars of emigration turned away from him. With the arrival of the Germans, Ivanov and Odoevtsev, like many others, fled from Paris to the south, to the resort of Biaritz, where they continued to live in grand style. Rumors spread that they hosted German officers and drank with them to the victory of Germany. Ivanov then denied this ...

He did not wait for gratitude from the Nazis - they took away a villa in Biaritz, forcing the spouses to huddle in a beach house. The Parisian apartment was smashed American bomb, and after the liberation of the capital, they settled in the Angleterre Hotel. Ivanov was nominated for Nobel Prize as the best Russian poet, but without success (soon another Russian poet, Boris Pasternak, received it). From longing, he began to drink - "food is too expensive, and wine is always available."

Years passed, forces and money diminished. They settled in the cheapest hotel, Odoevtseva fell ill from dampness. On the advice of doctors, the couple moved to a boarding house in the southern town of Hyeres, where Spanish emigrants lived out their lives. True to herself, she saw only light here: “Life was good in the nursing home, and even festive…” But Georgy Ivanov’s heart ached from the heat, but for the sake of his wife he stayed in Hyeres.

In his "Posthumous Diary" most of the poems are dedicated to Odoevtseva: "I don't even dare to remember how lovely you were..."

He died in August 1958, having written two testamentary letters before his death: to emigrants and to the Soviet government. Both have one request: take care of his widow, who "never had anti-Soviet views."

She dedicated a penetrating poem to his memory:

A tear slips from under tired eyelids,
Coins jingle on a church platter.
Whatever one prays for
He certainly prays for a miracle:
So that twice two suddenly turned out to be five
And the straw suddenly blossomed with roses,
To come home again
Although there is neither "at home" nor at home.
So that from under the mound with grave grass
You came out suddenly, cheerful and alive.

RETURN TO RUSSIA

After burying her husband, Odoevtseva moved to another almshouse - Gagny in the suburbs of Paris. There, at the insistence of a poet friend Yuri Terapiano, she wrote and in 1967 published the first book of her memoirs, On the Banks of the Seine. There she met her third husband.

Yakov Gorbov, her peer, a former tsarist officer, worked as a taxi driver in Paris, during the war years he volunteered for French army, was severely wounded and taken prisoner. His life was allegedly saved by a book that he always wore on his chest and which was pierced by a bullet - Odoevtseva's novel "Isolde" (true, and we only know about this from her). He was treated in a nursing home, and lived in his apartment on Casablanca Street. Irina Vladimirovna settled there, deciding to warm with care last years his faithful admirer. They lived together for a little over three years; in 1981 Gorbov died, she was left alone again. Two years later, a second book of memoirs appeared, which did not arouse interest in France. But both volumes were read avidly in the USSR - along with other contraband dissident literature.

That is why, at the beginning of perestroika, the journalist Anna Kolonitskaya, once in Paris, first of all rushed to look for Odoevtseva. And, finally, she heard a muffled grazing voice in the receiver: "Come, of course, just open the door yourself - the key is under the rug." Odoevtseva was bedridden after a hip fracture and several unsuccessful surgeries. After listening to the guest, she threw up her hands: "My God, you must be an angel! Let me touch you so that I believe."

Anna immediately suggested that she return to her homeland, but it was easier said than done. Alexander Sabov, staff correspondent of Literaturnaya Gazeta in Paris, who broke through the first publication about the poetess...

In April 1987, the 92-year-old poetess was put on a Paris-Leningrad plane. In the city of silver youth, an enthusiastic reception awaited her, the city authorities allocated an apartment on Nevsky Prospekt, provided a pension and medical care. Both books of Irina Odoevtseva's memoirs were published quite quickly - with censorship exceptions, but in such circulations (250 and 500 thousand!), Which could not even be imagined in the West. She hoped to publish her poems and novels, to finish the third book of memoirs, begun in Paris, "On the Shores of Lethe" ...

Listening to political debates on the radio (she did not have a television), she asked with concern: did I return to become a witness new revolution? That's why I preferred to live in the past. Literary critic N. Kyakshto wrote: "She managed to recreate in her house the atmosphere of a literary salon of the Silver or post-Silver Age: young writers, artists, aspiring poets, people who were simply interested in art came to visit her - she opened her heart to everyone, delighted and inspired everyone" .

In recent years, Odoevtseva did not see well, at times she started talking, but she retained her usual love of life. A few weeks before her death, Anna Kolonitskaya (who wrote a book of memoirs about her "Everything is Pure for a Clear View"), at the request of one of her biographers, asked in what order Gumilev lived with his two lovers. Irina Vladimirovna laughed and answered with her unique grazing: "At the same time, Anya! At the same time!"

PS She died on October 14, 1990 and was buried without any fuss at the Volkovo cemetery. Having gone to the banks of her last river, she left us living portraits of her contemporaries, against which her own reflection is almost invisible. Always admired by others, always dissatisfied with herself - maybe she was pleased with just such an outcome:

"I DISAPPEARED. I AM A POEM..."

Beautiful, charming, mscarlet and pretty, with a childishness that was not lost even in extreme old age, with invariable bows, handbags, gloves, fur coats. Even in extremely difficult times, cheerful and positive. This is Irina Odoevtseva. The Last Poet Silver Age…

Her real name is Iraida Gustavovna Geinike. Born in Riga in the family of a barrister. She had an ordinary childhood with home teachers, gymnasium, first love. Unusual were only the early awareness of himself as a poet and the appearance of the heroine of silent films. So Georgy Adamovich recalled her: “Who, from those who attended Petersburg literary meetings at that time, does not remember on the stage a slender, blond, young woman, almost a girl with a huge black bow in her hair, singsong, cheerfully and hastily, slightly grassing, reciting poetry, making everyone smile without exception, even people who had lost the habit of smiling in those years.

And, indeed, it was not always taken seriously. The first offense was inflicted by the “real poet” Nikolai Gumilyov, when he ridiculed a self-confident girl who already had a circle of admirers of her poems. Then future husband, the poet Georgy Ivanov, hearing “The Ballad of Crushed Glass,” tirelessly repeated: “Did you write this? Really you? You yourself? .. Excuse me, I can’t believe it, looking at you. Dmitry Merezhkovsky, when Odoevtseva made a presentation in his literary salon "Green Lamp", admitted: "I did not expect ...". And Vladimir Nabokov, whom she met in New York, put it most unambiguously: “So pretty, why is she still writing ...”

And she, having started writing early, earned the “title” of N. Gumilyov’s “best student”, becoming his friend and best listener.He respected in his beloved student her unwillingness to imitate anyone: against the backdrop of a host of "mushrooms-podahmatov" Irina Odoevtseva remained herself. And yet, probably more than Odoevtseva's poems, Gumilyov valued her company, her "ears always ready to listen to me." He told her about his childhood, about traveling to Africa, about the war, about the difficult relationship with Anna Akhmatova - about everything. And she enthusiastically listened and memorized every word. They had a common sense of humor, which allowed them to joke and fool around together.

She gave us amazingly romantic poems, created a special genre of ballads, and wrote a number of novels.Already her first novel, Angel of Death, aroused undoubted interest among both readers and fellow writers. This is a story about a teenage girl who has not yet parted with childhood, but guesses what lies ahead. This is the story of her soul, her conflicting desires and thoughts. After the publication of Angel of Death, the American press wrote: "This is a novel of youth, full of dreams, horror, charm, rare charm. It is light and at the same time extremely meaningful ... Odoevtseva created a thing of unforgettable beauty. "The novel Isolde, like other prose experiments of Irina Odoevtseva, did not leave indifferent either compatriots who found themselves abroad or the foreign press. With its title, it refers the reader to famous medieval legend about Tristan and Isolde - a love story that is as strong as life and death. It is this echo that colors the story. Vladimir Nabokov outlined the plot with a few strokes: "The famous break of our era. Famous dances, cocktails, cosmetics. Add to this the famous emigrant anguish, and the background is ready." Fate, from which it is impossible to escape, its blind blows that destroy ordinary and understandable life, the world seen by the mysterious eyes of a woman - all this the reader finds in the exquisite and whimsical work of Irina Odoevtseva.

Becoming the wife of the great poet of the Silver Age - G. Ivanov, having lived with him for 37 years life together, she wrote about her husband that she could not fully understand him. He seemed to her "strange, mysterious" and "one of the most wonderful" people she met. To her, a romantic girl with a bow, we owe the appearance of Ivanov's best poems:

And how could I, oh, judge for yourself,
To look into your eyes and not go crazy!

I do not say - believe, I do not say - hear,
But I know: you are now looking at the same snow

And my love looks over your shoulder
To this snowy paradise where you and me

***

Atomized by a million tiny particles
In the icy, airless, soulless ether,
Where there is no sun, no stars, no trees, no birds,
I will return - by reflection - in a lost world.

And again, in the romantic Summer Garden,
In the blue whiteness of Petersburg May,
I'll pass silently through the deserted alleys,
Embracing your precious shoulders

Yu.Annenkov. 1922

And, the most important merit of I. Odoevskaya is her memoirs “On the banks of the Neva”, “On the banks of the Seine”, on the villages of which she presented to the whole world and Russia as one jewel after another living portraits favorite poets: Mandelstam, Blok, Georgy Iv A nova, as well as many others, including Zinaida Gippius, Merezhkovsky, Adamovich, who lived first in Russia and then in exile. Optimistic, sociable, but not a bit ambitious, Irina Odoevtseva was always in the thick of the then literary "party". Irina Odoevtseva knew how to listen well, and she was often told very personal things, almost confessed. And a phenomenal memory allowed her, after many decades, to reproduce every word from the conversations, discussions, and disputes of those times.

With her books of memoirs, she returned to Russia all the friends who died far from their homeland. In the preface to the first book, On the Banks of the Neva, she clarifies: “I write not about myself and not for myself, but about those whom I was given to know” and asks readers to love and remember them.
These books are among the best lyrical memoirs of the 20th century and amaze with the author's natural ability to forgive those who did not like her too much.

N. Gumilyov, G. Ivanov and even E. Yevtushenko dedicated poems to her:

She was such a beauty
that is impossible to resist
and still touches me
a strand is taken from under her beret.
That strand tickles temptingly,
and boldly jump into the depths
that photo
I would like to,
as in an inaccessible country ...

Poetess.


Irina Vladimirovna Odoevtseva (real name - Iraida Gustavovna Geinike) was born on February 23 (according to other sources, June 25, July 27, November 2), 1895 in the family of a lawyer.

She was born in Riga, above the mouth of the Daugava. It is known that there was no Irina Vladimirovna then, but there was Iraida, the daughter of the barrister Gustav Geinike. There were home teachers, then a gymnasium, everything was like everyone else - and the first husband, a certain Popov, who did not leave a trace in history, and moving to St. Petersburg, and poetry.

When writing poetry became a habit with Iraida, she took the pseudonym of her mother's name and became Irina Odoevtseva.

She was a student of Nikolai Gumilyov and married the poet Georgy Ivanov.

Georgy Ivanov was introduced to Irina Odoevtseva by Nikolay Gumilyov: "The youngest member of the workshop and the most witty, they call him "public opinion", he creates and destroys reputations. Try to please him." The "first student" fulfilled Gumilyov's advice, and even, one might say, overfulfilled it. Ivanov liked her so much that he divorced his first wife. Ivanov and Odoevtseva married on September 10, 1921, to live together for 37 years.

In 1923, Odoevtseva emigrated from the USSR. Most of her life was spent in Paris.

The legacy of Gustav Geinicke went to the winning class, but in Paris it was possible to live on fees. The novels of Irina Odoevtseva were translated into several languages ​​- only in the USSR no one published them. To her, and to Ivanov, who died in 1958, Odoevtseva's words about emigre writers are applicable: "More than bread, they lacked the reader's love, and they suffocated in the free air of foreign countries."

Ivanov dedicated all his poems to his wife. She idolized him, wrote about him. Suspecting consumption, she tried to die, refusing food so as not to be a burden.

Odoevtseva wrote memoirs. Being an active participant in various literary circles, Odoevtseva was familiar with many cultural figures of the Silver Age and Parisian emigration. The heroes of her memoirs are Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Andrei Bely, Zinaida Gippius, Ivan Bunin, Larissa Andersen and many others.

Furor was made by two memoirs about the first half of the twentieth century - "On the banks of the Neva" (1967) and "On the banks of the Seine" (1978-1981). “The few jealous witnesses of those years who survived traditionally accused her of distortions and inaccuracies. Nevertheless, both of these books are precious historical documents, even if there are aberrations and too free play of fantasy” (E. Yevtushenko).


A living witness of the era, a participant in the joint handwritten almanac of Gumilyov, Georgy Ivanov, Mandelstam, among others literary heritage left brilliant memories. In Paris, she married a second time, but she lived in poverty. Having learned about her position, the Writers' Union invited Irina Odoevtseva to the USSR. In the spring of 1987, on the waves of “perestroika”, Odoevtseva (who had already buried her third husband, writer Yakov Gorbov) returned to the banks of the Neva.

Memoirs, which were published in a huge circulation, were read by all of Russia. The third book of memoirs - "On the Shores of Lethe" - remained unfinished.

She was buried in St. Petersburg at the Volkovskoye cemetery.

"LITTLE POETESS WITH A HUGE BOW".

“Who among those who attended then Petersburg literary meetings does not remember on the stage a slender, blond, young woman, almost a girl with a huge black bow in her hair, singsong, cheerfully and hastily, slightly grassing, reading poetry, making everyone smile without exception, even people , who had lost the habit of smiling in those years, ”recalled the poet Georgy Adamovich. Optimistic, sociable, but not a bit ambitious, Irina Odoevtseva was always in the thick of the then literary "party". Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Blok, Mandelstam, Bely, and later, in exile - Balmont, Tsvetaeva, Severyanin, Yesenin, Teffi, Bunin and many other "luminaries" of the Silver Age became the heroes of her memoirs - "On the banks of the Neva" and "On the banks of Seine". Irina Odoevtseva knew how to listen well, and she was often told very personal things, almost confessed. And a phenomenal memory allowed her, after many decades, to reproduce every word from the conversations, discussions, and disputes of those times.


Beautiful, charming, always tastefully dressed, crowned with a "huge bow" - an integral part of the "poetic image", looking so young that, even five years after her marriage, law enforcement officers in the casino doubted her coming of age ... Probably, one can understand contemporaries who were it is difficult to take the poet and prose writer Irina Odoevtseva seriously. “Did you write this? Really you? You yourself? .. Excuse me, I can’t believe it, looking at you, ”her future husband, poet Georgy Ivanov, repeated when he heard the Ballad of Crushed Glass. Dmitry Merezhkovsky, when Odoevtseva made a presentation in his literary salon "Green Lamp", admitted: "I did not expect ...". And Vladimir Nabokov, whom she met in New York, put it most unambiguously: “So pretty, why is she still writing ...”


“I am not writing about myself and not for myself ... but about those whom I was given the opportunity to recognize “On the banks of the Neva,” Irina Odoevtseva emphasized in the preface to her first memoir book. And she kept her word: the book completely lacks both the inevitable chapters of “childhood-adolescence” in classic memoirs and the coquettish narcissism on the topic “great and I”. And yet, I would venture to say that the most charming and lively among the mass of bright heroes of the "Banks of the Neva" was precisely the "image of the author" - Irina Odoevtseva herself, a young girl who in November 1918 came to enroll in the poetic department of the institute " living word».


From curriculum vitae, which the poetess herself could not stand (“Neither a biography, nor a bibliography. As a rule, I avoid them,” is all that she wrote in the “Poets about Myself” section of the American anthology of Russian emigration poetry), you can find out that she was born in 1895 in Riga, in the family of a barrister, and her real name was Iraida Gustavovna Geinike.


She wanted to be a poet since childhood. And by the time she entered the Living Word, she already considered herself such, even had a circle of admirers of her poems. One of her early poems—fortunately unsigned—was pulled at random from the common bundle at the first lecture by the teacher, the “real poet” Nikolai Gumilyov.


It was then that he would so often proudly introduce Odoevtseva to his acquaintances: “My student!” That Korney Chukovsky would offer her to hang a poster “Gumilyov’s student” on her back. And at that lecture, the criticism of the teacher was caustic and ruthless; the meter literally “pulverized” the anonymous newcomer. Irina ran home in tears and with the firm intention of giving up poetry forever; later, having calmed down a little, she again undertook to write “in the old style, to spite Gumilyov.” It was then that her ironic poem was born:


No, I won't be famous
Glory will not crown me
I, as for the rank of archimandrite,
I have no right to this.

Neither Gumilyov nor the evil press
Don't call me a talent.
I am a little poet
With a huge bow.


Nikolai Gumilyov, noticing the absence of a bright, memorable girl at the lectures, once caught up with her in the corridor and asked her to "be sure to come next Thursday." Soon she became his favorite student, moved from the Living Word to the Gumilev Literary Studio. The teacher argued with the quoted lines of the student: "I predict you - you will soon become famous ...".


This happened in April 1920, when at one of the literary receptions Irina read her Ballad of Crushed Glass. An eerie story about a soldier who decided to earn extra money on crushed glass mixed with salt and was mystically punished for the death of his fellow villagers shocked those present both with the content and the original form of an extremely simplified verse. Odoevtseva was declared the pioneer of the modern ballad genre; she subsequently wrote several more. “Now every dog ​​will know you,” summed up Gumilyov.


He respected in his beloved student her unwillingness to imitate anyone: against the backdrop of a host of "mushrooms-podahmatov" Irina Odoevtseva remained herself. And yet, probably more than Odoevtseva's poems, Gumilyov valued her company, her "ears always ready to listen to me." He told her about his childhood, about traveling to Africa, about the war, about the difficult relationship with Anna Akhmatova - about everything. And she enthusiastically listened and memorized every word. They had a common sense of humor, which allowed them to joke and fool around together. Once, during the October demonstration, Nikolai Gumilyov dragged Odoevtseva into a rather risky masquerade for those times: he was in a mackintosh, she was in a plaid "Scottish" coat, speaking in English with passers-by, they portrayed a foreign delegation. Could take for spies!


But their relationship, very trusting, never developed into true friendship: he remained a meter, she was an admiring student. And even more so, there is no reason to talk about love, although some biographers carefully look for hints of “something did happen” in Odoevtseva’s memoirs about Gumilyov and in his poems dedicated to her. Irina Vladimirovna herself, already at a venerable age, in a conversation with a Russian literary critic, denied all the rumors: “If only ... I would have said so. As a man, he was not attractive to me.”


And Irina Odoevtseva met her love on the same day when literary fame came to her - at the aforementioned reception with Gumilyov: “I silently offer my hand to Georgy Ivanov. For the first time in my life. No. Without any premonition."


They married in 1922 and left the country the same year. Separately: Irina went to her father in Riga, George - on business in Europe. We met in Paris, in exile.


The book "On the banks of the Neva" was a huge success, which inspired Irina Vladimirovna to write the second part of her memoirs, consecrated life poets in exile. In the preface, she writes: “I agree with Marina Tsvetaeva, who said in 1923 that from a country in which her poems were needed like bread, she ended up in a country where neither her nor anyone else’s poems are needed. Even Russian people in exile have ceased to need them. And this made poets writing in Russian unhappy.”


Konstantin Balmont, whom Mayakovsky began to “throw off the ship of modernity”, and his brothers in emigration completed this work; Igor Severyanin, who was paid a "pension for silence" by the editors of one newspaper; Marina Tsvetaeva, who admitted before returning to the USSR that emigration "kicked her out". Many of the confused, desperate people of the literary circle, which was a kind of "serpentarium of like-minded people", found consolation precisely from Irina Odoevtseva. She did not lose her natural optimism in emigration and was ready to listen and provide moral support to everyone. So, she canceled a trip to visit in order to listen to Severyanin, who brought her his new, no longer needed poems. It happened that her help was quite material: once Irina won back the lost money of Georgy Adamovich in the casino, who, however, immediately lost it again. Ivan Bunin talked for a long time with Odoevtseva about a variety of things and once told her a heartbreaking story from his childhood: in severe frost, he gave a gymnasium overcoat to a beggar boy, fell seriously ill and swore to his mother "no longer be kind." Odoevtseva was shocked; Bunin, laughing, admitted that he made it all up: “You listened to me so touchingly, touchingly ...”. But Irina Odoevtseva is condescending to all her comrades in exile: "More than bread, they lacked the love of the reader, and they suffocated in the free air of foreign countries."


She herself, living in France, in parallel with poetry begins to write prose. Her first novel, The Angel of Death, was published in 1927 and evoked enthusiastic responses from both readers and the reputable foreign press: “... The refined and charming aroma of the novel cannot be expressed in words,” wrote The Times. “On the book of Odoevtseva lies the unmistakable stamp of a very great talent. We even dare to put her on the same level as Chekhov…” (“Gastonia Gazette”). Irina Odoevtseva wrote several more novels: "Isolde", "Mirror", "Abandon Hope Forever", "Year of Life" (not finished).


The novels of Irina Odoevtseva were translated into several languages, but were never published in her homeland. Given this, the Canadian poetess Ella Bobrova, in her monograph about the writer, retells the plots of the books in detail, gives large quotes - and this is quite enough to make a burning desire to read them. It is possible that Russian publishers, who do not seem to be in poverty, will someday get their hands on the works of Odoevtseva.


After the war, when Irina Odoevtseva lost her father's inheritance, fees for novels became the main source of her and her husband's existence. Georgy Ivanov did not work anywhere, wrote poetry only by inspiration, liked to sleep until noon and read detective stories. Nevertheless, as a poet he was very popular, he was even going to be nominated for the Nobel Prize. And Irina Odoevtseva was so reverent towards her husband that she earned the label of a “shoe wife” from the bilious Bunin.


After 37 years of marriage, she wrote about her husband that she could not fully understand him. He seemed to her "strange, mysterious" and "one of the most wonderful" people she met. And Georgy Ivanov dedicated poems to his wife about the beginning of their love:


You did not hear, and I did not repeat.
It was Petersburg, April, sunset hour,
Radiance, waves, stone lions...
And the breeze from the Neva
Arranged for us.

You smiled. You did not understand,
What will happen to us, what awaits us.
Bird cherry blossomed in your hands ...
Here is our life.
And it won't work.

Georgy Ivanov died in 1958 in the city of Ieres in southern France. Twenty years later, Irina Vladimirovna again married the writer Yakov Gorbov, with whom she lived for four years, until his death. And she was left alone again.


The memoirs of Irina Odoevtseva appeared in the USSR in the early 1980s, first as underground, "dissident" literature. After perestroika, when it became possible to travel abroad, the journalist and writer Anna Kolonitskaya went to Paris with the sole purpose of finding Irina Odoevtseva, if, of course, she was still alive. Many emigrant writers with whom Kolonitskaya spoke were not sure about the latter. She had already lost all hope when she suddenly turned out to be the owner of Odoevtseva’s phone: “I am Anna Kolonitskaya, I am nobody, I really love your poetry and want to see you.” - "Come, just do not forget to get the key from under the rug by the door."


A Soviet journalist found the ninety-two-year-old poetess chained to a chair after a hip fracture. However, Irina Vladimirovna enthusiastically accepted a rather reckless, as Kolonitskaya later admitted, proposal on her part to return to Russia. Anna promised to do everything possible for this. Upon her return to the Union, she published in Moscow News and Literary newspaper» essays about Irina Odoevtseva. There was a wave of memories in the press, and the poetess was invited to return to her homeland. She accepted the offer immediately, which caused a storm in émigré circles. In April 1987, on an airplane flight Paris-Leningrad (Odoevtseva objected to Kolonitskaya's proposal to travel by train: "Anna, I'm still a great flyer!"), the poetess returned to the city of her youth.


In Leningrad, Odoevtseva was given an apartment on Nevsky Prospekt, provided medical care, and organized several meetings with readers. Her memoirs, republished in the USSR in a much larger circulation than in exile, were a success. “I really live here with admiration,” Irina Vladimirovna wrote to her friend Ella Bobrova, paraphrasing the refrain line from one of her poems. Then the enthusiasm of the Soviet leadership dried up, the publication of Odoevtseva's poems and novels was carefully put on the brakes, the elderly poetess was cut off from the literary world. Her health was deteriorating, making it impossible to return to the manuscript of the third book of memoirs, “On the Shores of Lethe,” begun back in France. In this book, Odoevtseva was going to tell "... with complete frankness about herself and others."


Irina Vladimirovna Odoevtseva died in St. Petersburg on October 14, 1990. And the Silver Age is finally in the past.

Olga Kuchkina. Essay "Over the Pink Sea".

The moon rose above the pink sea,
A bottle of wine was cold on ice.
And languidly circling couples in love
To the mournful rumble of the ukulele...

Winter 1920. Cold and hungry Petersburg, renamed Petrograd, but the new name has not yet taken root. In the gathering twilight, a pretty woman in a fur coat, hat and felt boots hurries along the uncleaned streets. In the hands of a bag with summer - instead of ball - shoes. When he takes off his fur coat, under it will be found a luxurious Parisian dress, inherited from the deceased mother. When he takes off his hat - a big bow in his hair.

Irina Odoevtseva came to the ball. About herself, she will compose a playful:

Neither Gumilyov nor the evil press
Don't call me a talent.
I am a little poetess
With a huge bow.

In fact, Gumilyov told her: "You have great abilities."

Under the name of Irina Odoevtseva, Rada Gustavovna Geinike, the daughter of a wealthy Latvian bourgeois, the owner of a tenement house in Riga, was included in Russian literature.

In St. Petersburg, people of her circle lived in spacious, unheated apartments - in contrast to Moscow, where everyone was packed. They wore beautiful clothes - the remnants of former luxury. They received free heavy, wet bread, snuff and stone soap.
Irina Odoevtseva, starving, like everyone else, does not think about hunger. She lives on the merry balls that were arranged in spite of everything; meetings at the House of Writers, where everyone could be fed walrus stew and where poetry was read; a literary studio where poetry reigned. The main feeling that owns it is a feeling of happiness.

Leaving two years later from St. Petersburg abroad for a while and not yet knowing that forever, she will sit on her bed at night and say loudly three times, like a spell: “I will always and everywhere be happy!”.

* * *

"Gumilyov's student" was Odoevtseva's second title.

Beginning in the summer of 1919, Nikolai Gumilyov taught classes at a literary studio. Charming Odoevtseva among the studios recently. The recognized master of poetry, who headed the workshop of poets, by that time had separated from his famous wife Anna Akhmatova and married the unfamous Anna Engelhardt. However, he exiled his wife Anya, who adored him, along with her little daughter to the city of Bezhetsk, to relatives, and he himself led a bachelor lifestyle.

From now on, Irina Odoevtseva takes her place in it.

They live in the neighborhood. He is at house number 5 on Preobrazhenskaya, she is at Basseinaya, at house number 60. He often accompanies her after class. The following dialogues take place between them:

Gumilev: I followed you several times and looked at the back of your head. But you never turned around. You must not be very nervous and not very sensitive.

Odoevtseva: I'm nervous.

Gumilyov: I was wrong. You are nervous. And even too much.

Walking, they covered fifteen versts a day. Then they went to him, sat by the fireplace, looked at the fire. The 19-year-old poet loves to ask, the 34-year-old poet loves to answer. They talked about everything and everyone. About Akhmatova, Blok, Mandelstam, Kuzmin, Severyanin. Names that sound like a silver bell, and there was Gumilev's circle. She entered him. He entered.

On Christmas Eve he will ask her to write a ballad about me. She will fulfill the request in Paris, in 1924, when he will already die in the dungeons of the Cheka, accused of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, which did not exist:

On the deserted Transfiguration
Snow swirled and the wind howled.
I knocked on Gumilev's door.
Gumilyov opened the door for me.
There was a stove in the office.
It was getting darker outside the window.
He said "Write a ballad
About me and my life.

Not very smart Anya Engelhardt after the death of Gumilyov will not find anything better than to say: I am a widow, and she is just the first student.

* * *

We leave out the degree of closeness between the teacher and the student. We only know that one day, walking with him, Odoevtseva will see opposite side the streets of a hurried man, tall, thin, with a surprisingly red mouth on a matte-pale face and bangs reaching down to his eyebrows; lively, mocking eyes sparkle under black, sharply defined eyebrows. Tearing off his head a checkered, similar to a jockey cap, he will shout: "Nikolai Stepanych, I'm sorry, I'm flying!" And disappear from sight.

But I'm afraid that he will die first
The one with the alarming red mouth
And falling bangs in the eyes,

- Osip Mandelstam, his friend, will write about him. At one time they even had business card for two: "Georgy Ivanov and O. Mandelstam" - this idea came to Mandelstam's mind.

He will be wrong. His friend will die later. In exile. Mandelstam himself - earlier. At the camp hospital.

It is difficult to explain why this happened, but we do not know everything about the biography of Irina Odoevtseva. The history of her life is replete with "white spots" and inconsistencies - for example, the date of marriage "floats" in the ten-year range. It is curious that Odoevtseva is one of the few who left after the revolution, but later returned to the USSR. Although, unlike the same Ehrenburg, Odoevtseva did this already during the “perestroika”. She died in Leningrad on October 14, 1990, at the respectable age of 95.

The poems of Irina Odoevtseva are an excellent example of the "Silver Age", the embodiment of the ideas of acmeism. Nikolai Gumilyov considered her "his best student." Abroad, Odoevtseva worked more on prose, and, perhaps, she did not fully realize herself as a poetess. But that doesn't stop us from classifying it as a classic.

Youth and early work Odoevtseva

The future poetess, whose real name is Iraida Geinike, was born in Riga in a family famous lawyer. The father provided his daughter, who was born on July 15 (27 according to the new style), 1895, with an excellent home education, which she later continued in the gymnasium. Irina Odoevtseva began to write poetry very early, but we cannot say exactly when.

The pseudonym was taken by the poetess in honor of her mother, as soon as she decided to seriously devote herself to literature. Apparently, she wanted to look like a more "Russian" poetess in the eyes of her readers.

After the gymnasium, Odoevtseva moved to St. Petersburg. Here she met Nikolai Gumilyov, who had a huge influence on her life. creative development, and joined his "Workshop of poets".

The poems of Irina Odoevtseva first gained popularity in 1921, and the collection “The Yard of Miracles” published a year later strengthened the success. Already at the turn of 1922-1923, the poetess left St. Petersburg, but managed to see a lot in this city. The first part of her memoirs - "On the banks of the Neva", describes in great detail literary life capital Cities. Odoevtseva communicated with Mandelstam, Bely, Gippius, Merezhkovsky, Bunin and other classics of Russian literature.

Irina Odoevtseva in exile

It is not known whether Odoevtseva actually married Georgy Ivanov, another famous Silver Age poet, in 1921, as written in her memoirs. A number of evidence suggests that this happened almost 10 years after emigration.

One way or another, the poetess left Russia in the early 1920s, like so many of her colleagues - it probably makes no sense to talk about the reasons for such a step. She ended up in Paris, where, as a result, she spent most of her life (which is what the second part of her memoirs - "On the Banks of the Seine" is dedicated to).

Now Irina Odoevtseva combined poetry in her work with prose - in addition to memoirs, she came out with a whole series of very successful novels. However, collections of poems continued to appear. In the USSR, of course, it was not published. Odoevtseva lived exclusively on fees, since the Bolsheviks inherited her father's inheritance.

Return to the USSR

After 65 years abroad, Odoevtseva returned to her homeland at the invitation of the Union of Writers. "Perestroika" finally made it possible to appreciate her work, and financial position poetess in France became more and more depressing.

After returning, it was her memoirs that gained particular popularity, although there is reason to doubt some of the facts presented.

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