13 Dec 1909
В Petersburg, On the steps of Tsarskoye Selo (Vitebsk) railway station, the 54-year-old poet died of a heart attack Innokenty Annensky. Playwright, critic, translator.
The bow understood everything and fell silent,
And in the violin the echo still lingered...
And it was torment for them,
What people thought was music
Born in 1855 Omsk, in the family of the head of the department of the main administration of Western Siberia. At 4, he moved with his parents to Tomsk, where my father was appointed chairman of the provincial government. A year later, in Petersburg, where the head of the family was offered a position as a special assignment official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
He was often ill as a child. He attended a private school and a gymnasium. In 1875, he entered the history and philology department of St. Petersburg University. After graduating, he worked as a teacher at the Gurevich Gymnasium.
In the 1890s he was the director of a closed educational college in Kyiv and the 8th St. Petersburg Gymnasium. He became seriously fascinated with ancient Greek authors—he translated all of Euripides and even wrote several original tragedies based on his stories.
He also translated French symbolist poets - Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rainier. At the same time, he began writing his own poetry, secretly from everyone.
He kept his poems to himself and never published anything, even though he was already nearly forty at the time. We high school students saw him only as a tall, thin figure in a uniform, who would occasionally shake a long white finger at us, but generally kept very far away from us and our affairs.
(former student and biologist Boris Raikov)
In 1896, 41-year-old Annensky became head of the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, but the position of director weighed on him.
To put it more modestly: what nobility is there in service!
(from personal letters, 1900)
In 49, he published his first book of poems, “Quiet Songs,” under the pseudonym “Nik. T-o” (the initials spelled out “Nobody,” the name by which Odysseus introduced himself to Polyphemus).
The delicate leaves are swirling
And they don’t want to touch the dust…
Oh, is it really you?
Still the same feeling of fear?
In 1906, he was dismissed from his post as director of the lyceum for what his superiors considered "excessive leniency" during the turbulent times of the first Russian revolution. According to contemporaries, he tried to defend the "rebellious youth" before the Minister of Public Education, even though the revolutionary-minded youth did not consider him "one of their own."
I am a weak son of a sick generation
And I won’t go looking for alpine roses,
Neither the murmur of the waves, nor the roar of early thunderstorms
I won't be given the joyful excitement
He worked as a district inspector and lectured on ancient Greek literature at the Higher Courses for Women. He retired a few months before his death.
He wrote poetry until his very end, anticipating the work of future poets. His "Bells" is the first manifestation of Russian Futurism.
For a long time or for a short time,
Lida got a fur coat...
Groomed - not groomed,
Willed - not willed,
They drank little and suffered.
Dida Lada was gilded
He wrote his most famous poem, “Among the Worlds,” about how one can live in a crumbling world, in 1901 in Tsarskoye Selo, but it was first published after Annensky’s death.
Among the worlds, in the flickering of the luminaries
I repeat the name of one star
Not because I loved her,
Because I languish with others.
And if doubt is hard for me,
I'm looking for an answer from her alone,
Not because it gives light,
Because you don't need light with it.
It gained widespread popularity in the 1910s after Alexander Vertinsky He wrote the music for it and performed the romance. In the late 1920s, Soviet censors called it "a repertoire exceptionally vulgar and philistine."
Among other performers of the romance later were Obodzinsky, Vysotsky и Grebenshchikov.
