Kirill Kutalov-Postoll. Monuments

Monuments
Kirill Kutalov-Postoll

Publication date: December 14, 2000

Erecting a monument to themselves

When composing his next text, Dmitry Bavilsky cannot do without immortalizing himself in it. This time we are talking about the “ Catch ” competition (details of the scandal are in previous issues of “Online Reading”); The question of where Bavilsky begins can only be asked by a very naive person:

“I know from myself how difficult it is to participate in competitions. I want attention and recognition. That’s why I would like to say a word about each of the “Catch” applicants. However, this is impossible to do - even purely technically: when I’m busy and busy, and read all six dozens of files - a lot of work. Therefore, I took and wrote out phrases from competing texts that comment either on themselves or on my attitude towards them . "

Just like that. The reader is left to sit and guess what the critic Bavilsky wanted to say. Or maybe he didn’t want to say anything, acting in some sense due to circumstances and personal characteristics.

We will return to the topic of “The Catch” after Dmitry Kuzmin says his word (the latter promises to do this soon, so wait for the episode about “The Catch” on Monday), but for now, hand on heart, ask yourself what you think about the following phrase:

“The medieval Icelanders not only discovered America and invented the realistic novel; they also either foresaw or anticipated the information age with their traditional formula “What’s new?” instead of “hello” when you meet . ”

Do you like her? Are you ready to get used to the idea that from now on she will exist here forever? Do you believe that not a single comma, not a single period in it can be changed? Do you think that from a distance it looks like a monument?

In this case, you have not seen the monuments yet.

The monument lies here . Kirill Vorobyov interviews Leonid Delitsyn. Delitsyn answers Vorobyov’s questions in his usual manner - first he takes on the appearance of a wise and gray-haired patriarch in a rocking chair, covered with a blanket and telling his great-grandchildren about how he first saw the Internet, then he slightly speeds up the pace of the story, and two or three paragraphs below the patriarch is unrecognizable. The hair is disheveled, the eyes are shining, the glasses have slipped down the nose, the blanket is lying under the chair, the great-grandchildren are huddled in the corners in fear:

“Since I was one of the very first online writers, along with Genyuk, Andreev, Pavlik Afanasyev, I immediately tasted all the joys of what it means to be popular, even if in a small circle of people (...) They wrote me letters with questions about what... sometimes with grateful reviews, I was compared to Dostoevsky, girls fell in love with me... This is very pleasant. I received the whole complex of joys that a real writer receives. Many others experienced the same thing . "

As for the matter, Leonid Delitsyn in an interview gives a detailed version of the apology for online literature from the publisher’s point of view. He talks about “one big literary consultation” and about the network as a medium for “testing” works before their eventual publication on paper. He also talks about the network as a medium for “running in” authors. That is, everything is quite lively. The monumentality characteristic of monuments is given to the text by a cross-cutting, so to speak, metaphor: a comparison of online literature with PCB, and everything else with Soviet pop music.

The author's "run-in" is, of course, a good and useful thing. You immediately imagine a romantic young man with all the necessary attributes of romantic young men, who ended up in the barracks instead of the desired Parnassus (I don’t give any references from the word “Parnassus” or from the word “barracks”, so as not to offend anyone). However, as the practice of recent months shows, the author is rather not being tested, but rather being rolled away. Like the Sivka slide. Or even better to say: they roll up. Like tin cans. The exhausted author can only explode , like a can, in the closet, since he has nowhere to retreat.

Monument on the central square
attracts tourists and pigeons

On Observer there are travel notes about a trip to India “ The Road to Dahezh ”. The genre determines the position of the author from and to: a motionless observer, a kind of absolute eye, recording what is happening around and testifying not so much about what he saw, but about himself and his history. Travel notes are a monument to the eye of the observer.

“We drive to the side of the road, along it we bypass the traffic jam, along the road they are chasing a herd of bulls with crooked horns and a dozen buffaloes. We overtake the buffalos, the trucks end, the road is calm, on the left the Pepsi sign fades soothingly in the sun. We stop at a roadside restaurant. The driver says that This is the best thing that comes along the road . "

Death is not at all what we most often imagine it to be.

Posthumous monument

And completely different. The book “Transition” by Pyotr Kalinovsky was published on the “Independent Literary Page “Death on the Internet” . The last illness. Death and After ." A thorough work in 19 chapters, dedicated directly to death, dying, and preparation for the transition to another world.

“We are accustomed to talking and writing about the arrival of death as a moment: “at this moment,” “the moment of dying is like the transition from reality to a dream,” “at this moment such and such happens,” and so on.

The word “moment” is convenient, since it clearly distinguishes between two states of the body - alive and dead, but this everyday understanding of death is incorrect. Death is not the end, and its arrival is not a moment that ceases the existence of a person, but a process of transition that takes some, sometimes a long time . "

So it is not surprising that the author, who refers almost exclusively to Christian sources and puts Christian argumentation at the forefront, in one place mentions the Tibetan “Book of the Dead”. You can also read about the changing understanding of death in the modern world and the consequences that these changes lead to here .

After the monuments

“Network Literature” successfully exploits the misanthropic trend. Dmitry Gorchev's " Rescue Plan " is followed by Sap-Sa-De, " In battle the reward will be ":

"A real understanding of the world is inaccessible to cold human cheese, unnecessary and even harmful. Its source is unclear and its origin is doubtful. For a long time, cold human cheese was used by Ydvaal and Shutsgrov. What originated in cold human cheese neither from the point of view of Ydvaal, nor from the point of view of Shutsgrov , cannot be called life - it is so primitive and joyless. However, it is impossible to destroy it. Rather, it will destroy Ydvaal and Shutsgrove, finding an opportunity to get out of the meager limits allotted to it by pseudo-being, which cannot not only realize its place in the world, but also simply understand that there is something else in the world . "

Actually, what exactly will be the “reward in battle” is not very clear. We must assume that there will be “cold human cheese.” The reassuring thing is that the cheese itself will never know anything about it.

And finally. A.A. Voznesensky’s poem about the Internet (with a capital title) simply did not get away with it. Voznesensky’s case is continued by Vasily Prigodich in the “Russian Binding” (the second text of the collection). To my untrained eye, the rhyme “hail - “Gradom” is especially touching .