Habibullo-Eugene Kiselev
A Synopsis of my Life
May 3rd, 2018, Thursday, 10:45:55 p.m.
Yekaterinburg, Russia. GMT 05:00
This afternoon, I visited my Teacher, Eugene Lobanov at his home. I bought three more copies of “Portraits”, a book, where my article on literary criticism in Russian was published for the first time.
We have also discussed an epic poem, which I wish to start writing someday. However, I must say, I have a whole bunch of things to do: preparing my third book of poetry, translations, scientific research, etc. All of this is done apart from my work as a tearcher and translator at the Ural State Mining University.
We also talked about my article on free verse writing. This topic is sort of developed, however there are still problems to be solved. I have even once prepared a report about it during one of the meetings of the Lubov Ladeishchikova’s lierary seminar.
After that, Eugene Lobanov and I had a small lunch together. We ate pizza; Lobanov treated me with his homemade apple jam. He told me a story when he met an American man of a Basque origin. This American studied in Russia in the early 1990s. He thought pizza was a Russian dish, because wherever he went he was given pizza as a treatment in Russia. Lobanov told me, “This man could not understand Russian jokes; however he got accustomed to them later”. When Eugene Lobanov told this man one of his daughters was named Tatyana, this American said, “I will marry to a Russian girl named Tatyana!” As a result, he did not marry to a Russian girl.
In the end, I told my Teacher I had never met like-minded people among the littérateurs of Yekaterinburg. He answered, “You will not always have the same people who will support you. Some people come to you, then they leave, and you meet new people… This is always like that”. He also offered me some ideas how to make my poetry more various. I cannot say I was satisfied with them. Probably, I will think of them later. I certainly will think of them, not like Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara, who said “I will think of it tomorrow” to forget unpleasant experiences.
Ad: