Leonid Aronzon. Poems by Leonid Aronzon

Pskov highway

White churches above my homeland where I am alone.
Somewhere there is a river, where melancholy has covered the isthmus...

Black birds scurry above me like targets,
the horses float and float, skirting villages.
Here is the highway. The pungent smell of autumn smoke.
The leaves have fallen, the last nests remain,
Torn October, and the groves rush past.
Here is the river, where is the melancholy, what is left behind them?

I will live, I will scream like an autumn bird,
circling low, I will take everything on faith, except death,
near death, like somewhere a river near leaves,
near love and not so far from the capital.
Here are the trees. Aren't they scared in the forest at night?
Long headlights scare the pillars, and behind them
branches knock and cast shadows on the groves.
Wet asphalt is reflected in the skin of your beloved.

Everything remains. So hello, my belatedness!
I won’t find it, I’ll lose it, but something will happen.
Near me, and even after it remained for someone
torn autumn, like a bird shot down in autumn.
White churches and the poor are our pastimes!
Everything remains, remains, and, stretching out their necks,
the horses float and float, plunge into the grass,
black birds scurry above me like targets.

***
Morning

Everyone is light and small who has climbed to the top of the hill.
How light and small it is, crowning the top of a forest hill!
Whose wave is there, whose soul or is it the prayer itself?
The top of a forest hill turns us into children!

and the top of the hill is adorned by a naked child!
If this is a child, who raised him so high?
The stems of sand sedges are stained with children's blood.

This memory of paradise crowns the hilltop!
Not a baby, but an angel crowns the hilltop,
it’s not blood on the sedge, but overgrown poppy in the grass!
Whoever it is, child or angel, is a prisoner of these hills,
The hilltop makes us fall to our knees,
At the top of the hill you suddenly drop to your knees!
It's not a child there - a soul enclosed in a child's flesh,
not a baby, but a sign, a sign that the Lord is nearby!
The leaves of distant trees are like small fish in nets,
look at the peaks: a child is playing on each one!
When collecting flowers, call them: here is mallow! here's the poppy!
it is the memory of God that crowns the hilltop!

***
Aronzon's vision

The sky is deserted and frosty.
The number of immortals has sunk into the depths.
But the guard angel endures the cold,
meandering low between the stars.

And in the room with luxurious hair
my wife's face turns white on the bed,
the wife's face, and in it her eyes,
and two wonderful breasts grow on the body.

I kiss the face on the crown of the head.
It’s so cold that you can’t hold back your tears.
I have fewer and fewer friends among the living.
More and more friends among the dead.

Snow illuminates the beauty of your faces,
space illuminates your soul,
and with every kiss I say goodbye...
The candle I carry is burning

to the top of the hill. Snowy hillock.
Looking to the heavens. The moon was still yellow
dividing the hill into a dark slope and a white one.
A forest stretched along the left side.

New snow was falling on the hard crust.
Here and there sedges bristled.
Indistinguishable, on the dark side
there was the same boron. The moon was shining from the side.

An example of somnambulistic quirks,
I rose, raising shadows.
Brought to his knees by the top,
I easily stuck a candle into the lush snow.

(January) 1968

Rita

Whether it's melancholy or joy, it's all the same:
Beautiful weather all around!
Is it a landscape, a street, a window,
whether infancy, maturity of the year, -
my house is not empty when you are in it
was at least an hour, at least in passing:
I bless all nature
for coming into my house!

(September?) 1968

***
Bridges approach each other at night,
And the best gold fades in gardens and churches.
Through the landscapes you go to bed, it's you
pinned to my life like a butterfly.

***
There is silence between everything. One.
One silence, another, another.
Full of silences, each one -
There is material for a poetic network.

And the word is a thread. Thread it through a needle
and use word thread to make a window -
the silence is now framed,
it is the cell of the net in the sonnet.

The larger the cell, the larger
the size of the soul entangled in it.
Any abundant catch will be smaller,

than the hunter who dares to dare
tie such a giant network,
which would have one cell!

***
Two identical sonnets

My love, sleep, my darling,
all dressed in satin leather.

My love, sleep my little darling,
all dressed in satin leather.
It seems to me that we met somewhere:
I am so familiar with your nipple and underwear.

Oh, how fitting! oh, how do you like it! oh, how it goes!
this whole day, this whole Bach, this whole body!
and this day, and this Bach, and the plane,
flying there, flying here, flying somewhere!

And in this garden, and in this Bach, and in this moment
sleep, my love, sleep without hiding:
and the face and the butt, and the butt and the groin, and the groin and the face -
let everything fall asleep, let everything fall asleep, my living one!

Without moving one iota or one step closer,
give yourself to me in all the gardens and cases!

***
Blank sonnet

Who loved you more enthusiastically than me?
God bless you, God bless you, God bless you.
There are gardens, there are gardens, there are in the night,
and you are in the gardens, and you are standing in the gardens too.

I wish, I wish I had my sorrow
to instill in you like this, instill in you like this without disturbing
your view of the grass at night, your view of its stream,
so that that sadness, so that that grass becomes our bed.

To penetrate the night, to penetrate the garden, to penetrate you,
raise your eyes, raise your eyes to heaven
compare the night in the garden, and the garden in the night, and the garden,
which is full of your night voices.

I'm going at them. Face full of eyes...
So that you stand in them, the gardens are standing.

***
Alas, I live. Deadly dead.
The words were filled with silence.
Nature gift carpet
I rolled the original one into a roll.

Before all that is, at night
I lie there, staring at them.
Glen Gould - the fate of my taper
plays with music notes.

Here is consolation in sorrow,
but it makes it even worse.
Thoughts swarm without meeting.

An airy flower, without roots,
Here is my tame butterfly.
Life is given, what to do with it?

November 1969

***
The whole face: face - face,
dust is a face, words are a face,
everything is a face. His. Creator.
Only He himself is without a face.

***
Thank you for the snow
for the sun on Your snow,
for the fact that this whole century has been given to me
I can thank You.

In front of me is not a bush, but a temple,
temple of Your bush in the snow,
and in it, falling at Your feet,
I couldn't be happier.

***
Aren't you, crazy about the tender,
with the tirelessness of a camel
walked the whole sea along the coast,
Are you haunted by night thoughts?

And isn't it possible for you to come without clothes?
an unarmed angel descended
and with utopian hope
for an intoxicating friendship?

So is it really the mind of the sea
was there only wind, only noise?
I saw: your angel is not hiding

slowly flying in thought
to your desert, to your allotment,
gloomy by your apostasy.

(1969 or 1970)

***
Still in the morning mists
your lips are young.
Your flesh is sanctified by God,
like gardens and like their fruits.

I'm standing in front of you
like lying on top
that mountain where the blue
takes a long time to turn blue.

What's happier than a garden?
be in the garden? And in the morning - in the morning?
And what a joy it is
Confuse day and eternity!

***
My God, how beautiful everything is!
Every time, like never before.
There is no break in beauty.
I would turn away, but where?

Because it is river,
the wind is quivering and cool.
No world behind:
whatever it is is in front of me.

(Spring? 1970)

***
The dawn is two steps behind you.
You are standing along a beautiful garden.
I look - but there is no beauty,
only quietly and joyfully nearby.

Only autumn has cast its net,
catches souls for the heavenly alcove.
May God let us die at this moment
and, God forbid, not remembering anything.

***
How good it is to be in abandoned places!
Abandoned by people, but not by gods.

And it rains and the beauty gets wet
an ancient grove raised by hills.

We are alone here, people are no match for us.
Oh, what a blessing it is to drink in the fog!
Remember the path of the fallen leaf

Remember the path of the fallen leaf
and the thought that we are following us.

Or did we reward ourselves?

Who awarded us, friend, with such dreams?
Or did we reward ourselves?
You don't need a damn thing to shoot yourself here:
no burden in the soul, no gunpowder in the revolver.

Not the gun itself. God knows
You don’t need anything to shoot yourself here.

Leonid Aronzon born March 24, 1939. In 1963 he graduated from the Pedagogical Institute and taught Russian language and literature in evening schools for about five years. Since 1966, he wrote scripts for popular science films.

During the poet's lifetime, his poems were practically not published (except for a few written for children). After 1976, foreign publications appeared. In 1979, Elena Schwartz compiled a book of selected poems by L. Aronzon, which formed the basis of a collection published in 1985 in Jerusalem. In 1990, Aronzon’s first book was published in his homeland, prepared by Vladimir Erlem. In 1994, the poet’s book, compiled by Elena Schwartz, was published in St. Petersburg in an expanded form.

Aronzon's early works on poetics differ little from the poems of other young interesting poets of the early sixties, although his extraordinary talent is already felt in them. The early Aronzon has a lot in common with the early Joseph Brodsky. However, starting from 1964, the paths of the poets diverged sharply. The main theme of Brodsky's poetry is the opposition between the high and low planes of existence, the crowd of objects and the cold, indifferent space, which at the level of poetry is expressed, for example, in the contrast between an unusually wide vocabulary and rigid, “bookish” syntax, regular verse. Aronzon's path is completely different - the world is dear to him in its momentary, indivisible unity. If Brodsky is a metaphysical poet, then Aronzon is a visionary poet.

Critic V. Kulakov (30) * in a review of L. Aronzon’s books published in his homeland, wrote: “Obsession with death is the first thing that catches your eye when reading L. Aronzon’s poems. “When I, your dear, die.. ", "I want to die early...", "If I had died yesterday, today I would be happy and sad..." Or this poem from 1968:

But on the other hand, the critic notes, “the other emotional pole of his poetry is as frantic as an obsession with death, an obsession with the beauty of the surrounding world, a continuously felt and almost unbearably physically unbearable bliss of existence, from which, like death, there is also nowhere to escape.”

Before us is a feeling of absolute beauty, deadly to life or life-giving to death. In L. Aronzon, in general, life and death - these fundamental oppositions - are removed and dissolved in beauty. And this beauty is from God:

The poet's widow, R. M. Purishinskaya, said about Leonid Aronzon very accurately and figuratively: “He came from paradise, which was somewhere close to death.”

Paradise, the Garden of Eden is the world of the poet’s soul and his poems. The world recreated in creativity.L. Aronzon, V. Erl (45) (poet, critic, literary critic, friend of L. Aronzon) calls the world-landscape.

This world of the poet’s soul, according to V. Erle, is luminous and colorful, it is inhabited by light, flying and mobile creatures. The image of a butterfly is very common. The poet cherishes the world in its momentary, undivided unity.

V. Erl distinguishes the most characteristic feature of the world-landscape of L. Aronzon, and this is its complete silence, which the author sometimes wants to break, it is so tense. But this is not simple silence. The poet describes silence, but what kind of silence...

Sometimes this “other” silence, the silence of his world-landscape, is defined by the poet as silence, and silence that “is between everything and is the material for the poetic network.” In the world-landscape, words acquired the most essential thing - silence, colored by intonations.

“The world as beauty” is the dominant feature of Leonid Aronzon’s work. But beauty borders on death in his poetic world:

Read also other articles on the topic “Second Culture Poetry.”

42 years without Leonid Aronzon

Brief overview of events and publications

“In the seventies, Leonid Aronzon, who passed away, was the most attractive and lively figure in Leningrad poetry of that time. His poetics and fate intrigue and fascinate everyone who at that time became a witness or participant in an independent cultural movement - the new Russian counterculture. Of course: an incredible, explosive mixture of absurdity and pure lyricism, ridicule and pathos, rude, on the verge of obscenity, vitality and Buddhist detachment from the world.

In comparison with the refined aestheticism of his short poems, the verbose and detailed Brodsky in the 70s. seemed archaically ponderous, too down-to-earth, too rational. Aronzon’s poems followed “the path of a fallen leaf,” leaving a faint autumn rustle on the ear, developing into the organ sound of a hidden music of meaning, inaccessible to ordinary consciousness, but opening up as a psychedelic insight, as a space of productive repetitions and constant returns to what has already been said, so that again and again again to designate new levels of metaphysical knowledge of what in the language of modern philosophy is called the relationship of Being to Nothing.”

Victor Krivulin. Leonid Aronzon - Brodsky's rival / Hunting for a Mammoth (St. Petersburg, 1998)

“Aronzon, unlike Brodsky, is a poet of heavenly memory; in his verse there is that harmony that has been revered since ancient times by the royal path of poetry. There is neither heavenly, nor childish, nor royal in Brodsky’s verse and thought. This is his, Aronzon’s, position - and this is the nature of his talent.”

Interview with O.A. Sedakova in memory of the poetess Elena Schwartz (May 17, 1948 - March 11, 2010)

“He read his poems as if the Universe stood still at the forefront of this reading. To say that Aronzon’s reading of poetry is ecstatic is to say nothing. Every word he utters is rich and self-sufficient, it looks like a heavenly fruit, filled with pulp, juices, freshness, and strength. The word is not cramped next to others, the pauses between them are echoing and deep, in his poems an unprecedented courageous and elastic, joyful and melodious harmony is born.”

Arkady Rovner.From the book “Remembering Yourself” (“Golden Section”, Moscow, 2010)

“Aronzon created a new ideological and aesthetic springboard for the emerging literary movement. The social escapism of the independent cultural movement received a different, positive development trajectory: from sensual objectivity and expressionism to the creation of its own spiritual and cultural mission.”

Boris Ivanov. How good it is in abandoned places/Petersburg poetry in faces. (UFO. Moscow, 2011)

“Leonid Aronzon died when he was thirty-one years old. This happened on October 13, 1970 near Tashkent. We went there to relax and travel.

There in the mountains, in a random shepherd's lodge, he came across this unfortunate a hunting rifle, and he left the lodge at night and shot himself.

I was not with him, but at that moment I heard the mountains rumble, the moon darkened and his friends - his angels in heaven - began to cry. And I understood everything, being a hundred kilometers away from him.

His death was the main event of his life. The same as poetry, childhood, Russia and Jewry, love, friends and fun. He came from paradise, which was somewhere close to death. Although he lived all his life in Leningrad. Of his thirty-one years, he wrote poetry for twenty-five years; for twelve years we lived together in great love and happiness. He worked as a teacher of Russian language, literature and history, as well as a loader, soap maker, screenwriter and geologist. His poems were never published during his lifetime. The mood was bad."

Rita Aronzon-Purishinskaya

“...But in my life I have never met a person more cheerful, witty and charming than him.”

(Leonid Aronzon. Poems / Compiled by Vl. Erl - Len. Committee of Writers, 1990)

42 years have passed since Leonid Aronzon passed away ( then LA).

The amazing number “forty”: the Russian spelling of this number contains the word “rock”, and Moses led the Jewish tribe through the desert for forty years. And he brought him to Canaan.

For almost forty years, the name of Leonid Aronzon was little known, articles, publications, memorial evenings, and documentaries circled around his name, but he only recently entered his “Canaan.”

During the life of LA, his works were distributed in manuscripts and samizdat and tamizdat (see “Jerusalem Bibliophile”, almanac IV, Jerusalem, 2011, p. 118. Leonid Aronzon in samizdat and tamizdat).

To date, almost everything that he created during his short life has been published, and, moreover, a number of the best works have been translated into other languages. His work has received recognition from the literary community and readers: a collection of scientific articles dedicated to his work has been published, and his books have sold out.

Today, remembering Leonid Aronzon, it is appropriate to talk about little-known facts related to the tragedy in the mountains and sum up the fate of his legacy.

By all accounts, the poet's poetic works are not only largely dedicated to, but also inspired by, his wife Rita Purishinskaya, and his maturation as a poet occurred under her influence. You can agree or disagree with this, but Rita, without a doubt, was his poetic muse.

Perhaps, over the years of marriage, the ardor of love has weakened on both sides, and the spouses have developed different preferences. In addition, the need to financially provide for the family (and both spouses were disabled with a meager pension) forced LA to work at a studio of popular science films as a screenwriter.

Whether it was a crisis in the spouses’ relationship, or the difficulty of understanding this crisis, as well as a change of job and the inability to publish one’s works, led to a breakdown in the psyche. The poet himself and his close circle were aware of this. Themes of leaving life, searching for and rejecting life's incentives are clearly heard in his poems.

With the start of work at the film studio, some material wealth appeared in the family, but at the same time the contradiction between the insurmountable need to express oneself in poetry and the forced work on scripts intensified. In the words of the poet: “ Impossible do these two things well" The situation weighs on him, and he decides to quit his screenwriting job. There are only two months between this decision and his death.

It remained unknown whether the poet died independently, of his own free will, in the mountains near Tashkent, or accidentally shot himself while carelessly handling a gun. The wounded man, realizing that he is on the verge of life and death, asks the doctor to save him. It was not possible to save him - there was not enough blood for a transfusion. The non-random grimace of Soviet healthcare.

Behind accident The nature of the injury and the unusually joyful day that preceded the tragedy speak volumes about the shot. LA was euphoric all day because he was among the beautiful mountains, walking, admiring his favorite butterflies, riding a horse, admiring the grace of his friend and her skill in horse riding.

...and you, Uzbek, you are so good,

that even an angel is ugly before you.

...but thanks to your tenderness

I am resurrected......................................

Last poem)

For the assumption about non-randomness The shot speaks of Rita's concern about the state of the aircraft: she follows him, along with the poet's friend Alexander Altshuler (Alik), anticipating a tragedy, and flies from Leningrad to Tashkent. To confirm this, I will cite a few lines from two Tashkent letters from Rita to a close friend.

October 9: “...Lyonik is silent, and if he speaks, it is in such a way that it would be better if he remained silent... The most logical thing is to go home... Yesterday Lenik suggested leaving. ...And the city, and the people, and the whole journey either seem, or in fact, are terribly ridiculous and stupid...”

October 12: “...Lenya and Alik went to the mountains, yesterday, Sunday, October 11, they should return on Wednesday... Lenik moved away a little on the last day, or maybe he pulled himself together, as I told him. He kindly and persistently called me to the mountains, promising me a donkey. But I, meaning him and myself, did not agree. Although I’m afraid that something will happen to them in the mountains...”

It is obvious that LA was torn between a sense of duty and a new romantic interest.

Shortly before the events described (about two years), documentary filmmaker Felix Jakubson (hereinafter FY) became a regular guest in the house of LA and Rita. After the death of the aircraft, he lived in a civil marriage with Rita for several years.

Before starting their life together, FYa and Rita meet with our mother (LA and I are siblings) and ask for her consent to their civil union, thereby emphasizing their commitment to the memory of LA. Mom, naturally, does not show her grief in any way, understanding the everyday background of the situation, but she worries about Rita’s infidelity: whatever the reasons for concluding a new union.

In 1983, Rita died after a serious and debilitating illness.

This is the general picture of events before and after the tragedy in the mountains. Now let's see what happened to the literary heritage of LA.

Shortly before her death, Rita decides to send the LA archive abroad. Before sending the archive, she invites the writer, poet, literary critic Vladimir Erl, a former friend of LA, and asks him to make a copy of the archive. He is helped by Alexander Altshuler and Mila Khankina, Rita's friend. After sending the archive to Russia, a complete set of copies remains. At the same time, Rita hands over to Vadim Bytensky, the closest friend of LA in her circle, who is leaving for emigration, a set of reprints of archival materials. She gives the same (presumably) set to our mother. Later, I duplicate these reprints by typewriting and make five books, each in a red binding with gold embossing “Leonid Aronzon”. I gave one of the copies of this book to Felix after Rita’s death, because... she did not entrust him with a copy of the archive (they did not have such a copy at home).

During Rita's lifetime, her attempts to publish LA's works were unsuccessful. Thanks to Vadim Bytensky’s literary and social connections, he managed to publish several poems for children in the Literary Russia newspaper in 1971.

Through the efforts of friends of LA, a literary evening dedicated to the memory of LA was organized in 1975. Rita, our mother and I were present at the evening.

There are audio recordings of speeches at the evening and a detailed report in the appendix to the samizdat magazine “Hours”. Vladimir Erl gave me a volume with these materials shortly before I left for emigration in 1992.

Literary evenings were also organized by Yakubson in St. Petersburg in 1995 and 1999, in Jerusalem (Israel), and by me in 2000 and 2007 in Baltimore and in 2009 in Philadelphia (USA).

In 1992, Vladimir Vikhtunovsky created the documentary-fiction film “Tales of Saigon”, in which one short story is dedicated to LA. The film contains episodes with my participation. This film was shown at one of the mentioned evenings in St. Petersburg.

Maxim Yakubson (FYa’s son from his first marriage) graduates from VGIK and in 1998 presented his diploma work - the film “Names”, partially dedicated to Leonid and Rita. The film is shown in one of the cinemas in St. Petersburg and on television.

Tatiana and Harry Melamud (USA, Baltimore) are creating a film about LA, “The Path of a Fallen Leaf,” which includes many of his poems, some of which are read by the author. The film is shown at private screenings in America, Israel, Germany and Russia, as well as at LA Memorial evenings in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

The LA archive, sent in a diplomatic mail to France, is received by the sister of Irena Yasnogorodskaya, a close friend of Rita, and transports it to Israel. Irena prepares for printing and publishes in the Malev publishing house in 1985 the first book of LA’s works, “Favorites” with a selection of poems compiled by Elena Schwartz.

In Russia, Vladimir Erl published “Poems” in 1990, the second book of poems by LA with an afterword by Rita Purishinskaya (see her statement in the preface to this article). The publishing house transfers the circulation of this book to Yakubson as the heir to LA copyright. He inherited this right as the husband of the deceased heir to the works of LA. An absurd legal incident: during the lifetime of LA’s closest relative, his brother (i.e., me), another person owns the copyright. Felix Jakubson refused to transfer the copyright to me, despite the wishes of all living relatives and friends of LA.

Felix Yakubson meets the publishers Arkady Rovner and Victoria Andreeva and gives them a selection of LA’s poems, and in 1997 they publish the book “The Death of a Butterfly” with a parallel translation of Aronzon’s poems into English by the English poet-translator Richard McCain. This is the first most complete edition of LA's works in Russian and English. However, it is replete with inaccuracies and errors both in texts and in dating. Felix learns from Rovner about the publication of the book and reports this in a letter sent to me in the USA, where I emigrated in 1992.

Irena Yasnogorodskaya marries the writer Genrikh Orlov and moves to America. She gives the LA archive to me because she considers me, the poet’s brother, to be the only natural heir to copyright. There were no other immediate relatives alive. From this moment on, my responsibility for the fate of LA's heritage arises.

I was faced with the task of finding a specialist who could sort through the archive and take care of the publication of LA’s works. A chance helped: I met philologist-researcher Ilya Kukui, an employee of the University of Munich in Germany, who was familiar with the works of LA and became interested in the archive. Ilya Kukuy invited Vladimir Erl, who has a copy of the archive, and Pyotr Kazarnovsky, the author of a thesis on Aronzon’s work, to work on the archive. In 2006, the book “Collected Works of Leonid Aronzon” (hereinafter “Collection”) in two volumes with comments from the compilers was published. This was the first publication based on the author's original manuscripts.

Presentations of the “Collection” were held in St. Petersburg and Moscow, which was recognized in Russia as the best poetry collection of 2006.

Richard McCain published LA works in English in 2012, basing it on the “Collected” - “Life of a Butterfly: Collected Poems”. The change in the title of his translations is indicative. Now this is “The Life of a Butterfly”.

Gisela Schultke and Marina Bordne, German translators, found me via the Internet and informed me that they had been translating Aronzon's poems into German for several years, but had a limited number of his works. I gave them the “Collection”, and in 2008 they published a collection of translations of LA’s poems into German with a parallel Russian text “Innenflӓche der Hand” at the Erata publishing house (Germany, Leipzig).

In 2008, the Vienna Almanac No. 62 was published (Germany, Munich; editors: Ilya Kukuy and Johanna Renate Döring) with articles by researchers from different countries (Russia, Germany, USA, Italy) dedicated to the work of LA, with translations of his poems into several foreign languages ​​(English, German, Serbian, Polish, Italian) and the first published “Notebooks” of LA. As literary critics noted in articles published in newspapers in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, the publication of the Almanac became a significant literary event on a European scale.

In 2002-2009, three audio discs “Anthologies of Contemporary Russian Poetry” were released (disc publisher - Alexander Babushkin, Perm), where LA himself reads his poems, as well as Victoria Andreeva and Dmitry Avaliani.

And finally, this year a collection of LA poems for children, “Who Dreams What and Other Interesting Cases,” with my foreword, was published. The compilers of the collection are well-known authoritative publishers of LA works Vladimir Erl, Ilya Kukuy and Pyotr Kazarnovsky.

This is a brief description of the events and a list of publications over the years that have passed since the tragic death of Leonid Aronzon (publications in periodicals in the USA, Russia, Israel and Germany are not included).

Below is a selection of poems by Leonid Aronzon. The photograph of the poet was made by Boris Ponizovsky.

Philadelphia, USA, 2012

Pskov highway

White churches above my homeland where I am alone.

Somewhere there is a river, where melancholy has covered the isthmus...

Black birds scurry above me like targets,

the horses float and float, skirting villages.

Here is the highway. The pungent smell of autumn smoke.

The leaves have fallen, the last nests remain,

Torn October, and the groves rush past.

Here is the river, where is the melancholy, what is left behind them?

I will live, I will scream like an autumn bird,

circling low, I will take everything on faith, except death,

near death, like somewhere a river near leaves,

near love and not so far from the capital.

Here are the trees. Aren't they scared in the forest at night?

Long headlights scare the pillars, and behind them

branches knock and cast shadows on the groves.

Wet asphalt is reflected in the skin of your beloved.

Everything remains. So hello, my belatedness!

I don't I’ll find it, I’ll lose it, but something will happen.

Near me, and even after it remained for someone

torn autumn, like a bird shot down in autumn.

White churches and the poor are our pastimes!

Everything remains, remains, and, stretching out their necks,

the horses float and float, plunge into the grass,

black birds scurry above me like targets.

1961

***

Villages are wooden, like shaky

the flooring of the walkways, where the light foot is,

leaving a faint imprint in the dust,

leads me, like a suicide bomber, to the pillars.

And it seems: this is the homeland - the palm of your hand,

collection of the plant kingdom,

where trees come together like elders,

to the feast, to the sacrificial fire.

And peace is slow as a bell,

spread out over curved lakes,

but, not reaching my homeland with my hand,

I'm clinging to the dead space

night fields. Like an abandoned vessel

the fields hum with distant feasts,

and the speech of the beggar, and the bull frozen into stone,

lies in the grass, staring at the dew.

The sky is covered with thick foam,

the bridges tremble, and this air is ancient

with four sides wide open

picks up the noise from the swaying trees.

The midnight trunks creak, creak,

and the cries of birds are slower and less frequent,

everything disappears in the smell of resin,

and it seems to me that the coast is close.

1962

***

Forestry

Without lusting over distance

from the hill that raises the forest,

as if I stood unconscious

one in the lakes forestry.

July. Aeronautics. Volume

charred boron. Sparse forest.

Its gaps are like flights of stairs.

Reindeer moss and stems above the forehead.

Raspberry bushes. Fern, snake

shelter. Blue dragonflies.

Well silence. Rolled up roses.

Damp stumps. And an angry bumblebee.

This is the allotment, the forester's lodge.

I write in it, I'm under two candles

I smear, I scratch, I compare to the dawn

with a motionless forest to gain love

by the juniper, by the small stream,

at butterflies, raspberries, berries,

near caterpillars, dead wood, ravine,

crazy birds that beat their wings.

In a damp hut between the pillars of candles,

listening to the crackle of stearin,

I remember the chirping of dragonflies

and the howl of a beetle, and the speech of a lizard.

In the corner there is an icon of the Trinity and a table

the blackened corners are pulled tight,

on it there is a kitchen knife, a bottle, glasses,

pot-bellied teapot, ashtray, salt.

Two plump moths circle around the candles.

The candlestick is like an icy fountain.

The owner is sleeping, I need to do something,

rise, knock over, push

the owner, all the utensils, twilight,

there, behind you are the creaking trees,

villages dug into the ground waist-deep,

damp raspberry bush, hedge, ravine,

crazy birds, a whole bunch of lakes,

burnt forest, lines of kilometers...

So this is all life, its result beyond death:

two moths, raspberries, candles, boron.

Like playing the harp on a clear April morning.

The sun is hot on the shoulder, and like the Jewish elders,

bluebeards, on the first days of Easter,

in every park the trees must now be beautiful.

The light illuminates the walls, the table and the papers on it,

light is the shadow that an angel gives us.

Everything else after: dragonfly garden, glory,

how calm the helmets of churches must be as they float

on this clear morning turning into noon,

similar to a harp and besides - something that I don’t remember.

Message to the hospital

In a cloudy park, draw my name on the sand, like with a candle,

and live until summer to weave wreaths that the stream will carry away.

Here he winds along the small forest, drawing my name in the sand,

like a dried up branch that you now hold in your hand.

The grass is tall here, and they lie like mirrors of calm, slow skies.

blue lakes, shaking the doubled forest,

and the sleepy cigarette wings of blue dragonflies vibrate,

you walk along the stream and drop flowers, look at rainbow fish.

The flowers are honey-bearing, and the stream writes my name,

forming landscapes: now a shallow backwater, now a stretch.

Yes, we will lie here, the grass grows through me, you hear,

I, sewn to the ground, see sleepy dragonflies, hear only the words:

It may be that the forestry of the dim lakes of our lives is the result:

the chirping of dragonflies, an airplane, a quiet stretch of water and a tangle of flowers,

that space of the soul where there are hills and lakes and horses running,

and the forest ends, and, dropping flowers, you walk along the stream along the damp sand,

Flutes blow after you, a swarm of butterflies, life follows you,

seeing you off, everyone is calling you, you are walking along the stream, no one is with you,

an even light over everything, young from the neighboring lakes,

as if there, in the distance, a tall and bright cathedral was built from the autumn sky,

if it’s not there, then tell me for God’s sake why?

my name, like you, winding through the small forests, draws a random one,

a slow and muddy stream,

and an airplane flying past the lakes on a hot day reads it,

maybe the stream is not a stream,

only my name.

So look at the grass in the morning, when the slow steam stretches,

there is light from lanterns nearby, light from buildings, and around you

leafless park,

where you draw a random, slow one with a dried branch

and a muddy stream,

that carries away wreaths of honey-bearing flowers and sits on the shoulder

reed moths, and there are plenty of blue dragonflies here,

you walk along the water and drop flowers, see rainbow fish,

and the rain I scribbled by hand breaks off the sheet music,

you draw a stream, along which you then walk and walk.

April 1964

Balaam

I

Where the boat is stuck in the sand

stern knocking on the lake,

where could this moose thicket

stand, loving your sadness,

there I am, wearing the glasses of a blind man,

I look at the blue pictures,

by footprints in the sand

I want to know the man's face.

And because the one who left

his face was gloomy and mad,

Hornets were scurrying around me,

It's like I died here yesterday.

II

Where is the pale Swede, tired of the pumping,

grabbed the ledges of the stone,

where the smooth wind passed the wave,

nailing two bodies to a boulder,

where did I get the woolen glove?

sides of angry bumblebees,

and scales of night fishing

shaved off the creeping trail from the waves,

and there I am, straightening your face,

looked at the dreams of lakes and saw

how the great one stood between the stones,

adorned with pride.

(Spring)1965

Butterflies

Above the infield branch,

rising to the midday heat,

multi-colored girl's ribbon

thousands of scraps fluttered,

and a lilac bush on the sand

was sounded by their fluttering,

when of all, winding, two are the best

your temples are clogged!

(Summer)1965

***

Madrigal

Your eyes, beauty, showed

not the churches of autumn, not the churches, but their sadness.

Some old trees

You were my chair, you were my pipe.

I fed the birds, I saw every hair

those long lilies that your voice wove.

I painted it on viscous clay for half a day,

Then I washed it so that I could remember it tomorrow morning.

(Autumn) 1965

Swan

A maiden sat around me,

both facing her and back to her

I stood leaning against a tree,

and the crucian carp swam to the watering hole.

A crucian carp swam, a model of a sunset,

marsh water cockchafer,

and a green patch

A water lily leaf blocked the entrance.

The swan was the vessel of the morning,

a relative of white flowers,

he swayed here and there.

Like a bowstring, cool

his chest arched on him:

he was not a trilling nightingale!

(March) 1966

***

Madrigal

Rita

How nice it is in summer - spring is all around!

Then a pine tree is placed in the heads,

chinese night reed text,

then a whistle is fiercer than a pea

a bumblebee hangs over the peonies of a flower,

then, making my style eloquent,

buzzes above you, subtly comparing you.

(Summer) 1966

***

Morning

Everyone is light and small who has climbed to the top of the hill.

How light and small it is, crowning the top of a forest hill!

Whose wave is there, whose soul or is it the prayer itself?

The top of a forest hill turns us into children!

and the top of the hill is adorned by a naked child!

If this is a child, who raised him so high?

The stems of sand sedges are stained with children's blood.

This memory of paradise crowns the hilltop!

Not a baby, but an angel crowns the hilltop,

it’s not blood on the sedge, but overgrown poppy in the grass!

Whoever it is, child or angel, is a prisoner of these hills,

The hilltop makes us fall to our knees,

At the top of the hill you suddenly drop to your knees!

It’s not a child there – a soul enclosed in a child’s flesh,

not a baby, but a sign, a sign that the Lord is nearby!

The leaves of distant trees are like small fish in nets,

look at the peaks: a child is playing on each one!

When collecting flowers, call them: here is mallow! here's the poppy!

it is the memory of God that crowns the hilltop!

1966

***

Where the leaves are dead and, quietly moving,

the lifted air sways above me,

butterflies are cutesy, dragonflies are graceful,

the day is filled with the hum of a bumblebee,

and the lizard, crouched on the sand,

aimed into space for another moment,

a heavy beetle that has split its shell,

igniting, the bush voices.

In the volume of autumn this ceremonial church,

this even light, this reflected sea

a huge light, and my thought grows,

and life is nearby, and it is not with me.

It's a bright day here, a highway, a burnt forest,

between the leaves there is a forest, wherever you look there are leaves,

lie in the grass while you have too many thoughts

It will drive you crazy or just get boring.

Oh, how spacious autumn is on a bright day

in the aspen forest, in the high leaf fall,

so here's the result! so what have you lost

and what did you gain by touching the bushes with your hand?

Some day, some quiet hour,

a stream between the leaves and the sky between the leaves,

lie in the grass and don’t demand anything,

to another soul, to the peace of communion.

Here is a bright hill that lifts you up,

here are the clouds, hurrying so quickly,

that there is no shadow. But still you are expelled,

but still, as if embraced in autumn

this whole forest, so you are embraced by something else

not these places with the usual desolation,

This is not your garden, this is not your steps

and all your way to return to them.

(1966)

1.

A day with short rains.

Wet garden under lanterns.

Behind his straight fence

the yellow leaves are a mess.

Returned silence

The evening windows are full.

Late. August is over.

Garden branches on the wall.

Only you are bright, as if

outside the window it's July and morning,

what I saw when I woke up

from thunder, rain and sea...

2.

Our garden was damaged by the wind.

More night rains water

from leaf to leaf, from leaf to ground

falls and waters the sand,

but they have already raised their faces

flowers straightened stems,

and morning humid fog

has already risen above the branches.

How good it is, admiring you,

look at the world available to us!

3.

In our fast conversation

It's hard to quote poetry.

For poetry - arranged meetings,

candles, scenes, silence - for them.

But in any conversation, the speech of the guard,

without letting out other words,

on my lips the same thing:

half a line - “My sadness is bright!”

(1966)

Not this, another silence,

like a horse jumping towards God,

I want its entire length

voice thoughts and syllables,

I want to die early

in hope: maybe I will rise again,

not entirely, at least by a third,

at least for a day, oh wonderful day:

Lesbian water jet

rotates the mill propeller,

and the maiden can see someone’s dreams,

when they were sung slowly,

oh body: sun, sleep, stream!

cathedrals of autumn are high,

when I<в>three lakes sedge

I lie with God and no one.

(1966?)

In empty houses in which everything is alarming,

in which, due to fear, it is impossible -

I live in houses like these,

wherever there is a door, there is a new phobia,

I loved them and I was loved in them

and there was also fear of losing love.

Any of Notre Dame's monsters

nothing compared to, well, at least with a lady,

that someone from the Middle Ages

was written on the canvas,

then photographed for me,

as a sign that the world lives by love.

Not to mention other utensils,

but each could be melancholy,

which has no rivals in sight:

every thing has so many faces,

that in front of each one one must prostrate on the floor;

There is no measure in anything, everything around is a secret.

I don't dare trust the emptiness

its original, deceitful simplicity,

there are so many souls in it, invisible to the eye,

but you just have to look to the side,

like several of them or one

You will see after a while or right away.

And even if the eye can’t discern

(alas, poor eyesight is not a shield),

then obvious fear will point to those souls.

And I don’t have the strength to step over the line,

what divides the world into light and darkness,

and even the light, and that is a bad guard.

It's not death that's scary: I wouldn't want to live -

so what scares me in the dark?

Is it really infantile anxiety?

my age still hasn't won

and I’m scared of what’s ahead,

and what came out onto the road behind?

(1966 or 1967)

Flipping through the calendar

I

As if I were hiding dead

and hid the body in the falling leaves,

owls and mice conversation

meandered through the poor nature,

and the beetle, wagging its train of buzz,

flew there with a broad chest,

where the knitting needles chatter over the water

hung on trembling wings,

where is the blue saw of the mountains

the face of the lakes was bloodied,

beautiful north and cancer,

and someone, seeing them, began to cry

and maybe he’s still crying.

II

Vipers quick weaving

I contemplated like a chant

and saw in the twilight of the forests

There is some kind of face between everyone.

Humming around my own

a heavy beetle circled in the grass,

and wasps, stinging the depths of the flower,

they rustled from afar.

The maiden stood by the water,

that flipped through faces,

and smoke from dried nets

darkened, hanging over the shore.

III

Winters deep traces

fresh as wet flowers

and it's unclear why

I don’t see a bee on them:

she is dressed for winter,

I could stay here since the summer,

then I would weave a wreath

from paw and foot prints,

where the approach is high

gate of northern melancholy

and snow in the big antlers of moose

untouched by the sled belts.

IV

And here you were beautiful,

like the verse “my sadness is bright.”

1966

In the field I breathe in the field.

Suddenly sad. River. Shore.

Isn't it the noise of your own melancholy?

did I hear in the wings of the beast?

Flew by... I'm standing alone.

I don't see anything anymore.

Only the sky is ahead.

The air is black and motionless.

Where the girl is naked

I stood in some kind of childhood,

what is there, a tree, a horse

or completely unknown?

(1967?)

Sonnet to Igarka

Al. Al.

You make our nights whiter

which means the white light is whiter:

whiter than the swan breed

and clouds, and the necks of daughters.

Nature, what is it? interlinear

from the tongues of the sky? and Orpheus

not a writer, not Orpheus,

and Gnedich, Kashkin, translator?

And really, where is the sonnet in it?

Alas, it does not exist in nature.

It has forests, but no trees:

it is in the gardens of nothingness:

That Orpheus, flattering Eurydice,

I didn’t sing Eurydice, but Eve!

(June) 1967

I

There are young skies in the sky,

and the pond is full of heaven, and the bush leans towards the sky,

how happy it is to go down to the garden again,

I've never been to before.

Opposite the stars, facing nothingness,

hugging myself, I slowly stand...

II

And again I looked up to the heavens.

My eyes are sad

saw a cloudless sky

and in the sky there are young skies.

Without taking my eyes off those skies,

admiring them, I looked at you...

Summer 1967

Opposite the low sunset

hidden by an oak tree,

covering my eyes with my palms,

I disturbed the owl's peace,

that, mistaking this darkness for night,

scaring the mouse, it darted away.

Then, opening the eyes of the face,

I saw heaven again:

the clouds were swirling,

the starry river brightened,

and, without meandering between the stars,

whose soul this angel carried,

baby, virgin, father?

With my eyes I caught up with the messenger,

but, nodding his face at me through his wing,

he disappeared into the dark and great.

(September?) 1967.

Aronzon's vision

The sky is deserted and frosty.

The number of immortals has sunk into the depths.

But the guard angel endures the cold,

meandering low between the stars.

And in the room with luxurious hair

my wife's face turns white on the bed,

the wife's face, and in it her eyes,

and two wonderful breasts grow on the body.

I kiss the face on the crown of the head.

It’s so cold that you can’t hold back your tears.

I have fewer and fewer friends among the living.

More and more friends among the dead.

Snow illuminates the beauty of your faces,

space illuminates your soul,

and with every kiss I say goodbye...

The candle I carry is burning

to the top of the hill. Snowy hillock.

Looking to the heavens. The moon was still yellow

dividing the hill into a dark slope and a white one.

A forest stretched along the left side.

New snow was falling on the hard crust.

Here and there sedges bristled.

Indistinguishable, on the dark side

there was the same boron. The moon was shining from the side.

An example of somnambulistic quirks,

I rose, raising shadows.

Brought to his knees by the top,

I easily stuck a candle into the lush snow.

(January) 1968

***

What will the lot that is thrown into the sky reveal?

I cry thinking about this.

A work of praise

summer appears in nature.

Flow of a ferocious waterfall

hanging, hanging in the radiance of rainbows.

Daisies bloomed everywhere.

I pick them off as I pass.

There are girls in nightgowns

frolicking near the rain.

Leaving myself lying in the grass,

I watch the water fall:

I am near the flowers and rivers in glory,

I read to them sometimes.

The river is raised by a dam,

hangs beautifully in the air,

where am I, hobbled by the picture,

looking at her is beautiful.

The water is almost setting on the hill

a bird plucked from the night,

and smells like heaven and wine

my conversation with the reed.

(March) 1968

It's good to walk in the sky

what a sky! what's behind it?

I've never been before

so beautiful and so alluring!

The body walks without support,

Juno naked everywhere,

and music, which is not there,

and an uncomposed sonnet!

It's good to walk in the sky.

Barefoot. For exercise.

It's good to walk in the sky

reading Aronzon out loud!

Spring, morning (1968)

I'm not bad as a poet

all because, thank God,

although I write little poetry,

but there are many beautiful ones among them!

1968

Forgotten sonnet

Insomnia all day. Insomnia in the morning.

Insomnia until evening. I'm walking

in a circle of rooms. They are all like bedrooms

Insomnia is everywhere, but it’s time for me to fall asleep.

If only I had died yesterday,

today I would be happy and sad,

but I wouldn’t regret that I lived in the beginning.

However, I am alive: the flesh has not died.

Six more lines that don't exist yet,

I'll drag it from the spoils into a sonnet,

not knowing, alas, why we need this torment,

Why do souls bloom in bouquets from corpses?

such thoughts and such letters?

But I extracted them - so let them live!

May Day (1968)

Sonnet to the soul and corpse of N. Zabolotsky

There is a light gift, as if in the second

happy time he repeats the experience.

(The figurative paths are light and flexible

high rivers that are raised by a mountain!)

However, I have been given another gift:

sometimes poetry is a whisper of exhaustion,

and I don’t have the strength to rhyme Europe,

not to mention to cope with the game.

Alas, labor will always be shameful,

where are the roses blooming,

where, sounding with the breath of the pipe

their clarinets, drums, trumpets,

everyone plays music - plants and animals,

the roots of souls, crushing the corpse!

May Evening (1968)

Second, third sadness...

Fragrant rain with thunder

passed, sounding like an ancient one -

the trees have become gardens!

What kind of flute was conceived

Inside you, my Danae,

how merrily the candle burns!

I love you, my wife,

Laura, Chloe, Margarita,

contained in a woman alone.

Let's go, woman, to Taurida:

although I love Zelenogorsk,

but you suit the mountain landscape.

(June? 1968)

Rita

Whether it’s melancholy or joy, it’s all the same:

Beautiful weather all around!

Is it a landscape, a street, a window,

whether infancy, maturity of the year, -

my house is not empty when you are in it

was at least an hour, at least in passing:

I bless all nature

for coming into my house!

(September?) 1968

Bridges approach each other at night,

And the best gold fades in gardens and churches.

Through the landscapes you go to bed, it's you

pinned to my life like a butterfly.

(1968)

There is silence between everything. One.

One silence, another, another.

Full of silences, each one -

There is material for a poetic network.

And the word is a thread. Thread it through a needle

and use word thread to make a window -

the silence is now framed,

it is the cell of the net in the sonnet.

The larger the cell, the larger

the size of the soul entangled in it.

Any abundant catch will be smaller,

than the hunter who dares to dare

tie such a giant network,

which would have one cell!

(1968?)

Two identical sonnets

1

My love, sleep, my darling,

all dressed in satin leather.

2

My love, sleep my little darling,

all dressed in satin leather.

It seems to me that we met somewhere:

I am so familiar with your nipple and underwear.

Oh, how fitting! oh, how do you like it! oh, how it goes!

this whole day, this whole Bach, this whole body!

and this day, and this Bach, and the plane,

flying there, flying here, flying somewhere!

And in this garden, and in this Bach, and in this moment

sleep, my love, sleep without hiding:

and the face and the butt, and the butt and the groin, and the groin and the face -

let everything fall asleep, let everything fall asleep, my living one!

Without moving one iota or one step closer,

give yourself to me in all the gardens and cases!

(1969)

***

Blank sonnet

Who loved you more enthusiastically than me?

God bless you, God bless you, God bless you.

There are gardens, there are gardens, there are in the night,

and you are in the gardens, and you are standing in the gardens too.

I wish, I wish I had my sorrow

to instill in you like this, instill in you like this without disturbing

your view of the grass at night, your view of its stream,

so that that sadness, so that that grass becomes our bed.

To penetrate the night, to penetrate the garden, to penetrate you,

raise your eyes, raise your eyes to heaven

compare the night in the garden, and the garden in the night, and the garden,

I'm going at them. Face full of eyes...

So that you stand in them, the gardens are standing.

1969

***

Does anyone really dare to hug you? –

The night and the river at night are not so beautiful!

Oh, how beautiful you could decide to be so,

that, having lived my life, I want to live again!

I am Caesar myself. But you are such a know

that I am in the crowd, staring politely:

there's your chest! those legs match her!

and if the face is like that, then what a marvel it smelled!

If only you were a night butterfly,

I would become a candle flying in front of you!

The night shines with the river and the skies.

I look at you - it’s so quiet in front of me!

I wish I could touch you with my hand

to have long lasting memories.

***

You can count us all on your fingers,

but by the fingers! Friends, where from?

I was so honored

to be among you? But how long will I be there?

Just in case: stay healthy

any of you! Just in case,

from the gifts given to me,

my friends, you are the best!

Goodbye, darlings. Its

for everything there is sadness in me. Evening

I'm sitting alone. I'm not with you.

God bless you with long butlers!

(Summer) 1969

***

My world is the same as yours, who did not know marijuana:

longing - longing, love - love, and the snow is also fluffy,

window - in the window, in the window - landscape,

but only the peace of the soul.

(1969)

***

The wall is full of shadows

from the trees. (Ellipses)

I woke up in the middle of the night:

Admitted to heaven in absentia,

I flew into it in a dream,

but woke up in the middle of the night:

life is given, what to do with it?

Even though the nights are getting longer,

the same day, not shorter.

I woke up in the middle of the night:

life is given, what to do with it?

Life is given, what to do with it?

I woke up in the middle of the night.

Oh my wife, in person

you are beautiful, like in a dream!

(1969)

***

Alas, I live. Deadly dead.

The words were filled with silence.

Nature gift carpet

I rolled the original one into a roll.

Before all that is, at night

I lie there, staring at them.

Glen Gould - the fate of my tapper

plays with music notes.

Here is consolation in sorrow,

but it makes it even worse.

Thoughts swarm without meeting.

An airy flower, without roots,

Here is my tame butterfly.

Life is given, what to do with it?

***

Something unfortunate happened in St. Petersburg.

Look at the sky - where is it?

Only summer uninhabited frame

stays in my empty lorgnette.

Reclining. I'm half-flying.

Who's going to fly towards you?

In each other's open mouth,

We bow with a nod and fly in.

No, not even an angel's feather

You can’t write at a time like this:

"The trees are locked,

but leaves, leaves, where does the noise come from?

***

The whole face: face - face,

dust is a face, words are a face,

everything is a face. His. Creator.

Only He himself is without a face.

1969

***

Thank you for the snow

for the sun on Your snow,

for the fact that this whole century has been given to me

I can thank You.

In front of me is not a bush, but a temple,

temple of Your bush in the snow,

and in it, falling at Your feet,

I couldn't be happier.

(1969)

***

Aren't you, crazy about the tender,

with the tirelessness of a camel

walked the whole sea along the coast,

Are you haunted by night thoughts?

And isn't it possible for you to come without clothes?

an unarmed angel descended

and with utopian hope

for an intoxicating friendship?

So is it really the mind of the sea

was there only wind, only noise?

I saw: your angel is not hiding

slowly flying in thought

to your desert, to your allotment,

gloomy by your apostasy.

(1969 or 1970)

***

Through the window - frost and night.

I look there, into the hole.

And you, my wife and daughter,

you sit without hiding your chest.

You sit in happy beauty,

you sit, as in those centuries,

when free from bodies

there was your melancholy.

Beyond all flesh, without fetters

was your sadness

and she didn’t need words -

there was a vast distance.

And in this morning distance,

like some wonderful garden,

lands were already looming

ridges and skies.

And you were dissolved

in world space,

the wave has not yet foamed,

and you were all around.

The winged beast breathed on you

and drank you in the river,

and you were so good

when I was nobody!

And, apparently, since those times,

even from that sadness,

there is a certain groan left in you

and a body with beauty.

And therefore, having closed the hole,

I'm going to my sofa,

where do you sit without hiding your chest?

and all the other dope.

(1969 or 1970)

***

Still in the morning mists

your lips are young.

Your flesh is sanctified by God,

like gardens and like their fruits.

I'm standing in front of you

like lying on top

that mountain where the blue

takes a long time to turn blue.

What's happier than a garden?

be in the garden? And in the morning - in the morning?

And what a joy it is

Confuse day and eternity!

***

Beauty, goddess, my angel,

the source and mouth of all my thoughts,

you are my stream in the summer, you are my fire in the winter,

I'm happy that I didn't die

until that spring, when my eyes

you appeared with sudden beauty.

I knew you as a harlot and a saint,

loving everything that I have recognized in you.

I would like to live not tomorrow, but yesterday,

so that the time that is left for you and me,

life moved backwards before we began,

If only a few years were enough, I would have turned it around again.

But since we will continue to live forward,

and the future is a wild desert,

you are an oasis in it that will save me,

my beauty, my goddess.

(Early 1970)

***

My God, how beautiful everything is!

Every time, like never before.

There is no break in beauty.

I would turn away, but where?

Because it is river,

the wind is quivering and cool.

No world behind:

whatever it is is in front of me.

(Spring? 1970)

***

The dawn is two steps behind you.

You are standing along a beautiful garden.

I look - but there is no beauty,

only quietly and joyfully nearby.

Only autumn has cast its net,

catches souls for the heavenly alcove.

May God let us die at this moment

and, God forbid, not remembering anything.

(Summer 1970)

***

How good it is to be in abandoned places!

Abandoned by people, but not by gods.

And it rains and the beauty gets wet

an ancient grove raised by hills.

We are alone here, people are no match for us.

Oh, what a blessing it is to drink in the fog!

Remember the path of the fallen leaf

and the thought that we are following us.

Or did we reward ourselves?

Who awarded us, friend, with such dreams?

Or did we reward ourselves?

You don't need a damn thing to shoot yourself here:

no burden in the soul, no gunpowder in the revolver.

Not the gun itself. God knows

You don’t need anything to shoot yourself here.

(To the biography of Leonid Aronzon)

B. Ponizovsky

In 2014, the poet Leonid Lvovich Aronzon would have turned 75 years old. Having barely crossed the 30-year mark, the poet died on October 14, 1970 from the consequences of a gunshot wound in the mountains near Tashkent. Suicide? Accident? Carelessness? Regardless of the answer (which can hardly be received with complete certainty), Aronzon’s death became one of the most important events in the self-awareness of Leningrad unofficial culture, and the poet himself became its central mythologem. Aronzon's path - “the path of reduction, the path of truncation<...>“, the fact of the transition from the aesthetic contemplation of the world to the already religious perception of everything that the world gives us” - turned out to be decisive for many poets who dedicated their poetic lines and reflections on his work to Aronzon (see essays by D. Avaliani, O. Yuryev, lectures by O. Sedakova and E. Schwartz).

In the 1970-1980s, the memory of the poet was preserved in a narrow circle of friends, and his work was distributed through self- and tamizdat. Already in the new century, a two-volume collection of his works, a collection of scientific works on his work, translations and publications, a facsimile reconstruction of the last plan of “The Chosen One” by L. Aronzon, were published. The main dates of the poet’s life are clarified, and many events are taken out of the mythological field into the space of factual description. From a character of “underground canonization,” Aronzon becomes a recognized classic of modern Russian literature, in one of the most radical versions formulated by V. Krivulin in the mid-1970s, a rival and alternative to Joseph Brodsky.

The suggestive power of Aronzon’s poetry is such that the author himself - willingly or unwillingly - turns out to be hidden behind the image of the lyrical Self he created. What was this person really like, asking the question: “Life has been given, what to do with it?” - and in the same poem equating a paradoxical sign of equality between life and death: “Alas, I live. Dead dead. The words were filled with silence"? Who speaks in these lines - the author himself or his lyrical hero? And didn’t it happen that in a kind of duel between the author and his lyrical double, the second one won?

The opportunity to get closer to the answer to this question can be given to us by the testimony of the poet’s relatives and friends - people who were part of the hospitable home of Leonid Aronzon and his wife Rita Moiseevna Purishinskaya (1935-1983). Like any memories, they cannot be completely objective and are themselves part of Aronzon’s myth, but they allow us to look at the poet’s personality through the eyes of his immediate circle, to minimize the distance, while at the same time maintaining the possibility of critical analysis and comparison of different versions.

the site offers an interview with the compiler of the first typographic collection of “Selected” by L. Aronzon, published in 1985 in Jerusalem, Irena Abramovna Orlova, as well as with the poet’s elder brother Vitaly Lvovich Aronzon, who initiated the publication of a two-volume collection of L. Aronzon’s works. The appendix contains a selection of the poet's unpublished poems.

Ilya Kukuy

“Russian poetry has Pushkin and Aronzon”

Interview of Ilya Kukuy with Irena Orlova

- Irena, please tell us how you got into Aronzon’s house.

She ended up as a schoolgirl - small, nasty and very curious. My cousin Natasha Rubinstein, who was four years older than me, had already entered the Herzen Institute and in her second year became friends with Lenya and Rita. I heard about Lenya for the first time from Natasha, who told me everything in the world and, in particular, read a letter from Rita, who was on the collective farm at that time. And in it I remember the phrase: “If everything with Lenka and I hadn’t gone so far, I would have broken up with him.” This made a very strong impression on my young imagination, because I didn’t know what “far” was, so it stuck in my head. Then a rumor spread around Leningrad that I seemed to be very good at telling fortunes, and they became curious: they called me to Rita. They lived then not yet on Liteiny, but in another place. I was still in school. Rita and Lenya were there, Osya Brodsky, and I told fortunes to everyone. Ose said: scandalous fame awaits you - which made him very angry and angry for the rest of his life. In addition, Lenya and I crossed paths with our mutual friends, who were Yura Shmerling and Volodya Shveygolts. I graduated from school in 1959 and, of course, I was very drawn to these elders, I visited one of them every day, but not yet Rita. I began to visit Rita’s house often after Leni’s death...

Forgive me, I’ll interrupt you: and then, in the fifties, was Aronzon already perceived as a poet or was he just an older acquaintance?

I knew that he was writing, but who didn’t write then? Everyone went to LITO to see Gleb Semenov, everyone thought that they wrote better than anyone else. Osya Brodsky often read, Dima Bobyshev, Zhenya Rein, Tolya Naiman - in my eyes they were poets then. I soon found out that Lenya was also a poet, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, because he was an arrogant, red-haired, hooligan man and it was absolutely impossible to take him seriously. The first time I was shocked by his poems was with the same Natasha Rubinstein, who lived on the creepy sixth floor on Chekhov Street, where it was very difficult for Rita to get to. Lenya was reading then, and it was difficult to understand him, because not a single letter was pronounced correctly, everything was burly, but it burned. I remember that then I first heard “Everyone is light and small...” and cried from the very first line. Even now I can’t remember this without tears. He read a lot then - and “Message to the Asylum” too. I kept saying: “Show me the text, show me the text.” I heard individual lines that simply pierced me, but I wanted the whole text... Lenya and I went out onto the site to smoke, Natasha was not allowed, and Lenya said: “Tell your fortune!” I took his hand and said: “Lenya, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your creativity ends abruptly. Actually, everything ends abruptly, and very soon.” He says: “What, is this death?” I say: “I don’t know if this is death, but everything on my hand ends very abruptly and very soon.” Rita wrote this down somewhere in her diary. And three months later Leni was gone. So it was obviously 1970...

It was then, at Natasha’s, that I realized that Lenya was a poet for me, but Brodsky, not so much. Sasha Mezhirov once told me this phrase: “I’m not a poet, but I write poetry.” I say: “Sasha, what a great fellow you are, Brodsky would never say that.” Because, in my opinion - in my opinion at that time - Brodsky wrote poetry, but was not a poet. Lenya was a poet for me, then Lena Schwartz and Krivulin too... Of course, we loved Brodsky, especially the way he read, there was some kind of magic in it. These howls, the shortening of the intervals between lines... As a musician, I thought that this was a wonderful talent. But he writes poetry, and Lenya is a poet.

- It was always interesting to me that Brodsky never mentioned Aronzon anywhere.

Why mention him? Of course, Osya knew his poems very well, just as he knew that he was in this poetic world - “But the leaves, the noise of the leaves, where does it come from?” - never enter. At the same time, I don’t want to say that Brodsky is a bullshit. This is an amazing talent in combining words, consonances, but these are all words about this life, you know? I had a constant dispute about them with David Yakovlevich Dar, already in Jerusalem, until his death, until his last day. He got very angry when I said that real poetry is Aronzon, and shouted: “What do you understand? Brodsky is a huge poet!” Yes, of course, but...

Do you think the inability to publish depressed Aronzon? He was trying to get through. Or did he feel comfortable in an informal circle?

All this was very painful, and the official refusals hurt him. I took his poems to Mezhirov, but Sasha, a very good poet and a good person, who adored poetry, did not stutter only when he read poetry - and he could read for five or six hours without repeating himself - said: “Listen, but he speaks Russian does not know. He makes grammatical mistakes." I say: “Sasha, but excuse me, this is a poetic move.” But Sasha was not at all delighted with Lenin’s poems; he did not hear them, nor did Zhenya Yevtushenko. This is not surprising: on the one hand, “The artillery hits its own” or “No matter how you twist it, Nefertiti existed,” and on the other hand, “There are young skies in the sky...” But David Samoilov really liked it, but he didn’t could have done nothing. Absolutely. And so Lenya read in the Cafe of Poets and generally tried to read wherever possible.

- Was the response important to him?

Extremely important. For him to love you, he had to say: “Lenya, you are a genius.” He was a trusting man, very emotional, and he lit up women like a match. For example, the poem “Someone dares to hug you...” is dedicated not to Rita (which simply infuriated her), but to Rimma Gorodinskaya, she later married Lesha Khvostenko. She was a great beauty, and of a foreign, chic type: a lighter, the whole entourage was delightful. But Rita was Lenin’s absolute muse, and he loved her madly, despite all the complexity of the relationship.

- In addition to Rita, his narrow circle of friends, which is constantly present in poetry, was very important to him, isn’t it?

- When did you become close to Rita?

When I learned about Leni’s death, I called her. We weren't any friends, just acquaintances who always stopped when we met on the street or at one of our friends' houses and chatted for a very long time. Then Larochka Khaikina picked up the phone and said: “Rita really wants you to come.” I must say that I was friends with Larochka, but I was a little wary of Rita, because there was such a cult around her...

- What was this cult expressed in?

In the crowd of her admirers and admirers. Rita said, Rita looked, Rita counted... And I said arrogantly: “No, guys, I won’t stand in this line, I don’t like it. You adore your Rita there, but for me she seems to be somehow ugly, and even, it seems to me, provincial.” But I felt a little guilty about this matter, because I told Lena that everything was falling apart for him, and I came there. Rita was lying down - she almost always was lying down - and wanted me to tell her fortune too. I said: “Ritochka, you will get married very soon.” It was right after Leni’s death, and everyone was indignant, because the widow was lying grieving, and here... And I: “Sorry, the hand doesn’t lie, but what I see is what I say.” And, after sitting with Rita for several evenings in a row, I suddenly saw how beautiful she was, simply beloved. There was always this phenomenon with her. And we became very close friends, just alter ego, a perfect merging of souls. Of course, I was in the house every day, and, of course, I reprinted tons of Lenin’s poems, because we distributed them all the time. And endless nightly conversations.

- Did Rita talk to you about what happened then near Tashkent?

She did, of course. There were two versions: that Lenya shot himself and that the gun fired itself due to careless handling, because Lenya was very drunk. Alik Altshuler talked about this. Rita, as you know, was not there, so she talked about it all the time, but she didn’t know either. The fact is that Lenya really asked to save him.

Do you think the story with Schweigolz could have influenced him in terms of the onset of depression? This, of course, was earlier, the mid-1960s, but still... Aronzon went to his trial.

We all went to his trial, as well as Brodsky's trial, and this story influenced everyone very much. Schweik (Schweigolz. - I.K.) clearly and rapidly went crazy, and it was terribly unexpected. Although it started at my wedding in 1961. My husband and I, very young people, rented some kind of basement and invited our friends to the wedding. There were Schweigoltz, Slavinsky, Galya Podrabolova. As they walked, some hooligans pestered Gala, and Schweik then began to threaten them. They went with him into this basement of ours, Schweik grabbed a huge cast-iron iron from the stove and, without hesitation, pierced three skulls. Two ran away, the third remained lying. Then it turned out that they all ended up in the hospital with a craniotomy, and it seemed like one of them died. I remember how we all went to the hospital, because if he really died, then Schweik was missing. They took us to the investigator, and we said that yes, there was aggression, it was defense. Fortunately, this man survived. My dad, a lawyer who helped a lot in this situation, told Schweik: “Volodya, blood attracts blood, be careful.” And when what happened happened, this phrase simply rang in our ears. It made a terrible impression on all of us. Do you think that Lenin's depression began with this?

- I don't know, I'm just asking. They were friends, after all, Aronzon later wrote letters to him in the camp.

I do not know either. But it was a terrible blow.

- Did the trial of Schweigolz and the trial of Brodsky somehow overlap with each other?

Of course, it was almost simultaneously. My father advised Zoya Toporova, who defended Brodsky, on how to behave and what to say. It was all close, and it all hit the nerves.

- Tell me, did Rita perceive Aronzon’s death as a tragic accident or as a logical event?

She perceived it as a poetic act. “It doesn’t take a damn thing to shoot yourself here...” At least that’s what she said.

And so ten years passed, from 1970 to 1980 - daily meetings, conversations, sitting in the hospital after Rita had a stroke. I would say that Rita created the cult of Aronzon, but this is not true, it is ugly. Rita simply showed us these poems and explained why they are so beautiful.

- Did this really need to be explained? You yourself said how shocked you were by the very first line “Everyone is light and small...”

Yes, one line, another line, but at first I knew three or four verses. “It’s good to walk through the sky, reading Aronzon aloud...” It seemed Oberiut, but sweet, nothing more. And Rita spoke very modestly: in Russian poetry there are Pushkin and Aronzon. Leni's poems grew very strongly after his death, and it was in his house. We were all very young people - Lenya died when he was 31 years old, and he was older than me. We were all terrible snobs, which we understood then... And Rita was able to show us that yes, Pushkin and Aronzon, no matter how crazy it may sound.

How great was Rita's influence on Aronzon? I came across the radical opinion that Rita “made” him.

This is a very good question. I can’t say that she did it, she rather did not allow him to relax and slack in his work (and sometimes he wanted to). With her absolutely impeccable taste, she was an incredible adviser and critic. Therefore, a lot of poems were dismissed and destroyed, because she said: “This is bad, this is vulgar, this is banal.” But where she said “brilliant” blossomed and grew. So her influence is enormous - both on him and on us. And so I took young people to her house, among them composers - Lenya Desyatnikova, Olya Petrova, they then began to write music based on his poems. And I brought my friend Lena Schwartz there, who didn’t know Aronzon before me. Having found out, she really wanted to come to the house, and she was the first to compile his collection at Rita’s request. And, in general, it was Rita who encouraged me to emigrate, because besides the fact that they kicked me out of the country very stubbornly, I resisted just as stubbornly. But Rita told me in the hospital: “Take me away from here, I don’t even want to be a Soviet dead man.”

- Were you pushed out in connection with your father’s affairs or on your own?

Because of my father, after Bonner came to my house to get papers from the Kovalev trial. Dad was in exile. But I no longer had these papers, I gave them to samizdat, to Sena Roginsky. And they started kicking me out of school... And I didn’t want to, but when Rita said this phrase, I decided not to resist anymore. I immediately called my parents so that they would send an invitation: to me, Rita, Larochka, Yurik, Alik, everyone - because Rita is a retinue, this is a package. If you loved Rita, you had to love absolutely everyone around you. But then Rita felt so bad that she could not leave.

The KGB had called me before. After Brodsky and Bobyshev read in Yurik Shmerling’s room, in a large communal apartment, I was called in for questioning, because the neighbor knew only me of all the guests. She had a daughter who played the piano, and somehow I helped this daughter several times. The neighbor snitched on me, and the interrogation lasted six hours. I was warned there that I couldn’t tell anyone about this. And I asked: “Why, what secrets?” - “Well, your father is a lawyer, your husband is a mathematician, you can do them a lot of harm.” And I say: “Only you can harm them.” They were mainly interested in Brodsky. The questions were kind of idiotic: “Why does Brodsky kiss your hand when we meet?” Or: “Do you like Brodsky’s poems?” - “Yes, I really like Brodsky’s poems.” - “What do you like about them?” - “Well, talented poems.” - “Remember by heart?” - “I remember.” - “Do you want to read?” - "No I do not want to". - "And why?" - “The audience is bad.” I was nineteen years old, and I perceived this not as a threat, but as some kind of farce. I wasn’t scared at all, that’s why I answered like that. I would probably be scared now.

- How did you take away Aronzon’s archive?

The archive was made by Volodya Erl; it sat in the house like furniture. All evening long he sat at Rita's secretary and compiled Aronzon's archive, making duplicates, reprinting, comparing options... without even being offended by Lenin's rather rude poems addressed to him. And when the documents arrived and I already knew that I was leaving, they gave me the archive, which I had sent with diplomatic mail, and it was taken away.

- What was the purpose of removing the archive?

Rita still thought that she and her mother would leave, and even when they were collecting me, they put some of their things in my luggage. In addition, in case I left before them, Rita really counted on me to publish a collection. Which is what I did. Not entirely successful, however, because Izya Mahler, a man who is no longer in the world and who had a publishing house in Jerusalem, decided to edit this collection. He changed a couple of lines - for example, he didn’t like the “lesbian stream of water” at all, so he replaced it with “Letheian”. But since I really wanted the collection to come out, I thought that posterity would forgive me if there were a few mistakes. Ritino’s afterword was shortened as “tasteless.” But I didn’t object, I had just arrived in Israel and was afraid that if I objected, Mahler would never publish this collection at all. I published it with my own money, which, to be honest, I didn’t have. But it seemed to me terribly important, no matter how it turned out.

This was actually a collection that Schwartz made in 1979 as a supplement to the Watch magazine, with minor changes?

No, because I wrote to Rita and she compiled the table of contents - what poems she would like to see in the first collection, even the order. I have these letters. There are many more poems in Lena's collection.

- When did you emigrate?

May 25, 1980. The archive left before me along with a large number of Mikhnov’s works and, funny as it may seem, Volkov’s book about Shostakovich. Part of this archive ended up in Israel, and part remained in Paris. My sister went to Paris to get her and brought her. Something, alas, got lost along the way... So the entire archive ended up in my possession, but I was completely superstitiously afraid to touch it. I already had poems, and therefore, when Rita sent me a list, I followed this list.

- How did the idea come about to give the archive to Vitaly Lvovich Aronzon?

Vitaly contacted me when he came to America. And giving him the archive as soon as possible was my first thought. The first and endless desire. And I gave it away without looking there. Because it was all very painful, fresh and still very painful. So I gave the boxes to him as they were, and he already began to take them apart.

This is my life with Lenya Aronzon. I remember him perfectly, standing right before my eyes: red-haired, bow-legged, burry, bearded, sharp, soft, funny, tragic... He really had everything. And I remember all his poems, because “even though I write few poems, there are many beautiful ones among them.” And this is the honest truth.

- Tell me, did Leonid have contact with his father?

In our adult years, my dad and I did not have such a close internal connection as with my mother, with whom we were always on the same wavelength. Dad was straightforward in his judgments, conservative in his habits, and hardworking to the point of selflessness. Because of his inflexibility and desire for justice, he was twice on the verge of expulsion from the party (the party district committee replaced the expulsion with a reprimand entered into his personal file). And his joining the party during the war was a desire to “fight for a just cause,” and not a communist idea. Dad had an ambivalent attitude towards Soviet power: loyal and condemnatory. In his youth he was among the “red cadets”. My father never aspired to an administrative career, but he reached such a level in his business that he worked with pleasure. At work he was not only respected, but loved. I worked with him at the same institute and saw this with my own eyes not only at the institute, but also at factories, at the ministry, when I was there on business trips.

One can find an explanation for the weak spiritual contact with my father in his immersion in work, uncompromisingness in assessing our bad (as it seemed to him, and often was) actions, mother’s priority in family affairs. But he was deeply devoted to his family - and, by the way, he loved Rita, he liked her. He was my mother's closest friend - that's what she told me when they called from the hospital and said that he had left. An unforgettably painful scene.

- Did Leonid listen to his mother’s opinion? It probably seemed philistine to him.

No, it didn't seem like it. Lenya listened to his mother, agreed, tried to change something, but nothing changed. He searched hard for a job, but could not stay in school; he invented trading adventures to earn money, but they did not work out very well for him. He lived in a different environment from his parental family. Over time, bohemian life began to frighten him.

Lenya was very afraid of Rita’s possible death; her illness always hung over him like a sword of Damocles. The resulting depression was fueled by conversations with Zhenya Mikhnov and the pessimistic ideas of Yura Galetsky, who had mystical conversations with him and Rita about the other world. How can you not go crazy here? The lack of perspective will drive anyone crazy, but there was no will to change this and no external push.

My mother saw the first signs of depression. In 1968, she told me that things were bad with Lenya: she complained of pain in her knee, asked for promedol (a narcotic medicine) and said that she did not want to live. He agreed to the offer to show him to a psychiatrist and took some pills. But the treatment put us all to sleep, and what happened was probably not least caused by depression.

- Vitaly, I have last question, and I apologize in advance for it. Don't you think that there really was a poetic logic to the death of your brother? It doesn’t matter whether to treat his death as a “poetic act” (suicide) or an accident caused by carelessness - the myth of Aronzon arose not least because his death seemed absolutely natural. Imagine that, as you write, he settled down like a philistine, became a professional screenwriter, a member of the Union of Cinematographers, maybe even left his family (or, God forbid, Rita died, which he was so afraid of), got married again, gave birth children - and so on. After all, such a picture is impossible from inside Aronzon’s artistic world. Despite Aronzon’s closeness to Pushkin’s harmonious and classical principles, his fate is very reminiscent of Lermontov, whose death, without being an actual suicide, was provoked by his chosen way of life, norms of behavior and, not least, the modeling of his own poetic image. Did your view of what happened change after you recognized another Leonid Aronzon - a poet with his own biography, unfamiliar to you before?

Yes, dear Ilya, a question of questions. I don't have a definite answer. I knew Leni’s last poems poorly then. It’s not that I didn’t know at all, but I didn’t really delve into it. We thought more about his physical and mental state. He was also disabled. Osteomyelitis in his early youth affected his consciousness, without any doubt: Lenya almost died. Before his illness, he was a normal, healthy, cheerful, ironic, kind, enthusiastic young man who loved his loved ones, who liked life, creativity, being a student, and friends. After many months of treatment, he is an adult who has crossed the line between pain, death and life. During the struggle with pain, I learned that pantopon (another drug) and nitrous oxide, which is used during operations, take consciousness into another world, devoid of both physical and mental pain. Do you remember: “This is the humor of the Lord God - nitrous oxide!”

photo by V. Aronzon

After the hospital, it was necessary not to live carefree, as before, but to graduate from college, look for a job, a job for a disabled person. That's what he was looking for. Rita, in her afterword to the book, wrote the truth about his change of many working professions. At one time, Lenya was saved by poetry, an optimistic and cheerful character, and friends - thinking, philosophizing, empathizing. But then the tragedy with Schweigolz happened, before that the trial of Brodsky, summons to the KGB, feuilletons. What is the price of life? What's ahead? What will happen to Rita? Could these questions suddenly arise before him at the decisive moment on the fateful night and what directed his hand to the trigger of the gun? Or was it really a pure accident, which can be subsumed under any higher logic? How should I answer this question? I discussed this mystery in my articles that you linked to in your first question. My opinion is that this is not a mystery, but an accident in an unfavorable momentary situation.

And what does it matter how the poet died for his high poetry? Let me answer in verse:

Past actions do not pass without a trace,
Memory is the faithful keeper of any troubles,
Take care of your loved ones while you are alive,
It’s too late to cry after completing the funeral rites.

Let fans of Leonid Aronzon’s work determine for themselves the cause of this tragedy.

April-May 2014, Munich-Philadelphia

“Yura Sorokin often visited us, with whom L. started some kind of trading business. Perhaps it was Yura’s suggestion that began a long period of passion for commercial photography. A “Moment” camera appeared on sale, which made it possible to take pictures immediately after taking photographs (analogous to a Polaroid). This is where the idea arose to go to Crimea and make money by filming on the beach. Along the way, Sorokin and L. manufactured spring guns for underwater hunting for sale. Door springs were used for guns.<...>Trips to Crimea continued for at least two summer seasons" (Aronzon V. Far and Close. About Leonid Aronzon ( cm.

Herald. No. 17 (67). August 1993 pp. 25-26.

Galetsky Yuri Iosifovich is an artist, a close acquaintance of Aronzon in the last years of his life. The poem “How good it is in abandoned places...” was written after a joint walk with Galetsky outside the city.

“He worked as a teacher of Russian language, literature and history, as well as a loader, soap maker, screenwriter, and geologist. His poems were never published during his lifetime. I was in a bad mood. But in my life I have never met a more witty, cheerful and charming person than him” (Aronzon L. Collected works in 2 volumes. T. 1. - St. Petersburg, 2006. P. 55).