Writer
Laureate of the State Prize of the third degree (1951)
Knight of the Order of the Badge of Honor
Awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War"
“In order to understand today, you need to understand yesterday and the day before yesterday.” Yu. Trifonov
Yuri Trifonov was born on August 28, 1925 in Moscow in the family of Bolshevik, party and military leader Valentin Andreevich Trifonov.
His father went through exile and hard labor, participated in the armed uprising in Rostov, in the organization of the Red Guard in Petrograd in 1917, in civil war, in 1918 he saved the republic’s gold reserves, worked in the Military Collegium Supreme Court. For the future writer, his father was a true example of a revolutionary and a human being.
Trifonov's mother, Evgenia Abramovna Lurie, was a livestock specialist, then an engineer-economist. Subsequently she became a children's writer - Evgenia Tayurina..
My father's brother, Evgeniy Andreevich, was an army commander and hero of the Civil War, also a writer, published under the pseudonym E. Brazhnev. Grandmother T. A. Slovatinskaya, a representative of the “old guard” of the Bolsheviks, lived with the Trifonov family. Both mother and grandmother had a great influence on the upbringing of the future writer.
In 1932, the Trifonov family moved to the Government House, which forty years later extra years became known throughout the world as “The House on the Embankment”, thanks to the title of Trifonov’s story.
In 1937, the writer's father and uncle were arrested and were soon shot (uncle in 1937, father in 1938). For a twelve-year-old boy, the arrest of his father, of whose innocence he was sure, was a real tragedy. Yuri Trifonov’s mother was also repressed and served a prison sentence in Karlag. Yuri and his sister and grandmother, evicted from the apartment of a government building, wandered and lived in poverty.
With the outbreak of war, Trifonov was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1943 he returned to Moscow. The “son of an enemy of the people” could not enter any university, and got a job at a military factory. Having received the necessary work experience, in 1944, still working at the plant, he entered the Literary Institute.
Trifonov said about his admission to the Literary Institute:
“Two school notebooks with poems and translations seemed to me such a solid application that there could be no two opinions - I would be accepted to a poetry seminar. I will become a poet... As an additional, completely optional, I added to my poetic creations short story, twelve pages long, under the title - unconsciously stolen - “The Death of a Hero”... A month passed, and I came to Tverskoy Boulevard for an answer. The secretary of the correspondence department said: “The poems are so-so, but the chairman liked the story admissions committee Fedina... you can be accepted into the prose department.” A strange thing happened: the next minute I forgot about poetry and never wrote again in my life!” At the insistence of Fedin, Trifonov was later transferred to the full-time department of the institute, from which he graduated in 1949.
In 1949, Trifonov married opera singer, soloist Bolshoi Theater Nina Alekseevna Nelina. In 1951, Trifonov and Nelina had a daughter, Olga.
Trifonov’s diploma work, the story “Students,” written by him between 1949 and 1950, brought him fame. It was published in the literary magazine " New world"and was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1951. The writer himself subsequently treated his first story coldly. Despite the artificiality of the main conflict (an ideologically devout professor and a cosmopolitan professor), the story carried the beginnings of the main qualities of Trifonov’s prose - the authenticity of life, the comprehension of human psychology through the everyday.
In the spring of 1952, Trifonov went on a business trip to the Karakum Desert, on the route of the Main Turkmen Canal. On long years writer's fate Yuria Trifonova turned out to be connected with Turkmenistan. In 1959, a cycle of stories and essays “Under the Sun” appeared, in which the features of Trifonov’s own style were first identified. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Trifonov wrote the stories “Bakko”, “Glasses”, “The Loneliness of Klych Durda” and other stories.
In 1963, the novel “Quenching Thirst” was published, materials for which he collected during the construction of the Turkmen Canal. But the author himself was not satisfied with this novel. And in the following years, Trifonov was engaged in writing sports stories and reports. Trifonov loved sports and, being a passionate fan, wrote enthusiastically about it.
Konstantin Vanshenkin recalled:
“Yuri Trifonov lived in the mid-fifties on Verkhnyaya Maslovka, near the Dynamo stadium. I started going there. He played up (football jargon) for CDKA for personal reasons, also because of Bobrov. On the podium I met the hardcore Spartak players: A. Arbuzov, I. Shtok, and then aspiring football statistician K. Yesenin. They convinced him that Spartak was better. Rare case".
For 18 years, the writer was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Physical Culture and Sports”, wrote several scripts for documentaries and feature films about sport. Trifonov became one of the Russian founders of the psychological story about sports and athletes.
The rehabilitation of Valentin Trifonov in 1955 made it possible for Yuri to write a documentary story, “Reflection of the Fire,” based on his father’s surviving archive. This story about the bloody events on the Don, published in 1965, became Trifonov’s main work in those years.
In 1966, Nina Nelina died suddenly, and in 1968, Alla Pastukhova, editor of the “Fiery Revolutionaries” series of Politizdat, became Trifonov’s second wife.
In 1969, the story “Exchange” appeared, later - in 1970, the story “Preliminary Results” was published, in 1971 - “The Long Farewell”, and in 1975 - “Another Life”. These stories told about love and family relationships. In the focus of Trifonov’s artistic quest, the problem constantly arose moral choice which a person is forced to do even in the simplest everyday situations. During the Brezhnev timelessness, the writer was able to show how an intelligent, talented person (the hero of the story “Another Life”, historian Sergei Troitsky), who did not want to compromise his own decency, was suffocating in this toxic atmosphere.
Writer Boris Pankin recalls Yuri Trifonov:
“It so happened that after my article “Not in a circle, in a spiral”, published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” in the late 70s, Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov every new thing, large or small in volume, brought to me with an autograph, or even in manuscript, as happened, for example, with the novel “Time and Place”. He was selling these new things so thickly that one day I couldn’t resist and asked with a feeling of healthy, white, according to Robert Rozhdestvensky, envy how he managed to produce such masterpieces one after another with such iron regularity.
He looked at me thoughtfully, chewed his full Negro lips - which he always did before maintaining a dialogue - touched his round horn-rimmed glasses, straightened the buttoned collar of his shirt without a tie and said, starting with the word “here”: “Here, you heard, Probably the saying goes: every dog has its time to bark. And it passes quickly...”
In 1973, Trifonov published the novel “Impatience” about the Narodnaya Volya, published in Politizdat in the series “Fiery Revolutionaries”. There were few censored notes in Trifonov’s works. The writer was convinced that talent manifests itself in the ability to say everything the author wants to say and not be mutilated by censorship.
Trifonov actively opposed the decision of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union to remove its leading employees I. I. Vinogradov, A. Kondratovich, V. Ya. Lakshin from the editorial board of the New World, knowing full well that, first of all, this was a blow to the editor-in-chief of the magazine A. T. Tvardovsky, for whom Trifonov had the deepest respect.
In 1975, Trifonov married writer Olga Miroshnichenko.
In the 1970s, Trifonov’s work was highly praised by Western critics and publishers. Each A new book quickly translated and published.
In 1976, the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” published Trifonov’s story “The House on the Embankment”, one of the most notable poignant works 1970s. In the story Trifonov made a deep psychological analysis the nature of fear, the nature and degradation of people under the yoke of a totalitarian system. Justification by time and circumstances is typical for many Trifonov characters. The author saw the reasons for betrayal and moral decline in the fear into which the entire country was plunged after Stalin's terror. Addressing different periods Russian history, the writer showed the courage of man and his weakness, his greatness and baseness, not only at the breaking points, but also in everyday life.
Trifonov matched different different eras, arranged a “confrontation” with different generations - grandfathers and grandchildren, fathers and children, discovering historical roll calls, trying to see a person in the most dramatic moments of his life - at the moment of moral choice.
For three years, “The House on the Embankment” was not included in any of the book collections, and in the meantime Trifonov was working on the novel “The Old Man,” about the bloody events on the Don in 1918. “The Old Man” appeared in 1978 in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples”.
Writer Boris Pankin recalls:
“Yuri Lyubimov staged “The Master and Margarita” and “The House on the Embankment” almost simultaneously at Taganka. VAAP, which I was then in charge of, immediately ceded the rights to stage these works in Lyubimov’s interpretation to many foreign theatrical agencies. For everyone. A “memo” immediately fell on the desk of Suslov, the second person in the Communist Party, in which the VAAP was accused of promoting ideologically vicious works to the West.
There,” Mikhalandrev (that was his “underground” nickname) reasoned at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, where I was also summoned, looking into the anonymous address, “naked women are flying around the stage. And also this play, what’s it called, “Government House”...
“A house on the embankment,” one of the assistants carefully suggested to him.
Yes, “Government House,” Suslov repeated. - They decided to stir up something old for something.
I tried to reduce the matter to jurisdiction. They say that the Geneva Convention does not provide for the refusal to foreign partners to assign rights to the works of Soviet authors.
They in the West will pay millions for this,” Suslov snapped, “but we don’t trade in ideology.”
A week later, a brigade from the Party Control Committee headed by a certain Petrova, who had previously achieved the expulsion of Len Karpinsky from the party, came to the VAAP.
I told Yuri Valentinovich about this when we were sitting with him over bowls of scalding piti soup in the Baku restaurant, which was on what was then Gorky Street. “The eye sees, but the tooth numbs,” Trifonov said, either comforting me or asking me, after chewing his lips according to his custom. And he turned out to be right, because Petrova was soon sent into retirement “for exceeding her authority.”
In March 1981, Yuri Trifonov was hospitalized. On March 26, he underwent surgery - a kidney was removed. On March 28, while waiting for the round, Trifonov shaved, ate and took " Literary newspaper” for March 25, where an interview with him was published. At that moment, a blood clot broke loose, and Trifonov died instantly from pulmonary thromboembolism.
Trifonov’s confessional novel “Time and Place,” in which the history of the country was conveyed through the fates of writers, was not published during Trifonov’s lifetime. It was published after the writer's death in 1982 with significant censorship removals. The cycle of stories “The Overturned House,” in which Trifonov spoke about his life with undisguised farewell tragedy, also saw the light of day after the author’s death, in 1982.
The writer himself defined the novel “Time and Place” as a “novel of self-awareness.” The hero of the novel, the writer Antipov, is being tested for moral fortitude throughout his life, in which one can discern the thread of fate chosen by him in different eras, in various complex life situations. The writer sought to bring together the times that he himself witnessed: the end of the 1930s, the war, the post-war period, the thaw, modernity.
Trifonov’s creativity and personality occupy a special place not only in Russian literature of the 20th century, but also in public life.
In 1980, at the suggestion of Heinrich Böll, Trifonov was nominated for Nobel Prize. The chances were very great, but the death of the writer in March 1981 crossed them out.
Trifonov’s novel “Disappearance” was published posthumously in 1987.
He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
Interview with Olga Trifonova: “I dreamed about them in reality...”
- Olga Romanovna, how did you meet Yuri Trifonov?
Oddly enough, the first meeting took place when I was still going to kindergarten, and Trifonov passed by every day on his way to work. I remember it because of the black tube case in which the wall newspaper lay. In those days, he was a simple worker, a pipe drawer at a military factory, and at the same time edited a wall newspaper. I couldn't know this. We met at the Central House of Writers restaurant. In those years there was a wonderful atmosphere, inexpensive and tasty. Yuri Valentinovich frequented this restaurant. He was quite famous, Firelight had already been released. Trifonov looked at me gloomily and angrily. Then he explained that he was annoyed by my happy appearance.
The romance proceeded dramatically, we converged and diverged. It was difficult for me to leave my husband; it would be better if we lived poorly with him. The feeling of guilt was so heavy that it poisoned the first months of Yuri Valentinovich’s and my life. The visit to the registry office for the divorce procedure was also difficult for him. I saw this and said: “Okay, God bless him, don’t need it yet.” But I was pregnant, and soon we got married. He lived in an apartment on Peschanaya Street, which he loved very much. It seemed very wretched to me, but I understood that I would have to pick him out of it, like Japanese samurai. One day a guest from America came to us and remarked: “Losers live in such an apartment.”
- It was difficult to live with famous writer?
It's surprisingly easy with him. A very tolerant person who does not claim other people’s living space. He had an amazing sense of humor, was amazingly funny, we sometimes laughed until we had Homeric fits. And then, he was trained to do housework like this: to wash the dishes and run to the store for kefir. True, I spoiled him quite quickly - it’s not good to send Trifonov himself to the laundry! The buzzword back then was “somewhere,” and one day I started snatching the plates that he was going to wash out of his hands, and he said, “Stop it, somewhere I like it.”
- In Trifonov’s diaries and workbooks, which came out with your comments, I read that in the sixties he had to do odd jobs and get into debt.
The debts were large. Then friends helped. Playwright Alexei Arbuzov often lent money. Life was not easy financially, and at times it was simply difficult. “I sometimes reached the ruble, don’t be afraid, it’s not scary,” he once told me, also at a difficult moment.
- Was he easy on money?
I remember a relative of his who was going to Spain came to see us. She said that she would go to work in the vineyards and buy jeans for her son and husband. Yuri followed me into the kitchen and asked: “Olya, do we have currency in the house? Give it to her." "All?" “That’s it,” he said firmly. When we were abroad, he always warned: “We must bring gifts to all relatives and friends, the fact that we are here with you is already a gift.”
- Yuri Trifonov was already famous when he wrote “The House on the Embankment.” And it seems to me that this story alone is enough for a writer’s fame. And yet, at that time it was not easy to get such a book through.
The publication history of the story is very complicated. “The House on the Embankment” was published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” only thanks to the wisdom of the editor-in-chief Sergei Baruzdin. The story was not included in the book, which included both “Exchange” and “Preliminary Results”. Markov made sharp criticism at the writers' congress, who then went to Suslov for reinforcements. And Suslov uttered a mysterious phrase: “We all then walked on the edge of a knife,” and this meant permission.
- Were you familiar with Vladimir Vysotsky?
Yes, we met at the Taganka Theater. Trifonov loved Vysotsky and admired him. For him, he was always Vladimir Semenovich, the only person whom he, who did not tolerate “Brezhnev’s” kisses, could hug and kiss when he met. We saw that behind the appearance of a shirtless guy there was a very smart and educated man. Once we met in the same company New Year. One thousand nine hundred and eighty was the last year in Vysotsky’s life. Our dacha neighbors gathered stars. There was Tarkovsky, Vysotsky and Marina Vladi. People who loved each other dearly felt disconnected for some reason. Everything is like cotton wool. It seems to me that the reason was that the food was too luxurious - a large meal, unusual for those times. Food humiliated and separated. After all, many were simply poor then. Tarkovsky was bored and amused himself by taking Polaroid pictures of the dog from strange angles. We were sitting next to Vladimir Semenovich, I saw a guitar in the corner, I really wanted him to sing. I awkwardly flattered him: “It would be nice to call Vysotsky, he would sing.” And suddenly he very seriously and quietly said: “Ol, but no one here except you wants this.” It was true.
- Tell me, did Yuri Valentinovich have any enemies?
More likely, envious people. “Wow,” he wondered, “I live in the world, and someone hates me.” The worst human quality revered vindictiveness. There was such a case. His story “The Overturned House” was in the magazine “New World”. One of the chapters describes our house, drunken movers basking in the sun near the Diet store. And when Yuri Valentinovich came to Diet to order, he was asked to come to the director. “How could you? - There were tears in the director’s voice. “I’ll be fired from my job for this!” It turned out that one writer was not too lazy to come to the store and tell him that soon the whole country would read about the movers. After this story, Trifonov refused to go for orders, however, he was always embarrassed to stand in a special line and did not like privileges. Never asked for anything.
- Even when I was seriously ill...
He had kidney cancer, but that wasn't what he died from. Surgeon Lopatkin performed the operation brilliantly; death occurred as a result of a postoperative complication - embolism. This is a blood clot. At that time, the necessary medications and filters that caught blood clots were already available, but not in that hospital. There wasn't even analgin there. I begged to transfer him to another, wore expensive french perfume, money. They took the perfume and pushed the envelopes away.
- Wasn’t it possible to have the operation abroad?
Can. When Yuri Valentinovich was on a business trip to Sicily, he was examined by a doctor. He said that he didn’t like the tests and suggested going to the clinic. I found out all this later. When I was told the diagnosis in Moscow, I went to the secretariat of the Writers' Union to get Trifonov's international passport. “Where will you get the money for the operation?” - they asked me. I replied that we have friends abroad who are ready to help. In addition, Western publishing houses signed contracts with Trifonov for a future book without even asking for the title. "It's very good doctors“, they told me and refused to issue me a passport.
They were buried according to the usual Literary Fund category at the Kuntsevo cemetery, which was then deserted. On the pillow they carried his only order - the “Badge of Honor”.
Newspapers reported the date of Yuri Trifonov's funeral after the funeral. The authorities feared unrest. Central house writers, where the civil funeral service took place, was surrounded by a tight circle of police, but the crowds still came. In the evening, a student called Olga Romanovna and said in a trembling voice: “We, MSU students, want to say goodbye...” “Already buried.”
Interviewed by Elena SVETLOVA
Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov was born on August 28, 1925 in Moscow. The writer's father is Valentin Andreevich Trifonov, a revolutionary, statesman and military leader, from 1923 to 1926 he served as chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Mother - Evgenia Abramovna Lurie, who was a livestock specialist, then an engineer-economist, and after that a children's writer.
In 1932, the Trifonov family settled in the “Government House”, which would later become widely known as the “House on the Embankment”, thanks to the story of the same name by Yuri Trifonov. In 1937-38, the writer’s parents were repressed. The father was shot. The mother was sentenced to eight years in the camps. She was released in May 1945.
The upbringing of Trifonov and his sister fell on the shoulders of their maternal grandmother. The writer spent part of the war in evacuation in Tashkent. After returning to Moscow, he began working at an aircraft factory. In 1944, Trifonov, who was fond of literature while still at school, entered the Literary Institute. Gorky to the prose department. Graduated from university in 1949. As thesis the story “Students” was performed. It was published by the New World magazine. The work, dedicated to the young post-war generation, brought the author popularity and the Stalin Prize of the third degree.
Then, as Trifonov himself admitted, there followed “an exhausting period of some kind of tossing and turning.” At that time, a sports theme appeared in his work. For 18 years, the writer was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Physical Culture and Sports”, a correspondent for this publication and major newspapers on three Olympic Games, several world championships in volleyball and hockey.
In 1952, Trifonov went on his first trip to Turkmenistan to understand himself and find material for new works. Then he went there again and again, a total of eight times over ten years. First, the writer observed the construction of the Main Turkmen Canal, then the Karakum Canal. The results of these trips were stories and essays collected in the collection “Under the Sun” (1959), as well as the novel “Quenching Thirst,” published in 1963. It was filmed, republished more than once, and nominated for the Lenin Prize in 1965.
At the end of the 1960s, Trifonov began working on a series of so-called Moscow stories. The first among them is “The Exchange” (1969). The next ones are “Preliminary Results” (1970) and “The Long Goodbye” (1971). Subsequently, “Another Life” (1975) and “House on the Embankment” (1976) were added to them. It was “House on the Embankment” that eventually became the most popular work Trifonova.
In the 1970s, Trifonov wrote two novels - “Impatience” about Narodnaya Volya and “The Old Man” about an old participant in the civil war. They can be combined into a conventional trilogy with the story “Reflection of the Fire” created in 1967, in which Trifonov comprehended the revolution and its consequences, and also tried to justify his own father, who had previously been rehabilitated.
Trifonov's books were published in editions of 30-50 thousand copies - a small number by the standards of the 1970s. At the same time, they were in great demand. To read magazines with publications of his works, you had to sign up in a queue at the library.
In 1981, Trifonov completed work on the novel “Time and Place,” which can be considered the writer’s final work. Critics of those years greeted the book coolly. Among the disadvantages was “insufficient artistry.”
Trifonov died on March 28, 1981. The cause of death was pulmonary embolism. The writer's grave is located at the Kuntsevo cemetery. After Trifonov’s death, in 1987, his novel “Disappearance” was published.
Brief analysis of creativity
In his works, Trifonov often turned to the past. True, he showed interest only in certain time periods. The writer's attention was focused on the eras and phenomena that predetermined the fate of his generation and had a strong influence on him. As literary critic Natalia Ivanova notes, no matter what periods Trifonov touched on - modernity, the 1870s or 1930s - he always explored the problem of the relationship between society and man. According to the writer, an individual is responsible for his actions, “from which the history of a people and a country is formed.” As for society, it has no right to “neglect the fate of an individual.”
Trifonov’s prose is often autobiographical in nature. For example, this applies to “House on the Embankment”. In particular, one of its characters is Anton Ovchinnikov, a well-rounded boy whom he admires main character- Glebov. Ovchinnikov's prototype is Lev Fedotov. He was Trifonov's childhood friend.
Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov was born August 28, 1925 in Moscow. Father is a Don Cossack by birth, a professional revolutionary, a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1904, a participant in two revolutions, one of the founders of the Petrograd Red Guard, during the Civil War a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Military Affairs, a member of the Revolutionary Military Councils of several fronts.
In 1937 Trifonov's parents were repressed. Trifonov and his younger sister were adopted by their grandmother, T.L. Slovatinskaya.
Autumn 1941 together with his relatives he was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1942 After graduating from school there, he enlisted in a military aircraft factory and returned to Moscow. He worked at the plant as a mechanic, shop manager, and technician. In 1944 became editor of the factory's large-circulation newspaper. In the same year he entered the correspondence department of the Literary Institute. He applied to the poetry department (more than 100 never-published poems were preserved in the writer’s archive), but was accepted into the prose department. IN 1945 transferred to the full-time department of the Literary Institute, studied in creative seminars by K.A. Fedina and K.G. Paustovsky. Graduated from college in 1949 .
The first publications were feuilletons from student life, published in the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" in 1947 and 1948(“Broad range” and “Narrow specialists”). His first story, “In the Steppe,” was published in 1948 in the almanac of young writers “Young Guard”.
In 1950 Trifonov’s story “Students” appeared in Tvardovsky’s “New World”. Her success was very great. She received the Stalin Prize, “all sorts of flattering offers poured in,” the writer recalled, “from Mosfilm, from the radio, from the publishing house.” The story was popular. The magazine's editors received many letters from readers, and it was discussed in a variety of audiences. Despite all its success, the story really only resembled life. Trifonov himself admitted: “If I had the strength, time and, most importantly, desire, I would rewrite this book from the first to the last page.” But when the book came out, its author took its success for granted. This is evidenced by the dramatization of “Students” - “Young Years” - and written by the year later play about artists “The Key to Success” ( 1951 ), staged at the Theater. M.N. Ermolova A.M. Lobanov. The play was subjected to rather harsh criticism and is now forgotten.
After the resounding success of “Students,” Trifonov, by his own definition, began “an exhausting period of some kind of tossing.” At that time he began writing about sports. For 18 years, Trifonov was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Physical Culture and Sports”, a correspondent for this magazine and major newspapers at the Olympic Games in Rome, Innsbruck, Grenoble, and at several world championships in hockey and volleyball. He wrote dozens of stories, articles, reports, and notes on sports topics. Many of them were included in the collections “At the End of the Season” (1961 ), "Torches on Flaminio" ( 1965 ), "Games at Twilight" ( 1970 ). In his “sports” works, what was openly revealed was what would later become one of the main themes of his work - the effort of the spirit in achieving victory, even over oneself.
Since 1952 Trifonov's trips to Turkmenistan began to build the Turkmen and then the Karakum Canal. The trips lasted about eight years. The result was the collection of short stories “Under the Sun” ( 1959 ) and the novel "Quenching Thirst", published in 1963 in the magazine "Znamya". The novel was republished several times, incl. and in Roman-Gazeta, nominated for the Lenin Prize 1965 , was dramatized and filmed. True, as Trifonov said, they read the novel, in comparison with “Students,” “much more calmly and even, perhaps, sluggishly.”
“Quenching Thirst” turned out to be a typical “thaw” work, remaining in many ways one of the many “industrial” novels of those years. However, it already contained characters and thoughts that would later become the focus of the writer’s attention.
Critics deciphered the title of the novel “Quenching Thirst” not only as quenching the thirst of the earth waiting for water, but also quenching the human thirst for justice. The desire to restore justice was dictated by the story “Glimmer of the Fire” ( 1965 ) - a documentary story about the writer's father. Late 1960s he begins the so-called cycle. Moscow or city stories: “Exchange” ( 1969 ), "Preliminary results" ( 1970 ), "The Long Goodbye" (1971 ), then they were joined by “Another Life” (1975 ) and "House on the Embankment" ( 1976 ). The plots of these books, especially the first three, seem to be devoted only to the “details” of the life of a modern city dweller. Everyday life city dwellers, immediately recognizable to readers, seemed to many critics to be the only theme of the books.
It took the critics of the 1960s and 70s a long time to understand that behind the reproduction of the life of a modern city there is hidden an understanding of “eternal themes”, of what constitutes the essence human life. When applied to Trifonov’s work, the words of one of his heroes were justified: “Feat is understanding. Understanding the other. My God, how difficult it is!”
Book about Narodnaya Volya “Impatience” ( 1973 ) was perceived in contrast to the “urban” stories. Moreover, it appeared after the first three of them, when some of the criticism tried to create Trifonov’s reputation as just a modern writer of everyday life, absorbed in the everyday bustle of the townspeople, busy, according to the writer’s definition, with the “great trifles” of life.
“Impatience” is a book about terrorists of the 19th century, impatiently pushing the course of history, preparing an assassination attempt on the Tsar, dying on the scaffold.
The novel “The Old Man” ( 1978 ). In him, in one life, history and, at first glance, seemingly unrelated to it, disappearing without a trace in the bustle of everyday life, modernity, absorbed by itself, were interconnected. “The Old Man” is a novel about passing people and time passing, disappearing, ending with them. The characters in the novel lose the feeling of being part of that endless thread that the hero of “Another Life” spoke about. This thread, it turns out, breaks not with the end of life, but with the disappearance of memory of the past.
After the writer's death in 1980 His novel “Time and Place” and the short story “The Overturned House” were published. In 1987 The magazine "Friendship of Peoples" published the novel "Disappearance", which Trifonov wrote for many years and did not have time to finish.
“A Time and a Place” begins with the question: “Do we need to remember?” Latest works Trifonov became the answer to this question. The writer defined “Time and Place” as a “novel of self-awareness.” Latest books therefore turned out to be more autobiographical than their predecessors. The narrative in them, entering new psychological and moral layers, acquired a freer form.
Starting with stories 1960s- in almost 15 years - Trifonov turned out to be one of the founders of a special trend in modern Russian literature - the so-called. urban prose in which he created his own world. His books are united not so much by common townspeople characters passing from one to another, but by thoughts and views on the life of both the heroes and the author. The main task Literature Trifonov considered the reflection of the phenomenon of life and the phenomenon of time in their relationship, expressed in the fate of a person.
Yuri Trifonov was born on August 28, 1925 in Moscow in the family of Bolshevik, party and military leader Valentin Andreevich Trifonov.
His father went through exile and hard labor, participated in the armed uprising in Rostov, in the organization of the Red Guard in Petrograd in 1917, in the civil war, in 1918 he saved the gold reserves of the republic and worked in the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. For the future writer, his father was a true example of a revolutionary and a human being. Trifonov's mother, Evgenia Abramovna Lurie, was a livestock specialist, then an engineer-economist. Subsequently, she became a children's writer - Evgenia Tayurina.
My father’s brother, Evgeniy Andreevich, an army commander and hero of the Civil War, was also a writer and published under the pseudonym E. Brazhnev. Grandmother T.A. Slovatinskaya, a representative of the “old guard” of the Bolsheviks, lived with the Trifonov family. Both mother and grandmother had a great influence on the upbringing of the future writer.
In 1932, the Trifonov family moved to the Government House, which more than forty years later became known throughout the world as the “House on the Embankment”, thanks to the title of Trifonov’s story. In 1937, the writer's father and uncle were arrested and were soon shot (uncle in 1937, father in 1938). For a twelve-year-old boy, the arrest of his father, of whose innocence he was sure, was a real tragedy. Yuri Trifonov’s mother was also repressed and served a prison sentence in Karlag. Yuri and his sister and grandmother, evicted from the apartment of a government building, wandered and lived in poverty.
With the outbreak of war, Trifonov was evacuated to Tashkent, and in 1943 he returned to Moscow. The “son of an enemy of the people” could not enter any university, and got a job at a military factory. Having received the necessary work experience, in 1944, still working at the plant, he entered the Literary Institute. Trifonov said about his admission to the Literary Institute: “Two school notebooks with poems and translations seemed to me such a solid application that there could be no two opinions - I would be accepted to the poetry seminar. I will become a poet... As an appendage, completely optional, I added to my poetic creations a short story, about twelve pages long, under the title - unconsciously stolen - “The Death of a Hero”... A month passed, and I came to Tverskoy Boulevard for an answer. The secretary of the correspondence department said: “The poems are so-so, but the chairman of the admissions committee, Fedin, liked the story... you can be accepted into the prose department.” A strange thing happened: the next minute I forgot about poetry and never wrote again in my life!” At the insistence of Fedin, Trifonov was later transferred to the full-time department of the institute, from which he graduated in 1949.
In 1949, Trifonov married opera singer, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Nina Alekseevna Nelina. In 1951, Trifonov and Nelina had a daughter, Olga.
Trifonov’s diploma work, the story “Students,” written by him between 1949 and 1950, brought him fame. It was published in the literary magazine "New World" and awarded the Stalin Prize in 1951. The writer himself subsequently treated his first story coldly. Despite the artificiality of the main conflict (an ideologically devout professor and a cosmopolitan professor), the story carried the beginnings of the main qualities of Trifonov’s prose - the authenticity of life, the comprehension of human psychology through the everyday.
In the spring of 1952, Trifonov went on a business trip to the Karakum Desert, on the route of the Main Turkmen Canal, and for many years, Yuri Trifonov’s writing life was connected with Turkmenistan. In 1959, a cycle of stories and essays “Under the Sun” appeared, in which the features of Trifonov’s own style were first identified. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Trifonov wrote the stories “Bakko”, “Glasses”, “The Loneliness of Klych Durda” and other stories.
In 1963, the novel “Quenching Thirst” was published, the materials for which he collected during the construction of the Turkmen Canal, but the author himself was not satisfied with this novel, and in the following years Trifonov was engaged in writing sports stories and reports. Trifonov loved sports and, being a passionate fan, wrote enthusiastically about it.
Konstantin Vanshenkin recalled: “Yuri Trifonov lived in the mid-fifties on Verkhnyaya Maslovka, near the Dynamo stadium. I started going there. He played up (football jargon) for CDKA for personal reasons, also because of Bobrov. On the podium I met the hardcore Spartak players: A. Arbuzov, I. Shtok, and then aspiring football statistician K. Yesenin. They convinced him that Spartak was better. Rare case".
For 18 years, the writer was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Physical Education and Sports” and wrote several scripts for documentaries and feature films about sports. Trifonov became one of the Russian founders of the psychological story about sports and athletes.
The rehabilitation of Valentin Trifonov in 1955 made it possible for Yuri to write the documentary story “Glimmer of the Fire” based on his father’s surviving archive. This story about the bloody events on the Don, published in 1965, became Trifonov’s main work in those years.
In 1966, Nina Nelina died suddenly, and in 1968, Alla Pastukhova, editor of the “Fiery Revolutionaries” series of Politizdat, became Trifonov’s second wife.
In 1969, the story “Exchange” appeared, later - in 1970, the story “Preliminary Results” was published, in 1971 - “The Long Farewell”, and in 1975 - “Another Life”. These stories told about love and family relationships. The focus of Trifonov’s artistic quests constantly arose the problem of the moral choice that a person is forced to make even in the simplest everyday situations. During the period of Brezhnev’s timelessness, the writer was able to show how an intelligent, talented person (the hero of the story “Another Life”, historian Sergei Troitsky), who did not want to compromise his own decency, was suffocating in this toxic atmosphere. Official criticism accused the author of the absence of a positive beginning, of the fact that Trifonov’s prose stands “on the sidelines of life,” far from great achievements and the struggle for the ideals of a “bright future.”
The writer Boris Pankin recalled about Yuri Trifonov: “It so happened that after my article “Not in a circle, in a spiral”, published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” in the late 70s, Yuri Valentinovich Trifonov wrote every new thing, large or small. in length, he brought it to me with an autograph, or even in manuscript, as happened, for example, with the novel “Time and Place.” He was selling these new things so thickly that one day I couldn’t resist and asked with a feeling of healthy, white, according to Robert Rozhdestvensky, envy how he managed to produce such masterpieces one after another with such iron regularity. He looked at me thoughtfully, chewed his full Negro lips - which he always did before maintaining a dialogue - touched his round horn-rimmed glasses, straightened the buttoned collar of his shirt without a tie and said, starting with the word “here”: “Here, you heard, Probably the saying goes: every dog has its time to bark. And it passes quickly...”
In 1973, Trifonov published the novel “Impatience” about the Narodnaya Volya, published in Politizdat in the series “Fiery Revolutionaries”. There were few censored notes in Trifonov’s works. The writer was convinced that talent manifests itself in the ability to say everything the author wants to say and not be mutilated by censorship.
Trifonov actively opposed the decision of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union to remove its leading employees I.I. Vinogradov, A. Kondratovich, V.Ya. Lakshin from the editorial board of the New World, knowing full well that, first of all, this was a blow to the editor-in-chief of the magazine Alexander Tvardovsky, for whom Trifonov had the deepest respect.
In 1975, Trifonov married writer Olga Miroshnichenko.
In the 1970s, Trifonov’s work was highly appreciated by Western critics and publishers. Each new book was quickly translated and published.
In 1976, the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” published Trifonov’s story “The House on the Embankment,” one of the most notable poignant works of the 1970s. In the story, Trifonov made a deep psychological analysis of the nature of fear, the nature and degradation of people under the yoke of a totalitarian system. Justification by time and circumstances is typical for many Trifonov characters. The author saw the reasons for betrayal and moral decline in the fear into which the entire country was plunged after Stalin's terror. Turning to various periods of Russian history, the writer showed the courage of man and his weakness, his greatness and baseness, not only at the breaking points, but also in everyday life. Trifonov matched different eras, arranged a “confrontation” for different generations - grandfathers and grandchildren, fathers and children, discovering historical overlaps, trying to see a person in the most dramatic moments of his life - at the moment of moral choice.
For three years, “The House on the Embankment” was not included in any of the book collections, and in the meantime Trifonov was working on the novel “The Old Man” about the bloody events on the Don in 1918. “The Old Man” appeared in 1978 in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples”.
Writer Boris Pankin recalled: “Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka almost simultaneously The Master and Margarita and The House on the Embankment.” VAAP, which I was then in charge of, immediately ceded the rights to stage these works in Lyubimov’s interpretation to many foreign theatrical agencies. For everyone. A “memo” immediately fell on the desk of Suslov, the second person in the Communist Party, in which the VAAP was accused of promoting ideologically vicious works to the West.
There,” Mikhalandrev (that was his “underground” nickname) reasoned at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, where I was also summoned, looking into the anonymous address, “naked women are flying around the stage. And also this play, what’s it called, “Government House”...
“A house on the embankment,” one of the assistants carefully suggested to him.
Yes, “Government House,” Suslov repeated. - They decided to stir up something old for something.
I tried to reduce the matter to jurisdiction. They say that the Geneva Convention does not provide for the refusal to foreign partners to assign rights to the works of Soviet authors.
They in the West will pay millions for this,” Suslov snapped, “but we don’t trade in ideology.”
A week later, a brigade from the Party Control Committee headed by a certain Petrova, who had previously achieved the expulsion of Len Karpinsky from the party, came to the VAAP.
I told Yuri Valentinovich about this when we were sitting with him over bowls of scalding piti soup in the Baku restaurant, which was on what was then Gorky Street. “The eye sees, but the tooth numbs,” Trifonov said, either comforting me or asking me, after chewing his lips according to his custom. And he turned out to be right, because Petrova was soon sent into retirement “for exceeding her authority.”
In March 1981, Yuri Trifonov was hospitalized. On March 26, he underwent surgery - a kidney was removed. On March 28, while waiting for the round, Trifonov shaved, ate and picked up the Literary Gazette for March 25, where an interview with him was published. At that moment, a blood clot broke loose, and Trifonov died instantly from pulmonary thromboembolism.
Trifonov’s confessional novel “Time and Place,” in which the history of the country was conveyed through the fates of writers, was not published during Trifonov’s lifetime. It was published after the writer's death in 1982 with significant censorship removals. The cycle of stories “The Overturned House,” in which Trifonov spoke about his life with undisguised farewell tragedy, also saw the light of day after the author’s death, in 1982.
The writer himself defined the novel “Time and Place” as a “novel of self-awareness.” The hero of the novel, the writer Antipov, is tested for moral fortitude throughout his life, in which one can discern the thread of fate chosen by him in different eras, in various difficult life situations. The writer sought to bring together the times that he himself witnessed: the end of the 1930s, the war, the post-war period, the thaw, modernity.
Trifonov’s creativity and personality occupy a special place not only in Russian literature of the 20th century, but also in public life.
In 1980, at the suggestion of Heinrich Böll, Trifonov was nominated for the Nobel Prize. The chances were very great, but the death of the writer in March 1981 crossed them out. Trifonov’s novel “Disappearance” was published posthumously in 1987.
Yuri Trifonov was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
About Yuri Trifonov was filmed documentary"About you and me."
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Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov
Used materials:
– Olga Romanovna, how did you meet Yuri Trifonov?
– Oddly enough, the first meeting took place when I was still in kindergarten, and Trifonov passed by every day on his way to work. I remember it because of the black tube case in which the wall newspaper lay. In those days, he was a simple worker, a pipe drawer at a military factory, and at the same time edited a wall newspaper. I couldn't know this. We met at the Central House of Writers restaurant. In those years there was a wonderful atmosphere, inexpensive and tasty. Yuri Valentinovich frequented this restaurant. He was quite famous, Firelight had already been released. Trifonov looked at me gloomily and angrily. Then he explained that he was annoyed by my happy appearance.
The romance proceeded dramatically, we converged and diverged. It was difficult for me to leave my husband; it would be better if we lived poorly with him. The feeling of guilt was so heavy that it poisoned the first months of Yuri Valentinovich’s and my life. The visit to the registry office for the divorce procedure was also difficult for him. I saw this and said: “Okay, God bless him, don’t need it yet.” But I was pregnant, and soon we got married. He lived in an apartment on Peschanaya Street, which he loved very much. It seemed very wretched to me, but I understood that I would have to pick him out of it, like a Japanese samurai. One day a guest from America came to us and remarked: “Losers live in such an apartment.”
– Was it difficult to live with a famous writer?
“It’s surprisingly easy with him.” A very tolerant person who does not claim other people’s living space. He had an amazing sense of humor, was amazingly funny, we sometimes laughed until we had Homeric fits. And then, he was trained to do housework like this: to wash the dishes and run to the store for kefir. True, I spoiled him quite quickly - it’s not good to send Trifonov himself to the laundry! The buzzword back then was “somewhere,” and one day I started snatching the plates that he was going to wash out of his hands, and he said, “Stop it, somewhere I like it.”
– In Trifonov’s diaries and workbooks, which came out with your comments, I read that in the sixties he had to do odd jobs and get into debt.
– The debts were large. Then friends helped. Playwright Alexei Arbuzov often lent money. Life was not easy financially, and at times it was simply difficult. “I sometimes came up to the ruble, don’t be afraid, it’s not scary,” he once told me, also at a difficult moment.
– Was he easy with money?
“I remember a relative of his who was going to Spain came to see us. She said that she would go to work in the vineyards and buy jeans for her son and husband. Yuri followed me into the kitchen and asked: “Olya, do we have currency in the house? Give it to her." "All?" “That’s it,” he said firmly. When we were abroad, he always warned: “We must bring gifts to all relatives and friends, the fact that we are here with you is already a gift.”
– Yuri Trifonov was already famous when he wrote “The House on the Embankment.” And it seems to me that this story alone is enough for a writer’s fame. And yet, at that time it was not easy to get such a book through.
– The story’s publication history is very complicated. “The House on the Embankment” was published in the magazine “Friendship of Peoples” only thanks to the wisdom of the editor-in-chief Sergei Baruzdin. The story was not included in the book, which included both “Exchange” and “Preliminary Results”. Markov made sharp criticism at the writers' congress, who then went to Suslov for reinforcements. And Suslov uttered a mysterious phrase: “We all then walked on the edge of a knife,” and this meant permission.
– Were you familiar with Vladimir Vysotsky?
– Yes, we met at the Taganka Theater. Trifonov loved Vysotsky and admired him. For him, he was always Vladimir Semenovich, the only person whom he, who did not tolerate “Brezhnev’s” kisses, could hug and kiss when he met. We saw that behind the appearance of a shirtless guy there was a very smart and educated man. Once we celebrated the New Year in the same company. One thousand nine hundred and eighty was the last year in Vysotsky’s life. Our dacha neighbors gathered stars. There was Tarkovsky, Vysotsky and Marina Vladi. People who loved each other dearly felt disconnected for some reason. Everything is like cotton wool. It seems to me that the reason was that the food was too luxurious - a large meal, unusual for those times. Food humiliated and separated. After all, many were simply poor then. Tarkovsky was bored and amused himself by taking Polaroid pictures of the dog from strange angles. We were sitting next to Vladimir Semenovich, I saw a guitar in the corner, I really wanted him to sing. I awkwardly flattered him: “It would be nice to call Vysotsky, he would sing.” And suddenly he very seriously and quietly said: “Ol, but no one here except you wants this.” It was true.
– Tell me, did Yuri Valentinovich have any enemies?
- More likely, envious people. “Wow,” he wondered, “I live in the world, and someone hates me.” He considered vindictiveness to be the worst human quality. There was such a case. His story “The Overturned House” was in the magazine “New World”. One of the chapters describes our house, drunken movers basking in the sun near the Diet store. And when Yuri Valentinovich came to Diet to order, he was asked to come to the director. “How could you? – There were tears in the director’s voice. “I’ll be fired from my job for this!” It turned out that one writer was not too lazy to come to the store and tell him that soon the whole country would read about the movers. After this story, Trifonov refused to go for orders, however, he was always embarrassed to stand in a special line and did not like privileges. Never asked for anything.
– Even when I was seriously ill...
“He had kidney cancer, but that’s not what he died from.” Surgeon Lopatkin performed the operation brilliantly; death occurred as a result of a postoperative complication - embolism. This is a blood clot. At that time, the necessary medications and filters that caught blood clots were already available, but not in that hospital. There wasn't even analgin there. I begged to transfer him to another, wore expensive French perfume, money. They took the perfume and pushed the envelopes away.
– Wasn’t it possible to have the operation abroad?
- Can. When Yuri Valentinovich was on a business trip to Sicily, he was examined by a doctor. He said that he didn’t like the tests and suggested going to the clinic. I found out all this later. When I was told the diagnosis in Moscow, I went to the secretariat of the Writers' Union to get Trifonov's international passport. “Where will you get the money for the operation?” - they asked me. I replied that we have friends abroad who are ready to help. In addition, Western publishing houses signed contracts with Trifonov for a future book without even asking for the title. “The doctors here are very good,” they told me and refused to issue me a passport.
They were buried according to the usual Literary Fund category at the Kuntsevo cemetery, which was then deserted. On the pillow they carried his only order - “Badge of Honor”.
Newspapers reported the date of Yuri Trifonov's funeral after the funeral. The authorities feared unrest. The central house of writers, where the civil funeral service took place, was surrounded by a tight circle of police, but crowds still came. In the evening, a student called Olga Romanovna and said in a trembling voice: “We, MSU students, want to say goodbye...” “Already buried.”
Interviewed by Elena SVETLOVA
Soviet writer, translator, prose writer, publicist, screenwriter.
Born on August 28, 1925 in Moscow in the family of a professional revolutionary who participated in the armed uprising in Rostov (went through exile and hard labor), in the organization of the Red Guard in Petrograd in 1917, in the civil war, in 1918 he saved the gold reserves of the republic, worked in Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. For the future writer, his father was a true example of a revolutionary and a human being. For a twelve-year-old boy, the arrest of his father, of whose innocence he was confident both in 1937, when it happened, and later, was a tragedy. In 1938, the mother was also arrested. "Son of an enemy of the people" after high school could not enter any university, so he had to work at an aircraft factory as a mechanic, a shop manager, and an editor of a factory magazine.
Having received the necessary work experience, Trifonov entered the Gorky Literary Institute, from which he graduated in 1949. He gained fame after the publication of the novel “Students” (1950).
In the spring of 1952, he went on a business trip to the Karakum Desert, on the route of the Main Turkmen Canal. For many years, the writer's fate of Yu.V. Trifonova turned out to be connected with Turkmenistan. In 1959, a cycle of stories and essays “Under the Sun” appeared, in which the features of Trifonov’s own style were first identified. In 1962 he wrote the novel Quenching Thirst.
The rehabilitation of his father (1955) made it possible in 1965 to write a documentary story, “Reflection of the Fire,” based on his father’s surviving archive.
In 1966-1969 he wrote a number of stories - “Vera and Zoyka”, “In the Mushroom Autumn”, etc.
In 1969, the first story from the urban cycle “Exchange” was published, followed (1970-1976) by “Preliminary Results”, “The Long Farewell”, “Another Life”, “House on the Embankment”.
In 1973, a novel about the Narodnaya Volya members, “Impatience,” was published, exploring the “ineradicable genetic code history”, linking together the past, present and future.
IN last years The novel "The Old Man" and the cycle of short stories "The Overturned House" were written.