Konstantin Balmont - Personality

Personality

Konstantin Balmont’s been characterized variously as theatrical, pretentious and outright egotistical, his behaviour being more often than not erratic and irrational. He could sprawl himself on a cobbled street of Paris to make an upcoming fiacre stop abruptly, or, dressed in a coat and hat, enter a pond at night so as "to experience something new and express this in poetry". What fans saw as the whimsies of a genius, others treated as cheap posturing aiming to impress. Boris Zaitsev remembered how his wife became duly appalled when Balmont (who was a neighbour) once asked her: "Vera, would you prefer a poet coming to Boris’ room by air, by-passing banal trails of the real world?" - We knew of one of his earlier attempts of the kind and were grateful for his visits having being made through banal and natural ways", Zaitsev added. Ridiculing good-humouredly his neighbour’s vain eccentricities, he remembered episodes when Balmont "could be altogether different person: very sad and very simple".

There’s been certainly more to the poet’s real personality than drunken escapades or impulsive follies he’s gained notoriety for. Poet Andrey Bely spoke of Balmont as of a lonely and vulnerable man, totally out of touch with the real world. Inconsistency marred his creativity too: “He’s failed to connect and harmonize those riches he’s been given by nature, aimlessly spending his spiritual treasures”, Bely argued. Duality was intrinsic to Balmont and the way he looked. According to Bely,

His deep-seated, almost browless eyes looked sombrely, humbly and mistrustfully. Once a spiteful look entered his face, a glimpse of vulnerability followed suit. His whole image was a kaleidoscope of contradictory features: arrogance and weakness, majestic posturing and languid apathy, cheekiness and fear – those were flickering on and on, making his pale, emaciated face ever changing. Sometimes this face looked insignificant. Sometimes it radiated unspoken grace.

"Balmont was a poseur and reasons for this were obvious. Ever crowded by worshippers, he was trying to bear himself in a manner he saw as befitting a great poet, casting his head back, furrowing his brow... It was laughter that gave him away… This childish laughter could say a lot of the nature of those ridiculous shenanigans of his. Exactly like a child, he was always moved by a momentary impulse", wrote Teffi. Close friend Valery Bryusov explained quirks and deviations in Balmont’s ways by "the deep poetic nature of his self". "He lives in a poet’s way finding in every moment of life’s its total richness. That is why one shouldn’t judge him by common criteria", Bryusov wrote.

Many remembered Balmont as extraordinary warm and humane person. Piotr Pertsov who knew him from the late teenage years, wrote of Balmont as of "very nice, friendly and considerate young man". Marina Tsvetayeva who was Balmont’s close friend in the years when both suffered from hunger and cold, insisted that the poet was "a kind of man who’d give any one in need his last bread, his last log of wood". Mark Talov, a Soviet translator who in the 1920s found himself penniless in Paris, remembered how often, having made a visit to Balmont he was finding money in his coat’s pockets afterwards; the poet (who was very poor himself) preferred the anonymous way of help so as not to confuse a visitor.

For some Balmont’s childishness was an affectation. Others saw it as genuine and true. Boris Zaitsev thought Valentin Serov’s portrait was closest in depicting Balmont’s brisky, slightly belligerent character. "Cheerful, easy to burst out, ready to retort sharply or effusively. Among birds he’d have been colourful chantecler, greeting daylight and life", Zaitsev wrote.

Outward bohemianism aside, Balmont had always been a hard worker, highly proficient and prolific. Wherever he went, he never stopped learning, seeping in not just impressions but myriads of facts concerning the place’s history and culture. Eccentric to many, he seemed rational and logical to some. Publisher Sergey Sabashnikov remembered the poet as "accurate, punctual, pedantic and never sloven… Such accuracy made Balmont a very welcome client", Sabashnikov added.