“My Real Life Is in Solitude…”: From the Diary of Maria Pozharova

The publication is dedicated to the poetess Maria Pozharova, who actively published in the Russian press at the beginning of the 20th century, and participated in the meetings of a number of St. Petersburg / Petrograd literary societies and circles in the 1910s. In the Soviet years, only her “children's” poems appeared in print — “for a younger age”, the publication of which was assisted by K. Chukovsky and especially S. Marshak. The published excerpts from Pozharova's diary (for 1909–1916) record her meetings and conversations with Z. Gippius, N. Gumilev, S. Yesenin, the poetess M. Moravskaya, prose-writer and literary critic N.N. Wentzel and other writers, contain detailed descriptions of the evenings of “Sluchevsky's Circle”, the literary life of the capital in the pre-revolutionary years. The introductory article also describes M. Pozharova’s difficult living conditions and marginal existence in the literature of the 1930–1950s. The text of M. Pozharova's diary is accompanied by a historical and literary commentary.