Crimea in literature
Ancient Tauris, preserving the spirit of Greco-Roman antiquity, remembering the Baptism of Rus' and deeds ancient Russian princes, alluring with a warm sea and nature evoking romantic pathos, has long served as a place of attraction for Russian writers. People came here on vacation, on business, for interesting creative meetings, and simply for inspiration. For some prose writers and poets, Crimea became a permanent place of residence, others fought here on land and at sea in terrible years wars for the Fatherland, there are also those who ended their earthly journey in Crimea. For many representatives of the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia, Crimea turned out to be a place of farewell to their Motherland, where they stepped onto the deck of a ship that was leaving into the unknown.
But Crimea is not only the addresses of writers, Crimea has firmly entered our Russian literature, and the images of the peninsula on the pages of classic works are sometimes no less enchanting than the Crimean landscapes in person.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799–1837)
The “first poet of Russia” spent almost a whole month in Crimea in 1820, arriving there during a trip to Novorossiya with his friend, the hero of the Patriotic War, General Nikolai Raevsky. The travelers traveled from Kerch through Feodosia - by sea to Gurzuf, and then visited Yalta, Alupka, Bakhchisaray, Simferopol. Born on board the brig on the way to Gurzuf famous poem“The daylight has gone out...”
“The light of day has gone out;
The evening fog fell on the blue sea.
Make noise, make noise, obedient sail,
Worry beneath me, sullen ocean.
I see a distant shore
The lands of the midday are magical lands;
I rush there with excitement and longing,
Intoxicated with memories...
And I feel: tears were born in my eyes again;
The soul boils and freezes;
A familiar dream flies around me;
I remembered the crazy love of previous years,
And everything that I suffered, and everything that is dear to my heart,
Desires and hopes are a painful deception...”
No less famous is Pushkin’s poem “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”, in which a direct author’s voice is heard, returning the reader to the poet’s personal experiences:
Having finally left the north,
Forgetting feasts for a long time,
I visited Bakhchisarai
A dormant palace in oblivion.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828–1910)
Leo Tolstoy, a young officer of the Russian army, just promoted to ensign from the cadets, becomes a participant in the bloody events Crimean War, which essentially made him a writer. He fights on the 4th bastion, defending the city of Russian glory until his forced abandonment on August 27, 1855. Tolstoy writes to his brother about the city’s defenders: “The spirit in the troops is beyond all description. During times Ancient Greece there wasn’t so much heroism.” Having seen the war from the inside, the young writer would soon become known as the author of “ Sevastopol stories" Tolstoy visited Crimea for the second time in 1885, almost 30 years later, traveling with Prince S.S. Urusov, his friend, also a participant in the Sevastopol defense. Tolstoy then examined the revived Sevastopol with interest, and then went to the Urusovs in Simeiz. And finally, the last visit - in September 1901 - to the town of Gaspra, where his admirer Princess Sofya Panina invited the seriously ill writer. Tolstoy stayed in the Panin palace and recovered from his illness until July 1902. Here he worked on completing the story “Hadji Murat”. Here Chekhov and Gorky visit him. Summarizing Tolstoy's three stays in Crimea, we see that he lived on the peninsula for a total of almost two years. A.P. Chekhov, in a letter to M. Gorky, wrote about Tolstoy: “He likes Crimea terribly, it arouses joy in him, purely childish.”
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
Crimea turned out to be inseparable from the biography of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. A native of the neighboring Azov region, he first came here in 1888 and, like many, found himself forever fascinated by the nature of Crimea. In 1889, he came to Yalta for a short time and worked on the story “A Boring Story.” And in 1898, an increasing lung disease forced Chekhov to think about moving to Crimea for permanent residence. He buys a plot of land with a garden here and builds a house. This is how the Yalta period of Anton Pavlovich’s biography began. Since then, the realities of Yalta life at the turn of the century have been included in the writer’s work. Perhaps Chekhov’s most famous works were created here - the plays “Three Sisters”, “ The Cherry Orchard", the story "The Lady with the Dog". The flavor of resort life embraces the reader of this story right from the first lines: “They said that a new face had appeared on the embankment: a lady with a dog. Dmitry Dmitrich Gurov, who had lived in Yalta for two weeks and was used to it here, also became interested in the new faces. Sitting in the pavilion at Vernet, he saw a young lady, short, blonde, wearing a beret, walk along the embankment; A white spitz was running after her...” Soon after the death of the writer, through the efforts of his sister Maria Pavlovna, a memorial museum was opened in the house, which has since been considered one of the main attractions of Yalta.
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870–1938)
Apparently, Kuprin’s first visit to Crimea is connected with his reporting activities recently decade XIX V. And in 1900 Kuprin came to Yalta at the invitation of A.P. Chekhov, who introduces him to the circle of writers vacationing in Crimea. In this sense, we can say that Crimea gave a start in life to Kuprin as a fiction writer, introduced him to literary life Russia at that time. Many of the most famous works writers are associated with Crimea: “ White poodle», « Garnet bracelet"... Subsequently, Kuprin, who traveled to many Crimean places, found himself most closely connected with Balaklava, where he was even planning to buy a house. This is the period 1904–06, the period of creation of stories that are reminiscent of the sea and fishing. Kuprin is friends with the Black Sea fishermen, goes fishing with them, and “passes the exam” of fishing science to the famous leader of the Balaklava fishermen, Kolya Kostandi. Based on this period, the essays “Listrigons” and the story “Svetlana” with a dedication to fishermen friends are written.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870 –1953)
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin first came to Crimea as a nineteen-year-old boy in 1889 and fell in love with these places forever. By the way, his father, Alexey Nikolaevich, was a participant in the Sevastopol defense, so the future writer had heard a lot about Crimea since childhood. In the first years of the 20th century. Bunin repeatedly comes to Yalta, where he stays with Chekhov. The Crimean pages of the writer’s biography are reflected in the novel “The Life of Arsenyev.” The poems “Uchan-Su”, “On the Seashore”, “Chatyrdag” are inspired by Crimea.
Maxim Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov, 1868–1936)
Gorky’s first and rather serious acquaintance with Crimea, then still Alexei Peshkov, took place during his famous wanderings around Rus', which began in 1888. Gorky gets to know the life of Crimea from the inside, being hired as a loader, then a builder, then a laborer, communicating on various occasions with ordinary people. “Two Tramps”, “Taurian Chersonese”, “Crimean Sketches” were created based on these impressions. The now textbook-famous “Song of the Falcon” was born from a local legend heard from a shepherd near Alushta. Subsequently, already a writer whose fame was growing rapidly, Gorky lived in Crimea in 1901, 1902, 1905. Here he meets Chekhov, Bunin, L. Tolstoy, Korolenko, Chaliapin, Garin-Mikhailovsky, Ermolova. In 1917, Gorky lived in Koktebel with Maximilian Voloshin. The last visit of a proletarian writer to Crimea took place under Soviet rule, in 1935.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893–1930)
Vladimir Mayakovsky first came to Crimea in 1913 during a creative tour of the cities of southern Russia, where he, Igor Severyanin and other futurists gave lectures on literature and recited poetry. The poet’s subsequent visits to Crimea were of the same nature: literary work, performances. Since 1925, Mayakovsky regularly visits Crimea, especially Yalta. Fascinated by cinema, he collaborated with the oldest film studio in Russia, the Yalta film studio, and here, at the sight of the steamship “Theodor Nette,” Mayakovsky conceived the idea for the famous poem “To Comrade Nette – the Steamship and the Man.” Many other poems were written here, some with characteristic titles: “Crimea”, “Sevastopol - Yalta”, “Evpatoria”, “Yalta - Novorossiysk”
Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev (1873–1950)
Crimea appeared terrible in the tragic famous work Ivan Shmelev "Sun of the Dead". This documentary prose forever remained a monument to the denunciation of practical Bolshevism, a monument to the so-called “Red Terror”, the execution of many innocent victims of the revolution, among whom was Shmelev’s son, a monument to the revolutionary cruelty of the new government and the desecration of sacred places. Ivan Shmelev survived the terrible years of 1921-22 in Crimea and left for emigration forever.
Photo active, adventure, health tours 
Sergei Nikolaevich Sergeev-Tsensky (1875–1958)
Sergeev-Tsensky became perhaps the longest-living Crimean writer among major Russian writers. He lived in Alushta, on the southern coast of Crimea, with short breaks for more than 60 years, surviving two revolutions there, the Civil and the Great Patriotic War and many events Soviet history. He died and was buried there. At the end of the 1930s. Sergeev-Tsensky is working on a large novel, “The Sevastopol Strada,” dedicated to the first defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. Very little time will pass and the Great Patriotic War will break out and again the Crimeans and Russian sailors will have to stand up for the heroic defense of the city of Russian glory. The house of Sergeev-Tsensky was destroyed by a fascist bomb, but restored by the owner in 1946. Now in this house, on the slope of Eagle Mountain, a memorial museum for Sergeev-Tsensky has been established. Alushta, a resort town on the seashore, has attracted many writers. Here in 1927-28. Vladimir Mayakovsky spoke, A.I. visited Sergeev-Tsensky. Kuprin, Ivan Shmelev, Maxim Gorky, K.I. Chukovsky, A.S. Novikov-Priboy.
Maximilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (1877–1932)
Maximilian Voloshin, poet and artist, can probably be called one of the most “Crimean” figures of Russian culture. Dying, he bequeathed to transfer his own house to the House of Creativity of Writers of the Literary Fund, but in fact, even during Voloshin’s life, his “House of the Poet” in Koktebel, on the eastern coast of Crimea near Feodosia, became a shelter for many wonderful writers and artists of Russia. Today we cannot imagine Koktebel without the memory of Voloshin. The poet spent his childhood in Moscow, and in 1893 he and his mother Elena Ottobaldovna moved to Feodosia, where he entered the gymnasium. Subsequently, he traveled a lot throughout Russia and abroad, and in 1903, upon returning from France, mother and son began building their own house in Koktebel. Voloshin settled here during the revolution and Civil War, hiding victims of both “red” and “white” terror. In the 1920s Koktebel and its surroundings have become as attractive to ministers of muses from mainland Russia as the southern coast of Crimea used to be. With the approval of the People's Commissariat of Education, Voloshin's estate turned into a free House of Creative Workers, now Soviet culture. Maximilian Voloshin, who died on August 11, 1932 at home, was buried nearby - on Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar, on a rocky slope his grave is marked with a flat granite slab. In 1984, the Voloshin Memorial House-Museum was opened in Koktebel, and in 2000, on the basis of the museum, the ecological, historical and cultural reserve “Cimmeria M.A.” was created. Voloshin" (Cimmeria is Voloshin’s favorite ancient Greek name for Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region). Voloshin Cimmeria is depicted in many poems of the poet-artist and on his canvases:
Like in a small shell - the ocean
The great breath hums
How her flesh flickers and burns
Low tides and silver fog,
And her curves are repeated
In the movement and curl of the wave, -
So my whole soul is in your bays,
Oh, Cimmeria is a dark country,
Enclosed and transformed...
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892–1941)
Photo active, adventure, health tours
The fate of Marina Tsvetaeva is inseparable from the creative fate of Maximilian Voloshin. Soon after they met, Marina came to Koktebel for the first time in 1911, her friendship with Max and her passion for Crimea began. After the death of Tsvetaeva’s father, Marina, her husband Sergei Efron and their little daughter Ariadna decide to change their situation and spend the winter of 1913 in Crimea. They come to Feodosia, where they rent housing on Annenskaya Street. Not far away, on Boulevard, Marina’s sister Anastasia and her son Andrei settle. As she later recalled, it was here that perhaps the happiest period in the long-suffering fate of her poet sister passed. Voloshin came here to the sisters, and they visited him in Koktebel. After the death of Voloshin’s earthly life, Marina writes an entire book-memoir, “Living about Living,” asserting the immortality of her poet friend. “Between three deserts: sea, earth, heaven - your last before us, standing for us, with a wanderer’s staff in one, with the catch of a rainbow game in the other, with a staff to pass us by, with a rainbow to bestow us...” – writes Marina Tsvetaeva, mentally standing at the burial place of Voloshin on the slope of Mount Kuchuk-Yanyshar. In 2001, the House-Museum of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaev was opened in Feodosia.
Alexander Green (Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky, 1880–1932)
In the same year Voloshin left this world, his neighbor in Cimmeria, a resident of the town of Stary Krym, the romantic writer Alexander Green, the creator fantastic country"Greenland", famous among the youth of several generations for the books "Scarlet Sails" and "Running on the Waves". Alexander made a long voyage as a sailor in his youth, and since then the Black Sea has entered his life and work. Already being a writer, the author of " Scarlet Sails", he moved permanently to Feodosia, where he and his wife bought a small house on Galereynaya Street. The novel “Running on the Waves” was written here. In 1930, the couple moved to the town of Stary Krym. From there, the road that Green walked to Voloshin leads through the mountains to Koktebel, now it is called Green’s path. In 1960, a museum was opened in Green’s house in Old Crimea, and in 1970, Green’s house in Feodosia was museumized.
Photo active, adventure, health tours 
Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky (1892–1968)
K. G. Paustovsky, who first came here in 1934, did not find Alexander Green in Old Crimea. The writer began to “break through the wall of silence” around Greene’s name. The second visit was in the summer of 1935, while working on the layout of the story “The Black Sea”. Paustovsky’s stay in Old Crimea was longer in 1938. Here he spent May-July with his wife Valeria Valishevskaya and adopted son Sergei. This was the time of work on the book “Tales and Stories”, published in 1939. Paustovsky called Crimea the land of “peace, reflection and poetry.” It is no coincidence that half of his works were written on Crimean soil. The novels “Romance”, “Shining Clouds”, “Smoke of the Fatherland”, the story “The Black Sea” and the autobiographical six books “The Tale of Life” are replete with Crimean motifs. The stories “Sea Graft”, “Sailing Master”, “Breeze”, “Black Sea Sun”, “Grain of Sand” are filled with the Crimean theme. Feodosia impressions formed the basis of the stories “Lost Day”, “Ttimid Heart”, Koktebel ones are reflected in “The Silenced Sound”, “Sineve”, “Meeting”. The story “The Black Sea” was written in 1935 in Sevastopol, and some chapters - “Mountain Dew”, “The Storyteller” - were created under the impressions of trips to Old Crimea. The chapter “The Storyteller” is dedicated to Alexander Green and the place of his last refuge in Old Crimea. It also says a lot that for her honeymoon in 1949 with Tatyana Evteeva, last wife, with whom Paustovsky lived for twenty years, until the end of his life, he chose Old Crimea. Tatyana Alekseevna, by the way, became the prototype of the heroine of Arbuzov’s famous play “Tanya”. Paustovsky dedicated his book to her Golden Rose" Crimea for Paustovsky was “a land of peace, reflection and poetry.” Konstantin Georgievich wrote in the article “Memories of the Crimea”: “There are corners of our land so beautiful that every visit to them evokes a feeling of happiness” and shortly before his death, in the spring of 1968: “A flying ridge of clouds stood over the Crimea, and it is not clear why this evening seemed significant to me. The motor ship thundered in the roadstead...... In every smallness there was great depth."
In a house in Old Crimea, where in the 1950s. Paustovsky lived, and his memorial museum has been opened since 2006. Opened in May 2007 Memorial plaque on-site monitoring station environment Karadag biological station, where K. G. Paustovsky lived in the early 1950s.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899–1977)
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, who found himself on the peninsula in last period his life in his homeland. The Nabokov family fled from the advancing Red troops during the Civil War, there was some hope that the white Crimea would survive, and the writer’s father, the famous political figure Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, even became the Minister of Justice in the Crimean Regional Government in 1918. At one time, the Nabokovs found shelter in the palace of that same princess S.V. Panina in Gaspra, who in 1901-1902. hosted Leo Tolstoy. Nabokov Jr. visits Yalta, Bakhchisarai, lives briefly in Sevastopol, and visits M. Voloshin in Koktebel. From Sevastopol in the spring of 1919 on a ship with symbolic name“Nadezhda” The Nabokovs set sail for emigration. The poems of V.V. remind us of Crimea. Nabokov “Bakhchisarai Fountain” and “Yalta Pier”. In 1921 in England, Nabokov wrote a memoir poem “Crimea”, beginning with the following lines:
In spite of frantic worries
you, wild and fragrant land,
like a rose given to me by God,
sparkle in the temple of memory.
I left you in the darkness:
swinging, fire signs
there was an argument in the foggy sky
above the roar of the treacherous shores.
All around, ships stood on amber pillars in the bay...
Photo active, adventure, health tours
Arkady Petrovich Gaidar (Golikov, 1904–1941)
Having first visited Crimea (Alupka) in 1924, Gaidar then repeatedly rested and worked on the peninsula. Among other things, there is a special reason for this. After all, Arkady Petrovich is one of the most popular children's writers, and not just a person who writes about children, but a friend of children who was constantly among them. And in Crimea in 1925 the most important pioneer camp in the USSR - Artek. Gaidar arrived there with his son Timur in 1931, settled in the camp and spent whole days among the pioneers. Here he is working on the story " Distant countries" Artek itself became the setting for the story “Military Secret”. main character story - Natka Shegalova - comes to Artek as a pioneer leader. This is how Gaidar describes her first acquaintance with the children's health resort. “In blue trousers and a T-shirt, with a towel in her hands, Natka Shegalova walked down winding paths to the beach. When she came out onto the plane tree alley, she met newcomers climbing the mountain. They walked with bundles, trunks and baskets, cheerful, dusty and tired. They held hastily selected round stones and fragile shells. Many of them have already managed to fill their mouths with sour roadside grapes. - Great, guys! Where? – Natka asked, drawing level with this noisy crowd. “The people of Leningrad!.. The people of Murmansk!..” they eagerly shouted back to her...”
In 1934, the writer visited these places again, and in 1937 he lived in the Yalta House of Writers. In 1972, a memorial plaque to Arkady Gaidar was unveiled in Artek, but it was dismantled in the post-Soviet period, when the image of Gaidar began to be increasingly denigrated in modern Ukraine.
Photo active, adventure, health tours
Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov (1932 – 2009)
Vasily Aksenov played a special, to some extent prophetic, role in the history of relations between mainland Russia and Crimea with his world-famous novel “The Island of Crimea”. The novel was written in 1977 - 1979. partly right on Crimean soil, in Koktebel. However, it could only be published at that time abroad (in the American publishing house Ardis), because, although it was written in the genre of fiction, in which everything is permitted, it shocked the then Soviet literary bosses. In the novel, contrary to geographical and historical truth, Crimea is described as an island that was not surrendered by the Whites during the Civil War and turned out to be an “island of freedom” independent and separated from the Soviet state. Crimea is developing, following its own path - and developing quite harmoniously. Since the publication of the novel, it has, figuratively speaking, “shot” three times: the first time by the very fact of publication (abroad), the second time by becoming available to domestic readers in 1990, having been legally published in the USSR in the magazine “Yunost” and immediately becoming "novel of the year". And finally, for the third time, after the death of the author - in March 2014, when Crimea voted for independence in a referendum, secession from Ukraine in favor of Russia and indeed turned out to be a kind of Russian “island”. It is noteworthy that the Prime Minister Autonomous Republic Crimea and an active fighter for the independence of the peninsula from the “Maidan” Ukraine became the Prime Minister of Crimea Sergei Aksenov, the namesake of Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov.
A week-long tour, one-day hiking and excursions combined with comfort (trekking) in the mountain resort of Khadzhokh (Adygea, Krasnodar Territory). Tourists live at the camp site and visit numerous natural monuments. Rufabgo waterfalls, Lago-Naki plateau, Meshoko gorge, Big Azish cave, Belaya River Canyon, Guam gorge.
M. Voloshin “Bear Mountain”, watercolor
These days marks another birth anniversary famous poet Maximilian Voloshin, whose life and work were closely connected with Crimea. In this regard, let us recall quotes from his articles about the Crimean Tatars, whose history and culture he revered and knew very well.
1. The Crimean Tatars are a people in whom very strong and mature cultural poisons were grafted onto the primitive viable trunk of Mongolism, partly softened by the fact that they had already been previously processed by other Hellenized barbarians. This immediately caused a wonderful (economic-aesthetic, but not intellectual) flowering, which completely destroyed the primitive racial stability and strength. In any Tatar one can immediately feel a subtle hereditary culture, but it is infinitely fragile and unable to defend itself. One hundred and fifty years of brutal imperial rule over the Crimea tore the ground out from under their feet, and they can no longer put down new roots, thanks to their Greek, Gothic, Italian heritage.
Poet Silver Age M. Voloshin (1877-1932)
2. Tatar art: architecture, carpets, majolica, metal chasing - all this is over; There are still fabrics and embroidery left. Tatar women, by innate instinct, still continue, like silkworms, to weave precious plant patterns out of themselves. But this ability is also running out.
3. It is difficult to consider the fact that several great Russian poets visited Crimea as tourists or travelers, and that wonderful writers came here to die from tuberculosis as an introduction to Russian culture. But the fact that the lands were systematically taken away from those who loved and knew how to cultivate them, and those who knew how to destroy what had been established settled in their place; that the hardworking and loyal Tatar population was forced into a series of tragic emigrations to Turkey, in the fertile climate of the all-Russian tuberculosis health, everyone died out - namely, from tuberculosis - this is an indicator of the style and character of Russian cultural trade.
Voloshin's house in Koktebel
4. Never (...) this land, these hills and mountains and plains, these bays and plateaus, have experienced such free plant flowering, such peaceful and deep happiness” as in the “golden age of the Gireys”
Voloshin loved to paint landscapes about Koktebel, since he lived here most of his life
5. The Tatars and Turks were great masters of irrigation. They knew how to catch the smallest stream of soil water, direct it through clay pipes into vast reservoirs, they knew how to use the temperature difference, which produces exudates and dew, and they knew how to irrigate gardens and vineyards on the slopes of mountains, like a circulatory system. Hit any slate, completely barren hillside with a pickaxe and you will come across fragments of pottery pipes; at the top of the plateau you will find funnels with oval turned stones, which were used to collect dew; in any clump of trees that has grown under a rock, you will distinguish a wild pear and a degenerate grapevine. This means that this entire desert a hundred years ago was a blooming garden. This entire Mohammedan paradise has been completely destroyed.
6. In Bakhchisarai, in the Khan’s palace, turned into a museum Tatar art, around the artist Bodaninsky, a Tatar by birth, the last sparks of folk Tatar art still continue to smolder, fanned by the breath of several people guarding it.
7. The transformation of the Crimean Khanate into the Tauride province was not favorable for the Crimea: finally separated from the living waterways, leading through the Bosphorus and connected only by economic interests with the “wild field”, it became a Russian provincial backwater, no more significant than the Gothic, Sarmatian, and Tatar Crimea.
8. The Tatars provide, as it were, a synthesis of the entire diverse and variegated history of the country. Under the spacious and tolerant cover of Islam, Crimea's own authentic culture flourishes. The whole country from the Maeotian swamps to south coast turns into one continuous garden: the steppes bloom with fruit trees, the mountains with vineyards, the harbors with feluccas, the cities gurgle with fountains and hit the sky with white minarets.
9. Times and points of view change: for Kievan Rus the Tatars were, of course, a Wild Field, and the Crimean Khanate was for Moscow a formidable nest of robbers, pestering it with unexpected raids. But for the Turks - the heirs of Byzantium - and for the kingdom of Giray, who had already accepted in blood and spirit the entire complex legacy of the Crimea with its Greek, Gothic and Italian ores and, of course, the Russians were only a new rise of the Wild Field.
Here, in these folds of sea and land,
The mold did not dry out human cultures -
The space of centuries was cramped for life,
So far, we – Russia – have not arrived.
For one hundred and fifty years - from Catherine -
We have trampled the Muslim paradise,
They cut down the forests, opened up the ruins,
They plundered and ruined the region.
Orphaned sakli gape;
Gardens have been uprooted along the slopes.
The people left. The sources have dried up.
There are no fish in the sea. There is no water in the fountains.
But the mournful face of the numb mask
Goes to the hills of Homer's country,
And pathetically naked
Her spines and muscles and ligaments
Used articles by Maximilian Voloshin “Culture, art, monuments of Crimea”, “Fate of Crimea”
: Crimea was and will remain Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. But it will never be Bendery.
Condoleezza Rice:
In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev handed over Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea, to the people of Ukraine in honor of hundreds of years of Russian-Ukrainian friendship. At that time, this fact did not play any role. However, the collapse Soviet Union showed the strategic fallacy of this step. Russia suddenly found itself in a situation where its important assets and a large part of the population found themselves on the territory of newly independent Ukraine. The most important base of the Russian navy in Sevastopol was now located on the territory of another state. Along with almost 700,000 ethnic Russians, making up approximately 70% of the city's population.Condoleezza Rice:
For him (Putin - website), Kyiv’s policy of rapprochement with the West is an insult to Russia in a zero-sum game for loyalty former territories empires. The invasion of Crimea and its possible annexation under the flimsy pretext of caring for its Russian-speaking population is an answer to us.M.S. Gorbachev:
The annexation of Crimea should not have happened at all. But, alas, it happened.M.S. Gorbachev:
The referendum in Crimea, in fact, was still going on last years.M.S. Gorbachev:
The biggest mistake is if suddenly these opponents of Russia’s unification with Crimea manage to push Russia against Ukraine. But for Russians to fight with Ukrainians is absurd.Alexander Zaldostanov "Surgeon":
Sevastopol is a more Russian city than Moscow.Crimea has always been for creative people not just beautiful and inspiring, but some kind of sacred place. Poets, writers, and artists came here and created their masterpieces. Why was this small peninsula so touching?
Let's go and look at Crimea with different eyes in order to understand where Russian and modern classics drew inspiration from.
Crimea through the eyes of writers
Let us first remember Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The writer lived in Gurzuf, rented a room in Yalta, received treatment, rested and created immortal works. He finally settled in Yalta in 1899, having completed the construction of his own house. Anton Pavlovich wrote to friends: “ My Yalta dacha turned out to be very comfortable. Cozy, warm and good view. The garden will be extraordinary. I planted it myself, with my own hands”.
“Belaya Dacha” has been preserved unchanged for posterity; the Chekhov Museum is located here. In Yalta, the playwright wrote “The Lady with the Dog”, the magnificent plays “The Cherry Orchard”, “Three Sisters”, the story “In the Ravine” and several short stories.
In 1900, Chekhov saw the production of his plays “Uncle Vanya” and “The Seagull” on the stage of the Sevastopol Drama Theater.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy participated in the Crimean War in the defense of Sevastopol, here he wrote “Sevastopol Stories”. After 30 years, the writer visited Simeiz and, as he admitted, looked at everything in a new way. “ This is where, or in general in the south, those who want to live well should begin to live... Secluded, beautiful, majestic…”
Leo Tolstoy was treated for two years in Koreiz, where Chaliapin, Kuprin, Korolenko, Gorky came to visit him, and they were all fascinated by Crimea. The famous “Song of the Falcon” was written by Maxim Gorky under the impression of the splendor of southern nature.
Kuprin came to rest in Balaklava every summer and autumn, and often went to sea with fishermen. He dedicated the essays “Listrigons” to them. The writer witnessed the uprising on the cruiser “Ochakov” and angrily spoke out against the brutal reprisal against the rebels, after which the commander of the Black Sea Fleet organized the expulsion of the writer from Crimea. In Balaklava, on the embankment, there is a monument to Alexander Kuprin.
Located in Feodosia Literary Museum Alexander Green, who lived here for six years. The brilliant novel “Running on the Waves,” dedicated to the writer’s wife, was written here.
Konstantin Paustovsky made an invaluable contribution to the restoration of Green’s creative heritage; he often came to Old Crimea and worked here on the story “The Black Sea,” in which Alexander Green became the prototype for Hart.
Bunin, Griboyedov, Gogol, Sergeev-Tsensky, Stanyukovich left their mark on the Crimean land, inspiring them to create works of genius.
Crimea poetic
In 1820, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin visited Taurida, ending up in southern exile here. For such a “punishment” he was immensely grateful to the authorities, because he fell in love with the picturesque nature. The poet wrote about his stay in the city that he bathes in the sea and gorges himself on grapes.
“A young cypress tree grew two steps from the house; every morning I visited him and became attached to him with a feeling similar to friendship" This cypress still grows in Gurzuf not far from the fountain to which Pushkin came every morning to drink water.
In the Bakhchisaray Palace, the poet was fascinated by the Fountain of Tears:
“Fountain of love, living fountain!
I brought you two roses as a gift.
I love your silent conversation
And poetic tears.”
Pushkin traveled the peninsula from Kerch to Simferopol, visited Bakhchisarai, the entire southern coast, and this is how Crimea appeared before Pushkin:
“Magic land! a delight to the eyes!
Everything is alive there: hills, forests,
Amber and yakhont grapes,
Dolin's sheltered beauty.”
It’s easy to get to Gurzuf by car to see with your own eyes the silent ancient contemporaries of the poet. Nowadays the Pushkin Museum, consisting of six halls, is open here.
In 1825, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz traveled from Tarkhankut to Yevpatoria, visiting Alushta and Chatyrdag. The results of the trip resulted in the cycle “Crimean Sonnets”.
In 1876, the peninsula was visited by Nikolai Nekrasov, who came here to improve his health on the advice of Doctor Botkin. In Yalta, the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” was completed and several poems were written.
The name of Maximilian Voloshin is inextricably linked with Crimea. The House of the Poet, which he founded and bequeathed to his friends, was opened. On Mount Kuchuk-Yenishar there is Voloshin’s grave, where the flow of admirers of his work never ends. He was buried here according to his wishes.
“And over living mirrors
A dark mountain will appear,
Like a scattering flame
Petrified fire.”
Osip Mandelstam visited Voloshin several times. In 1920, he was arrested in Feodosia by White Guard counterintelligence and after that he returned to the peninsula only in 1933, settling in Old Crimea.
Vladimir Mayakovsky did not ignore Crimea either:
“The wave sighs a little,
and, echoing her,
Breeze
over Evpatoria.”
In 1913, together with Igor Severyanin, the poet toured the peninsula, reading poetry and lectures.
Anna Akhmatova dedicated about 20 poems and the poem “By the Sea” to Crimea and Sevastopol, where she describes her childhood.
The list goes on; talented individuals in any century have found joy for the soul in the Crimean expanses. You can quickly and easily get to any place associated with the name of your favorite poet or writer.
Planet Crimea - a popular portal with reviews of holidays in Crimea, publishes quotes from reviews about Crimea written by famous writers And poets of the 19th century and 20th centuries Reviews of holidays in Crimea in our time can be both enthusiastically positive and sharply negative. And among them there are many that begin with the words “it was better before”! But it turns out that the reviews of writers and poets about Crimea were also very diverse. Among famous people of past centuries there were both ardent fans of holidays in Crimea and active opponents. They praised or scolded, but they always talked and wrote! The nature of Crimea, its cities, its sea, its people have not left anyone indifferent for many centuries in a row.
Crimean nature has always captivated travelers with its diversity: lush vegetation of the southern coast, bright blue sky, dazzling sun, whitening mountain tops, endless steppes and bright colors orchards.
All this beauty just begs to be put on canvas and paper. The Crimean land has been sung many times in poems, stories, novels and travel accounts.
Traveling around Crimea was not always easy and pleasant, but tourists even in the 19th century sought to conquer the southern coast of the peninsula, despite the inconveniences. What is there written evidence from those times:
“... Travelers sick with curiosity go to marvel at the picturesque nature of the South Coast. Even the ladies, despite the fact that they must ride 250 miles on horseback and be exposed to anxiety and dangers unusual for them, undertake this difficult journey - of course, they cry, repent of its continuation, but at the end they talk with delight about the miracles they have seen.”
V. Bronevsky. 1815
Great poets inspiredly described the beauty of Crimea. From a letter from Alexander Pushkin in the summer of 1820:
“Before dawn I fell asleep, meanwhile the ship stopped in sight of Yurzuf. Waking up I saw a captivating picture: multi-colored mountains shone, the flat roofs of the huts... from a distance seemed like beehives attached to the mountains, poplars, like green columns, rose slenderly between them, on the right the huge Ayu-Dag... And all around was the blue, clear sky, and the bright sea, and the shine, and midday air...
In Yurzuf I lived in situ, swam in the sea and ate myself on grapes... I loved, waking up at night, listening to the sound of the sea - and I listened to it for hours. A young cypress tree grew two steps from the house; Every morning I visited him and became attached to him with a feeling similar to friendship.”
Five years later, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz admired the southern coast of Crimea: “The part of Crimea between the mountains and the sea is one of the most beautiful areas in the world. The sky is as clear and the climate is as mild as in Italy, but the greenery is more beautiful..."
« The sea and the local nature captivate and touch me. Now I go every day - most often to Oreanda - this is the best thing I’ve seen here so far” - these lines belong to the pen of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, who in 1876 was treated in Crimea under the supervision of the outstanding Russian doctor S.P. Botkin.
The name of another doctor and brilliant playwright, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, is inextricably linked with Yalta.
“My Yalta dacha turned out to be very comfortable. Cozy, warm and good view. The garden will be extraordinary. I planted it myself, with my own hands.” Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, 1899.
However, like many creative personalities, Chekhov was not constant in his passions. Here are notes from his first visit to Crimea:
“The Tauride steppe is dull, monotonous, devoid of distance, colorless... and in general similar to the tundra... Judging by the steppe, by its inhabitants and by the absence of what is cute and captivating in other steppes, Crimean peninsula does not have and cannot have a bright future."
“Yalta is a cross between something European, reminiscent of the views of Nice, with something bourgeois-fair. Box-shaped hotels in which unfortunate consumptives languish... these faces of idle rich people with a thirst for penny adventures, a perfume smell instead of the smell of cedars and the sea , a miserable, dirty pier, sad lights in the distance on the sea, the chatter of young ladies and gentlemen who have come here to enjoy nature, about which they understand nothing." (about Yalta)
“For two weeks now I’ve been sitting alone in a one and a half ruble room in the Tatar-hairdressing city of Yalta... There are many young ladies in Yalta and not a single pretty one. There are many writers, but not a single talented person. A lot of wine, but not a single drop of decent wine." (again about Yalta)
Yalta residents have long forgiven their beloved writer for harsh statements and sacredly honor the memory of the playwright: his house-museum is one of the main attractions of the city.
Another great writer of the 20th century, Mikhail Bulgakov, also did not like Yalta. After reading his comments, it is unlikely that anyone will want to rush to Crimea like an arrow:
"People who are very upset should not come here. nervous system
. I explain Koktebel: the wind blows in it all year round every day, nothing happens without wind, even in the heat. And the wind irritates neurasthenics." (about Koktebel)
“Yalta is good, Yalta is also disgusting, and these properties are constantly mixed in it. You immediately have to bargain brutally. Yalta is a resort city: visitors... are looked at as a lucrative catch.” (about Yalta)
“Nothing can be worse than swimming in Yalta... Imagine a torn-up cobblestone street in Moscow. This is a beach. It goes without saying that it is covered with scraps of newspaper paper... and, of course, there is not an inch where you could spit without getting into someone else's pants or bare stomach." (again about Yalta)
“There was not a soul on the streets and no signs of life... We went to look for people, to look for impressions, but there were no people in the full sense of the word, no public places in Yalta. There was only one callous city club, in which there were, in our opinion , some kind of freaks, but they didn’t let us in there either as non-members of the club.” (about Yalta in winter)
“This picturesque white town in summer... in winter looked as bankrupt as Yalta. The Khan’s palace was locked, and this is almost the only attraction that Bakhchisarai had at that time. In spite of everything, we went to look for the colors of this legendary corner, but after rummaging city, they found nothing but depressing silence." (Bakhchisaray)
But not all writers were so strict towards Crimea and its cities. Sevastopol - a city worthy of worship can rightfully be proud of the volumes of poems, songs and novels dedicated to him.
In the famous “Sevastopol Stories,” Leo Tolstoy describes his feelings from his first stay in Sevastopol during the Crimean War:
“It cannot be that, at the thought that you are in Sevastopol, a feeling of some kind of courage, pride does not penetrate your soul, and that the blood does not begin to circulate faster in your veins...”
And these are the lines of Konstantin Paustovsky about Sevastopol:
“On the day of departure, Sevastopol again appeared before me majestic, simple, full of consciousness of its valor and beauty, it appeared as the Russian Acropolis - one of the best cities on our land.”
We will end with the words of not a poet, not a writer, but a person who spent a lot of time in Crimea, who sincerely loved it and did a lot for the development of the peninsula. The last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, walking along the paths of the park near the Livadia Palace, often said: “I wish I never left here.”And many travelers who were forever conquered by the Crimean land would willingly subscribe to these words.
Based on materials: Crimean blog. Unexplored places, secrets and riddles, historical facts about Crimea and the cities of Crimea.