Anniversary of the forbidden genius. A bit about Erdman Automatic translate

MOSCOW. November 16 marks 115 years of poet and playwright Nikolai Erdman.

Erdman’s name is invariably associated with “Jolly Fellows”, “Volga-Volga”, “Suicide” and “Mandate”. Slightly less often they recall the contribution of Nikolai Robertovich to the establishment of the Taganka Theater and his collaboration with Meyerhold. And practically no one knows his surname in the credits of the Morozko, the exquisite City of Masters, and several dozens of other films that was looked up to the holes (or was extinct for political reasons), almost no one knows.

If Kachalov’s escapade didn’t happen at a reception at Stalin with Erdman’s fable (either about the forever awake father of the peoples, or about the crow and the missing cheese), sooner or later the authorities would have found a reason to arrest the freethinker. The actor himself, pronouncing seditious lines, was not injured. Got to their author. Exile, loss of rights, wandering around cities and villages, the strictest veto on life in the capital until 1948. The ban earned great success not only in the State Technical Committee, but also in many theaters of the country "Mandate". The performance, which became an unconditional event, continued at the beginning of his career a series of successes: work on a review for the opening Satire Theater, the creation of a libretto for popular musical performances, a buffoonery script for cabarets, poems, fables, and well-aimed parodies.

All noted figurative, juicy language, accuracy of metaphors, subtle irony. The taboo for the production of “Suicides” arose already at the stage of rehearsals at the Meyerhold Theater. The reading before Lunacharsky’s reading ended categorically and unambiguously: the people’s commissar of education, having verified the genius of the work, promised that he would not allow it to appear on the Soviet stage.

Similar ridicule of fate was present in his life constantly. A Jesuit invitation to the post of litconsultant in the NKVD ensemble and permission to work on the next Alexandrov film hit without the right to be presented in credits and receive a prize for him. One of the few intercessors who tried to contribute to the return of the disgraced playwright to Moscow was not a comedy director, who owed him the success of his films, but Mikhail Bulgakov. At one time, the news of the detention of Nikolai Robertovich caused the burning of part of the first version of “The Master and Margarita”. Arrest at the very take-off, the subsequent trials did not deprive Erdman of talent, but became the cause of a mental breakdown.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru