Singer of the last heroes

The recent article by Andrei Okara about the thirty years of death of Vladimir Vysotsky is appropriate to continue with the memory of another sad anniversary - exactly 20 years ago, on August 15, 1990, another cult singer - Viktor Tsoi died tragically.

Of course, these authors cannot be literally compared. Their work has quite different stylistics and aesthetics, although in places similar heroic intonations - but this is because of the general "magical world of heroes." However, the construction of Vysotsky in the status of the “father of Russian rock” looks somewhat stretched. We know almost nothing about any contacts of Vysotsky with rock musicians (even Western ones, even the Soviet ones, which there were almost no)-what would be the most obvious proof of such “paternity”.

Vysotsky and rock are just different worlds, which does not mean division on the principle of “better and more”, but makes a certain cultural distance obvious.

If you introduce the generational criteria, then Vysotsky was vivid, perhaps, even the most expressive exponent of the “sixties”. And the Russian rock actually became the music of the last Soviet generation - “children of perestroika”. Moreover, the Soviet cultural framework already overlapping - the theme and energy of songs of cult groups (“Aquarium”, “Cinema”, “Alice”, “Civil Defense”) was often so metaphysical that it did not fit into the framework of the “generally accepted” in the Soviet system.

Vysotsky was quite organic for this system (although sometimes critical) ...

For many of us, born in the 1970s, and in the "era of perestroika" experiencing teenage maximalism, Viktor Tsoi became the "voice of a generation". Cassettes informally diverging throughout the country with the songs of his group, we eagerly rewritten from each other (just as the intelligentsia of the older generation reprinted Samizdat). Moreover, the development of the “cinema” from the album to the album - from the playful “eighth -grader” to the symbolist “star named the Sun” - was surprisingly synchronized with our own growing up.

Vysotsky, who left in 1980, but remained the idol of our parents, was still "too adult" for us. And when in the 1990s we ourselves became adults, we found that the heroes of life are far from the heroes of his songs ... But rather, their anti-heroes. However, in the 2000s, they suddenly began to teach everyone “patriotism”-and the current revival of the “Vysotsky cult” easily closed with nostalgia for late Soviet times . The Russian Federation, as stated, is the successor of the USSR, so everything is logical ...

This flat layout did not suit us in any way - we were still waiting for real changes. Tsoi inspired us to a revolution - not so much social as existential. It was clear to us that the war continued between the earth and the sky, that our flag was high, but something was wrong, and besides, and besides,

I turn off the TV, I write you a letter

About the fact that I can no longer look at shit ...

However, this attitude was not characterized by far from all “Russian rockers”, many of which preferred to integrate into the ruling “formats”. And in them, as Ilya Kormiltsev noted , "the creators of meaning evolve En Masse in a traditional way - from rebels to the guards."

The most clearly such evolution was demonstrated by Konstantin Kinchev, who turned from the singer of “pagan” freedom into the propagandist of the official “fofudy”. It is strongly impossible to imagine something similar with Tsoi! As well as his movement towards the postmodern neutrality of the BG or social opposition, Yuri Shevchuk and Mikhail Borzykin . Tsoi was still a romantic mystic - and in all these measured niches he would have felt closely ...

Most likely, the author of the Kaliningrad author Dmitry Voznesensky , who considers the departure of Tsoi an inevitable pattern: “ Tsoi simply had no place in new reality . When the vulgarity and hypocrisy became almost the official ideology of the country, and the TV turned into a crustacean of obscurantism-what was the romantic hero to do among all this? It is difficult to imagine an aged 50-year-old Tsoi, singing in the company of fake heroes of our time . ”

And here I would like to challenge some theses from the article by Andrei Okara again. In my opinion, he is too straightforwardly and simplifiedly shared various literary and musical authors in the Nietzschean categories of Apollonian and Dionysian. For “pure” Apollonists would have done an endless anthem, and undiluted Dionysians - an unbridled punk. In reality, it is more appropriate to talk about various proportions of these magical substances in each author. By the way, the reckoning of Sergei Yesenin’s Apollonists was surprised-with his cosmic longing, which also appeared in Victor Tsoi:

Where are you now, free will,

With whom are you now an affectionate dawn, answer, answer

Good with you, but bad without you

Heads and shoulders patient under the whip ...

Of course, Tsoi looks more “youth” than “classics” - which makes many of her fans treat him “frivolously”. These fans, who turned their “classic” idols into bronze “monuments”, completely forget that, for example, the poetic salons of the Silver Age were no less unheated and reckless than rock clubs of the 1990s. However, it was in them that a real modern culture was happening ...

Some conservatives are now trying to make the same “monument” from Vysotsky. But from Tsoi they will hardly get it - for the generation that continues to listen to him did not freeze in his style, but is also interested in all new musical styles. The only trouble is that of them over the past 20 years, nothing comparable in reliable significance has grown ... Therefore, the ancient question of the BG, in fact, has brought Tsoi on the stage, continues to be relevant: “ Where will that young sleeper, that will bother us from the face of the Earth? She is not, no, no ... ".

Perhaps in this creative crisis a crisis of imperial statehood itself is manifested, where "suddenly we are scared to change something." The generation of "changes" has not yet "returned this land to itself." And therefore

We are sitting at broken troughs

And guess on the wind rose,

And when it comes time to get up,

We are sitting, we are waiting ...

But the hope for the inevitable “April” inspires the next generation - which was born after the death of Tsoi, but incredibly continues to sing his songs . On this anniversary on the embankment of my little Petrozavodsk, several dozen young men and girls sang them - despite the rain and differences in political views. What happened in megacities?

And who will now refute that Tsoi is alive?