First World War in 3D. Northerner and Vertinsky

1919–2019 - century later

Alexander Genis: On the air, the new episode of our cultural and historical cycle “1919-A century later” with Solomon.

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Alexander Genis: The whole world last year, the whole world celebrated the centenary of the end of the First World War. And our heading constantly visited the fronts of this war, the people who fought, newspapers who wrote about it. The war ended in 1918, but its consequences are felt until today. At the end of the newly left 2018, an amazing documentary about the First World War appeared in American cinemas.

Solomon Volkov: I agree with you, this is a completely amazing thing.

Alexander Genis: Peter Jackson, a man who is known to everyone as a New Zealand genius who set the epic film on Tolkien trilogy, the famous Saga about the magic ring, received a task from the English museum. They wanted him to somehow deal with the archives of the First World War, with films, to make something from the chronicle that is stored with them. As a result, he had 600 hours of records, including detailed interviews, which in the 1960-70s of the BBC recorded from veterans of the First World War, which were then still alive. With this material, he began to work on the restoration of events, and most importantly - the atmosphere of the First World War. Soon Jackson realized that nothing good would come of it, because one chronic film is like another chronic film: all people quickly run, poor black and white pictures flashed. And all this is felt as a distant past that has nothing to do with us.

Solomon Volkov: At a big distance.

Alexander Genis: Yes, and this distance kills empathy, kills sympathy. And then Jackson took a revolutionary step in the history of cinema - he took all these images with color and in 3D, that is, he transformed into a voluminous image. This is sometimes done with black and white films, adding color to them.

Solomon Volkov: This is terrible!

Alexander Genis: That is what I wanted to say. Usually this causes indignation, because black and white cinema exists in its own way, according to its own rules.

Solomon Volkov: It possesses its magic.

Alexander Genis: But what Jackson did was just amazing.

Solomon Volkov: This is something incredible. When I saw, I thought that there was a wonderful transformation. Obviously archival, genuine personnel, but these people are alive. You are absolutely right, in a completely different way you perceive it. In principle, I am against the so-called colorization, that is, giving color to a black and white film-this always ruins magnificent originals. But here this technique was changed by the very fact of perception of all material. You perceive the soldier as your contemporaries. Therefore, their suffering, their death, their wounds - there were hospitalized, wounded people, curved faces from pain, a lot of suffering - you feel as if this is happening with your peers.

Alexander Genis: The name of the film can be translated as "they will not overcome," since almost all of them died at the front. But how - we will not recognize. The fact is that it was forbidden to show the chronicle so that not ...

Solomon Volkov: The position would not be visible.

Alexander Genis: First. And besides, it was forbidden to show corpses. Therefore, we see the wounded, blind, but not dead there.

Solomon Volkov: by the way, in the Soviet military chronicle, even the wounded could not be shown. Nothing at least somehow hinted that war is the death of people, it was unbearable suffering. Such was a chronicle from the blockade Leningrad, people were not shown there, it was preserved only in the archives, and that are a few personnel: skeletons at the machines - this was absolutely closed.

Alexander Genis: Jackson's picture made a breakthrough in historical cinema. This will not pass for nothing, because it is fundamentally new. We are used to the color image, we are used to the good quality of shooting, even to a voluminous image. Therefore, what we see on the screen of the film about the First World War is perceived as genuine reality. It is the present, there is no author’s text, there is no comment there, former soldiers who are talking about their experience tell about everything. But you see them with completely different eyes. For example, I drew attention to the fact that many soldiers have bad teeth. Then there was such a life, many did not have enough teeth. People smile at the camera, they are glad that they are shooting, they are fooling around, they eat, they drink, they die. And you understand that this war was not at all as it seems to us. Because the First World War was the first total war, there was never such before. And the people who went to the front had no idea what awaited them. They thought that they would boldly fight, but in fact they were cannon fodder, because almost the whole war was carried out by artillery, they simply substituted their bodies under the shells. Therefore, there was no validity, no gentleman, no sports excitement, which they were waiting for, was there.

Solomon Volkov: No Hussar.

Alexander Genis: No! We now know this, but they did not know that.

Solomon Volkov: They transferred all this on their own skin.

Alexander Genis: Of course, this is what the experience of the First World War makes such important today, when the Cold War is now unfolding, when Putin says that the best gift is a hypersonic rocket that begins a new arms race. Let's not forget that the old led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was ruined in this race. Therefore, it seems to me that such a film should be shown in all countries of the world, and in schools, in order to understand that “we can repeat” is not as fun as it seems. I have not seen anything more anti -war than this picture in my life. I think that after this there will be a lot of similar things in this area. A new opportunity appeared for a historical narrative. But we live in the world not so much literary as visual. It is visual impressions, it is precisely such visual bombs, I would say that they act most massively on a person.

I was at the Museum of War in London - this is a very strong museum. The war, especially the blitz, in England is still treated with trepidation. Basically, schoolchildren are brought there from all over Europe in order to show what war is. There is, for example, such an attraction. Adolescents are brought into a room that imitates a bomb shelter, and then explosions begin, shakes, the earth is pouring, and everyone sings peppy songs that people who fell into a bomb shelter really sang. I saw the schoolchildren from there come out pale. This film is replaced by such a museum, and the power of its influence can be huge.

And now we’ll get over to Russia.

Solomon Volkov: I will begin our conversation about Russia in 1919 by reading the poem. I will not say whose poem it is, because it is a very unusual poem that was written in January 1919, exactly a hundred years ago. It sounds like that.

Today "red", and tomorrow "white" -
Ah, not matter! Ah, not flowers!
People are vile and brutal,
I get tired to nausea.
Today vulgar and tomorrow vulgar
Today crooks and tomorrow then,
They, experienced, rogues are good,
Any rebellion will provoke you.
The ideas are absurd, dreams are in vain,
What in the "their" theories is the path to the deity?
Today "white", and tomorrow "red" -
They are colorless in essence.

The poem for 1919 is very unusual. It is in itself beautiful, very prophetic, very insightful. And now I will name the poet’s name, I think it will be completely unexpected for many of our listeners. Its author is Igor Severyanin. Never in my life, if I had read this poems, I would not know that the northerner wrote such a poem in January 1919, I would not say that the northerner was able to write such a poem. What is the most amazing in this, I first read it in a northerner’s collection, released in 1975, even before the beginning of perestroika. How it passed Soviet censorship, and that Soviet censorship thought, when it missed such a poem. After all, it equalized red and white: “These are all absurd ideas, the dreams are in vain” on both sides, people are repainted. The poem is called "painted", today can be white, tomorrow red, but in fact they are colorless, they don’t care. They are “crooks today, and tomorrow,”, as the northerner says.

Igor Severyanin

Alexander Genis: I think that Soviet censors treated Severyanin as a semi -decadent decadent, so he can do everything. I remember how at the university they explained to me that Balmont and a northerner are not real poets, real poets are Mayakovsky, Blok, and this is so - the ornament of literature. I already did not agree with this then, and now I do not agree. But the topic that you raised, in my opinion, is important. Decadents and revolution - so it can be denoted.

Solomon Volkov: I would like to unite a couple today, this association, I hope, will not be so unexpected for you or our listeners, because they are very similar, but I have never met the rapprochement of these two figures, and they, it seems to me, is simply twins. This is Igor Severyanin, about whom we have already said a few words, and Alexander Vertinsky, a poet, but mainly chansonnier, probably the first real Russian chansonnier, and perhaps one of the two or three greatest Russian chansonnier. I can only put Okudzhava next to Vertinsky, all the others are already smaller, and these two can be called great without any offenses. Both of them in their own way, Vertinsky proves this for much more time, they continue to occupy a very significant place in our spiritual life.

Alexander Genis: including Russian rock. For example, Grebenshchikov sings Vertinsky. These figures can already be combined for the reason that they played about the same role in the minds of that time. Some distrust, some smirk, some condescension - so they belonged to both. To the northerner, for sure. He first went down in the history of Russian culture, because Leo Tolstoy mocked him - it was a wonderful advertisement. But the northerner is not at all as just a poet as it seems. He was much closer to the futurists than to the Symbolists, say, he had much more from Mayakovsky than from Blok. He played in words just as all the then poets of the avant -garde fold played in words. An example is his most famous poem, which he was very proud of, was called "Okutura" because he was opened by the collection "Pineapple in champagne." No matter how we laugh at this pretentiousness, it is technically interesting from the point of view of versioning skills.

Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!
Surprisingly tasty, sparkling and acute!
All I am in something of Norwegian! All I am in something Spanish!
I am inspired by the impulsive! And I take the pen!

Bittering of airplanes! Run cars!
Windroswoman Express! The winged of the Bueers!
Someone is bored here! They beat someone there!
Pineapple in champagne is a pulse of evenings!

In a group of nervous girls, in an acute society of a ladies
I will implement the tragedy of life to Grezofars ...
Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne!
From Moscow - to Nagasaki! From New York-to Mars!

These are almost abstruse poems, for they mean little. Pure sounding, a set of beautiful words: Nagasaki, for example, why does he need Nagasaki? Yes, just like that. And the “wingers of the booers” could write Khlebnikov. And certainly Mayakovsky could write "Bitter of airplanes" and "Run cars." No wonder Seevernian and Mayakovsky talked to each other.

Nevertheless, the northerner himself impressed the comic rather. Antokolsky, who knew him well, recalls such a joke. He once came to visit the Severyanin and went to the restaurant, thought that now the poet would finally order pineapple in champagne. Instead, the northerner ordered a barrel of vodka and a salty cucumber. Yevtushenko wrote about him quite insightfully: “The semi -intelgent for the same semi -inteligents, Oscar Wilde from Cherepovets.” He was from this city. Yevtushenko wrote about his poetry:

"The poems of the northerner sometimes resemble a menu on Velenic paper in binding of pork burgundy skin color with gold embossing and a fluffy scarlet brush for laying."

It's a shame, funny, for sure. When the environment in which he lived, for which he wrote, the northerner fled to Estonia ended. I have been in Estonia recently quite often, and I know that he is a hero there, in Russia it can be forgotten, but in Estonia he is considered a prominent poet, he is studied, he is read, he is remembered, he has taken root there. But the trouble is that Soviet power came there. The northerner naively grabbed both Lenin and for Stalin and wrote such verses:

Our spirit is forever oatsenen.
We believe in love celebration.
Immortal Long live Lenin
And Stalin is his successor!

Fortunately, he died in 1941, and did not manage to experience the “love” of this successor on himself ...

Solomon Volkov: He died on the territory of Estonia already occupied by the Germans.

There was such an essayist, a man who wrote very cool about the theater and the literature, his name was Moses Iofiev, he died young in a plane crash. He wrote a wonderful essay about Vertinsky. It begins with the words that struck me, I quote them for various occasions. This phrase is: "there are affection that we do not forgive ourselves." A very accurate definition in relation to Vertinsky. And then Jofiev says: "This is because Vertinsky’s sadness becomes ridiculous and vice versa. And therefore, in his work, the banal becomes original."

This applies to the Vertinsky and the northerner.

Alexander Vertinsky

Alexander Genis: Very accurate. Indeed, Vertinsky is a white clown, we laugh and cry with him.

Solomon Volkov: It was in this description of Vertinsky by Jofiev that I first saw and realized that the Vertinsky and the northerner were creative twins. The northerner was born in 1887, and Vertinsky in 1889, a northerner 54 years old died in Tallinn, he had severe tuberculosis, and Vertinsky lived to 68, and died in 1957. The biography, of course, was much more bizarre in Vertinsky. That is the poem of the northerner from which I began, political, which is an exceptional rarity in the work of the northerner. But Vertinsky, after all, also does not have political songs, songs about politics, except for one famous. She is also an exception, it is called "what I have to say." This song is associated with a tragic episode, which is largely present in our minds. In the revolution of 1917, in Petrograd, as we know, contrary to the legend, there was no navigation of the winter. Junker who guarded the Winter Palace simply evaporated from the rear entrance, the Red Guards entered, as we all know now, into winter without any resistance. Then a legend was created thanks to the efforts and efforts of Eisenstein.

Alexander Genis: "The soldier runs, the sailor runs, shoots on the go."

Solomon Volkov: There was no this shooting. But in Moscow, Junkra was defended by the Kremlin from the Red Guards, they died quite a few - three hundred people, at least. And they buried them then in Moscow.

Vertinsky was born in Kyiv, then moved to Moscow and became a popular cabaret chansonnier there, he performed, as you already said, in the form of Pierrot - it was his stage suit, so broken, ironic, a man who made a sad, and ridiculous sad. But then he appeared at the concert shortly after the funeral of the junkers, at which he himself was present. I read this in the memoirs of the famous actor Mikhail Zharov, who was at this concert. The Hall, as Zharov recalls, was filled with women in mourning. Obviously, it was known in advance what would happen there. Wives, friends, mothers of dead junkers came. Vertinsky reached the stage not in Pierrot’s outfit, but for the first time in a black suit with a mourning ribbon on his hand, and said that he wanted to perform a song dedicated to the dead cadets. The initial lines were "I do not know why and who needs it, who sent them to death with a not trembling hand."

In my opinion, this is one of the strongest works of Vertinsky and certainly its only political song is openly. When he finished, the hall sobbed. Meanwhile, the Red Guard entered the stage, who, according to Zharov, announced: "Citizens, everyone remains in their places, now we will search." And indeed the Red Guards went in the rows, they began to check the audience. That is, it was regarded as a counter -revolutionary performance. And for Vertinsky, this was the last performance in Moscow. Soon after, he first found himself at the whites in the south of Russia, and then left the country.

The northerner remained a poet primarily for Russian emigration, you rightly said that in Estonia he was treated and treated in a special way, because he was the first major Russian poet to systematically translate Estonian poets into Russian. Estonians really appreciate it. Alexis early, who was taught here in America in Yale, it seems, university, his reputation is largely owed to the translations of Severyanin.

Vertinsky, unlike northerner, has developed an international career. He performed in the United States, performed in Hollywood, in San Francisco, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, with whom he made friends, became her lover in Paris. He had a bright international career. Но при этом он стремился все время вернуться в Советский Союз, чего-то ему не хватало, какого-то важного витамина в эмиграции, хотя он очень много зарабатывал, был успешен. Вертинский обращался несколько раз с просьбой разрешить ему вернуться, но как-то каждый раз не получалось. Наконец он получил такое разрешение во время войны.

Как мы теперь знаем, все такого рода разрешения были именными, их рассматривал Сталин лично. У Сталина с Вертинским сложились интересные отношения, хотя и не личные. Есть случаи личного общения Сталина, телефонные звонки Булгакову, Пастернаку, Шостаковичу, с Эйзенштейном он встречался, с Шостаковичем он тоже разговаривал, а с Вертинским таких встреч не было, во всяком случае мне о них неизвестно. Но у Сталина было четыре вида реакции на произведения культуры. Были произведения, которые ему не нравились и с политической точки зрения, и с художественной. Скажем, "Леди Макбет Мценского уезда" Шостаковича. Были произведения, которые ему нравились и с политической, и с художественной точки зрения, например, Алексей Толстой, романы "Петр Первый" и "Хождение по мукам". Ему нравился "Тихий Дон" Шолохова. Были произведения, которые ему не нравились с художественной точки зрения, но он считал их полезными с политической. К ним относился роман писателя, о котором вы, конечно же, знаете, Вилис Лацис, латышский знаменитый писатель.

Александр Генис: "Сын рыбака".

Соломон Волков: "Сын рыбака" – это было еще досталинское произведение, а тут речь шла о книге "К новому берегу". Вождю не понравился роман, но Сталинскую премию он дал ему, как полезному сочинению. А были произведения, тут мы приближаемся наконец к Вертинскому, которые с политической точки зрения он считал ненужными, но ему они нравились как приватной персоне. В частности, песни Вертинского Сталин сам пел – наряду с другими белогвардейскими песнями и церковными песнопениями. Это происходило в тесной компании с членами политбюро, когда они собирались и выпивали.

Безусловно, все последующее существование Вертинского в Советском Союзе до смерти Сталина происходило под сталинским контролем. Там была особая политика. Например, не возбранялось выступать с концертами. Вертинский за свои 14 лет пребывания в Советском Союзе выступил более двух тысяч раз по всему Советскому Союзу. Но нигде не было никакой рекламы, рецензий, прессы – ничего. Ему, впрочем, не нужна была реклама, потому что и так каждый концерт Вертинского был заранее обречен на успех и был распродан. В публичном пространстве это было очень странное существование. Человек, который пользовался колоссальной популярностью, а о нем не говорили никогда.

При этом Вертинский получил, в отличие от других такого рода персонажей, Сталинскую премию за свою роль в фильме, который, кстати, снимался в Риге, я даже присутствовал при одной из этих съемок, "Заговор обреченных". Это была история о попытке американского империализма захватить одну из новых стран народной демократии с помощью переворота, и как эта попытка провалилась. Вертинский играл человека, который напоминал кардинала Вышинского, который был такой большой бяка с точки зрения советской власти. Это – польский кардинал, который жил в изгнании, в Ватикане. Вертинский даже написал песню, посвященную Сталину в 1945 году.

Судьба Вертинского очень любопытна. Место, которое он занимает в истории русской культуры и в нашем сознании, тоже чрезвычайно любопытно и амбивалентно.

Александр Генис: Мой отец рассказывал мне, как Вертинский выступал в своем родном городе, в Киеве. Это было сразу после войны, отец только что вернулся из эвакуации. Достать билеты было невозможно, никакая реклама, как вы совершенно справедливо сказали, была не нужна, потому что весь город знал, что Вертинский в Киеве. Отец умудрился побывать на этом концерте и всю жизнь до самой смерти он рассказывал о впечатлении, которое на него произвел Вертинский. Но, конечно, песни о юнкерах там не было.

Соломон Волков: А мы сейчас эту песню услышим, она принадлежит к числу шедевров Вертинского и к числу шедевров русской антивоенной песни.

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