Pavel Grigorievich Antokolsky

Antokolsky Pavel Grigorievich (1896 - 1978), poet, translator. Born on June 19 (July 1 NS) in St. Petersburg in the family of a lawyer. The main hobby of childhood was drawing with watercolors and colored pencils. In 1904 the family moved to Moscow, where the future poet soon entered the private gymnasium. It started in high school passion for poetry, theater, recitation. He also kept a handwritten journal. After graduating from high school in 1914, a year later he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, but he was not destined to become a lawyer. His fate was decided by classes at the Student Drama Studio, which was led by E. Vakhtangov. He became an actor, then - until the mid-1930s - a director at the Theater. E. Vakhtangov.

With the beginning of the revolution, he served in the housing department of the Moscow City Council in order to preserve the Studio, which soon turned into the Theater of the People stone bridge. In 1918 he traveled with a brigade of actors along the front lines Western Front, then served in various Moscow theaters.

In 1920 he began to visit the "Cafe of Poets" on Tverskaya, where he met with V. Bryusov, who liked Antokolsky's poems, and he published them in the almanac "The Artistic Word" (1921). The first book of "Poems" was published in 1922. During 1920 - 30 he published several poetry collections: "Zapad" (1926), "Characters" (1932), "Large Distances" (1936), "Pushkin's Year" (1938) and others. During the Patriotic War, Antokolsky was a correspondent for front-line newspapers, led a front-line theater troupe. In 1943, the poem "Son" was created, dedicated to memory son who died at the front.

The work of P. Antokolsky is most fully represented in the books: "Workshop" (1958), "High Voltage" (1962), "The Fourth Dimension" (1964), "Time" (1973), "End of the Century" (1977) and others.

Antokolsky owns several books of articles and memoirs: Poets and Time (1957), Ways of Poets (1965), Tales of Time (1971).

Antokolsky is also known as an excellent translator of French poetry, as well as poets of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, etc.

He lived a long life, P. Antokolsky died in 1978 in Moscow.

Used materials of the book: Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.

20th century writer

Antokolsky Pavel Grigorievich - poet.

Antokolsky was born into the family of a lawyer, his father was a sworn attorney in private firms. Mother, who graduated from the Froebel courses, devoted herself entirely to the family. Antokolsky's grandfather is a famous sculptor, the creator of the famous statue of Ivan the Terrible. The boy inherited a love for the fine arts: he painted pictures, he subsequently designed his books, and took part in collective exhibitions of artists. When he was 8 years old, the family moved to Moscow - he studied at a private gymnasium, began to write poetry and play in amateur performances. AT early childhood he witnessed the revolution of 1905, saw barricades and battles between rebellious workers and soldiers.

After graduating from high school in 1914, for some time he attended the People's University. Shanyavsky. Then he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, but left from the 2nd year, dreaming of becoming an actor. He took part in extras, traveled with the troupe in the Red Army, played in the student drama studio organized by Evg. Vakhtangov, in the Moscow Chamber Theater, in the 2nd studio of the Moscow Art Theater.

From 1920 he worked in the Drama Studio under the direction of Evg. Vakhtangov and in the Theater. Evg. Vakhtangov - as a director and co-director, head of the literary part. In 1917-18 Antokolsky's play Betrothal in a Dream was performed on the stage of the studio. Antokolsky carried his love for the theater throughout his life, it was his second vocation, no less serious and powerful than poetry.

The first poems published in 1918 in the magazine "Centipede" and in 1920 in the magazine "Artistic Word" ("Edmond Keane" and " Bronze Horseman”), to a certain extent predicted the future poetic themes and images of Antokolsky. Theatricality is also inherent in them - a feature characteristic of the entire work of the poet.

In 1922, the first collection "Poems" was published, and in 1926 - "The West", inspired by the impressions of a trip with the Evg. Vakhtangov Theater to Sweden and Germany. In both books one can see a bizarre interweaving of two elements that equally owned the soul and consciousness of the poet: theatricality and poetry. The images of the theater sometimes come to the fore in them and determine the very approach to life, which appears to the artist's eyes as a colossal theater of passions, and the characters look like actors. Such are especially the verse. "Theatrical Journey", "London 1666", "Hamlet", "Ninth Symphony". The revolution appears to him as the "Theater of the World Battle". At the same time, theatricality, vivid spectacle and decorativeness did not prevent Antokolsky from conveying in his poems the real pace of history. Theater and theatricality did not close reality from his eyes, but were an inborn, organic means of comprehending time and people. Antokolsky is primarily a romantic, and therefore he seeks and finds expressive words and colors, because only expression, in his opinion, could convey the internal intensity of the historical action.

In the book "The West" he acted as a kind of poet-prophet and artist-denunciator. Arriving in Sweden and Germany from a hungry Russia that had endured the horrors of the war, he was struck by the well-fed philistinism of the Western bourgeoisie. Antokolsky vigilantly notices signs of decay and decay in the well-established life of a burgher. main motive books - a feeling of an approaching storm-retribution, disaster, death. Such are the verse. "Stockholm", "White Night", "Stone", "Night Talk", "Thunderstorm in the Tiergarten". In his declining years, he recalled that it was in this book that the theme of the crisis and the death of capitalist culture, even before the Second World War, became dominant in his work, that he touched the images that determined the poetic work of the artist for a very long time.

In 1927, Antokolsky published The Third Book, which included the famous Sansculotte, which played the role of a kind of program work. According to Antokolsky, it was in him, as, indeed, in many other poems included in the "Third Book", that a sense of history was expressed, a feeling that history is not the property of the past and pages school textbooks, but lives in the present, played out in the souls of contemporaries. Moreover, Antokolsky's passionate and long-term passion for the era of the Great French Revolution began with Sansculotte. In the "Third Book" another important theme of the poet began - love lyrics. Almost all poems written about love are dedicated to Antokolsky's wife, Zoya Bazhanova.

In 1928 the Vakhtangovites visited Paris. There he met Marina Tsvetaeva, also a romantic poet, whose small plays were staged in the studio during the Civil War. A new cycle of poems, inspired by this trip, was included in the book “1920-1928. Poems".

In 1930, Antokolsky published the dramatic poem Robespierre and the Gorgon, at the same time starting work on poems about Paris Commune and about the poet François Villon. Antokolsky's vagabond and romantic Villon is least of all a historical figure. Antokolsky himself said that all the vicissitudes of Villon's life were invented by him, that in this image he, as it were, concentrated his romanticism.

The 1930s were for him, as for many others. others Soviet writers of that time, full of trips around the country - as part of writers' teams and on their own. He visited Syasstroy, then three times in Armenia, in Georgia, twice in Azerbaijan, in Ukraine. The books "Actors" (1932), "Large Distances" (1936), "Pushkin's Year" (1933) appeared. In "Actors", a book with a characteristic "theatrical" title, the "world theater" unfolds: Antokolsky addresses both history (the war of the Gezes, France during the Great Revolution, 1914) and modernity. We can say that the main "character" of the whole book is not one or another historical character or contemporary, but time, history, epoch. Among the Georgian poems, poetic portraits of Titian Tabidze, Niko Pirosmanishvili, Tamara Abakelia stand out. The trips not only enriched Antokolsky with knowledge of new places and faces, but also brought him fame as a first-class translator of poets. Soviet republics. He translated from Armenian Hovhannes Tumanyan and Yeghishe Charents, from Georgian Shota Rustaveli, Simon Chikovani, Titian Tabidze, Karlo Kaladze, from Azerbaijani poets - Nizami Gandzhevi, Mirza Fatali Akhundov, Samed Vurgun. These translations are rightfully considered classics, as, indeed, are the translations from French, carried out by him in different years: “Civil Poetry of France” (1955), “From Beranger to Eluard” (1966), “Copper Lyre” (1970), “ Two centuries of French poetry" (1976).

The end of the 1930s, when one writer after another was subjected to repression, was difficult for poetry. It is quite possible that translations gave Antokolsky, like some other poets, a more or less safe niche for a while. However, the approach of a world tragedy could not but resonate in verse. A sharp foreboding of the trouble already standing at the gates of the country is imbued with a verse written on the very eve of the war - “June forty-one” (later it was called the poet “On the Eve”). During the war years, he published the books “Half a Year” (1942), “Iron and Fire” (1942), “Son” (1943), they should rightfully be joined by the “Third Book of the War”, published in 1946. The first book (“ Half a year”) opened with the poem “My son”, the second also contains poems addressed to Lieutenant Vladimir Antokolsky.

In 1942, Antokolsky suffered a terrible grief: his son died. He writes an epitaph poem dedicated both to his son and to all the dead sons. The whole poem is a monologue, the poet's conversation with his soul and with his dead son. inner feeling its fusion with the people and its tragedy with the people's misfortune created an epic subsoil for this outwardly purely lyrical work. Talking about his son, grieving and horrified, Antokolsky finds the strength not only to overcome personal pain, but also to make his readers think about the common problems of life. Antokolsky's poem is on a par with the poem "Zoya" by M. Aliger and the poem by O. Bergholz "In Memory of the Defenders".

In the post-war years, Antokolsky published books that summed up the original results: "Selected" (1947), "Poems and Poems" (1950), "Ten Years" (1953). That was the time of the latent work of thought and soul. In the second half of the 1950s, there was a new upsurge in his work. So it was with other poets of the older generation - V. Lugovsky, L. Martynov, N. Zabolotsky. At this time, young poetry lived intensely and brightly. Antokolsky publishes the book "Workshop" (1958), almost entirely devoted to art and people of art. He works hard and fruitfully, publishes several books, different in content: "The Power of Vietnam" (1960), "High Voltage" (1962), "The Fourth Dimension" (1964), "The Tale of Bygone Years" (1968). Both The Fourth Dimension and The Tale of Bygone Years, in Antokolsky's words, seem to "flip through" his life. Time, as always with Antokolsky, remains the main character of his works - not only those where he refers to history ("Night review"), but also those where we are talking about modernity ("Travel Journal"), as well as in his only prose book"Tales of the Time" (1971). Antokolsky writes a lot about poetic skill while remembering his poet friends, i.e. relying not only on their own rich experience, but also on the experience of artists different countries(Poets and time. M., 1957). Antokolsky's contribution to the poetry of the Soviet era and to Russian poetry is weighty and significant. He continued and developed the romantic line in poetic art.

A.I. Pavlovsky

Used materials of the book: Russian literature of the XX century. Prose writers, poets, playwrights. Biobibliographic dictionary. Volume 1. p. 51-53.

Read further:

Russian writers and poets(biographical guide).

Compositions:

Collected works: in 4 vols. M., 1971-73;

About Pushkin. M., 1960;

Test of time: articles. M., 1945;

Ways of poets: essays. M., 1965.

Literature:

Levin L. Four Lives: A Chronicle of the Works and Days of P. Antokolsky. M., 1969;

Tarasenkov L. Creativity of Pavel Antokolsky // Tarasenkov A. Articles about literature. M., 1958. T.1.

Born on 19 (1. VII) June 1896 in St. Petersburg.

In 1904, his father, a well-known lawyer, moved to Moscow. After graduating (in 1914) from Kirpichnikova's private gymnasium, Antokolsky listened to lectures at the Shanyavsky People's University, and a little later entered the law faculty of Moscow University. “Perhaps he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, but most likely because the Faculty of Law was at that time a coveted place for negligent young people who were going to somehow pass exams, go to lectures less and not work at all beyond the prescribed ... »

A lawyer career, however, failed: in 1915, Antokolsky first got into the drama studio of E. B. Vakhtangov, and fell in love with the theater for the rest of his life. True, he did not become an actor, but the poet found his own, precisely his own, unlike anything else world. “In poetry, he was a man of the theater, and in the theater a man of poetry,” Kaverin later wrote. “Bizarrely intertwined, these two indomitable passions made him unlike other poets, raising his poetic voice and making him sound full-bodied and proud, as the voices of Ostuzhev and Yermolova, Kachalov and Koonen sounded from the stage ... ”Antokolsky was associated with Vakhtangov’s studio long years. His first wife N. Shcheglova (an artist, of course) recalled: “Once in December, Pavlik saw me off. As usual, he recited new verses and was in a hurry, because it was already quite close to my house. It was very cold. I was wearing a lovely sheepskin coat with fur and a blue silk scarf with a pattern, and Pavlik was wearing a miserable little coat, altered from his father's. He, apparently, was very cold and held my arm, clung to me. I was sorry to part with him, but I did not want to call him to me. It was cold and uncomfortable there, and I could not even offer him tea - I knew that there was no kerosene in the kerosene, I did not have time to buy it. And suddenly, without listening to the verses, I said: “We need to get married.” “Yes, yes,” Pavlik said without a pause and almost ran off to his house. I was somehow not surprised by his behavior. I thought it was right…”

In 1921, the first poems of Antokolsky were published in the collection “Artistic Word”, and the following year a collection was published in which the poet included his lines about Paul I. “Exalted every day, cursed every day, with a haiduk, with a ringing, with a boom, rushes to terrible Petersburg, rushes over bridges, across the ice of the river, weak and powerful, and the intoxicated courier trumpets in the whirlwind of empty blizzards ... All-Russian autocrat! How is it that this power has dreamed of a snub-nosed and burry tyrant? Or did the Scythian snowstorms, as Derzhavin ordered them, protect the throne of god-like fools for him? Many who knew Antokolsky noted the poet's incredible physical resemblance to Emperor Paul. Marina Tsvetaeva told her sister: “You understand, he doesn’t look like anyone ... No, he looks like - but in a different color - Paul the First. The same huge eyes, heavy eyelids, and a short nose. A powdered braid would suit him - he could play the role of Paul the First ... "

The second book of Antokolsky - "The West" (1926) - was composed of poems about Sweden and Germany. It became an echo of his trip abroad with the Vakhtangov Theater in 1923. “With all the instinct of an artist,” wrote Antokolsky, “I felt touched by the themes and images that determined my work for a very long time ...” At the same time, important changes occurred in the life of the poet. “When my daughter was two years old and it became a little easier,” N. Shcheglova wrote, “I decided to return to the theater. Ruben Simonov and I began to prepare a pantomime to show Vakhtangov. I came up with this pantomime myself, we picked up the music - everything was based on dancing there, and our tap dance was especially good. And everything, everything was fine, the theater was going on a summer tour abroad - to Berlin, to Sweden, and I dreamed of how I would go with everyone. And suddenly it turned out that I was expecting a baby again. Pavlik left with the theater without me, and on this trip he fell in love with Zoya (Bazhanova). She had just been accepted into the theatre. All his Parisian poems are Zoe. Madly in love with her. And she is into it. Zoya really loved him very much. Even then I understood that she loves him much more than I do, and therefore I don’t blame him, but I understand him. I understand that he met a real woman's love, which I could not give him. And I, although it’s hard, maybe, to believe, but I never had a grudge against him for leaving me, because I was not for him the wife he needed. And with Zoya he was happy ... "

“I love you in a distant carriage, in a yellow indoor halo of fire, like a dance and like a chase, you fly through me at night ... I love you in a hot bed, in that moment captured by legend, when hands intertwined and decayed in adoration hugs dumb..."

“Zoya Konstantinovna,” recalled Kaverin, “it was not easy, not only because she was the wife of the poet, but because he was a man of a frantic temperament, infinitely quick-tempered, fickle, hardworking and at the same time careless. A man in whom extremes intersected, who easily fell under the influence of others, which inspired him at times with false, not going anywhere considerations. I once heard him speak against books in general, chiding all the authors in the world for writing them. He asserted this not in private, but in the circle of writers, and, naturally, some of them did not understand how this passionate artist, who collected books all his life and gave his life to write new books, could renounce both those and from others. Moreover, he was sincerely surprised when I reacted very harshly to his speech. This did not prevent him from soon admitting that he was "just stupid, insanely, irreparably stupid." In essence, the world in which he lived was poetry, and only poetry, and what happened outside of it seemed to him not worthy of serious attention. He lived by actions. The uniform course of life, its sequence for him existed only in the past, but in the present they did not have special significance. In truth, at times he gave the impression of a man who went beyond the natural norms of human existence. "Crazy Heart" - as one of his friends affectionately called him. And in his memoirs, covering only a very short part of his life, one can see this disorder, this throwing from his books to others, this frenzied struggle with long-dead thinkers, these disputes that he started no less than a whole century. Here, next to such and such a person, lived a slender, blond, small woman with a big heart and an iron will. He not only needed her, without her all his everyday and poetic existence would instantly crumble ... "

“She did not share all the passions of Pavel Grigorievich,” the poet Lev Ozerov added to Kaverin. - As for him, he shared all her passions, urgently and for a long time making them his own. But there were exceptions. Due to the ardor of character and some artistic infantilism, he sometimes wanted to do something without looking back at Zoya Konstantinovna. He did and very quickly repented of his deed. There was no coordination of unified undertakings, there was no blessing of Zoya Konstantinovna, and - the confused spirit of Pavel Grigorievich let him down, confused him. “Why are you, Pavlik, climbing onto the podium again? After all, boyishly waving her fist - (She showed how he waved his fist) and shouting out the first phrase - (she also shouted out this first phrase), - you still did not know how you would continue it and how you would finish it. Again this nonsense!

In The Third Book (1927), the Sansculottes appeared for the first time, previously known only from lists and from reading Antokolsky himself. “My mother is a witch or a whore, and my father is some old earl. Before his radiant hearing did not reach how, having torn her skirt into diapers, for two autumn nights my mother howled, having given birth to me in a moat. Even the rain was of little concern and spat on the fact that I live ... " Started with "Sanculotte" whole line large and small works of the poet dedicated to France, the French Revolution. When Antokolsky first visited Paris with the Vakhtangov Theater in 1928, he was always haunted by the feeling that he had already been to this city more than once.

The thirties became nomadic for Antokolsky. He then visited Syasstroy, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine. One after another, books appeared in which, moving away from the old romanticism, he tried to express a new reality - "Actors" (1932), "Large Distances" (1936), "Pushkin's Year" (1938). He translated a lot - Hovhannes Tumanyan, Yeghishe Charents, Shota Rustaveli, Simon Chikovani, Titian Tabidze, Mikola Bazhan, Leonid Pervomaisky, Nizami Gandzhevi, Samad Vurgun. Of course, he also translated his favorite Frenchmen - Hugo, Rimbaud, Barbier, Beranger. Subsequently, books were compiled from these translations - "Civil Poetry of France" (1955), "From Beranger to Eluard" (1966), "Copper Lyre" (1970), and finally, a large volume - "Two Centuries of French Poetry" (1976).

During the war years, Antokolsky's apartment on Schukin Street became something between a literary center and a hotel for war veterans. A guest could always get a mug of coffee here, though not always with sugar. The poets Dolmatovsky, Simonov, Matusovsky visited here, coming from the fronts, Nikolai Tikhonov flew in from Leningrad, A. Fadeev found shelter more than once. In July 1942, a letter came to the same address from a lieutenant who served with the poet's son, Vladimir. "Acting army. Antokolsky Pavel G. from a friend of your son Antokolsky Volodya. Dear parents, I want to inform you about a very sad event. Although I am sorry for you that you will be very upset, I inform you that your son Volodya, in a fierce battle with German robbers, died a heroic death on the battlefield on July 6, 1942. But we will try to take revenge on the German bastards for your son Volodya. His comrade Vasya Sevrin is writing this to you. He was buried near the Resseta River, a tributary of the Zhizdra. Goodbye, with ardent greetings to you.

"Arriving from northern front, - said Kaverin, - I first of all called Pavel Grigorievich. Zoya went to the phone. "What, you don't know anything? Vova is dead. I don't know what to do with Pavlik. He doesn't want to see anyone. But you come, it's you." She met me in an apartment on Shchukin Street, pale, with a haggard face, as if she had ordered herself not to cry. I found Pavel unrecognizably aged, with an almost indifferent, petrified face - and that is what frightened me. He was busy - drawing his son - and not for the first, but maybe for the twentieth time. I drew my son in an officer's uniform. The drawings lay on the window, on the table, on the bureau, could be seen behind the glass of the bookcase. And my arrival did not tear him away from this occupation. We hugged, and then he sat down at the table again and took a pencil in his hands. What could I say to him?... The silence lasted for a long time, at least half an hour. He drew and I looked at him. Zoya opened the door and immediately slammed it shut. Then, after an incoherent conversation, which he began in an almost impassive voice: where I came from, how things are at the front, how I live in a new, then still unusual circle, - I suddenly said: “Pavlik, you should not draw Volodya. You must write it. Tell me how he was at school, what he was interested in, with whom he was friends, how he spent the night after graduation, with whom he was in love. He asked: “Do you think?” So he always asked, consulting with me about a new idea, and our conversation, in which unconscious, unspoken words struggled, finding no way out, suddenly came to life, came to. It was the moment when he put aside the cardboard with the unfinished portrait of his son. By the way, I note that Pavel Grigorievich was an excellent draftsman, and the portraits of Volodya were not only similar, but shaded with care, in which there was something that frightened me, close to madness ... "

“You will dig in the black ashes for a long time. Not a day, not a year, not years, but centuries, until dry eyes went blind, until the ossified hand drew out the lines of its last - look at his favorite features. Not your son, but you are his heir. You switched places, he and you…”

According to friends, the manuscript of the poem "Son" while Antokolsky worked on it, constantly lay on the desk. He was allowed to look at the manuscript, it did not bother him. There was also a diary lying open, accessible to everyone - so as not to talk about their feelings once again. In 1943, the poem appeared in the magazine Smena. “I really wanted the magazine to have a portrait of Vovochka,” Antokolsky wrote to his daughter, “and the editors agreed to this, but the Central Committee of the Komsomol strongly objects. There is an element of rightness in this objection: they want the poem to sound as broad and general as possible. We have to agree with them also because it is the Komsomol press that is the only one suitable for a memory worthy of Vova ... ”And a postscript:“ The entire fee will go to the tanks.

In 1946, the poem "Son" was awarded the Stalin Prize.

However, this did not save Antokolsky from the cruel studies that he and many of his colleagues were subjected to in the coming years. “In a difficult time for him - and it happened that his name was mentioned with a small letter,” recalled the poet Mark Sobol, “in that short, fortunately period, Pavel Grigorievich behaved with dignity. He continued to work, this can be seen at least from the dates of writing poems, and most bitterly experienced excommunication from teaching department(at the Literary Institute) ... I must tell you about a meeting of poets and how Antokolsky behaved. Without trying to paint a portrait, I still want to show the character to some extent. On that day, not only Pavel Grigorievich, but also his students got it. Listing them by name, the speaker considered it necessary to bow in front of the only lady: “Let Veronika Mikhailovna excuse me, but she, too ...” Veronika Tushnova jumped up from her chair and, I dare say, majestically announced to the whole hall: “I would be offended if I was not on this list!“ - Pavel Grigoryevich was the last to speak in the debate. He spoke from the podium sadly and, as always, passionately. It is unlikely that he could check with algebra all the disharmony of the formidable accusations, but with surprising defenselessness he accepted them with his heart. He fiercely recognized himself - and only himself! Guilty on all counts. Even now I seem to hear the tragic speech of the prosecutor against the defendant: both bear the same last name - Antokolsky. Pavel Grigorievich did not ask for indulgence, but carried out the harsh sentence with his own speech. That was enough for the judges; the most adamant of them, with soulfulness uncharacteristic of him, declared: "I believe Antokolsky." Another second - and Pavel Grigorievich will leave the podium to the applause of the public and the presidium. But just at that moment a question came from the corner of the hall: “What is your opinion about the poet P.?” He was such a figure, we would say today, odious that his name, in general, was not even associated with the name of the teacher ... And there was a pause... Everyone, including the speakers who dissuaded him and Pavel Grigoryevich himself, understood that this question was like a booby trap. Holding our breath, we waited for Antokolsky's answer... "I consider P. a very talented person!"

“He was childishly trusting and open,” recalled the critic A. Revich. – That is why he so painfully experienced human unkindness and betrayal. By this, and not by timidity, I now explain his extreme confusion in the days when he was “worked through”. He was accused of being addicted to the West, and he was a real son of Russia, Russian culture, "a citizen of Moscow", as he wrote in verse. Even his interest in European history, in French culture and thought, was a traditional Russian interest in the West; it was not for nothing that he liked to quote Blok's words so much: “Everything is clear to us - both the sharp Gallic sense and the gloomy Germanic genius.” His interest in France was not just gallomania, but rather a spiritual attraction to the French spirit of democracy, to French revolutionism. Hence the poems about the Commune, about Francois Villon, hence Robespierre and the Gorgon and Sanculot. Hence the desire to translate Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Aragon and Eluard into Russian. In this he followed the Pushkin tradition. Pushkin was also drawn to Guys, to Chenier ... "

Books continued to be published - "Poets and Time" (1957), "Workshop" (1958), "The Power of Vietnam" (1960), "High Voltage" (1962), "The Fourth Dimension" (1964), "The Tale of Bygone Years" ( 1969). Unfortunately, Antokolsky lost his wife. “I don’t remember now until what time I wrote Pavlik to his apartment on Shchukina Street,” recalled Anastasia Tsvetaeva, “to the apartment, as I heard, of his happiness, his maturity and, perhaps, the beginning of old age, during the years of his marriage with his second wife, Zoya Bazhanova. I don't know when she died, but I know what happened to Pavlik after her death, he collapsed. This is no longer life - survival. The world that they loved together was still blooming and noisy all around, but it no longer had its former place in it. Somehow, at once, his very last age came: the years were layered soundlessly - and only one thing still sounded to him: verse. As soon as the sound of rhythm lit up, the years burned like moths over a fire, the senile camp straightened, the eyes under the yellow eyelids blazed as before, and the poet's voice thundered with almost unnatural force over the hushed circle of listeners ... "

“It cannot be said that he was abandoned,” Lev Ozerov wrote. “He still had a lot of friends visiting him, especially young people, especially young women. The latter were divided into two parts: one part was sincerely and disinterestedly attached to him, while the other part was concerned about Antokolsky's legacy. He played the old groom, and it seemed that he was about to tie the knot. This angered Natalya Pavlovna (the poet's daughter). My father littered with money, buying expensive gifts for the young ladies and arranging dinners at the National and the Central House of Writers with sliding tables and random hunters to drink and eat ... "

“In the summer of 1976,” recalled Margarita Aliger, “his eightieth birthday was solemnly and sincerely celebrated. He was surrounded by recognition, love, friendship of his older pupils and adoration of the younger ones. He was pleased with the anniversary. But this anniversary has become like a certain boundary in his existence. Like he's huge internal stress held out to it, and having survived it, loosened the straps, weakened the will that held him in what no, but still form. He became more ill, spent more time in the hospital. For almost ten years he lived without Zoya, lived uncomfortable, untidy, unusual for himself, not interrupting his work for a day. But his physical strength was running out. On July 1, 1978, on his birthday, calling his dacha in the morning to congratulate him, I found out that he had left the dacha for the city early in the morning and was not going to return. And he's not going to celebrate his birthday. Will be at home, on Schukin street. No, not sick, but not completely healthy either. The mood is bad... At the end of the day, Sophia Grigoryevna Karaganova, also an old friend of the Antokolskys, and I went to the city without talking to him about anything. Sofya Grigorievna had a bottle of some kind of overseas drink in store, and I was lucky - I managed to buy a tasty and large fresh cake in Prague. The door was opened for us by Vladimir Mikhailovich, Antokolsky's driver, who had been his constant companion and friend for many years. Pavel Grigoryevich was sitting in his office, among portraits, photographs, books, things so familiar and dear to us. Sat absent, detached. It was as if he was far away from here, very far away, God knows where. Probably, he nevertheless rejoiced at us, but how far this was from how Pavlik knew how to rejoice in people. There was no one else in the house…”

Biography

Antokolsky Pavel Grigorievich (1896 - 1978), poet, translator.

Born on June 19 (July 1 NS) in St. Petersburg in the family of a lawyer. The main hobby of childhood was drawing with watercolors and colored pencils. In 1904 the family moved to Moscow, where soon the future poet entered a private gymnasium. In high school, his passion for poetry, theater, and recitation began. He also kept a handwritten journal. After graduating from high school in 1914, a year later he entered the law faculty of Moscow University, but he was not destined to become a lawyer. His fate was decided by classes at the Student Drama Studio, which was led by E. Vakhtangov. He became an actor, then - until the mid-1930s - a director at the Theater. E. Vakhtangov.

With the beginning of the revolution, he served in the housing department of the Moscow City Council in order to preserve the Studio, which soon turned into the Theater of the People near the Stone Bridge. In 1918 he traveled with a brigade of actors along the front roads of the Western Front, then served in various Moscow theaters.

In 1920 he began to visit the "Cafe of Poets" on Tverskaya, where he met with V. Bryusov, who liked Antokolsky's poems, and he published them in the almanac "The Artistic Word" (1921). The first book "Poems" was published in 1922. During 1920 - 30 he published several poetry collections: "Zapad" (1926), "Actors" (1932), "Large Distances" (1936), "Pushkin's Year" (1938) etc. During the Patriotic War, Antokolsky was a correspondent for front-line newspapers, led a troupe of a front-line theater.In 1943, the poem "Son" was written, dedicated to son's memory who died at the front.

The work of P. Antokolsky is most fully represented in the books: "Workshop" (1958), "High Voltage" (1962), "The Fourth Dimension" (1964), "Time" (1973), "End of the Century" (1977) and others.

Antokolsky owns several books of articles and memoirs: "Poets and Time" (1957), "Ways of Poets" (1965), "Tales of Time" (1971).

Antokolsky is also known as an excellent translator of French poetry, as well as poets of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, etc.

He lived a long life, P. Antokolsky died in 1978 in Moscow.

Antokolsky Pavel Grigorievich - famous Russian poet and a translator, born on June 19, according to the new style - on July 1 in St. Petersburg in the family of a lawyer. With great interest in childhood, the boy was drawn to drawing. Pavel later moved with his family to Moscow in 1904 and entered the gymnasium.

Being in high school, the young man woke up a special interest in poetry, theater, recitation. In 1914, the future poet entered the Faculty of Law. However, after studying at the Student Drama Studio, he realized that he could not be a real lawyer. His calling is theater. Under the guidance of E. Vakhtangov, he becomes an excellent actor. In order to save the Studio during the revolution, the future poet decides to remain in the service in the housing department of the Moscow City Council. Soon it became the People's Theater near the Stone Bridge. In 1918 he began to travel with a group of actors along the roads of the Western Front. Later he served in many Moscow theaters.

Since 1920, he began to often come to the "Cafe of Poets", where he met V. Bryusov, he also read some poems to him. Of course, V. Bryusov appreciated them and soon published Antokolsky's poems in the almanac "The Artistic Word" (1921).

Periodization of the work of Pavel Antokolsky: 1922 - the first book of "Poems"; 1926 - collection "West"; 1932 - collection "Characters"; 1936 - collection "Large distances"; 1938 - collection "Pushkin's Year".

During World War II, the poet was a correspondent for front-line newspapers. In 1943, a poem dedicated to the memory of his son, who died at the front, was published in the world, which received the proud name "Son". Creativity P. Antokolsky most disclosed in the books: "Workshop" (1958); "High Voltage" (1962); "The Fourth Dimension" (1964); "Time" (1973): "End of the Century" (1977). Also, some articles and memoirs belong to the poet's work: “Poets and Time” (1957); "Ways of Poets" (1965); "Tales of the Time" (1971).

Antokolsky is a wonderful translator of French, Georgian and Azerbaijani poetry. The poet died in 1978 in Moscow.

In the mid-60s, in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, where my journalistic activity began, a special weekly page appeared before my eyes and with my participation, addressed specifically to teenagers. It was called - "Peer". It arose after the same "Scarlet Sail" in the central "Komsomolskaya Pravda" - literally six months later. But our page is somewhat different. It had an obligatory "writer's piece". That is, some famous writer addressed a non-standard and emotional "word" directly to a teenage reader. "Svversnik" came out on Thursdays. It was done by our department of student youth, where the average age of employees was barely twenty-two years old, and among ourselves we called this strip "The Filthy".

Once, when once again it fell to me to create a page, in search of the author of the "writer's piece" I turned to Anna Mass, a classmate in the philology department of Moscow State University. Her dad was a famous satirist, they lived in a writer's village near Moscow, and she had a lot of acquaintances of writers. Anya readily responded and quickly arranged a meeting with the poet Pavel Antokolsky, a neighbor in the country.

On the morning of the agreed day, I arrived at the writers' village on the Pakhra River and pressed

A white bell button on the gate of an old dacha fence. Soon I saw an elderly woman going to open the gate. For some reason, a woman shouted to me in a hoarse and loud male voice: “Who is there? Correspondent? BUT?" The woman unlocked the gate and said absolutely normally and even melodiously: “Come in!” From somewhere above I again heard a trumpet hoarse male voice - I raised my head and saw in the attic window the face of Antokolsky, familiar from the portraits.

Inside the house, either from the dining room or the living room, a narrow wooden staircase led upstairs. I climbed it and ended up in an office with a huge table littered with books, papers, smoking pipes, and with many wall shelves densely packed with volumes of various sizes and outlandish sculptures made from wood snags. Possessor of a hoarse and loud voice in this small and cramped space it seemed tiny and resembled a dark apricot pit.

I think Lev Ozerov has already expressed my impression of the meeting and conversation with the poet. And much better than me. He recalled Pavel Antokolsky as follows: “ natural gift eloquence. Developed by communication, tribune, frequent reading of poetry. Interviews on the topics of poetry and theater. Even more - the theater itself. Loud voice, gesture, behind which invariably - Roman speaker spoke. The desire to be taller than his height threw his hand forward, or rather, a fist up, as high as possible. . I do not know whether he was trained in the art of rhetoric, but he mastered this disappearing art of eloquence with enviable skill. It developed an improvisational beginning. He goes to the podium, shining with brown piercing eyes, under which there were always dark purple circles of insomnia and fatigue, eliminated by hefty portions of coffee or vodka. He often caught fire. With or without reason. He was rarely aroused. It was impossible to find him in a state of peace and complacency. At times it was like a theatre. Most often theater. He played the princess Turandot of his life ... "

I visited him in Pakhra several times. She was quiet as a mouse. She sipped her tea from a huge cup. And listened, listened. And then she ran to Anya at the neighboring dacha and told ...

I knew that Antokolsky belonged to those few writers who managed to create well and in bad times. Many of those who knew him, including Anya Mass, said: he tried to observe human ethics as much as possible. In response to an offer to sign some foul-smelling paper, he could afford to shout into the telephone receiver: “Antokolsky is dead!”

Stalin's time did not splatter him with their soul-destroying dirt. He wrote later about the fierce mustachioed:

We all, award winners,

Awarded in honor of him

Walking calmly through time

which is dead;

We are all his brother-soldiers,

silent when

Grew from our silence

People's trouble;

Hiding from each other

Sleepless nights,

When from our own circle

He made executioners...

Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky was a kind of festive miracle in that gloomy and painful time. He lived on a whim. Honored him special attention and friendship Marina Tsvetaeva. In the hungry year of 1919, she presented Pavlik Antokolsky, a Vakhtangov actor and poet, with a German cast-iron ring - cast-iron roses on an inner gold rim. And to the ring - Marina's poems:

“I give you an iron ring:

Insomnia - delight - and hopelessness.

So that you do not look girls in the face,

So that you even forget the word - tenderness.

So that your head in crazy curls

As a foamy goblet lifted into space,

To turn into coal - and into ashes - and into dust

You - this iron decoration.

When to your prophetic curls

Love itself will touch with red coal,

Then shut up and press to your lips

iron ring on a swarthy finger.

Here is a talisman for you from red lips,

Here is the first link in your chain mail -

To stand alone in the storm of days - like an oak,

One is like God in his iron circle.

The iron ring is a sign of kinship. Handing it to Antokolsky, Tsvetaeva recognized him as a colleague in poetry.

And he, in turn, first introduced younger contemporaries into literature - Konstantin Simonov, Margarita Aliger, Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, then front-line poets - Mikhail Lukonin, Semyon Gudzenko. And, finally, he became a teacher for Bella Akhmadulina and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky did not live three months to 83 years.

He was a poet from God. But in our vain times, it has been forgotten. Not reissued. They don't read from the stage, as they used to. Meanwhile, Pavel Antokolsky, impetuous and slightly bohemian, who loved a bow tie instead of a tie and a pipe instead of a cigarette, his notes, on which he worked almost to the very end.

Tatyana Torlina

From the memories of Anya Mass

1. Apartment No. 38

Our Moscow five-story house on Bolshoi Levshinsky, the house of artists of the Vakhtangov Theater, was built in 1928. In the fourth entrance, in apartment No. 38, an unmarried artist Zoya Bazhanova received a room, the second room was occupied by Vera Golovina, also unmarried, the third - an unmarried young artist Vladimir Balikhin. Their common housekeeper Varya, a village girl from near Ryazan, settled in the kitchen.

Balikhin soon brought his wife, a charming ballerina, to his room. Vera Golovina got married and moved in with her husband, a theater decorator, in the second entrance of our house. Her vacated room was given to Zoya's beloved, Pavel Grigorievich Antokolsky, or, as everyone who knew him closely called him, Pavlik. He started as an artist and director of the Vakhtangov studio, but by the time he settled in the house at 8a on Bolshoi Levshinsky, he was already a famous poet. For the sake of Zoya, he left his wife and two children, maintaining a close relationship with them. All his life he helped the first family, in which he was always supported and encouraged by Zoya, who had no children of her own.

Apartment number 38 was home to many friends. During the war, poets Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, Mikhail Matusovsky, Nikolai Tikhonov, Margarita Aliger came from the front to Pavlik and Zoya. Alexander Fadeev stopped and lived with them for a long time. For everyone there was a bowl of soup, a piece of bread, a mug of coffee, a mattress, a cot. Pavlik liked to “discover” young poets, helped with the publication of the first book, and recommended them to the Writers' Union. He was " godfather» Alexander Mezhirov, Mikhail Lukonin, Semyon Gudzenko, Evgeny Vinokurov.

Knowing the kindness and reliability of Pavlik and Zoya, they sometimes came to apartment No. 38 unfamiliar people just in need of money. Some, embarrassed to enter, stood on the landing. The money was transferred to them through Varya. But no one was denied.

During the years of my father's exile, Antokolsky was one of those who actively contributed to his transfer from Siberia to Gorky, and during the war years they together led a front-line theater brigade for some time. They have been great friends all their lives. Father liked Pavlik's poems, heavy, sonorous, like metal. He liked to recite "Hieronymus Bosch":

I will bequeath notes to my great-grandchildren,

Where it will be expressed without fear

The whole truth about Hieronymus Bosch.

This artist in ancient years

He did not live in poverty, he was cheerful, complacent,

Though I knew that I could be hanged

On the square, in front of any of the towers,

As a sign of approach doomsday…

The charming ballerina, having been Balikhin's wife for a short time, flew away, leaving him her daughter Natasha, whom Vladimir Vasilyevich adored as his own, just like Natasha - his "Vavochka". Natashin "Vavochka", educated, intelligent, very quiet person, a wonderful artist, even before the war, Karandyshev played remarkably in the film "The Dowry", and in the theater he was in secondary roles, perhaps because of his modesty of character. The boiling, friendly energy of Pavlik and the quiet delicacy of Balikhin did not prevent them from being in great friendship, and Natasha in this apartment was, sort of, a common favorite child.

Natasha was our yard girlfriend, and we often ran to her. Met us cheerful barking and jumping family favorite - black poodle Dymka. The housekeeper Varya, who had turned from a timid village servant into a strict housekeeper and almost the main member of the family, shouted at us menacingly, but not angrily: “Take off your shoes! Do not stomp on the corridor! They didn’t come to the tavern!” There was a smell of shag from the kitchen, and the hoarse cough of Varvara's lover, the chauffeur Sidorov, could be heard. You could hear Zoya Konstantinovna talking on the phone, and Pavel Grigorievich arguing heatedly with someone in his office, or it seemed that he was arguing, but in fact he had such an energetic manner of talking. We were not at all embarrassed that we disturbed the peace of the famous poet with our arrival. Moreover, Pavel Grigorievich behaved with us not like famous poet, namely as "Pavlik" - he left the office, greeted noisily, asked with curiosity about school affairs.

After the war, when the state anti-Semitic campaign began, Antokolsky was among those who were ranked among the "rootless cosmopolitans." Newspapers that until recently enthusiastically wrote about his Stalin Prize tragic poem"Son", now sneered at his poetry. They stopped publishing him, fired him from the Literary Institute, where he taught. They wrote about him that his poems and poems are imbued with aestheticism, decadence and pessimistic moods, far from struggle and life. Soviet people. But the most serious accusation in this set of literary vices was that his poems "are addressed to Western European themes." A direct indication that the author of the poem "Francois Villon", poems about Hieronymus Bosch

At that dangerous and shameful time, apartment No. 38 remained a place where artists and poets came, poems, music, disputes and - in spite of everything - laughter sounded.

We, the children, understood little of what was happening, our parents did not talk about such things in front of us. They knew that Pavlik was a wonderful poet, that his poem "Son", for which he received the Stalin Prize, was about his son Volodya, who was killed in the war. We read the poem. There was nothing aesthetic, that is, according to our ideas, unclear, in it. On the contrary, everything was clear and close:

...Vova! You can't move your hand

Tears cannot be wiped from the face,

I can't tilt my head back

Take a deep breath with all your lungs.

Why in your eyes forever

Only blue, blue, blue?

Or through charred eyelids

No dawn will break through? ..

We were also so touched by this poem because we remembered Vova Antokolsky well. Before the war, he often visited his father. I played volleyball in the yard with the older guys - with Vadik Ruslanov, Zheka Simonov, my brother Vitya. It was said that he had great aptitude for mathematics, that he was good at drawing and playing the piano. They also said that he was in love with Katya Sinelnikova from the second entrance.

His photograph - a handsome young man with serious eyes - hung in the Sinelnikovs' apartment in a glazed frame ...

In 1951, Vera Inber’s small separate apartment was vacated in the writer’s house in Kamergersky Lane (then “Proezd of the Moscow Art Theater”) (she moved to the writer’s house on Lavrushensky), and the Union of Writers offered Antokolsky her apartment. The reason that the disgraced poet was allowed to change the communal to a separate one was, perhaps, the fact that “friends of the Soviet Union” Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet came to Moscow from France. And, in order to lull their discontent - and they knew about the attacks on the poet, well known in France, the Writers' Union decided to show its nobility. In response, Antokolsky proposed his own version: he and Zoya would remain in the Vakhtangov house, and Balikhin and Natasha would move to Kamergersky. Management scratched their heads and agreed. So, to mutual benefit, two families received a separate apartment.

2. Country neighborhood

From the mid-fifties, the Antokolskys and I began to live in the same dacha village, fence to fence, and the friendship between our families became closer - not only figuratively, but also in literally. The frail fence between us after some time rotted and fell down, and we deliberately did not begin to restore it, we lived, as if on one common plot. Pavlik's daughter, Kips, came with her husband, the poet Leon Toom and children - a teenager Andrei and little Katya.

Zoina and mother's friends of the actress came - "Masha" Sinelnikova, "Vavochka" Vagrina. Communicated in our half, then in the Antokolsky half. They ate lunch, we drank tea. Or vice versa. We became friends with Kipsa, although she was fifteen years older than me. In fact, her name was Natasha, Natalia Pavlovna, and Kipsa was her childhood nickname, but it suited her very well: she was fat, lush, cheerful, spontaneous, girlishly mischievous.

A few years later, the family had a new actor- Darling. She was married and brought into the house by Pavlik's grandson, Andrei Toom, who was then barely twenty years old, and she was barely eighteen. Miniature, pretty - you can’t take your eyes off her - she remarkably fit into the large, noisy, friendly, hospitable Antokolsky family, became her favorite spoiled child, even when she gave birth to her own - Denis. She, in essence, was a child: a high school diploma and the complete uncertainty of the future. Andrei then studied at the University and was a promising mathematician.

At the family council, it was decided to "determine" Mila. This task was undertaken by Pavel Grigorievich. He decided to show Mila to director Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov. It was assumed that he, as a sign of old friendship, would help Mila to be accepted into the Shchukin Theater School.

On that day, when Antokolsky was taking Mila from the dacha to Moscow to “determine”, the poet Semyon Kirsanov, a neighbor in the village, and I were in the car with them.

Do you know who it is? - Antokolsky asked Kirsanov, turning around from the front seat and nodding at Mila. - This is the wife of my grandson Andrey.

Kirsanov critically looked at Mila, who was huddled into a ball, like a frightened bird, and said incredulously:

However, Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov, after listening to Mila, said that not only as a sign of friendship, but also with sincere willingness and confidence, he recommends her to the rector of the school, Boris Zakhava, and I am sure that he will take her. And so it happened. Mila graduated from drama school, and she was taken to the Theater of the Young Spectator. There she went from the first, wordless roles to the role of Natasha Rostova and the queen from the play "Ruy Blas". She always played amazingly sincerely. Young viewers mistook her for their peers. She could have played a lot more, but when in 1986 Henrietta Yanovskaya became the chief director of the Youth Theater and the theater completely changed its profile and repertoire, Mile Toom did not find a place there. From the Youth Theater, that is, the Theater for the Young Spectator, there is only one name left, it has become a theater for adults. Mila was relegated to the background. Tormented, she left the theater.

Milochka remained a friend of the Antokolsky family, even when she broke up with Andrei and became the wife of the talented theater designer Alik Sayadyants. She and Alika made friends with the family, and maintained friendly relations with Andrei for many years. She knew how to repay the good done to her. Never spoke badly about anyone. This was her position.

Then, in the sixties, wealth, comfort, well-groomed emanated from the Antokolsky house, from antique furniture, rare engravings, books ... A carved oak table was laid in the living room, or they were located on a spacious terrace. Zoya Konstantinovna knew how to receive guests.

She retained the angular, graceful figure of a girl until old age. She had a charmingly clownish, large-mouthed face, straight golden hair fell like a wing on her cheek. Leaving the service in the theater, she became interested in gardening, gardening, and in last decade of his life - a wooden sculpture. In the interweaving of roots, in a dry, knotty fragment, her artistic fantasy saw either the head of a mythical Gorgon, or a fabulous forest beast.

Pavlik would later write:

Barefoot, in a tattered dress,

In rotten leaves, in a rainy haze

You were looking for a crucifix

Or a witch on a broomstick...

Figures appeared in the house,

Like the fiends of a forest spring.

From wood skin

You freed their dreams...

She loved to work in the garden in front of the house. She had rough, overworked hands, which did not fit with the diminutiveness of her appearance, but gave him the charm of naturalness. She was assisted by Vladimir Mikhailovich, a slow, handsome old man, their former driver, and now "a man in the house" and a family friend. He armed himself with a hammer and nails and connected the parts of the figures into one whole. He called it "driving nails into devils." When the nails were driven into the devils, friends were summoned to see the new work of art. Semyon Kirsanov came, shy, energetic, small in stature, outwardly resembling Pavlik himself; Nagibin came with his then wife Bella Akhmadulina, Matusovsky with daughters.

Pavlik! Pavlichek! called Zoya.

Pavel Antokolsky: unknown and little-known poems
Publication and foreword by Anna Toom and Andrey Toom

Recently, the Moscow house-museum of Marina Tsvetaeva published the book “It was somewhere far away ...” - a collection of poems, plays and autobiographical prose by Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky, compiled by the poet's grandson Andrei Toom and his wife Anna Toom. We place here the preface of the compilers with a small selection of poems by P.G. Antokolsky, most of which have not been published before.

Editorial

From the compilers

Finding what is considered lost and publishing the original Antokolsky could be a sensation. I am sure that one day you will come across a whole layer of text that has remained somewhere in the stash, and this text will be released to the will of God, and then very interesting figure Russian poetry will appear to the world.

From a conversation with A.P. Mezhirov.

Pavel Grigoryevich Antokolsky (1896-1978) - a poet, translator, literary critic - belongs to the classics of Russian literature of the twentieth century. There are many lifetime editions of his works. And today it may seem that the work of the famous master of the word is exhausted, and the descendants can only re-read the old collections of his works. But it's not.

Pavel Grigorievich Antokolsky

The book "It was somewhere far away..." is the result of our many years of work with the literary archives of P.G. Antokolsky. His unpublished works have been found in the archives. Many manuscripts are almost a hundred years old, because the poet began his creative way even before the revolution. There are many early poems, two plays, an autobiographical story, written already in his mature years.

How could it happen that all these works did not see the light during the life of the author? Why did he publish little of his early poems, and the few that were published are either altered so that they are not immediately recognizable, or “hidden” in the cycles of published books so that they are not immediately found? Why did he not give his autobiographical story to print, although he used the manuscript more than once as material for work on essays about his contemporaries? If he didn't appreciate them, why did he keep them? It is known that in 1941, before leaving for evacuation, Pavel Grigorievich burned some part of his archive, but not his early poems - he safely hid them. What for? – Preparing the book, we found the answer to this question.

The book consists of three sections representing the poetry of P.G. Antokolsky, his dramaturgy and prose. To section Poetry along with well-known and little-known poems of the author, more than two hundred unknown poems were included, for the most part belonging to the earliest period of his work - 1915-1919. To section Dramaturgy two early plays "The Doll of the Infanta" and "Puss in Boots or Betrothal in a Dream" are included. Chapter Prose represented by the autobiographical story "My Notes", the largest prose work ever created by the author. To section Illustrations along with photographs, most of which have not been published before, unknown drawings by P.G. Antokolsky and a friend of his youth Yu.A. Zavadsky, who illustrated his poems.

All these works are not accidentally collected together: different parts of the book complement and explain each other. Antokolsky's poems and plays become more understandable when we learn the details of their writing from his autobiographical story. The figures presented here illustrate precisely the earliest, least known period the author's creativity.

The book "It was somewhere far away ..." is the only publication to date that includes almost all of the unpublished legacy of P.G. Antokolsky.

Pavel Antokolsky started writing early. Miraculously, a thin notebook survived - the gymnasium literary almanac "The Appeal", dated 1913 - and in it we find the very first and timid samples of his pen under the pseudonym Poplavsky: translations of poems by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Rilke. He studied at a good gymnasium, where the creativity of students was encouraged. Gymnasium E.A. Kirpichnikova on the street. Znamenka, near Arbatskaya Square in the center of Moscow, was famous for its liberalism and excellent education in the humanities. Teaching native and foreign languages ​​was especially well organized, and the theater organized in the gymnasium was considered perhaps the best student theater in Moscow. It was in the gymnasium years that both professional hobbies of P.G. Antokolsky - literature, including literary translation, and theater. Many of his classmates wrote. He also wrote from case to case and at first, apparently, did not attach much importance to this activity.

He belonged to a family with already established artistic traditions. Among the relatives were people of art - sculptors, painters. He was also read in art academy. Parents wanted to send their son to study painting in Paris, but these plans were destroyed by the outbreak of the First World War.

The family was in need, and it was decided that Pavlik remained in Moscow. After graduating from high school, he briefly attended the People's University. Shanyavsky, and then entered the Moscow University and studied for two years at the Faculty of Law without much interest. But creative energy is like a swift river: erect an obstacle and it will find another channel. It was then that he became seriously interested in literary creativity.

The beginning of the poetic path of Pavel Antokolsky coincided with the heyday of the "Silver Age" of Russian literature. Literary life was in full swing in St. Petersburg and Moscow: poetic circles arose one after another, and new bright personalities appeared every now and then. The subject of universal admiration is the poetry of Alexander Blok, a poet of the older generation. But young talents, almost the same age as Antokolsky, also declared themselves in full voice: Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky, Yesenin - strong, bright personalities, self-confident poets who argued on equal terms with the previous generation. And he is still a naive young man, besides very shy.

Compared with their poems, his own seemed helpless to him, and he considered them unworthy of publication. Such self-exactingness, of course, is a virtue, but still his self-perception was not quite adequate. After all, Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva recognized the poet in him: in him, almost a boy, she recognized him only from one poem, and how strict she was, how demanding both to herself and to others! ..

Antokolsky considered Alexander Blok to be his teacher, whom, however, he did not know personally. Blok's poetry helped him "understand the meaning of metaphor as a kind of magic power transforming the world". So he himself claimed and often added with a grin: "My early poems are a complete imitation of Blok." He spoke with gratitude about Valery Bryusov, the patron and mentor of the Moscow poetic youth of those years, his first publisher. But the main role in his poetic destiny, he assigned Marina Tsvetaeva.She was the first not only to approve his poems, but also gave them a penetrating assessment, and then did for him what no one else did: she opened the door to his poetic workshop for him.

Working with his old manuscripts, we unexpectedly discovered the influence of another poet on his work, which he never mentioned. The similarity of some of Pavel Antokolsky's poems dated 1915 with the poems of Elizaveta Dmitrieva, known under the pseudonym of Cherubina de Gabriak, published several years earlier, is striking. He borrowed a whole fantastic world from her: poetic images, characters, some poetic lines . Their biographies are also similar: each in early age survived the loss of his sister - hence the theme of death in the work of both, still very young people.

A. Blok, V. Bryusov, M. Tsvetaeva, Ch. de Gabriak are his contemporaries writers, whose talent and creativity were a model for him, he consciously or involuntarily learned poetry from them.

And to whom did he address in his poems? To whom did he dedicate them? - Often relatives: aunt Elena Pavlovna Antokolskaya (married Tarkhanova) - sculptor, uncle Lev Moiseevich Antokolsky - artist. They are the successors of the rich cultural tradition coming from them common ancestor, an outstanding sculptor Mark Matveyevich Antokolsky.

His poems also have young addressees. In the first place, of course, Yu. A. Zavadsky, the closest friend of those years. And often on the pages of manuscripts are the names of those who, after the revolution, either went to the White Army or went into exile: Marina Tsvetaeva, Sergey Goltsev, Yuri Serov, Vladimir Alekseev, Evgeny Kumming. Such is the social circle of young Antokolsky: relatives, far from the revolutionary fever that broke out in the country, and friends, many of whom preferred a foreign land and even death to life in Bolshevik Russia.

It is not difficult to see that neither his teachers, with the possible exception of V.Ya. Bryusov, nor many of his friends trustworthy for new government were not. And this is not an accident. The Bolsheviks regarded as a "class enemy" a whole stratum of society, in culturally most productive. It is not surprising that Antokolsky was interested in such people. And this could not but affect the work of a sincere, open young man. There is no doubt: if the early poems of Pavel Antokolsky appeared in print in the 20-30s, he would not avoid trouble. Here it is, the main reason that he rarely published them.

So, Pavel Antokolsky took his first steps in poetry, learning from the great masters of his time. All that was missing was a favorite thing, thanks to which he himself could take place as a person and as a poet. The case helped.

One day, winter morning In 1915, he, already a second-year student at the Faculty of Law, saw an advertisement on the wall of the university building for admission to the drama studio. He went there, to Mansurovsky Lane near the Arbat, in the very center of Moscow, and was enrolled in an acting troupe led by Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov. The studio will grow into the brightest theatrical phenomenon of its time, and later become the famous theater named after. E. Vakhtangov.

Antokolsky wrote three plays for this studio, among them The Doll of the Infanta (1916) and Betrothal in a Dream (1917-1918). The main enthusiast of their production was Yuri Zavadsky, an actor and artist. “It was then that the future potential director woke up in him,” Antokolsky later recalled. But the performances did not have a very happy fate - in the turbulent revolutionary years they turned out to be irrelevant.

The following years, despite their severity, were extraordinarily fruitful for Pavel Antokolsky and full of interesting meetings. The stories about these meetings are a valuable part of the autobiographical story "My Notes". He wrote about working with E.B. Vakhtangov, about his comrades at work in the theater, about friendship with M.I. Tsvetaeva and Yu.A. Zavadsky, about A.Ya. Tairov, with whom he also had to work, about the great directors V.E. Meyerhold and K.S. Stanislavsky.

In the thirties, he was already engaged mainly in literary work. The "Notes" reflected the history of the formation of the translation of poetry national republics in the former Soviet Union. P.G. Antokolsky was among the founders of this trend. He also spoke about another amazing phenomenon of those years - the enthusiasm of young people for the theater. He, along with his wife Zoya Konstantinovna Bazhanova, an actress, as representatives of the E. Vakhtangov Theater, headed one of these youth theaters in the city of Gorky.

At the same time, as the leader of literary seminars at the State Publishing House and the Literary Institute. Gorky, P.G. Antokolsky rallied the talented poetic youth of the country around him, became the teacher of several generations of poets, who later were deservedly called "the color of Soviet poetry." About how their friendship was born, how it grew during the Second World War, others spoke more than once: both his pupils and historians - but he himself, it seems, for the first time - precisely in his "Notes".

The story "My Notes" covers almost thirty years of the author's life: it begins with the First World War and ends at the beginning of the Second World War. However, it has never been published in its original form or in its entirety. Yes, and it was hardly possible. “My Notes” is laid-back, frank, confidential and, like the author’s early poems, abounds in politically incorrect names and events that were silent about in the Soviet press. The first two parts are especially interesting. They are a tribute to the friends of youth - some of them left Russia and were deleted for a long time, or even forever, from the history of Russian culture.

The story was written in July 1953. Stalin had died two months earlier. The connection between the events is undeniable. An important period of history has ended, in which the poet Pavel Antokolsky was also a participant. One gets the impression that in this story he brings together his life and personality - so having survived a natural disaster, when the worst is already behind, he feels himself, checking whether he is intact. “Is my conscience intact?”, Pavel Grigorievich seems to ask himself and answers with the entire text of his memoirs: “Yes, it’s intact.”

Life of P.G. Antokolsky coincided with a turbulent era in the life of the country - an era that contained great hopes, great fear, great losses, and great art. He had to go through all this, he was involved in everything. The only son died in battle, died at the hands of fascist invaders among those countless millions with whose lives the country paid for the betrayal and stupidity of its leaders. In memory of Volodya, Antokolsky wrote the poem "Son", which became a requiem for all the dead. For the poem, he was awarded the Stalin Prize, but ... the second degree. And soon a political campaign was launched against the "cosmopolitans" and the death of his son did not protect his father from attacks: he was branded a "bourgeois formalist" and excommunicated from poetry. Years passed, the old poet received well-deserved recognition and awards. True, he was rewarded sparingly - with an eye to a suspicious past. And his books were published in moderate editions. AT Soviet time circulation was determined not by reader demand, but by the opinion of the authorities. It was almost impossible to buy a collection of Antokolsky's poems in an ordinary bookstore. Even the collection of memoirs about him that came out after the death of the poet had a very modest circulation - 30 thousand copies. Despite the fact that the collection was very popular and quickly sold out, permission for its re-release was not received from the authorities. So the poet Pavel Antokolsky never became his own for the authorities.

His creative path began in pre-revolutionary Russia. He is a witness to the Russian revolution and civil war. His poems, written in that tragic period for the fatherland, and subsequent memories of that time, did not see the light, suppressed by the political censorship that reigned in the country, and as a result, self-censorship. Today, when the Soviet era is being rethought, the unpublished works of one of its brightest poets are timely and important.

P.G. Antokolsky kept his old manuscripts as a memory of his dear past. And, perhaps, he hoped that descendants in the third millennium, no longer fearing either Stalin's repressions or Brezhnev's stagnation, would impartially read his works and find their true place in Russian poetry. And we would like today's readers to understand how this bright and talented person was broken by many years of fear. And how much, in spite of everything, he managed to say.

professor of mathematics

Pernambuco State University, Brazil

professor of psychology

Trident International University, USA

Unknown and little known poems

***

There are many occupations and professions on earth,

There are many angels, archangels, devils,

Cock crows, crows of progress,

Shaggy old men and shorn children.

There are many fairs and hundreds of bell towers,

And a thousand separations and piles of all sorts of troubles -

So why are you unhappy today?

What is it that you still do not understand, poet?

What is your star? Around, above boiling

Immeasurable depth. And light in the morning.

Patience to the end - patience and patience.

You have wine, soul and craft.

1915. Pub. first.

***

L. Antokolsky

We live. We pass in a dream

Past the ancient churches, past the towers,

Past your villages and arable lands

And we miss our country.

About the fields of golden Saron,

About the centuries that thundered away,

And about the girls that died

And about the songs of King Solomon.

We will die. We will pass you by

Like a forgotten eternity. But every

Will turn to look at least once

In the impenetrable darkness of our eyes.

Winter - spring 1916. Publ. first.

***

V. Shestakov

Her eyes are like two swords

From blood and iron.

Having spurred a horse in a hurry,

Flies around the city, screaming -

And in the cry - Marseillaise.

When she screams back:

- Hey, who's waiting for us at the entrance?

Z wonche e songs, brighter look

And the rumble of the people's barricades

Answer: Freedom!

And, drunk as from wine

In her bloody light

incinerated country

Bows head, in love

In the mistress of centuries.

Winter-spring 1916. Publ. first.

***

CRUSADE

The Blessed Virgin above us

Will arise in the darkness of the desert.

Sad courage is a banner.

Forever and ever - Amen.

In the north they dream calmly

Cathedrals and shrines of saints,

And the speech of the people is discordant

The taverns and castles were quiet.

And the wind will blow from the north

Autumn and mournful birds,

And he will rise like a leader and groan,

And move the bulk of loopholes.

And there, at the tomb of Tancred,

Hearing the wingless alarm,

Cold evil victory

Look back crying.

Spring 1916. Public for the first time.

***

I took out a rusty sword from the basement,

Pushed a cardboard helmet on a stupid forehead

And went on the road to look for fun meetings,

As befits a paladin.

And the rain is pouring. And beats behind

Empty and full of holes.

And on the chest - a field flower,

A sad coat of arms, understandable even to a child.

You met me at the lantern

When they left the gloomy mass.

Oh my life! Oh poor dawn!

Empty, romantic nonsense.

Spring 1916. Publ. first.

***

Fate has given me a strange burden.

This is not a sickle or a slave's spade.

This is not a sword, and not a cross, and not a bow,

Not even a flute - a silver friend.

Something rushes about in the silence of the night.

There is something in gray-haired antiquity.

A motley, stupid dress of a jester.

Scarlet, evil, crooked lips.

A child's doll and a reflection of a knife.

A request for a miracle and the collapse of the rebellion.

A strange burden... As if in me

Thousands of eyes, unclosed in a dream.

Thousands of lives and a thousand wounds.

Thousands of spears piercing the fog.

With a wild song going to the call.

Spring 1916. Publ. first.

* **

How old is the Doge of Venice

Threw a ring, silent pledge

Into the Adriatic waves

Curbing their revelry.

As in the days of broken barricades

Tormented Demagogues

Vitiystvovali on the road

Leading to the same old hell

So now, on the first day of spring,

Springs of the Seventeenth year,

I'm in the cries of the street rabble

I'm trying your depths.

The illiterate thunder of telegrams,

The howl of the human sea

You sinewy hands of grief,

Toothless mouth, bloody scar.

You are the first person you meet

On that corner at four o'clock

You are the eyes of hate,

I bless you forever.

Autumn 1916 - 1917. Publ. first.

***

Book. E.P. Tarkhanova

And here she is, about whom grandfathers dreamed

And they argued noisily over cognac,

In the cloak of the Gironde, through the snow and troubles

She broke into us with a lowered bayonet.

And the ghosts of the Decembrist guardsmen

Over the snow, over the Pushkin Neva

They lead the regiments to the call of the buglers,

Under the loud howl of battle music.

The Emperor himself in bronze boots

I called you, Preobrazhensky Regiment,

When in the floods of open streets

The dashing clarinet darted and fell silent.

And he remembered, the Miraculous Builder,

Listening to the Peter and Paul firing,

That crazy, strange, defiant,

March - April 1917.

***

DIMITRY TSAREVICH

Russia! Burn the towns and villages!

I hear again

Deaf key, the keys were ancient

Blood surged.

I am Your Tsarevich, crowned with fate.

I'm an idiot.

From Krakow, from Pskov - hawk

I follow the flight.

And I dream of the Moscow State,

My terrible way.

And Tsar Ivan is a gold and rusty crutch

It plunges into the chest.

The revealed face from the Pigeon Book -

My maestat.

The Kremlin is buzzing at the meeting of defrocking,

The whips are whistling.

Anathema! Vespers chime!

Panna! Sorry -

My gouged eye over the howl of the mob,

My light is on the way.

Autumn 1917. Publ. first.

***

A. Kerensky

This is a true stronghold and reward.

This is the stone coat of arms of Petrograd.

This is Biron's vile whim.

This is a troika flying down

Under the driver's drunken song.

This is the wind of the morning: rise!

It's a frustrated enthusiasm.

This is the wind on the Nevskaya shallows.

This is the evil and holy Dostoevsky.

Come out, Kerensky, for a review.

You are our sword. You saved us. You are Peter.

July 1917. Publ. first.

***

PAUL THE FIRST

With a haiduk, with a ringing, with a boom, he rushes to terrible Petersburg,

On bridges, centuries, versts rushes into the past as if in memory

And the intoxicated courier trumpets the whirlwind of empty blizzards.

Autocrat of All Russia! What's this? Which power

This dreamed of a snub-nosed and burry tyrant?

Or Scythian blizzards, as Derzhavin ordered them,

Went guard of honor around god-like fools?

Or, like a Maltese star, he is poisoned by fate itself,

Or a rabid gaze fixed on a centaur

Falconet, or does the tail dance on the back?

No, not everything is lost yet, another card beats Fate,

Europe will rear up with the roar of regimental music!

No, not everything is known yet, why under the blizzard of March

He's empire and death blue stuck out his tongue.

Winter-spring 1918

***

A.F. Kerensky

A hand trembles in a tight glove.

The people - staring at the balcony -

On the scaffold of victory is shaky,

Where the red executioner is the law.

Otrepyev's eyes. jerky

Your delirium, trampled by fate,

Growing up, flying to grow up

Whip and whistle for you.

Russia is there. Like a throat

Clamped by gurgling spasm.

As if - the area has spread

Your cloak is your enthusiasm!

Go - fly - do not sleep at night -

To the front - to death - to Petrograd.

Is it not behind you

Parade that fled the Army.

Is it not for your impudent glory,

Whistling in the splits of the Finnish rocks,

Falconet horse copper-rusty

Drove down the avenues.

Or maybe in our years

Broke in after you liar

From the schooner to the division of Freedom

That Skipper with the crazy face.

And chills. The soldiers sing.

Russia - There. She looks

Under the lash of wages

Horns wild roar.

And the flag is torn off under the gray wind ...

There - in Minsk, on the Don - for us

Above the nameless Officer

The standard is deployed ... In good hour!

Summer 1918. Publ. first.

***

Petersburg. The Arch of the Headquarters is broken.

The wind blows over the gray Neva.

Only hooves clatter at midnight

On the end dry pavement.

And in the channels in granite blocks

Beats gray pontoon river.

And the fish are frozen in the cages.

And the machines are raging at the shipyard.

There - Putilovo, Sormovo, Tula ...

There are drive belts.

There - like flutes gun barrels

Responding to gun salutes.

There is a teary eyecarborunte

A cry from the throats of factories wasted,

Like the radius of the Red Riot

Will swing to Berlin and to New York.

In the center of the City - with the crackling of firecrackers

The shadows of carriages are scattered.

August cavalry guards

They missed the field marshal's nonsense.

Idols look up the squares,

They see - the flag, and on the flag - an eagle.

Like the last drinking glasses,

Hermitage mirrors ring.

Awakened not by a deaf grenadier,

Not forgiven even by a soldier's bayonet,

Pavel the First for a ghostly dinner

He enters with his tongue hanging out.

And, rising like the siren of Kronstadt,

The bronze roar of Peter is pouring -

Where with pipes, in a tavern storm,

Outlanders sleep the skipper.

Summer 1918

***

Marina Tsvetaeva

Let the barbarians rule the capital

And mirrors are broken in palaces,

I trusted the encrypted page

Your old girlish coat of arms is an eagle.

When crawling from the Motherland to the North

And the night trains cried

I convulsively squeezed the Seville fan

And it was too late to return to the black rebellion.

I need to be a liar like Casanova

Shout out in the Chamber of Mutiny

All the disputants - and turn around again

A boy and a knife swallower.

And the silver of the rings you wear

Decorate the execution - someone else's and mine -

So that at the end of the last Pantomime

The game was drawn.

And in the new life the parchment will whistle,

Like a thin whip on bald heads:

She won't come to Parliament today

And orders you to disperse.

1918

***

Black, as wells are black.

Black deep, distorting dreams.

So Jewish Blood begins.

Flowing towards the Twentieth Century and taking revenge,

So that I am not dead, who does not sleep,

But a simple shepherd. That night

Night abyss, like the name of a sister,

Once in Grenada led to the fires

And in curls grew horns.

The bonfires blazed out. Sinai has fallen.

That's why we became enemies.

With what lie, hunchbacked double,

From the darkness of the synagogues you entered my mind

What truth do you own?

You who betrayed the name Elohim to the winds,

Why are you inflamed my eyes

Too late returned Judah?

1919. Pub. first.

***

Silesian weavers and miners of Wales

In shipyards, in mines, in front of the stop of dams,

In whose sinewy hands rails sing like strings,

Whose throat is not filled with buzzing cities, -

You, initiators bolder than Bonaparte,

You redeemers are more divine than Christ.

Here is a map in the small flags of the military headquarters -

Here is the European Garden and your cramped quarters.

Your old year is on fire. Agent Cresot and Krupp

Trades under the guise of the Cologne Cathedral for Reims.

They spit about it in their telephone mouthpiece

Crows in bowlers are your Figaro and Times.

While they dream of death, it’s not air horses,

Corps jumped not of the dead guard,

But torn apart in the ripped Dragon

Carrion washed out by rain in empty trenches,

Convoys of tractors, convoys of quartermasters

All stones, all coffins, the whole world is not a barricade

In front of half a century in the square of spaces.

Parliament - screamers. Free paradise for abbots.

The stock trader swallows the pound sterling.

We invite you to the music of the alarm

Translate for them what BOLSHEVIK means.

Europe of knights, pirates and Apaches -

This collapsed cathedral behind the stakes of centuries.

Comrades, it's time! She is to your song

On a grand scale she moved the wheel of the peoples.

In the name of all the children and dusty books of Oxford,

In the name of Mind and Heart notre dame –

We embrace you. And we kiss faces

Bulls carrying bread to hungry cities.

1919. Pub. first.

***

LAST

Over rock. Over the roar of mourning marches,

Above the horse's baited lope.

When was it that the royal ghost

Shot and buried in the ground?

Where is the black eagle on the flying standard

In the lights of the Black Sea squadron?

The standard is lowered, and under a black cloud

Our red rooster will be raised.

When the grenadiers in furry hats

Chagalls - do you remember their murmuring?

Do you remember that he was like a smell of gunpowder

And how about "crawl" half of Europe?

Do you remember that autumn to the music of showers?

Then the trains went to the borders.

That autumn! Only the exhalations of the marches grew in her

And they stood like a pillar above the granite.

Under the curtain of downpours pouring gray

Closed the military theater.

Only flocks of crows to throw under the curtain

It remains: "Farewell, Emperor!"

Autumn groves salute him

Whistling sabers of branches.

And he hears, hears the firing of a blank

All night watch carriers.

Then he, the idiot defendant, wearable

Through the gray lowlands and hills,

From black Khodynka to yellow Tsushima,

With prayer, harmonica, grief...

To a feast, to reprisal, without the right to mercy,

In the broken spin of the century

He runs with the boy. And the horse begged

As you can see, it's time to round her up.

She snorted, sowing sparks on the slush,

A freaking horse snores.

..........................................................

- Father, have we arrived? Where are we? - In Russia.

We are buried in the ground, Alyosha.

1919

***

PETER THE GREAT

In ruthless greed for existence,

Behind every nothingness, every rag

His shadow flies over the night cities.

And every metal muscle buzzes

Like a bell. And, turning green dimly,

A classic raincoat is dragged along in the footsteps.

He measured the Baltic with a steel eye.

Burning in malaria like chimeras

Swamps and stones under step over the knee boots.

Sovereign will knows no limit,

Barely looked - and took over everything.

Menshikov is in a hurry, Lefort is chasing him.

Lights on frigates. Signals from kronverk.

And ice like knives. And, distorted face,

The blizzard filled up - and went, and went ...

And now at dawn walking to the department

Petersburgers are wandering, clinging their mouths

To the foggy Cup of the Great Eagle.

And again - ascended on Finnish granite -

The second century rushes sleepless,

Frantic, cold booed Peter,

The draftsman over the maps of the sea and land,

He ruins the revisionist dead souls,

Hurries the cemetery ghostly review.

1921 (1966)

***

Surrounded on all sides

The city is cawing crows.

He is worried because

It has radio and mail.

I hear, I hear a powerful rumble!

So at the beginning of our era

Studied article

Life Guards officers.

On the margins of military maps

And on the tin cockade

The symbol of glory is minted -

The beast is sovereign and two-headed.

We came home again

Into the blackness of a military prison.

State, my idol! -

Key-lock ordinary!

I watched tons of darkness

You pour into people's minds

After drinking bottles

Common phrases and bullets in the back of the head.

I have loved for a long time

Hour when in commandant's offices

They drive the truth to the basement,

Leave the conscience in the fools.

Long time no see

Your call was irresistible!

How many autumns and springs

He was clear and unbearable!

How many pieces of blunt bayonets

Carcasses hung on hooks,

How much death! That's what

The idol of our flammable tears.

Throw newspaper nonsense into the closet!

Black night corridor

Full as the night befits,

The sound of singles.

State, stone warehouse,

Landfill, cemetery, devastation, -

You are attached to me

Like a fiscal eye and ear.

1929. Publ. first time in 1989

***

EXTERMINATION CAMP

And then she came up to us, yellow as a lemon,

That old woman of eighty years,

In a katsaveyka, in a scarf of antediluvian times -

Barely moving legs skeleton.

The bluish strands of her wig

Were barely corrugated

And an old lady's blue-veined hand

She pointed to the landslides of the moat.

"Sorry, I was walking along the road poles,

In places burned to the ground.

You don't know where my boys are, sir,

Did you notice where their bodies are?

Excuse me, I'm deaf and blind.

Maybe among the Polish plains,

Maybe these broken skulls

My Joseph and my Benjamin...

After all, crushed stone crunched under your feet.

This black oily dust

This is the ashes of human charred bodies,

So said the old woman Rachel.

And we followed her through the fields. And eyes

We were often dimmed by tears.

And around the golden forests shone,

Late autumn Polish beauty.

There's a strip of golden grass burned,

Neither the sickle nor the scythe walk.

Only whispering voices, voices,

Quietly whispering voices there:

“We are dead. We are hugging each other.

We hugged our loved ones,

But now we turn only to strangers,

We don't hide anything from strangers.

Count the potholes in the ground

In rags of decayed clothes,

By broken glass, by toys in ashes,

How many bright hopes there were.

How much sun and bread have been stolen from us,

How many children's eyes fell asleep.

How much blue-black hair was cut off,

How many girlish hands unraveled.

How many tiny skirts, shirts, stockings

The wind drove and dragged around the world.

How much did phosphorus cost, and blood, and protein

In the dungeon of fascist lairs.

These stars and these flowers are us.

The executioners were in a hurry to finish,

Because their eyes were blinded from the darkness

Our lives are naked rays.

The killer's gas cans have used up everything.

Death in all its pitiful glory

She ran away from us along the asphalt highway,

Because in the evening dew

In the trembling of the grass, in the babbling of the foliage,

The outline of gray clouds -

You understand! We are no longer dead

We are resurrected forever and ever.

1944 [ ] .

***

EVERYTHING AS WAS

These wet huts are like crows' nests,

These bare branches are as black as rods.

This autumn that the enemy troops are on the defensive

In a village near Moscow, in the heart of the country.

So go down the creaky steps with a lantern,

Doors wide open - and straight into the inclement silence,

But with what regret, with what rapture

You are a guest on poor land for the last time.

Everything is as it was. And again to the mysterious stars

The foolish astrologer pokes his eye greedily.

Everything is as it was: your world is finally created:

And space is motionless, and time flows.

Everything is as it was! Yes, but you are no more

You are not young, not handsome, not an artist, not a god,

Inadvertently wandered into an alien planet,

Insulted her with a cough and the squeak of boots

Fall to her lips, warm, consider at least

These small roots and blades of grass features.

Even if she is your mortal whim,

She's a mother anyway, do you understand?

Tell her about your human grief -

All those whom you buried, the earth saved.

Everything is as it was. She has nothing to share with you.

Only clay and dust in it, and ash.

October 28, 1945. Publ. for the first time in 1982.

***

NON-ETERNAL MEMORY

1.

The substance of Spinoza went into grinding,

The ashes of Einstein's star are scattered.

Silent sand drifts

Suck in vague traces.

Only here and there prostheses of beggars stick out,

Scraps of silk and pieces of glass.

And on gray-haired, as time, ashes

And it's like an eternity has passed.

Why should she delay? Weeding the tares

And reasoned with idle minds,

She will correct the chapters from Matthew

Insidious interpretation of Thomas.

And you, the same age as the terrible century,

You, man of the forties,

Slashed by memory like a whip,

And really ready for a peaceful old age?

Do you love the dim light of a table lamp?

And on short waves the rumble of the earth ...

Where are these gloomy iambs

Have you been brought in to fear at home?

Well, take a closer look at the end

Listen to the underground voices!

You yourself are a leftover of a savage meal,

You yourself are tanned in shreds of skin.

Don't you dare ridicule

From freshly plowed trenches.

And if you hit the road, look, do not hesitate!

The last pass is even scarier.

2.

The massacres and round-ups are coming to an end.

Only the closeness of blood relationship

Darker than damnation and brighter than glory.

Curses or glory - which comes first?

Lost traces in the millennia

Wandering through the burnt cities.

In the sands behind Babi Yar, in black gossip,

In black markets, in junk, - and there

Spotlights flicker along the horizon

They crawl along ditches, crawl over bridges.

The hypocrite fools around, the scared is shaking

And the perjurer on the crib cheats ...

And somewhere they burn, crush, shred, fry,

Festering behind the rusty wire - and there

There are no traces - not in the cities of Europe,

On any conceivable planet,

Not in the black thickness of the earthen womb,

They are no longer in heaven or hell.

Danzig soap lies in bars,

What is boiled out of bones and veins.

There, someone's life soared with two wings

And it ended so that I could live in the world.

Whose life? Whose death is homeless and sleepless?

In the crown of what resinous black braids,

In what radiance of white linen

Did you step on that mortal slope?

Forgive me three centuries of delay

And three thousand years of silence!

Again we missed trains

On the land where you blazed.

Let me touch your skin with your hands

Cling your lips to a swarthy shoulder, -

I'm talking about the same thing, do you hear? - everything about the same

But he forgot what I was whispering about ...

My grandfather-sculptor has been waiting for you for half a century,

Cutting into marble with a small chisel,

So that you appear to the eyes of man

With such a girlish face.

Your wrists haven't been touched yet

Handcuffs, struggling with stubbornness,

Still you through the system of Warsaw streets

The scum did not drive away with gauntlets.

And sharp gravel, the ashes of bone crushers

I didn’t bloody your tender legs,

And the evil hag did not cut

Life in half, croaking "Varte noh!"

Lumps did not come straight to the throat

The damp earth at those terrible gates...

Live on Earth! What is easier and more familiar

Than black bread and blue oxygen!

But whatever I tell you, whatever

Nor invented more passionate and holy,

I will tear out only the stalk from the thicket

On the humus of all your deaths.

And your child, drunk forever

Immortal lips on your nipple

Can't see through closed eyelids

How green and tall this stalk is.

The pipes crackled. The strings resounded.

The bows broke in the fingers of the violinists.

Whose fun were you? Whose sadness?

Whose universe? – Maybe a draw?

Wake up, child of the burned people!

Gas, or a whip, or a sip of lead, -

Get up, young one! In cases of this kind,

In such love - there can be no end.

On such a night ruthlessly open

Sky dome in the green of the stars.

The sea sparkles, the roses smell stuffy

Through hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of miles.

I built for our date

Bridges hanging over eternity.

The universe hears my anxiety.

And bursts with scarlet flame.

And you?

3.

How hopeless, how cruel

Time flies through the years.

But the merged rumble of its stream

Sounds. REMEMBER FOREVER.

He sharpens the stone with every drop.

But as soon as you go out on the road -

Everything is hopeless, everything is cruel

It sounds: FORGET, FORGET, FORGET.

1946

***

We will cross out this and that in History,

Let's scrape and clean both lines and deadlines.

We will take on a bolt that is filled with lead,

What is buried with a shovel at the edge of the road.

No, not in a solid memory, not in my right mind,

But obediently, diligently, as ordinary,

Suffocate in any suffocating darkness

And we will be born into the world, if necessary, for the first time.

What happened? Who remembers? Who dares dare?

Start over, immortal change!

The copper bell did not ring the alarm,

She did not call the dead by name.

Only by the feet of the fallen we are dragged,

Only they are thrown into the abyss, into a crazy abyss,

And a bloody flap trembles in the wind,

A red flag signifying the root cause.

Life goes on. Revolution Mother

Continues obstinate, terrible business.

And what has not been completed, overlooked, -

That's temporary. It's not a sin and break.

1953. Pub. first.

***

DREAMS RETURN

Dreams return from wanderings.

Their strength is only in perseverance.

In the fact that we already dreamed of them

And since then they have not cleared up.

From the eternal night of the buried

A young boy comes out

No, since then he has not become older,

But, as then, he was tired on the march.

Fifteen years is not five centuries.

And blood on the military card

It hasn't faded yet, it hasn't faded.

Only dilapidated gymnast.

He doesn't worry, he doesn't joke,

Doesn't judge our actions

Shows no concern for us

Doesn't claim happiness.

He only remembers, vaguely remembers

Location of our rooms

And the table, and the dust on the bookshelves,

And the evening in long gossip.

He notices at times

Its kinship and similarity with us.

He will see his orphanhood

When it comes out into the open air.

1957

* **

We are all award winners

given in his honor,

Walking calmly through time

Which is dead.

We are all his brother-soldiers,

silent when

Grew from our silence

People's trouble.

Hiding from each other

Sleepless nights,

When from our own circle

He made executioners

For statues dug tons

All rocks,

Muffled human groans

Water of laudatory odes, -

Let the great-grandson take us

Contempt forever

All equally as equals -

We are not ashamed.

Yes, the evidence of these truths

Truly simple!

But we do not hate the dead

And our blindness.

1956. First published. in 1997.

***

I don't want to sue a dead man

Because he seemed like a father to me.

I can't mock him

Look into his affairs

And in a belated dispute

With a tomb - an eternal dungeon ...

I am a companion of the common table,

His fire is incinerated to ashes,

Poisoned by snake venom.

I, a contemporary of so many catastrophes,

He lived and lived, but in general he is alive and well.

But I grew old by his side.

Not a joke, not a trifle -

Get old at the time away,

Not a life to live, but ten lives -

And do not get away from your memory,

From the bitter legacy of sons

On this merciless feast.

I'm not talking about myself now!

But learning from one story

Her impassive fearlessness, -

Here, on the steep, bare shore,

I'll save a piece of truth

But I won't embellish these words.

1956. First published. in 1997.

***

How they are homeless, gloomy, dull,

How sadly they squint drunk,

Locksmiths, carpenters, painters, plasterers

In the heart of the country, in a village near Moscow.

What oppresses and oppresses them and bends under the wind

And bends down to the ground in inclement times?

Why every third of them dies

And red-handed in the police every second?

Not freaks, not geeks ... powerful breed,

Shoulders in a sazhen, posture is firm and proud, -

God deniers, lords of nature,

The generation that carried the banner of labor!

They were the cement in decisive plans,

Hurricane fire at river crossings ...

Look - don't they have order bars,

Healed wounds, state rights?

We wrote poems for a solemn occasion,

Shocked hearts, caused tears ...

Well, here she is under a lead cloud,

Everything as it is - all of Russia is crowded below.

So let's go along the roads, along the clay slopes,

Where three-ton skidding on any highway,

Where behind the wet huts, on the Russian field

She sings songs in shabby beauty.

Where in a wooden barracks, in a damp hostel

The poor button accordion is pouring after midnight ...

- Go out to the Volga, whose moan is heard, - tell me,

why is he sad and drunk?

What, comrade, is wrong - say for God's sake,

In the glorious camp of the working people in our country?

But the comrade is silent and sighs deeply.

He doesn't hear. He appears to be on the sidelines.

Or is civil grief inappropriate today?

Or is the drum and trumpet back in vogue?

Or is it too unflattering and too famous?

Or vision is not vigilant and the skin is rough?

Let the Muses, venal skins, go down,

I'm sick of avoiding your eyes -

Locksmiths, carpenters, painters, plasterers -

Real people, the working class.

1957. Pub. first.

Notes

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) - Austrian writer, poet, playwright; representative of decadence in Austrian literature of the endAn article in Pravda by N.M. Gribachev, Secretary of the Party Bureau of the USSR SSR. 02/16/1949. // Alexander N. Yakovlev Foundation. Document number 113.

Thanks to this poem, in the autumn of 1917, the author met M.I. Tsvetaeva.

The poem was written by Antokolsky under the impression of a trip in 1944 to the Polish village of Sobibor, where from May 15, 1942 to October 15, 1943, a concentration camp organized by the Nazis operated, in which about 250 thousand Jews were killed. According to the materials received during the trip, P.G. Antokolsky and V.A. Kaverin, also wrote the essay "The Uprising in Sobibor" (see Zn, No. 4, 1945), which was included in the "Black Book" of military reporters of the Red Army I.G. Ehrenburg (1891-1967) and V.S. Grossman (1905-1964) - about the genocide of the Jewish people on the territory of the USSR and Poland during the Second World War.