The tragedy of Gennady Shpalikov: a friend named the reason for suicide

Gennady Fedorovich Shpalikov was born on September 6, 1937 – exactly 85 years ago. We do not know how long the poet, director, author (or co-author) of scripts for such film masterpieces as Ilyich’s Outpost, I’m walking around Moscow (and the author of the lyrics to the title song of the film), “I come from childhood” , “A Long Happy Life” and others, but he committed suicide – at the Pushkin age of 37, in the heavy Peredelkino autumn of 1974.

In one of Shpalikov’s poems, which became widely known as a song, there are such lines: “The country will not regret me, But comrades will cry for me.” It so happened that one prophecy came true – friends began to cry, but the country also regretted and remembered. With one of them – the Soviet and Russian screenwriter, Honored Artist of the RSFSR Pavel Finn – on the eve of the memorable date, the MK correspondent talked.

“It is absolutely impossible to imagine this date – 85 years. Gena once said, and I often repeat this phrase: “It is indecent for a poet to live in Russia longer than 37 years,” our interlocutor began the conversation with such a dramatic recollection.

– Pavel Konstantinovich, there was a moment when Shpalikov wanted to leave VGIK to study at the Literary Institute. The question is natural: was he more of a poet or screenwriter?

– First of all, a poet, and not because he wrote poetry. He was a poet at his core. Whatever he wrote: scripts, plays – there was a very strong poetic beginning. When he studied at the Suvorov School, he was greatly influenced by Vladimir Mayakovsky, loved him very much, wrote poetry with a ladder, and the only thing he condemned him for then was suicide. What an incredible paradox: he condemned for the departure from life and himself repeated such a departure.

– Why did it happen? Does the epic distance reached to date since the tragedy allow for an explanation?

– For all the integrity of his nature, there were contradictions in him, caused by his way of life, and the fact that he could not coincide with what the authorities needed. At first, he was very caressed by the authorities, when only the Union of Cinematographers arose, he was elected to its board – there was hope for him as a young and faithful. But in the end it turned out that he was not on the way with the authorities, but the authorities were with him. This was one of the reasons for his tragedy.

What was he like, what do you remember?

– He was loved in our circle, he was very charming and was always absolutely at home with people of different ages. One of his best friends was Viktor Nekrasov (dissident writer, author of the novel In the Trenches of Stalingrad. — I.V.), who was much older than him.

But the end of Shpalikov’s life was very sad, and we, his friends, who, in general, were almost gone, reproached ourselves, believing that we had somehow missed him. But this is hardly the case. Some fatal predestination was in his fate. But his posthumous fame exceeded that of his lifetime. A few years later, the memory of him spilled out of his fate, and he became the property of very many. And, what is most remarkable, he became loved by the young, not only by our generation. My student at the Higher Script Courses Anton Verstakov, unfortunately also a tragic victim, recently wanted to make a film based on an unproduced script by Shpalikov.

– That is, the thread of interest in the legacy of Gennady Fedorovich does not break?

– I asked Anton: what attracts you in his work? He replied that the new generation was close in its experiences and hopes to Shpalikov’s generation. Today’s youth are looking for answers to their questions in his poems, prose and scripts (they are also, in general, prose).

– Let’s remember the episode when, in a student film script, he depicted an announcement at the dean’s office, where it was reported that “Gennady Shpalikov voluntarily passed away the other day.” Was this taken as a joke?

– He was fooling around. He didn’t think about suicide at the time. He loved to fool around, mystify – and in general was an extraordinary dreamer. Often he passed off stories of his own invention as reality.

– And how did your friendship begin?

– He studied at VGIK, already in his second year, and I just entered. We became friends for life, or rather, for the whole life that he lived. We were very close friends. During the institute period, they didn’t part at all, and when he entered the wide cinematographic activity, circumstances began to separate us, but then we spent a lot of time together when we settled in the House of Creativity in Bolychev. And just before the denouement, they rarely saw each other.

Yes, I was his friend, but not the only one – he was friends with Sasha Knyazhinsky, a famous cameraman, with animator Andrei Khrzhanovsky, with film director Julius Fait. We had a big company.