Secret vacancy: Cherubina de Gabriak, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva

Abstract

A chapter from the forthcoming biography of Cherubina de Gabriak, the paper discusses personal and artistic relationships between the three principal female poets of early 20th c. Russia. In reality, the age of female lyrical poetry began with the publication of Cherubina de Gabriak’s works in Apollonin 1909; the story influenced A. Akhmatova and M. Tsvetaeva. While Akhmatova, due to biographical circumstances, cared very little for the personality and works of de Gabriak, and ostensibly distanced herself from de Gabriak’s lyrical protagonist, Tsvetaeva, by contrast, expressed keen interest in Cherubina’s poems and even drew on her poetic subjects and imagery: e. g. in ‘On a Red Steed’ [‘Na Krasnom kone’]. On the whole, both Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva saw Cherubina as a precursor who had a good ear for the main symbols and questions of the time, but left some of those questions unanswered for others to finish the task.