"Treasure of Russian poetry"

To the anniversary of Bella Akhmadulina (1997)

Archival project "Radio Liberty this week 20 years ago." The most interesting and significant from the Archive of the Radio Freedom of twenty years ago. Incomplete story. Still living hopes. Could Russia go the other way?

"An old syllable is attracted to me ...". To the anniversary of Bella Akhmadulina. For the first time on April 14, 1997.

Marina Timasheva : Elena Bonnare and Elena Kamburova, Andrey Bitov and Andrey Voznesensky, Georgy Vladimov, Rezo Gabriadze, Boris Messerer, Evgeny Popov participate in our program. The program was prepared and conducted by Marina Timasheva and Ilya Dadashidze.

Ilya Dadashidze : “The best thing that every nation possesses is its language. The best in every language is the literature created on it. The best in any literature is poetry. It follows (at least, in my opinion) that a good poet is a treasure of the nation. Moreover, if such a poet is a woman. Bella Akhmadulina is a treasure of Russian poetry. Joseph Brodsky.”

Bella Akhmadulina :
It's me - at two o'clock in the afternoon
Povituha obtained by the trophy.
I have to play on the lute.
I tickled from Fei sticks.
Only a blunder of golden color
understands the soul - it's me
On the sultry day of the pre -war summer
I go around the beauty of being.
"Storm by mlake ...", and Bayushki-by
I got used to living, but, alas, -
I die from the war
Under the gloomy supervision of Ufa.
How winter and hospital are whitening!
I notice that I have not died.
In the clouds are illegible of the face
Those who died instead of me.
With an unsuitable blue face,
barely leaving the body from the torment,
This is me in anticipation of the great
I hear something less than sound.
Only then I will appreciate the habit
Listen to eternal, like a surf,
Nameless things roll call
With a soul calling a soul.
This is me - my dress of violets,
I am arrogant, Yuna and Tolsta,
but to the dying smile of poets
I have already accustomed the mouth.
Like a trembling between the heart and the heart,
There is a word between a word and a word.
The only thing is an ingenuous tool
Circle her knitting pen.
- To be the words groom and bride! -
I say this and laugh.
As a priest in the wilderness of the village,
I crown their secret union.
That's why fleeting fairies
They showered their whisper and laughter.
Forehead and singing bastard of the neck,
Oh, how I am not like everyone.
I love this scheme of dissimilarity
And, for long prey, hurrying
Young hounds my handwriting is rushing,
That overtook - and the soul fired.

Bella Akhmadulina. Photo by Anastasia Fedorenko

Marina Timasheva : Andrei Voznesensky connects more than 30 years of friendship with Bella Akhmadulina. She dedicated this to him poems ending in the duplicity:

I love everyone who is alive. Just do not part
Watch through the tears and fade to each other.

Andrey Voznesensky : What to say about Bella? This is the most crystal voice of our domestic poetry, and our terrible age with its cars did not affect it. This is an absolutely pure angelic note in our poetry. Bella did not only affect me, and probably affected my fate.

This is an absolutely pure angelic note in our poetry

When Nikita Sergeyevich shouted at me, Mikhail Romm, recalls that "Voznesensky replied that he did not divide the literature horizontally into generations, but divides it vertically. For him, Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky and relate to the young generation. But he added the names of Pasternak and Akhmadulina. Because You know a grandiose scandal, it is with Akhmadulina’s voice that I will read the poems of the pores, when it was still dynamic, nervous, there were Luzhniki, there were joint many thousands of poetry, there was an air of poetry in the country.

There are many of us. There may be four of us.
We rush in the car like devils.
Hoofer orange -over.
And the jacket on the elbow is for force.
Ah, squirrel, dashing disaster,
an unhealthy angel in appearance,
Your porcelain profile is good,
How a white lamp is on!
In hell in the pans are long
And they will send a patrol to the gate,
When on the maximum speedometer
You smoke, throwing the steering wheel.
I love when you squeeze the pedal
crystal, like texts in the choral,
You will say: "What sadness!
my rights were taken away ...
You see, they sewed excess
Speed in an excited state ..
And I went like normally ... "
Do not spoil yourself, squirrel, liver.
The sergeant, of course, is wise,
But there is no speed of the singing
In the box of its speeds.
The duties of the poet
not know the kilometer
take sounds at the speed of light,
How angels in the sky sing.
Over these years, light
Let us disappear, beating
Let no one to receive a prize.
We squeezed the speed for the first time.
Click, squirrel, Divine Koresh!
And let him not collect bones to us.
Long live the singing speed,
The murderous of speeds!
What is destined for us ahead?
There are few of us. There may be four of us.
We rush -
And you are a deity!
And yet we are the majority.

When the angel is driving, only he can save our car and civilization. So is the TV. This box for fools is considered, but when Bella and other poets appear on it, it is transformed and angelic work is going on. Blok wrote: "Poets lived there. Everyone met each other with an arrogant smile."

That is, this jealousy, envy, hostility in our circle is the main feature. Here in Bella this is not, and in me not. And once I, answering her poems, wrote the same size:

We broke God's covenant. They ate an apple.
The poet has no partner, all the duets ended in a duel.
We violated the human code - to be mutual target.
Our union was condemned by a scam worse than blood squad.
The offender was born with a white voice in the dark.

Even if our land is dirt, your Christmas is atonement.

With these lines I want to end the congratulation of Bella, our deity.

(Sings Elena Kamburova )

AP! .. Here I am again ...
I'm not scared at all
But I'm afraid for you: you are scared for me.
Suddenly I can’t resist and turn into fragments ...
AP! .. I did not die - I just froze.
Do not believe: this is a trick, I am not the death of death,
Look at me as long as life is intact.
Fear for me, because if you are not scared
–AP! - My trick is just a muffled price.
–AP! It is fun to go along the edge of the rope.
Dance, so dance, until it breaks.
I know that I will leave, I will leave you, if I need
- So it was every time. So it will be now.
Do not believe: this is a trick, I am not the death of death,
Look at me as long as life is intact.
Fear for me, because if you are not scared
–AP! - My trick is just a muffled price.
I'm leaving you for the fateful land
From today in the old days.
I am born in the circus, and I die in the circus.
–AP! Cry about me. Do not be afraid for me!
Do not believe: this is a trick, I am not the death of death,
Look at me as long as life is intact.
Fear for me, because if you are not scared
–AP! - My trick is just a muffled price.

Marina Timasheva : The performer of this song to the verses of Bella Akhmadulina - Elena Kamburova - discovered her poetry in the same 60s, but not at the beginning, like Andrei Voznesensky, but at the end of the decade.

I am leaving you from the fateful land from the present day to the old days. I am born in the circus, and I die in the circus

Elena Kamburova : I was struck by her appearance, her manner of reading poems, it seemed to me that they could not be read in a different way, they could not be read just like that, without stretching out the neck and not likened to the bird. Here is a little more, and it will take off. The title of "poetess" somehow does not fit this name at all, only "poet". Akhmadulina has some fascinating lines, when you don’t even understand what, but you go to the call, sound, and intonation. It was so interesting to observe how Leonid Engibarov said about Bella Akhmadulina. He was absolutely in love with her, he spoke of himself and her that “we are creatures”, and I really felt that there were people, but there were creatures. This is such a creature - Bella Akhmadulina, a certain separate flower, a certain separate star.

Ilya Dadashidze : flower, star, crystal voice, rare grace and purity, subtlety and hill, high parties as a reflection of the soul and the noble old -fashioned dictionary - these are almost mandatory epithets of any critical response of Bella Akhmadulina.

An old syllable entails me,
There is a charm of ancient speech ...

... she noticed in one of her first poems, and immediately hastened to clarify:

It happens our words
Both modern and sharper.

Marina Timasheva : About the combination in the verses of the Akhmadulina of the old syllable and the sharpness of the image of the world, the world without embellishment, says Evgeny Popov, recalling her Tarus cycle "One hundred and the first kilometer".

Valery Popov : Life and literature for her are initially associated into one whole. She speaks with high confidence that they will understand, and will not understand, they will feel that, in principle, the same thing. And as for this “one hundred and first kilometer” cycle, and its other verses, it is a provincial, or not provincial, but bitter Soviet life of a common man, it is sanctified by the presence of the author and acquires from this contrast the significance of Epica. And here, as it were, the fact that parts of the public seemed even to its minus, some kind of elaboration, suddenly powerfully acquires special significance.

The development of events is in a hurry,
Two soldiers entered the courtyard,
Wanting to sharpen two axes
For the carpentry intentions of Stroybat.

The former Akhmadulina, young Akhmadulina, with all these delights and suddenly - construction battalion, axes ...

... provincial, or not provincial, but the bitter Soviet life of a common man is sanctified by the presence of the author and acquires from this contrast the significance of Epica

When I met her, we immediately started talking about Shukshin. She was friends with him, she starred in his film, and she taught him a lot. She bought his shoes so that he would not go in boots, because at that time he did not just go in boots, but flaunted in boots. And she told him that it was necessary a little differently, although he refuted her the thesis that, having seen Pasternak’s photograph, said: “And yours is also in boots.” So, she taught him a lot, but she also learned, obviously, a lot. Because it was the penetration of that life outside Moscow, but in Russia. She really has this nationality, which is not related to the common people, when they beat themselves in the chest and shout "earth", "homeland" ... She just loves her homeland, and does not talk about it. And she feels this contrast herself, because her poems, with outwardly such extraterrestrialness, are purely accurate. She is, in a sense, not even a literary person. And one of her characters, this drunkard Grebennikov, he, when she approaches him and says that “I have interest in you,” he answers her:

You would have gone home, literature.
You promised us that there is justice,
Then why do you need - everything, and to us - the prosecutor's office?

And this is the feeling that she was born in our country is present in all her verses. Still Christianity, of course. Because in the most bitter verses, a poem about the unfortunate boy, Pashka, there suddenly such an explosion is compassionate, mercy, not declared, an underwater explosion of such.

Marina Timasheva : Confrontation to evil. This topic settles in the first verses of Bella Akhmadulina.

Bella Akhmadulina :
I thought at a cozy rain hour:
And suddenly, indeed, logically dinging,
obviously immoral child,
Born near the bloodshell.

That night when St. Bartholomew
on the feast called all the hunkers like a thin
There was a cry of the one between the two lights
Not a googenot and not a Catholic.

Another chick, barely singing nonsense,
Still walking, not a well -known goat,
He survived and appropriated the first breath
seized from the executed breath.

How, nanny, neither pestle nor feed
Your child is flower honey,
in his neat little blood
There is a sip of other people's oxygen.

He is a varnish, he wants to drink more
the body does not know the unenlightened
that is insatiable, sweet, hot
Tastens the spirit of the larynx of the suppressed.

I got to breathe! Not to blame
In religions and distant.
And he accepts the bloody child
For everyday benefits for the lungs.

I don't know, in the shadow of whose shoulder
He sleeps in the comfort of childhood and villainy.
But the executioner and the victim of the executioner
Equally corrupts the blind dream of the baby.

When the eyes open - look
What fate will be the poison in it?
Reflect - kill? Or die?
Or sorely blacken from slavery?

Accustomed to the excess of deaths,
You are kind people, scold and fight,
You are so fearlessly nursed children
That children are probably not afraid.

And if the child will cry from sleep,
Do not worry - it’s little to blame:
A little alarmed gum
milk cutters of the ghoul.

And if something looks from the branches,
frozen the skin with touching the skin,-
Do not be afraid! These are children of children
Clushed under the canopy of villains.

But maybe in unconsciousness, in paradise,
That crying sounds in honor of the choice of another,
and fragility defenseless
Mourning a small throat

all horror, excessive for the line,
All music, not explained in notes.
But in general - what trifles!
Just thirty thousand Huguenots.

Bella Akhmadulina. Photo by Anastasia Fedorenko

Marina Timasheva : Evgeny Popov spoke about the Christianity of Akhmadulina’s poetry, about compassion for characters, but there is compassion in life, in relations with real people, not only with literary heroes. In the Brezhnevsko-Andropovskoy, Akhmadulina stood up for Vladimir Voinovich and Lev Kopelev, she defended Evgeny Popov and Viktor Erofeev, supported Semyon Lipkin, Inna Lisnyanskaya, pulled out Sergei Parajanov’s prison. Bella Akhmadulina did a lot in order to intercede for people who resisted, opposed the authorities. Says Elena Bonner.

Elena Bonner : I want to say about the personal feature of Akhmadulina. She was a man not indifferent to the fate of her colleagues. And if you expand this circle, then, apparently, it is not indifferent to the fate of many. Therefore, she had a number of performances or actions that can be attributed to the circle of dissident.

Her defense of Parajanov, Vladimov ... Kopelev, Voinovich and others just say about this, as if demonstrates her public concern, although she is an absolutely lyrical person by the genus of creativity

Her defense of Parajanov, Vladimov, close communication, help and protection of Kopelev, Voinovich and others just say about this, as if demonstrates this social concern, although she is an absolutely lyrical personality by the genus of creativity. Somewhere in the mid-70s, someone handed us a small letter from Bella Akhmadulina. In this letter there was a few words of admiration for the social position of Sakharov and the hair of a mammoth, who in those years was excavated somewhere in Kamchatka or on Kolyma in permafrost. Such small reddish hairs, Locon Mammontenka. Andrei Dmitrievich is completely not sentimental, but the mammoth Locon is still something, and he did not forget this case, because a year later at the reporting peremarous annual assembly of the Academy, which took place in Moscow in the House of Scientists, this mammoth was exhibited, and Andrei Dmitrievich came and said: “And I saw all the mammoths from which someone Bella Akhmadulina detonated the curl that the curl that was with the curl that the curls that were with which We are stored. " Later, when Bella Akhmadulina was elected to the Boston Academy of Arts, she, in Boston, said that if Soviet academics do not want to protect Sakharov, she would protect him, using her title of an American academician.

Elena Bonner and Andrey Sakharov. 1975

Marina Timasheva : At one time, Bella Akhmadulina saved from the conclusion of George Vladimov. Her letter in the name of Yuri Andropov on the inadmissibility of the writer's arrest made an impression on the power of those who have those who are in power and Vladimov was given the opportunity to leave the Soviet Union.

Georgy Vladimov : What attracts us, many in this beautiful woman? Her amazing artistry is striking. She is a true artist not only when she reads poems from the stage, stage or in the room, straining and overwhelming the throat muscles. She can caress in a word, and can cut it off, can destroy. I had to observe this, but, fortunately, not to experience myself. In the last years, our house of Bella and Boris, that is, their dual house, Boris’s workshop on Vorovsky Street and a cottage in Peredelkin, were almost the only house where we could come, where we were waiting and were always happy for us. Often they came to us at the Malaya Filevskaya. We talked a lot, and it was always a holiday. In the house itself, we felt as if in shelter. At that gloomy and vile times, we, crossing this friendly threshold or meeting Bella and Boris on our threshold, as if parted with all the troubles, fears, with all our gloomy thoughts.

Ilya Dadashidze : Akhmadulina sought to take under protection not only her contemporaries, but also predecessors.

Bella Akhmadulina :
In the time where the villain is
Only an ordinary resident of the streets,
How menacingly fragile Jew.
In whom Rus' and music woke up.
Entering; brittle silhouette,
Guy in the graceful force.
The beginning of the century. The young age.
Raw summer in Helsingfors.
That is God or the young lady? Prayer -
After hundreds of miles of love fuzzy.
Admires! And the genius of the forehead
shyly shown by the bangs.
But the century wants to feast!
Exhausted, he is waiting for an excuse -
and Petersburg Petrograd
It will only leave the dying of the block.
He knew and said that there would be a sign
And the century will fall on his shoulders.
What can he? He is a poverty and nag
Before the miracle of the achieved speech,
The larynx that started a speech
Unloved - so open.
Enough to stop her,
And less diligence of life.
He is a special honor
The double gloating of the sky;
The singer, equipped with a gag in the mouth.
And a varnish, devoid of bread.
From memoirs: "Mandelstam
Loved cakes ". I'm glad
Find out about it. But breathe -
I don’t want to, and don't.
So, then, to be the Creator.
Having broken his hands behind him,
And the nameless dead man
Is everything not enough for flour?
And in death you need to know trouble
that who has not died down,
careless, surviving in hell,
Unquenchable childish thirst?
In my nightmare, in that paradise,
Where is he alive, where I hide him,
He's fed! And I feed him
Huge sweetness! And crying!

Marina Timasheva : Andrei Bitov talks about Bella Akhmadulina as a living water of modern Russian poetry.

Andrei Bitov : For me, the existence of Bella is a form of my not loneliness, so we may not see each other for years. About Bella can say such a common place. Дело в том, что когда ничего было нельзя, поэзия, слово вообще, находило себе дорогу таким же путем, каким находит себе вода путь в трещине, то есть лопались камни от того, что нас замораживали и мы оттаивали. Империя развалилась, мы не были разрушителями империи, а мы были живой водою. Вот эти странно пишущие люди. И камни треснули. И представить себе, сколько расколола этого камня Белла, достаточно трудно.

...поэзия, слово вообще, находило себе дорогу таким же путем, каким находит себе вода путь в трещине, то есть лопались камни от того, что нас замораживали и мы оттаивали

Когда была цензура, родился жанр, который предопределил возникновение видеомагнитофона. Я не знаю, был ли он уже на Западе, но он родился в России. Это было несколько людей - Окуджава, Белла, позднее – Высоцкий, и еще позднее – Жванецкий - это люди, которые работали мимо бумаги. Белла – письменный человек, ее стихи можно читать, их можно собирать в книгах, но Белла - это сочетание красоты, позы, жеста, голоса и слова. Тогда не существовало этой технологии. Эта технология была рождена в этих людях, но она не зафиксирована. Вот это и есть фантастическая жестокость и несправедливость времени.

Марина Тимашева : Булат Окуджава посвятил Ахмадулиной песню о "маленьком оркестрике под управлением любви".

(Song)

Илья Дадашидзе :

Меня терзали жизнь, нужда,
Страх поутру, что все сначала.
Но Грузия меня всегда
Звала к себе и выручала.

Так начинается одно из многих стихотворений Ахмадулиной на грузинскую тему, тему постоянную в ее творчестве. Слово Резо Габриадзе.

Резо Габриадзе : Белла на тбилисских улицах была так органична, так легко вписывалась. Белла смотрелась не только в старой части Тбилиси, но и в его ужасных новых кварталах она появлялась, трагичная. Это сплошное сопереживание миру. Она рифмуется с самой жизнью. Это поэт. Она очень красиво входила в платановые пятна на улицах. Помните это знаменитое ощущение больших широких листьев в южных странах? Она входила в тень платана, выходила, и очень красиво читалась. I remember this well. Ее появление всегда создает какую-то атмосферу поэзии, значительности этой минуты в жизни каждого из нас. Минута становится минутой, ее значение - шестьюдесятью секундами, а не так как сейчас - наши минуты бедные, они все худеют, худеют, становятся по десять-восемь секунд. А вот Беллины минуты – шестьдесят секунд, а часто и, может быть, триста секунд. Белла очень умеет дарить время и давать нам ощущение его. Я - ее поклонник, испуганный ее величием.

(Поет Елена Камбурова )

Напрасно ты идешь, последний мальчик.
Поставлю я твои подснежники в стакан,
и коренастые их стебли обрастут
серебряными пузырьками.
Но, видишь ли, и ты меня разлюбишь,
и, победив себя, ты будешь говорить
со мной надменно,
как будто победил меня,
а я пойду по улице, по улице...

Марина Тимашева : Борис Мессерер, с которым Ахмадулину связывают четверть века супружеской жизни, утверждает, что никогда не стремился победить Беллу.

Борис Мессерер : Беллу победить, во-первых, нельзя, и не нужно абсолютно. Дело в том, что у меня есть всегда желание помочь ей, спрятать ее от каких-то жизненных трудностей и защитить ее.

Илья Дадашидзе : "Ее стихотворения отличимы от чьих-бы то ни было мгновенно, ее стих размышляет, медитирует, отклоняется от темы. Развертывание ее стихотворения подобно розе, оно центростремительно и явственно отмечено напряженным женским вниманием к деталям, напряженным вниманием, которые иначе можно назвать любовью. Чистый результат, тем не менее, не салонная и не камерная музыка, результат – уникальное ахмадулинское смешение частного и риторического, смешение, которое находит отклик в каждой душе".

Марина Тимашева : Эти слова о Белле Ахмадулиной были сказаны Иосифом Бродским ровно десть лет назад. Сегодня уже нет ни Бродского, ни Владимира Соколова, ни Микаэла Таривердиева, людей, с которыми ее связывала многолетняя дружба.

(Поет Елена Камбурова )

По улице моей который год
звучат шаги - мои друзья уходят.
Друзей моих медлительный уход
той темноте за окнами угоден.
Запущены моих друзей дела,
нет в их домах ни музыки, ни пенья,
и лишь, как прежде, девочки Дега
голубенькие оправляют перья.
Ну что ж, ну что ж, да не разбудит страх
вас, беззащитных, среди этой ночи.
К предательству таинственная страсть,
друзья мои, туманит ваши очи.
О, одиночество, как твой характер крут!
Посверкивая циркулем железным,
как холодно ты замыкаешь круг,
не внемля увереньям бесполезным.
Так призови меня и награди!
Твой баловень, обласканный тобою,
утешусь, прислонясь к твоей груди,
умоюсь твоей стужей голубою.
Дай стать на цыпочки в твоём лесу,
на том конце замедленного жеста
найти листву, и поднести к лицу,
и ощутить сиротство как блаженство.
Даруй мне тишь твоих библиотек,
твоих концертов строгие мотивы,
и - мудрая - я позабуду тех,
кто умерли или доселе живы.
И я познаю мудрость и печаль,
свой тайный смысл доверят мне предметы.
Природа, прислонясь к моим плечам,
объявит свои детские секреты.
И вот тогда - из слёз, из темноты,
из бедного невежества былого
друзей моих прекрасные черты
появятся и растворятся снова.

Илья Дадашидзе : И снова Борис Мессерер. Какой образ возникает перед ним при имени Белла Ахмадулина?

Борис Мессерер : В общем, минуты ее такого высшего торжества, как бы когда были минуты ее признания, и вот это чувство, что я этому способствовал и довел до этого признания, они в первую очередь сейчас возникают в моей памяти. И вот, предположим, момент, когда Беллу сделали почетным членом Американской академии искусств и письменности. Когда дело состоялось в Америке, в Нью-Йорке, среди друзей-писателей, американских, в том числе – Апдайка, Миллера, и так далее, и ее чествовали как почетного члена Академии американской.

Белла Ахмадулина :
Я измучила упряжью шею.
Как другие плетут письмена -
я не знаю, нет сил, не умею,
не могу, отпустите меня.
Это я - человек-невеличка,
всем, кто есть, прихожусь близнецом,
сплю, покуда идет электричка,
пав на сумку невзрачным лицом.
Мне не выпало лишней удачи,
слава богу, не выпало мне
быть заслуженней или богаче
всех соседей моих по земле.
Плоть от плоти сограждан усталых,
хорошо, что в их длинном строю
в магазинах, в кино, на вокзалах
я последнею в кассу стою -
позади паренька удалого
и старухи в пуховом платке,
слившись с ними, как слово и слово
на моем и на их языке.