Grigory Solomonovich Pomerantz was precisely a great man – in the most initial and most accurate sense of these words. I was very little familiar with him, but for some reason I think I’m not mistaken.
A desk in the office of Grigory Solomonovich Paranets stood by the window. So that, sitting down to work, Grigory Solomonovich can see the forest.
The office, however, is an exaggeration. Yes, and the forest too. A small room, even which “modest” would already mean it to flatter her strongly. And southwestern forest park, part of the Troparevo recreation area, from all sides packed with peppy new buildings. But for the Paranets it was precisely the forest. Not in the sense of biological diversity, enormous sizes or increased dense. Forest in the sense of the phenomenon of nature, a living part of the living world, the perfection of which one cannot but admire. Grigory Solomonovich told what happiness it was-just to look from the window every day (in recent years he was very ill and almost could no longer go for walks) on juicy greens in the summer and the interweaving of black trunks and branches on a snow-white background in winter. And listening to him, even the most inveterate urbanist, probably, would not have doubted for a second that this is really happiness.
Alexander Arkhangelsky, one of the first to respond to the death of the Paranets, wrote very correct words in his “live magazine”. The fact that Grigory Solomonovich is difficult to correlate with some understandable categories. Philosopher, culturalist, theologian? All the time a little by. Writer, writer? Again, not that. Dissident? Not again. But who was he then and why his departure turned out to be a personal loss for everyone (I am sure) who at least once saw or heard the Paranets, who read at least a few of his pages?
I think I know the answer. We are habitually talking about great people, related to them of commanders, scientists or artists. And not very thinking that, in essence, this is wrong. Because the great commander could win a thousand battles, the great scientist – to open a thousand laws of nature, and the great artist – to play a thousand bright roles, but all this speaks little about what people they were. So, Grigory Solomonovich Pomerantz was precisely a great man – in the most initial and most accurate sense of these words. I was very little familiar with him, but for some reason I think I’m not mistaken.
Grigory Pomeranz as a person was – and will remain, while we will remember him, it is much most written by him: philosophical works, and books about religion, and polemic with Solzhenitsyn, and even excellent “notes of the ugly duckling”. His main work was his own life. Not a romantic-basonic life-making, but simply the life of a worthy person. There were great courage and great love in this life. There was a war, and there were Stalin camps. There was pain and there was faith. It was what Grigory Solomonovich said about what was the best: “I took only two or three steps in the depths. This is completely not enough for our salvation. It’s a little more than zero. But these are real, not imaginary steps, and they will not lose meaning if you change all words ”.
In one of the conversations with me, speaking of the values of human life, Grigory Solomonovich almost innocently admired the fact that the main of them go to us for nothing. Gave as an example the journal reproductions of great paintings and icons on the walls of his room. And then he talked about music: “After all, a disk with musical notes is very inexpensive, and on the radio you can just listen to the music for free!”And he told how he fell in love with classical music. It
was in a camp where, after strict conflicts with “thieves” and a real threat of life, it was lucky to get to a warm position of a normist of workshops with slightly more free conditions of detention. Grigory Solomonovich found this camp freedom the best use. There were pillars with reproducers on the territory of the camp who broadcast the first (and in those days, it seems, the only one) radio program. Every evening, the reproductors for hours erupted themselves unrestaled symphonies and concerts of Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Mussorgsky. And Pomerantz, wearing a felt boot and a pea jacket, went out every evening on a 35-degree frost and paced around a pillar with a reproduct for hours. He listened to great music and felt happy.
Of course, this episode was in an interview. And then I got almost the same story by Grigory Solomonovich in an interview with another edition. I remember I was upset: it was a shameful way that my text was not exclusive, although it was clear that the Pomeranz told a lot about this. Now I’m glad. I really want as many people as possible to imagine him just such. Standing in boots and a pea jacket on a 35-degree frost under a huge starry sky filled with great music. Free and happy.
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