Sergei Dovlatov writer biography. Biography of Sergei Dovlatov: personal life, education, literary career, photo

Dovlatov Sergey Donatovich - this name is well known in Russia and abroad. Behind him lies a famous writer and journalist who made a significant contribution to world literature. The books written by him are read with pleasure by people in many countries of the world. The biography of Sergei Dovlatov is the history of the Russian people of the second half of the 20th century. The vicissitudes of the writer's fate, in many ways typical of that time, are reflected in his work. To know the main milestones in the author’s life means to understand the stories and stories he wrote.

Biography of Sergei Dovlatov

Dovlatov's personality is surrounded by many myths. Perhaps the most famous of them is associated with his numerous affairs with women. However, people who knew the writer closely claim that the two hundred mistresses in Leningrad, which were often talked about, are nothing more than fiction. At the same time, Dovlatov owes a lot to his wife Elena. It was she who played a key role in his emigration and helped develop his writing career in America.

Years in the USSR

The future writer was born in 1941 in Ufa into a creative family. His father was a director, his mother a theater actress. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Dovlatov returned to Leningrad with his family. He was enrolled at a local university in the Faculty of Philology, but due to poor academic performance, he was unable to complete his studies. After serving in the army, he returned to the Northern capital and entered the journalism department of the same university. Dovlatov was engaged in journalistic and literary activities in parallel, but his novels and stories were not published because they contained the bitter truth about reality. In order to be able to publish and receive money for his work, Dovlatov decided to leave Russia. In 1978 he emigrated to New York.

Life in America

Moving to the USA allowed the writer to realize his creative ideas. His books were popular with readers. The Russian-language newspaper “New American,” which Dovlatov published, received many positive reviews. The writer appeared on the radio and was published in major publications. During the years of his life in exile, Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov published twelve books. His last wife, Elena, played an important role in the writer’s literary success. She spent a lot of energy and time on her husband's career. Despite his success in America, Dovlatov did not consider himself successful as a writer. In his biography, he admitted that in America “he did not become a rich and successful man.”

Dovlatov died in New York in 1990. The cause of death was heart failure. He had four children from different women. The eldest daughter, Ekaterina, was born in 1966. Four years later, the second daughter Maria was born. In 1975, the third daughter Alexandra was born. In 1984, son Nikolai was born.

Author's works

The biography of Sergei Dovlatov is a must-read if the reader wants to understand his works, since there is a lot of autobiography in them. The author paid a lot of attention not only to the text, but also to the illustrations for the books he wrote, covers and introductory articles. Philologists carefully study Dovlatov’s correspondence with publishers, which discusses not only issues related to the release of the book, but also the texts themselves, their content and intention.

“The Reserve” is a story based on events from the writer’s life. The main character, Boris Alekhanov, got a job at the Pushkin Museum in the village of Mikhailovskoye as a guide. The book was published in America in 1983, although a rough draft was created in the second half of the 70s.

“The Zone,” according to people who personally knew the writer, is one of his most beloved works. Dovlatov worked on it for about twenty years. The story includes fourteen separate stories, united by a common theme: the features of the daily life of guards and prisoners. The history of the idea for this book dates back to the time when Dovlatov served in the army and guarded camp barracks. The book was published in the USA in 1982. The writer had to go around several publishers to get it published. He was told that the camp theme was irrelevant after Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, but Dovlatov proved this statement wrong.

The story “The Foreigner” was written and published in 1986. The focus is on Russian emigrants and their life in New York. It is one of the author's most controversial works. Many of Dovlatov's contemporaries called it an outright failure. Best of all, in their opinion, the author managed to convey the images of Russian emigrants, while the text itself is more like a film script than a literary work. “Foreigner” is a book not about America, but about a Russian person living in this country. This is what Sergei Dovlatov said.

“Suitcase” tells the story of a Russian emigrant who left his native country with one suitcase in his hands. A few years later, he began to take it apart and found things that brought back many unexpected memories. The book was written and published in 1986.

In Russia, Dovlatov is a recognized master of words. Some of his works, in particular “The Zone” and “Suitcase”, were included in the list of one hundred books recommended for young readers for independent reading by the decision of the Russian Ministry of Education. This event happened in 2013.

“Thirteen years ago I put pen to paper. He wrote a novel, seven stories and four hundred short pieces. (To the touch - more than Gogol!) I am convinced that Gogol and I have equal copyrights. (Responsibilities vary.) At least one inalienable right. The right to publish what is written. That is, the right of immortality or failure" (Sergei Dovlatov. "Craft").

Sergei Dovlatov realized both of his rights in full: during his life he often suffered failures, and after his death he turned out to be one of the most famous emigrant writers. More than a quarter of a century has passed since his death, and Dovlatov’s books are still read by people of different ages.

Sergei Dovlatov was born in Ufa during the evacuation into a theater family. Later his parents returned to Leningrad, and after some time they divorced. The future writer was raised by his mother, so he knew firsthand about poverty.

“School... Friendship with Alyosha Lavrentyev, for whom the Ford comes to pick him up... Alyosha is playing pranks, I am entrusted with raising him... Then they will take me to the dacha... I become a little tutor... I am smarter and have read more. .. I know how to please adults...”

Sergey Dovlatov. "Craft"

In 1959, Dovlatov entered the philological department of Leningrad University, and his acquaintance with Joseph Brodsky, Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman and other writers, poets and artists dates back to this time. Dovlatov was soon expelled from the university for poor academic performance, although at first he pretended that he was “suffering for the truth.” After his expulsion, he was drafted into the army and served for three years as a security guard at penal colonies in the Komi Republic. “Obviously, I was destined to go to hell...”- Dovlatov recalled.

According to Brodsky, the writer returned from the army " like Tolstoy from Crimea, with a scroll of stories and some bewilderment in his gaze" Brodsky became the first to whom Sergei Dovlatov showed his literary experiments.

“...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: he didn’t stop showing them to us, however, because he didn’t stop composing them.”

Joseph Brodsky. “About Seryozha Dovlatov. "The world is ugly and people are sad"

Sergei Donatovich continued his studies, but already at the journalism department of Leningrad State University and immediately began working as a journalist, publishing in the student newspaper of the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute “For Personnel to Shipyards.” At the end of the 60s he joined the literary group “Citizens”, and a few years later he became the secretary of the writer Vera Panova. Dovlatov left memories, or rather, anecdotes about her and her husband, David Dar, in the collection “Solo on Underwood.”

A fireman in the Tallinn boiler room and a tour guide at the Pushkin Museum-Reserve "Mikhailovskoye", a watchman and editor of a weekly newspaper - Sergei Dovlatov has not tried anything in his short life!

He spent three years, from September 1972 to March 1975, in Tallinn; this time was reflected in the collection of stories “Compromise”, where the writer told about his experience as a correspondent in the newspaper “Soviet Estonia”. The Tallinn publishing house Eesti Raamat published his first book, Five Corners, which was very soon destroyed at the request of the KGB.

Dovlatov published little in the official press, but his texts appeared both in samizdat and abroad. It was after the first foreign publication, which Dovlatov allegedly did not even suspect, that in 1976 he was expelled from the Union of Journalists. Two years later, Dovlatov, due to persecution by the authorities, emigrated from the USSR and ended up in the USA.

Having settled in New York, he continued to work as a journalist in the press and on radio. The newspaper he edited, “The New American” (originally called “Mirror”), quickly became popular among emigrants, and his monologues from the program “Writer at the Microphone,” recorded for Radio Liberty, can still be found online.

“And then we appeared, mustachioed robbers in jeans. And they spoke to the public in more or less living human language.
We allowed ourselves to joke and be ironic. And moreover, laugh. Laugh at Russophobes and anti-Semites. Over false prophets and pseudo-martyrs. Above the lofty stupidity and serpentine hypocrisy. Over militant atheists and religious cliques. And most importantly, mind you, above yourself!”

Sergey Dovlatov. "Craft"

The story of the “New American” turned out to be bright, but short. The newspaper did not bring in any income, despite its popularity; as a result, its creators were unable to repay the loan; the last issue of the publication was published in March 1982.

The writer was also luckier with the publication of books in the USA than in his homeland. The result of 12 years lived in exile was a dozen books published under the name of Sergei Dovlatov. His stories have appeared in such popular publications as Partisan Review and The New Yorker. As for The New Yorker, Dovlatov became the second Russian writer after Vladimir Nabokov to be published in this famous publication.

Sergei Dovlatov died on August 24, 1990 from heart failure, he was only 48 years old.

Sergei Dovlatov is a Soviet and American writer, prose writer and journalist. In Soviet times, Dovlatov was a dissident, but today his works are recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for independent reading by schoolchildren.

Childhood and youth

From childhood, Sergei was an inquisitive boy with a developed imagination. His favorite subject at school was, and therefore he began writing poetry in elementary school.

When Dovlatov was 11 years old, his poems were published in Lenin Sparks. An interesting fact is that the future dissident dedicated one of his works.

After school, Dovlatov studied at Leningrad State University at the Faculty of Philology.

During this period of his biography, he especially liked creativity. Having studied at the university for less than 3 years, Dovlatov was expelled from it for poor academic performance.

Dovlatov was then drafted into the Soviet army, where he became a guard at a colony located in the Komi Republic.

The service had a very serious influence on the development of his personality, and also allowed him to collect a lot of interesting material.

Returning from the army, Sergei Dovlatov successfully passed the exams at the same university (from which he was expelled) to the Faculty of Journalism.

After graduating, he began working as a journalist in the Leningrad publication “For Personnel to the Shipyards.” During this period of his biography, he met aspiring prose writers from the literary society “Citizens”.

Then Dovlatov worked in many other newspapers and magazines, continuing to write various works. However, he could not publish them anywhere, since they ran counter to Soviet ideology.

After some time, Sergei Donatovich moved to, where he also continued to work in various publishing houses. In addition, he manages to work as a guide in a museum-reserve.

Since Dovlatov could not publish many of his works in his homeland, the prose writer published them abroad. When the KGB learned about this fact, Sergei Dovlatov began surveillance, which will continue until the end of his life.

In connection with these biographical events, in 1978 the journalist decides to emigrate to.

Arriving in New York, he began working in radio and also became editor of the New American newspaper. Soon Dovlatov became a popular writer. Despite this, he really misses Leningrad in general and in particular.

Works by Dovlatov

Since Sergei Dovlatov was considered a dissident writer, he could not be published in most publishing houses.

In this regard, he had to publish works in samizdat and in various emigrant magazines.

Over time, the pressure on him from the authorities increased. By order of the KGB, his book “Five Corners” was destroyed.

Only upon his arrival in the United States did Dovlatov manage to realize his potential as a writer. Many American publishing houses published his stories and novels in English and Russian.

An interesting fact is that such authoritative magazines as Partisan Review and The New Yorker sought to collaborate with Dovlatov.

Soon, Dovlatov’s story “The Foreigner” comes out, in which he describes the events of his biography. After that, he published collections of stories “Suitcase” and “Ours”, and then a collection of short stories “Compromise”.

Dovlatov's works became increasingly popular not only in the USA, but also in Europe. Soviet citizens had the opportunity to get acquainted with the work of the prose writer thanks to his creative program on Radio Liberty.

Personal life

Many believe that there were many women in the biography of Sergei Dovlatov, but this is not entirely true. In fact, he was a rather private person.

His first wife was Asya Pekurovskaya, with whom he lived for 8 years. Interestingly, immediately after the divorce they had a girl, Maria.

Dovlatov’s second wife was Elena Ritman, who was distinguished by her strong character. Many biographers of the writer believe that it was to this woman that he owed his popularity.

They had a girl, Ekaterina, but over time their feelings began to cool, as a result of which Elena left her husband and went to America.

A few years later, Sergei Dovlatov began cohabiting with Tamara Zibunova, who gave birth to his daughter Alexandra. However, this relationship was short-lived.

In 1978, many changes occurred in Dovlatov’s biography, as a result of which he realized that he could be put behind bars as a dissident.

In this regard, he urgently flies back to New York to Elena Ritman, where he remarries her. Soon the couple had a long-awaited boy, Nikolai (Nicholas).

Elena was a true friend and helper for her husband. She edited his manuscripts and also dealt with issues related to the publication of his works.

Death

It is reliably known that throughout his difficult life, Sergei Dovlatov suffered from alcoholism. And although he tried many times to break this habit, he failed.

In this regard, Dovlatov was very similar to, who also suffered from alcohol addiction all his life.

It is worth noting here that Dovlatov and Vysotsky (see), despite a similar situation in the Soviet Union, did not know each other.

This seems strange, because both worked on the word, were almost the same age (Vysotsky is 3 years older), both did not have official recognition, but their fates never crossed.

Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov died on August 24, 1990 in New York, at the age of 48. The cause of his death was heart failure. The writer was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery.

Photo by Dovlatov

Despite the fact that Sergei Dovlatov lived in the second half of the 20th century, there are not many good quality images of him. Below you can see the most popular photos of Dovlatov.

All fans of Russian literature know the biography of Sergei Dovlatov. This is a famous Russian writer who became famous thanks to his amazingly accurate and vivid stories and stories. He worked enthusiastically on the word. For example, ensuring that all words in a sentence begin with different letters. His amazing style and lack of metaphors made his works ideal for translators, so they were loved far beyond the borders of our country.

Childhood and youth

The biography of Sergei Dovlatov should begin in 1941, when he was born in Ufa. His family was evacuated. The Great Patriotic War began just two and a half months ago.

His family turned out to be international. His Jewish father, Donat Isaakovich Mechik, was a theater director. Mother Nora Sergeevna worked as a literary proofreader.

When the family returned to Leningrad, Dovlatov's father left for another woman. After that, communication with my son consisted only of correspondence.

As a child, Sergei was a calm child. He stood out for his tall stature, but was never known as a fighter. At the same time, I studied mediocrely.

Journalist career

After school, Sergei Dovlatov’s biography included the Zhdanovich University in Leningrad, where he studied at the Faculty of Literature and Finnish Language. True, he was not diligent, he constantly played truant. He was expelled from his second year. At that time, he managed to meet the classics of Russian literature of that period - poets Joseph Brodsky and Evgeny Rein, prose writer Sergei Wolf, artist Alexander Nezhdanov. For some time he was part of the creative bohemia of Leningrad.

In 1962, Sergei was drafted into the army. He served for three years in the internal troops. Dovlatov directly guarded penal colonies located on the territory of the modern Komi Republic near the city of Ukhta. This experience was described by him in the story “Zone: Notes of a Warden.” As Brodsky later recalled, Dovlatov returned from the army with a stunned look and a pile of stories. In this regard, he compared him with Tolstoy when he arrived from Crimea.

Having returned to civilian life, Sergei Dovlatov, whose biography is given in this article, enters the Leningrad University at the Faculty of Journalism. Due to the constant lack of money, he has to combine study with work.

His work as a journalist begins with the position of correspondent in one of the Leningrad newspapers. Gradually, he acquires acquaintances and connections, and becomes a personal secretary to the writer Vera Panova.

Moving to Tallinn

In 1972, a new stage began in the biography of Sergei Dovlatov. He moves to Tallinn. Here he continues his journalistic activities, working for the newspapers “Soviet Estonia” and “Evening Tallinn”. At the same time, he writes reviews for the magazines “Zvezda” and “Neva”.

During this period of his life, he tries to publish his stories, which he has been actively writing for a long time. The Baltic republics have always been considered freer than the rest of the Soviet Union.

A collection called "City Stories" is being prepared for publication by the publishing house "Eesti Raamat", but at the last moment the entire circulation is destroyed by order of the Estonian KGB.

In 1975, Dovlatov returned to Leningrad. He works for the magazine "Koster", then leaves for Mikhailovskoye, where he gets a job as a guide in the Pushkin Nature Reserve. He is still trying to publish at least some of his works, but to no avail. As a result, they are published in emigrant magazines and passed from hand to hand in samizdat. This leaves an imprint on the biography of the writer Sergei Dovlatov. He is expelled from the Union of Journalists.

To emigrate

Financial difficulties and constant persecution force Dovlatov to emigrate. In addition, he expects to publish his books there. In 1978, he went to Vienna following his wife Elena and daughter Katya. From there they head to New York.

In 1980, in the United States, he took the helm of the New American newspaper, which is published in Russian, and broadcasts on Radio Liberty.

In America, the writer begins a fundamentally different life. If in his homeland he could not publish a single line, then in the USA his collections of stories are published one after another. In total, in exile Sergei Dovlatov, whose biography and work are described in this article, manages to publish 12 books. By the middle of the decade, he turned into a popular writer who was published in The New Yorker.

Personal life

The biography and personal life of Sergei Dovlatov is not easy. His relationships with women were often too complicated; those around him considered him a Don Juan who could not be corrected. In the biography of Sergei Dovlatov, family has always been a kind of convention. Suffice it to mention that none of his four children were born while he was officially married. Daughter Katya appeared three years before the wedding with Elena, and son Nikolai appeared 8 years after the divorce. Another daughter, Maria, was born two years after her divorce from Asya, and Alexandra was born in a civil marriage with Tamara.

Officially, the writer was married twice. His first wife's name was Asya Pekurovskaya. They were married from 1960 to 1968. In 1970, after their official divorce, their daughter Maria was born. She took her mother's surname, left for the United States in 1973, and now holds the post of vice president of the film company Universal Pictures. He met Asya when he was a student. Many claim that this was his only true love.

In 1969, Elena Ritman became his wife. By that time she already had a daughter, Ekaterina, from Dovlatov. In 1971, the couple divorced, finding themselves in exile. At the same time, in 1981, they had a son; he now lives in America under the name Nicholas Dawley.

From 1975 to 1978, the writer lived in a civil marriage with Tamara Zibunova. In 1975, their daughter Alexandra was born.

In the biography of Sergei Dovlatov, personal life has always played a big role. This can be judged by his works, in which a lot of attention is paid to relationships; he writes with love and warmth about his daughter Katya.

Death

Now you know a short biography of who Sergei Dovlatov is. In exile, he constantly worked, rewriting his works created in the Soviet Union.

In 1990, he died in New York from heart failure. At that time he was 48 years old. The Russian prose writer was buried in the Queens area at Mount Hebron Cemetery.

Alcoholism

Friends and acquaintances who knew Dovlatov claim that alcoholism played a significant role in his fate and health. Moreover, many note that this was a widespread and widespread phenomenon for Soviet writers of that time.

They claim that Dovlatov did not like binge drinking and fought against it in every possible way. At the same time, he recognized the power of vodka, as Alexander Genis, who knew him well, writes.

The sculptor Ernst Neizvestny wrote that Dovlatov’s drunkenness was akin to suicide.

It was dark Russian drunkenness, which is great, great reflected in Vysotsky’s songs: “What a quiet house…”, “Everything is wrong! It's not like that, guys." Therefore, there is some kind of desire to run away somewhere, but where to run? into death, he certainly had.

Literary creativity

Dovlatov is known as one of the active participants in the literary group “Gorozhane”, which existed in Leningrad in the 60-70s. It was founded by Vladimir Maramzin, Boris Vakhtin, Igor Efimov, Vladimir Gubin.

His work in Tallinn is described in detail in one of the writer's most famous works - the collection "Compromise". Throughout his literary career he wrote prose. The Soviet Union refused to publish his works solely for ideological reasons. For all this time, he managed to publish only one story in the Neva magazine and a story on production topics in the Yunost magazine in 1974, for which he received a substantial 400 rubles for that time.

Dovlatov had a great influence on Russian culture. His works, as well as his biography, have more than once become the subject of performances and feature films. Thus, Mikhail Weller called one of his autobiographical stories “The Knife of Serezha Dovlatov.”

In 1994, the Moscow Art Theater staged the play “The New American” based on the works of Dovlatov, in which the writer was played by the Honored Artist of Russia Dmitry Brusnikin, who passed away quite recently.

Dovlatov has remained one of the most published and read authors for several decades. Together with Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky, he is one of the three most published Russian-language authors of the second half of the 20th century.

Now Dovlatov’s works have been translated into 30 languages ​​of the world. He still remains the only Russian-language writer whose story was published in America's main literary magazine, The New Yorker.

Writer's books

In his will, Sergei Dovlatov categorically forbade the publication of any of his texts that were published in the USSR before 1978. He did not allow them to be reprinted under any pretext. His first published work is called "The Invisible Book", it was published in 1977.

In 1980, notebooks were published in Paris under the title "Solo on Underwood". Also, his works that were published abroad during Dovlatov’s lifetime are “Compromise”, “Zone: Notes of a Warden”, “March of the Lonely”, “Ours”, “Demarche of Enthusiasts”, “Craft: a Tale in Two Parts”, “Foreign Woman”, “Suitcase”, “Performance”, “Not only Brodsky: Russian culture in portraits and anecdotes” (co-authored with Marianna Volkova), “Notebooks”, “Branch”.

In his homeland, all his works were published after his death. The first was the story "The Reserve", which was published in Leningrad in 1990.

Sergei Dovlatov was born on September 3, 1941 in Ufa, in the family of theater director Donat Isaakovich Mechik (1909-1995) and literary proofreader Nora Sergeevna Dovlatova (1908-1999).
In 1978, Dovlatov emigrated and settled in New York, where he became editor-in-chief of the emigrant newspaper “New American.” Books of his prose were published one after another. By the mid-1980s, he achieved great reader success and was published in the prestigious magazine The New Yorker.
During twelve years of emigration, he published twelve books in the USA and Europe. In the USSR, the writer was known from samizdat and his author’s broadcast on Radio Liberty.
It was in exile that chapters from the book “Ours” were written and published. American reviews of the book—and of the writer’s prose in general—are distinguished by their exceptional tolerance: literally not a single negative one.
The idea of ​​the book as a whole is connected with F. M. Dostoevsky: it goes back to the chapter “At ours” from the novel “Demons”. In the mid-1960s, Dovlatov wrote the short story “Ours” in Leningrad, satirically depicting the circle of young philologists close to him at the university. However, the book “Ours” was written much later and was first published in 1983 by the American publishing house Ardis.
“Ours” is an egocentric book, like all the other works of Sergei Dovlatov. But if earlier he portrayed others through himself, then here he shows himself through others. However, according to Andr. Ariev, the “virtual documentary” principle of describing events is expressed in this book more clearly than in any of his other works. Dovlatov the author, who made Dovlatov the hero the central character of his works, inevitably had to get to the history of the family. And in this case, the stories of the author’s family and the hero’s family are almost identical. The structure of the book is actually 12 chapters plus a conclusion, and figuratively it’s a kind of Chinaword. By entering his relatives into the vacant cells, the author receives a pre-known answer - himself.
Dovlatov began his genealogy with quite epic figures. Giants of the past, ancient gods - his seven-foot grandfathers barely stay on the border between portrait and allegory. Critics note that “Ours” indeed begins in the realm of myth.
But very often, when describing the genealogy of “Nashi,” Dovlatov’s great-grandfather, Moisei Mechik, is forgotten, to whom the first lines of the first paragraph of the first chapter are dedicated. “Our great-grandfather Moses was a peasant from the village of Sukhovo. Jew-peasant is a rather rare combination, it should be noted. This happened in the Far East." Who will this same great-grandfather be if we nevertheless take into account the already ingrained idea of ​​​​the development of the story “from myth to history, and from it to everyday life, to the emancipation of private life”? Moses is a kind of titan, ancient and half-forgotten, but who gave life to the whole family. It is not for nothing that he is “OUR”, the only resident of the village, the only peasant (Kronos was originally revered as the god of agriculture). The only, apparently, pure-blooded Jew.
The first grandfather Isaac (son of Moses) is powerful like Hercules and voracious like Gargantua. Having drunk the shop and eaten the snack bar, Isaac is a carnival mask, a fair strongman, a living womb: “He folded pieces of bread in half. I drank vodka from a cream soda glass. During dessert, he asked not to remove the aspic...” “I’m only a Jew on my father’s side,” said my grandfather, “but on my mother’s side I’m Dutch!” He cuts loaves of bread not crosswise, but lengthwise, has lunch before going on a visit, single-handedly drags a gun through a swamp, replacing tired horses, overturns a truck across the street, breaks a cohort of American cots, barely perched on them. Grandfather Isaac came home from the war with the Cross of St. George. In addition, he was the only resident of Vladivostok who opposed the revolution. “The characters themselves bear the traits of epic heroes. And as expected in the epic genre, the grandfather had three sons.” “Donat was a coupletist. Mikhail gave an art reading. The older brothers were drawn to literature and art. The younger one, Leopold, followed a different, more reliable path from childhood. Leopold grew up as a swindler." Leopold, fled in his youth to Belgium. He turned out to be the Achilles heel of his Jewish-Dutch father - Isaac was shot as a Belgian spy. “Achilles is impossible in the age of gunpowder and lead,” said Marx.
The second grandfather, Stepan Dovlatov, is gloomy and strong, like a rock, with constancy. “My maternal grandfather had a very stern disposition. Even in the Caucasus he was considered a hot-tempered person. His wife and children trembled at his gaze. If something irritated my grandfather, he frowned and exclaimed in a low voice: “ABANAMAT!” This mysterious word literally paralyzed those around him. It inspired them with mystical horror. - ABANAMAT! - exclaimed the grandfather. And there was complete silence in the house. The mother never understood the meaning of this word. For a long time I also did not understand what this word meant. ... The whole family obeyed him unquestioningly. He is for no one. Including heavenly powers. One of my grandfather’s fights with God ended in a draw.” Even death only barely erased him from the face of the earth: “At home, his disappearance was not immediately noticed. Just as they would not immediately notice the disappearance of a poplar, a stone, a stream...” Moreover, Stepan does not die, but ceases to be, disappearing in the flow of a stormy stream at the bottom of a deep ravine.
Naturally, Sergei Dovlatov himself is reflected in each of his legendary ancestors. From one grandfather he inherited a complex relationship with the universe, from another - an appetite. “Today we are invited to the Dombrovskys,” the wife reminds the author. “You need to have lunch beforehand.”
Chapters three through eight focus on the second generation, the fathers. Namely: uncle, aunt and aunt's husband, mother and father. And all of them, with the exception, perhaps, of the already mentioned Uncle Leopold, are no longer immersed in myth, but in the world of Soviet history. They are no longer gods, but heroes. “Ours” of the second generation are intellectuals, service people, and people of art. It was in their generation that the narrative takes on those anecdotal and paradoxical forms, which we will talk about a little later. “The biography of my aunt’s husband Aron fully reflects the history of our state. Our beloved and terrible country... Then my uncle died. It's a pity...".
Dovlatov represents his generation in “Nashi” as his wife and cousin. According to A. Losev - faithful Penelope and cheerful Ulysses. True, the mythological archetype here is hidden deeply and is difficult to guess. The third generation of “Nashi” has a completely different attitude towards historical matters and disputes about Lenin-Stalin. The combination of unconscious acceptance of the surrounding reality as it is, and at the same time the same unconscious detachment from it - these are the main properties of the nature of Sergei Dovlatov’s cousin, who, with the same passion and inner indifference to the essence, first does the Komsomol and then the camp career.
It is on the image of the cousin in the story “Ours” that we will dwell in more detail, comparing it with the image of the same character in the writer’s “Notebooks”.
Brother's image.
Dovlatov's notebooks still remain orphans in articles about his stories and stories. They were and are considered a form of self-defense of the writer against accusations of an overdeveloped literary imagination. Even the names of people from his circle are replaced with initials in the publication of letters in order not to offend them. This cannot be done when publishing notebooks. Brodsky, Vera Panova, Andrei Bitov, Yuz Aleshkovsky and many others remain in them. As it becomes clear, all these people are not angels, and Dovlatov does not always find noble motives in their thoughts and actions. The laconicism of Dovlatov’s notebooks allowed him to capture the circumstances of the lives of many people and his own image. He hid almost nothing from his thoughts, actions and feelings. He attached great importance to the latter circumstance.
In our work we present excerpts from “Solo on Underwood” related to the person of the writer’s brother, Boris Dovlatov.
"NOTEBOOKS"
My cousin's father said:
- I am relatively calm about Borya only when he is kept in prison!

My brother asked me:
-Are you writing a novel?
“I’m writing,” I answered.
“And I’m writing,” said my brother, “let’s wave without looking?”

My brother and I woke up at his friend’s house. We drank a lot the night before.
The condition is terrifying.
I see that my brother got up and washed himself. Standing at the mirror, combing her hair.
I speak:
-Are you really feeling well?
- I feel terrible.
- But you're preening!
“I don’t preen,” my brother answered. - I'm not at all
I preen myself. I'm... mummifying myself.

My brother's wife said:
- Borya is in a terrible situation. Both of you are drunkards. But your situation is better. You
You can drink it all day. Three days. A week. Then you don't drink for a month. Are you working out?
business, you write. With Bori everything is different. He drinks every day, and besides, he has
he has binges.

It would seem that the reader should form a certain image. An unreliable comrade, a relative of the author of “ZK”, a former – and more than once – prisoner, a heavy drinker, but possessing, however, a sharp mind. In fact, this is only an outlined plan, a literary sketch, a certain outline, the limits of which cannot be violated in a given work. It is impossible, first of all, for the creator of the work. The brother’s portrait will sparkle with new colors and be complemented by bold strokes in one of the chapters of the story “Ours.” Directly for which it was intended.
"OUR"
In the story “Ours,” and specifically in chapter 9 “My Elder Brother,” Dovlatov’s slightly different brother is revealed to us. The chapter begins with the words: “Life turned my cousin into a criminal. I think he was lucky. Otherwise, he would inevitably become a major party functionary.” Boris Dovlatov was born “under rather mysterious circumstances.” He was the child of Sergei Dovlatov’s aunt and Kirov’s deputy, Alexander Ugarov. But Ugarov had a family. Therefore, as a sign of atonement, he ordered a miniature inlaid card table to be delivered to his mistress’s home. “Apparently requisitioned from class-alien elements.” That's where we parted ways. “Soon the happy dad was arrested as an enemy of the people.”
Boris grew up very handsome and talented. “He was an exemplary Soviet boy. Pioneer, excellent student, football player and scrap metal collector. I was younger, but worse. And he was invariably set as an example for me,” writes Dovlatov. But soon serious changes occurred in the life of this boy. Borya barely received a school certificate, losing his gold medal and good fame at once, because of an act that had been discussed for several months. Boris Dovlatov urinated on the school principal from the windowsill.
Next - with arithmetic progression. After graduating with honors from the theater institute, becoming a director and going to work at the Lenin Komsomol Theater, Boris committed twelve robberies at once. With his friend, they stole suitcases, radios, tape recorders, umbrellas, raincoats, hats and a spare tire from twelve foreign tourist buses. Boris Dovlatov was given three years.
“Information from the camp was quite optimistic: “Boris Dovlatov steadily follows all the instructions of the camp regime... He enjoys authority among the prisoners... He systematically exceeds his work assignments... He takes an active part in amateur artistic activities...”
Boris was appointed orderly. Then - foreman. Then - chairman of the council of foremen. And finally - the head of the bathhouse.
It was a meteoric career.”
After his release, Dovlatov’s older brother was hired through an acquaintance at Lenfilm, where he worked his way up from lighting designer to film director. It passed, as always, quickly and dizzyingly. “Directors, cameramen and the director of Lenfilm himself, Zvonarev, fell in love with him. Moreover, the cleaning ladies loved him...”
But soon - not immediately, but gradually - failures appeared in the promising path of correction. “My brother made a career and at the same time ruined it.” Binges, brawls, fights with waiters and, ultimately, manslaughter in a car accident followed. Boris ended up behind bars again.
For all his outwardly frank dissident lifestyle, Boris Dovlatov refused to join the party not out of ideological convictions, but out of personal views. “He was delicately recommended to become a party member. He hesitated. It seemed to him that he was unworthy. ... Sixteen old Lenfilm communists were ready to recommend him to the party. But the brother hesitated. … Is it possible to be a communist with a criminal record?”
The laws seem to prevent him from being decent and successful. Taking oneself out of moral and ethical balance is justified only by the fact that it would seem that this is the only true, most successful way for Boris Dovlatov not to “go cold”, not to suffocate, not to get bogged down in the swamp that swallowed up his contemporaries, moreover, his loved ones. And the name of this swamp is not only Soviet, but in general - the surrounding reality, life. This is what he told his cousin when he, in search of income, voluntarily “dirred his pen” by doing literary work: “Do something useful. Aren’t you ashamed?.. I just killed a man... And you?”
Another important detail of the portrait of Boris Dovlatov clearly emerges before us. He is an outcast. Precisely an outcast, and not some romantic “other”. This is a new kind of existentialist, a marginal man, maneuvering between a successful existence in social reality and sinking to the very bottom. “Finally, I caught the most important trait in my brother’s character. He was an unconscious spontaneous existentialist,” writes the author of “Nashi.”
After sequential reading, a complete literary portrait of the “hero” finally emerges before us, in the context of the ancient mythologization of “Nashi”. A certain Perseus of Soviet scale. A demigod lost among simple contemplatives of everyday life.
The famous Japanese researcher of Dovlatov’s work, Mitsuyoshi Numano, identified in his works 7 distinctive features of the poetics of the Russian writer. But among them we will not find one, but very important feature - absurdity. Dovlatov took the absurdity to unsurpassed, absolute heights. Sometimes it is subtle, and sometimes it is deliberately enhanced. The absurd and the norm, “a mixture of everyday life and madness” are closely intertwined; the absurdity is realized through a collision with the “normal” world. The absurd is not only an artistic technique, a way for an artist to comprehend the reality and people around him, but is also a reflection of the worldview of the writer himself. “After communists, I hate anti-communists most of all,” Dovlatov writes in ZK. But Dovlatov’s absurdity, with which each work is imbued (to a greater or lesser extent), forms not so much a semantic or moral field for determining the status of the heroes, but rather for indicating the role of life, society and the state in their formation. The absurdity of the 20th century forms an “existential vacuum” (V. Frankl), when the meaninglessness of life and the total loneliness of a person in a world that has lost traditions and values ​​are acutely felt. “Life is absurd simply because a German is closer to me than my own uncle,” writes Dovlatov in the chapter “Uncle Leopold.”
The distinction between “ours” and “not ours” is connected with absurdity. At first glance, it seems that these are absolutely impenetrable poles. “Ours” are so spiritually close and similar to each other that “not ours” tend to confuse certain members of the writer’s family.
“My brother stood out sharply against my dull background. He was sent on important business trips. Everyone predicted a brilliant administrative career for him. It was impossible to believe that he was in prison. Many of my not very close acquaintances thought that I was in prison...” or, in another place: “...It’s good that you look like your mother. I've seen her photos. You are very similar...
“They even often confuse us,” I said. "
However, the last phrases belong not to anyone, but to the Belgian uncle Leopold, who, as we already know, is no closer to the author of the book than the unfamiliar German, the owner of the hotel. We see that the boundary between the bipolar spaces of the artistic reality of the book is not so strict and distinct. As in life, at any border there are defectors to one side or another. Dovlatov himself turned out to be like this, forced to leave his homeland.
***
Genis A: “I think that in “Nashi” Sergei was looking for evidence of the genetic inevitability of his fate. Not dreaming of leaving it, he hoped to accept it not as possible, but as a matter of course. Previously, Dovlatov was interested in the origin of the writer, now - simply origin. “God "gave me exactly what I had been asking him for all my life. He made me an ordinary writer. Having become one, I was convinced that I aspired to more, but it was too late. They don’t ask God for more."