"I recognized the handwriting of A. Blok"

The poet Paul Valerie once turned to librarians and archivists with such words, drawn on the library wall: “It depends on you here, whether I will become a grave or a treasure, whether I will remain a dumb or speaker. The choice is only you. My friend, do not come here if you are indifferent. " In the program prepared by Leonid Dubshan, archivists and philologists say.

Evgeny Belodubrovsky (St. Petersburg local historian, bibliographer):

- Postcard and text on the other side. I found a postcard at the house - it was a holy postcard, and on the other side there was a text: “Dear Stephanides, we arrived in Paris and stopped at a hotel where there was no shower. But still, we hope that Paul will find us a decent place, and we will finally see Paris from the height of the Eiffel Tower. Write to us at the address .... "I was 14 years old, I was completely amazed. I knew that there was the word “Paris”, I even knew that there was an Eiffel Tower, but I was struck that there was no soul, for some reason I decided that there was no soul. How is it not? This postcard was always under the glass not the holy side, but by this text. I realized that everything written by hand has a certain story, always some plot.

Vyacheslav Nechaev (archivist, bibliographer, historian of Russian abroad):

“I wanted to build bridges, went to Mit, and the medical commission looked and says: we need people with normal vision. I then went to historical and archive, thus got involved in this matter. From the first year we could study in the archives. Then, after the end, I worked, then it was called that in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art. For some reason, it was probably 1959-60, the KGB suddenly requested information about whether Generals Kutepov and Miller were stolen, whether there was any information in the archive of literature and art. And the certificate had to be carried out, they entrusted me. Then I first encountered emigration. I remember with what interest I leafed through the magazine "Firebird", published in Berlin, not inferior to Apollo. In my opinion, there were 15 rooms, no, no, 14, but these were gorgeous publications. It was necessary to make a certificate: yes, the NKVD was stolen. Why they requested, although they had all these materials, I still cannot understand this.

KGB archive

Marietta Chudakova (historian of literature):

- I remember this moment, very important. I finished my dissertation, after a few months I was preparing to defend it, I thought what to do next. This is the spring of 1964. I am walking along Stayninka Street in Moscow and suddenly stop: it comes to me that I can write about the writers I love. It was a complete discovery. Still, the Soviet school, a dotepel for a year and a half at the university, then Khrushchev’s report, a full fracture, of course. And the liberation begins, but it took many years, it took almost 9 years so that I suddenly realized that I can write about who I love. I listed in the head I love: Tynyanov, Tsvetaeva, Zoshchenko. And she began to write a book on the table about Zoshchenko. Of course, I went to Vera Vladimirovna in the same first year, went to Petersburg, then Leningrad, now I can’t even pronounce this word, so we have been waiting for a long time with my husband Alexander Pavlovich Chudakov, when Leningrad again became Petersburg, for us it was a very significant day. Distributing, I’ll say that on this day my husband said: “How I want to write to someone on the Envelum of St. Petersburg.” He thought, said: "I will write to Sasha Kushner." And he wrote, with pleasure he wrote to him on the “St. Petersburg” envelope. And then I was with Mikhail Leonidovich Slonimsky and Vera Vladimirovna Zoshchenko. I watched Zoshchenko’s letters, some manuscripts. This is already a real familiarization with the archive, so to speak. The emanation of personality came from these leaves. Particularly striking handwriting Zoshchenko, drawn as it were. A year after the defense, I got to work in the manuscripts of the Lenin library. It was such an amazing time, just finally woke up from exiles, camps that returned 10 years ago, they began to be a little less afraid and began to transfer the archives of their husbands, fathers, their archives. And the twentieth century went in all storage facilities. Archives - it was something illegal, strictly speaking. Because in 1941 they decided to transfer them to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but did not have time. It was not without reason that they talked about state archives that there are directors in uniform, only they are not visible. We all believed that they were colonels of the KGB. But the departments of manuscripts at libraries and museums - these were departmental, so there was a slightly different atmosphere. I remember the archive of Pavel Sergeyevich Popov, the biographer of Bulgakov, is the autumn of 1965, and there the manuscript “Masters and Margarita”. Elena Sergeevna gave him her reprint a few months after the death of Bulgakov. And we, four or five employees, after work like crazy, almost choking an isff, read this novel and go crazy.

Leonid Dubshan:

—The summers of the many works of Marietta Omarovna Eccentric on the history of literature, books about Bulgakov, Zoshchenko, Olesha and others, there is a book called “Conversations of Archives”. Here are a few lines from the last chapter: “The archivist daily holds in his hands leaflets written by people who are already dead. In front of him over and over again, a person’s life passes from his birth to the last point - and the sad circumstance is that this point is set as if from the very beginning! Every day, he holds in his hands documents that captured the flowering season of the very person whose death certificate lies right there, nearby, in the neighboring cardboard. ”

Vyacheslav Nechaev:

- There is the concept of “store”, and there is the concept of “burying”. Some roots, but different concepts. To bury is when everything disappears when they throw it away. Thus, many have buried the archives, threw it into the trash - and that’s it. It is necessary to pull out a lot. After any person, there is some kind of trace, another thing, bright or dark, but he remains. I must say that once I was an opponent of collectors, because collectors abuse trust, sometimes they assign some things, sometimes steal. That is, all sorts of collections are collected honest and dishonestly. Then I suddenly thought that many things from what they had preserved, collectors would have disappeared. There was such a Gurevich, a notary, not a notary, a lawyer, not a lawyer, in short, he was already retired, he collected books, all kinds of pieces of garbage and brought to the store. Sometimes it concerned theatrical affairs, the store sent to me, to our library. Gurevich came to us, opened the Bauls, who really smelled of a trash, there was such a characteristic smell. We bought some materials from him. And then one day among this garbage leaflets from the book. I took this leaf and I see - this is the handwriting of the block. This is a gift inscription, and not to anyone, but Kogan, the wife of Professor Peter Semenovich Kogan, there is a novel. I understand that it is useless to send it to the store, because this is not a whole book, they will not appreciate and believe it anyway, but I can’t buy it either in the library, because then only through the noble store, and I have no right to miss - this will all disappear. He did not know, it was written “AB”, but I know the handwriting of the block well. I had to tell him honestly: “You will forgive me, but this is a block. Here you are sitting, I will go to the WTO now, collect money and bring you cash. How much do you want? ” He called the amount. I went, NAME this money, brought and gave it.

Alexei Pucks

In archive affairs, sometimes someone is leading you by hand, some mysticism. It pleased fate that in 1958 I met Kruchenykh. They brought twisted to the archive, and he began to read his works. He read so that you felt a chandelier falling on the head of the count, the crack of the skull. You felt it. He began to read “Spring with Reference” when he pronounced, you felt the taste and shape of the object. He was not adapted to life. It reached the joke. I come to the twisted, he fusses in the kitchen. The neighbors left, and he arranged washing. What is this washing? Laughter is like. He put his underwear in a pan, poured water and laid a piece of soap from above - this was called his washing. I say: "Alexei Alekseevich, let me wash you." Or takes a cheese bought in a store, cottage cheese, it would seem, take and eat, no, he puts this cheese in a mug and floods with boiling water, then suddenly opens the cheese, begins to eat. For some reason, the gingerbread cookies also drew boiling water and ate this Sebus. All the time, boiling water was somehow present in his food. Maybe he was afraid, suddenly some hands took the wrong ones, contagious. In his room he has a mountain of manuscripts, folders, everything. The mountain is in the middle of the room, and on top of the trough, so that the mountain does not collapse. How did he oriente? Suppose the cabinet that stood on the right, there was Pasternak and Akhmatova, and under the bed of Baul, where Tsvetaeva was lying. In 1947, he offered the archival management to buy the remains of the archive of Tsvetaeva - I say that from him. He exchanged chocolate on the manuscript of Tsvetaeva. Smooth. The photos were there, something else. The albums that he did lay just in this mountain. I do not know if the album has been preserved where there was an Yesenin's autograph. Yesenin painted a mound, set a cross and wrote nearby "Sergey Yesenin." He belonged to Yesenin, it must be said, otherwise, otherwise he would not have been an autograph, as there was no Gumilyov’s autograph, did not recognize him, apparently. He had repairs, he called me as labor, and then called and said: where is such a book, somewhere, where is something? I came, took it to him or, if I could definitely name the place, said, and he found. He could not navigate in some part. His window was curtained with a rag, he only sometimes opened the window. He slept on an iron metal bed, such a soldier’s soldier's woolen blanket. I was on a trip and when I returned, they were already taken there with bags. After death. There were people who then offered a lot of money for any bag without looking. When you just know a person abstract - this is a slightly different state. When you watch letters, the manuscripts of the people you knew is hard. Because there is such a feeling, as if kite, even uncomfortable after the death of loved ones you knew.

Evgeny Belodubrovsky:

Vladimir Nabokov

-Nabokov for me for the first time sounded from the mouth, oddly enough, a test pilot Mark Gallai, Hero of the Soviet Union, he was a very beautiful person. This is the beginning of the 70s. I then worked on television with a freelance author, there were programs called “close -up”, I was one of those who were looking for interesting people. Mark Gallai, it turns out, studied at a school, which used to be the Tenishevsky school. He told me: “Everyone is engaged in the lyceum, but look at what a wonderful school was on Mokhova. Our school graduated from Mandelstam, Osip Emilievich, academician the future Zhirmunsky and so on. Do you know what such a writer Vladimir Nabokov studied there? When we studied, old teachers and old graduates told us that they published a children's journal, the magazine was called "Young Thought." I went to the public and began to look for the "Yu", found the magazine "Young Thought", the Tenishev school, 1915, such and such a number. Christmas trees, the fact, the fact is that it was a kind of sabotage. There was forbidden literature, there was the so -called special security, but almost all of the then forbidden names were printed in the periodical press, which was not prohibited: “Golden Fleece”, “Libra”, and so on. And I read it all, all these authors were there. I was amazed that these were all emigrants. They bring me a “young thought”, I opened this magazine. I look - “December Night”, Alfred de Musset, poem, translation by V. Nabokov. 1915, 16 years, the last semester. "Dedicated to V.Sh.". To whom? I began to watch the biography of Alfred de Musset, translations, there is no this translation, unknown text to anyone. So Nabokov entered my life. Of course, when I already began to engage in archives at all, I look at the TsGAI in Moscow - the archive of the newspaper Speech. I already knew that the newspaper School, which was published by Nabokov’s father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov with his friend Gessen, was printed in the printing house of this newspaper the first collection of Vladimir Nabokov. I asked for an inventory, they brought me an inventory. In the archive of the newspaper “Speak” that there was a proofreading copy of the first collection of Nabokov “Poems”, which was published in 1916. I asked immediately to make me copies. In the hands of one of my friends, Yevgeny Borisovich Shikhovtsev, he was from Kostroma, there was a completely rewritten first collection of Nabokov, I immediately sent him to Kostroma. He wrote to me: "Do you know what you did?" It turned out that there were five poems that were not included in the collection that was printed. That is, completely new, previously unknown texts of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov. The book was opened by the epigraph: "I dedicate this book to you, who saw the same dream." Then he was in love. This girl Valentina Shulgina, who, by the way, is dedicated to the December Night, V.Sh, but the epigraph did not enter the collection. Here are the first lines of all five previously unknown poems by Nabokov. First: "The night of frantic love in the silent movement." Second: "Naga, you are dreaming of a facet of partial shade." Third: "I pressed you with an unprecedented affection." Fourth: “I love, I love you, I love. How is this word. " And the fifth: "I believed, I waited, I dreamed, smiled." That is, I turned out to be the discoverer of the new, unknown texts of Vladimir Nabokov. Here I must say one thing that Nabokov himself refused these verses, in general, this collection. A well-known story when Elena Vladimirovna gave her brother she found on ruins somewhere in Berlin or in Paris this collection. He said that he was shy about these verses, that he would not want them to ever sound at all. But the fact that he did not want is cannot be a precedent for us, we must know, because it is Nabokov and that’s all. One poem struck me so that I constantly read it, because the last line suddenly exposed the future of Nabokov. This “past, live” is the key to Nabokov, this is the prediction of the future, which was completely embodied in the Nabokov memoir novel “Memory, Speak”.

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