Ivan Davydov. New figures in old photographs

The article about the book with the same name , contrary to the reader’s expectations, is not central in this small collection. At least, this particular reader, who temporarily turned into a writer in order to share his impressions, did not think so. She's not even the most interesting. Then why did the title of the book become the title? If you certainly, as you think, looking through the content listed at the beginning, baptize the collection with the name of one of its constituent articles, then it would be possible to choose more provocatively for reasons of at least marketing: “I will kill you near Mozdok” (this, as regular subscribers of the magazine remember "On Duty" is not so much about the war, but about Umberto Eco ).

Well, you certainly won’t think that the name is accidental. To do this, it is enough to turn to the fourth page of the cover, which informs that the author, among other things, is also a “specialist in oligarchic information wars ,” although this is known even without the fourth page. And in this area, nothing happens at all without intent, they are not the kind of people there. So, we continue to look for the answer to the question asked above - “then why, etc.”?

The answer (or rather, the option proposed below) becomes clear only after reading. Because reading articles previously published in various paper and online publications, remembering along the way - well, yes, yes, of course, I read this, but this, it seems, I missed or did not remember then - you feel a certain internal unity of the collected texts. Which, of course, are not externally connected with each other.

And the point is not in the art of the compiler (who is also the author), which, of course, exists, but does not play a predominant role. The point, in fact, is the genre - the dictates of the series, defined as philosophical essays. Well, of course, essayistics, well, yes, probably philosophical, although this term is not particularly clear. But the main thing is texts written six years or a year ago, ad hoc or under direct impression, which, in principle, is the same thing.

Something destined to become obsolete, that's what I'm saying. Even more - destined for obsolescence. And multiply by the specifics of the experienced era (epochs?), when words change or lose meaning at a speed close to the speed of a jet fighter, and the problem of those, the solution of which, as they usually write in newspapers, the best minds are struggling with, loses all significance faster, than any of the best minds mentioned above manages to formulate it clearly. So, something not meant to be re-read.

But nevertheless, rereadable, because here it is, in a book, and a book is not a newspaper, in which, after reading, something unattractive and hello is wrapped, and not even the Polit.Ru archive, which cannot be sorted out without the services of some private detective agency. And in the process of re-reading, this very “something” makes you suffer, remembering what in the year indicated in the note (“first published” and so on), this particular word meant and where did it go now, because the book is full of words that disappeared somewhere or significantly changed the meaning, and whether, for example, any books by writer X were published, except for the one under review, and if so, who read them then, and why, and why. A certain gap is formed between the reader and the text, because the reader should have lived when these texts were written, but he lives now. As a result, reading becomes a translation into today’s language, which might not be particularly interesting, because all reading is such a translation, but the beauty here is that the past being described was remembered even when it was the present, in connection with which strange things happen overlapping plans and somewhere in the back of blurry photographs figures appear that should not be there at all.

A specific example is an article from a year and a half ago from Polit.Ru (to be precise, there were two separate articles on the site, combined in the book), dedicated to NATO intervention in Kosovo affairs. In the article, if you delve into and criticize, there is a mixture of descriptive and analytical plans: the author first records the presence in society of a desire to present the current (in the sense of then) fate of the Serbs as a kind of Russian future, then suddenly it turns out that he himself shares this point of view. But this does not interest us at the moment. It is stated that the main thing is the public request to the authorities - give us a strong guy who can properly dispose of the S-300 if invisible enemy looms in the skies of his homeland. The first part was published on March 26, 1999. It took another year to find out how deeply the recorded request had ingrained itself into the cerebral cortex of fellow citizens.

It is this need to translate words, which quite recently did not exist at all, that testifies to the irreversibility of the present . Where does the title come from? That's what the book is about.

The second question is why read? It can only occur to a person who is not fascinated by the peculiar type of mental sport described above. The answer is perhaps there is no need. There is a TV, after all.