K m Simonov works about the war. Literary and historical notes of a young technician
Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich Simono in, poet, prose writer, playwright. Born on November 15 (28 NS) in Petrograd, was brought up by his stepfather, a teacher at a military school. Childhood years were spent in Ryazan and Saratov.
After graduating from the seven-year school in Saratov in 1930, he went to study to be a turner. In 1931, the family moved to Moscow, and Simonov, having graduated from the factory teacher of precision mechanics, goes to work at the plant. In the same years he began to write poetry. He worked until 1935.
In 1936, the magazines Molodaya Gvardiya and Oktyabr published the first poems of K. Simonov. After graduating from the Literary Institute. M. Gorky in 1938, Simonov entered the graduate school of the IFLI (Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature), but in 1939 he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin-Gol in Mongolia and never returned to the institute.
In 1940 he wrote his first play "The Story of One Love", staged at the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; in 1941 - the second - "A guy from our city." During the year he studies at the courses of war correspondents at the Military-Political Academy, receives military rank quartermaster of the second rank.
With the beginning of the war he was drafted into the army, worked in the newspaper "Battle Banner". In 1942 he was promoted to the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - the rank of colonel. Most of his war correspondence was published in Krasnaya Zvezda. During the war years he wrote the plays "Russian people", "Wait for me", "So it will be", the story "Days and nights", two books of poems "With you and without you" and "War".
After the war, his collections of essays appeared: Letters from Czechoslovakia, Slavic Friendship, Yugoslav Notebook, From the Black to the Barents Sea. Notes of a War Correspondent ".
After the war, he spent three years on numerous foreign business trips (Japan, USA, China). From 1958 to 1960 he lived in Tashkent as a correspondent for Pravda in the republics of Central Asia.
The first novel "Comrades in Arms" was published in 1952, then the big Book- "The Living and the Dead" (1959). In 1961 the Sovremennik Theater staged Simonov's play The Fourth. In 1963 - 64 he wrote the novel "Soldiers are not born". (In 1970 - 71 a sequel will be written - "The Last Summer".)
According to Simonov's scripts, the following films were made: "A guy from our city" (1942), "Wait for me" (1943), "Days and nights" (1943 - 44), "Immortal garrison" (1956), "Normandie-Niemen" ( 1960, together with S. Spaakomi, E. Triole), "The Living and the Dead" (1964).
V post-war years social activities of Simonov developed in the following way: from 1946 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1958 he was the editor-in-chief of the magazine "New World"; from 1950 to 1953 - editor-in-chief of the Literaturnaya Gazeta; from 1946 to 1959 and from 1967 to 1979 - Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
In 1974 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. K. Simonov died on August 28, 1979 in Moscow.
Simonov Konstantin (real name - Kirill) Mikhailovich (1915-1979) - poet, prose writer, playwright.
Born November 15 (28) in Petrograd, was raised by his stepfather - a teacher at a military school. Childhood years were spent in Ryazan and Saratov.
After graduating from the seven-year period I in Saratov in 1930, he went to the factory head teacher to study as a turner. In 1931 the family moved to Moscow, and Simonov, having graduated here from the factory head teacher of precision mechanics, went to work at the factory. During these years he began to write poetry. He worked at the plant until 1935.
In 1936, the magazines Molodaya Gvardiya and Oktyabr published the first poems of K. Simonov. After graduating from the Literary Institute. M. Gorky in 1938, Simonov entered graduate school at IFLI (Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature), but in 1939 he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin-Gol in Mongolia and never returned to the institute.
In 1940 he wrote his first play "The Story of One Love", staged at the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; in 1941 - the second - "A guy from our city".
During the year he studied at the courses of war correspondents at the Military-Political Academy, received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.
With the beginning of the war he was drafted into the army, worked in the newspaper "Battle Banner". In 1942 he was promoted to the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - the rank of colonel. Most of his military correspondence was published in Krasnaya Zvezda. During the war years he wrote the plays "Russian people", "So it will be", the story "Days and nights", two books of poetry "With you and without you" and "War"; his lyric poem "Wait for me ..." was widely known.
As a war correspondent, he visited all fronts, walked through the lands of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, witnessed the last battles for Berlin. After the war, his collections of essays appeared: "Letters from Czechoslovakia", "Slavic friendship", "Yugoslavian notebook", "From the Black to the Barents Sea. Notes of a war correspondent".
After the war, Simonov spent three years on numerous foreign business trips (Japan, USA, China).
From 1958 to 1960 he lived in Tashkent as a correspondent for Pravda in the republics of Central Asia.
The first novel "Comrades in Arms" was published in 1952, then the first book of the trilogy "The Living and the Dead" (1959). In 1961 the Sovremennik Theater staged Simonov's play The Fourth. In 1963 the second book of the trilogy appeared - the novel "Soldiers are not born". (In 19/0 - the 3rd book "The Last Summer".)
According to Simonov's scripts, films were made: "A guy from our city" (1942), "Wait for me" (1943), "Days and nights" (1943), "Immortal garrison" (1956), "Normandie-Niemen" (1960, together with S. Spaakomi, E. Triole), "The Living and the Dead" (1964).
In the postwar years, Simonov's social activities developed in the following way: from 1946 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1958, he was the editor-in-chief of the Novy Mir magazine; from 1954 to 1958 he was the editor-in-chief of the magazine "New World"; from 1950 to 1953 - editor-in-chief of the Literaturnaya Gazeta; from 1946 to 1959 and from 1967 to 1979 - Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
K. Simonov died in 1979 in Moscow.
In the minds of living people, the name of Konstantin Simonov is strongly associated with works about the Great Patriotic War, with the lines of the poem "The Son of an Artilleryman" familiar from school ("Major Deev was with Comrade Major Petrov ..."), and even with serial versions of his romance with famous actress Valentina Serova. During the years of Khrushchev's "thaw", the suddenly "thawed" anti-Stalinists did not want to forgive the Soviet "general" from literature, neither his lightning success, nor high posts in the USSR Writers' Union, nor loyal plays, articles and poems written in the late 1940s - early 50s. -s. Post-perestroika "scribes" national history and even ranked K. Simonov - the winner of the Lenin and six Stalin Prizes, one of the most famous and (I'm not afraid of this word) talented writers of the XX century - to "antiheroes". His works were unambiguously placed in a row with the "official" works of Fadeev, Gorbatov, Tvardovsky and other Soviet authors, completely lost for the present generation behind the big names Bulgakov, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Nabokov, etc. Such "unambiguity" in the assessment historical events, as well as poets, writers and their literary works has more than once played a cruel joke with those who today seek to preach it from the political platform, in the media or in school textbooks.
It is impossible to erase from the history of the country neither the Stalinist repressions, nor great victory in the Patriotic War. It is impossible to erase or “withdraw” truly talented works from Russian literature, even if you call their authors unprincipled “Soviet functionaries”, Stalinist sycophants, “commissioned” writers-socialist realists. Looking from the heights of the past years, it is much easier to demand displays of civic courage from others than to show it yourself in real life. Today's critics shouldn't forget this.
And even if we ignore the above "clichés" formed by public opinion in recent decades, there is simply no one to read the works of K. M. Simonov today. The theme of war has long exhausted itself, and for all the time that has passed under conditions of absolute literary freedom, not a single work truly loved by the people has appeared in the Russian-language literature of the post-Soviet space. The Russian literary market, in the form in which it exists now, is focused exclusively on the needs of fans of "light reading" - low-standard detectives, all sorts of fantasy and ladies' novels.
K.M. Simonov got a different, more severe era. His poem-spell "Wait for me" was read like a prayer. The plays "A guy from our city", "Russian people", "So it will be" became heroic examples for a whole generation of Soviet people. The far controversial, too frank cycle of lyric poems dedicated to V. Serova (With and Without You, 1942) marked a short period of “lyrical thaw” in Soviet military literature and brought its author truly nationwide fame. Reading these lines, it is impossible, it is impossible not to understand that Konstantin Simonov wrote about the Great Patriotic War not out of duty, but out of a deep inner need, which, from a young age to the end of his days, determined the main theme of his work. Throughout his life, the poet, playwright, thinker Simonov continued to think and write about human destinies associated with the war. He was a warrior and poet, able to ignite in the hearts of millions of people not only hatred of the enemy, but also to raise the nation to defend their homeland, instill hope and faith in the inevitable victory of good over evil, love over hate, life over death. Being a direct eyewitness and participant in many events, Simonov as a journalist, writer, screenwriter, artist of the word made a considerable contribution to his work in shaping the attitude to the events of the Great Patriotic War among all subsequent generations. The novel "The Living and the Dead" - the most ambitious work of the writer - is a deep understanding of the past war, as a huge, universal tragedy. More than one generation of readers was read to them: both those who went through and remembered that war, and those who knew about it from the stories of their elders and Soviet films.
Family and early years
Kirill Mikhailovich Simonov was born in Petrograd into a military family. His real father Mikhail Agafangelovich Simonov (1871-?) - nobleman, graduate of the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy (1897), major general. In his official biographies, K.M. Simonov pointed out that "my father was killed or missing" at the front. However, during the First World War, generals did not disappear without a trace at the front. From 1914 to 1915 M.A. Simonov commanded the 12th Veliky Lutsk Infantry Regiment, from July 1915 to October 1917 he was Chief of Staff of the 43rd Army Corps. After the revolution, the general emigrated to Poland, from where Kirill's mother, Alexandra Leonidovna (nee Princess Obolenskaya), received letters from him in the early 1920s. The father called his wife and son to him, but Alexandra Leonidovna did not want to emigrate. By that time, another man had already appeared in her life - Alexander G. Ivanishev, former colonel tsarist army, a teacher at a military school. He adopted and raised Cyril. True, the mother kept her son's surname and patronymic: after all, everyone considered M.A. Simonov to the dead. She herself took the name Ivanishev.
Kirill spent his childhood in Ryazan and Saratov. He was brought up by his stepfather, to whom he retained sincere affection and good feelings throughout his life. The family did not live well, so in 1930, after completing the seven-year school in Saratov, Kirill Simonov went to study as a turner. In 1931, together with his parents, he moved to Moscow. After graduating from the factory teacher of precision mechanics, Simonov goes to work at an aircraft plant, where he worked until 1935. In his Autobiography, Simonov explained his choice with two reasons: “The first and foremost is a five-year plan, just built not far from us, in Stalingrad, a tractor plant and the general atmosphere of construction romance that captured me already in the sixth grade of school. The second reason is the desire to earn money on your own. " For some time Simonov also worked as a technician at Mezhrabpomfilm.
In the same years, the young man begins to write poetry. The first works of Simonov appeared in print in 1934 (some sources indicate that the first poems were published in 1936 in the magazines Molodaya Gvardiya and Oktyabr). From 1934 to 1938 he studied at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky, then entered the graduate school of MIFLI (Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History named after N.G. Chernyshevsky).
In 1938, Simonov's first poem, "Pavel Cherny", appeared, glorifying the builders of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. In the "Autobiography" of the writer, the poem is mentioned as the first difficult experience, crowned with literary success. It was published in the collection of poetry "Review of Forces". At the same time, the historical poem "Battle on the Ice" was written. In the 1930s, recourse to historical subjects was considered mandatory, even “programmatic,” for an aspiring author. Simonov, as expected, introduces military-patriotic content into the historical poem. At a meeting in the journal Literary Study, devoted to the analysis of his work, K. Simonov said: “The desire to write this poem came to me in connection with the feeling of the approaching war. I wanted those who read the poem to feel the closeness of war ... that behind our shoulders, behind the shoulders of the Russian people, there is a centuries-old struggle for their independence ... "
War correspondent
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In 1939, Simonov, as a promising author of military topics, was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin-Gol. In a letter to S.Ya. Fradkina on May 6, 1965 K. Simonov recalled how he first got to the front: “I went to Khalkhin Gol very simply. At first, no one was going to send me there, I was, as they say, too young and green, and I had to go not there, but to Kamchatka to the troops, but then the editor of “Heroic Red Army” - a newspaper that was published there, in Mongolia, in our group of troops, - he sent a telegram to the Army Political Directorate: "Send a poet urgently." He needed a poet. Obviously, at that moment in Moscow there was no one more solid in his poetic baggage than me, I was summoned to the PUR something like that at one or two days, and at five o'clock I left in the Vladivostok ambulance to Chita, and from there already to Mongolia ... "
The poet never returned to the institute. Shortly before leaving for Mongolia, he finally changed his name - instead of his native Kirill, he took the pseudonym Konstantin Simonov. Almost all biographers agree that the reason for this change lies in the peculiarities of Simonov's diction and articulation: he did not pronounce the "r" and the solid sound "l". It was always difficult for him to pronounce his own name.
For Simonov, the war began not in 1941, but in 1939 on Khalkhin Gol, and it was from that time that many new accents of his work were defined. In addition to essays and reports, the correspondent brings a cycle of poems from the theater of military operations, which soon gains all-Union fame. The most poignant poem "Doll" in its mood and theme involuntarily echoes Simonov's subsequent military lyrics ("Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region", "Nameless field", etc.), in which the problem of a soldier's duty to the Motherland and his people is raised.
Immediately before World War II, Simonov twice studied at the courses of war correspondents at the Military Academy named after M.V. Frunze (1939-1940) and the Military-Political Academy (1940-1941). Received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.
From the first days of the war, Konstantin Simonov was in the army: he was his own correspondent for the newspapers Krasnoarmeiskaya Pravda, Krasnaya Zvezda, Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Bovoye Znamya, etc.
As a correspondent, K. Simonov could move in the front-line zone with freedom, fantastic even for any general. Sometimes, in his car, he literally escaped the ticks of the encirclement, remaining almost the only surviving eyewitness to the death of an entire regiment or division.
It is well known, confirmed by eyewitnesses and documented, that in July 1941, K. Simonov was near Mogilev, in units of the 172nd Infantry Division, which was conducting heavy defensive battles and breaking through from the encirclement. When Izvestia correspondents Pavel Troshkin and Konstantin Simonov arrived at the command post of the 172nd Infantry Division, they were detained, threatened to be put on the ground and kept until dawn, and were escorted to headquarters. However, the correspondent Simonov was even pleased. He immediately felt discipline, order, confidence, realized that the war was going far not as planned by the enemy. K. Simonov finds in the courage and firm discipline of the regiments defending the city a certain "fulcrum", which allows writing in the newspaper "not a lie for salvation," not a half-truth, forgivable in those dramatic days, but something that would serve others fulcrum would instill faith.
Even before the war, correspondent Simonov was compared to a combine harvester for his fantastic "efficiency" and creative fertility: literary essays and front-line reports poured out from under his pen as if from a cornucopia. Simonov's favorite genre is an essay. His articles (very few), in essence, also represent a series of sketch sketches connected by journalistic or lyrical digressions. During the war, the poet K. Simonov first appeared as a prose writer, but the writer's desire to expand the genres in which he worked, to find new brighter and more intelligible forms of presenting material very soon allowed him to develop his own individual style.
As a rule, K. Simonov's essays reflect what he saw with his own eyes, what he himself experienced, or the fate of another specific person with whom the war brought the author together. There is always a narrative plot in his essays, and often his essays resemble a short story. They contain a psychological portrait of the Hero - an ordinary soldier or officer of the front line; the life circumstances that shaped the character of this person are necessarily reflected; the battle and, in fact, the feat are described in detail. When K. Simonov's essays were based on the material of the conversation with the participants in the battle, they actually turned into a dialogue between the author and the hero, which is sometimes interrupted by the author's narration ("Soldier's Glory", "The Honor of the Commander", etc.).
In the first period of the Great Patriotic War - from June 1941 to November 1942 - Simonov strove to cover as many events as possible, visit various sectors of the front, depict representatives of various military professions in his essays and works of art, and emphasize the difficulties of the usual front-line situation.
In 1942, Konstantin Simonov was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. As a war correspondent, he traveled to all fronts. During the battles in the Crimea, Konstantin Simonov was directly in the chains of the counterattacking infantrymen, went with a reconnaissance group behind the front line, participated in a combat campaign of a submarine that mined the Romanian port. He also happened to be among the defenders of Odessa, Stalingrad, among the Yugoslav partisans, in the forward units: during Battle of Kursk, The Belarusian operation, in the final operations for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Simonov was present at the first trial of war criminals in Kharkov, was in the newly liberated, unimaginably terrible Auschwitz and in many other places where decisive events took place. In 1945, Simonov witnessed the last battles for Berlin. He was present at the signing of Hitler's surrender in Karlshorst. He was awarded four military orders.
The hard, sometimes heroic work of front-line correspondents, who not only collected material for essays and articles, but also took part in battles, saved others and died themselves, subsequently found its reflection in the works of the writer K. Simonov. After the war, his collections of essays appeared: "Letters from Czechoslovakia", "Slavic Friendship", "Yugoslavian Notebook", "From the Black to the Barents Sea. Notes of a War Correspondent ". Simonov is the author of the popularly beloved "Song of War Correspondents", which for many years became the anthem of journalists working in the "hot spots" of the planet:
"Wait for me": a novel by an actress and a poet
On July 27, 1941, K. Simonov returned to Moscow, having spent at least a week on the Western Front - in Vyazma, near Yelnya, near the burning Dorogobuzh. He was preparing for a new trip to the front - from the editorial board of Krasnaya Zvezda, but it took a week to get the car ready for this trip.
“During these seven days,” Simonov recalled, “apart from the front-line ballads for the newspaper, I suddenly wrote in one sitting“ Wait for me ”,“ The major brought the boy on the gun carriage ”and“ Do not be angry, for the best ”. I spent the night at Lev Kassil's dacha in Peredelkino and stayed there in the morning, did not go anywhere. He sat alone in the country and wrote poetry. All around were tall pines, a lot of strawberries, green grass. It was a hot summer day. And silence.<...>For several hours I even wanted to forget that there is a war in the world.<...>Probably, on that day more than on others, I thought not so much about the war as about my own fate on it ... "
Subsequently, very authoritative critics and literary scholars assured that "Wait for Me" is the most common poem by Simonov, that in one lyric poem the poet was able to convey the peculiarities of the time, was able to guess the most important thing, the most necessary for people, and thereby help millions of his compatriots in the difficult time of war ... But he succeeded not at all because he tried to “guess” what was most needed now. Simonov did not intend anything like this! On that hot summer day at the dacha of L. Kassil, he wrote what was vital to him. Turning his thoughts to the only addressee of his love lyrics - the actress Valentina Serova, the poet expressed what was most important and desirable for him at that moment. And only for this reason, that is why the poems written by one person and addressed to the only woman in the world have become universal, necessary for millions of people in the most difficult time for them.
With the rising star of Russian cinema, the prima of the Moscow Theater. Lenin Komsomol V. V. Serova (nee Polovikova) Konstantin Mikhailovich met in 1940. On the stage of the theater, his first play, "The Story of One Love", was staged. Valentina, by that time already the widow of a famous pilot, hero Soviet Union Anatoly Serov, played one of the main roles in it. Prior to that, in the 1939-40 season, she shone in the play "The Zykovs", and the young, then aspiring poet and playwright, did not miss a single performance. According to Serova, the loving Simonov prevented her from playing: he always sat with a bouquet of flowers in the first row and followed her every movement with a searching gaze.
However, Simonov's love for Vaska (the poet did not pronounce the letters "l" and "r" and that was what he called his muse) was not mutual. Valentina accepted his courtship, was close to him, but she could not forget Serov. She preferred to remain the widow of a hero-pilot, rather than become the wife of a still little-known young writer. Moreover, Simonov was already married to E.S. Laskina (B. Laskin's cousin), in 1939 their son Alexey was born.
From the very first literary steps the poet Simonov wrote “for the press,” accurately guessing the path that would lead his work to the printed pages. This was one of the main secrets of his early and lasting success. His ability to shift the actual semi-official point of view and offer it to the reader already in an emotional and lyrical package was forged from the first literary experiments. But "Wait for Me" and other lyric poems dedicated to relations with Serova were the only works of the poet that were not originally intended for publication. And who, in those pre-war, hurray-patriotic, ideologically sustained years, began to print love lyrics full of erotic drama and suffering about unrequited love?
The war turned everything upside down. Completely personal, the poem "Wait for me" that was necessary only for him, Simonov read more than once in the circle of his literary friends; read to the gunners on the Rybachy Peninsula, cut off from the rest of the front; read to scouts before a heavy raid on the enemy's rear; read to sailors on a submarine. They listened to him equally attentively both in the soldiers' dugouts and in the staff dugouts. The peculiarities of the Russian Soviet reader, already fully formed, were such that he sought in literature - especially in a painful situation of war - consolation, direct support. Providing such support was seen by critics as "one of the tasks of poetry." Simonov's poem also went beyond this function, having received from the first moment of creation another, special function: "spell", "prayer", "medicine for longing", "faith" and even, if you like, "superstition" ...
Soon the lines of the beloved poem began to diverge in handwritten copies, to be learned by heart. The soldiers sent them in letters to their loved ones, conjuring separation and near death, glorifying the great power of love:
On December 9, 1941, "Wait for Me" was first heard on the radio. Simonov happened to be in Moscow and read the poem himself, having time to air literally at the last minute. In January 1942, "Wait for Me" was published in Pravda.
According to eyewitnesses, at post-war meetings with readers Simonov never refused to read "Wait for Me", but somehow his face darkened. And there was suffering in his eyes. He seemed to be falling again in his forty-first year.
In a conversation with Vasily Peskov, when asked about “Wait for me,” Simonov wearily replied: “If I hadn’t written, someone else would have written.” He believed that it just happened by coincidence: love, war, separation, and miraculously dropped out several hours of loneliness. Moreover, poetry was his work. So the poems showed through the paper. So the blood comes out through the bandages ...
In April 1942, Simonov submitted the manuscript of the lyric collection With and Without You to the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house. All 14 poems in the collection were addressed and dedicated to V. Serova.
In the very first large article about this cycle, the well-known critic V. Aleksandrov (V. B. Keller), who has been well-known since the pre-war years, wrote:
The collection "With and Without You" actually marked the temporary rehabilitation of lyrics in Soviet literature. The best of his poems express the conflict between the two strongest driving forces of the poet's soul: love for Valentina and military duty to Russia.
In the days of the most difficult battles of 1942, the Soviet party leadership considered it necessary to bring to the mass reader just such verses, opposing the horrors of war with that eternal and unshakable, for which it is worth fighting and worth living:
However, Simonov's muse still did not dream that a longtime admirer would call her his wife. She also did not promise to wait faithfully and selflessly for her admirer from front-line business trips.
There is a version that in the spring of 1942 Valentina Serova was seriously carried away by Marshal K. Rokossovsky. This version was presented in the acclaimed series by Y. Kara "The Star of the Era" and firmly rooted in the minds of not only ordinary TV viewers, but also television journalists, authors of various publications about Serova in the press and on Internet resources. All living relatives, both Serova and Simonov, and Rokossovsky, unanimously deny the war romance of the marshal and the actress. The personal life of Rokossovsky, who was perhaps an even more public person than Serov and Simonov, is well known. Serova with her love, there was simply no place in her.
Perhaps Valentina Vasilievna, for some reason during this period, really wanted to break off relations with Simonov. Being a direct and open person, she did not consider it necessary to pretend and lie in real life - she had enough play on stage. Rumors spread throughout Moscow. The romance of the poet and actress was under threat.
It is possible that at this moment in the rejected Simonov, jealousy, resentment, a purely masculine desire to get his beloved at any cost began to speak. Having published love lyrics dedicated to Serova, the poet actually went for broke: he gave his consent to use his personal feelings for ideological purposes in order to gain real, nationwide fame and thereby "put the squeeze" on the intractable Valentina.
The script for the propaganda film Wait for Me, written in 1942, made the personal relationship between Simonov and Serova the property of the whole country. The actress simply had no choice.
It is possible that it was during this period that their novel, largely invented by Simonov himself and “approved” by the authorities, gave the first serious crack. In 1943, Simonov and Serova entered into an official marriage, but, despite all the favorable circumstances and apparent external well-being, the crack in their relationship only grew:
| We are both from the tribe, Where if you are friends - so be friends, Where boldly past tense Do not tolerate in the verb "love". So it is better to imagine me dead, Such, to remember good, Not in the fall of forty-fourth, But somewhere in forty-two. Where I found courage, Where strictly, like a young man, I lived, Where, it is true, I deserved love And yet I did not deserve it. Imagine the North, a blizzard Polar night in the snow, Imagine a mortal wound And the fact that I cannot get up; Imagine this news In that difficult time of mine, When even further from the outskirts I did not occupy your heart, When beyond the mountains, beyond the valleys You lived, loving another, When out of the fire and into the fire Between us you threw you. Let's agree with you: Then - I died. God bless him. And with the current me - let's stop And talk again. 1945 |
Over time, the crack of misunderstanding and dislike turned into “glass of a thousand-handed thickness,” beyond which “no heartbeat could be heard,” then into a bottomless abyss. Simonov managed to get out of it and find new ground under his feet. Valentina Serova surrendered and died. The poet refused to lend a helping hand to his former, already unloved muse:
As their daughter Maria Simonova would write later: “She died [V. Serova - E.Sh.] alone, in an empty apartment robbed by the crooks who soldered her, from which they took out everything that could be carried by hand ”.
Simonov did not come to the funeral, sending only a bouquet of 58 blood-red carnations (some memoirs contain information about a bouquet of pink roses). Shortly before his death, he confessed to his daughter: "... what I had with your mother was the greatest happiness in my life ... and the greatest grief ..."
After the war
At the end of the war during three years K.M. Simonov was on numerous foreign business trips: in Japan (1945-1946), USA, China. In 1946-1950 he held the post of editor of one of the leading literary magazines "Novy Mir". In 1950-1954 - editor of the Literaturnaya Gazeta. From 1946 to 1959, and then from 1967 to 1979 - Secretary of the Union of Writers of the USSR. During the period from 1942 to 1950, K. Simonov received six Stalin prizes - for the plays "A guy from our city", "Russian people", "Russian question", "Another's shadow", the novel "Days and Nights" and a collection of poems "Friends and enemies. "
Simonov, the son of a tsarist general and a princess from an old Russian family, regularly served not just the Soviet regime. During the war, he gave all his talent to the fighting people, to his Motherland, to that great and invincible country that he wanted to see Russia. But once he got into the party “cage” (Simonov joined the party only in 1942), he immediately acquired the status of a “necessary” poet treated kindly by the authorities. Most likely, he himself believed that he was doing everything right: the victory in the war and the position that Russia took in the world after 1945 only convinced Simonov of the correctness of the chosen path.
His ascent up the party ladder was even more rapid than his entry into literature and the acquisition of all-Russian glory. In 1946-1954 K. Simonov was a deputy of the USSR Armed Forces of the 2nd and 3rd convocations, from 1954 to 1956 - a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1946-1954 - Deputy Secretary General of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1954-1959 and in 1967-1979 - Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. Since 1949 - member of the Presidium of the Soviet Peace Committee.
Yes, obeying the "general line of the party", he participated in the campaign of persecution of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, wrote "custom" plays about cosmopolitans ("Another's Shadow") and ballad poems, tried to persuade I. Bunin, Teffi and other prominent writers-white emigrants to return to Soviet Russia. As editor-in-chief, in 1956 Simonov signed a letter to the editorial board of Novy Mir magazine refusing to publish Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago, and in 1973 - a letter from a group of Soviet writers to the editorial office of Pravda about Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov.
But at the same time, it is impossible not to admit that Simonov's activities in all his high literary posts were not so unambiguous. The return of the novels by Ilf and Petrov to the reader, the publication of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1966, in an abridged magazine version) and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, defended by L.O. Brick, which high-ranking "literary historians" decided to delete from Mayakovsky's biography, the first complete translation of the plays by A. Miller and Eugene O'Neill, the publication of V. Kondratyev's first story "Sashka" - this is not a complete list of K. Simonov's merits to the Soviet literature. There was also participation in "breaking through" performances at Sovremennik and the Taganka Theater, the first posthumous exhibition of Tatlin, the restoration of the exhibition "XX Years of Work" by Mayakovsky, participation in the cinematic fate of Alexei German and dozens of other filmmakers, artists, writers. The dozens of volumes of Simonov's daily efforts stored today in the RGALI, which he called "Everything done", contain thousands of his letters, notes, statements, petitions, requests, recommendations, reviews, analyzes and advice, prefaces, making way for "impenetrable" books and publications. There is not a single unanswered letter in the archives of the writer and the editorial boards of magazines headed by him. Hundreds of people began to write military memoirs after reading and compassionately appreciated by Simonov "tests of the pen."
In "disgrace"
Simonov belonged to that rare breed of people who were not spoiled by the authorities. Neither forced bowing to superiors, nor ideological dogmas, within the framework of which the path of Soviet literature of the late 1940s and early 1950s lay, killed in it a genuine, lively beginning, characteristic only of a truly talented artist. Unlike many of his literary colleagues, over the years of his "symphony" with power, K. Simonov has not forgotten how to perform actions aimed at defending his views and principles.
Immediately after Stalin's death, he published an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta, proclaiming the main task of the writers to reflect the great historical role of Stalin. Khrushchev was extremely annoyed with this article. According to one version, he called the Writers' Union and demanded the immediate removal of Simonov from the post of editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta.
By and large, editor Simonov did what he saw fit to do at that moment. His honest nature as a soldier and a poet resisted such forms of dealing with the values of the past and present as "spitting and licking." With his article, Simonov was not afraid to express the opinion of that part of society that really considered Stalin the great leader of the nation and the winner of fascism. They, yesterday's veterans who had gone through all the hardships of the last war, were sickened by the hasty renunciation of the “thaw” shape-shifters from their recent past. It is not surprising that shortly after the 20th Party Congress, the poet was brutally harassed and relieved of his high post in the Union of Writers of the USSR. In 1958 Simonov went to live and work in Tashkent as Pravda's own correspondent for the Central Asian republics.
However, this forced "business trip" - Simonov's link did not break. On the contrary, the release from social and administrative work and that share of publicity that accompanied him almost all his life, gave a new impetus to the writer's work. “When there is Tashkent,” Simonov joked gloomily, but with courageous dignity, “there is no need to leave for seven years in Croisset to write Madame Bovary.
"The Living and the Dead"
Simonov's first novel "Comrades in Arms", dedicated to the events on Khalkin Gol, was released in 1952. According to the original idea of the author, it was supposed to become the first part of the trilogy he conceived about the war. However, it turned out differently. To fully reveal the initial stage of the war, other heroes were needed, a different scale of the events depicted. "Comrades in Arms" was destined to remain only a prologue to a monumental work about the war.
In 1955, while still in Moscow, Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov began work on the novel The Living and the Dead, but political intrigues after the 20th Party Congress, as well as attacks from the new party and literary leadership prevented the writer from completely surrendering to creativity. In 1961, Simonov brought a completed novel to Moscow from Tashkent. It became the first part of a large truthful work about the Great Patriotic War. The author found heroes with whom the reader will go from the first days of the retreat to the defeat of the German army near Moscow. In 1965 Simonov completed his new book"Soldiers are not born", which is a new meeting with the heroes of the novel "The Living and the Dead". Stalingrad, the unadorned truth of life and war at a new stage - overcoming science to win. In the future, the writer intended to bring his heroes to 1945, to the end of the war, but in the process of work it became obvious that the action of the trilogy would end in those places where it began. Belarus 1944, offensive"Bagration" - these events formed the basis of the third book, which Simonov called "The Last Summer". All three works are combined by the author into a trilogy under the general title "The Living and the Dead".
In 1974, for the trilogy "The Living and the Dead" Simonov was awarded the Lenin Prize and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
According to K. Simonov's scripts, the films "A guy from our city" (1942), "Wait for me" (1943), "Days and nights" (1943-1944), "Immortal garrison" (1956), "Normandie-Niemen" (1960, together with S. Spaak and E. Triole), "The Living and the Dead" (1964), "Twenty Days Without War" (1976).
In 1970, KM Simonov visited Vietnam, after which he published the book "Vietnam, winter of the seventieth ..." (1970-71). In the dramatic poems about the Vietnam War "Bombing in the Squares", "Over Laos", "Dzhurka" and others, comparisons with the Great Patriotic War constantly arise:
| The guys are sitting, They are waiting for the missiles, As we used to be In Russia somewhere ... |
"I'm not ashamed ..."
Of great documentary value are Simonov's memoirs "The Diaries of the War Years" and his last book - "Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation. Reflections on Stalin ”(1979, published in 1988). These are memories and reflections of the time of the 30s - early 50s, of meetings with Stalin, A.M. Vasilevsky, I.S. Konev, Admiral I.S. Isakov.
In the book "Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation" K.M. Simonov partly revises his previous views, but does not repudiate them at all. Unlike some fairly well-known publicists and memoirists of the "perestroika" period, Simonov is far from "throwing ashes on his head." Performing painstaking work on the inevitable mistakes and delusions of his generation, the writer does not stoop to unfounded defamation of the historical past of his country. On the contrary, it invites descendants to listen to the facts, so as not to repeat previous mistakes:
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“I believe that our attitude towards Stalin in past years, including during the war years, our admiration for him during the war years - this admiration in the past does not give us the right to disregard what we know now, disregard facts. Yes, it would be more pleasant for me now to think that I do not have such, for example, poems that began with the words "Comrade Stalin, can you hear us." But these poems were written in 1941, and I am not ashamed that they were written then, because they express what I felt and thought then, they express hope and faith in Stalin. I felt them then, that's why I wrote. But, on the other hand, I wrote such verses then, not knowing what I know now, not imagining in the smallest degree and the entire volume of Stalin's atrocities in relation to the party and the army, and the entire volume of crimes committed by him in thirty the seventh - thirty-eighth years, and the entire volume of his responsibility for the outbreak of the war, which could not have been so unexpected if he had not been so convinced of his infallibility - all this that we now know obliges us to reevaluate our previous views on Stalin , revise them. This is what life demands, what the truth of history demands ... " Simonov K. Through the eyes of a man of my generation. M., 1990.S. 13-14. |
Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov died on August 28, 1979 in Moscow. According to the will, K.M. Simonov was scattered over the Buinichsky field near Mogilev, where in 1941 he managed to get out of the encirclement.
In conclusion, I would like to cite an excerpt from the book of memoirs of the philologist, writer and journalist Grigory Okun "Meetings on the distant meridian." The author knew Konstantin Mikhailovich during his stay in Tashkent and, in our opinion, most accurately described Simonov as one of the most controversial and controversial, but bright and interesting people of its time:
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“I knew Konstantin Mikhailovich. The man was not transparent, he was effectively conscientious. He resisted doublethink and at the same time coexisted with it. He did not like to speak in a whisper and loudly confessed with himself. However, his restless inner monologue sometimes burst out powerfully. His honest thoughts and motives, noble aspirations and actions in a strange way coexisted with the codes and statutes of his cruel and hypocritical time. At times, he lacked ethical perpendicular stability. Is there a good poet who would not give his own smoke along with his flame? .. " |
Konstantin Simonov was undoubtedly one of the key figures in Soviet literature. Poet, writer, playwright, publicist, editor - for 63 years of his life Simonov managed to do a lot, not only create and publish his own works, but also break through the censorship obstacles of others.
After the debunking of the personality cult of Stalin, Simonov was accused of faithful service to the leader, participation in the organized "condemnation" of Mikhail Zoshchenko, Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, in the campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans." But it was thanks to the “general of literature” that Simonov managed to publish Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, to remove disgrace from the novels of Ilf and Petrov, to achieve the publication of translations of the most significant works of Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O'Neill. It is not known how the fate of Alexei German's film "Twenty Days Without War" would have developed if the scriptwriter Konstantin Simonov had not become his lawyer.
Those who knew Simonov closely say that in last years life, he especially zealously, desperately tried to help talented people, tried to restore justice in relation to the great works of literature and art, which were considered alien by the Soviet regime. Perhaps this was how repentance was manifested. A talented man, Simonov in his youth really sincerely honored Stalin, gratefully accepted the signs of the leader's favor.
The poet's son, writer and public figure Alexei Simonov, believes that, having become a public figure, Konstantin Mikhailovich was afraid of exposing the "dark" place of the family biography: his father, an officer of the tsarist army, disappeared at the beginning Civil war- this fact could, on occasion, give the authorities the opportunity to brand Konstantin Simonov as the son of an enemy of the people. Alexei Simonov honestly and interestingly talks about the attitude of Konstantin Mikhailovich to Stalin and the subsequent transformation of this topic in the mind of the writer. "My father is dear to me because he has changed all his life"- says Alexei Simonov in a lecture he read within the walls of the Library for Foreign Literature.
Father was replaced by Simonov's stepfather - military man Alexander Ivanishev. The boy spent his childhood in military garrisons. After graduating from the Literary Institute, Konstantin Simonov went as a war correspondent to Khalkhin-Gol, in the same capacity he went through the entire Great Patriotic War.
The war began and remained until the end of life main theme Simonov - poet, writer, playwright. Beginning in 1959, parts of his epic novel "The Living and the Dead" (in 1964 the film of the same name by Alexander Stolper will be released) - a grandiose fresco about people at war. But the first films and performances based on Simonov's works of war appeared directly during the Great Patriotic War - and, according to the testimony of many, they became acts of tremendous moral support for soldiers and those who are waiting for soldiers from the front.
“Wait for me” is a poem dedicated by Simonov to his beloved, actress Valentina Serova, became a hymn to all the girlfriends, wives of Soviet soldiers. It was copied by hand and kept in the breast pockets of his tunic. Serova played the main role in the film of the same name "Wait for Me", which was filmed according to the script of Simonov and directed by Alexander Stolper in 1943 at the Central United Film Studio in Alma-Ata.
But even earlier, in 1942, Stolper shot the film A Guy from Our City, based on the play of the same name by Konstantin Simonov. In it, Nikolai Kryuchkov played a fighter, and Lydia Smirnova played his bride, a beautiful actress Varenka. By the way, the song "Wait for me" sounded in "The guy from our city", the music for which was written by the composer Matvey Blanter. And also the popular song "The armor is strong, and our tanks are fast" (music by the Pokrass brothers, lyrics by Boris Laskin).
Films based on Simonov's scripts were filmed in the 60s and 70s, and almost every one became a bright event. Simonov's faithful co-author, director Alexander Stolper, in 1967 filmed his novel "Soldiers are not born" - the picture was released under the title "Retribution". In 1970, Alexei Sakharov's film "The Case of Polynin" was released based on a script by Simonov - about the love of the gallant pilot Polynin (Oleg Efremov) and an actress from the front-line acting brigade (Anastasia Vertinskaya). This plot recalls the dramatic love story of Valentina Serova and her first husband, pilot Anatoly Serov, who died while testing a new aircraft.
In the 1970s, based on the story of Simonov, Alexey German made the film "Twenty Days Without War", in which he improved his proprietary method of "quasi-documentary", that is, the maximum achievement historical truth- household, costume, physiognomic, atmospheric. Surprisingly, - a man of a completely different generation and aesthetic faith - Simonov accepted and ardently defended Herman's film from accusations of "blackness", in an attempt to present "a fig in his pocket" instead of a picture for the next anniversary of the Victory. Today the film "Twenty Days Without War" is undoubtedly one of the most important domestic films-achievements.
The war turned Simonov to prose. At first, Simonov turns to journalism, since working for a newspaper requires efficiency in portraying events. But soon Simonov's stories began to appear on the pages of Krasnaya Zvezda. Here is what he himself wrote about this later:
“Leaving for war as a war correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the last thing I was going to write about the war. I thought of writing anything: articles, correspondence, essays, but not stories. And for about the first six months of the war, this is how it happened.
But one day in the winter of 1942 the editor of the newspaper called me and said:
Listen, Simonov, do you remember when you returned from Crimea, you told me about the commissioner who said that the brave die less often?
Perplexed, I replied that I remember.
So, - said the editor, - you would write a story on this topic. This idea is important and, in fact, fair.
I left the editor shy at heart. I have never written a story, and this proposal scared me a little.
But when I turned over in my notebook the pages related to the commissioner whom the editor was talking about, so many memories and thoughts flooded over me that I myself wanted to write a story about this man ... I wrote the story "The Third Adjutant" - the first story that wrote in my life "Cit. Quoted from: Ortenberg D. How I knew him // Konstantin Simonov in the memoirs of contemporaries. - M., 1984. - P.95-96 ..
In his prose, K. Simonov did not deviate from his basic literary principles: he wrote about the war as about the hard and dangerous labor of the people, showing what efforts and sacrifices it costs us every day. He wrote with the harsh ruthlessness and frankness of a person who saw the war as it is. K. Simonov comprehends the problem of the relationship between war and man. War is inhuman, cruel and destructive, but it causes a huge increase in civic activism and conscious heroism.
Many biographers, describing the military activities of K. Simonov as a correspondent and writer, say, on the basis of his works, about his personal courage. K. Simonov himself does not agree with this. In a letter to L.A. On December 6, 1977, he writes to Fink: “I saw people of“ great courage ”in the war, I had the inner opportunity to compare them with myself. So, on the basis of this comparison, I can say that I myself was not a man of “great personal courage”. I think that the person of duty, in general, was, as a rule, but not beyond that. I didn’t feel like a soldier; sometimes, in the course of circumstances, I found myself in the shoes of a soldier in the sense that I found myself in the same position, temporarily, not permanently, which is very important. A person who is in the position of a soldier for a long time and constantly can feel like a soldier. I have not been in this position for a long time and constantly. ”Simonov K. Letters about the war. 1943-1979. - M., 1990. - P. 608-609 .. In Simonov's prose we find a story about "great courage" and heroism of a soldier - an ordinary soldier and officer.
When Simonov turned to prose, he immediately realized its features and advantages. Prose allowed him to deal with the socio-psychological study of man in more detail and in more detail. Already the first story of K. Simonov allows us to say how many features of Simonov's prose developed. Very sparingly, telling only in individual details about direct battle episodes, Simonov pays the main attention to the moral and ideological basis of actions. He talks not only about how a person behaves in a war, but also why his hero acts this way and not otherwise.
Simonov's interest in inner peace his heroes must be especially emphasized, for many critics are convinced of the empirical, descriptive, informative nature of his prose. The life experience of a war correspondent, the imagination and talent of the artist, closely interacting with each other, helped Simonov to largely avoid both dangers - both descriptiveness and illustrativeness. The prose of a journalist - such a characteristic of K. Simonov's military prose is widespread, including under his own influence. “I didn’t want to separate essays from stories,” he wrote, republishing his front-line prose, “because the difference between the one and the other is mostly only in names - genuine and fictitious; there are real people behind most of the stories. " This self-characterization is not entirely objective, since the essays are inferior to the stories of K. Simonov both in the degree of generalization and in the depth of philosophical problems.
The essence of Simonov's military prose is in the opposition of life and death, and in their inextricable connection in war. "In war, willy-nilly, one has to get used to death" - these calm and at the same time significant words from the well-known story "Immortal Surname" reveal the very essence of Simonov's military prose. It is important to note that, recalling "his first and very strong impression of war," Simonov wrote in 1968 that such was the impression of "a great and ruthless course of events, in which suddenly, thinking not about others, but about yourself, you feel how the heart breaks, as if for a moment it is pity for oneself, for one's body, which can be destroyed just like that ... "Simonov K. From Khalkhin-Gol to Berlin. - M .: publishing house DOSAAF, 1973. - P.8 ..
Both the writer and his heroes, finding themselves at the forefront, were immediately forced to realize the cruel evidence that death in a peaceful life is an extraordinary, exceptional event that explodes the normal course of everyday life, hostile to everyday life, - here, at the front, it becomes just an everyday occurrence, a phenomenon everyday, household. At the same time, as the story “The Third Adjutant” says, in a peaceful life “unexpected death is a misfortune or an accident”, and in war it is “always unexpected”, because it does not affect people who are sick, old, often already exhausted by life and even tired of her, but young, energetic, healthy. This regularity of the unexpected, the usualness of the unusual, the normality of the abnormal makes people reconsider all the prevailing ideas, find new criteria for the value of a person, develop some other principles for determining what is just and unfair, moral and immoral, humane and inhuman.
Simonov fought in the ranks of the army, the power of which was inseparable from its moral and political unity. And therefore, the emphasis in his wartime prose is precisely on this unity. Of course, even at that time Simonov had images of officers that aroused criticism and condemnation. In the story "Days and Nights" this tendency was most vividly expressed.
The artistic growth of Simonov as a prose writer was based on a serious assimilation of the traditions of Russian realism. From the very beginning, K. Simonov focused his military prose on L.N. Tolstoy, well aware of all the audacity of such a plan. A. Makarov rightly saw that Simonov develops in his work Tolstoy's ideas about the character of the Russian warrior. He wrote: “Working on a novel about the army, setting himself the task of a realistic demonstration of the Russian military character, Simonov naturally took the path indicated by L. Tolstoy.” Makarov A. Serious life. - M., 1962. - S. 384 ..
I. Vishnevskaya, following A. Makarov, finds in Simonov the development of Tolstoy's ideas about the most typical behavior of a Russian in war. At the same time, she notices an extremely important circumstance: “One more thought from the story“ Days and Nights ”is also connected with Tolstoy’s tendency: that people, in the face of death, have ceased to think about how they look and what they seem to be. there was no time or desire left. So from a real, everyday war, its explosions, deaths and fires, Simonov turns to its moral results ... "Vishnevskaya I. Konstantin Simonov. - M., 1966 - S. 99 ..
Simonov's letters contain one very important self-esteem- he considers himself one of those writers who quite consciously strive to "write the war truthfully and casually, like a great and terrible work." Simonov studied with L.N. Tolstoy, the main thing - the principles of depicting war and man in war.
Tolstoy teaches Simonov not to judge a person based on how he seems, and especially from how he wants to appear. He taught to reveal the inner dignity of the Russian soldier under any appearance, taught to penetrate into his mental complexity, to the hidden incentives of his actions. Tolstoy teaches Simonov to test a person's worth by his behavior in the most dramatic situation - in the face of death. I am convinced that not only from life impressions, but also from Tolstoy, the philosophical problematic came to Simonov, which he later expressed in the ambiguity of the title "The Living and the Dead."
However, it is indisputable that the new type of war, the new character of intra-army relations, corrected Tolstoy's traditions and suggested to Simonov a life-affirming, mostly positive direction of his artistic searches. K.M. himself Simonov in the story “Infantrymen” defines his view of the image of war as follows: “In war, people talk about the war in different ways, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with rage. But more often than not, experienced people talk about the most incredible as Tkalenko, calmly, precisely, dryly, as if keeping a protocol. " Recording the incredible - this is how you can often define the style of Simonov's prose, and its psychological origins are perfectly explained by the phrase of the same reasoning about the battalion commander Tkalenko: “This means that they have thought it over long ago and decided and set themselves from now on a single and simple goal - to kill the enemy”.
Talking about people who are faithful to one single goal, and therefore clear, strong and whole, K.M. Simonov sometimes borrows from them his principles of storytelling, expressing conviction and fortitude. This is how the artistic unity arises, which, perhaps, was not always achieved by Simonov, but in the "Infantrymen" it was successfully implemented.
The story "Infantrymen" seemed to Simonov one of the most difficult in his work, but this is undoubtedly one of his best military stories in terms of the depth of psychologism, in terms of the power of figurative generalization. Finally, in this story, published in Krasnaya Zvezda already at the end of the war, on September 25, 1944, we come across a convincing artistic statement of the soldier's humanism, one of the deepest moral and philosophical conclusions of K. Simonov. And most likely - the most important both for Simonov and for all the people of his generation during that harsh wartime.
All the main features of Simonov's stylistics as a prose writer are best manifested in the story "Days and Nights". In this work, the indivisibility of personal and social, private and general destinies is carefully written out. Saburov, fighting and gaining victory, at the same time gains happiness for Ani. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, he does not even have time to think about her, but one has only to get the opportunity, at least for a while, to distract himself from his military affairs, as the thought of Anya and the conscious thirst for happiness become for Saburov the goal of life, inseparable from the main thing - from victory, from Homeland.
The desire for versatility, the capacity of the image leads to the fact that the description of everyday life is organically combined with direct emotional assessments of events and heroes. The author's lyricism often interferes with Saburov's thoughts. So, for example, in the middle of a description of one of the combat episodes, you can read: “He did not know what was happening to the south and north, although, judging by the cannonade, there was a battle all around, - but he knew one thing for sure and felt even more firmly: these three houses , broken windows, smashed apartments, he, his soldiers, dead and alive, a woman with three children in the basement - all this taken together was Russia, and he, Saburov, defended it. "
Here, it seems, for the first time so clearly sounded the idea of the unity of the "living and the dead", which was destined to become the main one in Simonov's work for decades.
The agitated, almost poetic intonation of such lines reminds that Simonov originally intended to write a poem about the defenders of Stalingrad, and then abandoned his thought and turned to prose. And he really managed, while maintaining his excited attitude to the topic, to create a story that is rightly assessed as one of the first analytical works about war. But the analysis of human characters did not interfere with the direct emotional and even agitational impact of the story, which at that time Simonov convincedly considered the main task of literature. Simonov's story is undoubtedly one of those works of the war years that managed to take part in the Great Patriotic War, were a powerful means of patriotic inspiration, fiercely fought for victory.
In 1966, in the preface to the collected works, Konstantin Simonov wrote: "I have been and continue to be a military writer, and it is my duty to warn the reader in advance that, opening any of the six volumes, he will face the war again and again." by: Words that came from the battle. Articles, Dialogues. Letters. Issue 2 / Comp. A.G. Kogan - M .: Kniga, 1985. - P.85.
K. Simonov did a lot to tell the world about the worldview and character, moral character and heroic life of the Soviet soldier who defeated fascism.
For the generation to which Simonov belongs, the central event that determined his fate, worldview, moral character, character and intensity of emotions was the Great Patriotic War... Lyrics of K. Simonov was the voice of this generation, prose of K. Simonov - his self-awareness, a reflection of his historical role.
K. Simonov understood the meaning of literature in those years in this way: “... It is difficult to write about the war. It is impossible to write about her as only about something ceremonial, solemn and light business. It will be a lie. To write only about difficult days and nights, only about the dirt of the trenches and the cold of snowdrifts, only death and blood - this also means lying, for all this is there, but writing only about this means forgetting about the soul, about the heart of the person who fought on this war. " Simonov K. Soldier's Heart // Literature and Art, April 15, 1942.
Simonov persistently strove to reveal the soldier's heroism without any embellishment or exaggeration, in all its great authenticity. Therefore, the structure of conflicts in his works is so complex, invariably including, in addition to the main antagonistic clash with fascism, a wide-ranging sphere of internal, moral, and ideological conflicts. That is why the desire to become a tragic writer so obviously grows in him. The tragic acts as the most faithful, sensitive and powerful tool for testing a person, understanding his value and affirming the greatness of his spirit. The fictional prose of K. Simonov provided evidence of the indissolubility of the tragic and the heroic, as it confirmed that heroic characters in all their truth and strength appear precisely in tragic circumstances. Victory over circumstances requires awareness of actions, personal conviction of their necessity, an irresistible will to accomplish them. The depiction of a heroic character is therefore unthinkable outside of psychologism, or, more precisely, using the term of A. Bocharov, outside of psychological drama as a combination of the severity of military events and the intense emotional dramas caused by these events.
Simonov also said quite clearly that the Soviet people were prepared for the heroism of the war years by their previous life experience: work during the first five-year plans, devotion to the Motherland. Consequently, Konstantin Simonov thoroughly investigated the social and moral origins of the feat and was one of the first to address this issue. Such a deep penetration into the spiritual life of the hero becomes possible because K. Simonov is close to the life of heroes, who for him are also heroes of the time, people who decided the historical fate of all mankind.
The deep, many-sided connection with life made it possible for Simonov to create works that became the pinnacles of Russian literature about the war and clearly express all of its main tendencies.
