On April 10, Bella Akhmadulina would have turned 80 years old. Marina Vladi's memories of Bella Akhmadulina, which are printed in one of the chapters of the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov "Bella. Meetings after"

Stanislav Govorukhin once said about Marina Vladi: “She still had impeccable taste. Of all the abundance of men who surrounded her in the USSR, she chose the brightest and most talented. Genius.” But not only her husband - Marina also chose the brightest and most talented friend in Moscow. Genius. Bell Akhmadulina. Perhaps this is truly evidence of impeccable taste. Or the depth that made it possible to appreciate the scale of who was nearby? It is no coincidence that in the routine seventies, perhaps only Akhmadulina and Vladi considered Vysotsky not a bard but a great poet. Well, Joseph Brodsky. Not a bad company...

It’s sad, but life turned out to be uncompassionate towards Vladi. Too many losses... And yet. Is vitality noticeable if fate caresses you? When, having placed juice, still water and “balloons” on the table in the garden, Marina began talking about Akhmadulina in her unique, unchanged voice, traces of time and its dramas disappeared. She blushed, remembering Bella, their Moscow and Paris meetings... She laughed more and more loudly. The one sitting in front of us was the former Marina Vladi, who, they say, drove the entire male population of the USSR crazy.

— Your compatriot Herve Bazin noted that at some stage a young woman becomes a woman still young. Late sixties. Akhmadulina is over thirty. What does she look like to a Parisian?

“The squirrel was not like everyone else.” I saw a lovely woman, very pretty. It never occurred to me to look at what she was wearing. On occasion, she and I discussed that Tatar blood flows in both of us. Despite the fact that I am blonde and my eyes are gray and not black, like Bella’s, I feel the oriental in me. How is this in Russian? Cheekbones, huh? Belka's were raised. In general, her bone structure is very beautiful. And the neck is white and long. Reading poetry, she was drawn to it like this (depicts).

It seems to me that the first time I came into contact with Bella was at her concert, to which Volodya brought me. We were sitting in the audience with him, and suddenly Akhmadulina announced from the stage: “Now there are several poems about Marina.” And in a chant: “I love you, Marina, that you...” (smiling, imitates). What happened to me! I blushed terribly. I still have this ability to blush from embarrassment. I thought that Akhmadulina wrote poems about me. Shrinking, she looked at Volodya in confusion. He listened without saying a word. And then - wow, I realized that Bella was reading about Marina Tsvetaeva. I blushed even more, I just turned purple. I was so ashamed. She scolded herself: “You vile girl, how could you imagine that Akhmadulina wrote something about you?!” Stupid situation. But I was big star, I’m used to being admired... There was such noise and commotion around me. So I made a mistake with Akhmadulina. This is definitely my first memory of her. Bella, to whom I confessed everything afterwards, had a lot of fun.

It was she who turned me on to Tsvetaeva’s poetry. In Paris I read it a little in French. After six years, I spoke little Russian. And I didn’t read it at all. In my opinion, Marina Tsvetaeva’s translations were done by Elsa Triolet. She also translated my beloved Chekhov. It doesn’t matter, as I later realized. I played Chekhov on stage in much better translations. In the summer I was visiting my son in Tahiti and in the library I came across a collection of Chekhov’s works in Russian. I forgot about everything. I lay on the beach and read voraciously... And after Tsvetaeva, I fell ill after Bella. She even played Marina in the play by Veronica Olmi.

— Remembering the year of filming in the film “Plot for a short story", you wrote: "...the circle of friends is narrowing. Now only the closest ones remain..." Among them, "Bella Akhmadulina is a brilliant and enthusiastic poetess." Is "brilliant" the assessment of Vysotsky?

- Why? This is our general opinion. Absolutely. Volodya constantly read Bella’s poems to me. Actually, his deity was Pushkin. But of the living poets, I bowed to Akhmadulina. This certainly had an impact on me. If your loved one, who is a genius himself, classifies someone as a caste of people-gods, this is worth listening to.

— Did you already know that he is a genius?

- Undoubtedly, when I lived with him, I understood this. Yes, from the first meeting in the theater I knew that Volodya was a genius. And after the rehearsal of "Pugachev" I saw in life a little gray boy, somehow dressed.

“You don’t pay attention to such nonsense.”

—(Laughs.) That time I did. Either because she was already looking at Vysotsky as a woman looks at a man, or he was completely poorly dressed. He had some creepy boots. And a terrible haircut.

- Okay, “brilliant poetess” is the opinion of both. And “enthusiastic” is probably your remark? Did Bella seem a little "too much" to you? Un peu trop - is that what the French say?

- That's right: too much. Bella was all too much. Too. But she couldn’t be like everyone else. She was unique.

— On what scale is Akhmadulina one of your closest friends? Because she was Vysotsky’s favorite poet? Or because she understood earlier than others: by “his birth, first of all... A poet”? When, back in New York, Joseph Brodsky presented Vysotsky with his book with the inscription: “To the great Russian poet”...

- A lot of water will leak. Volodya will finally be released from the USSR, he and I will travel halfway around the world before meeting Joseph in a cafe in New York in Greenwich Village. Vysotsky read new poems to him, Brodsky listened attentively. Then he took us to his home and gave us his last book. There was a lot to be euphoric about. Never before - what great poets there are! — the official poets did not count Vysotsky among their guild. Only Akhmadulina stood apart, confident that Volodya was a poet from God. The others thought he had rhymes. Naturally, Vysotsky was inspired by Bella’s assessment. I saw that Volodya doted on her, I saw how much she loved him. This brought us closer.

— It would seem that it is really so important: a poet is not a poet? Vysotsky already had crazy fame, a whole country of admirers, including (secretly) his persecutors.

- Ha! This is why he died, because he was not officially recognized. Endless refusals and reluctance to be accepted into the writing community greatly hurt my pride.

- Lord, he was received by Akhmadulina and Brodsky!

“The people accepted him, that’s the most important thing.” But it was precisely the unbearable gap between how the public loved Volodya and how the authorities did not tolerate it that infuriated him. At the beginning of our life with Volodya, I was perplexed: why is he tormented by the fact that he is not accepted as an official poet? He knows the value of the regime and is worried that this regime does not accept him?! Complete idiocy. She said: “Why do you need this stinking Writers’ Union? These shitty men?” I didn’t understand everything then. I considered Volodin’s reflections to be some kind of philistinism. But soon my eyes were opened to the enormity of the situation, to what it meant to live in the USSR without rights. For how many years Vysotsky was shackled! They didn’t print, didn’t publish, didn’t release records... But he knew that he was better than all of them. And Belka knew. How could he not be touched by this?

Evening on Povarskaya. December 15, 1976. From left to right: Ivan Bortnik, Tonino Guerra, Angelo de Genti, Laura Guerra, Boris Messerer, Yuri Lyubimov, Vladimir Vysotsky, Bella Akhmadulina, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ilya Bylinkin, Irina Sobinova-Kassil, Andrei Voznesensky
Photo: Valery Plotnikov. Photo archive of the magazine "Ogonyok"

— A year before his death, Vysotsky put on the same level with those who “punched in the gut”, “broke their wings”, nice friends and buddies who saw in him only a self-taught bard: “And they gave me good advice, / A little patronizingly, clapping on the shoulder, / My friends - famous poets: / — You shouldn’t rhyme “screaming, sticking out.” Is this a made-up phrase or did someone actually say it?

“That’s what Yevtushenko told Volodya.” Both he and Andrei Voznesensky, despite the fact that both got along with the authorities, never helped Vysotsky to get published, did not directly raise the question of admission to the Writers' Union. And Volodya asked for them. Bella constantly fussed over him. She helped with the “Alice in Wonderland” album when the Ministry of Culture almost ruined it. She thought of congratulating readers in Literaturnaya Gazeta on the New Year and the release of “Alice” performed by Volodin - as if the release of the record was a fait accompli. Where were the censors to go? Bella outwitted them. I know that she tried to help with the Writers' Union. I asked one of the bigwigs for Volodya. Useless.

— Before your first fixed apartment on Malaya Gruzinskaya, you were in constant search of a corner where you could settle down in relative comfort. Begovaya, south-west, and previously a room in the writer's house near the Airport metro station - next to Akhmadulina. Was it a good neighborhood?

— I associate the squirrel more with the workshop. We've been there a lot. Volodya appreciated that he was accepted in this house, where he was going interesting people. There was a bohemian atmosphere there. Canvases, paints, frames, crowding... Not very suitable for life. Several times I even scrubbed the bathtub. It wasn't that dirty, but the rust was ingrained and you couldn't get it off. Maybe they washed their brushes. Obviously, Belka gave up on this. Different character. I can't live like this.

— Many were offended for Akhmadulina, having read in your book that her dacha was of questionable cleanliness, and cats and dogs played with children right on the beds. But it’s unlikely that you wanted to offend Bella. It’s just that, as a foreigner, they didn’t understand what a writer’s cottage is...

“I didn’t have any intention of putting any kind of reproach into my words.” Although Bella's dacha was cluttered and furnished with random, probably government-issued furniture, it looked cozy. Volodya and I arrived, but the owners were not there. Only the children and the old nanny. But with Bella's arrival, the day flowed magically. This always happened if she was on a roll and read poetry non-stop... And as for the fact that cats and dogs messed around with Belka’s daughters, that’s not a criticism. In my house, dogs also sleep on the sofa. In my opinion, it’s wonderful when children and animals live together.

Excuse me, I’ll still go to the neighbors and find out what’s so noisy there. This sound got me.

The visit to the fence seems to be in vain.

“There are some workers there,” Marina explains when she returns. “They are painting a large machine for transporting horses.” There is also a horse racing field a hundred meters away. The dyers say: they can’t stop, otherwise there will be defects. I said that, by the way, I also work. I'm doing an interview. And they bother me. Oh... The sound finally stopped. Mercy! - Marina shouts.

On the other side of the fence former house, a little reminiscent of the mansion in which my mother lived in Russia before the revolution. The famous house, bought in the respectable Maisons-Laffite by fifteen-year-old Marina Vladi with the first royalties for the large clan of the Polyakovs - the Baidarovs. And now she sold it. I moved into a garage, not a garage - in general, into a well-reconstructed outbuilding. Marina touches on this topic in passing, and we don’t ask questions. So it was necessary... And to old home is digging. More precisely, it was laid from there - to Marina. The neighbors' dogs, whose puzzled faces are already more than an hour sticking out from under the fence.

— Look how they listen to Russian. What's happened? What are these unusual modulations? They are confused. And they are trying their best to figure it out. Comical. That fat girl used to run here, but she's gotten fat and now she can't fit under the fence...

— Your first husband, Robert Hossein, believed that the Polyakovs transferred the life of a large Russian noble family to Paris. And in Moscow, like it or not, the French mentality made itself felt. And although regular guests, a rich table is very Russian, they say you tried to close the house for random people. And for whom were the doors open?

— There is a photograph taken on Malaya Gruzinskaya when Volodya and I finally got an apartment. Our whole group is there: Bella with Boris Messerer, Sasha Mitta and his wife Lilya, Vasya Aksenov, Seva Abdulov, Stanislav Govorukhin, Viktor Sukhodrev with Inga Okunevskaya... There are some not quite “ours” in the photo. Belka sits next to Volodin’s father Semyon Vladimirovich, who hugged her. I also occasionally invited him, despite the fact that Vysotsky’s relationship with his parents was, to put it mildly, unimportant. And with the circle of friends that Volodya and I had, we didn’t just communicate. We were very close. You could say they lived together. We ate together, drank together, went swimming together at the diplomatic beach.

In the evenings, gathering at our house, we allowed ourselves to express ourselves freely. They suspected that they were eavesdropping, but did not hold back, they lived without censorship. There was even some mischief. Someone said: “Now we are making a broadcast for you. Listen. Let’s begin.” Those were the jokes. But Volodya, for example, was not a dissident. He expressed his attitude towards power in symbols. Of course, she understood everything and hated him. She realized how dangerous he was for her. More than Bella. Her poetry is about feelings, friendship, love. The civic position was manifested in life. The fact that she boldly put her name under human rights letters. But this is different. This is civisme, this is civic valor.

— In a poem dedicated to Vysotsky, Akhmadulina wittily portrayed the inevitable last guest, “the most unbearable and drunken of all,” the hostess, giving signs behind his back for cleaning... Weren’t you tired of almost daily meetings with Boris and Bella? The fact that they, bohemians, stayed up past midnight?

— In Russia it’s not too late. In France people go to bed much earlier. Me not. I didn't work in Moscow. Moreover, the guests did not tire us. And Bella’s visits are a pleasure. Even before Vysotsky, I had an open house in Paris. Robert is right: in the Russian manner. The French don't do that. I learned to cook while filming in Italy. I couldn’t think of anything for Volodka. She loved him wildly. I took care of him, ran after him. I bought good food for foreign currency, went to markets where there were familiar sellers. They gave me a huge loaf of meat, about twenty kilograms. I put it in the trunk and chopped it myself at home. By the time Bella and Boris arrived, the table had already been set with something tasty. At first the three of us sat and chatted. Later Volodya returned from Taganka.

—Who set the tone for the feast? He? Bella?

- Bella. Volodya was exhausted and could sit in silence for some time. In general, he was often silent in companies. Didn't show off. And Bella loved to perform. When she started reading poetry, the three of us froze. Then Belka defiantly said to Volodya: “Answer me!” He took the guitar, and the other three: Bella, Boris and me, went wild with delight. I will never forget these evenings. This era. Sometimes Volodya did not sing, but read. But, in my opinion, he read his poems poorly. But Bella is like no one else.

- She, like you, acted in films. What is the opinion of the famous actress on this matter?

— I know that Bella played Vasya Shukshin in the film, but I didn’t watch it. Therefore, I cannot judge (laughs) what kind of artist she turned out to be. Reading poetry and playing a role are different techniques. But when Bella went on stage, she became inimitable and had a magical effect on the audience.

— Do you really think Akhmadulina was funny, even playful, as she said about herself? Did you respond easily to jokes?

— Bella was laughing. She loved to laugh and loved funny songs. Listening to Vysotsky, I literally fell from laughter. She was amused by my stories about the hundreds of “witches” with white hair and bangs who were waiting for me at the plane’s ramp when I first flew to the USSR in 1959. Or about how on another visit Volodya and I went to the sea station in Moscow to take a ship.

- To the river station.

— River, of course. And one fat woman in the queue gave me an angry elbow in the side: “Wow, he’s working under Marina Vladi!” The squirrel was lying... We joked and fooled around endlessly. We talked like two girls. But at times it reminded me of the weather in Brittany. This peninsula in France has an unpredictable climate. It was just raining, ten minutes later the sun was blinding your eyes, then suddenly there was a storm and then silence again. Bella could also change in one evening. At first she was joyful, cheerful, happy, then for some reason she became gloomy, even tragique. She began to tell something with dramatic intonations and a mournful face. Having expressed herself in this way, Bella became calm again. Hurricane, sunshine, calm... She had a colossal temperament, more excessif than Volodya. I don’t know how to explain it in Russian.

- Excessive?

- With too much amplitude, yes. With greater amplitude than his. Vysotsky in life was much smoother than Bella. A normal person, except for those periods when he got so drunk that he fell on the floor. And then he disappeared. Volodya had binges, but he didn’t drink every day with his friends, he couldn’t drink. And Bella, probably, every evening was - there is a word derived from the French - drunk. Maybe because of this, she sometimes lacked the restraint that is characteristic of completely sober people. This was her way of living. It seems to me that she needed this state of intoxication. Heated, excited. You had to be on edge, on edge. So that, with your eyes closed, you throw yourself into poetry, into life...

— You described the celebration of your wedding with Vysotsky in Tbilisi. On this wonderful land, no one is safe from the fact that, disturbing the sophistication of the feast, some goat will not stand up with a toast to Comrade Stalin. You barely kept your husband from making a scandal. In a similar situation at a Georgian banquet, Akhmadulina threw her shoe at the nomenklatura poet. Is it impudence, lack of inhibitions? Or is it fearlessness, which has more than once given men a head start?

“I think it’s courage.” The courage and temperament I spoke about. Uncontrolled temperament. Bella knew that she could afford something that others couldn't, and that it might be a little scandalous. Beautiful, famous. A special poetess that everyone listens to. And then, she was completely indifferent to what they would say about her. It didn’t matter that people around me would be shocked in one way or another. There was not a drop of philistinism in her.

-Where did this come from?

- Ha! This is freedom. Again, temperament. The feeling of being someone. Bella understood perfectly well: she was not like everyone else. She is exceptional.

— In “The Return of Nabokov,” Akhmadulina lovingly captured your beauty and “influential generosity” (this is satisfaction for the moments of long-standing embarrassment!). However, with the most wonderful attitude towards a woman, as she told us, she would never “gossip” with her. Nevertheless, not everything is about the sublime... Surely there was a discussion of outfits, perfumes, cosmetics, and who knows what else. What?

— Recently I was filmed for a television project about Marcello Mastroianni. I don't give interviews to anyone now. For several years, I made an exception only for the documentary filmmaker who decided to talk about Marcello, and for you. I started out in cinema with Mastroianni. He is my wonderful partner and just a dear friend. And I communicated very closely with Bella, we were real friends. Like sisters. I want you to do something about her good book.

— Marina, we are grateful to you.

—(Laughs.) You can... I'm really closed now, I refuse meetings. But Belka is expensive part my life, which then... disappeared. What did we talk about with her? She, by the way, was extremely flirtatious. Bella has a rare beauty. The men were dying for her. Belka was not mistaken about this. She was aware of her strength. Oh-ho-ho, how! I criticized her: “Why do you put so much makeup on your face?”

— Did I listen to you?

- This is not the case. Not at all. And so, we consulted with each other. They talked about their sorrows and hopes. Bella was one of those people with whom I could talk about just about anything. I trusted her. I didn’t hesitate to complain, not to complain—to open up about how hard it was for me. She sympathized with the fact that in Moscow I was worried about my sons who studied in France, about Volodya, and I was upset that I was forced to hardly film. And in Paris I can’t find a place for myself out of fear that something bad will happen to my husband. I counted: I flew to seventy times Soviet Union to save him.

— Did Akhmadulina try to help?

“I helped those who had someone to pour out my soul to.” How could Belka really help me?

- She knew everything, but she declared: “I have never seen Vysotsky drunk in my life.” Partisan.

“Maybe Bella didn’t see how terribly drunk he was.” I might not have known everything. But even if she did know, it was not discussed for her. With anyone. That's Bella. Wall...

Bella in the famous Messerer workshop, surrounded by famous guests. Global Look Press

— Do you have her gifts?

“Bella didn’t give me her jewelry.” She liked large rings with large stones. I don't wear those. And the hats are not mine. Bella got them later. With age. It suited her. She was a gorgeous woman. What I have from Belka is a piece of paper covered in her handwriting with a poem that was born in connection with the death of my sister Tanya, Odile Versoix, a wonderfully beautiful woman, also an actress. Odile died of cancer exactly a month before Volodya left. Bella was friends with her and met her in Moscow and Paris. My sister and I went to the Bellin poetry evening at the Cardin Theater...

After Volodya’s death, for the first time, I flew to Moscow, willy-nilly, to settle his affairs. On one of my chaotic visits, we briefly met Belka. We stood there, hugging each other, and at some point Bella handed me a piece of light brown, rough paper—the kind they used to wrap food in the USSR back then. There was text on it. Apparently, Bella composed it spontaneously, somewhere she was overtaken by memories of Odile. This morning I honestly tried to find the leaf. It's a shame I couldn't do it. With this move... I still haven't sorted everything out.

— You yourself gave Akhmadulina a royal gift on New Year’s Eve 1977, inviting her and her husband to France.

— Boris said that he and Bella would like to come to Paris, and I agreed to invite them. I made an official paper. She suggested: “Live at my house.” I gave her the keys to the apartment. After my mother’s death, I could not be in Maison-Laffite, I was very sad. I rented out the villa and moved to the Montparnasse area. She returned back only six years later, when Volodya said: he wants to start life from scratch. Quit drugs, leave the theater, start a novel. And I rushed here again with enthusiasm, renovated the house, cleaned everything, licked it, bought new furniture.

— You rented an apartment at 28 Rue Roussel? We walked past this house a couple of times.

- Yes? I love this area almost in the center of Paris. I had a tiny apartment there. Three rooms. One is a bedroom with only a large bed and a fireplace. There is also the same small living room. Nearby is the sons' bedroom. It was a bit cramped, but it was perfect for Bella and Borya. They mostly lived together. I was just visiting because that winter, if I’m not mistaken, I was filming in Hungary. From time to time we all gathered in the apartment together. They cooked something in the tiny kitchen and spent a wonderful evening talking. One day I arrived, opened the door, and Bella was fiddling around at the stove. Fries frozen pancakes with cheese in a frying pan. It’s strange, I forgot so many important things, but for some reason a trivial episode remained in my memory. I even remember the smell: some kind of disgusting, semi-finished product. I should have explained more clearly where to do my grocery shopping.

— It was you who dyed Akhmadulina’s hair blonde in Paris? Did it suit her?

“She wasn’t feeling well.” But Bella painted herself. Or rather, she asked me to take me to her hairdresser. I gave her a hairdresser who did my hair. From him Belka came out blonde. Why did she need this? I say she loved to smear herself and cut her hair in different ways. Change your face.

— Despite the fact that you visited France sporadically, it turns out that there was time to experiment with Akhmadulina’s appearance. How about a walk around Paris? Show your favorite places, check out the shops?

— Bella went shopping with Boris. And around the city, if I was free, we wandered around a lot. Like all normal people in Paris. We sat in famous cafes and Italian restaurants. A couple of times I booked a table at Moroccan: I love Moroccan cuisine.

— Was Akhmadulin afraid to let go alone? She described how she got lost with Vysotsky, who had arrived in Paris, in the very center - near the Grand Opera. He then grinned: “You know, in one thing I surpassed you... I have even worse orientation than you.” Maybe this is a special gene inherent to the greats?

- Do you think so? Why?

— Do you remember the dialogue between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, on the eve of the war they agreed by phone to meet on Bolshaya Ordynka? “I’ll call a normal person now to explain how to get to us.” This is Anna Andreevna. And Tsvetaeva’s answer: “A normal person can he explain it to the abnormal?"

—(Laughs.) I remember. It seems like I read this once... So, Bella and Volodya are even more geniuses. In Paris you have to try hard to get lost. The small town. People walk from end to end. And they, although they were like children: they walked, looked around, said how wonderful it was, but they were not children after all.

Bella always wanted to be heard
Photo by Vladimir Savostyanov. TASS photo chronicle

— Are they Akhmadulina, Messerer and Vysotsky?

- First of all, Bella. Well, partly Volodya. There was a childishness about him that touched me so much. And Boris? Boris is different. Very calm. With Bella he was too... paternalistic. As Father. Constantly looked after. He showed that he was fiddling with her. Stuff like that that I didn't like.

— Did Akhmadulina tell you that at the desk of your apartment she dared to write a letter to Nabokov in Montreux?

- No. I wasn’t in France for a long time then. And the answer from Switzerland was brought in my absence. So the story of her meeting with Nabokov passed me by. It's a pity. I also admire him as a writer.

— You said that after Vysotsky’s death, many of his friends turned out to be ex-friends. And they added: “My whole life has been distorted by Russia.” It's sad that it's like this. But it is impossible to imagine Akhmadulina in the category of ex-friends, who wrote seven years after Vysotsky’s departure: “... it is unlikely that there will be such minty coolness that will ever lick, comfort and numb this always burning place.”

- It is also impossible that she, like many in our country, condemned your new marriage - with Leon Schwarzenberg. “Likewise”, and even more so “many” - is this really about Akhmadulina?

“Life went on so much that my contacts in Russia became narrower. And I encountered Bella less and less, since I practically stopped appearing in Moscow. I was in terrible despair, I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t understand how to live. In addition to the meeting when Belka gave me a poem about Odile, there may have been others, but I remember how we had lunch (after some time) in a large restaurant near the monastery where Chekhov is buried.

— This is the Novodevichy cemetery. Akhmadulina lies there now.

- Why did Bella die?

— Oncology.

- Like my mother, Odile, Andryusha Tarkovsky... Like Leon. My last husband (at one time he served as Minister of Health) was himself an oncologist. He treated Odile, and on this basis we met. Leon pulled me out of a severe depression. Of course, I couldn’t love him as passionately as Volodya. But we were connected by a bright, deep relationship. Leon is a rare person. When it turned out that Tarkovsky had cancer, he admitted him to his clinic and treated him for free. From there, Andrei, his wife, son and mother-in-law moved to me in Maisons-Laffite. He was staying with us. There seemed to be hope. But no... Then Leon struggled with his illness for four years.

Did news of his death reach Bella? Don't know. They didn't know each other. After Volodya left, we never touched on the topic of my marriage. This is, in general, something that is not discussed. And for her, I think, not condemnable...

— How did you find out about Akhmadulina’s death? Has she become one of your losses in a string of losses that gradually cease to deafen you?

- Chain of deaths... They follow me on my heels. The closest and dearest are disappearing, without whom there is not enough air, it is difficult to breathe... Are you asking if Bella’s death was one of the already familiar losses for me? In a sense, yes. After all, I also lost people closer to me. And yet... Her departure is not something that happened somewhere far from me. Not something that I could relate to with the philosophical sadness of a person tired of grief. Kostya Kazansky told me that Bella was no more. He is a musician, worked with Volodya. Kostya and I rehearsed a one-man show based on the book “Vladimir, or Interrupted Flight.” At one of the rehearsals, he said: “Akhmadulina died.” I can't describe how I felt. Too many things came to mind. It seemed to me that it was not the seventy-year-old who died... Bella, from what year?

The book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after" is published by the publishing house "Young Guard". The authors' interlocutors were Vladimir Voinovich, Marina Vladi, Azary Plisetsky, Laura Guerra, Mikhail Shemyakin, the poet's daughters Elizaveta and Anna

- Since the thirty-seventh.

- Pfft, I forgot that I’m a year and a month younger than her. We celebrated Bella’s birthday on the tenth of April, and mine on the tenth of May... You see, I was overcome by a strange feeling that it was not an elderly seventy-three-year-old woman who had left, but a young Belka, changeable like the weather in Brittany. My girlfriend. And with her, a huge and such an important part of my life disappeared.

Maisons-Laffite - Paris

The Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg hosted a presentation of the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings later."

Ten years ago, journalists from the Izvestia newspaper Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov took great interview from the famous sixties-born Bella Akhmadulina.

“Bella Akhatovna was friendly, hospitable and very beautiful,” Marina Zavada shared her memories. — We asked her about what she thinks about life in the country, about the events of the 90s. During the first interview, we spent about four hours with Bella Akhatovna, she listened attentively to the questions, did not interrupt, and her answers were brilliant and unexpected. The interview was published on two newspaper pages. After that, we occasionally called each other. And somehow the idea came up to make a book of dialogues with Akhmadulina. She responded willingly; she wanted to talk about her life. IN last years Bella Akhatovna's vision was getting worse and worse and she could no longer write anything. Unfortunately, circumstances were against it. Years later, after Akhmadulina’s death, the idea arose to still fulfill a kind of duty to her - to make big book. But now not with Akhmadulina - with people close to the poet, with her friends and relatives.

Some of these people accompanied her throughout her life, others collided with her on a short segment of the journey. These people share their impressions of Bella Akhmadulina, each trying to create her portrait in their own way.

In the book “Bella. Meetings after" included interviews with Vladimir Voinovich, Yuri Rost, Marina Vladi, Mikhail Shemyakin, Laura Guerra, Zoya Boguslavskaya, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Zhanna Andreeva, Maria Bankul, Vsevolod and Felix Rossels. Work on the book lasted about three years. The authors managed to fill it with unknown documents from the archives, never-before-published diaries of young Bella Akhmadulina.

Bella’s daughter also took part in the presentation. Elizaveta Kulieva:

— My role in the creation of the book is very modest. It’s awkward for me to be on the pages of books next to Voinovich and Shemyakin. The book itself is wonderful, it gives you the feeling that you yourself are talking with the interlocutors of Marina and Yuri. Mom always operated with images, sensations, and associations. The book allows you to look at her through the prism of talent and love. Sometimes it seemed to me that Marina and Yuri began to speak her language and think with her thoughts.

- When Vladimir Voinovich found himself in disgrace, many turned away from him,” said Yuri Kulikov. “Bella Akhmadulina came to Voinovich’s house every evening, they went into the kitchen and talked all evening. Voinovich recalled that Akhmadulina supported him like no one else. He still talks about it with tenderness. One day, Voinovich said, Akhmadulina called and invited her to come over. Her grandson, Leonid Andreev, a guest of the American ambassador, was her guest. We stayed up late. At that time it was difficult to get a taxi, but Voinovich had a Zaporozhets in his yard. And so the three of them arrived at the embassy, the gates were open, and the policeman apparently fell asleep. Voinovich drove the guest all the way to the porch, but when he was reversing out of the embassy territory, the car was stopped by a policeman who jumped out of the booth. Voinovich thought that now he would be in trouble. Then he remembered that Angela Davis had arrived in Moscow. And he said that it was she who brought her to the residence. Voinovich was released. Bella clapped her hands. If she had not been in the car, it is unlikely that he would have decided to pretend to be such a desperate macho, “to violate the state border.”

Another interlocutor was Marina Vladi, who, according to journalists, is not currently giving interviews. To question her and Mikhail Shemyakin, the authors of the book specially flew to Paris. Marina Zavada managed to convince Marina Vladi to tell about Bella Akhmadulina.

— The main reason that Marina Vladi agreed to give an interview was her love for Bella. In the 70s, they had a warm relationship, they communicated like friends,” Zavada said. — When we said goodbye to Marina Vladi, she said that she really wanted us to write a book about Bella. When Marina Vladi lived in Moscow with Vladimir Vysotsky, they often invited Bella and Boris Messerer to visit. Usually all attention was paid to Akhmadulina. Despite the fact that Bella has always been a shy and silent person. Another of our interlocutors, Azary Plisetsky, said that he is very busy, he is planning a business trip to Japan in the coming days, but for the sake of telling a story about Bella, he is ready to postpone the trip. And in general, “I’m ready to do anything for Bella.”

- WITH Mikhail Shemyakin we met in a Parisian cafe in Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” added Yuri Kulikov. “He came to the meeting in his traditional riding breeches and black boots. He patted the pocket of his riding breeches and said that he was carrying with him a volume of poems by Bella Akhmadulina. Moreover, he reads poetry in a unique way: he takes a book, underlines something and makes notes. When we asked him why he was doing this, Shemyakin said: perhaps someday he will illustrate Akhmadulina’s poems.

— What place do the memories of the “sixties” occupy in the book?

“Unfortunately, neither Vasily Aksenov, nor Andrei Voznesensky, nor Bulat Okudzhava were alive,” answered Marina Zavada. - But we decided to talk, for example, with Zoya Boguslavskaya, Voznesensky’s wife, an observant actor those years and events. She is a perceptive and intelligent person. But it seems that Zoya Borisovna somewhat exaggerated the degree of Bella Akhmadulina’s feelings for Andrei Voznesensky. Voznesensky treated Akhmadulina as a deity all his life. And every year, while he was healthy, on Bella Akhmadulina’s birthday, he brought her a huge bouquet of roses.

— Yevtushenko and Akhmadulina maintained their relationship. When they lived in Peredelkino, they visited each other’s dachas and walked along the paths of the village,” added Yuri Kulikov.

— Did you manage to put all the most important things into the book?

“We tried not to miss a single detail that emerged during conversations. Although, of course, we know more than we wrote,” Yuri Kulikov answered.

“We weren’t able to make a book with her, this is the main loss,” added Marina Zavada. - Not only for us.

In addition to the presentation, the guests visited the B. N. Yeltsin Museum, which they talked about in an interview for the Yeltsin Center website.

“I had the feeling that I lived through the 90s again,” Yuri Kulikov shared his impressions. — When there was a putsch in 1991, I was at the White House and I am aware of the role of Boris Yeltsin. He was a great man who in those days saved freedom and democracy. I remember, of course, what happened in 1993, when Ostankino and the mayor’s office were destroyed.

- It was scary time, added Marina Zavada. — Makashov was there, the crowd was going to take Ostankino. At that time I worked at VGTRK. Then the broadcast abruptly ended, and at some point there was a heavy feeling until we, at VGTRK, got a backup studio working. I remember all this very well... The Yeltsin Center amazes with the scale of the exhibition, with the way everything is lovingly collected and presented here. Everything is done very seriously professional level. One can feel the hand of a strong and intelligent organizer.

“It’s clear how carefully the exhibition was prepared,” added Yuri Kulikov. “And different points of view are presented.” For example, for the war in Chechnya. You have both points of view on this war. What is very important: there are no panegyrics for the era, just different points of view are presented.

“I was amazed by the scale and professional work that was done at the Yeltsin Center,” shared Elizaveta Kulieva. — Everything is done with great taste. I like modern museums aimed at children and young people. There is a lot of work behind this.

“Some of our interlocutors lovingly cherished Akhmadulina’s letters and notes,” Yuri Kulikov shared his impressions of the creation of the book.

— For example, the family of Maria Bankul, an associate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, preserved stacks of letters that Akhmadulina wrote in the 60s and early 70s. We were struck by the diaries that we found in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art; Akhmadulina kept them in the early 60s, being the wife of Yuri Nagibin. The archive also preserves a large selection of poems written in the 50s by the hand of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, when he was Akhmadulina’s husband. Having divorced Yevtushenko, Akhmadulina kept these poems.

— How did Evgeny Yevtushenko, who was not only her first husband, but also one of those who welcomed Akhmadulina to literature, perceive the idea of creating a book?

“Positive,” said Marina Zavada. — He himself wrote about Bella more than once. And always with admiration.

Yuri Kulikov and Marina Zavada signing autographs

Probably no one knew and felt Bella Akhmadulina as much as her daughter Elizaveta, who was a participant in meetings of creative and gifted people in her mother’s house. According to Elizaveta’s recollections, Bella Akhatovna perceived creativity with Pasternak-like ease, following the principle “you shouldn’t start archives or worry about manuscripts.” At the same time, Bella Akhmadulina treated other people’s poems with greater reverence than her own.

“Mom treated Yevtushenko and Voznesensky with great friendly warmth,” said Elizaveta Kulieva. “But they weren’t very close.” More precisely, they were close in their youth, but then they grew very apart. Yevtushenko and Voznesensky are mainstream poets who flourished under Soviet power. My grandmother’s letter, quoted in the book, sounds very funny in the context of Zoya Boguslavskaya’s stories that Voznesensky is practically a dissident, while Voznesensky and Yevtushenko always “were within the bounds.” My grandmother loved the newspaper Pravda and wrote to my mother: “I read Voznesensky’s poem, how beautifully he writes about Lenin, he is such a great guy. Bellochka, you should write the same way too.” And it sounded very ironic. Probably, my mother always had a somewhat biased attitude towards Yevtushenko and Voznesensky: she forgave them what she would not forgive others. At the same time, she made fun of them. But she never spoke badly.

— Joseph Brodsky attributed Akhmadulina to the Lermontov-Pasternak line in poetry, although, rather, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva is closer to her in spirit. What is your opinion?

— Tsvetaeva is more emotional, probably, if we evaluate female poets, my mother is between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. Akhmatova is too masculine for a woman, Tsvetaeva is “too” a woman. Mom had an inner rigidity characteristic of men. In general, I love my mother’s early poems more, and in them I hear Osip Mandelstam - this is when the poet is inspired not by a theme and an idea, but by a language and an image. When language is not a tool, but poets follow language, serve it, and are inspired by it.

“She had her own pantheon, which she built in her texts and which is visible from the dedications: it included Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova and Pasternak. Pushkin heads this pantheon. Among prose writers, she liked Nabokov and Bunin.

— Was Akhmadulina a fighter by nature who defended her principles under any circumstances? When Akhmadulina was only twenty years old, her work was harshly criticized in the country's leading newspapers.

— The poet has his own battlefield. It was a struggle on an invisible front, rather an internal confrontation. Unlike Vladimir Voinovich, she was not an active anti-Soviet. She was simply imbued with freedom, free internally. And this offended many. She defended precisely internal freedom.

“Nevertheless, Akhmadulina supported Sakharov and Voinovich. And it was precisely an open position.

— Yes, she also stood up for Georgy Vladimov. They discussed this with Voinovich. Mom was not a desperately brave person, but there is such a moral and human level when people simply could not live with a bad conscience. This does not mean that they were not afraid, including for the children. But mom was famous, too frank, and everyone knew what to expect from her.

Elizaveta Kulieva with her daughter, Marina Zavada, Yuri Kulikov

— Bella Akhatovna also refused to participate in the persecution of Boris Pasternak, which cost her expulsion from the Literary Institute, and she risked that her poems would not be published. How did she explain this?

“She said she couldn’t live with it.”

— How did her parents feel about Bella Akhatovna’s principled position? As you know, her father was a major Soviet official?

- They treated me badly. Because of this, my mother did not communicate with her mother for many years. Because these were insurmountable contradictions. Grandmother was naive, believed in the ideas of communism, wrote letters to the Pravda newspaper and tried to return my mother to the right path. But this was impossible. Mom began to understand everything very early. And in the end, this made their communication impossible.

— In what spirit were you raised—creative freedom or strictness?

- Together. We were left to our own devices, even excessively. But we were subject to strict requirements regarding behavior among adults or at the table. Among the adults we behaved seriously.

— Which of the “sixties” visited your house?

- Many. The closest people were Aksenov and Voinovich, but I was six years old when they left. The regulars were Bitov, Rein, and Viktor Erofeev. By the way, my mother never used this word - “sixties” and did not classify herself as a “sixties”. Mom has nothing in common with the company of writers with whom she is associated; she is an independent poet. The fact that she conquered stadiums is a happy coincidence of circumstances, nature, which endowed her with a beautiful appearance and a wonderful voice, artistry and charm. But the texts she broadcast from the stage are intimate, subtle and complex art. Stadiums are a happy accident. But they gained enormous fame, which ultimately protected her. The fame that Vysotsky, mother and Okudzhava had was their protection, they had to be reckoned with.

— Did the creative atmosphere that reigned in the house inspire you to take up a pen and try yourself as a poet?

— We constantly attended my mother’s creative evenings, especially me. It was part of life - a mother who read poetry. It was a natural environment. And I didn’t think that I could do anything else other than write and draw. This is what I do now.

- To sum it up. What was Bella Akhmadulina like?

- You can understand this by reading the book. She was very different. She could write “Day-Raphael” with one hand and clean the sink or prepare dolma with the other. Like any deep personality, a thinking, talented person, she manifested herself in very different ways in different situations. But she was by no means cut off from life. You could say she knew how to get along with life.

Photos by Lyubov Kabalinova

Marina Vladi - about Bella Akhmadulina. Chapter from the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella: Meetings Afterwards”

On April 10, Bella Akhmadulina would have turned 80 years old. Marina Vladi's memories of Bella Akhmadulina, which Ogonyok publishes, are one of the chapters of the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov "Bella. Meetings after" *

*The book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after” is published by the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house. The authors' interlocutors were Vladimir Voinovich, Marina Vladi, Azary Plisetsky, Laura Guerra, Mikhail Shemyakin, the poet's daughters Elizaveta and Anna...

It’s sad, but life turned out to be uncompassionate towards Vladi. Too many losses... And yet. Is vitality noticeable if fate caresses you? When, having placed juice, still water and “balloons” on the table in the garden, Marina began talking about Akhmadulina in her unique, unchanged voice, traces of time and its dramas disappeared. She blushed, remembering Bella, their Moscow and Paris meetings... She laughed more and more loudly. The one sitting in front of us was the former Marina Vladi, who, they say, drove the entire male population of the USSR crazy.

— Your compatriot Herve Bazin noted that at some stage a young woman becomes a woman still young. Late sixties. Akhmadulina is over thirty. What does she look like to a Parisian?

It seems to me that the first time I came into contact with Bella was at her concert, to which Volodya brought me. We were sitting in the audience with him, and suddenly Akhmadulina announced from the stage: “Now there are several poems about Marina.” And in a chant: “I love you, Marina, that you...” (smiling, imitates). What happened to me! I blushed terribly. I still have this ability to blush from embarrassment. I thought that Akhmadulina wrote poems about me. Shrinking, she looked at Volodya in confusion. He listened without saying a word. And then - wow, I realized that Bella was reading about Marina Tsvetaeva. I blushed even more, I just turned purple. I was so ashamed. She scolded herself: “You vile girl, how could you imagine that Akhmadulina wrote something about you?!” Stupid situation. But I was a big star, I was used to being admired... There was such noise and commotion around me. So I made a mistake with Akhmadulina. This is definitely my first memory of her. Bella, to whom I confessed everything afterwards, had a lot of fun.

— Recalling the year of filming in the film “The Plot for a Short Story,” you wrote: “...the circle of friends is narrowing. Now only the closest ones remain...” Among them, “Bella Akhmadulina is a brilliant and enthusiastic poetess.” “Brilliant” is Vysotsky’s assessment?

— Did you already know that he is a genius?

“You don’t pay attention to such nonsense.”

— (Laughs.) That time I did. Either because she was already looking at Vysotsky as a woman looks at a man, or he was completely poorly dressed. He had some creepy boots. And a terrible haircut.

- Okay, “brilliant poetess” is the opinion of both. And “enthusiastic” is probably your remark? Did Bella seem a little "too much" to you? Un peu trop - is that what the French say?

- That's right: too much. Bella was all too much. Too. But she couldn’t be like everyone else. She was unique.

- A lot of water will leak. Volodya will finally be released from the USSR, he and I will travel halfway around the world before meeting Joseph in a cafe in New York in Greenwich Village. Vysotsky read new poems to him, Brodsky listened attentively. Then he took us to his home and gave us his last book as a farewell gift. There was a lot to be euphoric about. Never before - what great poets there are! — the official poets did not count Vysotsky among their guild. Only Akhmadulina stood apart, confident that Volodya was a poet from God. The others thought he had rhymes. Naturally, Vysotsky was inspired by Bella’s assessment. I saw that Volodya doted on her, I saw how much she loved him. This brought us closer.

— It would seem that it is really so important: a poet is not a poet? Vysotsky already had crazy fame, a whole country of admirers, including (secretly) his persecutors.

- Ha! This is why he died, because he was not officially recognized. Endless refusals and reluctance to be accepted into the writing community greatly hurt my pride.

- Lord, he was received by Akhmadulina and Brodsky!

Evening on Povarskaya. December 15, 1976. From left to right: Ivan Bortnik, Tonino Guerra, Angelo de Genti, Laura Guerra, Boris Messerer, Yuri Lyubimov, Vladimir Vysotsky, Bella Akhmadulina, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ilya Bylinkin, Irina Sobinova-Kassil, Andrei Voznesensky

Photo: Valery Plotnikov / photo archive of Ogonyok magazine

— A year before his death, Vysotsky put on the same level with those who “punched in the gut”, “broke their wings”, nice friends and buddies who saw in him only a self-taught bard: “And they gave me good advice, / A little patronizingly, clapping on the shoulder, / My friends are famous poets: / - You shouldn’t rhyme “screaming, sticking out.” Is this a made-up phrase or did someone actually say it?

— I associate the squirrel more with the workshop. We've been there a lot. Volodya appreciated that he was accepted in this house, where interesting people gathered. There was a bohemian atmosphere there. Canvases, paints, frames, crowding... Not very suitable for life. Several times I even scrubbed the bathtub. It wasn't that dirty, but the rust was ingrained and you couldn't get it off. Maybe they washed their brushes. Obviously, Belka gave up on this. Different character. I can't live like this.

Excuse me, I’ll still go to the neighbors and find out what’s so noisy there. This sound got me.

The visit to the fence seems to be in vain.

On the other side of the fence is her former house, a little reminiscent of the mansion in which my mother lived in Russia before the revolution. The famous house, bought in the respectable Maisons-Laffite by fifteen-year-old Marina Vladi with the first royalties for the large clan of the Polyakovs - the Baidarovs. And now she sold it. I moved into a garage, not a garage - in general, into a well-reconstructed outbuilding. Marina touches on this topic in passing, and we don’t ask questions. So it was necessary... And there is a tunnel leading to the old house. More precisely, it was laid from there - to Marina. The neighbors' dogs, whose puzzled faces have been sticking out from under the fence for more than an hour.

— Your first husband, Robert Hossein, believed that the Polyakovs transferred the life of a large Russian noble family to Paris. And in Moscow, like it or not, the French mentality made itself felt. And although regular guests and a rich table are very Russian, they say you tried to close the house to random people. And for whom were the doors open?

—Who set the tone for the feast? He? Bella?

- She, like you, acted in films. What is the opinion of the famous actress on this matter?

— I know that Bella played Vasya Shukshin in the film, but I didn’t watch it. So I can't judge (laughs) what an artist she turned out to be. Reading poetry and playing a role are different techniques. But when Bella went on stage, she became inimitable and had a magical effect on the audience.

— Do you really think Akhmadulina was funny, even playful, as she said about herself? Did you respond easily to jokes?

- To the river station.

- Excessive?

-Where did this come from?

- Ha! This is freedom. Again, temperament. The feeling of being someone. Bella understood perfectly well: she was not like everyone else. She is exceptional.

— Marina, we are grateful to you.

— (Laughs.) You can... I'm really closed now, I refuse meetings. But Belka is a dear part of my life, which then... disappeared. What did we talk about with her? She, by the way, was extremely flirtatious. Bella has a rare beauty. The men were dying for her. Belka was not mistaken about this. She was aware of her strength. Oh-ho-ho, how! I criticized her: “Why do you put so much makeup on your face?”

— Did I listen to you?

— Did Akhmadulina try to help?

“I helped those who had someone to pour out my soul to.” How could Belka really help me?

- She knew everything, but she declared: “I have never seen Vysotsky drunk in my life.” Partisan.

“Maybe Bella didn’t see how terribly drunk he was.” I might not have known everything. But even if she did know, it was not discussed for her. With anyone. That's Bella. Wall...

— Do you have her gifts?

— You yourself gave Akhmadulina a royal gift on New Year’s Eve 1977, inviting her and her husband to France.

— You rented an apartment at 28 Rue Roussel? We walked past this house a couple of times.

— It was you who dyed Akhmadulina’s hair blonde in Paris? Did it suit her?

- Do you think so? Why?

— Do you remember the dialogue between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, on the eve of the war they agreed by phone to meet on Bolshaya Ordynka? “I’ll call a normal person now to explain how to get to us.” This is Anna Andreevna. And Tsvetaeva’s answer: “Can a normal person explain to an abnormal person?”

— (Laughs.) I remember. It seems like I read this once... So, Bella and Volodya are even more geniuses. In Paris you have to try hard to get lost. The small town. People walk from end to end. And they, although they were like children: they walked, looked around, said how wonderful it was, but they were not children after all.

— Are they Akhmadulina, Messerer and Vysotsky?

— Did Akhmadulina tell you that at the desk of your apartment she dared to write a letter to Nabokov in Montreux?

- It is also impossible that she, like many in our country, condemned your new marriage - with Leon Schwarzenberg. “Likewise”, and even more so “many” - is this really about Akhmadulina?

— This is the Novodevichy cemetery. Akhmadulina lies there now.

- Why did Bella die?

— Oncology.

— How did you find out about Akhmadulina’s death? Has she become one of your losses in a string of losses that gradually cease to deafen you?

The book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after" is published by the publishing house "Young Guard". The authors' interlocutors were Vladimir Voinovich, Marina Vladi, Azary Plisetsky, Laura Guerra, Mikhail Shemyakin, the poet's daughters Elizaveta and Anna

- Since the thirty-seventh.

Maisons-Laffite - Paris

On June 2, the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg hosted a presentation of a book with the lyrical title “Bella. Meetings later." The title is not accidental: the book is dedicated to one of the brightest poets of the second half of the twentieth century - Bella Akhmadulina. The authors are journalists Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov. Their work was published by the Young Guard publishing house. Bella Akhmadulina’s daughter Elizaveta Kulieva also came to Yekaterinburg to present the book.

“The book consists of interviews with people who were associated with Bella Akhmadulina,” Marina Zavada said at a meeting with future readers of the book. – Some of these people accompanied her throughout her life, others collided with her on a short stretch of the way. These people share their impressions of Bella Akhmadulina, each trying to create her portrait in their own way.

Ten years ago, journalists from the Izvestia newspaper conducted a long interview with Akhmadulina. The meeting with the poet went well and later inspired journalists to develop the topic.

Photo by Lyubov Kabalinova

01 /07

“Bella Akhatovna was friendly, hospitable and very beautiful,” Marina Zavada shared her memories. – We asked her about what she thinks about life in the country, about the events of the 90s. During the first interview, we spent about four hours with Bella Akhatovna, she listened attentively to the questions, did not interrupt, and her answers were brilliant and unexpected. The interview was published on two newspaper pages. After that, we occasionally called each other. And somehow the idea came up to make a book of dialogues with Akhmadulina. She responded willingly; she wanted to talk about her life. In recent years, Bella Akhatovna’s vision became worse and worse and she could no longer write anything. Unfortunately, circumstances were against it. Years later, after Akhmadulina’s death, the idea arose to fulfill a kind of duty to her - to make a big book. But now not with Akhmadulina - with people close to the poet, with her friends and relatives.

Elizaveta Kulieva at the presentation of the book “Bella. Meetings after"

Video: Alexander Polyakov

In the book “Bella. Meetings after" included interviews with Elizaveta Kulieva, daughter of Bella Akhmadulina, Vladimir Voinovich, Yuri Rost, Marina Vladi, Mikhail Shemyakin, Laura Guerra, Zoya Boguslavskaya, Evgeny Evtushenko, Zhanna Andreeva, Maria Bankul, Vsevolod and Felix Rossels. Work on the book lasted about three years. The authors managed to fill it with unknown documents from the archives, never-before-published diaries of young Bella Akhmadulina.

“My role in the creation of the book is very modest,” said Bella Akhmadulina’s daughter Elizaveta Kulieva. – It’s awkward for me to be on the pages of books next to Voinovich and Shemyakin. The book itself is wonderful, it gives you the feeling that you yourself are talking with the interlocutors of Marina and Yuri. Mom always operated with images, sensations, and associations. The book allows you to look at her through the prism of talent and love. Sometimes it seemed to me that Marina and Yuri began to speak her language and think with her thoughts.

“When Vladimir Voinovich fell into disgrace, many turned away from him,” said Yuri Kulikov. – Bella Akhmadulina came to Voinovich’s house every evening, they went into the kitchen and talked all evening. Voinovich recalled that Akhmadulina supported him like no one else. He still talks about it with tenderness. One day, Voinovich said, Akhmadulina called and invited her to come over. Her grandson, Leonid Andreev, a guest of the American ambassador, was her guest. We stayed up late. At that time it was difficult to get a taxi, but Voinovich had a Zaporozhets in his yard. And so the three of them arrived at the embassy, the gates were open, and the policeman apparently fell asleep. Voinovich drove the guest all the way to the porch, but when he was reversing out of the embassy territory, the car was stopped by a policeman who jumped out of the booth. Voinovich thought that now he would be in trouble. Then he remembered that Angela Davis had arrived in Moscow. And he said that it was she who brought her to the residence. Voinovich was released. Bella clapped her hands. If she had not been in the car, it is unlikely that he would have decided to pretend to be such a desperate macho, “to violate the state border.”

Another interlocutor was Marina Vladi, who, according to journalists, is not giving interviews at the moment. To question her and Mikhail Shemyakin, the authors of the book specially flew to Paris. Marina Zavada managed to convince Marina Vladi to tell about Bella Akhmadulina.

– The main reason that Marina Vladi agreed to give an interview was her love for Bella. In the 70s, they had a warm relationship, they communicated like friends,” Zavada said. – When we said goodbye to Marina Vladi, she said that she really wanted us to write a book about Bella. When Marina Vladi lived in Moscow with Vladimir Vysotsky, they often invited Bella and Boris Messerer to visit. Usually all attention was paid to Akhmadulina. Despite the fact that Bella has always been a shy and silent person. Another of our interlocutors, Azary Plisetsky, said that he is very busy, he is planning a business trip to Japan in the coming days, but for the sake of telling a story about Bella, he is ready to postpone the trip. And in general, “I’m ready to do anything for Bella.”

“We met with Mikhail Shemyakin in a Parisian cafe in Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” added Yuri Kulikov. “He came to the meeting in his traditional riding breeches and black boots. He patted the pocket of his riding breeches and said that he was carrying with him a volume of poems by Bella Akhmadulina. Moreover, he reads poetry in a unique way: he takes a book, underlines something and makes notes. When we asked him why he was doing this, Shemyakin said: perhaps someday he will illustrate Akhmadulina’s poems.

According to her daughter Akhmadulina, Bella Akhatovna was a person of principle. If someone behaved dishonestly, she could simply not shake hands with the person. And the bright and talented Akhmadulina was often envied, but she never allowed herself to respond negatively to this.

Photo by Lyubov Kabalinova

01 /05

Presentation of the book about Akhmadulina “Bella. Meetings after"

After the presentation, the audience asked questions to the participants.

– What place do the memories of the “sixties” occupy in the book?

“Unfortunately, neither Vasily Aksenov, nor Andrei Voznesensky, nor Bulat Okudzhava were alive,” answered Marina Zavada. – But we decided to talk, for example, with Zoya Boguslavskaya, Voznesensky’s wife, an observant protagonist of those years and events. She is a perceptive and intelligent person. But it seems that Zoya Borisovna somewhat exaggerated the degree of Bella Akhmadulina’s feelings for Andrei Voznesensky. Voznesensky treated Akhmadulina as a deity all his life. And every year, while he was healthy, on Bella Akhmadulina’s birthday, he brought her a huge bouquet of roses.

– Yevtushenko and Akhmadulina maintained their relationship. When they lived in Peredelkino, they visited each other’s dachas and walked along the paths of the village,” added Yuri Kulikov.

– Did you manage to put all the most important things into the book?

“We tried not to miss a single detail that emerged during conversations. Although, of course, we know more than we wrote,” Yuri Kulikov answered.

“We weren’t able to make a book with her, this is the main loss,” added Marina Zavada. - Not only for us.

In addition to the presentation, the guests visited the B.N. Museum. Yeltsin, which was discussed in an interview for the Yeltsin Center website.

“I had the feeling that I lived through the 90s again,” Yuri Kulikov shared his impressions. – When there was a putsch in 1991, I was at the White House and I am aware of the role of Boris Yeltsin. He was a great man who in those days saved freedom and democracy. I remember, of course, what happened in 1993, when Ostankino and the mayor’s office were destroyed.

“It was a scary time,” added Marina Zavada. – Makashov was there, the crowd was going to take Ostankino. At that time I worked at VGTRK. Then the broadcast abruptly ended, and at some point there was a heavy feeling until we, at VGTRK, got a backup studio working. I remember all this very well... The Yeltsin Center amazes with the scale of the exhibition, with the way everything is lovingly collected and presented here. Everything was done at a very serious professional level. One can feel the hand of a strong and intelligent organizer.

“You can see how carefully the exposition was prepared,” added Yuri Kulikov. – And different points of view are presented. For example, for the war in Chechnya. You have both points of view on this war. What is very important: there are no panegyrics for the era, just different points of view are presented.

“I was amazed by the scale and professional work that was done at the Yeltsin Center,” shared Elizaveta Kulieva. – Everything is done with great taste. I like modern museums aimed at children and young people. There is a lot of work behind this.

“Some of our interlocutors lovingly cherished Akhmadulina’s letters and notes,” Yuri Kulikov shared his impressions of the creation of the book. – For example, the family of Maria Bankul, an associate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, preserved stacks of letters that Akhmadulina wrote in the 60s and early 70s. We were struck by the diaries that we found in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art; Akhmadulina kept them in the early 60s, being the wife of Yuri Nagibin. The archive also preserves a large selection of poems written in the 50s by the hand of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, when he was Akhmadulina’s husband. Having divorced Yevtushenko, Akhmadulina kept these poems.

– How did Evgeny Yevtushenko, who was not only her first husband, but also one of those who welcomed Akhmadulina to literature, perceive the idea of creating a book?

“Positive,” said Marina Zavada. – He himself wrote about Bella more than once. And always with admiration.

Photo by Lyubov Kabalinova

01 /05

Presentation of the book about Akhmadulina “Bella. Meetings after"

“Mom treated Yevtushenko and Voznesensky with great friendly warmth,” said Elizaveta Kulieva. “But they weren’t very close.” More precisely, they were close in their youth, but then they grew very apart. Yevtushenko and Voznesensky are mainstream poets who flourished under Soviet rule. My grandmother’s letter, quoted in the book, sounds very funny in the context of Zoya Boguslavskaya’s stories that Voznesensky is practically a dissident, while Voznesensky and Yevtushenko always “were within the bounds.” My grandmother loved the newspaper Pravda and wrote to my mother: “I read Voznesensky’s poem, how beautifully he writes about Lenin, he is such a great guy. Bellochka, you should write the same way too.” And it sounded very ironic. Probably, my mother always had a somewhat biased attitude towards Yevtushenko and Voznesensky: she forgave them what she would not forgive others. At the same time, she made fun of them. But she never spoke badly.

– Joseph Brodsky attributed Akhmadulina to the Lermontov-Pasternak line in poetry, although, rather, the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva is closer to her in spirit. What is your opinion?

– Tsvetaeva is more emotional, probably, if we evaluate female poets, my mother is between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. Akhmatova is too masculine for a woman, Tsvetaeva is “too” a woman. Mom had an inner rigidity characteristic of men. In general, I love my mother’s early poems more, and in them I hear Osip Mandelstam - this is when the poet is inspired not by a theme and an idea, but by a language and an image. When language is not a tool, but poets follow language, serve it, and are inspired by it.

– She had her own pantheon, which she built in her texts and which is visible from the dedications: it included Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova and Pasternak. Pushkin heads this pantheon. Among prose writers, she liked Nabokov and Bunin.

– Was Akhmadulina a fighter by nature who defended her principles under any circumstances? When Akhmadulina was only twenty years old, her work was harshly criticized in the country's leading newspapers.

- The poet has his own battlefield. It was a struggle on an invisible front, rather an internal confrontation. Unlike Vladimir Voinovich, she was not an active anti-Soviet. She was simply imbued with freedom, free internally. And this offended many. She defended precisely internal freedom.

– Nevertheless, Akhmadulina supported Sakharov and Voinovich. And it was precisely an open position.

– Yes, she also stood up for Georgy Vladimov. They discussed this with Voinovich. Mom was not a desperately brave person, but there is such a moral and human level when people simply could not live with a bad conscience. This does not mean that they were not afraid, including for the children. But mom was famous, too frank, and everyone knew what to expect from her.

– Bella Akhatovna also refused to participate in the persecution of Boris Pasternak, which cost her expulsion from the Literary Institute, and she risked that her poems would not be published. How did she explain this?

“She said she couldn’t live with it.”

– How did her parents feel about Bella Akhatovna’s principled position? As you know, her father was a major Soviet official?

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Elizaveta Kulieva with her daughter, Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov at the Yeltsin Museum

– Which of the “sixties” visited your house?

- Many. The closest people were Aksenov and Voinovich, but I was six years old when they left. The regulars were Bitov, Rein, and Viktor Erofeev. By the way, my mother never used this word – “sixties” and did not classify herself as a “sixties”. Mom has nothing in common with the company of writers with whom she is associated; she is an independent poet. The fact that she conquered stadiums is a happy coincidence of circumstances, nature, which endowed her with a beautiful appearance and a wonderful voice, artistry and charm. But the texts that she broadcast from the stage are intimate, subtle and complex art. Stadiums are a happy accident. But they gained enormous fame, which ultimately protected her. The fame that Vysotsky, mother and Okudzhava had was their protection, they had to be reckoned with.

– Did the creative atmosphere that reigned in the house inspire you to take up a pen and try yourself as a poet?

– We constantly attended my mother’s creative evenings, especially me. It was part of life - a mother who read poetry. It was a natural environment. And I didn’t think that I could do anything else other than write and draw. This is what I do now.

– To sum it up. What was Bella Akhmadulina like?

– You can understand this by reading the book. She was very different. She could write “Day-Raphael” with one hand and clean the sink or prepare dolma with the other. Like any deep personality, thinking, talented person, she showed herself very differently in different situations. But she was by no means cut off from life. You could say she knew how to get along with life.

: Marina Zavada, Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after". And on April 10, 2017, Bella would have turned 80 years old.

Bella Akhmadulina - brilliant poet, translator

10 04 1937 — 29 11 2010

“The book, which begins with a conversation with Bella Akhmadulina herself, shows, without suppression or embellishment, a complex and tragic image of a brilliant person who finds it difficult to cope with an enormous gift, difficult to live, with all his friendships feeling his separateness and otherness. “Meetings after” concludes the unpublished diaries of young Bella Akhmadulina, discovered by the authors, which she kept in 1961-1963, living in Krasnaya Pakhra.”

Memories of Marina Vladi about Bella Akhmadulina

Bella Akhmadulina and Marina Vladi

“Bella was all too much. Too. But she couldn’t be like everyone else. She was unique...

Never before (Joseph Brodsky later called Vysotsky a great poet) have official poets counted Vysotsky among their guild. Only Akhmadulina stood apart, confident that Volodya was a poet from God. The others thought he had rhymes. Naturally, Vysotsky was inspired by Bella’s assessment. I saw that Volodya doted on her, I saw how much she loved him. This brought us closer.

I know that she tried to help with the Writers' Union. I asked one of the bigwigs for Volodya. Useless.

Volodya and I arrived, but the owners were not there. Only the children and the old nanny. But with Bella's arrival, the day flowed magically. This always happened if she was on a roll and read poetry non-stop...

Her poetry is about feelings, friendship, love. The civic position was manifested in life. The fact that she boldly put her name under human rights letters. But this is different. This is civisme, this is civic valor.

But when Bella went on stage, she became inimitable and had a magical effect on the audience.

Bella was laughing. She loved to laugh and loved funny songs. Listening to Vysotsky, she literally fell from laughter... She and I joked endlessly, fooling around. We talked like two girls. But at times it reminded me of the weather in Brittany. This peninsula in France has an unpredictable climate. It was just raining, ten minutes later the sun was blinding your eyes, then suddenly there was a storm and then silence again. Bella could also change in one evening. At first she was joyful, cheerful, happy, then for some reason she became gloomy, even tragique. She began to tell something with dramatic intonations and a mournful face. Having expressed herself in this way, Bella became calm again. Hurricane, sunshine, calm... She had a colossal temperament, more excessif than Volodya. I don’t know how to explain it in Russian.

Bella didn't give me her jewelry. She liked large rings with large stones. I don't wear those. And the hats are not mine. Bella got them later. With age. It suited her. She was a gorgeous woman. What I have from Belka is a piece of paper with a poem written in her handwriting.

And I communicated very closely with Bella, we were real friends. Like sisters. I want you to make a good book about her.

Here are the girls - they want love.

Here are the boys - they want to go hiking.

Weather changes in April

unite all people with people.

O new month, new sovereign,

so you are looking for favor,

so you are generous with favors,

tilting the calendar towards amnesties.

Yes, you will rescue the rivers from their shackles,

you will bring any distance closer,

you give enlightenment to the madman

and you will heal the illnesses of old people.

Only I am not given your mercy.

There is no greed to ask you for this.

You ask, I hesitate to answer

and I turn off the light, and the room is dark.

Bella Akhmadulina. 1960.

“We talked like two girls.” Marina Vladi - about Bella Akhmadulina. Later, in anger, he will reproach: “You don’t read enough.” Well, compared to him, many people look like idiots. And my mother breathed literature, but was a person of a different type, not of academic knowledge

Marina Vladi - about Bella Akhmadulina. Chapter from the book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella: Meetings Afterwards”

Evening on Povarskaya. December 15, 1976. From left to right: Ivan Bortnik, Tonino Guerra, Angelo de Genti, Laura Guerra, Boris Messerer, Yuri Lyubimov, Vladimir Vysotsky, Bella Akhmadulina, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ilya Bylinkin, Irina Sobinova-Kassil, Andrei Voznesensky

The book by Marina Zavada and Yuri Kulikov “Bella. Meetings after" is published by the publishing house "Young Guard". The authors' interlocutors were Vladimir Voinovich, Marina Vladi, Azary Plisetsky, Laura Guerra, Mikhail Shemyakin, the poet's daughters Elizaveta and Anna

Elizaveta Kulieva at the presentation of the book “Bella. Meetings after"