Arkady Dragomoshchenko. List of Nemzer

List of Nemzer
Arkady Dragomoshchenko

Publication date: February 1, 2000

Russian holidays, at the very least, have come to an end. While one of the most beloved folk pastimes - “summing up” - will continue to disturb the imagination of both experts and inexperienced spectators for a long time, who occupied the front rows in anticipation of the pleasure, if not from heavenly strife, then certainly from unraveling various kinds of mysteries, the simplest of which - “why this and not another” - often turns out to be insoluble. Perhaps the main one.

On the other hand, the procedure for publishing all kinds of lists, “hot ten”, etc., appearing at the turn of the new year is somewhat reminiscent of lunch in a Chinese restaurant with the obligatory cookies for dessert, in which the ticket of fate is sealed.

The regulated variability of changing dishes, the conditioned tradition of taste patterns ends with the invasion of chance, arrogant, but easily fits into the ritual system of the meal.

Having satiatedly cracked the cookie, you can read about your upcoming meeting with the Queen of England in two hours, or a much less incomprehensible prophecy about a night bird with a split emerald in its beak. Some tend to treat such predictions ironically.

But in order to understand more deeply the invasion of chance into everyday life, one should turn to the “Book of Changes.” I got the hexagram "Ruin".

It’s okay, I told myself, ruin is like an epiphany, an endless waste. In addition, the last trigram (nine) says: “The huge fruit is not eaten,” immediately offering a first-order interpretation: “A noble person will receive a cart; an insignificant person’s home will be destroyed.”

I guessed that the huge fruit of our literature had not been eaten. What finally confirmed my guess was Andrei Nemzer ("Time MN") - a well-oiled machine of domestic criticism.

As a noble man, Nemzer offers me a cartload of fruit, grown, in his words, by critics of various orientations and inclinations. And, importantly, different generations and habitats. Tell me who is reading you, and I will tell you what you wrote. Therefore, let’s turn to the names: Nikolai Alexandrov, Andrey Arev (St. Petersburg), Alexander Arkhangelsky, Dmitry Bavilsky (Chelyabinsk), Leonid Bakhnov, Sergey Borovikov (Saratov), ​​Andrey Vasilevsky, Alexander Gavrilov, Natalya Ivanova, Sergey Kostyrko, Boris Kuzminsky, Mark Lipovetsky ( Colorado, USA), Andrey Nemzer, Vladimir Novikov, Irina Rodnyanskaya, Olga Slavnikova (Ekaterinburg), Karen Stepanyan, Sergey Chuprinin, Evgeny Shklovsky.

Summing up the results of the survey , Andrei Nemzer, who personally took part in the plebiscite, offers “a look at Russian literature of the 90s” as a special period . Having realized “freedom in practice” for the first time and freed itself from the “censorship shackles,” literature, despite the death predicted for it, not only survived, but also flourished. As a result, expert critics can only name any number of works that are important, from their point of view.

The creation of such a list - 69 prose writers, 37 poets (excluding anthologies), 78 writers of various genres ("from world-famous philologists to newspaper columnists") - solved several problems. Firstly, a “guide to modern literature” has been created, and secondly, a “rating of prose writers and poets”. The most mysterious section of the list (besides “Prose” and “Poetry”) is called “Memoirs, criticism, essays, journalism, humanitarian thought.” Where, by the way, Andrei Levkin ended up, to his own amazement, with the book “Interregnum” . This section appears to be something like purgatory or an Olympic reserve, from where at any moment certain authors can be transferred to neighboring teams of prose writers or poets. Where, truly, no fatal surprises await us. Everything is calm, a little businesslike and sleepy. Galkovsky neighbors Vladimov , Sosnora with Sorokin . are also available Solzhenitsyn , Brodsky , Pelevin .

We know those we know.

The lists are quite safe, which suggests either Christmas complacency or a certain fatigue of critical minds seeking peace, stability, order . It may be that I missed something from the formula of social existence that is popular today.

In conclusion, I will dwell on one of the final statements of Andrei Nemzer that today prose “prevails” over poetry. Such periods happen in history, he explains.

In history, I will note, there are also periods when we can no longer determine with the convenient precision necessary to create “lists” not only the boundaries of genres, but also what is called literature, being content in fact with the outlines of huge uneaten fruits.