Mirra Lokhvitskaya
Encyclopedia
Mirra Lokhvitskaya was a Russia
n poet
who rose to fame in the late 1890s and, due to the flamboyantly erotic sensuality of her works, was regarded as the "Russian Sappho
" by her contemporaries. In her short lifetime Lokhvitskaya published five books of poetry, the first and the last of which received the most coveted Russian literary award of the day, the Pushkin Prize
. Completely forgotten in Soviet times (when she was dismissed as one of the petty balmontoids
), in recent years Mirra Lokhvitskaya's legacy has been totally reassessed. She is generally regarded now as one of the most original and influential voices of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry
and the first in the line of modern Russian women poets, having paved the way for the likes of Akhmatova
and Tsvetaeva
. Lokhvitskaya's younger sister Nadezhda became a well-known humorist writer under the pseudonym Teffi
, and their brother Nikolay Lokhvitsky, a Russian army general and a one-time associate of Kolchak
, fought against the Red Army
forces in Siberia
.
.
In 1882 Maria enrolled in the Moscow Aleksandrinsky Institute, from which she graduated in 1888. According to one popular belief, her literature tutor was A. N. Maykov
, a well-known Russian poet and writer, but, according to scholar T. Alexandrova, there's no evidence supporting what looks like one of the many myths surrounding her: Maykov at the time was working in Saint Petersburg as a senior Censorship Committee member. At the age of 15 Lokhvitskaya began writing poetry and published two of her poems as a small brochure (approved by the college's authorities) not long before graduation. In 1884 A. V. Lokhvitsky died and his widow took the children back to Saint Petersburg. Maria, with a teacher's diploma, followed suit four years later.
In 1888 several of her poems, signed M. Lokhvitskaya, were published in the Sever ('The North') magazine. Several popular literary journals became interested in the young debutante and soon the moniker Mirra emerged, having apparently had something to do with her dying grandfather Kondrat's last words (something to the effect of '...and the smell of myrrh
is blown away by the wind'), if the family legend is to be believed.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya rose to fame in 1891 when her first long poem By the Seaside (У моря) was published in the August issue of the Russian Review (Русское обозрение) magazine. As a promising starlet she was befriended by many prominent figures in the St. Petersburg literary establishment, including Vsevolod Solovyov
, Ieronim Yasinsky
, Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko
, Pyotr Gnedich
and V. S. Solovyov
. In late 1891 Lokhvitskaya married a French construction engineer named Eugeny Gilbert and the couple moved - first to Yaroslavl
, then to Moscow.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya's first major book, a compilation called Poems, 1889-1995 (Стихотворения, 1889–1895) drew a positive response and brought her the prestigious Pushkin Prize
in 1896, a year after its publication. "Ever since Fet
, not a single poet has managed to take hold of their audience in such a way", wrote her friend Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko. "Like sprinkling sunlight..." was the way he described the young poet's style of writing and the way the book impressed him personally. Volume II (1896 - 1898) followed in 1898 and two years later was re-issued, coupled with the first volume, in The Complete... edition.
In the course of the next few years Lokhvitskaya published dozens of new poems including the extensive Him and Her. Two Words (Он и Она. Два слова) and two epic dramas, Eastward (На пути к Востоку) and Vandelin. The Springtime Fairytale. By the time she published Volume III (1898–1900), Lokhvitskaya was Russia's most popular and best-loved woman poet. Far from enjoying her stardom, though, she spent the last five years of her life in physical pain and mental turmoil.
and violent nightmares, suffered from bouts of severe depression, and later from chronic and ever worsening stenocardia.
In 1904 her illness progressed; she was bedridden for most of the year, tortured by pain and anxiety. In the early days of summer 1905, the family moved Mirra to Finland
, where her condition improved slightly, but after her return she was hospitalized. Mirra Lokhvitskaya died on August 27, 1905. Tuberculosis
has often been cited as the cause of death, but this is unsubstantiated: there was no mention of it in any of the obituaries. Lokhvitskaya was buried on August 29 in Alexander Nevsky Lavra
's Dukhovskaya Church, with only close relatives and friends attending the ceremony.
Among those conspicuous by their absence was Konstantin Balmont
, a man who she had been passionately in love with and had had the most unusual kind of 'literary romance' with. It was the stresses of this strange and morbid 'frienship' that, as some believed, became the reason for her psychological crisis, and led to her moral and physical demise. "Her death was enigmatic. Spiritual disturbance was the cause", Isabella Grinevskaya
, a friend, wrote in her memoirs.
Lokhvitskaya and Balmont first met in the mid-1890s, probably in the Crimea
. Holding similar views on poetry in general, and it's symbolist line of development in particular, they instantly became close friends. Soon (according to the Lokhvitskaya scholar T. Alexandrova) the "spark of love was ignited". The effect of this, though, was not a trivial affair, but the most peculiar and still in many ways obscure poetic dialogue full of allusions, to decipher the details of which one had to examine the whole bulk of the heritage of both poets. In Lokhvitskaya's poetry her lover figured under the moniker of "Lionel" - after the character of P. B. Shelley
(Balmont famously translated into Russian the whole of the Englishman's poetic works in the 1890s), a "youth with curls coloured ripen rye" and "eyes greenish like the sea".
The mutual passion of Lokhvitskaya and Balmont wasn't altogether clandestine: it instigated public discussion and was often referred to as "scandalous". Insinuations were continuously made as to whether the two had ever been physically close. Poet, publisher and literary critic Pyotr Pertzov has called "their acclaimed romance" the first in the line of Balmont's numerous romantic victories. Some suggested that the two might have had a short affair in the early days; otherwise they were geographically wide apart, with Balmont spending a large part of the time travelling abroad. In his autobiography At the Dawn (На заре) he described their relationship as a "poetic friendship". Latter day researchers are inclined to think that their love indeed was a truly platonic affair, but - violently passionate, frustrating and utterly detrimental for both.
In 1901 Balmont and Lokhvitskaya met, apparently, for the last time. Afterwards their relationship, confined to enigmatically constructed poetic dialogues, deteriorated into something rather ominous, full of demands and threats on his part and pleas for mercy on hers. Considering the ever present gothic element in both writers's works of the time (full of coffins, corpses and all manner of "demonic" imagery), this 'friendship', even on paper, was now getting more and more strange. It was apparent that both took their shared self-created world of horror and passion very seriously. Balmont was continuously complaining in his letters of being "possessed" (and, according to many, suffered from Jekyll and Hyde sindrome), while Lokhvitskaya submerged herself in a quagmire of violent visions which, coupled with feelings of guilt towards her family, led to an illness the roots of which were obviously psychosomatic. Some (T. Alexandrova included) tend to regard the involvement of Valery Bryusov
, Balmont's close rival/friend, as the most damaging factor. The well-publicized fact that Bryusov (who hated Lokhvitskaya, thinking she was on a mission to "steal" a friend of his) dabbled in black magic
added another gothic touch to the whole thing.
In the circle of her literary friends, Lokhvitskaya was always surrounded by an "aura of adoration" - it seemed like every man "was a little in love with her". Among them was I. Bunin. In the rather grim gallery of the Nobel Prize laureate's literary portraits (caricatures, rather), Lokhvitskaya was an outstanding exception; in fact, the only person he remembered fondly. In his own words -...Everything in her was charming: the sound of her voice, the liveliness of her speech, the glitter of her eye, her wonderful facetiousness. The colour of her face was exceptionally beautiful: opaque and smooth, like that of of ripe Crimea
n apple.
For all her tremendous popularity, Lokhvitskaya led the life of a recluse. Being reticent, she rarely went out, finding excuses in one or another of her children's being unwell. It's known that at "poetic parties" her arrivals were eagerly awaited, but that her appearances there were only occasional and not necessarily triumphant. "She stepped on stage, and there was such a helplessness in her look that it took away all the attractiveness we've all been familiar with - through this photo of hers, published in all the journals”, wrote E. Poselyanin, remembering one such evening.
Lokhvitskaya's shyness was one of the reasons why so little mention has been made of her in the extensive body of Russian Silver Age memoirs. As A. Volynsky, an influential critic, once admitted, "Sadly, Lokhvitskaya, one of the most intriguing women of the time, left but a vague trace in my memory".
Attractiveness certainly played a part - first, in Lokhvitskaya’s meteoric rise to fame, then in the way people "refused to see beyond her beauty, remaining oblivious to the sharp intelligence that was becoming more and more obvious in her work". According to a biographer, Lokhvitskaya's was the "typical drama of a good-looking woman in whom people failed to notice anything except for her physical attractiveness".
, their brother Nikolay Lokhvitsky (1868–1933) - an army general. Younger sister Yelena (1874–1919) is often mentioned in Teffi's memoirs, while Maria is almost completely ignored. Yelena Lokhvitskaya wrote poetry, translated Maupassant (together with Teffi) and was a Drama Society member, but never regarded herself as a professional. Of Maria's two other sisters only the names are known: Varvara Alexandrovna (Popova) and Lydia Alexandrovna (Kozhina).
In 1891 Maria Lokhvitskaya married Eugeny Ernestovich Gilbert, a Frenchman, born in Russia. The poet's Volume I bore a dedication to her spouse, although later researchers suggested the possibility of there having been "another love – unhappy and unrequited" which some of her poems apparently hinted at. The fact that one of young Maria’s close friends was N. L. Gondatti, a well-known Russian-Italian Arctic traveller, gave, according to a biographer, "some food for thought along these lines".
There was another original aspect that made Mirra Lokhvitskaya an instant sensation in late 19th century literary Russia: the unusual frankness of her verses made her arguably the first woman in Russian literature who enjoyed total freedom of self-expression, speaking openly of sensuality, passion and sex. The famous saying "Lusciviousness means happiness" (Eto stchastye - sladostra′stye) summed up her attitude and for a while was seen as her trademark line.
Passionate love was indeed the leitmotif of Lokhvitskaya’s poetry. Her feelings, motives and inclinations, though, transformed over the years in quick and dramatic fashion, making the decade of her reign in Russian poetry an intriguing field for literary research. The well-known literary critic and author S. Vengerov
who rated her among the "outstanding Russian poets" wrote (in B&E's Encyclopaedia
):"The history of Lokhvitskaya's literary eroticism can be divided into three periods. Her first volume, despite the presence of cynicism, bore the mark of naive graciousness. There were plenty "sweet songs of love", but they were addressed to her husband who brought her "happiness and joy". In Volume II this half-shameful hue of teenagers's delights disappears without a trace. The lady singer's feelings become exremely sultry... Volume III brings her into the third and final phase where darkness prevails over light. There is no joy anymore: hopelessness, suffering and death is what Lokhvitskaya becomes preoccupied with. Lucid simplicity is gone, giving way to decorative quirkiness, with plots becoming increasingly subtle and exquisite...
In fact, there wasn't a trace of lusciviousnes left in the last, fifth volume. Lokhvitskaya excluded all poems addressed to her "spiritual lover", and what was left amounted to a fine collection of elegies full of dark premonitions, quasi-religious fables and thinly veiled farewells to her children. After her death in 1905, the lines of a late 1890s poem which sounded like a perfect epitaph were often quoted:
Meanwhile there were several misconceptions that S. Vengerov in his 1913 B & E article tried to brush away. First, he argued, the way literary historians signed Lokhvitskaya's name to the list of Russian decadents was wrong: "Totally devoid of sickly feebleness and vain extravagance" (generally associated with the Russian decadent movement), she was, "eager to enjoy life, declaring her right to put forth her feelings with all the mighty fullness of her soul", he wrote. In fact, "the poetess's agility was very much akin to the challenge of Marxism
", ventured the critic (known for his leftist inclinations), adding hastily that her "views on the meaning and reason of life were essentially Eastern, the full force of her poetic drive having been channelled into a narrow love theme. She spoke with outrageous frankness - but only of her "soul's fiery desires" and "passion's madness"". Indeed, if there was one thing Lokhvitskaya had been unanimously condemned for by contemporaries, it was her poetry's rather demonstrative lack of "social awareness".
Many saw her as a true mystic poet. Vyacheslav Ivanov
, speaking of Lokhvitskaya’s enigma
, praised her "almost antiquely harmonious nature". According to Ivanov, "She accepted Christianity with all the joy of her unbroken soul, that of a true pagan outsider, responding to Christian demands with her wholesome, natural kindness". Typecasting her as an "original" (as opposed to "proto-modern") bacchanalian character, he wrote:...And as a true bacchanal woman she was carrying in herself a fatally polarized outlook. Passion calls for – and is responded to by – death; pleasure brings pain. The beauty of erotic love and the demonic horrors of violence inspired her in equal measure. With daring curiosity she poised over abysses of torture. Possessed by the devilish charms of the Middle Ages, ecstatically she turned into one of those witches who've known all the joys of Sabbaths and burning fires...
Critic and writer A. I. Izmaylov, rating Lokhvitskaya (in 1905) as the best Russian woman poet ever (in fact, "the only one – due to lack of competitiveness") was deeply impressed by the contrasts of, as he put it, "her unique individuality". "Full of fiery passions, yet occasionally sickly nervous, she entered this world as a strange amalgam – of Heaven and Earth, of flesh and spirituality, of sinfulness and saintly aspirations, of lowlife delights and the longing for a higher plane, the future Kingdom of Beauty", he wrote. Izmaylov admitted, though, that many spoke of Lokhvitskaya's being one-dimensional, and that this criticism was well justified; in fact this narrow-mindedness in her poetry became more and more obvious as the years passed by.
According to M. Gershenzon, Lokhvitskaya was misunderstood by wider audiences; only "those enchanted by the subtle aromas of poetry, its musicality, easily recognized her exceptional gift". Speaking of the postumous compilation Before the Sunset (Перед Закатом), he wrote:Lokhvitskaya’s verse is charming. Rarely was she able to fulfill all of her ideas in one play, but her poetic plans worked - better still, when she herself wasn’t aware of their meaning. In the art of bringing individual verses, lines even, to perfection, she had no equal. It looks as if not a single Russian poet has ever come as close as she did to Pushkin’s lucid clarity, her verses being easily as catchy..
Summarizing Lokhvitskaya’s development over the years, Gershenzon wrote: "While in her earlier poems there prevailed a - "hurry up, lover, my oil is burning" - kind of motif, her latter works showed her soul deepening and getting quieter. As if - the moment she spotted this mysterious pattern of things beyond the passions adorning human life's fanciful facade, the walls opened wide to let her see through into unfathomable space".
...the author suggested that "...in effect, this poem was in itself a good enough reason for Lokhvitskaya's legacy to remain unpublished in Soviet times".
Soon after her death Mirra Lokhvitskaya's popularity began to fade. In the 1910s she was subjected to the "cold sneers of literary fashion-mongers" and the snipes of petty critics. Igor Severyanin
became fascinated with her poetry and even called his fantasy world Mirrallya in her memory, but his affectation, as T. Alexandrova noted, did little to add credibility to the late poetess's name. From the 1920s Lokhvitskaya's name and works were in oblivion - both in the USSR and abroad. Soviet and Russian immigrant critics labeled her and her poetry as "narrow-minded, trivial, saloon-wise and vulgar". The first half of Valery Bryusov's statement, - "For Russian poetry's complete future anthology, 10-15 of Lokhvitskaya’s truly flawless poems would be enough...", - became a cliche, its second half ("...but the attentive reader will forever be excited by and engaged in the hidden drama of this poet's soul that has marked the whole of her poetry"), was usually left unmentioned. For more than ninety years Lokhvitskaya remained unpublished in her homeland .
In the 1990s things started to change. The Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (1994) admitted that Lokhvitskaya's "influence on her contemporaries and on later poets is only beginning to be recognized". The American slavist V. F. Markov called Lokhvitskaya's legacy "a treasury of prescience", suggesting that it was her and not Akhmatova who "taught women how to speak". For, as T. Alexandrova put it, "her poetic world might have been narrow, but shallow - never". It’s just that, according to Vyacheslav Ivanov
, this depthness wasn’t obvious: "the depth of hers was that of a sunlit well, unseen to the untutored eye".
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who rose to fame in the late 1890s and, due to the flamboyantly erotic sensuality of her works, was regarded as the "Russian Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
" by her contemporaries. In her short lifetime Lokhvitskaya published five books of poetry, the first and the last of which received the most coveted Russian literary award of the day, the Pushkin Prize
Pushkin Prize
The Pushkin Prize was established in 1881 by the Russian Academy of Sciences to honor one of the greatest Russian poets Alexander Pushkin . The prize was awarded to the Russian who achieved the highest standard of literary excellence. The prize was discontinued during the Soviet period. It was...
. Completely forgotten in Soviet times (when she was dismissed as one of the petty balmontoids
Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont was a Russian symbolist poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.-Biography:Konstantin Balmont was born in v...
), in recent years Mirra Lokhvitskaya's legacy has been totally reassessed. She is generally regarded now as one of the most original and influential voices of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry
Silver Age of Russian Poetry
Silver Age is a term traditionally applied by Russian philologists to the first two decades of the 20th century. It was an exceptionally creative period in the history of Russian poetry, on par with the Golden Age a century earlier...
and the first in the line of modern Russian women poets, having paved the way for the likes of Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
and Tsvetaeva
Marina Tsvetaeva
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from...
. Lokhvitskaya's younger sister Nadezhda became a well-known humorist writer under the pseudonym Teffi
Nadezhda Teffi
Nadezhda Teffi, known simply as Teffi, was a Russian humorist writer. Teffi is a pseudonym. Her real name was Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya after her marriage Nadezhda Alexandrovna Buchinskaya...
, and their brother Nikolay Lokhvitsky, a Russian army general and a one-time associate of Kolchak
Aleksandr Kolchak
Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak was a Russian naval commander, polar explorer and later - Supreme ruler . Supreme ruler of Russia , was recognized in this position by all the heads of the White movement, "De jure" - Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, "De facto" - Entente States...
, fought against the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
forces in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
.
Biography
Maria Lokhvitskaya was born on November 19, 1869 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her father Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky (1830–1884) was a well-known lawyer of the time, famous for his public speeches, and the author of several academic works on jurisprudence and countless articles. The primary source of young Maria's creative aspirations, though, was her mother Varvara Alexandrovna (b. Hoer), a well-versed French woman, fond of literature and poetry. In 1874 the Lokhvitsky family moved to MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
In 1882 Maria enrolled in the Moscow Aleksandrinsky Institute, from which she graduated in 1888. According to one popular belief, her literature tutor was A. N. Maykov
Apollon Maykov
Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov was a Russian poet.He was born into the artistic family of Nikolay Apollonovich Maykov, a painter and an academic. In 1834 the family moved to Petersburg. In 1837-1841 Maykov studied law at Saint Petersburg University. At first he was attracted to painting, but he soon...
, a well-known Russian poet and writer, but, according to scholar T. Alexandrova, there's no evidence supporting what looks like one of the many myths surrounding her: Maykov at the time was working in Saint Petersburg as a senior Censorship Committee member. At the age of 15 Lokhvitskaya began writing poetry and published two of her poems as a small brochure (approved by the college's authorities) not long before graduation. In 1884 A. V. Lokhvitsky died and his widow took the children back to Saint Petersburg. Maria, with a teacher's diploma, followed suit four years later.
In 1888 several of her poems, signed M. Lokhvitskaya, were published in the Sever ('The North') magazine. Several popular literary journals became interested in the young debutante and soon the moniker Mirra emerged, having apparently had something to do with her dying grandfather Kondrat's last words (something to the effect of '...and the smell of myrrh
Myrrh
Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....
is blown away by the wind'), if the family legend is to be believed.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya rose to fame in 1891 when her first long poem By the Seaside (У моря) was published in the August issue of the Russian Review (Русское обозрение) magazine. As a promising starlet she was befriended by many prominent figures in the St. Petersburg literary establishment, including Vsevolod Solovyov
Vsevolod Solovyov
Vsevolod Sergeevich Solovyov was a Russian historical novelist. His most famous work is Chronicle of Four Generations , an account of the fictional Gorbatov family from the time of Catherine the Great to the mid-nineteenth century...
, Ieronim Yasinsky
Ieronim Yasinsky
Ieronim Ieronimovich Yasinsky , 1850, Kharkiv, Russian Empire, modern Ukraine, - December 31, 1931, Leningrad, USSR) was a Russian novelist, poet, literary critic and essayist, who also published his works under several pseudonyms: Maxim Belinsky, Nezavisimy and M.Tchunosov.-Biography:Yasinsky was...
, Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko
Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko
Vasily Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko , 1845, Tiflis , Russian Empire - died September 18, 1936, Prague, Chechoslovakia) was a Russian writer, essayist, journalist, memoirist, and the brother of famous theater director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko...
, Pyotr Gnedich
Pyotr Gnedich
Pyotr Petrovich Gnedich , known also as Gnedich-Smolensky, was a Russian writer, poet, dramatist, translator, theater entrepreneur and art history scholar.He was a grandnephew of Russian poet and translator Nikolay Gnedich...
and V. S. Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer, literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century...
. In late 1891 Lokhvitskaya married a French construction engineer named Eugeny Gilbert and the couple moved - first to Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl
Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located northeast of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. It is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities...
, then to Moscow.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya's first major book, a compilation called Poems, 1889-1995 (Стихотворения, 1889–1895) drew a positive response and brought her the prestigious Pushkin Prize
Pushkin Prize
The Pushkin Prize was established in 1881 by the Russian Academy of Sciences to honor one of the greatest Russian poets Alexander Pushkin . The prize was awarded to the Russian who achieved the highest standard of literary excellence. The prize was discontinued during the Soviet period. It was...
in 1896, a year after its publication. "Ever since Fet
Afanasy Fet
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet , was a Russian poet regarded as one of the finest lyricists in Russian literature.-Origins:...
, not a single poet has managed to take hold of their audience in such a way", wrote her friend Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko. "Like sprinkling sunlight..." was the way he described the young poet's style of writing and the way the book impressed him personally. Volume II (1896 - 1898) followed in 1898 and two years later was re-issued, coupled with the first volume, in The Complete... edition.
In the course of the next few years Lokhvitskaya published dozens of new poems including the extensive Him and Her. Two Words (Он и Она. Два слова) and two epic dramas, Eastward (На пути к Востоку) and Vandelin. The Springtime Fairytale. By the time she published Volume III (1898–1900), Lokhvitskaya was Russia's most popular and best-loved woman poet. Far from enjoying her stardom, though, she spent the last five years of her life in physical pain and mental turmoil.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya's death
The exact cause of Lokhvitskaya's death remains unknown. Her health started to deteriorate in the late 1890s: she complained of insomniaInsomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
and violent nightmares, suffered from bouts of severe depression, and later from chronic and ever worsening stenocardia.
In 1904 her illness progressed; she was bedridden for most of the year, tortured by pain and anxiety. In the early days of summer 1905, the family moved Mirra to Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, where her condition improved slightly, but after her return she was hospitalized. Mirra Lokhvitskaya died on August 27, 1905. Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
has often been cited as the cause of death, but this is unsubstantiated: there was no mention of it in any of the obituaries. Lokhvitskaya was buried on August 29 in Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Saint Alexander Nevsky Monastery was founded by Peter I of Russia in 1710 at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg supposing that that was the site of the Neva Battle in 1240 when Alexander Nevsky, a prince, defeated the Swedes; however, the battle...
's Dukhovskaya Church, with only close relatives and friends attending the ceremony.
Among those conspicuous by their absence was Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Balmont
Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont was a Russian symbolist poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.-Biography:Konstantin Balmont was born in v...
, a man who she had been passionately in love with and had had the most unusual kind of 'literary romance' with. It was the stresses of this strange and morbid 'frienship' that, as some believed, became the reason for her psychological crisis, and led to her moral and physical demise. "Her death was enigmatic. Spiritual disturbance was the cause", Isabella Grinevskaya
Isabella Grinevskaya
Isabella Grinevskaya was the pen name of Berta Friedberg, daughter of the author Abraham Shalom Friedberg and the first wife of Mordechai Spector....
, a friend, wrote in her memoirs.
Mirra Lokhvitskaya and Konstantin Balmont
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
. Holding similar views on poetry in general, and it's symbolist line of development in particular, they instantly became close friends. Soon (according to the Lokhvitskaya scholar T. Alexandrova) the "spark of love was ignited". The effect of this, though, was not a trivial affair, but the most peculiar and still in many ways obscure poetic dialogue full of allusions, to decipher the details of which one had to examine the whole bulk of the heritage of both poets. In Lokhvitskaya's poetry her lover figured under the moniker of "Lionel" - after the character of P. B. Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
(Balmont famously translated into Russian the whole of the Englishman's poetic works in the 1890s), a "youth with curls coloured ripen rye" and "eyes greenish like the sea".
The mutual passion of Lokhvitskaya and Balmont wasn't altogether clandestine: it instigated public discussion and was often referred to as "scandalous". Insinuations were continuously made as to whether the two had ever been physically close. Poet, publisher and literary critic Pyotr Pertzov has called "their acclaimed romance" the first in the line of Balmont's numerous romantic victories. Some suggested that the two might have had a short affair in the early days; otherwise they were geographically wide apart, with Balmont spending a large part of the time travelling abroad. In his autobiography At the Dawn (На заре) he described their relationship as a "poetic friendship". Latter day researchers are inclined to think that their love indeed was a truly platonic affair, but - violently passionate, frustrating and utterly detrimental for both.
In 1901 Balmont and Lokhvitskaya met, apparently, for the last time. Afterwards their relationship, confined to enigmatically constructed poetic dialogues, deteriorated into something rather ominous, full of demands and threats on his part and pleas for mercy on hers. Considering the ever present gothic element in both writers's works of the time (full of coffins, corpses and all manner of "demonic" imagery), this 'friendship', even on paper, was now getting more and more strange. It was apparent that both took their shared self-created world of horror and passion very seriously. Balmont was continuously complaining in his letters of being "possessed" (and, according to many, suffered from Jekyll and Hyde sindrome), while Lokhvitskaya submerged herself in a quagmire of violent visions which, coupled with feelings of guilt towards her family, led to an illness the roots of which were obviously psychosomatic. Some (T. Alexandrova included) tend to regard the involvement of Valery Bryusov
Valery Bryusov
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement.-Biography:...
, Balmont's close rival/friend, as the most damaging factor. The well-publicized fact that Bryusov (who hated Lokhvitskaya, thinking she was on a mission to "steal" a friend of his) dabbled in black magic
Black magic
Black magic is the type of magic that draws on assumed malevolent powers or is used with the intention to kill, steal, injure, cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences. As a term, "black magic" is normally used by those that do not approve of its...
added another gothic touch to the whole thing.
Personality
Those who knew Lokhvitskaya personally later spoke of the stark contrast between the poetess's bacchanal reputation on the one side and her real self on the other. The blatantly erotic author (whom some critics labeled a pornographer) in reality was, according to I. A. Bunin, "the most chaste woman in St. Petersburg, a faithful wife and a most caring, protective mother of several children". Playing a kind of "Eastern beauty" role at home, she received visitors lying down, languidly, on a couch. But, according to Bunin, there was not a trace of pretentiousness behind this posturing; on the contrary, the hostess greatly enjoyed matter-of-fact chattering about funny and trivial things, displaying wit and disarming self-irony.In the circle of her literary friends, Lokhvitskaya was always surrounded by an "aura of adoration" - it seemed like every man "was a little in love with her". Among them was I. Bunin. In the rather grim gallery of the Nobel Prize laureate's literary portraits (caricatures, rather), Lokhvitskaya was an outstanding exception; in fact, the only person he remembered fondly. In his own words -...Everything in her was charming: the sound of her voice, the liveliness of her speech, the glitter of her eye, her wonderful facetiousness. The colour of her face was exceptionally beautiful: opaque and smooth, like that of of ripe Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
n apple.
For all her tremendous popularity, Lokhvitskaya led the life of a recluse. Being reticent, she rarely went out, finding excuses in one or another of her children's being unwell. It's known that at "poetic parties" her arrivals were eagerly awaited, but that her appearances there were only occasional and not necessarily triumphant. "She stepped on stage, and there was such a helplessness in her look that it took away all the attractiveness we've all been familiar with - through this photo of hers, published in all the journals”, wrote E. Poselyanin, remembering one such evening.
Lokhvitskaya's shyness was one of the reasons why so little mention has been made of her in the extensive body of Russian Silver Age memoirs. As A. Volynsky, an influential critic, once admitted, "Sadly, Lokhvitskaya, one of the most intriguing women of the time, left but a vague trace in my memory".
Attractiveness certainly played a part - first, in Lokhvitskaya’s meteoric rise to fame, then in the way people "refused to see beyond her beauty, remaining oblivious to the sharp intelligence that was becoming more and more obvious in her work". According to a biographer, Lokhvitskaya's was the "typical drama of a good-looking woman in whom people failed to notice anything except for her physical attractiveness".
Family
Maria Lokhvitskaya was the daughter of the well-known St. Petersburg lawyer Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky (1830–1884) and his French wife Varvara Alexandrovna (born Hoer). Lokhvitskaya' younger sister Nadezhda became a famous Russian humourist short story writer known as TeffiNadezhda Teffi
Nadezhda Teffi, known simply as Teffi, was a Russian humorist writer. Teffi is a pseudonym. Her real name was Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya after her marriage Nadezhda Alexandrovna Buchinskaya...
, their brother Nikolay Lokhvitsky (1868–1933) - an army general. Younger sister Yelena (1874–1919) is often mentioned in Teffi's memoirs, while Maria is almost completely ignored. Yelena Lokhvitskaya wrote poetry, translated Maupassant (together with Teffi) and was a Drama Society member, but never regarded herself as a professional. Of Maria's two other sisters only the names are known: Varvara Alexandrovna (Popova) and Lydia Alexandrovna (Kozhina).
In 1891 Maria Lokhvitskaya married Eugeny Ernestovich Gilbert, a Frenchman, born in Russia. The poet's Volume I bore a dedication to her spouse, although later researchers suggested the possibility of there having been "another love – unhappy and unrequited" which some of her poems apparently hinted at. The fact that one of young Maria’s close friends was N. L. Gondatti, a well-known Russian-Italian Arctic traveller, gave, according to a biographer, "some food for thought along these lines".
Critical reception
Mirra Lokhvitskaya's poetry wasn't formally innovative. Critics and admirers agreed, though, that her works possessed a unique lightness of touch, rare musical quality and that she had the ability to demontrate dazzling technical perfection at times. "Exquisite", "colourful", "catchy" and "easily recognizable" were the most common words of praise given to her works at the time. In retrospect it turned out that Lochvitskaya's work bore at least one profoundly novel element: "the outright celebration of a purely female outlook". In that respect Lokhvitskaya is considered by many as the founder of Russian woman's poetry, a predecessor to such groundbreaking figures as Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva.There was another original aspect that made Mirra Lokhvitskaya an instant sensation in late 19th century literary Russia: the unusual frankness of her verses made her arguably the first woman in Russian literature who enjoyed total freedom of self-expression, speaking openly of sensuality, passion and sex. The famous saying "Lusciviousness means happiness" (Eto stchastye - sladostra′stye) summed up her attitude and for a while was seen as her trademark line.
Passionate love was indeed the leitmotif of Lokhvitskaya’s poetry. Her feelings, motives and inclinations, though, transformed over the years in quick and dramatic fashion, making the decade of her reign in Russian poetry an intriguing field for literary research. The well-known literary critic and author S. Vengerov
Semyon Vengerov
Semyon Afanasievich Vengerov was the preeminent literary historian of Imperial Russia. He was the pater familias of an artistic clan that included his sister Isabelle Vengerova, a co-founder of the Curtis Institute in New York City, and nephew Nicolas Slonimsky, a Russian-American...
who rated her among the "outstanding Russian poets" wrote (in B&E's Encyclopaedia
Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary is, in its scope and style, the Russian counterpart to the Encyclopædia Britannica. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps...
):"The history of Lokhvitskaya's literary eroticism can be divided into three periods. Her first volume, despite the presence of cynicism, bore the mark of naive graciousness. There were plenty "sweet songs of love", but they were addressed to her husband who brought her "happiness and joy". In Volume II this half-shameful hue of teenagers's delights disappears without a trace. The lady singer's feelings become exremely sultry... Volume III brings her into the third and final phase where darkness prevails over light. There is no joy anymore: hopelessness, suffering and death is what Lokhvitskaya becomes preoccupied with. Lucid simplicity is gone, giving way to decorative quirkiness, with plots becoming increasingly subtle and exquisite...
In fact, there wasn't a trace of lusciviousnes left in the last, fifth volume. Lokhvitskaya excluded all poems addressed to her "spiritual lover", and what was left amounted to a fine collection of elegies full of dark premonitions, quasi-religious fables and thinly veiled farewells to her children. After her death in 1905, the lines of a late 1890s poem which sounded like a perfect epitaph were often quoted:
Meanwhile there were several misconceptions that S. Vengerov in his 1913 B & E article tried to brush away. First, he argued, the way literary historians signed Lokhvitskaya's name to the list of Russian decadents was wrong: "Totally devoid of sickly feebleness and vain extravagance" (generally associated with the Russian decadent movement), she was, "eager to enjoy life, declaring her right to put forth her feelings with all the mighty fullness of her soul", he wrote. In fact, "the poetess's agility was very much akin to the challenge of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
", ventured the critic (known for his leftist inclinations), adding hastily that her "views on the meaning and reason of life were essentially Eastern, the full force of her poetic drive having been channelled into a narrow love theme. She spoke with outrageous frankness - but only of her "soul's fiery desires" and "passion's madness"". Indeed, if there was one thing Lokhvitskaya had been unanimously condemned for by contemporaries, it was her poetry's rather demonstrative lack of "social awareness".
Many saw her as a true mystic poet. Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov may refer to:*Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov, Russian Symbolist poet and philosopher*Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Ivanov, Russian rower who became the first three-time Olympic gold medalist in the single scull event...
, speaking of Lokhvitskaya’s enigma
Enigma
An enigma is a type of riddle generally expressed in radical or allegorical language that requires ingenuity and careful thought for its solution.Enigma, aenigma, or enigmatic may also refer to:-Music:...
, praised her "almost antiquely harmonious nature". According to Ivanov, "She accepted Christianity with all the joy of her unbroken soul, that of a true pagan outsider, responding to Christian demands with her wholesome, natural kindness". Typecasting her as an "original" (as opposed to "proto-modern") bacchanalian character, he wrote:...And as a true bacchanal woman she was carrying in herself a fatally polarized outlook. Passion calls for – and is responded to by – death; pleasure brings pain. The beauty of erotic love and the demonic horrors of violence inspired her in equal measure. With daring curiosity she poised over abysses of torture. Possessed by the devilish charms of the Middle Ages, ecstatically she turned into one of those witches who've known all the joys of Sabbaths and burning fires...
Critic and writer A. I. Izmaylov, rating Lokhvitskaya (in 1905) as the best Russian woman poet ever (in fact, "the only one – due to lack of competitiveness") was deeply impressed by the contrasts of, as he put it, "her unique individuality". "Full of fiery passions, yet occasionally sickly nervous, she entered this world as a strange amalgam – of Heaven and Earth, of flesh and spirituality, of sinfulness and saintly aspirations, of lowlife delights and the longing for a higher plane, the future Kingdom of Beauty", he wrote. Izmaylov admitted, though, that many spoke of Lokhvitskaya's being one-dimensional, and that this criticism was well justified; in fact this narrow-mindedness in her poetry became more and more obvious as the years passed by.
According to M. Gershenzon, Lokhvitskaya was misunderstood by wider audiences; only "those enchanted by the subtle aromas of poetry, its musicality, easily recognized her exceptional gift". Speaking of the postumous compilation Before the Sunset (Перед Закатом), he wrote:Lokhvitskaya’s verse is charming. Rarely was she able to fulfill all of her ideas in one play, but her poetic plans worked - better still, when she herself wasn’t aware of their meaning. In the art of bringing individual verses, lines even, to perfection, she had no equal. It looks as if not a single Russian poet has ever come as close as she did to Pushkin’s lucid clarity, her verses being easily as catchy..
Summarizing Lokhvitskaya’s development over the years, Gershenzon wrote: "While in her earlier poems there prevailed a - "hurry up, lover, my oil is burning" - kind of motif, her latter works showed her soul deepening and getting quieter. As if - the moment she spotted this mysterious pattern of things beyond the passions adorning human life's fanciful facade, the walls opened wide to let her see through into unfathomable space".
Legacy
This notion of Lokhvitskaya as a "domestic temptress" prevailed over the decades. Meanwhile, T. Alexandrova (the author of the book Mirra Lokhvitskaya: Doomed to Melt in Flight, 2008) insists that the poet was more of a mystic seer than a "sultry songstress". Quoting Lokhvitskaya’s short poem (written in 1902, long before even the First Russian revolution):...the author suggested that "...in effect, this poem was in itself a good enough reason for Lokhvitskaya's legacy to remain unpublished in Soviet times".
Soon after her death Mirra Lokhvitskaya's popularity began to fade. In the 1910s she was subjected to the "cold sneers of literary fashion-mongers" and the snipes of petty critics. Igor Severyanin
Igor Severyanin
Igor Severyanin was a Russian poet who presided over the circle of the so-called Ego-Futurists.Igor was born in St. Petersburg in the family of an army engineer. Through his mother, he was remotely related to Nikolai Karamzin and Afanasy Fet. In 1904 he left for Manchuria with his father but later...
became fascinated with her poetry and even called his fantasy world Mirrallya in her memory, but his affectation, as T. Alexandrova noted, did little to add credibility to the late poetess's name. From the 1920s Lokhvitskaya's name and works were in oblivion - both in the USSR and abroad. Soviet and Russian immigrant critics labeled her and her poetry as "narrow-minded, trivial, saloon-wise and vulgar". The first half of Valery Bryusov's statement, - "For Russian poetry's complete future anthology, 10-15 of Lokhvitskaya’s truly flawless poems would be enough...", - became a cliche, its second half ("...but the attentive reader will forever be excited by and engaged in the hidden drama of this poet's soul that has marked the whole of her poetry"), was usually left unmentioned. For more than ninety years Lokhvitskaya remained unpublished in her homeland .
In the 1990s things started to change. The Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (1994) admitted that Lokhvitskaya's "influence on her contemporaries and on later poets is only beginning to be recognized". The American slavist V. F. Markov called Lokhvitskaya's legacy "a treasury of prescience", suggesting that it was her and not Akhmatova who "taught women how to speak". For, as T. Alexandrova put it, "her poetic world might have been narrow, but shallow - never". It’s just that, according to Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Vyacheslav Ivanov may refer to:*Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov, Russian Symbolist poet and philosopher*Vyacheslav Nikolayevich Ivanov, Russian rower who became the first three-time Olympic gold medalist in the single scull event...
, this depthness wasn’t obvious: "the depth of hers was that of a sunlit well, unseen to the untutored eye".