Konstantin balmont - biography, information, personal life. Nicholas the last
Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (June 3, 1867, Gumnishchi village, Shuisky district, Vladimir province - December 23, 1942, Noisy-le-Grand, France) - symbolist poet, translator, essayist, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian poetry of the Silver Age. Published 35 collections of poetry, 20 books of prose, translated from many languages. Author of autobiographical prose, memoirs, philological treatises, historical and literary studies and critical essays.
Konstantin Balmont was born on June 3 (15), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province, the third of seven sons.
It is known that the poet's grandfather was a naval officer.
Father Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont (1835-1907) served in the Shuya district court and zemstvo: first as a collegiate registrar, then as a justice of the peace, and finally as chairman of the district zemstvo council.
Mother Vera Nikolaevna, nee Lebedeva, came from a colonel's family, in which they loved literature and were engaged in it professionally. She appeared in the local press, arranged literary evenings, amateur performances. Rendered strong influence on the worldview of the future poet, introducing him into the world of music, literature, history, first teaching him to comprehend the "beauty of the female soul."
Vera Nikolaevna knew well foreign languages, read a lot and "was not alien to some free-thinking": "unreliable" guests were received in the house. It was from his mother that Balmont, as he himself wrote, inherited "unbridledness and passion", his entire "mental system".
The future poet learned to read on his own at the age of five, spying on his mother, who taught her elder brother to read and write. The touched father presented Konstantin on this occasion with the first book, "something about savage oceanians." Mother introduced her son to samples of the best poetry.
When the time came to send older children to school, the family moved to Shuya. Moving to the city did not mean a separation from nature: the Balmont house, surrounded by a vast garden, stood on the picturesque bank of the Teza River; his father, a hunting lover, often traveled to Gumnishchi, and Konstantin accompanied him more often than others.
In 1876, Balmont entered the preparatory class of the Shuya gymnasium, which he later called "a nest of decadence and capitalists, whose factories spoiled the air and water in the river." At first, the boy made progress, but soon he got bored with his studies, and his performance decreased, but the time came for drunken reading, and he read French and German works in the original. Impressed by what he read, at the age of ten he began to write poetry himself. “On a bright sunny day they arose, two poems at once, one about winter, the other about summer” he recalled. These poetic endeavors, however, were criticized by his mother, and the boy did not try to repeat his poetic experiment for six years.
Balmont was forced to leave the seventh grade in 1884 because he belonged to an illegal circle, which consisted of high school students, visiting students and teachers, and was engaged in printing and distributing proclamations of the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party in Shuya. The poet later explained the background of this early revolutionary mood as follows: “I was happy, and I wanted everyone to be just as good. It seemed to me that if it’s good only for me and a few, it’s ugly”.
Through the efforts of his mother, Balmont was transferred to the gymnasium of the city of Vladimir. But here he had to live in the teacher's apartment Greek, who zealously performed the duties of "supervisor".
At the end of 1885, Balmont made his literary debut. Three of his poems were published in the popular St. Petersburg magazine "Picturesque Review" (November 2 - December 7). This event was not noticed by anyone except the mentor, who forbade Balmont to publish until the end of his studies at the gymnasium.
The acquaintance of the young poet with V. G. Korolenko dates back to this time. Famous writer, having received a notebook with his poems from Balmont's comrades at the gymnasium, he took them seriously and wrote a detailed letter to the gymnasium student - a benevolent mentor's review.
In 1886, Konstantin Balmont entered the law faculty of Moscow University, where he became close friends with P. F. Nikolaev, a sixties revolutionary. But already in 1887, for participating in the riots (related to the introduction of a new university charter, which students considered reactionary), Balmont was expelled, arrested and imprisoned for three days in Butyrka prison, and then sent to Shuya without trial.
In 1889, Balmont returned to the university, but due to severe nervous exhaustion he could not study either there or at the Yaroslavl Demidov Lyceum of Legal Sciences, where he successfully entered. In September 1890, he was expelled from the lyceum and left attempts to get a "state education" on this.
In 1889 Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina., daughter of an Ivanovo-Voznesensk merchant. A year later, in Yaroslavl, at his own expense, he published his first "Collection of Poems"- some of the youthful works included in the book were published as early as 1885. However, the debut collection of 1890 did not arouse interest, close people did not accept it, and soon after the release, the poet burned almost the entire small edition.
In March 1890, an incident occurred that left an imprint on Balmont's entire subsequent life: he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself out of a third floor window, suffered serious fractures and spent a year in bed.
It was believed that despair from his family and financial situation pushed him to such an act: marriage quarreled with Balmont's parents and deprived financial support, but the immediate impetus was the "Kreutzer Sonata" read shortly before. The year spent in bed, as the poet himself recalled, turned out to be creatively very fruitful and led to "unprecedented flowering of mental excitement and cheerfulness".
It was during this year that he realized himself as a poet, saw his own destiny. In 1923, in the biographical story The Airway, he wrote: “In a long year, when I, lying in bed, no longer expected that I would ever get up, I learned from the early morning chirping of sparrows outside the window and from the moonbeams that passed through the window into my room, and from all the steps that reached up to my hearing, the great tale of life, understood the holy sanctity of life. And when I finally got up, my soul became free, like the wind in the field, no one else had power over it, except for a creative dream, and creativity flourished in a riotous color..
Some time after his illness, Balmont, who by this time had parted with his wife, lived in need. He, according to his own recollections, for months “didn’t know what it was to be full, and went up to the bakery to admire the rolls and bread through the glass”.
Professor of Moscow University N. I. Storozhenko also provided great assistance to Balmont.
In 1887-1889, the poet actively translated German and French authors, then in 1892-1894 he took up work on the works of Percy Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. This period is considered the time of his creative development.
Professor Storozhenko, in addition, introduced Balmont to the editorial office of the Severny Vestnik, around which the poets of the new direction were grouped.
On the basis of his translation activity, Balmont became closer to the philanthropist, a connoisseur of Western European literatures, Prince A. N. Urusov, who in many ways contributed to the expansion of the literary horizons of the young poet. At the expense of the philanthropist, Balmont published two books of translations by Edgar Allan Poe (“Ballads and Fantasies”, “Mysterious Tales”).
In September 1894, in the student "Circle of Lovers of Western European Literature", Balmont met V. Ya. Bryusov, who later became his closest friend. Bryusov wrote about the "exceptional" impression that the poet's personality and his "frantic love for poetry" made on him.
Collection "Under the northern sky", published in 1894, is considered to be the starting point creative way Balmont. The book received a wide response, and reviews were mostly positive.
If the debut of 1894 did not differ in originality, then in the second collection "In boundlessness"(1895) Balmont began to search for "new space, new freedom", the possibilities of combining the poetic word with the melody.
The 1890s were for Balmont a period of active creative work in a wide variety of fields of knowledge. The poet, who had a phenomenal capacity for work, mastered "one after another many languages, reveling in work, like a man possessed ... he read entire libraries of books, from treatises on Spanish painting he loved to studies on Chinese and Sanskrit."
He enthusiastically studied the history of Russia, books on the natural sciences and folk art. Already in his mature years, addressing novice writers with instruction, he wrote that a debutant needs “to be able to sit on a philosophical book and an English dictionary and Spanish grammar on your spring day, when you really want to ride a boat and maybe you can kiss someone. To be able to read 100, and 300, and 3,000 books, among which there are many, many boring ones. Love not only joy, but also pain. Silently cherish in yourself not only happiness, but also the melancholy piercing into the heart..
By 1895, Balmont's acquaintances with Jurgis Baltrushaitis, which gradually grew into a friendship that lasted for many years, and S. A. Polyakov, an educated Moscow businessman, mathematician and polyglot, translator of Knut Hamsun, belong. It was Polyakov, the publisher of the modernist magazine Libra, who five years later established the symbolist publishing house Scorpion, where best books Balmont.
In 1896, Balmont married the translator E. A. Andreeva and went with his wife to Western Europe. Several years spent abroad provided the novice writer, who was interested, in addition to the main subject, in history, religion and philosophy, with great opportunities. He visited France, Holland, Spain, Italy, spending a lot of time in libraries, improving his knowledge of languages.
In 1899, K. Balmont was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.
In 1901, an event occurred that had a significant impact on the life and work of Balmont and made him "a true hero in St. Petersburg." In March, he took part in a mass student demonstration on the square near the Kazan Cathedral, the main demand of which was the abolition of the decree on sending unreliable students to the military service. The demonstration was dispersed by the police and the Cossacks, among its participants were victims.
On March 14, Balmont spoke at a literary evening in the hall of the City Duma and read a poem "Little Sultan", who in a veiled form criticized the terror regime in Russia and its organizer, Nicholas II (“That was in Turkey, where conscience is an empty thing, a fist, a whip, a scimitar, two or three zeros, four scoundrels and a stupid little sultan reign there”). The poem went from hand to hand, it was going to be published in the Iskra newspaper.
According to the decision of the "special meeting", the poet was expelled from St. Petersburg, for three years he lost the right to reside in the capital and university cities.
In the summer of 1903, Balmont returned to Moscow, then headed to the Baltic coast, where he took up poetry, which was included in the collection Only Love.
After spending autumn and winter in Moscow, at the beginning of 1904 Balmont again found himself in Europe (Spain, Switzerland, after returning to Moscow - France), where he often acted as a lecturer.
The poetic circles of Balmontists created in these years tried to imitate the idol not only in poetic self-expression, but also in life.
Already in 1896, Valery Bryusov wrote about the “Balmont school”, including, in particular, Mirra Lokhvitskaya.
Many poets (including Lokhvitskaya, Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, M. A. Voloshin, S. M. Gorodetsky) dedicated poems to him, seeing in him a “spontaneous genius”, an eternally free Arigon, doomed to rise above the world and completely immersed "in the revelations of his bottomless soul."
In 1906, Balmont wrote the poem "Our Tsar" about Emperor Nicholas II:
Our king is Mukden, our king is Tsushima,
Our king - blood stain,
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark...
Our king is blind squalor,
Prison and whip, jurisdiction, execution,
Tsar hangman, the low twice,
What he promised, but did not dare to give.
He's a coward, he feels stuttering
But it will be, the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign - Khodynka,
He will finish - standing on the scaffold.
Another poem from the same cycle - "To Nicholas the Last" - ended with the words: "You must be killed, you have become a disaster for everyone."
In 1904-1905, the Scorpion publishing house published a collection of Balmont's poems in two volumes.
In January 1905, the poet took a trip to Mexico, from where he went to California. The poet's travel notes and essays, along with his free-form transcriptions of Native American cosmogonic myths and legends, were later included in Snake Flowers (1910). This period of Balmont's work ended with the release of the collection "The Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns»(1905), largely inspired by the events of the Russo-Japanese War.
In 1905, Balmont returned to Russia and took an active part in political life. In December, the poet own words, took some part in armed uprising Moscow, more - in verse. Having become close to Maxim Gorky, Balmont began active cooperation with the social democratic newspaper " New life”and the Parisian magazine“ Red Banner ”, which was published by A.V. Amfiteatrov.
In December, during the days of the Moscow uprising, Balmont was often on the streets, carried a loaded revolver in his pocket, and made speeches to students. He even expected reprisals against himself, as it seemed to him, a complete revolutionary. His enthusiasm for the revolution was sincere, although, as the future showed, it was not deep. Fearing arrest, on the night of 1906 the poet hastily left for Paris.
In 1906, Balmont settled in Paris, considering himself a political emigrant. He settled in the quiet Parisian quarter of Passy, but spent most of his time on long journeys.
Two collections of 1906-1907 were compiled from works in which K. Balmont directly responded to the events of the first Russian revolution. The book "Poems" (St. Petersburg, 1906) was confiscated by the police. "Songs of the Avenger" (Paris, 1907) were banned from distribution in Russia.
In the spring of 1907, Balmont visited the Balearic Islands, at the end of 1909 he visited Egypt, writing a series of essays that later compiled the book “The Land of Osiris” (1914), in 1912 he made a trip to the southern countries, which lasted 11 months, visiting the Canary Islands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Ceylon, India. Oceania and communication with the inhabitants of the islands of New Guinea, Samoa, and Tonga made a particularly deep impression on him.
March 11, 1912 at a meeting of the Neophilological Society at St. Petersburg University on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of literary activity in the presence of more than 1000 people K. D. Balmont was proclaimed a great Russian poet.
In 1913, an amnesty was granted to political emigrants on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, and on May 5, 1913, Balmont returned to Moscow. At the Brest railway station in Moscow, a solemn public meeting was arranged for him. The gendarmes forbade the poet to address the audience who met him with a speech. Instead, according to press reports of the time, he scattered fresh lilies of the valley among the crowd.
In honor of the return of the poet, solemn receptions were arranged in the Society of Free Aesthetics and the Literary and Artistic Circle.
In 1914, the publication of the complete collection of Balmont's poems in ten volumes was completed, which lasted seven years. At the same time he published a collection of poetry "White architect. Mystery of the four lamps»- your impressions of Oceania.
At the beginning of 1914, the poet returned to Paris, then in April he went to Georgia, where he received a magnificent reception (in particular, a greeting from Akaki Tsereteli, the patriarch of Georgian literature) and held a course of lectures that had big success The poet began to study the Georgian language and took up the translation of Shota Rustaveli's poem "The Knight in the Panther's Skin".
From Georgia, Balmont returned to France, where he found the beginning of the First World War. Only at the end of May 1915, by a circuitous route - through England, Norway and Sweden - did the poet return to Russia. At the end of September, Balmont went on a two-month trip to the cities of Russia with lectures, and a year later he repeated the tour, which turned out to be longer and ended in the Far East, from where he briefly left for Japan in May 1916.
In 1915, Balmont's theoretical study was published "Poetry is like magic"- a kind of continuation of the declaration of 1900 "Elementary words about symbolic poetry". In this treatise on the essence and purpose lyric poetry the poet attributed to the word "incantatory and magical power" and even "physical power."
Balmont welcomed the February Revolution, began to cooperate in the Society of Proletarian Arts, but soon became disillusioned with the new government and joined the Cadets party, which demanded that the war continue to a victorious end.
Having received permission from A.V. Lunacharsky at the request of Jurgis Baltrushaitis to temporarily go abroad on a business trip, together with his wife, daughter and distant relative A.N. Ivanova, on May 25, 1920, Balmont left Russia forever and reached Paris through Revel.
In Paris, Balmont and his family settled in a small furnished apartment.
The poet immediately found himself between two fires. On the one hand, the émigré community suspected him of being a Soviet sympathizer.
On the other hand, the Soviet press began to “stigmatize him as a crafty deceiver,” who “at the cost of lies” won freedom for himself, abused the trust of the Soviet government, which generously let him go to the West “to study the revolutionary creativity of the masses.”
Soon Balmont left Paris and settled in the town of Capbreton in the province of Brittany, where he spent 1921-1922.
In 1924 he lived in the Lower Charente (Chateleyon), in 1925 - in the Vendée (Saint-Gilles-sur-Vi), until late autumn 1926 - in the Gironde (Lacano-Ocean).
In early November 1926, after leaving Lakano, Balmont and his wife went to Bordeaux. Balmont often rented a villa in Capbreton, where he communicated with many Russians and lived intermittently until the end of 1931, spending here not only the summer but also the winter months.
About your attitude towards Soviet Russia Balmont made it clear shortly after he left the country.
“The Russian people are truly tired of their misfortunes and, most importantly, of the shameless, endless lies of merciless, evil rulers,” he wrote in 1921.
In the article "Bloody Liars" the poet spoke about the ups and downs of his life in Moscow in 1917-1920. In the emigrant periodicals of the early 1920s, his poetic lines about the “actors of Satan”, about the “blood drunk” Russian land, about the “days of humiliation of Russia”, about the “red drops” that have gone to the Russian land. Some of these poems are included in the collection "Marevo"(Paris, 1922) - the poet's first emigrant book.
In 1923, K. D. Balmont, along with M. Gorky and I. A. Bunin, was nominated by R. Rolland for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1927, a publicist article "A Little Bit of Zoology for Little Red Riding Hood" Balmont reacted to the scandalous speech of the Soviet plenipotentiary representative in Poland D.V. Bogomolov, who at the reception said that Adam Mickiewicz in his famous poem “To Friends-Moskals” (the generally accepted translation of the title is “Russian Friends”) allegedly turned to the future - to modern Bolshevik Russia. In the same year, an anonymous appeal “To the Writers of the World” was published in Paris, signed “Group of Russian Writers. Russia, May 1927".
Unlike his friend, who gravitated towards the “right” direction, Balmont generally adhered to “left”, liberal-democratic views, was critical of ideas, did not accept “conciliatory” tendencies (Smenovekhovism, Eurasianism, and so on), radical political movements (fascism). At the same time, he avoided the former socialists - A.F. Kerensky, I.I. Fondaminsky and watched with horror the "leftward" Western Europe in the 1920-1930s.
Balmont was outraged by the indifference of Western European writers to what was happening in the USSR, and this feeling was superimposed on a general disappointment with the entire Western way of life.
It was generally accepted that emigration took place for Balmont under the sign of decline. This opinion, shared by many Russian émigré poets, was subsequently disputed more than once. In different countries, Balmont during these years published books of poems “Gift to the Earth”, “Bright Hour” (1921), “Haze” (1922), “Mine - to her. Poems about Russia "(1923), "In the Parted Distance" (1929), "Northern Lights" (1933), "Blue Horseshoe", "Light Service" (1937).
In 1923 he published books of autobiographical prose Under the New Sickle and Air Way, in 1924 he published a book of memoirs Where is My Home? (Prague, 1924), wrote documentaries "Torch in the Night" and "White Dream" about his experiences in the winter of 1919 in revolutionary Russia. Balmont made long lecture tours in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, in the summer of 1930 he traveled to Lithuania, while simultaneously translating West Slavic poetry, but Russia remained the main theme of Balmont's works during these years: memories of her and longing for the lost.
In 1932, it became clear that the poet was suffering from a serious mental illness. From August 1932 to May 1935, the Balmonts lived without a break in Clamart near Paris, in poverty. In the spring of 1935, Balmont ended up in a clinic.
In April 1936, the Parisian Russian writers celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Balmont's writing activity with a creative evening, designed to raise funds to help the sick poet. The committee for the organization of the evening called "To the Poet - Writers" included famous figures Russian culture: I. S. Shmelev, M. Aldanov, I. A. Bunin, B. K. Zaitsev, A. N. Benois, A. T. Grechaninov, P. N. Milyukov, S. V. Rachmaninov.
At the end of 1936, Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya moved to Noisy-le-Grand near Paris. Last years life, the poet alternately stayed in a charity house for Russians, which was kept by M. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, then in a cheap furnished apartment. In the hours of enlightenment, when mental illness receded, Balmont, according to the recollections of those who knew him, with a feeling of happiness opened the volume of "War and Peace" or reread his old books; he could not write for a long time.
In 1940-1942, Balmont did not leave Noisy-le-Grand. Here, in the Russian House shelter, he died on the night of December 23, 1942 from pneumonia. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery, under a gray stone tombstone with the inscription: "Constantin Balmont, poète russe" ("Konstantin Balmont, Russian poet").
Several people came from Paris to say goodbye to the poet: B.K. Zaitsev with his wife, the widow of Y. Baltrushaitis, two or three acquaintances and daughter Mirra.
The French public learned about the poet's death from an article in the pro-Hitler Paris Gazette, which made, "as it was then customary, a thorough reprimand to the late poet for having once supported the revolutionaries."
Since the late 1960s Balmont's poems in the USSR began to be printed in anthologies. In 1984, a large collection of selected works was published.
Personal life of Konstantin Balmont
Balmont told in his autobiography that he began to fall in love very early: “The first passionate thought about a woman was at the age of five, the first real love was nine years old, the first passion was fourteen years old.”
“Wandering through countless cities, I am always delighted with one thing - love,” the poet admitted in one of his poems.
In 1889 Konstantin Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina, the daughter of a Shuisky manufacturer, "a beautiful young lady of the Botticelli type." The mother, who facilitated the acquaintance, sharply opposed the marriage, but the young man was adamant in his decision and decided to break with his family.
“I was not yet twenty-two years old when I ... married beautiful girl, and we left in early spring, or rather, at the end of winter, to the Caucasus, to the Kabardian region, and from there along the Georgian Military Highway to the blessed Tiflis and Transcaucasia, ”he wrote later.
But the wedding trip did not become a prologue to a happy family life.
Researchers often write about Garelina as a neurotic nature, who showed love to Balmont "in a demonic face, even devilish", tormented by jealousy. It is generally accepted that it was she who addicted him to wine, as indicated by the confessional poem of the poet "Forest Fire".
The wife did not sympathize with either the literary aspirations or the revolutionary moods of her husband and was prone to quarrels. In many ways, it was the painful connection with Garelina that prompted Balmont to attempt suicide on the morning of March 13, 1890. Soon after his recovery, which was only partial - he had a limp for the rest of his life - Balmont broke up with L. Garelina.
The first child born in this marriage died, the second - the son Nikolai - subsequently suffered from a nervous breakdown.
After breaking up with the poet, Larisa Mikhailovna married the journalist and literary historian N. A. Engelgardt and lived peacefully with him for many years. Her daughter from this marriage, Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, became the second wife of Nikolai Gumilyov.
Poet's second wife Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva-Balmont(1867-1952), a relative of the famous Moscow publishers Sabashnikovs, came from a wealthy merchant family (the Andreevs owned shops of colonial goods) and was distinguished by a rare education.
Contemporaries also noted the external attractiveness of this tall and slender young woman "with beautiful black eyes." For a long time she was unrequitedly in love with A. I. Urusov. Balmont, as Andreeva recalled, quickly became interested in her, but did not meet reciprocity for a long time. When the latter arose, it turned out that the poet was married: then the parents forbade their daughter to meet with her lover. However, Ekaterina Alekseevna, enlightened in the "latest spirit", looked at the rites as a formality and soon moved to the poet.
The divorce process, allowing Garelina to enter into a second marriage, forbade her husband to marry forever, but, having found an old document where the groom was listed as unmarried, the lovers got married on September 27, 1896, and the next day they went abroad, to France.
With E. A. Andreeva, Balmont was united by a common literary interest, the couple carried out many joint translations, in particular Gerhart Hauptmann and Odd Nansen.
In 1901, their daughter Ninika was born - Nina Konstantinovna Balmont-Bruni (died in Moscow in 1989), to whom the poet dedicated the collection Fairy Tales.
In the early 1900s in Paris, Balmont met Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya(1880-1943), the daughter of General K. G. Tsvetkovsky, then a student of the Sorbonne Faculty of Mathematics and a passionate admirer of his poetry. Balmont, judging by some of his letters, was not in love with Tsvetkovskaya, but soon began to feel the need for her as a truly faithful, devoted friend.
Gradually, the "spheres of influence" were divided: Balmont either lived with his family, or left with Elena. For example, in 1905 they went to Mexico for three months.
Family life The poet was completely confused after E. K. Tsvetkovskaya had a daughter in December 1907, who was named Mirra - in memory of Mirra Lokhvitskaya, the poetess, with whom he had complex and deep feelings. The appearance of the child finally tied Balmont to Elena Konstantinovna, but at the same time he did not want to leave Ekaterina Alekseevna either.
Mental anguish led to a breakdown: in 1909, Balmont made a new suicide attempt, again jumped out of the window and survived again. Until 1917, Balmont lived in St. Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra, coming from time to time to Moscow to Andreeva and his daughter Nina.
Balmont emigrated from Russia with his third (civil) wife E.K. Tsvetkovskaya and daughter Mirra.
However, he did not break off friendly relations with Andreeva either. Only in 1934, when Soviet citizens Forbade to correspond with relatives and friends living abroad, this connection was interrupted.
Unlike E. A. Andreeva, Elena Konstantinovna was "worldly helpless and could not organize life in any way." She considered it her duty to follow Balmont everywhere: eyewitnesses recalled how she, “leaving her child at home, followed her husband somewhere to a tavern and could not take him out of there for a day.”
E. K. Tsvetkovskaya was not last love poet. In Paris, he resumed his acquaintance with the princess, which had begun in March 1919. Dagmar Shakhovskoy(1893-1967). “One of my dear ones, half-Swede, half-Polish, Princess Dagmar Shakhovskaya, nee Baroness Lilienfeld, Russified, sang Estonian songs to me more than once,” Balmont described his beloved in one of his letters.
Shakhovskaya gave birth to Balmont two children - George (George) (1922-1943) and Svetlana (b. 1925).
The poet could not leave his family; meeting with Shakhovskaya only occasionally, he often, almost daily, wrote to her, confessing his love over and over again, talking about his impressions and plans. 858 of his letters and postcards have been preserved.
Balmont's feeling was reflected in many of his later poems and in the novel Under the New Sickle (1923). Be that as it may, not D. Shakhovskaya, but E. Tsvetkovskaya spent the last, most disastrous years of his life with Balmont. She died in 1943, a year after the death of the poet.
Mirra Konstantinovna Balmont (in marriage - Boychenko, in her second marriage - Autina) wrote poetry and published in the 1920s under the pseudonym Aglaya Gamayun. She died in Noisy-le-Grand in 1970.
Works by Konstantin Balmont
"Collection of poems" (Yaroslavl, 1890)
"Under the northern sky (elegies, stanzas, sonnets)" (St. Petersburg, 1894)
"In the vastness of darkness" (M., 1895 and 1896)
"Silence. Lyric poems"(St. Petersburg, 1898)
"Burning buildings. Lyrics of the modern soul "(M., 1900)
“We will be like the sun. The Book of Symbols (Moscow, 1903)
"Only love. Semitsvetnik" (M., "Vulture", 1903)
"The Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns "(M., "Vulture", 1905)
"Fairy tales (children's songs)" (M., "Vulture", 1905)
"Collected poems" M., 1905; 2nd ed. M., 1908.
"Evil spells (Book of spells)" (M., " The Golden Fleece", 1906)
"Poems" (1906)
"Firebird (Svirel Slav)" (M., "Scorpio", 1907)
"The Liturgy of Beauty (Elemental Hymns)" (1907)
"Songs of the Avenger" (1907)
"Three heydays (Theater of youth and beauty)" (1907)
"Only love". 2nd ed. (1908)
"Round dance of times (All-glasnost)" (M., 1909)
"Birds in the Air (Sung Lines)" (1908)
“Green garden (Kissing words)” (St. Petersburg, Rosehip, 1909)
"Links. Selected Poems. 1890-1912" (M.: Scorpion, 1913)
"The White Architect (The Mystery of the Four Lamps)" (1914)
"Ash (Vision of a tree)" (M., ed. Nekrasov, 1916)
"Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon" (1917; Berlin, 1921)
"Collection of Lyrics" (Books 1-2, 4-6. M., 1917-1918)
"Ring" (M., 1920)
"Seven Poems" (M., "Zadruga", 1920)
Selected Poems (New York, 1920)
"Solar thread. Izbornik "(1890-1918) (M., ed. Sabashnikovs, 1921)
"Gamayun" (Stockholm, "Northern Lights", 1921)
"Gift to the Earth" (Paris, "Russian Land", 1921)
"Bright Hour" (Paris, 1921)
"Song of the working hammer" (M., 1922)
"Green" (Paris, 1922)
"Under the new sickle" (Berlin, "Word", 1923)
"Mine - Her (Russia)" (Prague, "Flame", 1924)
"In the parted distance (Poem about Russia)" (Belgrade, 1929)
"Complicity of Souls" (1930)
Northern Lights (Poems about Lithuania and Russia) (Paris, 1931)
"Blue Horseshoe" (Poems about Siberia) (1937)
"Light Service" (Harbin, 1937)
Collections of articles and essays by Konstantin Balmont
"Mountain Peaks" (M., 1904; book one)
"Calls of antiquity. Hymns, songs and plans of the ancients” (Pb., 1908, Berlin, 1923)
“Snake Flowers” (“Travel Letters from Mexico”, M., Scorpion, 1910)
"Sea Glow" (1910)
"Dawn Glow" (1912)
"Edge of Osiris". Egyptian essays. (M., 1914)
"Poetry as magic" (M., Scorpio, 1915)
"Light sound in nature and Scriabin's light symphony" (1917)
"Where is my house?" (Paris, 1924)
Someone will ask me why I put this verse here?
Then, so that we draw conclusions from our past.
Our beloved Motherland has a difficult past. Now it is fashionable to rewrite history. I turn to the witness of that time, to Konstantin Balmont, whom I trust. Today, someone is interested in painting a new image of Nicholas II, they deify him, make him a holy martyr. But why not make the entire Russian people a holy martyr?
Nicholas II is being portrayed to us today as an unsurpassed family man and exemplary tsar.
But I have questions that the current Russian government should think about:
1) Did Nicholas II do well, starting wars of conquest twice, while not listening to the order of his father, Alexander III, the king of the peacemaker, who bequeathed to his son not to enter into any wars. This order must be remembered by all Russian rulers, as if they were told to them by their Spiritual Father - Alexander the Third. We remember that the war unleashed by the CPSU in Afghanistan, in a foreign land, claimed the lives of 26,000 people, and the same number were disabled, and there were still missing, captured.
2) Is it good to wage wars of conquest? And Nikolai started them twice: the first time in the East with the Japanese for the lands taken from China, in particular Port Arthur, and the second time in the West, when we crossed our border and began to advance to the West. Did Russia need these wars, which claimed tens of millions of lives of ordinary Russian people? I think that to start a war, if fate does not save us, as it was in 41, you need only a defensive one. Only such wars can be justified. AT Japanese war our human losses were measured in hundreds of thousands, about 200,000. Losses in the imperialist era amounted to more than 2 million people killed and at least 3 million wounded and maimed.
3) Did Nicholas 2 do well when he did not apologize to the people who died on Khodynka, but went to the ball as if nothing had happened. The current Russian authorities have learned from the mistakes of Nicholas and behave sensitively when it comes to the tragedies associated with the death of people.
4) Did Nicholas 2 act well when he provoked Bloody Sunday with his cowardly actions? Could he have done differently? Yes, he could, but he didn't. And again he did not apologize to the people who came to him with a petition and were shot by order of the tsarist generals.
5) Did the king act well when he decided to abdicate during the war? I see in this renunciation of the throne a renunciation of Russia, and not only of power, because leaving the country during the war without a legitimate ruler, not suppressing the rebellion in the rear, not stopping the war meant betrayal of one's Motherland. Do we remember that Nicholas's abdication from power led to the disorientation of the entire country, the imperialist war of conquest grew into a civil one? And the civil war claimed 10 and a half million dead and 2 million emigrated from the terror of the Bolsheviks.
6) I ask those who made Tsar Nicholas 2 saints: On his conscience, at least 13 million killed, his former subjects who died because of the mediocre policy of the tsar, because of his short-sightedness, indifference to the lives of millions, cowardice and betrayal, how you could make him holy, where is his holiness? How can you make a saint a person who has not saved the country from destruction.
7) The death of the Tsar is tragic, I read several books about how the execution of the entire royal family was carried out - terribly - they did not spare children, women. They uprooted the royal family. The executioners were in a hurry, their atrocities must also be remembered. But even in this case, I was tormented by the question: why did no one save the tsar, why did the entire Orthodox country at that time forget about its tsar? We people today, this cannot be understood if we do not take into account that the reign of Nicholas was also accompanied by the Stolypin terror. It is likely that all of the above troubles, wars, the attitude of the king towards his people caused people to be latently disappointed in the king. They did not believe the king, the king, who abdicated the throne, was perceived as a father who renounced his children. That is why no one saved the king.
Balmont's poems about Nicholas 2 seem unusual and somewhat incomprehensible to us today - they sound so sharp from the lips of the poet who left us great poems. But the tsarist time was not simple, it was not a golden age, as interested persons are trying to present it today. royal power made mistake after mistake, it had already outlived its usefulness as an incorrect form of government, but the king did not want to create a new form. Instead of solving internal problems, the tsar created external problems for the country and the people, which inevitably gave rise to new, even more acute problems within the country. Check it out: http://youtu.be/bcCrF1hWQtc
But does the current government, which does not want to solve the internal problems of ordinary people, give rise to new ones, but shine before the world and its people with Olympics, championships, successful operations in Syria, a bridge to Russky Island, dumps that poison us and our children, fattening oligarchs on background of poverty and even poverty?
We remember how the reign of Nicholas II ended. Russia, devastated by the imperialist war, was plunged into a bloody revolution and a fratricidal civil war. Balmont's poems about Nikolai are a reminder to our current generations that there is no simple solutions, that it is impossible to rewrite history, otherwise the authorities will forget the bloody lessons and again plunge Russia into the abyss of disaster. As it happened now in the former Little Russia and New Russia.
I came across the fact that some people accuse Balmont of undermining the authority of the king with his poems, prophesying his death. But how could a poet not write poetry when a peaceful demonstration on Bloody Sunday was being shot down before his very eyes, how could a poet undermine the authority of the tsar with verses if the tsar himself had not undermined it with his actions?
For me, Balmont's poems are evidence of the tragic time that Russia was going through. And this is evidence that Nicholas 2 was not the king of the whole people, was not a true Christian: to ruthlessly plunge millions into war for the sake of far-fetched interests to seize new territories is immoral even by the standards of that time.
I ask the detractors of Balmont, if you attribute to him such great power that he allegedly destroyed the whole empire with his poems, then are you making a mistake or do you want to cover up your tracks grossest mistakes king, shift the blame from the guilty to the innocent?
The fact is that Balmont had a sense of foresight and expressed in verse what he felt in the approaching future. To blame Balmont for foresight is to shift the blame for the crime onto a witness to the crime, who warned the criminal about unseemly acts.
And if you blaspheme one citizen for his conscientious attitude to what is happening, then why are you silent about the whole organization The Russian Orthodox Church, which supposedly should be the conscience of the tsar and the nation, and certainly should have stopped Nicholas from the war. On the contrary, the church pushed him to war, encouraged him to go against the infidels, to capture Tsar-Grad. The church never repented for this war and the collapse of the state, everything was blamed on the Bolsheviks and the West. And this means that our church hierarchs have no conscience, or they are simply cowards - to evade responsibility is vile and petty.
Yes, I agree that the tsar did a lot of good things for Russia, but the result is important: the destruction of the country and tear apart hundreds of millions human lives already under the new Bolshevik government, for which the price of life was as miserable as under the tsar. We remember the Bolshevik terror against our people.
AT civil war the Bolsheviks won, they, like the king, did good deeds, and brought misfortune to Russia and its peoples. And we should not forget about the Soviet era: the past does not forgive if it is forgotten or if they want to simplify it.
You need to know and remember about the past, even if it is so unsightly.
NICHOLAS THE LAST.
You dirty bastard with bloody hands
You're a mouth breaker, you're a forehead puncher
The executioner, sitting comfortably with the executioners,
Under the shadow of the gallows, above the hosts of coffins.
When will your hour come, outcast of Nature,
And the terrible spirit of the dungeons filled with you,
It will rise as a cloud already growing for years,
And he will throw lightning, and thunder with Fate.
You must be executed by the hand of man
Perhaps her own, accustomed to kill,
You have become a cripple in soul to excess,
You can't live like that, you're a vile seal.
You have defiled yourself, your country, all countries,
That groan under your ugly heel,
You are a dwarf, you are Koschey, you are drunk with mud, drunk with blood,
You should be killed, you have become a disaster for everyone.
Nature has chosen you to complete
All the blasphemy of the Romanov family,
The afterlife vile, creeping clutch
All baseness, die, your days are shameful.
Here you can find interesting material about Nicholas II, learn the opinion of him from the lips of his inner circle. Here he is without the brilliance of his uniform:
http://scepsis.ru/library/id_3246.html
http://scepsis.ru/library/id_2814.html
http://scepsis.ru/library/id_2999.html
Read and draw your own conclusions...
Our king
Our King is Mukden, our King is Tsushima,
Our King is a bloodstain
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark.
Our Tsar is blind squalor,
Prison and whip, jurisdiction, execution,
Tsar hangman, the low twice,
What he promised, but did not dare to give.
He's a coward, he feels stuttering
But it will be, the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign - Khodynka,
He will finish - standing on the scaffold.
Balmont is a citizen, a poet and a prophet, and therefore there is no need to blaspheme Balmont for these poems, you just need to think about the past, but not only for us, ordinary people, but also for our government, which sometimes forgets about the responsibility that lies on its shoulders.
Balmont the seer not only denounces the tsar for his treacherous execution of a peaceful procession with icons, but he also begs the people to spare the innocent Tsarina, he knows that there will be revenge, but calls for mercy ... The Bolsheviks did not show mercy, did not spare either the tsarina or her children... nor tens of millions of Russian citizens.
Balmont calls the murder of the Woman, the Queen and her children abominable. And this filth must also be remembered. It was the queen and her children who became innocent victims, martyrs, just as millions of women and children who died in the war, from wounds, from hunger, from terror and repression were innocent victims ...
Oh, I pray you, my dear People,
How is this horror for you
It will come, it will come,
You have pity on her, and, loving a woman,
Do not include the queen in the cruelly right account.
Yes, you loved the Tsar, but you are deprived of him,
And you went to the King, but he was not there.
He is only a fairy tale, a terrible dream,
A murderous dead man, he must be executed.
Vampire - in the coffin. There is fear, but the dead is dead.
Since it is impossible to resurrect, be death his death.
The vampire will be dead. That is horror, but the law.
But, my People, let there be wrath,
Your anger, Slavic anger, and pity is not alien.
In the name of all your sorrows, torments, needs,
In the name of your wives and virgins,
Ruined, for centuries, for them,
Who did you mark and my ringing verse,
In the name of that longing that you are centuries, not days,
Endured, grieving to the grave,
Native people, I beg you
Don't defile yourself with the execution of a woman,
And crushing the stronghold of the prison with a heavy hammer,
In the hour of wrath and judgment, remember mercy.
Mercy must always be remembered by everyone, especially the ministers of power and the church - it is these two instances that just show us irreconcilability in the struggle against our own people, against their past. We lack mercy in Russia to come to terms with our bloody past. Grace is not enough today to forgive and accept the past. But where does grace come from?
The authorities are not merciful to their old people and youth - some are poor and slandered, others do not see the prospects to arrange their lives and start a family, the people are powerless. The church is not merciful to unbelievers - and this is the church of Christ!!??
Neither the authorities nor the church are working on the cohesion of the people - disunity is wild, because in the richest country there is no justice, prosperity and a single law for all, the majority have no prospects, the ruling elite, as always, acts on the principle of divide and rule, people have been lied to for decades, fed promises. The authorities have again become so torn away from the interests of ordinary people that the yawning abyss is terrifying, as if our state would not fall into it again. And the church again covers power ...
Today, the authorities and the church are creating unjust judgments in Russia, lying cynically and destroying righteousness. Russia under their heel becomes an unrighteous country, a country in which both justice and a fair trial are trampled. Yes, the government can be unjust, but if the church justifies and supports the destruction of justice and righteousness, then this means that Russia today is moving towards a new crisis, perhaps as bloody as on the outskirts of empires - Ukraine. A church in which there is no righteousness, but there is acquisitiveness and pride is just a colorful coffin, a beautiful crypt, but in any case it is carrion. Shemyakin, Basman, Ust-Labin... Each oligarch has his own court!!!
Russia today is an unrighteous country, and this is what the authorities and the church make it, trampling on the rights of the people and justifying unrighteousness. They do not draw conclusions from the reign of Nicholas 2.
Reviews
For such libels, the then authorities did not lay a finger on Balmont.
Remember what Stalin did to Mandelstam.
Alexey, I don’t know why the text could not be found before your publication, but now this poem is freely available on the Internet.
The "bloody tsarist regime" was much more humane.
It was the Bolsheviks who dragged Russia into World War II, they are a reflection of the Nazis. And stupidly started this war.
In general, it is easy to spoil in one's own country and dump him over the cordon three years after the revolution.
The Tsar and his Family were not going to leave Russia.
I can’t say better than Yevgeny Shnurovsky - I found these lines on his page.
Revolutionary Balmont
How furiously you cursed the yoke!
How fiercely you thirsted for royal blood!
How pathetically you summoned a storm!
How earnestly you waited for a free new!
And as a result, you cursed the country:
Helped her to wash with her own blood,
Helped the Empire to sink
And he didn't even think to say goodbye.
You escaped to cozy Europe
From the horrors you inflicted.
Your people, yes, cleared up the porridge,
But - after all, at what a monstrous cost ...
Again the demons are dragging us into the abyss.
Your filthy poem was useful to them.
So that every groan of all the martyrs of unrest
Aspen stake stuck into your coffin !!!
Andrei, let's talk about your accusation of lying: drop the link where you can find it and I will correct my text, when I typed it, it was impossible to find this verse. Secondly, blaming the poet for ruining Russia is from a narrow-minded mind, and thirdly, blaming the Bolsheviks for dragging Russia into the Japanese, and then the First World War, Russia is sheer ignorance and ignorance of history. If you carefully read Balmont's verse, you will not see that he called a storm on Russia. It was Eugene who confused Balmont with another poet. Do you have a link to where Balmoth invites death on Russia or wishes her harm? If there is, give it. Have you read his poems about Russia? They probably didn't read it. And he has two poems about Russia: one in verse and the second in prose. In emotional things, it is better to speak the language of facts and references, and not our inventions. So I understand your emotionality: you read a poem by Yevgeny Shnurovsky, which Balmont can confuse with other poets, but did not read Balmont himself.
And also these works of Konstantin Balmont meant Yevgeny Shnurovsky. You know his poetry very well, so finding them will not be difficult.
"Our Tsar", "Tsar Lie", "The Beast Unleashed", "As if Romanov", "Inevitability", "Criminal Word", "Autocracy is torn, broken..."
All this is written by him.
Wishes for massacre ... to whom?
To the Tsar, under Whom the population of the Russian Empire increased by 50 million, when Russia was one of the five leading powers, in terms of economic growth and concentration of production - in first place in the world. None of the subsequent temporary impostors, who took power after the Master of the Russian land, achieved these indicators.
The country that had the lowest taxes in the world.
The first submarine, the first car, the first aircraft, the first power plant in Russia - also under the "rotten autocracy".
Emperor Nicholas II banned the export of crude oil - only oil products Russia supplied abroad, and our motor oil was the best in the world.
And many many others.
I had to communicate with a professor-historian who studied documents about life in special stores in the 70s the last emperor, and even then he had a positive opinion about the Sovereign not only as a family man, a person, but also a strong leader.
There is a wonderful article by Anatoly Stepanov "Truth and Lies about Emperor Nicholas II".
Nobody blames the Bolsheviks for dragging Russia into the war with Japan and the First World War, but I just wrote earlier that thanks to them, Russia mediocrely, with huge losses, entered the Second World War. Because communists and Nazis simply could not appear as political forces without each other.
I have no doubt that I have named the worst of the poet's works - the rest of the poems from the seven volumes of the collected works are completely different.
Andrey, just two remarks, but very significant: It was the tsar-emperor who dragged Russia into the Japanese and imperialist war - this is a fact. At the same time, he violated the covenant and demand of his father: in no case should Russia be drawn into wars, not fight in the Balkans and for the Balkans. Thinking about peace for Russia is the father's mandate. But Nicholas thought about glory, and the leadership of the Orthodox Church about Constantinople. Well, what are all the merits of the tsar and the achievements of Russia worth if he dragged Russia into the war and thereby ruined it. But he already had a warning: the revolution of 1905 after the war with Japan. Alas, Andrei, I am not fascinated by Nikolai, as you are. I am disappointed with his actions. And any poet this case Balmont, like a Pythia, expresses what should happen Balmoth is a seer, but he is bitter from his providences - he saw that Nikolai was leading Russia to death: Remember Lermontov's words:
A year will come, a black year for Russia,
When the kings crown will fall;
The mob will forget their former love for them,
And the food of many will be death and blood;
When children, when innocent wives
The cast down will not defend the law;
When the plague is from stinking, dead bodies
Will begin to wander among the sad villages,
To call from the huts with a handkerchief,
And the smoothness of this poor land will torment;
And the glow will color the waves of the rivers:
On that day a mighty man will appear,
And you will recognize him - and you will understand
Why is there a damask knife in his hand;
And woe for you! - your cry, your moan
He will then seem ridiculous;
And everything will be terrible, gloomy in it,
Like his cloak with a lofty brow.
Everything is said exactly. It's just that poets see further than mere mortals. When today poets and honest people say that Putin is selling Russia to the West, are they calling trouble on Russia? Balmot could not call out the troubles of Russia with his poems: he only wrote about what would inevitably happen. It takes a brave person to face the truth. Those who accuse the poet of Russia's troubles are either scoundrels, or fools, or cowards. At the same time, they can be patriots, they can love the king who pushed Russia into the abyss. Have you ever wondered why the church of Nicholas and his family were elevated to the rank of saints? But because cowards and scoundrels are sitting there: they don’t want to admit the mistakes of the church, they don’t want to repent in the face of history and the people of their grave sins (it was they who supported the tsar in these wars, although there were separate votes of the Strats, who, like Alexander - 3, were categorically against wars, but they were not listened to).
And yet, Andrey, autocracy is not Russia. Putin is not Russia and Motherland. The state is not a country and a people. Cyril is not the conscience of the Orthodox Church and not its authority - this is a manager from the church, a businessman, but not a conscientious person. The money-grubbers in the Russian church have again won. Bitter, but it's a fact. This is how you described the merits of the tsar and the successes of Russia. But ask yourself the question: why did he, having all this, lead Russia to wars and revolutions, which the communists took advantage of. Autocracy itself as a form of government was precisely rotten: one tsar could not solve all the problems of vast Russia, just as today Putin and his pocket party cannot solve all the problems of Russia.
Andrew, I'm not a romantic, I'm a realist. Unlike you and Yevgeny Shuisky, I take a sober look at history, at what deeds a person glorified the fatherland. The deeds of Nicholas are shameful. To equate it with Russia is a delusion.
I went through your link: there is this verse in pieces. So while this verse is published only in Leninka and here on this page. A few years ago, it was published in full on several sites, but then disappeared. So you accused me of lying for nothing. But I'm not offended - it's all emotions, and I'm only interested in facts.
Dear Alexey, I understand that our views differ.
You can consider me a romantic, and yourself a realist, although the given historical facts speak volumes, and my point of view, supported by communication with historians, as well as evidence passed down from previous generations, also has a right to exist.
On "Stikhira" there is, for example, the historian Alexander Lysev, who devoted a lot of time to work in the archives, and Lev Fadeev's grandfather was an old Bolshevik, while both of them also have a very positive opinion about Emperor Nicholas II.
There were contradictions. "At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia developed economically and decayed spiritually" - Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov.
In the Orthodox Church, everything is far from being so simple, but I would be careful not to call the Patriarch a businessman, a money-grubber.
And there are complaints against Putin, it's just that other candidates are even worse, especially the communists.
Now about the main subject of our discussion.
I believe that Konstantin Balmont contributed to the revolution, but not as an ordinary person, but as one who owns the printed word. To blame him alone for the disaster, of course, is unacceptable.
Moreover, I do not find anything seditious in Lermontov's poem "Prediction", which is truly prophetic. But Lermontov clearly did not want the events that were predicted through him.
Sincerely. As a family man, Nicholas 2 was a model (Goebbels and Hitler were also wonderful family men), as a ruler - an empty place that everyone who could fill with their ideas: from Witte to Rasputin. A cowardly man who renounced the throne at a fatal moment and threw the country into chaos - this is his portrait as a ruler.
The current patriarch is a businessman from the church - the Josephites won once again - the non-possessors were in the minority. But not only is he a businessman, he is a man with sick pride and lack of conscience. Ego pushes him to stupid and defamatory acts such as inflating the hype around Pusirayt, lack of conscience allows him to wear expensive watches in a country where half the population lives at the poverty line, and start scandals with apartments in high-rise buildings. It’s not me who speaks about the lack of conscience of the patriarch and his pride, but ordinary ministers of the church, those very non-possessors who do not like the fact that the Cathedral of Christ the Savior has been turned into a commercial nativity scene. A priest I know said the following thing: Kirill is trying to bring us back to Byzantium, wants to be a co-ruler of Putin or someone else in Russia, as it was in Byzantium. Love of power, self-love and lack of conscience - isn't it a lot of sins for the top of the Orthodox Church? What can Cyril teach me, what kind of authority can he be for me? But the choice of Cyril was made by the majority of the church elite, although there were also ardent opponents, people with a conscience. Now they have to remain silent and watch as Cyril tries to turn a secular country into a religious patrimony. Silly, petty and disgusting. If there is no conscience at the top of the church, then there is no spirit and grace in it. There are temples, but there is no grace in them. Because the church cannot be a hoarder of earthly wealth: and today they are taking away from public use the buildings of hospitals, museums, clinics, libraries. Cyril cannot acquire spiritual riches, therefore he brings to Moscow "overseas icons and belts of virgins." Nol, this is just from the spiritual poverty of the church elite that came to power. The trial of Pusirayt resembles the trials of the Inquisition: in the 21st century, the church fell into medieval ignorance, aggression and anger - this is an example of Christian love and forgiveness. They try to throw stones at young and stupid girls, as they tried to throw stones at a prostitute in the time of Jesus. But there is no one who said, let him throw a stone on whom there is no sin. And who is judging them? People who have corrected the law and conscience.
Andrei, we are living in a time when in Russia conscience has died among the top echelon of power, among the top of the patriarchy. It remains to hope for ourselves and the preservation of conscience in ourselves and our children, grandchildren, students ... Even in stagnant times, the church was conscience, even at the very top, there were conscientious people, but now the main thing is not conscience, but greed. Until the Putins and Kirills get sick of greed, Russia will suffer spiritually along with them, will stagnate for decades, as under Putin, but latently in the depths of Russia there are many people for whom God is not in the church, but in the truth, but the truth revealed to us by Christ , in love and conscience. Can you say about Cyril that he has love and conscience? Or does Putin have love and conscience? I see hypocrisy and cynicism, hypocrisy and window dressing in them.
But I am an optimist: love and conscience are such weeds that neither the communist frenzy nor the capitalist new order can weed out. So I treat both Putin and Kirill as temporary workers: neither one nor the other did anything for the future of Russia. On the contrary, everything that is done positively in the country is done in spite of these gentlemen.
In a separate line about "Great Nicholas" - you ask historians how many millions of people died in Russia under Nicholas during the Japanese and World War II - and both wars were absolutely unnecessary for Russia, they were fought on foreign territories, in alien interests to us. Nicholas was called bloody by the people after the execution of the Resurrection of a peaceful demonstration. Not poets, but people. Why did the people desert the army in whole units, because the war was imperialist, why did the people win against Napoleon and Hitler? Because these wars were domestic. It is the bloody Nikolai, acting as a puppet for overseas puppeteers, that will draw Russia into a deliberately losing imperialist war of conquest - Russia cannot wage wars other than domestic ones. Remember how the Afghan war, also imperialist in spirit, ended? It ended with 9 years of disgrace and the collapse of the USSR. It is necessary to extract fundamental things from history, not sintemental ones. Nicholas 2 - a good person - this is sintementality, but the fact that he dragged Russia into bloody wars and led to a revolution and a civil war, bled and exhausted - this is a fundamental thing.
Alexey, I hold other views, and they have a basis. And over time, everything will become clear if I or you misunderstand something.
Can you confirm to me what exactly the Church selects from hospitals, museums, libraries? What she previously owned, stolen by the state, gets back.
I have been to the Kursk diocese more than once. I saw monastic lands there, which were previously ownerless. I know how the monks cultivated these vast lands - only a peasant can understand how to work on the land. If they are returned to the monastery, they will flourish again.
"The Pusiright trial resembles the processes of the Inquisition: in the 21st century, the church fell into medieval ignorance, aggression and malice - this is an example of Christian love and forgiveness. They try to throw stones at young and stupid girls, as they tried to throw stones at a prostitute in the time of Jesus. But there is no such who said, let the one on whom there is no sin throw a stone. And who judges them? People who have violated the law and conscience.
They are judged by state law. Just imagine that these whores (not a swear word - one of the very mild translations of the name of the group "Mad Vaginas") danced on mass graves year in 1958 somewhere in the outback? I admit that the result would be lynching, physical violence and silence in the absence of punishment of the participants in the massacre.
I also wrote this.
"In a good way, they should have been burned at the stake on the banks of the Moskva River, the ashes should be pushed downstream, and the place of the fire should be sprinkled with salt - but the ice has not yet melted ..."
From an article by Israeli journalist Israel Shamir "Girls and magicians"
Burn few corrupt whores at the stake,
Who, having arranged dances in the temple,
Sneered at the soldiers' bones,
Neither they should be wives, nor mothers:
Their minds, along with their consciences, are rotten.
What punishment will fix
The rotten conscience of Pussy Riot whores?
Journalistic investigation of how the provocation was prepared:
Andrey, I'm used to being responsible for my words. And you, accusing me of lying ("That the text cannot be found, a lie - this poem is freely available on the Internet."), You did not provide me with links that this verse is freely available today, where you gave a link, it is given in several lines, but not entirely. This is firstly, and secondly, at the time when I posted this verse of this verse, except for my page, it was nowhere, or you knew for sure that this verse was. Yes, he was, but then he disappeared from those sites where he was. And they told me that they removed it under the pressure of our "straight" church elite. So I have a question for you: do you not think that you should either apologize for the groundless accusation of lying to me, or correct your resume and remove the word “lie” from it in my address?
And the last thing: I understand that you are a believer, so have you ever thought about the fact that believers can offend the feelings of non-believers? And now believers just every day offend the feelings of non-believers and mine personally (I do not believe in stories about God, the afterlife and all sorts of miracles). And here are your words: "I consider both the First World War and Afghanistan justified for Russia." - these are the words of a believer, because only believers believe that everything is by the will of God (including the death of millions) and everything is done for the better or in atonement for the so-called sins (whom and before whom it remains outside the brackets), and so these words offend my the feelings of a person who does not believe in your religious tricks, a person whose loved ones died both in the First World War and in Afghanistan, died at the mercy of the thoughtless tops of power.
Andrei, you are never disgusted by your own religious ignorance: to believe in miracles like dense, illiterate pre-revolutionary peasants. Andrei, you are a believer, but tell me: are you not ashamed of your "patriarch" Kirill, for his huckstering, for his cynicism and lies, for his double standards? Or do you just not see all this and your mind is like the mind of uncritical young children who believe everything and everyone at their word? It is personally bitter and insulting for me to see how a young man (I'm talking about you) does not have a single gram of critical thinking, you believe in fables about miracles, about hidden relics: but it would be funny to me if this was said by a second-grader boy who still has thinking has not been formed, and instead of thinking, only imagination. You need to study Andrei and read history not only from pseudo-patriotic authors. I say this not to offend you, but because people like you are easy to manipulate: you have more emotions than logic, more experiences than critical reasoning. And this is bad, bad, because you are not a kid from the second "B" class.
I am not a believer, but I know the gospel very well. And I can say for sure that our "orthodox" church is not evangelical, it is Pavlovian (an impostor apostle) in its spirit, it is far from the spirit of Jesus - it is a church of servants and masters, rich and poor, and Jesus has all the brothers. I simply advise you, you don’t have to follow my advice, ask yourself questions and look for answers to them, read the Gospel without church exegesis, read Russian classics. Read and compare what Jesus commanded with what he is doing today and for a long time since the victory of the Josephites of the Russian Orthodox Church and its top. Think for yourself, do not look for authoritative references, but try to compare, analyze, draw conclusions yourself, without the help of church stories and interpretations, without emotions. Or, of course, you can live as you lived: do not think, but only pray and take the word of the priests. You choose your own path, but in any case, you need to be responsible for every word, but, as I understand it, you are not used to being responsible for your words, because you do not have your own words: you refer to someone, to someone statements or poems, but you yourself are afraid to make a mental act, you are afraid to ask yourself a question, you are afraid to think and express your thought, because then you will have to answer for your own, namely YOUR word. I personally do not take offense at you, but I do not want to indulge your irresponsible position on my page - to scatter other people's words and not be responsible for my own.
Good luck with your choice of life path. I don’t care which path you choose, but it’s bitter when in the 21st century young Russia (it’s good that not all, but partially) plunges into medieval religious obscurantism and elementary illiteracy - the inability to think logically and rationally (instead of emotions and fables). Bitterly. But even this bitterness must be endured in order to do everything possible for the enlightenment of future generations, because the current young generation has fallen out of the thinking tradition, has fallen into the tradition of myths. And this is understandable: they brought down one ideology (socialist), and left the country without an ideology for 20 years, and then suddenly they decided to turn everyone into a religious ideology. But a return to religion is a regression, a cultural regression, which is what our geopolitical enemies dream of. It is they who constantly impose on Russia, through agents of influence, the religious path and the destruction of the Soviet traditions of education. Education was battered, but they could not destroy, now they have taken up the religious duping of the masses. Both you and people like you, ardent, almost possessed by Orthodox demons, are toys in the hands of priests, who, in turn, are manipulated by obviously smart and cynical puppeteers ... Andrey, think about it, just think about it: you have one life and you just they lied that there will also be an afterlife, they lied to make you obedient and manageable: listen to the priests and the authorities and you will go to heaven ...
Forgive me, you don’t have to answer if it’s unpleasant for you, but correct your review, remove the unfounded accusation of me in a lie.
And the last thing: Leo Tolstoy died in Russia, but in his work "Resurrection" he clearly showed the bloody and rotten tsarist regime. Read sometime at your leisure and draw your own conclusions from what the eyewitness described. Read the memoirs of Gilyarovsky about Moscow, about what sewers were on the eve of the Revolution in Moscow, and what it became under the socialist system. Read more Andrew. Read Kuprin, his "Pit" is also an example of the tsarist time so beloved by you. All these people are witnesses of their time. And your Yevgeny Shnurovsky judges the past at the suggestion of priests and modern priestly propagandists. Balmont, Tolstoy, Gilyarovsky, Kuprin - these are all honest people of their time, they did not lie, there was no reason for them to lie, they are not Putin's or Kirill's leaven. And they loved Russia more than Shnurovsky. Feel free to read these authors. Of course, Balmont is emotional, but he also witnessed the dark and terrible that the tsarist regime carried in itself, which is why he collapsed because he was rotten from the inside. So the Central Committee of the CPSU at one time did not want to change, it rotted from the inside, collapsed and pulled a huge country along with it. And the current regime of crooks and thieves is rotting, does not want to change, and leads Russia to a dead end. And the church helps him in this ...
Dear Alexey,
I apologize for the false attacks - in fact, until 2011, I did not find the full text of this poem by Balmont on the Internet.
Corrected the text of the review.
Otherwise, there is not enough time to answer all the points.
About the First World War and Afghanistan - the answer is not from the standpoint of faith, but of historical necessity.
My ancestors and relatives were also directly affected by the First World War, the coups of 1917, the Second World War and Afghanistan.
About Afghanistan - You read my response about drug trafficking across the border in Soviet time and now, under the American occupation?
But about the relics ... You do not believe the conclusions of forensic experts on the relics of St. Alexander Svirsky? Yes, and it is wrong to reproach people with several educations and academic degrees for dense ignorance.
As for historians, I was lucky to communicate with a professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences, who back in the 70s studied materials about the life of the last Emperor in special stores, when it was impossible to talk about it openly. He then formed an opinion about Nicholas II as a strong leader. And he says that it was in fact the heyday of Russia in economic, technical and military terms.
Only those historians can be considered real who, according to archival documents, and not according to fiction studied the facts.
I read "Uncle Gilyaya" and Kuprin in my school years, quite a long time ago.
You never answered me about the population growth of the Russian Empire by 50 million, about the first place in terms of economic growth in the world, about the ban on the export of crude oil. The fact that Russian motor oil was the best in the world.
Even in Soviet times, for some reason, all indicators were compared with 1913 - the achievements of the "rotten", "backward", "bloody" tsarist regime. And why? Because they could not exceed these indicators. And the GOELRO plan - the electrification of the whole country - is the brainchild of Tsarist Russia, the Bolsheviks only changed it in accordance with the new situation after the civil war.
Are there a lot of myths? Now the version about the execution of the Royal Family, which was presented to us, does not stand up to criticism - too obvious a lie in Soviet publications does not hide the inconsistency. They didn’t shoot the Tsar, but they killed them with knives, ritually, and this was done not by the Bolsheviks, not by the Jews in any case, but by world-class Satanists. There were only a few initiated into the "mystery of lawlessness" - Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, the Sverdlov brothers in the Soviet government, and of the real regicides official version we at best know Yurovsky's name.
Have you ever thought about what was the fate of the regicides and their families afterwards? Uritsky, Sverdlov, Trotsky, Yurovsky...
Also a lot of interesting things.
Alexei, why do you call the return to religion a cultural regression?
I do not understand this ... there are a lot of learned believers, especially naturalists - physicists, mathematicians, geologists, biologists ... and many religious "miracles" have been proven when trying to investigate them. And existence Noah's Ark, and the Flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah, the Shroud of Turin, and finally, the Holy Fire on the Holy Sepulcher - this is impossible to deny.
The theory of evolution contradicts the laws of genetics discovered by Mendel.
And the Lanchansky miracle - speaks volumes? What Holy Communion really is for Christians.
You are talking about cultural regression.
Cultural regression is a distortion of history, the destruction of centuries-old family foundations, the imposition of "democratic" legal norms on us, the granting of rights to sick "minorities", whose representatives any healthy society should expel from their environment, or destroy physically - depending on the religion of this society.
Andrew, unfortunately, just now read. I will answer in detail only tomorrow, because tomorrow I have to get up early, and it's too late for me. Thank you very much for correcting the review and I express my respect to you. For other questions, I do not want to answer in a hurry. Goodbye, Andrey. Yours faithfully.
Yes, Andrey, I will try to answer you point by point. 1 About Nicholas II: he was a wonderful family man, but a man absolutely not ready to rule the country, not ready for what his grandfather was ready for: Russia needed a constitution and a parliament, You can’t switch to capitalist rails and leave autocracy. The people in Russia matured even under his grandfather for a constitution and self-government, but Nikolai was afraid of losing personal power, and in the end he lost everything: Russia and life. You write about the economic miracle in Russia under Nicholas. Yes, this is all fine, but the empire could no longer be governed in the old way, and the tsar hampered the transition to a new government of the country. But the worst thing that he did as a ruler was that he dragged Russia into wars that led to social tension and an explosion. Once again I am trying to tell you a simple thing: if, as you say, the tsar was an excellent manager, then why did the country collapse under his leadership? If he was such an outstanding leader of the nation, then why did he drag Russia into an imperialist war in which we defended the interests of Western capital with the lives of millions of Russian peasants: the same millions you write about. Here is an extract on the losses: the demographic losses of Russia in World War I - 2 million 740 thousand thousand people. of these, 1 million 670 thousand soldiers + 1 million 70 thousand civilians were killed; sanitary losses - 3749.0 thousand people. the wounded and crippled; loss of prisoners - 3343.9 thousand people. All this is divine, the king is the anointed of God. Nicholas plunged Russia into a catastrophe, which ended in an even greater catastrophe - a civil war. And this catastrophe just tells us: you can’t lead conquest wars- they are not just only the defense of the fatherland - that is the only justification for war. The tsarist regime got into the war and eventually collapsed because it was unable to cope with the tasks that Russia faced. And Russia was moving onto capitalist lines, it needed a different management. She needed local self-government, she needed an independent Duma and a constitution. Instead, the king dragged everyone into two wars, the second ended in failure. How can you justify such a ruler? How is Putin blaming the Bolsheviks for everything? If there had been peace in Russia, a constitution, parliament and local self-government, the collapse would not have come. Here is my opinion.
Andrei, here is a description of Nikolasha by his entourage:
In a conversation with P.N. Durnovo, Witte said that Nikolai impressed him as a completely inexperienced, but also not stupid, and most importantly, a very well-mannered young man.
To this P.N. Durnovo remarked:
You are mistaken, Sergey Yulievich, remember me - it will be like a copy of Pavel Petrovich, but in real modernity.
- "I then often recalled this conversation," - says Witte. - “Of course, Emperor Nicholas is not Pavel Petrovich, but in his character there are many features of the latter and even Alexander I (mysticism, cunning and even deceit), but, of course, there is no education of Alexander I. Alexander I was one of the most educated Russian people in his time , and Emperor Nicholas, in our time, has a secondary education of a guards colonel of a good family. /187/
He came to the Russian throne unexpectedly for everyone - Alexander III died before reaching 60 years old - a 26-year-old young man, small in stature, nondescript and shy, just like someone already from our modern history ...
And here's another, Andrey, for you a sketch of Nikolai. From his biography.
"On May 18, 1895, on the Khodynka field, thanks to the stupidity and mediocrity of the Moscow police, several thousand people, men, women and children, were crushed to death, mutilated and maimed. This terrible disaster, caused by the organization of the distribution of miserable royal gifts to the people, caused a general feeling of horror.
But Nikolai's entourage convinced that this horror should not interfere with the coronation celebrations. And the concert, scheduled for the same day on the same Khodynka field, a few hours after this field was littered with thousands of crushed people, was not canceled and Nikolai came to this concert.
In the evening of the same day, a ball was to be held at the French ambassador's - and the ball, at the insistence of above, was not canceled, and the king and queen attended this ball, as if nothing had happened.
The "master" of Moscow at that time was Nikolai's uncle, /190/ Sergei Alexandrovich, the most stupid, vicious and most mediocre of the sons of Alexander II, none of whom, however, rose above the most gray mediocrity. And the Governor-General of Moscow after Khodynka not only was not subjected to any responsibility, but was not even recalled from his post.
Here Tsar Nicholas II, at the most solemn moment of his reign, revealed to Moscow, and to all of Russia and to the whole world, all his moral squalor.
About Khodynka.
The tragedy on the Khodynka field is usually used to prove the myth about the "callingness of the Sovereign, his indifference to his people." As you know, in May 1896, celebrations were held in Moscow on the occasion of the coronation of Their Imperial Majesties Nikolai Alexandrovich and Alexandra Feodorovna. On the Khodynka field, during the distribution of royal gifts, a terrible stampede arose in which over a thousand people died and several hundred were injured. A terrible tragedy overshadowed the holiday.
What is the young Emperor doing in connection with this tragedy? An investigation was ordered. For the poor organization of order and hindsight, the chief police chief was removed from his post and the law enforcement officers subordinate to him were punished. The families of the dead and injured were given cash benefits. The dead were buried at public expense, and their children were placed in an orphanage. In other words, the Sovereign does what the head of any state must do in such a tragic situation. Moreover, the Sovereign and the Empress personally attended the memorial service for the dead and visited the wounded in hospitals several times.
On the day of the tragedy, the French ambassador was to have a reception and a ball. Reception at the ambassador of a foreign power for the head of state is not entertainment, but work. Of course, it was possible to cancel the reception. But it must be borne in mind that Russia and France were just establishing allied relations, and any roughness could be used by hostile states to upset the emerging alliance. And the Sovereign in this difficult situation found a worthy way out. He attended the reception, which emphasized Russia's loyalty to allied relations and interest in their development, but soon left, leaving everyone's Christian conscience to make a choice - whether to have fun on the day of the mournful event.
The behavior of the Sovereign in the days of the Khodynka catastrophe - both as a politician and as a person - should be recognized as irreproachable. But the enemies of the Autocracy even then sought to use any misfortune to discredit the Emperor. main reason noise around Khodynskaya tragedy there was an unjustified hope of the enemies of the Tsar that Khodynka would become an excuse for the dismissal of the Moscow Governor-General Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was hated by them.
Thus, if we consider all the facts impartially, then it should be recognized that the Khodynka disaster was an accident. This misfortune is only partly to blame for some police officers who were punished for hindsight. An objective researcher cannot see any fault of Emperor Nicholas II.
And here is a link to the biography of Nicholas 2
http://scepsis.ru/library/id_3246.html
I found it especially for you and not in the archives, but in an accessible form. Read Andrew. Think it over.
But Afghanistan!!! Before we entered Afghanistan, let it be known, in the USSR, hemp pollen was considered the biggest drug. And with the beginning of the war, our generals began to import heroin on airplanes in zinc coffins. Before the start of the war, the border was really locked up, and then it simply disappeared. So I wonder: where do you get "information" about Nicholas, about the Afghan war - probably from fables and TV, and not from printed sources. Or they say that special "educational" programs, websites and newspapers have been created specifically for the Nazis and other Putin youth. Provide links to such sources.
I sincerely want to understand, Andrey, where you get such a strange idea about history, about the role of religion in people's lives. I'll tell you honestly: I had and still have to communicate with large quantity scientists, and so only one of them is a believer - he is a mathematician, and then only because his schizophrenia or TIR drove him into a corner: he cannot communicate with people, therefore he communicates with a fictional god for himself. Yes, I remembered another opportunist - a "scientist", he also became a believer in order to make his career on this ... all my acquaintances scientists are sane people with critical thinking. If a "scientist" believes in God, then he is either a scoundrel and just stuck himself, or a sick and unfortunate person for whom faith has become a drug, officially allowed.
It will be interesting for me to hear your opinion about the biography of Nikolai and to learn from you links to the sources of your information.
Dear Alexey, about Afghanistan - directly from the person who served there, and is my close relative.
About Nicholas II - one of the most different sources, including by comparing facts.
We have already talked a lot about this, I can name my favorite authors-historians. Alexander Bokhanov, Peter Multatuli, Archpriest Alexander Shargunov,
"If a "scientist" believes in God, then he is either a scoundrel and just clings to himself, or a sick and unfortunate person for whom faith has become a drug officially allowed..."
This is nothing more than a label. It was among naturalists, mathematicians, physicists, geologists that I met believers. Less among psychologists and sociologists.
That's interesting ... I would like you to read about St. Luke Voyno-Yasenetsky - this is a "scoundrel", a sick and unfortunate person, or ...
Scientist of world renown.
Psychologist Viktor Frankl - it would also be interesting for you to read his biography and works. And how would we endure what he endured ... this experience is both psychological, and religious, and purely worldly.
Karl Jaspers...
Metropolitan John (Wendland) and Archpriest Gleb Kaleda - Doctors of Geology and Mineralogy.
Archpriest, Professor Gleb Kaleda, who kept the faith from childhood, in Soviet times ... a man who, as a teenager, risked carrying parcels to the families of arrested priests. At the age of 17 he went to the front, spent the entire war in the infantry.
You should also learn about the life of this priest.
And the fact that he is a doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences, a real scientist, researcher, and as a priest, showed himself from the very better side. The family is happy, with many children, I know about it. After the persecution of faith ceased, he was one of the first to engage in the spiritual care of prisoners. This man was so spiritually rich that the prison authorities allowed him to be on death row without an escort.
It’s just not worth labeling right away, and, of course, there should be criticality in the knowledge of the world, but the understanding that there are other, higher laws does not interfere with this at all.
It is very interesting to hear about the higher worlds, Andrei. Very interesting. Yes, maybe they are higher worlds, but what do they have to do with earthly life? The meanest come to power all over the world, including in Russia. Wars don't stop. The stratification of people by property and educational level continues. the same prostitution and drug addiction that you talked about exists. So your higher worlds are indifferent to earthly affairs. That there is such a country, the United States, in its entire history, they have destroyed more people in wars and subversive and economic conflicts than died in two world wars, but there are priests there who say that the Americans are God's chosen people. You cite believing scientists as an example, and I can cite no less, but more non-believers, but the question is that indeed among scientists there can be sincere believers who, for one reason or another, combine in their minds a certain duality: a critical and rational mind and some mythological consciousness, which is addressed out of habit or in difficult situation. But if this scientist has become a scientist in the full sense of the word, he no longer needs the concept of God - this category is superfluous to explain the structure of the world. So I wrote just about those who, having critical thinking, commit a forgery, allegedly turn to faith, in fact - this is a lie. Exactly the same when Putin goes to church and prays. A person who is cynical to the marrow of his bones will go to church simply because it is politically beneficial for him, which he does. If he were a sincere believer, he would have acted like Marcus Aurelius, and not like a temporary worker thinking about enrichment and holding power for the sake of power. Faith and religion have become a big speculation today. And what actually gave the religion of Russia? Darkness and ignorance, after which there was a riot. I realized, Andrei, that we will never come to a common opinion, we will never look at the same things in the same way, because I am an atheist, and you believe in God, you need authorities, I rely on my conscience, you act nobly out of expectation of the afterlife reward, but I act so simply out of conscience and mind. Probably, we should not bicker, because everyone will have their own opinion. At the same time, I respect you and your life choice. Even if you don't agree with him. Good luck and all the best, Andrey.
Andrei, nevertheless, I decided to return to the conversation after reading your statement about psychologists and their attitude to faith. The fact is that at one time I studied domestic and foreign scientific research, very disparate about the consciousness of believers. I was very surprised at the time of the foresight of Marx, his clear and it turned out to be in essence correct definition religion as the opium of the people. But Lenin's definition is better and more precise, it reveals main point religions:
“The impotence of the exploited classes in the struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to faith in a better afterlife, just as the impotence of the savage in the struggle with nature gives rise to faith in gods, devils, miracles, etc. Religion teaches one who works and needs all his life humility and patience in earthly life, consoling with the hope of a heavenly reward, and those who live by the labor of others, religion teaches charity in earthly life, offering them a very cheap excuse for their entire exploitative existence and selling at a reasonable price tickets to heavenly prosperity. the opium of the people Religion is a kind of spiritual fumes in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demands for some worthy of a man a life."
If only Lenin and Marx knew how right they are!!! For believers, at the moment of prayer, the performance of rituals, or during fasting, a state of altered consciousness arises, which is caused by the injection of endorphins into the blood - hormones of happiness or endogenous opiates, that is, drugs of their own production. So it turns out that religion is truly the opium of the people. I myself tried to enter these states of consciousness. These states are evoked in different religions by the same means: prayer, fasting, closed space, a burning candle or the performance of rituals, and the person gets access to drugs. And able drug intoxication(no matter what kind of production) a person is ready to endure everything, to believe everything. And the very miracles that supposedly work relics or icons are caused by the altered states of the believers themselves, it is known that drugs can lift the sick and the weak. Here people are temporarily healed in a state of altered consciousness. Both God and the saints appear in such a state, I know this from my own experience. And sobering up after such states is terrible, because there was a touch to the holy secret, I felt the breath of God on myself, I couldn’t bear his strength, I begged to be left alone, but God left me, that very state of grace left, and it’s bad: breaking begins, I want to pray again and again, if only to once again experience the miracle of touch .... it turns out to be touching the pantries of one's own hormones.
There are different degrees of religious intoxication, just quiet grace, when hormones are released regularly and in portions, but it’s bad for those who taste higher grace, that is, such a dose of opium when heaven and hell open up. Either go into seclusion, or start preaching...
Any religious obsession is the action of endorphins in the blood. Jesus is one of those who experienced the most powerful dose of endorphins, and how bad he felt when God left him, that is, scientifically, when withdrawal began, when the effect of his own opium ended. Andrei, I know a lot about you believers, because I studied you, lived among you, became one of you, in order not just theoretically and experimentally, but practically to enter the state of a believer, into his altered state of consciousness.
When I talk about scientists: "if a "scientist" believes in God, then he is either a scoundrel and just stuck himself, or a sick and unfortunate person for whom faith has become a drug officially allowed", then I mean one simple thing: a true scientist by cast of mind, and not by rank, does not need religion. But if this "scientist" began to believe in God, then he was never a scientist, but he simply had such a title. For me, it's "scientists" in quotation marks. The same scientists who, being a believer, began to engage in science, could not become scientists in their essence, they remained believers. There are really rare cases when a scientist, I now recalled one case, turned to faith in Soviet times (I personally talked to him and will not name him) because he did not find any other support in his life except faith (it gave him endorphin reinforcement to endure the injustice that he faced in the Brezhnev era.He told me so, I will pray and begin to feel relieved, I can continue to work and not think about the horrors of the Lubyanka, but as a scientist I understand that this is just self-hypnosis.So when I I told him about the studies of believers, their consciousness, their blood, he laughed with me and said, so I intuitively found a way out for myself.
And one more detail, Andrei, I will not name the temple and the priest, but this is how this person instructs those who seek justice. In my presence, one person repented in confession that he was tormented by a sense of injustice: he worked all his life as an oilman, went through the war, and suddenly, in a few days before his eyes, he found out that all those wells that he drilled at Soviet power belong not to the state and to it, as part of this state, but to some strange people: the Alekperovs, the Abramovichs, the Khodorkovskys. To this, the priest consoled him like this: it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man, so don’t worry, justice will be in heaven, it never happened on earth. Everything is straight according to Lenin: work hard, do not seek justice, after death you will be rewarded. And they believe, and humble themselves, and become slaves.
But here's another aspect. If you read the letter of Jesus' commandments and feel their spirit, then it suddenly becomes clear that the ROC, as a hierarchical mechanism, is far from fulfilling its commandments. And the higher the hierarch, the less he lives according to the commandments of the one whom you call Christ. But on the other hand, they strictly follow the commandments of Paul, the impostor apostle, who at one time intercepted the mission of Christians and directed them in the right direction for the Pharisees (he himself was a Pharisee and one of the first special officers and spies rolled into one).
You are so mad about usi-pusi, and why are you not jarred by the fact that they made a marketplace out of the temple, against which Jesus rebelled? Look at the clothes in which the "shepherds" walk, at the cars and houses in which they live, and answer whether they live according to the commandments of Jesus.
Andrey, I treat sincere believers calmly, I understand everything about them: a person is weak and needs strength, and draws it from himself in prayers. And it's up to them to believe or not. But it disgusts me to see how politics is made out of religion, how the church is introduced into the school, how they want to make a theocracy out of a secular state, and in fact we already live in it. It disgusts me to see how the culture of critical thinking is being destroyed, how they are trying to make an obedient herd out of the masses that will endure all sorts of injustice and atrocities on the part of the authorities. It disgusts me to see how the church took up arms against writers and poets, how they make bloody kings saints, how they try to rewrite history books and even Pushkin's poem about the priest and his worker a bald, it disgusts me when they try to inspire me that power is from God and it is beyond jurisdiction. It disgusts me when they try to make a slave religious ideology state. All this is darkness. If you want to believe, believe, if you want to sit on drugs of your own production, yes, please, just don’t disturb the country and set believers against unbelievers, we don’t need to kindle a civil war on religious grounds. And Kirill or his entourage seems to have a relapse: I want to denounce Russia, I want someone to drive it back into the waters not of the Dnieper, but of the Moscow River and baptize everyone there en masse, and whoever doesn’t believe them will set the obsessed youth hooked on endorphins.
Here is my vision of the situation with religion. You just once again demonstrated to me one phenomenon: believers justify any evil done by the authorities, if it was justified by the higher authorities, they find various pretexts to justify the authorities. And this is a sign that you have become obedient, and are not capable of compassion (two wars not on our territory can be justified), you do not care about the question of justice, there are already ready-made answers for everything: God decided everything and the shepherd said, which means everything is needed accept as is.
I will say again that I am sad to see how the church and the authorities are trying to reverse history. Nothing good will come of it. There were some bad girls-punks usi-pusi, whom no one knew, so thanks to the Church they became heroes and role models for green youth. And the church itself behaved again not according to the commandments of Jesus in relation to even stupid, but safe girls.
And why so much anger among believers towards them? Did Jesus call for judging those who offend? I will answer you where the anger and intransigence comes from: intellectual imprinting, or imprinting the way of thinking that comes from the authorities.
Among the priests there are a few who want to make life easier for those who suffer, converting them to faith and introducing them to endorphin addiction. These units understand that faith is only an earthly salvation from the injustice or evil of life, but nothing more. They simply lead the herd so that this herd does not rebel and run wild in this wild capitalist life without a single law for all. And people need a good education and a decent life, just a fair one, in which the laws are the same for everyone. And you shouldn't think that people are so primitive that they won't survive without drugs.
Mind and Conscience need to be educated in people, and faith does not add conscience, it only adds the fear of God ... not for conscience, but for the promised paradise, you do good deeds ... with an eye on the omnipresent God, give to the poor or give way ... this not about you personally, it's about all believers. That's what I don't like about them, that it is not conscience and compassion that move a person, but the promised paradise or a terrible hell.
All the best to you, Andrey. I am writing all this to you because I am not an indifferent person, I myself was once the same as you are now ... Yes, and you yourself have touched me - I never start any conversations or reproaches with believers. Just don't touch me...
If only we didn’t end up at the front and meet face to face, because the civil war in Russia has already begun, while on television and on the Internet, but it is already breaking out into the streets, breaking into churches and theaters.
It began with the filing of just our supreme power, both secular and spiritual. Our dialogues only show that this confrontation has not yet reached the point of bloodshed, but who can guarantee that religious fans will not start outrageous acts and smash atheists tomorrow? On the contrary, someone is constantly inciting them, and the church elite and state power have never stopped these outrages. Yes, and from the side of rabid atheists, a wave has also risen. But if the patriarch were wiser, he would not impose his religion on the country and the "holy" bloody Nicholas 2 as an example of an innocent victim. The ideological campaign is already underway: they want to convince Russia that we cannot live without religion and the monarchy. But they forget history, it was the most religious country, Russia, that came to revolution - And why? you need to think and understand why, and not try once again to turn the people into an obedient herd of believers.
So it turned out, Andrei, that those authors of the "historians" whom you referred to are simply pure monarchists, which means that they will justify everything that the tsar did. And behind them you justify violence and bloodshed. And this brings us to different sides of the barricades. Alas, this time the civil war in Russia is started by the Orthodox Church, not from big mind its leaders.
And pay attention, I didn’t go to your page and didn’t write to you that the priests were wrong, you were the first to come to me with accusations. You didn't like my truth about Balmont. Balmont is a poet, but the priests see him as a manifestation of Satan. Brad and more nonsense. And now you, with your righteous anger, are attacking me for publishing a verse that, under pressure from the church elite, was removed from the Internet. It's already ideological war. Think, Andrei, that young guys like you are being prepared as cannon fodder to suppress dissent in the country. Think about whether you want to participate in this civil war? I do not want to, therefore I do not attack the verses of believers - this is their personal right to believe or not. But I believe that believers have no right to attack unbelievers and their opinions.
Now they speculate a lot on the "feelings of believers", but they forget that non-believers also have a sense of their own dignity, they have their own, albeit different from religious, opinion on history and life.
The fact is that the church elite wants to recoup for 74 years of Soviet power. Revenges always start with wars. I do not want to participate in this war, because sooner or later it will lead to fratricide. And the current revenge is on the conscience of all churchmen, and especially on Kirill, for he stands at the top of the hierarchical vertical of power. And on your conscience, Andrei, this revenge. Think, think hard, not in a church way, but at least do not do evil to the commandments of Jesus, do not incite discord with your unbelieving brother. Forgive the atheists and their government, now no one is oppressing you, why are you putting pressure on them. Everything was returned to you and with a vengeance, they apologized to you. So you need to humiliate atheists now? Think hard with your mind, and not with the clichés that you perceived. It is difficult to think outside of clichés, especially for religious consciousness, but there were also people among believers who were able to think on their own, although they were immediately called heretics, or they, like Luther and Calvin, began to go their own way. If I have offended you in any way, I publicly apologize to you. I hope you and I will not be at war with each other.
Dear Alexey, what you have expressed here is your personal opinion, each person has his own. There is no point in discussing differences of opinion.
But I do not understand why you called church censorship the reason for the absence of the poem on the Internet.
"... a verse that, under pressure from the church elite, was removed from the Internet ..."
This is perhaps the only anti-monarchist poem by Konstantin Balmont, the full text could not be found on the Internet before your publication. You can find many more materials with a different point of view.
All other works of this kind could be found. Maybe an accident?
"Our Tsar", "Tsar Lie", "The Beast Unleashed", "As if Romanov", "Inevitability", "Criminal Word" are on the Internet.
I also apologize if I offended you in any way. On your part, it seems to me that there were no offensive transitions to personalities in the conversation.
This verse was on one literary site until 2011. Then the site remained, but the verse was gone. I was told that there were calls from the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church, that's all. I will not name this site, so as not to bring them into trouble. I think the debate is over.
The daily audience of the Potihi.ru portal is about 200 thousand visitors, who total amount view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.
When you listen to Balmont, you always listen to spring. No one entangles souls in such a bright fog as Balmont. No one blows this fog with such a fresh wind as Balmont. No one is still equal to him in his "singing power". Alexander Blok
K.D.Balmont. 1920s. Photo by P.I.Shumov
Slightly reddish, with lively quick eyes, head held high (...), wedge-shaped beard, fighting look (...). Something provocative, always ready to boil, to respond with harshness or enthusiasm. If compared with birds, then this is a magnificent chanteclaire, greeting the day, light, life. B. Zaitsev (writer, friend of Balmont in emigration)
“The poet is open with his soul to the world, and our world is sunny, a holiday of labor and creativity is always taking place in it, solar yarn is created every moment, and whoever is open to the world, peering attentively around him into countless lives, into countless combinations of lines and colors, will always have solar threads at his disposal and will be able to weave gold and silver carpets. K.D.Balmont
The heir of Pushkin and Dostoevsky, Balmont is highly endowed with "the dominant property of the Aryan - the universal outlook, the godliness of nature, all-humanity."
The poems of Konstantin Balmont, the symbolist poet, may be liked or left indifferent, but no one can deny their extraordinary musicality. Balmont seemed to have been created from an anachronism. A poet with amazingly green eyes and an overly aristocratic appearance. This is how girls represent the Prince or King.
He dominated the crowd. In his poetry, now scream, now chirp, and the Russian ear is disturbed by unusual, nasal "n" in rhymes "in love, half-asleep, intoxicated."
I came into this world
to see the sun
And blue vision.
I came into this world
to see the sun
And the heights of the mountains
Ilya Ehrenburg recalled that Balmont read his poems in an "inspirational and arrogant" voice, like "a shaman who knows that his words have power, if not over an evil spirit, then over poor nomads." The poet, according to him, spoke in all languages with an accent - not with Russian, but with Balmont's, pronouncing the sound "n" in a peculiar way - "either in French, or in Polish." The musical lines of his poetry resonate with the graceful melancholy of Chopin and the grandeur of Wagnerian chords - radiant jets burning over the abyss of chaos. The tender refinement of Botticelli and the lush gold of Titian are poured in his poetic colors.
I am a cry of pain, I am a cry of anguish.
I am the stone that fell to the bottom of the river.
I am a secret stalk of underwater herbs.
I am the pale face of river baths.
I am a light ghost between two worlds.
I am a fairy tale. I look without words.
I am a cherished sign - and only with me
You will say with your heart: "There is another world"
His frenetic love for poetry, his subtle flair for the beauty of verse, his whole unique personality make an exceptional impression. Much, much becomes clear through the prism of his poems. He teaches to understand other poets, his contemporaries, teaches to truly love life.
Konstantin Balmont was born on June 15, 1867 on an estate near the village of Gumnishchi in the Vladimir province. He considered himself a descendant (on the mother's side) of the Tatar prince, whose name was translated as " White Swan Golden Horde", and at the same time. He grew up in a poor noble family. Father of the poet Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont
(1835-1907) was the chairman of the zemstvo council in the city of Shuya, did a lot to spread literacy among the peasants (a school was built at his expense in the village of Gumnishchi). The father, who was most fond of nature and hunting, had no influence on his son. The poet's mother Vera Nikolaevna (1843-1909) appeared in the local press, arranged literary evenings, amateur performances. It was she who introduced her son to the world of music, poetry, history, taught to understand beauty.
BALMONT'S MYSTERIOUS NUMBER
January 1921 was unusually snowy in Paris. Balmont walks along the streets of Paris and admires the white roofs dear to his heart, enjoys the crunch of snow and all this enchanting "milky distance". But he knows that it won't be here for long and that all this outfit will fall off soon.
His thoughts are transferred to distant, dear, desired Russia, in the Moscow region, at the most difficult time for him, but although, when he was "tormented" and "exhausted", his soul still sang ...
It was thirteen months ago, on a fierce December 1919 in the town of Novogireevo. The poet lived there with Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya and his daughter Mirra.
All suffered from cold, hunger and disease. Elena Konstantinovna suffered especially, having already had pneumonia three times and fell ill again. My daughter has been ill for a long time. Balmont himself was ill with "Spanish flu" and complained about his heart. Damp firewood was kindled with great difficulty. The water supply froze, and for water it was necessary to walk half a verst - to the next of the two wells available in the whole town, because in the first, which is closer, the muddy water smelled like a swamp. But if only the distance! To pump water, it was necessary to make several dozen strokes. One has only to stop - and everything must be started all over again.
In order to somehow brighten up this difficult task for the sick poet, he begins to guess the numbers for which water will flow. Here the folk conspiracy for thirty-three longings is remembered and the number thirty-three is guessed. And on the thirty-third stroke, a trickle appears. On the second bucket, the trickle does not respond to the mysterious number, but appears only on the forty-second roll. And the poet rejoices. Again, symbolism is with him: in ancient Egypt, at the court of Osiris, the number of judges was 42. But the joy passes quickly: the stream is too thin and the bucket is filled too slowly. The poet runs out of steam, but, finally, on the hundredth pitching, the bucket is filled.
It is interesting that the title of the autobiographical story "White Dream", which described these events, echoes the title of the drama of the beloved Balmont playwright Calderon "Life is a dream". Balmont went to another world, to "where flax always turns blue" in the forty-second year of the last century. It is obvious that the well for him on that December day was a kind of oracle.
"Memories" E.A. Andreeva-Balmont, a brilliant biographer (not only of her husband), written in an elegant, somehow silvery iridescent musical style, is returned to the story again, since that difficult time of Balmont's life in Novogireevo was illuminated by Ekaterina Alekseevna from another mysterious side.
At that time, there was a long pause in Balmont's correspondence from Novogireev to Miass to Ekaterina Alekseevna. Here is what she writes in "Memoirs": "Balmont was not able to write, he had to hastily flee from Novogireevo. It turned out that their dacha in Novogireevo was an enchanted house. There were spirits in it that raised whirlwinds in the rooms; things fell off their places ", flew through the air and shattered to smithereens. Their dishes were broken all to the last cup. The apartment looked like it had been pogrom. At first, Balmont and Elena thought that it might be cats, rats, snakes, finally, but when before their eyes, jugs rose into the air, and books with a roar, as if they were made of metal, fell to the ground, there was no more doubt, it was "evil spirits". This went on for two months with a break at certain days and hours. They no longer had the strength to endure, and they fled. Since the trains had just been canceled at that time, they walked ten miles to Moscow on foot, loaded with their luggage. "
Such a misfortune fell, among other things, on the Balmont family. Comparing all the facts and events from the life of the poet, given in the "Memoirs" of Ekaterina Alekseevna, as well as in other sources about Balmont, published in recent times, including in the book by P.V. Kupriyanovsky and N.A. Molchanova "Poet Konstantin Balmont", with that story mentioned, are struck by a lot of coincidences.
Judge for yourself.
In the same 1942, his first wife Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina (1864-1942) died.
Of all the countries planned for visiting, Balmont was especially interested in Egypt. He carefully prepared for the trip, read many books about this country. And now he visits the "land of Osiris", the same one that he will remember at the well in 1909, when he was 42 years old.
Then his mother, Vera Nikolaevna, nee Lebedeva (1843-1909), dies, 42 years after the birth of the poet.
The book "The Land of Osiris", written by Balmont after the trip, ends with the essay "The Word of the Egyptian Elder" - 42 instructions from the father to the son from the ancient Egyptian book on papyrus - "The Book of the Dead".
Interestingly, Balmont was born 42 years after the Decembrist uprising. Until the end of his life, in his heart he considered himself a revolutionary, a rebel. And his services to the revolutionary movement were not so imaginary as they sometimes want to present. In 1905, according to the memoirs of Ekaterina Alekseevna, he "spent all his days on the street, built barricades, made speeches, climbed on the pedestals. At the university courtyard, the police pulled him off the pedestals and wanted to arrest him, but the students beat him off."
Collaborating in the anti-government magazine "Red Banner", published in Paris, he published 42 poems there. Among them were prophetic ones, for example, "Our Tsar" and "Nicholas the Last".
Our king is Mukden, our king is Tsushima,
Our king is a bloodstain
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark.
Our king is blind squalor,
Prison and whip, jurisdiction, execution,
Tsar hangman, the low twice,
What he promised, but did not dare to give.
He's a coward, he feels stuttering
But it will be - the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign Khodynka,
He will finish by standing on the scaffold.
Another poem from the same cycle - "To Nicholas the Last" - ended with the words: "You must be killed, you have become a disaster for everyone." It was in the 42nd year of his life (the second half of 1908 and the first half of 1909) that the poet crisis. Poetry collection, released at that time, - "Dance of Time" - became a "dance", circling memory in time and space, repeating motives, images of previous collections: "Firebird", "Birds in the Air", "Green Heliport". That was immediately noticed by critics.
At the same time (1909), the Scorpion publishing house published the last, tenth volume of Balmont's Complete Poems. The poet switches to prose and writes a number of autobiographical stories.
The poet's fantastic amorousness is well known. "The last novel" called Ekaterina Alekseevna Balmont's friendship with the sick young poetess Tanya Osipova, who lived in Finland. For two years the poet exchanged letters, poems, flowers with Tanya, supporting the will of a twenty-year-old girl in the struggle for life. This love story was reflected in the poet's essay "Spring has come", published in the magazine "Chimes" for 1929, in the 42nd issue.
Let us take a closer look at this mysterious number 42, at its two digits, the numbers 4 and 2.
It is remembered that the poet traveled four countries of the world in two world travel in 1905 and 1912. Contemporaries claimed that he visited more countries than all Russian writers combined.
In the life of Balmont, four amazing women left the deepest mark, from whom he had children: Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina, Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva-Balmont, Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkova and Dagmar Ernestovna Shakhovskaya. With the first two he was married, with the second two he lived in a civil marriage.
For many years, Balmont lived in two houses - with Ekaterina Alekseevna and Elena Konstantinovna. Twice there was a "triangle". At first, Ekaterina Alekseevna found herself in a delicate position in relation to Elena Konstantinovna, and then, in turn, Elena Konstantinovna found herself in the same position in relation to Dagmar Ernestovna. Twice the poet tried to commit suicide on the basis of family relationships. But, thank God, fate was merciful to him. And to us, enjoying his poetry.
Let's consider these numbers from the other side, from the side of creativity. As a symbolist poet, Balmont attached exceptionally great importance to the number four: “Fire, Water, Earth and Air are the four royal elements with which my soul invariably lives in joyful and secret contact. I cannot separate a single feeling from them and remember them Quadruples always." In addition, he associated with this number the "four stages of knowledge" on the way to the integrity of the perception of the world in accordance with the Indian philosophy of the Vedas.
With with good reason four more elements inherent in Balmont can be attributed to the number four. Dedicating his article "The Knight of the Woman-Girl" to I.S. Turgenev, he wrote: "Four elements own the fate of both Pushkin and Turgenev: Russia, Nature, Woman, Beauty. I mean the beauty of harmonious content, the beauty of artistic creativity."
But after all, these words can be put as an epigraph to the entire work of the poet and his biography.
The number two reflects the duality or duality of the symbolic work: from the external, sensual image to the transcendent, elusive, mysterious world of the divine. Balmont himself characterized symbolism as a psychological lyric designed to capture the feelings and experiences of a divided person at the turn of two periods in an era of decline.
So the number 42 looks like a symbol of the life and creative fate of the poet. Konstantin Balmont died in 1942 in Noisy-le-Grand, near Paris. Think about the words of Pythagoras: "The world is built on the power of numbers."
The last days of the poet in December 1942 were spent in German-occupied Paris. The Germans treated the sick poet indifferently. He hated them because they attacked his homeland. All his thoughts about Russia and the last lines are dedicated to her:
Where can I not be for a long time ... and where
Sea water does not reach here.
Though in the salty spirit of my will, I wave
I will splash to the desired shore.
Balmont left Russia in June 1920. Elena Tsvetkovskaya, daughter Mirra and A.N. Ivanova, a distant relative of Balmont.
The departure was arranged for him by his faithful friend, the poet Baltrushaitis, who was the Lithuanian envoy in Moscow, and thereby saved him. "Balmont at that time was begging and starving in Moscow, dragging firewood from a dismantled fence on himself and would certainly have scolded some" person "- you never know how it could end."
Having settled in France, Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya found themselves in difficult conditions. Literary fees brought a pittance; the main and constant support came from other states that created in the 1920s. aid funds for Russian writers. Balmont was among those who used these monthly subsidies. From time to time, money came from patrons or fans. However, funds were not enough. Especially if you take into account that Balmont had to take care of three more women ...
In the spring of 1935, Balmont, due to a difficult nervous disease enters the hospital. “We are in great trouble and in complete poverty,” writes E.K. Tsvetkovskaya. - […] And Konstantin Dmitrievich has neither a decent nightgown, nor night shoes, nor pajamas. We are perishing, dear friend, if you can, help, advise [...] Help to wrest from the troubled darkness of the Sun.”
At the end of 1936, Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya moved to Noisy-le-Grand near Paris to the emigrant shelter "Russian House", hosted by Mother Mary (E.Yu. Kuzmina-Karavaeva).
In 1940-1942. Balmont, as far as is known, does not leave Noisy-le-Grand at all. Here he dies on December 23, 1942. A year later, his common-law wife, Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya, the daughter of General K.G. Tsvetkovsky, Balmont’s life partner, died (formally, Balmont was not divorced from his second wife, E.A. Andreeva). She is buried here. On the tombstone is written: Elena Balmont. So, after her death, she took her husband's surname.
A 15-minute drive from Paris is the unremarkable town of Noisy-le-Grand. Despite the "large" prefix, the city does not have any special historical sights, except, perhaps, ancient church Notre-Dame et Saint-Sulpice, dating back to 1089-1090, and the Villeflix grotto, "located on private property and therefore inaccessible for inspection."
But this city cannot be ignored by the lover of poetry, because here he found his eternal home. greatest poet Silver Age of Russian Literature, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont. 
Tombstone of Konstantin Balmont and Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya.
K. D. Balmont in the 1880s
Balmont in Paris
"Graceful, cool and noble" Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva (1867-1950)
Taffy about Mirra Balmont: Once, in childhood, she undressed naked and climbed under the table, and no persuasion could pull her out of there. The parents decided that it was probably some kind of illness and called the doctor. The doctor, looking at Elena carefully, asked: “Are you obviously her mother?” - "Yes". - More attentive to Balmont. "Are you a father?" - "M-m-m-yes." The doctor spread his hands. “So what do you want from her?” In the photo: Balmont with French friends and the Shmelyovs. Far right - E. K. Tsvetkovskaya, far left - daughter Mirra
"Bohemian" Balmont and Sergei Gorodetsky with their spouses A. A. Gorodetskaya and E. A. Andreeva (right), St. Petersburg, 1907 .
K. D. Balmont. Drawing by M. A. Voloshin. 1900s
Mirra Lokhvitskaya It is still considered to be her “unsuccessful imitator” of Balmont, but this is far from the truth. It is known that even famous poem Balmont “I want” - I want to be daring, I want to be bold, Weave wreaths from juicy bunches, I want to get drunk on a luxurious body, I want to rip off your clothes I want the heat of a satin chest, We merge two desires into one ... - it was secondary, representing a belated answer to "Bacchic Song" by Mirra Lokhvitskaya.
“If they let me define Balmont in one word, I would, without hesitation, say: Poet ... I would not say this about Yesenin, or Mandelstam, or Mayakovsky, or Gumilyov, or even Blok, because of all those named, there was something else besides the poet in them. More or less, better or worse, but something else. In Balmont, except for the poet in him, there is nothing. Balmont - Adequate poet. On Balmont - in his every gesture, step, word - the stigma - seal - the star of the poet. M. I. Tsvetaeva.
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