"When a wife is a reliable support": the love story of poet Alexander Tvardovsky
Poet
Alexander Tvardovsky lived 40 happy years with his wife Maria Gorelova. Guests
at the National Centre RUSSIA learnt about this at a meeting of the Literary
Club "What to Read?!", where they discussed not only his creative
work but also his personal life.
The couple
got married without a lavish ceremony, but with confidence in their choice.
From then on, Maria became not only a spouse to the poet but also his closest
person, combining the duties of assistant, editor, secretary, whilst being his
reliable support.
Soviet poet
Yevgeny Yevtushenko said about Tvardovsky that he was "the strangest poet
who never wrote a word about love." And it was so, he did not write about
love, he had it in his life. He also did not create poems dedicated to his
wife, but expressed his feelings in letters: "Everything is so serious in
the world, my dear, that I think those people who preserve their tenderness and
attachment to each other now will be inseparable forever." His lines
addressed to his spouse during the Great Patriotic War: "And I don't know
how hard it would be for me, a hundred times harder than it sometimes is, if I
didn't have you and the children".
Every year
on Tvardovsky's birthday, he gave his wife a bouquet of white lilac despite the
fact that it was January outside.
"It is
difficult to determine how characteristic love lyrics were of Alexander
Tvardovsky. His feelings were probably too emotionally subtle for him to
express them. Maria Illarionovna preserved Tvardovsky's archive, thanks to
which it was fully published. As a result, there is work for society, and there
is a wife who is his support, his rear", noted Yevgenia Kravchenkova,
associate professor of the Department of World Literature at the Pushkin State
Russian Language Institute.
When Tvardovsky
was diagnosed with cancer, Maria was by his side until the end, and did her
best to ease his pain. After her husband's death, she published his letters and
released a book of memoirs.
The II
All-Russian Wedding Festival "Russia. Uniting Hearts" will take place
at the National Centre RUSSIA and will run from July 8 to 10. Life stories like
those of Tvardovsky and his spouse remind us that true love is not just loud
words, but daily loyalty and devotion.
The
festival programme includes official wedding ceremonies for more than 200
couples, as well as numerous special events: concert programmes featuring
popular performers, creative workshops by wedding industry specialists, fashion
shows, and much more.
