Patteringly, he slammed his fist on the table. - What about a children's writer? - That was not a good sign

“It” is one of the most voluminous and deep novels Stephen King. Making a good film adaptation of this book is not easy. Argentine director Andres Muschietti dealt with this by creating amazing picture about friendship, fear and hope. But even he had to sacrifice some of the book. Some scenes and storylines were not included in the film, and others turned into Easter eggs, which are a pleasure for a King connoisseur to catch.

The editors of MirF walked through the streets of Derry and even ventured into an abandoned house on Nable Street. We talk about the results of our expedition through the pages of the book and the new film.

Time and place of action

One day, on the streets of Derry, a provincial American town, children began to disappear - a monster awakened, hungry for children's fears. In the novel, before the reader’s eyes, two parallel plots develop at once: about adult heroes and their childhood memories, which drag them into an endlessly repeating nightmare.

Andres Muschietti moved away from the book format and divided the chapters of children and adults into two separate stories, of which only the first was included in the film. This weakened the connection between the past and the future, but the plot became less predictable.

Muschietti also moved the action forward 27 years - now it’s not adults who live in the 1980s, but teenagers. This also influenced the fears that haunt the heroes. The werewolves and mummies of 1950s films have been replaced by new horrors - clowns and headless children. Only half of the “losers” have their fears unchanged: Beverly Marsh, as before, is afraid of blood (as well as her own father), Eddie is afraid of diseases, and Bill Denbrough is lured into the sewer by his dead brother Georgie.

The bloody fountain in the bathroom is reminiscent of a scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

The guys take refuge in the Wasteland from the deadly tricks of Pennywise and the Henry Bowers gang. They perceive it as “their” territory, a safe refuge where nothing threatens them. It is thanks to this confidence that children win the “apocalyptic battle of the stones.” But in the film, the Kenduskeg River valley is an ordinary, unremarkable place. The on-screen characters have no attachment to him: at first, Bill even persuades his friends to go there in search of Georgie.

Forgotten Scenes

Even if we take only the line of children, the director missed several large-scale scenes. One of them is the murder of Eddie Corcoran. Eddie and his younger brother Dorsey suffered from domestic violence. One day, the father went completely crazy and killed Dorsey with a hammer, and Eddie, frightened, ran away from home. Unfortunately, in the Wasteland, he came across Pennywise: he took on the image of his dead brother, and then, turning into a swamp monster from the horror film “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” beheaded Eddie. This is not in the film - either the special effects were too expensive, or the director decided not to overload the film with another line with parental cruelty.

The scene with spontaneous turning of pages was replaced by frames switching on the projector - it turned out spectacular!

In the book, children learn the nature of It through the ancient Indian ritual “Chud”. Inhaling the smoke of smoldering grass, Mike and Richie see that Pennywise is an ancient monster who is fueled by childhood fears. This mystery is revealed when Bill enters the void between our universe and other dimensions, where It was born. During the ritual, Bill meets Maturin, the ancient turtle who created the world - from her he learns that Pennywise can only be defeated by the power of the mind.

In the film, the origin of the monster remains a mystery. As actor Bill Skarsgård said, a flashback about the 17th century was cut out of the final film, which described the backstory of Pennywise and his awakening after millennia of sleep. Perhaps it will be included in the sequel.

IN final battle Pennywise transforms - but in different ways. In the book, he turns into a huge spider with bulging red eyes, who is waiting for offspring. Moreover, this is only one of the incarnations of the clown, the closest to his metaphysical essence. Its true form is a collection of orange "dead" lights that live in the void between universes. In the film, he rushes about and takes the form of fear of one child, then another. A hint of the lights can only be seen at the end of the film, when Bev looks into the monster's mouth.

Finally, they did not show the most controversial scene of the novel - group sex"losers" with Beverly. In the book, after the final battle with Pennywise, the guys got lost in the labyrinths of the sewers. To restore spiritual unity and find a way out, the children perform this strange and shocking ritual. Of course, no one bothered to film such a scene. According to rumors, Cary Fukanaga, who was originally planned to direct It, was considering including some kind of analogue of it in the film - and was removed from the project.

Stephen King himself admits that he only thought about the emotional side of the transition from childhood to adult life and likened intimacy ancient initiation rites. However, most viewers breathed a sigh of relief when this outrage was never shown.

In the film, the "losers" swim together, stare at Bev, and later two of them kiss her, but otherwise everything is innocent

"Losers Club"

In the book, the “losers” always stuck together - this was the only way they could defeat the monster. In the film, their friendship is at some point under threat: after the first foray into an abandoned house, Richie Tozier demands to stop the hunt for the clown, to which Bill, angry, slaps his friend. Bookish Denbrough would never have done this: he understood how important it was to maintain peace in the team.

The characters of the other guys were also reviewed. Beverly's image at first coincides with the literary one: a bright, fighting girl who will give any guy a head start. But her relationship with her father is more complicated. In the book, she is afraid of him, but in her own way she loves him, just like he loves her. Because of this unhealthy love, Bev even marries his copy. In the film, Al Marsh is a real threat to his daughter, and it is because of him that she falls into the clutches of Pennywise. This couldn’t happen to bookish Beverly: she’s not afraid of the clown’s tricks and can stand up for herself.

Rumor has it that in Fukanaga's draft, his father's harassment of Bev was much more explicit.

The character that was cut the most was Mike Hanlon, the narrator and one of the key characters in the book. He shows the “losers” his father’s album with old photographs, which contains evidence of all the misfortunes that have befallen Derry since its founding. Then the children learn that Pennywise is not a person, but something more. In the film, this role went to Ben Hansom.

By the way, Ben is not only an avid reader, but also a talented engineer. In the book, he built a secret underground base for the "losers" and even made a silver bullet intended for Pennywise.

In the book, Mike's father is alive and plays an important role

Eddie is not the brightest “loser”, but he also has a couple of decent scenes. Particularly interesting is his meeting with a leper who treats the boy with a placebo - all this embodies Eddie's fears of disease. In the novel this scene is deeper. The stranger offers the boy intimate services, which reflects Eddie's fears of his awakening sexuality, which were nurtured by his mother. She not only limited physical development son, but also held back his emotional and sexual maturation.

To stop Tozier from saying anything too much, his friends would tell him, “Beep-Beep, Richie.” In the film, this phrase is heard only once, at a rather scary moment.

Villains

Henry Bowers's father in the book was always a scoundrel, and after being injured in the war, he completely went off the rails. He kept snapping at Henry or quarreling with Mike Hanlon's father, whose family he hated because of the color of his skin. On-screen Butch Bowers is also cruel to his son, but still keeps his emotions under control - it’s not for nothing that he works as a police officer. And you can’t call him a racist.

In the film, the Bowers gang doesn't live up to the scumbags in the book.

Apart from a couple of episodes, Henry's gang is much inferior to their book prototypes. In the novel, they, like predators, hunt down the guys, inventing new and ever new bullying. Most of their anger is directed at Mike: it comes to the point that they throw mud at the boy and kill his dog.

The craziest member of the gang is Patrick Hockstetter, a sadist and psychopath. As a child he strangled his younger brother, and when he got older, he began catching wounded animals and leaving them to die in an old refrigerator in a landfill. He himself died there: giant leeches sucked all the blood out of him, leaving wide bite holes all over his body.

It's a bit of a shame that in the film Patrick is just another victim of Pennywise.

Henry Bowers himself goes crazy when the clown in front of his eyes deals with the remnants of his gang. In the book, after emerging from the sewer, he confesses to the police that he killed his father; he is also found guilty of Pennywise's crimes. But in the film he fell into a well and, it seems, died. But in the sequel it is still possible to play out the book plot if Bowers survived the fall.

Links to the original

In the film adaptation, Muschietti removed or reworked a lot, but compensated for this with Easter eggs and references to the original. One of the most important is the turtle, which flashes here and there. In King's multiverse, the turtle Maturin is the creator of this world and the Guardian of the ray that supports Dark Tower. In the film, Bill noticed the Lego turtle in Georgie’s room, and then Ben saw the turtle in the water when the “losers” were relaxing at the quarry.

The novel devotes several chapters to the history of Derry. There are a couple of references to her in the film: the children talk about the fire at the Black Mark club and the explosion at the factory. And near butcher shop, where Mike faced his fear, there is graffiti reminiscent of the massacre of the George Bradley Gang that terrorized the city in the late 1920s.

The Bradley Gang massacre is one of Derry's many tragedies.

Another eerie moment in the city's history is recalled by a photo Ben saw in the Derry yearbook. There is a picture of a boy's head on a tree. Robert Dohai's head was blown off in an explosion at a metallurgical plant. A second before the explosion took his life, the boy was chewing candy - and his lips were stained with chocolate.

After the tragedy, Robert Dohai's head was found on a neighbor's apple tree.

Patrick Hockstetter saw red before he died balloon with the inscription "I Derry". This is a reference to the murder of homosexual Adrian Mellon at the city fair mentioned in the book. That day, his partner noticed a clown with a whole bunch of red holiday balloons with the same inscription. The analogy with Adrian Mellon hints that the book Patrick was partial to men. By the way, this story is based on the real murder of 23-year-old Charlie Howard in Bangor in 1984: then three teenagers beat the man and pushed him into a canal under a bridge.

Trying to cope with his stuttering, Bill repeats the tongue twister “He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!” Readers will remember that it was she who helped Bill win a mental victory over Pennywise in the final battle. King borrowed this tongue twister from the science fiction novel Donovan's Brain by Kurt Siodmak, where the hero also reads it to protect himself from a hostile hypnotic force.

Several shots show Bill's Silver bike. In the novel, he first saves Eddie's life and, 27 years later, Bill's wife.

The route along which Georgie pursued the paper vessel was also not accidental. Jackson Street and Witcham Street appear several times in the book. As did the orange construction fence, reminiscent of a sawhorse, that the boy hit.

Muschietti did not forget about the guys’ canonical fears. In the final battle, It, turning to Ben, momentarily takes the form of a mummy - Ben was afraid of it in the novel. And during his first visit to Nable Street, Pennywise's fingers briefly transform into werewolf claws. This is an obvious reference to Richie's fear of watching horror movies.

The werewolf Easter egg is so well hidden that finding it is doubly pleasant

By the way, there Richie comes across clowns, one of which is a copy of Tim Curry from the old film adaptation of “It”.

Dennis Jarvis | Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0

The statue of Paul Bunyan actually stands in the city of Bangor, one of the prototypes of Derry

And how many Easter eggs the costume designers hid! One of Eddie's T-shirts features a print of the supersonic Airwolf aircraft from the television series of the same name. On his other T-shirt you can see the car "Christina" from novel of the same name King. And Richie wears a T-shirt advertising Freese's, a popular Bangor department store.

But the most interesting T-shirt is Bill's. At first glance, it shows an incomprehensible logo on a green background. But if you look closely, you can make out that this is a sign of Tracker Brothers, a Derry shipping company. After 27 years, it is at their factory that the matured Eddie meets Pennywise upon his return to the city.

In the finale, Bev tells the guys that under the influence of Pennywise, she began to forget the events that happened. This foreshadows that the "losers" won't really remember each other until their next meeting with Pennywise. The order in which the guys leave the final scene is also interesting: Stan leaves first, followed by Eddie. This is the order in which the characters die in the book.

There's still hope for Bev and Bill - they're the last to go!

The first part of Andres Muschietti's film adaptation deviates greatly from the book, but the director so accurately captured the mood of the characters that all the inconsistencies fit harmoniously into the plot. And every Easter egg you notice makes your soul warm - and Pennywise is no longer so scary.

More than a poet...

Yevgeny YEVTUSHENKO: “Khrushchev barked: “The grave will correct the hunchback!” - and slammed his fist on the table at which we had just been drinking. Then I also slammed my fist on the table and said: “No, Nikita Sergeevich, it’s gone - and I hope forever! - the time when people were corrected by graves"

As for me, Evgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko was born not even in a shirt, but in a colorful concert shirt - sewn with his own hands, in addition.

“KHRUSHCHEV ADMITTED TO ME THAT SAVING THE CUBAN REVOLUTION IS THE BEST THING HE DID IN HIS POST”

“Well, yes,” he slammed his fist, I answered...

- ... just a minute. And you weren't scared?

- At that moment, no. I knew only one thing: I needed to protect my friend - God forbid he would be kicked out of Russia now.

Khrushchev began shouting: “If you, Mr. Neizvestny, don’t like our country, take your passport and get out.” The day before, they had already had a verbal altercation, during which both used the mighty Russian language to the fullest. They say - I was not present there - Unknown behaved very well, and Nikita Sergeevich, by the way, liked it.

Convinced that a reasonable consensus is always possible, I said: “Nikita Sergeevich, how can you raise your voice against a front-line soldier who fought in a penal battalion? Half of Neizvestny's back was torn out by fragments of German shells, he had 12 wounds. Let’s even say he’s wrong about something, but if he doesn’t succeed in something in art, tell him, correct him: he’ll understand and take it into account...” Khrushchev barked: “Ah-ah! Leopard change his spots!". He became filled with blood, turned purple and slammed his fist on the table at which we had just eaten and drank. There were microphones on the barbecue-stained tablecloth, and the echo picked up the sound. Then I also slammed my fist on the table and said: “No, Nikita Sergeevich, it’s gone, and I hope forever! - a time when people were corrected by graves.” To be honest, I wanted to read a poem...

- ...and then the cutting went like this...

— I still performed often and immediately realized that in terms of composition it was good ending, but... In general, he acted as he acted, and although he spoke quite sharply, he was polite...

- Well, yes: they gave the first secretary of the party’s Central Committee a fist bump - and that, you think, was polite...

- But I didn’t insult him, I called him by his first name and patronymic...

- Okay, you’re not listening, Nikita... By the way, what about your fellow writers?

- It was terrible! There were those who shouted, pointing at me: “And him there, and him too!”...

-Who exactly was screaming?

- Do not want to talk. One is louder than the others children's writer yelled - just don’t need to specify the last name...

- ...whose children are talented film directors...

- ...and he himself is talented. I loved his poems since childhood, I was brought up on them, but in the presence of those in power, he began to experience some kind of bearish illness. At that moment I looked at Khrushchev and suddenly saw that his eyes were full of contempt for these loudmouths. Suddenly he made a careless plowman movement: Sha!, turned half a turn to me, slowly raised his hands and clapped his hands three or four times right in front of my face. Applauded!..

- What about a children's writer?

“Instantly, getting his feet tangled in the velvet curtains that fenced off the presidium table, he crawled towards me. Almost falling, he grabbed my hand: “Zhenya, I congratulate you!”... Others rushed after... It was creepy to watch. The table stood in the shape of a T: where the crossbar was, the Politburo sat, and my place was at the base. After some time, Khrushchev’s assistant Lebedev whispered to me: “Evgeny Alexandrovich, Nikita Sergeevich will come up to you.”

Then, however, the leader passed by, but two days later he called me from Yugoslavia: he said that he was negotiating with Tito and kept remembering one word that I said. In fact, in general, I didn’t call him names, but one awkward word did slip out of my mouth...

- Which?

- "Idiot". Of course, I didn’t say that about him - I just couldn’t do it...

- How much, Evgeny Alexandrovich, did you have to drink to...

-...no, no, I didn’t drink anything there. Or drank - I don’t remember, but I used this word in a completely different context. You see, I got so nervous that I told Khrushchev: “There are very bad paintings at the exhibition, your portraits - why don’t you pay attention to them? You are there either with the collective farmers or with the workers - these helpful artists portray you, Nikita Sergeevich, forgive me, as an idiot.”

- What a nightmare!

- But I didn’t claim that he was an idiot, although the word, unfortunately, was uttered...

- ...and Khrushchev, poor thing, thought about it...

“To this day I really regret my ardor, but then he called and said reproachfully: “Why are you just me...”.” I wanted to justify myself: “Nikita...”, but then the all-powerful leader did not let me finish: “Well, well, you’ll repeat it again on the phone.” There was something sweet about it, you know... He sighed: “Okay,” and immediately switched to you. "On New Year will you come? - asks. "Where?". - “How to where? To the Kremlin. Come, let's meet together. I’ll come to you, otherwise they’ll eat you.” I somehow felt why he didn’t do this at the meeting - I was very offended and upset.

- Anyone would be offended...

- Well, what to do if there was such fervor on all sides?

I came to the Kremlin for the holiday, although I was not in a very good mood... Just the day before they announced that I would not be allowed to go to Germany, but they were already waiting there, a performance was announced. I was about to leave, and then Lebedev, Khrushchev’s assistant, who at one time helped publish the poem “Stalin’s Heirs”, runs up to me again... “Stay, Nikita Sergeevich will come to you,” he said and became stern. “Just stand up, Evgeny Alexandrovich, respect him... The man is still older than you.” I was surprised: “What do you think of me, though?” - “Come on, we can expect everything from you”...

As a result, Khrushchev came up, but before that, at about four in the morning, he gave a phenomenal speech. In fact, they drank a lot: Nikita Sergeevich was animated, arguing with someone. And then the Swedish ambassador Sulman stood up - the elder of the diplomatic corps, the doyen. He worked in Russia for many years, so in good Russian, although with an accent, he made a toast: he thanked him for the invitation to the Kremlin, expressed his wishes to the Soviet people.

By the way, the Swede dropped the phrase: “I respect you very much, Nikita Sergeevich, for your contribution to the cause of peace, although you are far from communist ideology...”, and suddenly Khrushchev cut him off. “Come on,” Mr. Sulman said. We’ve known each other for so long: how can you live so long in the Soviet Union and not be imbued with the best, most attractive ideology - communist? What ideas does capitalism have? Money and money - but we have ideals."

- Did he say this sincerely?

- Without any doubt. Khrushchev was the last romantic, that's why he fell in love with Castro. He really liked the young, energetic Cuban leader, who made the revolution not with our money, and when Fidel was in danger, Nikita Sergeevich decided to help him. For this purpose, an operation was carried out with missiles secretly delivered to Cuba when the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out.

In truth, it never occurred to Khrushchev to attack the United States. Being already retired, Nikita Sergeevich told me that saving the Cuban revolution was the best thing he did in his post. The hope was that the Americans would get scared and pledge not to touch the freedom-loving island. (By the way, such historical document exists, although it has not yet been made public in America. To admit the existence of such a piece of paper meant losing face for the United States).

“MARSHAL BUDENNY RAISED A Toast TO THE RED CAVALRY, WHICH DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE AMERICAN NUCLEAR THREAT”

“The Swede began to flutter: “In general, I’m not a communist, of course...” and so on, but then they announced that the floor was being given to the oldest member of the party. An old Bolshevik with gray hair came out and with tears in his eyes began to speak...

- ...how did you carry the log with Lenin?

— (Smiles). He spoke, of course, a little funny, but from the heart... Nikita Sergeevich even cried, and then stood up and made an unforgettable speech... It was already after four in the morning... “Look,” he turned to the audience, “what people have done our revolution, as they believed! Of course, it’s easier for the Americans - they have so many different parties, but here the whole country rests on the shoulders of one. This means that the people in it must be selected, with a clear conscience. Our party is very large - and this is both its strength and weakness. You look around: how many careerists got into it... They hired so many of them that sometimes you don’t know what to do.

Sometimes,” he continued, “I don’t sleep at night and think, think, think: how can I get out of this situation? Organize another purge? But everyone knows well what this will lead to... Again everything will roll like a snowball down a mountain: the innocent will suffer, and the culprits will escape. You know, one thought came to me here. We need, we need... - Khrushchev did not immediately find the word - declare our entire people a communist people and abolish the party. Then there won’t be a problem.”

— This wasn’t a meeting in ’64 by any chance?

- Absolutely right.

- Then it’s clear why Khrushchev was removed that year...

— (Joyfully). You got it all! There were few journalists there, especially with microphones, and in the morning there were almost none left, but then people with military bearing and tenacious eyes began to walk around the hall, and two or three people had their microphones snatched out of their hands before my eyes. They apparently understood: it is impossible for this sedition to go beyond the Kremlin walls.

Well, then Nikita Sergeevich fulfilled everything he promised me.

- Did you come up?

— Not just like that, but after singing the song “Do the Russians Want War,” which he loved very much. He greeted my wife warmly and was generally genuinely welcoming. He kept whispering: “Well, let’s go, let’s go side by side. You better stay close somehow, otherwise they’ll trample you and just spit out your buttons.”

- You see how supported!

“And this despite the tactless word that came out of my mouth.”

As soon as Khrushchev left, Brezhnev immediately appeared, and I talked to him for the first time. He told me: “But I, Evgeny Alexandrovich, are kept here only because I, the only member of the Politburo, can waltz dance with the Snow Maiden”...

Whatever you say, Nikita Sergeevich was a living person, not dead, and although he did a lot of stupid things, there was enough good in him... For example, I forgive him a lot for the fact that, having gone against the Politburo, he released hundreds of thousands of prisoners from camps.

— Oddly enough, many fighters of the old Bolshevik guard saw in you a kindred spirit, felt almost paternal feelings for you... If I’m not mistaken, one day even the legendary Marshal Budyonny decided to support you...

- Oh, this story is funny too. Just then I graduated from the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, was in disgrace, and three months ago I was not allowed to go on stage at that ill-fated evening with the cosmonauts. On May 9, on Victory Day, I was invited to speak at the WTO, where they invited two marshals - Rotmistrov and Budyonny, as well as my enemy - General Vostokov. At one time, this warrior tried to ban the song “Do the Russians Want War” - under the pretext that it demoralized the morale of the army. Only thanks to the intervention of our poor, long-suffering, nervous, capricious, willful, but still also humane Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva, nothing worked out for him. In front of me, she called the manager Soviet television Lapin and said: “I am still a member of the Politburo and the Minister of Culture! Comrade Yevtushenko is visiting me now, we’re making tea with him, so that this song is on the air for 15 minutes - I’m listening.” Performed by Mark Bernes, it sounded like a bolt from the blue.

Dima, you won’t believe this: Combat Marshal Budyonny came to my speech with... a saber.

— Was that a bad sign?

- No, but imagine: a man is sitting in the first row, with his hands on his saber and his mustache fluffed... Seeing me on the stage, General Vostokov twitched - can you imagine how he hated me? — but he restrained himself and did not demand that the performance be banned. Apparently, after the fiasco with the song, he didn’t dare.

I read a chapter from the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station and was so afraid that something terrible would happen, like Budyonny would stand up and say: “Shame!” or something like that. All the newspapers would have trumpeted this under the headline “Marshals are outraged by the act of the poet Yevtushenko,” but, reading the “ABC of the Revolution” about Civil War, I calmed down - I saw that Semyon Mikhailovich flashed a stingy man’s tear...

- ...and rolled into a mustache...

“Then there was a small banquet to which participants and honored guests were invited - Budyonny, Rotmistrov, and Vostokov. Until then, I had never seen cognac drunk in glasses, but Semyon Mikhailovich drained five glasses in full gulps. His physical strength shocked me!

- He was already old?

- Well, of course. Then the legendary marshal made a big philosophical toast about the coming war. To get started, I asked everyone a question: what branch of the military will become the most important after the Third World War? “Imagine,” he said, “everything is destroyed, creepy picture... Who will walk through the ruins? Rotmistrov said in a deep voice: “It’s clear who - armored forces" Vostokov also raised his voice: “I still think, Semyon Mikhailovich, that decisive role rocket units will play"...

Budyonny hit the floor with his sword: “The missile launchers will be destroyed, no one will survive - only the red horsemen will remain. The red cavalry will march through the ruins, so why not drink, comrades, to our cavalry, which does not care about the American nuclear threat.”

- “Hello, horse, I’m Budyonny”...

- Amazing, right? Then he looked at those present with a victorious glance and raised a glass to me and my poem: they say, we still have guys who sometimes get beaten, but they stand, like we once did, fighting the White Poles. There was, damn it, something childishly touching about it, and, of course, up close a lot of things are seen differently from what they later write in books and historical studies.

Naturally, I am grateful to Semyon Mikhailovich, and how could it be otherwise - he protected me. Surely one of the guests of the evening should have written somewhere that the marshal Soviet Union supported Yevtushenko and raised a toast to him, but either he didn’t dare, or he was very drunk, or the people at the top didn’t attach any importance to this.

“I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT BRODSKY. A BROKEN MAN... GOD IS HIS JUDGE!”

You are Evgeniy, I am Evgeniy,
You are not a genius, I am not a genius.
You're shit and I'm shit
You recently - I've been for a long time...

— (Dry). There is no need to voice this - I didn’t write it.

- Okay, but what was the envy expressed in?

- Well, I wouldn’t generalize - not everyone felt this black feeling towards me. There were people, especially poets of the front generation, who helped and very much... I include Simonov (Konstantin Mikhailovich supported me all the time), Lukonin, Gudzenko, Mezhirov... Alexander Petrovich is already over 80, but when I have no one to read poems, I call him wherever I am...

- Yes, and now lives in New York. He recently published a wonderful book, “Artillery Strikes Its Own,” after the title of the poem for which I was once expelled from the Literary Institute.

— What’s interesting is that in the States, where last years you are firmly established, for a long time lived such classics of Russian literature as Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky. Did you correspond and communicate? you had mutual love or, conversely, mutual hatred?

“I don’t want to talk about Brodsky - I didn’t know him personally, but I did everything I could for him, I even wrote a letter in his defense. At that time I was in Italy, so I asked my friends from the Italian Communist Party: Renato Guttuso and others to support me. Soviet Ambassador Semyon Pavlovich Kozyrev reported to Moscow that the Italian communists were asking to reduce Brodsky’s sentence, because too harsh a sentence would only benefit the enemies of the USSR.

— Brodsky didn’t appreciate your intercession?

“I repeat, I don’t want to discuss this topic.” God is his judge, because he didn’t even appreciate the act of the woman who made his name known to the whole planet by transcribing his trial - not a single kind words Brodsky did not mention Frida Vigdorova. He was such a broken man! Brodsky is a very talented poet, and I love his poems, especially those written before leaving Russia, and included them in the anthology, but he belonged to that peculiar type of people who, when someone helps them, feel humiliated and respond to kindness with hostility. Unfortunately, his offensive statements about me are reprinted, and circles from them are still spreading.

— Solzhenitsyn is also a complex person?

- We are all complex - but am I simple? I also spoke out in defense of Alexander Isaevich many times and consider him a literary and historical figure of enormous scale. My use of the word “historical” does not mean that I do not consider Solzhenitsyn simply a talented writer. He has works that are very interesting in language, but he does not know how to write about love at all, he is completely deprived of this, since he is always in a struggle and constantly gets involved in it... Solzhenitsyn never wrote his Natasha Rostova at the first ball, although, like Tolstoy, he is also immortal.

— Is it true that Brezhnev loved your poems and even quoted them from memory?

— I actually only talked in detail with Leonid Ilyich once - on the phone. If I saw him at some events, it was mainly when he passed by, but Klavdia Shulzhenko told me that one day, in front of her eyes, Erich Honecker began to pester him. “What is this Yevtushenko,” he asked, “when asked about the future of Germany, he answers that Berlin Wall will he fall?...

Before this, Walter Ulbricht complained about me to Khrushchev in the same way: “Yevtushenko is undermining the work of our party, harming the communist ideology”... Nikita Sergeevich answered him very witty - he himself told me about this later. “Comrade Ulbricht,” he spread his hands, “well, what do you think I should do with him? Exile to Siberia? So he was born there. Don’t pay attention - what’s the demand for a poet?” That’s what I told him, can you imagine!

Ulbricht then agreed, and Honecker was simply furious. “Comrade Brezhnev,” he said, “again Yevtushenko is itching for this: all the time he repeats that Germany must be free and reunite, that there will be no wall. He instills seditious thoughts in the GDR youth.”

To this Brezhnev replied: “Comrade Honecker, he is not a politician, but only a poet. Let me read his lyrical poems to you.” Right off the bat, almost without missing a beat, Brezhnev recited “Darling, sleep,” and then asked Shulzhenko to sing my song. The leader of the GDR fell silent. He didn’t express delight, but apparently resigned himself...

“LATELY I HAVE BEEN GETTING A LYRICAL FLOW AGAIN”

— Once upon a time, I actually composed “Don’t Rush” on a dare in 15 minutes, although I spent several hours poring over the very first song. I celebrated my 22nd birthday (how long ago this happened, I won’t say anything) when he called me famous composer Eduard Kolmanovsky. Later we wrote with him “Do the Russians Want War” and many other songs, and then we didn’t even know each other. “Zhenya,” said Edik, “I know your poems well, I’ve heard a lot about your wartime childhood at the Zima station, about how you sang ditties with the Siberian soldiers waiting for their husbands from the war, and with widows, so I want to offer you one melody “Very folk, Russian.”

I came to him, and he played a melody that immediately fell on my heart. “How long does it take you to write poetry?” - asked Kolmanovsky. “Let me sit with you for a little while, and everything will be ready”... He accepted the poems immediately, and new song went very well. Later it was performed by the young and then unknown seamstress Lyuda Zykina (she became one of the most famous in Lyudmila Georgievna’s repertoire)...

About three months after the song was first heard on the radio, I found myself in a wonderful northern village, where they spoke the old “okay” dialect. When I was walking down the street, a woman with empty buckets crossed my path and said: “Wait, son! I’ll fill the buckets now and then cross the road one more time, otherwise you won’t have a road in your life.” I fulfilled her request, and who knows, maybe that's why mine life path- even though in bumps, ruts, potholes and dangerous holes, where I constantly fell through, it still took shape.

There, on the banks of a small river flowing into the White Sea, women washed and beat clothes in the old-fashioned way with wooden sticks on stones and sang something familiar. I couldn’t believe my ears - they were saying: “Oh, I have quite enough gentlemen...”. Poised proudly, I approached. “Tell me, please,” he asked, hoping to hear his last name, “who is the author?” - “So this is ours, village, folk...” was the answer. At first I was offended, but then I realized that this was the highest compliment, an assessment, more important than all Nobel Prizes. (Sings):

The river runs, melts in the fog,
She runs, teasing me.
Ah, I have enough gentlemen,
but I have no good love!

I dance foxtrots and waltzes,
I sing in a circle by the fence.
I don't want anyone to guess
that I have no good love.
There is a birch tree at the edge of the forest,
sad alone at the end of the day.
I'll tell the birch tree as a friend,
that I have no good love.

All the boys are sleeping, and the girls are sleeping.
There is no fire in the village anymore.
Oh, it's probably my fault,
that I have no good love!

— People received your early love lyrics with a bang, which cannot be said about the critics. Angrily branding you, they even dubbed you the singer of dirty sheets...

- Lord, against the backdrop of what is being published now, these poems are like a sermon on chastity.

— Having celebrated your 73rd birthday, you returned to love lyrics. Are you experiencing a second youth?

- Yes, in Lately I suddenly had a lyrical current again. Of course, the poems have become different, not the same as 40 years ago, but I myself have become different...

Verb., St., used. compare often Morphology: I knock, you knock, he/she/it knocks, we knock, you knock, they knock, knock, knock, knocked, knocked, knocked, knocked, knocked, knocked, knocked 1. see nsv ... Dictionary Dmitrieva

knock- well, no; St. 1. in what, about what, for what. To strike (usually with a thud). S. fist on the table. S. stick. S. hand in hand. S. heels. 2. who what. Strike someone or something. S. head on the ledge. S. with a hammer on the finger. S. offender. Lightly...... encyclopedic Dictionary

knock- well, no; St. see also knock, knock, knock, knock 1) on something, about something, on something Hit (usually with a knock) Knock/knock on the table with your fist ... Dictionary of many expressions

knock- well, no; owls (nesov. knock). 1. in what, about what, for what. To strike (usually with a thud). Hit your fist on the table. □ The king hit the ground with his stick. Lermontov, Song about the merchant Kalashnikov. [Porfiry Petrovich] even lightly tapped his palm on... ... Small academic dictionary

Salavatneftemash- OJSC "Salavatneftemash" Type Open joint stock... Wikipedia

CRACK- CRACK, crack, crack, absolutely. 1. without additional To burst, break, making a cracking sound. The flask is cracked. 2. without additional To split, to form a crack on its surface. The skin is cracked from the frost. The cabinet is cracked. 3. transfer Sovereign to crackle in 2 digits. (colloquial... ... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

KNOCK- KNOCK, oh, oh; imperfect (colloquial). Same as knocking (in 1 and 2 digits). S. hammer. S. fist on the table. The heart is beating. | one-time knock, well, nope. | noun knocking, me, cf. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

fuck- well, no; St. 1. only 3 l. Razg. Make a strong, sharp sound (when falling, shooting, explosion) Fucked by an explosion. Thunder fucked deafeningly. 2. (whom what). Razg. Hit hard, knock, break. T. on the head. T. punches the table. T. plate, decanter... encyclopedic Dictionary

crack- well, no; cracked; St. 1. only 3 l. To form, to crack (cracks), splitting, breaking, tearing. The glass cracked. The wallpaper is cracked. The skin on my lips is cracked. The seams have cracked (created a rip, a hole). 2. Make a cracking sound. A branch cracked... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

fuck- well, no; St. see also fuck 1) only 3 l.; decomposition Make a strong, sharp sound (when falling, shooting, explosion) Fucked by an explosion. Thunder fucked deafeningly. 2) whom what colloquial. Hit hard, knock, break. Tr... Dictionary of many expressions

crack- well, no; cracked; St. see also crack 1) only 3 l. To form, to crack (cracks), splitting, breaking, tearing. The glass cracked. The wallpaper is cracked. The skin on my lips is cracked. The seams have cracked (formed... Dictionary of many expressions