“You made me cry over my own poems for the second time, the first time I cried when I composed them.”
CONVINCING FLIGHT
ABOVE THE Osprey's Nest
“They are in love and happy.
He: - When you are not there, it seems to me -
you just went into the next room.
She: - When you go into the next room, it seems to me
you are no more..."
E I read these poems for the first time, probably years sixteen ago. They sunk into memory and remained a kind of tuning fork of depth, completeness and even authenticity of feeling. Love. It is obvious that of the two, the one who loves the most when his beloved leaves the door is his death - the earth is empty, they say, without you... And a rare feeling for the word. Simple, touching lines “grew up” with me. I did not forget them, although I forgot many other poems, read, heard, even edited... I am sure that the secret is in the extraordinary “balance” of prose speech, which turns recitative into genuine poetry.
It was a phenomenon as paradoxical as the poetry of Vera Pavlova...
And I never thought that I would meet “live” the author of this poem. I even forgot the author’s last name then. For it sounded as simple (if not to say ordinary) as this revelation poem: the truth revealed on the run, in the bustle of life, in the magnetism of sincere attraction...
Pavlova - that was the name. Vera Pavlova.
“Daughters on the pager: “Call urgently!”
To the Lord on the pager: “Save and preserve!”
“Mom, I’m at Kirill’s! Well, that’s enough, don’t shout!”
So, I got it.
So, I got it."
And this magnificent prayer, read once upon a time in a magazine collection, delighted and surprised for many years...
I personally had the good fortune to meet Vera Pavlova on May 30, 2008. It was a phenomenon as paradoxical as the poetry of Vera Pavlova: a famous, to some extent even scandalous (thanks to the critics, but more on that later!) poetess in the Ryazan outback. In the regional - former district - center of Skopin (its coat of arms depicts the disappeared steppe bird osprey), standing in the middle of central Russia since the 16th century, and changing very little over all five centuries of its existence. In a town that looks like it came out of a painting by the Itinerants, you will find “Moscow Courtyard”, “The Last Tavern at the Outpost”, and “Meadow Before the Storm”. In the town, the center of cultural and spiritual life of which, in my deep conviction, and no offense to other cultural centers of Skopin, is the Youth Theater "Limit". Artistic director - Vladimir Del. The actors are an “amateur” troupe (made up of doctors, workers, students, drivers), but a troupe that shines with acting professionalism. At the “Christmas Parade” in St. Petersburg, the famous critic and chairman of the jury Elena Gorfunkel told the audience, anticipating the release of “The Limit”: “This is a theater in which professional children perform.” Over the twenty years of its existence (this year is the anniversary year for the Limit), this theater has become a laureate of more than eighty theater festivals in Russia and abroad.
And over the course of six years, this team prepared two performances based on the poems of Vera Pavlova: “I Yabet Yulbul” and “Everywhere.” The first (“I love you” backwards) was staged several years ago based on the poems of Vera Pavlova with the addition of scenes from Bunin’s “Easy Breathing” and... true stories from the lives of Skopinsky teenagers. The stage power of this production exceeded all expectations! The second performance, which was shown especially for Vera on May 30, is the “Intimate Diary of an Excellent Student,” staged and colored with poetry (directed by Vladimir Del), which she carries with amazing talent on her fragile shoulders - alone! - young actress Ekaterina Avdankina. Vera, shocked by the new reading of her own poems, gave Catherine a disk on which the author’s recording of the reading of “An Intimate Diary...”, with the inscription: “You made me cry over my own poems for the second time, the first time I cried when I composed them.”
You need to see how Catherine, wearing a baseball cap with her visor backwards, rushes around the stage - along the classical ancient Greek stage in the lower plane of the auditorium, from which the benches spread out like an amphitheater - and with organic teenage playfulness says: “Filina and Emelina have already guessed all the boys in our class on The Moon and the Sun...” And how her half-childish face changes when her lips pronounce the lines for which everything was conceived:
“Soon I will completely squander my childhood gold reserves...”
Adults and serious people they almost always forget how they themselves were children. However, there are exceptions to every rule. Vera Pavlova, who herself looked like a teenager in jeans and a sweater, with wonderful flowing hair - this is how she sat among the dressed-up Skopino beau monde - will never forget about her childhood. Because parting with him is painful, every renunciation of childhood, dictated by circumstances, is painful, even physiological:
“We fall out of childhood like baby teeth...”
The momentary discomfort in the wound remaining in the place of the baby tooth root will pass, but the longing for what was lost will persist and will irritate the balanced, successfully socialized health of an adult:
“Youth is a complication of all childhood diseases...”
But what’s surprising is that yesterday’s teenager Ekaterina Avdankina, reading Vera Pavlova’s poems, seems to be transported…twenty years into the future and looks into her current state with aged eyes. And fleeting fatigue flashes in her gaze, dripping a tear onto her velvety cheek with a genuine blush... And then the “retrospective” breaks down, and the girl again openly complains: “I started and haven’t stopped for a whole week!”
This is where the public was frapped - well, no one is used to rumors 
youth theater “Limit”, nor Vera Pavlova herself. After the production of “Ya Yabet Yulbul” in 2004, a wave of indignation hit the theater from education officials and employees of the notorious secondary (very secondary!) education system. “An honored teacher is writing to you... This is licentiousness and depravity!.. How can THIS be brought to the stage!.. I am shocked.” The scandal reached its climax after the festival of Ryazan theaters working for young people, “On the Threshold of Youth.” Representatives of theaters that did not receive such an ovation as “Ya Yabet Yulbul”, together with the “children’s jury”, gave their verdict to the performance:
“...I would like to remind the director that the group performs not on the dance floor, but in the Temple of Arts, and playing Tatu music on the theater stage is blasphemy!.. The theater was created for the relaxation of the soul and the beauty of the eyes, and not for to bring dirt and vulgarity to the stage... What should people understand when they read the title “Ya Yabet Yulbul”?.. Creators with star fever should not be allowed to attend the festival!”
At the same time, the reviews of the St. Petersburg theater jury about the same performance were sincerely laudatory.
The leaders of "The Limit" Vladimir and Irina Del, naturally, do not like to remember this. But, characteristically, pedagogical passions have settled down, stupid assumptions regarding the moral character of the theater troupe have moved into the background, and a performance with such lyrical and - again! - a paradoxical title, like all the works of Vera Pavlova, remained one of the pearls of the “Limit” repertoire. The fact that it is not on display now can be explained as simply as possible: the girls who masterfully played in it have grown up, some have gotten married. More adult roles are now played.
After the birth of “Everywhere” there were two pearls.
What’s surprising is that it was “The Limit” that gave impetus to Ryazan’s acquaintance with Vera Pavlova. Believe it or check it - but until Delhi found her poems on the Internet, was imbued with them, and caught fire creative idea, they didn’t stage the first performance, they didn’t write to Vera - literary Ryazan had no idea about this extraordinary poet! Well, only a few have encountered her poems. And then, perhaps, just as I, keeping the lines in my memory, forgot about the name - about the one who came up with them... At a blitz discussion organized on May 30 between the performance and the creative evening of Vera herself, it was said that for Skopin she was “discovered "Exactly Delhi. And Vera complimented the director: “The Limit” is the only theater that honestly informed the author about the use of her poems in its productions. Although precedents for the use of her poetry on stage occurred in other cities of Russia, including the capitals. But only “The Limit” dared to fully stage Pavlova’s poems - in other performances they serve either as a background or as a kind of “seasoning” for the action. That is probably why a correspondence friendship began between the theater and the poetess. Lasted five years. This friendship brought Vera Pavlova on May 30, 2008 to a town previously unfamiliar to her.
“Create? What are you doing! - Curdle
soured life
to ennoble life,
to make it easier for her
love. And love her, fat one,
like yellow Easter cottage cheese...
And you tell me about supermundane secrets.
And rise up for me, prophet..."
Peripheral life, alas, is difficult to ennoble even with such undoubtedly talented poetry. The provinces have their own criteria, including moral ones - sometimes Domostroev’s - their own ideas about poetry, their own creative hierarchy...
Vera had to listen to the speech of the honorary citizen of the city Skopin (I will not name the name out of delicacy): “It seems to me that such poems should not be listened to by men. There are too many details... But I liked the rest.” I wonder what the “rest” is? The rest of the play “Everywhere” is that the girl inevitably becomes a woman, and how she realizes her destiny:
“...The rest of the time I am a Woman!”
Vera answered the wary citizen that she does not divide her listeners by gender, and, moreover, believes that it is not a sin for men to better understand women’s nature, share and destiny. The last one - through the first two components.
Skopinsky poets lined up in the evening to get to a meeting with Vera, and raced to the stage to read their poems to her - and she thanked her for each performance. In her behavior one could feel the relaxedness of a “Western” person, unaccustomed to the far-fetched conventions of the Russian “life.” Do you know how Vera signed autographs? You’d never think of it in your life!.. She put pieces of paper on which short poems with a signature were written in her calligraphic handwriting into a basket, and invited everyone to read them out loud. With wishes like: “Playful! With passion! Philosophical! The daredevil received a piece of paper with a poetic gift for eternal memory.
This is what I got:
“To you.
Knocking off your heels.
Breaking oars, wings, skis.
Race with death.
The gap is getting smaller.
You're getting closer."
The desire for... is the leitmotif of the creativity and life of any real poet. Objects of desire are different. But this does not change the meaning of the driving force. In the biography of Vera Pavlova, the light of a guiding star, which has the power of a protective field, is clearly visible.
Of course, the visiting celebrities were asked questions about themselves. The answers to them, unlike her poems, left a kind of veil hiding something from prying eyes. The first stages of Vera Pavlova's biography look stereotypical: Muscovite, Gnesinka, musicology, birth of her first daughter on June 2, 1983. She lovingly calls her daughter her muse - the first poem was written on the same day right in the maternity hospital. Now the muse is 25 years old. Vera has two daughters, both of them live in Moscow and write poetry. The work of one of them, the mother, is much closer... Vera spoke few words about the American pages of the biography, and Stephen, the poetess’s husband, generally saved details. “My homeland is music and the Russian language” - this is about the contact of cultures. “It’s a shame to write poetry, it’s not a shame to write only about what cannot be said otherwise,” this is the essence of poetry. “Some write to be published, others for themselves, like me. This is a physiological process. Like breathing or something else,” this is about the attitude towards one’s own poetry. It seems to me that Vera and I understood each other.
...In fact, an exotic biography does not affect the quality of creativity. With the exception of very rare cases - such as, for example, Evgeny Karasev, but we will certainly talk about this phenomenon another time.
It is very likely that Vera’s arrival is connected with a family celebration, her daughter’s anniversary. However, almost the day before, I set off on a journey three hundred kilometers, ten to twenty years from Moscow, on a regular bus from the Shchelkovo bus station, to watch a performance based on my works and kiss the embarrassed Ekaterina on both cheeks, to congratulate the director, listen to the poems of the Skopinites, give a lot of interviews and, tired, drink tea in the hospitable foyer of the theater - it’s also a living room, to show my American husband, Stephen, the Russia that he does not know, despite his Russian roots...
“Why do you write poetry?” and “How did you meet your current husband?” - these two questions sounded almost simultaneously. Vera gave the same answer: poetry must be written so that there is always a chance to find your Prince. Once in Moscow, a courier from the American embassy found her - in a white Mercedes, into which a white horse from fairy tales had been transformed - and invited her to the embassy for a meeting with a man who was thoroughly familiar with the work of the poetess, loved him and was eager to meet her personally .
This man turned out to be Stephen. This was the prince. For seven years now, the Princess and the Prince have been living happily in the Far Away Kingdom - the Thirtieth State.
While riding on a bus and admiring the endless Ryazan fields through a poorly washed window (a killer cliche! I bring it only to highlight the beauty of Vera’s poetic language!), the Princess wrote a poem:
“I know I'm good.
I am a match for the Prince.
The Princess and the Pea
Globe."
Not everyone has such an honor - to become the first listeners of a small masterpiece.
Of course, enthusiasm for Vera Pavlova’s poems is not shared by many respected critics. In her own words, more than once she had to read, even on paper, something like “Wagging her ass, Vera Pavlova entered...” She prefers not to talk about the content of electronic critical articles at all. And what can you say if Alexander Arkhangelsky literally writes the following on one of the popular portals: “Vera Pavlova came up with poetic stupidity in time. She threw a sophisticated lyrical slogan into the surrounding literary space. It seems like this: “I am Verka/ - a sexy counter-revolutionary.” The formula, no matter how meaningless, is so convenient for quotation. It’s not necessary to read poetry after this…” and defines its concept as “spiritual poetic eroticism.” Vladimir Novikov already states on paper: “The system of direct shock applied by Pavlova is unthinkable for the current magazine bonton; it also frightens off criticism, since critical analysis requires quotations, and it is impossible to find even a quatrain within the bounds of decency here.” And even Maria Levchenko looks at Pavlova’s work from the same angle: “The physicality of the text, beloved by postmodernists, is replaced by Pavlova’s textuality of the body. The poet submits to the rhythm and music of his body, opens up for him the possibility of speaking, and - a word is born: Pavlova’s well-worn cliché about the birth of a word unfolds in literal and step-by-step realization...” Fortunately, Levchenko does not see in the analogy of the birth of a word and the birth of a person what could would devalue poetry.
In the poetry of Vera Pavlova there is a lot not of the body - there is a lot of poetry itself
Will another woman be allowed to wedge herself into the sluggish male debate in order to have her say? Unfortunately, one gets the impression that smart, educated literary figures are reasoning in the same vein as the honorary citizen of the city Skopin, who, due to his age and upbringing, can be forgiven for being shocked by a public allusion to regular ladies’ difficulties. How can unhappy people, infected with such intellectual hypocrisy, watch TV?..
I dare to suggest that this is the legacy of many historical layers, from the already mentioned “Domostroy” to the militant asexuality of the builders of communism. Over the course of several long eras, so-called male chauvinism has developed: in this context, a male monopoly on the discussion of certain topics and problems that are “indecent for a noble lady.” Despite the fact that everything traditionally considered indecent concerns gender relations and their consequences - that is, the most women's problems. Here it’s not far from outright sexism - the myth that a woman cannot write literary works above a certain “bar” that deserve attention persists in the minds and hearts of the strong half of humanity. Therefore, it is simply a pity for intellectually rich people who have fallen into the snare of a tenacious legend - or into a thinking stereotype that turns a literary allusion towards obscenity. Something like: “And in the stone arches of the Assumption Cathedral, I seem to have high, arched eyebrows...” Well, at least eyebrows, and not other bulges...
In the poetry of Vera Pavlova there is a lot not of the body - there is a lot of poetry itself, which is all the more remarkable because the poetess demonstratively does not resort to currently fashionable techniques in working with words. Its “physical” content, “carnal” surroundings are just one of the well-chosen artistic techniques that have justified themselves with a powerful resonance in culture and society. She does not abuse centons and reminiscences. The paradoxical, even aphoristic nature of her lines is sometimes based on allusions (The Princess and the Pea is very indicative), however, in my opinion, there are not many borrowings of any kind in Pavlova’s poetry. On the contrary, it is difficult to blame her for any secondary issues. Obviously, the blatant frankness of the poems was a poetic revelation of its own, the opening of a new “gateway” in women’s creativity - if anyone wants to divide creativity along gender lines. The main advantage of Vera Pavlova’s poetry is its apparent simplicity, even ordinariness, which is impressive precisely because these are as if the thoughts of an ordinary woman, dawning in the mind with a premonition - and breaking through, at the moment of contact with the poems, with consciousness: “Both I, and I thought so.” !” Therefore, Vera Pavlova will never lack unity with her readers. Especially female readers. But, as we have already found out, she does not suffer from the fact that the recipients of her creations are mainly women.
And, of course, man (critic) suggests - but God disposes. Vera Pavlova is the winner of the respectable literary prize named after Apollo Grigoriev in 2000 (the poetess joked lightly about what this prize meant to her: “Pointless money spent!”). In 2007, the New Yorker magazine published four poems by Vera Pavlova. Not a single Russian poet has published in this magazine since Brodsky. Moreover, in America, which we are accustomed to consider a soulless country, a kingdom of consumption that knows two books - a check and the Bible, a film is being made about a Russian poetess. All this suggests that Vera Pavlova is a special phenomenon in world literature that cannot be ignored.
And she has long objected to her opponents:
“Don’t touch this song -
she will sing herself.
But than something flying is more corporeal,
the more convincing the flight".
Elena SAFRONOVA
ZINZIVER No. 2 (10) (2008)
* * *
At night outside my door
beaten words cry -
I let you in, I warm you in my bosom,
widow of the murdered word...
* * *
Still life: where the table had food -
coffin. Moderately dead
I'm putting it in reserve
dead words into rhyme.
There, on the other side of the gate,
in that golden-domed city,
everyone speaks in poetry.
Dead - dead tongue
* * *
I realized where my soul is -
in the lowest, most delicate layer of skin,
in the wrong side, which is closer to the body,
in what distinguishes pain from caress,
is that he seeks pain more than affection...
* * *
They exchanged rings secretly.
They flew around the city in a sleigh.
Blizzards covered them with a scarf
and the snowstorms sprinkled them with hops.
And they had only one path,
there was so much nowhere to go,
that I didn’t want chickens and feather beds,
that I didn’t even want to kiss,
and just expose your faces to the wind,
but only in the wind your face changes.
Blizzards are blowing softly. Scary to sleep.
It will be even more scary to wake up.
* * *
Man: blow, pressure.
First without resistance
let me squeeze the juice,
I’ll remind you later: pubis
hides a bone under the pulp,
and you are not the owner: a guest.
* * *
Loneliness is a disease
sexually transmitted.
I don't climb, and you don't climb.
It's better to just be together,
let's chat about this and that,
not about that, not about that let's keep quiet
and let's hug and understand:
lonely is incurable.
* * *
No love? - So let's do it!
We did it. What will we do next? -
Let's show care, tenderness, courage,
jealousy, satiety, lies.
* * *
Let's touch each other
as long as we have our hands,
palm, forearm, elbow,
let's love for the torment,
let's torture each other
disfigure, mutilate,
to remember better
to make parting easier.
* * *
Why did you count how many men
and how many times, and how many times did she cum?
Did you really think it wouldn’t be enough?
And - it was not enough. List of men -
insomnia - reading to the middle,
I found myself in a dark forest.
I'm scared. I'm going to confess myself.
I bear myself as punishment.
* * *
scream - I don’t scream, I just whine and whine,
presenting you with one or the other cheekbone
* * *
Don't run up to the porch so quickly
my house burned down.
Don't look so closely at my face
you see - it's naked.
Don't take my hands - this poem
and so he gives it to Akhmatova.
Better go home, okay?
Get out of here, get out!
* * *
Put your finger on it as a shhh sign
to my small lips
However, they are no less
my main lips
However, they are no more
However, why the main
However, more about other things
I can't because - shh
* * *
Don't tell your body I.
Don't tell my body My.
With the edge of myself bending back my edges,
my body is cut according to its own standards,
know: when I finish, I finish
and, not mine, I’m certainly not yours
* * *
I'm studying from under the stick
wonderful works of the Lord:
life is not serious, but sad.
Death is serious, but fun.
Oh death, your taste is sour milk
and your peace is evergreen,
your full course is like a dream, absentee
and the whole thing is a running line.
* * *
One times one equals one
Hence the conclusion that together you are still alone
Hence the conclusion that together you and the other are one
Hence the conclusion: your second, he, like you, is alone
* * *
The postman cannot bear these words,
the plane's wings roll,
these, smelling of a scorched heart
and peace, gone to waste
overnight, in the homeland, alien
to both of us... To this whole world:
I love you. No answer needed.
I'll strain myself, tearing the envelope.
* * *
I brushed my teeth.
I don't owe anything more to this day.
* * *
scratched by a sharp wing,
flew right over the table
quiet angel,
and right behind him
swearing cherub
* * *
"Us. You"
We only know how to love the dead.
And we love the living clumsily,
approximately. And even closeness
doesn't teach us. Long separation
doesn't teach us. Serious illnesses
we are not taught. Old age does not teach us.
Only death will teach. She really is
professional in love!..
* * *
You don't need to pray for me.
Otherwise, heeding the tearful prayer,
nothing will happen to me,
something will pass me by
will guide you on a different path,
will remind you of the omnipotence of the bonds,
and something evil will not pass
the one for whom I pray in tears.
"Escamillo"
I don't remember them. I don't remember hands
who tore my dresses off.
And I remember the dresses. I remember how much torment
Forgotten hugs cost me,
like my mother didn’t let me in, like a child
looked tragically from the playpen,
how it fell, partly with heels,
into the arms of the evening, and he was fresh-
brewed infusion from rain
yesterday and fake Velcro,
who stained without mercy,
formal outfit, sexy, best
and that bench where, earnestly scraping
scraps of paint, wet, crazy,
I said: I love you.
I don’t remember who. For what - I don’t know.
"This one, what's his name..."
you excite me
like a criminal case
you're leaving me
like a lifeless body
you forget me
like fatal evidence
you count me
to the faceless face
women
***
The taste of taste is the taste of your mouth.
The taste of sight - I lick your tears -
so, half with rain sea water,
and my mouth... In search of words, I’ll put it in, I’ll put it in
tongue to tongue, taste buds to nipples
your taste, to taste the taste,
as if then I will understand what we should do,
How to avoid what I'm so afraid of...
***
You could pollinate flowers with your gaze,
you could sing along with the naiads with your eyes,
you could, you could... But could you
respond to a direct gaze with a direct gaze
your confidante sitting next to you
on the edge of a humming void?
***
invisible tear. It flows
along the inner surface of the cheek,
it flows through groundwater,
an influx of common melancholy,
it flows for no apparent reason,
and the secrets are known only to her,
it is the cause of folds and wrinkles
near the eyes, around the smile, between the eyebrows
***
Love is a lesson in breathing in unison.
Trouble is a lesson in chain breathing.
And only sleep, and only sound sleep -
a lesson in breathing itself.
The breath is freed from smell,
and the exhalation is not tattooed with speech,
and manifests itself in features - two or three -
faces - the face is achingly human.
You are human. Remember: only you
and no one else - neither beast nor bird -
You can sleep on your back so that you can be from a height
your face could come down to you,
so that, having exhaled black dust from your lungs,
breathe like in childhood, white, first,
and so that by the smile on your lips
your soul recognized you in the darkness.
Photo: www.verapavlova.ru Vera Pavlova
T-
Writer and journalist Linor Goralik has published a new book, “Private Individuals: Biographies of Poets Told by Themselves.” The New Publishing House, which is publishing the book, plans to subsequently publish several volumes. The first volume includes Goralik's interviews with thirteen poets, including Mikhail Aizenberg, Sergei Zavyalov, Vladimir Gandelsman, Dmitry Kuzmin, Alexander Barash, Alexey Tsvetkov, Vera Pavlova, Sergei Gandlevsky, Elena Fanailova and others. Here is an interview with poetess Vera Pavlova.
Linor Goralik: Please tell us about your family before you.
Vera Pavlova: My family tree is not very branchy. The family tradition goes no further. As for the great-grandfathers, I have information about only three great-grandfathers: great-grandfather Nikolai was kicked out of the seminary for drunkenness and became a commissar for combating moonshine during the Soviet era; Vladimir’s great-grandfather was killed by lightning; according to folk custom, he was buried in damp earth for three days, but he never came to life; Great-grandfather Gregory was a tailor in a Jewish shtetl, visiting foreigners took him with them to Paris, he settled down there, returned for his family, the revolution broke out, but he did not give up hope of leaving and forced his daughters to speak French, which sounded quite good in a poor Jewish shtetl. defiantly. I don't know anything about my great-grandmothers.
Now grandparents. Dad’s parents lived their entire lives in the village of Zhelyabovo, Ustyuzhansky district, Vologda region. I have never seen my father’s mother or grandmother Anya. She gave birth to fifteen children, raised nine, and worked as a saleswoman. The postcards we received from her had no punctuation marks at all. When grandfather Matvey went to the front, she dreamed of the Mother of God and said: “Don’t cry, Anna, your man will return.” He returned - he arrived on a trophy bicycle in the fall of 1945. Only from him in the village of Zhelyabovo did they learn that the war was over. I knew Grandfather Matvey: in his old age he visited his children scattered throughout the country once a year. He also came to us, brought cranberries in an oversized suitcase, sat on the sofa, diluted his vodka with hot sweet tea, watched TV and aloud duplicated what was happening on the screen (“oh, he’s gone,” “oh, he’s sleeping”), but I almost didn’t understand him: dialectisms, swearing, Vologda accent. After the death of his wife (he was nearly eighty), he took into his house a sixty-year-old woman, who ran away from him a month later - she was not ready for daily sex.
That's almost all I know about my dad's parents. I know everything about my mother’s: they lived with us. Grandfather Fedya - Fyodor Nikolaevich Nikolsky - came from a priestly dynasty, it was destined for him to become a priest. He became a political instructor. I have never met a kinder and gentler person. How handsome he was! In his youth he was a cavalryman. At an equestrian competition, he unsuccessfully swung his saber and cut off the horse's ear. He was so ashamed that he never sat on a horse again in his life. When I, a baby, got sick, screaming incessantly, and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong, grandfather came up to the crib and said: “Her ear hurts. She cocks her head to the side. Horses always do this when their ears hurt.” Indeed: I had otitis media. Grandfather was almost the only head of the personnel department of a large plant in Moscow who hired Jews. He lived ninety years without one week (delicacies had already been purchased for the anniversary, but it turned out - for the funeral), and would have lived longer if he had not gone to a meeting of the veterans’ council in cold weather. But he went, in full dress uniform, wearing orders, and on the way back he fell into the snow and died. More precisely, he died and fell: he died standing.
And grandma is still with us. Rakhil Grigorievna Livshits. She will be ninety-nine years old in March. She raised everyone: my mother and uncle (alone, in evacuation), me and my brother (she retired before the deadline), my daughters (I will take them, hand them over - and I know: they are like Christ in his bosom). Everything rested on her. I don't know a stronger person. I think that even now, when she sits in a chair and watches the Culture channel all day long, everything rests on her. Grandmother, my homeland.
Parents?
Dad: Anatoly Matveevich Desyatov. Tenth Tenth. Born in a cart, on a forest road, they didn’t take him to the hospital. I walked to school through the forest, lighting matches in the dark: from the wolves. At the age of eighteen, your Lomonosov, went to Moscow and entered the Institute of Steel and Alloys. Nugget. Now he is a Doctor of Science. He would be an academician if he had even a drop of vanity. But he only has a passion for his business - the enrichment of copper ores (and even for fishing and fire water). My favorite chapter of our family’s history is how dad once stayed too long at work, urinated in the reagent, copper extraction immediately increased, he added urea to the reagent, received a bonus of 6,000 Brezhnev rubles, and they bought me a piano.
Mom, Irina Fedorovna Nikolskaya, also graduated from MISiS. They met at the institute. At ski competitions. Mom was not very athletic, she walked and walked along the ski track, and then thought: “What the hell?” - and lay down on the snow, facing the sky. And dad rushed past. I stopped - who is it lying here? Recently my parents celebrated their golden wedding. There was, by the way, something to celebrate: both mom and dad, exchanging rings in the registry office, were virgins. The newlyweds were sent to Norilsk, where I was conceived: in a hostel, on a cot, on a polar night. Mom felt very good that night, she said. Dad answered my direct question: “I don’t remember.” A few days before the birth, my mother returned to Moscow. I missed my chance to be born in the Arctic Circle, or, better yet, on an airplane.
What kind of child were you?
My childhood was impeccable. Three-room apartment: in one room my grandparents, in the other - my dad and mom, in the third - me (and seven years later my brother Seryozha). A perfectly balanced (through the efforts of my grandmother), slender, indestructible universe. Everything is on time, everything is in its place. I help my grandmother with this as much as I can - I make sure that the glasses are in the “spectacle cabinet”, the watch is in the “chapel” (both are on the sideboard). I have never seen my parents quarrel (although they never kissed in front of me). I am the navel of the earth. They feed me black caviar so that the legs are not crooked (rickets, intrauterine life in the polar night), I eat out the center, and the flat blue jar turns into an amphitheater, blackened with the heads of numerous spectators. After admiring the animated picture, I eat them all.
What did this child want? How were you, little one, built from the inside?
Memories of early childhood are patchy and disgusting: I get up at night, look for a potty, pee in my dad’s slipper; We are driving out of town in our Pobeda, the barrier at the crossing falls on our hood with a thud; I wake up in someone else’s house and cannot open my eyes because they are festered and stuck together; I'm stepping in the forest wasp's nest, I run, the wasps follow me, bite me, buzz, I throw myself into the river. More or less clear and unpleasant memories for me begin from the time when boys began to play some role in life. Yes, some kind of key one. This is where the memory woke up. This, I think, is a girl’s memory - a memory that is not interested in anything but love.
When is this?
At six years old. Vova Strelkov, neighbor. First marriage proposal. Accepted without hesitation. When we met in the yard, he always asked: “Have you changed your mind?” And then either I changed my mind, or he stopped asking - I don’t remember, it doesn’t matter anymore, a girl’s memory is only interested in love in action. The next love was in the first grade - bug-eyed Oleg Ermakov. The following is based on the text of my book “The Intimate Diary of an Excellent Student.”
At the same time as love, music and skating appeared in my life: at the age of six I was sent to a music school and to the figure skating section. In the figure skating section - Izmailovsky Park, red fitted coat with white trim, "swallow", "sweep", "pistol" - she trained for only a year, studied music for seventeen years. I still can’t live without skates: when my life split into two continents, the first thing I got in New York were skates (white, black in Moscow). Recently, with the purchase of a second piano, life finally became double. And panties and bras fly back and forth in a suitcase several times a year.
Was it a hobby? Is this some kind of own crap that the child does?
I made a city out of paper. Cut out, glued, painted: multi-storey buildings, windows with curtains, signs, flowers, lawns. When I saw New York for the first time, I realized that this is where I was glued. My city was called Sirius. It had pharmacies, restaurants, shops, and its plasticine inhabitants lived a life full of adventures.
What was it like when you went to school?
At first there were only A's. But one day I made a blot, came into indescribable horror and, bursting into tears, wrote on a blotter: “Dear Irina Aleksandrovna, please don’t give me a four. I won't do it again! Three of my teachers—junior school, piano, and the diploma teacher at the institute—were called Irinsannami. But Irinsanna number one gave me a four. I felt disgraced forever (as I would later do after losing my virginity). From then on, I was only interested in A+ grades, and since there were no such grades at school, studying lost all interest for me. That is, of course, I was an excellent student, but due to inertia, it was not very difficult. You're sitting in class, quietly working under your desk. homework for tomorrow or you are reading, the bell rings - and life begins! Double: one in the yard, the other in the music school. In the yard there is a gang named Tom Sawyer (my favorite book, I’ll take it with me to a desert island, or rather, both “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”, now I agree in English), I am the boss’s right hand, my nickname is Chervonets (I’m Desyatova for now), there are no other girls in the gang, only inveterate losers from our “B” class. We climb trees and on the roofs of transformer booths (a sign on the door: “Don’t get in - he’ll kill you!”), draw maps of the area, make alarms, come up with codes and passwords and - nobles lick! - from time to time we pour water on some excellent student who does not allow her to write off (I always do, always, and to everyone). Let's pour it on - and tick away on bikes! I fall, pierce my leg with something, beige tights change color, a retinue of frightened boys takes me to the emergency room, everyone admires my courage, and I just don’t feel the slightest bit of pain, but I don’t show it.
What about music school?
At the music school there was a composition class led by the Honored Artist of the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (as he was always announced at our countless concerts), a member of the Union of Composers, Paul Mironovich Dvoirin. How we adored him, our Sol Minorych! How fun it was to chat with him about everything in the world, come up with incredible projects, joke without stopping (wit was considered the main virtue in our circle)! And - to compose music, which, as I now remember, was mainly composed by Paul himself for us. But he knew how to so quietly insert his elegant notes into our clumsy scores that we sincerely believed that this was our music. That we wrote a cycle of choral pieces, a quartet, a suite for percussion instruments, and the opera “Barmaley”. Our opuses were immediately learned and performed - by a choir, an ensemble of violinists (the pride of our Children's Music School No. 27), a string orchestra (at rehearsals of which we took turns at the conductor's stand). We played the drums ourselves. Three pieces for percussion instruments (“Gnu Antelope”, “The Death of Panikovsky”, “Horns and Hooves”) were the highlight of our concert programs (and were composed by Paul from the first to the last note). How nice it was to bow! And talk loudly while standing on stage: “Well, girls, shall we play an encore?” - “So they don’t clap!” The embarrassed audience begins to clap, and we play an encore. Khachaturyan and Pakhmutova are listening to us. We go on tour, drums and bongos barely fit in the compartment. Seven years of happiness. But a dark day came when a little boy from our composition class called me and solemnly squeaked: “I won’t go to Paul anymore, he is an enemy of the people, he is leaving for Israel.” The first big grief in my life. Expulsion from paradise. Paul soon showed up in America. He did not answer letters.
Wait, wait, but there was a lot more going on between eight and fifteen besides music?
Oh yes, I was drawing! I drew dystrophic people. A dystrophic is a creature with a long nose and thin arms and legs (I looked at a similar creature in the mirror every day with horror). Dystrophics were suitable for everything: drawing - and thus neutralizing - teachers in class, portraits of characters in books read under the desk, and also keeping a diary in pictures, parallel to the verbal diary, which was started at the age of twelve and today has two dozen thick notebooks.
Nowadays it's called "confessional comics."
Absolutely right. In general, I have invented a lot of bicycles in my life, including comics. I called these comics “distrofilms.” The plot for them was thieves' songs. My uncle Borya, whom everyone called - and still calls - Bob, taught me thug songs. Bob - first English word, which I recognized (the second is Furst: that was the name of the neighbors’ dog). Bob's role - necessary for every happy childhood - was "wizard". Drossel-Mayer, giver of nutcrackers. Nuclear physicist (later the heroic Chernobyl liquidator), master of sports in chess (oh, this is an eternal humiliation: Bob is soaking in the bath, a lathered dad is sitting on the floor under the door with a chessboard, Bob is playing blindly, dad always loses, always!), inventor shifters (from the latest masterpieces: “Here the unlovable one leaves, and to hell with alimony”), who, having heard our clumsy swearing, made a dictionary of swear words for me and his daughter (a school notebook covered from cover to cover), an inexhaustible inventor (what were the cost of the night mushroom picking, with flashlights) and - yes, here they are - a connoisseur of thieves' songs.
Therapeutic distrofilms were also drawn, the heroes of which were Vera Desyatova and her friends. For example, “Resident error.” What was meant was not this spelling error in the title, but a much more fatal error: Vera Desyatova (long nose, thin arms and legs) and her friend Natasha Kotyleva send a letter to America (“Hello, dear Paul Mironovich! How is the weather on Misi- Pisi?"), they are arrested, they are in prison (there they meet their favorite teachers), they are tortured (the most developed episode, half an album long, they torture mainly Vera Desyatova - I love Natasha Kotyleva too much), they are tried, sentenced to death , a man in a mask takes them off the gallows, takes them onto the plane, takes off the mask - yes, it’s Paul Mironovich! The plane lands in New York. Happy ending.
In general, the art of comics flourished. We often drew in collaboration with Lena Ragina, with my invaluable Ragindosik, the very first friend in my life (we have been friends since the age of six). Lenkin’s dad appreciated our talents and joined us in the Literaturnaya Gazeta cartoonists’ club. But I quickly regretted it: there were a lot of bearded men there, and we were very pretty and very fourteen-year-olds. We went a couple of times in total. So I didn’t become a cartoonist (although bearded men really encouraged me to do so). I haven't become an astronomer yet. Becoming an astronomer (and flying into space) was the main dream of my childhood (I still want to go into space). I knew everything about the Universe, filled thick notebooks with the names of stars and constellations and the distances to them in light years (without degrees, with all zeros, that’s how I liked it better). I was sent to the young astronomer's circle at the Moscow Planetarium. It was so boring there! In addition, the telescope was under repair (now I have my own telescope, at the dacha). A year passed and I quit.

Do we want to talk about boys?
Until about the end of third grade, all the boys were mine. The whole gang is named after Tom Sawyer. I did not take on the role of the head of the gang, I thought that it would be better to cede control to the men, and slowly manipulate them myself.
...And then it becomes clear why all the boys are always yours.
And they all took turns confessing their love to me. Sometimes in chorus. Once they came together, both of them were called Andrei, and said in one voice: “Vera, Andrei and I love you.” I shouted: “Get away, womanizers!” I couldn’t let my gang go like that.
Were you an amorous child?
Wrong word! There probably wasn't a single day when I wasn't in love with someone. I fell out of love with one, and fell in love with another on the same day. But then girlhood broke out, complexes, disgusting tyranny, ugly clothes and shoes, all this rubbish. I stopped liking myself. I once wore a cardboard pig mask for three days. Both on the street and to school. She couldn’t walk at a walking pace - she just ran, either running away from someone or catching up, while constantly stumbling and falling, especially from stairs. She became socially dangerous: she stole signs and plates and decorated her room with them (a sign on the door of my room: “Don’t break in - she’ll kill you!”), once she was caught trying to steal a house number, and she barely lost her legs. I cut out photographs of Brezhnev from Pravda and pasted them into a special notebook, vaguely feeling the conceptualist absurdity of this collection (however, the songbook, decorated with beauties in mink coats cut out from the Fur Fashion magazine, was also there, to be honest).
And all this because I was in love and didn’t know what to do with it. And in general - what to do with this stupid life. But Paul knew. We were sitting with him one day, and out of the blue he said: “You, Natasha, are the only one of us all who will be a musician. (It has become excellent.) You, Lena, will be good everywhere. And Vera will write books.” Everyone was very surprised - at that time I had not written a single poem yet. However, Paul told my parents something else: “Vera needs to continue her musical education.” It’s necessary: I entered the music school named after. October Revolution (now named after Schnittke), to the theoretical department. People end up in the theoretical department because they can’t get into the piano department. But I couldn’t go to piano because Irinsanna number two gave me a bad hand. School was fun. I was the ringleader; not a single classmate was left idle. In the first year we wrote a novel, a parody of a detective story, “The Theorist Follows the Trail,” and we made fun of everyone - both the populists and the brass players (especially the populist with whom I was in love, and the brass player who was in love into me). In our second year we wrote an opera. On the third, they made a film based on the same thieves' songs, where without them. And in my fourth year I got married, you idiot.
School means you are fifteen to seventeen years old. What else was important during this period?
Search for the Teacher. Paul Mironovich left, we said goodbye to him forever, for some reason it happened at the entrance to the zoo, it was raining and snowing, Paul took me by the hood with both hands and painfully pressed his lips to mine, tightly compressed. The first kiss of my life. He pushed me away, cried and ran away.
And then, in the first year of college, Vladimir Viktorovich Kiryushin appeared. It was simply impossible not to mythologize him! Solfeggio teacher. Innovative teacher. The author of a system that inevitably produces absolute pitch in anyone. During lessons, he yelled at us like crazy: “You should only drive trams, you’re mediocrity!” He screamed for a year, we adored him, everyone had perfect pitch, but in his second year he was no longer there: they imprisoned him. We were told that he was imprisoned for a political crime, and it was easy to believe it: he said God knows what in class without any caution. It was later that I learned that the article was called “pedophilia.” Boys. Poor V.V.! And then one day he called me - from prison! He called on business: he ordered me to write a fairy tale from the life of seventh chords (apparently, he also intuited that “Vera will write books.” Or did I show him “The Theorist Follows the Trail”? I don’t remember). This was his method of working with young children: music theory penetrating the child's brain through the smuggling of fairy tales. And I wrote. This was my first (and to date only) prose work in the fiction genre, quite inspired. The manuscript was not preserved, the fairy tale was published under his name, as were, several years later, my poetic adaptations of his fairy tales, twenty thousand rhymed lines. A ruble per line (my first literary income).
Kiryushin did not always call from prison. Sometimes he called from the Kremlin. “Vera, I’m in the Kremlin. We are talking with NN here. And he says: what kind of solfeggio is that - we even have an anthem without words. And I told him - I have a talented student, she will write. Will you write? Well, what is it worth to you! I didn’t write it - I couldn’t remember the motive. Then the anthem was Glinka’s “Patriotic Song”, no one remembered its tune, I asked many people. About ten years ago, from the article “Death of a Pedophile,” I learned that Kiryushin was killed. They rang the doorbell, he opened it, they stabbed him with a knife, but they didn’t take anything.
What was going on besides studying?

Concerts almost every day. Which were not always easy to get to. I remember attempts to climb onto the roof of the conservatory (they lifted a construction ladder up the fire escape, put it against the wall - and it didn’t reach the roof about five meters!) and blow up the service entrance of the Tchaikovsky Hall (a bomb made of sulfur and nitroglycerin farted, emitted a thin stream of smoke and went out). How many evenings were spent on the steps of the amphitheater of the Great Hall of the Conservatory with the score in hand! And - in the basement of the House of Composers, where you could order listening sessions of modern Western music - Cage, Stockhausen, Boulez, Xenakis, Nono - and feel like participants in a political conspiracy. And - in cinemas on the outskirts of Moscow, at semi-secret screenings of films by Tarkovsky and Abuladze. And then there were books - reprinted or photocopied - that were given for one night! (Lecture on the history of the CPSU, blind typing on a friend’s lap: “What are you reading?” - “Oh, some kind of porn!” I look in - “Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my loins...” “Fool, this is brilliant!” - I go to her, stay the night, read the novel to the end, discover Nabokov a year or two earlier than the rest of Russia.) In general, there was no time to be bored.
What's the story about "got married, you idiot"? Where did this person come from?
School, piano department. All other male creatures were timid, stooped, bespectacled men. Theorists, one word. And he was a pianist, and a jazz one at that (our school had a pop department).
So what, you wanted to get married?
Nooo, I didn't want to get married! I almost ran away from the registry office. But my Puritan upbringing told me (behind the scenes - a chorus of devils from Gounod’s Faust): you are a fallen woman, you are disgraced forever, only marriage can cover your sin! So I covered it. And she wasn’t even pregnant!
She was decent!
And she stayed, which is the funny thing.
How was your married life?
I’m eighteen, he’s twenty-one, we live with my parents, he doesn’t get along with them, I bring him scrambled eggs to our room, he eats them behind the latch. We earn money by singing in the choir (his mother is the regent). He lusts for everything that moves (in the year and a half of our marriage, meeting girls on the street, he ran into my classmates three times. Most recently: “Girl, what’s your name?” - I tried to meet a beautiful young brunette. And I heard in response: “Andrey, didn’t you recognize me? I’m your daughter, Natasha”). Natasha appeared.
And two weeks later I ended up in the hospital, and he left me. He came to the hospital - I had surgery the next day, the temperature was 40.5 - and said: “You and I don’t get along in character. Can I take the samovar that was given to us for our wedding?” And he went on vacation at sea. I spent two months in the hospital. Mom was with Natasha for a month (took a vacation), dad was with Natasha for a month (took a vacation). I lost my samovar. And a piano. And all the records. And illusions. That's when I started writing poetry. At twenty years old. With an open wound on the left breast: they sewed it up, but the threads were rotten and came apart. So I went to the second year of the institute - with an open wound. The grandmother insisted: “No academic leave, I’ll take Natasha on myself.”
What institute is this?
Gnesinsky. Historical-theoretical-composition department. Throughout the first year I was more and more pregnant. It was so cool! The whole institute came running to catch me when I slid down the railing in my ninth month. And I thought: what are you afraid of, fools, don’t you see that I have wings behind my back? And how I flew after giving birth!.. I don’t know greater happiness. And suddenly: “Can I take the samovar?” I had to write poetry.
What were they like, these first verses?
Very sentimental, very whiny, very poetic and disgustingly beautiful. I wrote them with colored pens, in calligraphy, in a diary and repeated them to myself all the time, like a spell, pushing a stroller, carrying Natasha to the nurse, sitting at lectures, crying into the pillow. My pillow hasn’t been dry for a year and a half. And the poems were like this: “How could you, I love you so much, why did you do this?” I'm a man of monorail logic. Making ends meet is vital for me. So that the glasses are in the “spectacle room” and the watch is in the “chapel”. And here nothing matched anything. I was on the verge of madness. But the poems held. You rhyme - and something seems to fit, at least something.
What was Natasha like?
Very bright, from the first months. She sang before she spoke and danced before she walked. Don't forget those dances in those described pulled down tights! One day - Natka was a year and a half old - Baba Rosa put her to bed during the day. Natka woke up, pooped herself and drew a pattern on the wall with poop. Her sister was visiting her grandmother at the time; she saw Natka’s art and shouted: “Rosa, punish her, beat her!” And Rosochka narrowed her eyes and said: “No, I won’t beat her, she did it very beautifully!”
What was going on with your studies at that moment?
At the Gnessin Institute there was someone to learn from. On the one hand, relic characters taught there, like the old lady who read us Russian music of the 18th century and tested our knowledge of musical material by randomly pointing at the only library anthology and marveling at how well we knew Dubyansky’s opera “The Misfortune of the Coach,” because we didn’t I noticed blindly that there was a tiny acorn and a wheel drawn in the corner of the page. On the other hand, there are extraordinary individuals. I got to the Teachers!
Analysis of musical forms: Rostislav Nikolaevich Berberov. Genius. Gasparov from musicology. He wrote a great book, supposedly about the Soviet symphonist German Galynin, but actually about music as a branch of metaphysics. After his lectures and individual lessons, time began to flow according to musical laws for me.
Aesthetics and philosophy: Georgy Ivanovich Kunitsyn. Titanium. All of Moscow attended his lectures with heavy tape recorders. Huge, loud - Zeus! He wrote the book “Universal Humanity in Literature.” He worked as a consultant to the CPSU Central Committee on extraterrestrial civilizations. Apparently, he was an expert in this matter (or he himself was an alien, which I also admit), and little green men helped him patch up the holes in dialectical materialism. He recognized me for his own: he gave me A's with huge pluses for both courses. I waved the entire page of my record book! I'm alone. The whole stream did not like me, because Kunitsyn said to everyone who passed: “You are far from Shatskaya” (at that time I still bore the name of a samovar lover).
History and theory of literature: Rudolf Valentinovich Duganov. So handsome, so thoroughbred - nose, mustache - a real White Guard officer. He will lounge on an official institute chair, as if in an armchair by the fireplace, light a pipe, and his eyes will sparkle: “Our topic today is Chekhov and the end of Russian realism.” Khlebnikov's main researcher in Russia, he is buried at Novodevichy, in the same enclosure with the Chairman globe. Oh happiness! - I become his favorite student. I submit my thesis to him for judgment and anxiously await his feedback. He returns the typescript to me without saying a word. I open it, leaf through it, and see that he has corrected all the typos made by the typist - on all 140 pages! After his death, I bought his book “Velimir Khlebnikov: The Nature of Creativity.” There were a lot of typos in it. I fixed them all.
History of music and thesis supervisor: Irina Aleksandrovna Givental. Author of the best textbook on the history of foreign music in Russian. In the margins of my work I wrote: “God bless the Faith.”
They are no longer there. All my teachers died. But until the end of my life I will try to earn their praise.
How did you imagine your future studies at the institute?
To continue the work of Berberov, to finally make musicology a science. I wrote a rather strong thesis “Late vocal cycles of Shostakovich. On the problem of the relationship between poetry and music." My defense turned into a battle between young teachers and relicts. Some said: “If we care about the future of musicology, we must support Shatskaya!” And others were fuming: “Why is this diploma defended here, and not at the philological department of Moscow State University?” The conservatives won—they failed me in graduate school with particular cynicism. So I did not become a musicologist, and musicology in Russia did not become a science.
What happened to the texts then?
The first poems were written in the maternity hospital, out of happiness. The second are in the hospital, out of grief. And then the third and fourth ones came, from various combinations of these two reasons. My poetry did not escape the observant Bob. I have a cousin, Lorina Nikolskaya (pseudonym - Dymova), the pride of my grandfather’s family, a poetess. It was even published in “Poetry Day”! Bob took me to her. I have not seen her either before or after (she now lives in Israel). Aunt read my poems (“How could you, I love you so much!”), blessed me to the fullest and called Evgeny Vinokurov. He said: “To Volgin, to Luch!” That's how I ended up at Volgin's. At my first meeting of Volgin’s literature at Moscow State University, the poems of Inna Kabysh were discussed. Everyone attacked Inna very much, Volgin defended her as best he could, and at the very end of the execution, two hours late, a handsome handsome man came in and introduced himself: “Vil Unspent.” It was ex-husband Inna Kabysh, future ex-husband of Vera Pavlova Misha Pavlov. I also did not go unnoticed - in the elevator a stranger said to me: “Your eyes are beautiful, like mine.” (What beautiful eyes Liza Pavlova, who was born a couple of years later, succeeded! Passers-by, idly looking into the carriage, recoiled when they met these huge eyes that covered three-quarters of their face. “You shouldn’t have swaddled them so tightly,” my big-eyed beauty sneers at maternal vanity.)
That day he had a reason to give in: he read his name on the list of those admitted to the evening department of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. From that day on, for five years I wrote only out of happiness. Pavlov resolutely entered the Gnesinka auditorium, took me in his arms and carried me away from the lecture. He got hired as a janitor, and we settled in a student janitor's communal apartment on Suvorovsky Boulevard, next to the Museum of Oriental Cultures. He made an alcove with a canopy with his own hands, a neighbor-artist painted on brick wall fireplace. The window looked out onto a wide cornice right under the roof, on which I danced naked at night. There were much more guests than there were dishes, and if they did not find the owners at home, this did not overshadow their fun (the key had a decent circulation). But the snow filled up the winter sessions. The Pavlovsk site was Kalashny Lane. The morning after the wedding, I went out - for the only time in my life - to help him with the morning cleaning: Kalashny Lane was strewn with sheets of the book “To Young Spouses” torn to shreds. They burst out laughing. Swept it out.
What was going on with your music during this time?
It was full of it: firstly, I accompanied the drunken guests: there was a piano at Suvorovsky. (The history of my marriages and divorces can be described as the history of the moving of my piano. The piano moved to Suvorovsky in an ambulance, from which the sounds of the Dog Waltz burst out onto the Moscow streets - our philologist friends could not play anything else.) Secondly , I wrote musicological essays for the magazine “Musical Life”. These were prose poems. I somehow lost the manuscript of one of them - and reproduced it word for word from memory. (I will repeat this feat a few years later, when Kuzminsky loses the only manuscript of my first book of poems, which he compiled, and I will completely restore it from memory using the surviving list of the first lines.) Thirdly, I sang in the choir. She sang for ten years. My first husband reigned. His second wife sang alto, then a third joined the soprano group. We sang very well! By the way, singing in the choir almost cost me my institute: someone snitched on me, the secretary of the institute party organization stood up for me, and barely defended me. And fourthly, I worked at the Chaliapin House-Museum as a tour guide. This is my only service in my entire life. I worked there for six months, increasingly pregnant. Then I gave birth to Liza exactly on Chaliapin’s birthday and went on maternity leave, from which I have not returned to this day. The father was present at the birth - one of the first in Russia. To do this, he had to pretend to be a journalist from the newspaper “Semya” and spend a long time looking for a maternity hospital ready for such extravagance. So, three doctors attended my birth (for comparison: I almost gave birth to Natasha in the corridor of the maternity hospital, because the nurse was too lazy to take me to the maternity ward).
I tried my best - Pavlov’s arms were all bruised afterwards. It didn't hurt me too much, but I didn't want to disappoint him. The maternity ward had a wall-to-wall window. Lisa was born exactly at midnight. Pavlov looked away at the last minute and saw her birth reflected in the starry night sky. According to him, it was reminiscent of the famous postage stamp depicting Leonov's spacewalk. That night I received a note from him: “Oh, you heavenly animal!” This is how the title of my first book appeared. The first real one. Because before her there were toy and typewritten ones. Printed with one finger, the finger of Misha Pavlov. They were called “Spartak - Champion”, “Resignation of Beskov”, “Cup of Cup Winners”. Because we were Spartak fans. They didn’t miss a single match played by Spartak in Moscow, they screamed in the stands in any weather, they carried Natasha with them.
But we not only went to football, we also went to litho. We left Volgin to Inna Kabysh, and we ourselves began to go to Viktor Kovda, at the Medic recreation center. Pavlov also wrote poetry, so I was teased by Akhmatova, and he was teased by Gumilyov. We complied as best we could. The editor of Yunost came to the next meeting, everyone was reading in a circle, he asked me to bring poetry to his magazine. I didn’t upset him - I brought it. (Since then, this has become my rule: give poems for publication only if they ask, but if they ask, then give them without hesitation). The poems are out. And now I’m riding on a tram and I see: a man sitting and reading “Youth”. I come closer - my poems! “Here it is, it has begun!” - I told myself. Since then, I haven’t seen people reading me on public transport. Not once in my life.
By this time, Natasha must have already gone to school? How was it?
Natasha and school are two incompatible things. At the end of September, Natasha locked herself in the toilet and said: “Kill me, I won’t go to school.” We didn’t know then that the teacher had a habit of hitting her students with a ruler. But the story with the asterisk touched us all. Natasha lost her October star. “Don’t come without an asterisk,” said the teacher. We're shopping: there are no stars anywhere. Then Grandfather Fedya, a party member since 1924 (“Before Brezhnev!” he liked to repeat), cut Natasha a star from a copper plate, Natasha put it on and proudly came to school: “My great-grandfather made this for me, a war veteran!” And the teacher: “What are you wearing, take off this rubbish now!” Natasha locked herself in the toilet again: “Kill me!” And he comes to the second grade and hears: “The October Revolution has been cancelled.” The children became worried: “What should we do now - wear stars or not?” Teacher: “As you wish.” Children: “We will wear it, we will wear it!” And they wore it. As for Natasha, she carried a star in her apron pocket for a whole year - just in case.
Fortunately, in addition to school, she had a music school and MTuA (Musical Theater of Young Actors), in which she shone from the age of nine. Natasha became a singer. If there is happiness in my life, it is listening to Natasha sing. Last year, while graduating from the conservatory, she sang “La Traviata” with orchestra, three acts, in the Great Hall of the conservatory. It was the fourteenth of May, and on the fifteenth of May the Great Hall was closed for renovations. Natasha was the last one to have a chance to bring down the balcony. And she almost brought it down: the hall was packed, it was a huge success! What I experienced cannot be expressed in words. The same happiness that I felt when I gave birth to her. My daughter was born again for me. More precisely, I realized that I gave birth to a diva. Everyone cried: the audience, members of the examination committee, old ladies selling programs. It seemed to me that even the orchestra members were ready to cry. Such a voice, such organic nature, such gentle beauty!
Lisa - who did Lisa become?
Lisa graduated from the psychology department of Moscow State University. When I arrived, I assured everyone: “Be patient for five years, I will cure you all.” A very honest, reasonable, handsome, kind man. Thanks to the School of Self-Determination of the unforgettable Alexander Naumovich Tubelsky.
How was your family life?
In 1992, I broke up with Misha Pavlov for reasons not worth mentioning, and married Misha Pozdnyaev. Mutual friends showed him my poems, because, unlike the first M.P., an amateur poet, he was a professional poet and writer. We met. Misha was my guardian angel for all ten years of our life. Very good poet good man, very, very. Deeply religious. He served as a subdeacon and bell-ringer (“Today I rang in your honor”), and was beaten for his bold articles on church topics. I amazed my daughters with their unusual behavior (Lisa, three years old: “Oh, sorry, Mikhail Konstantinovich, I forgot to cross my chewing gum!”). He sang and painted wonderfully. For the first five years we rented a house in the village of Vnukovo, Moscow region. We made wonderful friends there. The closest ones were Seryozha Kokovkin and Anya Rodionova; everyone gathered in their house. Lisa grew up on the laps of Okudzhava and Iskander, at the age of four she sang a duet with Tanya Kuindzhi to the accompaniment of Boris Petrushansky, and was applauded by Akhedzhakova and Filippenko. And since I didn’t work (writing an essay shouldn’t be considered work) short poems, even if it was three pieces a day!), then I had enough time to make music with all the surrounding children. We staged plays (“The Stone Guest”, “ Cherry Orchard"), performed operas ("The Magic Flute", "Aida", "The Queen of Spades"), organized musical evenings (Schubert, Schumann, Purcell, Rachmaninov), both children and adults took part in all this, everyone had a role, and who I didn’t sing, he sewed costumes, glued decorations, baked a cake for the afterparty. It was some kind of antique, estate-noble, incredible happiness. And then, in 1992, Kiryushin called, I don’t remember, from prison or from the Kremlin, and said: “I’m taking a new group of four-year-old children here and I think that they could use literature classes. Will you take it?" Thus began the “Zodiac”: twelve years of happiness, twelve children who became my family, not to mention their parents. I will write about this someday; it cannot be discussed in a nutshell. In addition, my wealth is burning my pocket - twelve completely recorded childhoods: after all, they wrote to me all the time, about everything, in prose and poetry. At first they didn’t even write - they dictated to the mothers, the “graphic mothers,” as I teased them. For twelve years, Zodiac was the backbone of my life.
Who were these children, where did they come from, how did it all work?
It was a yard club. Parents brought their children (most lived nearby), we studied for two hours, the first hour with literature, the second with music: we sang in chorus, all of us, both children and parents, and listened to music. And in literature, we read, analyzed, composed, analyzed what we had written - and we did this without any allowance for age. My poor children, when they came to go to school, had problems because, having read Mandelstam or Khlebnikov by heart, when asked to read “something from Barto,” they answered with the question: “Who is this?” It's funny that among the twelve children there were two sets of twins, boys. For a long time I could not learn to distinguish them by appearance - and could recognize each of them from the very first line of the essay. I did not fail to take advantage of such a rare opportunity when we staged “The Stone Guest” by Pushkin (full text) in conjunction with musical numbers from “Don Giovanni” by Mozart. Pushkin has two extensive roles where you need to learn a lot of words - Leporello and Don Guan. So what did we do: in the first act Don Juan was from one pair of twins, Leporello was from the other, in the fourth act there was a double replacement, unnoticeable to the public (but not to the mothers, of course).
I would like to go back and talk about your books during this period.
The first book was published in 1997 and was called “Heavenly Animal”. The relatives gathered and said: “Let’s print a book for Verkin.” Bob gave money, Seryozha, my younger brother, gave money. (Sergei Desyatov, founder and director of the ArtPlay gallery, is as proud of him as I can be.) They made the design themselves, took them from the printing house themselves, and carried the packs to small bookstores themselves. But the little book somehow managed to spread all over the country, all over the world. None of my now seventeen books can boast of as many reviews as this one. However, it didn’t get to me, I didn’t say to myself: “I’m a poet, my name is Tsvetik,” and I continued to treat poetry as amateurish handicraft - cross-stitching, until at some party I met Gennady Fedorovich Komarov, the founder of the legendary publishing house “Pushkin Foundation” " Huck said: “Vera, let’s publish your book.”
I collected the texts. And that day, when I was bringing these texts to him, on the tram, I suddenly didn’t understand - I felt, felt somewhere in the solar plexus: “I am a poet.” And I felt very sad. What a Flower! I am a slave to the lamp, I am doomed, all this fun, all this game, all this carnival - all this is in the past. However, later everything turned out to be not quite like that: much more fun and much scarier.
What about the next book?
It came out in 1998 and was called “The Second Language.” There is a joke about her that I always tell. Before boarding that ever-memorable tram, I was re-reading the manuscript, Misha Pozdnyaev came up and pointed his finger at the page: “This line is weak. That's what I would do." And for the first and last time in my life, I showed weakness, made an edit, printed out a new version, and handed it to the conductor of the Moscow-Petersburg train. And a day later Komarov calls: “Vera, everything is wonderful, only one line is not yours.” And he names this very line, one of a thousand. The Princess and the Pea is resting. This is him, Gennady Fedorovich Komarov.
Next - I’m a slave to the lamp! — I just had to sit and write, everything else happened by itself. Zakharov appears and says: “Give me the texts.” I give. Komarov is offended: “What about me?” I divide the manuscript in half: “Separation Line” - to Komarov, “The Fourth Dream” - to Zakharov. Komarov comes to Moscow with the layout, he and I go to Zakharov, I go home with the layout of two books in one bag.
Somewhere around this time, did you break up with Misha?
In 2001. I met Steve. Love is always a disaster. It was a very big disaster.
How did you meet?
Steve is a great translator. Great, because I decided for myself once and for all: since I translate into Russian, I must read everything that is written in Russian in order to keep up with this language. He really read everything. And he remembers everything. All! Read, seen (travelled all over the world), experienced, several languages... Everyone, after talking with Steve for an hour or two, exclaims: “Steve, you simply must write a book!” And, after singing Russian songs with him for an hour or two, she refuses to consider him an American. “To Steve, a real Russian intellectual,” our dear friend Alexey Alekhine raises his glass. “Steve, what an American you are - you’re a normal Vologda man,” my dad clinks glasses with his beloved son-in-law (I finally pleased my father: I married a fisherman). Once a week, Steve raided bookstores and bought all the new items.
That’s how my books fell into his hands. Wow! - he said to himself and called the cultural department (Steve is not only a Vologda man and a Russian intellectual, but also at that time the first secretary of the US Embassy in Moscow, the ambassador’s personal translator): “Find Vera Pavlova and invite her to a reception.” And a white car arrived under the window of my Khrushchev apartment, and a courier got out of it, and he handed me an invitation to Spaso House with a golden eagle embossed. I might have gone, but only on that day I was awarded the Apollo Grigoriev Prize. Steve didn’t know about this, he didn’t know anything about me except my poems (which he knew by heart). And that’s why at that reception he approached all the women: “Aren’t you Vera Pavlova?” Some people were offended: “How dare you!” And the next day newspapers came out with my photographs. Steve wanted to invite me to the reception even more. White car, courier, golden eagle. This time I went. Steve met me on the stairs. Introduced himself. I didn't catch the name. And when he called the next day, she asked again: “Who-who?” Pretty soon it became clear who: the man of my life. For the first time I met a man who was superior to me in everything: he was smarter than me, kinder than me, wittier than me, more experienced than me... I was lost. I was born again.
And six months later, Steve’s term expired and he flew to America. At the airport we vowed to each other eternal love. In one of last days Steve bought me three huge bars of Swiss chocolate. I told myself: I’ll eat one slice a day and when I’ve eaten it all, I’ll see Steve. The chocolate was eaten within three months. Three months later we met on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, visa-free for Russians. I crossed the ocean for the first time in my life. And when I returned, I told Misha that I could no longer be his wife. We have been living with Steve for ten years now, rewarding ourselves for the frequent separations in the early years by the fact that now we are never apart for a minute, fortunately we are both unemployed.
We hang around the world hand in hand. “Your key, Mr. Pavlova,” the hotel receptionists tell Steve when we arrive at the next poetry festival. “Hello, Mrs. Seymour,” the doormen say to me when we return. We understand each other perfectly. We see the same dreams. We read aloud, listen to music. Every now and then I whine: “Let’s get married!”, although we have been officially married for five years. We got married on the twenty-eighth of September 2006 at the registry office on Butyrskaya Street, overlooking the prison (only there you can marry a foreigner) and went from the registry office to Serezha’s ArtPlay gallery, where our friends had already gathered, about eighty people, invited to the presentation of my handwritten book “Letters to the next room, 1001 declarations of love” (from number four hundred and forty these are declarations of love to Steve, and only Steve). The book was brought to the gallery directly from the printing house, I saw it for the first time that day. It is all handwritten, even the imprint. It took me two months to write out poems in formal handwriting, and the artists at the AST publishing house spent six months scanning my pieces of paper and the drawings of four-year-old Lisa - at that age she had a period of graphic genius. On the flyleaf are the names of people dear to me, copied from the diaries (there you can find everyone I managed to talk about - every single one of them). The list was very useful to me when I invited guests to a presentation wedding.
And so the guests have gathered, wandering around the gallery, drinking, chatting, and suddenly - fortissimo - Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”, to the sounds of which Steve and I come out of hiding: I’m in a pink dress, he’s in a tuxedo, everyone is in shock. And so the fun began! But first I gave everyone a book. She gave it not without pathos: my Natasha sang “Tatyana’s Letter”, and I imitated this Tatiana - she sat at the table and wrote. On books. She glanced into the hall, snatched another dear face and wrote on the book: “I love Volodya and Ira,” “I love Anka and Seryozha,” “I love Yulka,” “I love Natasha.” The letter scene is long, I managed to sign everyone’s books. And give it away. Volodya Sorokin sang Rubinstein's Epithalamus, and the dancing began until one dropped.
Everything was mixed up: Liza waltzed with Prigov, I sang a duet with Petrushevskaya, and Liza’s literature teacher Olga Sergeevna Shavard watched with amazement what the characters in her lectures were doing. It's time to dance with dad. Iraida Yusupova (a great composer, I proudly bear the title of her court librettist) played daddy’s favorite “Foggy Morning” on the synthesizer, dad hugged me, we did a few awkward steps, and dad said, “I can’t dance!” he picked me up in his arms and spun me around for five minutes - a seventy-year-old hero.
What was the most important thing over the past five years?
Every day something important happens, but this is not a biography yet, this is still a diary. Probably the most important thing is meeting good people. We are so lucky to good people, we have such friends! Not only in Russia. We have renamed some European countries: France is called Borya Livshits, Italy is Lyudmila Shapovalova, Switzerland is Galya Bovy, Germany is Katya Medvedeva, England is Valentina Polukhina. In America we have many loved ones, but America also has a name: her name is Elena Demikovskaya.
How has America received your poetry?
Should I brag about how Steve and I conquered America?
Necessarily.
Willingly. Firstly, my poems in Steve's translations were published in The New Yorker: four poems on one spread. I was very proud and told everyone: “I am the wife of the translator of The New Yorker!” After that, the MTA (subway management) wrote to us and asked for one poem from the New Yorker selection for a poster. For three months this poem rode in seven thousand carriages, the whole of New York memorized it, it is memorable: “If there is something to desire, then there will be something to regret...”, from the early ones, who would have thought that such a thing awaited him fate. So the Knopf publishing house, which offered us to publish a book of translations, placed this poem in its entirety on the dust jacket. The book is called “If There Is Something To Desire,” and according to the results of 2010, it entered the top ten poetry bestsellers in America, being the only translated book in this top ten. I'm bragging about Stephen now, I have absolutely nothing to do with it! What’s amazing is that people reading this book don’t even realize that this is a translation: they write parodies, compose songs, ask permission to take the poem into a textbook for lawyers, into a manual for young parents, as an epigraph to a novel, as a caption to a photograph. Requests come from Sweden, from Australia, God knows where. This is what a language of international communication does. This is what Steve did.
What do you want now?
Grandchildren. Settled life. A dog. So that parents don't get sick. So that daughters can find a use worthy of their excellence. So that neither we nor they have to see with our own eyes the death of the most beautiful of planets, the stupidest of civilizations.
Pavlova Vera Anatolyevna (b. 1963, Moscow). Graduated from the Music College named after. Schnittke; Academy of Music. Gnessins, majoring in History of Music. She has published 18 books of poetry in Russia. Laureate of the Apollo Grigoriev Prize (2000), the Moscow Account Special Prize (2003), the Anthology Prize (2006), the October Magazine Prize (2011).
The morning is wiser than the evening,
daughter - mother.
What nonsense
wasted time -
debated whether it was possible in the snow -
without a hat,
in the rain - without an umbrella.
There would be no way to rake each other
in an armful -
Mother! Daughter!
Us. You
We only know how to love the dead.
And we love the living clumsily,
approximately. And even closeness
doesn't teach us. Long separation
doesn't teach us. Serious illnesses
we are not taught. Old age does not teach us.
Only death will teach. She really is
professional in love!..
Vera wanted to be a composer. From the age of 8 she composed music, studied at the music college named after. Schnittke, sang in the church choir, graduated from the Academy of Music. Gnesins, then became a music historian, and then went on maternity leave and began writing poetry in the maternity hospital. The first poems were published in the magazine "Youth". Since then he has been writing poetry for more than 28 years. During this time, she gave birth to two daughters, changed husbands, until she met the American Steve Seymour, who was first captivated by her poems, and then by herself.
She admits that she was amazed to learn that Steve knew almost all of her poems and had dreamed of meeting her for a long time. “Now I know why I need to write poetry, to find my Prince.” And now Vera lives in two houses - in two countries.
“Marriage to a foreigner.
Will he love his daughter-in-law?
mother-in-law?”
Vera Anatolyevna admits that she fell in love. Four years ago, The New Yorker magazine published 4 poems by Vera Pavlova translated by Steve. Of the Russian authors, only Brodsky has recently published in this magazine. Moreover, this love is mutual. “When I first saw the outskirts of New York, I caught myself feeling that this is exactly what nature seemed to me as a child: everything around was big and bright, and I was small and happy. I swung on a swing in the park on top of a giant waterfall and sang Glinka’s romances at the top of my voice. ”
Vera Anatolyevna Pavlova was transferred to twenty foreign languages. Participant of many international poetry festivals. Author of numerous librettos and cantatas. Known as a reader of poems by poets of the Silver Age, 7 discs have been published. Performances based on her poems were staged in Moscow, Perm, and Skopin
Films with her participation and about her were shot in Russia and Germany. France, USA.
“The cow bell is a reverse alarm:
it rings - everything is fine,
fell silent - alarm.
My poems are like cow bells.
Not an alarm"
“...They say that I took after my grandmother - just as domineering. Well. I don’t mind!... Baba Rosa is a powerful personality! She just turned 98 years old. From time to time, grandma announces to us that she intends to die... A couple of years ago she caught a cold. I arrive - she’s lying there, her eyes are closed: “I’m dying.” I don’t know what to say... Suddenly Rose says: “Read me your new poems” And I read it to her.
"Present. Toasts. Relatives. Girlfriends.
A flock of salad bowls flies around the table.
Grandma, did you have a favorite toy?
Grandma, can you hear me? I hear you. Was.
Doll. Rag. I called her Nellie.
Eyes with eyelashes. Braids. There is a flounce on the skirt.
In nineteen twenty-one we ate it.
She had bran inside her. A whole glass.”
How she laughed! “Yes, that’s how it happened!” (Of course, the poems were written from life!) “Read it again.” I read it again and again, and she laughed every time. After a couple of days, grandma recovered. Of course, I won’t claim that my poems cured her, but... And about the doll, everything is true. Granny lived a very difficult life: the Holodomor, evacuation with two small children, harmful chemical production...
By the way, it was my grandmother who instilled in me a love of poetry. My grandmother knew an incredible number of poems by heart and read them to me on walks.
At the age of 6, I entertained guests by reciting Yesenin’s “The Black Man” from beginning to end. By the way, I still remember it. And my grandmother, a couple of years ago, locked herself in my room with me and read me poems by heart - an hour or two of “Onegin”, practically in its entirety, of the same Yesenin. But most of all I loved when she read Pushkin’s “No, I don’t value rebellious pleasure”... I couldn’t resist, I filmed it. This is how an endless project began - the film “My Favorites”: my favorite people read one poem, their favorite, in front of the camera. And, reading, they become prettier before our eyes!..”
“I've been going to composition class since I was 8 years old. The teacher's name was Paul Mironovich Dvoirin (Among ourselves, trembling with adoration, we called him Sol Minorych) In his class we had best watch my childhood (and therefore my whole life). Lead abominations secondary school, the indifference of parents, the medieval torture of adolescence - all were redeemed by these hours. We composed a collective opera “Barmaley” and at its rehearsals we took turns conducting a string orchestra, we played percussion instruments and an organ, we met with Pakhmutova and Khachaturian, we gave concerts and went on tour, we talked about everything in the world and could not part with until the watchman kicked us out and locked the door of the music school behind us. My best friends from there, from the composition class. And I very strongly suspect that my poems come from there too.
I started writing poetry on June 2, 1983 in the maternity hospital 20 in Moscow. She gave birth to Natasha and began to write. Until that day, it had never even occurred to me to put words together. True, I kept a diary from the age of 12. But she expressed herself not in him, but in music and drawing. I drew “dystrophics” - little men with long noses and thin arms (it’s not hard to guess that I myself was just such a little man). Dystrophics were suitable for everything - and for comics based on thieves’ songs (we didn’t know the word “comic” back then, we didn’t even see comics they saw, and their works were called “dystrofilms”), and for everyday life writing (from time to time “verbal” ones were replaced by drawn diaries). And suddenly - poetry... Simultaneously with milk. In a note to my husband from the maternity hospital. The milk is gone. My husband left even earlier. The poems remain.
“...When I write, I have a very sad face. When sometimes poetry overtakes me on the subway, compassionate fellow travelers ask me: “Are you feeling bad?” and offer validol. And I feel good! A question often asked by readers: “Do you write when you feel good or when you feel bad?” Answer: I feel good when I write, and bad when I don’t.”
“I wrote and composed poems, but I didn’t know why. Steve read them and found me. It was then that it became clear why. ”
I bring to your attention a small selection of poems by V.A. Pavlova
I stroke your shirt in my hand.
I stroke your pillow's cheek.
I kiss your belt buckle.
My love, outlive me
Bird cherry milk will run away,
and the soul will run away barefoot
on the grass, and mistakes will be forgiven
to her - for not remembering insults,
and the dream will come true - a correspondence student,
and opens his notebook...
And it’s not that you want to live,
but he doesn't want to die.
I realized where my soul is -
in the lowest, most delicate layer of skin,
in the wrong side, which is closer to the body,
in what distinguishes pain from caress,
is that more affection seeks pain...
They are in love and happy.
He:
- When you're not there,
I think -
you just went out
to the next room.
She:
- When you go out
to the next room,
I think -
you are no more.
young girl sleeps like this
like someone is dreaming
an adult sleeps like this
like there's a war tomorrow
the old one sleeps like this
as if it's enough
pretend
dead and death will pass
the distant outskirts of the village.
I -
ta,
which
wakes up
left
from
you.
Used article by Vera Krotova from the magazine “Story”
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| Vera Pavlova at the 12th International Fair of Intellectual Literature, Non-Fiction 2010, Moscow Vera Pavlova at the 12th International Fair of Intellectual Literature, Non-Fiction 2010, Moscow |
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Laureate of the Apollo Grigoriev Prize for 2000. |
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| [[Lua error in Module:Wikidata/Interproject on line 17: attempt to index field "wikibase" (a nil value). |Works]] in Wikisource | |
Vera Anatolyevna Pavlova(maiden name Desyatova; May 4, Moscow) - Russian poetess.
Biography
In her youth she studied musical composition. Graduated from the Music College named after. Schnittke. Graduated from the Academy of Music. Gnessins, majoring in History of Music. She worked as a guide in the Chaliapin House-Museum, published musicological essays, and sang in a church choir for about 10 years.
She began writing poetry at the age of 20, after the birth of her daughter. The first selection was published in the magazine "Yunost", the first fame came after the appearance in the newspaper "Segodnya" of 72 poems (with an afterword by Boris Kuzminsky), which gave rise to the myth that Vera Pavlova is a literary hoax.
Vera Anatolyevna - participant of the round table “The Russian people are expressing themselves strongly!” , magazine “New World” No. 2, 1999. Answer:
Laureate of the Apollo Grigoriev Prize for 2000. Vera Pavlova's poems have been translated into twenty-two foreign languages. Participated in international poetry festivals in England, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Holland, USA, Greece, Switzerland.
Family
- Brother - Sergey Desyatov, founder and director of the gallery ArtPlay.
- Husbands and children:
- Andrey Shatsky, jazz pianist.
- Daughter - Natalya Andreevna Pavlova, opera singer.
- Until 1992 - Mikhail Pavlov.
- Daughter - Elizaveta Mikhailovna Pavlova, psychologist.
- From 1992 to 2001 - Mikhail Pozdnyaev (1953-2009), poet, journalist.
- Since 2001 (official marriage concluded in 2006) - Stephen Seymour (died in 2014), diplomatic, then literary translator.
- Andrey Shatsky, jazz pianist.
Creation
Pavlova's poetry is devoted mainly to personal and intimate life. modern woman- and talks about it with rare directness and sincerity. Based on Pavlova’s poems, it is possible to build a sociologically and culturally reliable biography of her contemporary - from the first manifestations of gender identity (in kindergarten) to the breakdown of the family, new, mature love, late new marriage. Pavlova's exceptional honesty and frankness of self-analysis are paradoxically combined with very traditional views on family, marriage, love, man and woman.
Author of the libretto of the operas “Einstein and Margarita”, “Planet Pi” (composer Iraida Yusupova), “Dido and Aeneas, Prologue” (composer Michael Nyman), “Christmas Opera” (composer Anton Degtyarenko), “The Last Musician” (composer Efrem Podgaits ), cantatas “Chain Breathing” (composer Pyotr Apollonov), “Shepherds and Angels” and “Blooming Willows” (composer Iraida Yusupova), “Three Rescues” (composer Vladimir Genin).
As a reader, she recorded seven discs with poems by poets Silver Age. Performances based on Pavlova's poems were staged in Skopin, Perm, and Moscow. Films about her and with her participation were shot in Russia, France, Germany, and the USA.
Books
- Heavenly animal. - M.: Golden Age, 1997.
- Second language. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 1998.
- Separation line. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 2000.
- Fourth dream. - M.: publishing house "Zakharov", 2000.
- An intimate diary of an excellent student. - M.: publishing house "Zakharov", 2001.
- Everywhere. - M.: publishing house "Zakharov", 2002.
- Coming of age. - M.: OGI, 2004.
- On both sides of the kiss. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 2004.
- Hand luggage: Poems 2004-2005. - M.: publishing house "Zakharov", 2006.
- Letters to the next room. - M.: AST, 2006.
- Three books. - M.: Zakharov, 2007.
- Wise fool. - M.: Avanta+, 2008.
- From eight books. - M., AST, 2009.
- On the other side of the speech. - M., AST, 2009.
- Namesake: Poems 2008-2010. | Children's Albums: Non-children's poems. - M.: AST, 2011.
- Woman. Operation manual. - M. AST, 2011.
- Seven books. - M., EKSMO, 2011.
- Libretto. - M., AST, 2012.
Libretto of operas and cantatas
- Opera “Einstein and Margarita” (comp. Iraida Yusupova)
- Opera “Planet Pi” (comp. Iraida Yusupova)
- Opera "Dido and Aeneas, Prologue" (comp. Michael Nyman)
- Opera “Christmas Opera” (comp. Anton Degtyarenko)
- Opera “The Last Musician” (comp. Efrem Podgaits)
- Cantata “Chain Breathing” (comp. Pyotr Apollonov),
- Cantata “Shepherds and Angels” (comp. Iraida Yusupova)
- Cantata “Blooming Willows” (comp. Iraida Yusupova)
- Cantata “Three Rescues” (composer Vladimir Genin)
Bibliography
- Goralik Linor. // Goralik Linor. Private individuals: biographies of poets, told by themselves. - M.: New publishing house, 2012.
- Pozdnyaev Mikhail.// New News. - February 1, 2013.
Write a review about the article "Pavlova, Vera Anatolyevna"
Notes
Links
- in the "Magazine Hall"
- Alexander Karpenko
- Vera Pavlova in the program “First Literary” on the Torf TV channel
An excerpt characterizing Pavlov, Vera Anatolyevna
We turned around in surprise - it was Michelle. “That’s all decided,” I thought contentedly. And again, someone voluntarily sacrificed something, and again simple human kindness won... I looked at Stella - the little girl was smiling. Everything was fine again.- Well, will you walk with me a little more? – Stella asked hopefully.
I should have gone home a long time ago, but I knew that I would never leave her now and nodded my head affirmatively...
To be honest, I wasn’t in too much of a mood to go for a walk, since after everything that had happened, my condition was, let’s say, very, very “satisfactory... But I couldn’t leave Stella alone either, so it would be good for both of them, though If only we were “in the middle”, we decided not to go far, but just to relax our almost boiling brains a little, and give our pain-wracked hearts a rest, enjoying the peace and quiet of the mental floor...
We slowly floated in a gentle silvery haze, completely relaxing our frayed nervous system, and plunging into the stunning, incomparable peace here... When suddenly Stella shouted enthusiastically:
- Wow! Just look, what kind of beauty is there!..
I looked around and immediately understood what she was talking about...
It really was extraordinarily beautiful!.. As if someone, while playing, had created a real sky-blue “crystal” kingdom!.. We looked in surprise at the incredibly huge, openwork ice flowers, dusted with light blue snowflakes; and the intertwining of sparkling ice trees, flashing with blue highlights at the slightest movement of the “crystal” foliage and reaching the height of our three-story house... And among all this incredible beauty, surrounded by flashes of real “northern lights”, a breathtakingly majestic ice palace proudly rose, the whole shining with the shimmer of unprecedented silvery blue shades...
What was that?! Who liked this cool color so much?..
So far, for some reason, no one has shown up anywhere, and no one has expressed a great desire to meet us... It was a little strange, since usually the owners of all these wonderful worlds were very hospitable and friendly, with the exception of only those who had just appeared on “ floor” (that is, they had just died) and were not yet ready to communicate with others, or simply preferred to experience something purely personal and difficult alone.
“Who do you think lives in this strange world?” Stella asked in a whisper for some reason.
- Do you want to see? – unexpectedly for myself, I suggested.
I didn’t understand where all my fatigue had gone, and why I suddenly completely forgot the promise I made to myself a minute ago not to interfere in any, even the most incredible, incidents until tomorrow, or at least until I had at least a little rest. But, of course, this again triggered my insatiable curiosity, which I had not yet learned to pacify, even when there was a real need for it...
Therefore, trying, as far as my exhausted heart allowed, to “switch off” and not think about our failed, sad and difficult day, I immediately eagerly plunged into the “new and unknown”, anticipating some unusual and exciting adventure...
We smoothly “slowed down” right at the very entrance to the stunning “icy” world, when suddenly a man appeared from behind a sparkling blue tree... She was a very unusual girl - tall and slender, and very beautiful, she would have seemed quite young , almost if it weren’t for the eyes... They shone with calm, bright sadness, and were deep, like a well with the purest spring water... And in these wondrous eyes lurked such wisdom that Stella and I had not yet been able to comprehend for a long time ... Not at all surprised by our appearance, the stranger smiled warmly and quietly asked:
- What do you want, kids?
“We were just passing by and wanted to look at your beauty.” Sorry if I disturbed you...” I muttered, slightly embarrassed.
- Well, what are you talking about! Come inside, it will probably be more interesting there... - waving her hand into the depths, the stranger smiled again.
We instantly slipped past her inside the “palace”, unable to contain the curiosity rushing out, and already anticipating something very, very “interesting” in advance.
It was so stunning inside that Stella and I literally froze in a stupor, with our mouths open like hungry one-day-old chicks, unable to utter a word...
There was no so-called “floor” in the palace... Everything there floated in the sparkling silver air, creating the impression of sparkling infinity. Some fantastic “seats”, similar to groups of sparkling dense clouds accumulated in groups, swaying smoothly, hung in the air, then becoming denser, then almost disappearing, as if attracting attention and inviting one to sit on them... Silvery “ice” flowers, shining and shimmering, they decorated everything around, striking with the variety of shapes and patterns of the finest, almost jewelry petals. And somewhere very high in the “ceiling”, blinding with sky-blue light, huge ice “icicles” of incredible beauty hung, turning this fabulous “cave” into a fantastic “ice world”, which seemed to have no end...
“Come on, my guests, grandfather will be incredibly glad to see you!” – the girl said warmly, gliding past us.
And then I finally understood why she seemed unusual to us - as the stranger moved, a sparkling “tail” of some special blue material was constantly trailing behind her, which sparkled and curled like tornadoes around her fragile figure, crumbling behind her. with silvery pollen...
Before we had time to be surprised by this, we immediately saw a very tall, gray-haired old man, proudly sitting on a strange, very beautiful chair, as if thereby emphasizing his importance to those who did not understand. He watched our approach completely calmly, not at all surprised and not yet expressing any emotions other than a warm, friendly smile.
The white, silver-shimmering, flowing clothes of the old man merged with the same, completely white, long hair, making him look like a good spirit. And only the eyes, as mysterious as those of our beautiful stranger, shocked us with boundless patience, wisdom and depth, making us shudder from the infinity visible in them...
- Hello, guests! – the old man greeted affectionately. – What brought you to us?
- Hello to you, grandpa! – Stella greeted joyfully.
Citizenship: Russia
Her poems are published not only in Russia, but also in Europe and the USA. Today Vera Pavlova lives between Moscow and New York. And now, as you read these lines, Vera Pavlova’s new book If There Is Something To Desire has already appeared on the shelves of American stores and has managed to evoke rave reviews. What's in this book? Love in all its manifestations, including its most intimate facets, longing for “relatives,” as the writer sensually calls her loved ones, and, of course, inexhaustible femininity. We were lucky: Vera Pavlova, who so rarely agrees to an interview, nevertheless answered our correspondent’s most intimate questions.
– Vera, there is a common opinion that a modern writer writes about himself... Do you agree with him?
– In fact, everyone writes about themselves. The person cannot tell anything else. Even if he invents another planet, he will still tell something about himself. This is even more interesting: to find the author where he is diligently hiding. And I'm not even hiding.
– How many “I”s do you have?
– I do not suffer from a split personality, and I hope that I have one “I”. But I also hope that it is changing. And one of the main goals of my existence is to change myself without changing myself. This is a simple motto. Change, while maintaining the core, continuity.
– Poems can be invented or sent down from above. Have you ever caught yourself making things up?
– It’s very scary to start inventing. Because for a poet this is tantamount to lying. You have to watch yourself all the time and catch yourself by the hand. There is another fear - to stop writing. When you don't write, it's very scary. At this moment there is a danger of starting to simulate the creative act. This requires a lot of patience. Don't make things up. Or honestly admit to yourself that you came up with it and cross it out.
– The theme of love, and its erotic component, predominates in your work. Have you already talked about it all or do you have more to say?
– I would describe this topic a little differently: how a girl turns into a woman. Given the right course of circumstances, this happens throughout life. Not on the first night, not with the first lover. A woman becomes a woman until her death, if everything goes as it should. So let's better call this topic the topic of femininity. It includes not only erotic love, but also love for children and parents. I now feel like an axis of symmetry between the older and younger generations, I understand both my parents and my daughters better. And thanks to this - myself, what happened to me, what awaits me.
– Don’t thoughts about old age scare you?
– In the new book, which I am putting together right these days, there are a lot of poems about old age - I want to strike a preemptive blow to it. Take a peek at what's around the corner. And you know what's surprising? The chapter on old age turned out to be the most enlightening. It feels like I'm waiting for her to come so I can relax and enjoy the beauty of the world.
– Is there a place for so-called civil lyrics in your work?
– Yes, the new book will contain several poems about the homeland. This word appeared in my poems in recent years when I started leaving for America for a long time. My husband is American and he is better off here. My wise daughter, when I was once again angry about the topic of “I want to go home,” told me: “Mother, you should be where it’s best for your beloved man.”
– How do you feel about your homeland?
– While I was leaving Russia for a month or two, I bravely declared that the homeland is the man you love. And in general, everything came together. But now, when I left for six months, I realized that the homeland is also your elderly, children and friends. The homeland is your dear ones, your dear ones. And I don’t need birch trees or rowan trees - I don’t need anything, only my dear ones. And where I could collect them in one heap, that would be my homeland. I found this one absolutely amazing New Year: on the roof of a 36-story skyscraper overlooking Central Park. We stood there with champagne, fireworks splashing at our feet, and it was just childish happiness. And I suddenly realized: now there would be 20-30 more people whom I love on this roof - and here it is, my homeland.
– Have you already absorbed the atmosphere of New York? Can you say that this is your city?
– This is not just my city, this is my very city! I don't live anywhere as well as in New York. But the better I feel here, the more I miss my loved ones who are far away. I really want to share my joy!
– How is your relationship with books written in English?
– In New York I mostly read in English. I reread books that I know by heart since childhood. This pleasure is incomparable to anything. Re-reading Twain, Carroll, Salinger in English is worth a lot, and I bathe in all this, shedding tears of tenderness. But speaking English is still a pain for me. I’m a perfectionist, I’m ashamed to moo, but I still can’t do it any other way.
– About native language you write: “...Russian tongue in the throat, acute, like appendicitis.” Is it really so sharp that it can be used to express everything very precisely?
- Yes. Everything can be expressed in Russian. But here I was trying to convey something else. These lines are about the painful happiness of creativity.
– Is it true that your photograph was published in Playboy magazine?
“I have a very smart destiny, and I mostly obey it.” But sometimes I have “quirks” when I try to do something of my own free will. Or someone else’s - which is even worse. And then some person said: “You need to be published in Playboy,” and he agreed, some photographs were even taken. Artem Troitsky then asked, looking at the pictures: “Who is this – a poetess or a model?” In general, I received compliments, and the publication was almost ready, when suddenly the literary section of the magazine was closed. Fate told me: darling, step aside!
– You said that fate leads you along some given path. How does that make you feel?
– I learned to obey fate. I walk, they lead me by the hand. And I believe that they lead to where they need to go.
– Are you an optimist or a pessimist in life?
- I'm a fatalist. If something happened, then it must be so; That means we are patient.
– You say that you are guided by some kind of inspiration. On the other hand, “I spin my own destiny, and I don’t need assistants”... So, you still spin your own?
- Well, if we catch me line by line in contradictions...
“But the question is, are you happy with how you spun it, or is the process not yet completed?”
- Of course, it is not completed yet. But it seems that everything turns out very beautifully, harmoniously and harmoniously. So slender that there is even an opinion that Vera Pavlova is a PR project. It has been said more than once that there is some person who is building a strategy for my behavior. How this is done, for example, in relation to pop artists. In my opinion, this is some kind of obsession of our time, when it seems that success can only be fabricated. When you think that if a poet has a reader, then there must be something wrong with that poet. We are so accustomed to inflated reputations that success seems suspicious to us.
– How do you name your books? It’s not easy to put a lot of meaning into a few words. Is this easy for you?
- Inhuman labor. This is one of the most complex tasks- ask the book what it is called. If you look closely at the child, you can see his name. And the book already knows what it’s called. But you haven’t yet. All my books told me what they were called. I didn't come up with their names. But the one I’m putting together now, I haven’t said yet. And so she torments me - terribly. Like an unnamed child.
– How do you imagine the reader who will get acquainted with the book If There Is Something To Desire?
– This book is aimed at non-Russian Americans. We convinced our publishers: you will have more potential readers if we make the book in two languages - you will get students studying Russian, Russian immigrants. They said, "No. We're making an American poet." Well, do it. I imagine my American reader rather vaguely, although I have already met him, because I often spoke at universities in front of English-speaking audiences. I read in Russian, the translator read in English, and I looked at the reaction. The reaction was very lively. Sometimes there are crying girls, exactly the same as in Moscow or, say, in Perm or Murmansk. Blog citations have now begun. Moreover, people perceive the book as poetry written in English. It doesn’t even occur to them that this is a translation!
– How do you assess the quality of this translation?
– It simply couldn’t have been better, because, firstly, we (translated the book into English language Vera's husband Stephen Seymour - Approx. ed.) lived these poems together, that is, the translator knows the life context for certain. Secondly, we discussed every word. It's no joke: the translation took seven years!
– Can a Russian poet make a living through creativity?
- No. All poets are forced to go to work. And very often - to the one that interferes with writing poetry. For example, associated with a word. The more you write “on the side,” the more it interferes with writing poetry. It's better to unload wagons than to write articles for the newspaper.
– In this regard, as far as I understand, you are lucky...
- Very! Even ashamed: I never had to unload wagons or write articles. The same fate decreed that I do only what I love: wrote poetry, sang in the church choir, ran a children's poetry studio.
– Does Vera Pavlova like to cook?
- No, I don’t like it. Although I can cook some standard 20 dishes. I also leave this for old age, just like writing poetry for children. When I get old, I’ll buy a cookbook and learn how to make yeast dough.
- Who is doing the housework now?
– I do. But I absolutely do not share Tsvetaev’s horror of everyday life. Everyday life is a wonderful thing because it allows you to get an immediate, satisfactory result: you cleaned and your house is clean, you cooked and your children are fed. In addition, household chores leave your head completely free.
“I’ve never been an ideal wife, but I can figure out how to do it.” I suspect that being an ideal wife means giving your husband complete freedom. Volodya Sorokin once said terrible words: “An ideal marriage is the art of not noticing each other.” I'm afraid there is some truth in this.
– There are so many wonderful reviews about your works in the press! How are you not soaring from this?
– Everything that surrounds me is divided for me into what helps me write and what hinders me from writing. Public attention - no matter whether it's slander or praise - gets in the way. It creates some kind of noise interference, distracts, destroys concentration.
– What if there was silence?..
– I don’t know, I haven’t tried it.
- Well, that is, it’s still nice?
– Yes, it entertains... One wonderful woman gave me a royal gift - my personal website, and I began to receive letters from readers. They are so cute! They write: they read your poems and decided to get married. Bless. I bless. And others take care of me: “I read your poems and I’m surprised how you haven’t hanged yourself yet? How do you manage to do this?” I'll explain how I manage to do this. I hope I explained it to you too, right?..
– Vera, have you ever had the desire to exclaim: “Oh, Pavlova, oh, the daughter of a bitch!”?
– Every time I finish a poem, first of all, I mentally exclaim “oh, you son of a bitch!” and, secondly, I say “thank you” to someone unknown. When I particularly like something, I cry over my own poems. This also happens, but rarely. And these are the best poems.