Did Andrei Voznesensky have a school romance with a teacher: The Secret of the Famous Poem

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today, the novels of teachers and students have again become a fashionable topic. A lot of messages, juicy details, stories that usually end badly even in America … However, not many remember that back in 1958 the strict Soviet community was shocked by the trick of Andrei Voznesensky. The young poet, on Teacher's Day, read the poem "Elena Sergeevna" in a live evening broadcast, which described a stormy romance between an English teacher and a student. Confirmation that these are not just poetic fantasies can be found in Voznesensky and in the essay "I'm 14". Researchers of his work have found out exactly who the poet could encrypt under the name of Elena Sergeevna.

Andrei Voznesensky studied after the war at Moscow's 554th school. Many years later it turned out that their 10 "B" was - as if on selection, solid stars: journalists and writers, academicians and doctors of science, one of the classmates of the famous poet, also Andrei, became a director, and now it is already difficult to decide which of them the larger one is Voznesensky or Tarkovsky. Graduated from high school in 1951. Was there a personality among the teachers of the 554th school who was so bright that the memories of her, even after 7 years, have not been erased from the poet's soul? It turns out there was. All Voznesensky's classmates (including Tarkovsky) recalled their beloved "Englishwoman" - Marina Georgievna Markaryants. Judging by the recollections of people who knew her, this was indeed an extraordinary person. Her father, a history teacher at the university, was exiled from Moscow to the mines before the revolution for too free speech. In the life of Marina-Amalia (that was the full name of the girl) there were many vivid acquaintances: the artist Gerasimov, for whom she worked as a model and assistant, actor Ivan Mikhailovich Moskvin, who headed the Moscow Art Theater in those years, the famous ballerina Ekaterina Geltser.

Andrei Tarkovsky's sister described this woman in her memoirs as follows:

(M. E. Tarkovskaya, "Tarkovskie. Shards of a mirror")

Other classmates also remembered her:

(From the memoirs of journalist and writer Yuri Bezelyansky)

Could a Soviet school teacher in the 50s decide to have an affair with a student? Voznesensky himself wrote about this later, even too frankly, but the mysterious woman again appears with him under the name of Elena Sergeevna:

However, it is known that in fact there were no high-profile scandals in school 554 in connection with such an incident. It is possible that everything remained a secret, because even classmates, admiring their beloved teacher, denied any hints of her novels. Maybe the parents of the future poet managed to "hush up the matter" if something came out. Or maybe it's easier to assume that Andrei Voznesensky, as a creative person, nevertheless wrote about what was desired but did not come true?

In the seditious poem, everything ended very badly for Elena Sergeevna, however, in fact, Marina Georgievna Markaryants, "Excellent worker of public education of the USSR", lived to old age in a Moscow communal apartment. She died in 1995. About the last lonely years of her life, the memories of another successful person were preserved, whom an old teacher helped in high school to "tighten" English:

(From the memoirs of Maria Sharova, researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

Still, it was about a woman who was not afraid of anything that Voznesensky's seditious poem was written, for reading which on the air, in his own words, Reading these lines, you understand that they are simultaneously about the real Maria Georgievna, who knew how to cause admiration for one look and gesture, and at the same time, about the incredible and fatal Elena Sergeevna:

Andrey Voznesensky

School

Elena Sergeevna

The last line: was deleted by the censorship.

Andrei Voznesensky became the author of many songs, some of which gained popular love. One of the most lyrical and sad poems, which turned into the famous aria from the rock opera "Juno and Avos", he dedicated to one of the first Soviet beauties Tatyana Lavrova, who, however, remained an actress of the same role.