This is criticism

This is criticism
Issue 13


Date of publication: September 4, 2003

We continue to publish conversations with literary critics. Today the guest of the column is Dmitry Bak .

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Russian Journal: Dmitry Petrovich, how did you, a historian and literary theorist, come to criticism?

Dmitry Bak: There were a number of reasons for this. It would seem that between literary theory and literary criticism there is a huge distance, not even a distance, but an abyss. You can publish five academic monographs and not be able to write one brilliant critical article. Nevertheless, the path from literary criticism to criticism is extremely attractive, and many have followed it. A literary historian deals with a phenomenon that has already been assessed, put on the shelf. The question does not arise in his mind: “is this or that novel by Dostoevsky, for example, good or bad?” Is it relevant for today's reader? For the current situation? For contemporary narrative practices? A literary historian reconstructs what has already happened, a critic lives inside a living process, he is a witness and participant in the formation of certain “established opinions”, and tries, to the best of his ability, to influence this process. I once read a phrase from Lydia Ginzburg that shocked me. Literally: “not only a bacteriologist should not love, but even a botanist may not like flowers...” Then, of course, there were words about the exceptional position of the critic: he is interested not only in the results of the research, but also in its subject. In literary criticism, I have always lacked this - a personal relationship, the opportunity to be the first to give an assessment that will be remembered and will become “theirs” for many.

There is another point. One of my friends, a great ancient Russian scholar, says: “It’s easier to study those writers who can no longer respond to criticism.” And this is also very important. Criticism is a word that instantly reaches the person you are writing about. This is a completely different responsibility; both the author himself and his “co-religionists” can answer you.

RJ: Are you talking only about yourself now, or do you see some kind of trend in this movement from academic studies to criticism?

D.B.: In the 1980s. There was a powerful influx of literary critics into criticism. This is, after all, a largely social phenomenon. Many of those who, during the Soviet years, lived in a more comfortable and less risky historical and literary territory and did not go to the platform of journalism, realized that the time had finally come to speak out. Many went into criticism and journalism in search of their daily bread - there is nothing wrong with that either. In the generation of critics who went through the school of academic literary criticism, the brightest names are Andrei Nemzer and Alexander Arkhangelsky. These are people of my generation, colleagues and like-minded people, whose opinions I always listen to with interest.

RJ: But, unlike you, they practically left literary criticism...

D.B.: No, why, Nemzer teaches literature to students very enthusiastically, and publishes historical and literary articles that are still meaningful and even, perhaps, more lively and vibrant than before, when he was not yet a critic. And Arkhangelsky wrote several excellent textbooks for school. One way or another, we are all people with a common destiny, at least I think so.

However, this phenomenon did not occur in the 1980s. was born. It has quite long historical roots. After all, the division between critics and academic scientists in Russian literature did not exist for a long time. In the 1820-30s. at the Imperial Moscow University, the same people who determined journal policy and were leading critics stood behind the department. Suffice it to mention Nikolai Nadezhdin, the founder of the Telescope magazine, who taught aesthetics at the university; historian Mikhail Pogodin, who published Moskovsky Vestnik and a little later Moskvityanin; Stepan Shevyrev, who led the history of poetry and actively published in the same “Moskvityanin”. And there was also Mikhail Kachenovsky, publisher of Vestnik Evropy and university professor-historian, in St. Petersburg - Pletnev and Senkovsky... Only, perhaps, with Belinsky, who was already a pure critic, this division begins.

But even later, already in the 20th century, there were quite massive “campaigns” of literary critics in criticism. This is especially true for so-called turning points. In the 1920s Almost all the theorists of the formal school - Shklovsky, Tynyanov, Eikhenbaum - wrote a lot about modern literature. Eikhenbaum, by the way, uttered a wonderful provocative phrase: “criticism is surprised, science understands...”

In the sixties and seventies the situation became different, university academic science and criticism diverged very far. Exceptions (Vladimir Turbin!) were quite rare. And recently, as we said, there has been a new call for literary scholars to magazines and newspapers. Some left science completely, others are trying to work here and there. Many people do it very organically; among the venerable scientists, I would name Nikolai Bogomolov; among the younger ones, the temperamental Oleg Lekmanov.

RJ: How difficult is this combination for you?

D.B.: I would say that it is risky and enjoyable. I have been teaching at the Russian State University for the Humanities almost since the day of its foundation (that is, of course, since the day of its transformation from the Historical and Archival Institute), teaching courses on both the history of literature and the history of criticism. And in my head all this somehow combines (literary criticism, oriented towards a neutral judgment, and criticism, obviously sharp and polemical) - this, of course, affects my courses. All the time, even in our conversation, as you can see, I compare the 19th century with the 20th, classics with modernity, criticism with the history of literature. And this gives me a lot, both as a specialist and as a reader, and I hope that it does the same for my students.

But, of course, any multi-machine operator takes risks. Academically trained people consider criticism to be a frivolous activity, even sometimes unworthy of a “serious scientist” who must sit in archives, compare manuscripts, etc. I do all this, and many of my colleagues do not understand why I also need criticism, all these opinions and assessments, which, they say, live for one day. On the contrary, from the point of view of uninhibited critics aimed at polemics, literary criticism is sheer tediousness, constantly palpable in the texts of people who sailed “from the other shore.”

These mutual claims are based, it must be said, on a misunderstanding. What does a literary historian study? The same judgments designed for momentary relevance, only drawn from the past. What, say, Pyotr Vyazemsky and Alexander Turgenev casually talked about 180 years ago. And the more serious the literary historian, the more interested he is in precisely non-obvious, “one-day” meanings that have not survived the topic of the day, and have not been deposited in the future. Without them, the later canonical historical and literary ideas that emerged will seem eternal and indisputable, as if they had fallen from the sky... Well, in general, if critics suddenly stop exchanging mutual attacks, the strict history of literature will soon have nothing to do, it will simply die.

...I always feel like I'm in an intermediate role, between two fires. I approach this calmly and ironically, although maintaining this sense of self is sometimes difficult. I am reproached for everything at once: both for academic tediousness and for journalistic ease. More, probably, still for the first. After all, criticism is not always based on analysis; the critic’s goal is often to flashily destroy, brightly praise, or perform a rhetorical pirouette. So my reputation as a moderate author is a disadvantage for a critic. When RJ conducted a survey a year and a half ago, it seems that Dmitry Bykov called me “the most honest critic” - a dubious compliment, right? It seems that a critic should be bright, harsh, scandalous, whatever, but not just honest?..

When you try to understand a story or a collection of poems, to place it in context, you pay attention mainly to what is “yes” in it for you, and not to what is “no” in it. I often just feel sorry for wasting energy on “no,” what can you do... In addition, a literary critic writes for his own kind, who always know the “history of the issue,” and criticism is also addressed to the reader, who, perhaps, only yesterday read for the first time Utkin, Ulitskaya or Gelasimov and have never seen any articles about them, here it is - the very first! The critic is inevitably focused on the audience: of course, in my articles I do not write about any “super-scheme stresses in verse” or “narrative models,” but I know these words, I know what stands behind them in the text. A critic always knows more than he says; there should be a sense of metaphysics behind his assessments, even if the tone of the article is cheerful and ironic.

Vladimir Novikov once told me: “What kind of a critic are you if you never “attached” anyone in your articles?” And this is partly true, I rarely “apply”, I listen more to others, those who, like Novikov, can say bluntly: “NN is not a poet.” Well, it’s true that such a sharp, energy-intensive judgment is often more justified than sluggish descriptive and enumerative muttering...

RJ: Then why aren’t you doing this?

D.B.: Yes, I just have different functions, I think. There are forest orderlies, and there are forest rangers, I belong to the latter, although an ideal critic, of course, should be able to do everything. Let's say in the 1990s. I felt better knowing that Andrei Nemzer was working in criticism. The "Nemzerovsky account" has been a worthy replacement for the Hamburg account all these years. In his presence, it is no longer so easy to put noodles in the ears of readers; he is uncompromising, and besides, he reads almost everything that appears in serious literature. Nemzer is a kind of literary OTK. There must be a person who is so inclined. I’m not set up like that, I’m not OTK, what can you do? Some prose writer NN, writing his next story, will not think that somewhere there is a critic Buck who will “attack” him if he writes something wrong.

Frankly speaking, in recent years criticism has outweighed me in my mind, I am moving further away from academic science, may my fellow literary critics forgive me. After all, an “objective” literary history that is absolutely independent of the researcher’s optics simply does not exist. Behind every concept there is an author. That is, any history of literature is not a finally formed series of positive facts.

It is in the exact or natural sciences that each subsequent hypothesis cancels the previous one; with the advent of Einstein, the Newtonian model of the world reveals its incompleteness. This is not the case in humanities; there are parallel universes here. Therefore, in relation to the history of literature, we can only talk about the processes of canonization and decanonization. Any history of literature begins with an attempt to reconstruct the reading circle of people of the period that we undertook to study - the result is a cloud of meanings that intersect in the most complex way. Otherwise - and this happens oh so often! - a literary critic takes a scheme from the future and superimposes it on the past. It turns out to be some kind of “overcoming romanticism.”

The same danger lies in criticism. No one will prove to everyone, without exception, that the classics of today are Solzhenitsyn, Iskander and Makanin, and not Prigov, Sorokin and Pelevin. And it’s funny to talk about which clip is number one, which clip is number two, etc. - each row has its own readers and admirers. This is normal for criticism, there are several juxtaposed hierarchical rows, there are many critics, one of whom writes in Literature, and the other in some extremely progressive and advanced publication.

Ask my student, ask a man on the street, a seventy-year-old writer of the old school - you will get three different pictures of modern literature.

RJ: And none of them is more valuable than the other?

D.B.: No, of course, time will clarify a lot, but now, when we are in the yet to come era of the “beginning of the century”, not a single nuance can be missed.

RJ: Is there any contradiction in your words? You say that you went into criticism in order to gain the right to voice your assessments, and at the same time, criticism for you is a field of vague meanings, where there can be no final assessment at all...

D.B.: I didn’t talk about vague meanings, sorry. Everyone believes in what they say and writes about it clearly and distinctly, to the best of their talent. The point is that there is no supreme authority that could connect and harmonize all this discord, and thank God that there is no. A risky analogy: there are people who are sincerely Orthodox, Catholics and Buddhists. And each of them is rightfully convinced of his own. But any kind of ecumenism is a very unreliable thing, either it turns out to be eclecticism, or an occult dictatorship. I have my own rating scale, my own Hamburg score, but I can’t pretend that there’s nothing else around. Let's say that the figure of Prokhanov in all his guises is deeply alien to me. But it would be funny not to understand that the scandals associated with it are highly characteristic and indicative of the modern literary moment.

RJ: You say that the academic style influences the critical style. Is there no reverse effect? Is academicism not being eroded by the influence of critical discourse techniques? And isn’t it difficult for a critic to transform into a university lecturer?

D.B.: Probably not as a lecturer. In my opinion, teaching is theater. At a lecture you need to experience what you have known for a long time as new. Only then will you be able to pass on your knowledge to someone. Critical experience is rather useful here.

As for literary criticism itself, archival work, textual criticism... No, it’s somehow on different shelves. I have been preparing a scientific edition of Arseny Tarkovsky for seven years now. If some poem was published 15 times, then I must compare all 15 publications, down to the commas, then look into the manuscripts, find discrepancies, identify the pattern of work on the text, take into account the influence of censorship, justify the conjectures, see what Tarkovsky wrote about this poem in letters... It is clear that in such strict areas of academic literary criticism there is no need to talk about any influence of criticism.

RJ: You talked about what you lacked in literary criticism. Was there anything that you were missing in criticism when you “landed” into it? Did you see any empty niche that you could fill in a way that would differentiate you from other critics?

D.B.: Both literary criticism and criticism have their peripheral extremes, which sometimes come to the fore, eclipsing everything else. In the history of literature, for example, this is a cold, positivistic establishment of dates and facts. This kind of work is very important, but it is still not the main thing, it is only the foundation for something more.

In criticism there is the opposite extreme, which did not suit me and does not suit me. This is lightness and hasty categoricalness. Since you need to be sharp and polemical, then, having mastered a certain style, a person can write critical articles about just about anything and be considered a critic, without understanding the basics of literature. Such a critic does not build his own picture of literature, but offers the reader a series of scattered notes about random books. This is a kind of critical populism aimed at an incompetent reader - they say, “I’m the same as you, there are no differences between us.” I always wanted to speak out more responsibly, with knowledge of the matter.

RJ: Tell me, did you choose this position consciously? Aren't you offended that there is, say, "OTK Nemzer" or, for other writers, "OTK Kuritsyn", "OTK Basinsky", but there is no "OTK Bak"?

D.B.: This is, of course, a conscious choice. I only write if I have a personal need to express myself. This is not connected with earnings, with other external facts - group obligations, mutual responsibility. An ex officio critic is a person who reads almost everything and writes about much of what he reads. The more complete the map of the current “literary process” is in his head, the more professional a critic is. But my bell tower also offers tempting views. I can speak to the reader beyond the role that is inevitably set by the magazine or online publication that contains the work record of a “real” critic.

Of course, such self-determination is associated with inevitable professional losses, first of all, limited opportunities for direct influence on the literary situation. Here's a concrete example. There is a wonderful prose writer Evgeny Fedorov. I am convinced that his “camp” works are the “third way” after Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. Fedorov does not set himself the same Columbus-like goals that his great predecessors had. This is treating camp material as if it were a continent already mapped. He can allow himself, despite all the horrors described, some detachment and a certain irony. In my opinion, this phenomenon is very significant. But it practically does not exist in literature. The critic Buck could, if he had taken a different position, try to somehow “promote” the prose writer Fedorov, and I am sure that I would have succeeded, simply due to the scale of the phenomenon itself. I published two articles about him, large by my standards, in Literature and in Novy Mir, and that’s all. I have spoken, my task as a critic is over.

RJ: Why does a situation like Fedorov arise? I am sure that if you conducted something like a poll among critics, it would turn out that the majority have a more than positive attitude towards him and consider him a significant writer. But at the same time, ask the same critics to name the ten largest contemporary prose writers - it is unlikely that Fedorov’s name will appear in this top ten. Why is this happening? What makes a writer noticeable, discussed, etc.?

D.B.: The mechanism of success is a very complex thing. Whether we like it or not - literature is largely developing according to the same laws as the cultural phenomena outwardly distant from it. The concept of "brand" is equally important in it. Today, "brandedness" in literature is achieved, first of all, through prizes. The prize does not always make the writer famous, but a kind of “patent for nobility” is connected with it. And here is a magazine or influential critic who make the writer “their own” play a big role. The quality of the texts themselves, of course, is the most important, but not one hundred percent, but, say, for seventy.

RJ: But still, is it more than half?

DB: I think yes. Literature is not a type of PR. But in history there are many examples, when contemporaries did not know future classics. Like Kierkegaard or John Donn. And vice versa: modern idols often do not fall into the pantheons of descendants. In general, in my opinion, literary eras can be classified by how much each of them is confident in its classics.

RG: Does our era know its classics? How suits you are the hierarchy that is now developing?

DB: Actually, we said that there are several hierarchies, and not one of them describes the literary situation until the end. If the self -description of the era does not come down to a single hierarchy, smoothly flowing into eternity, this is the "state of postmodern".

The culture by definition is pluralistic, which does not exclude solid personal beliefs. Say, I do not hide my, sorry for the expression, right -winged beliefs, but there is still a lot of things and everyone nearby. And the new left, like Limonov and Prokhanov, and Sorokin’s unnecessary - they all actively play on a cultural field, their game has their own meaningfulness.

RG: Tell me, and the Anglo-American Criticism, which you mentioned several times in your work, is vaccinated on Russian soil?

DB: In general, yes. In the West, now there is practically no fact that until recently, it was customary to call criticism. There is Criticism - an analogue of our literary criticism, and “Reviews” - brief, advertising type of annotation of new books. We gradually arise something similar - Sergey Chupinin wrote well about this in the May "Banner". Actually, you and I spoke a little earlier literally about the same. Criticism implies deep breathing, the critic should not only quickly view the book novelties, but also see their genesis, place them in historical and literary context. This is not enough for those whom Chuprinin calls the "Columnists." Their columns are, in fact, the same expanded annotations.

RG: I put into the concept of Criticism in relation to the current situation a slightly different meaning, I understood it, rather, as criticism, which approaches the approach to literary criticism .. The type of criticism when the author looks at the literary today as if with some temporary distance when he considers Modern Lit Process as part of the history of literature, which is important not to evaluate, but to classify, that is what to enter into the context - such an approach, represented, in particular, by the Arsov "Americans" - Mark Lipovetsky, Mikhail Epstein - is promising in Russia?

DB: Rather, no. But behind this is not worth a complaint. It does not mean: "Ah, what a pity that authors like Mark Lipovetsky and I are not printed in the" New World "." It seems to me that that measure of implantation of this kind of criticism into the Russian tradition that has been implemented is sufficient today. This approach took its "niche", and there is no need to expand it.

RG: And in conclusion, the question is a slightly different plan. Please tell us about the sensational story with a student booker.

DB: My students during the fall awarded a kind of alternative Buker Prize of 2002. They started with a short list, took it as if for their longlist-and read these six novels: D. Bortnikov, S. Gandlevsky, A. Melikhov, V. Month, O. Pavlov and V. Sorokin. But they didn’t just read, some of the students, on my assignment, collected a mass of data on the history of the English and Russian Boker on the network and magazines, introduced all the project participants to the conditions of presentation of the prize, developed their own rules of the game - all this was posted on our training electronic page. I must say, many have experienced a cultural shock. After all, they do not have a single circle of reading. They read the Murakami, and Zizheka, and Pelevin, and after all, there is also the Filfak program: from Plato to Platonov. And here - I had to choose between Gandlevsky and Melikhov. Suddenly it turned out that the literary life in Russia continues, that thick magazines print a variety of poetry and prose that he is fighting with the “fat people”, there are many literary clubs, salons ... I would try to state the same amount in the audience with a mentor tone information that was mastered by students "Samotek", as they were drawn into the project! ..

RJ: Who won your booker?

DB: Melikhov. Melikhov, Pavlov and Sorokin reached the finals, and Melikhov won.

RG: Very strange, I am not bad about Melikhov, but I was sure that any student would put him in the last place. Some kind of really modern reading ...

DB: Yes, for me the result was also quite unexpected, but all the more interesting and meaningful, the whole experiment turned out to be, we are going to continue it, but this is already, as Dostoevsky wrote, a completely different story ...

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PS (Mikhail Edelshtein)

Once, the magazine "Banner" held a round table called " Russian poetry at the end of the century. Neoarchists and neo-monk ." Read, very curious. Even if from the meaning of the words pronounced to abstract, and observe only the change of critical registers. At first, the journalistic pointed Alla Marchenko with Invectings against Putin (not that she did not like his poems, but in general); Then the refined provocateur Vladimir Novikov, with all his philologism, does not miss the occasion to throw his colleagues a reason if not for a fight, then at least for easy sparring; Further Igor Shaitanov, who did not want to talk about poetry, but with visible pleasure once again, who was once reached on the fashionable Western theoretical and literary trends; Behind Shaitanov Nikita Eliseev with the next paradoxical essay; The next one is Andrei Vasilevsky, so held together with the "periodicals" that on a round table instead of an independent performance, he offers the assembled marginalia in the margins of the performances of colleagues. And closing - Dmitry Buck. And that all the ones who performed at each other are different from him - but still from the first words it is obvious that there used to be one, but now another. No better, no worse - another and that's it. And it’s not even clear what exactly changes - it would seem, and there are not many terms in his speech, and its meaning is by no means dark, and all the quotes are all familiar - only the breakdown of intonation becomes noticeable instantly. There was a critic, and now Criticism has settled in her bast hut.

The opposition "Criticism VS Criticism" himself D. Bak and set in one of his reviews . And if you follow this path, then you can understand quite a lot of interesting things about the modern critical life in general, and about D. Baka in particular.

But first, we must, probably, agree that we are understanding by this very Criticism. Because the word is new, on Russian soil to the end with its meaning that has not yet been determined, from which some confusion stems, the traces of which everyone can easily notice in the interview placed just above.

So, speaking further about Criticism, I will keep in mind a critical strategy built on the understanding of criticism as a “moving literary criticism”. That is, the "criticists" about Sergey Gandlevsky or Stanislav Lviv speak in the neutral analytic manner that the historian of literature, saying, say, about the same tradition in Decembrist poetry. The expression of a personal attitude to the subject of a conversation in such a text is perceived as something rudimentary, which was inherited from a distant relative and is still not completely obsolete. As a result, an article is obtained - even now in the university "scientific notes" put it.

This, however, is the theory. Or practice - but Western. In practice, everything looks somewhat different. But more on that later. In the meantime, a step to the side, an attempt to outline the context.

In my opinion, D. Bak is not quite right when, describing in an interview his path, unites himself with Andrei Nemzer and Alexander Arkhangelsky. Between them the coincidence is biographical, generation, personal, in the end. But there is very little creative similarity, almost everything varies from the method to temperament. Try to present D. Baka with a newspaper observer - nothing will come of it.

As a critic of a tank stands in a completely different row. He is closer to M. Lipovetsky, I. Kukulin, D. Kuzmin. And therefore, the defense of the D. with the Back of fat-journalism seems like a tribute to me by a tribute or a manifestation of human addictions (here it would probably be some note for Alexander Ageev : they say, I do not want to say anything bad about thick magazines, I am just trying to describe the situation as she There is - but still will not believe). Its natural platform is a UFO or, say, "critical mass."

“What is the critic, if you have never“ put ”anyone in your articles?! All you are trying to scientifically talk about criticism, and not about literature, you dodge direct assessments,” the D. Baku on a different table throws the D. Baku. This time in "questions of literature". A rather strange reproach: a person is guilty of what makes up his (and not only his) method. Although in the case of the village, it really turns out to be curious: to come to criticism from literary criticism, in order to get the right to evaluate and a direct statement, and as a result become a symbol of cold academism. I, too, reading the articles of Buck, no, no, and I caught myself thinking: I wonder if he puts deuces to his students?

In fact, the problem of Russian Criticism, of course, is not in "evasion of direct assessments." Rather, on the contrary. Actually, the tank itself is exhaustively analyzed the state of affairs in almost its best article " Revolution in one individual poetry, or the barrenness of expectations ."

Criticism now is not just a promising critical direction, but also intellectual fashion. Accordingly, they practically do not have university professors in this sport in this sport, as you might expect, but the observers of advanced magazines mentioned above. In the role of the Russian field of experiments, on which new approaches are being worked out, they have their own littuska. Moreover, the whole meaning of the Russian Criticism is precisely in the promotion of several, partially intersecting in the composition of the parties. As a result, we received a simply export version of PR critics. As if we were not enough for us for internal use!

It is worth adding that the “PR criticists” in such parties are, as a rule, the most talented ones, able to arrange smart words in the best order and work at a speed of several new “-images” per minute. One trouble: no matter how tassu and classify their sponsored - all this can impress only those who are not familiar with the actual poetic products of the latter.

D. Bak represents another version of Criticism, more authentic, or something. Its texts do not imply any organic conclusions - a rare case not only against the background of the closest neighbors, but also in modern Russian criticism in general. A happy person, he really does not want to build processes, promote and promot. It really is only important for him to express and argue his opinion, and then back to the archive in order to accommodate Tarkovsky’s options there.

Any review of him turns into an easy run on the keyboard of world literature, in order to tell about the novel by Yuri Maletsky, he calls Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Max Frisha, Iris Murdok, German Hesse. “The critic is the more professional, the more fully in his head is the map of the current literary process,” says the tank, certifying himself according to this criterion rather as an amateur, rather than as a professional. Actually this is not true. It’s just that he has a different card in his head, another context. He wants to read the thing he liked against the backdrop of Nobel, rather than Buker laureates.

The main intention of the critic tank is to explain to the reader how this or that overcoat is made. And he dissolves it on the thread, and then sews it again. From analysis to synthesis. From morphologists to Bakhtin. Not forgetting to explicate your own methodological grounds simultaneously. Criticism as it is. Meet me.

If everyone wrote so, it would probably be bored. If there were no such criticism at all, it would probably be sad. And so ... so just right.