Biography and memoirs. Gumilyov Nikolay Stepanovich: short biography

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. The lyrical hero "the conquistador in the iron shell" identifies himself with them. 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 game plan and thereby outlines the contours of the author's position. 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 following travels, 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 board 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 man. 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 man 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 searches of this period are marked by an interest in Eastern 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.

1886 , April 3 (15) - was born in Kronstadt, in the family of the ship's doctor Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyov.

1887 - The Gumilev family moves to live in Tsarskoye Selo.

1900 - To improve the health of children, the family moves to the Caucasus, to Tiflis. Here Gumilyov enters the 2nd Tiflis Gymnasium.

1902 - On September 8, the newspaper "Tiflis Leaf" published the first poem by N.S. Gumilyov: "I fled to the forest from the cities ..." with the signature "K. Gumilyov."

1903 - The Gumilev family returns from Tiflis to Tsarskoye Selo. Gumilyov enters the 7th grade of the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, the director of which at that time was the poet I. F. Annensky. On December 24, an acquaintance with Anna Gorenko, Gumilyov's future wife, poetess Anna Akhmatova, took place.

1905 - In October, the first collection of poems by N. S. Gumilyov "The Way of the Conquistadors" was published, published at the expense of parents.

1906 - completion of studies at the gymnasium, Gumilyov receives a matriculation certificate. A trip to Paris, admission to the Sorbonne.

1907 - In Paris, since the first half of January, Gumilyov has been publishing a two-week literary magazine Sirius.

1908 - in January, the second book of Gumilyov's poems - "Romantic Flowers" (32 poems), dedicated to Anna Andreevna Gorenko, is published. Enters the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, soon transferred to the historical and philological.

1909 – leaves for Abyssinia for several months. Actively involved in the creation of the magazine "Apollo".

1910 - wedding with Anna Gorenko. Release of the third book of poems "Pearls".

1911 - creation of the "Workshop of poets".

1912 - "Alien Sky" collection.

1913 – March 25 at the Trinity Theater (Troitskaya, 18) the premiere of the "African" play "Don Juan in Egypt" took place.
April- as the head of the expedition from the Academy of Sciences, he leaves for Africa for six months (to replenish the collection of the ethnographic museum), keeps a travel diary (excerpts from the "African Diary" were published in 1916).

1914 - after the outbreak of the First World War, in August, he enrolls as a volunteer in the army. He was awarded the insignia of the military order (St. George Cross) 4th degree.

1916 - the release of the collection "Quiver".

1917 - In May, Gumilyov is transferred to the Thessaloniki front.

1918 - return to Russia. Publishes books of poems "Bonfire", "Porcelain Pavilion".

1921 - the collections "Tent", "Pillar of Fire" are released. Since the beginning of spring, Gumilyov has been in charge of the "Sounding Shell" studio.
in August arrested on suspicion of participating in a conspiracy and shot. Date, place of execution and burial are unknown.

Nikolay Gumelev- the great Russian poet, researcher, founder of the movement called " acmeism, literary critic. He also did language translations. Known pseudonym A.S. Gumeleva - Alexander Grant.

Brief biography of Gumelev

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumelev was born April 3, 1886 in Kronstadt, near Petersburg, Russian Empire. His father - Stepan Yakovlevich Gumelev- a doctor in the northern fleet. His mother - Anna Ivanovna Gumeleva (Lvova), a descendant of a fairly old noble family.

Nikolai had a brother - Dmitry Gumelev, 2 years older than him. Both brothers were quite painful. Because of this, the Gumelev family was forced to move to Tiflis from St. Petersburg in 1900. They lived in Tiflis for about 3 years.

Studying in high schools

In 1894 Nikolai entered the gymnasium of Tsarskoye Selo, but due to health reasons, just a few months later he was forced to switch to home schooling.

In 1895, his family moved to St. Petersburg, and only a year later Nikolai Stepanovich was enrolled in the Gurevich gymnasium. After moving to the Caucasus, he studied first at the 2nd and then at the 1st gymnasium in Tiflis.

In 1902 this is where it was first published
poem by Nikolai Gumilyov "I fled from the cities to the forest."

Return to Petersburg

Upon returning to St. Petersburg, Nikolai again continued his studies at the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium. He did not study well, there was even a question of his expulsion, but thanks to the talent of the poet, this did not happen.

In 1905 the first collection of poems by N.S. Gumeleva - "The Path of the Conquistadors". In 1906 Nikolai Gumilyov graduated from the gymnasium with a single "five" (logically) and received a certificate.

Gumilyov in Paris

Immediately after graduation, Nikolai Stepanovich moved to Paris. There he met his compatriots and French artists. He liked to travel - he visited other cities in France during the year, as well as in Italy.

In Paris, Gumilyov tried to publish his own magazine called "Sirius", where he was published both under his own name and under a pseudonym Alexander Grant.

In one of the 3 published issues of Sirius, Anna Gorenko's poems were first published (under the pseudonym Anna Akhmatova). Nikolai met Anna in 1903 and fell in love with her.

In 1908, the second collection of the poet's poems was published, which was completely dedicated to Anna Gorenko and was called "Romantic Poems".

Return to Russia

In the spring of 1908, Gumilyov returned to Russia, made acquaintance with the St. Petersburg literary world, and acted as a constant critic in the newspaper "Speech". In the same publishing house, he subsequently publishes his poems and stories.

Valery Bryusov, whom Nikolai considered his teacher, speaks quite warmly about Gumelev's work during this period, despite criticism of the poet's earlier poems.

Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumelev

In 1910 Nikolai Gumelev and Anna Akhmatova (Gorenko) are getting married. Their marriage actually lasted only about 4 years. But in those days it was impossible to get a divorce with the right to further marriage. According to the documents, the divorce took place only in August 1918 - already in Soviet Russia.

Anna and Nikolai had a son - Lev Gumelev, who left no descendants.

Gumelev - researcher

Gumelev has merits not only in literature and poetry, but also in the studies of Africa - Abyssinia. He made several expeditions eastern and northeastern Africa and brought the richest collection to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) in St. Petersburg.

In 1913, the second expedition of Nikolai Stepanovich to Abyssinia took place, which was previously agreed with the Academy of Sciences. Gumelev wrote down all his observations in his diary.

Gumelev - acmeist poet

Between expeditions, Nikolai Gumelev led an active literary activity. In 1910 a collection was published "Pearls", in which, as one of the parts, were included "Romantic Flowers".

The composition of "Pearls" includes a 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.

In 1911 created "Workshop of poets", who manifested his autonomy from symbolism and the creation of his own aesthetic program - acmeism. The Workshop included Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Narbut, Sergei Gorodetsky, Elizaveta Kuzmina-Karavaeva (future "Mother Mary"), Zenkevich and others.

In 1912, representatives of acmeism opened their own publishing house "Hyperborea" and began to publish a magazine with the same name in it.

Gumelev - warrior

Poets who lived during the First World War, colorfully and in detail described military operations in their poems. However, only a few independently participated in them. Among these was Nikolai Gumelev.

He went from a private to an ensign, having received many awards throughout the entire period of the war, including insignia George Cross from 1st to 4th degree.

In 1916, a collection of poems by Gumelev was published. "Quiver", which included poems on a military theme.

Last years

In 1918 a collection was published "Bonfire", as well as an African poem "Mick". In 1919, Nikolai Stepanovich married Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt. They had a daughter, Anna.

In 1918-20, Gumilyov lectured on poetic creativity at the Institute of the Living Word. In 1921, two of his collections of works were published - "Tent" and "Pillar of Fire".

Arrest and execution of Gumelev

In early August, Nikolai Gumelev was arrested and accused of participating in the "Petrograd Combat Organization of V.N. Tagantsev", which was plotting a political conspiracy.

Modern historians are more and more inclined to believe that, as such, the “Tagantsev organization” did not exist at all and that all cases were fabricated by the Chekists.

On the night of August 26, 1921 Nikolai Stepanovich Gumelev was shot along with 56 others accused of treason. Until now, the exact places of both the execution and the burial of all the bodies are unknown.

In 1992, the name of Nikolai Gumelev was rehabilitated.

Nowadays, in Krasnoznamensk, Kaliningrad region, an evening is held annually "Gumilyov autumn", which attracts poets and famous people from all over Russia to honor the memory of the great poet.

Russian poet of the Silver Age, founder of the school of acmeism, translator, literary critic, traveler, officer.
Born in the family of a naval doctor Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyov (1836-1910). Mother - Gumilyova (Lvova) Anna Ivanovna (1854-1942). Gumilyov spent his childhood years in Tsarskoe Selo, where he entered the gymnasium in 1903, the director of which was the famous poet I. Annensky. After graduating from high school, he went to Paris, to the Sorbonne.

The first publication - September 8, 1902 - the poem "I fled to the forest from the cities ..." in the newspaper "Tiflis Leaf" signed by K. Gumilyov. In 1905 he published the first collection of poems called The Path of the Conquistadors. Subsequently, however, he called this book "student experience."

Since 1907, Nikolai Gumilyov traveled a lot. Traveled to Italy, France. In 1908 he published the collection Romantic Flowers. 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.

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 them to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (St. Petersburg) the richest collection.

In 1910, the book "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. On April 25 of the same year, in the St. Nicholas Church of the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka, she married Anna Andreevna Gorenko (Anna Akhmatova).

In 1911, with the active participation of N. Gumilyov, the "Workshop of Poets" was founded, which, in addition to N. Gumilyov himself, included, in particular, Sergey Gorodetsky, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Narbut and others. A statement about the emergence of a new artistic movement - acmeism.

In 1912, 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 September 18 (October 1) of the same year, Anna and Nikolai Gumilyovs had a son, Lev.

In 1914-1918 he was in the army, then - at the headquarters of the Russian Expeditionary Force in Paris.

By order of the Guards Cavalry Corps dated January 5, 1915 No. 148b, he was awarded the St. George Cross of the 4th degree. On March 28, 1916, he was promoted to warrant officer with a transfer to the 5th Alexandria Hussar Regiment.

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

In 1917 he served in Paris as an adjutant to the Commissar of the Provisional Government. In Paris, the poet fell in love with a half-Russian, half-French woman, Elena Karolovna du Boucher, the daughter of a famous surgeon. Dedicated to her a collection of poems "To the Blue Star", the top love lyrics poet.

In 1918, the African poem "Mick" was published, as well as the collection "Bonfire". On August 5, a divorce took place with Anna Akhmatova.

In 1919 he marries Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, daughter of the historian and literary critic N. A. Engelhardt.

In 1920 he participated in the organization of the Petrograd department of the All-Russian Union of Writers.

In 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov published two collections of poems: "Tent", written on the basis of impressions from travels in Africa, and "Pillar of Fire", which included such significant works as "The Word", "The Sixth Sense", "My Readers".

In the same year, on August 3, Nikolai was arrested on suspicion of participating in the conspiracy of the "Petrograd military organization of V.N. Tagantsev" and shot. There is a point of view according to which the poet had nothing to do with this conspiracy, and the conspiracy itself was fabricated.

On August 24, a decision was issued by the Petrograd Gubchek 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. A popular version is that this is Berngardovka (the valley of the Lubya River) near Vsevolozhsk, although Lisy Nos is also possible.

In 1992, Gumilyov was rehabilitated.

Nobleman, Russian poet. The last four years of his life - formally - Soviet. Graduate of 1906.

More than once you remember me
And my whole world, exciting and strange.
N. Gumilyov

The only one of the great poets of the Silver Age, who was executed by the Soviet authorities by a court verdict. The rest were either tortured without trial (Klyuev, Mandelstam), or driven to suicide (Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva), or died prematurely from physical and spiritual shocks (Blok, Khlebnikov, Khodasevich), or - at best - endured persecution and persecution ( Pasternak, Akhmatova).

N.S. Gumilyov, 1912 20

95 years have passed since the death of the poet, but interest in his personality and work is growing year by year. Only in the 21st century, several extensive works devoted to the life path and work of N.S. Gumilyov were published, a complete collection of works was printed, “Works and Days of N. Gumilyov” by P. Luknitsky, which are the primary source of most chronological information about the poet, and several collections of memoirs were published about him.

Therefore, we will not give here a detailed presentation of Gumilyov's entire biography - those who wish can refer to the books mentioned - but, first of all, we recall the well-known facts related to the period of his studies at the Nikolaev Gymnasium (1903-1906), acquaintance with Anna Akhmatova and periods his life associated with Tsarskoi Selo.

April 3 1886 According to the old style, in Kronstadt, in the house of Grigorieva on Ekaterininskaya Street, the son Nikolai was born in the family.

Modern photo of the house on Sovetskaya Street (before 1917 - B. Ekaterininskaya), house 7 (pictured in the 1980s) 34

His father Stepan Yakovlevich served as a ship's doctor. Mother - (1854-1941), sister of the famous Russian admiral L.I. Lvova, was younger than her husband by more than 20 years. The boy was baptized on April 15 in the Kronstadt Naval Military Hospital Alexander Nevsky Church. The sacrament of baptism was performed by Archpriest Vladimir Krasnopolsky, the uncle of the newborn, captain of the 1st rank Lev Ivanovich Lvov and an institute graduate were the godparents. 25

Soon the whole family, together with the godfather, went to rest in Slepnevo, so Gumilev spent the first months of his life in the ancient family estate of his ancestors near Bezhetsk. 11 months after the birth of his son, Stepan Yakovlevich was promoted to state councilor and dismissed due to illness from service "with a uniform and a pension."

Mitya and Kolya Gumilev

By this time, the Gumilyovs looked after, and the whole family soon moved there. According to the recollections of his mother, Nikolai was in very poor health until the age of 10, he suffered from severe headaches. The doctor diagnosed him, in her words, "increased activity of the brain." The child perceived external phenomena unusually quickly, and the reaction that followed that weakened him so that he caused a deep sleep. Kolya's character was calm, gentle, and he patiently endured all the troubles associated with his poor health.

"I was spoiled a lot in childhood ... More than my older brother. He was a healthy, handsome, ordinary boy, and I was weak and sick. Well, of course, my mother lived in eternal fear for me and loved me fantastically ... "

Indeed, young Gumilyov was close only with his mother. According to all evidence, she was a strong-willed woman, a good housewife, devoutly taking care of her elderly, sick (rheumatism acquired in the Navy) and despotic husband. And at the same time, she was a rather subtle and sensitive person.

“... I was tormented and angry when my brother overtook me on the run or climbed trees better than me. I wanted to do everything better than others, to always be the first ... This, with my weakness, was not easy for me. And yet I managed to climb to the very top of the spruce, which neither my brother nor the yard boys dared to do. I was very brave. Courage replaced my strength and dexterity ..

… When the elder brother was ten years old and the younger eight, the elder brother grew out of his coat and his mother decided to alter him to Kolya. The brother wanted to tease Kolya: he went into his room and, throwing down his coat, casually said: “Here, take it, wear my rags!” Indignant, Kolya was very offended by his brother, threw away his coat, and no amount of persuasion from his mother could force Kolya to wear it. For a long time, Kolya could not and did not want to forget even the most trifling grievances ... "

At the age of 6, Kolya learned to read. The first attempts at literary creativity date back to this time. The boy composed fables, although he still did not know how to write them down. Then he learned to write, and began to compose poetry. in the spring 1895 Gumilyov passed the exam for the preparatory class of the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, but the classes at the gymnasium still tired the boy, but he studied at the gymnasium for only a few months: at the end of autumn he fell ill, and the doctors ordered to stop classes. Then the parents invited a home teacher, a student of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, a native of Tiflis Bagratiy Ivanovich Gazalov, who prepared him for admission to the Gurevich Gymnasium in St. Petersburg. Gazalov became attached to the student, although he could not overcome his inability to mathematics. For modest successes in this area, he ironically called Nikolai Lobachevsky. Seeing the boy's love for animals (the already mentioned parrots, white mice and guinea pigs), he gave him a book with the inscription: "To the future zoologist."

Lessons with a tutor fall on 1895-1896 years, Gazalov studied with Nikolai in the winter and spring of 1895 in Tsarskoye Selo. And then the Gumilyovs moved to St. Petersburg, where the boys were sent to the famous Gurevich gymnasium. Lessons with a tutor continue there. The statement of S. Ya. Gumilyov on the admission of his son Nikolai to the St. Petersburg gymnasium of Ya. G. Gurevich is dated April 15 1896 year, and he held the exams in May.

AT 1900 In the same year, the Gumilyovs bought a small estate, Popovka, and the whole family spent several months a year there. At this time, Kolya became interested in zoology and geography, bred various animals at home - guinea pigs, white mice, birds, squirrels.

Gumilyov studied at the Gurevich gymnasium for only four years. At the entrance exams, he showed satisfactory knowledge of the law of God, arithmetic and German, sufficient for admission to the first grade. The teacher of the Russian language recommended that he pay attention to "weak spelling and lack of grammatical information." Gumilev did not learn to write competently until the end of his life, which Odoevtseva admitted not without playful bravado. “You should be proud of your shortcomings. This turns them into virtues... My illiteracy is very special. After all, I have read thousands and thousands of books, here even a parrot would become literate. My illiteracy testifies to my cretinism. And my cretinism testifies to my genius.”

Urgent report on the successes of N. Gumilyov, issued at the Gurevich gymnasium for the 1899-1900 academic year

But if Gumilyov passed the entrance exams well, then every year he studied worse and worse. Next year - not a single four. Threes according to the law of God, Russian language, history (the only subject in which Gumilyov received one four in a quarter during the year), geometry. In geography, he also gets a three on the basis of quarter marks, but fails the annual exam. Explicit and undoubted deuces in Latin, Greek, French and algebra, and in German Gumilyov manages to get even a unit on the annual exam. (In the tsarist gymnasium, this mark was still in use, while in Soviet times it finally merged with a deuce.) Apparently, his poor academic performance was the topic of constant jokes; this theme is played up in Gumilyov's numerous impromptu works dedicated to the translator. Against this background, good marks for attention (four), diligence (four) and behavior (five) look impressive. With such results, Gumilyov left the Gurevich gymnasium.

But if he studied worse than ever, then he read voraciously. Already in early childhood, Shakespeare was side by side with the journal Nature and People. But Andersen's fairy tales were the first book. According to Akhmatova (preserved by Luknitsky), Gumilev kept this book for many years and often reread it. I read everything that was at home and with friends. Then the parents agreed with a familiar book dealer. Gumilyov's writers in this period are Mine Reid, Jules Berne, Fenimore Cooper, Gustave Aimard. But already in the third or fourth grade of the gymnasium, Gumilyov prefers Russian and world classics, including poetry. “The Song of the Old Sailor” by Coleridge, many years later he will translate into Russian - and this translation is destined to remain unsurpassed.

It is known that young Nikolai, who treated gymnasium classes with such disdain, carefully outlined the books he read and made “reports on modern literature” for his father. These reports were integral part"literary and musical" evenings that Dmitry and Nikolai arranged for Stepan Yakovlevich (in fact, this is the only evidence of his any active and interested participation in the upbringing of his sons). The father noted with satisfaction that the youngest son "has a well-delivered speech." Probably, this somehow comforted his parents against the backdrop of his dubious gymnasium successes.

At the same time, Nikolai became interested tin soldiers, and with his peers in Popovka staged battles in which each put up a whole army of soldiers. While playing, he and his comrades organized the "Secret Society", where he played the role of "Brama-Tama". The boys were "obsessed" with secret passages, dungeons, conspiracies and intrigues ... Parents gave each of the participants in the games a horse, and they imagined themselves to be cowboys or Indians. Gumilyov rode both saddled and unsaddled horses, and with his courage aroused admiration and invariable authority among his comrades. All these games did not prevent him from doing serious reading.

In the third grade of the gymnasium, Gumilyov became interested in theater: visiting morning performances was part of the programs of Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium students. He regularly attends morning (cheaper) performances for high school students in the capital's theaters. A handwritten literary magazine was published in the gymnasium. Gumilyov put his story in it. In the summer he wrote a long poem "On the Transformations of the Buddha".

Apparently, a normal teenager grew up from a "witch child", climbing trees, reading Boussenard, playing Indians. Thanks to his courage and erudition, he even became a ringleader in a children's company. Subsequently, Gumilyov determined his “internal” age as follows: thirteen years. Apparently, it was at this age that his sense of self was most harmonious. It was thirteen years old that he was happy, self-sufficient, equal to himself.

Gumilyov turned thirteen years old in 1899 year. A year later, he, along with his parents, left the capital. AT 1899 year, the whole family due to the state of health of his father, and Nikolai entered the 4th grade for the second time, at the 2nd Tiflis gymnasium. He studied there for six months, and on January 5 1901 years, his parents transferred him to the 1st Tiflis Men's Gymnasium. Success is slightly better than in St. Petersburg. In history for 1900-1901, he even gets an A, in geography - a B, in other subjects - a C. In Greek, he had to take a transitional exam, but in the end he received his triple in this subject as well - and finally moved to the fifth grade. It is known that Gumilyov had to take exams in the fall in order to move to the sixth grade. In the sixth grade (1902/03 academic year), Gumilyov had six fours: in the law of God, French, history, geography, and, oddly enough, in German and physics. In other subjects (Russian, Latin, Greek, mathematics) - three.

He continues to read a lot, write poetry and on September 8 1902 of the year he appeared in the newspaper "Tiflis Leaf" with his first own poem "I fled from the cities to the forest." This publication gave the author not only pleasure - he finally determined his path.

AT 1903 year the whole family returns to Tsarskoye Selo, and Nikolai enters the Nikolaev Men's Gymnasium, the director of which is the famous poet I.F. Annensky, who had a great influence on his students. AT 1905 Nikolai Gumilyov published his first collection of poems, The Path of the Conquistadors. AT 1906 year he works on the drama "The Jester of King Batignolles", which he never finished.

When Gumilyov, according to the results of his studies, was on the verge of being expelled from the gymnasium, I.F. Annensky insisted on leaving the student, saying: "All this is true, but he writes poetry."

N. Gumilyov's closest friend during his studies at the Nikolaev Gymnasium was the only peer with whom he could discuss his poems and modernist poetry. As a friend of Andrei, Nikolai began to visit the house, thanks to which he got the opportunity to see his sister Anna (Akhmatova) more often - the subject of unrequited love from the gymnasium.

Judging by the fragmentary recollections of fellow students, Nikolai was far from gymnasium life and was burdened by the misunderstanding of his peers. “For a year now, I haven’t been able to talk to anyone the way I would like ...”- he wrote to V. Bryusov from Tsarskoye Selo on May 8 1906 of the year. Anna Akhmatova said, though mainly about fellow citizens, and not about fellow students, that the Tsarskoye villagers and Nikolai Stepanovich treated each other unkindly: “He was such an ugly duckling in the eyes of the Tsarskoye villagers,” "Nikolai Stepanovich could not bear the Tsarskoselov at all." The Tsarskosels did not understand the young poet, did not appreciate his poetry, and there were even "rather animal-like people" 1 .

May the reader forgive us for the dispute in absentia with the great Akhmatova, but it seems that the rejection of Gumilyov's youthful poems and modernist poetry is not a sign of backwardness in broad sense this word and, moreover, a sign "bestiality". Indeed, many worthy and significant people came out of the inhabitants of Tsarskoye Selo at the beginning of the 20th century, including classmates of Nikolai Gumilyov.

N.S. Gumilyov, 1906 33

Little factual material has been preserved about the period of study of N. Gumilyov at the Nikolaev Gymnasium. These are fragmentary memoirs of Gumilyov's fellow students (not classmates):, L. Arens, and, Tsarskosel, Akhmatova's girlfriend and N. Gumilyov's half-sister A.S. Sverchkova, as well as gymnasium documents and testimonies of A. Akhmatova, a gymnasium teacher, the parents of a classmate, etc., collected by .

Of these, we know that for the first time Kolya Gumilyov entered the autumn 1894, but having studied at the gymnasium for only a few months, he was forced to switch to home schooling due to illness.

Again the threshold of the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium he crossed only in the fall 1903 year, enrolling in the 7th grade after the return of the family from Tiflis.

Nikolai studied at the gymnasium poorly and reluctantly, in the spring 1904 year could not pass the transfer exams and was left for the second year in the seventh grade. But he enjoyed learning French: "Nikolai tried at the French lessons, where they gave lectures, then. And this is not surprising, because Gumilyov was keenly interested in French symbolists and wanted to read them in the original."

The young poet was not left with his attention and support by his Teacher - I.F. Annensky. Probably, communication with the director and the Teacher did not immediately become informal. The impetus, most likely, was published in October 1905 the first book of poems by Gumilyov "The Way of the Conquistador":

Gumilyov gave the book to his acquaintances - up to the maid Zina, who soon passed from the Gumilyovs to the Klenovskys and proudly showed the new young gentleman the book of the old one.

“After the book was published, Gumilyov began to communicate with I.F. Annensky. Probably, because of the difference in years and positions - the gymnasium student and the director of the gymnasium - at first it was still distant, rather like this: he began to visit Innokenty Fedorovich ” 2 .

A copy of the collection presented to Annensky, he will inscribe with a quatrain dedicated to him:

To the one who was in love like Ixion

Not in our earthly joys, but in others,

Who created Quiet songs gentle dream,

Here Gumilyov mentions the published original tragedies of Annensky: “Tsar Ixion” and “Laodamia”, as well as a collection of his poems “Quiet Songs”. After the publication of his first "Book of Reflections" - a collection of literary-critical articles on Russian classics ( 1906 ), Annensky will make a dedicatory inscription for Gumilyov on his copy:

Between us the twilight of life is long,
But I do not reproach this dusk,
And my sunset is cold melon
With joy, he looks at the dawn. 3 .

“Gumilyov, who was on duty in the class, before the Latin lesson, put his little book into the class magazine brought from the teacher’s room and put it on the pulpit ... The bell rang, announcing the “big change”, and Annensky left the class with the magazine in his hands. The change ended, and Gumilyov went to the teachers' room for a magazine for another teacher, and walking back along long corridor, discovered the director's gift."

Absurdity upon absurdity: it is probably assumed that Annensky, who did not advertise his poetic studies, came to lessons with a copy of Quiet Songs ready - just in case. Or at a big break he ran home for a book of his poems for Gumilyov's loser? The fact that he taught not Latin, but Greek, in this case already secondary. And why would Gumilyov, who is well acquainted with the same Krivich, pass the book on to his father in such an exotic way? The most important thing is that Annensky’s inscription in verse (as it became known after its facsimile publication in “Day of Poetry. 1986”) was made not on “Quiet Songs”, but on the “First Book of Reflections”, published a year after “The Way of the Conquistadors” - in 1906 and under the real name of the author. 19

In any case, personal communication between Gumilyov and Annensky began precisely with the “Way of the Conquistadors”. Of course, already then Annensky recognized a real poet in Gumilyov, and his message is reminiscent of the transfer of the creative baton by the poet Derzhavin to the young Pushkin.

spring 1906 N. Gumilyov passed his final exams and on May 30 received a matriculation certificate, in which fives were listed only in the Russian language and logic. 24 Gumilyov's marks in the certificate (according to the results of the year / final tests):

• Law of God - 4 / 3
• Russian language - 4 / 5
• Logic - 5 / -
• Latin - 3 / 3
• Greek - 3 / -
• Mathematics - 3 / 3
• Physics - 3 / -
• Mathematical geography - 3 / 3
• History - 4 / 4
• Geography - 4 / -
• French — 4 / 4

“Gumilyov answered badly in the exam. He was asked why he did not prepare well for the exams? Nikolai Stepanovich replied: “I think that coming to an exam prepared for it is like playing with marked cards. 2 .

At the exam, he also received an A in Russian. There is a noteworthy testimonial from the same teacher about this examination:

“When asked what is remarkable about Pushkin's poetry, Gumilyov calmly replied: “Crystal”. To understand the power of this answer, one must understand that we teachers were completely alien new literature, decadence. This answer hit us like a butt on the head. We laughed out loud!” But still got five.

It could have been worse, especially since Gumilyov's interests by that time were already quite far from the gymnasium walls whitewashed by the new director. Tsarskosel very funny told how the schoolboy Gumilyov, tirelessly caring for the young ladies, begged one of them for an hour, driving her in a cab:

Let's be like the sun!

To be like the sun then meant to fulfill Balmont's covenant:

I want to be bold, I want to be bold
Weave wreaths from juicy bunches,
I want to get drunk on a luxurious body,
I want to rip off his clothes.

Much more than the study of his thoughts was occupied by poetry and a student of the Mariinsky Gymnasium Anya Gorenko, with whom he began to meet regularly from the spring of 1904. Anna and Nikolai met on Christmas Eve - December 24 1903 G.

This meeting with slight inaccuracies was described in her memoirs by Akhmatova's friend of her life -

"... Anya met Kolya Gumilyov, then a seventh-grade schoolboy, in 1904, on Christmas Eve. We left the house, Anya and I with my younger brother Seryozha, to buy some decorations for the Christmas tree, which we always had on the first Christmas Day. It was a wonderful sunny day. Near Gostiny Dvor we met the "Gumilyov boys": Mitya, the eldest, who studied at the Naval Cadet Corps, and his brother Kolya, a gymnasium student at the Imperial Nikolaev Gymnasium.

I used to know them, we had a common music teacher - Elizaveta Mikhailovna Bazhenova. It was she who brought her pet Mitya to our house and a little later introduced me to Kolya. Having met them on the street, we went further together, Mitya and I, Anya and Kolya, for shopping, and they took us home. Anya was not at all interested in this meeting, and I was all the less, because with Mitya I was always bored; I thought (and I was already fifteen then!) that he had no merit to be marked by me..." 18

Then 14-year-old Anya Gorenko was a slender girl with huge gray eyes that stood out sharply against the background of a pale face and straight black hair. Seeing her chiseled profile, an ugly 17-year-old boy realized that from now on and forever this girl would become his muse, his Beautiful Lady, for whom he would live, write poetry and perform feats.

Anya was an old-timer in Tsarskoye Selo—her family had lived here for more than ten years. The Gumilyovs had recently returned to Tsarskoye Selo after an eight-year break, and Kolya still could not get used to the "new place".

Most of all, the boy was upset that he did not have a relationship with classmates at all. Kolya had a hard time finding mutual language with peers. Tall, slightly ungainly, slightly squinting eyes, burry and very ceremonial in address, he stood out sharply against the background of other seventh-graders of the Tsarskoye Selo Imperial Nikolaev Gymnasium.

The poet and essayist Nikolai Otsup recalled Gumilyov:

“He is so important and slow, as now, he says something to my older brother Mikhail. Brother and Gumilyov were either in the same class, or Gumilyov was a younger class. I am 10 years younger than my brother, which means that I was then six years old, and Gumilyov was fifteen years old. And yet I remembered Gumilyov very well, because I had never seen a more peculiar face in Tsarskoe Selo either then or since. A strongly elongated, as if elongated head, slanting eyes, heavy slow movements, and, on top of everything, a very difficult pronunciation - how not to remember!

“He was not handsome,” confirms Valeria Sreznevskaya in her memoirs, “in this early period he was somewhat wooden, arrogant in appearance and very insecure inside ... He was tall, thin, with very beautiful hands, a somewhat elongated pale face, - I would say, not very noticeable appearance, but not devoid of elegance. So, blond, which in the north we can often meet.

At that time, the ardent young man tried with might and main to imitate his idol Oscar Wilde. He wore a top hat, curled his hair and even lightly tinted his lips. However, in order to complete the image of a tragic, mysterious, slightly broken character, Gumilev lacked one detail. All such heroes were certainly consumed by a fatal passion, tormented by unrequited or forbidden love - in general, they were extremely unhappy in their personal lives.

Anya Gorenko was perfect for the role of a beautiful but cruel lover. However, Anna was in love with another. Vladimir Golenishchev-Kutuzov (also a graduate of the Nikolaev Gymnasium, but in 1900), and then a tutor from St. Petersburg, was the main character in her girlish dreams.

From the available memories, it is rather difficult to imagine an integral portrait of Gumilyov the high school student. Most memoirists noted Gumilyov's detachment from gymnasium life, a desire to assert himself in poetry, and some self-doubt.

On top of that, Gumilyov wrote poetry, and poetry is not classical and not heroic - he was an adherent of the modernist direction in poetry. His peers did not understand and did not accept such creativity.

A semi-mythical story is known, told that on Anya Gorenko's name day he presented her with a bouquet of roses, which turned out to be the ninth such bouquet. Touched to the core, Gumilyov immediately went to the imperial flower garden, contrived to pick roses there, and an hour later presented them to the birthday girl with the words: “You don’t have anything like that. These are the flowers of the Empress!” 6.

In the winter of 1903-1904, Nikolai and Kurt devoted all their free time to playing vint. “At one such game they quarreled, and a duel with swords was decided. There were no dueling swords, and we had to use training foils, but since the latter are equipped with safety plates at the ends, our heroes, without hesitation, went out into the street and began to grind metal circles on stones. The duelists gathered to sort things out in the nearby forest in Vyritsa, but Nikolai's brother Dmitry, who arrived in time 5 minutes before the train left (he was warned about the quarrel), upset the duel, saying that the director immediately demanded them to him. "The duel did not take place, and for a long time in Tsarskoye they laughed, remembering the rapiers."

There are several verbal portraits of N. Gumilyov of that time, in which an elongated face, squinting eyes, and beautiful hands are emphasized.

“He was not handsome in this early period, he was somewhat wooden, arrogant on the outside and very insecure on the inside.<...>Tall, thin, with very beautiful hands, a somewhat elongated pale face, I would say, not very noticeable in appearance, but not devoid of elegance ”(V. Sreznevskaya); “Ugly, but with a carefully made parting in the middle of his head, he always walked in a uniform, it seems, on a white lining, which was considered among the high school students the highest chic”(N. Punin).

Nikolai was jealous of his appearance, V. Luknitskaya (1990) says that Gumilyov considered himself ugly and suffered from this. In the evenings, he "locked the door and, standing in front of a mirror, hypnotized himself to become handsome."

And if written evidence of the gymnasium period of the life of Nikolai Gumilyov, at least in small quantities, has been preserved, then until recently it was believed that not a single one of his visual images of this period of life was preserved. However, the discovery and clarification of the date of the famous photo of Gumilyov (they are discussed below), made by K. Finkelstein (biographer of the graduates of the Nikolaev gymnasium), we hope, will be able to refute the previous statement.

In the gymnasium handwritten magazine "Young Labor" 8 for 1906 /1907 academic year, among the prose and poetry of students were given their drawings on the themes of school life. The 13th issue of the magazine contains a drawing depicting a high school student with a mustache, in a uniform with a high stand-up collar, admiring himself in front of a mirror. The caricature is given without a title and without the signature of the author, so at first glance, it may seem that it represents a collective image of a nameless high school student.

But let's compare this drawing with the image of Gumilyov, given in the memoir story "Poets of the Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium" by Dm. Klenovsky:

“I began to look closely at Gumilyov in the gymnasium. But with caution - after all, he was older than me by 6 or 7 classes! Therefore, I did not see it properly ... And if I remember something, the external is so pure. I remember that he was always especially clean, even smartly dressed, In the gymnasium magazine there was a caricature of him: he stood, preening, in front of a mirror, pulled into a uniform, in trousers with thongs, in patent leather boots.

Everything fits together: a dandy look, and a mirror, and trousers with hairpins, and patent leather shoes. Does it really depict Nikolai Gumilyov?

Here we can only make assumptions. It is possible, of course, that the schoolboy in the drawing is a collective image, and Klenovsky connected him with Gumilyov later, since the story-memoir was written by him almost 50 years after graduating from the gymnasium. But in the cited article, memory does not fail the author in the list of students and in the presentation of events. It is unlikely that he could write about Gumilyov and a caricature only for the "red word".

It is impossible not to notice a certain similarity between the image in the figure 1907 year and famous photo Gumilyov in a uniform with a high standing collar: mustache, uniform, elongated neck, hairstyle. It is believed that this photograph is dated 1908 th year, since it is kept in Gumilyov's student file 1908 of the year. But this is a standard graduation business card, which graduates of the Nikolaev gymnasium ordered from Tsarskoye Selo photographers, in large quantities, in the last days of May or the first days of June. They were exchanged when parting with classmates, but, most importantly, up to 3 of these photographs were required to submit documents to the university. There are more than fifty such photographs in the Museum of the Nikolaev Gymnasium.

An interesting remark characterizing N. Gumilyov, a high school student, was made by a specialist in the history of costume O. A. Khoroshilova (L. Punin’s granddaughter), having familiarized herself with the photograph 1906 year and caricature. She said that the picture “Nikolai Gumilyov is depicted in a ceremonial gymnasium uniform. The uniform is absolutely tailored to order, moreover, from a good cutter who understands a lot about "tonality" (this word used to denote all types of chic). Everything here suggests that its wearer - a dandy to the fingertips - is too high in comparison with the established uniform collar and even higher white collar, which accepts the length of the neck (long neck and wasp waist- in those years they were signs of fashionable beauty not only among women, but also among men - especially in the first guard regiments). Therefore, the caricature (pay attention to the similar length of the neck and how it is emphasized by the too long collar) is 90% Gumilev. Moreover, he is depicted in a gymnasium uniform.

The main objection of opponents regarding the cartoon in the magazine may be the question: “Why was the cartoon published in the gymnasium magazine when Gumilyov had already left the walls educational institution? But it can be found quite convincing answer. Most likely, the cartoon was created by Yeshu while Gumilyov was studying at the gymnasium, but it was not possible to publish it earlier, since the gymnasium magazine began to appear only in the fall. 1906 of the year. And if such an opportunity presented itself, hardly anyone would dare to openly publish a caricature of Gumilyov without fear of "serious consequences".

“They were afraid of Nikolai Stepanovich and would never have dared to do anything like that to him, to hurt him somehow. On the contrary, he was treated< великим уважением и только за глаза иронизировали над любопытной, непонятной им и вызывавшей их и удивление, и страх, и недоброжелательство „заморской штучкой" — Колей Гумилевым» 1 .

And with Gumilyov's departure abroad, it became possible to place a caricature with impunity in a gymnasium magazine - in July 1906 Gumilyov goes on his first trip to Paris.

In Paris, in total, Gumilyov spent 19 months, arriving there for the first time in July 1906 year and stayed there until April 1907 , again from July to October and from November 1907 to May 1908 of the year.

The rejected poet again leaves for Paris, believing that the only acceptable way out of the situation is suicide. To settle accounts with life, the poet goes to the resort town of Tourville. The dirty water of the Seine seemed to Gumilyov an unsuitable haven for the tormented soul of a young man in love, but the sea was just right, especially since Akhmatova told him more than once that she loves to look at sea ​​waves. However, he was mistaken for a tramp, the police were called, and Nikolai went to give explanations to the police station. Gumilyov regarded his failure as a sign of fate and decided to try his luck in love again. Nikolai writes a letter to Akhmatova, where he again proposes to her. And gets rejected again.

During his frequent travels, Gumilyov absorbs into his soul the impressions of imperial power and military prowess against southern exoticism, which initially determines his tastes, his poetic style, starting with the first collection of poems, The Path of the Conquistadors. Not too zealous in gymnasium teaching (although the famous poet Innokenty Annensky works as the director of his gymnasium), Gumilyov is very zealous in extracurricular "adventure" reading. After graduating from the gymnasium with difficulty and late, he immediately leaves for Paris, where he spends two years communicating with French poets and artists and trying to publish the Sirius literary and art magazine, which, as the name suggests, is very far from everyday life and intended as can be seen from the publisher's explanations, exclusively "for refined understanding."

Gumilyov comes to Russia only in April 1907 of the year. First of all, he goes to Anna in Kyiv, then to Bryusov in Moscow. Luknitskaya explains this visit of Gumilyov to Russia by the need to appear before the draft board. But the certificate of his medical examination and release from military service is dated October 30 1907 of the year.

From Moscow, Gumilyov went to Berezki (which suffered from arson in 1905 and were soon sold); he spent some time in St. Petersburg and in Tsarskoye. More detailed evidence of this time - from late May to early July 1907 th - no. In early July, he went to Sevastopol, where Anna Gorenko spent the summer. Apparently, there, at Schmidt's dacha, there was another gap. Anna takes back this word, the engagement is terminated.

Akhmatova told Luknitsky that

"at Schmidt's dacha, she had a mumps and her face was closed to the eyes - so that a terrible tumor could not be seen ... Nikolai Stepanovich asked her to open her face, saying: "Then I will stop loving you!" Anna Andreevna opened her face, showed ... "But he did not stop loving me! He only said:" You look like Catherine II.

In addition, it is known that Gumilyov burned his play “The Jester of King Batignolles”, on which he had high hopes and which Anna refused to listen to. Yet their spiritual and intellectual communion continues. In particular, Gumilyov, before leaving, gives Anna a book by Papus. Akhmatova told Luknitsky about this, but she hardly read the occult work. In any case, this reading did not come in handy for her poetry.

From Sevastopol, without stopping in St. Petersburg, the young poet sailed to France on the ship "Oleg".

In Paris in July 1907 year, in the studio of the artist Sebastian Gurevich, a significant meeting takes place between Nikolai Gumilyov and Elizaveta (Lily) Dmitrieva, who will play a very significant role in the future not only in the life of Gumilyov, but also of his teacher - I.F. Annensky. Lilya Dmitrieva is none other than the poetess, the main character in the hoax "Cherubina da Gabriak", because of which Gumilyov will shoot with Maximilian Voloshin.

October 30 1907 year Nikolai Gumilyov is in Tsarskoye Selo on military duty presence, where he was. 28

November-December 1907 year he begins to feel the need for money.

These financial difficulties have an obvious explanation: in January 1908 year Gumilyov at his own expense (that is, from those 100 rubles that) publishes a second book of poems - “Romantic Flowers”. There is a dedication to “Anna Andreevna Gorenko” on her half-title.

Review of the book by I.F. Annensky was published in Rech on December 15 1908 of the year. The day before, the newspaper offered him cooperation as a reviewer. The review of Gumilyov's book was the first one offered by Annensky to the newspaper. She was the most original of all. Annensky, like other reviewers, singles out "Lake Chad" and the "Giraffe" adjoining it. Annensky, on the whole, highly appreciates the book of the young poet.

AT 1908 Gumilyov returns to Russia as a mature poet and critic. However, it soon becomes obvious that he behaves in a completely different way than is customary in the then poetic environment, imbued with decadent "relaxation".

The newspaper "Tsarskoye Selo" publishes a libel in which N. S. Gumilyov and his collection "Romantic Flowers" published in Paris are unjustifiably evil. Many years later, A. A. Akhmatova spoke of this as “obvious persecution by the brutalized Tsarskoye villagers. [...] In this terrible place, everything that was above a certain level was to be destroyed. [...] V N S. tsarskoselam was hostile most of all to decadent poems, then trips to Africa, statements like that his favorite heroine is not Tatiana or Lisa, but the biblical Eve. The tsarskosels never forgave him for this. In the journal "Vesy", No. 5, an article "Two Salons" was published, signed: "NG". An interesting editorial note: "The editors place this letter as an interesting evidence of the views shared by some circles of young people, but do not join the judgments of the author of the article."

Gumilyov leaves Paris no earlier than May 12 1908 of the year. First, he went to Sevastopol, where Anna Gorenko was. Here another “last” explanation took place. Anna again refused the stubborn lover. He and Gumilyov decided “not to meet or correspond” and returned the old letters and gifts to each other. Anna refused to return the veil he had given him, saying that it was “worn out”.

From Sevastopol, he went to Moscow, where he again met with Bryusov, from there - to Tsarskoye Selo. It seemed that the youthful “years of wandering” were coming to an end. But Gumilyov had one more journey to go - before a not too long period of settled life began.

Gumilyov ran for the circle at a meeting held at V. I. Krivich's in Tsarskoe Selo, and was elected. Petersburg newspaper wrote about this: “The young poet N. Gumilev, who made his debut at this evening, was elected a member of the Sluchevsky Evenings. This was the last meeting in the 1907-1908 season. The next season (May 1908-April 1909) Mug six times.

V. N. Knyaznin (Ivoilov) mentions Gumilyov's participation in the circle, which bore the name, in his book "Alexander Alexandrovich Blok": “... even such an essentially poetically conservative circle of poets and poetesses as the Sluchevsky Evenings, by 1909 had at least 10 modernists among its members (10% of the total published number of members of the circle).”

July 10 1908 Nikolai Gumilyov submits documents to St. Petersburg University, paying 25 rubles for the fall semester. thirty

Already in July, Gumilyov wrote to Bryusov about his intention to go “to Abyssinia” in the fall. In Tsarskoye Selo, Gumilyov appears only briefly in August - during these two or three weeks he manages (violating the mutual decision taken, it would seem, in Sevastopol) to briefly meet Anna Gorenko, who has arrived here. Apparently, love, resentment, wounded pride continued to torment him.

"...I am very, very sorry that I cannot take advantage of your kind invitation, but I am leaving just tonight. I am thinking of going to Greece, first to Athens, then to different islands. From there to Sicily, Italy and through Switzerland to Tsarskoye Selo. I'll be back around December."

Thus, leaving St. Petersburg, the poet himself did not know where he was going - either to Switzerland, or to Abyssinia. At the same time, he had very little money with him - the next “Childe Harold pilgrimage” was carried out against the will of his father. Most likely, Gumilyov spent the fees from Rech on him.

September 7 Gumilyov arrives in Kyiv, where he spends two days. On September 9, he leaves for Odessa, from where on the 10th he leaves for Alexandria on the ship of the Russian Shipping Society via Sinop, Burgos, Constantinople, Thessaloniki. He arrived in Egypt on October 1 and spent five days there. In further searches for the exotic, he went (October 3) to the main city of the country, the residence of the khedive (vice-king) - to Cairo. But then he suddenly runs out of money. Somehow he gets to Alexandria. Finally, he borrows money from a moneylender, buys a ticket for a steamboat (October 6) and returns, according to Luknitsky, the same way - through Odessa and Kyiv.

The desire to go to Africa, obviously, arose in Gumilyov quite a long time ago. Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky said that Abyssinia aroused the extraordinary curiosity of Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium students. Like Anna Akhmatova, he believed that officers and Cossacks from the convoy that accompanied the first Russian diplomatic mission served in Tsarskoye Selo, or at least were there. And young Gumilyov, according to Rozhdestvensky, was very fond of questioning the military.

In Tsarskoe Selo, Gumilyov settled with his parents - at first for then (since 1909) - for.

In the Belozerovs' house, the Gumilyovs met their neighbors - a family of artists - a prominent book graphic artist and stage designer, and his wife O.L. Della Vos Cardovskoy. The Gumilyovs and Kardovskys continued to communicate even after moving to Bulvarnaya. O. Della-Vos-Kardovskaya wrote in November 1908, attracted not so much by his poetic gift, but by "some kind of peculiar sharpness in the character of the face." It is surprising that Gumilyov's admittedly ugly appearance became the subject of interest for so many artists throughout his life.

Other Tsarskoye Selo acquaintances continue. Upon arrival in Russia in 1908, Gumilyov resumes communication with, whose representative, graduated from the Nikolaev Gymnasium 3 years later than Gumilyov, in 1909. The parents of Lev Arens were connected by personal friendship with the parents of N. Gumilyov. And the Arens sisters were the decoration of a kind of salon that formed in where the Arens family lived. The most striking personality of the sisters was "quiet and charming, like an angel", a poetess and translator, later a member of the Petrograd branch of the Union of Poets. Nikolai Gumilyov corresponded with her and dedicated one of his poems to her. Nikolay presented Vera with his first book of poems, The Way of the Conquistador, with a dedicatory inscription. Two other sisters - Zoya and Lydia, were in love with Gumilyov, but the poet had a stormy and short-lived romance with Lydia, because of which she quarreled with her relatives and left the family. She lived a long and eventful life and left interesting memories.

Gumilyov's passion for Vera Ahrens was more serious, but, apparently, their rapprochement was prevented by a parallel romance with Lydia. And Gumilyov's planned but not taken place trip to Evropa with Vera Ahrens, as a result, became his next trip to Africa.

Although, according to the memoirs of E. B. Chernova, Nikolai Gumilyov’s nephew Kolya Sverchkov was “out of literature”, he believed in Nikolai’s poetic gift and supported his literary endeavors. In 1909, he acted as secretary of the editorial board of the literary magazine Ostrov, published by A. Tolstoy and N. Gumilyov. Aleksey Tolstoy recalled that “at that time, only his younger brother, a fifth grade schoolboy, yes, maybe a talking parrot in a large cage in the dining room, really believed in Gumilyov.” The fact that A. Tolstoy remembered “Little Kolya” as a brother, and not N. Gumilyov’s nephew, suggests that there really were friendly, fraternal relations between them.

At the vernissage "Salon 1909 year" in St. Petersburg, Gumilyov met S.K. Makovsky. The result of this acquaintance was the creation of the magazine "Apollo".

N. S. Gumilyov and A. N. Tolstoy paid a visit to M. A. Kuzmin.

Start 1909 Acquaintance with A. A. Znosko-Borovsky, P. P. Potemkin, G. I. Chulkov, V. A. Pyast and other writers and artists. Early spring 1909 Acquaintance with O. Mandelstam.

Gumilyov met Komarovsky at Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, posing for her portrait. Subsequently, they repeatedly visited each other. Nevertheless, Komarovsky always tried to taunt Gumilyov somehow and ironically over his mentoring tone. This friendship, however, has always been rather strange.

In March 1909, Nikolai Gumilyov and the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrievna met again, they met at a lecture at the Academy of Arts. From this meeting, a new stage in the life of N. Gumilyov begins. Even earlier, Dmitrieva met Voloshin. When in mid-March 1909 Voloshin returns from Paris and briefly stops in St. Petersburg before leaving for his Koktebel. He meets with Dmitrieva, and at the same time her romance with Gumilyov develops.

At Gumilyov on the street. Boulevard, in the house of Georgievsky, a meeting of writers and artists, whom he introduced to I. F. Annensky, took place.

In May, E. Dmitrieva suggested that Gumilyov go to Koktebel to visit Voloshin, which they did. On this trip, Gumilyov wrote his famous "Captains", which made a huge impression on readers, including I.F. Annensky. Here in Koktebel, Gumilyov's cooling towards Dmitrieva takes place, which will become a fatal circumstance - she caught fire to push Gumilyov and Voloshin between herself and later she succeeded - the matter will end in a duel.

In May 1909 year out of print new magazine Gumilyov "Island", which will cease to exist after the 2nd issue due to the lack of a patron.

At the end of summer 1909 Petersburg, a new literary magazine "Apollo" was created. The editor was the son of the famous artist S.K. Makovsky, but Nikolai Gumilyov soon became the acknowledged leader and soul of the magazine. Either at the end of August, or at the beginning of September (different memoirists give different data), S. Makovsky received a letter by mail signed with the letter "Ch". Thus began one of the most high-profile literary hoaxes called "Cherubina de Gabriak", which will involve Makovsky, M. Voloshin, and, of course, E. Dmitrieva. And even indirectly, I.F. will suffer from this story. Annensky.

August, 26th 1909 Gumilyov filed a petition to be transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology of SPbIU. 31 Attended the lectures of the autumn-spring course. 23

In the newspaper "Tsarskoselskoye Delo" signed by D. V. O-e, a parody play in verse "Ostov" was published - in connection with the failure that befell N. S. Gumilyov and A. N. Tolstoy when publishing the magazine "Ostrov", the second issue which was not redeemed from the printing house, and the money was returned to subscribers.

Upon arrival from the Crimea, Gumilyov, not remembering E. Dmitrieva at all, meets with a young artist N. Voitinskaya, who painted his best graphic portrait, placed in the 2nd issue of the Apollo magazine

N. Gumilyov, 1909. Lithograph by N. Voitinskaya 16

In November, N. Gumilyov came to Kyiv to Anna Akhmatova, where he again proposed to her "and this time surprisingly easily received Anna Andreevna's consent to become his wife.<…>"

The popularity of Cherubina de Gabriac grew. In the second issue of "Apollo" on November 15, two of her poems appeared at once. But then a terrible blow lay in wait for one of the authors of the journal, none other than Gumilev's teacher I.F. Annensky! In order to make more space for Cherubina's poems, S. Makovsky removed Annensky's poems from the set ... Soon he wrote his last poem: "Let the herbs change over the temple of unrest ..", ..

Voloshin publicly slapped Gumilyov, who challenges him to a duel. I.F. was present at the same time. Annensky and said: “Yes, I was convinced that Dostoevsky was right: the sound of a slap is indeed wet.”

The duel between N. Gumilyov and M. Voloshin took place. The newspaper "Capital Rumor" responded to the incident:

"Duel of writers
In yesterday's issue "St. Rumors ”reported an incident between the writers Maximilian Voloshin and Gumilyov and the possibility of a duel between them. The duel took place this morning. The place of the duel is the same where gr. Uvarov with A. Guchkov. The snow, loose above the knees, greatly hampered the duelists, who already did not brilliantly wield weapons - smooth-bore pistols without a front sight. Among the seconds - gr. Al. Tolstoy and the artist Shervashidze. Managed the duel. Tolstoy. At his command, the opponents pulled the triggers. Each aimed point-blank at the enemy. Both did not calculate the recoil, and the duel went well: the bullets buzzed past. The duelists coldly waited for each other's hands, but peaceful relations did not improve. The reasons for the duel are of a romantic nature; Voloshin is offended in this incident.

And a few days later (a maximum of a couple of weeks) a public exposure of the hoax "Cherubina de Gabriak" took place.

A farewell party took place in Tsarskoye Selo, and on November 26, Gumilyov leaves for Kyiv together with Potemkin, Tolstoy and Kuprin. Here, in Kyiv, what Gumilyov had been seeking for so long suddenly happens. Andrey and Anna Gorenko, whose family then lived in Kyiv. Gumilyov invited Anna to drink a cup of coffee at the Evropeiskaya Hotel, once again made her an offer ... And immediately received consent. So abruptly and unexpectedly once again his fate changed. Meanwhile, in Kyiv, he was only passing through.

A year later, this time, the newspaper Russian word"13 (26) October 1910 of the year, in the column "PETERSBURG (On the phone from our correspondents)" she wrote about the trial of the duelists:

"The Case of the Writers-Duelists
The district court considered today the case of the poet Gumilyov and the novelist M. Voloshin. The first was accused of being challenged to a duel, the second of accepting the challenge. In a conversation with Mr. M. Voloshin, Mr. Gumilyov spoke insultingly about one absent poetess. G. Voloshin was indignant and struck Mr. Gumilev in the face. The latter challenged the offender to a duel, which took place in November last year outside St. Petersburg, in Novaya Derevnya. The seconds were: from the side of Gumilyov - Messrs. and M. Kuzmin, and from the side of Mr. M. Voloshin - and Prince Shervashidze.
At the command of the seconds, the duelists raised their pistols and fired, but the duel ended without shedding blood. Mr. Voloshin's pistol misfired, and Mr. Gumilyov either missed or fired into the air. Second witnesses cannot establish this for sure.
The district court sentenced both duelists to house arrest: Mr. Gumilyov for seven days, and Mr. Voloshin for one day."

But it will be a year later, and on November 30, I. F. Annensky, one of Gumilyov's teachers in poetry, the director of the gymnasium where he studied, died.

The funeral of I. F. Annensky took place at the Kazan cemetery of Tsarskoye Selo, but Gumilyov was already far from Tsarskoye Selo at that time - on November 30, on the day of Annensky's death, Gumilyov boarded a train and went to Odessa, his new African journey began ...

Gumilyov returned back to Russia on January 7 (OS) 1910 of the year. I went to Kyiv to meet with Anna, and on February 5 (old style) I arrived home. His meeting with his family was overshadowed: the next day after the arrival of his son, Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyov, the poet's father, died. He was buried at.

On April 5, Gumilyov submits a petition to the Rector of the University for permission to marry Anna Gorenko, 34 and before receiving such, he draws up a vacation on April 14 for a honeymoon trip abroad 26 and leaves for Kyiv.

N. Gumilyov's petition for permission to marry A. Gorenko, 1910 34

April 25 (O.S.) 1910 year student of St. Petersburg University N.S. Gumilyov married the hereditary noblewoman Anna Andreevna Gorenko in St. Nicholas Church with. Nikolskaya Slobodka, Oster district, Chernihiv province. 27 NONE of the groom's relatives showed up for the wedding; the Gumilyov family believed that this marriage would not last long. Even before the wedding with Gumilyov, Anna Gorenko, who became a bride, did not part with a photo of her beloved: “He is here with me ... I can see him - it's so insanely good ... I can't tear my soul away from him. I am poisoned for life, the poison of unrequited love is bitter! .. But Gumilyov is my destiny, and I dutifully surrender to her ... ".

Marriage to Anna Gorenko, who took her husband's surname and became Anna Gumilyova, did not become a victory for Nikolai Gumilyov. As V. Sreznevskaya put it, she had her own complex “life of the heart”, in which her husband was given a more than modest place. And for Gumilyov, it turned out to be not at all easy to combine in the mind the image of the Beautiful Lady - an object for worship - with the image of a wife and mother.

Until the end of April, the Gumilyovs lived in Kyiv, and on May 1 1910 years went on a honeymoon trip to Paris. Nikolai did his best to entertain his wife, took her to museums, restaurants, to bohemian meetings. But all his efforts were in vain. The honeymoon idyll was cut short when Anna Gumilyova met Amadeo Modigliani. Gumilyov and Modigliani immediately did not like each other - the restrained and non-drinking Gumilyov and the "drunk monster", a bohemian ladies' man who did not let a single pretty grisette, Modigliani. But, probably, it was this contrast with her unloved husband that attracted Akhmatova to Modigliani.

Modigliani immediately fell in love with a beautiful young Russian poetess. She struck him with her unusual appearance, the fact that she wrote poetry and the property of clairvoyance. It is safe to say that Gumilyov did not like this very much. After this trip, he lost interest in Paris, so beloved by him, and his relationship with Anna worsened. The Gumilyovs traveled back from Paris with the three of them.

At the end of the message 1910 year, Nikolai was expelled from the university for failure to pay tuition fees. 23

Upon arrival in Russia, Gumilyov worked hard, and at the end of September, just six months after his marriage, Nikolai Gumilyov again went to Abyssinia. The quiet house became too small for him. Thirst for romance, travel to distant Africa turned out to be an even stronger passion. Anna Andreevna really did not want him to leave, but he hoped that a new trip would help him somehow survive the first collapse of his hopes for simple family happiness. And my heart was crying with tenderness ...

At the end of March 1911, Gumilyov arrived from Africa sick with African fever, which would torment him for a long time to come. In the intervals between attacks of fever, he appears in the editorial office of "Apollo" and on the "Tower" of Vyach. Ivanova, writes new poems. He continues to shape the poetic tastes of poetry, although she never really acknowledged this.

In mid-May 1911, Akhmatova left for Paris to meet with Modigliani. Gumilyov still believes her, and thinks that Anna's relationship with the artist is purely platonic. Therefore, after seeing off his wife, he leaves for his estate in Slepnevo. Anna also comes there on her return from Paris. She falls into a noisy and cheerful company of young people, whose ringleader was Nikolai Gumilyov during his month of vacation there. Akhmatova still has "Paris burning behind" with Modigliani, the local public does not accept her.

For the first time after his marriage, Gumilyov starts a serious romance. Gumilyov had light hobbies before, but in 1911 Gumilyov fell in love for real. The subject of his love was young and fragile.

The feeling flares up quickly, and it does not go unanswered. However, this love also has a touch of tragedy - Masha is mortally ill with tuberculosis, and Gumilyov again enters the image of a hopelessly in love. Mashenka's health deteriorated rapidly, and soon after the beginning of their affair with Gumilyov, Kuzmina-Karavaeva died.

True, her death did not return Akhmatova's former adoration of her husband. Gumilyov begins to be disappointed in his wife.

Gumilyov - unique example when a person is ready to practically serve the ideal and in this matter he is militant. Loyalty to his once accepted views and obligations is rigorous. Baptized in Orthodoxy, he, among the skeptical intellectuals of his circle, and subsequently among the tough Bolsheviks, continues to overshadow himself with a sign at the sight of every church, although, according to Khodasevich’s poisonous characterization, “he does not suspect what religion is.” Having sworn allegiance to the tsar, he remains a monarchist even under Soviet power, and he does not hide this either from the simple-minded proletarians to whom he lectures, or from the Chekist investigators who interrogate him; he even manages to write in the sub-Soviet press about his "contact" with the Abyssinian Negus:

I gave him a Belgian gun
And a portrait of my sovereign.

At the same time, in essence, he does not have any personal feelings either for Nicholas II or for the Romanovs in general - rather, for the Empress, who was the chief of his regiment and in 1914 handed him the St. George Cross, who distinguished himself at the front.

Loyalty to the Beautiful Lady? Yes, but not the one that Blok has: this is not just a figurative move, but an officer's duty of honor, reinforced by deeds. A romantic principle, strangely projected into life.

According to memoirists, Gumilyov remains for life either a thirteen-year-old boy playing Indians, or a sixteen-year-old high school student playing knight.

It is not enough for him to write:

And gone into the night caves
Or to the backwaters of a quiet river
Meet the ferocious panther
Terrifying pupils -

- he must personally bring a stuffed animal of this panther to St. Petersburg, and for this he must go to Africa and personally shoot her while hunting. In 1914, he not only writes about bullets, he himself stands on the parapet under the bullets. He is prouder of the rank of ensign more than the title of writer.

He not only describes reality - he lives it, builds it, joins it unconditionally.

What is this reality?

His teacher Innokenty Annensky gives his first poems the following assessment: "Masquerade exoticism." In verses act: Ossian. Flying Dutchman. Pompeii with the Pirates. "The navigator Pausanias from the banks of the distant Nile" ... Antique cohort: Caesar, Augustus, Hannibal ... Warriors of Agamemnon. "Madonnas and Cyprites" ... A large gymnasium set. Plus extracurricular reading:

Hanno the Carthaginian, Prince of Senegal,
Sinbad the Sailor and Flying Ulysses.

Initially, all this really fits into the reading circle of a dreamy high school student, but exotic horizons fascinate Gumilyov even in maturity: “the crazy vaults of Wallgalla”, the mysterious Zanzibar, the fantastic “brother of Algeria, Tunisia” ... Lamentation for the Levant, lamentation for India, lamentation for Persia , crying about black Africa ... "Tsarskoye Selo Kipling" - they called Gumilyov.

In the clearly defined, holographically embossed theater of Gumilev's lyrics, the external scarcity of the Russian theme is noticeable. And this despite the fact that the same Innokenty Annensky sensitively catches behind an exotic masquerade - "spontaneous Russian search for flour", and this flour - from the inability to connect the desired ideal harmony - with real Russian life. Georgy Adamovich testifies: "He thought about Russia all the time." There is no Russia in the verse. This absence, quickly noticed by contemporaries, makes them attribute Gumilyov to “French” rather than “Slavic” soil, which, however, for the 1900s and 1910s does not at all sound like an exposure, but, on the contrary, like a compliment: a sign of recognition of the "European level" of verse.

Gumilyov's pre-revolutionary lyrical collections are sustained in such a detached, world-wide spirit: "The Way of the Conquistadors" (1905), "Romantic Flowers" (1908), "Pearls" (1910), "Alien Sky" (1912), "Quiver" (1915) - Gumilyov publishes these books in St. Petersburg, Paris and again in St. Petersburg in the pauses between trips to Egypt, Abyssinia and Somalia in order to study the life of African tribes (Gumilyov transfers the collected collections to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography).

One of the paintings by unknown Abyssinian artists brought by Gumilyov from Africa

However, although Gumilyov's poems contain a lot of Africa and little of Russia, the Russian pain is felt. Russia arises as a sign of the doom of the romantic ideal, as a symbol of obedience to circumstances. This wilderness, sadness, renunciation of life. This is a world that consistently opposes everything that Gumilyov recognizes and preaches.

In his beloved world, the sun reigns - dazzling and all-consuming. From the first published verse to the pistol flash of the last moment, a fiery pillar passes through the texts "merciless light, blind light ...". Gumilyov's sun initially lights up from the scattered sparks of Konstantin Balmont, with whom young Gumilyov is fascinated.

At Gumilyov himself, the sun not so much warms, shines and pleases, as it burns the world through and through: “Bonfire”, “Pillar of Fire” are the names of his books; fire, parched lips, rubies, hot blood - through motifs. The sun sparkles, plays, incinerates. The world in the rays of the sun "sprinkles", glares, crushes; he lives in reflections; Gumilyov has it - pink, or, more precisely, “pinkish”, stretching towards the sun and burned by the sun. Here is an example of this explosion of colors and feelings from the classic poem "Captains":

... And, having ascended the quivering bridge,
Remembers the abandoned port
Shaking off the blows of the cane
Shreds of foam from high boots,

Or, discovering a riot on board,
From behind the belt tears a gun,
So gold is pouring from lace,
From pinkish Brabant cuffs ...

Here is not just a collective image of a pioneer, where the figures of Gonzalvo and Cook, La Perouse, Vasco da Gama and Columbus have merged - this is an image of the universe, rebellious and crumbling under the blows of Fate.

Gumilyov contrasts the fiery ardor of the universe with the poetics of Alexander Blok and the symbolists. On the surface of the literary struggle, this rejection is recognized by Gumilyov's supporters as a rebellion of clarity against vagueness. Symbolism, in their understanding, is when someone once says something about nothing... But it is necessary to give clear names to things, as the first man Adam did. The term "adamism", put forward by Gumilyov, was not accepted - the term "acmeism" invented in reserve by Gumilyov's associate Sergey Gorodetsky was adopted - from the Greek word "acme" - the highest, flowering form of something. Nevertheless, Gumilyov remains the inspirer and leader of the trend.

Olga and Orest Vysotsky

The meeting with Gumilyov in Stray Dog turned the whole life of Olga Vysotskaya upside down. It is worth recalling that at that time there was already a serious crack in relations between Gumilyov and Akhmatova. The poet was looking for new impressions. And I found them in the face of Olga Vysotskaya. Their romance did not last long. But it ended with the birth of his son Orestes.

July. The poet Pavel Luknitsky recorded Akhmatova's memoir: “When the National Assembly left for Africa in 1913, the mother of the National Assembly once asked AA to sort out the desk drawer. AA, sorting through papers, found letters from one of his lovers (O. Vysotskaya - ed.). This was a surprise to her: for the first time she found out. AA hasn't written a single letter to NA Africa in six months." When Gumilyov returned from Africa in September, AA handed the letters to him with a regal gesture. He smiled shyly. Very embarrassed."

By the beginning of 1914, the marriage with Akhmatova had become essentially formal: the spouses “gave freedom to each other.” As Sreznevskaya writes, “they did not have any reasons for separation or rupture of relations, but there was no very close communication outside of poetry ... either.”

AT 1913 In the year in the article "The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism" he announces that symbolism has completed its "circle of development". The acmeism that replaced it is called upon to cleanse poetry of "mysticism" and "nebula", it must return the exact objective meaning to the word, and the "balance of all elements" to the verse.

In addition to the poems in which this program is implemented, Gumilyov develops it in critical articles - he has been publishing them continuously since 1909; Until 1917, he kept a regular column in the Apollon magazine “Letters on Russian Poetry”, where he responded to all the more or less noticeable poetic events of that time.

1923. Gumilyov N. Letters on Russian poetry. Petrograd, 1923 MNG fund 17

Collected after his death and published in 1923, these articles represent a set of artistic principles that largely supported the claims of acmeism to a place in the history of Russian lyrics: acmeism remains in history as one of the brightest trends in the poetry of the Silver Age, opposing symbolism with its mystical fogs , and futurism with its utopian projects. However, the lively and promising development of poetry is determined not by the activity of one or another "workshop", but by the fate of the great poets drawn into these "workshops". In acmeism, these are: Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Mandelstam; in futurism: Khlebnikov, Pasternak, Mayakovsky; in symbolism - Blok, whose internal controversy largely determines Gumilyov's path.

At the beginning of the First World War, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov volunteered for the cavalry

In January 1915 Gumilev again came to Petrograd. Here he meets Mandelstam (who returned from Warsaw, where he unsuccessfully tried to decide to join the army as an orderly) and his other poet friends. Attitudes towards him change dramatically (though not for long). Now he is a hero, the pride of the Petersburg poetic world, a man of legend. January 27 at "stray dog""an evening of poets with the participation of N. Gumilyov (poems about the war, etc.)" - Potemkin and Taffy. The next day, while visiting Lozinsky, Akhmatova for the first time read to her friends (Shileiko, Nedobrovo, Chudovsky) the poem “By the Sea”. Gumilyov probably already knew her (and Nedobrovo too - that winter he was one of the closest people to Akhmatova): the poem had been written several months earlier.

In early February, Gumilyov was back in the army.

the 5th of March 1915 Nikolai Gumilyov was expelled from the students of St. Petersburg University, as he did not pay the fee for the autumn semester 1914 of the year. And, on December 14, 1915, junior officer Nikolai Gumilyov asks the University Office to send his certificate to make a copy of it and submit a copy to the office of his regiment. 32

The newspaper "Morning of Russia" dated February 13 (n.s.t. 26), 1916, wrote about a new literary club, which included Gumilyov:

"A new society of the club of literary figures has opened in Petrograd -" Bronze Horseman».
The purpose of this society is to unite figures of literature, music and painting on the basis of the study of ancient Russian creativity.
The board members are: prof. K. I. Arabazhin, (Chairman), Yuri Slezkin (Vice-Chairman), N. Gumilyov (Treasurer), Boris Sadovsky (Secretary), Sergei Auslender, Sergei Gorodetsky and S. S. Prokofiev.
By unanimous decision of all full members of the society, they were elected honorary members: even members: K. Balmont, A. Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, A. Kuprin in Fedor Sologub. The Society intends to publish the almanac The Bronze Horseman and the Bulletin of Literature and Art. The Society intends to establish a lively connection with Moscow and local literary figures.

One month later, March 28 1916 year, after six months of training, Nikolai Gumilyov was promoted to the first officer rank. In the spring of 1916, Gumilyov spent less than a month in the “glorious regiment” ... Already on May 6, he again caught a severe cold, fell ill with bronchitis and was sent to Petrograd. It seems to have changed. It dragged on - and looked less and less like the bloody carnival that Gumilyov saw in it at first. He no longer rushes to the front; on the other hand, now no one is exempting him from military service: the army suffers from a lack of people The time has come to "roast the nightingales" - now the "warrior of the second category Blok" is called and sent by the foreman to dig trenches.

Meanwhile, Gumilyov, ironically, is sent to Tsarskoye Selo, to the infirmary located in the service buildings of the Grand Palace. The Tsarskoye Selo infirmaries, which she was in charge of, belonged to. In another infirmary, located in, from March 1916, Yesenin periodically lived, who served as an orderly on the Tsarskoye Selo hospital train. Gumilyov met Yesenin a little earlier, on December 25, 1915.

Akhmatova, together with her son and Anna Ivanovna, left for Slepnevo on May 14. But in St. Petersburg, Gumilyov had numerous girlfriends - he did not feel lonely. Relations with Tumpovskaya were already going wrong. Just at the moment when he was in the hospital, Margarita sent him a “breaking” letter. Back in March 1916, Gumilyov met Larisa Reisner and began to care for her - and often did this in the presence of Tumpovskaya. literary evenings... went arm in arm with me, then with her. "Thus began the most literary of Gumilev's literary novels.

On August 6-10, he received leave and again came to Tsarskoye Selo. Then for another month and a half he participated in positional battles and in a slow retreat.

In August, during a stay at home, Gumilyov and Akhmatova attended an evening organized by Sologub in favor of the exiled Social Democrats. Gumilyov, who was in military uniform, found it inconvenient for himself to speak at a politically colored evening, but Akhmatova read several poems, thus providing all possible material assistance to I. V. Stalin-Dzhugashvili, who was just in Turukhansk.

On August 22, as a well-deserved and twice awarded non-commissioned officer, he was sent to Petrograd to ensign school at the Nikolaev Cavalry School (54 Lermontovsky Prospekt) to pass the exam for the rank of cornet. 29 His address on the certificate is indicated at Liteiny pr., 31, kv.4. With the outbreak of the war, many such schools were created, hastily preparing officer cadres for the army from combat non-commissioned officers with higher education. He was allowed to live at home, in Tsarskoye Selo. The house on Malaya Street has changed: the rooms that Gumilyov and Akhmatova had previously occupied were rented out to a distant relative of the hostess; now Akhmatova settled in her husband's former office. Gumilyov himself occupied a small room on the second floor. The couple lived in the same house, but apart, without interfering with each other.

In these seemingly favorable conditions, Gumilyov in the autumn, upon arrival in St. Petersburg, resumes active literary work. From time to time, he gathers poets and philologists in Tsarskoye Selo - Mandelstam, Lozinsky, Shileiko and Zhorzhikov, Mikhail Struve. He again directs the literary department of "Apollo", and since December new "Letters on Russian Poetry" appear there.

Gumilyov's revolutionary euphoria of the first days, it seems, has completely passed. His few "civilian" poems of 1917 are disturbing and sober. Apparently, Akhmatova, who repeatedly emphasized that Gumilyov "understood nothing" in politics, was only partly right. Probably, in Gumilyov's mind (as in the minds of many poets) extreme political naivete and a precise sense of the deep essence of what was happening were bizarrely combined. In any case, the matter is not in the “monarchism” of the poet - until the summer of 1918, he did not express any monarchist views and sympathies.

However, he did not live long in revolutionary Russia that year.

March 8 old style Gumilyov again in Petrograd. On the same day, the poet fell ill again and was placed in the infirmary, where he began writing “Forgers”, an elegant and quite “postmodern” story. "Man". In any case, it was a way to keep a distance in relation to what was happening - and therefore a sober head.

Discharged from there a week later, Gumilyov attends one of the meetings of the briefly revived Workshop of Poets. He does not live in Tsarskoye, but in St. Petersburg - first at Lozinsky's, and then - in the furnished rooms of "Ira" (Nikolaevskaya street, house 2). He meets Akhmatova, who lives with the Sreznevskys, only occasionally.

Gumilyov did not accidentally stay in the capital. It was at this time that his fate was decided. Somehow he manages to get into the Russian Corps, heading to Thessaloniki, Greece. E. E. Stepanov points out that in this he was assisted by M. Struve, “who served at the headquarters.” According to Luknitskaya, Struve helped Gumilyov in another way: Gumilyov got a job as a war correspondent for the Russkaya Volya newspaper, with a rather large (800 francs) per month) salary!).

Upon returning to Russia, Nikolai Gumilyov immediately gets a job in the Repertory Section at the Theater Department of the People's Commissariat of Education. In the same year, the play "The Poisoned Tunic", written by him in Paris, was published.

Service in London, Boris Anrep.

In March 1918, the decision was made. Gumilyov is no longer going to wait for a "coup" and become an emigrant. After all, the Council of People's Commissars and the Provisional Government, Lenin and Kerensky from a beautiful far away, and even for such a politically eccentric person as he, probably differed little. Of course, Brestsky the world was supposed to shock Gumilyov, but not so much as to prevent him from returning to his homeland.

Apparently, it took some time to settle the formalities. Diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia were still maintained. In early April, Gumilyov leaves the UK and sails to Murmansk on an English transport ship. Before leaving, Anrep gave Gumilyov two gifts for Akhmatova - a coin of Alexander the Great and fabric for a dress.

Gumilyov and Akhmatova are officially divorced, after which both immediately create families again - Gumilyov with, and Akhmatova marries the Assyriologist Shileiko. “Why did you come up with all this?” The parting spouses go to Bezhetsk, see their son. Sitting on a hill, they talk peacefully, and Gumilyov says: “You know, Anya, I feel that I will remain in the memory of people that I will live forever.” Akhmatova inscribes the "White Flock" published in 1917: " Dear friend N. Gumilyov". Relations are moving into a different quality ...

Alas, “friendship” still did not work out. In 1918-1919, Gumilev visited Akhmatova and Shileiko quite often. Akhmatova also visited Gumilev, they also met at the Sreznevskys ... But from the middle of 1919, communication almost disappeared.

Having received a divorce, Gumilev quickly marries. On the one hand, he wanted to oppose his marriage to Akhmatovsky. But there was another, less important circumstance - she was pregnant. Gumilyov's wedding and took place in the spring of 1918. Gumilyov with his Asenka, as he called her, and the son of Lyova from marriage with Akhmatova, began to live on Preobrazhenskaya Street No. 5.

The rather evil epigram of Georgy Ivanov dates back to the same time:

Otsup, Otsup, where have you been?
I wrote a poem
I went to Vitebsk, to Mogilev,
Let Gumilyov praise.
That's how I got it:
Now a poem, then millet,
Now pork, then a story,
I will go again and again.

Gumilyov real world does not know initially, he knows only his romantic ideal contours. He raves about the form, because he does not see the meaningful embodiment of the world. And he does not see precisely because he expects from the world too ideal fullness, too “familiar”. He wants to build on "stones", and around - "sand". Rolling gold.

Gumilyov's world is too hard and therefore fragile.

The running motif of his poetry is the duel. Fatal. Often with a friend. With a loved man. With a woman.

Me from paradise, cool paradise,
You can see the white reflections of the day ...
And it's sweet for me - don't cry, dear, -
Knowing that you poisoned me...

The cross-cutting motive is rebellion, a rebellion of natural forces against the madness of man. The roar of the elements. The inevitability of a catastrophe.

Comets running smoky fumes
Kill the rest of the atmosphere
And growl with a wild roar
Deserts, mountains and caves.

The underlying motive is death. Immediate and inevitable.

And I won't die in bed
With a notary and a doctor,
And in some wild crack,
Drowned in thick ivy...

They wrote: I didn’t guess ... What kind of “ivy” is in the Chekist cellars? No, I just guessed. In 1921, those accused in the “Tagantsev case” were not executed in the basements - they were taken out “to nature” and forced to dig a hole ... wasn’t it here that Gumilyov showed self-control that amazed the executioners - digging a “wild crack” in the thickets? Others were screaming, begging for mercy...

He is not. He is originally and irreparably in another world: in an imaginary world of natural clarity, tragic detachment and a doomed spirit rushing events:

As once in overgrown horsetails
Roared from the consciousness of impotence
The creature is slippery, feeling on the shoulders
Wings that have not yet appeared, -
So century after century - soon, Lord? ..

Not chained to either the age or the country, the spirit asks God about the meaning and, having not heard the answer, waits for the prophecies to come true, and this whole false world will collapse, and the poison of life will finally be burned out of the cosmic abyss.

Should you interrogate me
Me, to whom a single moment -
The entire period from the first earthly day
Before the fiery doomsday?

Could it be that in 1921 he answered the Chekist investigator Comrade Yakobson in this way during interrogations? Or, without hiding contemptuous eyes, calmly agreed that he was a monarchist and that he “did not notice” the revolution?

From the point of view of eternity, all this, of course, is a transitory pattern: monarchies, republics, revolutions, counter-revolutions. For the spirit soaring in the desert, all this is nothing more than "cubes, rhombuses and angles."

The Bolsheviks, the people of the corners, the bearers of cubes and rhombuses, did they know whom they were killing?

In its deepest essence, Gumilyov had much more rights to become the founder of Soviet literature than even Mayakovsky, precisely because Gumilyov's poetry is heroic poetry in its original setting, it is the poetry of duty, sacrificial service, the poetry of the ideal - without breaking itself down to changing political slogans.

However, the ideal is disembodied, it cannot be realized in anything. Gumilyov does not recognize this incarnation in any real "country", not in any "actual phenomenon", not in any page of existence. Precisely because his ideal was initially too rigidly connected with established forms, with the “old regime”, or, as Gumilyov himself notes, this ideal is too “familiar”. So "familiar" that he can never recognize himself in reality. Gumilyov "does not recognize" Russia in the Soviet Republic that has risen from the bloody chaos - like the real old regime Russia, he refused to recognize behind the Blok fogs. According to the catchy, but precise definition of Marina Timonina, a researcher of Gumilyov's position, he did not want to notice either Pig or Holy Russia: Pig was uninteresting, and Holy Russia was not feasible.

That is: the place of Russia is holy, but Russia is not.

Forgive us, stinking and blind,
To the end humiliated, I'm sorry!
We lie on the dung and weep
Not wanting God's way...

This is what Gumilyov has real Russia- disembodied, without shape - Russia is rotten, Rasputin:

... Lights and darkness,
The whistle of robbers in the fields,
Quarrels, bloody fights
In terrible, like dreams, taverns.

And this is eternal, fatal and irresistible. And this exhausts the topic of Russia: ideally:

Golden heart of Russia
Beats rhythmically in my chest.

In real:

Russia raves about God, red flame,
Where you can see angels through the smoke...

In principle, God exists, and angels are visible. But a curse hangs over the world. And over the old world of autocratic Russia, and over Soviet Russia, in which Gumilyov lived for four recent years life.

These four years he continued to work feverishly. He managed to publish several collections of poems under the Soviet regime: "Porcelain Pavilion", "Bonfire", "Pillar of Fire".

After a conversation with AA about a divorce (1918 - V.L.), Nikolai Stepanovich and AA went to Shileiko's to talk together. In the tram, Nikolai Stepanovich, who felt that AA had already completely emancipated, began to say “comradely”: “I have someone who would be happy to marry me. Here is Larisa Reisner, for example ... She would be happy] to ... ”(He did not yet know that Larisa Reisner was already married.) 7

... Larisa Reisner made an appointment on Gorokhovaya Street in the visiting house. L.R.: “I loved him so much that I would have gone anywhere” (said in August 1920).

On April 14, 1919, a girl was born to a young couple, who was named Elena. Gumilyov was very happy (he told everyone that his "dream" was to have a girl), and when the girl was born, the doctor, taking the baby in his arms, handed him to his father with the words: "Here is your dream."

Soon he sends his wife and daughter to Bezhetsk, making sure that the food there is somewhat better than in hungry Petrograd. And his son is there.

Fragment of one of the group photographs taken at the celebration of M. Gorky in the publishing house "World Literature", March 30, 1919. 19

Memoirs of N.D. Beer, the daughter of a teacher and inspector of the Tsarskoye Selo Real School:

"... And the last time I saw him was already in Petrograd, in 1919, on the Anichkov Bridge, where I passed with my father on some cold, rainy, autumn day. Nikolai Stepanovich was in a hat, in a khaki overcoat. On that day for the first and last time I said hello and said goodbye to him by the hand ... "

In the summer (August) of 1920 8 there was a critical situation: Shileiko on Sun. Lit. (Publishing house "World Literature" - V. L.) did not receive anything. Everyone. lit. completely stopped feeding. There was absolutely nothing. Shileiko's monthly salary was enough for 7 days (by calculation). At that moment, N. Pavlovich unexpectedly appeared with a bag of rice from L. Reisner, who had arrived from Baku. In S. D., where A.A. lived, everyone was sick with dysentery at that time. And AA distributed the whole bag to all living neighbors. It seems to me that she only cooked porridge a couple of times. Starvation has set in.

In 1922, the publishing house "Workshop of Poets" published the first collection of N. Otsup "Grad". A few days before this date friend and teacher Nikolai Gumilyov was shot by Chekists, in January 1920 -. Their loss was for Nikolay Otsup a heavy loss and a personal warning. In the autumn of 1922, under the pretext of "recovering his health," he left for Berlin, having parted with his wife before that. Soon, in Berlin, which in the early 1920s became the literary capital of the Russian diaspora, most of the other members of the third “Poets’ Guild” also found themselves: G. Ivanov, I. Odoevtseva, G. Adamovich.

With the direct assistance of Nikolai Otsup, in 1923 in Berlin, three almanacs of the Workshop of Poets were republished and a new one was released - the fourth.

After the war, N. Otsup prepared for publication the volume of N. Gumilyov's Chosen One, and in 1951 he defended his doctoral dissertation on his work.

Vera Luknitskaya: "On my table lay a newspaper clipping - a notice of the death of Larisa Reisner from typhoid fever (February 9, 1926 - ed.). AA was amazed at this news and was very upset, it even upset her. I couldn’t think that I would outlive Larisa!” AA talked a lot about Larisa - very warmly, very well, somehow lovingly and with great sadness. "Here's another death. How people die! .. She so wanted to live, cheerful, healthy, beautiful ... Do you remember how relatively calm I accepted the news of Yesenin's death ... Because he himself wanted to die and was looking for death. This is a completely different matter ... And Larisa! .. "And AA spoke for a long time about how cheerful, full of energy Larisa Reisner was. She remembered her ... " I’m scared by the hand,” said 16-year-old Larisa Reisner to AA at a meeting (in Tenishevsky?), AA told about the performance, it seems, the first) of Larisa Reisner ... - Poor thing - they will talk badly about her, it’s not good to remember her abroad that she so quickly went over to the side of Soviet power.

They write that Elena Nikolaevna Gumilyova, the daughter of Gumilyov and his second wife Anna Engelgard, was not good-looking in her childhood. Then suddenly she blossomed - she became a beauty. She lived modestly and quietly, worked as an accountant. Didn't get married.
The Engelgardts' former housekeeper told (Anna's brother) about the circumstances of the death of Anna, her parents and Elena Gumilyova in besieged Leningrad in 1942: “First my father died, then my mother, then Anya, who suffered terribly from hunger and cold. Lena was the last to die."

The secret of Gumilyov's fate is in the strange attraction of his character for the asserting Soviet poetry, while his behavior is completely unacceptable for the asserting Soviet power.

For sixty-five years, the name of Gumilyov remained under the strictest official ban. Without naming this name aloud, Soviet poets: Nikolai Tikhonov, Eduard Bagritsky, Vladimir Lugovskoy, Konstantin Simonov - picked up the style and revived the pathos of their murdered inspirer: the music of romantic devotion to the ideal, fidelity to duty, officer honor, finally.

The poets of the post-war Thaw also swore allegiance to Gumilyov, and also secretly: in 1967, Vladimir Kornilov wrote a poem “on the table”, which he could print only during the time of Glasnost.

Vladimir Kornilov

Gumilyov

Three weeks of toiling
Whatever the night, the interrogation ...
And neither a doctor nor a notary,
Last but not least, the sailor.

He entered with a black sail,
Will take you nowhere...
There's a Mauser dangling
across the belly.

Revolution with "hydra"
Orders to straighten out
And science is not tricky,
If piit is captured.

... You did not take away in vain,
As if he knew in advance:
There will be a year - hands behind your back
The naval one will also go,

And write down as traitors
Whoever you want soon
And more than contemporaries
Fear is known and trembling.

... It seems that they did not bow to bullets,
But at random
Crucified and repented
On the calvary stands,

And they drank themselves, having lost faith,
And didn’t take out maybe ...
And they shot and hung themselves,
And you didn't have to.

Tsarskoye Selo Kipling
Lucky to save
Officer bearing
And arrogant speech.

... No illness, no old age
No betrayal of yourself
Didn't taste it in August
In the twenty-first
to Wall

Got up, cold perspiration
Without erasing from the forehead,
Delivered from shame
Perograd Cheka.

Only in 1991 Gumilev was rehabilitated.

Prepared by specialists of the Museum of the Nikolaev Gymnasium

Sources and notes:

1. Luknitsky P. N. Acumiana. Meetings with Anna Akhmatova. T. 1. 1924-1925 Paris: YMCA-PRESS, 1991.
2. Luknitskaya A. K. Nikolai Gumilyov: The life of a poet based on materials from the home archive of the Luknitsky family, L .: Lenizdat, 1990. P. 27.
3. Luknitsky P.N. Works and days of N.S. Gumilyov. SPb., 2010. S. 84-85. Subsequently, Annensky will write a review of the second collection of poems by his former student Romantic Flowers (1908).
4. Timenchik R.D. Innokenty Annensky and Nikolai Gumilyov.
5. Hollerbach E. City of Music. Tsarskoye Selo in poetry. St. Petersburg: Art-Lux, 1993. S. 152
6. Memoirs of Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky about N.S. Gumilyov // Nikolai Gumilyov. Research and materials. Bibliography. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1994. P. 398-426.
7. Timenchik R. D. Forgotten memories of Gumilyov // Daugava, 1993. No. 5. P. 157-160.
8. From the diary of Luknitsky 04/08/1926
9. At the insistence of L.M. Reisner, who arrived in Petrograd in August (?) 1920, Gumilyov was deprived of the rations given to him in the Baltic Fleet (P.N. Akhmatova),
10. From the diary of Luknitsky 04/17/1925
11. Finkelstein K. I. The handwritten journal of the Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium "Young Labor" // Toronto Slavic Quarterly. No. 25, 2008.
12. Finkelstein K. Imperial Nikolaev Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium. Pupils. St. Petersburg: Silver Age Publishing House, 2009. 310 p., ill.
13. Olga Hildebrandt-Arbenina. A girl rolling a serso ... M., Young Guard, 2007, pp. 99-108.
14. A.N. Golovkin. In the land of two cultures
15. A facsimile copy was donated to the Museum of the Nikolaev Gymnasium by a private collector who owns the original.
16. The collection was donated to the Museum of the Nikolaev Gymnasium by K.I. Finkelstein
17. Valeria Sreznevskaya "Daphnis and Chloe" / Star. - 1989. - No. 6. - S. 141-145.
18. Shubinsky V. Architect. Life and death of Nikolai Gumilyov., M .: Corpus, 2014.-736 p.- ill.
19. TsGIA SPb. F.14. Op.3, D. 61522. Photo from the personal file of student N.S. Gumilyov. photo color by Olga klimbim, klimbim2014.wordpress.com
20. there. L.1
21. there. L.3
22. there. L.4. Certificate of attended courses No. 5668 dated May 7, 1911
23. there. LL.9, 10. Certificate for No. 544 dated May 30, 1906
24. there. L.11. Baptismal certificate No. 47 dated February 20, 1887, Kronstadt
25. there. L.12. Release certificate No. 43 dated April 14, 1910
26. there. L.12 about. Marriage mark on the holiday sv-ve. Since October 1923, the village of Nikolskaya Slobidka has been included in the borders of Kyiv
27. there. L.13. Certificate of appearance for military service No. 34 dated October 30, 1907.
28. there. L.14. N. Gumilyov's petition to the Rector of St. Petersburg University for a copy of the certificate dated August 22, 1916
29. there. L.19. N. Gumilyov's petition dated July 10, 1908
30. there. L.20. N. Gumilyov's petition dated August 26, 1909
31. there. L.36. N. Gumilyov's petition dated December 14, 1915
32. there. L.33 about. Photo on N. Gumilyov's student card
33. there. L.50. N. Gumilyov's petition dated April 5, 1910
34. They wanted to make a memorial plaque on this house, but there is no absolute certainty that this is the same house: the fact is that there were two Ekaterininsky streets in Kronstadt - Bolshaya and Malaya. Malaya is now called Karl Liebknecht Street, and there seem to be no suitable houses there. And the people of Kronstadt themselves consider this house on the former Bolshaya Ekaterininskaya Street to be the birthplace of Gumilyov.