Miroslav Nemirov. All about Poetry 42

All about Poetry 42
Miroslav Nemirov

Publication date: May 22, 2001

Existence

In the 20th century, for some reason it was considered to be extremely good. That disdain for the everyday side of one’s life is one of the main signs of a genuine poet: A genuine Poet should not have a stake or a yard, be drunk, barefoot, ragged and, preferably, die under a fence.

Even quite prosperous

Professor's son Sashenka Blok

I tried to stylize myself according to this ideal:

Yes and me for no reason
They drove me into the attic.
Nobody listened to my arguments
And my tobacco came out.

Or:

I have only one hope left:
Look into the well of the yard.

Or:

Let me die under the fence like a dog
Let life trample me into the ground,
I believe that God covered me with snow,
The blizzard kissed me!

Or:

Above the black slush of the road
No fog rises.
The drogues are being driven, groaning
My faded booth.

Daytime face of Harlequin
Even paler than Pierrot's face.
And Columbine hides in the corner
Rags sewn in colorful colors...

Ride along, mourning nags!
Actors, master your craft,
So that from the walking truth
Everyone felt pain and light!

Mold has entered the secret place of the soul,
But you have to cry, sing, go,
So that to the paradise of my overseas songs
New paths have opened up.

is also there Mayakovsky :

I'll get out
filthy,
then an overnight stay in Kanavah... -

Mayakovsky? Filthy? Mayakovsky, as you know, was obsessed with hygiene - he handled door handles only with a napkin so that germs would not attack him, he went to restaurants and on visits with his personal glass, because he was afraid to drink from someone else's cholera vibrios, and - spending the night in ditches?

But the title of poet forced you to pretend that you spend the night in ditches, otherwise every mechanic, according to Kharms , will immediately understand that you are not a poet, but a piece of shit!

Well, and then the Soviet government gave them all this in full - to everyone, both those who wanted it and those who did not.

Khlebnikov , Mandelstam , Akhmatova .

Well, Mandelstam did not lead such a lifestyle because he liked it; Akhmatova - she simply, out of old regime habit, did not know how to do without servants (and there were servants, until the very beginning of the war! And besides, Akhmatova, as already described, had a special talent for turning everyone around her into servants), but Khlebnikov - this Yes, this one was really like that.

True, now that the 20th century has ended, it is no longer very clear - why was this so required, and what is the benefit of it?

But this was required, take it out and put it down.

This archetype comes out from the Greeks (Homer), from the Jewish wandering prophets, from the skalds, from our wandering epic storytellers, etc.

Well, of course, you can’t argue against the archetype.

I, too, paid a great tribute to this archetype, spending a significant part of my life as something like just such an outcast and semi-homeless person, though for the most part not on purpose, but - that’s how it turned out. In general, there was not a damn good thing about it, and, most importantly, if I wrote anything successful, it was during relatively prosperous periods of my life.

also spoke about this Pushkin - that misfortune, of course, can be a school of life, but then happiness is a university.

---

No, well, under the Soviet regime, it’s clear that there was little choice - either to get into the Union of Soviet Writers, for which you lick the asses of forty and then stand half-bent all your life, or - to the boiler room; but now?

But no, still now.

Still - you can't stand against the Archetype!

And the author of poems, who is kind of being nice to Gelman, who sits on the Presidium there, like something, who writes a column in the Russian Journal - oh, he’s still doubtful!

I understand, yes.

And I even agree.

Yes, that's it...

* * *

By the way, this is a requirement that the community of art lovers places on the bearers of these arts - it is similar - that’s interesting! - to the demands that the criminal community - the classical one, which, however, is now being eroded and deformed - presented to its leaders, that is, “thieves in law.” Those, too, were forbidden to have property, a family, or be in any service; It was supposed to live, when not in prison, then on raspberries, and of all the property to have only a knife and a wad of money.

This makes me think.

I just don’t know which ones yet.

* * *

However, they tell me, it’s still the same now - in order to somehow get somewhere, you need to lick forty asses in the same way, only not secretarial ones, but sponsorship ones, but now it’s even worse - before you could go to the boiler room or the janitor’s room - and now even this is gone.

So - - -

Immensity

It was also considered in the 20th century to be an extremely desirable quality for a poet:

What should I do, chick and firstborn,
In a world where the blackest grey,
Where inspiration is stored like in a thermos,
With this immensity in the world of measures?

M. Tsvetaeva

Well, this is a romantic variation on this theme.

In the 20th century, in addition to the above-mentioned romantic one, there was also an avant-garde version of the interpretation of this concept; immensity is someone who declares something larger, which was not previously an object of art, to be such an object - and, most importantly, forces society to agree with it. Moreover - according to Groys, this is the main (if not the only) goal of avant-garde art, which - according to the same Groys - is art alone, and the rest is arts and crafts.

Make them consider as art - colored spots on the canvas; even little gray squares on the canvas; black square painted on canvas; the empty canvas itself; an aquarium with a wooden hand floating in it; an upside-down urinal; a can of Campbell's soup, 48 times larger; there are some hectares of land there, painted blue; enlarged picture from the comic; a dead hare covered in honey and wrapped in felt; the act of showing one's ass to the public; the act of jerking off a dick in a public place; and so on, and so on. and so on.

By the end of the 20th century, in literature (all the above examples are from the field of fine art, which was ahead all the time), this race unfolded - who would further transgress the boundaries of common sense and public decency: “And me!” "No, it's me!"

- And I sucked dick from blacks!

- But I ate shit!

- And I cockroached my wife in broad daylight at the Pushkin Monument!

- And I taught my two-year-old brother to be a fagot!

- And I jerked off to a photo of a dead grandmother!

I also took part in this race:

- And I wrote whole long poems with only swear words!

This is sad.

And it’s surprising: avant-gardeism has been declared a corpse for twenty years now, and it has been replaced by postmodernism, which, it would seem - - -

But no, his avant-garde attitudes are still alive.

All activities of Ter-Oganyan A.S. The 1990s was dedicated to precisely this - demonstrating that avant-garde principles, despite postmodernism, are still alive and active - and ridiculing this - well, it was further demonstrated, and well, it was further ridiculed. His last pseudo-avant-garde action - cutting down icons - was understood as purely avant-garde - as another “And me! And me!” - And - - -