The Muse Must Be Slow

Venedikt Erofeev entered the history of literature as the author of the cult underground poem "Moscow-Petushki," which has been translated into more than thirty languages. Erofeev's literary heritage seems not to be very extensive. However, an important place in it is occupied by diaries and notebooks, which largely served the writer as a unique creative laboratory: in addition to biographical entries, they contained occasional notes—interesting observations, witticisms, aphorisms, puns, his own and others' maxims, fragments of conversations, anecdotes, etc. Excerpts from the notebooks, despite the variety of this material, provide an idea of both the work with words that found reflection in the aphoristic nature of Erofeev's works and the life credo of the writer, as well as the era in which he lived.