Mina Polyanskaya (USSR, Germany) - a novel with history. Publications in the Berlin cultural and political magazine “Mirror of Riddles”

Mina Iosifovna Polyanskaya(b., Riscani, Moldavian SSR) - Russian writer and literary critic.

Biography

Mina Iosifovna Polyanskaya was born in the village of Ryshkany, where her parents returned from evacuation shortly before her birth. Mother - Sima Ikhilevna (née Lerner), studied at a religious Jewish school in Bucharest, father, Joseph Yankelevich Polyansky - at a Romanian gymnasium. That same year, the family moved to Chernivtsi. In 1952, Joseph Polyanskoy was arrested following a denunciation for listening to “foreign voices” on the radio, but was soon released with an offer to leave the city. In the same year, he and his family (three children) went to Balti, where he died in January 1953. Mina Polyanskaya graduated from eleven-year school No. 16 in Balti and left for Leningrad.

Mina Polyanskaya is a graduate of the philological faculty of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Herzen in the late 60s, after which she studied at special courses “Literary Petersburg-Leningrad” with a specialization “Pushkin in St. Petersburg” and with seminars conducted by Pushkin scholar Vadim Erazmovich Vatsura and received a diploma with the entry “Pushkin in St. Petersburg”. She worked as a full-time guide in the literary section of the Leningrad city excursion bureau. This organization, which ceased to exist at the beginning of perestroika, carried out scientific work. From its depths came many wonderful books about writers and artists who lived in St. Petersburg and its suburbs. Mina Polyanskaya taught 16 literary topics, among them all Pushkin: “Pushkin’s House”, “Pushkin in St. Petersburg”, “Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo (Kitaeva’s dacha, Pushkin’s Lyceum), “Pushkin Mountains” (Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye and Svyatogorsk Monastery, near the walls which the poet is buried). Mina Polyanskaya’s life route since 1990: St. Petersburg - Jerusalem - Berlin - Ulm.

In 1995, in Berlin, Mina Polyanskaya (with her husband Boris Antipov and son Igor Polyansky, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Mirror of Mysteries”) created the cultural and political magazine “Mirror of Mysteries”. She participated in cultural exchanges with the German side, in particular, in the collection of the Senate of the Federal State of Berlin “Das russische Berlin” (“Russian Berlin”, 2002).

The ZZ magazine existed for eight years, from 1995 to 2003. Lev Anninsky, Alexander Kushner, Lazar Lazarev, Alexander Melikhov, Mikhail Piotrovsky, Boris Khazanov, Efim Etkind, Vladimir Marantsman and many other remarkable literary and cultural figures were published in ZZ. Constant collaboration with Friedrich Gorenstein, who lived in Berlin since 1980, did not stop until the very last days of the writer’s life (died March 2, 2002).”

Mina Polyanskaya is a member of the German Pushkin Society and the German branch of the international PEN club. Member of the Union of Russian Writers and the Union of Writers of the XXI Century.

Bibliography

“One Breath with Leningrad...” Lenizdat, 1988 (essays about Alexei Tolstoy, Chapygin and Shishkov) ISBN 5-289-00393-2
Classic wine. Philological exercises, St. Petersburg, ArSIS, 1994 (together with I. Polyansky) ISBN 5-85789-012-8
Muses of the city. Berlin, Support Edition, 2000 ISBN 3-927869-13-9
“My secret marriage...” Marina Tsvetaeva in Berlin. Moscow, Veche, 2001 ISBN 5-7838-1028-2
"I am an illegal writer." Notes and reflections on the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein. New York, Slovo-Word, 2004 ISBN 1-930308-73-6
Kilimanjaro Syndrome (novel). St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2008 ISBN 978-5-91419-069-6
Mary Shelley's Locket (novel). St. Petersburg, Aletheia, 2008 ISBN 978-5-91419-069-6
Florentine nights in Berlin. Tsvetaeva, summer 1922. Moscow, Golos-press, Helikon, Berlin, 2009 ISBN 978-5-7117-0547-5
White Knight Foxtrot. Andrey Bely in Berlin. St. Petersburg, Demeter, 2009 ISBN 978-5-94459-023-7
Berlin notes about Friedrich Gorenstein. St. Petersburg, Demeter, 2011 ISBN 978-5-94459-030-5
Reserved cards and countermarks. Notes about Friedrich Gorenstein. St. Petersburg, Janus, 2006 ISBN 5-9276-0061-1
The Mirror of Horace Walpole. (novel). Berlin, 2015. ISBN 978-3-926652-99-9

Publications in the Berlin cultural and political magazine “Mirror of Riddles”

ISSN 0949 - 2089

(chief editor Igor Polyansky, literary editor Mina Polyanskaya, editor Boris Antipov):

Mina Polyanskaya . In the footsteps of the heroes of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Novella "The Bride's Choice". The location is Berlin. Mirror of Mysteries. Berlin, 1995, No. 1 p.23-31.

Mina Polyanskaya. Nabokov in Berlin. Novel "Other Shores". Mirror of Riddles, 1995 No. 2, p. 27-34.

Mina Polyanskaya. Berlin Art House. Mirror of Riddles, 1996, No. 3. p.29-32.

Mina Polyanskaya. “...I am guilty before Berlin” (on the 175th anniversary of the birth of F. M. Dostoevsky). Mirror of Riddles", 1996, No. 4, pp. 26-33. Mina Polyanskaya, Tatyana Chernova. The history of one memorial plaque (Marina Tsvetaeva). Mirror of Riddles, 1997, No. 6, pp. 33-36.

Mina Polyanskaya, Matthias Schwartz. “Words, words, words...”, Berlin I. S. Turgeneva. 1998, No. 7, pp. 20 - 26.

Mina Polyanskaya. “Passing people slandered him...” The Stingy Knight” and “The History of the Village of Goryukhin” by A. S. Pushkin. Mirror of Riddles, 1999, No. 8, pp. 44-48.

Mina Polyanskaya. New reference book: Contemporary Russian writers in Germany. Mirror of Mysteries. 2000, no. 9. pp. 59 - 60.

MinaPolyanskaya. Alexei Tolstoy in Berlin. Mirror of Riddles, 2002, No. 10. P. 40-46. Mina Polyanskaya. "Others and Dovlatov." http://www.peremeny.ru/blog/19997

PUBLICATIONS IN MAGAZINES AND ALMANACS

Mirror of Mysteries (from 1995 to 2003)
Our Voice; Unsere stimme
Word\Word
"Das russische Berlin". Published by the Berlin Senate.
Person PLUS
Literature questions
Zinziver
Children of Ra
Private Correspondent
Changes.

Literary awards

Nominee for the 2009 Bunin Prize for the book “Foxtrot of the White Knight. Andrey Bely in Berlin" (longlist, in alphabetical order No. 37).
Winner of the 8th International Voloshin Competition for 2010 in the nomination established by the magazine “Questions of Literature”, “Faces of Russian Literature” (essays about Berkovsky: “We need a red Pinkerton” and “Death of a Hero”).
Winner of the 9th International Voloshin Competition for 2011 in the category “Newest Anthology” (essay “The Price of Detachment.” Based on the pages of Friedrich Gorenstein’s novel “Place”).
Winner of the Competition named after. Korolenko, established by the Union of St. Petersburg Writers, 2012, for the story “St. Andrew’s Tape.”
Diploma of the winner of the “Author of the Year” competition of the network portal “Notes on Jewish History.” 01/15/2014.

Links

E. O'Morphy - Mina Polyanskaya. Muses of the city. Znamia, 2001, No. 5. http://magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2001/5/rec_mor.html

Arkady Moshchinsky. About Mina Polyanskaya’s book “I am an illegal writer...” Notes and reflections on the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein. Word / Word, 2005, No. 45. http://magazines.russ.ru/slovo/2005/45/mo12.html

Vladimir Guga. The mystery of Friedrich Gorenstein "bad man". Review of Mina Polyanskaya’s book “Berlin Notes on Friedrich Gorenstein” Literary Russia, No. 08. 02.25.2011 http://litrossia.ru/2011/08/05997.html

Mark Leikin. The last lyrical note. (Mina Polyanskaya. “I am an illegal writer...” About the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein.” Slovo/Word, New York, 2003)

Roman Shin. The mystery of Professor Klemperer. (About the magazine “Mirror of Mysteries” No. 8, 1999) Europe Center, No. 7, 04/22/99.

Igor Achildiev. “And from the first words I fall in love and slowly...” (Notes about the sixth book of the magazine “Mirror of Riddles.” “Aleph-Bet” No. 103. September 1997).

Wolfgang Schlott. Mina Pojanskaja: Plackarty i kontramarki. Zapiski o Fridriche Gorenstejne.St. Petersburg: Janus 2006. 286 S., 15 Illustrationen und Fotografien. Osteurope 11/2007.

Lanin B. A.: Problems of modern education No. 6, 2013 http://pmedu.ru/res/2013_6_17.pdf

Interview by Vladimir Guga with Mina Polyanskaya: “The Jewish nose” is not an anatomical phenomenon, but a completely “cultural product.” Private correspondent (04/24/2012). http://www.chaskor.ru/article/polyanskaya_mesto_27800

Mina Polyanskaya, Vladimir Guga. Essay-interview “Lunch of silence or the “brand” of Friedrich Gorenstein.” Magazine "Ural" No. 3, 2013. http://magazines.russ.ru/ural/2013/3/g15.html

RUSSIAN WRITERS UNTER DEN LINDEN. Interview cycle. Mina Polyanskaya answers questions from Vladimir Guga. Part one. Fyodor Tyutchev: Privy Councilor and Secret Poet. Blog of Changes. May 30th, 2012. http://www.peremeny.ru/blog/11850

Footnotes

Mina Polyanskaya. Around the Berlin memorial plaque of Marina Tsvetaeva Magazine “Seven Arts”, 2013, No. 8.

Mina Polyanskaya The inevitability of the Koktebel meeting. Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron. Change blog, November 19 http://www.peremeny.ru/blog/17506
Mina Polyanskaya. Need a red Pinkerton. .Death of a hero. Strokes to the portrait of Naum Yakovlevich Berkovsky (essays - winners of the 8th international Voloshin competition 2010) Questions of literature, 2011 N1.http://magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2011/1/po19.html Voloshin competition. Faces of modern literature.http://www.voloshin-fest.ru/publ/voloshinskij_konkurs_2010/lica_sovremennoj_literatury/86-1-10

Mina Polyanskaya. The price of renegade. Through the pages of Friedrich Gorenstein’s novel “Place” (essay - laureate of the International Voloshin Symposium 2011) Zinziver, 2012, No. 2 (34) http://magazines.russ.ru/zin/2012/2/m15.html

Mina Polyanskaya. Fifty centuries without loneliness ☀http://7iskusstv.com/2012/Nomer6/MPoljanskaja1.php?fb_action_ids=539930789353725&fb_action_types=og.likes

Mina Polyanskaya. Underground Master Zucker. “Word\Word”, 2007, No. 54 http://magazines.russ.ru/slovo/2007/54/po14.html

Mina Polyanskaya. Friedrich Gorenstein in Moscow. Electronic literary newspaper “Foreign backyards”, 3-1 http://za-za.net/old-index.php?menu=authors&&country=ger&&author=poljanskaja&&werk=005

Mina Polyanskaya. Memoir reflections about Efim Etkind. “Persona Plus” 4, 2010 http://persona-plus.net/nomer.php?id=2722 ,

Mina Polyanskaya on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Friedrich Gorenstein on March 18, 2012. From memories of Friedrich Gorenshtein Private correspondent, March 18, 2012 http://www.chaskor.ru/article/iz_vospominanij_o_fridrihe_gorenshtejne_27265

Mina Polyanskaya. From memories of Friedrich Gorenstein (Full version) “Changes”, March 18, 2012. http://www.peremeny.ru/blog/11097 About Nabokov’s and Tsvetaev’s places in Berlin. Interview of Vladimir Guga with Mina Polyanskaya. Private correspondent. 27, O4. 2012. http://club.berkovich-zametki.com/?p=3545&cpage=1

Mina Polyanskaya. Spilled ink. Friedrich Gorenstein.http://7iskusstv.com/2013/Nomer12/MPoljanskaja1.php Tsvetaeva’s Berlin time. Mina Polyanskaya. Florentine nights in Berlin. Tsvetaeva, summer 1922. M., Golos-Press, 2009. – 208 pp.: ill.) Literary newspaper, No. 21, 2010.

Mina Polyanskaya. 77 days of Marina Tsvetaeva in Berlin. G. Seven arts. No. 1, January, 2014. http://7iskusstv.com/Avtory/MPoljanskaja.php

Mina Polyanskaya. Fyodor Tyutchev: “What is the latest political news?” Seven Arts, No. 1 (59), January 2015 http://7iskusstv.com/2015/Nomer1/MPoljanskaja1.php

Mina Polyanskaya. The strange case of Andrei Bely Notre Dame Cathedral of Lausanne. Mnemozina No. 3, 2015. http://www.mnemozina.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/polyanskaya-sobor.pdf

Mina Polyanskaya. Blog of Changes.Ru. - "Gloomy river at Anichkov Bridge." http://www.peremeny.ru/blog/18732

Mina Polyanskaya. Ivan Turgenev. The University of Berlin is the kingdom of thought. Mnemozina, No. 3 (2015)http://www.mnemozina.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/polyanskaya-turgenev.pdf

Polyanskaya Mina

“I am an illegal writer” (Notes and reflections on the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein)

Mina Polyanskaya

"I am an illegal writer..."

Notes and reflections on the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein

Part I. Pages of life

2. Drawn photographs

3. On the verge of great expectations

4. Kremlin stars

5. The price of dissidence

6. Moscow - Oxford - Berdichev

7. Berlin realities

8. In the Mirror of Riddles

9. "An Extraordinary Romance"

10. About the Russian Booker and other honors

11. "Gorenstein's Onion"

12. City of dreams and deceit

Eighty thousand miles around Gorenstein

13. Permanent residence

15. Funny sadness

16. Great-niece of Khrushchev

17. About literary provocations

18. "Dump site - Babi Yar"

19. Around the "Rope Book"

20. Digression on literary opinions,

disputes about Dostoevsky and my dream.

21. Cock crow

22. Solaris

Application

Several letters from Friedrich Gorenstein to Olga Yurgens

First response to the death of a writer

For a writer exploring the romantic

burning history, it takes a captivating dream

an alchemist who forgets about difficulties and failures

when drawing up the most fantastic generalizations and

assumptions, and at the same time the courage of a firefighter,

walking into the flames and raking the firebrands,

fiery stories. Therefore, if you are lucky,

Such writers deserve the highest reward. I

I don’t mean Nobel Prizes and others like that

elite chamber rooms, like geraniums,

awards, and the medal “For courage in a fire” or “For

courage in the fire."

F. Gorenshtein. rope book

Part I. Pages of life

1. “They spotted a guy at the coal mine...”

The first “memoirist” has the most difficult situation; it requires enormous mental stress, since everything is still very close, and many events are not ripe for paper due to the shortness of the time distance. Nevertheless, I take up the pen. However, the first narrator also has an advantage: there is less risk of memory anomalies and, accordingly, distortion of facts. In addition, the manuscript can be read by the writer’s friends, my assistants and advisers, who entrusted me with materials about him and letters. I hope that they will point out to me the inaccuracies that have tempted my memory.

This book is about one of the remarkable, not yet fully appreciated Russian prose writers, playwrights and film screenwriters of the second half of the now last century - Friedrich Gorenstein. He entered the “canonical” history of Soviet literature, along with Vasily Aksenov, Andrei Bitov and Viktor Erofeev, primarily as a participant in the sensational dissident almanac “Metropol” (1978).

Connoisseurs and lovers of literature highly value Gorenstein even outside the political context - as an artist. “No one could or can do this, neither among his predecessors, nor among his peers, nor among those who follow,” Simon Markish wrote about Gorenstein’s skill. Yefim Etkind called him “the second Dostoevsky.” “Turgenev’s purity of Russian speech in prose” was noted by Mark Rozovsky. Lev Anninsky was called an icon painter of literature (a writer of “reverse perspective”).* “The only Russian-speaking candidate for the Nobel Prize,” a “great” writer, “whom some did not notice, while others were silent” - Viktor Toporov. A writer endowed with a “mighty epic gift” is Boris Khazanov. Gorenstein is “a classic of Russian prose,” Alexander Ageev said in his obituary, and expressed concern: “it seems that even after death his fate will not be easy.”

* At one time, Lev Anninsky published an article about Gorenstein’s work in the journal “Questions of Literature” (1, 1992). This was, in fact, the first attempt at a serious analysis of the writer’s work in Russian criticism. Anninsky also published a critical article “Russian-German Account” about Gorenstein’s work in the Mirror of Mysteries (Mirror of Mysteries, 7, Berlin 1998).

While in Germany and France it is considered “good form” to know and read Gorenstein (for example, Francois Mitterrand was an admirer of his talent), he is still little known to the general Russian reader. In Russia, he is known, rather, to the “wide audience” as the screenwriter of the films “Solaris” and “Slave of Love” or the author of the play “Child Murder,” which was successfully staged in many theaters, including the Alexandrinsky (St. Petersburg) and the Moscow Maly Drama Theater . Few, however, have read his political detective novel “The Place,” dedicated to the Khrushchev Thaw, and the parable novel “Psalm,” in which the terrible pages of Soviet history are turned over. I would like to hope that my book will help the Russian reader find a path to Gorenstein’s creative personality.

Since 1980, the writer lived in West Berlin. As editor of the Berlin magazine "Mirror of Mysteries", where he was published, I had the opportunity to meet him and then become friends. I will begin my notes, however, not with a story about my acquaintance with Friedrich Gorenstein - I will do this later - but I will bring together old age and youth, childhood and maturity, and outline my understanding of what made up the plot of his biography, was the main impulse of creativity - his orphanhood .

Friedrich Gorenstein was born in Kyiv in 1932 in the family of an economist professor. Father, Naum Isaevich Gorenshtein (1902-1937), originally from Berdichev, was arrested and sentenced to death on September 6, 1937 by the “Special Troika” of the NKVD in Dalstroy. Many years later, in 1995, Friedrich received from the “authorities” a copy of the verdict of that same “troika” and showed me this “product” of the sophisticated inquisition of the Soviet era. The sentence was carried out on November 8, 1937 - this was the date in the document. In addition, Gorenstein was shown his father’s “file,” which he read carefully. It turned out that his father was not entirely an accidental victim of Stalin’s Moloch. The young professor was imprisoned for his “cause”: he proved the unprofitability of collective farms. “It’s as if collective farms were created for profitability,” said Gorenstein, “a naive father! Romantic!” The father was accused of sabotage in the field of agriculture. In the documents on the charges, a lady named Postysheva constantly appeared, who turned out to be the sister of Pavel Petrovich Postyshev - Member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, who later (1939) also did not escape Moloch. Sister Postysheva, a specialist in economics and agriculture, turned out to be the main whistleblower of Naum Isaevich Gorenshtein. Gorenstein talked about his father in the novel “The Rope Book.” “My father,” he wrote, a young professor of economics, was a specialist in cooperation. Cooperative enterprises differ sharply from both capitalist and economic organizations that have a coercive nature.”*

MINA POLYANSKAYA

CRADLE OVER THE ABYSS

Paul Anchel could have accidentally met “our people,” say, somewhere at a traffic light on the corner of Russkaya and Sadovsky. After the concentration camp, he was poorly dressed, but even rags could not hide his remarkable beauty and the eternal sadness in his eyes. Back in '42, he tragically missed his parents and sister in the Chernivtsi ghetto - they were deported to the Mikhailovka concentration camp, where they all died, and Paul, later one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century, Paul Celan, survived in the Tabareshty camp.
So, ready to escape from hell, the poet could stand at a crossroads and suddenly see my father, who had recently arrived from evacuation, dressed, I believe, in a magnificent self-made flannel blouse.
After the flight of the occupiers, apartments in Chernivtsi were empty, and to settle in a city that once had a legendary Jewish atmosphere, with European architecture - such a prospect seemed fabulously unimaginable! Joseph Polyansky was probably in high spirits, since he had just moved into an empty apartment with his family (three children!) - not entirely, but with two Viennese chairs - and, of course, was not overwhelmed by the idea of impending disasters.
While Paul, on the contrary, was leaving his parental apartment, which had been ravaged by Romanian looters, preparing to escape across the nearest border, and, considering it his duty to warn his fellow tribesman, the poet said to my father - in Yiddish, Romanian or Russian: where have you come, naive optimist? Such a hellish cauldron had just boiled here, such as Dante could not have imagined in a nightmare!
The renegade Bessarabian Jews, battered by the epidemics of the Central Asian evacuation, when more than once the Angel of Death stood at the head of the bed, had nothing to lose. Even before the war, life was not sweet under King Michael, who is sometimes approved of, but even under him there was a pogrom, though not a bloody one. Mom told me: they just robbed me, but, thank God, they didn’t beat me or kill me. She saw things taken from us from our Moldovan neighbors, sometimes even memorable, family ones, and the robber neighbors, having caught her glance of recognition, looked away “shamefully.” The authorities, like those of the Goryukhinites, changed so often that they did not even have time to catch their breath. What is the value of just one pre-war year under Stalin, when “alien elements” were exiled to Siberia for having private property in the form of a sewing machine, and now, after Samarkand, Bukhara and Namangan, there is this Stalin again.
Did my parents know about the tragic fate of local Jews? Not everything was known, while the horrors of the Chernivtsi robbery hung over the city like a stern biblical reminder. Opposite us, across the road, lived a professor who survived the occupation thanks to a certificate issued by the mayor of the city, Trajan Popovic, testifying, as in “Schindler’s list,” about his qualifications. I looked at him with respect when he approached the house in his black beret and then disappeared behind the mysterious heavy, cast-iron, patterned gate. None of “our people” dared to talk to him.
In the past - Austrian-Hungarian Chernivtsi, then Romanian Chernouty, then Soviet-Ukrainian Chernivtsi. Five-lingual - German, Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, and then Russian-speaking city.
I was only a month old when they brought me to an incredibly beautiful city with various tiled sidewalks. I remember my quiet street in the Carpathian region, rising up the mountain, along which no cars drove because of the steepness, with elegant mansions reminiscent of landowners’ estates and adjacent gardens, which gave the street a patriarchal look. An ancient street paved with large cobblestones, entirely lined with one- and two-story mansions with tiled roofs; some were even – including our house – with chimneys. I’ll push the gate, there will be a paved courtyard - I remembered the poems of one of the literary giants, who painfully yearns for Argentina in Europe. I’ll push the gate, there will be a paved courtyard, and a window behind which my betrothed is waiting. And at home, like angels... and at home, like angels...
On our Shevchenko Street (it is still called that way, house number is 88), Art Nouveau style mansions, known as the “Viennese Secession”, were in full display (houses built by students of the Austrian architect Otto Wagner posed in the city center). These houses, with heavy carved doors with intricate handles, were decorated with flowers, angels, and some had sparkling mosaic roofs, and the higher up the mountain, the more beautiful and mysterious they were.
The street seemed to be a copy of some typical street of a provincial European city somewhere in the foothills of the Alps or Carpathians of Austria-Hungary in the twenties. Either Trieste or a corner of old Prague. We got an apartment not in the center with the corresponding luxurious amenities, but closer to the outskirts. The mezzanine apartment consisted of one large square room with large windows onto a courtyard with bushes of fragrant tea roses and lilacs, which my father was delighted with, with parquet floors and a square kitchen with a wooden floor. The roof of our house was also decorated with a cheerful chimney - in the corner of the kitchen, closer to the door, there was a pot-bellied stove, and my mother baked luxurious round white bread in it. And other residents of the street were heating up their stoves, and thin streams of smoke rose high above the fairy-tale houses.
A significant decoration of our kitchen, in addition to the stove, was a faucet with a round cast-iron sink, under which I sat for a long time, studying its intricate patterns, as I now understand, “modern” patterns. The stove and faucet created a feeling of inviolability of existence and became symbols of the hearth.
Since there were three children and there weren’t enough sleeping places, they carefully laid me out, covering me with pillows and something else so that I wouldn’t fall, on a large oak table that stood against the wall in the kitchen opposite the very door opening onto the corridor, which played a certain role in the fate of my family.
The entrance to the apartment was through a long narrow corridor that opened into the courtyard at the very street gate. The corridor on the right (on our side) ended with a winding staircase upstairs - there, on the second floor, there were two apartments on both sides of the round lobby. One belonged to Shulka, the same age as my older sister, with her parents, and the other to Borka the Small (he was younger than many of us - “nobles”) and his parents. Borka the Small's father, Moses Daris, was one of the surviving Jews of the Chernivtsi ghetto. He was always gloomy and silent and did not talk, even among his family (as I later learned from Bori), about the suffering and humiliation of the ghetto. Little Borka, but in fact Boris Isakov, managed to remember me, despite the fact that I had left the magnetic, magical courtyard from time immemorial.
;

The impudence of the desires of the Romanian dictator Antonescu exceeded even the sick imagination of Hitler’s ally, for he considered the “ancient Roman” blood in the Romanian version “bler” than the Aryan, and its purity had to be defended and defended. Ion Antonescu, who seized power through a military coup, called on the Romanian people to mercilessly and with impunity kill Jews, acquaintances and strangers, neighbors and even friends. He announced that the sacred hour had come - at last! And such a wonderful chance - to kill with impunity - can only present itself again in 100 years. At the beginning of July '41, the Romanians cheerfully entered “the most Jewish city in Europe,” Chernivtsi, and began slaughtering. Jews from the Chernivtsi ghetto, as well as those from Iasi and Bessarabia, in freight cars, where the majority, as planned, suffocated from the heat and suffocation, were taken to concentration camps in Transnistria - the lands between the Dniester and Odessa, reclaimed by the generous hand of Hitler Antonescu: on, take it, it’s not a pity for such a thing.
Bori Isakov's father was in the same ghetto with Rosa Ausländer, then Rosalia Scherzer and Paul Celan, who in some unimaginable way managed to write poetry and translate Shakespeare's sonnets there. Many prisoners of the Chernivtsi ghetto, marked with six-pointed yellow stars - doctors, musicians, lawyers, poets, as well as Spinozists, Kantians, Marxists, Freudians - with six-pointed stars under the supervision of rude mustachioed soldiers and policemen talked about Hölderlin, Rilke, Trakl, Hess. Let's put it this way: it turned out to be a unique literary, intellectual corner in Chernivtsi, a poetic Olympus behind barbed wire. Neither Paul Celan nor Rosa Ausländer dedicated a single line to their hometown in France and Germany. I believe that, unlike the “bad” Hamelin (who did not keep his word, deceived the Pied Piper and was severely punished!), yet awarded the pen of Zimrok, Heine, Browning and Tsvetaeva, Chernivtsi, a city without repentance, will not be able to find your singer, because in this unique center of culture, a “plague on poets” also occurred. What could be worse than this?
;
I mentally return to the fateful corridor. So, along the corridor to the left, with windows facing the street, there were two more apartments. In one of them, the one opposite ours, lived a stern, silent Ukrainian couple who survived the occupation to the point of suspicion. They - husband and wife - were, in my childish opinion, similar to each other, stooped, of the same height, lean, sadly dressed in inky tones.
I must say that the conditions of my early childhood were absolutely free.
I couldn’t be offended, because, as my dad explained, for some reason I couldn’t cry. I was allowed to take whatever I wanted out of the house into the yard. I, a five-year-old, put on my mother’s silk dresses and high-heeled shoes, but in response I received only smiles of tenderness. Dad smiled joyfully when I asked him for another ruble for “my household.” I used these paper yellow rubles - I had reserves of rubles - to buy Christmas tree decorations in the hot summer and hang them near the mirror, boiled corn, some rattles, a vanka and other nonsense
The only prohibition for me was the neighbors across the street. I was told to pass by them as quickly as possible and not to engage in conversations, which I loved very much. The warning was also unusual because in our wonderful yard you could talk to all the other neighbors as much as you wanted, even in Yiddish, have fun, laugh and dance, but here, in the corridor, you had to quickly and silently pass by. Meanwhile, our door is a must! - was directly opposite the enemy door, performing “sentinel” duty.”
And I began to be afraid! I ran, burying my head in my shoulders, past the gloomy neighbors - they looked angrily and never appeared in the yard. However, it never occurred to me to tell anyone about my fears, and I suspect that many children, without leading questions, are not able to talk about their fears due to their, I would say, excessive childishness. I was afraid to such an extent that one day I had the most terrible dream of my life.
I sleep on my desk, and the bad neighbors - for some reason I know that it is them - are trying to push out our front door key in order to insert their own, another key there, outside, and open the door. This action takes place with a faint yellowish glow. And behind the door you can hear a women's choir. The key on my side turns and swings for a painfully long time, accompanied by continuous and, as I now understand, well-coordinated, professional, operatic singing, which resonated with piercing pain in my childish heart. But the key did not fall out and the door did not open. And the neighbors crowding outside the door were left without prey, that is, without me, a little girl, who incessantly, enchantedly looked at the key and believed that it contained salvation. Subsequently, I remembered this choir, and I instantly remembered it when I saw Fellini’s film about a sinking ship. Struck by a shot from a cannon drawn by a child’s hand with a black pencil, he slowly and inexorably goes under the water, accompanied by a tragic cry - a woman’s singing, reminiscent of the singing in my dream, as if the director looked into my dream.

Meanwhile, the clouds around our family were thickening, and the course of events was accelerating, as if invisible stokers were throwing coal into the firebox. The “inside” residents will willingly talk about what happened for some time, and over time, as it is repeated, the legend will become more colorful, acquiring the taste of old wine.
Joseph Polyansky was a type of person who was absolutely not bothered by power, which was reflected in the late integration from boyar Romania into the Stalinist post-war dictatorship. Joseph Polyansky's namesake, for the sake of concealment from an eavesdropping informer, in discussions called Joseph (Stalin) "Yosaly" - he himself, in the Yiddish manner, was also called by the diminutive Yosaly. Around Polyansky (a gymnasium in boyar Romania - this was respected among the “non-locals”) a whole group of political like-minded people had formed, and our apartment, with a copper samovar polished to a shine in the center of the table and beautiful amber tea in transparent thin glasses, was seething with anti-Stalinist passions.
And then one day a neighbor-janitor with a strange surname Shut, who lived in a house with a long wooden veranda-balcony on the right in the yard, “declassified” Yosaly - Joseph Polyansky. The jester allegedly confirmed to the NKVD during interrogation that he was listening to foreign “voices.” The excited courtyard only talked about the fact that the janitor himself did not come to THEM, they called him, asked him, and out of fear he confirmed. It was very important that the janitor did not denounce on his own initiative, because denunciation in our midst was worse than death.
They asked him (this is what they said in the yard, but I heard everything):
“Is it true that Joseph Polyansky listens to foreign voices?”
He replied:
"Yes".
The betrayed Jester, like the Gospel's Judas, realized what he had done and hanged himself in the attic, where he hung like a jester, according to the famous Pushkin (in the margins of the manuscript of Eugene Onegin) “how a jester hangs.”
An afterthought, a guess about the neighbors across the street, took hold of me. If “foreign voices” disturbed me, a girl, from sleeping - can you imagine the old radios with squeals and crackles? - then it’s really that those on the contrary, evil ones, with obviously bad intentions, didn’t hear, or didn’t eavesdrop, especially since there was no need to strain for this: the information itself easily floated into their dirty, greedy paws. In my dream, the neighbors stood outside the door, however, where is the dream and where is the reality? Or maybe they really were there? The child had to talk about the night vision and loudly declare that he was afraid of the neighbors guarding outside the door. But the girl remained silent. Alas, children sometimes find themselves in danger, of which their loving parents are unaware, and the cradle rocks over the abyss. The image belongs to Vladimir Nabokov. With this tragic image, the writer illuminated the beginning of the autobiographical novel “Memory, Speak.” Childhood offers many mysteries that neither theodicy, nor psychoanalysis, nor literature can resolve.
My father was arrested. However, the arrest was not Stalinist-classical, Moscow-Leningrad with the inevitable Gulag or execution. After some time, Joseph Polyansky was released according to an oral agreement: we will give you freedom, and you will give us an apartment. The agreement was violated by one party: six months later, as they said then, they “came” for their father, but he was no longer alive. They were released, therefore, in accordance with a “gentleman’s” agreement with the local NKVD, in which corruption flourished, and on the security of such a wonderful apartment.
In 1952, we, an expelled family, rented a room in another city (that’s another story) opposite the Jewish cemetery, where my father was soon buried. He died at the age of forty-three primarily from grief, because at the cost of his freedom he left his children homeless, in someone else’s corner. Polyansky died in January '53, and Stalin died two months later, so if... If those events - with the denunciation - had started a few months later, then the family would not have become homeless, I fantasize, perhaps they would have even wonderful prospects and so on in the subjunctive mood. I sometimes ask myself a rhetorical question: am I a homeless human “product” of the era? I write the word era with great caution, because it is possible that in fact I am just another character in some transepochal “drama of fate” in which we all participate.
Here is Paul Celan, who is called the poet of the Holocaust, who comes from the same local space as me - he seems to me a real victim of an inexorable fate. And we all laughed and went into other people's valleys. We don’t care: all the tents were burned. In 1945, Celan recorded the change from one dictatorship to another, predicted a high degree of denunciations, eavesdropping, mutual responsibility, violence, and realized that after one concentration camp, he might end up in another. He did not forget the tragic fate of his beloved Mandelsham: I heard you sing, frailty, I saw you, Mandelstam. And Mandelstam warned:

I live on the black stairs, and to the temple
A bell torn out with meat hits me.
And all night long I wait for my dear guests
Moving the shackles of the door chains.

Paul rushed off to Bucharest, two years later he entered Austria, then Paris, but flight did not save him - his tents were finally burned in Chernivtsi. The shadows of the past caught up, pursued him, and he committed suicide. Who is to blame - time, a cruel century, war, the Stalinist regime? Or assume some kind of predetermination? But, you must admit: if life is ruled by blind chance, then it loses its moral value. Is not it so?

The sunny summer courtyard has faded away, it is deserted and silent, as if space has frozen, time has stopped. Having scattered all over the world, to Israel, Canada, the USA, Germany, because anti-Semitism flourished in Chernivtsi, which gained unprecedented fame in the world, and the Holocaust was hushed up, the street children (Borya Isakov claims that there were thirty-two of us children there, is this conceivable?) - the “nobles” remained devoted to the romantic cult of friendship, forming a close circle, “our fatherland is Tsarskoye Selo.”
The yard fell silent, the only one under the blue sky, with a mighty chestnut tree with branches strewn with bright green leaves, under which the neighbors together in a large cauldron were cooking a unique plum jam, stirring with huge spoons-oars in such quantities that all the inhabitants of the yard had enough to eat. all winter, while we little ones joyfully ran and jumped around the sacred ceremony of plum making, and our cheeks were smeared with jam, which we were generously treated to.

You can’t hear the noise of the courtyards. Wow, there is silence above the roof of the house, the midnight moon hangs over the fake chimney.

The times of openness and tolerance of the post-war court with its special atmosphere are long gone, having mercilessly ripped out the best pages from the book of its life. In one old novel, a certain castle announced itself with an eerie inscription on the pediment: I belong to no one and belong to everyone; you were here before you came in, and you will remain here after you leave.
I don’t see the street, but it’s as if I once saw it - either in a dream, or in a painting, or on a carpet. A frozen cast, as in The Martian Chronicles, while over time it should have been overgrown with quinoa and other earthly weeds, but since this did not happen, then perhaps someday I will still get to those places where My early, happy childhood has passed, and I will finally see this house with a chimney, a yard with rose bushes, and a garden with fruit trees. But if, due to some reasons - perestroika, construction, deforestation - I don’t see either one or the other, but still see something, then, probably, I too will experience, in Nabokov’s words, “the satisfaction of suffering” . There’s one thing I definitely won’t find: my childhood.

Director Arkady Yakhnis told how he and Friedrich Gorenstein worked on a documentary about Babi Yar. It was decided to find the survivors of the “executioners” from the Lvov kuren. Their regiment was called lyrically - “Nachtigall”, which translated from German means “nightingale”. The very fact of finding them would be a serious plus for the picture. Arkady gave me a plan for an unrealized film written down by Gorenstein. Under paragraph 3 it is written:
Ukrainians are killers. Bukovinsky kuren and others. Surnames. Photos. Are there any still alive? A monument erected in their honor in Chernivtsi.
In Chernivtsi? Is it really possible that a monument was erected to the executioners in Chernivtsi? It turned out that it was true: in 1995, in the park on the corner of Russkaya and Sadovsky streets, a monument to the heroes of the Bukovinsky Kuren appeared in the form of an angel touching to tears, spreading its wings wide, ready to cover their “suffering righteous” with them.

Oh yes! Overwhelmed by the memories, I almost forgot to tell you the most important thing. Borya Isakov told me that a gloomy married couple is the door opposite ours, what horror! - mysteriously disappeared shortly after our departure. I asked Borya: “How is our corridor?” He replied: “The half in which the Polyanskys lived opposite the policemen was fenced off tightly with a wooden partition, up to the ceiling.”
Where and why did the neighbors disappear? Did the NKVD authorities show up at the time of their active denunciations, or did someone inform on the informers? Stalin's moloch of political repression boiled policemen, people who found themselves under the occupiers, and victims of the Holocaust in the same pot.

Mina POLYANSKAYA

Mina Polyanskaya is the literary editor of the Berlin cultural and political magazine “Mirror of Riddles”. One of the authors of the book “In the same breath with Leningrad...”(Lenizdat, 1989) about the literary Petersburg-Leningrad of the twentieth century, author of books Classic wine(St. Petersburg, ArSIS, 1994), Muses of the city(Berlin, SupportEdition 2000), “My secret marriage...” Marina Tsvetaeva in Berlin(Publishing Center, Helikon, Moscow 2001) and “I am an illegal writer...” Notes and reflections on the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein. In 2006, the Janus publishing house published a book by Mina Polyanskaya "Reserved seats and countermarks. Notes about Friedrich Gorenstein" (second, expanded, edition of the book "I am an illegal writer"). Published in Russian and German-language periodicals. He is also one of the authors of the Berlin Senate collection “Russian Berlin” (Das russische Berlin. Die Auslanderbeauftragte des Senats. Berlin 2002). Member of the international PEN club.

Creations: (sent by the author)

Mina Polyanskaya. The book "I am an illegal writer... Notes and reflections on the fate and work of Friedrich Gorenstein" - September 2004
Arkady Moshchinsky. Essay “About Mina Polyanskaya’s book “I am an illegal writer...”” in the magazine “Slovo/Word” 2005 No. 45

Mirror of Riddles

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Publisher's abstract:

The very title of the book, “I am an illegal writer...” contains an atmosphere of conflict. Mina Polyanskaya's book tells about the conflict of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Friedrich Gorenstein, with the Moscow literary and cinematic environment of the 60s and subsequent decades - right up to the last days of his life (the writer died on March 2, 2002). In addition, it is an attempt, through his tragic fate, to talk about the ups and downs of the development of Russian-Soviet post-Stalin literature in Russia and emigration. In the First Part - “Pages of Life” - a biography of the writer is given, if possible, with unknown facts, letters or excerpts from letters that are published for the first time. In the second part of the book “Eighty Thousand Miles Around Gorenstein” there are real “passions for creativity” of this extraordinary author and thinker.
The author of the book, a close friend of Gorenstein in the last years of his life, is the literary editor of the Berlin magazine “Mirror of Mysteries.” One of the authors of the book “In One Breath with Leningrad...” about literary St. Petersburg-Leningrad of the twentieth century, author of the books “Classical Wine”, “Muses of the City” about literary Berlin, “My Secret Marriage...” (Marina Tsvetaeva in Berlin) , as well as the mystical novel “The Guilty Apostle.” Member of the international PEN club."

Fragment from the book “I am an illegal writer...”:

Subsequently, during Gorbachev’s perestroika, “when the archives were opened and witnesses spoke,” Gorenshtein learned that the banning of the play turned out to be the work of Mikhail Shatrov (Gorenshtein personally read his denunciations), who did not like him, Gorenshtein, at a memorable meeting with the American playwright Arthur Miller, who arrived in Moscow in 1964 (Miller’s play “An Incident in Vichy” was rehearsed by Sovremennik). Oleg Efremov invited Gorenstein to a meeting, and the young playwright - inspired by the invitation to such an important event in such an important office - appeared long, almost an hour before the appointed time. Suddenly a well-fed, short man with thick black hair, wearing an expensive suit entered the office and looked at Friedrich with a “vigilant watchdog” gaze. He somehow immediately did not like the appearance of Friedrich in torn Kyiv boots, and the man in the suit ordered him to leave immediately. Deciding that this was an uninformed administrator, Gorenstein said:
- If you are an administrator, then about my invitation, contact the main director or the director of the theater.
“I’m not an administrator,” said the man, “I’m the playwright Shatrov.”
- If you are the playwright of Shatrov, then mind your own business. I am playwright Gorenstein.
Oleg Efremov flatteringly introduced Gorenstein to Arthur Miller and his Swedish wife, and they paid him a lot of attention. He felt so happy, surrounded by the nicest people, that he did not notice the watchful, jealous gaze of the playwright Shatrov. In conclusion, the wife of the American playwright photographed all the participants in the wonderfully successful evening. For a long time, Gorenstein could not understand why his plays, which seemed to correspond to the spirit of the times, were so stubbornly rejected by theater censorship. But “Shatrov’s plays were performed in a jamb on the stage, along which Kremlin cadets walked, holding carbines with attached knife bayonets. The Bolsheviks with the human faces of the actors of the Sovremennik Theater evoked thunderous applause from the progressive public.”

March 2, 2007 marked 5 years since the death of Friedrich Gorenstein. In 2006, the Janus publishing house published Mina Polyanskaya’s book “Reserved seats and countermarks. Notes about Friedrich Gorenstein” (the second, expanded edition of the book “I am an illegal writer”)

Excerpt from the book:
For example, it is interesting that it was in his phantasmagoric novel “Psalm” that Gorenstein used authentic documents. The book contains real voices, real pain. The famine in Ukraine, described at the beginning of the novel, is “taken from life itself.” The fact is that one of Gorenstein’s friends, who worked on the radio, at one time made a program that told real stories from the period 1930-1940. The program was called “Find a Person” and was hosted by Agnia Barto. After the long-past war, people still continued to look for each other. And these people wrote letters to the radio, telling episodes, incidents from their lives, from which they could recognize or remember each other. The editor received letters with such heartbreaking stories that, of course, it was impossible to “miss” this nationwide “cry of the soul,” genuine “socialist realism,” on air. But unnecessary piles of letters accumulated in one of the cabinets in the editorial office, and then went to Gorenstein. After the publication of this book of mine about Gorenstein, I received a letter from the compiler (and owner) of the famous electronic library, Alexander Belousenko. This is what he told me: “My mother lost her entire family in 1933 in the Voronezh region. Everyone died of hunger, only three children survived. Mom was the middle child. The children were scattered to different orphanages, and they lost each other. Later, the older brother found "Mom, but they never found their little sister. Mom wrote to Barto about these events and asked for help. But the answer said that they were only dealing with the war period." I answered Belousenko: “I read with amazement everything that you wrote about your mother. She, her brothers and sisters are the same wandering children as in Friedrich’s novel - hungry, homeless, or who have purchased a house, but only a child’s one. What was it like for you to read the “Psalm"! As for the letters on the radio, many wrote them incorrectly, that is, those who naively thought that they were also looking for those who disappeared or had already died of hunger in the 30s. These “unnecessary”, politically objectionable letters also ended up in Friedrich's hands, and it is possible that he read your mother's letter, and - who knows? - maybe it was it that served as a source of inspiration. He was talking specifically about unnecessary letters - that is, about “unnecessary" for a radio letter, including your mother’s, but one that he really needed.”
Gorenstein loved to work with newspapers, diaries, letters, and here, perhaps, he was not original. Romantics, with their preference for minutiae and detail, loved documents, especially letters, diaries, oral histories and memoirs. Chateaubriand, for example, turned for help to his wife, who had an excellent memory - she willingly reconstructed the episodes he needed from his past life, and Wadsworth loved to read his sister’s diaries, since she allowed him to do so.
The novel "Psalm" was sharply criticized in the Russian press in the 1990s. Gorenstein was accused of creating a false image of Russia. This was the refrain of criticism. Well, often the documented truth is such that people refuse to believe it.

From the author:
The book offered to the reader includes two “Gothic” novels by Mina Polyanskaya - “The Kilimanjaro Syndrome” and “Mary Shelley’s Locket”, in which the author tries to follow the tradition of literary hoaxes born by the fireplace on a cold August evening in 1816 (Byron claimed that “terrible “Literary conversations took place in mid-August in the presence of Lewis, the author of the terrible novel “The Monk”) at the Villa Diodatti near Lake Geneva. Then, from oral stories arose “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley and the short story “The Vampire,” possibly by Byron (the authorship is still in doubt), which subsequently gave rise to a literary hoax - “Guzlov” by Merimee, and then “Songs of the Western Slavs” by Pushkin and many other mystery novels and short stories. In a word, a vital, epoch-making “vampire” theme with a luxurious literary genealogy arose. In both novels, the heroes encounter images of a “different nature.” In Kilimanjaro Syndrome, the dramatic action takes place in a provincial African town on the Indian Ocean with Mount Kilimanjaro as a backdrop. The secret society “Captive Angel” settled there.
The heroine of the novel “Mary Shelley's Locket,” a young Oxford teacher and writer Mary Barclay, finds herself in an estate from which it is impossible to escape. She witnesses a “sabbath” around the fire, led by the Prince of Darkness. Her life (as well as the life of the heroine of “Kilimanjaro Syndrome” Elizabeth) is threatened by Byron’s Vampire. The author claims that the events she recounts are no less true than the events recounted by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, who assured: “Everything I tell is as true as the sun in the heavens.

Looking at the literary community, one can assume that the “masters of thought” are divided into “legitimate writers” and “illegal writers.” The writer-in-law, like his criminal counterpart, is stable, tenacious and invulnerable. An illegal writer ignores the rules, so he is often simply not noticed. Friedrich Gorenstein recognized himself as an “illegal writer.” Mina Polyanskaya, who knew Gorenstein well, in the second part of her interview for Chaskor, reflects on the dramatic fate of the author of the novels “Place” and “Psalm”, his fulfilled prophecies and legacy.

You were friends with the wonderful writer Friedrich Gorenstein. In your opinion, why did he turn out to be somewhat of an outcast in all spheres of the Russian literary process of the 20th century, both in “sovizdat”, and in “samizdat”, and in “tamizdat”?
- Efim Grigoryevich Etkind was also surprised that the works of a real master were not known in the world of the literary and artistic underground of the 70s and did not appear under Soviet rule even in samizdat.

From the first responses to my book “I am an illegitimate writer...” I sensed that some researchers are already rushing from the Jewish topic to the Russian one: back and forth, here and there, and don’t know where it’s most convenient to stick around. The biblical theme in Gorenstein’s work is seductive and not safe, since the symbiosis of Christianity and Judaism (with the affirmation of the dominant role of Judaism, the “biblical foremother”) of this writer of the Russian tradition requires not only a deeply educated, but also a very subtle, delicate and intelligent researcher. Of course, he was an “illegal writer” and, thanks to religious constructs, alien not only to modern Christianity, but also to Judaism. His attitude towards the person of Christ was not much different from Dostoevsky’s attitude towards him, who said that if he had to choose between faith and Christ, he would choose Christ, thereby denying his divine essence. Gorenstein would have chosen faith, but he treated the person of Christ (the person, of course, human) with deep sympathy and, I would even say, with tenderness, lamenting that the Nazarene took upon himself all the merciless cane blows of the Roman legionnaires, who took revenge on him personally in their hatred towards the Jewish people.

However, we should not forget that Gorenstein had problems not only with the Jewish, but also with the Russian question. Several Moscow critics accused him of not knowing and understanding Russian reality, which, in their opinion, was more evident in his story “Last Summer on the Volga,” written in Berlin. The reproaches to Gorenstein were strongly reminiscent of Rozanov’s against Merezhkovsky: “without a single wrinkle in the Russian soul.” It must be said that Rozanov guessed Merezhkovsky’s inability to understand the Russian soul (!) from his gait. In an article with the characteristic title “Among Foreign Languages,” he then wrote: “So, exactly So, - Russians never go! No one!!".

Having read the memoirs of Gorenshtein’s Moscow acquaintances in the magazine “October” (2002, 9), I was puzzled by the coherence of the team and the persistence of the discourse about Gorenshtein’s supposedly insufficiently refined Berdichev “manners,” with which he once wounded them, the capital. From what context do such rumors arise and what meaning do they carry? After all, the point is not in the presence or absence of this or that fact, but in the grotesque selection and typification of the fact. This is, for example, “Russian drunkenness” or, say, “Jewish nose.” The “Jewish nose” is not an anatomical phenomenon, but a completely “cultural product.” In the case of Gorenshtein, “admiration” of his supposed parochialism was, without a doubt, fueled by the energy of the anti-Semitic tradition. At the same time, I want to emphasize that not only Russians, but also Jews were and are accomplices in this “admiration”. Why not, because they are also part of Russian-Soviet culture.

Friedrich Gorenstein is a bitter paradox of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century. A novelist, screenwriter, and playwright of a planetary scale found himself erased from the literary map of the planet by cultural workers of polar opposite beliefs. The writer himself, reflecting on his fate, admitted: “In general, most of my problems in life were created not by the party authorities, but by the intelligentsia, their indifference, neglect, and even hostility.” However, as they say, it is impossible to hide an awl in a bag.

Gorenshtein was sure that not entirely harmless characteristics created a certain stable opinion that spread throughout editorial offices, bookstores, and then somehow settled in the KGB. In addition to my books about Gorenstein, there is also my essay about the writer “Permanent Residence” in the book “Muses of the City,” which for some reason I always forget about, which I shouldn’t do, if only because the essay was written during the writer’s lifetime , was read out loud to him, as in an exam, that is, it went through his complete “censorship.” In particular, Gorenstein approved of the following passage:

“Since the authority of “samizdat” was quite large and supported in the West, “not allowing” a writer into “samizdat” meant sometimes inflicting much greater damage on him than what the totalitarian system was capable of.”

Human passions boil in a sinful world, and they also boil on literary Olympus. Envy, as everyone knows, is one of the strongest human passions. Gorenstein was shocked that the novel “Viktor Vavich”, written almost at the same time as the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens” and on the same topic, however, which turned out to be several “levels” higher, was “buried” for two generations of readers. “...The information blockade that I know well. This is not forgiven - an attempt to bury alive, just as the entire Sovpisov funeral team buried alive the wonderful novel by Boris Zhitkov “Viktor Vavich”. (How I was a CIA spy. Mirror of Mysteries, 9, 2000)

Viktor Toporov, in his obituary for Gorenshtein, “The Great Writer We Didn’t Notice” (Izvestia, March 12, 2002) wrote: “And the most effective of group practices was put into action - the practice of silence, if not ostracism. Gorenshtein's citation index in the domestic press is unforgivably insignificant. It turns out that a great writer has passed away, whom we did not notice? It turns out like this. It turns out that a great writer has passed away, whom some noticed, while others fell silent. Gorenstein himself would say that both of these sins are equal.”

“In general, most of my problems in life,” he wrote, “were created not by the party authorities, but by the intelligentsia, their indifference, neglect, and even hostility. What is party power? Blind Moloch. And the intelligentsia is a conscious being, it sees both ways, engaging in artificial selection. So I walked away from them. I am not naming anyone specifically, because we are not talking about people, although there were people, but about the atmosphere: “ours - not ours.” “There are writers “in law.” I have always been an illegal writer, something like an archaic sectarian.” (How I Was a CIA Spy).

I took these words “I have always been an illegal writer” for the title of the first edition of my book (New York, 2003), but at the same time I arbitrarily removed (may Gorenstein forgive me) the words “I have always been”, since they were for the title unnecessary. It turned out: “I am an illegal writer...”. So whoever today borrows this title from me (and there is such a person) for his one-page watery creations about Gorenstein, thus committing a Hitchcockian setup in the spirit of his film “The Case of Mr. Pelham,” in which a double, a man without properties, tries take the place of the original with the help of the simplest object - suit, tie - permutations (in my case, Internet ones), they quote my liberties, not Gorenstein. Gorenshtein also had such a person without qualities, the manic Dmitry Khmelnitsky, whose breath on the back of the head the writer heard for many years, and whom he ultimately finished off in the pamphlet “To Comrade Matza, literary critic and man, as well as his descendants.” Khmelnitsky still lives in Berlin, unchanged, ageless, like Dorian Gray.

So, Gorenstein’s books were hidden for decades from the reader, the same reader who, according to Nabokov’s apt expression, saves the writer from “the disastrous power of emperors, dictators, priests, puritans, ordinary people, political moralists, policemen, postal workers and reasoners.” I am not a supporter of “fateful” phrases like: “time will put everything in its place,” or “great talent will sooner or later make its way to the reader,” or “manuscripts don’t burn.” Anything can happen in this world! It happens that time does not “arrange”, talent does not “break through”, and manuscripts burn to the ground.

Of course, Gorenstein's prose today is more than modern. Rallies and gatherings at the monuments to Mayakovsky and Pushkin, which died down recently, have long been vividly and scenically depicted in the novel “The Place”, moreover, at these same monuments. Sometimes I recognized entire scenes, as if someone had developed them from the novel “The Place.” In addition, I easily recognized politicians with the “nature of a street leader”, ready to make a career as an adventurer, standard for relatively free time, and seize power in the country. She recognized Shchusev, and Goryun, and especially Orlov-Udaltsov, and mentally asked: “And you want to be the king of Rus', and you, and you?” She recalled the Journalist who warned the main character of the novel, Gosha, who also aspires to power, about the danger of imposture: “Power-hungers are rarely patriots, but the happiness of the power-hungry is whose aspirations coincide with the popular movement. Otherwise, his ashes are fired from a cannon, as happened, for example, with False Dmitry.”

As it turned out, the secret formations of the late fifties were not a figment of Gorenstein’s imagination. The theme of organizations is timeless, and a large number of parties are expected to appear in Russia soon. Gorenstein’s novel presents—I warn you—the Nazi organization with all the necessary attributes, of course, with a portrait of Hitler and a swastika. I, who am still a liberal at heart in the traditional sense, would like to make a warning: not to overdo it. For if the country is left without power... Gorenshtein characterizes the Soviet phenomenon, which has left deep traces - the unenviable fate of the intellectual in the absence of power and the presence of the “peasant” with his class hatred of the intellectual: “... The ideal of the late moderate opposition intellectual is to stand with a loose noose on neck, on a strong stool - is possible only when there is only Power on the narrow path of History. When Popular Discontent comes out there to meet the authorities, like a wild boar at a watering hole, the first result of their confrontation is a double blow with their boots on the stool, and after that the world is left, at best, with only hoarse, biased, belated memoirs of a strangled man, like everything that dies. -intellectual."

It would seem that what is preventing such a relevant 800-page novel from reaching the reader? And nothing interferes. They read a novel, they read. They don’t buy it much, but they read it. And they even create Internet blogs with his quotes.

Therefore, there is a problem not with reading as such, but with reading paper books. This problem is related to new technologies, Internet downloading to e-readers, iPads, etc., etc. In short, the connection between times has been broken! As not only Shakespeare said, but also Tyutchev. This problem concerns all writers now. The fact that the hyped-up, excuse me, hyped-up – a Freudian slip – writers now shine so effortlessly and fussily at any television meeting indicates that their books are not selling so well. By the way, why is the winner of the Bunin Prize, the same Bunin who so ardently hated Soviet power and its dictatorship, Prokhanov, an admirer of Lukashenko and eastern dictators, not leaving the screens? I see this prophet without a prophetic beard “every” day of God! And every time I marvel at his lascivious eloquence, not as a literary observer from the outside (by the way, I am a member of the Union of Russian Writers), but as a person who sincerely worries about the fate of Russian literature.

And in conclusion of the topic “Gorenshtein and the Reader” I would like to thank His Majesty the Internet, which nowadays is even customary to write with a capital letter.

It is He who is the spoiler, it is He who is the sorcerer who blows his fresh fan (I admired Konstantin Fofanov’s verses “This is May the spoiler, this is May the sorcerer...” back in “The Twelve Chairs”).

He was the first to notice Gorenstein back in 2003, which I immediately solemnly informed the writer about at the gravestone. It was He, an objective, honest, unenvious connoisseur, who noticed the little-known author and introduced him to the grateful reader.

Friedrich Gorenstein, Mina Polyanskaya, Boris Antipov. Photo: Igor Polyansky

56 years have passed since the exposure of Stalin's personality cult. Since the repeated overthrow of Stalin, i.e. 27 years have passed since Perestroika. But the Russian liberal intelligentsia continues to actively “discover America” today, talking about what Solzhenitsyn, in fact, exhaustively told about in his tomes. How to explain this? Is this an attempt to hide from the understanding that today, in an era of incessant crises, democratic ideals look like myths, both in the West and in the East?
- 56 years is a lot. There is probably a quantitative time factor when memory begins to relax. Unfortunately, people tend to forget. I witnessed the second, complete de-Stalinization 26 years ago. And what was it like for me on March 5th of this year, when the Russian media congratulated me three times on Stalin’s Memorial Day. And Zyuganov and his associates were allowed on air for this purpose. What is there to be clever about: I was congratulated three times on the day of remembrance of the executioner, the culprit of the death of millions of innocent people! The Stalinist Moloch of political repressions with his high degree of denunciations, eavesdropping, mutual responsibility, violence is also guilty of the untimely death of my father at the age of 43 (he was arrested and the apartment was taken away). Joseph Polyansky died in January '53, and Stalin died two months later, but the pattern remained indestructible: if in this state they took away housing where you can lay your head, they will never return it. Now my son Igor Polyansky, once the editor-in-chief of the Mirror of Riddles, and now a doctor of philosophy, deputy director of the Institute of History and Ethics of Medicine at the University of Ulm, is writing a large work on the history of the Soviet doctor and unearthing unimaginable Stalinist nightmares - ready-made plots for horror films.

The history of Russian emigration of the 20th century continues. And one of the “cores” of this cultural phenomenon remains Berlin, the city in which Vladimir Nabokov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladislav Khodasevich, Efim Etkind, Friedrich Gorenstein worked. What is it like, Russian Berlin? Mina Polyanskaya, prose writer, publicist, literary critic, literary editor of the Berlin magazine “Mirror of Mysteries,” spoke in detail to “Private Correspondent” about the life of old and new Russian Berliners, about their dramatic destinies and the situation in which they find themselves today, in post-Soviet times. Today is the first part of this big conversation.

So what can we talk about here? On THIS point I am at one with the liberals.

Stalin, with all his symbols and paraphernalia, should have been declared an outlaw in time, that is, a criminal, just like Hitler in Germany. Then there would not be such confusion in bright minds today. One day, a friend of ours was removed from a train by German customs officers at the border because she was holding the magazine “Mirror of Mysteries” in her hands, open to the page where there was a frame from the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring” with the charming Gestapo man Müller-Bronev wearing a swastika armband. sleeve, and the uniform of an SS officer fit perfectly on Stirlitz-Tikhonov (that was Gorenstein’s article “Replica from the Place” in the 7th issue of the magazine, in which he explained how Nazism was varnished under the Soviets and Hitlerism was romanticized). Swastikas are illegal in Germany, and our friend had to explain for a long time that she does not profess Nazism and that these are just stills from the famous film.

What do you, as a literary editor of a cultural and political magazine and just a reader, think about the activities of classic thick magazines and literary Internet projects in modern Russia?
- Let me put it trivially: we are on the verge of big changes. And it seems to me that both book and magazine publishers are hiding in anticipation of either a miracle or a catastrophe, which have already happened in the history of mankind, when new technologies once again came into force, be it the first printing presses, the first radio, telephone, telegraph, cinema, etc. As for the Internet, its ability for self-improvement, self-control, unexpected behavior reminds me of Asimov’s phantasmagoric robot riots, when a person turns out to be powerless in front of the genius that he himself created. You can intelligently talk about the uniqueness of the Russian thick magazine, which once became the only supplier of culture in Russia with its vast territories in the absence of good communications, and so on and so on. One can even recall for literary pleasure the magazines “Sovremennik” (Pushkin’s, and then Nekrasov’s) and “Domestic Notes” by Nekrasov and Saltykov-Shchedrin. By the way! This has already happened! At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the development of newspapers suddenly pushed our thick magazine out of first place. Even then they predicted his death because of his slowness and cumbersomeness. However, he survived and took his rightful place. It seems to me that such a question would be good to ask two editors - a budget-subsidized and a private magazine. It’s interesting what the editors of, say, “Questions of Literature” and “Children of Ra” will tell you about the paper and online future of their magazines.

- How do you feel about film adaptations of Friedrich Gorenstein’s works?
- Currently, two films have been filmed: “The House with a Turret” by Eva Neumann and “Atonement” by Alexander Proshkin, but, as far as I know, they have not yet been released. Eva Neumann was introduced to Friedrich, who was already emaciated and gray when the cancer reached its final stages. Eva seemed to me an unusual person, because during the most difficult last days of Gorenstein she sat in the ward for a long time. Gorenstein’s current friend, the author of one-page tortured essays about him, Yuri Veksler (not to be confused with the famous cameraman Yuri Abramovich Veksler), as soon as Friedrich fell ill, he immediately faded away (skipped, disappeared, disappeared, dissolved) and for two difficult months never didn't show up.

Friedrich was probably captivated by the devotion of his new acquaintance Eva in his last days. The doctors announced a harsh verdict about Frederick’s hopelessness in her presence. We met her at the writer’s grave, found beautifully painted pebbles on the gravestone - it seems to me that these were her pebbles. She turned out to be a real creative person and I feel she made a good film.

Gorenshtein became friends with Alexander Proshkin, trusted him, and, probably, the talented director made a good film, although this is not at all easy due to the ambiguity of the original text. There is incredible complexity in a single image in the novel. I'm talking about Sashenka - an unpleasant person, capable of even betraying his own mother, however, nevertheless, the writer, without interfering in the objective course of the novel, without forcing the plot, extends his hand to her, with the writer's will he gives absolution.

Gorenstein first used his biblical method and strict biblical reminder not in the novel “Psalm,” built on the Pentateuch, as many believe, but in “Atonement.” “If you look from a great height” (“Psalm”), then the look becomes too much objective, considered under others angle of view.

In Atonement, during the war, a Jewish family was destroyed not by Nazi invaders, but by neighbors. The evil neighbors managed to kill the parents without much difficulty, but the five-year-old boy ran away and hid, so they had to look for him, and, in the end, the neighbors managed to carry out their plan, which is scary to even talk about. The neighbors, they believed, had destroyed the Jewish clan, tribe, family, and their names, and according to the Bible, names are fundamental to the Almighty, and one of the books of the Pentateuch is called “Shemot,” that is, “Names.”

But one of the family members survived the war - the eldest son, pilot August, a young man of unearthly beauty. August reminds me of his fate and beauty, spirituality of appearance and eternal sadness in the eyes of one of the most remarkable poets of the twentieth century, Paul Celan, whose parents and sister died in a concentration camp in 1942, and he miraculously survived in another concentration camp. Paul rushed off to Bucharest, two years later he entered Austria, then Paris, but flight did not save him - his tents were finally burned in Chernivtsi. And we all laughed and went into other people's valleys. We don’t care: all the tents were burned. The shadows of the past caught up and pursued him, and he committed suicide in Paris and threw himself into the Seine. Augustus could not bear the longing for his destroyed family, and especially the horror of what he had done, and also committed suicide, but, unlike Paul Celan, he left behind a son, whom Sashenka gave birth to. Therefore, through Sashenka (to put it biblically) the clan, tribe, family, name were preserved. And only the Almighty knows why He chose Sashenka to preserve the family, for we are not given to know this. I hope that I will even see “biblical grip” in the film (Gorenstein about Pushkin).

You graduated from Leningrad University. Is it possible to talk about the differences between the Moscow and St. Petersburg philological schools?
- Of course, I submitted documents to Leningrad University, but a certain young man of about thirty took me into the corridor and persuaded me to pick up the documents. He explained this by saying that I had no experience. Of course, one should not submit documents to this university based on two defining points: 1. Nationality, 2. A person from the street.

I must say that the young man gave me good advice to go to Herzen, for which I am grateful to him. Due to significant competition, I entered the philological faculty of the Herzen Pedagogical Institute, now a university (they say that there is no competition there now). I was lucky because, without knowing it, I found myself at the faculty at the time of its true heyday, when the legendary Efim Grigorievich Etkind and Naum Yakovlevich Berkovsky taught there. And also one of the last translators of The Divine Comedy, academician Vladimir Georgievich Marantsman, and Nikolai Nikolaevich Skatov, until recently director of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House). Professor Vladimir Nikolaevich Alfonsov, a brilliant expert on the Silver Age, author of the books “Words and Colors”, “The Poetry of Boris Pasternak” (died February 21, 2011), also taught. Some of the mentors who guarded my youth(Etkind, Marantzman, Berkovsky), became the protagonists of my book “Berlin Notes on Friedrich Gorenstein,” published in St. Petersburg in 2011, and the essays “We Need a Red Pinkerton,” “Death of a Hero,” “Memoir Reflections on Efim Etkind.”

For some reason I have always been lucky with my teachers. For another whole year I studied at special courses “Literary Petersburg-Leningrad” with a specialization “Pushkin in St. Petersburg” and with seminars conducted by the wonderful Pushkin scholar, the incomparable Vadim Erazmovich Vatsura - I will not forget how amazingly he read to us Vyazemsky, Boratynsky - all those to whom Pushkin confessed his love: But I love you, my poets / Happy voice of your lyres. I was awarded a diploma with the note “Pushkin in St. Petersburg,” and then these courses faded away and, therefore, my diploma is rare.

As for the philological school, there cannot be one. Tying any science to a territory is impossible, because science is a universal thing, where there are no territorial and political boundaries. However, all our teachers were still Soviet scientists, since they were forced to deepen the dogmas of Marxism-Leninism, and even Zhirmunsky was obliged to prove that his interpretation of Lenin’s works was the most correct, which did not prevent him from being put in prison. However, we are still the children of our teachers. I am a child of Berkovsky, foggy, enchanted by his fairy tales, his Heinrich von Kleist with “The Beggar Woman from Locarno” and “Marquise D'O” and “The Golden Pot”, “Little Zaches” by Hoffmann and the like.

Not without the participation of my teachers, I was drawn into the whirlpool of events and delights of Khrushchev's perestroika. Of course, I read and admired Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky. And she even visited Akhmatova’s tomb on March 10, 1966. Vladimir Marantsman took us students to Yasnaya Polyana to Tolstoy’s grave without a monument with a fresh mound overgrown with young grass, giving the impression of a recent burial. The sight of a modest burial mound magically “pushed” Tolstoy towards us and seemed to be a harbinger of something inevitable. These signs of our youth sank into our souls and left a mark forever, but they hardly prepared us for a life full of cataclysms in the future.

I still remember myself, a first-year student, on the Laundry Bridge in that same crowd of people sympathizing with Joseph Brodsky and waiting for the court’s decision as if the fate of a person very close to me was being decided. The hearing of the case of Brodsky’s “parasitism” took place in mid-March 1964 in the large hall of the Builders Club on Fontanka, next to the house of the former Third Department of the chief of gendarmes A.H. Benckendorff. Efim Grigorievich Etkind, as you know, was called as a witness to the trial that was memorable to my contemporaries.

How long did the magazine “Mirror of Mysteries” exist and what caused the end of its activities? What is the current situation with Russian journalism in Europe?
- In recent years, we have had difficulty financing the magazine, which we published solely for our own pleasure. Gorenstein, who loved the magazine, encouraged him and always asked for more and more copies. He accepted them with undisguised joy, like a small child playing with toys. It was touching to see this big man running around with small, bright magazines. And after the death of the writer, there was no longer any incentive to publish ZZ, and it somehow naturally and immediately, like sparklers, went out. In total, we stayed with the magazine for 8 years – from 1995 to 2003.

Vladimir Guga talks to Mina Polyanskaya

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