Vyacheslav Kuritsyn. Kuritsyn-weekly from April 13, 2001

Russia, which you don’t want to lose

A group of famous St. Petersburg writers grouped around the Amphora publishing house is distributing the text of an Open Letter to V.V. Putin. On Monday, the letter will be read out at a meeting of the creative intelligentsia in Manege (St. Petersburg, of course).

“Mr. President! Caring for the good of the fatherland, wishing to see a prosperous and strong power under our care, we, writers, philosophers, bearers of the collective selfless sanction of the United St. Petersburg power, would like to remind you of the obvious things. We are talking about the order of priorities of the state: the right one the order of priorities contributes to the elimination of disorder in all spheres of social life. We will talk about the empire as it should be talked about - neglecting the rules of good manners, now called political correctness, which require hushing up the basic conflicts of the collective unconscious and its archetypes - we do not remember what is behind what . Silence, as we know, leads to the appearance of complexes and, ultimately, to neurosis. Collective neurosis of guilt, and in an extremely severe form, has long struck Europe. The signs of the disease are obvious: inadequate reactions, capitulatory moods, taboos on all types of traditional discrimination - the next stage will be loss of legal capacity, always accompanied by loss of sovereignty. This will happen both from within and from without, under the pressure of the avenging colonialists who landed on the European continent shortly after the collapse of the previous colonial systems. They are much more determined than the Western colonialists of the 19th century and are unlikely to set up reservations for the aborigines. The sad example of Europe with its deplorable future shows that the loss of imperial self-awareness leads not only to a softening of morals and pluralism of opinions, but also to a softening of the brain and paralysis of the will. Russia has a chance to avoid such a outcome. Russia's huge territorial losses at the end of the 20th century are, in principle, comparable to similar losses of other powers, but there are still invisible borders that run along the edge of consciousness, and there is no more important task for the imperial sense of self than the defense of these borders. We will name these extreme frontiers directly, without twists and turns: Constantinople, Bosphorus, Dardanelles. Any sovereign of Russia, no matter what he is called - president, secretary general or emperor himself, must keep these goals hidden, but in no case exclude them from the field of what is desired. An irreparable mistake may result in the replacement of these true goals with so-called pragmatism, which before our eyes turns into a form of madness. Today we can finally see what the protracted reflection of Prince Hamlet has led to - he missed his birthright and beautiful Denmark is about to be inherited by the overseas prince Mustafa. The fact is that the right of birthright is ensured only by a clearly defined and intuitively obvious super task. Such was the call of the Last Sea, which sounded in the ears of the nukers of Genghis Khan, the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher, the capture of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, or at least the idea of ​​the World Revolution. The ultimate goal in itself does not guarantee success, but an empire concerned only with lentil soup is doomed to failure in any case. In this regard, it would be not only very appropriate, but also extremely constructive to once again elevate the idea of ​​​​capturing Constantinople and the straits to the rank of the Russian national dream and tacitly consolidate it at the state level as a desired political prospect. This needs to be done not so much because of the historical and confessional predilection of the titular nation for Constantinople and not so much because of the strategic importance of control over the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, but for reasons of a metaphysical nature: without having a super task, a transcendental goal ahead, the state is unable to achieve real goals. The President cannot but have such a super task in mind as a symbolic guideline for long-term and non-revisable state will. Only the firmness of this will will make it possible to fulfill all the associated needs. As practice shows, the state is, in principle, powerless in solving economic problems - this is the area of ​​responsibility of civil society; the state only needs to guarantee stable rules of the game. The idea of ​​statehood is immersed primarily in symbolic and aesthetic dimensions and therefore is better seen by an artist than by a politician. As for the invisible boundaries of imperial identity, here Russia will either gain Constantinople and the straits, or lose everything, including its own name. However, this alternative awaits Russia in a real historical perspective. Tests await us. Everyone.

Bearers of collective selfless sanction
United St. Petersburg power:
Pavel Krusanov,
Vadim Nazarov,
Sergey Nosov,
Vladimir Rekshan,
Alexander Sekatsky,
Ilya Stogov."

Here they come

It's common to laugh at the National Bestseller Award . They say that bestselling depends not on experts, but on buyers. It's right. They also say that the idea of ​​choosing a promising text and publishing it in a circulation of 50,000 is low-tech - why should the publisher Uspensky, Grishechkin or Krivopisko deal with NB if he himself will publish and sell everything... And this is true - there is no need. It is also true that such a circulation can simply ruin other authors: well, it will sell with any promotion out of these fifty-five...

However, the first result of the premium mechanism's chugging was convincing. I mean the list of finalists. The results of the grand jury vote are here , and the list itself is as follows.

A. Prokhanov. Walking in the night . - M: ITRK, 2001 (Nominator Yu. Bondarev)
S. Bolmat. On their own . - M: Ad Marginem, 2000 (Nominator M. Berg)
E. Limonov. Book of the Dead . - St. Petersburg: Limbus Press, 2000 (Nominator V. Tublin)
D. Bykov. Justification . - M: Vagrius, 2001 (Nominator G. Uspensky)
V. Sorokin. Feast . - M: Ad Marginem, 2001 (Nominator A. Gantman)
L. Yuzefovich. Prince of the Wind . "Friendship of Peoples", 2000, ## 1, 2 (Nominator V. Otroshenko)

He is much more interesting than any Booker or Anti-Booker shortlist. Almost all positions are serious social and artistic signs.

In the person of Prokhanov, the red-brown minority, no less valuable to the fatherland, has finally been treated kindly. culture than, say, the gay minority. Barriers between patriots and liberals, relevant for the Ogonyok generation. F. Raskolnikov, for new waves of readers are less significant, and this fact finally had a symbolic expression. Critic Ukhudshansky will get another chance to talk about the offensive of the Imperial Rat. The novel, in general, is so-so, Prokhanov (by the way, who is on my list of 100 as a representative of a minority) expresses all the power of his talent in the editorials of “Tomorrow” (from the latter: “If NTV had no debts and owned a controlling stake, would Shouldn't it be closed? Tuberculosis also has no debts. Pestilence does not own a controlling stake... Kiselev's glasses case is made from the skin of Russian soldiers. When the president was elected in 1996, NTV was a hospital duck that was placed under Yeltsin's rotten body ", as a result of which the country received a sick senile man who poisoned Russian life with cadaverous stains. When NATO tore apart Yugoslav schools and hospitals, threatened to “bomb” Orthodox Serbs into the Neolithic, NTV applauded the murderers, Kiselev pulled a bikini over Albright’s blue thighs." ), but this group has a problem with young talent.

In the person of Yuzefovich, an intelligentsia (in defiance of the intellectual) alternative to Akunin is supported: yes, we need detective stories, yes, detective stylizations are charming, but let it not be too much with philosophy (which Yuzefovich appeared in “The Prince”). He predicted that “Prince” - precisely in this alternative capacity - would be in the Booker six. The forecast wagged its tail, but managed to come true.

I constantly write about Bolmat and Sorokin in the Weekly, the word “Limonov” needs comment less than others, but it is important that these are all texts that are actively supported by criticism and are valuable for different groups of the population. Everything is fundamental statements about the world, texts that disturb the surface, form the context, provoke discussion, etc.

What’s curious is this: such a successful constellation of texts on the shortlist was apparently ensured by the voting system of BZ members. They did not consult with each other, leveling out positions during the dispute, without erasing sharp corners on the round table, but made a responsible choice: these two are mine. It seems to me that such tactics could make the work of the Booker jury more effective. As you know, there are five jury members and six finalists. If the jury started with each member making a responsible choice, automatically inserting his favorite into the six, we, in any case, would have a “talking” six... Well, okay, I was somehow carried away by main topic. From now on, her name, as we know, is Dmitry Bykov, represented on the shortlist by the novel “Justification . ”

I was hoping not to open the novel Justification. Yes, until recently I still retained some kind of human attitude towards this author, and I even defended him in disputes: they say, horror, of course, but not horror-horror. I believed that all the dirty tricks about me and my friends, which he spreads across the pages of everything in the world in industrial quantities, are connected purely with the absence of some convolutions, receptors, due to purely mechanical damage to the soul (you never know: some kind of complex or a bicycle got into it as a child). But these dirty tricks are not from a desire to spoil, but from a pure heart. As he hears, so he writes. This sincerity, I admit, was even attractive to me in Bykov. Well, the fact that he looks and dresses like an advanced assistant accountant from the “New Dawn” collective farm is a claim to the Lord God.

But here I was by chance, switching channels during a break in some football broadcast, and came across Dmitry Lvovich’s TV show. I lasted two minutes: I had to run to the toilet. The screwed-up clone of Mikhail Leontyev, with the consciousness of complete impunity, is killing someone from the position of the TVC channel, whose roof was not so long ago with no less passion in bodies subordinate to other political elements. And I realized that Bykov is not a bright, unrequited fool, but a dangerous monster who will still occupy large positions in New Russia (for example, he will certainly decide, together with Sasha Arkhangelsky, who will be awarded the title of People’s Artist and the medal “For Merit to Ethics”) and will suck out many tanks of my and your blood.

...I had to work hard on myself before I could even leaf through the newfangled novel. Read a prayer, meditate by the window at the crows building a new nest there, remember something bright. As a result, I read Justification with almost no disgust. Well, a novel. Various text management strategies of recent years have been collected together. From new story models to fantasy humor. Many people do this. The main ingredient in such cases is the sauce: in its own right. Here it is:

“She was, after all, the daughter of a high school literature teacher and, although she did not remember him at all, from birth she internalized a sense of the harmonious integrity of the world, its subordination to artistic laws. And the world in which she lived with Skaldin, in which he took her for a ride in a boat around Moscow -river, treated him to chocolate and talked about great plans to transform the soil, - also suggested the reverse side, a terrible black basement, where from time to time, by random but unmistakable choice, all these people who had just had fun, and now were evicted forever, were dragged off. there was no choice, but there was a quantitative indicator, an indispensable percentage, determined not by statistics, but by harmony, like warm or cold colors, and which made it possible to maintain the growing feverish fun in the rest . "

Here's the secret: the level of thought. Thanks to such a presentation of thought and pathos (long, but at the same time understandable, so “human”, the hut is such a reading room), I’m afraid the literary community fell in love with this unremarkable (very diluted by Vladimir Sharov) text. And therefore Bykov’s nomination is the most important and most terrible event of the “National Bestseller”. So what’s scary about Putin is not that Prokhanov will bloom under him: Prokhanov is just an exotic flower, let it bloom and please the eye. The scary thing about Putin is that the real electorate is speaking through him. Behind Bykov there is a real reader. In total, the winner is that same gray swamp, the dominance of which we have become a little unaccustomed to during the clown Yeltsin era.

We have no other society for us.

The individual moral, my own, is this: it’s time to quit literary criticism. I don’t want to be obliged to read Dmitry Bykov because of any jury of any award. I’ll stop writing about books: I’d rather write them myself and sell them.

Something to remember

In the process of mastering trading technologies, we published on the Ozon website the script for Sergei Solovyov’s film “Tender Age”. Also a kind of excuse, don’t deny yourself the pleasure. published there : article I will advertise it with a quote from Denis Gorelov’s

“As Soloviev rightly noted, the average man in his thirties remembers at least one motley-slush fire battle, one little Jenny swept into a glossy paradise, one traumatic surgery, five burnt jobs, twenty transitions to winter time, an abandoned school, "an article, a curfew, a pond with swans, lilacs with tanks, a wonderful unfamiliar naiad in some random drunken pool, crazy and gloriously squandered money, begging in Paris, police monkey bars covered with green snotty paint, hot roofs, a night highway rushing towards us, a red medical cord tightening the left forearm, a pioneer tie with frayed tails, a black rose, the emblem of sadness, and a red rose, the emblem of love . "

Without a single nail

And on “ Modern Russian Literature ” I published Igor Turbanov’s poem “ Puff-Puff ”. Here is its full text.

Puff-puff.
The verse is ready.

This year, as a critical academician, I will nominate this work for the Prize. A. Grigorieva. I think that Turbanov’s masterpiece has a chance to live for many generations.

For what is the most famous Russian poetic work of all time? I think the following is a masterpiece by an unknown (or is it? Leibov may know) author:

The fly landed on the jam.
That's the whole poem .

Turbanov's work is devoted to the same topic. But what laconicism! 15 instead of 37 needed by the fly-loving predecessor. Moreover, in these fifteen there are two Ys and three Xs.

If the members of the jury of A. Grigoriev have to make a choice between “Justification” and “Puff-Puff”, they, as high professionals, will be forced to admit that there is some difference between high art and painful ambitions.

Whose would moo

April 15, 2001 marks the 40th anniversary of the outstanding Russian artist Oleg Borisovich Kulik. Accepted in a limited and specific way by Russia (where he is still seen in the mass consciousness in the image of a dog man), Kulik has become an international star in recent years. Not a single major exhibition is complete without his photographs, objects and performances; museums vying with each other to buy cows that need to be stuck with their heads up their ass, and huge salon photographs in which radical texture and strategy are simply transformed into a pretty pattern. Here - dedicated to the publication of the anniversary, Kulik’s conversation with Petar Cukovic, curator of the Yugoslav pavilion at the you can read my old, but still tolerable article about the animal of the future, and here Venice Biennale 2001. For it is Yugoslavia that our Russian human dog represents at the main forum of contemporary art. And in the Russian pavilion, as usual, there will be an indistinct hodgepodge.