The name of the writer Veniamin Erofeev is known to everyone who is seriously interested in underground Soviet literature. The work of a prose writer has repeatedly received high marks from Russian and foreign critics, and since the mid-2000s it began to be thoroughly studied as part of academic scientific work. Most of the author’s famous works, such as, for example, “Moscow-Petushki”, an alcoholic short story, were popularly published unofficially by samizdat, in lists from original manuscripts or free paraphrases of listeners.
In just a few years from the beginning of his literary career, Veniamin Erofeev acquired the status of a creative personality known throughout the Soviet Union, quickly won the sympathy of readers and was able to actively resist Soviet censorship.
Biography
The writer was born on October 24, 1938 in the remote northern village of Niva-3. The settlement was only an addition to the huge hydropower plant, around which several settlements were built. One of the farms was called Kandalakshi, and it was in it that Veniamin Erofeev was born.
Despite this fact, in the official documents of the writer it is indicated that he was born at the Chupa station in the Loukhsky district of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Because it was there that the Erofeev family lived for many years.
The father of the future writer, Vasily Erofeev, served as the head of the railway station for a long time until he was repressed and sent to the camp for anti-Soviet propaganda. Mother - Anna Erofeeva - had no education and was a housewife all her life.
Childhood
Veniamin Erofeev was the sixth child in the family. The early years of the writer passed in an atmosphere of poverty. Young Venechka had to look for part-time jobs and “kalyms” to help her mother support her family. In school, he managed to work as a delivery man, a loader, a janitor.
When the writer's father passed away, Venechka was sent to an orphanage in the city of Kirovsk. Mother could not pull six children alone, so she sent the youngest to a state institution, hoping that he could live there better than a starving family.
Since childhood, Benjamin loved to read and studied very well. Teachers noted the boy's phenomenal talent for literature, language and drawing.
Erofeev finished school with a gold medal, and as the best graduate of the orphanage. He was sent to Moscow to study at Moscow State University.
early years
Having moved to the capital, Veniamin Erofeev, not hoping for a state scholarship, almost immediately makes a decision to get a job in order to be able to acquire literature and rare publications of interest to him.
A strong northern guy is happy to take workers to a construction site. Erofeev will be working there for the next two years, contriving to find time to work part-time as a loader and a janitor at a nearby grocery store.
Benjamin spends his entire salary on the purchase of scarce books in second-hand books, buys subscriptions and periodicals, spending free time reading and working with works of interest to him.
Training
In 1955, Veniamin Erofeev entered the philological faculty of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. The first year he studied "excellently", devoted himself to linguistic and literary work, made several drafts of scientific articles (which, however, were never completed), worked as an assistant laboratory assistant at the Department of Slavic Languages and Russian Studies.
The next year became more difficult for Benjamin. The guy felt a strong craving for creativity and began to pay great attention to working with his early literary opuses. He dropped out of school, stopped attending lectures and practical classes, sitting for hours in his dorm room and working on manuscripts, or walked around Moscow at night.
Around the same time, the writer became addicted to alcoholic beverages and began to lower all available funds in pubs and restaurants, while simultaneously conducting active literary activities.
Such behavior could not but affect the performance of Yerofeyev. And after several university meetings, where he was given "probationary periods" and all kinds of deferments, in 1957 he was expelled from the university for "poor performance and immoral behavior."
Veniamin Erofeev did not despair and, two years after being expelled, he submitted documents to the Orekhovo-Zuevsky Pedagogical Institute, where he was admitted in 1959. Here, the future writer did not study for a year - in 1960 he was expelled from the second year with the same wording.
Subsequent attempts to continue their studies at Vladimir and Kolomensk Pedagogical Institutes were also unsuccessful.
In 1963, Erofeev finally abandoned the idea of getting a higher education.
Employment
While still a student at Moscow State University, Benjamin began to look for a job. Having extensive experience in the labor sphere, he easily found part-time jobs for one evening, a week, or even a month, working as a loader, builder, joiner, painter, or postman.
The biography of the writer Veniamin Erofeev contains the following information about his work:
- 1957 - worked as a laborer in Moscow after being expelled from Moscow State University;
- 1958 - 1959 - moved to Slavyansk, where he got a job as a loader in a grocery store;
- 1959 - moved to Ukraine, became a member of the geological party and worked as a driller for a year;
- 1960 - lived in the city of Orekhovo-Zuevo, where he worked as a watchman in a detox;
- 1961 - returned to Vladimir, got a job as a loader and a handyman in a furniture store;
- 1962 - transferred to work at the Vladimir Construction Trust, where he took up the posts of electrician and plumber;
- 1963 - 1973 - joined the mobile team of installers and worked as an installer of cable lines;
- 1974 - got a job as a laboratory assistant in the parasitological expedition of VNIDiS, worked as part of a group studying the winged blood-sucking midge in Central Asia;
- 1975 - worked as an editor, checking and correcting scientific works and reports of students of Moscow State University;
- 1976 - moved to the Kola Peninsula and entered into an aerological expedition, taking the post of worker;
- 1977 - got a job as a shooter in the militarized guard service.
Nickname
According to the writer himself, he always had an “inexplicable attraction to rich and powerful Russian culture,” either his impressive erudition prompted the writer to study the culture of his native country, or an innate love for a small homeland, but in 1969 Erofeev took on a literary pseudonym, leaving surname and changing the name to Benedict - the more ancient, old Russian form of the name Veniamin.
Under this name, he will publish all his most important prose opuses and go down in the history of Russian literature.
Creative career
Erofeev began to engage in literary activity at school age. At 17, he began work on his first work - Notes of a Psychopath. These unique notes were considered lost for a long time, but at the beginning of the 2000s they were found at one of the writer's friends and published in 2004. In 1970, Erofeev published his debut voluminous work - a poem in prose entitled "Moscow - Petushki." The novel instantly became popular among the reading youth of that time.
A little later, other books by writer Veniamin Erofeev were published: Walpurgis Night or the Commander’s Steps, Good News, My Little Leninian, Dissidents, or Fanny Kaplan. Most of these works were not published during the writer's lifetime, and were published only at the beginning of the two thousandths of the XXI century.
Moscow - Petushki
One of the most famous works of the writer, which is, in fact, an allegory for one of his long trips in the train. In the book, Erofeev describes the life of a simple Russian person, snacks, alcoholic beverages and conveys the contents of the table-talk of soulful conversations.
The most famous lifetime publications of the poem:
- 1970 - author's manuscript and ten first lists made by Erofeev's friends;
- 1973 - Israeli magazine "AMI";
- 1988 - the national magazine "Sobriety and Culture";
- 1989 - re-publication in the publication "Sobriety and Culture";
- 1989 - publication in the almanac "News" (uncensored).
In this and his other works, Erofeev gravitates to the traditions of surrealism and literary buffoonery.
Controversial issues
The biography of Veniamin Erofeev contains many interesting and curious cases, one way or another connected with the literary activity of the writer.
For example, in 1972, he claimed that he had finished work on the novel Dmitry Shostakovich, but could not publish it, since the manuscript was stolen. Moreover, they stole it in an electric train while the writer was sleeping during a long move. Erofeev most of all regretted not the lost work, but that two bottles of chatters disappeared with the manuscript.
After 22 years, a friend of the writer, Vladislav Bogatishchev-Epishin, stated that the manuscript was not lost at all, but was kept with him and promised that very soon the unknown work of Yerofeyev would be released.
In 1994, he really posted a small fragment in open access. After a thorough analysis, most literary scholars recognized the fragment as fake.
Relation to religion
In 1987, Venedikt Erofeev decided to be baptized in the bosom of the Catholic Church. His friend, writer and translator Vladimir Muravyov, rendered all possible assistance to Benjamin and even became his godfather.
The sacrament of baptism took place in Moscow, in the church of St. Louis of France.
Close
The personal life of the writer Veniamin Erofeev was quite calm. In 1976, the writer married for the first time - to Valentina Zimakova. In marriage, the son of Benedict was born.
After eleven years, Erofeev married a second time - to Galina Nosova, with whom he lived until his very death in 1990.
The family of the writer Veniamin Erofeev actively participates in various events dedicated to his work, organizes memorable evenings and literary fairs.
Disease
In 1985, Veniamin Erofeev was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer. The following year, the writer underwent surgery, after which he lost the ability to talk and could only be explained later with the help of a voice-forming apparatus.
Death
Veniamin Erofeev died on May 11, 1990 in Moscow. His grave is located at the Kuntsevo cemetery.
Photo writer Veniamin Erofeev available in the gallery of outstanding university students.