The price of life

This is the rare case when the State Museum dedicated to the Russian poet appeared during his lifetime

At some point, a fashion for Yevtushenko arose in Russia. Judging by the responses in social networks, she did not pass even after his death. All these are echoes of the past. Recall at least November 15, 1991, when in Moscow “patriots writers” in the courtyard of the Rostov house burned the stuffed Evtushenko, made from papier-mash. Evgeny Yevtushenko knew how to annoy, knew how to outrage. He gave an occasion and immediately took him back, not fitting into any framework. By 2017, he became the most famous poet of living in the world - immediately after Bob Dylan (Yevtushenko would not agree with this). And he died on the day when Bob Dylan finally received the Nobel Prize in the field of literature.

In an interview, Yevgeny Yevtushenko said: “You better think about what you are talking about now, maybe with the last great poet.” And as a sign of evidence, he added that in the book “Great Poets” his poems are adjacent to the verses of Shakespeare, Burns, Pushkin ... Then, slightly reducing Paphos, he said that he feels “as a smuggler who has entered the territory of the dead.” Notice, the difference, in his opinion, is not in talent, but that he, unlike Pushkin, was still alive then.

Evgenia Yevtushenko did not like both fans of Joseph Brodsky and fans of Yuri Kuznetsov to the same extent. Cosmopolitans and soils. But then his own fans adore and adore, who are no less. No, more. Since 2010, they pushed the way to the Yevtushenko Museum-Gallery in Peredelkino, where the interior of the office (personal belongings, books, archive, awards) was recreated.

Evgeny Yevtushenko in his youth.

Yevtushenko annoyed with his dive - in clothes, in behavior, in creativity. And pathos, of course. “ I am different - I am a strained and idle, ” he wrote in his youth. - I go and inappropriate. I am all incompatible, uncomfortable, shy and arrogant, angry and kind ... ” So he remained until his 84 years - inappropriate and infinitely different. He who knows how to find a common language with Fidel Castro , even with Robert Kennedy ... with the head of the ideological management of the KGB, General Philip Bobkov and with Joseph Brodsky , with the American President Richard Nixon and Russian presidents ... But the peculiarity is that he was so different, this language soon ceased to be general.

When Yevtushenko composed his “I live in a state by name, as it were”, I did not mean state falsity. The world is full of those who pretend, constantly pretending to be someone. No matter how many courtiers, but malars are incomparably more.

Evgeny Yevtushenko really was more than a poet. He was an artist. In the literal sense of the word. A person who performs on stage and starred in a movie. Actor, film director, screenwriter. Do you imagine, for example, Boris Pasternak , playing a movie or making a film? In makeup or with a director's megaphone. And Yevtushenko, like Mayakovsky , was always aimed at the public, no matter what he did. He was a man of pop - with all pop features.

First of all, having learned about his death, I listened to the most famous songs to his poems, as a rule - songs from the films (“And the snow goes”, “Seryozha Olkhovaya”, “That's what is happening”, “Steps”, “Waltz about the waltz”, “What love love”, “Dery Wheel”), and revised his feature film 1990 “Stalin's funeral”. This film, like the previous, “kindergarten”, is largely autobiographical. But since Evgeny Yevtushenko was filming it, this is also a civil statement and at the same time tragifars. A hero like Charlie Chaplin walks along the Stalin-Berievskaya Moscow, with a cane and in a pot. Stalin painfully dies, but the Stalinists do not die. The naive young poet Eugene ( Denis Konstantinov ) reads poems about the acting doctors, but he is much more concerned about the girl-girl ...

Evgeny Yevtushenko in the role of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the film by Savva Kulisha "Take -out", 1979

Once upon a time, the Nobel laureate John Steinbek predicted Yevtushenko Slava Proseic-following the example of the Pasternakovsky novel “Dr. Zhivago”. But Yevtushenko’s novels “Berry Places” and “Do not die before death” did not become equally significant literary events. Just Yevtushenko had a different temperament.

Yevtushenko was as redundant as the omnipresent. One depended on the other. He himself often emphasized that for a long life he wrote a lot of superfluous, which could not but confuse the connoisseurs of good poetry. However, such a stream of words was thrown to the surface of the line and entire poems that would never be born if not for the inevitable verbal slag.

Yevtushenko did not die before death. He lived to the end, that is, worried, offended. Evidence of this is his resentment on the series “The mysterious passion” shown a few months before the death of the poet (there Yevtushenko was played by Philip Yankovsky ). The poet Yevtushenko even blinked his insult: “And they spread out of the film, // Finding a cowardly, // To our generation of envy, // Fear of the invisible leader.” Yevtushenko exclaimed: " Screenwriter, where is your conscience?" The calls for conscience at the end of 2016 looked so old-fashioned, so strange ... In order to at least understand something about the sixties and about where they came from, it is better to turn to the feature film of director Yevtushenko-with Alexei Batalov (playing the poet’s father). The film, in which Maya Bulgakov was shot, Vanessa Raedgrev ... Evgeny Yevtushenko himself played the role of a skewer drunkard in Stalin’s funeral, who had sculptured the statues and busts of the Bolshevik leaders for many years, and then taught a quiet riot in his workshop.

Yevtushenko’s character appears in the film from 1:06:00 to 1:11:16.

The hero of Batalov, the investigator at the interrogation asks: "Did you take part in the conspiracy against Comrade Stalin ?" And he, sighing, replies: “Unfortunately, no ... Do you know what the descendants will accuse us of? The fact that there was no conspiracy against Comrade Stalin. ” The dead Stalin takes dozens of people on the day of the funeral, but the peculiarity of the film is that, despite many deaths, the film still turned out to be bright, romantic. This is generally a feature of the work of Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He was a life -affirming author.

A few years ago, Benjamin Smekhov brought the performance of the Taganka Theater “There are no years” on the works of Yevtushenko.

“No years” - this is immortality in its purest form. There was no soot in the mud. Although there was something to flaunt. There were in the performance in the presence of both informers and executioners. But the theater on Taganka based on the poems of Yevtushenko created a light spiritual performance in which there was no place for internal and external abomination. She remained outside. In the play, the man was not trampled in a puddle, but gave him scope. The very life -giving scope, about which Yevtushenko wrote, no, not, cried out: “ Two girls stand at the edge of the roof, // Breathing hard, quieter, quieter, // They know that no one waits higher, // Or maybe they hope that they are waiting.” The curious are impatiently, lifting their heads, look from below (“When will they jump?”).

One of the potential suicides wrote before climbing the roof: “Perhaps the world will be better without me ” - and the poet answers her, and at the same time everyone: “It will not be better, dear, and worse, // Individually worse than the sea of ​​the puddle, // Where the ship icy in the cold will not come on scarlet sails.”

After the death of Evgeny Yevtushenko, the world definitely became worse.

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Having visited Pskov, Yevtushenko wrote the poem “Pskov Tower” (Read more on my blog on the PG website on July 18, 2016 - “The one who laughs the first, sees the Sun” ). The ending of the “Pskov towers” ​​turned out to be brave and ambiguous: “And, skiing, like donuts, // visiting Japanese, // And the elderly, and children, // And even the foreheads are still copper, // Like the victorious // on the towers of Pskov // Prapor.” The poet saw in Pskov " elevating ruins" - "in the hope of glory and good." This is the peculiarity of his creative look.

Hope, like faith in good, did not leave him like that.

One of the best poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko - “Seryozha Olkhovaya”, in his original form. The song does not have enough 66 lines, including these: “Let them say: //“ Well, when it is really to form! ” // And do not worry - // Everyone cannot be pleased with everyone. // despicable reason: // “Everything is settled, everything is formed ...” // When everything is formed - // there is no need to live. // and inexplicable - // This is not at all pointless. // all revaluation should not be confused, - // After all, the price // will not decrease // and it will not increase - // it is unchanged to that, // Why there is no price ... "

In Russian poetry, few could say the same thing about themselves that Yevgeny Yevtushenko said about themselves: "I am a happy and loving person."

Happy and loving people need to listen.