It's a long time ago and it's not true

Nobody knows the real truth.

A.P.Chekhov

It is generally accepted that time puts everything in its place, giving final and irrevocable assessments to people and events. In reality, however, everything is exactly the opposite. History is a cruel thing. She does not distinguish between right and wrong and does not recognize moral categories. All characters are absolutely equal for her, so the common expression “the judgment of history” turns out to be nothing more than an oxymoronic misunderstanding.

However, even with modern times it is no easier. So Dmitry Bykov in the latest quiz once again asserts “the identity of all Russian debaters,” and Igor Nikolaev sings in a plaintive way about his unsuccessful family life: “You can’t tell who’s right and who’s wrong.” But you really can’t tell. Documents are destroyed, witnesses lie, senses fail, emotions deceive. Everyone remains with their own rightness, and an outside observer can, following the example of Suleiman ibn Daoud, peace be with them both, nod both to the right and to the left - and you, they say, are right, and you are also right.

Everything that has been said fully applies to the complicated history of the relationship between Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Olga Andreeva-Carlisle. The first outlined his version of their long collaboration and subsequent break in the autobiographical notes “A calf butted an oak tree” and - in more detail - in the “essays on exile” “ A grain landed between two millstones ”; in response, Carlisle published her book “Solzhenitsyn: in the Secret Circle” in English in 1978, an expanded version of which has now been published by the Zakharov publishing house under the title “Return to the Secret Circle.”

The history of the long-standing litigation briefly goes like this. In 1967, the future Nobel laureate met Leonid Andreev’s granddaughter Olga in Moscow and asked her to translate and publish the novel “In the First Circle” in America. Then he will remember that he didn’t like Carlisle the first time - and her face, “moving, dark-haired,” did not bear “traces of serious thought,” and the expression of this very face was “wary - like that of some animal,” and on her legs were “white stockings with wicker arrows.” But then all this did not stop Solzhenitsyn, and he, full of confidence in the descendant of the Russian literary dynasty, actually appointed Carlyle as his representative in the West.

Soon, however, the writer realized that he was not satisfied with either the speed of work of the team assembled by Carlyle or the quality of the English translation of The Circle. But, despite the doubts that arose, he still entrusted her with the manuscript of the Gulag Archipelago. After this, the paths of the prose writer and his assistant completely diverged. Regarding the Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn repeated the same accusations - of delay and translation negligence - and added new ones to them, of excessive spending and exorbitant greed. Carlisle, in turn, announced that Solzhenitsyn suffered from delusions of grandeur and had a disdainful attitude towards people. As for the quality of the translation and the timing of publication, Carlisle claims that a writer with a mediocre knowledge of English and no idea of ​​the details of the American publishing process has no right to judge.

Apparently, there was still less malicious intent in the actions of the parties than an elementary misunderstanding caused by the obvious difference in life experience and what is commonly called mentality. Just read those pages of Carlyle's book where she nostalgically recalls her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War and wonders why Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky were so unsympathetic to her pinkishness. Solzhenitsyn clearly did not want to take into account the commercial side of the matter and the risk that American publishers took by releasing the work in the absence of the written consent of the author (Solzhenitsyn, who remained in the Union, naturally, could not put his signature on the relevant document).

There is no way to unravel the tangle of mutual misunderstandings, claims, and grievances that have accumulated between these people over three and a half decades. And if any reviewer takes one side or the other, it is not because of an insight that has descended on him, but because of a priori acceptance or rejection of everything that Solzhenitsyn does and says.

But to sympathize with Marina Picasso, the granddaughter of the great artist, is considered good form among literary observers. Three years ago, her book “Grandfather” was published in French, and now the Text publishing house has published a Russian translation.

In Europe, the book was perceived as sensational and even scandalous. Indeed, Picasso, in describing his granddaughter, appears as a “genius of evil,” a monster, a family tyrant, terrorizing and humiliating family and friends. All the women who loved Picasso ended tragically, the life of the artist’s closest relatives was distorted, Marina claims.

Probably the memoirist is truthfully conveying the facts. However, the unpleasant scenes described by Marina Picasso, if they evoke sympathy, are half bewildered. Yes, Picasso’s world was Picassocentric, just as the world of the hero of Andreeva-Carlyle’s book is pseudocentric. Picasso's last wife called him the Sun - "The Sun does not want to be disturbed." Undoubtedly, the artist himself perceived himself as the Sun, around which small planets revolve.

But all this is the normal egoism of a genius. The question is different - why did those around him perceive him this way? Where does this constant dependence on the financial assistance of “grandfather” come from? Of course, it would not be difficult for the artist to help his relatives more generously, but why is Picasso’s son, being the father of two children and the head of the family, not able to earn a living himself? And if neither Marina’s mother nor father “had the talent to be happy themselves and to give happiness” to their children, then what does the author of “Guernica” have to do with it?

Almost all the characters in the book, including the author, suffer from what Marina accurately calls Picasso syndrome. They are fixated on their great relative, they identify themselves through him, he is the reason for everything that happens in their lives, they simply do not know and do not recognize other explanations. "Grandfather" begins with a description of how, several years after the death of the artist, his granddaughter loses control of herself in the middle of a busy freeway. She would spend the next fourteen years on the psychoanalyst's couch. Who's to blame? Of course, Picasso. Being born the granddaughter of a genius is not much pleasure, but being the father and grandfather of people who only know that they are your relatives is not too easy either.

Unlike the authors of previous books, Konstantin Azadovsky, whose monograph “The Loon’s Fate” by Nikolai Klyuev” was published by the St. Petersburg publishing house “Inapress,” does not expose or condemn anyone. Although he is essentially busy with the same thing as Andreeva-Carlyle and Marina Picasso - demythologizing the biography of his hero.

“The Loon’s Fate” is an autobiographical narrative by Klyuev, dating back to 1922, and at the same time a kind of result of his life-creative project, aimed at creating an ideal image of a “people's poet.” Klyuev changes his age, social origin, geographical location of his village, invents Old Believer roots for himself, connections with the Khlysty and Skoptsy, acquaintance and almost friendship with Grigory Rasputin. In his autobiographical notes, Klyuev appears as a tireless traveler who visited all places significant from the point of view of folk mythology - from India and the “Chinese Belovodye” to Persia, Constantinople and Smyrna, although in fact the poet was never outside the Russian Empire.

Not only the personality of the poet himself is mythologized, but also other images that are significant to him, primarily the image of his mother - Praskovya Dmitrievna from a rude, illiterate peasant woman turns into a keeper of the root folk wisdom, “memorizing several thousand verbal nests in poetry and semi-statutorily.”

K. Azadovsky shows the impossibility of analyzing Klyuev’s works based on the poet’s self-characteristics. The researcher believes that it was not Klyuev who brought the folk spirit into the environment of St. Petersburg writers of the 1900-1910s, but, on the contrary, his acquaintance with symbolist writers allowed him to grasp the eschatological mood that reigned in their circle and stylize his biography and his work under the image of a “messenger from the people” desired by his colleagues.

All of the above, however, is not at all a reason for the author of the monograph to condemn the dreamer and inventor Klyuev. Rather, on the contrary, K. Azadovsky sees in the poet’s stylized autobiography evidence of his creative power and considers the study of “The Loon’s Fate” a necessary step towards penetrating the creative laboratory of the Olonets poet.

The chronicle "Port Arthur. Fleet Actions in 1904" (author-compiler K.P. Guber), released by the Russian State Archives of the Navy, shows that there are no right and wrong not only in personal and family squabbles - from the disasters that shook and destroyed powerful empires, only meager lines of the daily list remain. The book opens with the attack of Japanese destroyers on the Pacific squadron on January 26 and ends with the surrender of the fortress by Adjutant General Stoessel to the commander of the Japanese siege army, Baron Nogi, and the signing of the act of surrender.

The scientific reference apparatus here is in perfect order - appendices, a list of generals and admirals, a name index. But the most fascinating reading is, of course, the list of ships with their spell names: the battleship "Victory", the cruiser "Zabiyaka", the gunboat "Brave", the destroyer "Attentive" (the story is immoral, but not without irony - the last ship was torpedoed by its own destroyers).

But with international conflicts there is still at least some clarity; it is much more difficult to understand internal conflicts. Finnish historian Timo Vihavainen studies the evolution of the anti-bourgeois views of the Russian intelligentsia from the 1840s until the outbreak of World War II. His final study on this issue - "The Internal Enemy: The Fight against Philistinism as the Moral Mission of the Russian Intelligentsia" - was published by the Kolo publishing house.

In the middle of the 19th century, there was practically no serious layer of the bourgeoisie in Russia, which served the Russian intellectuals as a reason for national pride. In the second half of the century before last, Russia gradually became a capitalist country, but the strengthening of the role of the bourgeoisie led to the growth of romantic extremism.

However, everything that relates to this period of Russian history is presented by the author in an extremely sketchy manner and, I would venture to say, superficially. T. Vikhavainen analyzes the “discourse of the Silver Age” in much more detail. In general, however, even here it all comes down to a useful summation of the well-known: a presentation of the ideas of Solovyov, Merezhkovsky, the “Vekhovites”, Gorky, an amusing comparison of Lenin with Nietzsche.

Then the October Revolution occurred, and the intelligentsia, unexpectedly for itself, found itself included in the bearers of the bourgeois consciousness. However, attempts to build a new life were not very successful and short-lived. T. Vikhavainen is most convincing precisely where he shows how Mayakovsky’s calls to wring the necks of unfortunate canaries and the ascetic idealism of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s heroes were replaced by the end of the 1930s by the actual rehabilitation of petty-bourgeois values ​​(naturally, in a form disfigured by Soviet ideology).

At the same time, the very concept of “philistinism” remained a label now used to brand Trotskyists: “During the first two five-year plans, philistinism was redefined by the Bolsheviks. The good old values of ascetic radicals, such as the desire for equalization of incomes, communal life, the disappearance of the “petty-bourgeois” institution of the family and the abolition of money, were not only abandoned by the Bolsheviks, but in a breathtaking dialectical salto mortale, these old goals were proclaimed anti-socialist, anti-Marxist petty-bourgeois nonsense - philistinism."

So, the Russian intelligentsia fought and fought for a century and a half against the philistinism - and what is the result? Just as the first poet certified himself as a “petty tradesman” two hundred years ago, so one of today’s best poets proudly says: “ I am a tradesman myself - I repeat after Pushkin .” And the country, which has not read either one, dreams of winning a million and flying to the Canary Islands. Positively, there is no truth on earth. But whether it is higher - we cannot say anything definite about that.