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All her life she kept both the offprint and the envelope in which it was sent to her.
Another review, by Harbin poet Vasilii Loginov (1891–1946), criticized her poetry for "unusual, perhaps excessive, grammatical correctness" and argued that some sentences did not sound quite Russian. Further shortcomings, in his opinion, were "the youthful insignificance of the majority of poems," "the almost complete absence of sexuality," and "almost no lyrics and erotica." On the other hand, Loginov praised an "almost Levitan-like feeling for landscape" and "the great significance and force" of some poems. His conclusion was that "a certain poetic and artistic taste (…) was apparently formed by such perfect masters as Blok and Gumilev, who stretched a blessing hand over all Vezey's poems."[16] Not knowing English, neither Nesmelov, nor Loginov mentioned the English poems and translations.
The collection was welcomed in Claremont; a reviewer particularly noted that "one poem is entitled 'Claremont/ though it is in Russian, a tantalizing combination which was a great disappointment to everyone who wanted to read it." The translation of the poem (poem 28) into English by Professor Dietrich Neufield of Pomona College and Linda Schroeder, completed the review.[17]
At the end of the 1920s and begi
By the end of 1920s, the political situation in northeast China (called Manchuria by the foreigners) had changed. Since 1924, the Chinese Eastern Railway had been operated jointly by the USSR and the Chinese Republic, but their relations steadily worsened. In 1929, a serious conflict led to military action on the west border, easily won by the USSR. In autumn 1931-winter 1932, Japan occupied the three northeast provinces of China and in March 1932 established the puppet state of Manchukuo. Two years later, Manchukuo was transformed into the Great Manchu Empire with the puppet emperor Pu Yi on the throne. The USSR was forced to sell its share of the Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan in 1935 and pull out of the area.
Henry Vezey's newspaper Harbin Daily News closed in 1932, and in 1933 the Vezey family moved to Shanghai, as many Harbin Russians did in the 1930s. Shanghai was too international to allow for the creation of the Russian atmosphere typical of Harbin, but nevertheless there was some Russian cultural and literary life, including publication of books, newspapers, and journals. In Shanghai, Mary Vezey worked for foreign firms and continued to write poetry and some short stories, the latter published under a pseudonym of A. Raevskaia.[20]
Her second collection of poetry came in 1936. Entitled as simply as the first one, Slikholvoreniia (Poems), but numbered II, it contained 52 poems, all in Russian. Most copies of this collection were allegedly "eaten by rats" during the 1937 Japanese attack on Shanghai, as Mary Vezey was later informed by the publishers V.P. Kamkin and Kh.V. Popov,[21] Like the first collection, it became a bibliographical rarity.
Reviewing the second collection, Harbin poet Natalia Reznikova wrote that in Vezey's poetry "the influences of A. Blok and A
The collection was noticed in Europe. In 1937, the Shanghai-Paris journal Russkie zapiski (Russian Notes) reviewed several books published in Shanghai. The reviewer, concealed under the initials I.F., commented on Mary Vezey's poetry: "in the first collection, the Russian poems seemed like a translation from English, and the English poems a translation from Russian." This second collection, he continued, shows hard work, but new poems "lack independence. One feels the influence of Blok, of the lyrical poetry of Gumilev, and most of all of Akhmatova. These are real 'women’s' poems. Most of them are sad love lyrics."[24]
At the end of the 1930s, the Si no-Japanese War was raging in China, and the Second World War was about to engulf the world. In 1939, the Vezey family left China for San Francisco, a city favoured by many Russians from China. Mary Vezey's father, who had fallen seriously ill in Shanghai, died soon after their arrival in 1939; her mother in 1950. In September 1940, Mary Vezey married Evgenii Fedorovich Tourkoff (1908–1981), a Harbin Russian, a graduate of the Harbin Polytechnic Institute, an engineer, and soon they had a daughter Olga. In the 1960s, Mary Vezey worked as an assistant secretary to Professor Edwin B. Boldrey, a prominent neurosurgeon and Chairman of Neurological Surgery at the University of California Medical Center.
She continued to write and translate, and her poems appeared in emigre periodicals in the USA and Europe. Eight poems were included in Sodruzhestvo (Concord) (Washington, 1966), a significant collection representing the work of 75 living Emigre poets. In the 1960s, she offered a collection of her translations of the emigre poets Dmitrii Klenovskii and Vladimir Smolenskii to the Wesleyan University Press, Co
16
V. Loginov, "Knizhnye novinki. M. Vizi. "Stikhotvoreniia" (New Books. M. Vezey, "Poems"), Rubezh (Border), undated cutting, Harbin, 1930. 1.1. Levitan (1860–1900) was a Russian landscape painter, famous for his pensive, poetic paintings.
17
"College Graduate Writes Book of Poems in Russian," Claremont Courier, 20 March 1930.
18
Letter from L. Kel'berin to M. Vezey, 6 August 1930. For a translation of a poem by Kel'berin see poem 611.
19
Letter from V. Smolenskii to M. Vezey, 23 December 1930. For translations of Smolenskii's poetry see poems 636–648.
20
A. Raevskaia, "Fiesta" (Fiesta), Rubezh, no. 42, 14 October 1933; A. Raevskaia, "Parusa korablei" (Sails of Boats), Prozhektor (Searchlight), Shanghai, no. 48, 25 November 1933; A. Raevskaia, "Pari" (A Bet), Prozhektor, no. 3, 13 January 1934.
21
Letters from M. Vezey to O. Bakich, 28 August 1989 and 7 March 1991.
22
N. Reznikova, "Knizhnye novinki. M. Vizi. Stikhotvoreniia" (New Books. M. Vezey. Poems), Rubezh, no. 27, 27 June 1937.
23
"Bibliografiia. M. Vizi. Stikhotvoreniia, t. II (Bibliography. M. Vezey. Poems, v. II), Emigrantskaia mysl' (Emigre Thought), Shanghai, No. 3, 1936; "M. Vizi, Stikhotvoreniia II" (M. Vezey. Poems II), Novyi put' (New Road), Shanghai, 24 May 1936.
24
I.F., "Emigrantskie pisateli na Dal'nem Vostoke" (emigre Writers in the Far Hast), Russkie zapiski (Russian Notes), Shanghai-Paris, no. 1, 1937, p. 324–323.
25
Letter from M. Vezey to Wesleyan University Press, undated, ca. end of 1960s.