The world famous lyric poetess of the Soviet era with an extraordinary destiny, a sensitive soul and an unwaveringly honest civic position. Her poems are special, with some elusive scent of mystery, sadness and depth that can only be felt without realizing 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 who wanted to see 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 in her, withdrawal into herself, into her inner world? What are the main facts of Bella Akhmadulina's life? What did she get 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 is a Russian poetess, writer, translator, one of the largest Russian lyric poetesses 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 poet 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 according to the then fashion of Spanish predilections. 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 busyness of her parents. Grandmother taught her granddaughter to read, they read both fairy tales and Russian classics together. This love for literature Akhmadulina carried through her whole life, she 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 burdened her, it was much more pleasant for her to be alone with herself and with books. Therefore, being extremely well-read, in literature she felt like a fish in water and devoted all her time to her beloved literature. The same cannot be said about the rest of the subjects, which were often strolled 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. The talented girl was in the Literary Association, in a literary circle at the plant named after. 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 wishes of the parents in the journalistic field, but fate did not allow Bella to engage in 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 uncompromising nature was also manifested in her life principles, which do not tolerate a deal with conscience. At that time, a flurry of accusations of treason fell upon Boris Pasternak, including the demand for expulsion from the country. The reason was the awarded Nobel Prize in Literature. Among the university students, signatures were collected under such an accusatory letter, which Bella did not agree to sign, for which she was expelled. It was later restored, thanks to the help of the newspaper editor, for whom the young girl worked at the time.

In 1962, the first book of poetry "The String" was published, which was a huge success, despite criticism for its intimacy and bombast, not characteristic of Soviet writers.

The second collection of poetry was published in 1969 and was called "Chills". And then followed by "Music Lessons", "Snowstorm", "Poems", "Candle" ... The poet was a tireless worker, surrendering to creativity completely, she created in any condition and in any place.

Bella Akhmadulina's civil position

Bella Akhatovna did not stand aside from the events taking place in the country and its politics. She was painfully wounded by an injustice, to restore 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 the fact that he received the Nobel Prize, which was regarded as a betrayal of the Motherland, and the Soviet government incited the public against him. Bella was even expelled from the institute on 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 refused 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. Severe criticism and persecution followed immediately to the participants in the uncensored almanac.

“Letter of Forty-Two” is the name of the collective appeal to the president demanding the ban of parties in 1993, including Bella Akhmadulina who signed it. And in 2001, the poetess defended NTV.

Bella Akhmadulina - creativity

At Akhmadulina's concerts, people poured down the shaft, gathering large halls. She had a special artistic style, which gave a certain old-fashionedness, archaism, similarity to the pathos of the last century, but at the same time very rich in metaphors and bizarre images. The ordinariness of the sound contrasted with pomp and sensuality.

But what is most important - each poem was born in the heart of the poetess, it carried vitality and sincerity, conveyed feelings and found a lively response in the hearts of listeners and readers. Connoisseurs of her gift believed that the syllable of the golden age of Russian literature was inherent in Akhmadulina.

The magic, strong voice of the poetess, when she read her poems, vibrated with such a taut string that it did not leave anyone indifferent and made a person empathize, awakened his soul, conscience, excited his feelings. Like a tuning fork, it tuned in to reflections on life, raised to high truths.

Throughout her life, Bella Akhatovna carried love and reverence to her teachers, who influenced her whole 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, she was translated into all languages ​​of Europe, and this authority protected her from repression in many situations. But nevertheless, 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 harsh criticism and censorship.

Publishers refused to print it, and public speaking was banned. And this continued until the beginning 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, with many she was personally acquainted and even made friends.

Akhmatova translated the poems of many foreign poets, in 1984 she was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples.

Bella Akhmadulina's stay in Georgia is also associated with this period, which made an indelible impression on Akhmadulina, especially Tarusa, which became the poet's favorite place, her muse. The collection "Dreams of Georgia" and many translations of poems by prominent Georgian poets were born here.

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, which received a prize at the 1964 Venice International Film Festival. 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 hallmark of famous paintings: the romance "On my street ..." in "The Irony of Fate" by Eldar Ryazanov. In "Office Romance" the inner state of the heroine is conveyed by the poem "Oh, my shy hero." In "Cruel Romance" by Nikita Mikhalkov, the romance "And in the end I'll tell you" 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 fans, and there were novels and meetings.

During her life, the poetess had four marriages, which broke up 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 them with flowers. But it was not so much love for a woman as for a great and talented poetess. And she had her own principles, her own opinions on various issues, her own standards of good and evil, her own human and feminine characteristics, which cannot be ignored. Instead of unconditional love, they tried to correct her, educate and remake her, which could not but leave an imprint on Bella's subtle nature.

Bella Akhmadulina's husbands

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 tightly attracted to each other and made friends, but their romance did not start right away. The husband did not look for her soul, dedicated poetry and declared his love - the couple 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.

Bella Akhmadulina's second husband 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 for him was neither the first nor the last, Bella became his fifth wife. Having been married for 9 years, Nagibin parted with Akhmadulina on his own initiative. We will not delve into gossip about this, without having a reliable interpretation, but the fact is that she did not want to break off relations. 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 her the surname and patronymic of her now ex-spouse.

The next, third husband of Akhmadulina is Eldar Kuliev, 17 years younger than her. Where he came from in her environment, what attracted them to each other, is unknown, but between them first a friendly relationship arose, and then they grew into a romance, the result of which was the birth of their daughter Lisa. Actually, this marriage saved Akhmadulina from deep depression after the 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, set 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, relieved her of the burdensome life of her, taking a housekeeper. He understood her gentle poetic nature and warned her desires and difficulties. Yes, they truly loved each other and were happy. From this great love, after the death of his wife, Messerer created a monument in honor of his wife and the greatest poetess, erecting it in Tarusa in 2013.

Children of Akhmadulina

In the first and second marriages, the poetess had no children. But after a divorce from her second husband, Bella adopted a girl named Anna from an orphanage, giving her his last name and patronymic.

In her third marriage in 1973, Bella Akhmadulina gave birth to her only natural daughter, Elizaveta Kulieva.

When the poet married for the fourth time, both daughters were raised by Bella's parents. Despite rare meetings with their mother, love, warmth and understanding of each other were preserved in their relationship.

Elizabeth followed in her mother's footsteps and became a writer too. After the death of her mother, she published the book “Bella. Meet the afterbirth ”, which reflected 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, as she lived herself.

According to her daughter, Bella loved life very much, in all its manifestations, and gave herself up to this life to the end. This love and joy of life was the essence of Bella, and only the audience created her tragic image. And Liza loves this childish, enthusiastic joy from life most of all in her mother.

Death

The greatest poet passed away on November 29, 2010 after a serious illness in Peredelkino, Moscow region, where she and her husband had lived in recent years.

By this time, she was almost blind, which was the main suffering of her creative toiler-soul, since she could not write. According to Elizabeth's daughter, this became the main cause of death, in fact, Bella herself launched a program of self-destruction, since she could not endure 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.

Bella Akhmadulina is a Soviet poet, translator, and writer, her work became one of the brightest pages of the poetic boom of the 60s. She always called herself only a poet and found inspiration in simple things.

Childhood and youth

Izabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina was born in April 1937 in Moscow in an intelligent and wealthy family. Her father served as deputy minister, her mother was a major in the KGB and worked as a translator.

Together with them, Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina began to appear at creative evenings, where she read her works in a heartfelt manner, in a manner peculiar only to her. Her light, airy poems were a success. Although there were many critics. Akhmadulina was reproached for being intimate, old-fashioned and pompous.

The second collection of poetry "Chills" was published in Frankfurt in 1968. A year later, another book of lyrics appeared, called "Music Lessons". Bella Akhmadulina did a lot and with passion. Her compositions, read in one breath, have been hard-won. Collections "Snowstorm", "Poems", "Candle" followed one after another.

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Poetess Bella Akhmadulina

Bella Akhmadulina visited Georgia in the 1970s. This country and its culture made a huge impression on the poet. However, like Akhmadulina to Georgia. The result of this mutual love is the collection of poetry "Dreams of Georgia". Bella Akhatovna translated into Russian the poems of Galaktion Tabidze, Nikolai Baratashvili, Simon Chikovani and others. And the magazine Literaturnaya Gruziya published Akhmadulina's works even at a time when ideological prohibitions existed on them in Russia.

Akhmadulina is the author of many essays on outstanding creative personalities. She wrote works about Vladimir Nabokov and other talented people, with many of whom she was personally acquainted.

Bella Akhmadulina's literary evening

In 1979 Bella Akhmadulina became one of the founders of Metropol, an uncensored almanac. She often openly supported Soviet dissidents, among whom were Lev Kopelev, and many others. The poetess's statements in their defense were published by the New York Times. They were read on Voice of America and Radio Liberty.

In 1993, Akhmadulina put her signature under the "Letter of Forty-Two", the authors of which demanded that the president ban "all kinds of communist and nationalist parties." In 2001, Bella Akhatovna signed a letter in defense of the NTV channel.

Films

Bella Akhmadulina starred in only two films - "Such a guy lives" and "Sports, sports, sports". The first picture, written and directed by him, was released in 1959, when Bella was 22 years old. Akhmadulina played a journalist who writes about a simple guy who committed a heroic deed.

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Leonid Kuravlev and Bella Akhmadulina in the film "Such a guy lives"

The tape was awarded the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival. Bella Akhmadulina read her poems about sports and athletes in the film "Sport, Sport, Sport" by Elema Klimova.

But if Akhmadulina in the role of an actress can be seen only twice, then her poems and songs in the tapes appear often, bringing extraordinary charm and an amazing romantic aura. The films that have become cult are an example. In "" there is a song to the verses of Bella Akhatovna "On my street which year ...", performed. Later, a number of songs to the words of Akhmadulina were added to the repertoire of the Prima Donna of the Russian stage.

Bella Akhmadulina - "Oh, my shy hero." Read by Svetlana Nemolyaeva

In "Cruel Romance" the heroine sings "And finally, I'll tell you." The verse "Oh, my shy hero", read in "", is also a work by Akhmadulina from the collection "Chills". Bella Akhmadulina's recitation style is unforgettable and original. , who voiced Piglet in the cartoon about, took "Akhmaduli intonations", for which the poetess jokingly thanked her for the "planted pig."

Often, the poet's unusual name inspired her colleagues to humorous epigrams. The writers preferred to combine Bella Akhmadulina and. Both poets refused commemorative orders in honor of the anniversary of the Writers' Union, so the epigram soon spread in the poetic environment:

"Only Bella and Bulat refused the awards."

Personal life

Akhmadulina got married in her early youth, as soon as she was 18 years old. Her first husband was Yevgeny Yevtushenko. They lived together for 3 years. The divorce took place after the pregnancy was interrupted at the request of the spouse. Later, Eugene reproached himself for a rash proposal, which was the beginning of the end of his relationship with his wife.

Bella Akhmadulina is a Russian poet, writer and translator, one of the greatest lyric poetesses of the 20th century. Her poems have become a kind of anthem of the Soviet era, the difficult life during this period, and some kind of loneliness pinching the soul.

Even those who have never picked up collections of her poems have heard Akhmadullina's rhymes, because they are imbued with the best Soviet films. For example, the poem "On my street, which year .." became a romance performed by Alla Pugacheva in all the known, and one of the most beloved films of the Soviet era "Irony of fate or enjoy yourself!"

Height, weight, age. How old is Bella Akhmadulina

She began writing her first poems back in 1955, but even then her naive and touching lines attracted the attention of the public and other, more eminent authors. At that time, they did not know anything about the young poetess, but today she is famous in all countries of the former USSR, so you can find out everything about the writer, even such trifles as height, weight, age. How old Bella Akhmadulina was at the time of her death is also not a universal secret.

The poet died in 2010 at the age of 73, leaving behind an invaluable contribution to an entire era.

Biography of Bella Akhmadulina

Bella Akhmadulina's biography dates back to 1937 in Moscow. The girl began to write her first timid poems, filled with youthful experiences, quite early, and already at the age of 15, as literary experts say today, she found her own style. Bella was a member of the Literary Association and after school really wanted to enter the faculty of the Literary Institute. The girl's parents dreamed that she would enter the journalism faculty, but Akhmadullina failed the exams, after which she went to work for the Metrostroevets newspaper, having entered the institute only the next year. That time knows many tragedies, Bella saw them too. As a university student, she refused to sign the letter of accusation of Boris Pasternak, after which she was expelled. Of course, the official reason is not her passing the exam. But Akhmadullina graduated from the institute, later she was restored.

In 1962, she released her first compilation, and then another, and another. In total, the poetess published 8 collections of poems in Soviet times, and Akhmadullina herself more than once spoke out in support of writers who were unreasonably accused of anti-Sovietism. In 1993, she signed the Forty-Two Letter.

Bella Akhmadulina died on November 29, 2010. The grave, the photo of which is on the poetess's Wikipedia page, is located at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Bella Akhmadulina's personal life

Bella Akhmadulina's personal life, like her poems and rhymes, is full of tragedies.

The poetess was officially married four times, and between these clichés there were other men in her life. She was loved, admired, she was literally carried in her arms, but as in the lives of other great and famous women, Bella always confronted the fact that each of her husbands lived with a poetess, and not with a woman. It just so happened that every love of Akhmadullina broke her heart, and being the wife of public people and writers, who, it would seem, should understand the essence of her life and existence like no one else, were not ready for Bella's opinion and vision. Everyone tried to remake her, but you just had to love.

Bella Akhmadulina's family

The writer was born in a difficult time, her entire childhood is closely connected with the war. Her father, Akhat Valeevich, was a party and Komsomol worker, and when the girl was only two years old, he was drafted to war, where he served as a major in the guard.

The poet's mother, Nadezhda Makarovna, was a translator in the state security agencies, as well as the niece of the revolutionary Alexander Stopani. During the war, Bella and her maternal grandmother were evacuated to Kazan, and returned home only after the end of the war. Bella Akhmadulina's family saw that the girl was going through the consequences and sorrows of the war, she was more comfortable alone, and she devotes all her free time to writing poetry, but at that time they could not even suspect that soon everyone, young and old, would know her name. ...

Children of Bella Akhmadulina

They say that creative people are not at all adapted to everyday life, and even more so to raising children. This has already been said more than once by those who themselves are a creative person, and those who were brought up in a family of people of art.

The poetess has one own daughter, Elizabeth, who was born in the third marriage of the writer. But before that, Akhmadullina took up a girl from an orphanage, Anna, who, in other respects, did not become a native of the poetess. The children of Bella Akhmadulina, after she got married for the fourth time, remained to live with the mother and father of the poetess, and were brought up by them to the end.

Bella Akhmadulina's daughter - Elizaveta Kulieva

Bella Akhmadulina's daughter, Elizaveta Kuliyeva, is the only daughter of the great poetess, she was born in 1973. The girl lived with her mother for some time, and then was brought up by her grandmother. Despite the fact that the daughter of the poetess was left to herself for most of her childhood, the woman has no grudge against her mother, she always understood her subtle mental organization and once said that her mother “was an elf”.

Last year, the daughter of the famous writer presented a book about her mother “Bella. Meetings of the afterbirth ”in the presidential center of Boris Yeltsin. The woman told the main milestones in Akhmadulina's life.

Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Evgeny Yevtushenko

Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Yevgeny Yevtushenko became her first love. She was 25 years old, and the two poets were attracted to each other, as if opposite poles of magnets. Yevtushenko was the first to appreciate her poetry ten years ago, and their romance began much later. They met at the institute and then their relationship was only friendly, until Eugene timidly confessed his love to the girl.

They lived in perfect harmony, the husband literally looked into his wife's mouth, writing down his words about love in poetry. Soon Bella became pregnant, but despite the love, Yevtushenko was not ready for this. He forced his wife to have an abortion, which was the beginning of the end of their marriage.

Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Yuri Nagibin

Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Yuri Nagibin Russian journalist, writer, screenwriter. Immediately after the divorce, the poetess met her second husband, with whom she went down the aisle in 1959. He was a famous ladies' man, and women fell right at his feet. Bella became the fifth wife of a prose writer, but not the last.

They had been married for 9 years, and then, as Nagibin's next wife later said, Yuri found his wife in bed with a woman. Whether the sexual experiments of the poetess were true or a blatant lie of the new wife of a genius, no one will know, only the fact remains: Akhmadulina did not want to leave her husband, it was he who filed for divorce, after 9 years of marriage. After that, Bella took up a girl, Anna, from an orphanage, who later lived with her mother.

Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Eldar Kuliev

Former husband of Bella Akhmadulina - Eldar Kuliev became her salvation after the second divorce. At that time, Bella was very disappointed in the institution of marriage, regretted that she had an abortion from Yevtushenko and was in the wildest depression. Where did this young man come from, 17 years younger than the poetess, no one from Akhmadulina's entourage knew, but they became friends and for some time simply maintained friendly relations, and soon Bella became pregnant, so their romance was revealed.

Evil tongues say that Bella and Eldar often got drunk, and even the birth of a daughter did not affect her lifestyle, which is why the girl was sent to her grandmother. The relationship of this couple ended immediately after the birth of their daughter, and a year later Bella was married for the fourth time.

Bella Akhmadulina's husband - Boris Messerer

Bella Akhmadulina's husband, Boris Messerer, became her last man with whom the poetess lived until her death. She probably really loved him, since she had been married for so many years, although the witnesses of their life say that Boris was always a more loving and caring husband than Akhmadulina's wife. But next to him she was a hospitable hostess, although a housekeeper had already appeared in the house at that time, so her husband protected the poetess from her unnecessary life.

The love of her husband Akhmadulina manifested itself after her death. The man created a monument to his wife and the great poetess, which was installed in Tarusa in 2013.

Bella Akhmadulina best love poems read online

During her life, the poetess wrote many touching poems, which can still be heard today in various Soviet films. "Office Romance", "Irony of Fate", "Cruel Romance" ... this is not a complete list of everyone's favorite films, which contain lines from Akhmadulina's poems set to music.

Repeatedly the poetess wrote poetry to her lovers, for example, Yevtushenko. And although there are completely different themes in the poet's collections of poems, from loneliness to country, many believe that the best of the works that Bella Akhmadulina wrote are poems about love. The best ones can be read online right on the Internet, where today you can find many works of the deceased poetess.

Instagram and Wikipedia Bella Akhmadulina

The poet was repeatedly criticized by the Soviet government for her bold poems and rhymes, but the poet did not quit writing.

"RG" publishes an excerpt from a new book about Bella Akhmadulina, which would have turned 80 years old

Text: Marina Zavada, Yuri Kulikov
Photo: Molodaya Gvardiya Publishing House

Elizaveta Kulieva, the poet's daughter:
“When my mother was not given the Nobel Prize, she said:“ And rightly so. And there is nothing "

April 10 - 80 years since the birth of Bella Akhmadulina. The publishing house "Molodaya Gvardiya" recently published a book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov "Bella. Meetings next. " An excerpt from it - an abbreviated conversation with the poet's daughter Elizaveta Kuliyeva - is published today by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

- In the years that have passed since Bella Akhatovna's departure, 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 the disease. In the trouble that struck, did you miss your mother?
- I am not ready for such a question. In my mind, these are not related things. When your child is terribly ill, you begin to live a mundane, rough life, intolerable for someone ... I always tried to protect my mother from my troubles. And in the case of Nikola, she would not want my mother to see my grief. Still, the poet has a different degree of pain, right? And my mother served her gods.

- The resemblance of four-year-old Marusya to little Bella is even amusing. What features of your mother do you notice in her?
- Marusya is a person who cannot be forced to do something until she comes to it herself. Absolutely mom's type. Outward meekness, but inside - a core, which 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 up there with her hand and cleaned ... Decisiveness. And of course, stubbornness is impossible. Don't break. Maroussia is the same. She is interested in constructing phrases, playing with words. We rarely go to McDonald's, but then we walked in, she says: "Today we have a holiday of harmful things." This is also my mother's ...

- Two girls, Elizabeth and Anna, realized early that their mother was special. And the man who lived by the side, your dad Eldar Kuliev - let's refer to the words of Laura Guerra - “I 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 because he lives in the shadow of Akhmadulina. It was she who raised funds, prepared some coursework for Eldar ... My father was delicate, gentle, but, unfortunately, not only because of his age, he was infantile. It was difficult for both of them. Mom wrote in a letter: "It is a burden for me to be alive, not only as an elder." And it is a shame for a man in marriage to be a child ...

- Did you know your Balkar grandfather Kaysyn Kuliev?
- For many girls, the ideal of a man is a dad, but since I did not have a dad, and we were never close with my stepfather, my grandfather became an unattainable ideal of a man for me forever ... At the age of six, I was in the hospital with my mother. We spent two weeks together in the box - on the same bed. Mom urged me to endure the pain, but it was almost beyond my strength to endure: twelve injections a day. Probably, a colossal internal tension has accumulated in me due to the fear of roaring nevertheless, because when suddenly at the end of the hospital corridor I saw Kaisyn, I rushed violently towards him. I will not forget how I ran down the long corridor, and my grandfather stepped forward, and I hung on him. I was very small, but I felt such a power emanating from him and such pity that only a man, perhaps a father, can give.

- You recently undertook to re-read 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. Once I already took up the "Diary", but, apparently, the time was not in time. And then I was tempted to return to the book. Probably because after my mother's departure a desire arose to plunge deeper into her life, in particular - into that piece when she lived in Pakhra ... And suddenly - such a joy! Learn NS that you found in Mom's unknown records. I started reading and took my breath away. At some point, the topic of human loneliness began to excite me. I thought a lot about this, and exactly in those days I came across my mother’s diary, which simply formulated exactly what I thought about the love of my mother and Nagibin.

- The relationship of these two people - how are they seen through the eyes of an adult daughter Akhmadulina?
- Nagibin and my mother are somewhat opposite. He is an 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, 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 and took them with me. Here she writes: "Yura ... created and renewed my appearance ... And it was so significant that my mother, through a bold reform, turned the formless blood into a baby, nevertheless performed a less effective operation with me than Yura."

Nagibin introduced his mother to world culture. Was that what he was so in love with, taught at the Literary Institute?

Later, in anger, he will reproach: "You do not 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 kind, not academic knowledge.

And the merit of Nagibin, of course, that he not only opened layers of non-textbook names for her - he disciplined reading. However, her approaching gift became a revelation for him too. Happiness fell on each of them: to find a like-minded person, a person with whom you can speak the same language ... What a piercing Nabokovian entry in her diaries - about a shared dinner at the dacha, Yurin's face bent over a plate, birds flying outside the window, and at the end - a prayer: "Lord, leave me all this" ...

Mom never mentioned her personal life with us until Uncle Bori / Messerere /, the impression was that she was simply born married to him. But it naturally occurred to me that there are gaps in her life that she does not mention. Now, holding the pages of my mother's found in my hands, I, as a woman, understand how much suffering the collapse of a marriage with a man should have turned into for her, if she has lived a lot with him under one roof, she writes, as if at the beginning of intimacy: “... everything in me is oriented towards one passion, one habit of stumbling everywhere on the only warm, salutary warmth, greedily surrounding oneself with it - it all comes down to Yura. "

This thin, deep man, in addition, gave his mother what 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 order, refuge, measured life as joy for a long time filled her with something similar to bliss ...

- You ranked Nagibin among my mother's associates. Isn't this too strong a word for a writer who has composed a lot of opportunistic nonsense?
- Starting to keep a diary, Nagibin made a note that there is literature for himself and for printing. 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 the authorities and said: "I will build a fence from it out of money." But a terrible thing happened to him. He thought that for the sake of money it was possible to compose hack and at the same time go to the ideal. In fact, in the end, the hack ate it.

All this is sad. Because, no matter how Nagibin on the other side of his fence tries to integrate 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 was stewing. I always guessed: she felt bad among people who were not close, but it turns out that even in her youth she described in her diaries what was happening to her, that when she was visiting she felt the pangs of shame, boredom, laziness, loneliness, alienation to other-existing owners.

... In general, it is not easy to fit two "non-format" people under one roof. I exclude envy, but the manhood of Yuri Markovich was hardly offended by the celebrity of his young wife. Mom was on such a crest of fame that even later they recognized me 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, joking. The ease of genius with which my mother got poetry was seeming 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 capacity for work.

- The drafts of Akhmadulina were amazed at RGALI. A lot of unhappy crossed out words, stanzas, whole pages! How many female silhouettes and faces were mechanically drawn by the hand, when the angelic words stuck, did not want to be born!
- This is an absolutely Pushkin story, when the lightness is seeming. Mom loved to talk on this topic ... I have been composing since childhood, there were conversations around poetry and creativity all the time. That writing is hard, I think, I understood from the cradle, but the way my mother describes this process in her diaries is completely deafening.

- “Poems arise in me only in connection with the severe suffering of the brain. Does it look like a confession under torture ”?
- Yes. Mom strove so that "violence" was not noticeable to anyone but her, so that a wonderful theater would be born in the throes of poems. But writing poetry was a job for her. By the time I consciously remember myself, she became, I think, much more organized than in the era of Nagibin, for a long time she left somewhere in Repino, Komarovo, in Karelia, retired and wrote. In Sortavala we were given a house for two. The bird cherry blossomed, my mother dragged her into the house in huge armfuls: “… she is tuomi. And to at kiva tuomi, if in bloom. " She brought with her a typewriter, which she gave. Inside with duct tape, he glued a photo with the inscription: "A squirrel for tapping out rhymes." This machine is used to "tap" the amazing Sortavala cycle.

- In the archive, we came across a telegram referring to the Akhmaduli poem “I think how stupid I was” that appeared a year earlier: “Yalta Crimea is the house of creativity of the literary fund Akhmadulina Bella 10 04 1968 so far our thoughts are clear on the square of the uprising half past six kisses andrei bulat Vasya gladilin dyachenko evgeny zhora zyama irzhik kit leopold misha and maybe more, but not less "...
- So my mother - everyone knows - was devoted to friends: 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, the more accurate word she has is comrade. Or an absolute favorite: brother.

Such a complex person like my mother, who felt inner loneliness, her isolation and strangeness, did not need friendship in the ordinary and especially female understanding, with her 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 her constraint, she felt good with them, in the noisiest gatherings her separateness was implied and accepted. As soon as her arms were opened too wide, she hid. Because it is impossible to write in an embrace. You have to be alone to write. In this, in my opinion, she is most of all related to Okudzhava. But I'm not at all sure they were soul mates. Rather, I'm sure not. Great love, tenderness, mutual attraction, but not easily, nevertheless slowing down the steps in front of the pretended gate. Mom was lonely by definition. Loneliness is like a vocation, like a sentence.

- Bella Akhatovna, as you say, made fun of people who experienced the power of the past. This is the property of a very unsentimental person. What else did it make itself felt?
- When it became a trend to raise the sixties on the shield, my mother told me, as if addressing her acquaintances from this generation: "You mention those years through the word, the thaw, simply because then you were young, and now you are old fools." She was convinced that a real poet is always wider than any trend, direction. I hated pretentious talk about "stadiums". Mom's literary fate so developed that they helped her become famous, but that was not her goal, and after years she was not proud of herself in the role of the conquering tribune. Such a role was alien to her. In general, my mother believed that everyone has the right to yearn for the past, but there is no need to shout about your sadness, to elevate it to a cult. Or - then write about it, like Nabokov.

- Have you noticed the reasoning in the diary of a very young Akhmadulina about patriotism? “How many of us were taught patriotism ... they brought us to death, deafness and coldness to everything, but all we had to do was show ... 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 far away, fell face and hands into the snow, staggered with an incredible sweep, fell and wandered for many centuries in a row. And from all this there was such melancholy, such Leskov's cheek in the chest, such fear and breathtaking kinship and doom to this land, which is patriotism for Russians. "
- Much here, probably, came from Nagibin, from their conversations in this regard. Mom has a moment in her notes when the half-drunk Tolya, who was cleaning the snow in the garden, freezes when he sees a titmouse, and for a long time dully, dreamily watches her peck up the grain. Mom notices that this reveals 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, but, seeing a cat running along the roof with a plaintive meow, puts down the ladder and climbs into the fire after it. About Tolya, about the same drunk would-be stove-makers, my mother writes with admiration mixed with irony.

What is characteristic: Mom always found a common language with the people more easily 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 entered on purpose. From the first that comes to mind, the word "nichavo".

- “And I don’t have anything” ...
- Which, in general, is not far from the truth. My nanny Anna Vasilievna treated my mother with great pity, believed that everyone was striving to “leave her without pants” ... During the time of lack of money after the Metropol, Aunt Anya found a part-time job to feed us. Of course, we weren’t begging anyway, but the nanny considered it her duty to feed the children hearty and tasty. She had a huge American chest in her room. All the time she told me: "When I die - don't 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 had time for the commemoration. There, my mother remembered a story: somehow, seeing that Margarita Aliger's huge dog fell off the chain, throwing herself on the little dog Yevtushenko, my nanny blocked his path and offered her hand. Terrible scars remained for life.

- About Evgeny Yevtushenko - an indirect participant in the heroic epic. We know that his contacts with your mother did not end.
- It’s not news to you: Mom didn’t shake hands with those to whom she treated badly. And with them they could meet on the street, stop or walk together along Peredelkino. From time to time she came to his dacha, sometimes he dropped in to us. This did not stop Yevtushenko's mother from teasing. But for all that, she retained a certain warmth towards him.

- As well as preserved about a hundred pages of poems written by his hand in the late fifties, and a thick translation from the Azerbaijani book of Nabi Babayev "Oak on a rock".
- Did you find this in the archive? I probably missed it.

- Yes. For some reason, I didn't throw it away, having divorced.
- It is unlikely that there is something conceptual about first love hidden behind this. Rather, one must keep in mind: they are poets. And these are still manuscripts ...

- In 1998, the Russian PEN Center nominated Akhmadulina for the Nobel Prize. But the Portuguese won Jose Samarago. 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 was embarrassed about it. And when she found out that she hadn’t won, she commented: “And rightly so. And there is nothing. " But perhaps she wanted recognition. Because at the end of her life she began to ask the question: do they remember, will they remember?

- Late Akhmadulina somehow imperceptibly changed her noisy bohemian image to a respectable one. She gracefully accepted orders and State awards. However, no matter how well-behaved her belonging to the new social elite looked, she still remained out of order - in all meanings of the word. Standing apart. Was there a time with which she got along internally? Except for the night, of course.
- Awards, awards for mom were unnecessary and important. She was a bit shy about government rewards. In her view, this is not what a poet should strive for. They flattered Uncle Bore more. And she shrugged her shoulders: “Is that so? Well, let's go, we'll get it. " By the way, the whole family went to the Kremlin for the State Prize. 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 would not let him in. But we took an arm, put on an important look and walked easily. In the tent, my mother introduced me to the president.

- And what did she say? "Is this my poor Lisa"?
- As expected, according to etiquette: "Let me introduce you to my daughter." Mom was smartly dressed. But for her, this day was least of all a reason 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. And the night? She got along with the night. "And the structure of the soul, open for love, is okay." When I read these lines, I imagine Sortavala, bird cherry, early morning. Mom's favorite time: sunrise.

April 10 is the first birthday of Bella Akhmadulina, celebrated without her. After she left. The poet, who was “dictated from heaven to a task,” would have turned 74. A year ago, at about the same time, Bella Akhatovna and I agreed to make a book of conversations. Because of problems with her eyes, Akhmadulina has not written for a long time, but to tell - oh, there was something to tell! She was enthusiastic and in great shape. Impatiently, on the phone, she began to talk about what was intended for the book. Then she fell ill ... Now everything that is associated with the name of Akhmadulina seems especially precious. In Liza Kulieva, an unassuming resemblance to her mother is not immediately striking. But - some turn of the head, suddenly the same voice modulation, laughter - and for a moment in front of you like Bella, not repeated (who would dare to encroach on this!), But who passed on to the youngest daughter what she herself called "the meta of our unity" ... Today Elizaveta Kulieva in an exclusive interview with NG tells what her mother and her sister Anna were like in life.

- Several years ago, in an interview with a magazine that we published, Bella Akhatovna called her love for you meek and added that, apart from this feeling, she does not help you in anything. How much is Bella Akhmadulina's meek love?

“I’ll try to explain what, according to my feelings, meek love in my mother’s understanding is. As a child, she herself suffered from the stifling love that is characteristic of many parents. This is such an overabundance of feelings, overwhelming overprotectiveness. Grandmother was a very energetic, strong-willed person. Probably, her desire to penetrate all the nooks and crannies of her daughter's existence frightened her mother, especially considering the unusual nature of her nature, the subtlety of her psyche, the need to be alone with her thoughts.

Mom did not have enough personal space, she felt heightened care as evil. Therefore, she was always afraid to press on us with her love, she tried to give the children more air. In her case, gentle love implied very strong feelings, but with a minimum of obvious gaze. Mom, completely consciously, clearly formulating for herself, gave us considerable freedom.

- And said it aloud?

- Directly - no. I never complained: as a child, I was forced into pressure ... But by her behavior, habits, by how she valued her own solitude, respected ours, in general, any person, this could be understood.

And "assisted - did not contribute" is a separate topic. Anya and I, my sister, grew up in a specific atmosphere. A dacha in the village of writers, a literary house near the Aeroport metro station ... Everywhere we were surrounded by whining, spoiled, dependent “writers' kids”. Already in childhood, with an adult sarcasm, I called them that, picking up an expression from my mother. This is the rejection of any kind of cronyism, connections, use of the fame of parents - she has articulated more than once. It seemed to her ashamed to "enter" the children in the institute, to somehow attach them. You can't, you can't, you can't. Mom was absolutely right. We ourselves decided who we would be, we ourselves dealt with our institutions. Now I am even proud that I never clung to my mother's name.

- The idea of ​​"looking after the heavens" has repeatedly arisen in the poems of Bella Akhmadulina. Do you think that now she herself is keeping you from heaven? Protects from various misfortunes "two girls soiled with raspberries"?

- My sister and I are both believers, although in different ways. Anya is inclined to Orthodoxy, Hinduism is closer to me. I would rather believe in reincarnation than in the fact that my mother is looking at us from heaven. No, I cannot imagine that she is sitting somewhere on a cloud. In my opinion, after death a person ceases to be himself, but his energy remains. Everything, probably, remains, flowing into some other quality.

- What does the physical absence of your mother mean to you - regardless of the fact that she is a great poet? Or is everything so intertwined that even for you one cannot be separated from the other?

- It's been only a few months since my mother passed away, and now we just feel a gaping hole in the place of the heart. It seems to me that another six months or a year will pass and I will understand: mother is in everything in the world, around. I feel it flowing into me, into Anka, into every surrounding thing ... It will be so. In the meantime, her physical absence is a failure, a huge void. And the fact that my mother is a great poet is how we learned well from childhood to separate one from the other. Anya and I do not feel like the children of the great poet, but the children of our mother. And yet we know that she is a great poet. For us, this is not at all woven. And it would be foolish to live, constantly keeping in mind that you are like ... the crown prince.

I was little (about six or seven years old) when, after a poetry evening in a huge hall, an unfamiliar woman with bulging eyes ran up to me and shouted: "Do you know that your mother is great ?!" I did not understand what she wanted from me, but instinctively I grasped a certain secret, even drama. For the first time, people indirectly conveyed to my consciousness: my mother belongs not only to me and Anya. Of course, I saw: she stands on the stage, utters beautiful, incomprehensible words, heard admiring applause, but I did not know how to pair all this with someone else's aunt who had jumped out from somewhere. I didn’t know how, and all the same I was frightened: something could steal our mother from us.

A kind of confirmation is the story that Anya Feigina, the daughter of the artist Moisey Feigina, reminded me the other day. She is like a close relative to us - as a child, she was often left with her. At about the same time, I asked Anya: "Are you famous?" She decided that the loud Akhmaduli glory had managed to spoil me. She replied: “Do you know me? And Anya? And Bella? " I nodded. "Well, then, famous." That is, she perceived my curiosity as wrong, offensive. But now I understand that I meant something else. Apparently, she was worried, suspecting: what if Anya Feigina is also famous? Then she can be stolen too?

Your question, if you look at it, is both conceptual and very personal. My sister and I were discussing something similar just at night. I don’t know about the children of other celebrities; our mother is definitely in the first place. On the day of the funeral, some people, coming up to me, said: “Lizochka, we condole. The genius poet is gone. " What does the poet have to do with it? I lost my mother. Bella Akhmadulina will remain in Russian literature. And mom will be gone.

- Bella Akhatovna spent her last months with you in Peredelkino at the old writer's dacha. Did you learn something about her that you did not know before? Did you make small belated discoveries about her character, nature, in fact, not amenable to clue?

- Perhaps there weren't any special discoveries. Still, my mother and I have known each other for 37 years. (Laughs.) At the beginning of summer, my mother did not feel well. After the hospital, we decided that it would be best for her at the dacha. Mom spent the whole day with Katya, the woman who helped in the house. Uncle Borya (Boris Messerer - "NG") and Anya came from Moscow every day. Volodya and I, my husband, came home from work at nine o'clock. Mom waited patiently for the evening. The moment when everyone is gathered on the veranda at the table. Her voice sounds in her ears, the way she ceremoniously pronounces: "Are we going to have supper?", "What do we have for supper?" In fact, Volodya and I ate meat, some kind of salad, drank wine ... And my mother looked at us and, at best, sipped pioneer jelly. She had a diet.

Of course, the ritual was observed during a long, happy period, when her health seemed to be on the mend. Mom was joking, fooling around at the table, tenderly offering: "Let's tease Volodya." You know, she was to a large extent an artist, she believed that a person is a theater for others, and now - two hours before lights out at 23.00 - she performed from the stage with inspiration, enjoying being in the spotlight again. She lived in the artistic world, the cultural context was her reality, her habitat, and we, sitting at the table, were more people of a different, modern style. Mom's indescribable monologues in such a rich, concentrated form were almost an overdose. Even I, who had heard a lot before, was amazed at these tons of information.

The last one she spoke about two days before her death was Kirill Laskari, a famous St. Petersburg choreographer. I briefly dropped that I had seen his son the day before, also Kira. We are friends. Mom suddenly came to life, began to remember how little Kira was, how she and her uncle Borey visited Laskari in Leningrad. This city was constantly featured in my mother's conversations. They have a lot of friends in St. Petersburg. We were all in love with one - otolaryngologist Alik Levin. Such an elegant gentleman with a pipe. Mom called him "doctor ear-throat-feet" because Alik loved the music hall, and his wife Natasha danced in it. And the hospital named after Lenin, where Alik worked, was ridiculously called the "hospital named after Levin."

You asked about the discoveries that I made for myself. I don’t know what to call this trait ... Immediacy? Friendly responsiveness? Cheerfulness? It seems that all this was not news to me. But I was almost at a loss when I heard my mother, already quite weak, talking on the phone with Azarik (Azary Plisetskiy is the brother of Maya Plisetskaya and cousin of Boris Messerer - "NG"). Azarik works at the Bejart Studio School in Lausanne. During his mother's illness, he and Mikhail Baryshnikov toured South America and called literally every other day. Mom loved Azarik very much, his cheerful calls with detailed reports on the trip just prolonged her life. Shortly before his mother's death, Azarik phoned and began to describe: he is now in white pants, sitting under a palm tree, the sun hits his eyes, they are drinking coffee ... And my mother, who is ill, cheered up, rejoiced, as if she herself was enjoying this exotic ... Arriving at the funeral, Azarius remarked, "Bella let us pretend she doesn't know ..." Obviously she did.

Once Azarik told his mother that Baryshnikov sends her greetings and words of admiration. She reacted in such a funny way: "Surprisingly, I thought he didn't remember me." Strange as it may seem, at some stage she really began to feel a little forgotten. Because of problems with eyesight, she did not write: she could not compose "in her mind" - the creative process was firmly connected with a hand, a fountain pen. Mom did not complain, but from the scraps of phrases it was impossible not to understand that she was sad about the publicity from which she was tired before. And he seriously reflects on his meaning in literature.

More about discoveries. Or not discoveries? Mother was feared for her discernment. It was believed that she, like an X-ray, sees through people. Mom had a definition: "a benign person." She saw through the "poor" ones like a clairvoyant. I was always surprised that vigilance and flair in her are incomprehensibly combined with innocence. I didn’t suspect only its scale. In recent months, when we were in close contact, my mother's disarming gullibility at every step was downright striking.

Usually everything depended on her attitude towards the person. If she was disposed to him, then she trusted enthusiastically, infinitely. If there was a negative attitude (and often biased, inexplicable), then - the most absolute dislike. She was not rude - although she allowed herself to be harsh when faced with villains. But my mother made an aloof, gloomy face, as if expressing: I am so bored with you. The word "boring" was defining in her attitude towards a large part of humanity. This does not mean that she despised someone. I just couldn't find common ground ...

- It is unlikely that you were shy in front of your mother's famous friends, next to whom you grew up. But Bella Akhatovna herself, shyly (or arrogantly) preferring the "detached adoration" of the greats - Pasternak, Akhmatova, perhaps believed that children are supposed to sit quietly and absorb. Did your mom encourage you to be present when the regulars at home talk?

- Anka and I were not specially invited: let's stay with the adults. But no "softly" sounded from my mother's side either. Huge meetings were held in the room where we talk. Aksenov, Voinovich, Voznesensky, Rhine, Okudzhava ... The smoke stood like a rocker. Mom sometimes drove him away with her hand: it was bad for the children ... We were not forced to listen, to sit. When someone paid attention to us, wanted to entertain, play, my mother was happy. When Anka and I got bored, we got up and went for a walk ...

People usually came to Peredelkino on weekends and on holidays. And they lived on Chernyakhovsky. With a nanny who was treated like a grandmother. Mom spent most of the time with Uncle Bori on Povarskaya. Clearly, we were bored, we wanted to be together more often, but it turned out that way. Contact still remained constant. We were stuck for a long time in the famous workshop. The participants of the "Metropol" gathered there in our presence. Of course, we didn’t really understand much, but we noticed the pleasure of adults from work, their enthusiasm. We also observed what happened after the publication of the magazine. More precisely, they did not even observe - they felt it on themselves. The people I liked and their children, with whom there was no spill of water, disappeared, evaporated. Voinovich was thrown out of the country, Aksenov was forced not to return. For me, what was happening was a real childhood trauma. I was very friendly with Olya Voinovich and Vanya, the grandson of Maya Aksenova. I will not forget the feeling of being terribly lost. I couldn’t fit in my head: why they are not there, why they don’t come again, why I’ll never see them, why it’s impossible to communicate, to call?

How did they explain everything to us? I can’t imagine. I felt that my mother had fear for me and Anka. After all, those who left, as we learned later, were threatened, they were blackmailed: fear for the children ... Mom diligently protected us from straightforward language. I didn't want to be drawn into an early conflict with society. I have never heard from her, for example, that the pioneers are g ... but. But for some reason we did not doubt: that is exactly what he thinks. At the beginning of the 80s, it sounded warningly: "Don't, don't, with children." Apparently, she feared for the child's psyche, was afraid of duality: what is it like when they say one thing about the USSR at school, but in real life something else happens - wonderful people are pushed out of the country?

- Did Bella Akhatovna follow how you study? What do you do?

- She even occasionally (laughs) signed my diary. I preferred not to demonstrate it, because I studied poorly. But my sister is good. They used her as an example at school, and it terribly angered me. I grew up terribly disheveled, skipped classes, did not do my homework, and treated school disgracefully. But my mother not only did not scold me - one might say, deliberately connived. How many times have I come to the dacha on weekends and stayed until Tuesday. Mom wrote notes to the class teacher that I was sick. She wanted us to stay with her a little longer, take a walk. She had no doubts that such an innocent lie would not spoil us.

The only one in the family who could be stern is Uncle Borya. As a child, he was an authority for us. Under his influence, I attended an art school, he studied with me, took off for exams. But I am too lazy to work monotonously, to get dirty in clay and paint day after day. I was drawn to write and paint. Now is that good period in my life when I can do both at the same time. I am an art director at the oldest Russian advertising agency Begemot, I am in charge of the creative process: together with copywriters and designers, we come up with advertising. And Anka after school entered the polygraphic institute - the art department. So we both kind of followed in the footsteps of our stepfather. Uncle Borya was constantly trying to make us disciplined, from the age of three (thanks to him) he forced us to eat with a knife and fork. He just suggested that we should not interfere with the guests' conversations, not interrupt the adults, in short, we should behave in a responsible manner.

One summer my parents left for Leningrad. I was nine, my sister was fourteen. We were left with Anel Alekseevna, Uncle Bori's mother. There was a violent collision of two realities: desperately free and the other - when children are fed on schedule and put to bed on time. Anel Alekseevna, an exemplary mother and an extremely organized person, sounded the alarm because we did not come home at nine o'clock. We couldn't figure out what the problem was. Mom very early explained to us that you shouldn't stick your fingers into the socket, cross the road in front of the car and the train. We've got it all figured out. Why extra control? As a sign of protest, they poured a pack of salt into the soup that Anel Alekseevna cooked. Now I realize that we were cruel children: Anel took care of us, tried her best. The misconduct had no consequences, although my mother probably found out.

Her position that children should not be tortured, that any compulsion is inhumane, remained unshakable. On the eve of the cold weather, my mother and I went to a consignment shop near the Aeroport metro station in search of scarce boots. The high degree of freedom led to a comical situation. I chose oversized boots for myself. They were amazingly beautiful. But so great! Mom, who dressed invariably elegantly, tried to dissuade me from a wild purchase, but I insisted, and she gave up, did not push it. (Laughs.)

Mom gave us freedom not because of her carelessness or busyness - on purpose. We were very lucky with her, more than anyone else in the world. She was a good educator, guiding us, maybe in not entirely traditional ways, but I would not want to be in the place of a person who was brought up traditionally. Yes, my mother was not interested in my grades, did not help with the lessons. She didn’t insist: it’s necessary to read this and that… But she gave the correct attitude to literature. I started writing poetry, barely recognizing the letters - I had not gone to school yet. From the fourth grade she began to study in a literary studio, won children's competitions. Everything happened as if apart from my mother. But who would doubt: clearly under her influence. It seems to me, having been born, I already knew: literature is great. There were names in the air: Tsvetaeva, Pushkin, Akhmatova ... When I was ten I was in a hurry: I urgently needed to read Gogol, it was incredibly interesting.

By the way, about Gogol. When my classmate from the Literary Institute and close friend Tanya Semilyakina and I contracted to compose stories for girls at the Rosman publishing house and took the pseudonym Sister Sparrow, I was tormented for a long time: I was spinning in my head - Elizabeth Sparrow, Elizabeth Sparrow ... Where is this name? I went to my mother and asked her. Instant response! “Not Elizabeth, but Elizabeth. Have you forgotten how Sobakevich wanted to foist Elizaveta Sparrow on Chichikov, presenting a serf as a man? " But my mother re-read Gogol many years before me. She had a powerful memory. It was not for nothing that I recited my poems by heart for kilometers.

And the fact that it is possible not to learn mathematics, in practice - is allowed, was also in the air. Uneducated? Irresponsible? But, on the other hand, what have I lost from this? Mom herself more than once complained that she could not count the little things in the store, deal with the change. But I know that her thoughts were occupied by others, she did not want to delve into nonsense, focus on pennies. Mom was a rational person, with a mathematical, paradoxically, mindset. Intelligence fully allowed her to do higher mathematics.

Despite the apparent detachment, she was very, very intelligent and positive. Some acquaintances assumed that she would not like my decision to enter the Literary Institute, from which she was expelled for refusing to fit into Pasternak's persecution. But my mother always sneered at people who experience the power of the past. She argued that it was foolish to live with memories when you can live for today. To settle scores with the Literary Institute, where once there was a stifling atmosphere or, as she said, "communist nonsense"? What for?

- In general, the educational process, whether or not allowed to take its course, took place. What else did you learn from your mom?

“I suffer from pathological neatness - definitely to my mother. And Anka does not tolerate a mess. Mom loved order. Perfect order. There were never any rubble on the table, a heap of papers. Just a lamp or candle, a pen, and a stack of pages written on one side. Mom wrote on A4 sheets. It was an indispensable requirement for life. In the late 80s, when not only good paper - panties and soap disappeared, friends ordered a large thick hardcover book with blank pages for mom from the binder. As a result, anyone began to use it, but not she. First, I composed my first fairy tale and drew illustrations. Then a few funny poems shared with my mother appeared in the notebook. One autumn night at the dacha, she and I came up with a story about the Fearful Scarecrow. Mom told her to Evgeny Popov. He decided to continue the tale and wrote it down in a book. A tradition was born: everyone who came to the house began to write the book - Andrey Bitov, Viktor Erofeev, someone else ...

So I am thinking: what unites us three? We are all different - mom, Anya, me. However, there is a family trait, it is not ... bam, genetically transmitted, my mother brought us up so that we are not capable of meanness. Both my sister and I do not know how to weave intrigues, to swindle. At work, it’s easier for me to punch in directly than to act on the sly ... It wasn’t that my mother, for example, said: “Sit down, girls, I will explain to you what is good and what is bad”. Never - in an edifying form, never - notation, but everything she said was about this: a person must be honest, generous; greed, cowardice, vanity are disgusting. Goodness meant openness, the inability to betray, and the ability to compassion. That is, she raised us specifically. Including mentioning situations and her own actions when she showed these traits.

What else we definitely took from mom is a good attitude towards dogs. A long time ago, in the winter at the dacha, every day or every other day she cooked a huge tub, throwing everything that was at hand there: bones, bread, cereals. A giant vat was hoisted onto the sled, she dragged them, and we, the little ones, with bowls, followed in the frost from Dovzhenko Street to Lenin Street, where stray dogs were found. Anya took her mother's non-verbalized command as a call to action: go and save! She has two dogs of her own, while taking some strangers to the veterinary hospital, attaching them to friends. I also feel sorry for animals, but now I only have a cat. During her mother's illness she was nicknamed (it amused my mother) "mama's cat" for fawning, sucking up to her and just running around to complain.

Feeling weak, my mother did not let go of the old teddy bear. As far as I know myself, he existed. As a child, my mother played with him, even took him to the evacuation and brought him back. When we arrived, we got the bear. Seeing him at the dacha, my mother was delighted, began to feel. It is quite safe, only everything rustles inside. Every now and then my mother lovingly stroked the glass buttons and said in her indescribable voice: "Oh, how I remember those eyes!"

- Have you ever seen how Bella Akhatovna writes?

- Mom did not write, being in the same room with us. It would be unnatural. But it happened only once. The two of us rested for more than a month in Holgin near Leningrad. There were no other rooms in the motel, we were given a double room. It was then that I saw: my mother sat down at the table in the evening and worked all night. I fell asleep - she writes, woke up - also writes ... However, the last thing I bothered about was that I was a witness of the sacrament. I was 11, the motel had a stable, and horses were all I was interested in that summer.

- Bella Akhatovna was distinguished by her carelessness in financial matters, littered with fees when they appeared. Of course, during periods of lack of money, she was rescued by "a wondrous choice of the most high bounties: iambic, trochee, amphibrachium, anapest and dactyl." But was this set enough for a prosaic soup?

- True, my mother had bad times: she was prevented from working, she was not allowed to publish. She faced great financial difficulties. However, my sister and I had nothing to wear - we grew up quickly. The refrigerator was never empty. Here my mother somehow contrived to provide us with a well-fed childhood ... But in general, she even cultivated everyday inability in herself. Talent made such a demand on her. At the first opportunity, my mother freed herself from solving material problems, clearing the territory for an intense inner life. Refused the burdensome "option".

- In the East, there is a proverb: "Even a black crow says to a funnel:" You are my little white one. " In your family, the opposite is true. Realizing her dissimilarity, Bella Akhatovna associated herself with the black sheep and grieved that the children were in her. "Irreparable and incredible / in their faces is the meta of our unity." Do you also think that the mother is "different", and it is difficult, you have to live with it?

- The fact that as a child I desperately tried to prove that I am no different from my peers, there is - partly - an affirmative answer. For a long time, the authorities treated my mother almost like an enemy of the people. We were not initiated into this, but we were not blind. We caught my mother’s strangeness, detachment, unsuitability, we knew that she, with a certain amount of tragedy, was projecting this onto us. Such a soil could not be unfavorable for complexes. Stupidity: because of them, I was even ashamed of my mother's deafening glory, a loud surname. The question "Is it true that your mother is Bella Akhmadulina?" bothered me. Mom owns the lines: "The one who is alone cannot be counted." She dedicated them to Pavel Antokolsky, but this is, of course, about herself. However, you understand the invaluableness of singularity when you grow up. As a teenager, you so want to be like everyone else. Going to school, I envied other children: they are so simple, cool, they would not want to be friends with me. But they all wanted it. Our dissimilarity, apparently, was noticed only by us.

All this is in the past. If a person does not get rid of childish (overestimated or underestimated) self-esteem in time, he cannot grow up. We grew up quickly. It is common knowledge that all geniuses are children. And since your mother is a child, you become his parents, who have no right to be "different." They must be firmly on their feet. Probably, once we were also unadapted, let those who climb out of line, could not stand up for ourselves. But life has made its demands on us, and now, I think, we are not lost in the face of challenges. We are earthly. At the same time, they are smart, cool, possibly talented ... But we are not a mother. We do not have such an overwhelming gift as hers. She is a person of a completely different order. Genius. And it would be ridiculous, not having a mother's gift, to be "different."

- The famous "More and more I am sinless before people, / more and more I am guilty before children", written when you were very young, did Bella Akhatovna somehow explain to you who grew up?

- Mom, in various forms, let us know that she felt guilty. She sighed now mournfully, now playfully: "Poor, poor children!" (Laughs.) This also happened when we became big, independent ... Somewhere deep within her lived the installation that motherhood is more important than anything in the world. And since the gift insatiably demanded her undividedly, ordered not to be distracted, she reproached herself for depriving us of attention.

I don’t think my mother’s guilt is justified. She cannot be approached with generally accepted standards, as if she were a teacher or an accountant. As far as she could, my mother delved into our life, followed the progress. She admired that I was working hard and hard. When, unable to withstand the marathon at the Rosman publishing house, I dropped out of the race, she began to timidly hope that I would take up serious poetry. She asked: “But are you writing? Are you writing? " Here you also need to understand the subtext. Writing was the highest blessing for my mother, it’s the same as for a gourmet to eat deliciously, to drink excellent wine. Her "do you write?" is tantamount to the concern of an ordinary mother: “Are you full? Have you eaten? " However, here too, my mother did not show "burning guardianship." Meekly - going back to the beginning of the conversation - hoped that I had the same need to write as hers. But now I hardly write poetry. I understand everything about myself. (Laughs.) I took up prose.

Was there trust between us, which often arises between mother and girls? No. Anka and I protected her from unnecessary details, did not burden her with our problems. Of course, while my mother was relatively healthy, we were not too anxious, caring children. But we always took care of her. So it was accepted in the family. However, my mother saw right through ... In the midst of the last economic crisis, the advertising industry suffered greatly. A difficult period has come for those working in it. And then my mother's call: "You have no money, I know." - "What you? There is. Everything is fine". “Don't cheat. Come and get it. " How did she smell? Obviously, I was not guided by the fact that the advertising business was almost covered with a copper basin ...

- For some reason it seems that no matter how many different nuances in your life, one poem "Waiting for a Christmas tree" with its endearingly gentle refrain "sister and sister", "daughters Elizabeth and Anna" is able to flood with love all involuntary lacunae that arose in relationship with mom. And you don't stop feeling it. Right?

- Yes. And let everyone be jealous that my mother wrote such a poem for us. This is not only a poem - a moment of triumph. Mom confessed her love to us in her own way. Making fun of Americans with their constant in films: "I love you." - "And I love you". She said: "I don't want to look stupid like them, but still I love you very much."

She knew how to arrange holidays. On New Year's Eve, we came to the dacha. A magnificent spruce was brought into the large room, placed in the corner. It was a mandatory event - until a small Christmas tree was planted under the window. Her mother was presented by the worker Zhenya, who in our absence looked after the house, a gas boiler. First, my mother put a tip on the tree from the ground, later she stood on a stool, we climbed onto chairs. A wire with light bulbs was pulled through the window. We always had felt boots, a lot of pairs. We climbed into them and, falling into the snowdrifts, pulled a wire to the tree. We tried with might and main. Although what we were experts in electricity. Considering that we are children, and my mother is a poet.

She hasn't seen New Year with us lately. I began to visit Peredelkino less and less. We were decorating the Christmas tree without my mother. See how tall it is? The balls can only be hung on the lower branches. This year, for the first time after a long break, they put a Christmas tree in the room. In memory of my mother. Two spruces grew on our site, interfering with each other. One was hurt. It dawned on me: to die anyway, so let him die beautifully. We carefully cut it down, brought it into the house, decorated it with toys, colored bulbs. I had the feeling that my mother was somewhere nearby. Because, besides her, no one in my life has decorated a living Christmas tree.

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