Oleg Pavlov. Stopped time

Stopped time
Oleg Pavlov

Publication date: April 1, 2002

Russian prose in the early nineties sharply changed its face, although few people agreed that the authors of debut stories, which were numerous in magazines, would barely disappear before they came with a second wind or a second wave with stories and novels. And everyone was waiting for another prose, for some reason not realizing that this wave would throw out only the unforgotten old: from the day someone begins to write, he is locked in a time that has stopped for himself.

The energy of a new experience is a countdown. The life time of this generation was very short, because very soon the real, that is, felt and realized through personal experience, became history. In the nineties, the energy of new experience was “Afghan Stories” and “The Mark of the Beast” by Oleg Ermakov , written, however, about something that had already been relegated to Soviet history. This is how this decade began, but all the iconic works of the nineties, in one way or another, completely turn to the past, if not to history. by Svetlana Vasilenko say about modernity What did “The Fool” ? "Round Dance" by Anton Utkin? "Persona without credibility" by Vladislav Otroshenko? "Country of origin" of Dmitry Bakin? "The Great March for the Liberation of India" by Valery Zalotukha? "Chapaev and Emptiness" by Victor Pelevin? "Turn of the River" by Andrey Dmitriev? "Return to the Homeland" by Yuri Petkevich? "Endless Dead End" by Dmitry Galkovsky? Makanin and Ekimov, Solzhenitsyn and Prokhanov write about the new time, so they turn out to be more modern. Social realism is generally moving from fiction to detective stories: it is Marinina or Kivinov who paint the physiology of our time in all colors... How to understand all this?

The energy of a new spiritual experience first of all seeks new artistic forms. Therefore, colorful stories became prose , in which each of the new writers found their speech, found their form. In this sense, Ermakov’s prose was more modern than Ekimov’s prose, and Bakin’s prose was more modern than Makanin’s prose. A new artistic reality was born - and with it new meanings. Modern prose is not a story about modernity, but a conversation with contemporaries, a new formulation of the main questions about life. The prose of the nineties philosophizes about life, it is metaphysical and existential in its suspended time. There were no realists and postmodernists where spiritual states found their image. The main thing in modern times always becomes essentially the same question about God, that is, about truth on earth and above, about the causality of events occurring in human destinies, about the meaning of human life - and, in the end, about good and evil. There are no other meanings in our existence, just as there are only the same notes, the same letters, the same palette of colors in the existence of music, literature, painting, however, both in life and in art there is a constant creation of new forms of this of being: and what is genuine in these sounds, colors, letters, meanings, which are suddenly given one or another order - that is the essence. The question of the authenticity of being is not asked fiction , and therefore its reader, who chose this way of spending time only in order to fill some emptiness in himself as pleasantly and entertainingly as possible. This reader may be a deeply religious or deeply educated person, that is, not at all spiritually devastated, but still refuses a conversation with the writer in favor of an easy and non-committal pastime with a fiction writer.

The prose of the nineties turned out to be alien to its contemporary, that is, to the reader. But fiction is published and sold out in almost the same mythical circulations for which the book products of the “most reading country” were famous. In the prose of the nineties, the metaphysics of this time comes through much more clearly - it is difficult, painful; and in fiction the tragic is reduced to a carnival farce or a criminal joke. There is already the “physics” of this time, that same good “social realism” of today’s television series, which does not ask questions about life, its authenticity, but simply once again, in a pleasant home environment, replays in a more action-packed presentation for the average person the same life , long anesthetized his own indifference.

The prose of the nineties has only the image and likeness of the reader - the literary critic. In the nineties we can talk about him in general terms - as about one person. For the critics of the nineties, it was most important, first of all, what social idea he served, and most valuable of all was his own literary authority, that is, the sum of the ratings that he gave once and for all. The writer could not have had a conversation with such a contemporary. There was only literary guidance . People came into literature who were not taught how to write correctly. And they were met by a reader who called himself a “professional”, who, obviously, was taught how to read correctly, and at the same time how to write correctly. A writer could be overlooked only because he had different beliefs than the critic - and this is true. The prose of the nineties violated literary norms, created its own - and it was measured with slide rules. Assimilation has become almost the main and only way of comprehension. Behind every writer of the nineties, some already known, measured literary equivalent was placed as a shadow. The spiritual state of criticism in general has become close to the emptiness that has already been mentioned.

Russian criticism opened up in Russian prose questions that were painful for Russian life, but now, in its present state, it has not proven capable, with rare exceptions, even of an equal serious dialogue. Success is preferable - prizes, circulation, and anything that attracts attention, again somehow empty, and subjugates - like the amorphous expression of the will of the “majority”. This reproduced the morals and the literary situation of the Soviet era, in which the main thing was also success, ensured by unity with the “majority”.

If previously it was clear why, say, the Lenin Prize in the same way in the field of literature and art is awarded, then it is obviously impossible to win the Booker Prize . The businessmen who give money to support literary prizes today are unlikely to read anything themselves. You can go to the consumer for maintenance. But it is absolutely clear that this is just an oasis among the sorrowful silence of a huge country, a pass to which, however, our cultural society, with its large and small theaters, symphony orchestras, the celluloid power of Oscar-winners, and the literary elite, receives a pass.

Our culture pays the owners of this oasis in full, as in the Soviet past: with fear . After all, once upon a time, for the same purpose, they maintained an army of “Soviet writers”, so that only fear would be strong in a cultured society: so that yesterday’s intellectuals themselves, in fear for their newfound prosperity or even for the possibility of finding it, would drown out people’s pain with cynical laughter; they mocked in their midst those who still had a conscience; they themselves supervised, persecuted, lied... Fear of personal responsibility for what was happening. Fear of direct vision of the miserable life in which our people lived and live. Fear of serious thinking about life. And then the twilight of literature is thickened fear. In the nineties, they were not yet afraid to write - all such figures are noticeable in literature today for their loneliness. But when a writer or critic today submits to fear, we no longer notice it.

The main thing is that the present time has taught us not to sympathize, therefore suffering has become despised, just as people who suffer have been classified among us as the scum of society, to topics indecent for literature. The tragic sound in the nineties was perceived as a social protest - but it is indecent to “protest” after the “freedom” officially acquired by our entire society. It is necessary to be hypocritical that “life has become better, life has become more fun,” although today life is built on the oppression of some people by others, and in Russia of the new century this torments few people, few are ashamed and ashamed of it. But whether oppression of man by life in general or oppression of man by man has always been a source of suffering. And it’s better to shut your mouth, seal it with wax, take a vow of silence, so as not to make the whole society responsible for this. The same thing happened in literature. In the nineties, people were sent to study morality in the newspaper “Zavtra” or the verdict was “chernukha”. At the end of the decade, they taught the saints with hypocritical piety and demanded that they create “positive” works about life - and not those that “denigrate reality.” Everything is as in legend of the Grand Inquisitor . The same vile lie: to make people happy without suffering, that is, without truth, faith, love... and without God. Christ is love - but the depth of his love for people was measured by the measure of his suffering and death. If you don’t know the truth about people’s suffering, your love will be false and your happiness will be vile, bought only at such an ungodly price.

Speaking about Russian literature, for some reason few people ask the question, what has it always been like? What was the main thing about it? All of her was addressed to the person suffering, she responded to pain with pain , because the main thing for her was the person.