Vysheslavtsev Nikolai Alexandrovich. B.P. Vysheslavtsev and his philosophy of “hearts Since you are here...

The reality of myth (On the history of the relationship between M. I. Tsvetaeva and N. N. Vysheslavtsev)

I met Olga Nikolaevna Vysheslavtseva, nun Maria 1, in the second half of the 1980s. In her room in Krivoarbatsky Lane there was simple furniture, paintings by her long-dead husband Nikolai Nikolaevich Vysheslavtsev hung on the walls, there were icons, there were books in either American or English cabinets that did not open in a modern way, some doors did not gave in - they were broken during searches. During our conversations, old photographs, pencil sketches, Vysheslavtsev’s diaries, Olga Nikolaevna’s manuscripts, and letters were taken out of the cabinets. Olga Nikolaevna saw almost nothing, then she went completely blind, but she was more sighted than anyone: people constantly came to her, she prayed for them.

Once, in response to my question about the portrait of M. Tsvetaeva by Vysheslavtseva, Olga Nikolaevna said that Tsvetaeva dedicated a series of poems to him and that he spoke about her as a complex person. From Olga Nikolaevna I learned what kind of poems these were - A. A. Saakyants pointed them out to her. The dedication was also mentioned in the monograph by A. A. Saakyants “Marina Tsvetaeva: Pages of Life and Creativity (1910–1922)” 2; in her book “The Life of Tsvetaeva,” the researcher also indicated: “The end of April of the twentieth year. Tsvetaeva creates a cycle of poems addressed to “N. N.V"" 3. In Tsvetaeva’s notebooks, Vysheslavtsev was designated “NN.”, less often “NN. IN.". Finally, in the collected works of Tsvetaeva, published in the 1990s by Ellis Luck, this dedication was restored.

When Vysheslavtsev and Tsvetaeva met, he was thirty years old, she was twenty-seven, and there were twenty-seven poems dedicated to him 4 .

Those involved in the culture of the Silver Age, the name of N. N. Vysheslavtsev, cousin of the philosopher B. P. Vysheslavtsev, is quite well known. His works have been purchased by many museums. He is the author of famous portraits of P. Florensky, A. Bely, S. Klychkov, M. Chekhov, F. Sologub, G. Shpet, V. Khodasevich, I. Bunin, Vyach. Ivanova and others. His series of “imaginary portraits” of prominent personalities of past centuries is known. His graphic works are emphatically psychological; almost every portrait captures the tragedy and dignity of a person. In the Tsvetaeva he saw there was something of Dostoevsky’s women, an anxious, demanding gaze, raised eyebrows, closed energetic lips, a tense neck. His watercolors are light, lacking the precision of graphic drawing, but they convey mood. His nudes, or, as Olga Nikolaevna said, “nudes,” express the Renaissance heaviness of the flesh.

Vysheslavtsev was born in the Poltava province, he was the illegitimate son of Countess Kochubey and the estate manager, agronomist N. Vysheslavtsev. He never knew his mother. He studied at the Tambov gymnasium, in 1906 he moved to Moscow and began studying painting in the studio of I. Mashkov. In 1908, he went to Paris for six years, graduated from the art academy there, visited Italy, but with the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Russia. After graduating from the cadet school, Vysheslavtsev went to the front and was awarded the St. George Officer's Cross. He was seriously injured and walked on crutches for some time. In 1918, he got a job in the Art Department of the People's Commissariat of Education. When he met Tsvetaeva, he worked at the Palace of Arts on Povarskaya Street. At the same time, his personal exhibition was organized at the Palace of Arts.

He attracted attention: tall, correct, reserved, with a gentleness in his gaze. Tsvetaeva’s poems dedicated to Vysheslavtsev are expressive and dramatic: N.N. was not in love with her.

In a December 1920 letter to E.L. Lann, she gave his portrait in energetic, large strokes: “curly head,” “head set,” “flying sheepskin coat” (P., 161) 5 . She liked his quiet voice, which she wrote about in her notebooks. We also read there: “Now all of Povarskaya is like NN: French and blue riding breeches, every time the heart flies up and falls” (ZK., 123) 6; “And his beautiful, gentle hand, and his eyes, and his cap, and his voice” (ZK., 131).

She was attracted by his imagination, “the absurd grandeur - the chimerical nature - of all his plans, - the adoration of absurdity” (P., 161). Reality was saturated with illusions. “Admired and delighted, / Seeing dreams in broad daylight,” “Dreams float before my eyes,” she wrote between May 17 and 19 (“Admired and delighted...” P., 531) 7 . They were brought together by fantasies, poetic-infantile image-making, even surrealism of perception. She recalled how all the way from Zamoskvorechye to her house they talked “about some kind of ram, at first a small one: byasha, byasha! then he is already big and is driving us (under the moon - it was a full moon - and a very late hour of the night) - then, while driving, he begins to look back at us and - grin!, then we pacify him - one side is fried, we eat - etc. etc., etc., etc. - In the end - everyone returns to their home: I want to lie down - a ram, I take a book - wool - a ram! etc.” (P., 161).

Here V.D. Milioti speaks about N.N.’s academic character: he read so many books - “it’s just scary,” and Tsvetaeva “with the purest warmth of her heart” and “detachment, as before death,” says: “Gentlemen! – This is the only person besides S<ережи>- whom I feel higher than myself - by as much as seven heavens! (ZK., 108). In her perception, he is grandiose: “Oh, Pushkin! - HE N!" (ZK., 107). In her imagination he is endless: “N. N. You are a deep hour in my life, and there will be no end to this” (ZK., 106). For her, he is the essence of inexhaustibility, “a mystic and a being - in spite of everything! – definitely gifted with the gift of the soul (I would say – spirit!)” (ZK., 139).

She needed such a person. The period preceding their meeting was extremely difficult for Tsvetaeva. The winter of 1919 in her life is like the double curse of Adam and Eve: starving and freezing Balmont in a woman's scarf - and next to him a saucer with potatoes fried in coffee grounds; pork for three hundred and eighty on Smolensk; shelter for daughter; the desire to live - and the question whether now, after Rozanov’s death, there is someone who “could write a real book about the Famine” (ZK., 38). She met N.N. at a time when she was “alone, alone, alone - like an oak - like a wolf - like God - among all the plagues of Moscow<…>"(ZK., 38). She sought protection from him: “N. N.! Protect me from the world and from myself!”, “N. N., this is the first time I’ve asked for protection!” (ZK., 105); “NN! Tell me, where is my Irina now?” (ZK., 107); “NN! If I had met you earlier, Irina would not have died” (ZK., 109); "N. N. You are not raising me, you are reviving me” (ZK., 106).

In N.N. Tsvetaeva she saw a lot of virtues. She wrote: “Before you, I thought that all men were dissolute<…>"(ZK., 105); the exception was S. Efron, she called him an angel. Without wanting it, N.N. initiated in her a desire to reinvent herself, to know her new limits. She wanted to be respectable, obviously, someone like Sofia Andreevna or Anna Grigorievna. She decided that her mission was to “follow deaf Beethoven” or “write under the dictation of old Napoleon,” and everything else in her, from Casanova to Manon, was from “vicious scoundrels” who never corrupted her “completely” ( ZK., 105). She, like Ilya Ilyich, dreamed of an ideal routine: “A noble life: garden in the morning, then look at icons” (ZK., 108). She was delighted by Vysheslavtsev’s little room, his “wonderful, clean life: beds - brushes - books” (ZK., 110). He could force her to clean the house, get a telescope, learn English, take off all her rings, not write poetry or become a hero... Or, conversely, not become a hero:

What if the regiment entrusted me with the banner,
And suddenly you would appear before my eyes -
With another in hand - petrified like a pillar,
My hand would release the banner.

There is something English in his restraint, politeness, and closedness, which for her is bitter and unwanted. “NN. – my old England and my English home, where you can’t – it’s not allowed! – behave badly,” she wrote down 19 “Russian<ого>"May (ZK., 166), and before that, on April 27, the following poems were born:

It smelled of England - and the sea -
And valor. - Severe and stately.
- So, connecting with new grief,
I laugh like a cabin boy on a tightrope.
(“It smelled like England – and the sea...”. P. 522).

In poetic texts and in notebooks, similarities of motives are revealed. The cycle is perceived as psychological lyrics, so intimate that it seems that the soul is naked. The lyrical heroine tears off her covers and the effect is of absolute vulnerability in front of the man in whom she sought protection:

Nailed to the pillory
I will still say that I love you.
That no one to the very depths is a mother
He won’t look at his child like that.

What about you, who is busy with business,
I don’t want to die, but to die.
You won’t understand - my words are small! –
How little shame I have for the pillory!
(“Nailed to the pillory...” P. 532).

The motif of lack of blood is combined with the motif of unsightliness. The pillory is everywhere. In May, she wrote poems about this pillar, and in May she wrote down: “In general, since the meeting with NN, I have lost a lot of shine. This is so new for me - I forgot so much - to be unloved! (ZK., 134). New, but eternal: “Alas, Tatyana fades, turns pale, fades away and is silent!..” The boy calls Marina Ivanovna - without a hat, without stockings - a tramp, and in the eyes of the ladies she meets she reads: “If only I could dress you!” (ZK., 154). Poems about one's unworthiness were born:

It’s so clear to me – to the darkness in my eyes! –
What was not in your herds
Blacker - sheep.
(“He who said to all passions: forgive...”, p. 528),

and they answered her suspicions: “Each of us, at the bottom of our souls, lives a strange feeling of contempt for those who love us too much.” (ZK., 129)

Notebooks are the key to the cycle. Let's turn to Jung: "<…>Thus, works of very dubious literary value often seem particularly interesting to the psychologist. The so-called psychological novel does not give him as much as the literary approach expects from him” 8. To a psychologist - psychologically, but we read Tsvetaeva’s poems and her notebooks as a single text, they are about the same thing and with equal expression, with the same gesture in the line. She is a poet both in relation to N.N., both in notes and in poetry, she perceives every little thing as an image, remembers every breath. Leitmotifs, paradoxes, reminiscences, anaphors are needed by both the lover and the creative.

On April 25, Tsvetaeva began filling out a new notebook with a description of her dialogue with N.N., the topic of which was her relationship with V.D. Milioti. Because of her own frankness, she felt awkward: “I feel like a beaten dog, all behavior is ugly and stupid, and is not justified by anything” (ZK., 98). Awkwardness and fear of condemnation became constant in relations with N.N.: “<…>consciousness of one’s worthlessness and his condemnation, coldness, discomfort” (ZK., 100).

Timidity is dissonant with maximalism: “I need a business (love) that can take over my whole life and every hour” (ZK., 106). This is an April entry, and it shows how right Ortega y Gasset is: in love there is always dissatisfaction, and love is always active (“Etudes of Love”). In May, Tsvetaeva wrote about the same thing as in April: writing poetry is not enough for her, she needs to love - “every hour of the day and night” (ZK., 121), so as not to wake up, so that it’s like death. The more painful her feeling and the more naive the motive of the love game. For example, not daring to enter his room, she handed him and her daughter a bouquet of sweet peas with a branch of an apple tree: “Give it back, tell him that I’m waiting for him tomorrow - and run” (ZK., 112). The plot, the precise rhythm of the action, and the thoughtfulness of the bouquet are like a poetic text.

The motif of the hand is intimate and chaste, and it is part of the game. N.N. smooths out the blanket lying at the foot of the sofa with her hand, she: “<…>Wouldn’t it be better to stroke my hair?” (ZK., 99). The plot initiated by her develops according to her rules: “And now - like a dream - there is no other word. A gentle hand - tender - as if through a dream - and my head is sleepy - and every hair is sleepy. I just bury my face deeper into my knees.

- “Are you so uncomfortable?”
- “I feel wonderful.”

Strokes, strokes, as if convincing my head, every hair. Silk rustle of hair under your hand - or is it a silk hand? - No, holy hand, I love this hand, my hand...

And suddenly - the awakening of Thomas. - “What if he’s already tired of ironing and continues to do so just for the sake of decency? – You need to get up, finish yourself, – but – just one more second! - one!” – and I don’t get up. And the hand strokes everything. And an even voice from above:

“Now I’ll go” (ZK., 99). Who initiates the game?.. not at all tender... On the 4th of “Russian May” Tsvetaeva wrote down: “gentle with his hands” (ZK., 119), he is not gentle with his soul. On May 16, poems about the deceitfulness of the love myth are born:

I know that the most tender May
Before the eye of Eternity - insignificant
(“For my poor frailty...” P. 527).

On the 4th of “Russian May” she remembered Akhmatova’s line “This is how one strokes cats or birds.” An appeal to Akhmatova’s experience (the parallel, of course, is obvious; let us recall from the poem “In the Evening”: “How unlike the embrace / Touch of these hands” 9) only confirms our idea about the synthesis of poetic imagination and real feeling both in Tsvetaeva’s text and in her life. She created her romance with N.N. as a text. Like Proust's Swann, she imbued this intimate story with fiction, enriched it with artistic initiative, and created a new reality with her artistic imagination.

The hand in the myths of all nations has its own symbolic language. The hand is a gesture of power, and, recognizing this, Tsvetaeva conveys her place in the love game:

You wanted it. - So. - Hallelujah.
I kiss the hand that hits me.
To the chest that pushes away - I pull to the chest,
So that, in surprise, I listen to silence.

In the lyrics, she created her own playful space, layered the dust of centuries on the actual intimate situation and from under it an archetype broke through, the relationship with the chosen one was seen as a continuation of the eternal oxymoron and paradoxically lost its drama:

Monastic - cold to hot! –
Hand - oh Eloise! - Abelara!
(“You wanted this. – So. – Hallelujah...”. P. 532).

With an epithet, the lyrical heroine could rise above her chosen one and grin at his voluntary monasticism, while the unfortunate Abelard helped introduce the subtext of humiliating monasticism.

We read further: “When saying goodbye, he puts his hand on my head,” m<ожет>b<ыть>did I put my forehead on? – I lean my head against his shoulder, with both hands I hug his waist – a cadet’s! “We’ve been standing like this for a long time” (ZK., 100). Next: “NN! Take my head in your hands, finish what you started. - Only - for God's sake! – don’t separate anymore!” (ZK., 110). Hands that work with a brush, hold books, dig the ground - this is the leitmotif of notebooks. Hand - a sign of approach:

Close your eyes and don't argue
Hands in hand. The bolt fell. –
No, it’s not a cloud or a glow!
That is my horse, waiting for riders!
(“Yes, an unprecedented, unheard of friend...”. P. 523).

The hand is an image of communication and understanding. In mid-May, Tsvetaeva wrote: “NN! I have so much to tell you that I need a hundred hands at once!” (ZK., 190). The hand also has another playful role - to lead “to the land of silent kisses” (“Nailed to the pillory...” P., 532). Our immodest question: what happened? There was “immodesty of words” (ZK., 109). And kisses: “Who, in the end, is more sinful: the saint, to<отор>Is he a kisser – or a sinner? And what is offensive to him that I kissed him? I don’t even know who started it” (ZK., 128). His kisses gave rise to a reflection, she even decided that when men kiss, they despise, and women just kiss.

One of the motives of the cycle is the recognition of one’s teacher as the chosen one. On the 10th of “Russian May,” that is, at the end of April 1920, she began writing the play “The Apprentice” - “<…>about NN and myself, I was very happy when I wrote, but instead of NN - something lively and tender, and less complex” (ZK., 133). The manuscript of the play has not survived, but songs from it have survived: “In the hour of the surf...”, “To say: true...”, “I came to you for bread...”, “There, on a tight rope...”, “(Sailors and singer) ", "(Singer to the girls)", "-Round dance, round dance...", "And why is the fire cold...", "Yesterday I looked into your eyes...". Their mood coincides with the emotional content of the cycle. For example, in the song “Yesterday I looked into your eyes...” the motives of the coldness of the chosen one, the opposite states of the participants in the love act, female sensuality, emotional imbalance and paradox are combined:

I'm stupid and you're smart
Alive, but I'm dumbfounded.
O cry of women of all times:
“My dear, what have I done to you?!”

It’s like shaking a tree! –
In time the apple falls ripe...
- Forgive me for everything, for everything,
My dear, what have I done to you!
(pp. 546–547).

The student’s poetic motif was initiated by conversations between M.I. Tsvetaeva and N.N. Vysheslavtsev; it is found in notebooks: “NN! But it was you who started it! (Dear friend, I don’t blame you!) - You were the first to say: “If I really were an old teacher, and you were my young student, I would now lay my hands on your head - I would bless you - and go.” “How can one not turn one’s head down after this and not kiss the blessed hands?” (ZK., 139). In the cycle, the apprentice motif is evident in the image of the cabin boy.

His coldness prompted her to notice the “difference of breeds” (ZK., 128). Incompatibility is the motive of both recordings and poems. It seemed to her that he did not like her poetry. He did not like the 18th century. He called Blok's poetry poems. And in general he will be judged at the Last Judgment for callousness. He humiliated her with his correctness. So she convinced herself. He’s sweet in the morning, dry in the evening – and her reflection: “The fact that I come to him is unworthy. It’s impossible” (ZK., 133). She persuaded herself not to go to him, came up with tricks: it seemed like he was in Tambov, but - after all, he was not in Tambov... She needed to justify her own melancholy: if she had bread at home and there was no emptiness in her stomach, she would didn't languish. She called not seeing him for a day and a half a feat. Poems became an antidote: she “fogs” herself with poetry (ZK. 124). She tried to persuade herself to abandon him: he is a man of duty, this is too serious for her, he believes that at night you need to sleep, night for her - to kiss, and this is the least, there are such creatures - they live stronger at night. He could “take her straight to God” (ZK., 120), but he did not have the will to save her, and if he entered her life, then she was only in his room. He sometimes allowed himself harshness and indelicacy of judgment, which offended her, but being offended, she also built an exculpatory explanation: this is how N.N. wanted to separate her from him! Balancing between thesis and antithesis is the state of both the lyrical heroine and the author of notebooks. Then she is indignant: “<…>To push me away, I’m surprised at the lack of measure in it, even a tenth would be enough!” (ZK., 206), then he creates a myth about his gentleness: “But, after thinking, I unexpectedly conclude: ... in order to push me away, I bow before his sense of proportion: I wouldn’t believe in more, if he wouldn’t have pushed me away with less!” (ZK., 206). As if she was repeating the classic story of the last century about a famous hero who did not want to offend the gullibility of an innocent soul and, having advised the girl to be able to control herself, also showed a certain sense of proportion.

She called herself a harlot and a spiritual courtesan. Finally, she wrote down: “NN is convinced that I am bad<…>So: saint and sinner” (ZK., 128) - and, deciding to rule over herself, she wrote:

Who said to all passions: forgive -
Forgive you too.
I swallowed the grievances to my heart's content.
Like a whipping bible verse
I read in your eyes:
"Bad passion!"
(“He who said to all passions: forgive...” P. 528).

She said “sorry” - intimately, but she met him by chance, like a passer-by. In May, N.N. “recoiled,” and she wrote down: “I live now without any joy at all” (ZK., 126). A motif of unintentional meetings appeared in the notebooks. She was either ironic, comparing her chosen one with a man who, looking at the cloud, thought: “It’s gone!”, then she stated the coldness: “I met him just now in Sollogub’s garden. He is stone, I am stone. Not a shadow of a smile” (ZK., 163). In the poem “For my poor frailty...” written a little later, on May 16, these relationships between the characters are corrected, and perhaps in their new version they are more true to the truth:

For my poor frailty
You look without wasting words.
You are stone, and I sing,
You are a monument, and I am flying.
(p. 527).

14 "Russian<ого>May" a new plot in the relationship was revealed: "And, clutching my head, with the feeling that everything is ending:

- "God! What a world I lost in it!” (ZK., 145). Deciding to handle the plot situation in her own way, M.I. Tsvetaeva decided to make peace with N.N. on Trinity Day. But after some time - infantile, with resentment: he will not go to him to make peace on Trinity Day, and will not give him books. On Trinity Day it’s all the same: he won’t make peace, even though I copied and signed the book for him.

Tsvetaeva believed that much of what she did later, of what would happen to her, would be the work of his hands. Since June there has been a period of no-meeting. At the beginning of December, Tsvetaeva informed Lann about the visit of “the artist from the Palace” (P., 160), that he would come again, that he was fun and he was “absolutely indifferent” to her, and she was “irrevocable” (P., 161 ).

Vysheslavtsev perceived Tsvetaeva’s further fate as a forced path, the subordination of man to the era. The stamp of time - not only Soviet, but also the beginning of the century - is obvious in all the portraits that he created. Of course, they also depict extraordinary – psychologically, intellectually – people. The synthesis of the human and the temporal gave rise to a strange effect of a nature almost anomalous in its genius and doom. For example, in the portrait of Andrei Bely from 1928 there is an eerie expression. Olga Nikolaevna recalled: “We look, Bely is coming. From Arbat Square. We stopped at “Prague”. The impression he made was strange. He walked in a white suit with such a wobbling gait. We stopped, said hello, and agreed to meet. Monumental, tall, calm Nikolai Nikolaevich, confident in his movements, and the playing, exalted Bely.” An exalted poet in an exalted era - this is what the portrait told about. Sologub in Vysheslavtsev’s portrayal is depressed and gloomy. This is how Tsvetaeva wrote about Sologub: “<…>he is in great poverty, he is proud” (P., 285). Klychkov is concentrated and tense. All of them, in his understanding, are victims of power based on the base instincts of society. On September 12, 1941, he made an extremely dangerous entry in his diary for those times: “I read the translation of Gandhi’s book “My Experiments with Truth” (“My Life”). The translation was greatly abridged in order to protect the unstable Soviet reader from temptation, but I still read it with great interest. Much in Gandhi’s personality is reminiscent of Lenin, the same unconditional devotion to a single cause in life, the same integrity, the same willpower and character. But the differences are also great. Perhaps the main difference in all external activities of G<анди>and L<енина>can be defined as a calculation on the best sides of human nature in the first and on the worst instincts in the second” 10. Vysheslavtsev survived Tsvetaeva. In his diaries there is an entry from 1941: “October 6. Monday. Got up at 9. The day was spent sorting through books, folders and various materials. Bobrov called and then came. Looks confused and depressed. He told me terrible news (for me, because it had been known for two weeks already) about Marina Tsvetaeva, who left with her son somewhere deep into Chuvashia, counting on someone’s help. There was no help, the money was soon spent, she became a dishwasher, then she could not bear the hunger strike and the need and hanged herself. Gumilev, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva. A Lebed<ев->Godfather<ач>is prosperous, Aseev bought a house somewhere in the province, etc.” eleven .

Vysheslavtsev found family happiness with a deeply religious man. He met Olga Nikolaevna in 1923 and said that their marriage was written not here, but in heaven. His portrait of Olga Nikolaevna is completely different from others; he conveyed the peace and light that emanated from her. Olga Nikolaevna wrote stories that were close in spirit and language to I. Shmelev’s prose. In the 1960s, she took monastic vows and died on the night of June 30, 1995.

Vysheslavtsev taught drawing at the Moscow Printing Institute. He correlated his spiritual attachment to his students with the memory of his pupil, Olga Nikolaevna’s son from her first marriage, Vadim Baratov, who died at the front on December 31, 1943. On the last page of Vadim’s notes about the first days of the war there is Vysheslavtsev’s autograph: “The thought of him did not leave us . Is it not for the sake of his blessed memory that we do all this educational work! And wasn’t it inspired by them?!” 12 He published critical and theoretical works, and prepared his research on the work of Leonardo da Vinci. As Olga Nikolaevna told me, he was accused of cosmopolitanism. During the search, a huge card index on Leonardo da Vinci, prepared for the monograph, was seized, as well as diaries in which information about his contemporaries was given quite laconically - he was protecting people, fearing arrests. Vysheslavtsev and Olga Nikolaevna faced twenty-five years in prison, his students were given a sentence of ten years. Vysheslavtsev’s stroke and paralysis in 1948 saved him from imprisonment. The searches continued; the Vysheslavtsev library, located in the semi-basement of Leontyevsky Lane - one of the best personal libraries in Russia with several tens of thousands of volumes - was confiscated and taken away on trucks. Due to their contents, the books, as reported by the competent authorities, could not be returned to their owners. Shortly before his death, which occurred four years after a stroke, Vysheslavtsev turned to the spiritual heritage of the Optina elders. Olga Nikolaevna said that on the path to Orthodoxy he sought the truth in Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and studied the language in order to read texts in the original, but in the end he accepted the teachings of Christ and said once that he would like to forget everything he read except the Bible .

Notes

1 About O. N. Vysheslavtseva: Three meetings / Comp. A. M. Trofimov. 1997, pp. 185–476.

2 Sahakyants A. Marina Tsvetaeva: Pages of life and creativity (1919–1922). M., 1986. pp. 227–235.

3 Sahakyants A. Life of Tsvetaeva. Immortal Phoenix Bird. M., 2000. P. 208.

4 “Big quiet roads...”, “The whole sea needs the whole sky...”, “It smelled like England - and the sea...”, “We only have an hour...”, “Yes, an unprecedented, unheard of friend...”, “My path does not lie past your house...", "The eyes of a sympathetic neighbor...", "No, it's easier to give your life than an hour...", "Into the bag and into the water - a valiant feat!..", "For my poor frailty...", "When push into the chest...", "Having said to all passions: forgive...", "Yes, there is no end to the number of sighs for me! admiring...", "Nailed to the pillory / Slavic conscience...", "Nailed to the pillory, / I'll still say...", "You wanted this. - So. – Hallelujah...”, “By this hand, with which the sailors...”, “And neither stanzas nor constellations will save...”, “It’s not so mean and not so simple...”, “Who is created from stone, who is created from clay ...”, “Take everything, I don’t need anything...”, “Death of a dancer”, “I don’t dance - without my fault...”, “Through the eyes of an enchanted witch...”.

7 Poetic texts (S.) quoted from: Tsvetaeva M. Collection cit.: In 7 volumes. T. 1. M., 1994. Here and below, page numbers are indicated in parentheses.

8 Jung K. Psychology and poetic creativity // Jung K. Spirit Mercury. M., 1996. P. 257.

9 Quoted. By: Akhmatova A. Works: In 2 volumes. T. 1. M., 1996. P. 47.

10 Diaries of N. N. Vysheslavtsev. Archive of O. N. Vysheslavtseva.

12 Diary of V. Baratov. Archive of O. N. Vysheslavtseva.

Solntseva N. M.

Cathedral notes.
Questions of new and contemporary Russian literature. M., 2002.

M.I. Tsvetaeva. Portrait of N.N. Vysheslavtseva, 1921
Of all the portraits of Marina Tsvetaeva, this is probably the strangest. Huge eyes, an anxiously detached look, compressed lips, a tense neck... You might not even guess that this is Marina Tsvetaeva without a signature. Outwardly, if compared with any of her surviving photographs, she is not similar. What, then, did the artist depict in this drawing, what did he want to convey with this deliberate sharpness - was it Tsvetaeva’s inner mood, her experiences of that period, or, perhaps, simply his vision of her? Who was he in her life, who was she in his? Chronologically, this portrait is a point in the history of their meeting. But from the very beginning to this final point there is much more...

First, some background information. The artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Vysheslavtsev was born in the Poltava province, he did not know his mother, his father was the manager of the Kochubeev estate. Nikolai Nikolaevich spent his childhood with his father’s lonely sister and his uncle’s large family. Since 1906, he studied in Moscow, in the studio of the artist Mashkov.
In 1908 he went to Paris, where he lived for six years at his father’s expense, continuing his education as an artist. After Russia entered the First World War, he returned to his homeland and graduated from the ensign school from 1916 to 1918. He fought, was wounded, and was awarded the Officer's Cross of St. George.
After demobilization, Nikolai Nikolaevich settled in Moscow and received a position as a librarian and a small apartment in the Palace of Arts on Povarskaya. In those years, he lived by painting commissioned portraits, selling his paintings and drawings, and later began teaching painting.

He was distinguished by an extraordinary breadth of interests - not only in the field of art, but also philosophy, the history of religion, Russian and world literature. He was a passionate bibliophile and collected one of the best libraries in tens of thousands of volumes - a collection of books on art, philosophy, and history.
Nikolai Nikolaevich created an entire portrait gallery of his contemporaries: A. Bely, B. Pasternak, F. Sologub and many others. He painted the portrait of Tsvetaeva in 1921.
In his early youth, Nikolai Nikolaevich married in order to legitimize his unborn child, and subsequently did not maintain relations with his wife and daughter. In 1923, he entered into an alliance with Olga Nikolaevna Baratova and raised her son Vadim, who later died at the front.
Nikolai Nikolaevich’s students not only received professional lessons from him, but also visited the hospitable home of Nikolai Nikolaevich and his wife in Krivoarbatsky Lane, where a unique microcosm of a “creative family” was created around a teacher-mentor, created in the image of the Renaissance “bottega” model. Such informal communication was suspicious in those years, and only a serious illness - a stroke that occurred in January 1948 - saved Nikolai Nikolaevich from repression. He was paralyzed for the last four years of his life.

“My dear great-grandchildren, lovers and readers in 100 years! I speak to you as if you were alive, for you will be. (I’m not embarrassed by the distance! My legs and soul are equally easy to climb!)
My dear great-grandchildren - lovers - readers! Judge: who is right? And - from the depths of my soul I tell you - have pity, because I deserved to be loved.”
Marina Tsvetaeva

From "Notebook 8":
“Moscow, April 25, 1920, Saturday.
- “You know, one new line from Pushkin has been discovered. ...Your kiss is insatiable... That’s all.”
- “Well, tell me the truth, if you didn’t know that this was Pushkin, would it sound to you the same as it does now?”
- “I think so.” - Insatiable... - This is so unexpected and so true. Who among us has not experienced this? But because this is Pushkin, there is still a special radiance.”
(It’s a pity that I can’t convey the voice; it barely touches the words.)

- “And what am I thinking about myself just now! I'm not sea foam. Fire also has foam, right? The very top. - Fiery foam, dry. - After all, fire is not evil either, it’s cheerful.”
- “Do you always close your forehead like this?”
- “I always - and you know - I don’t let anyone open it. - Never.”
- “You probably have a very high forehead?”
- “Very - and generally - good. But that's not the point. I don’t like my face at all.”
- “Your appearance is so much less than your interior, although your appearance is by no means secondary...”

I look at his hand resting on the sofa.
- “Do you want to go?” - "Yes." - “And a little more?” - "Yes." - “Oh, so good!” - I remember something about Milioti.
- “He told me about you then, but I didn’t listen.” - “Did you tell me?” - "A little."
- “I can tell you myself. What do you think about this meeting? “I just didn’t think, I can stop every thought. I just didn’t allow myself to have any thoughts here.”
- “Do you want me to tell you? “It will be funny for you.” “It’s a very stupid story.”
I'm telling you.
I tell you as I always do in such cases, concerned about two things: to tell the whole truth - and not to shock the interlocutor.
In some places, it seems, I’m hiding, in others, it seems, I’m pushing away.
Silence after the story. I feel like a beaten dog, all my behavior is ugly and stupid, and in no way justified.
- “Milioti is clear to me in this story,” says N.N. “You are completely unclear.”
- “Ask, it will be easier for me to answer.”
- “Did you know what this was leading to, did you feel it or not?”
I think about it and check.
“I felt delighted and curious. When he kissed me, I immediately responded, but I wasn’t very happy - I didn’t expect it.”
- “Let's keep it simple. You say, “Was it really intimacy?” Don’t you really know how such apparent intimacy could end?”
- “I just didn’t think, I didn’t want to think, I hoped in God. Are you very disgusted?”
- “No, I’m judging you less than anyone else. But I feel sorry for you, it’s a pity that you abandon yourself like that.”

Thoughtfully smoothes the blue blanket lying at the foot of the sofa. I look at his hand.
- “N. N.!” - I feel affection - a little playful! - his voice - “Why stroke a blanket that doesn’t feel anything, wouldn’t it be better to stroke my hair?”
Laughs. - I laugh, - The hand is still - moving white - on the blanket.
- “Don’t you want to?”
- “No, I would be very pleased, you have such good hair, but when I read your poems, I read them in two ways: as poetry - and as you!”
- "Well?"
- “I remember one line of yours:
To your kisses - oh living ones! -
I won’t object to anything - for the first time...”
- “Oh, that was when! - That was then! - Now it’s just the opposite! “This never happened!” and, catching himself: “Lord, what am I saying!”
- We laugh.-
- “N. N., I’m still offended that you don’t want to pet me. “Isn’t my head better than a blanket?”
- “You have a very good head, but when I iron the blanket, at least I am sure that it is not unpleasant for him.”
- “Won’t you object?” - I laugh. - I slide to the floor - on my knees in front of him - with my head on my knees.
And now - like a dream - there is no other word. A gentle hand - tender - as if through a dream - and my head is sleepy - and every hair is sleepy. I just bury my face deeper into my knees.
- “Are you so uncomfortable?”
- “I feel wonderful.”
Strokes, strokes, as if convincing my head, every hair. Silk rustle of hair under your hand - or is it a silk hand? - No, holy hand, I love this hand, my hand...
And suddenly - Foma’s awakening. - “What if he’s already tired of stroking and continues to do so only for the sake of decency? - You need to get up, finish yourself, - but - just one more second! - one!” - and I don’t get up. And the hand strokes everything. And an even voice from above:
- “Now I’ll go.”
I get up resignedly. I escort you through the dark rooms. “I won’t go see you off for anything!” - I already have perseverance.
I accompany you first to the front door, then to the entrance, walking next to you.
Emptiness (fear of its emptiness), consciousness of its unworthiness and its condemnation, coldness, discomfort.
I accompany him to Sollogub, he comes back with me. I said something about Milioti: “He’s already forgotten!” - “You are wrong to think that this will serve as a memory for him for many years!..” The voice is not without slyness.
I say something about him - and:
- “When I’m next to you... However, it doesn’t matter: after all, you are from afar - from afar...”
- “What kind of person would you like me to be?”
- “No. - The same. - This is why you are so dear to me... - When this ends...”
- "What?" - “Our acquaintance.” - “Will it end soon?” - "Don't know."
We walk along the alley. - “You know, if someone meets me like this now, no one will think badly. - I walk the streets and cast magic.”
- "Why do you think so?"
“Because I myself am aware of my innocence,” I swear to God! - despite everything I do!
- "You're right."
Saying goodbye, he puts his hand on my head - maybe I put my forehead on it? - I lean my head against his shoulder, with both hands I hug his waist - a cadet's! - We’ve been standing like this for a long time.
- “And it seems to me that under the pretext that you are stroking, you opened your forehead? Oho!
Laughs. - We’re still standing. - I’m with my eyes closed. He lightly touches his forehead with his lips.
And an even, even, clear step along the alley.
___
N.N.! Protect me from the world and from myself!
___
N.N. I love your quiet voice. Before you, I thought that all men were dissolute (Volodechka, perhaps, did not love him, Seryozha was an angel.)
___
N.N. You are not raising me, you are reviving me.
...When the noisy day falls silent for a mortal...
And as I understand now, you don’t like my poems!
___
N.N. You are a deep hour in my life, and there will be no end to it.
___
Milioti about N.V.
- “Academic - I’ve read so many books that it’s just scary...”
And I - with the purest heat of my heart - detachedly, as before death:
- “Gentlemen! - This is the only person besides Seryozha - whom I feel is higher than myself - by as much as seven heavens! - Do not laugh. - I'm serious."
- Milioti's face.-
___
NN! Do you know that I now have a real temptation to run away to you - from the guests - with Pyatnitskaya - at 12 o'clock at night - to your home! -Don't be afraid, I will never do it.
___
NN! Take my head in your hands, finish what you started. - Only - for God's sake! - don't separate anymore!

From the series “N.N.V.”:
“then - in spite of everything - England...”
It smelled like England - and the sea -
And valor. - Severe and stately.
- So, connecting with new grief,
I laugh like a cabin boy on a tightrope

Laughs in the hour of the great storm,
Alone with God's wrath,
In blissful, monkey dope
Dancing over the foaming mouth.

These hands are persistent, strong
Rope - used to the sea blizzard!
And the heart is valiant, but by the way,
Not everyone has to die in bed!

And now, all the coldness of the starless darkness
Inhaling - on the mast itself - from the edge -
Over the yawning abyss
- Laughing! - I lower my eyelashes...
April 27, 1920

Marina Tsvetaeva, 1913

From "Notebook 8":
Russian May 3, 1920 - Sunday.-
Well.
The difference in attitude towards me between Milioti and N.N.
Milioti, appreciating, humiliated with behavior, N., behaving correctly, humiliates internally.

4th Russian May 1920, Monday
Dear friend, you could have performed a miracle on me, but you didn’t want to. You are “pleased” that I am like this.
... This is how you pet cats or birds...
You could, without ever stroking my hair (“too much!” - and I see it like that!) and just once - with all the tenderness of your sweet hand - stroking my soul - make me: well, whatever you want (for you always want only the best!) - a hero, a student, a great poet, make me not write poetry at all - (?) - make me clean the whole house like a toy, get myself a telescope, take off all my rings, study in English
___
Saying goodbye once, you told me:
- “Wait, don’t love me!”
- “Wait to love me!” - that's what I should have told you. - I fulfill your request twice
___
12 midnight
Lord, when I don’t see him for 11/2 days, it seems like a feat to me! After all, I always cloud myself: with poems, Mme de Staël, with people, I fight all the time, every minute I defend myself against the need for him, for me every minute is without him.
Oh, I know myself! In two full days I will have such a feeling of accomplishment, such a radiant feeling of having been delivered - beyond my strength! - burden, I will feel SUCH A HERO that - a second ago I didn’t even dare to think about it! - I’ll grab any excuse and rush to him, sincerely believing that I’m going on business.
God! After all, I'm not exaggerating. Let's discard the 4-5 hours I sleep and count the minutes -
48 hours - 10 = 38 hours 38 x 60 = 2280
___
38 x 60 = 2280 - Two thousand two hundred and eighty minutes, and each one is like a sharp edge! After all, this is SO. And for him - between drawing, gardening, walks, and I don’t know what yet (maybe he loves someone?) - for him it’s not even two days, but simply - nothing, he won’t even notice anything.
So I still suffered for 22 years from Sonya Parnok, but then it was different: she pushed me away, petrified me, trampled me with her feet, but she loved me!
And this, I think deeply and confusedly, is simply NOT NEEDED. After all, he says about his friends: “If they died, I would probably soon forget them...” But am I really a friend to him? - So - “pleasant”.
Lord, I repent to the end: I’m done with pride, “it’s nice” - I agree, but I can’t do one thing! I can not! I can not! - feel less than a knock in the room. I can’t do this - and it’s not pride that arises - but the last remnant of reason: “You won’t achieve anything!” and - what I will die with - correctness.
- Dear friend. You are probably at home now, Lidia Petrovna said that I was - then I don’t know anything.
Maybe you understand everything, then you feel sorry for me, maybe - nothing - because you don’t want (English!) and mentally put me in a stupid position.
…
- Lord, what have I done to him that he torments me so much? And I thought that I would never be able to love anyone again! - Exactly then, 17 years old, curly after measles, - for the first time!
- Poems. - But he doesn’t like my poems, he doesn’t need them, which means I don’t need them either - what do I care if Balmont praises ?!
- Rest. - Second of sobriety:
When I'm in the room, he feels good. - I'm not quite out of the habit yet, although I appreciate it.
- “I’m very sorry that you are leaving now,” - several times - and, giving the book: “You promised to accept it from me.” The second - perhaps out of pity, the first - directly; I am funny to him, like a variety of something: a special animal, a bird.
For sobriety:
He doesn’t know everything that I write (feel). Today I argued fiercely, loved - out loud - my own. Maybe he doesn’t feel anything behind this, because he’s not musical.
Lord, when I'm rich! everything - despite everything! - pulling me towards myself - I’m so tormented, what happened to others who loved him?!
- Zavadsky didn’t love me either, but he was flattered by my attention, and - besides! - I could write to him. Loved poetry. In addition, in Studio III I was honored, this increased my value to him - at least he could boast of my name! (III Studio is even less famous than I am!)
And this one-
___

(Number not entered) Russian May 1920, Tuesday
I am suspicious of the joy with which NN meets my every request: you rejoice like that - either when you love very much, or when you cling to the external in order to hide the inner emptiness for a person.
The first is not mon cas. (my case (French).)
___
Or maybe I'm taking my word for it too much? - NN is convinced that I am bad - and I am immediately convinced, without checking. - What have I done worse than him? - Let's take the basis. From the very beginning of the meeting, I knew who he was, and he knew who I was.
So: saint and sinner. Who, in the end, is more sinful: the saint who kisses - or the sinner? And what is offensive to him that I kissed him? I don't even know who started it.
And one more thing: “tell the truth! You don’t love me, do you?” - this is how they ask when - at least - they are going to love, if all the same - they don’t ask, they have no right, no - there is no reason!
Did I ask him? - Lord, I am so infinitely modest - in the feelings of another for me! - my immodesty is only in my own. It would never have occurred to me.
But our basis was the same: he felt good with me, I felt good with him. And, taking into account the difference in breeds, the attitude to the word (he is so stingy! I am so generous!) - it turns out that he was, perhaps, more drawn to me than I was to him.-
-
In a word, I am delighted...
He felt like he was fulfilling a certain gentleman's duty.
Or maybe this is not the case?
____
I suffered like this only once in my life - 10 years ago! - 17 years old! I completely forgot how it happens.
It’s as if I’m lying at the bottom of a well, with broken legs and arms, and people are walking above, the sun is shining.
The empty, bright Povarskaya is scary to me.

10th Russian May 1920
Deafening news: N.N. has a wife and daughter, both in Crimea. - I can’t believe it. - Maybe his daughter is in Crimea because she also has a “grimask”? - I don’t think about my wife. - It doesn’t matter. - Jealousy (and at the same time - joy!) Only for my daughter.
And he has 7 rooms in Moscow.
- “Vasily Dmitrievich, are you taking this room?”
- "For what? I have it." - “Then I’ll take it.” - “Why?” - “And so, for future use.”

May 11, 1920, Old Style - Monday.
In general, since meeting with NN, I have lost a lot of shine. This is so new for me - I forgot so much - to be unloved!
___
What separated me from NN. - My truth, the truth of my whole being, intentionally sharply emphasized so that I knew who I was dealing with (- Then I would forget, because - if he loved me - I would, of course, become different!)
___
NN! But it was you who started it! (Dear friend, I don’t blame you!) - You were the first to say: - “If I really were an old teacher, and you were my young student, I would now lay my hands on your head - I would bless you - and go.” - After this, how can you not put your head down - not kiss the hands that blessed you?
And - note - I held on until the next evening!
___
You didn’t have a mother. - I think about it. - And, having thought about it, I forgive you all your sins.
___
- I take a solemn oath - coute que coute (no matter what it costs (French)) - not to come to you myself.
Joy not only does not cover humiliation. Humiliation kills joy. And, leaving you, I am poorer than I was.

Russian May 14, 1920
- What is desire? -
I want to go to NN - that’s my desire.
But I can’t overcome myself to force myself to go up to his room. “What is this?” -
It is obvious: impossibility is stronger than desire, impossibility is overcome only by necessity.
If I needed NN, I would go up to his room.
But - I think deeply: - no! I think it would be easier for me to die on his doorstep.
___
And, clutching his head, with the feeling that everything is ending: “Lord! What a world I lost in it!”
___
Before my letter and the return of the books, everything was going differently; for a second, he found his old voice. You could feel the excitement through the ice.
Now it’s an impenetrable wall. I feel with my whole being that I DO NOT EXIST for him.
___
- He probably also despises me for my “friendship” with Milioti, not knowing that I am now so strongly friends with him because from his, Milioti’s, room you can see him, NN, passing by.

From the series “N.N.V.”:
Into the bag and into the water - a valiant feat!
To love a little is a big sin.
You, gentle with the slightest hair,
Unkind to my soul.

They are seduced by the red dome
And crows and doves.
Curls - all whims are forgiven,
Like hyacinth curls.

Sin over the golden-domed church
Circle - and do not pray in it.
Under this curly hat
You don't want my soul!

Delving into the golden strands,
Don't you hear the funny complaint:
Oh, if only you - just as earnestly
Bent over my soul!
May 14, 1920

N.N. Vysheslavtsev. Portrait of Pavel Florensky, 1922.

From "Notebook 8":
15th Russian May 1920
NN! The first time you saw me off, for the first time in my entire life I stopped not in front of my house.
It can be interpreted in every possible way: 1) what do I care about the old house, since there is a new house (you), 2) I just don’t want to go home 3) I want to go home, but not to myself (to you!), etc.
And in the end: neither your home nor yours.
___
NN is cunning. Knowing that he would suffer from me, he chose to torture me.
___
- How is it inside him, in his chest? - I met, waited, rejoiced, laughed, walked along Povarskaya at night, stroked my head - and then immediately: an order for the Decembrists - a vernissage - in between - a vegetable garden - some old people - lunches and dinners...
Looking at his hands, does he sometimes remember that I kissed them?
___
The woman who is always in his room is affectionate with me and Alya. If she loves him, she should feel sorry for me - a little bit.

May 16, 1920 (Actually: May 17) - Sunday - Trinity Day.
The day of our reconciliation, my friend.
It’s a pity that on this day I cannot present you with new love! (Not ready yet.)
I will not make peace with you, although your book is ready - rewritten and inscribed.
- “To my dear NNV. - with great sadness - from the bottom of my heart - on the wonderful Trinity Day.”
But today is your opening day. You have no time for Trinity Day and no time for women’s poems.

Spiritual Day 1920 (Date not included.)
- Passes. -
For me, the whole earth is a philtre amoureux, (love potion (French).) therefore, perhaps, it passes.
And NN (about whom I think most of all - probably from old memory - here in the book), meeting me in the count’s garden, perhaps thinks like a man looking at a cloud:
- "God bless! “It’s gone!”
___
I met him just now in Sollogub’s garden. He is stone, I am stone. Not a hint of a smile.
When I loved him, I was convinced that he was convinced of this - it was even unpleasant for me.
Now that I don’t love you (the tree is dry, tomorrow is Friday!), I am convinced that I am convinced of this too.

From the series “N.N.V.”:
Who said to all passions: forgive -
Forgive you too.
I swallowed the grievances to my heart's content.
Like a whipping bible verse
I read in your eyes:
"Bad passion!"

In the hands that you carry,
You read it - flattery.
And my laughter is the jealousy of all hearts! -
Like a leper's bell -
It thunders at you.

And by the way in your hands suddenly
You take a pickaxe - so that your hands
Don’t take it (aren’t they the same flowers?),
It’s so clear to me - to the darkness in my eyes! -
What was not in your herds
Blacker - sheep.

There is an island - by the goodness of the Father, -
Where I don't need a bell,
Where is the black fluff?
Along every hedge. - Yes. -
There are black herds in the world.
Another shepherd.
May 17, 1920

N.N. Vysheslavtsev with students of the Moscow Printing Institute. May 1948.

From "Notebook 8":
Russian May 20, 1920, Wednesday.
After meeting with NN. I’m somehow depressed, having discovered that I have a living heart (for love and for pain, - here: “whins!”) I began to fear myself, not to trust.- “Tu me feras encore bien mal quelque jour” (“You you will hurt me even more someday” (French) - began to love myself less.
For 10 years I was a Phoenix - senselessly and blissfully burning and resurrecting (burning and resurrecting!) - and now - doubt - some kind of suspicion:
“Come on, won’t you resurrect?”

From the series “N.N.V.”:
Through the eyes of an enchanted witch
I look at God's forbidden child.
Since my soul was given to me,
I became quiet and unresponsive.

I forgot how like a river gull
She moaned all night under people's windows.
I'm now a mistress in a white cap
I walk sedately, with blue eyes.

And even the rings became dull,
A hand in the sun is like a dead man wrapped in swaddling clothes.
My bread is so salty that it’s in my mouth,
And in the salt lick the salt lies untouched...
May 25, 1920

From "Notebook 8":
Moscow, May 31st Art. Art. 1920
Letter.
I have so much to tell you that I need a hundred hands at once!
I am writing to you as a non-stranger, I am trying with all my might to snatch you from non-existence (in myself), I don’t want to end, I can’t end, I can’t part!
You and I are going through a bad period right now, it will pass, it must pass, because if you were really the way you now want me to see you (and the way - alas! - I am beginning to see you!), I would never come to you didn't fit.
Understand! - I’m still trying to talk to you like a human being - in my own way! - good, I wanted to write you a completely different letter, I returned home, choking with indignation - insult - resentment, but with you it’s impossible, it’s not necessary, I don’t want to forget the other you, to whom my soul went!
NN! You did me wrong.
Liked - disliked, needed (in your opinion: pleasant) - unpleasant, I understand this, this is in the order of things.
And if it were like this here - oh Lord, would I need to say this twice - at least once?!
But the attitude here was not about “likes” and “dislikes” - you never know who I liked - and more than you! - but I didn’t give my books to anyone, in you I saw a person, and with this human of mine, in recent years I didn’t know what to do with!
Remember the beginning of the meeting: Fallen leaves? - It began from this, from this - from the very depths - to the very depths - of humanity - it went.
How did it end? - I don’t know - I don’t understand - I keep asking myself: what did I do? Maybe you overestimated the importance for me - of your hands, of your real presence in the room, (put me back!) - oh, my friend, didn’t I love my whole life - in return and more passionately than the existing ones! - former - non-existent - Existing!
I am writing to you with the complete purity of my heart. I'm truthful, that's my only meaning. And if this looks like humiliation - my God! - I am seven heavens above humiliation, I don’t understand what it is at all.
The person - the soul - the secret of this soul is so important to me that I will allow myself to be trampled underfoot just to understand - to cope!
A sense of good manners - yes, I follow it - common sense, yes, when the game is lost (before the game is lost), but here I am honest and pure, I want and will fight to the end, for the stake is my own soul!
- And divine sobriety, which is greater than common sense, is what teaches me now: do not believe what you see, for the day now obscures Eternity, do not hear what you hear, for the word now obscures the essence.
My first vision is sharper than my second. I saw you beautiful.
Therefore, bypassing the “humiliation” - and - insults - forgetting everything, trying to forget, I just want to tell you a few words about this ill-fated little book.
Poems written to a person. Beneath the mesh of the poetic form is a living soul: my laughter, my cry, my sigh, what I dreamed about, what I wanted to say - and it didn’t say - don’t you understand?! - I am a living person.-
How can I feel all this: a smile, a cry, a sigh, outstretched hands - alive!!! - give it to you, who needs it only as poetry?!
- “I don’t take a lyrical approach to this loss,” but the poems are all, the whole gift: You - I - You - mine - You... After this, why should I give them to you after this? - If only as rhymed lines - there are people who need them more than you, because it’s not me! - not my breed of poets - your favorites!
It’s the same thing: they cut off your finger, and the other one stands and watches - why? You are too sure that poetry is just poetry. This is not so, it’s not like that for me, when I write, I’m ready to die! And long later, re-reading it, my heart breaks.
I write because I cannot give this (my soul!) - otherwise.- Here.-
And to give them only because I promised - well! - a dead letter of the law. If you said: “They are dear to me, because to me”..., - “roads, because yours”, “roads because it was”..., “roads, because it has passed”, - or simply: roads - Oh my God! - as soon as possible! like with both hands! -
- And so to give, - it would be better if they had never been written!
- You are a strange person! - Asking me to rewrite Jalalova’s poems for you is a greeting from my dissolute soul to her dissolute skin
Why do you need them? - Form? - The most common one: iambic, it seems. This means the essence: I. - And what was written to you, was caused by you, was given to you - losing it (even without knowing what, because you didn’t read it) You are not lyrically upset, but ask me for a book to give me the opportunity to enroll okay. - You don’t need to teach me broad gestures, they’re all in my hand.
- How I would like you to understand me in this story with poems - with you!
How I would like you, in some simple and clear hour of your life, to simply and clearly tell me, explain to me; what's the matter, why did you leave? - So that I understand! - I believed it!
I, trusting, am worthy of the truth.
I’m tired.- It’s true that I’m hitting a rock like a wave (not of non-love, but of misunderstanding!)
- And with sadness I see how lightweight I am, I turned out to be heavier than you here.
MC.
“And they didn’t tell you to go to the front.”
___
I don’t remember about NN for days. If he really did all this (bargaining with Seryozha’s books, attitude towards Alya, the impudence of the last conversation) - to push me away, I’m surprised at the lack of measure in him, even a tenth would be enough!
But, after thinking, I unexpectedly conclude: .. in order to push me away, I bow before his sense of proportion: I wouldn’t have believed anything more, if he wouldn’t have pushed me away with anything less!”

So this is who the artist Vysheslavtsev depicted in the ill-fated portrait in 1921... She is a stranger, “another,” a strange woman who passed by. Unloved, misunderstood with her openness and storm of feelings. Not a portrait of Marina Tsvetaeva - a portrait of her love for N.N. and lack of love, its lack of understanding - to them.

Agronomist, local historian N.A. Vysheslavtsev was born in 1855 in the city of Lebedyan, Tambov province. After graduating from the New Alexandria Agricultural Institute, he worked as an agronomist in private farms in the western provinces of Russia.
Here, in 1890, when N.A. Vysheslavtsev served as manager of Count Kochubey’s estate, he had a son, whose mother, according to family tradition, was Countess Kochubey. Nikolai Alexandrovich took upon himself all the care of his son. His son Nikolai Nikolaevich Vysheslavtsev (1890-1952) became an artist and created a unique series of lifetime portraits of Silver Age figures. It was to him, Nikolai Nikolaevich, in the spring of 1920 that Marina Tsvetaeva dedicated the poem “Big Quiet Roads...”.

Since 1891, N.A. Vysheslavtsev was a tax inspector in the city of Temnikov, Tambov province (now the Republic of Mordovia), in 1903 he was transferred to the same position in the city of Tambov.
Nikolai Alexandrovich became one of the founders and at the same time treasurer of the Tambov Provincial Agricultural Society. His works on agronomy were published in the society's collections and in the Tambov Territory newspaper. In 1912, he organized the Tambov Agricultural Exhibition, which summed up the results of eight years of successful work of the Tambov Agricultural Society.

From 1915 to 1919, N. A. Vysheslavtsev taught agriculture and gardening at the Tambov infantry courses. He restored the agricultural museum organized at the beginning of the 20th century. After its liquidation, he was a consultant at the Tambov Peasant House. At the same time, he took part in the work of the Physics and Mathematics Society and headed the Aviakhim Museum. Since 1920, Nikolai Alexandrovich was a member of the Society of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Tambov Region.

Author's works

Pro-ruin production: with the attachment of design drawings on six sheets / N. Vysheslavtsev. - St. Petersburg. : Ed. A. F. Devriena, 1885. - 60 p.

Literature about life and creativity

Chermensky N. N. A. Vysheslavtsev. 1855-1926: obituary // News of the Tambov Society for the Study of Nature and Culture of the Local Region. - Tambov, 1927. - Issue. 2. - P. 79.
An expert on peasant life // Lebedyanskie news [Lebedyansky district]. - 2000. - January 1 - P. 5.

Reference materials

Tambov encyclopedia. - Tambov, 2004. - P. 112.
Tambov dates 2000. - Tambov, 1999. - pp. 80-81.

Thanks to the support of P.I. Novgorodtsev, Vysheslavtsev became a professor's scholarship holder and, after passing his master's exams, was sent on a two-year business trip abroad. N. N. Alekseev recalls that of the university cities of B. P. Vysheslavtsev, “most of all, Marburg is attracted, where at the foot of the old castle, on the banks of the quietly flowing Lahn, nestled the old university, where Giordano Bruno and our Lomonosov once studied.” Friends attended lectures and worked in seminars by P. Natorp and G. Cohen; Of the young philosophers who were in Marburg at that time, they became close to Nikolai Hartmann, Vl. Tatarkevich, V. E. Seseman. In Marburg, B.P. Vysheslavtsev wrote his dissertation “Fichte’s Ethics,” which was later brilliantly defended at Moscow University.

The writer Boris Zaitsev conveys his impressions of this defense, which took place shortly before the outbreak of World War II:

“We were sitting in a whole group, acquaintances, friends of Vysheslavtsev - among them was Professor Ustinov, also from Moscow University.

At the pulpit, the graceful and agile, nervous Boris Petrovich, making slightly dancing movements with his hands, as if adjusting something on his suit, now taking out a handkerchief, now putting it in, first made an introduction - and then the cannonade began. The “faculty,” the areopagus of the old professors, listened. One after another, the opponents came out, pointed out inaccuracies, disagreed with something, approved something, attacked something, and as soon as the next one fell silent, Vysheslavtsev hit the balls with the same ease and accuracy as in tennis, all in the same rhythmic movement . It was a real tournament. It lasted four hours...”

Thanks to the broad historical-philosophical comparisons and methodological originality, the significance of B. P. Vysheslavtsev’s dissertation goes far beyond the scope of the main topic. It determined the range of issues that occupied him in the future and the main directions for their solution.

The very beginning of this work is unexpected - the problem of the irrational in the philosophy of the early 20th century is given first place in it. The author’s sympathy for A. Bergson was clearly demonstrated here, although in a reflexively balanced way. He sees even greater closeness to his ideals in N. O. Lossky, considering him “a representative of that current of modern philosophy to which the future belongs.” Particularly important to him was the desire to free ourselves from subjective idealism and affirm the leading role of intuition in knowledge. The rejection of rationalism in its previous form, ontologism and intuitionism indicate the deep connection of B. P. Vysheslavtsev with the traditions of Russian philosophy.

After defending his dissertation, B. P. Vysheslavtsev began teaching at the university a course on the history of political doctrines, which had been taught before him by P. I. Novgorodtsev (who left teaching for political reasons); He also lectured at the Moscow Commercial Institute and at the Shanyavsky People's University.

In January 1917, B. P. Vysheslavtsev was elected extraordinary professor at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. Later, participation in the Free Academy of Spiritual Culture brought him especially close to N. A. Berdyaev, and their active collaboration continued after the forced emigration in 1922.

In Berlin, immediately upon arrival, B. P. Vysheslavtsev outlined his creative program to N. N. Alekseev in the following words: “Philosophy should now be not a presentation of theoretical problems that are inaccessible to people, but a teacher of life.” In Berlin, he published the brochure “Russian Elements in Dostoevsky” (1923), became close to the Christian Youth Union (YMCA) and subsequently took a direct part in its activities. One of his first works in this society was the publication of the collection “Problems of Russian Religious Consciousness” (Berlin, 1924), which published articles by N. Berdyaev, L. Karsavin, V. Zenkovsky, S. Frank, N. Lossky, N. Arsenyev . B. P. Vysheslavtsev wrote the article “Religion and Irreligion” here.

Soon B.P. Vysheslavtsev moved to Paris, where, together with N.A. Berdyaev, he founded the magazine “Put” - the leading theoretical organ of Russian religious and philosophical thought for a decade and a half.

The creative thought of B. P. Vysheslavtsev moves around two main themes - social philosophy and philosophical anthropology. In the true sense, he remained a philosopher, free from the passions of this fleeting age, only by developing the doctrine of man. Social problems deeply affected his soul and sometimes obscured the clarity of his thoughts. “It was painful to look at the blind bitterness of this kind man and philosopher,” recalled N. N. Alekseev, “who in this case had lost the gift of calmly and wisely looking at the world historical tragedy developing before our eyes.”

Already in the first issues of "Put" Vysheslavtsev's articles on topical social issues appeared, which later provided material for a popular brochure. Vysheslavtsev most directly connected social issues with the analysis of religious consciousness. To him in the late 1920s. it seemed that Russian youth, “who professed the religion of socialism..., were capable of an instant turn of religious feeling, capable of seeing the insignificance of their idol. And this vision,” he continued, “is taking place before our eyes.”

A long-standing interest in the problem of the irrational and a broad understanding of the tasks of philosophical anthropology brought B. P. Vysheslavtsev closer to the psychoanalytic school of C. G. Jung. He masters its conceptual apparatus, applying it further to the study of the experience of Christian ascetics. Vysheslavtsev received a positive response from the Jungians and was published in their periodicals. Unfortunately, due to the inaccessibility of sources, this side of his activity is not yet possible to cover in sufficient detail.

The most significant work of B. P. Vysheslavtsev is “The Ethics of Transformed Eros” (1931). In it, the philosophically interpreted concepts of “Law” and “Grace” become the core of the psychoanalytic study of ascetic work as a kind of “sublimation”. Vysheslavtsev thinks of the “heavenly hierarchy” of Areopagitism as a grandiose “system of sublimation”; For him, the image of a saint also appears as the “limit of sublimation.” The most essential role in the process of sublimation is assigned to “imagination”.

Here it is difficult to resist analogies with “The Imaginative Absolute” by Ya. E. Golosovker, written around the same time (1928–1936) and with the same key concepts of sublimation and imagination in the conceptual foundation. A noticeable shade of immanentism is characteristic of both books. But Ya. E. Golosovker, as far as one can judge from the published texts, has a tendency towards atheism, while Vysheslavtsev is not inclined to break away from Christian soil. For him, imagination is not only a way of understanding, but also the initial stage of “sublimation”, ending with “transformation”. The concept of “incarnation” is noticeably highlighted by Christological dogma, as can be seen from the following quote: “Art does not incarnate, it does not create a living person, the dream of Galatea remains a dream. But a living face has an infinitely greater power, with its living image, to ignite fantasy, penetrate “hearts and wombs,” and transform consciousness and subconsciousness. transforms a person and love is the state of a transformed person.”

Vysheslavtsev is protected from possible reproaches of immanentism by the eighth chapter - “Sublimation as dependence on the absolute.” “Comprehensive and ultimate sublimation,” he writes, “(not partial and conditional) is impossible without “sublimissimum”, without summum bonum, without absolute perfection.”

“The ethics of transformed eros” did not end Vysheslavtsev’s constructions in the field of philosophical anthropology. Having established in it the dynamic interaction between the concepts of the subconscious, libido, sublimation, freedom (as the center of self-consciousness, I), “I” as potential infinity, actual infinity as unity and the Absolute, which is “greater than actual infinity,” he moved into the sphere of theology and completed his constructions with two articles on the image of God in man, in which the influence of St. Gregory of Nyssa. He identifies seven ontological stages in human being, of which the highest is the irrational and superconscious self. “The Self is metaphysical and metapsychic,” writes Vysheslavtsev, “in every sense there is a certain “meta”, a final transcendence. Only Revelation and mystical intuition point to this ultimate depth."

B. P. Vysheslavtsev, who taught moral theology for a number of years at the Theological Institute in Paris, generally remained aloof from the most heated theological discussions. His only attempt to intervene in a theological dispute about the sophiological teaching of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, whose echoes are felt until recently.

The immediate reason for the heightened passions was at one time the “Decree” of the Moscow Patriarchate, signed by the patriarchal locum tenens and future Patriarch Sergius (Stragorodsky), in which this teaching was condemned as heretical. The material for the decree was prepared in Paris by members of the Brotherhood of St. Photius, mainly by the famous theologian V.N. Lossky.

The “Memoirs” of N. O. Lossky preserved the text of a letter from V. N. Lossky to his father dated November 26, 1935, containing interesting touches to the psychological portrait of B. II. Vysheslavtseva. But before talking about this, it is necessary to explain how N. O. Lossky himself understood the prerequisites for the unfolding drama. “Many emigrants,” he wrote, “hate the Bolsheviks so terribly that they began to hate, strictly speaking, all of Russia, and are suspicious of all persons and institutions located in Russia. They are not able to appreciate the great merits of Metropolitan Sergius, who managed, despite the satanic hatred of the Bolsheviks for religion, to preserve a huge church organization and, therefore, protect the Russian people from two serious disasters - from complete unbelief and from pathological forms of sectarian mysticism ... ".

Similar sentiments had a noticeable impact on N.A. Berdyaev, whom V.N. Lossky called “obsessed with the “obscurantism of freedom,” and his closest associate B.P. Vysheslavtsev. In November 1935, at the Religious and Philosophical Academy, they organized an open debate, intending, as V. N. Lossky wrote, to glorify the members of the Brotherhood of St. Photius and, of course, the Moscow Patriarchate, “as rapists of freedom of thought.” The central role in this action was given to B.P. Vysheslavtsev, who led it in a state of extreme excitement, and after the dispute, completely losing his composure, beat Maxim Kovalevsky until he bled. The next day, however, they sincerely reconciled, but public sympathy for sophiology and the fight for “freedom of thought” noticeably cooled after this incident...

B.P. Vysheslavtsev spent the last years of his life in Geneva. Here he wrote the book “The Philosophical Poverty of Marxism” (1952), published under the pseudonym B. Petrov, and a major socio-philosophical study “The Crisis of Industrial Culture” (1953). It caused heated controversy in the New Journal. Responding to his opponents, B.P. Vysheslavtsev once again emphasized that he stands for democracy, “which excludes a centrally controlled planned economy, excludes any economic and political totalitarianism and affirms the free market, freedom of trade, commodity and monetary circulation, accepting and approving, moreover, partial planning, partial specialization and nationalization and partial restriction of economic autonomy on the part of a sovereign, legal, democratic state." These words sound amazingly modern!

* * *

B.P. Vysheslavtsev turned to the “philosophy of the heart” throughout his entire career, but worked especially fruitfully on this topic in the second half of the 1920s. Readers of “Put” in the first issue of the new magazine saw Vysheslavtsev’s article “Knowledge of the Heart in Religion” (1925), the material of which, in a revised and expanded form, was later included in the book “The Heart in Christian and Indian Mysticism” (1929). This work provides the most systematic presentation of the views of B. P. Vysheslavtsev, but later he returned to its themes more than once and included the chapter “The Meaning of the Heart in Philosophy and Religion” in his final book “Eternal in Russian Philosophy” (1955).

With the theme of the heart, B.P. Vysheslavtsev touched on one of the cherished strings of the Russian philosophical lyre. For a long time, however, its sound was perceived only through the translations of the holy fathers, since our ancestors did not have the courage to speak “on their own,” especially on such issues as the doctrine of man created “in the image and likeness”... If you do not accept Taking into account the apocrypha (“The Legend of How God Created Adam”, etc.), the first original Russian works on philosophical anthropology should include the “Tradition” of the Venerable Nile of Sora (beginning of the 16th century), which expounds the doctrine of gathering the mind in the heart , as well as an anonymous treatise from the early 17th century. “On Human Nature,” in which the visible brain is connected with the invisible mind, and the visible heart with invisible wisdom.

Considerable attention was paid to this topic in the works of G. S. Skovoroda. He translated, with his preface and notes, Plutarch’s essay “On the Peace of the Soul” under the title “interpretation from Plutarch on the silence of the heart”, leaving, however, unanswered the question regarding the differences between Stoicism and m, but in “Grateful Erodius” he painted an accurate image of the “good hearts."

From his predecessors in the 19th century. B.P. Vysheslavtsev calls P.D. Yurkevich, whose article can be considered a classic. But searches in the works of Ignatius Brianchaninov, as well as other authors, would not be useless. Here we note that the themes of “philosophy of the heart” were also raised by the contemporaries closest ideologically to B.P. Vysheslavtsev - I.A. Ilyin and S. L. Frank. Frank, in particular, wrote about the heart as a place of contact between two worlds and about cardiac knowledge, and I. A. Ilyin devoted a chapter to the topic of the heart in “Axioms of Religious Experience”, an essay “On Contemplation of the Heart” and many pages in his various works. B.P. Vysheslavtsev himself considered the constructions of V.V. Zenkovsky, who paid especially much attention to issues of philosophical anthropology, to be closest to his own.

B.P. Vysheslavtsev also felt very strong support from Western thinkers, especially from M. Scheler and Pascal, “discovered” by him.

The question of the relationship between Christian and Indian teachings about man (if we do not even touch on the more subtle differences within each tradition) after the works of M. Muller and his school (to which the followers of N.K. Roerich also go back) went beyond purely academic research and acquired a certain confessional urgency at the end of the 19th century, when representatives of Theosophy used the material of comparative religious studies in order to “include” it in what they believed was a deeper and more comprehensive spiritual tradition.

At the same time, works began to appear that conceptualized it as a branch of Hinduism. For example, the evangelist John the Theologian appears to be a direct follower of the teachings of Shaiva Siddhanta. Ultimately, Hinduism, Freemasonry and Christian eschatology are linked into a single worldview system that claims to be the new gospel.

Representatives of Russian religious and philosophical thought of the orthodox trend did not ignore this trend. The most significant word was, perhaps, the book by M. V. Lodyzhensky, with whom B. P. Vysheslavtsev can find much in common.

B. P. Vysheslavtsev’s appeal to the issues of Christian anthropology in comparative religious studies was caused not only by the internal development of his philosophical concept, set out in detail in “The Ethics of Transformed Eros,” but also by the clashes of various ideological currents among the Russian emigration, which largely continued the unfinished disputes of the pre-revolutionary era . It is enough to point out that in the magazine “Path”, edited by N.A. Berdyaev and B.P. Vysheslavtsev, articles appeared more than once that gave a typically theosophical coverage of Christian tradition. It is no coincidence, apparently, that Vysheslavtsev in the late 1920s. worked on the brochure “Christianity and Theosophy”, which was announced in the series “Christianity, Atheism and Modernity”, but, as far as we know, was never published.

At the same time, literally on the eve of the appearance of B. P. Vysheslavtsev’s work “The Heart in Christian and Indian Mysticism,” quite subtle comparative studies on similar topics were carried out in foreign literature. This is, in particular, the book by A. Appasami “Christianity as Bhakti Marga”. Contrary to the somewhat provocative title, its author is far from risky hypotheses in the spirit of the above-mentioned Sri Parananda. Without abandoning the Christian position, he seeks to show that in the quest of Indian thought related to the doctrine of bhakti, there are a number of motives akin to the Gospel of John, and it is they that can subsequently serve as fertile ground for the development of Christian mysticism in India.

Noting that the earliest presentation of the doctrine of bhakti was given already in the Bhagavad Gita as a certain reaction to the severity and dispassion of yoga, he emphasizes that bhakti corresponds primarily to the concept of “love”, but is often also translated by the words “faith”, “devotion”. Bhakti expresses a special state of union with God with the mind, heart, or even the “inner heart” (ullam).

B.P. Vysheslavtsev set himself the exact opposite task - through the doctrine of the heart, to show the depth of the difference between Indian and Christian ideas about man. Along the way, he also touched on some differences between Orthodox and Catholic liturgical consciousness.

The main thread of his reasoning is connected with the understanding of the heart as the true Self of a person, his god-like self. Contrasting the Christian teaching about God and man with the Indian ideas about atmava and Brahman, Vysheslavtsev made clear the impossibility of their identification or external connection in the spirit of theosophical doctrines.

However, this fair conclusion does not close the way for further comparisons. Even P. Ya. Chaadaev believed it was possible through the “sympathetic ability of the human heart” to find points of contact between the Indian philosophical tradition and Christian culture.” And of course, the doctrine of bhakti, which Vysheslavtsev ignored, should be taken into account. Much can be gained by turning to other Eastern teachings, for example, to Taoism, in which the heart is thought of as the “receptacle of the mind” and where the concept of a meta(super) physical heart is developed. But the anthropological scheme of the ancient Egyptians is especially curious, the top of which is the “soul” (ba), “spirit” (ah) and the innermost essence of man (ka), identified with his heart. It is completely symmetrical to Vysheslavtsev’s own concept, according to which “soul,” “spirit,” and “self” are assigned, respectively, to the fifth, sixth, and seventh “ontological steps.”

Although Vysheslavtsev’s concept has received recognition from such an expert in religious and philosophical anthropology as Archimandrite, it raises a number of doubts. In the identification of “heart” and “self” V.V. Zenkovsky saw a direct contradiction with the Gospel... .

Nevertheless, Vysheslavtsev’s book “The Heart in Christian and Indian Mysticism” was the first experience in systematizing the Orthodox Christian teaching about the heart, carried out at a time when Russian philosophical anthropology was noticeably distracted from the true focus of humanity (“Science of Man” by V. I. Nesmelov, “ Soul of Man" by S. L. Frank). Met with a sympathetic response from N. O. Lossky, it drew closer attention to the role of the heart in Russian spirituality and contributed to the further understanding of the fact that the loss of the “logic of the heart” by modern humanity meets the interests of technocracy, seeking to control the masses harnessed to the chariot of “industrial progress” ".

To the 95th anniversary of the Kozmdemyansk Art and Historical Museum. A.V. Grigorieva

In 2014, in the month of September, the Kozmodemyansk Art and Historical Museum named after. A.V. Grigoriev turns 95 years old. As part of the “Year of Culture in the Russian Federation” and the anniversary of the museum, its employees carry out a variety of research work. Work is also underway on the attribution of drawings by artist N.N. Vysheslavtsev.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Vysheslavtsev was born in 1890 and died in 1952. He was a man of high culture, an intellectual, and an excellent conversationalist. He studied in Moscow and Paris, knew French, and had trips to Italy. When World War I began, he returned to his homeland in Russia. He hoped that the war would end quickly and left all the work in his workshop in Paris. In Russia he graduated from the school of warrant officers and went to the front of the 1st World War. At the front he was wounded, shell-shocked, and awarded the Order of St. George. After being seriously wounded in the head, he was demobilized. In 1918 he began working in Moscow at the People's Commissariat of Education in the department of fine arts. In 1920, an exhibition of his works was organized in Moscow at the Palace of Arts. Soon he met the famous Russian poetess Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva. At the time they met, she was 27 years old and he was 32 years old.

She dedicated 27 of her poems to Nikolai Nikolaevich. In them she mentions him with the letters NN. Of course, Nikolai Nikolaevich Vysheslavtsev, we think, painted portraits of Marina Ivanovna.

The collection of the Kozmodemyansk Art Gallery contains a collection of drawings by N.N. Vysheslavtsev. Some of them date back to 1921. From where these drawings came into the museum’s collection, information has not been found. Employees carry out their attribution. Art historians are involved in this work.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sarabyanov (art historian, painting expert, publisher in Moscow) helped in the work. Here is the content of his letter: “I received a response from Paris from Veronica Losskaya, who studies M. Tsvetaeva and to whom I sent a portrait to N. Vysheslavtseva. Unfortunately, she couldn't say anything definite. Neither negative nor positive. Now I’m sending the portrait to a Moscow color expert. Maybe we’ll learn something new.”

Soon an answer came from the art critic and this is what he writes: “Only it seems to me that this cannot be M. Tsvetaeva - the drawing of the nose and mouth is completely different. I would say Kollontai, but in Muranovo there is a similar portrait, although the stylized one is listed there as a portrait of Varvara Turkestanova aged 22. I only found a small photograph, apparently this is the same face. Turkestanova - but it seems not Varvara? We need to check this out, I think her name was Olga, she’s one of those Varvara Turkestanovs, Pavlov’s ladies-in-waiting.”

Taking advantage of the advice, the museum staff turned for help to the director of the Museum of the Muranovo Estate named after. F.I. Tyutchev to Igor Aleksandrovich Komarov. On the work on the attribution of drawings by N.N. Vysheslavtsev. he involved Svetlana Andreevna Dolgopolova, who soon sent a letter with the following content: “I have been working in the museum since 1971, I have been friends with O.N. for many years. Vysheslavtseva, widow of the artist N.N. Vysheslavtsev, who loved our museum. All the problems you outlined in your letter are familiar to me. Please write how you want to carry out this work. Maybe it makes sense for you to send an image of N.N.’s works. Vysheslavtsev from your museum.”

As a result, we have images of the works of N.N. Vysheslavtsev were sent. In exchange they received an image of Turcheninova’s portrait. Also, Svetlana Andreevna Dolgopolova donated to our museum the book “Nikolai Nikolaevich Vysheslavtsev - Artist of the Silver Age.” Moscow 2005

of the year. This book is dedicated to the life and work of the artist N.N. Vysheslavtseva. It introduces the work of the original Russian graphic artist, art critic, and teacher N.N. Vysheslavtseva.

His legacy is of considerable interest - artistic, historical and cultural. It specifically notes that in the 20s N.N. Vysheslavtsev creates a large series of portraits of figures of Russian Soviet culture. In the creative life of N.N. Vysheslavtsev’s portraits of women occupy a lot of space. The portrait of a woman is very typical of the artist’s heyday. Before creating a portrait, he got used to the work of the person being portrayed, which helped him reveal his inner appearance.

The question is: who is depicted in the pictures? remains open.

Fans of the artist N.N. Vysheslavtseva and connoisseurs of the “Silver Age” can become familiar with this work by attributing the drawings below.

They can, together with museum staff, coincide with this work to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the birth of the artist Nikolai Nikolaevich. The anniversary of which will be celebrated by the public in 2015.

Head historical department
V.L. Sherstnev