The author talks about the beginning of everything in the life of every person. He insists that everything once happened to everyone for the first time. Unexpectedly and for the first time in his life, a person meets another person. But we are also destined to link our destinies for the rest of our lives. They become true friends.
The author talks about his faithful and devoted friend. His friend's name was Sasha. They met in kindergarten, but this meeting was very important and decisive for everyone. The author's friend had a very interesting appearance. He was thin, with huge green eyes. I always liked to be neat and dressed neatly. Friends loved spending time together. Each of them listened to the other with pleasure.
Friends studied at different schools. Each of them had friends and classmates, but they never doubted that they were the closest friends and this would be for life. The author compares their friendship with the friendship of Pushchin and Pushkin. He is glad that his friend is also called the Great Poet. The author is proud and rejoices at the strong friendship of two great people. He wants to follow their example. He says that fate has not yet tested his friendship with Sasha, but he is sure that they will be able to overcome everything and maintain their devoted friendship.
Their relationship will be as strong and eternal as that of Pushkin and Pushchin.
Picture or drawing by Nagibin My first friend, my priceless friend
Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary
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In the presence of the Pskov governor, the collegiate secretary Alexander Pushkin signed a statement that he undertakes to live continuously on his parent’s estate, to behave well, and not to engage in any indecent writings or judgments, reprehensible and harmful public life, and do not distribute them anywhere. On August 9 I was brought to Mikhailovskoye. Oh, what a terrible fate has fallen on my head! Double supervision - the supervision of my father, the supervision of church authorities entangled me with iron chains. Day after day I drag out an empty and joyless existence. All letters addressed to me are immediately printed, and I am accused of godlessness and bringing punishment on the family. My exile is located in the depths of the pine forests of the Pskov province. The linden alley leads to our estate. On the right is a huge lake with flat shores, on the left is another, smaller one. Below, the Sorot River meanders through the meadow. I live in my grandfather's small, one-story house. Nearby are my nanny and parents, who by chance became my guards. Oh, how many times have I written to the Tsar, begging to be transferred from here, even to a fortress! It's all to no avail. No answer, nothing. At times I feel invisible, a faceless ghost whose words and letters disappear with the tailwind into nowhere. What about my lyceum friends? I haven't heard from you for a long time. It’s as if I’m cut off from the outside world, and the only friend of my days is Arina Rodionovna. My room is modest: a simple wooden bed, a tattered card table and shelves with books - that’s all the decoration. The remaining rooms are boarded up from prying eyes. "Boris Godunov" and "Eugene Onegin" are my joy. They occupy me during hours full of melancholy. However, staying in Mikhailovsky is not without rare happiness. I don’t know what impulses my father gave in to, but my parents suddenly created such a commotion, packed up and left the village, dragging both my sister and brother with them. I was left alone in the care of a nanny. Over time I got used to it. I saw the creative calm that was given to me from above. My genius is growing here.
And I’ll be a scoundrel if I don’t tell you how beautiful today’s frosty day is! It's the eleventh of January, the early rays of the sun come through the window, flood my bed and sparkle on the wooden floor. As usual, I ran out into the yard, picked up a handful of pure snow and rubbed it on my face. The pleasant burning sensation on my cheeks and the crystal water flowing between my fingers pleased me as never before. - Alexander? Someone's insinuating, painfully familiar quiet voice was heard from the direction of the door. I turned around. - Pushchin! I rushed to the familiar figure and embraced him in a tight hug. The unprecedented joy of reunion covered me from my feet to the very top of my head. I remembered my lyceum years and hugged Ivan tighter to my chest. “Well, here we are, dear friend...” he half-asleeply croaked words that were sweet to the ear, and I, coming to my senses, unclenched the grip of my hands. - When did you arrive? - Recently, only in the morning. But let's go, you'll catch a cold! Grabbing me in his arms, involuntarily burying my face in the fur collar of my fur coat, he dragged me into the house and threw me onto the bed. Laughing, I pushed Pushchin away and sat down. - What a habit it is to go out in such cold weather in just a shirt! - He lightly pushed me in the chest with his fist and moved to the table, where the tea carefully poured by the nanny was steaming in the cups, - I recognize my former comrade. “Come on, Ivan,” I pulled off his clothes and landed next to him, begging him to tell him all the news that had not reached me during my stay in Mikhailovsky. There was alcohol in the bins, and we, clinking our glasses, disappeared for many hours in an intoxicating conversation. Much has changed in our situation in the five years that have passed before this meeting. I became a famous poet. In the silence of Mikhailovsky, my genius fully matured. As I said earlier, I was now working on Onegin and Godunov, and was already finishing both works. Pushchin, as I learned, managed to transform from a brilliant guards officer into a modest judicial official. In 1823 he abandoned military service and following the example of Ryleev, who served in court, he took a judicial seat in the Criminal Chamber - first in St. Petersburg, and then in Moscow. Having talked, towards evening I became more cheerful than before and, with considerable effort, fished my friend out into the street and led him to the lake. The hitherto dull landscape, secluded and quiet, was now firmly anchored with the joy of our date. - Come on, catch it! Pushchin’s cheerful shout cut through the silence and mixed with the rapid snowball that flew straight into my neck and chilled my skin. - Hey! - I laughed, rubbing my palm over the site of the blow. Ivan rushed to run towards the ice-covered lake, but before he could reach the shoreline, I scooped up more snow, crumpled it with my fingers frozen from the cold and sent it after my friend. - Past! The second shell immediately reached its target, and he fell into the nearest snowdrift. - Order? - I jumped up to my friend and extended my hand. When you're in a joking mood, don't forget that your friends can trick you. Before his hand had time to touch mine, my elbow was in a tenacious grip, and I fell into the snow next to Pushchin. He hovered over me, pressing my legs with his thighs, cutting off the path to retreat and deftly raking prickly piles of heavenly fluff down my collar. Breathing heavily from the struggle, I still managed to knock him over and crush him down. In the moonlight, Ivan’s hair was scattered across the white surface, his cheeks were flushed, and his smile revealed a row of even white teeth. I bent closer to his face, touching the tip of my nose to my friend’s cheek and feeling the hot, convulsive breath on my skin. - Alexander... Childishness took over. At such a quiet moment, my friend’s face distorted into a dissatisfied grimace as soon as my hand pressed an icy handful to his cheek. - And don’t expect to defeat me! I jumped to my feet and rushed towards the light sparkling in the window of the estate, barely making out the creaking steps behind me. The door gave way easily, the house was empty, and after running a short corridor, I flew into my room and collapsed on the bed. I spread my arms and took a deep breath, laughing loudly. “Yeah, I gotcha,” Pushchin jumped up to me, touching the wooden corner of the bed with his knee, and pressed him with his body, “now you can’t run away anywhere!” “Iva-a-n,” I irritably called out his name and began to pull the snow-covered fur coat from my friend’s shoulders, throwing it to the side. I could feel the pillow underneath me absorbing the moisture from my hair. Our loud snoring echoed throughout the little room, and the smell of alcohol still hung in the air. He brazenly straddled my hips, crossed his arms over his chest and looked down triumphantly, like a victorious predator looks at his prey in moments of triumph. The dying lamp faintly illuminated two figures on a narrow bed and outlined the contours of Pushchin’s face. I lay below and looked at him, not without pleasure, long-awaited, happy and intoxicated by fun. His face softened, his fingers tangled the curls of my hair. He rested his elbow on my left, and our lips met in a timid, virginal kiss. At what point did we find ourselves almost naked? The hem of the shirt spread out, revealing her frequently heaving chest. I felt the touch of a hot body and I leaned forward, towards his hips and hands supporting me under the lower back. The impulse passed up the spine, hit my temples, and the dull, subsiding pain still made me arch over the sheets. He pressed my lower abdomen with his palm, and now supported my knee with his other hand. He whispered something in my ear in an intermittent, hoarse voice, and I, as if in delirium, heard only the endings of the words and with each thrust I moaned his name louder. The flickering light of the lamp spread in circles before my eyes, and, taking a deep breath, Pushchin buried himself in the pillow next to me. I pulled him closer and stroked his hair, going lower and tracing the vertebra on the back of his neck with my short nails.
It was long after twelve when I woke up from a rustling sound. The place next to me was empty, and the front door creaked pitifully. I grabbed a candle and ran barefoot onto the porch. - Are you leaving already? - I couldn’t express my surprise in words. - I have to go, I promised... I’m sure we’ll meet again in Moscow. I walked through the snow, despite the frost, and pressed myself against the fur collar of his coat, just like that morning. “Goodbye, dear friend,” we shook hands, and he jumped into the carriage. I hardly saw his carriage, but out of habit I continued to stand in the snow, looking into the distance, following my departing comrade, until the nanny suddenly returned in the middle of the night and forcibly took me into the house. Meanwhile, new lines were born in my head. My first friend, my priceless friend! And I blessed fate, When my secluded yard, covered with sad snow, Your bell rang...
The narrator remembers his friend, whom he lost forty years ago. The narration is told in the first person.
All the children from the old Moscow courtyard studied at two nearby schools, but Yura was unlucky. The year he started studying, there was a large influx of students, and some of the children were sent to a school far from home. This was “foreign territory”. To avoid fights with locals, the children walked to and from school big company. Only on “their territory” did they relax and start playing in the snow.
During one of the snow battles, Yura saw an unfamiliar boy - he stood on the sidelines and smiled timidly. It turned out that the boy lives in Yura’s entrance; his parents simply “walked” him throughout his childhood in the church kindergarten, away from bad company.
The next day, Yura involved the boy in the game, and soon he and Pavlik became friends.
What a reserve of individuality this boy, then the young man ‹…›, had, if he managed to enter so firmly into the soul of another person.
Before meeting Pavlik, Yura “was already experienced in friendship” - he had a childhood bosom friend, handsome, with a girl’s haircut, Mitya - “weak-hearted, sensitive, tearful, capable of hysterical outbursts of rage.” From his father, a lawyer, “Mitya inherited the gift of eloquence” and used it when Yura noticed that his friend was jealous of him or was telling lies.
Mitya's nonsense and constant readiness to a quarrel seemed to Yura “an indispensable part of friendship,” but Pavlik showed him that there is a different, true friendship. At first, Yura patronized the timid boy, “introduced him into society,” and gradually everyone began to consider him the main one in this couple.
In fact, friends did not depend on each other. Communicating with Mitya, Yura got used to “moral compromise,” and therefore Pavlik’s moral code was stricter and purer.
Forgiving betrayal is not much different from betrayal itself.
Pavlik's parents looked after him only in early childhood. Having matured, he became completely independent. Pavlik loved his parents, but did not allow them to control his life, and they switched to his younger brother.
Pavlik never entered into a deal with his conscience, which is why his friendship with Yura once almost ended. Thanks to the tutor, Yura knew perfectly well since childhood German. The teacher loved him for his “true Berlin pronunciation” and never asked for his homework, especially since Yura considered teaching it beneath his dignity. But one day the teacher called Yura to the blackboard. Yura did not memorize the poem he was assigned - he was absent for several days and did not know what was asked. Justifying himself, he said that Pavlik did not inform him about homework. In fact, Yura himself did not ask what was asked.
Pavlik took this as a betrayal and did not speak to Yura for a whole year. He tried many times to make peace with him without clarifying the relationship, but Pavlik did not want this - he despised workarounds, and he did not need the Yura that he revealed himself to be in the German lesson. Reconciliation occurred when Pavlik realized that his friend had changed.
The nature of friendship is different from that of love. It is easy to love for nothing and very difficult to love for anything.
Pavlik was a “mental” boy, but his parents did not provide him with a “nutritive environment.” Pavlik's father was a watchmaker and was exclusively interested in watches. His mother seemed to be a woman who “did not know that printing had been invented,” although her brothers, a chemist and a biologist, were major scientists. A cult of books reigned in Yura’s family, and Pavlik needed this like air.
Every year the friends became closer to each other. The question “Who should I be?” stood up to them much earlier than to their peers. The guys had no obvious preferences, and they began to look for themselves. Pavlik decided to follow in the footsteps of one of his famous uncles. Friends made shoe polish, which did not give shoes shine, and red ink, which stained everything except paper.
Realizing that they would not make chemists, the guys switched to physics, and after that - to geography, botany, and electrical engineering. During breaks, they learned how to balance by holding various objects on their noses or chins, which horrified Yuri’s mother.
Meanwhile, Yura began writing stories, and Pavlik became an amateur stage actor. Finally, the friends realized that this was their calling. Yura entered the screenwriting department of the Institute of Film Arts. Pavlik “failed in the director’s degree,” but the next year he brilliantly passed exams not only at VGIK, but also at two other institutes.
On the first day of the war, Pavlik went to the front, and Yura was “rejected.” Soon Pavlik died. The Germans surrounded his detachment, holed up in the village council building, and offered to surrender. Pavlik had only to raise his hands, and his life would have been saved, but he ended up and was burned alive along with the soldiers.
Forty years have passed, and Yura still dreams of Pavlik. In the dream, he returns from the front alive, but does not want to approach his friend or talk to him. Waking up, Yura goes through his life, trying to find guilt in it that deserves such an execution. It begins to seem to him that he is to blame for all the evil that is happening on earth.
We are all guilty before each other and a hundred times more guilty - before the dead. And we must always remember this guilt of ours - perhaps then our most sacred dream will come true: “to bring the departed back to life...
One day, a friend invited Yura to a dacha he had recently bought to go mushroom picking. Walking through the forest, Yura came across traces of ancient battles and suddenly realized that Pavlik died somewhere here. For the first time he thought that in the village council surrounded by enemies “it was not death that was happening, but last life Pavlik."
Our responsibility to each other is great. At any moment, we can be called upon by a dying person, a hero, a tired person, or a child. This will be “a call for help, but at the same time for judgment.”
Yuri Markovich Nagibin
My first friend, my priceless friend
We lived in the same building, but didn’t know each other. Not all the guys in our house belonged to the yard freemen. Some parents, protecting their children from the corrupting influence of the court, sent them for a walk in the decorous garden at the Lazarevsky Institute or in the church garden, where old palmate maples overshadowed the tomb of the Matveev boyars.
There, languishing with boredom under the supervision of decrepit, pious nannies, the children secretly comprehended the secrets that the court was broadcasting at the top of their voices. Fearfully and greedily they examined the rock writings on the walls of the boyar tomb and the pedestal of the monument to the state councilor and gentleman Lazarev. My future friend, through no fault of his own, shared the fate of these pitiful, hothouse children.
All the children from Armyansky and adjacent lanes studied in two nearby schools, on the other side of Pokrovka. One was located in Starosadsky, next to the German church, the other was in Spasoglinishchevsky Lane. I was not lucky. The year I entered, the influx was so great that these schools could not accept everyone. With a group of our guys, I ended up at School No. 40, very far from home, on Lobkovsky Lane, behind Chistye Prudy.
We immediately realized that we would have to go solo. The Chistoprudnye reigned here, and we were considered strangers, uninvited strangers. Over time, everyone will become equal and united under the school banner. At first, a healthy instinct of self-preservation forced us to stay in a close group. We united during breaks, went to school in droves and returned home in droves. The most dangerous thing was crossing the boulevard; here we kept military formation. Having reached the mouth of Telegraph Lane, they relaxed somewhat; behind Potapovsky, feeling completely safe, they began to fool around, shout songs, fight, and, with the onset of winter, start dashing snow battles.
In Telegraphny, I first noticed this long, thin, pale, freckled boy with large gray-blue eyes that filled half his face. Standing to the side and tilting his head to his shoulder, he watched our brave fun with quiet, unenvious admiration. He shuddered slightly when a snowball thrown by a friendly, but alien to condescension hand covered someone’s mouth or eye socket, he smiled sparingly at particularly dashing antics, a faint blush of constrained excitement colored his cheeks. And at some point I caught myself screaming too loudly, gesticulating exaggeratedly, feigning inappropriate, out-of-game fearlessness. I realized that I was exposing myself to a strange boy, and I hated him. Why is he rubbing around us? What the hell does he want? Was he sent by our enemies?.. But when I expressed my suspicions to the guys, they laughed at me:
Have you eaten too much henbane? Yes, he’s from our house!..
It turned out that the boy lives in the same building as me, on the floor below, and studies at our school, in a parallel class. It's surprising that we have never met! I immediately changed my attitude towards the gray-eyed boy. His imaginary insistence turned into subtle delicacy: he had the right to keep company with us, but did not want to impose himself, patiently waiting for him to be called. And I took it upon myself.
During another snow battle, I began throwing snowballs at him. The first snowball that hit him on the shoulder confused and seemed to upset the boy, the next one brought a hesitant smile on his face, and only after the third did he believe in the miracle of his communion and, grabbing a handful of snow, fired a return missile at me. When the fight ended, I asked him:
Do you live below us?
Yes, said the boy. - Our windows overlook Telegraphny.
So you live under Aunt Katya? Do you have one room?
Two. The second one is dark.
We also. Only the light one goes to the trash heap. - After these secular details, I decided to introduce myself. - My name is Yura, what about you?
And the boy said:
...He is forty-three years old... How many acquaintances there were later, how many names sounded in my ears, nothing compares with that moment when, in a snowy Moscow alley, a lanky boy quietly called himself: Pavlik.
What a reserve of individuality this boy, then the young man, had - he never had the chance to become an adult - if he was able to so firmly enter the soul of another person, who was by no means a prisoner of the past, despite all the love for his childhood. There are no words, I am one of those who willingly evokes the spirits of the past, but I live not in the darkness of the past, but in the harsh light of the present, and Pavlik for me is not a memory, but an accomplice in my life. Sometimes the feeling of his continuing existence in me is so strong that I begin to believe: if your substance has entered the substance of the one who will live after you, then you will not all die. Even if this is not immortality, it is still a victory over death.
Yuri Markovich Nagibin
My first friend, my priceless friend
We lived in the same building, but didn’t know each other. Not all the guys in our house belonged to the yard freemen. Some parents, protecting their children from the corrupting influence of the court, sent them for a walk in the decorous garden at the Lazarevsky Institute or in the church garden, where old palmate maples overshadowed the tomb of the Matveev boyars.
There, languishing with boredom under the supervision of decrepit, pious nannies, the children secretly comprehended the secrets that the court was broadcasting at the top of their voices. Fearfully and greedily they examined the rock writings on the walls of the boyar tomb and the pedestal of the monument to the state councilor and gentleman Lazarev. My future friend, through no fault of his own, shared the fate of these pitiful, hothouse children.
All the children from Armyansky and adjacent lanes studied in two nearby schools, on the other side of Pokrovka. One was located in Starosadsky, next to the German church, the other was in Spasoglinishchevsky Lane. I was not lucky. The year I entered, the influx was so great that these schools could not accept everyone. With a group of our guys, I ended up at School No. 40, very far from home, on Lobkovsky Lane, behind Chistye Prudy.
We immediately realized that we would have to go solo. The Chistoprudnye reigned here, and we were considered strangers, uninvited strangers. Over time, everyone will become equal and united under the school banner. At first, a healthy instinct of self-preservation forced us to stay in a close group. We united during breaks, went to school in droves and returned home in droves. The most dangerous thing was crossing the boulevard; here we kept military formation. Having reached the mouth of Telegraph Lane, they relaxed somewhat; behind Potapovsky, feeling completely safe, they began to fool around, shout songs, fight, and, with the onset of winter, start dashing snow battles.
In Telegraphny, I first noticed this long, thin, pale, freckled boy with large gray-blue eyes that filled half his face. Standing to the side and tilting his head to his shoulder, he watched our brave fun with quiet, unenvious admiration. He shuddered slightly when a snowball thrown by a friendly, but alien to condescension hand covered someone’s mouth or eye socket, he smiled sparingly at particularly dashing antics, a faint blush of constrained excitement colored his cheeks. And at some point I caught myself screaming too loudly, gesticulating exaggeratedly, feigning inappropriate, out-of-game fearlessness. I realized that I was exposing myself to a strange boy, and I hated him. Why is he rubbing around us? What the hell does he want? Was he sent by our enemies?.. But when I expressed my suspicions to the guys, they laughed at me:
Have you eaten too much henbane? Yes, he’s from our house!..
It turned out that the boy lives in the same building as me, on the floor below, and studies at our school, in a parallel class. It's surprising that we have never met! I immediately changed my attitude towards the gray-eyed boy. His imaginary insistence turned into subtle delicacy: he had the right to keep company with us, but did not want to impose himself, patiently waiting for him to be called. And I took it upon myself.
During another snow battle, I began throwing snowballs at him. The first snowball that hit him on the shoulder confused and seemed to upset the boy, the next one brought a hesitant smile on his face, and only after the third did he believe in the miracle of his communion and, grabbing a handful of snow, fired a return missile at me. When the fight ended, I asked him:
Do you live below us?
Yes, said the boy. - Our windows overlook Telegraphny.
So you live under Aunt Katya? Do you have one room?
Two. The second one is dark.
We also. Only the light one goes to the trash heap. - After these secular details, I decided to introduce myself. - My name is Yura, what about you?
And the boy said:
...He is forty-three years old... How many acquaintances there were later, how many names sounded in my ears, nothing compares with that moment when, in a snowy Moscow alley, a lanky boy quietly called himself: Pavlik.
What a reserve of individuality this boy, then the young man, had - he never had the chance to become an adult - if he was able to so firmly enter the soul of another person, who was by no means a prisoner of the past, despite all the love for his childhood. There are no words, I am one of those who willingly evokes the spirits of the past, but I live not in the darkness of the past, but in the harsh light of the present, and Pavlik for me is not a memory, but an accomplice in my life. Sometimes the feeling of his continuing existence in me is so strong that I begin to believe: if your substance has entered the substance of the one who will live after you, then you will not all die. Even if this is not immortality, it is still a victory over death.
I know that I still cannot really write about Pavlik. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write. There are a lot of things I don’t understand, at least what the death of twenty-year-olds means in the symbolism of existence. And yet he must be in this book, without him, in the words of Andrei Platonov, the people of my childhood are incomplete.
At first, our acquaintance meant more to Pavlik than to me. I was already experienced in friendship. In addition to ordinary and good friends, I had a bosom friend, dark-haired, thick-haired, with a girl’s haircut, Mitya Grebennikov. Our friendship began at the tender age of three and a half years, and at the time described went back five years.
Mitya was a resident of our house, but a year ago his parents changed their apartment. Mitya ended up next door, in a large six-story building on the corner of Sverchkov and Potapovsky, and became terribly self-important. The house was, however, anywhere, with luxurious front doors, heavy doors and a spacious, smooth elevator. Mitya, without getting tired, boasted about his house: “When you look at Moscow from the sixth floor...”, “I don’t understand how people manage without an elevator...”. I delicately reminded him that quite recently he lived in our house and got along just fine without an elevator. Looking at me with moist, dark eyes like prunes, Mitya said with disgust that this time seemed like a bad dream to him. This deserved to be punched in the face. But Mitya not only looked like a girl in appearance - he was weak-hearted, sensitive, tearful, capable of hysterical outbursts of rage - and no hand was raised against him. And yet I gave it to him. With a heart-rending roar, he grabbed a fruit knife and tried to stab me. However, being easy-going like a woman, he began to make peace almost the next day. “Our friendship is greater than ourselves, we have no right to lose it” - these were the kind of phrases he knew how to use, and even worse. His father was a lawyer, and Mitya inherited the gift of eloquence.
Our precious friendship almost collapsed on the first day of school. We ended up in the same school, and our mothers took care to seat us at the same desk. When they were choosing class self-government, Mitya proposed me as an orderly. And I did not mention his name when they nominated candidates for other public positions.
