"RG" for the first time published details from the diary of Bella Akhmadulina - Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Elizaveta Kulieva at the presentation of the book "Bella. Meetings after "

The Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg hosted a presentation of the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after.

Ten years ago, Izvestia journalists Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov took a long interview with the famous sixties Bella Akhmadulina.

“Bella Akhatovna was friendly, hospitable and very beautiful,” Marina Zavada shared her memories. - We asked her about what she thinks about life in the country, about the events of the 90s. During the first interview, we stayed with Bella Akhatovna for about four hours, she sensitively listened to the questions, did not interrupt, and her answers were brilliant and unexpected. The interview was published on two newspaper pages. After that we occasionally called each other. And somehow the idea came up to make a book of dialogues with Akhmadulina. She willingly responded, she wanted to talk about her life. In recent years, Bella Akhatovna saw worse and worse, she could no longer write anything. Unfortunately, circumstances were against it. Years later, after the death of Akhmadulina, the idea arose to fulfill a kind of duty to her - to make a big book. But now not with Akhmadulina - with people close to the poet, with her friends, relatives.

Some of these people accompanied her throughout her life, someone collided on a short stretch of the path. These people share their impressions of Bella Akhmadulina, each trying to create her portrait in their own way.

In the book "Bella. Meetings after” includes interviews with Vladimir Voinovich, Yuri Rost, Marina Vladi, Mikhail Shemyakin, Laura Guerra, Zoya Boguslavskaya, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Zhanna Andreeva, Maria Bankul, Vsevolod and Felix Rossels. Work on the book lasted about three years. The authors managed to fill it with unknown documents from the archives, previously unpublished diaries of the young Bella Akhmadulina.

Bella's daughter also took part in the presentation - Elizaveta Kulieva:

— My role in the creation of the book is very modest. It is embarrassing for me to be on the pages of books next to Voinovich and Shemyakin. The book itself is wonderful, it gives the feeling that you yourself are talking with the interlocutors of Marina and Yuri. Mom always operated with images, sensations, associations. The book allows you to look at it through the prism of talent and love. Sometimes it seemed to me that Marina and Yuri began to speak her language, to think with her thoughts.

- When Vladimir Voinovich was in disgrace, then many turned away from him, - said Yuri Kulikov. - Bella Akhmadulina came to Voinovich's house every evening, they went to the kitchen and talked all evening. Voinovich recalled that Akhmadulina supported him like no one else. To this day, he talks about it with tenderness. One day, Voinovich said, Akhmadulina called and invited me to come in. Her guest was the grandson of Leonid Andreev, the guest of the American ambassador. Stayed up late. At that time, it was difficult to catch a taxi, while Voinovich had a Zaporozhets in the yard. And so the three of them arrived at the embassy, ​​the gates were open, the policeman, apparently, fell asleep. Voinovich took the guest to the very porch, but when he was backing out of the territory of the embassy, ​​the car was stopped by a policeman who jumped out of the booth. Voinovich thought that now he would be in trouble. Then he remembered that Angela Davis had come to Moscow. And he said that he brought her to the residence. Voinovich was released. Bella clapped her hands. If she were not in the car, he would hardly have dared to pretend to be such a desperate macho, "violate the state border."

Another interlocutor was Marina Vlady, which, according to journalists, is not currently giving interviews. To question her and Mikhail Shemyakin, the authors of the book specially flew to Paris. Marina Zavada managed to convince Marina Vlady to talk about Bella Akhmadulina.

- The main reason that Marina Vlady agreed to give an interview is her love for Bella. In the 70s, they had a warm relationship, they talked like friends, - said Zavada. - When we said goodbye to Marina Vladi, she said that she really wants us to write a book about Bella. When Marina Vladi lived in Moscow with Vladimir Vysotsky, they often invited Bella and Boris Messerer to visit. Usually all attention was paid to Akhmadulina. Despite the fact that Bella has always been a shy and silent person. Another of our interlocutors, Azary Plisetsky, said that he was very busy, he was planning a business trip to Japan in the coming days, but for the sake of a story about Bella, he was ready to postpone the trip. And in general, "for the sake of Bella, I'm ready for anything."

- WITH Mikhail Shemyakin we met in a Parisian cafe in Saint-Germain-des-Pres,” Yuri Kulikov added. He came to the meeting in his traditional riding breeches and black boots. He patted the pocket of his riding breeches and said that he was carrying a volume of Bella Akhmadulina's poems with him. Moreover, he reads poetry in a peculiar way: he takes a book, emphasizes something and makes extracts. When we asked him why he was doing this, Shemyakin said: perhaps Akhmadulina's poems will someday be illustrated.

- What place in the book is occupied by the memories of the "sixties"?

“Unfortunately, neither Vasily Aksenov, nor Andrei Voznesensky, nor Bulat Okudzhava were already alive,” Marina Zavada answered. - But we decided to talk, for example, with Zoya Boguslavskaya, Voznesensky's wife, an observant protagonist of those years and events. She is a shrewd and intelligent person. But it seems that Zoya Borisovna somewhat exaggerated the degree of Bella Akhmadulina's feelings for Andrei Voznesensky. Voznesensky, all his life, treated Akhmadulina as a deity. And every year, while he was healthy, on Bella Akhmadulina's birthday, he brought her a huge bouquet of roses.

- Yevtushenko and Akhmadulina maintained relations. When they lived in Peredelkino, they went to each other's dacha, walked along the paths of the village, - added Yuri Kulikov.

— Did you manage to put all the most important things into the book?

- We tried not to miss a single detail that pops up in the course of conversations. Although, of course, we know more than they wrote, - said Yuri Kulikov.

“We failed to make a book with her, this is the main loss,” added Marina Zavada. - Not only for us.

In addition to the presentation, the guests visited the Boris Yeltsin Museum, which they told about in an interview for the Yeltsin Center website.

“I got the feeling that I lived through the 90s again,” Yury Kulikov shared his impressions. - When there was a coup in 1991, I was at the White House and I am aware of the role of Boris Yeltsin. He was a large-scale man who in those days saved freedom, democracy. I remember, of course, what happened in 1993, when Ostankino and the mayor's office were smashed.

“It was a terrible time,” added Marina Zavada. - There was Makashov, the crowd was going to take Ostankino. At that time I worked for VGTRK. Then the broadcast abruptly ended, and at some point there was a heavy feeling, until we, at the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, started working a backup studio. I remember it all very well… The Yeltsin Center impresses with the scale of the exposition, with the way everything is lovingly collected and presented here. Everything is done at a very serious professional level. The hand of a strong and intelligent organizer is felt.

“You can see how carefully the exposition is prepared,” added Yury Kulikov. And different points of view are presented. For example, to the war in Chechnya. You have both points of view on this war. What is very important: there are no panegyrics to the era, just different points of view are presented.

“I was struck by the scale and professional work that was done at the Yeltsin Center,” said Elizaveta Kulieva. Everything is done with great taste. I like modern museums designed for children and young people. There is a lot of hard work behind this.

“Some of our interlocutors treasured the letters and notes of Akhmadulina with love,” Yuri Kulikov shared his impressions of the creation of the book.

- For example, in the family of Maria Bankul, an associate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, there are bundles of letters that Akhmadulina wrote in the 60s and early 70s. We were struck by the diaries that we found in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Akhmadulina kept them in the early 60s, being the wife of Yuri Nagibin. The archive also preserved a large selection of poems written in the 1950s by the hand of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, when he was Akhmadulina's husband. Having divorced Yevtushenko, Akhmadulina kept these verses.

- How did Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who was not only her first husband, but also one of those who welcomed Akhmadulina in literature, take the idea of ​​​​creating a book?

“Positive,” said Marina Zavada. - He himself wrote about Bella more than once. And always with admiration.

Yuri Kulikov and Marina Zavada signing autographs

Probably, no one knew and felt Bella Akhmadulina like her daughter Elizaveta, who was a participant in meetings of creative and gifted people in her mother's house. According to Elizabeth's memoirs, Bella Akhatovna perceived creativity with Pasternak's ease, following the principle "do not start archives, shake over manuscripts." At the same time, Bella Akhmadulina treated other people's poems with great reverence than her own.

“Mom treated Yevtushenko and Voznesensky with great friendly warmth,” said Elizaveta Kulieva. But they weren't very close. More precisely, they were close in their youth, but then they diverged very much. Yevtushenko and Voznesensky are mainstream poets who flourished under Soviet rule. The letter from my grandmother, cited in the book, sounds very funny in the context of Zoya Boguslavskaya's stories that Voznesensky was practically a dissident, while Voznesensky and Yevtushenko always "were within the limits." My grandmother loved the Pravda newspaper and wrote to my mother: “I read Voznesensky's poem, how beautifully he writes about Lenin, he is such a fine fellow. Bellochka, you should also write the same way. And it sounded very ironic. Probably, my mother always treated Yevtushenko and Voznesensky somewhat biased: she forgave them what she would not forgive others. At the same time, she teased them. But she never spoke badly.

- Joseph Brodsky attributed Akhmadulina to the Lermontov-Pasternak line in poetry, although, rather, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva is closer to her in spirit. What is your opinion?

- Tsvetaeva is more emotional, probably, if we evaluate female poets, my mother is between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. Akhmatova is too masculine for a woman, Tsvetaeva is "too" a woman. In my mother, there was an internal rigidity characteristic of men. In general, I love my mother’s early poems more, and I hear Osip Mandelstam in them - this is when the poet is inspired not by the theme and idea, but by the language, the image. When language is not an instrument, but poets follow language, serve it, and are inspired by it.

- She had her own pantheon, which she built in the texts and which is visible from the dedications: it included Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova and Pasternak. Pushkin heads this pantheon. Among prose writers, she liked Nabokov and Bunin.

- Was Akhmadulina a fighter by nature, who defended her principles under any circumstances? When Akhmadulina was only twenty years old, her work was severely criticized in the country's leading newspapers.

“A poet has his own battlefield. It was a struggle on an invisible front, rather, an internal confrontation. Unlike Vladimir Voinovich, she was not an active anti-Soviet. She was simply permeated with freedom, free internally. And that bothered a lot of people. She stood for inner freedom.

- Nevertheless, Akhmadulina supported Sakharov and Voinovich. And it was just an open position.

- Yes, she also stood up for Georgy Vladimov. They discussed this with Voinovich. Mom was not a desperately brave person, but there is such a moral and human level when people simply could not live with a bad conscience. This does not mean that they were not afraid, including for children. But my mother was famous, too frank, and everyone knew what to expect from her.

Elizaveta Kulieva with her daughter, Marina Zavada, Yuri Kulikov

- Also, Bella Akhatovna refused to participate in the persecution of Boris Pasternak, which cost her expulsion from the Literary Institute, and risked that her poems would not be published. How did she explain it?

She said she couldn't live with it.

- How did her parents feel about Bella Akhatovna's principled position - as you know, her father was a major Soviet official?

- Badly treated. Because of this, my mother did not communicate with her mother for many years. Because it was an insurmountable contradiction. Grandmother was naive, believed in the ideas of communism, wrote letters to the Pravda newspaper and tried to return her mother to the true path. But it was impossible. Mom started to understand everything very early. And in the end, it made their communication impossible.

- And in what spirit were you brought up - creative freedom or rigor?

- Together. We were left to our own devices, even excessively. But we were subject to strict requirements in terms of behavior among adults or at the table. Among adults, we behaved seriously.

- Which of the "sixties" was in your house?

— Many. The closest people were Aksenov and Voinovich, but I was six years old when they left. The regulars were Bitov, Rein, Viktor Erofeev. By the way, this word - "sixties" - my mother never used and did not consider herself to be "sixties". Mom has nothing to do with the company of writers with whom she is associated, she is an independent poet. The fact that she conquered the stadiums is a happy coincidence, nature, which endowed her with a beautiful appearance and a wonderful voice, artistry and charm. But the texts that she broadcast from the stage are chamber, subtle and complex art. Stadiums are a happy accident. But they acquired great fame, which protected her in the end. The glory that Vysotsky, mother and Okudzhava had was their protection, they had to be reckoned with.

- Did the creative atmosphere that reigned in the house inspire you to take up a pen and try yourself as a poet?

- We constantly visited my mother's creative evenings, especially me. It was part of life - a mother who read poetry. It was a natural environment. And I didn’t think that I could do something else besides writing and drawing. This is what I am doing now.

- To summarize. Who was Bella Akhmadulina?

You can understand this by reading the book. She was very different. She could write “Day-Raphael” with one hand, and clean the sink or cook dolma with the other. Like any deep personality, a thinking talented person, she showed herself very differently in different situations. But she was by no means out of touch with life. It can be said that she knew how to get along with life.

Photos by Lyubov Kabalinova

April 10 Bella Akhmadulina would have turned 80 years old. Memoirs of Marina Vladi about Bella Akhmadulina, which are printed by one of the chapters of the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov "Bella. Meetings after"

Stanislav Govorukhin once said about Marina Vladi: "She still had impeccable taste. Of all the abundance of men who surrounded her in the USSR, she chose the brightest and most talented. Genius." But not only her husband - Marina also chose the brightest and most talented friend in Moscow. Genia. Bella Akhmadulina. Perhaps this is indeed evidence of impeccable taste. Or depth, allowing you to assess the scale of who is nearby? It is no coincidence that in the routine seventies, perhaps, only Akhmadulina and Vladi considered Vysotsky not a bard - a great poet. Well, Joseph Brodsky. Good company...

Sadly, life turned out to be uncompassionate towards Vladi. Too many losses... And yet. Is vitality noticeable if fate caresses you? When, putting juice, water without gas and with "balls" on the table in the garden, Marina began to talk about Akhmadulina in her unique, unchanged voice, traces of time and his dramas disappeared. She blushed, remembering Bella, their meetings in Moscow and Paris... She laughed more and more loudly. The one who sat in front of us was the former Marina Vladi, who, they say, drove the entire male population of the USSR crazy.

Your compatriot Herve Bazin noticed that at some stage a young woman becomes a young woman. The end of the sixties. Akhmadulina for thirty. What does she look like, in the eyes of a Parisian?

The squirrel was not like everyone else. I saw a lovely woman, very pretty. It never crossed my mind to see what she was wearing. On occasion, we discussed with her that Tatar blood flows in the two of us. Despite the fact that I am blonde and my eyes are gray, not black, like Bella's, I feel oriental in me. How is it in Russian? Cheekbones, right? At Belka, they were raised. In general, her bone structure is very beautiful. And the neck is white, long. Reading poetry, she pulled her so (depicts).

It seems to me that for the first time I came into contact with Bella at her concert, to which Volodya brought me. We were sitting with him in the audience, and suddenly Akhmadulina announced from the stage: "Now there are several poems about Marina." And in a singsong voice: "I love you, Marina, that you ..." (smiling, imitating). What happened to me! I blushed terribly. I still have this property of blushing from embarrassment. I thought that Akhmadulina wrote poems about me. Shriveling, she looked at Volodya in confusion. He listened without saying a word. And then - wow, I realized that Bella was reading about Marina Tsvetaeva. I blushed even more, became just purple. I felt so ashamed. She scolded herself: "A vile girl, how could you imagine that Akhmadulina composed something about you ?!" Foolish situation. But I was a big star, I was used to being admired ... There was such noise and din around me. So I messed up with Akhmadulina. This is definitely my first memory of her. Bella, whom I later confessed everything to, had a lot of fun.

It was she who addicted me to Tsvetaeva's poetry. In Paris, I read a little of it in French. After all, after six years, I spoke little Russian. And I didn't read it at all. In my opinion, the translations of Marina Tsvetaeva were made by Elsa Triolet. She also translated my beloved Chekhov. It doesn't matter, as I later realized. I played Chekhov on stage in much better translations. In the summer I was with my son in Tahiti and in the library I came across a collection of works by Chekhov in Russian. I forgot about everything. I lay on the beach and read avidly ... And Tsvetaeva, after Bella, I fell ill. She even played Marina in the play by Veronica Olmi.

- Remembering the year of filming in the film "A Plot for a Short Story", you wrote: "... the circle of friends is narrowing. Now only the closest ones remain ..." Among them, "Bella Akhmadulina is a brilliant and enthusiastic poetess." "Brilliant" is Vysotsky's assessment?

- Why? This is our general opinion. Absolutely. Volodya constantly read Bellina's poems to me. In fact, Pushkin was his deity. But of the living poets, he bowed before Akhmadulina. It certainly had an effect on me. If your loved one, who is a genius himself, classifies someone as a caste of people-gods, this is worth listening to.

Did you already know he's a genius?

- Undoubtedly, when I lived with him, I understood this. Yes, from the first meeting in the theater I knew that Volodya was a genius. And after the rehearsal of "Pugachev" I saw in my life a little gray boy, somehow dressed to the same.

“You don’t pay attention to such nonsense.

—(Laughs.) At that time I turned. Either because she was already looking at Vysotsky, like a woman at a man, or he was completely poorly dressed. He had some creepy shoes. And a terrible haircut.

- Well, "genius poetess" is the opinion of both. And "enthusiastic" is probably your remark? Did Bella seem a bit "too" to you? Un peu trop - is that what the French say?

That's right: too much. Bella was all too much. Too. But she couldn't be like everyone else. She was unique.

- On what scale did Akhmadulina become one of her closest friends? Because she was Vysotsky's favorite poet? Or because, before others, I understood: by "his birth, first of all ... a Poet"? When, back in New York, Joseph Brodsky will give Vysotsky his book with the inscription: "To the Great Russian Poet" ...

- A lot of water will leak. Volodya will finally be released from the USSR, we will travel half the world with him before we meet Joseph in a cafe in New York in Greenwich Village. Vysotsky read new poems to him, Brodsky listened attentively. Then he took us to his home and gave us his last book as a parting gift. It was from what to fall into euphoria. Never before - what great poets are there! - official poets did not rank Vysotsky as part of their guild. Only Akhmadulina stood apart, confident that Volodya was a poet from God. The rest believed that he had rhymes. Naturally, Vysotsky was inspired by Bella's assessment. I saw that Volodya did not have a soul in her, I saw how she loves him. It brought us closer.

- It would seem, is it really so important: a poet is not a poet? Behind Vysotsky there was already crazy fame, admirers - a whole country, including (secretly) persecutors.

— Ha! He died because of this, that he was not officially recognized. Endless refusals, unwillingness to be accepted into the writer's environment greatly hurt pride.

- Lord, he was received by Akhmadulina, Brodsky!

— He was accepted by the people, this is the most important thing. But it was precisely the unbearable gap between how the public loved Volodya and how they hated the authorities that infuriated him. At the beginning of my life with Volodya, I was perplexed: why does he suffer because he is not taken to the official poets? Knows the value of the regime and worries that this regime does not accept him?! Complete idiocy. She said: "Why do you need this stinking Writers' Union? These shitty men?" Then I did not understand everything. She considered Volodya's reflections to be some kind of philistinism. But soon my eyes were opened to the enormity of the situation, to what it means to live in the USSR without any rights. How many years Vysotsky was hobbled! They didn’t print, didn’t publish, didn’t release records ... But he knew that he was better than all of them. And Belka knew. How could he not be touched by it?

Evening on Povarskaya. December 15, 1976. From left to right: Ivan Bortnik, Tonino Guerra, Angelo de Genti, Laura Guerra, Boris Messerer, Yuri Lyubimov, Vladimir Vysotsky, Bella Akhmadulina, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ilya Bylinkin, Irina Sobinova-Kassil, Andrey Voznesensky
Photo: Valery Plotnikov. Photo archive of the magazine "Spark"

- A year before his death, Vysotsky put on a par with those who "beat in the stomach", "broke their wings", glorious friends and buddies who see him only as a self-taught bard: "And they gave me good advice, / Slightly down, patting on the shoulder, / My friends are famous poets: / - You should not rhyme "I scream-stick"". Is this a made up phrase or was it actually spoken by someone?

- That's what Yevtushenko said to Volodya. Both he and Andrei Voznesensky, despite the fact that both got along with the authorities, never helped Vysotsky get published, did not directly raise the question of admission to the Writers' Union. And Volodya asked them. Here Bella constantly fussed for him. Helped with the Alice in Wonderland record when the Ministry of Culture nearly killed her. She thought of in "Literaturnaya Gazeta" to congratulate readers on the New Year and the release of "Alice" in Volodin's performance - as if the release of the disc was a fait accompli. Where were the censors to go? Bella outwitted them. I know that she tried to help with the Writers' Union. She asked for Volodya one of the cones. Useless.

- Before your first fixed apartment on Malaya Gruzinskaya, you were constantly looking for a corner where you could settle down with relative comfort. Begovaya, southwest, and earlier a room in a writer's house near the Aeroport metro station - next to Akhmadulina. Was it a good neighborhood?

- I associate the squirrel more with the workshop. We've been there a lot. Volodya appreciated that he was accepted in this house, where interesting people gathered. There was a bohemian atmosphere. Canvases, paints, frames, crowds... It is not very suitable for life. I even scrubbed the bath a few times. It was not that dirty, but the rust had eaten in - you couldn’t wipe it off. Maybe wash your brushes. Obviously, Belka gave up on this. Another character. I can't live like this.

- Many were offended by Akhmadulina, having read in your book that her dacha was of dubious cleanliness, and cats and dogs played with children right on the beds. But it's unlikely you wanted to offend Bella. Just as a foreigner, they did not understand what a writer's dacha is ...

- It was not in my thoughts to put some kind of reproach into my words. Although Bellina's dacha was cluttered and furnished with random, probably state-owned furniture, it looked cozy. Volodya and I arrived, but the owners were not there. Only the children and the old nanny. But with the advent of Bella, the day flowed magically. This always happened if she was in good shape and read poetry without stopping ... And as for the fact that cats and dogs were messing around with Squirrel's daughters, this is not criticism. In my house, dogs also sleep on the couch. I think it's great when children and animals live together.

Excuse me, I'll still go to the neighbors, find out what's so noisy with them. This sound got me.

A visit over the fence seems to be in vain.

“There are only workers there,” Marina explains when she returns. “They are painting a large car for transporting horses. Here, a hundred meters from the field for racing. The dyers say: they cannot stop, otherwise there will be defects. I said that, by the way, I also work. I'm doing an interview. And they bother me. Oh... The sound did stop. Mercy! Marina screams.

On the other side of the fence, her former house, a bit reminiscent of the mansion in which my mother lived in Russia before the revolution. The famous house bought in the respectable Mason-Laffitte by fifteen-year-old Marina Vlady for the first fees for the large Polyakov-Baydarov clan. And now she's sold it. She moved to a garage not a garage - in general, to a soundly reconstructed outbuilding. Marina casually touches on this topic, and we do not ask. This means that it was necessary ... And a tunnel leads to the former house. More precisely, it is laid from there - to the Marina. The neighbor's dogs, whose puzzled muzzles have been sticking out from under the fence for more than an hour.

— Look how they listen to Russian. What? What kind of unusual modulations? They are confused. And they are trying their best to figure it out. Comic. That fat woman used to run here, but she got fat and now she can’t crawl under the fence ...

- Your first husband, Robert Hossein, believed that the Polyakovs transferred the life of a large Russian noble family to Paris. And in Moscow, like it or not, the French mentality made itself felt. And although regular guests, a plentiful table are very Russian, they say that you tried to close the house for random people. And for whom were the doors open?

- There is a photograph taken with us on Malaya Gruzinskaya, when Volodya and I finally got an apartment. Our whole group is there: Bella with Boris Messerer, Sasha Mitta and his wife Lilya, Vasya Aksenov, Seva Abdulov, Stanislav Govorukhin, Viktor Sukhodrev with Inga Okunevskaya... There are not quite "friends" in the photo. Squirrel sits next to Volodya's father Semyon Vladimirovich, who hugged her. I also occasionally invited him, despite the fact that Vysotsky's relationship with his parents was, to put it mildly, unimportant. And with the circle of friends that we had with Volodya, we did not just communicate. We were very close. You could say they lived together. They ate together, drank together, went swimming together on the diplomatic beach.

In the evenings, when we gathered at our house, we allowed ourselves to express ourselves freely. They suspected that they were eavesdropping, but they did not hold back, they lived without censorship. Even some mischief appeared. Someone said: "Now we are making a transmission for you. Listen. Let's start." Those were the jokes. But Volodya, for example, was not a dissident. He expressed his attitude to power in symbols. Of course, she understood everything and hated him. She knew how dangerous he was to her. More than Bella. Her poetry is about feelings, friendship, love. Citizenship manifested itself in life. That she boldly put her name under human rights letters. But this is different. This is civisme, this is civic prowess.

- In a poem dedicated to Vysotsky, Akhmadulina wittily depicted the inevitable last guest, "that everyone is more intolerable and drunker than everyone else," the hostess, giving signs behind his back for cleaning ... Were you tired of almost daily meetings with Boris and Bella? That they, bohemian people, stayed up past midnight?

- In Russia, it's not too late. In France, people go to bed much earlier. Me not. I did not work in Moscow. Moreover, the guests did not tire. And Bellina's parishes are a pleasure. Even before Vysotsky, I had an open house in Paris. Robert is right: in the Russian manner. The French don't do that. I learned how to cook while filming in Italy. What did not come up with for Volodya. Loved him wildly. She took care of him, ran after him. I bought good food for foreign currency, went to the markets, where there were familiar sellers. They gave me a huge loaf of meat, a piece of twenty kilograms. I put it in the trunk and chopped it myself at home. By the time Bella and Boris arrived, the table had already been laid with something tasty. At first, the three of us sat and chatted. Later, Volodya was returning from Taganka.

Who set the tone for the feast? He? Bella?

— Bella. Volodya was exhausted and could sit silently for some time. In general, he was often silent in companies. Didn't show off. And Bella loved to perform. When she began to read poetry, the three of us froze. Then Belka challenged Volodya: "And you answer me!" He took the guitar, and already the other three - Bella, Boris and I - went wild with delight. I will never forget those evenings. This era. Sometimes Volodya did not sing, but read. But, in my opinion, he read his poems badly. But Bella is like no other.

- She, like you, acted in films. What is the opinion of the famous actress on this?

- I know that Bella played Vasya Shukshin in the film, but did not watch it. Therefore, I can’t judge (laughs) what kind of artist she turned out to be. Reading poetry and playing a role is a different technique. But when Bella went on stage, she became inimitable, she had a magical effect on the audience.

- Do you really think Akhmadulina was funny, even playful, as she said about herself? Easy to respond to jokes?

Bella was a chick. She loved to laugh, loved funny songs. Listening to Vysotsky, literally fell from laughter. She was amused by my stories about a hundred "sorceresses" with white hair and bangs, who were waiting for me at the airstairs when I first flew to the USSR in 1959. Or about how, on another visit, Volodya and I went to the sea station in Moscow to take the ship.

— At the river station.

Riverside, of course. And one fat aunt in line as she moves her elbow to the side in my hearts: "Wow, she works under Marina Vladi!" The squirrel lay ... We joked with her endlessly, fooled around. They talked like two girls. But at times it reminded me of the weather in Brittany. This peninsula in France has an unpredictable climate. It had just rained, ten minutes later the sun blinded my eyes, then suddenly a storm and again silence. Bella, too, could change during one evening. At first she was joyful, cheerful, happy, then for some reason she became gloomy, even tragique. She would begin to tell something with dramatic intonations, a mournful face. After expressing herself in this way, Bella became calm again. Hurricane, sunshine, calm ... She had a colossal temperament, more excessif than Volodya's. I don't know how to explain in Russian.

— Excessive?

- With too much amplitude, yes. With a greater amplitude than his. Vysotsky in life was much more even than Bella. A normal person, except for those periods when he got so drunk that he fell to the floor. And then he disappeared. Volodya had binges, but he did not drink with friends every day, he could not drink. And Bella, probably, every evening was - there is such a word formed from the French - drunk. Maybe because of this, she sometimes did not have the restraint that is characteristic of completely sober people. It was her way of life. I think she needed this state of intoxication. Excited, excited. It was necessary to be on edge, on a degree. To, closing his eyes, rush into poetry, into life ...

- You described the celebration of your marriage with Vysotsky in Tbilisi. On this wonderful land, no one is immune from the fact that, having violated the refinement of the feast, some goat will not stand up with a toast to Comrade Stalin. You barely kept your husband from the scandal. In a similar situation, at a Georgian banquet, Akhmadulina threw a shoe at a nomenklatura poet. Is it impudence, lack of brakes? Or is it fearlessness, in terms of which it has more than once given odds to men?

I think it's courage. Courage and temperament, which I spoke about. Unrestrained temperament. Bella knew that she could afford what others did not allow, which could be a little scandalous. Beautiful, famous. A special poetess that everyone listens to. And then, she was completely indifferent to what they would say about her. It didn’t matter that everyone around would be shocked in one way or another. There was not a drop of philistinism in her.

— Where did it come from?

— Ha! This is freedom. Again, temperament. The feeling that you are someone. Bella knew perfectly well that she was not like everyone else. She is exceptional.

- In "The Return of Nabokov" Akhmadulina lovingly captured your beauty and "influential generosity" (here it is satisfaction for the minutes of a long-standing embarrassment!). However, with the most wonderful attitude towards a woman, as she told us, she would never "gossip" with her. Nevertheless, not everything is about the sublime ... Surely it happened to discuss outfits, perfumes, cosmetics, and you never know what else. What?

- Recently I was filmed for a television project about Marcello Mastroianni. I don't give interviews to anyone anymore. For several years I have made an exception only for the documentary filmmaker who decided to talk about Marcello, and for you. With Mastroianni, I started in cinema. He is my wonderful partner and just a dear friend. And with Bella I communicated very closely, we were real friends. Like sisters. I want you to make a good book about her.

Marina, we are grateful to you.

—(Laughs.) You can... I'm really closed now, refusing meetings. But Belka is an expensive part of my life, which then ... disappeared. About what only we did not chatter. By the way, she was extremely flirtatious. Bella has a rare beauty. The men were dying for her. Squirrel was not mistaken in this regard. I knew my strength. Oh ho ho, how! I criticized her: "Why do you put so much makeup on your face?"

- Listened to you?

- This is not. Not at all. And so - we consulted with each other. They talked about their disappointments and hopes. Bella was one of those with whom I could talk about just about everything. I trusted her. I was not shy about complaining, not complaining - to open up how hard it is for me. She sympathized with the fact that in Moscow I was worried about my sons who studied in France, for Volodya, I was upset that I had to almost not act in films. And in Paris I can’t find a place for myself for fear that something bad will happen to my husband. I calculated: I flew to the Soviet Union seventy times to save him.

- Did Akhmadulina try to help?

- Helped those who had to pour out their souls. And how could Belka really help me?

- She knew everything, but she declared: "I have never seen Vysotsky drunk in my life." Partisan.

“Maybe Bella didn't see how terribly drunk he was. I might not know everything. But if she did, it was out of the question for her. With anyone. That's Bella. Wall...

Bella in the famous workshop of Messerer, surrounded by famous guests. Global Look Press

Do you have her gifts?

Bella didn't give me any of her jewelry. She liked large rings with large stones. I don't wear these. And the hats are not mine. Bella had them later. With age. She went. She was a gorgeous woman. What I have from Belka is a piece of paper written in her handwriting with a poem that was born in connection with the death of my sister Tanya, Odile Versois, a wonderfully beautiful actress, also. Odile died of cancer exactly a month before Volodya left. Bella was friendly with her, met in Moscow, Paris. My sister and I went to Belline's poetry evening at the Cardin Theatre...

After Volodya's death, at first, willy-nilly, I flew to Moscow to settle his affairs. On one of my chaotic visits, we briefly met Belka. We stood, embracing, and at some point Bella handed me a piece of light brown rough paper - in such a product was wrapped in the USSR then. It had text on it. Apparently, Bella composed it spontaneously, somewhere she was overtaken by memories of Odile. This morning I honestly tried to find the leaflet. It's a shame, I couldn't. With this move ... I still haven't figured everything out.

- You yourself made Akhmadulina a royal gift, for the new year, 1977, by inviting her husband to France.

Boris said that he and Bella would like to come to Paris, and I agreed to invite them. Made it official. Suggested: "Live at my house." She gave me the keys to the apartment. After the death of my mother, I could not be in Mason-Laffite, I was very homesick. I rented a villa, having moved to the Montparnasse area. She returned back only six years later, when Volodya said: he wants to start life from scratch. Quit drugs, leave the theater, sit down for a novel. And I rushed in here again with enthusiasm, renovated the house, cleaned everything, licked it, bought new furniture.

- You rented an apartment at 28 Rue Russel, didn't you? We passed by this house a couple of times.

- Yes? I love this area almost in the center of Paris. I had a tiny apartment there. Three rooms. One is the bedroom, where there is only a large bed and a fireplace. Another small living room. Next to the bedroom for sons. Cramped, but for Bella with Borea it was great. They mostly lived together. I only visited because that winter, if I am not mistaken, I was filming in Hungary. From time to time we converged in the apartment all together. They cooked something in the tiny kitchen and spent a wonderful evening talking. Once I flew in, I open the door, and Bella is busy at the stove. Fry frozen pancakes with cheese in a frying pan. It's strange, I forgot so many important things, but for some reason a trifling episode remained in my memory. I even remember the smell: some kind of disgusting, semi-finished product. I should have been clearer about where to shop for groceries.

- Did you dye Akhmadulina blonde in Paris? Did she go?

- She was not well. But Bella dyed herself. Rather, she asked me to take her to her hairdresser. I gave her a master who did my hair. Belka came out of him as a blonde. Why did she need it? I say she loved to smear, cut her hair in different ways. Change face.

- Despite the fact that you occasionally visited France, it turns out that there was time for experiments on the appearance of Akhmadulina. How about walking around Paris? Show your favorite places, look into the shops?

Bella went shopping with Boris. And around the city, if I was free, we wandered around a lot. Like all normal people in Paris. We sat in famous cafes, Italian restaurants. A couple of times I booked a table in Moroccan: I love Moroccan cuisine.

Was Akhmadulin afraid to let go alone? She described how she got lost with Vysotsky, who had arrived in Paris, in the very center - near the Grand Opera. He then chuckled: "You know, in one thing I surpassed you ... I orient myself even worse than you." Maybe this is a special gene inherent in the great?

- Do you think so? Why?

- Do you remember the dialogue between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, on the eve of the war, they agree by phone to meet on Bolshaya Ordynka? "I'll call a normal person now to explain how to get to us." This is Anna Andreevna. And Tsvetaeva's answer: "Will a normal person be able to explain to an abnormal one?"

—(Laughs.) I remember. It seems that I once read this ... So, Bella and Volodya are all the more geniuses. In Paris, you have to try hard to get lost. The small town. People are walking from end to end. And they, although they were like children: they walked, looked around, said how wonderful it was, but they were not children after all.

Bella always wanted to be heard
Photo by Vladimir Savostyanov. Newsreel TASS

- Are they Akhmadulina, Messerer and Vysotsky?

First of all Bella. Well, Volodya partly. There was a childishness about him that touched me so much. And Boris? Boris is different. Very calm. With Bella, he was too... paternalistic. As Father. Constantly looked after. He showed that he was messing with her. Things that I didn't like.

- Did Akhmadulina tell you that at the desk of your apartment she dared to write a letter to Nabokov in Montreux?

- Not. I was away from France for a long time. And the answer from Switzerland was brought in my absence. So the story of her meeting with Nabokov passed me by. It's a pity. I also admire him as a writer.

- You said that after the death of Vysotsky, many of his friends turned out to be ex-friends. And they added: "My whole life has been distorted by Russia." It's sad that it is. But one cannot imagine Akhmadulina in the category of ex-friends, who wrote seven years after Vysotsky's departure: "... it is unlikely that there will be such a minty coolness that will ever lick, console and anesthetize this always blazing place."

- It is also excluded that she, like many in our country, condemned your new marriage - with Leon Schwarzenberg. "Like", and even more so "many" - is it about Akhmadulina?

- So life went on that my contacts in Russia narrowed. And I came across Bella less and less, since I practically stopped appearing in Moscow. I was in terrible despair, did not want to see anyone, did not understand how to live. In addition to the meeting when Belka gave me a poem about Odile, there may have been more, but I remember how we dined (after some time) in a large restaurant near the monastery where Chekhov is buried.

- This is the Novodevichy cemetery. Akhmadulina is now lying there.

Why did Bella die?

— Oncology.

- Like my mother, Odile, Andryusha Tarkovsky ... Like Leon. My last husband (at one time he was the Minister of Health) was himself an oncologist. He treated Odile, on this basis we met. Leon pulled me out of a severe depression. Of course, I could not love him as passionately as Volodya. But we had a bright, deep relationship. Leon is a rare person. When it turned out that Tarkovsky had cancer, he placed him in his clinic, treated him for free. From there, Andrei with his wife, son and mother-in-law moved to me in Mason-Laffitte. He lay with us. There seems to be hope. But no... Then Leon struggled with his illness for four years.

Did Bella get word of his death? Don't know. They didn't know each other. The topic of my marriage after Volodya's departure, we never touched on it. This is, in general, from the category of not discussed. And for her, I think, not condemned ...

- How did you find out about the death of Akhmadulina? Has it become for you one of the losses in a string of losses that gradually cease to stun?

“The chain of death... They follow me around. The closest ones, relatives, without whom there is not enough air, it is difficult to breathe ... You ask if Bella's death was one of the already familiar losses for me? In a sense, yes. I have also lost loved ones. And yet... Her departure is not something that happened somewhere far away from me. Not something that I could treat with the philosophical sadness of a man weary of grief. The fact that Bella is no more, Kostya Kazansky informed me. He is a musician, worked with Volodya. With Kostya, we rehearsed a solo performance based on the book "Vladimir, or an Interrupted Flight." At one of the rehearsals, he said: "Akhmadulina died." I can't express what I felt. Too many things jumbled up in my memory. It seemed to me that it was not the seventy-year-old who died ... Bella, from what year?

The book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after” is published by the publishing house “Young Guard”. The authors' interlocutors were Vladimir Voinovich, Marina Vlady, Azary Plisetsky, Laura Guerra, Mikhail Shemyakin, the poet's daughters Elizabeth and Anna

- Since the thirty-seventh.

“Pfft, I forgot that I’m a year and a month younger than her. We celebrated Bellin's birthday on the tenth of April, and mine on the tenth of May... You see, I was seized by a strange feeling that it was not an elderly seventy-three-year-old woman who left, but a young Squirrel, as changeable as the weather in Brittany. My girlfriend. And with it, a huge and such an important part of my life has sunk.

Maisons-Laffite — Paris

"RG" publishes an excerpt from a new book about Bella Akhmadulina, who would have turned 80 years old

Text: Marina Zavada, Yuri Kulikov
Photo: Young Guard publishing house

Elizaveta Kulieva, poet's daughter:
“When my mother was not given the Nobel Prize, she said:“ And rightly so. And there's nothing"

April 10 - 80 years since the birth of Bella Akhmadulina. The publishing house "Young Guard" recently published a book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov "Bella. Meetings after. An excerpt from it - an abbreviated conversation with the poet's daughter Elizaveta Kulieva - is published today by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

- In the years that have passed since the departure of Bella Akhatovna, many events have happened in your life. The main thing: twins were born - Marusya and Nikola. Before our eyes, you fought for several years, pulling an incurable boy out of an illness. Did you miss your mother in the trouble that befell you?
- I'm not ready for this question. In my mind, these are unrelated things. When your child is terribly sick, you begin to live a mundane, rough life, unbearable for someone ... I always tried to protect my mother from my troubles. And in the case of Nikola, I would not want my mother to see my grief. Still, the poet has a different degree of pain, right? And mother served her gods.

- The resemblance of four-year-old Marusya to little Bella is even funny. What traits of your mother do you notice in her?
- Marusya is a person who cannot be forced to do something until she herself comes to it. Absolutely mommy type. Outward meekness, but inside - a core that you do not expect in such a sweet creature, an elf. In my mother, this contradiction between external insecurity and internal strength was also striking. Even at home. Let's say the toilet is clogged in the country, everyone is in a panic. And my mother was worried, but she went, climbed in with her hand and cleaned it ... Decisiveness. And of course, stubbornness is impossible. Don't break. Marusya is the same. She is interested in constructing phrases, playing with words. We rarely go to McDonald's, but then we went in, she says: "Today we have a holiday of harmful things." This is also my mother's...

- Two girls - Elizabeth and Anna, realized early on that their mother was special. And the man who lived side by side, your dad Eldar Kuliev - let's refer to the words of Laura Guerra - "didn't even understand who was next to him"?
- Not certainly in that way. He understood everything. What's the point? I think he suffered in his own way from living in the shadow of Akhmadulina. It was she who raised funds, prepared some coursework for Eldar ... The father was delicate, gentle, but, unfortunately, infantile not only because of his age. It was difficult for both of them. Mom wrote in a letter: “It’s a burden for me to be alive, not only the eldest.” And it’s a shame for a man in marriage to be a child ...

- Did you know your Balkar grandfather Kaisyn Kuliev?
- For many girls, the ideal of a man is dad, but since I didn’t have a dad, and we were never close to my stepfather, my grandfather forever became an unattainable ideal of a man for me ... At the age of six, I was with my mother in the hospital. We spent two weeks together in boxing - on the same bed. Mom urged me to endure the pain, but it was almost impossible to endure: twelve injections a day. Probably, a colossal internal tension accumulated in me because of the fear of still crying, because when I suddenly saw Kaisyn at the end of the hospital corridor, I violently rushed to him. I will not forget how I ran along a long corridor, and my grandfather stepped towards me, and I hung on him. I was very small, but I felt such strength emanating from him and such pity that only a man can give, maybe a father.

- Have you recently taken up re-reading Nagibin's Diary in connection with the found mother's diaries, having learned that, being his wife, she also kept a diary?
- This is pure coincidence. Somehow I already took on the "Diary", but, apparently, the time was not ripe. And then I was drawn to the book. Probably because after my mother's departure, there was a desire to dive deeper into her life, in particular - into that piece when she lived in Pakhra ... And suddenly - such joy! Learn Yu that you found in your mother's unknown records. I started reading and it took my breath away. From a certain moment I began to worry about the topic of human loneliness. I thought a lot about this, and exactly in those days I come across my mother's diary, in which it is simply formulated exactly what I thought about the love of mother and Nagibin.

- The relationship of these two people - how do they see through the eyes of Akhmadulina's adult daughter?
- Nagibin and my mother are somewhat opposite. He is erudite, rigidly logical, sane, honest (I mean alone with himself, judging by the "Diary"). Mom is the embodiment of a genius who intuitively perceives the world. Dissimilar, transforming reality into creativity in different ways, they amazingly united into one whole and, penetrating each other's nooks and crannies, made up a perfect mind in their own way. It is difficult to say which of them gave more to the other. I do not exclude that Nagibin. This morning I reread my mother's diaries again, took them with me. Here she writes: "Yura ... created and updated my appearance ... And it was so significant that my mother, who turned shapeless blood into a baby through a bold reform, nevertheless performed a less effective operation on me than Yura."

Nagibin introduced mother to world culture. Was what he was so in love with taught at the Literary Institute?

Later, in anger, he will reproach: “You don’t read much.” Well, compared to him, a lot of people look like idiots. And my mother breathed literature, but she was a person of a different warehouse, not academic knowledge.

And the merit of Nagibin, of course, is that he not only revealed to her the layers of non-textbook names - he disciplined reading. However, for him, her approaching gift was a revelation. Happiness fell on each of them: to find a like-minded person, a person with whom one can speak the same language ... What a Nabokov-like piercing entry in her diaries - about a common dinner at the dacha, Yuri's face bent over a plate, birds scurrying outside the window, and in at the end - a prayer: "Lord, leave me all this" ...

Mom never mentioned her personal life to us before Uncle Boris / Messerer /, it seemed that she was simply born married to him. But, naturally, it occurred to me that there were gaps in her life that she kept quiet about. Now, holding in my hands the pages found by my mother, I, as a woman, understand how much suffering the collapse of a marriage with a man must have turned into for her, if she had lived a lot with him under the same roof, she writes down, as if at the beginning of intimacy: “... everything in me is oriented towards one passion, one habit of stumbling everywhere on the only warm, saving warmth, greedily surrounding oneself with it - it all comes down to Yura.

This thin, deep person, in addition, gave my mother something that thin people rarely give: male care, financial security, the comfort of a large beautiful house. True, she never became a mistress in this house, but the feeling of a way of life, a refuge, a measured life as a joy filled her with something similar to bliss for a long time ...

- You ranked Nagibin among your mother's like-minded people. Isn't this too strong a word for a writer who has written a lot of opportunistic nonsense?
- Starting to keep a diary, Nagibin made a note that there is literature for himself and for the press. Nagibin could not afford not to write "for everyone". He was afraid of poverty at the genetic level. Much later, my mother dropped that Nagibin hated power and said: “I will build a fence of money from her.” But a terrible thing happened to him. He thought that it was possible to compose hack-work for the sake of money and at the same time go towards the ideal. In fact, in the end, hack-work ate him up.

All this is sad. Because no matter how hard Nagibin on the other side of his fence tries to fit into the system, the idea of ​​him as such a Soviet writer is wrong. He kept aloof, because of the internal opposition in many literary companies he felt uncomfortable. And my mother in unfamiliar houses hung out. I always guessed: she feels bad among people who are not close, but it turns out that even in her youth she described in her diaries what was happening to her, that she was experiencing pangs of shame, boredom, laziness, loneliness, alienation to alien hosts.

... In general, two "non-format" people under one roof are not easy to fit. I exclude envy, but Yuri Markovich's manhood was hardly not hurt by the celebrity of his young wife. Mom was on such a crest of fame that even I was then recognized on the street, because I look like her. It seems to me that it is difficult for any man to endure if what is given to him by hard work, his companion achieves easily, jokingly. The ease of genius with which my mother obtained poetry was an apparent ease, and when Nagibin reproached her for not knowing how to work at all, he was at least unfair. On the scales of time, it turned out that her inoperability brought literature much more than Nagibin's efficiency.

- Akhmadulina's drafts struck at the RGALI. A lot of dissatisfied crossed out words, stanzas, whole pages! How many female silhouettes and faces were automatically drawn by the hand when the angelic words balked, did not want to be born!
- This is an absolutely Pushkin story, when the lightness is apparent. Mom loved to talk about this topic ... I have been composing since childhood, there was talk all the time around poetry and creativity. It seems to me that it’s hard to write, I understood from the cradle, but the way my mother describes this process in her diaries is completely deafening.

- “Poems arise in me only in connection with the sharp suffering of the brain. This is reminiscent of confessions under torture?
- Yes. Mom strove so that “violence” would not be noticeable to anyone except her, so that a wonderful theater would be born in the throes of poetry. But writing poetry was work for her. By the time I consciously remember myself, she became, I think, much more organized than in the era of Nagibin, she left for a long time somewhere in Repino, Komarovo, Karelia, retired and wrote. In Sortavala, we were given a house for two. Bird cherry blossomed, mother dragged her into the house in huge armfuls: “... she is Tuomi. And to at kiva tuomi, if in bloom. She brought with her a typewriter, which she presented. Inside with tape, he pasted a photograph with the inscription: "Squirrel for tapping rhymes." On this typewriter, an amazing Sortavala cycle was “knocked out”.

- In the archive, we came across a telegram referring to Akhmadulin's poem “I think how stupid I was” that appeared a year earlier: “Yalta Crimea is the house of creativity of the Literary Fund Akhmadulina Bella 10 04 1968 so far our thoughts are pure on the uprising square at half past six we kiss congratulations Andrey Bulat Vasya gladilin dyachenko evgeny zhora zyama irzhik kit leopold misha maybe more but no less”…
- So mom - everyone knows - was devoted to friends: Voinovich, Aksenov ... She had a bright relationship with them. Never - envy, always - admiration, the ability to appreciate the talent of another. But, in my opinion, her more accurate word is comrade. Or a very favorite: brother.

Such a complex person as mother, who felt inner loneliness, her isolation and strangeness, did not need friendship in the ordinary and especially female understanding, with its obligatory trust, the need to pour out her soul.

Yes, and it was not accepted, it seems to me, in my mother's close circle, confidential communication. In the company of her comrades, mother did not have to overcome stiffness, she was fine with them, in the noisiest gatherings her individuality was implied and accepted. As soon as her arms were opened too wide, she hid. Because it is impossible to write in the arms. To write, you have to be alone. In this, in my opinion, she is most related to Okudzhava. But I'm not at all sure that they were soulmates. In fact, I'm sure it isn't. Great love, tenderness, mutual attraction, but not easily, still slowing down the steps in front of the feigned gate. Mom was single by definition. Loneliness as a calling, as a sentence.

- Bella Akhatovna, according to you, made fun of people who experienced the power of the past. This is the property of a very unsentimental person. What else did it reveal?
- When it became a trend to raise the sixties to the shield, my mother told me, as if addressing her acquaintances from this generation: “You mention those years, the thaw, through the word, simply because you were young then, and now you are old fools.” She was convinced that a real poet is always wider than any current, direction. I could not stand pathos talk about "stadiums". My mother's literary fate developed in such a way that they helped her become famous, but this was not her goal, and years later she was not proud of herself as a conquering tribune. Such a role was alien to her. In general, my mother believed that every person has the right to yearn for the past, but there is no need to shout about your sadness, build it into a cult. Or - then write about it like Nabokov.

- Did you pay attention to the arguments in the diary of a very young Akhmadulina about patriotism? “How many of us have been taught patriotism ... they have brought us to death, deafness and cold to everything, but all we had to do was show ... the peasant whom Yura and I saw yesterday: among the distant damp snows, under a huge sky darkly filled with God, he wandered into a hopeless distance, fell face and hands into the snow, staggered with an incredible swing, fell and wandered for many centuries in a row. And from all this there was such melancholy, such Leskovsky tickling in the chest, such fear and breathtaking birth and doom to this land, which is patriotism for Russians.
- A lot here probably came from Nagibin, from their conversations on this matter. In my mother's notes there is such a moment when the half-drunk Tolya, who was clearing snow in the garden, freezes when he sees a titmouse, and for a long time stupidly dreamily watches how she pecks at the grain. Mom notices that this shows the eternal sentimentality of a Russian person at the sight of a living creature. I immediately remembered "Dubrovsky". Setting fire to the house, he asks the blacksmith Arkhip to open the doors so that the sleeping clerks can get out. But Arkhip, on the contrary, locks them up, but, having spotted a cat running along the roof with a plaintive meow, he puts up a ladder and climbs after it into the fire. About Tolya, about the same drunken would-be stove-makers, my mother writes with admiration mixed with irony.

What is characteristic: with the people, my mother always found a common language easier than with Soviet writers. At the Peredelkino dacha, she had a great friendship with the worker Zhenya. When my mother came from Moscow, Zhenya came, they talked for a long time, sometimes they drank. In my mother's oral speech there were a lot of vernacular, village words, which I introduced intentionally. From the first thing that comes to mind, the word "nothing".

- "I don't have anything"...
- Which, in general, is not far from the truth. My nanny Anna Vasilievna treated my mother with great pity, she believed that everyone was trying to “leave her without pants” ... During the lack of money after the Metropol, Aunt Anya found a part-time job to feed us. Of course, we didn’t beg anyway, but the nanny considered it her duty to feed the children satisfyingly and tasty. She had a huge American chest in her room. All the time she told me: “When I die, don’t forget, money is hidden at the bottom of the chest.” Aunt Anya died in 1992, on the same day as Asaf Mikhailovich Messerer. Mom wanted to come to the cemetery, but she and Uncle Borey only managed to attend the wake. There, my mother remembered a story: once, when she saw that the huge dog of Margarita Aliger broke off the chain, rushing at the little dog Yevtushenko, my nanny blocked his path and offered her hand. Terrible scars remain for life.

- About Yevgeny Yevtushenko - an indirect participant in the heroic epic. His contacts with your mother, we know, did not break off.
- This is not news to you: mother did not shake hands with those whom she treated badly. And they could meet on the street, stop or take a walk along Peredelkino. Occasionally she came to his dacha, sometimes he dropped in on us. This did not stop Yevtushenko's mother from teasing. But for all that, she retained a certain warmth for him.

- Just as she preserved about a hundred pages of poems written by his hand in the late fifties, and a thick translation from the Azerbaijani book by Nabi Babayev “Oak on a Rock”.
- Did you find it in the archive? I apparently missed it.

- Yes. For some reason, she didn’t throw it away, getting divorced.
- It is unlikely that something conceptual is hidden behind this, relating to first love. Rather, one must keep in mind: they are poets. But these are manuscripts...

- In 1998, the Russian PEN Center nominated Akhmadulina for the Nobel Prize. But the Portuguese Jose Samarago won. There is no justice in the world! How did Bella Akhatovna react to the failed laureate?
- She was, of course, aware of the nomination, but felt awkward because of this. And when she learned that she had not won, she commented: “And rightly so. And there is nothing. But perhaps she wanted recognition. Because at the end of her life she began to wonder: do they remember, will they remember?

- Late Akhmadulina somehow imperceptibly changed her noisy bohemian image to a respectable one. She gracefully accepted orders, State Prizes. However, no matter how well-behaved outwardly her belonging to the new social elite, she still remained out of order - in all meanings of the word. She stood alone. And was there a time with which she internally got along? Except at night, of course.
- Prizes, awards for mom were not needed and important. She was a little shy about government incentives. In her view, this is not what a poet should strive for. They flattered Uncle Borya more. And she shrugged her shoulders: “Is that so? Come on, let's get it." For the State Prize, by the way, the whole family went to the Kremlin. For some reason, we drank with Zyuganov. This is when my mother was taken to the presidential tent. In it, Putin congratulated the laureates. Uncle Borya kept trying to break through there. But the guards wouldn't let him in. But we joined hands, put on an important look and easily passed. In the tent, my mother introduced me to the president.

- So what did she say? "This is my poor Lisa"?
- As expected, according to etiquette: "Let me introduce you to my daughter." Mom was beautifully dressed. But for her, this day was least of all an occasion for stories. Rather, he gave me a reason to chat with friends about how I ate a pig in the Kremlin, drank with Zyuganov and shook hands with Putin.

Now about what time was most suitable for mom ... Yes, no. The feeling of being a mom at any time was dramatic. What about the night? She got along with the night. "And the order of the soul, open to love, is fine." When I read these lines, I imagine Sortavala, bird cherry, early morning. Mom's favorite time: dawn.

: Marina Zavada, Yuri Kulikov "Bella. Meetings after ". And on April 10, 2017, Bella would have turned 80 years old.

Bella Akhmadulina - brilliant poet, translator

10 04 1937 — 29 11 2010

“In the book, which begins with a conversation with Bella Akhmadulina herself, without hushing up and embellishment, the complex and tragic image of a brilliant person is shown, for whom it is difficult to cope with a huge gift, it is difficult to live, with all the friendships feeling their separateness, otherness. “Meetings afterward” completes the unpublished diaries of the young Bella Akhmadulina discovered by the authors, which she kept in 1961-1963 while living in Krasnaya Pakhra”

Memories of Marina Vladi about Bella Akhmadulina

Bella Akhmadulina and Marina Vladi

“Bella was all too much. Too. But she couldn't be like everyone else. She was unique...

Never before (Joseph Brodsky later called Vysotsky a great poet) did official poets classify Vysotsky as part of their guild. Only Akhmadulina stood apart, confident that Volodya was a poet from God. The rest believed that he had rhymes. Naturally, Vysotsky was inspired by Bella's assessment. I saw that Volodya did not have a soul in her, I saw how she loves him. It brought us closer.

I know that she tried to help with the Writers' Union. She asked for Volodya one of the cones. Useless.

Volodya and I arrived, but the owners were not there. Only the children and the old nanny. But with the advent of Bella, the day flowed magically. This always happened if she was in a good mood and read poetry without stopping ...

Her poetry is about feelings, friendship, love. Citizenship manifested itself in life. That she boldly put her name under human rights letters. But this is different. This is civisme, this is civic prowess.

But when Bella went on stage, she became inimitable, she had a magical effect on the audience.

Bella was a laugher. She loved to laugh, loved funny songs. Listening to Vysotsky, she literally fell from laughter ... We joked and fooled around with her endlessly. They talked like two girls. But at times it reminded me of the weather in Brittany. This peninsula in France has an unpredictable climate. It had just rained, ten minutes later the sun blinded my eyes, then suddenly a storm and again silence. Bella, too, could change during one evening. At first she was joyful, cheerful, happy, then for some reason she became gloomy, even tragique. She would begin to tell something with dramatic intonations, a mournful face. After expressing herself in this way, Bella became calm again. Hurricane, sunshine, calm ... She had a colossal temperament, more excessif than Volodya's. I don't know how to explain in Russian.

Bella didn't give me her jewelry. She liked large rings with large stones. I don't wear these. And the hats are not mine. Bella had them later. With age. She went. She was a gorgeous woman. What I have from Belka is a piece of paper with a poem written in her handwriting.

And with Bella I communicated very closely, we were real friends. Like sisters. I want you to make a good book about her.

Here are the girls - they want love.

Here are the boys - they want to go hiking.

April weather changes

unite all people with people.

Oh new month, new sovereign,

so you are looking for your location,

so you are generous with favors,

bowing the calendar to amnesties.

Yes, you will rescue the rivers from the shackles,

you bring any distance,

give enlightenment to the insane

and heal the ailments of the elderly.

Only your mercy is not given to me.

There is no greed to ask you about it.

You ask - I hesitate to answer

I turn off the light and the room is dark.

Bella Akhmadulina. 1960.