On the Banks of the Neva. On the Banks of the Seine

«I do not write about myself and not for myself, but about those I have been given 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 favorite 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. She had the opportunity to see her books published in the USSR — the memoirs «On the Banks of the Neva» and «On the Banks of the Seine» were released in the late 1980s with colossal print runs. The heroes of these memories are Nikolai Gumilev, Georgy Ivanov, Osip Mandelstam, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Ivan Bunin, and many others. And now, years later, this book — a monument to the era, its living testimony — is read with great interest. Odoevtseva's phenomenal memory allowed her, even after many decades, to reproduce the conversations, discussions, and disputes of that time. In her last years, I.V. Odoevtseva conceived a third book of memories — «On the Banks of Leta», which, however, remained unfinished: only a few chapters were published in the Parisian newspaper «Russian Thought». These chapters are included in the present edition.