I never regret anything. Never regret anything
My generation knows him from the program “Turns of Time,” which he hosted on the radio for many years. The intro of the program certainly included his poem “Never, never regret anything,” performed by the author. Very correct, smart, with a spectacular ending: “Let someone else play the flute brilliantly, but you listened even more brilliantly.”
Dementyev had many guises. He is not only a poet, but also a presenter, to whom our grandmothers wrote letters, he is also a politician, he is also an editor. On the day of his death, they remember the magazine "Youth", which he headed for 12 years.
There were no cardinal changes associated with his name in the magazine - he was neither Narovchatov nor Kataev, who transformed as editor-in-chief from a mischief maker into a benefactor and ascetic. His life was smooth and consistent. But the best thing he did were his songs. Especially "Apples in the Snow" and "Swan Fidelity". Without discounts or exaggerations - completely folk songs.
He lived a long life. Twenty days without ninety years. He was going to celebrate his anniversary in his homeland, in Tver, where he created the House of Poetry...
Of course, we can say that longevity is genes: his father and mother both lived to be ninety. But I see nobility in this longevity - akin to the nobility of a writer defending a little person. Everyone gets the face they deserve in old age. Andrey Dementyev is not flabby, he is not blurry. His eyes, with rays of wrinkles, shone with kindness. Having risen high above his worker-peasantism, he did not lose respect for his reader. That’s why people were drawn to him, like that unbelieving woman who went to church only because the priest called her darling. He remained an intellectual, maintaining an interest in the little man. Unlike modern pop singers from Instagram, who are only interested in themselves.
Never regret anything afterward,
If what happened cannot be changed.
Like a note from the past, I crumpled up my sadness,
Break the fragile thread with this past.
Never regret what happened.
Or about something that can no longer happen.
If only the lake of your soul does not become muddy
Yes, hopes, like birds, soared in my soul.
Do not regret your kindness and participation.
Even if for everything you get a smile in return.
Someone became a genius, someone became a boss...
Don't regret not having their troubles.
Did you start late or leave early?
Let someone play the flute brilliantly.
But he takes songs from your soul.
Never, never regret anything -
No lost days, no burnt love.
Let someone else play the flute brilliantly,
But you listened even more brilliantly.
Direct speech
Yuri POLYAKOV: He could cross himself with a two-pound weight
We asked the famous writer and playwright to remember Andrei Dementyev.
I remember well meeting Andrei Dmitrievich. It was 1973 or 1974. Great Hall of the House of Writers. Dementyev had just moved from Tver to Moscow, and this was his first creative evening. And for two, with the poet Peter Vegin. At that time they were approximately the same “weight category”. Vegin was a fashionable poet. He represented the experimental-Fronder line, a kind of Voznesensky, but with a smaller caliber. Dementyev just came to work at Yunost as deputy editor for Boris Polevoy. And so we, young poets, went to their battle like a football match. The audience went wild when Dementyev read his poems. It immediately became obvious that this was great folk poetry. He was perceived as a pure lyricist, charged with positivity. He came out victorious.
It’s a terrible shame that Andrei Dmitrievich passed away three weeks before his 90th birthday, for which we were preparing. We called back and discussed what we would do in Tver at the Dementiev poetry festival.
On June 1, I was with him on Radio 1, he was broadcasting the program “Turns of Time” live. We had a great time on air. But I noticed that Andrei Dmitrievich looked worse than usual. He always amazed me with his vital masculine unfading. One day we ended up with him either in Pitsunda or Koktebel. He was already over 60. He went out to the beach, took off his robe and... We, relatively young prose writers and poets at the age of forty, looked bashfully at our bellies. Before us stood a man in his seventies with an ideal athletic figure. He trained according to the method of Russian weightlifters. He could cross himself with a two-pound weight - this was a sign of athletic power. Until he was 70 years old, his jacket was bursting with biceps. Andrei Dmitrievich was determined to reach the century mark. There was every chance for this.
He was betrayed so many times, there were so many tragedies in his life, but he managed to make goodwill and forgivingness the dominant feature of his personality.
Like clockwork
Composer Mikhail MUROMOV: When I sang “Apples in the Snow,” he said: “That’s a dozen at once!”
More than fifty popular songs have been written based on Andrei Dementyev’s poems.
“Swans flew over the earth”, “I call you my Alyonushka”, “Tell me, mom”, “I draw you” - we sing these familiar lines with pleasure, often not suspecting that the author of poems that have long turned into hits, - poet Andrey Dementyev. He readily gave his poems to composers and singers, believing that this way they would truly reach the people. More often than others, composer and singer Mikhail Muromov wrote music for them.
This is a huge loss for literature. And for people - even more. Because it’s difficult to meet such a bright person,” Mikhail Muromov told KP. - First of all, he was a man. Wonderful, wide, sweet, smiling, dancing until his last years.
- How did you meet?
We lived nearby. I rented an apartment on Spasskaya, and he lived on Astrakhansky Lane in a writer’s house. We practically met on the street. He gave me his poem “The Stewardess,” and when I made the song, it immediately became popular, even without the radio, because it began to be heard on all planes. And after “The Stewardess” he gave me his book. And from this book I got 12 songs at once, including the same “Apples in the Snow.” These are poems from 1976. I just asked them to change them a little, and he very easily made concessions to the composers. We sat down together, figured it out, and the song still works. And she is already 31 years old!
- What songs did Andrei Dmitrievich like most?
When I sang “Apples...” to him on the phone, he said: “So, that’s a ten, we won’t even think about it.” I often came to his house - he was a very hospitable host, smiling and sweet. We will all miss him.
Five of the most famous songs based on the poet’s poems:
- "Swans flew over the earth"
- "I call you my Alyonushka"
- "Apples in the Snow"
- "I'm drawing you"
- "Stuntmen"
On June 26, 2018, the heart of an outstanding poet of our time stopped beating Andrey Dementyev. He didn't live long enough to see his 90th birthday. It would seem that just recently his creative evening took place in Rostov at the Don State Public Library. The poet was cheerful, active, sociable, cheerful and friendly. This creative evening was sold out. And then came the sad news.
Andrey Dementyev is one of my favorite poets. He always pleasantly amazed me with his kindness, openness and optimism. Dementiev did not have the so-called “star fever”.
Andrey Dmitrievich was born on July 16, 1928 in Tver. He began his literary activity in 1948. He worked for the Kalininskaya Pravda newspaper, headed the Komsomol life department of the Smena newspaper, and was an instructor in the propaganda and agitation department of the Komsomol Central Committee.
Since 1967, Dementyev lived in Moscow. He was the editor-in-chief of the legendary Soviet magazine Yunost (from 1981 to 1992). The circulation of this magazine under Dementiev was over 3 million copies!
And yet, Dementyev went down in history as a poet, including as a songwriter. In Soviet times, songs based on his poems “Alyonushka”, “Swan Fidelity”, “Father’s House”, “Ballad of Mother” were known and popular.
By the way, the song “Apples on the Snow” based on Dementyev’s poems, wonderfully performed by Mikhail Muromov (he also wrote the music for this song) was a super hit in the Soviet Union in the late 80s of the last century.
The poems of Andrei Dementyev have always been loved by the people. I would like to remind you that on March 8, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, congratulating women on International Women’s Day, read Andrei Dmitrievich Dementiev’s poem “I know that all women are beautiful.”
Dementyev was also an excellent presenter. He hosted various programs on television and radio. He took part in various political talk shows. I remember that he somehow managed to out-argue Zhirinovsky himself in Vladimir Solovyov’s program “To the Barrier!”
Andrey Dementyev has one poem that I especially like. When I feel sad and sad at heart, I always read it. The poem is called “Never regret anything.”
“Never regret anything afterward,
If what happened cannot be changed.
Like a note from the past, I crumpled up my sadness,
Break the fragile thread with this past.
Never regret what happened.
Or about something that can no longer happen.
If only the lake of your soul does not become muddy
Yes, hopes, like birds, soared in my soul.
Do not regret your kindness and participation.
Even if for everything you get a smile in return.
Someone became a genius, someone became a boss...
Don't regret not having their troubles.
Did you start late or leave early?
Let someone play the flute brilliantly.
But he takes songs from your soul.
Never, never regret anything -
No lost days, no burnt love.
Let someone else play the flute brilliantly,
But you listened even more brilliantly.”
Personally, these lines help me live. I think it's brilliantly written! I must say that this poem by Andrei Dmitrievich is very much loved by admirers of his talent. Dementyev was always asked to read “Never regret anything” at creative evenings. And the poet always did this.
But this time I can't say that I don't regret anything. I am very sorry and sad that the outstanding poet and man with a capital letter Andrei Dmitrievich Dementiev has left us forever into Eternity.
Georgy BAGDIKOV.
He was born in 1928 in Tver. It seemed Dementyev It was written in the family to live a long, long time - both father and mother exchanged their tenth decade. And he was only 20 days short of celebrating his 90th birthday. Andrei Dmitrievich died on June 26. Actually, this is how it always happens in life: just a little is missing to have time to finish writing, to love... To survive.
Son of an enemy of the people
Dementyev has the following lines:
Never regret anything afterward,
If what happened cannot be changed...
Do not regret your kindness and participation,
Even if for everything you get a smile in return.
Someone became a genius, someone became a boss...
Don't regret not having their troubles.
This poem can be considered the poet's testament. And the main rule of his life. He never regretted that something passed by. And a lot has passed. He grew up in a very musical family, where everyone and everything sang: Russian folk songs, romances, and classics. At school they called him “our Seryozha Lemeshev” for his clear voice. He was invited to audition for a music school. He came. Sang. But he didn’t apply - then he was already writing poetry.
After school I wanted to enter the Military Medical Academy, but they didn’t accept me. I went to the Institute of International Relations. But he expelled himself - he heard that one of the students was having problems because of his noble grandmother. His situation was even worse - the son and grandson of enemies of the people. Because of this, the poet himself admitted, in his youth he almost committed suicide.
“I no longer had enough strength,” Andrei Dmitrievich told AiF. “I didn’t have the strength to be hungry all the time.” Although my mother, in order to feed her family, went from house to house after work and worked part-time. I didn’t have the strength to always be afraid that a funeral would come to our house. And she came - my uncle, my mother’s younger brother, died at the front. I didn’t have the strength to live with the thought that my father was not fighting, but was in prison, repressed. And my grandfather died there, in the camp. Father, grandfather, father's brothers. They were all simple workers... They were all imprisoned and then all were rehabilitated. Three - posthumously. Father, fortunately, during his lifetime. But then I was oppressed by the thought of injustice - I knew that my father could neither be a traitor nor a spy ( Dmitry Dementiev was arrested under Article 58 as a counter-revolutionary, although he was what is called the “people's intelligentsia” - a peasant who graduated from the Timiryazev Academy and became a highly qualified agronomist. - Ed.). He was very honest. And even when dad had already returned, I still had to indicate in the questionnaires that my father had been repressed. Because of this, in many places documents were returned to me with a resolution to “refuse.” All this is for one boy’s soul. Very hard...
Andrey Dementyev speaks at the celebration of the 180th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Pushkin. Photo: RIA Novosti / Lulishov Solomon
At some point I felt that I could no longer cope with this. Although we, the boys of wartime, were much older than our current peers. Funerals, bombings, hunger, the need to survive no matter what - all this made us more mature. I was 14 years old then. I chose the moment when my grandmother went to the market and placed the cartridge on the tile so that it was right at the level of the heart. I wrote a letter and asked everyone for forgiveness. But grandma forgot something at home and returned. I twitched mechanically, turning towards the sound of the door opening, and the bullet passed a few centimeters... This flying bullet then changed a lot in me, in my character. Since then, I have never forgotten that we are responsible not only to the state or to ourselves. We are also responsible for those around us.”
Ruffy lyricist
Dementyev became neither a doctor nor a diplomat. He became a poet - subtle, acutely experiencing love, separation, and jealousy. And injustice. Hearing the name Dementiev, we first of all remember his love lyrics. No wonder Vladimir Putin, congratulating women on March 8 this year, chose lines from his poem:
As long as I live, I will pray to them.
I prefer love to other delights.
The Lord showed us a woman like a miracle,
Trusting the world with this beauty.
“I draw you”, “Swan fidelity”, “Alyonushka” and many, many other songs - they are all based on his poems. Of all the feelings, it was love that he valued above all.
“There is nothing higher than love - this is how he answered the “childish” question of “AiF” “What is love?” “I thank the Lord every day that he sent me my wife, my Anechka. Because only thanks to her I understood that love is a kinship of souls, it is an understanding at a glance, it is faith, it is a search and it is bliss. I couldn't live without love. And I would never have written everything that I wrote.”
But in recent years, more and more often, other notes have been heard in his poems: anxiety, pain for what is happening around him. “I wrote poetry here,” he said. - Listen". And read:
“The fields are overgrown with grass...
And, having confirmed my arrogance,
Feather grass crawls through the arable land,
Where rye once grew.
My favorite country,
Having experienced resentment and powerlessness,
Now I'm poor for life
It’s as if it’s not Russia at all.
He himself tried to help - both young poets, organizing poetry evenings in his House of Poetry in Tver, and provincial museums living from hand to mouth, and those who turned to him with their troubles as a member of the Public Chamber. He had a very big, kind, sensitive heart. Which eventually failed and stopped.
Andrey Dementyev has unusually wise poems:
Never regret anything afterward!
If everything that happened cannot be changed,
Like a note from the past, I crumpled up my sadness,
Break the fragile thread with this past.
Never regret what happened
Or about what can no longer happen...
If only the lake of your soul does not become muddy,
Yes, hopes, like birds, would soar in the soul.
Do not regret your kindness and participation.
Even if for everything you get a smile in return.
Someone became a genius, someone became a boss...
Don't regret that you didn't have THEIR TROUBLES.
Did you start late or leave early?
Let someone play the flute brilliantly,
But he takes songs from your soul.
Never, never regret anything -
No lost days, no burnt love...
Let someone else play the flute brilliantly,
But you listened even more brilliantly!
They say that with old age comes wisdom. I didn’t believe it before, they say, insanity comes, what wisdom is there! Until I became old myself.
Today is a significant day: the last work in the garden has been done, chokeberries have been harvested. Now I’ll sort it out and take it to my mother-in-law, she has hypertension, and this rowan is the first remedy for blood pressure. My mother-in-law is a wonderful person, she comes from an old aristocratic family, the Bolsheviks shot and shot them, imprisoned and imprisoned, but she endured everything - the cold, and hunger, and poverty, and humiliation, and wanderings after they were thrown out to street from your home. She survived everything, except that she had hypertension from terrible forced labor from an early age. I’ll take the rowanberries to her and let her make jelly. And I'll cook it for myself. I’ve never cooked, but I’ll cook it here.
And until March 1, blissful rest. In a couple of months, your back will stop hurting and will gradually straighten up, your legs and arms, which have become accustomed to the cold and dirt in the fall, will warm up. I don’t like autumn, although it is in autumn that you reap the benefits of all the spring-summer garden labor. You will appreciate the vegetables and canned goods in the underground and cellar and thank yourself for the inhuman labor in the beds later, but for now, when you remember, you will shudder.
Until the snowstorms, no work outside! A blissful brief moment when there is time to think about the eternal. Why are we born into the world, why do we live this way and not otherwise, and for what do we live?
You inevitably worry yourself with these questions, seeing how one after another friends and relatives leave, and you remain not so much an independent figure as a monument to them. Life is a strange thing! So much happened, but remained, only a little came true, as if some invisible hand was paving the way for me, mercilessly stopping all my attempts to turn away from some goal known only to it.
It is not true that life is chaotic, there is a hidden logos in it, it is in any life, even the most primitive, it’s just that in the life of an intellectual it is more noticeable, more complex or something...
I'm going through my past. It seemed that there was freedom of choice, and there was enough strength to overcome any obstacle, but one thing was possible, and a wall suddenly stood in the way of another. “No flags allowed!”
After school, quite unexpectedly, they weren’t accepted into college, they weren’t even allowed to take the entrance exams: it turns out there was an instruction not to accept missing children into universities with military departments. I would have passed the exams jokingly, but I didn’t know about the instructions. Fate or God, as you wish, needed me to take a sip of life. He took a sip. And this later came in handy more than once, protecting me from conceit and arrogance. He who drinks injustice will not become a tyrant.
And I found my calling in this test. It turns out that it wasn’t my thing to be a radio engineer, it was mine to be a design engineer. Who would have known if it weren’t for that KGB instruction.
Then graduate school, I wanted to become a university teacher. And it worked out, and not bad! But no, fate intervened again. Deprivation of an academic degree - and goodbye to the position of professor and head. department.
Now my young friend and comrade at NIECMI Sasha Krasnov has become both, I’m happy for him, but I never did. Apparently not mine either. Mine is the same NIECMI, where I had to create two hundred inventions. New technologies, which without me would have been created, would have been much later, but God wants everything to happen in due time.
And in my personal life I literally felt the hand of Providence on me. It wanted me to give birth to a daughter-genius, and it mercilessly cut off anything that could lead me away from this goal. Only now I understand that this was not a whim, but a calculation, and then it was incredibly painful.
We are weak and blind in the hands of Fate. And what’s the point of painfully going through the past on sleepless nights in the hope of finding some of your own mistakes there, which could have been avoided, and life would have been happier. No, never regret anything after all!
Even if a time machine were invented, and I managed to get to the key moments of my life, which determined its further course, I would not change anything there, may all my dear people, whom I offended voluntarily or unwittingly, forgive me for this !
You can’t change anything in the past, it will ruin your whole life. Don't regret that something didn't come true. So this is how it had to happen. No matter how your heart aches from unexpected pain, no matter how severely you repent of what you could have done but couldn’t do, endure it. God endured and commanded us. He guided you through this life, even sometimes taking you in his arms when you were ready to do something stupid.
And now you are at the finish line. Do not regret what is irretrievably gone. Don't envy others who, in your opinion, are more successful. “Don’t regret that you didn’t have THEIR TROUBLES”!
The same wise Sasha Krasnov once said very smart words: “Imagine that you became an academician. We would fly to a symposium somewhere, and the plane would boom and crash, and you would be gone. And so - you are alive! And he is right a thousand times, although he is a professor, and an academician, and now the head. pulpit, and I'm just a retired goat drummer. To each his own.
They say that man is the smith of his own destiny. This is not true, there is a supreme judge, and the last word always belongs to him. It makes no difference whether you are a janitor or an academician. We can “tweak” it, but will it be beneficial?
Here on our street a man was building a palace for himself, amassing crazy amounts of money for it, righteous and unrighteous. The palace turned out well, but he unexpectedly died from some trifle, like kidney stones. So much for the “blacksmith”. When deciding what to do at a decisive moment, listen to your inner voice, consult with your past in order to act not contrary to it, but in agreement with it.
Valentin Spitsin.
Reviews
Oh, dear Valentin Mikhailovich...., this hat, although it looks a little like Monomakh’s... but when put on forcibly, it rubs hard.... I don’t know how it was in your time... but now the bastard bureaucrat is overwhelmed with papers.... you barely have time to kick back...and resist in Italian....You won’t have time to do any science...there’s no time....What are our rulers thinking...having destroyed the academy...that’s where it belongs... They are destroying university science at the same time.... which had nothing to breathe anyway....
So....:)))
We'll survive...with a shovel in our teeth and plant potatoes...or steal...
Never regret anything afterward,
If what happened cannot be changed.
Like a note from the past, I crumpled up my sadness,
Break the fragile thread with this past.
Never regret what happened.
Or about something that can no longer happen.
If only the lake of your soul does not become muddy
Yes, hopes, like birds, soared in my soul.
Do not regret your kindness and participation.
Even if for everything you get a smile in return.
Someone became a genius, someone became a boss...
Don't regret not having their troubles.
Did you start late or leave early?
Let someone play the flute brilliantly.
But he takes songs from your soul.
Never, never regret anything -
No lost days, no burnt love.
Let someone else play the flute brilliantly,
But you listened even more brilliantly.
Analysis of the poem “Never regret anything afterward” by Dementyev
In the life of every person, sooner or later there come moments of re-awareness, rethinking the route taken in life. Probably, it is with the help of such moments of reflection that wisdom comes to a person. Poets for the most part are no exception, and they are inspired by these moments. In the poetic world you can find many works devoted specifically to understanding the past. One of these can safely be attributed to Andrei Dementyev’s poem “Never regret anything.”
The central character in the work is the author himself; his verse is a message to the reader, a general addressee. From the very first lines he addresses with the parting words “Never regret anything.” From the height of his experience, the years he has lived, he admonishes, calls not to look back at the past, because it has passed, and without it there would not be the present that exists now. The past cannot be changed in any way, it has already happened, you can only rethink it and let it go, breaking the “fragile thread” with it.
The author urges not to regret good deeds and accomplishments, no matter how they turn out for the reader in the end. He expresses his attitude to good and evil, to genius and simplicity. He teaches in any case to remain tolerant, to forgive insults, reproaches and evil. After all, if you don’t dwell on the past, then life in the present will sparkle with much brighter and purer colors. Each person in the eyes of the poet is unique in his own way, and everything that happens in everyone’s life is not in vain, because everything is closely interconnected. It is this relationship that the poet emphasizes in his work, and this is one of the main messages of the entire poem.
As means of expressiveness, the author resorts to metaphors (crumpling sadness, the lake of the soul), personification (hope, like birds), uses antitheses - “they left late or early,” “it happened or can’t happen.” The poet does not neglect irony (“don’t regret that you didn’t have their troubles”). Particular attention is paid to precise meanings rather than to means of expression. The author prefers to speak directly to the reader, without flowery comparisons, and his metaphors are understandable to almost everyone. The stanzas are united by anaphors, only the third stanza stands out from the general anaphoric rhythm, emphasizing, perhaps, the main message of the poet.
The author uses a tetrameter anapest and addresses the reader in a friendly conversation, which is emphasized by the chosen poetic meter, the alternation of male and female rhymes, and the desired rhythm is set by cross rhyme. The author's thought unfolds from stanza to stanza, which makes it possible to define the genre not only as a message-poem, but also as stanzas.
