Sergei Dovlatov is not only Brodsky. Sergey Dovlatov

Sergei Dovlatov is the only modern Russian prose writer about whom Joseph Brodsky wrote a separate independent essay. There is also a preface to Yuz Aleshkovsky, reviews of Alexander Solzhenitsyn - and that’s all. Prose writers rarely came to the attention of Brodsky the critic. Of the Russian writers of the past - only. He responded to death, but there we are talking about memoirs, not fiction, and besides, this memoirist for Brodsky is, first of all, the wife and widow of the great poet. Brodsky wrote often and extensively about poets. About Russians, classical (from Pushkin to Akhmatova) and modern (Losev, Rein, Akhmadulina, etc.), about English-speaking ones (Hardy, Frost, Auden), about ancient ones (Horace), about foreign languages ​​(Montalet, Cavafy). Against such a dense poetic background, the essay “” stands out especially.

Of course, the occasion should be taken into account - the first anniversary of Dovlatov’s untimely (at less than 49 years old) death on August 24, 1990. I asked Brodsky to mark this sad date (the first publication was in the Los Angeles weekly Panorama, September 13-20, 1991). He handed me the text without a title, saying that nothing suitable could be thought of. The next day I suggested: “Maybe just “About Seryozha Dovlatov”?” Brodsky responded enthusiastically, repeating several times: “Very good.” This story is appropriate and even necessary here, because it explains the origin of such a “human” title, which is not literary-critical, but also unique in Brodsky’s writings about writers.

In Brodsky’s essay about Dovlatov, two main motifs are adjacent and intertwined. The hero of the essay, on the one hand, is the youngest representative of a generation, a verbal (St. Petersburg-Leningrad) school, a group of like-minded people, united by a common and rare worldview for the place and time where it was formed, the name of which Brodsky indicates - “individualism and the principle of autonomy of human existence " (If Brodsky had written this essay in English, he would probably have used the short word рrivasu, which does not exist in Russian.) In this end-to-end characterization, the word “younger” is not the least important: this was Brodsky’s unconditionally recognized attitude towards him as "Seryozha." It is worth noting that the nominal age difference was only a little more than a year. But this was the usual communication of contemporaries with Brodsky - as younger with elder, regardless of date of birth. Dovlatov was not shy about this, as reflected in his notebooks:

“Brodsky has a friendly caricature of me. I think it's a wonderful drawing.

I showed it to my American editor. He said:

-Your nose is different.

“So,” I say, “it’s necessary to have plastic surgery.”

On the other hand, Brodsky’s essay constantly and emphatically talks about a wonderful writer with the highest appreciation of his literary merits. Both motives sound simultaneously: “...For me he was always Seryozha. The writer is not called by a diminutive name; a writer is always a surname, and if he is a classicist, it is also a first and patronymic name. In ten to twenty years this will be the case..."

Let us note Brodsky’s amazing prophecy: in 1991, Dovlatov’s fame was just beginning, his assessment was still mixed, and to many he seemed like a funny teller of funny jokes. Brodsky made a mistake only in the timing: it didn’t even take ten years for Dovlatov to become a modern Russian classic.

In his essay, Brodsky explains the appeal of Dovlatov’s prose to him. First of all: “It’s easy to read. He does not seem to demand attention to himself, does not insist on his conclusions or observations of human nature, and does not impose himself on the reader. I devoured his books in an average of three to four hours of continuous reading: because it was difficult to tear myself away from this unobtrusiveness of his tone.”

I twice had to hear Brodsky admit that Dovlatov is the only Russian prose writer whom he reads to the end without putting it off. What is noteworthy is the complete adequacy of Brodsky the reader to the ambitions of Dovlatov the writer, who considered his main achievement to be the fascination of reading. It is no coincidence that Dovlatov, in the spirit of the understatement characteristic of him in behavior and in literature, called Sherwood Andersen in American literature his favorites and reference points in Russian literature - without aiming at Dostoevsky and Dostoevsky, whom he adored.

Brodsky the critic reveals the feeling of gratitude of Brodsky the reader, finding in Dovlatov’s prose “an absence of pretension,” “a sober view of things,” and “the quiet music of common sense.” And most importantly: “This writer does not make a drama out of what is happening to him... He is remarkable, first of all, precisely for his rejection of the tragic tradition (which is always the noble name of inertia) of Russian literature, as well as for its consoling pathos.”

Brodsky, therefore, sees in Dovlatov a literary and ideological ally, instilling in Russian prose exactly the same qualities that he himself instilled in Russian poetry.

Let's compare the above fragment with the words from Brodsky's speech at the Library of Congress as Poet Laureate of the United States (in print - "Immodest Proposal"). He speaks of the most valuable virtues of the American poetic experience for him: “These poems are animated by the pathos of personal responsibility. There is nothing more alien to American poetry than all these famous Europeanisms: the sensitivity of the victim with its 360-degree rotating accusing finger, the sublime incomprehensibility, the Promethean pretensions and blind conviction." Undoubtedly, “Europeanisms” is a euphemism, conditioned by circumstances and the composition of the audience, for the very Russian tradition discussed in the essay about Dovlatov.

It is Dovlatov’s “Americanism” that explains his success among the American reader, Brodsky points out, examining the origins of this phenomenon. Saying that the idea of ​​privacy was nowhere “expressed more fully and clearly than in American literature, starting with Melville and Whitman and ending with Faulkner,” he writes about his generation, to which Dovlatov belonged: “The idea of ​​individualism, man in itself, on the outskirts and in its pure form, was our own.”

From this self-educated Western individualism in the East, one might add, the “American technique” of Dovlatov’s prose arose. His sentences were shortened in order to increase the specific weight of each phrase, so that a thought or image would not be confused with others, to place it on a kind of pedestal of a capital letter and a period. This is the American school - most of all, although Dovlatov did not respect it too much in adulthood: an understandable repulsion after too strong a youthful attraction. He wanted concreteness in his prose and offered it himself. This style was also nurtured by love and close attention to those writers whose classic books of the 20th century can be used as guides, reference books, and practical aids. Dovlatov was delighted by this: he once talked to me for an hour and a half about the accuracy of the details in The Great Gatsby. The famous Dovlatov humor, like that of the Americans, is simple: never eccentric, without grotesque and hyperbole, without ironic effort, essentially anti-ironic, restrained and dignified - all the same understatement.

All this fully resonates with Brodsky the reader and critic, since it corresponds to the artistic principles of Brodsky the writer. What is also important is his human principles. This, first and foremost, explains such a high assessment of Dovlatov’s prose: the common understanding of the world.

In the essay “About Seryozha Dovlatov” there is another clearly drawn line of intimacy: Brodsky discovers a poetic writing technique in his fellow prose writer. “... He was driven by a completely unconscious feeling that prose should be measured against verse... He strove on paper for laconicism, for the lapidary nature inherent in poetic speech: for the ultimate capacity of expression.” Brodsky notes in this that Dovlatov differs from the Russian tradition of writing and communication etiquette. (It is noteworthy that in his article on the death of Dovlatov, Lev Losev, who is very close to Brodsky in literary and life attitudes, also applies the well-known definition of poetry to Dovlatov’s prose: “... the best words in the best order.” Analyzing Dovlatov’s style, Brodsky even terminologically switches to the language of critical articles about poetry: “His stories are based most of all on the rhythm of the phrase, on the cadence of the author’s speech.” Read and perceived in this way, Dovlatov looks logical in the company of poets from Brodsky’s critical legacy.

A natural ally and convinced like-minded person in literature and life - such is Joseph Brodsky, Seryozha, the only modern Russian prose writer, about whom he wrote a separate essay.

Marianna Volkova

Sergey Dovlatov

Not only Brodsky

Russian culture in portraits and anecdotes

The authors dedicate this book not only to Brodsky, but to all cultural figures of the Russian diaspora.

PREFACE

This book was born under the following circumstances. Marianna Volkova had some guests. Including Dovlatov. Marianna showed the guests her work.

This is Baryshnikov,” she said, “Yevtushenko, Rostropovich...

Each time Dovlatov repeated monotonously:

I know a stupid story about him...

And suddenly it became clear that this was a finished book. Friends asked:

So there will be rumors? And gossip?

Including gossip... So what? After all, gossip characterizes the characters as fully as notarized documents. Remember the gossip about Dostoevsky. Are they applicable to Tolstoy? And vice versa…

In general, the book is ready. Its essence is the desire to capture the features of friends.

Or maybe in the desire to capture yourself. No wonder Marianne said:

The people we photograph also look at us through the lens.

After all, memory, to put it elegantly, is the only river that moves against the flow of Lethe.

Bella AKHMADULINA

This was after the exposure of the cult of personality. Many writers returned from the camps. Including the already middle-aged Galina Serebryakova. She had a chance to speak at a literary conference. During the performance, she unbuttoned her jacket, showing signs of prison torture. In response, the cynical Simonov remarked:

If only Akhmadulina had done this...

Subsequently, Serebryakova wrote a thick book about Marx. Remained true to communist ideals.

With Akhmadulina, everything is not so simple.

Vasily AKSENOV

Aksenov was driving around New York in a taxi.

He had a literary agent with him. The American asks different questions. In particular:

Why do most Russian emigrant writers live in New York?

Just at that moment an accident almost occurred. The driver screams in Russian in his heart: “Your mother!..”

Vasily says to the agent: “Do you understand?”

Yuz ALESHKOVSKY and Vladimir VOYNOVICH

In the presence of Aleshkovsky, some old Bolshevik said:

There was a civil war in Ukraine. We drove the whites back to the Dnieper. The horses were unharnessed. We decided to rest. I'm sitting by the fire with the orderly Vasya. I tell him: “Oh, Vasya! Let's defeat the whites, build socialism - a good life will come in twenty years! I wish I could live!..”

Aleshkovsky finished for him:

And twenty years later came - the thirty-eighth year!

Voinovich said: “I have been living in Germany for six years. I practically don’t know the language. It's hard to assimilate at my age. And there's no point. And yet I’m gradually getting used to it. I'm starting to figure something out. And even with the German language there are fewer and fewer problems... One day I was walking across the street. I was daydreaming and almost got hit by a car. The driver rolled down the window and yelled: “Du bist ein Idiot.” And I,” Voinovich finished, “unexpectedly understood what this guy wanted to say...”

Vladimir ASHKENAZI

They say Khrushchev was a smart man. But pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy was even smarter.

Many consider Vladimir Ashkenazi a defector. This is not true. Ashkenazi left for the West completely legally. Here's how it happened. (If you believe Khrushchev’s memoirs, by the way, they are quite truthful.)

Ashkenazi was, as they say, traveling. Married an Icelandic woman. He continued to tour abroad. And every time he came back. I even bought a return ticket in advance each time.

Once he and his wife were in London. Ashkenazi contacted the Soviet embassy. He said that his wife no longer wants to go to Moscow. He asked what he should do.

The ambassador reported all this to Minister Gromyko. Gromyko informed Khrushchev. Khrushchev, as is clear from his memoirs, said:

Let's say we order him to return. Of course he won't come back. And besides, he will become an anti-Soviet person.

Khrushchev put it verbatim:

“Why do we need to produce an anti-Soviet person?”

And he continued:

We'll give him a foreign passport. Let him remain a Soviet man. Let him go wherever he pleases. And when he wants, let him return home.

Ashkenazi never returned home. But he saved his relatives from oppression. Everything ended peacefully and decently...

It is not for nothing that they say that Khrushchev was an intelligent man.

Vagrich BAKHCHANYAN and Eduard LIMONOV

Once I asked Bakhchanyan:

You are Armenian?

Armenian.

One hundred percent?

Even one hundred and fifty.

Like this?

Even our stepmother was Armenian...

This happened at a literary conference. Among others, Limonov and Korzhavin took part in it. At the end there was a debate. Each speaker was given seven minutes. It was Korzhavin’s turn. For seven minutes he scolded Limonov for his immorality. Finally the chairman said:

Time is up.

I haven't finished yet.

But time is up...

Limonov intervened:

Am I entitled to time too?

Seven minutes.

Can I provide them to Naum Korzhavin?

It is your right.

And Korzhavin cursed Limonov for his immorality for another seven minutes. And now at his expense.

George BALANCHINE and Solomon VOLKOV

Balanchine lived and died in America. His brother, Andrei, remained in his homeland, in Georgia. And so Balanchine grew old. I had to think about a will. However, Balanchine did not want to write a will. He kept saying:

I am Georgian. I will live to be a hundred years old!..

A lawyer he knew explained to him:

Then your rights will go to your brother. That is, your ballets will be appropriated by the Soviet state.

I bequeath them to my beloved women in America.

What about your brother?

Nothing for my brother.

It will look weird. The Soviets will begin to challenge the authenticity of the will.

It ended with Balanchine writing this will. I left my brother two gold watches. And he bequeathed the rights to his ballets to eighteen beloved women.

Volkov started out as a violinist. He even led a string quartet.

Once I addressed the Writers' Union:

We would like to speak to Akhmatova. How to do it?

The officials were surprised:

Why exactly Akhmatova? There are also more respected writers - Miroshnichenko, Sayanov, Ketlinskaya...

Still from the film "Dovlatov". Photo: WDSSPR

“Normality” of Soviet life as a new ideological orientation.

Vysotsky, Brodsky, Dovlatov - the top three iconic names in Russia look like this today. What’s interesting is that the people’s pantheon of glory and the official, state pantheon coincide for the first time. Great tragic a film about Brodsky is being released on Channel One, and the poet himself is an undeniable authority in art and is included in all textbooks; Vysotsky’s anniversary is celebrated by all state media, and the head of state visits his museum. Dovlatov’s phrase “who wrote four million denunciations?” sounds on state television from the lips of odious presenters, and feature film "Dovlatov" Alexei German Jr., filmed with public money, represents Russia at the Berlin Film Festival and will soon be released.

It’s not surprising - any government uses creators, especially those who have passed away, in their favor - like Pushkin, whose centenary of death was celebrated magnificently in 1937. But the authorities today are not just paying homage to former “outcasts” - they are trying to turn them into “theirs”, into “ours”; in the state-owned Vesti FM, the pre-anniversary section was called “Our Vysotsky.” The word “our” today is a variant of Zamyatin’s “we,” which means that there is no gap between the state and ordinary people, that this is a single whole. There is now a place in the unified system even for the emphatic individualists Brodsky or Dovlatov - it is assumed in absentia that “today they would be for us.”

To what extent they were Soviet people is a complex question; it requires separate reflection in each case. But there is no doubt about how the Soviet government treated the current icons during their lifetime: for them they were “parasites” or, at best, “alien elements”; they were not published, censored, and were not officially recognized as a poet or writer. The fact that, taking into account the vegetarianism of the late Soviet regime, the creators got off relatively lightly, is not a merit of the Soviet regime, but their personal luck.

The main news is that today's government wants to appropriate them spiritually. She wants to retroactively reconcile them with the Soviet regime and with the state in general. It turns out that this is quite possible, the same “Pushkin loophole” is at work here: in any major talent you can find something that situationally can coincide with the rhetoric of the authorities at one time or another. For example, politically incorrect for these times Brodsky's poem about Ukraine, not to mention Vysotsky with his war songs, which today (but not in the 1970s, when newspapers wrote lampoons about him for “vulgarizing”) sound like a standard of patriotism. Again, Anatoly Naiman’s phrase as retold by Dovlatov “Soviet, anti-Soviet - what's the difference” or Brodsky’s phrase as retold by Dovlatov“If Yevtushenko is against collective farms, then I am for it” can be paradoxically used today not so much to justify Soviet power, but to affirm that very idea of ​​post-truth: no one here is better than others, everyone is equally bad. Dovlatov’s cynicism, which was more of a literary device, a mask and served as his own protection from the state, is used directly today - as if it were his credo, an ideological program. In fact, these quotes reflect the true value system of the speakers with approximately the same reliability as “Lenin’s quotes about the Internet” or IvanAksakov about Europe.

Why should the authorities take a difficult path, why tame “wild animals,” when there are so many tame, domestic animals around who completely found a common language with the Soviet government and could serve as an example for the current intelligentsia?

There is a practical explanation: these creators are really popular in the world today; Dovlatov and Brodsky to a greater extent, Vysotsky to a lesser extent. There are not so many global brands of Russian origin, you can’t throw them away. In addition, this is a demonstration of democracy and the breadth of the current government: you see, now we are able to appreciate Brodsky, Vysotsky, and Dovlatov, in contrast to the hardened bosses from the Politburo.

But behind all this there is also a super task. They want to convince us that Soviet life itself in the 1970s was “normal”, that it was not fundamentally different from European or American life in the 20th century. “Yes, we lived normally” - the saying of some fans of the Soviet is now becoming an ideology. One can convince of this normality precisely through the generally recognized Dovlatov, Brodsky and Vysotsky. The same “new normality” was gradually instilled when, on Moscow Day, last year a series of posters appeared in “Moscow Creates” with the image of Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak or academician Nikolai Vavilov, without indicating under what tragic circumstances they had to “create”.

But if here the reconciliation of “anti-Soviet with Soviet” looks schematic, then in films and TV series of recent years this is carried out using more subtle mechanisms. One of the main finds of recent decades is the expression “immersion in an era.” We've been hearing this phrase from producers for ten years now; to the question “What did you want to say with this or that series?” they respond with the standard phrase: “We wanted to convey the flavor of the era.” This means: we refuse a critical understanding of the era, turning it into a museum. And those who fought and broke out of this era with all their might are today being forcibly pushed back. This is nothing more than the posthumous transformation of “I” back into “we”, dissolution, their posthumous “marriage” to Soviet power - with the help of cinema. The plots of the films “Vysotsky. Thank you for being alive” by Pyotr Buslov and “The End of a Beautiful Era” by Stanislav Govorukhin based on the works of Dovlatov. Both films demonstrate how freely Vysotsky and Dovlatov lived, how they were allowed to do things that ordinary citizens were not allowed to do, not to mention the fact that the secret services in such films usually disinterestedly help writers or artists. Govorukhin’s main idea is that the Soviet government was harmless, people themselves wrote denunciations against each other and ruined everything.

The film “Dovlatov” by Alexei German Jr., which will be shown these days at the Berlin Film Festival, is, of course, much more perfect artistically. The authors show us six ordinary days of November 1971 in the life of Dovlatov, before his departure to Tallinn. But even here the director does not hide the fact that he wanted to “show the era” at the same time. This is probably a kind of safe conduct, a kind of compromise that an artist today must make. The result is some kind of completely peaceful “dissolution” of Dovlatov and Brodsky in ordinary Soviet life. In the film they work, write articles and make translations, read among the intelligentsia, and have frank conversations. You see, as the film seems to say, it was possible to live, it was possible to exist like this; and those who could not, could leave, but this is everyone’s personal matter.

What is more here - the director’s sincere conviction that “life was more honest then” (the famous war film of his father Alexei German Sr. “Road Check” lay on the shelf for 15 years for censorship reasons), or games according to the current rules, according to which When criticizing the Soviet regime, is it necessary to show the “good”? We won't know this anytime soon, of course.

A prohibited technique is to ask in such cases the question “What would the creators themselves say if they were alive?” It is impossible to answer this for obvious reasons. But as far as the Soviet era is concerned, we know their answer: they themselves answered it, whoever could, and this was a common place, the only compromise for the Soviet people of the 1970s: to live without noticing the Soviet power. The naivety of this position is clear today, but once upon a time it was the only possible and hard-won, tortured position that required certain sacrifices. Now this position is presented to us as one of the ready-made options for existence that the system itself supposedly provided to choose from. This is precisely the distortion of life's truth. With the help of these films, the actual main problem of any person in the USSR, not only the creator, is obscured: the lack of freedom, which distorts human nature itself. And if for the majority this was not a problem (at least, this is what we are told today), then our heroes felt it as the main trauma of their entire lives. And it is precisely this trauma that is being washed away today from their new, official biography - little by little, in small doses, in different ways, gradually turning into an everyday, unimportant, secondary problem. A little more - and Vysotsky’s song “Wolf Hunt” in the mass consciousness will literally mean a wolf hunt.

“Life was normal” - that’s what is ultimately suggested. An attempt, within the framework of modern ideology, to reconcile the Soviet and anti-Soviet through the mechanical merging of opposites. This scheme is artificial and therefore does not work. The post-Soviet social consensus in Eastern Europe, for example, is built precisely on the recognition of the depravity of the very nature of totalitarianism, and no formal or situational “advantages” of the system can serve as justification. Reconciliation is possible only on the basis of a general recognition of the utopianism and dead end of attempts to make people happy by force. The truth is that the existence of a person in a totalitarian society was “abnormal” - from a universal human point of view and, by the way, even from the current official Russian point of view. But to say this out loud today, especially in a movie, means breaking one of the main unspoken taboos. And instead of talking with the viewer on the most important topic - about freedom and unfreedom - hybrids will be born over and over again about the “aroma” of the next era, each of which knew how to crush people somehow uniquely and with a special taste.

In the year that has passed since his death, one might seem to have gotten a little used to his absence. Moreover, we did not see each other very often: in New York, at least. In your hometown, you can still run into a person on the street, in line in front of a movie theater, or in one of two or three decent cafes. This is what happened, not to mention the apartments of acquaintances, mutual friends, the premises of those few magazines where we were allowed. In his hometown, including its outskirts, the topography of the writer was comprehensible, and, I believe, three-quarters of the addresses and telephone numbers in the Naga notebooks coincided. In the New World, with all our mutual efforts, at best one tenth coincided. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to get used to its absence.
Maybe I'm not so used to his presence - especially considering the outburst? The tendency to suspect the worst behind oneself may force one to answer this question in the affirmative. Solipsism, however, has its limits; the life of even a close person can avoid them; death makes you come to your senses. To imagine that he still exists, just doesn’t call or write, for all his attractiveness and even evidence - for his books still continue to be published - is unthinkable: I knew him before he became a writer.
Writers, especially great ones, don't die in the end; they are forgotten, go out of fashion, and are reprinted. Insofar as the book exists, the writer is always present to the reader. At the moment of reading, the reader becomes what he reads, and, in principle, he does not care where the author is, what his circumstances are. He is pleased to learn, of course, that the author is his contemporary, but he will not be particularly upset if this is not the case. There are quite a lot of writers, even great ones, per capita. More, in any case, than the people who are really dear to you. People, however, die.
You can go to the shelf and take one of his books off it. His full name is on the cover, but for me he has always been Seryozha. The writer is not called by a diminutive name; a writer is always a surname, and if he is a classicist, then also a first and patronymic name. In ten or twenty years this will be the case, but I - I never knew his middle name. Thirty years ago, when we met, there was no talk about covers or literature at all. We were Seryozha and Joseph; Moreover, we addressed each other as “you,” and neither alcohol nor the absurd leaps of fate could change this sublimely ironic, slightly detached—from ourselves—form of communication and address. Nothing will change her now.
We met in an apartment on the fifth floor near the Finland Station. The owner was a student at the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University - now he is a professor of the same faculty in a small town in Germany. The apartment was small, but there was a lot of alcohol in it. It was the winter of either 1959 or 1960, and then we were besieging the same short-haired, pretty fortress, located somewhere on the Sands. For reasons too outlandish to list here, I soon had to lift this siege and leave for Central Asia. When I returned two months later, I found that the fortress had fallen.
It always seemed to me that, given his gigantic stature, his relationship with our squat, blond reality must have developed in a rather peculiar way. He was always noticeable from afar, especially considering the impeccable prospects of his native city, and involuntarily turned out to be the center of attention in any of its premises. I think that this somewhat burdened him, especially in his youth, and his manners and speech were characterized by a certain ironic caution, as if justifying and excusing his physical excess. I think that this is partly why he subsequently took up the pen: the feeling of the paradoxical nature of everything that happens, bordering on the absurd - both outside and inside his consciousness - is inherent in almost everything that came out of his pen.
On the other hand, the exclusivity of his appearance freed him from excessive worries about his appearance. All his life, as long as I remember him, he wore the same hairstyle: I don’t remember him either with long hair or with a beard. There was a certain completeness in his mass, more characteristic, as a rule, of brunettes than of blondes; a dark-haired person is always more specific, even in the mirror. The philological girls called him “our Arab” - because of Seryozha’s distant resemblance to Omar Sharif, who then appeared for the first time on our screens. To me, he always vaguely reminded me of Emperor Peter - although his face was completely devoid of Peter’s cat-like quality - for the prospects of his native city (as it seemed to me) preserve the memory of this restless walking mile, and someone must from time to time fill the vacuum left by it in the air .
Then he disappeared from the street because he joined the army. He returned from there, like Tolstoy from Crimea, with a scroll of stories and some stunned look in his eyes. Why he brought them to me was not very clear, since I wrote poetry. On the other hand, I was a couple of years older, and in my youth the difference of two years is quite significant: the inertia of high school, the complex of a high school student, takes its toll; if you write poetry, you are also more of a high school student in relation to a prose writer. Following this inertia, he also showed his stories to Naiman, who was even more of a high school student. He got a lot of trouble from both of us back then:
However, he did not stop showing them to us, because he did not stop composing them.
This attitude towards poetry writers remained with him throughout his life. I don’t dare to guess what benefit our, in those years predominantly condescending, ironic, assessments and reasoning brought to him. One thing is certain - he was driven by a completely unconscious feeling that prose should be measured against verse. There was, of course, something more behind this: the idea of ​​the existence of souls more perfect than his own. It doesn’t matter whether we were suited for this role or not - most likely not; it is important that this idea existed; In the end, I think no one was at a loss.
Looking back now, it is clear that on paper he strove for brevity, for the lapidary nature inherent in poetic speech: for the utmost capacity of expression. Anyone who expresses himself in Russian in this way always pays dearly for his style. We are a nation of many words and many words; we are the people of the subordinate clause, the swirling adjectives. Someone who speaks briefly, much less someone who writes briefly, discourages and, as it were, compromises our verbal redundancy. The interlocutor, relationships with people in general begin to be perceived as ballast, dead weight - and the interlocutor himself is the first to feel this. Even if it tunes to your frequency, it doesn’t last long.
The dependence of reality on the standards offered by literature is an extremely rare phenomenon. The desire of reality to impose itself on literature is much more widespread. Everything works out well if the writer is simply a narrator, telling stories, incidents from life, etc. You can always throw out a piece from such a narrative, trim the plot, rearrange events, change the names of the characters and the location of the action. If the writer is a stylist, a catastrophe is inevitable: not only with his works, but also in everyday life.
Seryozha was, first of all, a wonderful stylist. His stories rely most of all on the rhythm of the phrase; at the cadence of the author's speech. They are written like poems: the plot in them is of secondary importance, it is only a pretext for speech. This is more singing than storytelling, and the opportunity to have an interlocutor for a person with such a voice and hearing, the opportunity to duet, is very rare. The interlocutor begins to feel that he has porridge in his mouth, and this is how it turns out in reality. Life really turns into a solo underwood, because sooner or later the man in the writer becomes dependent on the writer in the man, not on the plot, but on the style.
For all his natural gentleness and good-heartedness, his incompatibility with the environment, especially the literary one, was inevitable and obvious. A writer is a creator in the sense that he creates a type of consciousness, a type of worldview that has not previously existed or been described. It reflects reality, but not as a mirror, but as an object that it attacks; Seryozha also smiled. The image of a person emerging from his stories is an image that does not coincide with the Russian literary tradition and, of course, is very autobiographical. This is a person who does not justify reality or himself; This is a person who brushes it off: leaving the room, rather than trying to restore order in it or to discern the deeper meaning, the hand of providence, in its filthy state.
Where he goes from this room - to the tavern, to the ends of the world, far away - is the tenth matter. This writer does not make drama out of what is happening to him, because drama does not suit him: neither physical nor psychological. It is remarkable, first of all, precisely for its rejection of the tragic tradition (which is always the noble name of inertia) of Russian literature, as well as its consoling pathos. The tone of his prose is mockingly restrained, despite all the despair of the existence he describes. Talking about his literary roots, influences, etc. is pointless, because a writer is a tree that pushes off from the soil. I will only say that one of his most beloved authors has always been Sherwood Anderson, whose “Tale of a Storyteller” Seryozha cherished more than anything else in the world.
It's easy to read. He does not seem to demand attention to himself, does not insist on his conclusions or observations of human nature, and does not impose himself on the reader. I devoured his books in an average of three to four hours of continuous reading: because it was precisely this unobtrusiveness of his tone that was difficult to tear myself away from. The constant reaction to his stories and tales is gratitude for the lack of pretension, for the sobriety of his view of things, for this quiet music of common sense that sounds in any of his paragraphs. The tone of his speech instills restraint in the reader and has a sobering effect: you become him, and this is the best therapy that can be offered to a contemporary, not to mention a descendant.
His failure in his homeland is not accidental, although, I believe, it is temporary. Its success among the American reader is equally natural and, I think, enduring. It turned out to be relatively easy to translate, because its syntax does not interfere with the translator's wheels. The decisive role, however, was played, of course, by a tone recognizable to any member of a democratic society - an individual person who does not allow the status of a victim to be imposed on himself, free from the complex of exclusivity. This person speaks as an equal with equals about equals: he looks at people not from bottom up, not from top to bottom, but as if from the outside. His works, if they are ever published in full, can rightfully be prefaced with a line from the remarkable American poet Wallace Stevens as an epigraph: “The world is ugly and people are sad.” This suits them in content, and it sounds like Serezha.
One should not think that he aspired to become an American writer, that he was “subject to influences,” that he found himself and his place in America. This was far from the case, and the point here is completely different. The fact is that Seryozha belonged to a generation that took the idea of ​​individualism and the principle of autonomy of human existence more seriously than was done by anyone, anywhere. I speak about this with knowledge of the matter, because I have the honor - the great and sad honor - to belong to this generation. Nowhere has this idea been expressed more fully and clearly than in American literature, starting with Melville and Whitman and ending with Faulkner and Frost. Anyone who wants can add American cinema to this. Others may also attribute this commitment to the stifling climate of collectivism in which we grew up. This will sound convincing, but it will not correspond to reality.
The idea of ​​individualism, of man on his own, on the outskirts and in its purest form, was our own. The possibility of its physical implementation was negligible, if not nonexistent. There was no talk of moving in space, especially to those regions from which Melville, Whitman, Faulkner and Frost came to us. When this turned out to be feasible, for many of us it was too late to implement it: we no longer needed the physical implementation of this idea. For by that time the idea of ​​individualism had truly become an idea for us - an abstract, metaphysical, if you like, category. In this sense, we have achieved much greater autonomy in consciousness and on paper than is possible in the flesh anywhere else. In this sense, we turned out to be “American” to a much greater extent than the majority of the US population; at best, we could only recognize ourselves “by sight” in the principles and institutions of the society in which, by the will of fate, we found ourselves.
In turn, this society, to a certain extent, recognized itself in us, and this explains the success of Serezha’s books among the American reader. “Success”, however, is not the most accurate term; too often he and his family were unable to make ends meet. He lived as a literary day laborer, always poorly paid, and even more so in exile. By “success” I mean that his translations were published in the best magazines and publishing houses in the country, not contracts with Hollywood and the volume of real estate. Nevertheless, it was a genuine, honest, ultimately terrible life of a professional writer, and I never heard any complaints from him. I don’t think he was very sad about the lack of contracts with Hollywood - no more than about the lack of them with Mosfilm.
When a person dies so early, assumptions arise about a mistake made by him or those around him. This is a natural attempt to protect ourselves from grief, from the monstrous pain caused by loss. I do not think that one should defend oneself against grief, that defense can be successful. Discussions about other options for existence are ultimately humiliating for those who do not have these options. I don’t think Serezha’s life could have been lived differently; I only think that her end could have been different, less terrible. Such a terrible ending - on a suffocating summer day in an ambulance in Brooklyn, with blood gushing from his throat and two Puerto Rican idiots as orderlies - he himself would never have written: not because he did not foresee it, but because he had dislike for too strong effects.
I repeat, there is no point in defending yourself against grief. Maybe it’s even better to let him completely crush you - it will at least be somehow proportional to what happened. If you subsequently manage to rise and straighten, the memory of the one you lost will also straighten. The very memory of him will help you straighten up. For those who knew Seryozha only as a writer, this will probably be easier to do than for those who knew both the writer and the person, for we have lost both. But if we manage to do this, then we will remember him longer - as someone who gave more to life than he took from it.

Texts and photographs are given according to the publication: Volkova M., Dovlatov S. “The poets lived there...” - St. Petersburg: JSC Zvezda Magazine, 1998. Read the full book: imwerden.de/publ-5454.html

Brodsky said that he loved metaphysics and gossip. And he added:
“Which is basically the same thing.”

I once came to Brodsky with my fox terrier Glasha. He made an appointment for me at 10.00. On the threshold Joseph said:
- You showed up exactly at ten, which is normal. But how did the dog manage not to be late?!

Doctors forbade Brodsky to smoke. This bothered him very much. He said:
— Drink a cup of coffee in the morning and not smoke?! Then there is no need to wake up!

Writer Voskoboynikov was offended by American tourists. It seems they behaved unpunctually. They didn't show up for a visit. Something like that. Voskoboynikov pouted:
“I,” he says, “will write a letter to John Kennedy.” Like, what kind of people are these, they didn’t even call.
And Brodsky tells him:
— You write “poste restante.” Otherwise, Kennedy runs to the post office every day and keeps complaining:
“Not a sound from Voskoboinikov again!..”

Joseph Brodsky has the following lines:

No country, no graveyard
I don't want to choose
To Vasilyevsky Island
I'm coming to die...

So, an acquaintance asked Trubin:
— Do you know where Joseph Brodsky lives?
Trubin replied:
- I don’t know where he lives. He goes to Vasilyevsky Island to die.

Twenty-five years ago, Galchinsky’s collection was published. Four poems in it were translated by Joseph Brodsky. I got hold of this book. Met Brodsky. I asked him for an autograph. Joseph took out his pen and thought. Then, without any tension, he composed an impromptu:

He gives Serge a translator.”

I was flattered. A short, elegant poem was created before my eyes. I go to Naiman's in the evening. I show the book and the inscription. Naiman takes out his copy. On the first page I read:

"Two hundred and eight Polish lines
A translator gives it to Tolya.”

Evgeniy Rein, in turn, had a copy with the inscription:

"Two hundred and eight Polish lines
A translator gives it to Zhenya.”

And yet he is a genius.

It was about fifteen years ago. A certain Lerner was tried. The same Lerner who in 1964 was a prominent activist in the massacre of Brodsky. He was tried for something shameful. It seems for forgery of order documents. And then the sentence was announced - four years. And then the following happened. Art critic Gerasimov was present in the hall. This was a man who wrote poetry only in moments of absolute spiritual harmony. That is, very rarely. Hearing the verdict, he stood up. Concentrated. Then he shouted clearly and loudly:

"Brodsky in Michigan,
Lerner in Magadan!

Joseph Brodsky told me:
- Only tailors have taste.

I remember I got hold of Brodsky’s book from 1964. I paid decent money for a bibliographic rarity. Dollars, if I'm not mistaken, fifty. I reported this to Joseph.
I hear:
- But I don’t have such a collection.
I speak:
- Do you want me to give it to you?
Joseph was surprised:
- What am I going to do with him? Read?!

Brodsky has a friendly caricature of me. I think it's a wonderful drawing. I showed it to my American editor. He said:
-Your nose is different.
“So,” I say, “it’s necessary to have plastic surgery.”

Brodsky about Efremov’s book:
- How did he decide to move from the second paragraph to the third?!

For Brodsky, Yevtushenko is a man of a different profession.

Joseph Brodsky likes to repeat:
- Life is short and sad. Have you noticed how it ends?

Naiman and Brodsky walked through Leningrad. It was at night.
- I wonder where the Southern Cross is? - Brodsky suddenly asked.
(As you know, the Southern Cross is located in the corresponding hemisphere.)
Nyman said:
- Joseph! Open the Brockhaus and Efron dictionary. Find the letter "A" there. And look up the word "Astronomy".
Brodsky replied:
- You, too, open the dictionary with the letter “A”. And look for the word “Astronomy” there.

We were walking from somewhere with Brodsky. It was late evening. We went down to the metro - it was closed. Forged lattice from ground to ceiling. And a policeman is walking behind bars. Joseph came closer. Then he shouted quite loudly:
- Eh!
The policeman became wary and turned around.
“Wonderful picture,” Joseph told him, “this is the first time I’ve seen a cop behind bars!”

Brodsky turned to me with a rather unexpected request:
- Go to your library at Radio Liberty. Make copies of the table of contents of all issues of Yunost magazine over the past ten years. Send me. I'll look through this case and pick out what's good there. And you will make copies for me again.
I went to the library. I took one hundred and twenty (120!) issues of the magazine “Youth”. I copied all the tables of contents. I sent all this to Brodsky first class. I am waiting. A week passes. Second. I call him:
— Did you receive my parcel?
- Oh yes, I got it.
- Well, what’s interesting there?
- Nothing.

I remember Joseph Brodsky spoke as follows:
— Irony is a descending metaphor.
I was surprised:
- What does this mean - a descending metaphor?
“I’ll explain,” said Joseph, “listen.” “Her eyes are like turquoise” is a rising metaphor. And “her eyes are like brakes” is a descending metaphor.

Once the three of us were sitting - Rein, Brodsky and me. Rain, by the way, said:
— Precision is a great strength. Zoshchenko, Blok, and Zabolotsky were famous for their pedantic precision. During our only meeting, Zabolotsky told me: “Zhenya, do you know how I defeated the Soviet regime? I defeated her with my precision!”
Brodsky interrupted him:
- Does this mean that he sat for sixteen years from bell to bell?!

Brodsky:
“For a long time I didn’t believe that you could say something stupid in English...

When Gorbachev's thaw took quite obvious forms, Brodsky said:
- Do you know what the danger is here? The danger is that Rain might change his mind about marrying an Italian.