Poet, writer and translator

The poetess Bella Akhmadulina entered Russian literature at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, when there was an unprecedented mass interest in poetry, and not so much in the printed as in the voiced poetic word. In many ways, this "poetic boom" was associated with the work of a new generation of poets - the so-called "sixties". One of the most prominent representatives of this generation was Bella Akhmadulina, who, along with Andrei Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Robert Rozhdestvensky and Bulat Okudzhava, played a huge role in the revival of public consciousness in the country during the “thaw”. The beginning of Bella Akhmadulina's literary path fell on the time when Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Nabokov, the leading figures of Russian literature of the 20th century, were alive and actively working. In the same years, the attention of society was riveted to the tragic fate and creative heritage of Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva. It was Akhmadulina who had the difficult mission to pick up the poetic baton from the hands of her great predecessors, to restore the seemingly forever broken connection of times, not to let the chain of glorious traditions of Russian literature be interrupted. And if now we can safely talk about the existence of the very concept of "belles-lettres", then this is largely the merit of Bella Akhmadulina to Russian literature.

Bella's family belonged to the Soviet elite. Her father Akhat Valeevich was a major customs chief, and her mother Nadezhda Makarovna was a KGB major and translator. The girl received an exotic combination of blood: on the mother's side, the family had Italians settled in Russia, and on the paternal side - Tatars. Parents were busy at work all day long, and the future poetess was brought up, mainly by her grandmother. She adored animals, and together with her granddaughter, they picked up stray dogs and cats. Later, Bella will do this all her life, passing on her love for animals to her two daughters - Anya and Lisa. “I fully agree with Anastasia Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, who said: “I write the word“ dog ”in capital letters,” she once said.

Bella Akhmadulina said about her childhood: “There was a miserable, wretched photograph somewhere: two sad women - this is my mother, my aunt, - but in their hands is what they just found, what was born in April 1937. Does this poorly formed unfortunate face know what is to come, what will happen next? It's only April 1937, but this tiny creature, this bundle they're holding, is pressed against itself, as if they knew something about what was happening around. And for quite a long time in the early, very early beginning of childhood, I was overshadowed by some feeling that I know, despite the complete absence of age, that I know something that is not necessary to know and impossible to know, and, in general, that it is impossible to survive ... First, tulips bloomed, and suddenly this gloomy child, unfriendly, unsympathetic at all, saw blooming tulips and said: "I have never seen anything like this." That is, quite clearly such a clear phrase. Everyone was surprised that a gloomy and some, perhaps, unwise child suddenly spoke out ... As a consolation to me, we are going in some kind of trolleybus, someone bought me, someone sold, several red poppies. That is, only I managed to be captivated by them and be terribly amazed, and to be so wounded by this scarlet beauty of them, this incredible color of these plants, as the wind blew them away. This is how all the failures began, like these missing poppies ... My mother called my father Arkady, and when I started jumping in bed, he taught me to say: “I am a Tatar, I am a Tatar” ... My name is Isabella, why? My mother in the thirties was obsessed with Spain. She asked her grandmother to find a Spanish name for the newborn. But in Spain, Isabel is still there. Grandmother even thought that the queen was called Isabella, but the real queen was called Isabelle. But I caught on early and cut it all down to Bell. Only Tvardovsky called me Isabella Akhatovna. I am very embarrassed when they call me Bella Akhmatovna, I say: “Forgive me, I am Akhatovna, my father is Akhat” ... ".

The war found little Bella in a garden near Moscow in Kraskovo. Her father was almost immediately called to the front, and her mother was constantly at work. Akhmadulina said: “In childhood, a child undergoes so many things, and also the beginning of the war, my God. How else I was rescued from this garden in Kraskovo. The Germans came close to Moscow. Father had already gone to war, and people thought that everything would end soon, that this was some kind of nonsense. I was four years old, I had a bear. These educators in Kraskovo robbed everyone. Parents will send some gifts, they took away. They had their own children. Once they wanted to take away my bear, but then I grabbed on so hard that they got scared. So it was possible to disappear, because a glow blazed over Moscow, Moscow burned. They grabbed their children, consoled them, and the rest of the small fry cried, crowded, but, fortunately, my mother managed to pick me up. Well, further wanderings began. All this is good for a person.”

Well, what's your name?

Come on, this girl will be on duty with us. She is probably very good and knows how to hold a rag.

I have never been able to do this and still can't. But that's how she fell in love with me precisely because of the military, as I believe, suffering. And somehow she asked me to manage this board, wipe it with a rag. And I read so much by that time that, of course, I already wrote very well, and if I put the stress somewhere in the wrong place in the “dog”, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t, because I constantly read, first with my grandmother, then alone. This incessant reading of Pushkin, but mostly somehow Gogol, was all the time. There were books in the house, and I was reading, and suddenly everyone noticed that I wrote without any mistakes and very briskly, and even began to teach others to write. Here is such a wounded post-war lonely sad woman, Nadezhda Alekseevna Fedoseeva, suddenly she is some kind of wing over me, as if I reminded her, I don’t know, I reminded her of someone, or the wounded, if she was a nurse, or, I don’t know, somehow she loved me. Well, everyone kind of got on with me. I really wiped this board ... ".

Bella Akhmadulina began writing her first poems at school, studying in the literary circle of the House of Pioneers of the Krasnogvardeisky District on Pokrovsky Boulevard. Already in 1955, her works were published in the magazine "October". Some critics called her poems "irrelevant", talking about things banal and vulgar. Nevertheless, the young poetess immediately gained great popularity among readers. Here is how Yevgeny Yevtushenko recalled the young poetess: “In 1955, in the October magazine, I stumbled upon touching, childishly chaste lines: “Letting my head on the lever, The telephone receiver is fast asleep.” And it was worth reading next to it: “In Ukrainian, March is called“ birch tree ”- and, snorting with pleasure, steam emerged almost with a lily in her wet hair to the birch tree: carefully. I shuddered sweetly: such rhymes were not lying on the road. He immediately called Zhenya Vinokurov to Oktyabr and asked: “Who is this Akhmadulina?” He said that she was a tenth grader, she went to his literary association at ZIL and was going to enter the Literary Institute. I immediately showed up to this literary association, where I first saw her and heard her selfless recitation of poetry. It was no coincidence that she called her first book "The String" - the sound of an utterly stretched string vibrated in her voice, it became even scary that it would break. Bella was then a little plump, but indescribably graceful, not walking, but literally flying, barely touching the ground, with pulsating veins wonderfully translucent through her satin skin, where the mixed blood of the Tatar-Mongol nomads and Italian revolutionaries from the Stopani clan, in whose honor it was named Moscow lane. Although her plump little face was as round as a Siberian shanezhka, she did not resemble any earthly creature. Her slanted, not only Asian, but some kind of alien eyes looked as if not at the people themselves, but through them at something that no one could see. The voice magically shimmered and bewitched not only when reading poetry, but also in a simple everyday conversation, giving lacy grandiloquence even to prosaic trifles. Bella was astonishing, like a bird of paradise that accidentally flew in to us, although she wore a cheap beige suit from the Bolshevichka factory, a Komsomol badge on her chest, ordinary sandals and a wreathed rustic braid, about which the wounded rivals said that she was braided. In fact, she had no equal rivals, at least young ones, neither in poetry nor in beauty. There was nothing contemptuous of others in her sense of her own extraordinaryness, she was kind and considerate, but for this it was even more difficult to forgive her. She was bewitching. In her behavior, even artificiality became natural. She was the embodiment of artistry in every gesture and movement - only Boris Pasternak looked like that. Only he buzzed, and Bella rang ... ".

The family wanted Bella to enter the journalism faculty of Moscow State University, because once her father worked in a large-circulation newspaper, but Bella failed the entrance exams, not knowing the answer to the question about the Pravda newspaper, which she never held or read in her hands. But nevertheless, on the advice of her mother, Bella went to work for the Metrostroyevets newspaper, in which she began to publish not only her first articles, but also her poems. In 1956, Bella entered the Literary Institute. She said: “At the beginning, in the first year at the institute, several people rallied who were considered more capable, and there were some very nice, but who did not show themselves. They tried to admit to the institute not by the strength of literacy or the ability to write poetry, but so. There were some former sailors there, well, and there was a wonderful one with whom we were very friends, who also became famous, the miner Kolya Antsiferov. So they tried to make sure that they were not those who studied with Nadezhda Lvovna Pobedina, that is, no one there thought about Pobedina, but simply not those who had read many books. And there was a wonderful, absolutely wonderful, whom I still love dearly, Galya Arbuzova, Paustovsky's stepdaughter. Here she was wonderful both in mind and in kindness, a wonderful person, she is like that now. Although many years have passed, I will always remember her with love. Well, and, of course, some influence of Paustovsky passed through her, both influence and support ... My such short-lived success continued until Boris Leonidovich Pasternak received the Nobel Prize. A scandal broke out at the institute, and not only at the institute, at the institute only to a small extent. They announced to everyone: this writer is a traitor. Some easily signed the charges, some simply did not understand what it was about. Yes, adult writers, some eminent writers signed false curses to Pasternak. And they just told me that it’s necessary, they shoved this paper ... It’s good if at an early age a person understands that you will make a mistake once and then all your life, all your life ... But it never crossed my mind to make mistakes, I couldn’t do it , it would be as strange as, I don’t know, offending my dog ​​or some kind of atrocity ... They expelled me for Pasternak, but pretended to be Marxism-Leninism. Naturally, I did not keep up with this subject. We had a diamat teacher, and she had diabetes, and I once confused diamat and diabetes. This is dialectical materialism - diamat. Well, I then defended it as cynicism. No, I didn't know, I didn't mean to offend. “Some kind of diabetes you call teaching…”.

In 1959, Bella Akhmadulina was expelled from the Literary Institute. In that difficult year, Bella was helped by the editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta S.S. Smirnov, who offered her to become a freelance correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta Siberia in Irkutsk. Akhmadulina said: “I saw a lot of grief, a lot of human grief. However, I continued to work. I had a poem about a blast furnace, about steelworkers. After their shift, they came out exhausted, they wanted to drink beer, eat, but there was nothing in the shops, no food. But vodka - please. Well, of course I didn't care. They treated me well, they understood that this was some kind of Moscow phenomenon. Well, I'm in overalls, in a helmet, which is ridiculous. But I started this in the Metrostroyevets newspaper, maybe there were some indulgences there. In Siberia, Bella wrote the story "On the Siberian Roads", in which she described her impressions of the trip. The story was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta along with a series of poems about the amazing Land and its people. Smirnov helped Bella Akhmadulina recover at the institute, sharply raising the issue in the Writers' Union about supporting young talents. Bella was reinstated to the fourth year, the one from which she was expelled. In 1960, Bella Akhmadulina graduated from the Literary Institute with honors. Shortly after graduating from the institute, she released her first collection "String". Then, evaluating her debut, the poet Pavel Antokolsky wrote in a poem dedicated to her: “Hello, Miracle named Bella!”. At the same time, Bella Akhmadulina came to her first fame along with the first poetic performances at the Polytechnic Museum, Luzhniki, Moscow University (together with Voznesensky, Yevtushenko and Rozhdestvensky), which gathered a huge audience.

With Andrei Voznesensky.

Sincere, penetrating intonation, the artistry of the very appearance of the poetess determined the originality of her performing style. Later, in the 1970s, Akhmadulina spoke of the deceptive lightness of these performances: "On the verge of fatal, on the edge of the rope."

The first collection of poems by Akhmadulina "String", published in 1962, was marked by the search for her own themes. Later, her collections “Music Lessons” (1969), “Poems” (1975; with a foreword by P.G. Antokolsky), “Candle”, “Snowstorm” (both in 1977), collections of poems by Akhmadulina were constantly published. published in periodicals. Her own poetic style took shape by the mid-1960s. For the first time in modern Soviet poetry, Akhmadulina spoke in a high poetic style.

happy beggar, good convict,
chilled in the north by a southerner,
consumptive and evil Petersburger
I live in the malarial south.

Don't cry for me - I will live
that lame-foot, who came out onto the porch,
that drunkard, drooping on the tablecloth,
and this, which paints the Mother of God,
I will live as a wretched bogomaz.

Don't cry for me - I will live
that literacy taught by a girl,
which is indistinct in the future
my poems, my red bangs,
how the fool would know. I will live.

Don't cry for me - I will live
merciful merciful sisters,
in military recklessness dying,
Yes, under my star and bright
somehow, but I'll live.

Sublime vocabulary, metaphor, exquisite stylization of the "old" style, musicality and intonational freedom of verse made her poetry easily recognizable. The very style of her speech was an escape from modernity, mediocrity, everyday life, a way to create an ideal microcosm, which Akhmadulina endowed with her own values ​​and meanings. The lyrical plot of many of her poems was not devoid of a magical shade of communication with the "soul" of an object or landscape (candles, portraits, rain, gardens), designed to give them a name, awaken them, bring them out of oblivion. Akhmadulina thus gave her vision to the world around her.

Just something - so that there is a candle,
simple candle, wax,
and age-old old-fashioned
so it will be fresh in the memory.

And your pen will hasten
to that ornate letter,
intelligent and ingenious
and good will fall on the soul.

You are already thinking about friends
more and more, in the old way,
and stearic stalactite
deal with tenderness in your eyes.

And Pushkin looks kindly
and the night has passed, and the candles go out,
and gentle taste of native speech
so clean lips cold.

In many poems, especially with conventionally fantastic imagery (the poem "My Genealogy", "An Adventure in an Antique Store", "Country Romance") she played with time and space, resurrected the atmosphere of the 19th century, where she found chivalry and nobility, generosity and aristocracy , the ability for reckless feeling and compassion - the features that made up the ethical ideal of her poetry, in which she said: "The method of conscience has already been chosen, and now it does not depend on me." The desire to acquire a spiritual lineage was found in poems addressed to Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova (“Longing for Lermontov”, “Music Lessons”, “I envy her - young” and other works); in their fate, she finds her measure of love, kindness, "orphanhood" and the tragic paid for creative gift. Akhmadulina presented this measure to the present - and this (not only in the word and style) was her special character of inheriting the tradition of the 19th century. The aesthetic dominant of Akhmadulina's work is the desire to sing, "give thanks" to "any little"; her lyrics were overflowing with declarations of love - to a passer-by, to a reader, but above all to friends, whom she was ready to forgive, save and protect from an unjust trial. “Friendship” is the fundamental value of her world (the poems “My comrades”, “Winter isolation”, “I'm already bored, and inappropriately, “The craft has brought our souls together”). Singing the purity of friendly thoughts, Akhmadulina did not deprive this theme of dramatic overtones: friendship did not save from loneliness, incomplete understanding, from mutual hopelessness:

Along my street which year
footsteps sound - my friends are leaving.
My friends slow departure
that darkness outside the windows is pleasing.

Running my friends deeds,
there is neither music nor singing in their houses,
and only, as before, Degas girls
pigeons straighten their feathers.

Well, well, well, let fear not wake
you, defenseless, in the middle of this night.
A mysterious passion for betrayal,
my friends, clouds your eyes.

Oh loneliness, how cool your character is!
Flashing with an iron compass,
how cold you close the circle,
not heeding the useless assurances.

So call me and reward me!
Your darling, caressed by you,
I will console myself, leaning against your chest,
I will wash with your blue cold.

Let me stand on tiptoe in your forest
at the other end of the slow gesture
find foliage, and bring it to your face,
and feel orphanhood as bliss.

Grant me the silence of your libraries,
your concerts are strict motives,
and - wise - I will forget those
who died or are still alive.

And I will know wisdom and sorrow
objects will entrust their secret meaning to me.
Nature leaning on my shoulders
announce his childhood secrets.

And then - from tears, from darkness,
from the poor ignorance of the past
my friends beautiful features
appear and dissolve again.

Liberal criticism was both favorable and condescending to the work of Akhmadulina, unfriendly and semi-official - reproached for mannerisms, pomp, intimacy. Akhmadulina always avoided, unlike other "sixties", socially significant social topics. The lyrics of Akhmadulina did not reproduce the story of mental suffering, but only pointed to them: “In the anguish that it is capable of”, “Once, swaying on the edge”, “It happened like this ...”. She preferred to speak about the tragic underlying basis of being in an allegorical form (“Don’t cry for me! I will live ...” - “Spell”), but more often in poems about poetry, the very process of creativity, which occupies a very large place in her creations. Creativity for Akhmadulina is both "execution", "torture", and the only salvation, the outcome of "earthly torment" (poems "The Word", "Night", "Description of the Night", "It's so bad to live); faith in the word (and fidelity to it), in the indissolubility of "literacy and conscience" in Akhmadulina is so strong that the overtaking dumbness is tantamount to non-existence for her, the loss of the high justification of her own existence.

Akhmadulina is ready to pay for her poetic chosenness with the “torment of superiority”, she saw suffering as an atonement for spiritual imperfection, “aggravation” of her personality, but in the poems “Bad Spring”, “This is Me”, she overcomes these temptations.

Oh pain, you are wisdom. Essence of decisions
so small in front of you
and overshadows the dark genius
the eye of a sick animal.

Within your ruinous limits
my mind was high and stingy,
but thinned healing herbs
The mint flavor never leaves my lips.

To ease the last breath,
I, with the precision of that animal,
sniffing, found its way out
in a sad flower stalk.

Oh, to forgive everyone - that's a relief!
Oh, forgive everyone, convey to everyone
and tender as irradiation,
taste grace with your whole body.

I forgive you, empty squares!
With you only, in my poverty,
I cried from vague faith
over the children's hoods.

I forgive you, foreign hands!
May you reach out to
that only my love and torment
an object no one wants.

Forgive you, dog eyes!
You were my reproach and judgment.
All my sorrowful cries
hitherto these eyes carry.

I forgive my friend and foe!
I kiss every mouth hastily!
In me, as in the dead body of the circle,
completeness and emptiness.

And explosions are generous, and lightness,
as in white rattles of featherbeds,
and my elbow is no longer burdensome
sensitive line of the railing.

Just air under my skin.
I'm waiting for one thing: on the slope of the day,
afflicted with a similar disease
let someone forgive me.

Akhmadulina solved the traditional theme of confrontation between the poet and the crowd without the usual denunciation of the uninitiated (the poem “The Chill”, the poem “The Tale of the Rain”): Moscow bohemia in conflict with the poet did not appear inescapably hostile, but genetically alien. In the collections "Mystery", published in 1983, and "The Garden", published in 1987, and awarded the State Prize in 1989, poetic hermeticism, description of solitary walks, "night concoctions", meetings and partings with cherished landscapes, keepers of secrets , the meaning of which was not deciphered, was combined with the socio-thematic expansion of the poetic space: residents of suburban suburbs, hospitals, unsettled children appeared, the pain for which Akhmadulina translates into "complicity of love."

Bella Akhmadulina with Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam.

Another facet of Bella Akhmadulina's talent is also interesting - this is her participation in two films. In 1964, she starred as a journalist in Vasily Shukshin's film "Such a Guy Lives", where she played almost herself while working in the Literaturnaya Gazeta. The tape received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. And in 1970, Akhmadulina appeared on the screens in the film "Sport, Sports, Sports."

Leonid Kuravlev and Bella Akhmadulina in Vasily Shukshin's film "Such a Guy Lives".

In the 1970s, Bella Akhmadulina visited Georgia, and since then this land has taken a prominent place in her work. Akhmadulina translated N. Baratashvili, G. Tabidze, I. Abashidze and other Georgian authors. In 1979, Akhmadulina participated in the creation of the uncensored literary almanac "Metropol". Akhmadulina has repeatedly spoken out in support of the persecuted Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Lev Kopelev, Georgy Vladimov and Vladimir Voinovich. Her statements in their defense were published in The New York Times and repeatedly broadcast on Radio Liberty and Voice of America. She has participated in many world poetry festivals, including the International Poetry Festival in Kuala Lumpur in 1988.

In 1993, Bella Akhmadulina signed the Letter of Forty-Two, published in the Izvestia newspaper on October 5, 1993. It was a public appeal by a group of well-known writers to citizens, the government and Russian President Boris Yeltsin about the events of the autumn of 1993, during which the Supreme Soviet of Russia was forcibly dispersed with the shelling of the parliament building from tanks and the death of 148 people according to official data. “There is neither desire nor need to comment in detail on what happened in Moscow on October 3rd. Something happened that could not but happen because of our carelessness and stupidity - the Nazis took up arms, trying to seize power. Thank God, the army and law enforcement agencies were with the people, did not split, did not allow the bloody adventure to develop into a disastrous civil war, but what if suddenly? ... We would have no one to blame but ourselves. After the August putsch, we "pityfully" begged not to "revenge", not to "punish", not to "forbid", not to "close", not to "engage in searches for witches". We really wanted to be kind, generous, tolerant. Good ... To whom? To the killers? Tolerant... Why? To fascism? … History once again gave us a chance to take a big step towards democracy and civilization. Let's not miss such a chance again, as it was more than once! - excerpt from a letter. The authors called on the President of Russia to ban “all types of communist and nationalist parties, fronts and associations”, tighten legislation, introduce and widely use harsh sanctions “for propaganda of fascism, chauvinism, racial hatred”, close a number of newspapers and magazines, in particular the newspaper “Day” , "Soviet Russia", "Literary Russia", "Pravda", as well as the TV program "600 seconds", to suspend the activities of the Soviets, and also to recognize as illegitimate not only the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, but also all the bodies formed by them (in including the Constitutional Court). The writers demanded to ban and "disperse" all illegal paramilitary and armed formations operating in the country. "Letter of forty-two" caused a split among representatives of the creative intelligentsia, which continues to this day. And Bella Akhmadulina did not get lost in this turbulent time, she only slightly distanced herself, leaving for work. She wrote memoirs about contemporary poets and essays about Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.

With Boris Yeltsin.

Bella Akhmadulina has always been an object of love and admiration. The poetess did not like to talk about her past personal life. “Love is the absence of the past,” she once wrote in one of her poems. However, her ex-husbands, who retained admiration for Bella for life, themselves spoke about past relationships in their diaries and memoirs. The first husband of Akhmadulina was Yevgeny Yevtushenko. She met him at the Literary Institute.

With Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

“We often quarreled, but quickly reconciled. We loved each other, and each other's poems. Hand in hand, we wandered around Moscow for hours, and I ran ahead and looked into her Bakhchisarai eyes, because only one cheek, only one eye, was visible from the side, and I did not want to lose a piece of my beloved and therefore the most beautiful face in the world. Passers-by looked around, because we looked like what they themselves failed to do ... ”the poet later recalled. This marriage lasted three years.

The second husband of Akhmadulina was the writer Yuri Nagibin. “I was so proud, so admired her when, in a crowded room, she read her poems in a tender, tense, brittle voice and her beloved face burned. I didn’t dare to sit down, so I stood against the wall, almost falling from a strange weakness in my legs, and I was happy that I was nothing for all those gathered, that I was for her alone, ”wrote Nagibin.

With Yuri Nagibin.

At that time, Akhmadulina, according to the memoirs of the poetess Rimma Kazakova, was especially extravagant: in the obligatory veil, with a fly on her cheek, “She was a beauty, a goddess, an angel,” Kazakova says about Akhmadulina. Akhmadulina and Nagibin lived together for eight years ... The poetess marked their parting with the lines: “Farewell! But how many books and trees were entrusted to us with their safety, so that our parting anger plunged them into death and lifelessness. Goodbye! We, therefore, are of them who destroy the souls of books and forests. We will endure the death of the two of us without pity and interest. Her civil marriage was short-lived with the son of the Balkar classic Kaisyn Kuliev, Eldar Kuliev, who gave her eldest daughter Elizabeth in 1973.

With daughter Lisa in Peredelkino. 1973

In 1974, Bella Akhmadulina met the artist, sculptor and theater designer Boris Messerer. They lived together for over thirty years. We met while walking our dogs and it was love at first sight. “Spring of the 74th year. Courtyard of the House of Cinematographers on Chernyakhovsky Street, near the Aeroport metro station. I walk with Ricky's dog, a Tibetan terrier. It belongs to the beautiful film actress Elsa Lezhdey, the woman I love, with whom I live in this house. Bella Akhmadulina appears in the yard with a brown poodle. His name is Thomas. Bella lives one entrance from me, in the former apartment of Alexander Galich. Bella at home. In shoes with low heels. Dark sweater. The hairstyle is random. The sight of her tiny, slender figure begins to ache at the heart. We are talking. About nothing. Bella listens absentmindedly. We are talking about dogs... Soon she leaves. And suddenly, with all the clarity that came out of nowhere, I understand that if this woman wanted, then I, without a moment's hesitation, would leave with her forever. Anywhere ... In the first days of our coincidence with Bella, we cut ourselves off from the outside world, plunged into nirvana and, as Vysotsky said, lay down on the bottom like a submarine, and did not give call signs ... We did not communicate with anyone, no one knew where are we. On the fifth day of Bella's voluntary confinement in the workshop, I, returning from the city, saw on the table a large sheet of drawing paper, covered with verses. Bella sat next to him. I read the poems and was amazed - they were very good poems, and they were dedicated to me. Before that, I had not read Bella's poems - it just so happened. After meeting her, of course, I wanted to read it, but I didn’t do it, because I didn’t want to jinx our nascent relationship ... ”- says Boris Messerer in the book“ Bella's Flash.

With Boris Messerer.

Messerer was immediately struck by how easily Akhmadulina gave away her works. And he began to collect these scattered poems - sometimes written on napkins, on notebook sheets. As a result of Messerer's search, a whole four-volume book was published. He became her kind of guardian angel. Boris took on the task of patronizing and patronizing and has been coping with this task for many years. “I am an absent-minded person,” the poetess said about herself. “Life's difficulties are completely insurmountable for me.” And if during the performance she forgot the line, her husband immediately prompted. In one of her poems, she said about him: "Oh, the guide of my timid habit." In this surprisingly tender touching union of two great people, the second daughter of Bella Akhmadulina, Anna, was born.

In the last years of her life, Bella Akhmadulina lived with her husband in Peredelkino. According to the writer Vladimir Voinovich, Akhmadulina suffered from a serious illness in the last years of her life: “She wrote very little lately, since she saw almost nothing, she practically lived by touch. But, despite a very serious illness, she never complained, she was always friendly. At the end of October 2010, she was admitted to the Botkin Hospital, where the surgeons decided to operate. According to doctors' forecasts, everything went well, Bella Akhatovna's condition improved. Akhmadulina spent several days in intensive care, then in the regular department. The poetess was discharged from the clinic, but, unfortunately, her body could not stand it and Bella Akhmadulina died four days after being discharged from the hospital.

Farewell to Bella Akhmadulina took place on December 3, 2010. Only her relatives and friends were present at the funeral service in the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Saying goodbye to her was generally unusually quiet. An hour before the official farewell - at 11 o'clock - those whom Akhmadulina called "her venerable readers" began to gather in the Central House of Writers. There are hundreds of people in the hall and foyer. They seemed to be afraid of unnecessary words. “As a boy, at the age of 17, I ran to her concerts, as they run to a Russian folk tale: to be cleansed from boiler to boiler. I boiled it down in her poems and came out so beautiful, full of life, believing in the future, ”said the writer Viktor Erofeev. “For me, she is externally and internally the embodiment of poetry, and female. Feminine and masculine - such a combination, ”said the writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky. Her friends recalled how Bella Akhmadulina knew how to make friends, how she knew how to love, how she combined the incompatible. “Bella remained a fragrant soul to the very end, which is why she draws such a crowd in any frost. People feel that this is a person who possessed a moral tuning fork and never did a single false deed, Natalia Solzhenitsyna, the widow of the writer Solzhenitsyn, is sure. “Bella didn’t like it when they said: “A poet in Russia is more than a poet.” She said: "It's like you're not doing your job." She was just a poet. Maybe the highest and cleanest in recent times,” said journalist Yuri Rost. Her poems were not politicized and social. Until now, it is not clear how such "pure poetry" of complex phrases and images gathered five thousand seats in stadiums. Maybe it was a need for something incomprehensibly beautiful? And Bella, like an accidentally surviving pearl of the Silver Age, hypnotized space?

"She was born a hundred years after Pushkin and left after a century of Tolstoy's departure," writer Andrey Bitov said of Akhmadulina. In the hall of the House of Writers, during the farewell to Akhmadulina, there were mainly sixties people present. “With the departure of Bella, the question is whether the intelligentsia remains in the country. Or it will disappear and be replaced by intellectuals working for the market,” Russian Minister of Culture Alexander Avdeev said.

Bella Akhmadulina was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. The funeral was attended only by those closest to her. It was cold and silent, there was no pathos and solemn speeches. Her voice is on the record. The books are poetry. The Beautiful Lady herself is gone...

In 1997, a television program was prepared about Bella Akhmadullina from the cycle "Life of Remarkable People".

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The text was prepared by Tatyana Khalina

Used materials:

B. Messerer, "Bella's Flash" "Banner", 2011
Biography on the site www.c-cafe.ru
Biography on the website www.taini-zvezd.ru
T. Draka, "Bella Akhmadulina - the search for her own style", "Logos" Lviv, 2007

Bella Akhmadulina is a rare, stunning, remarkable phenomenon in Russian poetry. Her poetry is masculinely strong, her poetic talent is exceptional, and her mind is impeccable. She is recognizable in every line, it is impossible to confuse her with anyone ... Bella Akhmadulina was born on April 10, 1937 in the city of Moscow. Her father was the Deputy Minister - Akhat Valeevich Akhmadulin, a Tatar by nationality, and her mother was a translator of Russian-Italian origin. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the intelligent atmosphere prevailing in the family contributed to the development of Bella's creativity.

She began to publish at school, by the age of fifteen, having found her own creative style, she was engaged in a literary circle. Therefore, when the question arose of where to go to study after school, the decision was unambiguous - only the Literary Institute. True, she was expelled from it for some time when the poetess refused to support persecution directed against, but the official reason for her expulsion was an unsatisfactory assessment on the subject of Marxism-Leninism.

Then, at the institute, she was reinstated and graduated in 1960, and in the same year she already gained some fame thanks to her numerous poetic performances at Luzhniki, Moscow University and the Polytechnic Museum. She, along with her comrades in the workshop, with, with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, (she was married to him from 1955 to 1958) with Robert Rozhdestvensky gathered incredible audiences.

True, Bella wrote her most famous poem “On my street which year ...” back in 1959, when she was only twenty-two years old. Subsequently, Mikael Tariverdiev (1975) will write marvelous music to these poems, and this romance will sound in the cult Soviet film by Eldar Ryazanov "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!"

The first collection of the poetess "String" was published in 1962. In 1964, Bella Akhatovna became a film actress, starring in the film "Such a Guy Lives" by Vasily Shukshin, where she played the role of a journalist. This film was awarded the Golden Lion at the Cannes Film Festival. Then another film work followed - in the film "Sport, Sport, Sport" in 1970. In the same 1970, another collection of poems by Akhmadulina, “Music Lessons”, was released. Then followed: "Poems" (1975), "Snowstorm" (1977), "Candle" (1977), "Mystery" (1983), "Garden" (1989). The latter was awarded the State Prize of the USSR.

A huge place in the heart of the poetess was occupied by Georgia, which Akhmadulina visited in the seventies, and which she fell in love with with all her heart. Bella translated the poems of Georgian poets: G. Tabidze, N. Baratashvili and I. Abashidze, trying to convey the beauty of their words, their incredible lyricism to Russian-speaking readers. In 1974, she married Boris Messerer, and this was her fourth marriage. In 1979, the poetess took part in the creation of the literary almanac "Metropol". The almanac was uncensored, which corresponded to the freedom-loving spirit of Akhmadulina.

She more than once supported the disgraced Soviet dissident authors: Vladimir Voinovich, Lev Kopelov, Georgy Vladimirov. She published statements in their defense in The New York Times, her speeches were broadcast on Voice of America and Radio Liberty. The poetess died in 2010, on the twenty-ninth of November. In recent years, according to her husband, Bella Akhatovna was very ill, almost blind and moved by touch, but the spirit of this extraordinary woman was not broken. She did not like to reproduce in her lyrics the story of spiritual sorrow and suffering, but she often pointed to them, she understood the underlying basis of being: “Do not cry for me ... I will live!”

Bella Akhmadulina's first poems were published when the poetess was eighteen. After only a few years, her creative evenings were already sold out, and the texts became hits. Bella Akhmadulina published 33 poetry collections, wrote essays and essays, translated poems into Russian from many languages.

Young poetess with a civil position

Bella Akhmadulina was born in Moscow in 1937. The Spanish name Isabella was chosen for her by her grandmother. “I caught on early and shortened this name to “Bella”, the poetess said.

The first poems by Akhmadulina were published in 1955 by the October magazine. She then studied in the tenth grade, studied in the literary circle of Yevgeny Vinokurov at the Likhachev plant.

After school, Bella Akhmadulina entered the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky. The young poetess read her own poems to the selection committee. In her first year, she was already a fairly well-known author. At the age of 22, Akhmadulina wrote a poem "On my street for a year ...", which became a famous romance.

An excerpt from the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!"

Three years later, the poetess released her first book of poems - "String", about which Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote: “It is no coincidence that she called her first book “The String”: the sound of an utterly stretched string vibrated in her voice, it became even scary that it would break.<...>The voice magically shimmered and bewitched not only when reading poetry, but also in a simple everyday conversation, giving lacy grandiloquence even to prosaic trifles..

Performances by Akhmadulina gathered full halls, squares, stadiums. Not only was the voice of the poetess special, but also her artistic style. Bella Akhmadulina used interesting metaphors in her texts and wrote in the style of the golden age.

"My lyrical heroine, she is of origin even earlier than the twentieth century."

Bella Akhmadulina

In 1958, students of the Literary Institute - including Bella Akhmadulina - were forced to sign a collective letter demanding that Boris Pasternak be expelled from the country. At that time, the persecution of the writer associated with his Nobel Prize was in full swing. The poetess refused to sign the letter. And soon she was expelled, officially - for a failed exam in Marxism-Leninism. However, later Akhmadulina was reinstated, and she graduated from the Literary Institute with honors.

“If the Literary Institute taught me anything, it was how not to write and how not to live. I realized that life is partly an attempt to defend the sovereignty of the soul: not to succumb to temptations or threats.

Bella Akhmadulina

Actress, translator, dissident advocate

Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: www.pinterest.com

Leonid Kuravlyov, Vasily Shukshin and Bella Akhmadulina on the set of the film "Such a guy lives." Photo: prosodia.ru

Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: art-notes.ru

In the 1960s, Bella Akhmadulina acted in films. Vasily Shukshin's film "Such a Guy Lives", where the poetess played a journalist, received the Lion of St. Mark prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1964. In the film “Sport, Sport, Sport”, behind the scenes, Akhmadulina read her own poems “Here is the man who started running ...” and “You are a man! You are the minion of nature ... ".

The poetess did not write on acute social and political topics, but she participated in the political life of the Soviet Union. She supported the dissident movement, defended the disgraced Andrei Sakharov, Lev Kopelev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. She wrote official appeals, visited places of exile, spoke in foreign newspapers, on Radio Liberty and Voice of America.

For a long time, the repressions of Bella Akhmadulina did not concern: she was known, authoritative and loved by the public, her poems were translated into all European languages. However, in 1969, Akhmadulina's collection Chills was published in Frankfurt. Printing abroad was very risky. After that, the poetess was criticized in the Soviet press, and her new collections were severely censored. Akhmadulina's performances were banned until perestroika itself.

During these years, the poetess was engaged in translations. She traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and was especially fond of Georgia. Akhmadulina translated Georgian poetry into Russian - poems by Nikolai Baratashvili, Galaktion Tabidze, Irakli Abashidze.

“Probably, every person has a secret and beloved space on earth, which he rarely visits, but always remembers and often sees in his dreams. This is how I think about Georgia, and at night I dream about Georgian speech.”

Bella Akhmadulina

In addition to Georgian authors, Bella Akhmadulina translated the works of poets from Armenia and Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, Italy and France. In 1984, she was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples, the American Academy of Arts and Letters elected the poetess as its honorary member. Akhmadulina also created essays on contemporary poets, written, as Yevtushenko said, in "elegant prose."

Bella Akhmadulina and Boris Messerer

Bella Akhmadulina and Evgeny Yevtushenko. Photo: pravmir.ru

Boris Messerer and Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: www.nastroenie.tv

Boris Messerer and Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: alamy.com

Bella Akhmadulina was married four times: to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Yuri Nagibin and Eldar Kuliev. In 1974, the poetess married for the last time - to the sculptor Boris Messerer.

He later recalled their acquaintance: "Bella at home. In shoes with low heels. Dark sweater. The hairstyle is random. The sight of her tiny, slender figure begins to ache at the heart. We are talking about dogs. She leaves soon. And suddenly, with all the clarity that came out of nowhere, I understand that if this woman wanted to, then I, without a moment's hesitation, would leave with her forever..

Bella Akhmadulina "gave away" autographs and poems, wrote them on napkins and scraps of notebook sheets. Messerer made copies and kept them for himself. He recorded conversations with his wife on a dictaphone. So there were four volumes of her works.

Boris Messerer accompanied his wife at creative evenings, Akhmadulina wrote about him: "Oh, the guide of my timid habits! .." Back in the years of persecution, Messerer suggested that she move to Tarusa. To this city, which Bella Akhmadulina often called her muse, she dedicated a collection of the same name with her husband's watercolors.

In total, during the life of the poetess, 33 collections of her poems were published. In recent years, Akhmadulina and Boris Messerer lived in Peredelkino. She continued to participate in creative evenings, but she wrote little: an eye disease interfered. In 2010, Bella Akhmadulina passed away. She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. After the death of the poetess, Boris Messerer wrote a memoir book "Bella's Flash", and a monument to Akhmadulina was erected in Tarusa, which was made according to his sketches.

Name: Bella (Isabella) Akhmadulina (Bella Ahmadulina)

Age: 73 years old

Place of Birth: Moscow

Place of death: Peredelkino, Leninsky district, Moscow region

Activity: poetess, writer, translator

Family status: was married to Boris Messerer

Bella Akhmadulina - Biography

Perhaps there is no person who has not heard this combination of first and last name at least once in his life, it is in this interpretation that Bella Akhmadulina will forever be remembered by her readers. The poetess had an inimitable manner of reading her poems and a subtle sensitive soul. How did her creative biography begin?

Childhood, the family of the poetess Bella Akhmadulina

Full name Akhmadulina Isabella. She is a native Muscovite, born before the war in a family that never needed money. The family was considered intelligent, since his father was a deputy minister, his mother was a KGB major, a translator. The Spanish name was chosen for the daughter at the insistence of her grandmother, who was in love with this country, later the poetess herself shortened her name.

What kind of roots did not mix in Bella: Tatar, Russian, Italian. Grandmother raised her granddaughter herself, because her mother and father worked for her. Passion for reading and classical literature was instilled in Nadezhda Mitrofanovna.

The war did not bypass the Akhmadulin family: the father went to fight on the front line. For safety, the girl was sent to Kazan to another grandmother, as soon as the war ended, Bella returned with her mother back to Moscow and went to school, but the classes did not give the girl much pleasure.

She loved literature, read a lot and wrote absolutely competently. In her school years, Bella had already begun to write her poems. The debut of a literary biography can be considered the publication of her works in the magazine "October", then she was 18 years old. Two years later, to some critics, Akhmadulina's poems seemed a little patriotic, not in the spirit of the times.

Bella Akhmadulina - your own style and taste

School years determined the dream, she decided that literature would become the main thing in her life. Parents insisted on journalism, the daughter listened to their advice and tried to enter Moscow State University, but did not pass the entrance examinations. I had to go to work in the Metrostroevets newspaper, the first published articles and poems appeared. A year later, the future poetess entered the Literary Institute, but she was expelled for refusing to recognize Boris Pasternak as a traitor.

In the Irkutsk editorial office of Literaturnaya Gazeta there was a vacancy for a freelance correspondent. There, Akhmadulina's talent was noticed and the editor-in-chief put in a good word in favor of being restored to a literary university, which she managed to graduate with honors. The sixties began with graduation from the institute, two years later the first collection "String" was published, which was admired by and. In Soviet times, these poets already had a huge weight in the literary environment.

Confession

Creative evenings, recitation of their works went in an endless stream. Bella Akhmadulina's poems were characterized by airiness and lightness. For these qualities, fans fell in love with Akhmadulina's poetry. This critics saw the bombast of the style and the old-fashioned theme of the poetic lines. Collections began to come out one after another literally once a year.

In the seventies, the poetess discovered Georgia for the first time and dedicates her next poetry collection to her. She translated many Georgian poets into Russian, thereby bringing the work of this wonderful nation closer to the Soviet reader. The Georgian periodical press remained loyal to Bella Akhmadulina and continued to publish her poems even during the period of the ideological ban.

Akhmadulina wrote about the great

In the biography of the poetess, many essays about those whose work delighted and continues to amaze generations will forever remain. She wrote about Marina Tsvetaeva,. Bella did it with pleasure, because she knew some of them personally. At the age of 22, Akhmadulina starred in the film “Such a Guy Lives”, the second film was a picture about athletes. Her poems were heard in the songs "Irony of Fate ..." and "Cruel Romance", in the film "Office Romance".

Bella Akhmadulina - personal life

Bella Akhmadulina had her first marriage at the age of 18, her first husband - Evgeny Yevtushenko, this union lasted for three years, no children were born. Immediately remarried the writer Yuri Nagibin, eight years can be called a long time, but still this marriage broke up. Bella adopted a girl from an orphanage. The third husband to whom Bella gave a daughter was Eldar Kuliev, the son of a famous writer. The last husband in the personal life of a famous poetess was an artist and set designer Boris Messerer. They lived together for more than thirty years.

She belongs to the generation of the "sixties" - poets who entered Russian literature at the turn of the fifties and sixties of the last century. The poetess has always been very popular, her work was admired, and crowds of fans always revolved around her. Bella Akhmadulina's first husband, poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, met her at the Literary Institute. For both of them, this was the first marriage that lasted three years. According to Yevtushenko's memoirs, they loved each other very much, often argued and quarreled, but quickly reconciled, and for what reason their marriage broke up is unknown - the poetess did not like to talk about her personal life.

In the photo - Bella Akhmadulina and Evgeny Yevtushenko

For the second time, Akhmadulina married the writer Yuri Nagibin, for whom she became the fifth wife. Bella Akhatovna has always been a very attractive woman, and at that time, and it was 1959, she was also extravagant - she wore a veil, drew a fly on her cheek, and the writer could not resist not only this beauty, but also the poems of the poetess. They lived together for eight years, and then Nagibin kicked his wife out of the house, saying that he would no longer live with her. The fact is that the second husband of Bella Akhmadulina, who unexpectedly returned home, witnessed a scene that struck him on the spot - he found his wife in the company of a friend with whom they were making lesbian love. Akhmadulina did not want to part with Nagibin and even took a girl from the orphanage for this, but even with a child, the writer did not take her back, moreover, according to the testimony of people who knew him, he did not like children, and the appearance of the adopted daughter of the poetess did not touch him at all .

In the photo - with Yuri Nagibin

The civil marriage of Bella Akhatovna with Eldar Kuliev, the son of the famous Balkar writer Kaisyn Kuliev, was very short. Eldar was seventeen years younger than the poetess, drank a lot and was too "simple" for Akhmadulina. She gave birth to his daughter Lisa, and soon they parted. The fourth and last husband of Bella Akhmadulina was theatrical artist Boris Messerer. They met by chance while walking their dogs, and Messerer fell in love with her at first sight. He was not familiar with her poetry, and when for the first time he read the poems that Bella Akhatovna dedicated to him, he was smitten on the spot.

In the photo - Akhmadulina and Boris Messerer

Later, Messerer began to collect the works of the poetess, which she gave away to all her friends and acquaintances, and when he put them together, it turned out to be a whole four-volume book. Akhmadulina was completely unsuited to everyday life, having married for the fourth time, she left her daughters in the care of her mother and nanny in an apartment bought by her ex-husband Yuri Nagibin. When the eldest daughter Anna, already an adult, found out that she was adopted, she left the matter and subsequently refused to give interviews about their life. About herself, the poetess said that "everyday difficulties for her are completely insurmountable." She loved feasts, and, according to many, drinking ruined the talent of the poetess, but her last husband was indifferent to her addiction. But he spoiled Bella Akhatovna as best he could - he bought her expensive things, jewelry, trying to make her always look stunning.

Messerer was called the guardian angel of the poetess, who not only took upon himself the solution of all everyday problems, but also put her literary heritage in order. After the death of his wife, Boris Messerer wrote the book "Bella's Flash" in memory of her. They lived together for thirty years - until the death of the poetess, and this was Akhmadulina's longest and happiest marriage.