Kirill Kutalov-Postoll. Unaccounted texts

Unaccounted texts
Kirill Kutalov-Postoll

Publication date: February 21, 2000

http://www.musagetes.com

Russian literature outside Russia is not a new topic in itself. The only serious omission in its development is that in the center of attention of writers, as if by itself, only emigrant literature, literature “in exile” appears. Meanwhile, since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and, as a consequence, the collapse of a single cultural space, in which a single language was, if not “cement,” then at least a manifestation, Russian literature, regardless of whether it wanted it or not, began to acquire new satellites, Russian-language literature of the former Soviet republics. This may seem like a stretch, given that there is a great temptation to see literature written in Russian, for example, in Ukraine or Uzbekistan, as nothing more than a continuation of what textbooks call “Soviet” literature, but this temptation must be overcome. The former republics of the Union are now in a situation that has hardly ever been seen and where during the 20th century. Primarily in all these new states there is a phenomenon of bilingualism. It is generally accepted that since this phenomenon arose solely due to the conditions of the transition period, it does not represent much value - a kind of centaur, an inevitable evil. A gradual (some more, sometimes less gradual) transition to a new state language will sooner or later put everything in its place, in Ukraine they will write in Ukrainian, in Tajikistan - in Tajik, and literature will again become the most important factor in gaining national identity. And God willing, in fact.

But at the same time, it seems that precisely because of the illusory nature of these unrecorded texts - at least because of this illusory nature - such a phenomenon as Russian-language literature, in general the Russian-language culture of the new independent states, deserves attention and careful treatment. was published in Russian Journal Two weeks ago, my article about the Fergana poetic school - this phenomenon, in many ways unique for modern Russian literature, took shape in an integral project precisely within the time frame of the notorious transition period outside the Russian Federation.

Almaty, where I lived for almost a year, from 1998 to 1999, has the semi-official status of the cultural capital of Kazakhstan. The city is small by Moscow standards, and it was not difficult to get around all its bookstores. The impression was quite depressing. It’s not that there was nothing there at all - Pelevin, in any case, could be found - but the annoying feeling of being on the cultural periphery did not leave. This feeling would be fundamentally illegal if the literature of modern Kazakhstan were presented there - it doesn’t really matter in what language. But for the most part, the bookstores of Almaty resembled the collapses of the metro - one or two new items that had randomly wandered into 99.9% of the serial novels of the second freshness. The only publication from which one could get at least some idea of ​​the literary life of Kazakhstan was the magazine Prostor, whose employees, at least at that time, were in constant fear of closure due to lack of funding. The situation was so abnormal that it even inspired some optimism - it was impossible to believe that everything was so bad.

There is a “worldwide Kazakh magazine “Arba” on the Internet , the central figure of which is the poet Bakhyt Kenzheev . However, this resource is positioned as quite far from what is happening inside Kazakhstan itself. Almost not a single writer represented on “Arba” on Kazakh literary resources mentioned.

Relatively recently, in November last year, the website " Apollinary ", a literary and artistic online magazine, opened. Its main sections are quite typical for humanitarian projects - poetry, prose, essays, logos (about which a little below), presentations (texts about modern Kazakh artists, writers, choreographers, reviews, surveys) All published texts are in Russian.

In general, the project looks very ambiguous. The presented works are on such different levels that their juxtaposition sometimes looks like an unfortunate mistake. From the prose section - in the form in which it exists today - two stories attract attention - “Early Spring” by Vladimir Bondar and “The Holy Fool” by O. Mark. O. Mark is a citizen of Kazakhstan, a veteran of the first Chechen campaign. Vladimir Bondar lives in Russia. By the way, if we had encountered “Early Spring” on the Art of War website , which was discussed last week, perhaps the conclusions about the veteran literature of participants in the 1994-96 war would have been somewhat different. Bondar's story looks very promising; it is more than a detailed description of the war itself; the intonation of a report from the scene is completely absent here - the narrative is surprisingly calm, devoid of the seemingly necessary poignancy of the plot. The Chechens are asking for help from Russian soldiers - it is necessary to call a doctor to a man seriously wounded by a random bullet, allegedly not related to the militants. A simple collision and a constant level of tension, resolved in the end by removing the opposition “friend or foe”.

The rest of the works suggest a rather sad idea that isolation from cultural centers, and first of all, no matter how odious it may sound, from Moscow, unfortunately, is not beneficial. “Moscowphobia” as a result leads to an unfortunate decrease in level, and the project, which claims to be a serious literary online publication (after all, “Apollinaris” is not a home page at all, but a magazine, and there are even sponsors), looks, at least partially, quite -amateurish. An attempt to explain this state of affairs by a “crisis of authors” raises the question - why, in this case, create a website when you could get by with a regional magazine, which, like Prostor, will never go beyond the borders of Kazakhstan? Fortunately, the magazine is not political and does not pose a threat to Kazakh authoritarianism, although it does not fit into the framework of state language policy.

In the “ Essays ” section I would like to note the text of the editor-in-chief of the magazine Olga Markova “City”. His main idea - an attempt to draw parallels between Almaty and St. Petersburg - may seem unusual. At the same time, one important point attracts attention - not only the feeling of being connected by a single cultural tradition, but also the memory of the most painful moments of the history of the twentieth century, lived together, much stronger and more palpably from “that” side. Here in Russia, this is remembered much less often, and such comparisons are generally extremely unpopular.

An unexpected surprise comes from the “ Logos ” section. Associations with the famous philosophical almanac are more than appropriate - the section presents texts by Maurice Blanchot, Jean Baudrillard, Hayden White and Richard Kearney, texts first published on the Internet. However, this is not the main unusual feature of the section. The translations were carried out by Kazakh scientists and, it should be noted, were done brilliantly; One of the translators, Bakhtiyar Yuldashkhodzhaev, is dedicated to a separate article in the “ Presentations ” section. It is probably not worth saying that the situation with serious philosophical literature in Kazakhstan is not much different from the situation with fiction; at the same time, the texts presented in Apollinaria are the first translations of the works of the above-mentioned philosophers into Russian. After reading these texts, my most general impression of the situation of bilingualism (or better yet, interlingualism) that was mentioned earlier (in short: they have forgotten how to write in Russian, they have not yet learned to write in Kazakh), has changed greatly.

In general, I think that the Network is an ideal place for implementing projects of this kind. By eliminating the two most cumbersome and boring problems - circulation and delivery, the Network at least allows you to create the illusion that the common space of Russian literature (and culture in general) still exists. At the most, it gives grounds to claim its restoration.

As for terminological disputes about which is more correct - “Russian” or “Russian-speaking” (if this is still interesting to someone), then at least I have not yet met a single person who would call the Russian writer Gazdanov “Russian-speaking” , although he was an Ossetian and lived in France.