NB: This is not a ‘good’ translation (every day brings a bag full of nasty surprises to someone’s ego bubble – I am in big troubles with tenses here). But i tried to preserve original author’s style. Wide strokes of native English speakers brush are Very Welcome
http://rozamira.org/da/jizn.htm
Life of Daniil Andreev Told by His Wife
In remote times - they seem remote by number of events that separate us and them - biographies usually began with listing of genealogy lineages. Probably, this close glazing into the terrain roots of personality is meaningful.
Father of Daniil Andreev - famous Russian writer Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev - was born in Orlovsk gubernia [province, a major administrative subdivision of the Imperial Russia] on that magnificent Russian terrain which was the native land of so many - inspiring and different - Russian writers. According to the family legend, father of Leonid Andreev was the illegitimate son of Oryol landowner Karpov (the name is yet unknown) and domestic girl Glafira. Barin [a Russian nobleman] married the girl to shoemaker Andreev - whence a surname originated. Mother of Leonid Nikolaevich, Anastasia Nikolaevna, - is the orphan daughter of bankrupted Polish ‘szlachcic’ [nobleman] Patzkovsky.
Daniil’s mother was polish by father Alexandra Mihajlovna Veligorskaja. Family name Veligorskije – is a [Russificated] form of a patrimonial name of one of the branches of Vielgorski Dukes (Vielgurski is more correct), deprived from their title and possessions for their participation in 1863 revolt. Alexandra Mihajlovna by maternal line was Ukrainian. Her mother, and grandmother of Daniil, was Evrosinya Varfolomeevna Shevchenko. The name Shevchenko, widespread in Ukraine, is not a concurrence, but family tights with Taras Shevchenko [Ukrainian poet]: Varfolomey Shevchenko was his second cousin, brother-in-law and blood-brother [ritual religious bonds between persons of godly, not mundane nature].
On November, 2nd, 1906, all these patrimonial lineages had been woven together in Berlin, when the second son of Leonid Nikolaevich and Aleksandra Mihajlovna, who was given a name Daniil by mother, was born.
Daniil Leonidovich always was - even up to strangeness - indifferent to his genealogical roots, never tried to carry out any genealogic research. All materials reported below are result of research; one could almost call them investigations, of join efforts of Oryol Literary museum employees and Olga Vasilevna Rojtsyna, the wife of the second cousin of Daniil’s brother Anatoly Mefodevich Levitsky.
Destiny was glazing into newborn’s cradle with awe and lucidity.
26 year-old Shurochka, absolutely healthy and cherished by her husband, has died from a ‘postnatal fever’ soon after giving birth to her second son. In many memoirs of contemporaries her darling, light image was lovingly kept together with accounts of how heartbreaking was her death for Leonid Nikolaevich. In some memoirs he appears going mad from suffering and tragedy. He could not stand seeing the newborn who was the cause of his wife’s death. It seemed that the child was doomed. But fortunately soon Elizaveta Mihajlovna Dobrova, the senior sister of Aleksandra Mihajlovna, has arrived from Moscow to Berlin. She has taken the orphan baby in which a life was hardly noticeable, to Moscow where the child found a wonderful family. This family can not be named differently but a native to Daniil. Up to six years Daniil had been taken continuous care by mother of Elizaveta and Alexandra, Busen’ka [loving name for ‘grandma’], Evrosinya Varfolomeevna Shevchenko. Iron-willed and strong-minded, she used unconditional sincere respect of everybody, all close and distant acquaintances surrounding her.
Perhaps, in our modern Babylon, with towers which fall long before the middle of construction is achieved, shapes of cities are almost indiscernible. And in fact each city had the unique spiritual shape, influencing spiritual outlook of its inhabitants: A person, living in Tver’, differed from a Petersburger, moscovite – from a person, living in Orlov.
Moscow accompanied childhood and adolescent years of Daniil Andreev.
Before entering Kremlin the child was removing a headdress at any season of the year despite of babysitter’s cries: he knew that that was the only way to enter Kremlin.
A Temple of Christ the Savior. It is vain to argue about its architectural perfection or imperfection as that building was a symbol of Moscow, and the image of the White Temple above a bend of Moscow- river and Andreev creativeness are inseparable.
Very typical for earlier Moscow Dobrov’s family lived in Small Levshinsky Lane. Till 1960-ties there was a two-storey small house, nothing remarkable. Building was very old, has gone through fire during Napoleon besieging Moscow. Such houses in Moscow ane known as prior-Napoleonic. Dobrovs lived on the first floor, and a kitchen and any auxiliary rooms were situated in a cellar with abrupt and narrow ladder leading there.
The entrance door was directly from a Small Levshinsky Lane – with a large copper plate on the door which read ‘Doctor Phillip Aleksandrovich Dobrov’. After entering the house, it was necessary to mount several wide wooden steps, and then a huge, in all wall, very beautiful mirror met everybody who entered the premises. A door with big white glasses directed futher to the left, into foyer. To the right from foyer there was a door to Phillip Aleksandrovich cabinet where his son Alexander Filippovich lived then; afterwards it was Daniil Leonidovich's room, and even later - ours with him, our favorite room, which was preserved in the book ‘Russian gods’ in the name of thechapter ‘From a small room’.
The door to the left from a foyer conducted into a hall. I have found it divided by curtains into several separate zones in which all senior generation of family huddled: Phillip Aleksandrovich, Elizaveta Mihajlovna and one more sister - Ekaterina Mihajlovna Mitrofanova.
It had occurred after 1917 Revolution when the whole Russian traditional mode of life in meeting human needs has been spoiled by ‘condensation’ and ‘community apartments’, which didn’t bring happiness to anybody, and spoiled more significant quantity of human lives than war, prisons and prison camps.
The hall played an immense role in Daniil's happy childhood. Dobrov’s house was the patriarchal Moscow house, hospitable and wholehearted. The house was opened for plenty of the most different, often discordant with each other people united on an intellectual level, breadth of interests and respect to each other.
I have still found echoes of it, as I have found a huge table in a frontward part of the partitioned hall, which had been moved apart on holidays with plug-in boards, in my opinion to up to five meters in length.
The room next to a hall previously was Phillip Aleksandrovich and Elizaveta Mihajlovna's bedroom, and at a door dividing these two rooms, more exactly - at a keyhole - small Daniil was sticking out, examining Shalyapin, Bunin, Skryabin, actors of the Art Theatre, Gorkiy, and many other Dobrov visitors.
Daniil not only loved Dobrov family – everybody loved them, - not only perceived this family as native, but often repeated: ‘How it is good, that I grew in Dobrov family, instead of being raised by father’.
Daniil's children's room was situated further along a corridor leading from a foyer into apartment. I have not found it any more, and only from his stories I know that all along the room, at a level of children's height, the portraits of governors of the invented by Daniil Tzar dynasty were hanging - an echo of his remembrance that had amazed his children's soul from ‘The Tsars’Gallery’ in the Kremlin where on the ceiling remarkable mosaic portraits of Grand dukes and Moscow Tsars were laid.
Daniil started to write very early, in the childhood. He wrote verses and prose: a huge epopee where action took place in interplanetary space. Planets were not those known to us, but invented. They had their own religious cults, which naturally were based on data, read from a children's adaptation of the Greek myths, but with very nice Daniil’s own addition: except for traditional Greek Supreme gods, gods of war and goddesses of love, there was also invented by Daniil god of Joy.
Up to school years Daniil studied at home. He had a teacher - to my shame, I forgot his name - obviously, he was a clever person and a talented teacher. The active and playful boy, upon an agreement with this teacher, restrained his character for two Sunday awards: if he behaved ‘well’ all the week long (possibly, the concept of ‘goodness’ was very extensible) then on Sunday the teacher drew to him one more letter of the Indian alphabet and carried him across new (for him) Moscow route of a tram.
Knowing that this spoilt, kind, inventive and playful little boy had cheerful and tender childhood, the following story sounds quite shockingly.
Beloved Grandma Evrosinya Varfolomeevna has died, when her favorite grandson was six years old. The grandson was ill with diphtheria, and the grandmother who looked after him, had seized the same diphtheria. The grandson recovered, the grandmother died.
The recovering child did see neither her death, nor funeral. Dobrov family did not know, how to tell him about beloved Grandma death.
Alexandra Filippovna, senior Dobrov daughter, has taken upon herself that difficult task. She started telling to the child that beloved Grandma was recovering in hospital, but started missing her daughter, Daniil’s mother; that to see her, it is necessary to die, but Grandma worries, if Daniil would allow that.
Diligence of Aleksandra Filippovna gradually led to that the boy wrote to the grandmother the letter where he let the Grandma join her daughter in paradise.
But melancholy about grandmother, desire to see unknown mother and conception of death as a road to Paradise which has developed in a children's soul, have led to unexpected result. In the summer after separation with beloved Grandma Dobrov family and Daniil lived nearby small Black river where his father Leonid Andreev had a small house (but not in his house), and the boy was caught on the bridge when he was going to drawn - not from suffering, but from his passionate desire to see the lost relatives.
The childhood turned into adolescence which coincided with 1917 Revolution and Russia being reduced to rubbles. The life became difficult and hungry, each family searched for any way to survive. F.A.Dobrov was preparing an unusual yeast supplement which was very useful and in great demand; it was known as ‘yeasts of doctor Dobrov’. Apparently, yeasts should be drunk, and it is not clear, why anybody in the family, including the inventor himself, did not keep the recipe...
Children Daniil and Tanya, his girlfriend from the age of three, a classmate in school and then his lifelong friend, Tatyana Ivanovna Olovjanshnikova, Morozova by husband, carried yeasts in accordance with orders across all Moscow. Having begun with these business campaigns, Daniil then wandered across Moscow alone during his young years, frequently all nights long - since evening till dawn.
Dobrovs were an orthodox family. Family celebrated all orthodox holidays, observed fastings; but there was no intolerance in them: everybody, being close with this family, was free in own beliefs, principles and even doubts. One of close friends of the house was an actress of Art Theatre, Nadezda Sergeevna Butova. From all her theatric roles I know only a role of mother Stavrogina in ‘Demons’. She has opened depth and spiritual beauty of orthodox rituals to 15-year old Daniil, he remembered that the rest of his life with gratitude.
But he was religious not by education, not by tradition, but by the whole of his personality makeup.
He studied in a private gymnasium which he graduated already as the school of the Soviet type. The gymnasium has been founded by Evgenia Albertovna Repman and Nadezda Fedorovna Fedorova. It was located in Merzlyakovsky Lane and known as ‘Repmanovsky’.
Daniil loved gymnasium very much and, apparently, had a reason for that. Unusual to an educational institution fact tells about an atmosphere in gymnasium. After 1917 Revolution Evgenia Albertovna lived in Sudak, Crimea. Being in a poor health, with paralyzed legs, she had no means of survival. Therefore her former pupils in gymnasium who graduated in 1920-ies, collected for her money on monthly basis. They proceeded to support her financially until the beginning of the World War II; and grand role in gathering this money belonged to Daniil.
I think, that his dream about a creation of a special school - the dream of all his life which was reflected in ‘the Rose of the World’ (education of superior, improved type of personality) - has soul roots in an original atmosphere of this gymnasium.
This dream is the creation of school for ethically gifted children; not young artists, biologists or wonder-kids -musicians, but children possessing special, namely sincere ethical properties of soul*.
*From what I know from Daniil's story, among every possible inventions of the 1920-ies was a story similar to this one: the destiny of three persons, connected with something like such group is known: one of them sunk rescuing a drowning man; the second left for a cave monastery on Caucasus; the third replaced a son to the mother who has left for monastery.
* * *
One girl, I shall name only her name, Galya, studied in one class with Daniil, - who he was fond of in the childhood and loved for many years since then. She did not love him; both their adolescence and young years were marked with a press of these troubled relationships of a deep friendship and non-reciprocated love. There was also a period of reciprocated love, and that is so vaguely referred to as a friendship – a deep sincere interest in each other, the mutual and deprived from any egoism desire of goodness, mutual understanding, - were kept to his utmost death.
Galya was the person of rare nobleness, charm and womanly hood. The cycle of poems ‘Moonstones’ is devoted to her.
Here it would be necessary to start to tell about Daniil Andreev's youth.
But I shall not do it. It is untimely. He has passed very dark and dangerous circles in the youth. No, he was neither drunkard, nor debauchee, anything ‘dark’ in usual sense of this term was not present in his life. In his life everything of the most essential nature always laid at a plane of irrational. The main burden of the terrible roads which he had passed during his young years was in plane of unreal. If these dark roads were absent, he would not write much of what he had written later, - the writer writes what his soul knows; it is impossible to invent anything - there would be no art in an invention. His first marriage pertains to his early marriage on university classmate at the Higher Literary Courses where he studied after graduating school. The marriage was strange and, certainly, he felt very guilty about this woman; that guiltiness he knew and remembered all life long. And she repaid him for a harm done to her with a friendship for all life. She began, much later, her efforts about his liberation from a prison and when I returned from a prison - helped me to take care about him.
I would like to note that the whole Daniil's life was accompanied by sincere, devoted friendship of women.
* * *
After graduation from Higher Literary Courses, he understood, that anything he had written could not be printed. Any fluctuations, any blackouts of soul never concerned his creativity, his truthfulness. Poet Daniil Andreev had not a place in the Soviet reality of that time.
The way out was found for him by his cousin Alexander Filippovich, a son of Phillip Aleksandrovich Dobrov. He could not become the architect after graduation from Architectural Institute because of encephalitis and had to work as a designer. He taught Daniil Leonidovich to write fonts, and that enabled him to earn a modest life.
Daniil never ceased to write.
Unusual features of Daniil’s personality defined also features of his creative talent:
- Palpable, real - using his own term - experience of other reality. That was the vision of the Heavenly Kremlin
above the Kremlin terrestrial appeared to him when he was fifteen;
- Stunning by its force and repeatedly proven experience of vicinity of Saint Seraphim in a temple during reading of orthodox Akafist to the God;
- Pre-sensation of an image of the Beast connected with an essence of a state, understood and described by Daniil later;
- Sensation, almost vision of woman-demons, dominating the Great cities;
- A powerful full of happiness touch to those whom he later named Elements of nature: fine creatures, spirits of terrestrial elements.
Andreev’s attitude to nature cannot be named as a love, considering under a word ‘love’ that usually is understood: an aesthetic admiration and comprehension of a vivacity of unpolluted ecological environment.
Everything around him: the Earth and the Sky, the Wind and the Snow, the Rivers and Flowers - was alive in direct, instead of figurative sense.
I remember, into what state of delight I brought him once when I admitted that I do not have doubts about real existence of protective home spirits and that I am a their friend – and therefore my place is so cozy...
He went barefoot always whenever possible. He was telling that he feels the Earth absolutely differently in different places. To my indignation: ‘Well, the Earth, as I understand it, is the only thing that it is possible to feel on dirty city asphalt!’ – He replied: ‘Impersonal sensation of human weight, very strong’.
Everything that is written in his big work ‘the Rose of the World’ about the nature had gone through him directly, as well as those chapters of the book ‘Russian gods’ devoted to nature.
During summers he lived near Moscow and in Crimea, but most of all he liked to leave for Trubchevsk. Unfortunately, I do not remember, how he has gotten there for the first time. But after seeing Trubchevsk for the first time he remained fascinated by these places. He liked pedestrian trips lasting for many days, almost always alone, barefooted, with a poor stock of simple meal (he ate a little in general) and tobacco – he was a chronic smoker. He was spending nights in casual haystacks, on a moss in a forest.
These travel inspired Daniil to write many poems. And poem ‘Nemerecha’ is the description of one of such trips.
* * *
We got acquainted in March, 1937. The person very close to both of us had acquainted us. He called Daniil on phone and asked him to walk down to the street. We were approaching Small Levshinsky Lane in the direction of a small house, and towards us a high, thin, harmonious, despite of being round-shouldered, person with very easy and fast gait was coming from the door of this house. There was a strong snow and I have remembered: ‘Blok’s’ night snowfall, the high person with swarthy face and dark narrow eyes. He had a very warm hand. In that way he entered my life, and I entered ‘The Dobrov’s house’ as everybody called it.
In 1937 I found the house in the sequent state: ‘elderly Dobrovs’ - Phillip Aleksandrovich already left work at the Second Town hospital and had a small private practice; Elizaveta Mihajlovna, a midwife was not working either.
The third of Veligorsky sisters, Ekaterina Mihajlovna lived together with them. She worked as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, considering that insane persons require care and kindness the most. All three of them, as I already wrote, lived in the big room behind curtains, and the forward part of this room served as a dining room and in the same place there was a grand piano on which Phillip Aleksandrovich played in the evenings.
Except for the elderly family members and Daniil, Dobrov’s daughter, Alexandra Filippovna, and her husband, Alexander Viktorovich Kovalensky, a very interesting person, with original, somehow ‘cold-ardent’ mind lived in the third room belonging to the family. Translator of Konopnitskoj, Slovak, Ibsen, he was the unusual poet and writer. His works were not printed. He was reading his works to few friends. All his works were destroyed on Lubyanka - he and his wife were arrested on our ‘case’. In Daniil’s youth Alexander Viktorovich had significant and sometimes overwhelming disempowering influence on him.
Dobrov’s have not weaned from a habit to live with the open door. And this door was opened in a foyer where all tenants of an apartment and all visitors were passing by, and among tenants there was also a woman who had received a room under the warrant of People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs [NKVD]. They have lost so many friends in Lubyanka bowels in 1937! All victims were named in one of the chapters of the novel ‘Wanderers of night‘ which referred to ‘Martyrolog’. Daniil Leonidovich started to write this novel in 1937. Before starting it he worked on the poem ‘A song about Monsalvata’, somewhat based on medieval legends. He did not finish this poem and never returned back to it.
* * *
Since 1937, in essence, our common life with him was already underway, at first as very close friends, later as a husband and a wife.
The same way our family lived, large circle of people lived in those years, therefore I shall try to tell what our life was like.
The overwhelming majority of people lived at that time very poorly. Almost all lived in municipal apartments where, generally, where absolutely alien people incompatible with each other were violently piled up.
Now it is accepted that at that time frequent reductions of prices were common. Probably, I do not remember it; but I remember well, how we were buying 100 grams of oil or a thin slice of sausage - it was really very tasty and many kinds of sausages were available, but everybody looked at their prices... Also Muscovites were sending packages with macaroni to relatives in province.
But that was only a background whence the wholeness of life was emerging. The real life was comprised of excellent concerts in the Large Conservatory Hall; frequent meetings with friends – three or four persons at once, with muffled (from neighbors) conversations and discussions on abstract themes which apparently were of utmost importance for us.
Daniil Andreev who was writing a poem about Monsalvat at that time, was not only comprehensible in his obsession with these images, he was also infinitely precious and necessary for all of us. Because for us, Russians, all those involved into the Russian culture, the theme of the hidden sacred relic bearing the spiritual help to thirsting for it into the surrounding us terrible world, was, possibly, the most precious gift.
Probably, Rimsky-Korsakov opera ‘The Legend About Invisible City of Kitezh and Maiden Fevronia’ was not performed at the Big theatre in those years: it were not only us who understood urgency of the hidden sacred relic, but also those who destroyed orthodox Temples which were obvious relics; those who has reduced teaching of history at schools to the tendentious story about revolts and revolutionary movements where peasant revolts in Germany directly followed Spartacus story; those who broke crosses on Vladimir Solovev’s, Yasukov’s and Khomyakov’s tombs.
Orthodox Church with pulled out bells performed the Liturgy. There are no words to express worship for this unfading feat; it will be never stirred up by any external alluvial lie. The church has carried silent fire of candles in the hands held down by shackles.
Wagner's music sounded on concerts at the Conservatory, and there we heard sound of Monsalvat bells; ‘Loengrine’ was performed at the Big theatre - most likely because of thoughtlessness of Bolshevic officials ...
I do not know how to describe that atmosphere of weakening, sickening fear in which all of us lived during those years. It is difficult to outline ‘we’ - anyway, I meant all those whom I knew.
I think, that such fear [as in Bolshevik Russia after 1917], and during so long period, had not been felt during history of the civilized mankind before. First, the fear was manifested by quantity of groups of population exposed to it; secondly, because for inception of this fear no reason was necessary; and certainly, because of long-term extent of horror crippling our souls. It is a lie that 1937 (‘thirty damned... ‘, etc.) was the most terrible. Simply in 1937 the huge snake has crept up closely to communists, here was the reason to shout about it. And everything has begun from the beginning, since 1917 - 1918.
Personally for me sensation of this constricting fear on a throat, sometimes loosening its grip, sometimes strangling, appeared in 1931 – I was 16 when my uncle was arrested along Industrial party process. That expectation full of horror – ‘this night they will come here for my relatives!’ – was known to every woman. Many of those, who during the whole night was sitting still and unmoved in their expectations, or, sobbing, where mongering all over apartment because of half-hour delay of husband from work – ‘he has been taken in the street!’ – are simply not alive any longer. Some women even now are afraid to tell their stories.
That life, described close to reality, was a background of the complex action developed in the novel ‘Wanderers of night ‘.
In Moscow fallen asleep from horror, under a vigilant surveillance from all Lubyanka windows, which were brightly illuminated all the night long, the small group of close friends prepares to the time when the tyranny pressing everybody will fail and the spiritual food will be utmost necessary to people thirsting for it during wingless and terrible epoch. Each of these dreamers prepares to forthcoming changes in own way. The young architect, Jennie Morgenshtern, brings drawings of a Temple of the Sun of the World which should be built on Vorobjev Mountains. (By the way, it is the same place where the new Moscow University had been built later.) This temple became a symbol of our group. A cross crowns the Temple and the emblem of winged heart in the winged sun is inherent to it.
The supervisor, scientist Leonid Fedorovich Glinsky, a researcher of culture, history and mythology of India (a tribute of passionate love of Daniil to India), was the author of the interesting theory of alternation of red and dark blue epochs in history of Russia. Colors - red and dark blue - are conditional, but this conventionality is clear: dark blue as dominance of the spiritual, mystical, and red - as prevalence of material.
Perhaps, the greatest loss connected with destruction of the novel, was Moscow which was alive in it. Moscow appeared in the novel not like one of many ‘descriptions’ of Moscow of that period, but as alive, multi-plane, tragic city!
The protagonists of the novel met on the first presentation of the Fifth symphony of Shostakovich in the Large Conservatory Hall. We with Daniil were present at this concert. The Symphony was described in the novel, where Daniil revealed in words part after part its content that had been transmitted by ingenious composer through music. What happiness, that we were not familiar with Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich! It would not be possible to him to refuse Daniil’s ‘decrypting’ of his music because it was correct and The Fifth Symphony is about how the human soul is pressed with the unbridled Elements of Evil and only a pray remains available to soul; on that note the Symphony ends.
A number of protagonists were a development of some parts of author’s personality: researcher of India Glinsky; poet Oleg Gorbov; archeologist Sasha Gorbov, enamored in the nature in the same way Andreev was. He comes back from Trubchevsk to Moscow in the beginning of the novel.
The novel certainly had an affinity to Dostoevsky tradition, which was passionately adored by Daniil Andreev. The novel was not imitation of Dostoevsky, but problems of the novel were similar to problems of novels of the great writer both by their ‘Russia-ness’ and by pertaining of these problems to universal truth - about Good and Evil and their manifestation in the world.
Daniil always came on a visit with notebook of verses or with the new chapter of the novel. Once he told me: ‘the best, which is in me, is this creativity. Now I am going to the friends with the best‘.
He was very timid and absolutely unable ‘to shine in a society‘. Therefore he could show his originality not directly, but as if having separated creativity from himself as it is done by an artist.
War has found him working on ‘Wanderers of night‘. He buried the manuscript and then returned to his verses. He had written a cycle of poems ‘Amber’, devoted to the real woman - her image is indirectly reflected in the novel. He worked on the poem ‘Germans’, but did not finish it as in the end of 1942 he was mobilized to Army.
Phillip Aleksandrovich Dobrov died two months prior to the beginning of war; Elizaveta Mihajlovna – in autumn of 1942; Ekaterina Mihajlovna - in the middle of war. Daniil, when returned from the front, didn’t found her alive.
He was qualified as ‘out-of-order’ soldier because of his health state. First he was commissioned to a staff of military units formed in Kubinka near Moscow; later, in the winter of 1943, he went on Ladoga Lake ice-road to the besieged in terrible Leningrad as a soldier of 196-th shooting division. His poem ‘The Leningrad Apocalypse‘; one of chapters of ‘Russian gods‘ are about it; and there is no need to retell the story here.
After Leningrad were Shlisselburg and Sinyavino - names which are unforgettable to those who have gone through war in the same way as Yelnya, Yartzevo and a lot of others...
* * *
Serving in a funeral military unit, Daniil Leonidovich buried those killed in communal graves, read above them orthodox mourning prays.
Once Daniil, when dragging shells, overstrained himself and got into sanitary unit. Then after recovery he was left in the hospital as an attendant; two persons have tried to keep him alive: the chief of hospital Alexander Petrovich Tsaplin and doctor Nikolai Pavlovich Amurov.
Experts were withdrawn from army during last months of the war to work in the rear. The municipal committee of Schedules the part of which he was as a font-artist has called him from front, and Daniil Leonidovich served the last military winter in Moscow, in the Museum of Communication as a designer.
Certainly, having had an opportunity to stay at home, he returned to his work on the novel. When the manuscript of the novel has been unearthed, it became evident that unskilled conspirator has buried it very badly: the novel has been written by hand, with ink, and ink has blurred all over manuscript.
He began writing all over again, now typing on the machine which by the way belonged once to Leonid Andreev and remained in Moscow only by chance. The revised manuscript, from chapter to chapter, became more and more significant.
Upon termination of war Daniil's close friends, geographers Sergey Nikolaevich Matveev and his wife Maria Samojlovna Kaletskaja, concerned by our really scandalous material disorder, have found for him quite unexpected form to earn money for survival. (myself, being a member of the Union of Artists, could not find any work, except for manufacturing of copies.) Daniil together with Sergey Nikolaevich has written the small book about Russian researchers of Central Asia Mountains. Matveev provided to the book his name of the respected scientist and a concrete material; and Andreev – a literary processing of this material. That work was not creative; it was fair, sincere, scientifically and literary qualified popularization of a scientific research.
The thin book had been printed in GeografGis; in 1946 the next order followed: the book about Russian travellers to Africa. Daniil worked on that material, soon to become one more little book, with incredible inspiration, he was striving to divide his time between book on Africa and his novel.
He searched for a material in Lenin Library. Once he came shining and told me that he has found data on the African river named after Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev. The fact that Gumilev was the most favorite poet of Daniil Andreev, like Lermontov, Alexei Tolstoi and Blok; is clear from his verses, and that could not be different.
The book about Russian travelers to Africa has been written, typed and then the master-book got dispersed. I know nothing more about that book.
* * *
In April 1947 the strange offer has been made to Daniil Leonidovich: to fly to Kharkov together with two or three other persons and read there a lecture based on a material of yet not printed book about Russian travelers. What it really was, we never were able to know. Most likely, it has been a NKVD ‘mise-en-scene’ from the very beginning.
On April 21st early in the morning the automobile has arrived to pick up Daniil in which one person of impersonal look sat in the civilian, and the second person was in the civilian too, he was playing a busy ‘organizer’ of Daniil’s travel. I, standing by the door, said good bye to Daniil. On road to the aeroport he had been arrested, and I have received from Kharkov the telegram, with Daniil’s likewise signature, about his safe arrival.
On April, 23rd, in the evening, they came after me. The search lasted for fourteen hours. Certainly, they have taken the novel – it was a novel that they were looking for - and everything, that was hand-written or typewritten in the house. They have taken away me too - in the morning and, like Daniil, on an automobile.
To characterize the atmosphere of that time: there was only one woman, Anna Sergeevna Lomakina, who herself, as well as her husband, served her term in a prison camp, and a mother of small children; who from of all tenants living in our apartment was the only person who went out in a foyer to greet me when I was taken away by police in civilian. She approached me, kissed me and gave a little slice of black bread and little pieces of sugar. I am gratefully remembering that episode - that others did not act for fear.
Daniil was taken away to Lubyanka many times for two or three day periods during prior-to-war years: a system of preventive arrests during the days of the Soviet holidays was in function. Once such situation happened to him during the wartime at the front and about which he told casually.
Later many relatives, friends, acquaintances were taken away on ‘Andreev’s case’. Then many unfamiliar names were added to our ‘criminal group‘ because they were simply ‘of the same flock’.
There were no heroes among us on the process. I think that I was the worst; albeit signing ‘clause No 206’, i.e. getting acquainted with all documents pertaining to ‘Andreev’s case’ at the end of the process, I did not see differences in testimonies. Why on a background of heroic partisans, anti-fascists, and members of Resistance so many Russian intellectuals were so weak? Nobody likes to speak about it.
The concept of decency and treachery disappears on such scale. Many of those who slandered themselves and others (what sometimes was the same), deserve the greatest respect in the ‘other’ life.
I see two main causes. The fear that more than for one decade undermined any will to resistance in advance, and resistance mainly to ‘communist authorities’. The most part of people, certainly worthy a name of heroes, kept heroically during a short time and in extreme conditions, in comparison with their ‘ordinary’ life. Our norm was this exhausting soul fear, it was our daily life.
And that second reason was that we never were politicians. There is a whole complex of character traits which should be inherent in the politician - a revolutionary or a counter-revolutionary, it is all the same, - and we had it not.
We, in all our weakness and defenselessness, were a spiritual opposition to that epoch. Our hostility was terrible for an omnipotent tyranny. I think that those who have carried weak sparks of candle lights along through storms and a bad weather, while not always even realizing this, have completed their mission.
12
And I had one more mission to complete. I could not forget that the same Russian as myself sits and interrogates me opposite to me. That was used, i was deceived many times and I was caught on all possible provocations. And still even now, after having understood as inadmissibly wrong i was at the time, I cannot completely cut off ‘us’ from ‘them’. These are the different parties of one colossal national tragedy, and yes the Lord will help all of us, to whom Russia is beloved, to understand and overcome this terrible knot.
Also I have to say: everybody who was taken away in more recent times, knew that somebody’s voice will speak for them that ‘human right’ exist, that family and friends will make everything possible.
In those years people were taken away for ever. Arrest meant a dark torment, silence and suffering, and an thought about beloved relatives only multiplied despair.
Our judicial inquiry proceeded for 19 months: 13 months on Lubyanka, in internal prison, and 6 - in Lefortovo prison. A basis of charge against Daniel was his ‘anti-soviet’ novel and his verses which several persons read or listened. But that was not enough to the public prosecutor, and Daniel Leonidovich had been additionally charged with Criminal Codex article 58-8 (preparation of act of terrorism), Several other persons including myself have been charged with providing help in preparation of attempt . This nonsense – an attempt upon Stalin’s life - has been based on quite realized and extremely negative attitude to Stalin which now became almost obligatory, but was present in many soviet people ‘for eternity’. It is a lie that all the Russian people usually ready to admire anyone, have bowed to Stalin; basically those admired him the most for whom Stalin was necessary somehow.
Realness and genuineness of the novel have played an aggravating role. We were interrogated about its protagonists as they were real people, especially Alexei Jurievich Serpuhovsky who stand out in the group of protagonists by his readiness for actions, instead of being engulfed by dreams. As a matter of fact Serpukhovsky had no prototype in Daniil’s environment. Serpukhovsky character has been felt, caught by Daniil in all tragic ghost-ness of that life – such public figure had to be present in the novel. It is natural that investigators did not understand process of creativity and persistently interrogated about who had been the ‘real person’ behind Serpuhovsky character. Moreover, emphasizing simultaneously Andreev’s true intuition and vigilance of prosecution, the group of people which could be both characters of the novel and our friends has been arrested later. They were not our friends.
They searched for weapon for a while. We did not have any weapon. We were convicted by ‘trinity’ – a verdict authority composed of three persons. It means that no court was in place and persons convicted in the same process, did not see each other. We were led into cabinet one by one and read our verdicts. Daniel Andreev as the main culprit, (now it refers to ‘steam locomotive’), has received a verdict of 25 years of imprisonment. I and several other relatives and friends – we all got 25 years of prison camps. Others had been convicted to 10 years of prison camps.
It is necessary to tell that the 25-years verdict at that time was the maximum term. For the short period In the USSR the death penalty has been replaced with 25-year verdict. Thus we have survived. Be that process a little bit earlier or a little bit later - and we would be shot dead.
After consequence Daniil Leonidovich and I saw the certificate about burning the novel, verses, letters, diaries and Leonid Andreev's letters to the small son and Dobrovs who he loved very much. On this ‘Certificate’ Daniel Leonidovich has written - I remember approximately: ‘I Protest against destruction of the novel and verses. I ask to keep manuscripts until I will be released. I ask to transfer letters of the father to the Literary museum ‘. I think that everything of it was lost.
Daniel Andreev was transfreed to the Vladimir prison; several persons (myself included) - to Mordovian prison camps.
Sergey Nikolaevich Matveev has died in camp from ulcer perforation. Alexandra Filippovna Dobrova has died in camp from cancer. Alexander Filippovich Dobrov has died from tuberculosis in Zubovo-Polyansky house for disabled after he had been released and nowhere to live in Moscow.
* * *
That can seem strange: when we have met with Daniil and were inseparable since then until his death, we never told each other about process and imprisonment. Our experiences in prison camps were matching and we understood each other from a half-word, and to tell each other about essentially the same experience was not necessary.
I know that conditions of the Vladimir prison were very grave. I know also that close intimate friendships were born in prison among many prisoners, which helped them to sustain imprisonment.
At various times with Daniel Leonidovich were: Vasily Vitalevich Shulgin; academician Vasily Vasilevich Parin; historian Lev Lvovich Rakov; the son of general Kutepov; Georgian Menshevik Simon Gogiberidze, who spent in Vladimir prison 25 years; Japanese ‘military criminal’ Tanaka-San. Art critic Vladimir Aleksandrovich Aleksandrov who has been released prior to everybody else has helped, under Daniil's request, to find and put in order tombs of Aleksandra Mihajlovna and her mother on Novodevichie cemetery.
Certainly, prison-cell mates during the years spent in prison were more numerous but I do not remember their names.
One time the cell of the Vladimir prison in which some of above listed persons were held together, has received the comic name ‘academic’. Criminals were put into their cell. I do not know their quantity, and ‘quality’ is easy to imagine: only real criminals are convicted under criminal sentence.
The ‘academic’ chamber has easy met newcomers. V.V.Parin began to read for them lectures on physiology; L.L.Rakov - on military history and D.L.Andreev has written the brief guide how to write verses and taught them to write verses.
These three prisoners - Parin, Rakov and Andreev - have written two-volume ‘The Newest Plutarch’ - grotesque invented biographies of several figures. L.L.Rakov has supplied this unique book with wonderful figures.
And about dire moments Daniel told, for example, so: ‘You know, handkerchief is a great thing! If you spread oneunder yourself, and with another one cover yourself, you feel that is not so cold’.
* * *
Now I should try to write about the most important issue that is a source of creativeness of Daniel Andreev including the book ‘Russian gods’.
It is difficult to formulate it because it is necessary to speak about indemonstrable things. Those to whom the world is not limited to visible and perceived (and as a last resort as logically demonstrable) phenomena and to whom other reality is not less significant than surrounding material one, will believe without any proof. If our world is not unique, but there are others worlds means that between them interpenetration is possible –what one has to prove here?
Those to whom the Universe is limited to visible, heard and perceived phenomena will not believe.
I was telling about the moments in Daniel Leonidovich's life when the other world powerfully rushed into ‘this’ world. In prison these ‘bleedings through’ into other realms became frequent, and gradually before him the system of the Universe and the categorical requirement: to devote his poetic gift of a message about this system became evident.
Sometimes such states occurred in a dream, sometimes on the verge of a dream, sometimes in reality. Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Block guided Daniil in his dream journeys to the other worlds.
In such way his three masterpieces were born: ‘The Rose of the World’, ‘Russian gods’, ‘The Iron Mystery’. All of them are about the same: about structure of the Universe and about never ending struggle of Good and Evil penetrating this structure.
Daniil Andreev is a poet, instead of being a philosopher not only in verses and poems, but also in prosaic novel ‘The Rose of the World’. He is the poet in ancient meaning of this word where an idea, a word, a feeling, or music (in his creativity it is expressed as musicality and rhythm of verses) are merged in the unique phenomenon. Ancient cultures called such phenomenon a poet.
All nature of his creativity, his figurative, instead of logic, attitude to the world as a myth-in-progress to become - is a poetry, not philosophy.
Are distortions during transfer by means of the human language of images of out-of-this-world unfamiliar concepts possible? I think, that they are not only possible, but inevitable. The human consciousness brings habitual concepts, logic conclusions, even simply personal predilections and antipathies into everything it touches. But, it seems to me that reading Andreev, you are convinced of his aspiration to be of how much his talent to be a pure transmitter channeler of heard and seen suffices.
He did not have any ‘techniques’ or any ‘systems of meditations’. His unique spiritual exercise was an orthodox pray, moreover a pray with his own words’.
I think that the heart attack which he had in 1954 and which has been the cause of his early death (in 1959), was consequence of these conditions; it was a payment with a human flesh for that knowledge which had been opened to him. Nevertheless of how monstrous my words sound and of how infinitely is a pity that the Destiny has not given him at least several more years for work, nevertheless his death is not excessively enormous and, maybe, the purest payment for being immersed into those worlds which had been his destiny.
In ‘The Rose of the World‘ he introduces the concept of a harbinger, the artist who is carrying out communication between the worlds through his creativity. He was a harbinger himself.
Vasily Vasilevich Parin, the Soviet academician, physiologist, atheist who had became in prison a friend of Daniil, with surprise told to me: ‘there was such impression, that he does not write, in sense ‘composes‘, and hardly has time to write down a stream of words which flows onto him‘.
Daniil could not but write. He said to me that two years of front for him were graver than ten years of prison. Not from fear of death - the death in prison was quite real and it could appear more painful, than on war, but because of impossibility of creativity there.
Initially he wrote in the cell on casual scraps of a paper. During searches these pages were confiscated. He wrote again. All prisoners of the cell participated in preservation of pages I had written including ‘military criminals‘, Germans and Japanese who did not know language but helped to hide manuscripts from solidarity among prisoners.
After deaths of Stalin and Beria the prison bosses have been replaced. David Ivanovich Krot became in command in prison; he facilitated a prison routine regime, admitted the correspondence and appointments with relatives. My mother began to visit Vladimir prison for appointments which proceeded for hour or two; and I began to receive cards and the letters in the Mordovian camp; letters were filled up with verses, with the smallest handwriting which, possibly, has completely exhausted camp censors. Nevertheless, censors were hanging letters to us.
At that time draft copies of ‘The Rose of the World‘, ‘Russian gods‘ and ‘The Iron mystery ‘ were written; manuscripts ‘Ambers’, ‘Ancient memory‘, ‘Forest Blood‘, ‘Foothills’, ‘Moonstones’ written up to arrest were restored; the cycle of poems ‘The Mouth of a life‘ was written. Fragments from a poem ‘Germans’ which he has recollected, were included into the chapter ‘From a small room’ of the book ‘Russian gods‘.
* * *
Time passed by. In 1956 the Khrushchev Commission on revision of affairs of political prisoners had started its work. Commissions worked in all camps and prisons. Millions of prisoners were released. In my prison camp from two thousand women by the end of work of the Commission only eleven remained. During 1956 summer one of the great prisoners’ transportation roads, the railway Moscow - Karaganda through Potma was transporting released prisoners in all its trains, and along railways people were standing and waving hands greeting these trains.
I had been released right in the end of commission work and in very much routine way: the supervisor has entered our barrack and has told: ‘Andreeva, gather your belongings, you leave tomorrow ‘.
I left, in the midst of golden Mordovian forests. I was in Moscow on August, 15th; our first appointment with Daniil in Vladimir happened on August, 25th, 1956.
We have met in a tiny room. He already waited for me as he had been brought there earlier. He was very bony, gray-haired; his head was not shaved as it was necessary for prisoners. There is nothing to tell about our indescribable joy – he has lifted me in his hands.
The prison guard looked at us, full of sincere sentimental feelings, and she did not see how Daniil under a little table which was separating us has transferred me a folded-in-quarter notebook with verses, and I have hidden it in my dress.
The commission has decreased his term from 25 to 10 years. Eight more months remained, but that was not terrible, but the fact that at his release at the end of term the previous conviction was not removed, and it meant refusal in a registration in Moscow. He was dying and everybody knew that. He knew that too.
Such decision of the Commission has been caused by his own statement submitted to this Commission. The essence of his statement was as follows: ‘I was not going to kill anybody, in this part I ask o reconsider my conviction sentence. But, while in the Soviet Union there will be no freedom of conscience, no freedom of speech and no freedom of press, I ask to not consider me as a completely Soviet person‘. It was clear that it was necessary to insist on one more revision of verdict, but first of all it was necessary to rescue the draft manuscripts written in prison. Having understood, that for revision of his sentence he will be brought bring to Moscow, we have agreed, that he will leave manuscripts in prison. Having learned, that he has been brought to Lubyanka, I arrived in Vladimir prison as though on appointment. I had been led to the person in command, David Ivanovich whom I mentioned earlier. He has told me that Daniil Leonidovich had been taken away to Moscow, and has then given me a bag with his belongings, left by Daniil. In the bus on the way to Moscow I already snatched out from a bag a notebook with draft copies of verses and ‘The Rose of the World ‘. There was a deliberate mess: slippers, books, notebooks, a shirt, etc.
David Ivanovich knew, what he was giving me, and he has made it with conscience.
Verdict revision which had begun in Moscow was not promising a safe end at all.
Daniel Leonidovich told that interrogations were only during day time and stenographer was writing everything for record. Very soon, by character of questions, he has understood, that the inspector collected a material for new term, ‘was sewing a new sentence‘.
I succeeded in securing an appointment with this investigator – in front of me there was a character of Stalin time: large, heavy, with large face and ice-cold convex eyes.
I do not remember short and meaningless conversation with him. It was clear that everything was hopeless. A new term.
In prison camp for very short time my road crossed with 14-years road on camps of one woman - I hope that she is alive; her name is Valentina Pikina. In 1956 and 1957 she, already rehabilitated, worked in the Central Committee, being engaged in restoration in a party of the rehabilitated communists. We were brough together with her by rehabilitated old communists who served their terms in Mordovia. By her advice I have written the desperate application that my husband who was fatally sick, was interrogated, and I ask - as strange it now sounds – a psychiatric expertise. As V.P. has arranged everything I do not know but Daniil had been relocated to Serbsky Institute which at that time was not that black place what it became later. In three - four months the conclusion has followed: ‘labile mentality‘. It meant, that the fatal statement because of which his term had been preserved albeit somewhat reduced, he could have written in a condition of depression. And depression can come and pass.
Here below is how dire the situation was for him in his own words; he did not know about my efforts, there was no communication between us, except for parcels.
On one of interrogations he had been asked about his attitude to Stalin. ‘You know, how badly I speak‘.
deadly terribly – both for ‘the father of all the people‘ and for myself. Suddenly I have felt that something unusual was happening. The inspector sat motionlessly, having squeezed his teeth, and stenographer did not write anything down, certainly, after his sign. After that completely unrecorded interrogation he had been taken away to Serbsky Institute.
In the morning of April, 21st, 1957 he has closed a door of a huge fortress on Lubyanka into Moscow filled with the sunlight and has come on the Kuznetsky bridge 24, to a reception where I waited for him, stone immobilized from excitement. We have joined hands and went to Podsosnensky Lane to my parents because we did not have anything of our own.
* * *
The last chapter of the life of Daniil Andreev has begun.
We lived with him anywhere available: at my parents, at our friends’ summer residence, in the House of Artists in Maleevka (Union of Writers has made that offer), in the village beyond Pereslavl-Zalessky, in village on river Oka, in the House of Artists on Northern Caucasus. We even rented a tiny apartment on Ascheulov Lane in Moscow.
The first year we lived in misery: friends were collecting and bringing us money assuring that we did not know who was giving us crucial means to survive . In a year Daniil Leonidovich has been paid under the special petition of the Union of Writers for his smallest published by then book, and he has been given the special pension - 1200 rubles in old money (equal to 120 in new money). It was possible to pay for the apartment which has been rented first for money of my parents and friends, and to surround the dying Daniil with everything that only could alleviate his illness. I could not look for any job as it was impossible to leave Daniil and besides that, as it has happened, I was very seriously ill.
V.V.Parin has made everything possible to save the life of his friend: Daniil was treated in Cardiological Unit of Vishnevsky Institute. Вишнев
