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the Author of twenty books, including beautiful works of Mikhail Prishvin, Viktor Astafiev, Valentin Rasputin, artist Yuri Seliverstov, the Creator of the Pushkin Museum-reserve in St Michael Semyon Geychenko… But he has another talent that I always admired. He’s an amazing conversationalist! He knows how to talk about important things with inimitable humor and irony, but never underestimating high. And yet, like Chukovsky, for many years he collects “Podorozhnik” – a collection of autographs of people of art and literature.

this and other things, we talked… or Rather he talked and I listened, getting an ideal…

Valentin, congrats on the well deserved award! We have known each other for a long time, and the place that introduced us, Clear meadow, where we meet every year on the birthday of Tolstoy. And you are constantly Pushkin in St. Michael. What you mean these places?

Valentin Kurbatov: Ask the first person: a poet? It automatically answer: Pushkin. However, if you ask the writer? Automatically – Colon.

Poetry of his youth, and prose – the reliance of adults and elderly. Pushkin was awarded to me immediately, along with Pskov, the great magician, guardian, and family – Semyon Stepanovich Geychenko, who taught everyone to be a contemporary of Pushkin, his contemporary in the results apicalnam in grief, able to feel alive Pushkin gene in your spiritual composition. Already and very hard to believe that I was a member of fifty of the Pushkin celebration of poetry (and not just once as the lead in a Clearing in the scientific and cultural center and the Pskov theatre), so if you stuff me with straw and put in center of Pushkin glade – it will be a good installation, and if to the delight of children to sew on the belly button so they could click it, I could still speak the voices of Irakli Andronikov or Mikhail Dudin of kaisyn Kuliev, or Karlo Kaladze, Rygor Borodulin, or mikoly Bazhana because then we were still one people.

And Clear was the fate, when the Union fell apart, went to share writers ‘ unions, and Leo invited us to shame and remind the collective role of the Russian word. And now, when you look accumulated during the quarter century of “the collections”, I hear again the still living voice of Dmitry Balashova and Vladimir makanina, Valentin Rasputin and Leonid Borodin, Lev Anninsky and Hrant Matevosyan, which are naturally and vividly side by side with those who now gather every fall in the Clear, as birds to their nests.

It is a good laboratory and the school of responsibility and love. They must, Michael and Clear, was the government, which has awarded us with you, Pavel V., its highest award, so TepePb just hold on and appropriate.

Question that I personally deeply interested. How to become critics? You were born in the Kuibyshev region in the family travel business. In his youth he changed several professions: carpenter, loader, typographical compositor. He served in the Navy. What brought you to literature? The parents, the school? The first book?

Valentin Kurbatov: Because it was probably the first owner and something I started as a reader, just finished reading to literary criticism? And remember! Learned to read earlier in the Psalms is the only book the dispossessed grandfather, in the dugout, where we lived with mother and brother until 1946. So at school then at first became puzzled in front of the primer without the “jers” and “yati”. Well, then read in the school in the village and already in the Urals in Chusovoy, where in 1947 he moved to the father. Here first book, how the book as “read,” I remembered now by accident. It was called “how Far is it to Sagadi”. Perhaps it was in the fifth grade, and even sixth, when I ventured to enroll in a public library. I only remember the cover where the dirt road was a girl with some object under the mouse. I suppose it is because girls and took. Neither the content nor the author can’t remember. Only the feeling of light and happiness from reading. Now that looked in the Internet and immediately saw the cover and learned of the author is Antonina Perfil. Read the first page and immediately remembered the feeling of happiness.

Then there was Gaidar “PBC” and “Blue Cup” and “Chuk and GEK” – the same clear and from your. And again this was not thought, but simply lived in one heart. How’s Tanya Larina “the time has Come – she’s in love.” Here and there all the books like me and was waiting. Care heart Gorky’s “Malva”, and happily terrified Turgenev’s “Clara milich”.

two years before you moved to the village Chusovoy, there after demobilization from the front came Victor Petrovich Astafiev. Subsequently you will connect with him a strong friendship. But then you were still a schoolboy. Did you know that in Chusovoy lives a writer?

Valentin Kurbatov: Officially the writer in Chusovoy was one Ivan Reutov. I knew that “newspaper Chusovskoy Rabochiy”, where no-no and published his stories and was a “writer” that I forced you to read respectful, although I read he can’t remember. And the “writer” is not seen, and to check the “impression” could not.

But one day at school we gathered for a meeting with Viktor Astafiev. Only to laugh. That’s how he wrote about our “meeting” Victor Petrovich, when I was sixty. “He was a high school students CHusovskogo school No. 9, when I began to go “the writers” (smile in parenthesis, then he always put the accent ironically “the writers”. – V.). Once I addressed this ninth school. The table on the stage,��covered with red cloth-cloth, the flowers in the vase, the pioneers salute, welcoming the writer, the praise, and I like it very much to heart, like to wear such a rare title… But what? Among reverent silence and timid trust respect laughter in the back row, the whispers, grimacing, wiggling and other pain. It’s high school students demonstrate a neglect of and contempt for the local Creator, who really like, but they know that their homeland, the more grimy, smoke and soot-covered town, no prophet and never will be. Among these militant because of their capabilities detractors, I learned, subsequently, present, and future critic Kurbatov”.

However, learned about it, more of my first book about it, where I said: “the Writer we know he lived behind the school on Bush street and fished with us on the Usva. On the podium this thin man was the same as on the river. The writers we have had a different view. “Off” was impossible, the exits were blocked by teachers – we sat back and calmly prosoverall this extra “lesson” without hearing from the speech of a word.”

Here is the first “Dating”.

Tell about his service in the Navy. Today, many young people consider serving in the army waste time and try to avoid.

Valentin Kurbatov: How to say fleet Eulogy! For four years the Navy has taught me the profession of a radio telegraphist, typesetter naval printing house, and in half last year and the ship’s librarian, and so here I esteem, and al! First of all, it’s hot then discuss the existentialists, kamyshovskoe “Plague” and shatrovsky “Nausea”. But they haven’t been published we have had to learn Polish and buy these books in Murmansk, where there was a shop with a “strange” books, because the port was international. “Nausea” has taught me in imitation of the hero to write a diary. And kamyshevskiy “the Myth of Sisyphus” and all armed – have the courage to roll the stone up, knowing that he would immediately roll down from the top and have to start over and without despair, because this is life. As after that not to serve?

the Existentialists were talking about Marcel Proust, about his “lost time” as the predecessor. And – wonder of wonders! In “my” library, probably due to the prefaces Lunacharsky, was two books – “towards the Swan” and “Under the shadow of young girls in flower”. Forgive my Northern fleet – I when demobilization took them with him. Now, to remove them “on the card”, but in the everyday wanderings I long lost first favorite books.

What made you go from Chusovoy and how did you get in Pskov?

Valentin Kurbatov: Really, and what in Chusovoy not sit still? Of course if all flying was done. Now turn around and again see hthey are the same, they – books – were driven. Won’t stay home after “Two captains” by Veniamin Kaverin. Yes, and nothing that you read in the magazine “Youth” “the continuation of the legend” by Anatoly Kuznetsov, where Komsomol construction and had to be “Terry petty bourgeois” in order not to go where “in a cheerful roar, the lights and the bells… the dream of the beautiful, yet obscure” was called forward. The ambiguity of dreams will have an impact on the author, who is a few years away in London and undermine the enthusiasm of the reader. But until then…

Yes, and published a “Star ticket” to the same: who are you? why we live, “time to be born and for you have all decided… To hell! Better to be a hobo and fail, than a lifetime to be a boy, performing the wrong decisions.”

I Think the time then was, as we all have, pain in the same place – not to sit. Here and pulled to the friends on the fleet to Peter, one of whom the young wife worked at the St. Petersburg youth Theatre and played aksenovskaya “Colleagues”. In The “Colleagues”! (Peers will understand the exclamation point.) But the friends for the four years of service had its own broken life, which had to be linked anew without my problems.

And then I remembered the boy who enrolled in “my” library before my demobilization. The boy told about his grandmother who was left alone (the fate of the parents do not remember), and he’s afraid she’s alone, and “if only…”. I remembered this “if”, and grandma met me at the Pskov station. Settled on her Zapskovye in the neighborhood with Gremyacha tower. In the early days looked sculpted from clay by Beethoven, imitating the Louvre, in order to decorate the empty room, reading taken from the Navy Proust and longingly thought of where to look for work. And three days later was a proofreader of the local newspaper “Lenin’s Iskra” with a salary of 50 rubles per month, of which 25 had to give to grandma. And I was dandy – “Bologna” had to buy in accordance with the century, nylon shirt and Smoking a pipe, as the heroes of ham. Had to temper their intellectual claims and proof-reading to go to the movers for hosiery factory already for 75 rubles. And grandma had to leave. It every night the same words were told that 1922году, studying in the gymnasium, I saw Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich “get me”, to use the slang of the guys from “Star ticket”. I went to wander in a rented apartment in the evenings walking with head of planning Department of the factory. Read to her with the skill of failed in Pike artist Pushkin: “In those days when the gardens of the Lyceum, I quietly blossomed, read willingly Apuleius, and Cicero did not read…”, emphasizing the ironic tone that I, too, prefer dirty pathetic Apuleius to Cicero.

Remembering the failed Pike, was moved to the Pskov theatre and began writing reviews, subscribing, when SPEchakli was “young” (and they in the 60s were all “young”), “Komsomolets Kurbatov” – we did not zabaluesh! And here’s the miracle – they were printed. How – “the voice of the people”! And then the brave editor of the “Young Leninist”, knowing that I still Polish mereka (and he loved this language and read it), took and took me to this “Leninist”. Without education in the Department of propaganda!

do You remember the thaw? What you mean this time?

Valentin Kurbatov: What was the “thaw” for me when I cringed, seeing the “Truth” these words “cult”. Not, I suppose, and somebody’s adult conversations. Television was not (I first saw it in the Navy), radio quiet (then I find out that the report-that Khrushchev and was printed only in 1989). On the day of Stalin’s death I returned from school (lessons canceled) and buried in old coats and rainwear on a hanger in the hallway, crying in horror, because from under the door cold on the legs flowed mournful music.

Then slowly things began to heal, and has stuck in the memory of limericks “Beria, Beria left the trust, and comrade Malenkov slapped him and kicks”. But like as they lived, and lived (teenagers another chronology). Worrying was just because it was, as we have heard, Amnesty and apparently the first they released from prison criminals (political else understands!), and you would just hear in the queues – there are killed, there got robbed. Well, Yes, and the region-is native of the Urals, in the Yes camp prisons, and then they somehow natural.

Perhaps the thaw was for the thaw by Ilya Ehrenburg, put the word into circulation, and for those who know “chill” time. And in my small environment a single word about “enemies of the people” and “black funnels”. Lived as they lived. Climbing with the guys on the roof of a House of young professionals on Lenin (very conveniently) to look out for the first satellite (radio informed at what hour on what area of the country he will fly), of course, it seemed that he saw: “Look! Out!”. Happy Gagarin’s flight. I was a typesetter for cruising the printing and put the letter in the letter (was manual) some message about the new successes of our ship, when the radio voice Levitan has informed that the space the first Soviet people. A stick she flew out of his hands, the letters splattered in all directions. I rushed to the upper deck. There is already confusion rushed the other guys, not knowing what to do with enthusiasm: the ship was sailing to a New Land, and there were one sea, though escraches!

A read – read bondarevskiy “Silence”, not knowing that she is “thaw”, published “Oranges from Morocco” Solzhenitsyn “One day…” different as “the thaw.” It was only later we learned that we lived under tyranny, with his mouth and with “the heirs of Stalin”, which did not want to settle down. And I bravely read these “Heirs” with naval scene, salonasthe cutting from “Truth”.

With these “heirs” only smile. Comrade Malenkov because “slapped kicks” is not one of Beria, but after the twentieth Congress you would just hear that Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov going to “reset Khrushchev”. And “joined them Shepilov”, then it will call in all party documents, even flashed imagery (not in vain because before the war he graduated the Institute of red professors), saying that Khrushchev “put on the boots of Stalin and began they “stomp”. Anyone remember Nikita Sergeyevich, you know that “stomp” he really knew how. Soon a group called the “anti-party” and dispersed. It will take many years. Someday I will lead the evening Victor Petrovich Astafieva in Leninka. And at the end will approach to me thoroughbred person, ask to meet Astafyev and introduce yourself: “Dmitry Kuznetsov”. And I respond: “Valentin”. He continues: “Shepilov”. I would add: “Kurbatov”. Seeing my folly, it will decode: “Joined them”. Both will smile and I will take him to acquaint with Viktor. I wrote about this in his book “the Plantain” and then repeat that when I handed him the already opened then the book of autographs and he was given a clean page, he smiled and said, “No, really, I’m in your genre,” and signed right under the autograph of Victor Petrovich. “Joined”.

the Most notorious poet of the “thaw” was Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I happened to meet him only shortly before his death. Two things in it I was struck by his unusual manner of dress and the incredible love of poetry. Not only her, but also to other people’s poems that he knew by heart “kilometers”. What was he like in his youth?

Valentin Kurbatov: Yevgeny Aleksandrovich, we met one day, poetess Tatyana Mikhaylovna glushkovo that I looked into every visit. Tanya then got a bit embarrassed, “Sorry, now would be a phenomenon. Don’t be surprised!” And really soon appeared in dazzling imported jacket (though he never wore). Knowing that I’m from Pskov, immediately said Hello Vsevolod Petrovich Smirnov, our great blacksmith and restorer, to which he came with a Squirrel (Bella Akhmadulina). And then he invited me to share them with Tanya for lunch. I shamelessly agreed. In the yard absently looked around: “what, I mean, I’m here?” We found his black “Volga”, he casually slipped his foot under the gas pedal on the floor scattered gold coins and the quarter (“made a Mess here…”), and we started.

On the way, he turned in “Romeo” (who knows – will understand!). Bought some smoked eel and a coke (so when I tried this the “bourgeois” drink – in the fall of 1974!). “Aragvi” he skipped ahead of Tanya. Behind me. Experienced doorman yet seeing Eugene A. immediately kicked me out. – such persons “Aragvi” has not been worn. Evgeny picked up the m��nya, and we walked in together. The same doorman gently removed my robe and smiled in apology.

was the Maitre d’: “Evgeny, you and your friends will be comfortable in our small room.” – “I have to admit, it was nicer here, with my readers,” – said E. A., casting a look of great hall: do they ask? It was evident – recognize.

And I could not see enough and hear enough: “When the year at 64th in the New world” published collections of the Anna Akhmatova after a long break, I called her: “Anna Andreyevna, what a blessing and what a lesson of our poetry!” She abruptly cut me off: “How do you among timpani and drum of your glory razluchili the voice of a madwoman. Fullness! Don’t bother!” And hung up. As the old woman hated me!”

And after a few SIPS reads the “Station Winter”, and reading! “Yevgeny Alexandrovich,” I say, “don’t get up, the sound flies above your head”. – “And you turn around”. He was sitting face to the small room, and Tanya and back. I turned around. The hall was already full. And then, he had read it to them.