Writer Yu Trifonov in the story. Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov, short biography
Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov was born August 28, 1925 in Moscow. Father is a Don Cossack by birth, a professional revolutionary, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1904, a participant in two revolutions, one of the founders of the Petrograd Red Guard, during Civil War member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Military Affairs, member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of several fronts.
In 1937 Trifonov's parents were repressed. Trifonov and his younger sister were adopted by their grandmother, T.L. Slovatinskaya.
Autumn 1941 together with his relatives he was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1942 After graduating from school there, he enlisted in a military aircraft factory and returned to Moscow. He worked at the plant as a mechanic, shop manager, and technician. In 1944 became editor of the factory's large-circulation newspaper. In the same year he entered the correspondence department of the Literary Institute. He applied to the poetry department (more than 100 never-published poems were preserved in the writer’s archive), but was accepted into the prose department. IN 1945 transferred to the full-time department of the Literary Institute, studied in creative seminars by K.A. Fedina and K.G. Paustovsky. Graduated from college in 1949 .
The first publications were feuilletons from student life, published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” in 1947 and 1948(“Broad range” and “Narrow specialists”). His first story, “In the Steppe,” was published in 1948 in the almanac of young writers “Young Guard”.
In 1950 Trifonov’s story “Students” appeared in Tvardovsky’s “New World”. Her success was very great. She received the Stalin Prize, “all sorts of flattering offers poured in,” the writer recalled, “from Mosfilm, from the radio, from the publishing house.” The story was popular. The magazine's editors received many letters from readers, and it was discussed in a variety of audiences. Despite all its success, the story really only resembled life. Trifonov himself admitted: “If I had the strength, time and, most importantly, desire, I would rewrite this book again from the first to the last page.” But when the book came out, its author took its success for granted. This is evidenced by the staging of “Students” - “Young Years” - and the play about artists “The Key to Success” written a year later ( 1951 ), staged at the Theater. M.N. Ermolova A.M. Lobanov. The play was subjected to rather harsh criticism and is now forgotten.
After the resounding success of “Students,” Trifonov, by his own definition, began “an exhausting period of some kind of tossing.” At that time he began writing about sports. For 18 years, Trifonov was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Physical Culture and Sports”, a correspondent for this magazine and major newspapers at the Olympic Games in Rome, Innsbruck, Grenoble, and at several world championships in hockey and volleyball. He wrote dozens of stories, articles, reports, notes on sports themes. Many of them were included in the collections “At the End of the Season” (1961 ), "Torches on Flaminio" ( 1965 ), "Games at Twilight" ( 1970 ). In his “sports” works, what was openly revealed was what would later become one of the main themes of his work - the effort of the spirit in achieving victory, even over oneself.
Since 1952 Trifonov's trips to Turkmenistan began to build the Turkmen and then the Karakum Canal. The trips lasted about eight years. The result was the collection of short stories “Under the Sun” ( 1959 ) and the novel "Quenching Thirst", published in 1963 in the magazine "Znamya". The novel was republished several times, incl. and in Roman-Gazeta, nominated for the Lenin Prize 1965 , was dramatized and filmed. True, as Trifonov said, they read the novel, in comparison with “Students,” “much more calmly and even, perhaps, sluggishly.”
“Quenching Thirst” turned out to be a typical “thaw” work, remaining in many ways one of the many “industrial” novels of those years. However, it already contained characters and thoughts that would later become the focus of the writer’s attention.
Critics deciphered the title of the novel “Quenching Thirst” not only as quenching the thirst of the earth waiting for water, but also quenching the human thirst for justice. The desire to restore justice was dictated by the story “Glimmer of the Fire” ( 1965 ) - a documentary story about the writer's father. Late 1960s he begins the so-called cycle. Moscow or city stories: “Exchange” ( 1969 ), "Preliminary results" ( 1970 ), "The Long Goodbye" (1971 ), then they were joined by “Another Life” (1975 ) and "House on the Embankment" ( 1976 ). The plots of these books, especially the first three, seem to be devoted only to the “details” of the life of a modern city dweller. Everyday life city dwellers, immediately recognizable to readers, seemed to many critics to be the only theme of the books.
It took the critics of the 1960s and 70s a long time to understand that behind the reproduction of the life of a modern city there is hidden an understanding of “eternal themes”, of what constitutes the essence human life. When applied to Trifonov’s work, the words of one of his heroes were justified: “Feat is understanding. Understanding the other. My God, how difficult it is!”
Book about Narodnaya Volya “Impatience” ( 1973 ) was perceived in contrast to the “urban” stories. Moreover, it appeared after the first three of them, when some of the criticism tried to create Trifonov’s reputation as just a modern writer of everyday life, absorbed in the everyday bustle of townspeople, busy, according to the writer’s definition, with the “great trifles” of life.
“Impatience” is a book about terrorists of the 19th century, impatiently pushing the course of history, preparing an assassination attempt on the Tsar, dying on the scaffold.
The novel “The Old Man” ( 1978 ). In him, in one life, history and, at first glance, seemingly unrelated to it, disappearing without a trace in the bustle of everyday life, modernity, absorbed by itself, were interconnected. “The Old Man” is a novel about passing people and time passing, disappearing, ending with them. The characters in the novel lose the feeling of being part of that endless thread that the hero of “Another Life” spoke about. This thread, it turns out, breaks not with the end of life, but with the disappearance of memory of the past.
After the writer's death in 1980 His novel “Time and Place” and the short story “The Overturned House” were published. In 1987 The magazine "Friendship of Peoples" published the novel "Disappearance", which Trifonov wrote for many years and did not have time to finish.
“A Time and a Place” begins with the question: “Do we need to remember?” Trifonov's latest works are the answer to this question. The writer defined “Time and Place” as a “novel of self-awareness.” Latest books therefore turned out to be more autobiographical than their predecessors. The narrative in them, entering new psychological and moral layers, acquired a freer form.
Starting with stories 1960s- in almost 15 years - Trifonov turned out to be one of the founders of a special trend in modern Russian literature - the so-called. urban prose in which he created his own world. His books are united not so much by common townspeople characters passing from one to another, but by thoughts and views on the life of both the heroes and the author. The main task Literature Trifonov considered the reflection of the phenomenon of life and the phenomenon of time in their relationship, expressed in the fate of a person.
In the 60–70s of the twentieth century, a new phenomenon arose in Russian literature, called “urban prose.” The term arose in connection with the publication and wide recognition of the stories of Yuri Trifonov. M. Chulaki, S. Esin, V. Tokareva, I. Shtemler, A. Bitov, the Strugatsky brothers, V. Makanin, D. Granin and others also worked in the genre of urban prose. In the works of urban prose authors, the heroes were townspeople burdened with everyday life, moral and psychological problems, generated, among other things, by the high pace of urban life. The problem of loneliness of an individual in a crowd, covered higher education terry philistinism. Works of urban prose are characterized by deep psychologism, an appeal to intellectual, ideological and philosophical problems of the time, and a search for answers to “eternal” questions. The authors explore the intelligentsia layer of the population, drowning in the “quagmire of everyday life.”
Creative activity Yuri Trifonov falls on the post-war years. The author’s impressions of student life are reflected in his first novel “Students,” which was awarded the State Prize. At the age of twenty-five, Trifonov became famous. The author himself, however, pointed out weak spots in this work.
In 1959, a collection of short stories “Under the Sun” and a novel “Quenching Thirst” were published, the events of which took place during the construction of an irrigation canal in Turkmenistan. The writer already spoke about quenching spiritual thirst.
For more than twenty years, Trifonov worked as a sports correspondent, wrote many stories on sports topics: “Games at Twilight,” “At the End of the Season,” and created scripts for feature films and documentaries.
The stories “Exchange”, “Preliminary Results”, “Long Farewell”, “Another Life” formed the so-called “Moscow” or “urban” cycle. They were immediately called a phenomenal phenomenon in Russian literature, because Trifonov described people in everyday life, and made heroes of the then intelligentsia. The writer withstood attacks from critics who accused him of “petty topics.” The choice of topic was especially unusual against the backdrop of the books that existed at that time about glorious exploits and labor achievements, the heroes of which were ideally positive, purposeful and unshakable. It seemed to many critics that it was dangerous blasphemy that the writer dared to reveal internal changes in the moral character of many intellectuals and pointed out the lack of high motives, sincerity, and decency in their souls. By and large, Trifonov poses the question of what intelligence is and whether we have an intelligentsia.
Many of Trifonov’s heroes, formally, by education, belonging to the intelligentsia, never became intelligent people in terms of spiritual improvement. They have diplomas, in society they play the role of cultured people, but in everyday life, at home, where there is no need to pretend, their spiritual callousness, thirst for profit, sometimes criminal lack of will, and moral dishonesty are exposed. Using the technique of self-characterization, the writer in internal monologues shows the true essence of his characters: the inability to resist circumstances, to defend one’s opinion, spiritual deafness or aggressive self-confidence. As we get to know the characters in the stories, a true picture of the state of mind emerges before us Soviet people and moral criteria of the intelligentsia.
Trifonov’s prose is distinguished by a high concentration of thoughts and emotions, a kind of “density” of writing, which allows the author to say a lot between the lines behind seemingly everyday, even banal subjects.
In The Long Goodbye, a young actress ponders whether she should continue, overpowering herself, to date a prominent playwright. In “Preliminary Results,” translator Gennady Sergeevich is tormented by the consciousness of his guilt, having left his wife and adult son, who have long become spiritual strangers to him. Engineer Dmitriev from the story “Exchange,” under pressure from his overbearing wife, must persuade his own mother to “move in” with them after the doctors informed them that the elderly woman has cancer. The mother herself, not knowing anything, is extremely surprised by the sudden hot feelings on the part of her daughter-in-law. The measure of morality here is the vacated living space. Trifonov seems to ask the reader: “What would you do?”
Trifonov’s works force readers to take a stricter look at themselves, teach them to separate the important from the superficial, momentary, and show how heavy the retribution can be for neglecting the laws of conscience.
In the works of Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov, time froze as a kind of symbol conveyed through the moral destinies of his heroes. The writer’s unusual and extraordinary approach seemed “out of place”; he was reproached for the lack of social characters, clearly expressed author's position. Over time, it became clear that he predetermined the emergence of a whole series of writers, called by the critic V. Bondarenko “the generation of forty-year-olds” (he includes A. Kim, R. Kireev, A. Kurchatkin, V. Makanin). What is also important for them is not the event chronology of the past, but the history of the Soviet era, presented in a different dimension. Let us consider the originality of Trifonov’s works and show how the picture of the world is created in his texts.
The family environment was of particular importance for the development of the writer. The biography of his father, a former revolutionary, professional military man, one of the organizers of the Red Army, is unusual. He was a member of the Soviet elite and was the chairman of the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Like many other representatives Soviet nomenklatura In the late twenties, Valentin Trifonov received an apartment in the famous Moscow Government House, located on Bersenevskaya Embankment. In those years, constructivist buildings were built in which the dream of a new socialist way of life was supposed to come true. Therefore, all the premises necessary for life were located in a confined space: housing, a cinema, a theater, shops, a laundry, a dry cleaner, a closed dining room and a food distributor. In fact, a narrow world of new bureaucracy was created, which differed sharply from the everyday reality of Soviet people. During the years of Stalin's repressions, the family suffered; first the father and then the mother were arrested. The father was shot, and the Trifonov family became the family of a traitor to the Motherland. Childhood and youth impressions were reflected in a number of Trifonov’s works (“House on the Embankment,” 1976; “The Old Man,” 1978).
At the beginning of the war, Yu. Trifonov was evacuated to Central Asia. Having finished high school in Tashkent, he works at an aircraft factory as a mechanic, a shop manager, and is the editor of a factory magazine. After the arrest of his parents, he had to perform the duties of a laborer. Yu. Trifonov at the same time earned work experience, which allowed him, after returning to Moscow in 1944, to enter the Literary Institute. M. Gorky. There he studied at a creative seminar for prose writers with K. Paustovsky and K. Fedin, the latter recommended to A. Tvardovsky Trifonov’s diploma work - the story “ Students"(1950) - for publication in the magazine " New world" This is how the first major publication took place in a leading literary and artistic magazine.
Yu. Trifonov’s first story appeared in a large-circulation newspaper, and the first significant publication took place in the “Young Guard” almanac. It is interesting that Yu. Trifonov began with poetry, which he later practically never addressed. In “Students,” for example, the factory literary circle discusses the graphomaniac poems of the mechanic Belov. It is possible that the author used his own works here, which, as he recalled, he wrote “easily and extensively.”
The story “Students” was awarded the 3rd degree Stalin Prize in 1951. Among the laureates of that year were G. Abashidze, S. Antonov, S. Babaevsky, F. Gladkov, A. Malyshko, S. Marshak, G. Nikolaeva, A. Rybakov, S. Shchipachev. The composition turned out to be so representative that the young man immediately felt like a writer.
The content of the work met the challenges of the time. When the persecution of the intelligentsia continued, Y. Trifonov exposed the “cosmopolitanism” of the professoriate and its “adulation to the West.” Despite the clearly custom-made nature of the work, built according to the traditional counterpoint scheme - positive - bad guy(a front-line student and his non-combatant comrade, an accomplice in the spread of alien influences), the story reflected features that would become dominant for the subsequent work of Yu. Trifonov. He accurately, consistently and partly even pragmatically records his time. Detail plays an important role in his texts. But the features that later became business card writer, his metaphors and symbols.
In the spring of 1952, on a business trip for the magazine "New World", Yu. Trifonov left for Turkmenistan to collect material for his planned novel about the construction of the canal. However, after Stalin’s death, the construction site was mothballed and the publication of Trifonov’s work turned out to be irrelevant. Novel " Quenching your thirst", later translated into many languages, he would publish only in 1963.
Using the example of the history of the construction of the Karakum Canal, the author develops a form of “industrial novel”, the action of which takes place during the “thaw” of the late 1950s. Using elements of a panoramic novel, the writer makes his heroes representatives of different strata of society, workers, young intellectuals, recent graduates of institutes, engineers, journalists, and scientists. The author conveys the peculiarities of their thinking. The pathos of Trifonov’s work is largely determined by the atmosphere of the “thaw”, the expectation of fundamental changes in society. Having spoken out on the topic of the day, the author subsequently did not turn to the form of the industrial novel, focusing on other topics and problems. In the 1950s, he also wrote plays, film scripts, and essays.
Yu. Trifonov also fills the forced pause by writing stories, which became a kind of creative workshop for the writer. Later they compiled the collections " Under the sun"(1959) and " At the end of the season"(1961). Y. Trifonov practically wrote stories throughout his life. The texts published in the New World were included in the collection “ Cap with a large visor"(1969). The stories defined the problems of his work and formed his own style, specific, clear, without an abundance of metaphors and complex syntactic structures. The evolution was also manifested in the gradual reduction of the author’s place in the narrative; from an objective narrator he will turn into a commentator, and an internal assessment will appear in the form of the author’s voice.
The trip to Turkmenistan did not pass without a trace; after it, a series of stories also appeared, which included “ Doctor, student and Mitya», « Poppies», « The Last Hunt"and other works by Trifonov. The author first of all captures a unique exotic world with its own problems, unique people, and new landscapes. Even in the novel Impatience"we will meet a striking description of an oriental bazaar. True, the Tashkent bazaar of the war period is shown here, and the Babylonian pandemonium depicted by the author clearly reflects the spiritual essence of the city, which absorbed those evacuated from the central cities, and the wounded who were being treated, and who settled here; and those convicted on political charges who are unable to leave. The accuracy of what is depicted by the author is indirectly evidenced by the Tashkent landscapes in Dina Rubina’s novel “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” where similar phenomena are described.
The stories reveal the writer’s movement toward his own style; he records what he saw photographically, listing verbs indicating feelings: “I saw,” “I peered,” “I saw something else.” When conveying stories, Yu. Trifonov does not always avoid cliches and passing phrases: “Who hasn’t been there.” The turn to specific problems required the formation of one’s own language; it was about attempts to express one’s own worldview.
Later, enumeration (based on verbs of motion) began to participate in creating the dynamics of the action: “They jumped, ran, stumbled, dragged bundles in the gray chilling darkness.”
The author’s desire for accurate descriptions is also evident in the documentary narration “ Firelight"(1965). The writer turns to the biography of father V. A. Trifonov, forgotten and little-known pages of the Civil War and Revolution are recreated. The documentary basis did not exclude for Yu. Trifonov the possibility of turning to complex and difficult phenomena of time, focusing on psychological conflicts.
The theme of the old Bolsheviks will be continued in the novel “ Old man", as if complementing the commissioned book published in the series "Fiery Revolutionaries" in Politizdat (in the 1960s - 1970s, V. Aksenov, A. Gladilin, V. Voinovich, B. Okudzhava participated in it). Participation in such projects for many writers became the only opportunity for self-expression and income. Material independence made it possible to survive and write other texts on the table.
The concept of “intolerance” becomes for him a kind of sign of relationships. In artistic form, Yu. Trifonov explored the concept that interested him (which became a phenomenon for him) using the example of the fate of Narodnaya Volya member Andrei Zhelyabov in the novel “ Impatience(1973), also written for the Fiery Revolutionaries series. Despite the clearly stated task, Yu. Trifonov tries to express his own view, identifying the Narodnaya Volya members as the direct predecessors of the Bolshevik revolution. The elevation of terrorists to the rank of heroes affected the fate of the work, which was not reprinted for a long time. The author denotes his position as follows: “Nothing but events, facts, names, titles, years, minus hours, days, decades, centuries, millennia, endlessly disappearing in the stream, observed by me...”. Immersed in history, the writer resurrects not only the setting, but also the habits, thoughts, and appearance of people of the 1870s.
It is interesting that the approach of Yu. Trifonov partly coincides with the position of Yu. Davydov, who made the era of the Narodnaya Volya dominant in his work. Documentary precision allowed both authors to make the voices of time sound. Far from modern reader the historical period is made interesting due to the active involvement of the reader in the events; he is forced to make his judgments, hurry after the heroes striving to fulfill their mission, and not be late.
It was only during the period of perestroika that the last, unfinished novel by Yu. Trifonov was released. " Disappearance"(published in 1987), in which the writer even more openly turns to the traditional depiction of the childhood and youth of a hero from a privileged and then repressed family of active supporters of the 1917 revolution in his prose.
In the 1960s, Yu. Trifonov became interested in sports topics and published collections of stories and essays on sports topics: At the end of the season"(1961), " Torches on Flaminio"(1965), " Twilight Games x" (1970). He also writes the script " Hockey players", which was made into a film in 1965. Many remember that, despite his slightly old-fashioned appearance, glasses, and stoop, Yu. Trifonov was a passionate fan. He played excellent chess and repeatedly traveled to major foreign competitions as a commentator.
In the early 1970s, stories began to appear that determined Yu. Trifonov’s personality as a writer: “ Exchange», Preliminary results», « Long goodbye», « Another life», « House on the embankment" It is in them that readers truly discover Yu. Trifonov. Critics call these works “Moscow” or “city” stories. The writer himself intended to call his cycle “Sandy Streets.” Perhaps, by doing so, he wanted to localize his works in space, pointing to one of the Moscow districts. It is the description of modern Moscow life that is at the center of his works.
Another feature of the cycle is related to the topographical accuracy of the descriptions. The words of the hero are not accidental: Houses on the embankment”, who thinks of the city “as a living being in need of help.” The huge city topos is described in detail, in detail and over a huge time period: it tells about wartime and peacetime, pre-war and modern Moscow. The subject of the image is both the center, Bersenevskaya Embankment, and the recent outskirts - Neskuchny Garden and Serebryany Bor. The last place always remained the most favorite, they passed here early years writer, therefore in his texts he is represented as a kind of chronotope.
The spatio-temporal system of Yu. Trifonov’s works is special; he does not strive for a chronological arrangement of his events; rather, the movement of the plot is determined by biographical time, which is why he is considered eternal themes life and death, love and hate, illness and health. The mediation of temporal characteristics allows us to focus not only on the everyday component, but also to pay special attention to landscape sketches. In addition to enumeration, the author uses repetition and gradation; the function of the landscape is descriptive and characterological. The landscape allows us to indicate the place and time of action.
The author's retrospective view was manifested in the two closing “Moscow” stories. " Another life"(1975) is dedicated to the fate of a historian seeking to obtain information about employees of the Tsarist secret police, among whom were later prominent figures of the party and the Soviet state. In search of the truth, he puts himself in danger. Often introducing the figure of a historian, Yu. Trifonov transfers to her the right to evaluate and make judgments instead of the author (Sergei Troitsky from “Another Life”, Pavel Evgrafovich Letunov from “The Old Man”).
Hence the attention to symbolism, which manifests itself starting from the name. Naming the second story " House on the embankment(1976) accurately reflects its content and turns into symbolic image time. Curious about the reasons for the change public consciousness, the writer seeks to explore the psychology of those who stood at the origins of the new society. Gradually, he goes back into the depths of time, presenting one of the few views at that time on the fate of an individual during the period of totalitarianism.
Yuri Trifonov was born on August 28, 1925 in Moscow in the family of Bolshevik, party and military leader Valentin Andreevich Trifonov.
His father went through exile and hard labor, participated in the armed uprising in Rostov, in the organization of the Red Guard in Petrograd in 1917, in the civil war, in 1918 he saved the gold reserves of the republic and worked in the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. For the future writer, his father was a true example of a revolutionary and a human being. Trifonov's mother, Evgenia Abramovna Lurie, was a livestock specialist, then an economic engineer. Subsequently, she became a children's writer - Evgenia Tayurina.
My father’s brother, Evgeniy Andreevich, an army commander and hero of the Civil War, was also a writer and published under the pseudonym E. Brazhnev. Grandmother T.A. Slovatinskaya, a representative of the “old guard” of the Bolsheviks, lived with the Trifonov family. Both mother and grandmother had a great influence on the upbringing of the future writer.
In 1932, the Trifonov family moved to the Government House, which more than forty years later became known throughout the world as the “House on the Embankment”, thanks to the title of Trifonov’s story. In 1937, the writer's father and uncle were arrested and were soon shot (uncle in 1937, father in 1938). For a twelve-year-old boy, the arrest of his father, of whose innocence he was sure, was a real tragedy. Yuri Trifonov’s mother was also repressed and served a prison sentence in Karlag. Yuri and his sister and grandmother, evicted from the apartment of a government building, wandered and lived in poverty.
With the outbreak of war, Trifonov was evacuated to Tashkent, and in 1943 he returned to Moscow. The “son of an enemy of the people” could not enter any university, and got a job at a military factory. Having received the necessary work experience, in 1944, still working at the plant, he entered the Literary Institute. Trifonov said about his admission to the Literary Institute: “Two school notebooks with poems and translations seemed to me such a solid application that there could be no two opinions - I would be accepted to the poetry seminar. I will become a poet... As an appendage, completely optional, I added to my poetic creations a short story, about twelve pages long, under the title - unconsciously stolen - “The Death of a Hero”... A month passed, and I came to Tverskoy Boulevard for an answer. The secretary of the correspondence department said: “The poems are so-so, but the chairman of the admissions committee, Fedin, liked the story... you can be accepted into the prose department.” A strange thing happened: the next minute I forgot about poetry and never wrote again in my life!” At the insistence of Fedin, Trifonov was later transferred to the full-time department of the institute, from which he graduated in 1949.
In 1949, Trifonov married opera singer, soloist Bolshoi Theater Nina Alekseevna Nelina. In 1951, Trifonov and Nelina had a daughter, Olga.
Trifonov’s diploma work, the story “Students,” written by him between 1949 and 1950, brought him fame. It was published in the literary magazine "New World" and awarded the Stalin Prize in 1951. The writer himself subsequently treated his first story coldly. Despite the artificiality of the main conflict (an ideologically devout professor and a cosmopolitan professor), the story carried the beginnings of the main qualities of Trifonov’s prose - the authenticity of life, the comprehension of human psychology through the everyday.
In the spring of 1952, Trifonov went on a business trip to the Karakum Desert, on the route of the Main Turkmen Canal, and for many years, Yuri Trifonov’s writing life was connected with Turkmenistan. In 1959, a cycle of stories and essays “Under the Sun” appeared, in which the features of Trifonov’s own style were first identified. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Trifonov wrote the stories “Bakko”, “Glasses”, “The Loneliness of Klych Durda” and other stories.
In 1963, the novel “Quenching Thirst” was published, materials for which he collected during the construction of the Turkmen Canal, but the author himself was not satisfied with this novel, and in the following years Trifonov was engaged in writing sports stories and reports. Trifonov loved sports and, being a passionate fan, wrote enthusiastically about it.
Konstantin Vanshenkin recalled: “Yuri Trifonov lived in the mid-fifties on Verkhnyaya Maslovka, near the Dynamo stadium. I started going there. He played up (football jargon) for CDKA for personal reasons, also because of Bobrov. On the podium I met the hardcore Spartak players: A. Arbuzov, I. Shtok, and then aspiring football statistician K. Yesenin. They convinced him that Spartak was better. Rare case".
For 18 years, the writer was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Physical Culture and Sports”, wrote several scripts for documentaries and feature films about sport. Trifonov became one of the Russian founders of the psychological story about sports and athletes.
The rehabilitation of Valentin Trifonov in 1955 made it possible for Yuri to write the documentary story “Glimmer of the Fire” based on his father’s surviving archive. This story about the bloody events on the Don, published in 1965, became Trifonov’s main work in those years.
In 1966, Nina Nelina died suddenly, and in 1968, Alla Pastukhova, editor of the “Fiery Revolutionaries” series of Politizdat, became Trifonov’s second wife.
In 1969, the story “Exchange” appeared, later - in 1970, the story “Preliminary Results” was published, in 1971 - “The Long Farewell”, and in 1975 - “Another Life”. These stories told about love and family relationships. In the focus of Trifonov’s artistic quest, the problem constantly arose moral choice, which a person is forced to do even in the simplest everyday situations. During the period of Brezhnev’s timelessness, the writer was able to show how an intelligent, talented person (the hero of the story “Another Life”, historian Sergei Troitsky), who did not want to compromise his own decency, was suffocating in this toxic atmosphere. Official criticism accused the author of the absence of a positive beginning, of the fact that Trifonov’s prose stands “on the sidelines of life,” far from great achievements and the struggle for the ideals of a “bright future.”
The writer Boris Pankin recalled about Yuri Trifonov: “It so happened that after my article “Not in a circle, in a spiral”, published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” in the late 70s, Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov every new thing, large or small in volume, he brought it to me with an autograph, or even in manuscript, as happened, for example, with the novel “Time and Place.” He was selling these new things so thickly that one day I couldn’t resist and asked with a feeling of healthy, white, according to Robert Rozhdestvensky, envy how he managed to produce such masterpieces one after another with such iron regularity. He looked at me thoughtfully, chewed his full Negro lips - which he always did before maintaining a dialogue - touched his round horn-rimmed glasses, straightened the buttoned collar of his shirt without a tie and said, starting with the word “here”: “Here, you heard, Probably the saying goes: every dog has its time to bark. And it passes quickly...”
In 1973, Trifonov published the novel “Impatience” about the Narodnaya Volya, published in Politizdat in the series “Fiery Revolutionaries”. There were few censored notes in Trifonov’s works. The writer was convinced that talent manifests itself in the ability to say everything the author wants to say and not be mutilated by censorship.
Trifonov actively opposed the decision of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union to remove its leading employees I.I. Vinogradov, A. Kondratovich, V.Ya. Lakshin from the editorial board of the New World, knowing full well that, first of all, this was a blow to the editor-in-chief of the magazine Alexander Tvardovsky, for whom Trifonov had the deepest respect.
In 1975, Trifonov married writer Olga Miroshnichenko.
In the 1970s, Trifonov’s work was highly appreciated by Western critics and publishers. Each A new book quickly translated and published.
In 1976, the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” published Trifonov’s story “The House on the Embankment,” one of the most notable poignant works of the 1970s. In the story, Trifonov made a deep psychological analysis of the nature of fear, the nature and degradation of people under the yoke of a totalitarian system. Justification by time and circumstances is typical for many Trifonov characters. The author saw the reasons for betrayal and moral decline in the fear into which the entire country was plunged after Stalin's terror. Addressing different periods Russian history, the writer showed the courage of man and his weakness, his greatness and baseness, not only at the breaking points, but also in everyday life. Trifonov matched different eras, arranged a “confrontation” for different generations - grandfathers and grandchildren, fathers and children, discovering historical overlaps, trying to see a person in the most dramatic moments of his life - at the moment of moral choice.
For three years, “The House on the Embankment” was not included in any of the book collections, and in the meantime Trifonov was working on the novel “The Old Man” about the bloody events on the Don in 1918. “The Old Man” appeared in 1978 in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples”.
Writer Boris Pankin recalled: “Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka almost simultaneously The Master and Margarita and The House on the Embankment.” VAAP, which I was then in charge of, immediately ceded the rights to stage these works in Lyubimov’s interpretation to many foreign theatrical agencies. For everyone. A “memo” immediately fell on the desk of Suslov, the second person in the Communist Party, in which the VAAP was accused of promoting ideologically vicious works to the West.
There,” Mikhalandrev (this was his “underground” nickname) reasoned at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, where I was also summoned, looking into the anonymous address, “naked women are flying around the stage. And also this play, what’s it called, “Government House”...
“A house on the embankment,” one of the assistants carefully suggested to him.
Yes, “Government House,” Suslov repeated. - They decided to stir up something old for something.
I tried to reduce the matter to jurisdiction. They say that the Geneva Convention does not provide for the refusal to foreign partners to assign rights to the works of Soviet authors.
They in the West will pay millions for this,” Suslov snapped, “but we don’t trade in ideology.”
A week later, a brigade from the Party Control Committee headed by a certain Petrova, who had previously achieved the expulsion of Len Karpinsky from the party, came to the VAAP.
I told Yuri Valentinovich about this when we were sitting with him over bowls of scalding piti soup in the Baku restaurant, which was on what was then Gorky Street. “The eye sees, but the tooth numbs,” Trifonov said, either comforting me or asking me, after chewing his lips according to his custom. And he turned out to be right, because Petrova was soon sent into retirement “for exceeding her authority.”
In March 1981, Yuri Trifonov was hospitalized. On March 26, he underwent surgery - a kidney was removed. On March 28, while waiting for the round, Trifonov shaved, ate and picked up the Literary Gazette for March 25, where an interview with him was published. At that moment, a blood clot broke loose, and Trifonov died instantly from pulmonary embolism.
Trifonov’s confessional novel “Time and Place,” in which the history of the country was conveyed through the fates of writers, was not published during Trifonov’s lifetime. It was published after the writer's death in 1982 with significant censorship removals. The cycle of stories “The Overturned House,” in which Trifonov spoke about his life with undisguised farewell tragedy, also saw the light of day after the author’s death, in 1982.
The writer himself defined the novel “Time and Place” as a “novel of self-awareness.” The hero of the novel, the writer Antipov, is tested for moral fortitude throughout his life, in which one can discern the thread of fate chosen by him in different eras, in various difficult life situations. The writer sought to bring together the times that he himself witnessed: the end of the 1930s, the war, the post-war period, the thaw, modernity.
Trifonov’s creativity and personality occupy a special place not only in Russian literature of the 20th century, but also in public life.
In 1980, at the suggestion of Heinrich Böll, Trifonov was nominated for Nobel Prize. The chances were very great, but the death of the writer in March 1981 crossed them out. Trifonov’s novel “Disappearance” was published posthumously in 1987.
Yuri Trifonov was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
About Yuri Trifonov was filmed documentary"About you and me."
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Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov
Used materials:
– Olga Romanovna, how did you meet Yuri Trifonov?
– Oddly enough, the first meeting took place when I was still going to kindergarten, and Trifonov passed by every day on his way to work. I remember it because of the black tube case in which the wall newspaper lay. In those days, he was a simple worker, a pipe drawer at a military factory, and at the same time edited a wall newspaper. I couldn't know this. We met at the Central House of Writers restaurant. In those years there was a wonderful atmosphere, inexpensive and tasty. Yuri Valentinovich frequented this restaurant. He was quite famous, Firelight had already been released. Trifonov looked at me gloomily and angrily. Then he explained that he was annoyed by my happy appearance.
The romance proceeded dramatically, we converged and diverged. It was difficult for me to leave my husband; it would be better if we lived poorly with him. The feeling of guilt was so heavy that it poisoned the first months of Yuri Valentinovich’s and my life. The visit to the registry office for the divorce procedure was also difficult for him. I saw this and said: “Okay, God be with him, not yet.” But I was pregnant, and soon we got married. He lived in an apartment on Peschanaya Street, which he loved very much. It seemed very wretched to me, but I understood that I would have to pick him out of it, like a Japanese samurai. One day a guest from America came to us and remarked: “Losers live in such an apartment.”
- It was difficult to live with famous writer?
“It’s surprisingly easy with him.” A very tolerant person who does not claim other people’s living space. He had an amazing sense of humor, was amazingly funny, we sometimes laughed until we had Homeric fits. And then, he was trained to do housework like this: to wash the dishes and run to the store for kefir. True, I spoiled him quite quickly - it’s not good to send Trifonov himself to the laundry! The buzzword back then was “somewhere,” and one day I started snatching the plates that he was going to wash out of his hands, and he said, “Stop it, somewhere I like it.”
– In Trifonov’s diaries and workbooks, which came out with your comments, I read that in the sixties he had to do odd jobs and get into debt.
– The debts were large. Then friends helped. Playwright Alexei Arbuzov often lent money. Life was not easy financially, and at times it was simply difficult. “I sometimes reached the ruble, don’t be afraid, it’s not scary,” he once told me, also at a difficult moment.
– Was he easy with money?
“I remember a relative of his who was going to Spain came to see us. She said that she would go to work in the vineyards and buy jeans for her son and husband. Yuri followed me into the kitchen and asked: “Olya, do we have currency in the house? Give it to her." "All?" “That’s it,” he said firmly. When we were abroad, he always warned: “We must bring gifts to all relatives and friends, the fact that we are here with you is already a gift.”
– Yuri Trifonov was already famous when he wrote “The House on the Embankment.” And it seems to me that this story alone is enough for a writer’s fame. And yet, at that time it was not easy to get such a book through.
– The story’s publication history is very complicated. “The House on the Embankment” was published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” only thanks to the wisdom of the editor-in-chief Sergei Baruzdin. The story was not included in the book, which included both “Exchange” and “Preliminary Results”. Markov made sharp criticism at the writers' congress, who then went to Suslov for reinforcements. And Suslov uttered a mysterious phrase: “We all then walked on the edge of a knife,” and this meant permission.
– Were you familiar with Vladimir Vysotsky?
– Yes, we met at the Taganka Theater. Trifonov loved Vysotsky and admired him. For him, he was always Vladimir Semenovich, the only person whom he, who could not stand “Brezhnev’s” kisses, could hug and kiss when he met. We saw that behind the appearance of a shirtless guy there was a very smart and educated man. Once we met in the same company New Year. One thousand nine hundred and eighty was the last year in Vysotsky’s life. Our dacha neighbors gathered stars. There was Tarkovsky, Vysotsky and Marina Vladi. People who loved each other dearly felt disconnected for some reason. Everything is like cotton wool. It seems to me that the reason was that the food was too luxurious - a large meal, unusual for those times. Food humiliated and separated. After all, many were simply poor then. Tarkovsky was bored and amused himself by taking Polaroid pictures of the dog from strange angles. We were sitting next to Vladimir Semenovich, I saw a guitar in the corner, I really wanted him to sing. I awkwardly flattered him: “It would be nice to call Vysotsky, he would sing.” And suddenly he said very seriously and quietly: “Ol, but no one here except you wants this.” It was true.
– Tell me, did Yuri Valentinovich have any enemies?
- More likely, envious people. “Wow,” he wondered, “I live in the world, and someone hates me.” He considered vindictiveness to be the worst human quality. There was such a case. His story “The Overturned House” was in the magazine “New World”. One of the chapters describes our house, drunken movers basking in the sun near the Diet store. And when Yuri Valentinovich came to Diet to order, he was asked to come to the director. “How could you? – There were tears in the director’s voice. “I’ll be fired from my job for this!” It turned out that one writer was not too lazy to come to the store and tell him that soon the whole country would read about the movers. After this story, Trifonov refused to go for orders, however, he was always embarrassed to stand in a special line and did not like privileges. Never asked for anything.
– Even when I was seriously ill...
“He had kidney cancer, but that’s not what he died from.” Surgeon Lopatkin performed the operation brilliantly; death occurred as a result of a postoperative complication - embolism. This is a blood clot. At that time, the necessary medications and filters that caught blood clots were already available, but not in that hospital. There wasn't even analgin there. I begged to transfer him to another, wore expensive French perfume, money. They took the perfume and pushed the envelopes away.
– Wasn’t it possible to have the operation abroad?
- Can. When Yuri Valentinovich was on a business trip to Sicily, he was examined by a doctor. He said that he didn’t like the tests and suggested going to the clinic. I found out all this later. When I was told the diagnosis in Moscow, I went to the secretariat of the Writers' Union to get Trifonov's international passport. “Where will you get the money for the operation?” - they asked me. I replied that we have friends abroad who are ready to help. In addition, Western publishing houses signed contracts with Trifonov for a future book without even asking for the title. “The doctors here are very good,” they told me and refused to issue me a passport.
They were buried according to the usual literary fund category at the Kuntsevo cemetery, which was then deserted. On the pillow they carried his only order - “Badge of Honor”.
Newspapers reported the date of Yuri Trifonov's funeral after the funeral. The authorities feared unrest. Central house writers, where the civil funeral service took place, was surrounded by a tight circle of police, but the crowds still came. In the evening, a student called Olga Romanovna and said in a trembling voice: “We, MSU students, want to say goodbye...” “Already buried.”
Interviewed by Elena SVETLOVA
Years of life: from 08/28/1925 to 03/28/1981
Soviet writer, translator, prose writer, publicist, screenwriter. He is one of the key figures in literature of the Soviet period. Representative of the existential trend in realism.
Born in Moscow, into a family rich in revolutionary traditions. Father: revolutionary, chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, mother: livestock specialist, engineer-economist. The writer’s maternal grandmother and grandfather, as well as his uncle (father’s brother), were closely associated with the revolution. Yura's childhood was more or less cloudless, but in 1937 Trifonov's father was arrested (shot in 1938, rehabilitated in 1955), and in 1938 his mother was arrested. Trifonov and his sister were left in the care of their grandmother.
At the beginning of the war, the family was evacuated to Tashkent, where Trifonov graduated from high school. In 1943 he returned to Moscow, worked at an aircraft factory as a mechanic, shop manager, and editor of the factory's large-circulation magazine. In 1944 he entered the correspondence department of the Literary Institute. Gorky. He transferred to the full-time department in 1947, having completed the required work experience at the plant (as a member of the family of an enemy of the people).
In 1949 he graduated from the Literary Institute, having defended the story “Students” as his thesis. The story receives the Stalin Prize (1951), and Yu. Trifonov unexpectedly becomes famous. In 1949 he married singer Nina Nelina (died in 1966), and in 1951 a daughter was born from this marriage. In 1952 he left for Turkmenistan on the route of the Main Turkmen Canal, and middle Asia enters the life and work of the writer for a long time.
The 50s and 60s become a time of creative search. At this time, the writer published a number of stories and the novel “Quenching Thirst,” with which (like his first work) he remained dissatisfied. In 1968 he married Alla Pastukhova.
In 1969, with the story “Exchange,” a cycle of “Moscow” or “city” stories began, which also included “Preliminary Results,” “The Long Farewell,” “Another Life,” and “The House on the Embankment.” The works of 1969-1981 became the main ones in creative heritage writer.
In 1975 he married for the third time. Wife Olga Romanovna Miroshnichenko (Trifonova). In 1979, a son was born from the marriage.
In 1981, Trifonov was diagnosed with kidney cancer and on March 28, 1981, he died from postoperative complications (embolism).
In 1932-1938, the Trifonov family lived in the famous Government House at 2 Serafimovicha Street. The house was intended for the families of the party elite and later became known (thanks to Trifonov’s story) as the “House on the Embankment.” Now the house houses a museum, the director of which is Yu. Trifonova’s widow, Olga Trifonova.
The novel Quenching Thirst was nominated for the Lenin Prize, but never received the award.
B. Okudzhava dedicated one of his poems to Trifonov (Let's exclaim...)
Trifonov's widow called the film adaptation of "The Long Farewell" a film made "very well and very adequately." And she was completely dissatisfied with the film adaptation of “The House on the Embankment,” saying that “the script authors read a different book.”
Writer's Awards
Third degree for the story "Student" (1951)
Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1980)
Bibliography
Novels and stories
Students (1950)
Quenching Thirst (1963)
Works included in the cycle "Moscow stories"