May 2, 1989
A writer and screenwriter has died in Moscow. Veniamin Kaverin. Author of the novels "Two Captains" and "Open Book".
In all trials, it is necessary to maintain dignity and always remain human.
Born in 1902 Pskov, came from a family of musicians. His father conducted a military orchestra, and his mother owned a musical instrument store. His real last name was Zilber. He took his pseudonym from the first chapter of Eugene Onegin, based on the surname of a hussar and Pushkin’s friend.
To Talon rushed: he sure
What is there waiting for him Kaverin.
Entered: and the cork to the ceiling,
The comet's wine splashed current
He studied during the Civil War. In 1923, he graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Living Oriental Languages, and a year later, from Leningrad State University.
He joined the Serapion Brothers circle together with Zoshchenko и Zamyatin. He wrote short stories and novels in the genre of psychological prose.
In the late 30s, he became famous throughout the country after the publication of the first volume of Two Captains, an adventure novel about Northern explorers.
The most interesting thoughts come to mind when you're 18 years old.
Fight and seek, find and never give up
The sky won't let me down. But I can't vouch for the earth.
If you are going to be, then be the best!
During the war, he worked in the Northern Fleet, gathering material for a sequel to "Two Captains." The second volume of the novel was published in 1944.
In 1956, he published the novel trilogy “Open Book” about a young microbiologist who discovered penicillin (her real-life prototype is the Soviet creator of the drug Zinaida Ermolieva).
In the 1950s, he edited the banned almanac "Literary Moscow." He was a good friend and stood up for his colleagues who were inconvenienced by the authorities. He was one of the few who refused to participate in the persecution. Boris Pasternak и Mikhail Zoshchenko. He was the first to mention the banned novel in print. Mikhail Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita." Signed a petition in defense. Julia Daniela и Andrey Sinyavsky. He spoke out against the ban on the publication of Cancer Ward. SolzhenitsynHe tried to secure the release of Nikolai Zabolotsky. He provided financial assistance to those who had fallen into disgrace. To Anna Akhmatova.
There is hardly a single serious writer who has not had a manuscript lying in his desk drawer, nurtured, thought over, and banned for inexplicable reasons that go beyond common sense.
In 1967, at the Congress of USSR Writers, he was forbidden to give a speech on the state of Soviet literature.
Literature cannot be controlled
There is no surer way to increase a hundredfold the interest in the past than to try to hide this past or distort it.
The country has entered a new period - a period of looking inward at itself, at what happened to it in previous years.
He considered his best work to be the novel “Before the Mirror” (1971) – a psychological novel in letters about love and art, written from a woman’s perspective.
He died of lung cancer at the age of 87.
If I could travel back in time, I'd choose the hungry winter of 1920. The debates that were driven by nothing but the desire to get to the truth. The cramped room in the House of Arts—half-open, so as not to suffocate from the tobacco smoke.
In 2001, the musical Nord-Ost was staged based on Two Captains.
