Life does not count

To the death of the poet

On April 25, the poet and artist Yuri Vasilievich Grunin, the author of several hundred poems about German captivity, died in Jezkazgan, not having lived exactly a month until the 93rd birthday, where he stayed from 1942 to 1945, and about the stepplag, where he was in prison up to fifty-fifth.

On April 25, the poet and artist Yuri Vasilievich Grunin, the author of several hundred poems about German captivity, died in Jezkazgan, not having lived exactly a month until the 93rd birthday, where he stayed from 1942 to 1945, and about the stepplag, where he was in prison up to fifty-fifth.

This huge epic, which had no equal epic, was first published in the nineties, in Kazakhstan, in the book “Polenu Plen”. Grunin tried to print poems in the early sixties many times - and Twardowski, to whom he sent them to the New World, and Slutsky, who answered him with a respectful and approved letter, and Selvinsky, who admired his formal skill.

I must say, the poems of Grunin both to me and many then seemed to be a hoax: well, a person could not write like that in the camp. But he explained: to remember - but it was impossible to record - a very dense verbal ligat was needed. It was forced avant -garde. And was it possible to write traditional poems about the reality of captivity?

Evgeny Yevtushenko was the first to print him, to whose indisputable merit before Russian poetry was added in the eighties - thanks to his poetic anthology, many forgotten or unknown names went to the reader. He published Grunin in the “light”, and then in a separate publication, but several dozen lines got there, and his entire military and camp poetic epic, an unprecedented chronicle, and lay the author in the archive. Something appeared in the local press, where Grunin, who joined the Union of Writers in 1991, was welcomed. But he lived and was printed in Jezkazgan, because he could not return to his native Ulyanovsk - he had nowhere to live there. He remained non -rehabilitated and unforgivable. He sent poetry on newspapers, sent one selection to the "interlocutor", and she accidentally came to me from the department of letters. Addressing the editor of the department of the letters, he turned to her: "Major!" - And this forced her to allocate a letter from a dump. I remembered the name and poems, but then we did not print poetry. Seven years later, I wanted to go to Grunin on a business trip, but it was the end of the nineties, the plane to Jezkazgan flew once a week, it was necessary to return back by the bus to Karaganda, then by airplanes to Almaty and Moscow, and the editors did not have such money.

I showed Grunin’s poems to my literary teacher Novella Matveeva and said that there is such a poet, with such a biography and such texts, and no one knows him.

“Go to him, this is a godly affair,” N.N. said, “I had a book of sonnets and there is money.” Publish - return.

By the way, I did not see a person who would be easier and rapid Matveeva parted with any fees: many were published thanks to her, others received her secret help - as if she were not a legal recipient of fees, but their redistributor. So I flew to Grunin, spent a day with him and wrote an essay about him. After him, I clearly remember, our editorial PR man, who had no attitude to literature and did not like poetry, flew into my office with a cry: “Well, your grandfather gives !!!”

Grunin was then under 80, he was a restrained, laconic, lean old man, who had already left all dreams of literary recognition. He smiled for the whole time of the conversation only once - when he remembered the camp friend Kamile Ikramov, with whom he was sitting together in the forty -seventh.

He was captured in the forty -second under the village of Vasilyevshchina; At first he was in a camp in the village of Maloye Zasovo, then he was sent to Germany to build roads. The British freed them, offered to stay, recruited, promised a service in the colonies - Grunin refused, was eager for his homeland.

When a car from the Soviet occupation zone came behind them, Grunin was first given the artist’s position, they allowed to write home, but then it was necessary to report on the capture of the author of the anti -Stalinsky anthem, and since he sent his parents poetry about captivity, they decided to make it this author. Meanwhile, the ROA anthem was “for the earth, for the will”, from the opera “Quiet Don”, but this was not interested in anyone. Grunin was given for ten years, at first he sat in Usollag, then he was thrown into the stepplag, in Jezkazgan, to copper mines. There, in 1954, he survived the Kengir uprising.

- After the death of Stalin, the regime staggered, everyone felt confusion, and the prisoners broke the wall between the male and female zones. Let's go to the women. It began with this. Do you know what they did the first when they took power? Established their punishment cell.

A lot has been written about the Kengir uprising and the brutal suppression (people traveled to people)-including in Novaya Gazeta, where in 2012 the article by Nikolai Formosov appeared; The first detailed Kengir chronicle was the chapter in the Archipelago - Forty days of Kengira. Grunin then wrote a letter to Solzhenitsyn with additions and clarifications. In 1999, he himself published a story about the uprising - the “back of the earth”.

He was not among the organizers of the uprising and went out in 1955. He lived in Dzhezkazgan, worked as an architect, designed many houses in the city. I tried to print - unsuccessfully. He wrote portraits, cut it on a tree, then, already at the publicity, led Litstrapnichka in the newspaper. His verses of the sixties are weak than the early and later: they appeared in them hope, actually Grunin is not too familiar. The illusions ended quickly. Late Grunin is terrible - he no longer believes in anything and nothing:

“I pray you tearfully with the thought of the latter. Evil is not washed off with jets of tears. Not a single mediator helped me. Where are they - Buddha, Mohammed, Christ? I do not dig on my fate, my soul is squeezed by my confusion: the more in the in -depth I study the Bible, the more we are more fatigue I do not believe in it. If you are invented, my God, - are you Jericho is glorified by a pipe for the future? If we are cursed, who are we cursed - a devilish whim or you? To dump from the heart of Veriga doubts, in order to stand up a little short and without religions, resting with your mortal soul, just come to your final point - sifted life, like in a sieve. How can I believe in the desired something if it is nothing in my thoughts? "

However, he had a worse, it was harder in the last years:

He is the right righteous Paul.
He glorified God's kingdom
Saints in your own words.
He is Paulus in Latin.
It translates "Small" -
And now, and in prison, and after.
That's all we know, perhaps,
About this humble apostle.
Passive Pavlova flock
accepts the position of slavery.

If you want - dispute. But recognize the power of the statement.

The largest circulation of his poetic collection is a thousand copies. This collection shortly before its 90th anniversary was published in Ulyanovsk and was called "dying." His poems appeared only in the New World - other thick magazines did not take them in the nineties. Now his large collections can be found on the network - both on “Verse.ru”, and on several other sites that any search engine can easily tell. Several paper books - including the first -class poem "On the slings of the lines" - released his daughter Julia, at her, of course, an account. It’s not enough space to quote a lot here, and it is difficult to choose - Grunin has everything strong, compressed and accurately and instantly remembered. I recall here at least four beloved lines from the Nomo Homini naval poem - about the era of great geographical discoveries, about sea campaigns for spices and pepper: “From pepper, income will pay for a trip to the glory of Spain itself. It will pay for everything. And life is not counted: they were not put in anything. ”

He did not join anyone, did not seduce in anything, did not repent of anything, did not forgive anyone. He lived and died lonely. His poems are by no means joyless - such a holiday of strength, talent, diversity - but there is no senile reconciliation and meekness of being in them: so unconquered and remained, as he was looking from his camp portrait of 1953.

I think his book would decorate the small series of the "Library of the Poet" and today would add strength, courage, even to poisonous mockery. But even without this poetic monument about Grunin, it is worth remembering - we do not have so many examples of brilliant spiritual resistance and creativity contrary to everything.