"I decided to remember them"

In St. Petersburg, a book of memoirs of a philologist, literary critic Tatyana Nikolskaya "Once again - Thank you!"

In 2014, Tatyana Nikolskaya had already been published in the publishing house of Yuolucca, a book of memoirs “ thank you for being ”, so the one who is familiar with her will understand that “thanks again” is most likely her continuation. So it is, the new "thank you" is an echo book, a bonno-sound book of that, the first "thank you"-which, however, in no way deteriorates its merits and its independence. Indeed, although this is the most “once again ...” and indicates to us something that existed before, namely, the first collection of memories of people, and famous, and not very, with whom the author had to communicate in his life, but the second meeting turned out to be no less pretty. The main feature of these memoirs is probably very simple: the inner gaze of the recalling one, on behalf of which there is a story in the first book, is not looking for dark spots in the folds of memory, this gaze is fulfilled by light and gratitude. And in the new book “Thanks again” we see the same light and the same gratitude once again.

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Conversation with Tatyana Nikolskaya in the program "Cultural Diary"

-And yet, Tatyana, how it turned out that the memories unified in meaning were divided into two parts, why did you need to say your "thank you" twice?

-Thanks to those people I write about in the book “Thank you for what you were,” I learned a lot, learned something, because all the older people, my teachers, teachers. Of the teachers, this, for example, Dmitry Evgenievich Maksimov, from informal teachers - this is the translator Ivan Alekseevich Likhachev, who spent 18 years in the camps, Anti -Chonik Andrey Nikolaevich Egunov, and there were people such as my distant relative, poet and bard Khvostenko. I decided to remember them. But the memories were written not by a single book, but by parts, at different times, until, finally, the book, published in the publishing house "Yuolucca", which is translated from Finnish means "Blueshore". But, apparently, for technical reasons, it turned out that it did not include my big memories about the Ida Moiseevna Nappelbaum, who meant a lot for me - the last 15–20 of her life, we communicated closely, and she died in 92. When we met her, we lived in the neighborhood - I am with dad on Nevsky, 74, and she was in the famous house "Tears of Socialism" on the corner of the count, then Proletarsky Lane and Rubinstein Street. I met her in the first year of the university when I began to engage in Vaginov. I wrote about her after her death in the newspaper "New Russian Word", but it was a purely biographical article. And now I am friends with her daughter, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Terenkova, who in recent years has been the mother’s secretary and helped her a lot, now she lives in Germany, but every year comes here for a month. So I took and processed that article, wrote about Ekaterina Mikhailovna, and about Ida Moiseevna’s sister, Olga Moiseevna Grudsova, a Moscow writer, who helped me a lot in my classes, sharing her literary connections. So the memories turned out to be common. And if this text entered the book “Thank you for being”, then maybe this new book would not have appeared. She appeared - primarily because I was tormented by my conscience in front of Ida Moiseevna’s daughter - after all, these memories did not fall into the book. Well, then they began to say to me from all sides - and why you don’t want to write about Viktor Andronikovich Manuilov, because you studied with him, and so one name reached out for another. And then I myself wanted to add something about some of my Georgian friends, primarily about the film scan, prose writer Erlome Akhvediani. This is a very interesting prose writer, the first Georgian author, whose stories were translated into Dutch. But in Russia, unlike Holland, they do not know his prose. He collaborated with the Schengya brothers, wrote with Lana Gogberidze the script for many films. He studied at the highest scenario courses with Ilya Averbach, knew all this company well, and I remember how we met at the funeral of Averbach. He was friends with Ibrahimbekov, with Bitov - a man was very interesting. Bitov wrote about him in his Georgian album, but no one knows more about him.

- That is, the memories of the ide of Moiseevna Nappelbaum, like a thread, others pulled along with themselves?

-Yes, yes, you can say so. Including about the daughter of Titian Tabidze Nite Tabidze, with whom I was also very friends and which helped me a lot in Tbilisi, I could say, my older friend. When a collection of her memory was being prepared in Tbilisi, I was asked to write something urgently about her. I wrote, but the collection, as it happens, did not come out, and the manuscript was lost. And only 2 years ago, my daughter found a nita and returned it to me. And I was visiting Parajanov several times - and I also wanted to tell about him. Well, then in the book “Thank you for being”, except for memories, my early stories of the 70s included, and in the early 80s I wrote a story that was not printed anywhere, except for one fragment. And I really wanted to print this story now - so I included it there.

She got to the Gulag in 1951 because of her portrait Nikolai Gumilyov, who had once hung at her house, and the investigator kindly explained to her that she was simply “not reached” in 1937

Tatyana Nikolskaya tells very easily and fun, but in fact, evidence of how gloomy the era was flashing in her memoirs. The book is opened by the memories of the Ide Moiseevna Nappelbaum, where the first page says about how she got to the Gulag in 1951 because of the portrait of Nikolai Gumilyov, who had once hung at her house, and the investigator kindly explained to her that she was simply “not reached” in 1937. A search is also mentioned in the case of the son of her old friends-the poets of Nikolai Brown and Maria Komissarova-Nikolai Brown Jr., "where Ida Moiseevna passed the witness, because it was known that she liked the poems of the young man. During this search, by the way, memories were found, reprinted by Tatyana Nikolskaya, which, in fact, could threaten her with great troubles. In the same chapter, the girlfriend of Nikolskaya Ekaterina Livshits, the widow of the executed poet, the author of the famous memoirs “One and a half -eyed Sagittarius” Benedict Livshits, for whom his widow served as “the wife of the enemy of the people”, is mentioned. In the chapter, the “Zeader of the Blue Wave”, dedicated to Viktor Andronikovich Manuilov, we read about his memoirs “Notes of a Happy Man”: “It was written in the Soviet years with all the ensuing consequences. There is nothing “superfluous” in it, nothing that could damage someone’s reputation, a lot of defaults. And there is no one to ask about many heroes of the book. "

This is written dryly and simply, as a very understanding, but a couple of lines, as if by chance dropped by Tatyana Nikolskaya, lies a whole layer of circumstances that the dedicated to recognize at a glance. Yes, this book is probably for the initiates who do not need to explain how and what could be damaged by reputation and what could be "superfluous". On the other hand, even those who are not so familiar with the realities of Soviet life will find a lot of interesting things here - at least a story about how the author of these memories becomes a participant in the events included in the prose of the writer Boris Kyshlenko. What is the description of at least this holiday: “At the impeccably serviced table, I sat next to Efim Slavinsky - Slavka, a tugn man who studied at the English department of the university’s philological faculty. He just arrived by train from Kyiv, where his parents supplied him with a bidon, filled with home cutlets to his birthday, set a biddon under the table and whisper Try on my mother's cutlets. "

-Tatyana, tell me, and you yourself probably have some favorite memories in this book or for you-all are equal?

-The most expensive for me are the memories of Sofya Mikhailovna Marr, the daughter-in-law of the linguist Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr and the widow of the linguist-Iranist Yuri Nikolayevich Marra. When I lived in Tbilisi in Tbilisi in the 70s, she practically replaced my grandmother. I lived with her when I collected materials for my first book about the cultural life of Russian emigration in Tbilisi during the time of Noah Jordan. She lived up to 90 years, and her husband died very early, in the late 30s from tuberculosis, and then she devoted her whole life not only to collect the materials left after him-along with the Georgian orientalists, she managed to release several collections of his correspondence on Iranistic and Georgian studies. Yuri Marr was a very bright man, but almost nothing of his labors brought to the press, Tom of his scientific papers came out after his death. And then I was fond of the verses of the Futurists-Umnikov-Kruzhenykh, Terentyev, Zdanevich who lived in Tbilisi, and Yuri Marr also wrote poetry, but his two thin books were published only in the 90s, it was impossible to publish them before. Now he is preparing for the release of his large volume-after the death of Sofia Mikhailovna, her papers were in the Georgian archive, I also have something in other private archives. We want to perpetuate the memory of her husband - already as a poet in honor of Sophia Mikhailovna.

-That is, the memories are still unequal for you-there are some more expensive ...

I remembered paradoxical and kindness of Parajanov-he really loved to give something

-You see, everything is ambiguous here, sometimes it is more difficult to write about a closer person than about someone, with whom I saw only a few times. So, it was more difficult for me to write about Sofya Mikhailovna, with whom I lived nearby for months than about Parajanov, whom I saw, probably, five times. Most of all I remembered his paradoxicality and kindness-he really loved to give something. The first time I came to him, we naturally spoke of his films, and I told him about my friend Sasha Lavrov, who watched, say, 34 times and even made a pickup in the notebook. Parajanov was so delighted and wanted to give him something, I had to go for a gift, but did not go. His address was given to me by his friend Mia Petrova, he says - Ah, such a little woman who looks like Juliet Mazin? And he handed her a tablecloth as a gift. At the same time, he sometimes provoked a guest - for example, he said to me: what good in Leningrad you have there, I only like Apraksin the yard there. I say: very good, I just live there, you will be there - come to me to drink tea. And he probably was waiting for indignation - how so, but the Hermitage! Such a person.

Photo by Sergey Parajanov

- All these are memories of fairly famous people, but you have other characters.

They tied a bottle of port to the panties, sailed to the nearest ice floe, stood on it, drank port and sailed back

-I had a friend Naiash Kedova, the sister of orientalist Vanya Stloblin-Kamensky, who was married to a very original person, nicknamed Pontili. This show-off organized the Mudists Society in the late 50s. It was mainly jazz musicians from the Leningrad Dixieland , which until 1964 did not have an official base - the guys simply played at different evenings, in institutes. The Society of Mudists is a game of words: there is such a melody, it is performed by Glen Miller’s orchestra in the film "Serenade of the Solar Valley", in the Mood. And these mudists organized such a cheerful informal company - there was Glavmud - pontili, there was an overseer, there was a deputy of the main, there was a chief of mutual defense - and all in the same spirit, there were 5-6 people. There was still such a mud-traveler, a friend of my relative Korotenko Yura Sorokin. They played like that - they had their own charter, where there were, for example, such rules: “Mudy yourself, but do not yell others,” “You will wise, I wise, my whole family is wise.” They had special "kir" passports, from the word "pike", to drink, - the passports of drunkards are essentially. These "kirov" passports were invalid without a cuffed coupon. Of these cheerful people, only one of the late Muds - Nikolai Skrypnik survived, he is now playing in the Leningrad Dixieland, he was accepted in 1964, he was then 18 years old. But since all positions were already busy, he was appointed the head of the Mudistic Garden. At first he could not understand what it was, and then he said: we come to the store, and the guys say - well, what will we take - a tree? "Tree" and "bitch" are various types of drinking - port and vodka. So he realized that his duties include providing a mudstic garden. In addition, they still committed all kinds of group actions, for example, one of the most interesting was that in winter, when there were already ice floes, but there were no continuous ice, they undressed to the panties, tied a bottle of portion to the underpants, sailed to the nearest ice floe, stood on it, drank port and sailed back. The distance could be small, at least three meters - such absurd shares. This group lasted quite a long time, until the mid-60s. When my book was published, I went to the concert of the Leningrad Dixieland. Skrypnik at this time was in the hospital, so I handed the book to Oleg Kuvaytsev with the words what is about you. And he began to tell me more and more details, he was in a hurry - you need to start the second department of the concert, and he says - wait! And then he goes on stage directly with this book and says - now, one writer gave me a book where there is a story about our Leningrad Dixyland. And then he told me about how one of the members of the ensemble, the youngest by age and therefore did not have time to become a mutist, presented to Obermud Akulov for his birthday a triangle and said: "This is a gift to you as a gift of the Obranmud triangle."

When you listen to Tatyana Nikolskaya, there is a feeling that her book has not yet been finished. In any case, it does not seem to be something closed and found the final shape-her pages seem to be constantly moving, germinating with transparent roots in familiar streets, into warm houses, suburban cottages, concert halls, echoing with conversations that have not yet been excluded, with exclamations that have not yet been born.