Leonid Kostyukov. Sit down. Two.

Sit down. Two.
Leonid Kostyukov

Publication date: January 31, 2000

Lotman Yu.M. Textbook on Russian literature for high school. - M.: Languages ​​of Russian Culture, 2000. - 256 p.; circulation not specified; ISBN 5-7859-0076-9.

They gave me a textbook on Russian literature by Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman for review. What to do?

Praising is somehow inconvenient. They will say: who are you to praise Lotman? It’s like patting some classic writer encouragingly on the cheek - as, remember, Shakespeare curiously noted. Cultural insanity. Scolding is practically the same thing. But here’s what Goethe was never able to understand (due to his historical limitations)... Hello, we’ve arrived. And who are you?

There are two options left. The first is not to take Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman’s textbook for review. The second is to discuss it, as mothball-covered bibliomaniacs discuss the quality of publication: the text itself is bracketed as a sacred product, while footnotes, references, gaps, fonts, and typos are criticized. For reasons not of interest to the reader, these two solutions do not suit me.

There is always a third way. In this case - to find a perspective in which I can see LOTMAN, not like a rat, the Statue of Liberty, but more or less on an equal footing. Like Lotman.

Excluding hooligan options, life gives me one such possibility: I am a former school literature teacher with a double-digit total experience. And in this respect I surpass not only Lotman, but also Pushkin and Dostoevsky combined. By the way, you’re grinning in vain.

For a schoolchild, Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman is just an uncle with a mustache, just like Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, according to the immortal observation of Kosoy, is a man in a jacket. And our aspiration must be communicated to them not by aspiration, but by indirect methods. So that it arises from within. Through interest - passion - love for real literature. Further everywhere. And the literature teacher is perceived by me personally as a meditative figure, a translator, turning the product into an advantageous, tasty side, ready for a skeptical, seemingly boorish reaction from the client, for simple but sharp questions. And from this point of view, quite rightly, I began to read the textbook mentioned above, ready to both scold it and praise it.

Then something strange happened. The willingness to praise gradually withered away as unnecessary, while the reasons for scolding multiplied, grew stronger and stronger. About a third of the way through the textbook, my poor memory could no longer accommodate them, so I had to resort to classification enclosures. By two-thirds, the full calculation for each individual enclosure, as well as their total number, exceeded the reasonable scope of the review. So, in a haphazard format of complaints and grumbling, it’s just painful.

Approximately 70% of the text in the textbook is not about literature at all, but about history. You know, in history textbooks, after a thorough analysis of wars and coups, there is usually a short subsection of culture , where names, titles and dates are briefly listed. So, in the book under review, presented in this way culture alternates with history presented in the same way : conquests, baptisms, dates, names. It’s as if in a slightly modified fairy tale about tops and roots, you and I were deceived by both the man and the bear, and here we stand with turnip tops in one hand and cabbage roots in the other. Roughly speaking, everything is bad here. And the fact that literature is presented as a function of the historical process. And the fact that history has been reduced to a simple scheme. And that the scheme itself is painfully familiar: like a tsar, so is a tyrant and a despot; like a pop, he is an obscurantist; like a revolutionary - so fiery. (I’m not saying that the reverse scheme is smarter. Negative and positive are always worth each other.) And, most importantly, there is nothing to grab hold of in terms of artistic delight. Personally, I remember very well how I was captivated by the internal rhymes and phonetic modulations in “The Prayer of Daniel the Imprisoner.” How the bitter words of Avvakum were etched in my memory. And here are available discussions about the formation and fragmentation of genres, either (sorry) banal, or (sorry again) declaratively controversial.

There is, for example, a passage that in such and such a century works were divided into ecclesiastical and secular, original and translated, but were not yet completely divided into artistic and non-fiction. It seems clear and true. But only it seems. The gullible teacher, who undertook to voice this paragraph, immediately, like a fratern with a knife (sorry again), swoops into the innocent question of a malicious excellent student: formulate the difference between artistic and non-artistic. The teacher finds it difficult to synchronize with all world literary studies. And while he is hesitating, the next question is, point to point: when did this separation finally take place? In other words, are Bunin's "Cursed Days", Rozanov's "Fallen Leaves", Ivanov's "St. Petersburg Winters", Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" artistic or not? You see, Yura... And if we are talking about the fact that now this division has occurred at least partially, but then it did not, then the third question is below the belt: what is unartistic ? in a folk song or some fairy tale about Ersha Ershovich? Sit down, two.

But all these claims are still at a sane level, and as you read, the emotion grows... how can I explain it to you... remember how Grandmaster Bender played chess with amateurs in Vasyuki? This is exactly what these amateurs feel. The grandmaster gave up the queen. Give up? Or wait?

On page 47, the author of the textbook quotes Herzen in the epigraph to the next chapter:

“Pushkin was killed in a duel at the age of thirty-eight.

Lermontov was killed in a duel, thirty years old, in the Caucasus."

How can we be here? To clarify 38 as 37, it is necessary to know the months of birth and death of the “sun of Russian poetry”. But in order to somehow... doubt Lermontov's 30, it is enough to master subtraction within the 2nd grade (1841 minus 1814). What should we do now with a schoolchild who writes in an essay: “Lermontov, as Herzen wrote, died at the age of thirty”? How should the dean of a Catholic educational institution behave in the new textbook “The Law of God” edited by a cardinal with reference to the Pope reading: “Jesus Christ fell at the hands of fanatics for 36 years”? Why confront authorities with basic arithmetic? Something is bound to fall.

Please forgive me again for taking so long to deal with this small inaccuracy. If it simply fell out of context with the rest, we would simply mark it as an unfortunate oversight. But what’s scary is that she expresses this indifferent context.

The book is full of rounded platitudes, stylistically reminiscent of the turns of Brezhnev's speeches. Somehow tautologically true, but... nothing is said. On the other hand, there are also some clumsy absurdisms in the spirit of Daniil Kharms. Examples? Please.

“He (Lomonosov - L.K. ) never tired of glorifying science and enlightenment in his poems.” - p.37. In school essays, such phrases are usually underlined with a red wavy line.

“He himself (Radishchev - L.K. ) said in a short poem that he paved the way to Siberia. The Decembrists, Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky and many other Russian writers then followed this road.” - pp. 42-43. Kharms. Rest assured, cool jokers will not miss this gem. Thanks to Radishchev. Or, as it was said in “The Diamond Arm,” come to us in Kolyma.

“Pushkin came to literature as a cheerful breaker of norms, he broke literary rules like a child breaks toys, with a mischievous laugh.” - page 76. Maybe it’s not Pushkin after all, but Sorokin and Vik. Erofeev? What did Pushkin “break” after Derzhavin and Karamzin? No more than other geniuses; built more than others. And finally flog this child!

On page 83 from the documents (the diary of P.I. Dolgorukov), isolated and carefully a quotation of two words is snatched: “Pushkin laughed” - for the sake of the author’s triumphant comment: “in church during the sermon .” So what? Does this undermine the authority of the church? Does it make Pushkin more multifaceted and more humane? It’s unlikely... The shareholder Brenner made a mess in the Pushkin Museum. So what?..

“Therefore, love and political lyrics for Pushkin do not oppose each other, but merge in a single ideal of a bright and complete existence.” - page 118. But where?! It is in songs about Stalin of the 30s that merge like two buckets of sludge. political and love lyrics

“Pushkin as a realist artist became a teacher of truth for all Russian writers. But Pushkin played no less a role as a bright, brilliant personality.” - page 122. This is Irtenyev. So, to the giggling of his comrades, the poor student begins the answer and hears the sacramental from the teacher: let’s get closer to the point.

In the same place: “Love him, and you will get a friend for life - simple and smart, sometimes cheerful, sometimes sad, always honest and courageous.” Maybe this is not about Pushkin, but about Vysotsky? Then the keywords simple and courageous are more or less in place.

Page 153, about Pechorin: “This is not an indoor romantic dreamer and not Hamlet, whose will is paralyzed by doubts and reflection.” Agree, this is a short, but very shallow interpretation of Hamlet, especially if you return to Shakespeare and refresh your memory of how many striking actions this disabled person with a paralyzed will managed to commit. It’s also funny that in this assessment of Prince Hamlet, the author of the textbook aligns himself with the eleven-year-old American schoolboy from the film “The Last Action Hero,” who presents Schwarzenegger in the role of Hamlet. But even in a Hollywood film such an assessment is given with an ironic overtone.

Page 154, about female images in Lermontov: “K. Marx in his early work said: “The moth, after the sunset of the common sun for all, seeks the light of lamps lit by individuals.” No comments.

Perhaps that's enough.

What else? The proportional division of the material is amazing. For example, exactly a third of the page is devoted to the life and work of Karamzin. This handkerchief failed to even mention that Karamzin wrote “The History of the Russian State.” For comparison: the same amount, if not more, space is devoted to the description of Lermontov’s duel with de Barant, which has nothing to do with literature at all, or tear-jerking episodes from the personal life of Kondraty Ryleev. Exactly four lines are devoted to the description of the syllabic-tonic system of versification. Sounds like a test for a federal agent: did you see Mister Colored on an oncoming subway train? Now tell me how many buttons he has on his shirt.

It is suspicious that the author of the textbook, in the part intended for schoolchildren, retells in detail, chapter by chapter, the plots of “The Captain’s Daughter,” “The Bronze Horseman,” “Masquerade,” “The Nose,” “Eugene Onegin,” etc. Experience shows that the purpose of such retellings is one - to replace the reading of the original. Is this good?.. It is suspicious that in the part of the textbook that is intended for teachers, the commonplaces of the philological dictionary are again chewed over and the most obvious connections within the text are updated. But the book came out after Nabokov’s lectures on Russian literature and after a collection of bright and intelligible essays by Weil and Genis on the same topic. Was it worth the embarrassment? And here an interesting question arises with a touch of detective fiction.

But in fact, who is the real author of this ill-fated textbook, whom I couldn’t raise my finger throughout the review to confidently call Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman? If you don’t look at the name and mustache, the image of a half-erased methodologist from RONO appears. And a not very appropriate quote from the early Marx - somehow this is not Lotman at the very end of the century...

And there is no one to ask. The book, judging by the imprint, has neither a compiler nor a responsible editor. There is a publisher, editor, proofreader, artist, that is, simply executors of someone's nameless will, people working with the manuscript. But where did the manuscript itself come from? The copyright looks like this: Yu.M. Lotman, 2000 . Either a hoax, or an unfunny joke with an afterlife connotation.

And if it is still Lotman (which doesn’t happen?!), then I completely agree with the annotation on the back cover: “The textbook... reveals to the reader another facet of this great scientist.” (My italics - L.K. ) Yes. But without this edge it was somehow more comfortable.