Young researchers re-studied poet, ethnographer, holder of two St. George’s Crosses Nikolai Gumilyov

April 15, 2019 marks 133 years since the birth of Nikolai Gumilyov (1886–1921), a poet of the Silver Age, the founder of Acmeism and the Poets' Workshop, playwright, literary critic, translator, traveler, officer of the Uhlan regiment, holder of two St. George's Сrosses. The Presidential Library continues to publish on its portal theses, exploring a rich creative heritage of Nikolai Gumilyov.

He was born in Kronstadt, in the family of a ship's doctor, and his childhood he spent in Tsarskoye Selo. Nikolai, completing his gymnasium education, received the first lessons of poetic skill from the director of the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium, a subtle adept of Russian symbolism Innokenty Annensky. The works of Friedrich Nietzsche and the poems of the symbolist contemporaries were also studied and learned by the emerging author.  

The first collected works of the poet “The Way of the Conquistadors” which was published in 1905, seemed to readers to be some kind of otherworldly, spicy and exotic; his characters, as if descended from the pages of the adventure characters of Fenimore Cooper, were strong in body and spirit and were able to achieve goals at any cost.

In the autumn of 1908, Gumilyov made his first trip to Africa. Green hills, endless golden dunes of the desert lit the poet's heart: he becomes the pioneer of the African theme in Russian poetry. Later he traveled to Africa three more times, collected folk songs, samples of fine art, ethnographic materials - this is reflected in a cycle "Abyssinian songs". The life of Gumilyov was in many respects related to his poetry: the romantic pathos of conquistadors from verses seeped into reality, helping the poet to overcome his own weaknesses and achieve victories.

Philologist Yevgeniya Razdyakonova in her dissertation abstract on the topic “Romantic Conflict and its Transformation in the Art of Nikolai Gumilyov” (2014) notes: “Gumilyov, like most romantic poets, builds his artistic world around traveling and moving to remote areas. Here one of the most universal antinomies "Here - There" works; “Here” is the world of reality - ordinary, mundane, tragic, full of trouble, “There” - varieties of the other world: ideal, mysteriously beautiful, mystically terrible, other-worldly, bright, sublime, miraculous, etc. <... > The world around us in the work of the poet is divided into the ordinary world and the sacred world, and the lyrical hero Gumilyov permanently rushes from the first to the second”. Not only lyrical, but also a real ethnographer.  

It was no longer an adolescent conquistador game. The Presidential Library’s portal on January 11, 2019 posted a message that the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera) presented the album “The Ethiopian Collection of Nikolai Gumilyov” in the public domain. (Ethiopia at that time was called Abyssinia). This priceless collection of artifacts says a lot about Gumilyov’s deep interest in African ethnography. Today, the collection contains 242 glass negatives, 107 ethnographic objects and four paintings by artists of Ethiopia. The collection is one of the earliest ethnographic collections from the territory of East Africa. Moreover, many of the photographs reflect the disappeared culture of the local peoples, captured before the beginning of their intensive contacts with the Europeans.

Difficulties in relations with Akhmatova grew, at the beginning of 1914 the “Poets' Workshop” ceased to exist, the bohemian life that Gumilyov led when he returned from Africa tired and seemed aimless and fresh after his fantastic wanderings.

At the beginning of the First World War, Gumilyov volunteered for the Uhlan regiment, in the army. According to the memoirs of his colleagues, he was attracted to danger. He was awarded St. George’s Crosses for bravery and received an officer's rank. The newspaper “Exchange Gazette” published his chronicle essays “Notes of the Cavalier”. In 1916, the book “Kolchan” was published, which, along with Italian travel sketches, the Russian theme for the first time began to sound in the soul of the poet, defender of the Fatherland.

On August 3, 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested by the Petrograd Emergency Commission on suspicion of participating in the plot of the Petrograd military organization V. N. Tagantsev, which was fabricated. Soon the poet was shot. The exact date and place of burial is unknown. According to the words of a member of the firing squad, Gumilyov held himself up with dignity: he smiled and managed to finish his cigarette... In 1991, the case of the poet Nikolai Gumilyov was terminated due to the absence of the event of a crime.