Valentin Berestov - They loved you without special reasons
Berestov Valentin Dmitrievich (1928-1998) - Russian children's poet,
writer, translator.
Valentin Berestov was born on April 1, 1928 in the city of Meshchovsk,
Kaluga region in the family of a teacher. The future poet learned to read at four
year. He began writing poetry since childhood. During the Second World War the family
Berestova ended up in evacuation in Tashkent. And there he was lucky
meet Nadezhda Mandelstam, who introduced him to Anna
Akhmatova.
Then there was a meeting with Korney Chukovsky, who played a big role
in the fate of Valentin Berestov. Both Akhmatova and Chukovsky reacted to the beginning
his work with great interest and care. At that time
K.I. Chukovsky wrote: “This fourteen-year-old frail teenager has
a talent of enormous range, surprising all experts. His poems
classic in in the best sense this word, he is endowed with a subtle sense of style
and works with equal success in all genres, and this work
combined with high culture and persistent performance. His
moral character inspires respect in all who come into contact with it.”
The first collection of poems by Valentin Berestov, “Sailing,” was published in 1957.
and received recognition from readers, poets and critics. Released the same year
the first book for children “About the car”. This was followed by collections of poems:
“Happy Summer”, “How to Find a Path”, “Smile”, “Lark”, “First
leaf fall”, “Definition of Happiness”, “Fifth Leg” and many others. "Berestov,
- wrote the poet Korzhavin, - this is, first of all, talented, smart and, if
one might say, a cheerful lyrical poet.” Anna Akhmatova about short
in the humorous poems of Valentin Dmitrievich Berestova told him:
“Take this as seriously as possible. No one can do that."
“If you asked me who is the man of the century, I would say: Valentin
Berestov. Because it was precisely these people that the twentieth century lacked more
everything." Novella Matveeva could join this statement
many. Many wonderful children are grateful to Valentin Berestov
writers whom he helped take their first steps in literature. . .
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Loved you without special reasons
Because you are a grandson,
Because you are a son,
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
V. Berestov
Marina Korotkova
Head of the library of the Center for the Development of Creativity of Children and Youth named after. A. V. Kosareva, Moscow
2008 has been declared the Year of the Family in Russia. And then, on a holiday, during the holidays, one of the readers, a teacher by profession, asked me to select “poems about family.” The first author who comes to mind is Valentin Berestov. Poem from the cycle “Crossroads of Childhood”:
Loved you for no special reason
Because you are a grandson,
Because you are a son,
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love, until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
In the book of memoirs “Childhood in small town“V.D. Berestov wrote: “How many affectionate eyes shone above me! I’m used to everyone loving me... The kindness of my family and fellow countrymen spoiled me at the beginning of my life. As an adult, I couldn’t get used to the fact that someone wasn’t happy with me and didn’t expect anything good from me at all.”
In Berestov’s poetry, the words “mother”, “father”, “grandmother”, “brother” are found especially often. If you put all these verses together, you get a kind of “family chronicle.” One of the poet’s collections is called “ Family photo"(M., 1973), based on the poem of the same name:
I'm putting on a new sailor suit,
And grandma straightens her hair,
Dad is wearing new striped trousers,
Mom is wearing an unworn jacket,
Brother is in a great mood,
Blush and smells like strawberry soap
And expects candy for obedience.
We solemnly take the chairs out into the garden.
The photographer instructs the camera.
Laughter on the lips. Excitement in the chest.
Silence. Click. And the holiday is over.
2008 marks the 80th anniversary of the birth of Valentin Dmitrievich; he was born in 1928, on the most frivolous day of the year - April 1:
And I was born on the first of April.
My father, returning from a trip,
I heard this news on the way
And he didn’t believe it: “That means I wasn’t born,
And if he was born, it was not a son.
No, the jokers have gone overboard.
Jokes, jokes, but joke in moderation!”
One of the first memories of childhood (Valya was not then more than three years) and favorite poem his mother:
Evening. Window sill with wet flowers.
Grace. Purity. Silence.
At this hour, head on palms,
Mother usually sits by the window.
He won’t respond, he won’t turn around,
It won't lift your face from your palms.
And he will wake up as soon as he waits
Behind the window of the father's smile,
And he will pull up the weights from the walkers,
And rushes towards him.
What is love in this world,
I know, but I won’t understand soon.
Valya’s mother played in amateur performances, and when she was preparing the role, the only food in the house was prison:
Mom walks around with her eyebrows furrowed,
Whispers loudly, teaches the role.
So, today there will be a prison:
Onions and butter, bread and salt.
The floor is not washed, the flower is not watered,
The fire went out under the stove.
And no one teaches children to school,
Doesn't educate us.
Artistic nature
No business on the day of the premiere
Before the worries of life. Prison –
Here is our holiday lunch.
Glasses break
They get out of hand.
Pour water from the tap into a bowl,
Crumble the bread and cut the onion.
And in my mother's eyes there is a storm,
And there is triumph in the movements.
What a prison!
What a prison!
Nothing tastes better!
And now the son in the auditorium looks at his mother-artist:
Mom played the machine gunner,
And my son’s soul sank.
How cheerful and brave
This was a machine gunner.
Mom, mommy, that's what you are!
Not hiding your triumph,
Shaking and pushing all the neighbors,
The son whispered: “This is my mother!”
And then his mother played
The daughter of a white general.
How cowardly and evil
She was a general's daughter.
The son wanted to fall through the ground.
After all, the family is covered in shame.
And all around there are admiring faces:
“Didn’t recognize it? Is this your mother?
(« Amateur performance»)
In his memoirs, Berestov wrote about himself as a “social half-breed”: one grandmother was a peasant woman, the other was a noblewoman. Valentina Berestova's mother, Zinaida Fedorovna, was the daughter of a famous landowner Fyodor Telegin and Alexandra, a noblewoman of the old Trunov family. Fyodor Telegin, however, was himself a peasant, but he became rich and became the owner of the Serebreno estate, not far from Meshchovsk. Valentin Berestov's father, Dmitry Matveevich Berestov, was from peasants, but from economic peasants, those who belonged to the treasury and did not know serfdom. From childhood he fell in love with reading, studied in Poltava at the Teachers' Seminary, then, when the First World War began world war and there was a shortage of officers from the upper classes, he was accepted into an officer school, from where he was sent to the front. Subsequently he worked as a school teacher, teaching history. Possessing a beautiful voice, he sang in a church choir as a child, and later sang lullabies by Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Vertinsky’s songs to his sons.
My father didn't whistle at all,
Didn't hum at all.
Not what I am, not what I am
When I was with him.
Not out loud, just like that,
He didn't sing anything.
Everyone says there was a voice
At my dad's.
I didn’t become a singer, I taught children,
IN three wars fought...
He sang for his mother, for the guests.
No, he didn't hum.
Why are we just singing?
Ta-ra da ti-ri-ri, -
Probably sounded in it,
But somewhere there, inside.
No wonder he had
The gait is so easy
As if the music was calling
Him from afar.
The Great has begun Patriotic War, and my father was called to the front, the poem “The First Evening of the War” is about this:
It was the first evening
perhaps the last war.
As at a wake, we eat pancakes with tears.
We sit and eat for a long time and look at our father.
Quiet, so quiet that you can hear hearts beating.
Sweet is the tea, but there is a stamp of sadness on the faces.
Why doesn't the messenger come to hand over the summons?
Maybe with this one, like with the First World War
Or with the Civil, the father will return alive.
Threads. Needle. Straight razor. Notebook.
It really doesn’t take long to pack for a long trip.
The infantry will come out to save the planet and the country.
Like going to work, my father got ready for war.
The Berestov family had three sons (the third son was born after the war). Valentin Dmitrievich wrote about himself and his brothers:
* * *
House
Walker.
The mother is overcome with horror:
- They're fighting again!
Brother goes against brother.
And he drives us into the yard,
Into the crowd of guys.
The yard is shaking:
Brother stands up for brother!
* * *
So, I take the scissors,
Comb and robe.
Sits like in a hairdresser's
My five year old brother.
And he asks for all the curls
Cut it down to one
So that women are at peace
They left him.
YOUNGER BROTHER
After all, it’s necessary! My brother still believes seriously
To something that has long been in question for me.
When he puffs, he is still a locomotive.
And I can no longer be a locomotive.
Valentin was the eldest of the brothers, and when his father went to the front, he was the eldest man in the family:
My father was called to the front.
And for this reason
I have to live from now on
As a man should.
Mother is always at work.
The apartment was empty.
But in a man's house
There's always something to do.
I'm watching my brother
Are your clothes okay?
Cooking dinner: in uniform
Hot potato.
Buckets full of water.
The apartment has been swept.
Washing dishes is easy -
There's not a drop of fat on her.
With a calm look,
solid and worthy,
In the yard, to the garbage pit,
I'm walking with a garbage bucket,
Coupons from three cards
they cut my hair at the grocery store.
Breadwinner and breadwinner. Man.
The eldest in the house.
I'm sincerely sure
That he became a substitute for his father.
But in that distant life,
blessed, pre-war
Father didn't study
Things like this.
Mother replaced father.
I'm helping my mom.
Meanwhile, there was no news from his father for a long time, and in 1942 a fourteen-year-old teenager wrote a poem “To Father”:
My father! You don't send any news
Already whole year dear family,
But the days when we were together
In a dream they stand in front of me.
And what has been lived comes to life:
Reeds and the distance of the native river,
And you, bending over the water,
You look wearily into the floats.
Once again, baby, I’m next to you
I stand, keeping silence,
And you look so welcoming
Sometimes you look at me...
And again a passing cart
Knocking, dust swirling with smoke.
And the old horse, tired of running,
Plodding along with slow steps.
Not a sound breaks the silence.
Just a stupid quail in the morning
Repeats without stopping
“It’s time to sleep” and “it’s time to sleep.”
And life flows again from the beginning,
Still full of the same joy,
As if she didn't separate us
Relentless war.
It's like we were a nightmare
All the turmoil and need,
And the morning is a radiant light
They were dispersed without difficulty.
My father returned alive from this, his third, war. He raised three sons and was an example in life for each of them:
The older brother had a loud father,
The idol of the town, local historian and singer.
Imitating him in this and in this,
The son became a historian and a poet.
The middle brother had a sad father
A fisherman and a fugitive from boredom.
I planted a flower bed and a vegetable garden behind the house.
Imitating him, his son became an agronomist.
U younger brother there was an old father
Sage, resident of the beyond world.
He looked for books, collected and read.
And the son, in imitation, became a scribe.
So age and time changed him,
The era of my father was spinning.
And only one thing did not change the father:
For every son he was a model.
“The era of my father was spinning,” writes Berestov. In 1936, Dmitry Matveyevich was expelled from the party and was summoned at night for interrogation by the NKVD. Saving his family, he left Meshchovsk. In 1988, Valentin Dmitrievich wrote a poem about this, “Evidence (1936).”
“Berestov,” they told their father, “
Admit it: you are a Socialist Revolutionary.
They were looking for evidence
They raised dust in the archives,
In Ukrainian, for example.
And now we will present them.
It’s not for nothing that you hid the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
What's in Ekaterinoslav
Did you speak at the congress?
Why did you go to the Socialist-Revolutionaries with this?
What did he tell them about terrorism?
In nineteen hundred and three?
- What did you say? Probably nonsense.
What else can I say at that time?
Could a child of eight years old?
“How about eight? Ooh, enemy seed!
Got out, damn it!”
During the war, Berestov's father was captured and upon returning home he was forced to work in a rural school; he could not find work in Kaluga.
Two grandmothers lived in their family: Baba Sasha, mother of Zinaida Fedorovna, and great-grandmother Alexandra Gerasimovna, mother of Baba Sasha. Valentin Dmitrievich also talks about them in his poems.
BABA SASHA
Our affectionate fairy!
Arches of proud eyebrows.
I called him “Baba Sasha”
My mother's mother.
There were rumors in the town
About your past sins,
And with the zeal of a praying mantis
You begged them.
In a black shawl, in a strict dress,
Asking for yourself, for us,
On your knees before god
I fell down many times.
Freezing spokes
A blue look from under a scarf...
I drove along the floorboard
Blown buttons troops.
Budyonny and I beat the cadets,
Interventionists, cadets.
The cry “Hurray!”, “For the power of the Soviets!”
It shook your quiet roof.
In his book of memoirs, Berestov wrote about her: “My blue-eyed, black-haired grandmother, mother of five children, fell in love with a defrocked monk and left my grandfather. I heard rumors about this in Meshchovsk half a century after my grandfather’s death.”
And about my great-grandmother:
Great-grandmother-deprived, great-grandmother-noblewoman
I always hurried to visit early in the morning.
Why should the landowner be honored by me?
Great-grandmother! Not everyone has it.
“Great-grandmother, hello!” –
“Have you come, naughty one?
For some gingerbread, eat it. Take an earphone.
Kovaleva again. Sing, darling, sing!
Ah, radio! Treasure for a blind old lady!
Well, that's enough. The newspaper is a breeding ground for culture.
Let's tell the cartoons.
Circle on the eye? Ah, monocle! Well, well!
In a top hat and with a bomb? Bring on the war!”
Oh, how she made fun of Briand,
Over Churchill, Hoover, Zhang Hsue-liang,
How she snorted, holding her lips with her palm,
Above the petty arrogance of the great powers.
She joked, had fun, rode in a carriage.
Laughing and joking, she lingered in the light.
The tenth decade!.. A crowd of old ladies
Yes, a yellow chasuble priest like a cone.
“You have fallen a victim” was not heard here.
According to the ancient rite, she was buried.
Great-grandmother loved listening to folk songs performed by the singer Kovaleva, was interested in politics and, despite the fact that she was already blind at that time, subscribed to the Izvestia newspaper. Thanks to Izvestia and his great-grandmother, little Valya Berestov learned his first letters and read his first word. He talks about this in his memoirs: “And yet she (great-grandmother) taught me the first two letters. In other cartoons that I told her, among stormy sea stood a proud cliff with four letters along a steep cliff. “Three identical letters next to each other? - asked the great-grandmother. “No other way than the USSR!” The first word I read!” Valya and his brother Dima were called by their grandmothers Dragotsuntchik and Strekotunchik. Grandmothers were “disenfranchised” - that is, deprived of voting rights due to their noble origin.
My father's mother, grandmother Katya, lived in the village of Torhovo. She was the second wife of Matvey Berestov and bore him 18 children, of whom nine survived. She came from the village to visit in a cart and drove the horse herself.
GRANDMOTHER KATYA
I see grandma Katya
Standing by the bed.
Came from the village
Grandma Katya.
A gift for mom
She serves.
I'm quiet
He puts in a dried pear.
I ordered my father
Like a child:
“You, baby, are on your own
Unharness the horse!”
And asked with respect,
Leaning over me:
“Would you like a fairy tale,
My father?
Many of the Berestovs' relatives died in the war. Two sons of Baba Sasha did not return from the war. Valentin Berestov's cousins Vasily and Konstantin - grandsons of Baba Katya - also did not return from the war. In the poem “Shirt,” Valentin Dmitrievich spoke about his cousin Vasily:
The parents are different, but the grandmother is the same.
And she brought her brother from the village to us.
And I, six years old, was the most happy for him.
My cousin was studying to become a teacher.
How funny he was! How kind he was!
What beautiful shirts he wore!
He came in a white shirt. And on our porch
We looked at the cathedral clock for an hour.
And before mom said: “Go to bed!”
We have learned to recognize the time by the arrows.
Then he came for me in a blue shirt,
He brought them to other students and sat them down at the table.
And the announcer, like a teacher, told the story for everyone.
This is how I listened to the loudspeaker for the first time.
But then my brother came into the house in a black shirt,
And my mother let the two of us go to the village.
Ah, the new shirt has one big secret:
In the paint trough in the kitchen it changed color.
And again she - look! - looks like new.
And the loudspeaker speaks more and more sternly...
Dear brother, he did not return from the battlefield.
The gramophone shines like a silver trumpet.
My favorite record, hissing, went in a circle:
“The cut glass fell from the table.”
The windows in the hut are open. There are friends under the windows.
“They fell and broke, like my youth.”
Vasily fought near Kyiv, was a political instructor, and was surrounded. Then he was in a partisan detachment. In 1944, Vasily Grigorievich went missing. Shortly before this, his parents received two letters from him, in one of them he asked not to worry if there was no news from him for a long time.
The father of the hero of the poem “Kostik” Nikolai Matveevich Berestov was the chairman of the collective farm. When the Germans arrived, he was appointed headman, but he managed to preserve the collective farm herd without handing over a single head of cattle to the invaders. Despite this, after the liberation of the village by the Red Army (at the beginning of 1942), he was arrested and sent to Uzbek camps. The village residents stood up for him, and in 1945 he was released and rehabilitated, but his health was undermined, and he soon died. And his son Konstantin, who was not yet 18 years old, was drafted into the army and, as the son of an “enemy of the people,” was sent to a penal battalion. He died a few months later, in 1942, when he was blown up by a mine (penalties were thrown into the minefield in front of the equipment):
Who remembers Kostya,
Our cousin
About brother soldier
About our long-standing loss.
He graduated from school
And he immediately died in the war.
You remembered him
I dreamed about him in a dream.
In family albums
He lives on an old card
(He didn't play,
But for some reason it was filmed with a guitar).
And something is more important
Than just sadness and kinship,
Connected us all
Who hasn't forgotten about him yet?
Poems about deprived grandmothers and brother Kostya were published only in the 1970s. And here it would be appropriate to recall another poem by Berestov.
SUBTEXT
You won't find a dirty trick in my poems.
Secretly smart and secretly brave
I can't be. Hiding lies under the truth
Under lies the truth is an impossible task
I think. I write what I want
I’ll keep silent about whatever I want.
Well, the subtext is different from the catch
Poems are given not by the author, but by the era.
Years passed, and Valentin Berestov turned from a grandson and son into a father, and then into a grandfather. When his daughter Marina was born, poems for children appeared. “My daughter Marina inspired me to write poems and fairy tales for children,” V.D. Berestov wrote in his autobiographical note “About Me.” For example, the famous poem “About the girl Marina and her car” or the poem “Horse”:
Me for my daughter
The best of horses.
I can laugh loudly
And click loudly.
And riding, riding, riding
On his dashing horse
That's how it goes
Cowgirl girl.
And the next morning there is no horse.
He leaves for half a day
Pretending to be angry
Businesslike,
But he dreams of one thing:
I wish I could become a horse again.
And, trembling with impatience,
Hit with his hoof.
And then poems about the grandson appeared.
FOR THE BIRTH OF A GRANDSON
Like in childhood, grandma
She's friendly with me.
But this grandmother -
My wife!
WALKING WITH YOUR GRANDSON
Grandfather likes birch trees
And aspens.
My grandson likes the kiosks
Shops.
He took the cannibal mask,
I took the stickers.
Grandfather didn't have any
Not a penny.
At one of the meetings with readers, Valentin Dmitrievich said: “I took all the stories from my own own life. Everything that was written in my poems was with me...” The verses given here, combined a single theme, the theme of family, is a unique history of the Telegin-Berestov family, inextricably linked with the history of our country.
And a few more poems, not included in the article, also on a “family” theme: “Letter from Grandmother”, “French”, “Waking up, I go to the window...”, “Bathing”, “Door”, “At my father’s desk... "", "Father Fishing", "Father's Gift", "At Grandma's", "Parents' Day (1940)", "Night Conversations with Father", " Scary dream”, “Mom left”, “Parents went to the theater”, “Paper crosses”, “Only once, and then at the beginning of childhood...”.
Loved you for no special reason
Because you are a grandson,
Because you are a son
Because baby
Because you are growing,
Because he looks like his dad and mom.
And this love until the end of your days
It will remain your secret support.
(No Ratings Yet)
More poems:
- How you were loved during your lifetime! I thought it was impossible to love anymore. And friends swore on your grave to remember you forever. Why? There are no questions here, the one who knew you will understand... And...
- Many, my friend, loved you, You gave yourself to many... But you gave yourself to them without loving... It was only a prank, Or the dictates of hungry need, Or explosions of despair... But your pure beauty...
- They loved each other so long and tenderly, With deep melancholy and insanely rebellious passion! But, like enemies, they avoided recognition and meeting, And they were empty and cold short speeches. They...
- No, it is not you that I love so ardently, It is not for me that your beauty shines: I love in you my past suffering and my lost youth. When sometimes I look at you, V...
- Having fallen in love with you, I am embarrassed and don’t know how to say that I am seduced by you and am afraid of becoming guilty. Whenever I am in front of you, I sit in complete confusion, I don’t know what to say then, Only...
- There have been many difficult days, There will be many difficult days. So, it’s too early to draw conclusions. So we met her, So we met her Somewhere on a country road. Only a few...
- Shouldn't I remember you? As long as I breathe, I will never forget you and the deceased. You are dearer in sorrow and the darkness of storms, Than the rest of the world in the shining of the sun. Be free, great and...
- Well, don’t I love you, distant one, if again I’m drawn to grab a handful of the distance, so that I can see your face nearby. And such a heavy languor, What do you...
- With secret, heavy melancholy, I look at you, my heart! What's ahead for you? - A doll that will amuse you at first, and then this doll will get boring... Later, when you grow up, you...
- My love, Russia, I love you as long as I live, Your slanting rains, Your glades of grass, The roads of your wanderings, Your dashing children. And there is no excuse for those who don’t love you. My love, Russia, You are with everyone...
- The world is crammed with old severity, but the birds are chirping from the rooftops, but with every eyelash you speak reverently of youth. And the green flame of maples flows into the heart, sparkling. I don't know when between us...
- I want to call you wife Because others didn’t call you that, old house my, broken by the war, you are unlikely to appear as a guest again. For what I wanted...
- I don’t remember you, why should I remember? This is only what I know, Only what can be known. The edge of the earth. A strip of smoke reaches into the sky, slowly. Lonely, unsociable, meandering...
- The little man learned to walk from the sofa to the edge of the table. He already has eyes and shoulders, and his own young affairs. We need to touch everything hastily, try a baby tooth: oh, like grandma’s...
- Grand Duchess To Elisaveta Feodorovna I look at you, admiring you every hour: You are so inexpressibly beautiful! Oh, it’s true that under such a beautiful appearance there is an equally beautiful soul! Some kind of meekness and innermost sadness...