A handwritten autographed letter. Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A handwritten autographed letter.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a Russian Soviet poet, novelist, director, publicist, actor. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize.

The letter is dedicated to the writer and military correspondent Emmanuel Feigin.

The text of the letter:

"The boundlessness of nobility

Emmanuel Feigin was one of the most benevolent people I knew. The benevolence of a writer, it would seem, should not be a rare quality, but alas! - in our professional environment, it is less and less common to see eyes that light up with inspiration from other people's works, and tears from other people's works in the eyes of amazed colleagues are almost a museum phenomenon.

Feigin, a man who did not live too gloriously, was able to help other writers not only in their troubles, but also knew how to be happy with someone else's fame, when, of course, she chose those worthy of her, and when people crushed by fame changed, disintegrated, had the tact and courage to say to their face not malicious, but bitterly friendly words.

I never considered him a phenomenally talented artist of words, but his phenomenal talent as a writer gradually began to turn into the artistry of creativity.

Ethics may not always shift from aesthetics, but it is the key to constantly identifying the best artistic qualities, a guarantee of continuous growth, or at least a guarantee of the impossibility of a professional complete fall. When I read Feigin's The Dog Captain, I was stunned by the unexpected qualitative shift. Morality has even raised style to a new level, pulled out of the dark corners of the soul the unsuspected jewels hidden there, Feigin, who gave so much effort to journalism, freeing himself from the oppression of all kinds of cliches until the end of his days,

* "Yegor Grachev's Offense"

he overcame the averageness of verbal constructions, guided as by Ariadne's thread by his own innate conscientiousness, because it told him that in literature averageness is dishonesty. It was thanks to his conscientiousness and love for other writers that he himself became a better and better writer, he developed until his death.

His voice was doomed to rasping, frightening sounds, even at those moments when he wanted to say the most tender words. It was a terrible ordeal, but Feigin withstood such a test, remaining an example of the nobility of continuous painful improvement. He blessed my first steps in poetry, but only mine!

The ignominy shown sometimes even by infinitely talented artists limits their talents and destroys them. Nobility increases the talents of infinitely gifted people, but only if their nobility is unlimited.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko"