Lilith, leave!

The collection "Midnight, XIX century" The modest feast of literary nostalgia continues. Following the anthology of “Noon, XIX century”, which sent his name to Boris Strugatsky’s magazine and combined the chosen texts of the pioneers of Russian fiction under the same cover, a collection was published in the same series, only with the replacement of “noon” for the opposite time of the day. "Midnight, XIX century" is another look back, this time on what can be conditionally called the classic of the Russian horror. Or at least Sasassens.

In fact, it is, strictly speaking, not only about the 19th century, but also about the beginning of the twentieth. Vsevolod Garshin, present here, really lived in the century before last, but most of those who gave tribute to both centuries were found in horror, and Nikolai Gumilev and Alexander Green, as the authors, completely belong to the twentieth century. But the 19th century can be understood not only literally, that is, chronologically, but also as a literary era, and then its boundaries are somewhat shifted. Actually, we are talking about the FIN de Siecle, about the end of the century as a special period. It was then that the Russian people just worsened the feeling of unknown, supernatural and terrible - mystical forebodings spilled in the air, and part of the educated public came into fashion spiritualism and sectarianism. The definition of "horror" flaunting on the cover also requires explanation. With horror, Russian writers were complicated. In some things, nothing terrible seems to be happening. For example, in the story of Fedor Sologub “Shadows”, the boy Volodya is fond of the Theater of Shadows, which arranges in his room with the help of his own hands and walls, and plants his mother on this lesson - that’s, in fact, that’s all. “Traveling to the country of broadcast” by Nikolai Gumilyov is a description of a pleasant, albeit unsafe for the health of a narcotic trip, and the hero of the Chekhov’s story “Fasts”, as you know, recalls three completely harmless things, at different times frightened him: an incomprehensible fire on a bell tower that was divorced from the train in a commodity car and dog in the forest. But in horror now you will not surprise anyone. For an understanding reader, that sparkling is much more expensive, which is demonstrated here even in the complete absence of something truly terrible. In addition, horror with horror is discord-in the same “shadows” terrible is present, but it is not contained in action, but somewhere in the bowels of a typically Sologubovsky dreary mood, in intonations, in a wonderful phrase “everywhere the wall” sounding like a slogan of hopelessness. Leonid Andreev, telling about the grief in the priest’s family and about the tragedy of carnal temptation, was able to uncompromisingly immerse in the atmosphere of suffering, and it does not matter at all that he had no horror, and we could not wait for the denouement. The phantasmagoria of Alexander Green, including the amazing “Fandango”, is not so much terrible as weird and mysterious, but it also becomes uneasy from them. The role of the "locomotive" of horror and mysticism among those present in the "midnight" authors are performed by the same Sologub. The grumpy cloth turns into a fighting dog, a deceased senior husband is to a rich lady in the image of her new acquaintances, death comes by ad, and love turns into vampirism in the literal sense of the word, and only an other world that orders the vampire to save the victim: “Lilith, leave!” Learn, lovers of primitive Freddie Kruger! However, Valery Bryusov, who describes transcendental mania, as well as Mikhail Artsybashev, almost does not lag behind Sologub: one of his heroes receives absolute knowledge from a monster similar to a huge toad. This collection, perhaps, could have been added a lot (at least the famous Andreevsky story “Red Laughter”, which fits into the horror genre), but the essence is not in detail, but in a concentrated look directed at the very heart of the Russian Fin de Siecle. The authors, conditionally represented as Russian lavcraft, languished, insightfully seeing the invisible, anticipating Mamleev, and this said.

Midnight, XIX century. - M.: Corporation "Sombra", 2005. - 320 p.

01/12/2006 / Kirill Reshetnikov, the material was published in the "newspaper" No. 2 of 01/13/2006.