Interview with Leila Alexander-Garrett. Caught dream How Tarkovsky worked on the set

(an excerpt from the story “Moscow, we will all come to you ...”)

... Shura Shivarg introduced me to the books of his friend, the “forgotten classic of the twentieth century” - Curzio Malaparte - an Italian journalist, writer, diplomat and director. The pseudonym Malaparte translates as "bad share" as opposed to Bonaparte, whose last name means "good share". Malaparte said about himself and Napoleon: "He ended badly, but I will end well." The real name of the writer is Kurt Erich Suckert (his father was German, his mother was Italian, he himself called himself a Tuscan, he even wrote the book “Cursed Tuscans”), but in 1925, when he was 27 years old, he took a pseudonym that echoes the name of Napoleon.

I followed Shura's recommendation immediately: when I got home, I ordered all the writer's books through Amazon, available in English and French. Delivery usually takes two to three days. Here we had to wait. The first books “Kaput” and “Skin” (forbidden catholic church) came in a week, and “Volga is born in Europe” in a month. But what a surprise: the first edition of 1951 with yellowed pages and with someone's American address! “The Volga is born in Europe” was supposed to be released in Rome on February 18, 1943, as the author himself clarifies, but burned down during an air raid by the British Air Force. Six months later, the book was republished, but here the Germans did their best: they sentenced to burning. Again the book was published in 1951 in America. I had one copy of this edition in my hands.

Shura said that during the war, Malaparte was a correspondent for Eastern Front. During the First World War, at the age of 16, he ran away from home and signed up for the front as a volunteer. After the war, Malaparte received from France the highest award for courage. In one of the battles, he was poisoned by German poisonous gases, ended up in the hospital, but returned to duty. In Italy, Malaparte joined the National Fascist Party. Winston Churchill (a fan of Mussolini in the 30s) said: “Fascism has done a service to the whole world… If I were an Italian, I would certainly be with you…” Later he would regret what he said, but the word is not a sparrow, although in those days the word "fascism" has not yet become synonymous with "Hitler".

In the book "Technique of the coup d'état", written in 1931 on French, Malaparte will criticize Mussolini and Hitler. He will write about the latter in final chapter, called “Woman: Hitler” (“Une femme: Hitler”): “Hitler is just a caricature of Mussolini…”; “all clerks and all waiters look like Hitler…”; “Hitler, this plump, arrogant Austrian with a small mustache over a short and thin lip, with hard distrustful eyes, with irrepressible ambition and cynical intentions, like all Austrians, has a weakness for heroes ancient rome...”; “Hitler is the failed Julius Caesar, who cannot swim and lingered on the banks of the Rubicon, too deep to wade through…” all the virtues of Kerensky. He, just like Kerensky, is just a woman…”; “Hitler is a dictator with the soul of a vengeful woman. It is precisely this feminine essence of Hitler that explains his success, his power over the crowd, the enthusiasm he awakens among the German youth ... ”; “Hitler's nature is essentially feminine: in his mind, in his claims, even in his will there is nothing of a man. it weak person trying to hide the lack of energy, his painful egoism and unjustified arrogance with cruelty ... ”; “Hitler is a chaste ascetic, a mystic of the revolutionary movement. Like a saint. Nothing is known about his connections with women, says one of his biographers. When it comes to dictators, it would be more accurate to say that nothing is known about their connections with men…”; “Hitler loves only those whom he can despise. His cherished desire- one fine day to get the opportunity to corrupt, humiliate, enslave the entire German people in the name of freedom, glory and power of Germany ... ”

The book was burned in Germany in 1933, the author himself was expelled from the fascist party, arrested, sent to the famous Roman prison with the romantic name "Regina Coeli" ("Queen of Heaven"), and then exiled for five years to the island of Lipari (from 1933 to 1938). I was on this volcanic island and saw a citadel with fortified walls, where Curzio Malaparte probably sat. He writes that camera 461 has remained in his soul forever: “The camera is inside me, like a fetus in the mother's womb. / I am a bird that swallowed its cage.”

In the summer of 1941, Malaparte was the only front line correspondent. He sent objective reports, which was regarded by the Nazis as a crime. The Germans demanded the return of Malaparte from the Eastern Front and deal with him. From the very first days of the fighting, the Italian correspondent predicted that the war with Russia would not be quick: no blitzkrieg blitzkrieg. He said that Hitler's war was doomed, that it was the same senseless adventure as Napoleon's war. The author titled the first part of the book “Volga is born in Europe”: “In the footsteps of Napoleon”. He tried to explain that it was impossible to understand Soviet Russia without getting rid of petty-bourgeois prejudices, and that those who did not understand Russia could neither conquer nor bend her to their will. He repeated that the war was not against Asia, which many then believed, believing that this was a clash between civilized Europe and the Asian hordes of Genghis Khan, with Stalin at the head; that the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, but originates in Europe, like the Thames, the Seine or the Tiber, that Russia is part of Europe.

In September 1941, Goebbels ordered the expulsion of a war correspondent for "propaganda in favor of the enemy", discrediting the honor of the German army. Malaparte was arrested, but in early 1943 he was again on the Eastern Front, on the border of Finland and the Soviet Union.

How many subtle observations Malaparte left about the last days of peace in Europe. His recordings begin on June 18, 1941 in Galati, a small Romanian town on the banks of the Prut River. From the window of his hotel, he watched the Russians living on the opposite bank; described how the local boys on both sides of the river chased the dogs carelessly, and the boys in turn chased the boys; how Romanians mined a bridge, and perfumed ladies with oiled gentlemen drinking coffee in Greek confectioneries. Romanians, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews, Italians lived in Galati, and all of them carelessly wandered along the main street of the city, went to the hairdresser, to the tailor, to the shoemaker, to the tobacconist, for a bottle of perfume, to the photographer ... And peaceful life on both there is very little left of the river, a few hours ... The first bombing, and life on both banks turned into death. Among the flowering, fragrant fields, the Germans saw the corpses of the first killed Soviet soldiers lying with open bright eyes, as if looking into the cloudless, blue sky. One German soldier could not stand it, he picked cornflowers with ears of corn in the field and covered the eyes of the dead with flowers.

The events described in the book end in November 1943 - during the blockade of Leningrad. Finnish troops stand in Terioki, Zelenogorsk (in Akhmatovo Komarov), and in Kuokkala, in Repino. From there, Malaparte watched the "agony of Leningrad." He wrote that the tragedy of this city is immeasurable, it has reached such gigantic, superhuman proportions that normal person cannot take part in this… “There are no such Christian feelings, such mercy and pity to realize the tragedy of Leningrad. This is akin to scenes from Aeschylus and Shakespeare, when the mind of the viewer seems to be about to shake from the amount of horrific violence; it is outside of human perception, as something alien to the very history of human existence ... ”The writer said with pain that Leningraders withstood an incomparable level of martyrdom in history, but, in spite of everything, these silent, dying men and women were not broken ... The secret of the city's resistance was that it did not depend either on the quantity and quality of guns, or on the courage of Russian soldiers, but on the incredible ability of Russian people to suffer and sacrifice, which is unthinkable in Europe ...

Malaparte knew Russian literature and culture very well. One chapter of the book is devoted to visiting the house and grave of Ilya Repin, where in the cold empty rooms he heard the creak of the floorboards “light as a touch”, as if the former occupant of the house had quietly passed by. In the snowy garden, although everything happened on Easter, he searched for Repin's grave for a long time. Having found it, he stood in front of a hill without a cross, and in parting loudly said in Russian: “Christ is risen ...” The roar of cannonade was heard around: Repin's estate was several hundred meters from the front line.

One day, while walking with Finnish sentries on the ice of Lake Ladoga, he saw under his feet Russian soldiers frozen into the ice, falling into the water and remaining there frozen until the arrival of spring. He knelt down and instinctively wanted to stroke those masked faces of people frozen in ice. And they seemed to see him off with their wide-open eyes... Leaving the unconquered Leningrad, Malaparte promised to return to this "melancholy landscape" of the imperial and proletarian city, although St. Petersburg was closest to him in Leningrad.

“Who won the war?” Malaparte asked himself and the entire civilized society and answered himself: “No one has won in Europe. Victory is not measured by the number of square kilometers ... there can only be a moral victory. I will even say this: there are no winners in the war ... "

In the book "Kaput" he exposes the Nazi "superman" and fascist barbarism. In the preface, the author writes: “War is not so much main character books as much as a spectator, in the sense in which the landscape is also a spectator. War is the objective landscape of this book. Main character- this is Kaput, cheerful and creepy monster. Nothing can be better expressed than by this tough, mysterious German word Kaput, which literally means “broken, finished, shattered into pieces, doomed to ruins”, the meaning of what we are, what Europe is today - a pile of garbage…”

He started “Kaput” in the summer of 1941 in the village of Peschanka, in Ukraine, in the house of the peasant Roman Sucheny. Every morning Malaparte sat in the garden under the acacia and worked, and when one of the SS men appeared in his field of vision, the owner of the house made a warning cough. Before the Gestapo arrested Malaparte, he managed to hand over the manuscript to the owner of the house, who hid it in a pigsty. The owner's daughter-in-law sewed the manuscript into the lining of Malaparte's uniform. “I will always be grateful to Roman Suchena and his young daughter-in-law for the fact that my seditious manuscript did not fall into the hands of the Gestapo.”

Malaparte described the defeated “winners” as follows: “When the Germans are frightened, when the mystical Germanic fear crawls over their bones, they evoke some special feeling of horror and pity. Their appearance is wretched, their cruelty is deplorable, their courage is silent and helpless…”

But his observations of the Germans in Finnish bath, where SS Reichsführer Himmler steamed, who, to the accompaniment of nervous laughter, was whipped with birch brooms by steamed bodyguards. “Naked Germans are remarkably defenseless. The secret has been taken away from them. They don't scare anymore. The secret of their strength is not in their skin, not in their bones, not in their blood; he is only in their form. The shape is the genuine skin of the Germans. If the peoples of Europe saw this sluggish, defenseless and dead nakedness, hidden under a gray, military field cloth, the German army would not frighten even the weakest and defenseless people ... To see them naked is to comprehend at once secret meaning their national life, their national history…”

Malaparte ridiculed Europe "fighting for civilization against barbarism"; he witnessed the inhuman horrors that the fascist invaders brought to Soviet Russia: punishing, shooting children, women and the elderly, raping, hanging, starving ... There is no end to the list of German atrocities in the occupied territories - this Malaparte does not get tired of repeating.

Based on the 1949 novel The Skin, Liliana Cavani made a film in 1981 in which Marcello Mastroianni played the role of Malaparte. The film also featured Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale. A gloomy, cynical, morally disoriented world during the 1943 Italian war, when American troops entered Naples, exposing the local population, especially women, to violence, humiliation and contempt: “You are dirty Italians!” - the favorite phrase of Americans sounded from everywhere. The winners are not judged, but it is worth remembering the words of Aeschylus: “Only by honoring the gods and / Temples of the vanquished, / The winners will be saved ...”

Feeling great interest in Soviet Russia, Malaparte came to Moscow for a few weeks in the spring of 1929. He was looking forward to seeing the hegemony of the proletariat in power, living according to ascetic, puritanical laws, but instead he met the Epicurean party elite, copying the West in everything, indulging in scandals and corruption just five years after Lenin's death. Malaparte had the idea to write a chronicle novel about the life of the new Moscow “communist aristocracy”. The original titles of the novel: “God is a killer”, “Towards Stalin”, “Princesses of Moscow”. The final title of the unfinished novel is "Ball in the Kremlin". Not only Stalin, Gorky, Lunacharsky, Demyan Bedny, Mayakovsky appear on its pages, but Bulgakov himself. Bulgakov's meetings with Ma-laparte became known from the memoirs of the writer's second wife, Lyubov Evgeniev-na Belozerskaya. The third wife, Elena Sergeevna, also mentions the name of the Italian journalist in connection with the stormy romance of their friend Maria (Marika) Chimishkyan. In her book “Oh, the honey of memories”, Lyubov Belozerskaya describes a car ride in which her husband, Marika and herself took part: “A fine spring day in 1929. A large open Fiat stopped outside our house. In the car, we meet a handsome young man in a straw boater (the most handsome man I have ever seen). This is the Italian journalist and publicist Curzio Malaparte (when asked why he took such a pseudonym, he replied: “Because the name of Bonaparte was already taken”), a man of an unheard of stormy biography, information about which can be found in all European reference books, however, from some discrepancies ... His real name and surname Kurt Zukkert. Green youths in the first place world war he volunteered for the French front. He was poisoned by gases first used by the Germans then ... "

Malaparte himself describes more than one meeting with Bulgakov. In the novel The Volga Is Born in Europe, he mentions their meeting at the Bolshoi Theater, where they sat in the stalls and watched the ballet The Red Poppy to the music of Gliere with the unsurpassed ballerina of that time, Marina Semyonova. Together they walked along the streets of Moscow on Easter days and talked about Christ! I checked the calendar: Easter in 1929 fell on May 5th. So we have exact date their meetings. In The Master and Margarita, the meeting with the “foreigner” took place on one of the May days, “at the hour of an unprecedentedly hot sunset, in Moscow, on the Patriarch’s Ponds ...”

It is interesting to compare the description of a young brunette - “a handsome man in a straw boater” of Bulgakov’s wife (the object of her admiration turned 31 on June 9, 1929, and her husband turned 38 on May 15) with a sketch of a “foreigner” who brought incredible chaos to the Soviet capital: “He was in an expensive gray suit, in foreign, in the color of the suit, shoes. He famously twisted his gray beret over his ear, and under his arm he carried a cane with a black knob in the shape of a poodle's head. He looks to be over forty years old. The mouth is kind of crooked. Shaved smoothly. Brunette. The right eye is black, the left one is green for some reason. The eyebrows are black, but one is higher than the other. In a word - a foreigner ... "

In 1929, Bulgakov was just beginning to write his "sunset" novel. In the drafts, he was called “Black Magician”, “Engineer’s Hoof”, “Evening of a terrible Saturday”, “Tour”, “Black Magician”, “Consultant with a hoof”, “Satan”, “Black theologian”, “He appeared”, “ Horseshoe of a foreigner”.

Malaparte did not read the novel: it came out in 1966, 10 years after his death. But in those Easter days they talked a lot about Christ. “Where is Christ hidden in the USSR? asked Malaparte. - What is the name of the Russian Christ, the Soviet Christ? And he himself gave the answer: “I don’t give a damn!” - this is the name of the Russian Christ, the communist Christ ... "

In the novel Ball in the Kremlin, Malaparte asked Bulgakov, in which of his characters is Christ hiding? It was about the “Days of the Turbins”. Bulgakov replied that in his play Christ has no name: “Today in Russia, the hero Christ is not needed ...” Malaparte continued his interrogation: “Are you afraid to say his name, are you afraid of Christ?” “Yes, I am afraid of Christ,” Bulgakov admitted. “You are all afraid of Christ. Why are you afraid of Christ?” - did not let up the Italian. Malaparte writes that he fell in love with Bulgakov that day when he saw how he, sitting on Revolution Square, silently wept, looking at the Moscow people moving past him, at this wretched, pale and dirty crowd with sweat-drenched faces. He added that the crowd moving past Bulgakov had the same gray shapeless face, the same extinguished watery eyes, like the monks, hermits and beggars present on the icons of the Mother of God. “Christ hates us,” Bulgakov said quietly.

Malaparte describes in detail the days of Russian Easter, when the booming voice of Demyan Bedny, the chairman of the Union of Militant Atheists and Atheists, the author of the Gospel of Demyan, sounded from loudspeakers on poles near churches (“ New Testament flawless evangelist Demyan”), which tells about Christ, the son of a young prostitute Mary, who was born in a brothel. “Comrades! yelled Demyan Poor. - Christ is a counter-revolutionary, an enemy of the proletariat, a saboteur, a dirty Trotskyist who sold himself to international capital! Ha ha ha!” At the entrance to Red Square, on the wall next to the chapel of the Iveron Mother of God, under a huge poster “Religion is the opium of the people,” hung a scarecrow depicting Christ crowned with a crown of thorns with a sign on his chest “Spy and traitor of the people!” In the chapel, under the crucifix, Malaparte saw a nailed inscription: “Jesus Christ is a legendary character who never really existed ...” On one of the columns of the Bolshoi Theater, on the then Sverdlov Square, the greasy voice of Demyan Bedny shouted from a loudspeaker: “Christ has not risen ! He tried to take off into the sky, but was shot down by the valiant red aircraft. Ha ha ha!”

The thought that arose in me after reading these lines suggested itself: isn’t Malaparte one of the “inspirers” of the image of Woland? A stroke to create the image of a “foreigner”? A hot May day, a walk with a mysterious Italian, conversations about Christ ... As a result, one wrote a book about Christ and the devil, the other in 1951 in Italy shot the film “Forbidden Christ” according to his own script, which received a prize at the First Berlin Film Festival.

When visiting the mausoleum of Lenin, Malaparte asked: “Why did you embalm him? You turned him into a mummy…” He was answered: “We do not believe in the immortality of the soul.” Malaparte understood that “death for a communist is a smooth, compact wall without windows. Cold, hermetically sealed sleep. Emptiness, vacuum… A stopped car…”

About Soviet godlessness, Malaparte said that everything in this colossal tragedy of godlessness crosses the boundaries of the usual human experience. “The Russians have turned into people who hate God in themselves, into those who hate themselves not only in their own kind, but also in animals.” He gives the example of a mortally wounded Russian prisoner being carried on a stretcher by fellow prisoners. For a minute they stop. A dog runs up to the wounded man. He takes her by the collar and strokes her head gently. Then he grabs a piece of ice and with all his might hits the dog between the eyes with a sharp end. The dog cries out in pain, bleeds, tries to escape from the hands of a dying soldier, breaks free and runs away into the woods covered with blood. The captive soldier laughs, although there is very little life left in him, just like in the dog he wounded.

Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris, a cult film based on Alberto Moravia's novel, starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli and Fritz Lang, was filmed at Villa Malaparte. After the prohibition of the film “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” in 1933, the German director Fritz Lang was summoned by the Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (the director was waiting for imminent reprisal) and unexpectedly offered him the post of head of the German film industry: “The Fuhrer saw your films Nibelungen and Metropolis and said: here is a man capable of creating a National Socialist cinema!..” That same evening, Fritz Lang left Germany and never returned there.

His famous red brick villa - Casa Malaparte (it was called one of the most beautiful houses in the world), located in the eastern part of the island of Capri on a high, 32-meter, impregnable, sheer cliff protruding from all sides into the sea, the writer designed himself. It resembles a sail or latrine flying over the sea (galjoen, Nider., - the front surface part of a sailing ship) of a ship. AT different time many writers have visited here, including Alberto Moravia and Albert Camus. Shura Shivarg also visited Villa Malaparte. Shura was most shocked by the burning fireplace with a glass back wall. Through the flames of the fireplace, the guest was surrounded on all sides by the blue of the boundless mediterranean sea blending into the blue of the sky. The villa could only be reached by sea in calm weather, so as not to crash on underwater reefs; or a long walk. I recently re-watched Godard's film. The villa has an impregnable character. The 99 steps leading to the roof looked like an Aztec pyramid. The owner of the villa is still called one of the most enigmatic men of the first half of the 20th century. One of Malaparte's works is called “House like me”. He believed that his villa was his portrait carved in stone. “I live on an island, in a house that I built myself; he is sad, severe and impregnable; stands alone on a sheer cliff above the sea… like a ghost, like a secret face of a prison… Perhaps I never wanted, even when I was in prison, to escape. A man cannot be free in freedom, he must be free in prison…”

After the death of the writer in 1957, the villa was looted by vandals, and the fireplace, which Shura Shivarg admired so much, was smashed. In the 80s, a serious restoration of the house began. The writer has a collection of essays “A Woman Like Me”. Among them: “City like me”, “Day like me” and “Dog like me”. Reading this story, I could not hold back the tears, it is dedicated to his dog Febo. Familiar feelings of incomparable love for a creature devoted to you. While in prison on the island of Lipari, Malaparte saved the puppy from imminent death, this was his only friend, who in turn helped the owner overcome loneliness and despair.

Lyubov Belozerskaya also has remarks about Malaparte: “He has many sharp speeches in the press on his account:“ Living Europe ”,“ The Mind of Lenin ”,“ The Volga Begins in Europe ”,“ Kaput ”and many, many other works that have made a splash abroad and never translated into Russian. Judging only by the names, they denounce the roll to the left. But it wasn't always like that. First an admirer of Mussolini, then his fierce opponent, he paid for this with a heavy exile to the Aeolian Islands. He died in 1957. At his deathbed - according to foreign sources - the papal nuncio was on duty so that at the last moment he would not reject the rites of the Catholic Church. But I got ahead of myself, but for now he is a charmingly cheerful person who is pleasant to look at and with whom it is pleasant to communicate. Unfortunately, he stayed in Moscow for a very short time…”

After the war, Malaparte, indeed, unsuccessfully tried to join the ranks communist party Italy. According to the legends that accompanied him all his life, he received his party card posthumously, and before his death he converted to Catholicism. Some accused Malaparte of bowing to fascism, others to communism. Many were perplexed: does what Malaparte writes correspond to the facts? Why did things happen to him that didn't happen to others? The answer is simple: a true writer sees things in life that others don't. best performance the writer himself gave himself, calling himself a “damned Tuscan”, who values ​​freedom above all else: “only freedom and respect for culture will save Europe from times of cruelty…”

In Moscow, Malaparte chose two places - the bar of the Metropol Hotel and the Scala restaurant. He himself lived at the Savoy Hotel.

Leila Alexander-Garrett is the author of the book "Andrey Tarkovsky: Collector of Dreams" and the photo album "Andrey Tarkovsky: Photo Chronicle" Sacrifices ". Author of the plays "Night Gaspar. The Hanged Man" and "English Breakfast". Worked on the set of Andrei Tarkovsky's latest film "The Sacrifice" in Sweden and with Yuri Lyubimov at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, as well as at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. Organizer of the festivals of Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov in London, author of numerous photo exhibitions.

- In The Collector of Dreams, you mention that Tarkovsky bequeathed you "not to be neutral" and even predicted that you would write a book.

-L. G: When I wrote, I remembered these words. Then they pissed me off. I was young, obstinate, and I was outraged that someone was pointing something out to me. But Andrei always guessed, always hit the bull's-eye. And so, I wrote it 20 years later... In addition, there are a lot of books about Tarkovsky that do not correspond to reality. I do not want to judge anyone - everyone has the right to dispose of their knowledge, acquaintances, friendship and write whatever they want, but I was on the sidelines. At least she tried. The book is not about me. I was just lucky to be with him, with the whole film crew, to be a participant in this magical process of creating a movie. After all, this is really a magical process: out of nothing, some idea, a dream, an accident - Tarkovsky weaved out of thin air.

And why did you decide to write a book only after 20 years?

L.G.: I often repeat, I really liked Chinese phrase: nothing is too early and too late, everything happens on time. It's true. If I had written this book earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have realized something, didn’t feel it, didn’t digest it ... It happened after the Tarkovsky festival in London, maybe from a meeting with, with Gordon, with Yankovsky, Bondarchuk - this gave an incentive and charged me. They spurred me on, and I wrote not only in some kind of haste and carelessness, but in a hurry that this should be done.

You live in London, studied in Sweden, grew up here. Tell us a little more about yourself.

LG: I was born in the Soviet Union, in Uzbekistan, then I came to Leningrad - I entered the Academy of Arts. Then I met my ex-husband. I didn’t even know then that he was a Swede - we were afraid of them, they were also cautious. Then she got married and moved to Sweden. And when I found out that Tarkovsky's film would be filmed there, I went to the producer. She told me that Tarkovsky insisted that the translator in the painting be a man. Like, a woman doesn’t suit him in character, it’s necessary to shoot early, the work is hard, and he worked with a man at Nostalgia, so he’s probably used to it.

But you still got the job. What do you think, how did you take Tarkovsky?

LG: It would be better, of course, he answered himself! But I never hung myself on him, did not get it, and this surprised him. There were also closer people around him, but sometimes they just clung with their claws. I didn't have it. Maybe because I lived in Sweden, in a different environment. It's a wonderful thing, it's great to be Russian and throw yourself into your arms all the time, but sometimes you need to keep something in yourself.

What country do you consider home?

-L. G.: I am here now - and for me there is only Moscow. And when I'm in Sweden, she is like my favorite stepmother. This is youth, time spent with Andrei, theater, friends.

- You write that Russia is a “generator” that energizes, and you describe the country very warmly. But the tone changes when it comes to Tarkovsky's attitude towards Russia.

L.G.: Andrei knew his own worth, he knew that he was bringing currency to this country, but they brazenly lied to him ... After all, he was often invited to shoot abroad, and these bastards said that Tarkovsky did not want to, he was busy, he was not in Moscow. And he found out about it a few years later. He was treated like a nonentity. Here is even this story, when Andrey wanted to involve in the film "Sacrifice", with which he worked in Italy. They didn't even answer him from the embassy. But Tarkovsky was never a dissident, he refused to meet with many Western journalists, because they stopped seeing him as an artist and focused only on dissent.

Abroad, probably, it was also not easy?

LG: Very hard, of course. It's hard here. And it's hard there. Another problem is money. Here in the picture, he could wait a long time for the right weather, and there we had 55 shooting days, and at least you crack.

-M. T .: Well, here, too, there was the number of meters shot per day.

-L. G: But the budget is bigger.

-M. T .: Well, I don’t know, in general, he worked on very small budgets. It's just that the West has a tougher system.

-L. G: Money dictates everything.

-M. T .: Here they also dictated, but they met him halfway, realizing that he was a great artist, and that he needed help.

-L. G.: He said more than once that in Russia he is given a budget - and that's it, he makes a movie and doesn't think about it anymore. And they reminded me every day. And then, of course, uncertainty about the future. Here he had a home, friends, family, support, there was a rear. There was no. There were, of course, acquaintances - but it's one thing when you're a guest, and another thing - when you're part of society.

How has this affected the films? What do you think distinguishes Tarkovsky's latest paintings made in the West?

LG: Simplicity. Tarkovsky said: simplicity is the most difficult thing. The Sacrifice has a few characters, a simple house, nothing special. Removed everything. Asceticism to the last.

What was Tarkovsky like on set?

LG: Swift as the wind. A whirlwind that came, and everything began to move around. And not to move randomly - sometimes people create chaos around themselves - it was a creative whirlwind. He wanted, which is very important, to include everyone in his creative process.

The Dream Collector is one of the alternative titles for the film The Sacrifice. Why did you choose him for the book?

LG: The director usually embodies scripts, ideas, and Andrey embodies dreams, fantasies, visions. Here, in particular, there was a story when he had a dream in which he died and sees his mother, and Tarkovsky decided to include this scene in the film.

-M. T: We are talking about a scene that was not in the script. The budget was modest, so at first they did not want to shoot her. But then they took it off.

-L. CG: But the scene was not included in the film. All the participants are there long dresses, in hats, but I wanted to achieve the utmost simplicity, so that there were no beauties in the film. And he cut this piece out, leaving only the beginning and the end.

And what other dreams or, maybe, cases from life got into his films?

M. T .: In the "Mirror" there is an episode in which the boy is shocked. This is a children's joke, I forgot it, I only remember that this boy in the joke grabbed something and said: "Oh, it beats with current." It was incredibly funny, I told Andrey, he also laughed, and then he used it.

Or here in The Mirror: a scene with a boy who throws a training grenade. They also tell him something like: “And also a blockade man, a Leningrader,” they say, he has no right to do bad deeds. Why blockade - probably because in 1943, when the blockade was broken, Leningrad children were taken down the Volga, and for one night they stopped in the village where we studied. Everyone ran to meet them at the pier, people came out with food, but they were not allowed to eat, there were doctors with them. We ourselves were like matches from hunger, but what we saw is indescribable. There were simply no faces, only huge eyes. And, of course, Andrew remembered it.

Like many other things, Tarkovsky was Tarkovsky. At least this story with the long-suffering bird cherry, which he demanded from the poor Swedes for the "Sacrifice". At the end of the war, we lived in a village near Moscow, and my mother sold bird cherry at the Paveletsky railway station. Andrei climbed bird cherry, tore, threw it to us, and my mother and I picked it up. And, of course, he wanted to restore the image of that tree in the film, but it did not work out.

- There are a lot of very personal details in the book, including about Tarkovsky's relationship with his wife. There are many things that the director himself probably would not want to talk about. How did you solve this problem for yourself?

LG: So many unpleasant things have already been written about him! I tried to be delicate, retouched. That's not what the book is about.

-M. T: We cannot place the artist in a vacuum, it is necessary for the reader to understand that Andrey did not live in an airless space. This emphasizes Andrei's inner life, the contradictions that tore him apart. A certain person was present in his life, played big role, and, perhaps, the ability to be creative was preserved largely due to the conditions in which Andrei existed. Because the creator needs not only semolina, but also something more serious: overcoming, internal struggle, which, perhaps, gave a creative impetus.

- Most of the "Dream Collector", in addition to the introduction and epilogue, are your old diaries from the filming of "Sacrifice" with your own comments. Did you enable the diaries as is or did you change something?

LG: These were notes, pieces of paper, notes on the script. I just deciphered everything, and then collected it. The archival material is huge, I still have a lot left ...

Does that mean we have to wait for another book?

LG: Well, no, probably, it will already be something else, that's enough.

Today, Elegant New York is starting a new column in which it will publish materials with continuation from issue to issue. The section will feature chapters from books, series of stories, journalism and much more.
Our "Series" opens with an article by Leila Alexander-Garrett "Berlin-Kyiv-Moscow".

Leila Alexander-Garrett, was Andrei Tarkovsky's assistant, translator and friend, worked with him in Sweden on the set of his last film, The Sacrifice (1985). She published her memoirs about this great director in the book Andrei Tarkovsky: Collector of Dreams. Also, she created and published in 2011, a wonderful photo album "Andrei Tarkovsky: photo chronicle" Sacrifices ".

Leila organized and held several interesting photo exhibitions and festivals: "Last Cinema", gallery "On Solyanka", Moscow, 2010; film festival "Zerkalo", Ivanovo, 2010; film festival "Molodist", cinema "Kyiv", multimedia installation in the cultural and educational center "Master class", Kyiv, 2011.

She is also the organizer of: the Andrei Tarkovsky Festival in London, 2007; the Sergei Parajanov Festival in London and Bristol, 2010; charity concert to help restore the Russian Orthodox church in London, (the temple where Metropolitan Anthony served).

Leila Alexander-Garrett also worked for a long time with Yuri Lyubimov at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm (“A Feast in the Time of Plague” by Pushkin, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov) and at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London - (“Enufa” by Janacek, “ Ring of the Nibelungs" by Wagner).

BERLIN-Kyiv-MOSCOW

Leila Alexander-Garrett

Berlin

My daughter was jealously reminded of my love for Berlin, studying German for exams, when, upon returning from Kyiv, I enthusiastically began to tell her about the city, which conquered me with its beauty, grandeur, hospitality and meetings with wonderful people, among whom were Ukrainians, and Russians, and Armenians, and even one Scot. Lena and I sat in the park immortalized in Past and Thoughts by a famous Russian exile who once lived "near Primroz-Gil"; Lena rapped out German phrases, leading me to bewilderment: where did she get this predilection for German culture, for German, to the theater of Brecht, to the reading of Goethe's Faust in the original?

It all really started in the German capital, with an exhibition dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky, "Mirror by Mirror" at the "Photo Edition Berlin" gallery. The exhibition of collages by Sergei Svyatchenko is based on legendary movie Tarkovsky's "Mirror", more precisely, a few frames from the film that fell into the hands of a Ukrainian artist living in Denmark from his teacher, and he got them from the director himself. The director's sister Marina Tarkovskaya and her husband Alexander Gordon, Andrei's classmate and co-author of theses at VGIK, were invited to the vernissage from Moscow, and I was from London. Marina was unable to come, and I spent my short visit (from 2 to 5 April 2009) with Alexander.

In the spring of the following year, Sergei called from Denmark with the news about the upcoming Days of Creativity of Arseniy and Andrei Tarkovsky "Father and Son" in Kyiv. His call coincided with a meeting with the outstanding film director Roman Balayan at the British Film Institute, where the festival of another famous Kiev resident, "Virmyanin" Sergey Parajanov, was held. It soon became clear that Roman Balayan was acquainted with the director of the Meister Klasa cultural and educational center Yevgeny Utkin, the organizer of the Tarkovsky Days of Creativity, a businessman, the main driving force many serious cultural events in Kyiv, such as Gogol-fest, classical music concerts, poetry evenings and other projects.

Sergei Paradzhanov and Tarkovsky were connected by many years of friendship and mutual sincere admiration. When the film "Ivan's Childhood" was released in 1962, Parajanov exclaimed: "Tarkovsky is my teacher!" - "Seryozha is a genius!" - responded Tarkovsky, who rarely gave laudatory epithets to his colleagues in the profession, after the publication of The Colors of Pomegranate. Before letting the next guest into his hospitable Kyiv home, Parajanov asked if he had seen "Ivan's childhood"? On a positive answer, the door was opened, on a negative one, it was slammed in front of the visitor's nose with instructions to immediately look at the picture - and immediately return to discuss it! Parajanov dedicated his last film Ashik-Kerib to Tarkovsky, which he announced from the stage at the premiere screening in Munich without hiding his tears.

I gratefully associate my visit to Berlin with the name of Ron Holloway, a writer, film critic, and director who passed away in December 2009. American by birth, studied philosophy in Chicago, received doctoral degree a theologian in Hamburg, Ron and his dynamic wife, actress and journalist Dorothea Moritz, have been the center not only of world-famous film festivals such as Berlin, Cannes and Venice, but also of many Eastern European, Asian and Latin American ones. Every year they visited more than two dozen film festivals, published the Kino magazine, in which they introduced readers to new names, among which were our compatriots: Klimov, Parajanov, German, Abuladze, Bykov, Tarkovsky. Ron has been awarded the German Cross of Cultural Merit for Building Bridges, the Cannes Gold Medal, the Polish Ring, the prestigious American Film Foundation Award, and many other international prizes. Dorothea Moritz considered her main merit to be "the victory over the Catholic Church", since she managed to lure the future Catholic priest and make him her husband and colleague in the noble service of art.

From the hotel, on the street of the muse of astronomy and astrology Urania, I called Ron, and was immediately invited to the street of the Holy Lands, located on the banks of the Spree River, to an old house with monumental and decorative sgraffito painting. A spacious, bright apartment with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, soft sofas and armchairs from the sixties, coffee tables littered with stacks of magazines and newspapers - a typical corner of a bohemian intelligent couple. We sat with the balcony door open - it was nice to find ourselves from rainy London to sun-drenched Berlin - and looked at hundreds of photographs taken by Ron during Parajanov's visit to Germany. With a touching smile, Ron told how he accompanied his guest to all the flea markets, where the unsurpassed master of myth-making cleverly fooled the merchants, and they, as if enchanted, gave all sorts of knick-knacks sunk into the soul of an exotic buyer for free. After tea drinking, Ron, with a solemnly ironic expression on his face, carried Parajanov's shirt into the living room, which he “waved without looking”, falling in love with his bright American T-shirt. The solemn ritual of dressing me in Parajanov's robe was accompanied by Dorothea's infectious laughter.

Before leaving, Ron invited me to watch an unfinished film interview with Alexei German.

Alexander-Garrett L. Collector of Dreams Andrei Tarkovsky. - M.: Publishing house "E", 2017. - 640 p. — (Biographies famous people). ISBN 978-5-699-95388-2

The book is based on the diary of Leila Alexander-Garrett, Andrei Tarkovsky's translator on the set of The Sacrifice, which she kept every day. Andrei Tarkovsky's latest film is a testamentary film calling for the realization of personal responsibility for the events taking place in the world.

Yuri Norshtein: "Leila Alexander-Garrett's book is both documentary and fiction, that is, fiction in the sense that Leila owns an excellent Russian dictionary, documentary, because she witnessed all this huge creative process on the film "Sacrifice", because she was Tarkovsky's translator, and, in my opinion, in three directions at once: into English and into Swedish and back into Russian, excluding Tarkovsky's obscenities. Thanks to her, Tarkovsky's whole speech was in the ears of his assistants - scrupulous, very accurate Swedes, whom Tarkovsky turned into normal people during the shooting, in the sense that they became more relaxed, more freely understand what was being said, in what direction the film is moving. Although it is unlikely that one of the colleagues can fully understand what is stuck in the head of the director, he himself does not always understand.

Tarkovsky is an improviser, he is able to change the nature of the direction of the scenes in the process creative work, and without it it does not work. Layla writes about everything about it. I like that this book is not flattering. This is not a book of worship to Andrei Arsenievich and exaltation of him as a director and creator. Firstly, he does not need this, and secondly, any such established worship deprives a person of life and causes only one thing - distrust of the reader. Leila's book is essentially documentary: it is a documentary imprint state of mind, the sensual state of the director, it is a documentary imprint of his torment, his staggering from side to side, winding, when a person does not have the opportunity to shoot, but continues to live under the tension that he asked himself at the beginning of the film. And then the horrors begin, which can only be understood by a loved one, or the one with whom this happens. It seems to me that Leila had a lot of bitterness in her communication with Tarkovsky and she revealed many bitter features that characterize the hero of this book from different, including quite unsightly sides, but all this cannot be removed from a person’s life: any one contains something and other.

After reading this book, I immediately called Leila, expressed all my enthusiasm for her, emphasizing that this is one of the most truthful books and, most importantly, that it is an absolutely accurate testimony, since Leila herself, as creative person will not give herself the right to lie, because her lies will immediately multiply and penetrate the readers, who will turn this lie in their own way, and then a meaningless legend will appear. You should not create legends, but you need to peer into the true face and read out what really accompanies the life of the creator with all the sorrows and joys of discovery. Dream Collector Andrei Tarkovsky is the best written about Tarkovsky, along with biographical memoirs of Marina Tarkovsky, without a doubt, written with love, which is rare in our time. Everything in it is alive, subtle, without varnishing, without embellishment. The main thing is that Tarkovsky is alive in it."

Leila Alexander-Garrett, Andrei Tarkovsky's translator during the filming of The Sacrifice, presented her book Andrei Tarkovsky: Collector of Dreams in Moscow at the end of the week.

When reading the book, the luxury of hearing an eyewitness struggled with embarrassment from some of the characteristics of its characters, from the banality of epithets and the pretentiousness of the composition. Whether by the will of the editors or the author himself, but the book, alas, seemed to be another contribution to the hit, but obviously redundant and completely incomprehensible genre, when the driver talks about the life of a princess, ex-wives about famous husbands etc. However, in a personal meeting, the author turned out to be much nicer than the text. It immediately became clear why Tarkovsky chose her as a translator - a thin, even, psychologically clear person.

Russian newspaper: Who were you in his life? The prototype of the image of the Translator in "Nostalgia"?

Leila Alexander-Garrett: Well, except in terms of wardrobe. My then-husband, having arrived from the film festival, said: Tarkovsky tore off your wardrobe. The coat, scarf, shoes and golden bag that I had during my first meeting with the director in Moscow ended up in the film. Both the beret and the translator's hair were the same as mine. But this applied to almost everyone. He could see some kind of scarf and say "I want." Once he told me: take off your vest. And dressed his son in it in the movie. He could talk about higher worlds, but at the same time suck all the details out of life. He "copied" from the surrounding everything that he liked.

RG: What would you call the genre of your relationship with him?

Alexander-Garret:"Fate Crossing". Tarkovsky went through 14 translators, but said "alchemy does not match." And, in the end, the director of the picture began to call me almost every day and invite me. And when I came, he hugged me and said: you will be with us, because Tarkovsky is calm with you. Andrew was very nervous person, he vibrated all over.

RG: What were your motives for writing the book?

Alexander-Garret: The desire to write it arose immediately after the filming of "The Sacrifice" and the departure of Andrei. But as the wise Chinese say, nothing is too late or too early, everything is on time. I hope that now this "time" has come. I have a huge archive at home, which I hope to donate to the Tarkovsky Museum in Moscow - it's a shame that it still doesn't exist. I think there would be worldwide interest in it. In any case, when I organized a small film festival in England dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky in December 2007, the halls were full. After "Mirror" Marina Tarkovskaya was approached by sobbing Englishmen and said: this film is about me.

RG: Are there many new details in the book?

Alexander-Garret: Yes, because this period in Tarkovsky's life is terra incognita. He didn't talk to anyone at the time. Director Vladimir Grammatikov told me recently how Tarkovsky asked him to take money and a parcel for his son Andryusha. And he was not afraid. In general, there were people who, seeing him, crossed to the other side of the street.

RG: What was special about this work on "The Sacrifice"?

Alexander-Garret: There were many interesting things. Andrey, by all means, wanted to shoot white nights. And then he removed all the frames with white nights from the film. The group was perplexed. He answered: I did not know how they would look on film. The image of the white night that intrigued him - a feeling of loneliness, a universal landscape - he came up with in Italy, where he wrote the script.

He did not set any specific tasks for the actors, but talked a lot with them on general topics - about love, betrayal, lies, death. In the West, such topics are taboo, they are talked about only with very close ones. And Andrey's conversations at first took everyone out of balance. But then the actors understood. And they often repeated that no one gave them more than Tarkovsky. He chose actors for a very long time, so it was a guard. And, by the way, I wanted to invite Oleg Yankovsky to the role of the doctor. Yankovsky learned about it only at our festival in January 2007. They did not even deign to answer letters to the Soviet embassy for Tarkovsky, let alone pass them on to Yankovsky.

RG: Have the reasons for Tarkovsky's non-return lost their mystery?

Alexander-Garret: He was left in the West by the desire to work. Although Yermash promised him the opportunity to film The Idiot without hindrance, Tarkovsky no longer believed. An artist of this caliber always feels who and what he is. And to go through challenges to the carpet, through the tone of Soviet remarks declaring him a third-rate artist... But remaining in Europe, he did not become a dissident. And at the very first press conference he refused to communicate with journalists when they tried to make the dissident topic the main one.

There was only one reason for not returning: he had to work.

In the Soviet Union, he made 5 films in 20 years. And in the West for 2 years - "Nostalgia", "Sacrifice", a documentary, almost an hour-long film "Journey through Italy", wrote "Captured Time" and staged "Boris Godunov" in Covent Garden.

RG: In relation to the artist, the world is almost always hurting, you describe in the book the scene when Bergman stood two steps away from Tarkovsky and did not respond.

Alexander-Garret: I later worked at the Royal Dramatic Theater with Yuri Lyubimov and often spoke with Bergman. “Before every new film I watch Andrey Rublev, this is a masterpiece, nothing is higher than it,” he said when we sat together at the table. But in his book Magica Laterna, he describes that he also ran away from meeting Kurosawa and, it seems, from Woody Allen. He says that at such a moment something happens to his stomach. And he has had it since childhood. But Tarkovsky always reproached me: imagine, if we nevertheless approached him directly, he would have nowhere to drape, he would have to say: hello - goodbye - let's drink a cup of tea.

RG: How did you choose the right ethical distance in relation to the described past, how did you decide what to expose and what to hide? You write rather harshly about Tarkovsky's wife Larisa.

Alexander-Garret: You haven't read Olga Surkova's book "Me and Tarkovsky". Compared to her, I retouched.

RG: Read. I have more complaints about your description.

Alexander-Garret: Doesn't matter. Tarkovsky said that art exists only because the world is unfavorable. What needs to be overcome. Maybe it was this personal situation that prompted him to be creative.

RG: The spiritual "porridge" in the author's head, which casts a shadow on the hero, is also embarrassing - clairvoyance and existentialism, Catholic monks and astrology, all in one bottle.

Alexander-Garret: But Tarkovsky was also interested in everything - both Zen Buddhism and mysticism. He had some clairvoyant acquaintances in every city, in Moscow he met Juna and parapsychologists. But in London, the translator Ira Kirillova, one of the oldest parishioners of the Orthodox Church, introduced him to Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh. Later, Vladyka Anthony said that Andrei was uncomfortable at first, he wanted to leave, but Vladyka, a man of broad views, could win everyone over to the temple, he somehow amused Andrei.

Later Andrei confessed to him.

They talked about the sacrament of prayer, about inner silence. Tarkovsky, meanwhile, was preparing The Sacrifice. And a lecture on the Apocalypse at St. James's Cathedral in London.