Каталог «Хлебниковской коллекции» Дома-музея Велимира Хлебникова

мордовскую шапку – ещё предстоит выяснить.

Ясно одно: шапка представляет несомненный

интерес для художников, этнографов и нумиз-

матов.

Блюдо. Выжигание и роспись по дереву

выполнены Александром Хлебниковым. На

блюде запечатлён матрос с броненосца «Потём-

кин». Под его портретом, по борту блюда, выре-

зана надпись: «Русская свобода родилась на

море». Она перекликается со строкой Вели-

мира: «Свобода – дочь моря» («Нужно ли начи-

нать рассказ с детства?..»). Возможно, свою

работу Александр выполнил в 1908 году, посту-

пив в Одесский университет.

События, связанные с мятежным броненос-

цем, ещё были свежи в памяти одесситов.

КАТАЛОГ «ХЛЕБНИКОВСКОЙ КОЛЛЕКЦИИ» ДОМА-МУЗЕЯ ВЕЛИМИРА ХЛЕБНИКОВА

In September 1931, Vera Khlebnikova arran-

ged her aged parents’ move to Moscow as it was

impossible for them to survive for their meager

pension in the starving Astrakhan. By that time,

they had the bare essentials only, as V.A. Khlebni-

kov was invalided out from the post of the Direc-

tor of the Reserve and his apartment was by two

third occupied by other dwellers. Thus, a lot of

stuff was sold out, however, the one remained

would be enough for two wagons, as noticed by

Petr Miturich. Later on, in Moscow, “we arranged

everything little by little, so everything found out

its place”.

Most of the surviving items of the Khlebnikov

family were donated to the Museum. Let us out-

line some of them.

Velimir Khlebnikov’s stuff:

A pencil and some Koh-i-noor stamps.

A pen made of the willow branch (with which

the poet wrote the “Willow Branch” article: “I am

writing now with a withered willow branch, on

which some silver fluff-balls sat down like the fluffy

little hares coming out to see the spring”).

A necktie (given by V. Mayakovskiy).

A comb.

Some figures from Sergiyev-Posad: Ivan the

Terrible and A Village Young Woman. In his “Ka-

2” story Khlebnikov writes: “I brought a wooden

but a gingerbread Ivan the Terrible with beauti-

ful thin eyebrows […] and four green village

young women…” One left out of four as three, as

confessed by the poet, were given by him to gipsy

kids.

The Plate with the Verbitskiy Family Crest

The Verbitskiys (the poet’s cousins on the ma-

ternal side) were noblemen. The clanship of the

crest to the Verbitskiys was identified by A. Parnis.

This, as considered by the researcher, is one of the

intermediate crests of the Verbitskiy clan. Velimir

raised his family tree to the “noble military man

Stepan Verbitskiy (beginning of the XVIIIth cen-

tury), who “had come from Poland under the All-

Russian empire to serve the All-Russia throne”.

“There is an Armenian (the Alabovs) and a Zapo-

rozhyean blood (the Verbitskiys) in my veins”, sta-

ted the poet in his “Autobiographical Note”. Let

us add that Gogol was his favorite writer and Veli-

mir wrote “The Easter (Imitation of Gogol), “Go-

gol’s Equation of Life”, “Death of Palivoda” (a Za-

porozhean with such family name can be found in

“Taras Bulba”) and other works.

The Cup of V. Khlebnikova

The dark blue one with the faceted bottom

and the body styled on the Chinese painting. Vera

Khlebnikova depicted this cup in her “The Man-

darins Piece” (1930s).

The Cup of Y. Khlebnikova

P. Miturich stated: “Old people conserve eve-

rything. They became intimate with stuff… I could

remember once I left just household rubbish ho-

ping they would forget about it in a hurry, but Y. N.

(Yekaterina Nikolayevna Khlebnikova. –

A.M.

)

then said: “Petr Vasiljevich left it, but this is of sen-

timental value to me as given to me by Vitya”. So,

this cup became dearer to me than many others”.

The Mordovian Cap

Such drawing by Vera Khlebnikova as “Velimir

Wearing a Mordovian Cap” performed in the Mor-

dovian village of Alfyorovo (Alferjevo), where the

Khlebnikovs lived in the early 1910s, is widely

known. Its (the Cap’s) description was made by

May Miturich-Khlebnikov: “This is a woman’s cap

made of cerecloth and embroidered with colored

wool, beads, shells, having some necklace on the

small chains”. The coins in it are of great interest

not least because they are not listed even in such

a big international catalogue of coins as the

Krause catalogue. It was managed to identify that

they all had been issued in France and there is a

portrait of Louis XVI on the head side of one of

them! We still have to figure out how the French

coins could appear on the Mordovian cap. But one