The writer Anastasia Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1894-1993) is best known as the sister of the famous poetess Marina Tsvetaeva. Her father Ivan Vladimirovich is a famous philologist and art critic, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. From his first marriage, Ivan Tsvetaev had a daughter, Valeria (Lera) (1883-1966), a teacher and choreographer, and a son, Andrei (1890-1933), a lawyer and decorative artist. From the second, with Maria Alexandrovna (née Main) (1868-1906) – daughters Marina (Musya) (1892-1941) and Anastasia (Asya).
As a child, Anastasia lived in Moscow and spent all holidays with a large and friendly family. She received an excellent primary education at home. In the autumn of 1902, due to tuberculosis diagnosed in her mother, she left with Marina for the Italian Riviera, where she lived in Nervi, near Genoa. She then studied at private boarding schools in Switzerland and Germany until she returned to her homeland in 1905.
Anastasia Ivanovna lived a very long life, outlived almost all of her relatives, was arrested several times, served long sentences in prison, countryside and exile. Therefore, the memories of a happy childhood are the warmest, the most interesting memories of her.
Nastya Tsvetaeva with her father.
Excerpts from the text are published with citation rights. With the full text of AI Tsvetaeva can be found in the publications: Memoirs. – M.: Soviet writer, 1971. – 526 p.; Memories [Электронный ресурс]. – M.: House-Museum of Marina Tsvetaeva, 2012. – 918 pages; Memories. – M.: AST: House-Museum of Marina Tsvetaeva, 2014. – 717 p.
The editors have placed subtitles for convenience.
Santa Claus
We also loved the Christmas and New Year photographs (a cabin in the woods with a red window, a bare tree and burning snow, or bells in the air with a ribbon dotted with sparkles, forest animals around Santa Claus on bertolet snow or boron). They hung over the beds, brightening the day and going to bed. At that moment there were postcards shining from beginning to end, shining with a greenish lunar glow: castles, nights, landscapes, the building of the Bolshoi Theater. These too were friends, loved passionately.
By the way, about Santa Claus. He had no role in our Christmas trees. Maybe because our grandparents, Maine and Ilovaisky, were each of them so special, so different from the common ones, similar to Santa Claus? In the photographs of Santa Claus we only see the sparkles that scattered the snow.
Leshy: there was tenderness towards him, under the shadow of the forests. The merman, the spirit of all waters, called, drowned, was mysterious, like the King of the Forest. Even Brownie, did he seem to be just a stone’s throw from Santa Claus? – and it was at least a little fun, a little scary, but it belonged to him (forest, water, house).
Marina (right) and Anastasia Tsvetaeva. 1905 Photo: TASS
But the creature, the myth of a creature associated with a single type of climate, was a whole range below. It didn’t materialize. That’s how we feel.
Present
Aunt and Grandpa’s visit was always a holiday, but above all, Christmas. There is a Christmas tree high to the ceiling of the room under a shower of silver gold and chains and, like trolls on a mountain of branches, the bright magic of the balls, blue, blue, green. Smells: hot wax (candles), tangerines and grandpa’s cigarette. But happiness began with a spark: a call, the arrival of my grandfather. Lit by his own hand, the light ran along the white wick from branch to branch, from candle to candle, until the entire tree lit up like a bouquet of lilacs under the dew. The thinness of a strictly dressed yellowish-gray grandfather, the width of the satin-covered waist and, from the waist, the unimaginable width of the dress with bells and gathers, aunt…
Christmas tree market in the garden of the Anichkov Palace. 1913
Their gifts were special, unlike the more modest ones their parents gave them. Not to mention the Nuremberg dolls, but with other toys that for us were magical, my mother’s “grandfather’s closet” was full, which my mother only opened from time to time, where a huge wind-up fly buzzed, sparkled some intricate viewpoints, Swiss chalets. It shone with the mirrors of the windows with green shutters, something sparkled with mother-of-pearl, something sounded and played, among the porcelain and gilded figures, where the colors of peacock feathers and rainbows, glass beads and beads lived, where the pipe cooed like a dove, where the music box changed melody on its roller, under a glass, and to this day a fairy tale like the Nutcracker lives in their souls.
All these things that we adore, Musya and I shared mentally, and the day after the division they were exchanged by us, verbally, eagerly fighting for the possession of what we wanted. This was difficult: we liked the same things, almost always! As in books or what our mother told us, we did not tolerate any common ground: the things or the hero of the book could only be Musin’s or mine. So we divided our two favorite poems: Musya took “Ondine” and I received “Rustem and Zorab” in return. So we share everything. Not out of stinginess, no, out of passion. And they paid with reckless generosity: to get some bell, which both equally needed, the other also gave this and that, and the third – without counting! Understanding how difficult it is to give in! They butted heads three times and there was no turning back.
Christmas tree, light up! Late nineteenth century.
Christmas Eve
Christmas has arrived unnoticed. The house was full of creaks, creaks, hiding behind closed doors in the hallway, and you could hear what was happening below from upstairs, from the children’s rooms. I was already looking forward to the “panorama” of my mother with her magical transformations. The smells lifted the house like the waves of a ship. With one eye, through the half-open door, we saw mountains of ceremonial service plates, washed the day before, Chinese dessert plates, the crystalline shine of vases, and heard the clinking of glasses and glasses. They served roast beef with a pink center (which I hated) and pressed black caviar on a large platter. The nostrils caught the aroma of “grandfather’s” cookies.
Mom’s angry voice, commotion, running; Lera, who doesn’t like excesses in her mother’s house, is in her room. We sneak in there, into her world, attractive, special. She draws. Now with a pencil, now with charcoal, now on satin, with oil paints: rose petals curl. She smells like perfume. She cleaned the chain of her American gold watch with tooth powder. Is this copper? Handsome (Andryusha condescendingly explains, she is eleven years old. She is learning Latin and Greek).
G. Mosler. Christmas morning. 1916
I brush myself diligently. The chain is already burning, like the ten-ruble gold coin that my mother gave me yesterday to take to Lera, and every month I wear it and I’m afraid of losing it on the stairs. Vasya, our wonderful black cat, meows: he is looking for roast beef. A chained dog barks in the yard. I wish I could go with her! But you can’t: the governess gets angry.
Someone came to visit. Others passed by without dad, leaving business cards. The whole day goes like this until Christmas Eve.
ABOUT! Is here! Most importantly, so loved it’s scary: the doors slowly open before us, flying down the stairs, ceremoniously dressed, and above everything that moves, shines and smells, wrapped beneath green and gold. The smell of it drowns out the smells of tangerines and wax candles.
His paws are velvety, like Vasya’s. She’s about to light up. She is waiting. The gifts are still closed. Lera, wearing a light silk blouse, adjusts her new gold chains. Her balls still glow faintly: blue, light blue, crimson; golden beads and silver “rain”: everything is waiting… Grandpa always lit the wick from candle to candle. He is no longer there. Dad lights the first match and Christmas begins!
Christmas card. Beginning of the 20th century.
Christmas tree
Irreplaceable for anything: a Christmas tree! In the snow-lit hallway, almost brighter than the sun, running up the steep stairs, past the amber cracks of the covered, smoky stoves, we spun around, repeating the suddenly glowing word.
The tree smelled of tangerines, hot wax and grandfather’s cigarette, long extinguished; and he rang: never to be heard again! – the front doorbell and my mother’s polkas, yellow and red cubes that jump from under my mother’s hands to the squares of parquet and are carried with us through the rooms.
Between the bedroom, the hallway, the back door, the utility room and the double doors in the hallway something was being carried, something creaked with the subtle sound of cardboard boxes, something was dragged and there was the smell of nameless smells, whispers as they carried it and They guessed it, and Andryusha, having managed to see, ran up the stairs towards us, fleeing from the governess, choking, whispering: “They brought him!…”
So we, children (“raised like this?” – no, we felt like that! We never asked for anything), we dreamed vaguely and greedily about what they would give us, and this was the happiness more expensive than the happiness of possession, that, confused, like the branch of a Christmas tree in threads of silver “rain”, in a confusion of gratitude, shyness, subtle disappointments, arrived at the height of the holiday. The lack of control, the unknown lust, the anticipation were sweeter.
Distribution of gifts by the Empress at the Christmas tree at the Gatchina stadium for the lower ranks.
That day the clock was advancing so slowly… The hour and half hour chimes were separated from each other, as if by an elastic band. How long passed without it getting dark! Her mouth refused to eat. All the feelings, like boiled milk, disappeared around the edges, towards the ear.
But this too happened. And when I no longer wanted anything, as if due to the terrible fatigue of an exorbitant day, when I, the youngest, was already falling asleep, I thought, – from below, where before we had only been a nuisance, from where everything had been expelled the day – a magical sound was heard – a bell!
Like a year ago, and like two, and even further, even further, when nothing had happened yet: the call that they call us, only us! They only need us down there, they are waiting for us!
Quick steps down the stairs as the fraulein enters us again and again, quickly adjusting the lace collars again and again, examining her hands, combing her hair, already tangled, butterflies of ribbons flying over her head – and under the stomps and flying, and suddenly stuttering steps down the stairs – tall double doors open towards us… And in all its brilliant spaciousness, in the entire height of the corridor that suddenly rises, to its almost non-existent ceiling – she !
The one that was dragged, chopped, rocked, installed on the cross, enveloping it in green skies with angels and gold paper stars. Which was hidden from us with exactly the same passion with which we dreamed of seeing it.
V. Johansen. Merry christmas. 1891
Fairy tale
How grateful I am to the elders who, knowing the child’s heart, did not merge the two celebrations into one, but gave them separately: the brightness of the decorated fir tree, at first dull, which was already blinding. And then, the mysterious transformation of him into the real one, all in lighted candles, burning by his own brilliance, for whom there was no longer voice or breath and about whom there are no words.
I. Brzhevskaya. Portrait of Anastasia Tsvetaeva.
…She was burning. The party is over. The air around him was so thick, so saturated that it looked like orange or chocolate: but there were pistachios in it, and the taste of nuts, and… Christmas tree beads from a twinkling thread spilled over the toy , an unimaginably green grass. in my flat box with bright and colorful cows, horses, sheep and older children in the lottery.
Books with gilt edges and heavy gold bindings, with images that made your heart ache; colored pencils, rope wheels on which Andryusha worked, artificial amber and turquoise beads. Dolls! This scourge Musin and mine are dolls that we didn’t know how to play with and that they gave us as pedagogical gifts every year.
Holding a new book close to her short-sighted eyes, Musya was already reading it, forgetting everything around her, devouring nuts, when a blue ball fell from the tree, flashing the fiery death of a thread!
Its clear shell, glowing with blue brilliance, crumbled into a silver waterfall, as if it had never been blue and had never been a ball.
The lit candles dripped in our painful crying and in the crying of the elders who rushed to take us out of the fragments. Warm wax, steaming needles of Christmas tree branches…
Tomorrow
The joy of waking up on the first day of Christmas! After running down the stairs, return to the tree: already found, yours forever, for many more days until the day of farewell! Look at her with the morning eyes that see everything, surround her everywhere, crawling behind her, hug her, smelling her branches, see everything that was hidden yesterday in the play of candle fire, look at her. without the obstacle of the presence of adults, without the distraction of gifts not yet considered, that taste like everyone in my mouth. Not black, like yesterday, in the gaps, but flooded through the window with a density of frozen growths with yellowish rays of sun, it awaits us, having turned all its yesterday’s silver and sheets into glass. Flashing with morning sparks of all colors, only now they really burn with all the witchcraft of fruits: the greenery of thick glass pears (they don’t even break when falling!), Burning scarlet apples, bright red tangerines ( They are a little embarrassed! They are not made of glass, they can be eaten…).
The luxury of balls that ring lightly and almost weightless: the most fragile, the most mysterious!
Anastasia Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1894-1993). Photo: TASS
The boxes contained the aunt’s dolls dressed in Swiss outfits; We loved the little ones because they were magical and we didn’t need to sew them, iron them, or put them to sleep. What was surprising about the girls’ play with dolls was the practicality of their enthusiasm. These dolls demanded one thing: admiration. Just because we could do that… The books were open, and I immediately looked at everything, calling out to Musya, who, collapsing on the chosen one, was passionately reading, humming something in response to me. And the jaws grew tired of chewing nuts.
And in the afternoon, the first or second day of Christmas, my mother showed us the panorama, and we fell asleep, no longer remembering where we were, after everything that had happened…
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