Rene Guerra: "Culture - this is what is left!"

[Евгений]

Alexander Chatsky.
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Вложение 17305 Mr. Rene Guerra Yulianovich (France)
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The story of Rene Guerra, I'll start with his hometown - Nice, which in the second half of the XIX century chosen by the Russian imperial family, and after 1917 - the Russian emigres.
"Nice - the Russian city outside of Russia", - says R. Guerra. Before joining France in 1860, Nice, part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, was a favorite vacation spot of the Russian nobility. These often come Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (wife of Nicholas I). So Nice called "winter capital" of Russia's ruling house.

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In 1857, Russia and the Kingdom of Sardinia signed an agreement to open next door to the town of Nice Villefranche-sur-Mer, in a former prison, coal-go storage for Russian ships. Tsarist government funded the construction of the road from Nice to Villefranche, which opened Alexandra. Russia fleet base existed for 20 years. In 1997, Academician DS Likhachev was opened in Villefranche bronze bust of the Empress. And in a city park, which goes on the Avenue of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, there are two statues of the Orlov brothers, who were here at the end of XVIII century, and the bust of Admiral Ushakov.
In Nice, was built by Russian library out Russian-language newspapers ( "The Russian-French Journal" and "Voice of the Riviera"), hence went direct train to St. Petersburg.
In 1865 in Nice, the Villa Bermon died heir to the throne Nicholas, son of Alexander II.
In Nice there were Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin (stayed at the hotel "Oasis", which was then called "Russian-board"). Herzen bequeathed to bury him in Nice, and today the town cemetery - a bronze monument to the publisher's Bells.
Having bought in the northern part of Nice deserted park Valroz a dozen acres, Russian industrialist Paul von Dervis built a palace. In Chateau Valroz was an open theater with 400 seats, for which Dervis had its own symphony orchestra and choir. It was here on Jan. 5, 1879 premiere was Glinka's opera Life for the Tsar. In 1881 th patron slew the tragic death of his daughter, and the estate began to decline.
Today the chateau Valroz - the administrative building of the University of Nice, where Rene Guerra headed the Department of Slavic Studies. Peasant hut, which Dervis moved here for a log of his estate of Odessa, turned into a cafeteria, a bronze sculpture of a horse by Paolo Trubetskoy painted in yellow and green colors.
In Nice and other cities in the south of France for long lived Bunin, Rachmaninov, Merezhkovsky and Gippius, Berberova Khodasevich, Georgi Ivanov, Mark Aldanov.
In 1911, the Russian colony in Nice, there were more than 3 thousand people.
There is a "Russian" Cemetery (land belongs to the Russian community and can not be alienated, in contrast to Saint Genevieve de Bois, near Paris, which is simply a "municipal" and now this necropolis at risk of "dissolution" there are many graves of the French). In Nice on the "Russian" cemetery lie the remains of General Yudenich, who led the white guard on a revolutionary Petrograd. Here are Nick Leo and Alexander Rajewski, artist Philip Malyavin, critic Georgy Adamovich.
But back to our hero. Who was Rene Gera, and he wondered?
He was born in Nice in 1946. After 10 years the family moved to the resort town of Cannes, where his mother Rene was the place the headmaster.
Once turned to her elderly modestly dressed woman with a request to give her granddaughter extra lessons in mathematics. Instead, she proposed to teach any of the Guerra family of the Russian language. So the two boys Guerra, Allen and Rene began to walk on the lessons of Russian. But the senior, Allen, soon from these lessons refused, because in schools they studied Latin, English and German languages, and Rene continued his studies (in pre-revolutionary ABC).
The lady was a talented teacher and an extraordinary personality. Her name was Valentina Rassudovskaya, previously it was from Kiev. A year later, a second teacher was a former Kharkovchanka Ekaterina Tauber, poet, poetry by writing Khodasevich, Bunin, Adamovich (many years later, R. Guerra issued two of its volume). Lessons held at Ekaterina at home, often going the Russian immigrants, and they at that time, only in Cannes, lived a few thousand people.
Before Rene Guerra has opened the world of pre-revolutionary Russia. Many of the emigrants in poverty, but dignity is not lost. For Rene, they were representatives of a great country with which the disaster struck.
Russian "old" (and they were just under 60) going to someone's apartment and remembered the past - the pre-revolutionary life, the civil war. On the shelves were lying Russian edition - Contemporary Annals, "Revival", "Russian note. The air was permeated with Russian culture. Rene grew up in its atmosphere, and Ekaterina became his spiritual teacher.
Each year in Cannes feast of Russian culture, and Rene took part in it. His number was the role of corona Falsdmitry in the scene meeting with Marina Mnishek a fountain of "Boris Godunov".
Today, the question of what attracted his Russian immigrants, Rene Guerra says: "It was charming, intelligent, touching people. After the great crash, they lived outside of time and hoped to return. Well, I was just curious child." Honest French boy with a soul, open to all good, was outraged at the injustice committed against these Russian. "I could not understand why these lovely people were not needed in Russia."
After graduating from high school Rene was in Paris. First, he entered the Institute of Oriental languages, but then moved to the Faculty of Slavic Studies at the Sorbonne University. Here his interest in Russia has gained clear outline - R. Guerra became professionally engaged in Silver Age of Russian literature. There are people who not only in love with a certain era, but to devote her life. These were Heinrich Schliemann, who found Troy, Bernard Berenson - a connoisseur of Italian Renaissance. This category of people belonged to Rene Guerra.
Another student, in 1966, Rene first arrived in the USSR. "Six weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg was enough to chase everything that they told me in Paris", - says R. Guerra.
After graduation in 1967, Rene decided to write a master's thesis on "the last Russian classics" Boris Zaitsev, and wrote him this letter. "It Zaitsev, apparently flattered, and he kindly answered me. He was already 85 years old, and he was glad that the first time in more than forty years of living in a foreign country (since 1922) It has expressed an interest in French philologist."
In the West, to Russian immigrants and their culture was regarded as something of a relic. Ignored, slighted. The then-professors (with some exceptions) was set up very pro-Soviet. Rene was the only student of Slavic studies, which not only kept aloof from "the old Russian", but was drawn to him. At the Sorbonne, this was not accepted: should write about the great dead, and not about the little-known exile still alive. Some of the professors even considered that Zaitsev - a fictional writer. Rene insisted, and the topic was approved.
Rene wrote a thesis. In it he defended the thesis that the Silver Age of Russian literature is not completed in 1917, and was continued in the work of Russian emigres in France until the outbreak of the Second World War.
He challenged the thesis of Soviet literature, according to which the Russian writer or an artist, being abroad, inevitably becomes a victim of creative sterility. (Although, for example, "dark alleys" Bunin, "The sun of the dead" Shmelev, "The house in Passy," Zaitseva been established in France.)
Friendship with BK Zaitsev has meant that the last four years of life of the writer Rene was his literary secretary.
In 1968, Boris Zaitsev received an offer from Moscow - to put on their homeland.
R. Guerra dissuaded him: "Because there is always the author of the foreword, which necessarily obolzhet you. You spoil your image." And he was right: when he left a collection of A. Remizov, in the preface to his Leningrad professor Yury Andreyev reported that they found themselves in exile, Remizov was de creatively barren, that collection of leaving a hard time to select a small number of standing works that out 40 books of the writer almost nothing is of no value ..., etc.
"Once abroad, the Russian writers did not write worse - says R. Guerra. - In Soviet Russia, they could not create anything like it.
Any emigration - a tragedy, but for them it was luck. His artistic legacy, they were proven right, the correctness of their choice ...
Now we see their revenge, however, post-mortem ... Culture - this is what is left! "(R. Guerra, May 1999, St. Petersburg).
Well-known Russian emigre writers had no access to the French audience. Rene Guerra has written about it, and began to defame him in the press. We Guerra difficulties: in French universities have been strongly influenced by leftist ideas, and Slavic studies avoided the emigrants did not want to irritate Moscow. With departments lectured about Gorky, Fadeeva, Damien poor. As a result, Rene Guerra was forced to lead a double life as a Soviet dissident. His mastery of the Russian language, even gave rise to rumors: "Rene Guerra - a Roman Gerasimov, a KGB agent."
Even in his youth R. Guerra began to collect postcards from Russia. In Paris, began to seek out and buy the newspapers, books published in Russian in Prague, Belgrade, Harbin, Paris. They came with tiny circulations and are now a rarity.
Collection - a matter of life R. Guerra, and not the rich man's pastime. Much he bought at auctions, traded. There are things that gave him, because he was friends with many artists - with Annenkov, Andreyenko Sarsuns (about which he wrote a monograph), with the abstractionist Lansky, a colleague of Malevich - Mansurov. "They understand and appreciate the fact I am a Frenchman, gave himself a mission to preserve, not to allow spray to light, and then divide the great monuments of culture. Someone is because of this, even jokingly called me Ivan Kalita ... None of my collection I do not sell, although the proposals come regularly ... I'm not just a collector and collector-curator. I gather together what has lasting value, provides access to the anonymous stratum of Russian culture of the twentieth century. At the same time I was doing my duty to close in spirit to the Russian people have entrusted me with the most expensive .
At this gathering, I look, not as archivist, and as a scientist, researcher and witness the lost world peopled by invisible giant ".
In 1968, as a graduate student, in the framework of cultural exchanges R. Guerra studied at Moscow University in Moscow and was searching for traces of remaining in Paris Russian friends. Behind him was installed surveillance, were unequivocal threat, and finally, expulsion from the USSR.
The customs office at the Rene Guerra confiscated records of conversations with Korney Chukovsky and Yuri Trifonov. Pursuit of incriminating articles have been published, in which he was to label "ideological saboteurs" and "double-dyed anti-Soviet." At thirteen years R. Guerra was "unwelcome. In France, it failed in competitions, called "friend belobanditov", penned in his denunciations. Rene Guerra, meanwhile, worked as a translator, taught the very least made a scientific career.

"In France, my colleagues treat me with suspicion. France was the country's pro ... I despised the Romain Rolland and Louis Aragon, who did not hide their communist convictions and openly assisted the secret police and their wives were agents of the GPU. And they did it solely from self-interest, because their books were published in the USSR huge editions ...
The famous French painter of Russian origin, Sergei Sarsuns, who was my great friend, left a will in which the bulk of their heritage bequeathed to Russia. I, as his executor, the will of the deceased friend, and through the Russian embassy in Paris sent the picture in the USSR in 1975. And what do you think: they are still gathering dust in the vaults! 15 years lay in the basement of the embassy, the remaining 15 years - in the cellars of the Tretyakov Gallery. Not so long ago, the representative of the Tretyakov Gallery, contacted me with the suggestion that I gave money to the frame for the paintings, then canvas Sarsuns will be shown to the people. But I found it, sorry, rudeness. The artist gives his paintings worth tens of millions of dollars, and the state for 30 years can not find the money to frame them! "
Made by Rene Guerra seems pure fiction.
The young Frenchman was not only a pioneer but also a seer: when in his native France, the world of Russian emigration existed on the margins, he almost single-handedly started a great job of studying its spiritual treasures, getting access to them at first hand.
Hundreds of letters Bunin, Tsvetaeva, Gippius, Merezhkovsky, Remizov, Balmont, archives of Russian writers were rescued them from destruction and oblivion.
Starting in the 1960's collecting and research work, he still has it with an incredible pace, personal funds replenish its Russian archives.
This legendary man was able to do that, it seems, can not afford a single person.
Having been recently at an exhibition of portraits from the collection of R. Guerra, a famous conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky (himself a well-known art collector and connoisseur of the fine) said: "I am shocked to find no other word can not." Even my three-quarters of the exhibits were generally unknown. It seemed as if we already know very well what height reached in exile, the art of Russian emigrants. But there is much we still do not know. This collection simply has no value ".
"Willy hung from floor to ceiling in all rooms of the house Guerra, in the hall, stairs, paintings and drawings represent the Silver Age Russia: Korovin, Kustodiyev, Malyavin, Bilibin, Dobuzhinsky, Konchalovsky, Goncharova, Larionov, Benois, Somov, Bakst, Serebryakov, Grigoriev, Sudeikin Chekhonin, Alexander Yakovlev, Yuri Annenkov - my head is spinning when you see all this as exhibits to museum rooms, a private house in the quiet Paris suburb, the interior of conventional dwellings. One need only look into the eyes of Yevgeny Zamyatin Kustodiev work on the portrait hanging on the staircase between the first and second floors, to feel like a beating heart! "- wrote Arkady Vaksberg. - There are artists from the proud tribe of emigrants, we have almost unknown: Serge Sarsuns, Michael Andreenko, Dmitry Bushen, Andrew Lanskoy, Alexander Zinoviev, Lev Zak ...
There are almost 40 thousand volumes of Russian book rarity - in large part with the words of authors and donors. "heir to the Russian culture abroad" - written in the Sergey Lifar donated by Rene of Paris edition of Pushkin's letters.
There are a countless number of folders with precious manuscripts, letters, autographs of Pushkin and Gogol, Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy, Gorky, Bunin, Severyanin, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, only autographs Alexei Remizov, more than four ".
In addition, Rene Guerra has created a Paris publishing house Albatros. "Why do I suddenly became a self-publisher? - Writes Rene Guerra. - Why did the Frenchman in the seventies began to publish a book in Paris in Russian?" For whom and for what? ". In the late 1960's almost all Russian publishing houses were closed, and R. Guerra decided to contribute to the publication of books, publishing the works of authors close to him. He collected the poems, literally, "scraped" them from the pages of the emigre journals over the past half century.
R. Guerra was not only artistic, but also the technical editor, and even a proofreader.
When in the late 1970's started to revive Russian emigre publishing, the publishers were in the orbit of the writers "third wave" and the "first wave" forgotten. Again Rene Guerra had, without any assistance and grants to continue a non-profit publishing work, struggling with forgetfulness. All 1980, he worked on the creation of "Russian almanac.
Rene Guerra published 36 books. They actually sold, and heard, because there was nowhere to sell them. Books R. Guerra, not very willingly accepted even at the commission ...
Great excitement of last year was an auction of works by the artist M. Dobuzhinsky. There had been an incredible rise in prices for works of Russian artists.
"Everything that was estimated at 300 thousand euros from a small, lasted nearly four million - said R. Guerra. - Lot thousand euros went for 10, 15, 20 thousand. It was a sensation, I bought all the illustrations of the" White night "Dostoevsky (it was my dream), bought all the illustrations for" Poor Liza "Karamzin.
All the money I inherited after my mother died, were spent. Five years ago I would have bought them for half the total offered for sale. Today it was only a small part. Although I was very desirable and expensive.
I love Dobuzhinsky. I knew his son Rostislav Mstislavovich. He died in 2000, he was 97 years. He never sold the work of his father, he lived modestly. Russia could buy everything at once for half a million euros. The negotiations are going, and I was sure that some type of oligarch Vekselberg buy up everything on the vine.
I Rostislav Mstislavovich nothing to sell, but made several priceless gifts. For example, a portrait of Nabokov's work in 1937. I brought it to the 95-meters in Russia (on exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery - A. Ch), and then he disappeared, along with some other work (lost 22 works).

Dobuzhinsky - one of the founders of the World of Art ". It (the auction) have been working since 1907 and until his death, including the fact that he did in America. All creative way of a man - a unique collection of all genuine. It's like, for example, would sell the whole collection Serov! They sold the original drawings for "The Three Fat Men" Yuri Olesha. I wanted to buy them - they are made in the early 1930's, in exile. All images were evaluated in a thousand euros. For me, this is also a lot of money, but the figures have gone to 40 thousand. I reached 25 thousand and stopped, despite the boldness. Still need to get into debt and be in debt.
Changes in Russia also affected the disgraced professor: his reputation restored in 2004, Rene Guerra was elected honorary member of the Russia Academy of Arts, his name is listed in the "Golden Book" of St. Petersburg. R. Guerra now divides his time between Paris, Nice and Moscow. He met with whom she wants and goes where he wants: in Elec and Voronezh, Orel and Vologda, in Surgut and Tyumen.
In 1992, Rene, along with his elder brother Alain (professor of Germanic retired) established in Nice, the Association for the preservation of Russian cultural heritage in France. Its subsidiary - Franco-Russian house in the village of Ber-les-Alpilles, near Nice, where the brothers are invited to work Guerra Russian artists and writers. "This is not the Soviet house of creativity, - says Rene - and something like that Voloshin's house in Koktebel. There already visited more than 60 people. The initiative of the House held numerous exhibitions. Through the efforts of brothers Guerra on the facade of the Hotel Oasis in Nice, where he lived Chekhov, memorial panels depicting the writer (here, Chekhov wrote two acts of "The Three Sisters," here Osip Braz created a portrait of Chekhov, which is now exhibited in the Tretyakov Gallery).
In conclusion, quoting a correspondent of the Literary Gazette in Paris Arcadia Vaksberg:
"Renaissance art and literature of the Russian diaspora need, above all, a new generation. We need not only their homeland but also far beyond its borders, for the true talents belong to all mankind. Exiles themselves in any official recognition was no longer needed. For them speak and will speak of their work. And yet - such enthusiasts are passionate ambassadors of the Russian culture, as Rene Guerra.