Sergey Kuznetsov. Yamerv

Yamerv
Old and new. Issue 14

Sergey Kuznetsov

Publication date: June 19, 2003

When I started this column, I had no idea what it would all turn into. Having undertaken to write about old books once every two weeks, I intended to remind the reader of texts long forgotten by him, but it gradually became clear that the main purpose of these notes was to study how the books I read in childhood and adolescence influenced my subsequent life. I suspect that this is not so interesting to the reader, but somehow it doesn’t work out any other way, and therefore I propose to consider myself as a laboratory mouse: here, there lived a boy, born in 1966 , Moscow, Russian-Jewish intelligent family. This is what he read, and this is what came out of it.

After this preface - about today: the scientific and artistic book by Nathan Eidelman "Vievarum", published by "Children's Literature" in 1975 and then given to me - it seems, for the New Year. Oddly enough, it is easily found on the Internet (of course! With such and such a keyword!) - the full text is on Vivos Voco.

As you can see, the book consists of two parts: the first tells about Pushkin, Pushchin and Gorchakov - three lyceum friends, and the second - about Herzen's secret correspondents. Even without re-reading the book, it is not difficult to understand the hidden themes relevant to readers of the seventies. Pushkin, Pushchin and Gorchakov represent three paths of an intellectual in relation to power - creativity, dissidence and career. The story about Herzen and his secret correspondents is even more transparent: Tamizdat and its authors living in the Union. It is wonderful that Eidelman completely avoids natural pathos - he does not discuss the slippery issue of Herzen’s emigration, does not pass judgment on whose fate is more honorable and better: a poet, a fighter or an official, and generally tries to adhere to a neutral tone.

The past years have added almost nothing to the perception of the book: except that the story of the London exile was updated thanks to the efforts of Boris Berezovsky, and the problem of moral choice (poet/dissident/careerist), on the contrary, somehow lost its former urgency: perhaps because it is not very clear what the position can now be considered dissident - they are no longer exiled to Siberia and even Eduard Limonov, thank God, was released.

The only funny change that happened to our perception of the text is associated with the story of a certain Pertsev, a poet and secret correspondent of Herzen. After Albrecht, it is pleasant to read about how Pertsev fought back during interrogations: he copied everything from unknown persons, wrote for himself, did not intend to give anything to Herzen, and so on. So, the funniest thing about all this today is that Pertsev’s name was “Erast Petrovich.” Literally like Fandorin.

It must be said that Eidelman devotes a whole paragraph to discussing the name “Erast”:

If a boy is born into a noble family in 1804, who is called Erast, then this speaks, firstly, of the impression that Karamzin’s recently appeared “Poor Liza” and Lisa’s lover, the young nobleman Erast, made on his parents. Secondly, this direction of family tastes threatens the child’s literary future...

Believe it or not, I remembered this paragraph quite vividly when reading “Azazel” five years ago - although, it seems to me, Fandorin is still younger than Pertsev, so he was not threatened with a literary career.

However, this paragraph was not the only thing that was imprinted on my childhood brain. Of course, it never bothered me that Continent was published in Paris, and Brodsky was published in Ann Arbor - well, of course, Herzen was in London, these were in France and America, normal things, our Russian tradition. But the first part made a much greater impression on me - which is about Pushkin and his lyceum friends.

Of course, I tried on Pushkin’s laurels for myself and my classmates. For some reason, it seemed that everything we wrote - poems, plays, prose - would someday be dug up and people would guess who was hiding under what nickname. Unfortunately, I still remember these texts by heart, but they did not receive any further life: I don’t quote them in my book , nor did anyone put them on the Internet (however, there are texts by other math school students, classmates of Misha Verbitsky, written by three or four years later and in a different cultural context).

However, re-reading Eidelman today, I realized that one thing was firmly stuck in my head: the idea that any poetic word is priceless. Eidelman spends most of the book talking about how he rummages through archives, looking for any line by Pushkin, any mention of the poet or document associated with him. This is how the archive becomes a sanctuary.

It is clear that such a cult of Pushkin could exist only in a situation where culture replaced religion, and the reader was confident in his heart that the Last Judgment was something like a meeting of descendants evaluating what was written during life. (It is no coincidence that the son of his beautiful era, Joseph Brodsky, so liked Auden’s poem, in which he expressed a similar thought - Time that with this strange excuse / Pardoned Kipling and his views, / And will pardon Paul Claudel, / Pardons him for writing well) .

Not inclined today to share this position one hundred percent, I still believe that archiving is one of the forms of a righteous act, and not a single written word should be destroyed. Having studied Brodsky for many years, I became convinced that for a philologist “bad” poems can be more valuable than good ones - and therefore I never tire of asking my poet friends not to destroy what they have written. They, of course, do not listen to me and, like Auden’s time, I have to forgive them for this, since they write well.

Reading books that you once loved as a child is not an easy experience. You realize with sadness that in almost thirty years you have not changed as much as you thought. And that, too, tells you something about the story and how it works—maybe even more than the book itself.

PS I deliberately do not reveal what the title “Vievarum” means - after all, you can follow the link , right?