Alexander Ageev. Hunger 47

Hunger 47
Practical gastroenterology reading

Alexander Ageev

Publication date: August 13, 2001

To be honest, I didn’t expect that my slight attack on Grebenshchikov in the previous “Hunger” would cause many heated letters in defense of my idol. The pathetic Olshansky wrote something to the effect that he doesn’t care who has B.G. stole the melody because "Rock and Roll is Dead" is still a great song. And the calm Sergei Soloukh expressed it in the sense that all Russian rock (and all rock in general) is pure plagiarism. Therefore, there was no need, they say, to touch Grebenshchikov. The rest of the letters in pathos and content were still closer to Olshansky: “B.G. is our everything!”

These letters surprised me: it turns out that the grassroots (and not only) cultural consciousness still needs authorities and idols, builds and protects hierarchy, and is by no means mired in indifference and is not infected with corrosive skepticism. Which, generally speaking, is good - the mechanism is old, but useful, but one can argue about the personal composition of the celestials.

I’m just now reading A. Reitblat’s latest book , “How Pushkin Became a Genius , ” published by UFO. In its title essay, using the example of Pushkin, the very pressing problem of “literary reputation” is posed today and describes (sorry, very sketchily, but the topic is worthy of a monograph) the strategy and tactics of our first genius to create his own. The anniversary that made a splash two years ago left behind seas of molasses and oil (you go to Biblio-Globus - there is still a whole stand with an appalling amount of anniversary Pushkiniana), so the image of Pushkin , drawn by Reitblat, is even perceived freshly - the image of a sober literary figure , who used a whole system of techniques to expand his fame and authority in literary and non-literary circles: from defiant behavior to building ambivalent relations with the authorities (both an oppositionist and an official historiographer).

The book is generally interesting - despite the title, Pushkin is only an episodic character, and it is dedicated to the formation in the first half of the 19th century of what can be called the “infrastructure” of Russian literature: how the readership was formed, what libraries were like in everyday life at that time, how copyright developed and the now familiar institution of editing, what kind of relationship writers and publishers had with the state (the most interesting article “Writers and the III Department”), what the Russian “bestseller” of that time was, and a lot of other things.

Since before our eyes, in some way, the process of formation of a relatively new infrastructure of literary life is also underway, you come across many parallels and see what is emerging naturally, and what is husk, transitional forms. Oddly enough, almost everything new is old, thoroughly forgotten during the years of Soviet non-market life. Who cares, but I like it.

Another book produced by “UFO” that lies on my desk is a plump volume of literary essays by Grigory Kruzhkov , “Nostalgia of Obelisks.” To be honest, I haven’t read yet, I’m just looking at the pictures, of which there are many scattered throughout the book - some are funny. But I’m afraid to read, because Kruzhkov is preoccupied with the connections between English and Russian poetry. As for English, I have to trust him - he probably knows and understands it better than me, and as for Russian, I’m afraid of running into amateurism and for this, Kruzhkov, whom I love as a literary-human phenomenon, will stop loving. I accidentally read the phrase “ Overcoming Symbolism,” which Zhirmunsky wrote about in 1922, seemed like a historical inevitability , “and immediately became sad and doubtful. Judging by the number of footnotes on the most exotic publications, Kruzhkov is an erudite person, and that means this is an error in my memory. However, as now I see the 12th book of “Russian Thought” for 1916 with the sensational article by Zhirmunsky “Overcoming Symbolism”... A trifle, but unpleasant. But I say again - I haven’t read the book yet, I only leafed through it briefly, looking at the pictures, so. that this, God forbid, is not a review of any kind.

This week I read with real pleasure “The Diaries” of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , published by “Our House” (L’Age d’Homme) in cooperation with the Yekaterinburg “U-Factoria” last year. But somehow she didn’t particularly catch my eye anywhere, but then for once I went into “Ad marginem” and saw it.

Why I read with pleasure is impossible to explain, because Pyotr Ilyich’s diaries are extremely boring, written in denominative sentences like “Woke up. Drank tea. Rain. However, I worked a little. Got drunk in the evening.” This is not a quote, but an attempt to reproduce the type of narrative, but for some reason such boring daily chronicles fascinate me. On the one hand, you understand that this is actually human life - a monotonous, but also majestic, everyday epic that covers decades, and on the other hand, against the gray enumerative background, some individual non-standard phrases, unusually used words, mysterious leitmotifs suddenly flash , not explained by commentators (which means you can speculate to your heart’s content). In short, reading such a diary is like searching for a grain of pearl in a trash heap, a process that is akin to collecting. You sort through a lot of all sorts of nonsense (well, for example, books on store shelves or something like that) until you come across something unusual, out of the ordinary.

I don’t even know how to illustrate this - in the quote I’ll pull out exactly the rare, but it’s rare against the backdrop of the ordinary, the array of which will remain behind the scenes.

But still: 1890, Tchaikovsky is in Florence, writing The Queen of Spades . The entries are the most ordinary: slept (good or bad), had lunch (good or bad), worked (and this way and that). You fall into this unhurried rhythm, and suddenly it appears: “ March 1/13. Thursday. I didn’t sleep well. I even had a terrible nightmare at the beginning of the night (rustling paper and movement in my room) .” Or the next day: “ March 2/14. Friday. I don’t sleep well, probably from fatigue from work. The birth of a king and a mass of troops with vile music .”

No, in fact, it is very difficult to explain why this unexpected “ mean music ” suddenly pleases - the diaries must be read sequentially, day after day, as life itself was lived.

By the way, reading with personal pleasure all kinds of diaries, notebooks and letters (almost no matter whose), for some reason I feel like I am betraying the glorious profession of literary critic. Therefore, I frantically grab hold of the latest magazines, looking for some kind of fiction there, but - alas - in the August issue of "New World" there is one joy - several very good stories by Evgeniy Shklovsky, and the highlight of the issue, the story by Alexander Titov "The Life That Wasn't" - The opus, although professional, is somewhat dull. And in the accidentally bought “Continent” (# 108) there is some kind of not shameful, but not inspiring prose, and in “Banner” , and in “Star” ...

So you walk through all sorts of book cellars, looking for something unexpectedly epic...