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The most significant cultural event of the last days is the three -part television conversation between Yevgeny Yevtushenko with Solomon Volkov. The initiative of the conversation belonged to Yevtushenko, and this is already interesting. One of the best, if not the best and most indisputable book of Volkov is his "Talk with Joseph Brodsky." All connoisseurs and friends of Brodsky unanimously recognized Volkov’s interlocutor of the genuine Brodsky. They talked about Eckerman, whom the Russian Goethe found. And here, of course, Evgeny Yevtushenko could not have arisen, by his own representation, dividing the place and glory of the best poet of our time with Brodsky. To get Volkov for appropriate conversations meant to equal Brodsky and in this regard. After all, Solomon Wolves today is a brand, a quality mark: those whom he honors conversations immediately increase in the rank.

I started with this topic - Yevtushenko and Brodsky, because it is the most significant, the most interesting thing that was said in a three -hour conversation. It is clear that this plot was the last, as it should be in cases where it is necessary to emphasize and highlight something. But the first two programs are not deprived of interest, although everything or almost all of what was said there was already known from Yevtushenko’s autobiographical book “Wolf Passport”. Even about the conversation with Robert Kennedy in the bathroom with the shower. However, I must have not remembered something from that book, because the recognition of Kennedy that the United States gave the Soviet authorities the secret of Sinyavsky and Daniel, it seems, was not in the book. The motivation for this course is brilliant: to undermine the positions of the "iron shur" Shelepin, who was eager for power and conceived restroilinization. What a leader you are if you do not manage the KGB with your own department and depend on American clues!

This is interesting, and there was still something worthwhile in the first two parts of the television program, but here I must say that it was, just in these first two parts, very poorly built, directed and mounted. The plot of the alleged suicide of Yevtushenko hung: he was given after the story about the Czechoslovak events, while it was precisely these days that Yevtushenko proved himself heroically, sending the authorities several indignant telegrams and writing the poem "Tanks walking in Prague." Suicidal sentiments took possession of Yevtushenko after a scandal produced by Khrushchev at a meeting with figures of Soviet art, that is, this dates back to 1963, and not by 1968, and in the television program they were rearranged, and this plot hung. The reception was chosen very rudely, tactlessly: to beat the next portrait of the next wife Yevtushenko with a stone on the glass when he parted with her. In general, strawberries were more than necessary; Apparently, this is the requirement of current television when it deals with the stars.

But all these are flowers; The berries and, so to speak, the fruits were demonstrated and collected in the third part, when it was a question of Brodsky and his relationship with Yevtushenko. Yevtushenko published a sensational document: Brodsky’s letter to the leadership of the New York Quinsk College with an urgent recommendation not to give Yevtushenko to work in this educational institution, since he, Yevtushenko, is unfriendly to the United States, which was proved by the quotation of a poem written by Yevtushenko on the murder of his interlocutor Robert Kennnendy. Of course, this letter was not worth writing. Not only was it morally doubtful - it was even useless, given the enormous popularity and influence acquired by Yevtushenko in America. Something by Foche: worse than a crime, is a mistake. And you need to understand why Brodsky, a person, among other advantages of his advantages, went to it.

This is a plot that goes beyond the personal relations of two celebrities, it is super -faced, common -round. Two dimensions of modern culture have encountered: genuine, high - and mass, popular, folk, if you want, and if you want, pop. Moreover, the clash occurred in an environment that is extremely unfavorable for a high culture: it loses its position, it is in the rearguard. Someone said, and it is right that Brodsky is a cultural paradox: a great poet born in the era of the disappearance of poetry. If not disappearance, then the loss of the highest cultural status, verses are written no less, if not more than ever, but Yevtushenko is the most. He is fruitful like Balmont. Now remember the block: can I put them nearby? So Brodsky with Yevtushenko, one refutes the other, they are genetically incompatible, their cells reject each other. Brodsky was by no means without glory, and Yevtushenko (Nobel Prize) surpassed his honors and surpassed his honors. But the very existence of Yevtushenko as a famous poet could not but annoy Brodsky, he vulgarized for Brodsky the very concept of poetic glory. A situation was created when the brilliant poet took one bracket with a pop star.

Chaliapin in Leps in one artistic restroom.

The mentioned block once said Akhmatova, a considerable poetess: you write as if you were standing in front of a man, but you need to stand in front of God. Evtushenko forced the feminine, flirty nature and makes him flirt with everyone, even with Lenin and Fidel Castro. "Fidel, take me a soldier of the army of freedom!" Well, how could it relate to such poems, to such a person Brodsky, who talked with the celestial?

This, if you like, metaphysical annoyance stood behind Brodsky’s action, and so it should be understood. They say: to understand means to forgive. Brodsky does not need our forgiveness, but it can be understood.

However, no one denies Yevtushenko's advantages. He is a reverent doe.

Boris Paramonov-New York writer and publicist

Opinions expressed under the heading "Law" may not reflect the point of view of the editors of the RS