A lifelong duet.

The passing year of 2015 - the year of Ivan Bunin's 145th anniversary - reconciled the writer with Voronezh. For the first time in many years, a large-scale exhibition opened in the city; Voronezh residents were shown paintings best friend Bunin - artist and writer. And the regional department of culture announced. Summing up the results of the “Bunin” year, the RIA Voronezh correspondent, with the help of Voronezh philologists, collected interesting facts about our outstanding fellow countryman.

Sergei Morozov, Moscow Bunin expert:

Bunin is often labeled with different labels: he was angry, poisonous, bilious, he is stingy, he is selfish. It got to the point that Bunin was called both a Freemason and a person who supported the Germans during the war. And the “strawberry” things about him personal life I don't touch it at all. Books are shot, films are written, without any references. All this sounds like novels and fiction.

Fact one. Bunin was a “prickly” man

“...Due to the liveliness of his temperament, he scolded many, but often right there, in the same phrase, he reminded them of everything talented and promising that he found in them. He scolded easily, very easily, but it depended on a lot: he was infinitely demanding of himself and wanted the same from others.”

Galina Kuznetsova, “Grasse Diary”.

There is a lot of evidence that the writer was a caustic and sharp-tongued person. Literary scholars emphasize: yes, he was of a difficult character. But he was never an evil person.

For decades, especially in Soviet time“, Bunin’s ill-wishers created a myth about the writer’s embitterment,” says Voronezh Bunin expert Vladimir Boykov. - As an example, his memoirs are given, in which he criticizes a number of writers and contemporaries: Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Alexei Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky. Bunin presents them with the “Hamburg account”, accusing them of collaborating with the communist regime. What many took for bitterness was his integrity. He judged them according to the so-called “Pushkin principle”. Pushkin believed that “the poet’s words are the essence of his work.” Bunin judges their deeds according to their words. He was a discerning and demanding person, but not an embittered one.

He was not evil, but a very caustic person,” notes Doctor of Philology, head of the department Slavic philology Faculty of Philology of VSU Gennady Kovalev. - Why? Life forced me. He came from impoverished nobles, and considered himself a nobleman, but he lived in such conditions that there was nowhere else to go. In Ozerki, where he spent his childhood, there was sometimes nothing to eat. He never finished high school - firstly, he was sick a lot, and secondly, he had no particular desire to study. He grew up to be a genius, and genius and school are incompatible things. Bunin had to grow out of himself - what was inherent in him, he realized. In this sense, he was close to Chekhov. They were friends with Chekhov. But in general, Bunin was a prickly person. He did not always recognize the friendship of any person. Such a person had to be a good diplomat. The only person The one he didn't argue with was Teffi. It was sweetie good woman, who could sort everything out. Bunin was friends with Kuprin, although he liked to drink and when drunk he became worse than Bunin.

Bunin did not tolerate superficiality,” notes Tamara Nikonova, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of the Department of Russian Literature of the 20th–21st Centuries, Theory of Literature and Folklore at VSU. - He had an awareness of the significance of his talent. He was not only harsh and bilious. But not because he wanted to make a scandal: he did not forgive negligence in work, not thinking through some things that seemed very important to him.

BY THE WAY

Ivan Bunin belonged to one of the oldest families Russia. First international passport, issued to Bunin before the revolution, contained the prefix “de” in French. His passport said "Jean de Bounine". While in France, he wrote his name that way.

Fact two. Bunin saved three Jews from death

During World War II, Ivan Bunin and his wife Vera Nikolaevna live in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette. It must be said that the Nazis, knowing that he was a Nobel laureate, a White Guard and an emigrant, treated the writer with respect. But Bunin did not agree to any cooperation with the Germans. Despite the fact that German officers lived next door to Bunin’s house, this did not stop the writer, risking his life and the life of Vera Nikolaevna, from hiding three Jews in his villa for several years. This is a journalist and literary critic Alexander Bakhrakh, pianist Alexander Liberman and his wife. The writer saved these people from death. That is why in Israel the writer was nominated for the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Fact three. Bunin was almost named Philip

Subsequently, journalist Alexander Bakhrakh will write interesting book memories of Ivan Alekseevich - “Bunin in a dressing gown.” The book contains interesting evidence - Bunin hated the letter “F”. And he confessed to the journalist why: as a child, his mother wanted to name him Philip. But in last moment the nanny dissuaded the lady: “Why does the barchuk need the name Philip? Let him be Ivan."

Fact four. Bunin lived in the same house with his wife and mistress

At the villa in Grasse: Kuznetsova stands, from left to right: Margarita Stepun (Kuznetsova’s mistress), Bunin, Vera Nikolaevna

The writer was an ardent and amorous person. Ivan Alekseevich's first love was Varvara Pashchenko, who left him and married his friend Arseny Bibikov. Bunin’s second love was Odessa Greek Anna Tsakni, whose marriage did not last long - his beautiful wife quickly fell out of love with him. Their only child, a son, died when he was five years old. After this, the writer had no children.

The writer’s most devoted woman was Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, who lived with him until her death and left a book of memories about him, “The Life of Bunin.” It was she who brought comfort into the writer’s life and became a real housewife.

In 1926, in Grasse, Bunin met the aspiring writer Galina Kuznetsova, with whom they began an affair that lasted for 15 years. Bunin Kuznetsova was old enough to be a daughter - the age difference between them was 30 years. The lovers met for about a year in a rented apartment in Paris. The writer did not intend to divorce Vera Nikolaevna: “Love Vera? Like this? It’s like loving your arm or leg...,” said the writer. As a result, he confronted his wife with a fact: Galina would live with them under the same roof as a secretary, student and adopted daughter. “Let him love Galina... if only this love makes his soul sweet...,” wrote the resigned Vera Nikolaevna in her diary.

Bunin went to receive the Nobel Prize in Stockholm together with Vera Nikolaevna and Galina. On the way back, the writer's student caught a cold, and the couple decided to stop in Dresden - leaving Galina in the house of Bunin's friend, philosopher Fyodor Stepun. There she met his sister, the opera singer Margarita or, as her friends called her, Marga. When Galina returned to Grasse a week later, Ivan Alekseevich felt that his beloved was spending much less time with him. The truth was revealed when Marga Stepun arrived at the Bunins’ villa. The women did not separate for a minute; they lived in the same room. At first, Bunin made fun of his girlfriends until he realized that they were lovers. For the writer this was a severe blow. After clarifying their relationship with Bunin, Kuznetsova and Stepun will leave the Grasse villa. The story of this “love quadrangle” formed the basis of the film “His Wife’s Diary.”

Fact five. Bunin was a swearer

Bunin lived normal life Russian person. He was not only an excellent writer, possessing high level figurativeness, but at the same time he could swear in a black way,” says Gennady Kovalev. - In Bunin’s letters, swearing occurs where it is necessary and where it is not necessary. Moreover, he compared himself with Kuprin, who surpassed Ivan Alekseevich in virtuoso mastery of swearing. But the first place in this skill belonged to Alexei Tolstoy, who knew not only the “small” Petrine “bend”, but also the “big one”.

A turn or “bend” is a chain of “multi-story” curses tending to infinity. Thus, the “small” phrase includes more than 35 curse words, and the “big” one – 120. The latter, by the way, according to Gennady Kovalev, was masterfully mastered by Emperor Peter the Great. And in two turns at once - Sergei Yesenin.

Ivan Bunin understood that swearing is a part of the national Russian language. By the way, when he was awarded the title of academician, he decided to create a dictionary of Russian obscenities, notes Gennady Filippovich. “I hired a boy who ran around and copied everything that was written on the fences and overheard swear words.

Fact six. Bunin handed out the Nobel Prize.

Evil tongues claim that Ivan Bunin threw the Nobel Prize down the drain - he drank it away and lost. But, according to philologists and Bunin scholars, this is a myth. So, after receiving the award, Bunin distributed almost 120 thousand francs to those in need.

Documents show that the writer gave away the Nobel Prize, notes Sergei Morozov. - Do you know what Bunin’s apartment in Paris was called? Help Center.

Bunin was never a drunkard, emphasizes Gennady Kovalev. - Another thing is that when such a big economic chance appears, the writer has a lot of “stuck” acquaintances who ask for help. This characterizes Bunin on the other hand: he was a generous person. After the Nobel Prize was eaten up, the Bunins lived in wild poverty. In Grasse, during the occupation, in order to somehow survive, they even started a vegetable garden.

Of course, Bunin had the habits of a Russian master,” notes Tamara Nikonova. - By the way, the Bunins never sat down together at the table, even when they lived extremely poorly and were starving at the Villa Jeannette. Bakhrakh, Kuznetsova, writer Leonid Zurov - these were people who had nothing to live on. The Bunins themselves barely made ends meet, but they always had two or three “freeloaders” living with them.

Tamara Alexandrovna points to another fact: in 1933 monetary equivalent The Nobel Prize was the smallest in its history. This is all due to the great depression of 1929-1930, which Europe coped with great difficulty.

Fact seven. The mission to return Bunin to the USSR failed

Despite his hatred of the Bolsheviks, the writer was very homesick and, according to some researchers, even thought about Alexei Tolstoy’s proposal to return to the USSR.

The fact that the writer himself was planning to return to the USSR is rather a myth. Yes, Bunin was at the Soviet embassy, ​​but this does not mean that he signed any papers, says Tamara Nikonova.

After the war, the mission to return Bunin to Soviet Union studied by the poet Konstantin Simonov. In Soviet times, a legend appeared that the Soviet government decided to seduce the starving Bunin with gastronomic delights: they say, a plane with amazing dishes flew from Moscow to Grasse.

The Bunins lived in absolute poverty. They were glad to host Konstantin Simonov, but there was nothing to treat him with, says Tamara Nikonova. - In fact, Simonov agreed with the Bunins that he would visit them with his treats on their square. He asked the pilot to buy some simple food - vodka, herring, black bread, sausage. And Bunin seemed to say at the table: “The Bolshevik sausage is good...”. But Bunin never agreed to move to the USSR. And Simonov reported the failure of his mission.

Fact nine. None of the works proposed by Bunin were ever filmed.

Even during Ivan Alekseevich’s life, filmmakers approached him with a request to sell them the rights to the film adaptation,” says Bunin scholar Sergei Morozov. - In one of his letters to an interested party, he listed a list of his works that could be filmed. But nothing from this list has yet been filmed.

One of the stories on this list is "The Mister from San Francisco." According to Bunin scholar Sergei Morozov, Luchino Visconti could have filmed it, but he did not. But, continues Sergei Morozov, “It is better to read Bunin, and read slowly.”

Fact eight. Bunin admired Tvardovsky, but did not like Dostoevsky

Ivan Alekseevich praised the writer and poet Alexander Tvardovsky for the poem “Vasily Terkin”.

Tvardovsky was not spoiled by the praise, he was confused and said: “Vanka Bunin praised me!” Once one of the students said to me: “What’s good is that Tvardovsky said that - he Nobel laureate held him for a friend." I answered: “Just so you understand: for peasants Vanka Bunin is a family nickname.” That is, Tvardovsky introduced him into his peasant family. And no Nobel Prize played a role.

At the same time, in Galina Kuznetsova’s book “The Grasse Diary” there is interesting evidence that Bunin considered Dostoevsky a bad writer. And in a conversation with Vera Nikolaevna and Leonid Zurov, he noticed: the world, reading the “bad writer” Dostoevsky, seemed to have gone crazy.

“I want to say that, obviously, it is not me who is mistaken, but “the world”, that we are dealing with a case of general mass hypnosis. But not only do they not dare say that the king is naked, but they don’t even dare admit it to themselves,” said Ivan Alekseevich.

Fact ten. Bunin and Nabokov were rivals

Back in the early 1920s, the young writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote a letter in which he confessed his love for his work to Ivan Bunin. The two celebrities met in Berlin at a gala meeting in honor of Bunin receiving the Nobel Prize. Nabokov read his poems. Surprisingly, years later Nabokov would call Bunin an “old skinny turtle” and a vulgar man. The history of the relationship between the two writers is reflected in Maxim Shrayer’s book “Bunin and Nabokov. History of rivalry."

For one thing, Nabokov was very selective in his relationships with people, notes Tamara Nikonova. - When Bunin invited him to meet and sit, he ironically wrote that sentimental conversations in Russian, over vodka, do not exist for him. Nabokov and Bunin are different in everything. The first language Nabokov spoke was English. At the age of six, he just started learning Russian - his father realized that the child did not speak it at all. Moreover, until the 1940s, when he found himself outside of Europe, he would be a Russian writer. It seems that love for Russia cannot even be assumed in this anglicized, arrogant man. But it can be seen in his lyrics. Thus, an everyday biography is strikingly different from a literary text.

“Everyone thought it was a crocodile, but it was Bunin who came to visit”

Bunin was an artistic person (it was not for nothing that Stanislavsky invited him to his troupe and even offered him the role of Hamlet) and loved practical jokes. In the book “The Life of Bunin,” Vera Muromtseva-Bunina cites Ivan Alekseevich’s recollection: in the spring of 1901, together with Kuprin, he paid a visit to the head of the Yalta girls’ gymnasium, Varvara Kharkevich, who was a fan of both writers. Not finding her at home, Bunin and Kuprin went to the dining room, to the Easter table and, “having fun, began to drink and snack.” Kuprin suggested: “Let’s write and leave poems for her on the table,” and the writers, laughing, wrote a comic message to the hostess of the house on the tablecloth, which she then embroidered:

In Varvara Konstantinovna's dining room
The table was set perfectly, long,
There was ham, turkey, cheese, sardines -
And suddenly not a crumb, not a speck:
Everyone thought it was a crocodile
And it was Bunin who came to visit.

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The writer who managed to derive the formula ideal woman, of course, must be a true connoisseur of female beauty. “Black eyes boiling with resin... eyelashes black as night, a gently playing blush, a thin figure, longer than an ordinary arm - you know, longer than usual! - small leg, in moderation big breasts“, correctly rounded calf, shell-colored knees, sloping shoulders” - Ivan Bunin, like an inveterate Pygmalion, spent his whole life looking for Galatea, from which he could fashion his ideal. He found her in his declining years.

Ivan Bunin

The love of the writer and Galina Kuznetsova, who was thirty years younger than him, became a real challenge to society, especially since such a piquant love triangle was formed: a husband, his aging wife and a new passion. “Imagine, they live like this - the three of them,” people around them gossiped. But this was the case when the opinions of others were least of all interested in lovers. All boundaries were erased by a powerful influx of feelings. "There's something about him Magic power“- Galina wrote about Bunin in her diary, admitting that this force cannot be resisted.

Women of genius

“True love does not choose” - this is how Bunin once and for all defined his attitude towards the main of “human passions”. He, a writer and poet, a “singer of love,” needed constant nourishment of feelings, so every new novel he threw himself headlong, as if into a pool.

Entire volumes can be written about Bunin’s women. In history there are the most significant novels writer, who became known through letters and diaries. Bunin himself did not have the habit of boasting about his victories on the love front. Meanwhile, his first long-term relationship began when Bunin was only 19 years old. He met his beloved Varvara Pashchenko at the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, where he worked as a correspondent. The girl’s parents categorically opposed the marriage, so the lovers lived in what is called a “civil marriage.” However, after a while, Varvara fell in love with Bunin’s friend and married him.

A few years later, Bunin marries Anna Tsakni. But the marriage turned out to be short and unhappy. His and Anna's only son died at the age of five. Apart from their son, the spouses had nothing in common; Bunin complained many times about his wife’s coldness: “How many times have I revealed to her my soul, full of the best tenderness, she doesn’t feel anything.”

Ivan Bunin and Vera Muromtseva

After breaking up with Tsakni, Bunin met the woman with whom he was destined to live until his death. Vera Muromtseva, who grew up in a noble, professorial family, was called by her friends “the natural-born wife of a writer.” The tall “cameo-faced” blonde caught Bunin’s eye at one of the literary evenings. They started dating secretly. An old story repeated itself - Vera’s parents opposed her romance, and the girl agreed to live with Bunin in a “civil marriage”, without a wedding. “I came up with an idea, we need to do translations, then it will be pleasant to live and travel together - everyone has their own business, and we won’t be bored...” - this is how Bunin saw their life together, and Vera meekly agreed to leave her family, studies, and hobbies for the sake of beloved. Next years She is busy only with looking after the house and doing her best to provide comfort and coziness to her genius. Despite everyday difficulties and difficult conditions of “nomadic life”, the couple are quite happy. But this serene happiness, alas, leaves them in Grasse, a small town in the south of France, where Bunin meets his last passionate love - Galina Kuznetsova.

Meeting with an idol

Galina Kuznetsova was born into an old noble family and received a classical education at the Kyiv Women's Gymnasium. She married a lawyer, a white officer, quite early, and together with her husband she left for Constantinople. Later the couple moved to Prague, and then to France.

The relationship with her husband did not work out; Galina blamed him for “weakness of character.” They lived very poorly. To somehow escape from sad thoughts, Galina began writing poetry and prose. It is published in literary magazines, and critics give it favorable reviews. Galina gradually enters the literary circle and makes new, useful acquaintances. One of these acquaintances turned out to be truly fateful. Philologist and poet Modest Hoffman introduced the aspiring poetess to Ivan Bunin. It happened in Grasse, on the beach where Bunin was doing a traditional swim. The writer was fascinated by the beautiful stranger, and she turned out to be completely unable to resist his magnetism. “You are my idol,” Galina admitted that evening. Returning from Grasse, she immediately announced to her husband that she was leaving him. After stormy scandal, during which her husband cried and swore to kill her rival, Galina became a free woman. From this moment her long and passionate romance with the great writer begins.

Galina Kuznetsova

Under the same roof

For almost a year, the lovers met in a small rented apartment in Paris. Bunin was torn between Paris and Grasse, his wife and new lover. Of course, Vera guessed about her husband’s passion. A poetess I know said that Vera “went crazy and complained to everyone she knew about Ivan Alekseevich’s betrayal.” The couple even had a stormy showdown, after which Bunin left for Paris. But the writer did not intend to divorce his wife, he did not want to lose his established life, and over the years of his life his wife became a close person to him. “Love Vera? Like this? It’s like loving your arm or leg...” Bunin once said with surprise. In turn, Vera could not leave her adored genius. "I love him. And I can’t do anything about it,” she answered questions from her friends.

Galina also suffered, waiting for the next date with her beloved, not knowing whether he would come this time or not. It all ended with Bunin confronting his wife with a fact: Galina would live with them as a secretary, student and adopted daughter. Vera had no choice but to agree and close her eyes to the relationship between “teacher” and “student”.

Victor Borisov-Musatov "Walk at Sunset"

“Let him love Galina... if only this love makes his soul sweet...,” Vera wrote in her diary. Her love was so sacrificial that she agreed to endure the presence of her husband’s passion nearby. Galina also had a hard time, but she tried to maintain a fragile balance in the house, hoping that over time Bunin would make a choice in her favor. This not entirely typical relationship story dragged on for fifteen years. What was going on in the souls of all the participants in the “love triangle” all these years, one can only guess. In their diaries, all three make careful entries, not a single extra words. However, sometimes, no, no, and some strange details of “life together” will flash. For example, Vera in her notes complained about poverty, said that she only had two and she often wore “Galina’s clothes.” In Galina’s “Grasse Diary,” pent-up dissatisfaction periodically breaks through: “you have to take into account the character of I.A., but for all the twenty years of her life next to him, she cannot reconcile with him,” she writes about Vera.

Tangled connections

Over time, the “triangle” turned into a “square”. The writer Leonid Zurov settled in the villa, whom Vera began to closely patronize. Guardianship resulted in Zurov's devoted love for Vera, which Bunin, of course, knew about. The situation in the house became tense. “I don’t know how to behave so that there are good relationships in the house,” Galina writes in her diary.

If at first Galina seemed to be bewitched by Bunin, then the tense years in the “love triangle” help her to cast off this spell. She finally dares to admit to herself that Bunin will never leave his wife. From that moment on, she began to think about the future: “It’s really impossible to live like that without independence, as if in ‘half-children’.” To live in the position of either a secretary or a student, to catch sidelong glances at herself, to faithfully look into the eyes of a genius, giving up her own ambitions - no, this is not what she dreamed of! Unlike Vera, Galina is more decisive. In addition, she realized that she no longer liked leading the reclusive life that Bunin insisted on. This lifestyle fueled the writer, but completely deprived Galina herself of strength. And then the Nobel Prize arrived, which Bunin went to receive together with both “wives.”

It was probably at that moment that Galina realized how sad it was to remain in the shadow of a great writer. How much effort went into reprinting manuscripts, literary discussions, and in the end, she cannot even claim to be the muse of a genius. After all, Vera will always be the “official muse” as the writer’s wife. After the award ceremony, on the way from Sweden to France, the Bunin couple, together with Galina, stop to stay with the writer Fyodor Stepun. There Galina fell ill, and the Bunins went home, leaving the young woman in the care of the writer. Far from Bunin, Galina was finally freed from her passion for him. Moreover, a new period is beginning in her life. She unexpectedly fell in love with Stepun's sister, opera singer Margarita Stepun. When she returns to Grasse, he follows her.

suitcases Together with Margarita she leaves for Germany. “Galya has finally left. The house became deserted, but easier,” Vera writes in her diary with relief.

Bunin, on the one hand, was very worried about the break with Galina. On the other hand, he quickly came to terms with the loss, as always, switching to creativity. After parting with his “last romantic prize,” he wrote the famous cycle of stories “Dark Alleys.” “You know, there are so few happy meetings in the world,” he will say in one of the stories. But, it seems, there are happy partings. In any case, Vera was close to her beloved husband until the end of her life and did not share him with anyone else. Galina found her happiness with Marga.

“Until the end of her life, Stepun kept her in her paws... they entered the service and lived quite decently... everything was fine,” she wrote close girlfriend families. Love-addiction is a thing of the past. But Galina still went down in history as the muse of the great writer. Based on her "Grasse Diary" filmed famous film“The Diary of His Wife”, thanks to which the name of Galina Kuznetsova forever remained associated with the name of Ivan Bunin.

Photo: East News, Legion-Media.ru, ITAR-TASS

A writer who has managed to derive the formula for an ideal woman must, of course, be a true connoisseur of female beauty. “Black eyes boiling with resin... eyelashes as black as night, a gently playing blush, a thin figure, longer than an ordinary arm - you know, longer than usual! “a small leg, a moderately large chest, a properly rounded calf, shell-colored knees, sloping shoulders” - Ivan Bunin, like an inveterate Pygmalion, spent his whole life looking for Galatea, from which he could fashion his ideal. He found her in his declining years.

The love of the writer and Galina Kuznetsova, who was thirty years younger than him, became a real challenge to society, especially since such a piquant love triangle was formed: a husband, his aging wife and a new passion. “Imagine, they live like this - the three of them,” people around them gossiped. But this was the case when the opinions of others were least of all interested in lovers. All boundaries were erased by a powerful influx of feelings. “He has some kind of magical power,” Galina wrote about Bunin in her diary, admitting that this power cannot be resisted.

Women of genius

“True love does not choose” - this is how Bunin once and for all defined his attitude towards the main of “human passions”. He, a writer and poet, a “singer of love,” needed constant nourishment of feelings, so he threw himself headlong into each new novel, as if into a pool.

Entire volumes can be written about Bunin’s women. The most significant novels of the writer remained in history, which became known through letters and diaries. Bunin himself did not have the habit of boasting about his victories on the love front. Meanwhile, his first long-term relationship began when Bunin was only 19 years old. He met his beloved Varvara Pashchenko at the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, where he worked as a correspondent. The girl’s parents categorically opposed the marriage, so the lovers lived in what is called a “civil marriage.” However, after a while, Varvara fell in love with Bunin’s friend and married him.

A few years later, Bunin marries Anna Tsakni. But the marriage turned out to be short and unhappy. His and Anna's only son died at the age of five. Apart from their son, the spouses had nothing in common; Bunin complained many times about the coldness on his wife’s part: “How many times have I opened my soul to her, full of the best tenderness, - she feels nothing, not a stake.”

Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova. V.N. Bunina wrote: “Gali has 10 December. 1931"

Victor Borisov-Musatov "Walk at Sunset"

“Let him love Galina... if only this love makes his soul sweet...,” Vera wrote in her diary. Her love was so sacrificial that she agreed to endure the presence of her husband’s passion nearby. Galina also had a hard time, but she tried to maintain a fragile balance in the house, hoping that over time Bunin would make a choice in her favor. This not entirely typical relationship story dragged on for fifteen years. What was going on in the souls of all the participants in the “love triangle” all these years, one can only guess. In their diaries, all three make careful entries, not a single extra word. However, sometimes, no, no, and some strange details of “life together” will flash. For example, Vera in her notes complained about poverty, said that she only had two shirts and that she often wore “Galina’s clothes.” In Galina’s “Grasse Diary,” pent-up dissatisfaction periodically breaks through: “you have to take into account the character of I.A., but in all twenty years of her life she cannot reconcile with him,” she writes about Vera.

Tangled connections

Over time, the “triangle” turned into a “square”. The writer Leonid Zurov settled in the villa, whom Vera began to closely patronize. Guardianship resulted in Zurov's devoted love for Vera, which Bunin, of course, knew about. The situation in the house became tense. “I don’t know how to behave so that there are good relationships in the house,” Galina writes in her diary.

Ivan Bunin, Leonid Zurov, Galina Kuznetsova
Sunstroke

Happiness after a breakup

Apparently, having suffered from a difficult love for Bunin, Galina did not want and could not fall in love with men. For some time, she and Marga, as Margarita Stepun was called, lived in Grasse with the Bunins. But quarrels with Bunin eventually lead to Galina starting to pack her bags. Together with Margarita she leaves for Germany. “Galya has finally left. The house became deserted, but easier,” Vera writes in her diary with relief.

Bunin, on the one hand, was very worried about the break with Galina. On the other hand, he quickly came to terms with the loss, as always, switching to creativity. After parting with his “last romantic prize,” he wrote the famous cycle of stories “Dark Alleys.” “You know, there are so few happy meetings in the world,” he will say in one of the stories. But, it seems, there are happy partings. In any case, Vera was close to her beloved husband until the end of her life and did not share him with anyone else. Galina found her happiness with Marga.

“For the rest of her life, Stepun kept her in her paws... they entered the service and lived quite decently... everything was fine,” wrote a close friend of the family. Love-addiction is a thing of the past. But Galina still went down in history as the muse of the great writer. Based on her “Grasse Diary,” the famous film “The Diary of His Wife” was made, thanks to which the name of Galina Kuznetsova forever remained associated with the name of Ivan Bunin.

Grave of I.A. Bunin at the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois
Photo courtesy of M. Zolotarev

* * *

Life, alas, did not provide her with any other role than that of a “follower”. A role that is habitually common in a woman’s life, but which often destroys the Personality in her. She didn't notice it. It seemed to her that everything was different. After all, she was loved... Until her death.

However, what am I talking about here? My God, is individuality really that important in a woman? Something strange, elusive, something that cannot be touched with your hands, something completely unsuitable for everyday life in the style of terre a terre * (* earth, earthiness - French - author.)

Was it really so dangerous, the destruction invisible to the eye, the erasing of unknown facets of the Personality, if in her earthly circle there was everything necessary for comfort and tranquility: a house surrounded by flowers, work that did not strain the nerves, musical evenings on weekends, the company of a beloved friend?.. .

True, all the time boasting to the guests that she, a friend, managed to subordinate all the attention of the mistress of the house only to herself, forcing her to forget other things strong feeling– which once conquered and captivated, seemingly forever?...

But nothing happens - forever. Nothing lasts forever. Just like Life itself.

* * *

That feeling was like sunstroke, upon the roll of a wave that suddenly rose high... However, quite soon it crashed against the rocks. It was natural. It couldn't have been any other way. But the deadly run-up of the wave lasted not much, not little: fourteen years!

This is exactly how much time has passed since the very moment when the heroine of our essay met the famous Russian emigrant - writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin on the sunny beach of Grasse and until she met with opera singer Margarita Stepun, into whose hospitable house, filled with the sounds of a piano, she ended up in 1933, having fallen ill on the way back from rainy Stockholm to warm Grasse..

However, we are in a hurry. We are in a hurry, reader. Between the significant milestones of the biography we noted there was still whole life, remained unnoticed, unwritten, half-forgotten, erased, obscured by those who played their main roles in her life. Roles of Loving and Leading.

A few lines about her almost forgotten Life...

* * *

Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova was born on December 10, 1900 in Kyiv, into a cultured old noble family.

She spent her childhood in the suburbs of Kyiv, in Pechersk, in house number three on Esplanadny Lane.

Then he, his mother and stepfather moved to Levandovskaya Street with huge spreading chestnut trees. Since childhood, Galina Nikolaevna passionately loved their shadow and aroma. It seemed to her that chestnuts in Paris no longer smell the same. And their candles are not so straight.

In 1918, there, in Kyiv, she graduated from the first Pletneva girls’ gymnasium, receiving a completely classical education. Got married quite early because of difficult relationship in the family, which he silently mentions in his autobiographical novel “Prologue” and in his diaries.

Already in the early autumn of 1920, Galina left Russia with her husband, a white officer-lawyer Dmitry Petrov, sailing to Constantinople on one steamship filled with a motley crowd of people, in despair and hopelessness leaving their homeland tormented by the bloody innovations of the October revolution.

At first, the Kuznetsov couple settled in Prague, where they lived in a hostel for young emigrants - “Svobodarne”, but then, due to Galina Nikolaevna’s poor health, in 1924, they moved to France. Galina, while still in Prague, became a student at the French Institute, and her first literary experiments began to appear in newspapers and magazines.

In tiny grains, her “literary heritage” is scattered throughout them, emigrant publications: “New Time”, “Sowing”, “Link”, “Modern Notes”

All this, of course, was met with an invariably friendly response from editors and critics, but something in her stories, sketches, short stories - watercolor - cold, transparent, invariably with a somewhat drawn out plot ("Oles", "Blue Mountains" and many others.) there was a chill through it: faceless, unmemorable. There were no sparks of the soul, no flame of the heart in everything written...

Only exquisitely - a pale reflection of something unfelt, misunderstood. And she herself, I’m afraid, has always been “only a reflection” in everything. Let me explain my point.

Galina had very strong empathy.

Psychologists clearly and strictly define such a human property as the ability to experience and play out only other people’s emotions in one’s life.” Not yours, alas! Then your emotions are hidden, “sandwiched” too deeply. And do they exist? Not to have your own, strong inner life, to live and feel only as a “stranger”, all this is a trait of soft, plastic natures, easily susceptible to someone else’s will.

And a strong alien will feels quite comfortable when reflected in such “human mirrors,” wouldn’t you agree? They are what she needs, maybe... Only them. This is how man is made.

Such a strange, “absorbing” property of nature had a strong impact on the work of Galina Kuznetsova. In the manner of her writing.

Among the “acmeistically transparent” lines of her poems and diary entries I found a very remarkable episode:

...I feel mediocre. The head acts hastily and erratically. However, I try to study. Yesterday I took a postcard with Madonna's head and began to describe it in poetry. The following came out:

In a light headscarf, head bowed,

She looks with submissive eyes

Down somewhere. Behind narrow shoulders

Empty distance and slopes of dark fields,

And the city wall has a jagged ridge,

Darkening against a light blue sky

She looks with her mouth folded like a child,

And a thin circle above it shines in the sky...”

At first glance, nothing strange... Lovely poetic lines. True rhymes, perfect description. Yes, that's right. But the fact of the matter is that this is just a description, without the slightest shade of any of your personal, passionate, sincere impressions and feelings. This is not experienced, not deep. Just a cold, calm glance. Kuznetsova has many such poems. They were rated quite highly by Vyacheslav Ivanov, Georgy Adamovich, M. Bacilli, but the coldly polished lines did not really touch the depths of the soul and were remembered, because, according to a fair remark, M. Dukhanina - a modern critic and researcher of the grains of Kuznetsova’s heritage -: “...In poetry Kuznetsova is, of course, a mystic, a contemplator. She always thought in complex, abstract images and symbols, capturing certain “beautiful moments”, which are decisive for her in life.

Her feelings are vague, not fully realized and imbued with unearthly, “seraphic” signs. In her collection The Olive Garden (1937), for example, there are almost no poems about love; in general, there are few manifestations of not only passions, but also ordinary, completely feminine joys and sorrows. What is valuable for her is “the discovery of mysterious treasured signs everywhere... what? She didn’t know, she only knew that it was in them that there was beauty and meaning for her, without which everything else was unnecessary and insipid,” - this is how Kuznetsova characterized herself in her autobiographical story " Artist"*. (*M. Dukhanina. “Monastery of the Muses.” Personal web collection of the author of the essay.)

And into this vagueness of feelings, sensations, yearnings, desires, into the orderly, boring life of a fairly wealthy mature woman, silently loved by her husband* (*At the time of parting with Dmitry Petrov, Galina Nikolaevna was already about 33 years old! - author. ) lightning suddenly burst in, blinding the heart and mind in the guise of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin.

They had met once before in Paris, but they did not remember that meeting at all. Galina Nikolaevna was supposed to give Bunin the manuscript of someone’s book. She conveyed it, he said a few insignificant words. At that time there were no signs of lightning, thunderstorms, or blinding sun! For Bunin, ahead was life in Grasse, for her cool, pearly-gray mornings over the ancient Parisian roofs, tiring and humiliating running around in different editorial offices, waiting for vacations and weekends, during which she and her husband invariably went to the sea. Galina loved the sea. She adored bathing and the sun's splashes, which enveloped her all over a thousand times: fine, small, with smooth lines of a figure, not at all spoiled by maturity. Both to herself and to her acquaintances, she still in many ways resembled a mischievous girl: she loved to walk in sandals, open dresses, short skirts, loved the sun, which also affectionately clung to her. She was tanned, young, and a little sad. Something unspoken tormented her... But what? She couldn't understand.

* * *

In that fateful and outwardly ordinary velvet season of the summer of 1926, she and Dmitry came to the sea coast for only two weeks. Her husband’s vacation was already ending when, on one of the rather long, boring “Grasse days,” as it seemed to her, while walking along the beach with her friend editor and writer Mikhail Goffman, Galina Nikolaevna again encountered Bunin and was introduced to him again. He was delighted to meet her and shook her hand casually and warmly. He said a few kind words, slowly glancing over her bare arm and lingering on her smile: a little embarrassed - Ivan Alekseevich was an idol for Galina, she avidly read his books and knew many of his poems by heart.

What spark flashed between them then, what instantly ignited in the recesses of their souls? What burned you? Did Bunin read that very thing, unspoken, in her eyes: the languor of passions, acute curiosity, and, perhaps, not fully realized even by herself, a call for the eternal game of man and woman - dangerous and sweet, calling and at the same time frighteningly enchanting.

What was it expressed in, this call to coquetry, which promised a lot? I don't dare say. I just can not. For anyone who has ever tried to write down in words the melody of the relationship between two that has barely begun to sound, has invariably failed - there is something in this that is completely incapable of words, descriptions, clear concepts, or any logic at all...

Almost whole year 1926 - 1927 lovers met in Paris in a small apartment in Passy, ​​which Galina rented herself, almost immediately upon returning from Grasse she left her husband.

“Dima the husband,” as she called him in her diary, at first could not at all understand the reasons for her leaving, and when she explained everything sincerely, he did not believe it. Having believed, he got drunk, and when he got drunk, he promised to kill his sixty-year-old rival! But the morning after the stormy scandal, a tearful Galina discovered only an empty wardrobe and the disappearance of two large old suitcases. At first, the rejected husband still came to her, asking her to come back, to change her mind, leaving bouquets and envelopes with money on the doorstep, but she flatly refused to accept them. Gradually, the quiet and unlucky lawyer - taxi driver Dima - Volodya Petrov (* his name varies in the whimsical memories of his contemporaries - author.) realized something and disappeared like a ghostly shadow. Dissolved in the bustle of Paris.

Now nothing connected Galina with her past life, and with the ability, characteristic of almost all women, to instantly “erase” the past, as if to throw it out of her head consciously, she felt even more like just a young girl. She herself couldn’t believe that she could have gone through too much already, for a whole adult life: marriage, revolution, departure from Russia, emigration wanderings, literary defeats and successes, a dizzying romance, a break with her husband! I couldn’t believe it, and that’s it! She was completely covered and overwhelmed by a blinding feeling, truly similar to a sunstroke, a flash of lightning, a sea storm, a typhoon, a tsunami! She instantly forgot everyone and everything, maybe even herself, poor thing, but was there any time for comparisons and analysis in her soul then, stunned by such a stormy flow of feelings? She enjoyed the present, because it was exactly what she had always unconsciously dreamed of: bright, exciting, incredibly interesting, painful, unlike her previous, unbearably boring, “decent” life, planned for years in advance...

Bunin stunned her not only and not so much with the passion of his rich nature, the brilliance of his mind, the depth of emotional experiences, the subtlety of understanding the essence of her, purely feminine character- all this happened, yes, undoubtedly. It simply couldn’t be otherwise. But there was something else in Bunin. What fascinated and powerfully hypnotized Galina. She constantly felt as if “stunned” by him. She limply submitted to the magical, beautiful rigidity of his eyes. It was as if she was drowning in it entirely. If she came to her senses an hour later, then, feeling the emptiness behind her shoulders, she gave free rein to tears for the whole day and helplessly tore up letters from Bunin and his short notes. But the next day I again dutifully waited for his arrival. I waited for meetings at the station, in a cafe, in the Bois de Boulogne, in the theater, concert hall. In a small room with green silk on the walls and a window onto the Tuileries garden fence...

* * *

O "indecent - whirlwind romance“Bunin and Kuznetsova were soon gossiped by the whole émigré-secular Paris. Everyone got the “nuts” in these gossip: both the gray-haired friends of the writer who had completely lost his head, and his wife, dear Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva - Bunina, who allowed such an unheard of scandal and resignedly accepted all the ambiguity of her position.

Someone justified her, Vera Nikolaevna, who had walked next to Bunin on almost a thirty-year journey of wanderings and wanderings, someone twisted their finger at their temple at the sight of a pleasant woman, who had turned gray early, smiled confusedly, and absentmindedly started talking to her acquaintances about something completely different from what was demanded of her. her simple rules decorum and tact.

Betrayed by her husband overnight, Vera Nikolaevna was all filled with not only grief and resentment for herself, no, just bewilderment... What could Ian find in this grey-eyed, smiling girl with the neat parting of the head of a Leonardo Madonna?! He has gone completely crazy in his old age! The girl’s talent for writing is very small and fragile, her verbal palette is ghostly-poor, and she must also carefully and patiently teach her to see in a special way: the mist of the mountains, and the shades of the fading dawn and the turquoise tints of the waves... Gift is not the main thing in her, yes and, alas, he will not be given the strength to develop independently.

This can be seen clearly.

But what happened to Ian? Is he blind? He must absolutely love the fact that she, Galina, listens to him in fascination, almost looking into his mouth, catching every word. That she laughs incessantly, even when she really wants to cry... Or diligently tries to write down in her workbook the plot of the story that he gave her in passing. Maybe Ian simply wants to hold back time, stop its running, he, who is always so insanely afraid of death, decay, oblivion? Does he want to enchant time? How is Doctor Faustus?!

Vera Nikolaevna did not know anything for sure. She was lost, painfully and frantically thinking: should she leave? Leave? Quit? Start all over again? But how?! Is it conceivable for her to live without him, Yana, even for a moment? No. And to him without her - I knew for sure - no. From whom else can he receive and receive so much care? Petty, everyday, necessary! And so she, not an abandoned, but firmly forgotten wife, was quietly drowning in this strange, frightening triangle of feelings, every day she sank deeper and deeper to the bottom.. What could save her, return her to the shore of life? How could she, a tired and no longer very healthy woman, survive and not go crazy in the midst of such mental hell? Well, how?! Loneliness, and even in emigration, with a narrow circle of acquaintances, was unthinkable for her. Not in any way. And poor Vera Nikolaevna came up with a very beautiful saving excuse for herself and for them, the lovers: the extravagant Ian, her beloved and adored, fell in love with Galina Kuznetsova as a daughter, a child he almost never had. Well, apparently, it never healed in his ardently receptive soul deep wound from the loss of five-year-old Kolenka - a curly-haired, smart boy who began to speak in funny rhymes early, and was burned out by scarlet fever within a week. Yes, exactly, like a child! All the strength and ardor of his fatherly feelings, not completely spent, simply poured out on sweet Galina like a noisy avalanche.

Only after finally convincing herself that the young gray-eyed aspiring poetess and prose writer “by the will of God” simply replaced Ivan Alekseevich’s child, a son, lost in his reckless youth and fleeting first marriage, Vera Nikolaevna was able to receive Galina Nikolaevna in Grasse, at the Belvedere villa Kuznetsov as a “literary student” of her husband and her “adopted daughter.” No more, no less. Love triangle was too much loving soul legalized

Its sides were so smooth in appearance that they resembled... It’s not clear what. On a certain broken figure, on a beam, all sides of which intersected at one point - the Master of the house. His “I” was central, basic, the only significant one. Only him. And no one else's. Vera Nikolaevna understood this perfectly. But the understanding of this by young “Laura” - Galina - did not immediately enter her mind and heart, alas!

* * *

Ivan Bunin mercilessly consigned his diaries of 1925 to 1927 to the fire, while Galina Kuznetsova in her charming “Grasse Diary”, which contained almost six small years old life with him in the same house, not a single word betrays

this hot and captivating secret of feeling that connects her with her owner. It is in vain to search in the pages of this literary, elegant, accurate in description, fascinating magazine for even a tiny hint of her! The roles in a very strange and so ordinary “real life performance” were strictly and clearly distributed. He is a teacher. She is a humble student. He works in his cell at the Grasse “monastery of the muses.”

(*This is what V.N. Bunina called the villa “Belvedere” - the author.) Rewrites the master’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev” completely. Reads the books he has selected. He has endless conversations with him about literature. Diligently carries out all orders. Conducts correspondence. Receives guests in the absence of the hostess. Keeps them company on walks. And what happens at night... Does anyone care? Even history, looking at everything impartially, through the veil of time...

But, by the way...

Frequent changes of mood, incomprehensible and indescribable melancholy and tears, inability to independently literary work even in the outwardly invisible presence of Bunin. His own dull hatred, incomprehensible anger towards those sheets of paper that she, “dear Galochka”, filled with lines in the afternoon hours for some unknown reason - alone, flashes of his unjustified irritation at everyone and everything, dull rejection by herself of any words and gestures at all Vera Nikolaevna, Galina’s fierce and unreasonable jealousy for the book image of Arsenyev (that is, the young Ivan Bunin! - author.) All this says a lot, too much. To those who can read through the lines and see with inner vision. And not only about love, of course! Not only.

Here are just a few typical entries from the now famous “Grasse Diary”:

Although outwardly I am cheerful, secretly I do not feel well. V.N* (*Bunin’s wife - author) sat with me yesterday in the dark with the stove burning, and said that she was very glad that Zurov was living with us*, (* A little-known emigrant writer invited to the villa by Bunin, Zurov was secretly in love with Vera Nikolaevna Bunina and retained this feeling for many years. Bunin knew about everything. The triangle was thus balanced and became a square! - author.), that he brought revitalization, youth into the house and influences me in this sense, otherwise I am too susceptible to the influence of I.A., I live harmfully for myself, beyond my years. “You only need to wish for one thing that Zurov has and that you don’t have,” said V.N., “self-confidence and self-belief.”

All these days I am sad because the house is not good. I. A. has a pain in his temple, and he is angry with everyone and everything in the house. However, even without this he gets irritated by our voices, conversations, laughter. I often feel sad about this. I don’t know how to behave so that there are good relationships in the house..

Lately I’ve been visiting V.N. more and more often. Now she’s sick and doesn’t go out much. Yesterday we both stayed at home in the evening, lay on her bed and talked about human happiness and the inaccuracy of its concept. Human happiness lies in not wanting anything for yourself. Then the soul calms down and begins to find good things where it did not expect it at all...”

* * *

Let's say last words the records do not belong to Galina Kuznetsova at all. Most likely - Vera Bunina. Galina, of course, did not even think of subscribing to such a sacramental, “elderly” phrase. She hoped that having finally left Grasse for Paris, together with the Bunin couple and Zurov - just in time for the release of her book Prologue - an autobiographical novel about her youth in Russia - she would be able to taste the fullness of life and reward herself for her three-year imprisonment in "Monastery of the Muses" She was still desperately going to find happiness on the beaten, familiar women's roads. Humility did not particularly attract her, although she could, when meeting with friends in a cafe, sweetly lowering her eyes, complain that women sometimes have to come to terms with many things that were unpleasant to them, and even cry, complaining about the complete lack of their own determination and will! Yes, perhaps, as a professional writer, studying with Ivan Alekseevich, she made a huge leap forward: in almost a year she wrote a book, which was greeted warmly and with curiosity, but what, what did all this change in her? What did this give her? Did this make her finally happy? And where can we still look for it - illusory Happiness without will?

Her friends felt sorry for her, nodding their heads, shrugging their shoulders condescendingly, and following with mocking and contemptuous glances her figure in a light evening dress, with a squirrel fur cape on her shoulders.

Having broken free from the heavily jealous, suffocating guardianship of both Bunin himself and Vera Nikolaevna, humbled by him, Galina with great pleasure, as if in a hurry, in the company of the omnipresent, hot-tempered, nervous Zurov, visited Parisian museums and literary evenings, with excitement and trepidation, she collected, pasted and copied into her diary all the comments made by anyone in the press and in private conversations about her first book.

Bunin, on the other hand, turned pale, clenched his fists under the table, gave her furious, hissing reprimands in his office on Rue Offenbach, not afraid of prying ears and eyes, completely forgetting himself, and in general, looked upset and exhausted - he was so tormented by the “partial emancipation” of his beloved! In response, she laughed in confusion, said that this was necessary, slightly triumphant in her soul, but his unevenness and unevenness in everything: gestures, words, actions, was transmitted to her, a sensitive empath. Galina interrupted her previously regular diary entries, wandered a lot and aimlessly through the streets, suffocating in the unusual Parisian spring that instantly turned into summer, striving for complete loneliness. She was again terribly tormented by melancholy. Again there was a feeling inside me of something unspoken, strange, tearing my heart to pieces. She began to languish and wait again. Bunin, like a prophetic raven, sensed the alarm and quickly moved his entire “wrong-holy” family to the familiar, sleepy, calm Grasse. The painful arpeggio in his painful romance with the “student” lasted for another three years. What was in them, these years? What awaited her? She couldn't know yet. Empathy only sensed it with subtle nerves. Upon returning to Grasse, Galina Nikolaevna’s personal lack of freedom became even more bitter and acutely felt by her. Her every movement - mental or physical - is under the jealous control of I. Bunin. “I don’t have time to be alone, to walk alone...” Galina said bitterly in her diary.

Kuznetsova’s situation causes great concern for the sensitive and infinitely kind Vera Nikolaevna: “... I spent the night with Galya. They talked a lot about what she should do in order to get more freedom,” “I feel sorry for Galya and Lenya. Both of them are suffering. I would give a lot so that they were lucky. It’s also hard for Jan. Today he told me: “It would be better for the two of us, more boring, maybe, but better.” – she wrote in her notebook at that time.

Leonid Zurov, a complex and mentally unbalanced man, was in constant despondency, which only aggravated the general difficult atmosphere in the house: “Z. told me yesterday,” Kuznetsova writes in her diary, “that he has terrible melancholy, that he doesn’t know how to will cope with it, and it stems from what he learned, saw in Paris, from thoughts about emigration, about the writers he so longed for. And I understand him.”

A longtime friend of the family, Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky, editor and publisher, who also at one time shared shelter with the Bunins, and therefore perfectly understood what was what, with his visits and conversations, also diligently and constantly poisoned Kuznetsova’s already restless soul: “In captivity the soul can harden, even go somewhere, but it seems to me that it will still be twisted, will not blossom freely, will not bear the same fruits as in freedom,” “You could give up everything,” But I know that you choose more. hard way. The soul grows in suffering. You're a little late to develop. But you have intelligence, talent, everything to be a real person and a real woman. already realizing that she simply has no other choice.

Kuznetsova was embarrassed not only and not so much by her personal “unfreedom of Woman and man.” The current situation was aggravated by the fact that the young writer was still, in fact, deprived of the opportunity to work and improve in her craft. “...You can’t sit down at the table if you don’t have that feeling, as if you’re in love with what you want to write.... Now I almost never have moments in my life when I like this or that so much that I want to write,” “... You can’t feel like a junior all your life, you can’t be among people who have different experiences, different needs due to age. Otherwise, this creates a psychology of premature fatigue and at the same time deprives one of character, independence, everything that makes a writer,” “I feel hopeless.” . I haven’t been able to work for several days. I gave up on the novel,” “I feel lonely, like in the desert. I didn’t get into any literary circle, they never mention me anywhere during the “friendly list of names.” The tangle of melancholy and suffocating hopelessness grew. more tangled and tight.

* * *

Margarita Dukhanina, in her article on the history of relationships in the “Grasse quadrangle,” writes insightfully: “The crisis in the “Monastery of the Muses” gradually grew. Everyone suffered, everyone, even though various reasons, felt unhappy."

Everything. Even Vera Nikolaevna Bunina’s high sacrifice did not now bring her such usual humble satisfaction. Vice versa.

“... I woke up with the thought that there is no shared love in life. And the whole drama is that people do not understand this and especially suffer,” she writes in her diary in May 1929. Around the same time, Kuznetsova, after reading A. Maurois’s novel “Ariel,” states: “There are a lot of interesting things. The result is still the same. Everyone is unhappy.” L.F. Zurov openly languishes that “... he is always sad after work, he lacks youth, there is no one to make noise with, have fun with...”. “You have even begun to walk slowly, you are still restraining yourself in everything,” he bitterly remarks to Kuznetsova.

The thought of the need for change does not leave the inhabitants of the Grasse monastery for a minute: “Today ... there was a very serious and sad conversation with L. [Zurov] about the future. “half-children.” He said that we are not working well, that we are writing unevenly, that now everything is on the map, I know more than ever that he is right.”

For some time, the nervous situation in the house is partially relieved by a new face: F.A. Stepun becomes a frequent guest here. All household members fall under the charm of his personality: “He is, as always, brilliant. He is a rare combination of a philosopher and an artist... he is simple in his manners, inexhaustible...” - this is the description of Vera Nikolaevna. “Yesterday we had a kind of verbal ballet in I.A.’s office at the Villa Belvedere. Stepun poured out so many brilliant portraits, characterizations, paradoxes that we all sat there, smiling stunnedly. I.A. is a worthy interlocutor for him, but he doesn’t have that sparkling the savoring of life that is in Stepun,” “He... was cheerful and all sparkling, frolicking, shimmering, so it was a pleasure to look at him and listen to him. At the same time, he saw so many people, talked to so many in these last months when he traveled with. giving lectures in different cities, and looking at all this from the most unexpected points of view, with such unexpected gestures, finishing the drawings, speaking!” - writes Kuznetsova. Many pages of the Grasse Diary are dedicated to F.A. Stepun. Kuznetsova describes with true pleasure all his skirmishes and clashes with Bunin, and one can feel how often in these disputes she takes the side of the guest, not the owner!

Fyodor Avgustovich Stepun - philosopher, critic, writer, brilliant debater, who was closest to the symbolist authors - in particular, Blok, Bely with his “Petersburg”, seemed to deliberately fence with Bunin, disagreeing with him on everything. Such heated verbal battles had not been remembered at the Belvedere for a long time. However, the summer passed, Stepun - a guest of the Fondaminskys - great friends of the Bunins - returned to his home in Germany, and with his departure, despondency, boredom and general discontent reigned in the house again. Soon this “family trouble” becomes noticeable to others, and many stop visiting the Bunins and do not invite them to their place. I.I. Fondaminsky, without hiding, says this to Kuznetsova: “I don’t like it when the four of you visit us. It feels like you’re all connected by some simple thread, that everything has already been discussed with you, that you’re scared.” tired of each other..." What an insightful remark, isn't it, reader?!

The difficult psychological situation is aggravated by everyday troubles and increasingly scarce means of living: “... we are as poor as, I think, very few of our friends are. I have only 2 shirts, the pillowcases are all darned, there are only 8 sheets, and only 2 strong ones.” , the rest are in patches. Ian can’t buy warm underwear. I mostly wear Galina’s clothes,” writes Vera Nikolaevna on the very eve of 1933, the year that destroyed the “Monastery of the Muses” and brought with it so many joys and troubles, victories. and defeats, downs and ups, so many Bunins did not know in their entire former emigrant life.

* * *

ABOUT Nobel Prize have been talking at the Belvedere for the last three years - ever since Ivan Alekseevich Bunin had real plans to receive it. In the fall, life in the house revolved around endless discussions of “who will get it” and greedy, almost hopeless waiting. The same thing happened this fall; the peak came on November 9, the day the prize was awarded: “Everyone was depressed in the morning, secretly nervous, and even more so tried to mind their own business... I.A. sat down at his desk, did not leave and seemed to even be writing intently.” Within a few hours, everything became known: Bunin and Kuznetsova, so that “time would pass quickly and some kind of decision would come,” went “to the cinema,” where an excited, not himself, Zurov came running with stunning news.

The prize meant future changes in life, while no one could have guessed what they would be. Even after a week after the news, amazement and a certain confusion reigned in the house: “We still haven’t fully woken up. I can’t get used to the new situation at all and literally with fear I decide to buy the most necessary things for myself,” Kuznetsova wrote on November 17, adding in at the end: ... the distant lights of Grasse .... - ... the feeling that it’s all over, and our life has turned somewhere else ... "

The award of the prize did not at all improve Bunin’s relations with other emigration writers (already difficult, because “Bunin did not like anything about modern prose, emigrant or European" - and he never hid his "antipathies.") To the hostility was added the outright envy of some former comrades. A scandal ensued with the Merezhkovskys and a complete break in relations, and with the others too. Bunin's bad character created precedents for constant quarrels: with B.K. Zaitsev, with Teffi... Teffi sent a witticism around the city: “We now lack another emigrant organization: “Unification of people offended by I.A. Bunin.”

The current situation greatly upset G.N. Kuznetsova, which she repeatedly mentions in her diary.

Bunin decided to go to Stockholm to receive the prize himself. He took Vera Nikolaevna and Kuznetsova with him on the trip (obviously, Zurov was left at home because of his reputation as an “enfant terrible”). The writer Andrei Sedykh (Ya.M. Tsvibak) went with Bunin as a secretary. The trip remained in the memory as a triumph: “Photographs of Bunin were looked at not only from the pages of newspapers, but from shop windows, from cinema screens. As soon as I.A. went out into the street, passers-by immediately began to look back at him. A little flattered, Bunin pulled it into his eyes a lamb hat and grumbled: “What is this? The tenor’s perfect success. The receptions followed one after another and there were days when you had to go from one dinner to another,” recalled A. Sedykh in his book “Distant, Close” (1962).

Nothing foreshadowed future trials for Bunin. We decided to return back through Berlin and Dresden to visit dear Fyodor Avgustovich in Germany. Sedykh returned to France.

On December 24, 1933, Vera Nikolaevna wrote in her diary: “Yan and F.A. (Stepun) switched to “you”. His sister Marga lives with them. A strange big girl is a singer. She laughs well.”

What happened in the Stepuns’ house in December 1933 is not known for certain. None of the eyewitnesses left records about these days. If you believe the memoirs of I. Odoevtseva, who was close friends with Galina Nikolaevna, the “tragedy” happened right away: “Stepun was a writer, he had a sister, the sister was a singer, a famous singer - and a desperate lesbian. We stopped by. And that’s where the tragedy happened Galina fell in love terribly - poor Galina... drinks a glass - a tear rolls down: “Are we women in control of our destiny?..” Stepun was powerful, and Galina could not resist...”

Margarita Avgustovna Stepun was born in 1895 in the family of the chief director of stationery factories known throughout Russia. Her father was from East Prussia, her mother belonged to the Swedish-Finnish Argelander family. Apparently, M.A. Stepun received an excellent education - the family was not only very, very wealthy, but also “enlightened”. Marga inherited her love of music from her mother. According to the memoirs of F.A. Stepun, there was “a lot of music in the house, mainly singing. My mother and her friend, who often visits us, sing.”

History and literary criticism now have, alas, more than meager information about the life of M.A. Stepun before meeting G.N. Kuznetsova. Judging by the fact that in Paris she took part in meetings of the Moscow Community and spoke at evenings with “Moscow memories”, it can be assumed that before the revolution she lived in Moscow. In exile she often performed with solo concerts(in Paris for the first time in 1938), where with her strong, “divine contralto” she performed works by Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Dargomyzhsky, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Most likely, it was the music and beautiful voice of Margarita Avgustovna that charmed Galina Nikolaevna, who once admitted in the autobiographical (unfinished) story “The Artist”, meaning herself as the main character: “Since childhood, music was something special for her, belonging to the world of magical elements that owned her. She greedily strove for it and did not know who could lead her along the right way. Even in her youth she had such a secret dream: she has a friend, genius musician. She comes to him from time to time, and he plays for hours for her in a huge half-empty studio... The hours that they spend together belong to something the highest, the most beautiful that happens on earth...”

One way or another, Kuznetsova finally has a “friend - a brilliant musician”. Who knows, perhaps, after several years under the same roof with the despotic egoist Bunin and the gloomy neurasthenic Zurov, Galina Nikolaevna could no longer afford to fall in love with a man...

After returning to Grasse, life there is completely different. Zurov and Bunin are in a constant, hidden quarrel with Kuznetsova. Vera Nikolaevna notices, but doesn’t really understand what’s going on: “Galya began to write, but is still nervous. ... She has correspondence with Marga, which we

Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova(after Petrova’s husband; December 10, Kyiv - February 8, Munich) - Russian poetess and writer, memoirist.

Biography

main book

Kuznetsova’s poems and prose continued to be published in the largest emigrant publications - “Modern Notes”, “New Journal”, “Airways”.

Her “Grasse Diary”, which she kept in - was published in Washington. It became not only a meaningful historical and literary source, but also a remarkable literary phenomenon, the author’s main book - one way or another, Kuznetsova did not write anything better than it. Based on the book Feature Film Alexei Uchitel’s “The Diary of His Wife” (), which gained great fame and was awarded many awards (see:).

Proximity to Bunin determines Kuznetsova’s poetry and prose, as well as her place in Russian literature. Kuznetsova’s very homogeneous poems are dedicated to nature; clear, beautiful sketches are melancholic in mood. Her prose is event-poor, reflective and always associated with memories. With subtle psychological insight, she described the relationships between people in the first years after the coup and flight from Russia.

Publications

• Morning, Paris, 1930 (collection of stories)
• Prologue, Paris, 1933 (novel)
• , a facsimile reproduction of a 1937 book from the Vyacheslav Ivanov library in Rome. In the book there is an inscription in Bunin's hand, a letter asking for a frank review.
• Grasse diary. Washington: Viktor Kamkin, 1967
• Grasse diary. Paris, 1974
• Grasse diary. Stories. Olive Garden. M.: Moscow worker, 1995
• Grasse diary. M.: AST-Olympus, 2001
• Women's prose of Russian emigration / Comp. O. R. Demidova. St. Petersburg: Russian Christians. humanitarian Institute, 2003.
• Bunin and Kuznetsova. The Art of the Impossible: Diaries, Letters / Comp. O. Mikhailov. M.: Grifon, 2006
• Prologue. St. Petersburg: Publishing House Mir, 2007
• Grasse Diary/ Compilation, introductory article, comments by O. R. Demidova. St. Petersburg: “Mir”, 2009

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Literature

• Stepun F. Meetings. M.-SPb., 1995.
• Melnikov N. G. Kuznetsova Galina Nikolaevna// Literary encyclopedia Russian abroad 1918-1940. M.: RAS; INION, 1997, p.225-227
• Through the mouths of the Bunins: Diaries of Ivan Alekseevich and Vera Nikolaevna Bunins and other archival materials: In 2 vols./ Ed.-comp. Green M.; preface Maltseva Y. Munich: Posev, 2005
• Dukhanina M. “Monastery of the Muses.” On the history of creative and personal relationships of G. N. Kuznetsova, I. A. Bunina, L. F. Zurova, V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina, M. A. Stepun//
• Batshev V. Writers of Russian emigration. Germany, 1921-2008: Materials for a biobiliographic dictionary. Frankfurt am Main: Literary European, 2008, p.145-146

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An excerpt characterizing Kuznetsova, Galina Nikolaevna

Near the village of Praca, Rostov was ordered to look for Kutuzov and the sovereign. But here not only were they not there, but there was not a single commander, but there were heterogeneous crowds of frustrated troops.
He urged his already tired horse to get through these crowds as quickly as possible, but the further he moved, the more upset the crowds became. The high road on which he drove out was crowded with carriages, carriages of all kinds, Russian and Austrian soldiers, of all branches of the military, wounded and unwounded. All this hummed and swarmed in a mixed manner to the gloomy sound of flying cannonballs from the French batteries placed on the Pratsen Heights.
- Where is the sovereign? where is Kutuzov? - Rostov asked everyone he could stop, and could not get an answer from anyone.
Finally, grabbing the soldier by the collar, he forced him to answer himself.
- Eh! Brother! Everyone has been there for a long time, they have fled ahead! - the soldier said to Rostov, laughing at something and breaking free.
Leaving this soldier, who was obviously drunk, Rostov stopped the horse of the orderly or the guard of an important person and began to question him. The orderly announced to Rostov that an hour ago the sovereign had been driven at full speed in a carriage along this very road, and that the sovereign was dangerously wounded.
“It can’t be,” said Rostov, “that’s right, someone else.”
“I saw it myself,” said the orderly with a self-confident grin. “It’s time for me to know the sovereign: it seems like how many times I’ve seen something like this in St. Petersburg.” A pale, very pale man sits in a carriage. As soon as the four blacks let loose, my fathers, he thundered past us: it’s time, it seems, to know both the royal horses and Ilya Ivanovich; It seems that the coachman does not ride with anyone else like the Tsar.
Rostov let his horse go and wanted to ride on. A wounded officer walking past turned to him.
-Who do you want? – asked the officer. - Commander-in-Chief? So he was killed by a cannonball, killed in the chest by our regiment.
“Not killed, wounded,” another officer corrected.
- Who? Kutuzov? - asked Rostov.
- Not Kutuzov, but whatever you call him - well, it’s all the same, there aren’t many alive left. Go over there, to that village, all the authorities have gathered there,” said this officer, pointing to the village of Gostieradek, and walked past.
Rostov rode at a pace, not knowing why or to whom he would go now. The Emperor is wounded, the battle is lost. It was impossible not to believe it now. Rostov drove in the direction that was shown to him and in which a tower and a church could be seen in the distance. What was his hurry? What could he now say to the sovereign or Kutuzov, even if they were alive and not wounded?