Celebrity biography – Bella Akhmadulina
Isabella Akhmadulina is a famous lyric poet and talented writer. She is a member of the Union of Russian Writers and the Academy of Literature in America. Her work has a special style, characterized by sophistication, naturalness and emotionality.
Childhood
Isabella Akhmadulina was born in Moscow on April 10, 1937. The girl’s father was a Tatar, worked as a customs chief, and her mother, who had Russian-Italian roots, was a translator for the State Security Committee. Due to constant employment at work, the parents did not have time to raise their daughter, so little Isabella was under the care of her grandmother. From childhood, she taught the future poetess to love literature, reading to her the works of great Russian writers.
During the war, my father was called to the front. Bella was evacuated to Kazan, where her paternal grandmother lived. In Kazan, a girl became very ill. It was only thanks to her mother's arrival that she was able to survive. When the evacuation ended, Akhmadulina went to school. It was difficult for her to adapt, she often played truant and did not want to study. I only loved the literature lesson. In order to get used to schooling, It took Bella three years.
The beginning of a creative journey
While still a schoolgirl, the poetess attended literary circle at the House of Pioneers. At the age of fifteen, she already had a special, unique style. In 1955, the first poems of young Bella were published. They were touching and had an unusual rhyme. The poetess also attended classes at the Literary Association. During this period, Akhmadulina firmly decided to connect her life with literary art. She enters the Institute of Literature. In 1959, she was expelled from the university because she refused to support the charges against Pasternak. The poetess went to work as a correspondent for one of the Irkutsk newspapers, which later published her story “On Siberian roads"The editor-in-chief of this magazine contributed to Bella being returned to the institute. She graduated in 1960. The poetess also published poems and articles in the Metrostroivets magazine.
In 1955 in magazine "October" The first poems of the 18-year-old poetess were published
Career
At the age of twenty-two, Akhmadulina composed the poem “On My Street Which Year...”, which subsequently became very popular. In 1975, music was written for this verse and the finished romance was performed in the famous film “The Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath!” The author of the poem “Oh, my shy hero”, which was read by the heroine of the film “ Love affair at work"Akhmadulina was also there. The first collection of poems by the poetess appeared in 1962. It was called "String".
Akhmadulina’s real popularity came after her performance in Moscow at the Polytechnic Museum. According to the poetess, it was hard for her public performance, but she skillfully coped with the excitement. Her writings on creative evenings had big success. Bella's talent was highly appreciated by Rozhdestvensky, Yevtushenko and other masters. Her works fascinated with their special sophistication and lyricism. They intertwined the traditions of poetry of past years.
The poetess’s second collection, “Music Lessons,” was published in 1969. It was followed by others, which later became popular (“Blizzard”, “Candle” and others). Bella wrote her compositions with anguish and large quantities. The attitude of critics towards Akhmadulina’s work was different. Some reproached her for her mannerisms, while others were friendly. She took part in the filming of two films: “There Lives a Guy Like This,” where she played a journalist, and “Sport, Sports, Sports.”
Bella Akhmadulina in cinema - director Vasily Shukshin "F" he's such a guy"
Having visited Georgia (1970), Akhmadulina was delighted with this country. The result of this was the collection “Dreams about Georgia”. She also translated poems by Chikovani, Baratashvili and others. The poetess' essay about creative people. She wrote about such talented personalities as Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and many others.
Akhmadulina was a participant in various poetry festivals.
Bella Akhatovna belongs to the so-called “Sixties” poets
Akhmadulina with Bulat Okudzhava and Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Personal life
The poetess got married at the age of eighteen to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, director and poet. Three years later they divorced. Her next chosen one was Yuri Nagibin, a writer. This marriage also did not last long (nine years). In 1968, the poetess adopted a girl from an orphanage, Anya, and gave her the surname of her ex-husband - Nagibin. In a civil union with Eldar Kuliev, which also turned out to be short-lived, the couple had a daughter, Elizaveta. Soon Bella gets married again. She lived with her husband Boris Messerer for almost thirty years.
The writer spent her last years in Peredelkino. She was constantly sick and had trouble seeing, so she stopped writing. At the age of seventy-four (November 29, 2010), the poetess died of a cardiovascular crisis. At the House of Writers in the capital they said goodbye to the legendary Bella Akhmadulina.
In memory of the legendary poetess, monuments were opened in Moscow and Tarusa. And also in 2012, the Bella Prize was established and is awarded to young poets aged 18 to 35 years. The initiator of the institution was her husband Boris Messerer. The award ceremony is held twice a year in Moscow and Italy, given that Bella had Italian roots. The prize fund is 3,000 euros, and talented poets can receive it even for one poem.
Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina was born in the spring of 1937 in Moscow. She grew up in an intelligent prosperous family. Her parents were influential people. His mother worked as a translator in the KGB department and had the rank of major, and his father was a deputy minister.
The full name of the writer is Isabella Akhmadulina. That's what her beloved grandmother called her. In the 1930s, there was great interest in Spain and everything related to this country in the Soviet Union. The girl was named after the Spanish Queen Isabella.
Childhood
The biography of Bella Akhmadulina deserves special attention. The writer lived a rich life, interesting life. She was a romantic by nature. The poetess mixed several bloods at once: Tatar, Russian and Italian.
Bella loved her grandmother very much, who treated her with tenderness and adoration. It was she who had a great influence on Akhmadulina’s choice of her life’s work and helped her granddaughter become an outstanding poetess. Her grandmother taught her to read, thanks to her Bella fell in love with poetry and the works of great writers.
During the war, Bella's father went to the front. The girl was sent to Kazan, to another grandmother. There Akhmadulina became seriously ill and was on the verge of death. She was saved by her mother, who arrived and her daughter came out.
The first poems were written when the poetess was still at school. The girl already had her own style. At the age of eighteen, her first poem was published in a magazine. In 1957, her work was subjected to harsh and unkind criticism in the press. The critics' emphasis was on the style: it was pointed out that it was somehow old-fashioned, and that the poems themselves were too “plot-based” and contained descriptions that were too detailed for poetry.
Creation
After working for a year at the newspaper, Akhmadulina decided to fulfill her dream and entered the Literary Institute. After some time, Bella began working as a journalist in " Literary newspaper», Chief Editor who was fascinated by the girl’s talent. Thanks to him, the poetess’s work became known to the general public and enjoyed great success, and Akhmadulina graduated from the institute with excellent marks.
In 1962, the first collection of her poems, called “String,” was published. The talent of the young author was noticed by very influential people in the literary world. Rozhdestvensky, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky became interested in her.
In 1968, the collection “Chills” appeared, and then “Music Lessons”. Akhmadulina’s works were read in one breath. Almost simultaneously the collections “Candle”, “Blizzard”, “Poems” were published.
Bella Akhmadulina loved traveling to Georgia. The beauty of this wonderful country inspired her and gave life to a huge number of poems. The writer expressed her love for this sunny country in the collection “Dreams about Georgia”. Bella is also connected with the culture of Georgia: she is a translator of the works of such talented Georgian writers as:
- Tabidze.
- Baratashvili.
- Chikovani.
The poetess created many wonderful essays about great people, including:
- V. Vysotsky.
- V. Nabokov.
- V. Erofeev.
Movies
Bella Akhmadulina performed roles in only two films. But both films are true masterpieces. These are the films:
- “There lives such a guy.”
- "Sport, sport, sport."
The film “There Lives Such a Guy” was filmed in 1959 by director V. Shukshin. At the time of filming, Bella Akhmadulina was only twenty-two years old. In this film, Leonid Kuravlev became her partner.
Akhmadulina's poems can be heard in many famous films. Among them:
- "Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath".
- "Cruel romance".
- "Love affair at work".
An interesting fact is that actress Iya Savvina, who voiced Piglet in the cartoon “Winnie the Pooh,” copied Bella’s manner of speaking. The poetess reacted to this with humor. She jokingly thanked Savvina for “putting a pig on her.”
Personal life
It is known that personal life Bella Akhmadulina's life consisted of many bright, happy and sad moments. The poetess got married for the first time when she was only eighteen years old.
Soon after the divorce, Akhmadulina married the writer Yuri Nagibin. This marriage lasted nine years. If you believe V. Aksenov’s biographical novel “The Mystic River,” then the reason for the divorce was Bella’s betrayal. After Yuri and Bella broke up, the poetess adopted a girl named Anna.
For some time Akhmadulina lived with Eldar Kuliev, son famous writer Kaisyn Kulieva. It was a civil marriage. From Eldar, Akhmadulina had a beautiful daughter, Elizaveta.
And in 1974, the poetess became the wife of Boris Messerer, a theater artist and set designer. Despite the fact that he devoted a lot of time to work, he always had the opportunity to pay attention to his family. Bella's children, Lisa and Anna, treated him like their own father.
Death of a poetess
The poetess died in the ambulance. The reason for her death was cardiac arrest. Say goodbye to great poetess All her relatives and admirers of her work came to the House of Writers. Bella Akhmadulina is buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Author: Irina Angelova
On my street for what year
footsteps sound - my friends are leaving.
My friends are slowly leaving
pleases that darkness outside the windows...
I can't believe her death. Never. There is something absurd in this that I don’t want to put up with.
Bella (Isabella) Akhatovna Akhmadulina (April 10, 1937 (19370410), Moscow - November 29, 2010, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian poetess, writer, translator, one of the largest Russian lyrical poets of the second half of the 20th century. Member of the Union Russian writers, Executive Committee of the Russian PEN Center, Society of Friends of the Museum fine arts named after A.S. Pushkin. Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Bella Akhmadulina was born on April 10, 1937 in Moscow. Her father is a Tatar by nationality, a deputy minister, and her mother is Russian Italian origin, who worked as a translator for the KGB. I started writing poetry back in school years.
When Akhmadulina’s first poems appeared in the magazine “October” in 1955, it immediately became clear that a real poet had arrived. Having entered the Literary Institute that same year, she was the queen there, and all the young poets were in love with her, including the compiler of this anthology, who became her first husband. Her talent was also admired by poets of the older generation - Antokolsky, Svetlov, Lugovskoy, but she only met Pasternak once on the path, but was embarrassed to introduce herself to him. Having mastered the assonant “Yevtushenko” rhyme, it sharply turned in a completely different direction - into whispers, rustles, uncertainty, elusiveness.
In 1957 she was criticized in “ Komsomolskaya Pravda" Graduated from the Literary Institute in 1960.
In 1964, she starred as a journalist in the film “There Lives a Guy Like This.”
The first collection of poems, “String,” appeared in 1962. This was followed by the poetry collections “Chills” (1968), “Music Lessons” (1970), “Poems” (1975), “Blizzard” (1977), “Candle” ( 1977), “The Secret” (1983), “The Garden” (USSR State Prize, 1989).
Akhmadulina’s poetry is characterized by intense lyricism, sophistication of forms, obvious echoes of poetic tradition of the past.
In the 1970s, the poetess visited Georgia, since then this land has occupied a prominent place in her work. Akhmadulina translated N. Baratashvili, G. Tabidze, I. Abashidze and other Georgian authors.
In 1979, Akhmadulina participated in the creation of the literary almanac “Metropol”.
In 1993 she signed the “Letter of Forty-Two”.
Akhmadulina wrote memoirs about contemporary poets, as well as essays about A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov.
In 2006, Akhmadulina became the hero of the book “Autograph of the Century,” in which one of the chapters is dedicated to her.
Akhmadulina was the first wife of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and later the wife of Yuri Nagibin. From the son of the Balkar classic Kaisyn Kuliev, Eldar Kuliev, in 1973 she gave birth to a daughter, Lisa. In 1974 she married theater artist Boris Messerer. Liza Kulieva followed in her mother’s footsteps - she graduated from the Literary Institute and lives in Peredelkino with her husband. The second daughter of the poetess, Anna, graduated from the Printing Institute and designs books as an illustrator.
She died on the evening of November 29, 2010 in an ambulance. According to the poetess' husband Boris Messerer, death was due to a cardiovascular crisis.
Russian President D. A. Medvedev expressed official condolences to the family and friends of the poetess.
..." a very great Russian poet has passed away. And, perhaps, the last one after Anna Akhmatova major poet with a woman's name. Still, let's not forget that Bella Akhmadulina was the only poet in the USSR, which Vladimir Nabokov became interested in. Nabokov, who denied Pasternak and Tvardovsky. Nabokov, who rejected everyone who was not of the same aesthetic composition with him. He could not resist Akhmadulina’s poems. And how can you resist them? Against their only sadness, their only pride and some elusive timidity?
“On my street for many years / there are sounds of footsteps - my friends are leaving. / My friends / the slow departure / is pleasing to that darkness outside the windows...”
So her steps also echoed. Gone. To another country. Where someone still continues to type her new poems on a typewriter." - Pavel Basinsky.
Bella Akhmadulina's childhood and family
Akhmadulina’s hometown is Moscow. She was born and lived on Varvarka. Her father held the post of a major customs chief, while her mother worked as a translator and KGB major. The girl had an exotic combination of blood, since her mother’s family included Italians and her father’s were Tatars. To a large extent, due to the busyness of her parents, Bella was raised by her grandmother. It was she who instilled in her granddaughter a love for animals, which she carried throughout her life.When the war began, my father was immediately drafted. Bella and her grandmother went to evacuate. First they went to Samara, then to Ufa and then to Kazan. The second grandmother on her father’s side lived there, but for the girl she was completely alien and unfamiliar. In this city, Bella became seriously ill.
It is unknown whether she would have survived or not if her mother had not come to Kazan. This was in 1944. Thus ended the evacuation. Once home, Bella went to school. The grandmother instilled in her granddaughter a love of reading. She read Pushkin and Gogol and junior classes I wrote absolutely without errors. It must be said that Akhmadulina always went to school with great reluctance and often missed classes. According to her recollections, during the war years she got used to loneliness, and school seemed to her strange place. Only four years later the girl began to get used to it.
Bella Akhmadulina's first poems
As a schoolgirl, Bella began visiting the House of Pioneers, where a literary circle was organized. The first magazine in which the poems of the young poetess were published was the magazine “October”. This happened in 1955. These first poems were childishly chaste and touching. Evgeny Yevtushenko immediately drew attention to her works; he was surprised by the unusual rhymes and his own writing style.Bella was attending classes at the Literary Association at that time, planning to become a student at the Literary Institute after school. The parents dreamed that their daughter would enter the journalism department at Moscow State University. Bella tried but failed the exams. The girl got a job at the Metrostroyevets newspaper, where she wrote articles and her poems. A year later, Akhmadulina became a student, entering the Literary Institute. After Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize, he was declared a traitor. Bella refused to sign the letter of accusation. This was the real reason that the student was expelled from the institute. This happened in 1959.
The beginning of the literary career of Bella Akhmadulina
The poetess managed to get a job at Literaturnaya Gazeta as a freelance correspondent in Irkutsk. While in Siberia, she wrote a story and called it “On Siberian Roads.” It was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta, and several of her poems were published at the same time. She wrote about the amazing region and the extraordinary people who lived there. Soon, the newspaper's editor-in-chief helped ensure that the talented girl was reinstated at the institute. In 1960 she graduated from it, and received a honors diploma.Bella Akhmadulina - poetry
Very little time passed, and a collection of poems called “String” was published. After she performed at the Polytechnic Museum of the capital along with Yevtushenko, Voznesensky and Rozhdestvensky, real popularity came to her. Artistry and soulful intonation defined her style. As the poetess said, such performances were difficult for her, despite the apparent ease.
Poems by Bella Akhmadulina, collections
In her first collection, Akhmadulina seemed to be looking for her own themes. In 1969, the collection “Music Lessons” appeared, six years later the collection “Poems”, and in 1977 – “Blizzard” and “Candle”. The periodical press vied with each other to publish Bella's poems.Her style was finally formed by the mid-sixties. What was unusual was that in modern Soviet poetry she was the first to speak in a high poetic style. Her works contained stylization of the “ancient” style, sophistication, metaphor, and sublimity.
Bella Akhmadulina. This is how hearts were broken
Critics had different attitudes towards Akhmadulina’s work. There were those who reproached her for her intimacy and mannerisms, some treated her condescendingly and favorably.
The poetess starred in two films. In “There Lives a Guy Like This” she can be seen in the role of a journalist. Leonid Kuravlev also played in this film. She also took part in the filming of the film “Sport, Sports, Sports.”
Personal life of Bella Akhmadulina
The poetess's first husband is Yevgeny Yevtushenko. They met at the institute. Yevtushenko recalled that the spouses often quarreled, but just as quickly made up. The couple stayed together for only three years. Her second husband is Yuri Nagibin (writer). They lived together for eight years. After the breakup, Bella accepted an orphanage girl, Anna, into the family, to whom, in the hope of returning her husband, she gave the surname Nagibina and patronymic Yuryevna. This was followed by a short civil marriage with Eldar Kuliev. They had a common daughter, Elizabeth.Poet, writer and translator
Poetess Bella Akhmadulina entered Russian literature at the turn of the 1950s-1960s, when an unprecedented mass interest in poetry arose, and not so much in the printed word, but in the spoken poetic word. In many ways, this “poetry boom” was associated with the work of a new generation of poets - the so-called “sixties”. One of the most prominent representatives This generation was Bella Akhmadulina, who, along with Andrei Voznesensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Robert Rozhdestvensky and Bulat Okudzhava, played a huge role in the revival of public consciousness in the country during the “thaw”. Start literary path Bella Akhmadulina happened at a time when Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Nabokov, luminaries of Russian literature of the 20th century, were alive and actively working. During these same years, public attention was focused on tragic fate And creative heritage Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva. It was Akhmadulina who had the difficult mission of picking up the poetic baton from the hands of her great predecessors, restoring the seemingly forever broken connection of times, and not allowing the chain of glorious traditions of Russian literature to be interrupted. And if now we can safely talk about the existence of the very concept of “fine literature,” then this is largely the merit of Bella Akhmadulina to Russian literature.
Bella's family belonged to Soviet elite. Her father Akhat Valeevich was a major customs chief, and her mother Nadezhda Makarovna was a KGB major and translator. The girl received an exotic blood combination: on her mother’s side there were Italians who settled in Russia, and on her father’s side there were Tatars. Parents were busy at work all day long, and the future poetess was raised mainly by her grandmother. She adored animals, and together with her granddaughter they picked up stray dogs and cats. Later, Bella will do this all her life, passing on her love of animals to her two daughters, Anya and Lisa. “I completely agree with Anastasia Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, who said: “I write the word “dog” in capital letters", she once said.
Bella Akhmadulina said about her childhood: “There was a pathetic, wretched photograph left somewhere: two sad women - this is my mother, my aunt - but in their hands they have what they just found, what was born in April 1937. Does this poorly formed unhappy face know what is to come, what will happen next? It’s only April of 1937, but this tiny creature, this bundle they are holding, pressing close to them, as if they knew something about what was going on around them. And that's enough for a long time in the early, very early beginning of childhood, some feeling dawned on me that I knew, despite complete absence age, that I know something that is not necessary to know and is impossible to know, and, in general, that it is impossible to survive... First the tulips bloomed, and suddenly this gloomy child, unfriendly, not at all likeable, saw the blooming tulips and said: “ I've never seen anything like this." That is, such a clear phrase is absolutely clear. Everyone was surprised that a gloomy and perhaps unwise child suddenly spoke out... To console me, we were riding in some trolleybus, they bought me, someone was selling, several red poppies. That is, as soon as I had time to be captivated by them and be terribly amazed and so wounded by this scarlet beauty of them, this incredible color of these plants, the wind blew them away. This is how all the failures began, like these missing poppies... My mother called my father Arkady, and when I started jumping in bed, he taught me to say: “I am a Tataya, I am a Tataya”... My name is Isabella, why? My mother was obsessed with Spain in the thirties. She asked her grandmother to find a Spanish name for the newborn. But Isabel is still in Spain. Grandmother even thought that the queen was called Isabella, but the real queen was called Isabel. But I realized it early and shortened it all to Bell. Only Tvardovsky called me Isabella Akhatovna. I’m very embarrassed when they call me Bella Akhmatovna, I say: “Excuse me, I am Akhatovna, my father is Akhat…”.
The war found little Bella in a kindergarten in Kraskovo near Moscow. Her father was almost immediately called up to the front, and her mother was constantly at work. Akhmadulina said: “In childhood, a child undergoes so many things, and also the beginning of the war, my God. How they rescued me from this garden in Kraskovo. The Germans came close to Moscow. My father had already gone to war, and people thought that everything would end soon, that this was some kind of nonsense. I was four years old, I had a teddy bear. These teachers in Kraskovo robbed everyone. The parents will send some gifts, they took them away. They had their own children. Once they wanted to take my bear away, but then I grabbed it so tightly that they got scared. So it was possible to disappear, because a glow was blazing over Moscow, Moscow was burning. They grabbed their children and consoled them, and all the other small fry were crying and crowding around, but, fortunately, my mother managed to pick me up. Well, further wanderings began. All this is useful to a person.”
Well, what's your name?
Come on, this girl will be on duty for us. She probably knows how to hold a rag very well.
I have never been able to do this and I still can’t do this. But that’s how she fell in love with me precisely because of what I believe was military suffering. And once she asked me to manage this board and wipe it with a rag. And I had read so much by that time that, of course, I already wrote very well, and if I put the emphasis in “dog” somewhere in the wrong place, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t do it, because I was constantly reading, first with my grandmother, then alone. This constant reading of Pushkin, but mostly somehow Gogol, was all the time. There were books in the house, and I was reading, and suddenly everyone noticed that I wrote without any mistakes and very quickly, and I even began to teach others to write. Here is such a wounded post-war lonely sad woman, Nadezhda Alekseevna Fedoseeva, suddenly she had some kind of wing over me, as if I, I don’t know, reminded her of someone, or the wounded, if she was a nurse, or, I don’t know, somehow she fell in love with me. Well, everyone somehow took their cues from me. I really wiped this board...”
Bella Akhmadulina began writing her first poems while still in school, studying literary circle Houses of pioneers of the Krasnogvardeisky district on Pokrovsky Boulevard. Already in 1955, her works were published in the magazine “October”. Some critics called her poems “irrelevant,” talking about banal and vulgar things. Nevertheless, the young poetess immediately gained great popularity among readers. This is how Yevgeny Yevtushenko recalled the young poetess: “In 1955, I came across touching, childishly chaste lines in the magazine “October”: “Having dropped my head on the lever, the telephone receiver is fast asleep.” And it was worth reading next to it: “In Ukrainian, March is called “berezen”” - and, snorting with pleasure, the couple emerged, almost with a lily in their wet hair, towards the bereznya: carefully. I shuddered sweetly: such rhymes did not lie on the road. He immediately called Zhenya Vinokurov at Oktyabr and asked: “Who is this Akhmadulina?” He said that she was a tenth-grader, went to his literary association at ZIL and was going to enter the Literary Institute. I immediately showed up at this literary association, where I saw her for the first time and heard her selfless recitation of poetry. It was no coincidence that she called her first book “String” - the sound of a tightly stretched string vibrated in her voice, and you even became afraid that it might break. Bella was then a little plump, but indescribably graceful, not walking, but literally flying, barely touching the ground, with pulsating veins marvelously visible through her satin skin, where the mixed blood of the Tatar-Mongol nomads and Italian revolutionaries from the Stopani family jumped, in whose honor she was named Moscow lane. Although her plump face was round, like a Siberian swan, she did not look like any earthly creature. Her slanted, not just Asian, but some kind of alien eyes looked as if not at the people themselves, but through them at something invisible to anyone. The voice magically shimmered and bewitched not only when reading poetry, but also in simple everyday conversation, giving a lacy grandiloquence to even prosaic trifles. Bella was astonishing, like a bird of paradise that had accidentally flown to us, although she was wearing a cheap beige suit from the Bolshevichka factory, a Komsomol badge on her chest, ordinary sandals and a wreath-style country braid, which her wounded rivals said was braided. In fact, she had no equal rivals, at least young ones, neither in poetry nor in beauty. There was nothing disdainful of others hidden in her sense of her own uniqueness; she was kind and helpful, but for this it was even more difficult to forgive her. She was mesmerizing. In her behavior, even artificiality became natural. She was the embodiment of artistry in every gesture and movement - only Boris Pasternak looked like that. Only he hummed, and Bella rang...”
The family wanted Bella to enter the journalism department of Moscow State University, because her father once worked in a large-circulation newspaper, but Bella failed the entrance exams, not knowing the answer to the question about the newspaper Pravda, which she had never held or read. But still, on the advice of her mother, Bella went to work for the Metrostroyevets newspaper, in which she began to publish not only her first articles, but also her poems. In 1956, Bella entered the Literary Institute. She said: “At the institute, at the beginning, in the first year, several people rallied who were considered more capable, and there were some very nice ones, but who did not show themselves. They tried to admit people to the institute not based on their literacy or poetry skills, but on the basis of this. There were some former sailors there, well, and there was a wonderful one, with whom we were very friends, who also became famous, miner Kolya Antsiferov. So they tried to ensure that they were not those who studied with Nadezhda Lvovna Pobedina, that is, no one there thought about Pobedina, but simply not those who had read a lot of books. And there was a wonderful, absolutely wonderful person, whom I still love dearly, Galya Arbuzova, Paustovsky’s stepdaughter. She was remarkable both in intelligence and kindness, a wonderful person, and she still is like that. Even though many years have passed, I always remember her with love. Well, and, of course, some of Paustovsky’s influence passed through her, both influence and support... My short-lived success continued until Boris Leonidovich Pasternak received Nobel Prize. A scandal broke out at the institute, and not only at the institute, at the institute only to a small extent. They announced to everyone: this writer is a traitor. Some easily signed the charges, some simply did not understand what they were talking about. Yes, adult writers, some eminent writers signed false curses against Pasternak. But they just told me what I needed, they shoved this paper... It’s good if it’s already in early age a person understands that you will make a mistake once and then for the rest of your life, your whole life... But it never occurred to me to make a mistake, I couldn’t do it, it would be as strange as, I don’t know, offending my dog or something... that atrocity... They expelled me for Pasternak, but pretended that this was Marxism-Leninism. Naturally, I did not keep up with this subject. We had a diamat teacher, and she had diabetes, and I once confused diamat and diabetes. This is dialectical materialism - diamat. Well, at that time I defended it as cynicism. No, I didn’t know, I didn’t want to offend. “You call teaching some kind of diabetes...”
In 1959, Bella Akhmadulina was expelled from the Literary Institute. In that difficult year, Bella was helped by the editor-in-chief of the Literary Gazette S.S. Smirnov, who invited her to become a freelance correspondent for the Literary Gazette Sibir in Irkutsk. Akhmadulina said: “I saw a lot of grief, a lot of human grief. Nevertheless, I continued to work. I had a poem about the blast furnace, about steelworkers. After their shift, they came out exhausted, they wanted to drink beer and eat, but there was nothing in the stores, no food. But vodka, please. Well, of course, I wasn't interested in that. They treated me well, they understood that this was some kind of Moscow phenomenon. Well, I'm wearing overalls and a helmet, which is ridiculous. But I started this in the newspaper “Metrostroyevets”, there may have been some concessions there.” In Siberia, Bella wrote the story “On Siberian Roads,” in which she described her impressions of the trip. The story was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta along with a series of poems about the amazing Land and its people. Smirnov helped Bella Akhmadulina recover at the institute, urgently raising the issue in the Writers' Union about supporting young talents. They reinstated Bella to her fourth year, the same one from which she was expelled. In 1960, Bella Akhmadulina graduated from the Literary Institute with honors. Soon after graduating from the institute, she released her first collection, “String”. Then, assessing her debut, the poet Pavel Antokolsky wrote in a poem dedicated to her: “Hello, Miracle named Bella!” At the same time, Bella Akhmadulina’s first fame came with her first poetic performances at the Polytechnic Museum, Luzhniki, Moscow University (together with Voznesensky, Yevtushenko and Rozhdestvensky), which attracted a huge audience.
With Andrei Voznesensky.
The sincere, soulful intonation and artistry of the poetess’s very appearance determined the originality of her performing style. Later, in the 1970s, Akhmadulina spoke about the deceptive ease of these performances: “On the edge of fatality, on the edge of a rope.”
Akhmadulina’s first collection of poems, “String,” published in 1962, was noted for its searches own themes. Later, her collections “Music Lessons” (1969), “Poems” (1975; with a foreword by P.G. Antokolsky), “Candle”, “Blizzard” (both in 1977) were published; collections of Akhmadulina’s poems are constantly published in periodicals. Her own poetic style formed by the mid-1960s. For the first time in modern Soviet poetry, Akhmadulina spoke in a high poetic style.
happy beggar, kind convict,
a southerner chilled in the north,
consumptive and evil Petersburger
I’ll live in the malarial south.
Don't cry for me - I will live
that lame woman who came out onto the porch,
that drunkard slumped on the tablecloth,
and this, which the Mother of God paints,
I will live as a wretched god.
Don't cry for me - I will live
that girl taught to read and write,
which is fuzzy in the future
my poems, my red bangs,
How the fool would know. I will live.
Don't cry for me - I will live
sisters more merciful than merciful,
in military recklessness before death,
Yes, under my bright star
somehow, but I’ll still live.
Sublime vocabulary, metaphors, exquisite stylization of the “ancient” style, musicality and intonation freedom of the verse made her poetry easily recognizable. The very style of her speech was an escape from modernity, the middle, everyday life, a way of creating an ideal microcosm, which Akhmadulina endowed with her own values and meanings. The lyrical plot of many of her poems was communication with the “soul” of an object or landscape (candle, portrait, rain, garden), not without a magical connotation, designed to give them a name, awaken them, bring them out of oblivion. Akhmadulina thus gave her vision to the world around her.
All you need is a candle,
simple wax candle,
and age-old old-fashionedness
This way it will be fresh in your memory.
And your pen will hurry
to that ornate letter,
intelligent and sophisticated
and goodness will fall on the soul.
You're already thinking about friends
increasingly, in the old way,
and stearic stalactite
you will do it with tenderness in your eyes.
And Pushkin looks tenderly,
and the night has passed, and the candles are going out,
and the delicate taste of native speech
It's so cold on your lips.
In many poems, especially with conventionally fantastic imagery (the poem “My Genealogy”, “An Adventure in an Antique Store”, “A Country Romance”), she played with time and space, resurrected the atmosphere of the 19th century, where she found chivalry and nobility, generosity and aristocracy , the ability for reckless feeling and compassion - the traits that made up the ethical ideal of her poetry, in which she said: “The method of conscience has already been chosen, and now it does not depend on me.” The desire to find a spiritual pedigree was revealed in poems addressed to Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova (“Longing for Lermontov”, “Music Lessons”, “I Envy Her - Young” and other works); in their fate she finds her measure of love, kindness, “orphanhood” and the tragic paidness of the creative gift. Akhmadulina presented this measure to modernity - and this (not only the word and syllable) consisted of it special character inheritance of the 19th century tradition. The aesthetic dominant of Akhmadulina’s work is the desire to sing, to “give thanks” to “any little thing”; her lyrics were filled with declarations of love - to a passer-by, a reader, but above all to friends, whom she was ready to forgive, save and protect from an unjust trial. “Friendship” is the fundamental value of her world (poems “My comrades”, “Winter isolation”, “Already bored, and inappropriate, “The craft has brought our souls together”). Singing the purity of friendly thoughts, Akhmadulina did not deprive this theme of dramatic overtones: friendship did not save from loneliness, incomplete understanding, from mutual hopelessness:
On my street for what year
footsteps sound - my friends are leaving.
My friends are slowly leaving
I like that darkness outside the windows.
My friends' affairs have been neglected,
there is no music or singing in their houses,
and only, as before, the Degas girls
blue ones trim their feathers.
Well, well, well, let fear not wake you up
you, defenseless, in the middle of this night.
There is a mysterious passion for betrayal,
my friends, your eyes are clouded.
Oh loneliness, how cool your character is!
Shining with an iron compass,
how coldly you close the circle,
not heeding useless assurances.
So call me and reward me!
Your darling, caressed by you,
I will console myself by leaning against your chest,
I will wash myself with your blue cold.
Let me stand on tiptoe in your forest,
at the other end of a slow gesture
find foliage and bring it to your face,
and feel orphanhood as bliss.
Grant me the silence of your libraries,
your concerts have strict motives,
and - wise one - I will forget those
who died or are still alive.
And I will know wisdom and sorrow,
mine secret meaning they will trust me with items.
Nature leaning on my shoulders
will announce his childhood secrets.
And then - out of tears, out of darkness,
from the poor ignorance of the past
my friends have beautiful features
will appear and dissolve again.
Liberal criticism was at the same time supportive and condescending towards Akhmadulina’s work, unfriendly and official - she reproached her for mannerism, pompousness, and intimacy. Akhmadulina always avoided, unlike other “sixties”, socially significant social topics. Akhmadulina’s lyrics did not reproduce history mental suffering, but only pointed to them: “In the melancholy of which I am capable,” “Once, swaying on the edge,” “It happened like this...”. She preferred to speak about the tragic basis of existence in an allegorical form (“Don’t cry for me! I will live...” - “Spell”), but more often in poems about poetry, the very process of creativity, which occupy a very large part in her works. great place. For Akhmadulina, creativity is both “execution”, “torture”, and the only salvation, the outcome of “earthly torment” (poems “The Word”, “Night”, “Description of the Night”, “It’s So Bad to Live); Akhmadulina’s faith in the word (and loyalty to it), in the indissolubility of “literacy and conscience” is so strong that the overtaking dumbness is tantamount to non-existence for her, the loss of the high justification of her own existence.
Akhmadulina is ready to pay for her poetic chosenness with the “torment of superiority”; she saw suffering as an atonement for spiritual imperfection, an “exacerbation” of personality, but in the poems “Bad Spring” and “This Is Me” she overcomes these temptations.
O pain, you are wisdom. The essence of the solutions
so small in front of you,
and the dark genius dawns
the eye of a sick animal.
Within your destructive limits
my mind was high and stingy,
but the medicinal herbs have thinned out
The mint taste never leaves my lips.
To ease the last breath,
I, with the precision of that animal,
sniffing, I found my way out
in a sad flower stem.
Oh, to forgive everyone is a relief!
Oh, forgive everyone, convey to everyone
and tender, like irradiation,
taste grace with your whole body.
I forgive you, empty squares!
With you only, in my poverty,
I cried from vague faith
over the children's hoods.
I forgive you, strangers' hands!
May you reach out to
that only my love and torment
an item that no one needs.
I forgive you, dog eyes!
You were a reproach and a judgment to me.
All my sorrowful cries
until now these eyes carry.
I forgive enemy and friend!
I kiss all your lips in haste!
In me, as in the dead body of a circle,
completeness and emptiness.
And generous explosions, and lightness,
like in the white rattles of feather beds,
and my elbow is no longer burdensome
sensitive feature of the railing.
Only air under my skin.
I'm waiting for one thing: at the end of the day,
afflicted with a similar disease,
may someone forgive me.
Akhmadulina resolved the traditional theme of confrontation between the poet and the crowd without the usual denunciation of the uninitiated (the poem “Chills”, the poem “The Tale of Rain”): Moscow bohemia, in conflict with the poet, appeared not inescapably hostile, but genetically alien. In the collections “The Mystery,” published in 1983, and “The Garden,” published in 1987, and awarded the State Prize in 1989, poetic hermeticism, descriptions of solitary walks, “nightly inventions,” meetings and partings with treasured landscapes, keepers of secrets , the meaning of which was not deciphered, was combined with a socio-thematic expansion of the poetic space: inhabitants of suburban suburbs, hospitals, unsettled children appeared, the pain for whom Akhmadulina transforms into “comlicity of love.”
Bella Akhmadulina with Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam.
Another interesting facet of Bella Akhmadulina’s talent is her participation in two films. In 1964, she starred as a journalist in Vasily Shukshin’s film “There Lives Such a Guy,” where she practically played herself during her work at Literaturnaya Gazeta. The film received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. And in 1970, Akhmadulina appeared on the screens in the film “Sport, Sports, Sports.”
Leonid Kuravlev and Bella Akhmadulina in Vasily Shukshin's film "There Lives Such a Guy."
In the 1970s, Bella Akhmadulina visited Georgia, and since then this land has occupied a prominent place in her work. Akhmadulina translated N. Baratashvili, G. Tabidze, I. Abashidze and other Georgian authors. In 1979, Akhmadulina participated in the creation of the uncensored literary almanac Metropol. Akhmadulina has repeatedly spoken out in support of the Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Lev Kopelev, Georgy Vladimov and Vladimir Voinovich, who were persecuted by the authorities. Her statements in their defense were published in the New York Times and repeatedly broadcast on Radio Liberty and Voice of America. She has participated in many world poetry festivals, including International holiday poetry in Kuala Lumpur in 1988.
In 1993, Bella Akhmadulina signed the “Letter of Forty-Two,” published in the Izvestia newspaper on October 5, 1993. This was a public appeal by a group of famous writers to citizens, the government and Russian President Boris Yeltsin regarding the events of the fall of 1993, during which there was a forceful dispersal of the Supreme Soviet of Russia with shelling of the parliament building from tanks and the death, according to official data, of 148 people. “There is neither the desire nor the need to comment in detail on what happened in Moscow on October 3. Something happened that could not help but happen because of our carelessness and stupidity - the fascists took up arms, trying to seize power. Thank God, the army and law enforcement agencies were with the people, did not split, did not allow the bloody adventure to develop into a disastrous one civil war, well, what if suddenly?... We would have no one to blame but ourselves. We “pityingly” begged after the August putsch not to “revenge”, not to “punish”, not to “prohibit”, not to “close”, not to “search for witches”. We really wanted to be kind, generous, and tolerant. Kind... To whom? To the murderers? Tolerant... Why? Towards fascism? ... History has once again given us the chance to take a big step towards democracy and civilization. Let’s not miss such a chance again, as we have done more than once!” - excerpt from the letter. The authors called on the Russian President to ban “all types of communist and nationalist parties, fronts and associations”, tighten legislation, introduce and widely use tough sanctions “for the propaganda of fascism, chauvinism, racial hatred”, close a number of newspapers and magazines, in particular the newspaper “Den” , " Soviet Russia», « Literary Russia", "Pravda", as well as the television program "600 seconds", suspend the activities of the Soviets, and also recognize not only the Congress as illegitimate people's deputies RF and The Supreme Council RF, but also all the bodies formed by them (including the Constitutional Court). The writers demanded to ban and “disperse” all illegal paramilitary and armed groups operating in the country. The “Letter of the Forty-Two” caused a split among representatives of the creative intelligentsia, which continues to this day. But Bella Akhmadulina did not get lost in this turbulent time, she only distanced herself slightly, going back to work. She wrote memoirs about contemporary poets and essays about Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.
With Boris Yeltsin.
Bella Akhmadulina has always been an object of love and admiration. The poetess did not like to talk about her past personal life. “Love is the absence of the past,” she once wrote in one of her poems. However, her ex-husbands, who retained their admiration for Bella throughout their lives, themselves spoke about their past relationships in their diaries and memoirs. Akhmadulina’s first husband was Yevgeny Yevtushenko. She met him at the Literary Institute.
With Evgeny Yevtushenko.
“We often quarreled, but quickly made up. We loved each other and each other's poems. Hand in hand, we wandered around Moscow for hours, and I ran ahead and looked into her Bakhchisarai eyes, because only one cheek, only one eye was visible from the side, and I didn’t want to lose a single piece of my beloved and therefore the most beautiful face in the world. Passers-by looked around, because we looked like something they themselves had failed to do...,” the poet later recalled. This marriage lasted three years.
Akhmadulina’s second husband was the writer Yuri Nagibin. “I was so proud, so admired her when, in a crowded room, she read her poems in a tenderly tense, brittle voice and her beloved face was burning. I didn’t dare sit down, I just stood by the wall, almost falling from a strange weakness in my legs, and I was happy that I was nothing to everyone gathered, that I was nothing to her alone,” Nagibin wrote.
With Yuri Nagibin.
At that time, Akhmadulina, according to the memoirs of the poetess Rimma Kazakova, was especially extravagant: in the obligatory veil, with a spot on her cheek. “She was a beauty, a goddess, an angel,” Kazakova says about Akhmadulina. Akhmadulina and Nagibin lived together for eight years... The poetess noted their separation with the lines: “Farewell! But how many books and trees have entrusted their safety to us, so that our farewell anger would plunge them into death and lifelessness. Goodbye! We, therefore, are among them who destroy the souls of books and forests. Let us endure the death of the two of us without pity or interest.” Her civil marriage with the son of the Balkar classic Kaisyn Kuliev, Eldar Kuliev, who gave her her eldest daughter Elizaveta in 1973, was short-lived.
With daughter Lisa in Peredelkino. 1973
In 1974, Bella Akhmadulina met the artist, sculptor and theater designer Boris Messerer. They lived together for more than thirty years. We met while walking our dogs, and it was love at first sight. “Spring of '74. The courtyard of the filmmakers' house on Chernyakhovsky Street, near the Airport metro station. I'm walking my dog Ricky, a Tibetan terrier. It belongs to the beautiful film actress Elsa Lezhdei, the woman I love, with whom I live in this house. Bella Akhmadulina appears in the yard with a brown poodle. His name is Thomas. Bella lives one entrance away from me, in the former apartment of Alexander Galich. Bella in homemade. In low-heeled shoes. Dark sweater. The hairstyle is random. The sight of her tiny, slender figure begins to ache in your heart. We are talking. Nothing. Bella listens absentmindedly. Talking about dogs... Soon she leaves. And suddenly, with all the clarity that came out of nowhere, I understand that if this woman wanted, then I, without a moment’s hesitation, would leave with her forever. Anywhere... In the first days of our coincidence with Bella, we cut ourselves off from the world around us, plunged into nirvana and, as Vysotsky said, went to the bottom, like Submarine, and we didn’t submit call signs... We didn’t communicate with anyone, no one knew where we were. On the fifth day of Bella’s voluntary imprisonment in the workshop, I returned from the city and saw on the table large leaf Whatman paper covered with poetry. Bella sat next to her. I read the poems and was amazed - they were very good poems, and they were dedicated to me. Before this I had not read Bella’s poems - it just so happened. After meeting her, I, of course, wanted to read it, but I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to jinx our nascent relationship...” says Boris Messerer in the book “Bella’s Flash.”
With Boris Messerer.
Messerer was immediately struck by how easily Akhmadulina gave away her works. And he began collecting these scattered poems - sometimes written on napkins, on notebook sheets. As a result of Messerer's search, a whole four-volume book was published. He became her kind of guardian angel. Boris took upon himself the task of caring and patronizing and has been coping with this task for many years. “I am an absent-minded person,” the poetess said about herself. “Everyday difficulties are completely insurmountable for me.” And if during a performance she forgot a line, her husband immediately prompted her. In one of her poems she said about him: “Oh, the guide of my timid behavior.” In this surprisingly tender, touching union of two great people, Bella Akhmadulina’s second daughter, Anna, was born.
IN last years In her life, Bella Akhmadulina lived with her husband in Peredelkino. According to the writer Vladimir Voinovich, Akhmadulina suffered from a serious illness in the last years of her life: “She wrote very little in Lately, since I saw almost nothing, I practically lived by touch. But, despite the very serious illness, never complained, was always friendly.” At the end of October 2010, she was hospitalized at the Botkin Hospital, where surgeons decided to operate. According to doctors, everything went well, Bella Akhatovna’s condition improved. Akhmadulina spent several days in intensive care, then in a regular ward. The poetess was discharged from the clinic, but, unfortunately, her body could not stand it and four days after being discharged from the hospital, Bella Akhmadulina died.
Farewell to Bella Akhmadulina took place on December 3, 2010. Only her family and friends were present at the funeral service in the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The farewell to her was generally unusually quiet. An hour before the official farewell - at 11 o'clock - at Central House writers began to gather those whom Akhmadulina called “her venerable readers.” There are hundreds of people in the hall and foyer. They seemed to be afraid unnecessary words. “When I was a boy of 17, I ran to her concerts, like people run to a Russian folk tale: to be cleaned from boiler to boiler. I was digested in her poems and came out so beautiful, full of life“believing in the future,” said writer Viktor Erofeev. “For me, she is externally and internally the embodiment of poetry, female poetry at that. Feminine and masculine - such a combination,” said writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky. Her friends recalled how Bella Akhmadulina knew how to make friends, how she knew how to love, how she combined incompatible things. “Bella remained a fragrant soul until the very end, which is why she draws such a crowd in any frost. People feel that this is a man who had a moral tuning fork and never did a single false act,” says the widow of the writer Solzhenitsyn, Natalya Solzhenitsyna. “Bella didn’t like it when they said: “A poet in Russia is more than a poet.” She said: “It’s like you’re doing your own thing.” She was just a poet. Maybe the highest and purest in recent times,” said journalist Yuri Rost. Her poems were not politicized or social. It is still unclear how such “pure poetry” from complex phrases and images gathered stadium seats of five thousand. Maybe it was a need for something incomprehensibly beautiful? And Bella, like a accidentally surviving pearl of the Silver Age, hypnotized the space?
“She was born a hundred years after Pushkin and left after the century of Tolstoy’s departure,” the writer Andrei Bitov said about Akhmadulina. In the hall of the House of Writers during the farewell to Akhmadulina, there were mainly people from the sixties present. “With Bella’s departure, the question arises as to whether the intelligentsia remains in the country. Or it will disappear and be replaced by intellectuals working for the market,” noted Russian Minister of Culture Alexander Avdeev.
Bella Akhmadulina was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Only those closest to her attended the funeral. It was cold and silent, there was no pathos and solemn speeches. Her voice remained in the recordings. There are poems in the books. The Beautiful Lady herself left...
In 1997, a television program from the series “The Life of Remarkable People” was prepared about Bella Akhmadullina.
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Text prepared by Tatyana Halina
Used materials:
B. Messerer, “A glimpse of Bella” “Banner”, 2011
Biography on the website www.c-cafe.ru
Biography on the website www.taini-zvezd.ru
T. Draka, “Bella Akhmadulina - search for her own style”, “Logos” Lviv, 2007