Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (alsoGumilyov;Russian:Николай Степанович Гумилёв,IPA:[nʲɪkɐˈlajsʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕɡʊmʲɪˈlʲɵf]ⓘ; April 15 [O.S. 3 April] 1886 – August 26, 1921) was a Russian poet, literary critic, traveler, and military officer. He was a co-founder of theAcmeist movement. He was the husband ofAnna Akhmatova and the father ofLev Gumilev. Nikolai Gumilev wasarrested and executed by theCheka, the secret Soviet police force, in 1921.
Nikolay Gumilev was born in the town ofKronstadt onKotlin Island, into the family of Stepan Yakovlevich Gumilev (1836–1910), a naval physician, and Anna Ivanovna L'vova (1854–1942). His childhood nickname was "Montigomo," the Hawk's Claw.[1] He studied at the gymnasium ofTsarskoye Selo, where theSymbolist poetInnokenty Annensky was his teacher. Later, Gumilev admitted that it was Annensky's influence that turned his mind to writing poetry. He spent some of his youth inTbilisi,Georgia attending the First Gymnasium.[2]
His first poem,I Ran from Cities into Woods (Я в лес бежал из городов), was published on September 8, 1902 in the newspaperTifliski Listok. In 1905 he published his first collection of poetry entitledConquistadors’ Way. It was composed of poems on the most exotic subjects imaginable, fromLake Chadgiraffes toCaracalla's crocodiles. Although Gumilev was proud of the collection, most critics found his technique sloppy; later he would refer to this publication asapprentice's work.
From 1907 on, Nikolai Gumilev traveled extensively throughout Europe, most notably inItaly andFrance. In 1908 his new collectionRomantic Flowers appeared. While inParis, he published the literary magazineSirius, but only three issues were produced. Upon returning to Russia, he edited and contributed to the artistic periodicalApollon. During this period, he fell in love with a non-existent womanCherubina de Gabriak. It turned out that Cherubina de Gabriak was the literary pseudonym for two people:Elisaveta Ivanovna Dmitrieva [ru] andMaximilian Voloshin. On November 22, 1909, he had aduel with Voloshin over the affair.
Gumilev marriedAnna Akhmatova on April 25, 1910. He dedicated some of his poems to her.[3] On September 18, 1912, their childLev was born. He would eventually become an influential and controversial historian.
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LikeFlaubert andRimbaud before him, but inspired by exploits ofAlexander Bulatovich andNikolay Leontiev, Gumilev was fascinated with Africa and travelled there almost every year. He explored, sporadically hunted lions, and even contributed to the development ofEthiopia, eventually donating a large collection of African artifacts to theMuseum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Saint Petersburg. His landmark publication,The Tent (1921), collected his best poems on African themes, one of them "Giraffe".[4]
In 1910, Gumilev fell under the spell of theRussian Symbolist poet and philosopherVyacheslav Ivanov and absorbed his views on poetry at the evenings held by Ivanov in his celebrated "Turreted House". His wife Akhmatova accompanied him to Ivanov's parties as well.
Dissatisfied with the vague mysticism ofRussian Symbolism, then prevalent in the Russian poetry, Gumilev andSergei Gorodetsky established the so-calledGuild of Poets, which was modeled after medieval guilds of Western Europe. They advocated a view that poetry needs craftsmanship just like architecture needs it. Writing a good poem they compared to building a cathedral. To illustrate their ideals, Gumilev published two collections,The Pearls in 1910 and theAlien Sky in 1912. It wasOsip Mandelstam, however, who produced the movement's most distinctive and durable monument, the collection of poems entitledStone (1912).
According to the principles ofacmeism (as the movement came to be dubbed by art historians), every person, irrespective of his talent, may learn to produce high-quality poems if only he follows the guild's masters, i.e., Gumilev and Gorodetsky. Their own model wasThéophile Gautier, and they borrowed much of their basic tenets from the FrenchParnasse. Such a program, combined with colourful and exotic subject matter of Gumilev's poems, attracted to the Guild a large number of adolescents. Several major poets, notablyGeorgy Ivanov andVladimir Nabokov, passed the school of Gumilev, albeit informally.
When World War I started, Gumilev hastened to Russia and enthusiastically joined a corps of elite cavalry. He fought in battles in East Prussia and Macedonia.[5] For his bravery he was invested with twoSt. George crosses (December 24, 1914 and January 5, 1915).
His war poems were assembled in the collectionThe Quiver (1916). In 1916 he wrote a verse play,Gondla, which was published the following year; set in ninth-centuryIceland, torn between its nativepaganism and IrishChristianity, it is also clearly autobiographical, Gumilev putting much of himself into the hero Gondla (an Irishman chosen as king but rejected by thejarls, he kills himself to ensure the triumph of Christianity) and basing Gondla's wild bride Lera on Gumilev's wife Akhmatova (or maybeLarissa Reissner). The play was performed inRostov na Donu in 1920.
During theRussian Revolution, Gumilev served in theRussian Expeditionary Force in France. Despite advice to the contrary, he rapidly returned toPetrograd. There he published several new collections,Tabernacle andBonfire, and finally divorced Akhmatova (August 5, 1918), whom he had left for another woman several years prior. The following year he married Anna Engelhardt, a noblewoman and daughter of a well-known historian.
In 1920 Gumilev co-founded theAll-Russia Union of Writers. He made no secret of his anti-communist views. He also made theSign of the Cross in public and didn't care to hide his contempt for "half-literateBolsheviks". On August 3, 1921, he was arrested by theCheka on charges of participation in a nonexistentmonarchist conspiracy known as the"Petrograd military organization".[6] On August 24, the Petrograd Cheka decreed execution of 61 participants of the case, including Nikolay Gumilev. They were shot on August 26 in theKovalevsky Forest (the actual date was established only in 2014; previously it was thought he died on August 25).[7][8]Maxim Gorky, his friend and fellow writer, hurried to Moscow and appealed to Lenin, but was unable to save Gumilev.
Gumilev's execution placed a stigma on Akhmatova and on their son, Lev. Lev was arrested later in the purges of the 1930s and spent almost two decades in agulag.[9]
Despite Gumilev's execution,Gondla was again performed in Petrograd in January 1922: "The play, despite its crowd scenes being enacted on a tiny stage, was a major success. Yet when the Petrograd audience called for the author, who was now officially an executed counter-revolutionary traitor, the play was removed from the repertoire and the theatre disbanded."[10]
In February 1934, as they walked along a Moscow street,Osip Mandelstam quoted Gondla's words "I am ready to die" to Akhmatova, and she repeated them in her "Poem without a Hero."[11]
Although banned in the Soviet times, Gumilev was loved for his adolescent longing for travel andgiraffes andhippos, for his dreams of a fifteen-year-old captain"[1] His "The Tram That Lost Its Way" is considered one of the greatest poems of the 20th century.[1]
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