Translated material
Reader on precision science
Sergey Gandlevsky
The publishing house "New Literary Review" published Mikhail Gasparov's book "Records and Extracts"
The publishing house "New Literary Review" published Mikhail Gasparov's book "Records and Extracts"
An unusual book. Memoirs are not memoirs, although there are several essays of an autobiographical nature. At the same time, in “Records and Extracts” there is something of an anthology of aphorisms, although it was originally compiled not for our reading, but for the author’s own needs. Side by side with cursory notes are extended statements (about the intelligentsia, criticism, antiquity, etc.), interspersed with excerpts from letters, translations of poetry, retellings of conversations and dreams, strangers and their own. But this varied and varied literature is given intonational unity and aesthetic meaning by the image of the author, essentially a lyrical hero. The interest in this kind of literature is understandable: we are given the opportunity to get to know a remarkable person better. And the composition of the book well reproduces the situation of a new acquaintance, say, on the road, when the first opinion about a fellow traveler is formed by his involuntary reactions: some unprecedented thing flashes outside the window, some Karlo-Liebknechtovsk, and the stranger mentions that “the employee bought Nabokov and Camus in the village of Nochnoy Matyug. If little by little common ground is discovered, you may want to listen to a story or two from your companion’s life or find out his views on a particular subject.
Some of Gasparov’s own comments and the statements of others he cited immediately migrated to my personal quotation book: “Philosophical lyrics” is a game of thought, a demonstration of personal experience of commonplaces..."; “If you need to explain, then there is no need to explain"; but about the Soviet history textbook - “as if Shvabrin wrote it for Pugachev,” etc.
The book is primarily educational. It was news to me that in Ancient Greece “it was impossible to live life without killing someone, even if only as a militiaman in an everyday boundary war.” Or that romanticism, with its moral ambiguity and African passions, owes its appearance... to improved nutrition! If until the 18th century humanity had no time for fat, then for some time now fears for the survival of humanity as a biological species have disappeared, and the human race could afford the luxury of putting up with the existence of immoral renegades - sort of spies into the future. But Gasparov immediately questions the shocking materialism of his own conclusion, adding that a similar demographic explosion that occurred at the same time in China did not give rise to either romanticism or individualism. This professional precision, which has outgrown the boundaries of the specialty, seems to be a very important human quality of the scientific and lyrical hero, and at the same time the main component of the pathos and charm of the book as a whole. Scrupulousness has been elevated to the principle: “I am engaged in precise science, and you are engaged in some science.” Reading Gasparov discourages hasty generalization and ideologizing in shallow waters. Genuine awareness is incompatible with ideology, which is forced every now and then to patch up the gaps of knowledge with inspiration. The ability to generalize, of course, testifies to the strength of the human mind, but no less to its weakness.
Out of personal and scientific conscientiousness, refusing to round the facts to the conclusions of an integral worldview, Gasparov the philologist deliberately deprives himself of the right to aesthetic assessments: “When I say “This is 4th Art. Iambic", I am a scientist, when I say "This iambic is good", I am being studied." The same thing, but in different words, was said by Hegel: “I think badly when I add something of my own.” The author of “Records and Extracts” does not have a worldview, but he has a worldview that relies exclusively on experience, delivered with the maximum possible accuracy. The discipline of thought matches that of the camp: “a step to the left, a step to the right is considered an escape.” Scientific asceticism and method dissolve a person within themselves: “Do not laugh, do not cry, do not curse, but understand” (Spinoza). As often happens, the research approach is not content with the subject of professional consideration and is gradually transferred to other areas of culture: “Accepting a ready-made religion is also the same as adjusting your religious feeling to a given answer.” Since I am quoting Hegel and Spinoza not from primary sources, but from the works of Lev Shestov, a zealous opponent of speculation, it is approximately clear that Gasparov can be objected to if desired, but on my part it would be disingenuous to especially ardently defend a sense of well-being for which I personally do not have enough spirit.
Every page of the book exudes simply disarming rationalism. To catch the author in rationality is to break open doors: “Just as democracy is the lesser of political evils, so reason is the lesser of philosophical ones. Reason, this Braille font of our blindness...” Not without challenge and almost with relief, Gasparov says: “ I'm a soulless intellectual."
The passion for finding a rational grain in everything prompted Gasparov to undertake a bold experiment: translating foreign poems, written in regular meter and in rhyme, into Russian in free verse, not word for word, but just the essence of the matter. I can’t resist quoting Gasparov on this matter: “Pale Fire” in the translation. Vera Nabokova, the poems were translated in unrhymed iambic heterometers, as Nabokov translated Onegin, and with the same destructive result: Pushkin is avenged...” However, the texts resulting from the author’s summary translation are impeccable in their own way.
Accurate scholar Gasparov considers it his duty to approach himself with the same indifference as to “iamb 4”: his autobiographical essays are wonderful prose. The years of childhood and adolescence, until the boy found an outlet for himself in philology, were a middle-class hell, too familiar to many compatriots. Independence was given to the author at the cost of renouncing all claims to society: “I do not feel human rights for myself, except for the right to die of hunger... I exist only with the permission of society and can be destroyed at any moment for the fact that I am not completely like that, what kind of me he needs." Dignity manifests itself in the form of absolute self-denial: “Without me, the people are incomplete”? No, more fully than with me: I am a negative quantity, I am redundant in it.” And the syllable with which such a “negative quantity” declares its existence was well characterized by the author himself (though in relation to the rationalists of the 18th century): “.. .style without style, transparent, colorless, showing only its subject..." Gasparov's language eschews eloquence for the same reasons that his thought avoids generalizations: for the love of accuracy. Perhaps in catastrophic eras (Petrine era, post-revolutionary, current) such a style is doubly valuable: literature embarks on adventures in artistic creativity, but comes to its senses in scientific existence.
Is this really wisdom: self-demandingness, tolerance of the world order and lack of illusions? In any case, let us take note: at the heights of knowledge, in the rarefied atmosphere of precision, there is even less certainty than with us sinners below. But life is also possible there, as convincing proof is Gasparov’s unusual book.