famous Armenian writer Soviet era Marietta Sergeevna Shahinyan (Մարիետա Սերգեյի Շահինյան) was born on April 2, 1888. She made history Soviet literature as one of the first science fiction writers.
Shaginyan was born in Moscow, her father was an assistant professor at Moscow State University. As befits a girl from a good family in pre-revolutionary Russia, received home education, and then studied at a private boarding school and at the gymnasium. At 24, Marietta graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Higher Women's Courses.
Around this time, Shaginyan, who was already making her first literary experiments, met Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky, began to rotate in bohemian circles. Then the future writer leaves for Germany for two years, where she studies philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. Returning to Russia, Shaginyan settled in Rostov-on-Don, taught art history at the local conservatory and worked as a correspondent for several regional newspapers.
Shaginyan accepted the October Revolution with enthusiasm. In 1920 she moved to Petrograd, where she continued to teach art history and engage in journalism. From 1922 to 1948, Shaginyan was a special correspondent for the Pravda newspaper, and she also wrote for Izvestia. In 1927 she moved to Armenia for several years, and in 1931 returned to Moscow.
Contemporaries, in particular, the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, described Marietta as an extremely enthusiastic nature and constantly carried away by some new ideas or people.
In the 1930s, Shaginyan received another education - she graduated from the Planning Academy of the State Planning Commission, where she studied weaving, then worked in factories for some time. At the same time, she joined the Writers' Union and became a member of its board. She received her doctorate in 1941. philological sciences for a book about Taras Shevchenko. She spent the Great Patriotic War in the Urals, continuing to write for Pravda.
Shahinyan has been engaged in literary work since the age of 15, she began with poetry and even before the revolution she published two collections of poems and two stories. These books were very popular with the reading public. In total, during her career, the writer published more than 70 novels, novellas, short stories, essays and poetry collections.
In the 1920s, Shaginyan produced a successful series fantastic stories Mess Mend or Yankee in Petrograd, originally published under the pseudonym Jim Dollar. These books brought the writer great fame.
Because of some of the work, Shaginyan had trouble with the authorities. For example, the book The Ulyanov Family was banned and removed from libraries because it mentioned the Kalmyk roots of Vladimir Lenin. However, in general Soviet authority loved Marietta Shaginyan, as evidenced by the Lenin and Stalin Prizes and a set of labor orders. It is noteworthy that she received the Lenin Prize for the very "Ulyanov Family", which was later considered seditious. Stalin's Shaginyan was given for the book of essays "Journey through Soviet Armenia." For the book "Resurrection from the Dead" the writer received the Big Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Republic.
Shaginyan was married to philologist and translator Yakov Khachatryants. The couple raised a daughter, Mirelle, who took her mother's surname.
Marietta Shaginyan died in 1982 and was buried at the Armenian Vagankovsky cemetery.
She was born on March 21 (April 2), 1888 in Moscow, in the family of a doctor, Privatdozent of Moscow University Sergey Davydovich Shaginyan (1860-1902). Mother, Pepronia Yakovlevna Shaginyan (1867-1930), was a housewife.
She received a full-fledged home education, studied at a private boarding school, then at the Rzhevskaya gymnasium. In 1906-1915 she collaborated with Moscow print media. In 1912 she graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Higher Women's Courses of V. I. Guerrier. In the same year she visited St. Petersburg, met and became close friends with Z. N. Gippius and D. S. Merezhkovsky. From 1912-1914 she studied philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. In 1915-1919 she was a correspondent for the newspapers Priazovsky Krai, Black Sea Coast, Labor Speech, Craft Voice, Caucasian Word, Baku.
In 1915-1918 she lived in Rostov-on-Don, taught aesthetics and art history at the local conservatory.
Shaginyan enthusiastically accepted the Great October Socialist Revolution, which she perceived as an event of a Christian-mystical nature. In 1919-1920 she worked as an instructor at Donnarobraz and director of the 1st spinning and weaving school. Then she moved to Petrograd, in 1920-1923 she was a correspondent for Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet and a lecturer at the Institute of Art History. In 1922-1948 she worked as a special correspondent for the Pravda newspaper and at the same time for several years as a special correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper. In 1927 she moved to Armenia, where she lived for five years. Since 1931 she lived in Moscow.
In the 1930s she graduated from the Planning Academy of the State Planning Commission named after V.M. Molotova (studied mineralogy, spinning and weaving, energy), worked as a lecturer, weaving instructor, statistician, historiographer at Leningrad factories, during the years of the Great Patriotic War spent in the Urals as a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda. In 1934, at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, she was elected a member of the board of the USSR Writers' Union. For several years she was a deputy of the Moscow City Council. Doctor of Philology (1941, received a degree for a book about Taras Shevchenko). Member of the CPSU (b) since 1942. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1950).
She died on March 20, 1982 in Moscow. She was buried at the Armenian cemetery (a branch of the Vagankovsky cemetery).
prizes and awards
Stalin Prize third degree (1951) - for the book of essays "Journey through Soviet Armenia" (1950)
Lenin Prize (1972) - for the tetralogy "The Ulyanov Family": "The Birth of a Son" (1937, revised edition 1957), "The First All-Russian" (1965), "A History Ticket" (1937), "Lenin's Four Lessons" (1968 ) and essays on V. I. Lenin
Hero of Socialist Labor (1976)
two orders of Lenin
order October revolution
three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor
Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Armenian SSR (1932)
Order of the Red Star (1945)
Order of the Badge of Honor (8/8/1943)
Order of Friendship of Peoples
Big gold medal of Czechoslovakia - for the book "Resurrection from the Dead" (1964)
Shaginyan Marietta Sergeevna - Soviet writer and poetess, historian, journalist, Doctor of Philology, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR. She was born on March 21 (April 2), 1888 in Moscow in the family of a doctor. Armenian.
Member of the CPSU (b) / CPSU since 1942. She received an excellent home education, then studied at a private boarding school, then at the Rzhevskaya gymnasium, one of the best gymnasiums Moscow at that time. In 1912 she graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Higher Women's Courses. In the same year she visited St. Petersburg, where she met and became close friends with Z.N. Gippius and D.S. Merezhkovsky, was interested in the philosophical concepts of the Symbolists, and was influenced by them. In 1913, Shahinyan published the book "Orientalia", which brought her fame. Big role In the formation of the writer, her cooperation in the newspapers "Priazovsky Krai", "Kavkazskoe Slovo" and "Baku" played, where she regularly acted as a professional journalist, covering the events of the literary and artistic life of the country. In 1915-1918 she lived in Rostov-on-Don, taught aesthetics and art history at the conservatory.
Shaginyan enthusiastically accepted the October Revolution of 1917, which gave her new themes for creativity. In 1922-1923, the story “Change” appeared, then “The Adventure of a Lady from Society”. In 1923-1925, under the pseudonym Jim Dollar, he published a series of agitation-adventure stories "Mess-Mand", which had big success. In 1928 he publishes a peculiar literary work- "roman-complex" - "Kik", which united different genres- "from a poem to a report." In 1930-1931 she wrote the novel "Hydrocentral", which was the result of her years spent on the construction of Dzorages. In the 1930s she graduated from the Planning Academy of the State Planning Commission (she studied mineralogy, spinning and weaving, energy), worked as a lecturer, weaving instructor, statistician, historiographer at Leningrad factories, spent the years of World War II in the Urals as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper. For many years Shaginyan worked in the genre of the essay: “Zangezur Copper” (1927), “Soviet Transcaucasia” (1931), “Journey through Soviet Armenia” (1950; Stalin Prize, 1951), “Foreign Letters” (1964) and many others.
For many years I wrote literary portraits people who were close to her (N.S. Tikhonov, V.F. Khodasevich, L.N. Rakhmaninov) or whose life and work were dear to her (T.G. Shevchenko, I.A. Krylov, I.V. Goethe). In 1946 she defended her dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philology. In 1950 she was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR.
The long life lived by Shahinyan was filled with big and small historical events about which she always wrote passionately and with interest. A special place in Shaginyan's work is occupied by books about V.I. Decree of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR dated May 3, 1976, Shaginyan Marietta Sergeevna was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
Lived in Moscow. She died on March 20, 1982 at the age of 94. She was buried at the Armenian cemetery in Moscow. She was awarded 2 Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, 4 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Red Star, the Order of Friendship of Peoples, the Badge of Honor, and medals. Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1972), Stalin (State) Prize (1951). In Moscow, a memorial plaque was installed on the house in which she lived.
Marietta SHAGINYAN
Dmitry Shostakovich
(1966, article for the 60th anniversary of the composer)
Calling this name, you imagine a lot. First of all - the era in which we lived and live. An epoch in which the music of Shostakovich, resounding at all stages of the half-century we have lived through, gave voice and expression. In the twenties and early thirties, when we experimented at school, experimented in the theater, tried, as an experiment, to introduce new forms of life, broke the seven-day week, creating five-day and six-day periods, Shostakovich's music, tragically for itself, showed us the risk and inorganic nature of a naked experiment . In the thirties and forties, when the ridges of our five-year plans began, one after another, to rise on the horizon, she rose with the mighty ridges of her symphonies, the depth of the affirmation of a new humanity in the Fifth, the wide and generous adagio in the Sixth, the wisdom of the human, kind "yes" in the Quintet, this pearl of the world musical literature. With the beginning of the war - the tocsin over the stupid, machine-like invasion of Hitler, the Seventh Symphony thundered, heralding the inevitable death of fascism. Going over in memory everything that Shostakovich gave our people, you see with amazement almost topicality; almost documentary, almost a chronicle of an era, with the composer's constant appeal to the origin of the new world, to the revolution of 1905, to the plan for creating a symphony in 1917, to the constant accumulation of drafts with sketches of the image that he had been thinking about for years, the image of Lenin.
This epoch-making breadth and authenticity of musical creativity in Shostakovich is associated with his instinctive, like self-defense, stubborn desire to be in the midst of the people, not to leave the ranks, as if to hide behind the general movement, to be part of the multitude. Only in this light do many facts from his life and the extreme, defenseless sincerity with which he speaks about himself become clear. In order to avoid obvious discrepancies and contradictions, when talking about Shostakovich, you must always adhere only to what you managed to hear from him personally, and it does not matter if different years he will answer the same question not quite the way he answered before - the taste and attitude towards this or that phenomenon of culture change | (but very little!) himself, and this is the most reliable source for a biographer.
Dmitri Shostakovich is a Siberian by origin, although he was born in St. Petersburg in 1906. His grandfather, Boleslav Shostakovich, was exiled to Siberia for participating in the Polish uprising. The father was born in Narym and, as the son of an exiled man, was spared from military service; having moved to St. Petersburg, he began to work in the Chamber of Weights and Measures created by Mendeleev. Mother was a Siberian, studied at one time at the Conservatory. “Musical heredity comes from both father and mother,” said Shostakovich. I had to read somewhere that as a boy he showed no attraction to music and did not study the piano very willingly. This is not true. One day, in the autumn of 1959, Shostakovich was invited by the youth of the Herzen Leningrad Pedagogical Institute to speak at their club. The institute and its club are famous in Leningrad, the first one is that they let out many wonderful people from their walls, and the second one is that in the walls of the literary club students listened to many major creators of our culture, starting with Mayakovsky. ” Shostakovich came to the students, very excited , in an uplifting mood, spoke. He was very sincere and willing to answer questions. The transcript of this meeting provides interesting material for a biographer. Dmitry Dmitrievich said: “It was noticed that I early childhood loved to listen to music. Our neighbors were playing music, and I was often caught in the hallway under their door. When they began to teach me how to play the piano, I began to make great strides, and having mastered the stage of learning to play, I began to write at the same time. In my notes of several conversations with the composer, he said even more strongly: almost a three-year-old baby, he literally stuck to the doors, from where the sounds of the piano poured out, and it was simply difficult to tear him away from these neighboring doors. “That was perhaps the strongest impression of my childhood.” The language of music, in its logic of alternation of sounds, seemed to precede little Shostakovich's knowledge of verbal language, was, as it were, his primary connection with the outside world. It is curious that something similar comes to your mind when you compare his handwriting: music and writing. Before me lies a page from the manuscript of his piano sonata, and above it are lines of dedication. Nervous, scattered, jumping letters of words - and a clear, firm, as if the hand did not tremble, musical notation, as if musical writing is much more natural for his hand than verbal. But both were written at almost the same time.
The composer's father died in the twenty-second year, a year before Dmitry Dmitrievich graduated from the Conservatory. Life became difficult. The mother went to work as a cashier, the older sister gave lessons, but the sixteen-year-old son became the main support of the family. In the morning he studied composition at the Conservatory, participated in a musical circle. In the evenings in the cold and dark shaft of the cinema one could see under the screen at the piano a short teenager with a blond head and with serious, attentive bright eyes, with which he must have looked much more intently into the hall filled with caps of sailors and the excited revolutionary youth of those years than looked at him from there. Shostakovich, with his acting, accompanied what was happening on the screen, intensifying the tragic and comic with music, raising the feeling and sympathy of the audience. But those biographers who see in this early meeting composer with The Great Mute (in those years, cinema was still German!) only the school of the art of film scoring, which he later mastered with such perfection. It seems to me that here he learned first of all the secret of the “mass nature” of music, the secret of that magical connection by which music merges people into a single experience, unites them in one feeling and thought. After all, he himself, watching the screen, felt like a particle of hundreds of people in the auditorium, expressing for them with his game the general mood for them and for himself.
After the First Symphony, fame came to Shostakovich. And although he continuously, with a purely Mozartian ease, composed music, it never occurred to him to isolate himself not only from the teaching, but also from the wide social activities. For example, a competition for the best Soviet song. Hundreds, thousands of these songs began to flock from all over the Union. And I remember how surprised he looked at me, who frivolously asked him how it was possible to spend time watching all this (I confess, I even, it seems, said “this mura”), but Shostakovich did not “waste” time. From these sheets of paper he got acquainted with the musical thinking of the new, Soviet generations, he learned from the flow of living voices coming to him from the depths of the people.
The musical culture of our distant republics grew. Many Soviet Russian composers brought laws and experience to them European music, taught European genres of opera and ballet. But Shostakovich, it seems to me, responded with his entire musical palette precisely to their primary national melos, he absorbed their unusual folklore in his Pushkin style. musical vocabulary. The cello sonata, for example, betrays Dmitri Dmitrievich's undoubted responsiveness to what we call by the generalized name "oriental music".
It is paradoxical that it was Shostakovich who was rudely punished for the "formalism" of his innovative attempts. Meanwhile, if we consider his work as a whole, you are amazed at his root fidelity musical classics, Furthermore, Shostakovich's music reveals the secret of true innovation - when something really new, turning the page of the previous one, seemingly unfamiliar, unseen and unheard at first glance, leads to the strengthening of the thousand-year life of art, showing that its eternal tree does not stall, its eternally living root nourishes it with new juices fresh shoot, reviving and continuing his life. Here is a compelling example. Recently, we again saw the old opera by Shostakovich, written during the years of his experiments and sharply condemned just for them - "Katerina Izmailova". And what did it turn out? Word for word came true and justified what Shostakovich himself spoke with conviction about his opera thirty-two years ago. Let's hear it now;
“I tried to make the musical language of the opera as simple and expressive as possible. I cannot agree with the theories, at one time current among us, that in new opera there should be no vocal line and that the vocal line is nothing more than a conversation in which intonations should be emphasized. Opera is primarily a vocal work, and the singers must attend to their direct duty - to sing, but not to talk, not to recite or intotone. All my vocal parts are built on a wide cantilena, taking into account all the possibilities of the human voice, this richest instrument.
As we can see - a direct statement of the classical operatic form. What did the composer bring the new to the old form? " Musical development goes all the time in a symphonic plan - in this respect, the opera is not a rehash of old operas, that is, operas built according to individual numbers. The musical flow goes on continuously, breaking off only at the end of each act, and resumes in the next, going not in small pieces, but developing in a large symphonic plan ... In each act, except for the fourth, there are several scenes, and these scenes are separated not by mechanical pauses, but by musical ones. intermissions… A continuation and development of previous musical thought…” Shostakovich’s explanation was included in the libretto and published in Muzgiz in 1934. Then it was somehow obscured by criticism. And now, leaving the opera, the audience, shocked by Katerina Izmailova, said: “And this bright music, this classical piece seemed like gibberish!” Time has brought Shostakovich's music closer to us, the ear has learned to hear and understand it better. Time has revealed one more thing: not just a connection with the classics, but the connection of his music with the Russian classics.
At the age of thirteen, he wrote his first serious work - "Scherzo" for orchestra. And it was precisely the scherzo - a form born from a huge range of human laughter, from a cheerful joke to thunderous and caustic laughter - that became the most characteristic and most brilliant success of Shostakovich, which most strongly expresses the features of his writing. It is in the numerous scherzos that the Russian national character his music, the closeness of the energetic rhythm and infectious humor of these pearls - to Mussorgsky, whom Shostakovich invariably loved and loves very much. At the same meeting in pedagogical institute about which I'll have to not in last time mention the composer about himself: “I am a graduate of Russian music school, "The Mighty Handful" had a huge effect on me."
By "school" the composer meant, of course, not his educational institution, but that group high realism, united by advanced artistic thinking, which consisted of Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and other members of the so-called "mighty bunch", And they and Stasov did a lot so that the light criterion of "pleasantness and beauty of music" was swept aside when applied to great art, requiring a serious and deep understanding . They demanded from real art that it should not lull and amuse, but shock people, act with great force on such depths of the human soul, which, perhaps, even man himself does not know. And from these depths it evoked great, great feelings that attached them to the people. Like the early Lermontov
“... But suddenly, like flying thunderbolts,
My fingers hit the strings...
I found a sound hitherto unknown,
I poured out a clean stream of thoughts.
The soul from high feelings became crowded
And in an instant she broke her chain ... "
I guess, that " mighty bunch would welcome Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony, which remains one of the culminations of his symphonic work. The experience of the Patriotic War and the rampant fascist atrocities posed an ethical problem for all mankind, the question of good and evil, which is no longer decided in the Hamletian way, not by a lonely human conscience. I remember, with a notebook in my hand, I stood in front of Shostakovich, asking him how he created the Thirteenth, what he was thinking about when he started it. Moscow still knew nothing about this new symphony, it was still, like a statue before the opening, covered with a canvas of our ignorance. And I wanted to look under the canvas in advance, to get a ticket to a future article from the author himself.
Shostakovich, as always after a huge creative upsurge - as twenty years ago, when, having given the best that lived in him into the immortal pages of the Quintet, he walked through the dark midnight streets of Moscow, full of kindness and blissful fatigue of bestowal, - he was unusually cordial and good In general, he does not like to talk about his work, and especially does not like to decipher what is invested in the work. But then he said, and although it was not much, his meaning seemed to me enormous: “The social behavior of a citizen, that's what always attracted me, I thought about it. In the Thirteenth Symphony, I posed the problem of civil, namely civil morality.
The theme of civic ethics led Shostakovich to the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, almost always, no matter what they were about, rich in social content. Among the five poems he took for his oratorio symphony, there was no separate poem about courage. Meanwhile, the entire Thirteenth Symphony, if you try to convey its effect on the listener, is a lofty song about human courage, a powerful call to civic nobility, to serving the great ideals of the new society. In this work, one cannot fail to feel one more feature of Shostakovich as a creator. As if synthesizing his own path in it, he to some extent recreates and uses in it the features and colors of many of his former works. Didn't the passacaglia from "Katerina Izmailova" suggest to him a peculiar male form oratorios: a leading soloist-bass, a choir of only basses... The bells and peals in the orchestra that set off the silence reminded the listener of the quietened Palace Square Eleventh, and the thundering second movement ("Humor") - after all, this is again typical of Shostakovich, the life-affirming scherzo "of the first symphonies. And the beloved return to polyphonism that touched you with an instant caress, and this extraordinary, soul-touching music of the third movement (about our women who endured everything and will endure everything), and the end of the symphony, which subsides like a breath - don’t they make you remember the silvery ending of the Quintet?
So much can be said about Dmitri Shostakovich's enormous journey in the sixty years of his life, and so little has been said about him. But let's give the floor to the hero of the day. It was uttered from the heart, without fear of official phrases, simply and trustingly, and with an unexpected echo of two words from the Pushkin dictionary, which gave the whole speech a touch of great intimacy, all at the same meeting with Leningrad students on October 5, 1959:
“... I could hardly work in isolation from life. without meeting with wonderful people, without not seeing with our own eyes everything that is being done here and on the globe, I could not work, because any worker, be it a writer, artist, composer, scientist, figure in science and culture, cannot create if he is cut off from social work, from life. Without impressions, enthusiasm, inspiration, without life experience, there is no creativity.”
Published: Shaginyan M. Collected works in 9 volumes. T. 9. Works on music. M.: Fiction, 1975. S. 444 - 451.
Marietta Sergeevna Shaginyan(arm. Մարիետա Սերգեյի Շահինյան ; March 21 [April 2], Moscow, - March 20, Moscow) - Russian Soviet writer Armenian origin, one of the first Soviet science fiction writers.
Biography
Marietta Shaginyan was born in Moscow to an Armenian family. Father, Sergei Davydovich Shaginyan was a Privatdozent at Moscow State University (1860-1902). Mother, Pepronia Yakovlevna Shaginyan (1867-1930), was a housewife.
She received a full-fledged home education, studied at a private boarding school, then at the Rzhevskaya gymnasium. In 1902-1903 she studied at the Catherine's Women's Gymnasium in Nakhichevan-on-Don. In -1915 she collaborated in the Moscow press. In 1912 she graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Higher Women's Courses of V. I. Guerrier. In the same year she visited St. Petersburg, met and became close friends with Z. N. Gippius and D. S. Merezhkovsky. From 1912-1914 she studied philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. In 1915-1919, M. S. Shaginyan was a correspondent for the newspapers "Priazovsky Krai", "Black Sea Coast", "Labor Speech", "Craft Voice", "Caucasian Word", "Baku".
For several years she was a deputy of the Moscow City Council. Doctor of Philology (1941, received a degree for a book about T. G. Shevchenko). Member of the CPSU (b) since 1942. Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR ().
In Novy Mir No. 2, 1954, the critic Mikhail Lifshitz published a pamphlet, The Diary of Marietta Shaginyan, dedicated to an analysis of her newly published diary. After reading the manuscript at the end of 1953, Tvardovsky told Lifshitz "You don't know what you wrote!". Lifshitz replied: "I know and can even imagine some of the consequences." This publication produces a great scandal in the literary world.
Literary creativity
She has been engaged in literary activity since 1903 . She began with symbolist poetry. She has published over 70 books of novels, short stories, essays, poems and about 300 printed sheets articles, reviews, reports. She published books of poems "First Meetings" (), "Orientalia" (, 7 editions were published), then books of stories "Narrow Gates" (), "Seven Conversations" (). At that time, the public put her above the then Marina Tsvetaeva.
At the same time, Marietta Shaginyan became interested in the work of Goethe, and in 1914 she went to Weimar for 10 days. “This journey, ten days before August 1, 1914, was last step cultural idolatry; politics suddenly burst into him, ”she later wrote in her diary. On the way back to Russia, while passing through Zurich, she wrote a feature book, A Journey to Weimar.
In the book "The Adventure of a Lady from Society", the writer shows a turning point in the minds of the Russian intelligentsia under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution. B - under the pseudonym "Jim Dollar" published a series of agitation and adventure stories "Mess-Mend", which was a great success. In 1928, she published a peculiar literary work - the “complex novel” “K and K” (it stands for “The Sorceress and the Communist”), which united different genres - “from a poem to a report”.
As Lev Kolodny noted: “For more than twenty years, the book by M. Shaginyan“ The Ulyanov Family ”was withdrawn from libraries, and she herself, according to her confession,“ suffered in order ”due to the fact that she discovered the Kalmyk origin in the family of Lenin’s father, which the Nazi newspapers took advantage of in 1937.
She systematically opposed the reforms of the Russian language: at the symbolist salon of the Merezhkovskys against the reform of 1918, and in 1964 against the reform project with the following words: “For twenty years I have been buying bread in a bakery on the right side of the Arbat, and why am I now going to go to the left?”
An excerpt characterizing Shaginyan, Marietta Sergeevna
And he, with those free and familiar, graceful movements that distinguished him, took the lady-in-waiting by the hand, kissed her, and, kissing her, waved the lady-in-waiting hand, lounging on an armchair and looking away.- Attendez [Wait], - said Anna Pavlovna, thinking. - I'll talk to Lise today (la femme du jeune Bolkonsky). [with Lisa (wife of the young Bolkonsky).] And maybe this will be settled. Ce sera dans votre famille, que je ferai mon apprentissage de vieille fille. [In your family, I will begin to learn the trade of the old girl.]
Anna Pavlovna's drawing room began to gradually fill up. The highest nobility of St. Petersburg arrived, people of the most heterogeneous in age and character, but the same in the society in which everyone lived; the daughter of Prince Vasily, the beautiful Helen, arrived, who had called in for her father to go with him to the feast of the envoy. She was in cipher and ball gown. Also known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg [the most charming woman in St. Petersburg], the young, little princess Bolkonskaya, who got married last winter and now did not go to big light due to her pregnancy, but still traveled for small evenings. Prince Hippolyte, son of Prince Vasily, arrived with Mortemar, whom he introduced; Abbé Morio and many others also came.
- You haven't seen it yet? or: - you don't know ma tante [with my aunt]? - Anna Pavlovna said to the visiting guests and very seriously led them to a little old woman in high bows, who floated out of another room, as soon as the guests began to arrive, she called them by name, slowly shifting her eyes from the guest to ma tante [aunt], and then departed.
All the guests performed the ceremony of greeting an unknown, uninteresting and unnecessary aunt to no one. Anna Pavlovna followed their greetings with sad, solemn sympathy, tacitly approving them. Ma tante spoke to everyone in the same terms about his health, about her health and about the health of Her Majesty, which today was, thank God, better. All those who approached, without showing haste out of decency, with a sense of relief from the heavy duty they had performed, moved away from the old woman, so that they would not go up to her all evening.
The young Princess Bolkonskaya arrived with work in an embroidered gold velvet bag. Her pretty, with a slightly blackened mustache, her upper lip was short in teeth, but it opened all the nicer and stretched out even more nicely sometimes and fell on the lower one. As is always the case with quite attractive women, her shortness of lips and half-open mouth seemed to be her special, her own beauty. Everyone had fun watching this full of health and liveliness, a pretty mother-to-be, who endured her position so easily. It seemed to the old men and the bored, gloomy young people who looked at her that they themselves were becoming like her after spending some time talking with her. Anyone who spoke to her and saw at every word her bright smile and shining white teeth, which were constantly visible, thought that he was especially amiable today. And that's what everyone thought.
The little princess, waddling, walked around the table with small quick steps with a work bag on her arm and, gaily straightening her dress, sat down on the sofa, near the silver samovar, as if everything she did was part de plaisir [entertainment] for her and for everyone those around her.
- J "ai apporte mon ouvrage [I grabbed the job]," she said, unfolding her purse and addressing everyone together.
“Look, Annette, ne me jouez pas un mauvais tour,” she turned to the hostess. - Vous m "avez ecrit, que c" etait une toute petite soiree; voyez, comme je suis attifee. [Don't play a bad joke on me; you wrote to me that you had a very small evening. See how badly I'm dressed.]
And she spread her hands to show her, in lace, an elegant gray dress, girded with a wide ribbon a little below her breasts.
- Soyez tranquille, Lise, vous serez toujours la plus jolie [Be calm, you will be the best], - answered Anna Pavlovna.
- Vous savez, mon mari m "abandonne," she continued in the same tone, referring to the general, "il va se faire tuer. Dites moi, pourquoi cette vilaine guerre, [You know, my husband is leaving me. Going to his death. Say , why this nasty war,] - she said to Prince Vasily and, without waiting for an answer, turned to the daughter of Prince Vasily, to the beautiful Helen.
- Quelle delicieuse personne, que cette petite princesse! [What a charming person this little princess is!] - said Prince Vasily quietly to Anna Pavlovna.
Shortly after the little princess, a massive, fat young man with a cropped head, spectacles, light trousers in the fashion of the time, with a high frill, and in a brown tailcoat, entered. This fat young man was the illegitimate son of the famous Catherine's nobleman, Count Bezukhoi, who was now dying in Moscow. He had not served anywhere yet, had just arrived from abroad, where he had been brought up, and was for the first time in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with a bow, which belonged to the people of the lowest hierarchy in her salon. But, despite this inferior greeting, at the sight of Pierre entering, Anna Pavlovna displayed anxiety and fear, similar to that which is expressed at the sight of something too huge and unusual for a place. Although, indeed, Pierre was somewhat larger than the other men in the room, but this fear could only relate to that intelligent and at the same time timid, observant and natural look that distinguished him from everyone in this living room.
- C "est bien aimable a vous, monsieur Pierre, d" etre venu voir une pauvre malade, [It is very kind of you, Pierre, that you came to visit the poor patient,] Anna Pavlovna told him, exchanging frightened glances with her aunt, to which she let him down. Pierre murmured something incomprehensible and continued to look for something with his eyes. He smiled joyfully, cheerfully, bowing to the little princess as if he were a close acquaintance, and went up to his aunt. Anna Pavlovna's fear was not in vain, because Pierre, without listening to his aunt's speech about her majesty's health, left her. Anna Pavlovna stopped him in fright with the words:
"You don't know Abbe Morio?" he is a very interesting person…” she said.
– Yes, I heard about his plan for eternal peace, and it is very interesting, but hardly possible…
“Do you think? ...” said Anna Pavlovna, in order to say something and turn again to her occupations as a mistress of the house, but Pierre did the reverse impoliteness. First, he, without listening to the words of his interlocutor, left; now he stopped his interlocutor with his conversation, who needed to leave him. He bowed his head and spread big feet, began to prove to Anna Pavlovna why he believed that the abbot's plan was a chimera.
"We'll talk later," said Anna Pavlovna, smiling.
And getting rid of young man unable to live, she returned to her occupations as a mistress of the house and continued to listen and look, ready to give help at the point where the conversation was weakening. Just as the owner of a spinning shop, having seated the workers in their places, paces around the establishment, noticing the immobility or the unusual, creaking, too loud sound of the spindle, hurriedly walks, restrains or sets it in its proper course, so Anna Pavlovna, pacing around her drawing room, approached the silent or a mug that was talking too much, and with one word or movement would start up again a regular, decent conversational machine. But amidst these worries, one could still see in her a special fear for Pierre. She looked at him solicitously as he approached to hear what was being said about Mortemart, and went to another circle where the abbe was speaking. For Pierre, brought up abroad, this evening of Anna Pavlovna was the first he saw in Russia. He knew that all the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg were gathered here, and his eyes widened like a child in a toy shop. He was afraid to miss smart conversations that he can hear. Looking at the confident and graceful expressions of the faces gathered here, he kept waiting for something particularly clever. Finally, he approached Morio. The conversation seemed interesting to him, and he stopped, waiting for an opportunity to express his thoughts, as young people like it.
Anna Pavlovna's evening was started. spindles with different sides evenly and without ceasing noise. Apart from ma tante, beside which sat only one elderly lady with a weepy, thin face, somewhat a stranger in this brilliant society, the society was divided into three circles. In one, more masculine, the center was the abbot; in the other, young, the beautiful Princess Helen, daughter of Prince Vasily, and the pretty, ruddy, too plump for her youth, little Princess Bolkonskaya. In the third Mortemar and Anna Pavlovna.
The viscount was a pretty young man, with soft features and manners, who obviously considered himself a celebrity, but, out of good manners, modestly allowed himself to be used by the society in which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna, obviously, treated her guests to them. Just as a good maître d’hotel serves as something supernaturally beautiful that piece of beef that you don’t want to eat if you see it in a dirty kitchen, so this evening Anna Pavlovna served her guests first the viscount, then the abbot, as something supernaturally refined. Mortemart's circle immediately started talking about the murder of the Duke of Enghien. The viscount said that the Duke of Enghien died from his generosity, and that there were special reasons for Bonaparte's bitterness.
- Ah! voyons. Contez nous cela, vicomte, [Tell us this, viscount,] - said Anna Pavlovna, feeling with joy how this phrase echoed something a la Louis XV [in the style of Louis XV], - contez nous cela, vicomte.
The viscount bowed in humility and smiled courteously. Anna Pavlovna made a circle around the viscount and invited everyone to listen to his story.
“Le vicomte a ete personnellement connu de monseigneur, [the viscount was personally acquainted with the duke],” Anna Pavlovna whispered to one. “Le vicomte est un parfait conteur,” she said to another. - Comme on voit l "homme de la bonne compagnie [As a person of good society is now visible]," she said to the third; and the viscount was served to society in the most elegant and favorable light for him, like roast beef on a hot dish sprinkled with herbs.
The viscount was about to begin his story and smiled thinly.
“Come over here, chere Helene, [dear Helen],” Anna Pavlovna said to the beautiful princess, who was sitting at a distance, making up the center of another circle.
Princess Helen smiled; she got up with the same unchanging smile of a quite beautiful woman, with which she entered the drawing-room. Slightly noisy in her white ball gown trimmed with ivy and moss, and shining with the whiteness of her shoulders, with the gloss of her hair and diamonds, she walked straight between the parting men, not looking at anyone, but smiling at everyone and, as if kindly giving everyone the right to admire the beauty of her figure. , full of shoulders, very open, according to the fashion of that time, chest and back, and as if bringing with her the splendor of the ball, she went up to Anna Pavlovna. Helen was so pretty that not only was there no trace of coquetry in her, but, on the contrary, she seemed ashamed of her undoubted and too strong and victorious acting beauty. She seemed to wish and could not belittle the effect of her beauty. Quelle belle personne! [What a beauty!] - said everyone who saw her.
As if struck by something extraordinary, the viscount shrugged his shoulders and lowered his eyes while she sat down in front of him and lit up him with that same unchanging smile.
- Madame, je crains pour mes moyens devant un pareil auditoire, [I really fear for my abilities in front of such an audience,] he said, tilting his head with a smile.
The princess leaned her open full hand on the table and did not find it necessary to say anything. She waited smiling. Throughout the story, she sat up straight, looking now and then at her full beautiful hand, which changed its shape from pressure on the table, then to an even more beautiful breasts on which she was adjusting her diamond necklace; she straightened the folds of her dress several times and, when the story made an impression, looked back at Anna Pavlovna and immediately assumed the same expression that was on the face of the maid of honor, and then calmed down again in a radiant smile. Following Helene, the little princess also moved from the tea table.
- Attendez moi, je vais prendre mon ouvrage, [Wait, I'll take my work,] - she said. Voyons, a quoi pensez vous? - she turned to Prince Hippolyte: - apportez moi mon ridicule. [What are you thinking about? Bring me my reticule.]
