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The story of the life of the soul. Ariadna Efron. Life story, soul story “Deep feelings and love of life”

" It reveals the history of the concept of “soul” in different cultures and interesting conclusions are drawn.

Ole Martin Heistad. History of the soul. From Antiquity to modern times

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Most people believe that they have a soul, but few can explain what it is: a figurative expression, a metaphor? Maybe it doesn’t exist at all, and it’s a fiction? Maybe it's completely outdated? About this new book Norwegian philosopher Ole Martin Heistad, known to Russian readers from the book “The History of the Heart in World Culture.” Heistad explores the development of the soul over three millennia from Antiquity to modern times in the Western world, in Russian culture, in Buddhism and Islam.

The Norwegian philosopher Ole Martin Heistad, known to Russian readers from the book “The History of the Heart in World Culture,” talks about his book.

Martin Heistad: Most people believe that they have a soul, but few can explain what it is. There is something amazing, almost enchanting, about the soul. The soul is the expression of something deeply internal and personal that is difficult to express in words and concepts. The discrepancy between the obscure meaning of the soul and the greater importance that most people attach to it is reflected in our everyday speech. We can talk about a whole and pure, deep and honest soul. We feel something deep down in our souls, our soul is hurt, and we are afraid of “damaging our soul.” We use these expressions when talking about personal and moral qualities.

There are strong and weak souls, free and constrained, closed and open. The most personal qualities concerning our inner strength and vulnerabilities we find deep down. Some people have a vulnerable and pliable soul. We may be sick in body and soul, and we strive to find peace in our souls. The soul can be restless and split. So are these figurative expressions, metaphors applied to our personal qualities, or does the word “soul” refer to something real and represent a special dimension in a person, along with the mind and feelings. These are the questions at the heart of this book.

The concept of soul has changed over time. Therefore, we ask ourselves the question: what is the soul - matter or thought, mind or feeling, form or content, possibility or reality, something purely individual or more than an individual, something whole and unified or complex and heterogeneous? The soul is not so easy to define. Perhaps it does not exist at all and is just a fiction, an artificial construction? Just a concept or an image? But in any case, this concept, this structure is ancient, it was constantly destroyed and restored, and therefore it is, in all likelihood, necessary.

In all cultures, the fate of the soul depends on how the individual lived the century allotted to him, whether he did good or evil in words and deeds. The focus is thus on the life lived. What matters is how an individual develops his personal and spiritual qualities and fulfills its obligations to other people. Perhaps this is the most important quality of the soul in modern world. And although the soul is something strictly individual, it is determined by our relationship to others. You can't take care of yourself without taking other people into account.

Therefore, the soul is at stake when an individual joins collective movements, as Hannah Arendt writes about it. What consequences this has for the individual and for the others involved we learn from the history of such mass movements as communism and Nazism, as well as the aggressive versions of nationalism and Islamism in our time. The same thing happens when we blindly surrender ourselves to the power of stereotyped thinking, the media, market mechanisms and politicians who abuse power.

Soul in to a greater extent than other dimensions in a person is the subject of creation, personal and cultural education. We don't have to convince ourselves that our bodies exist, even though various culturally constructed ideas about the body shape how we shape and relate to our bodies. We also agree that we have a mind with the ability to reason logically correctly regardless of our subjective opinions. For body and mind are something given to us objectively. However, the presence of a soul is a subject of thought and justification of a completely different type. For this is an individual and personal value.

The soul contains all our complex inner world, described by Shakespeare, conflicting feelings and unclear motives, Kierkegaard's fear, Kafka's suffering and Goethe's aspirations. The soul is the way that we choose to organize and shape this entire internal subjective world. In the flow of time and consciousness the soul actively seeks its entrance and exit according to the Law, its ultimate mythical goal in dissolution into all, into nothing, or into unity.

Not only Buddhists strive to free themselves from the soul at the end of life, dissolve it, and avoid eternal boredom and eternal suffering. Muslims and Christians consider the union of the soul with God as their ultimate goal, just as artists and thinkers try to find and achieve unio mystica (union with God). The soul is the answer to the mystery of death, since we are sure that it is exclusively mine, something that everyone wants to find out and preserve in order to die their own own death in peace and reconciliation. But for life, “leaving the stage” should also be in order. The soul is a certain energetic, empathic and purposeful quantity that is moved throughout life inner strength. This value is due to how we, based on history, cultural values and our own experience, we understand a person and what this person should be, based on our goals and values.

The soul is our freedom to define ourselves in our own image, whether or not we believe we are created in the image of God (which is itself a historically created image). The soul is a quantity created by culture that distinguishes us from animals and is not subject to deterministically unconditional causal laws. The soul is an expression of our integrity, our vulnerability and our fragility; it suffers, loving or sympathizing, when someone or those close to us is offended. The soul exists as long as we want it, as long as we believe that we have a certain value that we must take care of and fight to protect. And if we know that we have a soul that needs protection, then, in Nietzsche’s words, we also have “a fundamental knowledge of ourselves that cannot be sought or found and which cannot be lost,” something we owe only to ourselves, and if we lose, it will be our own fault. This something is incomprehensible and mysterious, it surpasses itself and evokes delight and awe in us, it is our accumulated experience that fits into an autobiographical palimpsest, for only in this way do we become who we are and want to be, if we live according to our inner conviction about about what it means to be human and humane.

In this book we will trace the development of various ideas about the soul, as well as the image of the soul in fiction. Literature gives flesh and blood to the soul and determines its meaning in various historical periods.

I am very pleased that the Text publishing house in Moscow wished to publish this book in Russian. I would like to note that for the Russian edition of the book I wrote a special chapter about the “Russian soul.” The absence of such a chapter would be a clear omission, given the importance of the soul in Russian cultural heritage.

I would like to express special gratitude to the translator Svetlana Karpushina for a professional and close-in-spirit translation to the original, replete with quotations from many sources.

I hope that this book will inspire readers to engage in further dialogue between the soul and itself.

Svetlana Karpushina, translator of the book: With the Norwegian philosopher Ole Martin Heistad, professor of interdisciplinary cultural studies High school Telemark, I met when I translated his book “The History of the Heart in World Culture” together with Anastasia Naumova. This book was published in Norway in 2004, and has since been translated into 18 foreign languages. Russian edition— 2009. It reads like a fascinating novel.

Heistad speaks and reads a little Russian, and therefore translating his texts is both pleasant and troublesome, because he will definitely review the translation and ask questions. But he is always ready to discuss and clarify, which is very valuable when it is a text by a philosopher.

Heistad's new book is dedicated to history human soul. And the soul is a mystery. It is not easy to define and say where it is or whether it exists at all.

I had to work hard, especially with quotes.

When I was translating the chapter on Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” in search of a suitable translation that included the word “soul,” I had to re-read the translations of M. Lozinsky, D. Min, and P. Katenin again and again.

There are even more quotes in the chapter on Goethe's Faust - there are 45 quotes on 15 pages. In search of the “soul,” I leafed through the translations of N. Kholodkovsky and B. Pasternak many times, so now I know “Faust” almost by heart. When Heistad describes the final scene of the tragedy in the mountain gorge, I had to look for quotations in A. Fet’s translation of 1883, since I found this scene only in his work.

And as for the famous words “Stop, just a moment! You are wonderful!”, which became catchphrase, then the translator is unknown.

It was very interesting to follow Heistad in exploring the path of the soul in the history of human perception of the world. The concept of soul arose in Homer as “psyche”. She is the shadow of the body and appears only after death. Next begins a fascinating journey of the soul through Greek philosophy; of course, it finds its place in Christianity and is present in almost all medieval thinkers and philosophers of the Renaissance. When the position of the soul in philosophy weakened, in the second half of the 19th century it moved into the sphere of psychology (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud). In the twentieth century, the soul is reborn in fiction. Let us recall Hamsun’s “unconscious life of the soul” or Joyce’s novel “Ulysses,” which is called the “stream of consciousness of the soul.”

For the Russian edition, Heistad wrote a chapter on the soul in the history of Russian culture. This chapter turned out to be two to three times larger than the others. It turned out that almost all Russian writers and poets have a soul. “I will pour out my whole soul into words,” says Yesenin (“My Way”), and in another poem he makes the discovery: “But since devils nested in the soul, then angels lived in it.” This also happens. “That’s right, I decided to turn my soul inside out!” exclaims Blok (“Twelve”). IN terrible years Bolshevik repressions, Anna Akhmatova speaks of the mental death that is necessary to survive:

I need to completely kill my memory
The soul must turn to stone
We must learn to live again.

Your business is bad - says the doctor to the hero of the novel “We” by Zamyatin , - apparently, you have formed a soul...


 The topic that Heistad took on is inexhaustible. While working on the translation and reading the sources, I wondered how the author managed to make a choice: what to talk about and what not to talk about. After all, from Antiquity to today Philosophers and scientists, writers and poets, people of all cultures and religions talk, think, and write about the soul.

IN modern society, as Heistad believes, few people care about their souls. However, if the question of giving it up arises, most people will undoubtedly oppose it.

Some people argue that the soul is becoming obsolete. However living history the soul says something else. On the contrary, it testifies with great force to the immeasurable power of the soul. When things get tough, the soul appears with its inner voice, which never stops. Many writers and poets describe the relationships of love and trust between people on which the care of the soul and the personal integrity of man is based, which will exist as long as we believe in human dignity.

Origin of the soul

I think it is appropriate to begin the study of the life of the soul with the origin of this life. Very few of my subjects are able to remember their beginnings as particles of energy. About some details early life souls were communicated to me by young, beginning souls. These souls have more short story life both in the World of Souls and beyond, so their memories are still fresh. However, my Level I Subjects retain, at best, fleeting memories of their Self's origins. The following two excerpts from aspiring souls serve as illustrations:

“My soul was created from a huge, asymmetrical cloud mass. I was expelled like a tiny particle of energy from this powerful, pulsating bluish, yellowish and, white light. The pulsating mass emits a hail of such particles. Some fall back and are reabsorbed into the mass, but I continue to move forward and am carried along in the current with other souls like me. The next thing I remember is that I am in a closed area where very loving beings are taking care of me.”

“I remember being in a kind of manger, where we were placed in separate cells (like in hives), like incubator eggs. After I became more aware of what was happening, I learned that I was in the incubator world of Uras. I don't know how I got there. I am like an egg in the embryonic fluid waiting to be fertilized, and I sense that there are many other cells of young energy that have awakened with me. There is also a group of mothers here, beautiful and loving, who... break through our membranes and release us. There are swirling streams of intense, energizing lights around us, and I hear music. The first thing that arises in my mind is curiosity. Soon I was taken away from Uras and joined with other children in another place.”

Only in in rare cases I get to hear detailed stories about the “nurturing” of souls from very advanced Subjects. These are the "specialists" known as Hatchery Mothers. The next Subject, named Sina, is a representative of this type of work, and he belongs to Level V.

This personality deals with children both in the World of Souls and beyond. She currently works in a shelter for seriously ill children. In her past life she was a Polish woman who, in 1939, although not Jewish, voluntarily went to Germany concentration camp. She served the officers and took care of the kitchen, but this was only an external pretext. She wanted to be close to the Jewish children who ended up in the camp and help them with everything possible ways mi. How local resident a nearby town, she could leave the camp during the first year. Then the soldiers did not let her out. She eventually died in the camp. This advanced soul could have lived longer if it had brought more than 30 percent of its energy with it to support itself in carrying out this arduous task. This is the conviction of a Level V soul.

Dr. N: Sina, what experience of your life between incarnations was the most significant for you?

SUBJECT:(without hesitation) I'm going to a place where... souls are hatched. I am the Incubator Mother - a kind of midwife.

Dr. N: Are you saying that you work in a soul incubator?

SUBJECT:(lively) Yes, we facilitate the emergence of new souls. We ensure early development... by showing warmth, tenderness and care. We meet and greet them.

Dr. N: Please describe your surroundings to me.

SUBJECT: These are... gaseous... honeycombs, above which flows of energy rotate. Everything is illuminated with bright light.

Dr. N: By calling the incubator a "honeycomb", are you saying that it has the structure of a beehive or what?

SUBJECT: Um, yes... although the incubator itself is a huge center without any visible boundaries. New souls have their own incubator cells where they remain until they grow up, and then they leave this place.

Dr. N: As an Incubator Mother, when do you first see a new soul?

SUBJECT: We are located in the “delivery department”, which is part of the incubator, or center. The new arrivals are small masses of white energy contained in a golden sac. They move slowly and majestically towards us (like a conveyor belt).

Dr. N: Where?

SUBJECT: In our area of ​​the center, under the arch, there is a wall, completely filled with a molten mass of highly concentrated energy and... vitality. She seems to be charged with the amazing power of love rather than with any visible source of heat. The mass pulsates and vibrates, beautifully and softly. It is similar in color to what you see when you look through closed eyelids into the sun on a bright sunny day.

Dr. N: And do you see how souls emerge from this mass?

SUBJECT: This mass begins to swell - always in different places. The swelling intensifies and shapeless bulges form. Their separation from the masses is an absolutely marvelous moment. A new soul was born. She has energy, vitality and personality.

Note: Another subject, also a Level V, commented on incubation as follows: “I see an egg-shaped mass and energy flows in and out of it. When it expands, fragments of the energy of new souls are generated. When it shrinks, I think the energy of those souls that failed to manifest is pulled back. For some reason, these fragments were unable to take the next step towards their individuality.”

Dr. N: What do you see beyond this mass, Sina?

SUBJECT:(long pause) I see this blissful orange-yellow glow. And around there is a purple shadow, but not cold darkness... but eternity?

Dr. N: Can you tell us more about the flow of new souls moving towards you from this mass of energy?

SUBJECT: The flow moves slowly from the fiery orange-yellow mass of energy as nascent fragments (souls) are separated from it. They are led to various points where caring motherly souls like me are located.

Dr. N: How many mothers do you see?

SUBJECT: I see five people not far from me... who, like me... are studying.

Dr. N: What are the responsibilities of the Hatchery Mother?

SUBJECT: We hover over the hatched fragments to... dry them after they are released from their golden sacs. They move slowly, and we manage to easily and gently embrace their tiny energy.

Dr. N: What does “dry” mean to you?

SUBJECT: We dry... so to speak, the wet energy of the new soul. I don't know how to explain this human language. It’s as if we are embracing the new white energy.

Dr. N: So now you see mostly white energy?

SUBJECT: Yes, and when they approach us, they are next to us, I notice a blue and purple glow around them.

Dr. N: Why do you think this is so?

SUBJECT:(pause, then quietly) Oh... now I understand... this is the umbilical cord... the original energy cord of development that is connected to everyone.

Dr. N: From what you say, I get the image of a long pearl necklace. Souls are like connected pearls lined up in one line. Is this true?

SUBJECT: Yes, rather, like a string of pearls on a silver conveyor belt.

Dr. N: Okay, now tell me: when you accept each new soul, dry them - does this give them life?

SUBJECT:(answers quickly) Oh, no. Life force omniscient love and knowledge comes through us, not from us. As we process new energy along with our vibrations, we transmit... the essence of the beginning: hopes for future achievements. Mothers call it... "a hug of love." It is accompanied by instilling in them thoughts about who they are and who they can become. When we embrace a new soul in a “love embrace,” it fills it with our understanding and compassion.

SUBJECT: No, she already has everything, although the new soul does not yet know who she is. We teach with care. We announce to the newly born being that it is time to begin. By igniting... its energy, we bring into the soul the awareness of its own existence. This is the time of awakening.

Dr. N: Sina, please help me figure this out. When I think of nurses in hospital maternity wards caring for newborns, I imagine they have no idea what kind of person a particular baby will become. Are you working in the same way - unaware of the immortal nature of these new souls?

SUBJECT:(laughs) We work as these nurses, but it's not exactly what happens in the maternity ward of hospitals. When we accept new souls, we know something about their personality. Their individual characteristics become more apparent when we combine our energy with them to support them. This allows us to better tap into our vibrations to activate, or ignite, their self-awareness. This is all part of the initial process of their existence.

Dr. N: As a trainee, how do you acquire knowledge about the correct use of vibrations in working with new souls?

SUBJECT: This is something new mothers need to learn. If something goes wrong, new souls do not feel fully prepared. Then one of the Hatchery Masters intervenes.

Dr. N: Can you clarify something else for me, Sina? When you first receive these souls, lovingly embracing them, do you and other mothers notice some organized process of aligning souls along certain personality parameters? For example, first there are ten representatives of the type of brave souls, then ten more cautious ones?

SUBJECT: How mechanical it is! Each soul is unique in all its qualities, created to a perfection that I cannot even describe. The only thing I can tell you is that no two souls are the same!

Note: I have heard from some of my other subjects that one of the main reasons why each soul is different from another is that after the Source "chipping off" the fragments of energy to create the soul, they change slightly and are therefore slightly different from the initial energy mass. Thus, the Source is like a divine mother who never gives birth to twins.

Dr. N:(persistently, wanting my subject to correct me) You think this is perfect random selection? That there is no sequence of qualities that have any similarities? Do you know this is true?

SUBJECT:(disappointed) How can I know this if I am not the Creator? There are souls that have similar qualities, and those that do not - all in one heap. The combinations are mixed. As a mother, I can adjust every important feature I feel, and so I can tell you that no two combinations are the same.

Dr. N: Okay... (Subject interrupts, continuing the thought.)

SUBJECT: I feel that there is a powerful Presence on the other side of the arch that controls all things. If there is some kind of clue to energy structures, then we do not need to know about it.…

Note: These are the moments that I look forward to in my sessions, trying to open the door to the ultimate Source. And always the door is only slightly opened.

Dr. N: Please tell me how you feel this Presence, this energetic mass that is directing these new souls to you. You and other mothers must surely have thought about the Source of Souls, despite the fact that you cannot see it?

SUBJECT:(whispers) I feel that the Creator... is nearby... but not necessarily doing this work himself... producing...

Dr. N:(softly) So the energy mass is not necessarily the original Creator?

SUBJECT:(as if feeling awkward) I think there are helpers - I don't know.

Dr. N:(turning the conversation in a different direction) Sina, do new souls have flaws (imperfections)? If they were created perfect, would there be no point in them being created by a perfect Creator?

SUBJECT:(doubtfully) Everything seems perfect here.

Dr. N:(I change the subject for a while) Do you only work with souls that go to Earth?

SUBJECT: Yes, but they can go anywhere. Only a portion is sent to Earth. There are many physical worlds like Earth. We call them worlds of pleasure and worlds of pain.

Dr. N: And can you recognize the soul destined for the Earth based on your experience of incarnations?

SUBJECT: Yes. I know that souls who are heading to worlds like Earth must be strong and resilient because of the pain they will have to endure along with the joy.

Dr. N: I think so too. And the fact that these souls become polluted in the human body - especially young souls - is a consequence of their imperfection. Is this true?

SUBJECT: I think yes.

Dr. N:(continuing) And this leads me to believe that they must work to acquire more content than they originally had in order to achieve complete knowledge. Do YOU ​​agree with this assumption?

SUBJECT:(long pause, and then with a sigh) I think there is perfection... in new creations. Maturity in new souls begins with the destruction of innocence, and this is not because they were initially flawed. Overcoming obstacles makes them stronger, but the acquired imperfections will not be completely eliminated until all souls unite and the end of the incarnation comes.

Dr. N: Wouldn't this prove difficult given that new souls are constantly appearing to take the place of those who have completed their incarnations on Earth?

SUBJECT: This too will end when all people... all races, nationalities unite as one, which is why we are sent to work in places like Earth.

Dr. N: So, when the training is completed, will the universe we live in also die?

SUBJECT: She may die earlier. It doesn't matter: there are others. Eternity will never end. This process is very important because it allows us to... retain experiences, express ourselves... and learn.

Before I continue to talk about the development of the process of soul advancement, I must list what I have learned about distinctive features in their experiences that they have had since creation.

1. There are fragments of energy that seem to return to the energy mass that created them before they can reach the Incubator. I don't know why they fail. Others who reach the Incubator are unable, at an early stage of maturation, to learn to “be” on their own. Later they become involved in collective action and, as far as I can judge, never leave the world of souls.

2. There are fragments of energy that have such individual characteristics or mental structure that they do not tend to incarnate in physical form or in any world. They are often found in mental worlds and also appear to move between dimensions with ease.

3. There are fragments of energy that carry the essential qualities of the soul, which are embodied only in the physical worlds. These souls can also train between lives in the mental realms of the Soul World. I don't consider them interdimensional travelers.

4. There are also fragments of energy that represent souls capable and inclined to incarnate and act How individuals in all types of physical and mental environments. This does not necessarily provide them with more or less knowledge than other kinds of souls. However, thanks to the wide range their With practical experience, they can take on responsibilities in various areas of activity.

The development program of a newborn soul unwinds slowly. After leaving the Incubator, these souls do not immediately begin to incarnate or unite into groups. Here is a description of this transitional period given by one Subject, a very young Level I soul who had only incarnated a couple of times and still had fresh memories of it.

“I remember that even before I was assigned to my soul group and began to incarnate on Earth, I was given the opportunity to gain experience in the semi-physical world, having a light form. It was more of a mental world than a physical one, because the matter around me was not entirely solid and there was no biological life there. There were other young souls with me, and we moved easily like luminous bubbles, having the semblance of a human form. We just stayed there, doing nothing, and couldn't feel what it was like to be dense, hard. Although the environment was more astral in nature than earthly, we learned to communicate with each other as beings living in community. We had no responsibilities. And there reigned a utopian atmosphere of enormous, all-encompassing love, security and protection. I have since learned that nothing is static and that is - initial stage- was the easiest experience of our existence. We would soon be living in a world where we would not be protected, where we would experience pain and loneliness as well as pleasure, and all these experiences would be learning experiences for us.”

The soul that survives the body

Ariadna Efron. The story of life, the story of the soul. T. 1. Letters. 1937-1955. T. 2. Letters. 1955-1975. Memories. Prose. Poetry. Oral histories. Translations. Compilation: R.B. Valbe. - M.: Return, 2008.

The modern reader, almost satiated with human tragedies, in particular the so-called camp literature, is unlikely to be drawn to this book, unless the name of the author is of interest: Ariadna Efron, daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva, who belongs to the poets Silver Age, which has now become a fashion item.

Meanwhile, Ariadna Sergeevna is not only a “part” of her mother’s biography and perhaps the main one to whom we owe the “resurrection” of Tsvetaeva in her homeland - the publication of her books (about which - later), but in herself deserves the closest attention and - great respect.

Taken from Russia as a girl, she later yearned for her and longed to go there. Bunin scolded: “Fool!”, frightened (and prophesied, prophesied!), and then suddenly: “If I were as old as you, I would walk... and they would all be lost (France, Cannes... - A.T.) to hell!”

The dream came true. Alya, as her family and friends called her, sees the USSR in 1937 with enthusiastic, trusting eyes (“Ours, all ours, all ours, mine”), sends naive articles to France, full of jubilation, is surrounded by friends, loved by her husband. “I was happy - in my entire life - only during this period,” she would write long and difficult years later.

And then began, in her bitterly ironic expression, “eighth-grade education.” In the Lubyanka “class,” as she would later write to the Prosecutor General, “they were beaten with rubber “ladies’ questionnaires,” they were deprived of sleep for 20 days, they conducted round-the-clock “conveyor” interrogations, they were kept in a cold punishment cell, undressed, standing at attention, they carried out mock executions.” . They extracted evidence against themselves and against their father...

In the camp, I gradually learned about the suicide of my mother and the death of my brother at the front (about the execution of my father much later). It seemed like I had no more strength, “I left everything there“-in prison,” she wrote to her husband. “Before noon (landing. - A.T.) - childhood, and from noon - old age,” she would say ten years later in a letter to Pasternak, who helped her in every possible way.

But: “I decided to live at all costs,” she will write to her aunt, Anastasia (also with “education”!). All her thoughts are about her mother: “It is important for me now to continue her work, collect her manuscripts, letters, things, remember and write down everything about her what I remember..." And then - the words, then, at the height of the war, in 1942, which looked like the purest dream: “Soon, soon she will take her big place in Soviet, Russian literature, and I must help her in this.”

Soon, soon?! No matter how it is... “Special education” is not limited to the nervous prison-camp “eight-year” years. For a little over a year she manages to live freely, in Ryazan, where a talented artist with her “wolf card” - a special kind of passport - is not allowed to work at a local school.

An - the smoking room is alive! “...But the eyes, out of old habit, absorb and convey to the heart, bypassing the mind, the great beauty of Siberia, which is unlike anyone else... I’m brutally tired, a real mess - but I’m glad that there are so many children around, noise, ridiculous jumps, piercing screams changes."

Her letters are wonderful! “You are a writer,” Pasternak admires, “and it hurts when your letters talk about this in a low voice...”

“I sleep under all this snow,” she answers sadly, “not even knowing whether my late spring will come... Or will I never break through the ice crust?” And then - with sad humor: “...I’m shrinking like a flower dried in the Criminal Procedure Code...”.

“Spring” is indeed late, and it comes in the form of an unstable “thaw”.

In 1954, still in Turukhansk, Alya learns about the execution of her husband (back in the days of the “Doctors’ Plot”) and feels “quartered” (mother, father, brother, husband) - “now all that remains is to blow off his head...”.

There is still no response from the Prosecutor General. And if there is a positive “where to go and with what money and what to do, how to earn a living and where?”

"Here melancholy ooh which!" - “...climbs out of the taiga, howls with the wind along the Yenisei, comes with hopeless autumn rains, looks through the eyes of sled dogs, white deer, and the convex, brown, ancient Greek eyes of skinny cows.”

However, when, released, but not having received housing in Moscow, she ends up in Tarusa, then even here “in winter it looks like exile.”

However, in her own words, trained for years to do without everything, she, with her “donkey’s virtues - stubbornness and patience,” sets about what she had long planned: to achieve the publication of Tsvetaev’s book.

And fate (God?) sends her the happiest meeting. At the writers' club they introduce her to a man with bored eyes and tell her who she is...

“And then something amazing happens,” Ariadna Sergeevna would later write in her memoirs about him (and write with amazing talent, passion, and forever gratitude). - Everything that was just Kazakevich’s face instantly subsided like a blush giving way to pallor; as if someone had pulled and, from top to bottom, from forehead to chin, torn off the limp, shiny skin of a well-fed, peacefully indifferent stranger, and I saw the face of his soul.

...The beautiful, childish in insecurity and masculine in iron composure, in the desire to protect, brotherly, paternal, maternal, the most indescribably close human “I” rushed towards mine - distrustful, disfigured, distorted - lifted him, hugged him, absorbed him, protected him , ascended - with a single flash of golden, penetrating, sad eyes.

It was from that second that my true rehabilitation began.”

No, it was not without reason that another person who quickly came to Ariadna Sergeevna’s aid, the critic A.K. Tarasenkov, following Pasternak, declared her a talent for whom it would be a sin not to write novels.

Only she had no time for novels! Not only that, when preparing the texts of poems and commentaries on them, it was necessary, as the “old daughter of the immortal mother” said (Alino “self-determination”), to go through “continuous virgin soil.” Ahead there were so many obstacles, prejudices, simply bureaucratic fears and reinsurance, vicious printed attacks on the “white emigrant” and “decadent”!

After one most disgusting feuilleton, even Ehrenburg, who took a lively part in Alina’s “undertaking,” advised “to hold off and not interfere anywhere.” “This is exactly the type of activity that I do best,” Ariadna Sergeevna noted ironically (and unfairly).

“One of these days I’ll be in Moscow, I’ll go find out which century’s plan includes—if it includes—a book,” she jokes sadly three years later.

This first small book, and the voluminous volume in the “Poet's Library,” and subsequent editions, and memories of his mother required the greatest work.

But at the same time it was necessary to earn a living, and Ariadna Sergeevna translated like a convict. I rarely got around to writing my own prose and poetry.

Meanwhile, in all this, written in fits and starts, there is so much intelligence, observation, kindness and - generosity! I suspect that translations are also noted as the latter. You read, for example:

Around me there are leaden edges of melancholy,
The earth is lifeless and the skies are starless.
For six months of the year the sun is freezing here.
And six means pitch darkness and miserable nights...
The polar spaces are exposed like a knife:
I wish I had the shade of a bush! At least a wolf trail.

And you think: isn’t Charles Baudelaire “gifted” here by the translator herself with her dramatic experience? An experience that was directly reflected in my own poems:

Soldier's triangular letter
There's a flock in the sky.
These are geese on the free side
They fly away.
……………………………………
We will be left with the polar night,
The hut is black, life is carbon dioxide,
Like a mark on the shoulder, shameful,
Settlement, supervised.

I would like to bite into a Russian apple once,
In the house where I grew up, I can fall asleep just once!

And how captivating are the lines that suddenly light up with a kind smile:

And the snow lies on the shore
From children's striped skis,
Looks like it was filmed on the run
A sailor's vest.

And what a blessing that all this is finally completely collected in a three-book, lovingly and carefully prepared by Ruth Borisovna Valbe, whom Ariadna Sergeevna not without reason wrote in one of her letters recent years called in her smiling manner not only a faithful friend, but also “our last camel in this life, which is becoming such a desert, such a Sahara”!

The words about the desert were said for a reason. “For tens, well, for hundreds of souls that have survived the body, how many bodies have survived the soul!” - A. Efron once remarked bitterly and caustically.

Her soul outlived her body! Even if she was not lucky enough to accomplish everything she was capable of (in a sad moment, she herself spoke with a grin about her life as a kind of “magazine version of life”: “After all, Nothing not yet done, and not so much lived as endured.”

Kazakevich, having visited Italy shortly before his death, said: “It is generally accepted that they know how to take care of beauty. It seems to me that this is incorrect. Where beauty is not threatened by anything except the passage of time, people do not need to take care of it - they coexist with it, as with everything familiar. Believe me, nowhere in the world is it protected and defended so desperately, bare hands, like here in Russia…”.

It’s as if it was said about Ariadne Efron - who saved and defended the poetry of Marina, as she called her mother from childhood.

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Ariadna Efron

The story of life, the story of the soul

There ILetters 1937-1955

Eego+AShShis

UDC 821.161.1-09 BBK 84(2Ros=Rus)6-4 E94

Efron, A. S.

E94 History of life, history of the soul: In 3 volumes. T. 1. Letters 1937-1955. / Comp., prepared. text, prepared ill., accept. R.B. Valbe. - Moscow: Return, 2008. - 360 pp., ill.

ISBN 978-5-7157-0166-4

The three-volume book most fully represents the epistolary and literary heritage Ariadna Sergeevna Efron: letters, memoirs, prose, oral stories, poems and poetic translations. The publication is illustrated with photographs and original works.

The first volume includes letters from 1937-1955. The letters are arranged in chronological order.

UDC 821.161.1 BBK 84(2Ros=Rus)6-5

ISBN 978-5-7157-0166-4

© A. S. Efron, heir, 2008 © R. B. Valbe, comp., prepared. text, prepared ill., approx., 2008 © R. M. Saifulin, designed, 2008 © Return, 2008

Zoya Dmitrievna Marchenko brought me to Ada Alexandrovna Federolf - they served time together in Kolyma.

Smoothly combed, wearing a gray shawl, the blind woman did not let go of my hand for a long time. She knew why I came - there were folders prepared for me on the table. Each of them was attached to a notebook sheet, on which, in large blue pencil: “Ariadne Efron” and the name of the works.

We sat down at the table. I explained that the collection “Today Is Gravitating” from the works of repressed women has been mostly prepared and I need a few days to answer what of these manuscripts can be included in it.

And in response: “Write a receipt!”

Until now I have not been offered this. For the possession of such “slanderous” manuscripts, quite recently one was threatened with prison. I got up to leave, but the women held me back.

In 1989, the publishing house " Soviet writer» The collection “It’s Gravitating Now” was published in a hundred thousand copies. In it, among the 23 authors - prisoners of the Gulag were Ariadna Efron and Ada Federolf.

Since then I have visited Ada Alexandrovna many times. She told the story, and I discussed it with her and wrote down inserts for her memoirs “Next to Alya” - that’s what those closest to Ariadne called her.

At first, I disliked Ariadne Efron - I could neither understand nor justify her complete detachment from the tragedy of 1937, when the skating rink of repression swept through her relatives and friends of the Tsvetaeva family.

Ariadne, who returned from Paris, was assigned to work for the magazine “Revue de Moscou”. Some kind of security company, in which one fell in love with Ariadne, and the other, after a short time, interrogated and beat her in Lubyanka.

No matter how much violence, lies, or suffering Soviet reality revealed to her, she childishly believed in an idea that had nothing to do with this reality. She believed fervently, treating her

suffering as temptations that should not discredit the idea that he and his father served. “Alya was like a child,” said Ada Alexandrovna, “she judged politics at the level of “Pionerskaya Pravda.”

Because of Ada Alexandrovna’s blindness, I had to read manuscripts out loud to her. Sometimes, in an evening - just a few paragraphs. And the free memory game began. She remembered Alya. Either Alya in a fragile boat is crossing the Yenisei for mowing and Ada looks after her and prays to God that the boat will not capsize on the rod, then Alya is in Paris, a participant in some secret meetings, detective stories, - the assertive writing talent of Tsvetaeva’s daughter required the work of imagination. And my friend listened to all this and remembered it for a long time. winter evenings in a lonely house on the banks of the Yenisei.

Finally we got to the stories about Zheldorlag, where Ariadna Sergeevna served her sentence. During the war, she worked as a motor operator at an industrial plant, making tunics for soldiers. She was an exemplary prisoner, did not refuse work, did not violate the regime, and did not engage in political conversations. And suddenly, in 1943, the prisoner Efron was transported to a punishment camp.

“Knowing that Alya is sociable, that people are drawn to her,” said Ada Aleksandrovna, “the detective decided to make her an informer so that she would inform on her friends. She was dragged to the “cunning house” many times, and Alya kept saying “no”. And she, with a bad heart, was sent to the taiga on a punishment trip - to die.”

He said that he would not leave this life until he saw his child. When they just brought it to him born daughter, he laughed with his toothless mouth and shook with an old man's cough. A few hours later, old man Ma fell asleep and never woke up.

Yulia, it was necessary to cool the body, it was still burning. She is seventeen years old, and literally a day ago she tore out a child from herself, such a hated girl who took the strength from her body.
The young mother remembered the lake behind the village in which she lived. When she was little, she went there to swim with other children.
Winter, early morning, Julia ran out of the house, she needed to get to the lake, plunge into its cool waters. Feeling that her warmth was melting the snow under her feet, the girl walked more and more slowly. Exhausted, she reached the lake, which had not yet frozen, but was only covered thin ice. Yulia threw herself from the pier into the water and, breaking through the fragile barrier, began to sink to the bottom, into the silence and darkness of the water.

Yulia had to be born hundreds more times to live the experience of life in which she gave new life. To be born and die - again and again.

In one of her lives she was a tree, a beautiful one, absorbing strength from the soil. When it reached the peak of its youth, straightened its branches and began to stretch towards the sun, ready to begin to bear fruit, a hurricane occurred. The wind tore it out of the ground with its roots. With its thinnest roots, the plant began to cling to life. No one raised it, it lay there for many decades, drying up, and only received nourishment from a few shoots from the once mighty roots and tried to live a little longer. But the forest dwellers, rains and winds, eventually destroyed the lying tree and life left it completely.

Julia was born into an ordinary family, her parents and brothers did not love her very much, but as best they could. The girl loved the whole world and her life, she tried, grew and learned. At the age of seventeen, a meeting with Konstantin happened in her life. He tore her from her father's house, took her as his wife and hoped that with her beauty and care she would create with him strong family.

After a couple of years of marriage, the newlyweds had a son, a good calm boy. For Julia, her husband was like a dam, holding back her expression of love both for herself and for their son. As a wife and mother, the woman seems to be happy, but somehow one-sidedly, without a full manifestation of her feelings towards the world and the family around her.

At the age of forty, Konstantin thought about life. He built a house, a good one, in the private sector. And the tree, one might say, or rather, founded the business from scratch, which bore good fruit. He raised his son and paid for his education. One morning, he announced to his wife that he had filed for divorce. And a few months later he left in search of himself, somewhere in the tourist places of Southeast Asia. He, of course, did not find himself, but for about thirty years he spent his time quite cheerfully and intensely.

Yulia didn’t need to look for anyone, she knew herself perfectly well.
Four years after the divorce, Julia met Maxim. It was understanding at first sight. Pieces of the souls of both people saw each other and remembered general history, one of the first births. They remembered all the suffering that had accompanied their many lives. They remembered the healing they had achieved after living thousands of years of incarnations and years of this life. At first sight, mutual love for each other arose in both of them. A man and a woman were legally married, and a couple of years later they had a desired and beloved daughter. They lived a long time life together filled with love and mutual support. And they died as old men, surrounded by their loving grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
After this life, they were not born again, having gone a long way towards accepting love.


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