Poet, essayist and literary critic, a prominent representative of the Silver Age Maximilian Voloshin spent a significant part of his life in the Crimea, in Koktebel. And thanks to him, this place became known far beyond the peninsula.
Years of study and first critical articles
Maximilian Voloshin was born in 1877. He spent his childhood in cities such as Kiev and Moscow. From 1887 to 1893, the future poet studied at Moscow gymnasiums. And then her mother, Elena Ottobaldovna, bought land in the Crimean Koktebel and moved there with her son. Here, by the Black Sea, in 1897, Maximilian was finally able to graduate from high school. It is easy to calculate that at that time he was far from a child, he was already about 20 years old: the fact is that he was left several times for the second year.
In 1897, Maximilian Voloshin entered the law faculty of Moscow University. But already in 1899 he was expelled for participating in a strike and his penchant for anti-government agitation. Maximilian Voloshin did not recover, he preferred to engage in self-education. In the same 1899 Voloshin made his debut as a critic in the magazine "Russian Thought". Moreover, his early reviews did not even have a signature. The first article, under which the authorship of Voloshin was indicated, was called "In Defense of Hauptmann". This article, published in the same Russian Thought in 1900, was, in fact, one of the manifestos in defense of the aesthetics of modernism.
Voloshin at the beginning of the 20th century
At the beginning of the new century, Maximilian Voloshin traveled extensively and with pleasure throughout Europe. Once, at a lecture at the Sorbonne, he met the bohemian artist Margarita Sabashnikova. In April 1906 he got married and began to live in St. Petersburg. However, soon Margarita was carried away by another poet - Vyacheslav Ivanov, who, as luck would have it, lived next door. This led to the fact that the family eventually broke up.
Voloshin's first book was called rather unpretentious - “Poems. 1900-1910 . The publication of this book became a significant event for the Russian-speaking literary community of those times. From 1910 to 1914, several more important journalistic and artistic works by Voloshin were published.
In 1914 he left the country - first to Switzerland, and then to France. The reason for emigration is clear: the poet did not want to take up arms and actively participate in the First World War. He expressed his pacifist protest quite clearly in the series of articles "Paris and the War" and in the collection of anti-war poems "Anno mundi ardentis".
Voloshin returned to Crimea only in 1916. He accepted the October Revolution that burst out the next year as inevitability and as a test for Russia. During the turbulent years of the civil war, he strove to be above the fray, urging people to remain human. In his house in Koktebel Voloshin saved both "white" and "red" from persecution. In particular, the famous Hungarian communist Bela Kun was hiding in his house for some time. When the “reds” completely defeated the “whites” on the peninsula, Voloshin (this, of course, was facilitated by his extensive connections) was issued a security certificate to his house and assigned a pension. On the other hand, since 1919 Voloshin's texts have practically ceased to be published in major publications.
Last years and death
In the twenties, Voloshin worked in the field of protecting local monuments, was engaged in local history and education of workers and peasants, and repeatedly organized exhibitions of his own watercolors (thus he declared himself as a very gifted artist). During these years, Voloshin's house became a kind of pilgrimage place for writers. Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Chukovsky, Khodasevich, etc. have been here. Sometimes the number of guests reached several hundred.
In 1927, Maximilian Voloshin married a second time to nurse Maria Zabolotskaya. Since 1922, Maria has been, as they say, her own person in the house - she took care of the poet's sick mother. With his second wife, Maximilian was really lucky: she steadfastly endured all the hardships of marriage and supported the poet until his death.
Maximilian Voloshin died of a stroke in 1932. Maria Zabolotskaya, who lived for more than forty years, managed to preserve almost all of her husband's creative heritage and the legendary house itself. It is still a significant landmark of the peninsula today.
