Andrey Levkin. Cocktail "Children's Orphanhood"

After all of Erofeev’s texts appeared in society (in the book under review they are almost all except “My Little Leniniana”), the conversation about him turned in such a direction that he is the author of the only masterpiece, “Petushkov”, of course. And the rest is like that of the artist Ivanov, whose work is entirely preparatory sketches. Yes, and the artist Bryullov also painted one Main picture, and Shishkin - bears, and Aivazovsky with the ninth wave.

And writers do this too. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, “The Master and Margarita”, “Pushkin House”, for example. Ivan Shevtsov, for example, with the novel “Aphid”, or Sholokhov with “Quiet Don”. Accordingly, all of them are the same poets who in Russia are more than poets, because they form society. Because literature is important not as literature, but as a kind of evidence. Well, witnesses are not supposed to tell different truths twice, so they are all authors of the same book. As for the evidence, it goes something like this:

- Erofeev, please tell us how you were tortured under Soviet rule?

- ABOUT! Fuck how they tortured me! Motherfucking assholes!..

The corresponding dialogue can be found at the end of the book under review, this is an interview with Prudovsky given to the magazine “Continent” back in 1990.

At the same time, it is important to understand that the evidence will not just be the facts reported by a certain witness at the trial, but his very behavior. So Erofeev testifies, Solzhenitsyn testifies, Aksenov also testified when he wrote “Burn.” Even Metropol testified, although, it seems, without wanting to do so. Mr. Muravyov even wrote in the preface to Erofeev that “Moscow-Petushki” is “a poem about Soviet everyday life in the face of world culture, for which Venichka Erofeev represents . ”

Here, however, there is a problem: who exactly is representing - Venedikt or Venichka? And the second question: it is grammatically unclear who Ven.Erofeev represents. For Soviet everyday life or for world culture? It’s not the commentator’s fault, it always happens that we seem to say one thing, but no, we also represent you for something unexpected. In general, everyone has already agreed that in the case of Erofeev we are talking about testimony and representation, which is why one wants to understand the meaning of this testimony and how faded it is now, after years.

In the “Notes of a Psychopath” itself, which opens this book, no special representation or evidence is visible; here is just a classic novel of education, written in an ingenuous diary form. Psychopathy itself has a completely adolescent character, that is, it is completely in line with the general world culture. But even when Erofeev subsequently composes his “Little Leniniana”, then in this too there will be no dissident discourse, but sincere youthful inquisitiveness, which finds a way out in clarifying the truth or falsity of a certain Lenin, who clearly represented Veniamin in front of someone. That is, forcing one to suspect that the main psychological basis of Ven. Erofev’s creativity was eternal youth, which, alas, passed in a bad state climate.

What, exactly, is the problem with this very psychopathy, stated by the author in his well-read and rewritten “Notes of a Psychopath”? For example (to offend the sixties, etc.), there is no visible movement of time here. Neither the magazine "New World", nor the magazine "Youth", nor Solzhenitsyn, nor Aksenov and Gladilin had an impact on Erofeev's discourse. That is, there is no talk of any change in the degree of freedom in the conditions of Soviet density. The document, therefore, is not at all public in the sense of public tribune publicity - the representation follows the type of Mr. Marmeladov’s aria, performed by him at his first meeting with Mr. Raskolnikov: “Come out, he will say, you! Come out drunk, come out weak, come out drunk. And we will all come out without shame and stand.” The lack of mention of Mr. Marmeladov or Mr. Dostoevsky in the chapter “Esino-Fryazino” from “Petushki” is quite surprising, by the way.

This is what Ven.Erofeev did the most terrible thing - already through Venichka: he gave the semi-literary people a whining discourse, which was then supported by Dunya Smirnova in her critical notes about life. This refers primarily to the prose, previously for some reason called “Vasily Rozanov through the eyes of an eccentric.” And I’m a sweet, tender, thin, smart girl, and why are they bringing out such crap around me, torturing me, torturing me - pouring water on my head, fagots! They don’t do it nicely for me, they don’t do it well for me, and they don’t even do it satisfactorily! But they only do bad things!

That is, the essence of Erofeev’s discourse consists of constant complaints to a certain pope. The same dad to whom “Notes of a Psychopath” is already addressed. He was exhibiting himself in front of someone, demonstrating his subtlety and love of freedom.

Another discourse consists of comparing the effects of Soviet power and vodka, bad power and bad vodka, which, however, affects differently: by inducing heroic and active actions, inducing sublime feelings or friendly communication, or plunging into the depths of self-knowledge. In this case, we are dealing with the last option, the whole fatal charm of which is to win a place on a par with the first two, socially heroic options. Even as if partly adapting to them, but - complementing them and illuminating them with inner light.

All of Erofeev in total is one episode from “War and Peace”, when Pierre Bezukhov, who has fallen into an enlightened hysteria, shouts into the starry sky above him that, damn it, they locked me in a booth, they locked my immortal soul?! Ha ha ha! Moreover, in the book he doesn’t seem to shout very much about this topic, but in Bondarchuk’s film he shouts very clearly, that is, Bondarchuk himself, like Pierre B., simply shouts in reproach to the entire... not the Universe, but the territory of the Soviet Union. Well, they locked it, yes. The soul, accordingly, having to be immortal, reports how it is going on where it was locked up. It’s a pity that “Moscow-Petushki” was not filmed under Soviet rule and Bondarchuk did not play Venichka, wearing the same glasses that Pierre B.

In a word, they locked it up - so write yourself your “Little Leniniana”, Venichka. And yet, why is Dostoevsky not mentioned in the chapter “Fryazino-Esino”? Well, at least the same Marmeladov aria? There is a drunken Korolenko, Pomyalovsky is also under attack, even Garshin - but no, no, Dostoevsky’s Venichka. Or did you realize that you don’t even need to pick on someone when you’re drunk? Although in reality he walked - as follows from individual texts, and from the monument now erected to Venedikt on Struggle Square - along Dostoevsky Street, past, accordingly, the Mariinsky Hospital, where Dostoevsky had the imprudence to be born.

In sum, as usual, it’s a story about how a person doesn’t understand something. Well, nothing at all, up to the stage of mom, why did you give birth to me, because the Algerian dey has a bump under his nose. And they pour cold water on my head: also, essentially, a sobering-up station. Well, if you end up in a sobering-up station anyway, then it makes sense to get drunk first.

In the end, if we are to describe that moment in historical time, we must try to remember it. So that there is no longer a complete autumn-winter tragedy, then let it be spring, March. Morning. It’s almost dawn, people are going to work, snowdrifts are melting all around, there’s a bus stop. A crowd, men smoking Prima, and even if it was Java, the bus wouldn’t go, there were a couple of screaming children, who on the way to work were being taken to some kind of kindergarten with yellow windows in the dawn twilight. The snowdrifts are melting, emitting dampness and moisture, cars passing by splash, stinking of the fumes of bad gasoline. Apparently, it's around the middle of the week, which doesn't make any difference at all. From the stop and to the side there are tall buildings, and you can even see how, among the melting snow, along the paths to the stop, more people are walking, wearing something gray. To work. They locked up this very immortal soul. Where, why - nothing is clear. The landscape, when viewed from here, is decidedly peaceful, but for some reason it is still noumenal unbearable.

Accordingly, all of Erofeev’s works consist in the fact that he does not understand anything. Accordingly, the global question that Erofeev is busy repeating is not even “Mom, why was I born?”, but “How can this be, comrades?! What do they write in our newspapers?” And he thoughtfully collects it:

"Nixon asked Golda Meir to take a more flexible position" . And then - it is not clear due to what complex spiritual inclination - “Dissolve the Duma, but do not touch the constitution . ”

“He keeps confusing Andre Gide with Andrei Zhdanov, Leconte de Lisle with Rouget de Lisle and Musa Jalil . ” Why would he, in fact, this invisible interlocutor, not confuse them? Or here are all sorts of historicisms:

"In Pravda 37, the article "Collective farm thanks to Yezhov . "

“This, of course, has its own truth, but this is the Komsomol truth . ”

"Parties of that sovereign, general secretary" .

Let us note that all these statements were considered by the author worthy of being included in the notebook - which, given the diligence with which the psychopath’s diary was corrected, was a literary fact for him. It’s interesting here: you come across pure Olesha ( “Write in such a way, firstly, that it is disgusting to read, and so that every line smacks of imposture” ) or the equally authentic Ilf ( “Names of Passengers and Disabled Persons” ). That is, this is still the same fragmentary Soviet genre, which should demonstrate glimpses of independent reason among the state dregs.

In general, any simple-minded person with the ability to compose words is able to write three texts that may be interesting. Third: write some kind of road, journey. Second: to present a certain altered state of consciousness (well, this particular author is going crazy because his immortal soul was locked in a booth). First: something like telling about your own life without embellishment. Erofeev combined the second and third texts in "Petushki", and the first text was "Notes of a Psychopath". But they didn’t work out, so if there hadn’t been censorship time then and if he had taken this story to the publishing house, he wouldn’t have finished writing for “Petushki.” That is, this was the benefit he received from Soviet power. With these two works, Erofeev’s writing potential was exhausted, so that, for example, there was no need to write a play.

But here something else is strange - criticism of the works of Mr. Erofeev, a Soviet man, seems absolutely unthinkable to conduct in the actual critical discourse. Simply because all the supports of the Soviet era have already disappeared so much that any critical behavior is impossible here: these seventy years have already passed into some kind of closed volume of a non-existent, already fictitious life. If its consequences still remain today, then in material form, for example, in the form of catering outlets from Soviet times that remain here and there (in RIA Novosti, for example, there is a canteen, I recommend it for excursions). And so - this whole set of hopes, thrills and fears has long become physiologically unconscious. As if we were talking about the lifestyle of some aborigines of God knows where the island is located.

That is, there is a certain reproduction of timeless consciousness in the specific outlines of the then booth. That is, splint. Of course, the limitation of the immortal soul by a scoop is a very specific reason and basis for art. Whatever the occasion, such is the art.

That is, this is such a popular print “How mice buried a cat” or “Cossack Kozma Kryuchkov strikes twenty-seven green devils with a lance.” A recipe for this cocktail comes to mind: a room, on the wall there is a picture “May in Moscow” - with Kremlin walls and a pink apple blossom on the side of the Spasskaya Tower - torn from the magazine “Ogonyok”. In the tape recorder V. Tsoi sings “Mom is anarchy, Dad is a glass of port.” On the table - slightly covered with something sticky - is a typescript (2nd copy or even a YMCA-Press edition) of "Moscow-Petushkov", a bottle, of course, as well as a glass or glass. The cocktail is called "Children's Orphanhood", and the contents of the bottle are completely unimportant.

Yes, and outside the windows it’s March - a view of the bus stop, the snowdrifts are melting. There is a crowd of people, men are smoking Golden Java, the bus is not moving, the children who are being taken to a kindergarten with yellow windows continue to scream. The snowdrifts are melting, squeezing out December cigarette butts, and passing trucks stink of diesel fuel. It's still about midweek, which still doesn't make any difference. From the stop and to the side there are tall buildings, and along the already black paths on the still white snow, more people in something gray are walking towards the stop.