Ratgauz, Daniil Maksimovich

Father - Max Abramovich Rathaus, hereditary honorary citizen, banker. D.M. Ratgauz studied at the gymnasium in Kiev , graduated from the law faculty of the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev (1895), and served as a sworn attorney.

The patron of the poetic experiences of young Rathaus became you. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko . After a 24-year-old student sent his verses to P.I.Tchaikovsky in August 1892, the composer created 6 romances in the last year of his life to the words of Rathouse (opus 73: “We sat with you at the river that fell asleep”, “On this moonlit night ”,“ Again, as before, alone ”, etc.) and encouraged their author with letters recognizing“ true talent ”. In 1893, Rathouse published the first collection of poems in Kiev. In 1902, A.P. Chekhov wrote in a personal letter to Rathaus about the love of his romances. After Tchaikovsky, C. A. Cui , S. V. Rachmaninov , R. M. Glier and others also wrote romances to the words of Rathaus.

In the future, Rathaus wrote and published a lot, taking care of recognition in every possible way (wrote an article about himself for the Critical-Biographical Dictionary of S. A. Vengerov and sent it to him, sent verses to composers and compilers of anthologies, etc.). In 1896–1917, Rathaus published several books of poetry (including the three-volume magnificent “Complete Collection of Poems”): they provoked, however, almost unanimously negative reviews of critics of various directions. Valery Bryusov called Rathouse “the poet of platitudes”: he “collected examples and samples of all battered, stereotyped expressions, all worn-out epithets, all vulgar maxims”. Reviewers noted the imitation of his poems (borrowing from poets of the older generation - A.K. Tolstoy, Fet, Polonsky - as well as authors popular in the 1880-1890s: Apukhtin, Nadson, Minsky, Lokhvitskaya). Against this background, the reaction of Leo Tolstoy stood out sharply, who repeatedly stated in an interview that of the contemporary poets, Rathouse was most appreciated and contrasted with “ decadents ”.

Almost all of Rathouse's poems are imbued with consistent pessimism (the name of one of the collections: “Songs of Love and Sorrow”), he complained about the obsessiveness of the corresponding mood in letters to Chekhov. According to his daughter, he suffered from a nervous system disorder. In 1910-1918 he lived in Moscow, then again in Kiev, from where he left for Berlin in 1921, and two years later to Prague. He released abroad two more collections in the same spirit: “My Songs” (Berlin, 1922) and “On Life and Death” (Prague, 1927). In Prague, he fell ill with a severe form of hypertension, in recent years he was paralyzed, although he continued to write. He was buried at the Olshansky cemetery in Prague.

The daughter of Ratgauz Tatyana Daniilovna (1909–1993) was a poetess, an activist of the Prague Association of the Skete of Poets , an actress, from 1935 in Riga, after 1940 she remained in Soviet Latvia, worked as a translator, wrote memoirs.

• D. Rathouse . Complete collection of poems. St. Petersburg — M., 1906
• D. Rathaus "Yearning of Being", St. Petersburg, Vol-Vol, 1910