Biography and personal life of Bella Akhmadulina. Fireworks of love Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Eldar Kuliev
Childhood and family of Bella Akhmadulina
Akhmadulina's hometown is Moscow. She was born and lived on Varvarka. Her father served as a large customs chief, while her mother worked as an interpreter and a KGB major. The girl had an exotic combination of blood, since there were Italians in her mother's family, and Tatars in her father's. To a greater extent, due to the employment of parents, Bella was raised by her grandmother. It was she who instilled in her granddaughter a love for animals, which she carried through her whole life.When the war began, the father was immediately called. Bella, along with her grandmother, went to the evacuation. First they went to Samara, then to Ufa and further to Kazan. There lived a second grandmother on her father's side, but for the girl she was completely alien and unfamiliar. In this city, Bella became seriously ill.
It is not known whether she would have survived or not, if her mother had not arrived in Kazan. This was in 1944. Thus ended the evacuation. Once at home, Bella went to school. Grandmother instilled in her granddaughter a love of reading. She read Pushkin and Gogol and wrote absolutely without mistakes in the lower grades. I must say that Akhmadulina always went to school with great reluctance, often missed classes. According to her recollections, during the war years she got used to loneliness, and the school seemed to her a strange place. Only four years later, the girl began to get used to it.
The first poems of Bella Akhmadulina
As a schoolgirl, Bella began to attend 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 October magazine. This happened in 1955. These first verses were childishly chaste and touching. Yevgeny Yevtushenko immediately drew attention to her works, he was surprised by unusual rhymes and some kind of writing style of his own.Bella at that time attended classes at the Literary Association, planning to become a student at the Literary Institute after school. Parents dreamed that their daughter would enter the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University. Bella made an attempt, but failed her exams. The girl got a job in 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 accusation letter. This was the real reason that the student was expelled from the institute. It 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 the Literary Gazette, 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 editor-in-chief of the newspaper contributed to the fact that the talented girl was reinstated at the institute. In 1960, she graduated from it, while receiving a red diploma.Bella Akhmadulina - poetry
Quite a bit of time passed, and a collection of poems called "String" was published. After she performed at the Polytechnic Museum of the capital together with Yevtushenko, Voznesensky and Rozhdestvensky, real popularity came to her. Artistry and penetrating intonation determined her style. As the poetess said, such performances were difficult for her, despite the seeming 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 - "Snowstorm" and "Candle". The periodical press vied with each other to publish Bella's poems.Her style was finally formed by the mid-sixties. It was unusual that in modern Soviet poetry she was the first to speak in a high poetic style. In her works there was a stylization of the "old" style, and sophistication, and metaphor, and sublimity.
Bella Akhmadulina. This is how hearts are broken
Critics treated Akhmadulina's work differently. There were those who reproached her for intimacy and mannerisms, some treated condescendingly and favorably.
The poetess starred in two films. In "Such a Guy Lives" 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, Sport, Sport."
Bella Akhmadulina's personal life
The first husband of the poetess is Yevgeny Yevtushenko. They met at the institute. Yevtushenko recalled that they often quarreled as spouses, but just as quickly reconciled. Together, the couple stayed for only three years. Her second husband is Yuri Nagibin (writer). They lived together for eight years. After the break, Bella adopted the orphanage girl Anna into the family, who, in the hope of returning her husband, was given the surname Nagibina and patronymic Yurievna. This was followed by a short civil marriage with Eldar Kuliev. They had a common daughter, Elizabeth. 
A year after the birth of her daughter, Akhmadulina married Boris Messerer. She lived with this man for more than thirty years.
Poetry concert of Bella Akhmadulina (2001)
Death of Bella Akhmadulina
Akhmadulina spent her last years in Peredelkino, where she lived with her husband. She was very sick and hardly wrote. In the fall of 2010, she was hospitalized and urgently underwent surgery.Despite the fact that the operation went well and the poetess recovered quite quickly, she died only four days after discharge. The funeral passed without pathos. Only close relatives and friends were present.
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 by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Bella Akhmadulina: "The palms of the lily of the valley are given and kept in the palm of the hand. And the order of the soul, open for love, is laden" ... Photo: Viktor Vasenin / RG
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 Balkarian 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.
The new book dedicated to Bella contains conversations with her loved ones and with those with whom her life intersected.
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 up 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! I know that you found unknown mother's records in the RGALI. 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 into 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 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 has 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 I understood from the cradle that writing poetry is difficult, but the way my mother describes this process in her diaries is completely deafening.
When my mother was not given the Nobel Prize, she said: And rightly so. Nothing
- "Poems arise in me only in connection with the sharp suffering of the brain. Does it resemble confessions under torture"?
Yes. Mom tried 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 it into the house in huge armfuls: "... she is tuomi. And kukiva tuomi, if in bloom." She brought with her a typewriter, which was presented by Vasily Aksenov. 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 of Akhmadulina Bella 10 04 1968 so far our thoughts are pure on the uprising square at half past five we kiss congratulations Andrey Bulat Vasya gladilin dyachenko evgeny zhora zyama irzhik kit leopold misha maybe more but no less"...
So mother - everyone knows - was devoted to her friends: Okudzhava, 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 ... to the little man 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. 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. The first word that comes to mind is "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 - do not 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 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 Yevtushenko 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 to him.
Just like she kept about a hundred pages of poems written by his hand in the late fifties, and a thick translation from Azerbaijani of Nabi Babayev's book "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 about it. And when she learned that she had not won, she commented: "That's right. And there's 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? Well, let's go, we'll 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 Bitov and I joined hands, put on an air of importance, and passed easily. 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 structure 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.
A poet can be distinguished from a non-poet at once, even by a single poem. The founders of the award proceeded from this in 2012, deciding to celebrate young poets for the very thing, the only thing .... "Bella" has four nominations: for poems in Russian and in Italian, for an essay on modern poetry, and "Touching Kazan "(title from Akhmadulina's article "The Secret Union of Words") for poetesses from Tatarstan.
Ask for rain, its blind water, / smoke today, and tomorrow there will be smoke / in all gardens, / sad and homely. /Today is a garden,/ and its light is deep... - this is the beginning of the verse, recognized by the jury headed by the critic Natalya Ivanova as the best this year. Its author, poet and journalist from Zhukovsky Ekaterina Perchenkova, graduated from the history department of Moscow State University, studied at the Literary Institute, and considers Olga Sedakova her teacher in poetry.
Creativity Sedakova was also inspired by another Russian laureate, a student of Mikhail Gasparov, critic Ilya Kukulin. His winning essay "Stylization of Folklore as a Remembrance of Europe: "Old Songs" and "Songs of the Western Slavs", which analyzed the Pushkin and Sedakov cycles, was included in the collection of articles "Olga Sedakova: Poems, Meanings, Readings".
The choice of this year was difficult. Our young poetry is very strong, independent of the elders, it develops in its own way, but with great love for the word, for tradition, - says Natalia Ivanova. - This tradition has many lines, and each of the young chooses his own.
Ekaterina and Ilya were awarded the traditional prizes of "Bella" - small copies of the Messerer monument to Akhmadulina, standing in Tarusa. The young Tatar poetess Elvira Hadieva received the same prize in the nomination "Touching Kazan". The winners-Italians, or rather Italians, also rose to the stage. The Italian jury headed by Stefano Garzonio, Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Pisa, awarded Alessandra Cava for the poem "Come in: this is a village" and Federica Giordano for "Optimism is the fragrance of life".
This memorable souvenir of 2017 was dedicated to the memory of Tonino Guerra, a friend of Akhmadulina, who left us 5 years ago in March 2012. The winner in the nomination was to be an opus marked by an invincible, truly Guerra love of life. And in addition to the poetess Federica, the poet and artist Vasily Borodin received a mosaic made by Marco Bravura based on pastel Guerra for the poem "The rain broke the apples." In which there are also such lines: "Over the happy nights / the stars will wake up / full of mind, sadness / and gaps in it through - / neighboring stars, the rest ..."
The world-famous lyrical poetess of the Soviet era with an extraordinary fate, a sensitive soul and an unwaveringly honest civic stand. Her poems are special, with some elusive aroma of mystery, sadness and depth that you can only feel without understanding what it was. But it was! .. People of all ages read her poems, they made songs and romances from them. Even without knowing her name, people listened to them with bated breath. And the concert halls did not accommodate those wishing to her performances.
What else do we know about this amazing woman - Bella Akhmadulina? How did her life develop, why was there always a note of sadness and a certain detachment, withdrawal into herself, into her inner world? What are the main facts of Bella Akhmadulina's life? What happened to her in her personal life? Let us very carefully touch upon this acquaintance with the dramatic life of the great and talented Bella Akhmadulina.
Bella Akhmadulina - Wikipedia.
Bella (Isabella) Akhatovna Akhmadulina - Russian poetess, writer, translator, one of the largest Russian lyric poets of the second half of the twentieth century. Member of the Union of Russian Writers, the Executive Committee of the Russian PEN Center, the Society of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin. Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation and the State Prize of the USSR.
And this is not all the titles and titles of a woman who lived not for their sake, but at the behest of her soul and conscience, and fulfilled the task of life.
Bella Akhmadulina - biography
The famous poetess was born on April 10, 1937 in Moscow. She had an intelligent family. Bella's father, Akhat Valeevich, worked in the party and Komsomol service, was a deputy minister. Mother, Nadezhda Makarovna, was a KGB translator.
Initially, the girl was given the name Isabella in the then fashion of Spanish passions. Later, the girl changed her name, shortening it to the now known one.
In the upbringing of little Bella, her maternal grandmother Nadezhda Mitrofanovna played a big role, the reason for this was the employment of her parents. Grandmother taught her granddaughter to read, they read both fairy tales and Russian classics together. Akhmadulina carried this love for literature through her whole life, it became her innermost essence and meaning of life, embodied in numerous works of the poetess and writer.
The war did not allow the girl to go to school on time, she and her grandmother were sent to Kazan, where the family of her father, who was at the front, was located. There, Bella suffered a dangerous illness, which she managed to cope with only with the arrival of her mother.
Only after returning to Moscow, Bella went to school, but studying among her peers weighed her down, it was much more pleasant for her to be alone with herself and books. Therefore, being extremely well-read, in literature she felt like a fish in water and devoted all her time to her favorite literature. The same cannot be said about the other items that were often walked around and ignored.
During her school years, Bella wrote poetry with might and main, and by the age of 15 she had her own established literary style. A talented girl was in the Literary Association, in a literary circle at the plant. Likhachev, her first publications in the magazine "October" at the age of 18 are associated with this period.
After school, there was an attempt to fulfill the desire of parents in the journalistic field, but fate did not allow Bella to an alien occupation - she failed the entrance exam. And the next year she entered the literary institute, which she dreamed of. At this time, she already had a decent creative experience and fame.
But in the student body, Bella's uncompromisingness in her life principles, which do not tolerate a deal with her conscience, also manifested itself. At that time, a flurry of accusations of betrayal fell upon Boris Pasternak, up to the demand for expulsion from the country. The reason was the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded. Signatures were collected among university students under such a letter of accusation, which Bella did not agree to sign, for which she was expelled. Later, she was restored, thanks to the help of a newspaper editor, for whom the young girl worked at that time.
In 1962, the first book of poems "String" was published, which was a huge success, despite criticism for intimacy, pomposity, not characteristic of Soviet writers.
The second collection of poetry was published in 1969 and was called Chills. And then followed “Music Lessons”, “Snowstorm”, “Poems”, “Candle” ... The poetess was a tireless worker, devoting herself to creativity completely, she created in any state and in any place.
Civil position of Bella Akhmadulina
Bella Akhatovna did not stand aside from the events taking place in the country and its politics. She was hurt by the injustice, for the restoration of which she took all possible steps.
Even as a student, she did not make a deal with her conscience and refused to sign a letter of accusation against B. Pasternak for receiving the Nobel Prize, which was regarded as a betrayal of the Motherland, and the Soviet authorities incited the public against him. Bella was even expelled from the institute under the pretext of failing an exam.
She was a supporter of the disgraced Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Kopelev, defended and supported them with her appeals and speeches in foreign radio and press, wrote essays about them.
In 1978, Akhmadulina took part in the publication of the Metropol almanac, which collected the works of many talented authors who were denied the official publication of their books. This collection, made in a handicraft way, in a typewritten version, had a circulation of 12 copies, one of which would have been illegally exported to America and republished there. Harsh criticism and persecution immediately followed the participants of the uncensored almanac.
“Letter of forty-two” is the name of the collective appeal to the president demanding a ban on parties in 1993, among the signatories of it is Bella Akhmadulina. And in 2001, the poetess came to the defense of NTV.
Bella Akhmadulina - creativity
People poured into Akhmadulina's concerts, gathering large halls. She had a special artistic style, which gave a certain old-fashioned, archaic, resemblance to the pathos of the last century, but at the same time very rich in metaphors, bizarre images. Ordinary sound contrasted with high-flown and sensuality.
But most importantly, each poem was born in the heart of the poetess, it carried vitality and sincerity, conveyed feelings and found a lively response in the souls of listeners and readers. Connoisseurs of her gift believed that Akhmadulina had the style of the golden age of Russian literature.
The magical, strong voice of the poetess, when she read her poems, vibrated with such a tense string that it did not leave anyone indifferent and made a person empathize, awakened his soul, conscience, and excited feelings. Like a tuning fork, it set you up to think about life, raised you to high truths.
Throughout her life, Bella Akhatovna carried love and reverence for her teachers, who influenced her entire life and work - these are Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak and Mandelstam.
33 collections of beautiful poems are the main result of Bella Akhmadulina's creative life. Plus a lot of articles, essays, translations of foreign authors.
Akhmadulina - banned author
Akhmadulina was loved in the country and abroad, she was known and respected, translated into all the languages of Europe, and this authority protected her from repression in many situations. But still, she did not manage to avoid the fate of all the progressive people of the “stagnant” Soviet period, and after the publication of the book Chills outside the country (Frankfurt), the poetess was subjected to severe criticism and censorship.
Publishing houses refused to print it, and a ban was placed on public speaking. And this continued until the start of perestroika. In disgrace, the poetess continued to write a lot, in her work there were essays about many famous people, such as Nabokov, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Vysotsky and other talents, she was personally acquainted with many and even friends.
Akhmatova translated the poems of many foreign poets, in 1984 she was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples.
The stay of Bella Akhmadulina in Georgia is also connected with this period, which made an indelible impression on Akhmadulina, especially Tarusa, which became the favorite place of the poetess, her muse. Here was born the collection "Dreams of Georgia" and many translations of poems by prominent Georgian poets.
Akhmadulina in cinema
In her youth, Bella Akhmadulina starred in two films. This is the role of a journalist in the film “Such a guy lives” by Vasily Shukshin, who received a prize at the international festival in Venice in 1964. The second film is "Sport, Sport, Sport" by Elem Klimov, in which Akhmatova read her own poems dedicated to athletes.
Akhmadulina's poems and songs have become the calling card of famous paintings: the romance "On my street ..." in Eldar Ryazanov's "Irony of Fate". In Office Romance, the inner state of the heroine is conveyed by the poem "Oh, my shy hero." In the "Cruel Romance" by Nikita Mikhalkov, the romance "And in the end I will say" sounds.
Bella Akhmadulina - personal life
This woman was beautiful and charming, many men liked her, they fell in love with her, and there were crowds of admirers, and there were novels and meetings.
The poetess had four marriages during her life, which fell apart one after another, and only the last brought her long-awaited consolation.
Each of her husbands loved and admired her, they dedicated poems of love to her and showered her with flowers. But it was love not so much for a woman as for a poetess, great and talented. And she had her own principles, her own opinion on various issues, her own standards of good and evil, her own human and female characteristics, which cannot be ignored. Instead of unconditional love, they tried to correct, educate and remake her, which could not but leave an imprint on Bella's subtle nature.
Husbands of Bella Akhmadulina
The first husband of the poetess at the age of 18 was Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He was the first connoisseur of her poetry much earlier, in her school years. Then they met again at the institute and, being close natures, were strongly attracted to each other and became friends, but their romance did not start right away. The husband did not cherish the soul in her, devoted poetry and declared his love - the spouses were happy. But their marriage cracked due to Bella's pregnancy, since Yevtushenko did not allow the child to be born. And this was the reason for the subsequent separation of the young couple.
The second husband of Bella Akhmadulina was Yuri Nagibin, a writer, journalist and screenwriter. Their meeting took place very soon after the divorce from Yevtushenko, in 1959. Nagibin had the gift of making women fall in love with him. And this marriage was neither the first nor the last for him, Bella became his fifth wife. Having been married for 9 years, Nagibin, on his own initiative, broke up with Akhmadulina. We will not go into gossip about this without having a reliable interpretation, but the fact is that she did not want to end the relationship. Be that as it may, the divorce took place, and after it, the poetess, perhaps in confusion of feelings and disappointment, took the girl Anya from the orphanage, adopting her and giving the surname and patronymic of the now ex-husband.
The next, third husband of Akhmadulina is Eldar Kuliev, 17 years younger than her. Where he came from in her entourage, what attracted them to each other, is unknown, but first friendly relations arose between them, and then they grew into a romance, which resulted in the birth of their daughter Lisa. Actually, this marriage saved Akhmadulina from deep depression after a previous divorce, but after the birth of a child, their relationship dried up.
Just a year later, Bella met her main man, fate, who became her fourth husband, with whom they lived until the end of her life. This is Boris Messerer, a sculptor, theater artist, stage designer, who from the first meeting realized that he would go to the ends of the world for this woman. He surrounded her with love and care, saved her from the life that weighed her down, taking a housekeeper. He understood her tender poetic nature and warned her desires and difficulties. Yes, they truly loved each other and were happy. Out of this great love, after the death of his wife, Messerer created a monument in honor of his wife and the greatest poetess, installing it in Tarusa in 2013.
Akhmadulina's children
In the first and second marriages, the poetess had no children. But after a divorce from her second husband, Bella adopted the girl Anna from the orphanage, giving her his last name and patronymic.
In her third marriage in 1973, Bella Akhmadulina gave birth to her only daughter, Elizaveta Kulieva.
When the poetess married for the fourth time, both daughters remained in the upbringing of Bella's parents. Despite rare meetings with their mother, love, warmth and understanding of each other remained in their relationship.
Elizabeth followed in her mother's footsteps and also became a writer. After her mother's death, she published the book Bella. Meetings after”, which displayed the main events of her life. Sharing childhood memories, Lisa noted the mother's ability to create happiness for her loved ones, especially children. She made children's birthdays an unforgettable bright holiday. She taught her daughters to live according to conscience and honor, the way she lived herself.
According to her daughter, Bella loved life very much, in all its manifestations, and gave herself to this life to the end. This love and joy of life were the essence of Bella, and only the public created her tragic image. And Lisa loves this childish, enthusiastic joy from life most of all in her mother.
Death
The greatest poetess passed away on November 29, 2010 after a serious illness in Peredelkino, Moscow region, where she and her husband lived in recent years.
By this time, she was almost blind, which was the main suffering of her creative worker-soul, since she could not write. According to daughter Elizabeth, this was the main cause of death, in fact, Bella herself launched a self-destruction program, as she could not bear a useless existence.
They say she had cancer, but she died of an acute heart attack in an ambulance. She was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
After the death of his beloved wife, Messerer wrote a book of memoirs about her, and in 2013 he created a monument in honor of Bella Akhmadulina in Tarusa.
The other day, the widow of the famous writer Yuri Nagibin, who lived in America for a long time and only recently returned to Russia, told many interesting stories about Bella Akhmadulina. The words of Alla Grigoryevna Nagibina can be trusted, because the famous poetess was once the fifth wife of Yuri Nagibin.
Now Alla Nagibina lives in a country house in the village of Krasnaya Pakhra near Moscow. This house was built by her ex-husband and lived in it for 30 years after his sixth marriage in Leningrad Alla Grigoryevna. It was here that the famous writer's widow met with the Sobesednik journalist and, surrounded by carved furniture, antiques and expensive paintings, told him the secret of her husband's divorce from Bella Akhmadulina.
According to the widow, even after the divorce, Akhmadulin, along with Yevtushenko, Rozhdestvensky, Aksenov, Okudzhava and many others, came to this house for Easter and Christmas. Now these people are considered legends, but then they were ordinary people, between whom quarrels quite often broke out.
It all started in 1967, when Yuri Nagibin made an unexpected decision to part with his wife Bella Akhmadulina. The poetess did not want to leave the writer, but he firmly declared that he would no longer live with her.
The reason for the divorce, according to the writer's widow, is described by the writer Aksenov in one of the scenes of the novel "Mysterious Passion" - the husband finds his wife in the arms of two other women on their family bed. After that, the hero of the novel simply threw his wife with her mistresses and things outside the threshold of his apartment.
The writer's widow claims that this is exactly what happened in real life, and one of Akhmadulina's mistresses was Galina Sokol, who later became the wife of Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Aksyonov himself wrote about this in the preface to his novel.
Bella Akhmadulina long hoped to return to Yuri Nagibin, since he lived very well for his time. The writer had a dacha, a car. He dressed well, received large fees for screenplays and often traveled abroad.
Therefore, in order to return her husband Bella Akhmadulin, together with Galya Sokol, they developed a whole plan - they went to the orphanage, where the headmistress known to them worked, and without any documents, she “issued” her child friends. Galina got a boy, and Akhmadulina got a girl.
As a result, hoping that Yuri Nagibin would return to her, Bella Akhmadulina gave her daughter Anna her last name and patronymic Yurievna. However, this act, according to Alla Nagibina, did not touch her late husband - he never returned to the poetess.
Perhaps this happened due to the fact that the writer did not like small children - he simply did not understand how to work if children were crying in the house. None of his six wives could ever persuade him to have a child. Therefore, the writer Bella Akhmadulina, who by that time was already 50 years old, said that even for the sake of this girl he would not return to her.
After this conversation, Bella Akhmadulina married the son of the Balkar classic Kaisyn Kuliev, who was 17 years younger than her. And Yuri Nagibin, having provided his ex-wife with an apartment, married for the sixth time to Alla Grigorievna, with whom he lived for about 30 years. He did not stop communicating with his ex-wife - after all, it was one company, but he admitted to his last wife that he did not seem to have lived before her.
Well, after a divorce from Nagibin, Bella Akhmadulina began to drink heavily, although before that she loved to skip another glass. She did not live with Eldar Kuliev for a long time, despite the fact that she gave birth to her new husband's daughter, Elizabeth. The next husband of Bella Akhmadulina was the artist Boris Messerer, who "understood" her rushing soul and was calm about her habit of abusing alcohol.
However, for the sake of this marriage, Bella Akhmadulina abandoned her daughters Anna and Elizaveta to her mother, who, along with her children and a housekeeper, lived in an apartment donated by Yuri Nagibin. The poetess no longer participated in the upbringing of her daughters. Perhaps that is why, as soon as her daughter Anna, already an adult, found out that she was adopted, she immediately left her mother and is now extremely reluctant to communicate with journalists - she probably just does not want to remember her difficult childhood.
By the way, the new wife of Yuri Nagibin was not accepted in his company. Everyone condemned the writer for kicking Bella Akhmadulina out into the street, and his new wife for taking the place of a great poetess, whose poems men listened to with their mouths open, and they forgave her a lot for this.
