Poet Bella Akhmadulina. Dossier
Poet, writer and translator
Poetess Bella Akhmadulina entered Russian literature at the turn of the 1950s-1960s, when an unprecedented mass interest in poetry arose, and not so much in the printed word, but in the spoken poetic word. In many ways, this “poetry boom” was associated with the work of a new generation of poets - the so-called “sixties”. One of the most prominent representatives of this generation was Bella Akhmadulina, who, along with Andrei Voznesensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Robert Rozhdestvensky and Bulat Okudzhava, played a huge role in the revival of public consciousness in the country during the “thaw”. The beginning of Bella Akhmadulina’s literary career occurred at a time when Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Nabokov, the luminaries of Russian literature of the 20th century, were alive and actively working. During these same years, public attention was focused on the tragic fate and creative heritage of Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva. It was Akhmadulina who had the difficult mission of picking up the poetic baton from the hands of her great predecessors, restoring the seemingly forever broken connection of times, and not allowing the chain of glorious traditions of Russian literature to be interrupted. And if now we can safely talk about the existence of the very concept of “fine literature,” then this is largely the merit of Bella Akhmadulina to Russian literature.
Bella's family belonged to the Soviet elite. Her father Akhat Valeevich was a major customs chief, and her mother Nadezhda Makarovna was a KGB major and translator. The girl received an exotic blood combination: on her mother’s side there were Italians who settled in Russia, and on her father’s side there were Tatars. Parents were busy at work all day long, and the future poetess was raised mainly by her grandmother. She adored animals, and together with her granddaughter they picked up stray dogs and cats. Later, Bella will do this all her life, passing on her love of animals to her two daughters, Anya and Lisa. “I completely agree with Anastasia Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, who said: “I write the word “dog” in capital letters,” she once said.
Bella Akhmadulina said about her childhood: “There was a pathetic, wretched photograph left somewhere: two sad women - this is my mother, my aunt - but in their hands they have what they just found, what was born in April 1937. Does this poorly formed unhappy face know what is to come, what will happen next? It’s only April of 1937, but this tiny creature, this bundle they are holding, pressing close to them, as if they knew something about what was going on around them. And for quite a long time in the early, very early beginning of childhood, some feeling dawned on me that I knew, despite my complete lack of age, that I knew something that did not need to be known and was impossible to know, and, in general, that it is impossible to survive... First the tulips bloomed, and suddenly this gloomy child, unfriendly, not at all likeable, saw the blooming tulips and said: “I have never seen anything like this.” That is, such a clear phrase is absolutely clear. Everyone was surprised that a gloomy and perhaps unwise child suddenly spoke out... To console me, we were riding in some trolleybus, they bought me, someone was selling, several red poppies. That is, as soon as I had time to be captivated by them and be terribly amazed and so wounded by this scarlet beauty of them, this incredible color of these plants, the wind blew them away. This is how all the failures began, like these missing poppies... My mother called my father Arkady, and when I started jumping in bed, he taught me to say: “I am a Tataya, I am a Tataya”... My name is Isabella, why? My mother was obsessed with Spain in the thirties. She asked her grandmother to find a Spanish name for the newborn. But Isabel is still in Spain. Grandmother even thought that the queen was called Isabella, but the real queen was called Isabel. But I realized it early and shortened it all to Bell. Only Tvardovsky called me Isabella Akhatovna. I’m very embarrassed when they call me Bella Akhmatovna, I say: “Excuse me, I am Akhatovna, my father is Akhat…”.
The war found little Bella in a kindergarten in Kraskovo near Moscow. Her father was almost immediately called up to the front, and her mother was constantly at work. Akhmadulina said: “In childhood, a child undergoes so many things, and also the beginning of the war, my God. How they rescued me from this garden in Kraskovo. The Germans came close to Moscow. My father had already gone to war, and people thought that everything would end soon, that this was some kind of nonsense. I was four years old, I had a teddy bear. These teachers in Kraskovo robbed everyone. The parents will send some gifts, they took them away. They had their own children. Once they wanted to take my bear away, but then I grabbed it so tightly that they got scared. So it was possible to disappear, because a glow was blazing over Moscow, Moscow was burning. They grabbed their children and consoled them, and all the other small fry were crying and crowding around, but, fortunately, my mother managed to pick me up. Well, further wanderings began. All this is useful to a person.”
Well, what's your name?
Come on, this girl will be on duty for us. She probably knows how to hold a rag very well.
I have never been able to do this and I still can’t do this. But that’s how she fell in love with me precisely because of what I believe was military suffering. And once she asked me to manage this board and wipe it with a rag. And I had read so much by that time that, of course, I already wrote very well, and if I put the emphasis in “dog” somewhere in the wrong place, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t do it, because I was constantly reading, first with my grandmother, then alone. This constant reading of Pushkin, but mostly somehow Gogol, was all the time. There were books in the house, and I was reading, and suddenly everyone noticed that I wrote without any mistakes and very quickly, and I even began to teach others to write. Here is such a wounded post-war lonely sad woman, Nadezhda Alekseevna Fedoseeva, suddenly she had some kind of wing over me, as if I, I don’t know, reminded her of someone, or the wounded, if she was a nurse, or, I don’t know, somehow she fell in love with me. Well, everyone somehow took their cues from me. I really wiped this board...”
Bella Akhmadulina began writing her first poems while still at school, studying in the literary circle of the House of Pioneers of the Krasnogvardeysky District on Pokrovsky Boulevard. Already in 1955, her works were published in the magazine “October”. Some critics called her poems “irrelevant,” talking about banal and vulgar things. Nevertheless, the young poetess immediately gained great popularity among readers. This is how Yevgeny Yevtushenko recalled the young poetess: “In 1955, I came across touching, childishly chaste lines in the magazine “October”: “Having dropped my head on the lever, the telephone receiver is fast asleep.” And it was worth reading next to it: “In Ukrainian, March is called “berezen”” - and, snorting with pleasure, the couple emerged, almost with a lily in their wet hair, towards the bereznya: carefully. I shuddered sweetly: such rhymes did not lie on the road. He immediately called Zhenya Vinokurov at Oktyabr and asked: “Who is this Akhmadulina?” He said that she was a tenth-grader, went to his literary association at ZIL and was going to enter the Literary Institute. I immediately showed up at this literary association, where I saw her for the first time and heard her selfless recitation of poetry. It was no coincidence that she called her first book “String” - the sound of a tightly stretched string vibrated in her voice, and you even became afraid that it might break. Bella was then a little plump, but indescribably graceful, not walking, but literally flying, barely touching the ground, with pulsating veins marvelously visible through her satin skin, where the mixed blood of the Tatar-Mongol nomads and Italian revolutionaries from the Stopani family jumped, in whose honor she was named Moscow lane. Although her plump face was round, like a Siberian swan, she did not look like any earthly creature. Her slanted, not just Asian, but some kind of alien eyes looked as if not at the people themselves, but through them at something invisible to anyone. The voice magically shimmered and bewitched not only when reading poetry, but also in simple everyday conversation, giving a lacy grandiloquence to even prosaic trifles. Bella was astonishing, like a bird of paradise that had accidentally flown to us, although she was wearing a cheap beige suit from the Bolshevichka factory, a Komsomol badge on her chest, ordinary sandals and a wreath-style country braid, which her wounded rivals said was braided. In fact, she had no equal rivals, at least young ones, neither in poetry nor in beauty. There was nothing disdainful of others hidden in her sense of her own uniqueness; she was kind and helpful, but for this it was even more difficult to forgive her. She was mesmerizing. In her behavior, even artificiality became natural. She was the embodiment of artistry in every gesture and movement - only Boris Pasternak looked like that. Only he hummed, and Bella rang...”
The family wanted Bella to enter the journalism department of Moscow State University, because her father once worked in a large-circulation newspaper, but Bella failed the entrance exams, not knowing the answer to the question about the newspaper Pravda, which she had never held or read. But still, on the advice of her mother, Bella went to work for the Metrostroyevets newspaper, in which she began to publish not only her first articles, but also her poems. In 1956, Bella entered the Literary Institute. She said: “At the institute, at the beginning, in the first year, several people rallied who were considered more capable, and there were some very nice ones, but who did not show themselves. They tried to admit people to the institute not based on their literacy or poetry skills, but on the basis of this. There were some former sailors there, well, and there was a wonderful one, with whom we were very friends, who also became famous, miner Kolya Antsiferov. So they tried to ensure that they were not those who studied with Nadezhda Lvovna Pobedina, that is, no one there thought about Pobedina, but simply not those who had read a lot of books. And there was a wonderful, absolutely wonderful person, whom I still love dearly, Galya Arbuzova, Paustovsky’s stepdaughter. She was remarkable both in intelligence and kindness, a wonderful person, and she still is like that. Even though many years have passed, I always remember her with love. Well, and, of course, some of Paustovsky’s influence passed through her, both influence and support... My short-lived success continued until Boris Leonidovich Pasternak received the Nobel Prize. A scandal broke out at the institute, and not only at the institute, at the institute only to a small extent. They announced to everyone: this writer is a traitor. Some easily signed the charges, some simply did not understand what they were talking about. Yes, adult writers, some eminent writers signed false curses against Pasternak. But they just told me what I needed, they shoved this paper... It’s good if at an early age a person understands that you will make a mistake once and then for the rest of your life, your whole life... But it never occurred to me to make a mistake, I could not do it , it would be as strange as, I don’t know, offending my dog or some kind of crime... They expelled me for Pasternak, and pretended that this was Marxism-Leninism. Naturally, I did not keep up with this subject. We had a diamat teacher, and she had diabetes, and I once confused diamat and diabetes. This is dialectical materialism - diamat. Well, at that time I defended it as cynicism. No, I didn’t know, I didn’t want to offend. “You call teaching some kind of diabetes...”
In 1959, Bella Akhmadulina was expelled from the Literary Institute. In that difficult year, Bella was helped by the editor-in-chief of the Literary Gazette S.S. Smirnov, who invited her to become a freelance correspondent for the Literary Gazette Sibir in Irkutsk. Akhmadulina said: “I saw a lot of grief, a lot of human grief. Nevertheless, I continued to work. I had a poem about the blast furnace, about steelworkers. After their shift, they came out exhausted, they wanted to drink beer and eat, but there was nothing in the stores, no food. But vodka, please. Well, of course, I wasn't interested in that. They treated me well, they understood that this was some kind of Moscow phenomenon. Well, I'm wearing overalls and a helmet, which is ridiculous. But I started this in the newspaper “Metrostroyevets”, there may have been some concessions there.” In Siberia, Bella wrote the story “On Siberian Roads,” in which she described her impressions of the trip. The story was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta along with a series of poems about the amazing Land and its people. Smirnov helped Bella Akhmadulina recover at the institute, urgently raising the issue in the Writers' Union about supporting young talents. They reinstated Bella to her fourth year, the same one from which she was expelled. In 1960, Bella Akhmadulina graduated from the Literary Institute with honors. Soon after graduating from the institute, she released her first collection, “String.” Then, assessing her debut, the poet Pavel Antokolsky wrote in a poem dedicated to her: “Hello, Miracle named Bella!” At the same time, Bella Akhmadulina’s first fame came with her first poetic performances at the Polytechnic Museum, Luzhniki, Moscow University (together with Voznesensky, Yevtushenko and Rozhdestvensky), which attracted a huge audience.
With Andrei Voznesensky.
The sincere, soulful intonation and artistry of the poetess’s very appearance determined the originality of her performing style. Later, in the 1970s, Akhmadulina spoke about the deceptive ease of these performances: “On the edge of fatality, on the edge of a rope.”
Akhmadulina’s first collection of poems, “String,” published in 1962, was marked by a search for her own themes. Later, her collections “Music Lessons” (1969), “Poems” (1975; with a foreword by P.G. Antokolsky), “Candle”, “Blizzard” (both in 1977) were published; collections of Akhmadulina’s poems are constantly published in periodicals. Her own poetic style had developed by the mid-1960s. For the first time in modern Soviet poetry, Akhmadulina spoke in a high poetic style.
happy beggar, kind convict,
a southerner chilled in the north,
consumptive and evil Petersburger
I’ll live in the malarial south.
Don't cry for me - I will live
that lame woman who came out onto the porch,
that drunkard slumped on the tablecloth,
and this, which the Mother of God paints,
I will live as a wretched god.
Don't cry for me - I will live
that girl taught to read and write,
which is fuzzy in the future
my poems, my red bangs,
How the fool would know. I will live.
Don't cry for me - I will live
sisters more merciful than merciful,
in military recklessness before death,
Yes, under my bright star
somehow, but I’ll still live.
Sublime vocabulary, metaphors, exquisite stylization of the “ancient” style, musicality and intonation freedom of the verse made her poetry easily recognizable. The very style of her speech was an escape from modernity, the middle, everyday life, a way of creating an ideal microcosm, which Akhmadulina endowed with her own values and meanings. The lyrical plot of many of her poems was communication with the “soul” of an object or landscape (candle, portrait, rain, garden), not without a magical connotation, designed to give them a name, awaken them, bring them out of oblivion. Akhmadulina thus gave her vision to the world around her.
All you need is a candle,
simple wax candle,
and age-old old-fashionedness
This way it will be fresh in your memory.
And your pen will hurry
to that ornate letter,
intelligent and sophisticated
and goodness will fall on the soul.
You're already thinking about friends
increasingly, in the old way,
and stearic stalactite
you will do it with tenderness in your eyes.
And Pushkin looks tenderly,
and the night has passed, and the candles are going out,
and the delicate taste of native speech
It's so cold on your lips.
In many poems, especially with conventionally fantastic imagery (the poem “My Genealogy”, “An Adventure in an Antique Store”, “A Country Romance”), she played with time and space, resurrected the atmosphere of the 19th century, where she found chivalry and nobility, generosity and aristocracy , the ability for reckless feeling and compassion - the traits that made up the ethical ideal of her poetry, in which she said: “The method of conscience has already been chosen, and now it does not depend on me.” The desire to find a spiritual pedigree was revealed in poems addressed to Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova (“Longing for Lermontov”, “Music Lessons”, “I Envy Her - Young” and other works); in their fate she finds her measure of love, kindness, “orphanhood” and the tragic paidness of the creative gift. Akhmadulina applied this measure to modernity - and this (not only the word and syllable) was her special character of inheriting the tradition of the 19th century. The aesthetic dominant of Akhmadulina’s work is the desire to sing, to “give thanks” to “any little thing”; her lyrics were filled with declarations of love - to a passer-by, a reader, but above all to friends, whom she was ready to forgive, save and protect from an unjust trial. “Friendship” is the fundamental value of her world (poems “My comrades”, “Winter isolation”, “Already bored, and inappropriate, “The craft has brought our souls together”). Singing the purity of friendly thoughts, Akhmadulina did not deprive this theme of dramatic overtones: friendship did not save from loneliness, incomplete understanding, from mutual hopelessness:
On my street for what year
footsteps sound - my friends are leaving.
My friends are slowly leaving
I like that darkness outside the windows.
My friends' affairs have been neglected,
there is no music or singing in their houses,
and only, as before, the Degas girls
blue ones trim their feathers.
Well, well, well, let fear not wake you up
you, defenseless, in the middle of this night.
There is a mysterious passion for betrayal,
my friends, your eyes are clouded.
Oh loneliness, how cool your character is!
Shining with an iron compass,
how coldly you close the circle,
not heeding useless assurances.
So call me and reward me!
Your darling, caressed by you,
I will console myself by leaning against your chest,
I will wash myself with your blue cold.
Let me stand on tiptoe in your forest,
at the other end of a slow gesture
find foliage and bring it to your face,
and feel orphanhood as bliss.
Grant me the silence of your libraries,
your concerts have strict motives,
and - wise one - I will forget those
who died or are still alive.
And I will know wisdom and sorrow,
Objects will entrust their secret meaning to me.
Nature leaning on my shoulders
will announce his childhood secrets.
And then - out of tears, out of darkness,
from the poor ignorance of the past
my friends have beautiful features
will appear and dissolve again.
Liberal criticism was at the same time supportive and condescending towards Akhmadulina’s work, unfriendly and official - she reproached her for mannerism, pompousness, and intimacy. Akhmadulina always avoided, unlike other “sixties” people, socially significant social topics. Akhmadulina’s lyrics did not reproduce the history of mental suffering, but only pointed to them: “In the anguish of which I am capable,” “Once, swaying on the edge,” “It happened like this...”. She preferred to speak about the tragic basis of existence in an allegorical form (“Don’t cry for me! I will live...” - “Spell”), but more often in poems about poetry, the very process of creativity, which occupy a very large place in her works. For Akhmadulina, creativity is both “execution”, “torture”, and the only salvation, the outcome of “earthly torment” (poems “The Word”, “Night”, “Description of the Night”, “It’s So Bad to Live); Akhmadulina’s faith in the word (and loyalty to it), in the indissolubility of “literacy and conscience” is so strong that the overtaking dumbness is tantamount to non-existence for her, the loss of the high justification of her own existence.
Akhmadulina is ready to pay for her poetic chosenness with the “torment of superiority”; she saw suffering as an atonement for spiritual imperfection, an “exacerbation” of personality, but in the poems “Bad Spring” and “This Is Me” she overcomes these temptations.
O pain, you are wisdom. The essence of the solutions
so small in front of you,
and the dark genius dawns
the eye of a sick animal.
Within your destructive limits
my mind was high and stingy,
but the medicinal herbs have thinned out
The mint taste never leaves my lips.
To ease the last breath,
I, with the precision of that animal,
sniffing, I found my way out
in a sad flower stem.
Oh, to forgive everyone is a relief!
Oh, forgive everyone, convey to everyone
and tender, like irradiation,
taste grace with your whole body.
I forgive you, empty squares!
With you only, in my poverty,
I cried from vague faith
over the children's hoods.
I forgive you, strangers' hands!
May you reach out to
that only my love and torment
an item that no one needs.
I forgive you, dog eyes!
You were a reproach and a judgment to me.
All my sorrowful cries
until now these eyes carry.
I forgive enemy and friend!
I kiss all your lips hastily!
In me, as in the dead body of a circle,
completeness and emptiness.
And generous explosions, and lightness,
like in the white rattles of feather beds,
and my elbow is no longer burdensome
sensitive feature of the railing.
Only air under my skin.
I'm waiting for one thing: at the end of the day,
afflicted with a similar disease,
may someone forgive me.
Akhmadulina resolved the traditional theme of confrontation between the poet and the crowd without the usual denunciation of the uninitiated (the poem “Chills”, the poem “The Tale of Rain”): Moscow bohemia, in conflict with the poet, appeared not inescapably hostile, but genetically alien. In the collections “The Mystery,” published in 1983, and “The Garden,” published in 1987, and awarded the State Prize in 1989, poetic hermeticism, descriptions of solitary walks, “nightly inventions,” meetings and partings with treasured landscapes, keepers of secrets , the meaning of which was not deciphered, was combined with a socio-thematic expansion of the poetic space: inhabitants of suburban suburbs, hospitals, unsettled children appeared, the pain for whom Akhmadulina transforms into “comlicity of love.”
Bella Akhmadulina with Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam.
Another interesting facet of Bella Akhmadulina’s talent is her participation in two films. In 1964, she starred as a journalist in Vasily Shukshin’s film “There Lives Such a Guy,” where she practically played herself during her work at Literaturnaya Gazeta. The film received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. And in 1970, Akhmadulina appeared on the screens in the film “Sport, Sports, Sports.”
Leonid Kuravlev and Bella Akhmadulina in Vasily Shukshin's film "There Lives Such a Guy."
In the 1970s, Bella Akhmadulina visited Georgia, and since then this land has occupied a prominent place in her work. Akhmadulina translated N. Baratashvili, G. Tabidze, I. Abashidze and other Georgian authors. In 1979, Akhmadulina participated in the creation of the uncensored literary almanac Metropol. Akhmadulina has repeatedly spoken out in support of the Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Lev Kopelev, Georgy Vladimov and Vladimir Voinovich, who were persecuted by the authorities. Her statements in their defense were published in the New York Times and repeatedly broadcast on Radio Liberty and Voice of America. She has participated in many poetry festivals around the world, including the Kuala Lumpur International Poetry Festival in 1988.
In 1993, Bella Akhmadulina signed the “Letter of Forty-Two,” published in the Izvestia newspaper on October 5, 1993. This was a public appeal by a group of famous writers to citizens, the government and Russian President Boris Yeltsin regarding the events of the fall of 1993, during which there was a forceful dispersal of the Supreme Soviet of Russia with shelling of the parliament building from tanks and the death, according to official data, of 148 people. “There is neither the desire nor the need to comment in detail on what happened in Moscow on October 3. Something happened that could not help but happen because of our carelessness and stupidity - the fascists took up arms, trying to seize power. Thank God, the army and law enforcement agencies were with the people, did not split, did not allow the bloody adventure to develop into a disastrous civil war, but what if suddenly?... We would have no one to blame but ourselves. We “pityingly” begged after the August putsch not to “revenge”, not to “punish”, not to “prohibit”, not to “close”, not to “search for witches”. We really wanted to be kind, generous, and tolerant. Kind... To whom? To the murderers? Tolerant... Why? Towards fascism? ... History has once again given us the chance to take a big step towards democracy and civilization. Let’s not miss such a chance again, as we have done more than once!” - excerpt from the letter. The authors called on the Russian President to ban “all types of communist and nationalist parties, fronts and associations”, tighten legislation, introduce and widely use tough sanctions “for the propaganda of fascism, chauvinism, racial hatred”, close a number of newspapers and magazines, in particular the newspaper “Den” , “Soviet Russia”, “Literary Russia”, “Pravda”, as well as the television program “600 seconds”, suspend the activities of the Soviets, and also recognize as illegitimate not only the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, but also all bodies formed by them (in including the Constitutional Court). The writers demanded to ban and “disperse” all illegal paramilitary and armed groups operating in the country. The “Letter of the Forty-Two” caused a split among representatives of the creative intelligentsia, which continues to this day. But Bella Akhmadulina did not get lost in this turbulent time, she only distanced herself slightly, going back to work. She wrote memoirs about contemporary poets and essays about Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov.
With Boris Yeltsin.
Bella Akhmadulina has always been an object of love and admiration. The poetess did not like to talk about her past personal life. “Love is the absence of the past,” she once wrote in one of her poems. However, her ex-husbands, who retained their admiration for Bella throughout their lives, themselves spoke about their past relationships in their diaries and memoirs. Akhmadulina’s first husband was Yevgeny Yevtushenko. She met him at the Literary Institute.
With Evgeny Yevtushenko.
“We often quarreled, but quickly made up. We loved each other and each other's poems. Hand in hand, we wandered around Moscow for hours, and I ran ahead and looked into her Bakhchisarai eyes, because only one cheek, only one eye was visible from the side, and I didn’t want to lose a single piece of my beloved and therefore the most beautiful face in the world. Passers-by looked around, because we looked like something they themselves had failed to do...,” the poet later recalled. This marriage lasted three years.
Akhmadulina’s second husband was the writer Yuri Nagibin. “I was so proud, so admired her when, in a crowded room, she read her poems in a tenderly tense, brittle voice and her beloved face was burning. I didn’t dare sit down, I just stood by the wall, almost falling from a strange weakness in my legs, and I was happy that I was nothing to everyone gathered, that I was to her alone,” Nagibin wrote.
With Yuri Nagibin.
At that time, Akhmadulina, according to the memoirs of the poetess Rimma Kazakova, was especially extravagant: in the obligatory veil, with a spot on her cheek. “She was a beauty, a goddess, an angel,” Kazakova says about Akhmadulina. Akhmadulina and Nagibin lived together for eight years... The poetess noted their separation with the lines: “Farewell! But how many books and trees have entrusted their safety to us, so that our farewell anger would plunge them into death and lifelessness. Goodbye! We, therefore, are among them who destroy the souls of books and forests. Let us endure the death of the two of us without pity or interest.” Her civil marriage with the son of the Balkar classic Kaisyn Kuliev, Eldar Kuliev, who gave her her eldest daughter Elizaveta in 1973, was short-lived.
With daughter Lisa in Peredelkino. 1973
In 1974, Bella Akhmadulina met the artist, sculptor and theater designer Boris Messerer. They lived together for more than thirty years. We met while walking our dogs, and it was love at first sight. “Spring of '74. The courtyard of the filmmakers' house on Chernyakhovsky Street, near the Airport metro station. I'm walking my dog Ricky, a Tibetan terrier. It belongs to the beautiful film actress Elsa Lezhdei, the woman I love, with whom I live in this house. Bella Akhmadulina appears in the yard with a brown poodle. His name is Thomas. Bella lives one entrance away from me, in the former apartment of Alexander Galich. Bella at home. In low-heeled shoes. Dark sweater. The hairstyle is random. The sight of her tiny, slender figure begins to ache in your heart. We are talking. Nothing. Bella listens absentmindedly. Talking about dogs... Soon she leaves. And suddenly, with all the clarity that came out of nowhere, I understand that if this woman wanted, then I, without a moment’s hesitation, would leave with her forever. Anywhere... In the first days of our coincidence with Bella, we cut ourselves off from the outside world, plunged into nirvana and, as Vysotsky said, lay on the bottom like a submarine, and did not give call signs... We did not communicate with anyone, no one knew, where are we. On the fifth day of Bella’s voluntary imprisonment in the workshop, I returned from the city and saw on the table a large sheet of whatman paper covered with poetry. Bella sat next to her. I read the poems and was amazed - they were very good poems, and they were dedicated to me. Before this I had not read Bella’s poems - it just so happened. After meeting her, I, of course, wanted to read it, but I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to jinx our nascent relationship...” says Boris Messerer in the book “Bella’s Flash.”
With Boris Messerer.
Messerer was immediately struck by how easily Akhmadulina gave away her works. And he began collecting these scattered poems - sometimes written on napkins, on notebook sheets. As a result of Messerer's search, a whole four-volume book was published. He became her kind of guardian angel. Boris took upon himself the task of caring and patronizing and has been coping with this task for many years. “I am an absent-minded person,” the poetess said about herself. “Everyday difficulties are completely insurmountable for me.” And if during a performance she forgot a line, her husband immediately prompted her. In one of her poems she said about him: “Oh, the guide of my timid behavior.” In this surprisingly tender, touching union of two great people, Bella Akhmadulina’s second daughter, Anna, was born.
In the last years of her life, Bella Akhmadulina lived with her husband in Peredelkino. According to the writer Vladimir Voinovich, Akhmadulina suffered from a serious illness in the last years of her life: “She wrote very little lately, since she saw almost nothing, she practically lived by touch. But, despite a very serious illness, she never complained and was always friendly.” At the end of October 2010, she was hospitalized at the Botkin Hospital, where surgeons decided to operate. According to doctors, everything went well, Bella Akhatovna’s condition improved. Akhmadulina spent several days in intensive care, then in a regular ward. The poetess was discharged from the clinic, but, unfortunately, her body could not stand it and four days after being discharged from the hospital, Bella Akhmadulina died.
Farewell to Bella Akhmadulina took place on December 3, 2010. Only her family and friends were present at the funeral service in the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The farewell to her was generally unusually quiet. An hour before the official farewell - at 11 o'clock - those whom Akhmadulina called “her venerable readers” began to gather in the Central House of Writers. There are hundreds of people in the hall and foyer. It was as if they were afraid of unnecessary words. “As a boy of 17, I ran to her concerts, like people run in a Russian folk tale: to cleanse themselves from cauldron to cauldron. I soaked in her poems and came out so beautiful, full of life, believing in the future,” said writer Viktor Erofeev. “For me, she is externally and internally the embodiment of poetry, female poetry at that. Feminine and masculine - such a combination,” said writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky. Her friends recalled how Bella Akhmadulina knew how to make friends, how she knew how to love, how she combined incompatible things. “Bella remained a fragrant soul until the very end, which is why she draws such a crowd in any frost. People feel that this is a man who had a moral tuning fork and never did a single false act,” says the widow of the writer Solzhenitsyn, Natalya Solzhenitsyna. “Bella didn’t like it when they said: “A poet in Russia is more than a poet.” She said: “It’s like you’re doing your own thing.” She was just a poet. Maybe the highest and purest in recent times,” said journalist Yuri Rost. Her poems were not politicized or social. It is still unclear how such “pure poetry” from complex phrases and images gathered stadium seats of five thousand. Maybe it was a need for something incomprehensibly beautiful? And Bella, like a accidentally surviving pearl of the Silver Age, hypnotized the space?
“She was born a hundred years after Pushkin and left after the century of Tolstoy’s departure,” the writer Andrei Bitov said about Akhmadulina. In the hall of the House of Writers during the farewell to Akhmadulina, there were mainly people from the sixties present. “With Bella’s departure, the question arises as to whether the intelligentsia remains in the country. Or it will disappear and be replaced by intellectuals working for the market,” noted Russian Minister of Culture Alexander Avdeev.
Bella Akhmadulina was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Only those closest to her attended the funeral. It was cold and silent, there was no pathos or solemn speeches. Her voice remained in the recordings. There are poems in the books. The Beautiful Lady herself left...
In 1997, a television program from the series “The Life of Remarkable People” was prepared about Bella Akhmadullina.
Your browser does not support the video/audio tag.
Text prepared by Tatyana Halina
Used materials:
B. Messerer, “A glimpse of Bella” “Banner”, 2011
Biography on the website www.c-cafe.ru
Biography on the website www.taini-zvezd.ru
T. Draka, “Bella Akhmadulina - search for her own style”, “Logos” Lviv, 2007
She attended a literary circle led by Evgeniy Vinokurov.
In 1960 she graduated from the M. Gorky Literary Institute.
Bella Akhmadulina gained fame in the early 1960s with poetic performances at the Polytechnic Museum, Luzhniki, and Moscow University, together with poets Andrei Voznesensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Robert Rozhdestvensky, who attracted large audiences.
Akhmadulina’s own poetic style was formed by the mid-1960s. The poetess's lyrics are characterized by sublime vocabulary, metaphor, exquisite stylization of the "ancient" style, musicality and intonation freedom.
Her first collection of poems, “String,” was published in 1962, followed by the collections “Music Lessons” (1969), “Poems” (1975), “Candle” and “Blizzard” (both 1977). Collections of Akhmadulina’s poems were constantly published in periodicals.
In 1983, the collection "The Secret" (1983) was published. In 1987, the collection “The Garden” was published, which was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1989.
Akhmadulina's story "Many Dogs and a Dog" was published in the unofficial almanac "Metropol" in 1979.
In post-Soviet Russia there were more than 15 collections by Akhmadulina, as well as collected works in three volumes.
Akhmadulina is also known for her translations of Georgian poets Galaktion Tabidze, Simon Chikovani and others.
Akhmadulina acted in films, played a journalist in Vasily Shukshin’s film “There Lives Such a Guy” (1964), and was involved in small roles in the films “Sport, Sports, Sports” (1970), “The Non-Transferable Key” (1976). She was the screenwriter of the drama "Chistye Prudy" (1965) and the short film "The Stewardess" (1967) based on the works of Yuri Nagibin.
Bella Akhmadulina has been awarded various awards. She was a laureate of the USSR State Prize (1989), the Russian Presidential Prize in the field of literature and art in 1998, and the Russian Federation State Prize in 2004.
She was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In memory of the poetess, the Russian-Italian literary prize "BELLA" was established in 2012.
Bella Akhmadulina was married to the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, then to the writer Yuri Nagibin. In 1974, artist Boris Messerer became her husband.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
Bella Akhmadulina's first poems were published when the poetess was eighteen. Just a few years later, her creative evenings were already sold out, and her texts became hits. Bella Akhmadulina published 33 collections of poetry, wrote essays and essays, and translated poems into Russian from many languages.
Young poetess with a civic position
Bella Akhmadulina was born in Moscow in 1937. The Spanish name Isabella was chosen for her by her grandmother. “I realized it early and shortened the name to Bella.”, - said the poetess.
Akhmadulina’s first poems were published in 1955 by the magazine “October”. She was then in the tenth grade, studying in the literary circle of Evgeniy Vinokurov at the Likhachev plant.
After school, Bella Akhmadulina entered the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky. The young poetess read her own poems to the selection committee. In her first year, she was already a fairly well-known author. At the age of 22, Akhmadulina wrote the poem “On My Street Which Year...”, which became a famous romance.
Excerpt from the film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!”
Three more years later, the poetess released her first book of poems - “String”, about which Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote: “It is no coincidence that she called her first book “String”: the sound of a tightly stretched string vibrated in her voice, and you even became afraid that it might break.<...>The voice magically shimmered and bewitched not only when reading poetry, but also in simple everyday conversation, giving a lacy grandiloquence to even prosaic trifles.”.
Akhmadulina’s performances attracted full halls, squares, and stadiums. Not only the poetess’s voice was special, but also her artistic style. Bella Akhmadulina used interesting metaphors in her texts and wrote in the style of the golden age.
“My lyrical heroine, she has an origin even earlier than the twentieth century.”
Bella Akhmadulina
In 1958, students of the Literary Institute - Bella Akhmadulina was among them - were forced to sign a collective letter demanding that Boris Pasternak be expelled from the country. At that time, the persecution of the writer related to his Nobel Prize was in full swing. The poetess refused to sign the letter. And soon she was expelled, officially for failing the exam in Marxism-Leninism. However, Akhmadulina was later reinstated, and she graduated from the Literary Institute with honors.
“If the Literary Institute taught me anything, it was how not to write and how not to live. I realized that life is partly an attempt to defend the sovereignty of the soul: not to succumb to temptations or threats.”
Bella Akhmadulina
Actress, translator, defender of dissidents
Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: pinterest.com
Leonid Kuravlev, Vasily Shukshin and Bella Akhmadulina on the set of the film “There Lives Such a Guy.” Photo: prosodia.ru
Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: art-notes.ru
In the 1960s, Bella Akhmadulina acted in films. Vasily Shukshin’s film “There Lives Such a Guy,” where the poetess played a journalist, received the “Lion of St. Mark” prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1964. In the film “Sport, Sports, Sports,” Akhmadulina read her own poems behind the scenes: “Here is the man who started running...” and “You are a man! You are nature’s darling...”
The poetess did not write on sensitive social and political topics, but she participated in the political life of the Soviet Union. She supported the dissident movement, defended the disgraced Andrei Sakharov, Lev Kopelev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. She wrote official appeals, visited places of exile, spoke in foreign newspapers, on Radio Liberty and Voice of America.
For a long time, repressions did not affect Bella Akhmadulina: she was famous, authoritative and loved by the public, her poems were translated into all European languages. However, in 1969, Akhmadulina’s collection “Chills” was published in Frankfurt. Publishing abroad was very risky. After this, the poetess was criticized in the Soviet press, and her new collections were subject to strict censorship. Akhmadulina’s performances were banned until perestroika.
During these years, the poetess was engaged in translations. She traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union and especially loved Georgia. Akhmadulina translated Georgian poetry into Russian - poems by Nikolai Baratashvili, Galaktion Tabidze, Irakli Abashidze.
“Probably every person has a secret and favorite space on earth, which he rarely visits, but always remembers and often sees in his dreams. This is how I think about Georgia, and at night I dream about Georgian speech.”
Bella Akhmadulina
In addition to Georgian authors, Bella Akhmadulina translated works of poets from Armenia and Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, Italy and France. In 1984, she was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters elected the poetess as an honorary member. Akhmadulina also created essays about contemporary poets, written, as Yevtushenko said, “elegant prose.”
Bella Akhmadulina and Boris Messerer
Bella Akhmadulina and Evgeny Yevtushenko. Photo: pravmir.ru
Boris Messerer and Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: nastroenie.tv
Boris Messerer and Bella Akhmadulina. Photo: alamy.com
Bella Akhmadulina was married four times: to Evgeny Yevtushenko, Yuri Nagibin and Eldar Kuliev. In 1974, the poetess married for the last time - to the sculptor Boris Messerer.
He later recalled about their acquaintance: “Bella at home. In low-heeled shoes. Dark sweater. The hairstyle is random. The sight of her tiny, slender figure begins to ache in your heart. We're talking about dogs. Soon she leaves. And suddenly, with all the clarity that came out of nowhere, I understand that if this woman wanted, then I, without a moment’s hesitation, would leave with her forever.”.
Bella Akhmadulina “gave away” autographs and poems, writing them on napkins and scraps of notebook paper. Messerer made copies and kept them for himself. He recorded conversations with his wife on a tape recorder. This is how four volumes of her works appeared.
Boris Messerer accompanied his wife at creative evenings, Akhmadulina wrote about him: “Oh, guide of my timid behavior!..” Even during the years of persecution, Messerer invited her to move to Tarusa. She dedicated a collection of the same name with her husband’s watercolors to this city, which Bella Akhmadulina often called her muse.
In total, during the poetess’s lifetime, 33 collections of her poems were published. In recent years, Akhmadulina and Boris Messerer lived in Peredelkino. She continued to participate in creative evenings, but wrote little: her eye disease interfered. In 2010, Bella Akhmadulina passed away. She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. After the death of the poetess, Boris Messerer wrote a memoir book, “Bella’s Flash,” and a monument to Akhmadulina was erected in Tarusa, which was made according to his sketches.
Today we will meet one of the most famous Soviet poetess, translator, screenwriter and simply beautiful woman Bella Akhmadulina. The poems are famous not only among the older generation, but also among teenagers, as they are studied in the school curriculum. Her biography, personal life, children, creative success are of interest to many fans.
In this article you will find detailed answers to all your questions about the greatest lyric poetess of the second half of the twentieth century. She was one of the brightest poets of the 60s. After reading her poems, you will understand that they completely lack social themes.
Height, weight, age. Years of life of Bella Akhmadulina
The Russian poetess and translator is famous; her poems are popular to this day. Fans of the poetess are interested in the question of what her height, weight, and age were. Years of life of Bella Akhmadulina, when she died. Bella passed away at the age of 73.
She was a tall, stately lady. Her height was 170 centimeters and her weight was 46 kilograms. Bella Akhmadulina was born under the zodiac sign Aries, and according to the eastern calendar she is a Bull. Her character in all respects corresponds to the characteristics of this zodiac sign.
Biography of Bella Akhmadulina
Bella's full name is Isabella Akhmadulina. Her grandmother gave her the name because Spanish names were popular in the USSR in those years. Isabella was born back in 1937 on April 10 in Moscow.
Her family was quite wealthy, since her father held a high position, and her mother was a translator and served in the KGB. Bella is of mixed blood, as her ancestors are of Russian, Tatar and Spanish origin.
During hostilities, Bella was taken to Kazan, where her second grandmother lived. In 1945, the girl and her mother returned to Moscow, where she resumed school. The future writer loved to spend time reading, but she was bored at school and Bella was reluctant to study because of this.
She began writing her first poems when she was in school, and at the age of eighteen she made her debut in the Ogonyok magazine. Critics immediately criticized her poems, expressing opinions that they were old-fashioned and irrelevant for the Soviet era.
After publishing her first poems, Isabella decided on a profession; she wanted to become a poet. But her family didn’t like these plans, and Bella promised that she would go to Moscow State University. But to great success, the girl fails her exams.
After failing the entrance exams, Bella gets a job at the Metrostroevets publication. She began publishing her poems in this newspaper.
A year later, Akhmadulina decided to enter the A.M. Gorky Literary Institute. Her studies at this institute were short-lived; she was expelled from the institute because she refused to sign a sheet condemning B. Posternak’s traitors to the Fatherland.
After expulsion, Isabella gets a job at the Literaturnaya Gazeta publishing house. The editor-in-chief was shocked by her unique abilities and helps to resume her studies at the educational institution. In 1960, Bella graduated from the institute with honors.
The creative biography of Bella Akhmadulina is moving forward with fleeting steps. In 1962, she published a collection of poems entitled “String”. The collection contained her best poems. The public instantly fell in love with the talent of the famous writer.
The next collection was published in 1968 under the title “Chills”, in 1969 a collection of poetry “Music Lessons”. Bella created a lot, her collections were published in an incredibly short time, but the poems were so light and airy that they were read in one breath.
Isabella Akhmadulina not only wrote poems, but was also a translator. She translated poems by Nikolai Baratashvili, Simon Chikovani and other Georgian authors into Russian. She also translated poems from Armenian, Abkhaz, Kabardino-Balkarian, English, Italian, Polish, Czech and other languages.
Throughout her life she played two roles in films. If you can see her as an artist in only two films, then her poems can be heard in many films.
Akhmadulina was born a century after the death of Pushkin, and passed away a century after the death of Tolstoy.
The famous writer loved animals very much. My grandmother instilled a love for dogs and cats from childhood.
Bella was the winner of the USSR State Prize.
The last years of her life were difficult for the poetess. She was very ill, went blind and could not write anything. Bella Akhmadulina died on November 29, 2010 in Moscow. She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. In 2014, a monument made by her husband was erected at Bella’s grave. You can see a photo of Bella Akhmadulina’s grave. The monument resembles Bella in life: a slender, chiseled figure with a book in her hands.
After Billa's death, the world still remembers her and her famous poems. In honor of the memory of the great writer, monuments were erected in the cities of Tarusa and Moscow.
Personal life of Bella Akhmadulina
The personal life of Bella Akhmadulina is no secret to anyone. She was married three times. She first married at the age of eighteen to the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. After 3 years the union broke up. The second husband was Yuri Nagibin. After 9 years of marriage, the couple separated due to Bella's infidelity. Married to Yuri, Bella adopts Anechka. The third common-law spouse is Eldar Kuliev. Akhmadulina gives birth to Eldar's daughter Lisa. The fourth husband was Boris Messerer. The married couple lived together for more than thirty years until Bella's death.
Bella Akhmadulina's family
Every woman dreams of family happiness, that there would be harmony at home, the laughter of children, but family for Bella has never been in the foreground. Her creativity brought her happiness. She has three marriages behind her, but she has not found a real man, support in the family.
But fate smiled at her and in 1974 the writer met the sculptor Boris. With him, the poetess felt loving, feminine, and needed. When Bella married the sculptor, she moved to live with him, leaving Anya and Lisa to be raised by her mother and nanny. Bella Akhmadulina's family in the last period of her life consisted of a loving husband and two daughters.
Children of Bella Akhmadulina
Bella Akhmadulina's children grew up with their grandmother. Anna was born in 1968, she was the adopted daughter in the family of the poetess and Yuri Nagibin. In 1973, Elizaveta was born from Eldar Kuliev. After the mother fell madly in love with Boris Messerer, she forgets about her daughters and goes to live with her lover.
But the writer quickly feels the emptiness in her mother’s heart and resumes communication with the children, but does not take them to live with her. Bella began to pay attention to raising and teaching children. Boris Messerer also quickly found a common language with the girls. Isabella never hindered the development of her daughters' talents and did not infringe on their choices.
Bella Akhmadulina's daughter - Anna Nagibina
Bella Akhmadulina’s daughter, Anna Nagibina, was born in 1968. Anna was an adopted child in the family of Nagibin and Akhmadulina. Bella was adopted by a girl in order to save her marriage with Yuri. Subsequently, after a break in the relationship, the poetess gives Anna to be raised by her mother and Anna.
Anna and her nanny lived in an apartment that Nagibin bought for his daughter. From childhood, Anya recalls that her mother paid attention to her upbringing, but very rarely. As a teenager, Anya learns that she is an adopted child in their family. This upsets her, she leaves home and stops communicating with her mother.
Daughter of Bella Akhmadulina - Elizaveta Kulieva
The daughter of Bella Akhmadulina, Elizaveta Kulieva, was born in a marriage with Eldar Kuliev. Lisa is now 44 years old. The girl was very lazy since childhood, was reluctant to study at school, and her older sister Anna was always given as an example. Lisa attended art school.
From childhood, Lisa recalls that her mother even signed her diary a couple of times, but this was rare. Lisa was raised by a nanny. After graduating from school, Elizaveta entered the A.M. Gorky Literary Institute.
Bella Akhmadulina's ex-husband - Yuri Nagibin
Bella Akhmadulina's ex-husband, Yuri Nagibin, was a famous prose writer. I met Bella in 1959. The prose writer was called “the playboy of that time.”
Nagibin tied the knot six times throughout his life. The writer did not have children in any of the marriages. Bella was his fifth wife. After living with him for nine years, they separated. Bella loved Yuri, and in order to save the marriage she even decided to adopt him. Yuri Nagibin died in 1994.
Bella Akhmadulina's ex-husband - Eldar Kuliev
Bella Akhmadulina's former common-law husband, Eldar Kuliev, was a film director and screenwriter. Eldar was born into a famous family in 1951. The romance between Kuliev and Akhmadulina was stormy, but not long-lasting. They loved spending time together and led a rather wild life. In this marriage, a daughter, Elizabeth, is born. After the divorce, Bella takes Lisa and places her in the care of a nanny. Eldar did not communicate with his daughter. The famous screenwriter died in 2017.
Bella Akhmadulina's husband is Boris Messerer
Bella Akhmadulina's husband, Boris Messerer, is a famous sculptor and artist. The acquaintance of Boris and Bella was accidental. They met while walking their dogs, after which they began communicating, and subsequently the couple decided to legitimize their relationship.
The marriage with Bella was the second and last. The couple lived together for more than thirty years. Messerer was Bella's protector; he took upon himself the solution to all problems. Boris published a book after the death of his wife called “Bella’s Flash”
Bella Akhmadulina's best love poems (read online)
Bella Akhmadulina's best love poems, read online - this is the most common phrase on the Internet. Akhmadulina’s romantic lyrics are full of grace and specific “grandstanding”. The poetess could speak about emotions that stirred the heart and about the ordinary joys of love.
For Bella Akhmadulina, falling in love is an emotion of empathy, to feel tender, fragile, vulnerable, behind the shoulder of a strong man. Love in the poetess's poems is intertwined with friendship. Because a couple in love should also be friends with each other. Having read her poems, you think that the poetess suffered from being pummeled by men. Bella Akhmadulina's poems have been translated into many languages of the world.
Instagram and Wikipedia Bella Akhmadulina
Many admirers of her poems are interested in the question of whether Bella Akhmadulina has Instagram and Wikipedia. Bella is not registered on any social network, and details of her life can be read on the pages of Wikipedia.
The poetess did not recognize social networks, since she was always in favor of live communication, where you feel the emotions, tone and speech of your interlocutor. Her husband and daughters are also not registered on Instagram, and you can learn about the last years of the poetess’s life only from interviews.
Bella Akhatovna Akhmadulina was born in the spring of 1937 in Moscow. She grew up in an intelligent, prosperous family. Her parents were influential people. His mother worked as a translator in the KGB department and had the rank of major, and his father was a deputy minister.
The full name of the writer is Isabella Akhmadulina. That's what her beloved grandmother called her. In the 1930s, there was great interest in Spain and everything related to this country in the Soviet Union. The girl was named after the Spanish Queen Isabella.
Childhood
The biography of Bella Akhmadulina deserves special attention. The writer lived a rich, interesting life. She was a romantic by nature. The poetess mixed several bloods at once: Tatar, Russian and Italian.
Bella loved her grandmother very much, who treated her with tenderness and adoration. It was she who had a great influence on Akhmadulina’s choice of her life’s work and helped her granddaughter become an outstanding poetess. Her grandmother taught her to read, thanks to her Bella fell in love with poetry and the works of great writers.
During the war, Bella's father went to the front. The girl was sent to Kazan, to another grandmother. There Akhmadulina became seriously ill and was on the verge of death. She was saved by her mother, who arrived and her daughter came out.
The first poems were written when the poetess was still at school. The girl already had her own style. At the age of eighteen, her first poem was published in a magazine. In 1957, her work was subjected to harsh and unkind criticism in the press. The critics' emphasis was on the style: it was pointed out that it was somehow old-fashioned, and that the poems themselves were too “plot-based” and contained descriptions that were too detailed for poetry.
Creation
After working for a year at the newspaper, Akhmadulina decided to fulfill her dream and entered the Literary Institute. After some time, Bella began working as a journalist at Literaturnaya Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief was fascinated by the girl’s talent. Thanks to him, the poetess’s work became known to the general public and enjoyed great success, and Akhmadulina graduated from the institute with excellent marks.
In 1962, the first collection of her poems, called “String,” was published. The talent of the young author was noticed by very influential people in the literary world. Rozhdestvensky, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky became interested in her.
In 1968, the collection “Chills” appeared, and then “Music Lessons”. Akhmadulina’s works were read in one breath. Almost simultaneously the collections “Candle”, “Blizzard”, “Poems” were published.
Bella Akhmadulina loved traveling to Georgia. The beauty of this wonderful country inspired her and gave life to a huge number of poems. The writer expressed her love for this sunny country in the collection “Dreams about Georgia”. Bella is also connected with the culture of Georgia: she is a translator of the works of such talented Georgian writers as:
- Tabidze.
- Baratashvili.
- Chikovani.
The poetess created many wonderful essays about great people, including:
- V. Vysotsky.
- V. Nabokov.
- V. Erofeev.
Movies
Bella Akhmadulina performed roles in only two films. But both films are true masterpieces. These are the films:
- “There lives such a guy.”
- "Sport, sport, sport."
The film “There Lives Such a Guy” was filmed in 1959 by director V. Shukshin. At the time of filming, Bella Akhmadulina was only twenty-two years old. In this film, Leonid Kuravlev became her partner.
Akhmadulina's poems can be heard in many famous films. Among them:
- "Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath".
- "Cruel romance".
- "Love affair at work".
An interesting fact is that actress Iya Savvina, who voiced Piglet in the cartoon “Winnie the Pooh,” copied Bella’s manner of speaking. The poetess reacted to this with humor. She jokingly thanked Savvina for “putting a pig on her.”
Personal life
It is known that Bella Akhmadulina’s personal life consisted of many bright, happy and sad moments. The poetess got married for the first time when she was only eighteen years old.
Soon after the divorce, Akhmadulina married the writer Yuri Nagibin. This marriage lasted nine years. If you believe V. Aksenov’s biographical novel “The Mystic River,” then the reason for the divorce was Bella’s betrayal. After Yuri and Bella broke up, the poetess adopted a girl named Anna.
For some time, Akhmadulina lived with Eldar Kuliev, the son of the famous writer Kaisyn Kuliev. It was a civil marriage. From Eldar, Akhmadulina had a beautiful daughter, Elizaveta.
And in 1974, the poetess became the wife of Boris Messerer, a theater artist and set designer. Despite the fact that he devoted a lot of time to work, he always had the opportunity to pay attention to his family. Bella's children, Lisa and Anna, treated him like their own father.
Death of a poetess
The poetess died in the ambulance. The reason for her death was cardiac arrest. All the relatives and admirers of her work came to the House of Writers to say goodbye to the great poetess. Bella Akhmadulina is buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Author: Irina Angelova