New soil specialist

Roman Senchin about Dmitry Novikov’s book “The Burning Flame”

Dmitry Novikov. Holomyanaya flame. M.: AST, “Edited by Elena Shubina”, 2017.

Dmitry Novikov’s novel “The Naked Flame” was noticed by critics after its publication in a literary magazine. Nowadays, unfortunately, this is a rarity: the vast majority of journal publications are published completely without reviews, disappearing into the thickness of the cultural layer. It is hardly worth hoping that this layer will be disturbed by a future curious archaeologist.

However, the seventh book of the October magazine last year, in which Novikov’s novel was published, was not ordinary - it was thematic. It contains poetry and prose of contemporary writers of the Russian North. Anna Matasova, Yana Zhemoytelite, Leta Yugai, Alexander Bushkovsky, Alexander Kirov.

In general, it is not without reason that most thick magazines are increasingly publishing similar (thematic, geographical) issues. This is one of the effective ways to attract the attention of, if not the notorious mass reader, then at least some critics. Now, after all, critics need some kind of bait: shortlists of prestigious awards, a near-literary scandal, a new name, which is probably the pseudonym of a popular author - they, the critics, are unlikely to pick up a book or, especially, a thick magazine just like that.

Magazines have few mechanisms to attract critics. Except this: look, dear ones, we have collected modern literature from the Russian North; we have released a youth issue, and there are a lot of bright talents in it, so tell us about them first; we translated the works of Lithuanian (Estonian, Georgian, Armenian) writers - very interesting.

Yes, Novikov’s novel (the magazine version of the novel) was published in a favorable environment. This in no way diminishes his artistic merits. On the contrary: it’s great that at least one of the many, many works of modern Russian literature worthy of attention and discussion received them soon after their birth.

“The Naked Flame” was recently published as a book. It is possible that such a rapid publication was influenced by the resonance of the magazine publication.

Before moving on to talking about the novel itself, a few words about the author.

Dmitry Novikov is from the generation of writers who appeared on the Russian literary field in the first half of the 2000s. Together with Denis Gutsko, Sergei Shargunov, Ilya Kochergin, Arkady Babchenko, Andrey Rubanov, Alexander Morev, Danil Guryanov, Zakhar Prilepin, German Sadulayev. It was then and in connection with them that conversations began about new realism, new sincerity, new confession, rock writing, human document...

It is especially important that most of the authors lived (and still live) far from Moscow, and they brought artistic pictures of Rostov-on-Don, Sakhalin, Altai, Chechnya, and the Urals to our modern literature. Dmitry Novikov from Petrozavodsk again opened Karelia to us.

In 2002–2009, a dozen of Novikov’s stories appeared in thick magazines, and two collections were published. They received a lot of positive reviews, not so much from critics as from fellow prose writers, including Andrei Bitov, Fazil Iskander, Vladimir Makanin, Andrei Volos.

And then there was a creative silence, broken by rare, very rare publications. Dmitry Novikov, by all accounts, a born, “pure” storyteller, sat down to write a novel (quote from one interview) “about Russian life based on materials from the past, present and a little bit of the future.”

The novel took a long time to be written, I personally no longer believed that it would appear. And so, I finished writing. Published, published, and on the most (sorry for the term not from book publishing) now prestigious label - “Edited by Elena Shubina”.

“The Bladed Flame” is an excellent work, in my opinion, outstanding. It is very rare for me to find a book in our modern prose that would be a pleasure to read. Many, many pages of Novikov’s book brought me pleasure.

True, there are words that are out of style, clumsy phrases, obsessive repetitions, but now I don’t want to hunt for “fleas”, to become the one about whom Yesenin once so rightly said: “A stupid critic or a stupid reader always sees in a writer not a face.” it, and definitely warts or moles.”

I’d rather open the book at random and quote a piece from it:

“On a wide slope, at the very mouth of the stormy Keret, lies the village of Keret, uninhabited. Spread out and lying down. The remains of houses lie on the ground, barely visible in the tall, thick grass, unbridledly colored with yellow, blue, and white spots of luxurious meadow flowers. Old Pomeranian crosses lie on the churchyard, through the whitish ancient wood of which perennial lingonberries have sprouted. The foundation of a large church lies quietly, unnoticed, which previously, like a proud white bird, just about ready to take off, inspired the entire neighborhood with the delight of bright joy. The former streets lie in unclear, washed-out terraces - upper, lower, middle. The indifferent White Sea is blue below. On the other side of the bay, the remains of a shipyard collapsed. Seagulls are flying over all this.”

Yes, in my opinion, the book is excellent and, most importantly, useful. And I advise everyone to read it. (This is not an advertisement for this particular printed product: the magazine version of “The Naked Flame” can easily be found on the Internet on free sites.) But I have a question: is this work really written in the form of a novel?

Here I want to reflect without reproaching the author, the editors of Oktyabr and the publishing house. For myself, so to speak. Perhaps my thoughts will be useful to someone.

Recently (and not only recently) there have been discussions about the future of the novel. What should it be like, how can it change in the era of first radio, then cinema, then television, mobile phones with SMS, the Internet with its social networks, in which texts are not welcome, where there are a lot of “beeches”...

The opinion is growing that the thick novel is an anachronism, that it is impossible to return to the novel form of the century before last. The reader, they say, simply will not cope with seven hundred pages of concise text and will get confused in many characters, in several lines.

However, these statements are refuted by the interest (although, let’s face it, not massive) in thick books and long stories. And there are very, very few novels like, for example, “The Stone Bridge” by Alexander Terekhov on the book market today. Either the publishers don’t take it, or the writers don’t dare to write big (which is more likely).

The design of the “Holomyanoy Flame” (yes, I note that the “Holomyanoy Flame” is a rainbow reflected on the sea surface) is complex. The text consists of several dozen chapters: some are short, two or three pages long, some fifteen to twenty pages long. The chronology is broken: from 1975 we end up in 1913, then we are transported to 1943, then to 2003.

You don't understand the plot so much as you feel it. So the editor of “October” Valeria Pustovaya writes in the announcement of the magazine publication: “It can be read at the same time as a confession, a travelogue and a parable.”

There seems to be a main character - Grisha, whom we see as a child, a teenager, a young man, a strong man... But almost on an equal footing with him in the novel is someone who tells the story in the first person, although this is clearly not the narrator. In addition, Grisha sometimes tells the story himself and becomes the first person. Both Grisha and his comrades, and this “someone” and his friend are traveling along the White Sea, fishing.

Only once do they intersect. And not directly, but through third parties:

“—There were two people who came here before you last year. Also on a kayak,” Mikhail continued to tell stories. - So they raked it from the Kola Peninsula itself. From Lovozero we went down the Ponoi and walked along the Tersky. Thin, dirty, hungry. The canoe is darned and re-darned. How they survived, I don’t know. One of them was called Volodya, I don’t remember the other. We decided to follow the path of Varlamy Keretsky, idiots. They were lucky to get out. Without a king in your head and without God's help you can go far. To nowhere..."

In one place in the book, it seems, and then in passing, it is indicated that the guy Kolyamba from the chapters about the 1930s and the old man Savvin are the same person. Reading is hindered by the texts about Varlaam of Keret (taken from an anthology of ancient Russian literature), which are also typed in the old orthography. Maybe they should have been woven into modernity, and not made into separate chapters?

In general, almost every chapter is practically a finished story. This was noted by the same Valeria Pustovaya, and by the prose writer Ilya Kochergin (“... A package of stories that has been welded and then repeatedly reforged is like Damascus”), and with reservations by the critic Andrei Rudalev, and many others who spoke about “The Golomyan Flame.”

There is development in the book, but a good collection of stories also has its own internal plot. More importantly, Dmitry Novikov proved with this work that he is a storyteller from God. As Kochergin rightly noted, the novel “is written in the language of a story and is designed for slow reading.” Indeed, the text is very dense, there are no pages necessary for the fabric of a novel, seemingly empty, passable, but giving rest to the reader. From time to time you put “The Naked Flame” aside, overwhelmed with impressions and artistic power. Perhaps, having had a difficult but successful experience in writing a large-scale work, Dmitry Novikov will return to stories. Another question is that collections of short stories are now being published reluctantly; premium institutions are turning to novels and what novels resemble.

Dmitry Novikov began as an author of “urban prose”. His first book, which appeared on the shelves of Moscow bookstores, “Fly in Amber” (2003), contained stories about a city dweller, crushed by houses, responsibilities, and squeezed by the rules of city life. Sad, poignant things. “Ruby Tuesday,” “Where the Newts Winter,” “Feeling Like the Blues.” Urban thoughts, city landscapes, urban melancholy...

True, nature appears already in that book. In the stories “Kuipoga” and “On the Suma River”. But nature rather than heals the city dweller, rather finishes him off with its power and mystery.

Two years later, the book “Lust” was published, which included new stories, including “Another River,” which later became part of “The Naked Flame.” And the book “In Your Networks” (2014) can be called a collection of sketches for a future novel.

In fact, Dmitry Novikov followed the path of many of his older comrades in the writing workshop - from the city to nature, from asphalt to soil. And not only as a writer, but also as a person: a native and resident of Petrozavodsk, he lives longer and longer outside of it in a house he built with his own hands, which is very well written in the essay “Build!”

Novikov is not a theorist, not a publicist, but “Golomyanoe Flame” is an absolutely Pochvennik work. True, unlike the soil scientists of past generations, the author sees only the “remains” of villages; people living on the soil and the soil - this “grapes of the Russian land” can be counted on one hand. There are almost no noble fish left in the rivers and sea...

What the countryside writers grieved about forty to fifty years ago, what they tried to save, seems to have perished completely. However, no. People are pushed out of cities by various forces, but mainly by an instinctive desire to live on the land, with their own farming. This is also reflected in the literature. For example, in the works of Boris Ekimov, Mikhail Tarkovsky, Andrei Antipin, Ilya Kochergin. And this is gratifying. In general, Russian literature is not about cities. Or rather, the city in it is something alien, terrible, contrary to nature. By and large, even now, when, according to statistics, two-thirds of Russians live in big cities, literature still relates to the city.

Most of the heroes of The Holomyanaya Flame are tourists. That is, people who came for a while from the city to the White Sea. They will go kayaking, go fishing and return back. True, they will probably return changed and, perhaps, in order to pack their things and leave for a long time to those depopulated villages where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived.

I would like to read about this from Novikov. To see the same White Sea, the same Keret through the eyes not of a tourist, but of an established inhabitant.

In the meantime, one more excerpt from the book. I confess in secret - in order to lure a possible reader of this note into the book itself. Find, read in full.

“The males began to go crazy for spawning, they became bright red and elegant. Several of them were following the female. And they fought, fought bravely, showing their daring and respect. She chose one and began to build a nest with him. Somewhere on a river rift, where there are pebbles and sand at the bottom and the water is shallow so that the sun can warm them up, they will dig a large hill, and the eggs will spawn there.

Even when the herd goes up the river, it kills all the small fish, all the hunters that are slippery up to the caviar. And he doesn’t eat them, but the grandfathers said - “crushes”, kills them and throws them away. The female, after her joy, rolls back into the sea, eats herself and waits for next time. The males remain to guard part of the eggs. Others are also at sea. Only then they lose their outfit and lose weight terribly - a skeleton with a big head. They are then called Valchaki.”