Alexander Ageev. Hunger 25

Hunger 25
Practical gastroenterology reading

Alexander Ageev

Publication date: April 6, 2001

...Well , so about Rodnyanskaya, about the article “Hamburg Hedgehog in the Fog,” as promised .

Andrei Nemzer, in his quick magazine review, has already qualified this article as “defeatist,” which has a considerable amount of truth. Speaking about the prose of the last two or three years, “which today enjoys the predominant attention of criticism” (however, Rodnyanskaya does not name so many names - these are M. Shishkin, A. Korolev, T. Tolstaya, M. Uspensky, L. Yuzefovich, M .Galina), Irina Bentsionovna admits that she does not have definite and clear criteria for assessing her ( “the Hamburg ruler is breaking” , “the north-north-west is blowing with all its might, in which Hamlet is mad and he can no longer distinguish a falcon from a heron” ).

And this is not I. Rodnyanskaya’s personal misfortune, but a general cultural problem: “Now the cultural time (so it seems to me) has changed more abruptly than ever before. It has called into question not the composition of the panels of judges (with their truth, goodness, beauty, harmony , mimesis, Apollonism, Dionysianism, nationality, historicism, etc.), but the very certainty of aesthetic judgment, the distinction between success and failure in artistic activity."

This is, in fact, what “defeatism” is: firstly, a critic cannot fully function when “the north-northwest is blowing with all its might,” “evaluations of “good” and “bad” become inappropriate.” And secondly (and most importantly), a huge stage of artistic development has ended. And - it ended badly: "For centuries art has been moving away from its existential base - Beauty, for the time being, however, without losing sight of it through increasingly complex mediations, through the counterpoint of chiaroscuro, through the perfection of style, refuting the ugliness of nature, through the "hostile word of negation" , referring to the ideal. But then she completely disappeared from view, and immediately everything became dead. All that was left were the dummies - funny, luxurious, majestic." Something like the “end of history” is also predicted: “... this will last a long time. Because functionally it corresponds to the brave new world into which Russia is now joining.” Rodnyanskaya refuses to dream about “what will happen later” : “It makes no sense to draw images of the future from the past. It's better to shut up."

Everything quoted (alas, I can only link to the contents of the March “New World”, so I quote liberally) is an impressive conceptual “frame” in which a rather temperamental (that is, passionately biased, fair-unfair, with abundant “reading in the hearts”) is placed "and Novomir protectionism, a signature Rodnyansky) analysis of the latest "good bad literature."

After reading this analysis, you calm down at least about the first “defeatist” point, that is, the possibility/impossibility, as well as the fruitfulness/unfruitfulness of the functioning of criticism in conditions of a crisis of criteria. Rodnyanskaya is scared about “shut up,” but I’m not scared - in fact, Irina Bentsionovna’s critical-analytical machine works very smartly, producing the necessary number of arguments to confirm the supporting “concept” of the final break between literature and the “primary “text” of life.”

Here, in general, there is no fire, it is quite easy to agree and argue with Rodnyanskaya, because somewhere she is right (very well said about the “loin pieces that certify the level” of writing), and somewhere she is engaged in excessive generalization of particulars; somewhere he rudely pushes the writer with his knee into the “niche” of “bad good literature” (this applies primarily to Mikhail Shishkin, in whom, God knows, there is much more traditional writerly innocence than sophisticated, deliberate manipulation), and somewhere by truth and by untruths he saves “his own people” (Mikhail Butov and Olga Slavnikova) even from suspicion of aesthetic affinity with the latest fashionable literature.

This concerns the “small”, “internal” text. The “big one” that frames it provokes me, on the one hand, into an indecent schoolboy giggle (oh, this permanent discussion about “literature and life”, “literature and literaryism”, no matter how you spice it up with eschatology), and on the other hand, it forces me to internally get closer, stand at attention and ask Kushner’s question: “Is life still captivating?” - and answer, naturally, in accordance with the source: “Still captivating!”

After all, Rodnyanskaya, in essence, does not like the current state of culture and not the current literature, which “is bad... because it has changed orientation. It is addressed not to a providential interlocutor, be it God or a descendant, but to those who will fit right there.” " .

She doesn’t like the fact that Adam and Eve once ate an apple. They launched, you know, all those processes that now set her teeth on edge. I can expand the proof of this thesis into about forty thousand more characters, but is there any need for that?

The trouble is that Irina Bentsionovna can only really be reproached for inconsistency: literature sins against its known Ideal, Idea, Plan, changes its pre-established (by whom?) orientation, art moves away (century after century) from its existential basis, and Irina Bentsionovna Rodnyanskaya is still interested in what is going on there.

This sinful interest is worth a lot and, in general, in its own way even justifies the existence of “bad good literature.”

And a couple more words. "The book world, cultural production, which has become self-sufficient, without an influx of energy from outside. A closed system, doomed to entropy?" - this is what Rodnyanskaya says about the latest prose. And what, she also believes, following Bart, that the author is dead ? But surely the heretical thought does not occur to her that another Author, who has the only source of energy in the “closed system” created by Him, has died?

Maybe I'm blasphemous, but for me this analogy is a normal working tool.

Quite convenient.