The days of the minister

The artist of the theater art studio wrote a novel. The main character is the cat. The circulation is permitted

At the age of 12, he entered the international film school. At 15 - in the "pike" on the course of Rodion Ovchinnikov, from where he flew out. At 17 years, he worked in Novaya Gazeta for several months, helped to make a news feed (“There, to my amazement, I learned that journalists drink even more than actors”). Then he submitted documents to the VGIK (scenario workshop) and to the Literary Institute to Posnavkin. But in the end he chose GITIS, the course of Sergei Zhenovach.

At the introductory I read Brodsky, Kushner, Pasternak, Pushkin. Dreiser, Sasha Sokolov, Bulgakov, an excerpt about Stepa Liddeev. Who then knew that after 16 years the student of Zhenovach will become a basket in the play “Master and Margarita”, playing a tenth role in the repertoire of the theater art studio? Who knew that in the incomplete thirty -three actors would begin to write the first novel, which will be published and dispersed so soon that the second circulation would be needed? What is the shadow of Bulgakov, and not only him, will flicker behind the name, “Savely Days”, behind the method of narration - the sharp -up gaze of the creature of a different nature? That the debut text of the 35-year-old author will connect the bitterness of humility, wisdom of acceptance and the joy of knowledge? What transparent simplicity of this prose will open complex landscapes of the city and experience? And it will enter a pure and bitter note into the cacophony of modernity. Someone knew.

The New Gazeta is represented by Gregory of the minister - a familiar name in the theater, and the new one in literature.

Roots . My family is Francophon: grandmother, mother, sister all my life is connected with the French language, I am the only one who does not speak it. I recently told familiar Frenchmen: you can’t imagine what kind of caste it was - Soviet francophones, they knew Paris better than yourself; My grandmother had never been to Paris, but with her eyes closed, she could conduct a tour of him.

DEATH . I felt the inevitability of the end of 10 years. I was in the pioneer camp, looked at the rain. Outside the window there was a line of high -voltage gear, dripal from the wires. I watched the drops fall, and I suddenly felt scared.

I don’t know why the rain provoked such thoughts. It was a causeless, total horror. He is still with me.

When I was six years old, my father died. I could not realize his death, to accommodate it in myself. Put in a bottle and hang a tag with a name. Only in adulthood only in adulthood it began to reach how I lacked something that he could give me. We are not only what we have, but, it seems to me, to a greater extent, what we are the most not enough in ourselves.

I was recently in Bruges and saw in the gallery the work of an unknown artist at the beginning of the 16th century: a portrait of a little girl with a dead bird in the palm of my hand. This picture struck me: the child sees death for the first time and silently, with his eyes, asks someone whom we do not see what this means.

FAITH . I decided to be baptized at the age of 14 of my own free will. I did not become a church man. Much has changed since then. When they ask me if I believe, I reply that I am hoping. But at least once a year I make a trip to Radonezh. One of the most expensive places to me. There I was baptized.

Prose . I always wrote every day. Diary, observation, memories. But the "Days of Saveliya" ( Moscow, AST, editorial office of Elena Shubina, 2018 ) The very first finished experience. I worked for 2.5 years. The story of the novel is a series of partings and losses. Something my life became like a novel when I wrote it. Many strange, frightening coincidences and rhymes.

TASK . Our world is obsessed with the acquisition, addition and increase. I wanted to do something about the creature that only loses. Poor, dependent and uncertain. In my case, the courtyard cat approached this role best.

Prototype . It is not as such. But there is (that is, it was) Hermione. My favorite cat. Black, green -eyed Hermione. Very young. She burned in 4 days. I terribly loved this creature; When she left, it became a tragedy for me. But her departure seemed to give an impetus for creativity. I realized what the book will be about.

MAGNET. I felt that a certain magnet had matured inside and he began to attract thoughts, scraps of dreams, images. Sometimes it seems to me that the writer does not really compose, but recalls. And he recalls not only what was with him, but also what could never happen to him. This is an amazing law of imitation of life to creativity. Or vice versa.

Acting - I just do this most of my life. I will not say anything new, this is a dependent profession. She fetters and does not promise anything ahead. When we acted seventeen years ago, Evgeny Kamenkovich, who was gaining course with Zhenovach, said: I know why you came here, you don’t want to sit in the offices! I remember that. I think we just wanted to have fun more than others. But the theater art studio is literally my house and family. I do not hesitate to say, fate.

Master . Zhenovach man of great inner strength and colossal devotion to the cause. I do not like to scold our time. It is in many ways fine. It provides an infinite number of opportunities. But there is also the reverse side of the coin. There is, as it were, the optionality of the case you do. In this sense, Zhenovach is a man of calling. His theater can be loved or not to love, but he has a property that is very expensive for me. It became almost unimportant on what literary basis the performance is created. Moliere, Pushkin, Chekhov or Wilde. In fact, the authors turned into machines to issue a plot. Zhenovach is interested in the nature of the author. Psychology and features of a particular writer and playwright. Classic is a spectrum from which you can take one or another shade that is relevant today. The ability of Zhenovach to determine the tone of the author, to follow this tone, the ability to understand the logic and aesthetics of the author - now almost no one works like that.

The main authors . Lotman was once asked if art has a moral meaning. He replied not. But then art (literature in particular) gives you the opportunity to make a choice that life may not provide. Perhaps literary events changed me more than what happened in my life.

• Becket . A very important author for me. The prose-prose is in the shadow of the baccarate dramatourg. But his prose is much more important to me. Strange, moderately conventional, moderately drawn characters against the backdrop of an abstract landscape, in absolute timelessness, raving incomprehensible where and it is incomprehensible why. In some ways, my Saveliy is the hero of the Backet worlds.

• Boccaccio . I read it only about 30. One of the most important books in world literature, full of infinite love for life. It becomes uneasy when you understand that all the main characters (10 young people) are most likely doomed to die from the approaching plague. In my book there was originally an episode when the heroes gather at the pond and poison tanks from their own, other people's and invented lives until the morning. True, later I greatly modified this scene. The Dalai Lama said that the world does not need successful people, the world needs storytellers, in this sense I am a Buddhist.

• Sasha Sokolov . One of the most important authors for me in Russia of the twentieth century.

• Proust . Fell in love with him at 16. The first thing he did in Paris went to Pere Lashez. For a long time I searched for his grave, found, stood, thought. The pier, forgot to take the Madeline cookies with him.

• Nabokov . It makes no sense to compete with it in style. We must look for other shores, other horizons, and just know that it is, it is beautiful.

• Akutagawa . Gorky, sharp, ironic and very close writer.

• Chekhov. My favorite author. I visited almost all Chekhov places except Sakhalin: Melikhovo, Taganrog, Yalta, Moscow addresses. At twenty, I fell in love with Chekhov and at the same time read Lev Shestov, and it was a terrible chemical reaction, I was almost ill. There was a feeling that you were flying in a elevator at frantic speed. Alevtina Pavlovna Kuzicheva, one of our best Chekhvedov (we already have three performances in Chekhov in the theater), remarkably called him “great uncertainty”. And Shestov considered him a killer of hope. But his bitterness is compensated by amazing beauty.

• Gunter Grass . Especially the "tin drum." The story of Oscar Macerata, who refused to grow at the age of three. Savva does not have a tin drum. But he has a Vivaldi motive from the L'amoroso concert, with whom he never parted. Music was extremely important to me when I wrote Savva. I listened for hours. Amorphic, viscous, atmospheric music, without a pronounced form. Brian Eno, Tchaikovsky, Bach, CoCteau Twins and Majical Cloudz - this is the musical composition of my book.

• Mikhail German and his "Antoine Watto". I love watto, his mood, his elusiveness and hidden tragedy. Five years ago, I began to collect everything about watts and found this book. Herman, by the way, gives the French proverb “Doubts - the beginning of wisdom”; My Savva did not have time to survive until wisdom, but he had in abundance in abundance.

• And Hoffman , of course! Everything is clear here.

Generation . My childhood was in the nineties, I remember the lines for sugar perfectly, I remember the 91st year and the 93rd. I remember how a person was shot before my eyes. I do not really believe in the mission of generations. The path of each generation is both exceptional and the same as everyone. But we were, I thought, the first to be torn from the Soviet anchor. As it turned out, it was an illusion.

Message . I did not think about the “message” of the book at all. I did not formulate anything to myself when I wrote. Already setting the point, I realized: this book is about the inevitability of separation. About our powerlessness in the face of large losses and that our questions always remain unanswered. This book is about tenderness and the price of happiness. And yet. You know, the topic that you turn to in creativity in a sense impose social responsibility on you. I lived on Gogolevsky Boulevard. Behind the Museum of Modern Art, I once found a cat commune. I began to feed them. It seems that the fourth generation is already growing now. Since then, I changed the address, moved to the Baumanskaya area. But I often return to them. Cats recognize me from afar, greet loudly, share the news. Demonstrate their location.

Moscow and signs of fate. This novel is also a recognition of love for the city. Moscow is a full character of the novel. There are places that feed me by force and infinitely inspire me: Pokrovka, the Elokhov Cathedral, the Church of Nikita Martyr, Taganka and the surroundings of Baumanskaya. My grandmother, before moving to Kuzminki, lived on Taganka. The family lived next to my theater, not far from Shelaputinsky Lane, where Savely was born. And I myself was born in the very maternity hospital named after Clara Cetkin. But when I wrote Roman, I did not know this. I somehow ask my mother just in case, but where did I get born? On Taganka. Where? Such a beautiful mansion, what was it called? <...> Life defines literature or literature life? Suddenly I buy an apartment in Aptekarsky Lane. Next to the very address that is described in the novel.

The first readers . The remarkable writer Marina Stepanova was the first to read the novel. Then I managed to send the manuscript to critic Alexander Gavrilov. Their reviews inspired me. I decided to show the text to my beloved writer Evgeny Germanovich Vodolazkin, with whom he was a little familiar. He did not answer for a long time. Three weeks have passed. And I received SMS in the morning: “I will say one thing: tears in my eyes. This is deep. The style is good. Let's call in the evening. ” We began to communicate on Skype. He gave the manuscript to Elena Shubina. Warned: she will call you. She called just at the moment when I was on samples at Mosfilm.

I literally ran out of the frame to answer the call. It was an incredible news for me. She, not reading the book until the middle, said: I will print. And Vodolazkin wrote a preface.

Favorite role . She has not yet been played. I hope everything is ahead. I work in my favorite theater and enjoy it, but the transition from the dependent acting state to the author, this universe that has opened to me is now more important for me.