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By Olga Bobrova
When the world's best film directors were being honoured in the Dutch city of Rotterdame in the late 80s Sergei Paradzhanov was among them. He was then 64. Two years later he died.
On the whole, Sergei Paradzhanov made 7 films all of which represent an entire world of fantasmagory. The films defy narrow-mindedness and may not even be meant for mortals. "If I were asked which film could be sent to another civilization I would suggest Paradzhanov's "The Spirits of Long-Forgotten Ancestors", - said once the well-known French director and actor Robert Hossein.
"The Spirits of Long-Forgotten Ancestors" was released in 1965. Before that Paradzhanov studied in the Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. His first films were unimpressive with nothing unusual about them. This one, however, created a sensation. It was made in Ukraine after a story by the Ukrainian classic Mikhail Kotsyubinsky. It is a legend which mesmereizes the viewer with the pagan rythms and vibrant colours and the stunning dramatism of events and fates. The prominent Polish director Andzhei Vaida is said to have gone down on his knees before Paradzhanov and kissed his hand to show his admiration for the masterpiece. The entire world applauded him. His films won 39 international awards including 24 Grand Prix.
In his native country, however, the authorities were after him never missing a chance to hamper his work... 15 years were crossed out of his creative life. Three times he was put behind bars. And there was no difficulty in finding the reason in view of the fact that Paradzhanov was known for his independent,unrestrained and challenging manner. When state censors cancelled another premiere at the Taganka Theatre, Paradzhanov came in support of Yuri Lyubimov. He told him: "If you are thrown out of the theatre, take it easy, everything will be all right. They won't let me work either. But the Pope sends me diamonds. I sell them and live on the money". This couldn't have been more stupid! However, the director was accused of speculation and put into prison. But he managed to remain an artist even behind bars. His fantasy breathed life into any piece of paper, glass or a bottle cork and even pieces of junk turned into marvellous compositions. The portraits of Cardinal Richelier, Peter the Great and many of his other works created in jail are kept in the Paradzhanov Museum in the Armenian capital Yerevan.
Sergei Paradzhanov was an Armenian who had been born and grown up in Georgia. He received training in Russia under the guidance of the prominent film-maker Igor Savchenko. Hee began his career in Ukraine. In Armenia he shot his film "The Colour of Pomegranate"about the prominent Armenian poet of the 18th century Sayat-Nove. In Georgia - "The Legend of Suram Fortress". The last film - "Ashik Kerib" - was created in Azerbaijan after a fairy tale by the outstanding 19th century Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov. Paradzhanov's films adequately depicted the national colour and at the same time were distinctly innovative. This is also true of the whole of his life not a single moment of which was ever wasted. His friends and relatives found it excitingly interesting and at the same time unbearably difficult to be with him. But they loved him the way he was.
When he died a telegram came to Russia: "The world of cinema has lost a magician". The telegram was signed by Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Mastroiani,Masina, and Moravia .
 
 


RUSSIAN MUSES OF WESTERN ARTISTS

the book "Russian Enchantresses by V.Fedorovsky and G.Saint Bris

 
 by Olga Rusanova
This book was inspired by the life and work of Salvador Dali. It was written by Gonzaque Saint Bris who was born in romantic Touraine and by the Russian cultural attache Vladimir Fedorovsky. The two authors spent 17 years collecting their materials.The book "Russian Enchantresses" was published in France in 1994 and in Russia in 1998.
Vladimir Fedorovsky and Gonzaque Saint Bris met in Paris in the 1970s thanks to Salvador Dali and his wife Gala. Dali told them that what the Russians had gained perfection in was their crazy women. A smile lit Gala's face with its slanted eyes and high cheek-bones. She looked at Fedorovsky and Saint Bris intently and said - it's you, a young Frenchman and a young Russian, like the heroes of Balzac and Dostoyevsky, must write the history of Russian muses, Russian women who give inspiration, together. She meant not only herself,not only her relentless opponent Elsa Triolet: they had both been destined to place under their spell the individualities of Salvador Dali and Louis Aragon. She also thought of Lou Andreas-Salome, who inspired Nitzsch, Rilke and Wagner, Princess Kudasheva, the wife of Romain Rolland, Dina Verni, who charmed the sculptor Maillol, Lidia Delektorskaya, who inspired Matisse, Nadia, who bewitched Leger, Olga whose surname was Picasso...
This is how that book took shape. Picasso met with his Russian muse thanks to the famos producer Sergei Diaghilev, who had brought Russian Ballet to Paris. The fire of their love was lit by the shining light of Russian ballet that brightened Europe in 1917. Picasso spent a lot of time with the Russian troupe comprising 60 dancers. However Olga Khokhlova alone captivated him with her charming ingenuousness. Picasso followed the Russian troupe to Florence and then to Naples. Olga became his first wife. The young beauty radiating tranquility seemed to the passionate Spaniard a quiet shelter after world upheavals and personal distresses.
Such is the romantic version. But there is another one. Matisse maintained that Picasso had decided to marry because of a curious episode. Once Olga visited the artist, and their conversation ended in passionate embraces. When leaving the studio Olga stumbled and sprained her ankle. It was a drama for a ballerina: she could dance no longer. As an involuntary cause of Olga's loss of job Picasso had to marry her. Henri Matisse liked to advocate this version in the decline of life.
At first the life of the Picasso couple looked almost idyllic. They prospered: they had a car with a liveried driver, magnificent clothes, pedigree dogs. Their house was frequented by Manuel de Falla, Erik Satie, Arthur Rubinstein, Jean Cocteau - by all Parisian celebrities. Picasso went to all theater and ballet premieres, frequented receptions and banquets - always accompanied by his elegant and beautiful wife.
Alas, Olga took it into her head to make a prosperous bourgeois out of a great artist. But she did not possess the necessary secrets and ruses. So in 1935 they divorced. Evidently Marc Chagall was right when he said that those two inhabited different planets.
The book "Russian Enchantresses" by Fedorovsky and Saint Bris excerpts from which we are citing, is full of love stories. But it centers on Elena Dyakonova known as Gala - at first as Gala Eluard, and then as Gala Dali, the wife of a great poet and a great artist.
She belonged to the heroic generation of women, who survived a double catastrophe -a war and a revolution - in Russia. Many of them had to flee their motherland because of the political terror. Thrown to the very bottom by the events in Russia, they had to begin a new life in a foreign country from scratch, without friends, without connections, without means of existence. Gala not only found the strength to cope with the tests of her times and win happiness for herself. She managed to give support and inspiration to the men she loved.
Gala was a controversial person. According to Fedorovsky and Saint-Brie, there were three or even four women in her: a girl from Russia, a Cinderella dreaming of a prince, a Parisienne content with the bourgeois style of her life in love with her husband. A third Gala was a frivolous woman encouraged by Paul Eluard. The fourth was Gala of the last years of her life with Dali, ruling the artist's financial empire with icy calm.
Paul Eluard's love for her was a love of a romantic poet. For him, he used to say, there was but one creature in the whole world. Indeed, Gala for ever remained his only true love. This, however, did not prevent Eluard from offering her a free bohemian way of life. The poet liked the semi-freedom of their married life, while Gala was not satisfied with this life at all. Beisdes, she was longing for an extraordiary personality. This personality she found in Salvador Dali, whom she met through Eluard. She chose Dali at first sight because she understood immediately: that was a man of genius.
One of their first meetings took place on the beach. As Dali wrote later, he was completely enchanted by the beauty of Gala's back, strong and fragile, muscular and delicate at the same time.
Then, in 1929, Dali was 25, and, as he later admitted, was constantly looking for something to lean for support on. Nor did he have any substantial means at the time. It's clear that Gala's involvement was disinterested, that she was attracted to Dali because she felt there was a man of genius. Apparently, she helped him a lot to become one.
According to the book's authors, in his declining years Dali was fond of recalling his Spanish childhood, with the favorite entertainment being an optical theater where he saw a charming Russian girl who appeared before him in white furs sitting in a three-horse sleigh. The girl resembled a small wild animal. Her lively gaze was in sharp contrast with the serene immobility ofher features, which were as harmonious as those of Raphael's madonnas. And, the artist insisted, he knew it was his Gala.
Those are only two famous stories about western artists' being in love with Russian women. There were far more Russian muses. Among them Maria Zakrevskaya, known as Baroness Boudberg, who was admired by two great writers Maxim Gorky and Herbert Wells; the great Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova, who had a romantic relationship with Modigliani, another great Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva, whose epistolary love affair with Rilke became a legend, and Elena Zonina whose admirer was Jean-Paul Sartre. There must be some mystery to this attraction. Gala offered her own version, saying that an European man is turned to the outward, while a Russian woman is all tuned to the internal. This provides a basis for a union between western creators and their northern muses.
The book "Russian Enchantresses" abounds in interesting facts from the lives of the great people of the 20th century. But it's more than entertaining reading. The authors say they have written the book in order to show the existence of Europe's cultural space stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, a space that has existed before political unity. Besides, the authors say, they wanted to covey this song of love and the spirit of peace embodied by women to today's world torn to pieces by nationalism. The book is also a hymn to the woman, a woman who manages to overcome all obstacles, a woman who comes home at night on the verge of commiting suicide but get up in the morning to resume the struggle for the happiness of the people they love.
Illustrations:
Olga Picasso by P.Picasso. 1923.Oil. Private collection
Photograph of Gala and Salvador Dali`s wedding.1958
Atomic Leda. Salvador Dali. 1949.
 
 

 
 
 
 

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