Poet, prose writer, translator, bard, playwright, literary critic.

Alexander Baltin

On the death of Novella Matveeva

You won't find light in this world:

It is covered with the ashes of our actions.

A passerby will hear a song from the window:

A wave of heat that you don't expect

Will wash the soul...

Nice wave.

Homeless brownie will find a home

In a secluded song there is such depth

Will warm thousands of gentle listeners.

We are left with songs and poems

Consciousnesses and souls cuddle.

The ship will rush to the shores,

And those waiting will dream fairy tales.

Shakespeare's universe rises

Strongly made sonnets are powerful.

And creativity is a fruit that has been ripening for so long

Everything remained - beautiful, marvelous, juicy.

Dreams of corals and seas,

When strong, they take you to the beyond.

For everyone there is an otherworldly hearth:

Emphasizes the integrity of the universe.

"45": The publication in our almanac dated August 1, 2016 is perhaps Novella Nikolaevna’s last lifetime publication...

Only a realist of feelings can be in this world,

where it seems impossible to be

a realist about everything else.

What child doesn't like to sculpt? Which adult? You crumple a pliable soft substance in your fingers, think about various little things, very serious at that moment, and the plasticine begins to take shape... “I sculpt from plasticine, plasticine is softer than clay. I sculpt dolls, clowns, dogs from plasticine...”(N. Matveeva).

What about poetry? Words also come from childhood - ships and captains from the distant “Dolphinia”, intangible sunbeams, wings with bells, chatty drainpipes, ironic waterfalls. In an instant, the perception of the world around us changes: the colors become brighter, thoughts become lighter, and the failures and experiences of big children fade. The word is plastic when the soul speaks.

Both happiness and sadness sounded in that song;

Her melody was quiet, ancient and simple...

Reading Novella Matveeva’s poems can be compared to an exciting journey. The ship rocks on the waves, the mast creaks, the boat has its own melody:

Blue waves are coming.

Green? No, blue ones.

Like millions of chameleons,

Changing color in the wind.

Wisteria blooms tenderly -

She is softer than frost...

And somewhere there is a land called Delphinia

And the city of Kangaroo.

The traveler sooner or later finds pearls - lines that are close to his feelings. This is the reader's need.

What is the role of ships? In an interview with Literaturnaya Gazeta, Novella Matveeva noted that poets, if they are real poets, are somewhere close to priests. They hurry us towards good.

When words and objects lose their meaning,

Poets come to earth to renew them.

Captains, like travelers, are afraid of not finding their way, of not returning to the country of their childhood, but they also cannot stay there forever, so they go out to the open sea again and again.

Dry poplar fluff hovers like a spirit,

Afraid of falling: the ground is damp and cold...

The soul is afraid to talk to itself out loud,

He is afraid to admit that that country is lost.

Novella Nikolaevna Matveeva was born on October 7, 1934 in Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin) into a creative family. My father is a geographer, local historian of the Far East, my mother is a literature teacher, a poetess who published under the pseudonym Matveeva-Orleneva.

In the book of memoirs “The Ball Left in the Sky,” published in 1996, Novella Matveeva speaks warmly about her childhood, despite the hardships of the war and post-war years.

She first heard her mother’s poems, which struck Novella, in her mother’s voice:

The road was difficult... How the orbits turned black!

But a pen on a restless table does not rust.

I shoed the horse’s hoof with an incorruptible verse.

Release the occasion, poet! Wash your face in crystal!

Fatigue, respite, cleansing and the eternal search for knowledge, power and precision of the word.

“Just as Saxon raved about her mother’s poems, I raved about mine,” Novella wrote.

Forty-first year. Father, Nikolai Nikolaevich, was assigned to the People's Militia for health reasons and worked at the Moninsky military hospital. As Novella Matveeva recalled about the war period of their family’s life: “... Meanwhile, our family was getting more and more difficult, everything was getting worse. Constant weakness from malnutrition and constant colds in winter began to fall on us due to poor clothes and shoes. I began to go blind from acute vitamin deficiency. And then Nikolai Nikolaevich committed the first and last in his life, a great, as he himself believed, “abuse.” He arranged for me to be treated in that Moninsky military hospital for a whole month. During my Monin period, I could, of course, only read, but not write prose. As for poetry, what other poems do I need if my mother’s poems were always in my memory!”

From 1950 to 1957, Novella Matveeva worked as a general worker in an orphanage in the Shchelkovsky district. “Yes, it wasn’t easy,” Novella Matveeva admits in her essay. “But it wasn’t only bad...

...It was youth! There were sketches of poetry and prose stuffed into pockets. There was a captivating flowering area of ​​the Young Colony! And finally, great plans! I was going, for example, to enter a sign workshop or become a homemaker - painting faces on dolls for a toy factory. Dreams Dreams! These exorbitant claims were not destined to come true.”

Matveeva composed the melodies of her first songs at the end of the war. A new round in Novella’s life began in 1959 during active collaboration with Komsomolskaya Pravda, and in 1961 Matveeva became a Member of the Union of Writers of the USSR.

In 1962, Novella Matveeva graduated from the Higher Literary Courses at the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky, where she met a graduate of the same institute, Ivan Kiuru. They got married in 1963.

In 1966, Novella Matveeva’s first album with a recording of her own songs appeared.

A lot has been said about Novella Matveeva’s songs. First of all, this is a phenomenal effect on a person - cleansing, pacifying, sometimes a slight sadness is heard in them, as an understanding of the immediacy, the transience of a happy moment.

Song! Everything in the world breathes song;

The wind, the hubbub of the gong, the talk of the Ganges, the measured step of the elephant...

May we not sing even a single swan song,

For the whole planet is harnessed to the song.

As Dmitry Bykov noted in his essay “The Purest Sample”: “The purest substance of art that I have ever seen in my life are the songs of Novella Matveeva, performed by the author, just like that, at a concert or at her home, in Moscow or on Skhodnya , at the tea table or on the porch.” In his opinion, Matveeva is a natural and hereditary democrat, a defender of the oppressed and poor; the very concept of elitism has always been hostile to her.

Novella Matveeva has always been true to herself in her desire to influence with words the injustice and incorrectness that existed in dissonance with her perception of the world.

But, as a consolation, they told me yesterday,

That there is no perfection on earth. And what?

I should shout joyfully: “Hurray!”

And I thought sadly: “God!”

60-70s. The experiences of Novella Nikolaevna Matveeva and Ivan Semyonovich Kiuru in the description of Gennady Krasnikov: “...what a striking difference in communication with the world, which, due to forced or voluntary loneliness, most often came down to communication with nature, of which Novella Matveeva and Ivan Kiuru always felt like an organic part . More than once I had to observe how during a walk they suddenly stopped on the road, giving way to a running ant or a leisurely beetle. “Let the guy pass,” they said almost in one voice...”

Of course, it is difficult for a poet to get along with the rules and cliches of the era.

The world loves them. Spring cannot exist without them.

Neither war nor centuries can take them.

And yet they withered away. From what?

From the noise of the stamping machine.

Novella Matveeva dedicated many of her poems to her husband, recorded songs based on his poems, they released a joint record. “I still need to do a lot: prepare Ivan Semenovich’s book for publication - his prose, poetry. I am writing memories of him.

I find strength in this, in this I see my duty to his memory” (F.A. Nodel. “To whom Chronos himself is not a decree”).

The joy, courage and worldly wisdom given by the poems and songs of Novella Matveeva are invaluable. And let everything be said in the world, what is important is how it is said. Sincerely, simply and at the same time deeply.

You can climb - in the end - to Parnassus,

Drop anchor in Cyprus, sail beyond Crete,

But how do you get back to where you are now?

Where is the dandelion closed by long rain?

Bibliography of Novella Matveeva:

Novella Matveeva owns more than 30 books of poetry, prose and translations: “Lyrics” (1961), “Boat” (1963), “The Soul of Things” (1966), “Sunny Bunny” (1966), “Swallow School” (1973), “The River” (1978), “The Law of Songs” (1983), “Surfland” (1983), “Rabbit Village” (1984), “Favorites” (1986), “Praise to Work” (1987), “The Unbreakable Circle” (1991), “Melody for Guitar” (1998), “Cassette of Dreams” (1998), “Sonnets” (1998), “Caravan” (2000), “Jasmine” (2001).

In 1984, at the Central Children's Theater in Moscow, Matveeva's play “Egle's Prediction” was staged - a fantasy based on the works of Alexander Green, containing 33 songs by Novella Nikolaevna.

As a singer-songwriter, N. Matveeva recorded the following records: “Songs” (Melodiya, 1967), “Poems and Songs” (Melodiya, 1966), “The Road is My Home” (Melodiya, 1982), “Music of Light” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1984), “Ballads” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1985), “My little crow” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1986), “Red-haired girl” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1986) and CDs “What a Big Wind” (ASP, 1997), “Girl from a Tavern” (ASP, 1997), “Matveeva’s Novella” (Moroz Records, 1999), “Best Songs” ( Moscow Windows, 2000), “Desperate Mary”, “Tavern “Fours””.

An album of 14 songs by Novella Matveeva performed by the group “Today in the World” was released in 2009 and was highly praised by the poet.

Awards of N. Matveeva: Pushkin Prize - in 1998, State Prize - in 2003.

Literature:

Matveeva N. The ball remaining in the sky. - M: Young Guard, 2006. - 132 p.

Medynsky G. Song poetry of Novella Matveeva // Youth. - 1966. - No. 7.

Krasnikov G.I. One warrior in the field...

Born on October 7, 1934 in Tsarskoye Selo (now the city of Pushkin) in the Leningrad region. Father - Matveev-Bodriy Nikolai Nikolaevich, was a local historian of the Far East, a full member of the All-Union Geographical Society. Mother - Matveeva-Orleneva Nadezhda Timofeevna, poetess. Spouse - Kiuru Ivan Semenovich (1934-1992), poet.

From 1950 to 1957, Novella Matveeva worked in an orphanage in the Shchelkovsky district of the Moscow region.

She began to write under the influence of her mother. Nadezhda Timofeevna was an extraordinary person in many respects, a person of great culture and great artistry. She loved poetry very much and read poetry very well. It was from her lips, in her amazing recitation, that Novella first heard Pushkin’s poems. There was not always a radio in the Matveevs’ house, but thanks to their mother, music was constantly playing. She had a romantic, sonorous voice. She sang gypsy, Russian and Italian songs.

In general, Novella Matveeva comes from a famous literary family of the Russian Far East: her grandfather Nikolai Petrovich Matveev-Amursky was a poet and author of the first “History of the City of Vladivostok.” Her mother, younger brother Roald Nikolaevich, her uncle Venedikt Nikolaevich, husband are also poets...

Novella Matveeva composed her first poems as a child, during the war. It was in the Moninsky hospital, where she was treated for acute vitamin deficiency, which had affected her eyes. She showed the poems to her father, who worked there, in the hospital, as a political instructor. As a child, I tried to compose music for my own poems, as well as for the poems of A. Gladkov, V. Agnivtsev, W. Shakespeare, M. Lermontov, A. Fet...

Her first publication, in 1957, was a parody of the song “Five Minutes” from the movie “Carnival Night.” The publication of poems soon followed in the newspaper "Sovetskaya Chukotka" (1958) and the magazine "Yenisei". Since 1959, her poems began to be regularly published in central newspapers and magazines. In promoting the first large collections of poems, Novella Matveeva was helped by poets Igor Grudev and David Kugultinov, as well as Komsomol Central Committee workers Viktor Bushin and Len Karpinsky. Further, S. Marshak, K. Chukovsky, M. Atabekyan, V. Chivilikhin, N. Starshinov, B. Slutsky, Yu. Voronov took part in the fate of the poetess. Korney Ivanovich, when “Sunny Bunny” was read to him, even jumped over his chair for joy.

Novella Matveeva has a happy creative destiny. They noticed her in time and immediately fell in love with her. A girl from the provinces with an unusual, bewitching voice and a guitar in her hands conquered the capital in the early 1960s, and then the whole country. Her songs, heard on amateur tape recorders, were quickly embodied in the record “Songs” (M.: Melodiya, 1966). It was the first bard record in the Soviet Union, which was subsequently released several times, but remained a rarity.

Since 1972, Novella Matveeva began composing songs based on the poems of the poet Ivan Kiuru. The most famous and popular songs of Novella Matveeva were: “Song of the Mule Driver” (“Oh, how long, long have we been driving...”), “Wind” (“What a big wind...”), “Drainpipes” (“Rain , evening rain..."), "Girl from the tavern" ("You were afraid of my love in vain..."), "Outskirts" ("It was a summer night..."), "Captains without mustaches" ("Here is the front I have a blue sea..."), "Dolphinia Country" ("Blue waves are coming..."), "Magician" ("Oh, you magician..."), "Gypsy" ("Merry gypsies walked around Moldova. .."), "Organ Grinder" ("Snow was falling on the ground..."), etc.

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In 1962, Novella Matveeva graduated from the Higher Literary Courses at the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky. She became a professional writer. In 1961 she was accepted into the USSR Writers' Union.

The poetry of Novella Matveeva is dominated by the lyric-romantic element. It reflects the high humanistic feelings of man, his dreams and fantasies, and the colorful natural world that surrounds him. She also writes a lot for children. In addition, Novella Matveeva is engaged in translations, writes parodies and epigrams, and writes articles on issues of literature and art.

In total, she has written more than 30 books of poetry, prose and translations. Among them: “Lyrics” (1961), “Boat” (1963), “The Soul of Things” (1966), “Sunny Bunny” (1966), “Swallow School” (1973), “River” (1978), “The Law” songs" (1983), "Surfland" (1983), "Rabbit Village" (1984), "Favorites" (1986), "Praise to Work" (1987), "Indissoluble Circle" (1991), "Melody for Guitar" (1998), “Dream Tape” (1998), “Sonnets” (1998), “Caravan” (2000), “Jasmine” (2001).

As a singer-songwriter, N. Matveeva recorded the following records: “Songs” (Melodiya, 1967), “Poems and Songs” (Melodiya, 1966), “The Road is My Home” (Melodiya, 1982), “Music of Light” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1984), “Ballads” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1985), “My little crow” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1986), “Red-haired girl” (co-authored with I. Kiuru, Melodiya, 1986) and CDs “What a Big Wind” (ASP, 1997), “The Girl from the Tavern” (ASP, 1997), “Matveeva’s Novella” (Moroz Records, 1999), “The Best Songs” ( Moscow Windows, 2000), “Desperate Mary”, “Tavern “Fours”.

In 1984, the Central Children's Theater in Moscow staged N. Matveeva's play "Egle's Prediction" - a free fantasy based on A. Green, containing 33 of her original songs.

Novella Matveeva is the author of hundreds of publications in periodicals. More than a hundred articles by famous poets, writers, critics and literary scholars are devoted to her work. Among their authors are E. Evtushenko, L. Anninsky, E. Vinokurov, V. Ognev, Z. Paperny, V. Lakshin, S. Marshak, S. Chuprinin, G. Krasnikov, B. Okudzhava, E. Kamburova, D. Granin , Y. Smelyakov, V. Tsybin, B. Slutsky, V. Berestov, A. Urban, Y. Smelkov and others.

Personal adversity and the occasional misunderstanding of some critics, art critics, editors and publishers did not break Novella Nikolaevna’s will. She continues to work actively to the delight of numerous fans of her work.

In 1998 N.N. Matveeva was awarded the title of laureate of the Pushkin Prize in poetry.

Lives and works in Moscow.

Opinion about Novella Matveeva
Catherine 05.07.2007 10:53:26

Since childhood, I have loved the songs of Novella Matveeva. I’ve been singing them all my life, and even to my grandson, he sings along with me with pleasure. Matveeva is a person of unique talent! I literally worship her!!!

The time comes and everyone leaves...
Alexander Vladimirsky 06.09.2016 11:13:42

The time comes and everyone leaves, it was, is and will be forever, someone can simply be remembered, but someone will go to another world carelessly.

October 7 is the anniversary birthday of the poetess Novella Nikolaevna MATVEEVA, a master whose poems and songs should come into contact with the childhood of every person, with every life... And February 1 of this year was the anniversary of the poet Ivan Semenovich KIURU (1934–1992), Matveeva’s husband.

And today, a loved one, a like-minded creative person, a friend, adviser and protector continues to live in the heart and work of Novella Nikolaevna. She dedicates poems to his memory (“Siberia”, “The Passing Century”, “Rag Pickers”, “Oatmeal Gusli”, “On Chulym”, “Painting”, “Vase”, “I Hear”), takes his lines as epigraphs ( as he did in relation to her poetry during his lifetime).

But she believes that this is not enough: “I still have a lot to do: prepare Ivan Semyonovich’s book for publication - his prose, poetry. I am writing memories of him. I find strength in this, in this I see my duty to his memory.”

By the time when they, the same year, for the first time - while still students - entered into the community of the translation of “The Distant Garden” by the classic of Finnish poetry Katri Vali, they were already spiritually related in many ways. And above all, childhood and youth are in need and humiliation. Four years after the death of Kiuru, Matveeva wrote the poem “Siberia”, in which, along with the magnificent landscapes of the land where circumstances drove the family of Kiuru’s twice-repressed father, there were lines generated by his poem “The Spinning Wheel” - about a mother whose soul was yearning for her homeland.

Mother at the spinning wheel
I whiled away the nights...
But in a distant country
A lonely seagull
Her thought hovered, -

remembers Kiura, and Matveeva, in verse and prose, sets out his biography as follows:

There Elovka is your village,
With my mother's spinning wheel in the hut...
There I accumulated childish thoughts,
I listened to the psalms with secret horror
Under the straw flying
from the black rafters.

“...Susanna Ivanovna, the poet’s mother, had to purchase a sewing machine herself. This detail of everyday “essentiality” might not be remembered if it were not, apparently, a direct heir to that remarkable Siberian spinning wheel, which seemed to the child like some kind of buzzing half-deity (half-man, half-distaff), and soporific, calming, and at the same time time to allow him to “read his confusion on the wall” by nightfall... in his passport... they imprinted the 38th article on Ivan Kiura - a sign of unreliability... He began to wander... From that moment on, OUTSIDE the family... Vytegra (timber rafting). Volga-Baltic Canal (work on a dredger)... With the unbridled courage of a man who, at his sixteen years old, really has nothing to lose, Ivan Kiuru was the first (and often without being called) to take risks... All the most difficult and dangerous things fell on Ivan Kiuru’s lot.” .

And he, back in 1980, after seventeen years of marriage, described Matveeva’s childhood and youth in such a way that the everyday and spiritual origins of her work were clear:

“Novella Matveeva composed her first poems as a child, during the war... Novella Nikolaevna began to write, apparently under the influence of her mother, the poetess Nadezhda Timofeevna Matveeva-Orleneva, a very extraordinary person... she practically did not have to be published (in the same “family” collection “Melody for Guitar”, from which I quote from the “mutual biographies” of Kiura and Matveeva, Nadezhda Timofeeva is dedicated to the poetic section “Takeoff of a column into the blue…” compiled by her daughter. - F.N.)… a large family that had to be fed. Therefore, she worked as a cultural worker, as a teacher in a craft, and as a canteen manager...

When Nikolai Nikolaevich (Matveev-Bodrogo, her husband. - F.N.) tried to portray him as an “enemy of the people,” Nadezhda Timofeevna sent a letter to the government... soon they had to move into a six-meter closet (from a vaulted stone room in an orphanage, “very cold - even sparks of frost appeared on the walls,” but Kiuru’s own family at one time I had to live under the same roof “with the family of a tubercular man, with his calves, chickens and other living creatures.” - F.N.) ... in order not to be evicted, Novella, then still a teenager, had to get a job as a laborer in an orphanage farm (and in particular, to tend a herd, about which there are remarkable lines in her “Shepherd’s Diary”, for example, the “morals” of two fables written at the age nineteen and twenty-one years old: “One thing is clear to me: now I // Don’t know who is shepherding whom!..” and “We must listen to the calls of the majority, // But only when it is not a herd.” - F.N.)… I had to repair mats for greenhouses and look after vegetable gardens. When the work turned out to be so easy, it was possible to compose. There, for example, the music for “The Snake Charmer”, for “The Flying Dutchman”, for “Longren’s Ballad” (future), for “Homeless Brownie” and “I was born by the sea” was born. It was either music without words or with unsettled lyrics.”

Having themselves suffered from humiliation and need, they often chose as heroes of their works people persecuted by others and by fate: Rembrandt, who fell into beggary, and the posthumously slandered Villon and Dashkova - N. Matveev, the executed Lorca - I. Chiura.

In this regard, the organic connection between I. Kiuru’s poem “Songs of Lorca” and N. Matveeva’s autobiographical story “The Tramp Lady” is quite remarkable. When two out-of-the-ordinary poets were persecuted by the owners and guests of the House of Creativity and - because of this - Novella Matveeva “in peacetime... anywhere... accompanied Ivan Semyonovich as if to the front... she was afraid that he... would commit suicide.” “The ringing nerve is stretched tight, and bitter tears tremble on it,” he wrote, and she clarified in parentheses: “of course, for a different reason, since his pen did not serve despicable reasons” - and permeated her entire story with the lines of Kiuru’s poem . But the reason for the bullying (which was not something she had imagined, as evidenced by G. Krasnikov, the author of the preface to the one-volume work of N. Matveeva “The Ball Left in the Sky”) was in their, Matveeva’s and Kiuru’s, dissimilarity, their insubordination to “household” customs: “They “It must be disgusting to watch how we, even on the go, on walks, are still composing something!”

After nine years of joint family and creative life, in 1972, Matveeva began to write music and poems by Ivan Kiuru, and also perform with him in joint concerts: “...Everything went alternately - his song and mine; with my music and with others; in my performance and in others, NO ONE has EVER asked the question: do our songs agree genre-wise and can they be presented together?”

Not only their songs, but also their poems are creatively close. Her “Flood” and his “Sunset” are comparable. In both, nature is not only spiritualized, but also appears in an image characteristic of each poet. And this is no exception. In his “The Grove Turned Red” and its “Drainpipes,” included in many collections of songs, they also animate the seemingly inanimate.

The grove turned red under the blue star...
The grove perked up,
The grove began to tremble.
Her soul has awakened,
Love breathed in her!

Oh, those pipes!
They made the lips into a tube,
To
Passers-by
To blurt out the secrets of the houses.

(N. Matveeva)

Moreover. It was thanks to Ivan Kiur that Novella Matveeva significantly expanded her creative range: “Ivan Semyonovich... constantly asked me: “When will you put together a book of sonnets?!.” And as for the cycles “Sonnets to Dashkova” and “Representative of the Muses” (about her), it was he who prompted me to write them... It seems that Ivan Semyonovich also knew that I would encroach on the research.”

And since, according to Matveeva, “A sonnet is a replica, // One throw of coal // In the heat of debate, // A quick statement in a dispute,” then “the mother of two Russian Academies,” “the soul of the eighteenth century,” “the princess of books,” “ inventor of melodies and sonorous verses,” so close in spirit to Matveeva herself, is awarded the following lines:

So in your heart, poor
and heroic
They converged without converging, like an army
with the army,
Truthfulness of character and deceit
centuries...

And in two cycles of sonnets dedicated to poetic “studies” of the biography and work of Shakespeare (“Shakespeare” and “Conjectures about Shakespeare”), among the best is “And is this role really so small?” - “throwing coal into the heat of debate,” which continues today in literary criticism and “in the theater.” Judge for yourself:

... Who remembers the voice of honor?
Is he friends with him?
Who listens to the civil conscience
call?
As you can see, our hearing is not for
votes.
Since we consider the terrible -
funny!
Since we agree that the world
forgot
About ghosts rising from their graves!..

Kiuru called Matveeva’s lyrics “knightly generous, because she is not grumpily wise, but childishly wise and always on the side of justice.” He managed to complete his novel-essay “Dastan about Ashugs, or the Girl from the Tavern,” and the one to whom the novel is dedicated wrote in the year of Kiuru’s death: “...Being blocked, flagged, and erased all around, he saved me from troubles in every possible way... helping me with everything, including the printing of songs, taking care of discs, organizing concerts... he read my poems from the stage, argued with my editors... he also took upon himself the main difficulties of our life.”

And in each subsequent publication she remembered him again and again. Thus, in the preface to the posthumous collection of works by I. Kiuru, “Apple Tree Country” (2004), N. Matveeva defends his right to a poetic “non-general expression”: “... a completely special new free verse: Ivan Kiuru. The most intuitive and whimsical and at the same time somehow tropically hot and unprecedentedly large! Free verse, unexpectedly endowed with the signs of an epic and, accordingly, such a significant intonation... Heroic free verse! “This has never happened before.”

A few months after the passing of Ivan Kiuru, Matveeva wrote in her poem “Painting” dedicated to him:

A miracle of miracles happened:
In poetry - you are Apelles!
To whom Chronos himself is not a decree!

As you know, the expression “Apelles trait” means high perfection achieved through hard work.

Matveeva N., Kiuru I. Melody for guitar. M.: Argus, 1998.

Matveeva N. Sonnets. St. Petersburg: Art, 1998.

Kiuru I. Apple country. M.: APART, 2004.

Matveeva N. The ball left in the sky. M.: Young Guard, 2006.

The motive of childhood in the poetry of Novella Matveeva (Poems “Wind”, “Dolphin Country”, “Boat”, “Childhood Country”) In the beginning there was a garden. Childhood was a garden. Without end and edge, without borders... T. Tolstaya “They sat on the golden porch...”

Purpose of the study : consider why the childhood motif sounds in N. Matveeva’s poetry, identify ways to create this theme in the structure of several poems. Research methods : studying the biography of N. Matveeva, information about the features of creativity, analysis of works in which this topic is voiced, identifying ways to create a childhood motif. 1. Introduction. Biographical information. Novella Nikolaevna Matveeva was born in 1934 in the Leningrad region. Russian poet, prose writer, bard, playwright, literary critic. Novella Matveeva's father is a geographer by profession, a local historian of the Far East, and a romantic by worldview (hence the children's names - Novella and Roald). Mother is a literature teacher, poetess, who published under the pseudonym Matveeva-Orleneva. Grandfather was also a writer and the author of the first “History of the City of Vladivostok”; he lived in Japan for many years. The cousin is a poet of the Russian diaspora. From 1950 to 1957, Matveeva worked in an orphanage in the Shchelkovo district of the Moscow region. In 1962 she graduated from the Higher Literary Courses at the Literary Institute. Gorky (in absentia). He has been writing poetry since childhood and has been publishing since 1958. The first collection was published in 1961; the second (“Ship”) - in 1963. In 1961, Matveeva was accepted into the USSR Writers' Union. In the 1970s, she published the books “Swallow School”, “River”, etc., in the 1980s - “The Law of Songs”, “Surf Country”, etc. Since the late 1950s, Novella Nikolaevna began composing songs in your own poems and perform them to your own accompaniment. 33 songs of Novella Matveeva are known. In 1996, a book of memoirs, “The Ball Left in the Sky,” was published. In 1998, Novella Matveeva became a laureate of the Pushkin Prize in poetry. Novella Nikolaevna lives in Moscow. Lately she has been working on translations. 2. Features of N. Matveeva’s lyrics. Matveeva’s lyrics are built on metaphors, filled with contrasts, unexpected images, alternation of static and dynamic in her poetic world.. Paradoxical points of view, subtle humor and irony, ambiguous sound images of her poems subtly resemble the poetry of M. Tsvetaeva: “But isn’t it fate itself was given to me there-there? For my eyes are here, and my gaze is there...” Novella Matveeva said that as a child she wanted to devote herself to music. It is no coincidence that she began to perform her poems with a guitar. Musicality and fantasy are the main features of N. Matveeva’s style. Novella Matveeva's poems and songs are always some kind of journey. And often - a journey to the land of childhood. The motifs of sea voyages and distant countries correlate her poetic works with the work of the romantic A. Green. No one has ever written or sung about ships like this: “Like a tightrope, they crossed the horizon again... along the edge of the sea to the edge of the earth.” This aspiration to a fairy tale, to the “republic of dreams” lies the amazing originality of Novella Matveeva. In the poetess's poems - a person's dreams, his visions, the richest world of his associations. From these dreams, hope is born for the best, the highest, the noblest thing that exists in the world of people. One of the key genre and thematic formations in Matveeva’s work is landscape - most often sea - lyrical sketches containing parable and fairy-tale motifs. In many verses: “What a big wind...”, “Boat”, “Blue Sea”, “Captains without mustaches”, etc. Through the strokes of a landscape sketch, wonderful metamorphoses appear that can only arise in a child’s semi-fairy-tale imagination. 3. Analysis of individual poems united by the cross-cutting motif of childhood. What a big windAttacked our island!The roofs were blown off the houses,Like milk - foam.
And if the nail is to the houseDrive with the sharp end,Without a hammer, right away,He will go into the wall himself.
The wind broke the willow,I leveled the ridges in the garden -As much as a radish rootHe crawled out of the soil on his own.And, rolling sidewaysTo the neighboring garden,Grown into someone else's bedAnd I grew up there again.
And the squall carried me out to seaTen two boats,And woe to the fishermen,Don't light your pipes.
And I need to light a cigarette,Yes, light a match,Like a glance on the flyStop the bird.
What a big wind!Oh, what a whirlwind!And you sit quietlyAnd you look tender.

And no forceYou can't be touchedNeptune will soon leaveFrom your throne.
What a big windAttacked our island!The roofs were blown off the houses,Like milk - foam.
In a poem "What a big wind..." the first picture is drawn as if by a child’s hand: houses on the island, the wind like a giant blowing the roofs off the houses, a garden and a vegetable garden where radishes grow in the beds... The wind is so strong that an unusual comparison arises - a hyperbole: “And if you drive the nail to the house with the end sharp, without a hammer, right away, it will go into the wall itself.” A fantastic event occurs: “The wind broke the willow, leveled the ridges in the garden - even the radish root came out of the soil on its own. And, rolling sideways towards the neighboring garden, it grew into someone else’s garden bed and grew there again.” The episode seems to be seen through the eyes of a child, who always brings his own fantastic invention to what he sees. The second part of the poem has a different sound. In the center is a realistic sketch: an empty seashore, boats blown out to sea by the wind, a fisherman who does not know how to save the boats. He can't even light a match in the wind to light his pipe. Both the first and second pictures emphasize the power of the wind, they are dynamic, but the ending of the poem is static: “And you sit quietly, and you look tenderly. And no force can touch you, as soon as Neptune gets off his throne...” An image of a lyrical hero (heroine) appears, maintaining steadfastness and constancy in contrast to the destructive elements. Perhaps this is the constancy and durability of the feeling of love that exists in this world (“And you look tenderly...”). The power of love can withstand the most terrible elements. The poem's refrain, lexical repetitions, and anaphors enhance the musicality of the text. Unusual comparisons and metaphors give the text an external simplicity, bringing it closer in style to poems for children, although the subtext of the poem contains a deep philosophical meaning.

"Dolphin Country"– one of the most iconic in N. Matveeva’s work. Blue waves are coming.Green? No, blue ones.Like millions of chameleons,Changing color in the wind.Wisteria blooms tenderly -She is softer than frost...And somewhere there is a land called DelphiniaAnd the city of Kangaroo.
It is far! Well then? -I'll go there too.Oh, my God, my God,What will happen without me?The palm trees will dry up without me,Roses will die without me,The birds will fall silent without me -This is what will happen without me.
Yes, but without me once againThe ship "Porcupine" has sailed.How can I have such troubleWill I erase it from my memory?And yesterday it came, it came, it cameLetter to me, letter, letterWith the stamp of my Delphinia,With Kangaroo stamp.

White envelopes from the mailThey burst like magnolia buds,They smell like jasmine, but that's whatMy relatives write to me:Palm trees don't dry without me,Roses don't die without me,The birds won't be silent without me...How can this happen without me?
Blue waves are coming.Green? No, blue ones.Bitter tears come...I'll brush it off, shake it off, erase it.Wisteria blooms tenderly -She is softer than frost...And somewhere there is a country called DolphiniaAnd the city of Kangaroo. The first impression that arises when reading the poem is a clear similarity with the poems of Korney Chukovsky, written for young children. Elements of a fairy-tale narrative: the fictional country of Dolphinia, the city of Kangaroo, the ship "Porcupine", a letter coming from a non-existent country - create the motif of childhood. Numerous repetitions, as in children's rhymes, bright spots of color (blue waves, white wisteria, green palm trees and red roses) - all give the poem the effect of external simplicity, emphasizing the similarity of the text with a child's drawing. The lyrical heroine of the poem, no matter how old she is, is a child at heart. She, like a child, dreams of leaving for Delphinia, believes that it is impossible to go there without her, assures in all seriousness that she received a letter from the city of Kangaroo, cries that she will not be able to sail on the Porcupine ship. In this poem by N. Matveeva, nostalgia for childhood and the call are especially loud: “Let's be like children!” Let's believe in dreams and universal love! The poem was set to music and became a song. In “Dolphin Country,” the impressionistic sea imagery “Blue waves are coming in. // Green? No, blue...” becomes an exposition for the subsequent lyrical confession, filled with a feeling of spiritual closeness to the world of a distant dream - and at the same time the sad experience of separation from this world, the longing of the soul for the lost heavenly state. The tangible details of the text: “With the stamp of my Dolphin, // With the stamp of the Kangaroo” and the abundance of colloquial expressions give the song psychological authenticity.

Poem "Ship", which also became a song, is usually published in collections of poems for children. Once upon a time there lived a cheerful and slender boat:
Soared above the waves like a falcon.
They say he built himself,
They say he made it himself. He impregnated himself with resin,
He dressed himself in both oak and metal,
He led himself on the voyage - his own pilot,
His own boatswain, sailor, captain. The boat sailed, the sails rustled, He was not afraid of anything anywhere. And the volcanoes raised their gray eyebrows at the sight of him. The boat sailed on the summer seas,
Made faces at the last kings,
Are all the countries in bloom, is everything in place, -
He wrote everything down, checked everything! Fifteen times, twenty times a day, other ships met him: They would stand there, gossip for a minute, and again they would run in different directions... The boat was sailing, dreaming about something,
I threw everything I saw onto the masts,
He made his own conclusions, his own pilot,
Your own boatswain, sailor, captain! After reading this poem, you can’t help but wonder: maybe Novella Matveeva’s work has no points of contact with reality at all? It is no coincidence that children love to illustrate this poem, the hero of which is a fairy-tale boat. Everyone understands that the boat is depicted as a person: he is independent, observant, and brave. He does everything himself! The ship is also a sociable and cheerful dreamer. The ship notices everything, draws conclusions, and sails through life itself. How can someone not like him? . The poem is based on personification: the boat, volcanoes, and other vessels act like living beings. The ship, like any person, grows up, learns, traveling through life. The motif of a child’s faith in the miraculous permeates the entire text, one just wants to listen to this life-affirming song, remember one’s childhood, spring, and a boat sailing in a big puddle.

Poem "Childhood Country" sounds completely different: it is filled with sadness, a feeling of the impossibility of returning to the country of childhood, which now seems so beautiful...

I would replace you, there-there, here-here,

For here, too, flowers grow along the roads.

But wasn’t fate itself given to me there?

For my eyes are here, and my gaze is there.

“There” is a palm tree, a secret, a Buddhist temple.

The sharp, unearthly blue seas of grace...

Something that seemed just around the corner.

A tall empty barn penetrated by the sun...

"Oh, how happy I am!" - a rooster crows in the yard.

Fresh log cuts are like cheeses,

Dry poplar fluff dances like a spirit.

I remember: the grass waved with tassels,

In the cracks of fences, peeping, she grew up,

And the breeze, which does not remember kinship,

Quietly whispered immemorial words.

The ditches there are full of yellow dandelions,

Like canals filled with dry golden water...

It's a pity I'll never see that side

You can never put yellow water in your palm.

Even now I seem to be wandering there,

And dandelions serve as my canvas,

But on the heels, on the heels, on my tracks

Memory treads heavily - my convoy.

You can climb - in the end - to Parnassus,

Drop anchor in Cyprus, sail beyond Crete,

But how do you get back to where you are now?

Where is the dandelion closed by long rain?

Dry poplar fluff hovers like a spirit,

Afraid of falling: the ground is damp and cold...

The soul is afraid to talk to itself out loud,

He is afraid to admit that that country is lost.

The poem is built on the opposition HERE / THERE.

Here it is today, in adulthood. There - it was in childhood. Childhood is a village with flowers by the road, with dandelions in the ditch, with a tall barn and a rooster who joyfully greets the new day. The childhood picture is permeated with the sun, filled with the smell of trees and herbs, dry poplar fluff... Childhood also means books about distant countries. These countries are far away, beyond the blue seas... As a child, how I wanted to visit unknown, mysterious countries where palm trees grow and Buddhist temples rise. It is impossible to come or fly to the country of childhood. Only memory can take us back there for a short time. A lot is possible for an adult: “You can eventually climb Parnassus, // drop an anchor in Cyprus, swim to Crete...” But it is impossible to see the world as you saw it in childhood. Perhaps only especially sensitive, spiritually bright people sometimes have access to a child’s perception of the world. This is precisely the quality that the author of poetry Novella Matveeva possesses. The world of the country of childhood is created by the author with the help of original epithets: acutely foreign seas, not remembering kinship breeze, immemorial words; unusual comparisons: “fresh cuts of logs are like cheeses”, “There are ditches full of yellow dandelions, like canals with dry golden water”, “dry poplar fluff hovers like a spirit”... The lost feeling of the world as a happy fairy tale is emphasized with anaphora in the final stanza: afraid..., afraid..., afraid... The motif of the lost garden-paradise (childhood) is also the main one in T. Tolstoy’s story “They sat on the golden porch...”, so we took the epigraph to the work from this story.
In 1993, Novella Matveeva wrote the following lines for her husband, poet-bard Ivan Kiuru:
The Savior commanded us to “be like children.”Since then we have succeeded in the world:Get rid of the sample; achieveSo that... the children themselves are not “like children”! There is so much sad irony in this quatrain and how accurately it reflects our current reality.

4. Conclusions and generalizations.

The greatest advantage of the presented poems by N. Matveeva is the poetry of childhood poured into them. Childhood is presented in these poems and songs as a time of innocence and purity, when a person has not yet learned to lie and believes in a fairy tale.In the subtext of all these poems, Novella Matveeva tells the reader about what she experienced in childhood. Here is a little man learning to withstand the elements, overcoming fear (“What a big wind…”). Here the lyrical hero dreams of a fairy-tale country and believes that they are waiting for him there (“Dolphinia Country”). Here is a little person who educates himself, who “makes” himself, so as not to give in to difficulties in adult life. And finally, having become an adult, the hero of Matveeva’s novel mentally returns to the land of childhood, so as not to harden his soul, not to forget how to see the miraculous in life, not to forget how to believe in miracles. Novella Matveeva is also a magnificent children's poet. In the sixties, she published the book “Sunny Bunny”, and in 1984 – the poems “Rabbit Village” and “I sculpt from plasticine...”. The bright and magical world of her poems and songs captivates both children and adults; it calls you on a long journey and helps you cheerfully endure difficulties along the way through life.

Bibliography

1. Lavlinsky S.P. Technology of literary education, 2003.

2. Matveeva N.N. Collection of poems and songs “Country of Surf”, 1982.

3. Medynsky G. Song poetry of N. Matveeva, Youth, 1966, No. 7.

4. Nichiporov I.B. The romantic world of poetry by N. Matveeva, 1963.

5. Prikhodko A. Soul and flesh of poetry, New World, 1967, No. 2

Private bussiness

Novella Nikolaevna Matveeva (80 years old) born in Detskoe Selo (now the town of Pushkin), Leningrad region. Her father, Nikolai Nikolaevich Matveev-Bodry, was a geographer, local historian of the Far East and a full member of the All-Union Geographical Society. Mother, Nadezhda Timofeevna Malkova, taught literature, wrote poetry, and published under the pseudonym Matveeva-Orleneva. Grandfather Nikolai Petrovich Matveev-Amursky was also a writer, the author of the first “History of the City of Vladivostok”, and lived for many years in Japan.

Novella began writing poetry as a child, during the war, and at the end of the war her first songs appeared. From 1950 to 1957, Matveeva worked in an orphanage in the Shchelkovsky district of the Moscow region.

Since the late 50s, she began performing in public with her songs to the accompaniment of a seven-string guitar. A girl from the provinces with an unusual “childish” voice and a guitar in her hands was noticed and loved. She began publishing in 1958. Already in 1961, the first collection of her poems, “Lyrics,” was published, and in the same year Matveeva was accepted into the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1962, she graduated from the Higher Literary Courses at the A. M. Gorky Literary Institute (in absentia).

The second collection of poetry by Novella Matveeva, “The Ship,” was published in 1963. In 1966, the Melodiya company released the first record with Matveeva’s songs. In the 1970s, she published the books “Swallow School”, “River”, in the 1980s - “The Law of Songs”, “Surf Country”, etc.

In 1996, a book of memoirs by Novella Matveeva, “The Ball Left in the Sky,” was published. In 1998, she became a laureate of the Pushkin Prize in poetry, and in 2002, a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of literature and art.

Novella Nikolaevna lives in Moscow. Lately she has been working on her translations of Shakespeare's sonnets.

What is she famous for?

In 1964, Novella Matveeva wrote her most famous song, “The Girl from the Tavern” (also called “The Ballad of the Nail”). The words of this song “You were afraid of my love in vain, I don’t love so terribly...” are known even by those who do not know their author.

Novella was one of the first Soviet songwriters, her popularity was very great - most of the students in our country sang Matveeva’s songs, full of light, romance and kindness, the charm of which was enhanced by her unusually thin, almost childish, voice.

The most famous and popular songs of Novella Matveeva were: “Song of the Mule Driver” (“Oh, how long, long have we been driving...”), “Wind” (“What a big wind...”), “Drainpipes” (“Rain , evening rain..."), "The girl from the tavern" ("You were afraid of my love in vain..."), "Outskirts" ("It was a summer night..."), "Captains without mustaches" ("Here is the front I have a blue sea..."), "Dolphinia Country" ("Blue waves are coming..."), "Magician" ("Oh, you magician..."), "Gypsy" ("Merry gypsies walked around Moldova. ..”), “Organ Grinder” (“Snow was falling on the ground...”).

What you need to know

Novella Matveeva

Despite the fact that Novella Matveeva was usually classified as a member of the sixties (on purely chronological grounds), she herself never ideologically considered herself one of them and, in general, as journalist Boris Zhukov, a researcher of bard songs, wrote about her, “she remained a completely loyal Soviet subject.” Novella has always been an introvert, she tried to limit contacts with the outside world as much as possible, in which she was largely helped by her husband, Ivan Kiuru, who took on the lion's share of communication with editors and publishing houses.

According to Novella Nikolaevna herself, she developed a craving for solitude in childhood: “Out of cowardice, probably out of fear. I am a wild person, I don’t know how to behave. It's very easy for me to look funny. That’s why I try to be somehow separate...”

She studiously avoided all forms of publicity. Even photographs of Novella Matveeva from the 60s, when she was at the peak of her fame, can literally be counted on one hand. She performed infrequently, and over the years - less and less.

Her husband, the poet Ivan Kiuru (1934-1992), was from a family of repressed Soviet Finns. They lived together for 29 years. The few recollections of people who knew Matveeva and Kiura closely indicate that this couple inexplicably irritated those around them for some reason. Either by disdain for “everyday life”, or by devotion to each other, or by the fact that they were self-sufficient - having created their Universe for two, they did not allow anyone there.

In 1992, Ivan Kiuru died, and three years later, Mikhail Nodel, a young journalist and poet, who became Novella Matveeva’s secretary and literary agent in the 90s, and in fact, as Zhukov writes, “a mediator between her and the world,” died. Matveeva fell silent for several years. New poems (but not songs) began to appear only at the very end of the 90s. Novella Nikolaevna herself practically “fell out” of all public life, spending almost all her time in the winter in a city apartment, and in the summer at the dacha in Skhodnya, where neighbors may not notice her presence for months. By her own admission, she closely follows politics, the news and takes everything very close to her heart.

Direct speech

“I never had songs based on poetry. I always just write the whole song as a whole. Sometimes not all at once, sometimes piecemeal, but so that it’s all your own: the lyrics and the melody - without loans from outside,” - Novella Matveeva

“Green’s landscapes, nightmares, even Green’s names - what is more hypnotic in the world than the name “Blue Cascade of Telluri”, which alone can replace a novel, and what about a novel - an entire country? Perhaps only the poetry of Novella Matveeva, and especially her songs, was such a burn for me,” — Dmitry Bykov.

“If Okudzhava is a blessed rain, then Novella Matveeva is an amazing island,” - Zinovy ​​Paperny.

“I remember in the early sixties, when I first heard her sunny, fairy-tale songs, for some reason I decided that only a very happy person could write such songs... When I first came to Novella Matveeva’s house and saw the monstrous life of her huge, unpleasant communal apartment on Begovaya Street, I was shocked. What a powerful imagination of an artist, what courage and optimism an author must have who invented his fairy-tale world in such a setting!..,” - Alexander Gorodnitsky.

5 facts about Novella Matveeva

• Matveeva’s father was a romantic, so he gave his children such unusual names, calling his daughter Novella and his son Roald. Novella Matveeva does not have a single namesake in all of Russia.
• Released in 1966 by the Melodiya company, Novella Matveeva’s record became the first record of a bard song in the USSR.
• Novella Matveeva does not like the word “bard” and prefers to call the performers of the original song “polyhymniks”.
• In 1984, at the Central Children's Theater in Moscow, Matveeva's play “Egle's Prediction” was staged - a fantasy based on the works of Alexander Green, containing 33 songs by Novella Nikolaevna.
• The Moscow theater "Studio-69" staged a play based on the poems of Novella Matveeva. Each poem performed on stage is a small miniature performance.

Materials about Novella Matveeva