I was born in an artistic family in Moscow, and my childhood was full of fairy tales. When I was 3 years old, my family moved to the School of Painting and Sculpture. At a concert, I was held by my mother and met Tolstoy. Since then, I have the same memory and consciousness as an adult. I was bathed in artistic atmosphere day and night, and I showed my talent and interest in music since I was a child, and I was praised and guided by musician scriabin. Later, I found my own shortcomings, resolutely gave up music, turned to study philosophy, and finally chose literature. 19 13 I finished my first book of poetry. When the first world war broke out, I got an exemption certificate because of my leg disease, and I have written many poems and novels since then. I have participated in the "Kalldahl Da" art group and met many artists and writers. Russian poet Brock and German poet Rilke had a great influence on me. Mayakovski and I met because of hostility, and finally parted ways. Zvetayeva is a poet and friend I admire. Like Mayakovski, she died of suicide. I can't forget two Georgian poets: Ashvili and Tabidze.

selected works

I still clearly remember the night described by Rogoff. At night, I was awakened by a sweet, lascivious pain, which I have never tasted before. I cried and cried in pain and fear. But my tears were drowned by the music. When the trio that woke me up finished playing, my crying was heard. The curtain that divided the room in two was pulled open, and I lay behind it. Mom came, and she leaned over my head and coaxed me quickly. Probably took me out to meet the guests, maybe I saw the living room through the open door. The smoke in the living room is ethereal, and the candles are flashing their eyelashes, as if the smoke stung their eyes. Candlelight illuminates the red panels of violins and cellos. Grand piano looks black. Men's dresses look black, too. Women put on skirts and show their shoulders, just like flowers sticking out of baskets on naming day. Two or three old people's white hair was mixed with clouds of smoke. One of them, whom I knew very well later, often met. He is the painter NiNi Nigai. The image of another old man has been with me all my life, just like most people, especially because my father drew illustrations for his works, went to his house as a passerby and sincerely admired him, so that our whole family has infiltrated his spirit. He is Leo nikolayevich (Tolstoy).

Why do I cry so much? Why do I remember the pain until today? At that time, I was used to the voice of grand piano at home, and my mother played the piano very well. I think the sound of the grand piano is an inseparable part of music itself. The sound of strings, especially when they are played indoors, is very harsh to me and makes me uneasy, as if there were cries for help and bad news from ventilation window.

That winter, about two people died-anton rubinstein and Tchaikovsky. They seem to be playing Tchaikovsky's famous trio.

This night is like the dividing line between my childhood without memory and my later adolescence. Since then, I have been able to remember, and my consciousness has worked like an adult's consciousness, and there has never been a long interval or mistake.

However, lying in the corner is not a mountain, but a wrinkled little old man, Tolstoy's little old man. He has described dozens of such little old men and scattered them in his pages. Small fir trees are planted everywhere in this place. The setting sun projected four oblique beams of light into the room, casting a cross shadow of a huge window lattice and a small cross like a child of some small fir trees in the corner where the body was parked.

On that day, the town in front of Astabovo Station became a gathering place for journalists from all over the world, and it was noisy. The snack bar in the railway station is booming, and the waiters are too busy to meet the customers' requirements. They trotted out the tender bloody steaks. Beer flows like a river.

Tolstoy's two sons, iria and Andrei, are at the railway station. Sergei Livovich came to see the Holy Spirit by train. Tolstoy's body will be transported from here to Jasnaya Polaina.

College students and young people sang the song "Always Remember", carried the coffin through the yard and garden of the station, walked to the train in front of the platform and put it in the van. The crowd gathered on the platform took off their hats and sang again, and the train slowly left in the direction of Tula.

Tolstoy naturally quieted down. Like a ronin, he quieted down by the main traffic road in Russia at that time, but the hero and heroine in his works continued to run and spin on this main road. They tore open the window and peeped at the insignificant halfway station. They don't know, those eyes that observe their lives, embrace their eyes with their eyes, and let them live forever. It is here that they are closed forever.

If we choose one trait from every writer, such as lermontov's strong * * *, Chutchev's multi-level connotation, Chekhov's poetry, Nikolai Nikolai Gogol's talent and Dostoevsky's imagination, what attribute should we choose if Tolstoy is limited to one trait?

The main quality of this man who talks about morality, advocates equality and the rule of law is that he is a unique person and has reached absurd novelty. The legal system he advocated is aimed at everyone, not conniving at anyone, and not allowing anyone to be an exception.

He has a skill at any time in his life. He is good at observing various phenomena in an all-encompassing and prominent essay at a moment of complete cutting. However, this kind of observation ability can only be possessed occasionally when we are young, or when we take back all the happiness, or when we win great victories in our hearts.

If we want to observe like this, our eyes need to be controlled by * * *. It is this * * * that can illuminate an object with its own flash, thus enhancing the clarity of the object.

Tolstoy has always cherished this * * *, creative and intuitive * * *. It was in this case that everything he saw was original and fresh, and he re-examined and liked his first observation. The truth he saw is so contrary to our habits that it even makes us feel strange. However, Tolstoy is not looking for this strangeness, nor pursuing it as an end, nor revealing it in his works as a writer's means.

I'm not going to describe my relationship with Mayakovski. We were never best friends. His confession was exaggerated. His view of my work has been distorted.

He doesn't like 1905 and Captain Schmidt, and thinks it is wrong for me to write these two works. He likes two books, namely, Overcoming Obstacles and My Sister.

I'm not going to state the process of each meeting and the reasons for our differences. I want to try my best to give Mayakovski a general evaluation and talk about his significance. Of course, these two questions will have my own subjective color and prejudice.

Pick the main ones and talk about them in advance. We don't understand his inner pain before he committed suicide. Too much physical torture, people may lose their minds at any time, and the pain of being abused is too great to stand. This feeling itself will push people to the end. However, a person who has been destroyed by the executioner does not mean that he has been destroyed. When he is frantic with pain, he still exists in his own doomsday, and his past still belongs to him. He can also recall the past, and if he wants, he can help him with memories in the face of death.

When a person decides to commit suicide, he expresses despair to himself, abandons the past, declares himself bankrupt, and thinks his memory is useless. These memories can no longer approach this person, save him and support him. The internal continuity is destroyed and the individual ends. Perhaps, not out of abiding by the decision, but because I couldn't stand the trouble of not knowing who it belonged to, the pain that no one felt pain, and the futile and desperate expectation, I finally ended my life.

I think Mayakovski shot himself because he was aloof, because he condemned something on himself or around him, which was incompatible with his self-esteem. Ye Saining hanged himself. He didn't seriously consider the consequences. Deep down in his heart, he thought-who knows, maybe this is not the end, there is another one thousand, and the situation will be ambiguous. Ma Lina Zvetayeva spent her whole life working to avoid daily chores. When she found it unbearable to do so, she had to give up this voluntary activity for her son for a while and look around with sober eyes. At this time, she found her eyes in a mess, beyond her creative ability, stagnant, unaccustomed and lifeless. She hid in panic and was at a loss in the face of terror. I don't think Paul Ashvili can solve any problems. It seems to be confused by Shigalev's activities in 1937. At night, he looked at his sleeping daughter and imagined that he would be ashamed to look at her again. The next morning, he went to some friends and smashed his skull with a shotgun. I think Fadev walked out of various political entanglements with his guilty smile. At the last moment before shooting, he said goodbye to himself with this smile. He might say something like, "Well, it's over. Farewell, Sasha. "

However, their pain is indescribable, and their pain has turned sadness into a heart disease. Their talents are admirable and their personalities unforgettable. In addition, let's bow our heads to their suffering with sympathy!

Get down to business. 19 14, in a cafe in Arbat Street, there should be a conflict between two literary and art groups. Bobrov and I are on our side. The other side originally planned to be tretyakov and Sershevich, but they also brought Mayakovski.

To my surprise, I saw the young man in the corridor of No.5 Middle School. He is two classes below me in school, and I met him in the lounge of the symphony hall. He often appears in front of me at halftime.

Shortly before the meeting, one of his later fans showed me a copy of Mayakovski's early works published in the newspaper. At that time, the man not only didn't understand his future god, but also showed me his things indignantly in a sarcastic tone, thinking that this was obviously a nonsense of mediocrity. But I like those poems very much. This is his earliest shining work, which was later included in Ordinary Niu Jiao.

Now we are sitting in a cafe, and the author of this poem attracts me as much as his poem. In front of me is a beautiful young man with a gloomy face, a voice like a hymn of a big sacrifice, and a pair of boxers' fists, which are clever. He is a figure between A. Grin's mythical hero and Spanish matador.

It can be seen at a glance that he is beautiful, smart and talented. Maybe he has superhuman talent-this is not his main quality, but his main quality is iron inner self-control, the heritage or foundation of noble tolerance, and a sense of responsibility, which makes him not allow himself to be another way, not so beautiful, not so smart and not so talented.

His decisive spirit and fluffy long hair brushed by five fingers remind me of the comprehensive image of young terrorists in Dostoevsky's novels-underground workers, younger people from other provinces.

Other counties don't always lag behind the capital, and it's not good for them. When several big cities are going downhill, remote corners are sometimes saved by old-fashioned charities there. In this way, Mayakovski brought a belief to the world of tango and skating rink from the far south Caucasus forest region, where he was born. The belief that Russian education can only be revolutionary is still deeply rooted in inland areas.

The untidy artistic demeanor just embellishes the natural appearance of this young man. He pretended to be like that with relish and played that role, which made his huge mind and body look a little rough and loose and made him a subversive and bohemian artist.

In the last few years of Mayakovski's life, no one's poems existed at that time, his own poems did not exist, and other people's poems did not exist; At that time, Ye Saining hanged himself; At that time, in a word, literature stagnated, because the beginning of The Hall of Silence was also a poem, and so were the early writings of Pierniak and Babel, Fielding and Vsevolod Ivanov. In those years, brilliant and talented comrades, who had no distractions and were not confused by anything, were the main pillars of his friends and ambitions.

As for me, I have completely parted ways with him. I broke up with Mayakovski for the following reasons. I have announced that I am quitting the Lev editorial department and I am no longer one of them, but my name is still printed on the list of colleagues. Therefore, I wrote a strongly worded letter to Mayakovski, which must have angered him.

Earlier, when I was still dominated by his fiery feelings and the magic of his inner strength, when I was still influenced by his great creativity and ability, and he gave me warmth, I gave him the following words in the inscription of the book Life, My Sister:

You have devoted yourself to studying China's balance of payments,

Dealing with the tragedy of the Economic Commission,

You, like a flying Dutch singer,

You can sing poetry in any field!

I know that the path you have taken cannot be imitated.

But how can I get it from your sincere journey

take you to

A pampered place.

There are two famous sayings about the times. Life is getting better and better, and life is getting more and more enjoyable. Mayakovski was and still is the best and most talented poet of his time. The second sentence made me write a letter in person, thanking the author of this sentence, because these two sentences made me get rid of the flattery of the role and appeared in the 1930s and before the writers' congress. I love my life and am satisfied with it. I don't need to gild it. I can't imagine life without secrets, life without being noticed, and life behind the window glass.

Mayakovski's works were forcibly promoted, just as potatoes were promoted in the yekaterina era. This is his second death. He is not responsible for this death.

1965438+In July 2007, ehrenburg was entrusted by Brusov and found me. So I met this clever writer, whose temperament is completely opposite to mine-he is capable and cheerful.

At that time, political exiles began to flood into China. At that time, these people, and others, caught up with the war abroad and were forbidden to leave the country. Andre Bailey is back from Switzerland. Ehrenburg is back, too.

Ehrenburg told me about Zvetayeva, full of praise. He also showed me her poems. At the beginning of the revolution, at a fund-raising party, I heard her recite poems with others. During the military period, I went to see her one winter. I told her something trivial, and she replied with something irrelevant. I was not used to Zvetayeva's voice at that time.

At that time, my hearing was spoiled by strange avoidance and the destruction of idioms around me. I can't hear any normal sounds. I often forget that the language itself, even without fancy elements, has certain content and significance.

It is precisely because of the harmony of Zvetayeva's poems that the meaning of the poems is clear and definite. It is precisely because her poems have only advantages and no disadvantages that they become the resistance when I accept them, which makes me unable to understand its essence. What I am looking for everywhere is not substance, but irrelevant wit.

I underestimated Zvetayeva for a long time. Similarly, for different reasons, I underestimated many others-Bagritski, Hlebnikov, Mangerli Shtam and gumilyov.

As I have said, there are only two kinds of young people who are not good at expressing their ideas intelligently and regard nonsense as a virtue and a necessary condition for originality. That is, Azeyev and Zvetayeva are still talking like normal people and writing in classical language and style.

Suddenly, both of them gave up what they were good at. Asiyev was fascinated by Khlebnikov's example. And Zvetayeva has changed in her heart. But I have long been conquered by Zvetayeva, who is original and inherits the tradition before the change.

Her poems must be read intensively. When I did this, I was shown infinite purity and strength, which made me speechless. I've never seen anything like it. Let me make it simple! In addition to Ann Nenski and Brock, there is also Andrei Bielie, who is slightly restricted. The early Zvetayeva is a figure that all other symbolists, even their sum, can only dream of. I didn't say that against my will. While those people's vocabulary struggled in vain in the world of imaginary formulas and lifeless archaic characters, Zvetayeva broke through many difficulties and flew freely over the real creation. She easily completed the creative task with incomparable skill.

1922 In the spring, when she was already abroad, I bought a book, Mileage, a small collection of her poems in Moscow. There is a power in the form of Zvetayeva's lyric poems, which immediately conquered me. This is the form of her painstaking exploration. It is not soft, but concentrated and refined. Reading her poems will not make you feel breathless in every line, but will make you read the following poems continuously, which will develop in their own stages.

These characteristics make me feel kind, perhaps because we have the same influence, or have the same motivation in character formation, or family and music have the same function, and have the same starting point, purpose and hobbies.

I wrote a letter to Zvetayeva in Prague, full of praise and surprise, because I ignored her for so long and saw her so late. She answered my letter. We started writing letters to each other. By the mid-1920s, our correspondence was particularly frequent. At that time, her book Handicrafts had been published, and Moscow people also knew her manuscripts of long poems, which were large in scale, extensive in connotation, novel and extraordinary: The Last Poem and Poems of the Mountain and Rath. We became friends.

Zvetayeva is a woman, but she has a capable heart. She is decisive, resolute and unstoppable. In her life and creation, she greedily advanced, even as fierce as a beast, pursuing completeness and clarity. In this pursuit, she went very far and walked in front of others.

In addition to several works we know, she also wrote many works we don't know. These are some magnificent masterpieces, some of which adopt the style of Russian folk stories, and some adopt the themes of well-known historical legends and myths.

If these works can be published, it will be a great event and a great contribution to the motherland's poetry, and the motherland's poetry will be decorated with these late and timely gifts immediately.

I think Zvetayeva needs a thorough re-understanding, and waiting for her will be the highest recognition.

We are friends. I saved nearly a hundred of her replies. I have said that loss and loss occupy much space in my life, but I never thought that one day I would lose these carefully preserved and precious letters. Their disappearance is due to excessive concern.

During the war, I often went to visit my family members who were evacuated to other places. Scriabin Museum has a staff member. She worships Zvetayeva and is my good friend. She suggested that she should keep these letters, as well as some letters from my parents and Gorky and romain rolland. She locked all these letters in the museum safe. As for Zvetayeva's letter-she wouldn't let it go, and she didn't even believe in the solid wall of the safe.

She lives in the suburbs all the year round. When she comes back to her apartment every night, she always carries a suitcase with these letters in it. The next day, at dawn, she took it to work in town. That winter, she returned to her villa home after work, exhausted. On the way, in the Woods, she suddenly remembered that she had left her suitcase with letters in the carriage of the electric train. Zvetayeva's letter just left by car and never came back.

(translated by Ulan Khan)

Precautions:

"Shigalev" is the villain in Dostoevsky's novel The Demons, which is a metaphor for Ye Ruofu's crime of persecuting innocent intellectuals in 1937.

Sasha vujacic: Fadif (1901-1956) is the nickname of Alexander.

Make an appreciative comment

Pasternak wrote two autobiographical works in different periods. One was a security certificate written by 1920s, while People and Things: Autobiographical Essays was written by 1956, when the author was 66 years old. After most of his ups and downs, he became mature and steady, and his writing was more concise. But he never dreamed that he would face a bigger storm in the near future, that is, he would get all kinds of blows and humiliation suffered by Nobel Prize in Literature, just like the personal tragedy in the times shown in doctor zhivago, and he would become the protagonist of this tragedy. At this time, he can still recall the past calmly and peacefully, relive his life experience with the sensitivity of the poet, and pick up the fragments in his memory.

Although People and Things: Autobiographical Essays is an autobiography, as the author said in the Safety Protection Certificate, "I am not writing my own biography. I write about others and involve myself before I write about myself. " This essay autobiography also conforms to this feature. The author basically takes time and activity as clues. With the progress of writing, he gradually hid himself behind the scenes when describing his educational experience, social activities and ideological development, mainly describing the writers he interacted with or knew, analyzing their personalities and evaluating them. At the same time, he did not review his whole life experience, but intercepted some fragments and described the people and things that had an important influence on his thoughts. Pasternak called it an essay on people and things, which can be said to be very appropriate.

Pasternak used this autobiography to build an ideological stage, on which he presented a lot of outstanding performances of the times. He is not a director, but more like an announcer, threading a needle in it. He has been surrounded by many writers and artists since he was a child, and these celebrities can make a long list. With keen sense and infinite affection, he painted these characters for us with thrifty brushwork, such as musician scriabin, Austrian poet Rilke, Russian writers Brock, Gorky, Mr. Lai, ehrenburg, and Georgian poets Ashvili and Tabidze whom he could not forget. Through simple memories, these characters are lifelike in his works. Of course, in order to avoid repetition, some things mentioned in the first autobiography are briefly mentioned here. However, three writers occupy a very heavy weight in his life and memory, and their memories constitute a wonderful chapter in this autobiography. This is lev tolstoy, Mayakovski and Zvetayeva.

Pasternak traced his contacts with them and recorded some precious details and events, especially his accurate grasp and evaluation of them. He has an insight into human nature, is good at observing and experiencing, and can capture the essential level of human spirit through trivial matters and phenomena. Tolstoy undoubtedly played an important role in his life. He met Tolstoy when he was three years old. That incident prompted the author to awaken his self-consciousness, and then his consciousness left his childhood and entered youth. From the autobiographical point of view, this is the beginning of his real memory. Since then, Tolstoy's image has been accompanied by the growth of the author. After Tolstoy's death, he rushed to the scene to see off the Russian "soul" affectionately and described the situation of transporting Tolstoy's coffin at that time. His true record of Tolstoy's death made the scene enduring, and also showed his high grasp of Tolstoy's spirit: this is a struggling soul, and his confusion and contradictions are still spreading on the land of Russia; There is also his "unique absurd novelty", which is the source of his * * * and unique perspective. If he worships Tolstoy more, his evaluation of Mayakovski is equal. After comparing the changes of Mayakovski's poetic style in the early and late period, he pointed out that the tragedy of the poet's later period lies in that he was regarded as the revolutionary Mayakovski, and his poems were forcibly popularized, "just like the potatoes in yekaterina's era were popularized. This is his second death. " Poetry was regarded as a propaganda tool and a revolutionary slogan, and the poet lost his self and independent spirit, which constituted the fundamental factor of Mayakovski's tragic death. It is in this sense that we can understand Pasternak's special love and admiration for Zvetayeva. At first, he didn't appreciate her poems. Later, he was conquered by her "infinite purity and strength" because she represented the artist's independent spirit and artistic purity. This kind of uniqueness, integrity and clarity is what he advocates and is also the artistic concept he pursues all his life. Finally, like Ye Saining, Mayakovski, Ashvili and Fadev, Zvetayeva committed suicide because of despair and unbearable pain. Pasternak put them together and concentrated on a tragic suicide, which was shocking and the moral behind it was self-evident.

Although Pasternak didn't describe his life experience and ideological development directly and meticulously like the Safety Protection Certificate, we can clearly feel his emotional sustenance and ideological context through the characters and events he described. In this tragic era, after experiencing the storm of life, he no longer indulges in personal experiences, but closely combines his personal destiny with the times and highlights the characteristics of the times from these people, which is the fundamental reason for the tragic ending of the characters. As one of them, Pasternak clearly saw the desire for freedom and the spirit of independence when he recalled these ideological elites. At the same time, through their life experiences, they also deeply realized a kind of repressed and distorted power. His regret for Mayakovski's "second death" is a criticism of the loss of independence. Obviously, these nostalgic figures reflect the author's own personality and thoughts, namely, independent personality, pure artistic pursuit and generous humanitarian spirit. He is borrowing someone else's cup to water his block.

At the same time, the magic of thought is spread through beautiful words, and the combination of the two forms a fascinating space for the work. When writing this autobiography, Pasternak regretted it, and admitted that he had committed the common fault of "unnecessary affectation" when writing the Safety Protection Certificate, and some twists and turns were obscure and obscure. People and Things tries to change the style of the previous book and try to be more concentrated and concise. Although this autobiography has written many characters, there are not many stories and detailed descriptions. In many places, he just sketched with thick lines, leaving out complicated details. What he pursues is not the truth of details, but the substantial things in life, which is a great shock to people, and this mainly depends on the power of an idea, which is the impact of the tragedy of the times on the soul. The tempering of most of life has made Pasternak more calm and subtle, and his language is more powerful and impactful. But the pursuit of simplicity does not mean abstract life. As a talented poet who loves poetry all his life, Pasternak's poetry often overflows through delicate and vivid language flow. His unique perception of poetry and passionate experience of life are full of the poet's keen and intuitive images. Beautiful metaphors and wise words appear between the lines from time to time, which makes people feel the poetry shining everywhere. The rich tragic atmosphere also makes the tone of the work reveal heaviness and depression in liberation and calmness. Pasternak wants to get rid of the stereotyped stereotype and pursue the effect of touching people's hearts and "stopping the heart", which is his pursuit of the perfect combination of thought and art. Whether the work has achieved such an effect is left to the readers to judge.

(Liang Qingyi)