THE LIFE AND WORK OF NIKOLAI GUMILYEV (1886-1921) -BRILLIANT POET OF THE SILVER AGE
FINAL/18.7.2021
SLIDE 1 – TITLE PAGE
INTRODUCTION
The 26th August 2021 will be the 100th anniversary of the tragic death of Nikolai Gumilyev. The Pushkin Club is commemorating that date by devoting this evening to a celebration of the life and work of Gumilyev – who is one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century.
Throughout his short life of 35 years Nikolai Gumilyev loved to travel. He visited Egypt, Abyssinia, Somalia and many other countries. Gumilyev twice visited London, for short periods. When he returned to Bolshevik Russia at the end of his second visit in April 1918, he left behind various papers which came to be known as Gumilyev’s “London archive”. One of the papers in this archive was a mysterious diagram, which related the names of 12 Roman gods to four social “castes.” These four castes, which were derived from Hindu tradition, were warrior, merchant, clerk and pariah // воин, купец, клерк и пария. The various intersections between these groupings - warrior-merchant, merchant-clerk etc. – were intended as a framework for the classification of Russian poets (and perhaps poets in general) by type.
Thus, Lermontov appears as “warrior-clerk”. Blok, on the other hand, appears as “clerk-pariah”. The names of a further 12 Russian poets were listed, including Gumilyev himself. Regrettably, these poets were left “unclassified”. However, Gleb Struve, who first published the papers from Gumilyev’s London archive, has speculated that Gumilyev would have put himself in the same category as Lermontov, i.e. that of warrior-clerk.
In the course of this evening, I hope to be able illustrate this description of Gumilyev, by reference to both his life and work. I will also show how Gumilyev was one of the founding members of the Acmeist poetry movement and describe the part he played in the brilliant flowering of Russian culture known as the Silver Age (c. 1895 - 1915).
From his very first collection of verse, “Path of the Conquistadors” // Путь конквистадоров (1905), Gumilyev himself did much to project the image of “poet-warrior”. He once said that he was a traveller, a soldier and a poet - in that order.
I would also like to draw some comparisons between Lermontov and Gumilyev.
Some of the parallels between the two poets are indeed so close as to be uncanny:
They both saw active service on the battlefield.
Both engaged in duelling.
And both had a clear presentiment of their own death.
Gumilyev died at the age of 35, one of the first writers to die at the hands of the Bolsheviks. He packed an amazing amount of life into those 35 years and produced a corpus of work that stands comparison with the best Russian poets. It is fair to say that Gumilyev fulfilled the famous lines of Pushkin from “The Prophet”:
“Arise, prophet, sense and see,
And crossing land and sea,
Set aflame the hearts of people with your Word.”
EARLY LIFE
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyev was born on the naval base of Kronstadt, on 3 April 1886, into the noble family of a Kronstadt ship’s doctor, Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilyev. His mother was Anna Ivanovna L'vova.
SLIDE 2 - Parents; SLIDE 3 - Parents with Mitya [Dmitri, 2 years’ older] and Kolya [Nikolai]
Before Nikolai's first birthday, his father retired from the Russian Imperial Navy, and the Gumilyevs moved to the Petersburg suburb of Tsarskoye Selo.
SLIDE 4 - Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye became the future poet's main home until the Revolution.
From an early age, Gumilyev’s mother (to whom he remained close all his life) had encouraged in him a love of reading, and his father had encouraged his love of adventure. Because of poor health, he was educated almost entirely at home until the age of ten.
SLIDE 5 – Gurevich Gymnasium
The family then moved to St Petersburg, where he was enrolled in the Gurevich Gymnasium [grammar school], which had a fine reputation and genuinely enlightened teachers.
The young Gumilyev showed little enthusiasm for lessons. But he developed an early love of literature.
SLIDE 6 – Nikolai Gumilyev as a boy
By the time he was 13 (1899), this already included the Russian poets and (in translation) Milton and Coleridge, as well as Shakespeare.
The following year (1900) brought a dramatic change of routine. Probably because of the ill-health of Gumilyev’s older brother, Dimitry, the family moved to Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia. This was a picturesque and exotic place — with another excellent Russian Gymnasium, where Gumilyev studied more successfully than before.
The family returned to Tsarskoye Selo in the autumn of 1903. It was at this point that Gumilyev discovered the German philosopher, Nietzsche, and the Symbolists — and became increasingly convinced of his own vocation as a poet. A more personal influence was Innokenty Annensky, the headmaster of his new school, the Tsarskoye Selo Boys' Gymnasium [grammar school].
SLIDE 7 - Tsarskoye Selo Gymnasium
Gumilyev again made poor academic progress.
SLIDE 8 – Gumilyev as a Gymnasium student
He had to repeat a year because of his failure in mathematics, and did not leave school until he was 20.
SLIDE 9 – Innokenty Annensky
But he fell under the poetic and ideological sway of Annensky, who happened also to be a first-rate poet. This influence continued after Gumilyev left school, until Annensky's sudden death from a heart attack in 1909. Gumilyev later admitted that it was Annensky's influence that had turned his mind to writing poetry. Subsequently, he proclaimed Annensky to be the inspirational precursor of the Acmeists.
MEETING WITH AND COURTSHIP OF ANNA GORENKO (AKHMATOVA)
Another encounter in Tsarskoye Selo at the end of 1903 had a still greater impact.
SLIDE 10 – Anna Akhmatova as a girl
This was his first meeting (at the age of 17) with the 14-year-old schoolgirl, Anya Gorenko — who later assumed the pen-name of Akhmatova. Gumilyev fell deeply in love with Akhmatova and, by May 1904, had declared his love for her. There followed an agonising and lengthy courtship. He twice proposed marriage, and was twice turned down before Akhmatova eventually agreed to marry him.
EARLY VERSE : 1905 – 1912 (including “Parisian period”)
SLIDE 11 – Cover of ‘Path of the Conquistadors’
Nikolai Gumilyev's first book of verse was “Path of the Conquistadors” // Путь конквистадоров, which was published at his parents’ expense in October 1905.
The poems of this collection are firmly rooted in the mainstream of Russian Symbolism, the leading poetry movement of that time.
We will read one of the poems from this collection, “Choice”(1). In this poem Gumilyev writes that, whatever route we choose to take in life, no mortal can escape their ordained fate. However, the poet declares that each of us has “the incomparable right” to choose our own death // несравненное право – самому выбирать свою смерть. Some commentators have suggested that the poem gives expression to that presentiment of his own violent death which haunted Gumilyev throughout his life.
READ “Choice” (1)
SLIDE 12 – Valery Bryusov
Gumilyev had sent a copy оf «Путь конквистадоров» to Valery Bryusov, a prominent Symbolist poet and editor of the most important Symbolist journal, The Scales // Весы. A brief and rather lukewarm review duly appeared there. It was followed, three months later, by a letter from Bryusov which led to a lengthy period of dedicated “apprenticeship” by Gumilyev to the older poet. Bryusov proved himself the ideal mentor. His influence was apparent in his pupil's next volume, Romantic Flowers // Романтические цветы – published, at Gumilyev’s own expense, in 1908. We will now read the exquisite poem 'Giraffe' from that collection.
READ Giraffe (2)
In 1906, following Akhmatova’s rejection of him at that point, Gumilyev chose to abandon Russia.
SLIDE 13 – Nikolai Gumilyev in Paris
That autumn he left for Paris - with little money, and against his parents' wishes - on the pretext of study at the Sorbonne. He seems to have been far from assiduous in attending lectures on Art and Mediaeval French Literature, but he evidently read a lot, and worked hard at his writing. With two Russian associates, Gumilyev produced a short-lived literary and artistic periodical, Sirius, in which Anna Akhmatova made her poetic debut.
Gumilyev also tried to widen his circle of literary acquaintances among the many Russian intellectuals who frequented the French capital. Unfortunately, the most prominent of these — Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his wife, Zinaida Gippius – were not very encouraging. Indeed, he was effectively snubbed by Gippius - a rebuff which he resented for the rest of his life. The overriding impression of his 'Parisian period' is one of deep solitude, depression and misery.
All these resulted in an attempted suicide, and then a restlessness which led to his arrest for vagrancy in Normandy.
Against such a background, literary progress might have seemed impossible. However, with Bryusov's help, Gumilyev gradually began to publish his works in several prominent periodicals, and the older poet's favourable reaction to Romantic Flowers gave him the confidence to return permanently to Russia in the spring of 1908.
SLIDE 14 – Vyacheslav Ivanov
In 1909 Gumilyev initiated a series of seminars on poetry under the guidance of Vyacheslav Ivanov, the erudite Petersburg Symbolist poet.
SLIDE 15 - The Tower
He and Akhmatova began to frequent Ivanov’s famous bohemian-intellectual “Tower” // Башня - which was actually the nick-name of Ivanov’s flat. These meetings eventually led to Gumilyev's creative emancipation from the influences of other poets.
At this point, Gumilyev was still only 23. Akhmatova later regarded the opposition which the still young Gumilyev mounted to Vyacheslav Ivanov's formidable personal and intellectual authority as an act of “civic courage”.
However, he also sought out other, more physical forms of danger.
DUEL WITH MAXIMILIAN VOLOSHIN – November 1909
SLIDE 16 – Maximilian Voloshin
A notorious example was the bizarre event which took place in the literary life of St.Petersburg in November 1909. This was Gumilyev’s duel with the poet, Maximilian Voloshin.
The tangled pretext was the “creation” of a fictional Catholic poetess – one, Cherubina de Gabriak - by Voloshin and Elizaveta Dmitriyeva.
SLIDE 17 – Elizaveta Dmitriyeva
Gumilyev had an affair with Elizaveta Dmitriyeva and even proposed. But she had switched her affections in the summer of 1909 from him to Voloshin. In the autumn of 1909 the identity of 'Cherubina' – as Elizaveta Dmitriyeva - was revealed in the press, and Gumilyev made some unflattering remarks about Elizaveta. Then Voloshin slapped his face in public, and Gumilyev challenged him.
After the event each of the duellists was fined 10 roubles, and the “duel of the decadents” elicited a series of sardonic reports in the popular press.
This contemporary amusement at the duellists’ expense is not hard to understand. By the beginning of the 20th century duelling was manifestly anachronistic; and though other Russian men of letters were later to issue challenges, Gumilyev and Voloshin were certainly among the last to fight. The literary-theatrical element, moreover, was emphatic throughout.
SLIDE 18 – Chernaya Rechka
The duel took place at Chernaya Rechka, the site both of Pushkin’s duel with D’Anthes and of Lermontov’s with de Barante. And Gumilyev set out for the encounter from the editorial offices of the magazine, Apollo. The address was Moika, 24. This was in striking proximity to the apartment at Moika, 12, from which Pushkin had set out to fight with D’Anthes. One notable difference from the 19th century was that Gumilyev, together with his seconds, set out for the duel by taxi!
The outcome of the duel might well have been tragic, had Voloshin's second not tampered with his gun, which twice misfired. Gumilyev himself fired into the air.
SLIDE 19 – ANNA AKHMATOVA
This episode – in November 1909 - shows how turbulent Gumilyev's personal life was at this time. But despite long separations and Gumilyev's occasional pursuit of other women, Akhmatova continued to be his ideal. He was driven to such despair by her seeming indifference that he twice attempted suicide. It may be that Akhmatova eventually chose to accept him more from a mixture of respect and compassion for his sheer persistency than out of any unhesitating love on her part.
At last, in April 1910 the couple married, to the unanimous disapproval of Akhmatova's relatives.
Not surprisingly, their marriage was happy only for a short time. Akhmatova herself later realised that her marriage to Gumilyev was not the beginning, but ”the beginning of the end of their relationship”.
SLIDE 20 - Gumilyev and Akhmatova with their son, Lyova
Their son Lev, who was born on 18 September 1912 ,was raised by Gumilyev's mother, Anna Ivanovna.
On the level of everyday life (in which neither partner was particularly skilled) they soon drifted apart. On another level, however — of poetry and spiritual concerns – they remained very close, and the poetic dialogue between the two never came to a halt.
SLIDE 21 - Anna Akhmatova [Slide 19 again]
The image of Akhmatova haunted Gumilyev's writing throughout his career.
A good illustration of this is his poem “From A Dragon’s Lair” (3)
«Из логова змиева, / Из города Киева»
This was written in 1911, within a year of his marriage to Akhmatova, and appeared in the collection “Alien Sky” // Чужое небо (published in 1912). Following her parents’ separation, Akhmatova had lived with her mother, principally in Kiev. The poem draws on Ukrainian folklore demonology.
READ (3) – From A Dragon’s Lair
Slide 22 – Nikolai Gumilyev [Slide 1 again]
As for Gumilyev's poetic development, in 1910 he had produced his third book Pearls // Жемчуга, which was brought out by Bryusov's Scorpio // Скорпион publishing house.
Gumilyev continued to move away from the influence of the Symbolists, to broaden his range of literary and cultural reference and in effect to find his own “poetic voice”.
In Pearls and his next book, Alien Sky // Чужое небо (1912), one can already detect some of the features of Acmeism, in the respect shown for the literary heritage and tradition, and in the values of self-discipline and craftsmanship.
A good example is the poem “Captains” (4) from Pearls (1910). It displays some of the characteristic features of Acmeism : very specific and concrete details; graphic images; and intense physicality. Thus, in “Captains”, we see the sea-captain marking his bold course with a needle on a tattered map; slashing off flecks of foam from his boots with blows of his cane; and whipping out a pistol from his belt to quell a mutiny, with the result that gold dust spills from his cuffs of pinkish Brabant lace.
READ (4) – 'Captains'
From his home in Tsarskoye Selo, Gumilyev now sought active involvement in Petersburg literary life.
TRAVELS TO EGYPT, ABYSSINIA AND ITALY
However, throughout his life Gumilyev showed himself ready to abandon the literary scene - and perhaps the banalities and emotional complexities of domestic life – by disappearing for long periods on his foreign travels.
At the end of 1909 he left on a four-month journey to Abyssinia, but failed to reach the capital, Addis Ababa. In autumn 1910, only four months after honeymooning in Paris, he abandoned his wife for a longer, six-month expedition.
SLIDE 23 – Africa (1); SLIDE 24 – Africa (2)
This time he went via Constantinople, Port Said and the Nile, and reached Addis Ababa inland through desert and mountains from Djibouti.
The three journeys he made to Africa were physically arduous and hazardous. He made friends with Abyssinian poets and artists, met Emperor Menelik II and collected folk songs, paintings and everyday utensils. He returned to Russia with tropical fever and an apparent disenchantment with travel.
But in the spring of 1913 — only four months after the inception of the new poetry movement, Acmeism, and seven months since the birth of his son, Lev - he left for the third time, for Abyssinia and Somalia.
SLIDE 25 – The future Emperor Haile Selassie (photo by Gumilyev)
During this visit he met the future Emperor Haile Selassie I and took a photograph of him.
This third and final expedition to Abyssinia in 1913 was sponsored and financed (albeit modestly) by the Academy of Sciences. He and his nephew, Nikolai Sverchkov, brought back a rich and varied collection. This was proscribed for a long time, like Gumilyev's writings, but is now housed in the St Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.
Gumilyev’s travels in Africa inspired many fine poems which were published in his books 'Pearls', Alien Sky', 'Quiver', 'Bonfire' and 'Tent'.
Gumilyev also travelled in Europe. In 1912 he and Akhmatova toured Italy together. This led to a series of poems on Italian cities.
ACMEISM
SLIDE 26 – Cover of journal “Apollo”
Between these foreign trips, Gumilyev continued to energetically pursue his literary activities. He became involved with Sergei Makovsky's new journal Apollo // Аполлон — which later became a forum for Acmeist opposition to Symbolism. His regular “Letters on Russian Poetry” were models of well-written and perceptive literary criticism.
And, in November 1911, with other young colleagues, Gumilyev founded “The Poets’ Guild”// «Цех поэтов», in opposition to Vyacheslav Ivanov’s gatherings in the 'Tower'. He and Sergei Gorodetsky were the self-appointed “Masters of the Guild”, with Anna Akhmatova as “Secretary”.
SLIDE 27 – Osip Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam soon became, in Akhmatova’s phrase, первая скрипка // “first violin”. By the end of 1912 Gumilyev and the other founder members were ready to announce the advent of Acmeism. In January 1913 Gumilyev and Gorodetsky published their Acmeist manifestoes in the journal, “Apollo”.
Gumilyev’s manifesto was entitled “The Legacy of Symbolism and Acmeism”.
SLIDE 28 – Nikolai Gumilyev as ‘Maitre’ [the leader of the 'Poets' Guild' and Acmeist movement]
This established Gumilyev as the effective leader of the new Acmeist movement in Russian poetry. It also coincided with a period of extraordinary vitality and creativity in Russian culture – in painting, music and ballet, as well as literature. Acmeism – and Gumilyev’s mature creative period as a poet – became part of the brilliant flowering of the period known as the “Silver Age” // «Серебряный век», which lasted roughly from 1895-1915.
ACMEISM AND THE SILVER AGE
It is called the Silver Age, by way of contrast with the Golden Age of Russian Literature of the 19th Century.
During the period of the Silver Age - from 1895 to 1915 – or, arguably, until the 1930s - other arts, as well as poetry, were in an extremely vibrant state. Chagall and Vryubel were emerging as painters, as were Malevich, Kandinsky, Larionov and Goncharova. Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Stravinsky were revolutionising music. Stanislavsky and Meyerhold were developing new methods in theatrical production. Diaghilev, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Vatslav Nizhinsky were transforming classical Russian ballet in the most exciting way. And Lev Bakst and Alexander Benois were painting, illustrating books and designing costumes and scenery for ballet and theatre. There was a remarkable intensity about it all, as if the participants foresaw that their creativity was soon to be stifled by the impending Soviet dictatorship or through being scattered into foreign exile.
The great achievement of Russian novelists in the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev had not been matched by the Russian poets who were their contemporaries. Most of them wrote "civic" poetry in a style that Mandelstam described as of an "almost wooden simplicity". In the 1890s, the prevalent ‘civic virtue’ theories were challenged by the Symbolist poets. They succeeded in freeing Russian poetry from what Gumilyev called its previous “narrow prison of ideology and prejudice”.
The Symbolists also influenced painting, music and other arts. And they brought Russia into contact with European literary movements, represented elsewhere by Baudelaire, Mallarme, Stefan George, Rilke and Yeats.
The Symbolists - Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and to some extent Blok - had come to think of poetry as essentially religious, mystical, and metaphysical.
The Acmeists, the group with which Gumilyev is identified, had different ideas.
Acmeism first and foremost involved the three great poets: Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Gumilyev. The movement seemed to unite these three poets even beyond the grave. Mandelstam, for instance, wrote to Akhmatova, on the seventh anniversary of Gumilyev's death, of the imaginary dialogue he continued to conduct with Kolya, without interruption or foreseeable end.
The Acmeist movement was conceived in deliberate opposition to the long-standing dominance of Russian Symbolism, which, the participants believed, had lost its way in the fog of its own mysticism and high-flown metaphysical abstractions.
Gumilyev defined Acmeism “etymologically”, by reference to its Greek root, akme, as “the highest point of something,... the flowering, or time of florescence. Years later, when Mandelstam was pressed to define Acmeism by a hostile audience, he defined it as “a yearning for world culture”// «тоска по мировой культуре».
Gumilyev сlaimed that the Acmeists were the true heirs of Symbolism, preserving the best of the older movement. Gumilyev declared that: “Symbolism has been a worthy father”// «Символизм был хорошим отцом». The “son”, however, was quite different. The Acmeists shared the commitment to Western European culture traditionally associated with St Petersburg and emphasised this commitment in the title of the journal, “Apollo”, with its classical connotations.
The Acmeist approach to poetic subjects will tend to be multi-faceted, multi-layered and multi-dimensional. A good illustration of this approach in Gumilyev’s case is his poem “Sixth Sense”(5).
READ (5) – Sixth Sense
The focus of Acmeism is on humanity and each individual's relation to the “immediate reality” of the surrounding world. This is reflected in the psychological rather than metaphysical, emphasis of Gumilyev's early poetry.
And Gumilyev’s voyages are on some level psychological ones of internal discovery. Eventually, distant travel becomes a metaphor for spiritual pilgrimage. In poems like “The Word” (6) he expresses a sense of spiritual impoverishment or alienation or, at any rate, a sense of humankind’s failure to realise its spiritual potential. The Word was written in 1919 and is part of the collection Pillar of Fire // Огненный Столп.
“The Word” is highly rhetorical: it alludes to several Biblical texts. The last two lines read as follows: “And like bees in a deserted beehive/ Dead words smell bad”. This striking image may be a metaphor for a breakdown of human communication.
READ 'THE WORD’ - (6)
Perhaps the most crucial distinguishing feature of Gumilyev's verse is the active ethical impulse it expresses. In Gumilyev’s case, this means a conscious endeavour to live life to the full or to the bitter end, aspiring to “the full blossoming of all physical and spiritual force.” While Gumilyev proclaimed this as an Acmeist goal, it always remained a challenging ideal rather than something he managed to accomplish in practice. As a result, his poetry often deals with the sense of a life wasted and opportunity missed or denied, and expresses feelings of alienation, displacement and inner disharmony. On the other hand, whatever the vicissitudes of life, there is a stoical acceptance of the pain of reality.
The “active ethical” element in Gumilyev’s poetry is evident in the firm renunciation of suicide and also in the eloquent moral concern he expresses about how best to cope with living. This is illustrated by his poem “My Readers”// «Мои читатели» (published in Pillar of Fire in 1921). Let me just quote four lines of this poem in English translation:
“But when bullets whistle around, When waves break the bows, I will teach them how not to fear, Not to fear and to do what has to be done.”
WORLD WAR 1: MILITARY SERVICE (1914 – 1918)
Following the outbreak of the First World War, and alone among established writers, Gumilyev at once volunteered for military service.
SLIDE 27 – Nikolai Gumilyev as a soldier
It was no matter to him that he had been exempted from military service in 1907 because of his astigmatism. He was motivated by the same striving for inner development which had already impelled him towards both Africa and Acmeism.
He enlisted in the cavalry as an ordinary soldier. In order to do so, at his own expense he took lessons on the use of the sabre and lance. Being left-handed, he also applied for and was granted permission to fire from his left shoulder.
Gumilyev served in uniform until the late spring of 1918 and saw a lot of action on the Eastern Front. Like Lermontov, Gumilyev distinguished himself in battle by exceptional courage. He was decorated for bravery three times, twice with the St. George Cross.
SLIDE 28 - colours of Nikolai Gumilyev’s military decorations: two St. George's Crosses [in black and gold]; and, on the left of the picture, the Order of St. Stanislav [in red and white]
SLIDE 31 – Nikolai Gumilyev as a soldier [Slide 29 again]
In 1916 he wrote a poem which has often been considered to be prophetic of his later execution by the Bolsheviks. I am referring here to “The Workman” (6), which was published in 1918 in the collection, Bonfire // КостЁр. This is a poem inspired by the First World War. That said, there is certainly a chilling presentiment of death caused by a bullet. As Nabokov said of Lermontov’s poem“The Dream”, this presents another “vision of terrifying clarity.”
READ “The Workman” - (7)
Gumilyev spent the last two weeks of June 1917 in London. There, amongst others, through Boris Anrep (the mosaicist and close friend of Akhmatova) - he met such luminaries as Roger Fry, G.K. Chesterton, Yeats and Aldous Huxley. The next stage of his journey took him to Paris. He remained there through the rest of 1917, serving as an administrative assistant to the Military Commissar of the Provisional Government.
While in Paris, Gumilyev paid persistent court to a certain Yelena Du Bouchet, whose attitude to his advances is recorded in his posthumously published cycle, for A blue Star // К синей звезде.
In January 1918 Gumilyev returned to London, hoping to reach the Mesopotamian Front. When this proved impossible, he worked for a while in the Ciphers Department of the Russian Government Committee. By April 1918 all funds for his maintenance were exhausted, and he was ordered home to Russia.
LIFE IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY PETROGRAD
Back home in Revolutionary Petrograd, Gumilyev threw himself into literary life with unrestrained enthusiasm. After his divorce from Akhmatova in the summer of 1918, he hurriedly married the poet, Balmont's step-daughter, Anna Engelhardt. She bore him a daughter, Yelena, in April 1919. By November 1919, day-to-day existence in cold and hungry Petrograd had become so difficult that the family was despatched to Gumilyev's mother in Bezhetsk in Tver' province. Gumilyev’s son, Lev, who was being raised by Gumilyev’s mother, also lived there. The result was that Gumilyev lived apart from his family until May 1921.
FINAL CREATIVE PERIOD
SLIDE 32 – Cover of Костёр // Bonfire
In 1918 Gumilyev embarked on the publication of his sixth book of verse, Bonfire // КостЁр, and also his version of oriental poetry, The Porcelain Pavilion // Фарфоровый павильон. He was commissioned to produce the African cycle of his poems Tent // ШатЁр, and published his translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh.
By early 1919, the acute paper shortage forced him to channel his energies elsewhere. He spent a great deal of time editing and translating for Gorky’s “World Literature” series.
In addition to this, Gumilyev taught the theory, history and practice of poetry, often lecturing several times a week, and devoting considerable attention to a coterie of younger writers. He seemed indefatigable, too, as a member of numerous literary-cultural committees which were then vital to the very physical survival of the intellectual community. In 1921 he was elected Chairman of the Petrograd Branch of the Russian Union of Poets.
Though it is difficult to see how he found time for original work (let alone alleged political conspiracy), this was also a time of great creative activity. He produced much new drama [N.B Gondla dates back to 1917]; the first cantos of a narrative work, Poem of the Beginning; some lyrical poems - sometimes in an experimental vein; and, above all – SLIDE 33 – cover of “The Pillar of Fire” - the magnificent poetry that would make up his collection The Pillar of Fire // Огненный столп (1921). There was no doubt that when he was arrested - in August 1921 – he was at the height of his powers, and full of fresh creative plans.
In terms of Gumilyev’s poetic achievement, I would not wish to dismiss the value of his earlier work. However, the poetry which he wrote between 1918 and 1921, particularly that in the volumes, Bonfire //«Костёр» (published in 1918) and Pillar of Fire //«Огненный столп» (1921), was of unsurpassed quality.
“The Pillar of Fire” was his last book of poems. It was published in the three weeks between his arrest and execution in August 1921, and was distinguished by a staggering range and intensity of spiritual searching and a new emotional and intellectual depth. This was matched by the remarkable technical accomplishment of a poet who had been developing exponentially throughout his career.
I have already mentioned the poem 'My Readers'. But I cannot leave the Pillar of Fire collection without mentioning two other poems –The collection opens with the famous poem, Memory // Память. At one level, this is an autobiographical account of some of the key events or stages in Gumilyev’s development. But it is also a very good example of the greatly increased depth and complexity of his last collection.
The second poem is The Tram That Lost Its Way // «Заблудившийся трамвай» (8). This poem, which was written in 1919, ranks as one of Gumilyev’s greatest achievements and as one of the greatest poems of the 20th century.
In Gumilyev's own words, the verses came to him suddenly after a sleepless night spent at a card-game. He wrote all 15 stanzas in 40 minutes, without any editing, and was himself surprised at his creation.
The poem could be described as a vision. It is to be understood on many levels and has many meanings. I can only outline the poem’s most obvious, superficial meaning. The Author jumps on to the Tram of Revolution, which is moving with enormous speed and from which it is impossible to get off.
The Tram is losing its way in space and time. It swings between Europe, Africa and Asia, between spiritual heights and executions. Eventually it reaches Russia – and Gumilyev gives us three landmarks which no Revolution can destroy.
These are Pushkin – who wrote 'The Captain's Daughter', where the code of honour was expressed: even its epigraph reads “Береги честь смолоду»; the Bronze Horseman - a symbol of statesmanship and “a window to Europe”; and St. Isaac's Cathedral - a symbol of Orthodoxy - where the Author orders a prayer to be said for the salvation of his beloved Mashen'ka (who could also symbolise Russia) and orders a funeral service for himself (in another presentiment of his own violent death).
We will now read this poem.
READ The Tram that Lost Its Way - (8)
ARREST AND EXECUTION BY THE BOLSHEVIKS – August 1921
SLIDE 34 – Gumilyev’s photo from CheKa archive: the version, без ретуши, showing facial bruises
Nikolai Gumilyev was arrested on 7 August 1921. To judge by the surviving record of his interrogation, Gumilyev's most serious crime was an admission that, had the Kronstadt Revolt of March 1921 spread to Petrograd, he would have been prepared to fight on the side of the rebels. His “guilt” was otherwise attested only by the flimsy allegations of one or two shadowy agents provocateurs.
In the aftermath of the ruthless and bloody suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion in 1921 by the Bolshevik regime, a sensible person could be forgiven for thinking that the safest course was to adapt one’s behaviour to fit the times.
SLIDE 35 – Nikolai Gumilyev's signed statement when in prison, where he refuses to name the friend and First World War comrade who tried to involve him in counter-revolution activities
However, this was not Gumilyev’s style. Gumilyev throughout his life lived according to a strict code of chivalry and honour. And to the very end of his life he remained true to his principles. There is no doubt that his constitutional inability to deviate from his chosen path – which was that of moral principle and honour – helped to seal his fate. The details of his case were described in an article published in the magazine, NOVY MIR, in 1987.
This article contains a short note by Terekhov, the Senior Deputy Procurator-General of the USSR, who in 1986 was given the task of reviewing all the material on Gumilyev’s case in the State archives.
Terekhov writes that Gumilyev’s crime had consisted in not informing the Soviet authorities that he had been invited to join an anti-Soviet officers’ plot, the so-called Tagantsev conspiracy.
As Terekhov put it: «Предрассудки дворянской офицерской чести не позволили ему пойти с доносом.» // “The principles of the code of chivalry and officers’ honour did not allow him to become an informant.”
On 24 August 1921, Gumilyev was sentenced to death.
He was shot together with 60 of the other so-called “Tagantsev conspirators”. The executions were carried out in a forest outside Petrograd, in the early morning of 26 August 1921. (The exact date at last became known in 2014!) The bodies were buried in an unmarked communal grave. The next three slides show the different sites where it is thought the executions may have been carried out:
SLIDE 36 – near the Berngardovka Station
SLIDE 37 - in the Kovalyovsky woods near a bend in the River Lubya
SLIDE 38 - near «Лисий Нос», the 'Fox's Nose' headland
Nikolai Gumilyev was the first prominent man of letters to be murdered by the new regime – a victim not of Stalinism, but of Lenin’s “Red Terror.”
SLIDE 39 – Alexander Blok
Blok’s own death, on 7 August 1921, the same day on which Gumilyev was arrested, was shrouded in mystery; no-one seems quite to know what he died of. We now know that Lenin personally ordered that a visa should not be issued for Blok to get treatment in Finland.
It is fair to say that these three events – the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, the death of Blok and the execution of Gumilyev and the other “Tagantsev conspirators” – had a marked effect on the political and cultural atmosphere. It became even more oppressive and suffocating.
SLIDE 40 – Portrait of Nikolai Gumilyev
By 1923 Gumilyev's works were proscribed in Russia, and those close to him began to suffer.
Lev, his son by Akhmatova, and later an outstanding historian, ethnographer and cultural philosopher, was repeatedly arrested because of his parentage, and spent a full decade in prison camps. Gumilyev's second wife and daughter died of cold and starvation in 1942 during the Siege of Leningrad.
Akhmatova herself was treated harshly. None of her books were published between 1921 and 1940, and the 1940 edition of her poems was almost immediately banned.
But, despite the banning of his work, Gumilyev’s poetry continued to be read in secret, and was studied and reprinted in the West. On the centenary anniversary of Gumilyev's birth in 1986, cautious re-publication of his poetry at home became one of the first signals of Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. Publication figures since then clearly suggest that he is now one of Russia's most popular poets.
CONCLUSION
“An incorrigible romantic, vagrant-adventurer, conquistador, and a tireless seeker of dangers and strong impressions – that was the way he was”. That was how one of his contemporaries, the historian of the arts and critic, Erich Gollerbach, described Gumilyev.
Gollerbach commented that, as children, many of us devour books about adventure and travel, and went on as follows:
“[However,] almost no-one lives a life of heroic adventure, almost no-one is inspired to translate into life the dangerous ideas and undertake expeditions to distant parts. He did this. He lived as if he was 16 all his life. Love, death and poetry. At 16 we know these are the most wonderful things in the world. Then we forget about them. Routine trifles of daily life kill our romantic dreams. We forget. But he did not forget. He did not forget them until he died.”
The Russian scholar, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov compares Gumilyev’s poetic path to the explosion of a star that “suddenly flares so brightly before its destruction and emits a flood of light across the surrounding spaces”. His achievement at 35 was arguably at least the equal of Akhmatova’s at the same age, possibly even of Mandelstam’s. As with the greatest 19th century poets – Alexander Pushkin, shot in a duel aged 37, and Mikhail Lermontov, also killed in a duel at the age of 26 – one can only wonder in awe and regret at what might have been achieved over the next half a life-span.
All this makes the sudden death of Gumilyev - at 35 - seem especially wasteful. His premature death – like that of Lermontov at 26 - leaves an overwhelming sense of unfulfilled potential, the thwarted promise of still greater things to come. The Symbolist poet, Vyacheslav Ivanov, used a particular phrase to describe his erstwhile Acmeist adversary. This was: «Наша погибшая великая надежда» //“Our great hope who has died”. I think that this is a fitting epitaph to the great Acmeist poet and brilliant poet of the Silver Age, Nikolai Gumilyev.
The last poem on the list is simply entitled “Last Poem“(9). This poem is believed to have been found in Gumilyev’s prison-cell after his execution on 26 August 1921, and was published in the West. Although its authenticity cannot be vouchsafed, it is an extremely powerful and moving poem.
If indeed it was written by Gumilyev, it was the last poem he wrote.
READ (9) – Last Poem
SLIDE 41 – Nikolai Gumilyev's photograph and the Russian text of “Autumn” - «Осень»
And we will now listen to Nikolai Gumilyev himself. Rafy will play a recording from 1918 in which Gumilyev will read part of his poem 'Autumn'//«Осень». Thus, a hundred years after his death, the voice of a poet will call to us.
Lucy will first read an English translation, by John Cobley, of the relevant excerpt [or fragment]. In the fragment of the recording that remains, Gumilyev starts reading in the middle of a sentence. So Lucy will read the two preceding lines in the translation, so that you can make sense of the rest of the sentence as spoken by Gumilyev.
(10) PLAY RECORDING OF GUMILYEV READING – AUTUMN // ОСЕНЬ
END