Ilya Kormiltsev: biography, family, poetry tests, date and cause of death

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Ilya Kormiltsev is a famous Russian poet and translator from Italian, English and French. Known as a literary and musical critic, for several years he headed the publishing house "Ultra. Culture". One of the main authors of most of the texts of the Russian rock band "Nautilus Pompilius".

Poet biography

Ilya Kormiltsev was born in Sverdlovsk in 1959. He has a younger brother, Evgeny, who became famous as the author of lyrics for the domestic rock bands April March, Birobidzhan Music Trust, and Nastya Polevoy.

Ilya Kormiltsev himself studied at a special school in which special attention was paid to the English language. After graduation, he left for Leningrad, where he entered the chemical department of the local state university. However, a year later he transferred to his homeland to the Ural State University, from which he graduated in 1981 with a degree in chemistry.

Poetic creativity

Although in reality all this time the guy is only interested in poetry. Ilya Kormiltsev in 1981 becomes the main author of lyrics for the songs of the Sverdlovsk rock band Urfin Juice. The team included Alexander Pantykin, Vladimir Nazimov and Yegor Belkin. Poems and songs by Ilya Kormiltsev are in great demand. The poet also wrote poems at that time for Nastya Poleva, who performed solo, for the Cocktail, Kunstkamera, and Engels Grandchildren groups.

In 1983, an important event took 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 band the real stars of Russian rock. Their 1986 album "Separation" is considered one of the best records of its time.

Cooperation with Nautilus

If earlier rock bands in the Soviet Union were banned in every possible way, then during perestroika, the attitude towards them changes to a positive one. Butusov's team is even awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize, which the hero of our article decides to refuse, as he always had an extremely negative attitude towards politics and the Soviet state system.

In 1990, a poetic collection of poems by Ilya Kormiltsev called "Bound in One Chain" was published. He is accompanied by drawings by Vyacheslav Butusov. The texts of Ilya Kormiltsev remain known to this day, mainly performed bycollective "Nautilus Pompilius".

Rock band success

In parallel, Ilya begins to work as a translator of literary works, including prose. 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 convert to Orthodoxy. In 1995, Ilya was baptized, the Russian translator and memoirist Natalia Trauberg, the daughter of the famous film director, became his godmother.

When the group "Nautilus" breaks up in 1997, Kormiltsev founds his own project called "Aliens". At the same time, the main field of his activity is not music and songs, but literary translations.

Translator activities

The photo of Ilya Kormiltsev began to appear in specialized cultural publications when he began to actively cooperate with the magazine "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 "Vacation in a Coma" by Frederic Begbeder, "Four Wishes" by Owen Colfer, "Ferris Wheel" and "Steps" by Jerzy Kosinski, "Until We Have Faces" by Clive Lewis, "Timbuktu" by Paul Auster, " Fight Club "Chuck Palahniuk", "Trainspotting" Irving Welsh, "Stay in My Skin" MichelleFaber, "Glamorama" by Bret Easton Ellis.

Kormiltsev also translated stories by Frederick Brown, Louis de Brenière, poems by Allen Ginsberg, Leroy Jones, Gregory Corso, Philippe Lamantia, Michel Houellebecq, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, plays by Tom Stoppard, fairy tales by John Tolkien, lyrics by the legendary band Led Zeppelin, the style of which he largely adopted when he worked on the texts for "Nautilus Pompilius".

Publishing work

Already in the 2000s, Ilya Kormiltsev decided to engage in independent publishing. At first, he oversees the book series "Foreigners", which is called "Behind the Porthole". It tries to promptly release new novels by contemporary foreign writers, which have recently been translated into Russian.

In 2003 Kormiltsev opens his own publishing house called "Ultra. Culture". It specializes in publishing radical texts. For example, one of the first novels he published was the work of the capital's skinhead Dmitry Nesterov "Skins: Russia is Awakening". It tells about a group of neo-Nazis who solve the national question in Moscow with the help of murder and violence. Moreover, the plot is based on the life experience of the author. Behind the pseudonym Nesterov hides the right-wing activist Roman Nifontov. The book is currently on the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

Conflict with "Foreigner"

After the release of "Skins: Russiaawakens" Kormiltsev had a conflict with the publishing house "Foreign Literature", which broke off labor relations with him. But this upset him a little, he continued to publish controversial and sharp documentary and fiction books in his publishing house, which told about various aspects of the life of modern society - Moreover, Kormiltsev's authors often held radically opposite views (from the far-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 publishing house was constantly at the center of scandals. He was accused of drug propaganda, extremism, distribution 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, in the end, will not be imposed by society, but by a specific person or bureaucratic structure.

Disease

In early 2007, Kormiltsev was in the UK on a business trip when his he alth deteriorated rapidly. 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 aboutclosing of the publishing house "Ultra. Culture". This happened due to financial problems and pressure from law enforcement agencies.

The death of Ilya Kormiltsev occurred on February 4 in London, at the Royal Masden Hospital. His many friends and colleagues gathered to see the poet on his last journey. The funeral of Ilya Kormiltsev took place at the Troekurovsky cemetery on February 9. Dmitry Bykov, who delivered 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. The well-known Russian public Islamic figure Heydar Dzhemal spoke about this. 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 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 conformity. He kept a blog in LiveJournal, where he often made rather harsh statements, which incurred the wrath of others, especially from Russian nationalists, who often accused him of Russophobia.

Later Kormiltsev himself explained that under 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 spiritpersonality.

A vivid illustration of his views is an open letter addressed 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 poems that he wrote with all his heart.

Private life

Breadwinners was married three times. His first chosen one was called Svetlana, their son Stas was born. From the second wife Marina, the hero of our article has a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, Ignat.

The public was most familiar with the third wife of the poet - the Belarusian actress and singer Alesya Mankovskaya, who was 15 years younger than Kormiltsev. They had a daughter, Carolina.

Awards and prizes

The poet's work during his lifetime was not awarded high awards. In 2007, he was named among the winners of the Big Book National Prize. He was posthumously awarded a special prize "For Honor and Dignity".

Literally a few days later it became known that a new literary award named after Ilya Kormiltsev was presented within the framework of the international book exhibition Non/fiction. The author of this idea is the editor of the publishing house "Ultra. Culture" Vladimir Kharitonov, who worked with the poet for several years. The members of the expert council mainly included friends of the deceased. As noted by the editor-in-chief of the Oxygen publishing house Vladimir Semergeya, radicalauthors who are on the other side of the existing mainstream culture.

In February 2016, the hero of our article was posthumously awarded the Our Radio Award for his contribution to the development of national rock music.

Memory of Kormiltsev

The memory of the poet today is kept in many cities not only in Russia, but all over 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. Approximately a year later, a literary and musical evening in his memory was held in the popular Moscow club "B2", which was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his birthday. Interestingly, the action was organized on the initiative of former Nautilus musician Oleg Sakmarov and singer Tatyana Zykina.

In Moscow at the same time, a monument to Kormiltsev was unveiled at the Troekurovsky cemetery, which was designed by his friend, artist Alexander Korotich, who once designed the covers of the Nautilus Pompilius group and other domestic rock bands.

In February 2012, the premiere of a documentary about the poet took place. It was directed by Oleg Rakovich and Alexander Rozhkov. The picture was released under the title "In vain, you new songs …".

In 2014, the Yekaterinburg authorities actively discussed the decision to award Kormiltsev the title of Honorary Resident of Yekaterinburg. But this was never done.

The poet is often remembered by his colleagues and rockmusicians. The Black Obelisk group has a song dedicated to him, It Doesn't Matter, and the Bi-2 group 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 its recording: Vladimir Shakhrin, Diana Arbenina, Nastya Poleva, Nike Borzov.

At the end of 2017, journalist and music critic Alexander Kushnir released the book "Breadwinners. Space as a memory". Its presentation took place within the framework of the same International Fair of Intellectual Literature, at which it was decided to present the award in his name.