«ВРЕМЯ ШЛО…» АРХИВНЫЕ МАТЕРИАЛЫ ТАТЬЯНЫ ДАНИИЛОВНЫ КЛИМЕНКО-РАТГАУЗ

Abstract

“Time is ticking… The archival materials of Tatyana Daniilovna Klimenko-Ratgauz”. This article is devoted to the archival materials of Tatyana Klimenko-Ratgauz (1909–1993), an actress and writer, whose career began in the Russian Diaspora. Berlin, Prague, and Riga are the three capitals, where she lived in 1920–1940. Her memoirs correspond to the periods of her creative development. The unpublished memoirs, which have been written irregularly for several decades, begin with memories of childhood in Moscow and Kyiv. Famous theater figures, journalists, writers came to her father, a well-known poet and translator at that time. Memoirs testify to these visits, where, in addition to childhood impressions, they talk about Moscow theaters (the Moscow Art Theater, the Korsh Theater) and the performances of the Kyiv Opera. During the Berlin period, meetings were held with K. Stanislavsky, O. Knipper-Chekhova, V. Kachalov, N. Plevitskaya and others; with writers – Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, A. Tolstoy. In Prague, work begins in the theater studio of L. Kamerovskaya and in the literary association “Hermitage of Poets”; meetings with P. Potemkin, Igor Severyanin, V. Lebediv, V. Mansvetov, A. Eisner, A. Golovina, E. Chegrintseva, A. Vertinsky and others. The Riga period diversified her literary work – in the Riga Drama Theater she becomes a prima donna. The ego-texts of T. Klimenko-Ratgauz are not limited to memoirs: as a “calendar” of the cultural events of her life, she refers to albums of autographs, letters, drawings and madrigals dedicated to her, written by creative personalities of the Russian Diaspora. The facts cited in the archive of the memoirist make the picture of literary and theatrical life in the 1920–1940s more complete.