Yurii Verkhovskii and Wilhelm Sorgenfrei
from 16 July 2015 to 14 January 2016
Exhibition within the permanent exhibition Blok and his Circle
Exhibition within the permanent exhibition Blok and his Circle
In his notebooks Alexander Blok often mentioned the names of his closes friends - literary men and symbolists - Yurii Verkhovskii and Wilhelm Sorgenfrei, with whom he shared his artistic plans.
Yurii Verkhovskii (1878—1956), a poet, translator and literary historian, devoted his numerous research works to poets of Pushkin’s period: Baratynskii, Delvig, Ryleev.
In his memories, written in 1946, Verkhovskii admitted that he had lost almost all documental evidence of his friendship with Blok; the documents which he managed to find are shown at the exhibition.
Wilhelm Sorgenfrei (1882—1938), a poet and translator, met Alexander Blok in spring 1906, and this friendship influenced his life and works a lot. Block’s poem Shagi komandora [Commander’s steps] is dedicated to him.
Literary translations made the most part of Sorgenfrei’s work. He made many works by German classic authors available to Russian readers: Stefan Zweig, Romain Rolland, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Heine and Heinrich von Kleist.
The exhibition features objects from the museum’s collection: books, manuscripts, photographs from N.P. Ilin’s collection and books from V.N. Orlov’s library. These items reveal the history of a strong friendship between the two translators and Alexander Blok: from the circumstances of their encounter to reminiscence after the poet’s death. Like pieces of a puzzle, the exhibited items complement the biographies of Verkhovskii and Sorgenfrei only to demonstrate the contrast between the life twists of poets of the Silver Age.
The ticket to the main exhibition grants access to this exhibition.
