On January 21, the poet, translator, essayist Anatoly Naiman died. Anatoly Genrikhovich was a longtime friend of Novaya Gazeta. Today, on this sad day, we are publishing an essay about the poet, which the columnist for Novaya Eroshok wrote almost a quarter of a century ago. The essay was included in Zoya's book, which we published after her departure (2018) — «Just people from a simple life.» .webp» class=»SingleImage_image__3qIDn» alt=»» />
Anatoly Naiman. Photo: Anna Artemyeva/Novaya Gazeta
In 1997, Anatoly Naiman received awards for the best prose — in the magazine «New World» («B. B. and others») and in the magazine «October» («The Glorious End of Infamous Generations»).
Twice nominated for the Booker Prize.
Vagrius publishing house publishes his book The Glorious End of Infamous Generations in May (under the same cover as Poetry and Lies).
From Dovlatov :
A descendant of d'Artagnan
A short man walks along the boulevard along the yellow benches, past plaster urns… His name is Anatoly Naiman.
Fast legs it is covered with light-colored continental jeans. The grace of the young prince is in the movements.
Nyman is an intellectual cowboy. Manages to pull the trigger before any opponent. His tracer jokes are venomous.
Underwood solo
The woman in the tram to Nyman:
«Ah, don't touch me !”
“It’s okay, I’ll wash my hands later …”
Besides, Nyman writes wonderful poems, he is Akhmatova’s friend and Brodsky’s tutor.
I am his I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of him too. I call for the first time and I think: if he starts being rude, I will hang up.
I am writing about Sir Isaiah Berlin.
Sir Isaiah is hardly known among us. Meanwhile, he is the greatest thinker. The addressee of many poems by Akhmatova. Brodsky believes that our country most urgently needs this intellect and would learn from him about its spiritual history and thus about its current capabilities much more than it has been able to do until now.
I am reading Four Essays on Freedom by Berlin (this amazing book was brought from London, Sir Isaiah has not been published here), I read at first just for myself, not for work, but when I want to tell readers about the “Guest from the Future”, as I called his Akhmatova, I understand that nothing works out for me, something is missing; however, it is clear what — personal communication with Sir Isaiah or with someone who knows him closely … But Berlin is inaccessible in England, Brodsky, respectively, in America. But in Russia? Nyman.
In short, I'm calling.
Nyman says that he is ill, he is leaving, he is distant and lazily interested in why I decided to write about Sir Isaiah.
I’m only talking about the initial impulse to write:
“I’m reading Sir Isaiah Berlin, and on TV Gennady Burbulis talks about himself as a philosopher.”
Nyman immediately understands everything, laughs, stops getting sick and leave, and we meet.
This is the winter of the ninety-fourth.
But about it — a little later.
In the meantime, about today.
>Memory subtracts lifespan
Nyman has finished his book The Glorious End of Infamous Generations.
And when the manuscript was sent from the publishing house, cleanly printed, fresh from the printer, and he read it in its entirety again, a feeling of acute sadness that had not been experienced for a long time came.
Until I wrote it, it all lasted and was in the present tense, as in the past.
And when he wrote, as if he put his life in a drawer or in an old chest of drawers and closed it on a patterned key.
“Memory is such a thing, which subtracts your life time. You experience something two or more times and due to this you miss something that is passing now.”
Fate was favorable to Naiman. He did not sit, did not dig the ground … And everything else, which was also very difficult — calls to the KGB or even worse, when someone said: “But they asked me about you there …”, and surveillance and so on — everything it was, yes, unpleasant, but not that scary.
Something worse is when you constantly experience ideological humiliation. Not pressure — humiliation. Which you must endure humbly, but in essence — slavishly.
“There is a huge difference between humility and slavery. Humility is your choice. And slavery is when you are forced to. If I am not mistaken, John Chrysostom in some of his sermons said: “Of course, you need to forgive insults. This is the main thing. But first of all, be offended. Don't be a slave who gets hit on the face, but he doesn't notice it.”
When Nyman is told: “It was better to live under the communists,” he agrees: “Of course, it's better. Because we were young and with whole teeth.”
Joseph Brodsky and Anatoly Naiman in Venice. Photo: @Brodsky.Online
And in a moment — with pressure:
“And now the Democrats are so crappy. I am 60 years old. And the communists are so good. I was with them for 20 years.”
“Memory, of course, is selective. And you are training her to be selective.
But there are deeper layers of memory, and they slip things on you that you just stop on the street and physically cover your face with your hands — you yourself acted so disgustingly and how terrible it was … ”
When it was ninety that winter On the fourth we started talking about Sir Isaiah Berlin, then we talked for a long time — December, January, February …
In February 1995, Novaya Gazeta was closed. Not for political, but for financial reasons. We owe the printing house a billion rubles.
The newspaper was not published for half a year.
Naiman called me all this time and made me laugh.
Call.
— This is Anatoly Genrikhovich. I mean: you are very lucky that the newspaper was closed. You sit and work on a difficult topic. When else would you have such an opportunity…
Call.
– This is Anatoly Genrikhovich. I've been thinking… In today's times, in my opinion, it is equally significant: what to have in your pocket a billion rubles, what to have a billion rubles in debt…
The latter especially amused Dmitry Muratov. The editor-in-chief says that we would not have survived if, thanks to Nyman's jokes, we suddenly felt very significant at some point … with a billion rubles of debt in our pocket.
Sir Isaiah Berlin became the hero of our first issue — after the revival of the newspaper in August 1995.
In one of the first meetings, Anatoly Naiman said to Isaiah Berlin: «I wrote about you: a philosopher and a philologist.» Berlin said: «Not one or the other.» “Well, not a mathematician,” said Nyman. «No, not a mathematician.» “What about a historian?” — “No, and not a historian.”
Much in the world is formulated in negation. Who are you? I am not that and not that. And from these “not” it turns out “yes”.
(And for a completely different reason: “There are things where grammar protests. You can say: he is a poet. But you can’t: I am a poet.”)
In the novel Poetry and Falsehood, Anatoly Naiman wrote that Isaiah Berlin is an unimaginable figure in Russia. And then he added: frankly, nowhere today.
Sir Isaiah Berlin died in the autumn of 1997.
Nyman was then abroad.
When he returned to Moscow, he received a letter from Sir Isaiah. It turned out that this was the very last letter that Berlin wrote. Sir Isaiah answered Nyman's questions, it was a continuation of their personal conversation, which had been going on for many years. And it seemed that nothing could end and «continue the life of people in the space and time of normal experience» (Berlin's words), as long as there is a soul's answer to existence …
In Russia, Isaiah Berlin has not been translated, not read to this day , not recognized. (Later it was published — Note «New»).
Sir Isaiah Berlin. Photo: wikipedia.org
To be Gagarin without flying into space
“I recently saw a film about Brezhnev on TV. Guys my age sit and say how wonderful it was before 1976; then a little not so wonderful, but if it had always been like before 1976, well, it would have been a completely unique time! And one uncle (with such, you know, the kind face of an evil person) says (and his words are the last in the film): “It was a great era — Brezhnev. What will they remember in a hundred, two hundred years? They will remember that the 20th century is 1961, the flight of a man into space … And who kisses Gagarin? Brezhnev! (The country was then led by Khrushchev, but in this case it doesn't matter — Note of «New»).
This has always distracted us from what we are. Distracted and distracted. Nobody wants to be themselves. Everyone wants to be Alla Pugacheva. Or those who kiss.
Or they want to be Gagarin. Still, there was a risk in what Gagarin did…
It's good to be Gagarin, but without flying into space. Komarov flew into space and did not return. And no one wants to be Komarov.
Everyone wants to be prosperous, but at the same time someone else.”
FROM Dovlatov:
Naiman and one of his acquaintances were watching TV. They showed figure skating.
— Curious, — says a friend, — will Belousova and Protopopov become world champions this time?
Nyman suddenly became angry:
— Don't worry about Protopopov! You worry about yourself!
“And before, only a few people made sure not to be not themselves. And the rest did not want to be themselves.
What have I not heard or read about Akhmatova! Akhmatova, a capricious lady, Stalin in a skirt, was terribly concerned about her reputation … But Akhmatova was not by chance Akhmatova. That is, by itself. Not about all my friends whom I love and who have achieved something in life, I can say that. And not because it’s still early…”
“And today everyone wants — consciously or unconsciously — to mingle.
Do not distinguish yourself.
There is a hellish plan in this mingling. So that everyone could be everyone.
We are a generation, we are sixties… I'm terribly tired of them, these sixties. Until they were sixties, they could still be distinguished by sight. And now, when all the sixties and all carry the same bodyaga … Or — those published in the «New World». And we are in glossy magazines. And we are the new Russians…
A person is trained to be a part of something.
What was before and what is the most valuable thing now?
This is when you were who you were. When I wasn't pretending to be someone else.
In the last eight or ten years, it has become easier to be yourself. But almost no one wanted to…”
About the rank problem
“About five or six years ago, one of our writers, very average and now living abroad (however, neither of these is important), said to me: “I was recently in Moscow and realized: finally, the hierarchy has ended in literature, there are no first writers , there are no last, no one is better than anyone. Now in Russia, as in the West.” To which I said: “I don’t think that I know things worse in the West, and it’s completely wrong that there is no hierarchy. But I will say about Russia: this is not a country in which there can be no hierarchy.”
Yes, despite the fact that a huge number of magazines are springing up and you can print anything you want, and even some things that are obviously mediocre can be much more successful than things that stand out in one way or another, but still there will always be Leo Tolstoy in Russia and it will never happen that they will say: but you know, Boborykin is better than Leo Tolstoy!
There is always a hierarchy in the community of people.
People are very clearly separated from each other by their merits and with their shortcomings. And everyone has a certain price. Which no one, however, somehow specifically defines and no one from living people can determine. But there is certainly a sense of it.”
Dignity is what remains when you take away…From Dovlatov:
Naiman is in a hurry. I accompany him. I want to talk endlessly about stories. Printing is not required. It does not matter. Someday later… Just to write something worthwhile.
Nyman nods absently. He is indifferent even to the constellation of left-wing Muscovites. He knows the literary secrets of the past and the future. Modern literature — all — a nondescript cluttered tunnel between the past and the future …
We find ourselves in the area of new buildings. I'm trying to please him:
— I think Tolstoy would not agree to live in this dull area!
— Tolstoy would not agree to live in this … year!
Anna Akhmatova and Anatoly Naiman in Komarovo. 1964 & nbsp; year. Photo: akhmatova.org
“Such a haunting, poignant impression: too much of everything in the world has been exposed today. Of course, it didn't happen right away. It was piling up.
The main search was discovered somewhere in the mid-80s.
And this search was not just and not only a total lie.
The armored newspaper Pravda was insulated on Saturdays with «live ”- like a roe deer entered the bus on the Siberian route. And they took her for a long time, then they dropped her off somewhere in the taiga … And now it was already impossible to endure.
What was going on in the literary field — the closest to me? Tons of novels by the secretaries of the Writers' Union came out. And that was also overkill. The most visible, material! There were huge warehouses filled with millions of copies of unreadable books.
It was too much that the line of 15-16 people was still standing, you thought you would come to the counter in 50 minutes. Although, no, 15-16 people … (I said this to show my fellow citizens my tolerance.) In fact, the queue is 7 people. But there were 700 in the queue!
During perestroika, it seemed that this enumeration should be eliminated. Didn't happen.
Moreover, there was a new bust. With all values or debunking values. A mechanism for the debunking of values has developed. We can no longer de-construct, disassemble something. There are scaffoldings — we need to dismantle them. Garbage — you need it … And what's next? Wall. Let's break down the wall. This turns out to be a house. All right, let's take a look at the house. Let's take everything apart…”
“The victory of the Devil is not that he gave the world fascism or communism. He led people away from the only value that exists, led humanity away from man as a person.
The current stage is more dangerous, more disastrous than communism.
For God's sake, do not think that I think democracy is worse than communism. Everything is better than communism!
But we have a different conversation.
What happened?
If before there was a clear distinction between private life and what you will — you are involuntarily involved and what you are resisting… But now — there is no former rude, propagandistic enthusiasm. But just everything, absolutely everything has the same price.
A person is equally delighted with how worthily General Nikolaev, whom we were shown in the Vremya program, was sitting on a chair, and with how vulgarly the singer NN performs.
There is an attack, or maybe the attack is already behind, and this is another victory for the gentleman with horns and hooves, but it seems that now the end of such a thing as self-esteem is supposed to end.
They want to convince us: a person behaves with dignity or without dignity — no one is interested in this anymore.
“And yet, even today there are people (again, probably very few) who behave with dignity. And it's a strange thing! You don't have to like these people at all. Or you do not accept everything from what they do. Or even you absolutely do not agree with them. But you note: these are people with dignity. <…>
Dignity is what remains if you take it away… It was possible to take away Okudzhava's dacha (by the way, a very old, almost wrecked one, but it doesn't matter). So what? Okudzhava would not cease to be Okudzhava because of this.”
Poetry is in the most privileged position, because no one needs it
“What does my beloved poetry do? Poetry, besides all that it is, is also a uniquely therapeutic thing. It always refers exclusively to the individual. And first of all, to the reader, who is the author. The poet turns to himself. Anatoly Naiman turns to a certain Anatoly Naiman, about whom he does not know everything. He asks this second Anatoly Naiman something, and this second Anatoly Naiman, telling him, does not pretend that he, this second Anatoly Naiman, is the same poet who writes about him. No, this is a reader of equal size, equal to the poet. Only if he, the poet, manages to learn something from himself that he didn’t know before creativity, only then an outsider appears.
Poets of the 60s, 70s — everyone knows them — addressed to the audience. This does not mean that they did not appeal to the lone reader. Contacted. But this lone reader was part of the audience. The vector in creativity was directed to the audience, to the masses. Poetry can't stand it. It immediately turns into demagogy.
I know that a person as part of humanity will not survive if he does not retire. In order to look around in a small space and see that he himself is in it. Then he can already from there, peering into himself, look differently at the opening circles: here is the circle of his family, here is the circle of his village, the circle of the city in which he lives, the circle of humanity.