Leonid Aronzon who dreams of reading something. “Who dreams of what and other interesting cases” by Leonid Aronzon

The OGI publishing house published wonderful poems by Leonid Aronzon. These are poems for children. Aronzon also wrote poems for adults, which are well known. But this is the first time that poems for children have been published. They were collected by Vladimir Erl, Ilya Kukuy and Pyotr Kazarnovsky. The book was illustrated by Anna Florenskaya. The book came out wonderful. As for the poems, they are quite ordinary, that is, all sorts of strange things and incredible things feel quite comfortable in them. I thought long and hard about quoting as an example. And you took this: What do you need here? I'm afraid of you! “Sleep,” answered the Dwarf, “I’m only dreaming.” There are always a thousand miracles in dreams... He scratched the back of his head and climbed onto the table. With a hundred, like a cat, Fut! - and on the closet. “I,” the Dwarf swore, “I live only in dreams.” No matter what I do, You must sleep! I blinked, and the Dwarf was on the floor again. Suddenly I saw a book: One! - and tore up all her pictures, letters and words to the Pinocchio doll, stepped on the nose, tore off the horse’s mane and tail, poured a jar of ink onto the drawing. The alarm clock broke - the one I repaired. I wanted to wake up, shout: “Guard!” Only at this time the Dwarf whispered to me: “There are always a thousand miracles in dreams... He scratched the back of his head, farted - and disappeared!” I woke up in the morning Before the rooster, I looked at the book: What nonsense! Out of fear, I put on my mother’s glasses: All the pictures and letters are torn to shreds. The Pinocchio doll has always had a nose, the doll has no nose, and the horse has no tail. In my drawing there is a Lake of Ink. The alarm clock doesn't sound - the one I repaired. The sailboat is flattened, the sails are knocked down. I look through binoculars, But closing my eyes: Still in binoculars Everything is dark - Mom doesn’t believe in the dwarf anyway.

Leonid Aronzon. Who dreams about other interesting cases. – M.: OGI, 2011. – 72 p.

On September 22, 2011, the mini-hotel “Old Vienna” opens the literary season. The first highlight will be the presentation of Leonid Aronzon’s book “Who Dreams What and Other Interesting Cases” (M.: OGI, 2011).

The compiler of the collection, Vladimir Erl, collected almost all the children's poems of the wonderful Leningrad poet Leonid Aronzon. Most of the poems are published for the first time. Illustrations for the collection were created by A. Florenskoy.

“This book should become a bright and full-fledged addition to the “adult” work of Leonid Aronzon (1939-1970), an addition that will open up to connoisseurs another facet of his poetic world. These poems will help both small, not so small, and very large readers to take a closer look at the world so as to see in it more reasons for joy and play,” the annotation says.

The evening will be attended by Lyudmila Zubova, professor of the Russian language department at St. Petersburg State University, poet, prose writer and literary critic Pyotr Kazarnovsky, playwright and director Olga Tsekhnovitser, poet and film director Maxim Yakubson.
Musical compositions will be performed by Alexander Dzhigit and members of the group “Green Sleeves”.
Starts at 19.00. Free admission.

Leonid Aronzon is a Leningrad underground poet of the 1960s with a fate quite typical for a representative of unofficial culture. Not fitting into the Soviet format, he was forced to content himself with the narrowest circle of readers, consisting mainly of his wife and closest friends. Aronzon died very early, when he was only 31 years old. After the emergence of unofficial culture from the “underground” in the 1980s and 90s, Aronzon’s poems appeared for a long time in scattered form: in small-circulation collections and in samizdat anthologies. Only a few years ago, Ilya Kukuy, Pyotr Kazarnovsky and Vladimir Erl compiled a complete annotated two-volume set of his works. At the same time, they collected children’s poems, thanks to which the OGI publishing house published the book “Who Dreams What and Other Interesting Cases.”

The children's collection turned out to be very cute, not least thanks to the wonderful, Mitkovsky touching and smart illustrations by Anna Florenskaya. Her drawings show beautiful and slightly sad people: calm fish in top hats, hedgehogs with long, soft, shiny needles, cute horses and strict birds, children with adult bodies and faces. As for the poems themselves, there is so much to be found among them, although the book is quite small. It’s as if the author specifically decided to try a little of all the genres and themes known to children’s poetry. There are small quatrains, nursery rhymes, an alphabet poem, and “confusion” poems, where animals change voices and bodies and play leapfrog. There are translations (from Jan Brzechwa) and a cycle of poems about an artist who, for the sake of children and the scientific community, adds small mischievous changes to reality. There are poems from children's lives: about school, play, family, and so on. In general, the whole set of children's poetry is not very original, but quite cheerful and skillful.

What is missing from Aronzon's children's poems is Aronzon himself. He is almost invisible in them, does not manifest himself in any way - neither stylistically, nor in temperament, nor in thought. He does not bring into children's poems anything that he did so well in adult poetry, such as avant-garde word games or lyricism, never boring, but full of subtle, strange life, for example, this: “The grass is high here, and the blue lakes lie like mirrors of calm heavenly skies, shaking the doubled forest, / and the sleepy cigarette wings of blue dragonflies vibrate, / you walk along the stream and drop flowers, you look at the rainbow fish.”.

In children's poetry, Aronzon seems to be playing in advance on someone else’s field, where he is not looking for something new and his own, but simply does “as is customary”:

Thus, Aronzon’s poems for children and his adult poetry are correlated as funny and beautiful. Or something like the Horse from “Who Dreams What” and the Horse from his adult poems.

The horse is like this:

And the Horse is like this:

However, there is also a passage written a little more boldly. He appears as a surprise gift at the very end of the book. The most excellent Great Dane, who has “six legs, three rows of teeth... eyes here, here, here and here... wings internal and external, no ears - hears like this...”, - this absurd, sweepingly free beast runs, as if unable to keep up, flies into the last page of the book and freezes there to show: this is how everything would be here if Aronzon had given children’s poetry a little more than himself.

In children's poetry, Aronzon seems to be playing in advance on someone else’s field, where he is not looking for something new and his own, but simply does “as is customary”:

Thus, Aronzon’s poems for children and his adult poetry are correlated as funny and beautiful. Or something like the Horse from “Who Dreams What” and the Horse from his adult poems.

The horse is like this:

And the Horse is like this:

Noise and laughter in the garage:
The hare rides on a hedgehog.
Now we have a taxi,
If you want to go, ask!

“Children’s poems by habitually “adult” poets have been published generously lately - they are searched for in old literary magazines and collected in separate collections. And while "Azbuka" published children's poems by Joseph Brodsky ("Elephant and Maruska"), the OGI publishing house presents us with children's poems by another St. Petersburg poet of the 60s - Leonid Aronzon, "Who Dreams What and Other Interesting Cases." This book will surely appeal to kids and parents who have already appreciated and loved Kharms.”

Actually, this is my review of Aronzon’s collection “Who Dreams What...” (OGI).
I’m usually not a very critical critic, but here I still found a couple of malicious, but not fatal, minuses)))

* * *
Noise and laughter in the garage:
The hare rides on a hedgehog.
Now we have a taxi,
If you want to go, ask!

* * *
Our horse has sides
In golden apples.
A horse walks and eats grass.
I'll pick apples from a horse.

* * *
I envied the Giraffe
Fat-bellied hippopotamus:
- By what right?
He's handsome and I'm ugly?

Give me a neck like that -
I'll look better in no time!

The artist decided to help the hippopotamus:
It's time to get to work
Tap-
Dashi!
Tassels!
Paints!
Lively!
Lively!
There will now be a Behemoth
Long-necked!

He will be in Africa
Walk around in a giraffe scarf!