Legends of Yevgeny Schwartz

Our experts have repeatedly called Evgeny Schwartz the best Petersburg writer of the Soviet era.

It is known that in 1918 Evgeny Schwartz participated in the famous Ice March of General Kornilov. So, at that moment, was he an ideological fighter against the Bolsheviks? To discuss facts, evidence is needed. For some reason, Schwartz did not want to recall the years from 1916 until the end of 1919. Yes, there is evidence that Schwartz took part in Kornilov’s Ice March. But it is difficult to speak of any clear political convictions at such a young age. I think Schwartz never really asked himself whom he was fighting against; he simply went on the march with part of his Kuban troops. Later, he voluntarily left them. At the same time, Schwartz’s biographies say that in 1918 he served in the Red Army in a food detachment that confiscated grain from peasants. Now it is believed that he made this up. Where is the truth? A joker, a stout man, and a merry fellow, as he was usually perceived, Evgeny Lvovich was a master of invention. He spread a rumor through the no less talented storyteller Nikolai Chukovsky that he accidentally knocked out his front teeth while serving in the Red Army food detachment. Although there was no such food detachment in Schwartz’s life — that is a myth.

They say that when new passports were issued, Evgeny Schwartz asked to write “Jew” in the nationality field. But the passport officer misheard and wrote “Indian.” This is a well-known anecdote known to the entire editorial staff of the magazines “Chizh” and “Yezh,” where Schwartz worked. Moreover, “Indian” was poetically immortalized by Nikolai Oleynikov, who wrote a humorous poem trying to win the favor of the pretty Henrietta Davydovna Levitina, the editorial secretary.

I am handsome, I am fastidious, I am cheeky,

I have many different ideas.

I do not have scorch marks in my thoughts,

Like this Indian does!

How did Schwartz manage not to be affected by the fight against cosmopolitans? Was his nationality ever held against him? There was no outright anti-Semitic persecution. They punished more cynically. Imagine the state of a playwright when, after a premiere, the play is removed from the repertoire of all theaters in the country for decades, as happened with “The Dragon.” By the way, when Schwartz began publishing in a newspaper, his father advised him to take his grandfather’s surname — Larin — as a pseudonym. He believed it would be easier for a writer to live with a Russian surname. But Schwartz did not do this.

Director Nikolai Akimov staged almost all of Schwartz’s plays. Some were banned immediately after the premiere (“The Naked King,” “The Shadow,” “The Dragon”). But Schwartz kept writing, and Akimov kept staging them. Nikolai Akimov was more than a director to Schwartz: he fearlessly went through all the circles of hell via artistic councils and repertoire committees. In 1944, decorations for “The Dragon” were being prepared in the workshops of the Vakhtangov Theater and the Moscow Art Theater. Making concessions to the censors after a public viewing, Akimov persuaded Schwartz to rewrite the second and third acts. Schwartz read the new version of the play at the artistic council of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography and was successful. But at that very time, the newspaper “British Ally” published news that the Manchester theater had staged “The Snow Queen” based on Schwartz’s play. Perhaps this fact, or the general fame of Schwartz’s plays in the West, which were translated into other languages, influenced the officials’ final decision to ban “The Dragon.” But the union of Schwartz and Akimov was unbreakable; although they did not speak for months due to differences in opinion, after the ban on “The Dragon,” both began working on the production of “The Bear.” The title was later changed, at the request of director Garin, to “An Ordinary Miracle.”

Legend has it that as soon as one critic began composing a denunciation of Schwartz’s immoral character, his hand was paralyzed. And one lady was about to write a statement to return Schwartz to the family, but then she ran out of ink. Then she changed her mind. That a collective denunciation was sent by two children’s writers, but their letter was lost in the mail during sorting. And the letter of one vigilant reader reached the right place, but the cleaning lady threw the denunciation into the trash bin. So fate somehow protected Schwartz. Undoubtedly, Schwartz had a guardian angel. For example, Schwartz lived in a house on the Griboedov Canal, 9, and the residents of this house twice suffered the harshest repressions — in 1934–1938 and 1946–1949. But Schwartz was not touched. Maybe he was saved by the wisdom: “Never talk to people you do not know well enough.” Or maybe by mysticism. Schwartz repeatedly said in public that he wrote everything except denunciations, and was cautiously ironic in his statements. And most of his colleagues — writers, Schwartz’s neighbors in the house on Griboedov Canal, 9 — actively used Aesopian language in live communication. Tomashevsky advised quoting classical antiquity when answering suspicious questions and not to take any family conversations outside the apartment. All the informers living in that house were known by name.

The author of very bold plays that had problems with censorship, Schwartz nevertheless had his own car, an apartment in a good house in Leningrad, his own dacha in Komarovo, and money in the bank. True, the apartment was the smallest in the writers’ house — 27.3 square meters. He hardly used the car. The dacha (a blue house) was rented by the Schwartzes from 1948 on Morskoy Prospekt in Komarovo. More importantly, shortly before his death, Schwartz finally saw a book of his plays published.

Who did Schwartz really mean in “The Dragon” — Stalin or Hitler? He wrote a play about the irreversible destruction of a free society and the suppression of the individual brought by a totalitarian regime. And who is the leader of that regime is not important.

Schwartz’s prose became his entries in barn books and his phone book; wonderful memoirs about his fellow writers were published in the book “I Live Restlessly.” Although many are still difficult to decipher because of the disease Schwartz suffered from — hand tremors, which made the letters he wrote look like, as Marshak said, dead mosquitoes.

Quotes from Schwartz

– Eh, what a pity — the kingdom is too small, nowhere to roam! Well, never mind! I’ll quarrel with the neighbors!

– After all, he is still better than the Dragon. He has arms, legs, and no scales. After all, he is a president, but a human.

– A king cannot be an idiot, daughter. A king is always wise.

– Everyone was taught. But why were you the first student, you beast?

– We have not yet discussed the terms of the duel. – We have long been killing without any terms. New times — new trends.

– Fridrikhsen, do you need freedom? – Why do I need freedom? I am married!

– In our circle, among real people, they always smile just in case. Because then, whatever you say, it can be interpreted in different ways.

– The best decoration of a girl is modesty and a transparent dress.

– I assure you, the only way to get rid of dragons is to have your own.

– When they were strangling his wife, he stood nearby and kept repeating: “Well, bear it, maybe it will pass!”

– It is very harmful not to go to the ball when you deserve it.

– I have so many connections that you can go crazy from the fatigue of maintaining them.

– I have no time to court. You are attractive, I am damn attractive — so why waste time?

Source:

https://online812.ru/2015/08/26/008/