Yengibarova - from the audience

The poem displays the clown “thief” in “sometimes a wacky cap”, stealing sad minutes, sadness, longing from those who came to look at him. Spectators, accustomed to the fact that "[e] if a clown is supposed to be funny," grumble that the buffoon is not funny enough, not immediately noticing the loss of sadness.

The jester himself, taking away other people's sorrows, himself becomes sadder, "[p] because the burden of another's grief || Out of habit, he considered his own. ” Finally, the burden of other people's grief that has become their own becomes unbearable, so that the actor chokes with grief and his back breaks. He is dying right on the street, in front of passers-by, who think that this is just a drunkard who fell. The author gives him the last honors: “This trick is no longer a pantomime: || There was death - the queen of pantomime! ”

Leonid Yengibarov is a Soviet circus artist, a clown-mime, who had non-standard playing equipment and was popular in the USSR in the 1960s and early 1970s (in 1971 he was awarded the title of People's Artist of the Armenian SSR ). Yengibarov died of heart disease in the summer of 1972, at the age of 37. Marina Vlady in the book “Vladimir, or Interrupted Flight” described Vysotsky’s attitude to Yengibarov as “boundless tenderness” and “mutual admiration”, mentioning that they often met in the circus with Yuri Nikulin . According to her, when Vysotsky was informed by telephone about the death of Yengibarov, Vladimir burst into tears ^[2] :

Yengibarov is dead! This morning on Gorky Street, he felt sick with heart, and no one helped - they thought that he was drunk! <...> He died like a dog, right on the sidewalk! Marina Vladi. "Vladimir, or Interrupted Flight"

The accuracy of this evidence is disputed by the researcher of the work of Vysotsky Viktor Bakin, who indicates that on July 25, 1972, Yengibarov died not in the street, but in his home ^[3] . Another specialist on Vysotsky, Vladimir Novikov , blames this discrepancy on the fact that Vysotsky, who was in the Baltic states on the set of the film Four in the summer of 1972, received second-hand distorted information from someone who arrived from Moscow to Jurmala through a few days after the death of Yengibarov ^[4] .

The poem "Yengibarov - from the audience" was written shortly after the death of the clown - according to one source, in August 1972 ^[5] , according to others already to his funeral ^[6] . In the program “ Echo of Moscow, ” dedicated to Vysotsky’s connection with the circus, Anton Orekh reports that in August 1972 the poet had read the poem to captain Anatoly Garagule. According to the author of the program, this is the only surviving recording of the author’s performance of this poem ^[7] (in 2009 this only performance was included in Oleg Vasin’s documentary film “Poet and Clown” dedicated to Vysotsky and Yengibarov). The text of the poem was published in the journal " In the world of books " No. 7 for 1987 ^[8] . In addition to the author’s, it is known that Vsevolod Abdulov’s performance of this poem was included in the second disc of the double album “Vladimir Vysotsky - ... Though I’ll stand a little more on the edge ...”, which was also released by the company “ Melody ” in 1987 ^[9] .

Researchers of Vysotsky’s creativity note the roll call of the poem “Engibarova - from the audience” (which V. Bakin calls “one of the most penetrating and bitter poems” by Vysotsky ^[5] ) with the Hamlet theme in the author’s life and work. So, Vladimir Novikov points out the coincidence of rhythm with the work of Boris Pasternak “The Humming Quiet. I went to the stage ... ”(which Vysotsky performed to music at the beginning of the play of the Taganka Theater “ Hamlet ”) ^[4] , and Anatoly Kulagin draws a parallel between the image of the“ gloomy ”jester in this poem and the images in another work of Vysotsky -“ My Hamlet ", And not only the jester of Yorik, but also the lyrical hero himself, who was raised as a jester and learned to hide" a secret look when he is angry and bitter. " Another feature linking these poems, Kulagin calls the motive of misunderstanding the crowd ^[10] .

Novikov also notes the consonance of another Pasternak’s line “Too many hands to embrace ...” with the words from Vysotsky’s poem:

In these lines Novikov sees at the same time a parallel with the quote from Crime and Punishment , where Svidrigailov , speaking of Raskolnikov , says: “How much he dragged on himself ...” ^[4] . Another author, with whose motives echoes “Yengibarova - from the audience”, is called Anna Akhmatova , who has a wreath dead in a 1945 poem. I. Teacher "there is an image of a man who" [has] absorbed poison, ... [has] regretted it all, breathed in languor - [and] suffocated ... " ^[11] .

According to Novikov, the lines about someone else's grief, which the buffoon considered his own, describe not only Yengibarov, but also Vysotsky himself ^[4] . The song “The tightrope walker” written at about the same time (“He did not come out with either a title or a height ...”) is called both autobiographical and fate-inspired by Yengibarov ^{[4] [7]} (for the pantomime of the same name in Yengibarov’s repertoire, featured in particular in the documentary 1966, A.V. Skobelev drew attention ^[10] ). The coincidence of the dates of death is often also noted: Vysotsky died, like Yengibarov, on July 25, but in 1980 ^{[5] [7] [12]} .

• Vladimir Vysotsky. Engibarova - from the audience // Collected works in four volumes / Compiled and written by V. I. Novikov , O. I. Novikov . - M .: Time, 2008. - T. 3. Songs. Poems. - ISBN 978-5-9691-0280-6 .