When Paris blooms When are the best times to visit Paris? Main events in Paris in April

Parisian chestnuts

I'm tired of night thoughts

And I'll take a guitar chord,

And chestnut trees are blooming in Paris

Near Place la Concorde.

Weightless these candles

That passers-by are deprived of sleep,

Good but short lived

Like our spring with you.

In my own youth under old age

Don't come back even if you die

And chestnut trees are blooming in Paris

Over the paths of the Tuileries.

Over the Moscow snow grains,

For which the rains will come

I scream hopelessly into the phone:

"Wait for me, wait!"

Why should I wait in vain

At the turn of the century?

Me on this happy holiday

Can't keep up with you.

And in Paris, a river pier,

colorful carousel,

And boats carry tourists

At the foot of the Tour Eiffel.

And I look out the window stupidly

On the yard through the bottom,

Where is my age group

Compete in dominoes.

And in Paris it flies in a circle

An endless round dance

And the student kisses his girlfriend,

And no one is waiting for anyone.

It somehow happened historically that it was Paris, one of the largest and most beautiful cities in the world, that became the place where both the Russian nobility and the Russian intelligentsia always aspired to. Perhaps that is why it was with France that Russia established strong centuries-old cultural ties. The word "Paris" immediately brings to mind the Impressionist artists, Ivan Turgenev, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani and Anna Akhmatova, Edith Piaf and Yves Montand. Paris is associated for us with the childhood discovery of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Prosper Mérimée and all the wonderful French literature, which has long been related to Russian.

I first came to Paris back in 1968. A year before, my song "Atlanta" unexpectedly for me, at that time I was sailing on another expedition, won first place in the All-Union competition for the best song for Soviet youth. And the Central Committee of the Komsomol, at the suggestion of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Komsomol, decided to send me, along with other artists and poets, as part of the “creative group” of the USSR Olympic team to the Winter Olympics in Grenoble.

We spent three weeks in France: four days in Paris, and the rest of the time in Grenoble. "By official capacity" we had to perform from time to time in front of our athletes in the Olympic village and in front of the French "public". Since I myself did not know how to play the guitar then, however, I still do not know how, the actor of the Comedy Theater, now a people's artist, Valery Nikitenko, was appointed as a special accompanist. Already on the Leningrad-Moscow train, it turned out that he also did not know how to play the guitar at all. After the confession, Valery tearfully asked him not to extradite him, because he really wanted to go to Paris. As a result, at concerts in France, guitarists from the Georgian ensemble Orero played along with me, and I must say that I don’t remember such a luxurious accompaniment to my modest songs in all subsequent years.

Paris struck me with its exact resemblance to our school and book ideas about it - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Pantheon, the Arc de Triomphe, Rodin's Balzac on the Boulevard Raspail, the Invalides Palace, the Sacré Coeur on the top of Montmartre hill, Notre Dame. Acquaintance with this city was reminiscent of a journey into the book through the looking glass of our childhood - from Hugo and Merimee to the "forbidden" Zola and Maupassant. More than others, I remember Notre Dame and the Orangerie Impressionist Museum in the Tuileries Park.

In Paris, the head of our group, a high-ranking Komsomol apparatchik Gennady Yanaev, later the last vice-president of the USSR under the last president Gorbachev, who became infamous as the chairman of the State Emergency Committee, was indignant during an excursion to the Louvre: “What kind of museum? They put some kind of stone woman without a head and with wings at the very entrance, - the famous antique statue of Nike of Samothrace was meant, - but there is nowhere to drink beer! The next day, in the evening, having had time in the morning to speak contemptuously about “talentless bourgeois portraitists painting oblique snouts” (meaning Modigliani), Yanaev suddenly burst into our room in a state of joyful excitement, intensified by the Stolichnaya brought with him, and declared: “Paris is a city of a hostile ideology and constant vigilance is needed. Therefore, those who have not yet seen a striptease have broken up into combat “troikas” - at Place Pigalle!

As for Modigliani, I still managed to intercede for him before our formidable leaders. And it was like this: on the occasion of the Olympic Games, an exhibition of works by Modigliani was specially organized, which our delegation visited. Hearing the above-mentioned contemptuous remark of the hungover Yanaev, I became terribly angry and unexpectedly for myself, forgetting about the difference between our positions and elementary caution, I began to shout at him and his deputy first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of Belarus Mikhail Rzhanov: “Komsomol fools, this is a great artist ! How dare you talk about him like that?" I expected an angry reaction, but our leaders suddenly became quiet, and Yanaev, smiling peacefully, said: “Sanya, why are you barking? You better explain to us - maybe we will understand. For the next twenty minutes, in a voice trembling with excitement, I gave an inspirational speech about the work of Amedeo Modigliani and his tragic life, which ended at thirty-five, using the film Montparnasse 19 as the basis of my narrative. Yanaev listened with half an ear, but when he found out that the artist was an alcoholic and drank himself, he joyfully declared: “Sanya! This is our man. Bourgeois bastards made a brilliant artist drunk!” After that, the exhibition was recommended for obligatory visits to all members of the Soviet delegation.

The era of sad gaps,

Where death is plentiful catch.

Akhmatova and Modigliani,

Akhmatova and Gumilyov.

heavenly from the Lord of manna

An outcast can't wait.

Novels were short

Both are unhappy.

Only lived for long years

There is a secret available -

artist or poet

A poet is incapable of love.

Don't complain about it in vain

That everyone burned out before the deadline:

One choked on absinthe

The other was shot.

Because both for a long time

She managed to survive.

But with them, even if not enough,

Sharing a bed and shelter,

She bound them forever

Aliens from different worlds.

Like a ringing bell in the fog

It sounds like a combination of words:

Akhmatova and Modigliani,

Akhmatova and Gumilyov.

I still remember the cramped second-class compartment of the Paris-Lyon train that we took to Grenoble. In this compartment, the size of ours, not four, but six people were placed, and it was incredibly stuffy. We stood in the corridor at the window and decided that we would wait until Paris was over and go to bed. However, we stood for more than an hour, and roads and houses were still flashing outside the window - so we never waited for a forest or a field. In the middle of the night we were woken up by a sudden and unexpected stop, all the more strange since the Paris-Lyon Express was speeding over a hundred kilometers an hour. It turned out that one of our compatriots, stupefied with stuffiness, went out into the corridor from a neighboring compartment, decided to open the window to breathe, and pulled the bracket closest to the window, under which something was written in French that he did not understand. It turned out that he pulled the stopcock handle. The next morning, our activists walked around the cars with a hat and collected five francs from everyone for a fine.

In Grenoble, we were settled one by one in the families of members of the Franco-Soviet Friendship Society, whose children studied Russian in colleges, and were given tickets for all matches and competitions. Once a day we gathered at the central club. There were scary moments, of which the most frightening was the one when at the final concert, after the end of the Olympic Games in Grenoble, I had to sing two numbers after Charles Aznavour. There were other tests as well. My hosts settled me in a room with a separate entrance. For this reason, I was given the key to a high carved door that swings open directly into the garden. Almost the entire room was occupied by an old huge bed, not two, but at least four-sleeping, with high bog-oak backs topped with numerous cupids. On the boundless featherbeds of this luxurious bed, where at least lie down, at least across, I felt like a lonely wanderer in the desert, especially since the wooden walls of the house turned out to be not a very reliable barrier to the cold of February nights. I put my suitcase with the two “permitted” bottles of vodka I had brought under the bed, following the Soviet habit. One day I went to some drinking and dancing party with our French friends. Sometime after midnight, when the booze began to run out a little, I suddenly remembered the suitcase with vodka, and decided to go for it. I was driven in her little Peugeot by one of the French translators, Danielle, a 20-year-old brown-haired woman in a stunning mini. It was raining outside. Sitting next to her in the car, which she drove heroically through the darkness and the rain, I tried not to look at her legs, which were tightly wrapped in a black mesh pantyhose. We passed through the garden. I opened the door with difficulty in the darkness and switched on the light. She threw off her wet cloak, took out a comb from her long hair and, having loosened it, began to wring it out. Then she jumped on the bed with a run and laughed, spreading her arms. I, of course, crawled under the bed for a suitcase. When I pulled out my suitcase, she grabbed my neck and said: “Listen, this vodka is still not enough for everyone, and such a bed is very rare among us. Maybe we'll stay?" My head swam, but my vigilant heart sank with fear. I imagined that the ancient wooden walls would now move apart, revealing the lenses of the photo and movie cameras filming us. Then French intelligence agents will break in to recruit me into the Surte, or some other espionage service. “What are you, what are you,” I muttered in a trembling voice, “it’s inconvenient, they are waiting for us.” And reached for her wet cloak. Perhaps that is why, on the day of departure, when she said goodbye to us, she came up to me and, gently slapping my cheek and smiling contemptuously, said: “Goodbye, fool.”

After the concert on the occasion of the end of the White Olympiad, a big banquet took place. It was announced that the hot dishes would be typically French. Therefore, we were somewhat surprised when we were served tobacco chicken. Only when we thoroughly tasted them, it turned out that these were not tobacco at all, but fried frogs. Soviet ladies began to faint, but the men were on top - they asked for more "Smirnoff" vodka and unanimously fell on the frogs. At dessert, the Italian Fausto, who was studying at Moscow State University and who understood Russian, who was sitting next to me, turned to me with a loud question: “Sanya, how did you like the French woman?” The KGB man, who was officially called the director of the school, who was sitting on the other side of me, put down his glass and looked back at me. "I don't know," I stammered. "Why dont know"?" Fausto did not hesitate. “Why, why,” I tried to get rid of the importunate interlocutor, “I don’t know the language.” He thought for a long time over my answer, obviously not understanding it and wrinkling his forehead, then he smiled joyfully and shouted: “What language? Hands!

On the way back through Paris, Valera Nikitenko and I, having asked for time off from the authorities, went to watch Paris at night. When, after wandering half the night along the Boulevard Clichy and Place Pigalle and drinking coffee with the drivers of night taxis in the famous "Womb of Paris", we returned to our own hotel, it turned out that the doors to it were tightly locked. No one answered calls or knocks. It was then that Valera discovered some half-open gates near the hotel, decorated with a cast old lattice with lions. When we entered them, hoping to find some additional entrance to the hotel, it turned out that this was someone's private house, separated from the hotel by a blank wall. In the courtyard of the house stood open luxury cars, on the table of the open veranda, weak street lighting made it possible to distinguish some bottles and the remains of an uncleaned dinner. Frightened, we turned back towards the gate, but it seemed to have slammed shut behind us as we entered. And how they slammed shut! Some kind of automatic lock worked, which even from the inside without a key was impossible to open. Only now the meaning of what happened penetrated into our drunken heads. In the middle of the night, we climbed into someone else's house, and if they grab us, we won't even be able to really explain anything, because we can't connect two words in French. For the next half hour, we climbed over high gates topped with sharp spearheads, one of which I hopelessly ripped my only weekend trousers.

In Paris, however, we were lucky. It started to snow in Moscow, and the Air France company, apologizing for the flight delay, took care of the air passengers. We were immediately put up in one of the most expensive hotels in Paris, the Lutetia, on the Boulevard Raspail, and given five hundred francs for personal expenses.

Frightened to death, Soviet citizens, carefully instructed in the "case of provocation" and slightly stunned by unexpected favors, accustomed to the fact that their own Aeroflot treats passengers like prisoners of war, we flatly refused luxurious single rooms, and we were placed in even more comfortable double. After dinner at the company's expense, with Burgundy wine, and walking half the night along the Grands Boulevards, we returned to our unusually rich room with rococo furniture. And here my neighbor, who had already exchanged winks with a pretty journalist from our group, came up with a crazy idea. This journalist and her translator friend lived in the same room, one floor up. My neighbor tried to call them on the phone, but the telephone operator did not understand Russian, and neither German, nor English, nor, moreover, my neighbor could explain himself in French. Then he approached me and demanded that I speak English with the telephone operator and find out the phone number of our ladies. His plan was simple to the point of genius; his girlfriend was supposed to come to us, and I - in her place, in their room. All my attempts to dissuade him did not affect his mind, excited by the vapors of Burgundy and the sight of a luxurious - at least four-sleeping - bed with an alcove canopy. “Valera,” I persuaded him, rightly fearing “immediate provocations,” “well, be patient until tomorrow, to Moscow, what difference does it make to you?” "What are you talking about? he shouted. “On French soil, even our women are sweeter!” I had to pour him another glass of wine, after which he finally fell into a sleepy state.

The next day, to our some annoyance, the weather improved and the plane flew safely from Le Bourget to Moscow ...

In the following years, I happened to visit Paris many times, and I always compared this great city with my previous ideas about it, drawn from the books of Hugo, Dumas, Mérimée, Stendhal and Maupassant. I remember that in Omsk, during the famine years of the evacuation, I was fond of the biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. All the boys then, apparently, were fond of the figure of this great commander! I have re-read Academician Tarle's wonderful book "Napoleon" many times. And this childhood passion for Napoleon was preserved for many years. Therefore, when already at a mature age I ended up in Paris in the Palais des Invalides, where Napoleon and his famous marshals are buried, the era of the Napoleonic Wars passed before my eyes again, which caused acute nostalgia for itself. By the way, in the same place in the Palace of Invalides, where everything speaks of victorious battles, including Borodino, and the military glory of France, I unexpectedly found tombstones in Hebrew on a gray wall. It turned out that Jewish soldiers who fought for France on the fields of the First World War were buried here.

In the Parisian Palais des Invalides,

Where Napoleon is buried

And mournful statues

Bowed down at the magnificent columns,

Where glory is at its zenith

And everything talks about the war

I found an inscription in Hebrew

On a gray tomb wall.

They said under the inscription of the date,

That the eternal found peace here

Soldiers who died in battle

Distant World War.

And looking at the dull list

Saving French honor,

I remembered - such graves

There are many in Berlin.

At the Weissensee cemetery

Where is your youth and talent

Jewish soldiers buried

Those who died for the Fatherland.

Fighting on the Marne and Ypres

Fighting on both sides

Jews died for their country

Causing damage to the enemy.

In the regions where the iron blizzard

Fire burned the fields

They killed each other

foreign fatherland for,

His in inert thought

I naively consider it my own.

And the fat fire of the Holocaust

Europe answered them.

On each of my visits, Paris turned to me with some new side, but it always remained not an imperial capital, a symbol of high-profile military victories and bloody revolutions, as the architects tried to present it, but, above all, a city of poets and artists, an eternal city of lovers.

Paris shines with the edges of the roofs

In the noise of a foreign people.

An old romance has sunk into obscurity,

Only love remains.

Where is my home? Do they shine in it

Stars at the bottom of the well?

The fire goes out, the palm freezes,

Only love remains.

In a distant country, in peace, in war,

We all lived as we should.

Sorrow and evil carried away,

Only love remains.

Whether mountain peak, ryu li Lepic,

Nothing will come back.

Everything is carried away by water,

Only love remains.

Keeping memory, remember me

Over time, giving up the fight.

The bitterness of insults will fly away into the night,

Only love remains.

The circle is over, time is out of hand

It pours in a thin stream.

Which one of you will tell me now

What then remains?

Seagulls wing beats on the glass,

The new sun is laughing.

The oar will light up in the river,

So love remains.

One of the main symbols of Paris is the famous Luxembourg Gardens with the ancient Luxembourg Palace, an oasis in the middle of a noisy city that does not stop day or night. Here you can meet Parisians of all ages, spending their leisure time in numerous cafes or enjoying the silence on the garden benches. This garden is especially good in two seasons - the crimson Parisian autumn and spring, when it is filled with students resting from their unbearable studies on the eve of the session.

Calling blue canvases from Manet's memory.

I'm unlikely to find a similar scene in Russia,

Which would also be cloudless and carefree.

Under the inscription that forbids lying on the grass,

There is a policeman, missing the spring sun.

Around on the lawns, lazy fun lasts,

Lovers doze, head to head.

All France is sleeping at this hour in the Luxembourg Gardens -

Babies in strollers, in an old woman's patterned sun loungers.

Was it not here that the obsolete cannons now thundered,

Carrying the Communards the last misfortune in life?

They were shot here, at this low wall,

Where a young couple kisses passionately

Being a sculptural group of Rodin,

That sleeps, lulled by the world of daytime silence.

And I walk through the garden along the sandy path,

Looking at them enviously and stealthily.

Students lie on the grass in the Luxembourg Gardens

Runaways from lectures, as we used to run away.

Noisy Paris flows around this world of couch potatoes,

Where the Amazons sleep, pulling their tunic short,

And God slumbers over the garden on a sunny cloud,

Like an idle student who can't wait for the holidays.

Paris is an amazingly green city. There are a huge number of parks, squares, gardens. Almost all parks are associated with historical events, because Paris is so steeped in history that wherever you step, you are sure to stumble over some kind of relic. If Communards were shot in the Luxembourg Gardens, then Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was walking in the Montsouris park. His apartment was nearby, on the little street Marie-Rose, where Inessa Armand lived in the next house. And in this wonderful park, where ducks swim, seagulls soar, chestnut trees bloom, he thought no more and no less than about the plans of the World Revolution. It even seems strange that everything in Paris is so closely connected - both the absolute silence of the Parisian parks, and the thundering flames of revolutionary terror, both French and Russian.

Another completely unique world of Paris, without which Paris would not be Paris, is children. France has a very large number of large families. In contrast, for example, to neighboring Germany, where at best there is one child per family, here it is considered the norm to have three or four children. While the parents are working, the children are looked after by nannies. Little Parisians - relaxed, cheerful, well-dressed and well-groomed, filling the Parisian parks and squares with their chirping, form an absolutely amazing atmosphere of a cheerful sunny Paris, aspiring to tomorrow.

In Paris, life is in full swing day and night, but as soon as you turn a corner from a noisy highway and take a few steps, you find yourself on a quiet, cobblestone street with dim light of lanterns, which seems to have come from the Middle Ages. And it seems that right now, three musketeers will come out from around the corner together with d'Artagnan, and those adventures that attracted so much in childhood will begin. And very close by, noisy highways cross the boulevards, and Paris continues its day, evening and night life.

When on the verge of gray roofs

I watch before bed

I see Paris again

Outside the St. Petersburg window.

There in the middle of a foreign land

Ships sail on the Seine

And my friend Natalie and I

We go to the Place Italia.

Not knowing grief and worries,

From dawn to dawn

Holiday people walking

Through the Tuileries Park.

Where kings used to live

Now the tulips are blooming

And my friend Natalie and I

We go to the Place Italia.

There, drunk on wine and happiness,

holding a glass in hand,

Sitting with friends d'Artagnan

In a fancy wig.

There over the boulevards in the distance

Cranes fly north

And my friend Natalie and I

We go to the Place Italia.

They drink cheerful wine

At this evening hour.

Oh why is it so dark

Outside our windows?

And there they sing: se tre joli, -

Rather quench my thirst

And my friend Natalie and I

We go to the Place Italia.

When you get to Paris, then, looking back at your own life, you remember that great literature, especially Russian, which you discovered for yourself in childhood. Here one cannot fail to recall the remarkable writer Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, who in his last years lived in Europe and did a lot to bring Russian and Western European literature closer together. A close friendship connected him in Paris with Flaubert, Zola, Hugo, Maupassant, Merimee, George Sand and other French writers. He died in 1883 near Paris, in the town of Bougival, from lung cancer.

What strange shadows, however,

Reflected in this glass!

Turgenev dies of cancer

In cozy Parisian land.

This evening, sunset and long,

What does he suddenly remember?

Benefits of the beautiful Polina

Or Bezhin abandoned meadow?

Or gloomy early morning Nevsky

At the Vladimir Church, a mute,

Where Dostoevsky wanders wearily

From the gambling house home?

Who was a talent and who was a genius?

Everything has now faded into darkness.

Dying of cancer Turgenev

In cozy Parisian land.

Noble profile appearance,

Heads of unmelted snow

Will float away like a silver cloud

In the recent Silver Age.

I look at volumes of his prose,

I heal the wounds of my soul with them.

There are roses blooming between the arbors,

They are fresh and good.

Coolness blows over the estate.

The lake is motionless.

And do not cut down the cherry orchard,

And they don't teach you how to kill.

The tragic fate of another Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was and remains my favorite poet, is connected with Paris. It was here that he apparently met his last love - Tatyana Yakovleva. It was not just love, but an attempt to break out of the environment in which Mayakovsky found himself in the Soviet Union and gain the desired freedom. He wrote to her: "I will take you anyway someday, alone or together with Paris." He was seriously in love with Yakovlev. Who knows, perhaps Mayakovsky's fate could have turned out differently if he came to Paris again.

Bloody banners of October

We have lived our century not in vain, -

They still hurt us today.

The poet who portrayed the rebel

With descendants through the years talking

In his personal life he was weak and weak-willed.

He, from all stretching lived,

Served the Great Revolution

I shared its misfortunes with my native country,

But, having loved since youth,

Raising your poems like a membership card,

Depended on the woman and the power.

Waving a formidable fist,

He sang, overcoming a lump in his throat,

All calling to them giving strength.

Both are deceived and attracted,

He was under the heel of both,

And both led him to the grave.

Keeping a straight face

He stands in bronze on the square,

Chewed by laudatory articles.

His poems are an artillery row

Then they will revive again for life

Letter and resolution to Yezhov.

Last exit. France. Paris.

You can’t run away, Volodichka, you’re naughty:

Don't think better about Yakovleva.

Coming back, on the way,

He gave to Lorigan Coty

The entire fee that was received.

Sad is the sound of a broken string.

For a long time already there is no country in sight,

Whose passport was closer to him.

The poet died, and it is not his fault,

That no one needs today

All one hundred volumes of his party books.

The past century is inconceivably distant.

He burns like a charcoal.

The end of the poet is sad and pathetic.

But for many years, until the time expired,

His girlfriend was put on the threshold

Bouquets of violets paid for by him.

Another love of Mayakovsky, Lilia Yuryevna Brik, played a rather difficult role in his fate. The famous love triangle became fatal for the poet. It was Briks, especially Osip Brik, who collaborated with the “authorities”, who were advised not to give a visa to Mayakovsky so that he could not go to Paris again, because they feared that he would marry Tatyana Yakovleva and remain forever in France. Here we recall the epigram dedicated to Brik, usually attributed to Sergei Yesenin: “Do you think who Osya Brik is? Russian language researcher? But in fact, he is a spy and an investigator of the Cheka! Unfortunately, that's how it was. However, after the death of Mayakovsky, Lilia Brik provided him with immortality. It was on her letter to Stalin that the famous resolution of the leader was inscribed in red pencil: “Comrade Yezhov! I beg you to pay attention to Brik's letter. N.I. Yezhov did not yet head the punitive organs, but was the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Then came the lines that people of my generation learned by heart at school: "Mayakovsky was and remains the best and most talented poet of our Soviet era."

This Mauser is a lady's in a huge hand!

This shot that's tied to a secret

From which the echo buzzes in the distance,

For the benefit of other poets!

Why, agitator, tribune and hero,

Suddenly you shot yourself

So squeamishly avoiding raw water

And not eating unwashed fruit?

Maybe the women were to blame

That burned your soul and body

Paid the highest price

Failures of their adulteries?

The point is not that, but that friends are enemies

With each new one becomes an hour

That all the sonorous power of the poet cannot be

Give to attacking classes.

Because the poems sing of terror

In the frenzied and howling press,

Because a feather was equated with a bayonet

And included in the system of repression.

You fulfilled your last civilian duty,

Do not commit other atrocities.

You carried out the sentence - before,

And not in hindsight, like Fadeev.

The century goes on, the day ends

On a high note,

And a shadow falls on Mayakovsky's house

From the huge house opposite.

In the vicinity of Paris there is an amazing corner of Russia - the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois. Here lie Russians who lost their homeland during their lifetime and found it only after death. But we got it, hopefully forever. Many of those whom we called the White Guard and who were sung by Marina Tsvetaeva and other remarkable poets and writers remained in this cemetery. Anyone who comes here is shocked by the order of military burials. The glorious officers of the White Army lie in their military units - separately Don artillery, separately Cossack troops, separately cavalry units. Until their death, they retained their commitment and love not only for Russia, but also for their military traditions, including those educational institutions where they were brought up. In addition to the ranks, generals, colonels and others, almost everyone on the gravestone can see the shoulder strap of that cadet corps or cadet school, which they once graduated from when they were young.

Not just in the era that was before,

Now figure it out.

cadet brotherhood.

They lie silently in damp darkness,

But no complaints.

Cadet epaulette on a tombstone

And Pavlovian monogram.

School years beckon us back,

And nowhere to go -

Road from life everywhere and always

Goes through childhood.

The commanders of past campaigns lie,

Dressed in earth

What is the rank of cadet.

The generals of dashing divisions lie,

hero grandfathers,

And there is no higher title for them,

What is the rank of cadet.

Shouting, flying south, cranes,

The dead are disturbing.

Money is running out - from this land

They will be written out too.

Change color in neighboring forests

Earth turnovers.

Close habitually ranks in heaven

cadet companies.

Forget, cadets, about cannon smoke,

Get some sleep.

Let you dream, gray-haired boys,

Abandoned Peter.

Mysterious world of an ancient manor

With a yellowing garden.

And mom's dress, and dad's uniform,

And the Motherland is near.

The tombstone of the canonical form with the inscription "Don Artillerymen" located opposite the memorial to the cadets also attracts attention.

Lying away from the Empire

Under the half-fallen chestnut tree

Lieutenant of the Don Artillery

He won't be a captain anymore.

Under a warm glowing ray,

Parted with the world of the sublunar,

He will forever be a lieutenant,

Cheerful, enthusiastic, young.

Flickering autumn puddle,

And no regrets again

That he will never make it

Until the next rank.

He will remember the bridges with crossings,

And the windows of the native house,

Where it smelled of heated herbs

Over the waters of the Pacific Don.

Steppe, dense, tart,

Against a dark blue background.

And here the Orthodox Church is only

Reminds me of the former Russia.

And the years of emigrants - as if there were none, -

There are only snoring horses

And this distant sky is only

Where are the stars, as on the chase.

Not far from the graves of the White Guard lie the most prominent representatives of Russian literature and art of the 20th century who died in exile: Rudolf Nureyev, Alexander Galich, my peer Andrei Tarkovsky, who amazed the whole world with his art of cinema and, having flashed, passed away. Wonderful writers and poets lie here: Ivan Bunin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius and many, many others. Here it is, a huge Russian field on French soil ...

In the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois

Oblivion does not grow grass -

Her, dressed up like a lover,

The gardener cuts regularly.

Where the statues freeze in fox boas,

Emigrants found peace, -

Russian freedom guarantors.

In the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois

The earth is white from the February snow,

And look at the black crowns,

Forgetting about horses, squadrons.

Ringing at the monastery of Saint-Genevieve

Starlings who have flown in a two-syllable chant,

Binding her with birdsong

With Donskoy or Novo-Devichy.

Again in anticipation of a new spring

The dead dream of Moscow dreams,

Where the blizzard is spinning twisted,

Cast crosses flying around.

native places familiar from childhood,

And the dome shines over the Cathedral of Christ,

Inclining the dead to hope

That everything will return as before.

In the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois,

Disappearing from the planet like a moa bird

A flock of swans lies

Growing into Parisian soil.

Between marble angels and terpsichore

An invisible choir sings canons to them,

And no, it is clear from the song,

Freedom in addition to dormancy.

The Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery is inextricably linked not only with Russian literature, cinema, ballet, but also with Russian author's song. Every time I come here, I put flowers on the grave of Alexander Arkadyevich Galich - a man of difficult fate, who marked an entire era. A successful writer, prosperous playwright, whose plays were staged throughout the Soviet Union, he, at the height of his prosperity, suddenly took and went into dissidents, starting to write tough, accusatory songs. After that, he lost everything he had, was expelled abroad, and died a few years later under strange circumstances. This death is still mysterious. The songs of Alexander Galich, as well as his famous poem "Kaddish", dedicated to the outstanding teacher Janusz Korchak who died in a Nazi concentration camp, remained forever in the golden fund of Russian literature and became a kind of monument to that unfortunate era, which we now call the "Era of Stagnation".

Again the old word "today"

It comes to my mind unbidden.

They say: "The return of Galich",

As if you can return from the past.

These songs, once forbidden,

No anathema today, no sale to them,

At that time, politically harmful,

And now irretrievably forgotten!

Oprichniki calculated well,

Convinced Leninists-Stalinists:

Who is cut off from the usual home,

Forever without him and will remain.

The sound of an empty stirrup is heard

Above today's complete edition.

Who is cut off from place and time,

He will come back late.

Above the crosses swirling swoosh.

I look in the store "Melody"

On the portraits of sad Galich,

On dashing portraits of Volodina.

It gathers dust, not knowing the rotation,

Their records are a silent pile ...

No return is given

Nobody, nowhere, nowhere.

It is absolutely impossible to imagine Paris without open cafes, without guitar-sounding songs, without the famous French chanson. Without Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, Charles Aznavour and many others. Bulat Okudzhava once told me that it was Montana's arrival in Moscow in 1956 that prompted him to take up the guitar for the first time. The spirit of French chanson, which once swept the whole of Europe and was a serious impetus for the birth of an author's song in our country, still exists. That's just the attitude towards the authors is different. At the Montparnasse cemetery, at the grave of the famous French chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg (Ginsburg), always littered with fresh flowers, I somehow involuntarily remembered our chansonnier Ginzburg, who performed under the literary pseudonym Galich.

We can't predict ahead.

Earthly existence.

Lie in French graves

Two Ginzburgs, two chansonniers.

Autumn landscapes sketches,

Breath of the near seas.

One of them is Dnepropetrovsk,

The other is a Kishinev Jew.

October red fox

Sneaking through the wet grass.

One was famous in Paris

The other is popular in Moscow.

Little is known to us in total

About their dissimilar fate, -

One died from drugs

The other was killed by the KGB.

They were bound by a common bond,

From birth, every outcast

But the first remained French,

And the Russian remained different.

How these graves are not close

Cold rainy times:

On the first - flowers and notes,

Thick grass on the second.

And the thought is sad again

Suddenly comes to me:

The Russian word does not follow

In someone else's bury side.

An amazing thing is that those emigrants who lie in the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois dreamed of returning to their homeland for the rest of their lives, and those boys who they once were, who died on the fronts of both the First World War and the Civil War, they dreamed of getting to a quiet and calm Paris, which historically was a place of rest and entertainment for a Russian person.

Chapter III. Parisian ordeals A four-week sea voyage. – Meeting with Meyerbeer in Boulogne. Wagner comes to Paris with his letters of recommendation. - Smiling for a moment of hope and soon disappointment. – Wagner has to write music on commission