Andrei Bely (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, 1880-1934)
Autograph poem, 'To Asya'. 1917
Autograph manuscript poem ‘To Asya’, Demyanovo, 1917.

In Russian. 12 lines on one page, 192 x 138mm, on a bifolium (conjoined at foot), numbered ‘16’ and ‘v’ at upper right corner.

V bezgnevnom sne, v gnetushche-grustnoy nege
Rastvorena tak stranno strast' moya...
Prob'yet priboy na belopennom brege,
Plesnet v utes solenaya struya.

An evocation of an ‘angerless dream’ of his wife, in which the poet’s passion dissolves into ‘heaven, filling like tears / The fragrant glitter of the evenings / Blissfully shine with turquoises’, and concluding with fragments of ‘my last dream: / Sicily … And passionate guitars … / Palermo, Monreale … Radès … I love you!’.

The ‘Asya’ of the poem is Anna Turgenieva (1890-1966), the great-niece of the novelist, whom Bely met in 1909, and with whom in the following year he travelled through Sicily and North Africa (including to Radès in Tunisia): they married in 1914, but by the time of this poem they had already been separated by the World War (when Anna remained in Switzerland), and by 1921 when they met again in Berlin the marriage was over.

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