Ilya Kormiltsev - a famous domestic poet, as well as a translator from Italian, English and French. Known as a literary and musical critic, for several years led the publishing house Ultra.Kultura. One of the main authors of most texts of the Russian rock band "Nautilus Pompilius".
The biography of the poet
Ilya Kormiltsev was born in Sverdlovsk in 1959. He has a younger brother, Eugene, who became famous as the author of texts for domestic rock groups "April March", "Birobidzhan Mustrest", as well as Nastya Poleva.
Ilya Kormiltsev himself studied at a special school, in which special attention was paid to the English language. After her graduation, he went to Leningrad, where he entered the chemistry department of a local state university. However, a year later he transferred to his homeland at Ural State University, which he graduated in 1981 with a degree in chemist.
Poetry
Although in reality all this time the guy is only interested in poetry. In 1981, Ilya Kormiltsev became the main author of the lyrics for the songs of the Sverdlovsk rock band "Urfin Djus". The team included Alexander Pantykin, Vladimir Nazimov and Yegor Belkin. Poems and songs of Ilya Kormiltsev are very popular. The poet also wrote poetry for Nastya Poleva, who performed solo, of the Cocktail, Kunstkamera and Engels' Grandchildren at that time.
In 1983, an important event takes place in the biography of Ilya Kormiltsev. He meets Vyacheslav Butusov, one of the founders of the legendary Russian rock band "Nautilus Pompilius". It is the songs of Ilya Kormiltsev that make this group real stars of Russian rock. Their 1986 album "Separation" is considered one of the best records of its time.
Collaboration with Nautilus
If before rock bands in the Soviet Union were forbidden in every possible way, then during perestroika the attitude towards them changed to positive. Butusov’s team is even awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize, which the hero of our article decides to refuse, since he has always been extremely negative about politics and the Soviet state system.
In 1990, a poetic collection of poems by Ilya Kormiltsev was released under the title "Chained together." He is accompanied by drawings by Vyacheslav Butusov. The texts of Ilya Kormiltsev remain known until now, mainly performed by the Nautilus Pompilius collective.
Rock band success
In parallel, Ilya begins to work as a translator of literary works, including prosaic. Affected by his brilliant knowledge of foreign languages, which he is fluent in.
In the 1990s, another significant event took place in the fate of Kormiltsev, he decides to adopt Orthodoxy. In 1995, Ilya was baptized, his godmother was the Russian translator and memoirist Natalya Trauberg, the daughter of the famous film director.
When the Nautilus group disbanded in 1997, Kormiltsev founded his own project called Aliens. At the same time, his main area of ​​activity is not music and songs, but literary translations.
Translator Activities
A photo of Ilya Kormiltsev began to appear in specialized cultural publications when he began to actively collaborate with the journal Foreign Literature.
The hero of our article translates a huge number of novels by foreign authors, modern and classic. It is in his interpretation that we know the novels “Vacations in a Coma” by Frederick Begbeder, “Four Desires” by Owen Colfer, “Ferris Wheel” and “Steps” by Jerzy Kosinski, “Until We Found Faces” by Clive Lewis, “Timbuktu” by Paul Oster, " Fight club "Chuck Palahniuk", "On the Needle" by Irwin Welch, "Stay in my shoes" Michelle Feiber, "Glamor" Bret Easton Ellis.
Kormiltsev also translated the stories of Frederick Brown, Louis de Brenniere, poems by Allen Ginsberg, Leroy Jones, Gregory Corso, Philip Lamantia, Michel Welbeck, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Tom Stoppard’s plays, John Tolkien’s fairy tales, the lyrics of which are many of the styles of the legendary band Led adopted when working on texts for Nautilus Pompilius.
Publishing work
Already in the 2000s, Ilya Kormiltsev decided to engage in independent publishing. Initially, he oversees the book series Foreigners, which is called Behind the Porthole. They try to quickly release new novels by contemporary foreign writers, which have recently been translated into Russian.
In 2003, Kormiltsev opened his own publishing house called Ultra.Kultura. It specializes in publishing radical texts. For example, one of the first novels published by him is the work of the capital's skinhead Dmitry Nesterov, "Skins: Russia Awakens." It tells about a group of neo-Nazis who solve the national question in Moscow with the help of killings and violence. Moreover, the plot is based on the author’s life experience. Behind the pseudonym Nesterov is hiding the right-wing activist Roman Nifontov. The book is currently on the Federal List of Extremist Materials.
Conflict with the "Foreigner"
After the publication “Skins: Russia Awakens”, Kormiltsev had a conflict with the publishing house “Foreign Literature”, which severed his employment relationship. But this didn’t upset him much; he continued to publish contradictory and sharp documentary and fiction books in his publishing house, which told about various aspects of the life of modern society - drug culture, terrorism. Moreover, the authors whom Kormiltsev published often held radically opposite views (from the extreme left Mexican philosopher and writer Marcos Subcomandante, who became the founder of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, to the far right American politician William Luther Pierce, who founded the National Alliance).
Because of these controversial publications, the publisher was constantly at the center of the scandals. He was accused of drug propaganda, extremism, and the dissemination of pornography. At the same time, Kormiltsev himself repeatedly noted that he had never been a supporter of permissiveness, supporting the introduction of age restrictions on access to a particular work of art. At the same time, he insisted that censorship should not be introduced, since the ban would ultimately be imposed not by society, but by a specific person or bureaucratic structure.
Disease
In early 2007, Kormiltsev was on a business trip in the UK when his health condition deteriorated sharply. Doctors discovered a malignant tumor of the spine. Moreover, the cancer was already in the fourth stage, which is considered incurable. Just a few weeks before it became known about the closure of the publishing house Ultra.Kultura. This was due to financial problems and pressure from law enforcement agencies.
The death of Ilya Kormiltsev took place on February 4 in London, at the Royal Hospital Masden. His numerous friends and colleagues gathered to accompany the poet on his last journey. The funeral of Ilya Kormiltseva took place at the Troekurovsky cemetery on February 9. Dmitry Bykov, giving a farewell speech, noted that Kormiltsev can be safely put on a par with the most famous Russian poets, because his poems went to the people, becoming part of our speech, and this is the main sign of greatness and recognition.
For many, it was a surprise that shortly before his death, the poet converted to Islam. This was told by the famous Russian public Islamic activist Heydar Cemal. Some of his relatives and friends denied this, but noted that the poet was buried in a shroud facing Mecca. The fact that Kormiltsev adopted Islam as a result was nevertheless confirmed by several of his close friends.
Views
Speaking about the views of the hero of our article, it should be noted that he was intolerant of any manifestation of conformism. He kept a blog in LiveJournal, where he often made rather harsh statements, thereby incurring the wrath of others, especially from the Russian nationalists, who often accused him of Russophobia.
Later, Kormiltsev himself explained that by the “Russians”, to whom he had such a negative attitude, he did not mean the whole people, but only the so-called “ardent imperials” who hate freedom and the spirit of the individual.
A vivid illustration of his views is also an open letter to Vyacheslav Butusov, written after his speech to activists of the Nashi youth movement. In it, the hero of our article called the “Nashi” gopniks hired at the budget expense, noting that he did not want them to listen to the verses that he wrote with all his heart.
Personal life
Kormilcev was married three times. His first beloved was called Svetlana, their son Stas was born. From the second wife of Marina, the hero of our article has daughter Elizabeth and son Ignat.
The public was most familiar with the poet’s third wife - the Belarusian actress and singer Alesya Mankovskaya, who was 15 years younger than Kormiltsev. They had a daughter, Carolina.
Awards and prizes
Creativity of the poet during his lifetime was little awarded high prizes. In 2007, he was named among the winners of the Big Book national award. He was posthumously awarded a special prize "For Honor and Dignity."
Literally a few days later it became known that a new literary prize named after Ilya Kormiltsev was presented at the Non / fiction international book exhibition. The author of this idea is the editor of the publishing house Ultra.Kultura Vladimir Kharitonov, who worked with the poet for several years. The members of the expert council mainly included the friends of the deceased. As noted by the editor-in-chief of the Oxygen publishing house Vladimir Semergey, radical authors who are on the other side of the existing mainstream culture can expect to receive the award.
In February 2016, the hero of our article was posthumously awarded the Our Radio Prize for his contribution to the development of Russian rock music.
The memory of Kormiltsev
The memory of the poet is now kept in many cities not only in Russia, but throughout the world. In September 2008, a memorial bench dedicated to Kormiltsev was erected in London, not far from the British Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. About a year later, the literary and musical evening of his memory took place at the popular B2 club in Moscow, which was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of his birthday. It is interesting that the action was organized on the initiative of the former Nautilus musician Oleg Sakmarov and singer Tatyana Zykina.
At the same time, the monument to Kormiltsev was opened in Moscow at the Troekurovsky cemetery, which was designed by his friend, the artist Alexander Korotich, who once designed the covers of the Nautilus Pompilius band and other Russian rock bands.
In February 2012, the premiere of a documentary telling about the poet. It was directed by Oleg Rakovich and Alexander Rozhkov. The picture came out under the title "In vain, you're new songs ...".
In 2014, the Yekaterinburg authorities actively discussed the decision to award Kormiltsev the title of Honorary Resident of Yekaterinburg. But that was never done.
The poet is often remembered by his colleagues and rock musicians. The group "Black Obelisk" has a song dedicated to it, "It does not matter," and the group Bi-2 released a video for the song "Bird on the Windowsill" in 2016, which is also dedicated to the memory of the hero of our article. Many famous musicians took part in her recording: Vladimir Shakhrin, Diana Arbenina, Nastya Poleva, Nike Borzov.
At the end of 2017, the journalist and music critic Alexander Kushnir released the book “The breadwinners. Space as a memory.” Her presentation was held within the framework of the International Fair of Intellectual Literature, at which it was decided to present a prize in his name.