Peplum of great victories

About the new novel by Alexei Ivanov

Alexey Ivanov. Tobol. A lot of called. M.: AST, editorial office of Elena Shubina, 2016.

Alexei Ivanov defined the genre of his new book Tobol as a romance. In fact, this, of course, is a novel-country. Because the appearance on the book shelves of the first part of the most large -scale creation of the Ural Recluse is just one of the episodes of an amazing story, a little like a fairy tale.

Firstly, Alexei Ivanov has long and sincerely believes that the movie is very strong witchcraft, and the recent success of the film “Geographer Sprinkled”, shot according to his novel, only strengthened the writer in this opinion. In a recent interview, he directly admitted: “Now the movie is dominated by arts, and one who wants to really achieve popularity and fame should be filmed. It is unlikely that there are works that will live in a culture fully if they are not filmed. And it doesn’t matter which adaptation is good or bad. ”

Secondly, the writer Alexei Ivanov, as you know, quickly transforms any thesis into theory. In this case, in the theory of "iconocentricity". Like, our culture is already ceasing to be literary, people begin to communicate with pictures, and not words, and cinema as a quintessence of pictures becomes the second main art, takes the place of literature. Culture becomes "iconocentric." As the literature used to affect cinema and theater, so now the cinema affects literature, and the new format of the novel comes from the cinema, more precisely - from the dramatic series. The concept of this new format of the modern novel Ivanov is also developed in quite details, and it willingly shares it in almost all interviews.

Thirdly, three years ago, producer Oleg Urushev, spending the night at the Tyumen Remes Hotel, read the brochure about this “Siberian Leonardo da Vinci” before going to bed. So much so that, after a thorough acquaintance with the subject, I decided to shoot the Bayopic series. The script was ordered to some Tyumen author, he did not give birth to anything decent, then the producer proposed this project to Ivanov. It was then that the stars formed in a figure called "happiness."

The writer Alexei Ivanov can be treated as you like, but the fact remains: few people can write out a non -trivial and large -scale historical canvas better. He really eagerly loves Russian regional history and “digs” it exclusively by the needs of the soul for many years. And then people come and ask - do what you do, and we will fulfill your most cherished desire for this.

Everyone is happy. Urushev received a quality scenario that allowed the first channel to sell this project. Ivanov, having even performed two scenarios for the producer (for 8 episodes and a full meter), began to get along with the same conceptually new novel for himself. Large -scale (as the series “Game of Thrones”), multi -sized (as the series “Game of Thrones”), combining the unconnected (as the series “Game of Thrones”) and foreign (as the series “Game of Thrones”). At least at the stage of ideas, everything was just like that.

And in fact? We still have to evaluate the scale: Ivanov promises to finish Roman at the end of the summer of 2017, but even the first volume, “Tobol. A lot of those called ”, almost twice the standard book volume. With multinivate, everything is also in order - in the book at least a couple of dozen main characters, not counting secondary characters. Happy Ivanov, as a bile-free owner, slips more and more dishes to the guest: St. Petersburg rulers and regional officials, church hierarchs and convicts, captures, captured Swedes and equivalent Russian, lean soldiers and free “walking people”, illiterate children of nature and scribes-information addicts. Dzungars and Ostyaks, Chinese and Russians, Little Russians and Bukhara - noev ark, not a book.

But the main character, undeniable and unconditional, is Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov, as ordered. Probably, for the first time, Alexei Ivanov is so clearly introducing his alter ego into his novel. The fanatical local historian with the surname is either Remezov, or Ivanov laid out everything about himself without hiding: “For a long life, Semyon Ulyanovich is already used to it, already reconciled with the fact that these miracles are not curious to anyone. His knowledge is a real community, but by all her moves and nooks he wandered without satellites, and even the sons were nearby only on his son's duty. One could death to be poisoned by the bitterness of loneliness, but the world was too beautiful to leave it. ” Urushev also comes to Remezov-the first Siberian governor Matvey Gagarin, makes him an order-lame and then the most sincere, probably lines of the novel are born:

“God sees, this was the happiness that people ask for, but Remezov Sr. did not look at either grandchildren or sons. In his imagination, the harsh weathered faces of the long -dead or killed governors, explorers and metropolitans sailed. He heard the whistle of the Yakut arrows, the alarm of the Iliman rebellion and the fierce fingers of Albazin, heard the crack of Semyon Dezhnev, rushing into the storms of the sails and the roar of the fire -shielding mountains, Volodka Atlasov, who was menacingly glowing at the end of the world over the surf of God Okian. There, in the distant borders of Siberia, in midnight weather, log towers of abandoned mangazey blackened, there in the wet tundra of permafrost, lifting curved tusks, quietly pull out the shafts of mammoths, there are mountains, there are tigers, there are a steppe, into which the Mongols flooded dead gengiz, there is a Chinese boys in the palace for the palace. The Great Wall is lusting with a crooked sword of the Golden Dragon, there black shamans take off the demons in the smoke of the sacrificial bonfires of the sworn island of Olkhon. ”

One thing is annoying - the happy do not observe not only the clock, they generally have a bad reflection. Ivanov is clearly in a hurry, but not because of any vulgar deadlines, but simply happiness, just rushing. And from this overflow of his book is too much. If metaphors, then something like: “The dawn spilled freshly and spaciously-cranberry-inflated, as if thawed. The bronze core of the sun drowned the blue ice of the sky with its bare and hot astronomical body and Puntsovo highlighted the pillars of stove smokes above the snow roofs. From afar, a forth ringing of hundreds of Moscow bells spilled with liquid glass. ”

If errors are wild. I remember that after the release of the “children of Captain Grant”, film critics were mockingly interested in Stanislav Govorukhin, why Talkav speaks in Spanish, and all the other Indians-in pure Russian. Now Ivanov repeated this feat: in the novel there are several Little Russians, almost everyone speaks normally, and only Colonel Novitsky is forced to utter something slurred and visible like: “Will I put a fucking off the fuck? You, you are a ravrevuviv heart ... ".

If historical episodes are all. In general, that's it. Just as Remezov, having received an order for the tower from Gagarin, eventually built the first stone Kremlin behind the Urals, so Ivanov, instead of Bayopic, offers such a polyphony that it becomes terrible. He certainly needs to put everything interesting on the table that was happening in the region - even if he did not manage to really raise the texture, which is why annoying bloopers happen, as in the story of the siege of Albazin. And here it should be noted that, to the honor of Ivanov, the number of historical mistakes in the book is quite small, especially taking into account the scale of the written out can. And most discrepancies with real history were clearly made by the author consciously: well, a person who read the monographs of Shebaldina cannot know how Johan Gustav and Brigitte Christine actually met.

And this historical sanity of the author inspires the greatest fears for the fate of the novel. Yes, the author conscientiously constructs the martino patterns on the Martino patterns, but Martin, despite all the historical allusions, are unleashed in the plot sense. He can bind any plot threads and make any guns shoot: what claims can be - these are fantasy, there are dragons there! Ivanov, on the other hand, seriously risks being a hostage of the material from which he constructs his “peplum”.

Because the real story and a filmmaker about the times of the gods and heroes who have gone in the summer are incompatible. History, a real story, deeply antagonistic drama, it does not only have composition, but just the beginning and the end. This is a powerful river that flows from where it is notable where and can flood anything. Any popularizer of history knows that the main difficulty is to remove excess, to find out of this huge lace, where each part is connected by hundreds of threads with others, at least some whole piece. The approaches of the historian and writer are opposite. The first must be assembled in the storage everything that is possible. The second must be taken out of there only what you cannot do without.

Unfortunately, so far Ivanov has a loose “collector of colorful chapters”, very poorly joining each other. There remains the hope that in the second volume he will still be able to explain why he needed the prisoner Schved Stralenberg, the lord of Philofei, and the chief commander of the Bibikov, and the Bukhazam Kasim, the Ostyatsky Prince Pantille, and the one-eyed split of Avdonium, and the son of the Albazin Kuzma Chong, and Volodka Legostaev from Etigerova from Etigerova.

As in another song about the Motherland, "At the table no one is superfluous at the table."