Masterpiece

April 11, Alexander Alexandrovich Timofeevsky died

For some reason, it seemed to me that this night, as in the film “Lawn Mobilizer”, all the phones suddenly broke out. And people shouted one to each other: Shura! Shura! Shura!

Knew the doctor who made him a cardiogram and calmly left him, knew this doctor, whom he throws now?

Shura felt that things were bad, and in his serene manner he asked Facebook for a good cardiologist. But at the same time he did not go to Moscow, sat in the country with his dogs, nine legs for three. Do not leave them.

I do not think that Shura Timofeevsky adequately appreciated himself. Its meaning is for us. I understood, of course, how friends, close people love him. But modesty, brought up from childhood (and I have not seen a person better in the life of a person) - modesty and mind, of course, protected him from self -awareness as treasures.

Shura ... I cannot call him differently, although "Alexander Alexandrovich should say." But as he became Shura thirty years ago in the “capital”, where we worked together, let it go and remains. By the way, they “worked together” - not quite accurately. I could be mistaken, but, it seems to me, Shura never served, although the best editions of Moscow became so largely thanks to him. In a joke, it was called "Gray Cardinal."

In fact, the positions that Timofeevsky held here and here, here, in no journal. It is called the "free brain."

A real intellectual and a powerful erudite, Shura Timofeevsky grew up in one of the best libraries in Moscow. But this is not even the point. Intelligence and erudition do not exhaust the uniqueness of his mind. Alexander’s mind is spiritual and incredibly charming, he has a special quality for this apparatus - natural morality. The texts and ideas, like the very personality of Timofeevsky, were informed of publications (where he suddenly went-to chat, smoke, drink a coffee-coffee and got stuck for months, and then for years in his position obscene)-reported a special spirit of easy freedom. A mild, unnecessary, slightly colored irony ... It was such freedom that determined the personality of Timofeevsky - a thinker and comprehension. Why, in fact, determined? The texts remained, and they will not burn, they will not explode from the heart attack.

In these texts, as in his life, Shura, who began professional - well, say, “career” - in the Soviet Union, managed to not be a Soviet journalist and Soviet man. Therefore, his career is in quotation marks. Therefore, I am talking about its natural morality. He loved Italy madly and could easily live there - with his tongue and skills. But he did not go anywhere. Not because he was a fighter - oh, just not! He was not any fighter! He was simply a very natural person, relaxed in each of his movements and a word. And it is natural for a person to live at home. And in this house, with these rescued dogs, among books and manuscripts, with the infrequent collapse of friends, with a reusable Schengen visa (why not) - Shura was happy, how happy a very smart person could be. In any case, there was enough peace and will.

Any partisanship was deeply across the soul. To enter the barricades, he too well distinguished the causal links of any revolutionary chain: ideas-victims-fruits.

Did he have a position? Undoubtedly. Liberal - in the original, better meaning of the word "freedom".

When we were all young and very, I remember, we had fun at different parties, I terribly loved to dance with Shura. He danced perfectly - with an irresistible grace, sometimes characteristic of full people.

On everything that Shura did in life, like a personal stigma, this sign of grace stood. On everything that he said and wrote. And even on how easily and unreliable he knew everything. I can’t imagine an object that would be a Chinese letter for him. Well, is it actually a Chinese letter. Brilliantly, at the expert level he knew cinema and fine art, he was well versed in the theater, poetry, journalism, architecture, history, religion, in politics, and in women, by the way. Who, besides Shura Timofeevsky, could say: “This is not a neck, but a powerful artistic statement”?

Once he wrote to me: “I rejoiced, having read from you that the masterpiece cannot be perfect. To be a masterpiece, the work needs a mistake, a flaw. I sign up with my hands and legs. ”

Shura Timofeevsky was not perfection. There were mistakes in it. He was a hedonist, did only what he wanted and he did not want to do (in essence, this is happiness), he did not commit strong acts, enjoyed life, art and understanding of the processes of being. Shura, in essence, was baroque - that is, a completely wrong person.

And so he was a masterpiece.