On 27 June Maria Kopyova, known to thousands of readers by her penname Alice Danchokh, a contributor to the Russian Mind magazine, passed away
Time has no unit of measure in our memories. We evaluate our days primarily by the people who marked them and “painted” them in certain colours. If these men and women have given our existence (which, alas, is not always rosy and cheerful) new “colours” that delight the eye and soul, we are lucky. It means we won some wonderful and enriching moments of communication. Or maybe even whole hours of intense happiness, derived by thinking people only from intelligent speeches and sincere books.
Maria Kopyova, known to thousands of readers by her penname Alice Danchokh, has passed away, leaving her beloved husband, son and grandchildren. The accursed disease that plagued her for many years despite the beautiful woman’s unyielding fortitude has taken its toll… Our world has lost a talented, unique and «one-off” (as the ever-memorable Gennady Shpalikov would say) person.
Who was she, our author Alice Danchokh, whose works – almost all of them – were published in the Russian Mind magazine? A prose writer, an essayist, a columnist?… She was all at once in a perfect mix of genres. And most importantly, she knew how to tell stories. And how she did it!… Once we heard from her: «He who believes that the world consists of atoms is wrong. It’s made up of stories that you should be able to hear and convey.»
Maria Mikhailovna Kopyova, or rather Alice Danchokh, was a master of listening and hearing. In her books she did not invent sonorous myths and elegant fairy tales for laymen; she told true stories for people who had a keen interest in history, literature, culture, physiology and even cooking. No wonder one of her first books was entitled, Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood.
We don’t think Maria-Alice was a romantic, yet nostalgia was strongly present in her soul. It was mostly a tribute to her family, which gave the girl an excellent education, and gratitude to their home (which was always open and hospitable) where her grandmother Vera Alexeyevna reigned supreme – a wise beauty who knew all the secrets of the world, knew how to defend her own opinion and create true wonders in the kitchen out of petty things. A tribute to her childhood at school in Moscow’s Spasopeskovsky Lane, at an elite school specialising in French and, of course, at the Institute of Foreign Languages, which still bore the name of Maurice Thorez back then. She used to say: «Irina Lvovna Filimonova, a French vocabulary teacher, was a mother figure to me…»
We can’t help but think of the title of her another book, The Not-Quite-Holy Family from Silver Lane. In the «Nationality» column of a humorous questionnaire started by Literaturnaya Gazeta Danchokh indicated: «Cosmopolitan”. It’s not very accurate: our Alice was a “native” of the famous Old Arbat Street. It is no coincidence that the literary club she set up in Romanov Lane was called the Reading Room in Arbat Street at her suggestion. Born in Moscow’s oldest maternity hospital named after Grauerman, she cherished the hope of opening the Grauerman Children Association someday, which would unite the «Arbat geniuses» of all times and ethnic groups: «A baby born at Grauerman’s becomes a privileged resident of the capital from its first cry. The Kremlin and Red Square are a stone’s throw away; wherever you step, fountains of spiritual life are everywhere. The Moscow Conservatory is two steps away, The Lenin Library is three steps away, and you can go to the Vakhtangov Theatre and the Pushkin Museum every day, not to mention three cinemas…»
Alice Danchokh on the Subtleties of Writing and Creative Inspiration
«I’m still interested in people, their stories, destinies, feelings and experiences. They still surprise, delight, and exasperate me.»
«I know little about the subtleties of writing, so I can’t share anything. But I do have a secret to share – I write all my books, essays and articles with Graf von Faber–Castell pencils and an eraser that perfectly erases unsuccessful thoughts. To paraphrase Kozma Prutkov: ‘If you want to be an author, be one.’»
«Literary activity is akin to drug addiction. It’s very hard to stop.»
«For the author the books he has written are like children who need to be loved and need continuous attention. You should not offend them – I try to be impartial. But it is up to readers to decide how successful they are.»
«Catching inspiration is akin to experiencing the ecstasy of love. For me inspiration is a complex physiological process in which inner energy is sublimated into constructive work– splashing words and thoughts onto paper or into cyberspace. To bring inspiration into action you should experience a perpetual acute sense of creative hunger and, hunting for new impressions and emotions, consume ‘alluring food’ without fear of mental shocks, worries and difficulties…»
She enjoyed recalling the old Arbat courtyards, archways, kitchens with intoxicating smells curling from the windows into the frosty air to the tram tracks, the Ars cinema transformed into Science and Knowledge, the shop where turtles and parrots were sold… «Ah, Arbat, my Arbat…» The “world of Arbat”, received from her grandparents and dissolved in her blood, was something sacred to her. Crudely earthly, but at the same time irrevocably distant and impalpably Heavenly, like the Star of Bethlehem above the Infant Jesus. Like the mysterious land of Kotovia from the fairy tale on the Cat Kotovich and Princess Myshkana, written by Alice probably for her grandchildren.
«The elite has not disappeared, but it has lost its relevance,» Alice Danchokh pronounced her verdict on modern society in an interview. Maria Kopyova, nee Malysheva, belonged to the class of aristocrats of the spirit: her father was an editor and translator of literature from Turkish at the Khudozhestvennaya Literatura Publishing House, and her mother was the editor of a popular music magazine (her parents were divorced). By right of birth into a family of intellectuals, free from avarice, she lived without being bound by caste envy, long-term humiliation, or the Bolshevik thirst for domination and suppression of someone else’s will.
When we saw Alice Danchokh, we usually thought of Anna Akhmatova: «I can do without what is necessary, but never without what is superfluous.» A special talent? Definitely. But not only that. Alice Danchokh listened keenly and attentively to herself and to others. She listened physiologically and psychologically. This is where her books, Medical History, or a Health Diary, and A Long Road to the Land of Age-Related Changes, were born. With “water of life” and the axiom: «As you chew, so you will live”, and with happy centenarians… And, like icing on the cake, with sensational revelations about men: «Women fail to understand that they and men are not just different planets, but essentially have nothing in common.» Maria-Alice looked at representatives of the seemingly stronger sex with a hidden smile. At the same time, she secretly sympathised with men and even pitied them – strong-willed and ambitious poor devils.
She was a person of principles. She recalled her grandmother’s instructions: «The groom comes only to the bride who is waiting for him. And adventures are for those who are ready for them.» And also: «It’s important to me when we agree on what seems funny.» And she wasn’t afraid of seeming funny herself – ever since her extremely funny sketches she showed on the student stage at the Department of Foreign Languages. She did not at all strive to differ from others, which some women do. For some reason her «peculiarity» was natural – with an «old–fashioned» manner of carefully pronouncing and dragging out long words, with feline flexibility in gestures. This happens…
«I write about what interests me,» said Alice Danchokh. And she was interested in a wide range of things. «You don’t cut a thread with a sword. I write with a pencil, returning to the manuscript over and again,» she would say about her creative workshop. “The idea of a new book can also be prompted by the ‘genius of a place’, not least such a luxurious one as the Cote d’Azur or Florence, or maybe just an old incunabula book found in a flea market of a small town…»
Continually creating, giving herself easily and wittily to plans and ideas that change with the speed of kaleidoscope patterns, at first was for her a professional need, and then a form of struggle with a protracted illness.
The Art-Liniya Foundation, which has held hundreds of concerts for children musicians in Russia and abroad and trained genuine, renowned artists, was her idea. The Russian Insomnia at the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve in Moscow, The Inmost Recesses of the Russian Soul – this is also her, Alice in the land of the beautiful reality she creates. The Imperial Gardens of Russia Festival? Nothing could happen here without Danchokh. Without her Eight Rose Stories, in which the rose flower played a key role in the lives of the characters…
Only an absolutely extraordinary person could leave behind a dozen and a half books translated into French and Italian (one of her books will be published in English soon): so different, multi–volume, but connected by the author’s immediately recognisable intonation.
Alice Danchokh’s notes (I can’t bring myself to call them «travel notes», as they are much deeper), Florence. A View from the Hill, and Stories from a Missing Suitcase. Myths of the Cote d’Azur, are unusual too. The author’s suitcase has not only a reliable handle, but also strong locks. Those who are alive and have a flexible mind will swiftly find the keys to them and discover such characters as Merezhkovsky and Cocteau, Brodsky and Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky and Blok in the trunk…
As a famous Italian-American film ends: «Life is not over as long as you have if only one story and someone to tell it to.» Alice Danchokh has a host of such stories. They are united into a skilled knitting and woven into an original canvas. Reading her books, even those who have lived in France or Italy for years catch themselves thinking that they are discovering something new. For in her «suitcase stories» Alice Danchokh not only opens up new things to seemingly knowledgeable people, but also makes us all think differently about the world and about ourselves.
Maria Kopyova did not live to see her birthday by a couple of months. But despite the irreparable loss, the Reading Room in Arbat Street will reconvene in September. This time it will be in Saratov, the city of Maria Mikhailovna’s ancestors. Her new book will also come out, because she worked till her last breath on a family saga, whose publication was scheduled for their golden wedding anniversary with Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Kopyov.
«I believe in the law of the conservation of energy,» the writer Alice Danchokh stated in one of her numerous interviews. If the energy of her touching love for her family and friends helped Maria Kopyova fight the illness, then Alice Danchokh’s creative energy charged her with a permanent desire to work: to write, to help others, to bring up children… Alice Danchokh, aka Maria Kopyova, taught us to do good and love people too.
Eternal memory! We will always remember her!
Editors of the Russian Mind magazine
