Dmitry Vodennikov Return After the Fury of the Revolution

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He lost an engagement ring once in space (but then thank God he found it).

They say that on the second day of the Apollo 16 lunar mission, pilot Ken Mattingly suddenly discovered that he no longer had a wedding ring. History is silent, whether it disappeared from his finger or from his pocket, but the ring sank into the water.

(Interesting though: our ordinary earthly language, just like a language, vacillates helplessly about space. We “lost in space” but “thank God” we found. “Ring submerged” – what kind of free water is in the command module? However, the expression: “Ordinary terrestrial language flounders helplessly in the theme of space” – nothing better. Here, there we find words – they lose weight, they become something else entirely.)

Basically, the crew searched all over the ship for Ken Mattingly’s gold ring.

On the ninth day, while in space, Mattingly was finally seen floating out of the hatch. “Another astronaut, Charles Duke Jr., noticed the ring and tried to catch it, but failed. Luckily, it bounced off Mattingly’s helmet and Duke caught it. Just imagine: a small ring nearly disappeared into the depths of endless space! (This excerpt .)

… Larisa Reisner wouldn’t understand all the fuss around the ring. He did not recognize the marriage. Even when she was married or in other long-term relationships, she did not refuse to tell stories. Russian revolutionary, writer and poet, also a diplomat.

He is not born yet – he will only be born tomorrow. On May 14, 1895, according to the new style, Larisa Reisner was born. Or not?

The fact is (and here again these other cosmic laws, this “revolutionary cosmos” come into effect in the case of revolutionary myth-making), were born according to official documents, which are still calculated according to the Julian calendar. Born on May 1, But in reality it was not. He was born already from the first to the second, that is, on the second day of May. In general, there is a suspicion that he “set” his date of birth to the international day of solidarity of all workers.

April does not dare to waste the heat,
The tired day began to subside.
And there’s still dead Vrubel on the wall
Frozen horror breaks the seal.

Yes, yes, the revolutionary Valkyrie wrote such degenerate, sweet poems – it’s amazing.

And this is the woman who is believed to have become the prototype of the female commissar in Vishnevsky’s play The Optimistic Tragedy.

“Well, who else wants a commissioner’s body?”

… For example, Nikolai Gumilyov was in love with Reisner.

“I dream of you almost every night.” He named her “Leri”. By the way, at that time he was married to Anna Akhmatova. But then Leri was different. That was still before the revolution – then we will see a completely different Reisner.

Here, together with the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Mikhail Kuzmin and Osip Mandelstam, he visits the “beautiful commissar”.

“Larisa lived in the Admiralty at that time. The sailor on duty led me through dark, noisy and harsh corridors. At the door of Larisa’s private room, shyness and awkwardness seized us, so our arrival was solemnly announced. Larisa was waiting for us in a small room covered from top to bottom with exotic fabrics … On a wide and low pouf, side by side with a thick ancient Greek dictionary, were an abundance of English books. On a low oriental table, the crystal faces of countless perfume bottles and some copper vessels and shimmering drawers shimmered and shimmered… Larisa wore a kind of dressing gown sewn with heavy threads…”

Heavy threads, countless perfume bottles. Sort of Madame Pompadour. An amazing woman, of course.

She seemed to carry her beauty like a torch as she walked down the street. The companion will then remember that there is not a single man who will pass by without a glance, and that one in three (“stats exactly as determined by me”) stands up to look at him, while the scenes he and his witness walk by will not be lost in the crowd. So, always walking by your side is back? Why?

But the most striking thing is that even the main character of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is named Larisa, thanks to Reisner. An inhuman charm.

You were smoking like a storm of grace.
After a little time in the living fire,
Mediocrity fell out of favor in an instant,
Imperfection brought wrath.
Dive deep into the legend, hero.
No, this road does not tire the feet.
Expand as far as you can above my thoughts:
They feel good in your big shade.

And then die from a glass of unboiled milk. Typhoid. “Some nonsense, no one believed,” wrote the young Varlam Shalamov, who at that time was only seventeen years old. Years will pass, and Shalamov will face the once awakened real delusions, including Larisa Reisner.

But the interesting thing is that there was probably no unboiled milk to drink. Maybe it was just frothed milk. I read somewhere in the Reisner family that they wanted to make a cake. (For some reason, I immediately think that they are additives.) Cream for them was made from milk, which turned out to be contaminated.

I’m looking for all kinds of culinary resources (how do I know this myself) – wherever cream is boiled, boiled. I even write to my girlfriend (she is an outstanding culinary specialist). The answer comes:

“But first the milk (as part of the other ingredients) is boiled to fill the eclairs. Then oil is added and the cream is whipped. It can not stay cold, there will be no cream – there is also flour or starch in the composition, and they should swell during the boiling process, according to the principle of semolina. That’s why the cream is called “custard”.

And then I realized that I was only looking at classic eclair recipes. And they probably made him protein. (“If the people don’t have bread, let them eat cake.” We’ve heard that somewhere before.)

But what a double life. The downtrodden poet – the commissar of the revolution. He was born either on May 1 or on the second. He died either from a glass of unboiled milk or from a cake.

She’s walking down the street, probably with lots of rings on her fingers, but not a single wedding and everyone turns to look at her. And the grieving person walking with him turns around to check if everyone else is turning around.

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