The most difficult task. Zinaida Mirkina

“….After all, what we consider silence is the voice of the incessant God..”

50 years of shared happiness

Zinaida Aleksandrovna and Grigory Solomonovich lived together for more than 50 years. He passed away just short of his 95th birthday.

Fortunately, there are still videos of his conversations. And what a pity that our television is deaf to such extraordinary people. And there are fewer and fewer of them...

They have gone far from us,
Gone into the silent skies.
And, freezing, he sees the eye.
And the ear hears voices,
Which are carried by the wind.
The sound fades into the distance.
Oh, what, what should I answer them?
Why did they leave us?
I would still like to look, I would like to listen,
What the sheets whisper in the heights.
Trees are our souls
Escaped from the bustle.

Zinaida Aleksandrovna Mirkina turned 88 years old in January.

...That long-familiar sound -
Light drops pattering,
Like wet leaves
She whispers to her heart that she is alive...

Biography
Zinaida Aleksandrovna Mirkina. Essay on my life.

I was born on January 10, 1926 in Moscow to young revolutionary-minded parents. Father is a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1920, a participant in the Baku underground. Mother is a Komsomol member in a red scarf. In the house there was an atmosphere of deep faith in the ideals of the revolution, asceticism, sacrifice in the name of one’s ideal. As deputy director of the Thermotechnical Institute, my father received the party maximum, i.e. four times less than what a non-party member would receive in his place. As a child, I didn’t hear any stupid party phraseology, but the party, as I felt it then, really seemed to me the honor and conscience of my era. This is how I felt at school - perhaps under the influence of the family microclimate.

And suddenly - thirty-seventh year. Half, if not three-quarters of the parents of the children I know were arrested. My mother asked me to call home those whose parents were arrested and to be especially attentive to them. Firstly, she told me, mistakes happen, and secondly, you can imagine how scary it is to live knowing that your parents are enemies. It was only many years later that I appreciated these words. Moreover, I found out that my father slept for two months without undressing, and said goodbye to us not only for the night.

At the age of 14 (40), I thought about many inconsistencies between ideology and life. Bruno Jasensky’s book “Man Changes Skin” brought me out of the crisis. She convinced me that enthusiasm and belief in ideals shape new relationships between people and new atmosphere, and there is the main thing, and this is more important than all material results. I realized that the burning of the soul itself is more important than anything that comes out of this burning. And it was as if I swore internally allegiance to this fire. But after some time I learned that Bruno Yasensky himself was arrested and declared an enemy of the people...

Next comes war. She washed away all the questions. Evacuation to Novosibirsk. Incredible nostalgia for Moscow in the first year. Incredible tension of all teenage forces (I’m 15-16 years old). But I am still grateful to School No. 50 in Novosibirsk, where I studied in the 9th and 10th grades. It was good school With good teachers. In Novosibirsk I had my first literary successes, perhaps more loudly than ever afterwards. I was the editor of the school wall newspaper and made some revolution in this matter. The newspaper was published on seven sheets of Whatman paper, it occupied the entire corridor, and our entire school and many children from other schools were rushing to read it. But life was hard, a painful life. Edge of hunger. In the summer, grueling work on the state farm (this was called the labor front) ...

In 1943, she returned to Moscow to go to college. I entered the philological department of Moscow State University. For a long time I doubted whether I had the right to engage in literature now, when the country is in such tension. The first year of university gave a negative answer to this question. What they were doing there seemed empty and vanity to me. And this was when people were dying at the front... And although I really only loved literature, I was a pure humanitarian, I strongly thought about running into physics, into engineering - to be useful simply, tangibly. Only L.E. Pinsky’s lectures reconciled me with the philology department. I felt that thought may not be idle, that studying literature and the history of thought is not at all vanity. And I realized that this faculty, less than any other, would take me away from my soul, from myself.

My student years were very important stage of my life. But, of course, not the university as such, but what happened to my soul when I studied there. The soul has matured. Very hard. Very painful. I was surrounded, it seemed, by all the damned questions that tormented humanity before me. But I had no idea that they had tormented many, many people for centuries. I was alone, alone with the unknown, with the painful mystery of existence. The books that poured in only led to this mystery, but I could not get any answers from them. The Bible, which I became acquainted with at about 18 years old, was very captivating and exciting. But only Old Testament. I felt a huge cosmic wave coming from it - a different scale, a different measure. The New Testament was incomprehensible to me. He did not say anything to the soul then. I grew up in an atheist family and was a convinced atheist. But by about the age of 18, I began to feel that you couldn’t live with atheism, that it was small, crap. And when I read Dostoevsky’s phrase (in the novel “The Idiot”) that all atheists are not talking about THAT, I realized that this was true, that this phrase was taken, as it were, from my soul.

Music occupied a huge place in this period of life. My friend and I, along with our university friends, ran to the conservatory several times a week, with or without tickets. And there, in the gallery, something great happened to the soul, incomparable to anything. First it was Tchaikovsky. The 5th and 6th symphonies, then Beethoven, played a special role in my life. And when it came to Bach, I was already a different person. It began with one organ concert, which revealed such an inner infinity, the existence of which I could not even suspect. I wrote poems then, which in themselves were very weak, but what made them come into being was enormous. They contained the following stanza:

And be the giver of strength for the battle,

I swear by that chord, drunken by the vastness,

You will no longer hear my prayer!

At first glance, completely atheistic verses. This was actually my first religious poem. God from outer space with one jerk moved inside, into my own inner abyss. From an external, alien, other being, he turned into a deeply internal one, into my own bottomlessness, into my other, great “I”. Thus, even before I read the words that the kingdom of God is within us, I already vaguely felt this in my own experience. It was not God in general, but only the external god, the idol, that the soul rejected and refused to pray to him without love and reverent awe. On the contrary, the soul for the first time felt its divine beginning and great awe before it, reverence, love.

However, all this was still very vague. It came and went, and the soul remained, as it were, in the desert. And this desert grew and grew. And the “damned” questions came closer and closer. They surrounded us with a wall. The whole world seemed to me like a continuous wound, continuous suffering. All animal world ate each other. Yes, man ate animals, and all people caused suffering to each other. And I couldn’t help but cause suffering, which completely terrified me. Well, at least: I couldn’t respond to love and felt the suffering I was bringing. From this I myself suffered almost more, and perhaps much more, than the one whom I could not accept.

All this was abnormal, painful. I didn’t share my experiences with anyone and even in appearance I was one of the most cheerful girls on the course. This is such a paradox. However, life became more and more unbearable. And the flow of self-recrimination grew and grew. Somehow it turned out that if I could ask someone, I always asked myself. She considered herself guilty before everyone with complete sincerity. I was then very far from Christian books, I didn’t know any phrases like “I’m worse than everyone,” “I’m to blame for everyone,” but that’s exactly how I felt. The only thing that seemed fruitful and important to me was asking myself. Then I realized that I seemed to be wiping my soul like paper with an eraser, and I rubbed it all the way to the hole. The soul became transparent, and something that is always nearby, but so rarely penetrates inside us, poured into it. The thick wall of our ego usually doesn’t let us in. One day this wall suddenly collapsed. It was a very special day. The day of the culmination of pain. It seemed that a little more and the heart could not stand it. It was at the dacha. There was a thunderstorm. And then the sun rose, and the spruce tree that stands in front of the balcony - covered in drops, in thousands of large raindrops - suddenly burst into flames like a thousand suns. It was something indescribable. Shock. A mental revolution. When a few years later I saw the icon of Theophanes the Greek “Transfiguration”, I felt in the overturned apostles, who had lost all their previous landmarks, the same state that I had experienced. Light, unprecedented - supernatural - seemed to pierce the heart through and through and did not kill, but recreated it. First of all, there was complete confidence, super-reasonable, beyond any logic, that the Creator of this beauty was perfect. This opened my heart. And then something happened that cannot be expressed in direct words, because the words of our language are unilinear, but what I saw was multidimensionality. And although my physical eyes saw NOTHING but dazzling beauty, my inner eyes saw God. And I can’t express it in any other word. I saw something that I could not imagine, because my soul had not known this before. - New look, A New Look, new system feelings. I felt a gaze on me that contained endless love and peace at the same time. It was this intersection of love and peace that was amazing. Boundless love for me and perfect peace for me, no matter how difficult it may be for me. If love alone were without peace, it would be powerlessness. If there was only peace without love, it would be indifference. But their combination was some kind of super-peaceful internal omnipotence. And in this look, in this new internal structure, there was an answer to all my questions and all the pain. My meaning is not to satisfy my desires, but to transform them - in the very height that my soul and every human soul. At this height, inner light and all-embracing love are born. The heart feels eternity as clearly as the hand feels solid objects. - Firmament. And in this firmament nothing is needed from the outside. The soul is nourished from an internal source and finds in it everything to quench its thirst and hunger. The whole world is in her, and she reveals it to everyone.

But no matter how much I say, the main thing remains in the words. I was definitely raised to great mountain and immediately showed their completeness. The world was scary and meaningless when seen fragmentarily, in parts. No single part makes sense. He is in the secret of completeness. This was my second birth. I was 19 years old.

However, the spiritual experience that I acquired was adjacent to zero life experience, not to mention everyday life. At first it seemed to me that no one had experienced anything like this before me, otherwise all the answers to the questions would have been found in an instant. And now I will answer everyone’s questions... I took the Gospel, and it was revealed to me instantly. I already knew everything that was said there. It took years for me to understand: an experience similar to mine happened more than once or ten times, that it was repeated in different people, but changing his whole soul, he could not change anything in the world. That people’s eyes and ears are not yet prepared. “He who has ears, let him hear...” - had no ears...

And this was a new, incredible blow. It seemed to me that now, now I will give people what they need most. But... People DID NOT NEED IT. I became heavy for them. They could not and did not want to live on the mountain that was revealed to me. No, not bad and not evil, but good people, relatives, loved ones - they clearly shied away. They could not withstand this internal tension. And I sort of began to stuff the unfolded wings under my ordinary dress. It was unbearably difficult. And physically I couldn’t stand it. Around my fifth year at university, I fell ill. Maybe everything took its toll: the stress of the war years, hunger, and, finally, this great internal overstrain. I fell ill. She was bedridden for five years. I couldn't walk, I couldn't read, I couldn't do anything. And I experienced incredible torment. If they had told me earlier that this was possible, I would have asked for death as the highest mercy. That's what I asked. But to no avail. She dreamed of death, but unauthorized death was out of the question. I felt simultaneously with the torment that it - this torment - was my task, that the soul should BE ABLE TO BEAR IT. The cross is different. This is my cross. And something infinitely important for everyone depends on how I endure it.

Maybe my whole life was divided into two parts - before and during the illness. The second part continues to this day. Although I have been walking and working for a long time. I won’t talk about how I learned to live again. It is very difficult. Let me just say that it’s probably the same way one learns to walk on a tightrope. I learned. Not too good, but I learned. And people can't see that I'm walking on a tightrope. They can see that I walk like everyone else. But the fact that everyone has the ground under their feet, and I have a rope, this is not visible. I’m holding on to the air... Or, more precisely, to that very firmament. I came up with a term - to dive under the disease. This is a process somewhat reminiscent of diving under the waves during a storm. I handle myself well in the water, perhaps much more confidently than on land. Not just in the water, but in the sea, and therefore this comparison is natural for me. To dive under the disease, to live deeper than the disease... When this succeeds, I live and work. My self-medication is deep contemplation, access to those expanses of the Spirit that are truly eternal and are not subject to the laws of this world. We have little idea how accurate and true Dostoevsky’s expression is, which has become current: beauty will save the world.

I started writing again. (I haven’t written for 7 years). I learned to write again, as well as to walk. I have been writing poetry since childhood. During periods of shedding, she tore everything up. At the age of 18 I decided that it was all over with poetry. And suddenly they began to come like a thunderstorm, like a storm. It was happiness and completeness. But then it left me just as it came. Later I realized that I was moving from one type of creativity to another. The definition of the first was given by Akhmatova. The second is Tagore. Akhmatova has lines about the Muse: “It’s tougher than the fever shakes off, and then for a whole year - not a hoo-hoo.” And Tagore: “I plunged the vessel of my heart into the silence of this hour, and it was filled with songs.”

Now (and for a long time now) this is the only way for me. And poetry is the fruit of deep contemplation. And if the soul enters silence, everything is washed away in it, the vessel becomes clean and something from the source of life flows into it. Poems are traces of this something... And, perhaps, every real verse is a touch to the source of life.

What I began to write after a seven-year break was very different from what I wrote before. The fullness of life did not come spontaneously, in moments of creativity, but in a different way. She actually was a constant internal state, disrupted only by something external - illness. When it was possible to localize the disease, to “dive under the disease,” the soul became itself and was, as it were, constantly connected to the source of creativity, to the source of life (that’s one thing). And yet the poems remained helpless for a long time, much more helpless than before the seven-year break. I learned to write again. Mastery is constant work...

There was no question of publishing poetry in the early 50s. But I managed to get work - poetic translations. I started translating Soviet poets different republics - word by word. The work was exhausting and often humiliating, although I never took vile poetry. But there were poems that were simply bad, not genuine, and translating them was agony. I have been translating since 1955. The first translations were by Silva Kaputikyan (bad translations, I’m ashamed of them).

I had close friends who really needed my poems. The main friend among them, who had a huge influence on my entire development, is Lima Efimova. This is a man who could say like Prince Myshkin: “I don’t know how it’s possible to see a tree and not be happy. In her, I felt for the first time an exit into the spiritual space, unlimited by my EGO. And although she had not written a single line in her entire life, I felt in her true creativity spirit. This friendship was infinitely important to me. It still lasts.

From those long ago years I still have closest friends Rosa Sikuler and Vera Shvartsman. As for Vera, I consider her a genius wordsmith. At her school, she staged amazing performances with high school students. It seemed to me a miracle that this could be done together with children.

In 1960, a great event happened in my life - a meeting with Grigory Pomeranets. One of my friends brought him to our dacha in the summer, who decided that he definitely needed to hear my poems. He collected poems for the first “Syntax” by Alik Ginzburg, an anthology of non-print poetry. By the way, this was the first magazine to publish (with a circulation of 30 copies) Brodsky and several other poets who are now known. The 4th issue was supposed to contain my poems. But number 4 was no longer there - Alik was arrested...

“Syntax” introduced us to Grisha. A young man in a white shirt with huge hair came in (later it turned out that he was already 42 years old - he looked about 28). He asked me to read poetry. I started. And suddenly the sense of space and time disappeared. Everything has disappeared. I felt that no one had listened to me like that before. His eyes darkened and deepened. They looked somewhere upward and inward, and the poems - I saw it - entered deeply, deeply into the very infinity of the soul. A lot of people accidentally gathered. He didn’t let me break away, didn’t let my mother feed the guests. I asked you to read and read more. Sometimes he asked me to repeat it and wrote it down.

In February 1961 we got married. By the time we met, spiritually I was already a completely mature person. I was already formed at 19. When we met, I was 34. But physically, I would hardly have survived if not for Grisha. From that time on, there was always a person with me who shared my soul, with all its joy and heaviness. A man who never had too much of me. I was always needed, and not just some piece of my soul, but the whole of me.

Then everything was together. And it was endlessly fruitful for both of us. Once at the beginning of 1962, Grisha told me: “You found yourself in the way you write, but I didn’t. I found myself in the way I live, the way I love.” He said this calmly, without a hint of sadness. I felt that he had found the main thing. These words made me infinitely happy. The correct hierarchy was found. He does everything that depends on him, the rest is not up to him. And it was as if some fairy had overheard him. From then on, he began to write one essay after another, learned to “immerse the vessel of his heart in the silence of this hour,” and the words came by themselves.

And rivers flowed through me, seas of poetry, several poems, and then prose. First of all, fairy tales. And later an essay about Dostoevsky “Truth and Its Doubles”, about Pushkin – “Genius and Villainy”, about Rilke – “The Invisible Cathedral” and a book about Tsvetaeva – “Fire and Ashes”, and finally the novel “Lake Soriklen”. This is to some extent an autobiography of the soul. But not only that. (Perhaps this is the most precious thing in prose to me).

I have completely stopped translating for income since we were together. Grisha cut it off. I translated only what was necessary for me. First of all, Rilke is the poet closest to me of all. And I also translated a little Tagore and Arab Sufis. This is very important work. It was published in BVL, in the volume “Arabic Poetry of the Middle Ages”, Ibn al Farid and Ibn Arabi. Rilke's translations were published along with his work about Tsvetaeva in the book "The Invisible Cathedral", but most of all poetry was published. Finally, together with Grisha, the book “Great Religions of the World” was written and two general books essay "In the Shadows" Tower of Babel" and "Invisible counterweight" - the first part of our general lectures, which we have been reading at the seminar for more than ten years. We already have, as it were, our own community - people who really need the same thing that we need. After our lectures there are long conversations and answers to questions. We value very much the atmosphere of deep authenticity that is felt at these meetings. It seems to me that real spiritual work is going on here, work on reading the Word addressed to the Soul.

We want not only physical eyes, but the Soul to learn to read.
Because only she can read God's Word.
God does not speak any of our languages.
He speaks with light, silence, height and depth that embraces us.

Zinaida Mirkina

Zinaida Mirkina - famous Russian poetess, which became famous largely due to its philosophical lyrics. The running motif of her work, which can be traced in almost every poem, is spiritual development man, the relationship between man and God. Do you want to learn more about the path, creativity and life views of this poetess? Welcome to this article!

Zinaida Mirkina. Biography

The future poetess was born in 1926 in Russian city Moscow. Her family had revolutionary inclinations. Mirkina's father was a member of the Bolshevik Party (since 1920) and a participant in the so-called Baku underground. Mother was an ordinary Komsomol member. An atmosphere of deep faith in the revolution and its ideals reigned in the Mirkins' house. Young people believed that for the sake of their ideals they needed to make concessions and lead an ascetic lifestyle. Thus, Zinaida’s father, being the deputy director of the Thermotechnical Institute, received the party maximum. And this is four times less than what a non-party worker earned in the same position.

The revolutionary atmosphere influenced the formation of Zinaida as a person. However, at the age of 14, she first began to think about the discrepancy between the cultivated ideology and real life. The girl was brought out of reflection by a book called “Man Changes Skin” by B. Yasensky. This work greatly influenced the views of the future poetess. Zinaida finally realized that faith in ideals and “fire in the soul” is more important than any material values.

The Great Patriotic War

During the war, the Mirkin family was evacuated to Novosibirsk. During this time, Zinaida studied at Novosibirsk school No. 50. It was a rather difficult period for the girl. Edge of hunger, teenage problems, new team, exhausting work in the Soviet economy - all this put pressure on the future poetess. However, there were also positive aspects. At this time, Zinaida Mirkina took her first steps in literature. The girl became the editor of the school wall newspaper, which enjoyed great success among local educational institutions.

In 1943, Zinaida Mirkina returned to Moscow. There she entered the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University. And again Mirkina suffers from contradictions. The girl wanted to study literature with all her heart. However, she considered this a useless exercise that would not help her country, which was suffering from a debilitating war. Therefore, Zinaida planned to transfer to a technical specialty and become an engineer. However, Pinsky's lectures convinced Zinaida that literature plays a huge role in the development of a nation and country.

Zinaida Mirkina. Poetess. Photo

IN student years Zinaida began to get involved in religion. She read the Bible completely, and the Old Testament made a great impression on the girl. Zinaida grew up in an atheist family. However, she began to realize that she could not live like this. As a result, the girl abandoned her atheistic views. At the same time, Zinaida Mirkina began writing religious poems. The girl defended her thesis. However, the poetess was unable to pass the state exams due to a serious illness that confined her to bed for five whole years. Also, Zinaida was forced to interrupt her creative activity.

Further activities

When Mirkina finally overcame the disease, she again took up poetry. But, due to the thematic focus, the girl could not publish her poems. It is for this reason that most of the work went “in the drawer”. In order to support herself, Mirkina was engaged in translations of Soviet poets from various republics. Also, Zinaida conducted literary evenings among your friends. There the poetess read out her own works. In 1960, at one of the evenings, Zinaida Mirkina met Grigory Pomerantsev, who was collecting material for literary magazine"Syntax". A relationship began between them. As a result, in 1961, Gregory and Zinaida tied the knot.

Creativity of the poetess

One of the most interesting poets writing on religious topics is Zinaida Mirkina. The work of this writer is characterized by incredible optimism, pathos and sublimity. A similar effect is achieved through various literary devices, which Mirkina skillfully weaves into her works. Zinaida repeatedly touches on eternal themes relating to faith and religion in general.

However, Mirkina's bibliography consists of more than just religious lyrics. Zinaida over the years literary activity I wrote a lot of fairy tales and even a couple of poems. Essays about great writers of the past deserve special attention. Mirkina wrote about Pushkin ("Genius and Villainy"), Dostoevsky ("Truth and Its Doubles"), Tsvetaeva ("Fire and Ashes"). In addition, Mirkina enriched the domestic literary treasury with translations of famous Soviet writers.

Zinaida Mirkina - poetry

They say people are dying
They say that people are sick.
They say there is no heaven in this world,
They say that hell is very close.
They say there are no such events
So as not to be brought into the whirlpool.
Speak up people, speak up
And the apple tree is blooming near the house...

Meeting of Zinaida Mirkina with Grigory Pomerants

A friend brought Grigory Pomerants, who was collecting poems for the publication of an anthology of non-print poetry, to her dacha. This day became significant for them.

“...The day burned so much, the day shone so much.
Like it's an interval
Between worlds..."

Zinaida Mirkina was at a loss, since guests had gathered, she had to go to the set table, but Grigory did not allow her to interrupt.

Moreover, he forbade her hospitable mother to invite everyone to the meal. Grigory Solomonovich himself recalled this with disbelief - he, so tactful, turned into a tough man who did not hear those around him, did not pay attention to the requests and murmurs of the guests.

That period was difficult for him, his beloved wife died, the loss was bitter and difficult. And suddenly he felt that he had touched a magical source.

He came to life with every line, he absorbed the words, he could not tear himself away for a moment, it seemed to him that otherwise life would stop.

And suddenly this happens:
All the distance floats into our hearts.
And you touched your cheek
To the star and with your finger to the clouds.
And it’s so quiet for us, so crystal clear,
That you can see the bottom of the ocean
And you and the farthest star -
Indivisible One.

“...The space of paradise is extended
Between two mixed hearts..”

“The light turned two into one...”

And six months later they got married. Zinaida Mirkina was 34 years old. Spiritually, she was already an established person, but physically, she was a very weak woman. The disease in its most terrible manifestation receded, but was always nearby and often reminded of itself. She admits that living alone, she would not have been able to withstand the physical pain; she would have been gone a long time ago.

“From that time on, there was always a person with me who shared my soul, with all its joy and heaviness. A man who never had too much of me. I was always needed, and not just some piece of my soul, but all of me.”

The husband literally nursed his wife. They lived together for more than 50 years. This is one of the happiest, most inspired couples.

This is probably the case when two halves of the soul met. Zinaida never tires of reminding that SUCH meetings happen when a person is internally ready to remain alone.

Only a complete personality can attract something like this. She gave up on her female destiny, being sure that she would remain alone forever. And only she felt her readiness to be alone... when fate presented a universal gift - a meeting with a person who shared her soul.

We are two very old men.
In my hand is your hand.
Your eyes are in my eyes
And so imperturbably quiet,
So endlessly deep
Non-stop flow
That tenderness that is greater
us,
But it pours into the world from ours
eye,
That tenderness that is so full,
That everything will pass, but not her.

And then the words sounded: “I wish I could introduce them!” They are so similar." At this point they parted, but Heaven heard them)

You open your soul to us,
You quietly embrace us with light.
And we... we are looking here and there.
And we keep asking: where are you?
You lit up the Spirit like the firmament,
And you whisper quietly at sunset:
As soon as he finds me,
Who will open his arms to Me?

A new round in the work of Zinaida Mirkina
and Grigory Pomerantz.

Of course, the work of Zinaida Alexandrona was reflected in the worldview of such an extraordinary personality as G.S. Pomerantz. But his wife’s lyrics and her poems were also reflected in Pomerantz’s journalism. After his marriage, Grigory Solomonovich began to write a lot, he felt a surge of strength.

The time they lived together was unusually fruitful for both. Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants is one of the most brilliant and educated personalities, one of the most significant thinkers of the last century. He didn't like being called a philosopher. Rather, he is a man of the Way, an “absolute man,” as Vladimir Levi called him.

I really want to write an article about Grigory Solomonovich, because even after briefly touching on his biography, I was struck by the fortitude, intelligence and deep decency of this man.

The doors of their house are always open for friends, there is always a special joyful atmosphere in it. Read how one of the listeners, B. Chichibabin, recalls the conversation

“The greatest happiness of my life were their conversations, during which they both spoke, taking turns, not interrupting, but listening and complementing each other. Although she and he spoke, it was not a dialogue, but a two-voice monologue, as it were, winding in a spiral of one integral spiritual being, out of condescension to the listener, for ease of perception and for the sake of greater completeness, divided into two bodily - female and male - images.

In addition to home “get-togethers,” Zinaida Mirkina and Grigory Pomerants for a long time gave joint lectures at the Moscow Museum of Patrons, where like-minded people met. The hall was always crowded, people stood along the walls and sat on the floor. People came specially from other cities to listen to poetry. Oh, what a pity that I didn’t know about this...

Life is a conversation with God.
Not the one recorded, yesterday,
And the incessant, everlasting
Which continues to this day.
From heart to heart - directly,
Just like a sudden cry of a bird,
Like the sound of rain, like the shine of rays
Among the wet branches.

“They told me raindrops
With a flash in the crossed fire:
There are no dead, but only us, the living,
Only partly alive, not completely.”

“God doesn’t speak any of our languages.
He speaks with light, silence, height and depth that embraces us.”

Nature, sky, mountains, trees, rain... everything is loved. Zinaida Alexandrovna is especially sensitive to the forest.

Thank you, my forest,
For your quiet lessons.
Because life is possible without
Vain deeds and cruel words...

“….After all, what we consider silence is the voice of the incessant God..”

50 years of shared happiness

Zinaida Aleksandrovna and Grigory Solomonovich lived together for more than 50 years. He passed away just short of his 95th birthday.

Fortunately, there are still videos of his conversations. And what a pity that our television is deaf to such extraordinary people. And there are fewer and fewer of them...

They have gone far from us,
Gone into the silent skies.
And, freezing, he sees the eye.
And the ear hears voices,
Which are carried by the wind.
The sound fades into the distance.
Oh, what, what should I answer them?
Why did they leave us?
I would still like to look, I would like to listen,
What the sheets whisper in the heights.
Trees are our souls
Escaped from the bustle.

“This is a continuous dialogue with him, “a dialogue between voice and silence - responsive, filled with reciprocal meaning”
(A. Zorin)

You left, but the birches remained.
You left, but the forests remained.
And through all the irrepressible tears
Silent beauty emerges.
Don't be distracted for an hour or a moment,
I am united with them, as with you.
And through all the incessant speeches
Your dumbness comes through.

Zinaida Aleksandrovna Mirkina turned 88 years old in January.

...That long-familiar sound -
Light drops pattering,
Like wet leaves
She whispers to her heart that she is alive...

Do nothing at all
Stand motionless on a quiet morning
And enjoy mother of pearl
My native sky
And the shells on the table,
My snow-white coral...
Yes, do nothing at all
And even thoughts are at zero.
Be still next to God
And suddenly feel how much
I have been given immeasurable amounts of
When there is a table, coral, a window...

Zinaida Mirkina. Photo: Anna Artemyeva / Novaya Gazeta

« Lord, if only people would look at Your rights! Hallowed be Thy name..." - Zinaida Aleksandrovna Mirkina wrote in Novaya Gazeta in February 2017. She was fully ninety years old.

Zinaida Alexandrovna wrote then in discord. Between Russia and Ukraine (this fight was clearly especially unbearable for her in recent years). Between the “reds” and “whites” a hundred years ago - and their descendants today. Between the surface on which the “prince of this world” rules (and most of us crowd) - and the depth of acceptance and forgiveness, to which it is difficult to descend.

The experience of a person who lived on this particular land for almost the entire twentieth century intensified her voice:

“Our world is sick,” Zinaida Aleksandrovna wrote in Novaya in September 2014, at the peak of anxiety.

And then follows a brilliant, solid, absolutely sober analysis of the last thirty years of life on “one sixth”, on the former territory of the USSR. Honest (and almost menacing in its directness) in relation to the strong and weak of this world, to the elegant and naive self-delusions of perestroika, to the “building of democracy” using direct fire, to Chechen war, tragic strife with Ukraine, the rapid collapse of the former empire and the fate of its subjects.

Re-read Mirkina's essay: the voice of honor and the voice of common sense speak in it in unison. And you think with admiration that these diagnoses were firmly and clearly made by an 88-year-old woman - a lyric poet, translator of Rilke and Sufi poetry, author of an essay about Dostoevsky and Tsvetaeva.

But spiritual work, which Zinaida Mirkina and her husband, philosopher Grigory Pomerantz, carried out together for five decades in Russia in the 20th century, was more important and significant than their texts and lectures. The texts included only integral part the path of two wise men. Other mechanisms of fate were also at work here. Perhaps - more understandable to the compilers of lives than to us today.

• "New Newspaper"

parting

Gift of full-heartedness

About personality, poetry and spiritual path Zinaida Aleksandrovna Mirkina for Novaya Gazeta was written by her student, prose writer and screenwriter Roman Perelshtein

On September 21, after a long illness, the spiritual poet Zinaida Aleksandrovna Mirkina passed away. An unsurpassed translator, a brilliant publicist, an outstanding lecturer, a brilliant essayist, a major religious thinker— she left an indelible mark on the souls of her admirers and followers. Mirkina and her late husband, Russian philosopher Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants, stand apart from national culture, but are in her womb. I would compare them to a beacon to which a culture, any culture, must orient itself in order to adhere to its heavenly roots.

Creativity begins with limitation, finds its continuation in freedom and does not end in service. Mirkina's poetry is service in its purest form. The source that feeds such poetry is inexhaustible. What is the purpose of a poet who has rejected self-expression and taken the path of self-sacrifice and self-exhaustion? He serves what exceeds his understanding, but will never miss the secret of his heart. Zinaida Mirkina immerses the reader in this secret, common to everyone; the secret that connects us to each other.

We have all suffered an irreparable loss. But books, lectures, films dedicated to the couple of wise men remain, and their seminar remains alive. Pomerantz and Mirkina as spiritual phenomenon form a single whole, and at the same time they complement each other in an amazing way. Their thoughts are sober, their revelations are winged.

Since the nineties, Mirkina has published seventeen poetry collections, each of which immediately became an event. A new, final collection is now being prepared for publication. Its name “Open Door” is symbolic. Zinaida Alexandrovna was open door. She had an unprecedented gift of full-heartedness. I am sure that without such “cores” as Mirkina and Pomerantz, not a single culture will survive, it will simply crumble, fall into pieces. Such people pave the way to heaven. Outwardly they remain secular people, but inside they are deeply religious. But their religiosity does not suppress anyone, because it is light and quiet.

Zinaida Aleksandrovna left us at the age of 93; Pomerantz lived two years longer. One of their instructions was: “You need to live long in Russia.”

Eternal memory to Zinaida Alexandrovna. With her poems she revealed in us such inner silence, in which vital grains of goodness and light ripen.

p.s.

Farewell to Zinaida Alexandrovna will take place in Moscow. On Monday, September 24, at the Central House of Writers, from 11 a.m.