Max Voloshin (1877 – 1932)
Alone among unfriendly hordes
I don’t take sides, I favour nobody.
I am a voice of springs inside me
Maximilian Alexandrovich Kirienko-Voloshin, commonly known as Max Voloshin (1877 – 1932), was a Russian poet of Ukrainian-German origin. He was one of the significant representatives of the Symbolist movement in Russian culture and literature. He became famous as a poet and a critic of literature and the arts, being published in many contemporary magazines of the early 20th century, including Vesy, Zolotoye runo ('The Golden Fleece'), and Apollon.
He was known for his brilliant translations of a number of French poetic and prose works into Russian.
LIFE and WORK
During the years of the First World War, Voloshin, in Switzerland at the time, showed himself to be an author of profoundly insightful poems, engaging in a philosophically- and historically-based exploration of the tragic events of his contemporary Russia. He was known for his humanism, appealing "in the days of revolutions to be a human, not a citizen" and "in the disturbances of wars to realize the oneness. To be not a part, but all: not from one side, but from both."
Eventually Voloshin made it back to France, where he stayed until 1916. A year before the February Revolution in Russia, Voloshin returned to his home country and settled in Koktebel. He would live there until the end of his life. The ensuing Civil War prompted Voloshin to write long poems linking what was happening in Russia to its distant, mythologized past. Later, Voloshin would be accused of the worst sin in the Soviet ideologue's book: keeping aloof from the political struggle between Reds and Whites. In fact, he tried to protect the Whites from the Reds and the Reds from the Whites. His house, today a museum, still has a clandestine niche in which he hid people whose lives were in danger.
Reportedly, "never were a poet's works so closely bound up with the place where he lived. He recreated the semi-mythical world of the Cimmerii in pictures and verses. He painted landscapes of primeval eastern Crimea. Nature itself seemed to respond to Voloshin's art. If one looks west from the Voloshin Museum, there is a mountain whose shape is uncannily similar to Voloshin's profile."
Miraculously, Voloshin survived the Civil War, and in the 1920s set up a free rest home for writers in his house, in accordance with his rejection of private property. Yet he continued to draw most of his inspiration from solitude and contemplation of nature.
During the latter years of his life, he gained additional recognition as a subtle water-colour painter. Many of his art works now belong to museums around the world, while others are kept in private collections in Russia and abroad.
Although some critics may note that Voloshin's poetry "may be esthetically inferior to that of Pasternak, say, or Akhmatova, and it is somewhat patchy," it has been noted that "it contains deep philosophical insights and tells us more about Russian history than the works of any other poet." Many of Voloshin's comments seem to be prophetic. In a normal state, he wrote, two classes are outside the law: the criminal and the ruling class. Today, Russia has fully realized this principle. Voloshin's integrity and profound ideas made him a non-person in Soviet Union, and not a single poem of his was published in USSR from 1928 to 1961. It has been theorized that "if he had not died in 1932, he would certainly have become another victim of the Great Terror. "'This is not the first time that, dreaming of freedom, we build a new prison," read the first line of one of Voloshin's finest poems.
Voloshin's small village of Koktebel in Southern-Eastern Crimea, which inspired so much of his poetry, still retains the memory of its famous poet, who was buried there on a mountain now bearing his name. His "House of a Poet" (now a museum) continues to attract people from all areas of the world, reminiscent of the days when its owner served as the host of countless poets, artists, actors, scientists, and wanderers.
He is regarded as one of the most notable poets of Russian Silver Age. His poems were set to music and frequently performed by singers-songwriters
MIRROR
I am an eye stripped of its lid. I’ve been abandoned on the ground,
So I’ll dismantle and reflect this world…
The images, they slide. I feel, I heed,
But they are merely glimpses that I can’t hold down.
And often during dusk, when stacks are blowing smoke
Over the blue-lit city, and thunder’s in the air,
They’ll gaze at me, those sleepless eyes
And lips, parched with the darkness of despair.
The room’s inside of me, the water drips.
And shadows shift, they distance from me, growing.
The clock is ticking, the water drips,
One question always interrupted by one following.
And then a feeling, vague
A stirring from below. A happy sorrow, sweet fear of
…………………………………………………………separation…
And I beg of it “just stay, exist inside of me
Don’t interrupt the birth of this excruciation…”
And once again, the clamor of the day,
An ashen face - it’s sinking to the bottom…
But time will finally freeze over this eye
And stretch its dismal film across me.
July 1
Paris 1905
Translated by Masha Udensiva-Brenner.
For me the sense of existence
Is not difficult to realize.
A seedlet that brings forth a life,
A secret of blossom, for instance,
In plants and in stones – everywhere,
In mountains and clouds above them,
In beasts and in starlets up there
I hear the singing of flame....
I’m kneeling down to kiss the ground,
The night wraps everything around,
My lips are feeling it is close,
The wormwood-scented breast of Yours,
Oh, Mother Earth!
UNTITLED
Fine threads paint the sky
Wanting to overtake the day,
And night has tipped
Into my soul, into the lakes.
I want to scream something
Into its dark, open jaws,
To bring my ear to it,
Press up against it with my tremulous heart.
You walk holding your breath,
The fields are freezing.
No, listen…do you hear it?
It’s the earth breathing.
I cling to the grass.
To be yours forever…
“I know, I know…I understand,”
Whispers the water.
The night is dark and starless.
Someone cries in their sleep.
Bottomless, it spilled over the waters,
And into me.
July 6, 1905
Paris
Translated by Masha Udensiva-Brenner
Everyone may be born twice. Isn’t it me.
Born in the spirit,
Right at the turn of the century?...
I found myself in the heart of Asia
Wisely interned there by destiny?
IN PURSUIT
My thoughts chant: “we’re tired…we’re freezing …”
I sleep. But asleep my spirit is restless.
Racing through snowy deserts
In a dreadful, distant land.
My spirit is with you through the rocking train.
My thoughts are chanting on and on,
My spirit’s in Russia, and Antigone leads
the blind man through scorching desert terrain.
My spirit is racing, brushing the plains
Along this land’s tormented paths.
And the fine threads of bloody dreams
Wreathe through the world and burrow into my heart.
My spirit whirls away with you…
Frost weaves across the windowpane
And we nestle against the glass,
Our gazes to the hyacinth-blue moon.
My thoughts are chanting on and on…
My spirit is with you through the rocking train.
Antigone leads the blind man away
Along the rocky paths of scorching desert terrain…
February 1906
Paris
Translated by Masha Udensiva-Brenner.
