Mirra Lokhvitskaya

Forgotten in Soviet times, in the late 20th century Lokhvitskaya's legacy was re-assessed and she came to be regarded as one of the most original and influential voices of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, and the first in the line of modern Russian women poets who paved the way for Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva.

• Name — Mirra Lokhvitskaya • Birth Name — Maria Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya • Born — 19 November 1869 • Birthplace — Saint Petersburg, Russia • Died — 27 August 1905 • Place of death — Saint Petersburg, Russia • Occupation — Poet • Awards — Pushkin Prize • Spouse — Eugeny Gibert

Maria Lokhvitskaya was born on November 19, 1869, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Her father Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky (1830–1884) was a well-known lawyer of the time, famous for his public speeches, the author of several academic works on jurisprudence. The primary source of young Maria's creative aspirations, though, was her mother Varvara Alexandrovna (Hoer), a well-educated Frenchwoman, fond of literature and poetry. Lokhvitskaya's younger sister Nadezhda would later become a well-known humorist writer better known as Teffi, their brother Nikolay Lokhvitsky (1868–1933), a Russian White Army general and a one-time associate of Aleksandr Kolchak, fought against the Red Army forces in Siberia. Another sister Yelena Lokhvitskaya (1874–1919) wrote poetry, translated Maupassant (together with Teffi) and was a Drama Society member, but never regarded herself professional. Of Mirra's two other sisters, only the names are known: Varvara Alexandrovna (Popova, in marriage) and Lydia Alexandrovna (Kozhina). In 1874, the Lokhvitsky family moved to Moscow. In 1882, Maria enrolled in the Moscow Aleksandrinsky Institute, from which she graduated in 1888. Some sources stated that her literature tutor was Apollon Maykov but modern literary historians challenge this. At age fifteen, Lokhvitskaya started writing poetry and published two of her poems as a small brochure (approved by the college's authorities) not long before graduation. In 1884, Alexander Lokhvitsky died and his widow took the children back to Saint Petersburg. Maria followed suit four years later, now as a young teacher. In 1888, several of her poems, signed M. Lokhvitskaya, were published by Sever (North) magazine. Several popular literary journals became interested in the young debutante and soon the moniker "Mirra" emerged. A family legend proposes that it had to do with her dying grandfather Kondrat's mysterious parting words: "...and the smell of myrrh is blown away by the wind."

• Illustration — Mirra and Eugeny Gibert Lokhvitskaya rose to fame in 1891 after her first long poem, "By the Seaside" (У моря), appeared in the August issue of the Russkoye Obozrenye (Russian Review) magazine. She became a popular figure in the Petersburg literary circles and became friends with Vsevolod Solovyov, Ieronim Yasinsky, Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, Pyotr Gnedich, and Vladimir Solovyov. In late 1891, Lokhvitskaya married Eugeny Gibert, a French construction engineer, and the couple moved first to Yaroslavl, then to Moscow. They had five sons. Lokhvitskaya's first major book, a collection called Poems, 1889–1895 (Стихотворения, 1889–1895), drew positive response and brought her the prestigious Pushkin Prize in 1896, a year after its publication. "Never since Fet has a single poet managed to get a grip of their readership in such a way," wrote her friend Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko. Volume II (1896–1898) followed in 1898 and two years later was re-issued, coupled with the first volume, in The Complete... edition. In the course of the next few years, Lokhvitskaya published dozens of new poems, including the extensive Him and Her. Two Words (Он и Она. Два слова) and two epic dramas, Eastward (На пути к Востоку) and Vandelin. Springtime Fairytale. By the time her Volume III (1898–1900) came out, Lokhvitskaya was Russia's most popular and best-loved woman poet. Far from enjoying her stardom, though, she spent the last five years of her life in physical pain and mental turmoil.

The exact cause of Lokhvitskaya's death remains unknown. Her health started to deteriorate in the late 1890s: she complained of insomnia and violent nightmares, suffered from bouts of severe depression, and later experienced chronic and ever worsening stenocardia. In 1904 Lokhvitskaya's illness progressed; she was bedridden for most of the year, tortured by pain and anxiety. In the early days of summer 1905, the family moved her to Finland, where her condition improved slightly, but on return she was hospitalized. Mirra Lokhvitskaya died on August 27, 1905. Tuberculosis has often been cited as the cause of death, but this claim remained unsubstantiated and there was no mention of it in any of the obituaries. On August 29, Lokhvitskaya was interred in Alexander Nevsky Lavra's Dukhovskaya Church, a small group of relatives and friends attending the ceremony. Among those absent was Konstantin Balmont whom she had been passionately in love with. It was the stress of this strange relationship that, as some believed, had triggered her psychological crisis, and led to moral and physical demise. "Her death was enigmatic. Spiritual disturbance was the cause," Lokhvitskaya's friend Isabella Grinevskaya wrote in her memoirs.

• Illustration — Konstantin Balmont Lokhvitskaya and Balmont met for the first time in the mid-1890s, in Crimea. Sharing similar views on poetry in general, and its symbolist line of development in particular, they soon became close friends. What followed, though, was not a trivial affair, but a peculiar and obscure poetic dialogue full of allusions, to decipher the details of which one had to examine the whole bulk of the heritage of both poets. In Lokhvitskaya's poetry her lover figured as 'Lionel', after the character of Percy Bysshe Shelley (it was Balmont who translated into Russian most of the Englishman's poetry in the 1890s), a "youth with curls coloured ripen rye" and "eyes greenish like the sea". This affair instigated public discussion and was often referred to as 'scandalous'. Whether Lokhvitskaya and Balmont had ever been physically close, remained unclear. Some suggested they might have had a short affair in the early days; in the later years even in the geographical terms both were wide apart, with Balmont spending much of his time abroad. In his autobiography At the Dawn (На заре) he described their relationship as 'poetic friendship'. Modern literary historians consider their relationship to have been truly platonic affair, albeit violently passionate, frustrating and psychologically detrimental for both. In 1901, Balmont and Lokhvitskaya met, apparently, for the last time. Thereafter, their relationship was confined to enigmatically constructed poetic dialogues, full of demands and threats on his part and pleas for mercy on hers. Apparently both were taking their shared self-created world of horror and passion seriously. Balmont was continuously complaining in his letters of being 'possessed', while Lokhvitskaya submerged herself in a quagmire of violent visions which, coupled with feelings of guilt towards her family, might have led to an illness the roots of which were obviously psychosomatic. Some (Alexandrova included) regard the involvement of Valery Bryusov, Balmont's close rival/friend to be the most damaging factor. The well-publicized fact that Bryusov (who hated Lokhvitskaya, thinking she was trying to 'steal' a friend of his) dabbled in black magic added a gothic touch to the whole affair.

People who knew Lokhvitskaya personally later spoke of the stark contrast between the poet's 'bacchanal' reputation and her real life persona. The author fond of erotic imagery (whom some critics labeled 'pornographer') in reality was, according to Ivan Bunin, "the most chaste woman in Saint Petersburg, a faithful wife and most caring, protective mother of several children." Playing 'Eastern beauty' at home, she received visitors lying languidly on a couch. Still, according to Bunin, there was not a trace of pretentiousness behind this posturing; on the contrary, the hostess greatly enjoyed matter-of-fact chattering about funny and trivial things, displaying wit and disarming self-irony. In the circle of her literary friends, Lokhvitskaya was surrounded by 'aura of adoration'; it seemed as if every man, according to a biographer, "was a little in love with her." Among them was Bunin. In a by and large grim gallery of his literary portraits (most of them crude caricatures), Lokhvitskaya was the only person whom he remembered fondly. "Everything in her was charming: the sound of her voice, the liveliness of her speech, the glitter of her eye, her wonderful facetiousness. The colour of her face was exceptionally beautiful: opaque and smooth, like that of a ripe Crimean apple," Bunin wrote in his memoirs. Lokhvitskaya was reticent, attended literary parties on just rare occasions and her appearances there were not necessarily triumphant. "As she entered the stage, there was such a look of helplessness about her as to take away all the attractiveness," wrote the religious author Evgeny Pogozhev (Poselyanin), remembering one such evening. Lokhvitskaya's shyness was one of the reasons why so little mention has been made of her in the extensive body of Russian Silver Age memoirs. Influential critic Akim Volynsky once confessed: "Sadly, Lokhvitskaya, one of the most intriguing women of the time, left but a vague trace in my memory." Good looks certainly played a part, first in Lokhvitskaya's meteoric rise to fame, then in the way people "refused to see beyond her beauty, remaining oblivious to the sharp intelligence that was becoming more and more obvious in her work." According to Alexandrova, Lokhvitskaya's was a "typical drama of a good-looking woman in whom most people failed o recognize anything beyond her physical attractiveness."

• Mirra Lokhvitskaya Website (Russian) * • Mirra Lokhvitskaya Poems (Translations)

Mirra Lokhvitskaya was recorded at birth as Мария Александровна Лохвицкая. She also worked under the name Мирра Лохвицкая. The authorities additionally record the headings Maria Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya and Mirra Lokhvitskaia. Her recorded language was Russian. She was the child of Aleksander Lokhvitsky.

Mirra Lokhvitskaya is recorded with the occupation playwright. Recorded as a citizen of Russian Empire. Classed in the genre poetry.