April 21: The birthday of Tatyana Bek, a poet who was broken by honesty
Tatyana Bek was born on April 21, 1949, in Moscow, into a family of writers. Her poetry has been compared to the diary of an intelligent Muscovite—vivid, painful, and impossibly honest. She has been called "the tragic tenor of the era."
From a literary family to literature
Tatyana's father, Alexander Bek, was a novelist and war veteran, and her mother, Natalia Loiko, was a children's writer. Tatyana published her first poems at the age of 16. At 23, she graduated from the journalism department of Moscow State University and worked as a librarian at the All-Union State Library of Foreign Literature. At 25, her first collection, "Skvoreshniki," was published, followed by "Snegiry."
Poetry was and remains a home-grown, witch doctor's method of self-healing for me: I spoke out, and only in this way did I survive mentally.
Poetess and critic
Bek contributed to Voprosy Literatura, Znamya, Novy Mir, Druzhba Narodov, Obshchaya, and Nezavisimaya newspapers. She taught at the Literary Institute. Critics compared her work to a diary: it contains the drama of unrealized female love, a Pasternak-like "detail" of the experience of existence, and the vivid joy of small details. After perestroika, she published books in small print runs: "Mixed Forest," "Five-Colored Mystery," "Tree on the Roof," and "Clouds Through the Trees."
In 1981, at 32, she wrote one of her most famous poems:
I'll be old, I'll be white
Deaf, awkward, inept...
Yes, regardless of fashion
I will recreate these years
Mercilessly, cordially, dryly,
I'll be an honest old woman
Honesty that became a death sentence
In late 2004, Bek publicly condemned the plans of fellow poets Yevgeny Rein, Mikhail Sinelnikov, and Igor Shklyarevsky to undertake translations of the "poetry" of the dictator Turkmenbashi. In Nezavisimaya Gazeta, she wrote: "It is not fitting for poets or sages to fawn on kings, extorting profits."
In response, her colleagues, along with the editor-in-chief of Znamya magazine, launched a harassment campaign against her. Beck fell into depression.
On the night of February 7-8, 2005, she passed away at the age of 55. The editors of Literaturnaya Gazeta cited a massive heart attack as the cause. Friends and colleagues ruled her death a suicide due to persecution.
Her simple truth—it is indecent to offer one's services to a tyrant—sounded unexpectedly crushing, but it crushed her first and foremost. (Gazeta.ru)
There are few sounds and few signs
— The line of poetry sleeps...
I'm melted. I'm tired.
Goodbye, alphabet
