About trust in the spine

We will talk about the early text of V. Nabokov's “Call” (1927). Dolinin puts him in a number of others, in which Nabokov "experiences models of psychological novelty, building characters devoid of autobiographical features, and experiencing them in acute situations of loss and recognition of some secret." And the “call” is a story about the “courageous wanderer with the name and patronymic of the“ singer of masculinity ”of Gumilyov, who inadvertently revealing the shame of his mother’s secret” (A. Dolinin. True life of the writer Sirin: work about Nabokov. St. Petersburg, 2004, p. 37).

But is it about this? Indeed, the “call” is a short story about how the young Russian is looking for his mother in Berlin, whom he has not seen for 7 years. But their date is overshadowed by the fact that a 50-year-old woman is waiting for a young lover, setting a table for celebrating his 25th anniversary. The son, who has long wandering in the southern latitudes and intended to finally move to Berlin, after a brief visit to his mother, changes the decision and is going to go north - "to Norway, or something."

His geographical movements are symptomatic. He goes to the front - to the war with Germany, saying goodbye to his mother at the Nikolaev station in St. Petersburg. Then he fought, moved to the whites. “And finally, Russia gave him a vacation, - according to others - unlimited. Russia kept him for a long time, he slowly slipped down from north to south, and Russia tried to keep him - Tver, Kharkov, Belgorod - all sorts of entertaining villages ... It did not help. She had another temptation in reserve, another last gift - Tauris, but he did not help."

Petersburg - Africa - Berlin - Norway ... Berlin could hold her mother’s hands, but she just waits for another, preparing her gift for her lover: "Nearby, as if staggering in the shadow of a bottle, lay a white cardboard box. He raised it, took off the lid. Inside there was a new, rather tasteless silver cigarette case." He abandoned the luxurious Tauris to hold someone else's tasteless gift in the distant Berlin - a dubious echo of the “smoke of the Fatherland”.

Nabokov demanded in the first time to be good readers, trusting not to the head, but ... the spine: “Reading <...>, you should only relax and trust your own spine - although reading and the head process, but the point of artistic pleasure is located between the shoulder blades. A slight trembling run on the back is the culmination of feelings that is given to the human race when meeting with pure art and pure Given the spine and its trembling.

To relax is to drive the blood from the head, to stand on all four paws of the new instinct and the sensual original knowledge. To trust is to surrender to the will of direct reliability and absolute reality, which opens in the text and which contains the conditions of its truth. There were a head, torso, hands and other dissected parts of the old structure, but now there is none of this, they are going again, they form a new thought and the container of unheard of experiences. So, we must trust your spine ... But the spine is not a physiological organ, but a symbol of a special kind. The center of metamorphosis is a point between the shoulder blades that rests like a pea in a pod. This is, as it were, the heart of a person reading - a special creature, self -aware of the spine and sucks the juices of meanings. Movement along the horizontal axis of the text is simultaneously a vertical running of meanings - a light tremor - on the back. The reader’s head is like a wick, set by the beginning of reading a literary text. Trembling is a proud chime of vertebrae and bells of the lyrical ridge, body music, tangent flickering of the inner path. The concept of the inner path is very conditional, because Nabokov thinks in a living continuum, where there is no border between internal and external, soul and body, pleasure and suffering, reading and writing. The trembling runs along the back, like a coachman's bell, along the road. And this priceless thrill glides over the body when meeting with pure art (which, we note, Nabokov does not distinguish from pure science, thereby placing an equal sign between "be" and "know"). And pure art is free from specific content and subject languages ​​and is associated with the experience of the form as such. This is a transcendental area.

But in the story the call does not sound, why?

The hero is Nikolai Stepanovich Galatov. Africa and the mention of the tram in Berlin - in this "lost Russian province", indeed, indicate Gumilyov. The hero is a strong, fearless person who effectively fulfills his dreams: “But these years, this is a magnificent staggering in the light, the excitement of freedom, the freedom that was dreamed of in childhood! .. A continuous mining reid ...”. "A Min -Rida and" lost tram "of Gumilyov himself, where" the executioner and me to me, is the images of the coming execution. Another identification sign is a smile: "One thing has not changed at all in it: his laughter is with squint, with a recess." This formidable weapon in the fight against tyranny of Nabokov leaves behind Gumilev: "... there is nothing more hateful for the dictator than this impregnable, always elusive, forever teasing the brilliance. One of the main reasons for which the Leningrad bandits executed Gumilyov, the Russian poet, was the fact that the investigator was dimly: the investigator was dim. In the dungeon, in the wandering corridors on the way to the truck, in the truck that brought him to the place of execution, and in this place, where there was only a shuffling of an awkward and gloomy shot platoon, the poet continued to smile. " This smile lives after death. And this is precisely invented by Nabokov the Gumilev smile or rather a dozen memoir evidence.

This surrounding smile is akin to the signs of the absence accompanying the narrative. Together they form three symbolic gaps. The first is an invisible laughter. Now about the second. The hero, who passed the three wars, was wounded only once and "lost his index finger." In total, the lost index finger that the trigger is pressed is mentioned three times. The third symbol is the call itself. The hero, coming to Berlin, is likened to Sherlock Holmes, and his mother calls him a "detective."

The arrival falls on Sunday, everything is closed and there is no way to find the maternal address, and he would like to find her passion right away. At the same time, Nikolai Stepanovich is similar to the famous detective: "In a yellow coat with large buttons, in a checkered carduze, short and broad -shouldered, with a pipe in his teeth and with a suitcase in his hand, he went to the square in front of the station." Already ready to desperate, Galatov suddenly sees the sign of the Petrograd dentist, to whom they went with their mother. Nikolai Stepanovich makes his first call on the door to him. Alas, this dentist is only a namesake, but good luck! - He knows the address of his mother - his current patient. When the son, barely coping with unbearable excitement, finds the desired house, there is no electricity in the building: “It was so dark on the stairs that he stumbled two times. Having reached the thick darkness to the first site, he struck a match and illuminated the golden plank near the door. <...> He groped for a button and called. <...>

And now - something clinked behind the door, once, once again - and, like a wind, the door swayed. The front was as dark as on the stairs, and a sonorous and cheerful voice flew out of this darkness. “Electricity went out in our whole house - it was directly horror,” and he instantly recognized this long, viscous “horror” in the “horror” and instantly restored to this sound to the slightest feature that, hidden by darkness, became in the doorway.

“True,” “not to see ZGI,” he grinned and stepped towards her. ”

A thick darkness envelops the meeting. A voice comes to a soundless call. The unlucky son recognizes the mother by the uterine sound of the word "horror." This is the horror of the darkness of his return. Everything in her is alien, restless and scary. This is the second bell.

After turning on the electricity, the third call, as in the theater, is heard when Nikolai Stepanovich makes plans for a joint campaign in the musical Hall: “The loud call cracked with the front door. <...> The bell stopped - waited. <...> The call was put on again, this time persistently and irritatedly. And drilled for a long time. The tan of the cane, or something.

Nikolai Stepanych resolutely headed for the front. But on the threshold of the room, his mother caught his shoulders - she tried her best to pull him and whispered everything: "Do not dare ... do not laugh ... for God's sake! .."

Once again the call broke out, briefly and angrily. <...> The ringing stopped. Everything was quiet. The caller, apparently, was tired, and he left. "

The bell is a benefit of civilization. In Berlin, electricity reigns, which not only allows you to be mistaken for trams, but also to open the doors to the prodigal sons: “Nikolai Stepanych stood in front of the door [Dentist], I wanted to call,” he remembered that he was Sunday, and still called. Something was furious in the castle and the door succumbed to the first floor. He opened the maid. ”

Both the door of the doctor and the mother of Galatov are equipped with electrical calls (in the English translation, the story emphasized “Doorbell” - “doorbell”), which replaced outdated mechanical bells and hammers. But there is no light in the maternal house! Anyone who presses a non -existent index finger on an invalid electric call falls into the space somewhat different than an apartment of an aging beauty with repainted hair ("an adult son came to an old mother"). The old mother is the homeland. Russia gave unlimited vacation to its sons. She has new concerns, other colors and smells, she sobs in anticipation of another who took possession of her thoughts. In the story, one of the best Russian poets, ruined by the Bolshevik power, appears - Gumilyov. As if the Fatherland herself spoke to Akhmatova: "I am a bad mother." The backstage epigraph "Call" - Mandelstamovsky:

I'm so afraid of sobbing Aonid,
Fog, ringing and gaping.

The apparent absence of Mandelstam turns around, as Nabokov himself loved to express himself, "as a kind of radiant presence. As the French say," Il Brille par Son Absence " -" He shines with its absence. "The text of Mandelstam (1920) is about a forgotten word: a forgotten word:

I forgot the word what I wanted to say.
A blind swallow to the hell of the shadows will return,
On the wings of the cut, play with transparent.
In unconsciousness, the night song is sung.

No birds can be heard. Immorter does not bloom
The manes of the night herd are transparent.
In a dry river, an empty shuttle is floating,
Among the grasshoppers, the word is unconscious.

And grows slowly, like a tent or temple,
Then suddenly a crazy antigon
Then a dead swallow rushes at the feet
With Stygian tenderness and green branch.

Oh, if you return the sighted fingers, shame,
And the convex joy of recognition.
I'm so afraid of sobbing Aonid,
Fog, ringing and gaping.

And the mortals are given the authorities to love and recognize,
For them, the sound will spill into the retracts,
But I forgot what I want to say
And the thought is ethereal to the hell of the shadows.

Everything is not about that transparent,
All a swallow, girlfriend, Antigon ...
And on the lips, like black ice, burns
The Stygian memory of the ringing.

The architectonics of the Nabokov story follows the motive canvas of this text of Mandelstam:

1). Oblivion: "During the trip you forget the names of days: they are replaced by cities."

2). The recognition: "... from this darkness a sonorous and cheerful voice flew out to him <...> and he instantly found out <...> and instantly restored to this sound to the slightest feature that , hidden by darkness, became at the door. With a gaze, recognizing her all , from head to toe ... "

3). Fear and sobbing (Mandelstamskoye: "I am so afraid of sobbing Aonid ..."): "And everything was in it someone else's, and restless, and terrible "; “He turned around - and only then noticed that his mother, reclining on the couch and buried his face into the pillow, shudders from sobs . In the old years, he often saw her crying, but then she cried completely differently - she sat at the table, and, crying, she did not turn her faces, her wrinkled loudly and spoke so young, and it was so free , and was so freely ... Something elegant in the bend of her back is that one leg in a velvet shoe touches the floor ... You could directly think that it was crying a young blond woman ... "

4). And, of course, the main parameters from which we started reading the story - fingers and shame, ringing and gaping.

One main, “forgotten” word remains, exactly the one that the Mandelstam poem is written and which, being unraveled, restored (or remembered), is obliged to coincide with the main word of the Nabokov story. But what is this word? According to all the conditions of the secretary, does the poet need to write a poem about the loss, is initially diligent to keep in the mind and know the desired word? But if the poet himself knows, of course, we must get to the same.

Here Nabokov, with his story, claims that he knows. And we remains with the help of one mysterious text about gaping ("call") to give an answer to the riddle of another. Both Mandelstam and Sirin have a forgotten, lowered word - a house .

Mandelstam's poem is erotic, it is not only about the love of mythical heroes - Psyche (winged soul) and Amur (body, flesh), it is turned to the acquired and soon lost lover - Nadezhda Khazina. Her name becomes the ghostly word that he forgot, and in the Stygian ringing the poet tries to hear: "Where is the royal, where is the girl's house ?" In many languages, the word "house" is consonant with the name of the Mandelstam's "girlfriend" - the Spanish and Italian "casa", the German "Haus", the English "house", and, finally, simply the word from "thieves' music" - Khaza. In the poem, its high substitutes are sequentially crossed - a damn, a tent, a temple. (Do not forget that Mandelstam is the author of poems about "casino", "Cassandra", Kazan Cathedral).

A light swallow-box with a green branch of celandine flies a surrogate of the name. And the memory goes according to her trail, it flies after the verb “touch” - “Oh, if you return the shame and convex joy of recognition ...”

And then the eternal poetological art, the institute of which was laid by the relative of Nabokov, Admiral A.S. Shishkov, and continued in the "Dubrovsky" A.S. Pushkin. This is the famous French verb Toucher - touch, touch (keys), play. In the poem about the games of memory and oblivion, a swallow-box returns to the afterlife, so that in a ghostly hall with shadows "transparent to play ". And then in the darkness of extinguished consciousness, by touch - "In unconsciousness, the night song is sung."

The tenacious memory of several generations of Russian poets in every way was played by the “translation” cranks of this French verb and their variations sometimes very far bouncing from the source - to touch, play, touch, dance tango (the Spanish name for the dance is exacerbated by the verb “touch” in Latin), extinguish, sew, joke ... up to thrones and kingdoms. So with the courageous smile of Nikolai Stepanovich, in the story of the trick of the extinguished light, Sirin grunted the story about the aggravated development of the open borders of the House of Poetry.

In the same 1927, Sirin published his "university poem", consisting of 63 stanzas. It is dedicated to Cambridge and is built on the verbal development of a "rhyming pair" - we are talking about "soul" and "Toucher". The eternal psyche of the university is the Englishwoman of Violetta, who is free from the Russian “darling” by I. Bogdanovich and even to a greater extent from the “arc” of Chekhov. Here everything is held by the shape and values ​​of the verb Toucher. The element of the game permeates the whole university life: these are the favorite sports games (from football, cricket, tennis to checkers), and music, and dancing, and cinema Chaplin ("Funny and Touching Chaplin"), and the Theater with Hamlet, and the Hamlet Theater, and It is not surprising that in the end - "went the whole world to play." The main character: "She was cunning, attracted, / I played the air in the air ..." Paradise in the poem is the highest degree of game. Paradise can only be achieved by playing. Paradise as a fulfillment of the imperative: "IG-RAY!" ("We will play the ball in paradise"). The first touches of a love feeling: “And I held out my hand quietly, / trusting my inner knock, / repeating to me: touch ... / I touched”; "... as soon as the first goal is awakening, / I will touch the cells of the cells"; "I look: our funny shadows / shoulder touch the shoulder." In love we must move like a car at the beginning of the way: "... and the car started." And just as the fireplace stews, the cigarette - goes out and love.

The final sixty -third stanza sets a riddle already familiar to us along Mandelstam:

And that's all. Enough, sounds
Enough, muse. Before separation
I only ask for this:
flying like a swallow, then below
then in the embroidery, find, find the same
A simple word in the world of this
Always understand you ready;
and may not be this word
neither moth bichuma nor rust;
all sorts of roads
Bless his movement,
He was not led to freeze;
Feel a gentle rotation
slightly tilted earth.

The muse flying in the embroidery, like a swallow-cast, the poet conjures to find a simple word, bless it, prevent the word to freeze. There is also a clue from the sinking preaching of treasures in the sky: “Do not collect treasures on the ground, where moth and rust are exterminated and where thieves are dug and steal; but collect treasures in the sky, where neither mole, nor ryge are exterminated, and where thieves do not dig and do not steal. Because, where is your treasury, there will be your heart” (MF. VI, 19-21). The Russian poem about English university ends with a universal concept of a simple and warm Russian word House , which in English means "dome, arch, head" = dome. The movement of the heavenly arch is non -stop and it also expands the limits of human and poetic existence and location - the house is carried away with him, it is in the heart and head that feels the gentle rotation of the earth. Such a house is a treasure that can neither steal, nor dig, nor exterminate with rust and moth. Or as Mandelstam said about it a little later:

I'll tell you this, with a shopkeep
Because it's not yet time:
It is achieved later and experience
Unaccountable sky game .
And under the temporary sky of purgatory
We often forget about
That the happy sky -
Sliding and lifetime house .