Once upon a time there was a translator. Lyudmila Savitskaya and Konstantin Balmont. Comp. Livak L.

Russian and French actress, writer and translator Lyudmila (Lucy) Savitskaya (1881–1957) is almost unknown to the modern Russian reader, but this is an important figure for understanding the phenomenon of transnational modernist culture in which she played the role of an intermediary. The history of her life and creativity was closely intertwined with the biographies of prominent figures of “new art” - from A. Jew, G. Apolliner and E. Pound to D. Joyce, V. Bryusov and M. Voloshin.

A special place in it was occupied by the coriffs of early Russian modernism, the poet Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), who was friends and collaborated with Lyudmila Savitskaya. Previously not published materials - diaries, correspondence and memories that shed light on their fleeting novel and the subsequent long -term relationship - make up the bulk of the book and cover the little -known pages of the history of Russian culture of the first third of the twentieth century.