Vladimir Krupin is a representative of the so-called village prose. He is known primarily for his collection of stories “Grains” and such works as “Water of Life”, “Forgive me, Farewell...”, “Love me as I love you”.
There were different periods in his creative path. Among them is a time of complete oblivion. Today, the books of the Russian writer are published regularly. In addition, Vladimir Krupin became the first laureate of the Patriarchal Literary Prize. The biography and work of the Russian prose writer is the topic of the article.
Childhood
The future writer was born in a small village in the Kirov region two months after the start of the Great Patriotic War. Vladimir Krupin reflected his childhood memories in the collection “Vyatka Notebook”. In the stories included in this book, the writer tells not only about wartime, but also about the fates of completely different people.
Vladimir Krupin is a Russian prose writer, for whom the theme of love for his small homeland has become almost the main thing in his work. The writer’s childhood, like the early years of many of his peers, was not easy. After graduating from school, he worked as a loader, milling operator, and mechanic. For some time he worked for a local rural newspaper as a correspondent. Vladimir Krupin knew firsthand about hard peasant labor. He, like many war children who lived in villages, spent most of his summer holidays in the garden or in haymaking.
City and village
Vladimir Nikolaevich greeted me cordially, hugged me like a brother and invited me into the office: “Sorry, I urgently need to answer a letter, but in the meantime, look at the pictures.” The office, like the rest of the rooms of a capital resident, is filled with icons, books and paintings. The furniture is prefabricated, it is clear that each mismatched item is associated with some memories. Homespun rug - real, rustic. This is how the new Russians decorate their apartments, in the à la russe style, while the Krupins use it for its intended purpose, covering a shabby sofa. The writer finishes writing on the laptop, I take out the recorder, but no such luck - Nadezhda Leonidovna, his wife and also a writer, editor of a pedagogy magazine, invites me to the table. According to Russian custom.
After prayer we have tea, maintaining a leisurely conversation. As usual, we talk about the weather, they say, it’s an amazing winter today - so much snow has never fallen in Moscow since 1915.
– You’ve been living in Moscow for a long time, haven’t you? - I ask the Vyatchan resident.
Vladimir Nikolaevich laughs:
– It’s been a long time, but I didn’t experience those record snowfalls in 1915. I served my military service in Moscow at the end of the 50s, having managed to work for two years in a regional newspaper and one year as a mechanic and milling machine operator in Kilmezi before joining the army. Then I studied here at the institute. He dreamed of being a historian, wrote a script about the streets of Moscow for television, and led excursions. I studied the capital inside and out.
– Then you decided to stay here?
– No, although the graduate school provided metropolitan registration. I stayed when I married Nadezhda, a native Muscovite.
“We know the Moscow where you met from the film “I Walk Through Moscow,” I turn to Nadezhda Leonidovna. – Is this a different city now?
“So the country is no longer the same, a lot has changed,” she answered. – Recently, old photographs of Lyublino, where we lived, were sent to my smartphone. These shots are amateur. My God!.. A completely different environment, different people.
– Imagine, there are old women standing at the platform, selling radishes - 10 kopecks per bunch. You go up to them and talk. The train is about to leave, but there is no rush - you and the whole country have an immense future ahead,” recalls Vladimir Nikolaevich. – The country was like one family. And then, just as angles began to appear in architecture, people became angular.
– Do you think architecture influences people?
- Very! What kind of house did you spend your childhood in? Wooden? Low buildings mean people know each other. And they are closer to the forest and the river. What is childhood without this? Those who start a large family are better off raising their children in the village; impressions from there are extrapolated for the rest of their lives.
“What words do you use, my God,” the wife shakes her head.
The writer laughs:
- Okay, I’ll say “projected.” But seriously, in the village, from childhood, a living language is ingrained in a person, because there is a living environment... There is such a Varenets, maybe you can eat it?
“God forbid,” I accept the treat and make an attempt to start the interview.
Family
Vladimir Krupin is called an Orthodox writer. No wonder. After all, the future prose writer was brought up in an atypical Soviet family. Church rituals were known to him since childhood. Among the relatives, of course, there were pioneers and Komsomol members. But on Easter, a festive table was always prepared in the Krupins’ house, and they put on clean white shirts. However, we didn’t go to church because it was destroyed. And the grandfather of the future writer was arrested only because he refused to work on the Great Orthodox holiday.
Notes
- [ruskline.ru/analitika/2011/09/06/ya_vsegda_hotel_byt_pisatelem/ Vladimir Krupin: “I always wanted to be a writer...”]
- [ruskline.ru/news_rl/2011/05/19/vladimir_krupin_otradno_chto_nasha_vlast_hotya_by_chtoto_nachala_ponimat/ Vladimir Krupin: It’s gratifying that our government has at least begun to understand something]
- [ruskline.ru/news_rl/2012/04/20/diktatura_vorovstva/ Dictatorship of theft]
- Mukhametshina E.
[www.gazeta.ru/social/2014/05/15/6034493.shtml “Tolstoy, of course, is deeply disgusting”]. "Gazeta.ru" (May 15, 2014). Retrieved May 17, 2014. [www.peeep.us/1333ee54 Archived from the original on May 16, 2014]. - [www.trud.ru/article/02-12-2004/80762_paradoksy_fateja_shipunova.html Work: PARADOXES OF FATEY SHIPUNOV]
Student years
After three years of military service, Vladimir Krupin submitted documents to the Literary Institute. Gorky. However, he did not pass the competition and entered the Pedagogical Institute, the Faculty of Russian Philology.
By the time he received his diploma, Krupin was married and lived with his wife in a communal apartment. The times were difficult. I had to work a lot, write scripts for television. But even in those years, Krupin found time for creativity. And despite the fact that he failed to publish his works for a very long time. Only in 1974 was Vladimir Krupin able to publish his first collection of stories.
Books
The writer's creative path began with the publication of poems, essays and reports. But the genre of “village prose” attracted him extremely much from his youth. In 1974, the works “The Coachman's Tale” and “Varvara” were published. At the same time, the collection “Grains” was published.
The story “Water of Life,” which Vladimir Krupin wrote three years after his literary debut, brought widespread popularity. This work contains fantasy, humor, and sadness. The author talks about a certain healing spring that can cure a very common illness in Russia - alcoholism.
Essays
- Zerna, 1974 (collection of stories)
- Until the Evening Star, 1977 (collection of short stories)
- Living Water // “New World”, 1980, No. 8
- Palm Sunday, 1981
- Fortieth day // “Our Contemporary”, 1981, No. 11
- Living Water, 1982 (collection of stories)
- In full Ivanovskaya, 1985
- The Road Home, 1985
- Vyatka notebook, 1987 (collection)
- Sorry, goodbye..., 1988
- AS ONLY, SO IMMEDIATELY a story // “Our Contemporary”, 1992, No. 12
- Children's church calendar, 2002
- Russian saints, 2002
- Stories of recent times, 2003
- Consecration of the throne. Everyday life of a rural temple. Notes of a parishioner, 2005 (three stories)
- Unsunset light. Notes of a Pilgrim, 2007
- Haze, 2007 (collection of stories)
- From feast to hangover. Russian view of globalism, 2007 (collection of stories)
- Athos. History and modernity of the Holy Mountain, 2008 (religious journalism)
- Holy Land. Where His Footsteps Walked, 2009 (religious journalism)
- Barefoot in the Sky, ed. Siberian Blagozvonnitsa, 2010
- Athos. Standing in Prayer, ed. Siberian Blagozvonnitsa, 2011
Articles
- Krupin Vladimir
. [borodino2012.net/?p=2094 Kulikovo Field: Next fall marks the 600th anniversary of one of the greatest battles in the history of the Motherland] // Komsomolskaya Pravda, 09.13.1979. - Krupin Vladimir
. [www.rospisatel.ru/krupin3.htm “You are the earth and you will go back to the earth”]. - Krupin Vladimir
. [3rm.info/5014-russkie-tezisy.html Russian theses]. - [www.blagogon.ru/articles/36/ Stories] // Holy Fire, No. 1.
- [www.blagogon.ru/articles/48/ Vasya, throw away your crutches] // Holy Fire, No. 2.
- [www.blagogon.ru/articles/66/ Dad in my life] // Holy Fire, No. 3.
- [www.blagogon.ru/articles/73/ Shameless demon] // Holy Fire, No. 4.
"Time of the Burning Match"
This book is a selection of the writer's stories. It also includes works previously published in literary magazines. The works in this collection are easily perceived and accessible even to young readers. Russian prose writer Vladimir Krupin teaches good and bright things. “Books for children and adults” - this is how fans of his work speak about the collections of stories of this writer.
Patriotic writer
In the nineties, Vladimir Krupin began to publish works of art in which he expressed his state position. Thanks to these writings, he gained a reputation as a tendentious fiction writer. The inadequacy of the creative intelligentsia, the agony of the Russian village are the main themes of this period. The writer also acted as a publicist.
Krupin treats Russian folklore with special attention and love. In his social and creative life, he expresses contempt for Western values, which is clearly evidenced by the story “Yankee, Go Home”, and which slips into the work “As soon as possible.” The latter is the notes of a young psychiatrist. In this story, the author identifies the morals in the country at the turn of the century with the order in a mental hospital.
About Astafiev
– You said that the new generation of writers is not so bright. But Astafiev was also a bit gloomy in places, to put it mildly. What do you think of his latest novels?
– As a writer he was very great - a tremendous power of expression and persuasion. I met him in 1971, but even before that I considered him my teacher. His last years made us very sad. It probably began with his pastorals “Lyudochka,” in which the heroine hanged herself, and “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess,” a bleak story, although with a glimmer of light at the end. A wounded soldier dies in a medical train and ascends into the sky: “The train broke away from the rails and floated towards the horizon...” He told Rasputin and me that censorship from “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” threw out a comparison in which, as I remember, soldiers in gray greatcoats were lying on snow like unwashed potatoes. As a writer, this is incredibly powerful. Just imagine: you take potatoes out of the basement, and they are so stale. And we, of course, were indignant that it was crossed out. But when the bacchanalia of permissiveness came, he restored it like this: “Soldiers’ heads in helmets and caps were seen as unwashed potatoes, carelessly poured onto the snow.” Strongly! But at the same time, he restored other deleted episodes that were terrifying. For example, checkmate his heroes. And Lucy... Astafiev himself said that he worked for a long time on the image of Lucy, the “shepherdess” with whom the main character was in love, and during this time he himself fell in love with her. And in the piece that he restored, Lucy is raped by both ours and the Germans.
Then there was the terrible story “The Sad Detective” and his last novel “Cursed and Killed,” which I could not finish reading. And Rasputin couldn’t do it either. We stopped understanding him. And also obscene epithets addressed to Marshal Zhukov and other commanders, a kind of “trench truth”, they say, the Germans were overwhelmed with corpses. It seems to me that he was unfair, some kind of tear opened up in him. I suffer greatly from this, but I always remember him and will remember him.
– They say that Astafiev was waiting for the Nobel Prize and therefore tried to live up to what Solzhenitsyn was given the prize for. They are almost the same age, only six years apart, both fought, both wrote the truth about their time, and Astafiev was literary superior to Solzhenitsyn. And if they gave it to one, then why won’t they give it to the other...
“I don’t know what he was waiting for.” He waited for the fact that in 1993 his signature was placed under the firing squad “Letter of Forty-Two,” in which liberal democrats called for the banning of communist and “nationalist” parties and societies, and for the closure of some newspapers, including “Den” and “Sovetskaya Rossiya” , "Literary Russia". It was not stated directly, but in fact the letter pushed patriots to be shot in the White House, since it called for not to stand on ceremony with the “fascists” and to act outside the law, banning the Supreme Council and the Constitutional Court in the process. What was amazing was that they were written by liberals, but the spirit was Bolshevik. Astafiev's surname was tucked into the very end, although according to the alphabet it should have come first. Yuri Kublanovsky claims that Astafiev later stated that his signature was affixed without asking. Like, they called and said about the letter, and he waved his hand: “Okay, sign it.” But the very fact that they turned to him says something.
At the same time, we loved him very much, and I continue to love him. And look what a bright writer was next to him - Evgeny Nosov, many of whose works, written for children, are included in the school curriculum. He was friends with Astafiev and was the only one who could tell him the truth. He himself was also a front-line soldier, a gunner, and three months before the Victory he was seriously wounded. And he said to him: “Vitya, what is this...” To Astafiev’s credit, when he compiled his collected works, he inserted letters to him there, including ours and Nosov’s, in which he reproached him, saying that Vitka is such a -whatever, why are you dragging all sorts of obscenities to you.
Therefore, you understand, it is impossible not to love Astafiev, at least compassionately. My favorite book of his is “Ode to a Russian Vegetable Garden.” What a beauty this is! In essence, the story, of course, is Orthodox - about how the Lord God protects His people and in the most difficult times sends either grass, then potatoes, or fish.
Features of Krupin's prose
The main image in the work of this writer is the House. In his stories, he recreates it, based on memories of relatives, peasant life, and folk wisdom inherent in the village residents. Another characteristic feature of Krupin’s prose is open endings. Moreover, such endings are particularly lyrical and soulful.
One of the largest works, “Vyatka Notebook,” is dedicated to the Small Motherland. According to critics, it is this collection that contains classic examples of village prose.
Krupin's favorite heroes are holy fools, village men. These characters speak the truth, understand the true essence of events, although they express their thoughts rather tongue-tied. But it is these lovers of truth who oppose lies, which have long been rooted in Russian society, and, according to the author, provoke such phenomena as social apathy, indifference, and drunkenness. The writer is extremely careful about language. This is expressed not only in the rich literary style characteristic of his works. It is known that the Russian prose writer more than once spoke out against the use of borrowings from foreign languages in his native speech.
Krupin’s later work is devoted to the theme of Orthodoxy (“Velikoretskaya Font”, “Last Times”, “Religious Procession”). Since the mid-nineties, the writer has been teaching at a theological academy, and is also the editor-in-chief of one of the Christian magazines.
Losses and gains
– Vladimir Nikolaevich, ten years ago we had a long interview with you. What has changed over time?
– A lot has changed, and for the worse. But there is no need to dwell on this, because next to this is a revival. Let's say that over these years the number of crusaders of the Velikoretsk religious procession has increased even more. This is a visible sign of the revival of Russia.
– What did you mean by the worst side?
“The pressure on the person has increased. I especially feel sorry for the elderly and pensioners. It seems like they are increasing pensions by 500 rubles, but the prices eat up the increase immediately in the evening. Life has become more difficult for the poor.
Things have always been hard in Russia, materially. Is it worth grieving about this? I have a story “The Time of a Burning Match” - this is not my image, but the image of the holy fathers, who said that our existence here, compared to eternal life, is like a burning match against the background of the sun’s radiance. What should we think about? Of course, about how to earn eternal life. Therefore, if we evaluate the past time not materially, but in the main thing, then everything is not so bad with us.
– What have these years brought, good and bad, for you personally?
– That’s all, thank God – the children are healthy, the grandchildren are growing up. But people left, without whom it is difficult to imagine one’s life. My mother-in-law almost didn’t live to see her centenary. I was proud that I was the best son-in-law in the Russian Federation. But she didn’t make it... A fighting person, a front-line soldier, she signed for the Reichstag. It was a big blow for my wife and me.
And how many friends have I lost, my God! Sviridov, Soloukhin, Vasily Belov, Valentin Rasputin left. These are all my older brothers and friends. He buried each one and accompanied him to the grave. I felt very lonely in literature. This is very sad for me personally. But maybe the Lord left me so that I could pray for them and continue their work. I really want to write about them.
- Some leave, others come.
– In a writing sense – yes, of course. So we supported and replaced the front-line generation of writers. This is a special breed of people; there will never be such people again. The next generation supported us - Andrey Vorontsov, Evgeny Shishkin, Yuri Kozlov, Alexander Trapeznikov and others. Also Sasha Seguin, who wrote the script for the film “Pop” and the biography of Metropolitan Macarius. They professed the same moral standards, and it was a change in the literal sense. But after them they were not propped up, but already trampled, so to speak, by authors who are difficult to evaluate. Because there are so many of them, I can’t find my way anymore – an anthill, to be honest. The technology that has invaded our lives - these laptops, the instant transmission of texts to publishing houses, the ability to publish oneself on the Internet - can now turn anyone who can put words together into a writer. What I regret: along with the mass popularity, some kind of alienation appeared among writers. Previously, let’s say, they went to Nekrasov and got together - like brothers. It was the same with us. And now everyone meets on their laptops via Skype.
– There are many surnames, but few first names?
– There are very good authors. And you know, now women set the tone. You have Nadezhda Miroshnichenko, a very good poetess - sometimes so loud, sometimes very lyrical. In Vyatka I have a wonderful friend Svetlana Sirneva, she writes amazingly heartfelt, spiritual poetry. What kind of Tsvetaevs and Akhmatovs are there... Nina Yagodintseva. Sergei Shargunov, who recently wrote a wonderful thing about Kataev - “The Pursuit of Eternal Spring.” The same Zakhar Prilepin. Another thing is that they are exploiting the already conquered space. For example, Prilepin’s latest novel is about the Solovetsky camp. He brought out the head of SLON Eichmans under the name Eichmanis, and took other odious figures into the novel. Well, we wrote about the Gulag, and here we go again. That is, they somehow see less light.
– Does mass character in literature lower its level?
“It gives birth to, how can I put it... geeks.” It's a vicious circle. A low level of writing lowers the level of readers, and they, in turn, lower the demands of writers - and it’s like we’re rolling downhill.
– Does this affect you too, your creativity?
– Those authors who started publishing earlier were luckier. They have a circle of long-time readers who remember them as before and expect something from them - and this does not allow them to relax. I also feel the anticipation. And how can I betray trust?
(The owner’s cell phone started playing a melody from the old Soviet TV show “Film Travel Club”; the interview was interrupted. Vladimir Nikolaevich began to explain into the phone how to get to the Intercession Monastery, to the relics of the blessed Matrona of Moscow. It seems that Krupin’s duty today is to be a guide to Moscow streets.)
“Well, here’s an example of what has changed in ten years,” the writer returns to the conversation. “My neighbor called, he’s on his way to Matronushka.”
– Is your neighbor in the country also a writer?
- No, no, hard worker mechanic. We don’t have a writer’s dacha, but just a house in the countryside, in Balashikha. The neighbor has his own farm and keeps goats. At one time, due to Russian carelessness, he did not legally register the property inherited from his deceased parents, and now a car wash is coming onto the site, and a bulldozer is already raking out his yard. So I went to pray, but before I was an unbeliever. So where are we?
