Authors

Discussion

This paper traces the history of a recently discovered set of photographs of Nikolai Gumilev and his circle from 1921, and the accompanying letter from 1986 from Ida Nappelbaum (1900-1992) to Lev Gumilev (1912-1992). On the basis of these photographs (themselves versions of a well-known shot) we establish the dates and their original sequence, the place they were taken, as well as confirm people depicted there. 

This forms a background to understanding a relationship that failed to take off between Lev Gumilev, the poet’s son, and Ida Nappelbaum, one of the last surviving members of Gumilev-senior’s poetic circle Zvuchashchaia Rakovina. 

This brief letter and the photographs throw an unexpected light on how the legacy of the grand figures of Russia’s Silver Age, specifically Nikolai Gumilev and Moisei Nappelbaum, still continued to shape the lives and inner selves of their children even in the late Soviet era.