Ilya Selvinsky biography. Biography
Selvinsky Ilya
Ilya Lvovich Selvinsky
At the Zoo - Spell - From the diary - Cossack joke - What happiness can be - Kokchetav - Don't believe my photographs.... - I don't choose the reader. He... - Night plowing - First layer - Sonnet (There is no immortality...) - Sonnet (Raised by a variety of reading matter...) - Sonnet (Mental suffering like a gamma...) - Happiness is the quenching of pain... - Taman - Tractor `S-80` - Gypsy - Noises - Youth - I saw it!
SPELL Call me, call me, Call me, call me!
If trouble jumps onto your shoulders, Not just any misfortune, but precisely the Age-old misfortune-beard, Call me, call me, Don’t be ashamed of yourself or me, Just exchange grief for joy, Melt your fear by the fire!
Call me, call me, Call me, call me, Don’t you dare whisper to a letter, Call me even by name, I’ll take your breath away!
Call me, call me, Call me... 1958 Thought armed with rhymes. ed.2e. Poetic anthology on the history of Russian verse. Compiled by V.E. Kholshevnikov. Leningrad, Leningrad University Publishing House, 1967.
YOUTH You will fly into the air in the morning, Kissing women with the wind, Laughter, like a vigorous pearl, Jumps into your teeth, into your nostrils...
What would this be? There seems to be no reason: The sky is sleek and decorous, The sea is also at peace.
Carefully drained the puddles of the rain the day before yesterday; Nine hours on the Caterpillar tower for service;
And I have 1000 nya in the sublingual Something is pouring peas, So that the lungs burst into laughter loudly Barking...
Listen, come on, come on! But you can’t do a damn thing: The laughter is golden, ripe, So satisfying and full.
There are so many funny things in the world: For example, “cabbage”... We need to think about sad things, But what should we outline?
Plague rats may sneak into the cellar tomorrow. I'll be bald too. Once upon a time they bent the...
Somewhere in Norway the flagship... And suddenly again: “cabbage”! Devilry! How delicious it is to rattle your diaphragm like that!
A golden laughter, Foamy, excellent. Shh... come on: is it decent for someone like that to be happy? Soviet poetry 1917-1929. Moscow, "Soviet Russia", 1986.
AT THE ZOO Here are scales, feathers and fur, Here is a groan, a growl, a laugh, a cry, But what shocks most of all is the philosophical in tigers:
From board to board there flashes, upholstered with twigs, a drunken whirling of resentment, a phantasmagoria of melancholy. 1945 Russian poets. Anthology in four volumes. Moscow, "Children's Literature", 1968.
SONNET There is no immortality. And glory is just smoke, And it will last for at least a hundred generations, But somewhere you will be replaced by another And you will still disappear, poor genius.
History needed you Just, perhaps, for a few moments... But do not despair, poor genius, Sad, one-minded and unsociable.
As before, you strive for eternity! Let the thought never leave you That you need the echo from the distant future more than glory and medals.
There is no immortality. But life is full, When it is given immortality. November 14, 1943, Adzhi-Mushkai quarries Ilya Selvinsky. Selected works. The Poet's Library (Large Series). Leningrad: Soviet writer, 1972.
I SAW IT! You don’t have to listen to folk tales, You don’t have to believe newspaper columns, But I saw it. With my own eyes. Do you understand? Saw. Myself.
Here's the road. And over there is a hill. There's a ditch between us. From this ditch grief rises. Grief without shores.
No! There are no words about this... You have to growl here! Cry! Seven thousand shot in a frozen pit, Rusted like ore.
Who are these people? Fighters? Not at all. Maybe partisans? No. Here lies the lop-eared Kolka. He is eleven years old.
All his relatives are here. Farm "Vesely". The entire "Samostroy" - one hundred and twenty courtyards. Nearby stations, nearby villages. All the hostages were sent to the ditch.
They lie, sit, crawl onto the parapet. Everyone has a gesture. Amazingly yours! Winter in the dead man froze the feeling with which the living accepted death,
And the corpses are raving, threatening, hating... Like a rally, this dead silence is noisy. No matter in what form they are felled, With their eyes, grin, neck, shoulders, They argue with the executioners, They exclaim: “You won’t win!”
Boy. He is quite light. The chest is open in protest. One leg is in a thin boot, the other shines with the varnish of the prosthesis. A light snow falls and falls... A young disabled person opened his chest. He apparently shouted: “Shoot, devils!” I choked. Fell. Frozen. But as a sentry over the rookery of death, a crutch stuck into the ground sticks out. And the rage of the dead did not freeze: She calls out to the front-line soldiers from the rear, She hoisted the crutch like a pole, And her milestone is visible far away.
Grandma. This one died standing, rose from the corpses and died like that. Her face, glorious and simple, was convulsed by a black spasm. The wind shakes her rags... Sealing wax froze in the left orbit, But the right eye is deep in the sky Between the breaks of the clouds. And in this reproach to the Most Pure Virgin is the destruction of decades of faith: “If fascists live in the world, It follows that there is no God.”
Nearby is a tortured Jewish woman. She has a child with her. Just like in a dream. With what care the child's neck is tied with her mother's gray muffler... Mothers did not change their hearts: Going to be shot, walking under a bullet, An hour, half an hour before the grave, Mother saved her child from a cold. But even death is not separation for them: Enemies and the red stream have no power over them now.
Drips from a child's ear
maternal
How scary it is to write about this. How creepy. But we have to. Necessary! Write! Fascism can no longer get off with a joke: You have measured the baseness of the fascist soul, You have realized in all its falsehood the “Sentimentality” of Prussian dreams, So let
through them
waltzes This motherly handful sticks out.
Go! Brand it! You are standing in front of a massacre, You caught them by the hand - convict them! You see how the executioners crushed us with an armor-piercing bullet, So thunder, like Dante, like Ovid, Let nature itself weep, If
I saw it and didn't go crazy.
But I stand silently over a terrible grave. What words? The words have decayed. There was a time - I wrote about my dear, About the clicking of the nightingale.
It would seem, what’s wrong with this topic? Is it true? Meanwhile, Try to find a real word Even for these topics.
And here? But the nerves are like onions, but the lines... are deeper than boiled strings. No, comrades: language cannot express this torment.
He's too familiar, that's why he's pale. Too elegant, therefore stingy, Reduced to an inexorable grammar Every cry that leaves the lips.
Here it would be necessary... It would be necessary to convene a council, From all the tribes from shaft to shaft And to take from each everything human, Everything that has broken through the centuries, Screams, wheezing, sighs and groans, Echoes of invasions, pogroms, massacres... Not this l
bottomless torment
Akin to the words you are looking for?
But we also have such a speech, Which is hotter than any words: The enemies are showered with a curse by buckshot. The batteries rattle with the words of the prophets. Do you hear trumpets on the lines? Confusion... Screams... The thugs turn pale. They're running! But there's nowhere for them to escape From your bloody grave.
Loosen your muscles. Close your eyelids. Grow up with grass at these heights. Whoever saw you, from now on will forever carry away all your wounds in your soul.
The ditch... Can you describe it as a poem? Seven thousand corpses.
Semites... Slavs... Yes! There are no words about this. Fire! Only with fire! 1942, Kerch Russian Soviet poetry. Ed. L.P. Krementsova. Leningrad: Enlightenment, 1988.
COSSACK JOKING Black-eyed Cossack woman Shoed my horse, Asked me for silver, Not valuing my labor dearly.
What's your name, young lady? And the pullet says: “You will feel my name from under the clatter of hooves.”
I drove down the street, galloped along the road, along the path between the brown ones, between the brown ones between the rocks:
Masha? Zina? Dasha? Nina? It’s as if it’s not her... “Ka-cha! Ka-cha!” - they cut out the horseshoes of my horse.
From then on, I can walk, I can gallop, "Katya! Katya! Katerina!" I whisper persistently.
What kind of nonsense is this? I have another one. But Katya, like a song, is not known from the soul, brother:
The black-eyed Cossack woman Shoed my horse, At the same time she chained me too in passing. 1943 Russian Soviet poetry. Ed. L.P. Krementsova. Leningrad: Enlightenment, 1988.
TAMAN When in the Caucasian cavalry regiment I see a Cossack on a white-legged horse of a bay shoal, in a Circassian coat with a red soul and a helmet askew, who still calls his hut “kuren”, I don’t need to be enlightened, I’ll call out to him: “Hello, horseman, Taman land!"
From Krymskaya, from the village to Chushka to the spit, I walked around your, Taman, mustachioed oats, I know the bloody foulbrood smoother than battle, I can recognize each of your huts by sight. It used to be that you would bring a letter from a Cossack from the front. They would seat the guest on a trestle bed under a saber with braid, and a small peasant hall, wallpapered with newspapers, would begin to stare at you with portraits of villagers. Three samovars will boil, three lamps will buzz, Three girls will vying with each other turn your head, Until your mother screams and, taking a Turkish basin, Like a golden horse, ransoms you.
My Taman, my Taman, an outpost of my country! I loved the way of battle antiquity in you, I loved your military breeze, Your guttural streams and your proud speech. Cavalry land! You cannot be overwhelmed, Even if you are plowed up with 1000 bombings and harrowed with infantry. Someone else's banner is above you, someone else's speech is in the house, But the enemy knows:
you won't give in to him. My Taman, my Taman! In the spring chaos, the swift does not rush home with such longing from afar, With which your Cossack regiments, Kuban sons, are drawn to you through fire and dreams.
One of the smallest peoples of Russia, the Crimeans, gave the country one of the prominent poets of the twentieth century. The poems of Ilya Selvinsky, as well as his prose and drama, took their rightful place in Soviet culture. Unusually, his work turned out to be cyclical: towards the end of his life, Selvinsky returned with his old works, having significantly edited them.
The poet died in Moscow on March 22, 1968. He experienced a lot in 68 years: he fought in two wars, traveled around the Arctic, and changed a lot of professions before his literary career.
Selvinsky's early years
Selvinsky was born into a Krymchak family on October 11 (24 according to the new style) October 1899. This happened in the city of Simferopol. The family had glorious military traditions: the grandfather served in the Phanagorian Regiment, the father was a veteran of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877. The poet himself also had to spend a lot of time at the fronts.
Ilya Lvovich graduated from elementary school, then gymnasium - and already in these young years he was engaged in poetry. Ilya Selvinsky first published his poems in 1915: they were published in the newspaper “Evpatoria News”.
The range of professions to which the poet devoted his youth is amazing: from the work of a loader to the work of a model, a reporter, and even a wrestler in a circus. Also Selvinskikh, overwhelmed by revolutionary sentiments, took part in the Civil War on the side of the Red Army.
After the war, he headed to Moscow, where he entered Moscow State University. Already by this time, the poems of Ilya Selvinsky had gained popularity, and he himself had gained significant weight in poetry circles. The Krymchak poet was rightly considered the leader of the constructivist movement.
In 1926, Selvinsky’s first collection of poems was published, and the same period became a time of experimentation for the author: he wrote bold and unusual poems, poems strange for his time. Alas, much of Selvinsky’s work will still be misunderstood by the authorities.
Mature years of the poet
Surprisingly, against the backdrop of such literary success, Selvinsky worked for some time as a welder at a factory in the late 1920s. And almost immediately after that, he sent me on a trip on the legendary Chelyuskin, as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper.
He did not participate in further legendary and dramatic events around this ship, leaving board before the start of the drift and wintering. But even without the harsh nature of the Arctic, there were enough problems: in 1937, government resolutions were issued stating that Ilya Selvinsky wrote “anti-artistic and harmful” poetry. Moreover, officials even had questions about the harmless play “Umka is a Polar Bear.”
In 1941, Selvinsky again found himself at the front. There were plenty of poets on the fields of the Great Patriotic War, but hardly any with the rank of lieutenant colonel, to which Selvinsky rose. The classic distinguished himself in battles, received several wounds - but, fortunately, he was lucky again in the war.
True, the war actually ended for Ilya Lvovich already in 1943 - he was summoned to Moscow, and again about the “wrong” poems. According to rumors, Stalin personally participated in the discussion of the situation, who then noted that Selvinsky was highly valued as a poet by Trotsky and Bukharin.
Only in 1945 did the classic get his title back and was sent to the front again.
Post-war years
At the end of the war, Selvinsky finally devoted himself entirely to literature. He published poems and novels in verse, plays, as well as prose. The last work, the lyrical theatrical tragedy “The Swan Princess,” was published in the year of the author’s death.
Poembook, 2015
All rights reserved.
V.E. Meyerhold and I.L. Selvinsky. 1929
Daily rhymes
Ilya Selvinsky (1899-1968)
Lovers don't die
Glory be to the one who invented love
And raised her above passion:
He continued his courage into old age,
He brings out a lily among the ice.
I understand: you say - a mirage?
But there is more tenderness in the world,
We will soon die less:
After all, we are dying from hopelessness.
(1961)
***
I've been starving for you for years.
I fall asleep with a prayer for the inaccessible,
I wake up - and in a fading prayer
I listen to the roosters and barking.
And there is so much indifference in these sounds,
Such sobriety of the world outside the window,
What seems unthinkable is to spill
My melancholy with all its fire.
And you flash in this sober world,
You are happy among simple worries,
You get up at seven, have lunch at four -
The deer call will not call you.
But sometimes, the icon itself is stricter,
You look sideways to the side -
And for a second it scared me to the point of trembling:
Aren't you the one who yearns for me?
(1959)
SPELL
Call me, call me
Call me, call me!
If trouble jumps on your shoulders,
Not just any, but exactly
The age-old trouble is the beard,
Call me, call me
Don't be ashamed of yourself or me -
Just exchange grief for joy,
Melt your fear by the fire!
Call me, call me
Call me, call me
Don't you dare whisper to a letter,
Call me by name -
I will surround you with my breath!
Call me, call me
Call me...
(1958)
Ilya Selvinsky:
In the late 1920s he wrote experimental epic poems.
In the mid and late 1920s, the popular eccentric artist and chansonnier Mikhail Savoyarov performed experimental “leftist” poems and poems by Ilya Selvinsky in his concerts. In particular, he read (and at times even sang) the poem “Ulyalaevshchina” to musical accompaniment in the costume and aesthetics of the Blue Blouse Theater.
In 1927-1930, Ilya Selvinsky conducted a heated journalistic polemic with Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1930 he made statements of repentance. At the same time, as follows from his autobiography, he went “to work as a welder at an electrical plant.”
In the early 1930s, Selvinsky wrote avant-garde poetic dramas.
In 1933-1934, he was a correspondent for Pravda on an expedition led by O. Yu. Schmidt on the steamship Chelyuskin, but did not participate in the drift and wintering: as part of a group of eight people, he landed on the shore while staying near the island. Kolyuchin and walked with the Chukchi on dogs across the ice of the Arctic Ocean and tundra to Cape Dezhnev.
Since 1937, crushing party resolutions have been issued against Selvinsky: on April 21, 1937 - a Politburo resolution against his play “Umka - the White Bear”, and on August 4, 1939 - a resolution of the Organizing Bureau about the magazine “October” and Selvinsky’s poems, which were called “anti-artistic” and harmful." Since 1937 he has written historical dramas in verse.
Member of the CPSU(b) since 1941. Since 1941, he was at the front in the ranks of the Red Army, first with the rank of battalion commissar, then lieutenant colonel. He received two shell shocks and one serious wound near Bataysk. The Deputy People's Commissar of Defense was awarded a gold watch for the lyrics of the song "Combat Crimean", which became the song of the Crimean Front.
At the end of November 1943, Selvinsky was summoned from Crimea to Moscow. He was criticized for writing “harmful” and “anti-art” works. He is believed to have "wrongly" reported on Jewish victims of the Nazis. According to another version, in Selvinsky’s completely harmless poem “Whom Russia Cradled” (1943), they astutely saw a caricature of J.V. Stalin (hidden under the word “freak”)...
(Wikipedia)
Excerpt from the poem "Ulyaevshchina:
The telegram arrived at 2:10 am.
The carpet tiger rages peacefully,
When Turkish shoes have gouty handwriting
Exhausted his desert from the table to the door.
The hot shop was visible through the window
Where the white flame was exposed...
The room began to rush at everyone
Crazy things -
And a matte lantern set in bone,
Raised by the tabletop Negro statue,
Faceted icicles knocked from energies
In the lid of a suitcase made of crocodile skins,
Where did stocks, kernels, currencies,
Linen, a volume of Blok, a stack with a monogram,
Encrypted word of a scary telegram
Mysterious - "revolution".
Superstitiously they put in a penny Spas.
The yard under the car's skull came to life.
He convulsively closed his nickel-plated mouth
Crocodile from suitcase leather -
While there's a two-nosed bulldog on the windowsill,
Copying the cartoonish flabby millionaire,
Guarded the dawn greenish-gray
And I shuddered when I heard a beep...
A blizzard of fire rushed through the window:
The sun was born in the hot workshop,
Like a hammer and insomnia
There was a rebellion there!
Hammers, cupola makers, drillers, chasers
Planers, riveters, fighters and painters,
Glittering in gloss the molding of the ribs and the chasing of the cheeks
They suffered from revolutionary malaria.
At least for a second, at least for a second
Open the valves of stagnant storms...
And at this time St. Petersburg
Collapsed into smithereens in October...
"POET-ORCHESTRA"
The thirty years since the poet’s death are approaching, and his powerful figure is moving away from us. Already, few connoisseurs and gourmets of poetry imagine its scale.
But once upon a time his name was put in the following row: Mayakovsky, Selvinsky, Bagritsky - and at the same time they argued which of them could claim first place among their contemporaries. All three, in some way, have the same fate: the desire to do their best to adapt to the new post-revolutionary life, to become leaders, to outshout everyone else.
Everyone along this path had both achievements and, alas, failures. Such was the era, which forced one to overexert one’s voice, sometimes to break it, to forget that the role of a poet is essentially non-vain. Remember Pasternak’s words: “but you yourself should not distinguish defeat from victory.”
We will not condemn poets, but we cannot ignore the rather significant circumstances of their existence in literature. On one of M. A. Voloshin’s watercolors, which he gave to the poet, there is the inscription “Ilya Selvinsky - poet-orchestra.” This definition seems to me to be very successful and succinct. Indeed, the poet's polyphony of voices is amazing. He was probably the only one in poetry who tried to speak not in “one language, dried up, without salt,” but used all the richness of dialects, jargons, dialects of the awakened Rus'. Either he speaks easily and gracefully on behalf of the Odessa thief Motka Malkhamoves, then on behalf of the commanders of the semi-partisan Red Army, feeling like a fish in water in their unimaginable “surzhik”, that is, a fusion of languages of Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, God knows what else. I visited Chukotka and wrote the play “Umka the Polar Bear,” where the characters speak like real Chukchi, who have barely mastered Russian literacy. A significant part of his young poetry was spent on experiment and search. The search for a genre, even to the point of writing poetry in the form of a report, the search for meters that no one has ever written (imitation of drumming in “The Ballad of the Drummer”).
It was all the spirit of the era. Kirsanov also had an excellent command of words, and was a real circus performer in poetry: it was believed that without this, new poetry corresponding to the revolutionary pressure could not be created.
Inexorable time has shown that this is not the main thing, that the main thing is “not to give up a single bit of your face,” but they all retreated, and this was one of the reasons that all of them, possessing enormous talent, faded and went into the shadows. Of course, Selvinsky was larger than both Aseev and Kirsanov - people who received a lot from God, but also ruined a lot in themselves with vanity. However, no one is given the opportunity to serve God and mammon at the same time.
Later poets, such as Lipkin, Korzhavin, Tarkovsky, treated verbal flourishes with disgust and demanded that their students not write anything for the sake of form.
It seemed to Mayakovsky that the iambic was dead, but now almost a century has passed, and neither A.S. is at all disdainful of the iambic. Kushner, neither Timur Kibirov, nor I. Brodsky, finally.
Fans of “leftist” poetry easily classified A.T. as a retrograde. Tvardovsky. Well? Tvardovsky became less of a person because of this. The “left” play with words and rhythms had its own charm. But let us refer to the same A.T. Tvardovsky:
While you are young, there is little demand!
Play! But God forbid
To live to see gray hair,
Serving empty fun.
Some things can be explained by the “high tongue-tiedness” that inevitably arises at the turn of the epoch, when all the criteria change and perspectives shift.
In 1921, there was nowhere for poets to publish, and the main venue for performances was various poetry cafes. One of these cafes was called “Sopo”, that is, “Union of Poets”, in common parlance “Sopatka”. Many poets gathered there: from seasoned or semi-venerable poets to beginners. One day there was another reception to the union. I.A. was sitting on the stage. Aksenov, a then fashionable director who translated Crommelynck’s acclaimed play “The Generous Cuckold” for Meyerhold (ten years ago the author of these lines watched this play in Leningrad, and it—God forgive me—seemed surprisingly boring and mediocre). Then Aksenov was considered a kind of arbiter elegantiarum, that is, a judge of grace. Among those present was V.V. Mayakovsky, who did not hide his yawning and made disparaging remarks such as “the poems are cold, like a dog’s nose” or “stolen from Mayakovsky.”
But then a powerfully built young man appeared on the stage, occupying half the stage, for his suit was made of thick fabric, used for the jibs of fishing dinghies. On his feet were homemade wooden shoes.
No, it wasn’t some kind of shocking futuristic thing. The fact was that in Yevpatoria, where the young man came from, there were no clothes or shoes for sale. With a magnificent bronze baritone, the young man began to chant poems that forced everyone to listen.
A fast-flying horse, cast from black and ringing bronze,
You are my only comrade, you are my rude song.
You are all beautiful and powerful, like the ringing verse of Maron.
All your members are harmonious, like armor of scarlet armor.
The majority looked at Mayakovsky with bewilderment. But Mayakovsky was silent and smiled. The young man continued:
Do you remember how we rushed through the fields of Rodan with this girl,
Ear-to-ear with the wind? I'm a muscular hand
He squeezed her sta-an, swallowing his mouth-a grenade honeycomb,
And under a wide palm, accustomed to the reins and iron,
Innocent Percy stood up in little husks.
I am telling this episode based on the memories of Selvinsky himself.
Many were ready to ridicule the poet who dared to read some Latin hexameters during the era of the October Revolution. But there were also quite friendly reviews. The poet-translator of Argo exclaimed: “This is Latin bronze!”
But everything was decided by the already mentioned Ivan Aleksandrovich Aksenov, whose authority was then very high.
His main idea was that the young man’s hexameters are not simple, but modern. Doubling vowels is a technique that may be simplified, but no one has yet thought of it to convey longitude and brevity in ancient verse. (I will note on my own that I fully understand the delight of a young man appreciated by an authoritative person, but it is completely incomprehensible when this is enthusiastically told by the old teacher of the Literary Institute, the author of the book “Studio of Verse” I.L. Selvinsky, who should have known that this The technique was used not only by A.S. Pushkin (“The pure shines, the glass bowls shine” (From Xenophanes of Colophon), but even Trediakovsky and Sumarokov a century and a half ago.) Truly: the new is the well-forgotten old.
The young man was accepted into the union. When he passed by Mayakovsky’s table, the latter, smiling, asked: “Are you really thinking of riding into Soviet literature on this horse?”
The poet's relationship with Mayakovsky was ambiguous at different periods: from sympathy to hostility, almost enmity.
Despite his youth, the poet managed to survive and experience a lot. He began writing poetry while still studying at the Yevpatoria gymnasium. Times were turbulent, and I had to either leave my studies, carried away by the reality that had jumped out of the brakes, or return to my desk again. He was either interested in French wrestling and even performed in the circus under the name Lurich III, or worked as a water rescuer, or as a “water pumper,” that is, a person pumping water by hand.
However, he himself said it best in poetry:
We got confused in the subtle systems of parties,
We followed Lenin, Kerensky, Makhno,
They despaired, returned to their desks,
To boil again if the banner waves.
Isn’t it because the spokesmen of “truths”
From Gubernia Committee caps to Berlin Panama hats
They said about us: “Adventurers,
Revolutionary mob. Shpan..."
He either worked in the gang of the then notorious Maruska, or was a Red Guard. Therefore, he understood the elements of the civil war from the inside. But what he saw and understood did not coincide with what was required by the criticism of that time, and he almost always found himself in trouble.
After the revolution, he serves in the Central Union. He is well versed in the fur business: his father did this. He was a Crimean by nationality, a Crimean half-Jew, half-Gypsy. No, these are not Karaites, as many thought; for some reason Hitler treated the Karaites condescendingly, but he completely destroyed the Krymchaks.
As a Soviet employee, the poet was concerned with the question of why intellectuals should be considered a kind of second class, aren’t they needed by socialism?
To the land of sheepskin and fleas
Climb on an industrial rope
At least to a level equal to Canada,
We need a phenomenon, alas, inevitable,
Called the intelligentsia.
On this basis, he had constant disputes with Mayakovsky, who, as is known, unconditionally declared: “I give all my sonorous power as a poet to you, the attacking class.” He sharply criticized Selvinsky’s “Pushtorg” and told him: “Today your problem of the intelligentsia is of no interest to anyone... It all boils down to joining the proletariat as an assistant attorney. Yes, if he had your biography, he wouldn’t care about it! Now everyone says: we are proletarian, even Count A.N. Tolstoy. And then a Red Guard in bandages comes out and declares: “And we are intellectuals.”
The hostility escalated when Selvinsky organized his “constructivism” in opposition to Lef. There were twelve “Consters”; they also called themselves “the remarkable dozen.” It is hardly worth explaining in detail what this constructivism consisted of. Very untimely, they called their collection “Business” and depicted a skyscraper and horn-rimmed glasses on the cover. However, at that time this corresponded to the proclaimed slogan “American efficiency and Russian revolutionary scope.” An interesting observation: none of these twelve were harmed, although the attacks on them were quite harsh. But the so-called peasant and proletarian poets were completely destroyed in the 30s. Let literary scholars think about this oddity. They did not touch the desperate N. Aduev, although N. Erdman was seriously persecuted for his much more cautious humor.
For just one poem “V. V. Mayakovsky on demand,” by the way, written in the manner of Selvinsky, Aduev could have been crushed into powder. Not erased.
Selvinsky’s “Declaration of the Rights of the Poet” was openly directed against Lef and Mayakovsky.
Even if with the best car
"Enthusiasm is the key to victory"
What do you demand from a man?
Who, as they say, is a poet?
And you call: to the throat of the song.
Be a sewer man, be a water drainer.
Yes, there is just as much poetry in this schema,
How much aviation is in the elevator?
When are you in a hurry to give up poetry?
In rhymes as magnificent as a dragoon ball,
This is funnier than the hare's entry
In the "Society of Hare Stew Lovers".
He got away with it, despite the frantic, almost denunciatory cries of Aseev and company. But the “tops” were somehow wary of Selvinsky. Sometimes the attacks drove him to despair.
How many times, thrown aground,
You growl: “I'm tired of it! To hell! Bent!"
And, like raspberry caramel,
I would suck the sour bullet with gusto...
And suddenly you get a piece of leaf
From somewhere beyond Posyet Bay.
This is a great verse reader
I felt the pain of my poet.
And again, holding laughter in my teeth,
You live as if you won Vagram,
And again you walk among the howling of dogs
With his usual tiger gait.
Despite the poet’s feuds with Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich, while attacking Selvinsky himself, did not allow others to do so.
The artist Erast Garin recalls how Meyerhold staged Selvinsky’s rather risky play “Commander 2”, where, in addition to the no longer encouraged leftism of the form, the objective and scary truth of the civil war was presented. By the way, an interesting observation: if you take Selvinsky’s last lifetime editions, you will find this play, but in a terrible, distorted form. (Apparently, in the 50s the poet was really “bent” so much that he became a real comprachico in relation to his early works, directly according to the formula of Boris Slutsky: “I break their legs, I chop their hands”). So, the creepy commander there is called Pankrat Chub. In the same 20s version he had a different name. And patronymic. Joseph Rodionovich. This is, so to speak, a parte.
Let's return to the memories of Erast Garin. I will not quote these memories extensively, but will limit myself to a brief retelling of the places that are most interesting for our topic. Lunacharsky appeared at the theater's artistic council's discussion of the play and, in violation of the usual routine for such discussions, asked to be allowed to speak first. His main idea was: the play is filled with complex philosophical content, it is very multifaceted, so it is impossible to stage it: the workers and peasants will not understand it. It can only be read.
Mayakovsky was the second to speak: it turns out, he said, that we must impoverish our creative capabilities in order to get closer to the level that is lagging behind today. If I had to be guided by such opportunistic positions, then I would throw down my pen and... go to your assistant, Anatoly Vasilyevich.
Lunacharsky laughed, hugged and kissed Mayakovsky... and the play was staged. This was still possible back then.
Many were then pestered that the workers and peasants would not understand them, that they needed to get closer to working life.
Selvinsky went to work as a welder at an electric lamp plant. He tried his best, wrote the entire Elektrozavodskaya Gazette in verse, from which the essay “How a Light Bulb is Made” was published repeatedly, even in the Ogonyok Library. The poet was praised, although, frankly speaking, all this production was completely indigestible. And still he could not write like Demyan Bedny or A. Bezymensky, his intellectual ears stuck out from under the welder’s cap. All that remains from this entire period is a fragment from I. Ilf’s notebook: “It was at that happy time when the poet Selvinsky, in order to get closer to the industrial proletariat, was engaged in autogenous welding. Aduev was also welding something. They didn't make anything. Good night, as Alexander Blok wrote, making it clear that the conversation is over” (p. 151).
When reproached that he would not succumb to “demification” (at that time there was a slogan “demification of literature”), the poet snapped:
Literature is not a parade
With his alignment meticulous.
I would be glad to dress up
It's sickening to be poor.
He was amazing at making enemies. I think that A.A. Surkov, who later became a major literary functionary, could never forget his epigram:
His curls are like a September landscape,
Profile - at least carved out on statues.
It’s a pity - he can’t write poetry,
And this
For the poet
Flaw.
The writer of these lines saw A.A. Surkov up close. He really had a medal-handsome face. Well, as for the inability to write poetry, this is a bit of an exaggeration.
By the way, about the “poet-orchestra”. Selvinsky himself considered himself a cellist in Russian poetry, indignant at the fact that he was valued lower than the three “harmonists”, to whom he included the already mentioned A. Surkov, M. Isakovsky and, alas, A. Tvardovsky, which, in my opinion, is not does the poet credit. It must be said that he was attacked evilly and unfairly. They were accused of a cynical attitude towards women, quoting old, almost youthful poems:
In her passion is changeable, affection is rare,
And the gestures are seductive and unnecessary.
She's spoiled, but still sweet
Like cherries pecked by a sparrow.
But in fact, most of his love poems are addressed... to his wife, Berta Yakovlevna Selvinskaya, and these poems are pure and touching.
You are still walking, floating on the ground
In a cloud of feminine warmth.
But in a smile that is dearer than the light,
The extra line is missing.
But these wrinkles are also yours
It suits you very well, my dear.
No, don't flatten our love
Even time for the wheel!
These are poems from 1932, “White Arctic Fox”. Unlike almost everything else, I quote them from the later edition, 1972. In principle, I prefer publications from the 20s and 30s. Here the poet improved these lines, they became more humane. “Ulyalaevshchina,” for example, I would never recommend reading in its latest editions. Only in the early days.
The poet addressed his wife in 1960:
You are the dream of my youth,
The legend of my old age...
Selvinsky traveled a lot around the North, participated in the expedition of the famous “Chelyuskin”. His enemies spread rumors that he had escaped from Chelyuskin. In fact, he and a group of Chelyuskinites were sent on reconnaissance when it seemed possible to find a way to the shore through the ice. They couldn't go back. Their situation was hardly better than that of those remaining on the icebreaker. As you know, everyone was saved.
On the eve of the war, the poet has a presentiment:
Let's check our metaphors,
Thunder, lights and banners,
Maybe I'll have to tomorrow
Go on the attack with a song.
I had to. And very soon. The poet collaborates in front-line newspapers. At this time, the theme of love for the Motherland and hatred of fascists became central to his work. A stunning picture is presented by the poem “I saw it” about thousands of people shot by the Nazis. It is large, and I will give only the beginning of it.
You don't have to listen to folk tales,
Don't trust newspaper columns.
But I saw it. With my own eyes.
Do you understand? Saw. Myself.
Here's the road. And over there is a hill.
Between them
like this - a ditch.
From this ditch grief rises.
Grief without shores.
No! There are no words for this...
Here you have to growl! Cry!
Seven thousand shot in a frozen pit,
Rusted like ore.
…
Poems from this period also attract attacks. Selvinsky was very unlike the average image of a poet.
He writes more simply after the war. Talking in the poem “Sevastopol” about how he was once in prison in this city, and in 1944 he found himself there with the Soviet troops that entered there and saw familiar places, the poet exclaims:
And then I realized
That lyrics and homeland are one,
That the homeland is also a book,
Which we write for ourselves
A treasured feather of memories,
Crossing out prose and length
And leaving the sun and love.
After the war, he continued to conduct a seminar at the Literary Institute. Suffice it to say that among his students were S. Narovchatov, D. Samoilov, A. Yashin, R. Gamzatov.
In the last years of his life, he lived in a dacha near Moscow, students came to see him there. During the war, he caught a bad cold, his beautiful voice broke. As he himself said: “The chest resonators have died down. There’s nothing else to read about The Tiger.” The tiger was one of his favorite images, and he was a magnificent reader of his things.
Unfortunately, his poetic resonances also died out somewhat in the post-war years. He died on March 22, 1968, just shy of 69 years old.
Pavel Grigorievich Antokolsky, who loved the poet very much, said heartfelt words about him: “Is it true that Selvinsky did not live to see anything that he dreamed of next to his loved ones. Is our confidence in the destruction of a living soul so firm?
I'm many years old. My life is filled with losses of those closest and most precious. Hand on heart, I admit that I am not sure about the finality of death. True, I’m not sure about the opposite - about immortality...
Standing in my old age at the threshold of this riddle, I dare to shout infinitely to my dear comrade, friend and brother: “Don’t worry, dear. Your work continues. Your animation breathes. Your books live. There is no end in sight to their immortality.”
His line is engraved on the gravestone (Novodevichy Cemetery): “People! Take at least a line as a memory!”
He'll take it, Ilya Lvovich! Definitely.
Literature
1. Aseev N. Letter to the editor // Komsomolskaya Pravda, 1930, No. 289.
2. Ilf I. Notebooks. M.: Sov. writer, 1957.
3. About Selvinsky. Memories. M.: Sov. writer, 1982.
4. Reznik O. Life in poetry (the work of I. Selvinsky). M.: Sov. writer, 1981.
5. Selvinsky Ilya. Selected works. L.: Sov. writer. The Poet's Library, large series, 1972.
6. Selvinsky Ilya. Lyrics. M.: Artist. literature, 1934.
7. Selvinsky Ilya. Selected Poems. M.: Library "Ogonyok", 1930.
8. Selvinsky Ilya. I will talk about poetry: articles, memoirs, “Verse Studio.” M.: Sov. writer, 1982.
Sea Sea! Crimean Sea!
The call of my youth...
And if you really want happiness,
We will go to Crimea!I. Selvinsky, Crimea.
Ilya (Karl) Lvovich Selvinsky (1899-1968) - Russian Soviet writer, poet and playwright, representative of the literary movement of constructivism.
He nevertheless became a writer, despite the significant abilities first for drawing and then for music, which were noticed in him in early childhood...
Unlike his romantic father, his mother, as a woman of practical intelligence, spoke about his talents like this: “If you are going to be an artist (musician), then you must be outstanding, otherwise you will only end up as a tramp (or start singing at weddings). But will he be outstanding? Unknown! After all, all children draw (or sing).” In general, there was no point in risking either the fate of his son or his funds for education (by the way, very meager funds). She saw a son with a normal education and a normal profession (preferably a doctor). Ilya had no choice but to urgently find a “less expensive” creative field, because the need to express himself was brewing and was looking for a way out. And a solution was found, especially since the “tool” was already available - a donated pen with an imprint of the profile of the poet Pushkin, and the age was quite suitable for everything - 11 years. And although there were still some doubts, as the poet himself later said, they were washed away by “the wave that poured into the soul from the Gulf of Kerkinitis.” The blinding blue of the sea, which lay right outside the windows of the gymnasium, left no doubt and had been like this since childhood and passed through his entire life.
Vladimir Mayakovsky later, in 1928, having visited both this city and this gymnasium, told Ilya in surprise: “I could not study in such a school. The sea is coming into all the windows...” And that was precisely what helped him. But you still had to be by the sea...
The fact is that, in general, a quite wealthy and prosperous Selvinsky family, consisting of father, mother and six daughters, lived in Simferopol. There, on October 11, 1899, a boy was finally born - our future poet (which, of course, no one suspected yet). And in 1905, a disaster occurred - my father went bankrupt, suddenly turning from a successful fur industrialist, first into a furrier, and then into a simple worker. For three years we lived literally from hand to mouth, in semi-basement apartments. And only then we went to Yevpatoria (my father was offered a good job). We settled right by the sea. There, nearby, there was a primary 4-year city school, to which Ilya was sent to study. It was in him that the teachers noticed his artistic and musical abilities. And in it was written the first poem, which was later published in the local newspaper “Evpatoria News,” which made it a kind of “landmark of the city.”
Crimean landscape
In 1915, Ilya Selvinsky entered the gymnasium (then, of course, it could not have occurred to him that it would someday bear his name). He studies “excellently”, at the same time he loves to read, is fond of poetry, for which he receives the magnificent nickname Byron. Participates with pleasure in all school concerts, productions and literary evenings. He writes poetry and even plays. With all this, Ilya is not a slender and gentle young man, but a tall, noticeable and strong boy. In the Evpatoria Museum of Local Lore they will show you a photograph taken on March 26, 1916, in which a stately young man with a proudly raised head and a serious, thoughtful look (well, pure Byron) immediately stands out among the high school students - this is Ilya Selvinsky. He was indeed broad in the shoulders and athletically built - he was considered “the first strongman of the united classes.” By the way, in the gymnasium any sports activities were encouraged in every possible way, but “sea sports” were respected most of all. They even had their own small fleet - three gigs and a scow, as well as real naval uniforms for the guys. And Ilya managed to participate in everything: he swam excellently, covering distances of 2-3 kilometers, was a first-class rower, but was especially fond of wrestling - French, American freestyle and jiu-jitsu. Well, it was not for nothing that the local Greeks - all fishermen and sailors - pulled him into their craft. During the summer holidays, he often went with them to buy fish at the Tarkhankut lighthouse and, as expected, received his share. And one summer he even sailed as a cabin boy on the sailing schooner “St. Apostle Paul”.
Ilya Selvinsky is a student at the Yevpatoria gymnasium. 1910s
Everything would have gone on as usual if there had not been a revolution there, far from Crimea, in Petrograd... It reached Evpatoria by 1918, appearing on the roadstead in the form of two cruisers - “Romania” and “Euphrosyne”, which , having fired a couple of volleys, they sent a boat with sailors ashore. They, in turn, entered the office of the Russian Society of Shipping and Trade and announced the establishment of Soviet power in the city. The director of the gymnasium (with some other rich residents of the city) emigrated to Turkey on a battleship. A hospital was set up in the building itself. And at that time, in Yevpatoria there was a small theater called “Grotesque” - a kind of traveling music hall (there was even a Chinese man in it with a small Himalayan bear!). And since there were no classes in the gymnasium yet, Ilya joined the troupe as an actor and went with everyone around Tavrika. But over time, the guy became tired of the role of a guard at an Indian temple in the play “Priestess of Fire,” especially since, according to rumors, the German army occupied Ukraine and was approaching Crimea. Selvinsky decides to look for the front and help “his own people,” even if they are Red Guards. I didn’t have to search for long: at the Novoalekseevka station I found some Evpatoria acquaintances - brother and sister Nemichi, who were in a large united detachment that included Evpatoria, Simferopol, and Yalta residents. With their help, he ended up in the detachment. Knowledge of fighting techniques and the courage shown in the very first fight by a boy in a gymnasium overcoat helped him gain authority. But already in the next battle at Perekop, Ilya received his first wound and concussion. The detachment went to Dzhankoy, and was left in the small town of Armyansk in the care of one of the residents. The Reds were finally driven out of Crimea, and a week later his father came for him, and by the end of the summer Ilya was already back at his desk - in the last, eighth grade.
Ilya Lvovich Selvinsky with his wife Berta Yakovlevna. 1924
Having graduated from high school with excellent marks, in 1919 the young man went to Simferopol to study medicine, as his parents dreamed, (in fact, to attend philologists). However, at the same time, it was also necessary to earn money for education (1 thousand per year) and for food... I had to take on literally everything: I worked as a loader, and as a model, and as a court reporter in a newspaper, and even as a wrestler in a circus under the name Lurich III, son of Lurich I. They paid well for wrestling, but the rector of Taurida University found out about this and posed the question bluntly: either Ilya is a student or a circus performer, because the first is incompatible with the second. And then somehow his participation in the “red detachment” was discovered, for which he was arrested. The detachment itself, as it turned out, was shot somewhere near Kerch... After spending first in Simferopol and then in Sevastopol prison for about a month, Ilya was released. Somehow I got to Yevpatoria, and there my father was completely sick and the family didn’t have a penny of money... Again, I had to work everywhere: on agricultural work in the Moinaksoy German colony, then in the vineyards, at the water pump at the Dulber Hotel. This hotel belonged to the artist of the Art Theater Duvan-Tortsov, whose family was the center of the intelligentsia of that Yevpatoria, and Ilya studied at the same gymnasium with his sons. He would return to this “Dulber” and live there in 1929. with his wife Bertha; and many more events will take place in the same “dulber” in his biographical novel “Oh, my youth!” about his native Evpatoria... In the meantime, having worked in the hotel basement from 7 a.m. to three in the afternoon, the young man quickly changed into his existing suit and “fantasy” tie and rushed to the second floor of “Dulber”, where artists, writers, musicians gathered for five o’clock tea, artists, art critics. In those years, many people came to Crimea, hoping to wait out the “red fever” that happened to the country.
Thus, in the process of creative discussions, the style of the young poet was gradually developed. Despite all the vicissitudes of fate, Selvinsky continued to write, but in fact he had no style and wanted to improve. Impressionism became the school... But then hot days came, the verses had to be postponed, the Red Army entered Crimea and, apparently, for good. Straight from the water pump, Ilya Selvinsky was appointed head of the Tea-Unarobraz section, and then sent to study in Moscow, at a now communist university. “The Sociology of the Arts” was taught by Lunacharsky himself, and he taught so much that he suddenly wanted to become nothing less than a poet of the revolution. All the poetic minds of the capital were then greatly excited (in those 20s, it was still possible to be “excited”). Dozens of literary groups and movements were united by SOPO (Union of Poets) headed by its chairman, Valery Bryusov himself. As Ilya Selvinsky later wrote: “There were many different things in the union, but they were united by the French slogan: “Ghanger tout cela!” (change all this!), because this is how the revolution was understood.” And everything started to turn...
Then the life of the poet Ilya Selvinsky was different. There were many poems, poems, and even plays. Successful and less successful ones. Sometimes they called him a formalist, sometimes they praised him very much. There was also some strange work. For example, in charge of a feather and down factory, as well as a fur instructor in Kyrgyzstan (harvesting - you won’t believe it - “gopher skins”; then, however, they transferred to “large furs”). At the same time, intensive boxing training... But there was also leadership in the group of constructivist poets. In 1923 he graduated from the university and apparently began to engage in literature professionally. Finally, in 1926, the first collection of poems called “Records” was published, which, of course, included the “Crimean Collection” - but what could he do without it, how could he do without his beloved Crimea?! But suddenly he wanted to and went to work as a welder at an electrical plant for two years - isn’t that strange? And then he went to Kamchatka as a “special representative of the Soyuzpushnina”. From the newspaper “Pravda” I was on an Arctic expedition: first with “Chelyuskin”, then with the Chukchi on dogs I went all the way to the Bering Strait. What happened to him during his long life...
No, I didn't live an easy life,
Perhaps because I was brave,
But I didn’t know how to be unhappy
And that’s why I was happy...
Ilya Selvinsky arrived in Yevpatoria in August 1941, two months before the occupation of the city by the Nazis, being a correspondent for the newspaper “Son of the Fatherland” of the 51st Separate Army. And then, already as a lieutenant colonel, in December 1943. takes part in the liberation of his native Crimea (in the Kerch landing).
