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He started writing verses very early in his life and even though his parents dismissed literary endeavor as not serious and profitable enough, Gumilev stuck to his guns. Finishing school, he told his parents he wanted to continue his education at the Sorbonne. He wasn't entirely sincere about education, however, even though he did enroll in the famous university. What he was really after was the arts and the French poetry he liked so much. And, last but not least, it was the first time he left home on his own... Getting back to Russia, he started publishing his poems. Gumilev is one of those writers who take time realizing themselves and make the big time," Valery Bryusov, another famous Russian poet, once said of Gumilev. The prediction came perfectly true and Nikolai Gumilev eventually rose to become a great poet, an intelligent and very discerning critic and one of the finest representatives of the Silver Age of Russian literature. He later met the very talented and beautiful Anna Gorenko, who later became world famous under the pen name Anna Akhmatova. Their marriage didn't last long though because two poets just can't live happily together... Driven by a lifelong desire to assert himself, Nikolai Gumilev never missed a chance to put his will to the test in emergency, be it during risky travels in Africa or in combat. Once, when they were crossing a river in Africa sitting inside a basket hanging from a rope, Gumilev, seeing that the tree roots were rotten, started rocking the basket, just for the fun of it, risking a deadly plunge into a river down below which was literally teeming with crocodiles... The moment they reached the opposite bank, the rope snapped and the basket went tumbling down... When World War One broke out in 1914, Nikolai volunteered to the battlefront. He fought with valiance, which often bordered on daredevilry... Once, when an enemy machinegun opened up on the Russian positions, everyone sought cover inside a nearby trench, everyone but Gumilev who, visibly unperturbed by the bullets flying all around him, remained in the open lighting up a cigarette. Well, it surely took more than sheer bravado to win two St.George's Crosses for valiance though... Strange as it might seem, the two major political upheavals that happened next, namely the February Revolution of 1917 which dethroned the Romanovs and the Bolshevik takeover in October left Gumilev largely unmoved because he never really cared much about politics. Paradoxically, it was Gumilev who became one of the first to fall at the hands of the victorious Bolsheviks who accused him of plotting against the Revolution... When the terrible news of Gumilev's execution arrived, everyone was
in shock unable to believe that the famous poet was no more... "When the
state confronts a poet, I pity the state," one author said then. "Really,
what can it possibly do? To kill the poet? But you cannot kill the poems,
they are immortal, and so the poor state always ends up the loser..."
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Still a young
boy, Nikolai started working hard to perfect his image and personality.
"I have always been a snob and an aesthete," he later admitted. "When I
was 14 I read The Portrait of Dorian Gray and imagined I were Lord Henry.
I started paying much attention to my looks, which I didn't like and which
made me suffer a lot. Well, I was ugly, too skinny and clumsy. Moreover,
I was red and pimply in the face and my lips were so thin. After dark I
would lock myself in inside my room and, standing in front of the mirror,
kept telling myself how nice and good-looking I really was..." This effort
didn't go in vain and even though Nikolai never was a good-looker, his
strong spirit was immediately visible to all...