Adelaida Kazimirovna Gertsyk was a Russian translator, poet, prose writer, and critic. In her professional life as a poet, she made various publications in magazines throughout Russia. She wrote critic literature as well.
Background
Adelaida Kazimirovna Gertsyk was born on February 15, 1874, in Alexandrov, Vladimir Oblast, Russian Federation to Sofia Maximilianovna (nee Tidebel) and Kasimir Antonovich Lubny-Gertsyk. Her mother, who died when Adelaida Kazimirovna and her sister, Eugenia, were young children was of German and Swiss heritage, though the family was entirely Russified, they were Lutheran.
Education
All the children received a broad early education from tutors and governesses, which included the study of five languages encompassing Polish and Italian, among others. They also traveled to Europe to experience diverse cultures during their childhood. Continuing her education, Adelaida Kazimirovna was prepared for gymnasium following the curriculum of the Moscow Nobles Boarding School by the poet, M.A. Carlin, from whom she developed a passion for writing. Adelaida Kazimirovna studied at the Moscow Women's Gymnasium and after graduating, studied art history, literature, and philosophy on her own.
Fascinated by Russian folklore, Adelaida Kazimirovna taught the subject in a school in Tsarskoe Selo as well as at her family's estate in the Crimea. Her first works were translations which she began publishing in 1899. These included works by Alfred de Musset, Selma Lagerlöf, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Ruskin, and others. She also produced translations with her sister, Eugenia, and began writing poetry during her relationship with Alexander Bobrychev-Pushkin, a married lawyer and poet. He was much older than her, but their relationship inspired her to write and influenced her later works. He died suddenly in 1903 and as a result of the shock, Adelaida Kazimirovna partially lost her hearing.
Beginning in 1905, Adelaida Kazimirovna worked as a collaborator on the journal Libra, publishing critiques and reviews of new books under the pseudonym V. Syrin. in 1906 she published an essay From the world of Children's Games, which was an acclaimed introspection. Her first significant publication of her own poems appeared in the almanac of the Symbolists known as Flower Garden of First Ashes that same year, as the cycle Golden Key. The poems depict philosophical and religious symbols with references to folkloric myth. She gained praise for the works from such artists as Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maximilian Voloshin, and others.
Around the same time as her publication, Adelaida Kazimirovna spent the summer of 1908 at the family estate in Sudak and remained there until the first of October.
In 1910, her collection Poems was published and earned responses from the same group of noted poets, which was unusual praise for a Russian woman. In 1911, Adelaida Kazimirovna published an autobiographical novella, About That Which Never Was in the journal Russian Thought. From 1910 to 1917, she published in the journals Northern Notes, Muses' Almanac among others pursuing aesthetic themes.
The couple hosted literary salons which were widely attended by some of the most noted intellectuals of the day. At one of these events in early 1911, Voloshin brought the young poet Marina Tsvetaeva. The two became steadfast friends and it would later be Adelaida Kazimirovna who introduced Tsvetaeva to Sophia Parnok in 1914. Following the autobiographical novella cycle, she published two more, My Loves, 1913, and My Wanderings, 1915.
During the war years encompassing World War I and the Russian Civil War, the family lived in the Crimea, first staying in the home Gertsyk's father had built-in 1880. As they had in Moscow, the couple hosted salons for members of the intelligentsia, which included their friends from Moscow. The group discussed literature and philosophy, staged performances, and even published a literary newsletter.
In 1914, as the older home needed renovations, the couple decided to build their own house in Sudak, which took two years to complete. They moved in in 1916 but did not enjoy it for long, as when the Red Terror reached the Crimea in 1920, their gatherings were banned. The famine seriously impacted her children, nearly killing them, and then in January 1921, Adelaida Kazimirovna was arrested. She spent three weeks imprisoned in Sudak and used the time to write a cycle of poems called The Cellar. After her release, she expanded some of these into a series of longer pieces, Cellar Essays, 1924-1925. Some of these were printed in 1926 in the magazine Chimes in Riga. All dealt with the question of the border between life and death wherein people on the verge of death leave behind their earthly pleasures and seek the truth.
In 1924, the family homes in Sudak were nationalized. Living in abject poverty and unable to find publishers, she and her son were forced to share a single pair of shoes. Finding the Soviet regime to be one of "coarse materialism", Adelaida Kazimirovna tried to emigrate with her family to France but was unsuccessful. She died in a hospital in Sudak after suffering an acute attack of nephritis on 25 June 1925 and was buried in the Sudak Cemetery. The cemetery was destroyed in the 1980s and no trace of her burial remains.
Adelaida Kazimirovna became friends with and was influenced by Sergei Bulgakov to convert from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy.
Personality
According to the memoirs of her sister, Ada grew up as a thoughtful, withdrawn child, showed great perseverance in learning. She was fluent in German, French, Italian and Polish, had extensive knowledge of literature, linguistics, and theory of versification.
In her lyrics, mystical motives, the cult of beauty, senses of internal disruption, guilt, loneliness are prevailing. In her works, Adelaida Kazimirovna focuses on her inner world and listens to the voices of nature intensively.
Adelaide's poems are saturated with religious and philosophical symbolism, but in a way, they are close to folk poetry.
Physical Characteristics:
Adelaida Kazimirovna had big bright eyes, plush lips, and dark hair.
Quotes from others about the person
Marina Tsvetaeva: "First, Voloshin described her to me as deaf, ugly, middle-aged. That she loves my poems and is waiting to meet me. But what I saw was an irresistible woman. We became friends ardently."
Boris Pasternak, who became acquainted with her work in the 30s, said: "Of course, she had had a poetic experience before, but if it had been mixed with the bitterness of the life that came later, before her death, all this would have lifted her God knows where."
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Writers
Marina Tsvetaeva, Maximilian Voloshin,Vyacheslav Ivanov
Connections
In January 1909, in Paris, Adelaida Kazimirovna married Zhukovsky, a biologist, publisher, and translator of philosophical literature, who was a member of the Russian aristocracy and well-to-do. The poet Maximilian Voloshin served as the best man at the wedding. By the following August, their first child, Daniyl was born. In 1913, she gave birth to her second son, Nikita.