Translated material
Lev Losev. Poems from four books
Mikhail Aizenberg
Archive "Book"
St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 1999
There are authors who have become “part of speech” in the most literal and everyday sense of these words. “But it’s still a shabby canteen,” one of the leisurely conversation suddenly drops. “Where the half-liter is walking under the table...”, another one picks up understandingly. And they sum it up in a duet: “No, after all, Western vodkas are not taken like the white head.”
These lines belong to the poet Lev Losev, but not to him alone. They also belong to all people who have included them in their everyday life and thus appropriated them. Losev has many such lines and entire poems. His “citation index” is one of the highest, despite the fact that the author has lived overseas for a long time and there, overseas (at the Hermitage Publishing House), he published his first two books: “The Miraculous Landing” and “The Privy Councilor”. (That is, they reached Russia in a few copies.) The next two books have already been published by the St. Petersburg Pushkin Foundation. Losev's new book is a selection from the four previous ones.
It can be assumed that one of the most annoying publishing misunderstandings has finally been resolved - with a huge delay. But it's not that simple. I could compile a long list of wonderful poems that were not included in the collection, although the selection itself, in my opinion, is remarkable, and the nature of the author’s preferences is the topic of a special, very intriguing study. There is no point in trying to state it in a small review.
Once again you are convinced that a book of poems is not the sum of poems. All things are familiar, only their author was unknown to you before reading the book. This is some other poet, another Losev. More strict, serious, less prone to risky jokes and puns. (It should be noted, however, that Losev’s jokes have nothing to do with “humor”, and people do not make puns out of a good life.)
If we remember, we met the first Losev not so long ago and only about twenty years ago we first read his poems in the magazines “Echo” and “Continent”. (From these first, quite deafening, selections, not all were included in the collection.) But Losev became a “living classic” almost immediately and somehow unexpectedly. It seems unexpected, first of all for himself. According to his admission, he began writing poetry very late, at thirty-seven years old (a significant figure). It was as if he was waiting for his time to finally come. The age of the author and the age of his poetics do not always coincide. A special sensitivity to parody and “irony of style” made Losev the author of the next generation in relation to his peers, but this authorship was complemented by the experience of observation and reflection, an accurate understanding of the literary situation. He knew very well which commonplaces of contemporary lyrics he would like to avoid and how. “All these were fish on the fur of nonsense, multiplied by lethargy, but sometimes I actually managed to print this nonsense.” There is no trace of nonsense or whimsical poetic intricacy in Losev’s poems, but now he demonstrates this in a less programmatic way. Apparently, he feels that he will no longer be confused with anyone.
Lev Losev really cannot be confused with anyone. His best poems (and there are a lot of best ones) have some special, personal focus. They usually begin with an unpretentious description, listing, sketch or commentary; It’s as if they are gradually making their way past low verbal truths, deliberately colliding with each one. They don't imitate anything, they don't deceive anyone. Only the “quality of sound” changes subtly, and you suddenly find yourself in a different space, at a different height, in the united hum and thunder of the oratorio.
That is why Losev’s poems cannot be quoted in pieces, and yet - this is how, for example, the poem “... worked in the Bonfire” ends, begun with the intonation of a tired and bilious memoirist:
And time passed./And the first day approached./And the secretary wrote out the chervonets./And time passed, without ceremony with anyone,/and it tore everyone to pieces./Those in the camp barracks are chifiring,/those in the Bronx are fighting with cockroaches, /those in the mental hospital nod and cuckoo,/and drive the little devils off the cuffs.
March 27, 2000