barren, destructive flowers..."

"We are the barren flowers of destruction..."
Dmitry Tsilikin

Publication date: March 1, 2000

I'm seeing the wonderful critic Tatyana Moskvina at the "Thunderstorm" by Henrietta Yanovskaya at the Moscow Youth Theater. Bored - no strength! Strained, forced, artificial, absolutely lifeless and, moreover, aggressive. Out of boredom and torment we begin to whisper. I say: “Where did Meyerhold have a twisted staircase like this one? In “The Lady with the Camellias”? Tanya replies: “No, in “Profitable Place” - “That’s right, it was on it that Babanova played the scene of the quarrel with Zhadov ". Moskvina (sighing heavily): “You and I are the wreckage of a vanishing civilization.”

Showing the collection of a certain “couturier” - this time another Rastignac came to conquer the North. Palmyra from Cheboksary and, as usual, happily replaced his years of study with his daddy’s wallet. Topless models walk around in leather pants. I ask a (smart and talented) female designer sitting next to me: “How is this absolute emptiness of the gaze achieved?” She: “Oh, we need to work on this. Lack of education, lack of upbringing, lack of nutrition, dancing all night...”

In the entrance where my office is located, the first floor is rented by a 24-hour computer club. Entrance from the yard. It is in this courtyard that teenagers and young men swarm around the clock: they will smoke and then play their endless game again. So, I’ll tell you, these teenagers have an even more absolute emptiness in their eyes. You might as well look into the eyes of a dinosaur. Or you still remember the classic pig, which ate something on the go and, without noticing, gobbled up a chicken that turned up.

It's almost scary. You begin to doubt not only the meaning (at least some) of your activities - no, here you inevitably doubt the very reality of your own existence.

It's normal, of course. Anyone who has lived and thought cannot but periodically realize with rage or sadness: “nobody needs everything I do.” It would be strange to argue with the fact that stupidity, redneckness, vulgarity, and emptiness exist in the world. Understanding it and reconciling with it, generally speaking, is the most important form of spiritual activity and searching for one’s own path in the field. Another thing is that in the computer era, vulgarity and stupidity turned out to be especially disgusting, since they were armed with the best, most perfect fruits of the human mind. Herds of satellites fly in space, hundreds of thousands of complex structures stand on the ground, millions of instruments and people ensure the functioning of television - to show us what?

In the same way, the computer serves to satisfy primitive excitement. And worse than that - the realization of the most base and vile properties of human nature. Urinating in an elevator, breaking light bulbs where you just see something new and good - tearing it, breaking it and mutilating it, doing all sorts of dirty tricks - all this is a way to release the wild evil energy that fills a person’s life in the absence of other fillers. But when you receive what appears to be a greeting card in the mail that destroys your hard drive, it's exactly the same thing. The stupid animal that creates and spreads this virus is having fun somewhere with its oligophrenic fun, not only not thinking that the fruits of many years of work have been ruined - for example, a book - but also not suspecting the existence of some books...

Sometimes you get the feeling that the Internet was created by graphomaniacs. For two or three hundred years, there were some obstacles on the way to the publication of the text, censors and editors were working - and now all the feelings that graphomaniacs around the world have felt towards them all these years seem to have merged into one terrible clot and splashed out into the space of the Internet . You don't need to know anything. You don't need to know anything. If Pelevin - shameless, arrogant trash - has become the star and banner of the generation, then why should others be shy: he can write so badly, but we can’t? If the information field of the Earth one day collapses, it will be due to its contamination with the fruits of authorship.

It was good for Pushkin: Sovremennik published something, and all of Russia, no matter how many people read it, read it. Now, I think, in the vast expanses of our homeland you can find a person who does not know the name “Pugachev”. Everything that is dear and even sacred to the members of one circle is an empty phrase to the members of another. Director Alexey German said that in the early 70s he got into a fight with some Georgians who didn’t know who Ioseliani was. This comical incident is, of course, due to the temperament of the participants and drinking, however - as Herman himself rightly noted - with whom and for whom are we “fighting” today?

Or, for example, when I read about the historical role of the Leningrad cafeteria "Saigon" for the fate of Russian culture, it seems necessary to prefix the word "culture" with "sub-". Over the past fifteen (almost) years, a lot has changed, coordinate systems have crumbled, criteria have been newly formed, and then some people felt that they needed to seize a moment of luck. And they caught it! For some time, a fair number of incompetent impostors were listed as musicians, artists, philosophers, poets...

However, this has always been the case. There were always Minnesingers and the Korsch Theater flourished, and there were always some Bunchikov and Nechaev, idols of the generation. And Bach worked nearby. Or Chekhov. Or Shostakovich. Now: some shabby guys are traveling around the world, it’s called a “rock band”, they are accompanied by old documentary recordings of folk ecstasies in stadiums... And if you listen, it’s just rhythmic noise.

The famous perestroika TV program “The Fifth Wheel” once showed one exalted lady who exchanged an apartment somewhere for a room opposite “Saigon” - imagine the power of the desire to be inside the environment (subculture)! But, excuse me, if your whole life is contained in a coffee shop, in a “small double” in chipped porcelain glasses, why did you live? "Closerie de Lilas", "Rotunda", "Select", "La Coupole" became famous because Hemingway or Buñuel, or Dali sat there. But subtract these cafes and restaurants from the lives of Buñuel and Dali and look at the rest. Should we subtract them from the history of restaurants? So they repeat about “Saigon” that Dovlatov and Brodsky were there. So what? If everyone who was there with them got together, ordered a small double, poured some port and cracked a joint, Brodsky’s spirit would not be evoked mediumistically.

“Art, just like science, evaluates life phenomena solely by their intrinsic value, without any participation of generosity or compassion” (M. Saltykov. Letter to the editor of “Bulletin of Europe”).

Alexander Timofeevsky, a luminary of thought in the 80s and 90s, once (long ago), responding to accusations of snobbery, noted that snobbery is not measured by Baudrillard (or anyone else), for a real snob the latest literary events will always remain "The Divine Comedy" and "Eugene Onegin". Since then, it must be said, a generation of “intellectuals” has grown up who read Baudrillard (and in the original language), but did not read Bunin. And their snobbery, of course, is completely juvenile.

But life is even funnier than even outstanding minds imagined. Because pre-election work for Kiriyenko is also, undoubtedly, a form of snobbery. Only in this snobbery there was absolutely no energy left for internal opposition to the “surrounding caricature” (as Kierkegaard put it).

Here is another fragment of a disappearing civilization - the concept of “unintelligent”. Try to tell someone that - they will laugh, really, they will laugh. Something should not be done because it is unprofitable, dangerous, harms the image, contradicts the market situation, is not fashionable, etc. Not doing something because it is unintelligent... This civilization has practically disappeared.

Which is easy to prove. I’ll take a piece at random from Schwartz’s Notebooks, about the actor Kadochnikov:

“I haven’t met him since Tyuzov times. And then one day someone called me in Komarovo, judging by his voice, a broken man, and said: “The secretary of Pavel Petrovich Kadochnikov is speaking to you.” Already a secretary had formed next to him! <...> And then he arrived himself, in his own car, which he personally drove. <...> And he kept smiling, uncontrollably, like a lover. And the object of love was himself. We went to the city together. He kept smiling.

On the way, he told me that he had a dacha with so many fruit trees. That he got a new apartment on the corner of Gorky Street and Kirovsky Prospekt. That the traffic cop wanted to fine him, but when he saw that the offender was Kadochnikov, he smiled and let him go. And it was all true. And his eyes shone, and his loving smile was almost shy. She never left her pretty face. And the price for him, this person, was a penny, and his soul, the only thing that could save him, was willingly and long ago sold to the devil. But even in hell his affairs are not as good as before. The traffic cop, smiling, let him go and did not fine him for the violation. But in the film studio the people are ruthless. Crooked, askew, stumbling, but this art is being improved. And in the last film his partners played, and he tried to infect the audience with his love for himself. “Aren’t I nice,” he repeated, no matter what words he got for his role. And right there, next to him, a boy playing in a movie almost for the first time took advantage of new discoveries in his field. And he got a figure that was amazing in its liveliness. It turned out to be a miracle, next to which poor, pretty, with lying lips, Pavel Petrovich was ashamed. Tight".

Try to approach something today with these Shvartsian criteria. That's the same!

But... who knows...

Derzhavin's “river of times” is not only a majestic definition, but also, so to speak, physically accurate. The times in this river are arranged in accordance with hydrodynamic laws, fast jets are noisy and foaming at the top, closer to the bottom everything is smooth and slow, there are eddies (turbulent flows), there are also motionless pools...

There are professions that ensure the progressive nature of the movement of civilization (say, all occupations in the field of technical progress), and there are professions that ensure the continuity of this movement - for example, the profession of a musician. Or a classical ballet dancer. Or a doctor. Those who are now adopting these skills in private life can be the most modern young people, they have a cassette inserted into their player that is not Bach or Adan, an earring in their ear (and not only in their ear), and a feather in their ass, just like laid down in youth. However, in the craft everything is the same: the choreography of Coralli-Perrot-Petipa, the piano school, which directly goes back to Liszt and Beethoven, and anatomy, which goes back in general to Avicenna, Celsus and Galen. In comparison with these mysterious professional depths, many highly fashionable occupations look very easy: it’s not for nothing that dancers and doctors study for six to eight years, musicians for fifteen, but you can learn to become a businessman in a couple of years or even not study at all.

I risk getting a reputation as a retrograde and even an obscurantist, but it seems to me that culture is, first of all, a culture of craft. I am not against “new processes in culture,” let them go. However, what looks more convincing is not the process of foaming with the subsequent entrainment of foam by the upper layers of the flow, but the process of gradual settling to the bottom of a solid, convincing sediment. Still, the word “culture” itself is largely synonymous with the concepts of “permanent”, “durable”, isn’t it?