Yerofeyev categorically did not align with official trends or any fashion for something fundamentally transient.
Individualist
He couldn't live to old age. Or even to mature wisdom. And he didn't. He died at 51.
Yerofeyev was an individualist. He did not unite with anyone or align himself in the era of cohesive communities, Soviet or anti-Soviet (the latter, of course, being better, but that's not the point).
Yerofeyev usually wrote in the first person. He did not want to take responsibility for other persons.
Yerofeyev is a man without pathos. He does not glorify or condemn. He sympathizes. And states. But sometimes piercingly and ruthlessly. For example, like this:
"I combed my hair as best I could and returned to the carriage. The audience looked at me almost indifferently, with round eyes as if occupied with nothing...
I like it. I like that the people of my country have such empty and bulging eyes. It fills me with a sense of legitimate pride. You can imagine what kind of eyes there. Where everything is sold and bought: ... Deeply hidden, lurking, predatory, and frightened eyes... Devaluation, unemployment, pauperism... They look from below, with unceasing concern and anguish – that's what the eyes in the world of the pure are like...
But my people have such eyes! They are constantly staring, but – no tension in them. Complete absence of any meaning – but what power! (what spiritual power!) these eyes will not sell anything. They won't buy anything. No matter what happens to my country, in days of doubt, in days of heavy reflections, in the hour of any trials and disasters – these eyes won't blink. They are dewed with God's dew... I like my people. I am happy to have been born and grown up under the gaze of these eyes."
Yerofeyev knew something crucial about a Russian person. That he does not attach himself to anything. An eternal wanderer. He aspires to something, fantasizes, dreams – but all in vain. He achieves nothing. And simply perishes on the way. Russia for him is a road from nowhere to nowhere.
Yerofeyev and Germany
What connects Yerofeyev to Germany? Almost nothing.
He has never been abroad at all. But in 1962, he wrote the novella "Good News," under the influence, as some believe, of Friedrich Nietzsche: the "gospel of Russian existentialism." The main voice there belongs to Satan. In 1987, the poem "Moscow to the End of the Line" was published in German under the title "Die Reise nach Petuschki" (The Journey to Petushki).
It is said that the translation is not very successful, but parallels with Franz Kafka's "The Trial" are easily recognized.
In 2006, a legal process began in Hamburg regarding the copyright of Venedikt Yerofeyev's book "Moscow to the End of the Line." The plaintiff and heir to the copyright of the work, the writer's daughter-in-law Galina Yerofeyeva, claimed that the book was regularly reissued worldwide, and the author's heirs did not receive money for the copyright. As a pensioner with disabilities, she had to live with her husband and three children in a one-room apartment.
The defendant, as can be understood, was either the publishing house "Albin Michel" or the Swiss publishing house "Kein und Aber." Online, for example, you can find Valery Berlin's story about this. Yerofeyev also had legal disputes with the Moscow publishing house "Vagrius."
Yerofeyev and Gogol
In Russian literature, there are two great prose poems: Gogol's "Dead Souls" and Yerofeyev's "Moscow to the End of the Line."
In one interview, Yerofeyev said, "When I die, they will call me Gogol..." Both poems are about wandering that does not end (or ends with the death of the protagonist).
Ukrainian Gogol, coming to the north, discovered around him the kingdom of dead souls. He decided that he could resurrect them with words. And he began to write a magical novel. But he broke under this burden. It drew him to Moscow, and he died there, far from the beloved south.
Yerofeyev does not make such a definite conclusion about other people. He sadly observes their imperfections and apparent uselessness to anyone. The trip from Moscow to Petushki (a town east of the capital) has an unattainable goal and is ultimately devoid of meaning.
Almost a сult writer
Yerofeyev remained in the memory of generations. One of the few Russian authors of the 20th century whose works were actively read by the younger generation in our century. And even - as the witness himself claims - they filled theaters when "Moscow to the End of the Line" was shown.
Those who are a bit older remember him as the composer of fragrant pungent poisons, cocktails like "Komsomolka's Tear," "Suchiy Potroh," "Aunt Klava's Kiss," and other drinks made from infusions, fortified wines, nail polish, colognes, and insecticides.
His biography
His biography is sad and uncompromising.
The writer was born on October 24, 1938, far in the north, in the semi-labor settlement of Niva-2, in the suburbs of Kandalaksha near Murmansk. He was the youngest child in a large family.
In late 1941, his grandfather, Vasily, was arrested and died three months later in prison. After the war, his father, also Vasily, the chief of a railway station, was arrested twice. The father was convicted of sabotage, leaving the family without means of support. The mother went to work with her sister in Moscow, and the younger children ended up in the children's home in the city of Kirovsk. Yerofeyev spent six years in the children's home. In 1954, the father was released, and he returned to his family but died in 1956.
In 1955, Yerofeyev graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the philological faculty of Moscow State University. Yerofeyev lived in the university dormitory at Stromynka, where he began his first composition, "Notes of a Psychopath" (1956–1958; the manuscript was considered lost, first published in 1995).
His obvious talent was combined with a completely anarchic lifestyle. He received an increased scholarship for his talents, but due to truancy from military training, he was expelled.
From March 1957, without leaving the USSR, Yerofeyev changed numerous professions. He worked as a loader in a grocery store (Kolomna), a mason's assistant (Moscow), a stoker (Vladimir), a duty officer at the police station (Orekhovo-Zuyevo), a wine dish receiver (Moscow), a driller in a geological party (Ukraine), a shooter in the militarized guard (Moscow), a librarian (Bryansk), a collector in a geophysical expedition (Arctic Circle), and the head of a cement warehouse in the construction of the Moscow-Beijing highway (Dzerzhinsk in the Gorky region). In 1974, in the Hungry Steppe (Uzbekistan), Yerofeyev worked as a laboratory assistant in a parasitological expedition, and in Tajikistan, he worked as a laboratory assistant in the fight against blood-sucking mosquitoes.
In 1961, Yerofeyev entered a pedagogical institute in the city of Vladimir. The same story repeated: increased scholarship and expulsion for "bad behavior." Later, Yerofeyev was expelled from suburban, deeply provincial Orekhovo-Zuyevo and Kolomna pedagogical institutes.
For a decade, Yerofeyev worked on the installation of cable communication lines. During these works around Moscow, he wrote his poem "Moscow to the End of the Line" (1969). In 1972, "Dmitry Shostakovich" followed, the draft manuscript of which was lost. Articles on Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun are also considered lost.
The poem "Moscow to the End of the Line" circulated in samizdat. It was first published without the author's consent in 1973 in Jerusalem, in the AMI almanac. The publication as a book in Paris appeared in 1977. In the USSR, the poem was first published during the relaxation of censorship in the journal "Sobriety and Culture" as a work about the harmfulness of alcoholism, with significant omissions. Secretary-General Gorbachev then began an unsuccessful campaign against alcoholism, which led to the collapse of the Soviet system (although not solely because of it).
In 1995, 18 years after it was written, the novel was published in Russia without censorship. Many readers criticized the "book about a drunkard"; others love it.
From 1978, Yerofeyev lived in the north of Moscow, where he wrote:
- The tragedy "Walpurgis Night, or The Steps of the Commander" (published in Paris in 1985, in the USSR in 1989);
- The documentary collage "My Little Leniniana" (published in Paris in 1988, in Russia in 1991);
- Began the play "Fanny Kaplan" (unfinished, published in 1991).
From the mid-1980s, Yerofeyev developed throat cancer. After treatment and several surgeries, he lost his voice and could only speak with the help of an electronic voice device.
Yerofeyev died in Moscow on May 11, 1990.
Slowly and incorrectly
"Everything in the world must happen slowly and incorrectly so that a person cannot become conceited, so that a person is sad and confused."
The intonation and subtext are Gogolesque. Illusions - zero.
Many things still happen slowly and incorrectly today.
Related topics:
Despite being an individualist who did not align with any cohesive community, either Soviet or anti-Soviet, Yerofeyev's work "Good News" in 1962 was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, showcasing elements of Russian existentialism.
In a legal dispute, Yerofeyev's daughter-in-law, Galina Yerofeyeva, claimed that her husband's book "Moscow to the End of the Line" was regularly reissued worldwide, and the author's heirs did not receive due royalties. This controversy took place in Hamburg, Germany.
