Viktor Borisovich's father was an officer, his mother (originally from the Polish gentry) worked as a paramedic. In 1960 he met Anna Akhmatova, and from 1962 he attended a literary association led by Gleb Semyonov. He graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University in 1967, and left the Komsomol a year before graduation. He defended his diploma on the works of Innokenty Annensky. From 1974 he was married to Tatyana Goricheva until her emigration in 1980.

A prominent figure in the unofficial culture of Leningrad. The first laureate of the Andrei Bely Prize in 1978. In the 1970s one of the largest figures in Leningrad literary and cultural samizdat (magazines “37”, “Northern Post”, etc.).

In the early 1990s. Member of the editorial board of the journal “Bulletin of New Literature”. In the 90s he conducted extensive literary and social activities.

The first books under the same title “Poems” (1981 and 1988) were published in Paris, followed by the poetry collections “Appeal” (1990), “Concert on Demand” (1993), “The Last Book” (1993), “Borderlands” (1994 ), “Requiem” (1998), “Bathing in the Jordan” (1998), “Poems of the Jubilee Year” (2001), “Poems after Poems” (2001). A book of poetry from the 1970s, Compositions (2010), was published posthumously.
He was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox Cemetery in St. Petersburg.
..

Victor Borisovich KRIVULIN: poetry

EXCELLENCE

Elevation of needles. helpless power
from the depths of black spruce
you will feel it through your spine
the dotted line of the trunk and the vertical of someone else's word
and his eldership and thoughtful bark
outer brain in convolutions and wrinkles...
lived here after leaving the game
thinkers of their time - and now, having died,
located more conveniently than rain
more free than evergreen darkness
entering the room with a sullen noise
infiltrating fifth column
into consciousness - both deeper and darker
unprotected branches

SKIT ON THE ISTHMUM

Unnaturally clean-bearded in only canvas
an old man appears on his fingers to teach in a silent way
about the invisible angelic order
about hope for a taste close to lemon
adherents gather in a small group at the exit of the train
it takes a long time to get there, losing questionable transport
finally - Pigeon River and thunderbirds
and the tin ban was crucified over the unbroken bridge
and what will they ask when from the icy steps
Did some force throw them underground?
former Finnish dugout, in the middle there is a plastic box -
he sits like a harrier and time has not bent him

THE LORD'S SUMMER

Lord's Summer! no bumblebees or poles
they didn’t find such goodness:
arrests in May in the warmth of paradise
in July at the time of country bliss
assembly line interrogation, a stream of blinding darkness!
here the fern bloomed above the protocol
and the peat burned subcutaneously and such
grimaces of the Kostroma maiden
didn’t even know how to handle a pack
of your lovely evil spirits...
but here
August turned and the people
for consecration under the wing of the cathedral
carries Antonov apples -
and the Prosecutor's visa is prohibitive
over the OSO resolution

FIRE IN THE BATH

Are libraries burning too early?
revolt of books, led by fire,
the more bitterly it speaks of a person,
the more published about him.
For now - depressed. Investigate the beginning
fire. From the depths of the service yard
Dump trucks are hauling away in cubes and piles
still hot burned Yesterday.
Four-dimensional ash. Unprecedented
conglomerate. sacred mountain,
where newspapers, uncials are mixed,
scattered numbers
party or Parisian magazine
into a single Ararat, into a meaningful array...
There hasn't been enough flood here yet -
so that, having abolished any reading matter,
start the story over!
So that the new Noah together with the new Ham
democratic built the ark,
while the ocean closes over the Temple
and we are sure that every person
worthy of the truth lost by Adam.

THESE

These - bathed in the kitchen in galvanized troughs
playing at the church without a cross since infancy
don't write gold cards for Easter
You can't catch silver smelt from the bridge
tin lead and even in drops of mercury
they were carried by the weather, swaddled in cloth
and now there’s no one to just remember them
pigeon word in half-native
language of the church language of lights
reflected by the waves with such cold force
that you want to hug tighter and more painfully
to the door handle - a bronze double-leaf carved door
where the six-winged witness is depicted
their non-existence their tinny life

PROPHET

Again, Lord, forgive them
the word is black, the will of evil
for a language game
with Pushkin's Ezekiel
was he sent down from the cloud?
amidst the scorching heat
dehydrated cholera
desert? - tell me, Pushchin
or from the inside of some
from a dreamy womb,
with the ideals of Europe
saying goodbye to Katkov
this rustle came
all six Semitic wings...
Feathers fluttered, feathers hid
sky in cracks and crevices
in need of repair!
Forever in the zone of devastation
agitated spirits
crowds of them to the horizon
there's a swarm of them under the soil
their swollen waters
their names? but who are you
once called - temptation
don't know to be named
they don’t want to be recognized
and not even twice -
many times at the same time
the river is slowly entered

Victor Borisovich KRIVULIN: interview

Victor Borisovich KRIVULIN (1944-2001)- poet, prose writer, essayist: | | | | .

A CONVERSATION UNDER THE APPLE TREES OR A FORGOTTEN INTERVIEW...

Victor Krivulin...This tape sat for about ten years. A conversation that took place sometime in the past in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, under the apple trees near the porch of the Writers' House of Creativity in Komarovo. Ten years is not a short period of time; during this time, huge changes can occur in the life of not only an individual, but also an entire country. It has been several years since the death of Viktor Borisovich Krivulin, poet, prose writer, publicist, and ideological inspirer of our almanac. But today his words, spoken then, ten years ago, sound very relevant and timely.

RESULTS
To whom are the results and to whom is it so
impenetrable Last Judgment
as if the video recorder is not turned off
although the screen is broken
the speaker is ripped out
but light and sound live
and the tape rustles
for the viewer of other times
or other planids

"Forgotten Interview" - dedicated to the memory of Viktor Krivulin...

Viktor Borisovich, who was the poet in the sixties?
- The sixties were the time when the writer, the poet suddenly discovered that he was no more than a poet, no less than a poet - he was equal to himself. This is, say, Brodsky’s tragedy or, on the contrary, his triumph: he is a poet... Actually, he is being judged for this, for the fact that he is no more than a poet and no less than a poet. It was an amazing process - a person is judged only for being a poet. That is, in fact, only because it is something equal to itself. And in this sense, the sixties were a very good time. Of course, it’s naive, of course, we lived absolutely isolated from the other world, this is all understandable. We lived disconnected from world culture. Although, despite the resistance, they read more and translated more then than now.

For me, the generation of the sixties is primarily associated with the human rights movement. To what extent were you politicized?
- In general, I have the impression that our generation, in a broad sense, turned out to be not just apolitical - we arose as some kind of reaction to the human rights movement. Well, I know people, wonderful, pure, bright people who fought for human rights, for his freedom. But aesthetically, these were people brought up by Soviet culture. Nowadays they really love this word - mentality. They had a Soviet mentality.

But, as far as I imagine, resistance to the Soviet state, passive and passive, was quite widespread?
- Initially, there was a general mood, some kind of opposition... and the opposition... it was divided: there was a political opposition and there was an aesthetic one, so to speak. The Sinyavsky trial showed this. And still there was some kind of freedom zone. There were zones that were not painted over by the state, not painted over in red, they were like white spots where someone somehow settled, but at the same time literary life followed its own laws. The only thing is that there were no publications, there were no books, but all this was compensated for in a wonderful way: we now cannot imagine the scale of samizdat, because no one is doing it**. But I am convinced that the circulation of these small samizdat collections exceeded the official circulation.

“...therefore you may not be a poet, but you must be a citizen,” said the poet. Who did the sixties feel like?
- We were people of this state, but we were not citizens of this country. To be citizens presupposes civil society, but there was none. When you ask this question, you ask it as if from today. Although, from my point of view, now there is no civil society either, it is emerging... And if we talk about literature, in principle, literature was the literature of the empire. Moreover, even Pushkin or Tolstoy, who fell into the zone of school study, became Soviet writers. It was Soviet literature...

- Did this change your attitude towards literature?
- This made it difficult to relate to it and, I think, what has now happened, in a sense, is not only the defeat of the Soviet system, but this is the defeat of Russian culture in a deeper sense, it turned out to be incapacitated... So in recent years, I have become interested in the system writer-state relations in the West. And I understand that this is a very complex system. And when we say that there is no literature support there, this is not so. There is strong government support for culture, for example in Germany, where the Goethe Institute subsidizes young poets. Huge sums are allocated for this. In Sweden, the situation is approximately such that every Swedish writer receives a certain percentage, I think five percent, of the cost of each of his books, which is borrowed from the library. Let's try to imagine this situation here! Nowadays there is a myth spreading that in the West no one is interested in literature. This is also not true. Let's be honest. For example, in France there is a program “Apostrophe”, it is made by Bernard Pivot, which is watched by almost all of France. This is a show about literature. It is made in such a way that it is extremely interesting to watch. This is both a book promotion and a meeting with the authors. Limonov once spoke on this program. This is one of the popular programs. When we now have the myth that the Western economy is a market economy and that the writer is thrown out there, this is also not entirely true.

- Well, we still live in a world of illusions...
- We live in a situation of extremes, this irritates me more and more. Soviet literature, as we were told, was the best, the most wonderful. It was such idiotic messianism. Now there is a completely different slavish state of fear of the West, complete horror that something else is approaching, which is much better than what we have. This is the show. But if we talk about poetry: in the West there are few poets of the same class as in Russia, I can say quite definitely.

-...there are still a lot of misconceptions and myths in history.
- History exists in the sphere of mythology, I already wrote about this, Soviet history is located between completely mythical events: between the capture of the Winter Palace, an assault that did not happen, and the assault on the White House, which also did not happen...

- How was it not?
- Well, it was as if there was a revolution, but it was as if it didn’t exist... The question of power here hangs like such snot over Russia! Because there is no real power that we could say about - it is communist or it is not communist, there is no power that we could trust. Lately, I’ve been watching TV every day, mostly I’m looking at faces: and the whole political situation visually comes together in two parts, on the one hand there’s a pig’s hari, a pig’s image, and on the other hand there’s the type of a skinny European. And the entire political struggle is a struggle between thick and thin. Who has already managed to grab and who has not yet managed to grab. The situation is comical - there is no person of normal size here, there is one who still needs to be pumped up with bribes and money, and one who has already been pumped up... and there is another type - these are wolves. Gray wolves who were simply left away from the feeding trough! Here is Ampilov, for example. These are absolutely wolf faces. So it turns out: wolves, pigs and some others who need these benefits, but they are already at the feeding trough, although they have not yet gained weight.

About a Person: Vladimir Kurmanaev about Viktor Krivulin

Victor Borisovich KRIVULIN (1944-2001)- poet, prose writer, essayist: | | | | .

I knew Krivulin for about 5 years, of which 2 years or a little more I saw him relatively often. I met him and his wife Olya in 1990 or 91. He then lived in an apartment on Peterhofskoye Highway (official address - Leni Golikova St., 4, apt. 9). The best thing that can be done for the sake of his memory is to reproduce the atmosphere of their home, although here I did not set myself such a task. Krivulin was “who wished to stay alive” - that’s how he was perceived. He once said: “It’s still an amazing country. Nobody needs a gifted person here.” It was said unexpectedly and with pain; I had never heard such a thing from him either before or later. We were getting acquainted with Russia then, this was 90-91-92. But deep down, it seems to me, he believed in the possibility of changing this situation, or even hoped that he would make a mistake.

Krivulin was a man who wanted to be relevant to the essence, and he consistently avoided everything else. It was always noticeable. I once mentioned in a conversation about a close friend of mine, an artist, who turned on a tape recorder with recordings of Bach performed by Glen Gould and practically did not turn it off throughout the entire day. This was during the most painful, frenzied, hungry period, with the distorted sound of crowd voices in the streets. Krivulin did not hear at first, but when I repeated the story about what seemed to me resourceful behavior, he, condescending to my anachronistic frivolity of a 30-year-old man, remarked with a grin: “Well, you can, of course, do it that way...”. In general, he and Olya, his wife, were very reminiscent of angels in those eerie times, especially Krivulin, also with his difficulty in moving.

It was felt that Krivulin worked a lot. He was probably one of the first in the country to become acquainted with the “pleasure” of losing the text he had been working on on a computer all night (he worked at night). He was then mastering new genres of newspaper, magazine articles, and essays (“Can you imagine what it’s like to write an article?” he once said, like a pioneer describing a new landscape for himself). Later he said that he took Khodasevich as a model for himself and was trying to write in such a way that it could someday be put together and published.

Krivulin claimed that he did not read translations. I believed that doing translations had spoiled Brodsky’s style (Galchinsky, etc.). Once he said something good about Kushner, and I admitted that I did not perceive him. Krivulin was very surprised and began to praise the early Kushner, even reciting something by heart.

Krivulin was pleased with his novel (“Shmon”), did not understand those who scolded him and assured that he had completed all the tasks that he had set for himself. I somehow foolishly objected to him in someone else’s words that this is not the kind of novel after reading which you want to do something; he responded with deep silence, in which there seemed to be both grief in agreement and disagreement with this approach, and even resentment. He loved Sosnora and was proud that Sosnora treated him well. When I once repeated my friend’s opinion that some of Sosnora’s texts cause laughter, he immediately objected that the perfection of poetic language makes them invulnerable.

Krivulin then turned from an underground writer into a legal one - a process unknown or rare in the history of literature. He sometimes acted according to the old, Soviet patterns of “writer’s” functions, but at the same time tried to get rid of them. In essence, he never insisted on himself, but offered himself, and believed in himself. I did the same with others if I tried to help them, and when they didn’t believe in themselves as much, it backfired. Krivulin constantly said that writing should return to normal, that it was necessary to stop “shepherding peoples,” that books should be well published and expensive.

Krivulin highly valued his past. One day an aspiring director came to him, wanting to make a film about the Saigon cafe and underground cultural figures. Krivulin, I believe, told him everything about his film, he simply created this film, and all he could do was ruin it, which, it seems, he did. (The film was called “Chkhaya about Saigon.” A lot of space in it was devoted to the monologue of Krivulin himself, which made it valuable.) Krivulin understood people and treated them with confidence. And the person who made this film hardly understood anything of what he was filming about.

Krivulin, it seemed to me, was proud that he lived in Komarovo in the room where Akhmatova lived and where he once visited her. After Akhmatova, Vera Panova lived in this room. But he didn’t like the room as a place to work. “It’s a boring number,” he summarized, and in response to my misunderstanding, he explained: “People didn’t live here, but survived.” I remember that at the same time he told how he taught children at school translations, putting the sound basis of the verse at the forefront, or taught them to write like that themselves, I don’t remember anymore.

Krivulin, I think, hated everything ordinary. But he also disliked the ordinariness of confronting the ordinary. Sometimes this multidirectionality reached a critical point. On the day we met, he told me that Brodsky approached him with a proposal for cooperation. Krivulin agreed and began working (it was either a book or a script about Mandelstam), but at the same time he published, as he put it, two “anti-Brod articles.” Brodsky, according to Krivulin, “abruptly cut off” or “abruptly interrupted” contacts. Here it should be noted that if not for Krivulin, two such deep experts on Mandelstam could have created something completely exceptional, unimaginable. But, probably, the fact is that they looked at things differently, and Krivulin believed that co-authorship did not exclude mutual criticism, which Brodsky in their situation could consider at least inconsistent.

Krivulin did not like fools. One quite famous poet at that time (early 90s) asked him why he did not put punctuation marks in poetic texts. Krivulin replied that it was more convenient. The poet was offended and then told me: “This is not an answer.”

He seemed to have a rather low opinion of the current state of Russian philology. In addition, the exhaustion of certain topics was a settled issue for him. When I told him that I had written a paper about Pushkin, he replied: “Volodya, I don’t understand.” About the state of St. Petersburg university philology, in particular, he spoke quite skeptically in 1994-95: “Well, whatever. Alik Muratov?!”

Krivulin perceived his isolation in Soviet times as a chance given to his thoroughness. It seems to me that he valued this thoroughness most of all in her. And at the same time, he understood the danger of isolation, which can provoke the illusion of self-sufficiency. It is extremely interesting whether there will be many memories of Krivulin. After meeting with him, the thought always swirled: “I need to write it down.” But he moved in a circle of people who perceived him as part of a whole to which they also belonged. In order to characterize the whole in its parts, additional effort is needed.

It seems to me that the too wide or easy popularity of people who once belonged to the underground culture did not evoke sympathy in him. He said with irritation in front of me: “Lena Schwartz has lost her readers.” He published poems about television personality Nevzorov and singer Grebenshchikov, in which irritation was also discernible (“Grebenshchikov sings from all the cracks”). He laughed at the poet Andrei Kryzhanovsky, who complained about his “underground” fate. Regarding Nevzorov, I once complained that he had changed a lot, even as a “type” (we had known each other since childhood), that even at the age of 19-20 he was a very lively, talkative, friendly, gentle person who was interested in theater, directing, trying to stage something (though at the same time (it was felt) somewhat cold). Krivulin told me that Nevzorov, who participated in some religious society, was arrested, and he, frightened, named many, and in response to my complaints he remarked: “Intercession for the people never goes unpunished.”

I remember his words about Stalin: “Stalin produced a social system in which for a person everything in the world was beautiful, except for himself.”

Once, when I came to him, he asked: “How do you like Brodsky’s article (or interview)?” He was outraged by Brodsky's words about the guilt of the Russian language. (It seems to me that this indignation reflects the divergence of their poetics. They are almost the same age, acquaintances, St. Petersburg residents, but as if from different generations. Brodsky is an individualist, a Protestant in religious views (at least for some period). The basis of his poetics is the most important thing in himself, which he will say only to himself, and then not directly, but by hints. The basis of Krivulin’s poetics is language, he is a philologist, brought up within the walls of St. Petersburg University at a time when the most important things were said there by structuralists. In addition, , the language of an Orthodox person in religious views who honors the Word in the Temple). Krivulin was offended not for the Russian language, not for his language, but for the Language.

At the time when we met, faced with the fact of the almost complete disappearance of interest in poetry in Russia, Krivulin was analyzing the very nature of the existence of poetry in Russia. He wondered whether poetry was simply a substitute for the missing epic. He was shocked by the thought that before the 18th or even the 19th century, no poetry existed in Russia (the poetry of the 18th century could have simply been “imported”). Krivulin believes that poetry is a conversation with a personal God and has nothing to do with literature (the poet’s addressee is his own ideal hypostasis, the prose writer’s addressee is the reader). He was probably afraid that poetry did not have deep roots in Russia. He himself argued (as a person who did not betray common sense) that poetry was no longer needed, and wrote articles and essays. He said that now reflection can save. However, at the same time, he could express his intention to publish over time a magazine that had never existed in Russia - a magazine where there would be only poetry.

He constantly talked about language, that “something is happening to us,” that emigrant poets escaped the influence of the processes taking place in the language, but those who remained in Russia did not escape. He said that “mythologem” is being replaced by “polytheme”, that consciousness is being politicized and we are forced to think about what we don’t want to think about. Krivulin believed that our consciousness is characterized by being connected to what is happening “above”; he called it imperial. Was it this idea of ​​being “connected” that led him to the monarchical views he espoused in the 1990s? At the same time, he was not interested in popular respect for power; he based his views on the beauty of the monarchical idea in the minds of the people. He was not afraid of the collapse of Russia, because he did not consider Russia an empire in the ancient sense.

Krivulin was concerned about whether his poems, filled with literary allusions, evoked appropriate associations. Once (I remember that it was December 30, 1991) he, having read me the poem “Now piercing, now cutting comfort...”, asked whether it evoked the corresponding motif of the novel “The Idiot”.

Knowing how difficult it had become to write poetry (it seems, on his own), he supported others, said that his friends were gradually beginning to write poetry again, in conversations he constantly urged them to write essays, let them read essays brought to him by others, and asked opinions about them. He told me once (I think I was complaining about something) that while living with his wife and two children, hers and his own, in a shared apartment in one room, he wrote in the bathroom at night.

Somewhere in April 1989, not yet knowing each other, I wandered into Krivulin’s evening at the Lecture Hall on Liteiny. There were relatively few people in the hall. Krivulin, diving his head to the right and left and turning his cheek to the listeners, spoke about the current state of poetry, about his three-month trip to Paris, and read poetry. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep any notes, but I remember a few thoughts. He said that interest in poetry had fallen, and that we must take this into account, that we should not “involve” people. He also said that during the period of democratization of life, the artist is obliged not to forget about artistic aristocracy. Otherwise, popular art awaits him, as the experience of Voznesensky and Yevtushenko showed. He spoke about the disappearance of the negative impulse in relation to everything around him, which, in his opinion, is inherent in the Russian person. He did not find a tragic attitude among foreigners, which explained Berdyaev’s failure at the Sorbonne and Shestov’s relative failure. I also remember that, among others, he read a poem in which the possibility of seeing a tombstone with Nabokov’s name was compared to suicide.

Everything he said then, as is now clear, revealed the main thing that worried him 17 years ago and later - the question of the conditions for the preservation of Russian culture and Russian poetry.

I should finish here, but I would like to add the following. Krivulin captured the process perfectly. The process he named seemed obvious. But the value of the subject, who participated in the process and was obvious to Krivulin, was not as universally obvious as the process. Therefore, it always seemed to me that Krivulin’s opinion about the process in some form, in some way reaches the people influencing the processes, but the values ​​dear to him are not dealt with quite as he would probably like. For example, he wrote somewhere (I think in the Literator newspaper) and said that in Russia there are no priests capable of dealing with the intelligentsia. It seems to me that the opinion was accepted - the intelligentsia has been brought to the point where it is quite difficult for them to deal with a priest. Krivulin expressed the opinion (on Radio Liberty, if I’m not mistaken) that the underground writer had the additional advantage over the official one that he did not have to resist the influence of not only official censorship, but also public influence. Krivulin named Bitov and Iskander as writers who partly successfully resisted official censorship, but who experienced social influence that deformed their talent. And this process, in all its complexity, did not, apparently, go unnoticed - corporate interest acquired a much more serious influence on the writer than the influence of censorship or the public. Corporate interest seduces deeper than the interest of overcoming censorship and public opinion, although it also has an advantage for the writer - it is surmountable, unlike other influences. But here too Krivulin pointed out the process with excellent accuracy.

THE IDEA OF RUSSIA Trees fallen asleep in the gray snow, and two lonely crows... The idea of ​​Russia, as far as I can penetrate with consciousness beyond the level, open, seemingly shorn criminal hill, even to the enemy, - the idea of ​​Russia is not somewhere in the brain, not in the region some kind of spiritual - and here, in plain sight, in the vast wilderness, in a dangerous neighborhood with a soul that does not know where the boundaries of the soul are, where is one’s own, where is someone else’s. GARDEN OF THE NINTH OF JANUARY Here the dusty garden looks like documents sealed, and in the garden it’s so sad... I’ll go out. I will walk along the rusty fence: in some five-year period, moved for some reason from the Winter Palace to a workers' settlement, from St. Petersburg to the heart of Leningrad, it reached the point of such squalor and desolation that next to it the air of the factory is like a fleeting vision, like genius of pure beauty. THE WAY TO HOME Mortal houses of tortured colors, vacant lots on the left, concrete, the backyards of motor depots - even the sweet cloudy summer does not incriminate you of humanity! Yes, and people here, like unanswered letters, as if they were to blame for something, return from work in the evenings... An eternal transport, a monotonous voice calling out one by one, the names of these very popular penates - DEFENSE, ANTI-AIR GUNS, PORTNOVOY... The ends of the earth are not beyond by sea, not somewhere - here it is, the edge of the earth, at every stop! To go out is the same as to die, to a point on a sheet of graph paper, to a point (not to be brought closer, but not to be erased) - to turn to a point; getting off the tram, disappearing without a trace in his own shadow. SOUTHWEST Orange bicycles thrown into the grass - as if, in defiance of nature, they had grown from Michurin's soil and a fresh newspaper, radiant sections of the fruits of enlightenment and progress in the fall, in the middle of the cold, among the remains of a dacha forest, where dormitory buildings are scattered and cooperative towers go high - around the turn of the wheel, and there, beyond the highway, beyond the ravine... The city, of course, is growing, and the islands of nature, enclosed in the natural cycle, are becoming more and more homeless. The Russian word “sputnik” can be applied to anything, even to me, when I look out the window and see: orange circles, a cyclist lying on his back in the reddish grass, completely red. The heavy sun rolls across it. Just yesterday from camp - school tomorrow. A low building, like a prison, behind the trees... It's a pity, the curtain prevents you from seeing what a new perspective will open around the corner... A house, probably... what else?.. just a house. It’s a miracle if this patch of bay is unclean! TV TURNED ON ON TIME It got dark. The crows roared their farewell. And it became quiet. And now the pneumatic door sighs, the tram cars are hidden in the trees of the copse. On the entire road to the suburbs, hardly even one face survived! at least these, on the left, are sleeping quarters... It got dark. I can hear the itching of silence - sudden, inflamed... Like the TV being turned on at the right time! Yes, his voices are saving, like a dream repeated a thousand times. TRAP Trap? Yes. Screen. In the embrace of euphoria, I feel somehow creepy. Why did they speak like humans? - and the faces are getting darker, looking like a prison that has been hastily turned into a mental hospital... Well, he’s not a prisoner - he’s just a patient, no longer afraid of his superiors, his guards, his commands! But waves of a completely different fear flooded the soul: a trap? Yes. Screen. Green light. Anesthesia. Bach subcutaneous morphine. "Aquarium" Turkestan plan. *** Moonless words burn invisibly, like alcohol... Like a flame, barely visible, it stands over the city. The wind will rush, and the tongue will sway, tremble... Not a crack, not a flash, not a scream, just a rustling in the ears - gasoline burns shapelessly in the fire garages. The rectification buzzes secretly in hospitals under glass, where the floorboards do not creak, where comrades who are dying out sleep in a row. In the book depositories the elastic ashes of books ring as the sheets shrink, spiraling into the native holes of muteness, into the gaping voids, into darkness and decay... - What are you?! " 1969 THE RAT But what we call conscience is not a rat with red eyes? Isn't it a rat with red eyes secretly watching us, as if present in everything that is given to the night, that has become a belated memory, repentance, a burning dream? Here comes the dream eater rat, a friend of the underground... A rat comes, a friend of the underground, to the underground dweller, who is ready to suffer from spiritual pain. And the mouth is strewn with teeth, before him, like the sky with stars - so conscience will come to the call. Two hand-made coals burn, painfully digging into the skin. Painfully digging into the skin of the underground dweller, I look like a rat. Two - the Lord's judgment - of fire. Two eyes in pitch darkness. What is the pain of the bite of sinful flesh or the hidden work of a rat, when the fate of a writer in Rus' is to squeak under the floorboard! Fate to squeak under the floorboard, sing the sharp-faced people, with a crimson glow. Save us, righteous one ! With a crimson face, sitting underground, tongueless, as if completely in heaven! 1971 FLUTE OF TIME A passer-by regrets the time not lived, but completely passed, and the music is like silence, and the heart of silence is not overcome by sadness, nor by the sound of footsteps, shapeless and flat... Above the square, overgrown with grass, is a high formation of the guards' palace, a mad flute echoes. Goat-like troops are running. Here is Marsyas the ensign, skipping, here is the music - not rest, but shortness of breath, here is the flayed skin - in the fluttering of a flag! A passerby, a particular person, will sneak by the side of the parade... But the music, filled with silence, like an insect in amber rigidity, seems to retain the fragile movement, although it is deprived of movement... To the passerby - belts and times, and here the sublime flute flies off! And her call, almost otherworldly, her needle piercing the ear, in the inaudible sea of ​​butterflies and flies, in the beds of recruits planted in columns, reigns and cries - cries and reigns... And the music of the mossy black trunk entered the passerby like a splinter, like a snake of melody shimmering entwined. 1972 CLIO They fell on their faces and licked the hot dust. The vanquished walked - the sackcloth herd lowed. The winners walked like large drops of hail. Mountain streams howled. The soul of the waterfall roared. Witch story. Sweaty neck. Crutch. Clio, to you, white with dust and salt, Clio, with a stick above the rumbling sea of ​​wheels, the victors walked - a convoy of fat life, a defeated millipede walked, and a lonely flower grew in the middle of the field in the bitter winds. Clio with a flower. Blue crone of the valleys. Clio with the horsetail and Clio in rags of fog, Clio, and Clio, and Clio, incoherently and drunkenly, kissing everyone departing - armies, and peoples, and countries into the sulfur abysses of the eyes or into the blinded hearts of clay. 1972 *** From the question: what about freedom? to a howl, to a cry: “I belong!” not time has passed, but nature has displaced the chalk circle. Over the entire horizon of the microscope, more than covering the country, the glass drop of the flood under the dome took the question high, descending to a whisper, more transparent and flatter than glass. I flatten my icy face: what happened? what date? Known only orally from shreds, from brittle sheets in circles associated with art, in lips adjacent to lips - the name of time-temple, known only by whiteness - the space will be occupied by speech and the bone joint will be strengthened here with lime, where with saliva - but it will grab. But it holds. But the unity of the fog and the roof, the type and the surface of the memorial slabs sleeps. You are conditioned by the underground. You are the midnight letter, in the light of evening trade, in the fading light of the mind, you ask fear: what kind of prison threatened the underground vision of the monk - the blind man of the monastery gates? did the scaffold roll under the feet of the discarded person at the sticky basement wall, where the sewer glory roars? Then ask the crystal that was dissolved in bitterness: where did your point resurrect, at what time difference? 1975

LEVIATHAN SAILS

poems 1998 PAST KINESHMA Above the Volga - tricolor. Here is the sunset formula. Is it one life or divided into three? Monasteries flock to the river, factories crawl away hungover, and even monuments hollow inside have become thirsty. Oh, how demonic their late poses are, their wings instead of hands, their pilot’s mittens. The feeding of the seagulls at the stern is pure Hitchcock: it’s as if it’s not birds that are diving, but the souls of the dead are raging around the white flagpole, a child from the capital, why is he here? Why is he afraid of the province, where the truth is double, where everything flows backward and everything loses light?.. A sailor on watch, when it gets dark, lowers the flag. And only the foam trail still lives, still turns white LOCK NUMBER SIX A thin wave hits the crumbling concrete slabs. What other secret is there about the artificial bottom? There are no dogs buried there, except maybe prisoners... but who remembers their names? Information is closed. Airlock number six has a slimy wall. The lowering of the passenger trough to the all-Russian level - there, in the lower worlds where we are all forgotten, some in the family lindens, some as part of the ministerial retinue, in the bustle of the monkey's work - unfinished pyramids, underdeveloped cities of KALYAZIN, a spiritual oryasina sticks out of the sea-lake that in the middle of Kalyazin this is frozen the power of the Hammer and the Mind of the Sickle and L.B. Krasin and we fearfully look at the work of her hands - with her, with this very bitch, all the best is connected! LEVIATHAN Over the plains of Prigov Screams Rubinstein flies Leviathan floats Four-tubes and speaks a lot But is not at all distinct Clarity, he says, he lacks Clarity he lacks, the wolf IN THE FETAL POSITION has been free for ten years and still every morning you wake up in the fetal position, all hands tucked up, clutched in on your knees, your chin is between your collarbones and you lie like a comma in some kind of document on a sympathetic secret top secret letter THE FIFTH TRUTH AND THE FIRST TRUTH 1 Either what was lost was found and found - it turned out to be someone else’s, not ours. Or I feel sick with my memory; just start talking to her at night, tear her to shreds, or, twisting your neck, somehow look from the side or from above - but if only you could look at it differently, as I probably will never be able to 2 to whom the evening bell rings to whom - a raven in the evenings over the evening ringing... the wooden electric barn squeals, turning along the yellow-green rails... soon the rails and the trees will be removed where the crows play out their fearless Last Judgment every evening with self-indulgence, lifting the hood of the killed "Lada" the young priest is still fiddling with the engine - but the Lord knows best what to fly easily and sinlessly, why rust under the shadow of poplars that someone once planted exactly 3 on the site of a garden, poor ones, now there are only spiritual trees and so - a concrete house, from where you look with your unenlightened gaze: Khrushchev, Lord! she herself is like a neglected garden, all in cracks and crevices in the alleys where memories sleep where pre-regime Annas hang on bare branches as if on skinny necks 4 with the Fifth Truth an old man with the First Truth a sleeping teenager... You can go crazy and drink yourself to death - the forest of concepts saves the language , trees in growths speaking like this, then speaking as if it were they - and not the wind - playing with obedience-space, which is a mere trifle because it does not grow at all, is not born does not die 5 those who return in dreams as a butterfly about one wing, how they flew over this fear again find yourself on the ground? in the middle of the wing - an open eye at the edges - the trembling of the letter, do they see us, asleep, or does a shining darkness live in them and the fundus of the eye looks into itself and in a dream such a bottomless light seems to write to us that everything has been found, everything - which is not yet for us CHRONICLE OF SHORTAGES the ever-hungry Khlebnik, thirsty Vodkin-Petrov... and here we are: we sum up the results of their food-paper revolution with their penetration into the origins of inner speech of open color. a chronicle of continuous shortages emerges from the depths of the office; a retired engineer or a former doctor will pull out a desk drawer, discover a corner of a draft that was acquired by unrighteous means - and immediately push it away with a thud, hide it for the future, for later, for the very last time after which we live with inner speech in an unfinished poem SHAGREEN SKIN Russia you shriveling shagreen skin! It’s not for nothing that Balzac found his widow here and looks a whole century younger... On a person there is a sign of being bruised by the Russian language, everything is gray around, one continuous bruise, what kind of bruise did they give you? And the Cezanne or the bruise all gave you aching, clouds that find no support in anyone, only an eternally renewed regional committee the once strong house of a merchant's office is now a gangster bank, shagreen curtains and forged bars in the windows: this is not the original text - translation of a pork turnout in gold embossing OUTSIDE The power of the Lord is with us! I am exhausted by dreams, by dreams... N. A Someone with us is disturbed In the morning you leave the house with traces of yesterday's dinner outside with traces of yesterday's dinner A drop falls, splashing on a puddle like a quote from a book that has not been published but claws tormenting the soul A rare race of people who read the rain, small-printed, those clouds and the sound writing is also so pearl-gray the drizzle only makes you feel nauseous and the exhaustion is looking for someone to shove your points into, this uncryed out otherness of yours WITHOUT LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW there will be singing for you - and there will be enough patience for the tart wine - in the evenings - the kind uncle will pay for it, because he still doesn’t get a kick out of it except watching our endless movie without getting out of bed without looking out the window ISAAC AND ABRAHAM At night they read Palamas: Silence - light, learning - a knife Preparation for everything What you don't know You don't expect Having picked dried grass They tried to make a fire - Just a hair's breadth from the head The Eastern god passed like a thief With non-burning and dry fire. Isaac stood up - he was just smoke And there was nothing, listen, with him Neither to talk nor to grieve Abraham lay down - he was like a house A house talking about fire And more - nothing more # # # *** All the coldness of the mirror, all the emptiness and flatness are splashed into my face. Therefore, there is no point in poking around with questions, looking for some sign of involvement in another dimension in echoes and reflections... I am all on this side. And darkness envelops my vigil on all sides. But it’s as if the neighbors behind the wall are moving furniture and trampling - - through the shell of absolute night, I imagine an unknown, alien voice. Scraps of words, sometimes even scraps of an incomprehensible phrase - and probably intended for Me! (I don’t know the language...) *** Let's praise a world that is full of death! To the sublime soul there is sadness, sadness, the sadness of a bowed head... Let us praise the rain that is always dreaming and the wet face in the glass of the window, white from the impossibility of spilling On lips that are dry to the bottom. *** Moonless words burn invisibly, like alcohol... Like a flame, barely visible, it stands over the city. The wind will rush, and the tongue will sway, tremble... Not a crack, not a flash, not a scream, just a rustling in the ears - gasoline burns shapelessly in the fire garages. The rectification buzzes secretly in hospitals under glass, where the floorboards do not creak, where comrades who are dying out sleep in a row. In the book depositories the elastic ashes of books ring as the sheets shrink, spiraling into the native holes of muteness, into the gaping voids, into the darkness and decay... - What are you?!" AND THE SILVER AGE And the silver age, like a young month, stood over my youth , unattainable - he was a fashion, an artificial environment, he was a game that we would play, it seemed to us, stronger than the rest! He was a success, a challenge, an eclipse of the meetings of the elderly and the joys of pigs, he simply was. But what can we replace him with now that the wave of the resurrected dead went to a fantastic profit, and the salt lake of life is like the scales of a biblical fish, with a dry face, without eyes, looking at us from somewhere outside? and sadness will not overcome the heart of silence, nor the noise of footsteps, shapeless and flat... Above the square overgrown with grass, there is a high formation of the guards' palace, the echoes of a mad flute. Goat-like troops are running. Here is Marsyas the ensign, skipping, here is the music - not rest , but shortness of breath, here the skin is torn off - in the trembling of the flag! A passerby, a particular person, will sneak by the side of the parade... But the music, filled with silence, like an insect in amber rigidity, seems to retain the fragile movement, although it is deprived of movement... To the passerby - belts and times, and here the sublime flute flies off! And her call, almost otherworldly, her needle, piercing the ear, in the inaudible sea of ​​butterflies and flies, in the beds of recruits planted in columns, reigns and cries - cries and reigns. .. And the music of the mossy black trunk entered the passerby like a splinter, entwined with a snake of flickering melody. AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE At the beginning of my life, I remember school. Life is not enough to forget her happy lessons. School and family, and the wolf outside the windows, Loki’s icy genus... They didn’t know hunger. But the high corridor shone and melted, and the director’s bald head floated... Years watered with goat’s milk! my keys, the origins of later non-existence. Rarely flogged. Children's vices were hidden under uniforms, we plunged puny bodies into the pool, where the icy liquid - where the Antarctic crumbled Numbers of the unnatural - circled, burning. FIRE IN THE BATH Are libraries burning early? The uprising of books, led by fire, speaks the more bitterly about a person, the more published about him. For now - depressed. The start of the fire is being investigated. From the depths of the service yard, dump trucks are hauling out cubes and piles of what was still hot and burned yesterday. Four-dimensional ash. An unprecedented conglomerate. The sacred mountain, where newspapers, uncials, scattered issues of a party or Parisian magazine are mixed into a single Ararat, into a meaningful array... The flood was not enough here yet - to, having abolished any reading matter, begin history all over again! So that the new Noah, together with the new democratic Ham, will build the ark, while the ocean closes over the Temple and we are sure that every person is worthy of the truth lost by Adam. THAW Warmth does not warm. Zero in a vacant lot. In the middle of the night, suicidal snow thunders through the pipes. The gray sheet that has embraced us cannot spread, cannot sleep... Breathless, on tiptoe, almost imperceptible, intangible, December has passed - and you forgive it: even Time is not our master! And let the unexpected thaw please some of the new ones, while Pascal talks to me about the resurrection of Khrushchev. The graves reveal recent dead. The pressure drops. There was a breath of rot through the window and in this indifference of the scales there is a dead point of strength and powerlessness. CUTTING JERUSALEM Grebenshchikov sings in every crevice. Vysotsky lived to see the big press. The breath is stale, and the newborn Kharms rides into the Pishchevikov House of Culture on a donkey... It’s not Leningrad around - Jerusalem, busy with the reconstruction of the Temple from half-destroyed ruins, where the triumphant Pit will pretend to be either an abyss without a bottom, or a man-made Everest... But the landscape is as flat as the soul is infected, as if connected with the place - it is, perhaps, the only thing here that does not change and is indestructible, even if you swarm the earth, even if you cover a drawing of the heavenly Jerusalem with a slogan! I know: we are no longer there, we live where we matter, where fate has placed us in the corners according to the stamp, where they know us both in person and behind the scenes. .. CLIO They fell on their faces and licked the hot dust. The vanquished walked - the sackcloth herd lowed. The winners walked like large drops of hail. Mountain streams howled. The soul of the waterfall roared. Witch story. Sweaty neck. Crutch. Clio, to you, white with dust and salt, Clio, with a stick above the rumbling sea of ​​wheels, the victors walked - a convoy of fat life, a defeated millipede walked, and a lonely flower grew in the middle of the field in the bitter winds. Clio with a flower. Blue crone of the valleys. Clio with the horsetail and Clio in rags of fog, Clio, and Clio, and Clio, incoherently and drunkenly, kissing everyone departing - armies, and peoples, and countries into the sulfur abysses of the eyes or into the blinded hearts of clay. *** Not yet fear, but as if someone, invisible from around the bend, had cast their shadow forward. Not yet fear - but a shadow is creeping, touching the corner of the house and my shadow crossed with someone else’s shadow, as if it had entered into a fusion - and becoming one corner of the break, it broke away from my feet... Not yet fear - but what kind of connection has been established between me and the shuffling of steps hidden behind the wall, when two more were not in the world, only their shadows moved in their embrace like two defeated wings. ...and time gave birth to us mortals at a turning point and pushed us together! No longer fear, but the pain of a blow, but of a broken ball, I am a flying fragment... I was whole to the world And now I am split. SEPTIMS I’ll ask Tyutchev: into what sea does the Soviet calendar drive fragments of ice? and if time is God’s creature, then why doesn’t it shed crystal tears? And why does the big-eyed water darken out of fear and shame, and why do the eyes on the icon dim? Before the inanimate world, in confusion, in a spiritual whirlpool, like a voiceless fish, you look, blinded by tears, with a heavy shine, heavier than mercury. I’ll ask Tyutchev - but mentally, that’s it. . . how to speak in heavenly language about the dying minute? We will drink away the time, and carefully cover the dried-up body with the most tender veil. Do not renounce the kinship of your native history, dear, do not hope that the delirium of centuries and the dull captivity of minutes will pass you by. Do you believe it? - the property will be returned to the original owner. And hordes of shadows from what was lived in vain will fill the streets and rooms to the brim, - and How to breathe - I’ll ask Tyutchev and regret who? *** Our next series will yet come, And a new yearning knowledge will touch the neck, eager to recognize the coldness of the blade, and the hot gape, and the pink bubble - and the bronze steel of posthumous painting. It seems to me, amid the muscular fuss, that death is somewhere around the corner... A transparent pistol falls through the poor palm. The wiring in the bunker sparks as it burns out... And we expect to live until we are old, frolicking and playing. It seems that Afghanistan has deceived And abroad is already flowing into the comradely future fog with its computers and singing clocks... How my eyes itch not to see the best countries, Nor the homeland, whose pain does not blind! And how much time can pass in such confusion and in such immortality?! The more weight I take off my shoulders, the higher, higher, beyond the estimate, the high cost of temporary shares! Here's gold. Melt it and drink, and perhaps the moment will come - we will gush with blood from the cooled books.

- (1944 March 17, 2001, St. Petersburg), Russian poet. At the center of Krivulin’s poetry are religious motives, the theme of personal guilt and responsibility for what is happening in the world. Creatively, he is close to Anna Akhmatova (see AKHMATOVA Anna Andreevna) and Joseph... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

KRIVULIN Viktor Borisovich- (b. 1944) Russian writer. The poetry is centered on religious motifs, the theme of personal guilt and responsibility for what is happening in the world. Initially published mainly in samizdat. Published an unofficial literary and artistic magazine 37 (total... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Krivulin Viktor Borisovich- Viktor Borisovich Krivulin (July 9, 1944, Kadievka village, Voroshilovgrad region; March 17, 2001, St. Petersburg) Russian poet, essayist, philologist. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. A prominent figure in the unofficial culture of Leningrad. Prize winner... Wikipedia

Krivulin, Viktor Borisovich- Genus. 1944, d. 2001. Poet, representative of samizdat culture. Publisher of the unofficial literary and artistic magazine "37". Author of several poetry collections. In the last years of his life, the demoross politician... Large biographical encyclopedia

Viktor Borisovich Krivulin- (July 9, 1944, Kadievka village, Voroshilovgrad region; March 17, 2001, St. Petersburg) Russian poet, essayist, philologist. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. A prominent figure in the unofficial culture of Leningrad. Laureate of the Andrei Bely Prize for 1978 ... Wikipedia

Krivulin- Krivulin, Viktor Borisovich Viktor Krivulin Date of birth: July 9, 1944 (1944 07 09) Place of birth: Kadievka (Voroshilovgrad region) Date of death: March 17, 2001 (2001 03 17 ... Wikipedia

Volchek, Dmitry Borisovich- Wikipedia has articles about other people with the same surname, see Volchek. Dmitry Borisovich Volchek (born June 18, 1964, Leningrad, RSFSR) Russian poet, novelist, translator, publisher. Contents 1 Biography 2 Translations ... Wikipedia

Modern Russian poets- ... Wikipedia

Samizdat poets- Samizdat poets are authors for whom participation in the uncensored literary life of the late 1950s and mid-1980s. (and above all publications in samizdat) was the main method of literary behavior. Thus, in this... ... Wikipedia

List of writers and poets of St. Petersburg- This is a service list of the state ... Wikipedia

Books

• Sunday clouds Buy for 770 UAH (Ukraine only)
• Sunday clouds, Viktor Borisovich Krivulin. The proposed collection of poems by Viktor Krivulin selectively represents his poetic work from the late sixties to the mid-eighties. This is the time when Krivulin, together with...

Viktor Borisovich Krivulin - poet, prose writer and essayist, philologist, central figure of Leningrad unofficial culture.

From a 1995 interview: “For me, and for many other St. Petersburg poets, communication with artists was of great importance. The same thing happened in Moscow, however. And in general, among my friends there are more artists than poets.”

Victor Krivulin wrote articles about Mikhail Shvartsman, Alexander Aksinin, Anatoly Vasiliev, Mikhail Shemyakin, Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, Igor Zakharov-Ross, Lev Smorgon, Marina Spivak, and about the artists of the Mitki group.

I’ll remember the artist when it’s impossible to imagine
in the heart of crazy life:
empty room
covered with yellowed newspaper.

So, in the fall I’ll remember (when else?), turning to
in the spirit of the best traditions
to the diversity of foliage and neighbors, -
Is there an artist crowd here?

Here. Where else? Where can he go from here?
from the occupation of coughing and decay,
from a collection of cold spots
on woolen canvas?... Are we traveling or getting sick -

everyone is glued to childhood, covered in spider saliva!
It will happen to remember the artist,
I'll have a chance:
will a brick fall, will a truck hit an eyewitness,

will the crowd of the spot of existence grow on the asphalt,
or something like that -
imagine a room
yearning for secret freedom.

There is the pinnacle of the possible. Dusty walls and roofs,
and portraits of flowers immersed
in your reflections... I don’t remember anything above
dead life in rolls!

Nothing happens. Lord, even with those
who has a random gift
I discovered a coincidence!..
Day - attic. Night - basement. The ghost of creativity.
A cloud of steam.

October 1972

Victor Krivulin was born on July 9, 1944 in the village. Kadievka, Voroshilovgrad region, in a military field hospital (the parents fought on the Leningrad Front, and after breaking the blockade - on the 4th Ukrainian Front). Lived in St. Petersburg.
Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad University.
In the 70s - one of the largest figures in Russian literary and cultural samizdat (magazines "37", "Northern Post")
First laureate of the Andrei Bely Prize in poetry (1978).
In the early 90s, he was a member of the editorial board of the journal "Bulletin of New Literature".
Member of the Writers' Union. Vice-president of the St. Petersburg Russian PEN Club.
Head of the workshop-studio of young poets.
In the 90s he conducted extensive literary and social activities.

I’ll ask Tyutchev what sea he’s driving into
fragments of ice soviet calendar,
and if time is God's creature,
then why doesn’t he shed crystal tears?
And why out of fear and shame
the big-eyed water darkens,
Are the eyes on the icon dimming?
Before the inanimate world, in confusion, in turmoil,
in a spiritual pool, like a voiceless fish,
you are the look of one blinded by tears,
with a heavy shine, heavier than mercury...
I’ll ask Tyutchev, but mentally, secretly -
how to say in heavenly language
about the dying minute?
We will sing away the time, and the dried-up body
Let's cover it carefully with the most delicate veil...
Kinship to native history
don’t deny, darling, don’t hope,
that the delirium of centuries and the dull captivity of minutes
passes you by - do you believe it, they will return you
good to the original owner.
And hordes of shadows from lives lived in vain
will fill the streets and rooms to the brim...
And - How to breathe? I’ll ask Tyutchev
And regret who?

Victor Krivulin. Drawing by Leonid Simonovsky.

About Me

- It’s a shame to write about myself, and yet I’ve been doing this my entire adult life, choosing meditative elegy as the predominant genre, perhaps because in other types of verbal activity the “I” of the writer is not so significant. If we switch to the language of questionnaires and Plutarch, it turns out that I was born in July 1944 somewhere in the region of Krasnodon, famous by Fadeev, with whom my father, the then military commandant of this town, was familiar through the nature of his service, helping to collect materials for future novel "The Young Guard". From 1947 to this day, with minor breaks in Moscow, Paris and Crimea, I have lived in Leningrad, which today can again be called St. Petersburg. I entered the Italian department of the Faculty of Philology with the sole purpose of reading The Divine Comedy in the original language. This goal has not yet been achieved... Be that as it may, I have already graduated from the Russian department (my thesis on Innokenty Annensky). I have been writing poetry for as long as I can remember, but I began to take them seriously only after 1970, when while reading Baratynsky (Boratynsky?) I had, so to speak, a formative insight - and I seemed to have acquired a magical breathing knowledge of my own, unique intonation, unique, like fingerprints. Feeling that I belong to the so-called new Leningrad poetic school (Brodsky, Stratanovsky, Schwartz, Mironov, Okhapkin), with its authors common balancing on the brink of irony and pathos, absurdity and spiritual soaring, surrealism and empire style, I dare to say that in many ways I differ from the mentioned authors. I will not hide the fact that I experienced a certain influence from Moscow conceptualists (Prigov, Rubinstein) - however, not so much literary as human. I write in quanta, combining texts into small collections (something between a poetic cycle and a poem), which, in turn, spontaneously merge into a larger text, organized more according to the laws of architectural and musical composition than according to literary rules themselves. The first such book - "Sunday Clouds" - was published in samizdat in 1972, the last - "At the Window" - in 1992. Over twenty years, the poetic manner, naturally, has undergone significant changes, but the intonation has changed least of all. I wrote prose, now I am engaged in journalism, I am working on a book of essays about modern Russian culture.

Victor Krivulin. 1993

Poems by Viktor Krivulin in "Babylon" #2

Portrait of Viktor Krivulin. ArtistValery Mishin

ON THE ROAD AT THE CROSS
sometimes piercing, sometimes cutting comfort
that spectacle in the homemade light
glass and music - Russians sing there
in your farewell language,

Almost in English - groping for the cross
imbedded between nipples
now stabbing, now cutting, now filigree
decorated - to pay for travel

From St. Petersburg to Geneva
appointed long ago, since then
like a poor knight from the Virgin Mary
had one last vision

Determined and quiet conversation

St. Petersburg poet, living classic Viktor Krivulin listens with interest to the creativity of the young generation. On stage - Dima Vodennikov