.___________________________________________________________
Lev Losev former Leningrader
. .
LEV LOSEV (born in 1937). Since 1976 lives in
USA. His poems were published on the pages of magazines
"Continent", "Echo", "Third Wave", in the newspapers of the Russian
Abroad. Author of the book "The Miraculous Landing" (1985).
.
.
* * *Under the eaves at the very top
incomprehensibly written XU.
The one who wrote this motto,
he dared to threaten heaven.
Crushed, like a fortress of enemies,
the decrepit temple of our decrepit gods.
Heaven for forgotten people
he stole, the second Prometheus,
not fire, blue light -
lit TVs in the huts.
He scorned both danger and pain.
His liver pecks alcohol
taking the form of an eagle,
but stubbornly he drinks from the throat,
dragging the ladder to the house again,
to write your inscription.
Our letter is a strong connoisseur,
He will put a dashing curl
above the union letter I,
completing their efforts.
The Russian frost does not take him,
does not take either sclerosis or cirrhosis,
no longing, no heart attack, no stroke,
he will continue the phallic cult,
embodied in the Tatar word
with a pig tail at the end.1974
PRONOUNS
Betrayal, which is in the blood,
Betray yourself, betray your eye and finger
betrayal of libertines and drunkards,
but from the other, God, save.Here we lie. We feel bad. We are sick.
The soul lives under the window separately,
Under us is not an ordinary bed, but
mattress-rotten, hospital humus.Why am I, sick, so unpleasant to me,
so it's because he's such a slob:
soup spots on the face, fear spots
and spots of hell on the sheet.Something is still flowing in us,
when we lie with cold feet,
and all that we have lied for our lives,
now we are presented with a long bill.But strange and free you live
under the window, where a branch, snow and a bird,
watching these lies die
how it hurts and how afraid she is.1976
“I understand - the yoke, hunger,
there is no democracy for a thousand years,
but the bad Russian spirit
I can’t stand it,” the poet told me.
"These rains, these birches,
these oohs in part of the graves, ”-
and a poet with an expression of menace
curled his thin lips.
And he said, in a rage:
"I don't like these drunken nights,
the repentant sincerity of drunkards,
Dostoevsky anguish of informers,
this vodka, these mushrooms,
these girls, these sins
and in the morning instead of lotion
watery block rhymes;
our bards cardboard spears
and their acting hoarseness,
our iambs are empty flat feet
and trochees thin lameness;
insulting our shrines,
everything is designed for a fool,
and life-giving pure Latin
a river flowed past us,
This is the truth - a country of villains:
and there is no decent closet, ”-
crazy, almost like Chaadaev,
so abruptly ended the poet.
But with the most flexible Russian speech
something important he was bending around
and looked as if straight into the district,
where the archangel with the trumpet died.1977
“All the yarns have unraveled,
again a tow in hand,
and people learned
play the reed.We are in our polymers
weave a tuft of wool,
but these half measures
can't save us..."So am I, a meager vessel,
wrong oval,
at Udelnaya station
sat and mourned.I had nowhere to hide
the soul of my business,
and a rainbow of oil
blossomed in front of me.And so much forcing
and having done things,
I am behind the fence
stared blankly.The mental hospital was breathing
hulls glowed,
and there flashed faces,
voices roamedthey sang whatever they had to,
turning to scream
and Finnish swamp
the reed answered them.1978
DOCUMENTARY
Ah, in an old movie (in an old movie)
a soldier shaves in a trench,
around other dupes
their soundless roar,
hobble their feet briskly,
hands quickly pick
and bravely look into the lens.There, on unknown paths
traces of howitzer batteries,
dreaming of chicken legs
on the droshky, a Jewish refugee,
there the day goes like this
under the flag of black-white-gray,
that with each series - gray.There the Russian tsar is languishing in the carriage,
plays seka and storm.
There, only sometimes silently ahh
six-inch jura.
There behind the Olsztyn basin
Samsonov with a businesslike face
unzips the holster.In that gray and quiet world
Ivan is lying - an overcoat, a gun.
Behind him, Francois, suffering from a tic,
Peugeot rolls silently.
....................................................
Another terrible roar will be heard,
we will still see the blood red,
we'll still see.1979
He said: "And this is basil."
And from the garden to the English plate -
ruddy radish, onion arrow,
and the dog wobbled, sticking out his tongue.
He simply called me - Alyokha.
"Come on, in Russian, under the landscape."
We got good. We got sick.
The Gulf was Finnish. It means ours.Oh, motherland with a capital R,
Or rather, C, or rather obnoxious,
our permanent air is order-bearing
and the soil is an invalid and a cavalier.
Simple names - Ghoul, Rededya,
the union of the Cheka, the bull and the peasant,
forest named after Comrade Bear,
meadow named after Comrade Zhuk.In Siberia, the hawk dropped a tear,
In Moscow, a blade of grass ascended the pulpit.
Cursed from above. Farted below.
The china rattled and Glinka came out.
Horse-Pushkin, biting the bit,
this Kitovras, who glorified freedom.
They gave roach - a thousand people.
They gave Silva. Duska didn't.And the motherland went to hell.
Now there is cold, mud and mosquitoes.
The dog is dead, and the friend is no longer the same.
Someone new hastily moved into the house.
And nothing, of course, grows
on a bed near the former bay.LAST ROMANCE
Yuz Aleshkovsky
Can't hear the noise of the city
There is silence over the Neva Tower ... etc.Silence over the Neva tower.
She turned gold again.
Here comes the woman alone.
She isbogged down again.
Everything reflects the face of the moon,
sung by a host of poets,
not only a watch bayonet,
but a lot of piercing objects,The Admiralty syringe flashes,
and local anesthesia
instantly freeze to the borders
the place where Russia used to be.Rigor to the face
not only in the womb of a premature baby
but also to his half-father,
in the morning drunk on the board.Suitable unpriority,
dead from lack of trees.
In the land of empty skies and shelves
nothing will be born.The dead Summer Garden glimpses.
Here comes the woman back.
Her lips are bitten.
And the Neva tower is empty.ACCORDING TO LENIN
Step forward. Two back. Step forward.
Gypsies sang. Abramovich squealed.
And, yearning for them, mournful,
flooded the zealous people
(survivor of the Mongol yoke,
five-year plans, the fall of the era,
Serbian letters alien bulk;
somewhere Polish intrigue is ripe,
and to the sounds of the pas de patiner
Metternich danced against us;
under the asphalt all the same potholes;
Pushkin wasted in vain, because of a woman;
Dostoevsky mutters: bobok;
Stalin was not good, he is in exile
did not share parcels with homies
and one personal escape).
What is lost cannot be returned.
Sasha, sing! Rise up, Abrashka!
Who has a shirt left here -
do not drink away, so at least jerk the gate.Far away, in the Country of Rogues
and obscure but passionate gestures,
there lived Bulgakov, Berdyaev,
Rozanov, Gershenzon and Shestov.
A beard in ancient gossip,
squealing about the last thingsand, furtively taking out the medallion,
sighed Kuzmin, fussy,
over a helpless blond strand
from the muscular chest of a jurist,
and Burliuk walked around the capital.
like an iron, and with a swede in his buttonhole.)
_________________________________________________
* Petersburg, that is, the encrypted hero of Akhmatova's Poem Without a Hero.Yes, at sunset over the city of Petrov
reddish admixture of Messina,
and under this crimson veil
red forces gather
And in everything there is a lack, a lack:
paving stones disappear from the pavements,
you ask for tea in a tavern - unsweetened,
in "Speech" every line is a typo,
and wine can not be bought without sediment,
and the tram does not run, twenty,and the grass creeps out of the cracks
Sillurian pavement.
But it's also a bunch of women
and men drank, flirted,
and at the table, next to the Socialist-Revolutionary
Mandelstam conjured over
eclair.And the SR looked businesslike,
how a barefoot dancer jumped,
and there was a smell of dynamite
over a lovely cup of cocoa.PUSHKIN PLACES
Day, evening, dressing, undressing -
everything is in sight.
Where secret appointments were made -
in the forest? in the garden?
Under a bush in mind a mouse mink?
a la gitane?
In a stroller, with curtains pulled over the windows?
but what about there?
How crowded this desert land is!
Hidden - look
in the garden a man walks with a twig,
on the river the women are busy with canvas,
a decrepit dove sticks out in the living room in the morning,
do not sleep, ah!
Oh where to find the limits hidden
for a day? for the night?
Where do you get the studs? take off your pants?
where is the skirt away?
Where measured happiness does not frighten
sudden knock
and a boorish smirk of complicity
on the faces of servants?
Village, you say, solitude?
No, brother, you're kidding.
Isn't that why the wonderful moment
just a moment?Worked at Kostra. In this dim place
away from the race and editorials,
I met a hundred, maybe two hundred
transparent young men, unprepossessing girls.
Cold squeezing through the door,
they, not without impudent coquetry,
I was told: "Here's a couple of texts for you."
In their eyes, I was an editor and a beast.
Covered with unthinkable rags,
they are about the text, as Lotman taught them,
judged as something very dense,
how about concrete with rebar in it.
All these were fish on fur
nonsense, multiplied by lethargy,
but sometimes I get this nonsense
and actually printed.It was frosty. In the Tauride Garden
the sunset was yellow and the snow beneath it was pink.
What were they talking about as they walked?
the awake Morozov overheard,
the same Pavlik who did evil.
From a plywood portrait of a pioneer
plywood cracked from the cold,
but they were warm.And time passed.
And the first number came up.
And the secretary wrote out a chervonets.
And time passed, without ceremony with anyone,
and it blew everyone to bits.
Those in the camp barracks chifir,
those in the Bronx are fighting cockroaches,
those in the mental hospital squawk and cuckoo,
and the devils are driven from the cuff.FOR CHRISTMAS
I lie down, I defocus my eyes,
split the star in the window
and suddenly I see the area siryu,
their raw homeland.In the power of an amateur optician
not just double - and double,
and the twins of Saturn and Jupiter
fraught with a Christmas star.Following this, which quickly leaked out
and dried up, even faster
ascend over the Volkhov and Vytegra
Star of the Magi, Star of the Kings.
.......................................................
A star will rise above the station building,
and the radio in the general store window
dance program on request
interrupt in confusion and
slow a little, how to pray
about shepherds, wise men, kings,
about communists with Komsomol members,
about the rabble of drunkards and sluts.Blind, talkative prophets,
fathers accustomed to the cross,
how these lines are hasty,
go on a white sheet,
quickly soaked by the sunset,
roam the far side
and open the doors to the rooms,
long abandoned by me. .
.
Page 216-228
The most interesting and significant from the archive of Radio Liberty twenty years ago. Unfinished story. Still living hope. Could Russia have gone the other way?
Ivan Tolstoy: June 15 - 60 years of the poet Lev Losev. Our today's broadcast is dedicated to this anniversary. In it you will hear speeches by Losev's St. Petersburg friends: poet Vladimir Uflyand and historian Vladimir Gerasimov, critics Andrei Ariev from St. Petersburg, Alexander Genis from New York and Pyotr Vail from Prague, Lev Losev's co-author on philological studies Valentin Polukhina from the British University in Kiel, publisher the first books of the poet, the owner of the Hermitage publishing house near New York, Igor Efimov, and the writer Tatyana Tolstaya, who is now in Greece. You will also hear a conversation with the hero of the day and his poems, both old and new, unpublished, in the author's performance.
On the waves of Radio Liberty, the release of "Over the Barriers", which today is dedicated to the poet Lev Losev. On June 15, he has a round date - 60 years. Lev Vladimirovich was born in Leningrad in 1937 in the family of the poet Vladimir Livshits. He graduated from Leningrad University, wrote scripts, children's poems, worked as an editor in the magazine "Koster". Author of ten plays. In 1976 he emigrated and very soon made a brilliant university career as an American professor. He teaches at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. One of the leading experts on the work of Joseph Brodsky. He defended his thesis on the theme "Aesopian language in Soviet literature". And suddenly, and unexpectedly even for the closest friends, Lev Losev appeared in print with his serious, so to speak, "adult" lyrics. This happened in 1979 on the pages of the Parisian literary magazine "Echo", which was published by Maramzin and Khvostenko. The appearance of Losev the poet made a strong impression on Russian poetic circles. Joseph Brodsky immediately called Losev "Vyazemsky of our century." I am pleased to say today that in 1980, when I arrived at the Pushkin Reserve, I introduced some of the participants in today's program to the poems of Lev Losev. I remember their unspeakable surprise and joy from the new voice of their old friend, from the new thrill. Almost twenty years have passed since then, Losev published two poetic books in the West - "The Miraculous Landing" and "Privy Councilor". Both - in the publishing house "Hermitage" Igor Efimov. A year ago, his collection "New Information about Karl and Clara" appeared in St. Petersburg in the publishing house of the "Pushkin Fund". Today, no one doubts that Losev is a well-deserved master of our literature. Lev Vladimirovich - at the microphone of Radio Liberty.
Lev Losev:
All yarns unraveled
again a tow in hand,
and people learned
play the reed.
We are in our polymers
weave a tuft of wool,
but these half measures
can't save us...
So am I, a meager vessel,
wrong oval,
at Udelnaya station
sat and mourned.
I had nowhere to hide
the soul of my business,
and a rainbow of oil
blossomed in front of me.
And so much forcing
and having done things,
I am behind the fence
stared blankly.
The mental hospital was breathing
hulls glowed,
and there flashed faces,
voices roamed
They sang what they had to,
turning to scream
and Finnish swamp
the reed answered them
Now I will read two poems from the second book, from the book of 1987, which is called "Privy Councilor". The first poem is called "Levlosev".
Levlosev is not a poet, not a kifared.
He is a marine painter, he is a velimirologist,
Broadsky player with glasses and a sparse beard,
he is an osipologist with a hoarse throat,
it smells like vodka
he smacks nonsense.
Levlosevlosevlosevlosevon-
ononononononon judas,
he betrayed Russia, he betrays Zion,
he drinks lotion
does not distinguish good from bad,
he never knows what's coming from
at least I heard the sound.
He is an annophile, he is an alexandroman,
Fedorolyub, turning to prose,
he will not write a novel,
and there is an article on an important issue -
keep your pocket!
He hears the sound
as if someone is executed
where the straw supposedly eats,
but it's not a bell, it's a telephone,
he does not fit, he is not at home.
And a small poem from the same book called "Dedication".
Look, look here quickly:
Above a flock of round bullfinches
The dawn comes from trump cards -
All red.
Oh, if only I could!
But I could not: a lump sticks out
In the larynx, and there will be no lines
About the properties of passion.
And there are two lives as one.
We stand with you at the window.
Why not drink some wine?
I'm kinda chilly.
Melo all month in February.
A candle burned in a Chevrolet.
And on the red king
The hat was on fire.
In the Russian thickets they have no number,
we just can't find the way -
bridges collapsed, a snowstorm brought,
the trail was littered with a windbreak.
They plow there in April, they reap there in August,
there in a hat they won’t sit at the table,
quietly waiting for the second coming,
bow to whoever comes -
constable on a troika, an archangel with a pipe,
passer-by in a German coat.
There they treat diseases with water and grass.
Nobody dies there.
The Lord puts them to sleep for the winter,
in the snow covers up to fear -
neither fix the ice-hole, nor chop wood,
no sleds, no games, no fun.
Bodies taste peace on the floors,
and souls are happy dreams.
So much heat tangled in sheepskins,
that will last until spring.
Petr Weil: The place that Lev Losev occupies in our literature and in the literary process is unique. Let me remind you that literature is what is written, the literary process is the circumstances in which what is written is created. These circumstances are difficult in all epochs, in all latitudes, not least because literary people do not treat each other too warmly. It `s naturally. If the definition is true that poetry is the best words in the best order, then how many better orders can there be?
Hence the self-conceit, and jealousy, and envy, and hostility. And here Lev Losev stands out sharply. Everyone respects him. His literary figure has a powerful authority: "But Losev said," "But Losev thinks differently." One could refer to the solidity and thoroughness of his studies. Nothing like this. Solidity is manifested in skill, but what solidity a writer has, allowing himself such liberties in poetry that not every young avant-garde artist dares. I wonder if there is such a poetic category - authority? If not, we introduce for Losev. Once, about two years ago, I asked Joseph Brodsky if he had ever treated anyone other than childhood and adolescence, of course, as an elder. He suddenly became serious, thought about it, then said that at some point - to Cheslav Milos, and all his life, from his youth until that time - to Losev. In my opinion, Brodsky himself was somewhat puzzled by his own conclusion. As for literature, poetry, Losev composes poems that are immediately recognizable, unlike anyone or anything. I remember well the first time I read them. The selection, Losev's very first poetic publication, appeared in 1979 in the Parisian magazine Echo and gave the impression of some kind of hoax. I remember the feeling: it does not happen. It does not happen that suddenly, at once, in one fell swoop, a completely mature, virtuoso, strong, original thinking poet appears. But it seems that I am beginning to quote Pushkin's words. Nothing to do about. Not much has changed since the time of Pushkin, who said about Baratynsky "he is original with us, because he thinks". Of course, the four decades of Brodsky's presence in Russian poetry have not been in vain, the poems have become smarter, but as long as it is usually about imitation, the real consequences are ahead. It is all the more striking how parallel to his great friend, unlike him, the intellectual poetry of Lev Losev moves in its own way. However, this phrase, although true, is very incomplete. I really don't want to reduce Losev's poems to amazing versification, caustic wit, subtle observations, deep thoughts. Is this not enough? Few. I read fragments from Losev aloud more often than anyone else's poems. It is appropriate, it is spectacular, it is advantageous. But you mutter his lines to yourself not because you admire them, but because they are written for you and about you. That elusive, indefinable and indescribable quality that makes poetry real, Losev himself tried to designate in the poem "Reading Milos": "And someone pressed my throat with his hand / and let him go again." Fifteen years ago I read this simple line and I remember it every time I read Losev.
Except for two or three initial notes
and black logs on fire
no one remembers me
what is dead in me.
And what do you order to remember -
the silence of Russian aonids?
How would you like to understand
it's scary to pick up the phone,
and the phone is ringing.
Or this:
What else is this?
And this is a mirror, such a glass,
to see with a brush behind the cheek
the fate of the displaced person.
Here is the formula, one of Losev's many remarkable formulas - "a displaced person of fate." He's talking about himself, of course, but I'll subscribe if he doesn't mind.
Ivan Tolstoy: Now another look from St. Petersburg. Critic Andrey Ariev.
Andrey Ariev: Lev Losev's poems seem unexpected and new in our poetry for two decades. So it's easy to admit: it is Lev Losev who has long been the ruler of my fleeting thoughts about the meaning of modern lyrics. Instead of serving divine speech, instead of sweet sounds and prayers, like Khlebnikov:
Both carefree and playful.
He showed the art of touching.
To touch with the clawed paw of a lion, but also to touch heartily, sincerely. The meaning of this poetry is revealed not by the first, but by the second turn of the key. What is essential in it is the movement continued from the hidden depths. It is not mystical experience that is important here, but a good knowledge of one's own nature and nature, of the unfortunate fact that in every person something dies all the time, and what is happening is reminiscent of Pushkin:
But happiness plays angrily with me.
Lev Losev's intuition is an intuition about the incompleteness of human existence, a feeling that almost dominates the St. Petersburg artistic tradition. “No one will remember with me / what has died in me,” writes Losev. We live with grief in half and sin in half, but we do not indulge in despondency, and in winter we remember flowers, we even know how to celebrate "non-priesty", as the poet wrote in his last romance. And here's what's interesting. In Losev's first book, "The Miraculous Landing", "The Last Romance", the second poem in order, tells about the unborn baby, about the miserable fate of Russia:
The Admiralty syringe flashes, and local anesthesia
will instantly freeze to the borders the place where Russia used to be.
And now let's look at Losev's latest collection. Perfectly symmetrical - the second poem from the end is devoted to the same topic. It is called "Sin in Half" and has the subtitle "June 15, 1925". The mirror reflection fixes the world poetic record: starting with "under-Christmas", the poet celebrates the day of his "not birth" - on this day, but twelve years later, he was born in Leningrad, remembering that somewhere, in the southern resort town, it happened such.
Then she sat alone for a long time
at the doctor's office.
And the skin of the sofa was cold
her is hot
The oilcloth is brilliant, the pain is thin and sharp,
instant fog.
There was a Jewish doctor, a Russian sister.
Crowd of Armenians
From Turks, photographers, Nepmansh mothers,
dads, punks.
Tan bronzed from apache shirts,
white pants.
Everything in this crowd and in this life is a matter of chance, but according to Losev, this is life, only accidents in it are natural, and we are talking about them. Only on the periphery of consciousness, almost beyond the verses and the earth, his lyrical hero looms:
On a bent dolphin - from wave to wave -
through the darkness and the moon,
the invisible boy blew into the sink,
blew into the sink.
The tender "invisible boy" in the poetry of Lev Losev shows the face of a hardened misanthrope. But the hero, I repeat, is precisely this random ghost, not materialized, and therefore an immortal lyrical germ.
No, just random features
beautiful in this terrible world ...
... Lev Losev argues with romanticism in general and Blok in particular. The more accidental, the more truly the verses are composed, the life plan is composed - Losev could say so, following Pasternak. The meaning of life is not a priori, and I think that you can think anything, says Losev.
An invigorating literary echo is always heard in his poems, they are not pragmatic, not utilitarian, light like calendar sheets, like little notes at an emigrant ball
Of course, his wit is often gloomy, smacks of Nekrasov's hypochondria, but Lev Losev's wit has a playful character, and therefore is not hopeless, not dull. An invigorating literary echo is always heard in his poems, they are not pragmatic, not utilitarian, light as the leaves of a calendar, like little notes at an emigrant ball. This is how Khodasevich and Georgy Ivanov wrote outside of Russia. The poetry of Lev Losev is all in a cloud of allusions and reminiscences, all supported by this harmony from the ages. Therefore, he is so frankly quotable, poetry without a literary echo for him is like food without salt. And he's right. In order to read the book of Russian life, it is necessary, like Losev, to compare it with the Book of Genesis of the Bible:
"Earth
was formless and empty.
In the above landscape
relatives recognize places.
This is how our existence continues, the second day has come and the second verse. And all the poetry of Lev Losev is the unexpected joy of the accidentally extended time of an extended day.
Ivan Tolstoy: After criticism - a word to the poet. Vladimir Uflyand.
Vladimir Uflyand: I have long been interested in such a war-opposition of vodka and a writing person. Before my eyes, several people even suffered a mortal defeat in this war. And Lesha, somewhere around thirty years old, suffered the first such tactical defeat from vodka. He and the late Boris Fedorovich Semyonov said goodbye to Boris Fedorovich's grandmother. If we remember that Boris Fedorovich himself is twenty years older than us, then what kind of grandmother was she? And the next day, Boris Fedorovich, as if nothing had happened, went to hangover with cognac, and Lesha ended up in the hospital with a suspected heart attack. But since then, he has made some very cunning agreement with alcohol: he doesn’t drink until six in the evening, but after six he communicates quite calmly with both vodka and friends. And on his sixtieth birthday, I wrote him this poem:
Lesha's friend!
Having exchanged the seventh ten,
Respect yourself and your order today.
When will six p.m. come,
don't put yourself in trouble
other than the dissolution of ice in scotch tape,
and the night is not enough for them.
And at noon your Nina will disturb your sleep,
gazing at the lawn intently.
He will exclaim so that a trembling will break out in the distance:
“Well, Lyosha, we have lived with you!
The bear ate my slippers, your swimming trunks,
did not eat the bottle that stood on the bench,
but drank the rest of it.
His footprints are in the grass!
God grant him, furry, amendments!
And a soft landing after a spin”
And in the meantime, you will begin to exercise.
And I would like to make a comment to this poem that Lyosha and Nina live in a lovely place surrounded by such hefty American coniferous trees. Ninulya has planted a garden, and all kinds of animals go to this garden: deer, marmot, even a bear sometimes comes. And the thing is that Ninulya is an absolutely incredible person, she is talented in everything she takes on, so Lesha simply could not start writing below the level at which he began to write, because next to Nina he could not do this to himself allow. Nina and Lesha will have a golden wedding at the beginning of the next century, and Lesha is also lucky in this. God bless him and continue like this!
Ivan Tolstoy: Roots of Lev Losev in St. Petersburg, in Leningrad. A word to a friend of his youth, historian Vladimir Gerasimov.
Vladimir Gerasimov : Near the Obvodny Canal, in the last quarter along Mozhayskaya Street, at the corner of Mozhayskaya and Malodetskoselsky Avenue, I visited him shortly after we met. He lived there for quite some time in a communal apartment. I must say that our entire company, we all lived then in the old city, because there was no new city yet, even Kupchino had just begun to be created. And we were all such Petersburgophiles, Petersburgers, and this city intrigued us a lot, evoked a lot of questions for us. As for those two or three dozen universally recognized architectural masterpieces, thanks to which St. Petersburg is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, we knew as much about them as it seemed to us enough. But the fact that on these streets, even if they are not at all brilliant, even if they are some kind of melancholy, all the houses have different facades, not all of the same face, this made me want to know when it was built, who lived here, what was here before. There was nothing beautiful in this house on Mozhayskaya, and yet I think that Lesha and his household would have been a little more interesting to live in it if they already knew then that this house was built in 1874 by an architect with a loud surname Nabokov. We didn't know it then. Yes, however, this Nabokov, Nikolai Vasilyevich, had nothing to do with the family that gave the world a famous writer, just a namesake. We also did not know that two remarkable Russian poets Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky and Anton Antonovich Delvig once lived on the neighboring street from Mozhayskaya, on Ruzovskaya. By the way, about Delvig. About Delvig and Losev. Although, it would seem, what is the connection between them? And for a long time Lesha, at the time of our still intense communication, even outwardly reminded me of Delvig - soft features, a rounded chin, glasses with very strong diopters. But the point is not only in external similarity, you never know who looks like anyone. About Delvig, Anna Petrovna Kern, a famous contemporary of Delvig, Pushkin and other poets, their friend, writes very touchingly and, in my opinion, talentedly. She was on good friendly terms with Delvig. And this is what she writes: “Delvig, I can affirmatively say, was always smart! And how amiable he was! I have never met a person more amiable and pleasant than him. recognize in him true British humor. Hospitable, generous, delicate, refined, he knew how to make everyone around him happy. He always joked very seriously, and when he repeated his favorite word "funny", it meant that it was about something not at all amusing, or about sad, or annoying for him. It seems to me that if the name Losev is inserted in this paragraph instead of the name Delvig, then in the rest you can not change a single word. Of course, I didn’t share my observations with Lesha and never wrote to him about it, because it would be inconvenient, but since today I still speak for our radio listeners, it seems to me that they will nevertheless form a more complete picture about our hero of the day, if I share these observations with them. So, then Lesha and Nina moved to a more spacious apartment, and he doesn’t mention the places where Lesha and his family have lived for the last few years in his own country anywhere in his poetry, because in those parts it’s just beyond the eye what to catch. There are such nine- or sixteen-story blockheads standing there, at their feet, like some kind of dogs, four- and five-story buildings sheltered. And, of course, there were many very important reasons for their departure from here, but it seems to me that one of these reasons, albeit not the most important, was Lesha's desire to take his wife away from this landscape, from that landscape that opened from the windows of their apartment, where Nina sat all day in a rather despondent mood and admired the huge puddle that never dried under their window. I have not been in those places for a long time, but a few years ago the puddle still remained in the same place, just like the famous Mirgorod puddle, sung by Gogol.
Ivan Tolstoy: From Petersburg - to the West. Our microphone is from New York author Alexander Genis.
Alexander Genis: Losev, with his cunning rhyme, with his complex patterned rhythm, with his sophisticated verbal play, is a scientist-virtuoso of versification. But there are qualities in his poetry that allow it to be read even by those who usually look with hatred at the text typed in a column. Losev's poems are also interesting at the simplest, philistine level. They are prosaic, and narrative, and fascinating. The fundamental contradiction of his work is born of the exclusive loyalty of the author to his hero, more precisely, the heroine - the motherland. And in this sense, Losev's poetry is purely émigré. The conflict of Losev's poems is determined by the existence of the motherland and the fact of its absence. The loss of the fatherland is a fruitful artistic experience. Nature does not tolerate emptiness, and Losev fills it with his own and not his own memories. He enumerates Russia, rhymes it, beats it with a clever word game. Losev diligently packs native realities into his verse, so that it would be more convenient to transport Russia from place to place. But where is the ideal, where is the magic crystal of art, through which bad reality is transformed into normal? Losev also has this. The poet, tormented by the absurdity of Russian history, secretly retains a shy image of a reasonable norm, an image that is rare, but still found in the wax museum of his memoirs.
So that instead of this rust, fields in the insecticide
again the Volga would roll into the Caspian Sea,
horses would eat oats again,
so that a cloud of glory shines over the homeland,
so that at least something would work out.
And the tongue won't dry out.
Ivan Tolstoy: Recently, the writer Tatiana Tolstaya visited our Prague studio on her way from Greece.
Tatiana Tolstaya: It seems to me that Lev Losev wonderfully combines two things. The first is that he openly and for everyone shows the whole spectrum of Russian literature in which he exists, which is huge. This is from Pushkin, from Derzhavin to Mandelstam and children's poems, which is natural, he came out of these children's poems, up to quotations from various unexpected things, translated things, Dante, anything. For a literate, intelligent, educated reader, he presents, without hesitation, the entire spectrum of literature. This is often called postmodernism, but in my opinion, it's just a good education and a beautiful ability to handle the text, it's a literary text. But the narrower one, with which this broad tradition is connected, in my opinion, lies in such a strange position. On the one hand, it leaves Zabolotsky. And both early and late. He has quotes from the later, again, you guess - you will not guess. In our country, the late Zabolotsky is little read, and it is customary not to like him, and in vain. And it precedes, strange as it may seem, Timur Kibirov.
Ivan Tolstoy: Tell me, is it possible that serious, real lyrics have such a charge of a sense of humor? In general, is it legal for serious lyrics to be humorous poetry at the same time?
Tatiana Tolstaya: Legal or not legal? It may be illegal. Like all true poetry, it must be lawless. But it is so difficult that few people succeed. There are such humorous, satirical, ironic directions in which people are, for example, Sasha Cherny, a very respected poet (early Sasha Cherny, before the emigrant period). With humor - fine, someone likes it, someone doesn't like it, but in the sense of lyrics - stop, the lyrics don't work there. Don Aminado, absolutely beautiful, satirical, if you like, poetry, an attempt at lyrics - stop! Blockage, saliva pink. And the opposite sin is the lyrics are high, sublime, somewhere all in the clouds, looking at the stars, and there, in these stars - only sugar, nausea.
He was a friendly beacon for many poets in Russia
To cross the lofty with the humorous, not to be afraid to step off the sidewalk and step into the terrible mud, to pull out the leg without getting dirty, but only adding to our life experience, and at the same time rushing head somewhere very high, not where cheap stars for three kopecks are, and to where the peaks are, to which we still need to stretch our chin in order to look - Losev somehow manages to fit on this line. And I would say that it was in this very capacity that he was a friendly beacon for many poets in Russia. Many tried to imitate him. It didn't work out. This gift you cannot take away, you cannot adopt, you cannot use. I know many poets who would like to write like Losev. This is such envy, which, it seems to me, says a lot, and this is such a good trait - to envy Losev. He can, I can't.
Ivan Tolstoy: When Losev left the Soviet Union in the second half of the 70s, no one suspected that he was a poet. As a poet, he declared himself already in exile. You have already seen Lev Vladimirovich in America. Tell me, are Losev and poetic behavior two things in common?
Tatiana Tolstaya: I may not know Lev Vladimirovich closely enough to evaluate his poetic behavior, but in my opinion, no. That is, his hair does not flutter, he does not run around the house like a madman. And he looks unusually gentlemanly and behaves like a gentleman, in our best idea, right or wrong, about this word. This person is extremely obliging, amiable, polite, extremely well-mannered, hospitable, kind, indulgent to those stupid things that, say, drunken guests can afford. And communication with him is communication with the old, long gone and, perhaps, non-existent St. Petersburg world. Somehow he maintains alone, alone with himself, in the wild wilderness of his small state, the idea that there are such people in St. Petersburg. If you haven't seen them, well, well, here they are, here they are.
Ivan Tolstoy: Now let's move on to those who professionally collaborate with Lev Losev. First - a philologist from the University of Keele, UK, Valentina Polukhina.
Valentina Polukhina: In my relationship with Lesha, of course, Brodsky is present as air and light. Lesha was one of Joseph's closest friends, he is the author of the top ten articles on Brodsky, and for me he is the greatest authority on Brodsky. In his always brilliant articles, he demonstrates the ability to lead away from unambiguous interpretations, from scientific schemes, his articles, like his poems, are surrounded by a huge field of cultural context. And my respect and gratitude to Lev Vladimirovich is immeasurable. But I love Losev the poet no less for his clever talent, special lyricism, dry wit and fantastic formal inventiveness. His poems are captivating with their paradoxical moves. Puritanism is mixed with hidden eroticism, postmodernism - with classical harmony, realism - with absurdity. Despite the fact that in life extremes are alien to him. A unique gift. Losev is a poet and a man of impeccable reputation. His erudition is fabulous, his modesty is attractive, his politeness, charm, his nobility are truly aristocratic. And in poetry, and in life, and in articles, Losev is smart and elegant, gentle and sad, witty and wise. And this man, by the will of fate and completely undeserved by me, is my colleague and friend. I couldn't have wished for a bigger and better gift. And on his birthday, I wish him to enjoy his talent and take care of his health. And maybe smile a little more often and not so sadly.
Ivan Tolstoy: I called the city of Tenafly near New York, where the Russian publishing house "Hermitage" is located, which published the first two books of Losev. Here is a recording of a conversation with the owner of the publishing house Igor Efimov.
What is the commercial fate of publishing his books?
Igor Efimov: I must say that with all the difficulties of Losev's books that we published ... We also published a collection of his wonderful essays, which at one time were published in the Continent magazine under the title "Closed Distributor". Here is this collection, two collections of poems and the book "Poetics of Brodsky", they all almost dispersed. But they take a very long time to separate. So gradually, I think that we have returned our expenses, but this process was stretched, as we see, for ten years or even more.
Ivan Tolstoy: For you as a publisher, what is the circle of Losev's readers in Russian America?
Igor Efimov: These are mainly Russian people who write poetry, they follow each other very much, they involuntarily are actively interested in each other, and the Slavists who teach modern Russian literature, who know Losev the professor very well, Losev the wonderful researcher of Russian literature, and they are interested in all aspects of his work.
Ivan Tolstoy: And now - a conversation with the hero of the day himself. Lev Vladimirovich, there is probably an external reason that you began to publish your poems only after crossing the border in a western direction. But there is probably an internal reason. Can you tell me about one and the other?
Lev Losev: As for what you call an external cause, this is probably the most obvious. It's not that I wrote a lot of poetry, as they say, of political content, but, one way or another, everything you write is informed, saturated with your worldview, your attitude to reality. So it is unlikely that by nature itself, perhaps, by my verbal nature, it would even have occurred to me to propose something for publication in the Soviet Union while it existed and while I was there. But the most important thing is that I wrote quite a bit while living in my homeland, until the beginning of 1976, when I emigrated. As I wrote in the preface to my first collection, Miraculous Landing, I began to write poetry, at least to take what I did seriously, only in 1974, that is, a year and a half before my emigration. Simply put, not much has been written during this time. Quite frankly, hand on heart, I did not plan any literary path, any literary future for myself when leaving Russia. As I said, then I wrote poems for only a year and a half or two in earnest, and at that moment I absolutely did not want to publish anything written, because basically I wrote them for such "therapeutic" purposes. Not that I intentionally wrote them, but they were obtained, they were written, they came to me as a kind of way to survive. And some kind of superstition then told me that publishing them, even just reading them in a circle of friends, meant destroying their therapeutic, healing effect for the soul. Then, of course, all this belated timidity gradually evaporated, as there were more poems, I became more sober about this, and, in the end, in the year 1980 for the first time in the magazine "Echo" poems were published. But I never considered it as a career, not in the least. More seriously, I can say that, oddly enough, although in general I am rather a pessimist by nature, and I never expect special joys from the future, but those general ideas about the future that I had when I left my homeland in 1976 year, they came true. Because I didn’t imagine anything particularly concrete and didn’t export anything in this sense, except for readiness for everything. What did I expect? Simply put, freedom. And I really got it.
Ivan Tolstoy: Where is the poet Losev celebrating his anniversary?
Lev Losev: That I can tell you for sure. I will meet my so-called anniversary (I don’t attach much importance to this date at all) on the train on the way from Milan to Venice. In the morning I will be in Milan, in the evening I will be in Venice. This is due to my big trip to different European cities.
Ivan Tolstoy: Let me congratulate you on your 60th birthday!
Lev Losev: Thank you very much, Ivan Nikitich!
And at the end of our anniversary program, Lev Losev kindly agreed to read an unpublished poem.
Lev Losev:
I learned to write that your Sluchevsky.
Published in dying thick magazines.
(What decadentism, Alexandrianism!
This could compose Cavafy,
and the late Shmakov would have translated,
and then the late Joseph would have corrected).
And he himself got fat that your Apukhtin,
I can’t get to the sofa without shortness of breath,
I drink chamomile infusion instead of tea,
I throw unread books
on the face forgotten like a smile.
And when they knock on my door with a fist,
when they shout: at the gates of the Sarmatians!
ojibwei! Lezgins! goyim! -
I say leave me alone.
I retire to the inner chambers,
cool gloomy chambers.
Lev Losev visiting the Gandlevskys, Moscow, 1998. Photo by G.F. Komarova
"POET IS HUMUS"
Lev, in the preface to your first collection of poetry, The Wonderful Landing, published by the Hermitage Publishing House (USA) in 1985, you note that you started writing poetry quite late, at the age of 37. The number "37" is fatal in the life of many Russian poets - most often, as you know, it marked the end of the master's journey. In your case, the opposite happened...
I would not attach too much importance to the mysticism of numbers, in particular, the mysticism of age. In my case, everything is logical here. Indeed, at this age I reached that state, which in the language of popular psychology is now called the "mid-life crisis", as psychoanalysts say, mid life crisis - I don't know how to say it exactly in Russian. In general, this is a state that every person goes through at thirty-two, thirty-seven, thirty-eight years old ... when some distance has already been covered, you find yourself at some kind of finish line, you need to reevaluate something and start over. I went all this way in a normal way, without being a poet ...
And what really coincided (although who knows who controls our destiny?) - there was something more than a simple coincidence: I was seriously ill, at the age of 33 I had a heart attack, then I got out of it for several years. This contributed to the beginning of a new path. Also during this period of my life, for various reasons, I lost a number of close friends, whose presence was extremely important for me. For example, Brodsky left, he was forced to leave. I became friends with someone and so on. And in this unexpectedly rarefied air, verses arose. I took them more seriously than now - as some kind of saving agent sent to me.
- Nevertheless, it seems that you were still surrounded by interesting people, people of high culture ...
It would be more accurate to consider the cultural environment not as a certain circle of acquaintances, but precisely as a circle of cultural information in which a person is immersed. In this sense, in a cultural environment, a person can live somewhere in the middle of a taiga or jungle, regardless of his personal acquaintances, connections, family background, etc., because the means of communication in this case are books, music, etc. - not necessarily people. Although people can be too. Why am I now getting into this theorizing? Because one does not replace the other. The circle of human relations is something separate. Quite right, among my friends there were people of high culture in the truest sense of the word, people highly educated and creatively active in various fields - I was generously endowed with such a circle due to the circumstances of my biography since childhood. But first of all, what was important for me was poetry, poetry. I am not afraid to say that this has always been the main content of my life. It was important for me to live not just in a cultural environment, but in an environment where new Russian poems, new Russian poetry are born.
During the crisis period of which I speak, it was precisely this inner circle of mine that gradually dissipated. I named Brodsky, but there were several other people whom I consider uniquely gifted, unique poets of my generation. I do not want to make any hierarchies - I do not believe in them - I will name, for example, Mikhail Eremin, Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, my closest friend of my youth Sergei Kulle, now deceased. It was a galaxy of people of extraordinary creative potential, and it so happened that, with the exception of only Uflyand, none of them were nearby. That is, I continued to get acquainted with their things, but it was not at all what daily communication with poets gives, endless conversations, when you, as it were, from the inside understand what kind of brew poetic texts are born from. Everything suddenly evaporated, disappeared and led to a feeling of a terrible vacuum that I needed to fill with something. That it began to be filled with my own poems was not a conscious decision.
Lev Losev is a pseudonym chosen by you as if out of necessity. Born Lifshitz, you once heard from your writer father: "There is no place for two Lifshitz in one children's literature - take a pseudonym." Apparently, now there is no great need to save it. However, despite the fact that you left children's literature a long time ago, you said goodbye to your father a long time ago, you still did not return to your real name. Is this due to the memory of him or, perhaps, a habit? Inwardly, do you not care about having a double "I" in yourself?
Not at all. I don't know why - this name stuck to me. If someone shouts in the street: "Lifshitz!" - I'm not likely to turn around. But if they shout: "Losev!" - of course ... Even if they mean the late Alexei Fedorovich Losev, although, besides this famous philosopher, there were two more big scoundrels named Losev. One sat on Moscow television, and the other on Bulgakov's archives. Although Lifshitz remained in my passport in the Soviet Union, I got used to the fact that I was Losev. For myself, I explain this by the fact that I did not invent this pseudonym, my father gave it to me. We get a name from the father without asking... that's the thing, No, I don't have a duality of "I". True, for any person of Jewish origin who writes under a Russian pseudonym, there is always a delicate question: why do you hide your Jewish origin? But in my own lyrics this side of my personality is widely discussed. So, apparently, the hypothetical accusation disappears.
Reading your poems, it is impossible not to notice that they play a big role in them - how can I say it more precisely? - objects, signs of a very specific world. With special admiration, you often describe, for example, an onion, a piece of bread, a candle, etc. Material, like paint on a canvas, is the light that falls on the objects of your attention. Where does this attraction to tangible forms come from? To use the good old term, picturesque?
Maybe because of all the arts I love painting the most. I cannot call myself a great connoisseur of painting, but nothing fascinates me so much as the work of painters - old and new. Of all my life friendships, one of the most precious for me is the friendship with Oleg Tselkov. This seems to be part of the answer. The other one... it's hard to say, because it's always dangerous to talk about your own works in terms of their origins... But one way or another, I probably was brought up mainly by the St. Petersburg literary school, the acmeist school. In itself, this word is not very successful, because acmeism is an extremely temporary concept. The name "acmeists" was assigned to Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Georgy Ivanov, who, as poets, can just as well be enrolled in the same school as Pushkin, Fet, Annensky, Kuzmin. That is, the Petersburg literary tradition did not remain the same, it developed, but this tradition, which shied away from direct philosophizing as such in poetry as much as possible, which somewhat limits direct expressions of emotionality. For me, it's almost a matter of good taste.
- And if we talk about the influence of the Oberiuts, the Zabolotsky period of "Columns" on your work?
I don't know about influence. Of course, what I would most like to say is that there are no influences on my poetry. But this is difficult to assess, because if we talk about writing poetry as a work, then it is in its midst that you yourself meticulously make sure that there is not suddenly in your lines someone else's word, someone else's imagery, someone else's intonation. Yet, probably, the influence of Zabolotsky and the Oberiuts was enormous. I don't know whether it's my own poetry or just my formation. There was a period when I just worked on them tirelessly, dug up texts, rewrote, distributed, and they somehow got into my blood. It was quite an early period, somewhere in the mid-50s. I think I was one of the first in our generation to rediscover Zabolotsky and the Oberiuts.
Ten years later, either I left them, or they left me. I can’t say that they have become uninteresting to me - and now there are Zabolotsky’s poems that touch me endlessly, which are inexhaustible in meaning, from my point of view, and - if not whole things, then some pieces by Vvedensky, and completely separate lines from Kharms too... But still, their poetic world cannot be compared with the poetic world of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky, because even Kharms and Vvedensky were people of genius limited. So now I would not like to talk about some apprenticeship with them.
You said that you were engaged in their texts. Indeed, Lev Losev is also a philologist. This side of your creativity cannot be bypassed. I wonder if the scientific approach to literature, to poetry in particular, does not prevent you from being liberated in your own versification?
As it is customary for us American teachers to say in such cases: "This is a very interesting question." Indeed, he interests me more than anyone else. We must begin with the fact that there is no distinction between philology and poetry. Essentially, they are one and the same. From my point of view, all our true poets were, to one degree or another, philologists, if you like - literary critics, linguists, critics. Pushkin, with his remarkable articles on literature, not only on current literature, but also on the history of literature, spoke heartily about language. Professional philologists were Blok, Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov - in fact, all the major symbolists. Mandelstam and Akhmatova had a serious philological education, which was replenished and continued throughout their lives; we can speak as serious philologists even of such autodidacts as Tsvetaeva or Brodsky.
What is the difference after all: why in some cases they write "literary research" (that is, work with archival materials, as in the case of Akhmatova, or an analysis of Dante's text, as in Mandelstam), and in other cases they indicate - "poem"? I affirm that in both the first and second versions, the initial impulse is the same - to express with the help of words something new, some kind of feeling, sentiment, knowledge, information - something that was not previously expressed in the words of this language. And then intuition prompted the most effective way of this expression. In some cases, this new thing can be said in a rational language, then a "philological article" or an "essay" is written. In other cases, this newness itself does not find a rational expression, and then it is necessary to use words, as Mandelstam wrote in "A Conversation about Dante", not in their direct dictionary meanings, but indirectly. To use Vygotsky's terminology, word-image is poetry.
In one of your poems there is a phrase: "A poet is humus..." Could you tell us how such a formulation, such an image arose, what is behind it?
Ever since we settled in New England and my wife became passionate about gardening, I have, so to speak, fallen in love with compost, with humus. My hands somehow do not lie to do these things, but I really like to observe the vegetation in our yard. What happens to humus makes a particularly mystical impression on me - how from rubbish, garbage, garbage, an absolutely pure black substance, like pollen of flowers, appears before my eyes, giving new life. This is perhaps one of the most metaphysical processes that we have been given to observe with our own eyes. Therefore, the metaphor "poet-humus" (somewhere I have: "humus of souls and books", i.e. culture) is for me the highest metaphor of any existence, any, including creative, life.
If I may, I will now return to the topic of "duality" that I touched upon in the question of the relationship between your last name and pseudonym. True, in another aspect. I quote your poems: “I will lie down, defocus my eyes. I will split the star in the window, and suddenly I will see the area shining, my damp homeland ...“ The problem, so to speak, of a double vision of the world seems to me very important for understanding your work.
Well, to simplify, this poem is just about the fact that the vision should be double. By the way, in my opinion, none of the readers and critics paid attention to the fact that this is a Christmas poem. Or maybe they turned, but did not speak. At the time of the Nativity of Christ, as is known, there was a rare combination of two planets - Saturn and Jupiter, which could look like one new star from the Earth. This is, in general, one of the atheistic explanations of the gospel phenomena. But in my poem, which, as I noted, is about double vision, I wanted to give the gospel perception of the endlessly repeating Christmas in the style of the Science and Life magazine. Dramatic and lyrical (more importantly lyrical) in poetry is created in the presence of two poles. Sometimes poems written by very cultured people are unbearably monotonous. Take, for example, the remarkable philologist Averintsev. He has recently started publishing his poetry.
The poems are not bad, very accurately stylizing some genres, with the words chosen correctly. There is a lot of taste, culture and even sincerity in poetry, but they have one drawback - they are boring. Why? There is no second stylistic pole. I am not going to give Averintsev any advice, it would be completely inappropriate - but if he, as it seems to me, were in some kind of graceful crying (I don’t remember what he was crying about: about the servant of God Alexei? .. ) suddenly inserted a reality from the vulgar Soviet everyday life, then, perhaps, something could have arisen ... Then lyricism would have appeared. And here is the other extreme. There was such "barrack poetry", one of our best poets Sapgir had something to do with it, Kholin ... Here Kholin, a talented person who has wonderful things, has a more or less rhymed registration of vulgarity, boredom, dirt, everyday life . This is again devoid of lyrical energy. A kind of astigmatism is necessary for the poet.
Now, in the so-called perestroika times, many of those St. Petersburg poets who sought to preserve and continue the traditions of the Russian "Silver Age", other traditions - I mean, first of all, those with whom you felt a deep spiritual connection - from a semi-legal position moved into a very comfortable position. That is, in this case we are talking about the opportunity to publish, speak at home, abroad. There was a kind of process of merging of St. Petersburg literature with Russian and world literature in a broad sense. Don't you think that in this way the circle of St. Petersburg literature of the 60s - early 70s, as it were, closed, ended?
I don't think it's yesterday, a closed page. If we talk about the publication of poems written twenty to twenty-five years ago, then this is quite a useful cultural affair. But, you know, it doesn't change anything. Doesn't save. It does not cancel the tragedy of the whole generation, because the life, the youth of these people is destroyed, humiliated and no later confessions, publications can restore it.
- What is your attitude to the changes in the Soviet Union, in modern Europe?
Like everyone else, I follow the events with great interest and, like everyone else, I have no idea where all this will lead. Brodsky, for example, believes that the only historical problem of mankind is overpopulation. In a broad sense, he seems to be absolutely right. With this approach to things, all forecasts can only be the most pessimistic - individual political changes in different parts of the globe essentially do not change anything. But I'd like to be a bit more optimistic about that. It seems to me that there is a movement towards an unusually sweet and dear to me political utopia. Back in my student years with my friend Sergei Kulle, whom I have already mentioned, we dreamed (again in purely utopian terms) that the whole of Europe would fall apart: Germany would again consist of many principalities, France - of Provence, Burgundy, Lorraine ... Russia - from the principalities of Moscow, Smolensk, the Khanate of Kazan, etc. And, oddly enough, there was a historic chance for the realization of this utopian dream.
September 1990 - July 1991
Many art historians have tried to unravel the characters of the late Oleg Tselkov. They tightly surrounded him so that he could not get out of their creepy company. And he, getting used to them, began to give their ugliness even some touching features. He hugged powerful torsos with wind instruments, tickled with the wings of butterflies, shyly sitting on the ears or apoplectic nape.
These types were prone to both aggression and sentimentality, fell into depressive loneliness due to a tormenting inferiority complex, clutching at any ambitions, up to imperial ones. And they proliferated rapidly against the backdrop of the catastrophic de-intellectualization of mankind. And the poet Lev Losev interpreted them better than others.
He inherited his love for poetry from his father, Vladimir Lifshitz, who possessed not only a strong professional hand, but also a playful adventurer. His ringing poems, which sang of the Spanish Republicans, I enthusiastically recited in my childhood. And Sasha Mezhirov told me how Lifshitz published a risky acrostic in an army newspaper. The first letters of the poetic lines were secretly formed into the phrase "The Leningrad Front will not forget its poet Vladimir Lifshits." And this mischief-maker invented the non-existent English poet James Clifford, who allegedly denounced not ours, but, on the contrary, orders alien to us.
The paternal rebel also manifested itself in his son's poetic experiments. He felt like a professional and enjoyed it. His verse was thick, the rhymes rang out. And he was not afraid to tease either himself or his comrades, as, for example, in the poem "The Company of Eros":
“Our colonel, bourbon, / smelling of cognac and boots, / begged us not to open the bud of love / with impatient hands. / The soldiers went without permission / and returned, filled with muck, / to the tent where he slept, like Solomon, / the grenade launcher Leva Lifshits. / And he rattled: “Mouths are pomegranates, honey - / her words. But a sting is hidden in them ... " / And what he inserted into the grenade launcher / flew into the distance, but did not hit the target.
Losev was able to write both himself and his time with the help of a brilliant poetic technique in a number of cases no worse than his man-made idol Joseph Brodsky, and sometimes even socially sharper, more sophisticated. I also love many of Brodsky's poems. But the most worthy verses do not justify unworthy deeds. And he insulted us, the sixties, saying that we threw stones only in the permitted direction.
Emigration to the United States in 1976 by the little-known Lev Losev, who worked for 13 years in the children's magazine Koster, was silent. Just as silently, after graduate school, Leva got a job teaching Russian literature at Dartmouth. He invited Alexander Kushner and me to his college, we met in a friendly manner and read poetry to his students. By tacit agreement, we did not touch on my relationship with Brodsky, who could not forgive me that he was released from exile precisely on my letter: he was humiliated that he should be grateful to someone.
But there is Losev’s confession of how even telephone conversations with the hero of his future Zhezeel book had a freezing effect on him: “Hypnotism was not that I fell into some kind of trance, haze and unconsciousness. On the contrary, the happiness of the conversation with Joseph consisted primarily in the clarity of the conversation, "illuminating all corners of consciousness." Only when I hung up the phone, not immediately, sometimes much later, I remembered that Joseph had not answered such and such questions that seemed important to me. Moreover, I did not ask them, although I was going to ask them for sure. I can’t explain this otherwise than by the supernatural ability to block in the mind of the interlocutor topics uninteresting to him, Joseph.
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From most of the books about Brodsky, there is a feeling that the consciousness of their authors is still blocked for many questions hanging in the air. True, Losev has a poem in which he nevertheless breaks through to the confessions of his hero, who lifts the veil over what he preferred to remain silent about. And it becomes clear why he did not come to die on Vasilyevsky Island and why he never visited Israel. Brodsky did not want to feel himself either Russian or Jewish, he tried not to belong to anyone. He conquered the feeling of belonging that frightened him of the obligation to be grateful to someone. But this victory was his tragedy.
Having read Losev's "post-Broad" poems, I was stunned by the mastery of the author and the culture of poetry in the face of rampant lax graphomania both throughout Russia and the Russian abroad.
Losev, unsteadily looming on the outskirts of the new Leningrad poetry behind the backs of Gleb Gorbovsky, Yevgeny Rein, Dmitry Bobyshev and Brodsky, who had just dawned, managed to gain sharpness and stereoscopicity, learning from them, but not disdaining the experience of the sixties, with whom the Leningraders, if not at enmity, they preferred not to mix. They tried to free themselves from publicism, characteristic of us, and from romanticism, they proposed instead of a monument to the victims of Babi Yar (Yevtushenko) to erect a monument to Lies (Brodsky), resurrected the sarcasm of the Oberiuts. It was a rebellion against outright citizenship, against allying and co-creating with an audience that was met with a slightly arrogant attitude on their part.
They countered the open smile of the sixties with a skeptical grin. But both of them seriously developed the form, despite the difference in content and energy-bearing design. And contributed to the resurrection of interest and love for poetry.
“Well, Petrov, by name Vodkin, / and by name just Kuzma, / how did it happen? It turns out that I am stuck / in this canvas. And our canvas, / like winter, / without end. After weaving daily, is it not time for us to rest. Stop it. / We have tried many drinks, / yet the best are vodka and tea.
These poems by Losev do not seem to have a civic orientation. But there is freedom that sucks into its dizzying funnel, there is an invitation to enjoy unbridled mischief.
Losev loved to shock: “Is an agnostic pleasing to God, / who does not know in any way - / whether to hang a coat on a carnation / or a mattress for a fat body?” He could also act as a hooligan, of course, by the standards of that time: “It’s uncomfortable in the hut, it’s dirty on the street, / crucian carp died in the pond, / all the women went crazy - they want an orgasm, / and where to get it in Russia!” Or: "Here is a woman standing - a kind of cabinet / poster both outside and inside, / and until morning three / pygmies from the torment of Lumumba leaned against her."
He was an indispensable participant in serious, sickeningly Slavic symposiums - Mr. Loseff with a neat beard, something like a minister of the Provisional Government. But don't be fooled by his Oxford-knotted ties in later photographs. No matter how he dressed, there was something yellowish about him. And he could not say: "The shadow of Brodsky adopted me ..." He has his own place in poetry.
Leo liked to play with words, sometimes, perhaps excessively, but always sharply and lively, but did not use it for unworthy reasons. He was not just a techie, but a super techie. And a super-techie with a spark of God - and with a strong reserve of conscience.
From martyrdom
and hazing
growing evasive
half-men.
But no matter how you want
cock them
there are boys with a spark -
don't put them out!
And in Lev Lifshitz,
grenade launcher,
in the Jewish personality
there is no undercoat!
He was bespectacled
but so weird
with your makarik
wrote poetry.
In them the world is not Moscow,
and the communal
soviet boskhovskiy,
vascular!
And there were women
in which fell in love
but respect
got from them.
Almost tsekovsky
false humanoids,
grown up Tselkovskaya
celkovoloids.
But in these monsters
in the midst of tyranny
seeing the future
he didn't get lost.
And believed in butterflies
sentimentality
who saved the stupid
from their mentality.
shove with hair
in Mr Loseff!
And not a professor
American -
I welcome it
squabbler!
Evgeniy YEVTUSHENKO
