Kirill Kutalov-Postoll. Catechism of Context

Catechism of Context
Kirill Kutalov-Postoll

Date of publication: September 28, 2000

The main event of the week is, of course, the move of Lev Pirogov with his “Paper” to “Russian Journal”. The move was accompanied by a collision, albeit a friendly one, that is, not even a collision, but advice: don’t write about beer and trams anymore. It’s not very clear why, however, apparently because the “Paper” was already about this somehow from the beginning, but then we were separated, one might say, by kilometers of wired communications, but now, in the neighborhood, it’s impossible to continue this. Bolivar can only stand one, and I'm kind of out of context. Although, perhaps the reason is completely different.

Be that as it may, not a word more about beer and trams .

So the word of the week is "context".

Dmitry Kuzmin was the first to talk about the context in another article from the Literary Diary. Or rather, about simulating the context. Kuzmin, however, calls this “mimicry”, which, in fact, is not surprising, since “imitation”, like “simulacrum”, are not words from Kuzmin’s vocabulary. Briefly, the essence of the article: Dmitry Kuzmin, in his own manner, debunks the crooks of pseudo-literature, who do not fall into the notorious context of graphomaniacs and other fanatics, who do not understand this context and therefore distort it. The following are named as examples of unworthy site holders: “ The First Aid Kit of a Bibliomaniac ” and “ The Last Poets of the Millennium ”. There is only one complaint and, in general, for Rulinet it is quite naive: the creators of such sites, according to Dmitry Kuzmin, are concerned exclusively with their personal “promotion”, while the “final product” they create turns out to be unpresentable, since even not a very strict zealot he sees academic standards with self-made “ears” a mile away. Fraud, in a word. Spontaneous, unauthorized connection to the context.

That's right. Speaking about the sites cited as examples, there is no need to argue with Kuzmin; moreover, kicking a lazily lying amateur is a favorite pastime, just know that you should restrain yourself (you also need to restrain yourself so as not to improve the amateur’s statistics at the expense of those who came to his site from a link in yours devastating review). The point is different.

Reading online has already written about Kuzmin’s programmatic article , the purpose of which, it seems, was, on the one hand, to prepare the public for the resumption of the “ Diary ”, and, secondly, to “fit” into that very context , which Dmitry Kuzmin constantly talks about, to fit in as publicly as possible, to demarcate that is, the border. In fact, that article was a kind of generalization of the discussion about the network that unfolded in the first half of the year on the (then) fruitful soil of “ Tenet ”. Actually, the main reason for Kuzmin’s rejection of setatura was and is that the setatura is out of context, in a vacuum, hence the homemade nature and the abundance of absurdities; in a word, setatura is like the dark side of the high road of literature.

So, the point is not in the “retrograde” of Kuzmin (since Pirogov came to RZh, it would not be worth talking about Kuzmin at all - the lords are fighting...), the point is in the discrepancy between the efforts and the tasks, some substitution of the desired for the actual and, most importantly, most importantly, involuntary (or even arbitrary) sacralization of one’s own activities. The cultural context is considered not least (if not first) as the sacrament of communion (the example of Lev Pirogov’s advice and attack, by the way, is also in a sense a confirmation of this), as, on the one hand, the highest symbolic good (out of context - out lit.process), and on the other - like a pass, like a club card. As a result, although this is a roughening, the context is equated to the catechism, which, as a rule, is memorized, crammed, that is. And hardly anyone is guaranteed against drawing too arbitrary dotted lines when determining the place of this or that fragment of reality within the framework of the whole picture. An example of this is the work of Shamshad Abdullaev, in his own assessment, which does not engage the register of the Russian literary tradition. At the same time, this assessment does not prevent Dmitry Kuzmin from supporting Abdullaev’s page on “ Babylon ” (by the way, an interesting detail: the text of the link itself varies from shamshad on the “Virtual Fergana” website to abdullaev on “Babylon”). Meanwhile, it is clear that small and always present fluctuations, discrepancies, differences of hearing, one way or another, can subsequently lead to the emergence of heresy, which, as we know, is always a discrepancy precisely in the details and never in the main thing.

This may sound a little wild, but unexpectedly appropriate and decent in the light of “fitting the set into context,” the latest review by Sergei Kostyrko in “New World” looks. Right there, as usual, shot point-blank in the guest "Tenet", this review in fact, minus, of course, the strangely frequent typos (do they scan texts, or what? Are they saving on typists?), fully reflects the fact that what is happening - or at least should be happening - to the literary sector of the network.

This time Sergei Kostyrko includes in his review sites that, in principle, do not necessarily have to exist (from a certain point of view, of course), since they are initially continuations of “paper” publications. We are talking about such projects as, in fact, the “ Magazine Hall ” itself (which has long featured online magazines - the online “ New World ” and the online “ Znamya ”), “ Literaturnaya Gazeta ”, “ Ex Libris ”, “ Logos ” and so on. It makes no sense to list everything; the level of the subject is already clear, I think.

It doesn’t matter that by the end of the article Sergei Pavlovich had forgotten a little the question that he asked himself at the beginning - about “the circle of phenomena that we call the literary Internet,” having described only a small segment of this circle. Even if the process of surfing took Kostyrko somewhat away from the stated topic, the result is very important: initially the “offline” critic approached something that the internet has been talking about for a long time, not just talking about it, but, in any case, no, no, and even screaming. To consider the network as not so much a potential set of new expressive possibilities, but as a medium for the existence of literature. Moreover, here it is important to understand the “environment” not as the physical environment of the bearer of signs (the white field of a sheet of paper, the white field of a word processor), but as a full-fledged environment of existence, an environment in which a work is able to live, that is, to be read, to be in demand, to be noticed, to be involved, in the end, in all the relations in which a work should be involved at almost the beginning of the 21st century, including commodity-money relations (in which, in addition to line fees, there are also author-lite-agent, publishing-seller, etc. Further).

In other words, the problem is not the rightness or wrongness of this or that critic, editor or publisher, nor the erroneous, from his point of view, interpretation of the cultural field; the problem is the lack of common space, in fact, the lack of it, the absence of a common reference field. That is, people talk about different things. As a result, it turns out that one steals the cultural context from the other, which, as Dmitry Kuzmin tirelessly reminds, is a symbolic benefit, a pass and an indulgence. And when Kuzmin says that he writes about competitors, he is being disingenuous at the very least. Neither “The First Aid Kit of a Bibliomaniac” nor “The Last Poets of the Millennium” compete with “Babylon.” Just thieves who stole something they had no idea about.

Kuzmin is not talking about the Art of War website. But in vain, by the way. Although, on the other hand, it is clear why. Art of War also represents a very specific context, only fundamentally different in relation to “Babylon”. In fact, the weight category is the same, only one swims breaststroke and the other long jumps. They don't seem to intersect. But if we are to take care of the cultural context as a means of catching people, then the battle should take place precisely on this field. From the point of view of eternity if. Because Art of War will not say “created” - collected, united - more than a school: literature.

By the way, one of the latest updates to the site is stories and a novel by Valery Rusin. To understand that not only “veteran”, but specifically “Afghan” literature exists and has its own canon, it does not take much time; it is enough to compare Rusin’s prose with the prose of one of the most famous authors on Art of War - Pavel Andreev. This has already been written about here, and now we can only briefly repeat the distinctive properties of “Afghan” veteran prose: reflexivity, even some detachment, psychologism, taking the narrative out of the narrow framework of a “war story” to the level of higher genre unities. It is interesting that the opposite is typical for “Chechen” veteran prose, and here the dominance of the canon is also observed. I remember how in one of the discussions they explained to me why Vladimir Bondar’s prose cannot be placed on Art of War: precisely because it does not fall into the “Chechen” literary context. Although, since the number of literary texts about the Afghan and Chechen wars is not yet equal, it is probably too early to talk about the established “Chechen” canon.

To avoid misunderstanding, it is necessary to clarify one important detail. “Cultural context” is, in principle, a rather arbitrary thing; wherever you turn, that’s where it ends up. Not to mention the fact that, as a rule, we are not talking about the “cultural context” as such, but about a segment of it, rather about the context of the school. This does not apply, of course, to the already mentioned kicks to the soft spots of amateurs - they don’t care, you can’t break through them, no matter how hard you try. This is more about the question of sacralization. Not so much literature, but one’s own place in it. Myself, that is.

Towards the end, although somewhat out of touch with the previous presentation, there are few announcements. One, more precisely. On perhaps the only thanatological resource of the Russian network, there is another update (the resource is updated rarely, approximately once every five months, but accurately).

"Autumn of Necrorealism" :

The “point of absolute dying” is unattainable. It's always delayed. She's in short supply. Necrorealism offers to live on when, it seems, everything has already collapsed. “After death comes the right life, guys!” This is what we should appreciate about necrorealism and its monsters. In this autumn season .