Arseny Tarkovsky

Arseny Tarkovsky, a highly reputed Soviet poet, presides over the poetry seminar that Eduard Limonov is urged to attend when he arrives in Moscow. The circle offers Eduard a route into the city’s literary life, but also exposes the hierarchy governing that life: access is difficult, the master’s authority is unquestioned, and the aspiring poet is expected to become a devoted disciple. For Eduard, the seminar becomes the setting for a decisive refusal of that role—and, eventually, for a reading that unsettles the room.

Identity and Literary Position

In the account, Tarkovsky is already a recognized poet when Eduard and Anna settle in Moscow in 1968. Their move is precarious: without the residency permit required to live openly in the city, they inhabit small rooms on its outskirts and move often to avoid attention. The painter Brusilovsky, a fellow Kharkovite who has established himself in Moscow, becomes their protector and introduces Eduard to the possibility of making his way through literary circles. He recommends Tarkovsky’s seminar as a place where an ambitious provincial poet might begin to gain a foothold.

Tarkovsky’s standing is conveyed through both his reputation and his surroundings. The seminar meets at the headquarters of the Writers’ Union, in an old patrician residence associated with the Rostov family’s house in War and Peace. He arrives in a black Volga, wearing an elegant fur-lined coat and smoking aromatic tobacco from an English pipe. His white hair is slicked back; even his slight limp is described as distinguished. The scene sets him apart physically and socially from the crowd waiting outside in the snow. He is not merely the teacher in a room: he is the person who can enter the warm interior while others stamp their feet outdoors.

The account also places Tarkovsky within a literary lineage. He is described as a former lover of Marina Tsvetaeva, and his seminar invokes the memories and anecdotes attached to prominent poets of the past. His son is beginning a career as a filmmaker, but the biographical narrative focuses on the father’s immediate importance to Eduard: Tarkovsky is the established poet whose circle offers recognition while requiring deference.

The Seminar and Its Gatekeeping

Brusilovsky warns Eduard that the seminar is crowded and that getting in depends on belonging to its inner circle. He tells him to ask for Rita. On the first Monday, Eduard arrives an hour early, notebook in his coat pocket, but Rita is absent. Tarkovsky arrives with a small group of chosen attendees; Eduard and the others remain outside. He says that he waits through six Mondays before Rita appears on the seventh and he finally gets in.

That delay makes access itself part of the seminar’s meaning. Eduard has come not only to hear poetry but to read his own and impress the room. Instead, the group’s established routine repeatedly postpones his turn. The meeting is organized around a member reading poems and Tarkovsky responding, but the newcomers’ position is defined by waiting. The account’s stark contrast between the freezing sidewalk and the warm, exclusive interior gives this literary institution a visible social boundary: the aspirants can see the master enter, yet for weeks they cannot reach the space where their work might be judged.

Authority, Taste, and Eduard’s Refusal

When Eduard is finally inside, he finds a seminar whose expectations he cannot accept. One week, a poet named Mashenka reads delicate, melancholic poems modeled on Pasternak. The narrative presents them as predictable, and Tarkovsky responds by cautioning her against overly perfect rhymes and recalling an anecdote about Osip Mandelstam. Anecdotes about Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva recur at the meetings. To Tarkovsky, this is the language and practice of a literary circle; to Eduard, it is a frustrating diversion from the moment he wants: the chance to read his poems and leave everyone astonished.

Eduard’s objection is not simply that his turn comes late. He recognizes that the role available to him is that of the devoted disciple, and rejects it. The biographical account stresses that Tarkovsky does not strike him as ridiculous or obviously contemptible. The problem is structural: the circle appears to offer no place for a young poet except submission to its master. Eduard’s resistance therefore begins before his performance. He refuses the relationship the seminar seems to prescribe, even as he continues to attend in the hope of being heard.

The Reading and Its Narrative Significance

After another meeting at which the same pattern repeats, Eduard goes for a drink with several other frustrated poets. Even though the beers cost enough that he may have to go without food the next day, he tries to stir them into revolt. The account compares his appeal to the cry of the sailor in Battleship Potemkin: a demand that the group has had enough of rotten meat. At first, the others do not take the provincial newcomer seriously; his appearance and squeaky voice seem to count against him. Then he opens his notebook and begins to read.

The room’s response reverses the earlier arrangement. The aspiring poet who has been made to wait becomes the center of attention: the group listens in an increasingly dumbfounded silence. The narrator likens the scene, as legend has it, to the Parnassians listening to the arrogant, uncouth young Arthur Rimbaud. Vadim Delaunay is among those present. The comparison enlarges Eduard’s reading into a story of an unruly talent confronting literary convention, while its legendary framing keeps the episode from being presented as a neutral record.

Tarkovsky’s role in the scene is consequential even though the account does not describe him endorsing Eduard or changing the seminar’s rules. His authority supplies the institutional setting against which Eduard’s refusal and reading acquire force. The seminar first makes the hierarchy tangible—in the guarded entrance, the weeks of waiting, and the master’s established routines—then provides the audience before which Eduard can challenge it. In this episode, Tarkovsky embodies literary prestige as both a genuine center of cultural life and a gate that the young poet is unwilling to approach as a disciple.