After the ball

The ball, strictly speaking, was not. Television mostly modestly rushed. The highest authorities were not at all noted for this insignificant reason. The memorable event was marked by shy half -dead.

I am personally more pleased. I am not a great lover of magnificent state celebrations with salutes and a poured sea of ​​state vulgarity, without which such events can not do. My soul is not pleased with the extensions stretched through the garden ring with quotes. I am not touched by sincere voices from the metro reproducers, clumsy intonation "favorite lines".

I repeat, I do not need these celebrations. I already love the writer Leo Tolstoy. Maybe more than anyone who wrote in Russian, and there there is someone to choose from.

But it's interesting, why is there such a silence?

They say that a solid and influential institution still plays on Tolstoy, which today plays the role of the ideological department of the ruling party and called the Russian Orthodox Church. Maybe so. And the state, and society? Well, apparently, we have such a state of society, which is not up to Tolstoy now.

And the truth is: to whom it cares to the fact that the figure of Leo Tolstoy itself is one of the few justifications (in order not to say, excuses) of the existence of an exotic, to put it mildly, historical phenomenon called "Russian state". Why should we be proud that “Anna Karenina”, “the death of Ivan Ilyich”, “Cossacks” are written in the same language that we speak? Why should we rejoice that while these books will be read, our language will at least somehow live? Why should we be proud of the few that makes Russia convertible if such a price per barrel? Yes, and does anyone need this convertibility, inclusion in the global context? Someone yes, someone does not. But today, wretched and aggressive world province gives a louder voice and stands on his hind legs, like a circus bear surviving from the mind. And, frankly, it’s bad somehow, clumsily and not fun looks this shaggy and bearded portrait on the glossy cover. Not commodity and not glamorous. Informat, in short.

And the state? And is the author of the "Russophobic" Haji Murat, who is blatantly dissonating with the great concept of "sealing in the toilet"? What to do concerned with its silicone "grandeur" with such a merciless formulation: "Patriotism in the simplest, most clear and undoubted meaning is nothing else for the rulers, as an instrument for achieving power -loving and selfish goals, and for managed - renunciation of human dignity, reason, conscience and slave subordination of themselves to those who are in power. It is preached wherever patriotism is preached ”?

The Soviet state complained to Tolstoy, not because it was so sensitive to the transcendental heights of artistic expressiveness, and therefore only that Lenin was “talking about him, because he was appointed a“ mirror of the Russian revolution ”. To put it mildly, his difficult relationships with the church and the state impressed the Soviet regime, which parted with the past not so laughing, but increasingly planting and shooting. But she parted, parted not jokingly.

Tolstoy as a “strong” realist, exposure of all and all sorts of masks and a fighter with the church watered and fertilized the communist state, whose official ideology was “scientific atheism”, which took on our expanses the original form of the pagan cult of living and dead leaders. But the Tolstoy and all kinds of non-resistance was said to him in the same way as the discorded wallpaper and ignorance of the foundations of Marxism-Leninism are forgiven for the time being, for the time being. Well, the old man did not enter into the most advanced ideology - it happens. It will grow up - understand.

The Soviet school did everything that she could in order to turn Tolstoy into a gloomy verbose bore. By the way, many did not cope with this sensation, no matter what the mighty pressure of the truly inhuman visual power of his books, not only the concrete slabs of the “school curriculum”, but even his own life philosophy.

Perhaps that is why his posthumous fate in other countries was happier than in his own country.

And now here is a sovereign silence. But Leo Tolstoy for the whole world, and therefore, for us, will remain Leo Tolstoy even without the support of the Russian state. This is the problem not Leo Tolstoy, this is the problem of the Russian state and Russian society.

More recently, a new translation of Anna Karenina was published in Germany. His publication was dedicated to the date, which the whole civilized world celebrated these days. He noted very widely, which was especially noticeable in comparison with the modest silence of the Motherland. This translation was made by a brilliant translator Rosemary Titze, my good friend. I can’t resist and boast of the fact that she discussed some difficult places, including with me. I am proud.

The other day, Rosemary came to Moscow and talked about her work on the translation. I told you very interestingly. Among other things, she said that her transfer to Karenina to German was the 21st in a row, and said in this regard that the task was especially difficult - her translation was to noticeably differ from the previous ones. Judging by the reaction of the reading public, which has already bought more than half of the circulation, she succeeded.

Well, the 21st translation is good. We, it seems, has not really translated Leo Tolstoy. It is a pity, but what to do - you will have, no matter how difficult it is to read and re -read it in the original.