Dante. new sweet style

31.12.2020 “The work on writing essays 9.3 on the collection of tests for the OGE 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko, has been completed on the site’s forum.”

10.11.2019 - On the site forum, work on writing essays on the collection of tests for the Unified State Exam 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko, has ended.

20.10.2019 - On the site forum, work has begun on writing essays 9.3 on the collection of tests for the OGE 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko.

20.10.2019 - On the site forum, work has begun on writing essays on the collection of tests for the Unified State Exam 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko.

20.10.2019 - Friends, many materials on our website are borrowed from the books of Samara methodologist Svetlana Yuryevna Ivanova. Starting this year, all her books can be ordered and received by mail. She sends collections to all parts of the country. All you have to do is call 89198030991.

29.09.2019 - Over all the years of operation of our website, the most popular material from the Forum, dedicated to the essays based on the collection of I.P. Tsybulko 2019, has become the most popular. It was watched by more than 183 thousand people. Link >>

22.09.2019 - Friends, please note that the texts of presentations for the 2020 OGE will remain the same

15.09.2019 - A master class on preparing for the Final Essay in the direction of “Pride and Humility” has begun on the forum website.

10.03.2019 - On the site forum, work on writing essays on the collection of tests for the Unified State Exam by I.P. Tsybulko has been completed.

07.01.2019 - Dear visitors! In the VIP section of the site, we have opened a new subsection that will be of interest to those of you who are in a hurry to check (complete, clean up) your essay. We will try to check quickly (within 3-4 hours).

16.09.2017 - Collection of stories by I. Kuramshina “Filial Duty”, which also includes stories presented on the site’s bookshelf Traps of the Unified State Exam, can be purchased both electronically and in paper form at the link >>

09.05.2017 - Today Russia celebrates the 72nd anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War! Personally, we have one more reason to be proud: it was on Victory Day, 5 years ago, that our website went live! And this is our first anniversary!

16.04.2017 - In the VIP section of the site, an experienced expert will check and correct your work: 1. All types of essays for the Unified State Exam in literature. 2. Essays on the Unified State Exam in Russian. P.S. The most profitable monthly subscription!

16.04.2017 - The work on writing a new block of essays based on the texts of the Obz has FINISHED on the site.

25.02 2017 - Work has begun on the site on writing essays based on the texts of OB Z. Essays on the topic “What is good?” You can already watch.

28.01.2017 - Ready-made condensed statements on the texts of the FIPI OBZ appeared on the website,

Vasily Aksenov

New sweet style

In our leisure time we once read

There is a sweet story about Launcelot.

Dante. "The Divine Comedy"

1. Three steps

On August 10, 1982, Alexander Yakovlevich Korbakh first set foot on American soil. While he was standing in a huge line at passport control at the PanAm terminal, this date kept spinning in his head: there was some additional meaning to it. And just after control, already near the baggage carousel it dawned on me: it’s a birthday! Every year on this day something “fulfilled” something for him, and now something has come true: forty-two, or something, no, forty-three. Did I think a year ago in Crimea that a year later I would be celebrating my birthday at the New York airport! 10.8.82, forty-three years old, headache from yesterday, N-1 visa, one and a half thousand dollars in my pocket, three thousand francs, I don’t feel anything except the “sum of feelings.”

The first meeting on American soil turned out to be pleasant, if not exciting. Suddenly, among the first to arrive, a suitcase jumped out of the underworld, demonstrating strange mobility, not to say swagger. Prone to inappropriate thoughts on irrelevant topics, Alexander thought, looking at the suitcase: after all, a suitcase worn out on tour, but somehow mentally dear. So, in essence, what happens is: they killed a large animal somewhere, made a suitcase out of the skin in Latvia, and now everything brutal has already evaporated, the suitcase has turned into an object of nostalgia.

The suitcase drove past, collided with an Indian bale, and fell flat. On the next turn, Korbach grabbed his own from someone else’s and began to join the line for customs inspection.

The individual thrusts a piece of paper: “Declaration! Declaration!

Eh, he doesn’t understand English! Jim Corbett demonstrates: a sharp turn of the hands and then an elegant, moderate lift of the palms: “If you don’t mind, sir.”

There was nothing attractive, but nothing particularly repulsive in the suitcase. Among the sweaty shirts is a book in an antique binding, a large “D” with a golden seal on the volume. There is clearly no double bottom. Jim Corbett looks at his passport. Gosh, this rare bird is Soviet!

- Is there vodka? - the officer jokes.

“Only here,” the visitor jokes in response, patting himself on the forehead.

Great guy, Corbett laughs, it would be nice to sit with him at Tony’s.

How many interesting things every Russian carries within himself, Corbett thought for a few more minutes, letting potential violators through without checking. A country of exceptional order, everything is under control, no homosexuality, how is it all organized there?

Alexander Korbach, meanwhile, walked in the crowd towards the entrance to the gaping tunnel, behind which, in fact, the free land began. A body that has just flown across the ocean may not yet be in full composition. Perhaps the astral threads, all these chakras, idas, pingalas, kundalinis have not yet completely combined due to the aircraft speed that is not typical for humans. He thought so, not without sad humor. The shuffling of soles does not mean anything, just the movements of household machines wanting to come to America. It will take some time for everyone to become passionate again.

In front of the crowd stood three steps, which seemed to Alexander Yakovlevich to be three ledges of different colors: one white, marble, the second rough, as if made of charred stone and purple to black, the third - fiery scarlet porphyry. The crowd was silently drawn into the tunnel.

Ahead, at the end of the tunnel, another standing crowd appeared, welcoming. Television camera lamps were already sticking out above her. Keep a low profile, Korbach told himself. Speak only Russian. No demeaning attempts at gibberish. Sorry, gentlemen, the situation is uncertain. The theater still exists. The question of my artistic direction is up in the air. The purpose of the visit is contacts with creative forces of the United States that are kindred in spirit and style.

Well, so far this one is not repulsive in appearance, like Lermontov, although with Andrei Bely’s receding hairline, 175 centimeters tall main character approaches the television cameras, we, taking advantage of the novel’s space, can slightly swing at his curriculum vitae.

2. Curriculum vitae

In 1982 soviet man I still had no idea what these two poorly pronounced words meant. He, of course, did not know the abbreviation CV, which is pronounced “see-vee” and every time resembles a certain sibyl, that is, a predictor of the future. There is some reason for this, since CC, this mixture of a questionnaire and curriculum vitae, referring to the past, always contains hope for good changes in the future. In essence, this is nothing more than an advertisement for an individual, made in the hope of getting people to buy.

Advertising, after all, should not deceive, and therefore the author, in the role of a personnel officer, must immediately reveal that the hero in his video had some ambiguities, if not ambiguities. Here, for example, is the ever-troubling “fifth point” of Soviet jargon. In all documents, Alexander Yakovlevich Korbakh was listed as a Jew, but he was not always such, we must admit. His last name didn’t always “aah” so much in Hebrew. And the middle name once sounded more pleasant to the red ear.

In childhood and early adolescence, our friend played the role of Sasha Izhmailov, a Russian boy. He also had a corresponding father, Nikolai Ivanovich Izhmailov, a WWII hero limping and leaning on a massive stick, of whom Sasha, as expected, was proud. For his part, Nikolai Ivanovich treated Sasha with restrained severity, which could be mistaken for restrained love, and only when he was very drunk called him an incomprehensible word “bastard,” after which his mother screamed shrilly: “I’ll die! I’ll die!”

Working in the nomenklatura, Nikolai Ivanovich increased his standard of living, and his family, as people say, did not know grief. IN post-war years Sasha became rich with a brother, and then with a sister. Nikolai Ivanovich often fussed around on the carpets in the office with all three of them, and only sometimes, hugging Valerka and Katyushka, he warmly whispered: “You are my dear ones,” emphasizing each word.

Now you and I, reader, can guess, but the boy did not understand then why, over the years, his admiration for his father was replaced by some kind of vague wariness.

On the periphery of this difficult family, meanwhile, Grandma Irina was always present, who was so called seemingly simply because of her age, but at the same time, not entirely just because of her age. She tried to appear on those days when Izhmailov went on important business trips. First she brought Sasha toys, then skates and clubs, looked at him lovingly, and spent hours tirelessly talking about the Indians of America, then about frigate drivers, then about the world political arena.

Grandma was atypical. A military doctor, she spent the entire war in field hospitals. She walked with a firm officer’s step, the constant “Kazbek” in her teeth, large glasses brought her whole figure to the common denominator of a leading woman. In addition to all this appearance, throughout Sasha’s childhood, her grandmother drove her own little car, a captured Opel Cadet.

The boy did not understand how this remarkable person was his grandmother; he felt some kind of family distortion, but did not want to go into details. Sometimes he heard Grandma Irina and Mom begin to speak in what is called a raised voice. The grandmother seemed to lay some kind of claim on him, and the mother, with her characteristic exaltation, rejected these rights. Only in fifty-three, that is, in the fourteenth year of Sasha’s life, did everything become clear.

Teacher Vera Matveevna, reflecting on methods of education, is forced to admit that she was wrong in trying to educate all her students the same way: “You cannot suppress a person. .. everyone should do good in their own way... The dissimilarity of characters should hardly be taken for incompatibility.”

A. Aleksin “Mad Evdokia”

The teacher Evdokia Vasilievna was convinced: the greatest talent in her students was the talent of kindness, the desire to come to the rescue in difficult times, and it was these character traits that she cultivated in them.

A. de Saint-Exupery “The Little Prince”

The Old Fox taught the Little Prince to comprehend wisdom human relations. To understand a person, you need to learn to peer into him and forgive minor shortcomings. After all, the most important thing is always hidden inside, and you can’t see it right away.

B. Vasiliev “My horses are flying...”

The narrator remembers with gratitude his first teacher, who raised her students to be true citizens of the Fatherland.

Indifference of the adult world (children's insecurity; innocent child suffering)

D.V. Grigorovich "Gutta-percha boy"

The hero of the story is the orphan Petya, who is mercilessly exploited in the circus: he is a tightrope walker. While performing a difficult exercise, the boy crashed, and his death simply went unnoticed.

A. Pristavkin “The golden cloud spent the night”

The heroes of the story - Kuzmenysh - while in an orphanage, became victims of cruelty and indifference of adults.

F.M. Dostoevsky "The Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree"

The boy, the hero of the story, came with his mother to St. Petersburg, but after her death, on the eve of Christmas, no one needed him. No one even gave him a piece of bread. The child was cold, hungry and abandoned.

THE PROBLEM OF DEVELOPMENT AND PRESERVATION OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

Development and preservation of the Russian language

A. Knyshev “O great and mighty Russian language!”

In this ironic publication, the journalist ridicules borrowers, showing how ridiculous our speech becomes when oversaturated with them.

M. Krongauz “The Russian language is on the verge of a nervous breakdown”

V. Stupishin sweet stil? What language do we speak and write?

The journalistic article is devoted to the problems of linguistic absurdities, which are full of speeches of politicians and some journalists. The author gives examples of absurd accents in words, foreign borrowings, and the inability of speakers and writers to use the rich arsenal of the Russian language.

A. Shchuplov “From the Party Congress to the Congress of the Roof”

The journalistic article is devoted to reflections on how many abbreviations have appeared and continue to appear in our lives, which sometimes become, according to the author, an example of “official stupidity.”

Quotes

“Speak Russian, for God’s sake! Bring this novelty into fashion.” (A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov.)

“In days of doubt, in days of painful thoughts about the fate of my homeland, you alone are my support and support, oh great, mighty, truthful and free Russian language!” (I.S. Turgenev)

“... Voluntarily or unwittingly, we have come today to the line when the word becomes not a part of life, one of many parts, but the last hope for our national existence in the world.”

(V. Rasputin)

“To use a foreign word when there is an equivalent Russian word means to insult both common sense and common taste.” (V. Belinsky)

“A person’s morality is visible in his attitude to the word.” (L.N. Tolstoy)

N. Gal “The Living and the Dead Word”

The famous translator discusses the role of the spoken word, which can hurt a person’s soul with its thoughtlessness; about borrowings that distort our speech;

about bureaucracy that kills living speech; about caring for our great heritage - the Russian language.

K.I. Chukovsky “Alive as Life”

The writer analyzes the state of the Russian language, our speech, and comes to disappointing conclusions: we ourselves are distorting and mutilating our great and powerful language.

Correlation between a person’s name and his inner essence

DI. Fonvizin "Nedorosl"

In the comedy, many characters have “telling” surnames: Vralman, a former coachman, lied that he was a foreign teacher; the name Mitrofan means “like his mother,” who is depicted in the comedy as a stupid and arrogant ignoramus. Skotinin Taras - Mitrofan's uncle; He loves pigs very much and in terms of the coarseness of his feelings he is similar to cattle, as his surname indicates.

PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH NEGATIVE PERSONALITY QUALITIES

Heartlessness, spiritual callousness

A. Aleksin “Division of property”

The mother of the heroine Verochka is so callous that she forced her mother-in-law, who raised and healed her daughter, to leave for a remote village, dooming her to loneliness.

Y. Mamleev “Jump into the coffin”

The relatives of the sick old woman Ekaterina Petrovna, tired of caring for her, decided to bury her alive and thereby get rid of their problems. A funeral is a terrible evidence of what a person becomes, devoid of compassion, living only in his own interests.

K.G. Paustovsky "Telegram"

Nastya lives a bright, fulfilling life away from her lonely, old mother. To her daughter, all her affairs seem so important and urgent that she completely forgets to write letters home and does not visit her mother. Even when a telegram arrived about her mother’s illness, Nastya did not go right away, and therefore did not find Katerina Ivanovna alive. The mother never lived to see her only daughter, whom she loved very much.

In our leisure time we once read

There is a sweet story about Launcelot.

Dante. "The Divine Comedy"

Part I

1. Three steps

The suitcase drove past, collided with an Indian bale, and fell flat. On the next turn, Korbach grabbed his own from someone else’s and began to join the line for customs inspection.

The individual thrusts a piece of paper: “Declaration! Declaration!

Eh, he doesn’t understand English! Jim Corbett demonstrates: a sharp turn of the hands and then an elegant, moderate lift of the palms: “If you don’t mind, sir.”

gosh) – exclamation of surprise: wow! Wow!

This little one of the rare birds is Soviet!

- Is there vodka? - the officer jokes.

“Only here,” the visitor jokes in response, patting himself on the forehead.

Great guy, Corbett laughs, it would be nice to sit with him at Tony’s.

Well, while this not repulsive appearance, like Lermontov, albeit with Andrei Bely’s receding hairline, 175 centimeters tall, approaches the television cameras, we, taking advantage of the novel’s space, can slightly swing around his curriculum vitae.

2. Curriculum vitae

In 1982, Soviet people still had no idea what these two poorly pronounced words were used with. He, of course, did not know the abbreviation CV, which is pronounced “see-vee” and every time resembles a certain sibyl, that is, a predictor of the future. There is some reason for this, since CV, this mixture of questionnaire and biographical information, referring to the past, always contains hope for good changes in the future. In essence, this is nothing more than an advertisement for an individual, made in the hope of getting people to buy.

Working in the nomenklatura, Nikolai Ivanovich increased his standard of living, and his family, as people say, did not know grief. In the post-war years, Sasha became rich with a brother, and then with a sister. Nikolai Ivanovich often fussed around on the carpets in the office with all three of them, and only sometimes, hugging Valerka and Katyushka, he warmly whispered: “You are my dear ones,” emphasizing each word.

Now you and I, reader, can guess, but the boy did not understand then why, over the years, his admiration for his father was replaced by some kind of vague wariness.

One day visiting Grandma Irina in her large room on Starokonyushenny Lane, he noticed something new on the wall: an enlarged photograph of a young military man with a sleeper in his buttonhole. Who is this? He felt that some dizzying turn of fate was approaching, but still decided to ask.

“This is your father,” the grandmother said firmly and was enveloped in blue government smoke. She waited for objections, but none came. - You see, this is your face: ears stick out, mouth to ears, laughing eyes. And here is your metric, it is not true that it was lost in the evacuation. This is your father, Yakov Ruvimovich Korbakh, my son, and you are my own grandson. It was I who then insisted to Lisa that my father be included in the register, even though he had already disappeared in prison.

From that day on, Sasha stopped calling Nikolai Ivanovich Izhmailov dad, despite the fact that his mother, as if sensing the approaching family breakdown, stubbornly insisted on the previous situation: “go to your father, ask your father, consult with your father.”

Instead of an explanation, one day a striking event occurred in the family. Nikolai Ivanovich was on a business trip (in those years he supervised the Donbass in terms of nourishing Marxist truth), his mother and her younger children went to a matinee at the Youth Theater, Sasha sat alone in the dining room over a physics textbook, or something, and listened on the radio to the overture to Kabalevsky’s opera “ Cola Breugnon.” The whirlwind of musical rebellion overwhelmed him, he longed to rush somewhere immediately, well, to these gezes, to the rebel arquebus players. Then a heavy Stalinist Empire style chandelier fell from the high ceiling right on his head. And he lost consciousness.

Subsequently, he tried to remember his feelings at that moment, or in an insignificant fraction of a moment, or in a pause not embraced by time. Consciousness, obviously, is cut off even before the pain has passed to the receptors, because you don’t feel pain. Where is the soul in this pause? It was during this pause? He remembered that the pause was interrupted by a moment of monstrous compression and rupture, after which everything seemed to be restored, he opened his eyes and saw Izhmailov’s eyes above him, flashing when they met his eyes with frantic joy. “Nikolai Ivanovich,” he whispered, and Nikolai Ivanovich burst into tears. What kind of wild existentialism, idiotic indeterminism? You are sitting at the table, listening to Cola Breugnon, and at some point a fucking chandelier falls on you, and not on an empty place.

Alexander Yakovlevich was not given the opportunity to find out during the decades of his life that this moment of compression and rupture was nevertheless determined by previous development. The fact is that no chandelier fell on him. Exercising copyright, we could keep silent about this, however, remembering the reader’s right, we do not consider it possible to maintain a grinning mystery.

The fact is that at the height of the overture, Nikolai Ivanovich, who had returned from a business trip, entered the dining room. That day his shortened and nailed leg ached horribly. The recent death of Joseph Vissarionovich plunged the entire apparatus of the Central Committee into bad weather, and Nikolai Ivanovich was no exception. Even in Donbass he felt something sickening. In this state, he saw the back of the hated boy’s head in front of him. The cub of Yashka Korbach, who owned Liza, who was considered his best friend, whom he handed over to the security officers. How can one consider oneself a respectable party member after this, if immediately after Yashka’s arrest he began to rape Liza and overwhelm her with lust? How can you forget this if this growing new Yashka is always in front of you? Here, choking, Nikolai Ivanovich raised his boxwood stick and brought it down with all his might on the top of the boy’s head.

To the credit of Comrade Izhmailov, it must be said that he first called an ambulance and only then began to break out the chandelier in order to simulate an existential catastrophe.

For some reason, misfortune reconciled Sasha with her fictitious father. The explanation was silently postponed by everyone, and he began to call his stepfather Nikolai Ivanovich. And his mother once told him: “Nikolai Ivanovich is very good man, after all, he married me when I was already with a child, that is, with you, Alexander.” And he, despite his increasing masculinity every day, wiped his eyes and stroked her head.

An explanation, and perhaps no less dramatic than the one that never happened, occurred three years later, in 1956, when Alexander was already in tenth grade. One day at dinner, Nikolai Ivanovich became nervous with a newspaper covering Hungarian events: “Scoundrels! Scoundrels! They hung communists upside down!”

It was possible, of course, to wait with the explanation, to skip this nervous moment, but Alexander, turning pale, pushed the plate away and made a statement:

– Mom and Nikolai Ivanovich, I want to inform you that I am taking my father’s surname and... and his nationality.

- You're crazy! – the mother immediately cried out. - After all, you’re only one quarter!

There was a painful pause. The younger children sat with their mouths open. Katyusha mechanically continued her vile habit of pouring from the spoon back into the bowl.

- Go away! - Nikolai Ivanovich finally said.

“This is the third thing I wanted to tell you,” said Alexander. - I'm moving to my grandmother.

Mom covered her face with a napkin. The gazes of Korbach and Izhmailov met. The latter silently waved his hand away: away! out!

Having thus deciphered such formal points of the supposed Korbachian si-vi, we must point out other, albeit not so important, but significant points. Well, for example, in the “education” column you can simply indicate “higher”, or you can make it more specific. In this case, we will have more than one high school mention, but a whole list: Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, Theater School named after Shchukin, directing department of VGIK, Higher Screenwriting Courses. This list, however, will lead us to nothing but embarrassment, because our hero did not earn a diploma from any of the indicated institutions.

Moscow State University was going to expel him after the first semester for “revisionist views,” but they finally expelled him after the second semester and with a different wording: “expelled for unsatisfactory attendance.” He rushed headlong into the theater school, like a diver from a diving board, in splashes, in the laughter of a new-born “cartoon,” and quickly got to the point of saying: “expelled for disrupting a course performance.”

The saddest, and perhaps the most dangerous period of Sasha’s education was the Institute of Cinematography. Fascinated by the possibilities of the “hidden camera,” he made a two-part film about summer military camps. What he thought was gentle humor infuriated the colonels from the military department. The film was requested by the KGB, where it sank into a bottomless womb. The liberal dean advised the young man to go somewhere for a year. Society may not forgive him for his encroachment on the “most sacred,” on the patriotic duty of young people. In general, our hero left VGIK without a diploma, and got hooked on screenwriting courses with the help of heavily drinking friends, just so that he wouldn’t be taken to the barracks, wouldn’t be soldered to parasitism, wouldn’t be sent one hundred and first kilometer away.

To hell with them, with these Soviet universities, Sasha thought then. Real education now comes not from the official system, but from the catacombs: from banned and forgotten books, from Western intellectual journals, from underground art exhibitions, and most importantly, from communication with the still living luminaries of the “Silver Age”.

Having thought through this idea, he went to Leningrad and managed to invite himself to visit Akhmatova and read to her at least a meter of his poetry. “This is not bad for you,” the empress of the “Silver Age” graciously said and repeated from the whole meter one line, which he was not very proud of and which he tried to mumble while reading: ““The bumblebee whispered courage to Shamil.” Like Khlebnikov,” she added with a smile.

One of his friends from his unfinished philology department introduced him to two great old men who lived in a writers’ cooperative near the Airport metro station, Mikhail Bakhtin and Leonid Pinsky. The old people, not spoiled by the attention of the younger generation, accepted the inquisitive young man with undisguised pleasure. Sasha never ceased to be in awe of the giants of erudition. I even tried to adopt from them the manners of the old intelligentsia, not always realizing that both exile and the camp experience were thoroughly imprinted on these manners - for example, strong licking of a spoon.

The more important thing is that they sparked a burning interest in the Renaissance and realized that this word is often used incorrectly in our country, as the revival of something that was once born, and then for some reason withered away for five hundred or a thousand years . From this point of view, speaking about the renaissance of Russian philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century, one might think that Aristotle and Plato once worked in Rus'. Speaking about the Renaissance, obviously, we must keep in mind the general creative upsurge of a nation, a group of nations, or an entire civilization.

The shocked young man listened as the old men, endlessly lighting cigarettes next to each other, easily talked about the literary scene of 13th-century Florence, about the “new sweet style” that came from the two Guidos - Guinizelli and Cavalcanti, 2
Guido Guinicelli, Guido Cavalcanti(both ca. 1230–1280) - poets from Dante’s circle, the founders of the “new sweet style” - canzones and sonnets glorifying love and exalting man.

About how powerfully young Dante entered this style. Three centuries before Shakespeare! Six centuries before Pushkin! Seven centuries before Sasha Korbach! Does this mean that before this “new” style, the “old” one already existed? Well, of course, here they are: the eleventh century, the troubadours of Provence! That is why this style began to be called new, because they longed to revive the old, all these outpourings, all these canzones of Bertrand de Born, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and other courtly vagabonds, girded with swords.

A human carnival procession with all its masks of laughter and horror passed in front of him, led by Mikhail and Leonid, the “sages and poets” of OPOYAZ, who only towards the end of their lives, after arrests and camps, managed to carry the “lit lights” to their cooperative apartments. These were the people of the second Russian Renaissance. As we approached the twentieth century, a mighty stream of creativity arose, the dam of which was set by two fiends of “positivist thinking” - Lenin and Stalin.

This, indeed, is a worthy goal in life, yesterday’s idol of Soviet youth decided, to work for the third Renaissance! And so, throwing the guitar onto his grandmother’s closet, twenty-six-year-old Korbach, a dropout from the philology department of Moscow State University and the Shchukin Theater School, barricaded himself from his young life with philosophical treatises and volumes of classics. Even after a long break, he began to visit his mother, who worked in the manuscript department of the All-Union Lenin Library and had access to a special storage facility.

His living space in those years extended in the nook behind the massive bookcases of Irina Stepanovna Korbakh, née Kropotkina - yes, one of those Kropotkins! - and the grandmother never ceased to admire the spiritual evolution of this, as she put it, not the worst representative of her unexpected generation.

Sasha lived on duty in the boiler room, and did not shy away from reselling book shortages. He sported a black naval pea coat, which, of course, had its own history. Here it is in compressed form.

West Estonia, Keila-Joa. Restricted area. Telegraphic prose in its prime. The abandoned estate of the Volkonsky-Bencendorffs. Tank brigade headquarters. In the park there are remains of bridges on the remains of chains. Remains of idylls. Waterfall. Slabs of the necropolis raised by caterpillars. The tankers were looking for gold.

Descent to the sea. The hum of the pine trees. Free wind radio. Greenish and foamy roll. In shallow water - a black pea coat, like a good half of humanity. Verbs and adverbs come in. Grabbed it. I'm dragging. Hard. Tired. Flipped over. Mind-blowing. A double-breasted item, not ours, from Stockholm, sparkled!

The pea coat, as heavy as an ocean lion, was stuffed with petrified sand. Young Sasha spent three days using a scoop (!) to pull this sand out of his sleeves and pockets. The object, brought to Moscow, dried for another three months and finally came to life, laying on the shoulders like a thick and soft skin, a pea coat of Swedish cut, there is no other like it on the Arbat. It was in this strange attire from a huge Swedish shoulder that he became addicted to trudging around the city, especially since the bottomless pockets contained a lot of books.

In this imaginary CV there was another very confusing section, namely “work activity”. Here there were some zigzags, spirals, jerks, and most importantly, some dips and blackouts. Here, let’s say, is A. Korbach’s main “credit”: acting and artistic direction in one of the Moscow theaters. It seems like a well-known fact to everyone, but don’t try to find this theater on the lists of Moscow cultural churches. Don’t try to find in newspapers or dissertations the titles of Korbach’s once noisy and even scandalous performances, they are not there. We will only have to rely on the conversations of the Moscow public and our own memories, which, however, is what we are going to do.

First, however, let me return to what accidentally fell from my pen forty lines ago, to Sasha’s all-Union pop-tape fame. For all its curiosity, it still also relates to work activity.

He first appeared before the public with his guitar at a Komsomol song competition and immediately went against the “romance of long roads” and stood out sharply as an independent bard, a rooster of the sixties. Sasha Korbach's song "Purgatory" was rewritten across all ten time zones by the old, grinding magicians. The romance-blues “Figure Skating” made girls’ heads spin everywhere.