Yuz Aleshkovsky died on March 21. The talented prose writer, poet, widely known for the song about the leader “Comrade Stalin, you are a great scientist”, was a very versatile author. My generation remembers his ironic poems, collections of short stories for youth “Shoo”, “Shoo and I in the Crimea” and the adventurous story “Kangaroo”, which was recommended for mandatory reading by the English-speaking public by Joseph Brodsky. Few writers can boast of something like this, but Brodsky even interviewed Aleshkovsky – an exceptional case, usually the Nobel laureate gave them, and did not take them …
Laureate of the Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Tepfer Hamburg Foundation “in aggregate”, as well as the “Russian Prize” for “A Little Prison Novel”, Aleshkovsky managed to work at a construction site and in the virgin lands, serve in the Navy and even get a prison term for stealing the car of the Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He considered himself a happy man. “I was a merry fellow, a slacker, a lazybones, a gambler, a swindler, a bully, a scoundrel, a smoker, a street child, a cyclist, a football player, a glutton,” he wrote in his “unbureaucratized” autobiography.
It seems to me that he was a real epicurean – he loved life in all its manifestations, he did not get lost even in the brightest company, his speeches made an impression even against the background of the most venerable writers.
In 1979, there was a scandal with the uncensored almanac Metropol, in which Aleshkovsky published his camp poems. Andrey Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Evgeny Rein published in it – after the scandal, many had to leave the Writers’ Union, and some even emigrated. Including about Yuzu.
We met back in 2000, at the congress of the international PEN club in Moscow. Then, for the first time after leaving for emigration, he ended up in Moscow and rejoiced at her like a child.
The PEN meeting was a huge event. Günter Grass, Andrey Sinyavsky, Maria Rozanova, Vasily Aksenov arrived in Russia, they were waiting for Marquez – he could not be there only because of illness.
And I remember we were standing in the foyer of the hotel – huge round tables, noise everywhere, cheerful fuss, always some kind of events. We were introduced by Andrey Bitov, the president of the Russian branch of the PEN club, was very friendly with Aleshkovsky, accompanied him to emigration – there is even a photograph where they stand together and Yuz holds a bottle of Russian vodka. Of course, the epicurean Aleshkovsky wanted to immediately acquire a “native drink”. In the evening, a banquet was planned, which was arranged by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, but why wait?
In those years, it was not very good with alcohol, so we got the trophy with adventures – from speculators at the Kiev railway station. It came in handy after the official ceremony, when we met people from the Far East and writers from Krasnoyarsk. Aleshkovsky was also a native of these places, he was proud that he was a Siberian like Astafiev, Solntsev. Cheerful, groovy, he was an ideal participant in the international kipish …
After this congress, we corresponded by e-mail for a long time, he asked me to send him all the latest poetry collections, read carefully, and always noted what he liked. The highest praise was: “What a pity that I can not show this to Joseph Brodsky.”
And I, in turn, happened to write a preface to his selection in Literaturnaya Gazeta – romance, it was somewhat different from what was known to the Russian public, and in the 2000s Aleshkovsky came out in armor-piercing editions – such thick books on newsprint. From this selection, he singled out the poem “Farewell Romance”, stylized as a Zhigan song:
“She was tormented, and I was freed,
I’m sitting in the gymnasium with a loose scythe,
I cry like a child from the bitter graces of God,
I wander barefoot through the puddles of mournful days …
The author is a Russian poet and essayist
The position of the editors may not coincide with the opinion of the author
#Perfect #Epicurean