"Love in female form" by Marina Tsvetaeva. What kind of relationship did the poet have with the actress Sophia Golliday?

Marina Tsvetaeva has never been a prude. In addition to her beloved husband Sergei Efron, there was a place in her life for another love — about which "they did not sing in church and in The Gospels were not written." The story in question began in December 1918.

Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergey Efron before the wedding. onethousandninehundredeleven

The winter of 1918-1919 turned out to be difficult for Marina Tsvetaeva. She was left alone in Moscow with two daughters, seven-year-old Alya and two-year-old Irina. Sergey Efron went to the front. There is cold, hunger, unfamiliar orders, a new world around, to which the poetess is absolutely not adapted. The only thing in which she finds an outlet is poetry and fleeting hobbies, thanks to which Tsvetaeva still feels alive.

One of these hobbies was Yuri Zavadsky, an artist of the Vakhtangov Studio Theater. In December, Marina read her novel "Blizzard" in front of the studio. After the performance , the poet Pavel Antokolsky introduced her to By Sophia Golliday.

Sofia Golliday as Nastenka from F. Dostoevsky's "White Nights"

It was Marina Sonya who confided all her "loves" and theatrical insults when she was not given a role. At the same time, in those years, Holliday was quite a well-known actress in Moscow.

Fragility, romance, femininity — it was not at all like Marina's previous love for another Sophia. The poet and literary critic Sofya Yakovlevna Parnok has been in her life for a little more than a year and a half. Domineering and strong, the boy after the only unsuccessful marriage stopped all relationships with men, and Tsvetaeva fell in love for real.

Marina's husband then withdrew himself, deciding that this relationship would gradually come to naught by itself. And so it turned out. After a year and a half of close friendship, Tsvetaeva found another woman in the Parnok room — and left her forever.

Perhaps, remembering this painful experience for her, she treated Sonechka carefully. Calling her her "love in female form", Marina has never allowed herself anything more than a friendly hug.

Tsvetaeva also tried to help Holliday in her profession: she wrote plays and poems specifically for her, but none of them were ever staged. After a short period of fame (thanks to the success of the play "White Nights") Sonechka was again not in demand. Desperate, she agreed to the offer of a provincial theater — and left Moscow.

Tsvetaeva described their heartbreaking farewell in her "Tale of Sonechka":

They did not see each other again. After some time, Tsvetaeva learns from other people that Sonechka was in Moscow and did not go to her. Then — that the actress got married (to the director of a provincial theater, whom he never loved).

And many years later, in exile in France, Tsvetaeva will receive a letter with the news of Sonechka's death from stomach cancer, which happened three years ago. She will immediately sit down to write a story about a friend who was so little in her life, but meant so much. Tsvetaeva understood and forgave her friend - posthumously.