I insist: me! To me! And - the very thing that the bass-baritone, who portrays Prince Igor in the opera, yearns for. In fact, is it really not all the philippics spent on those who take away freedom, in my professional case, of course, freedom of speech? Not all inventory...

H

I'm waiting: me! To me! And - the very thing that the bass-baritone, who portrays Prince Igor in the opera, yearns for.

In fact, is it really not all the philippics spent on those who take away freedom, in my professional case, of course, freedom of speech? Haven't all stocks of pathos been depleted? But that's why I keep saying selfishly: give it to me! About the rest - for now - I'll experimentally try to forget, resting on my personal interests.

Why did I leave literary criticism in the seventies, despite the fact that to this day I have not completely got rid of this nickname? Then, I remember, someone sympathized: how, they say, are you with your polemical temperament and in the history of literature, but the whole point is that the aforementioned temperament got into a position where it could manifest itself too one-sidedly.

Scold Voznesensky? To express dissatisfaction with the next essay by Yevtushenko? For God's sake! And I wouldn’t even mind, I had to criticize both, but it made sense when critical abuse was available and their, so to speak, antipodes. And now the time has come, the time has come when, not only can you not catch the Lenin laureate Isaev of illiteracy - some super-insignificant Firsov (well, who remembers him?) And don’t touch him as a faithful accomplice of the CPSU.

And if so, who am I then going out, scolding the talents, in which, if you please, I don’t like something there, and lowering, even if forced, to graphomaniacs? It seems already as their accomplice, blowing their tune. And is it not an informer on those who are objectionable to the authorities? ..

Here he left.

Now, I'm afraid, the situation is being reproduced. In order not to go far and for the sake of purely visual clarity: I am egoistically (I repeat) waiting, no longer hoping that the fuss around TV-6 will end in favor of Kiselev - Sorokina - Norkin. Then I'll pour out, and speak out about what I don't like about this team. For example... Or... But, stop, my mouth closes, and I refuse to serve the cause of Lesin and those who are above him.

What about TV-6, which, be that as it may, evokes sympathy, turning into compassion. How can I, tell me, be with Viktor Erofeev or Sorokin, antipathy for whom, after my writings, I can no longer hide? Well, how could the “Walking Together” with their clumsy servility not make them an unexpected advertisement? Well, how would you get it? It turns out that my circle of untouchables would have expanded due to the newest persecuted?

How were dissidents made before? And I’m talking, for example, not about Alexander Galich, whose awakened gift as a satirist was supposed to turn his life as a secular bon vivant and minion; had to restore the higher authorities against him; should have been condemned to exile. No, it's about others, about something else. For general understanding - here is the scheme embodied in the film "Say a Word About the Poor Hussar." Remember the actor Bubentsov, who did not think about rebellion, who was ready for meanness and provocation. But ... After all, they didn’t leave a person with any other way out, how to rebel! How much strength, how much sophistication put into something not to leave!

The quoted “stylistic disagreements” with the authorities, declared at the trial by Andrei Sinyavsky, are not a trick, but pure truth. This again, the authorities took care to give them the appearance of political (albeit sensing that freedom from it, the most insulting of freedoms, lurked in style). What about Doctor Zhivago?

More from the one quoted. "Our redhead is being given a biography," Akhmatova is known to have said of Brodsky's trial. Of course, the “redhead” would have made it himself, but would he have received the Nobel? I doubt. There is not a grain of resentment for Brodsky, however, "ranks are given by people," and simply poetry, and even at the time of the Cold War, would not have been so appreciated.

It was the same with Pasternak. And with Solzhenitsyn. Not without action and opposition from the native Soviet authorities.

Kiselev, of course, will not be given the Nobel, but certainly not through the fault of those who persecuted his team. They did their job, for which it is difficult to thank them, although in a sense it is worth saying thanks to all the persecutors of the word.

It is known that in the time of Peter the Great, other works were published anonymously. Not out of fear, not in the way it was during the years of our “samizdat”, but simply the “authors” (then spelling) did not consider it honorable and necessary to declare their “authorship”. There was little honor - and there was no pride.

But… “Peter forbade the monks to have paper and ink in their cells… Peter announced one more of the tyrannical decrees: under the death penalty it is forbidden to write while closed. The non-bearer is declared an equal execution. (Pushkin "History of Peter".)

This, of course, was not about the persecutors of "fiction" - due to the practical absence of it. Peter was afraid of anonymous letters and conspiracies (although isn’t this what the authorities traditionally suspect of writers, now the media?). But the writers were taught a lesson ahead of time. Flattering! Respect for the word (and in Rus' respect is inseparable from fear) on the part of the authorities outstripped self-respect, which did not immediately arise among Russian writers.

Here, you see, in us, shamelessly squandering our Word, humiliating its authority with arrogance, they will bring up the necessary self-respect. Without which the writer - cut.