What works did Balmont write. Konstantin Balmont ~ biography, photo, personal life, best poems. The last years of Balmont's life

Balmont is the son of Balmont TsGIA SPb. F. 14. Op. 3. D. 59082. Azadovsky K.M., Lavrov A.V. Anna Engelgardt - Gumilyov's wife: based on the archive of D.E. Maksimova // Nikolai Gumilyov: research and materials. SPb., 1994. S. 361, 372, 377. Hildebrandt-Arbenina O.N. Gumilyov // Ibid. pp. 438–470.

ANDREEVA (married Balmont) Ekaterina Alekseevna 1867–1950Translator, memoirist; wife of K. Balmont. “For the first time, looking into her face, I reached out to her with all my heart, but ... for all the time I never spoke to her. In this face there is a lively, open readiness to go to

BALMONT Konstantin Dmitrievich 3(15).6.1867 - 12/23/1942Poet, critic, essayist, translator. Publications in the magazines "Scales", "Apollo", etc. Poetry collections "Under the northern sky" (St. Petersburg, 1894), "In the vastness" (M., 1895), "Silence" (St. Petersburg, 1898), "Burning building. (Lyrics of the modern soul) "(M.,

BALMONT Nikolai Konstantinovich 1891–1926Poet, pianist, amateur composer. The son of K. D. Balmont from his first marriage with L. A. Garelina. “Red-haired, with a porcelain pinkish face, green-eyed, and a nervous tic on his face! ... Nix was called “Dorian Gray” at the university” (O. Hildebrandt.

Balmont Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (1867-1942) - Russian poet, essayist, literary historian. Every soul has many faces, many people are hidden in every person, and many of these people, forming one person, must be ruthlessly thrown into the fire.

KD Balmont and the poetry of the Indians And Mexico arose, an inspired vision... If the tradition of translating the poetry of the Indians into Russian cannot be called established, then, of course, it can be called old. Since the time when the Russian reader was first able to get acquainted with high

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. She had a strong influence on the worldview of the future poet, introducing him to the world of music, literature, history, and was the first to teach him to comprehend the "beauty of the female soul."

Vera Nikolaevna knew foreign languages ​​well, read a lot and “was not a stranger 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 an apartment with a Greek teacher, who zealously performed the duties of a "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. The famous writer, having received a notebook with his poems from Balmont's comrades at the gymnasium, 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 him of financial support, 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 pre-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 formation.

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 of Balmont's creative path. 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 journal Vese, who five years later established the symbolist publishing house Scorpion, which published Balmont's best books.

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 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 - 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, in his own words, "took some part in the armed uprising of Moscow, more in poetry." Having become close with Maxim Gorky, Balmont began active cooperation with the social democratic newspaper Novaya Zhizn and the Parisian magazine Krasnoye Znamya, 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 traveled to 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 conducted a course of lectures that were very successful. The poet began to study the Georgian language and set about translating 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 of 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.

Balmont unequivocally declared his attitude towards Soviet Russia soon 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 Russia's humiliation", about the "red drops" that went to the Russian land, regularly appeared. 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” movement of Western Europe in the 1920s and 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 documentary essays "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 of 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. The last years of his life, the poet stayed alternately either in a charity house for Russians, which was kept by M. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, or 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 a 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.

The poet's family life 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 were forbidden 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 the last love of the 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 (married - Boychenko, in the 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., "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.: Scorpio, 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)

K. D. Balmont was born in the village of Gumnishchi (Vladimir province) June 15, 1867 in the family of a judge. From an early age, his mother instilled in the boy a love of music and literature. After some time, the family moved to the city of Shuya, where in 1876 Balmont went to the Shuya gymnasium. Konstantin was expelled from the gymnasium for revolutionary sentiments. Balmont is transferred to the city of Vladimir and finishes the establishment in 1886. In the same year, he decided to enter the Faculty of Jurisdiction at Moscow University. But even here, after a year of study, he was expelled for participating in student riots.

Balmont wrote his first works at the age of 10. But after criticizing his mother, the boy could not be creative for 6 years. For the first time he published his poems in the magazine "Picturesque Review" in 1885 in St. Petersburg.

Balmont from the late 1880s engaged in translation activities. In 1890, desperate because of failures, both in his personal life and in his work, the writer tried to commit suicide: he jumped out of the window, he was seriously injured, as a result of which he lay in bed for a whole year. Despite the very tragic circumstances, however, this period was very fruitful in terms of literature. So, in 1890, the debut collection of poems was published. True, he did not arouse public interest, and the poet burned the entire circulation.

The peak of Balmont's creativity fell on the 1890s. During this period, he travels a lot, reads and learns languages. Often the writer was engaged in translations: in 1894 he translated the History of Scandinavian Literature (by Gorn), and in 1895-1897 the History of Italian Literature (by Gaspari). In 1894, Konstantin Dmitrievich published the collection "Under the Northern Sky", began to be published in the journal "Scales", the publishing house "Scorpion". Soon new books by the author "Silence" and "In the boundlessness" appeared.

In 1896, Balmont left for Europe and traveled for several years. In 1897 he was lecturing on Russian poetry in England. In 1903, a new collection of poetry "Let's be like the sun" was released, which brought him great success and popularity. In 1906, Konstantin Dmitrievich travels to California and Mexico. During the revolution of 1905-1907, he was an active participant in it, building barricades and making speeches to students. In fear of being arrested, Balmont left for Paris in 1906. He returned to Moscow only in 1915, traveling around the country with lectures.

In 1920 he left for France, where he lived until the end of his life. In Paris, he published 6 collections of poems and autobiographical books "The Air Way", "Under the New Sickle".

Soon, doctors discovered a serious mental illness in the poet. He spent the rest of his life on the outskirts of Paris in poverty. Balmont did not write anymore. Konstantin Dmitrievich died December 23, 1942 from pneumonia in the Russian House shelter.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born in 1867 on his father's estate not far from Ivanovo-Voznesensk. His family is rumored to have Scottish ancestry. In his youth, Balmont was expelled for political reasons from the gymnasium in the city of Shuya, and then (1887) from the law faculty of Moscow University. At the university, he recovered two years later, but soon left it again due to a nervous breakdown.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont, photo, 1880s

In 1890, Balmont published the first book of poems in Yaroslavl - completely insignificant and not attracting any attention. Shortly before that, he married the daughter of a Shuya manufacturer, but the marriage turned out to be unhappy. Driven to despair by personal failures, Balmont in March 1890 threw himself onto the cobblestone pavement from the window of the third floor of the Moscow furnished house where he then lived. After this unsuccessful suicide attempt, he had to lie in bed for a whole year. From the resulting fractures, he remained with a slight limp until the end of his life.

However, his successful literary career soon began. The style of Balmont's poetry has changed a lot. Together with Valery Bryusov, he became the initiator of Russian symbolism. Three of his new poetry collections Under northern skies (1894), In the immensity of darkness(1895) and Silence(1898) were greeted with admiration by the public. Balmont was considered the most promising of the "decadents". Magazines that claimed to be "modern" willingly opened their pages to him. His best poems are included in new collections: burning buildings(1900) and Let's be like the sun(1903). Having remarried, Balmont traveled with his second wife all over the world, right up to Mexico and the USA. He even traveled around the world. His fame was then unusually noisy. Valentin Serov painted his portrait, Gorky, Chekhov, many famous poets corresponded with him Silver Age. He was surrounded by crowds of admirers and admirers. The main poetic method of Balmont was spontaneous improvisation. He never edited and did not correct his texts, believing that the first creative impulse is the most correct.

Poets of Russia of the XX century. Konstantin Balmont. Lecture by Vladimir Smirnov

But soon Balmont's talent began to decline. His poetry showed no development. They began to consider her too lightweight, paid attention to rehashing and self-repetitions. In the 1890s Balmont forgot about his gymnasium revolutionary moods and, like many other symbolists, was completely "non-civilian". But with the start revolutions of 1905 he joined the party social democrats and released a collection of tendentious party poems Songs of the Avenger. Balmont "spent all his days on the street, built barricades, made speeches, climbing on the pedestals." During the December Moscow uprising of 1905, Balmont made speeches to students with a loaded revolver in his pocket. Fearing arrest, he hastily left for France on the night of New Year 1906.

From there, Balmont returned to Russia only in May 1913 in connection with the amnesty given to political emigrants on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The public arranged a solemn meeting for him, the following year a complete (10-volume) collection of his poems was published. The poet traveled around the country with lectures, did a lot of translations.

February revolution Balmont at first welcomed, but was soon horrified by the anarchy that swept the country. He welcomed General Kornilov's attempts to restore order, and considered the Bolshevik October Revolution "chaos" and "a hurricane of madness." He spent 1918-19 in Petrograd, and in 1920 he moved to Moscow, where he "sometimes had to spend the whole day in bed to keep warm." At first, he refused to cooperate with the communist authorities, but then, involuntarily, he got a job at the People's Commissariat for Education. Having achieved from Lunacharsky permission for a temporary business trip abroad, Balmont left Soviet Russia in May 1920 and never returned to it.

He settled again in Paris, but now, due to lack of funds, he lived in a bad apartment with a broken window. Part of the emigration suspected him of a "Soviet agent" - on the grounds that he did not flee from the Soviets "through the forests", but left on the official permission of the authorities. The Bolshevik press, for its part, stigmatized Balmont as a "crafty deceiver" who "at the cost of lies" abused the trust of the Soviet government, which generously let him go to the West "to study the revolutionary creativity of the masses." The poet lived his last years in poverty, yearning for his homeland. In 1923 he was promoted R. Rolland for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but did not receive it. In exile, Balmont published a number of poetry collections, published memoirs. The last years of his life, the poet stayed either in a charity house for Russians, which was maintained by M. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, or in a cheap furnished apartment. He died near German-occupied Paris in December 1942.