Don Quixote of Emigration and her Frankensteina

Unknown autographs of Dovlatov were found. And for each - a plot worthy of a Dovlatovsky pen

Maxim Kravchinsky, a collector and TV presenter of the Canadian RTVI, collected everything connected with Sergei Dovlatov, 20 years old. In his collection - lifetime publications, correspondence, copies of newspapers with Dovlatov articles. Something was bought at auctions, something from the Bukinists, the most valuable thing was transferred from hand to hand to Dovlatov, his acquaintances and friends.

Maxim Kravchinsky

Writer, journalist, TV presenter

- The Dovlatov autograph can now cost 150 thousand rubles in the market. This is a detailed inscription on the book, with a pattern, to a famous person. The usual strokes are many times less, somewhere two hundred dollars, there are many of them, Dovlatov was generous with autographs, with pleasure gave and signed. But lifetime books are in any case a rarity. The circulations were small, 300-500 copies, sometimes a thousand. However, they did not get out. This is not comparable with how it began to be published after death in Russia.

Like many, for the first time I did not read Dovlatov, but heard on the radio, it was the Voice of America. And when in 1990 I got on the plane in the States, I thought that the first thing to do is to buy his books there. But America stunned me: skyscrapers, thousands of sneakers in stores, music - and I forgot about Dovlatov. I remembered August 25, when it was already necessary to leave. The bus left Brighton, in a woman in a neighboring seat I saw a newspaper, and there was a huge announcement: "Sergey Dovlatov died yesterday in New York." I had a feeling of devastation, I compare it with a feeling of caught and immediately lost fish. I spent all the next years in pursuit of him: I bought books, met with his colleagues and friends.

I caught up with my Dovlatov in 2014, when I ended up in the apartment of Elena, his widow, in the writer’s office. She gave me a “branch”, signed, and on that I calmed down a little.

In my collection - all lifetime publications, a large corps of autographs. I want to talk about several of them in detail here. Addressers are fantastically interesting people. Everyone could become a character in Dovlatov's prose. From such acquaintances, he made literature.

Pavel Leonidov

“Among other individuals
In our western wilderness
Leonidov stood out
The beauty of your soul! "

“Pavel Leonidov - Frankenstein and Don Quixote at the same time - with the useless wishes of restraint and decency. S. Dovlatov. "

- Dovlatov was almost the only person in exile with whom Leonidov did not quarrel. He constantly entered the controversy with everyone, wrote open letters, argued even with Solzhenitsyn, and even those who were lower than the lower, and did not give a descent at all. Hence the wish of restraint in the autograph. I find it difficult to determine the family of his activities. He began under Stalin as an entertainer, then he became a famous poet-songwriter, wrote texts for Zykina and other pop stars, was a concert administrator. There is a similar character in a foreigner.

In America, he published a scandalous book about Vysotsky, who was a cousin of his uncle, designed it, no less, like Shemyakin himself, and two more: “Lebyazhy lane” and “Operation“ Return ”. He produced the Almanac "Literary Abroad", the newspaper "Russia outside Russia", conducted a large cultural work.

The figure is colorful. New York journalist Alexander Sirotin writes:

“About a rather typical method of earning, Emil Gorovets told me:

- Pasha Leonidov comes to my house and says: “Listen, I am writing a book now and devote one chapter to you. Give me money for the publication. " I answer him: “You know, Pasha, I will not be offended if you don’t write anything about me.” “No, dear, you did not understand,” says Pasha. “I will write about you anyway, but if you pay, I will write something good, and if you don’t pay, I will write something very bad.” Knowing the character of Paul, I succumbed to his blackmail, gave money, but on the condition that he will not write about me. ”

In America, he did not take root, the language knew barely, the American way of life was alien to him. So he said:

“The fact that I can write poetry is absolutely no one needs. If you are a singer, the road is one in a tavern. If you are an entertainer <...> or a poet, then by a taxi. ”

But he did not go to the tavern or taxi drivers, he sat on the manual, wrote books. In the early 1980s, he began to bother about returning to the Union, went to the embassy. There they demanded public repentance from him. He wrote and published a repentant letter, but even after this permission to reemigrate he was not given, they pulled time, they wanted something else. He never lived before returning, he died in 1984. It is officially believed that from the heart, but I think, from longing for Russia. It is enough to read his poems written in America:

Fall…
I will fall, I will get up
And elapse,
Memory,
And wherever I look -
Everywhere Rus'

…………………

Fall…
At least a soul to another
I will take
Memory,
And wherever I remember -
Everywhere Rus'.

Mikhail Gulko

“Dear Misha - with respect and all kinds of complexes. WITH.".

-Misha Gulko, the most famous emigrant singer, is called the godfather of the Russian chanson, the person who was the first to record on the record “lieutenant Golitsyn”, “Murka”, “Institute”, gave them a canonical sound. In 2009, I made literary processing of his memoirs “The Fate of the Emigrant”. Among other things, there are memories of Dovlatov and their common photo, a wealthy picture taken in the Primorsky restaurant. On the back, the inscription by the hand of Dovlatov: "Dear Misha, with whom it is always easy and pleasant."

“With all kinds of complexes,” Dovlatov writes to him on the book “Demarch of Enthusiasts”. It is difficult to say what he meant, but you can assume. Misha is a person with extreme life experience. He worked in Kamchatka, in Magadan, went to sea on trailers, sang to sailors in taverns, in general, he saw a lot. And apparently, the stories that he told made impression on Dovlatov. Although he and his own experience was quite tough, one service in the camps is worth it.

I do not think that they were friends, but crossed on Brighton enough regularly. At the same time, Chanson Sergey Donatovich did not like, this is confirmed by the widow. But I have a book in the collection where his correspondence is collected with the father of the time of service in the army. In almost every letter - poems. In my opinion, these are ready -made songs. It is strange that no one has yet fulfilled them. Recently, in Toronto, where I live, I came on a tour of Basta. I showed him Dovlatov’s poems, he became interested. So, perhaps, there will still be.

Konstantin Kuzminsky

“Kostya Kuzminsky, with growing respect for his disinterested and valuable works. S. Dovlatov. "

-I met Kuzminsky in August 2014. He could before, but after watching the film “Former”, where Kuzminsky surrounded by a retinue and two huge greyhounds is pushed on a bed, smokes and broadcasts, he seemed to me something like Grishka Rasputin, and I was afraid to approach him for many years. He was a phenomenal person. I spent several days with him, we could not talk, he only changed his robes, by the evening, when it got colder, he threw the bathrobe more tightly. I don’t know if there were people who saw him in another clothes, it seems to me, there is no. He was already deep in 70, he read poetry kilometers, more interestingly talked about his meetings with Brodsky, with Willy Tokarev, with Khvostenko, with whom he did not communicate.

“I'm weak, I am a poverty and a goal, my friend is the only verb” - he has such a line, and in it all Kuzminsky.

He lived in literature, was simply dissolved in it, called himself "the last student of the Russian avant -garde." And of course, eccentric behavior. Could walk in the center of Manhattan in the papa, in Burke, with a staff. And the greyhounds fled nearby. They say that somehow Shemyakin did not invite him to his birthday, at the height of the celebrations Kuzminsky came there naked, opened the door and fell to the dance floor of a Russian restaurant. There is a Shemyakinsky drawing: naked Kuzminsky, and around - carcasses of meat.

There is no person from the third wave with whom he did not correspond, sometimes it was a continuous swearing, but nevertheless. He was really one of the centers of Russian abroad, both literary and artistic, performances, exhibitions - all this turned around him.

The man was fond of. Ten years before his death, he sold part of his collection to one of the American universities. And in just a few years, he spent everything on a collection of African art-masks, some gates that could not be drawn upstairs, they weigh almost a ton.

His last book is “Roman-Gazeta”, memories, including Dovlatov. And “disinterested and valuable works” are, of course, about the “blue lagoon”, an anthology compiled by Kuzminsky. A huge nine -volume work, the most complete collection of Samizdat poets, equipped with detailed comments. At one of the last auctions, Laguna was sold for one and a half thousand dollars. American edition. And in Russia it has not yet been published.

Mikhail Armalinsky

“Write instead of threatening letters - poems. All the best to you. S. Dovlatov. "

The Wikipedia says about him as follows: “The writer, publisher and network figure, known for his erotic-pornographic projects, as well as as the first active Russian spamer.” I read the texts of Armalin already at a fairly mature age, but I received such a cultural shock that it is still not risking to return to them. He has plots, which you can’t meet in porn films.

The most sensational book is “Pushkin’s Secret Notes”, for which some praise him, while others swear to what the light. The Pushkinists of Armaly hate. But this is a bestseller, a job translated into several languages.

He sent one of his books to the review of Dovlatov to the "New American". And when the next number came out, he saw that there were no reviews of his book, and the drawing from the cover was reproduced as an illustration for the Dovlatovsky essay.

This outraged him, he wrote an angry letter: they say, by what right? Dovlatov tapped him with a completely formal answer on a typewriter and added a wish to write poetry, not a sly by hand.

In exile, while, in general, and now, copyrights were treated quite freely. What are the rights there if we are talking about several hundred dollars. This is at best, but often much less.

Armalinsky prose was hardly close to Dovlatov. With regard to erotica, he was a very chaste person. In his books, we will not find a single description of sex, all sexual scenes are hidden by figures of silence. On the other hand, it is with Dovlatov that an attempt is connected to release a “Russian playboy” in America. He, with great invention, designed him with drawings, gave an interview with a prostitute there, invented by him from beginning to end. The layout was already ready. She was taken to potential publishers, who later did not get in touch. So, unfortunately, this project is lost.