The last love of the poet Yuri Levitansky in his letters and memoirs of his wife Irina

“AND THERE BE WHAT WILL HAPPEN...”

“Early this morning I read your letter. I fly, I flutter... I love you so much that I think I’ll suffocate with happiness!..” It seems that this was written by a young man at the time of his first love, at the very beginning of his life. And it was written by a man behind whose back there are wars, serious illnesses, who can hope for love that makes you suffocate, for happiness that lifts you above the ground - it’s risky... We met Yuri Levitansky’s widow on the eve of the fourth anniversary of his death poet. Talking about the years they lived together, Irina handed over Levitansky’s letters to her for publication in Ogonyok. Together with her memories, these letters formed a strange story. Strange, tragic and touching - like all Levitansky’s poetry

“ Fate composed a play, and we played in it,” he told me more than once.

We met in August 1985 in Jurmala. I was a student at a provincial university, he was one of the most famous poets of his time. A gray-haired man in a sweater, with a pipe in his mouth, was walking along the path of a seaside park (“Looks like Hemingway,” flashed then). I walked to the station and asked him what time it was. She thanked me and moved on. He walked alongside. He started talking about something neutral, I answered politely... Years later, recalling our first meeting, he admitted: “I don’t know why I followed you, started talking to you... After all, I actually didn’t see you then. I didn’t realize how young you were, otherwise I wouldn’t have dared...”

The next day I get off the bus and meet him at the stop with a string bag full of bottles. He smiled: look, they sell whiskey in the grocery store, our entire writers' House of Creativity has rushed to Jurmala... We met. His name—I’m ashamed to admit—meant nothing to me. I had never read his poems before, and then he joked about it all our lives... And that day he was not surprised at my ignorance. I only asked: since we had a meeting again, could the two of us go for a walk tomorrow?.. I didn’t think about continuing this strange acquaintance. But the next day we still met - absolutely by accident.

The holidays were over, it was time for me to fly home. He gave me his book with the inscription:

“Irina, with expectation and hope (for what?). Heartily and tenderly...”

It was drizzling, and I remembered his wet sad mustache and blue jacket with a hood for a long, long time. Then, in the book he gave me, I found poems written when I was still a little girl, but as if about our meeting:

Happy holiday of homelessness,
quiet light without fire.
Feeling bottomless
August day...

The poem ends almost prophetically:

Only midnight will fall -
as a guess about
that won't let go
neither now nor later...

I returned home, the days flew by, the meeting in Jurmala became so far away. But, remembering my promise, I sent him a short letter: “I don’t know if you remember me... I read your book with great pleasure...”

Several months have passed. There is no answer - and there could not be.

Where is he - and where am I?.. But suddenly:

“Hello, dear Irina!

...For once I left Moscow - and this is what happened. And I must admit, I was waiting for your letter, and you can hardly imagine how glad I was for it. Could you really think that I forgot you - such an unusually nice little man? Thank you for all the kind words you said - it is pleasant and truly dear to me.

With joy and sadness I remember Dubulti, the wonderful sea and you too. Everything flashed by like a dream; it’s almost impossible to believe that it all happened in reality.

How are you there, in your Bashkiria? Are you going somewhere closer to our region in the near future? I would be very glad to see you again. Please write, I will answer carefully from now on.

All the best to you, all the very best, with very kind feelings towards you, sincerely and cordially yours...”

A correspondence began, the most ordinary one: how are you? and how are you? aren't you going to Moscow? That would be good!

In the spring, at the beginning of May, I arrived in Moscow. I called and he invited me to visit.

It's so simple - and so hopeless.

Then there was our first summer, and in the fall I had to leave again for a long time - for an internship in Germany.

“Just for a year!” - I consoled him. “For a whole year,” he answered.

- You do not understand! It is always easier for the one who leaves than for the one who stays.

Whether this is true or not, I felt terribly homesick in Berlin. I didn’t want either study or the new “European” life that I so wanted to live, especially since I have German roots... I wrote two letters a day, waited for his response letters and phone calls, and it was already completely clear to me : I can't live without him.

And he needs me.

“...Today there was a program on TV about me, the phone is literally hot - the most unexpected people from Moscow and even from other cities are calling, and calling, and calling - and I just want you, and that we watch together, and you were I would be glad - then I would experience real joy, but otherwise it’s past me. <...>

You write “I won’t take anything from you” - what does that mean? I didn't understand this. I want nothing more than to be with you, I will do everything for this, I have taken all sorts of steps and actions that are not very simple for me, and I will do everything to the end - if only everything we want comes true. You have the right to everything - all of me and all of mine - this is yours too - why won’t you “take it”? I feel incredibly sorry for you, and for all your tears I will try to repay you in full - I will be happy if I can give you at least some joy in your life...”

“...Yesterday I went to the Central House of Writers to feed two ladies (one Kharkov critic and one Moscow) - so, they, filled with the highest respect for me, kept explaining to me who I am, what I am, etc., about my duty to literature, duty to readers, and how wonderful it is to be Levitansky... And they made me feel so sad - you should know how little all these words have always meant to me, and now I feel even sadder - no , not a duty to literature, but simply to myself - after all, I am a person, after all, and I have (should have) a duty to myself. I don’t know whether it’s a duty or not - but my business, my need, my necessity is to do what I have to do, and without this everything is meaningless, and I no longer understand who I am and why I am - well, there is no point, and that's all. All sorts of movies and entertainment are wonderful, but only when I do my damned thing, well, at least until lunch (symbolic), that is, at least for half a day I fill up my paper, and then - please, whatever you want - but only later. You understand me? Do you understand that I am not making anything up or exaggerating? <...>

I’m waiting for you with impatience, although I’m sad that I will appear before you, with all my “rejuvenation,” exhausted and tired, and not as I could and would like to appear before your dear eyes, and yet I wait with great impatience - and then come what may... "

“...I understand that I shouldn’t do this, that I’ll upset you again, but I can’t do otherwise, no matter how hard I try, because it’s as if I’m talking to you in such, alas, a strange way, on paper...

I don’t know how to explain it to you - I’m nervous. Well, let's say, today the magazine "Friendship of Peoples" - there is a large selection of Vysotsky with a large and subtle introduction by Samoilov, there is Yu. Davydov, a story by Okudzhava... And somehow I feel bitter - that I live like this, what I do (well , okay, now I’ll cook dinner - feed my girls and all sorts of other things, as if familiar, although I’ve long understood that this is useless, and they, my daughters, don’t need me for much anymore either, that is, not for what I could actually give them) - but they call and call me and ask for poems, but I don’t have everything ready, and how can I explain this? This is how I live, this is how I work... Forgive me a thousand times for writing to you about this - you are able to understand and will still understand a lot - although why should you be responsible for my stupidity or pay for it? This, of course, is unfair, but I need, it is necessary for someone to be nearby. I know that you will forgive me, if not now, then later, one day, later, but the main thing is now, after listening to (reading) this whining, because you have enough rationality and wisdom, and try somehow, my beloved and dear. Or maybe, on the contrary, you will understand that it is better not to deal with such an idiot, as you know, you will be right in any case. <...>

I reread my letter and wanted to tear it up and throw it away, but I couldn’t. If you can understand all this and forgive me for this, I will love you more, although, I swear to you, there seems to be nowhere else. I love you madly, and I wait, and I will wait - someday you will understand what it cost me and how difficult it was for me.

Read it, for God’s sake, but don’t take everything too close to your good heart! “I hope there will be a letter tomorrow, and I’ll feel a little better, and I’ll go in the morning to order a conversation with you and again wait, wait, wait...”

He secured a short business trip to Berlin. After our meeting, the separation became unbearable. Without waiting for the end of the school year, I rushed to Moscow.

So as not to be separated anymore.

It was not a “bright holiday” at all.

I remember with horror our homelessness, lack of money (after all, he still had to raise three daughters), queues in stores, literally for everything. Hungry and cold city. “As long as I can remember, I remember queues” - an old poem by Levitansky - as if about me at that time. My loved ones crossed me out of their lives - they could not forgive my action, which was so unexpected for them: before I met Levitansky, I was quite predictable and problem-free... How I endured all this, trying not to show him in any way that I sometimes feel unbearable in a foreign city , among people alien to me, incomprehensible bohemian morals and manners - I, a provincial fool, raised by a strict communist grandmother?

In those first years, it was not easy for him with me either. I didn’t fit into his usual life. He was upset by my rejection of this life - in my opinion, absurd and destructive. There are too many feasts, fuss, unnecessary meetings and empty conversations. I wanted him to treat himself more carefully, but he believed, as it is said in the poems of his friend Samoilov, “that sometimes it was in vain to let passions subside, and that one should not be careful, and that one should not be careful”...

When I left Moscow for the session, he completely disappeared: I left him! They called me: you left, and Levitansky got drunk, cried with friends: “What should I do, what should I do now?!”

And I asked myself: what should I do?

Shortly before his death, he said: “You know, you were right: the main thing is when there are you and me, there are two of us, we need each other. When there is a table, paper and pencil. And when nothing hurts..."

I often think: if he had not met me in Jurmala, he would have lived his last years much differently, he would have written more. I live with a feeling of guilt before him. I did what I could and succeeded - but probably not enough...

At times he seemed like a child to me.

“Children,” he answered, “are a concept for all ages. So I’m fine!”

When I left for work, he called me constantly: I miss you, and you? what's your mood? Or simply: “Control call.”

There were many touching everyday scenes. He liked to dress nicely. “Have you seen the jackets Edlis has? Tell me: where does Edlis buy them?”

— Well, Yuliy Filippovich recently went to Paris. And in general he has a different figure. He doesn’t have a belly, for example,” I gloat.

- What does the belly have to do with it?! A person knows how to buy things, but we don’t know how!..

He loved sweets. I'll keep a box of chocolates in the cupboard as a gift. I come home from work, open the cupboard - the box is empty.

-Where are the candies? - I ask sternly.

- Probably dried out...

One day he calls: “Don’t be angry, I gave the money here. They came to collect for the funeral.” “Who came?” - "Don't know. The doorbell rang, I opened it...” - “Why do you open it to strangers?” - “They said: for the funeral.”

He easily trusted people, easily and generously responded to any request for help.

“You know,” I said once, “even if you were a quiet, calm, inconspicuous accountant, and not a famous poet, I would still be with you.”

“Well, of course, you don’t care,” and he was offended.

I still don’t understand: why were you offended? Strange...

He has hardly written for the last ten years.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I thought, “but something has gone, disappeared... Maybe my time has expired. Now I’m not a writer, I’m a reader.”

One journalist, having come to interview him, asked: let’s outline the range of topics, the main ideas of your work.

Levitansky sighed sadly:

- My dear, poetry and love have no circle...

And yet he was tormented by the thought that this circle would very soon open: “You will remember me many years later: “In my youth there was a poet... It seems that his last name was Levitansky...”

“...Really, I’m not some kind of dissolute neurasthenic or hysterical, it’s been a long, long time since I cried for the last time, but now it’s coming. <...> It’s bitter to realize how unfair it is that you and I have missed each other so much in time, this sometimes makes me despair, but what should I do now when I can’t imagine my life without you... That’s all I live with the very hope that I wrote to you about then, without even thinking about anything like that, without hoping for anything - but this is surprising - why did I write? Something pushed me to do this, I felt something that was still unclear and unknown to me...”

He never read his poems to me. I saw him reciting his poems only at poetry evenings. In a circle of close friends, he could sing one of the charming songs of his own composition, about a cap, for example... But he refused to read poetry.

But during these ten years I was his first reader. He carefully retyped his uneven lines on an old Rheinmetall with a funny slant to the left and handed it to me with a serious look, looking over his glasses. I sat next to her, read - and my breath was taken away. To hide my tears, I pointed out, for example, the abuse of commas.

- Philologist! This is the author's punctuation!

Just as seriously and seemingly a little indifferently, he once gave me this to read:

Why did the Lord send you
and as who?
After all, you are not my blood, not my flesh
and, moreover,
you're not even from these years -
you're from another day.
Why did the Lord send you
test me
and made it so that you and I -
how to exhale and how to inhale -
converged at the edge, at the line,
at the junction of two eras,
on that invisible line,
as if timeless,
when you're here and I'm already
in another time,
and through the rubble of winters and years,
lying in front
I’m already shouting after you -
wait, don't go! —
through half-sleep and half-delirium -
don't go, wait! —
I’m still screaming after you,
but you don't hear me.

Seeing my tears, he said:

“You take literature too close to your heart.” This is unprofessional.

- But this is about you and me - so it turns out I can’t hear you?!

He said nothing. And the next day he handed me a piece of paper with handwriting:

But you still hear, but you still hear
as long as I
and I can still hear you breathing next to me, -
Thank you.
And we have the sea - it’s still ours -
yours and mine.
And the sky above the sea is ours too
one for two...

It was a gift to me, a consolation.

But he published the poems without an ending.

I had a premonition that he would die when I was not around.

And so it happened - January 25, 1996. He went to a meeting between the presidential administration and the intelligentsia - and did not return.

I didn’t see him die, so for me he is alive.

I dream of him not knowing about his death. He returns from somewhere, cheerful and animated, and I think of only one thing: to quickly call his friends - to warn him, so that they don’t accidentally tell him that he is no longer there...

“...Hurry up, at least this short meeting, and then maybe we’ll come up with something, maybe, my dear, I’ll hold out somehow. I know that I have upset you again - so why not write to me at all? or make up all sorts of nonsense, which I have already tried to do?

I love you, puppy - who’s to blame that everything turned out so awkwardly! It happens like that for me, but it shouldn’t happen for you... I’m sorry again...”

Photos used in the material: from the Levitansky family archive