In fact, this acquaintance took place in 1940. Marina and I had very good relations. I met her in 1939 when she returned to native land . At the same time, a book of my translations from the Turkmen poet Kemine (XIX century) was published. I gave it to Tsvetaeva, she answered me with a letter in which there were many kind words about my translations. The story of Marina's dedication is as follows. The first line of one of my poems: "The table is set for six" - she took the epigraph to her poem, in which she reproached me for forgetting her, the seventh. Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva arrived in the USSR in a very serious condition, she was sure that her son would be killed, as it happened later. I loved her, but it was hard with her. She was too abrupt, too nervous. We often went to her favorite places - in Trekhprudny Lane, to the museum created by her father ... Marina was a difficult person. One day she came to Akhmatova. Anna Andreevna gave her a ring, and Marina Akhmatova - beads, green beads. They talked for a long time. Then Marina was about to leave, stopped at the door and suddenly said: “But all the same, Anna Andreevna, you are the most ordinary woman.” And she left. She was terribly unhappy, many were afraid of her. I'm also a bit. After all, she was a bit of a warlock. She would call me at 4 in the morning, very excited: “You know, I found your handkerchief in me!” “Why do you think it's mine? I have not had scarves with a mark for a long time. - “No, no, this is yours, it has the mark “A. T.". And I'll bring it to you now!" - "But ... Marina Ivanovna, it's 4 o'clock in the morning!" - "So what? I'm coming". And she came and brought me a handkerchief ... It really had the mark “A. T.". Tsvetaeva's last poem was written in response to my "I set the table for six ...". Marina's poem appeared after her death, it seems, in the Neva. For me it was like a voice from a coffin. © Arseniy Tarkovsky "Dotted" ************** The table is set for six, Roses and crystal, And among my guests Grief and sadness. And my father is with me, And my brother is with me. The hour passes. Finally, there is a knock at the door. Like twelve years ago, The hand is cold And the unfashionable blue silks rustle. And the wine rings from the darkness, And the glass sings: “How we loved you, How many years have passed!” My father will smile at me, Brother will pour wine, Give me a hand without rings, She will tell me: - My heels are in the dust, The braid has faded, And our voices are singing from under the ground. © Arseniy Tarkovsky *************** I keep repeating the first verse And I keep revising the word: - “I set the table for six ...” You forgot one thing - the seventh. It's sad for you six. On the faces - rain streams ... How could you forget at such a table the Seventh - the seventh ... Your guests are unhappy The crystal decanter is inactive. Sad for them, sad - himself, Uninvited - sadder than all. Gloomy and dull. Oh! do not eat or drink. - How could you forget the number? - How could you make a mistake in the account? How could you, how dare you not understand That there are six (two brothers, the third - You yourself - with your wife, father and mother) There are seven - since I am in the world! You set the table for six, But the world did not die out with six. What a scarecrow among the living - I want to be a ghost - with yours, (My own) ... Timid as a thief, Oh - without hurting a soul! - For an undelivered device I sit down uninvited, the seventh. Once! knocked over a glass! And all that longed to spill - All the salt from the eyes, all the blood from the wounds - From the tablecloth - onto the floorboards. And no coffin! Separation - no! The table is disenchanted, the house is awakened. Like death at a wedding dinner, I am life at dinner. ... No one: not a brother, not a son, not a husband, Not a friend - and yet I reproach: - You, who set the table for six - souls, You did not plant me - from the edge. © Marina Tsvetaeva
The meeting of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva and the poet-translator Arseny Tarkovsky refers to a difficult time after returning to the USSR from exile.
She did not experience such loneliness and anxiety even in the difficult post-revolutionary years in hungry Moscow. She is forced to wander with her son in foreign corners, complete uncertainty about the fate of the arrested Sergei Efron and her daughter, all her letters seem to be sent to nowhere, there is no answer to her cry of the soul. Many former acquaintances tend to switch sides when they meet unexpectedly, fearing that they will be suspected of sympathizing with the wife of the “enemy”.
The lack of funds and the opportunity to work, and this despite the fact that the father created the Museum of Fine Arts, books from the three libraries of the Tsvetaevs were donated to the Rumyantsev Museum, magnificent poems were written about Moscow, the homeland of M. Tsvetaeva. But in this new Moscow there is no place for her and her son. It was difficult, hard, unbearable ... - all these words are appropriate. But for the poet, always - above all troubles and misfortunes - is still the most terrible thing of all "emptiness of the heart." "Uninvited, seventh..."
When Arseniy Tarkovsky came to Moscow in 1925 to study, Marina Tsvetaeva had been living in the Czech Republic for three years. But her poems were well known to people interested in poetry. Her books could be found at book dealers, read or exchanged with friends. The young Arseniy Tarkovsky had great respect for Tsvetaeva as a master, master, and senior colleague. In the summer of 1939, Tarkovsky, together with his second wife Antonina Alexandrovna and her daughter Elena, lived in Checheno-Ingushetia, where he translated local poets. Behind him is an early bitter love for Maria Gustavovna Falz, later - a happy marriage to Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, the birth of two children in the family - Andrei and Marina, then leaving the family for Antonina Trenina out of passionate love ... He writes his own beautiful poems, but before the release of his first book, there are still years, so you have to earn a living by translations. Tarkovsky is not just a poet - a true poet. He could not help but read the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, he could not pass her by in his life. Marina Arsenievna writes that Arseny Aleksandrovich, who was born in 1934, gave her a name in honor of the poet Tsvetaeva.
The last years of Marina Tsvetaeva's life are well studied, but exact date her meeting with Arseny Tarkovsky is nowhere to be found. It is known that poems - translations of Tarkovsky Turkmen poet Kemine served as an occasion for acquaintance. The collection was signed for printing on September 12, 1940, and perhaps a month later it was published. The translation of Arseny Tarkovsky came to Marina Tsvetaeva, most likely through his close friend, translator Nina Gerasimovna Berner-Yakovleva. In her youth, she attended a literary and artistic circle on Bolshaya Dimitrovka, the owner of which was Bryusov. There she first saw Marina and Asya Tsvetaev, accompanied by Maximilian Voloshin.
From left to right: Elena Ottobaldovna Voloshina, Vera Efron, Sergei Efron, Marina Tsvetaeva,
Elizaveta Efron, Vladimir Sokolov, Maria Kudasheva, Mikhail Feldstein, Leonid Feinberg.
Koktebel, 1913.
A draft letter from Marina Ivanovna to Arseny Tarkovsky is known, written in Tsvetaeva's October notebook for 1940 and rewritten for someone by Ariadna Efron.
"Dear comrade. T. (...) Your translation is lovely. What can you do yourself? Because for another you can - everything. Find (love) - you will have words. Soon I will call you to visit - in the evening - to listen to poems (mine), from future book. So - give me your address so that the invitation does not wander - or lie - like this letter. I would very much ask you not to show this letter of mine to anyone, I am a solitary person, and I am writing - to you - why do you need others? (hands and eyes) and do not tell anyone that, one of these days, you should (breathe) my poems - soon I will have an open evening, then everyone will come. And now - I call you in a friendly way. Every manuscript is defenseless. I'm all handwritten. M (arina) Ts (vetaeva). This is a late letter from the "late" Tsvetaeva - very young in spirit.
Judging by the letter, it was addressed to a person already familiar, for whom sympathy arose. Tsvetaeva and Tarkovsky could have met both at some literary evening, and in the section of translators ... But Berner-Yakovleva claims that Tsvetaeva and Tarkovsky met precisely at her place. It is authentically known about their meeting in the house of Nina Gerasimovna in Telegraph lane. Maria Belkina recalls this room in the "communal apartment": "...green walls, where there was antique mahogany furniture and French leather-bound books on the shelves." And Marina Arsenievna Tarkovskaya, the daughter of the poet, in her recently published book “Shards of a Mirror” says: “I went there several times with my mother - my mother was friends with Nina Gerasimovna. The room was painted in "antique" green color- this is in the era of cheap wallpaper and expensive "silver" rolling. I remember that there was mahogany furniture - a bureau, a sofa and a slide filled with antique glass. Both the color of the walls and the furniture were very suitable for the hostess - a stately red-haired beauty, who was very good even in her mature years.
Nina Gerasimovna herself recalled: “They met in my house. I remember this day well. For some reason, I left the room. When I returned, they were sitting side by side on the couch. From their excited faces, I understood: it was the same with Duncan and Yesenin. They met, they jumped, they jumped. Poet to poet... They called each other, met, walked around Tsvetaeva's favorite places - Volkhonka, Arbat, Trekhprudny ... Once they met in line at the state ticket office. Those who saw them together noticed how Tsvetaeva changed in Tarkovsky's society. Marina Arsenievna writes: “The attitude of the pope towards Tsvetaeva does not change. He, already a mature poet, is still the same respectful student, she is for him an older friend and Master. To the poem "Cricket" (1940) in my father's notebook there is a postscript: "Reserved" in the second line - the epithet was invented by Marina Tsvetaeva, instead of mine, which she did not like "(I found my father's epithet -" funeral ")".
Once (1940), in the presence of Marina Ivanovna, Arseny Tarkovsky read his poem addressed to the dear departed people - father, brother, beloved woman Maria Gustavovna Faltz (the poems were written a few days before the anniversary of her death).
Tsvetaeva usually memorized other people's poems easily, from the very first reading. But in her response poem (March 6, 1941), she abandons the ballad style of Arseniy Tarkovsky, from the chorea, and writes in iambic, which gives the poems special strength and drama. Tsvetaeva calls those sitting at the table in her own way: Tarkovsky has a father, a brother, She and folklore “woe and sorrow”; Tsvetaeva: "Two brothers, the third - you yourself with your wife, father and mother." Marina Ivanovna did not understand - or did not want to understand - that his deceased beloved was coming to dinner with Tarkovsky. Maybe, knowing this, she would not have written these response verses to him, which sound not only as a reproach, but also as a hope for a turn for the better in their relationship. So far, she hasn't been invited to dinner.
I keep repeating the first verse
And I am forwarding the word:
"I set the table for six"...
You forgot one - the seventh.It's sad for you six.
On the faces - rain jets ...
How could you at such a table
Forget the seventh - the seventh ...Unhappy to your guests
The crystal decanter is inactive.
Sad for them, sad for himself,
Uninvited - all the sadder.Gloomy and dull.
Oh! do not eat or drink.
- How could you forget the number?
How could you count wrong?How could, how dare you not understand
That six (two brothers, the third -
You yourself - with your wife, father and mother)
There are seven - since I am in the world!You set the table for six
But the six of the world did not die out.
What a scarecrow among the living -
I want to be a ghost - with yours,(His) ... Timid as a thief,
Oh - not hurting a soul! -
For an undelivered device
I sit down uninvited, the seventh.Once! knocked over a glass!
And all that longed to spill -
All the salt from the eyes, all the blood from the wounds -
From the tablecloth to the floorboards.And no coffin! Separation - no!
The table is disenchanted, the house is awakened.
Like death for a wedding dinner
I am the life that came to supper.Nobody: not a brother, not a son, not a husband,
Not a friend - and yet I reproach:
- You, who set the table for six souls,
Who didn't plant me - on the edge.
An accurate and very terrible premonition of his fate.
It soon becomes clear that Arseny Alexandrovich avoids meeting her. In the spring of 1941, he did not even say hello to her at the book market in the Writers' Club. He is a man, he is a poet who prefers to love - much more than to receive love. In this respect, their poles coincided with Anna Akhmatova. And simply - both physically and emotionally - he could not devote more time to Marina Ivanovna than he did. He has a young wife and an adopted daughter, an ex-wife and two small children of his own, an old mother... Departed loved ones. Nevertheless, he is also sorry to lose friendship with Tsvetaeva:
Everything, everything connected, even the air itself
Around you - up to your very stars -
And the belt, and each of your stubborn
Elastic step and angular verse.You, not released on bail,
Free to burn and squander free,
Just think: there was no separation,
Closing like water, times.To the joy of the hand! For sadness, for years,
But if only you didn't leave again.
You are subject to deadly waters,
You don't have to separate them again.(First edition of the poem).
And again - an amazing bitter foreboding. Under the verses, the date is "March 16, 1941". The fact that there are poems dedicated to him, perhaps the last in the life of Tsvetaeva, Arseny Tarkovsky did not know then.
The war has begun. One day, Tsvetaeva and Tarkovsky met by chance on Arbat Square and came under bombardment. They hid in a bomb shelter. Marina Ivanovna was in a panic - swaying, she repeated the same phrase: "And he (the fascist - N.S.) goes on and on ...". Then - evacuation. Perhaps Tsvetaeva's fate would have turned out differently if Tarkovsky had left for Chistopol at the same time as her. But at first he accompanied his wife and adopted daughter there, and he himself was able to leave only on October 16. I learned about the death of Marina Ivanovna back in Moscow.
"I call - does not respond, Marina sleeps soundly,
Yelabuga, Yelabuga, cemetery clay..."
(1941)"Marina is washing clothes.
Effervescent foam in pride
Her working hands
Throw on a bare wall ... "
(1963)"How I'm afraid to forget you
And change in an instant
Straight phosphor thread
For doubling, tripling
Rhyme - and in your poem
Bury you again."
(1963)
He is a poet, he is young, he is torn apart by passions, he experiences a lot tragically ... And he loves Tsvetaeva - early, until 1917, and after - he claims - she ended like a poet ... Growing up, he leaves his youth and young Tsvetaeva, from her poetics farther and farther. Once, as the writer Elena Krishtof recalls, he asked aloud: “Who would explain to me why, the further, the more I leave Tsvetaeva’s poetry? ..” And he answered himself: “I will retell the explanation of one young woman. Twenty years old. She told me: you already lack strength for Tsvetaeva ... Perhaps she is right. At least in my case... Tsvetaeva for him too (like Anna Akhmatova - N.S.) was a Poet with a capital letter and even more. But all the memories of her, all her swirling, restless or better - depriving lines, all his debts to her - all this, taken together, he hid in the back room and threw the key into the river ...
Sometimes he bitterly reproached Tsvetaeva for something, said that he loved her (testimony of Benjamin the Blessed), often spoke of her tenderly ... Nevertheless, he read Tsvetaeva's poems less and less, but prose - with constant interest. Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev were constant companions of the poet. Always loved, but with big reservations, Blok and Pasternak. Over the years, he lost interest in Mandelstam. But perhaps most of all he moved away from Tsvetaeva. He said that he could not bear her "nervous fragmentation of sentences, constant screaming." Although she remained for Arseny Alexandrovich a great poet, but already without her former passion and love.
So. Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky. The last surge of Marina Tsvetaeva, the last attempt to save from the void... But: a human disengagement, a creative disengagement. Much did not take place, much was not destined to come true. However, they gave each other more than they did not give. Such human and poetic relationships are not forgotten. And yet this last meeting again turned out to be a "non-meeting" for Marina Ivanovna. That is, a new emptiness of the soul.
By the summer of 1941, the fire of her soul went out completely. No one managed (yes, in general, did not want to) support him. The fire of love went out - poems ceased to be written. Poems disappeared - the will to live weakened. And then the element of Death carried away Tsvetaeva.
Vladimir Faradzhiev says:
...I remember the winter of 1987. On television launched into production documentary"The death of Marina Tsvetaeva". As the author of the script, I see my task as an attempt to get to the bottom of the root cause of Tsvetaeva's voluntary departure from life. To do this, the director and I decided to turn to living witnesses of the life drama of the great Poet. In particular, to Arseny Tarkovsky, whose relationship with Tsvetaeva, already at the end of her earthly existence, is considered to be Marina's last romantic "splash".
Why couldn't Arseny Aleksandrovich say anything about Tsvetaeva? Perhaps partly because he read Marina's last poem only in 1982, after being published in the Ogonyok magazine, when he was already 75 years old. The eyewitnesses who saw him that day are unanimous in their assessment of the then state of mind of the poet, characterizing him in one word: catharsis.
Article by N. Savelva - moloko.ruspole.info/node/61, izcvetaevoy.ru
Marina Tsvetaeva and Arseny Tarkovsky first saw each other in the fall of 1940 at the house of their mutual friend, translator Nina Gerasimovna Berner-Yakovleva. Nina Gerasimovna later recalled: “They met at my house. I remember this day well. For some reason I left the room. When I returned, they were sitting side by side on the sofa. We met, rushed up, rushed in. Poet to poet..."
The age difference was 15 years (she was 47, he was 32), but Tarkovsky and Tsvetaeva liked each other and talked all evening. Fascinated by their common interests, they left the translator's house together.
They say that there was an affair between them, although Tarkovsky himself never spoke on this topic, but what the poet has in his soul, then pours out in verse. Tarkovsky dedicated several heart-piercing poems to Marina Ivanovna.
Everything, everything connected, even the air itself
Around you - up to your very stars -
And the belt, and each of your stubborn
Elastic step and angular verse.
The bitterness of the loss and senselessness of what Marina had done to herself, Arseny Alexandrovich was deeply worried. Upon learning of her death in Yelabuga, he wrote in a poem:
Where is your thundering wave
Stuffy, black sea surf,
You, winged falling star,
What have you done to yourself?
Perhaps Marina Ivanovna was Tarkovsky's love and muse, but he did not reveal the secrets of his heart to anyone, as he hid the name of his first lover, Maria Gustavovna Falz.
Maria Falts ... a smart, beautiful, educated widow, a little older than Arseny. Their love was mutual, but the lovers' meetings were interrupted when Tarkovsky left to study in Moscow in 1925. Judging by the dates of the poems written after dating their beloved, they met in 1926 and 1929.
At the last meeting, Tarkovsky and Maria agreed not to meet again: he was already married to Vishnyakova (1928), she said she was getting married. Maria Falts died on August 5, 1932 from a serious illness, but Arseniy Alexandrovich remembered her all his life and remembered the date of her death.
Once, a few days before the next mournful date, Tarkovsky wrote a poem "The table is set for six." In the poem, he mentioned himself and dead, but beloved and unforgettable people: Maria Falz, father and brother; the fifth and sixth in the poem were grief and sorrow.
The table is laid for six -
Roses and crystal...
And among my guests -
Woe and sadness.
And my father is with me
And my brother is with me.
The hour passes. Finally
There is a knock at the door.
Like twelve years ago
Cold hand
And the unfashionable make noise
Blue silks.
And the wine sings from the darkness
And the glass chimes
"How we loved you,
How many years have passed."
Father smiles at me
Brother pour wine
Give me a hand without rings
She will tell me:
"My heels are in the dust,
braid faded,
And they sound from under the ground
Our voices."
Tarkovsky read some of his poems to Tsvetaeva "in secret", perhaps he read her the poem "The table is laid for six." The date of writing under the poem is not worth it, but it is known that it was written in 1940 on the eve of the mournful date of the death of Maria Falz.
This poem made a strong impression on Tsvetaeva and painfully stirred her soul in love. Marina Ivanovna believed that she could also take a place at the poet's table, and if a long-dead woman was already invited to the table, then she, alive, and even more so, has the right to this.
Marina felt the poem as a betrayal, she felt deceived, abandoned and unnecessary to anyone.
On March 6, 1941, from the depths of her broken heart, the lines of a response poem surfaced:
I repeat the first verse
And I rewrite the word:
- "I set the table for six" ...
You forgot one - the seventh.
It's sad for you six.
On the faces - rain jets ...
How could you at such a table
Forget the seventh - the seventh ...
Unhappy to your guests
The crystal decanter is inactive.
Sad for them, sad for himself,
Not called - all the sadder.
Gloomy and not bright.
Oh! do not eat or drink.
- How could you forget the number?
How could you count wrong?
How could, how dare you not understand
That six (two brothers, the third -
You yourself - with your wife, father and mother)
There are seven - since I am in the world!
You set the table for six
But the six of the world did not die out.
What a scarecrow among the living -
I want to be a ghost - with yours,
(His) ... Timid as a thief,
Oh - not hurting a soul! --
For an undelivered device
I sit down uninvited, the seventh.
Once! knocked over a glass!
And all that longed to spill -
All the salt from the eyes, all the blood from the wounds -
From the tablecloth to the floorboards.
And no coffin! Separation - no!
The table is disenchanted, the house is awakened.
Like death for a wedding dinner
I am the life that came to supper.
Nobody: not a brother, not a son, not a husband,
Not a friend - and yet I reproach:
- You, who set the table for six souls,
Who didn't plant me - on the edge.
On August 8, 1941, Marina and her son George left for evacuation. Perhaps one of the reasons for leaving Moscow was the cooling of relations with Tarkovsky: he began to avoid personal meetings with Tsvetaeva, although his feelings for her remained unchanged.
The daughter of Arseny Tarkovsky Marina, who is also his biographer, wrote about her father's relationship with Tsvetaeva:
"Marina Ivanovna throughout her life needed the presence of a friend next to her, a person who would understand her. This gave her some kind of support, nourished her as a poet, revived her feelings. Sometimes she tried to completely capture a person in her captivity. And That's the kind of person my dad became for a while."
And further:
"Dad was passionate about Tsvetaeva, first of all, as a poet, she was a master for him. He could not respond to her ardent friendship. Because he was a family man. Once, when Tsvetaeva and Tarkovsky and his wife were at a book fair, he did not approach Marina Ivanovna It offended her. And so ended this relationship ... "
Arseny Tarkovsky read Marina Tsvetaeva's poem "Everything repeating the first verse" only in 1982 in the magazine "Spark". The poem shocked the aged poet to the core. What he thought at the same time is unknown, but when he was once asked about Tsvetaeva, Tarkovsky replied: "She was terribly unhappy .... I loved her, but it was hard with her."
Tarkovsky has a famous cycle of poems dedicated to the great Russian poet Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva 1 .
The first thing that struck me in these beautiful poems was the author's sense of colossal guilt in front of his idol friend who had passed away ("Where best friend, where is my deity, where is the angel of wrath and righteousness?.. And what am I guilty of, what is my fault?").
There are 12 lines in Tarkovsky's poem "From the Old Notebook" (1939) - in them you involuntarily feel some kind of subtext, a legend:
Everything connected in reality - the air is the most
Around you to your very stars,
And the belt, and each of your stubborn
An elastic step, and an angular verse.
You are not bailed out
Free to burn and squander free,
Just think: there was no separation,
Closing like water, times.
For joy - a hand, for sadness, for years!
Do not open adjacent wings again:
You are subject to deadly waters,
You don't have to separate them again.
Same fault - same legend! - in the other twelve lines dedicated to Tsvetaeva:
I hear, I'm not sleeping, you call me Marina,
Eat, Marina, you threaten me with a wing, Marina,
As the trumpets of angels sing over the city,
And only the bitterness of his incurable
You will take our poisoned bread to the Last Judgment,
How they took the ashes of their native at the walls of Jerusalem
Exiles when David wrote the psalms
And the enemy pitched his tents in Zion.
And in my ears is your death call,
Behind the black cloud your wing burns
By prophetic fire in the wild sky.
These guilt and legend are expressed most strongly, it seems to me, in his sonnet “Like twenty-two years ago” (1941-1963):
And whatever a person is, then death, and whatever
A blade of grass, then into the fire and under the heel,
But to me in this gnash and groan
Another death is more audible than all separations.
Why - arrow - I did not burn in the bosom
Conflagration? Why your semicircle
Didn't finish? Why am I in the palm of your hand
Life, how do I keep a swift? Where is the best friend
Where is my god, where is the angel of wrath
And righteousness? Blood on the right and left
Blood. But yours, bloodless, a hundredfold
Deadly. I'm thrown back by the string
Wars, and I won't close your eyes,
And what is my fault, what is my fault?
Several times in my presence he was asked questions about this perceived legend, about some special relationship between them: "Did you have an affair?" - to which he invariably answered: no, there was nothing 2 . But the legend, its feeling - remained, and it seems to me that he deliberately forced this legend - he, thirty-three years old, exemplarily brought up, addresses her, forty-eight years old, with a direct and firm "you", "Marina", "teach" ... And then - strangely: she committed suicide, suicide - she hanged herself, and he constantly talks in verse about disastrous waters, looking for her at the bottom ("choking, you go to the bottom") ... Some kind of mystery ....
Once or twice I asked the same question (about possible closeness) and got the same answer.
But once, by chance, I found myself in the center of a real unforgettable typhoon, which, if they are given female names, it is necessary to give a name - Marina.
That's what happened.
Handing Tarkovsky the photographs taken on September 26, 1982, he was especially warmly treated by him (to be honest, we never kissed so many times again). He was in some special emotional mood.
I have a feeling that on that day (judging by the captions on the photographs, it happened on October 12, 1982) I accidentally came to them at a key, turning point in his spiritual and personal life: I never saw him again in such a joyful and enlightened condition.
It turned out that I found out about this on the same evening, a few minutes before me he had Pavel Nerler, who brought him another, absolutely priceless gift: the publication in Ogonyok of Marina Tsvetaeva’s last poem (“I keep repeating the first verse ...” ), written from memory in response to his poem “The table is set for six - // roses and crystal, // And among my guests - grief and sadness ...” - and for him this previously unknown poem was an STUNNING SPIRITUAL EXPLOSION FROM THERE, A RELIGIOUS GIFT ONLY ON ITS UNDERSTANDING SUB-TEXT AND LANGUAGE, SOME SUPER-IMPORTANT CONFIRMATION AND FORGIVENESS.
This last poem by Tsvetaeva in her life was read and said many times that evening, and I would like the reader to also have the opportunity to read it at this moment.
But first, let's recall the original poem by the thirty-three-year-old Tarkovsky (1940):
Chalk and salt
Your native Slavyansk,
Tired of being alone
Sit with me...
The table is set for six
Roses and crystal
And among my guests
Woe and sadness.
And my father is with me
And my brother is with me.
The hour passes. Finally
There is a knock at the door.
Like twelve years ago
cold hand
And the unfashionable make noise
Blue silks.
And the wine rings from the darkness
And the glass sings:
"How we loved you,
How many years have passed!
Father smiles at me
Brother pour wine
Give me a hand without rings
She will tell me:
My heels are in the dust
braid faded,
And sing from underground
Our voices.
And this is how Marina Tsvetaeva answered excitedly and strongly, recalling his poems:
"I set the table for six..."
I keep repeating the first verse
And I am forwarding the word:
- "I set the table for six ..."
You forgot one - the seventh.
It's sad for you six.
On the faces - rain jets ...
How could you at such a table
Forget the seventh - the seventh ...
Unhappy for your guests
The crystal decanter is inactive.
Sad for them, sad for himself,
Uninvited - all the sadder.
Gloomy and dull.
Oh! do not eat or drink.
- How could you forget the number?
- How could you make a mistake in the account?
How could, how dare you not understand
That six (two brothers, the third -
You yourself - with your wife, father and mother)
There are seven - since I am in the world!
You set the table for six
But the six of the world did not die out.
What a scarecrow among the living -
I want to be a ghost - with yours,
(His) ... Timid as a thief,
Oh - not hurting a soul! -
For an undelivered device
I sit down uninvited, the seventh.
Once! knocked over a glass!
And all that longed to spill -
All the salt from the eyes, all the blood from the wounds -
From the tablecloth to the floorboards.
And no coffin! Separation - no!
The table is disenchanted, the house is awakened.
Like death for a wedding dinner
I am the life that came to supper.
Nobody: not a brother, not a son, not a husband,
Not a friend - and yet I reproach:
- You, who set the table for six souls,
Who didn't plant me - on the edge.
He was in a state of intense joyful shock, which can be called happiness or euphoria: at the same time happy, proud, kind, wise, tall and smart, and surprisingly relaxed, soft, like jelly, constantly smiling and touching trustingly, as if fearing that this was not a dream. , Tatyana Alekseevna and me, joked sweetly, enjoyed life, was ready to respond reverently to any question, to bestow a detailed answer. And in every word, like a child, there is an abyss of feelings... 4
Perhaps he needed to be filmed at that moment, but I was without my bags of photographic equipment (how could I know that this would be the main evening of his life), giving my spine a rare respite.
(1) The first special biographical study of the relationship between Tarkovsky and Tsvetaeva (whom Brodsky called the first poet of the 20th century) that I know of was carried out by Tsvetaeva's biographer M. Belkina. What follows is only my reader's view and my recollections of conversations with the poet on this subject.
(2) He said that somehow he came with young poets to read his poems to Mandelstam, and he drove them away. Another thing is Tsvetaeva: she singled him out, brought him closer, and they immediately developed friendly relations.
(3) Dates can drive anyone crazy. It seems that answering her with a poem dated March 16, 1941 “Everything is connected in reality ...” (quoted above) he thanks her for this poem dated March 6, 1941 - is not it?
(4) I read somewhere that in women the right and left hemispheres of the brain communicate with each other on four times more neurons than in men, and I thought that by raising him as a girl in childhood, his mother may have saved him in his childhood psyche from boyish coarsening and simplification, which was very useful to him as a poet.
Update as of December 30, 2006. It seemed to me that it would be right to put on this page as many materials as possible, reflecting the connections between Tarkovsky and Tsvetaeva. Here is a place from his memoirs:
My favorite poets are Tyutchev, Baratynsky, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Khodasevich. I met Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva in 1939. She arrived in a very serious condition, she was sure that her son would be killed, as it happened later. I loved her, but it was hard with her. She was too abrupt, too nervous. We often went to her favorite places - in Trekhprudny Lane, to the museum created by her father ... Marina was a difficult person. She said about herself and her sister: “Where I am sharp, Asya is impudent.” One day she came to Akhmatova. Anna Andreevna gave her a ring, and Marina Akhmatova - beads, green beads. They talked for a long time. Then Marina was about to leave, stopped at the door and suddenly said: “But all the same, Anna Andreevna, you are the most ordinary woman.” And she left.
She was terribly unhappy, many were afraid of her. Me too, a little. After all, she was a bit of a warlock.
She would call me at four in the morning, very excited: “You know, I found your handkerchief in me!” “Why do you think it's mine? I haven't had a handkerchief with a label for a long time." - “No, no, this is yours, it has the mark “A. T.". I'll bring it to you now!" - "But ... Marina Ivanovna, it's four in the morning!" - "So what? I'll be right there." And she came and brought me a handkerchief. It did indeed have an "A. T.".
Tsvetaeva's last poem was written in response to my "The table is laid for six ...". Marina's poem appeared after her death, it seems, in 1941, in the Neva. For me it was like a voice from a coffin.
Update as of May 10, 2007. Lately, I've been haunted by the thought
that Tarkovsky's original poem "The table is laid for six ..." could have been influenced
Akhmatov's poem "New Year's ballad":
New Year's ballad
And the month, bored in the cloudy haze,
He cast a dull glance into the chamber.
There are six appliances on the table.
And only one empty device.
This is my husband, and I, and my friends,
We welcome the New Year.
Why are my fingers covered in blood?
And wine, like poison, burns?
The owner, raising a full glass,
Was important and immovable:
“I drink to the land of my native glades,
in which we all lie!”
A friend, looking into my face
And remembering God the news of what,
He exclaimed: “And I am for her songs,
in which we all live!”
But the third, who knew nothing,
When he left the world
My thoughts in response
He said: "We must drink for that,
who is not with us."
End of 1922
A poem about a feast with dead friends was first published in the Russian Contemporary magazine, 1924, No. 1, p. 41. After the publication of this poem, the printing of A. Akhmatova's poems was interrupted for almost 15 years.
Update as of 07/01/2007. About the terrible cruelty and injustice of the fate of M. Tsvetaeva, Maria Petrovykh said best and briefly:
In memory of M.Ts.
They didn’t sip, they didn’t warm,
Your death could not be averted.
Inexcusable mortal sin
So it remained for everyone, for everyone.
God, how lonely you were!
Adapted to a life of cruel ...
Even your son in his short time -
How mercilessly cruel he was!
I don't have the strength to remember it.
Always at work, always in poverty,
Forever in flight... Oh, the poet's way!
The time is not the same and the people are not the same.
Update as of March 10, 2008. And, of course, we can't get away from another predecessor poem. Its author is Marina Tsvetaeva.
You go, you look like me
Eyes looking down.
I dropped them too!
Walker, stop!
Read - chicken blindness
And poppies typing a bouquet,
That they called me Marina
And how old was I.
Do not think that here is a grave,
That I will appear, threatening ...
I loved myself too much
Laugh when you can't!
And the blood rushed to the skin
And my curls curled ...
I was too, passerby!
Walker, stop!
Pick yourself a wild stalk
And a berry after him, -
Cemetery strawberries
There is no bigger and sweeter.
But just don't stand gloomy,
Lowering his head to his chest.
Think of me easily
It's easy to forget about me.
How the beam illuminates you!
You're covered in gold dust...
- And don't let it bother you.
My voice is from underground.
* The author of the memoirs is Alexander Nikolaevich Krivomazov, a graduate of MEPhI, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the New York Academy of Sciences, Director General of INTERSOCIOINFORM LLC. During the years of friendship (1981-1988) with the outstanding Russian poet and translator Arseniy Alexandrovich Tarkovsky (1907-1989) he took and published a large number of photographs of the poet; now he is preparing for publication a book of memoirs about Tarkovsky, two parts of which he published in 1997 and 1998: Krivomazov A.N. To the 90th anniversary of the poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky. - Computers in educational process, 1997, No. 6, p. 103-166; Krivomazov A.N. Memories of the poet Arseny Tarkovsky (part two). - Computers in the educational process, 1998, No. 6, p. 103-164.
Marina Tsvetaeva and Arseniy Tarkovsky.
"I hear, I'm not sleeping, call me, Marina..."
The last years of Marina Tsvetaeva's life are well studied, but there is no exact date of her meeting with Arseny Tarkovsky anywhere. It is known that the reason for the acquaintance was poetry - translations of Arseny Tarkovsky by the Turkmen poet Kemine.
A draft of a letter from Marina Ivanovna to Arseny Tarkovsky, written in Tsvetaeva's October notebook for 1940, is known.
"Dear Comrade T. (...)
Your translation is amazing. What can you do yourself? Because for another you can - everything. Find (love) - you will have words.
Soon I will call you to visit - in the evening - to listen to poems (mine), from a future book. So - give me your address so that the invitation does not wander - or lie - like this letter.
I would very much ask you not to show this letter of mine to anyone, I am a solitary person, and I am writing - to you - why do you need others? (hands and eyes) and do not tell anyone that, one of these days, you should (breathe) my poems - soon I will have an open evening, then everyone will come. And now - I call you in a friendly way.
Every manuscript is defenseless. I'm all handwritten.
M (arina) Ts (vetaeva)"
When Arseniy Tarkovsky came to Moscow in 1925 to study, Marina Tsvetaeva had been living in the Czech Republic for three years. But her poems were well known to people interested in poetry. Her books could be found at second-hand booksellers, read or exchanged with friends. The young Arseniy Tarkovsky had great respect for Tsvetaeva as a master, master, and senior colleague. Marina Arsenievna (the daughter of the poet) writes that Arseny Aleksandrovich, who was born in 1934, gave her a name in honor of the poet Tsvetaeva.
When they met, Marina Ivanovna had just returned from France.
Arseny Tarkovsky in that summer of 1939, together with his second wife Antonina Alexandrovna and her daughter Elena, lived in Checheno-Ingushetia, where he translated local poets. 
In the photo, Tarkovsky with Maria Tarkovskaya-Vishnyakova. With son Andrei.
Behind him is an early bitter love for Maria Gustavovna Falz, later - a happy marriage to Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, the birth of two children in the family - Andrei and Marina, then leaving the family for Antonina Alexandrovna Trenina out of passionate love ... He writes his own beautiful poems , but there are still years before the release of his first book, so you have to earn a living by translations. Tarkovsky is not just a poet - a true poet. He could not but read the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, he could not pass her by in his life.
Yes, a lot has been written about Tsvetaeva in the 1940s. It was difficult, hard, unbearable ... - all these words are appropriate. But for the poet, always - above all troubles and misfortunes - is still the most terrible thing of all is "emptiness of the heart."
"Uninvited, seventh..."
1940s. Meeting with Arseny Tarkovsky. They called each other, met, walked around Tsvetaeva's favorite places - Volkhonka, Arbat, Trekhprudny ... Once they met in line at the state ticket office. Those who saw them together noticed how Tsvetaeva changed in Tarkovsky's society. Marina Arsenievna writes: “The attitude of the pope to Tsvetaeva does not change. He, already a mature poet, is still the same respectful student, she is for him an older friend and Master. "in the second line - the epithet was invented by Marina Tsvetaeva, instead of mine, which she did not like" (I found my father's epithet - "funeral")".
Once, in the presence of Marina Ivanovna, Arseniy Tarkovsky read his poem addressed to the dear departed people - father, brother, beloved woman Maria Gustavovna Faltz (poems were written a few days before the anniversary of her death).
The table is set for six
Roses and crystal
And among my guests
Woe and sadness.
And my father is with me
And my brother is with me.
The hour passes. Finally
There is a knock at the door.
Like twelve years ago
cold hand
And the unfashionable make noise
Blue silks.
And the wine rings from the darkness
And the glass sings:
"How we loved you,
How many years have passed!
Father smiles at me
Brother pour wine
Give me a hand without rings
She will tell me:
- My heels are in the dust,
braid faded,
And sing from underground
Our voices.
Tsvetaeva usually memorized other people's poems easily, from the very first reading. But in her response poem, she abandons the ballad style of Arseny Tarkovsky, from the chorea, and writes in iambic, which gives the verses special strength and drama. Tsvetaeva calls those sitting at the table in her own way: Tarkovsky has a father, a brother, She and folklore "woe and sorrow"; Tsvetaeva: "Two brothers, the third - you yourself with your wife, father and mother." Marina Ivanovna did not understand - or did not want to understand - that his deceased beloved was coming to dinner with Tarkovsky. Maybe, knowing this, she would not have written these response verses to him, which sound not only as a reproach, but also as a hope for a turn for the better in their relationship. So far, she hasn't been invited to dinner.
I keep repeating the first verse
And I am forwarding the word:
"I set the table for six"...
You forgot one - the seventh.
It's sad for you six.
On the faces - rain jets ...
How could you at such a table
Forget the seventh - the seventh ...
Unhappy to your guests
The crystal decanter is inactive.
Sad for them, sad for himself,
Uninvited - all the sadder.
Gloomy and dull.
Oh! do not eat or drink.
- How could you forget the number?
How could you count wrong?
How could, how dare you not understand
That six (two brothers, the third -
You yourself - with your wife, father and mother)
There are seven - since I am in the world!
You set the table for six
But the six of the world did not die out.
What a scarecrow among the living -
I want to be a ghost - with yours,
(His)...
Timid as a thief
Oh - not hurting a soul! -
For an undelivered device
I sit down uninvited, the seventh.
Once! knocked over a glass!
And all that longed to spill -
All the salt from the eyes, all the blood from the wounds -
From the tablecloth to the floorboards.
And no coffin! Separation - no!
The table is disenchanted, the house is awakened.
Like death for a wedding dinner
I am the life that came to supper.
... Nobody: not a brother, not a son, not a husband,
Not a friend - and yet I reproach:
- You, who set the table for six souls,
Who didn't plant me - on the edge.
An accurate and very terrible premonition of his fate.
It soon becomes clear that Arseny Alexandrovich avoids meeting her. In the spring of 1941, he did not even say hello to her at the book market in the Writers' Club. He is a man, he is a poet who prefers to love - much more than to receive love. In this respect, their poles coincided with Anna Akhmatova. And simply - both physically and emotionally - he could not devote more time to Marina Ivanovna than he did. He has a young wife and an adopted daughter, an ex-wife and two small children of his own, an old mother... Departed loved ones. Nevertheless, he is also sorry to lose friendship with Tsvetaeva:
Everything, everything connected, even the air itself
Around you - up to your very stars -
And the belt, and each of your stubborn
Elastic step and angular verse.
You, not released on bail,
Free to burn and squander free,
Just think: there was no separation,
Closing like water, times.
To the joy of the hand! For sadness, for years,
But if only you didn't leave again.
You are subject to deadly waters,
You don't have to separate them again.
And again - an amazing bitter foreboding.
Under the verses the date is "March 16, 1941". The fact that there are poems dedicated to him, perhaps the last in the life of Tsvetaeva, Arseny Tarkovsky did not know then.
It turned out that he first read these verses only in 1982. That is 42 years after they were written.
“For me it was like a voice from under the ground,” admitted Arseny Alexandrovich.
The war has begun. One day, Tsvetaeva and Tarkovsky met by chance on Arbat Square and came under bombardment. They hid in a bomb shelter. Marina Ivanovna was in a panic - swaying, she repeated the same phrase: "And he (the fascist - N.S.) goes on and on ...".
Then - evacuation. Perhaps Tsvetaeva's fate would have turned out differently if Tarkovsky had left for Chistopol at the same time as her. But at first he accompanied his wife and adopted daughter there, and he himself was able to leave only on October 16.
I learned about the death of Marina Ivanovna back in Moscow.
"I call - does not respond, Marina sleeps soundly,
Yelabuga, Yelabuga, cemetery clay..."
He is a poet, he is young, he is torn apart by passions, he experiences a lot tragically ... And he loves Tsvetaeva - early, until 1917, and after - he claims - she ended like a poet ... Growing up, he leaves his youth and young Tsvetaeva, from her poetics farther and farther. Once, as the writer Elena Krishtof recalls, he asked aloud: "Who would explain to me why, the further, the more I leave Tsvetaeva's poetry? .." And he answered himself: "I will retell the explanation of one young woman. Twenty years old. She told me she said: you already lack strength for Tsvetaeva ... Perhaps she is right. At least - in my case ... ". Tsvetaeva for him too (like Anna Akhmatova - N.S.) was a Poet with a capital letter and even more. But all the memories of her, all her swirling, restless or better - depriving lines, all his debts to her - all this, taken together, he hid in the back room and threw the key into the river ... "
With Akhmatova it was different. Over the years, he more and more appreciated her poetry, poetic ear, wit, called her the best poet of the century. He loved her very much as a person. Moreover, Arseny Tarkovsky was in awe of Anna Andreevna, thanked "for the royal existence and the royal word", regretted that they missed each other in time and space. As many testify, he survived her death with great difficulty, he thought he would not survive. And Tarkovsky himself wrote with age more and more calmly, more measuredly, closer and closer to Akhmatova. Akhmatova's balance and harmony were closer to him than Tsvetaev's revolt. Or maybe Anna Akhmatova was closer to him in a Christian way, because she did not have deep despair ... 
Sometimes he bitterly reproached Tsvetaeva for something, said that he loved her (the testimony of Benjamin the Blessed), often spoke of her tenderly ... Nevertheless, Tsvetaeva read poetry less and less, but prose - with constant interest. Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev were constant companions of the poet. Always loved, but with big reservations, Blok and Pasternak. Over the years, he lost interest in Mandelstam. But perhaps most of all he moved away from Tsvetaeva. He said that he could not bear her "nervous fragmentation of sentences, constant screaming." Although she remained for Arseny Alexandrovich a great poet, but already without her former passion and love.
So. Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky. The last surge of Marina Tsvetaeva, the last attempt to save from the void... But: a human disengagement, a creative disengagement. Much did not take place, much was not destined to come true. However, they gave each other more than they did not give. Such human and poetic relationships are not forgotten.
And yet this last meeting again turned out to be a "non-meeting" for Marina Ivanovna. That is, a new emptiness of the soul.
By the summer of 1941, the fire of her soul went out completely. No one managed (yes, in general, did not want to) support him. The fire of love went out - poems ceased to be written. Poems disappeared - the will to live weakened.
And then the element of Death carried away Tsvetaeva.
According to the publications of Natalia Savelyeva
http://moloko.ruspole.info/node/61
