- To start, could you talk about your background, your family, your childhood ...
- I was lucky. I count among my ancestors several remarkable characters. And two of them, my great-grandfather Efim Isaakovich Ginzburg and my grandmother Markovna Elena, his daughter, in my opinion were "just". The light of their personality illuminates my life so far. I would say even more. Probably because over the years, I close myself that boundary they had already achieved.
My two great grandfathers were watchmakers. I remember very well Efim Isaakovich. He ninety-three years old when he died. It was a family of soldiers. His father had served twenty-five years in the tsarist army, he participated in the taking of Plevna, received the medal of St. George for the soldiers, and had finished his service with the rank of sergeant. My great-grandfather, he held a haberdashery in Smolensk until the revolution, but it was a bad trader, and he failed, he became a watchmaker. Another of my great-grandfather, I only have a historic photograph which shows his watchmaking workshop after a pogrom. Tables overturned, everything is in pieces. It was in Kiev.
These watchmakers, these artisans have made to higher education for their children. One of my grandfathers completed his law at the University of Moscow in 1917, but he did not want the Soviet diploma, he believed that Soviet power was only a momentary inconvenience and that this aberration could not last long. My other grandfather has completed a business school, then the Conservatory, he made several times from prison, seventeen in all. He has written two books. A demographic, the other on music theory. He died in relegation in 1955, and I have few memories of him, I think I only saw him once.
My parents were scientists, and that was the career I intended too. We had the illusion that science was a freer field. My family hated and feared the power, and yet my father came to the party. For good reason: it was necessary that there are decent people in this party ... When I was little, I could hardly bear my father, and I allowed the divorce of my parents enthusiastically . But he had an old lonely and so sad that I am at peace with him. You see, no Oedipus complex or Electra ... Quite the contrary, I loved my mother. It was a naive woman, cheerful and charming. And most importantly, beautiful. When I was fifteen years, she realized that was the oldest of us, and she held my account opinion. She was fifty-three years old when she died. But it is never very far from me, as my grandmother.
I had a wonderful childhood. Not like that of Nabokov. But it contained everything a girl should know: books, fears, loneliness, shame, friends, love, wretched, disease, anguish. Even today, I attach great attention to childhood, there is a lot of mysterious things.
- You are a geneticist training. What has influenced your choice of profession, and how the transition occurred in the genetic literature?
- Choosing my first job was determined by vivid childhood impressions. The miserable lab where my mother worked in the old building of a former orphanage, in my eyes was a temple of science. Even today, I love the instruments of the laboratory, measuring cups, retorts, test tubes ...
On the way, in fact, there was none. I always thought that man is what is most interesting in the world. In a sense, I have not changed jobs, I just changed methods and instruments. Specifically, I was fired. I worked at the Institute of General Genetics, and I was guilty in the eyes of the KGB, I was reading some books, I recopied. Academician Doubinine was a prudent man, he simply closed our laboratory. My scientific career ended there.
When Did you write the first story of the collection Poor parents?
- in 1989. He was released immediately.
- What happened between the time you were terminated, and this publication?
- I have not worked. My mother fell ill and I took care of her until her death. Both my son were born. When they became a little older, I started working as Head of Jewish Literary Theatre. I stayed three years and when I'm gone in 1982, I knew with certainty that I wanted to write, and nothing else.
(...)
- How to start a text? How does a topic?
- They are two different issues. How it starts is a technical issue. At one time I had a binder with written on "Beginnings". It is indeed a crucial moment - the first sentence of the first movement. The first sentence should be plastically perfect start must be instantaneous. It is one of my books that begins badly: it has not been good.
In terms of subjects, this is not a technical problem, but ontological. There are subjects who accompany you throughout your life, they do not leave. Or because the self, it turns around for her whole life, either because they develop themselves before our eyes, by showing different angles, I do not know ... My Topics are not and will not disappear. I live with them.
(S. Benech remark: the novel appearing in March Gallimard Sincerely yours, Shurik , falls under these circumstances: it's been years that this subject the accompanies it. It is already embedded in one of the new Poor parents, "Gulya.")
- In one of his interviews, Nabokov said that what determines the level of talent is the faculty that has a writer to create a totally imaginary world that did not exist before. On the other hand, there is a radically opposite view that life is the ideal novelist. Marquez admitted that he took snippets of many lives and that ultimately, it gave a kind of collage. How things happen for you?
- Generally, I hate tests in which we must choose the correct answer. When people ask me if I prefer fish or meat, I choose without hesitation the bike! I think that says more Marquez, although this has nothing to do with bonding. If there is someone who created a fantastic reality, with its own reference system and its internal logic, it is just Mark. As for Nabokov, he lied. He was an absolute genius, he was terribly afraid of saying banalities, and I feel he sometimes allowed himself to take own traps. For example, he often spoke with contempt of psychoanalysis, yet in many respects, he was under its control.
Your question puts me in such company, between Nabokov and Mark, that I have only one thing to say is that in this system reference point, I'm not!
(...)
The novel Medea and her children is a family chronicle. The story of Medea and her sister Alexandra, who seduced the husband of Medea and has him a daughter, Nika, is repeated in the next generation, when his niece Macha Nika and fall in love with the same man, which ultimately lead Macha suicide. Children they answer for the sins of their parents? What do you think of concepts such as fate, destiny? To what extent the actions we do are they the result of our free will?
- love, betrayal, jealousy, suicide, love, all that these things are as old as man himself. They, truly human acts. As far as I know, animals do not commit suicide for love, at worst, they slaughter their rivals. But each era has its commonly accepted ways to respond, since confinement in a monastery until duel, since the stoning to divorce more ordinary.
People who grew up after the sexual revolution sometimes feel that we can agree on everything, reject prejudice, contempt of outdated rules. It is possible to preserve a marriage and raising children as part of a mutually agreed sexual freedom. I've met in my life a few happy unions of this kind. Two or three times. I strongly suspect that in such relationships, a couple still suffers in secret, but has no other way than accept the proposed conditions. In general, relations based on this kind of agreement sooner or later collapse. And then, all psyches do not support this are accepted by the enlightened reason. That's about the two love triangles in the novel Medea and her children.
On the question of whether children meet the sins of their parents, I do not understand what she has done here. It would be well if each of us came to cope with his own sins ... So for that is that of his parents! I think it is rather the parents who answered the sins of their children. It is a rational point of view, but I think there is something more essential. In addition, there is a very important reciprocal relationship between sin, disease and heredity, it is here that both fate, destiny and chance. And even medicine ... And then, in this lace, there is also the thread of free will. Over a rare, thin, but there nonetheless. It is true that in my opinion there is not many people that on earth who have free will (if we do not mean the act of surrendering their basic needs) and there are few situations in life where one has the opportunity to exercise this free will. In general, this is an illusion. But there have been in my life two or three such cases. Unless this is an impression ...
What then becomes the claim that the principle of free will is the fundamental principle of human existence since the creation of the world?
In theory, true, but in practice it is almost impossible. This is not a question of divergence between theory and practice, this is because the goal is beyond our possibilities. Given that by accepting the principle of free will, the man takes responsibility for what he does or does not, as otherwise it gets rid of that responsibility.
I have often heard about your books: "All this is beautiful, but too rounded, too flattened, there are too of happy ending. " To be honest, when I read the first time Medea, and then The Funeral , I also had the impression that you turn down the curtain, as in the theater, giving the sensation of a circle in the loop, a closed text itself. This happens intuitively, naturally, or is there behind this bias Copyright?
I read a review in a more radical view: "At Ulitskaya, it always ends either by a happy ending, or by death. "It's much more fun, do not you think? As if, ultimately, life itself proposed a different purpose than death .... As the curtain, I am quite agree. The playwright's art is precisely to lower the curtain time. Just because the author takes a little time to do so, and his hero dies a natural death. Any. Imagine what would have happened to world literature if Hamlet had died obese at the age of seventy years, Juliette diarrhea at forty and grizzled Romeo killed himself by falling from his horse when he was drunk ... What to do with it is the bias of the author?
I want to talk a bit about what we call "women's literature." What do you think of the distinction between an art and an art male female? Is it justified? If yes, what are the fundamental differences between these two literatures?
Yes, yes, a hundred times yes! There is an art and a female male art. This distinction is not absolute, but anthropologists are well aware that there are nations where it is women who are keepers of the legends and oral traditions. And there are ancient cultures where this function is exclusively male. There are musical instruments for women and other men, and even music for men and women. We must look toward cultural anthropology, and history of the question contains the answer. Yes, there is an art male and female art, of course.
In fact, it is a extremely large problem, a real subject of study. A psychological problem, theme. I've never done any research on it, but it is an area in which we can always rely on what one feels.
The world of men and women of the world are different worlds. They overlap in places, but not completely. There are areas of concern especially men, others of concern to women. Issues of love, family and children, are more in the female world. Women place less emphasis on problems male as the struggle to find a place in the sun, career issues or hierarchy. There is no doubt that biological basis. In animals, it never finds a hierarchy among females, it is not necessary at all.
But also, we must not forget that sex, despite its obvious duality is not something absolute. We all know masculine women and feminine men, even within the agreed limits of normality. And if you cross these limits, we see a world open particular, that of the third sex. With its aesthetic its problems, its relational system. So I think today we can speak not only for women and men of literature, but also of gay literature. Or rather, homosexual culture. (...)
(...)
Your Sonechka Medea and heroines seem very unusual for Russian literature. They are amazing examples of humility and at the same time, they never let themselves down. It seems that women like this exist anymore. What makes the difference? We tried to educate girls differently once, or times have changed?
You know, I do like to review, I ask that I get asked another question. This one does not please me. What this means: Atypical? Sonechka Marmeladov and it is typical? And Princess Maria? And Natasha Rostov?
Regarding education, it is true, it changes from generation to generation. My mother did not high high as had my grandmother. But I still think that much depends on the character. Education can lead, iron out some things, but the character is of decisive importance. I have two adult son that I raised exactly the same way, I believe it, but they are totally different people.
(...) I feel that The Funeral constitutes a turning point in your writing. To start, this novel has a rhythm and energy extraordinary things greatly lacking today in our literature. Then, it is incredibly visual and musical, which for someone of my generation, is a quality evident, rare and unmistakable. And finally, for the first time, perhaps, in history (if not longer than that) of Russian literature, it talks about the disease, agony and death of a man without hysteria without artificial pathos, and at the same time, you manage to stay balanced on the edge of the sacred and the profane, without descending to the level of the latter. It was a goal that you had set from the beginning, or it happened by itself? Do not see that death is a taboo subject in Western culture?
was what I had in mind. I wrote this book in 1991 and 1992, then I put it aside because I felt that I had not come to where I should have. Then I worked even on long, I considered finished, but I'm still not arrived at what I wanted. And I never will. I said everything I could. True, this is not only death but also the process of death.
Since I'm going to America, I never cease to amaze me to see that at home, it seems that there is no death. It is like hiding something indecent. I feel that in general, they see death as a kind of inconvenience to which one can escape if it behaves well - if you eat properly, if you do not smoke and even, perhaps, if one performs good deeds.
That is to say that death is a huge failure, fatal, one might say, yet they are ashamed of their failures?
Yes. While at home, death invaded much of life. At least mine. My grandmother, my grandfather and my parents died before my eyes and in my arms. I have buried many friends. I watched the dying. I lived the moment when a loved hot turns into a cold object, in a mock human being, a useless thing to do away with speed. People die in different ways. I saw several times the beauty and dignity with which people are gone. My grandmother. An older friend. Others go out in suffering and courage. Death is one of the most important moments of a lifetime. And I'm working on. As far as I can.
The action of Happy funeral takes place in New York, in rural emigration. I know it has annoyed many people. Basically, here's roughly what gives these critics: "This medium is represented with great accuracy. I hate this medium. While this book does not please me. "What motivated you to write about the Russians in New York, on what basis the selection of the frame?
In emigration, everything is exaggerated: the characters, disease relationships. Alik's story is the story of my life, and not only mine, one of several people. It could happen in Russia. It would have been very similar but still different. On the bottom of America, our dead Russian stands better. I believe it.
ago in this story is something else that offends some people: the approach of death and eroticism. That too is for contrast, or you want to express something else?
I think in the late twentieth century, these two concepts have become so intertwined that Eros and Thanatos, is almost the same thing. For my part, I'm at the bottom of applied anthropology is to say that I write novels. So, rather than theoretical research, which interests me is the fact that in some African tribes, the day of the funeral of the husband, the widow passes between the arms of all men age who wish to generate. How to understand this? I do not know. Anthropologists build theories ...
That a woman of today who has just buried her lover immediately falls into the arms of another man does not seem psychologically implausible. The human being is distinguished from animals by the fact that its depths are inexhaustible.
In your work, dreams prominently, and the events that occur at the fluctuating boundary between the visible and invisible worlds. In your life, you give much attention to this stuff?
The border to which you are probably thinking intrigues me greatly. (Note SB: see the book published after this interview , The Case of Dr. Koukotski , with its dreamlike part) By nature, I think I'm one of the people who give psychics, mystics of all kinds, including including fortune tellers. I was born under the sign of Fish, if that tells you something. For me, the dream world and the universe that are very important rub. I get a lot out there. This does not prevent me from being someone rational, as anyone who has worked in scientific research (which I did for a certain period, even though it was short), and j 'I was heavily contaminated by positivist methodology.
I am very careful to preserve the limits of my personal normality. I know how those trying to watch this world neighbor through the hole lock are close to insanity and other forms of destruction. Many seek to introduce them using various psychological techniques or by pharmaceutical means, including hard drugs. Me, no. I decided once and for all that I took what was given me, but I did not want any more.
In your opinion, "the zeitgeist" is there and if so, do you consider important to try to reflect in your work ;? How would you characterize that of modern times?
(...) What is he, the spirit of the times? Can anyone answer this question? My grandmother, driven by the spirit of the pre-revolutionary, had helped someone to escape from the prison in the Lubyanka, and then these are flanked by prison escapees half the country, including my grandfather. I tell myself that if I were born in those years, I would have distributed leaflets. Even smart people sometimes have yielded the call of the zeitgeist. So I'm cautious, I do not play with it. I answer as I can with issues that require a response. And I know that today, today, to compromise its reputation, simply declare that the common morality based on the Ten Commandments is not an asinine ridiculous and outdated. That we can be sure that radical critics do not forgive you! Moreover, such a statement requires some courage, because nobody wants to look ridiculous.
In your opinion, what is the link, the main sign of our times?
You know, there is a phenomenon that is observed in some insect species, when the larvae had not reached the end of their development are beginning to multiply and produce their same larvae. Our current culture is a little larva, a little girl. I'm not the first to notice this infantilism. I do not mean it's wrong. I suppose that this same culture infant will soon be replaced by a culture "of old." Because with the increase living standards (not here!) and prolongation of life expectancy (again, not with us), the population will soon exceed the population of much younger. That also is not a gift!
(...)
Many of your characters, if not most, are Jews. If you do not mind, I would have liked to talk a bit about it with you. What do you feel more Jewish or Russian? How does that translate into your work? In your story On 2 March this year , you say: "She heard about her a sort of buzzing disaster," jjj "dark brown beetle escaped from the word" Jew "." And further: "The hot copper plate bearing the name Jijmorski, their horrible name, it can not, shame." For me, anti-Semitism is something that belongs to the past. Among people my age, it is fashionable to be Jew, I have friends who change their name to the Russian Jewish name of their grandmother and their great-grandmother. In your opinion, what happened that might have caused a radical reversal?
What wonderful question! You know what delights me? Is to have lived long enough to know when anti-Semitism is out of fashion! What you said about the fact that it is fashionable to be a Jew among the people of your age, this reversal of which you speak, you do not believe that you get lost? That you live in I do not know what celestial spheres? I believe that in our country, anti-Semitism is alive and as well!
I'm Jewish. It is true that among my characters, there are many Jews. There were many around me when I was little. My family was mostly made up of Jews. My grandparents had two daughters-Russian Tanya and Tamara. Both were very fond of my grandmother and, in general, there were no racial problems at home.
But around, there was a hostile world is as I felt when I was a child. In 1953 I was ten. That year, my parents were dismissed. My mother brought a lawsuit to be reinstated. And I was sent to spend the summer in a mining village near Tula, my aunt Tania. My mother was afraid that stops us all and we were deported. I am sure that if this had happened, Tania would have kept.
My story On 2 March this year is partly autobiographical. Anyway, I was this little girl to whom his back grandfather dying of cancer told stories of the Bible. Over the years, this memory becomes increasingly essential. At bottom, is not this cultural heritage, in addition multiplied by love? My grandfather knew Hebrew and Yiddish, of course, my mother included, but does not speak for my part, I do not understand anymore. Only when I began studying German at school that I realized that Yiddish was like him. But I remember Easter 1952, the last year of the life of my great-grandfather. It was beautiful, and I already knew the story of Exodus, thanks to my great grandfather ...
The problem of identity for a small Jewish fifties, is a real subject of romance, I assure you. I lived with acuity. This did not mean being better or worse, it meant being "other." And I would have liked to be like everyone else. From time to time when I was playing in the yard, it made me feel that I was different. I had excellent relations with my little friends, but there was something irreducible. Then I stopped wanting to be like everyone else. I created an inner world to replace the outside world, and books began to occupy an important place in my life.
exclusion, even in mild form, promotes inner tension.
And I tried to share with my readers my thoughts on this topic. It is possible that this has had on me a therapeutic effect. It seems to me that I no longer suffer from the disease - the difficulty of being Jewish. Long ago I ceased to feel my status as a Jewish fatal inconvenience. Today, it seems not a privilege, not a merit or a nuisance. Better yet, I am in this field someone so deeply that I feel no healthy feeling violent towards the anti-Semites. If they want to hate Jews, they hate them, it does not bother me! But they comply with laws that prohibit racial persecution. Nobody has to love anyone. But it's recommended. Someone said: "My children, love one another. "I think He was right.
(...) It is probably fair to say that one of the main characters of almost all your works is the family. The mystery of the relationship between a man and a woman, the mystery of marriage. The family as a continuous work. What attracts you to this theme? Why is it important to you?
The family is an important part of life. Right now, the world changes a lot, and this concerns also the relationships between men and women and the family as an institution. It is possible that some found old-fashioned family values. Me, I'm fond. It seems that the role of the family was especially important during the Soviet era. It was precisely here that we could find the real values, unlike the false values which we gorged everywhere, from the kindergarten to the cemetery. But we could also not find them. Me, I had a great family. A home. A table around which eleven people were found. A white tablecloth. Respect for elders and care for younger children.
It is now rare to encounter this kind of family. But I am among my fellow women who had the courage to have many children. That is the creation of the world. Without metaphor. And creativity, happiness. But it is very difficult. I regret having only two children. (...) By the way, I never said that a family was a constant work: of course. What matters is that marriage is a continuous work. Soon be forgotten, he collapses. I know, I've experienced. I am not saying that man is born to be happy as a bird to fly. But I think most of us do not realize that to be happy, we must work on yourself. Happy people just like that of birth, it is rather rare!
(...)
You travel a lot. Whether you make these trips as a writer? In your opinion, is there a difference between today's situation of writers in Russia and the West? Is there a difference between report to literature here and there? Is there a difference between public?
I always loved to travel, even if the departure time is always painful. My family know just how unhappy I am when I'm going. My journey was a most magnificent trip to Central Asia in 1971, I believe. For the first time I felt that I was traveling, not in space but in time.
Since 1986 I spend several weeks every year in New York. America gave me a new perception of health and diseases of mankind. I knew that the society in which we live is completely unnatural, that people are distorted, and America gave me the opportunity to learn about my own country. I do not mean that America is the standard of health, but I prefer an honest man and beast to a smart mob. All the more reason for a rogue beast.
For my job as a writer, the I do travel in recent years are very useful, they give me a haven for work: I received three times a European grant and was able to work several months in the quiet and serenity, and in excellent conditions. As the Soviet Writers in homes of writers, once. Unlike anything I had to pay for it - no need to go to party meetings or attend scoundrels.
I have no access to European culture, I speak foreign languages too badly for that. My relationships, even with a representative of the literary world as bright as Claude Duneton, are limited by the poverty of my English, which does not prevent me from appreciating them. I spent several weeks with the Hungarian writer and screenwriter Andrach Forgach, our conversations were very interesting, but again, incomplete. Always for the same reason. Most people I meet are Western Slavonic Papers.
It is difficult to judge the difference between the situation of writers in Russia and the West, because I know some and poorly others. I guess they have much in common. And it will only increase. Today, there are few writers who rely on their art. Generally, they teach or they have a job somewhere.
I live in an apartment in Moscow writers, and I can testify that it is a sad spectacle of former Soviet celebrities who end up somehow their lives without receiving a penny. Imagine Semyon Babaïevski, author of The Cavalry gold star, formerly published millions of copies, shredded trousers, with a pension of twenty dollars? It took probably a great writer, right? Oh, excuse me, you are asking me questions about writers, and I'm talking about ... Babaïevski
Regarding differences in relation to the literature, they gradually fade , that is to say that the place occupied by the various literary genres becomes equivalent. In bookstores, many shelves are devoted to Princess Diana, astrology and popular literature in all genres, detective stories and novels with rose water. And very little to what we call real literature. Those who buy the classics is mostly students who must pass examinations. And then there's the notion of hit parade, best-seller. We also, in recent years we have come to this process a bit simplistic. Of course, it is well-organized campaigns. The buyer (the reader) is gullible. But here it is even harder. However, it is poorer. Yet the love of reading has not completely disappeared in our country and that is a plus. I think we will continue to read, but less and less. There will always be subject to a certain percentage of "real readers".
(...) Many people complain that in the West, demand and interest in Russian literature are considerably fallen. If we do not take account of Slavonic and a narrow circle of enthusiasts, the only Russian authors that people are reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. These assertions seem to you fair? Which is why Russian writers are becoming rarely popular in the West?
is entirely fair, Russian literature is not fashionable. This eliminates the departments of Slavic studies. The specialists of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy change their job or commit suicide. The reasons why Russian literature is not popular are many. I think one of them is a political reason. Our policy is not popular. And the unfathomable stupidity of our economy. The irresponsibility of our leaders. It is not in the West that we do not love us, we Nor, we do not like it very much! And new generations choose Pepsi unreservedly 1. Home. But Europe and America, they, drink Pepsi for some time. I guess they will not soon be interested in something a little acid. A few years ago, Africa was in vogue, then it was the turn of China. It is possible that Russia will again become a fashionable day.
(...)
Some argue that the technique opens up a space for all kinds of prophecies or revelations that could instantly reach the farthest corners of the planet and even the cosmos. But there is no message that may affect anyone. There are powerful means of transmission, but there is not much special to convey. And in this situation, irony and self-mockery is the only way to communicate something keeping her dignity. How far this view you seem to think it right and that you personally for irony?
is an excellent question, but there is food for an entire conversation. Can not find that funny, more communication possibilities of man are, the less it can deliver messages have value? Every man needs a message sent to him personally. And this message has more value, the more personal in nature. Those who write the texts today's most popular horse on the border: to put their message to reach as many people as possible, without depriving him the intimate nature that makes us feel that we are personally addressed. It follows that the more personality are highly organized, the less permeable popular posts. I mean a quote on a calendar page is preferred over the original and that among us there are not many people would read it that Aristotle, Meister Eckhart or even Freud.
Regarding the second part of the question, or rather her underwear, we're talking about the inflation of words and maybe even the whole language. A writer constantly looking for new methods to communicate something. Otherwise, he finds himself a prisoner of the literary tradition that preceded it, and each of his personal literary discoveries is doomed to be born already stamped. Finally, the irony is nothing more than a process, too. In fact, there are already plenty of books, it could very well stop here. But we do not know why there are people who align tirelessly words, not at all in the hope to offer humanity a new truth, be it artistic, but driven solely by the need to play this game that is enshrined in human nature. We can not consider this occupation without a smile, it's true. I think God considers himself a smile touched the researchers of words, those musicians who can not tear themselves away from their flutes and their guitars, and those who daub paint miles of canvas white ... Well, I have the impression that all it lacks a bit of irony, my last sentence is too pathetic, right?
The irony will eventually run out, too, will come and then something else, a kind of hermeneutics, for example. Or cultural codes of a different nature. But I feel that the essence of a message does not change the fact that it is written on cards, with the huge letters graffiti winding, or in rhymed stanzas which have, in addition, the shape of a cross or a chalice ...
The message in itself demands to be read ...
(...)
And you, what do you read? Which contemporary author are you drawn?
I read all kinds of things. I spent some time in my apartment son, and I was delighted to find everything I needed: a bit of ancient poetry, Russian and English classics, philosophy, much of contemporary literature, a whole bunch of brochures on the Tao , massage and design. I was thrilled, I dug in there like a little mouse. I love reading, but I read less lately.
I say, paraphrasing the Latin adage, which I prefer to speak of the dead only to speak well. And not to mention the living ...
Brodsky keeps grow since his death. His poetry has always been important to me. I recently read his essays with pleasure. And thanks to him, poets whose names do not tell me much before.
It seems to me that the writer of the twentieth century ideal is Nabokov. But I can still change their minds ...
