Inna Bulkina. Professorial hack

Professorial hack - 2
Literary manifestos from symbolism to the present day / Comp. and foreword by S.B. Dzhimbinov. - M.: XXI century. - Consent, 2000. - 608 p. - (B-ka of Russian culture) ISBN 5-293-00021-7

Inna Bulkina

Publication date: April 28, 2001

Collections of literary manifestos are not published very often: between this book and its, if I may say so, primary sources - collections prepared at one time by N.L. Brodsky and V. Lvov-Rogachevsky - there are more than 70 years: in fact, an era that should be called Soviet literature and which is hardly described with academic impartiality, but is however evaluated without it.

Probably, before talking about the essence, it makes sense to explain about the textual foundations and principles that guided the compiler (S. Dzhimbinov) and the publishers. The overwhelming majority of texts (up to OBERIU - this is 4/5 of the book space) are published from the collections “From Symbolism to “October” (compiled by N.L. Brodsky, N.P. Sidorov - M.: New Moscow, 1924) and “ Literary manifestos" (Compiled by Brodsky N.L., Lvov-Rogachevsky V., Sidorov N.P.. - M.: Federation, 1929). In the real primary sources - that is, the actual publications of all these declarations, treatises, reports, etc. .d. - the compiler and editors, it seems, rarely looked in. So numerous omissions and abbreviations in most cases are not specified, despite the fact that from the almost 200-page treatise by D. Merezhkovsky “On the causes of the decline and on new trends in modern Russian literature” in our collection There are only 7 pages left (it doesn’t seem like enough!), but where do they come from - from the beginning, the end, the middle, why are these, and not some other, publishers silent. (Meanwhile, as a “manifesto” of Russian symbolists, several pages from the chapter are presented here IV, which in turn is called... “The beginnings of a new idealism in the works of Turgenev, Goncharov, Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy.”) Lengthy French and German quotations remain without translation, pseudonyms are not disclosed (although in order to find out in M. Rossiyansky, author of "Gloves for Cubo-Futurists", Vadim Shershenevich , it was enough to just look into Masanov’s dictionary; and A. Svyatogor (A. Ageenko) is also a completely recognizable figure), of course, there is no need to talk about comments, and the compiler modestly stipulates that “there is still a long way to go before academic verified publications ”, admits with captivating frankness that “ detailed textual no work was carried out, because this would have greatly delayed the publication of the book " (where was the rush?), and what is remarkable is that, despite all the modesty of his own claims, he does not forget to attribute most of the possible flaws to the... ignorance of the authors: "Many manifestos were compiled in a hurry and not always sufficiently educated people ." Presumably, it was for this reason that the poorly educated authors of manifestos did not translate quotations from Novalis for their future publishers.

As for the compiler’s other reasons - not textological, but conceptual, here it makes sense to return again to the original source : “ ... the collection represents unsystematic reprints from various publications, to the collection and arrangement of which the compiler did not attach any criteria. Mechanical selection of materials and arrangement them in chronological order - this is how the “work ” of the compilers was expressed. This is a quote from a review of the first collection prepared by N.L. Brodsky. Vl.Sillov's review was called "Professor's hack work" and was published in "Lefe" (1924, #1). Lef's review was biased, which is understandable, but it makes sense to give one more quote:

“In the preface “from the compilers” there is a humorous gratitude to E.F. Nikitina and V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, “who transferred the handwritten manifesto of the Luminists to our collection.” At the risk of being accused of ignorance, we must admit that this was the first time we heard about the existence of this “school” "and the "standard bearers of luminism" poets Kisin, Maizels, Reshchikov, Machtet and Kugusheva. If we were chasing professorial gratitude, we could double, quadruple, tenfold this book, handing over to the compilers piles of declarations and manifestos, the authors of which did not find printing houses for themselves ", limiting himself to reading his works to his relatives, friends and Lvov-Rogachevsky. To what extent are the declarations of luminism, form-librism, biocosmism, emotionalism, fuism and other family associations characteristic of the trends of modern literature?" There is no answer to this day, but today all this would have some archaeological value if the new edition were at least somewhat specially prepared.

Meanwhile, all of the above equally applies to that small part with which the current compiler “enriched” the original source. What criteria was S. Dzhimbinov guided by when reprinting as a “manifesto” the poems of G. Sapgir or L. Gubanov , critical articles of M. Epstein or the “beginnings of the lexicon” of Mitkov ? What was the literary program of SMOG (and did it exist at all?), can the Mitkov movement be called a literary school, what is “meta-metaphorism” (is anyone other than K. Kedrov able to understand and repeat this?), why the same poets K. Kedrov believes that they are meta-metaphorists, and M. Epstein - meta-realists - on completely speculative, but completely different grounds?

Was the compiler really in such a hurry - or was he unconscious - that he didn’t even look at the obvious sources: the numerous paper and virtual versions of “Samizdat of the Century” ? Why does he consider “Calling a Spade a Spade”, published in 1986 by Progress, to be the only collection of literary manifestos in the last 70 years (where most of the pieces are not manifestos at all, but programmatic articles), apparently without the slightest idea about the historical series of Moscow State University, consistently which published precisely the manifestos of Western European classics, romantics, etc.?

Perhaps insufficient study of this topic and its history prevented the compiler from asking a natural question: what is a manifesto of a literary school? How does it differ from the declarations of a circle or group, from a treatise or critical article, from any poem that someone, for some reason, wants to consider programmatic?

A collection of literary manifestos could become a first-person history of literature, if real literary figures appeared in it, if the first persons did not interfere with the crowd, and if the prompters did not pretend to be directors. From a real historical perspective, manifestos can explain a lot, although not necessarily what is expected from them in the literal sense. Thus, the history of English literature is a series not of manifestos, but of treatises “in defense of poetry” - from Philip Sidney to Shelley and from Matthew Arnold to Eliot. Then the manifestos of the romantics, for the most part, will become acted out dialogues - from the “Theatrical Introduction” to Goethe’s “Faust” and to Pushkin’s “Conversation between a Bookseller and a Poet”, from the “Conversation between the Publisher and a Classicist from the Vyborg Side” that preceded “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray” - and to Lermontov's "Journalist, Reader and Writer". What is considered to be the “manifesto” of the Symbolists was a series of lectures, then collected in a medium-sized volume, and the numerous “documents” remaining from various kinds of associations of “proletarian writers” took as a model the works of another, let’s say, genre. All of them are organized in the manner of the “April Theses”. What is presented in this collection as the “manifesto” of the “Pereval” group is an instructive text, of course, but obviously of bureaucratic origin. This is a "Memorandum...", the essence of which is the need to create a writers' union.

Finally, the question that the compiler asks is: why, until the 90s, not a single “ism” arose in Russian literature? The answer to it is partly contained in the collection itself: in all the Wapp, Rapp, and other declarations of the founders of the “literature of victorious socialism,” what is manifested first of all is anonymity , the actual “amputation” of the first person: “ Style is a class ,” the Wapp, Rapp, and others persistently repeat "blacksmiths". The second part of the answer (directly related to the first - as thesis and antithesis) can be found in very different texts - from Brodsky’s Nobel speech , also in its own way a manifesto of poetry as a private matter of the poet, to Mich’s “Afterword”. Eisenberg to the famous almanac "Personal File", recently republished by "UFO" as a monument to the era of the late 80s - early 90s:

"For any conscious author of the seventies and eighties, belonging to any group was obviously of a secondary nature. The inhabitants of the underground were loners, outsiders. They were outsiders, not oppositionists: they opposed not just one thing, but all of them at once. Such a position is the worst reason for unification."

But with all this, the so-called “isms”, that is, literary schools, were and remain, and not ephemeral - like the “meta-metaphorists” invented by K. Kedrov or the mannered PR “courtly mannerists”, on which, if you believe the compiler of the collection “Literary manifestos from symbolism to the present day,” all “literature of our days” has exhausted itself. You can feel whatever way you like about PM , but as a literary school (group, movement) it’s difficult to ignore it. And here they did without him.

By and large, compiling a collection of this kind requires a certain distance. Otherwise, the result is “professorial hack work.” And - with a continuation. It is possible that in 70 years the next compiler will publish another collection of literary manifestos, using the current one, published by Soglasie, as a primary source. And we get "Professor's hack-3."