Ann Akhmatova: Remembering Alexander Blok

In the autumn of 1913, a welcome party was held in a hotel in Petersburg for Vilhalen, who had come to Russia, and on the same day the Bestuzhev Advanced Girls' Seminary also held a considerable internal evening (for students of the university only). One of the women in the party's organizers had the whim of inviting me to give me a welcome speech to Villehalen, and I had a tender affection for him, not because of his sensational metropolisism, but because of a small poem, "On a Wooden Bridge in the Sky."

For some reason, I always felt that the grand reception in the hotel in St. Petersburg had a feeling similar to a memorial service, a tuxedo, fine champagne, poor French, and toasts—in view of this, I decided to attend the gathering of female students.

Women benefactors from charities also attended the party, where they fought all their lives for women's equal rights. One of them was a female writer, Ariadna Vladimirovna Terkova-Wergrzhskaya. She knew me when I was younger, and after I spoke, she said, "Look, Anichka has won equal rights for herself. ”

I met Brock in the actor's makeup room.

I asked him why he hadn't gone to Vilhalen's welcome party. The poet replied with touching bluntness: "Because I am asked to speak, and I cannot speak French." ”

A female cadet came to us with the list and informed me to recite it after Brock. I pleaded, "Alexander Alexanderrovich, after you, I can't recite it." His answer, with a sense of reproach, was reproachful: "Anna Andreevna, neither you nor I are high-pitched singers. "He was already the most famous poet in Russia. And I, for two years, often recited my poems in the "Poets' Workshop", the "Association of Lovers of Artistic Languages" and the "Tower" of Vyacheslav Ivanov, but here the situation is completely different.

If the big stage can disguise a person, then the small platform will ruthlessly expose him to the public. The small platform is like a guillotine. That day, maybe it was the first time I felt this way. To the people standing on the small platform, the people in the field seem to be a thousand-headed monster. The public is hard to control. In this respect, Zochenko was a genius. Pasternak is also quite casual on small platforms.

No one knew me, so when I came out, someone was shouting, "Who is this?" Blok suggested that I recite 'We're here as a bunch of idlers...,' but I refused, "Whenever I read' I put on a narrow skirt , people laughed. He replied: "Whenever I read 'drunkards staring at rabbit-like eyes' – they laugh too. ”

It seems that it was not there, but at another literary evening, after listening to Igor Schssyrianin's recitation, Blok returned to the actor's dressing room and said, "His voice is oil-stained, like a lawyer's." ”

One Sunday in late 1913, I went to see him with a collection of Blok's poems and asked him to sign it. In each of his books, he simply wrote: "Gift to Akhmatova – Blok" (The Collected Poems of Beauty). And in the third book, the poet wrote a short poem dedicated to me, "Someone Will Tell You: Beauty Is So Terrible...". The poem says I wear a Spanish shawl, and I've never had that kind of shawl. At that time, Brock was fascinated by Carmen, so he hispanized me too. Honestly, I've never worn a red rose on my bun. It is no accident that the poem was written in the Spanish lyrical style. In the spring of 1921, when we had our last meeting backstage in the drama scene, Brock walked up to me and asked, "What about the Spanish shawl?" That was the last thing I heard him say.

I had been to Brock's house only once, and on that only visit I mentioned in passing the poet Benedict Levitz that it was only because of Brock's presence that he was prevented from writing poetry. Instead of laughing, Brock said to me very seriously, "I understand that." Leo Tolstoy hindered my writing. ”

In the summer of 1914, I went to visit my mother in the Kiev suburb of Darnica. At the beginning of July, I passed through Moscow and returned to my home in the village of Slepanevo. While in Moscow, I caught the first mail truck and got on, and I smoked on the platform. The train entered a certain station, the train stopped, the platform was empty, and someone threw down the pocket containing the letter. Suddenly, Brock appeared before my eyes and surprised me. I shouted, "Alexander Alexanderrovich!" He looked back. Because he was not only a great poet, but also a master of euphemistic questions. He asked, "Who are you walking with?" I only had time to answer, "One person." "The train started.

Today, 51 years later, I opened Brock's notebook, which I read on July 9, 1914: "I accompanied my mother to TheOdessonechinaya to see the sanatorium. The devil is playing tricks on me. Anna Akhmatova on the mail truck. ”

Blok said elsewhere that I had tortured him on the phone with Jerimas and Kuzmina Kalavaeva. I can provide a little evidence for this.

I hung up the phone with Brock, and Alexander Aleksandrovich had a habit of saying what was on his mind, and that day he asked with a characteristic bluntness: "You called me, probably because Ariadna Vladimirovna Terkova told you everything I said about you?" Curiosity was about to kill me, so I went to see Ariadna Vladimirovna the day that she received her visitors. I asked her what Brock had said. How I begged, she refused to say, "Anichka, I never pass on to that person what this guest is talking about." ”

Blok's notebook, which gives people a sporadic gain, digs the vague past out of the abyss of forgetting and indicates the time of the event. I thought again of the wooden Isaac Bridge. The bridge flares up toward the mouth of the Neva River. My companions and I looked in amazement at the scene we had never seen before. Blok made the record that the day was July 11, 1916.

After the Revolution (January 21, 1919), I met Brock again in the theater cafeteria, his face haggard and his eyes glazed over like crazy. He said to me, "When people meet here, it's as if they've arrived in that world." ”

At the beginning of the war (August 5, 1914), the three of us (Brock, Gumilev, and I) ate at the Imperial Village Railway Station (Gumilev had already put on his military uniform). Blok visited the families of the soldiers in order to help. When only the three of us were left, Kolia said, "Do you want to send him to the front?" This is tantamount to throwing the nightingale into a frying pan and frying it. ”

Twenty-five years later, when the Blok Memorial Was held in the Drama Coliseum (1946), I recited a poem that had just been written:

He's right —it's a street lamp, a pharmacy again,

The waters of the Neva River, the silence of the river, the granite walls...

He stood there, living like the beginning of this century,

Erected like a monument.

At that time he presented the Pushkin Memorial,

Wave your arms goodbye,

He accepted death wearily,

As undue tranquility.

(Translated by Ulan Khan)

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