Akhmadulina Bella (full name Isabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina), the largest lyric poet of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, was born in Moscow on April 10, 1937 into an intelligent family. Father, Akhmadulin Akhat Valeevich, was the deputy minister, and his mother, Nadezhda Makarovna Akhmadulina, worked as a translator. The girl grew up in a creative atmosphere, famous writers and poets often visited the house, and little Bella listened with adult interest to adult conversations about art, theater premieres, new books, about everything that Moscow had lived in the fifties of the last century.
Future poet
Bella Akhmadulina’s poetic gift manifested itself as a child, she easily rhymed everything that came to her mind, and at age 12 the girl began to write down her verses in a notebook. When she was 15 years old, the poetess of the young poetess read the famous literary critic D. Bykov. In his figurative expression, Bella "felt for her style of poetry."
After graduation, Bella Akhmadulina, whose biography then opened her main page, applied to the Faculty of Journalism, but failed the exam. In response to a question about the contents of the editorial of the latest issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Bella shrugged and stated that she was not reading the newspaper.
Ranks of Akhmadulina
Bella Akhmadulina’s life was filled with Russian poetry to the brim, she published many collections that the whole country read, was a member of the Writers Union of the Russian Federation, participated in the Russian PEN Center under the chairmanship of Andrei Bitov, in which Akhmadulina served as vice president together with Andrei Ascension. Also, the poetess was a member of the public committee at the Museum named after A.S. Pushkin on Prechistenka. She was an honorary member of the American Academy of Literature and the Arts. He is a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, as well as the State Prize of the Soviet Union.
Poetess and censors
Bella became a recognized poetess of Akhmadulin even before graduating from the Literary Institute (she received her diploma in 1960). At the age of 18, Bella actively participated in the protest movement for justice, she, like many Soviet writers and poets, was not satisfied with the strict censorship of the Press Committee. In 1957, Akhmadulin was criticized in Komsomolskaya Pravda, to which she replied with new verses. A confrontation began with literary officials, party structures and the administration of the institute in which Bella studied. And when she publicly refused to participate in the persecution of Boris Pasternak, she was expelled from the Literary Institute (a formal reason was an unsuccessful standings on Marxism-Leninism). However, Akhmadulin was soon restored, since the incident threatened to reach international level.
Treasure of Russian poetry
A year before graduation, in 1959, the poet wrote her first poem, which brought her worldwide fame, "My Street, Which Year ...". After the first success of Akhmadulin, Bella continued to work as usual, creating real masterpieces. The poetess adhered to the old-fashioned style in her poems, although the themes were revealed by the most modern. Bella Akhmadulina’s poems are vivid, memorable, piercing, as Joseph Brodsky said, Bella is “a treasure of Russian poetry”.
Akhmadulina did not recognize the word "poet", demanded that she be called "poet." When the "poet" Bella Akhmadulina visited Georgia in 1970, she fell in love with this country, leaving, and left part of her soul in Tbilisi. Later, already being a well-known translator, translated into Russian works by Irakli Abashidze, Galaktion Tabidze, a 19th-century romantic poet Nikolai Baratashvili.
The poetess wrote in prose, and she wrote a series of essays on contemporary poets, as well as on Pushkin and Lermontov. The work of Bella Akhmadulina was reflected in the best-selling book "Autograph of the Century", 2006, an entire chapter is devoted to it. And abroad, the poetess devoted volumes of literary studies.
Akhmadulina's style
Bella Akhmadulina’s poems abound in metaphors, which, like a diamond placer, adorn and ennoble strings. The poetess translates the most usual narrative into a bizarre interweaving of allegories, and phrases acquire a hint of archaism, and simple phrases become pearls of elegant style. Such is Bella Akhmadulina, poet.
Bella was a member of the “sixties” circle, she revolved among the most famous poets of that time: Evgeny Yevtushenko, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Andrei Voznesensky. Their performances at Moscow University, the Polytechnic Museum, Luzhniki gathered huge audiences. At that time, people were not just open to new experiences, they were “open” for the fresh wind of change, waiting for changes for the better, hoped. Therefore, poems of poets, and not least Bella Akhmadulina, became an underlying criticism of the totalitarian system.
Public performance
Bella Akhmadulina, biography which raised questions among party leaders, became the first Soviet poetess who spoke about simple things with a high poetic syllable. Her stage performances became an improvisation of the master. The indescribable manner of reading, confidential intonations, Bella's artistry acted fascinatingly on the audience. There was a ringing silence in the hall, and only the poet's soulful voice read verses written in high "calm", which, nevertheless, everyone understood. The tension was fainting, later Bella said: "... as if walking along the tip of a rope ..."
The choice
Bella instinctively detached herself from everyday life, fled from modernity, sought solitude in her work. The first collection of the poetess, entitled "String", was released in 1962. The book shows the desire of Akhmadulina to find herself in Russian poetry. It is tense, there are many roads, but I want to find the only right, my way. And Bella found him, it was in the mid-60s that she ceased to be a “knight at a crossroads,” and then that high poetic style, manner and music of poetry formed that distinguished all of Bella Akhmadulina’s work.
Sublime lyrics, metaphor accuracy, freedom to build a verse - all this became "the poetry of Akhmadulina." In her work, one interesting feature can be traced: the poetess communicates with the soul of the subject. Rain, trees in the garden, a candle on the table, someone’s portrait - everything has spiritual signs in Bella Akhmadulina’s poetry. One feels her desire to give a name to the subject and enter into dialogue with it.
The past and present in the work of Akhmadulina
Bella Akhmadulina’s poems seem to play a game over time, the poetess tries to subjugate space, leaves her thoughts in the XIX century, the era of chivalry and nobility, aristocracy and generosity. There, in the past, Bella finds her place, lives on lost values ​​and longs to return them to her modernity. An example of this is "Adventure in an antique store", "Country affair", "My family tree".
All her life, Bella Akhmadulina followed the principle of "friendliness", it was important for her to "give thanks", to sing the very smallness, for this smallness does not exist - everything is great. Therefore, Bella Akhmadulina talked about love as if her lover had heard her, but in fact she turned to a passerby, reader, or an ordinary person. Her lyrics are permeated with participation, compassion and love for unfortunate people, wretched, raw creatures in human guise.
The poetess Akhmadulina experienced the effect of criticism in two directions: the official, which accused her of mannerism and trickery, and the criticism of the liberal, which allowed "art" in poetry. Both of them were offspring of the system, and Bella ignored them. However, the poetess never wrote poetry on topics of public importance and social subtext. Her lyrics were lyrical and not otherwise, although the weaver or milkmaid could be made lyrical. And she would have done it if not for the social competition between them, on which the party bodies insisted.
Personal life
There were rumors about Bella Akhmadulina as a fatal woman. And indeed, everyone who fell in love with her for at least five minutes fell in love with her. Men felt her inaccessibility, and this only kindled passion. Bella's first legal husband was Yevgeny Yevtushenko, with whom she studied at the Literary Institute. The family life of the two poets took place in quarrels and reconciliations, walking around Moscow and gifting each other with verses. Yevtushenko and Akhmadulina lived together for three years.
The second husband of the poetess was Yuri Nagibin, a writer. Nagibin’s love was such that during Bella’s performance on the stage he could not sit, stood up against the wall and held himself so as not to fall from an inexplicable weakness in his legs. At that time, Bella was at the peak of her extravagance. “Angel, beauty, goddess,” - said Rimma Kazakova about her friend Akhmadulina. The marriage with Nagibin lasted eight years. Farewell was painful, Bella even wrote poems about it.
Akhmadulina also had novels, she met with Vasily Shukshin, even starred in his film "Such a guy lives," playing a journalist. For some time she lived with Eldar Kuliev, the son of the famous writer Kaisyn Kuliev. The marriage was civil, but nevertheless the couple had a daughter Lisa in 1973.
Then, in 1974, Bella met Boris Messerer, a theater artist who became her third and last husband, and the poetess lived with him for more than thirty-five years. Somehow it happened by itself that practical Boris Messerer undertook to conduct the affairs of an absent-minded wife. He tidied up her poems, written on anything horrible, including on napkins. Bella was grateful to her husband for this. The life and work of Bella Akhmadulina were under reliable protection. The wife of the poetess guarded the treasure of both her and all Russian land.
The death of Akhmadulina
In October 2010, Akhmadulina Bella felt unwell, cancer was aggravated. The poetess was hospitalized in the Botkin Hospital, where she was operated on. There was an improvement, and Akhmadulin was discharged home. However, four days later she died.
The funeral service was held in the church of Saints Kozma and Damian, in the presence of relatives and friends. Then, in the Central House of Writers, the poetess said goodbye to all those whom she during her life called "my venerable readers," and this is many thousands of people. Bella Akhmadulin was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery.