There is in Moscow, on the corner of Plotnikov Lane, on Old Arbat, a monument to Okudzhava, which collects daily crowds of people and catches their eyes. The poet goes to the viewer, to the Arbat paving stones, from a bronze semi-arched gateway, benches and a tree rustling with leaves in the wind. This is a place in memory of Bulat Okudzhava and evening gatherings of poetically minded youth. Why was it decided here to perpetuate the image of Bulat Okudzhava in bronze?
What connects Okudzhava with Arbat?
The monument to Bulat Okudzhava on the Arbat appeared for a reason: it was erected next to the house where he lived for some time as a child, before he was sent to study in Georgia. He returned here and settled for a long time since February, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven. It was then that the Okudzhava family, already in an incomplete composition, after the execution of the poet’s father, moved to Moscow.
Mother, grandmother and Bulat settled in a communal apartment on the fourth floor of house number forty-three along Stary Arbat Street. Once upon a time youth reigned and laughter rang. Now the atmosphere has become oppressive and tense. However, despite the worrying years, the poet’s mother and grandmother did everything to ensure that his childhood and youth passed as happily and calmly as possible.
This house, once a two-story building, built in the middle of the 19th century and built on the other two floors by the beginning of the 20th century, is now called Okudzhava's house. The poet’s childhood will be held here, he will write about this house in an autobiographical work, the novel “The Abolished Theater”, not mentioning his childhood, but his parents, still alive and still together, full of hope, who entered their communal apartment in house number forty-three Arbat street.
“… They, clutching paper and unquestioning rights in their hands, appeared on the street with the strange name“ Arbat ”, entered house 43 and moved into apartment 12 on the fourth floor of a large dirty-beige house. In the apartment that you already know about, they were honored to have two rooms located at the opposite ends of a long corridor, ”said Bulat Okudzhava about the first meeting of parents with their future family home.
They grow near the house, at the Okudzhava monument on the Arbat, trees that made him a poet, and trees that are rightly called the same age as Okudzhava. They saw a lot, a lot in the life of the "singer Arbat". And today you can touch the palm on the bark, which touched the palm of the poet.
Monument to Okudzhava on the Arbat
The monument, erected on the corner of Plotnikov Lane and Arbat in the city of Moscow, became the first monument to the poet.
Back in the nineteen ninety-seventh year, on June 19, a week after the death of the poet, a decree was issued on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation to perpetuate the memory of Okudzhava. A little later, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation announced a competition for the best design of the monument to the poet, the winner of which will be the sculptor Georgy Frangulyan.
Work on the monument was completed in the new decade.
On May 8, two thousand and two, the day before the birthday of Bulat Okudzhava, who would have turned seventy-eight years old that year, and the day before the celebration of Victory Day, important for the memory of the poet who fought for three years on the fronts of World War II, there is a monument to Okudzhava on Arbat was inaugurated in the presence of the wife of the first president of the Russian Federation, Naina Yeltsin, who at that time was the mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, officials at various levels and admirers of Okudzhava's talent.
Criticism of the monument
Two and a half meters high, the thin, cast in bronze figure of Bulat Okudzhava, leaving the courtyard from two bronze benches and designed to symbolize the gateway of the bronze semi-arches, provoked a reaction mostly negative, sharp and rude among critics.
“The monument to Okudzhava on the Arbat is … pop, ” - M. Kravchinsky left such a piercingly biting, as if slap in the face, response about the sculptural composition. Or, for example, S. Yamshchikov described it as a monument, "which is terrible to pass by." They called the monument both ugly and alien to the Arbat, and empty, and not depicting Okudzhava. The sculptural composition literally suffered a flurry of attacks and accusations.
But does the Okudzhava monument on the Arbat really deserve such a sharp assessment?
He has become a favorite place for creative youth, people come to him to read poetry, he sings songs with a guitar, lovers kiss on his benches, tourists are photographed with him, both traveling across Russia and those who have arrived from abroad. Could, being ugly, a monument to Okudzhava on the Arbat become a center of attraction?
Photos tell us quite the opposite, rather than critics: he took root and harmoniously blended into the Old Arbat atmosphere. Bulat Okudzhava walks around Moscow, along the beloved Arbat, with which so much is connected in his life.
