Andrey Levkin. Kitchen hermeneutics 1

Kitchen hermeneutics 1
Andrey Levkin

Publication date: March 1, 2001

The project involves about a dozen reviews. Of course, some kind of novelty is declared, otherwise there would be no point. Texts are not evaluated based on their quality - thin. virtues, social meaning. The properties of the authors are not taken into account. Who (what) should we talk about then? About the features of the writing apparatus that produced the text. About the author's agent of the letter, his golem.

Since this story is the first, it must also be an interpretation of what was just said. A factual example or something - why it was taken as close as possible to the application. Of course, Vladimir Sorokin, "The Feast" .

Sorokin was not taken for the direct reason of kinship with the medical hermeneutics - then Pepperstein would have been more convenient, he, as a writer, is an amateur, he would have known everything better: by reflection of the first impulse, physiological. The reason for choosing Sorokin is different, intuitive... we’ll understand now. In general, the “writing apparatus” or “writing agent” looks wild; it’s easier to call it the author’s golem. So, Sorokin’s golem, who made the “Feast”. Another starting position: there is always a hole in a book, through which this book came out into the world. And this hole is what this golem works with. Of course, it does not have to be presented explicitly.

The first text, “ Nastya ”: the heavenly beautiful (by the author’s efforts, with which one is supposed to agree) girl Nastya is eaten in the conditions of Russian noble-estate culture: with her full consent, on the day of her 16th birthday, for which Nastya, in fact, was preparing (was cooked). This is a completely traditional Sorokin, coinciding with the text from almost twenty years ago: about an intellectual who is lured out of the forest by a tape recorder with a recording of Vysotsky. The intellectual was eaten there too, of course. Accordingly, there is no new hole here.

The second text, “ Concrete ,” represents a purely avian, that is, an intermediate language, which is always good, but also nothing more than the joy of the fact that there are many words in the world. This is good joy, but there is little of it here.

The third text, “ Avaron ,” was written by approximately the same old Sorokin golem, adding a few social textures. A little close to the one in “ Moscow ” or simply from the “Moscow” time. If he had been the main one in "The Feast", then it would not be what it is.

The fourth text, " Banquet ", menu ( "Salad from New Year's photographs" , "Chess soup" , "Tights with whipped cream" ). Well, this is the starting point of this book.

That is: the presence in it of a dead structure of a dictionary, catalog, cookbook, menu. Cookbooks have many editions: Pavich, Rozanov, Borges with his (and not invented by him, here he was already approaching Kuritsyn, more on that) fictional creatures. Or Andrei Yakovlevich Sergeev with a vintage album, and also with Eliot’s cats and quartets of the same Eliot.

Any such story does not at all mean that the golem-that-writes was unable to create its own universe (or capitalize some conditionally existing one). About another thing: it is more natural for such a golem to live with quick gestures. It is designed precisely so that the entire space is not built, but in squares, rectangles (hmm, matchboxes) - so that there is just enough for everyone to get this feeling. Of course, they can then be put together, making a catalogue, a cookbook, a bestiary (for a private person it would be a diary, for critics - I’ll say a little further, below). And this golem tried, he knows that these gestures do not transform into each other.

Why was Sorokin able to arrange the book like this? Well, yes, the experience of “actional”, “performance” “not making” texts (the line from the early Sorokin to Kulik is obvious). But Dragomoshchenko, who is not at all inclined to introduced constructions (he is not busy with art of the visual type), now writes brilliant reviews - his February golem - on books that end up being reviews (some nonsense like "The History of O", something... then, as it were, about Gertrude Stein) turn into fictional texts. That is, some kind of secret of life has become clear, but it is so natural that composing decorations for it is not an option: therefore, it can only be revealed in quick smiles to what exists. More precisely: for a quick moment it allowed one to see its existence. Let it be in someone else's text, whose participation is simply landscape.

Well, where does the charming critical madness of Pirogov, Olshansky, Kuritsyn come from - as the founder of this drama? And here we need to talk about them themselves, and not about their agents-letters-golems, since their messages correlate precisely with specific physical carcasses. They address real beings, responding to letters written by the physical organism. With his, the individual’s, motivations and experience. The difference from the options of both Sorokin and Dragomoshchenko is clear: such reactions are always social. Well, they are lyrical, like any sociality.

Sorokin’s golem is forced to find the environment for his enlightenment cases himself: so, what places them in the cookbook? The question is not that it is a matter of honor for every golem to create a cosmogony for itself; it may not struggle, limiting itself to a diagram of detected feelings on any piece of paper. Use someone else's scenery, an empty stage: there is a floor, a ceiling, three walls, a ramp.

And this is the property of the current Sorokin golem: it is on the line that communicates its powerlessness to provoke its space into light. For him there is no heaven, there is no such thing. Of course, he cannot fit into a series of other people's descriptions. That is, we are dealing with an aggregate that is at least smarter than the traditional narrative one (up to and including Tolstoy, not Dostoevsky and Kafka), which in heroic sincerity describes its inter-mental state.

In which something can only be understood in fits and starts. The golem felt the presence of some connections in the world that he did not want to lose, but he did not have the time or other opportunity to remember them. Rather than putting it in the catalogue. Here we will pay attention to the subsequent purely semantic inhibitions: the recipes given, say, in the “Mirror” are inhibited as if by drying up of the libido, from saturation after realizing the fact as having happened. Reflection, in the case of “Mirror,” is quite physiological, but has not yet turned into a bodily one: the drying itself is reflected.

Let us also note the obscene ontological discourse: all this completely passes into the world of people. Well, firstly, any reader, after mastering “Banquet” and “ Yu ,” can easily reproduce the “Nastya” scheme on any familiar material. This is how this discourse will return to the world - personally through oneself . Secondly, this is highly correlated with the discourse of King Solomon, for whom everything passes, this too will pass (with Rozanov’s postscript: what has passed is eaten, and it would not have happened otherwise). That is, - this is the very fact of life, devouring its facts, ergo - the very fact of devouring can only be the edge on which it is a thrill to freeze (such as the abyss on the edge, etc. Pushkin in the part of "The Feast during Ch." - but These are just ordinary paper games, meaningless).

Of course, the very vision of the abyss (mouth, mouth), completely absorbing everything (including, most importantly, any spasm of its awareness), naturally evokes thoughts about defecation, and we come to a simple conclusion about Sorokin’s golem: he, I don’t even know a gift from which gods, he feels like a constant border guard on the border of being and non-existence. Let's say, in "Big Zasol" (see "Yu").

Of course, there is a place for a literary message here. There was such a Derzhavin, who unfinished the slate ode in which the river of time, in its flow, drenched everyone. But here it is: a winter evening. Derzhavin went to Tsarskoe Selo to visit the lyceum students, and then, after a short time, died. And what is called the “Slate Ode” remained unfinished.

If you were in Tsarskoe Selo, you might have noticed that the arch between the lyceum and the palace is slightly on the hill. If you go inside it (there are further palace outbuildings) and sit on a bench, you can clearly see that this arch is the mouth of eternity, since people who go there fall through before our eyes. And in winter, well, they just go off into the darkness.

Of course, this was not the reason for writing "The Feast". No connection. But, having slightly extended the previous comparison, we will come to the natural thought that even if something has failed, then what follows will be boring, what follows will be crap.

Sorokin has been dealing with shit for a long time (not a golem, he himself, in real life). That is, we have here a Gnostic version, not invented, God forbid, but built into a person, which gives rise to approximately similar writing golems. That is, Sorokin’s golems are the descendants of Derzhavin’s last golem. Some extended Tsarskoye Selo version. The cookbook of the dead, compiled by a brigade of Gnostics back in the days when there was no aviation, so they could not imagine that human feces could descend from the sky.

The main question here is not what Sorokin himself thinks about it. And not even about what else can be expected from his golem. It is clear that both of them are beautifully crappy, the ass in anatomical atlases is also beautiful. The question is the opposite: what does this golem get excited about?

There is a funny overkill here, considering that the book was published in “Ad Marginema” - in the declared border institution. But of course, A. Ivanov correctly defined what he wants, but who should he publish if not Sorokin? Although here we are introducing ourselves into the life of living beings, about which I know nothing: what if A. Ivanov thinks about the mainstream?

In a word, a person’s life is up to seventy years old, and if you’re lucky, a little more - that’s all about this : we have very little time when we’re high, and every time it’s very short. Well, until the caper has bloomed, until this caper has not yet been devoured. In pickled, accessible form. How many jars of capers - so many stories and write down, but no: from all the capers in the world - there is only one story. The other one is from something next. See " Eat! ", Mr. Rubinstein, Lev.

Already a summary: Sorokin’s feast is presented in the most correct sense, like Robinson Crusoe. Moreover, this is a book of descriptions of highs that are not at all derived from what can be gobbled up. Not in the version, that is, of Kruchenykhov’s Rimbaud, that we will burst stones and rocks. This is about something that can have - has already had - a dramatic impact on the totality of our indriyas. This is what we have when we hang as shadows. Or something that will help us recognize ourselves as a shadow. The degree of intimacy of this golem is extremely close to the border of decency to observe someone else's happiness.

Now the last question: is the variety of Sorokinsky Golem’s receptors fictitious? No, then there would be no book. And most importantly: death from the lack of Invisible Food, as in “Horse Soup”, which is simply some kind of Japanese Catholicism.

Some kind of Food in the Highest Sense gets into us (to sum up), and we, filled for a moment with the grace of the taste that recognized us, spend our whole lives only describing how we had it. How did they understand the difference between the grace of “love letter salad” and “woolen gold” .

Sorokin’s golem did not get to the point of writing a collective sabantuy of well-cooked themselves (above - a July thunderstorm is about to happen, plus thirty) of the roundabout passengers. He is not Solzhenitsyn’s because: he would certainly have mentioned the camp prisoners in permafrost packaging. Social discourse is alien to Sorokin’s golem - he just wants to be for as short a time as possible, even if it’s just a mess of pagers. What is already inherent in Sorokin himself is a strong (alienation) human artistry.