The consolation of the living from Boris Zaitsev. Essays and Memories of Writers

MOSCOW. Boslen Publishing House has published a collection of essays and essays by one of the prominent representatives of the Silver Age, Boris Zaitsev.

The rules for the survival of a small publishing house in a crisis market are good intuition, the quality of printing, impeccable design, and a careful selection of works. Following these simple canons, Boslen has remained afloat since 2002. Gogol and Grass, Rost and Yuzefovskaya, Yamburg and Gladilin peacefully coexist in the list of authors. The genre range is also extensive: the works of contemporary poets and prose writers, popular science literature, and memoirs.

One of the readers of new publications that deserves unconditional attention is the collection “Consolation of books. Again about the writers. " It is composed of essays, essays and memoirs of the writer and translator Boris Zaitsev, dedicated to colleagues in the writing workshop. Those whom he personally knew, with whom close friendship had connected, about whom his soul hurt, and those who were a moral reference point for him: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Benoit, Merezhkovsky, Bunin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Chekhov.

Zaitsev was an active participant in the literary life of pre-revolutionary Moscow, the founder of the magazine "Dawns", a member of several literary circles. Bunin, Kuprin, Gorky, Chaliapin, Veresaev, Andreev were also regulars in the meetings of the Moscow association Sreda, which were held at the apartment of the poet and philanthropist Nikolai Teleshov. In St. Petersburg, he was a frequent guest of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s “Tower”, witness of the theater experiments of Meyerhold, the birth of the private art “School of Bakst and Dobuzhinsky”, one of the first listeners of new works by Velimir Khlebnikov, Fedor Sologub, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Alexander Blok.

His novels, novels, travel essays, stories, romanized biographies of great writers find an emotional response from readers. Not only thanks to its literary merits, thanks to which the writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1962, but also to amazing harmony, a positive attitude, acceptance of life even in its most difficult periods, spirituality.

Like many talented writers, artists, musicians, Zaitsev did not accept the changes that took place in Russia in October 1917. The only way out was emigration. A visa for going abroad in 1922 was obtained for the writer by the people’s commissar of education Anatoly Lunacharsky. The polyglot, a versatile erudite person who was educated at the University of Zurich, turned out to be a priceless PR manager for the new government, who shaped its decent image. An interesting coincidence: the street in Kaluga, on which Zaitsev lived with his uncle, a doctor, during his studies at the Nikolaev classical gymnasium and a real school, now bears the name of Lunacharsky.

Emigration helped to avoid repression, physical destruction or forced cooperation with the new government. Reckoning was the silence of his name, the absence of his books in libraries. Their return was possible only after perestroika. People who knew Zaitsev spoke of him as a man of amazing sincerity, purity and sincerity. Boris Pasternak spoke of the extraordinary cordiality and inspiring power of letters from a senior colleague. The writer and art critic Pavel Muratov, the hero of one of the essays, dedicated the three-volume “Images of Italy” to him — brilliantly written and repeatedly reprinted travel notes.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru