Ariadna Efron
Efron in 1926
Efron in 1926
BornAriadna Sergeyevna Efron
(1912-09-18)18 September 1912
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died26 July 1975(1975-07-26) (aged 62)
Tarusa, Kaluga Oblast, Soviet Union
OccupationRussian/Soviet poet, writer, translator, visual artist
EducationÉcole du Louvre, Paris
PartnerSamuil Gurevich (common-law)

Ariadna Sergeyevna Efron (Russian: Ариадна Сергеевна Эфрон; 18 September  [O.S. 5 September] 1912 – 26 July 1975) was a Russian poet, memoirist, artist, art critic, and translator of prose and poetry. Her original poems, except for those written in childhood, were not printed during her lifetime. She was a daughter of poets Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva.

Life

Early life

Efron's parents and relatives called Ariadna Alya; her mother Tsvetaeva devoted a large number of poems to her (including the cycle "Poems to her Daughter"). Efron herself wrote poems from early childhood (20 poems were published by her mother in her collection "Psyche"), and she kept diaries. In 1922, she went abroad with her mother.

Emigration

From 1922 to 1925, Efron lived in Czechoslovakia, and from 1925 to 1937 in France, from where, on 18 March 1937, she was the first of her family to return to the USSR.

In Paris, she graduated from the Duperré School of Applied Arts, where she studied book design, engraving, lithography, and from the École du Louvre where she majored in art history.

She worked for the French magazines Russie d'Aujourd'hui ('Russia Today'), France-URSS ('France-URSS'), Pour-Vous ('For You'), as well as for the pro-Soviet magazine Nash Soviet ('Our Union'), which was published by the "Union of Returning Soviet Citizens" (Союз возвращенцев на Родину). She wrote articles and essays and produced translations, illustrations).[1] Her translations in to French included works by Mayakovsky and other Soviet poets.

The "Union of Returning Soviet Citizens" was in fact a cover organization of the NKVD, but Efron accepted this and supplied the NKVD information on exiled Russians and those wanting to return to the USSR.

After the return to the USSR

After returning to the USSR, Efron worked in the editorial board of the Soviet magazine Revue de Moscou (published in French). She wrote articles, essays, reports, made illustrations and produced translations.

In prison camps and in exile

On 27 August 1939, Efron was arrested by the NKVD and convicted by the OSO under article 58-6 (espionage) to 8 years of forced labour in labour camps. She was tortured and forced to testify against her father. She only learned afterwards about the death of her parents in 1941 (her mother committed suicide in the evacuation in Yelabuga, and her father was shot).[2]

In the spring of 1943, Efron refused to cooperate with the camp leadership and become a "snitch", and she was transferred to a logging camp in the Sevzheldorlag, a penal camp. An actress of the camp theater, Tamara Slanskaya, managed to ask someone for an envelope so she could write her husband, Gurevich: "If you want to save Alya, try to rescue her from the North." According to Slanskaya, "pretty soon he managed to get her transferred to Mordovia, to Potma".[3]

After her release in 1948, she worked as a teacher of graphics at the art college in Ryazan.[4] After long years of isolation, she felt a great need to communicate with friends, and her life was brightened by correspondence with friends, who included Boris Pasternak who sent her his new poems and chapters from his forthcoming novel Doctor Zhivago. She was so impressed by the book that she wrote to Pasternak:[5]

10/14/48 ... I have a dream, which, due to my circumstances, will not be fulfilled soon – I would like to illustrate the book, slightly differently from the usual way, not like books are usually illustrated, i.e. cover, title page etc,. no, I would like to do some drawings with a pen, to try to have on paper certain characters the way I see them with my eyes, you understand, don't you, to capture them…

Efron was again arrested on 22 February 1949 and sentenced, on the basis of her previous conviction, to a life in exile in the Turukhansky District of the Krasnoyarsk Krai. Thanks to her education in France, she was able to work in Turukhansk as an artist-designer in the cultural center of the local district. She produced a series of watercolor sketches about life in exile, some of which were first published only in 1989.[6][7]

In 1955, she was rehabilitated as there was no proof of criminal activity. She now returned to Moscow, where in 1962 she became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. In the 1960s and 1970s, she lived in one of the buildings of the ZhSK of the Union of Soviet Writer" (Krasnoarmeyskaya St., 23).[8]

Death

From her youth, Efron had a heart condition; she suffered several heart attacks.[9]

She died in a hospital in Tarusa from a massive heart attack on 26 July 1975[9] and was buried in the town cemetery. Tarusa is a small town 102 km from Moscow which had been a popular place for writers and artists, including Marina Tsvetayeva's parents who had had a villa there. During the Soviet era, many members of the dissident intelligentsia had settled in Tarusa, as they were forbidden to live less than 100 km from Moscow.

Efron edited for publication works of her mother and took care of her archives. She left behind her memoirs, which were published in the magazines Literaturnaja Armenija- ja Zvezda. She had also produced a lot of translations of poetry, mainly the works of French poets, such as Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Théophile Gautier, etc. She also wrote many original poems, which were only published in the 1990s.

Her common-law husband ("my first and last husband") was Samuil Davidovich Gurevich (in the family known as Mulya; 1904–1951; he was executed in the Stalinist repressions), a journalist, translator, and editor-in-chief of the journal Za Rubezhom ('Abroad'). Efron had no children.

Publications

  • Efron, Ariadna (1982). Письма из ссылки. Ариадна Эфрон Б.Пастернаку (in Russian). Paris: YMCA-PRESS. p. 182. ISBN 2-85065-012-9.
  • Efron, Ariadna (1989). О Марине Цветаевой: Воспоминания дочери (in Russian). Moskova: Sovetskiĭ pisatel. p. 480. ISBN 5-265-00670-2. Archived from the original on 10 August 2011.
  • Efron, Ariadna (1996). А душа не тонет. Письма 1942–1975. Воспоминания (in Russian). Moskova: Kul'tura.
  • Efron, Ariadna (2003). Рисунок. Акварель. Гравюра [Drawings, water colours, gravures] (in Russian). Moskova: Vozvraščenije. p. 72. ISBN 5-88149-134-3.
  • Efron, Ariadna (2008). История жизни, история души (3 volumes). Составление, подготовка текста, подготовка иллюстраций, примечания Р. Б. Вальбе. Том 1: Письма 1937—1955. Том 2: Письма 1955—1975. Том 3: Воспоминания, проза, стихи, устные рассказы, переводы [Life history, history of the soul] (in Russian). Moskova: Vozvraščenije. p. 1192. ISBN 978-5-7157-0166-4, 978-5-7157-0167-1, 978-5-7157-0168-8.
  • Efron, Ariadna; Федерольф Ада (1996). Мироедиха. Рядом с Алей (in Russian). Moskova: Vozvraščenije. p. 368. ISBN 5-7157-0063-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Efron, Ariadna (2004). Жизнь есть животное полосатое. Письма к Ольге Ивинской и Ирине Емельяновой (1955—1975) (in Russian). Moskova: Studija VIGRAF. p. 276. ISBN 5-94437-004-1.
  • Efron, Ariadna (2005). Моей зимы снега. Воспоминания, рассказы, письма, стихи, рисунки (in Russian). Moskova: Novosti. p. 936. ISBN 5-88149-212-9.
  • Efron, Ariadna; Federolf, Ada (2006). Непринудительные работы [Unforced labors: the memoirs of Ada Federolf and selected prose of Ariadna Efron.] (in Russian). Moskova: Vozvraščenije. p. 412. ISBN 5-7157-0201-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Efron, Ariadna (2008). Аленькины вещи (in Russian). Moskova: Vozvraščenije. p. 42. ISBN 9785715701701.
  • Efron, Ariadna (2008). Нить Ариадны (in Russian). Moskova: Dom-muzeĭ Mariny Cvetajevoĭ. p. 40. ISBN 978-5-93015-101-5.
  • Efron, Ariadna; Federolf, Ada (2010). А жизнь идёт, как Енисей… Рядом с Алей (in Russian). Moskova: Vozvraščenije. p. 408. ISBN 978-5-7157-0234-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Efron, Ariadna (2009). No Love Without Poetry: The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva's Daughter (in Russian and English). Northwestern University Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-8101-2589-6.
  • Efron, Ariadna (2013). Книга детства: Дневники Ариадны Эфрон, 1919–1921 (in Russian). Moskova: Russkiĭ put. ISBN 978-5-85887-435-5.
  • Efron, Ariadna (2018). Нелитературная дружба: Письма к Лидии Бать. Предисловие Р. С. Войтеховича; примечания И. Г. Башкировой (PDF) (in Russian). Moskova: Sobranije. p. 360. Retrieved 28 January 2020.

Literature

  • Jemel'janova, Irina Ivanovna (1997). Легенды Потаповского переулка: Б. Пастернак. А. Эфрон. В. Шаламов: Воспоминания и письма (in Russian). Moskova: Èllis Lak.
  • Справочник Союза писателей СССР. ред. М. В. Горбачев, сост. Н. В. Боровская (in Russian). Moskova: Sovetskiĭ pisatel. 1970. p. 792.

References

  1. ↑ Сводный каталог периодических и продолжающихся изданий Русского Зарубежья в библиотеках Москвы, Moscow, 1999, p. 127.
  2. ↑ Efron, Ariadna (2012). Неизвестная Цветаева. Воспоминания дочери [The unknown Tsvetayeva. Memoirs of her daughter]. Moscow: Алгоритм (Algoritm). ISBN 978-5-4438-0058-5.
  3. ↑ "Ариадна Эфрон, письма из ссылки/ Ariadna Efron, letters 1942–48". Archived from the original on 2 January 2017. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  4. ↑ В письме к Е. Я. Эфрон и З. М. Ширкевич от 22 февраля 1948 г.: «<…> я зачислена на работу с 1-го февраля <…>» (Эфрон А. С. История жизни, история души: В 3 т. / Сост., подгот. текста, примеч. Р. Б. Вальбе. М. «Возвращение», 2008. Т. 1. С. 139)
  5. ↑ Из переписки Ариадны Эфрон и Бориса Пастернака (1948—1957 гг.) — М.: «Знамя», 1988, № 7 — с. 139.
  6. ↑ Туруханские письма. Ариадна Эфрон — Алла Белякова. — М.: Дом-музей Марины Цветаевой, 2009. — С. 168.
  7. ↑ Акварельная живопись Ариадны Эфрон — Л.: «Нева», 1989, № 4 — цветная вкладка
  8. ↑ Список телефонов ЖСК «Советский писатель». — М., типография «Литературной газеты», 1966. — С. 34—35.
  9. 1 2 Ирина Чайковская: Вглядеться в поступь рока. Интервью с Руфью Вальбе (Номер 16 (147) от 16 августа 2009 г.) | Журнал «Чайка»
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