Odvukon - three

This is the first two-headed, double word in relation to two Russian literature-Soviet and foreign-used the emigrant writer Roman Ghul. For almost three decades, he headed the oldest “New Journal” in the Russian foreign countries, the gul is just like that - “Odvukon” and “Odvukon -Twa” - called collections of his critical articles about two literature, which were released respectively in 1973 and 1982. At all, it would seem, recently - still on the living memory of many of us. Nevertheless, the situation has since changed radically, and today we have been living in a completely different cultural era, with other ideological and existential circumstances. Therefore, many issues related to the relationship of two Russian literature - or maybe they have long been alone for a long time? - It's time to put and think over again. The collection of articles by the Associate Professor of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, candidate of philological sciences Elena Skarlygina, known as a specialist in literature and journalism of Russian emigration of the second half of the past century and as one of the first domestic researchers of the Russian non -certificate culture of the late Soviet time, is designed to contribute to the solution of these problems.

All the texts included in the collection have been written by the author over the past twenty years - starting from the end of the eighties, when layers of Russian literature, alternative to the Soviet mainstream, and then more decisive, erode old, well -armed attitudes, began to enter the horizons of the Russian -speaking reader. In the first section of the collection, there are many characteristic times of the opening and typical directions of attention for this time. In particular, this is inevitable for the late piercing years, almost dominated the theme of the poet’s relationship with the authorities in the then thoughts on literature. The article “On one common verb” among Mandelstam and Pasternak is dedicated to her - about those sinister meanings that, in a specific atmosphere of the Soviet thirties, unexpectedly for himself, acquired an old, peasant, meek word “worldwater”. The text that compares social circumstances and fate, and therefore the worldview of Bulat Okudzhava and Yuri Trifonov, and the conversation about Isaac Babel, who, as an artistic phenomenon, was unconditionally generated by the catastrophic revolutionary processes of his time, and they are also ruined. In the second section - works about the Russian literary foreign countries, among which it is worth noting the large and thorough text about "the third Russian emigration in modern perception." The topic is all the more important, which is not very reflected: despite the fact that since the fall of the Soviet government managed to pass - and create a distance convenient for research - a whole cultural era, the “third wave”, the author notes, “still occupies a completely marginal position in research, and in combination as an integral phenomenon has still been little studied”.

The author makes a lot to correct this under -reflection. True, she, in fact, is rather a historian of ideas and social situations. The book is about this side of Russian literary processes: about values (almost primarily - social and political), circumstances, people and their relations. To talk about the aesthetic, actually verbal aspects of the same processes, there is practically no place for the definition of verbal fabric and modeling worlds, although it seems absolutely necessary to solve the degree of unity of literature on both sides of the former barricades.

A rare, now almost forgotten word from the lexicon Dahl meant, recall - "with an assistant or spare horse." That is how, according to the ghoul quoted by Scarlygina, Russian literature went “after the Bolshevitsky coup”, when part of the Russian literature saved in the West assumed the role of the same spare horse - if it had not had this reserve, “the Bolsheviks would have strangled her all.” So, Odvukon, Russian literature lived almost until the end of the twentieth century, until the end of Soviet censorship.

And what: is it now achieved - when the previous barriers, in theory, collapsed - a bowl of semantic and other unity of our literature?

Skarlygina - although he writes that “today, when all previously prohibited texts - both writers who continued to work in their homeland and representatives of all three waves of emigration are completely published, <...> Russian literature of the twentieth century is perceived as a whole,” is inclined to the opinion that there is still no. Moreover, censorship prohibitions are far from the only source of heterogeneity and, by and large, is not the most important.

Moreover, I risk saying that unity will never be achieved. And even more - it is not necessary. In fact, there was no unity when the section line coincided with the western border of the Soviet Union and dissected the Russian literary life seemed to be only two parts. Both of these parts were inside themselves and very diverse, and even conflict.

We learn about the “overturned”, Soviet version of this heterogeneity, some of the chapters dedicated to the “unquestioned Russian culture of the 1960-1980s” and the role, which in the Russian sociocultural situation in the same years was played by Sam- and Tamizdat. According to the author, this role is primarily preserving: “The main and indisputable conquest of Samizdat and Tamizdat, in our opinion,” she writes, “consists in preserving the great cultural heritage of Russia of the twentieth century in its entirety and without censorship distortions.” It seems, however, that the role of an alternative book publishing, with all the importance of preserving functions, is still much wider: it expanded the scope of vision (from political to aesthetic), loosened inertia and evidence. Enriched and complicated literary perception and created new growth points.

Based on the material of the emigrant (near) literary life, heterogeneity and conflict are no less strict than in our Fatherland, except a little differently arranged - are shown mainly in connection with the relations of writers of the “third” Russian emigration to one of its leading figures - to Solzhenitsyn (from which this attitude was definitely far from the unconditional acceptance) and with the relationship between it) Figures of the most significant-Vladimir Maksimov and Andrei Sinyavsky-and two “irreconcilable, hostile” camps that have developed around the Magazines “Continent” and “Syntax” and “opposed each other until the beginning of the 1990s”. “Not about any unity of the“ third wave, ”especially in its political head,” writes Scarlygin, “there was no question.”

Yes, to connect different literary flows, to arrange the connecting channels between them (as well as to think through their correspondence), it is certainly necessary. But to be mixed by them, it seems, is not destined - except in the chaos of the end of time. Literature, in general - verbal and semantic life, requires reserves, tanks that would not merge with each other - and at critical moments would exchange elements developed inside them. On the example of the two (more precisely, as Scarlygina, three: foreign, official and non -certificate) Russian literature of the twentieth century this is just the most clearly visible - although in one of its most tragic options - after all, this division was paid to the broken fate too generously so that this can be taken with a light heart.

And yet: it is already clear that certain improvised or spare horses will always be started, as soon as anything will intend themselves as at least any leading line. And no, this is not necessary to be neither conflict nor tragic (although, of course, conflict and tragedy will also always find a place, being, alas, existential constants).

The Odvukon movement continues. Russian -speaking literature today is created in at least two fundamentally different situations: inside the Russian cultural and language environment and beyond. It contains like emigrant writers (people with the position of a fundamental outsider-the first of these is the Russian Estonian Andrei Ivanov, whose last book, “Night in Saint-Claim”, literally the other day, Julia Podlubnova wrote), so people who write in Russian in another country, but by no means without a discharge from her (say, Lena Elang, living in Vilnius, living in Vilnius, I would say “literature in general” in our language, without tough ethnic and cultural bindings-rather the All-European; or her Vilnius builder Max Fry, who is essentially the same) or even about her (such as Lyu Lubomirskaya, which someone-I don’t remember now, unfortunately, said that she writes Portuguese literature in the Russian language). A separate phenomenon with their own characteristics is the Russian -speaking authors of the former Soviet republics, pronouncing in Russian obviously foreign cultural experience and foreign meanings - from such double -ragged ones, for example, the Tashkent, the Uzbek poet and writer Sukhbat Aflatuni, he is Russian critic Yevgeny Abdullaev, is recalled.

Is there any language between all these authors, in addition to the general language, is the unity that would say about a common team - and not, say, about the sledges of many and different, traveling completely in different directions? It seems that this minute is still far from clear (something tells me that the sides and harnesses are most likely different, but we will not hurry). This has to be meaningful. And I really want to hope that we will read about it, and that the book by Scarlygina is only the beginning of a large and constructive conversation about the growing multiplicity of the Russian word.