Alexander Ageev. Hunger 21

Hunger 21
Practical gastroenterology reading

Alexander Ageev

Publication date: March 20, 2001

God goes , I've been patient for a long time. But then the other day they told me with condemnation: “Your colleague Bulkina...”

And yesterday a “colleague” published another review , which caused me not only the usual annoyance, but also some thoughts. The easiest of them were about the fact that the current seething Kyiv is not like the current half-asleep, frozen Moscow. It must be that street events pump up adrenaline even into the blood of literary reviewers, otherwise why would Bulkina, from review to review, become freer and freer in her speeches, more and more impartial in her assessments of her hated object - thick magazine culture.

In general, we must pay tribute to the patience of the Kyiv girl: she dislikes all this carrion so much and invests a remarkable critical temperament in reviewing it for so long. It’s no wonder that my voice sometimes breaks and Russian literary realities get confused in my head.

It’s obvious, after all, when writing about the Andrei Bely Prize ( “Until now, the St. Petersburg Prize was good because it had clearly defined boundaries: obscure marginalized people were awarded a bottle of vodka, and that was the end of it. All interested parties were pleased and proud - of their own avant-gardeism and nonconformism" ), Bulkina confused it with some other, more radical one - well, perhaps, with the International Mark named after D. Burliuk, which is awarded by the Tambov Academy of Zaumi. And the St. Petersburg-Jerusalem-Roman poetess Alexandra Petrova, respectively, with Ry Nikonova, probably. Ry Nikonova is marked with this very Mark...

And so, as far as I know, all the laureates of the Andrei Bely Prize have long and successfully collaborated with thick magazines, although, according to Bulkina, they should run away from them in horror so as not to become infected with cadaveric poison. Indeed: God forbid that a real poet “move into the thick-magazine mainstream” ! But poets are like little children: they go where they are loved, publish, and even pay a little money for it. And what is, if we talk about poetry, the “thick-magazine mainstream”? Draw me a middle line between Vanshenkin and Prigov, who are published on equal terms in Znamya - unless it turns out Losev or Strochkov. Not bad at all for the “mainstream”.

In the last year, TJ (I’ll use the abbreviation of Bulkin’s invention) has really been doing poorly with prose, but it’s not much fun with it in Russia in general. Even Dima Bykov’s novel will probably be enthusiastically discussed on all corners. And all the poetry that is worthy of attention passes, thank God, through the hands of magazine editors before ending up in Komarov’s Pushkin Foundation or Ruslan Elinin.

In general, a strange feeling comes to me when I read Inna Bulkina’s reviews: it’s as if I’m sitting behind the walls of Carthage (wow, the walls are enough for my lifetime), and outside the simple-haired “freedom on the barricades” is running around and monotonously screams from time to time: “Carthage should be destroyed! Carthage must be destroyed! Carthage must be destroyed!" And since the Roman power is not visible behind her fragile shoulders (where are those young punks?), I want to feel sorry for the girl and open the gates of Carthage to her.

Well, I’ll confess: about three years ago I was unable to integrate into the context of Znamensky’s “Observer” Bulkina’s review of some (I don’t even remember) book by Yuri Andrukhovich - the review was too big and in general somehow “didn’t stand up” and didn’t look good ( this happens), and now Vladimir Shpakov received the full reward for that shortcoming of mine: “Vladimir Shpakov retells Andrukhovych’s “Recreations” from a translation published by “Friendship of Peoples.” With the crystal fervor of a neophyte, the reviewer recalls all the Ukrainian names known to him - from Gogol to Ivan Drach , after which he slides with relief onto a familiar track, bringing Andrukhovich together with... Sergei Gandlevsky." According to this logic, “Friendship of Peoples” did a bad deed by publishing the translation, and not the original, by Andrukhovich.

Well, okay, all this is nothing more than the grumbling of a Carthaginian resident. What really worries me is the stability of revolutionary illusions, the revolutionary dogmatism based on them and the irresistible desire of the ordinary literary consciousness for perfection.

That is, to the simplicity of the structure of literary life. To a clear demarcation on the literary field: here are the fortresses of conservatives and archaists, here is the bivouac of innovators, who, in order to breathe and live, certainly need to destroy the old fortresses. For what? Then, it has always been this way, in all literary eras, about which today’s critics, journalists and writers were taught in universities. Epochs of literary struggle - another dogma - are the most fruitful, therefore, for the sake of fruitfulness, it is worth maintaining a certain degree of conflict in literature, and it does not matter whether there is real soil for it or not.

In my opinion, there is no such ground, and the most boring thing that one has to read from time to time is the mutual “attacks” of “archaists and innovators”, various oaths of allegiance and battle cries. People have absolutely nothing to say to each other, the arguments of both are inconvertible, and the only fruit of this whole “struggle” is empty annoyance.

Yes, at least with the same TL: in textbooks on the history of literature it is written that the Russian thick magazine has always been such and such (well, there is “direction”, ideological “opposition”, “enlightenment”, expression of a complex of ideas and aspirations of a certain groups of “intelligentsia”, aesthetic secondaryity). That's what he once was.

But now he’s not like that: he doesn’t express anything special, he doesn’t hold on to any very specific ideas, he’s aesthetically omnivorous.

You bite him on one side - there is the smug "sixties man" Nikolai Shmelev about his beloved self , and you turn him on the other side (which Bulkina did not do so as not to destroy her scheme) - there is radical Alexander Altunyan with thoughts that the idea of ​​​​"freedom of speech" has not yet replaced the idea of ​​"glasnost" in our country.

And so the adherents of perfection (that is, simplicity) approach such an eclectic TJ with a knife to their throats and ask: “Who are you with, masters of culture?” And when they don’t hear a clear answer, they get very upset. I would like to sort everything out, and for this, probably, the Znamya magazine should publish either only Alexandra Petrov, or only Lev Smirnov.

About literature, back in the early 90s, they found out for certain that it does not owe anything to anyone: it develops according to its own internal laws and whatever it is, eat it. But a magazine, a newspaper, an almanac still “should” do something. If they “should” do anything, it’s just not to lower the bar: so that the place of Alexandra Petrova is not taken by Ry Nikonova, and the place of the normal poet Lev Smirnov is not taken by Khatyushin and Gavryushin. So that there would be Astafiev and Zorin, and not Otroshenko and Segen, Ergali Ger, and not Sergei Bolmat.

But let’s say for a moment: an editorial revolution took place in the magazine “Znamya” and Chuprinin’s place was taken by anyone: Kuzmin, Kukulin, Pirogov. And he called out to like-minded people. What's next? I absolutely know.

Firstly, Znamya will begin to appear not on 240 pages, but on 120, and not once a month, but once every three months. Secondly, its circulation will drop from 8,500 to 1,000 copies. Thirdly, columnist Inna Bulkina will look into Znamya as often as she now looks into Babylon, visits Textonly or Observer.

Both the “conservative” and “radical” cultures in today’s Russia are so weak and thin that even with their combined efforts they barely fill seven or eight thick magazines (and this is still a decent volume, Bulkina wouldn’t know). Now “conservatives” and “innovators” illegally, “wrongly” coexist with each other on the pages of TZh, serve each other as a kind of “locomotives”. You can, of course, separate them in order to find out whose locomotive is cooler, but what will emerge, I’m afraid, is only that “literariness” in general has suffered a crushing defeat in Russia - temporary or final, God knows. I personally don’t really want to look beyond this region.

And - I myself am imperfect - I don’t like perfection.