“The 20th century ended with Voznesensky” – MK

– We had houses standing side by side – between our sites there was a fence with a gate. And Voznesensky came to us through this gate. Then the fence fell – and he passed in this place. That is, he did not go outside and did not go around to “officially” get to us. We lived literally side by side, so communication was warm and related.

How many years have you been neighbors?

– At first, from the year 86, we lived in the lodge with our parents, that is, across the road, and he had a dacha in another place. And then we and he moved, and Andrei Andreyevich ended up next to us on Pavlenko Street. This is where the Pasternak House Museum is located.

– Was Pasternak’s house for Voznesensky really a “place of power”, almost mystical?

– He loved Pasternak very much. Of course, I will break through the open door when I say that it really was his teacher, especially the early Pasternak with his bewitching stanzas – Voznesensky also bewitched and bewitched with the word. We remember that when Boris Leonidovich was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR, Voznesensky was not afraid to come to him. Then he was at the funeral, although many were afraid to say goodbye to the disgraced poet. But most importantly, when Andrei Andreevich was asked back in those “dangerous” times: “Who is your favorite poet?” – he, clenching his fists, got up and said: “Boris Pasternak.”

I often saw him on Pavlenko Street. At night he walked along the famous Pasternak field, now built up, wrote poetry, said that the cosmos influenced him, he was inspired by the stars and moonlight. He was clearly visible in the darkness, because it is a dark night, there are no lights, but he is in a white suit.

– For the creative process, he did not need to reach for pen and paper?

– All poets are divided into two groups – some compose in the mind, like Tyutchev, like David Samoilov. He said that while walking from the train to his house in the village of Opalikha, he wrote a poem. And then I just wrote it down. And there are poets like Pushkin, who had to sit and write, his hand “prompted” to him, as evidenced by the incredible number of edits in drafts. I can’t live without a pen and paper too.

– Part of the Soviet mentality was “doors without locks” – the tradition of visiting without permission, how long did it last in Peredelkino after the collapse of the Union?

– In the 90s, when the House of Creativity was still functioning, when literary life was in full swing, the doors were really wide open. There was even such a case: I wrote one of my first stories and decided to read it at night to my husband (Archpriest Vladimir Vigilyansky, a well-known critic. — I.V.). They put the children to bed, it was already quite late – eleven, even half past twelve. I read it, myself in admiration for what I had written, and my husband began to say: “Where is the story, what is it all about? ..” I cried out of disappointment, tore the sheets to shreds, and suddenly we heard a knock on the door. It must be clarified that we were in the back room – to get into it, we had to go through the veranda, the large room and the “dressing room”, bypassing four or five doors. And suddenly someone knocks. I was frightened, I carefully opened the door, and Voznesensky was standing there – radiant, in his white suit: “Tomorrow you should come to the Bolshoi Theater, we gave you the Pasternak Prize.”

– How did your acquaintance with Voznesensky begin?

– At the age of 14, I found his book “Triangular Pear” with my parents. I was already in full swing with the “high illness”: I didn’t sleep at night, I wrote, read Tsvetaeva and Pasternak … I was completely struck then by the incredible energy of Voznesensky:

Lilac says goodbye, lilac – like a skier,

Lilac licks on my cheeks like a poodle!

The lilac is roaring

lilac – princess

The lilac burns with acetylene!

At that time, Kirsanov, Slutsky, Levitansky were still alive, who were “breaking out” from the generally accepted system of versification. But nevertheless, I understood his desire to break out of the established official framework.

– What was Voznesensky like in everyday communication? Was it easy with him?

– He was extremely friendly – seemingly closed and not very emotional, but kind and unforgiving. I got married at the age of 19: we met Vladimir Vigilyansky in Lita. And then he published a caustic essay on Andrei Andreevich’s book The Shadow of Sound. The article, I remember, was called “Five-sixths of a look at the Shadow of Sound.” She was arrogant and could easily offend. Because it was not party criticism, but a look from the depths of the Silver Age, from the “nest of aesthetic dissent” – Voznesensky’s poetry was measured by such standards. And then it did not interfere with our relationship. Well, there was also his “Mademoiselle Kus-Kus” sung in verse – a cat that grew out of our kitten, which we gave to Voznesensky, and he glorified her … So, through this cat, we also kind of became related.

I remember that we went to Andrey Andreyevich, Zoya Borisovna Boguslavskaya gave us tea, and they came to us, especially when Andrey Sinyavsky and Marya Vasilievna Rozanova came to Moscow and stayed with us.

What is the most precious memory? There was a day that you think about: nothing better than fate will give you?

– In 1988, Voznesensky and I were together as part of a representative poetic delegation at the international festival in Paris and Grenoble. It was the “first sign” for those who did not leave – a crushing event. It seemed that now it would all end – Paris, Grenoble – and it would never happen again. Emigrants came to our performance – not only local, French, but also from Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy. Not only the second emigration, but also the first. We met people whom we never expected to see – Andrei Sinyavsky, Vladimir Maksimov, Nikita Struve, none of us slept, it was a pity for everyone to waste time sleeping … By this moment, we had a very warm relationship with Andrei Andreyevich.

I recently replayed these events when I participated in the creation of a documentary, the authors of which realized that Voznesensky had somehow been forgotten. In the 90s, Brodsky became an idol, everyone began to write “under Brodsky”, to convey his words as a Creed. And Brodsky, as you know, scolded both Voznesensky and Yevtushenko very much.

But Voznesensky was a real poet:

When you get off the train, they call you!

Trembling across the field.

The field is spurred by cornflowers,

No matter how you leave, you won’t leave…

In a poem, Marc Chagall needed to find a rhyme for the exclamation “Ah, Mark Zakharovich” – and he received a wonderful verb: “you get sick.” That is, you go into a kind of borderline, almost mystical state. He has many precious things. And so this “forgetfulness” is very undeserved.

Which of the last poems he wrote do you consider the most significant?

– Poems about how he lost his voice – he actually lost it:

My right to vote was denied.

Hitting the wheels

so that at least one in a vocal country

was voiceless.

In Pyotr Shepotinnik’s documentary about Voznesensky – unfortunately made too late when the poet was already ill – there are very strong shots: the poet and screenwriter Yuri Arabov walks with a bag on his shoulder, almost in felt boots (snow crunches underfoot), to Voznesensky’s dacha and reads “I’m losing my voice.” Yura’s face is bony, uneven, and the verses are somehow “torn”, disturbing.

– Anniversaries, even posthumous ones, are not the best time to turn over the tragic pages of a biography. But still, let’s go back to the moment of your last meeting.

— We were brought together by the linguist Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov. It was at the end of August 2009, on the 24th or 25th, Ivanov was lecturing in America, but he was visiting his dacha in Russia for the summer. We saw each other there for the last time.

– With whom else was Voznesensky on friendly terms – in Peredelkino and “further everywhere”?

– With many – Zhenya Popov, Sinyavsky, and with Andrey Donatovich, and with Marya Vasilyevna, with Arabov, Oleg Khlebnikov … At the end of their lives, on New Year’s Day, they even reconciled with Yevtushenko, before that there was some kind of misunderstanding between them.

– Modern Russian poets, especially from the patriotic camp, strive to get on TV, considering this a guarantee of popularity. The fact that Voznesensky became popularly known is explained by the sound of poetry (in stadiums or in hits by Rotaru and Pugacheva) – or are they significant in themselves, only as texts?

– To answer, you need to understand how we – several Soviet generations – existed. For us, poetry was a way of existential survival. Then they read poetry, prose, religious philosophy, not like today. And the figure of the poet was different. But Voznesensky really read amazingly, beating the rhythm with his hand, as if he were beating a tennis ball with a racket. He kept the room in suspense. I was at his evenings – in the Central House of Writers, when I was seventeen years old, and in the Tchaikovsky Hall, shortly before the tragic story that happened to him. What he read was full of poetic energy. But poetry does not only affect the mind. Not only does the imagery captivate us: “Wild-growing weed tubes with squeezed blue”, but the sound, phonetics affect the energy image of a person. This is the secret of the influence of sometimes incomprehensible, but bewitching poems.

– Is it a tragic story that Voznesensky experienced an attack by stray dogs?

– In the 2000s, nothing grew on the Pasternak field, but Andrei Andreevich continued to walk there, get inspired and write poetry. Autumn, terrible desolation around, everything is in ruins. And stray dogs – they huddled in packs and ran around. These dogs on that terrible day, as I was told, surrounded Voznesensky, and the little mongrels – the most aggressive ones – attacked first, grabbing on the knee for a test. And when they saw that he did not resist, they all attacked together. They threw him in this field. Thank God, there were men nearby who saved him. But this was the beginning of the end.

Evgeny Popov, writer, vice-president of the Russian PEN Center, recalls:

– Voznesensky appeared in Russian poetry as “a lawless comet in a circle of calculated luminaries.” The poem “Masters”, published in 1959, made him famous, “The Triangular Pear” strengthened his fame. I was a boy and I remember how at night in Krasnoyarsk poetry lovers marched to the accompaniment of the lines “Rock and roll. / Against the sandal wall. / Rum in the mouth. Faces like neon…” The phenomenon of his unprecedented popularity is talent, energy, new words, new rhythms and, at the same time, meanings. “In Russia I live between snows and saints” is from the book “Mosaic”, which he gave me already in 1963, and I keep it as a treasure. By the way, “Mosaic” was designed by Ilya Glazunov, also a beginner then.

I am not going to cling to Andrei Andreevich, he is of a different generation, but, of course, he was proud that he always had me in mind as a prose writer, and in 2009 he personally presented me with the Triumph Prize, and even read humorous poems, where he rhymed ” Popov” and “popoff”. And he was not just famous, but WORLDWIDE FAMOUS. It was translated and, of course, printed in dozens of countries. He was friends with Marilyn Monroe, Allen Ginsberg, Kennedy.

Recalls Konstantin Kedrov, poet, philosopher, professor at the Literary Institute:

– Thanks to Voznesensky, Russian poetry acquired completely new, impetuous rhythms and images that could not have arisen before him. The 20th century began with Mayakovsky and ended with Voznesensky. And the 21st century is partly revealed to them. I will say it in words – lines from a poem dedicated to me:

Kostya! Don’t resist bullshit

Condolence their misfortune.

In our critics of Freud

their medical history.

The fact is that Andrei was my closest friend, and I owe him a lot, because he said more about me than I did about him. It needs to be talked about, it needs to be explored, read and remembered. It is very good that they began to remember him, but it seems to me – not enough.