In 1903, the family returned to Tsarskoye Selo, the poet entered the gymnasium, the director of which was the poet Innokenty Annensky.

In 1906, Gumilev graduated from high school and entered the Sorbonne in Paris.

In Paris, Gumilyov published the Sirius magazine, corresponded with Bryusov, to whom he sent his poems, articles and stories, some of them were published in the Symbolist magazine Libra.

Since 1907, Gumilyov traveled a lot, was three times in Africa. In 1913, as the head of the African expedition on a business trip of the Academy of Sciences, he traveled to the Somali Peninsula.

In 1908 he returned to Russia and was enrolled in the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, from 1909 he listened to lectures at the Faculty of History and Philology, but did not complete the course.

Since the spring of 1909, Nikolai Gumilev participated in the preparations for the publication of the Apollo magazine, where he became one of the main employees. In the same year, he became one of the founders of the poetic society "Academy of Verse" (Society of Zealots of the Artistic Word), which included poets Innokenty Annensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others.

In the autumn of 1911, Gumilyov, together with the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, created the literary association "Poets' Workshop", as well as the program of a new literary direction - acmeism.

In October 1912, the first issue of the journal "Hyperborey" was published, with Gumilyov as its editor.

During these years, the poet released several collections - "Romantic Flowers" (1908), "Pearls" (1910) and "Alien Sky" (1912), in which, in addition to his works, Gumilyov included translations of Theophile Gauthier's poems.

With the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918), despite being exempted from military service, Nikolai Gumilyov volunteered for the front, enlisting as a volunteer in the Life Guards Lancers Regiment. By the end of 1915, he was awarded two St. George's Crosses (III and IV degrees). In March 1916, Gumilyov was promoted to ensign and transferred to the 5th Alexander Hussar Regiment. In 1917 he left for Paris in connection with the transfer to the Thessaloniki front. In January 1918, after the dissolution of the office of the military commissar, to which he was assigned, Gumilyov went to London, and then in April 1918 returned to Russia.

During the years of the war, Gumilyov did not stop literary: the collection "Quiver" (1916) was published, the plays "Gondola" (1917) and "Poisoned Tunic" (1917), a series of essays "Notes of a Cavalryman" (1915-1916) were written.

In 1918-1921, the poet was a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature", led the recreated "Workshop of Poets", and in 1921 - the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets.

From 1919, he taught at the Institute of Art History, at the Institute of the Living Word, and in many literary studios.

Under the leadership of Gumilyov, a translation studio worked, he was a mentor to young poets from the "Sounding Shell" studio.

In August 1921, collections of his poems "Tent" and "Pillar of Fire" were published.

On August 3, 1921, Gumilyov was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities. On August 24, a resolution was issued by the Petrograd Provincial Extraordinary Commission on the execution of 61 people for participating in the "Tagantsevsky counter-revolutionary conspiracy", among those sentenced was Nikolai Gumilyov. For a long time the exact date of the poet's death was unknown. In 2014, when working with documents on executions in the period from 1918 to 1941, historians managed to find marks about the extradition of the poet for the execution of a death sentence. Gumilyov was shot on the night of August 26, 1921. In 1992, the poet was officially rehabilitated.

Gumilyov was married twice. In 1910-1918, his wife was the poetess Anna Akhmatova (real name Gorenko, 1889-1966), in 1912 their son Lev Gumilyov (1912-1992) was born - a well-known ethnologist, historian, archaeologist, orientalist, writer, translator. The second wife of Nikolai Gumilyov was Anna Engelhardt (1895-1942), daughter of the historian and literary critic Nikolai Engelhardt. From this union, a daughter, Elena, was born in 1919, who died of starvation during the siege of Leningrad in 1942.

Nikolai Gumilyov had a son, Orest Vysotsky (1913-1992), from actress Olga Vysotskaya. His memoirs about his father were published under the title "Nikolai Gumilyov through the eyes of his son."

The only museum of Nikolai Gumilyov in Russia is open in the city of Bezhetsk, Tver Region, in the village of Slepnevo in the preserved ancestral estate of the Gumilyov family.

There, in Bezhetsk, there is a monument to the poet and his family - his first wife Anna Akhmatova and son Lev Gumilyov. Monuments to Nikolai Gumilyov were opened in Koktebel (Crimea) and in the village of Shilovo, Ryazan Region.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886-1921) was born in Kronstadt. Father is a marine doctor. He spent his childhood in Tsarskoye Selo, studied at the gymnasium in St. Petersburg and Tiflis. He wrote poetry from the age of 12, the first printed performance at the age of 16 was a poem in the newspaper "Tiflis Leaf".

In the autumn of 1903, the family returned to Tsarskoe Selo, and Gumilyov graduated from the gymnasium there, the director of which was Ying. Annensky (studied poorly, passed the final exams at the age of 20). The turning point is an acquaintance with the philosophy of F. Nietzsche and the verses of the Symbolists.

In 1903 he met the schoolgirl A. Gorenko (the future Anna Akhmatova). In 1905, the author published the first collection of poems - "The Way of the Conquistadors", a naive book of early experiences, which, nevertheless, has already found its own energetic intonation and the image of a lyrical hero, a courageous, lonely conqueror, has appeared.

In 1906, after graduating from high school, Gumilyov leaves for Paris, where he listens to lectures at the Sorbonne and makes acquaintances in the literary and artistic environment. He attempts to publish the Sirius magazine, in the three issues of which he is published under his own name and under the pseudonym Anatoly Grant. He sends correspondence to the magazine "Vesy", the newspapers "Rus" and "Rannee Utro". In Paris, and also in the author's edition, the second collection of Gumilyov's poems, "Romantic Poems" (1908), dedicated to A. A. Gorenko, was published.

With this book, the period of mature creativity of N. Gumilyov begins. V. Bryusov, who praised - in advance - his first book, states with satisfaction that he was not mistaken in his predictions: now the poems are "beautiful, elegant and, for the most part, interesting in form." In the spring of 1908, Gumilyov returned to Russia, made acquaintance with the St. Petersburg literary world (Vyacheslav Ivanov), acted as a constant critic in the newspaper Rech (later he began to publish poems and stories in this publication).

In autumn he makes his first trip to the East - to Egypt. Enters the law faculty of the capital's university, soon transferred to the historical and philological. In 1909 he took an active part in the organization of a new edition - the Apollon magazine, in which later, until 1917, he published poems and translations and maintained a permanent column "Letters on Russian Poetry".

Collected in a separate book (Pg., 1923), Gumilyov's reviews give a vivid picture of the literary process of the 1910s. At the end of 1909, Gumilyov left for Abyssinia for several months, and when he returned, he published a new book -.

April 25, 1910 Nikolai Gumilyov marries Anna Gorenko (their relationship broke up in 1914). In the autumn of 1911, a "Poets' Workshop" was created, which manifested its autonomy from symbolism and the creation of its own aesthetic program (Gumilyov's article "The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism", published in 1913 in "Apollo"). The Gumilev's poem (1911), which was included in his collection (1912), was considered the first acmeist work in the Workshop of Poets. At this time, Gumilyov's reputation as a "master", "sindik" (head) of the Poets' Workshop, one of the most significant modern poets, was firmly established.

In the spring of 1913, as the head of the expedition from the Academy of Sciences, Gumilyov left for Africa for six months (to replenish the collection of the ethnographic museum), kept a travel diary (excerpts from the African Diary were published in 1916, a more complete text was published recently).

At the beginning of the First World War, N. Gumilyov, a man of action, volunteered for a lancer regiment and deserved two St. George's crosses for his bravery. In "Birzhevye Vedomosti" in 1915 his "Notes of a Cavalryman" were published.

At the end of 1915, a collection was published, his dramaturgic works - "Child of Allah" (in "Apollo") and "Gondla" (in "Russian Thought") - were published in magazines. The patriotic impulse and intoxication with danger soon pass, and he writes in a private letter: "Art is dearer to me than both war and Africa."

Gumilyov goes to the hussar regiment and seeks to be sent to the Russian expeditionary force on the Thessaloniki front, but along the way he is delayed in Paris and London until the spring of 1918. This period includes a cycle of his love poems, which compiled the posthumously published book "Kenya Star" (Berlin, 1923) .

In 1918, upon his return to Russia, Gumilev worked intensively as a translator, preparing for the publishing house "World Literature" the epic about Gilgamesh, poems by French and English poets. Writes several plays, publishes poetry books

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov(April 3 (14), 1886, Kronstadt - August 26, 1921, near Petrograd) - an outstanding Russian poet of the Silver Age, founder of the school of acmeism, translator, literary critic, traveler, officer.

Gumilyov is a rare person (“exceptional,” said A. Akhmatova). There were several levels of this large individuality: a brilliant poet, an insightful critic, an organizer of literature, a traveler, a warrior. He himself, according to Akhmatova, valued the last two features in himself more. They are directly connected with the strong-willed system, the courageous beginning of his poetry, and in it an effective attitude towards the world.

Conquistador enthusiasm is in youth. With Gumilyov the master, an active approach becomes a way of spiritualizing the world. Hence the assertive tone of his poems. “On the path of negation,” he said, “one cannot achieve true poetic form.” We, the readers, feel in his poems the soul of a man "who loves the world and believes in God." And one more feature of his work is faith in the magical power of the word, a heroically hopeless desire to return to poetry the magical power, which, as he believed, poetry was performed in antiquity.

Short in terms of the number of years lived, but full of action and thought, Gumilyov's biography seems to be consubstantial with the creative path he traveled. Everything that concerns his artistic heritage is valuable, but the details that illuminate the path of life are equally important. The first poet of that era, Alexander Blok, looked at his modernity with bitterness and skepticism. His opponent, even the antipode, Gumilyov, recognized himself as a worker of the Russian Renaissance. He felt early - and this was his discovery - that someone must assert in Russian poetry a heroic spirit and an intense will to live. Gumilyov's creative maturity fell on the golden period of the Silver Age. In the twentieth century, this is the most inspiring image of a Russian poet: in his poems we read the story of one beautiful soul. The image of the poet fascinated, appealed to the solution and caused imitation. This image was strivingly created by him, and was completed posthumously by others - both his companions and poets who did not personally know Gumilyov.

Whom, what kind of person did Gumilyov want to see himself? The history of self-realization of a brightly talented personality is a big topic. It was often said that Gumilyov brought the muse from heaven to earth, that he moved away from the Symbolists, to which he himself belonged at the beginning of his journey. But both in the pre-Acmeistic period and in the future, he thought of the human "I" in a cosmic key. The work of the spirit is to reunite the personality with its universal source. This is a matter of religion, but poetry is also appropriate if the poet is aware that his task finds a solution in the spiritual realms. “This is a very special feeling, sometimes filling with such awe that it would interfere with speaking, if not the feeling of victory that accompanies it,” Gumilyov argued.

If as a gift we are given

Thoughts undiscovered depth,

Knowing no bottom,

Older than the suns and forever young...

If a mortal sees a glimpse of paradise,

Just keep opening...

These lines from The Discovery of America he finished in the Mediterranean on his way to Abyssinia in 1910. Even after he proclaimed acmeism in the spring of 1912, Gumilyov in his work is wider than his own theory, since the aspiration to higher levels of consciousness was the essence of his poetry.

Me, who, like the tree Ygdrazil,

Sprouted as the head of the seven universes

And for whose eyes, like dust,

The fields of the earth and the fields of the blessed...

He wrote from the front to Akhmatova: "You know that poets are prophets." And in another letter: "The only sad thing is that the initiative here is not in my hands, and you know how I got used to it." The initiative manifested itself constantly in his life - in travels, in the opening of circles and societies, the founding of magazines, the organization of the literary process, in the creation of a literary movement with a very significant name for Gumilyov "acmeism", that is, the peak, the tip, the highest point of achievement. The initiative was manifested in a beneficial effect on the poets around him. The significance of his personality was noticeable even outwardly. “Everything that Gumilyov did, he, as it were, performed clergy,” recalled his front-line comrade, headquarters captain Karamzin. And here is the recollection of Adamovich, who met Gumilyov even before the start of the war, to which Gumilyov (the only one from his environment) went as a volunteer, a “hunter”, as they said then: “Gumilyov had great vitality, some kind of gaiety and faith in his happiness and good luck. It was infectious and attracted to him.” An incomparable, "rare feast for the mind," said Adamovich, was a private conversation with him. In a face-to-face conversation, Gumilyov's wise simplicity, clarity of judgment, and vastness of knowledge were manifested.

Georgy Adamovich

Thinking about Gumilyov's companions, you see in front of you a galaxy of young poets, but also a whole portrait gallery of writers, critics, artists, scientists who met Gumilyov on the path of life and, of course, played a noticeable or inconspicuous (but still definite) role in his fate . Gumilyov's personality was reflected or refracted in the individual consciousness of his contemporaries. And the descendants saw him no longer in the light of a time distant from them, but a little differently - in the rays of their own time. In the first place among her contemporaries is Anna Akhmatova, who did not leave any coherent memories of Gumilyov, but for years she collected his legacy, dedicated poems to him during her lifetime and wrote poems in memory of him.

Relations with Akhmatova are a complicated topic. This is a single combat of two highly outstanding personalities. Akhmatova wrote, for example: “Very early - in the “Way of the Conquistadors” - in Tsarskoye Selo, I became for Gumilyov (in verse) almost Lilith, that is, the evil inclination in a woman ... He told me that he could not listen to music, because that she reminds him of me." And more about this love-struggle: “The tragedy of love is evident in all of Gumilyov’s young poems.” The laconic lines in Akhmatova's notebooks clarify something. She wrote that Gumilev gave rise to "whole hordes of students", especially posthumously. He calls Akhmatov three names - Tikhonov, Shengeli, Bagritsky - and then expands the topic: "The whole literary southern Russia raved about him." “Gumilyov had many students in the narrow sense of the word,” Adamovich argued, and one can add with knowledge that they were “raved” by young poets of the first wave of emigration.

Meetings with Gumilyov left a strong impression. Among his companions, somewhere in the first place, we see Osip Mandelstam. For him, Gumilyov was the closest friend of all whom Mandelstam had ever called by this word. Mandelstam was born a poet, but Gumilyov helped him to become as big as he became, versed in poetry, like few people in a whole generation. The shooting of a friend became for Mandelstam the shock of his life. After the death of Gumilyov, Osip Emilievich continued to "communicate" with him. “The conversation with Kolya has never been interrupted and will not be interrupted,” he wrote to Akhmatova.

We find the same kind of recognition in Georgy Adamovich. In his letter to Gumilyov there are lines: “I ... have a habit of holding semi-oppositional conversations with you, but in essence I have admired you - your role and steadfastness in the face of the pressure of any “fight” - for a long time and with envy. You are a real "poor knight", and you can not help but love if you love poetry. "Poor Knight" is Pushkin's paladin:

He had one vision

inconceivable mind,

And deeply impressed

It hit him in the heart.

Georgy Ivanov

Georgy Ivanov, who knew Gumilyov for nine years, met him both in public and in private, in a mask that became second nature, and in a dressing gown, recalled him: “The impassive, almost haughty mask of a snob, African hunter, “Russian Theophile Gautier” hid a very Russian, restless and agitated, unsatisfied soul. Oh, how far Gumilyov was in his essence from the brilliant and empty Gauthier! He himself was well aware of this. But, realizing, with all the greater perseverance ... he once walked the chosen path - the line of the highest resistance. In what direction was this line drawn or, let's say, predestined? According to Georgy Ivanov, who wrote a lot about Gumilyov, his whole life was devoted to the sole purpose of helping to remember and understand what we have forgotten:

But we forgot that shining

Only a word amid earthly anxieties,

And in the Gospel of John

It is said that the word is God.

G. Ivanov testifies that his friend almost all his life ran into the cold of indifference and misunderstanding.

During the life of Gumilyov, his books were known mainly in the literary environment. Some notoriety began with the "Pearls" and spread slowly. Three years spent in the war, then another year abroad and the last period (1918-1921) in the frozen, dying Petrograd - all this contributed little to the fame and influence that Gumilyov dreamed of. He did not have a mass reader. Balmont at the beginning of the century, then Blok, then Igor Severyanin were known incomparably wider, were revered by the mass reader. “He, and this made him very upset, was surrounded by some kind of malevolent silence for a long time,” testified K. Chukovsky. “Anyone who knew Gumilyov closely,” G. Adamovich recalled, “will confirm that during his lifetime he was little loved and that he suffered from this ... I remember how, three years before his death, looking in the newspaper an approving review of the poems of which something of a novice poet, he said sadly: “If only once someone would write about me like that.”

Glory came to him overnight, but it was posthumous glory. Somehow, at once, with a free wide surf, the properties of his exciting, imperious, noble verse were revealed. It became clear that a poet of national importance had passed away. Praise to him, a man and a poet, sounded in Russian stanzas on five continents. Lifetime literature about Gumilyov can hardly be called rich. Several dozen reviews and not too frequent mentions of the name in different articles - that's all. And this is in response to fifteen books published over the course of seventeen years of literary work. Until the fateful August 1921, all poems mentioning the name of Gumilyov or directly dedicated to him were written by poets who knew him well and saw him often: Annensky, Akhmatova, Gorodetsky, Zenkevich, Vyacheslav. Ivanov, Georgy Ivanov, Kuzmin, Mandelstam, Narbut, Odoevtseva. An exception is the poetry of Sergei Gutan, who met Gumilyov only once. Another exception is the poetry of the Saratov poet Viktor Zhurin, who never met Gumilyov at all.

Of the responses to Gumilyov's death, Voloshin's "At the bottom of the underworld" (1922) remains the most famous. It includes the powerful, over-quoted stanza:

Temen is the lot of the Russian poet:

Inscrutable fate leads

Pushkin at gunpoint

Dostoevsky to the scaffold.

Anna Akhmatova

A. Akhmatova in 1921 wrote several poetic monologues on behalf of Gumilyov. They are psychological, each revealing some psychological collision of their difficult relationship. In these verses there is no image of a poet, but no one wrote about Gumilyov the man either earlier or later, and no one except Akhmatova could write. In the poetic Gumilyovian, these verses are the only ones in terms of confession, psychologism. They sound the voice of Gumilyov, heard through death. His image in them is completely different than in all other poems dedicated to him. We will not find the name of Gumilyov in Akhmatov's poems of that time, although at that time it had not yet fallen under a complete ban.

Georgy Ivanov, after the death of a friend, collected and published two books by Gumilyov in Soviet Petrograd - Posthumous Poems and Letters on Russian Poetry. In 1924, Voltaire's Virgin of Orleans could still be published in a Soviet publishing house in the translation of Gumilyov, G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich. The following year, in the large Moscow anthology Russian Poetry of the 20th Century, we find an excellent selection of Gumilyov's poems. Then the poems of enemies appear in print - for example, Gorodetsky and Bagritsky.

Sergei Gorodetsky

Gorodetsky calls his former comrade in the Guild of Poets “a blind man, an enemy of the uprising”, and his death is “meaningless”, because Gumilyov, according to Gorodetsky, “calmedly called death to himself.” Bagritsky, who learned a lot from Gumilyov, takes the side of the executioners in Poems about a Poet and Romance (1925):

Despatch from St. Petersburg: terrible news

About the black betrayal of Gumilyov.

Guilty for the death of the poet Romantic with a capital letter, on whose behalf the following stanza is written:

I raced in a cart, walked along country roads,

And, although the crime did not forgive him,

I brought the singer to the last wall,

She baptized him with the last cross ...

Another picture in the literature of the Russian diaspora. Here the image of Gumilyov became part of the literary and thematic repertoire. Here we see not only an abundance of poems about Gumilyov or with an epigraph from his works, but also reviews of posthumously published books and many articles, essays, studies, memoirs. The enthusiasm for his poetry manifested itself in the abroad steadily, on the rise. By the tenth anniversary of his death, even more responses appeared in the foreign press than by the tenth anniversary of Blok's death.

Alexander Bisk, known as the first translator of Rilke in Russia, lived in Bulgaria. At the same time, he is an original poet who met the twenty-year-old Gumilyov in Paris, when yesterday's graduate of the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium came to enter the Sorbonne. Vadim Gardner lived in Finland, who fled from red Petrograd in the year of the execution of Gumilyov. Not much time had passed since Gardner, at the end of the World War, returned from London to Russia. He recalled in his diary in verse about a twelve-day voyage in the same cabin with Gumilyov on an ocean transport escorted by British destroyers. And even earlier, Gardner was accepted by Gumilyov into the Poets' Workshop. Gumilyov wrote about him in "Apollo" and offered to print his poems in "Hyperborea". In St. Petersburg, Vsevolod Pastukhov met Gumilyov, who in exile became a famous pianist, but who did not forget the vocation of the poet. He lived in Riga, then in New York, where he became the editor of the journal "Experiments", somewhat reminiscent of "Apollo". There were even more people in the Russian diaspora who knew Gumilyov not for long and not close, but met him and left memories. Sofia Dubnova, who lived in Warsaw before the war, was published in Apollo when Gumilyov was in charge of the poetry department in this magazine. Since 1922, Vladimir Vereshchagin, a relative of the famous artist, a professional singer who performed with his quartet, lived in Paris. He met Gumilyov during the years of the Civil War in the House of Writers.

The oldest poet in exile, who began to publish ten years before the birth of Gumilyov, Nikolai Minsky,

the same age as Innokenty Annensky, Gumilyov's gymnasium teacher, lived in Berlin in the twenties. Acquaintance with Gumilyov took place in St. Petersburg in 1914. They talked about acmeism. Minsky, recalling the conversation, argued that Gumilyov the poet reveals to the reader only what he personally experienced. Gumilyov told him that, unlike the Symbolists, in his poems he distanced himself from mysticism. And yet his thought was directed deep into, so that at the end of his life in his work more and more often a sense of cosmicity was manifested. “The fate of Gumilyov's soul, perhaps, intended to shine like a fiery pillar in Russian poetry, but this fate was not destined to come true,” wrote N. Minsky.

At the beginning of the emigration, when Berlin was still considered the capital of the Russian diaspora, a literary and artistic “Chamber of Poets” arose in Paris. One of its participants was the artist Sudeikin, who often met Gumilyov in Stray Dog. The critic E. Znovsky-Borovsky, the former secretary of the Apollo magazine, in which Gumilyov was in charge of the literary department until the time he volunteered for the Uhlan regiment, came to the evenings of the Chamber. At the evenings of the "Chamber" one could meet Andrei Levinson, another "Apollonian". Until the days when he decided to escape from red Petrograd, he, together with Gumilyov, led the French department at the World Literature publishing house. Levinson drew attention to Gumilyov's work before many others, writing a review of "Romantic Flowers", the second collection of the poet, then almost unknown to the reader. When, after the execution of Gumilyov, emigrants staged a protest rally against the Red Terror in Paris, Levinson delivered a speech about the death of the best poet of his generation. “The sun of the world,” he said, “is poetry. He sacredly honored the prestige and dignity of the writer and spoke in his defense with impassive impudence. Participated in the "Chamber" Mikhail Struve, who met Gumilyov in the spring of 1915 in the Petrograd infirmary, where the ill Gumilyov was sent from the active army for treatment. Georgy Evangulov, who lived in Tiflis before emigrating and remembered the house on Sergievskaya Street in the Armenian district of Tiflis, Sololaki, also participated in the Chamber. At the time when the young Gumilyov lived in this house, he first published poems in print. Evangulov participated in the Tiflis Workshop of Poets, created in the same way as the first Workshop founded in 1911 by Gumilyov - St. Petersburg. Since then, many poetic "workshops" have arisen in different cities and countries: Baku, Constantinople, Berlin, Paris, Tallinn, Tartu, Shanghai. Each of them was founded following the example of Gumilevsky. Posthumous fame was incommensurable with lifetime. Hence these numerous "workshops".

The cities he visited caused poets to associate with his work. So, in George Shengeli Sevastopol is as closely connected with the sea as with the name of Gumilyov:

When I come to gray-haired Sevastopol,

Gray from olives, from winds and stones,

I cry when I see the floating acropolis

On the inner road among the batteries.

I know that here in the footsteps of Gumilyov

My quatrain will go with a sea gait, -

But what am I to do, since again and again

Shengeli's student, the poet Mark Tarlovsky, having visited Koktebel a year after Gumilyov's death, first of all, wants to see a room with a low ceiling, overlooking the mountains, with the sound of the tide, in which "Captains" were written in 1909. Tragic are the last lines of these "Memoirs in Koktebel" by Tarlovsky:

And his people tore it apart,

His God trampled down like a parasite!

We are all shot, friends,

But it's hard for us to admit it...

About Tsarskoe Selo, about the gymnasium in which Gumilyov studied, recalls his younger classmate Dm. Klenovsky:

There are buildings, plain in appearance,

Decorated by those who lived in them.

So it was with this. Here it is worth

At the crossroads of poverty and dust.

But if you open the doors to the classroom -

You will see a young man at the lesson,

That in the fields of Kraevich, hiding,

About conquistadors rhymes lines.

Some undertakings in foreign literature were built under the sign of Gumilyov. In the Parisian literary and artistic circle "Gatarapak" on February 1, 1922, the play "Child of Allah" was read. “There was a period,” Y. Terapiano writes about Parisian poets, “when, following the example of Gumilyov, we were going to create a Russian Parnassian group.” Young writers were especially interested in the stories of G. Ivanov and G. Adamovich about the first Guild of Poets and its founder. “In Paris, everything came together at once, without hindrance,” G. Adamovich recalled in his best book “Comments”. “The remnants of Gumilyov’s guild training were woven into the tragic memories of St. Petersburg.” Young poets asked I. Odoevtseva and N. Otsup about Gumilyov, about what he was like in life, when they came to the chaotic meetings of the Paris Poets' Guild in the La Baule cafe.

Irina Odoevtseva

Among the participants in the meetings were five poets who knew Gumilyov well. Later, Otsup defended his doctoral dissertation on the work of his teacher, and Odoevtseva wrote in detail, although not without fiction, in the book On the Banks of the Neva about her meetings with Gumilyov.

In memory of him, the Parisian poetic circle "Crossroads" in 1928 gathered in the cafe "Closri de Lily", where Gumilyov was constantly before the war. In January 1930, Y. Terapiano lectured at the Turgenev Society on the dispute between Blok and Gumilyov.

Yuri Terapiano

In June 1930, at the Union of Young Poets and Writers, Yuri Mandelstam read a report “On Gumilyov’s Lyrics” at an evening in his memory. The prominent critic K. Mochulsky gave a lecture on Gumilyov at the Russian People's University, which opened in the early 1920s in Paris. Not limited to Paris, you can fill the pages with details about how the fame of the poet grew and spread abroad, foreseeing that he would leave a deep mark behind him. On Spirits Day in 1918, when the bells rang, Gumilyov told Akhmatova: “I now felt that my death would not be my end. That somehow I will stay ... ".

Gumilyov the traveler liked to give his poems the names of countries, localities, cities. His books include "Venice", "Rome", "Pisa", "Genoa", "Bologna", "Florence", "Constantinople", "Stockholm". On the map of his muse of distant wanderings there is "Lake Chad", "Lake Transimen", "Rhodes", "Madagascar", "Red Sea" and many countries - "Sweden", "France", "Egypt", "Abyssinia", " Laos", "Sudan", "Algeria and Tunisia" ... and how many other geographical names in his legacy: "Discovery of America", "African Night", "Turkestan Generals", "Norwegian Mountains", "Christmas in Abyssinia", "Addis Ababa, the city of roses...". But if you list the cities and villages of the Russian diaspora, where the influential name of the poet was creatively perceived, then this list will surpass the list of Gumilyov's names.

Pavel Bulygin, a man of bright biography, lived in Addis Ababa for many years. His life can be defined by the same words that were so often spoken about Gumilyov: poet, traveler, warrior. He could become the hero of Gumilyov's poem "My readers" ("An old tramp in Addis Ababa, / Conquered many tribes, / Sent me a black spearman / With greetings composed of my poems").

Bulygin learned about the death of Gumilyov in the desert, where he left Addis Ababa with a caravan. In the same poem "My readers" there is a line: "They carry my books in a saddle bag ...". These are prophetic words about the Russian Parisian Yuri Sofiev, who wrote in 1929 about his youth:

In the days of youth, both difficult and harsh

Carried, under the gun clang and noise,

Worn-out books by Gumilyov

At the bottom of the saddlebags.

In Berlin, where Russian publishing flourished, in the 1920s Gumilyov's books Towards a Blue Star and Quiver were published. In the same place, a few months after the death of the poet, the Anthology of Modern Poetry was published, which included Gumilyov's poems. And at the opening of the Berlin House of Arts in December 1921, Nikolai Minsky spoke about the collection Pillar of Fire, which came out a few days after the death of the poet. Raisa Bloch lived in Berlin, who participated in the Gumilev Union of Poets, and Vera Lurie from

"Sounding Shell" - the last literary circle created by Gumilyov. V. Nabokov, who studied at Cambridge, wrote in 1923 in "In Memory of Gumilyov":

Proudly and clearly you died, died as Muse taught.

Now in the silence of the Elysian he speaks to you about the flying

Copper Peter and wild African winds - Pushkin.

In Warsaw, Sergei Gorny, who graduated from the same Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium as Gumilyov, published his memoirs in the newspaper For Freedom. Boris Volkov lived in San Francisco, a participant in the world and civil wars, a traveler who traveled all over Asia from the Arab East to Japan. His collection "In the dust of other people's roads" was inspired by reading Gumilyov. The very title of the book arose under the deep impression of Gumilev's "Alien Sky". Volkov was a member of the San Francisco literary and artistic circle, in which, like in a number of other foreign associations, a large thematic evening dedicated to Gumilyov was held.

The poet Pyotr Gladishchev, a poet of the Gumilyov school, lived in Egypt. In Belgrade in 1928, Gumilyov's admirers formed the "New Arzamas". Several well-known poets in exile came out of this circle, including the best poetess abroad, Lidia Alekseeva, a relative of Akhmatova. The well-known Prague circle "Skit" dedicated its first open meeting to Gumilyov. At the very beginning of emigration, more essays, articles, reviews about Gumilyov appeared in Russian newspapers and magazines in Paris, Berlin, Riga, Harbin and other cities than in his entire life. Here are the Revel Latest News, the Berlin Rul, the Warsaw Sword and Molva, the Riga Segodnya, the Parisian newspaper Russia and Slavdom, which especially often recalled Gumilyov, the Helsingfors New Russian Life, and the Harbin Frontier magazine. In Harbin we find a number of admirers, imitators, connoisseurs of Gumilyov's work. “Vasily Obukhov,” recalls V. Pereleshin, “knew Gumilyov by heart in whole books.” Valery Pereleshin himself learned to write from Gumilyov and dedicated several poems to him.

The Society "Circle of Poets" created in Harbin was inspired by the creative heritage of Gumilyov. Even earlier, the Akme society arose in Harbin, uniting six poets of the acmeist direction. In 1937, in Harbin, another group released the Gumilev Collection, and in it we see the names of Far Eastern poets - Nesmelov, Achair, Pereleshin. Harbinka Maria Vizey was the first to translate Gumilyov into English. Among those who dedicated poems to Gumilyov are Lydia Khaindrova and Marianna Kolosova, known for her fiery civil lyrics.

One could write a book about the resonance of Gumilyov's work in foreign literature - the influence of Gumilyov's legacy turned out to be so widespread, long-lasting, diverse, the very image of a courageous poet seemed so attractive and beautiful in the countries of the Russian diaspora. In this book, it would be possible to tell in detail about Sergei Makovsky, who, together with Gumilyov, founded Apollo, and in exile dedicated the cycle of sonnets Nagarel to him. Tell about the white warrior Ivan Savin, who was taken prisoner in the Crimea, miraculously escaped from captivity and fled to Finland. The heroism in Savin's poetry is consonant with Gumilyov's. Tell about Maria Volkova, who ended her days in the German village of Ottersweier, about whom General Krasnov wrote: “The daughter of a Siberian Cossack and a Ural Cossack ... A terrible, furiously fierce ice campaign through all of Siberia ... In it is the terrible death of a beloved father, a hero Kolchak campaign, the loss of his first-born daughter. And then - exile, foreign land, poverty, the consciousness of one's restlessness. It would be necessary to say in detail about the Gumilyov line among the poets of the second emigration - from Vyacheslav Zavalishin, who published four volumes of Gumilyov's poems in the DP camps - the very first post-war publication. About Nikolai Morshen, a resident of Kiev, who lived for fifty years on the California coast, about Yuri Trubetskoy, who spent his last days in the German province. Of all the influences on émigré poetry, except for Pushkin's, Gumilev's was the strongest.

Until the eighties of the 20th century, abroad remained the center for collecting Gumilyov's heritage. The first collected works of Gumilyov were published, alas, not in Russia, and also the first books about him. And it is absolutely bleak to remember that the first dissertation about the poet was written in French (1952), the first monograph (1978) was published in English. The book is weak, but at one time it also supported the living warmth of memory and interest in the heritage of the traveler, warrior, and poet.

And only starting from 1986, the center for studying Gumilyov's work moved to Moscow and St. Petersburg. But have his name and legacy been completely forgotten in the Soviet Union for decades? Oblivion was achieved by the ruling ideology and its censorship, but purposeful defensive efforts did not reach the goal. Love for Gumilyov's poetry did not fade away. Interest in his work was latent, underground, secret, and therefore could not be wide, but still it never stopped. Ida Nappelbaum, a poetess, daughter of the famous St. Petersburg photographer-artist M. S. Nappelbaum, who photographed Gumilyov, had his portrait hanging in his room. The portrait is rare - not a photograph, but a painting by the artist Shwede, for whom Gumilyov specially posed.

Ida Nappelbaum knew Nikolai Stepanovich well. When he was arrested, she carried parcels for him. In 1937, in the year of wild nighttime arrests, the husband of Ida Moiseevna, fearing a search, destroyed the precious portrait. Years passed, and one night they came for her and said: “We didn’t get you in thirty-seven.” She was charged with both friendship with Gumilyov and the destroyed portrait that hung in her room fourteen years ago, and was sentenced to ten years in the camps.

In California, I met the remarkable poet Nikolai Nikolaevich Morshen, an emigrant of the second wave. I was interested in his poem about Gumilyov, and he told me about his life in pre-war Kyiv: “In my company, everyone was fond of Gumilyov. I accidentally met an old woman who had all his collections, but she did not let them out of her apartment. However, she allowed me to come and copy anything. I did just that, and then I came to my company and read everything rewritten. One day in 1937, I remember, in the evening at the university during the intermission of a concert, I was walking along the corridor and, passing by a couple standing at the window, I heard a student reading Gumilyov to a student. I looked at him, he raised his head, and we exchanged understanding smiles, like two augurs... It was from the alloy of all this that the poem "From the evening shift, my peer..." was born.

Two years earlier, Daniil Andreev, a writer, visionary, seer, wrote Gumilyov's monologue in prison, mentally recited by him on the night before the shooting. This is one of the best poems in the poetic Gumilyovian:

Only the last night is hard:

The flow of blood is too heavy

I remember too far the haze

Over the fires of free standings...

Be calm, my leader, lord,

Angel, friend of my thoughts, be calm:

I can die alone

Like a poet, like a man and a warrior.

In Leningrad in the fifties one could meet a man with a memorable face, as if with a detached look. He walked on crutches, but he could hardly be called a homebody: he appeared here and there. I met him by chance, but knew little about what wonderful poetry he writes. It was Roald Mandelstam, the founder of the Leningrad underground poetry. He never printed a single line in his entire life. And only after his premature death did his colorful, sonorous, disturbingly romantic poems spread in samizdat. One of the best written by him is "The Scarlet Tram". It was not even necessary to mention the name of Gumilyov in order to hear the noble Gumilyov tradition in this poem. The "Scarlet Tram" by Roald was a counterpart of "The Lost Tram" by Nikolai Stepanovich. He flew along the same stellar corridors of time.

Bursted like a copper barrel

Burning sky,

In the starry frost of the night

The scarlet tram rushed!

In the notebook of A. Akhmatova, which was not intended for publication, there is a note: "Gift is strong and original ...". This is said about Vladimir Nikolaevich Kornilov (1928-2002). His poem "Gumilyov", inspired by frequent meetings with Akhmatova, is really strong. Here are his final lines:

No sickness, no old age

No betrayal of yourself

I didn’t know ... And in August

In the 21st against the wall

Got up, cold perspiration

Without erasing from the forehead,

Delivered from shame

Petrograd Cheka.

Innokenty Annensky

The image of Gumilyov, captured in poetic speech, is found throughout almost the entire twentieth century. It began on that long-standing spring day in 1906, when Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky presented his newly published book to his student Kolya Gumilyov, inscribing on it:

Between us is the twilight of a long life,

But I do not reproach this dusk,

And my sunset is cold melon

With joy, he looks at the dawn.

With joy and hope, the venerable Annensky felt a powerful talent in the beginning poet and, together with a blessing, gave him a creative impulse. Russian poetry of the 20th century is like a triptych: pre-revolutionary, post-revolutionary and emigrant poetry. And in each leaf of the triptych, in each part of the trilogy, we find an abundance of verses that reveal, clarify, complement the image of a great Russian poet, without whom Russian poetry of the 20th century is unimaginable.

Iowa City, USA

Illustrations:

portrait of Nikolai Gumilyov (charcoal) by Inna Lazareva (Philadelphia);

portraits of Georgy Adamovich, Osip Mandelstam, Georgy Ivanov (works by Yuri Annenkov),

Anna Akhmatova, Sergei Gorodetsky and Nikolai Gumilyov,

Eduard Bagritsky, Nikolai Otsup, Nikolai Minsky, Georgy Shengeli,

Mark Tarlovsky, Dmitry Klenovsky, Irina Odoevtseva, Yuri Terapiano,

Pavel Bulygin, Vladimir Nabokov, Valery Pereleshin, Ida Nappelbaum,

Daniil Andreev, Roald Mandelstam, Vladimir Kornilov, Innokenty Annensky.

N. S. Gumilyov was born in Kronstadt in the family of a military doctor. In 1906 he received a certificate of graduation from the Nikolaev Tsarkoselskaya gymnasium, the director of which was I. F. Annensky. In 1905, the first collection of the poet "The Way of the Conquistadors" was published, which attracted the attention of V. Ya. Bryusov. The characters in the collection seem to have come from the pages of adventure novels from the era of the conquest of America, which the poet read in his adolescence. With them, the lyrical hero identifies himself - "a conquistador in an iron shell." The originality of the collection, saturated with common literary passages and poetic conventions, was given by the features that prevailed in Gumilyov's life behavior: love for the exotic, the romance of a feat, the will to live and create.

In 1907, Gumilyov left for Paris to continue his education at the Sorbonne, where he listened to lectures on French literature. He follows the artistic life of France with interest, establishes correspondence with V. Ya. Bryusov, and publishes the Sirius magazine. In Paris in 1908, Gumilyov's second collection Romantic Flowers was published, where the reader was again expected to meet with literary and historical exoticism, but the subtle irony that touched individual poems translates the conventional methods of romanticism into a playful plan and thereby outlines the contours of the author's positions. Gumilyov works hard on poetry, achieving its "flexibility", "confident rigor", as he wrote in his program poem "To the Poet", and in the manner of "introducing realism of descriptions into the most fantastic plots" he follows the traditions of Leconte de Lisle, the French parnassian poet , considering such a path "salvation" from the symbolist "nebulae". According to I. F. Annensky, this "book reflected not only the search for beauty, but also the beauty of the search."

In the autumn of 1908 Gumilev made his first trip to Africa, to Egypt. The African continent captivated the poet: he becomes the discoverer of the African theme in Russian poetry. Acquaintance with Africa "from the inside" turned out to be especially fruitful during the next trips, in the winter of 1909-1910 and 1910-1911. in Abyssinia, the impressions of which were reflected in the cycle "Abyssinian Songs" (collection "Alien Sky").

Since September 1909, Gumilyov became a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. In 1910, the collection "Pearls" was published with a dedication to the "teacher" - V. Ya. Bryusov. The venerable poet responded with a review, where he noted that Gumilyov "lives in an imaginary and almost ghostly world ... he creates countries for himself and inhabits them with creatures created by him: people, animals, demons." Gumilyov does not leave the heroes of his early books, but they have changed markedly. In his poetry, psychologism is intensified, instead of "masks" people appear with their own characters and passions. Attention was also drawn to the confidence with which the poet went to mastering the skill of poetry.

In the early 1910s, Gumilyov was already a prominent figure in St. Petersburg literary circles. He is a member of the "young" editorial office of the journal "Apollo", where he regularly publishes "Letters on Russian Poetry" - literary critical studies, which are a new type of "objective" review. At the end of 1911, he headed the "Workshop of Poets", around which a group of like-minded people formed, and acted as the ideological inspirer of a new literary trend - acmeism, the basic principles of which he proclaimed in the manifesto article "The Heritage of Symbolism and Acmeism". His collection Alien Sky (1912), the pinnacle of Gumilyov's "objective" lyrics, became a poetic illustration for theoretical calculations. According to M. A. Kuzmin, the most important thing in the collection is the identification of the lyrical hero with Adam, the first person. The acmeist poet is like Adam, the discoverer of the world of things. He gives things "virgin names", fresh in their originality, freed from the old poetic contexts. Gumilyov formulated not only a new concept of the poetic word, but also his understanding of a person as a being who is aware of his natural givenness, "wise physiology" and accepts the fullness of the surrounding being.

With the outbreak of World War I, Gumilyov volunteered for the front. In the newspaper "Birzhevye Vedomosti" he publishes chronicle essays "Notes of a Cavalryman". In 1916, the book "Quiver" was published, which differed from the previous ones primarily by expanding the thematic range. Italian travel sketches side by side with meditative poems of philosophical and existential content. Here, for the first time, the Russian theme begins to sound, the poet's soul responds to the pain of his native country, devastated by the war. His gaze, turned to reality, acquires the ability to see through it. The poems included in the collection "Bonfire" (1918) reflected the intensity of the poet's spiritual search. As the philosophical nature of Gumilyov's poetry deepens, the world in his poems appears more and more as a divine cosmos ("Trees", "Nature"). He is disturbed by "eternal" themes: life and death, the perishability of the body and the immortality of the spirit, the otherness of the soul.

Gumilyov was not an eyewitness to the revolutionary events of 1917. At that time, he was abroad as part of the Russian expeditionary force: in Paris, then in London. His creative pursuits of this period were marked by an interest in Oriental culture. Gumilev compiled his collection The Porcelain Pavilion (1918) from free transcriptions of French translations of Chinese classical poetry (Li Bo, Du Fu, and others). The "oriental" style was perceived by Gumilyov as a kind of school of "verbal economy", poetic "simplicity, clarity and authenticity", which corresponded to his aesthetic attitudes.

Returning to Russia in 1918, Gumilyov immediately, with his characteristic energy, is included in the literary life of Petrograd. He is a member of the editorial board of the publishing house "World Literature", under his editorship and in his translation the Babylonian epic "Gilgamesh", the works of R. Southey, G. Heine, S. T. Coleridge are published. He lectures on the theory of verse and translation at various institutions, and runs the "Sounding Shell" studio for young poets. According to one of the poet's contemporaries, critic A. Ya. Levinson, "the young people were drawn to him from all sides, admiringly submitting to the despotism of the young master, who owns the philosopher's stone of poetry..."

In January 1921, Gumilyov was elected chairman of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets. In the same year, the last book, Pillar of Fire, was published. Now the poet is delving into the philosophical understanding of the problems of memory, creative immortality, the fate of the poetic word. The individual life force that fed Gumilyov's poetic energy earlier merges with the supra-individual. The hero of his lyrics reflects on the unknowable and, enriched with inner spiritual experience, rushes to the "India of the Spirit". This was not a return to the circles of symbolism, but it is clear that Gumilyov found in his worldview a place for those achievements of symbolism, which, as it seemed to him at the time of the acmeist "Sturm und Drang" a, led "into the realm of the unknown." , which sounds in Gumilyov's last poems, enhances the motives of empathy and compassion and gives them a universal and at the same time deeply personal meaning.

Gumilyov's life was tragically interrupted: he was executed as a participant in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, which, as it has now become known, was fabricated. In the minds of Gumilyov's contemporaries, his fate evoked associations with the fate of the poet of another era - Andre Chenier, who was executed by the Jacobins during the French Revolution.

Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:	Kronstadt, Russian Empire
Date of death:
Place of death:	Near Petrograd
Citizenship:	Russian empire
Occupation:	Russian poet explorer of Africa
Direction:
Awards and prizes	Badge of the Order of St. George 3rd class

Childhood and youth

Abroad

First expedition to Abyssinia

Between trips

Second expedition to Abyssinia

World War I

Life in Soviet Russia

Arrest and death

Versions of the events of 1921

The main features of poetry

Main works

Collections of poems

Translations

Influence on literature

Interesting Facts

Songs based on his poems

Reviews of contemporaries

The image of N. Gumilyov in fiction

Literature

(April 3 (15), 1886, Kronstadt - August 1921, near Petrograd, exact location unknown) - Russian poet of the Silver Age, founder of the school of acmeism, translator, literary critic, traveler, officer.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Born in a noble family of the Kronstadt ship's doctor Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyov (July 28, 1836 - February 6, 1910). Mother - Gumilyova (Lvova) Anna Ivanovna (June 4, 1854 - December 24, 1922).

His grandfather - Panov Yakov Fedotovich (1790-1858) - was a deacon in the church of the village of Zheludevo, Spassky district, Ryazan province.

From childhood, Gumilyov was a weak and sickly child: he was constantly tormented by headaches, he reacted poorly to noise. Despite this, he often participated in games with peers, where he constantly tried to lead.

But he preferred loneliness or the company of animals to communication with children - a "red dog", a parrot, guinea pigs. He avoided people.

In 1900-1903. lived in Georgia, where he was sent by his father. Here, in the "Tiflis List" in 1902, he published his first poem. He entered the Gurevich gymnasium, but after studying for a year, he fell ill and his parents invited him a tutor. He noticed Gumilyov's penchant for zoology and geography.

Gumilyov spent his childhood years in Tsarskoe Selo, where in 1896 he entered the gymnasium, the director of which was the great poet of Russian symbolism Innokenty Annensky.

He did not study well and graduated from the gymnasium at the age of twenty in 1906. A year earlier, the first book of his poems, The Path of the Conquistadors, was published.

After graduating from high school, the poet went to study at the Sorbonne.

Abroad

Since 1906, Nikolai Gumilyov lived in Paris: he listened to lectures on French literature, studied painting, and traveled a lot. Traveled to Italy and France. While in Paris, he published the literary magazine "Sirius" (in which A. Akhmatova made her debut), but only 3 issues of the magazine were published. He visited exhibitions, got acquainted with French and Russian writers, was in intensive correspondence with Bryusov, to whom he sent his poems, articles, stories.

The following year, in April, Gumilyov returned to Russia to pass the draft board. In Russia, the young poet met his teacher, Bryusov, and his lover, Anna Gorenko. In July, he set off from Sevastopol on his first trip to the Levant and returned to Paris at the end of July. There is no information about how the trip went, except for letters to Bryusov.

There is a version that it was then that Gumilyov first visited Africa, this is also evidenced by the poem "Ezbekiye", written in 1917:

However, this is unlikely chronologically.

In 1908, Gumilyov published the collection Romantic Flowers. With the money received for the collection, as well as the accumulated funds of his parents, he goes on a second trip.

He arrived in Sinop, where he had to be quarantined for 4 days, from there to Istanbul. After Turkey, Gumilyov visited Greece, then went to Egypt, where he visited Ezbikiye. In Cairo, the traveler suddenly ran out of money, and he was forced to go back. On November 29, he was again in St. Petersburg.

Nikolai Gumilyov is not only a poet, but also one of the greatest explorers of Africa. He made several expeditions to eastern and northeastern Africa and brought the richest collection to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) in St. Petersburg.

First expedition to Abyssinia

Although Africa had attracted Gumilyov since childhood, the decision to go there came suddenly and on September 25 he went to Odessa, from there to Djibouti, then to Abyssinia. The details of this journey are unknown. It is only known that he visited Addis Ababa for a formal reception at the Negus. The friendly relations of mutual sympathy that arose between the young Gumilyov and the wise experience of Menelik II can be considered proven. In the article “Did Menelik Die?” the poet described the troubles that took place at the throne, as he reveals his personal attitude to what is happening.

Between trips

Three years between expeditions were very eventful in the life of the poet.

• In 1910, the collection "Pearls" was released, on April 25 of the same year in the Nikolaev church of the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka, Gumilyov married Anna Andreevna Gorenko (Akhmatova).

• In 1911, with the active participation of N. Gumilyov, the "Workshop of Poets" was founded, which, in addition to Gumilyov, included Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Narbut, Sergei Gorodetsky, Kuzmina-Karavaeva, Zenkevich and others.

• In 1912, he announced the emergence of a new artistic movement - acmeism. Entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University (studied Old French poetry)

• In the same year, the poetry collection "Alien Sky" was published, in which, in particular, the first, second and third cantos of the poem "The Discovery of America" ​​were printed.

• On October 1 of the same year, Anna and Nikolai Gumilyovs had a son, Leo.

Second expedition to Abyssinia

The second expedition took place in 1913. It was better organized and coordinated with the Academy of Sciences. At first, Gumilyov wanted to cross the Danakil desert, study the little-known tribes and try to civilize them, but the Academy rejected this route as expensive, and the poet was forced to propose a new route:

Together with Gumilyov, his nephew Nikolai Sverchkov went to Africa as a photographer.

First Gumilev went to Odessa, then to Istanbul. In Turkey, the poet showed sympathy and sympathy for the Turks, unlike most Russians. There, Gumilyov met the Turkish consul Mozar Bey, who was on his way to Harar; they continued on their way together. From Istanbul they went to Egypt, from there to Djibouti. Travelers were supposed to go inland by rail, but after 260 kilometers the train stopped due to the fact that the rains washed out the path. Most of the passengers returned, but Gumilyov, Sverchkov and Mozar Bey begged the workers for a trolley and drove 80 kilometers of the damaged track on it. Arriving in Dire Dawa, the poet hired an interpreter and went by caravan to Harar.

In Harrar, Gumilyov bought mules, not without complications, and there he met Ras Tafari (then Governor of Harar, later Emperor Haile Selassie I; adherents of Rastafarianism consider him the incarnation of the Lord - Jah). The poet presented the future emperor with a box of vermouth and photographed him, his wife and sister. In Harare, Gumilyov began to collect his collection.

From Harar, the path lay through the little-studied lands of the Gaul to the village of Sheikh Hussein. On the way, they had to cross the fast-flowing Uabi River, where Nikolai Sverchkov was almost dragged away by a crocodile. Soon there were problems with provisions. Gumilyov was forced to hunt for food. When the goal was achieved, the leader and spiritual mentor of Sheikh Hussein Aba Muda sent provisions to the expedition and warmly received it. Here is how Gumilyov described the prophet:

There Gumilyov was shown the tomb of Saint Sheikh Hussein, after whom the city was named. There was a cave from which, according to legend, a sinner could not get out:

Gumilyov climbed there and returned safely.

Having written down the life of Sheikh Hussein, the expedition moved to the city of Ginir. Having replenished the collection and collected water in Ginir, the travelers went west, on the hardest path to the village of Matakua.

The further fate of the expedition is unknown, Gumilyov's African diary is interrupted at the word "Road ..." on July 26. According to some reports, on August 11, the exhausted expedition reached the Dera valley, where Gumilyov stayed at the house of the parents of a certain H. Mariam. He treated the mistress of malaria, freed the punished slave, and the parents named their son after him. However, there are chronological inaccuracies in the Abyssinian's story. Be that as it may, Gumilyov safely reached Harar and was already in Djibouti in mid-August, but due to financial difficulties he was stuck there for three weeks. He returned to Russia on September 1.

World War I

The beginning of 1914 was difficult for the poet: the workshop ceased to exist, difficulties arose in relations with Akhmatova, the bohemian life he led after returning from Africa got bored.

After the outbreak of World War I in early August 1914, N. S. Gumilyov volunteered for the army. Together with Nikolai, his brother Dmitry Gumilyov, who was shell-shocked in battle and died in 1922, also went to war (on conscription).

It is noteworthy that although almost all the poets of that time composed either patriotic or military poems, only two volunteers participated in the hostilities: Gumilyov and Benedikt Livshits.

Gumilyov was enrolled as a volunteer in the Life Guards Ulansky Her Majesty's Regiment. In September and October 1914, exercises and training took place. Already in November, the regiment was transferred to southern Poland. On November 19, the first battle took place. For night reconnaissance before the battle, by Order of the Guards Cavalry Corps dated December 5, 1915 No. 148b, he was awarded the St. George Cross of the 3rd degree No. 108868.

At the end of February, as a result of continuous hostilities and traveling, Gumilyov fell ill with a cold:

For a month the poet was treated in Petrograd, then he was again returned to the front.

In 1915, from April to June, although there were no active hostilities, Gumilyov almost daily participated in reconnaissance patrols.

In 1915, Nikolai Gumilyov fought in Western Ukraine (Volyn). Here he passed the most difficult military tests, received the St. George Cross, which he was very proud of. Anna Akhmatova responded somewhat skeptically to this:

Rarely fly to lead To our porch. Gave a white cross to your father.

So she wrote to her little son Leo.

On July 6, a large-scale enemy attack began. The task was set to hold positions until the infantry approached, the operation was carried out successfully, and several machine guns were saved, one of which was carried by Gumilyov. For this, on January 13, 1915, by order of the Guards Cavalry Corps dated December 24, 1914 No. 30, he was awarded the St. George Cross of the 4th degree No. 134060; renamed to corporal, and on January 15 he was promoted to non-commissioned officer.

In September, the poet returned to Russia as a hero, and on March 28, 1916, by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Front No. 3332, he was promoted to ensign with a transfer to the 5th Alexandria Hussar Regiment. Using this respite, Gumilev led an active literary activity.

In April 1916, the poet arrived at the hussar regiment stationed near Dvinsk. In May, Gumilyov was again evacuated to Petrograd. The night jump in the heat described in the Notes of a Cavalryman cost him pneumonia. When the treatment was almost over, Gumilyov went out into the cold without asking, as a result of which the disease worsened again. Doctors recommended that he be treated in the south. Gumilyov left for Yalta. However, the military life of the poet did not end there. On July 8, 1916, he again went to the front, again not for long. On August 17, by order of regiment No. 240, Gumilyov was sent to the Nikolaev Cavalry School, then again transferred to the front and remained in the trenches until January 1917.

In 1917, Gumilyov decided to transfer to the Thessaloniki Front and went to the Russian Expeditionary Force in Paris. He went to France by the northern route - through Sweden, Norway and England. Gumilyov stayed in London for a month, where he met with local poets: Gilbert Chesterton, Boris Anrep, and others. Gumilyov left England in a good mood: paper and printing costs turned out to be much cheaper there, and he could print Hyperborea there.

Arriving in Paris, he served as an adjutant to the Commissar of the Provisional Government, where he became friends with the artists M. F. Larionov and N. S. Goncharova.

In Paris, the poet fell in love with a half-Russian, half-French woman, Elena Karolovna du Boucher, the daughter of a famous surgeon. He dedicated to her a collection of poems "To the Blue Star", the pinnacle of the poet's love lyrics. Soon Gumilyov moved to the 3rd brigade. However, the disintegration of the army was felt there as well. Soon the 1st and 2nd brigades mutinied. He was suppressed, many soldiers were deported to Petrograd, the rest were united in one special brigade.

On January 22, 1918, Anrep got him a job in the encryption department of the Russian Government Committee. Gumilyov worked there for two months. However, bureaucratic work did not suit him, and soon the poet returned to Russia.

On August 5, 1918, a divorce took place with Anna Akhmatova. Relations between the poets went wrong for a long time, but it was impossible to divorce with the right to remarry before the revolution.

In 1919 he married Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, the daughter of the historian and literary critic N. A. Engelhardt, this marriage was also unsuccessful.

In 1920, the Petrograd department of the All-Russian Union of Writers was established, Gumilyov also entered there. Formally, Blok was elected head of the Union, but in fact the Union was controlled by a "more than pro-Bolshevik" group of poets headed by Pavlovich. Under the pretext that a quorum had not been reached in the presidential election, a re-election was called. The Pavlovich camp, believing that this was a mere formality, agreed, but Gumilyov's candidacy was unexpectedly appointed at the re-election, and he won.

Gorky took a close part in the affairs of the department. When the Gorky plan “History of Culture in Pictures” arose, Gumilyov supported these initiatives. His "Poisoned Tunic" came in very handy. In addition, Gumilyov gave sections of the play "Gondla", "Rhinoceros Hunt" and "Beauty of Morni". The fate of the latter is sad: its full text has not been preserved.

Living in Soviet Russia, Nikolai Gumilyov did not hide his religious and political views - he was openly baptized in churches, declaring his views. So, at one of the poetry evenings, he was asked from the audience - "what are your political beliefs?" answered - "I am a convinced monarchist."

Arrest and death

On August 3, 1921, Nikolai was arrested on suspicion of participating in the conspiracy of the Petrograd Combat Organization of V.N. Tagantsev. For several days, Mikhail Lozinsky and Nikolai Otsup tried to help their friend out, but despite this, the poet was soon shot.

On August 24, a decision was issued by the Petrograd GubChK on the execution of the participants in the "Tagantsevsky plot" (a total of 61 people), published on September 1, indicating that the sentence had already been carried out. Date, place of execution and burial are unknown. The following versions are common:

• Berngardovka (Valley of the Lubya River) near Vsevolozhsk. A bridge across the Lubya River, a memorial cross is erected on the bank.
• The area of ​​the pier "Lisiy Nos", behind the powder warehouses. The wilderness near the railway station "Razdelnaya" (now Lisiy Nos) was previously used as a place for executions by courts-martial.
• Anna Akhmatova believed that the place of execution was on the outskirts of the city in the direction of the Powder.
• Kovalevsky forest, in the area of ​​​​the arsenal of the Rzhevsky training ground, at the bend of the Lubya River.

In 1992, Gumilyov was rehabilitated.

Versions of the events of 1921

There are three versions of Gumilyov's involvement in the Tagantsev conspiracy:

• Gumilyov participated in the conspiracy - the official Soviet version of 1921-1986, supported by some emigrants.
• Gumilyov did not participate in the conspiracy - the 1960s version, common in the USSR during perestroika (1986-1991).
• The conspiracy did not exist at all, it was completely fabricated by the Cheka in connection with the Kronstadt uprising - the modern version.

Addresses in St. Petersburg - Petrograd

• 1886, April - Kronstadt, Grigorieva's house on Catherine's street (now - Soviet), 7
• 1886, June - Tsarskoye Selo, Moskovsky street, 42, against Torgovy Lane;
• 1890 - the Gumilyovs bought an estate along the Nikolaev railway - Popovka;
• 1893, autumn - St. Petersburg, rented apartment 8 at 3rd Rozhdestvenskaya Street, 32 (in Shamin's house at the corner of Degtyarnaya and 3rd Rozhdestvenskaya streets, now 3rd Sovetskaya);
• 1903, summer - Tsarskoye Selo, a rented apartment on the corner of Orangery (Karl Marx) and Middle (Kommunarov) streets, in the house of Poluboyarinov;
• 1914 - Tuchkova embankment, 20, apt. 29;
• 1918-1919 - Ivanovskaya street, 25, apt. fifteen;
• 1919-1920 - tenement house - Preobrazhenskaya street, 5;
• 1920 - August 3, 1921 - DISK - Avenue of the 25th October, 15.

Creativity and literary path

The poet wrote his first quatrain about the beautiful Niagara at the age of six. He also wrote poems at the gymnasium, but they were of poor quality (Nikolai Stepanovich himself did not include them in any of his collections). Nevertheless, when Gumilyov was on the verge of being expelled from the gymnasium, director I.F. Annensky insisted on leaving the student (“All this is true, but he writes poetry”).

The first publication - September 8, 1902 - the poem "I fled to the forest from the cities ..." in the newspaper "Tiflis Leaf" signed "K. Gumilyov.

In 1905, he published the first collection of poems called "The Way of the Conquistadors" (conquistador - obsolete from conquistadors). This collection was honored with a separate review by Bryusov, who at that time was one of the most authoritative poets. Although the review was not laudatory, the master ended it with the words “Suppose that it [the book] is only the“ path ”of the new conquistador and that his victories and conquests are ahead,” it was after this that correspondence began between Bryusov and Gumilyov. For a long time, Gumilyov considered Bryusov his teacher, Bryusov's motives can be traced in many of his poems (the most famous of them is "Violin", however, dedicated to Bryusov). The master, for a long time, patronized the young poet and treated him, unlike most of his students, kindly, almost like a father.

In Paris, Bryusov recommended Gumilyov to such famous poets as Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Bely and others, but the masters offended the young poet so much that he was afraid to visit celebrities for a long time. True, in 1908 the poet "revenge" them by anonymously sending them the poem "Androgyn". It received extremely favorable reviews. Merezhkovsky and Gippius expressed their desire to meet the author.

In Paris, Gumilyov began publishing his magazine Sirius. In addition to Gumilyov himself, who published in the journal under various pseudonyms, as well as Anna Akhmatova, who treated this undertaking with irony, Alexander Bisk and several little-known poets were published in Sirius.

In 1908, Gumilyov published the collection "Romantic Flowers", dedicated to Akhmatova (the dedication was removed during the reprint). It was this collection that gave him a certain literary name.

In 1910, the collection "Pearls" was published, in which "Romantic Flowers" was included as one of the parts. The composition of the "Pearls" includes the poem "Captains", one of the most famous works of Nikolai Gumilyov. The collection received laudatory reviews from V. Bryusov, V. Ivanov, I. Annensky and other critics, although it was called "still a student's book."

At this time, symbolism was in crisis. Seeing this, Gumilyov in 1911, together with his friend S. Gorodetsky, founded his own circle, the Workshop of Poets. Initially, it did not have a clear literary focus. At the first meeting, which took place in Gorodetsky's apartment, there were Piast, A. A. Blok with his wife, Akhmatova and others. Blok wrote about this meeting:

In 1912, it was announced the creation of a new literary movement - acmeism. Acmeism proclaimed materiality, objectivity of themes and images, the accuracy of the word. The emergence of a new trend caused a strong reaction, mostly negative.

In 1916, the collection "Quiver" was published, which included some poems on a military theme.

In 1918, the collection "Bonfire" was published, as well as the African poem "Mick". The prototype of Louis, the monkey king, was Lev Gumilyov. The time for the release of the fairy tale poem was unfortunate, and it was met with a cool reception.

In 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov published two collections of poems. The first is "Tent", written on the basis of impressions from travels in Africa. "Tent" was supposed to be the first part of a grandiose project "textbook of geography in verse." In it, Gumilyov planned to describe in rhyme the entire inhabited land. The second is Pillar of Fire, which includes such significant works as The Word, The Sixth Sense, and My Readers. Many believe that the "Pillar of Fire" is the top collection of the poet.

The main features of poetry

The main themes of Gumilyov's lyrics are love, art, death, there are also military and "geographical" poems. Unlike most poets, political and patriotic lyrics are practically absent.

Although the sizes of Gumilyov's poems are extremely diverse, he himself believed that he was best at making anapaests. Verlibre Gumilyov rarely used and believed that although he had won “the right to citizenship in the poetry of all countries. Nevertheless, it is clear that free breeze should be used extremely rarely. Gumilyov's most famous vers libre is My Readers.

Main works

Collections of poems

• Path of the Conquistadors (1905)
• Romantic Flowers (dedicated to Anna Andreevna Gorenko), Paris (1908)
• Pearls (1910)
• Alien Sky (1912)
• Quiver (1916)
• Bonfire (1918)
• Porcelain Pavilion (1918)
• Tent (1921)
• Pillar of Fire (1921)
• To the Blue Star (1923)

Plays

• Don Juan in Egypt (1912)
• Game (1913, published 1916)
• Actaeon (1913)
• Gondla (1917)
• Child of Allah (1918)
• Poisoned Tunic (1918, published 1952)
• The Transformation Tree (1918, published 1989)
• Rhino Hunt (1920, published 1987)

Dramatic scenes and fragments

• Achilles and Odysseus (1908)
• green tulip
• The Beauty of Morny (1919, published 1984)

Prose

• [Notes of a cavalryman (1914-1915)]
• Black General (1917)
• Merry brothers
• African diary
• Up the Nile
• Cards
• Deucalion
• Palm tree shade (1909-1916)

poems

• Mick (1918)

Translations

• Théophile Gautier "Enamels and Cameos" (1914)
• Robert Browning "Pippa Passes By" (1914)
• Albert Samin "Polyphemus"
• William Shakespeare "Falstaff" (1921)

Editions

• Gumilyov N.S. Poems and poems. - L .: Owls. writer, 1988. - 632 p. (Library of the poet. Large series. Third edition.)
• Gumilyov N.S. Favorites. — M.: Sov. Russia, 1989. - 469 p.
• Gumilyov N.S. Letters about Russian poetry / Comp. G.M. Friedlender (with the participation of R.D. Timenchik); Prep. text and comments. R.D. Timenchik. — M.: Sovremennik, 1990. — 383 p.

Influence on literature

Gumilyov's persistent and inspired activity in creating formalized "schools of poetic mastery" (three "Workshops of Poets", "Live Word Studio", etc.), which many contemporaries were skeptical of, turned out to be very fruitful. His students - Georgy Adamovich, Georgy Ivanov, Irina Odoevtseva, Nikolai Otsup, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Nikolai Tikhonov and others - became prominent creative individuals. The acmeism he created, which attracted such great talents of the era as Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, became a completely viable creative method. Gumilyov's influence was significant both on émigré poetry and (both through Tikhonov and directly) on Soviet poetry (in the latter case, despite the semi-forbiddenness of his name, and largely due to this circumstance).

• Throughout his life, Gumilyov defined his internal age as 13 years old, A. Akhmatova's age - 15, and the age of his second wife - 9 years.
• In 1907, when the poet was drafted into the army, he did not pass a medical examination due to strabismus that interfered with shooting, but in 1914 he was recognized as fit: the first time he fired from his right shoulder, and the second time he changed it to the left.
• “Wooden with a long nose” - this is how A. N. Tolstoy described Gumilyov.

Songs based on his poems

• In the repertoire of A. N. Vertinsky there is a song "Chinese watercolor", the verses of which belong to N. S. Gumilyov.
• The repertoire of the Melnitsa group includes the songs “Serpent”, “Olga”, the verses of which belong to N. S. Gumilyov.
• Elena Kamburova's repertoire includes songs based on some of N. S. Gumilyov's poems (for example, "Magic Violin").
• Chancellor Guy's repertoire includes the song "Love" based on a poem by N. S. Gumilyov.
• The repertoire of the Kvartal group includes the song "Sada-Yakko", the verses of which belong to Gumilyov.
• The repertoire of the Little Tragedies group includes the song "Road" based on the poem of the same name by Gumilyov.
• The repertoire of the group Who Dies In Siberian Slush includes the song "Gumilyov's Testament"

Family

• Anna Akhmatova (June 11 (23), 1889 - March 5, 1966) - first wife;
• Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt (1895 - April 1942) - second wife;

• Lev Gumilyov (October 1, 1912 - June 15, 1992) - the son of Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova;
• Orest Nikolaevich Vysotsky (October 26, 1913, Moscow - September 1, 1992) - son of Nikolai Gumilyov and Olga Nikolaevna Vysotskaya (December 18, 1885, Moscow - January 18, 1966, Tiraspol);
• Elena Gumilyova (April 14, 1919, St. Petersburg - July 25, 1942, Leningrad) - daughter of Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Engelhardt.

• Anna Ivanova Gumilyova - Gumilyov's mother (June 4, 1854 - December 24, 1922)
• Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyov - Gumilyov's father (July 28, 1836 - February 6, 1910)

The fate of Gumilyov's relatives turned out differently: Akhmatov and Lev Gumilyov had a long life, all-Russian and world fame. Anna Engelhardt and Elena Gumilyova died of starvation in besieged Leningrad. Anna Ivanovna died a year later than Gumilyov, never believing in her son's death.

Elena and Lev Gumilyovs did not leave children and the only descendants of the poet are two daughters and one son of Orest Vysotsky. The eldest daughter of Vysotsky Iya is now alive, she has a daughter and granddaughter, as well as three daughters of Larisa Vysotskaya, her younger sister, who died in 1999.