Prokofiev Sergey Olegovich. Excerpt characterizing Prokofiev, Sergei Olegovich

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

Saul Bellow

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

William Faulkner

July 26 marks the first anniversary of his death. He passed away after a three-year painful illness. At the funeral in the Swiss city of Dornach, in the Goetheanum, the head building of the Order, many relatives, colleagues, friends and numerous followers gathered to say goodbye to him.

Sergei is the son of Sofia Leonidovna Feinberg and Oleg Sergeevich Prokofiev, the composer’s youngest son from his first wife, Spanish singer Carolina Codin. (Her family name was Lina; in February 1948 she was arrested and, according to Article 58, she was sentenced to 20 years in maximum security camps, released in 1956.) Oleg Sergeevich, who became an artist, was married to an Englishwoman, Camilla Gray, in his second marriage . The Soviet authorities did not allow him to leave the country and only allowed him to go to London for his wife’s funeral, which gave him the opportunity to remain in England. Sofya Leonidovna, Sergei's mother, became a famous children's writer, and later, in her old age, became interested in poetry and wrote several books of poetry. Sergei's maternal grandfather Leonid Evgenievich Feinberg was an artist and famous Soviet art theorist (I note that Leonid Evgenievich was born into a Jewish family and was baptized). His brother Samuil Evgenievich Feinberg was a famous pianist and outstanding teacher, professor of piano at the Moscow State Conservatory. This is the kind of family Seryozha grew up in.

You have to go back a long way to explain everything and get to the main point. I spent the summer month of 1970 in Gurzuf. My friend from the institute, Natalya, invited me to join her and head to Koktebel to celebrate the anniversary of the death of Maximilian Voloshin. Her Moscow friends, spouses, both sculptors, agreed to shelter us in their house for the entire duration of our stay. They turned out to be very nice, hospitable hosts, and also close friends of Maria Stepanovna Voloshina, the keeper of the house of the famous poet and artist. It was they who introduced us to Maria Stepanovna. During this “ceremony,” something unimaginable and inexplicable happened: when I introduced myself and explained the reason for our appearance in Koktebel and embarrassedly touched the hostess’s hand, she suddenly announced that she had known me for a long time. I tried to explain myself delicately, not wanting to turn out to be an impostor, but she briefly insisted on her position. I don’t remember how the conversation went further, but Maria Stepanovna, with her leading questions, understood that I would like to read something written by him in the home library, built by Voloshin himself, knowing that unpublished things were unavailable. Our sculptor hosts already on the day of our arrival explained the situation in the house and the tradition of closing the library on all days of mourning. Imagine my genuine surprise when Maria Stepanovna ordered the next day to take Natasha and me to the Library and give us literary treasures inaccessible to ordinary mortals. I suddenly became bolder, which apparently happens to people in a state of shock, and asked (an unthinkable “whim”) if it was possible to get to the Tower of Poets. And the benefactor Maria Stepanovna immediately ordered to take me there. Time was moving towards evening, it was already dark, so I went upstairs and lay down, like guests at home in the old days, on one of the benches and... stared at the starry, mesmerizing sky. I don’t remember how I came down to earth and who helped me get to the hospitable home of Muscovite sculptors.

The next morning, after breakfast, Natalya and I went to the Voloshinsky house and were taken to the Library, opening the treasured door with the key. They brought, I remember, 4 (maybe 5) volumes of verified poetic texts, critical articles and philosophical essays to the table, and we began to read and, with Maria Stepanovna’s permission, feverishly copy, as we chose, into my notebook. It was impossible to resist noticing the decoration of the library. Numerous works by Maximilian Voloshin himself hung on the walls. But two works by the Mexican Diego Rivera attracted special attention: an amazing portrait of Max and a more familiar canvas for Rivera with a bouquet of huge white calla lilies. We were well aware that an exception had been made for us and that absolutely no one was supposed to be here on the day of death.

On the morning of August 11, at breakfast, we learned that a messenger boy from Maria Stepanovna had come running to tell us that we should not come to the morning memorial prayer service, because... the police allowed the presence of only relatives and selected friends of the House. The prayer service was to be led by Father Nikolai from Moscow (he, who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, composed a piano piece specially for this occasion).

At noon, everyone went up to the “land of prayer and meditation,” to the top of Kuchuk-Yanyshar, to the grave of M. Voloshin. The place is special and was remembered by many who visited there later. Several short, proper speeches followed. But then a youth with an irresistible expanse of curly brown head “a la Voloshin” came out to the gravestone. (Many years later I learned that Seryozha got the golden hair from his maternal grandmother Maria Ivanovna Korovina, depicted in two enthusiastic portraits of the work of her two husbands: her first husband, Valentin Aleksandrovich Yakovlev, who died early, and her second husband, Leonid Evgenievich Feinberg) He began to read very concentrated, without any acting, looking not in our direction, but towards the sea. (These words, every word, are with me to this day.)

Didn't I choose my birthday myself?
Age and kingdom, region and people,
To go through torment and baptism
Conscience, fire and waters?

To the apocalyptic beast
Thrown into the gaping maw,
Fallen deeper than it is possible to fall,
In the grinding and stench - I believe!

I believe in the truth of spiritual forces,
Unchained the ancient elements,
And from the depths of charred Russia
I say: “You’re right to judge like that!

It needs to be diamond hardened
To calcinate the entire thickness of existence,
If there is not enough wood in the smelting furnace,
God! Here is my flesh!

I clearly remember that I was taken aback. I inquired who was reading poetry, and received a whispered answer: “Seryozha Prokofiev.” Only adults gathered there, and this young man seemed to give his word to Voloshin himself, having read, from my point of view, a sacramental confession. And Seryozha was already reading the second:

Every day it gets wilder and wilder
The night is dead numb.
The stinking wind, like candles, extinguishes life:
Neither call, nor shout, nor help.

Dark is the lot of the Russian poet:
An inscrutable fate leads
Pushkin at gunpoint,
Dostoevsky to the scaffold.

Maybe I'll draw the same lot,
Bitter child killer - Rus'!
And at the bottom of your cellars I will perish
Or I’ll slip in a bloody puddle, -
But I will not leave your Golgotha,
I will not renounce your graves.

Meanness or malice will finish you off,
But I won’t choose another fate:
To die, so to die with you
And with you, like Lazarus, rise from the grave!

I was stunned. I admit, I felt like a person from another world. Knowing what had happened in the morning and clearly understanding that among those gathered there were observers in civilian clothes, I was sure that as soon as we descended from the mountain, we would all be taken away.

No one was touched.

And in the evening, many came to the House where the Voloshin readings were held. Maria Stepanovna presided, who occasionally (and given her blindness, this was for her - from memory) corrected those reading. I noticed that Seryozha was not there. He was not there the next day in the evening in another house, where the local elite had gathered to meet with E. Limonov, who was becoming scandalous. I am absolutely sure that Seryozha preferred privacy in his room and reading to crowded parties, as they now call it.

After a fleeting mutual introduction, I felt the awkwardness of “asking” for acquaintance with a young man 10 years younger than me, besides, I perceived Seryozha, I must admit, with an awkward feeling of his superiority (after all, he read Voloshin’s poems unknown to me and lived in the house of M.S. ., who loved him and clearly loved him like a mother). We didn’t see him in the library the next day either; apparently, he could always take any book and retire to his room, or maybe he didn’t want to break the tradition of the house. The first thing I did that day in the library was to look for those two poems in one of the books given to me. It turned out that the first one was “Readiness” of 1921. and the second - “At the Bottom of the Underworld” 1922, dedicated to the memory of A. Blok and N. Gumilyov.

A day later we returned to Gurzuf. Unfortunately, it was not possible to say goodbye to Maria Stepanovna and thank her for the days that were etched in her memory for the rest of her life: our hospitable hosts said that she was not feeling well and should not be disturbed. I was never able to see Seryozha – Sergei Olegovich again; fate decreed that the witnesses of those events would be irrevocably scattered all over the world.

Quite recently, previously unknown poems by S.O. Prokofiev, written when he was 16–19 years old, were published. Neither Sofya Leonidovna, the mother of Sergei Olegovich, herself a poetess, nor any of his close friends suspected of these poetic searches and revelations. Sergei Olegovich himself recalled later: “In my life it was a time of intense internal formation and spiritual searches associated with a number of spiritual and mystical experiences, some of which were reflected in poetry.” We are talking about his passion for Anthroposophy that consumed him. The atmosphere of the Koktebel House and the enormous influence of the creativity and personality of Max Voloshin, one of the very first followers in Russia of the philosophical teachings of the German mystical philosopher Rudolf Steiner, clearly had an impact (Voloshin participated as a volunteer in the construction of the first Goetheanum in Dornach). Having become acquainted with this teaching, Sergei, who had previously been fond of painting - like his father - categorically refused to study it and devoted his life to this “science of the spirit.” After the collapse of the USSR, he became one of the founders of the Russian Anthroposophical Society.

Anthroposophy is a grandiose phenomenon in the modern world; the giants of Russian and world culture were keen on it and were its ardent admirers. I will list only the most important names that are well known to everyone: Andrei Bely, Makhsimilian Voloshin, Wassily Kandinsky, Selma Lagerlöf, Albert Schweitzer, Bruno Walter, Saul Bellow and Andrei Tarkovsky. Alexander Scriabin was immersed in the study of the problems of occultism, art and theosophy, the forerunner of Anthroposophy and, if not for his early death in 1915, he would undoubtedly have been among its followers.

Anthroposophy was based on Christian mysticism and the European philosophical tradition, in particular on the teachings of Goethe. (Steiner himself defined Anthroposophy as the “Goetheanism of the twentieth century”). It was also based on the provisions and conclusions of Kabbalism, Vedanta and German natural philosophy. Completely simplified and concise: the goal of Anthroposophy is to develop a sense of unity with the spiritual essence of the Universe. In the concept of Anthroposophy, man is body, soul and spirit. Anthroposophy, while maintaining the importance of reincarnation as a scientific principle of evolution, argued that the spirit is guided by the law of reincarnation.

Let us return, however, from the unattainable heights of transformation to earthly realities. So, 40 years later in the collection “Mystical Fire of the Soul. Youth Poems” publishes poems by Sergei Prokofiev, the composer’s grandson. This year they will find a new life: on the initiative of the All-Russian Museum Association of Musical Culture named after M.I. Glinka, the competition “The Time of the Prokofievs” is being held, within the framework of which poems will become the literary core of musical compositions. Sergei Olegovich’s mother, Sofya Leonidovna Prokofieva, is an honorary member of the jury. This is how she describes the impression of meeting her son’s poetry: “I am 84 years old. I haven’t been expecting spiritual shocks for a long time... That’s why it turned out to be such an unexpected gift, even an event, for me to read for the first time the poems my son wrote in his youth. For forty years he did not touch them, he even considered them lost. And so, emerging again as if from nothingness, they fell into my hands and made a huge impression on me, close to shock. I still don’t understand how, after writing so many poems, my son never showed them to anyone close to him or even said a word about them. Now I know that he wrote poetry mainly at night. It was as if they were waking him up, being born almost ready. As if given to him from above...”

I am glad that at the beginning of my life I encountered this amazing young poet.

Sergei Olegovich Prokofiev(German: Sergej O. Prokofieff; January 16, 1954, Moscow - July 26, 2014, Dornach) - Russian and Swiss anthroposophist.

Biography

Sergei Prokofiev was born on January 16, 1954 to the family of artist Oleg Prokofiev and writer Sofia Prokofiev (née Feinberg) in January 1954 - ten months after the death of his famous grandfather and namesake, composer Sergei Prokofiev.

As a child, he was fond of painting, but at the age of 16, having become acquainted with anthroposophy, he decided to devote himself entirely to this “science of the spirit.”

Sergei Prokofiev's first books in German and English were published abroad. His scientific interests concerned mainly Christianity from the perspective of anthroposophy. After the collapse of the USSR, Prokofiev and like-minded people revived the Russian Anthroposophical Society, and later moved to the center of the World Anthroposophical Society - Dornach, Switzerland, the location of the Goetheanum. In 2001, Sergei Prokofiev was elected one of the six members of the society's executive committee. He was considered one of the leaders of the worldwide anthroposophical movement. Prokofiev's last lectures at the Goetheanum attracted up to 700 people.

Family

• Grandfather - Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev (1891-1953), Soviet composer.
• Grandmother - Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva (1897-1989), Spanish singer.
• Father - Oleg Sergeevich Prokofiev (1928-1998), Soviet and British artist, poet.
• Mother - Sofya Leonidovna Prokofieva (née Feinberg, b. 1928), Soviet and Russian writer.

Biography

As a child, he was fond of painting, but at the age of 16, having become acquainted with anthroposophy, he decided to devote himself entirely to this “science of the spirit.”

Sergei Prokofiev's first books in German and English were published abroad. His scientific interests concerned mainly Christianity from the perspective of anthroposophy. After the collapse of the USSR, Prokofiev and like-minded people revived the Russian Anthroposophical Society, later moving to the center of the World Anthroposophical Society - Dornach, Switzerland, the location of the Goetheanum. In 2001, Sergei Prokofiev was elected one of the six members of the society's executive committee. He was considered one of the leaders of the worldwide anthroposophical movement. Prokofiev's last lectures at the Goetheanum attracted up to 700 people.

Family

• Grandfather - Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev (1891-1953), Soviet composer.
• Grandmother - Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva (1897-1989), Spanish singer.
• Father - Oleg Sergeevich Prokofiev (1928-1998), Soviet and British artist, poet.
• Mother - Sofya Leonidovna Prokofieva (nee Feinberg, R. 1928), Soviet and Russian writer.

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Notes

Literature

• Timofeev Yaroslav.// News. - 2014. - August 3.

Excerpt characterizing Prokofiev, Sergei Olegovich