Alexander Ageev. Hunger 18

Hunger 18
Practical gastroenterology reading

Alexander Ageev

Publication date: February 27, 2001

In childhood and adolescence, my parents constantly scolded me for the inconsistency and lack of foundation in reading: the sight of five, eight, ten books simultaneously opened and scattered throughout all the residential and non-residential premises of the apartment horrified them.

“The child grows up distracted, he cannot concentrate on one thing or complete the task,” etc. and so on. - normal parental fears. But what were the librarians afraid of who resolutely refused to give a teenager more than two books at a time?

There was such a strange, unclearly established norm in the libraries that were available to me. When I came with these two read books the next day, they greeted me with distrust and hostility and even tried to interrogate me about the contents of the “supposedly read” books. And everyone explained to me, as best they could, that a normal person cannot “quality” (that is, with benefit) read more than two books a week. In response, I was rude and insulted cultural workers: it’s you who are so stupid, but I can do twenty...

Now I remember all this and think: both dissatisfied parents and distrustful librarians, in addition to all sorts of other things, probably also experienced something like a converted reverence for the book. Almost awe, a residual religious feeling. Still, we underestimate the simple fact that the history of mass literacy in Russia fits entirely into the lives of three generations.

Or four? - all the time you somehow forget that your generation is no longer the last one...

In a word, a teenager not “reading a BOOK”, but devouring books in supernormal quantities, without trepidation and reverence, about thirty years ago was probably an unpleasant sight, unconsciously repulsive to many.

In addition - this can hardly be discounted - both parents and librarians seemed to be responsible for the future problem-free socialization of the teenager. Abundant reading is a form of loneliness, even regardless of its quality. The habit of loneliness and the constant need for it prevent a person from integrating into any - be it communist or capitalist - society. Moreover, disorderly, branchy reading is evidence of an unconscious disrespect for the very principle of hierarchy, and what is society if not a system of hierarchies?

I allowed myself all these leisurely reflections, partly of a memoir-nostalgic nature, because for once it was a relatively calm weekend, without particularly urgent literary concerns. When this happens, I immediately fall into childhood, that is, with relief I give up all “hierarchical”, business and professional reading, open any book that looks at me, and read it exactly until it makes me want to open another, and another - a third, and so on - if only ad infinitum!

In childhood and adolescence, the limit was set by the modesty of a personal library, and now, when in thirty years a library has been assembled (here is actually another, more energetic word) that takes another hundred years to master, free weekends fall out due to a pure misunderstanding: a former teenager Contrary to the fears of parents and librarians, he “socialized” almost completely. Although socialization really did not proceed along the main, supporting “trunk”, but more and more through branches, branches...

All of the above, meanwhile, has something to do with the Internet, if we neglect its interactive (pathetic source of pride) capabilities and treat it as a way of organizing reading - branching through links. In principle, both my childhood and my “free” adult (when I’m lucky and have free time) reading was the Internet before the Internet. At the same time, there was no Internet compulsion in the “links” (the word “link” actually has a burdened etymology), they were generated by some kind of intuitive impulses, and their freedom was limited only by the size of the library (the Russian Internet, by the way, is still poor and - consequently - limits freedom). In this sense, I experienced complete bliss as a first- or second-year graduate student, sitting in Leninskaya and ordering whatever my heart desired. Except that technically this proceeded relatively slowly and, alas, there were no separate rooms with a sofa and an ashtray (why, in essence, not introduce this form of service in our poor libraries?).

Well, for once I relaxed and, finishing reading the recently mentioned Marquis de Custine, began to “branch” from him in different directions. I was drawn first of all to Herzen (why?): I took a volume of letters and opened the year 1839 (it’s now clearer: in the summer of which Custine traveled around Russia and in the summer of which Herzen was released from Vladimir to the capital). I wasn’t looking for anything specific: what came across was what I read. Well, for example, an excited letter to Ogarev, November 1839:

“No, friend, this is not the path of creativity and success. The reason for everything is clear: we all studied poorly, we are finishing our studies somehow and are ready to act before we have tempered damask steel and learned to use it. And you, caro, write, I’m unaccustomed to reading , then while reading is one of the most powerful means for us now. I haven’t lost the habit, I move forward, I move decisively. And you often stand with your theurgic-philosophical dreams. It’s a sin for us to bury our talent, it’s a sin not to give it away, otherwise we won’t do anything. , but we can do it, we really can. You say that you write a lot . Firstly, I don’t believe it; secondly, I believe even less that you will write this much.”

In fact - you didn’t necessarily think - the collected works of the reader Herzen would be more significant than the collected works of the writer Ogarev. And how long, however, has the virus of “Alexia,” the disease of non-reading, been roaming the Russian “educated community”! Moreover, it is clearly spreading “from top to bottom,” from the “elite” to the “masses.” Therefore, everything is not as scary as it seems.

Then - Custine is Custine! - I went into the indexes to Herzen’s volumes (by “links”, by “links”), and there was plenty of the said Custine there.

Well, what a delight, for example, the characteristics of the provincial Russian nobility in the Nicholas era:

“Some of them lived for whole years abroad, bringing liberal ideas from there; others came to Moscow for several months, and spent the rest of the year locked up in their estates, where they read everything that came out that was new, and were well informed about the intellectual movement in Europe Among the provincial nobility, reading became a fashion. People boasted that they had a library, and at worst they subscribed to the Journal des Debats and the Augsburg Gazette; it was considered a sign of good taste. one decent house, where Custine’s works on Russia, which was prohibited by a special order from Nicholas, were not found. Young people, deprived of participation in any activity, under the constant threat of the secret police, were all the more passionate about reading the Sum of Ideas. in circulation, increased."

I read this, and my uncompromising liberalism gives way, and some heretical thoughts appear about the fact that in the eternal Russian pendulum of “thaws” and “freezes” there is at least the meaning that “frozen” Russia gets the opportunity to read and digest what that she swallowed, almost without chewing, in the liberal era. The “sum of ideas” currently in circulation is somehow suspiciously meager: as if nothing so special and amazing had suddenly become freely available over the previous fifteen years. What if Russia is a self-regulating system, and now it’s wondering: should it go into hibernation, should it stock up on ideas?

However, you never know what kind of nonsense pops into your head at the end of Russian February, between Defender of the Fatherland Day and International Women’s Day, at the transition from Maslenitsa to Lent?

Well, suppose a “dictatorship of the law” is established, as everyone is now afraid of. Although unlikely. Herzen knew Russia and wrote in his time:

“At first glance it is quite clear that respect for the law and its forms would limit arbitrariness, stop general robbery, wipe away many tears and thousands would breathe more freely... but imagine the great and stupid respect that the English have for their legality, addressed to our code. Imagine that officials no longer take bribes and follow the laws literally, imagine that the people believe that these are really laws - one would have to flee Russia without looking back."

The words “our code” sent me to another most interesting book - the 6th of the nine-volume (beautiful, with pictures, on thick white paper!) edition “Russian Legislation of the 10th-20th Centuries” . It came out already during perestroika and I inherited it from my father (he was not a lawyer, but sometimes his imagination in the bookish sense was richer than mine).

This volume contains the most beautiful document of the era: the “Code on Criminal and Correctional Punishments” of 1845. There are 150 pages of tight italics on a gray background (the artist, perhaps, expressed his “fairy” to Nikolai Palkin?), but it is readable in one spirit, since all of Russia is here in full view - with all its past, present and - God forbid - future, with all its literature and “social thought”.

What is a crime?

"1. Any violation of the law, through which the inviolability of the rights of the supreme power and the authorities established by it, or the rights or safety of society or individuals, is infringed, is a crime ."

This pyramid was, is and...? Although - “either, or, or”...

And so - this document contains all the plots of Russian prose of the 19th century in a compact package, and it is not even clear why Dostoevsky read newspapers in search of the plot of his next novel. Take some chapter of the Code and unwind it. There are chapters specifically “Herzen” and “Gogol”, there are “Dostoevsky”, many “Leskovsky”.

And what a language! Is it really possible to compare it with the current clerical dialect? By the way, it was from this “Code” that the (strict clerical) formula “remote and not so remote places” began to circulate. Do you know the difference between the concepts of “removal from office” and “removal from office” ? Oh, this is a whole poem, and a very mysterious one. About “resignation” it is clear: “A person removed from office is deprived of the right, within three years from the date of dismissal, to re-enter state and public service.” But the “Code” is mysteriously silent about “removed from service,” leaving room for the imagination of the performer.

This, of course, is not the entire fan of “links” that I followed from the Marquis de Custine - I looked into Belinsky, and Stankevich, and paid tribute to Prince Odoevsky (topical article “On the hostility to enlightenment noticed in modern literature”), and V.P. Botkin leafed through.

I also took a walk along the French “branch” - and I refreshed my memory of Chateaubriand’s “René”, and I held Charles Nodier’s dear two-volume “Read Old Books” in my hands, and even found “Confession of a Son of the Century” by Alfred de Musset, as well as “Life, Poems and thoughts of Joseph Delorme" by Charles Sainte-Beuve.

Like I visited a sanatorium, really.