Oral memoirs

In the Scientific Library of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov has a unique fund - Collection of phonological documents named after. V.D.Duvakina. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that here, on thousands of kilometers of tape, in casual conversations people share their memories of Russian cultural figures of the first third of the twentieth century, about their lives; this is not an interview, since the goal of V.D. Duvakin, the founder of the foundation, was “to preserve everything that can still be preserved,” and he was focused on the researcher and reader of the 21st century, repeating that his recording is not for publication. Among the interlocutors are well-known personalities ( M.M. Bakhtin , N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky , R.Ya. Plyatt , V.V. Shulgin , etc.), and those whose names are less known, but they participated in cultural process or witnessed it, formed the cultural background of the era. The recordings began in 1967 , and the lack of orientation towards publicity, as well as the fact that V.D. Duvakin, after the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial , having acted as a witness for the defense on the part of his student A.D. Sinyavsky , became a disgraced figure, contributed to their frankness. Listening to numerous tapes, you can learn not only the facts of our history, but, what is especially important, the perception of events by their contemporaries, the awareness of the participants in the process - the living voices of previous generations that have not passed through censorship.

The 21st century has come, and the Duvakin collection, replenished with records of his students, is gradually becoming open to those interested in Russian culture: the books “Memoirs” by N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky (2nd ed.), “Conversations by V.D. Duvakin with M.M. Bakhtin" (2 ed.), "Anna Akhmatova in Duvakin's notes", "Memoirs. Conversations with V.D. Duvakin" by A.V. Azarkh-Granovskaya, " Oral memoirs " by L.I. Timofeev and G.N. Pospelov, “ Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam ,” not counting many journal publications. However, most of the conversations are still inaccessible, now for technical reasons: the recordings are deteriorating, there is practically no equipment to listen to them; Although oral speech loses a lot when it is transmitted in writing, for now publication is the only way for us to convey the Collection to readers, a labor-intensive and difficult path. And now, in addition to audio and traditional paper publications, fragments from the Collection of Phonological Documents named after. V.D. Duvakina appear on the Internet.

The collection began with memories of V.V. Mayakovsky , the study of whose life and work V.D. Duvakin devoted his entire life, so it is quite legitimate, especially in the year of the great poet’s anniversary , that publications begin with a fragment of a conversation with M.D. Volpin (1902 - 1988), film scriptwriter, writer and artist ROSTA . The book of memoirs of V.E. Ardov and M.D. Volpin is currently being prepared for printing by employees of the department of phonological documents of the Scientific Library of Moscow State University. Four conversations were recorded by V.D. Duvakin with M.D. Volpin, and the first of them were devoted to meeting V.V. Mayakovsky. In the memoirs, a conversation about Mayakovsky’s work is combined with everyday details, with reflections on the poet’s character, on the reasons for the tragedy that occurred at the end of his life. In the second conversation, on November 14, 1967, M.D. Volpin recalls, in particular, meetings with Mayakovsky at poker and comments on the lines from the poem “ About This ” (it should be noted that the motive of the game is present in the poet’s works more than once):

Covering the windows with the palm of the corner,
I pull glass by glass from the edge.
Entire life
lay on the window maps.
Glass point -
and I will lose.

Volpin M.D.: This is a strikingly accurate image of the player. When you have the cards in your hands, you have received them - you do not fan them all at once, but you fold them so that you only see the first card. Then you begin to slowly pull out the second card. You have a tambourine, the second one is also a tambourine, and you need to have five tambourines. You draw the third - again a tambourine. The fourth - again a tambourine. And if the fifth turns out to be a diamond, then this is a very high combination, and you can safely add a lot of money and take the entire pot, you have a very high chance. Therefore, the latter is pulled out with great trepidation and sometimes they are mistaken, I will talk about this now. This is exactly what he portrays perfectly, transferring it, you see, into what a high, so to speak, sphere - the lyrical.

Duvakin V.D.: And you will remember that this is visually absolutely accurate. This house on Vodopyanom - if you approach it, the corner of the opposite house is blocked, and window after window opens. I always explained this to students, but what you told me, I couldn’t explain.

Q: And therefore for the player this image - it still has amazing internal power, because you need to know the player’s condition when he already has four diamonds in his hands, there is, in general, everything that can be earned in a month or two - this It was not a joke, this game - and a lot depends on which one looks out now, little black or little red. And here is the red one. And then Mayakovsky said: “and forty,” there, “and half a dozen” (well, I won’t explain this - the important thing is that this is a lot and that this, in fact, should suppress the opponent in poker).

D: Did you just need both diamonds and red hearts?

Q: No, definitely diamonds.

D: Only one suit.

Q: And just imagine that it’s already in the morning, the game goes on from eight in the evening until almost eight in the morning, sometimes, well, at least until four very often, there’s already some darkness even among experienced players, and when he pulled out, Having already named the amount, it turns out that these are worms.

D: Turned around.

B: Yes. And here... I’m not afraid to denigrate the memory of Mayakovsky, because I think that this does not disgrace him, so to speak, that’s how we all played... I didn’t know how to do that, it was part of that game, such style of play... he threw cards and said: "Color!" "Color" means: all diamonds. And if the enemy did not have enough composure to check, then Mayakovsky could safely take the game. And he preferred this style of play. In other companies this would be impossible - say, in the company of entertainer Alekseev 1 . These were very good poker players from Moscow, there sat such strict, very well-mannered gentlemen, there were no jokes during the game, they played silently, as expected. In my opinion, Mayakovsky loved this game much less, and there these things would have been impossible. And here this was the game, it was truly a struggle of souls, composure and courage. And therefore, when Mayakovsky writes: “and a card sharper” - remember? - in the early poems, then to some extent this answered - maybe he had not played yet, but in any case, his views on the card game, that it should be a fight with all his might, did not bother him much about another game. So during the game he was fierce, very interesting and, having lost, tried in every possible way to somehow resume the game and fight back. He could immediately take you to play billiards. If the time was, well, say, half past three - the last circle closed at three - we had one there, in Pimenovsky Lane.

D: I know, in the basement.

Q: The billiard room there was closing, but it was possible to persuade up to four markers - Philip... forgot his last name. He could persuade me to go play billiards if I accidentally won that evening, although he knew that I don’t play billiards at all. "I'll give you seven balls!" - he said. This is unthinkable: even with complete inability to play, giving seven balls to an American is almost dooming yourself to lose. But he couldn’t leave having lost. Then he said: “Let's play like this - how many pillars are there to the corner? To the first cabman, say. Even - you give me everything (I - for the even), odd - I owe you the same amount as I lost." I say: “Vladim Vladimych, there are éclérages, but you don’t have them.” - “We’ll go to my house - I’ll give you the house.” In general, he persuaded me to do anything, but I didn’t know a single game other than poker. And so he managed, in general, to drag him in and force him to play for another four hours at “sixty-six”. And, as I was told, he often managed to fight back.

D: That is, it was not only a matter of material things, but also...

Q: No, that is, I’m just telling you with complete conviction that it wasn’t a matter of material things at all, it was a matter of this distraction into such a completely wild game, I’ve never seen such a game anywhere else, you know. Once he was playing in my small room, a very strong player, D’Actile 3 , was playing - a player also “with tricks”, also somewhere on the verge of cheating - psychologically, really. Well, for example, it was possible at seven in the morning, when everyone was already exhausted, to create a scandal over any ridiculous reason and after that sit down to play again. And when I later asked D’Actil: “Why do you almost always arrange things like this?”, he said: “Darling, this is an extra chance. I’ve angered you all, you’re always attacking me. I don’t have much money left.” “,” he says, “and I use this too, everyone needs to use cards.” And this is the kind of company Mayakovsky loved very much. But as proof that there was absolutely no money issue here... let’s say, persuading me to continue the game, but I no longer have anything to play for, he says: “Okay, will the walkers work?” - and took the walkers off the wall. The price for walkers was, say, a ruble and twenty kopecks at that time. He said: “Well, what time?.. I’ll pay five rubles for the walkers.” That is, without giving me cash, which is not allowed for a player, he thus, so to speak, bought walkers from me at an unimaginable price. One day he took the trouble to crawl under the bed and take out my shoes, old, worn-out shoes, and he rated them incredibly highly.

D: So that you continue the game?

Q: So that I continue the game, so that he can continue the game and so that he doesn’t have to go home at all. When he played, he didn’t want to quit, it distracted him, he was all in it, it was generally interesting to him. And money - without money the game is meaningless, that's a different conversation, money is in the game all the time - just like cards. What about without money? In general, this is not clear to the player; money comes into the game.

D: Do you remember the questionnaire about Nekrasov? "There is an opinion that Nekrasov was an immoral person." Mayakovsky replies: “I was very interested in whether he was a swindler. Due to a lack of materials, the paperwork was stopped.”

B: Yes, yes, yes.

D: This is the twenty-first year.

Q: I referred to poetry, this is the second one. He was extremely interested in this aspect of the matter. But I don’t want to name the person who also didn’t play very cleanly, but it was done in a petty, unpleasant way.

D: Aseev.

Q: And I must tell you that Mayakovsky did not like this game and he took little part in these games.

D: I've already heard about it. It seems to me that he was generally a petty person, Nikolai Nikolaevich, in that, in his life sense.

Q: In my opinion, yes, but I don’t want this, so to speak... so, it’s hard to say.

D: Well, what type of scam was there?

Q: Well, there, you see, it already started like this: if a person was winning, then the wife began to persuade him that he was sick, that he didn’t need to stay too long: “Sorry, I’m uncomfortable. Let’s go home, guys, let’s go,” he says. “Nikolai Nikolaevich is tired, he needs to go to bed.” If he lost, the wife would go and say: “You understand, Nikolai Nikolaevich is so upset, you will sit for a while longer...” This is one side, so to speak. As you can see, in a completely different way... you don’t need courage for this.

D: Yes, on the contrary, it affects gallantry, right?

B: Yes. Then other ways. Aseev has a good card - he takes out of his pocket some kind of piece of money, which looks like, say, a hundred rubles, and in the bank, well, let's say, eighty. He shows: “I’m in charge of the bank! Seventy more!” Loses, let's say. He takes out this piece of paper, since he must answer for the bank and pay the loss, makes a surprised face and says: “Lord, it turns out that this is ten. I was sure that it was a hundred.” This is a completely different calico, you know? To throw cards and say: “Color!”, but he doesn’t have “color” - you have to be able to do this, you have to do it artistically, and that’s all. And this is a pitiful thing, after this in general, a person... firstly, that’s it, the game ends here, and everyone becomes very unpleasant and somehow ashamed. I can never remember such cases from Mayakovsky.

Notes:

1 Alexey Grigorievich Alekseev (Lifshits) (1887 - 1985), director and playwright, one of the founders of the national entertainer, told V.D. Duvakin: “At this table that you see now, here, sometimes we played poker - there was such a company, today it’s even scary to think that it could have been: Mayakovsky, Volodya Khenkin, Igor Ilyinsky - all were young then, and there was someone fifth, I don’t know, by the way, they played preference, or even poker, I don’t remember. Nikolai Nikolayevich Aseev and I were in this house against the Moscow Art Theater, we were also on very good terms" (Department of Phonological Documents of the Scientific Library of Moscow State University, item 465).

2 A game for cash, accepted in Mayakovsky’s circle. Volpin explains the term above: ““Eclerage” means “put it on the table”: you couldn’t issue any pieces of paper, there, or “I’ll give it back” - this immediately kicked people out from the table.”

3 D'Actile A. (Frenkel Anatoly Adolfovich) (1890 - 1942), Soviet poet.