What is the name of the first collection of Margarita Aliger. M. Aliger “We will not be able to live in the world with a small and inconspicuous fate. Life in the capital

Poetess -
"symbol of Stalinist propaganda"
"ideological saboteur"
and just a woman

... And we, without hypocrisy and flattery, for everything that we breathe and live, not separately, but together bear our responsibility. (Yaroslav Smelyakov)

“I don’t like Brodsky, but he is a poet and we need to save him, protect him,” wrote Lydia Chukovskaya, daughter of Korney Chukovsky, in her diary.

I don’t like, for the most part, the poems of Margarita Aliger, but without her, without her friends and relatives, the literary and cultural life of our once common country would be incomplete and, in general, might have turned out differently.

To write an essay about a poet, especially a female poet, whose poems are not close to you, do not correspond to your worldview, is both difficult and simple at the same time. It’s difficult, because you still need to choose the right intonation, tune in with the heroine on the same wavelength, understand at least a little of her feelings. Simple - because the magic of your favorite lines does not distract you, does not allow you to surrender to the flow of your own feelings, emotions, experiences. You can follow your own concept of the story with a slight detachment from the texts.

And my concept is to clean the image of Margarita Iosifovna Aliger as much as possible from labels and often unfair characteristics. After all, this injustice, without the possibility of justification, was created just by people who do not want to be responsible for our past, which “belongs equally” to everyone.

In one of the articles about the work of Margarita Aliger, I read that, while preparing for reprinting in 1960, in the midst of the thaw, her poem “Zoya”, she refused to delete the mention of Stalin from the text. But others at the same time removed from their creative heritage not pages, but entire periods. I do not think that M. Aliger was a staunch Stalinist. Yes, she remained true to her ideals, did not give up her past, her delusions, she was ready to bear personal responsibility for this past, without discounting the scale of her personal guilt as a bearer and preacher of a certain ideology.

It is interesting that even the playful nickname "Aligeritsa" given to her by Anna Akhmatova sounds like one of the labels in the mouth of the "subverters" of the poetess. But, most likely, in this nickname, the similarity of the poetess's surname with the name of a well-known animal was simply played up. To imagine seriously a small, fragile Margarita Aliger in the role of a dangerous predator is still, you see, hard.

“There is no person who would be like an Island, in itself: each person is a part of the Mainland, a part of the Land; and if the Wave blows the coastal Cliff into the sea, Europe will become smaller and also if it washes away the edge of the Cape or destroys your Castle or your Friend; the death of each Human belittles me, for I am one with all mankind, and therefore never ask for whom the Bell tolls: it tolls for You "...

From Margarita Aliger's poem "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1961):

From the official biography of Margarita Aliger:

Margarita Iosifovna Aliger (Aliger-Makarova) - Russian Soviet poetess, playwright. Born in Odessa on September 24, 1915. In the summer of 1933, her poems were first published in Ogonyok: Weekdays and Rain. A year later, Aliger entered the Literary Institute named after A. M. Gorky. In 1937, Margarita Iosifovna graduated from the institute. Her collections begin to appear - "Year of Birth" (1938), "Railway" (1939), "Stones and Grass" (1940).

In 1942, the poem "Zoya", dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, was published. The poem was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1943; it has been translated into many languages. Thanks to the poem, after which her name became widely known, Aliger became a symbol of Stalin's patriotic propaganda.

By the way, as Archpriest Mikhail Ardov said, the huge popularity of the poem about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya led to the fact that even chocolate sets with her portrait appeared on Moscow shelves. And then Margarita Aliger stood up for the honor of her heroine and ensured that sweets with her image disappeared from sale.

Aliger was a member of the editorial board of the almanac "Literary Moscow", which was the herald of the "thaw".

In the sixties and seventies, the poetess visited many countries. She wrote well-known cycles of poems: "Two meetings", "Japanese notes", "Poems from afar", "Italy of my soul", "From a French notebook", "Sad Spain".

A special place in the work of Aliger is occupied by the prose book "Return to Chile", written as a result of two trips to Latin America. In the seventies, the poetess almost did not print her poems, switching to memoirs and criticism. Memoirs about A. Akhmatova, A. Tvardovsky, E. Kazakevich belong to the best pages of the book about poetry and poets "The Path in the Rye".

Margarita Iosifovna died in August 1992 as a result of a ridiculous accident - she fell into a deep ditch near her dacha in the village of Michurinets, Moscow Region.

On August 5, Literaturnaya Gazeta published an obituary "In Memory of Margarita Aliger". It was signed by 25 famous poets and writers: A. Voznesensky, D. Danin, E. Evtushenko, E. Dolmatovsky, L. Libedinskaya, E. Matusovsky, B. Okudzhava, L. Razgon and others.

You can read more about the life of Margarita Iosifovna Aliger in Lazar Medovar's essay "Margarita Aliger: Life in Literature".

From my youth, I was endlessly worried that there were no spectacular details and incredible circumstances in my biography, and that, perhaps, I could easily fit all of it on one page, and it was always difficult for me to write or tell it ...

Somewhere between 1931 and 1934 in Moscow, apparently, young Margarita and one of the future Soviet poets Yaroslav Smelyakov (1912-1972) met in a literary circle at the Ogonyok magazine. According to the recollections of people who knew this story of short youthful love, they were a little over 20. Probably, since Rita moved to Moscow in 1931, and Yaroslav was repressed in 1934 on false charges, having been released in 1937.

And this short-term novel is interesting with the “mystical” story of a massive silver ring with a Masonic emblem, presented by Smelyakov to Margarita Aliger after their break: “Remember, as long as you wear the ring, everything will be fine with me” ...

Every time the ring was out of sight, something really happened to Smelyakov. And for the first time, when he was arrested. Then the ring broke and lay in the box for a long time. After the death of Yaroslav Smelyakov, Margarita Aliger came to visit her old friend, Lydia Libedinskaya (wife of the writer Yuri Libedinsky). It was then that the history of the ring surfaced again, and Margarita Iosifovna reached into the box.

She went into the office, she could be heard opening a drawer, rustling papers, and suddenly there was a loud, desperate cry. I rushed to her. Margarita stood on the threshold, pale as a sheet, holding a ring in her hands and, barely moving her lips, repeated:

- Whole, it's whole, Lida! .. I took the ring from her - it really was completely whole - no traces of repair, soldering.

“It can be seen that life has closed, the ring has closed,” said Margarita Aliger.

But there are good poems. At least this is Yaroslav Smelyakov, 1940:

If I get sick, I won’t go to the doctors, I turn to my friends (don’t think that this is delusional): spread the steppe for me, curtain my windows with fog, put a night star at the head ...

At the very end of the 30s, Margarita Aliger got married. Her husband, Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin (1915-1941), graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, studied at the graduate school with N. Ya. Myaskovsky. Back in Rostov-on-Don, where Konstantin graduated from a music school, he was adopted by a teacher N. Rakitina (hence the double surname).

Life broke me with cruel inexorability. My husband, like me, was still studying, was a graduate student at the Moscow Conservatory, we started living on two scholarships. A son was born. A serious illness for a while completely deprived me of the opportunity to write. And when everything began to improve, serious difficulties of a completely different nature were discovered in the work ... Then I wrote little and everything was something not right, something very indistinct and inorganic. And then a misfortune befell me, worse than which nothing could be - after a long, serious illness, my little son died. The grief that shook me, turned my soul upside down, apparently opened in it new sources of vital and creative energy, and it was as if something threw me into work. It was an unconscious form of self-defence, because work, and only work, could support and save me at that time ...

As soon as the Great Patriotic War began, Konstantin volunteered for the front and soon died in battle near Yartsevo. He managed to write several songs to his wife's poems, several piano pieces and the opera "The Soldier's Bride" based on the story "A Soldier Was Coming from the Front" by V. Kataev (libretto by M. Aliger).

Elena Mushkina. "The Age of One Family":

Aliger, a small, thin, "pocket" woman, lived in the area of ​​Miusskaya Square, in the House of Composers. Akhmatova called her Aligeritsa. With her nine-month-old daughter Tanya, she left for evacuation to Chistopol. Then the second girl was born, Masha, Fadeev's daughter. They said she looked a lot like him. Margarita was friends with the Libedinskys. My mother and I were confused: the Libedinskys have Masha and Tanya in seniority, Aliger has Tanya and Masha ...

The writer Alexander Fadeev, the author of The Young Guard, at that time was married to the Moscow Art Theater actress Angelina Stepanova by a second marriage and raised her eldest son, also Alexander, whom he adopted and gave his last name. The second, their common son, Mikhail, was born a year after Maria Aliger, in 1944.

From an article by Natalia Ivanova “Alexander Fadeev’s Personal File” (published in Znamya magazine, 1998, No. 10):

The women who fascinated Fadeev were extraordinary. And outstanding women were fond of Fadeev - the famous poem by Maria Petrov "Make me a date in this world ..." is addressed, according to contemporaries, to Fadeev ...

Complaining about the busyness that takes him away from creativity, Fadeev “wakes up” when a new, fresh, unexpected feeling invades his life; then he is overwhelmed with emotions, some of which end up on the pages of letters. This is how “Rita”, Margarita Aliger, appears in his letters: in March 1942, Fadeev lived for some time with Pavel Antokolsky, who sheltered him, and, suffering from the flu, ended up in a “friendly commune” of poets, among whom was Aliger.

Relations with women have never been a simple matter for Fadeev - especially with a "comrade in writing" and, moreover, culminating in the birth of a daughter. Fadeev - after a rather significant separation - was "infinitely excited" by an unexpected meeting with Aliger on the street and writes a letter to her, explaining the postponement of the necessary conversation by special - first public, and then personal - employment. “And if anything consoled me during these months,” writes Fadeev, “it was the thought that you, with your soul and talent, probably also gained these strengths and then you also lived these months mentally easier and you were able to do a lot. look with wider and stronger eyes. Fadeev justifies himself before Aliger. And in front of yourself, too.

“No one, absolutely no one, has ever understood, does not understand and can not understand me - not in the fact that I am talented, but in the features, in the nature of my individuality, which is in fact too vulnerable with the true size of my talent and therefore needs special treatment,” he explains Aliger. Open - close, open - disappointed; to realize oneself misunderstood and vulnerable, not doubting the strength of one's talent and feelings - such are Fadeev's hesitation in relations with women.

In 1956 Alexander Fadeev shot himself. And two poems by Margarita Aliger are one of those that, of course, are inspired by this terrible ending.

A woman on the street screamed So that everything around shuddered. … It was the very beginning of the burst of grief, formidable torments. The pain will be cruel and great, - Do not measure, do not count the days, - And when there is no strength to cry, People will say: she felt better.

Again they quarreled in the tram, not holding back, not ashamed of strangers ... But, involuntarily not hiding envy, I looked at them excitedly. They don't know how happy they are. And thank God! Nothing for them to know. Just think about it! - nearby, both are alive, and you can fix and understand everything ...

Sergey Mnatsakanyan in the article “Ragged time. Guardians" allowed himself the following at the address of Margarita Aliger:

Dry, like Baba Yaga, tense and tenacious Margarita Aliger in glasses with powerful glasses, one of the guards of the regime. One of the wives of Alexander Fadeev. She wrote a poem about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. In the seventies, she undertook to support young Moscow poets. Margarita Aliger, as befits a fairy-tale friend of Koshchei, seemed immortal ...

... She died unnoticed, in Peredelkino, during a walk, she simply fell under a bush not far from the "state" - Litfond's dacha, somewhere - also unnoticed - was buried. With the departure of people like Margarita Aliger, the departure and change of eras begin ...

I don’t know why the editors of Literaturnaya Gazeta in 2003 decided on such an insulting publication that offended the human and simply feminine dignity of the poetess who had died more than 10 years ago and her youngest daughter tragically died by that time more than 10 years ago.

Well, we’ll have to wait a little with the departure and change of eras, at least reminding readers of a few more beautiful “female” poems by the “guardian of the regime”:

From the introduction by Natalia Gromova to the publication “Letters from Ariadna Efron to Margarita Aliger” (October magazine, 2004, No. 2):

The life and poetry of Margarita Iosifovna Aliger reflected the historical paradoxes of the Soviet era. A poet of state officialdom, favored by the authorities, laureate of the Stalin Prize in 1943, she was at the same time one of the founders of the "Thaw" almanac "Literary Moscow", a member of the commission on the literary heritage of M. I. Tsvetaeva and ardently helped Ariadne Efron in preparing the first literary evenings and collections of Tsvetaeva's poetry. Aliger was generally talented precisely with the talent of friendship. From her youth, her circle of friends included D. Danin, his school friend E. Dolmatovsky, Y. Smelyakov, K. Simonov and the elders - P. Antokolsky, V. Lugovskoy. At the height of the campaign against cosmopolitanism, N. Gribachev demanded in vain from the pages of Literaturka that Aliger renounce Danin's "vile cosmopolitan".

Ariadne Efron and Margarita Aliger were also united by friendship with E. G. Kazakevich, who remained in the memory of his contemporaries both as an interesting writer and as a significant personality in the literary horizon. In 1956, together with V. Kaverin and M. Aliger, he achieved the publication of the almanac "Literary Moscow", which existed in only two issues. It published the works of A. Akhmatova and M. Tsvetaeva, as well as L. Martynov, N. Zabolotsky, B. Pasternak, V. Shklovsky and other writers and poets, undeservedly excluded from literature.

From the Note of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On Some Issues in the Development of Modern Soviet Literature", July 27, 1956:

... Recently, as a reaction to the varnishing of reality, some writers and artists have developed a desire to depict, first of all, the “bitter truth”, to draw attention to the difficulties and disorder of life, to severe hardships and to the insults of the innocent victims. Similar tendencies manifested themselves, for example, in the recently released collection “Literary Moscow”, where a number of authors draw, first of all, the shadow sides of our life, sometimes resorting to deliberate situations for this (S. Antonov’s stories, Rozhdestvensky’s and Aliger’s poems) ...

Deputy head Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU B. Ryurikov

Head Sector of the Department V. Ivanov

Instructor I. Chernoutsan

From the book of L. A. Balayan:

On May 19, 1957, party and state leaders met with cultural figures. Here is how the writer Vadim Tendryakov recalls this meeting:

“Heavy drunk Khrushchev saddled the theme of ideology in literature - “varnishers are not such bad guys ... We will not fuss with those who surreptitiously dirty us.” He unexpectedly fell upon the fragile Margarita Aliger, who actively supported the almanac Literaturnaya Moskva.

— You are an ideological saboteur. Burp of the capitalist West!

— Nikita Sergeevich, what are you talking about? Aliger, stunned, fought back. - I'm a communist, a member of the party.

- Lie! I do not trust such communists! Here I believe the non-party Sobolev! You don't!

- That's right, Nikita Sergeevich! Sobolev helpfully agreed. - Right! You can't trust them!"

Subsequently, Igor Chernoutsan, an employee of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU, became the husband of Margarita Aliger. From the official reference:

Igor Sergeevich Chernoutsan (10/19/1918 - 01/22/1990) - writer, party worker. Born and graduated from school in Yaroslavl, in 1936 he became a student of the first intake of the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and Art (IFLI) in Moscow. Graduated from IFLI on June 21, 1941. Was drafted into the army. After completing training in accelerated radio communication courses, he became the head of the radio station of the Stalingrad Front. Was shell-shocked several times. The war ended in Koenigsberg. He was awarded military orders and medals. After the war, he graduated from the Academy of Social Sciences, defended his thesis and was sent to work in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. From 1951 to 1982 he worked as an instructor, head of the sector, consultant, deputy head of the department of culture.

Writer Daniil Granin:

All these years, he, Igor Chernoutsan, was, probably, the most reliable refuge for us, they carried his grievances, hardships with him, it was possible to talk heart to heart with him, express everything that was painful, consult. First of all, we went to him - from Sholokhov and Fadeev, from Simonov and Tvardovsky to us, then young Tendryakov, Sergey Orlov ... It was not so easy to earn people's gratitude in this position in those difficult times, and most importantly - the reputation of a good person , defender, zealot of justice ... He managed to defend many destinies, books, films, names. It was not an easy duty to report to the chiefs, who read almost nothing, judged, however, indisputably, using all sorts of hints and slander. And no matter how you fight, you had to do something with which you did not agree. This mental discord was costly... But now, looking back at the experience, you understand that his self-sacrifice justified itself.

As the poet Konstantin Vanshenkin recalled, the authors decided to offer their first joint song with the composer Yan Frenkel "Soldiers" to Bernes. However, breaking through the song was not so easy. She "reeked of pacifism":

There are more soldiers in the earth than on earth.

Lydia Chukovskaya (from the diary):

The eldest daughter of Margarita Aliger, Tatyana Makarova (1940–1974), wrote poetry and translated into Russian the poetry of foreign authors. Her translations of poems by the Romanian poetess Magda Isanos are considered very successful. She died of acute leukemia.

Maria Aliger (Enzensberger) - the youngest daughter of Margarita Iosifovna - was very beautiful, according to eyewitnesses, she had many admirers and married the German poet Hans-Magnus Enzensberger. As Ivan Shchegolikhin tells in the article “Peace be with you, the anxieties of past years” (Prostor magazine, No. 10, 2003), Masha was not allowed out of the country to her future husband. And only when, after the invasion of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, none of the eminent "Europeans" wanted to come to us at the next congress of writers, Maria was released in exchange for Enzensberger's promise to take part in the event.

With her husband, she traveled to many countries, but still they often lived apart - the family did not work out. In 1969, Maria settled in London, taught at the university, wrote books and articles, translated poetry, and was fluent in English. She even translated from Russian into English, including Mandelstam and other poets of the Silver Age, Mayakovsky, and Soviet contemporary poets.

In 1991, she arrived in Moscow, preparing to return to Russia permanently, to work in the journal Kinovedcheskie Zapiski. She became a witness to the putsch, but the twenty-year absence from her homeland was not in vain, something broke in her and, having left to finish her business in London, she unexpectedly committed suicide. Some of her London friends attributed the death to an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, but the version of suicide became the main one. Maria Enzensberger was transported to Moscow and buried in Peredelkino next to her older sister. A year later, their mother, Margarita Iosifovna, also took a place next to them in the cemetery.

At the beginning of my essay, I wrote that I did not like the poems of Margarita Aliger.

Once, even before the war, she, mentioning a famous poet, wrote in a letter to Vladimir Lugovsky: “... He doesn’t need, like you and me, to wait for a “common” mood, explode into the sky, rush about with some not even lines yet, but sighs and gasps that are destined to become poems ... It’s sweet for me to suffer, it’s sweet to go crazy from approaching poems »(“Literary Russia”, No. 2, 19.01.2007).

This youthful impulse of hers, expressed in a few lines of prose text, in my opinion, is much brighter, more emotional than most of the written poems. Perhaps the reason is in the subsequent tragic events in the life of Margarita Aliger, perhaps in the very atmosphere of those years ... I don’t know.

After all, she herself was often tormented by doubts - at least in a 1967 poem:

... I dream of everything, I dream of fortitude, Strange and uninhibited talent. Who am I, a deaf artist Or a blind musician?

But only her article about Anna Akhmatova I like much more than many of her poems - and the language is brighter, more figurative, and the emotional perception is completely different. This is my subjective opinion. There are others.

From an interview with Zinaida Sharko, actress of the Leningrad ABDT named after V.I. M. Gorky, People's Artist of the RSFSR:

... Immediately after graduation, I went to Moscow - I dreamed of getting into the Moscow Art Theater, where Alla Tarasova played. My idol. A romantic girl arrived, only poems in her head, she went up the stairs, and I was shaking - maybe She just passed here! And in the waiting room sat the secretary and gnawed on a pickle. "What would you like?" she asked. "I don't want anything anymore!" - I said and left offended in my best feelings. She walked along Kamergersky and through tears read the poems of Margarita Aliger: “Leningrad, Leningrad, I will help you ...” So the cucumber and Aliger predetermined fate ...

And one more opinion, which I cannot dispute due to the unconditional authority of the name of Anna Akhmatova. From the memoirs of Archpriest Mikhail Ardov:

In my father's archive there is a small notebook in which he recorded his conversations with Akhmatova. There is this entry from 1948:

“And her ability to penetrate into the depths of literary works is as follows:

Margarita Aliger came to us and read to Anna Andreevna her new poem about love for her late husband (composer Konstantin Makarov, killed in the war). The reading went on eye to eye.

Anna Andreevna said this: in this poem, the shortcoming is that it is dedicated and you are talking about a murdered husband, but you are thinking about another person and now you love this other.

Aliger was amazed and admitted that it was true.”

Of those poems in which Margarita Aliger ceases to be a “symbol of Stalinist propaganda”, and appears before readers as just a talented poetess and a loving woman, I like “No, no, I didn’t love those! ..”, “Please, at least dream more often me…”, “What a night in the world, what a night!..”, “I want to be your sweetheart…”, “Autumn wind smells like snow…”, “I beg you, at least dream more often…”, “The wound heals knife…”

“Biography” of Margarita Iosifovna Aliger, I would like to end with an excerpt from the poem of 1959, “The Lovely Tragedies of Shakespeare!”.

Soviet poetess. 1915–1992

Margarita Iosifovna Aliger (Zeiliger) was born on October 7, 1915 in Odessa into a Jewish family. Her parents were employees. Her father dreamed of composing music all his life, but for many years a terrible need forced him to translate technical literature. Therefore, he really wanted at least his daughter to be able to become a musician. But the daughter quit music lessons immediately after the death of her father. She was then only ten years old.

After the seventh grade, Aliger (then still Zeiliger) entered a chemical technical school, and then got a job at a chemical plant. But her soul was drawn to high art. And real literature lived, as it seemed to her, only in Moscow. Therefore, in the early 1930s, at the age of 16, Margarita left her studies, Odessa and moved to Moscow. Having failed the exams at the institute, he removes the “corner”, goes to work in the library of the OGIZ institute and in the factory circulation.

Soon she was accepted into the literary association at the Ogonyok magazine, and already in 1933 two of her poems were published in this publication: Weekdays and Rain. In 1934-1937, Aliger studied at the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute.

Margarita first married in 1937 for the composer Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin. Soon, the Moscow authorities allocated an apartment to the spouses in the composer's house on Miusskaya Square. From this marriage, a son, Dmitry, was born. A year later, a terrible misfortune befell the family - little Dima died from a long illness. In 1940, a daughter, Tatyana, was born.

In the first days of the war, the husband of the poetess died in the battles near Yartsevo in the Smolensk region. She dedicates the poem "Music" to his memory, one of the most emotional and expressive in her work.

The youngest daughter, Maria Aliger-Enzensberger, was born on July 28, 1943 from a relationship between Aliger and A.A. Fadeev, married at that time to actress Angelina Stepanova. The second husband of the poetess was the German poet Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, for whom she went to London and lived there for a long time. At this time, the poetess was engaged in translations a lot.

The last husband of Aliger was the deputy head of the department of culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU, writer, front-line soldier Igor Sergeevich Chernoutsan. By the will of fate, Aliger outlived all her husbands and children. The first daughter Tatyana became a poetess and translator, like her mother. She died of leukemia in 1974.

In the days of the August coup of 1991, Margarita Iosifovna came to Russia, and even was going to move to her homeland for good. On August 1, 1992, the poetess died in an accident, falling into a deep ditch near her dacha in the village of Michurinets near Moscow. (There is a version that Aliger committed suicide in a fit of severe depression on October 6, 1991.) On August 5, 1992, Literaturnaya Gazeta published an obituary. It was signed by 25 famous poets and writers, among them Voznesensky, Yevtushenko, Dolmatovsky, Libedinskaya, Matusovsky, Okudzhava, Razgon.

Aliger was buried at the Peredelkino cemetery next to her daughters.

Aliger's creative biography is full of ups and acclaim, as well as downs and criticism. In 1938, still a very young poetess, she became a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR. During the Spanish Civil War (1937), four poets: Dolmatovsky, Simonov, Matusovsky and Aliger composed a poetic message to the "heroic Spanish people". From that moment on, Aliger's poems drew the attention of Stalin, who liked them.

Before the first award in 1939 (“Badge of Honor”), Aliger had only one, not the most powerful collection, “Birth Year”, published in 1938. Aliger herself was well aware of this. She believed that the second book would be better.

In 1942, the poetess wrote the poem "Zoya", dedicated to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. For this work, she received the Stalin Prize the following year. Aliger donated it to the Defense Fund.

The poetess was a war correspondent in besieged Leningrad. There she became close to Anna Akhmatova. They were very different - both as people and as poets. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, Akhmatova often sought comfort and tranquility in Lavrushinsky Lane, in Aliger's Moscow apartment.

A special place in the work of the poetess is occupied by the poem "Your Victory", published in 1946. In it, she first addressed the topic of the fate of the persecuted Jewish people. The poem was severely criticized and subsequently reprinted with the exclusion of a fragment devoted to the Jewish theme.

Criticism treated the work of Margarita Aliger differently. Even before Stalin's death, her work was called decadent. And after the death of the leader, the poetess was completely declared “mediocre”.

The poetess was a member of the board of the Writers' Union, was a member of the editorial board of the journal Literary Sunday (1992). Aliger has always been actively involved in translations. At first, the subject of her work was the work of the poets of the Union republics, then the scope of the work expanded. Throughout her life, she translated about 40 poets from interlinear translations - from Bulgarian, Georgian, Jewish (Yiddish), Azerbaijani, Ukrainian, Latvian, Uzbek, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Korean. For her translation activities she was awarded the P. Neruda International Prize (1989).

In her poetry, the poetess created a heroic-romantic image of a contemporary - an enthusiast of the first five-year plans ("Year of birth", 1938; "Railway", 1939; "Stones and Grass", 1940), a fighter on the fronts and a worker in the rear of the Great Patriotic War war ("Memory of the Brave", 1942; "Lyric").

Biography

ALIGER MARGARITA IOSIFOVNA (1915−1992)

Russian poetess. She was born on September 26 (October 7), 1915 in Odessa in a family of employees. She graduated from a chemical college, worked in her specialty at a factory. In 1934-1937 she studied at the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky; has been published since 1933. From the very beginning, her poetry collections have been centered on the heroic-romantic image of a contemporary, whether it be a young enthusiast of the first five-year plans (Birth year, 1938; Railway, 1939; Stones and Herbs, 1940), or a mother courageously experiencing the loss of her a child (Winter of this Year, 1938), or a fighter and worker on the fronts and in the rear of the Great Patriotic War (Memory of the Brave, 1942; Lyrica, 1943).

She published her first poems in 1933. She studied at the Literary Institute from 1934 to 1937. The first book, Year of Birth, was published in 1938. During the war, the poem "Zoya" about the young partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who was hanged by the Nazis, gained immense popularity. Although later historical interpreters questioned this version as an official legend, the poem was nevertheless full of sincere tragedy: “Silence, oh what silence! Even the rustling of the wind is infrequent and muffled. Quietly, as if there was only one girl left in the world in wadded pants and a three-piece. After the war, at a time when poetry was at its throat, Aliger wrote a weak, boring poem "Lenin's Mountains" in the style of the then "non-conflict". But she was always in the forefront of those writers who, despite their half-stifledness, demanded the right to fresh air. The liberal intelligentsia applauded Aliger when, at a meeting of Moscow writers, she said that "old comrades in the front and in poetry will forgive Kostya Simonov some of his actions only on the condition that he never repeats them." Aliger was a member of the editorial board of the almanac "Literary Moscow", which was the herald of the "thaw". When Khrushchev decided to freeze his own thaw, Aliger courageously spoke out against him at a government banquet-discussion with writers in 1956. Later, already retired, Khrushchev asked the compiler of this anthology to convey an apology to all the writers with whom he was rude, and the first of them was Aliger, who with belated bluntness called his behavior "vulgar and tactless." In her personal life, she was deeply unhappy. Her first husband, composer Makarov, was killed at the front. Their daughter, the talented poetess Tanya Makarova, whose poems we present in this anthology, tragically passed away. The father of her second daughter, Alexander Fadeev, committed suicide. His daughter, having married the German poet Enzensberger and not finding her place in life abroad, also passed away of her own free will. Having lost her last husband, she was left completely alone, was found dead not far from her Peredelkino dacha, in a roadside ditch. All who knew her, and among them the compiler of this anthology, remember Aliger as an exceptionally bright person. The compiler of this anthology wrote poems about her, where there are such lines: "There was in the poet, merged forever, a special inner pride - both a Russian poet and a Jewess."

Aliger Margarita Iosifovna was from Odessa. The writer was born on September 26, 1915. in a family of ordinary employees. She studied at a chemical technical school, after which she worked at a factory in her specialty. From 1934 to 1937 studied at the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky. She was married to the composer Makarov and Alexander Fadeev. Both of her husbands passed away early. Her two daughters also died tragically. Aliger began to publish her works in 1933. Her first book, which was published in 1938, was "The Year of Birth".

In her collections of poems, from the very beginning she shows the image of a heroic, romantic contemporary. In her works "Year of Birth" 1938, "Railway" 1939 and "Stones and Grass" 1940, this image is revealed by a young enthusiast of the first five-year plans, in the works "Memory of the Brave" 1942 and "Lyric" 1943 - in the rear and at the front of the Great Patriotic War hard worker and fighter, "The Winter of This Year" 1938 is a mother experiencing the loss of her child. During the war, the poem about the young partisan "Zoya" was in great demand.

In the post-war period, in the style of "conflict-free" of those years, Aliger wrote an uninteresting and weak poem "Lenin's Mountains". But she always wanted to freely express her thoughts on paper. Margarita Iosifovna was a member of the editorial board of the anthology "Literary Moscow", which was a harbinger of the thaw. When Khrushchev was about to stop his own thaw, Margarita Iosifovna bravely expressed her protest at a meeting with writers in 1956. Later, Khrushchev admitted his mistake and apologized to the writers for his rudeness, Aliger was in the forefront.

The Russian poetess died on August 1, 1992 in the village of Michurinets, Moscow Region. She was found dead in a roadside ditch near her dacha. Everyone who knew Aliger considered her a very bright and kind person.

Margarita Iosifovna Aliger (born Margarita Zeiliger), (1915-1992) - Soviet poetess, journalist, translator, war correspondent. Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1943).

Margarita Iosifovna Zeiliger was born on October 7, 1915 in Odessa. Margarita's father was a lawyer. After school, Margarita entered a chemical college and at the same time worked at a factory in her specialty. However, at the age of 16, she decided to quit her studies and move to Moscow to study. Without entering the institute, Margarita got a job as a librarian at the OGIZ Institute ("Association of State Book and Magazine Publishing Houses"). In 1933, her poems "Weekdays" and "Rain" were published in the magazine "Spark". It was the literary debut of "Margarita Aliger".

In 1934, she managed to enter the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky. She studied there until 1937, and in 1938 she became a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR.

In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Aliger and three other poets: M. Matusovsky, E. Dolmatovsky, and K. Simonov wrote a message in verse to the “heroic Spanish people”. After that, Stalin noticed Aliger, whose poems he liked, and in 1939 Margarita Aliger received the Order of the Badge of Honor.

Margarita's husband, composer Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin, died at the very beginning of World War II in the battles near Yartsevo. Margarita dedicated a very emotional and expressive poem "Music" to his memory. After his death, Margarita became a war correspondent in besieged Leningrad.

In 1942, Aliger became a member of the CPSU (b).

In 1942, she dedicated the poem "Zoya" to the feat of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, for which she was awarded the Stalin Prize. However, after the death of I. V. Stalin, critics began to call Aliger a “mediocre” poetess.

Margarita's teachers - Vladimir Lugovskoy and Pavel Antokolsky attracted her to a very profitable business - the translation of poets of the Union republics. Aliger translated poems by about forty poets from Ukrainian, Jewish, American, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Lithuanian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Korean.

Aliger was very inspired by B.L. Pasternak.

Margarita Aliger translated the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Archibald MacLeish, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Desanka Maksimovich, Eduardas Mezhelaitis, and other contemporary poets. In 1989, Aliger was awarded the P. Neruda International Prize for her translation work.

In 1955, Aliger took part in the creation of the "thaw" almanac "Literary Moscow". Member of the editorial board of the journal Literary Sunday (1992). Member of the board of the joint venture of the RSFSR and the joint venture of the USSR.

Creation

Aliger's poetry is close to prose, it contains descriptiveness and reflection, but there is no narrative as such, neither in poems nor in poems. Her poetry is not replete with metaphors, but is quite symbolic. For example, in her poem "The Art of Making Bouquets" (1963), she seems to remind us that the most essential should remain in poetry. In the lyrics, he adheres to the golden mean between the political and the personal, and in later poems, the preponderance is on the side of the theme of the timeless and eternal.

And, nevertheless, in her early poems "Birth Year" (1938), "Railway" (1939), Aliger created heroic and romantic images of contemporaries, party enthusiasts, and in the poem "The Winter of This Year" (1938), the poetess sings the strength of will and spirit of a mother who has lost a child. This is an autobiographical poem, the most emotional work of the pre-war period, which tells about a tragic event in the life of Margarita herself, her experiences: “... I suffered a misfortune, worse than which nothing could be - after a long serious illness, my little son died. The grief that shook me, turned my soul upside down, apparently opened in it new sources of vital and creative energy, and it was as if something threw me into work. It was an unconscious form of self-defence, because work, and only work, could support and save me at that time.

The collection "Stones and Herbs" (1940) also received recognition and fame. The poetic cycles "Memory of the Brave" (1942), "Lyric" (1943) are dedicated to the exploits of soldiers at the front and workers in the rear.

In her poem "Your Victory" (1946), Aliger also touched upon the theme of the persecuted Jewish people. This poem occupied a special place in the work of Margarita, the poem was attacked and severely criticized and even reprinted later with the removal of a fragment devoted to the theme of the Jewish people. However, this fragment was copied by hand and distributed, and also repeatedly appeared as evidence in the proceedings of the cases of "Jewish nationalists."

Throughout her creative biography, Margarita Aliger has been repeatedly awarded various prizes and awards.

Order of the Badge of Honor (January 31, 1939),
Stalin Prize for the poem "Zoya" (1942), donated by the poetess to the Red Army fund in 1943,
medal "For the defense of Moscow"
medal "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945",
two orders of the Red Banner of Labor,
Order of the Great Patriotic War (1985),
Order of Friendship of Peoples (October 7, 1985),
International APN Pablo Neruda Award in 1989 for translation activities.

Margarita Zeiliger was a very sensual and emotional person, and biographers attribute many novels to her: with Nikolai Tikhonov, Alexei Fatyanov, Arseny Tarkovsky. In the Literary circle at the Ogonyok magazine, Margarita met the poet Yaroslav Smelyakov, who became her first love. However, she married only in 1937, at the age of 22, the composer Konstantin Dmitrievich Makarov-Rakitin (1912-1941) became her husband, but their family happiness did not last long, Konstantin died at the front at the very beginning of the war. Their first son Dmitry died as an infant in 1938, their second daughter Tatyana (1940-1974) also became a poetess and translator, she died at the age of 34 from leukemia. Granddaughter - Anastasia Kovalenkova (born 1968, daughter of Tatyana) became an artist. From an affair with A.A. Fadeev (married at that time to actress Angelina Stepanova), Margarita had a second daughter - Maria Aliger-Enzensberger (1943-1991), who married the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger, also translated, lived in London for a long time, came to Russia in 1991, during the August coup, and was going to move to her homeland completely, but after returning to the UK, in a fit of severe depression, she suddenly took her own life.

The second husband of Margarita was a writer, front-line soldier and deputy head of the department of culture of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Igor Sergeevich Chernoutsan (1918-1990)

Aliger outlived all her husbands and children.

Her uncle (father's brother) is Doctor of Medicine Gersh Pinkhusovich Zeiliger (b. 1858, date of death unknown). His son, Nikolai Grigoryevich Zeiliger (1904-1937), a Social Democrat, was subjected to repeated arrests, as a result, in 1937 he was shot.

Another uncle, Miron Pavlovich (Meer Pinkhusovich) Zeiliger, was a process engineer, candidate of mathematical sciences, a member of the Board of the Phoenix Machine-Building Plant. Described the "Seiliger cycle" (the Zeiliger formula for the thermal efficiency of the Trinkler-Sabatier cycle, 1910); his wife, Polina Davydovna Zeiliger, lived in France since 1924, professor and head of department at the Russian Higher Technical Institute (RVTI).

On August 1, 1992, Margarita Aliger fell into a deep ditch near her dacha in the village of Michurinets in the Moscow region, as a result of which she died.

On August 5, 1992, an obituary signed by 25 famous poets and writers was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta, among them E. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky, B. Okudzhava, E. Dolmatovsky, L. Razgon. L. Libedinskaya.

The grave of Margarita Aliger is located at the Peredelkino cemetery in the Moscow region, she was buried next to her daughters.

Poems "Year of birth", 1938,
"Zoya", 1942
Verses and poems. 1935-1943. M., 1944
"The Tale of Truth", 1945
"Lenin mountains", 1953
From a notebook, 1957
"A Few Steps", 1962
"Zoya". Poems and poems, 1971
Poems and prose. In 2 volumes, 1975
"Path in the Rye" Articles, 1980
"A quarter of a century", 1981
Collected works. In 3 volumes, 1984

Aliger's formation as a poet took place precisely in the 1930s. In 1933, the Ogonyok magazine published her first poems. In 1934, she entered the Evening Working Literary University, which had been opened by the Writers' Union shortly before. According to her, it was studying at this university that made her an educated person, instilled the skills necessary for getting an education, organization and the ability to value time. Margarita Aliger graduated from the university in 1937.

Starting in 1934, Aliger's works began to be actively published in various magazines and newspapers. She performed with the reading of her poems in public. When a civil war was going on in Spain, Margarita Iosifovna Aliger, together with, K. Simonov and wrote a poetic message to the heroic Spanish people, which Margarita Aliger read out at a gala evening attended by guests from Spain, Maria Teresa Leon and Rafael Alberti.

Margarita Aliger traveled a lot. From 1934 to 1939 she visited Leningrad, Karelia, the White Sea, the Oka, Kama and Volga, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Ukraine. On these trips, she had ideas for new poems, which were actively published in various publishing houses.

V. Lugovskoy and P. Antokolsky, senior colleagues of Margarita Aliger, attracted her to the translation work, which was very diverse. Thanks to the work of Margarita Aliger, Russian readers were able to get acquainted with the works of more than forty poets from different countries. She has translated from Georgian, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Jewish (Yiddish) and Korean. She translated the works of Lesya Ukrainka, L. Kvitko, P. Neruda, L. Aragon. Partially, Margarita Aliger's translations were included in the book "The Huge World".

In the late 1930s, Margarita Aliger married the young composer Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin.

They had a son who died at the age of one year after an illness. In 1938, Aliger wrote the poem “The Winter of This Year” about a mother who lost her child, which is considered one of her main pre-war works. In 1940, the couple had a daughter, Tatyana. When the Great Patriotic War began, Konstantin Makarov-Rakitin went to the front as a volunteer. Soon he was killed in a battle near Yartsevo.

From the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Margarita Aliger worked as a correspondent for the central newspaper Stalin's Sokol. On assignment from the editors, she traveled to various sectors of the front, and spent a year in besieged Leningrad. Her poems were heard on the radio and published in newspapers.