2023-05-24 17:54:39
– Nadezhda Ilyinichna, honestly, I envy you: you talked with Brodsky! Tell me how it was?
– It was May 1991, I came to the USA for a conference of Russian and American Slavists and Americanists. It was a project that came up with the dean of Moscow State University Yasen Nikolaevich Zasursky and professor at Princeton University Ellen Chansiz.
On the last day before departure, the translator of Tsvetaeva and Tatyana Tolstaya, Jamie Gambrell, and her friend Sasha Sumerkin, also a translator and Joseph Brodsky’s secretary, invited our small group to visit Brodsky. Of course, we gladly agreed.
– Did you go with Zasursky?
– No. Yasen Nikolaevich at that time met with his American writer friends. By the way, as we quickly realized, he not only knew American literature better than many Americans, but also visited Faulkner, Steinbeck, Doctorow and many others.
And we (teachers Galina Belaya, Elena Skarlygina and I, at that time an employee of the Literature Department of Ogonyok, who had just defended her dissertation) went to
Brodsky.
Remember the lines: “We came to visit the poet”? This is how it happened.
It was a clear morning, the birds were singing. Sasha Sumerkin was waiting for us on the porch of a pretty English-style mansion on Morton Street in Soho. Jamie hurried to press the button for the desired apartment. All three of us, without saying a word, looked at each other, as if we wanted to capture a crucial moment.
– How did Brodsky meet you?
He was waiting for us, he was very happy. He immediately sat me down in the living room, which was quite smoky, immediately took out a cold bottle of champagne, deftly opened it, filled the glasses, then held the cork in his teeth for a long time, distributing napkins and opening a box of cookies.
What impression did he make on you then?
– Jeans, shirt. A little disheveled, agitated, like a teenager. In general, he seemed at that time most of all like a teenager who could not wait to read the next sonnet of Mary Stuart, which he had just composed … There were few visitors from the USSR – there was still the USSR – he had few.
– And what were you talking about then?
– He talked more with Galina Andreevna about common acquaintances. He spoke about his work at the Library of Congress, which he had recently taken up as Poet Laureate. And about how he lectures, how he heals a sick heart, how he conceived a series of cheap books by American poets…
The unforgettable intonation that sounds today in its halls of the Akhmatova Museum is captured in films, records – we listened to it in a spacious bright room filled with smoke and joyful surprise of recognition.
He asked about Moscow, about poetry evenings, about the April Writers’ Association, about Ogonyok and Korotich… He smoked incessantly, lighting a new cigarette from the previous one.
— Didn’t you then persuaded him to print something in the USSR?
– Here is how it was. At some point, I plucked up the nerve and asked if he wanted to submit something for publication in Ogonyok. Joseph Alexandrovich froze.
“Will I be published in Ogonyok?” – and the surprised eyebrow of a teenager. – “Surely”.
I was carrying home the manuscript of the new poem “Vertumn”. It was published two weeks later. This was Brodsky’s first publication in the USSR after his departure.
Did he see her?
– Yes. The next time I brought him a publication. Then we were again with Jamie and Sasha, who was already ill, discussing the latest news, the recent putsch (Jamie and I were together in Moscow for three days in August), literary battles, publications … Brodsky’s wife, Maria, was with us, very young and beautiful. I remember she brought tea, sat down in the pose of an ancient pensive goddess on the floor and did not move the whole time we talked, an hour or so. Jamie was friends with Brodsky and Maria, she was one of the few, besides Sasha, close and constant friends. Like Mikhail Baryshnikov. Baryshnikov came to Brodsky when I came a year later to interview for a magazine about the contemporary literary process. He was a little tipsy and really wanted to take part in the conversation. The interview turned out to be very funny, Brodsky constantly switched from literary subjects to economic ones, he enthusiastically spoke about the need to develop farming in Russia, reforms in agriculture, recalled Stolypin. And Baryshnikov enthusiastically commented on literary novelties and recent publications. Only many years later did I understand why the poet was so worried about the state of affairs in agriculture.
– Why?
“Because he spent a year and a half in exile in the countryside. I understood this when I found myself in Norinskaya, that very remote Arkhangelsk village where Brodsky lived. Norinskaya is now a museum, lovingly made by Leningrad artists and friends of the poet, tourists go there, among the exhibits is the publication in the regional newspaper of two poems, “Autumn” and “Tractors at Dawn”, and voice recording – the editor-in-chief tells how she decided to print these verses…
– Is it true that another famous poet, Andrei Voznesensky, suspected you of a special relationship with Brodsky?
– Our short meetings with Brodsky really did not go unnoticed. More than once or twice Andrei Voznesensky, also the author of Ogonyok (and a good friend of my husband at that time), periodically reminded me of them pointedly. And he said – well, if we are in America at the same time, I will find you at Joseph …
Brodsky has been gone for a long time. There is no magnificent Galina Andreevna Belaya, Sasha, Jamie, Lena suddenly died.
But the memory of our meetings, the champagne cork, the lock of hair thrown back from the forehead and the surprised look of a teenager challenging the stars and fate does not weaken.
– Who is the American who was “convicted” in connection with Brodsky?
— My friend is a professor of Russian literature at American Drew University named Carol Yuland. Five years ago, she unexpectedly found her name in a new biography of Brodsky. She came with students to Moscow for the holidays, went to a bookstore and bought a book by Vladimir Bondarenko in a small series of ZhZL. This book, with nervous notes in pencil, she brought me the same evening, rushing in incredible excitement, leaving the students to walk around our capital on their own. In the marked paragraphs, it was said that in New York Brodsky met for two years with a student of Slavic studies, Carol Yuland, who was very worried about their breakup. Several poems were dedicated to this girl and their relationship, which the author also analyzed.
— So it was?
– I never met Brodsky! Carol exclaimed. Of course I knew him! But all that time I was with my husband, we had a little daughter, my whole life is a university and a house! I was terribly tired and never cheated on my husband!
Quite quickly we managed to restore, as it seemed to us, the real cause of what happened. The author of the biography in the small ZHZL series, unlike the author of Brodsky’s “big biography” in the same publishing house, the emigrant poet Lev Losev, did not go into the details of his hero’s New York life, the book is mainly written on Russian material. Most likely, he heard about Brodsky’s affair with a student at Columbia University. There really was a romance, and the girl was very worried, but then she got married and asked her friends never to mention her name in this regard. Friends did just that. Carol Yuland knew her well, she also studied at Columbia University and wrote about the poetry and cultural life of late Soviet Leningrad, spoke at conferences and published in scientific journals. So Bondarenko just got it mixed up.
– This story did not create problems for Carol?
– No. Carol’s husband and her already adult daughter reacted to what happened with humor. But Carol, as a serious scientist and a real American, wanted to restore justice. She wrote a courteous letter to the director of the publishing house asking him to correct the error and point out to the author that her name should not be used in such a context. After some time, having already returned home, she received a short note by e-mail from the author of the book, who expressed regret for his mistake. Carol wrote that she asked for the next edition to eliminate her and, if possible, inform the audience about her. She did not receive more letters from the Young Guard and calmed down. The following summer, she again came to Russia with students, and besides, she was already working on a book about the history of the unique series of ZhZL biographies (the book was recently published, this is the first fundamental work on this unique series, invented by the publisher Pavlenkov before the revolution and subsequently continued by Gorky) . Of course, in the very first days in Moscow, she entered the Young Guard store on Sushchevskaya Street. By that time, Bondarenko’s book had gained fame, the author, in contrast to most researchers and critics, presented the Nobel laureate not as a victim of the regime, but as a patriot and sovereign, not devoid of sympathy for imperial practices. So it is not surprising that the publishing house released a new edition. Carol immediately bought the book. And – again I saw the story of my unhappy romance with a Russian poet! I rushed to write to the publisher again, but the answer was silence.
Did she sue?
No, it goes against her principles. She began to talk about this case at conferences. Meanwhile, some friends shrugged their shoulders after hearing about her battle for justice – but in fact, what’s wrong with her having an affair? Brodsky twisted them enough, someone is proud of his whole life even a fleeting acquaintance.
This is where the covid epidemic started. The friend continues to hope that the publishing house will correct the mistake, at least in the third edition, and that the poet’s biography will not include this fake. Meanwhile, at the university, where she taught for almost thirty years, history began to acquire apocrypha. Recently, she heard students proudly tell their peers: “You know, we have such a cool university, we have a professor who has been dating Brodsky himself for two years!” And future researchers of Russian literature many years later will most likely write about the novel of the Nobel laureate with the young Slavist Carol and compare the details of her real life with lines supposedly dedicated to her.
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