Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mikhail Bulgakov
Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and writer Mikhail Bulgakov loved to make fun of each other, both in personal meetings and directly in their work – and sometimes they did this without restraint, without shame in their statements. The authors’ conflict was in many ways based on ideological grounds: Mayakovsky idealized the communist system “with heartfelt”, which cannot be said about Bulgakov, whom a colleague called “bourgeois”. The poet wrote about the author of The Master and Margarita, especially in the play The Bedbug: “A constant dictionary of dead words … bagels, bohemia, Bulgakov.” The latter also mentioned Mayakovsky in his texts – for example, in his article “The Benefits of Lord Curzon”: “On the balcony under the Obelisk of Liberty, Mayakovsky thumped the crowd with a cracked head, opening his monstrous square mouth …”. It is also believed that Mayakovsky became the prototype of the mediocre poet Sashka Ryukhin in The Master and Margarita. And even before that, the creator of “Clouds in Pants” almost spoiled the production of “White Guard” at the Moscow Art Theater. He gave a speech to like-minded people, explaining that Bulgakov’s ideas were harmful, and urged them not to let the game play, even if it wasn’t successful.
The audience liked the confrontation between Bulgakov and Mayakovsky. As the screenwriter Sergei Yermolinsky recalled, everyone came running to watch the joint pool games: “Of course Bulgakov and Mayakovsky! It looks like a scandal is about to break out. Although at first the relationship of the classics developed differently. According to the stories of the playwright Valentin Kataev, during the first meeting the writers had a nice chat and even asked Mayakovsky for advice (but he did), as Bulgakov could not find a suitable surname for one of his heroes. eventually ignoring colleague’s advice).
“But still, they stood on opposite sides of theatrical currents. Mayakovsky is Meyerhold and Bulgakov is Stanislavsky.”
Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky
The enmity between the writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Ivan Turgenev also did not begin immediately, but after years of acquaintance, the difference in their characters began to manifest itself more and more clearly. Dostoevsky was considered a rather complex person, on the contrary, Turgenev behaved as confidently as possible in society and openly scolded his colleague for his “uneven life”.
The first serious discussion between the authors occurred when Dostoevsky read the novel The Double, where Turgenev broke up during a break due to busyness. This move made the writer very uncomfortable, so he emotionally declared that he would “step in the mud” all famous writers. Then for a while their communication was cut off: Dostoevsky was sent to hard labor because he belonged to a political society. As the author of Crime and Punishment recalls, after returning from exile, he read about Turgenev’s novelties that brought them back together. True, it did not last long: Dostoevsky no longer concealed that he was an ardent enemy of everything European, contradicting Turgenev’s position.
The final break between the classics took place in Baden-Baden, Germany. In a foreign facility, the creator of “The Player” was heavily amused, losing all the money on the table and only accumulating debt. When Dostoevsky came to Turgenev to ask for a loan, he only took from him half the amount. And at the next meeting, the authors argued forever, even stopping to greet each other. According to Dostoevsky himself, he later criticized Turgenev’s new novel “The Smoke” and in response angered him by swearing at Russia. At the same time, Turgenev stressed that he had no such dialogue about the country: he would not have touched on such topics with someone “who, as the author explains, does not fully possess his own mental abilities.”
Ivan Bunin and Vladimir Nabokov
While Ivan Bunin was already a literary star, Vladimir Nabokov was just beginning to take his first steps in this regard. The future creator of Lolita idolized an experienced colleague and wrote him letters, calling Bunin a “grand master” and himself a “hardworking student.” The author of Dark Alleys commented on Nabokov’s work and offered advice, noting that although he openly imitated other writers, he seemed more talented than most teenagers. At that time, the writers knew each other only by correspondence and never saw each other face to face: Nabokov lived in Moscow, and Bunin had already gone into exile.
However, the faster Nabokov’s reputation and literary talent developed, the more sour his relationship with his colleague. He came to Paris in the 1930s, where he made a splash, and bad languages began to call the young writer Bunin a rival. Most notably, his wife, Vera, a Nobel laureate in literature, disliked Nabokov: on the author’s first visit, she wrote with displeasure in her diary that she “was ‘admitted’ here.”
At a personal meeting of the authors, it turned out that they could not find a common language. According to Nabokov, Bunin invited him to a popular Paris restaurant, although he knew that a colleague could not stand such establishments. The “candid conversations, confessions in the Dostoevsky style” that Bunin was trying to carry out were not for his part. “At the end of lunch we were unbearably bored with each other. “You will die in terrible agony and in complete loneliness,” Bunin said bitterly when we went to the hangers … “Nabokov recalled. Later, the author of “Lolita” completely lost respect for the former teacher, calling him “Lekseich Nobel”. He named it, and found in it a resemblance to “a skinny tortoise moving its dim-eyed old head.”
Two years before his death, Bunin finally refused Nabokov – and even explained that he had never invited him to a restaurant: “Yesterday, Mikhailov came to us, he brought a debauched book of Nabokov’s surname with a royal crown on it. which is crazy bullshit about me – like I dragged him to a restaurant to have a candid conversation with him – sounds like a lot! The pea buffoon you scared me with, beat me up and made me jealous of.
Alexei Tolstoy and Osip Mandelstam
Writer Alexei Tolstoy and poet Osip Mandelstam did not become sworn enemies for long, the first even stood up for his colleague in front of the editors. But their relationship ended unfortunately – when the poet was attacked and arrested.
One day, Mandelstam lent a loan to another colleague and neighbor, Sergei Borodin, in the stairwell, known by the pseudonym Amir Sargidzhan. Mandelstam, who was already known as a very emotional person, was in no hurry to return the money, which he did not like. The poet’s patience finally ran out when he saw Sargijan’s wife carrying a basket of food and two bottles of wine. Neighbors rushed to the street under accusations that they were starving his family and at the same time feasting with guests, staying in debt. Then Sargidzhan entered the conflict, hitting both Mandelstam and his wife.
After some time, the participants in the fight came to the so-called “court of comrades”, which was practiced in the USSR – its chairman was Tolstoy. The author decided that both neighbors were responsible for the incident and ordered Sargidzhan to repay the debt when he had money. Mandelstam did not accept such a decision, believing that Tolstoy was complicit in insulting his wife.
A year and a half later, Mandelstam found himself at the Writers’ Publishing House in Leningrad, where Tolstoy was at that time. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the poet deliberately rushed to his colleague and slapped him in the face. Soon after, Mandelstam was detained for the poem “We live without feeling the country under us,” sung by an unidentified person. There were unconfirmed rumors that both Sargidzhan and Tolstoy himself might have been involved.
Sergei Yesenin and Boris Pasternak
Once a quarrel broke out between the poet Sergei Yesenin and the writer Boris Pasternak in the editorial office of the magazine Krasnaya Nov. At that moment, Yesenin was drunk.
“The prince (Yesenin – socialbites.ca) grabbed the smart mongrel (Pasternak, socialbites.ca) with one hand completely rustically on the breasts, and the other tried to hit him in the ear, if the mulatto – according to the current expression of those years, he is both an Arab and a flaming With a face resembling a horse, in a jacket with torn buttons, he managed, with clever clumsiness, to thrust the king’s son into the cheekbone with his fist, which he failed to do. by no means, ”Valentin Kataev recalled these events, admitting that he absolutely did not know the real reasons for the quarrel.
Pasternak later said that he and Yesenin have always had an unstable relationship: one day they could not have souls, and the next they were cruelly hated.