Zapiski pskikhopata [The Notes of a Psychopath]

Venedikt Erofeev - writer and playwright, author of the genius poem ‘Moscow-Petushki’ (1970) and the play ‘Walpurgis Night’ (1985) - a huge phenomenon in Russian literature and not yet fully comprehended. In his short autobiography, Erofeev calls his ‘Notes of a Psychopath’ (1956-1958), begun at the age of seventeen, as his ‘first noteworthy work’, ‘the most voluminous and ridiculous thing ever written.’ For a long time, the Notes were not published, while in his interviews Erofeev again and again emphasized that he considered this text worthy of publication, but he hardly believed in such a possibility, since the Notes were full of ‘unexpected lexical phrases, to put it mildly’. And the really complete, carefully verified text of ‘Notes of a Psychopath’ was released only in 2004. ‘When I was kicked out of Moscow State University, - said Venedikt Erofeev in one of his interviews, - I already wrote - purely youthful’ Notes of a Psychopath ‘. Classmates, those who read, said that it was impossible, that it was impossible to write like that. ‘You, Erofeev, do you want to become famous throughout the institute?’ And I answered: ‘My intentions are much larger!’ ‘And how could a person, whose fame had long since overcome the limits of the capital and the Petushkov themselves, could have answered this question differently, and whose books have been translated more than thirty languages of the world.