Salomea Andronikova
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Salomea Nikolayevna Andronikova (Russian: Саломея Николаевна Андроникова), born Salome Andronikashvili (Georgian: სალომე ანდრონიკაშვილი) (October 1888 – May 8, 1982) was a Georgian-Russian noblewoman and a prominent socialite of the literary and artistic world of pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg. A close friend of the poets Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, her physical and intellectual charms were celebrated in their poetry and inspired other contemporary writers such as Grigol Robakidze and Ilia Zdanevich as well as the artists Boris Grigoriev, Alexandre Jacovleff, and Zinaida Serebriakova.[1]
Family
Salomea Andronikova was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia) into the family of the Georgian prince Ivane Andronikashvili (1863–1944) and his Russian wife Lidiya Pleshcheyeva-Muratova (1861–1953). Salomea's real patronymic was "Ivanovna", which she found vulgar and adopted "Nikolayevna" instead.[1] The Andronikashvili family claimed descent from the Byzantine Comnenid dynasty.[2] Salomea also had a sister, Maria (1891–1976) and a brother, Jesse (1893–1937), a retired White Russian officer who was purged during Joseph Stalin's rule.
St. Petersburg and emigration
In 1906, at the age of 18, Salomea moved from Tiflis to St. Petersburg, where she married the tea businessman Pavel Andreyev and gave birth to a daughter Irina. She ran a salon, which hosted literary gatherings and was frequented, among others, by the poets Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam. After the divorce with Andreyev, Salomea had a 7-year long affair with the Russian poet Sergey Rafalovich, with whom she fled the revolutionary turmoil in Petrograd to her native Georgia in 1917. She settled in Tiflis and co-edited the Russian-language literary monthly Orion. Here, she began a love affair with Zinovy Peshkov, a French diplomat of Russian background, and accompanied him to Paris in 1919. She helped the Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova escape Soviet Russia and supported the poet Marina Tsvetaeva during her forced exile in Europe.[3]
In 1925 Salomea married the lawyer Alexander Galpern, a Russian émigré to France and a close friend of Alexander Kerensky, but the couple lived separately. She worked for the fashion magazines of Lucien Vogel and remained in Paris until 1940, when she moved to the United States, where Galpern served at the British embassy, bringing her grandson with her. Her daughter Irina, baroness Nolde, a member of the French Resistance during World War II, remained in the German captivity. Salomea lived in London since 1937 and died there in 1982, at the age of 94, in a house purchased for her by the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin.[4] In accordance with her will, Salomea’s ashes were scattered on Trafalgar Square.[5]
References
- ^ a b Smith, G. S. & Stone, G. C. (1998), Oxford Slavonic Papers: New Series. Volume XXX, p. 90. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198159544.
- ^ Kelsey Jackson Williams (2006), A Genealogy of the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond. Foundations - the Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy – Vol. 2, No. 3.
- ^ Feiler, Lily (1994), Marina Tsvetaeva: the Double Beat of Heaven and Hell, p. 178. Duke University Press, ISBN 978-0822314820
- ^ Template:Ru icon Лобанов-Ростовский Н. Дм. История: Портрет Саломеи Андрониковой работы Александра Яковлева. Русская Газета. 03.31.2005, №12(83).
- ^ Template:Ru icon Мнухин Л., Авриль М., Лосская В. Российское зарубежье во Франции 1919—2000. — Москва: Наука; Дом-музей Марины Цветаевой. 2008.
