Open letter to the memory of Zhvanetsky: why am I sad and happy at the same time - ForumDaily
The article has been automatically translated into English by Google Translate from Russian and has not been edited.
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Bu məqalə Google Translate servisi vasitəsi ilə avtomatik olaraq rus dilindən azərbaycan dilinə tərcümə olunmuşdur. Bundan sonra mətn redaktə edilməmişdir.

An open letter to the memory of Zhvanetsky: why am I sad and happy at the same time

Today I woke up with a lump in my throat and my eyes wet from tears. I lay there, thinking, thinking... Until I realized that I was an orphan. Zhvanetsky left me.

Photo: video frame YouTube / TV Channel Dozhd

First, a little about the sad things. He probably left many, but I don’t know them, so I’ll tell you about myself. We did not know each other personally, although when I worked in an Odessa restaurant orchestra back in the 80s, he, being a friend of one of the musicians, sometimes came at the end of work, when we, the musicians, were served a light dinner at one in the morning. He sat with us at the table and... took notes. Exactly. We ate and joked, although no one laughed. And he listened, sometimes he said something, but he kept silent more and more and wrote down. It was only years later that I realized that we were talking funny, although not everyone understood this, and he drew material by “going to the people,” which he later spoke about more than once.

Why am I sad? All those who penetrated my heart with their talent, Baryshnikov, Okudzhava, and Raikin, when leaving, take a piece of it with them. And Mironov, and Plyatt, and Vysotsky, and the creators of “Well Wait a minute” and “Cheburashka”, and Kartsev, and Ilchenko - everyone who made up my life piece by piece, giving it drink and illuminating it with an amazing fire, are leaving... And with each departure it goes out in I need one more candle. Someday the last one will go out.

And now about the fun. Zhvanetsky was not a talent. He was a genius. And it will be for as long as people who read what he wrote and listen to his miniatures find it funny. I don’t know how long this will last, but I’m quietly glad that I found him. It is unlikely that they will ever say “I lived in the time of Sergei Evelev”. But at the time of Mozart, Pushkin, Brodsky, Bach, and now also Zhvanetsky, people probably lived. And they will not be ashamed to talk about it.

On the subject: 'Nothing is better than life, and humor is life': satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky died

I am happy and proud to have found Michal Mikhalych. We are actually even from the same city. So it was fateful that we walked along the same streets and heard the same words and voices. He was able to make a life, a career out of it. To invent, record and reproduce this and that, as no one else could. Before him were Babel, Zoshchenko, Mendele Moicher-Sforim, and other brilliant masters. Together with him, somewhere nearby, also lived wonderful writers, composers, readers, artists ... Chukovsky, Dunaevsky, Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, Irakly Andronikov.

And now about why I am happy, although sad. Because, probably, I was lucky to live with him, Zhvanetsky, at the same time. That is, I am his contemporary, and this is a great privilege. I think that I was pushed to try to write not only by a lost and slightly tipsy muse one evening, but also by the desire to try like him...

Yes, I know, it’s stupidity, impudence to even think like that, but nevertheless I tried it, about fifteen years ago. And since then I’ve been writing to myself slowly, for my own pleasure. No, of course, I can’t be as smart and funny as he is. Nobody can. Because there are talents (big and small), and there are geniuses. Genius is where talent ends, and then... thirty-three million light years up or into the depths where it lives. But on the other hand, I can also speak out, sacredly adhering to the main commandment of the great master “you need to write and write when you can’t anymore.” At some point, I “couldn’t” either.

Yes, I know, many are now writing, almost all. And that's great. We save so much on antidepressants and splash out on paper what otherwise would have gone to children, wives, other women, neighbors in the yard in the form of sour borscht ... We are so saved from bitterness, evil, rejection, irritation, disagreement with the world, forming inside and requiring satisfaction ...

But I was distracted. Thank you, dear, and Mikhal Mikhalych Zhvanetsky, who remains in my memory until the last breath. I confess I never laughed while listening to you. More precisely, he never laughed outside. I do not know why. But I laughed inside. Perhaps I was afraid to laugh outside, so as not to miss a word. You wrote very tightly, without water, without gaps, without the opportunity to relax and breathe ... so I did not relax. It was like an endless series of waves of our beloved Black Sea going one after another, which can easily sink an inept swimmer ...

Your humor is surprisingly deep, sad, and universal. That’s why you were on duty around the country, understanding like no one else what was happening in it. You were one of the few people allowed to criticize the rulers, and fortunately, no one pricked you with a poisoned umbrella or hit you with a random truck. Thanks to them for sparing the genius!

How lucky we, your contemporaries, are! And how impoverished our lives would be if you were not there. Once again, thank you so much for everything: for finding your path, for not turning away from it. That we didn't lose our way. That they didn’t sit in the shadows and always took risks, saying things that were flammable, sharp, penetrating to the very liver, turning everything rotten and impartial inside out, turning it into honest and truthful. For “slapping the Hound of the Baskervilles in the face,” realizing that at any second it could come to its senses and tear you apart.

I'll miss you. I understand that nature will probably never repeat such a phenomenon. People like you are very rare, and I am terribly proud that fate has thrown me into the twentieth century, where you have already ended up.

I don't want to join the millions of mourners. I will remain alone in my quiet sadness. Sadness, a feeling of irreparable loss, like love, are very individual feelings and not transferable to others. They are born deep inside and can dry up like an outdated tree or live forever, nourishing the entire body with the life-giving juices of happiness and joy. This is how you were, my dear, a breeding ground that filled me (and probably many others) with life, warmth, sad laughter and the unique ability to see what is invisible to others. And there’s nothing to say about the ability to describe it in the most amazing way. God probably gave you a kiss on the top of the head when you were born. For that, a huge inhuman thank you to him, and to you too.

For everything, for everything, for everything, for everything, for everything ...

And don't be lazy, please. Make those around you laugh now. They don’t even understand how lucky they are to have you, and it’s a sin for us to complain. You had a long creative life on earth, and you lived it with honor and benefit. And my parents just accidentally guessed, thanks to which I was able to “sniff” your genius and fall to an amazing spring that will water the suffering for a long time. This is the legacy of genius. An eternal spring of inexhaustible creativity. Your creativity, beloved and remaining with me forever, Michal Mikhalych Zhvanetsky.

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