Late declaration of love. Probably this should be the title of this note about a poet whose life fits in such a time and geographical period: June 15, 1937, Leningrad - May 6, 2009, Hanover, New Hampshire, and the poems are not absorbed by eternity, but belong to it.
Once upon a time, his book "The Miraculous Landing" (1985) struck me with pure lyrics.
Precisely with naked lyrics, and not its imitation, not lyrical epic exercises from the third person of a fictional mask. From myself, and not from the "lyrical hero."
The "Leningrad" school of Russian poetry is monotonous.
But above it are Kushner and Brodsky. and Losev.
In 1991, with Tanya Tolstoy, who was flying overseas (we were friends then), I gave him my Parisian book.
And for some reason he added, fool, that I don’t need to answer.
But he answered. A few months later, in one of his few interviews. After the question of the correspondent of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which of the contemporary poets is close to him, I saw my name.
It was an invitation to dialogue. But we weren't lucky enough to talk.
We didn't meet here, but we'll see.
Livshits is a good poet. So briefly, not without jealousy, Brodsky answered Denis Novikov when he mentioned Losev in London.
I bet it's not just good.
A.Ch.

He said: "And this is basil."
And from the garden to the English plate -
ruddy radish, onion arrow,
and the dog wobbled, sticking out his tongue.
He simply called me - Alyokha.
"Come on, in Russian, under the landscape."
We got good. We got sick.
The Gulf was Finnish. It means ours.

Oh, motherland with a capital R,
Or rather, C, or rather obnoxious,
our permanent air is order-bearing
and the soil is an invalid and a cavalier.
Simple names - Ghoul, Rededya,
the union of the Cheka, the bull and the peasant,
forest named after Comrade Bear,
meadow named after Comrade Zhuk.

In Siberia, the hawk dropped a tear,
In Moscow, a blade of grass ascended the pulpit.
Cursed from above. Farted below.
The china rattled and Glinka came out.
Horse-Pushkin, biting the bit,
this Kitovras, who glorified freedom.
They gave roach - a thousand people.
They gave Silva. Duska didn't.

And the motherland went to hell.
Now there is cold, mud and mosquitoes.
The dog is dead, and the friend is no longer the same.
Someone new hastily moved into the house.
And nothing, of course, grows
on a bed near the former bay.
.
.

LAST ROMANCE

Yuz Aleshkovsky

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Can't hear the noise of the city
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There is silence over the Neva Tower ... etc.

Silence over the Neva tower.
She turned gold again.
Here comes the woman alone.
She flew up again.

Everything reflects the face of the moon,
sung by a host of poets,
not only a watch bayonet,
but a lot of piercing objects,

The Admiralty syringe flashes,
and local anesthesia
instantly freeze to the borders
the place where Russia used to be.

Rigor to the face
not only in the womb of a premature baby
but also to his half-father,
in the morning drunk on the board.

Suitable unpriority,
dead from lack of trees.
In the land of empty skies and shelves
nothing will be born.

The dead Summer Garden glimpses.
Here comes the woman back.
Her lips are bitten.
And the Neva tower is empty.
.
.

ACCORDING TO LENIN

Step forward. Two back. Step forward.
Gypsies sang. Abramovich chirped.
And, yearning for them, mournful,
flooded the zealous people
(survivor of the Mongol yoke,
five-year plans, the fall of the era,
Serbian letters alien bulk;
somewhere Polish intrigue is ripe,
and to the sounds of pas de patiner
Metternich danced against us;
under the asphalt all the same potholes;
Pushkin wasted in vain, because of a woman;
Dostoevsky mutters: bobok;
Stalin was not good, he is in exile
did not share parcels with homies
and one personal escape).
What is lost cannot be returned.
Sasha, sing! Rise up, Abrashka!
Who has a shirt left here -
do not drink away, so at least jerk the gate.
.
.

... He worked at the Bonfire. In this dim place
away from the race and editorials,
I met a hundred, maybe two hundred
transparent young men, unprepossessing girls.
Cold squeezing through the door,
they, not without impudent coquetry,
I was told: "Here's a couple of texts for you."
In their eyes, I was an editor and a beast.
Covered with unthinkable rags,
they are about the text, as Lotman taught them,
judged as something very dense,
how about concrete with rebar in it.
All these were fish on fur
nonsense, multiplied by lethargy,
but sometimes I get this nonsense
and actually printed.
It was frosty. In the Tauride Garden
the sunset was yellow and the snow beneath it was pink.
What were they talking about?
the awake Morozov overheard,
the same Pavlik who did evil.
From a plywood portrait of a pioneer
plywood cracked from the cold,
but they were warm.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And time passed.
And the first number came up.
And the secretary wrote out a chervonets.
And time passed, without ceremony with anyone,
and it blew everyone to bits.
Those in the camp barracks chifir,
those in the Bronx are fighting cockroaches,
those in the mental hospital squawk and cuckoo,
and the devils are driven from the cuff.
.
.

MIRACULOUS LANDING

Everything went on as usual.
Tormented by longing for Saturday,
people crowded in the tram;
tormented by longing for compote,

trudged from a kindergarten walk.
Suddenly the angels of God brigade,
heavenly miraculous landing
fell on the hell of Leningrad.

Bazooka shook the bushes
around the Hermitage. Hosanna!
Already captured the bridges
stations, cafe "Kvisisana".

The locks of the prison are displaced
grenade and the word of the Lord.
The hostages are a little embarrassed -
who slept, who is drunk, who in underwear.

Here - Michael, Leonid,
three women, Yuri, Volodya!
The car flies to the west.
We won, you are free.

The rustling of wounded wings,
dragging along the sidewalks.
Helicopter departure covered
squad with a mortar strike.

But strength melted like wax,
exhausted angelic company
under the pressure of internal troops,
dejectedly wandering from work.

And we got up and left
melted into the fading sky.
At the bottom of the lanterns patrols
in Ulyanka, Grazhdanka, Entebbe.

And smolders midnight then
farewell strip of sunset
pontoon blown up by us
on the shallows near Kronstadt.
.
.

Eighteenth century, that pig in a wig.
A golden mess floats along the river,
and in Felitsa's satin cabin
wanted to move.
An officer invited to catch a flea,
suddenly felt that the spirits were losing their strength,
drowning out body odors,
mother fussed, puffed.
The eighteenth century floats, floated,
I just forgot my scenery here and there,
that scattered under the onslaught of the forest
Russian greenery wild.
Volgly huts, a chapel, a ferry are visible.
Everything is built roughly, with a simple axe.
Nakaryaban in a notebook with a quill pen
verse splintering, soul scraping.
.
.

AT CHRISTMAS

I lie down, I defocus my eyes,
split the star in the window
and suddenly I see the area siryu,
their raw homeland.
In the power of an amateur optician
not just double - and double,
and the twins of Saturn and Jupiter
fraught with a Christmas star.
Following this, which quickly leaked out
and dried up, even faster
ascend over the Volkhov and Vytegra
Star of the Magi, Star of the Kings.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A star will rise above the station building,
and the radio in the general store window
dance program on request
interrupt in confusion and
slow a little, how to pray
about shepherds, wise men, kings,
about communists with Komsomol members,
about the rabble of drunkards and sluts.
Blind, talkative prophets,
fathers accustomed to the cross,
how these lines are hasty,
go on a white sheet,
quickly soaked by the sunset,
roam the far side
and open the doors to the rooms,
long abandoned by me.
.
.

TALK

“We are driven from stage to stage,
And everything goes into the hands of Poland -
Walesa, Milos, Solidarity, Pope,
we have Solzhenitsyn, and that
Gloomy-Burchsev and pretty average
prose writer. "Nonsense, he's just the last
romantic". "Yes, but if you subtract rum»,
“Well, okay, what are we taking anyway?”
From the pool of Lubyanka and butyrok
pals in commercial comfort
emerge, into the bright world of big bottles.
“Have you tried the Swedish “Absolute”,
I call him "nightingale",
shy away - and Sofia is right there. ”
“But, nevertheless, a shabby canteen,
where a half-liter is walking under the table,
no, after all, like a white head,
so Western vodka is not taken.
"Wonderful! nostalgia for sivuha!
And for what else - for informers?
old whores spreading rumors?
by listening to "Freedom" at night?
by the way? according to the district committee? by pogrom?
according to the wall newspaper "For cultural life"?
"Maybe we should really drink rum -
this one will definitely knock us off our hooves.”
.
.

And finally, the stop "Cemetery".
A beggar puffed up like a bedbug,
in a Muscovite jacket sits at the gate.
I give him money - he does not take.

How, I say, I was put in an alley
monument in the form of a table and a bench,
with a mug, half a liter, hard-boiled egg,
following my grandfather and father.

Listen, you and I are both impoverished,
both promised to return here,
you already check the list, I'm yours,
please, please, take care.

No, he says, you have a place in the alley,
there is no fence, a concrete bucket,
photo in an oval, lilac bush,
there is no column and no cross.

Like I'm Mister some Twister
does not allow a cannon shot,
under the visor, mocking, takes,
Whatever I give, I take nothing.
.
.

MY BOOK

Neither Rome, nor the world, nor the century,
nor in the full attention of the hall -
to the Lethean Library,
how viciously Nabokov said.

In the cold winter season
("once" - beyond the line)
I look up the hill
(goes down to the river bank)

tired life cart,
filled with sickness.
Lethean Library,
prepare to be taken seriously.

I stuck my throat for a long time
and here is my reward for my work:
will not be thrown into Charon's boat,
on bookshelf stuck.
.

/////////////////////////////////////////

Poet Lev Losev
Having made his debut at the age of 37, at an age that became fatal for other poets, Losev avoided the "fear of influence" characteristic of young talents. He did not know it because he considered influence to be culture, valued continuity, and saw no sin in book poetry. Among other people's words, his muse was as at ease as others among the clouds and birches. Having entered poetry without scandal and according to his own rules, Losev immediately began with adult poems and turned out to be unlike anyone else, including - a conscious choice! - Brodsky.
Friends and contemporaries, they looked at the world in the same way, but wrote about it differently. Playing the classics, Losev assigned himself the place of Vyazemsky under Pushkin. An enlightened conservative, a strict observer of morals, a little old-fashioned, equally endowed with subtle humor, ironic insight and skeptical love for the motherland. The latter must be insisted on, because Losev was by no means indifferent to politics. Sharing the views of his Vermont neighbor, he, like Solzhenitsyn, dreamed of seeing Russia "settled" according to the New England standards: a local, good-neighborly democracy, and most importantly, that at least something would grow.
Losev's ideal, without envy, skipped the romantic 19th century, not to mention the hysterical 20th, in order to find a model for itself in the clear sky of the Enlightenment. Laws change people, wit justifies poetry, and everyone cultivates his own garden.
At the Losevs it was full of flowers and edible greenery. Once a bear came after her, crossing the stream, but he did not destroy the idyll. Composed of smart books and true friends, Losev's life was beautiful and worthy. Poems in it occupied only their place, but he always read them standing up.
Reference
Lev Losev was born in 1937 in Leningrad and emigrated to the United States in 1976. Abroad, he published several books of poetry, published studies on The Tale of Igor's Campaign, on the work of Chekhov, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, with whom he was close friends. For almost thirty years he taught Russian literature at the prestigious Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
On May 6, the poet, writer and literary critic Lev Losev died in New Hampshire at the age of 72. IN MEMORY of Lev Losev Those who know this name also know that this is a huge loss for Russian culture. Himself - an amazing and subtle poet, last decade he selflessly dedicated his life to the memory of his great friend, Joseph Brodsky. His comments on the texts of I.B. - this is the pleasure and happiness of immersion in a culture that, alas, almost did not touch us. The book in the ZhZL series is a monument not only to Brodsky, but also to Lev Losev himself. (A separate lesson is the distance that the author kept in this book, nowhere allowing himself to pat the genius on the shoulder and stick out his person at least a little. A close friend of Brodsky, whom he also considered one of his teachers, Losev NEVER MENTIONED ABOUT THIS). “Time is an honest man”; the name of Lev Losev will certainly take the right place in the minds of reading and thinking Russia, but today this is somehow not very comforting. Very sad. Viktor Shenderovich “Lev Losev is one of the smartest and kindest people I have seen in my life. We first met in the reception room of Leningrad University, where we entered at the age of 18. They accepted him, but I didn't. They often met in literary companies, poetic ones. He wrote poetry from his youth. Few people knew about this. And he worked in the children's magazine "Bonfire", and, by the way, he managed to smuggle his friends' poems there. He was friends with wonderful poets, with the same Joseph Brodsky, Yevgeny Rein, Mikhail Eremen, Uflyand and many, many others. Perhaps his main love in life, besides his wife Nina and children, is Russian poetry. His poems are not like others: angular, sharp, witty, and at the same time there is a genuine feeling in them. This is very sad news. Lev Losev is a wonderful person. And this is even more important, in my opinion, and means much more than the fact that he is also a real poet. When you lose a dear person, you think first of all about - See more at:

He said: "And this is basil."
And from the garden to the English plate -
ruddy radish, onion arrow,
and the dog wobbled, sticking out his tongue.
He simply called me - Alekha.
"Come on, in Russian, under the landscape."
We got good. We got sick.
The Gulf was Finnish. It means ours.
Oh, motherland, with a capital R,
or rather, C, or rather, Yer obnoxious,
our permanent air is order-bearing
and soil - an invalid and a cavalier.
Simple names - Ghoul, Rededya,
the union of a check, a bull and a man,
forest named after Comrade Bear,
meadow named after Comrade Zhuk.
In Siberia, a hawk dropped a tear.
In Moscow, a blade of grass ascended the pulpit.
Cursed from above. Farted below.
The china rattled, and Glinka came out.
Horse-Pushkin, biting the bit,
this Kitovras, who glorified freedom.
They gave roach - a thousand people.
They gave Silva. Duska didn't.
And the motherland went to hell.
Now there is cold, mud and mosquitoes.
The dog is dead, and the friend is no longer the same.
Someone new hastily moved into the house.
And nothing, of course, grows
On a bed near the former bay.
* * *
... worked at the Bonfire. In this dim place
away from the race and editorials,
I met a hundred, maybe two hundred
transparent young men, unprepossessing girls.
Cold squeezing through the door,
they, not without impudent coquetry,
I was told: "Here's a couple of texts for you."
In their eyes, I was an editor and a beast.
Covered with unthinkable rags,
they are about the text, as Lotman taught them,
judged as something very dense,
how about concrete with rebar in it.
All these were fish on fur
nonsense, multiplied by lethargy,
but sometimes I get this nonsense
and actually printed.
It was frosty. In the Tauride Garden
the sunset was yellow and the snow beneath it was pink.
What were they talking about?
the awake Morozov overheard,
the same one, Pavlik, who did evil.
From a plywood portrait of a pioneer
plywood cracked from the cold,
but they were warm.
And time passed.
And the first number came up.
And the secretary wrote out a chervonets.
And time passed, without ceremony with anyone,
and it blew everyone to bits.
Those in the camp barracks chifir,
those in the Bronx are fighting cockroaches,
those in the mental hospital squawk and cuckoo,
and the devils are driven from the cuff.
Bad rhymes. Stolen jokes.
We ate. Thank you. like beans
moving cold in the stomach.
It's getting dark. Time to go home. Magazine
Moscow, or something, take as Veronal.
There, the dolt dreamed about the past,
when ours went ahead
and crushed evil spirits with a broom,
and the emigrant is a distant ancestor
gave the village a half-bucket.
Spin it all you want, Russian palindrome
master and slave, read at least like this, at least like that,
a slave cannot exist without a bar.
Today we walk around the bar...
It's good there. There it spreads, layered,
cigar smoke. But there sits a Slavist.
Dangerous. Until then, I'll drink again
that in front of him I will start throwing my beads
and from a colleague I will again achieve,
so that he again responds to me with vulgarity ...
“Irony is not necessary for the Cossack,
you sure could use some domestication*,
not without reason in your Russian language
there is no such word - sophistication"**.
There is a word "truth". There is a word "will".
There are three letters - "comfort". And there is "rudeness".
How good is the night without alcohol
words that cannot be translated
delirious, mutter empty space.
On the word "bastard" we come to the house.
Close the door behind you more tightly, so that
the spirits of the crossroads did not sneak into the house.
In broken flip-flops of the foot
insert, poet, five twisted processes.
Also check the chain on the door.
Exchange hello with Penelope.
Breathe. Slap into the depths of the lair.
And turn on the light. And wince. And freeze
…What else is this?
And this is a mirror, such a glass,
to see with a brush behind the cheek
the fate of the displaced person.
* * *
“Sorry I stole it,” I tell the thief.
"I promise not to talk about the rope" -
I say to the executioner.
Here, whining, low-browed pro *****
Kanta comments on me and Nagornaya
sermon.
I am silent.
So that instead of this rust, fields in the insecticide
again the Volga would roll into the Caspian Sea,
horses would eat oats again,
so that a cloud of glory shines over the homeland,
so that at least something would work out.
And the tongue won't dry out.
1985-1987

* * *
“I understand - the yoke, hunger,
there is no democracy for a thousand years,
but the bad Russian spirit
I can’t stand it,” the poet told me.
"These rains, these birches,
these groans in part of the graves, ”-
and a poet with an expression of menace
curled his thin lips.
And he said, in a rage:
"I don't like these drunken nights,
repentant sincerity of drunkards,
Dostoevsky anguish of informers,
this vodka, these mushrooms,
these girls, these sins
and in the morning instead of lotion
watery block rhymes;
our bards cardboard spears
and their acting hoarseness,
our iambs are empty flat feet
and trochees thin lameness;
insulting our shrines,
everything is designed for a fool,
and life-giving pure Latin
a river flowed past us.
This is the truth - a country of villains:
and there is no decent closet, ”-
crazy, almost like Chaadaev,
so abruptly ended the poet.
But with the most flexible Russian speech
something important he was bending around
and looked, as if right in the district,
where the archangel with the trumpet died.
S.K.
And finally stop "Cemetery".
A beggar puffed up like a bedbug,
in a Muscovite jacket sits at the gate.
I give him money - he does not take.
How, I say, I was put in an alley
monument in the form of a table and a bench,
with a mug, half a liter, hard-boiled egg,
following my grandfather and father.
Listen, you and I are both impoverished,
both promised to return here,
you already check the list, I'm yours,
please, please, take care.
No, he says, you have a place in the alley,
there is no fence, a concrete bucket,
photo in an oval, lilac bush,
there is no column and no cross.
Like I'm Mr. Some Twister
does not allow a cannon shot,
under the visor, mocking, takes,
Whatever I give, I take nothing.
* you sure could use some domestication
** sophistication - very roughly: "sophistication" (English).

Lev Losev writes a lot and is published in emigrant Russian-language publications. Losev's articles, poems, and essays made him famous in American literary circles. In Russia, his works began to be published only starting from 1988.

Lev Vladimirovich Losev was born and raised in Leningrad, in the family of the writer Vladimir Alexandrovich Lifshitz. It is the father, a children's writer and poet, who one day comes up with the pseudonym "Losev" for his son, which later, after moving to the west, becomes his official, passport name.

Graduated from the faculty of journalism of the Leningrad State University, a young journalist Losev goes to Sakhalin, where he works as a journalist in a local newspaper.

Back from Far East, Losev becomes an editor in the all-Union children's magazine "Bonfire".

At the same time he writes poetry, plays and stories for children.

In 1976, Lev Losev moved to the United States, where he worked as a typesetter-proofreader at the Ardis publishing house. But the career of a compositor cannot satisfy Losev, full of literary ideas and plans.

By 1979, he completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Michigan and taught Russian literature at Dartmouth College in northern New England, New Hampshire.

During these American years, Lev Losev writes a lot and is published in Russian-language emigrant publications. Losev's articles, poems, and essays made him famous in American literary circles. In Russia, his works began to be published only starting from 1988.

The greatest interest among readers was his book on the Aesopian language in the literature of the Soviet period, which once appeared as the topic of his literary dissertation.

The story of Lev Losev writing a biography of Joseph Brodsky, whose friend he was during the life of the poet, is noteworthy. Knowing about the reluctance

Brodsky to publish his own biography, Lev Losev nevertheless undertakes to write a biography of a friend ten years after his death. Finding himself in a very difficult position, violating the will of a deceased friend (their friendship lasted more than thirty years), Lev Losev, nevertheless, writes a book about Brodsky. He writes, replacing the actual biographical details of Brodsky's life with an analysis of his poems. Thus, remaining true to friendship, Lev Losev incurs literary critics who are perplexed by the absence of actual details of the poet's life in the biographical book. Even the unspoken, verbal subtitle of Losev's book appears: "I know, but I won't tell."

For many years, Lev Losev has been an employee of the Russian Service of the Voice of America radio station, the host of the Literary Diary on the radio. His essays on new American books were one of the most popular radio columns.

The author of many books, writer and literary critic, professor, laureate of the Northern Palmyra Prize (1996), Lev Losev died at the age of seventy-two after a long illness in New Hampshire on May 6, 2009.

Books by Lev Losev

Great landing. - Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1985.

Privy Councilor. - Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1987.

New information about Karl and Clara: The third book of poems. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Fund, 1996.

Afterword: A book of poems. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Fund, 1998 ..

Poems from four books. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Fund, 1999.

Sisyphus redux: The fifth book of poems. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Fund, 2000.

Collected: Poems. Prose. - Yekaterinburg: U-Factoria, 2000.

As I said: The sixth book of poems. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Fund, 2005.

Joseph Brodsky. The experience of literary biography. ZhZL series. - M.: Mol. guards

Lev Vladimirovich Losev (1937-2009) - Russian poet, literary critic, essayist, son of writer Vladimir Alexandrovich Lifshitz. Below is his conversation with journalist Vitaly Amursky, published in the Ogonyok magazine, 1992. No. 71.

Lev Losev visiting the Gandlevskys, Moscow, 1998. Photo by G.F. Komarova

"POET IS HUMUS"

Lev, in the preface to your first collection of poetry, The Wonderful Landing, published by the Hermitage Publishing House (USA) in 1985, you note that you started writing poetry quite late, at the age of 37. The number "37" is fatal in the life of many Russian poets - most often, as you know, it marked the end of the master's path. In your case, the opposite happened...

I wouldn't give too much of great importance the mysticism of numbers, in particular, the mysticism of age. In my case, everything is logical here. Indeed, at this age I reached that state, which in the language of popular psychology is now called the "mid-life crisis", as psychoanalysts say, mid life crisis - I don't know how to say it exactly in Russian. In general, this is a state that every person goes through at thirty-two, thirty-seven, thirty-eight years old ... when some distance has already been covered, you find yourself at some finish line, you need to reevaluate something and start over. I went all this way in a normal way, without being a poet ...

And what really coincided (although who knows who controls our fate?) - there was something more than a simple coincidence: I was seriously ill, at the age of 33 I had a heart attack, then I got out of it for several years. This contributed to the beginning of a new path. Also during this period of my life, for various reasons, I lost whole line close friends, whose presence was extremely important to me. For example, Brodsky left, he was forced to leave. I became friends with someone and so on. And in this unexpectedly rarefied air, verses arose. I took them more seriously than now - as some kind of saving agent sent to me.

- Nevertheless, it seems that you were still surrounded by interesting people, people high culture...

It would be more accurate to consider the cultural environment not as a certain circle of acquaintances, but precisely as a circle of cultural information in which a person is immersed. In this sense, in a cultural environment, a person can live somewhere in the middle of a taiga or jungle, regardless of his personal acquaintances, connections, family background, etc., because the means of communication in this case are books, music, etc. - not necessarily people. Although people can be too. Why am I now getting into this theorizing? Because one does not replace the other. The circle of human relations is something separate. Quite right, among my friends there were people of high culture in the truest sense of the word, people highly educated and creatively active in various fields - I was generously endowed with such a circle due to the circumstances of my biography since childhood. But first of all, what was important for me was poetry, poetry. I am not afraid to say that this has always been the main content of my life. It was important for me to live not just in a cultural environment, but in an environment where new Russian poems, new Russian poetry are born.

During the crisis period of which I speak, it was precisely this inner circle of mine that gradually dissipated. I named Brodsky, but there were several other people whom I consider uniquely gifted, unique poets of my generation. I do not want to make any hierarchies - I do not believe in them - I will name, for example, Mikhail Eremin, Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, my closest friend of my youth Sergei Kulle, now deceased. It was a galaxy of extraordinary people creativity, and it so happened that, with the exception of only Uflyand, none of them were nearby. That is, I continued to get acquainted with their things, but it was not at all what daily communication with poets gives, endless conversations, when you, as it were, from the inside understand what kind of brew poetic texts are born from. Everything suddenly evaporated, disappeared and led to a feeling of a terrible vacuum that I needed to fill with something. It was not a conscious decision that it began to be filled with my own poems.

Lev Losev is a pseudonym chosen by you as if out of necessity. Born Lifshitz, you once heard from your writer father: "There is no place for two Lifshitz in one children's literature - take a pseudonym." Apparently, now there is no great need to save it. However, despite the fact that you left children's literature a long time ago, you said goodbye to your father a long time ago, you still did not return to your real name. Is this due to the memory of him or, perhaps, a habit? Inwardly, do you not care about having a double "I" in yourself?

Not at all. I don't know why - this name stuck to me. If someone shouts in the street: "Lifshitz!" - I'm not likely to turn around. But if they shout: "Losev!" - of course ... Even if they mean the late Alexei Fedorovich Losev, although, besides this famous philosopher, there were two more big scoundrels named Losev. One sat on Moscow television, and the other on Bulgakov's archives. Although Lifshitz remained in my passport in the Soviet Union, I got used to the fact that I was Losev. For myself, I explain this by the fact that I did not invent this pseudonym, my father gave it to me. We get a name from the father without asking... that's the thing, No, I don't have a duality of "I". True, for any person of Jewish origin who writes under a Russian pseudonym, there is always a delicate question: why do you hide your Jewish origin? But in my own lyrics this side of my personality is widely discussed. So, apparently, the hypothetical accusation disappears.

Reading your poems, it is impossible not to notice that they play a big role in them - how can I say it more precisely? - objects, signs of a very specific world. With special admiration, you often describe, for example, an onion, a piece of bread, a candle, etc. Material, like paint on a canvas, is the light that falls on the objects of your attention. Where does this attraction to tangible forms come from? To use the good old term, picturesque?

Maybe because of all the arts I love painting the most. I cannot call myself a great connoisseur of painting, but nothing fascinates me so much as the work of painters - old and new. Of all my life friendships, one of the most precious for me is the friendship with Oleg Tselkov. This seems to be part of the answer. Another... it's hard to say, because it's always dangerous to talk about one's own works in terms of their origins... But one way or another, I probably was brought up mainly by the St. Petersburg literary school, the acmeist school. In itself, this word is not very successful, because acmeism is an extremely temporary concept. The name "acmeists" was assigned to Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Georgy Ivanov, who, as poets, can just as well be enrolled in the same school as Pushkin, Fet, Annensky, Kuzmin. That is, the Petersburg literary tradition did not remain the same, it developed, but this tradition, which, if possible, shuns direct philosophizing as such in poetry, which somewhat limits direct expressions of emotionality. For me, it's almost a matter of good taste.

- And if we talk about the influence of the Oberiuts, the Zabolotsky period of "Columns" on your work?

I don't know about influence. Of course, what I would most like to say is that there are no influences on my poetry. But it is difficult to assess this, because if we talk about writing poetry as a work, then it is in its midst that you yourself meticulously make sure that there is not suddenly in your lines someone else's word, someone else's imagery, someone else's intonation. Yet, probably, the influence of Zabolotsky and the Oberiuts was enormous. I don't know whether it's my own poetry or just my formation. There was a period when I just worked on them tirelessly, dug up texts, rewrote, distributed, and they somehow got into my blood. It was quite an early period, somewhere in the mid-50s. I think I was one of the first in our generation to rediscover Zabolotsky and the Oberiuts.

Ten years later, either I left them, or they left me. I can’t say that they have become uninteresting to me - and now there are Zabolotsky’s poems that touch me endlessly, which are inexhaustible in meaning, from my point of view, and - if not whole things, then some pieces from Vvedensky, and completely separate lines Kharms too... But still, their poetic world cannot be compared with the poetic world of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky, because even Kharms and Vvedensky were people of ingenious limitations. So now I would not like to talk about some apprenticeship with them.

You said that you were engaged in their texts. Indeed, Lev Losev is also a philologist. This side of your creativity cannot be bypassed. I wonder if the scientific approach to literature, to poetry in particular, does not prevent you from being liberated in your own versification?

As it is customary for us American teachers to say in such cases: "This is a very interesting question." Indeed, he interests me more than anyone else. We must begin with the fact that there is no distinction between philology and poetry. Essentially, they are one and the same. From my point of view, all our true poets were, to one degree or another, philologists, if you like - literary critics, linguists, critics. Pushkin, with his remarkable articles on literature, not only on current literature, but also on the history of literature, spoke heartily about language. Professional philologists were Blok, Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov - in fact, all the major symbolists. Mandelstam and Akhmatova had a serious philological education, which was replenished and continued throughout their lives; we can speak as serious philologists even of such autodidacts as Tsvetaeva or Brodsky.

What is the difference after all: why in some cases they write "literary research" (that is, work with archival materials, as in the case of Akhmatova, or an analysis of Dante's text, as in Mandelstam), and in other cases they indicate - "poem"? I argue that in both the first and second versions, the initial impulse is the same - to express with the help of words something new, some kind of feeling, sentiment, knowledge, information - something that was not previously expressed in the words of this language. And then intuition suggested the most effective method this expression. In some cases, this new thing can be said in a rational language, then a "philological article" or an "essay" is written. In other cases, this newness itself does not find a rational expression, and then it is necessary to use words, as Mandelstam wrote in "A Conversation about Dante", not in their direct dictionary meanings, but indirectly. To use Vygotsky's terminology, word-image is poetry.

In one of your poems there is a phrase: "A poet is humus..." Could you tell us how such a formulation, such an image arose, what is behind it?

Ever since we settled in New England and my wife became passionate about gardening, I have, so to speak, fallen in love with compost, with humus. My hands somehow do not lie to do these things, but I really like to observe the vegetation in our yard. A particularly mystical impression on me is made by what happens with humus - how from rubbish, garbage, garbage, absolutely pure, like pollen of flowers, a black substance appears before my eyes, giving new life. This is perhaps one of the most metaphysical processes that we have been given to observe with our own eyes. Therefore, the metaphor "poet-humus" (somewhere I have: "humus of souls and books", i.e. culture) is for me the highest metaphor of any existence, any, including creative, life.

If I may, I will now return to the topic of "duality" that I touched upon in the question of the relationship between your last name and pseudonym. True, in another aspect. I quote your poems: "I will lie down, defocus my eyes. I will split the star in the window, and suddenly I will see the area shining, my damp homeland ... "The problem, so to speak, of a double vision of the world seems to me very important for understanding your work.

Well, to simplify, this poem is just about the fact that the vision should be double. By the way, in my opinion, none of the readers and critics paid attention to the fact that this is a Christmas poem. Or maybe they turned, but did not speak. At the time of the Nativity of Christ, as is known, there was a rare combination of two planets - Saturn and Jupiter, which could look like one new star from the Earth. This is, in general, one of the atheistic explanations of the gospel phenomena. But in my poem, which, as I noted, is about double vision, I wanted to give the gospel perception of the endlessly repeating Christmas in the style of the Science and Life magazine. Dramatic and lyrical (more importantly lyrical) in poetry is created in the presence of two poles. Sometimes poems written by very cultured people are unbearably monotonous. Take, for example, the remarkable philologist Averintsev. He has recently started publishing his poetry.

The poems are not bad, very accurately stylizing some genres, with the words chosen correctly. There is a lot of taste, culture and even sincerity in poetry, but they have one drawback - they are boring. Why? There is no second stylistic pole. I am not going to give Averintsev any advice, it would be completely inappropriate - but if he, as it seems to me, were in some kind of graceful crying (I don’t remember what he was crying about: about the servant of God Alexei? .. ) suddenly inserted a reality from the vulgar Soviet everyday life, then, perhaps, something could have arisen ... Then lyricism would have appeared. And here is the other extreme. There was such "barrack poetry", one of our best poets Sapgir had something to do with it, Kholin ... Here Kholin, a talented person who has wonderful things, has a more or less rhymed registration of vulgarity, boredom, dirt, everyday life . This is again devoid of lyrical energy. A kind of astigmatism is necessary for the poet.

Now, in the so-called perestroika times, many of those St. Petersburg poets who sought to preserve and continue the traditions of the Russian " Silver Age", other traditions - I mean, first of all, those with which you felt a deep spiritual connection - moved from a semi-legal position to a completely comfortable position. That is, in this case we are talking about the opportunity to publish, speak at home, abroad. A kind of process of merging of St. Petersburg literature with Russian and world literature in a broad sense took place.Don't you think that in this way the circle of St. Petersburg literature of the 60s and early 70s, as it were, closed, completed?

I don't think it's yesterday, a closed page. If we talk about the publication of poems written twenty to twenty-five years ago, then this is quite a useful cultural affair. But, you know, it doesn't change anything. Doesn't save. It does not cancel the tragedy of the entire generation, because the life, the youth of these people is destroyed, humiliated, and no later confessions or publications can restore it.

- What is your attitude to the changes in the Soviet Union, in modern Europe?

Like everyone else, I follow the events with great interest and, like everyone else, I have no idea where all this will lead. Brodsky, for example, believes that the only historical problem humanity is overpopulation. In a broad sense, he seems to be absolutely right. With this approach to things, all forecasts can only be the most pessimistic - separate political changes in different parts the globe essentially change nothing. But I'd like to be a bit more optimistic about that. It seems to me that there is a movement towards an unusually sweet and dear to me political utopia. Back in my student years with my friend Sergei Kulle, whom I have already mentioned, we dreamed (again in purely utopian terms) that the whole of Europe would fall apart: Germany would again consist of many principalities, France - of Provence, Burgundy, Lorraine ... Russia - from the principalities of Moscow, Smolensk, the Khanate of Kazan, etc. And, oddly enough, there was a historic chance for the realization of this utopian dream.

September 1990 - July 1991

The most interesting and significant from the archive of Radio Liberty twenty years ago. Unfinished story. Still living hope. Could Russia have gone the other way?

Ivan Tolstoy: June 15 - 60 years of the poet Lev Losev. Our today's broadcast is dedicated to this anniversary. In it you will hear speeches by Losev's St. Petersburg friends: poet Vladimir Uflyand and historian Vladimir Gerasimov, critics Andrei Ariev from St. Petersburg, Alexander Genis from New York and Pyotr Vail from Prague, Lev Losev's co-author on philological studies Valentin Polukhina from the British University in Kiel, publisher the first books of the poet, the owner of the Hermitage publishing house near New York, Igor Efimov, and the writer Tatyana Tolstaya, who is now in Greece. You will also hear a conversation with the hero of the day and his poems, both old and new, unpublished, in the author's performance.

On the waves of Radio Liberty, the release of "Over the Barriers", which today is dedicated to the poet Lev Losev. On June 15, he has a round date - 60 years. Lev Vladimirovich was born in Leningrad in 1937 in the family of the poet Vladimir Livshits. He graduated from Leningrad University, wrote scripts, children's poems, worked as an editor in the magazine "Koster". Author of ten plays. In 1976 he emigrated and very soon made a brilliant university career as an American professor. He teaches at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. One of the leading experts on the work of Joseph Brodsky. He defended his thesis on the theme "Aesopian language in Soviet literature". And suddenly, and unexpectedly even for the closest friends, Lev Losev appeared in print with his serious, so to speak, "adult" lyrics. This happened in 1979 on the pages of the Parisian literary magazine "Echo", which was published by Maramzin and Khvostenko. The appearance of Losev the poet made a strong impression on Russian poetic circles. Joseph Brodsky immediately called Losev "Vyazemsky of our century." I am pleased to say today that in 1980, when I arrived at the Pushkin Reserve, I introduced some of the participants in today's program to the poems of Lev Losev. I remember their unspeakable surprise and joy from the new voice of their old friend, from the new thrill. Almost twenty years have passed since then, Losev published two poetic books in the West - "The Miraculous Landing" and "Privy Councilor". Both - in the publishing house "Hermitage" Igor Efimov. A year ago, his collection "New Information about Karl and Clara" appeared in St. Petersburg in the publishing house of the "Pushkin Fund". Today, no one doubts that Losev is a well-deserved master of our literature. Lev Vladimirovich - at the microphone of Radio Liberty.

Lev Losev:

All yarns unraveled
again a tow in hand,
and people learned
play the reed.

We are in our polymers
weave a tuft of wool,
but these half measures
can't save us...

So am I, a meager vessel,
wrong oval,
at Udelnaya station
sat and mourned.

I had nowhere to hide
the soul of my business,
and a rainbow of oil
blossomed in front of me.

And so much forcing
and having done things,
I am behind the fence
stared blankly.

The mental hospital was breathing
hulls glowed,
and there flashed faces,
voices roamed

They sang what they had to,
turning to scream
and Finnish swamp
the reed answered them

Now I will read two poems from the second book, from the book of 1987, which is called "Privy Councilor". The first poem is called "Levlosev".

Levlosev is not a poet, not a kifared.
He is a marine painter, he is a velimirologist,
Broadsky player with glasses and a sparse beard,
he is an osipologist with a hoarse throat,
it smells like vodka
he smacks nonsense.

Levlosevlosevlosevlosevon-
ononononononon judas,
he betrayed Rus', he betrays Zion,
he drinks lotion
does not distinguish good from bad,
he never knows what's coming from
at least I heard the sound.

He is an annophile, he is an alexandroman,
Fedorolyub, turning to prose,
he will not write a novel,
and there is an article on an important issue -
keep your pocket!

He hears the sound
as if someone is executed
where the straw supposedly eats,
but it's not a bell, it's a telephone,
he does not fit, he is not at home.

And a small poem from the same book called "Dedication".

Look, look here quickly:
Above a flock of round bullfinches
The dawn comes from trump cards -
All red.

Oh, if only I could!
But I could not: a lump sticks out
In the larynx, and there will be no lines
About the properties of passion.

And there are two lives as one.
We stand with you at the window.
Why not drink some wine?
I'm kinda chilly.

Melo all month in February.
A candle burned in a Chevrolet.
And on the red king
The hat was on fire.

In the Russian thickets they have no number,
we just can't find the way -
bridges collapsed, a snowstorm brought,
the trail was littered with a windbreak.
They plow there in April, they reap there in August,
there in a hat they won’t sit at the table,
quietly waiting for the second coming,
bow to whoever comes -
constable on a troika, an archangel with a pipe,
passer-by in a German coat.
There they treat diseases with water and grass.
Nobody dies there.
The Lord puts them to sleep for the winter,
in the snow covers up to fear -
neither fix the ice-hole, nor chop wood,
no sleds, no games, no fun.
Bodies taste peace on the floors,
and souls are happy dreams.
So much heat tangled in sheepskins,
that will last until spring.

Petr Weil: The place that Lev Losev occupies in our literature and in the literary process is unique. Let me remind you that literature is what is written, the literary process is the circumstances in which what is written is created. These circumstances are difficult in all epochs, at all latitudes, not in last turn because literary people not too warm to each other. It `s naturally. If the definition is true that poetry is the best words in the best order, then how many better orders can there be?

Hence the self-conceit, and jealousy, and envy, and hostility. And here Lev Losev stands out sharply. Everyone respects him. His literary figure has a powerful authority: "But Losev said," "But Losev thinks differently." One could refer to the solidity and thoroughness of his studies. Nothing like this. Solidity is revealed in skill, but what solidity a writer has, allowing himself such liberties in poetry that not every young avant-garde artist dares. I wonder if there is such a poetic category - authority? If not, we introduce for Losev. Once, about two years ago, I asked Joseph Brodsky if he had ever treated anyone, except for childhood and adolescence, of course, as an elder. He suddenly became serious, thought about it, then said that at some point - to Cheslav Milos, and all his life, from his youth until that time - to Losev. In my opinion, Brodsky himself was somewhat puzzled by his own conclusion. As for literature, poetry, Losev composes poems that are immediately recognizable, unlike anyone or anything. I remember well the first time I read them. The selection, Losev's very first poetic publication, appeared in 1979 in the Parisian magazine Echo and gave the impression of some kind of hoax. I remember the feeling: it does not happen. It does not happen that suddenly, at once, in one fell swoop, a completely mature, virtuoso, strong, original thinking poet appears. But it seems that I am beginning to quote Pushkin's words. It's nothing you can do. Not much has changed since the time of Pushkin, who said about Baratynsky "he is original with us, because he thinks". Of course, the four decades of Brodsky's presence in Russian poetry have not been in vain, the poems have become smarter, but as long as it is usually about imitation, the real consequences are ahead. It is all the more striking how parallel to his great friend, unlike him, the intellectual poetry of Lev Losev moves in its own way. However, this phrase, although true, is very incomplete. I really don't want to reduce Losev's poems to amazing versification, caustic wit, subtle observations, deep thoughts. Is this not enough? Few. I read fragments from Losev aloud more often than anyone else's poems. It is appropriate, it is spectacular, it is advantageous. But you mutter his lines to yourself not because you admire them, but because they are written for you and about you. That elusive, indefinable and indescribable quality that makes poetry real, Losev himself tried to designate in the poem "Reading Milos": "And someone pressed my throat with his hand / and let him go again." Fifteen years ago I read this simple line and I remember it every time I read Losev.

Except for two or three initial notes
and black logs on fire
no one remembers me
what is dead in me.
And what do you order to remember -
the silence of Russian aonids?
How would you like to understand
it's scary to pick up the phone,
and the phone is ringing.

Or this:

What else is this?
And this is a mirror, such a glass,
to see with a brush behind the cheek
the fate of the displaced person.

Here is the formula, one of Losev's many remarkable formulas - "a displaced person of fate." He's talking about himself, of course, but I'll subscribe if he doesn't mind.

Ivan Tolstoy: Now another look from St. Petersburg. Critic Andrey Ariev.

Andrey Ariev: Lev Losev's poems seem unexpected and new in our poetry for two decades. So it's easy to admit: it is Lev Losev who has long been the ruler of my fleeting thoughts about the meaning of modern lyrics. Instead of serving divine speech, instead of sweet sounds and prayers, like Khlebnikov:

Both carefree and playful.
He showed the art of touching.

To touch with the clawed paw of a lion, but also to touch heartily, sincerely. The meaning of this poetry is revealed not by the first, but by the second turn of the key. What is essential in it is the movement continued from the hidden depths. It is not mystical experience that is important here, but a good knowledge of one's own nature and nature, of the unfortunate fact that in every person something dies all the time, and what is happening is reminiscent of Pushkin:

But happiness plays angrily with me.

Lev Losev's intuition is an intuition about the incompleteness of human existence, a feeling that almost dominates the St. Petersburg artistic tradition. “No one will remember with me / what has died in me,” writes Losev. We live with grief in half and sin in half, but we do not indulge in despondency and in winter we remember flowers, we even know how to celebrate "non-priest" as the poet wrote in his last romance. And here's what's interesting. In Losev's first book, "The Miraculous Landing", "The Last Romance", the second poem in order, tells about the unborn baby, about the miserable fate of Russia:

The Admiralty syringe flashes, and local anesthesia
will instantly freeze to the borders the place where Russia used to be.

And now let's look at Losev's latest collection. Perfectly symmetrical - the second poem from the end is devoted to the same topic. It is called "Sin in Half" and has the subtitle "June 15, 1925". The mirror reflection fixes the world poetic record: starting with "under-Christmas", the poet celebrates the day of his "not birth" - on this day, but twelve years later, he was born in Leningrad, remembering that somewhere, in the southern resort town, it happened such.

Then she sat alone for a long time
at the doctor's office.
And the skin of the sofa was cold
her is hot

The oilcloth is brilliant, the pain is thin and sharp,
instant fog.
There was a Jewish doctor, a Russian sister.
Crowd of Armenians

From Turks, photographers, Nepmansh mothers,
dads, punks.
Tan bronzed from apache shirts,
white pants.

Everything in this crowd and in this life is a matter of chance, but according to Losev, this is life, only accidents in it are natural, and we are talking about them. Only on the periphery of consciousness, almost beyond the verses and the earth, his lyrical hero looms:

On a bent dolphin - from wave to wave -
through the darkness and the moon,
the invisible boy blew into the sink,
blew into the sink.

The tender "invisible boy" in the poetry of Lev Losev shows the face of a hardened misanthrope. But the hero, I repeat, is precisely this random ghost, not materialized, and therefore an immortal lyrical germ.

No, just random features
beautiful in this scary world…

... Lev Losev argues with romanticism in general and Blok in particular. The more accidental, the more truly the verses are composed, the life plan is composed - Losev could say so, following Pasternak. The meaning of life is not a priori, and I think that you can think anything, says Losev.

An invigorating literary echo is always heard in his poems, they are not pragmatic, not utilitarian, light like calendar sheets, like little notes at an emigrant ball

Of course, his wit is often gloomy, smacks of Nekrasov's hypochondria, but Lev Losev's wit has a playful character, and therefore is not hopeless, not dull. An invigorating literary echo is always heard in his poems, they are not pragmatic, not utilitarian, light as the leaves of a calendar, like little notes at an emigrant ball. This is how Khodasevich and Georgy Ivanov wrote outside of Russia. The poetry of Lev Losev is all in a cloud of allusions and reminiscences, all supported by this harmony from the ages. Therefore, he is so frankly quotable, poetry without a literary echo for him is like food without salt. And he's right. In order to read the book of Russian life, it is necessary, like Losev, to compare it with the Book of Genesis of the Bible:

"Earth
was formless and empty.
In the above landscape
relatives recognize places.

This is how our existence continues, the second day has come and the second verse. And all the poetry of Lev Losev is the unexpected joy of the accidentally extended time of an extended day.

​Ivan Tolstoy: After criticism - a word to the poet. Vladimir Uflyand.

Vladimir Uflyand: I have long been interested in such a war-opposition of vodka and a writing person. Before my eyes, several people even suffered a mortal defeat in this war. And Lesha, somewhere around thirty years old, suffered the first such tactical defeat from vodka. He and the late Boris Fedorovich Semyonov said goodbye to Boris Fedorovich's grandmother. If we remember that Boris Fedorovich himself is twenty years older than us, then what kind of grandmother was she? And the next day, Boris Fedorovich, as if nothing had happened, went to hangover with cognac, and Lesha ended up in the hospital with a suspected heart attack. But since then he has made some kind of very cunning agreement with alcohol: he does not drink until six in the evening, but after six he is completely calm and communicates with vodka and with friends. And on his sixtieth birthday, I wrote him this poem:

Lesha's friend!
Having exchanged the seventh ten,
Respect yourself and your order today.
When will six p.m. come,
don't put yourself in trouble
other than the dissolution of ice in scotch tape,
and the night is not enough for them.
And at noon your Nina will disturb your sleep,
gazing at the lawn intently.
He will exclaim so that a trembling will break out in the distance:
“Well, Lyosha, we have lived with you!
The bear ate my slippers, your swimming trunks,
did not eat the bottle that stood on the bench,
but drank the rest of it.
His footprints are in the grass!
God grant him, furry, amendments!
And a soft landing after a spin”

And in the meantime, you will begin to exercise.

And I would like to make a comment to this poem that Lyosha and Nina live in a lovely place surrounded by such hefty American coniferous trees. Ninulya has planted a garden, and all kinds of animals go to this garden: deer, marmot, even a bear sometimes comes. And the thing is that Ninulya is an absolutely incredible person, she is talented in everything she takes on, so Lesha simply could not start writing below the level at which he began to write, because next to Nina he could not do this to himself allow. Nina and Lesha will have a golden wedding at the beginning of the next century, and Lesha is also lucky in this. God bless him and continue like this!

Ivan Tolstoy: Roots of Lev Losev in St. Petersburg, in Leningrad. A word to a friend of his youth, historian Vladimir Gerasimov.

Vladimir Gerasimov : Near the Obvodny Canal, in the last quarter along Mozhayskaya Street, at the corner of Mozhayskaya and Malodetskoselsky Avenue, I visited him shortly after we met. He lived there for quite some time in a communal apartment. I must say that our entire company, we all lived then in the old city, because there was no new city yet, even Kupchino had just begun to be created. And we were all such Petersburgophiles, Petersburgers, and this city intrigued us a lot, evoked a lot of questions for us. As for those two or three dozen universally recognized architectural masterpieces, thanks to which St. Petersburg is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world, we knew as much about them as it seemed to us enough. But the fact that on these streets, even if they are not at all brilliant, even if they are some kind of melancholy, all the houses have different facades, not all of the same face, this made me want to know when it was built, who lived here, what was here earlier. There was nothing beautiful in this house on Mozhayskaya, and yet I think that Lesha and his family would have been a little more interesting to live in it if they already knew then that this house was built in 1874 by an architect with a loud surname Nabokov. We didn't know it then. Yes, however, this Nabokov, Nikolai Vasilyevich, had nothing to do with the family that gave the world a famous writer, just a namesake. We also did not know that two remarkable Russian poets Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky and Anton Antonovich Delvig once lived on the next street from Mozhayskaya, on Ruzovskaya. By the way, about Delvig. About Delvig and Losev. Although, it would seem, what is the connection between them? And for a long time Lesha, at the time of our still intense communication, even outwardly reminded me of Delvig - soft facial features, a rounded chin, glasses with very strong diopters. But the point is not only in external similarity, you never know who looks like anyone. About Delvig, Anna Petrovna Kern, a famous contemporary of Delvig, Pushkin and other poets, their friend, writes very touchingly and, in my opinion, talentedly. She was on good friendly terms with Delvig. And this is what she writes: “Delvig, I can affirmatively say, was always smart! And how amiable he was! I have never met a person more amiable and pleasant than him. recognize in him true British humour. Hospitable, generous, delicate, refined, he knew how to make everyone around him happy. He always joked very seriously, and when he repeated his favorite word "funny", it meant that it was about something not at all amusing, or about sad, or annoying for him. It seems to me that if the name Losev is inserted in this paragraph instead of the name Delvig, then in the rest you can not change a single word. Of course, I didn’t share my observations with Lesha and never wrote to him about it, because it would be inconvenient, but since today I still speak for our radio listeners, it seems to me that they will nevertheless form a more complete picture about our hero of the day, if I share these observations with them. So, then Lesha and Nina moved to a more spacious apartment, but about those places where Lesha and his family lived, after all, a few recent years in his own country, he does not mention anywhere in his poetry, because in those parts there is simply nothing for the eye to catch on. There are such nine- or sixteen-story blockheads standing there, at their feet, like some kind of dogs, four- and five-story buildings sheltered. And, of course, there were many very important reasons for their departure from here, but it seems to me that one of these reasons, albeit not the most important, was Lesha's desire to take his wife away from this landscape, from that landscape that opened from the windows of their apartment, where Nina sat all day in a rather despondent mood and admired the huge puddle that never dried under their window. I have not been in those places for a long time, but a few years ago the puddle still remained in the same place, just like the famous Mirgorod puddle, sung by Gogol.

Ivan Tolstoy: From Petersburg - to the West. Our microphone is from New York author Alexander Genis.

Alexander Genis: Losev with his cunning rhyme, with his complex patterned rhythm, with his sophisticated word game- A virtuoso of versification. But there are qualities in his poetry that allow it to be read even by those who usually look with hatred at the text typed in a column. Losev's poems are also interesting at the simplest, philistine level. They are prosaic, and narrative, and fascinating. The fundamental contradiction of his work is born of the exclusive loyalty of the author to his hero, more precisely, the heroine - the motherland. And in this sense, Losev's poetry is purely émigré. The conflict of Losev's poems is determined by the existence of the motherland and the fact of its absence. The loss of the fatherland is a fruitful artistic experience. Nature does not tolerate emptiness, and Losev fills it with his own and not his own memories. He enumerates Russia, rhymes it, beats it with a clever word game. Losev diligently packs native realities into his verse, so that it would be more convenient to transport Russia from place to place. But where is the ideal, where is the magic crystal of art, through which bad reality is transformed into normal? Losev also has this. Poet tormented by the absurd Russian history, secretly retains a shy image of a reasonable norm, an image that is rare, but still found in the wax museum of his memoirs.

So that instead of this rust, fields in the insecticide
again the Volga would roll into the Caspian Sea,
horses would eat oats again,
so that a cloud of glory shines over the homeland,
so that at least something would work out.
And the tongue won't dry out.

Ivan Tolstoy: Recently, the writer Tatiana Tolstaya visited our Prague studio on her way from Greece.

Tatiana Tolstaya: It seems to me that Lev Losev wonderfully combines two things. The first is that he openly and for everyone shows the whole spectrum of Russian literature in which he exists, which is huge. This is from Pushkin, from Derzhavin to Mandelstam and children's poems, which is natural, he came out of these children's poems, up to quotations from various unexpected things, translated things, Dante, anything. For a literate, intelligent, educated reader, he presents, without hesitation, the entire spectrum of literature. It's often called postmodernism, but I think it's just a good education And beautiful skill handle the text, it is a literary text. But the narrower one, with which this broad tradition is connected, in my opinion, lies in such a strange position. On the one hand, it leaves Zabolotsky. And both early and late. He has quotes from the later, again, you guess - you will not guess. In our country, the late Zabolotsky is little read, and it is customary not to like him, and in vain. And it precedes, strange as it may seem, Timur Kibirov.

​Ivan Tolstoy: Tell me, is it possible that serious, real lyrics have such a charge of a sense of humor? In general, is it legal for serious lyrics to be humorous poetry at the same time?

Tatiana Tolstaya: Legal or not legal? It may be illegal. Like all true poetry, it must be lawless. But it is so difficult that few people succeed. There are such humorous, satirical, ironic directions in which people are, for example, Sasha Cherny, a very respected poet (early Sasha Cherny, before the emigrant period). With humor - fine, someone likes it, someone doesn't like it, but in the sense of lyrics - stop, the lyrics don't work there. Don Aminado, absolutely beautiful, satirical, if you like, poetry, an attempt at lyrics - stop! Blockage, saliva pink. And the opposite sin is the lyrics are high, sublime, somewhere all in the clouds, looking at the stars, and there, in these stars - only sugar, nausea.

He was a friendly beacon for many poets in Russia

To cross the high with the humorous, not to be afraid to get off the sidewalk and step into the terrible mud, to pull out the leg without getting dirty, but only adding to our life experience, and at the same time rushing head somewhere very high, not where cheap stars for three kopecks are, and where there are peaks, to which we still need to stretch our chin in order to look - here on this line Losev somehow manages to fit. And I would say that it was in this very capacity that he was a friendly beacon for many poets in Russia. Many tried to imitate him. It didn't work out. This gift you cannot take away, you cannot adopt, you cannot use. I know many poets who would like to write like Losev. This is such envy, which, it seems to me, says a lot, and this is such a good trait - to envy Losev. He can, I can't.

Ivan Tolstoy: When Losev was leaving Soviet Union in the second half of the 70s, no one suspected that he was a poet. As a poet, he declared himself already in exile. You have already seen Lev Vladimirovich in America. Tell me, are Losev and poetic behavior two things in common?

Tatiana Tolstaya: I may not know Lev Vladimirovich closely enough to evaluate his poetic behavior, but in my opinion, no. That is, his hair does not flutter, he does not run around the house like a madman. And he looks unusually gentlemanly and behaves like a gentleman, in our best idea, right or wrong, about this word. This person is extremely obliging, amiable, polite, extremely well-mannered, hospitable, kind, indulgent to those stupid things that, say, drunken guests can afford. And communication with him is communication with the old, long gone and, perhaps, non-existent St. Petersburg world. Somehow he maintains alone, alone with himself, in the wild wilderness of his small state, the idea that such people are found in St. Petersburg. If you haven't seen them, well, well, here they are, here they are.

Ivan Tolstoy: Now let's move on to those who professionally collaborate with Lev Losev. First - a philologist from the University of Keele, UK, Valentina Polukhina.

Valentina Polukhina: In my relationship with Lesha, of course, Brodsky is present as air and light. Lesha was one of Joseph's closest friends, he is the author of a dozen best articles about Brodsky, and for me he is the greatest authority on Brodsky. In his always brilliant articles, he demonstrates the ability to lead away from unambiguous interpretations, from scientific schemes, his articles, like his poems, are surrounded by a huge field of cultural context. And my respect and gratitude to Lev Vladimirovich is immeasurable. But I love Losev the poet no less for his clever talent, special lyricism, dry wit and fantastic formal ingenuity. His poems are captivating with their paradoxical moves. Puritanism is mixed with hidden eroticism, postmodernism - with classical harmony, realism - with absurdity. Despite the fact that in life extremes are alien to him. A unique gift. Losev is a poet and a man of impeccable reputation. His erudition is fabulous, his modesty is attractive, his politeness, charm, his nobility are truly aristocratic. And in poetry, and in life, and in articles, Losev is smart and elegant, gentle and sad, witty and wise. And this man, by the will of fate and completely undeserved by me, is my colleague and friend. I couldn't have wished for a bigger and better gift. And on his birthday, I wish him to enjoy his talent and take care of his health. And maybe smile a little more often and not so sadly.

Ivan Tolstoy: I called the city of Tenafly near New York, where the Russian publishing house "Hermitage" is located, which published the first two books of Losev. Here is a recording of a conversation with the owner of the publishing house Igor Efimov.

What is the commercial fate of publishing his books?

Igor Efimov: I must say that with all the difficulties of Losev's books that we published ... We also published a collection of his wonderful essays, which at one time were published in the Continent magazine under the title "Closed Distributor". Here is this collection, two collections of poems and the book "Poetics of Brodsky", they all almost dispersed. But they take a very long time to separate. So gradually, I think that we have returned our expenses, but this process was stretched, as we see, for ten years or even more.

Ivan Tolstoy: For you as a publisher, what is the circle of Losev's readers in Russian America?

Igor Efimov: These are mainly Russian people who write poetry, they follow each other very much, they are involuntarily actively interested in each other, and the Slavists who teach modern Russian literature, who know very well Losev the professor, Losev the wonderful researcher of Russian literature, and they are interested in all aspects of his work.

Ivan Tolstoy: And now - a conversation with the hero of the day himself. Lev Vladimirovich, there is probably an external reason that you began to publish your poems only after crossing the border into westbound. But there is probably an internal reason. Can you tell me about one and the other?

Lev Losev: As for what you call an external cause, this is probably the most obvious. It's not that I wrote a lot of poetry, as they say, of political content, but, one way or another, everything you write is informed, saturated with your worldview, your attitude to reality. So it is unlikely that by nature itself, perhaps, by my verbal nature, it would even have occurred to me to propose something for publication in the Soviet Union while it existed and while I was there. But the most important thing is that I wrote quite a bit while living in my homeland, until the beginning of 1976, when I emigrated. As I wrote in the preface to my first collection, The Miraculous Landing, I began to write poetry, at least to take what I was able to do seriously, only in 1974, that is, a year and a half before my emigration. Simply put, not much has been written during this time. No literary path, I, quite honestly, hand on heart, did not plan any literary future for myself when leaving Russia. As I said, then I wrote poems for only a year and a half or two in earnest, and at that moment I absolutely did not want to publish anything written, because basically I wrote them for such "therapeutic" purposes. Not that I intentionally wrote them, but they were obtained, they were written, they came to me as a kind of way to survive. And some kind of superstition then told me that publishing them, even just reading them in a circle of friends, meant destroying their therapeutic, healing effect for the soul. Then, of course, all this timidity, which was too late for its age, gradually evaporated, as there were more poems, I became more sober about it, and, in the end, in 1980, for the first time, poems were published in the Echo magazine. But I never considered it as a career, not in the least. More seriously, I can say that, oddly enough, although in general I am rather a pessimist by nature, and I never expect special joys from the future, but those general ideas about the future that I had when I left my homeland in 1976, they came true. Because I didn’t imagine anything particularly concrete and didn’t export anything in this sense, except for readiness for everything. What did I expect? To put it simply, freedom. And I really got it.

Ivan Tolstoy: Where is the poet Losev celebrating his anniversary?

Lev Losev: That I can tell you for sure. I will meet my so-called anniversary (I don’t attach much importance to this date at all) on the train on the way from Milan to Venice. In the morning I will be in Milan, in the evening I will be in Venice. This is due to my big trip to different European cities.

Ivan Tolstoy: Let me congratulate you on your 60th birthday!

Lev Losev: Thank you very much, Ivan Nikitich!

And at the end of our anniversary program, Lev Losev kindly agreed to read an unpublished poem.

Lev Losev:

I learned to write that your Sluchevsky.
Published in dying thick magazines.
(What decadence, Alexandrianism!
This could compose Cavafy,
and the late Shmakov would have translated,
and then the late Joseph would have corrected).
And he himself got fat that your Apukhtin,
I can’t get to the sofa without shortness of breath,
I drink chamomile infusion instead of tea,
I throw unread books
on the face forgotten like a smile.
And when they knock on my door with a fist,
when they shout: at the gates of the Sarmatians!
ojibwei! Lezgins! goyim! -
I say leave me alone.
I retire to the inner chambers,
cool gloomy chambers.