‘To have children with the Fair Lady…’. On the history of the correspondence between Maria Shkapskaya and Aleksandr Blok

Abstract

The article methodically analyses several versions of M. Shkapskaya’s poem ‘To have children with the Fair Lady…’ [‘Detey ot prekrasnoy damy…’], dedicated to A. Blok, and examines the changes made by Shkapskaya as she was revising the draft. It is a well-known fact that, in 1920, a year before his death, it was Blok who helped Shkapskaya establish a literary career. Having read a typewritten copy of her collection of poems entitled Mater Dolorosa, he supplied a favourable review, which, along with personal recommendations of M. Kuzmin, M. Lozinsky and N. Gumilyov, ensured Shkapskaya’s membership in the Petrograd Union of Poets, despite the fact that none of her work had been published at the time. The article lists several lesser-known facts about Blok’s life (for example, that he personally knew and corresponded with Shkapskaya, who was also a friend and correspondent of his mother’s, A. Kublitskaya-Piottukh), and includes the complete text of Shkapskaya’s comical ‘opera’ Blok Aleksandr, sent to Blok in a letter dated 16 January 1921; the text is supplied with notes. Also included is another of her ‘operas,’ Shkapsky Orest.