Missing classic

About Leonid's prose

Recently, my old friend, a tireless book collector, gave me a weighty book: a complete collected works and letters of Leonid Ivanovich Modbychina. However, if you subtract the preface and comments, as well as the private letters of this far from a happy person, the volume of the author’s prosaic texts is quite modest. Few people still know the prey, but those who know consider him to be our Joyce. Pretychin is indeed a big writer. He had just recently resurrected after a deaf writer's death in 1936, and a bright future in the history of Russian literature awaits him.

Leonida Prebychina opened the roots of Chukovsky in the mid-1920s. He was highly appreciated by the “Serapion brothers”*and the Oberiuts **. With the help of literary friends, preychin published three thin books of prose. Two are stories, one is a small autobiographical novel “City En”.


“Serapion brothers” - the unification of young prose writers, poets and critics that arose in Petrograd on February 1, 1921. The group consisted of a circle of students of Yevgeny Zamyatin and Viktor Shklovsky. In their declarations, the unification - in contrast to the principles of proletarian literature - emphasized its apoliticality. The members of the group were Lev Lunts, Ilya Gruzdev, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Veniamin Kaverin, Konstantin Fedin, Nikolai Tikhonov, Vsevolod Ivanov and others. * Oberiu (association of real art) - a group of writers and cultural figures that arose in 1927 in Leningrad. The group included Daniil Harms, Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Konstantin Vaginov, Igor Bakhterev and others. Members of the association declared the rejection of traditional forms of art, the need to update the methods of depicting reality. The group ceased to exist when in 1931 Vvedensky, Harms and Bakhterev were arrested.

*“Serapion brothers” - the unification of young prose writers, poets and critics that arose in Petrograd on February 1, 1921. The group consisted of a circle of students of Yevgeny Zamyatin and Viktor Shklovsky. In their declarations, the unification - in contrast to the principles of proletarian literature - emphasized its apoliticality. The members of the group were Lev Lunts, Ilya Gruzdev, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Veniamin Kaverin, Konstantin Fedin, Nikolai Tikhonov, Vsevolod Ivanov and others. ** Oberiu (association of real art) - a group of writers and cultural figures that arose in 1927 in Leningrad. The group included Daniil Harms, Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Konstantin Vaginov, Igor Bakhterev and others. Members of the association declared the rejection of traditional forms of art, the need to update the methods of depicting reality. The group ceased to exist when in 1931 Vvedensky, Harms and Bakhterev were arrested.

The war with formalism meant the defeat of literature and art necessary for ideology. Shostakovich turned out to be a musical victim, preychin - literary

“I opened the prey in the Brezhnev years. The wonderful, early deceased writer Yevgeny Kharitonov told me about him. Later, the prey praised me his contemporary - Kaverin. I read the story“ Meeting with Liz ”, who gave the name of the first book of stories, and - he gasped. Pretychin managed to say nothing about the person and his passions, not saying nothing.

The story was motionless in the plot, not of little interest in characters, but the fact that in some seedy city a certain haggard Kukin sighed and worried about the fact that a certain girl Liz was undressed behind the door of the bathhouse, was perceived as a love languor of high poetry in prose. In the end, this Liz drowned in the river, and the fire of Kukin passion went out with a mournful hissing of the head.

Other stories prey are as rich in the Achinea of Provincial Life as “Meetings with Liz”, and this nonsense of the NEP era is gradually lifting into the “comedy” of the entire human project, regardless of the country and temporary coordinates. What is not Joyce with his Dublin?

In 1935, preychin managed to print a completely Soviet work at all - the novel “City En”, where he spoke about the life paradox: small and large events in life are often mixed in such a way that large ones become small, and vice versa. This eliminates a person from the brutal logic of existence, gives scope for free choice of impressions and often leaves a person in fools.

Against the background of the power gaining power, preychin looked like an involuntary provocateur. The party was oriented correctly: the war with formalism meant the defeat of literature and art necessary for ideology. Shostakovich turned out to be a musical victim, preychin - literary. He was violently quarreled at a meeting of Leningrad writers. He muttered several slurred words in response and disappeared forever. No one knows what happened to him further. It is difficult to imagine that he secretly crossed the Soviet border.

At the beginning of perestroika, a small book of prey with my preface was published, where I wrote about him as a “real writer”, who was forgotten. My friend gave me a weighty Tom, which was published in 1999, where they were already writing about the booty as a classic. Over the years that have passed since this publication, it became especially clear with us how terrible the heavy immobility of human nature, which generates anger, pettiness, dullness at different levels of being.

Once I came across the old “light” number, which came out before the collectivization, where there were photographs of our best writers. The future of our literature was associated with these writers. There was neither Platonov nor even Bulgakov on the board of honor. There, of course, there was no prey. But the then famous writers, like Babel and Kataev, in my opinion, give little for our today's self -knowledge.

The lonely, born in 1894 in the unknown Latvian town of Ludza, who spent many years in Bryansk, a man of non-traditional orientation, a victim of Soviet utopia, writer's executioners and fools, suicide, preychin can tell us something significant about us. “Meetings with Liz” continue. The country becomes isolated from the world "city of EN".