On the Banks of the Neva

«I write not about myself and not for myself, but about those whom I have been given the chance to know… I write about them and for them. I try to speak as little as possible about myself…» — wrote Irina Odoevtseva in the preface to her memoirs — a Russian poetess, a beloved student of Nikolai Gumilev, who left Russia in 1922. She lived a long life and returned to her homeland in 1987 — the last representative of the distant Silver Age. Her memoirs «On the Banks of the Neva» were published in Russia in the late 1980s in a colossal run — 150,000 copies and were received as a revelation. Even today this book — a monument to the era, its living testimony — is read with great interest.

 On its pages appear Nikolai Gumilev, Anna Akhmatova, Georgy Ivanov, Osip Mandelshtam, Vladimir Mayakovsky... Odoevtseva's phenomenal memory allowed her to reproduce conversations, discussions, and debates of that time even decades later.