Vysotsky prose works. Vysotsky, "A Novel about Girls" (selected prose)

Vysotsky

For the beginning, see “New World”, 2000, No. 11, 12.

The book is published in its entirety in the “Life of Remarkable People” series by the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house.

Our own foreign country

The year seventy-three began for Vysotsky with the writing of his last songs. The latter - not in the literal sense, of course - why rush to where we will arrive anyway? - but in terms of life-composition. How many songs and poems are already available? Three hundred? Four hundred? There is no time and reluctance to study statistics - it is not a matter of quantity, but of results.

There was complete clarity about the theater. He leaves it - in his soul he enters into such a secret agreement with himself. That is, he will play - as long as he and Taganka have enough patience. And he simply couldn’t play honestly, there was simply no other way; he had not yet been able to do anything with a weakened nerve and coolness. But the heart made a choice between two passions - the word is now more important than the game, the poet stands in front of the actor:

I left the business, such a good business!
He didn’t take anything away - he fell off in what his mother gave birth to -
Not because I was impatient, but the time was ripe,
Because of the blue mountain, other things caught up.

“Blue Mountain” clearly came from someone else’s poems. Of course, it was Bulat who rode on his horse - “along the red river, my joy, along the red river, to the blue mountain, my joy, to the blue mountain”... If this mountain is a symbol of poetry, to which we strive and which calls us to itself , - it’s not a sin to repeat. We need new synonyms for the already overused Parnassus and Pegasus.

From the height of the blue mountain, from the height of God's face looking at you from a dusty icon, all intratheater dramas and conflicts are seen calmly, without irritation:

And below they say - whether from good or from evil, I don’t know:
“It’s good that he left - without him things became better!”
I rip off the cobwebs in the corner from the images with my nails,
I'm in a hurry because they are saddled behind the house.

These horses - you know what kind, they can carry "to last refuge" And then the words “I left the business” will take on an additional, albeit undesirable, meaning. But playing with death is an integral part of the profession, and after the line has been honestly drawn, our “personal matter” is transferred to the heavenly office, and, as they say, “wait for an answer.” In the meantime, let's live.

Vysotsky has not been abroad since his childhood in Germany. In subsequent years, he, like most Soviet citizens, tried not to think about what might be inaccessible. You will daydream, open your mouth at a foreign loaf - and you will be dumbfounded by the fact that you are “not allowed to travel abroad.” There is no such adjective in dictionaries, but in oral speech responsible comrades it is there. In Vysotsky’s work, the nervous and painful theme of distant travels was reflected back in 1965, when he composed a song “for those traveling abroad and those returning from there”:

And now, eight years later, he himself fills out a form called “application form”: “I ask permission... to France for 45 days - from April 15 to May 30, 1973... to visit his wife, de Polyakoff Marina-Catherine (Marina Vladi)". Attached to this is a reference from the place of work, signed with a “triangle” (director, secretary of the party bureau, chairman of the local committee); certificate from the house management; invitation “from there”: “I, the undersigned Marina-Catherine de Polyakoff... invite my husband, V.S. Vysotsky, for full financial support for a period of...”, etc. “A bunch of forms” were submitted on the first of March, but this is only the first step. Then a secret “special check” begins: they find out the ins and outs of the “applicant” and his mom and dad.

Why do we Soviet people dislike writing business papers so much? Because literally each of us must hide something about ourselves and our loved ones: nobility, Jewishness, belonging to the dispossessed or repressed, living in occupied territory, having relatives abroad, contacts with foreigners or dissidents. If you write everything honestly, you will harm yourself; if you hide something, you will be exposed as a deceiver. And impeccable people by the standards of our valiant bodies simply do not exist.

It seems that no incriminating materials were found on Vysotsky, and on April 2 he was allowed to pay a state fee of 361 rubles for the coveted visa. By the way, a lot of money! But three days earlier, the newspaper “Soviet Culture” published an article by M. Shlifer “In private order.”

Which Slate or Schnifer signed this material is absolutely not important. It is important that a case has been opened against Vysotsky in connection with his February tour in Novokuznetsk. And someone has a strong desire to bring him under the article - no longer in the newspaper sense. It was calculated that he gave sixteen concerts in four days: “Even the hero, Ilya Muromets of art, cannot bear such a load!” They found out that he performed without the knowledge of Rosconcert, by personal agreement with the director of the local drama theater. Well, there was an agreement: three leading artists left the theater, performances stopped, there was nothing to pay salaries with. They entered into a mutually beneficial agreement, which is now being called a “commercial deal,” “hack work,” and “illegal business activity.”

To whom will you prove that you are truly capable of heroic workloads, that you are capable of giving people something that cannot be measured in hours or rubles. That within the framework of their instructions and standards, real professional work is simply impossible. The official rates are absurd. If you don’t come to an agreement “privately,” then the people will never see or hear anything good. Our profession needs its own Robert Fischer - through his stubborn fight for fees, he defended the rights of all chess players as professionals, and Soviet grandmasters also began to be paid some money, and not rewarded with “Flight” watches for winning an international tournament. An actively working artist wants to receive something for his work, and not be on someone else’s “full financial support” all his life...

But this is not the main thing now. Are authoritative comrades from the center behind the Novokuznetsk machinations? Do they want to make it difficult for Vysotsky to travel around Europe in this way? It is impossible to know. Marina, sensing something was wrong, begins to tug at her Parisian friends, they turn to the leader of the Communist Party, Georges Marchais, and he calls almost Brezhnev himself in Moscow. On April 17, a passport with a visa was received, although there is still no real peace.

“The wait lasted, but the farewell was short...” A line more than a month and a half long. Moreover, the farewell took a maximum of two days - a dozen short conversations, including telephone conversations, with relatives and closest friends. Everyone wishes you a good journey, trying not to reveal the chill of alienation that inevitably arises in such cases. And the wait lasted - how long? Maybe five years, or maybe all thirty-five.

“He didn’t even need someone else’s abroad,” how many times did various people repeat this phrase of Vysotsky as a saying. No, brothers, you need to go abroad - at least in order to look at yourself, here, and at your affairs from a sufficient distance. To think about where to live next.

On April 18, 1973, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi leave Moscow in a Renault car. Both have very solid travel experience, but this case is unusual, special, solemn and alarming at the same time. Having gained momentum, they have a lively conversation on some minor topics, although they are both thinking about what could happen at the checkpoint. What, exactly, is so terrible that can happen? They won't kill you! They won’t kill you, but they can deprive you of that new life to which you have already tuned in with your mind, your heart, and all your nerves, stretched like strings. Perhaps a similar fear is unconsciously experienced by a baby who has set his sights on living, who is about to be released from his mother’s womb, where he has been tortured for so long...

“The clouds are gloomy on the border,” I suddenly remember a cheerful song in neither village nor city, although all the clouds have thickened in my soul, and the sky above Brest is clear. He hands over two passports to the border guard, who is hiding in a two-story building. Well, will he come back now, salute and say that, according to a telephone message received from Moscow, the visa has been canceled and citizen so-and-so must turn the shafts? No, with a wave of his hand he beckons you to drive up to the service premises. Men and women, military and civilians, are running towards the car from all sides. They crave autographs - who knows what: they shove cigarette packs, passports, buffet menus, they are even ready to offer their foreheads. Yes, hello, yes, it’s me and this is my wife, Marina Vladi (at least someone would have guessed and ask Marina to sign something)... The passports are being returned. So, let's see: the stamps are in place. Tea? Yes thank you. Take a photo with the whole company? Please!

On Polish territory you can already give free rein to your emotions, shout and fool around. Because we are rushing to the West! Freedom, freedom! Heads up! Life rushes by like poetry... Two things immediately began to come together. One poem was started on a highway in Belarus, but it was afraid to stick out and straighten out. Now its rigid rhythmic frame is overgrown with the meat of details:

Shadows of bare birches
voluntarily lay down under the wheels,
The highway is shiny
and the bayonet pointed into the distance.
Eternal death row mosquito
broke right at the nose,
Transforming glass
windshield
into Dali's painting.

Purely literary, non-song verse - it is closer not to theater, but to cinema. The game of general and close-up plans, pictures, atmosphere. Mystical surreal, like Andrei Tarkovsky. Free transitions from one era to another...

And chaotic thoughts
lazily knocking on the crown,
We rushed into the breakdown -
Well, try to stop it!
And into my car
time knocked pleadingly, -
I let this time pass
mixed with blood.

During this journey, Marina also became, as it were, a “fighting friend”: crossing the border brings people together - even those already connected by strong ties. Gratitude is a new feeling that he felt almost for the first time in relation to a woman. We know how to fall in love, adore, suffer from separation, go crazy, but silently, in our souls, give thanks, that is, give good in response to good...

Poland is abroad, but not a foreign land. This is where our surname came from - and the combination “Mr. Vysotsky” sounds quite natural. The Poles have something in common with the Russians (there is no getting around their Slavic roots) and with the French (a penchant for elegance and chic). Many of our compatriots proudly talk about the presence of a Polish element in their blood. Poles everywhere take Marina as one of their own. The Polish type of woman is a kind of ideal European model, which is approached, on the eastern side, by not too plump Russian ladies, and on the western side by not too emaciated French women. It’s a pity, we have problems with the language, and then “Please, lady!” things are not going well.

We arrived in the capital on time, but unwittingly caused confusion in Polish internal affairs. We stayed at a hotel and from there began calling Daniel Olbrychski. His wife Monika answers: Danek is filming in Lodz, he will return late in the evening. And with extreme hospitality he offers to pick them up at the hotel right now. And it must be unfortunate that it was in this hotel and at this very time that Danek was having a strictly secret meeting, the program of which did not include the appearance of his wife. Marina was horrified, although, from a male point of view, the event was not sensational: for many actors, the expression “I’m on set” often has some secondary meaning.

Nevertheless, the evening with the Poles was a success. Wajda, Zanussi, Hoffman - it’s been a long time since I’ve seen so many first-class directors at one table. No matter what these people talk about, you can feel that they are immersed in their work twenty-four hours a day (we only have Tarkovsky, well, maybe Kira Muratova). Not “filmmakers”, but artists. The game element in their appearance is completely absent. Everyone has a big thought in the foreground, a main idea, and professionalism is implied by itself, this is a matter of technology. And where does this small and poor country have such a powerful film industry and such a high directorial culture?

Moreover, the Poles were especially staring after the war, at the ruins. They honestly experienced everything that happened, did not fall into national ambition, into fanfare glorification of their exploits. But everyone has a sense of homeland, and political freethinking does not contradict it at all. Even in jokes they remain patriots. For example: a person puts one hundred zlotys in a bank, where he is told that the safety of the deposit is guaranteed by the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the entire socialist community. “What if the commonwealth collapses?” - “If the master is sorry to give a hundred zlotys for this, the master is not a Pole.” And here in Russia it is becoming increasingly fashionable to talk about ourselves - “in this country” and convince each other of our historical doom. There is a difference.

Daniel undertakes to accompany his friends: he gets into his car and flies at breakneck speed to the German border, they can barely keep up with him. Here is the farewell: Vysotsky and Marina - to the west, the owner - “in the other direction”, where he is not really drawn today... Nothing, as they say here, will change...

We passed Fürstenwalde, and Eberswalde - much further north. And he would hardly have recognized the garrison town of his childhood. We have passed East Berlin - and now another Rubicon has been crossed: we are finally in the Western world. We will spend the night here, but for now - our first walk along the capitalist street.

From the stories of Russian travelers, he knows that the strongest impression on them is invariably not architectural monuments, not museums (we have plenty of this stuff), but exclusively store windows. When our man sees thirty varieties of sausages and forty types of cheese (and everything is “available for sale”, not props, not exhibition samples!), he faints. This is too unusual after the Soviet shop windows with pyramids of uniform cans of seaweed... One of our directors was taken along the Champs Elysees for the first time, because what seemed most interesting to him there was the Renault and Peugeot standing behind the glass on the ground floor. He was shocked that you could just walk in, pay, and immediately receive the ignition keys. The French looked at him as if he were a Papuan: they don’t understand our worldview. Any Belmondo with us would have to wait in line for six months, then go to hell in the middle of nowhere, to the Warsaw Highway, hang out there for a couple of hours and use his famous smile twenty times in order to sell him our Lada with a suitable body and that the color he likes. No romantic dreamer in his wildest dreams will see a car shop similar to the one in Paris somewhere on Gorky Street.

The border between Germany and France is almost imperceptible, and you don’t have to get out of the car. And then little by little you notice the difference between peoples. A German cares primarily about benefits and comfort, while a Frenchman, in addition to this, always remembers his appearance. Even if he is in the overalls of a road worker, he will put on some kind of neckerchief to indicate his individuality. Moreover, the hairstyle, mustache, sideburns of all sorts are in perfect order. A middle-aged Clochard sits at a gas station and asks those passing by for ten francs - he is quite decently dressed and has a well-groomed beard. And the bottle in his hands is not bourda, but burgundy.

On the twenty-ninth of April we arrived in Paris. He simply does not have words for this city. And it’s good that they don’t exist, because falling into the general rut and rhyming: “Paris” - “roofs” - “you speak” - “you are silent” - no, that’s not our business. You can finally be silent, and this is pleasant in its own way. You walk along the streets without even asking the name of each of them. And this city doesn’t bother you or puzzle you either. Your internal creative combustion engine is completely turned off, which in your homeland can only be achieved with the help of the “cursed one”. A completely new feeling: you don’t spend money, but refuel. Maybe this is the point of travel?

Paris also has its own Russia, which Marina actively introduces him to. He simply did not expect to see so many people speaking Russian. And at the same time, they know Vysotsky’s songs by heart. They quote like Pushkin or Griboyedov, inserting lines into their speech, sometimes even in a different, modified sense: “But, unfortunately, a friend suddenly turned up,” “We are not at all trained in such matters,” “Beauty among those running!” A couple of times I autographed handwritten notebooks with songs. Many of the local Russians listened to him in Moscow or St. Petersburg, and here his concert could become an event. But then the Parisian case will be added to the Novokuznetsk case... And - “I will not see either Rome or Paris.” Or, on the contrary: they will put you outside Russia and will not let you back. Neither one nor the other really suits us. IN friendly company Vysotsky sings what he wrote three-odd years ago in response to rumors that he had “left Race”:

Whoever believed received a gift,
For a good ending, like in the movies:
Take it Arc de Triomphe,
Hit the Renault factories!
I laugh, I die of laughter:
How did you believe this nonsense?!
Don't worry - I didn't leave,
And don’t get your hopes up - I won’t leave!

And the local Russians understand him very well. Because they need him there. He should not just live in Russia, but be Russia. And it’s also nice to feel that your personality no longer consists mainly of dreams and intentions, but of ready-made songs that say many times more about you than you yourself could say in the most intimate conversation.

Actress Marina Vladi was invited to the Cannes Film Festival - together with her husband. The role of “Comrade Krupsky” is somewhat unusual for Vysotsky. There was an anecdote that was not entirely clear to foreigners. An old communist speaks to the people and tells how he worked in the People's Commissariat of Education under the leadership of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. They listened to him, and then asked: “Have you met Nadezhda Konstantinovna’s husband?” - “No, unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to meet Comrade Krupsky.” What to do: Vysotsky has not yet managed to star in a film that could be ranked at the Cannes level. But maybe all is not lost yet? Someday we'll star in a masterpiece, and maybe we'll try to direct ourselves. In the meantime, let's walk in a tuxedo, arm in arm with Marina, along the famous embankment, where now, at the grand opening, there are so many world movie stars.

The next morning he was pleasantly surprised to see photographs in the newspapers. Professionally filmed, it’s fun to look at yourself in an international context. In Soviet newspapers, Vysotsky’s identity is strictly classified: they can still name him, but his face is kept, as it were, under a burqa. Yes, West is West, East is East...

From the trip, Vysotsky brings various gifts to his loved ones: some jeans, some a turtleneck, some cosmetics... And for himself, he took from France something priceless and not controlled by any customs - the spirit of freedom and the willingness to fight for their own civil rights. In fact, why do we consider ourselves obviously guilty? Why do we perceive the opinion of any official as the voice of God? After all, in ten, well, twenty years, they will still accept our point of view, since they simply do not have their own. A lie by itself does not produce anything; it always speculates on the truth. They will still talk and write about the educational significance of Vysotsky’s songs when it becomes beneficial for them. So, maybe we should put our feet to the future and think with our heads what we can achieve today?

On June 21, the court ruled that Vysotsky must return the nine hundred rubles “illegally” paid to him to the treasury. This, of course, did not make him happy, but it did not discourage him either. On the contrary, it was enough courage to write a letter to the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Demichev and take a completely different tone:

“Dear Pyotr Nilovich! Recently I have become the object of unfriendly attention from the press and the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR. For nine years I have not been able to get through to legalized communication with the listeners of my songs...”

Like this! Calmly and with dignity. The easiest way is to describe the situation as it is.

“You probably know that in the country it is easier to find a tape recorder on which my songs are played than one on which they are not. For nine years I have been asking for one thing: to give me the opportunity to communicate live with the audience, to select songs for the concert, to coordinate the program.

Why am I put in a position in which my civically responsible creativity is relegated to a kind of amateur performance? I am responsible for my creativity to the country that sings and listens to my songs, despite the fact that they are not promoted by radio, television, or concert organizations...”

“Delivered - delivered”, “responsible - I answer”... Oh, then we’ll correct the entire text, but for now, let’s not lose our tone.

“I want only one thing - to be a poet and artist for the people that I love, for the people whose pain and joy I seem to be able to express, in accordance with the ideas that organize our society.”

No, this is not a “Soviet” language, this is quite an international standard. The French, pushing through their cultural plans and projects, also refer to the interests of society. Society and state are not exactly the same thing.

“And the fact that I am not like others, this is, perhaps, part of the problem that requires the attention and participation of management.”

Isn't it too much? But it’s honest, and honesty cannot ultimately be unprofitable. This is customary in the civilized world.

The result of this letter after some time is the assignment of the Philharmonic rate to Vysotsky as an artist of the spoken genre. Eleven rubles and fifty kopecks per performance. But don't laugh. WITH black sheep- at least a tuft of wool, and then we will continue the fight.

New hopes

In some modern story he remembered one small but eloquent detail: school teacher music student sees a large poster on the street with the name of his former classmate giving a solo concert. “Nothing is more upsetting than the success of a comrade,” sums up about this either the character, or the author, or both. It's upsetting, but not for everyone. Vysotsky was very happy to learn that Zolotukhin’s story “To the Source of the River, to My Childhood” was published in the magazine “Youth”. And even in the same room with Boris Vasiliev - the company you need! When one of ours comes to the forefront, there is nothing bad but good about it. He also pulls us there with his inspiring example!

Voznesensky invited me to his dacha on the eve of the 500th Antimirs. Let's try to show him new poems and get advice about possible publication. There is a chance - right now. Some people enter literature without any problems, like walking up a ladder. Some are even taken there by escalator - for good personal data. Well, non-standard authors have to climb the rock, clinging to any ledge.

In July we arrived in Pitsunda with Marina and Seva Abdulov. Moscow acquaintances Inga Okunevskaya and Viktor Sukhodrev met at the House of Cinematographers' Creativity. Victor works as a translator at the Foreign Ministry - he even had to deal with Khrushchev. Inga and Victor wanted to invite the newcomers to their table in the dining room, but it turned out that not everyone was allowed into the prestigious row near the wall, but only Sergei Gerasimov, Eldar Ryazanov and persons equated to them. Compliance with the hierarchy is strictly monitored by an administrator named Gugulia, a former party worker. Then Inga and Victor themselves moved to the democratic middle of the hall, where Vysotsky, Marina and Seva received an uncomfortable table near the aisle. And the awkwardness immediately disappeared. This way it’s easier than downloading your license and proving whoops. Many ambitious priests of beauty spend their whole lives and all their strength fighting to be settled and planted where they need to be.

Three weeks of quite a relaxing holiday. We went to buy Isabella wine at a familiar Abkhazian house, where Vysotsky visited last fall during the filming of A Bad Good Man. This time he himself did not take part in the tasting, and therefore drove the car and, upon returning to the House of Creativity, unloaded from it first the bottle he had received as a gift, and then Seva and Victor, who had fallen victims of Caucasian hospitality.

The calm resort sea rebelled one evening and swimming was banned. After the rain, the vacationing public came ashore, as did Vysotsky and his company. And suddenly the line dividing sea and land seemed to him to be the border between two worlds. And how strangely both sides behave! White lambs rush at full speed towards this line - and near it they break, turning into nothing. And people coolly stare at the disastrous process, have fun with it, but will not even come close, so as not to splash them with cold moisture. The poet, as always, is cut into two halves, one with those suffering, the other with those watching.

The next morning I read this song to my small circle; I chose not to voice the melody. They listened with understanding, but, it seems, they did not really take the last stanza:

But in the twilight of the seabed -
In the secret depths of sperm whales -
One will be born and rise alone
An incredible wave -
She will rush to the shore -
And it will consume those watching.
I'll sympathize a little
To those who died - from afar.

Here, with Pushkin, there is an unobtrusive echo (“Comrade, believe, it will rise...”), and an unexpected turn of thought at the end: those who perceive life as a spectacle, history will still get enough of them... But is this harsh sarcasm necessary: ​​“I will sympathize from afar”? “From afar” - that is, from the other world. Is there any room left for vindictive accounts?

One Gagra rich man threw a reception for the cinematic elite. In the courtyard of his villa he set a large table for about thirty people, vanity fair at its finest! Of course, it would be possible not to go, but why waste energy on a proud refusal? And then - any, even the most boring meeting, is a source of information. People somehow reveal themselves, and if you don’t look at them, don’t listen, what are we going to write about? “You shouldn’t approach other people’s tables,” the poet said quite rightly, but feasting from ancient times to the present day remains the main genre of human communication.

In short, five of us showed up there - and everything went according to the traditional scenario. After two or three banal toasts, the owner naturally started talking about the guitar and songs. I had to say that the guitar remained in Moscow. “We’ll find another one, we’ll get it out of the ground.” In full accordance with the “Smotriny”, almost composed and not yet sung by anyone: “He wanted me to sing - was it in vain that they gave me water?!”

What are you going to do here? Why can Nikolai Kryuchkov sit quietly, relax, and no one forces him to sing: “I’ll wave my silver wing to you”? Vysotsky must serve them culturally... They think that he is flirting, that he is pushing his own price. But he simply is not in the mood, or rather, the selected and limited contingent that has gathered does not give him the necessary mood. He doesn’t “perform” his songs, but rather re-creates them with the participation of suitable listening partners. The author, the artist is a creature with an unpredictable psyche. It’s like an honest, unselling woman: with mutual passion, she can give herself to you somewhere in the bathroom or in an elevator while standing, but without a sincere desire she will run away from a luxurious bed. In short, he did not allow himself to be raped this time.

And a couple of days later he called his people to the beach after dinner, to the farthest mushroom umbrella. It’s a very opportune time, since the entire public is watching the movie. Here he began to sing. And it must be done: as soon as the session ended, the mechanic turned on pop melodies and rhythms at full power. Damn him, what a bad time! As if hearing his curse, the stupid music stops, and he shows his friends the newest songs.

The next morning it turns out that people leaving the cinema heard Vysotsky’s voice, asked the projectionist to turn off the loudspeaker, lined up on the balconies of the House of Creativity and listened to the end. Those whose windows overlook the highway were invited to stay in rooms with sea views. But Vysotsky and his company could not see this entire audience because of the tall trees.

Maybe the public watches the artist from afar not out of indifference, but out of delicacy? They are embarrassed to invade your world... Let's think about the last stanza new song. It is possible that we will do without this vengeful wave of destruction that will overwhelm everyone... Sometimes it is better to leave the last word to yourself, and stop at the penultimate word in the song.

In September, Taganka goes to Tashkent - however, neither “Galileo” nor “Hamlet” are being taken there. Still won big victory- V. S. Vysotsky, among five particularly distinguished actors, was awarded a Certificate of Honor from the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Uzbek SSR. Yes, exactly with capital letters, because it is considered a government award. And from now on, in all questionnaires in the corresponding column we will not have a dash, not “I don’t have”, but this very thing.

Then - Alma-Ata, where he was actively interviewed by the press. Television appearance in Ust-Kamenogorsk. And the sky did not fall to the ground, and the waters of the Irtysh did not flow back from Vysotsky’s voice. Well, why are they so afraid of him on the banks of the Moscow River?

The most an important event at the end of the seventy-third year - work on ballads for the film “The Escape of Mr. McKinley,” which, based on the novel by Leonid Leonov, is going to be directed by Mikhail Schweitzer. What kind of novel is not so important. It is important that the director’s idea naturally came across Vysotsky as a poet. It started with the fact that Schweitzer wanted to use the Brechtian principle of “alienating” meaning, a way of directly addressing the viewer - only not in zongs, but in plot-driven ballads, and he even wrote them in rough form - he made something like a prose interlinear. He began to consult with his wife and co-author Sofia Milkina. She identified Vysotsky, called him and delicately offered to look at the preparations, just in case. We met at Mosfilm, he received the texts, opened the folder at home - and he was drawn into it, and plunged headlong into the schematic little world constructed by the director.

America is not America depicted here - that is not the point. He wasn't there, he doesn't know. There was an opportunity to overcome the gravity of my own life. They gave him a small planet for experiments, where everything can be built from scratch, everything can be painted with your own colors. How many days are given for the creation of the world? Six? This is how it goes approximately: from Friday to Thursday, six out of eight ballads are ready, plus the seventh, written without interlinear translation, taken directly from itself:

Someone looked out for a fruit that was not ripe -
They ran for the trunk - it fell...
Here's a song about someone who didn't sing
And what the voice had, I didn’t recognize.

But in those six ballads, he released his voice - not a singing one, but a poetic one - into complete freedom. I allowed myself not to think about drama, not to look at my watch. The length of the song depends on the interlocutor - here you clearly feel the beginning, middle, end, here you cannot go for a long time in one direction, after a couple of stanzas, as a rule, there is a turn. There are, of course, those bards who start playing lyrical bagpipes and demand attention. And they receive this attention - our people are sensitive and compassionate. Vysotsky is not like that: it is unthinkable for anyone to yawn in the middle of a song. And he always ends it exactly in the place that is suggested by the breath of the listeners. He would rather cut off the last stanza of his song than allow it to be applauded by mistake after the penultimate one.

That’s all true, but I also want to immerse myself into myself without limiting the depth, and this can only be achieved by a large form. Do we write for others or for ourselves? Life is too short to answer this question. And the best thing is when you are always alone and always with everyone.

Thirty-seventh

It just so happens that Vysotsky’s own birthday rarely turns out to be a festive one. In mid-January 1974 he had a week off from working hard at the theater during the school holidays. And where there is a day off, there is a spree, according to the root system of the Russian language. On the day of Vysotsky’s thirty-sixth birthday, he is not at Antiworlds; on the twenty-sixth he is absent from rehearsals. Again there was talk about replacements, but they took on him, introduced the notorious “spiral” into his already tormented body - and here he is again, Hamlet and Galileo.

The political weather has noticeably begun to deteriorate. One might even say that the political climate has changed. In January, Lydia Chukovskaya was expelled from the Writers' Union, and in March, Vladimir Voinovich. Galich, who has long been expelled from all creative organizations, visits friends, sings farewell songs and hopes that someone will dissuade him from leaving.

But the main event of the year, and perhaps the entire decade, is the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn. The world-famous writer, Nobel laureate was arrested like a duck and brought to Lefortovo. And from there, as a special favor, to the airport. Maybe not to Kolyma, but to Frankfurt am Main, but he didn’t ask to go there! In addition to the right to asylum, a person also has the right to a single homeland... And all this happened with almost complete indifference of fellow citizens.

Where were we at that moment, on February thirteenth? They played, sang, entertained the people... To be honest, we simply did not notice Solzhenitsyn’s departure - we did not note it in our hearts in order to avoid unnecessary suffering. They say that their situation is precarious. But all these punitive actions against our colleagues have a direct bearing on each of us. For whom does the bell toll, one wonders?.. If anyone now utters in response a stupid pun, “The regional committee tolls the bell,” I will kill such an idiot on the spot. You and I are no longer children to joke so casually about any terrible occasion. So in 1937 we indifferently heard how our neighbor was taken away at night, and in the morning they went about their little affairs. And gradually they ceased to be people.

We don’t understand anything either in economics or in politics... We are tongue-tied, we can’t say two words... Not in international affairs... It’s scary to think. And you can’t help but think. And I want to think... What is this?! And they - these - understand everything...

I only got on my nerves, both for myself and for others, but didn’t come to any clarity. Clarity can only come through poetry and song.

We all live as if, but
They haven't bothered us for a long time
Nor locomotive whistles,
No steamship whistles.
Others - those to whom it is given -
They strive deep - and see the bottom -
But - like dung beetles
And shallow water fry...

A tough song - both in tone and meaning. Wouldn't it be difficult for listeners? Or maybe she is only for herself, about herself... Even though she talks about “we”. We have become too comfortable in this life. We consider ourselves to have suffered for the truth and demand some other laurels for ourselves for this. We want to be allowed to tell our truth. What if it is never allowed? We need to look for opportunities for new, unprecedented risks, and not for ways to survive. Of course, not everyone can do this, but if you already feel this strength in yourself, then it is useless to cling to the psychology of a snake. Born to fly, he cannot crawl.

This is how you delve into yourself, repent of cowardice and inconsistency - and you can move on with your life. Everything is written out of dissatisfaction with oneself; as dissatisfaction dries up, the songs will end.

And if you look even deeper into yourself, you will see: what happens in the soul essentially does not depend on external factors. The soul has an independent rhythm - periodic alternation of sadness and joy, despair and enlightenment. Neither success, nor money, nor fame have a direct influence on this rhythm. Everyday events can only resonate with it.

And this rhythm is higher than logic, more complex than meaning. All “yes” and “no”, all “pro” and “contra” obey him: “Drown!.. Don’t drown!.. Drown!.. Don’t drown...” And there is no end to this dispute with oneself...

Ahead is a new trip to France, in connection with which on April 8, Vysotsky is summoned for an interview at the Zhdanovsky district committee of the CPSU. The pleasure is dubious, but it is impossible to avoid this procedure. There is an expression in the Soviet language used during the so-called elections - “a bloc of communists and non-party people.” This is how one sees a single prison block into which a passive crowd is driven, consisting of both members and non-members of the party. Even if you were a non-party member at least three times, show up to the district committee. And listen to Comrade Zubov’s instructions about what is and is not allowed in Paris. Ideological provocations cannot be ruled out. And they advise you to be careful with “formerly ours”, because they are all recruited by Western intelligence services. All this would be funny...

That same day I met Marina in Sheremetyevo, the next morning - the two of them were recording at Melodiya, with an orchestra conducted by Garanyan. More than an hour and a half of sound - it's like a big album! He sang twenty-three songs himself, six by Marina. She did it. Moreover, “I carried my Trouble...”, “It happened - the men left...” - this is understandable, songs from a woman’s perspective. But Marina’s “male” songs “We must leave” and “Two beautiful cars” came out so well that now he himself, perhaps, will not perform them. Let her silvery timbre now ring with piercing regret: “You were slow, light gray!”

Taganka turns ten years old. Although this is not written about in the press at all, those who need it know this date - April 23 - without being reminded. A week before, the premiere of “Wooden Horses” based on Fyodor Abramov. Vysotsky does not participate in it, but along with everyone else he is happy that they managed to push through the village theme, and then, lo and behold, the authorities will rehabilitate the long-suffering Mozhaev “Live”. Abramov is a cool guy. He was an assistant professor in Leningrad and wrote articles about how rural life was untruthfully portrayed in literature. And then he decided to throw himself into the breach, threw off the frog skin of an assistant professor and became a pure writer. He is absolutely convinced that he is right, therefore he knows how to fight with officials, to prove that his position, and not theirs, is patriotic.

At first it was not even clear what kind of theatricality could be extracted from Abramov’s stories: well, women talk about their hard lives - no dynamics, no humor. Mozhaevsky Kuzkin in this sense is much more playful. But it happened - and something unexpected. It was in the northern village that the Russian character was presented in its purest form. And it’s not just about these damn collective farms, although it’s about them too. Something valuable and subtle leaves life, disappears forever. No one in any Moscow Art Theater would have played Milentyevna like Demidova did - she’s completely organic. And Slavina in Pelageya reached its apogee. And Vanya Bortnik cast the role of her husband almost without words.

The premiere of “Horses” took place exactly on the day when the Sovremennik Theater moved into a new building on Chistye Prudy. That is, the building is old; it used to house the Colosseum cinema. We visited it as children, although Vysotsky and his friends from Karetny were in all respects closer to another cinema with a “Roman” name - “Forum”. In short, after the premiere we rushed to congratulate our colleagues on their housewarming. Lyubimov does not like Sovremennik - for many reasons: both for his creative spinelessness and for his increased adaptability to Soviet conditions. He gives them a live rooster from Tagansky's Hamlet, accompanied by a moderately sarcastic congratulatory text. Vysotsky probably doesn’t have any emotions about the second drama theater in Moscow: after Efremov moved “to the lagging brigade” of the Moscow Art Theater, it seems that he didn’t see anything there except “His Island” with his songs.

Literally for a day I jumped out to Uzhgorod, where they are starting to film “The Only Road” - a Soviet-Yugoslav film about the events of the forty fourth year. The German tank fleet was without fuel. And the Germans sent a convoy of two or even three hundred giant fuel tankers there. And they put Russian prisoners of war as drivers, chaining them to the cars. And they told the partisans: if you shoot, the cars will explode and the Russians will die. The plot is very nontrivial. Vysotsky plays the role of one of the drivers - Solodov. He doesn’t say anything, but on his last voyage, before his death, he sings a song. After the invitation to the film, it came together immediately with the final shock couplet:

We will not die a painful life -
We'd rather live by certain death!

What a crazy race! Upon returning to Moscow in three days - “Hamlet”, “The Fallen”, “The Life of Galileo”, “Anti-Worlds” - and on April twenty-ninth, he and Marina set off along the route laid out last year. I remember that on this day we were already entering the city of Parizhsk - as some Russian emigrants call it. The anxieties and hopes of that time surfaced in my soul... The populated areas of Belarus are already reminiscent of the lines that began to be written on this highway. The cycle “From the Travel Diary” was recently transferred to Petya Vegin; he is the compiler of the anthology “Poetry Day” for next year, and really hopes to publish poems for the thirtieth anniversary of the Victory.

The second Paris turned out to be a saving intermission, a necessary pause. The language spoken in this city and the style of life here become clearer. Despite all the external liveliness of the French, there is always an interval between people, a distance - like between cars. Acquaintance does not oblige you to get closer; pouring out your soul to each other is not very common. Everyone is busy with themselves and their own affairs. But maybe this cool atmosphere is just good for long-term and large-scale work? At the Orsay Museum, he thinks about how long most of the famous impressionists lived, how thoroughly and purposefully they revealed their worlds. Of course, painting is a completely different matter, but still...

Unexpectedly, he is introduced to the Russian artist Mikhail Shemyakin, who three years ago left Leningrad, where the city authorities cut off his oxygen supply. Long and thin, like a crane, always dressed in special clothing of his own design: a cap with a visor, a jacket, high black boots - this bohemian-eccentric Shemyakin turns out to be surprisingly sociable. He immediately remembers “Wolf Hunt” and speaks about it in an unconventional way: “It’s like a painting that has everything. Classical proportionality." Not far from the Louvre, Shemyakin has a workshop where he and his wife work non-stop. His paintings are very unusual, similar to himself - large, powerful, but not overwhelming. He manages to read a lot and generally lives in world culture. For him, there seems to be no contradiction between Russia and the West. Russian spiritual breadth, he believes, can be combined with European intelligence.

Shemyakin treats everything professionally and business-like. Even his drinking seems to follow a schedule. Literally after his first meeting with Vysotsky, he bought a decent tape recorder to immortalize the songs of his new friend. He has not the slightest doubt that people will need these records in a hundred or two hundred years. Just like his paintings.

Poor Russians: they are constantly put in front of insoluble dilemmas, driven into the gap between two tough options. Should I live there or here? And the decision is a losing one in advance: either you are a poor slave in the Union, or a poor, deaf-mute refugee in a foreign country. Here, Academician Sakharov, through the howl of jammers, speaks on the “enemy” radio about the human right to free movement around the planet. So even the intelligentsia considers him crazy: look what you want! There isn't enough currency for everyone... Or maybe we can make some money? Why don’t everyone work hard for ten years, and in the eleventh year, maybe the money will appear. Here, of course, they talk and think too much about money, but everyone is provided for. I chatted a little with the housekeeper: she had been to Italy, Sweden, and even Singapore. There is work - there is money, although there is never enough of it. But the stimulus is constant, the concentration of energy. Near a jewelry store on Bon Nouvel Boulevard, he listened to the conversation of two girls. One, pointing to some kind of “branzulette” in the window, temperamentally told her friend: they say, I want to earn “arzhan” and buy this thing - that “ashete” -. And here we have the same girls spending time and energy standing in line for half a day to get earrings at Stoleshnikov. They don’t buy from us, but “get it” - a concept that cannot be translated into any languages.

What stunned him most of all was that decent people - not millionaires, but simply many from the middle class - are provided for here not until the end of the month, not until the end of the year, but for life. Some people inherited their parents’ fortune, some wisely invested their money in the bank, and many work not for a piece of bread, but for pleasure and to establish their personality. Well, for the people’s favorite to secretly receive his fee in an envelope, risking a lawsuit, this did not happen with either Brel or Brassance.

Why do we in Russia have some kind of painful attitude towards the very problem of well-being? In a country that has screamed so much at the whole world about a bright future, no one, in fact, believes in the possibility of a normal human life. But we have so much space, so many resources - even now, after fifty million people have been tormented by revolutions and wars. We live crowded, cramped and resentful. It’s as if we were all huddled together in one lopsided hut with windows looking into a dark ravine - this is what our racial life looks like from the outside...

“In my hops, I slightly ruled the forest...” - it’s spinning in my head, and now he’s driving (without any hops - God forbid!) a beige horse “BMW-2500”. The old Renault was sent to a well-deserved rest. He returns to Moscow “somewhat different,” as his friends and colleagues tell him. There was inner calm, even tranquility. How long will it last?

The theater is going on tour to Naberezhnye Chelny, the city where the mighty KamAZ trucks are produced. The performances are, of course, sold out, and tickets are sold secondhand at a huge overpayment - it can’t be any other way. And when we went to the hotel for the first time, tape recorders thundered from the windows on both sides of the street with Vysotsky’s voice. Maybe this noise would be enough for someone for the rest of their life. And he looks at this matter soberly. People's love is a good thing, no doubt about it. But it consists of different components, here is the popular mind, and a certain kind of stupidity, and the enthusiasm inherent in the crowd, which can be turned to anything. At the moment when inspiration dictates something to you, no one’s opinions simply exist - take a notebook and write it down... And in the intervals between insights, you still think about one more task - your sounds, as one comrade said, must be brought into the world.

Vysotsky always wanted everyone to get a piece of him: the worker, the peasant, the intellectual. He never curried favor with snobs, but he still needs to get confirmation of his thoughts from educated people, experienced in poetic subtleties, who, like him, appreciate the same Akhmadulina. Do they read an artistic super-task in his songs - or do they think that he states obvious truths in crude language? People in his circle speak to him openly on these topics less and less often, and the exclusion zone becomes more and more clear.

The city asked Lyubimov to give, in addition to the performances, a concert by artists from the famous theater. The hall was equipped with seats for three thousand, if not more. The Tagan stars began to appear. Demidova recited Blok’s poems wonderfully—they applauded her politely. The next number was - it doesn’t matter whose, but the person was completely boorishly driven off the stage with noise and whistles. They are the ones waiting for Vysotsky and out of impatience they are capable of anything. Smekhov got ready to perform Mayakovsky - and again the threat of obstruction loomed. Vysotsky is simply carried onto the stage, his anger bursts, and with the gaze of a basilisk he instantly makes the crowd go numb.

If you don’t shut up right now, I won’t respect you. You have offended not only my friends, but also artists of the highest class.

Explained popularly who is who here. We understood and calmed down. They listened to both Smekhov and Zolotukhin. And he was seriously angry with this audience: if you love Vysotsky, then why are you letting him down like this, putting him in a stupid position? But it seems they are not doing this out of malice. He came out with a guitar and stopped the joyful barrage with a cautious gesture. No, this is not mass stupefaction, the faces are still not fanatical, quite meaningful...

After all the notes and questions and answers, he goes out into the fresh air, pursued by autograph collectors. He gets on the bus and suddenly rises into the air. What, we boarded the plane by mistake? No, it was the fans who lifted the bus in their arms. Well, it’s possible if you like it that way: after all, I’m not alone on this bus, but with my comrades.

On the first of July we went by boat down the Kama to Yelabuga. Payment for travel is in kind, that is, by Vysotsky. Pushkin also described the following distribution of labor: “There were many of us on the canoe, some strained the sail... Ta-ta-ta-ta, our smart helmsman steered the heavy boat in silence, and I, full of carefree faith, sang to the swimmers...” They sailed, We climbed up the steep bank and got to the place where Tsvetaeva lived and where she lost her life.

The house turned out to be tightly closed, so they moved to a neighbor. From her they learned that the house had been remodeled, that there was no longer either the room in which Tsvetaeva lived with her son Mur, or the annex in which “this writer” hanged herself. The annex was low, and she had to kneel down. (I asked God for forgiveness - I thought.) The aunt was still weaving something about fried potatoes in a frying pan, about the supply of cereal in the cupboard. They still compare it with food, but what does that have to do with it: they don’t commit suicide from hunger... But why? So much has been said about suicide, so many myths and theories have been piled up, but every time you start thinking about it as if for the first time...

No, to hell with the bullet and the noose! Never and never! This has now become completely clear to him. Suicide is the death of the mind, which the soul separated from it cannot endure. And he has not yet lived a day apart from his mind. So far he has always understood everything soberly - no matter how defiant this word sounds in relation to his way of life. If something ever fails, it’s the soul, and souls are not suicides, they simply move to another space.

Marina’s grave was then lost in forty-one, then twenty years later extra years The monument was placed where Sister Anastasia indicated by intuition. “Here, I can smell it!” - the old woman screamed. It was right that they listened to her. You can talk to the poet’s soul anywhere if you say a few of his lines to yourself: “Whoever wins in the square - don’t think about it or know about it, in the solitude of your chest - celebrate and bury the victory of solitude in your chest. Solitude: go away, life!”

Of the drinks here, he likes kumys the most - they say it even has degrees! He gets so much of it that there is enough for almost the entire troupe. The people here turned up like this - you can’t even call them the vulgar word “fans”, in general, they understand him well. They work at KamAZ, and read more than Moscow nerds. My colleagues and I went to visit one such family - there on the shelf, next to the classic books, were films with neat inscriptions “Vysotsky” along the edge of the box. “We all know your poetry well,” they say calmly, without servility. There are readers, and there will be a book for them someday.

Perhaps the most important thing that he wrote in the thirty-seventh year of his life was “The Pursuit” and “The Old House.” It’s not just a cycle, but like a small poem in two parts - “Dark Eyes”, and the ending not only completes the second song, but also closes the ring:

...How much has sunk, how much has subsided!
Life threw me, but it didn’t throw me.
Maybe I sang about you clumsily,
Black eyes, white tablecloth?!

Two images of Russia. Alone, our man is desperately brave - and will gallop away from any wolves. And when they come together, they “sour souls, become pimpled,” “from time immemorial we have been in evil and whispers.” It turns out that our evil is multiplying in collective forms, and good is always individual. At all times.

Maybe he will sing “Pursuit” in Kheifitz’s new film, “The One and Only.” This is based on a story by Pavel Nilin with the excellent title “Dur.” And the love triangle there is quite unusual. The main character, the driver, is played by Zolotukhin, and his wife by Proklova. Her heroine is, as people say, “not a b..., but an honest giver” - she cannot resist the person in pants. And now her next subject is the head of the choral circle, Boris Ilyich, to whom she surrenders after a heart-to-heart conversation. Vysotsky was invited to play this provincial loser, and if he wants, to sing. The proposal has been accepted, but we'll see about the song.

The troupe arrived on tour in Vilnius by the Lietuva train, and Vysotsky with Dykhovichny and Zolotukhin on a BMW. “And what kind of Jew doesn’t like driving fast,” joked Zolotukhin when Dykhovichny was driving. We spent the night in Minsk. Vanya treated him to roast ducks shot during the “royal” hunt by his father-in-law, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.

Everything started out fine, and then another breakdown loomed. He quarreled with Tanya, then asked her forgiveness in front of everyone. And the only way to forgive yourself, alas...

I slept in the room for a day. Dykhovichny drove the car to Moscow, where they later went together by train. The tour continues in Riga, but Vysotsky does not get there right away. Again, life and death wanted to measure their strength in him. The mind seems to be constrained, but still intact and continues to passively observe what is happening. Here its unfortunate owner cuts out a “stitch” from himself, here he hits himself in the chest with the same knife - but knows that the blow is not fatal. Dykhovichny allows himself to be tied up and an ambulance is called, who stitches him up. What then? He tries to throw himself out of the window, but feels that the pull of life is stronger. He ends up in Sklif, is discharged a day later and goes not home, but to Seva Abdulov on Nemirovich-Danchenko, from where he is again taken to Sklif, having previously sewn in “esperal” - right on the table.

Still, I finished the last five days in Riga, and then - to Leningrad, for the whole of October. At the very beginning of the month, news of Shukshin's death arrives there. Vasya died at the age of forty-five, during the filming of Bondarchuk’s pompous film “They Fought for the Motherland” - based on Sholokhov’s unfinished novel of the same name (he couldn’t finish it, because he himself was probably disgusted by this unnecessary burden). Shukshin worked in the boss’s film in the hope of getting the go-ahead for his own film about Razin, it was his cherished dream. And now - the end of all plans. Everyone, of course, began to remember how Shukshin predicted his death in the film “Kalina Krasnaya,” although several months ago this picture was unanimously criticized for the unnaturalness of the conflict, for the lack of lively characters and strained “sensitivity.”

Vysotsky has not seen Shukshin for several years; their professional cooperation once came down to prehistoric conversations about the film “There Lives Such a Guy” - probably Shukshin’s best work, where he even tried Vysotsky for the role of Pashka Kolokolnikov, already promised to Kuravlev. Shukshin listened to early songs on Bolshoi Karetny - silently, without comment, and then did not reveal his attitude towards Vysotsky’s work. But is this important now? We always leave the possibility of meeting a person for later, for the future, and then - soup with the cat. We won't meet again, we won't talk.

He rushed to Moscow, managed to attend the funeral service and the funeral. In the acting environment, the theatricality of the posthumous ritual is especially noticeable. For many, this is a continuation of the vanity fair, a reason to show off. Although you see genuine pain on some faces. Everything about us is mixed up: you don’t understand where we play, and where we live and die. The artist is like a child: he climbed onto the window and threatens to jump. He seems to be playing and almost laughing. But if you don’t hold him back, he will fall and break to death.

Standing at the coffin, I suddenly caught myself thinking that he had come, as it were, to look at his death from the outside. Although he had already described all this in verse with utmost precision, I was drawn to see “how it’s done.” Not good... One excuse: maybe after this rehearsal, this training flight, we will soon go to heaven...

I was returning by car and turned over seventy kilometers before Leningrad, like in a movie. And, like a stuntman on the set, he remained intact. A familiar mechanic straightened out the dented side of the car in two days. Oh, and God’s servant Vladimir has recently pulled back his Lord! He asked and asked to come to him, but he put him in his place: your turn has not come, live a little longer and wash yourself properly!

And - let's write about your impressions, was it for nothing that you rode back and forth?

Shortly before leaving St. Petersburg, Marina and I visited Fyodor Abramov. He gave his book “The Last Hunt”. And upon returning to Moscow, they learned that Gena Shpalikov had hanged himself. Age - thirty-seven. Alcohol - yes. There are no publications, except for some trifles in songbooks. People sing in bad voices “And I am walking, walking through Moscow...”, not knowing the name of the author. He left the status of a screenwriter, now, perhaps, they will start taking poems out of the table and publishing them.

The emotional background - you can't imagine anything worse. After Marina's departure, there is another plunge into darkness. The theater is routine work. Lyubimov has resumed rehearsals for “Live” and still wants to hand it over. And as a bird in hand - “Fasten your seat belts.” The whole scene is an airplane from the inside, different people are sitting there, reminiscing about the war, talking about the difficulties that builders face in our time... At first, Vysotsky had the role of the Director, sorting out the relationship with the Writer (artist V. Zolotukhin), then everything was redrawn. The courage there was of the second freshest, and the censorship curtailed it.

But the start of the performance is good. A soldier walks through the entire hall, in full gear, with a machine gun behind his back, a guitar in his hands like a weapon. He is immediately recognized by his voice, and many in the audience have long remembered the song by heart:

We turned the Earth back from the border -
It happened at first -
But our battalion commander spun her back,
Pushing off with your foot from the Urals.
Finally we were given the order to advance,
To take away our inches and crumbs, -
But we remember how the sun went back
And it almost set in the east.
We do not measure the Earth with our steps,
I'm fussing with flowers in vain, -
We push her with our boots -
From myself, from myself!

The whole world in the palm of your hand

I noted the last “fatal figure” on the road: the day before, on January twenty-fourth, Marina and I left Moscow. And two days before departure they had a meeting with Demichev. Pyotr Nilovich receives them first class - he gives them coffee, asks about their creative plans, the weather in Paris and other social things. Then he tells his secretary to connect him with the director of Melodiya and expresses sincere bewilderment at the fact that the record of Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky has not yet been released. Everything is played out according to Stanislavsky’s system, beautifully and convincingly. At the top, “yes” sounds, and then at the bottom, everything comes to naught, without words, quietly.

The sad mood was transferred to the car, and its engine stalled two hundred kilometers before Brest. Many kind people came to the rescue, but they could not understand the imported equipment. The Poles honestly refused to get involved with BMW. Only in West Berlin, in a workshop with the same three letters on the sign, was the car easily brought back to life.

From impressions: in Warsaw, Wajda’s premiere performance “The Life of Danton”, and at the junction of Germany and France, the city of Strasbourg.

The third Paris is darkened, even poisoned, by the story of Igor, Marina’s eldest son. He is in a drug treatment hospital, like his inseparable friend Alex. Long conversations with the doctor, an arrogant and self-confident type, searching for an acceptable way out of a hopeless situation for everyone.

An evening at Zhan's restaurant, where Alyosha Dmitrievich, the Russian gypsy baron, has settled, brings some peace. But my soul is a little cramped, I want to go to completely different places. They said that Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky will be awarded the Dahl Prize. A good reason to see the teacher ten years later, to see what he is like now. But entering the raspberry of reactionary emigration - this pleasure can cost too much...

Still, I took a risk. And he congratulated Sinyavsky and talked to many. They introduced him to different people. They have a great Russian literary life here. Since last year, Vladimir Maksimov has been publishing a magazine with the beautiful name “Continent”, in which you can publish - if you are ready to never be published in the Union or intend to “get out” altogether. Moreover, no one is being forced into anti-Soviet arms, everyone is quite restrained. In general, it was not in vain that I went, I felt my independence, so to speak, on both sides.

But, as the story “Dubrovsky” says, the next day the news of the fire spread throughout the entire area. It was already reported by teletype that Comrade Vysotsky was personally present at the presentation of the award to Sinyavsky. How efficient they are, bitches. And calls have already come from some ambiguous individuals, with provocative questions like “Are you out of control?” “I wasn’t in it” is the only possible answer here, but it’s disgusting when quotes from Vysotsky are poured out by people who were never his friends, and are now trying to make their own small business out of him. Maybe they record it directly from the phone to a tape recorder.

And all this makes him and Marina nervous also because the visa was issued for thirty days, and soon they will have to contact the Soviet Ambassador Chervonenko with a request for an extension. Freedom of movement “there and back” has to be defended step by step, centimeter by centimeter, and for some small people - here and there - it would be very pleasant to watch how he steps in the wrong direction - and falls, disappears...

He kept a diary for about two weeks, describing in it the road to Paris and his first French impressions. I did this, in general, for myself, but not without some caution: suddenly it would turn out to be prose, suddenly the pen would take a turn from the diary path onto the road of a great novel...

I re-read it and was terribly upset. So everything is flat, one-dimensional - no volume. And too seriously - about those everyday trifles and adversities that I am used to taking as a joke. But he seemed to write sincerely, striving for accuracy and specificity. But for myself as a reader I did not resurrect what had just happened, and when re-reading it I did not experience it again. What's the matter?

Writing for yourself and writing for the reader are completely different things. A diary is not literature, it is a psychotherapeutic tool, a way of self-medication, licking wounds. Nobody likes to listen to complaints, but paper will tolerate anything. So he poured out only anxiety, annoyance, dissatisfaction, irritation on her for large and small reasons. Everything significant, everything you live for, remains between the lines. Well, for example: “I sent 3 ballads to Sergei and was tormented with the 4th about love. Today, it seems, I got it.” This refers to Sergei Tarasov and his film “Robin Hood's Arrows,” for which ballad songs are composed. It is written evasively, as if in the mask of a fucked-up professional, tired of the embrace of the muse. What was it really like?

You sit, chew on a pencil, reproach yourself for your helplessness, humiliatingly compare your attempts with the work of the greats: Pasternak - he wrote for real, but I... It’s time to give up this business and shut up forever. And just when you have already fallen into nowhere in your own eyes, suddenly a wave comes out of nowhere and drags you...

When the water of the Flood
Returned again to the borders of the shores,
From the foam of the outgoing stream
Love quietly climbed onto land -
And disappeared into the air before the deadline,
And the term was forty forty...

And after this rumble, a chorus suddenly pours out without a single “r”, with a soft “el” and a chanting of vowels. A solid “y” - like lips stretched out for a kiss:

I'll make a bed for lovers - oooh -
Let me sing in my dreams and in reality!..
I breathe, and that means I love!
I love, and that means I live!

It turns out that Vysotsky’s voice can be impeccably gentle! Although clean creative joy and lasted less than a second. There are no words, much less phrases, for her. She fell into a gap. Yes, as Boris Leonidovich correctly said, “one must leave gaps in fate, and not among papers, crossing out places and chapters of a whole life in the margins.” It is better to write prose not about yourself - not with “I”, but with “he”. “I” is the first letter in the alphabet of poetry, that’s where it belongs, and no diaries can replace an honest word of song.

First crossing of the English Channel in my life. England is the foreign country of foreign countries. Now France seems like home. Unlike the thoroughly spectacular Paris, London is a closed and incomprehensible city. Step outside the traditional tourist area and you will be surrounded by severe darkness. There are so many gloomy gray and yellow houses here, similar to our Butyrkas, and yet these are all respectable business buildings or high-class hotels.

The cozy bustle of the capital can only be felt on Oxford Street, lined with shops. The street is narrow, and sitting on a double-decker bus, you can’t help but be amazed at the skill of the drivers: how do they manage to navigate their bulky motorhomes without hitting anyone? There are even more Arabs and Africans than in Paris, but only here they have something birdlike and thoughtful in their faces - in contrast to the animated facial expressions of Afro-Asian Parisians. It’s clear: language influences. And they all feel like English, which cannot be said, for example, about the Caucasians in Moscow - they are strangers to us, “Chuchmeks,” and therefore, out of a sense of wounded ambition, they strive to prove their superiority. And here calm equality reigns - probably, there are some racial contradictions deep down, but they are securely shrouded in politeness.

Where does the famous English humor come from? No one around is laughing or even smiling. He probably sits very deep in them somewhere. These thoughts arise about “Alice in Wonderland” - work on the record has been dragging on for two and a half years, and the Muse has never really visited. When Oleg Gerasimov invited him to write songs for this fairy tale, he agreed, as they say, without looking, but after reading the fairy tale, he immediately decided to refuse: there are some second, third meanings, as Soviet censors say - “uncontrolled subtext.” You can’t get through the translation into depth - you need to understand the original language, and even better, be born English. But Gerasimov nevertheless persuaded him, besides, Marina once played Alice in a French radio show. There is still no certainty, however, that it will work. Russian laughter is strongly associated with satire and social criticism. We, with our Gogol and Shchedrin, castigate “shortcomings” based on some norm, some ideal, believing that we know “how it should be.” And Carroll makes fun of the very structure of the world, sees “shift” in literally everything...

I started looking out on the streets, in shops and restaurants “ living nature" - people similar to the characters in "Alice". Including those he invented himself. The broken Robin Goose and Ed the Eaglet met quite soon, near some pub. I tried several gentlemen for Carroll, but there was something missing in their faces - paradoxicality, or something. Finally, in the Fortnum and Mason store in Piccadilly, where he was gazing hungrily at the multi-colored cans of tea, a thin man with deep-set, sad eyes caught his eye. This is the guy I'm considering for the role of Carroll, aka the Dodo Bird! The sad Englishman suddenly smiled at the corners of his lips.

He didn’t even try to spot the real Alice among the local children; rather, he looked for something “Alice” in adults: gullibility and curiosity. All these physiognomic games helped me tune in to the right wave. Of course, it would be nice to master Carroll’s native language, but we don’t have time for that, we will invent a special speech for our fairy tale - not English, not quite Russian, but “Vysotska”...

In London we met with Oleg Khalimonov and his wife Veronica. Oleg works at international office to protect the sea from pollution. His colleagues, having learned that Vysotsky was here, persuaded him to speak at the Soviet embassy. There, of course, there wasn’t enough room for everyone, and then he sang again at the Khalimonovs’ house, where his closest comrades had gathered.

In April - a cruise along the route Genoa - Casablanca - Canaries - Madeira and a visit to Mexico. The variety of impressions is at the level of pure childish joy. Only in such a vast space could a desperate Parrot (for the same “Alice”) be born, flaunting a rolling “r” and in his dreams having already visited all continents:

I saw India, China and Iraq.
I'm an indie-and-vidum - not a butt-fool.
(Only savages think this way.)
Caramba! Bullfight! And - damn it!

A completely different theater

The Italians invited Lyubimov to stage the opera at La Scala in Milan - as they say, they don’t refuse such offers. And on the occasion of his departure, he invited Anatoly Efros to do something at Taganka. He chose “The Cherry Orchard”. There had been talk about this for a long time, and it was hinted that Vysotsky would be Lopakhin, but while he was traveling, rehearsals began. With Shapovalov. We need to see what's going on there.

He walked unnoticed into the unlit hall and settled down in one of the last rows. Maybe it’s not so beautiful from behind, but the horizons are much broader... So what do we see on stage? The director walks around with the actors and recites the text. First he walks with one, then with another... He doesn’t teach anything, doesn’t demand anything, but simply nurtures them into their roles in this way. Wow! Is it really possible to carry out this courageous function so simply and so tenderly? Then the director began making comments. Literally - what he noticed, he shared, calmly, without harshness, looking somewhere into space. And space listened to him most attentively, absorbing every word... It's time to come out of the shadows. “Oh, it’s you, Volodya!..” - “Yes, Anatoly Vasilyevich, from the ship to the ball...”

The ball began to spin quickly. Chekhov unexpectedly found himself being translated into Tagansky. His text has many layers, there is both prose and poetry. And for some Brechtian “alienation” resources have been discovered; it is possible to do without zongs. Efros singled out pieces, monologues that are spoken by Demidova - Ranevskaya, Lopakhin - Vysotsky, Zolotukhin - Petya Trofimov into the audience, almost leaving the character. Against the general authentic psychological background, this produces a stunning effect. The so-called “fourth wall” opens from time to time and then closes again. The result is a wonderful mishmash of “Mkhatism” (not current, but ancient, real) and “Lyubimovism” of the very first grade. This is just butter to Vysotsky’s heart, this is exactly what he lacked so much throughout his Tagan life. His personal strategy in art is to always draw two lines at once, intertwining them with each other. I thought that in Hamlet he achieved this completely, but maybe not, another horizon is opening up ahead.

There are roles in which a spiritual vertical is given, and in such cases the actor only needs to stretch, push with all his might to solve his task. Such were Galileo and Hamlet for him (in the cinema, alas, he had not yet had a chance to scale the peaks). And there are roles where you need to add something of your own. This is Lopakhin. Chekhov gave us some kind of riddle, a problem that allows for several solutions. Why does he have thin, delicate fingers, like an artist? Why is he not just a lout and a mug, as, apparently, the majority of merchants of this middle class were?

Efros invited the actors to imagine that all the characters were children running around a mine-filled field, and Lopakhin was the only adult telling them about this danger, unsuccessfully appealing for caution. With this, the director, of course, nominated Lopakhin to be a giant and found justification for the performer’s excessive temperament. And psychological authenticity is achieved by a completely traditional solution: Lopakhin has been in love with Ranevskaya ever since he was a boy and she was a young lady. “Lyubov Andreevna is young, thin...” - as Vysotsky pronounced these words with a courageous tenderness accessible only to him - and off we go. Demidova responded deeply and piercingly, arousing his absolutely sincere admiration. Yes, she plays the best here.

A lot has happened over these eleven years on the Tagansk stage. Here they sang, shouted, did incredible somersaults, stood on their heads, marched, fired from firearms... But was there love on Lyubimov’s stage? Let's leave this question to theater historians. Efros, in any case, smuggled it in - and something changed here, moved. But what should we do with Lopakhin’s purchase of the cherry orchard? Here, whatever one may say, the lyrics end. “The cherry orchard is now mine!” - and a frenzied dance, ecstasy, demonstration of the spiritual underbelly begins. All this can be interpreted purely theatrically: contrast, the change from lyricism to sarcasm - and other aesthetic things. But how can you explain this to yourself - in order to organically exist in the role until the end?

It is clear that Lopakhin went too far in satisfying the instinct of the owner. But how can Vysotsky penetrate this feeling? He doesn’t really know what money is, because he doesn’t live with it for a long time. He doesn’t even take good care of his cars, and he hasn’t acquired any real estate yet. We need, we need the equivalent of passion. What kind of cherry orchard would he like to own?

Success is probably the possible answer. A person who writes and plays cannot help but desire success; here, complete unselfishness would be unnatural. The desire for success helps us remove minerals from the depths of our souls. What if this desire is released in its entirety, without restraining springs? Imagine how suddenly everyone met you halfway - they type your every letter, let you play whatever you want, talk and write about you endlessly... And you want more and more: praise, admire, bow down! The artist is both a child and an animal. The child creates unselfishly, playfully, and the animal, in order to fulfill its creative appetites, eats everyone who is nearby. Maybe he even feels sorry for them, but he consumes them inexorably. How Vysotsky himself - from someone's point of view - ate Chapin, although this contributed to increasing the nutritional value of the performance as a whole. No one doubts that Vysotsky plays this role better, but to play it like that, you needed that victorious and merciless passion with which he attacked the role.

He transferred these “proposed circumstances” to Lopakhin’s monologue in the third act. It turned out stunning and creepy at the same time. Brutal rapture, and then - shame, repentance, when he finds himself on his knees in his frantic dance in front of Ranevskaya. Demidova then compared this scene with his best songs...

Yes, I came, I saw, I conquered... A little over a month passed between the first rehearsal and the premiere - July 6th. Lyubimov simply hated both this performance and the director. The chef has a broad nature: not only Mozart lives in him, but also a little Salieri has nestled somewhere in the corner of his soul. However, he still did not cut “The Cherry Orchard” from the repertoire, but in order to relieve his soul, he began to speak out against the “star sickness” of the actors. Efros, of course, is guilty of this - he knows how to light up the stars.

But Shapovalov experienced the situation painfully. He informed everyone how, before the performance, he came to the Bolshoi Theater workshops for a fitting, and there they said that Lopakhin’s costume was made for Vysotsky. The gentle and intelligent Efros did not say in time that he was keeping Shapovalov as his second. He - and he can be understood - said: “Don’t expect that I will play for you when Volodya leaves for Paris.”

In the troupe, in the “collective,” hostility towards one comrade who has shone too much gradually thickens. He is allowed everything - to travel around Paris and Italy, and then, upon his return, grab the best roles. Disrupt performances in their own theater and applause at personal concerts. Everything for some, nothing for others... The song is as old as time, but no less threatening.

Still, faith has not been lost, after all, he has screwed himself into this life like a tailspin, and something interesting and unconventional is already starting up around him. Alexander Mitta, with whom they have been friends for so many years, conceived a film “inspired by Vysotsky” about the tsar and the poet, as if about the first Russian intellectual, a “black sheep” in a barbaric environment. And Dunsky and Fried wrote the script with this setting - “The Blackamoor of Peter the Great.” Pushkin's unfinished novel is only an excuse, a springboard. Actually, you can play Pushkin himself in the “blackamoor”, in comparison with Peter the Great... Naturally, there were some difficulties in getting approved for the role. The authorities began to demand a natural Ethiopian; the director even had to test two Africans for the blezir and reject them. The idea of ​​a joint film with the Americans also arose, provided that the main role was played by a black actor. We fought back from this too. Vysotsky has had enough ink on his professional path, so he is ready for this role - both internally and externally. Filming begins in July in Jurmala, where he arrives with Marina after a short stay visiting Govorukhin near Odessa.

“Poetry Day 1975” finally comes out, but it brings little joy. As a result, exactly one thing was published - “The wait lasted...”, besides, at the last moment, a vile boss named Karpova cut two stanzas from there. After such a long wait to see a third of his triptych in print, and even with mutilations... He, of course, only told Vegin good words: “Old man, they got really wet! And it’s great that you and I are published next to each other!” But I somehow felt uncomfortable in the poetic “mass grave”, where everyone lies in alphabetical order. People may simply not realize that this is “the same Vysotsky.” They’ll think it’s some namesake, and won’t even read it.

And in Aurora the matter was limited to the publication of a friendly cartoon of Vysotsky. A selection of poems, corrected, scribbled, with stupid remarks in the margins, was sent to the trash. Although, maybe someone saved it for the future - then they will give it to the museum. They say about Tsvetaeva that when she returned to the Union, collectors of her handwritten autographs hovered around her - literate and cultured people well understood the meaning of these pieces of paper. She also talked a lot and nervously about poetry, about music, about everything in the world - often to completely random interlocutors, and they simply felt awkward: such a luxurious monologue sounds, it’s impossible to remember, such words disappear... People didn’t have tape recorders then - now everything -there are still fewer losses at the crossing of Lethe...

The first, it seems, large “personal” article was published about Vysotsky. In the collection “Actors of Soviet Cinema” a lady named Rubanova wrote about him. Tolerable, in general, but these critics are so insensitive to words that, as Comrade Chatsky said, “you won’t get any better from such praise”:

“Vysotsky is not given what is called absolute charm. In his artistic appearance there is a challenge and a conscious desire to live in a role contrary to the accepted idea of ​​​​attractiveness. This is generally a characteristic feature for the actors of the Taganka Theater - A. Demidova, V. Zolotukhin, Z. Slavina. In Vysotsky it is strengthened by individual natural “contradiction.”

Well, how can this be translated into simple Russian? That Vysotsky and his theater comrades are actually freaks, but with their acting they prove that it is not necessary to be beautiful? No? And then what? And why come up with some stupid “contrary to wisdom”? A normal reader will see the beginning of the paragraph: “Vysotsky is not given ...” - and immediately stumble. Oh, okay. “Accept praise and slander with indifference and do not challenge a fool.” Just to get hold of indifference somewhere, even just a little...

In Riga he recorded ballads for Robin Hood's Arrows. I liked myself enormously, well, simply, as the leaders of our country say, a feeling of deep satisfaction (in Brezhnev’s style, as if chewing stones and with that southern “g” - “hdeep”). Isn’t the first sign of insanity such self-indulgence, huh? No, these ballads were simply written on an exhale - maybe it took him ten years to fill his lungs with air for them. He finally spoke out in direct speech - as they say, without posture or mask. Only “Song of Free Shooters” is conventional, role-playing, or something. And the rest - without game dichotomy, without hints and subtexts. And I was able to do without irony, even, perhaps, there is some kind of anti-irony here: brave directness, like a blow of a sword, destroys ironic grins, cuts off the head of any cynicism:

We take purity and simplicity from the ancients,
Sagas, fairy tales - we drag from the past, -
Because good remains good -
In the past, future and present!

We are all weak people, there is plenty of rubbish in us. In order to always live with dignity, you lack basic strength. But someday you need to stand up to your full height and, without cloying pathos, lay out your basic principles: what can you say about good and evil, love and hate. And so it happened. Even if someone has never heard of Vysotsky, he can now judge him based on five ballads. If you don't like it, don't take it, but that's just how I am. And there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people in my country who will see their credo in these ballads and subscribe to every word. And the case is such that the figure of the author, his facial expressions, etc. are not needed for these texts. It is the singing voice behind the scenes that is a suitable form of existence. But will the film accommodate this pressure? Again, anxiety and a nasty feeling of one’s own helplessness.

“A chicken is not a bird, Bulgaria is not a foreign country.” This is what aristocrats say, spoiled by many trips abroad. Not in a contemptuous sense, but because Bulgaria is the country with the first potential accessibility for Russians. After all, only as a special exception can you enter capitalist France the first time. There is a hierarchy according to which a person is first tested for ideological and political stability by visiting a socialist country. Bulgaria in this series is the most socialist and the most friendly. And for the seditious Taganka, a tour in Bulgaria is the first step to Europe, a very important one. Well, the time is right - September, the velvet season.

At the airport, journalists with television cameras greet you and immediately ask you to say something into the microphone, but the engines have not yet stopped. Only Vysotsky is able to shout them down: “Warm, warm! Both in the air and in souls.” We came with “Hamlet”, at the famous curtain, this is also the first foreign voyage. Later we talked a lot about Hamlet with Lyuben Georgiev for television - it turned out to be a great program. By the way, before performing “Mass Graves,” Lyuben read a recently published translation into Bulgarian.

The same television started recording for a large disc at the Balkanton company. One guitar is not enough here. I called Shapovalov and Mezhevich to help with the accompaniment. We arrived, without rehearsals, without a single take, we recorded fifteen songs with a small author’s commentary. Chapin gave, as only he can, a powerful rhythm, in “My Gypsy” he played all the tops. Well, Mezhevich made all sorts of decorations. Of the new ones, they recorded “The whole war is full…” and “I finished forging yesterday.” There is “The One Who Didn’t Shoot”, and “The Microphone Song”, and “The Pacer”... All that remains is to test the firmness of Bulgarian censorship from my own experience...

Roof over your head

The housing issue in our country is always filled with special importance and tension. According to Bulgakov's Woland, he spoiled many Muscovites. Oh, this struggle for square meters, these long-term queues, intrigues, family dramas. Western people will never understand this - they often do not know their square footage, and some may even be mistaken about the number of rooms. In our case, the footage figure is a coefficient for assessing a person, no less important than the salary rate. The owner of a three-room apartment cannot be confused with the tenant of a room in a communal apartment - they have a different posture and facial expression.

At the age of thirty-seven, Vysotsky finally achieved the high title of “responsible tenant”, having received the keys to a three-room apartment number thirty on the eighth floor of a new building number twenty-eight on Malaya Gruzinskaya. The house is a cooperative one, inhabited by artists, some of whom have studios at the very top, as well as “art critics in civilian clothes.” On the ground floor there is an exhibition hall.

We had to postpone the housewarming: a tour in Rostov, upon return - a kidney attack and several days at the Vishnevsky Institute. But they finally transported the furniture there, which, of course, turned out to be too little for the new possessions. Showing efficiency, the owner of the apartment finds some nimble soldiers who, in a few hours, make a table and two large benches for the kitchen. And for his office, he orders them shelves - made of the thickest boards so that they don’t sag under the books. Vanya Bortnik and I took all the books out of the cardboard boxes and arranged them. Well, you can start a new, happy life.

Rembrandt has “Self-Portrait with Saskia” - such a cheerful picture. If Vysotsky’s house had a palette and an easel, he would also have painted a self-portrait with Marina. But there is no time to master the art of painting yourself, there is no one to order (not Glazunov - let him better paint Brezhnev with Indira Gandhi on his lap!). Let's take advantage of the offer of the most fashionable photographer today - Valery Plotnikov. Some say his work is too static. But it is statics that we need; we will strive for dynamics on the silver screen. And here I would like to catch and stop the moment.

They turned out in this frame almost as they were eight years ago, or rather, out of time. Both are young, wearing jeans. Marina has a smile and a hand resting on his knee. He has long hair, long for “Arap”, but neatly styled. Horizontally - a guitar, like a life line. He himself is so well turned vertically, raised above the ground. And no nerves, no dramas... We will remain like this for people, let them feel good...

In the large room I hung a map of the world, a good one, with a durable cellophane covering. While still in Paris, I bought buttons with multi-colored plastic caps and began to mark with them the cities and countries that I had visited over the last less than three years. Poland, Germany, France, England, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Madeira Island, Canary Islands, Mexico... Not bad. North America has not yet been developed - it’s okay, we’ll get there.

With Robin Hood's Arrows, the worst fears were confirmed: not a single arrow reached the target. They say that the film is an adventure, serious ballads do not fit into it... And as a mocking hint, the advertising and commercial film “Zodiac Signs” is being released, where Vysotsky’s completely passable song about these very signs sounds happily. There the task was extremely simple: list all twelve constellations plus somehow play on the theme jewelry. He composed it without difficulty: “He took these constellations from the sky, he set them in precious metal...” And regarding the previous text, where the hungry Leo looks at Aries, and the Virgos raised their hands to Gemini and so on, one person said to him so thoughtfully: “ Listen! Pushkin composed a parody of this song of yours long ago...” - “Which one?” - “Everything under our Zodiac is mixed up. Leo became Capricorn, and Virgo became Cancer.” There’s nothing to cover here; Pushkin’s is both shorter and wittier.

But this small case is indicative as an experiment: hackwork does not bother anyone, and honest, inspired work turns out to be unnecessary as a result...

Recording for "Alice" has begun. I finished composing several songs urgently, exhausting my veins. And when everything came together, he loved this job. It also happens: you are riding on someone’s tow, and then you accelerate so much... Now he feels like the author of this performance - no less than Carroll and Gerasimov. And he is very concerned about who will sing there and how. He reserved Ed's parrot and eaglet for himself. Carroll will be sung by Seva Abdulov. We searched for Alice for a long time - we finally found Klara Rumyanova, the one who is the Hare in the cartoon “Well, wait a minute!” The thing turns out to be unlike anything else: English eccentricity has completely taken root on Russian-Soviet soil. “There are many unknowns in a strange country...” Yes, every country is strange in its own way. As for us, what hinders us most of all is the tendency to achieve obviously unrealistic goals - since the time of Peter the Great, and even earlier, debt has accumulated:

We scold the inaccurate plan, and
He is crawling at the seams - there-shooting...
My dears,
Plans are feasible
There are imaginary ones next to you -
dotted line...

There are questions that are absolutely the same for an Englishman and a Russian, for a rich man and a poor man. Each of us is given a portion of time, which we do not know how to appreciate and spend senselessly. And this leads to damage to the single, eternal Time with a capital T. Once upon a time these questions were discussed by the greatest sages, Plato in his Greece. And then people began to be shy about high matters, and for extremely serious conversations there was only a children's fairy-tale space left:

But... they didn't watch the clock well
happy,
And they deliberately slowed down time
cowardly,
They rushed Time, urged
loud,
Time was wasted for no reason
lazy.

From some point on, it became clear to Vysotsky that he had joined this great Time. The connection is more painful than pleasant. It is clear that the songs will outlive him - otherwise it would not be worth writing. Immortality is not such a rare destiny. This is especially noticeable in the example of children's writers. Children are completely indifferent to whether the author of “Cinderella” or “The Cluttering Flies” is alive or dead. But in addition to creative, professional tasks, there is a dialogue with Time that every thinking person:

Grease the wheels of Time -
Not for the first prize, -
He's in a lot of pain from the friction.
One should not offend Time, -
It is bad and sad to live without Time.

And in order to convince his interlocutors of simple and eternal truths, he himself reincarnated at this Time, although the song was not written in the first person. And he, living by the will of fate right here and now, fully felt the pain from friction. This is where the children's record unexpectedly led.

Friends and friendship

“What is friendship? Light heat of a hangover, grievances, free conversation, exchange of vanity, idleness or patronage, shame.”

This sad definition was given by Pushkin, who was occupied with the question of friendship all his life. They say that the word “friend” appears almost seven hundred times in his works, well, this is together with letters, etc. For Vysotsky this is also important word, and he inherited the problem from Pushkin in full. Like our classic, he believed in the lyceum brotherhood and on the nineteenth of October he honestly remembered his comrades. Tsarskoye Selo, so Vysotsky tries to defend the idea of ​​friendship in his dialogue with a steadily expanding audience. More and more often he talks about how his first songs appeared, about Bolshoy Karetny, and this is already becoming a stable oral novel:

“It seemed to me that I was writing for a very small circle - five or six people - of my close friends, and it would be like that all my life. These were very worthy people, the company was wonderful... I never counted on large audiences - neither in halls, nor in palaces, nor in stadiums - but only on this small company of people closest to me. I thought it would stay that way. Maybe these songs became famous because they have this friendly attitude...” He had already convinced himself and hundreds of thousands of people copying these words from tape recorder to tape recorder of this. Vysotsky’s listeners have long learned that his stories are not just filling a pause between songs and the names mentioned here are forever immortalized. Kocharyan, Makarov, Akimov - it now sounds like Delvig, Pushchin, Kuchelbecker. If the role of Shukshin and Tarkovsky in the history of Bolshoi Karetny is slightly exaggerated, it is not for one’s own vanity, but for the completeness and impressiveness of the overall picture: what kind of people were there!

Let us return to the question posed by Pushkin: what is friendship? “The slight heat of a hangover” is a thing of the distant past for us; now there can be no talk of lightness: if this joyless business begins again, then there will be no time for friendship. “Resentment is a free conversation” - this is familiar to us; in the artistic environment, inoffensive conversations almost never happen. “Exchange of vanity, idleness” - I try not to take part in this, which, by the way, inevitably leads to isolation. “Patronism is a disgrace” - here God had mercy: although I sometimes had to sing in the presence of high-ranking persons, friendship with them did not develop. Although there are so many rumors, and sometimes the songs are taken too literally: they say that Vysotsky is being invited by big people to sing “Wolf Hunt” to them. Well, firstly, this is fiction, and not a report from the scene. And secondly, and most importantly, there is no such big person in the country that he could safely patronize - this is not for you in Tsarist Russia. It happened after all to sing in the house of Galina Brezhneva, whose father was lying in a hospital room at that time and listening to Vysotsky’s voice through the telephone receiver. A touching fact, of course, but what does it change in life? Even Brezhnev cannot allow Vysotsky - Suslov will not allow him. The system is designed in such a way that the “first” is controlled and blocked by the “second”...

It was not for nothing that Pushkin uttered these four merciless lines about friendship in a bitter moment - ultimately, his faith in friends turned out to be an illusion. IN Last year no one cared about him enough to protect him from a duel, from a duel with death, who acted under the pseudonym Dantes. There was no equal person nearby. Not necessarily equal in talent - life does not come down to poetry - but in vitality. Such vitality overwhelmed everyone with whom fate brought him together.

It’s easier in this regard abroad; they call everyone “friends” - acquaintances, friends, colleagues and partners. For them, the word “friend” is a sign of politeness, nothing more. In our country, “friendship” means something sacred, this concept is downright religious. And where there is religion, cult, there is an inevitable contradiction between word and deed.

If we count in foreign terms, then Vysotsky has at least a thousand friends - everyone with whom he has common affairs, who invites him to different cities who collects his records. But if you count it our way, it will turn out to be quite a bit, almost nothing.

In theater and cinema - friendship is friendship, and service is service. Mitta and I were such good friends, we celebrated so many New Years together, and on film set everything is falling apart. They started making one film, but now it turns out to be completely different, and the title was changed - popular popular vulgarity appeared in it: “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married a Blackamoor.” Now Vysotsky is after Peter and after the comma. What can I say, Alexey Petrenko, of course, is a textured man, but then why not shoot pure Peter with him, without us with the Arab and with Pushkin? This vile Soviet hierarchy penetrates everything: the tsar seems to Secretary General and must be the first everywhere, and an intellectual can only be an unresponsive idiot, whom everyone and everyone is humiliating. And I dreamed that creative person we will appear on an equal footing with the authorities. This has never happened in real life, at least on the screen...

Well, again with the songs... Neither “Dome” nor “Robber” are included in the film. Mitta says that the songs bring out our entire plan, that with them we will be defenseless against editorial claims. Okay, we’ll hide the idea from the editors, but also from the audience! Why then fence the garden? Why then work at all?

Zolotukhin’s friend, meanwhile, is being pushed into Hamlets. The boss told him directly: “I can’t work with Mr. Vysotsky anymore.” Yes, “mister” is the first time. Lyubimov had a whole range of naming methods, sometimes within the same rehearsal. First, “Volodya” or even “Volodenka”, then: “Vladimir, what are you…”, then: “Vladimir Semenovich, you can’t do that…”, finally, in the third person, appealing to other artists: “Tell Comrade Vysotsky that... “Now Vysotsky is no longer a comrade... “Mister” means: go to your Paris or even further away.

We had a rather nervous conversation with Valera. We were driving from the theater in a car, and, having passed Nogin Square, Vysotsky stopped: “If you play Hamlet, I will leave the theater.” I also told him: for me, the most important thing in life is friends, friendship. And then, remembering this scene, I thought self-critically: why should only one side make sacrifices for the sake of friendship? It’s also not entirely fair...

What about friendship with poets? On the outside, everything is fine, but when it comes to the most important matters, it begins: why do you need this shitty Writers' Union, why do you, so independent, obey some bastard? Is your fantastic fame and national fame not enough for you? Even if your book is published, it will be in such a castrated form that you won’t recognize yourself. Why, they say, should you become an aspiring poet? You can now speak completely legally both through the “Knowledge” society and through the society of book lovers...

This concern for Vysotsky’s reputation is touching. There’s no way he’ll be among the beginners; readers remember his experience and length of service well! It’s like defending a dissertation: for one, it took place late because he is weak and dull, and for the other, because he was slowed down for his scientific courage. And although the scientific degrees of mediocrities and talents are called the same, smart people understand the difference.

It seems that his poet friends are helping, carrying his poems somewhere, talking to someone from the authorities. But they don’t go for risky aggravations, because they consider Vysotsky’s literary concerns to be a whim. They don’t feel what’s going on inside him. The critical mass of what has been written in fifteen years will tear him apart, blow him to pieces! The greater the difference between real fame and official non-recognition, the more terrible the pressure inside the soul. This is nature, physics, and no reasonable soothing speech will help here...

This damned glory separates literally everyone. How familiar to him is the cold mask that suddenly appears on the faces of even close people! “Just don’t think that I envy you,” and from this banal, absolutely identical momentary facial paralysis for everyone, everything that once united with people, brought joy, and gave strength to live and work, collapses.

Vadim Tumanov

They were introduced by a friend from Magadan, then they met in some company. Tumanov organized a mining team in Siberia: men wash gold, and they have neither bosses nor subordinates there. And in the Moscow environment, too, this man stands on equal terms with everyone: a tenacious gaze, a dull voice, an imperturbable intonation. In general, we got along right away. And then Vysotsky learned the details of the biography of his new friend: in 1948, as a young navigator in the Far East, he received Article 58, paragraph 10 - “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” - for disapproving statements about Mayakovsky, for reading Yesenin and for much love for Vertinsky, forty of whose records were confiscated from Tumanov during the search. (Lord, where else, in what country do they pay such a price for freedom of aesthetic taste!) Tumanov escaped from the camps seven (in words!) times and yet inexplicably remained alive. Released in '56. With such personal data, it is not difficult to calculate a person’s attitude towards Vysotsky’s songs - the most direct.

It is nonsense that friends are made only in childhood and adolescence. Perhaps, having already missed all the fatal dates and numbers, you are just beginning to understand and feel difference and equality - two necessary conditions for true friendship.

Equality is not sameness. It is not for nothing that twins are rarely friends and try not to appear together - unless they exploit their similarity by working in the circus. There are many types of false equality: classmates, classmates, etc. Moreover, for some reason people are embarrassed to admit to themselves that the intimacy created by circumstances is not so strong. So what if we studied together, lived in the same yard, and even though we worked together in the same institution! Deep down, on a subconscious level, everyone wants to distinguish themselves from their own kind, to manifest themselves as an individual, and not as a particle or grain. Hence the need for dissimilarity, for difference, for friendship with people completely different from you. Perhaps, love sometimes contains friendship: a man and a woman cannot be the same according to the laws of nature - therefore, there are fewer reasons and grounds for envy and hatred. For that matter, Marina was also a true friend to him all these years - they would not have gone far on love alone and would not have stayed together for so long.

With Vadim, Vysotsky has a difference of eleven years, and equality - in fearlessness before fate. Both, in fact, are prospectors who have invested themselves in the work with all their guts - so that it is already too late to profit, to calculate other options for fate. Tumanov actually experienced what Vysotsky had already written about - by intuition, through imagination. Rare opportunity verification and confirmation of art by life. Vadim, in turn, is one of those people who experience an unfeigned psychological need for art - not for entertainment, not for prestige. In short, like-minded people can live in parallel for a long time and meet at a mature age. “We always miss new meetings and new friends...” - it was said long ago and without any special second thought, and now it is confirmed.

One day they are sitting on Malaya Gruzinskaya near the TV, in which political commentator Yuri Zhukov is lying about something, pretending to read “letters from the working people.” And where do they dig them up from? Suddenly Vysotsky gets the idea to have everyone write a list of the hundred most hated people. We went to different rooms. Vysotsky’s list is ready in about forty minutes, he’s already hurrying Vadim: “Are you coming soon?”

Disease history

This medical expression has long been ingrained in his mind: it buzzes like a fly, winding up rhythm and plot. How much time Vysotsky spent in hospitals! How many painful procedures were performed on him! Honestly, to the list of his roles in theater and cinema we should add the role of the Patient in the theater of life. Someone told him that “patient” means “suffering” in Latin, and there is a moment of truth in this. It seems that you voluntarily enter a medical institution, sometimes through acquaintance, through connections, you are placed. And you feel like a prisoner there, like a victim; you see executioners and inquisitors in the doctors and staff.

I'm lying on the bend of existence,
Halfway to the abyss, -
And my whole story -
Disease history.

From this stanza-seed, at the turn of the seventy-fifth - seventy-sixth years, a song trilogy unfolds. Maybe it's even a poem - but you don't even have to think about publishing it. And it is not clear where and to whom such a composition can be sung in full. The result was not “hell-purgatory-paradise”, but complete hell in three forms. The first part is a medical examination:

The second song describes an appointment with a psychiatrist. This scene is resolved in a humorous, comic manner:

……………………………….

And the edge loomed,
And the paper shuddered, -
The doctor acted for good
It's a pity - it's not my good...

Such jokes, however, are punishable by time. And you can easily prophesy disaster for yourself and make a fairy tale come true. Even if you were Vysotsky three times, an intelligent psychiatrist, if given instructions, will give you the required diagnosis, and then come home, pour a glass and, turning on the tape recorder, listen to the corresponding song with great pleasure and understanding. And he will not agree with the author’s disclaimer: “These lines are not about you, but about other doctors.” In your own words from an earlier song, which has already become an unofficial classic, he will answer: “This is about me, about us, about everyone, what the hell are wolves!” And why did some well-wishers decide that good knowledge of Vysotsky’s work in power circles promises some benefits or at least concessions to the author? Enough, I’ve written enough, we can already give him some sedative to calm him down completely.

The third song is about this, where a hopeless philosophical conclusion is summed up on behalf of the mercilessly cynical doctor:

You shouldn't be upset -
Peace is better for you, -
After all, the entire history of the country is
Disease history.
Humanity has everything -
Now colic, now pain, -
And his whole story -
Disease history.
The patient lives more and more cheerfully,
More and more angry and useless -
And enjoys his
Medical history...

So far I have only shown the entire trilogy to Vadim, and have not yet taken it out to the public. And not just for reasons of caution. At the Vishnevsky Institute of Surgery, I tried to start a conversation, read four lines “I lie on the bend of being...”, looked at the friendly, but slightly puzzled faces (after all, people are used to laughing with Vysotsky, not crying) - and interrupted himself: okay , in addition to the medical history, there is also a health history. And the concert went on as usual. Probably, you shouldn’t burden people with unsolvable problems.

But no matter how much you translate your ailments into a symbolic plane, your body obeys completely earthly ones, physical laws. The blows rain in with constant consistency, and there is no defense against them. One story with “Mr. McKinley” is enough to drive even a completely healthy person into his grave. They invited me to the film, no less - as the Author. Bill Sigger walks in the frame, sings ballads, and against their background some kind of plot develops with Banionis and others. Well, the author tried his best and composed his own “film within a film.” “The Hippie Mystery” is a whole condensed opera. The son of a bitch Ermash, the nomenklatura Skoda, was the first to chop up this opera. It’s painful even to remember these nine ballads, of which only the abbreviated “Mannequins” and “Exit to Heaven” were included in the picture. Where to put your amputated organs now?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find ways to recharge with new energy. People's love, the live reaction of the audience is a powerful source, without it Vysotsky would have burned out long ago, incinerated himself to ashes, but this source alone is not enough. This is not greed, not some kind of arrogance. It’s just that the energy received from the audience, from the sincere confessions of listeners and song collectors, is all immediately spent on new work, for oneself, for pure selfish pleasure, nothing can be snatched.

The same goes for friendships. He does not know how to feed on close people, to use them one-sidedly. That’s how he works: as much as he took, he immediately gave back as much. God did not give us a family in the normal sense of the word. “We are homeless, disorderly, familyless, poor” - this is what Blok said about him.

Women? There is no longer the passion to achieve them, and they are sensitive people, they instantly react to the lack of sincere attention to them. “No, can you imagine, they have such a fashion now - not to let Vysotsky himself” - he released this bonus recently and repeats it from time to time in men’s conversations. But he understands to himself that there is nothing special to take from these - albeit sometimes quite sweet - fools, fascinated by his fame... And by nature, he is not a Don Juan-consumer, but rather a desperately sacrificial Don Juan. If love flashes a farewell smile, then the Commander’s steps will inevitably overtake...

In general, there is less and less of what is left in life that helps not to die. AND new energy can only be extracted through self-destruction. During the hellish kidney pain last fall, someone (we won’t specify who exactly) suggested Vysotsky try amphetamines - the kind of stimulants that athletes sometimes resort to. It's not even considered a real drug. It helped with the pain, and then it turned out that you can drive out the green snake with such an injection... No, everything is within reason. We read Bulgakov's story - "Morphine", written, presumably, on the basis of our own experience. Mikhail Afanasyevich did not become a drug addict, he pulled himself together. And here we’re not even talking about morphine, but about an almost harmless medicine...

From Bodaybo to Montreal

And again, another trip helps to take my mind off everything. On April 1, he and Marina set off along a well-worn route. This time, for some reason, the abundance of stray dogs catches the eye - a purely domestic feature, foreign dogs are all wearing collars and with their owners:

You are the owner driving along the earth -
Let's say, in Velikiye Luki, -
And males scurry under the wheels
And there are bitches.
They were smeared into slime on the road,
What kind of nonsense are you creating?
You encourage surrealism
Dear fellow driver.

From these angry, tired lines, the imagination turns in a completely different direction, and the “dog” theme will soon find a different solution:

Wherever I squeeze my soul, wherever I put myself,
The dog is with me - My destiny, helpless, sick, -
I chased her with stones, but the dog presses to my knee -
He looks, his eyes are bulging, and there is saliva on his tongue.

In Minsk we met with Ales Adamovich and received “The Khatyn Tale” as a gift from him. It’s also not easy for a person: he is constantly waging a war against censorship, and there are no more victories than losses.

In Cologne, as usual, they studied the famous cathedral from the outside and inside, wondering how it survived the bombing: after the war, almost the entire city was rebuilt. We sent Nina Maksimovna a rather cheerful postcard, where, after Marina’s polite phrases, he wrote: “Mommy! We've become insolent here and are fighting in German - I remember only one phrase and use it everywhere. Kiss. Vova."

After Paris - again Madeira, the Canaries, Portugal, Morocco. Everything is great, but “in accordance with the Regulations on entry into and exit from the USSR, approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of September 22, 1970 No. 801, entry into developing and capitalist countries is permitted once a year.” There are still plans for this summer. Will they let me in?

We returned to Moscow in a new Mercedes 350, metallic blue. They say that two other car enthusiasts have such a model in the exemplary communist city - chess champion Anatoly Karpov and Secretary General Brezhnev. Upon returning, I finished things with “Arap”: what happened is what happened. I auditioned for the role of Pugachev. The film will be directed by Alexey Saltykov from a script by Edik Volodarsky. They want to invite Marina to Catherine II. Dreaming is not yet prohibited in this country...

And now - to the east. Vadim and his son flew to Irkutsk, where they gave Vysotsky a reception with sumptuous toasts, but suddenly such a nauseating lordly-Soviet conversation began that he had to call in sick and leave without singing a song. In the provinces, too, you can find all sorts of things. I was with the military, I even rode a tank, and then one officer comes up and, taking him by the sleeve, begins to work out: “The country needs completely different songs... Your, if I may say so, creativity...” Or at the Bodaybin airport, when he was sitting, sketching the lines “We don’t say shtbormy, but stormba...” (this is for the film “Wind of Hope” by the Odessa studio, but where can you go?), three shaggy and tipsy men came up, stuck in a guitar with stickers of naked women and asked to be served. It almost came to a fight...

But, of course, this is not what Siberia is remembered for. I stood near Lake Baikal, remembering Vampilov, almost his own age, who passed away four years ago. It turns out that he did not drown, but died of a heart attack before reaching a few steps to the shore. The amazing play “Duck Hunt” remains, waiting for the brave souls who will undertake to stage it. Driving past Zima station, I took a photo as a souvenir of the town that gave Russia Yevgeny Yevtushenko - for all his foppishness, he is still a poet, and Vadim also considers him a human being. At the mine, Khomolkho touched with his hand the permafrost opened by a bulldozer: life moves along a sharp edge, the living and the dead side by side... And when we were traveling by train to Biryusa, he, taking a guitar, began to hum quietly in the compartment, and the conductor was amazed: “Just like Vysotsky!”

The people at Vadim’s mines are wonderful. The faces are tarpaulin, and the souls are silk. There are talkative ones, but more silent ones. I managed to gain enough from both of them - for months to come. In Khomolkho, the start of the concert was delayed for a long time: the dining room, naturally, could not accommodate everyone, and they had to put out the window frames. They apologized to him every now and then, but he answered one thing, calmly, without pathos: “I need these people more than they need me.”

The second trip to France was not without difficulty: at first the OVIR issued a standard refusal, but they advised me to appeal the decision to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was done. It seems that there were also calls from “significant persons”. In general, the head of the main, allied OVIR, Obidin, contrary to his last name, wrote a not at all offensive resolution on Vysotsky’s letter, asking the Moscow department to “carefully consider the applicant’s request.” They released me and charged 271 rubles for the visa.

We arrived in Paris by plane, and a few days later - in Montreal, where in full swing Olympic Games. We stayed at the house of Marina’s friend Diana Dufresne. Literally on the first evening we came across two famous football players in the city - Blokhin and Buryak. Last year, Vysotsky spoke to our team at a base near Moscow, after which they won a friendly match. This time the team did not win any laurels, and the guys were clearly depressed. They brought them to their place, and when they mentioned that Buryak’s birthday was tomorrow, he happily sang a few things to them on the cassette. Naturally, there is a whole “support group” of Soviet pop artists present here. The next day, Lev Leshchenko tries to invite Vysotsky to sing before our match with the Germans, but Sports Minister Pavlov does not allow it.

The recording was made at the RCA studio: there are both old songs and new ones, including “Domes” and “Robbery”. They promise to release a disc. And after a short acquaintance with New York - again Paris and there solid work at the Le Chant du Monde studio, with the ensemble of Konstantin Kazansky. I can’t wait to hold my full-fledged, large and hard record in my hands, otherwise the Soviet flexible “minions” look like a pathetic handout. People, of course, buy them, and even the Krugozor magazine with a hole in the middle, where two ballads from McKinley were published, is circulated by collectors, but this small thing cannot compete with hundreds of thousands of homemade tape recordings.

And the emigrant Misha Allen also called, who five or six years ago published his translations of Vysotsky’s songs in local magazines. English language. Great!

Upon arrival in Moscow, Vysotsky takes to the OVIR a paper admitting an unauthorized visit to Canada and the USA - in connection with his wife’s work in these countries. This does not seem to have caused any negative consequences.

And on September 9, Taganka goes to Yugoslavia for the tenth anniversary BITEF - Belgrade International Theater Festival. They brought "Hamlet", "Ten Days" and "The Dawns Here Are Quiet". It is not for nothing that Yugoslavia is considered a country that is not entirely socialist: there is no chaos, the culture of the organization is the highest. We would have about three hundred hangers-on bustling around, but here literally a few people arrange everything, combining several functions: he is a driver, an administrator, and a translator from all languages. Just like we carry several roles in a play. They played first in Belgrade, then in Zagreb, then in Sarajevo - also, probably, not by chance: after all, when artists spend the night on a train, they don’t need a hotel. Wise calculation in everything.

"Hamlet" took first place. More precisely, he shared it with Peter Brook’s play “The Ik Tribe” and with the American Wilson’s musical “Einstein on the Beach.” But Lyubimov was named first when the winners were announced.

Then two weeks of touring in Budapest. The boss turned fifty-nine - Vysotsky and Bortnik read him a greeting ending with the words “Vanya. Vova." The team, however, does not like the fact that the two artists became such friends, and the fact that they were close to the throne. Why is Lyubimov sitting with them at dinner, why was I not put up in the same hotel as them, and so on. “The Kingdom of Vova and Bortnyaga” - someone has already commented angrily. Strange affair! If you talk to each one individually, you can’t see where this anger is in him. And when they secretly slander, it’s as if they release something sticky from themselves, and this nastyness glues people together much more tightly than lofty goals and thoughts.

Friendliness is not the norm, not the rule, as we thought in our youth; it is rather an exception and a rare luxury. So why not rejoice at every glimmer of mutual goodwill against the general background of everyday, gloomy enmity? Lyubimov has now warmed up to Vysotsky for one simple but unexpected reason. The chief entered his second (or third - historians will figure it out) youth - he fell in love with a Magyar woman, a translator named Katarina. According to rumors, she is the daughter of the local ruler, Janos Kadar. All the Tagans frowned: what about Tselikovskaya and the director’s moral character in general? And only Vysotsky, like a man, understood the boss who needed support. It's not even about advice on courting foreign women, choosing restaurants and so on - it's all rather playful chatter. "She good man“- that’s the main thing that was said, and nothing more is needed. And, by the way, a person in love should not say anything else - either at fifty-nine or at nineteen. The laws of decency are extremely simple, only the ways to justify its absence are complex.

Marina came here to star in Martha Meszáros's film “There Are Two of Them.” She has it here the main role, and on the occasion of Vysotsky’s arrival, an episode was added to the script where the heroine meets with a certain man. A long kiss capped the scene.

Verse and prose

“They came together: wave and stone, // Poetry and prose, ice and fire...” Rarely does anyone think about the abyss of meaning inherent in these oft-repeated Pushkin lines. Meanwhile, Verse and Prose are the main characters literary history. These are two elements, two deities, which are at war, then reconciled, then diverge in different directions, then intertwine and interact. The relationship between them is no less significant for literature as a whole than the connection between literature and life, with social reality. Or you can look at the problem this way: the process of interaction between verse and prose echoes social, spiritual, and moral processes.

This was well understood in Pushkin's times. At that time, writers were not inclined to talk about “ideology,” “citizenship,” “spirituality,” and other abstractions, and there were no such words. The conversations were about how to translate your ideas, your civic and spiritual ideals into words. There was a lot of debate about genres, style, and the laws of verse and prose. For Pushkin, the transition from poetry to prose was perhaps the main “internal” plot of his creative biography.

Verse and prose thoroughly clarified their relationship at the beginning of our century, during the Silver Age and the heyday of Russian art that continued in the early twenties. Bunin, Andrei Bely - who are they: prose writers or poets? Khlebnikov often experimented on the border between poetry and prose. Blok, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Khodasevich are unthinkable without their prose. Nabokov wrote poetry all his life, and he gave the best examples of them to the autobiographical hero Godunov-Cherdyntsev in the novel “The Gift.” And how verse and prose intertwined in Pasternak’s stubbornly independent path!

In official Soviet literary production, poetry and prose were strictly separated into corresponding “workshops” with their own regulations and bosses. Gradually, two types of “engineers” developed human souls": a prose writer is one who, for the life of him, cannot compose two lines of poetry, and a poet is one who chases these lines one after another, but is absolutely incapable of “inventing” any characters, plots, unable to tell anything except of his glorious biography. This is the rule.

Literature, however, always lives and develops “as an exception.” And among those who today determine the movement of the artistic word, there are masters who avoid narrow specialization. It is noteworthy, for example, that Fazil Iskander, having become famous as a prose writer, remained a kind of lyric poet, that Andrei Bitov has poetic experiments (one of them, by the way, is dedicated to the memory of Vysotsky), that in the almanac “Metropol”, the author of which was Vysotsky , Bella Akhmadulina performed with prose, and Vasily Aksenov - with a poetic play. And yet, “departmental” thinking has become firmly entrenched in the literary consciousness, in the ideas and assessments of the writers, critics, and readers themselves. Any non-standard phenomena at the intersection of prose and poetry cause confusion and suspicion. For example, for a long time Zhvanetsky could not be recognized as a writer: for a prose writer, he writes too briefly, for a poet, it seems awkward and without rhyme. And Zhvanetsky is, first of all, a catchy and swift prose epigram. Did you think this doesn't happen? Happens!

And Vysotsky was excommunicated from poetry primarily because other poets “don’t write like that.” And after his death, such conversations dragged on for a long time. It was so annoying that sometimes I wanted to answer: “Okay, he’s not a poet. Prose writer." And what? How many of today's masters of the prose word have so many dissimilar characters and types, so many original plots and conflicts? In your opinion, he does not fit in with Voznesensky and Yevtushenko (for some), with Samoilov and Kushner (for others), with Sokolov and Kuznetsov (for others), but perhaps he will fit in with the everyday stories of B Shukshin and B. Mozhaev, with the plot phantasmagoria of V. Aksenov, with the merciless military conflicts of V. Bykov, K. Vorobyov, V. Kondratyev, with the camp stories of V. Shalamov?

Vysotsky’s verse itself is prosaic verse. Hence its fundamental “unsmoothness”, the presence in it sometimes of some kind of rhythmic “burrs”, concealed by melody and singing, but often noticeable when trying to read poems out loud or recite them. But this does not mean at all that such verse is “worse” than smooth verse, without intonation obstacles. Excessive smoothness can lead to monotony, when the reader’s consciousness does not stop at anything, does not cling to anything, but, as it were, beats a beat that corresponds to the size used by the poet. Tynyanov called it “poems in general.” For some reason, Vysotsky doesn’t have such poems. He always has poems “in particular”. And the rhythmic roughness carries a new meaning.

The historical development of verse is a natural alternation of “smoothness” and “roughness.” If a verse loses its perceptibility, heaviness, becomes too light, weightless, then its renewal occurs with the help of prosaic “graftings”, when the verse assimilates various noises of the time: street polyphony, everyday information unusual for poetry, shocking details not accepted by poetic etiquette. Here it’s time to remember how Nekrasov’s poems, which evoked the legendary assessment of Turgenev, were received by contemporaries: poetry did not spend the night in them. The inertia of this attitude lasted for an extremely long time - despite the great readership success of Nekrasov’s works. However, this success also caused a snobbish reaction and conversations like: this is a social phenomenon, not an artistic one, etc. In 1921, K. I. Chukovsky conducted a questionnaire survey “Nekrasov and We” among leading Russian poets. Since the idea of ​​Nekrasov’s “unpoeticism” was in the air at that time, Chukovsky specifically included an item on poetic technique in the questionnaire. And the answers were unexpected. Nekrasov was criticized for his lack of “technicality” only by the least skilled of the poets surveyed, Gorky, who gave examples of rhymes that were weak, in his opinion. But the “aesthetes” and “modernists” spoke differently. Here are three answers that are worth reflecting on in connection with the debate about Vysotsky.

Z. HIPPIUS. His technique is generally in harmony with the spirit of his works, and they would be worse if it were “more perfect.”

D. MEREZHKOVSKY. Nekrasov’s technique is uneven: there are ups and downs; music and the scraping of a nail on glass. But this is how it should be: the unevenness of technology expresses the imbalance of personality. A more perfect one would be less expressive.

N. GUMILEV. Remarkably deep breathing, power over the chosen image, wonderful phonetics, continuing Derzhavin through Pushkin’s head.

The point is that “perfection” is not a simple concept, that in order to solve his problems, for harmony between the verse and his personality, the poet sometimes has to sharply deviate from the usual standards, from the “balance” that has developed in poetry. More important is “expressiveness”. New resources of “music” can be found in “the scratch of a nail on glass.” Finally, in addition to Pushkin’s “harmonious” line, in Russian poetry there is also Derzhavin’s, relatively speaking, “disharmonious” system of sound organization of verse. And Vysotsky’s “weighted” phonetics, for that matter, is connected precisely with the latter through many intermediaries and milestones.

“Disharmony” is historically necessary for poetry in order to renew the very feeling of poetry. “Poetry in general” blurs verse into a monotonous flow. In real poetry, a line is not just a conventional segment, it carries within itself the appearance of the entire work, the imprint of the author’s individuality. It is not necessary that it contain some kind of aphorism, the rhythmic movement itself is important. Pushkin’s “Admiralty Needle”, Lermontov’s “One Wonderful Prayer...”, Tyutchev’s “Human Tears, O Human Tears...”, Nekrasov’s “At You, Beautifully Arm Akimbo...”, Blok’s “Fatal News of Death”, Akhmatov’s “And the Disheveled Volume Guys” , Pasternak’s “They are sprinkling their acrostics from the rooftops” - all these are authorized representatives of the authors and their artistic worlds. The verse itself is the most brilliant creation of man. True poets always understand its value. “Glands of strings” - Mayakovsky conveyed this feeling. Let's see if Vysotsky has strong and weighty hardware. Let's pick a few at random:

They got into my soul, tearing it apart...

Everything is behind us - both the bullpen and the trial...

And the soul crosses the boards...

And I should tell Gogol about our miserable life...

How much faith is lost in the forest...

Say thank you for being alive!

We all live as if, but...

Domes in Russia are covered with pure gold...

I won’t sound on a weakened nerve...

Each of these lines is not a conventional unit of measurement of the text, but a single impulse, a creative movement. A verse is not a frame, but a picture itself, an image is tragic or comic, a verse is a plot situation or state of mind. The keen sense of poetry inherent in Vysotsky is transmitted to his readers. They store in their memory not only Vysotsky’s aphorisms and maxims, but also those very “pieces of strings”. You're standing in line somewhere, and suddenly you hear an ironic and sorrowful sigh: “Beauty among those running!” In fact, after the word “beauty” there is a long pause, and after “running” there is a poetic translation: “There are no first and no lagging behind.” But Vysotsky remains in memory precisely in his verse series. The law of “unity and closeness of the verse series”, discovered by Tynyanov, is in full effect here.

Feeling the verse as unity, Vysotsky immediately felt the line, the pattern of rhythm, in stable expressions: “Save our souls!”, “Peace to your home!”, “The morning is wiser.” And he constantly intensified the “crowding”, trying to fit a whole event, a dialogue, the beginning of a conflict into one verse:

“Snakes, snakes all around - let them be!”

"Private Borisov!" - "I!" - “Come on, how was it!”

I shouted: “Are you stunned?”

Constantly asking the question “whether it is possible to expand the horizons,” Vysotsky expanded the space of poetry. Look through the book: you will see that Vysotsky really loves long lines. U modern poets It is not customary to go beyond hexameter in iambic and trochee. And in Vysotsky we will find iambic seven-meter (“Whoever ended his life tragically is a true poet”, “Comrades scientists, associate professors with candidates!”, “Wherever I squeeze my soul, wherever I put myself”), and trochee seven-meter (“ On Earth they read in science fiction novels”, “If I decide something, I’ll definitely drink”), and trochee octometer (“It was a Sunday day - and I didn’t pick my pockets...”, “We were in time: there are no delays when visiting God ...”, “There were framed bearded men hanging on the wall...”).

The same goes for three-syllables. Vysotsky actively exploits their “long” modifications, including pentameters: dactyl (“Gentle Truth walked in beautiful clothes...”), amphibrachium (“Falls and sunsets remained behind our backs...”; and in “Execution of a Mountain Echo” the echo effect is created in odd verses with the sixth foot: “In the silence of the pass, where the rocks are not a hindrance to the winds, a hindrance...”); anapaest (“I left the business, such a good business...”). In all such cases, the author takes a risk: if such meters are not mastered intonationally, they will sound cumbersome or pompous. And in all the situations mentioned, the poet successfully copes with the “resistance of the material,” with the resistance of the meter. And everywhere the “lengthening” of the verse is associated with shades of content: with the strengthening of the narrative beginning, the saturation of the verse with substantive details. Versification, versification (versus - verse) is a constant return (vertere - turn) of speech to the starting point. A line is nothing more than an instant isolated from the flow of time. Vysotsky strives to extend this moment, to give it prosaic length, unlimitedness (prosus - free).

But lengthening a verse is not an end in itself; Vysotsky also loves an ultra-short line: “She // has everything of her own - both linen and housing...” - so much envy, curiosity, hidden “complexes” in this periodically repeated “she has.” But “Song about a short-distance skater who was forced to run a long distance” - here both of these distances are shown through a visual verse, rhythmic comparison, through the alternation of long and short lines:

Ten thousand - and just one race

remained. At this time our Beskudnikov Oleg

got arrogant.

In general, Vysotsky has a very extensive, as poeticists say, metrical repertoire. The range of dimensions with which he operates is as diverse as the range of his themes and subjects. The polyphony of rhythms corresponds to the abundance of characters, the diversity of their views and judgments. Vysotsky's metric and rhythm are still awaiting their special study with detailed statistical calculations and searches for patterns. The excessive, in the opinion of some, prosaic and conversational nature of Vysotsky’s poetic speech reliably protected against rhythmic inertia. The stability of creative style and loyalty to the once chosen style often condemns poets to constantly varying several rhythmic and intonation moves that are familiar to them. Vysotsky looked for a new rhythmic solution for each new song. Hence the “untestedness” of his poetic intonation. But it was precisely thanks to this “untriedness” that Vysotsky’s verse entered into the necessary friction with new life and linguistic material. The surface of the wheel must be uneven: you won’t go far on smooth, “bald” tires.

Vysotsky’s verse, which was “overloaded” in terms of meaning and plot, was helped to sound by the melody, and the author’s voice also made his way easier. But this does not mean at all that without melody and without the author’s performance, this verse does not stand on its feet. A song is not “less” than a poem, but maybe in some ways it is more. To those who believe that Vysotsky’s poems are only sung, but not “read,” we can only say one thing: let’s hold off on making final conclusions. It is possible that the forms of existence of this verse will also be its “eye” reading and recitation aloud (many actors and readers today are mastering Vysotsky’s legacy). “Unsmooth” verse often looks into the future of language. What today seems awkwardness or clumsiness to someone, tomorrow may be recognized as the utmost naturalness of speech.

Poetry cannot live by focusing only on smoothness and smoothness - this would lead to the complete imperceptibility of the word. “Unsmooth” poets return attention to each individual word in the verse. R. Jacobson called Mayakovsky’s poetry “the poetry of highlighted words.” This formulation is largely applicable to Vysotsky’s poetic speech. When the poet’s works began to be widely published, text critics faced the problem of punctuation - and not only in texts published from phonograms, but also in texts recorded in handwriting: since Vysotsky wrote down mainly “for himself,” he placed punctuation marks unsystematically and often omitted them altogether . As a result, textual critics had to take care of punctuation themselves. And one curious detail: to indicate numerous intonation pauses within a verse, dashes had to be widely used (this is especially typical for publications prepared by A. Krylov). It is possible that the author of the texts himself would have done the same if he had had the opportunity to prepare his book for publication. Words colliding sharply with each other, thoughts and emotions running into each other - they obviously need to be thinned out somehow. Or maybe, instead of a dash, Vysotsky would have used a verse “ladder” of the “Mayakovsky” type. As he did, for example, in the manuscript of “Black Pea Jackets”:

Behind our backs

remained

sunsets, -

Well, at least insignificant

well at least

invisible takeoff!

And this selection of most of the words into a separate line does not look mannered, it is organic, it is confirmed by intonation movement. Textual critics, of course, do not have the right to build a “ladder”, but, speaking purely experimentally, it would quite look like a way of fixing the intonation division of the verse, which is objectively present in Vysotsky:

There at the neighbor's

feast on the mountain,

solid, poured,

Well, the hostess -

pipe tail -

Goes to the basements...

Here, just some dashes are replaced with steps of the “ladder”.

It is because of this emphasis on words that there are so many misunderstandings about Vysotsky’s “unreadability.” For an experiment, take some poem by Mayakovsky, for example “Yubileinoe,” composed of tonically processed long lines of free trochee, and write everything down in long lines, without a ladder. The result will be something unusual, almost comical. In general, in Vysotsky’s songs there is often a “ladder” hidden; the words there live on different floors – both intonationally and semantically.

This emphasis is also preserved in poems written in erased traditional meters. At first glance, the iambic pentameter of the poems “My Hamlet,” “I am writing to you,” “My black man in a gray suit...” gives the impression of some kind of rhythmic and intonation naivety: in the poetry of the 60s and 70s, this meter became stylistically neutral , Vysotsky speaks it with dramatic and pathetic old-fashionedness:

I saw: our games every day

Everything looked more like outrages...

Thank you, good people, thank you, -

That they did not spare the night and the ink!

I do not intend to hide from the court,

If they call me, I’ll answer the question

All these are confessional-monologue poems, and the effect of complete frankness and spiritual vulnerability is achieved by abandoning rhythmic inventiveness. Rhythmic old-fashionedness makes speech emotionally naked. “Literary” words, even if not without a hint of banality, suddenly come to life - because each of them can and should be understood literally. For Vysotsky, Hamletism and dramatic iambic pentameter are not a pose, but a line of fate. He simply could not say anything else about himself “openly.” There are people who public life- romantics and fighters, and when alone - ironic skeptics. Vysotsky, never tired of joking and ironizing, building both plot and rhythmically witty semantic patterns, was a vulnerable and unbending romantic at heart. Therefore, he could reveal his inner drama with the utmost completeness only in a naive, old-fashioned rhythmic form:

And the vein of patience in me burst -

And with death I switched to you.

While reading, we cannot miss a single word here, since each of them is absolutely reliable, each is used in a literal, direct meaning. Is it only because these lines sound convincing that we know their biographical context? No, the truthfulness here is both intonational and verse.

Vysotsky’s rhyme deserves special mention. In addition to masterfully punning rhymes, he also has a lot of cross-cutting rhymes that organize the entire composition of the work. It is enough to cite only the rhyme series itself: “brigade” – “masquerade” – “zoo” – “parade” – “For Christ’s sake” – “behind” – “Nadia” – “Vladi” – “dressed up” – “stroked” – “fence” "- and the whole plot and the whole “system of images” will appear before us well famous song. Well known, by the way, thanks to its catchy rhyming. And how quickly the plot of the song “About the Vacha River and fellow traveler Valya” rushes, where rhymes flash like pillars in a train window:

What is this Vacha,

I found out from the whip -

He rode to Vacha crying -

He came back laughing.

Two rows of rhymes - on “cha” and on “acha” - overlap each other, creating a most spectacular pattern along the edge of the verse fabric.

The love for virtuoso rhyme, for the rhyme that organizes the composition, pushed Vysotsky to strophic searches and inventions. In our “printed” poetry, such efforts were little encouraged in the 60s and 70s, and they are not popular even now. The vast majority of poets use in the absolute majority of their works elementary quatrains with cross rhymes - Akhmatova called such stanzas “cubes”. The “cube” has many defenders who are convinced that it is better not to invent or “show off.” And yet, such a widespread “unification” of stanzas involuntarily reminds us of our architecture, which made the “box” the main form of the era - the same “cube”, in fact.

So, while true professionals of verse are conscientiously designing “cube” after “cube,” an amateur architect bursts into their establishment with his “handicraft” (that is, individual, non-standard) strophic finds:

Once upon a time for God's gift

He received a fee -

In Lukomorye there is a fume -

per hectare!

But his blow was enough -

To avoid God's punishments,

The cat dictates about the Tatars

Or let’s remember “The Reserve”, where there is a stanza of thirty verses, twenty-seven of which end in “shchi”, “shchi” and “shy”: a whole orchestra of hissing sounds! And sometimes cultural and traditional echoes are visible in Vysotsky’s strophic patterns: in “Parody of a Bad Detective”, and then here and there the strophic skeleton of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” shines through. Maybe this came from the play “Antiworlds”, where Vysotsky read a fragment from “Oza” by Voznesensky - just “in the role” of Raven. However, what is important is not so much the direct source as the very fact of Vysotsky’s verse “responsiveness” to cultural tradition.

Let's return to the problem of rhyme. Along with compound, punning, cross-cutting rhymes, Vysotsky widely used the simplest, most elementary, grammatical rhymes: “window” - “cinema”, “half a can” - “Taganka” or: “went” - “lured”, “loss” - “soot” ", "brother" - "guys". And both types of “Vysotsky” rhymes diverged from the rhyming fashion dominant in the poetry of the 60s and 70s. There was (and still is) a focus on imprecise, assonant rhyme that captures the roots of rhyming words. Such rhymes occur in Vysotsky, but quite sporadically and do not determine the appearance of the verse.

Rhyme is assessed not in itself, but in the entire complex of verse means of each poet. The “old-fashioned” rhyme has its own inexhaustible resources. Junna Moritz has a passionate poem about this, where she defends “beggar rhymes,” calling them “beautiful old women.” And, by the way, the practice of this poetess proves that a modern and innovative style can easily be combined with rhymes like “star” - “never”, “me” - “other”, “beauty” - “verst”.

Vysotsky managed to extract energy and wealth from “poor” rhymes. They record an emotional gesture from him. Without attracting undue attention to themselves (with the exception of those theatrically effective rhymes, examples of which have already been given), Vysotsky’s rhymes steadily and rigidly count down the beats of the verse pulse, the blows that the poet inflicts on the enemy in his own way (with evil, with fate, with death) in an endless duel. For this task, you need a rhyme that is not vague, but clear. Look at how simple, uncomplicated rhymes work in the poem “My destiny is to the last line, to the cross...”. Here three streams of identical rhymes follow each other, striking like machine-gun fire. All rhymes are simple, but the phenomenon of rhyme itself is felt here as a challenge to the chaos, meaninglessness, cruelty and vulgarity of everyday life. Rhyme energetically “pulls” prosaic life material, rough vocabulary to the level of genuine poetry, creating a romantic – without pathos – mood.

It is curious that Vysotsky was ready to introduce rhyme into prose text. In his story “Life Without Sleep (Dolphins and Crazies)” (1968) we find the following clearly rhythmic passage, ending with a rhyming game slightly reminiscent of the spirit of paradise verse:

“On the street there is slush, ice, somewhere drivers are swearing and falling women are swearing, and the men (who don’t fall) don’t shake hands with them at all, but try to look at the color of the underwear, or worse, they don’t try anything: they walk and strive, trying not to fall. If you fall and no one will pick you up - you fell yourself, get up yourself. Law, corral, landfill, moonshine, carminative and just rut.”

This strengthens the idea that the “proseization” of verse was for Vysotsky a way of discovering new resources of poetry. He led his poetry towards prose, but he also moved prose towards poetry. For Vysotsky, prosaicness was a measure of the naturalness of a verse word. Some of Vysotsky’s lines in their speech and rhythmic structure are very reminiscent of the proverb - folk genre, located on the very border of poetry and prose: “The bride will weep honestly for me,” “Well, as far as Vologda is not so bad,” “He served in Tallinn under Stalin,” “He threw it, the viper, and Cook is gone!”

The same is evidenced by Vysotsky’s increased attention to the poetic organization of consonant sounds. Y. Karyakin correctly noted: “By some miracle, his consonants were able to sound like vowels, sometimes even stronger.” Let us add that this is a feature not only of the performance, but also of the poetic text. It would be impossible to sing and draw out consonants if they were not lined up in certain rows and were not included in the overall sound of the verse, in its rhythm. The focus on the dynamics of consonants again goes back to futuristic poetics. Let us remember Mayakovsky’s “grassing”, and Kruchenykh’s repeatedly ridiculed “dyr bul schyl //ubeschur” was nothing more than a tuning fork for tuning a poetic instrument in a special way, for the loud sound of consonants. Judge for yourself: you can’t stretch out the vowels here, but the consonants are quite: “dir-r-r, bul-l-l, schyl-l-l, uuch-sch-shur-r-r” - in general, mentally voice this text You can also use Vysotsky’s voice.

And here it is also necessary to say about a very special, purely individual experiment that Vysotsky conducted at the junction of poetry and prose, at the very border of verse and colloquial speech. The verse word tends to be sharpened, polished - but this is the potential danger of excessive smoothness. Vysotsky sometimes wanted the line not to freeze, to continue to pulsate conversationally, so that it would seem to be reborn in the presence of the listener-interlocutor. And while performing a song, he sometimes unexpectedly introduced additional words that lengthened the line, broke the meter, but at the same time organically fit into the overall speech structure. Editing the typewritten notes, he then crossed out these insertions, then, on the contrary, wrote in new ones.

The most expressive example is the song “Marathon”, where the first verse:

I run, trample, slide -

“spreads apart” is usually performed in the following way: “I run-run-run-run-run-run - I run for a long time, because I have forty kilometers to run - I run-run, trample, slide...” And then the main text becomes more complicated all the time inserts. Let’s give one fragment, enclosing the “extra” words in brackets:

(No, well) To me too – (huh!?) – a good friend, –

(Look, there) He went around me in a circle!

And (still) yesterday (to me) everything is around

(To me) They said: “Sam is a friend!

Sam is our (they said) Guinean friend!”

Here the verse is tested for strength, for speech organicity and, as we see, it passes this test, maintaining its “unity and tightness”, acquiring another rhythmic level (the stable text acts as a “meter”, and the performance text acts as a kind of “super-rhythm” ). Here, by the way, it becomes possible, poetically speaking, to vary anacrusis, to freely switch from iambic to trochee, from trochee to iambic.

There is also a deep ironic subtext here. We live in a carefully edited world: unnecessary, random, suspicious words are discarded, crossed out, since our official culture strictly adheres to a given “size”. And in “extra” words, in slips of the tongue and carelessness, the most valuable information is often hidden. In Vysotsky’s world, living, everyday, “despicable prose” seems to poke out from behind the verse façade. And this dialogue of poetry and prose (in every sense of both words) permeates everything written by Vysotsky.

It is interesting how this dialogue is created in Vysotsky’s unfinished prose experience - “A Novel about Girls”. The novel, which began sharply and abruptly, grew out of the songs of the “thieves” cycle of the first half of the sixties: the same characters, situations, conflicts. The author weaves into a tight plot knot the fates of the prostitute Tamara Poluektova, the criminal Kolka Svyatenko, the actor Alexander Kuleshov, the Stalin-era executioner Maxim Grigorievich... It is difficult to make any assumptions about the further development of the events of the novel, its possible plot twists. But you can see some principles of Vysotsky the prose writer’s approach to his material, fully manifested within the two author’s sheets. The material, frankly speaking, is inelegant and requires thorough artistic overcoming.

There are certain traditions of “elevating” criminal themes. One of them is the romanticization of characters, a kind of injection of “spirituality” generously produced by the author (note that this is exactly how writers of “hot” topics act in our time of glasnost: their girls of easy virtue, as a rule, are distinguished by their unselfishness, intellectuality and readiness to the purest love). It is not difficult to make sure that Vysotsky did not go this way, that the author’s view of Tamara does not at all coincide with the mood of Kolka the Colleague, who is in love with her: “She just walked in, and didn’t fly in like an angel, and she smelled of some kind of perfume, booze and valerian; and there were bruises on her face, although the tone had already been set in the morning, and it was thick. But Kolka didn’t notice any of this..."

Another way is to rise with wit: a criminal character captivates readers with jokes and philosophical aphorisms. This tradition has many striking achievements (in particular, the stories of Babel, so close to Vysotsky), but by now its exhaustion is obvious: charming criminals, full of puns and paradoxes, have become quite boring, they somehow do not look against the real background of those monsters and sadists, which we learn about from the press and which, alas, are much more typical than their conventionally literary counterparts. Vysotsky the novelist clearly keeps his wit in check, and he doesn’t share it with the characters at all.

The transformation of “low” material in “A Novel about Girls” is carried out primarily at the level of intonation. The very first phrase: “The girls loved foreigners” is significant not because of the “information” it contains, but because of the defiant directness of its tone. Who says this: the author, the hero? It is life that speaks, and it is life’s voice that the author first of all strives to capture. Vysotsky talks about ugly, but quite life-like details without a grin or a grimace, without flaunting rudeness, but also without indifferent cleanliness.

The author's position is largely conveyed through intonation and rhythm of speech. “A Novel about Girls” is rhythmic prose. Sound patterns appear in it every now and then: “And KAR-kal, old raven. They took Nikolai away for a drunken fight..." Listen to how this "punishment" rolls out throughout the phrase. Behind the apparent simplicity and conversationality there is a strict and harmonious measure...

In today's literature, verse and prose sort things out quite dramatically. Therefore, Vysotsky’s experience in combining the two main principles of literature becomes especially interesting.