To the 75th anniversary of his birth

Venichka.

I'll never regain consciousness
If there is knowledge, there will be sherry.
Calm down, neighbor Dostoevsky, -
The Kremlin will manage without me!

Pours Struggle Square -
And immediately Hammer and Sickle!
Komsomol goddess crying
With a branch of honeysuckle in his hands...

Venichka is 75 years old... Is that a lot or a little?..
By today's Russian standards, quite a lot. A whole life, divided like a bottle into three, into the lives of three generations succeeding each other, two of which definitely fall in Soviet times, and the last in the new Russian life. It’s just a pity that Venichka didn’t see it, this very Russian life.

Introduction.

As an epigraph, or perhaps an introduction, let us give a small information block about the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the writer Venedikt Erofeev 15 years ago.

So. Moscow. 1998

…October 23 in the Main Hall Russian Foundation Culture took place an evening dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the birth of Venedikt Erofeev. This year the writer's anniversary was celebrated very widely. But the evening at the Fonda was distinguished by a special intimacy, almost home comfort. The writer’s friends were present at the evening: Igor Avdiev (Venin’s autograph in the magazine “Sobriety and Culture” with the first publication of the poem in Russia, owned by Avdiev, states that he (Avdiev) is the Minister of Defense from the poem. “Two hours later he gave up the ghost in the hands of the Minister of Defense" - the head of "Voinovo - Usad"); Vadim Tikhonov (“The author dedicates these tragic pages to Vadim Tikhonov, my firstborn” - epigraph to the poem); the son of Venedikt Erofeev is also Venedikt. Guest of the evening is Gario Zanni, journalist and literary critic, translator of works by V. Erofeev...
...memories about Venechka and his life were heard, strange life a rushing man... ...the audience was presented with fragments of the play "Moscow-Petushki", directed by Valery Ryzhiy. In the main and only role is Alexander Tsurkan. This is a one-man show. More precisely, a performance of two - an Actor and a Saxophone. The saxophone served here as a kind of decoration and music, as if a spotlight and ramp. Performer-saxophonist - Alexey Letov...

Short biography.

Erofeev, Venedikt Vasilyevich (October 24, 1938, Niva-2, Murmansk region - May 11, 1990, Moscow) - Russian writer, author of the poem “Moscow - Cockerels”.

Personal life.

Was married twice. In 1966, Erofeev had a son, he was also named Venedikt.
After the birth of his son, Erofeev registered a marriage with his mother Valentina Vasilievna Zimakova (1942-2000). The writer's second wife is Galina Pavlovna Nosova (1941-1993).

Erofeev's books have been translated into more than 30 languages. A documentary film by Pavel Pawlikowski “Moscow - Petushki” (1989-1991) was shot about him.
In Moscow, in the park on Struggle Square, there is a sculptural group dedicated to the heroes of the poem “Moscow - Cockerels”.
In Vladimir, a memorial plaque was installed in his honor on the building of the Pedagogical Institute.
In Kirovsk, the Erofeev Museum was created in the central city library.

Exploring creativity

The first study devoted to the poem “Moscow - Petushki” appeared long before it was published in the USSR. In 1981, an article by Boris Gasparov and Irina Paperno entitled “Rise and Go” appeared in the collection of scientific articles Slavica Hierosolymitana. The study is devoted to the relationship of the text of the poem with the Bible and the work of F. M. Dostoevsky.
The largest work dedicated to Erofeev and written abroad is Svetlana Gaiser-Shnitman’s dissertation “Venedikt Erofeev. “Moscow - Petushki”, or The Rest is Silence.”
In Russia, the main studies of Erofeev’s creativity were also associated with the study of his central work - the poem “Moscow - Petushki”. Among the first critical works, it is worth noting a short article by Andrei Zorin “Commuter Train long distance"(New World, 1989, No. 5), which says that the appearance of "Moscow - Petushki" testifies to "creative freedom and continuity literary process", despite any difficulties.
“Moscow - Petushki” is traditionally fit by researchers into several contexts, with the help of which it is analyzed. In particular, “Moscow - Petushki” is perceived as the proto-text of Russian postmodernism and in the context of M. M. Bakhtin’s idea of ​​the carnivalesque of culture. The connections between the lexical structure of the poem and the Bible, Soviet cliches, classical Russian and world literature are being actively studied.
The most extensive commentary on the poem belongs to Eduard Vlasov. It was published as an appendix to the poem “Moscow - Cockerels” in 2000 by the Vagrius publishing house.
In Oleg Kudrin’s fantasy novel “The Code from Venichka” (2009, “Olympus-ASTrel”), written in a postmodern spirit, in the “sacred texts” of Venedikt Vasilyevich there is an explanation of almost all the secrets of the universe.
In 2005, the “Chronicle of the life and work of Venedikt Erofeev” (compiled by Valery Berlin) was published in the almanac “Living Arctic” (No. 1, “Khibiny - Moscow - Petushki”).

Major works.

"Notes of a Psychopath" (1956-1958, published 1995)
“Moscow - Petushki” (poem in prose, 1970)
“Walpurgis Night, or the Commander’s Steps” (tragedy, published in Paris in 1985, at home in 1989)
“Vasily Rozanov through the eyes of an eccentric” (essay, 1973, published in the USSR in 1989)
“My little Leniniana” (collage, published in Paris in 1988, in Russia in 1991)
“Useless Fossil” (the book is based on the notebooks of the prose writer)
In 2005, the Zakharov publishing house organized the publication of the writer’s notebooks, edited by Vladimir Muravyov and Venedikt Erofeev Jr. (the writer’s son).

As an afterword.

What and who is Venichka Erofeev for Russian and late Soviet culture of the late twentieth century?.. The answer is unequivocal - he is an integral part of it. Whether this is good or bad - History and the Reader will judge!..

Website dedicated to the work of the great Russian writer Venedikt Erofeev:
http://www.moskva-petushki.ru/

For the epigraph our heartfelt gratitude to Pankrat Antipov.
http://www.proza.ru/diary/panant/2013-10-24

(Based on materials from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and open sources).

Illustration source:
Yandex photo.

“I am a superman, and nothing superhuman is alien to me...”

Venichka Erofeev

Russian writer and alcoholic, best known for the story "Moscow-Petushki", written in early 1970. The text of the story contains a lot of parodies of cliches of that time, but there is no incrimination...

He was brought up in an orphanage. He graduated from school with a gold medal.

“Venichka constantly carried a green notebook with him, in which he wrote down observations and notes about the people around him. There was also an unfinished manuscript of the poem “Moscow-Petushki”. Venichka did not part with this notebook and did not show it to anyone. One day Igor came to his brigade. The friends, as usual, drank, and Avdiev decided to steal the treasured manuscript from his friend. Having waited until Venichka fell asleep, Igor took out a notebook from under his pillow. While still on the train, he read it from cover to cover and returned to Moscow completely stunned. Taking a taxi, he rushed to Tikhonov, and his friends read the manuscript all night, laughing and crying with delight. Venichka showed up in the morning, not himself from the loss that had befallen him. But from the faces of Igor and Vadim, he immediately realized that they had the secret notebook. “Thank God it was found. Let’s spank a little,” he breathed out with relief...”

Petrovets T.G., Stars are scandalous, M. “Ripol-classic, 2000, p. 210.

At one time, the writer wrote out for himself a British understanding of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s novel: "In British encyclopedic dictionary: “Kak zakalyalas stal” - “the success story of a young cripple.”

Erofeev V.V., From notebooks / From the bottom of the soul, M., “Vagrius” 2003, p. 452.

“...a whole galaxy of “humble” writers arose, whose patriarch can rightfully be considered Venedikt Erofeev. His “weakness” - Venichka’s angelic drunkenness - is the key to the transformation of the world. In the poem “Moscow-Petushki” alcohol serves as a “generator of unpredictability”. Intoxication is a way to break free, to become - literally - not of this world. (Again, an interesting parallel with Taoist texts: “A drunk person who falls from a cart, even very sharply, will not be broken to death. His bones and joints are the same as those of other people, but the damage is different, because his soul is integral. He sat down in cart unconsciously and fell unconsciously.") Vodka in Erofeev’s poem is a midwife new reality, experiencing birth pangs in the hero’s soul. Each sip rejuvenates the “callous”, ossified structures of the world, returning it to the ambiguity, proteanness, amorphousness of that chaos pregnant with meaning, where things and phenomena exist only in potency. The main thing in the poem is an endless stream of truly free speech, freed from logic, from cause-and-effect relationships, from responsibility for meaning. Venichka brings out of oblivion random coincidences, like an unpredictable hiccup: everything here rhymes with everything - prayers with newspaper headlines, the names of drunks with the names of writers, poetic quotes with obscene language. There is not a single word spoken in simplicity in the poem. In each line, unprecedented verbal matter, conceived by vodka, boils and swarms. The drunken hero plunges headlong into this speech protoplasm, foolishly confessing to the reader: “I, as a phenomenon, have a self-expanding logos.” Logos, that is, integral knowledge, including analysis and intuition, reason and feeling, “self-grows” in Venichka because he sows words from which, like from a grain, meanings sprout.”

Genis A.A. , Ticket to China, St. Petersburg, “Amphora”, 2001, p. 97-98.

Sample text: “I like it. I like that the people of my country have such empty and bulging eyes. This gives me a sense of legitimate pride. You can imagine what kind of eyes there are. Where everything is sold and everything is bought... deeply hidden, lurking, predatory and frightened eyes... Devaluation, unemployment, pauperism... They look from under their brows, with unceasing care and torment - these are the eyes in the world of Chistogan... But mine people - what eyes! They are constantly bulging, but there is no tension in them. A complete absence of any meaning - but what power! (What spiritual power!) These eyes will not sell. They won't sell anything and won't buy anything. Whatever happens to my country. In days of doubt, in days of painful thoughts, in times of any trials and disasters, these eyes will not blink. God's dew is all they need..."

Venedikt Erofeev, Moscow – Petushki.

“Vodka is the essence and root of Erofeev’s creativity. Once we honestly read the poem “Moscow-Petushki”, we will be convinced that there is no need to justify vodka - it itself justifies the author. Alcohol is the core on which Erofeev’s plot is strung. His hero goes through all the stages of intoxication - from the first saving sip to the painful absence of the last, from a store closed in the morning to a store closed in the evening, from a hangover revival to a sober death. The compositional outline is also built in strict accordance with this path. As we move toward Cockerels, the text increases in elements of nonsense and absurdity. The world swirls around, reality closes in on the hero’s painful consciousness. But this clinically reliable picture describes only the external side of intoxication. There is another - deep, worldview, philosophical, let's face it - religious. His close friend, Vladimir Muravyov, wrote about Erofeev’s religiosity, who persuaded him to convert to Catholicism, convincing Venichka that only this denomination recognizes a sense of humor.
Muravyov writes: "Moscow-Petushki" - a deeply religious book [...] Venichka himself always had the feeling that a prosperous, ordinary life was a substitute real life, he destroyed it, and his destruction partly had a religious connotation.”

Genis A.A. , Good news. Venedikt Erofeev / Two: Investigations, M., Eksmo; "Horseshoe", 2002, p. 58.

Venedikt (Venechka) Erofeev is a great talent with a sad fate, “a man frightened by happiness.” Writer, author of the popular prose poem “Moscow-Petushki”, to which a monument was erected in Moscow with the inscription

“You can’t trust the opinion of a person who hasn’t had a hangover yet.”

Childhood and youth

Venedikt Vasilyevich Erofeev was born in the Murmansk region, in the village of Niva-2 in the suburbs of Kandalaksha. There were 5 children in the Erofeev family, Venechka was the youngest. Mother Anna Andreevna Gushchina ran the household, father Vasily Vasilyevich worked as the head of the railway station. The archives contain photos of the parents of the future writer.

At the beginning of the war, the Erofeevs moved from Chupa to the Khibiny station of the Kirov branch. A month later they were evacuated to the village of Nizhnyaya Toima Arkhangelsk region. Due to a shortage of food, Anna Andreevna and her children returned to their homeland.

Soon repressions began in the country; at the end of 1941, Vasily Konstantinovich Erofeev’s grandfather was taken away for refusing to harness a horse to an officer’s carriage. Three months later he died in prison. In 1945, Father Venedikt was arrested; he served time in a prison camp for sabotage and anti-Soviet propaganda.


Venechka's childhood was spent in hunger and cold. By the age of 6, the boy could read and write; he spent all his time scratching something on scraps of paper. When they asked what he was writing, he answered: “Notes of a madman.” On September 1, 1945, Boris and Venedikt Erofeev went to first grade at the school at Khibiny station, having one briefcase between them.

By 1947, Anna Andreevna and her children were left without a livelihood. She went to Moscow to earn money, and sent the younger ones to an orphanage. Venechka studied well, one day he was awarded a trip to a pioneer camp in Rybinsk.


Venedikt Erofeev with his mother, brother, sisters and niece

In 1951, the father returned from prison, the mother came from the capital, and the family was reunited. True, after 2 years, Vasily Vasilyevich was again arrested for being late for work and sentenced to 3 years, which he spent in Olenegorsk prison. In 1956, after spending 2 years in freedom, he died.

Venedikt Erofeev graduated from school with a gold medal and in 1955 entered the Moscow University without exams. State University, Faculty of Philology. He lived in a hostel where he met interesting people, among them the Soviet philologist, literary critic and translator Vladimir Muravyov, who influenced the literary views of the future writer.


In 1957, Venechka was expelled from the university for poor academic performance and systematic absenteeism. He got a job as a helper in the construction department of Remstroytrest. In the dormitory, the future writer organized a literary circle, where young workers read poetry, and Venedikt read excerpts from classical literature. Because of these meetings, Erofeev was fired from his job.

Venya spent the next 2 years in Ukraine, and in 1959 he returned to the capital and entered the philological faculty of the Orekhovo-Zuevsky Pedagogical Institute, where he began publishing a literary almanac. In 1960, student Erofeev was expelled.


Over the next years, Venedikt changed jobs like gloves. I tried to continue my education, entered the Vladimir and Kolomna Pedagogical Institutes, studied well, and received an increased scholarship. But discipline suffered, and he was kicked out.

Books

The bibliography of Venedikt Erofeev includes only 5 completed works. Even in his youth, Venya began to compose “Notes of a Psychopath.” This is a diary that reflects the author’s stream of consciousness, combining high ideas, base thoughts and complete nonsense. The book was first published in 2000 in an abridged version. The full version was included in the collected works in 2004.


Since 1960, Erofeev has been working on the story “The Good News,” which has survived fragmentarily. The work is imbued with spirit German philosopher, which Venya studied with enthusiasm. This work has a mysterious fate. The writer gave the manuscript, which contained 13 chapters, to friends for safekeeping.

It was subsequently returned and lost again along with part of the archive. After the author's death, 4 chapters of the story were discovered. Later, the 5th chapter was found in Italy, and the 6th in Bulgaria. Now “The Good News” is published in Erofeev’s notebooks.


In 1970, the writer finished work on the prose poem “Moscow-Petushki”. This is partly an autobiography, the main character’s name is Venya, he was traveling by train to his child and his mistress. I rode happily, had one drink after another. As a result, it turned out that he had mixed up the route and was moving in the opposite direction. Upon arrival in the capital, the protagonist is stabbed to death by strangers.

“Since then I have not regained consciousness, and I never will,” is the last line of the book.

The poem, composed of chapters whose names corresponded to the names of the railway stations along the Venya route, was instantly disassembled into quotes. The phrase “And immediately drank” from the chapter “The Hammer and Sickle - Karacharovo” has become popular among the people.


The author did not expect such popularity of “Petushki”. According to him, the poem was written “without any pretensions... for seven or eight friends, so that they could laugh for ten pages, and then be sad and think for eight pages.”

The work was not published in the USSR for a long time. It was first published in Israel in 1973, then in London and Paris. In the writer’s homeland in the late 80s, the poem “Moscow-Petushki”, ironically, was published in the magazine “Sobriety and Culture” in a truncated version. Full text appeared in 1989 in the anthology “Vest”. The audio version of the book was recorded by a Russian musician and showman.


There are other works in Erofeev’s work: the play “Walpurgis Night, or the Commander’s Steps”, the essay “Vasily Rozanov through the eyes of an eccentric”, a selection of quotes “My Little Leniniana”, the unfinished play “Dissidents, or Fanny Kaplan”, the essay “Sasha Cherny and others "

Venya said that he also wrote the novel “Shostakovich,” which was stolen on the train. In 1994, it was announced that the manuscript had been found and would soon be published. As a result, it appeared in print small excerpt, which critics say is fake.

Personal life

Erofeev met his first love Antonina Muzykantskaya in the dormitory of Moscow University. Romantic dates continued throughout the year. Then, in the fall of 1959, Venya met Yulia Runova, courted her, and offered to go to the Kola Peninsula together. In 1961 they broke up, but the feelings did not go away. The future writer tried to find his chosen one in 1962, but Julia changed her address. Their meetings resumed in 1971, after Runova got married and gave birth to a daughter.


In 1964, Venedikt had a relationship with Valentina Zimakova, a native of the Petushinsky district, whom he introduced to his mother as his wife. On January 3, 1966, the young couple had a son, Venedikt Venediktovich, they married in February of the same year and settled in the village of Myshlino, Vladimir Region. Erofeev hardly saw his wife and son, wandered around the apartments of friends and acquaintances, and drank a lot. In 1975, the family broke up.

The writer’s second wife was his friend Galina Nosova; the marriage was concluded on February 21, 1976. A year later, the young people received a 2-room apartment in Moscow. However, Erofeev did not break off relations with Yulia Runova.

In 1979, they visited Venya’s brother Yuri in Kirovsk. Alcohol abuse led to the fact that on Christmas 1979 the writer was hospitalized with a diagnosis of delirium tremens. Judging by the diaries, Venedikt drank either “red” or “ginger” every day from morning to evening. Erofeev was treated for alcoholism in 1982 at a clinic in Moscow. It seemed that personal life would improve after this.

After being discharged, Venedikt and his friend Nikolai Melnikov set off on a voyage along the northern rivers and lakes to the White Sea. During the trip, the writer missed Julia, wrote letters to her, and declared his love. Upon returning, the atmosphere in the family became tense; the couple were planning to divorce and exchange their apartment. In addition to Yulia Runova, Erofeev had other women.


The child from his first marriage was studying in Moscow at a boarding school at that time. Venedikt Sr. tried to visit him and was present at his son’s 17th birthday.

In 1983, the writer again went to a boarding house near Moscow for treatment for alcohol intoxication. And in the spring of that year, his wife admitted him to a psychiatric hospital.

Death

Erofeev had a predisposition to alcoholism - his father was a drunkard, and his brother was the same. In his youth, Venya did not drink alcohol; everything happened, according to him, suddenly: he saw vodka in the window, bought a bottle and cigarettes, drank, lit a cigarette and never quit.


This led to tragic consequences. In 1985, Venedikt was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent surgery. The tumors were removed, but the writer lost his voice. Italian doctors made a voice-forming apparatus for Erofeev with a microphone, which was applied to the larynx.

A year later, the Sorbonne doctors promised Venechka to restore his voice, but the government did not let him out of the country. The shocked writer spoke about this in an interview:

“I’ll die, but I’ll never understand these brutes.”

IN Last year life, after the publication of the poem “Moscow-Petushki” in the USSR, Erofeev gained popularity in his homeland. Journalists and fans harassed the writer.

Venedikt's health condition worsened, and depression began. In 1990, doctors discovered that the cancer was progressing. The writer was hospitalized and prescribed radiation therapy, but refused it due to his serious condition.

On May 11, 1990, Venedikt Erofeev died. The writer's grave is located in Moscow at the Kuntsevo cemetery.

Documentary film “Venedikt Erofeev. Islands"

In 2008, a documentary film “Venedikt Erofeev. Islands"

Quotes

“We must honor, I repeat, the darkness of someone else’s soul, we must look into them, even if there is nothing there, even if there is only rubbish there, it doesn’t matter: look and honor, look and don’t spit...” (“Moscow-Petushki”)
“Oh, the most powerless and shameful time in the life of my people is the time from dawn to the opening of shops!” (“Moscow-Petushki”)
“Life is given to a person once, and one must live it in such a way as not to make mistakes in the recipes.” (“Moscow-Petushki”)
“...it is absolutely not necessary to be a subtle psychologist in order to be considered one...” (“Notes of a Psychopath”)

Bibliography

  • 1957 – “Notes of a Psychopath”
  • 1960 – “Good News” (“Blagovest”)
  • 1970 – “Moscow – Petushki”
  • 1972-1973 – “Vasily Rozanov through the eyes of an eccentric”
  • 1982 – “Sasha Cherny and others”
  • 1985 – “Walpurgis Night, or the Commander’s Steps”

Venedikt Erofeev kept notebooks almost all his life: from them “Moscow - Petushki” and his other works were born, they also became the main source telling about the writer’s life and the formation of his style. Their publication - first in the form of small collections, and then in their entirety - began immediately after Erofeev’s death. The books are filled with extracts from what they have read, remarks from friends and casual acquaintances, diary entries, phone numbers and lists of debts, aphorisms, jokes and puns. Here Erofeev honed his style, and many of the recordings passed almost unchanged into his compositions; others, no worse, remained, neatly written out in separate notebooks. In the notebooks, Venedikt Erofeev appears as a sad philosopher, a lover of paradoxes, and reading them is no less interesting than “Moscow - Petushki”.

Venedikt Erofeev. 1988 Anatoly Morkovkin / TASS

1. About a reason to drink

The 1978 note may seem humorous, but this is not the only time when Erofeev is going to celebrate some unexpected memorable date. Other entries mention the 150th anniversary of the great flood of 1824 in St. Petersburg, the 70th anniversary of Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, the 90th anniversary of Vasily Chapaev, “lying at the bottom of Yaik,” and even a kind of Pushkin anniversary - the 150th anniversary of that day. when Pushkin received a loan from Nicholas I to print “The History of Pugachev.”

This writer’s love for unobvious anniversaries is explained by his passion for exact dates, and the desire to correlate his own biography with historical events, and, probably, the purely everyday need to find a reason to drink. But main reason still lies on the aesthetic plane - it’s no coincidence that everything memorable dates that Erofeev mentions look downright ironic.

Late 1960s Soviet Union a wave of anniversaries associated with events swept over October revolution And Civil War, and the culmination was the celebration of the centenary of Lenin’s birth (by the way, it is this date that the members of the cable-laying team in “Moscow-Petushki” have in mind when, under the leadership of Venichka, they solemnly swear “on the occasion of the coming century to put an end to industrial injuries”) . Erofeev writes about this with sadness in notebook 1969-1970:

“Once you start, it’s hard to stop. 50 years of the establishment of Soviet power in Aktobe, 25 years of the Lvov-Sandomierz operation, etc., etc. The murky stream of dull, stupefying anniversaries keeps expanding.”

Proposing to “sprinkle” the next anniversary, Erofeev makes an attempt to rip off the official Soviet language, making it meaningless. And thus, perhaps, make your existence next to him a little more acceptable.

2. About the benefits of alcohol

“About the need for wine, that is, it would have been a relief from a lot of things if, say, in April 17, Ilyich was such that he could not climb onto an armored car. That is, the task is to stop drunk people from drinking, and to force them to”

Behind the humorous form typical of Erofeev, a serious content is hidden. Alcohol as a natural limiter is one of the constant themes of his recordings. A drunk person is capable of little, which means that he is less likely to commit some kind of meanness. The historical sober Lenin is cruel and merciless, the Lenin from Erofeev’s sketch evokes laughter and, perhaps, even sympathy.

The idea about Lenin, who got so drunk that at the most crucial moment he could not climb onto an armored car and deliver his historical speech, is similar to a joke. IN in a certain sense this is an anecdote, the purpose of which is to revive a frozen historical figure. This is probably why Erofeev writes out pages and pages of quotes from the letters of Lenin and Krupskaya, choosing the funniest ones. For example, this one: “Still, I feel sorry that I’m not a man, I would hang around ten times more.”  Nadezhda Krupskaya to Maria Ulyanova, the letter is about walks in the vicinity of Shushenskoye..

From these extracts for two February days in 1988, “My Little Leniniana” was formed - Erofeev’s last completed work. And although it is often classified as postmodernism, in fact it is rather an attempt to humanize Soviet officialdom using the means available to the writer. Hearing the word “post-modernism,” Erofeev would probably have grimaced no less than when asked whether he considers himself a Russian intellectual  From an interview with Igor Bolychev. Quote By: Venedikt Erofeev. Collected works in 2 volumes. T. 2. P. 277..

3. About mixing genres

“Not laughter with tears, but guttural neighing with quiet sobbing into the pillow, tragedy with farce, music with super-prosaicism, and so that it was surreptitious and inconspicuous. Merge all genres into one, from rondo to parody, I won’t settle for anything less.”

It is interesting that Erofeev unites not even opposites, but extreme points: “Not laughter with tears, but a guttural neighing with a quiet sob into the pillow...” This fragment expresses both his love for everything abnormal, going beyond the usual, and and hatred of the “golden mean”. The same quote from Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, which Erofeev wrote out in 1961, speaks about this:

Spicy is what is dear to us, people,
When we are fed up with normal.
The familiar no longer intoxicates us.
Only the extreme - thinness or stature,
Either youth or old age - capable
Hit the head and the middle
Can only cause nausea  Translation by Anna and Peter Hansen..

Piquantity, unusualness, indecency - these are Erofeev’s elements. It is needed to amaze the reader, to throw him off balance. The extreme “goes to the head”, like Venichka’s famous cocktails with their fantastic and incompatible ingredients - disinfestal for killing small insects, BF glue, brake fluid. Actually, all of Erofeev’s work, in a sense, is such a cocktail - a mixture of different genres (“from rondo to parody”), linguistic registers and stylistic layers.

4. About the ordinariness of grief

“You have a light bulb. But my heart is burned out, and I don’t say anything.”

In a crudely ironic form, as if this were a remark from a grumpy electrician, Ero-feev expresses something really important to him. “Venya’s real passion was grief. He suggested writing this word with a capital letter, like Tsvetaeva: Grief,” writes Olga Sedakova, recalling the episode in “Moscow - Petushki”, in which Venichka compares herself with the heroine of Kramskoy’s painting “Inconsolable Grief” " There, Venichka claims that he feels the “sorrow” and “fear” that ordinary people experience at exceptional moments in life, for example due to the death of loved ones, all the time. For him, grief turns into commonplace, into something familiar, but without losing its poignancy.

In this context, this entry becomes clear. A “burnt out” heart for Erofeev is a situation as everyday as for others it is a burnt-out light bulb. But while a light bulb can be replaced, it’s more difficult to do so with your heart. The hopelessness of this situation is well expressed in a 1973 entry on the same topic:

“Compare their heaviness and hopelessness with mine, stupid. They have a salary tomorrow, but today there is nothing to eat. And I have the Leningrad blockade.”

5. About my beloved firstborn

“And Tikhonov would have messed everything up. He would be Brutus in Athens, and Pericles in Rome.”

Vadim Tikhonov, “beloved firstborn”  The author called Tikhonov his “favorite firstborn” in the dedication to “Moscow - Cockerels”. The writer meant that Tikhonov became something like his first student., to whom the writer dedicated “Moscow - Petushki”, became not only a character in Erofeev’s main book, but also a constant hero of notebooks. Distinctive feature“Wadi” means dense ignorance. Tikhonov was indeed not very erudite: he somehow graduated from high school, was known as a hooligan, and memoirists often recall his illiteracy and bad manners. Tikhonov's ignorance and bad manners were obviously a constant source of jokes among friends and, perhaps, the reason for the irrational love that Erofeev felt for him.

Erofeev notes in his notebooks that his friend confuses the inventor Henry Ford and the chemist Ernest Rutherford, the composer Offenbach and the philosopher Feuerbach, the actress Vera Maretskaya and the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, the artist Rembrandt and the politician Willy Brandt. Erofeev does not even miss the opportunity to tell a Swiss researcher about this, the author of a dissertation on “Moscow - Petushki”  The text of the letter is given in: Svetlana Gaiser-Shnitman. Venedikt Erofeev: “Moscow - Petushki”, or “The Rest is Silence”. Bern; Frankfurt am Main; New York; Paris. 1989. He seems to contrast Tikhonov with the well-known humorous description of an intellectual who is able to distinguish Gogol from Hegel, Hegel from Bebel, Bebel from Babel, and further down the list. Tikhonov, on the contrary, knows nothing. So in the quoted fragment he is mockingly likened to Chaadaev from Pushkin’s famous poem, but if Chaadaev “had Brutus in Rome, Pericles in Athens,” then Tikhonov would have messed everything up here too.

6. About suitable comparisons

“Igor Avdiev, long as the life of akyn Dzhabayev, bearded like a joke”

In Erofeev’s notebooks, his other friend, Igor Avdiev, is often mentioned. He had an eccentric appearance: very tall, with a long thick beard. Erofeev himself was tall. “...In Igor it was one meter ninety-seven, and in Vienna it was one meter eighty-seven (he usually said: one meter eighty-eight),” recalled his second wife Galina Nosova. “Avdiev and I are both long. But he is as long as a December night, and I am as long as a June day,” writes Erofeev himself, using his typical comparisons to convey not only the similarity in their appearance, but also the difference: Erofeev’s hair was blond, Avdiev’s was bluish. black.

These comparisons are based on a simple pun: a tall and, as a rule, thin person is often called long, but at the same time life can be long - for example, the Soviet poet Dzhambul Dzhabayev, who lived 99 years. To create the same effect, you can use not different meanings of the same word, but stable linguistic expressions: a person can become bearded like a joke, long like a ruble, or tall like an award. This is how Erofeev’s joke is born.

The writer himself, it seems, understood the simplicity of such puns. “You have to get used to joking like a Crocodile,” notes Erofeev in a recording from 1966. However, some of his puns are based not only on primitive humor, but also on his characteristic desire to update language and the ability to accurately describe appearance or character:

“It is the most strict and the longest of us, like the liturgy of Basil the Great - the longest and most strict of all liturgies.”

There is no doubt that this article is also about Igor Avdiev. If Erofeev’s Tikhonov, as a rule, is portrayed as an ignoramus, then Avdiev, as the hero of the writer’s notebooks, is distinguished by a deep and very serious religiosity. Erofeev could have written “tall, like a tower” or “stern, like a reprimand,” but chose a different option. The result may not be the funniest pun, but it is a fairly accurate description.

7. About ambiguity

“Is it about *** [prostitutes] or not about *** [prostitutes]? From Diderot: “The most happy man the one who gives happiness to the greatest number of people."

The source of this aphorism is the 1976 tear-off calendar. A random collection of various quotes, anniversaries and useless information about everything in the world is an absolutely Erofeev format. From this calendar, Erofeev not only writes down the aphorisms he likes, but also learns about the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Prime Minister of Vietnam Pham Van Dong, which is about to be celebrated, that Alexander the Great, among other things, was the inventor of ice cream, and the total length of the bookshelves of the Lenin Library storage is more than 400 kilometers. Erofeev probably developed a love for reading tear-off calendars in childhood. This is how the writer’s sister Nina Frolova remembers it:

“We didn’t have any special books, so we read everything that came to hand; We had a small tear-off calendar that you hang on the wall and tear off a piece of paper every day. Venichka knew this calendar - all 365 days - by heart even before school; for example, if you tell him: July 31st, he replies: Friday, sunrise, sunset, length of day, holidays and everything that is written on the back.”

8. About silence

“There is no need to rush into publishing or making anything public. Newton, who discovered universal gravitation, introduced it to people 20 years later."

This recording was made in 1974; very soon the topic of creative silence will become extremely painful for Erofeev. “Moscow—Petushki,” written in 1969, was published abroad in 1973 (“My prose has been on tap since 1970 and to-go since 1973,” the writer himself joked), in the same 1973 in Samiz-Danish the magazine "Veche" published his essay about the philosopher Vasily Rozanov - and his next text, the play "Walpurgis Night", will appear only 12 years later. All this time, Erofeev will suffer from creative muteness and the inability to create something equal to “Petushki” - his creative debut and opus magnum. Alexander Leontovich writes in his memoirs about Erofeev:

“In general, he was incredibly talented, and I think he realized well, if only by one percent. My wife told him about “Petushki”: “You’re like Tereshkova.”  This refers to Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, the first woman to be in space., flew once and that’s it.” He just wriggled around - he was very offended - but didn’t answer anything.”

Erofeev could only joke bitterly, as he did in his notebook in 1978:

“Why have you been silent for five whole years?” they ask. I answer as the Counts answered before: “I can’t help but remain silent!”  A reference to Leo Tolstoy’s manifesto “I Can’t Be Silent.”».

9. About relationship with God

“I asked the Lord God for only one thing - “as an exception” to make this summer one and a half degrees cooler than usual. He didn’t promise me anything firm.”

The comic effect of this fragment is based on the omnipotence of the addressee and the insignificance of the request itself, emphasized by the non-integer number by which Erofeev asks to lower the temperature - “one and a half degrees cooler than usual.” In addition, the Lord cannot promise “anything firm,” as if the request seems difficult to fulfill or fraught with too burdensome troubles. Erofeev portrays himself as an annoying, whining petitioner, and God as either a petty official or a tired parent who cannot decide whether to allow the child more sweets. Erofeev loved precisely this form of complaints about the weather: he used the same form of “a degree and a half” later, but with the opposite sign:

“I asked the Lord God to make it at least one and a half degrees warmer than usual. He didn’t promise me anything firm.”

10. About the passage of time

“Here you want to sleep so much from the wine that you tell, for example, an anecdote about Chapaev, you say “cha”, but you don’t have time to say “pa”.”

An example of Erofeev’s favorite hyperbolic construction. Here, in his characteristic manner, he updates well-worn language clichés like “in an instant” or “without having time to blink an eye.” You can say “before you even blink an eye, it’s already dark,” or you can say this:

“And how quickly darkness comes this November. I swung it - it was still light, but when ****** [drank] it was completely dark.”

  • Erofeev V. Collected works in 2 volumes.
  • Sedakova O. Several monologues about Venedikt Erofeev.