And Zhdanov said that Akhmatova was poisoning the consciousness of Soviet youth with the rotten and putrid spirit of her poetry. So how could they have felt about the resolution and speech? Isn't that sadistic-to ask about it? It's like asking a man into whose face a hooligan has just spat, "How do you feel about having spit on your face? Do you like it?" But there was more. They asked it in the presence of the hooligan and bandit who did the spitting, knowing full well that they would leave and the victim would have to stay and deal with the bandit.
Akhmatova rose and said that she considered both Comrade Zhdanov's speech and the resolution to be absolutely correct. Of course, she did the right thing, that was the only way to behave with those shame-shot as a member or an antigovernmcnt conspiracy (the so-called Professor Tagantsev Affair), despite Maxim Gorky's plea to Lenin to spare him. Nikolai Nikolayevich Punin (1 888-1953), art historian, Commissar of the Hermitage after the Revolution, was Akhmatova's third husband.
Arrested several times, he finally perished in Siberia.
*The postwar ''tightening of the screws" began with Zhdanov's move against Zoshchcnko and Akhmatova {1946). Both were expelled Crom the Writers' Union, stripped or all means or sunival, and viciously badgered in the newspapers and at innumerable meetings.
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less, heartless strangers. What could she have said? That she thinks she's living in an insane asylum of a country? That she despises and hates Zhdanov and Stalin? Yes, she could have said that, but then no one would have ever seen her again.
The "friends," of course, could have bragged about the sensation back at home, "among friends." Or even slipped a report about it into the papers. And we would have all suffered a loss, we would have lived without Akhmatova and her incomparable late poetry. The country would have lost its genius.
But Zoshchenko, a sweet and naive man, thought that these people really did want to understand something. He naturally couldn't say everything he felt, that would have been suicide, but he embarked on an explanation. He said that at first he didn't understand either Zhdanov's speech or the resolution. They seemed unfair to him and he wrote a letter about it to Stalin. But then he started thinking and then many of the accusations seemed fair and just.
Poor Mikhail Mikhailovich, his nobility did not serve him well. He had thought that he was dealing with decent people. The "decent people" applauded and left. (They didn't think Akhmatova deserved applause.) And the already ill Zoshchenko was starved as punishment.
He wasn't permitted to publish a single line. His feet were swelling, he was starving. He tried to make a living by repairing shoes.
The moral is clear. There can be no friendship with famous humanists. We are poles apart, they and I. I don't trust any of them and not one of them has ever done anything good for me. I do not acknowledge their right to question me. They do not have the moral right and they dare not lecture me.
I never answered their questions and I never will. I never took their lectures seriously and I never will. I am backed up by the bitter experience of my gray and miserable life. And I'm not happy in the least that my students have adopted my suspiciousness. They don't believe the famous humanists either and they're right.
It's too bad. I'd be very happy if they managed to find some famous humanist who could be trusted, with whom you could chat about flowers, brotherhood, equality and liberty, the European soccer championships, and other lofty topics. But no such humanist has been born.
There are more than enough scoundrels, but I don't feel like talking to 204
them: they'll sell you cheap for foreign currency or a jar of black ·caviar.
That's why I derive a sad satisfaction from the fact that my best students, seeing my sad example, refrain from friendship with humanists.
I heartily recommend a dog to keep from being lonely.
Don't believe humanists, citizens, don't believe prophets, don't believe luminaries-they'll fool you for a penny. Do your own work, don't hurt people, try to help them. Dori't try to save humanity all at once, try saving one person first. It's a lot harder. To help one person without harming another is very difficult. It's unbelievably difficult.
That's where the temptation to save all of humanity comes from. And then, inevitably, along the way you discover that all humanity's happiness hinges on the destruction of a few hundred million people, that's all. A trifle.
Nothing but nonsense in the world, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol once said. It's that nonsense that I try to depict. World issues grab man by the collar; he's got plenty of problems of his own, and now there are world issues as well. You could lose your head-or your nose.
I'm often asked why I wrote the opera The Nose. Well, first of all, I love Gogol. I'm not bragging, but I know pages and pages by heart.
And I have striking childhood memories of The Nose. Now when they write about The Nose, they harp on Meyerhold's influence: to wit, that his production of The Inspector General astounded me so that I took on The Nose. That's not correct.
When I moved to Moscow and into Meyerhold's apartment, I was already working on The Nose. It was all thought through, and not by Meyerhold. I was working on the libretto with two marvelous men, Sasa Preis and Georgi Ionin. It was a marvelous, magical time. We would get toget�er in the morning, early. We didn't work at night, first of all because we were put off by the Bohemian style of work.
You should work in the morning or afternoon, no need for midnight drama.
And secondly, Sasa Preis couldn't work at night. He was busy at night, working. His job had an important-sounding title, "agent in conserving nonliquid property," while what he really was was a watchman. He guarded a candy factory, formerly Landrin's. The owner, George Landrin, ran off abroad and his son did too. They left 205
the property behind and Sasa guarded it to keep looters away.
It was a lot of fun. As Oleinikov said, "Truly, it was fun. Truly, it was funny." At first we approached Zamyatin, we wanted him to take charge of our libretto since he was a great master. But the great master didn't add to the fun and didn't stand out in any way from the rest of us.
Mayor Kovalyov needed a monologue. Everyone else backed away from doing it, but Zamyatin said, "Why not?" He sat down and wrote it. By the way, it's a bad monologue. That was the extent of the contribution by the great master of Russian prose. So Zamyatin got on the credits by accident, so to speak. He wasn't very much help, we managed on our own. So much for the influence of the great masters.
They were very special people, Preis and Ionin. Preis wrote Gogol's comedy St. Vladimir Third Grade for him. As you know, Gogol didn't finish the play, he only left rough sketches, and Sasa wrote the play.