Books at the head of the head

This is not a hint of "notes from the head of the head" of this Senagon. This is just a literal translation of the French expression Les Livres de Chevet. In Russian, we say "table book" - but try to say the same in the plural, as there will be stupidity right there. Board games. Table lamps. The clock is finally. But really not a book .

And the table book is not quite the same as un livre de chevet - this is something more practical and constant. It is impossible to say: "At first, his table book was a volume of Rilke, later - letters of Van Gogh." That is, actually it is possible - if ironic.

But I have other intentions.

I would like to talk about my loved ones, and most importantly - re -read books - in the hope that the reader will share if not my addictions, then my curiosity. These are mainly books published (or reprinted) relatively recently.

However, other of them are, on the contrary, for quite some time. For example, how many of you (I do not mean experts) were held in your hands by the test seventh volume of Pushkin’s first academic publication, where on the back of the title it is written: " Unbearable secretary of academician V. Volgin, June 1, 1935"? And on the last page we read that Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev was the “Uch. Tom corrector” ... This volume, unlike the subsequent ones, is still equipped with detailed comments. Comments on Boris Godunov were written by G.O.Vinokur - a delightful reading. So, you will have to look for information about new products elsewhere.

Stepun F.A. Former and unfulfilled. –SPB: Alethea - progressor, 1995. - 651 p. (reprinted in 2000)

On my shelf is the 1995 edition - the first, published in modern Russia. This, of course, is one of the best books ever read: it is unusually soulful. It can be opened on almost any page - and read more. Fedor Augustovich Stepun was a philosopher, one of the founders of Logos magazine, an enlightener, a politician (and even a member of the Provisional Government), a propagandist of Russian culture in Germany, where thousands of students who listened to him in frozen university audiences in difficult years after the defeat of Germany in 1945 are stored. But not about that.

Throughout the story about his life, Stepun remains close and understandable in his spiritual movements and often in his spiritual searches. The main thing is that it is always proportionate to me personally, as an ordinary person.

If Berdyaev is commensurate for himself, God and his creation, then Stepun is proportionate to everyone who is ready to hear him. I listen - and suddenly I begin to understand the connections and patterns, which I seemed to know about before, but did not understand the clutch of mechanisms that give rise to circumstances.

I will name three motives that are essential for me at different times of my life. The first is the war of 1914 and the revolution. Stepun sipped both of them with a full measure.

“Listen,” my father told me this year in 1948 (he not only remembered 1905, but he himself participated in something), “in the summer of 1917, no one heard about the Bolsheviks . There were cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries; well, the Socialist Revolutionary, finally.” I, of course, knew none of this. Moreover: the authority of the father, otherwise unconditional, did not apply to such plots. At 16, I was not ready to believe that the Bolsheviks were some kind of bunch of conspirators. Because then everything around, and not just in the textbook of history, was made "on 2", and this at such fragile age gives rise to non -fruitful doubts, but rather a stupor.

It was reading Stepun, I once again thought about what a terrible spring is straightened in society when the state of frustration becomes the destiny of the masses. For having begun to fight "for faith, the king and the Fatherland", the peasants, who were the majority of the army, by 1916, were no longer an army , but for which the long -awaited return to work on their land remained the only undoubted value . And then it is clear who and how did what was carried out with us in 1917. It turns out that the Weimar syndrome (if we take this concept more widely) for the first time took place a little east of Weimar ...

Do you think involuntarily - and today? Today, however, nothing. But tomorrow? Day after tomorrow?

The second motive is the spiritual openness of Russia to Europe until the 1914 war. For 7 years, Stepun lived and studied in Heidelberg, where he met his first wife Anya, also a student who was destined to die three years later; I met my second wife Natasha there. Being very constrained in funds, the young Fedor Augustovich, nevertheless, lived in Italy for five months, where he met with various famous people. Including, for example, with Benedetto Kroche.

Stepun finally returned to Moscow in 1910. Here is what he, among other things, saw: "... the famous mansion on the Vozdvizhenka in the Moorish-Gothic style, with his strewn shells and troops of the Mauritan-Gothic style." What? I can’t refuse to quote the following lines to myself the pleasure of: “... In Moscow, every ridiculous quirk has always been more to face than obedient obedience to the law of planned construction. Sometimes, however, I think that with a careful examination of the Soviet capital, the image of which, despite hundreds of photographs, I still won’t see it somehow, and the extractive Russian gift is good -is it good, is it good, is it good. redo in your own way. "

The third motive is a truly lively and sincerely harmonious person and should remain an active maker of his life in her seemingly neglected little things. The thickness of these trifles allows you to continue spiritual work, maintaining external and internal neatness. Neither the hollow cheeks of a hungry ascetic, nor unclean boots. Instead of that in the spring of 1919, Stepun and his wife, having difficulty taking money, chosen wallpaper for their rooms in the village of Ivanovka for a long time, where Natasha’s parents had a house, a garden and a small amount of land from the former names. Wallpaper - "gray with red -circuit and gold for the office, and light, with blue wreaths of an Empire for the bedroom." Spouses glue the walls with "Izvestia", "thoughtlessly running the horrors printed in them with one eye, including lists of executions sentenced to execution, among which familiar names often came across."

And until the expulsion of 1922, this is a neo -neoKantian philosopher, Headelberz, a friend of Vyacheslav Ivanov and Berdyaev, lived, together with his wife’s family, “from the ground” - in a completely direct, rather than the Tolstoy sense of the word: looked behind the leaf horses, wiped the old apple garden, drove apples for sale, chopped firewood and even chopped firewood and even chopped firewood and even prepared the forest on the opening of the Council. The wife of his wife mowed, plowed and threshed, father -in -law - "landowner" - showed himself like a skilled shorts and generally a master of all hands.

If anyone forgot, I remind you - according to Stepun, before the revolution, the landowners belonged to only 15% of arable land.

Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker. Joy of Cooking.– Indianapolis: Bobbs -Merril, 1973. - 849 p.

In the 60-70s, I re-read the mountains of respectable American novels, whose names I do not mention, because I read them so as not to forget the language. In terms of content and tonality, these were books similar to the "Sonya" Ulitskaya - moderately petty and just dramatic narratives about everyday life.

Often, American women were mentioned there, who once again moved with the entire belongings to another town, where they offered her husband better work. And everywhere she appeared a detail, typologically equivalent to the port of Pope Ham in the description of the family’s move of the then Moscow intellectuals or pots with a century -old, if the family of workers was meant. This detail is the cook book by Joy of Cooking . Apparently, an ordinary American could not do without her.

Later, in this assumption, I strengthened: in 1973, for some time we "adopted" an American graduate student, a quite practical girl who was somewhat embarrassedly told that she was used to cooking the "book". I asked her to send me Joy of Cooking .

I admit that, unlike Stepun, who really stands on a shelf at the head of the head, Joy “lives” in my kitchen cabinet, next to his other relatives. However, I read this fat volume and just lying on the couch.

According to the number of direct benefits that I constantly extract from there, only the “practical doctor’s directory” can compare with Joy . But this is also a storehouse of philosophy of everyday American life. All Fool -Proof (protected from the inequal) and "No nonsense" - without curls and subtext. No "flour, how much it will go." They will clearly tell you how much it will go, not forgetting to mention what is called "tolerance and landing" in engineering.

In the book of 849 pages - not a single color illustration and the minimum number of very informative schematic black and white drawings. My publication came out to the invention of microwave ovens, and this, in my opinion, is the only negative. Otherwise, Joy is not only not outdated, but on the contrary - now almost all the ingredients mentioned there can also be bought from us! And in 1973, when I first opened it? And later, already with absolutely empty shelves?

As they say in Odessa, "and here you will laugh loudly." It was on this book that I learned to bake Russian pies on yeast and lean oil. In general, cook simple products from a minimum. Because its recipes are algorithms in the literal sense of the word. And if something needs to be done not on straight heat, but on a steam bath, then in each recipe it is (like any other) will be again and again given by a bold font with an arrow that marks technologically compulsory techniques.

A separate chapter - about the initial ingredients and their properties, from potatoes to nasturtium seeds. Tables of measures and weights that allow you not to reflect that flour is easier than granulated sugar, but what about powdered sugar? A separate chapter on how to warm up. Separate - about how to freeze. May the authors be blessed - it is followed by their instructions, I managed to use the large freezer cabinet in the most hungry time in the most hungry time. Would it occur to me that you can freeze any hard cheese? Or a white loaf?

Our professionals would have burned today with shame if they looked at how it was made in the Joy in 1973 of the publication of the subject. But Bill Gates then could not help the authors. By the way, about the authors: this is mother and daughter - Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker.

The first edition of Joy was published in 1931 - it means that this is a great depression. It would be interesting to see how it looks - someday I hope to do it. In 1973, the mother was no longer alive, but from the preface it follows that the reprint and revision of Joy became the life of the whole family.

It is curious that in a country, stuffed Gadgets, that is, with all kinds of electrical devices - mixers, bleeders, etc., a book that allows you to use all this and can do without. And sometimes the authors directly advise to interfere or whisk manually.

You didn't have to receive many guests at once? They will tell you and even draw how to set the table for tea for many or for a few, after all, different things happen in life. You have a large family and a meager budget - it does not matter, they will explain to you which part of the meat carcass should be bought in this case and how to use callous bread and yesterday's potatoes.

And especially in this book, the complete absence of “bombers” and fundamental tolerance to any tastes and addictions of the reader so typical for our publications. For example, the head of the "menu" - that is, breakfasts, dinners, dinners, Christmas, buffet, cocktails and so on - opens up with a small and gracefully written introduction "how to make a menu.

It sounds like this: “What and when we eat, it depends on the habits and customs, and they constantly change. Let us recall how the genuine epicurean ate in do -the -comedy China. In the gaps between the light and the meal not coincided with a certain time, he all the time he put exquisite sweets into his mouth. Let us recall how they ate abundant breakfasts in England, and abundant breakfasts. Calcular dinners and meals before bedtime, and this despite the fact that in the most dining times (that is, during the day - R.F.) , only sherry and biscuits were served - so as not to "die of hunger."

Here I will probably stop. So that you can fully envy me.