Serge Wolkonsky

Serge Wolkonsky
Serge Wolkonsky
Born	May 4, 1860; Revel, Russia
Died	August 25, 1937 (aged 77); Virginia, United States

Prince Serge Wolkonsky (also referred to as Sergei Mikhailovitch Volkonsky; Template:Lang-ru) (4 May 1860 – 25 October 1937) was an influential Russian theatrical worker, one of the first Russian proponents of eurhythmics, pupil and friend of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and creator of an original system of actor's training that included both expressive gesture and expressive speech.

Biography

Wolkonsky was born on the Fall estate near Revel in Imperial Russia (now Tallinn, Estonia). His mother was Princess Elizaveta Grigorievna Volkonskaya, daughter of Grigory Petrovich Volkonsky (son of Sophia, a sister of Decembrist Sergei Volkonsky) and Mary (née Countess Benckendorff, daughter of Count Alexander Benckendorff). Princess Volkonskaya profoundly influenced her son Serge, defining many of his interests, including his Orthodox religious views; among her friends was the well-known Russian philosopher, theologian and poet Vladimir Solovyov. Wolkonsky's father, Mikhail Sergeevich, was a son of Decembrist Sergei Volkonsky and Mary, née Raevskaya; his godfather was Pushkin's friend Ivan Pushchin, another Decembrist. From his birth, Michael was registered as a serf, and as the son of a deportee wasn't allowed to enter the University, ^{[clarification needed]} but in 1855, just after the death of Emperor Nicholas I, he reached Russia from Siberia, and by the 1870s had become a member of the State Council.

Wolkonsky graduated from the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University in 1884. In the spring of 1893, he attended the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as an official representative of the Department of Public Instruction, and an article by him about it was published later on in Vestnik Evropy ("The European Bulletin"). Later that year he went on a world cruise before returning to Petersburg via Constantinople. In the mid-1890s, he delivered lectures on Russia at Cornell and Harvard.^[1]^[2]^[3]

During the realm of Tsar Alexander III Serge Volkonsky converted to Russian Creem Catholic Church from Russian Orthodoxy.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). He became the first director of established in 1931 Conservatoire Rachmaninoff in Paris. During this time he became "a close friend and associate of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva (who dedicated to him her cycle of poems 'The Disciple' and wrote an essay about his memoirs)."^[4] In 1936 he was invited by the Kurt Jooss ballet school in London, after which he taught in the ballet company of Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin. In this city Wolkonsky met the woman he married, Mary Walker Fearn, daughter of United States diplomat J. Walker Fearn and (by her first marriage) a sister-in-law of the former Mrs. Elsie French Vanderbilt. After the marriage Prince and Princess Wolkonsky went to the United States, and there in the town of Hot Springs, Virginia he died after a brief illness. "His health had been undermined by four years of teaching in Bolshevik schools."^[5] On 31 October, a requiem was held in a Russian Catholic church, and "besides relatives there was all Russian Paris."^[6] He was buried in Richmond, Virginia.

References

^ Simon Karlinsky (ed.), Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya (U. of California Press, rev. ed., 2001), p. 47.
^ Cornell Alumni News, Vol. 14, No. 23 (Mar. 13, 1912), p. 3.
^ The Harvard Crimson, February 24, 1896.
^ Karlinsky (ed.), Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya, p. 48.
^ The New York Times, October 26, 1937, p.17.
^ F. Requiem on Prince Serge Wolkonsky, Poslednie Novosti, 1937, 1 November, N 6064, p. 3 (in Russian).

Works

Pictures of Russian History and Russian Literature. Boston, NY, London; Lamson, Wolffe & Co. 1st ed. 1897; Pictures…, (Lowell lectures), 1898
Impressions: sketches of American life as observed by a Russian. Chicago, 1893
My reminiscences (translated by A.E. Chamot). London: Hutchinson & Co, 2 vols, 1924
"The Decembrists. The first Russian revolutionists," Thought, v.3, 1928

(For a full list please see Russian article.)

Bibliography

R.C.Beachem, "Appia, Jaques-Dalcroze and Hellerau," NTQ, v.1, N 2-3, 1985
C.Bommeli, "Vera Griner," Le Rythme, Geneve, bull. 8-9, 1990—1991, p. 24-25
Arnold L. Haskell. Diaghileff. His artistic and private life. — NY, 1935
Matilda Kshessinskaya. Dancing in Petersburg — London, 1960, 1973; Souvenirs de la Kshessinskaya. — Paris, 1960.
Mary Trofimov, "The Last Days of Prince Serge Wolkonsky)," Theatrical Life, Moscow, N 20, 1991, p. 31 (in Russian)