Yuri Trifonov (1925-1981)

After studying this chapter, the student should:

know

• the traditions of A.P. Chekhov in the works of Yu. V. Trifonov;
• the main features of the artistic world of Yu. V. Trifonov (philosophical problems; choice of heroes; everyday plots; detailing as a means of psychological characterization of characters);
• ideological and artistic originality of the story "Exchange" and the novel "The Old Man";

be able to

• determine the role of Yu. V. Trifonov in the creation of urban prose;
• trace the role of details in the stories of Yu. V. Trifonov;
• show the correlation between modernity and history in the prose of Yu. V. Trifonov;
• explain what role the character discussions play in revealing the meaning of the works of K). V. Trifonov;
• to reveal the position of the author in an externally objectified narrative;

own

• the concepts of "urban prose", "character", "detailing", "author's position"; "artistic time and space";
• the skills of comparative analysis of the works of Yu. V. Trifonov with the modern literary process.

The work of Yu. V. Trifonov, with all its thematic diversity, is devoted to the reflection of the phenomenon of life and the phenomenon of time in their interaction. One of the first to take up the reflection of the urban life of the second half of the 20th century, Trifonov created the genre of "urban story", saw eternal themes behind everyday phenomena. In history, Trifonov looked for the roots of today's problems, answers to questions about humanism and misanthropy, about good and evil, spirituality and lack of spirituality. His philosophical and psychological prose became a worthy development of the traditions of Russian realism at the beginning of the century, and the writer's creative biography contained almost all the paradoxes of the Soviet era.

Creative biography and artistic world of Yu.V. Trifonov

Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov was born into the family of a major professional revolutionary who was repressed in 1938. Trifonov was brought up by relatives, worked at an aircraft plant. Having overcome all the obstacles that stood in the way of ChSVN (a member of the family of an enemy of the people), Trifonov entered the Literary Institute and his first work - a novel "Students"(1950) achieved state recognition: received the Stalin Prize. However, the prize did not save the young writer from being expelled from the institute and from the Komsomol for "the origin of enemies of the people concealed when joining the Writers' Union." Fortunately for Trifonov, the district committee did not approve this decision, thus the young talented writer had the opportunity to graduate from the institute and get a job. However, instead of continuing to move along the path of government-optimistic conjuncture, accompanied by fame and all kinds of benefits, Trifonov chose the painful path of comprehending the complexities of life.

A transitional step on this path was the novel "Thirst quencher"(1963), in many ways still reminiscent of industrial prose (the book tells about the construction of the Kara-Kum canal and the life of journalists). However, in terms of the depth of the moral issues raised and the complexity and contradictory nature of the characters, unusual for those years, the novel foreshadowed the creation of that artistic world that would fully manifest itself in Trifonov's "Moscow stories" of the late 1960s – 1970s.

Stories "Exchange" (1969), "Preliminary Results" (1970), "Long goodbye" (1971), "Another life" (1975), "House on the Embankment"(1976) brought Trifonov wide popularity among readers and almost complete misunderstanding among critics. The writer was reproached for the fact that there were no major personalities in his new works; conflicts were built on everyday, everyday, and not large-scale situations. As if in response to this criticism, Trifonov, one after the other, created works on historical, more precisely, historical-revolutionary, themes ("Reflection of the Fire", 1965; "Impatience", 1967; "Old Man", 1978), where he again matched the high and the ordinary, sought a connection between revolutionary intransigence and the cruelty of our day.

"Moscow stories"

Trifonov's mature talent manifested itself in the "Moscow stories". There are no sharp social and ideological clashes, as in "Students", there are no epic descriptions, as in "Quenching Thirst". The action of all stories, like the modern events of Trifonov's novels, takes place in ordinary Moscow apartments and ordinary country estates. The writer strove so that in his characters - engineers, researchers, teachers, even writers, actresses, scientists - the reader could accurately guess himself. My prose, Trifonov argued, "is not about some [bourgeois], but about you and me," about ordinary townspeople. His characters are shown in everyday situations (in exchanges of apartments, illnesses, minor clashes with each other and with the authorities, in search of earnings, interesting work) and at the same time are associated with time - present, past and partly future.

"History is present in every day, in every destiny," the writer argued. "It is heaped up in mighty invisible layers - however, sometimes visible, even distinctly - in everything that forms the present."

"Moscow stories" can not be called everyday and even anti-bourgeois, although in each of them there is certainly one, or even several pragmatists, selfish interests, whose sole purpose in life is material well-being, a career at any cost. Trifonov calls them "iron boys", and their cynicism and inability (and often unwillingness) to understand another person, his soul and mood is denoted by the word "lack of feeling" which he writes in detente as especially significant. However, the author's ironic-satirical attitude towards this series of characters shows that they are clear and not interesting to Trifonov and therefore are not the main object of his psychological narrative.

Trifonov is interested in completely different characters: seekers, evolving, subtle in their own way. Associated with them are the problems that have always faced Russian literature and have become especially aggravated in our days - the moral freedom of a person in the face of circumstances. In "Moscow stories" such circumstances are the little things of everyday life, which, as it is easy to see, makes Trifonov related to his beloved writer A. P. Chekhov.

In some cases, the action takes place in the present tense: in front of the reader's eyes, the kind, gentle Viktor Dmitriev "exchanges" his conscience for material well-being. In other stories, Trifonov resorts to a flexible form of characters' recollections of events and thoughts of past years. The heroes sum up the "preliminary results" of their life and find that it has passed by, even if they managed to grab a breath of popularity or acquire a home, position, title.

Chekhov's story about the imperceptible degradation of personality gets a fundamentally new sound from Trifonov. The characters of the "Moscow tales" persistently convince themselves that they are not the culprits of their spiritual death, but the circumstances, life. The same Dmitriev not only betrays his mother by offering her an exchange of apartments (but in fact, saying that she will soon die), but also convinces himself that it would be better for the mother to live with him and her hated daughter-in-law before she dies. In an extreme case, Victor is ready to shift the blame for this act of his and for others like him on his wife. However, the writer constructs the plot in such a way as to prevent the hero from making excuses. By the will of the author, Lena, Dmitriev's wife, in response to an almost direct accusation of relatives that it was she who pushed her husband to meanness, remarks not without sarcasm: "Yes, of course, I am capable of anything. Your Vitya is a good boy, I seduced him." ...

The final of the story sounds like a moral accusation to the hero of "Preliminary Results", where the narrator, who throughout the entire narrative condemned himself and his former life, returns to it again and continues the "race" for illusory happiness. Conscience, or rather its remnants, gnaws at even the most vile of all the main characters in the "Moscow tales" of Vadim Glebov, nicknamed "Baton".

The author's attitude to the characters is conveyed "in homeopathic doses" through psychological details. For example, Dmitriev cannot immediately recall his child's drawing: thereby the writer shows how far today's Viktor Georgievich is from that naive kind boy that he once was. However, the recollection of childhood forces an adult hero to do a good deed: to take care of a belly dog. The episode with the purchase of saury on the day of his grandfather's funeral becomes a symbol of the hero's "oleukianization", his loss of sensitivity, and ultimately another step towards being cut off from the Dmitriev clan. The ambiguity of the character of the main character, the internal struggle taking place in him, will also be indicated by the detail carefully given by the writer: "After the death of Ksenia Fedorovna, Dmitriev had a hypertensive crisis." Trifonov ns used a synonym for this disease (heart failure), but an intelligent reader will easily guess about the symbolism of the diagnosis. Only at the very end of the story, amid the philosophically calm information of the narrator about the fate of the Dmitrievs' dacha in Pavlinovo, about the housewarming of Viktor's sister and her husband, will the condemning and regretful author's phrase about the 37-year-old Dmitriev break through: “He somehow immediately gave up, turned gray. Not an old man yet, but already elderly, with tight cheeks uncle"[our emphasis. - V. A.].

In "Exchange" there is an episodic character - Dmitriev's grandfather, a Narodnoye resident who recently returned from Stalin's exile. This "mastodon", as the young heroes of the story call him, cannot understand why the Lukyanovs turn to the old housekeeper as "you"; requires Victor to be not just "not bad, but an amazing person." At the same time, there is no Dmitrievskaya arrogance in his grandfather for his nobility, he is characterized by extreme tolerance for people; it is no coincidence that both Victor and Lenochka love him. The death of a grandfather is not just a turning point in the "olukianization" of a grandson, but a kind of symbol: himself brought up on the ideals of October, Trifonov in the first "Moscow story" traditionally explains the loss of morality by betrayal of revolutionary ideals.

However, this explanation did not satisfy the writer for long. In the story "House on the Embankment" the firm Bolshevik Ganchuk, in the 1920s. who renounced universal human values ​​and preached violence in the name of future happiness, in the 1940s he himself becomes a victim of such violence from people who replaced universal happiness with their own personal well-being. The problem of correlating the noble goal of serving historical progress and choosing the means of such service, once raised by FM Dostoevsky in The Demons (Trifonov highly valued this novel), so captivated the artist that he wrote a novel about the People's Will “Impatience”. The tragedy of Zhelyabov and Perovskaya, according to the author of this book, consists in the contradiction of their lofty and pure designs, on the one hand, and cruel, inhuman ways of their implementation, inadmissible violence against history, on the other. From here, from the past, the writer is now pulling the thread to the immorality of today, to the spiritual tragedy of many people of the 20th century.

In the works of Trifonov, everyday scenes are increasingly connected with global events of history. In some cases, the main storyline is complicated by a number of side, unfinished ones; many characters appear only indirectly connected with the main events ("Another Life", "House on the Embankment"). In others, the plot has two or three main stems (the novels "The Old Man", "Time and Place"). The present and the past are intricately intertwined in the memory of the heroes, complemented by dream-symbols. Trifonov himself called this "an increase in the density, density and saturation of the letter." The book in this case, the writer half-ironically, half-seriously noted, will become "thick", like the borscht of a good housewife. The writer often resorts to the form of "polyphonic novels of consciousness", "novels of self-awareness", saturated with the characters' memories of the events and thoughts of past years, reflection. Summing up the "preliminary results", the heroes ask themselves questions about their lives, accuse themselves and look for excuses, and the author seems to only record their thoughts and arguments.

Such a construction, in particular, is characteristic of the story "Another Life", which stands apart from the series of "Moscow stories" by Trifonov. The main characters of this book are not the money-grubbing "Lukyanovs" and not even degrading intellectuals. They are painfully trying to get to know themselves, to determine the true place they occupy in life, in history. Olga Vasilievna, on whose behalf the narration is being conducted, does this after the death of her husband in internal monologues, memories, dreams. From her stories, the image of the late Sergei Troitsky emerges, a professional historian who did not want to be only a "historical necessity", a combination of chemical elements that disappear with death (as his biologist wife believes), and who painfully searched for the combination of the laws of history with the personality of a person, and a person with another person. Here we have another meaning of the title: "Penetrate into another, give yourself to another, to be healed by understanding "- such is the unattainable dream of Sergei Troitsky. At the same time, with amazing insensibility, he does not notice the closest of the" other "people - his wife. diffusion ", those. interpenetrating, "stimulant structure" seeking "stimulant compatibility ", and will not be able to "combine" his egoistic desire for her husband to belong only to her, with the need not to suppress his individuality. Only after the death of Sergei Olga Vasilievna realizes that she could not penetrate into his world; that each person is a "system in space", and to achieve the happiness of "another life" means to create a dual world of systems. "The worst thing in life is loneliness", not death or misfortune - this is the conclusion the heroine comes to. The characters of the story, dreaming of another life, never reached it. Olga Vasilievna sees a symbolic dream: instead of a clear meadow, she and her husband find themselves in a swamp. But the "other life" still exists. The story ends with a phrase about the inexhaustibility of being.

Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov was born on 28 August 1925 in Moscow. The writer's father is Valentin Andreevich Trifonov, a revolutionary, statesman and military leader, in the period from 1923 to 1926 he served as chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Mother - Evgenia Abramovna Lurie, who was a livestock technician, then an engineer-economist, after that a children's writer.

In 1932, the Trifonov family settled in the Government House, which would later become widely known as the House on the Embankment, thanks to the story of the same name by Yuri Trifonov. In 1937-38, the writer's parents were repressed. Father was shot. The mother was sentenced to eight years in the labor camps. She was released in May 1945.

The upbringing of Trifonov and his sister fell on the shoulders of the maternal grandmother. The writer spent part of the war in evacuation in Tashkent. After returning to Moscow, he began working at an aircraft plant. In 1944, Trifonov, who was still at school fond of literature, entered the Literary Institute. Gorky to the prose department. Graduated from the university in 1949. The story "Students" was presented as the diploma work. It was published by the Novy Mir magazine. The work, dedicated to the young post-war generation, brought the author popularity and the Stalin Prize of the third degree.

Further, according to Trifonov himself, followed by "a grueling period of some kind of throwing." At that time, a sports theme appeared in his work. For 18 years, the writer was a member of the editorial board of the journal "Physical Culture and Sport", a correspondent for this publication and major newspapers at three Olympic Games, several world championships in volleyball and ice hockey.

In 1952, Trifonov went on his first trip to Turkmenistan to understand himself and find material for new works. Then he went there over and over again, eight times in total over ten years. First, the writer watched the construction of the Main Turkmen Canal, then the Karakum Canal. The result of these trips were stories and essays, united in the collection "Under the Sun" (1959), as well as the novel "Quenching Thirst", published in 1963. He was filmed, republished more than once, and nominated for the Lenin Prize in 1965.

In the late 1960s, Trifonov began working on a series of so-called Moscow stories. The first among them is Exchange (1969). The next - "Preliminary Results" (1970) and "Long Farewell" (1971). Subsequently, they were added to "Another Life" (1975) and "House on the Embankment" (1976). It was "House on the Embankment" that eventually became the most popular work of Trifonov.

In the 1970s, Trifonov wrote two novels - Impatience about the People's Will and the Old Man about an old participant in the civil war. They can be combined into a conditional trilogy with the story "Reflection of the Fire", created in 1967, in which Trifonov comprehended the revolution and its consequences, and also tried to justify his own father, who had previously been rehabilitated.

Trifonov's books were published in print runs of 30-50 thousand copies - a small number by the standards of the 1970s. However, they were in great demand. In order to read magazines with publications of his works, in the library he had to sign up in a queue.

In 1981, Trifonov completed work on the novel Time and Place, which can be considered the final work of the writer. The criticism of those years greeted the book coolly. Among the minuses was called "insufficient artistry".

Trifonov died on March 28, 1981. The cause of death was pulmonary embolism. The grave of the writer is located at the Kuntsevo cemetery. After Trifonov's death, in 1987, his novel Disappearance was published.

Brief analysis of creativity

In the works of Trifonov, he often turned to the past. True, he showed interest only in certain time periods. The writer's attention was focused on the epochs and phenomena that predetermined the fate of his generation, which had a strong influence on him. As the literary critic Natalia Ivanova notes, no matter what periods Trifonov touches - the present, the 1870s or the 1930s - he always studied the problem of the relationship between society and man. According to the writer, a person is responsible for his actions, "which make up the history of a people, a country." As for society, it has no right to “neglect the fate of an individual”.

Trifonov's prose is often autobiographical. For example, this concerns the "House on the Embankment". In particular, one of her characters is Anton Ovchinnikov, a well-rounded boy who is admired by the main character, Glebov. Ovchinnikov's prototype is Lev Fedotov. He was a childhood friend of Trifonov.

Many of the library readers present with pleasure re-read his works and saw them in a new light.

The head of the service department N.N. Voronkova prepared a report on the main stages of the creative path, very often knowledge of the biography of the writer helps to understand his works. In this regard, the book by the widow and son of Yury Trifonov "Olga and Yury Trifonovs Remember" was very interesting, in which facts previously unknown to readers are highlighted.

We remembered the first especially memorable stories, such as "Exchange", which at the beginning of the 60s sounded like a new living word. M. Vasilevskaya said that she had watched the old and new films based on the story "Long Farewell", which are as interesting today as they were in those years. V. Matytsina said that the reason for this is in the moral message that permeates all the work of Y. Trifonov.

According to M. Buzyun, today the significance of his works is precisely in the attention to morality issues. I. Mertsalova believes that this topic is the most significant in connection with the loss of this understanding.
N. Borovkova separately dwelled on the story "House on the Embankment", which at one time became a landmark and assigned this name to the once "gray" house. I remembered the fate of its inhabitants and the collisions of the story itself, like many of the works of Y. Trifonov, reflecting the biography of the author.

V. Levetskaya admitted that on the eve of the date she first read his last novel of the very end of the 70s "Time and Place". In it, the author covered his entire life, starting with a prosperous childhood, the execution of his father in 37, the expulsion of his mother, and further hardships and the struggle for survival and an irrepressible desire to become a writer.

Yuri Trifonov was born on August 28, 1925 in Moscow into the family of a Bolshevik, party and military leader Valentin Andreevich Trifonov.

His father went through exile and hard labor, participated in the armed uprising in Rostov, in the organization of the Red Guard in Petrograd in 1917, in the civil war, in 1918 he saved the republic’s gold reserves and worked in the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. For the future writer, my father was a real model of a revolutionary and a person. Trifonov's mother, Evgenia Abramovna Lurie, was a livestock specialist, then an engineer-economist. Subsequently, she became a children's writer - Evgenia Tayurina.

Father's brother, Evgeny Andreevich - army commander and hero of the Civil War, was also a writer and published under the pseudonym E. Brazhnev. Together with the Trifonov family lived grandmother TASlovatinskaya, a representative of the "old guard" of the Bolsheviks. Both mother and grandmother had a great influence on the upbringing of the future writer.

In 1932, the Trifonov family moved to the Government House, which after more than forty years became known to the whole world as "The House on the Embankment", thanks to the title of Trifonov's story. In 1937, the writer's father and uncle were arrested, who were soon shot (uncle in 1937, father in 1938). For a twelve-year-old boy, the arrest of his father became a real tragedy, of whose innocence he was sure. Yuri Trifonov's mother was also repressed and was serving a sentence in Karlag. Yuri and his sister and grandmother, evicted from the apartment of the government building, wandered and lived in poverty.

With the outbreak of war, Trifonov was evacuated to Tashkent, and in 1943 he returned to Moscow. "The son of an enemy of the people" could not enter any university, and got a job at a military plant. Having received the necessary work experience, in 1944, while still working at the plant, he entered the Literary Institute. Trifonov told about his admission to the Literary Institute: “Two school notebooks with poems and translations seemed to me such a solid application that there could be no two opinions - they would take me to a poetry seminar. I will become a poet…. In the form of a makeweight, completely optional, I added to my poetic creations a short story, twelve pages long, entitled - unconsciously stolen - “Death of a Hero” ... A month passed, and I came to Tverskoy Boulevard for an answer. The secretary of the correspondence department said: "The poetry is so-so, but the story was liked by the chairman of the admissions committee Fedin ... you can be admitted to the prose department." A strange thing happened: the next minute I forgot about poetry and never wrote from it again in my life! " At Fedin's insistence, Trifonov was later transferred to the full-time department of the institute, from which he graduated in 1949.

In 1949, Trifonov married Nina Alekseevna Nelina, an opera singer and soloist of the Bolshoi Theater. In 1951, a daughter, Olga, was born to Trifonov and Nelina.

Trifonov's diploma work, the story "Students", written by him in the period from 1949 to 1950, brought him fame. It was published in the literary magazine Novy Mir and was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1951. The writer himself later treated his first story coldly. Despite the artificiality of the main conflict (an ideologically faithful professor and a cosmopolitan professor), the story carried the rudiments of the main qualities of Trifon's prose - the authenticity of life, the comprehension of human psychology through the ordinary.

In the spring of 1952, Trifonov went on a business trip to the Karakum Desert, on the highway of the Main Turkmen Canal, and for many years the literary fate of Yuri Trifonov was connected with Turkmenistan. In 1959, a cycle of stories and essays "Under the Sun" appeared, in which for the first time the features of the Trifonov style were indicated. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Trifonov wrote the stories "Bakko", "Glasses", "The Loneliness of Klych Durda" and other stories.

In 1963, the novel "Quenching Thirst" was published, materials for which he collected at the construction of the Turkmen Canal, but the author himself was not satisfied with this novel, and in the following years Trifonov was engaged in writing sports stories and reporting. Trifonov loved sports and, being a passionate fan, enthusiastically wrote about it.

Konstantin Vanshenkin recalled: “Yuri Trifonov lived in the mid-fifties on Verkhnyaya Maslovka, near the Dynamo stadium. I started going there. He added (football jargon) for CDKA for personal reasons, too, because of Bobrov. On the podium he got acquainted with the inveterate "Spartak" players: A. Arbuzov, I. Shtok, then the beginning football statistician K. Yesenin. They convinced him that Spartak was better. Rare case".

For 18 years, the writer was a member of the editorial board of the journal "Physical Culture and Sport", wrote several scripts for documentaries and feature films about sports. Trifonov became one of the Russian founders of the psychological story about sports and athletes.

The rehabilitation of Valentin Trifonov in 1955 made it possible for Yuri to write a documentary story "The Reflection of the Fire" based on the surviving archives of his father. This story about the bloody events on the Don, published in 1965, became the main work of Trifonov in those years.

In 1966, Nina Nelina died suddenly, and in 1968, Alla Pastukhova, editor of the Fiery Revolutionaries series of Politizdat, became Trifonov's second wife.

In 1969 the story "Exchange" appeared, later - in 1970 the story "Preliminary Results" was published, in 1971 - "A Long Farewell", and in 1975 - "Another Life". These stories told about love and family relationships. The focus of Trifonov's artistic searches constantly arose the problem of moral choice, which a person is forced to make even in the most simple everyday situations. During the period of Brezhnev's timelessness, the writer was able to show how an intelligent, talented person (the hero of the story "Another Life" historian Sergei Troitsky) was suffocating in this poisonous atmosphere, who did not want to compromise his own decency. Official criticism accused the author of the absence of a positive beginning, of the fact that Trifonov's prose is "on the sidelines of life", far from great achievements and the struggle for the ideals of a "bright future."

Writer Boris Pankin recalled about Yuri Trifonov: “It so happened that after my article“ Not in a circle, in a spiral ”published in the Druzhba Narodov magazine at the end of the 70s, Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov every new thing, big or small in terms of volume, he brought it to me with an autograph, or even in a manuscript, as happened, for example, with the novel "Time and Place". Then these new things were going so thickly with him that one day I could not resist and asked with a feeling of healthy, white, according to Robert Rozhdestvensky, envy, how does he manage to give out such masterpieces one after another with such iron regularity. He looked at me thoughtfully, chewed on his full black lips - which he always did before maintaining a dialogue - touched his round horn-rimmed glasses, straightened the buttoned collar of his shirt without a tie, and said, starting with the word "here": "Here, you heard, probably a saying: every dog ​​has its own hour to bark. And it passes quickly ... "

In 1973, Trifonov published the novel Impatience about the People's Will, which was published in Politizdat in the Fiery Revolutionaries series. There were few censorship bills in Trifonov's works. The writer was convinced that talent manifests itself in the ability to say everything the author wants to say, and not to be disfigured by the censorship.

Trifonov actively opposed the decision of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union to withdraw from the editorial board of Novy Mir its leading staff members II Vinogradov, A. Kondratovich, V. Ya. Lakshin, knowing full well that, first of all, this is a blow to the editor-in-chief of the journal Alexander Tvardovsky, for whom Trifonov had the deepest respect.

In 1975, Trifonov married the writer Olga Miroshnichenko.

In the 1970s, Trifonov's work was highly appreciated by Western critics and publishers. Each new book was quickly translated and published.

In 1976, the magazine Druzhba Narodov published Trifonov's story House on the Embankment, one of the most notable poignant works of the 1970s. In the story, Trifonov made a deep psychological analysis of the nature of fear, the nature and degradation of people under the yoke of a totalitarian system. Justification by time and circumstances is typical for many Trifonov characters. The author saw the reasons for the betrayal and moral decline in the fear in which the whole country was immersed after the Stalinist terror. Referring to different periods of Russian history, the writer showed the courage of a person and his weakness, his greatness and baseness, and not only at breaks, but also in everyday life. Trifonov matched different different eras, arranged a “confrontation” for different generations - grandparents and grandchildren, fathers and children, discovering historical echoes, striving to see a person in the most dramatic moments of his life - at the moment of moral choice.

For three years, "House on the Embankment" was not included in any of the book collections, while Trifonov, meanwhile, was working on the novel "The Old Man" about the bloody events on the Don in 1918. The Old Man appeared in 1978 in the Druzhba Narodov magazine.

The writer Boris Pankin recalled: “Yuri Lyubimov staged“ The Master and Margarita ”and“ House on the Embankment ”at the Taganka almost simultaneously. VAAP, which I was then in charge, immediately ceded the rights to stage these things in the interpretation of Lyubimov to many foreign theatrical agencies. Anyone interested. On the table of Suslov, the second person in the Communist Party, a "memo" immediately lay down, in which the VAAP was accused of promoting ideologically depraved works to the West.

There, - argued at a meeting of the secretariat of the Central Committee, where I was summoned, Mikhalandrev (that was his "underground" nickname), looking at the anonymous letter, - naked women fly around the stage. And this play, like hers, "The House of Government" ...

“House on the embankment,” one of the assistants prompted him carefully.

Yes, "House of Government" - repeated Suslov. - We decided to stir up the old for something.

I tried to reduce the matter to jurisdiction. They say that the Geneva Convention does not provide for the refusal of foreign partners to assign rights to the works of Soviet authors.

They will pay millions in the West for this, ”snapped Suslov,“ but we do not trade in ideology.

A week later, a brigade of the party control committee headed by a certain Petrova, who had previously achieved the expulsion of Lena Karpinsky from the party, raided the VAAP.

I told Yuri Valentinovich about this when we were sitting with him over bowls of scalding piti soup in the “Baku” restaurant, which was on the then Gorky street. “He sees an eye, but a tooth doesn’t,” Trifonov said, either comforting me or asking, chewing his lips according to his custom. And he was right, because Petrov was soon retired "for abuse of power."

In March 1981, Yuri Trifonov was hospitalized. On March 26, he underwent an operation - a kidney was removed. On March 28, in anticipation of a detour, Trifonov shaved, ate and took the Literaturnaya Gazeta for March 25, where an interview with him was published. At that moment, a blood clot came off, and Trifonov instantly died from pulmonary thromboembolism.

Trifonov's confessional novel "Time and Place", in which the history of the country was transmitted through the fates of the writers, was not published during Trifonov's lifetime. It was published after the writer's death in 1982, with significant censorship rejections. The cycle of stories "The Overturned House", in which Trifonov spoke about his life with undisguised farewell tragedy, also saw the light of day after the death of the author, in 1982.

The novel "Time and Place" was defined by the writer himself as "a novel of self-awareness." The hero of the novel, the writer Antipov, is tested for moral resilience throughout his life, in which the thread of fate, chosen by him in different epochs, in various difficult life situations, is guessed. The writer strove to bring together the times he himself witnessed: the end of the 1930s, the war, the post-war period, the thaw, the present.

Trifonov's creativity and personality occupy a special place not only in Russian literature of the 20th century, but also in public life.

In 1980, at the suggestion of Heinrich Belle, Trifonov was nominated for the Nobel Prize. The chances were very high, but the death of the writer in March 1981 canceled them out. Trifonov's novel Disappearance was published posthumously in 1987.

Yuri Trifonov was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery.

A documentary film "About us with you" was shot about Yuri Trifonov.

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The text was prepared by Andrey Goncharov

Used materials:

- Olga Romanovna, how did you meet Yuri Trifonov?

- Oddly enough, the first meeting took place when I was still in kindergarten, and Trifonov walked by every day to work. I remember it thanks to the black case-tube in which the wall newspaper was. In those days, he was a simple worker, a pipe draper at a military factory, and at the same time edited a wall newspaper. I couldn't know that. And we met at the restaurant of the Central House of Writers. In those years there was a wonderful atmosphere, inexpensive and tasty. Yuri Valentinovich used to visit this restaurant. He was quite famous, Fire Flare was already out. Trifonov looked at me gloomily and viciously. Then he explained that he was annoyed by my good looks.

The romance was dramatic, we converged and dispersed. It was difficult for me to leave my husband, it would be better if we lived with him badly. The feeling of guilt was so heavy that it poisoned the first months of my life with Yuri Valentinovich. A visit to the registry office for the divorce procedure was also difficult for him. I saw this and said: "Okay, God bless him, not yet necessary." But I was pregnant and we got married soon after. He lived in an apartment on Sandy Street, which he loved very much. She seemed very wretched to me, but I understood that he would have to be wiped out of her, like a Japanese samurai. Once a guest from America came to us and remarked: "Losers live in such an apartment."

- Was it difficult to live with a famous writer?

- With him - surprisingly easy. A very tolerant person who does not pretend to someone else's living space. He had an amazing sense of humor, was surprisingly funny, we laughed at times to Homeric fits. And then, he was so trained on the housework: to wash the dishes, and to run to the store for kefirchik. True, I spoiled him pretty quickly - it's not good to drive Trifonov himself to the laundry! Then there was a fashionable word "somewhere", and somehow I began to snatch from his hands the dishes that he was going to wash, and he said: "Stop, somewhere I like it."

- In the diaries and workbooks of Trifonov, which came out with your comments, I read that in the sixties he had to do odd jobs, go into debt.

- Debts were big. Then friends helped. The playwright Alexei Arbuzov often lent money. Life was not easy financially, and at times it was just difficult. “I sometimes reached the ruble, don't be afraid, it's not scary,” he told me once, too, at a difficult moment.

- Was he easy on money?

- I remember his relative, who was going to Spain, came to see us. She said that she would go to work in the vineyards, buy jeans for her son and husband. Yuri followed me into the kitchen and asked: “Olya, do we have currency in our house? Give it back to her. "Everything?" “Everything,” he said firmly. When we were abroad, he always warned: "We must bring gifts to all relatives and friends, the fact that we are here with you is already a gift."

- Yuri Trifonov was already famous when he wrote "House on the Embankment". And it seems to me that this story alone is enough for literary glory. And yet, at that time it was not easy to break through such a book.

- The story of the publication of the story is very difficult. The House on the Embankment was published in the Druzhba Narodov magazine only thanks to the wisdom of the editor-in-chief Sergei Baruzdin. The story was not included in the book, which included both "Exchange" and "Preliminary Results". Markov made sharp criticism at the writers' congress, who then went to Suslov for reinforcements. And Suslov uttered a cryptic phrase: "We all then walked on the edge of a knife," and this meant permission.

- Did you know Vladimir Vysotsky?

- Yes, we met at the Taganka Theater. Trifonov loved Vysotsky, admired him. For him, he was always Vladimir Semyonovich, the only person whom he, who could not tolerate “Brezhnev's” kisses, could hug and kiss when they met. We saw that behind the look of the boy's shirt was a very intelligent and educated person. Once we celebrated the New Year in the same company. One thousand nine hundred and eightieth - the last in the life of Vysotsky. Our neighbors in the country have collected stars. There was Tarkovsky, Vysotsky with Marina Vlady. People who loved each other dearly felt somehow disconnected. Everything is like cotton wool. It seems to me that the reason was too luxurious food - a large grub, unusual for those times. Food humiliated and disconnected. After all, many then simply lived in poverty. Tarkovsky was bored and entertained himself by filming the dog with a Polaroid from strange angles. We sat next to Vladimir Semenovich, I saw a guitar in the corner, I really wanted him to sing. I awkwardly seduced him: "It would be nice to call Vysotsky, he would sing." And suddenly he very seriously and quietly said: "Ol, but here no one but you wants this." It was true.

- Tell me, did Yuri Valentinovich have enemies?

- Rather, envious people. “Wow,” he wondered, “I live in the world, and someone hates me.” He considered vindictiveness to be the worst human quality. There was such a case. The magazine "New World" contained his story "The Overturned House". One of the chapters describes our house, drunken loaders basking in the sun near the Diet store. And when Yuri Valentinovich came to the "Diet" for an order, he was asked to go to the director. “How could you? - Tears rang in the director's voice. - I will be removed from work for this! It turned out that one writer was not too lazy to come to the store and tell that soon the whole country would read about the loaders. After this story, Trifonov refused to go for orders, however, he was always embarrassed to stand in a special line, did not like privileges. Never asked for anything.

- Even when seriously ill ...

“He had kidney cancer, but he didn't die of that. Surgeon Lopatkin performed the operation brilliantly, death occurred as a result of a postoperative complication - embolism. It's a blood clot. At that time, there were already the necessary medicines and filters to catch blood clots, but only in the wrong hospital. There was not even analgin there. I begged to transfer it to another, I wore expensive French perfume, money. They took perfume, repelled envelopes.

- Wasn't it possible to have the operation performed abroad?

- Can. When Yuri Valentinovich was on a business trip to Sicily, he was examined by a doctor. He said that he did not like the tests and offered to go to the clinic. I learned all this later. When I was told the diagnosis in Moscow, I went to the Secretariat of the Writers' Union to get Trifonov's passport. "Where will you get the money for the operation?" - they asked me. I replied that we have friends abroad who are ready to help. In addition, Western publishing houses signed agreements with Trifonov for a future book, without even asking for the title. “There are very good doctors here,” they told me and refused to issue a passport.

They were buried according to the usual litfond category at the Kuntsevo cemetery, which was then deserted. His only order, the Badge of Honor, was carried on the pillow.

Newspapers reported on the date of Yuri Trifonov's funeral after the funeral. The authorities feared unrest. The central house of writers, where the civil funeral service took place, was surrounded by a dense police ring, but crowds came anyway. In the evening, a student called Olga Romanovna and said in a trembling voice: "We, students of Moscow State University, want to say goodbye ..." "We have already buried it."

Interviewed by Elena SVETLOVA

Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov was born August 28, 1925 in Moscow. Father is a Don Cossack by birth, a professional revolutionary, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1904, a participant in two revolutions, one of the founders of the Petrograd Red Guard, during the Civil War, a member of the Collegium of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs, a member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of several fronts.

In 1937 Trifonov's parents were repressed. Trifonov and his younger sister were adopted by their grandmother, T.L. Slovatinskaya.

Autumn 1941 together with his family he was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1942 After graduating from school there, he enlisted in a military aircraft factory and returned to Moscow. At the plant he worked as a mechanic, shop manager, technician. In 1944 became the editor of the factory large circulation. In the same year he entered the correspondence department of the Literary Institute. He applied to the Faculty of Poetry (more than 100 never-published poems have survived in the writer's archive), but was admitted to the prose department. V 1945 transferred to the full-time department of the Literary Institute, studied in the creative seminars of K.A. Fedin and K.G. Paustovsky. Graduated from institute in 1949 .

The first publications were feuilletons from student life, published in the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" in 1947 and 1948("Wide range" and "Narrow specialists"). His first story "In the Steppe" was published in 1948 in the almanac of young writers "Young Guard".

In 1950 in Tvardovsky's "New World", Trifonov's story "Students" appeared. Its success was very great. She received the Stalin Prize, "all sorts of flattering offers poured in," the writer recalled, "from Mosfilm, from the radio, from the publishing house." The story was popular. Many letters from readers came to the editorial office of the magazine; it was discussed in a variety of audiences. For all its success, the story really only resembled life. Trifonov himself admitted: "If I had strength, time and, most importantly, desire, I would rewrite this book from the first to the last page." But when the book came out, the author took the success for granted. This is evidenced by the dramatization of "Students" - "Young Years" - and the play about artists, "The Key to Success" ( 1951 ), staged at the Theater. M.N. Ermolova A.M. Lobanov. The play was criticized quite sharply and is now forgotten.

After the noisy success of "Students" for Trifonov, by his own definition, came "an exhausting period of some kind of throwing." At that time, he started writing about sports. For 18 years, Trifonov was a member of the editorial board of the journal "Physical culture and sport", a correspondent for this magazine and major newspapers at the Olympic Games in Rome, Innsbruck, Grenoble, at several world championships in hockey and volleyball. He has written dozens of stories, articles, reports, sports articles. Many of them were included in the collections "At the end of the season" (1961 ), "Torches on Flaminio" ( 1965 ), "Games at dusk" ( 1970 ). In the "sports" works, it was openly manifested what would later become one of the main themes of his work - the effort of the spirit in achieving victory, even if over himself.

Since 1952 Trifonov's trips to Turkmenistan began to build the Turkmen, then the Karakum canal. The trips lasted for about eight years. The result was a collection of stories "Under the Sun" ( 1959 ) and the novel "Quenching Thirst", published in 1963 in the magazine "Banner". The novel has been reprinted more than once, incl. and in "Roman Gazeta", was nominated for the Lenin Prize 1965 , was staged and filmed. True, as Trifonov said, they read the novel, in comparison with "Students", "much more calmly and even, perhaps, sluggishly."

"Quenching Thirst" turned out to be a characteristic "thaw" work, remaining in many respects one of the many "production" novels of those years. However, there were already characters and thoughts in it, which would later become the focus of the writer's attention.

Critics deciphered the title of the novel "Quenching Thirst" not only as quenching the thirst of the earth, waiting for water, but also quenching the human thirst for justice. The desire to restore justice was also dictated by the story "Reflection of the fire" ( 1965 ) - a documentary story about the writer's father. Late 1960s it starts the cycle of the so-called. Moscow or city stories: "Exchange" ( 1969 ), "Preliminary results" ( 1970 ), "Long Goodbye" (1971 ), then they were joined by "Another Life" (1975 ) and "House on the Embankment" ( 1976 ). The plots of these books, especially the first three, seem to be devoted only to the “details” of the life of a modern city dweller. The everyday life of city dwellers, immediately recognizable by readers, seemed to many critics to be the only theme of the books.

It took the criticism of the 1960s and 70s a long time to understand that behind the reproduction of the everyday life of a modern city there is an understanding of “eternal themes,” which is the essence of human life. When applied to Trifonov's work, the words of one of his heroes were justified: “A feat is understanding. Understanding the other. My God, how difficult it is! "

The book about the People's Will "Impatience" ( 1973 ) was perceived in contrast to the "city" stories. Moreover, it appeared after the first three of them, when some of the critics tried to create Trifonov's reputation as just a modern everyday writer, absorbed in the daily bustle of the townspeople, who, according to the writer, are busy with the “great trifles” of life.

Impatience is a book about terrorists of the 19th century, impatiently pushing the course of history, preparing an assassination attempt on the king, perishing on the scaffold.

The novel "The Old Man" ( 1978 ). In it, in one life, history turned out to be interconnected and, at first glance, as if it had nothing to do with it, disappearing without a trace in the bustle of everyday life, modernity absorbed by itself. "The Old Man" is a novel about people leaving and the time that is leaving, disappearing, and ending with them. The characters in the novel lose the feeling of being part of that endless thread that the hero of The Other Life spoke about. This thread, it turns out, breaks off not with the end of life, but with the disappearance of the memory of the past.

After the death of the writer in 1980 were published his novel "Time and Place" and the story in stories "Overturned House". In 1987 the magazine Druzhba Narodov published the novel Disappearance, which Trifonov wrote for many years and did not manage to finish.

"Time and Place" begins with the question: "Do I need to remember?" The last works of Trifonov were the answer to this question. The writer defined "Time and Place" as "a novel of self-awareness." The latter books were therefore more autobiographical than those that preceded them. The narrative in them, entering new psychological and moral layers, acquired a freer form.

Starting with stories 1960s- for almost 15 years - Trifonov turned out to be one of the founders of a special direction of the latest Russian literature - the so-called. urban prose in which he created his own world. His books are united not so much by common characters-townspeople passing from one to another, as by thoughts and views on the life of both the heroes and the author. Trifonov considered the main task of literature to reflect the phenomenon of life and the phenomenon of time in their relationship, expressed in the fate of a person.