Yuri Kanner, President of the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC), told how, by a lucky chance, he became involved in the events of Marshak's anniversary, meeting on Tsvetnoy Boulevard Alexei Gordeev, the governor of the Voronezh region, who contributed to the opening of the monument to Marshak in Voronezh. Kanner was surprised that this monument is the first monument to Marshak in Russia. Thus, the idea was born to erect a monument to the famous author in Moscow.

"I always thought that Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak was a Soviet poet. I was very surprised to learn that he translated from Hebrew and translated from Yiddish, knew these languages ​​and met his future wife in Israel, then it was called Palestine. Already after I got into the project, I realized that I got into the project correctly!- said Yuri Kanner.

The city leadership provided support, and now the paperwork is nearing completion, allowing the erection of a monument in Lyalin Lane, near the apartment where Samuil Yakovlevich lived.

The writer's grandson Alexander Marshak noted the correct choice of location for the monument. It was in Lyalin Lane that the writer, together with the Kukryniksy, climbed onto the roof and shot incendiary bombs during the war, and also worked on the fairy tale "Twelve Months", which he wrote during the Great Patriotic War. The place for the monument is the best, historical. Alexander Immanuelovich emphasized that both he and Yuri Kanner would like the monument to be truly a work of art. He remembered the words of Samuil Marshak from a dialogue with Naum Korzhavin: " Any art is as good as it contains poetry. By the way, this also applies to poetry.". It is necessary that poetry be present in the monument." We will not be, and Moscow will be decorated", - Marshak's grandson uttered such a vivid phrase, after expressing the hope that if the monument is "humane", then it will become especially valuable and important for people.

The grand opening is scheduled for November 4th. And on June 1, on Children's Day, the Samuil Marshak train will be solemnly launched on the Moscow-Voronezh route.

Photos from open sources

Also Alexander Marshak recalled the literary merits of his grandfather: Samuil Marshak is not only a writer and translator, but also the organizer of the first children's publishing house and theater in Russia, as well as several magazines for children. It was Marshak who attracted many major contemporary writers to children's literature, and everything that was published from children's literature during Marshak's youth was his editing.

Alexander Marshak spoke about the family's contribution to the popularization of the writer's work. Son Immanuel, an outstanding physicist and talented translator (he was the first to translate Jane Austen into Russian), after the death of his father, dismantled Marshak's archives almost single-handedly, presenting his legacy to publishers in a processed form. After the death of Immanuel, the legacy of Samuil Marshak to this day, Alexander Marshak is engaged with great enthusiasm.

Four volumes of approximately selected translations of Marshak have recently been released. It is planned to publish a four-volume collection of children's works.

General Director of the publishing house "Eksmo" Oleg Novikov emphasized that Marshak is invariably in the top ten most popular authors, and sales of his works are growing every year. It is planned to republish 10 books with classic illustrations, on which several generations have grown up.

Together with the Moscow metro, the publishing house is preparing the Marshak train on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line for launch in September: illustrations, audio recordings and special tickets will delight people. An equally interesting project is being prepared by the Russian Post - they will print collectible postcards and hold an exhibition dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the poem "Mail".

A special program is being prepared, of course, for the Red Square Book Festival: leading Russian actors will take part in it, and bookstores and libraries have planned many events that involve the entire book industry.

Photos from open sources

Olga Muravyova, Director of the Department of Children's Literature of the AST Publishing House, emphasized that a cultural environment in which it would be interesting and comfortable for all generations to interact is one of the main goals of the anniversary year.

Reading aloud championship among high school students "Page 17" has already been launched with a hashtag in in social networks#mymarshak. 12 thousand teenagers from 20 regions of Russia take part in the readings, and the prize fund of the championship is 300 thousand rubles. Folk readings are held with the support of the All-Russian competition of readers "Live Classics". The Moscow Theater of Russian Drama launched the "International Festival of School Theaters". Not a single organization that was approached with ideas dedicated to the anniversary year turned down the publisher.

The director of the Russian State Children's Library continued to talk about projects Maria Vedenyapina. She noted the literary competition "Letter in Poems" organized together with the Malysh Publishing House, which is aimed not only at popularizing children's reading, but also at developing thinking. Children of two age groups, from 8 to 12 and from 13 to 16 years old, will be able to write poems addressed to Samuil Marshak or one of his literary characters. The competition started on April 2, International Children's Book Day, and so far 46 entries have been received. Applications will end in mid-September and will be evaluated by a professional jury, which will include contemporary children's authors: Sergey Makhotin, Andrey Usachev, Mikhail Yasnov, Anastasia Orlova and director of the Voronezh Regional Children's Library Alla Vladimirovna.

About the train Moscow-Voronezh "Samuil Marshak" spoke in more detail Evgeniy The railroad workers were not indifferent to participation in the anniversary events of Marshak. Recently, a new double-deck rolling stock has been put into operation on the Moscow-Voronezh route. It is he who will become the base for the thematic train. Since last year, it has included a car with a specially designed children's play area, and now the branding and improvement of the train for the festive year is almost completed.

November 3 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous Russian and Soviet poets, also known for his translation works - Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak.

The creator of classic children's works, poet and translator, Marshak was born in 1887 in a village near Voronezh in a Jewish family. His father was a descendant of the famous 17th century talmudist and rabbi Kaidonover. In Hebrew, the word "marshak" denoted an abbreviation of the respectful address to this rabbi.

Destined to be a poet

Even in the gymnasium, Marshak attracted the attention of his teacher of literature with his first literary experiments. The teacher helped and guided the student, instilled in him a love for literature, considering Samuel to be unusually talented. The well-known Russian critic Stasov, having accidentally read the poems of a talented young man, helped him move to the best gymnasium in St. Petersburg.

A life dedicated to children

The poet devoted all his work to children. Through his efforts, a children's theater was opened in Krasnodar; in revolutionary Petrograd, he begins to publish a magazine for children, Sparrow. Each of his works can be called a masterpiece - almost all children's poems are still known and loved by both children and adults.

For many years Samuil Yakovlevich was the head of Detgiz in Leningrad. Not everyone knows that the poet used his own funds to help a boarding school in Lithuania for Jewish children who became orphans as a result of the Holocaust.

In addition to children's poetry, the poet was seriously engaged in translations. Thanks to his work, we can get acquainted with the classic works foreign literature- poems by Shakespeare, Burns, fairy tales and poems by Kipling and others.

For his invaluable contribution to Soviet literature, Marshak was repeatedly awarded the Stalin and Lenin Prizes, Orders of Lenin, Patriotic War and the Red Banner of Labor.

Marshak Samuil Yakovlevich (1887-1964), poet and translator.

Born November 3, 1887 in Voronezh in the family of a soap factory technician. Early fell in love with poetry and began to compose them himself. From the age of 19 he lived with lessons and small literary earnings. The most successful in the work of the young Marshak are poems inspired by a trip to the Middle East in 1911.

The following year, Marshak entered University of London. In 1914 he returned to Russia. In 1915, his first translations from W. Blake were published, and later - English ballads.

From 1918, Marshak worked with children in a colony near Petrozavodsk, then in Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar), which predetermined his future work in children's literature. In 1923, Marshak's children's books appeared in print - translations from English and original poems for the smallest. In the same year, Marshak became a literary consultant for the children's almanac "Sparrow" (soon turned into the magazine "New Robinson"), in which he attracted many famous and emerging writers to cooperate.

In 1934 at the First Congress Soviet writers Marshak was a co-speaker of M. Gorky (“On Great Literature for Little Ones”).

In 1935, the first large collection of the poet "Tales, songs, riddles" was published. In addition, Marshak enthusiastically translated English folk ballads, poems by R. Burns. He continued to write for children, published a number of articles on children's literature and many nonfiction poems.

During the Great Patriotic War, Marshak wrote poems for military posters, anti-fascist pamphlets, rhyming captions for newspaper cartoons. At the same time, he published the first translations of W. Shakespeare's sonnets, wrote a play-tale "Twelve Months", a cycle of poems "All the Year Round". His satirical books "History Lesson", "Black and White", "Kaput" were published. His collection

"Poems of 1941-1946" included and lyric poems. At the end of the 40s. Marshak wrote articles, poems for newspapers, prepared children's poetry collections.

In 1948, the book "Shakespeare's Sonnets in S. Marshak's Translation" was published.

Samuil Yakovlevich worked until the last day, obsessed with one passion, one love, giving everything to literature.

2017 marks the 130 years since the birth of Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak, a remarkable poet and translator, whose poems are familiar from early childhood to more than one generation. He was loved and loved throughout Russia. Millions of children grew up on his fairy tales.

Samuil Yakovlevich was born in Voronezh on November 3, 1887 into a Jewish family. The surname Marshak was passed on to the writer from a descendant who was a famous rabbi and Talmudist. The writer's childhood passed near Voronezh, where he also attended a gymnasium. In 1907 he began to publish. Marshak's first children's book of poems was called The House That Jack Built. It contained translations of merry English folk songs. Then other books by Marshak appeared with poems and fairy tales, which instantly won the love of little readers: "Children in a Cage", "Fire", "The Tale of the Stupid Mouse" (1923), "Circus", "Ice Cream", "Yesterday and today" (1925), "Baggage" (1926), "Poodle", "Mail" (1927), "That's how absent-minded" (1930), etc.

For his biography, Samuil Marshak composed many works for children: songs, riddles, fairy tales and sayings, plays for children's theater, which were translated into many languages. In his works, he taught children to enjoy the beauty of the poetic word. He showed that poems can tell entertaining and instructive stories. His poems are funny and serious: they teach, educate and entertain. Along with children's poems, Marshak worked on serious works: the collections "Selected Lyrics" and "Lyric Epigrams", political pamphlets. In 1960, Marshak's autobiographical story entitled "At the Beginning of Life" was published, and a year later a collection of articles "Education by Word" was published.

Until the last day of his life, Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak did not part with pen and paper. The writer received several prizes, awards, orders for his work, including the Lenin and Stalin Prizes. He died on June 4, 1964 and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. In 2015, a monument to Marshak was erected in Voronezh, the writer's homeland.

This year the Voronezh Regional Children's Library invites you to take part in international action “V Day of Poetry S.Ya. Marshak in children's libraries" . Date of the international action - October 27, 2017 - dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the birth of S.Ya. Marshak. You can learn more about the promotion and the conditions for participation in it.

V.A. Favorsky. Self-portrait with his wife. 1913. Domotkanovo

Artists in the First World War. Fragments of correspondence with a brief introduction by art historian Elena Murina

March 15, 2016

In this book, the descendants of Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky and Ivan Semenovich Efimov publish letters from these artists, who were friends and even had distant family ties - Vladimir Andreevich was married to the niece of Ivan Semenovich's wife, the wonderful artist Nina Simonovich-Efimova. Both of them were participants in the First World War - Vladimir Andreevich had been in the army since 1915, and Ivan Semenovich - since 1916. It was Favorsky who recommended Efimov to his battery. Vladimir Andreevich was promoted to warrant officer and presented to the St. George Cross for participation in the Brusilovsky breakthrough.

These letters from the front to their young wives and parents are an amazing document of love and spiritual closeness with their relatives.

When Vladimir Andreevich came to some exhibition or meeting of artists, everyone, regardless of age and even attitude to his art (there were those who did not like or did not understand this art), met him with the greatest reverence and respect. He was known for the fact that he never, at any time, tarnished his reputation with an unseemly act, which was a rarity in those years. It combined fidelity to the traditions of the Russian intelligentsia, honor, nobility, simplicity - simplicity in relations with people, with students and a deep sense of modernity. He was a contemporary artist who experienced the history of our country, and remains one of the most significant representatives of Russian artistic culture. His creative activity was extremely versatile. He was not only a famous master of engraving and the creator of the art of book design, but also a painter, but also the creator of monumental paintings, as well as a draftsman and sculptor. And that's not all. Favorsky was an outstanding teacher and original thinker, who left a great theoretical legacy in which he comprehended not only his own experience, but also the patterns of development of world art - from ancient egypt until the twentieth century.

All this together has become a truly unique contribution of Favorsky to our culture. Moreover, the value of this contribution stemmed from the philosophical and ethical prerequisites that guided him in his creative life. For him they were not abstract philosophical categories. Favorsky admitted in one of the articles that when he entered the world of art and understood its beauty, then I wanted others to see it too, to teach them to see this world. That is, for him the goal of creativity was the knowledge of the laws of beauty and artistic truth, in order to reveal the beauty of art to a person - whether they are his students or just spectators.

This measure of humanity determined his preferred choice of those types and genres of art that accompany a person in everyday life: a print that adorns a home, and not stored in a museum; the book you are holding in your hands; wall painting accessible to everyone; a theatrical performance where the viewer is in direct contact with the beauty of the scenery. That is, Favorsky was fascinated by the idea of ​​organizing a spiritualized human environment by means of art. In fact, we should talk about humane creativity that brings beauty and goodness and opposes the chaos of everyday prose.

It is no coincidence that he was one of the highest moral authorities among his contemporaries - students and a wide range of artists and admirers. However, the significance of Favorsky's figure made him for many years one of the main targets of frantic criticism during the period of so-called socialist realism, to the "dogmas" of which he had nothing to do. He was officially proclaimed formalist No. 1, and his amazing monumental paintings and sgraffito in the Museum of Motherhood and Infancy and in the House of Models in Moscow were destroyed.

Only at the end of his life did Favorsky receive the recognition he deserved and was revered by the artistic community as one of the great classics of Russian art.

V.A. Favorsky. Book of Ruth. 1924

Ivan Efimov wrote in his notebooks about a friend:

Favorsky is a real husband (vir in Latin), and we are all boys, including P.A. Florensky, who, however, overcomes his restlessness by will, and the calm of some mountain is simply given to Favorsky.

About Efimov himself, Favorsky wrote in 1959 to his son Adrian:

Ivan Semenovich is not a sculptor, but an inventor of new forms. It's true: how many sculptors who have been given a mass of clay in their hands and who traditionally sculpt and have no idea about the silhouette and space that should be in any plastic work, but Ivan Semenovich so sharply and witty come to light. […] There are living works that end in nothing but a living feeling, but there are works that, in the end, being alive and coming from life, are embodied as rhythmic thoughts, like crystals, I would say, plastic ideas that express rhythmically and musically modern and create what is called the style of the era. Everything that I have said here, in my opinion, closely concerns Ivan Semenovich and rarely any other sculptor. In this he is similar to the ancient artists.

Elena Murina

Artists in the First World War. V.A. Favorsky - M.V. Favorskaya. I.S. Efimov - N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova. Letters. Compiled by E.A. Efimova, I.I. Golitsyn, I.D. Shakhovskaya. — M., 2013

Accepted abbreviations:

V.A. - Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky

M.V. - Maria Vladimirovna Favorskaya (Derviz)

I.S. - Ivan Semenovich Efimov

N.Ya. - Nina Yakovlevna Simonovich-Efimova

V.A. to M.V. Moscow (barracks) - Domotkanovo

(1st letter)

My dear Maruska

I'm writing you a letter, but I don't know what to write - either because it's too much, or because it's chaotic. The main thing I want to know about you is how you and Nikita are doing. I really want to hope that everything is fine with you and you have gained courage and do not lose heart.

If you write me a sad letter, it will be very unpleasant for me. I feel very strongly that I am not free. Please write me about yourself. And about me for the first time I will write briefly. I got to the barracks as soon as you left, the next day on Wednesday evening. A big shed, bunks, about forty volunteers, people are very different and there are obviously very nice ones, but there are also bad ones, but there are no very bad ones - just stupid. Some already quarrel with each other, quarrel, but this is by mutual agreement and they do not stick to those who do not want this. My beard especially guarantees me against this, it inspires respect in everyone. We also have the nearest authorities, and I must say, they are generally good: firstly, a platoon commander, a crest of Herculean build and a very good-natured one - Minko. Then the lieutenant - this indifferent one. Then ensign Grunberg - this really nervous person, but a good one. Here are all the people who can give me trouble or not deliver it.

When the classes started, I was still afraid that I would feel bad, but now I see that all this is not so difficult. Until my leg hurts, I’m here and jumping and running like I haven’t run for a long time. And in horse riding I had undoubted talents. That's the whole life and everything would not be bad if it weren't for fleas - there are an awful lot of them because of the sandy soil and they don't let you sleep, but fatigue helps. To you I am very likely /.../ the end of the letter is missing.

Notes:

Domotkanovo - an estate with a two-story manor house, a neglected park with linden and spruce alleys and a chain of overgrown ponds, located sixteen miles from Tver, was bought by the father of M.V. Favorskaya (Derviz) by Vladimir von Derviz after his marriage to Nadezhda Simonovich in 1886.

Nikitka - Nikita Vladimirovich Favorsky (1915 -1941) - son of M.V. and V.A.The artist, phenomenally gifted from childhood, is a draftsman, sculptor, engraver, painter; learned from his parents from infancy; among his other teachers - P.Ya. Pavlinov, K.N. Istomin; graduated in 1938 graphic faculty MIII, his diploma - engravings for "The Captain's Daughter" by Pushkin - I.E. Grabar called "a phenomenon in art"; independent things he participated next to his father in monumental painting and book works, created vivid cycles of engravings for the fairy tales of B. Shergin, for the Armenian epic, and for the painting of the sanatorium in Kislovodsk. In 1941, having a "white ticket" (a sick heart), he volunteered for the militia and went missing during the defense of Moscow.

M.V.'s wedding Derviz and V.A. Favorsky. Domotkanovo. 1912

Dear dad and mom, I'm alive and well. We have fought a little over the past few days and with benefit, you probably already read about it. Many prisoners, a lot of all sorts of junk, guns, clothes, wine, all sorts of things, sometimes you think to take something as a keepsake but you don’t know where to put it. Guns are lying around like simple sticks and no one / them / is interested in us (they are later collected for the troops) with us, and everyone is looking for small carbines, there are also a lot of cartridges scattered everywhere. The prisoners are eccentrics, they go rejoicing, some talk about something preoccupied, but very businesslike ahead of the escorts, they come to us trying to get out of the shelling, and then they will come out and try to carry or lead our wounded, in a word, to be useful.

As for Marusya, I also hope that everything will be fine for her and others to enjoy. I bow to all the inhabitants of Epifanovka, I kiss you both tightly

your Volodka

Notes:

Epifanovka - the farmstead of Favorsky on the Oka, near the large fishing village of Pavlova (a town of hereditary handicraftsmen who made knives, locks, etc.), where several generations of the Epifanov-Favorsky family were priests (a surname received by grandfather V.A. in the seminary ). Father V.A., Andrei Evgrafovich Favorsky, built a house and founded a dairy farm and an apiary in his homeland, on the wasteland, which he bought in the 1890s as a property qualification necessary to become a zemstvo vowel. He named the farm in memory of the original family name.

V.A. Favorsky with his family. 1916

V.A. to parents in Epifanovka

My dear parents, we are at war, we have everything for now, and if things go on like this, the Germans will not be able to cope with us. It's been quiet for a few days now and everyone is resting. I'm alive and well and don't worry about me at all.

Dad can be pleased, the commander ordered me to collect all my papers and they want to represent me as an officer, I didn’t ask, they themselves find me worthy, of course I don’t know what the answer will be, but I have to think positive. Of course, I'm afraid of my new duties, but it's not so soon and it will be possible to prepare, calculate what if I forgot. I live here not badly, it is only a little dirty and it is rather difficult to wash, but in general it is not bad. My comrades are doing well. Babinsky almost certainly leaves for the factory.

As for the general successes, you probably know better than I do, but in general it’s good on the Russian front, but if they had pressed on the French and Italian fronts, then the Germans would not have been able to throw either guns or soldiers. Well, how are you, how is everyone doing as an estate and all living creatures, orchards and vegetable gardens, does your mother draw, are you waiting for Vladimir Dmitrievich? well the postman goes all the best to you kiss you hard

your son Volodya

Notes:

Vladimir Dmitirevich - Vladimir Dmitrievich (background) Derviz (1859-1937) - father of M.V. Xpainter, watercolorist; studied at the Academy of Arts together (and later was friends) with V.A. Serov and M.A. Vrubel; He also graduated from the School of Law. In 1885, having married Serov's cousin, Nadezhda Simonovich (1866-1908), and having received his share of the capital from his father (St. Petersburg senator), he bought the Domotkanovo estate in the Tver province and, until the death of his wife, was energetically engaged in organizing and modernizing the economy - both his own and the peasant (Nadezhda Yakovlevna was the soul of the estate for both households and peasants). For many years Vl. Dm. actively worked in the zemstvo, solving issues of education, "people's health", etc.; was elected chairman of the Tver district and provincial zemstvo councils. After the revolution, expelled from the estate, in the hungry Moscow of 1919-1920, he earned money by repairing shoes. From 1920 to 1928 he lived and worked in Sergiev - first in the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of the Lavra; in 1922, during the seizure of "church valuables" by the authorities, he, together with Yu.A. Olsufiev, in the most difficult living conditions, managed to preserve the priceless treasures of the monastery for history and culture (by handing over the least significant, but rich in precious stones and massive gold and silver things). Then, before the intensification of repression, he was the first head of the Lavra Museum.

V.A. Favorsky. Card officers. Romania. 1917

V.A. to A.E. to Epifanovka

End of June 1916

Dear dad, how are you and mom doing, I'm alive and well, in general, the danger for me is not very big. You know, of course, that we are already far away against our former sector, we are fighting now in a completely different way, all the time movement, all the time change, so sometimes you get very tired, there is no time and nowhere to wash for weeks, so you are extremely dirty. Our commander is still ill and we have only two officers on the battery, who have a lot of work and get tired, especially the senior officer, very much. I am always with the senior officer at the observation post and my relations with him are very good, and in general, I have good relations with all the others.

We have to deal with the infantry, ask them about their life, they tell a lot of interesting things. One recently said that during reconnaissance he climbed into the church and found the enemy wounded left there, gave them a drink (there was no bread with him), at this time the enemy set fire to the church with a shell. The orderlies immediately picked up our wounded, but they did not want to drag strangers from the burning church, but our officer forced us and the soldier was very pleased. You have to see a lot of prisoners and talk to them, in general they complain that they have almost nothing to eat, they give very little bread, they give almost no meat at all, so you don’t understand what they eat, our soldiers eat incomparably better. I feel well, I get tired but not overtired, the weather is good and rheumatism and neuralgia do not torment me. How do you live, that in Epifanovka, is everything all right? Like mother, like /aunt/ Lida and children. Does my mother draw and what exactly, let her draw more for herself and for me. What about cows, bees, bread, what kind of weather you have, how Oka is doing.

Well, I bow to everyone, kiss you and mother, write me firmly all the best to you

your son Volodya

Notes:

A.E. - Andrei Evgrafovich Favorsky (1845-1924) - father of V.A. Attorney at Law, member of the Moscow Court of Justice; a native of Pavlov on the Oka, the eldest son in a large (5 brothers and 2 sisters) and early orphaned family of a priest; Zemsky and public figure; member of the First State Duma from the Nizhny Novgorod province. After the revolution, from 1920 he lived in Sergiev and worked in the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquities of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra (created in 1918 according to the concept and under the leadership of Father Pavel Florensky).

Lida - Lidia Vladimirovna Ganeshina (nee Sherwood), sister of Olga Vladimirovna Favorskaya, mother of V.A.

V.A. Favorsky. trenches. 1933

V.A. to parents in Epifanovka

Hello, my dears, I am alive and well, the events are going on some dizzying, but we still hope for the best. We were supposed to have an offensive here and we were assigned to a bad division, and it did not go on the offensive, and even part of it fled. The Turks and Bulgarians themselves climbed, but they were beaten off quite decisively by artillery and machine-gun fire, so they won’t climb again. There are many guilty, but of course the chiefs who reported that it is possible to attack are to blame. The gunners are behaving well and the shock battalions make a very good impression, and most importantly, more and more are already wounded, but the fresh people are to hell. It should be noted that some of the policemen did not flee, but remained at their post, so not all of them are scoundrels. Now, apparently, it will be quiet, we will wait, and the Germans here are weak for the offensive. It is remarkable that our prisoners do not surrender, but run away, it used to be different, they did not run away, but surrendered. One thing in all this is good, that it is all now in sight and not hidden, and therefore it may be possible to correct it. My stomach hurt again and I lay in reserve for two weeks, was treated, drank milk, and now I have completely recovered.

Today I am a birthday boy and I congratulate you on this, and then my mother, because recently she was also a birthday girl. Well, I'm sending Marusa a piece of paper to the Economic/Omic/community/, only she will have to go to Moscow once, well, it's not so difficult, letters from her are still cheerful and cheerful.

All the best to you, kisses to both of you, low bow to Aunt Lida

your son Volodya

I finished a woman with a child, I will do something else.

Notes:

"Woman with a Child" - a sculpture that V.A. carved from local stone free time; subsequently purchased from the MTX exhibition - P.Ya. Pavlinov.

The picture brought by I.S. Efimov from the front. 1917. First on the left - commander of the 3rd battery D.M. Saakov, the second - I.S. Efimov; second from right - V.A. Favorsky

V. A. to parents in Epifanovka

My dears, I am alive and well with us so far calmly and I don’t have much to do, but still I have, so I don’t get bored. Today I received a letter from my mother, she writes that there are no letters from me for a long time, but I try to be careful, though the first thing I write to Maruska and then to you, so sometimes I don’t have time. The money that dad sent I received recently, thank you very much for it, it will last me a long time. Maruska writes to me quite often, they are doing well, there are very interesting letters about Nikita, how he talks, how he tries to walk - it would be terribly interesting to look at him, I only worry that my grandmother gets tired with our boy. It’s a pity for my mother that she doesn’t have to draw, I also really miss painting and I started to draw a little, and although all this is of course a trifle, it’s very nice at least a little. […] We don’t have any special changes here, only the commander arrived, but I had to write to you about this, and the senior officer, with whom I was together all these battles, left as commander in the second battery, I feel sorry for him, in general it’s better perhaps to be with a young commander. But this commander is also a good artilleryman and treats all of us very kindly. In addition, remember, I wrote to you about two ensigns sent to us, one of them has more or less taken root with us, and one cannot get used to it at all, everyone dreams of a park or something like that and he was lucky - he asks from the park to come to us too ensign Vasiliev and they may exchange places. It will be nice, this Vasiliev is a nice guy and besides, our Moscow artist, from the school of painting. In general, it turns out that the artists are good artillerymen, not without reason that Michelangelo, Leonardo and Cellini were the first artillerymen. Maybe in our free time we will draw together with him, and more seriously than sketches, that's all our news. And as for warm clothes, things are like this for me: jerseys, socks, a hat, etc. I have in Kiev at the Babinskys and I can get them more or less easily, but about the other I wrote to Marusya, maybe you, mother, will help her with advice or deed. I asked for my blue sheepskin coat to be widened at the shoulders and covered with a khaki, and then some warm boots, at least fur, but it’s better not to get wet, and fur mittens, that’s all, though it’s a lot and will require a lot of money, but what to do. The main thing is that I don’t understand how it will all be sent to me in the end if they don’t let me go on vacation. Well, my dears, all the best to you, I kiss you tightly

your son Volodya

Notes:

About the park - a park of guns.

... after all, they were the first artillerymen ... - The listed Renaissance artists - Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) - were also engaged in the development of siege and defensive weapons, structures and devices, as well as casting cannons and using them in real combat operations.

V.A. Favorsky. Battery on the go. Drawing from a letter to M.V. End of October 1916

M.V. to V.A. Domotkanovo - Army

My dear husband, thank you, my knight-soldier for the poems, they are good and I can still see my dear. Something boiled in my soul a lot that I want to say: seeing my grandmother's fussiness, pettiness; Lyalin and Val/eryan/ Dm/itriyevich/ keen concern; the passionate pursuit of the pleasures of the Efimovs and Serg / her / Ivanovich (only for the Efimovs / satisfied, but for P /olner / not); papa's confused, cold, lonely life, as if he had closed with a heavy lid all the best and most important and decided to touch only the most superficial strings of his soul; and Lelin, and my crude fanaticism to the cause - it seems to me that one should not live like that, that is, live in the same way in fact, but feel differently, so that life is illuminated by something from the inside, so that petty worries and momentary pleasures always reign and fanaticism for any business, even for art and for the upbringing of a child.

So that the soul would be all permeated with this big one, like a dewdrop permeated with the rays of the sun; but most importantly, when the sun shines, all the drops of dew sparkle and rejoice; when a person is doing well, it is not difficult for him to praise God and look into the sky and be kind. But when a person feels bad, and misfortunes attacked him - his grandmother has blindness, Lyalya has deafness, Serg / her / Iv / anovich / and dad have loneliness, I have an illness and eternal fear for your life (war) - and that's it - I still want that in spite of everything, the soul would be a praise to God, whole and united like a sigh; so that when the whole sky is gray, and the wind rushes through the bare autumn fields, and there is not a single ray of sunlight - and then the dewdrop would shine, penetrated by the inner sun that never sets.

Closer to this live, it seems to me, contented and hard-working Kolya and Natasha, keeping cheerfulness and faith in their souls (in what?); but the truth is they do not have grief, but there is a certain complacency, which of course contradicts the ideal. Always busy doing things for other O.V. and A.E. In my opinion, they also live well, they do not have heaviness and gloominess of their souls, their souls are simple and open to others. True, I don’t know much, but I think that she lived ideally - this is my mother, who always maintained meekness and peace of mind and some kind of splendor, and quietly enjoyed nature and the fact that life gave her good things. And gave more heavy. I open it more and more, but there has always been peace in my soul, and leaving with us somewhere / ud / to the thaw, sitting on a log, she smiled and sang some nib / ud / our songs. But I know so little, I don't even know if she believed; but that's how she lived.

Oh Volodik, Nikita coughed and all my good thoughts were gone; we were walking with him now, my grandmother dressed him lightly, and I think he caught a cold.

And these thoughts I have are far from reality, some misfortunes, I feel that I cannot endure calmly, so that the inner light does not go out: I could not endure loneliness, I would become embittered /... / I also think about Christianity - but this another time, and I wrote you so much, and you know, thoughts inspired by you; of course you.

Good luck

your stupid wife.

True, my body is selfish, but my soul is not, you're right. All the same, I fulfilled my little decision during the summer: I don’t remember a time when I got angry, I would speak in an angry voice. In my heart I sometimes got angry, but immediately restrained myself. What am I boasting about? it's so small that it's embarrassing to even talk about it. So few!

I would like the soul to sound all the time - praise, like the psalms of David. And you write - you have to live more intensely, like lightning; I don't quite understand it. In my opinion, this is the way to live.

Kiss my darling.

True, I have no right to say that they do not live like that, those whom I know; who knows - seemingly gloomy faces, boring preoccupied speeches, but in their souls there may be a light that is hidden from everyone, and shines in spite of everything. After all, the human soul is a mystery. I can say that I know only my own, yours and Nikita's soul; I almost know Lelina, but no one else, and in essence I have no data to say that they live not like that. Only the light somehow seldom breaks through with them, and you can’t hide the light anyway; we saw him at my mother's and were warmed by him, yes, yes, all our childhood is warmed by this light. Of course, Lyalina's children are also warmed by the light of mother's love. No, my mother had another light. And I don’t consider motherly love, you know, it’s like loving yourself or your husband; your child is selfish love.

I can not stop - I write everything and get distracted.

I love you the most; I love you too much and I'm afraid that you, it is you, are the light for me and I live / and inspire you - crossed out/, but there must be something more than love. You do not think?

Notes:

Lyalya - Adelaida Yakovlevna Derviz (nee Simonovich; 1872-1945) - sister of N.Ya.; aunt M.V., model of the famous painting by V.A. Serov “Portrait of A.Ya. Simonovich" [GRM]. From her youth, she helped her mother - at school, her sister Nadia - in the conduct of the Domotkanovsky estate. I lost my hearing at the age of 18. Val's wife. Dm. Derviz.

Valeryan Dmitrievich -Valerian Dmitrievich (von) Derviz (1869-1917) - brother of Vl. Dm., Uncle M.V., mathematician. After his marriage, he built his own house in Domotkanovo, next to the old manor house of his brother (the exposition of the V.A. Serov Museum is now located in it). On the last day of the Moscow October uprising of 1917 (November 2, O.S.) Val. Dm. was killed in the street by a stray bullet.

Polner - Sergei Ivanovich Polner (1861-1929) - teacher of mathematics in St. Petersburg (in the 1900s - at the Tenishevsky School); member of the United Council of Professors of Petrograd; in the 1880s one of the strongest chess players in the capital; in 1922 he was expelled from the country among a large group of "active anti-Soviet intelligentsia (professors)"; lived in exile and was buried in Paris.

Lelya - Elena Vladimirovna Derviz (1889-1975) - sister of M.V. and niece N.Ya., pianist. Her whole life has passed under the sign of selfless fulfillment of duty. In 1917, after graduating from the conservatory, she went as a nurse to a field hospital; during the Civil War (again working in a hospital in Syzran) she injured her arm and subsequently could no longer give concerts; was an accompanist at music courses; also earned money by typing; unconditionally sacrificed everything to help in creativity and everyday life - Favorsky, Efimov, others - both relatives and friends. As for her personal life: her chosen one, Mikhail Timofeevich Markelov (1899-1937) - an ethnographer of the Moscow Museum of Ethnology (Mordvinian by origin; went on expeditions with Efimov and idolized him) - was arrested in 1933 as a "nationalist" and exiled to Transbaikalia (he worked at an experimental permafrost station in Skovorodino and closely communicated there with a friend of the Efimovs and Favorsky - P.A. Florensky); in 1934 transferred to Tomsk (supervised) - to teach at a local university; E.V. also went there to see him. Derviz. In 1937 he was re-tried: 10 years without the right to correspond. Then they did not know that it was - execution.

Kolya and Natasha - Nikolai Yakovlevich Simonovich and his daughter.

Nikolai Yakovlevich Simonovich (1869-1937 /?) - brother of N.Ya. and uncle M.V.Bacteriologist, doctor; Tolstoyan. He lost his hearing from a young age, but this did not interfere with his life and work. Built not far from Domotkanov, according to his original project, a log manor house - "Zaovrazhye"; maintained his own bacteriological laboratory at the Tver provincial zemstvo hospital; in 1919, he managed to take out a wagon with equipment and set up a laboratory in Lipetsk under the city Ministry of Health, and from that time he worked and lived there with his wife and daughter. (Adrian Efimov and his grandmother A.S. went with them to Lipetsk and stayed there until 1921) In 1936, Nick. Ya. was arrested and then sent to Siberia. How, where and when he died is unknown.

Natasha - Natalya Nikolaevna Simonovich (1890-1942) - daughter of Nick. I., mathematician, teacher. Beloved niece of Nina Yakovlevna, beloved cousin of M.V. She taught in Tver, after the Civil War - in the schools of Lipetsk, from the beginning of the 1930s - at courses for workers and engineers of a metallurgical plant under construction. Personal life of N.N. tragic: her late and only love - a young brilliant engineer Alexander Borisovich Sekhon (c. 1900-1937 /?) was arrested (“for words”) in 1935. N.N. went after him, found him at the construction sites of the Norillag, registered the marriage and got the right to live with him inside the zone for 2 weeks. Having learned about the accusation of her father, she returned to Lipetsk; then, in 1937 - again to the Yenisei, but she was no longer allowed into Norilsk, and she lived in Dudinka, only corresponding with her husband; then the letters stopped. In 1940, after burying her mother, who was terminally ill with diabetes and labeled "the wife of an enemy of the people", she came to Moscow to the Efimovs and Favorskys; in 1941 she did not evacuate the city and died in the hospital, in the most difficult year of the war, and was buried in a common grave. (N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova at the end of her life wrote a piercing confessional story about her -"The Story of a Girl" Not published.)

O.V. and A.E - parents V.A., Olga Vladimirovna and Andrey Evgrafovich Favorsky.

Letters No 4, 5, 6
I.S. to N.Ya. in Domotkanovo

Mid October 1916

N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova and I.S. Efimov before being sent to the front. 1916

E. No 4

When I arrived, not all the officers were at home (in the hut) and the commander was not; I was immediately well fed (a cook-soldier from some Moscow hotel), then we went to the battery, standing half a verst from the hut: there are 4 guns in dug pits. They removed the covers from one, began to show me. One very pleasant officer (chemist) and a technician, an orderly for guns, showed up, pink, with a young curly beard, in a leather jacket and trousers. Then the officer ordered that various types of shells be taken out of the cellar, but I climbed in there and there I planted them, heavy ones, a pood and a half, on my knees; in this place the battery has only been standing for three days, now the guns are covered with wicker shields, they have become hairy, like dragons. Now I am sitting in a wallless barn on a saddle and all around are various military facilities. A horse walks on my legs! I feed her with bread, and behind her back, as if carpets are being beaten out, guns click and roll, beautiful sounds, a good accompaniment for life.

Well, a better chronological story; on the first evening, when they came from the battery at dusk, the commander arrived from the headquarters, a vigorous, strong, black Armenian with two beautiful bulging balls of eyes with slightly lowered corners and such arches of eyebrows, /drawing/ no, it doesn't look like it, simple, reliable, after a short greeting, he sat down to read the secret orders of the headquarters the next day. And it's nice to feel that you are not a stranger, he only briefly said that the lower ranks should not know this. When he finished, they began to examine the huge white mouthpiece, which the officer who was traveling with us took to Moscow to Faberge to repair, which connected the crack with a nasty silver snake, and our first conversation with him was about it. Then they decided to drink at dinner a part of the box that the officer brought, leaving a part for the battery holiday - Holy / Mikh / ail /, which will soon be. They drank for the commander, for new officers, Favorsk / th / and others. During the conversation, it became clear how happy I was with my new life, and the commander said: “I drink for our new one - I don’t know how to say it (I must have wanted to say a comrade), and for us to justify his hopes.” And something else mentioned about my age. After a while, I drank to a friendly, strong family, which I had the good fortune to join. It was at ease and easy in this "terrible male" company, as it can never be at a table with strangers.

In the trenches, as they moved closer forward, nearby explosions began to be seen. The commander said that we would wait here. I asked him if it was safer to stand than to walk, he answered, no, he only shoots, just at that section in the advanced trenches where we are going. But what about, I say, V.V. decide that he will stop? “But he won’t always hit in one place forever - after all, when we shoot ourselves, the psychology is the same.” Indeed, soon stopped, let's go.

Today with Vlad. Andr. sat on the oak on which our observation post is arranged. So everything is firmly arranged - a staircase, a platform with a railing on an oak tree. We were told by phone where our guns were firing, and we monitored the explosions. The officer instructed me to keep a log of the battery's military operations, that is, to write history. Last night we had an interesting conversation with the commander about riding and horses.

We live 7 people in a hut, and it doesn’t seem crowded, it just doesn’t occur to me that it’s crowded, well, like Maria Dmitr / Ievna / in Tver. A telephone hangs over the commander's bed.

I once told an officer that they would give me a revolver - “You are not allowed!” - "Well, I'm a scout." - “Who told you that you are a scout? - (joking, this is a nice chemical officer). - Reliable, proven ones are appointed to scouts. And so, whoever asks for scouts - so they are appointed to the headquarters and carry packages.

Notes:

Chemical officer - Vasily Zakharovich Prodan.

Another officer is Pyotr Vasilyevich Ilyushin.

...of a "terrible male" company... - The son of middle-aged parents, I.S. grew up under the tutelage of old women who were afraid for him, without the society of peers: ... A gray childhood life - well, how about it: in childhood he walked under a veil, with a blue umbrella from the wind (the most difficult thing was to point the umbrella against the wind when there was no wind at all). Touching the snow deadly danger. I did not know the feeling of a felt boot on a bare leg. I have never ridden on sleds. [...] In the gymnasium, too, he was lonely because of his upbringing. That is why I appreciated the camaraderie of two hundred people in the battery so much... N.Ya. notes: At the age of seven he was sent to the military school of Bertalotti, where there was an extremely harsh regime, so that family pampering rebounded, and the military regime, it seems to me, still left its disciplinary, useful light for him.

V.V. - Your Highness.

... at Maria Dmitrievna's in Tver ... - in a two-room apartment above the hospital laundry (M.D. Simonovich worked as the chief clerk of the provincial zemstvo hospital), where her family lived comfortably - she, her husband Nikolai Yakovlevich and daughter Natasha, and where Numerous relatives stayed when they came to Tver.

Envelopes and a letter to I.S. Efimov to N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova

E. No. 5

Now we are lying, talking, waking up, about observation pipes. They stick out like a periscope and are shot at. The same officer, in response to some of my words, says - "Look, how the rear argues." Said who where will he go, and teams / ir / gov / yells /: "I'm not going anywhere, I'll command from the bed." It is convenient for him - there is a telephone above the bed, and not with a call, but as I wanted to do - with a beep.

I went to bed with an absurd good volunteer / sharing / on a battery with soldiers, and with them I scooped morning tea from a bucket. I was told that the soldiers had already called me the battery grandfather (and Favorsky is the only one here with a beard, or maybe more than one, is called daddy). Then in the morning he began to clean the wall of the bunks in the dugout with a sharp and convenient shovel, because the local clay is cut with unusual voluptuousness; I hear the battery greet the commander, and I also got out of the dugout, and with him and with the officers went to the trenches, where he had to talk with the battalion (infantry) commander.

He, /our/ commander, has a very pleasant voice and, despite his great certainty, some kind of sweet oriental softness. I am now saying that an officer instructed me to write history. Commander/andir/ gov/ yells/: “Look what V/asily/ Zakh/arovich/ - he’s already breathed it out of himself.” He swears very well all the time.

On the third day, when the whole team was walking, I turned to the commander with a request: “Your Excellency, order me to ride a ramrod, I really love riding.” - "Ah, please!" - and immediately turned around and ordered that the horse be assigned to me. This horse was advised to me as a frisky one - a small red-roan with a bald head and white-legged. I haven't tried it. In order to give a horse, you need to shout into the phone: "Checkers, give the horse to such and such."

You don’t send a suitcase, it’s not worth it, but the boots are oversized, if you could order an old refugee, it would be good, but only my foresight writes to you, but for now I have good, and warm legs in your blue blouse. I remember one of my ancestral magnifiers, you didn’t seem to be familiar with it (or maybe it was a burning glass), it would be good to look at a map with it, or else Nik / olai / Vas / Ilyevich / in Tyushevka has an excellent round old magnifying glass. Just don't buy, please.

Now I'm thinking of riding into the battery. I, they say, have already been called the battery grandfather.

Go to Petersburg. 2 more red handkerchiefs came and onuch papers, and Vilborg will send compasses here. I am writing to Ek/Aterina/Nik/Olaevna/, I would like to write to her much of what I am writing to you, but it is boring to rewrite, since you are going to Petersburg, give her my letters, and I emphasize that I want to borrow for Mikh/ ail / Os / IPovich /, or rather Maria Samoilovna, from whom, as a Parisian thinker, I have long felt the pressure sending me to war.

Here, perhaps, came hair insoles; you really start a slate board and do not try too hard and divide this board into Moscow - and Otradnoye. Pipe and English/Ian/tobacco. Magnifying glass at Nick. You. Cigars from the right bedside table in the blue /room/.

Now I’m back, three of us rode, an excellent horse, I hold it with all my might with both hands, and it’s very frisky, so that I could, it seems, overtake both of my officers, I just avoided it so as not to be envied. At sunset, the color was very beautiful, red-roan, and shimmers with rose gold. It is unusually good to ride, the countryside is hilly, beautiful, occasionally there are lone pears. Against the setting sun, the forest is filled with blue smoke, because a part is standing in it.

Notes:

Tyushevka - a village in the Efimov estate.

Onuch paper - tissue paper.

A. Vilborg is a familiar merchant-publisher.

Ekaterina Nikolaevna Vinberg (1878-1959) - teacher, friend of N.Ya. from the gymnasium years, who lived in St. Petersburg. The first letter of I.S. it was sent by E. Vinberg. A fragment of a letter from I.S. to Tolskaya (the widow of A.N. Tolsky), written on the same days:…Good. Smoothly. Just as the body is comfortable and calm in a new shell, so the soul sat comfortably and calmed down completely, as never before; God bless forever. And how easily he now walks in this uniform on Russian soil. Night. The train is lonely in the field. Dawn; the chin on my cap suggested to me that happiness is to stand in a leather jacket on the lowest step of the carriage and rush in a warm whirlwind to war.There must be no other such lucky person who would be straight out of a lazy scary privacy went straight to the front, bypassing all the nasty hardships of military training. Such an easy transition better life- a sign from experience, perhaps, only to those who are taken by lightning from our lives and wake up surprised in another.I began to write to you while still in the carriage, - now I continue in the dugout during a break between fires; we have been preparing for the attack for the third day, which is scheduled for today, but, probably, due to rain and slippery clay, it has not yet been undertaken (now my letter to you has been lying in the album for a long time - and, by the way, for these two years I have written four thick letters to you, but I won’t send you right away, and then it seems old). I am quite happy that I have found myself in this simple environment, welded together by one purpose, and I would like to think that, finally, my flabby, unadapted and mediocre double, into which I always degenerated from time to time, will get rid of me. The good thing is that I got into this friendly family, right when she is busy with a business that will suck me in itself, and this is not overshadowed by any conventions of discipline. And how timely I am cut off from my work, on which I have completely lost the habit of working lately. Now I believe that if I am whole and infected with this cheerfulness of the war, then I will return to that case in a different way. Forgive me that it somehow turns out that I am trying on the great event of the war to my own fate, but somehow I don’t know how to look otherwise. Another great joy for me is that my good friend is with me, a very deep artist who brought me here to fight.

Mikhail Osipovich Tsetlin (1882-1945) - poet (pseudonym Amari) and prose writer, member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. I.S. participated in the design of a collection of his poems; Maria Samoilovna Tsetlin (nee Tumarkina; 1882 -?) - collector; N.Ya. visited her salon in Paris].

I.S. Efimov. Commander D.M. Saakov. Drawing from a letter to N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova. 1917

E. No. 6

Then they went with volunteer Altukhov, crammed into the dugout of the 3rd gun. And they sang with the soldiers “Because of the island ...!” under the harmonica Recently I sat with Vladimir Andreevich on the top of a tall oak at an observation post. Leaves fell from the shots. A pink technician arrived, they came to dine in the hut. While I sit on the fence close, close to a white strong snorting horse, pressing its ears on a stranger, on a head wrapped in halters and chains. The technician talked about a good priest who, in front of a mass grave, when he began to serve a memorial service, stood up, raised his hands to heaven and said: “Righteous in heaven, step aside (or make room), give place to these heroes.”

There is such a well-established life here that it seems that it should be so and it has always been and will be so. Only now, next to the teapot, smelling of smoke, lies the worn-out shoe of a six-year-old child. On this blue smoke are red, strong, sunlit oaks; high, 5 arshin Catholic crosses, supporting the telephone wire, which here stretches in all directions like a cobweb, over lumps of black earth arable land. And they drove home, in the green sky stood, as always, bright rockets, which, apparently, did not want to fly far from the earth. My horse, it turns out, used to /been/ with a rural father (Vetluga, Kostroma province.), A little frequent trot and hot, so he gets hot in vain, but all the horses and dogs that dealt with me became calmer, although pleasant, of course that she carries anxiety within herself.

/…/ Where my horse stands in reserve, about one and a half or 2 versts (from where I can call the horse by phone) the reserve stands in a rare (cut down) pine forest of the Sokolniki scale, now it is not ordered to cut down, so yesterday, when we arrived, I look, he sits high, damn it, where is the soldier and cuts the branch on which he sits. The bark from trees to human height is all cut down for flooding. Beautifully at dusk among rare pines against a bright sky, horses stand in rows, tied to a chain stretched between the trees. The muzzle in front of the muzzle is our black-haired shearer with a sack on his face, and opposite the gray horse, which all the time pulls on his sack, there are beautiful horned gray Ukrainian oxen that serve on the battery.

Today Vlad. Andr. battery attendant. And I walk and sit near the guns, I ask them to show the soldiers, who explain very clearly, and now I am writing you a letter, otherwise we are sitting with Vlad. Andr. and Vasiliev, who was with you at Yuon's and held /exams/ and studied at the school [MUZHVZ], and now, recently, without Vladimir Andreevich, he was transferred to our third battery. He cut walls / dugouts / a woman on excellent ground, and they talked. Artist. He told how his brother, a cavalryman, escaped from Austrian captivity through Italy, how he was met in England and dressed in an English uniform because he broke off.

Soldiers dug raspberries near the hut and built a dugout for themselves.

Notes:

Yuon Konstantin Fedorovich (1875-1958) - painter, teacher, leader for many yearswho had his own studio in Moscow.

I.S. Efimov. Portrait of an unknown. Blue album. 1917

E. No 11

I.S to N.Ya. in Domotkanovo

October 1916

/…/ The center of today is my bath. Well, I bought myself, the nice chemical officer and I guessed to take advantage of the hospitality of the infirmary. A charming old man washed us, he talked about how excellent forests were around here, about the fortress of the local former people, whose women married at 25 years old, and men kept their virginity until 40 years old, before reaching which not a single girl would let (these are my words about my old age). This helped military service. And the strength of the people was such that his mistress gave birth in a wagon and did not even order the horses to be stopped. He spoke about serfdom, how, in order to flog pregnant women, they were laid with their belly on a dug hole. And he told an interesting legend about how the pans signed the abolition of serfdom. The sovereign in the Senate ordered them to sign a law on the release of slaves. They signed, thinking that the case was about robbers, but the Sovereign said: “No, these are hunters, but I have other slaves.” And it was too late to change. Give this legend to Adelaide Semyonovna, it will make her happy.

Now we sit, drink local good wine and eat. Yesterday with Vlad. Andr. and Nick. Boris. spent the evening with a sweet but dissolute drunken comrade, whom his comrades for fun left to the mercy of fate. Vladimir Andreevich assures us that we were doing a public cause.

Today we have a day's rest, and tomorrow we will again march in a marching column for 70 versts along beautiful undulating terrain among the most beautiful panorama, precisely a panorama from which it is impossible to cut a piece for painting a landscape. /.../

Notes:

Adelaida Semyonovna Simonovich (1844-1933) - mother of N.Ya. and grandmother M.V. teacher; founder (together with Ya.M. Simonovich, 1840-1883) of the theory and practice of Russian preschool pedagogy; both are "sixties", followers of Herzen, who "blessed" them for real disinterested activity in Russia. A.S. and her husband (a doctor and teacher) organized the first Russian kindergarten in St. Petersburg (1866); published a magazine Kindergarten”, where they published their own and translated articles. A.S. she led an "elementary school" - for several years in Tiflis, then again in St. Petersburg; brought up a galaxy of followers. In the working family of the Simonovichs, where there were 6 of their children, Valentin Serov (A.S.'s nephew) and the orphan Olga Trubnikova (who later became his wife; both she and all the Simonovich sisters served as Serov's models) were brought up - "Girl, illuminated by the sun" [TG ] and "Portrait of M. Ya. Lvova" [Orsay, Paris], "N. Ya. Derviz with a child" [TG], etc.). After the marriage of her daughter Nadia and the acquisition by her husband Vl. von Derviz of the Domotkanov estate (1886) A.S. lived there with younger children; for many years headed the built Vl. Dm. school where she taught peasant children (many of them became rural teachers). After the Civil War, completely blind, she lived in Sergiev (Zagorsk) in the family of her granddaughter - M.V. Favorskaya and helped raise great-grandchildren.

Nick. Boris. - Nikolai Borisovich Rosenfeld (1886-1936 /?) - artist, friend of V.A., illustrator; studied with V.A. in Munich, translated with him in the 1910s. books on art (A. Hildebrandt and K. Voll); worked in 1912-1913 with Favorsky and Istomin on murals in the house of V.S. Sherwood. After the revolution, N.B., who had previously lived very poorly with his family, accepted the help of his brother, L.B. Kamenev, one of the Bolshevik leaders (and helped V.A. when he was dying of typhus in 1920). Designed books for the Asademia publishing house. He was arrested in 1935 (following his brother, who then, after the famous "trial of 1936", was shot). N.B. taken according to the so-called. "Kremlin cause" together with his wife and son (shot in 1937). N.B. himself perished in the dungeons of the NKVD; no evidence of him and documents after the 35th, as well as traces of his work, have not yet been found.

I.S. to N.Ya. and Adrian in Domotkanovo

November 1916

Don't tell your mom or she'll scold you. Again, on a foggy moonlit night, I went to the Monster, on a steam locomotive. I stood in front near his very heart, and sometimes his heart suddenly began to beat strongly and often. This is when the wheels did not take and rotate in place. A multi-colored constellation of the station appeared ahead, and the monster began to choose its own path between many paths. I have never traveled on a train so much fun - sometimes with comrades, sometimes with geldings, we are going very economically, we are going to make a brood of horses somewhere at a long stop, i.e. to withdraw all 200 horses from the wagons. Today they slaughtered a cow - a wagon of our handsome bulls is coming with us. Passenger traffic is now very crowded with our military trains, so the head of the echelon, as an officer - the owner of the train, sometimes allows the military, and sometimes private, to ride on our train. Thanks to my night trip on a steam locomotive, I discovered some mistake in our route - the head of our echelon thought to take fodder (oats) at a certain station - it turned out that we would not go through it. When I reported this to him, he wanted to send another, but I volunteered to go, and funny, on the way to the station they offered me hay: “Yes, you would take it,” but I refused, saying that we needed oats. At the commandant's station, thanks to my talkative mood, I learned everything I needed and didn't need, but it was interesting. And first of all, I managed when our echelon departed, and found out that the locomotive was served and was leaving in 20 minutes, but a map of future actions appeared, for which I sat for 23 minutes, and my train left. But everything ended perfectly: I got into the next echelon of a foreign train, first in a horse carriage, where there was a uterus with a foal and a gray big horse, illuminated in the morning, and then I rode in a soft carriage with the head of a strange echelon and a doctor who spoke interestingly. And it ended up that, having walked two versts, he caught up with his train that had gone ahead, quietly moving along the curves, that is, he met him more correctly, going towards him through the plowed fields of corn.

It turns out that the soldiers of the 2nd platoon missed me and invited me to eat apples, which they managed to get from a box that had broken on the way. Yesterday we bought apples and arranged a game: moving further and further, I threw apples to a friend through the car window, and the old saleswoman asked me to buy more: “it’s very good to watch how you throw.”

Marvelous! Where they bathed in a military hospital, the clerk (a local black resident) pokes his address, asks to write and says that he will answer with a warm feeling. Now I went from the theater to the coffee shop, where I went several times. An old beautiful Jew, saying goodbye, with sparkling eyes, wished me a happy return to the family, and they affectionately said goodbye to everyone who was sitting, one hunchbacked old one.

It must be that the war presses the most necessary spring and waits only for the command "e-e-drivers - sit down."

I can still kiss you.

Notes:

Adrian Ivanovich Efimov (1907-2000) - son of N.Ya. and I.S. A well-known scientist, geologist, one of the first researchers of hydrogeological conditions and permafrost Yakutia. During the Great Patriotic War (from 1941 to 1943) he was sent to the location of the Trans-Baikal Front for the selection and engineering and geological survey of sites for the construction of military airfields and large technical facilities. Biographer, as well as the custodian of the creative - artistic and literary - heritage of his parents. He did a lot in his study, systematization and preparation of various editions and publications. He is largely responsible for organizing the museum of V.A. Serov in Domotkanovo and the study of historical and cultural ties of all Domotkanovo residents.

M.V. Favorskaya (Derviz). Self-portrait with her husband. 1913

N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova. Portrait of I.S. Efimov. 1917

Letter from N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova to I.S. Efimov. 1917

We thank Elena Borisovna Murina for the text specially written for Kultpro and Ivan Dmitirevich Shakhovsky for help in publishing the fragment.