THE MOSCOW SUMMIT : Reporter’s Notebook From Moscow : Reagan Turns Literary; Clock Nearly Conquers Press Corps

MOSCOW —  Faced by audiences packed with writers, artists, movie directors, theater managers, professors and students, President Reagan turned rather literary Tuesday, loosing a dazzling array of sophisticated quotations.

For two addresses at the House of Writers and Moscow State University, White House speech writers armed the President with quotations from Russian movie director Sergei Eisenstein, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Russian poet Nikolay Gumilev, American novelist William Faulkner, Russian educator Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian novelist Boris Pasternak, an unnamed Russian songwriter, Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol and George Washington. He even spoke of “the rich and noble culture of the Uzbek man of letters, Ali Sheer Nevoyai.”

In one case, however, Reagan light-heartedly made up a quote. “As Henry VIII said to each of his six wives,” the President told the group at the House of Writers, “ ‘I won’t keep you long.’ ”

Reporters insist that President Reagan looks rather tired and listless in Moscow. During a speech by a Soviet movie maker at the House of Writers on Tuesday, the 77-year-old Reagan was spotted dozing off. These signs of fatigue have prompted questions about the President’s health.

In reply to one such question at a joint U.S.-Soviet briefing, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said: “There is no problem with the President’s health. He did have a difficult night’s sleep, and we’re all a little tired, and I suspect that was reflected probably in our entire delegation.”

Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov came immediately to Fitzwater’s support. “After they (Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev) had a walk on Red Square,” Gerasimov said, “we went up on a very high, steep stairs, and I will tell you, I felt breathless, but the President felt OK.”

The problem of tiredness arose during Nancy Reagan’s trip to Leningrad as well. Reporters noticed that Lidiya Gromyko, the wife of Soviet President Andrei A. Gromyko and Mrs. Reagan’s hostess, looked rather tired during a busy day.

Asked if she felt tired, Mrs. Gromyko, who is the same age as President Reagan, replied, “Of course, I’m tired. I’m 77 years old. How could I not be tired?”

Bureaucrats took a buffeting from both sides at the summit in Moscow. In his speech to Moscow State University, President Reagan told a story to illustrate his contention that “bureaucracies are a problem around the world.”

The President described a town with a good-for-nothing bureaucrat who somehow always hung on to power.

“So one day,” the President went on, “in a town meeting, an old woman gets up and says to him, ‘There is a folk legend where I come from that when a baby is born, an angel comes down from heaven and kisses it on one part of its body. If the angel kisses him on his hand, he becomes a handyman. If he kisses him on his forehead, he becomes bright and clever. And I’ve been trying to figure out where the angel kissed you that you should sit there for so long and do nothing.’ ”

Later during the day, Soviet spokesman Gerasimov, in a mood that was similar to Reagan’s, tried to explain that the Russian language uses the word “bureaucrat” to describe a government official who is not very good. “In the Russian language,” he said, “the term ‘bureaucracy’ has a shade of negative meaning, and therefore, we cannot say we have high-quality bureaucracy. It cannot be said. So this is all.”

One of the great wonders of the Soviet Union is crowing the sleep out of the White House press corps. The journalists are staying in the Mezhdunarodnaya, the most luxurious hotel in the country. The Russians are fond of fancy clocks, and the one in the Mezhdunarodnaya is probably the fanciest of all.

The Soviet government, which runs the hotel, has installed an enormous copper clock three stories high in the atrium of the hotel--onto which most of the rooms open. Every hour on the hour, chimes begin to ring, doors open, fancy little figures from Russian folklore roll out and back, and, most spectacular of all, a huge copper rooster flaps its metal wings, stretches its metal neck feathers and begins to crow.

The continual crowing every 60 minutes shatters the nerves of Washington reporters trying to sleep after a long day’s work. “I’ve never seen that cock crow,” said one reporter. “But I’ve heard it. If I do see it, I’ll wring its neck.”

Gorbachev has often been compared to one of his predecessors, Nikita S. Khrushchev, in his efforts to reform the Soviet system, but there is one subject about which the two men differed.

At a dinner at Spaso House, the Moscow residence of the U.S. ambassador, hosted by President and Mrs. Reagan, Gorbachev and the other guests were entertained by a group led by noted jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. The musician said Gorbachev was seen tapping his foot to the rhythms.

He seemed to be “very into it,” Brubeck said, and Nancy Reagan was overheard asking Gorbachev if he liked the music. “I like good jazz,” the Kremlin leader replied, “and this is good jazz.”

But jazz was not music to Khrushchev’s ears. “When I hear jazz,” Khrushchev commented in December, 1963, “it’s as if I had gas on the stomach.”

A few months ago, a visitor could find a ferocious anti-American poster in a prominent window of a government office building a few blocks from the Mayakovskaya subway station. It showed cartoon drawings of evil-looking American capitalists, their clothes decorated with dollar signs, greedily grasping for money. The poster had faded colors and looked a little old-fashioned for Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s Soviet Union even then.

Now it is gone. It has been replaced by a new poster with drawings of a young American boy and a young Soviet girl in an idyllic, pastoral scene. The theme of the poster is peace on Earth.