How the ladies of the past could seduce exceptional men

We have added to this list some ladies of not too old history. Of course, Cleopatra and the Marquise de Pompadour both had their secrets, but they don't really suit us. Yet a modern man hardly looks like a French king or a Roman general. Let's take examples from two neighboring centuries.

Natalia Goncharova: a modest chess player


In a letter to Princess Vyazemskaya Pushkin admitted that Natalia Nikolaevna became his 113th love. The sophisticated poet was not so easy to shoot down with a sniper shot. Beautiful? Anything. Beautiful cargo. There was something special about her beauty. Count V.A. Sollogub left this portrait of Goncharova: "Many ... I have met many women who are more charming than Pushkin, but I have never seen a woman who combines the completeness of classical features with camp. Growth is high, with a fabulously slim waist, richly developed shoulders and chest ... ". He continues to speculate on his profile, ears, teeth. But we have nothing to say, the essential is said: tall, thin and with a large bust. And it was large by today's standards - about 175 cm. Today we call this the appearance of a model. The woman of the future among the cuttlefishes of 155 centimeters (the average size of the ladies of the time), and besides, "without insolence for all, without pretension to success. Despite all her beauty, N. N. was modest in terms of communication. She had no falsehood, but was well educated: she knew four languages and played chess. Of course, all men, pardon me, gentlemen, including the sovereign, were amazed by such a thing. The sun of Russian poetry saw in her her Tatyana - or rather, an improved copy.

Apollinaria (Polina) Suslova: games in the hot-cold weather


This woman is marked in the story by the love of two celebrities - F. M. Dostoevsky and V. V. Rozanov. She was, as it seems now, a feminist - she cut her braids, attended university and did not want to get married. They are all activists now, but at that time this young woman, concerned about the meaning of life and benefit to society, was a fashionable curiosity. She was the first to declare her love for Dostoyevsky - also in the spirit of the times. F.M. fell deeply in love, recognizing in Suslova a special kind of Russian. The writer wanted to sit on two chairs: not to divorce his wife, and scenes of jealousy of Pauline parading by. Then she goes to Paris and takes another lover, a student Salvador (excellent choice!) who hurts the classic more than ever. Her noble manipulators - from Polina in The Player to Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky gave her the traits of Apollinaria.

After breaking up with the writer, who quietly remarried, she has been searching for herself for a long time. But instead, she found a Moscow University graduate, Vasily Rozanov, whom she invited to her room for the night without ceremony. He was not married, but too young - just over twenty years old. Their union lasted only five years. Apollinaria's weakness was that she never forgave the weakness of men. "Weak and timid men hate me," she said, and she carried her hatred throughout her life. 

Lou Salomé: Sex is not the main thing.

The woman who turned the dynamos on important people in Europe was Louise Gustavovna Salomé. She was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a Russian general, a German from the Baltic. The youngest beloved girl among five brothers, she firmly assimilated: with the guys, you have to be friends. And all the uncles sent to the friend zone. The philosophers Paul Reyau and Friedrich Nietzsche were her first. Both wanted to get married, but she offered them a triple "spiritual union between books and flowers". Réjeux even committed suicide when she got married. Although her husband, the orientalist Friedrich Carl Andreas, also agreed to "possess without possessing". Lou lived with him for 43 years. And she threw branched horns at him - with the Marxist Georg Ledeburg, doctor Friedrich Pinels, poet Rainer Maria Rilke and a host of other reputable people. What was it about this lady that amazed the Friedrich's and the Carls? Nietzsche said he was struck by the breadth of her spirit. "She's quick as an eagle, strong as a lioness, and yet a very feminine child," he confided to a friend. Lou has never clung to a man. She would run away, they would catch her. She emphasized her feminine independence: she wore a deaf dress and wrote academic books, and love and sex - a tenth thing. The men wanted to change her mind: "No, no, not a tenth! We will prove it to you! They didn't.

 

Lilya Brick: The Great Manipulator


Lilya Yurievna Brik left a clear instruction: "We must convince a man that he is wonderful or even brilliant, but that others do not understand him. And allow him what they don't allow at home. For example, to smoke or to travel wherever he wants. Good shoes and silk underwear will do the rest. As we know, this methodology allowed him to keep the Soviet poet No. 1 for 15 years. And not only to keep! Mayakovsky hosted and supported Lilya and her... legal husband Osip Brik, who was working nowhere. Of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich sometimes broke the hook - he fell in love, ran away, but Brik his iron hand came back. She convinced the poet that "bourgeois" love will destroy his genius. "If I married him, if I gave birth to children, he wouldn't be interested, and he would stop writing poetry," - Lilya Yuryevna recalls. Another of his tricks - sticking the new lady of heart Mayakovsky, then he got into a fight with the old one. The last time the reception failed, the poet was introduced to a married Veronica Polonsky: he had to be distracted from the model Tatiana Yakovleva. Mayakovsky was carried away and began to ask for a divorce from Polonsky. Veronica hesitated - and then fired the fatal shot. 

Maria Zakrevskaya-Benkendorf-Budberg: The myth woman


Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya was the love of Gorky, Herbert Wells and the eminent British diplomat Bruce Lockart.

Nina Berberova, wife of the poet Khodasevich, wrote in her memoirs: "Mura (Maria) loved men very much and did not hide it. Not only her lovers, but men in general.

The first brick in the foundations of her adventurous destiny laid parents: they sent her to study in London. It was there that her brother - an employee of the Russian Embassy - Maria entered the high circle of Russian aristocrats and diplomats. She also met her future husband, I.A. Benckendorf, and two lovers - Wells and Lockhart. After her husband was killed by peasants on a property near Revel (Tallinn), she found herself in the starving Moscow of 1917. She turned to the British Embassy for help - and there she met Lockart again. "I saw a woman of great charm whose conversation could brighten my day," the Englishman later recalled. To build on her success, Maria organized a breakfast for diplomats to celebrate the birthday of one of them, with vodka and caviar. "Something came into my life that was stronger than life itself," Lockart later recalled. Soon the Englishman was expelled from Russia as a spy. And Maria, in search of income, met Gorky and became his secretary. There is no doubt that the classicist bought the shell of a lady of high society. Moore was able to "listen carefully, looking with intelligent eyes. But above all, she knew how to be mysterious and meaningful.

 

Will the charms of these ladies work today?


- Almost every woman you've described has something psychopathic about her," says clinical psychologist Michael Horse. - They can't sympathize, they can't sympathize, but they take pleasure in tormenting men. It's the appearance that these women have had particular success. The second half of the 19th century - early 20th - was the time of the struggle for women's rights. At that time, the brilliant "femmes fatales" were seen as a kind of symbol of the times and excited the imagination of society as a whole, but few people dared to link their personal lives to them. Specifically, only men - whether writers or janitors - who may have suffered some kind of trauma from their mothers or fathers during their childhood. And they chose coldly manipulative women out of love, because with them it was possible to reproduce a traumatic childhood situation and try to overcome it. Mature and mentally healthy men do not fall for these manipulations - neither in the 19th nor in the 21st century.