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IN SLOVAK 166 (230)
Projective lexicon of the Russian language January 7, 2007

Dear friends! Have a bright and joyful Christmas!

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In the latest issue of the magazine "Star" (12, 2006) my article " Theology of the Book of Job " was published.
It compares three theologies: Job, his prudent friends, and God himself, answering Job’s cry-question.

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Theme: name of the century
There are such expressions as the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Realism...
Is it possible to define the 20th century in one word? 21st?

On the eve of the new century, I had a question: how to briefly designate the past century, the 20th, and the coming century, the 21st? After all, there are more or less stable names for the 18th - the Age of Enlightenment, for the 19th - the Age of Realism. For all their conventionality, they allow us to sharply outline the appearance of time, its place in the sequence
centuries. Are we ready to define and predict the characters of the 20th and 21st centuries just as categorically, monotonously (even at all possible costs)?

Then, in 1999, I wrote the essay “The Name of the Century.” Today I bring to your attention this text (previously not published in Dar), with a number of definitions for two centuries. I would like to pose the same question again in an expanded historical retrospective and perspective. Seven years is a considerable historical period; periods of life, ages of a person are sometimes calculated in seven years (for example, in L. Tolstoy). How appropriate are those names for the past century and the century to come - now already underway - that were proposed then, in 1999? What realities and trends have emerged during this time that allow us, witnesses and participants of the 21st century, to define it differently than seen the day before?

If you have any other definitions, one-word or two-word characteristics of the 20th and 21st centuries, neologisms on this topic, please send them to me within a month, preferably with a brief motivation. I will publish them in the issue of the second week of February.

Write to me at:
russmne@emory.edu
Mikhail Naumovich Epstein.
Subject: dar
Encoding KOI8

NAME OF THE CENTURY

My age, my beast, who can
Look into your pupils...?
"Век" (1923)

- Don't forget me, execute me,
But give me a name, give me a name!
"Like a small body
wing..." (1923)

Osip Mandelstam

1.
At the end of our century (the 20th), it’s time to give it a name, if only to indicate the extent of its habitability (and obsolescence!). After all, he can’t walk forever in a line numbered XX... - although such revenge on a century that turned millions of its sons into camp dust, into a number series, into a line without names, would be deserved. But about the deceased - either good or nothing, and yet the century is already breathing heavily on its deathbed. To give a century a name means to end it with dignity, to say goodbye politely - and to prepare the deceased for a meeting with the memory of descendants, with future judges and researchers.

What name is appropriate for our century? Is it possible to merge our sorrow and admiration, curse and gratitude into a single word? Stable epithets: “atomic”, “nuclear”, “space”, “computer”, “revolutionary”, “age of the masses”, “age of sports”, “age of electronics”, “age of genetics”, “age of cybernetics”, “age speeds", "age of technology", "age of scientific and technological revolution", "age of world wars", "age of Auschwitz and Hiroshima" - turn out to be doubtful not only because many of them have already turned into newspaper clichés, but also because characterize only partial achievements or failures of the century. Is there something that unites the splitting of the atom and the conquest of space, the pathos of social revolutions and the tragedy of death camps?

Recently, British lexicographers (Collins Dictionary Publishing Group) tried to find for each year of the 20th century one key word that would define its “malice”, sound like a slogan or nickname. The resulting picture is very motley and rather sad - dark colors predominate in the vocabulary of the century. Of course, British specifics leave their mark: for them 1905 is Sinn Fein, and for Russians it is “Bloody Sunday”. But here are a few touches to the portrait of the century - through the eyes of the British:

1905 - Sinn Fein (Irish nationalist organization)
1911 - air raids (the first baptism of fire of aviation in the Italian-Turkish war)
1917 - Waiting
1933 - Gestapo
1936 - Mickey Mouse
1940 - jeep
1941 - radar
1944 - projectile aircraft
1949 - Big Brother
1953 - rock and roll
1965 - miniskirt
1972 - Watergate
1983 - AIDS
1991 - ethnic cleansing

From these annual rings the mighty trunk of the century is layered, imprinting on its cut the full force of historical winds... And yet, it is unlikely that a complete picture of the 20th century can be formed from such dotted verbal strokes. This requires a frequency-semiotic analysis of all words and their intersecting meanings - and what would a computer brain produce as a result of adding them up? Perhaps the synthetic definition of the century would look like "Miki-Cheka" or "Rock-Gestapo".

If you don’t synthesize annual definitions, but try to find one single word that would best suit the character of this century, I would suggest THE CENTURY OF POWER. It is difficult to find an unambiguous equivalent for the word POWER in the Russian language; it means: strength, ability, authority, might, power, authority, power, energy, electricity. What particularly attracts me about this word and why I nominate it for the high title of “title of the century” (or at least “nickname of the century”) is the combination of the political and technical aspects of power: power and energy . In English, words as diverse as “superpower” and “power plant” have a common root, “power.” The 20th is the age of superpowers and power plants. The energy of political power , which is trying to squeeze the whole world into one fist (German, Russian, American) - and the power of technical energies that split the nucleus of an atom and send rockets to the edges of the solar system. The 20th century is the technology of power and the power of technology , which, by the way, is precisely imprinted in Lenin’s formula: “communism = Soviet power + electrification of the entire country...”

Power + energy is the formula not only of failed communism, but also of the entire 20th century, which, surprisingly, lived to a happy death “due to old age.” The forces of society, thrown to master nature... And the forces of nature, thrown to master society. The 20th is the potency-patent age, which adds the patent of the inventor to the potency of the rapist. The age of Joseph Stalin and Niels Bohr is the “ steel age.” Will , which is measured in volts . The love of the political elites for electricity, refueling power with the energy of nuclear explosions...

The 20th century is a century not only of energies, but also a century of masses that, with unprecedented breadth, flow into the maw of history, becoming cannon fodder, screaming and gun flesh, filling the stands of stadiums and death camps, Luzhniki and Gulags... According to Einstein’s formula, connecting the mass and energy, splitting and synthesis of masses, is the most powerful source of energy extracted by power from nature and society.

If we try to define the 20th century in Russian in one word, then “power”, “energy”, “might”, “power” will turn out to be POWERS, i.e. units of the same category: POWERS. And then the shortest definition of our century was given by Velimir Khlebnikov:

But now Em steps into the realm of the strong word “I can.”
Listen, listen to the voice of might! [1]

The age of power and capacity. Not only “mogovest”, but also mogovek , who passed under the cry-spell “mogi! magay! magay!”:

Mogun, I can!
Mogul, I can do it! I can, I can!
Mogay, my self...
Walk, mighty man! Hands! Hands!...
Mogarnye, mozheskie, mogannye,
Mighty, mighty, mighty! [2]

“Mighty”, “possible”, “mighty” century. By the way, the names of both determinants - Vladimir Lenin and Velimir Khlebnikov - also ask to be included in the definition of our century. Khlebnikov himself chose a name consonant with the “strong word I can.” It would be possible to assign the 20th colorful titles “ Vek-Velimir ” or “ Vek-Vladimir ” - lead the world ! own the world ! - which sound no worse than the “wolfhound century” coined by Mandelstam - and in fact, are almost synonymous with it. What was “velimir” or “Vladimir” for the priests of this century, was “wolfhound” for his victims.

2.

So, the velimizing (commanding the world) and the ruling (mastering the world), the 20th century will most likely go down in history with the mark “ M ”: POWER, I CAN. And by this mark it will be easy to distinguish it from the century P - 18th and century R - 19th. Let's try to understand the logic of this transition.

The Age of Enlightenment established the dominance of reason, discarding the aristocratic privileges and religious superstitions of previous centuries. True, the 18th century had not yet resisted the last superstition - rationalism, the naive cult of reason itself. The 19th century corrected this error by making reason dependent on reality and at the service of it. Reality and, accordingly, realism are the keywords century of the 19th . Belinsky, in one of his suicide letters, swore that he was ready to lay down his soul for the concept of reality, that for him there was nothing more sacred than reality as it is - and to hell with ideals! Poetry, novels, aesthetics - and those became “real” in the 19th century, not to mention the basis of REALITY - the triumphant march of Science. Darwinism, determinism, environment, organism, physiology, photography, realism, naturalism, positivism (also known as nihilism) - it seemed that all avenues of retreat from reality were cut off, there was no longer any return to the old mystical swamp of “ideals”...

It is difficult to understand how such a sober admiration for IS (in both senses: “to eat” and “to be”) could suddenly grow into a frantic CAN, covering the eyes with blood. But POWER gradually grew through BEING - and the most scientific calculations suddenly led to the fact that it is KNOWLEDGE of existence that gives POWER over it. From Darwinism to social Darwinism, from the theory of natural selection to the simple idea that since the fittest survives, then it would be better for me to be it - just one step, one turn of the cerebral gyrus. The earth is inherited by an all-powerful master race or a muscular poor class.

Just as the Enlightenment mind, having risen to the concept of reality, stepped over itself and discarded rationalism, so the new culture of reality quickly outgrew itself and discarded realism in favor of more economical and energetic forms of power, the volitional construction of reality instead of slavish submission to it. Nietzsche, towards the end of his adult life, was tormented that he was just a pathetic philologist, while he needed to be a biologist, a super-Darwin, breed a new race of masters, create a superhuman organism... But this superbiology turned out to be, in essence, a remake of the same philology - a dream of a spell word, of an ideology that creates a new strong world. Ideology is philology imbued with the will to power. Mysticism has returned - but as unprecedented activism, as the mysticism of human self-deification. Blagovest was replaced by Mogovest .

3.

Thus, in the womb of Reality, the beast devouring it was born - Power-Energy. Let's now look ahead. Isn’t the embryo of the coming century already ripening in the womb of the passing age - and how can we baptize it at the moment of birth? After all, both the century and the millennium have quick births, the day of which is already written into our current calendar.

There is good news: the 21st century promises to be a virtual century - century B. the By multiplying its power to unprecedented proportions, the 20th century surpassed the limits of the world that could require such power. Is it necessary to increase thermonuclear energy if it can already blow up the entire planet many times over? Owning the globe, its natural and human resources, is profitable and honorable, but not enough for a wild imagination, for the insatiable appetite of power, for transglobalism , the will to conquer new worlds. Isn't it a shame to crawl around on a small ball, lost on the outskirts of space, in the bearish corner of a remote galaxy? - while, according to the latest scientific data, unidentified universes are rushing nearby, the entrance to which is either through a black hole, or through an electron, or through a computer screen, or - closer and most likely - through the crack of one’s own “I” ". It’s a pity to miss the most interesting, world-encompassing things in pursuit of another piece of oil desert or diamond-crumbed permafrost.

There is no doubt that in the 21st century, scientific, technical and socio-political powers will increase - but at the same time they will no longer serve so much to conquer as to “break through” reality, to penetrate into other dimensions and worlds. After all, in the 20th century, scientific knowledge of reality did not stop, but on the contrary, expanded many times over compared to the 19th - but it cannot be said that in the 20th realism, respect for reality as such, triumphs. The knowledge of reality continued - but began to serve a different, powerful purpose. So in the 21st century, the growth of power will continue, but they will already serve a different purpose - not the regime of power, but the development of other dimensions of time and space.

Power, reaching the limits of the world, needs something else, the multiplication of the worlds themselves. Moreover, both quantum and computer mechanics, each in its own way, talk about parallel worlds. Possible. Probabilistic . Virtual . begins This is how the century B . From Power a new form of its self-affirmation is born - active Possibility, the Possibility of Being. Opportunity - as the word itself suggests, is the sublimation of power, its ascent to dizzying heights, going beyond the limits of reality given to us in sensations (instead of a dull and, as we have already seen, self-destructive mastery of it). MAY, overcoming itself, turns into a weak, but infinitely attractive MAYBE. POWERS are being replaced by CAPABILITIES. Mogovest of Power is muted Mozhevest of Opportunities

Power is the highest degree of potency of being, but beyond the border of potency a new quality arises: potentiality . Potency is just the lowest form of potentiality . Why be the ruler of one world if you can be the creator of many worlds? Power is just a drop in the ocean of possibilities , a timid, primitive form possibility , a strong possibility in slavery to an even stronger reality. Potency is limited to what I can do ; potentiality - a breakthrough into another dimension: what I can be . The desire for power comes from a lack of being. If there is only one reality, then in it only one can rule over others, be strong at the expense of others. But where realities multiply, the category of power disperses: everyone creates for himself “his own” of possible worlds.

The New Century is woven into the loops of B,
Spinning into infinity
Where only Opportunity reigns.

Probably, the 21st will be the century of virtuality, not only in terms of electronic and computer technology, but also in the sense of the multiplication of alternative ways of existence, virtual theories, practices and communities. Virtual cities, universities, shops, parliaments, governments, elections...

I would like to offer a symbolic gesture of the 21st century, by which wanderers of virtual worlds can identify each other in real life , “off-line”, landing somewhere in the space of a room, street, meeting, party. How can they express their belonging to other worlds, their dedication to the mystery of the Network? I would suggest a sign similar to the letter V, the sign of victory, but with the two raised fingers, index and middle, added to the ring. Three spread fingers form the letter W - the sign of the World Wide Web. Network-to-the-whole-world. W is like two Vs, a connection of two signs of victory.

It should be clarified that W, double-yu is a double V not only visually, but also historically. Initially, the letter V (v) and the letter U (u) represented variations of the same sign (that is why they are so similar in their designs and stand side by side in the Latin alphabet and its European derivatives). Double-u is a double “V”, and in a sense, the Network is a double victory, not just a victory within reality, which politicians, military men, financiers and other people of success achieve... It is a victory over reality itself , an exit into virtual dimension. Victoria + virtuality. Victory + virtuality = 2 V = W. Throwing three fingers up, we welcome the virtuals , double winners...

It is hardly possible for our imagination to look further than century B now. But if the 21st century really becomes the century of multiplied dimensions, an expanded fan of worlds, clones quickly multiplying from each other, information copies, electronic doubles, multiple possibilities, ---

then the definition of the 22nd century is set, where everyone will be given the opportunity of a separate world: the century O. An age of alienation, detachment, loneliness

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1. "Zangezi", plane 9, in the book. Velimir Khlebnikov. Creations, M., Soviet writer, 1986, p. 483.

2. Ibid., plane 10, p. 484.

* * *
So, I ask readers to suggest names for the past century and the present century: a name-sentence and a name-prediction. The title must consist of one word or two-word phrase, with appropriate motivation.

Here is a list of 20th century names that seem to me to be the most competitive:

Century of Power
Age of power-energy
Potential-patent age
Age of Relics
Age of Power
Age of Revolutions
Age of technology
Age of Speed
Age of the masses
A century of dehumanization
The Age of Globalization
Age of expansion
The media century
Space Age
Nuclear Age
Electro-age (electric + electronic).
Age of will-voltage
Vek-Vladimir
Vek-velimir
Age-apocalypse

The list of suggested 21st century prediction names is much shorter:

Virtual century
The Age of Possible Worlds
Age of other dimensions
The Age of Alternatives
The Age of Potentiality
Age of psychoreality
Century-imaginarium
Century-explosive

I will publish the new names proposed by you in Dar.

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“The word controls the brain, the brain controls the hands, hands control the kingdoms” (Velimir Khlebnikov).
network project Mikhail Epstein's "The Gift of Words" has been published since April 2000. Every week, subscribers are sent several new words, with definitions and examples of use. These words are not in any dictionary, and yet they denote significant phenomena and concepts for which there has not yet been a place in the language and public consciousness. "Dar" also conducts discussions about the Russian language, discusses letters and suggestions from readers. “The Gift” can serve as a guide to word creation, an introduction to the world of linguistic fantasies and mental technologies. All previous issues

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