How Voznesensky argued with the Pope about UFOs

FRIENDSHIP WITH PASTERNAK

In 1947, fourteen-year-old Andrei first became acquainted with Pasternak’s poems and decided to write to the poet, attaching several of his own poems to the letter. After that, Pasternak, to Andrei’s amazement, called him himself. Later, Andrey Andreevich recalled: “I came to the gray house in Lavrushinsky, of course, in an hour … The door opened. He stood at the door. Everything floated in front of me … “

A friendship began that lasted for many years, despite the huge difference in age. However, Voznesensky noted that Pasternak himself was an eternal teenager: “In the verses in the author’s speech, he indicated his age:“ I am fourteen years old. Once and for all”.

After the first meeting, Boris Leonidovich gave Andrei the manuscript of the still far from finished novel Doctor Zhivago and “and an emerald notebook of new poems from this novel” to read. Andrei, returning home, was unable to wait and read these verses right on the go. “From that day on, my life was decided, it acquired a magical meaning and purpose.”

In Pasternak’s house, Voznesensky met Anna Akhmatova, Svyatoslav Richter, Irakli Andronikov … Once Andrei refused to celebrate his birthday – because Pasternak did not celebrate his own either. And it was Pasternak who supported the poet in his decision to enter the Institute of Architecture. It would seem that you need to go to Literary? But, as Igor Virabov, the author of an excellent biography of Voznesensky, writes, Pasternak believed that “you can become a poet without a special diploma, but you can easily get poisoned by a near-literary environment.”

CONFUSED GORILLAS WITH BABOONS

“Andrey Voznesensky became a famous poet the day Literaturnaya Gazeta published his young poem Masters,” Yunna Moritz wrote. Soon real fame fell upon him. The poem “Fire at the Architectural Institute” made a splash: such voices had not yet been heard in Soviet poetry. He read it loudly from the stage of another institute – the Polytechnic.

Goodbye architecture!

Blaze wide

cowsheds in cupids,

regional clubs in rococo!

O youth, phoenix, fool,

diploma in flames!

You wave your red skirt

and tease with your tongue.

Farewell, it’s time for the outskirts!

Life is a change of ashes.

We all burn out.

You live – you burn.

There, the fire was compared with a “red-assed gorilla” (a metaphor impossible for the Soviet press for several more years), and the poem ended with the words: “It’s all over! Everything is started! Let’s go to the cinema!”

By the way, there are no red-backed gorillas, baboons and hamadryas have a red backside. Voznesensky was often caught in inaccuracies: for example, from the name of Marilyn Monroe, he released the letter “i” (“Merlin”), and called her “the heroine of suicide and heroin” (although she never used opiates). But this, of course, is not essential.

RESPONDENCE TO SARTRE AND PICASSO’S BED

The glory of Voznesensky, like the glory of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, crossed the borders of the USSR. He talked with Jean-Paul Sartre and his wife, Simone de Beauvoir: in Paris, they took Voznesensky to the cabaret, in Moscow, Voznesensky took them to Kolomenskoye. The friendship ended when Sartre refused the Nobel Prize and, in an explanatory article, “simply attacked Pasternak.”

He also met Pablo Picasso, stayed with him, slept in his bed. “Did you sleep in Picasso’s bed? Don’t despair if not. You toss and turn all night, you won’t close your eyes.” A terrible cold reigned in the room, Voznesensky ran to the shower to warm himself and one day he saw a vision: the slippers themselves, without legs, galloped there, into the bathroom.

He recalled the first meeting with Pablo: “Picasso was half naked, in some kind of mesh T-shirt, like a tanned yellow billiard ball spinning in a pocket.” Picasso asked him to read “Goya” in Russian “and, understanding without translation”, cackled after him like an echo: “Ho-ho-ho! ..”

He talked with Marc Chagall, and with the famous philosopher Martin Heidegger, and with the Pope… explain the subject at school. And dad said that he did not believe in aliens.

A MILLION PROFITABLE ROSES

Several poems by Andrei Andreevich turned into hits. “Drum Dance” (“You, fate, drum on the whole planet!”), “Give me back the music” (“You through the years, you fly after me through the years, like a tanned angel behind my back”), “A girl is crying in the vending machine” (the original was “The girl is freezing in the vending machine”), “I will pick up music for fate” … And, of course, “A Million Scarlet Roses”, originally written in Latvian (Voznesensky made a free translation).

Raymond Pauls recalled: “Alla Pugacheva listened to her here in Riga. At first, the song seemed too simple to her … She did not like either the music or the poems: “What kind of nonsense? I won’t sing this!”…” And Voznesensky himself, to put it mildly, did not consider this text his best work. But in the end, Pugacheva did everything, because she was prepared for the song with a spectacular number for the “New Year’s Light” – she soared into the air under the dome of the circus. And the song instantly became a hit, not only in the USSR, but also in Japan. Once Pauls played this melody to a Japanese journalist who came to Latvia: “The Japanese, having learned that it was me, the author, almost fell down …” Well, Voznesensky was carefully sent copyright for performing songs in Japan, and in the 90s he said: “ If we talk about what feeds me, it’s roses … “

BY THE WAY

The State Prize canceled the Nobel Prize

They say that in 1978 Voznesensky was the main contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But she did not get to him, but to the American writer Isaac Bashevis-Singer. The literary critic Vadim Kozhinov told how he learned from the famous Norwegian philologist Geir Hjetso, who had the most direct relation to the Swedish Academy distributing Nobel prizes, that Voznesensky was the most likely Nobel laureate. However, according to Hyetso, this candidacy was rejected because Voznesensky received the USSR State Prize: “Awarding Voznesensky a high Soviet prize, in fact, completely deprived him of the dissident halo that he had to one degree or another, and he was no longer of interest for the Swedish Academy.

Fire at the Architectural Institute

Fire in the Architectural!

Through the halls, drawings,

amnesty for prisons

fire, fire! On a sleepy facade

shameless, naughty,

red-assed gorilla

the window pops up! And we are already graduates,

it’s time for us to defend.

Cracking in the closet under the seals

my reprimands! Whatman – like a wounded man,

red leaf fall.

My stretchers are on fire

cities are burning. A bottle of kerosene

five years and winters soared …

Karinochka Krasilnikova,

Ouch! we’re on fire! Goodbye architecture!

Blaze wide

cowsheds in cupids,

regional clubs in rococo! O youth, phoenix, fool,

diploma in flames!

You wave your red skirt

and tease with your tongue. Farewell, it’s time for the outskirts!

Life is a change of ashes.

We all burn out.

You live – you burn. And tomorrow, striking a finger,

pierces like a bee

compass needle

from a handful of ash … … Everything burned out completely.

The police are full.

Everything is over!

Everything is started!

Go to the cinema!

Goya

I am Goya!

The eye sockets of funnels pecked out to me by a raven,

flying into the naked field. I am Woe. I am the voice

Wars, cities of smut

in the snow of the forty-first year. I am Hunger. I am the throat

A hanged woman whose body is like a bell

beat over the bare square … I am Goya! Oh grapes

Retribution! Tossed in one gulp to the West –

I am the ashes of the intruder!

And he drove strong stars into the memorial sky –

Like nails. I am Goya.

Beats woman

In whose restaurant, in whose country – you don’t remember,

but at midnight

there are six men, there is a table, there is a New Year,

and an angry woman – beats!

Maybe the company didn’t suit her

where glances stick like bath leaves?

For what – it doesn’t matter. So they are supposed to

went in the faces, as the linen is rinsed.

Bay, woman! Bay, honey! Bay, vengeful!

Mayonnaise a bald man in suspenders.

Bay, woman!

Massage their faces!

For all your future mattresses

because you are the best in everything,

that matriarchy has long been on earth –

beat off, put on shoes, be smart, laugh, –

such anguish is indescribable!

Throw a corned beef salad into it.

Men, knights, where have you gone?!

So you want to lean on someone –

Alas…

Bay, revanchist! Life is like a white dance.

Not him, but you, having beaten him off, pull.

Buy half a liter. How boring he is!

Get tired while you stir.

Well, is it possible to shoot ice cream in a vest ?!

Is it possible to wait in caprons in cold weather?

The very eighth to buy mimosa –

Can?!

Guilty, fall on your knees

columns, people, moon alleys,

you would have died long ago without it!

Look, from under the dirty table –

she staggered to the mirror.

“Ah, mirror, cool glass,

I whisper to you incoherent words,

I press my lips to myself

and I’m sliding down hard on you,

and I think: cowards, no strength –

I wish someone would beat me! .. “

She’s been taken away for a long time.

But in the pipes of jazz, in the middle of the hall,

but in the form of a sweaty oval,

like the Mother of God, the mirror stood

in the marks of the lips, and tears flowed in it …

Nostalgia for the real

I don’t know about the rest

but i feel the worst

not for the past nostalgia –

real nostalgia.

As if a novice wants to go to the Lord,

well, and access only to the rector –

so I beg for access

without intermediaries to the present.

It’s like I did something different

or even not me – others.

I will fall into the clearing – I feel

nostalgia for the living land.

No one will split us with you.

But when I hug you

I embrace with such sadness

like someone is taking you away.

Loneliness will not redeem

an open carpentry into the garden.

I’m not longing for art

suffocate for real.

When I hear petty tirades

stumbled comrade,

I’m not looking for the likeness – the original,

I feel sad for him, really.

Everything is plastic, even rags.

Tired of living sketchy.

We will not be with you in the future,

and the church…

And when I laugh in the face

stupid mafia,

I say: “Idiots are in the past.

In the present, the growth of understanding.

Black water rushes from the faucet

whipping redhead, infused,

gushing rusty water from a faucet.

I’ll wait – the real one will go.

What has passed has passed. For the better.

But I bite like a secret

nostalgia for real.

What will come. Let me not stop.

1976

Saga (I will never forget you)

You wake me up at dawn

you will go out unshod.

You will never forget me.

You will never see me.

Shielding you from the cold

I think: “God Almighty!

I will never forget you.

I will never see you.”

This water in the goosebumps of the dam,

this is the Admiralty and the Stock Exchange

I will never forget

and I will never see again.

Do not blink, tear from the wind

hopeless hazel cherries.

Coming back is a bad omen.

I will never see you.

Even if we return to earth

we secondarily, according to Hafiz,

Of course, we’ll get along with you.

I will never see you.

And it will turn out so minimal

our misunderstanding with you

before the future misunderstanding

two living with an inanimate void.

And sway with meaningless heights

a couple of phrases from here:

“I will never forget you.

I will never see you.”

1977