Lev moose. Lev Losev: “Fate is without the whirlpool of Lubyankas and Butyrkas. Declining invitation

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

"THE POET IS HUMUS"

Lev, in the preface to your first collection of poetry, “The Miraculous Landing,” published by the Hermitage Publishing House (USA) in 1985, you note that you began writing poetry quite late, at the age of 37. The number “37” is fatal in the life of many Russian poets - most often, as we know, it marked the end of the master’s path. In your case, everything happened the other way around...

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

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

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

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

During the period of crisis that I am talking about, it was precisely this inner circle that gradually dissipated. I named Brodsky, but there were several other people whom I consider uniquely gifted, unique poets of my generation. I don’t want to create any hierarchies - I don’t believe in them - I’ll name, for example, Mikhail Eremin, Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, my closest friend from my youth Sergei Kulle, now deceased. This was a galaxy of people of extraordinary creative potential, and it so happened that, with the exception of Uflyand, none of them were nearby. That is, I continued to get acquainted with their things, but this was not at all what daily communication with poets gives, endless conversations, when you understand from the inside, from what brew poetic texts are born. Everything suddenly evaporated, disappeared and led to the feeling of a terrible vacuum that I needed to fill with something. It wasn't a conscious decision that it started to fill with my own poetry.

Lev Losev is a pseudonym chosen by you as if out of necessity. Born Lifshits, you once heard from your father-writer: “Two Lifshits have no place in one children’s literature - take a pseudonym.” Apparently there is no great need to save it now. However, despite the fact that you left children's literature long ago, said goodbye to your father a long time ago, you still have not returned to your real surname. Is this explained by the memory of him or, perhaps, by habit? Are you not internally concerned about having a double self?

Not at all. I don’t know why - this name has grown on me. If someone on the street shouts: “Lifshits!” - I'm unlikely to turn around. But if they shout: “Losev!” - of course... Even if they mean the late Alexei Fedorovich Losev, although, besides this famous philosopher, there were two more big scoundrels named Losev. One was on Moscow television, and the other was on Bulgakov’s archives. Although I still had Lifshits in my passport in the Soviet Union, I got used to the fact that I was Losev. For myself, I explain this by the fact that I did not invent this pseudonym, my father gave it to me. We receive a name from our father without asking... that's the thing, No, I don't have a duality of self. True, for every person of Jewish origin who writes under a Russian pseudonym, there is always a sensitive question: why are you hiding your Jewish origin? But in my texts themselves this side of my personality is widely discussed. So, apparently, the hypothetical charge disappears.

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

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

- And if we talk about the influence of the Oberiuts, the Zabolotsky period “Stolbtsy” on your work?

I don't know about the influence. Of course, I would most like to say that there are no influences on my poetry. But this is difficult to evaluate, because if we talk about writing poetry as a job, then it is in the midst of it that you yourself meticulously make sure that someone else’s word, someone else’s imagery, someone else’s intonation does not suddenly appear in your lines. Still, probably, the influence of Zabolotsky and the Oberiuts was enormous. I don’t know whether it’s directly based on my poems or simply on my formation. There was a period when I simply worked tirelessly on them, unearthed texts, rewrote them, distributed them, and they somehow entered my blood. This was a fairly early period, somewhere in the mid-50s. I think I was one of the first in our generation to rediscover Zabolotsky and the Oberiuts.

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

You said that you dealt with their texts. Indeed, Lev Losev is also a philologist. This side of your creativity cannot be ignored. I wonder if the scientific approach to literature, to poetry in particular, prevents you from being liberated in your own versification?

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

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

In one of your poems there is a phrase: “The poet is humus...” Could you tell us how this formulation, this image, what is behind it?

Ever since we settled in New England and my wife became a passionate gardener, I have, so to speak, fallen in love with compost, humus. Somehow I don’t have the time to do these things, but I really like to watch the growing season in our yard. What happens to humus makes a particularly mystical impression on me - how out of rubbish, garbage, waste, an absolutely pure black substance, like flower pollen, appears before my eyes, giving new life. This is perhaps one of the most metaphysical processes that we can observe with our own eyes. Therefore, the metaphor “poet is humus” (somewhere I have: “humus of souls and books,” i.e. culture) is for me the highest metaphor of any existence, any life, including creative life.

If you allow me, I will now return to the topic of “duality” that I touched on in the question of the relationship between your last name and pseudonym. True, in another aspect. I quote your poems: “I’ll lie down and unfocus my eyes. I’ll split the star in the window, and suddenly I’ll see the region of Siryu, my damp homeland... “The problem of, so to speak, a double vision of the world seems to me to be very important for understanding your work.

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

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

Now, in the so-called perestroika times, many of those St. Petersburg poets who sought to preserve and continue the traditions of the Russian “Silver Age”, other traditions - I mean primarily those with whom you felt a deep spiritual connection - are from a semi-legal position moved to a completely comfortable position. That is, in this case we are talking about the opportunity to publish and perform at home and abroad. There has been a kind of process of merging St. Petersburg literature with Russian and world literature in the broad sense. Don’t you think that in this way the circle of St. Petersburg literature of the 60s and early 70s has, as it were, closed and ended?

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

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

Like everyone else, I am following events with great interest and, like everyone else, I have no idea where all this will lead. Brodsky, for example, believes that the only historical problem of humanity is overpopulation. In a broad sense, he is apparently absolutely right. With this approach to things, all forecasts can only be the most pessimistic - individual political changes in different parts of the globe essentially do not change anything. But I would like to answer this a little more optimistically. It seems to me that there is a movement here towards a political utopia that is unusually sweet and dear to me. Back in my student years, with my friend Sergei Kulle, whom I have already mentioned, we dreamed (again in purely utopian terms) that all of Europe would fall apart: Germany would again consist of many principalities, France - of Provence, Burgundy, Lorraine... Russia - from the principalities of Moscow, Smolensk, Khanate of Kazan, etc. And, oddly enough, a historic chance has appeared to realize this utopian dream.

September 1990 - July 1991

The most interesting and significant from the Radio Liberty archive twenty years ago. An unfinished story. Hopes still alive. Could Russia have taken a different path?

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

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

Lev Losev:

All the yarns have unraveled,
again the tow is in hand,
and people have forgotten how
play the reeds.

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

So I, a meager vessel,
irregular oval,
at Udelnaya station
sat and was sad.

I had nowhere to hide
my soul's work,
and a rainbow of oil
bloomed in front of me.

And having screwed up so much
and having done some work,
I'm behind the fence opposite
looked blankly.

The mental hospital was breathing
the hulls glowed,
and there flashed faces,
voices were walking

There they sang what they had to,
starting to scream
and Finnish swamp
the reed answered them

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

Levlosev is not a poet, not a lyre player.
He is a marine painter, he is a Velimir expert,
Brodskist with glasses and a sparse beard,
he is an osipologist with a hoarse throat,
it smells like vodka
he is talking nonsense.

Levlosevlosevlosevlosevon-
onononononononon Judas,
he betrayed Rus', he betrayed Zion,
he drinks lotion
does not distinguish good from bad,
he never knows what's coming from,
at least I heard the ringing.

He is an annophile, he is an alexandromaniac,
Fedorolub, switching to prose,
he won't be written a novel,
and there is an article on an important issue -
keep your pocket!

He hears a ringing
as if someone had been executed
where the straw is supposedly eaten,
but it’s not a bell, it’s a telephone,
he doesn't fit, he's not at home.

And a small poem from the same book, called “Dedication”.

Look, look here quickly:
Above a flock of round bullfinches
Dawn comes with trump cards -
All red.

Oh, if only I could!
But I couldn’t: there’s a lump sticking out
In the larynx, and there will be no lines
About the properties of passion.

And there are two lives as one.
We stand with you at the window.
How about drinking some wine?
I'm kind of chilly.

It's snowy all month in February.
The candle was burning in the Chevrolet.
And on the king of hearts
The hat was on fire.

In the Russian thickets they are countless,
we just can’t find a way -
bridges collapsed, a snowstorm blew in,
The path was blocked with windfall.
There they plow in April, there they reap in August,
there they won’t sit at the table wearing a hat,
calmly await the second coming,
they will bow, no matter who comes -
a policeman on a troika, an archangel with a trumpet,
passerby in a German coat.
There they treat diseases with water and herbs.
No one dies there.
The Lord puts them to sleep for the winter,
in the snow it covers up to fear -
neither fix the hole, nor chop the wood,
no sledding, no games, no fun.
The bodies taste peace on the floors,
and souls are happy dreams.
There is so much heat trapped in the sheepskins,
that will last until spring.

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

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

In addition to two or three initial notes
and a black log on fire,
no one will remember me
of what died in me.
And what do you order to commemorate -
the silence of the Russians?
And how do you want me to understand,
that it’s scary to pick up the phone,
and the phone rings.

Or this:

What else is this?
And this is a mirror, such a piece of glass,
to be seen with a brush behind your cheek
fate displaced person.

Here is the formula, one of Losev’s many wonderful formulas - “a displaced person of fate.” This is about himself, of course, but I will also sign if he doesn’t mind.

Ivan Tolstoy: Now a different view from St. Petersburg. Critic Andrey Ariev.

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

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

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

But happiness plays with me maliciously.

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

Flash Admiralty syringe and local anesthesia
the place where Russia was will instantly freeze to the borders.

Now let's take a look at Losev's latest collection. Completely symmetrical - the second poem from the end is devoted to the same topic. It is called "With a Sin in Half" and has the subtitle "June 15, 1925." A mirror image records a world poetic record: starting with “not before Christmas,” the poet celebrates the day of his “not birth” - on this day, but twelve years later, he was born in Leningrad, remembering that somewhere, in a southern resort town, something happened such.

Then she sat alone for a long time
in the doctor's waiting room.
And the skin of the sofa was cold,
hers is hot

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

From Turks, photographers, NEP mothers,
dads, punks.
Bronzed tan from apache shirts,
The pants turned white.

Everything in this crowd and in this life is a matter of chance, but according to Losev this is life, only accidents in it are natural, and that’s what we’re talking about. Only on the periphery of consciousness, almost outside of poetry and earth, does his lyrical hero loom:

On a curved dolphin - from wave to wave -
through the darkness and the moon,
an invisible boy blew into a conch shell,
blew into the sink.

The gentle “invisible boy” appears in the poetry of Lev Losev as the face of a seasoned misanthrope. But the hero, I repeat, is precisely this random ghost, not materialized, and therefore an immortal lyrical embryo.

No, just random features
beautiful in this terrible world...

... Lev Losev argues with romanticism in general and Blok in particular. The more random, the more faithfully the poems are composed, the life plan is formed - this is what Losev could say, following Pasternak. The meaning of life is not a priori, and I think that you can think anything,” says Losev.

In his poems one can always hear an invigorating literary echo; they are not pragmatic, not utilitarian, light as calendar leaves, like notes at an emigrant ball

Of course, his wit is often gloomy, smacks of Nekrasov’s hypochondria, but in Lev Losev it is of a playful nature, and therefore is not hopeless, not despondent. In his poems one can always hear an invigorating literary echo; they are not pragmatic, not utilitarian, as light as calendar pages, like notes at an emigrant ball. This is how Khodasevich and Georgy Ivanov wrote outside Russia. The poetry of Lev Losev is all in a cloud of allusions and reminiscences, all supported from time to time by this harmony. That is why he is so openly quotable; poetry without a literary echo for him is like food without salt. And he's right. In order to read the book of Russian history, one must, like Losev, compare it with the Book of Genesis of the Bible:

"The earth
was formless and empty."
In the above landscape
I'll find out the places for my family.

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

​Ivan Tolstoy: After the critic, a word to the poet. Vladimir Uflyand.

Vladimir Uflyand: I have long been interested in this kind of war, the confrontation between vodka and a writing person. Before my eyes, several people even suffered mortal defeat in this war. And Lesha suffered his first such tactical defeat from vodka when he was about thirty years old. She and the late Boris Fedorovich Semenov said goodbye to Boris Fedorovich’s grandmother. If we remember that Boris Fedorovich himself is twenty years older than us, then what kind of grandmother was she? And the next day, Boris Fedorovich, as if nothing had happened, went to get a hangover with cognac, and Lesha was admitted to the hospital with a suspected heart attack. But since then he has made some very cunning agreement with alcohol: he doesn’t drink until six in the evening, but after six he communicates quite calmly with vodka and with friends. And on his sixtieth birthday, I wrote him this poem:

Friend Lesha!
Having turned seventy,
Respect yourself and your order on this day.
When will six p.m. come?
don't put yourself in trouble
other than dissolving ice in scotch tape,
otherwise there won’t be enough night for them.
And at noon Nina will disturb your sleep,
looking at the lawn with passion.
He will exclaim so loudly that there will be tremors in the distance:
“Well, Lyosha, you and I made it!
The bear ate my slippers, your swimming trunks,
I didn’t eat the bottle that was on the bench,
but drank the rest from it.
His footprints are pressed into the grass!
May God grant him, the furry one, some corrections!
And a soft landing after a corkscrew”

Meanwhile, you will start physical exercises.

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

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

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

Ivan Tolstoy: From St. Petersburg to the West. New York author Alexander Genis is at our microphone.

Alexander Genis: Losev, with his cunning rhyme, with his complex patterned rhythm, with his sophisticated verbal play, is a virtuoso scholar of versification. But there are qualities in his poetry that allow it to be read even by those who usually look with hatred at text typed in a column. Losev's poems are interesting at the simplest, philistine level. They are prosaic, narrative, and fascinating. The fundamental contradiction of his work is born of the author’s exceptional loyalty to his hero, or more precisely, to the heroine - his homeland. And in this sense, Losev’s poetry is purely emigrant. The conflict in Losev's poems is determined by the existence of the homeland and the fact of its absence. The loss of the fatherland is a fruitful artistic experience. Nature does not tolerate emptiness, and Losev fills it with his own and not his own memories. He lists Russia, rhymes it, plays with it with clever verbal play. Losev carefully packs native realities into his verse to make it easier to transport Russia from place to place. But where is the ideal, where is the magic crystal of art through which bad reality is transformed into normal? Losev has this too. The poet, tormented by the absurdity of Russian history, secretly preserves a shy image of a reasonable norm, an image that is rare, but still found in the wax museum of his memories.

So that instead of this rust, the fields in the insect pest
Once again the Volga would roll into the Caspian Sea,
If only horses would eat oats again,
so that a cloud of glory shines over the homeland,
so that at least something would work out, it would work out.
And maybe the tongue won’t dry out.

Ivan Tolstoy: Recently, the writer Tatyana Tolstaya visited our Prague studio while passing through from Greece.

Tatiana Tolstaya: It seems to me that Lev Losev wonderfully combines two things. The first is that he openly and for anyone shows the entire spectrum of Russian literature in which he exists, which is huge. This is from Pushkin, from Derzhavin to Mandelstam and children's poems, which is natural, he came from these children's poems, right down to quotes from various unexpected things, translated things, Dante, whatever. For a literate, intelligent, educated reader, he presents, without hesitation, the entire spectrum of literature. This is often called postmodernism, but, in my opinion, it is simply a good education and a beautiful ability to handle text, this is a literary text. But the narrower one, with which this broad tradition is connected, in my opinion, lies in such a strange position. On the one hand, it comes out of Zabolotsky. And both early and late. He has quotes from the later, again, if you guess it, you won’t guess it. We don’t read much of the late Zabolotsky and it’s customary not to like him, and in vain. And he precedes, strange as it may seem, Timur Kibirov.

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

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

He was a welcoming beacon for many poets in Russia

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

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

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

Ivan Tolstoy: Let’s now move on to those who professionally collaborate with Lev Losev. First, a philologist from the University of Keele, Great Britain, Valentina Polukhina.

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

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

What is the commercial fate of publishing his books?

Igor Efimov: I must say that despite all the difficulties of Losev’s books that we published... We also published a collection of his wonderful essays, which at one time were published in the magazine “Continent” under the title “Closed Distributor”. This collection, two collections of poems and the book “The Poetics of Brodsky”, they are all almost sold out. But they diverge for a very long time. So gradually, I think we recovered our expenses, but this process was extended, as we see, for ten years or even more.

Ivan Tolstoy: For you as a publisher, what is the readership of Losev in Russian America?

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

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

Lev Losev: As for what you call the external cause, this is probably the most obvious. It’s not that I wrote a lot of poems, as they say, of political content, but, one way or another, everything you write is informed, imbued with your worldview, your attitude to reality. So it is unlikely that by its very nature, perhaps, its verbal nature, it would even have occurred to me to propose something for publication in the Soviet Union while it existed and while I was there. But the most important thing is that I wrote quite a bit while living in my homeland, until the beginning of 1976, when I emigrated. As I wrote in the preface to my first collection, “The Miraculous Landing,” I began to write poetry, or at least take seriously what I was able to do, only in 1974, that is, a year and a half before my emigration. Quite simply, not much was written during this time. Quite honestly, hand on heart, I didn’t plan any literary path, any literary future for myself when leaving Russia. As I said, at that time I only wrote poetry seriously for a year and a half or two, and at that moment I absolutely did not want to publish anything I wrote, because I mainly wrote them for such “therapeutic” purposes. It’s not that I intentionally wrote them, but they turned out, they were written, they came to me as a kind of way to survive. And some kind of superstition then told me that publishing them, even just reading them with friends, meant ruining their therapeutic, soul-healing effect. Then, of course, all this belated trepidation gradually evaporated, as the number of poems became more numerous, I began to take a more sober view of this, and, in the end, in 1980, poems were published for the first time in the Echo magazine. But I never looked at it as a career, not in the slightest. More seriously, I can say that, oddly enough, although in general by nature I am rather a pessimist, and I never expect any special joys from the future, but those general ideas about the future that I had when I left my homeland in 1976 year, they came true. Because I didn’t imagine anything particularly concrete and didn’t take anything away in this sense, except readiness for anything. What did I expect? To put it simply - to freedom. And I really got it.

Ivan Tolstoy: Where does the poet Losev celebrate his anniversary?

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

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

Lev Losev: Thank you very much, Ivan Nikitich!

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

Lev Losev:

I learned to write that yours is Sluchevsky.
I publish in dying thick magazines.
(What decadence, Alexandrianism!
Cavafy could have written something like this,
and the late Shmakov would have translated,
and then the late Joseph would have corrected it).
Yes, and he himself has gained weight that your Apukhtin,
I can’t get to the sofa without shortness of breath,
I drink chamomile infusion instead of tea,
I throw away the unread books,
the smile seems to have been forgotten on his face.
And when they knock on my door with their fist,
when they shout: Sarmatians are at the gates!
Ojibway! Lezgins! goyim! -
I say: leave me alone.
I retire to the inner chambers,
cool gloomy chambers.

Many art historians have tried to unravel the characters of the late Oleg Tselkov. They surrounded him tightly so that he could not get out of their creepy company. And he, having gotten used to them, began to give their ugliness even some touching features. He hugged powerful torsos with wind instruments, tickled with the wings of butterflies that fearfully settled on their ears or apoplectic heads.

These types were prone to both aggression and sentimentality, fell into depressive loneliness due to a tormenting inferiority complex, grasping at any ambitions, even imperial ones. And they multiplied rapidly against the backdrop of the catastrophic de-intellectualization of humanity. And the poet Lev Losev interpreted them better than others.

He inherited his love for poetry from his father, Vladimir Lifshits, who had not only a strong professional hand, but also a playful adventurer. I enthusiastically recited his sonorous poems praising the Spanish Republicans as a child. And Sasha Mezhirov told me how Lifshits published a risky acrostic poem in an army newspaper. The first letters of the poetic lines secretly formed the phrase “The Leningrad Front will not forget its poet Vladimir Lifshits.” And this mischief-maker invented the non-existent English poet James Clifford, who supposedly denounced not ours, but, on the contrary, orders alien to us.

His father's rebel streak also manifested itself in his son's poetic experiments. He felt like a professional and enjoyed it. His verse was thick, the rhymes rang. And he was not afraid to make fun of himself or his comrades, as, for example, in the poem “The Company of Eros”:

“Our colonel, bourbon, / smelling of cognac and boots, / not to unstick the bud of love / with impatient hands, begged us. / The soldiers went AWOL / and returned, filled with filth, / to the tent where, like Solomon, / the grenade launcher Leva Lifshits slept. / And he rattled: “The lips are pomegranates, the honey is / her words. But they contain a sting..." / And what he inserted into the grenade launcher / flew into the distance, but did not hit the target."

Losev was able to write both himself and his time with the help of a brilliant poetic technique, in some cases no worse than his man-made idol Joseph Brodsky, and sometimes even socially sharper, more sophisticated. I also love many of Brodsky’s poems. But the most worthy poems do not justify unworthy actions. And he insulted us, the sixties, saying that we threw stones only in the permitted direction.

The emigration to the United States in 1976 of the little-known Lev Losev, who worked for 13 years in the children's magazine Koster, was silent. Just as quietly, after graduate school, Leva got a job teaching Russian literature at Dartmouth. He invited Alexander Kushner and me to his college, we met in a friendly manner and read poetry to his students. By tacit agreement, we did not touch upon my relationship with Brodsky, who could not forgive me for the fact that he was released from exile precisely because of my letter: he was humiliated that he should be grateful to someone.

But Losev admits how chilling even telephone conversations with the hero of his future Zhezel book had a chilling effect on him: “The hypnotism did not consist in the fact that I fell into some kind of trance, dregs and unconsciousness. On the contrary, the happiness of a conversation with Joseph consisted primarily in the clarity of the conversation, “illuminating all corners of consciousness.” Only after hanging up the phone, not immediately, sometimes much later, did I remember that Joseph never answered such and such questions that seemed important to me. Moreover, I didn’t ask them, although I was definitely going to ask them. I cannot explain this other than by the supernatural ability to block topics that are uninteresting to him, Joseph, in the mind of the interlocutor.”

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From most books about Brodsky one gets the feeling that the consciousness of their authors is still blocked from many questions hanging in the air. True, Losev has a poem in which he nevertheless breaks through to the confessions of his hero, lifting the veil over what he preferred to remain silent about. And it becomes clear why he did not come to die on Vasilyevsky Island and why he never visited Israel. Brodsky did not want to feel like either a Russian or a Jew; he tried not to belong to anyone. He conquered the sense of belonging that frightened him with the obligation to be grateful to someone. But this victory became his tragedy.

Having read Losev’s “post-Brod” poems, I was stunned by the author’s skill and the culture of verse, given the rampant graphomania both throughout Russia and in the Russian diaspora.

Losev, looming unsteadily on the outskirts of the new Leningrad poetry behind the backs of Gleb Gorbovsky, Evgeny Rein, Dmitry Bobyshev and the just emerging Brodsky, managed to gain sharpness and stereoscopicity, learning from them, but not disdaining the experience of the sixties, with whom the Leningraders, if not at enmity, then they preferred not to mix. They tried to free themselves from the journalisticism characteristic of us and from romanticism, they proposed instead of a monument to the victims of Babyn Yar (Yevtushenko) to erect a monument to Lies (Brodsky), and resurrected the sarcasm of the Oberiuts. It was a rebellion against overt citizenship, against allyship and co-creation with an audience that was met with a slightly arrogant attitude on their part.

They contrasted the open smile of the sixties with a skeptical grin. But both of them seriously developed the form, despite the difference in content and energetic design. And they contributed to the revival of interest and love for poetry.

“Well, Petrov, his last name is Vodkin, / but his first name is simply Kuzma, / how did this happen? It turns out that I am woven / into this canvas. And our canvas, / like winter, / without end. Having weaved our daily work, isn’t it time for us to rest? Finish it. / We tried a lot of drinks, / still the best are vodka and tea.”

These poems by Losev seem to have no civic orientation. But there is a freedom that draws you into its dizzying funnel, there is an invitation to enjoy unbridled mischief.

Losev loved to shock: “Is an agnostic pleasing to God, / who does not know in any way - / whether to hang a coat on a nail / or a mattress for a fat body?” He could also be a hooligan - of course, by the standards of that time: “The hut is uncomfortable, the street is dirty, / crucian carp died in the pond, / all the women went crazy - they want an orgasm, / and where can you get it in Rus'!” Or: “Here a woman stands - like a cabinet / poster both outside and inside, / and until the morning three / pygmies from Lumumba’s torment leaned against her.”

He was an indispensable participant in the sickeningly serious Slavic symposia - Mr. Loseff with a neat beard, somewhat similar to the minister of the Provisional Government. But don't be fooled by his Oxford knot ties in later photos. No matter how he dressed, there was something yellow-jacketed about him. And he could not say: “Brodsky’s shadow adopted me...” He has his own place in poetry.

Leo loved to play with words, sometimes, perhaps, excessively, but always sharply and lively, but he did not use it for unworthy reasons. He was not just a technician, but a super technician. And a super-techie with a spark of God - and a strong reserve of conscience.

From martineting

and hazing

evasive ones grow

half men.

But no matter how much you want

cock them

there are lads with a spark -

don't put them out!

And in Leva Lifshits,

grenade launcher,

in the Jewish personality,

there is no subterfuge!

He was bespectacled

but so strange

with your makarik

wrote poems.

The world in them is not Moskhov’s,

and communal,

Soviet-Boschian,

vasisual!

And there were women

Which ones did you fall in love with?

but uwomen

got it from them.

Almost the Central Committee

false humanoids,

Tselkovsky grown up

coelcovoloids.

But in these monsters

amidst tyranny,

seeing the future

he didn't get lost.

And believed in butterflies

sentimentality,

delivered the stupid people

from their mentality.

shove with hair

at Mr. Loseff!

And not the professor-

American -

I welcome you to it

bickering!

Evgeniy EVTUSHENKO

Lev Vladimirovich Losev was born and raised in Leningrad, in the family of the writer Vladimir Aleksandrovich Lifshits. It was the father, a children's writer and poet, who one day came up with the pseudonym “Losev” for his son, which later, after moving to the west, became his official, passport name.

After graduating from the Faculty of Journalism of Leningrad State University, the young journalist Losev goes to Sakhalin, where he works as a journalist in a local newspaper.

Returning from the Far East, Losev becomes an editor at the All-Union children's magazine "Koster".

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

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

By 1979, he was completing graduate school at the University of Michigan and teaching Russian literature at Dartmouth College in northern New England, New Hampshire.

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

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

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The story of Lev Losev's biography of Joseph Brodsky, whose friend he was during the poet's lifetime, is noteworthy. Knowing Brodsky’s reluctance to publish his own biography, Lev Losev nevertheless undertakes to write a biography of his friend ten years after his death. Finding himself in a very difficult situation, violating the will of his late friend (their friendship lasted more than thirty years), Lev Losev, nevertheless, writes a book about Brodsky. He writes, replacing the actual biographical details of Brodsky’s life with an analysis of his poems. Thus, by remaining faithful to friendship, Lev Losev incurs literary critics who are perplexed by the lack of actual details of the poet’s life in the biographical book. There even appears an unspoken, spoken subtitle of Losev’s book: “I know, but I won’t tell.”

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

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

Books by Lev Losev

A wonderful landing. - Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1985.

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

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

Afterword: Book of Poems. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 1998..

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

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

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

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

Joseph Brodsky. Experience in literary biography. ZhZL series. - M.: Mol. guard

Lev Losev is a great poet.
O.V. 16.05.2009 02:56:28

Lev Losev is not yet a well-known poet in Russia, as he deserves to be. He is above popularity, he is a real, “straightforward” poet who was not distracted by vanity. A mysterious poet. Like Anensky, like Fet, but Losev! Holy man. Unfortunately, he published little in Russia... He is needed, very much needed! “While he was looking for God, people were looking for him” - this is about L.L.
His modesty, the “absence of a hero,” may not allow people not to see him, not to understand that he is a great Russian poet.

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

He said: “And this is basil.”
And from the garden to the English plate -
ruddy radish, onion,
and the dog wiggled, sticking out his tongue.
He simply called me Alekha.
“Come on, in Russian, under the landscape.”
We felt good. We felt bad.
The Gulf was Finnish. It means ours.
Oh, Motherland, with a capital R,
or rather, S, or rather, Er obnoxious,
our permanent air of order
and soil - disabled person and gentleman.
Simple names - Ghoul, Rededya,
union of a check, a bull and a man,
forest named after Comrade Bear,
meadow named after Comrade Zhuk.
In Siberia, a hawk shed a tear.
In Moscow, a blade of grass ascended to the pulpit.
They swore from above. They farted downstairs.
The porcelain rattled and Glinka came out.
Horse-Pushkin, biting the bit,
this whale race, who glorified freedom.
They gave vobla to a thousand people.
They gave me "Silva". Duska didn’t give it.
And the homeland went to hell.
Now there is cold, dirt and mosquitoes.
The dog died, and the friend is no longer the same.
Someone new moved into the house hastily.
And nothing, of course, grows
In a garden bed near the former bay.
* * *
...worked at Kostya. In this dim place
away from the race and editorials,
I met a hundred, maybe two hundred
transparent young men, plainest girls.
Squeezing through the door with a cold,
they, not without impudent coquetry,
They told me: “Here are a couple of texts for you.”
In their eyes, I was an editor and a beast.
Covered with unimaginable rags,
they are about the text, as Lotman taught them,
judged as something very dense,
like concrete with reinforcement in it.
These were all fish with fur
nonsense multiplied by lethargy,
but sometimes I find this nonsense
and indeed it was possible to print it.
It was freezing. In the Tauride Garden
the sunset was yellow and the snow underneath was pink.
What were they talking about as they walked?
the watchful Morozov eavesdropped,
the same Pavlik who did evil.
From a plywood portrait of a pioneer
the plywood cracked due to the cold,
but they were warm.
And time passed.
And the first number came.
And the secretary wrote out a chervonets.
And time passed without ceremony with anyone,
and it blew everyone apart.
Those in the camp barracks are chirping,
those in the Bronx are fighting cockroaches,
those in the mental hospital are nodding and crowing,
and the little devils are driven off the cuffs.
Bad rhymes. Stolen jokes.
We ate. Thank you. Like beans
cold ones stir in the stomach.
It's getting dark. Time to go home. Magazine
Moscow, perhaps, take it as Veronal.
There the oaf dreamed of the past,
when our people walked ahead
and crushed the evil spirits with a broom,
and the emigrant's distant ancestor
gifted the village with half a bucket.
Spin it however you want, Russian palindrome
master and slave, read it this way or that way,
A slave cannot exist without a bar.
Today we are passing the bar...
It's good there. There it spreads, layers,
cigar smoke. But there is a Slavist sitting there.
Dangerous. I'll get drunk again before then
that I’ll start throwing my pearls in front of him
and from my colleague I will get it again,
so that he will answer me with vulgarity again...
“A Cossack doesn’t need irony,
you sure could use some domestication*,
no wonder in your Russian language
there is no such word - sophistication"**.
There is a word "truth". There is a word "will".
There are three letters - “comfort”. And there is “rudeness”.
How nice it is to have a night without alcohol
words that cannot be translated,
delirious, muttering to empty space.
With the word “bad” we approach the house.
Close the door behind you more tightly in order to
the spirits of the crossroads did not sneak into the house.
Feet in worn-out slippers
insert, poet, five twisted appendages.
Also check the chain on the door.
Exchange hello with Penelope.
Breathe. Walk into the depths of the lair.
And turn on the light. And shudder. And freeze
...What else is this?
And this is a mirror, such a piece of glass,
to be seen with a brush behind your cheek
fate displaced person.
* * *
“Sorry for stealing,” I say to the thief.
“I undertake not to talk about the rope,”
I say to the executioner.
Here you go, low-brow pro*****
Kanta comments to me on Nagornaya
sermon.
I'm silent.
So that instead of this rust, the fields in the insect pest
Once again the Volga would roll into the Caspian Sea,
If only horses would eat oats again,
so that a cloud of glory shines over the homeland,
so that at least something would work out, it would work out.
And maybe the tongue won’t dry out.
1985-1987

* * *
“I understand - the yoke, hunger,
there has been no democracy for a thousand years,
but a bad Russian spirit
I can’t stand it,” the poet told me.
“These rains, these birches,
these groans about the graves,” -
and a poet with an expression of threat
he curled his thin lips.
And he also said, getting excited:
“I don’t like these drunken nights,
the repentant sincerity of drunkards,
Dostoevsky anguish of informers,
this vodka, these mushrooms,
these girls, these sins
and in the morning instead of a lotion
watery Blok rhymes;
our bards' cardboard spears
and their actor’s hoarseness,
our empty iambic flat feet
and the thin trochees lame;
our shrines are offensive,
everything is designed for a fool,
and life-giving pure Latin
A river flowed past us.
That's the truth - a country of scoundrels:
and there is no decent toilet,” -
crazy, almost like Chaadaev,
so the poet ended suddenly.
But with the most flexible Russian speech
he was skirting something important
and looked as if straight into the district,
where the archangel with the trumpet died.
S.K.
And finally the stop “Cemetery”.
A beggar, puffed up like a bug,
in a Muscovite jacket sitting at the gate.
I give him money - he doesn’t take it.
How, I insist, was placed in the alley
monument in the form of a table and bench,
with a mug, half a liter, hard-boiled egg,
following my grandfather and father.
Listen, you and I are both impoverished,
both promised to return here,
check the list, I’m yours,
please, please respect me.
No, he says, you have a place in the alley,
there is no fence, no concrete bucket,
photo in an oval, lilac bush,
there is no column and no cross.
Like I'm some Mr. Twister
doesn't let you get within range of a cannon shot,
under the visor, mockingly, takes it,
no matter what I give, I take nothing.
* you sure could use some domestication - “a little training would benefit you” (English).
** sophistication - very approximately: “sophistication” (English).