Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (June 3, 1867, the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province - December 23, 1942, Noisy-le-Grand, France) - symbolist poet, translator, essayist, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian poetry of the Silver Age. Published 35 collections of poetry, 20 books of prose, translated from many languages. The author of autobiographical prose, memoirs, philological treatises, historical and literary studies and critical essays.

Konstantin Balmont was born on June 3 (15), 1867 in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district of the Vladimir province, the third of seven sons.

It is known that the poet's grandfather was a naval officer.

Father Dmitry Konstantinovich Balmont (1835-1907) served in the Shuya district court and zemstvo: first as a collegiate registrar, then as a magistrate, and finally as chairman of the district zemstvo council.

Mother Vera Nikolaevna, nee Lebedeva, came from a colonel's family, who loved literature and dealt with it professionally. She appeared in the local press, organized literary evenings and amateur performances. She had a strong influence on the worldview of the future poet, introducing him into the world of music, literature, history, first teaching him to comprehend the "beauty of a woman's soul."

Vera Nikolaevna knew foreign languages \u200b\u200bwell, read a lot and “was not alien to some freethinking”: the house received “unreliable” guests. It was from his mother that Balmont, as he himself wrote, inherited "wildness and passion", his entire "mental structure."

The future poet learned to read on his own at the age of five, spying on his mother, who taught his older brother to read. A moved father gave Constantine the first book on this occasion, "something about savages Oceanians." The mother introduced her son to examples of the best poetry.

When the time came to send older children to school, the family moved to Shuya. Moving to the city did not mean a separation from nature: the Balmont house, surrounded by a vast garden, stood on the picturesque bank of the Teza River; his father, a hunter, often traveled to Gumnishchi, and Constantine accompanied him more often than others.

In 1876, Balmont entered the preparatory class of the Shuya gymnasium, which he later called "the nest of decadence and capitalists, whose factories spoiled the air and water in the river." At first, the boy made progress, but soon he got bored with learning, and his academic performance declined, but it was time for drunken reading, and he read French and German works in the original. Impressed by what he had read, at the age of ten he began to write poetry himself. "On a bright sunny day they arose, two poems at once, one about winter, the other about summer"- he recalled. These poetic endeavors, however, were criticized by his mother, and the boy did not try to repeat his poetic experiment for six years.

Balmont was forced to leave the seventh grade in 1884 due to belonging to an illegal circle, which consisted of high school students, visiting students and teachers, and was engaged in printing and distributing proclamations of the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party in Shuya. The poet later explained the background of this early revolutionary attitude of his as follows: “I was happy and I wanted everyone to feel the same way. It seemed to me that if only me and a few are good, it is ugly ".

Through the efforts of his mother, Balmont was transferred to the gymnasium of the city of Vladimir. But here he had to live in the apartment of the Greek language teacher, who zealously fulfilled the duties of the "overseer".

At the end of 1885 Balmont made his literary debut. Three of his poems were published in the popular St. Petersburg magazine Zhivopisnoe Obozreniye (November 2 - December 7). This event was not noticed by anyone except the mentor, who forbade Balmont to publish until he completed his studies at the gymnasium.

The acquaintance of the young poet with V.G. Korolenko dates back to this time. The well-known writer, having received a notebook with his poems from Balmont's high school comrades, took them seriously and wrote a detailed letter to the high school student - a benevolent mentoring review.

In 1886, Konstantin Balmont entered the law faculty of Moscow University, where he became close to P.F.Nikolaev, a revolutionary of the sixties. But already in 1887, for participating in the riots (associated with the introduction of a new university charter, which students considered reactionary), Balmont was expelled, arrested and imprisoned for three days in Butyrka prison, and then exiled to Shuya without trial.

In 1889, Balmont returned to the university, but due to severe nervous exhaustion he could not study - neither there, nor in the Yaroslavl Demidov Lyceum of Legal Sciences, where he successfully entered. In September 1890, he was expelled from the Lyceum and on this he gave up trying to get a "state education".

In 1889, Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelin, daughter of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk merchant. A year later, in Yaroslavl, at his own expense, he published his first "Collection of poems" - some of the youthful works included in the book were published back in 1885. However, the debut collection of 1890 did not arouse interest, close people did not accept him, and soon after the release, the poet burned almost the entire small edition.

In March 1890, an incident occurred that left an imprint on the entire subsequent life of Balmont: he tried to commit suicide, jumped out of the third floor window, suffered severe fractures and spent a year in bed.

It was believed that despair from his family and financial situation pushed him to such an act: the marriage quarreled Balmont with his parents and deprived him of financial support, the immediate impetus was the Kreutzer Sonata, read shortly before. The year spent in bed, as the poet himself recalled, turned out to be creatively very fruitful and attracted "An unprecedented flowering of mental excitement and cheerfulness".

It was in this year that he realized himself as a poet, saw his own destiny. In 1923, in his biographical short story Air Way, he wrote: “In a long year, when I, lying in bed, no longer hoped that I would ever get up, I learned from the early morning chirping of sparrows outside the window and from the moonbeams that passed through the window into my room, and from all the steps that reached to of my hearing, the great fairy tale of life, I understood the holy inviolability of life. And when at last I got up, my soul became free, like the wind in a field, no one had any more power over it, except for a creative dream, and creativity blossomed in a violent color. ".

For some time after his illness, Balmont, by this time separated from his wife, lived in need. He, according to his own memories, for months “I didn’t know what it meant to be full, and went up to the bakeries to admire the rolls and bread through the glass”.

Professor of Moscow University N.I. Storozhenko also rendered great help to Balmont.

In 1887-1889, the poet actively translated German and French authors, then in 1892-1894 he took up work on the works of Percy Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. It is this period that is considered the time of his creative formation.

Professor Storozhenko, in addition, introduced Balmont to the editorial office of the Northern Bulletin, around which poets of the new trend were grouped.

On the basis of his translation activities, Balmont came closer to the philanthropist, connoisseur of Western European literature, Prince A. N. Urusov, who in many ways contributed to the expansion of the literary horizons of the young poet. At the expense of the philanthropist, Balmont published two books of translations by Edgar Poe (Ballads and Fantasies, Mysterious Tales).

In September 1894, in the student's "Circle of Western European Literature Lovers," Balmont met V. Ya. Bryusov, who later became his closest friend. Bryusov wrote about the "exceptional" impression that the poet's personality and his "frenzied love for poetry" made on him.

Collection "Under the northern sky", published in 1894, is considered to be the starting point of Balmont's career. The book received a wide response and reviews were mostly positive.

If the debut of 1894 was not distinguished by originality, then in the second collection "In the vastness" (1895) Balmont embarked on a search for "a new space, a new freedom", the possibilities of combining poetic words with melody.

The 1890s were a period of active creative work for Balmont in a wide variety of fields of knowledge. The poet, who had a phenomenal capacity for work, mastered "one after the other many languages, reveling in his work, like an obsessive ... reading entire libraries of books, from treatises on his beloved Spanish painting and ending with research on the Chinese language and Sanskrit."

He enthusiastically studied the history of Russia, books on natural sciences and folk art. Already in his mature years, referring to novice writers with guidance, he wrote that a debutant needs “To be able to sit on a philosophical book and an English dictionary and Spanish grammar on your spring day, when you really want to ride a boat and maybe you can kiss someone. To be able to read 100, 300, and 3,000 books, many of which are boring. To love not only joy, but also pain. Silently cherish in yourself not only happiness, but also the longing that pierces your heart ".

Balmont's acquaintances with Jurgis Baltrushaitis date back to 1895, which gradually grew into a friendship that lasted for many years, and S.A. It was Polyakov, the publisher of the modernist magazine Libra, who, five years later, established the Scorpion Symbolist publishing house, where Balmont's best books were published.

In 1896 Balmont married the translator E. A. Andreeva and went with his wife to Western Europe. Several years spent abroad provided the aspiring writer who was interested, in addition to the main subject, history, religion and philosophy, with enormous opportunities. He visited France, Holland, Spain, Italy, spending a lot of time in libraries, improving his knowledge of languages.

In 1899 K. Balmont was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

In 1901, an event took place that had a significant impact on the life and work of Balmont and made him "a true hero in St. Petersburg." In March, he took part in a mass student demonstration on the square near the Kazan Cathedral, the main demand of which was the cancellation of the decree on sending unreliable students to military service. The demonstration was dispersed by the police and Cossacks, and there were victims among the participants.

On March 14, Balmont spoke at a literary evening in the hall of the City Duma and read a poem "Little Sultan", in a veiled form criticizing the regime of terror in Russia and its organizer, Nicholas II (“That was in Turkey, where conscience is an empty thing, there reigns a fist, a whip, a scimitar, two or three zeros, four villains and a stupid little sultan”). The poem went from hand to hand, it was going to be published in the newspaper "Iskra".

By order of the "special meeting" the poet was expelled from St. Petersburg, depriving him of the right to live in capital and university cities for three years.

In the summer of 1903, Balmont returned to Moscow, then went to the Baltic coast, where he studied poems that were included in the collection "Only Love".

After spending the autumn and winter in Moscow, at the beginning of 1904, Balmont again found himself in Europe (Spain, Switzerland, after returning to Moscow - France), where he often acted as a lecturer.

The poetic circles of balmontists that were created during these years tried to imitate the idol not only in poetic self-expression, but also in life.

Already in 1896, Valery Bryusov wrote about the "Balmont school", including Mirra Lokhvitskaya among it.

Many poets (including Lokhvitskaya, Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Viach. Ivanov, MA Voloshin, SM Gorodetsky) dedicated poems to him, seeing in him a "spontaneous genius", the ever-free Arigon, doomed to rise above the world and completely immersed "in the revelations of his bottomless soul."

In 1906 Balmont wrote the poem Our Tsar about Emperor Nicholas II:

Our king is Mukden, our king is Tsushima,
Our king is a bloody stain
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark ...
Our king is blind misery,
Prison and whip, judgment, execution,
The gallows king, half as low,
That he promised, but did not dare to give.
He's a coward, he stumbles
But it will be, the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign - Khodynka,
He will finish - standing on the scaffold.

Another poem from the same cycle - "Nicholas the Last" - ended with the words: "You must be killed, you have become a disaster for everyone."

In 1904-1905, the Scorpion publishing house published a collection of Balmont's poems in two volumes.

In January 1905, the poet took a trip to Mexico, from where he went to California. The poet's travel notes and sketches, along with his free transcriptions of Indian cosmogonic myths and legends, were later included in Serpent Flowers (1910). This period of Balmont's creativity ended with the release of the collection “Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns " (1905), largely inspired by the events of the Russian-Japanese war.

In 1905 Balmont returned to Russia and took an active part in political life. In December, the poet, in his own words, "took part in the armed uprising of Moscow, more in poetry." Having become close to Maxim Gorky, Balmont began active cooperation with the social democratic newspaper Novaya Zhizn and the Parisian magazine Krasnoe Znamya, which was published by A. V. Amfitheatrov.

In December, during the days of the Moscow uprising, Balmont often visited the streets, carried a loaded revolver in his pocket, and made speeches to students. He even expected reprisals against himself, as it seemed to him, a complete revolutionary. His enthusiasm for the revolution was sincere, although, as the future showed, not deep. Fearing arrest, on the night of 1906, the poet hastily left for Paris.

In 1906, Balmont settled in Paris, considering himself a political émigré. He settled in the quiet Parisian quarter of Passy, \u200b\u200bbut spent most of his time on long journeys.

Two collections of 1906-1907 were composed of works in which K. Balmont directly responded to the events of the first Russian revolution. The book "Poems" (St. Petersburg, 1906) was confiscated by the police. "Songs of the Avenger" (Paris, 1907) were banned from distribution in Russia.

In the spring of 1907, Balmont visited the Balearic Islands, at the end of 1909 he visited Egypt, writing a series of essays, which later compiled the book "The Land of Osiris" (1914), in 1912 he made a trip to the southern countries, which lasted 11 months, visiting the Canary Islands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Ceylon, India. Oceania and communication with the inhabitants of the islands of New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga made a particularly deep impression on him.

March 11, 1912 at a meeting of the Neophilological Society at St. Petersburg University on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of literary activity in the presence of more than 1000 people K. D. Balmont was proclaimed a great Russian poet.

In 1913, amnesty was granted to political emigrants on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov, and on May 5, 1913, Balmont returned to Moscow. At the Brest railway station in Moscow, a solemn public meeting was arranged for him. The gendarmes forbade the poet to address the audience that met him with a speech. Instead, as it was clear from the press of the time, he scattered fresh lilies of the valley among the crowd.

In honor of the poet's return, receptions were held at the Society of Free Aesthetics and the Literary and Art Circle.

In 1914, the publication of the complete collection of Balmont's poems in ten volumes was completed, which lasted seven years. Then he published a collection of poetry “White Architect. The mystery of the four lamps " - my impressions of Oceania.

At the beginning of 1914, the poet returned to Paris, then in April he went to Georgia, where he received a magnificent reception (in particular, a greeting from Akaki Tsereteli, the patriarch of Georgian literature) and gave a course of lectures that had great success. The poet began to study the Georgian language and began to translate poem by Shota Rustaveli "The Knight in the Panther's Skin".

From Georgia Balmont returned to France, where he was caught by the outbreak of the First World War. Only at the end of May 1915, by a roundabout route - through England, Norway and Sweden - the poet returned to Russia. At the end of September, Balmont went on a two-month trip to the cities of Russia with lectures, and a year later he repeated the tour, which turned out to be longer and ended in the Far East, from where he briefly left for Japan in May 1916.

In 1915 Balmont's theoretical sketch was published "Poetry as Magic" - a kind of continuation of the 1900 declaration "Elementary words about symbolic poetry." In this treatise on the essence and purpose of lyric poetry, the poet attributed to the word "incantatory-magical power" and even "physical power."

Balmont welcomed the February Revolution, began to cooperate in the Society of Proletarian Arts, but soon became disillusioned with the new government and joined the Cadet Party, which demanded the continuation of the war to a victorious end.

Having received, at the request of Jurgis Baltrushaitis, permission from A.V. Lunacharsky to temporarily go abroad on a business trip, together with his wife, daughter and a distant relative of A.N. Ivanova, Balmont left Russia forever on May 25, 1920, and reached Paris through Revel.

In Paris, Balmont and his family settled in a small furnished apartment.

The poet immediately found himself between two fires. On the one hand, the émigré community suspected him of being sympathetic to the Soviets.

On the other hand, the Soviet press began to "brand him as a crafty deceiver" who "at the cost of lies" achieved freedom for himself, abused the confidence of the Soviet government, which generously let him go to the West "to study the revolutionary creativity of the masses."

Soon Balmont left Paris and settled in the town of Capbreton in the province of Brittany, where he spent 1921-1922.

In 1924, he lived in Lower Charente (Chatelion), in 1925 - in Vendée (Saint-Gilles-sur-Vie), until the late autumn of 1926 - in Gironde (Lacanau-Ocean).

In early November 1926, after leaving Lacanau, Balmont and his wife went to Bordeaux. Balmont often rented a villa in Capbreton, where he communicated with many Russians and lived intermittently until the end of 1931, spending not only summer but also winter months here.

Balmont unequivocally announced his attitude to Soviet Russia soon after he left the country.

“The Russian people are truly tired of their ill-fated and, most importantly, of the shameless, endless lies of the merciless, evil rulers,” he wrote in 1921.

The article "Bloody Liars" the poet spoke about the twists and turns of his life in Moscow in 1917-1920. In the emigre periodicals of the early 1920s, his poetic lines about the "actors of Satan", about the "blood-drunk" Russian land, about the "days of Russia's humiliation", about the "red drops" that had gone to the Russian land appeared regularly. A number of these poems were included in the collection "Marevo" (Paris, 1922) - the poet's first émigré book.

In 1923, K.D.Balmont, simultaneously with M. Gorky and I. A. Bunin, was nominated by R. Rolland for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1927, a publicistic article "A little bit of zoology for Little Red Riding Hood" Balmont reacted to the scandalous speech of the Soviet plenipotentiary representative in Poland D.V. Bogomolov, who at the reception stated that Adam Mitskevich, in his famous poem "To Friends-Muscovites" (the generally accepted translation of the name - "Russian Friends"), allegedly addressed the future - to the modern Bolshevik Russia. In the same year, an anonymous proclamation "To the writers of the world" was published in Paris, signed by the "Group of Russian Writers. Russia, May 1927 ".

Unlike his friend, who gravitated towards the "right" direction, Balmont adhered to generally "left", liberal-democratic views, was critical of ideas, did not accept "conciliatory" tendencies (changeover, Eurasianism, and so on), radical political movements (fascism). At the same time, he avoided the former socialists - AF Kerensky, II Fondaminsky and watched with horror the "leftward direction" of Western Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

Balmont was outraged by the indifference of Western European writers to what was happening in the USSR, and this feeling was superimposed on the general disappointment with the entire Western way of life.

It was considered that the emigration was for Balmont under the sign of decline. This opinion, shared by many Russian émigré poets, was subsequently challenged more than once. In different countries, Balmont during these years published books of poetry "Gift to the Earth", "Bright Hour" (1921), "Marevo" (1922), "Mine - to her. Poems about Russia "(1923)," In a Widened Distance "(1929)," Northern Lights "(1933)," Blue Horseshoe "," Light Service "(1937).

In 1923, he published books of autobiographical prose "Under a New Sickle" and "Airway", in 1924 he published a book of memoirs "Where is my home?" (Prague, 1924), wrote documentary sketches "Torch in the Night" and "White Dream" about what he experienced in the winter of 1919 in revolutionary Russia. Balmont made long lecture tours in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, in the summer of 1930 he made a trip to Lithuania, in parallel doing translations of West Slavic poetry, but the main theme of Balmont's works during these years remained Russia: memories of her and longing for the lost.

In 1932, it became clear that the poet was suffering from a serious mental illness. From August 1932 to May 1935, the Balmont lived without a break in Clamart near Paris, in poverty. In the spring of 1935, Balmont was admitted to the clinic.

In April 1936, Parisian Russian writers celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Balmont's writing with a creative evening designed to raise funds to help the sick poet. The committee for organizing the evening entitled "To the Poet - Writers" included famous figures of Russian culture: I.S.Shmelev, M. Aldanov, I. A. Bunin, B. K. Zaitsev, A. N. Benois, A. T. Grechaninov, P. N. Milyukov, S. V. Rachmaninov.

At the end of 1936, Balmont and Tsvetkovskaya moved to Noisy-le-Grand near Paris. The last years of his life, the poet stayed alternately in the care house for the Russians, which was kept by M. Kuzmina-Karavaeva, then in a cheap furnished apartment. In the hours of enlightenment, when mental illness receded, Balmont, according to the recollections of those who knew him, with a feeling of happiness opened the volume of "War and Peace" or re-read his old books; he could not write for a long time.

In 1940-1942 Balmont did not leave Noisy-le-Grand. Here, in the orphanage "Russian House", he died on the night of December 23, 1942 from pneumonia. He was buried in the local Catholic cemetery, under a gray stone tombstone with the inscription: "Constantin Balmont, poète russe" ("Constantin Balmont, Russian poet").

Several people came from Paris to say goodbye to the poet: B. K. Zaitsev with his wife, the widow of Y. Baltrushaitis, two or three acquaintances and daughter Mirra.

The French public learned about the death of the poet from an article in the pro-Hitler "Parisian Gazette", which made, "as it was supposed, a thorough reprimand to the late poet for the fact that at one time he supported the revolutionaries."

Since the late 1960s. Balmont's poems in the USSR began to be published in anthologies. In 1984 a large collection of selected works was published.

Personal life of Konstantin Balmont

Balmont told in his autobiography that he began to fall in love very early: "The first passionate thought about a woman was at the age of five, the first real love was at the age of nine, and the first passion was at fourteen."

"Wandering through countless cities, I am always delighted with one - love," the poet admitted in one of his poems.

In 1889, Constantin Balmont married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina, daughter of a Shuya manufacturer, "a beautiful young lady of the Botticellian type." The mother, who facilitated the acquaintance, sharply opposed the marriage, but the young man was adamant in his decision and decided to break with his family.

“I was not yet twenty-two years old when I ... married a beautiful girl, and we left in early spring, or rather, at the end of winter, to the Caucasus, to the Kabardin region, and from there along the Georgian Military Highway to the blessed Tiflis and Transcaucasia”, - he wrote later.

But the wedding trip was not a prologue to a happy family life.

Researchers often write about Garelin as a neurasthenic nature, who showed Balmont love “in a demonic face, even a devilish one,” tormented with jealousy. It is generally believed that it was she who made him addicted to wine, as indicated by the poet's confessional poem "Forest Fire".

The wife did not sympathize with either the literary aspirations or the revolutionary sentiments of her husband and was prone to quarrels. In many ways, it was the painful connection with Garelin that pushed Balmont to attempt suicide on the morning of March 13, 1890. Soon after his recovery, which was only partial - the limp remained with him for the rest of his life - Balmont parted with L. Garelin.

The first child born in this marriage died, the second - son Nikolai - subsequently suffered from a nervous breakdown.

Having parted with the poet, Larisa Mikhailovna married a journalist and literary historian N.A.Engelgardt and lived peacefully with him for many years. Her daughter from this marriage, Anna Nikolaevna Engelhardt, became the second wife of Nikolai Gumilyov.

The poet's second wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva-Balmont (1867-1952), a relative of the famous Moscow publishers Sabashnikovs, came from a wealthy merchant family (the Andreevs owned shops of colonial goods) and was distinguished by a rare education.

Contemporaries also noted the external attractiveness of this tall and slender young woman "with beautiful black eyes." For a long time she was unrequitedly in love with A. I. Urusov. Balmont, as Andreeva recalled, quickly became carried away by her, but for a long time did not meet reciprocity. When the latter arose, it turned out that the poet was married: then the parents forbade their daughter to meet with her lover. However, Ekaterina Alekseevna, enlightened in the "newest spirit", looked at the rituals as a formality and soon moved to the poet.

The divorce proceedings, allowing Garelina to enter into a second marriage, forbade her husband to marry forever, but after finding an old document where the groom was listed as unmarried, the lovers got married on September 27, 1896, and the next day they went abroad, to France.

With EA Andreeva, Balmont was united by a community of literary interests, the couple made many joint translations, in particular, Gerhart Hauptmann and Odd Nansen.

In 1901, they had a daughter, Ninika, Nina Konstantinovna Balmont-Bruni (she died in Moscow in 1989), to whom the poet dedicated the collection Fairy Tales.

In the early 1900s in Paris, Balmont met with Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya (1880-1943), daughter of General K.G. Tsvetkovsky, then - a student at the Faculty of Mathematics at the Sorbonne and an ardent admirer of his poetry. Balmont, judging by some of his letters, was not in love with Tsvetkovskaya, but soon began to feel the need for her as a truly faithful, devoted friend.

Gradually, the "spheres of influence" were divided: Balmont either lived with his family, then left with Elena. For example, in 1905 they went to Mexico for three months.

The poet's family life became completely confused after, in December 1907, E.K. Tsvetkovskaya had a daughter, who was named Mirra - in memory of Mirra Lokhvitskaya, a poetess with whom he was associated with complex and deep feelings. The appearance of the child finally tied Balmont to Elena Konstantinovna, but at the same time he did not want to leave Ekaterina Alekseevna either.

Mental torment led to a breakdown: in 1909 Balmont made a new suicide attempt, jumped out of the window again and survived again. Until 1917, Balmont lived in St. Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra, coming from time to time to Moscow to visit Andreeva and her daughter Nina.

Balmont emigrated from Russia with his third (common-law) wife E.K. Tsvetkovskaya and daughter Mirra.

However, he did not break off friendly relations with Andreeva either. Only in 1934, when Soviet citizens were forbidden to correspond with relatives and friends living abroad, this connection was interrupted.

Unlike EA Andreeva, Elena Konstantinovna was "worldly helpless and could not organize her life in any way." She considered it her duty to follow Balmont everywhere: eyewitnesses recalled how she, "leaving her child at home, went with her husband somewhere in a tavern and could not take him out of there for 24 hours."

E. K. Tsvetkovskaya was not the poet's last love. In Paris, he resumed his acquaintance with the princess, which had begun in March 1919. Dagmar Shakhovskoy (1893-1967). “One of my dear ones, half-Swedish, half-polka, princess Dagmar Shakhovskaya, nee Baroness Lilienfeld, Russified, sang Estonian songs to me more than once,” - this is how Balmont described his beloved in one of his letters.

Shakhovskaya gave birth to two children Balmont - Georgy (Georges) (1922-1943) and Svetlana (b. 1925).

The poet could not leave his family; meeting with Shakhovskoy only occasionally, he often, almost daily wrote to her, over and over again confessing his love, talking about his impressions and plans. Preserved 858 of his letters and postcards.

Balmont's feeling was reflected in many of his later poems and the novel Under a New Sickle (1923). Be that as it may, not D. Shakhovskaya, but E. Tsvetkovskaya spent the last, most disastrous years of his life with Balmont. She died in 1943, a year after the poet's death.

Mirra Konstantinovna Balmont (married - Boychenko, second marriage - Autina) wrote poetry and was published in the 1920s under the pseudonym Aglaya Gamayun. She died at Noisy-le-Grand in 1970.

Works by Konstantin Balmont

"Collection of Poems" (Yaroslavl, 1890)
"Under the northern sky (elegies, stanzas, sonnets)" (St. Petersburg, 1894)
"In the vastness of darkness" (M., 1895 and 1896)
"Silence. Lyric Poems "(St. Petersburg, 1898)
“Burning buildings. Lyrics of the Modern Soul "(M., 1900)
“Let's be like the sun. Book of Symbols "(M., 1903)
"Only love. Seven-flowered "(M.," Vulture ", 1903)
“Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns "(Moscow," Vulture ", 1905)
Fairy Tales (Children's Songs) (M., Grif, 1905)
"Collection of Poems" M., 1905; 2nd ed. M., 1908.
"Evil spell (Book of spells)" (M., "Golden Fleece", 1906)
"Poems" (1906)
"The Firebird (Slav's Svirel)" (M., "Scorpion", 1907)
Liturgy of Beauty (Elemental Hymns) (1907)
Avenger's Songs (1907)
"Three blossoms (Theater of youth and beauty)" (1907)
"Only love". 2nd ed. (1908)
"Round Dance of Times (Vseglasnost)" (Moscow, 1909)
"Birds in the Air (Singing Strings)" (1908)
"Green Helicopter City (Kissing Words)" (St. Petersburg, "Rosehip", 1909)
“Links. Selected Poems. 1890-1912 "(Moscow: Scorpio, 1913)
"The White Architect (The Sacrament of the Four Lamps)" (1914)
"Ash (The Vision of the Tree)" (M., Nekrasov Publishing House, 1916)
Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon (1917; Berlin, 1921)
"Collection of Lyrics" (Book. 1-2, 4-6. M., 1917-1918)
"The Ring" (M., 1920)
"Seven Poems" (M., "Zadruga", 1920)
Selected Poems (New York, 1920)
“Solar yarn. Izbornik "(1890-1918) (M., ed. Sabashnikovs, 1921)
"Gamayun" (Stockholm, "Northern Lights", 1921)
"Gift to the Earth" (Paris, "Russian land", 1921)
"Bright Hour" (Paris, 1921)
"Song of the Working Hammer" (Moscow, 1922)
"Marevo" (Paris, 1922)
"Under a new sickle" (Berlin, "Word", 1923)
"Mine - to Her (Russia)" (Prague, "Flame", 1924)
"In a Widened Distance (Poem about Russia)" (Belgrade, 1929)
Complicity of Souls (1930)
"Northern Lights" (Poems about Lithuania and Russia) (Paris, 1931)
"Blue Horseshoe" (Poems about Siberia) (1937)
Light Service (Harbin, 1937)

Collections of articles and essays by Konstantin Balmont

Mountain Peaks (Moscow, 1904; first book)
“Calls of Antiquity. Hymns, songs and designs of the ancients "(Pb., 1908, Berlin, 1923)
"Snake Flowers" ("Travel Letters from Mexico", M., Scorpio, 1910)
Sea Glow (1910)
"The glow of the dawn" (1912)
"Land of Osiris". Egyptian Essays. (M., 1914)
"Poetry as Magic" (M., Scorpio, 1915)
"Light and sound in nature and Scriabin's light symphony" (1917)
"Where is my house?" (Paris, 1924)

Vladimir province, Shuisky district, a tiny village of Gumnishchi, a modest estate - on June 3, 1867, Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was born here, who became one of the best symbolist poets of the "Silver Age" of Russian poetry. He was the third child in the family, and the boy was named after his grandfather, a naval officer. Dmitry Konstantinovich, his father, served all his life in the zemstvo and court of the city of Shuya, starting his career as a collegiate registrar, then becoming a magistrate, and later chairman of the zemstvo council. His wife Vera Nikolaevna, the daughter of a general, gave birth to seven sons to her husband, but such a large family did not prevent her from studying literature. Her poems were published in the local press, she staged amateur performances and literary evenings, she knew several languages \u200b\u200band was prone to some freethinking - “unreliable” often stayed in the Balmont's house. It was the mother's influence that shaped the poet's worldview, it was she who introduced him to the world of literature, history and music and conveyed to her son the passion and unbridled nature of nature.

Kostya learned to read at the age of five, and on his own, spying on the lessons that his mother gave his older brother. Upon learning of this, his father gave Kostya his first book of his own, and his mother began to acquaint the boy with Russian poets. Soon the Balmont moved to Shuya, where in 1876 Kostya was sent to a gymnasium. Studying bored him pretty quickly, but the boy began to read literally voraciously, and he studied French and German writers in originals. At the age of ten, he wrote his first poems, but his mother criticized them, and Kostya left his attempts at creativity for six whole years.

In the seventh grade, the future poet joined an illegal circle that distributed proclamations of the People's Will in Shuya. The consequence of these revolutionary sentiments was expulsion from the gymnasium. The mother managed to arrange the young People's Will in the Vladimir gymnasium and to settle with the teacher of the Greek language, who "supervised" Kostya. According to Balmont himself, the last year and a half in the gymnasium became a real prison for him, disfiguring the nervous system. But at the same time, he experienced the first shock of a literary work after reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

In November and December 1885, three poems by Konstantin Balmont were published by the popular metropolitan magazine Zhivopisnoe Obozreniye. From the poet's "adult" environment, this debut was noticed only by Kostin's mentor, who immediately forbade him to publish until he graduated from the gymnasium. But Balmont's fellow practitioners sent a notebook with his poems to the writer Korolenko, who responded with a very favorable response.

In the summer of 1886, Konstantin Balmont was enrolled in the first year of the law faculty of Moscow University. In his youth, the poet was a rebel and a revolutionary to a much greater extent than a writer - he dreamed of “going to the people” and making the dream of universal human happiness come true. It is not surprising that at the university he made friends with the sixties Nikolayev and six months later he took part in student riots. Many students considered the new university charter reactionary and strongly opposed its introduction. As a result, Balmont was expelled from the university, arrested, and after three days spent by the poet in the Butyrka prison, he was exiled to Shuya.

Two years later, Konstantin married - the daughter of one of the Shuya manufacturers, Larisa Garelina. The parents were categorically against this marriage and deprived their son of financial assistance. Larisa Garelina gave birth to two children for Balmont, one of whom survived - his son Nikolai.

In the same 1889, Konstantin returned to Moscow, but could not continue his studies at the university. The doctors named the reason for this severe nervous exhaustion. Balmont tried to continue his education in Yaroslavl, having successfully entered the Demidov Lyceum of Legal Sciences, but he did not force himself to seriously study jurisprudence - at that time he was passionate about German literature and wrote a lot himself. In Yaroslavl in 1890 Balmont's real debut as a poet took place - he published a collection of poems for his own money. True, this book did not arouse any interest even among close people, and Konstantin burned the entire edition.

In the early spring of 1890, the twenty-two-year-old poet attempted suicide by throwing himself out of a window on the third floor. The reason for this was family and financial situation, and the impetus was the reading of The Kreutzer Sonata. Konstantin did not manage to die, but due to serious fractures he was ill for a whole year. In the fall, he was expelled from the lyceum - this time for academic failure. This was the end of the poet's "state education", and Balmont owes all his knowledge exclusively to himself and to some extent to his elder brother, who was passionately fond of philosophy.

The year the poet spent in bed turned out to be very fruitful for him in terms of creativity and entailed, in his words, "the flourishing of cheerfulness and mental excitement." Nevertheless, Balmont parted with his wife, took offense at his freethinking friends (because of his literary activity, who accused him of betraying the "ideals of social struggle") and literally begged for quite a long time. The magazines did not want to publish his poems, but Konstantin did not lose heart. There were also well-wishers. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, after meeting with the poet, wrote to the editor of Severny Vestnik. Professor of Moscow University Storozhenko Konstantin took an article about Shelley's work, and Storozhenko found a job for him, persuading the publisher Soldatenkov to entrust Balmont to translate fundamental works. For three years the poet translated "The History of Scandinavian Literature" and "The History of Italian Literature" - and the translations not only saved him from hunger, but also made it possible to fulfill his own creative dreams. In addition, thanks to the patronage of Korolenko and Storozhenko, Balmont became a member of the editorial board of the Severny Vestnik magazine, around which young poets were then grouped.

In the fall of 1892, the poet met Nikolai Minsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius in St. Petersburg. He also became close to Prince Urusov, an expert in Western European literature and a well-known philanthropist. Urusov financed two books by Edgar Poe, translated by Balmont, and the patron greatly praised the poems of Konstantin Dmitrievich, included in his first collections "Under the Northern Sky" (1894) and "In Boundlessness" (1895). According to Balmont, it was Prince Urusov who helped him find himself and free his soul.

In 1894, Balmont met with Valery Bryusov, who became his best friend. A year later, the poet met the poet Jurgis Baltrushaitis and the publisher of the Vesy magazine Polyakov. In 1900, Polyakov founded the Scorpion publishing house of the Symbolists, which published the poet's best books.

The first collections of Balmont's poems did not delight critics, but nevertheless provided Konstantin Dmitrievich with access to well-known literary magazines. The last years of the 19th century generally became a time of active creativity for the poet, and in various fields. Balmont's performance was simply phenomenal - he studied languages \u200b\u200band history, natural sciences and folk art, read unthinkably a lot (from treatises on painting to research on Sanskrit).

In 1896, Konstantin Dmitrievich married again. Together with his wife, translator Ekaterina Andreeva, he went to Europe and spent several years there. In 1897 he was invited to lecture on Russian poetry at Oxford. The poet's life was full of meaning and happiness, it was dominated by exclusively aesthetic and mental interests. Balmont presented his European impressions in the 1898 collection Silence, which was recognized at that time as his best book. In 1899, the poet joined the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

In the late nineties, Konstantin Dmitrievich found another close friend, the poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya. Their relationship developed in correspondence, a real "novel in verse". Balmont tried to make these platonic feelings a reality - but the married and sober-minded Lokhvitskaya stopped attempts, without stopping, however, the correspondence. Despite the complete "virtuality", the connection between the poets turned out to be very strong and serious and ended only in 1905 - due to the untimely death of Lokhvitskaya.

However, this strange novel did not prevent the poet from leading a far from measured personal life in reality. In 1901, his daughter Nina was born, and about the same time he met Elena Tsvetkovskaya, the daughter of a general, a student at the Sorbonne and his passionate admirer. Tsvetkovskaya caught every word of the poet, and very quickly he did not so much fall in love with her as began to need her devotion. The poet did not want to leave his wife, and his life was divided: he either returned to his family or left with Tsvetkovskaya.

In 1900, Balmont's collection "Burning Buildings" was published, which was not at all like the previous ones and took a central place in his work. The poems from this collection brought the author all-Russian fame and the status of one of the leaders of the new poetic movement - symbolism. Ten years after the release of Burning Buildings, the crown of Russian poetry belonged undividedly to Balmont - the rest of the poets either tried to imitate him, or with incredible difficulty defended their independence. By this time, the poet's lifestyle had changed: assiduous homework alternated with carousing, and his wife was looking for him all over Moscow. But the inspiration did not go away, and Balmont wrote a lot, wondering and rejoicing at the depths of his own soul. The very next book, Let's Be Like the Sun, which appeared in 1902, sold almost two thousand copies in six months - an unheard-of success for a collection of poems.

However, the poet's revolutionary mood did not leave either. In 1901, Konstantin Dmitrievich took part in a student demonstration at the Kazan Cathedral, demanding the abolition of the decree on the passage of soldier's service by unreliable students. In March, Balmont read The Little Sultan, a poem criticizing the regime of terror and the emperor, at a literary evening. The result was a link from St. Petersburg and a ban on living in the capital and university cities for a period of three years. For several months Balmont lived on the Volkonsky estate, and in the spring of 1902 he left for Paris. For over a year he traveled around Europe, then briefly returned to Moscow, from where he went to the Baltic States and again to Europe. Glory followed him - everywhere poetic circles of followers - "balmonists" were created, and their members imitated their idol not only in poetry, but also in their way of life. According to Valery Bryusov, Russia literally fell in love with Balmont.

In 1904-1905, the Scorpion publishing house published a two-volume edition of Balmont's poems (which later turned into a ten-volume collection of works), and the poet himself at the beginning of 1905 left for America to travel to Mexico and California. His travel essays and notes, along with free translations of Indian cosmogonic legends, were subsequently included in the book "Snake Flowers", published in 1910.

Konstantin Dmitrievich returned from America in 1905 and immediately plunged into the political life of Russia. He became close to Gorky, worked actively in the social democratic newspaper Novaya Zhizn and in the Parisian magazine Krasnoe Znamya. Fortunately, in the armed Moscow uprising, Balmont participated mainly in poetry - but nevertheless he constantly stuck out in the streets, made fiery speeches in front of students, built barricades and carried a loaded revolver with him. True, the poet no longer wanted to be arrested - and on New Year's Eve he left for France, where he remained for seven whole years, considering himself a real political emigrant.

Balmont settled in Passy, \u200b\u200ba Parisian quarter, but all the years of emigration he traveled a lot - traveled around Europe. was in the Balearic Islands, Egypt, the Canary Islands, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, Polynesia and Ceylon. The inhabitants of Oceania impressed him especially deeply.

The poet yearned for his homeland constantly and acutely, but he was afraid to return - and, most likely, he was rightly afraid. The tsarist secret police considered Balmont to be politically unreliable and dangerous, keeping secret surveillance over him even in Europe. His book "Poems", published in 1906 in St. Petersburg, was confiscated by the police, the collection "Evil Charm" of the same year was arrested by the censorship "for blasphemy", and "Songs of the Avenger", published a year later in Paris, was banned from distribution in Russia. Apparently, the first Russian revolution also affected Balmont's fascination with the epic side of Slavic culture - but about the collections “The Firebird. Slav's pipe "and" Green helicopter. Kissing words "critics responded very dismissively.

In 1907, Elena Tsvetkovskaya gave birth to the poet's daughter Mirra, and his family life was completely confused. Mental torment again led Balmont to an unwillingness to live - but his second jump from the window did not lead to death. Before the revolutionary events in Russia, he lived in St. Petersburg with Elena and from time to time visited Catherine in Moscow.

In 1913, the emperor announced an amnesty to political emigrants, and in May Balmont returned to Moscow, where he was given a solemn welcome right at the station. The police forbade the poet to speak to the public, and, according to the press, he scattered the live lilies of the valley in the crowd. For several months the poet traveled around Russia with lectures, and at the beginning of the next year he again left for Paris, and from there to Georgia, where he studied the Georgian language and began to translate "The Knight in the Panther's Skin". Among other major translations of Balmont during this period is the transposition of ancient Indian literary monuments.

The First World War found Konstantin Dmitrievich in France, and he managed to return to Russia only at the end of the spring of 1915. In September, he again went to lectures in Russian cities, and a year later he repeated his tour, completing it in the Far East and Japan.

Balmont accepted the February revolution with enthusiasm and immediately began to cooperate with the Society of Proletarian Arts, but the new government disappointed him very quickly. The poet joined the Cadet Party, welcomed Kornilov's activities and watched in horror as his homeland was heading towards chaos. The October Revolution terrified him even more. Balmont did not want to compromise with the Soviet regime, but his financial situation left much to be desired - especially since the poet had to support two families. Therefore, I had to be loyal: Konstantin Dmitrievich moved with Tsvetkovskaya to Moscow, got a job at the People's Commissariat for Education, read lectures, published poetry and translations - and practically starved. In early 1920, Balmont began to bother about a trip abroad, motivating her need for the poor health of his wife. Thanks to Baltrushaitis, he got Lunacharsky on a business trip to France and left Russia for good in May.

Life in exile turned out to be a little better than in Soviet Russia - meager fees, poverty and endless longing for the homeland. A new romance somewhat brightened up the existence outside of Russia - Princess Shakhovskaya gave birth to Balmont's son Georges and daughter Svetlana. But in the last, most terrible years, Elena Tsvetkovskaya was with the poet.

In 1932, doctors found Balmont with a serious mental illness, and in 1935 he ended up in a clinic. Neither illness nor poverty deprived the poet of his famous eccentricity and sense of humor, but he wrote less and less poetry. By 1937, Konstantin Dmitrievich finally surrendered to mental illness and stopped writing altogether. He lived first in a furnished cheap apartment, then in a charity house, which Kuzmin-Karavaeva kept for Russian emigrants. In the rare hours of spiritual enlightenment, the poet reread War and Peace or leafed through his own books.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was killed by pneumonia. He died on December 23, 1942, at night, in the Parisian suburb of Noisy-le-Grand. They buried him in the local Catholic cemetery and wrote on a gray tombstone under the name: "Russian poet."

Konstantin Balmont - Russian poet, translator, prose writer, critic, essayist. A prominent representative of the Silver Age. He published 35 collections of poetry, 20 books with prose. He translated a large number of works by foreign writers. Konstantin Dmitrievich is the author of literary studies, philological treatises, critical essays. His poems "Snowflake", "Reeds", "Autumn", "Towards winter", "Fairy" and many others are included in the school curriculum.

Childhood and youth

Konstantin Balmont was born and lived up to 10 years in the village of Gumnishchi, Shuisky district, Vladimir province in a poor but noble family. His father Dmitry Konstantinovich first worked as a judge, later took the post of head of the Zemstvo Council. Mother Vera Nikolaevna came from a family where they loved and were fond of literature. The woman organized literary evenings, staged performances and published in the local newspaper.

Vera Nikolaevna knew several foreign languages, and she had a share of "free-thinking"; "unwanted" people often stayed in their house. Later he wrote that his mother not only instilled in him a love of literature, but from her he inherited his "mental structure." The family, in addition to Constantine, had seven sons. He was third. Watching his mother teach his older brothers to read, the boy independently learned to read at the age of 5.

The family lived in a house on the banks of the river, surrounded by gardens. Therefore, when it came time to send the children to school, they moved to Shuya. Thus, they had to break away from nature. The boy wrote his first poems at the age of 10. But my mother did not approve of these undertakings, and he did not write anything for the next 6 years.

In 1876, Balmont was enrolled in the Shuya gymnasium. At first, Kostya showed himself as a diligent student, but soon he got bored with all this. He became interested in reading, while he read some books in German and French in the original. He was expelled from the gymnasium for poor teaching and revolutionary sentiments. Even then, he was a member of an illegal circle that distributed leaflets of the Narodnaya Volya party.

Konstantin moved to Vladimir and studied there until 1886. While still studying at the gymnasium, his poems were published in the capital's magazine "Picturesque Review", but this event went unnoticed. After that he entered the Faculty of Law at Moscow University. But even here he did not stay long.

He became close to Peter Nikolaev, who was a revolutionary in the sixties. Therefore, it is not surprising that after 2 years he was expelled for participating in the student disorder. Immediately after this incident, he was expelled from Moscow to Shuya.

In 1889, Balmont decided to recover at the university, but due to a nervous breakdown, he again could not finish his studies. The same fate befell him at the Demidov Lyceum of Legal Sciences, where he entered later. After this attempt, he decided to leave the venture to get a "government" education.

Literature

Balmont wrote his first collection of poems when he was bedridden after a failed suicide. The book was published in Yaroslavl in 1890, but later the poet himself personally destroyed the bulk of the circulation.

Still, the collection "Under the Northern Sky" is considered the starting point in the poet's work. He was greeted by the public with admiration, as were his subsequent works - "In the vastness of darkness" and "Silence". He was eagerly published in modern magazines, Balmont became popular, he was considered the most promising of the "decadents".

In the mid-1890s, he began to communicate closely with,. Soon Balmont became the most popular symbolist poet in Russia. In poetry, he admires the phenomena of the world, and in some collections he openly touches on "demonic" topics. This is noticeable in "Evil Charm", the edition of which was confiscated by the authorities for reasons of censorship.

Balmont travels a lot, so his work is imbued with images of exotic countries and multiculturalism. It attracts and delights readers. The poet adheres to spontaneous improvisation - he never made edits to the texts, he believed that the first creative impulse was the most correct.

The "Fairy Tales" written by Balmont in 1905 were highly appreciated by his contemporaries. The poet dedicated this collection of fairy songs to his daughter Nina.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont was a revolutionary in spirit and in life. The expulsion from the gymnasium and the university did not stop the poet. Once he publicly read the verse "Little Sultan", in which everyone saw a parallel with. For this he was expelled from St. Petersburg and banned from living in university cities for 2 years.

He was an opponent of tsarism, so his participation in the First Russian Revolution was expected. At that time he became friends with and wrote poetry that looked more like rhymed leaflets.

During the December 1905 Moscow uprising, Balmont speaks to students. But, fearing arrest, he was forced to leave Russia. From 1906 to 1913 he lived in France in the status of a political emigrant. Being in a kind of exile, he continues to write, but critics increasingly began to talk about the decline of Balmont's work. In his latest works, they noticed a certain pattern and self-repetition.

The poet himself considered his best book Burning Buildings. Lyrics of the Modern Soul ”. If before this collection his lyrics were filled with melancholy and melancholy, then “Burning Buildings” opened Balmont from the other side - “sunny” and cheerful notes appeared in his work.

Returning to Russia in 1913, he published a 10-volume complete collected works. He works on translations and lectures around the country. Balmont received the February revolution with enthusiasm, as did the entire Russian intelligentsia. But soon he was horrified by the anarchy in the country.

When the October Revolution began, he was in St. Petersburg, in his words, it was a "hurricane of madness" and "chaos." In 1920, the poet moved to Moscow, but soon, due to the poor health of his wife and daughter, he moved with them to France. He never returned to Russia.

In 1923, Balmont published two autobiographies - "Under a new sickle" and "Air way". Until the first half of the 1930s, he traveled all over Europe, his performances were a success with the public. But among the Russian diaspora, he no longer enjoyed recognition.

The decline of his work fell on 1937, when he published his last collection of poems "Light Service".

Personal life

In 1889, Konstantin Balmont married the daughter of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk merchant, Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina. Their mother introduced them, but when he announced his intention to marry, she spoke out against this marriage. Konstantin showed his inflexibility and even went for the sake of his beloved to break with his family.

Konstantin Balmont and his first wife Larisa Garelina

As it turned out, his young wife was prone to unjustified jealousy. They always quarreled, the woman did not support him in either literary or revolutionary endeavors. Some researchers point out that it was she who addicted Balmont to wine.

On March 13, 1890, the poet decided to commit suicide - he threw himself onto the pavement from the third floor of his own apartment. But the attempt failed - he lay in bed for a year, and from his injuries he remained lame for the rest of his life.

In a marriage with Larisa, they had two children. Their first child died in infancy, the second - their son Nikolai - was sick with a nervous breakdown. As a result, Konstantin and Larisa separated, she married a journalist and writer Engelhardt.

In 1896 Balmont married a second time. Ekaterina Alekseevna Andreeva became his wife. The girl was from a wealthy family - smart, educated and beautiful. Immediately after the wedding, the lovers left for France. In 1901, their daughter Nina was born. In many ways, they were united by their literary activities; together they worked on translations.

Konstantin Balmont and his third wife Elena Tsvetkovskaya

Ekaterina Alekseevna was not a domineering person, but she dictated the lifestyle of the spouses. And everything would have been fine if Balmont had not met Elena Konstantinovna Tsvetkovskaya in Paris. The girl was fascinated by the poet, looked at him as if he were a god. From now on, he lived with his family, then for a couple of months he went on trips abroad with Catherine.

His family life was completely confused when Tsvetkovskaya gave birth to her daughter Mirra. This event finally tied Konstantin to Elena, but at the same time he did not want to disagree with Andreeva. Mental torment again led Balmont to suicide. He jumped out of the window, but, like last time, he survived.

As a result, he began to live in St. Petersburg with Tsvetkovskaya and Mirra and occasionally visited Moscow to see Andreeva and her daughter Nina. They later immigrated to France. There Balmont began to meet with Dagmar Shakhovskoy. He did not leave the family, but met with the woman regularly, wrote letters to her every day. As a result, she bore him two children - son Georges and daughter Svetlana.

But in the most difficult years of his life, Tsvetkovskaya was still with him. She was so devoted to him that she did not live a year after his death, she left after him.

Death

Having moved to France, he yearned for Russia. But his health was deteriorating, there were financial problems, so there was no question of returning. He lived in a cheap apartment with a broken window.

In 1937, the poet was diagnosed with a mental illness. From that moment on, he no longer wrote poetry.

On December 23, 1942, he died at the Russian House shelter, near Paris, in Noisy-le-Grand. The cause of his death was pneumonia. The poet died in poverty and oblivion.

Bibliography

• 1894 - "Under the northern sky (elegies, stanzas, sonnets)"
• 1895 - "In the vastness of darkness"
• 1898 - “Silence. Lyric poems "
• 1900 - Burning buildings. Lyrics of the modern soul "
• 1903 - “Let's be like the sun. Book of symbols "
• 1903 - “Only love. Seven-flower "
• 1905 - “The Liturgy of Beauty. Elemental hymns "
• 1905 - "Fairy tales (children's songs)"
• 1906 - "Evil spell (Book of spells)"
• 1906 - "Poems"
• 1907 - Songs of the Avenger
• 1908 - "Birds in the Air (Singing Strings)"
• 1909 - "Green Helicopter City (Kissing Words)"
• 1917 - Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and the Moon
• 1920 - The Ring
• 1920 - "Seven Poems"
• 1922 - Song of the Working Hammer
• 1929 - "In the Extended Distance (Poem about Russia)"
• 1930 - Complicity of Souls
• 1937 - "Light Service"

Balmont Konstantin Dmitrievich (1867 -1942). The Silver Age lasted only a couple of pre-revolutionary decades in Russia, but it gave many bright names for Russian poetry. And for a whole decade Konstantin Balmont reigned on the poetic Olympus.

He was born near Shuya, in the family of a provincial nobleman. He learned to read while attending the lessons of his mother, who taught his older brother. Mother formed the beginning of Constantine's worldview, introducing him to the world of high art.

Education in the gymnasium ended with expulsion due to the spread of the People's Will proclamations. Nevertheless, they managed to get an education (1886), although the poet had painful impressions about this period. Balmont's debut (1885) in a well-known magazine went unnoticed; the published collection also did not cause any response.

The second collection, In Boundlessness (1894), was marked by a completely new form and rhythm. His poems are getting better. Having got out of the lack of money, the poet travels, works a lot, lectures on Russian poetry in England. In the collection of poems "Burning Buildings" (1900), readers saw that Balmont, who will own the souls of the Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Constantin Balmont becomes the leader of Symbolism. They imitate him, envy him, fans are trying to break into the apartment. The poet, inclined to romanticism, takes part in the 1905 revolution, because of which he was forced to hide abroad.

Upon returning to his homeland, Balmont publishes a ten-volume edition of his works. He is engaged in translations, lectures. The poet welcomed the February revolution, but soon lost interest in its slogans. And the revolution of October 1917 caused his rejection. Balmont seeks permission to leave and leaves his homeland forever.

In emigration, the poet avoids circles hostile to the USSR. There is nowhere to get help. In addition, Balmont maintains two families, and the financial situation is becoming more difficult. The last collection of poems "Light Service" (1937), he wrote, already suffering from a mental illness. In recent years, he settled in a nursing home, where he died of pneumonia in the winter of 1942.

Konstantin Balmont returned to Russian readers when, in the sixties, the first anthologies of poets of the Silver Age were published.

Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont (06/15/1867, Gumnishchi, Vladimir province - 12/23/1942, Noisy-le-Grand, France) - Russian poet.

Constantin Balmont: biography

By birth, the future poet was a nobleman. Although his great-grandfather bore the name Balamut. Later the named surname was changed in a foreign way. Balmont's father was the chairman. Constantine received training at the Shuya gymnasium, however, he was expelled from it, since he attended an illegal circle. A short biography of Balmont tells that he created his first works at the age of 9.

In 1886, Balmont began his studies at the law faculty of Moscow University. A year later, due to participation in student riots, he was expelled until 1888. Soon he left the university of his own free will, entering the Demidov juridical lyceum, from which he was also expelled. It was then that the first collection of poetry, which Balmont wrote, was published.

The poet's biography tells that at the same time, due to constant quarrels with his first wife, he tried to commit suicide. The suicide attempt ended for him with a lifelong limp.

Among K. Balmont it is worth mentioning the collections “Burning Buildings” and “In Boundlessness”. The poet's relationship with the authorities was tense. So, in 1901 for the verse "Little Sultan" he was deprived of the right to live in university and capital cities for 2 years. K. Balmont, whose biography has been studied in some detail, leaves for the Volkonskys' estate (now the Belgorod region), where he works on a poetry collection "Let's Be Like the Sun". In 1902 he moved to Paris.

In the early 1900s, Balmont wrote many romantic poems. So, in 1903 the collection “Only love. Seven-flower ", in 1905 -" The Liturgy of Beauty ". The named collections bring fame to Balmont. The poet himself travels at this time. So, by 1905 he managed to visit Italy, Mexico, England and Spain.

When political unrest begins in Russia, Balmont returns to his homeland. He collaborates with the social democratic publication Novaya Zhizn and the magazine Krasnoe Znamya. But at the end of 1905, Balmont, whose biography is rich in travel, again comes to Paris. In subsequent years, he continued to travel a lot.

When in 1913 political emigrants were granted amnesty, K. Balmont returned to Russia. The poet welcomes but opposes October. In this regard, in 1920 he again left Russia, settling in France.

While in exile, Balmont, whose biography is inextricably linked with his homeland, actively worked in Russian periodicals published in Germany, Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. In 1924 he published a book of memoirs called Where is My Home ?, wrote essays about the revolution in Russia, White Dream and Torch in the Night. In the 1920s, Balmont published such collections of poetry as "A Gift to the Earth", "Marevo", "Bright Hour", "Song of the Working Hammer", "In the Far Away". In 1930 K. Balmont completed the translation of the Old Russian work "The Lay of Igor's Host." The last collection of his poems was published in 1937 under the title "Light Service".

At the end of his life, the poet suffered from a mental illness. K. Balmont died in an orphanage known as the "Russian House", located near Paris.