Ksenia Zorina. The Goat's Song, or the Thirty-Second, But Still Love

We have boom a Bukowski . Charles Bukowski is everywhere. There are three or four of his books on book shelves at a time, the same novel is published in different translations, some publish “all of Bukowski”; what has already been published in bulk is published in the form of collected works; what has not yet been published hangs on the Internet. It feels like there is a kind of “fan club” of Bukowski from Moscow to Vladivostok - it includes translators who are confident that they translate him well, and everyone else - poorly, and friends of translators, who are confident that the best translators are their friends . If you know who to call, you can discuss at any time of the day how different people translated this or that passage - this is especially true for unprinted words, which, largely thanks to Bukowski and his translators, are perceived - in printed form - as absolutely printed. Reviewers quote each other. Editors, seeing a new book, say: “Oh!” "ABOUT!" refers not to the book itself, but to the reviewer - if you brought it, it means you understand, and therefore are admitted.

The above, of course, is an ironic exaggeration: the boom, most likely, has already passed, everyone has eaten too much, the editors have Bukowski coming out of their ears, and they don’t want to write or publish reviews of him. The "fan club", according to some assumptions, consists of a simple chain in which knowledge is transferred from one atom to another - and even if this entire chain is extended from Moscow to Vladivostok, it turns out that the absolute majority is not affected by this knowledge. And, in the end, someone may simply not like him. There's nothing special to love about him. He did not discover anything new (like everyone else who has been using letters since the invention of the alphabet). As for the majority, most likely the first person they meet (unless of course he turns out to be an “advanced intellectual”) will say that Bukovsky is a dissident who was exchanged for Luis Corvalan... However, they are unlikely to remember about Luis Corvalan - but Vladimir Bukovsky still calls some vague and indefinite memories. Once again - this is how it should be, we must better remember our past. And Charles Bukowski is one of those who, gradually creeping into our souls, makes “their” past our past. When this process is completed and their past finally becomes ours, we will remember it better - as we remember now... What keeps me from listing the people who shared their past with us is that perhaps no one remembers this past, again he doesn’t remember. As for “them,” my American friend who graduated from Harvard (everyone is supposed to have an American friend, I have one too) - my American friend doesn’t know who he is Charles Bukowski .

But the translators translate - “the schikaturist is schikaturik and is not afraid of anything.” What should they do - they have already fallen in love, and they don’t care, they don’t care. We started when no one was interested in it, we finished when no one was interested in it anymore. Books do not come out by magic - so what if the book was signed for printing a year ago, if it was just finally brought from Saratov (because there was no money and there was nothing to hire a car for). As always, the last to come to us is what was the very first and most important - poetry. Which are basically untranslatable. Here (again, as always) there is a parallel with the domestic living classic, with which Bukowski is constantly compared - or was compared, it seems to have already passed. (Since it is impossible to think that Bukowski copied something from Limonov , some suspect the opposite. The axiom that it is impossible to copy anything, that there is air, it is common, they either breathe it or not, is not always perceived. Let’s leave the question of secondaryity, - the one who comes first is the one you read and fell in love with first.) The majority of the reading public still does not accept the Russian living classic, and those who read, oddly enough, for the most part do not know that he is, first of all, a poet, do not know at all that he wrote poetry. (If the book "Russian", published in 1979 by the publishing house "Ardis" has not yet been republished in Russian, so it is not surprising that translations of poems are the last to be published. Where are the publishers, there are many of them now? Or is it unprofitable, uninteresting and scary for absolutely everyone? What kind of snobbery, the devil take you?!) I never wrote a review of the penultimate or penultimate book of the Russian classic - “The Book of the Dead”. The review should have consisted of two lines: “What, strictly speaking, cannot forgive him? The fact that he is alive.” So Bukowski, fortunately for us, is dead. We can read, publish and love it without damage. Without fear that he would throw something away. It won't be any worse than it was. Forward.

The publishing house with the difficult-to-reproduce name "Adaptec/T-ough Press; step/Lithuanian" published a collection of poems by Charles Bukowski "The Vomiting Lady" translated by Kirill Medvedev (on the cover there is a poem translated by Alexander Zaitsev ). At the same time, “Verb”, translated by the same Medvedev, released the novel “Women” . It’s good to read books together - you can see how differently, in poetry and prose, this or that event, this or that feeling is reflected. Here is a woman whom a man took, laid on the bed, made love to her (since I am not Bukowski, I will not use other printed analogues of this not very successful expression), got up, drank beer, lay down and made love again. So she got up, finally took off her shoes, went to the bathroom, came back and took his dick. So she broke the bottles, tore the jacket, destroyed the car, flashed one last rotten tooth, broke the high and left. She didn't ruin her life. Here is the same woman - in verse. If proof were needed that the unrhymed lines were poetry, proof could easily be produced. Poems stand on their own. Everything is different there - everything is stronger, sharper, more ruthless, more tender and sentimental. There, what is repaired in prose is torn and carried on. On the other hand, prose is not a documentary recording of sexual acts, but literature.

Besides the fact that the same women often appear in poetry and prose, Bukowski’s “Women” is the result of reading his poems. These are not the women that he had when he “worked in slaughterhouses, factories, and sat in prisons,” and not those that he did not have then (laughter about the fact that Bukowski is the last stronghold of our heterosexuality, our last hope never ceases) - these women went to him, old and ugly, because he is a poet. They flocked to his poems, to his fame, to his delight in the gladiatorial fight with the audience, who wanted him to outdo the musician who had just left the stage. He paid not with money, but with the fact that he is a poet - and, nevertheless, one should not discount the fact that he had enough strength, courage and a stubborn desire to be a man to take them. They flocked to his apparent freedom - and over the course of two hundred and eighty-five pages he then trampled on his own cowardice. In general, a book about the problems of creativity - which is indirectly related to sex.

As for the poems, there are good ones, and there are simply wonderful ones. Of course, you can’t learn them by heart, but you will remember some lines, and you will read them from a book to someone else. (By the way, in the appendix are two real letters, to John William Corpington, written, despite the absence of a torn line, like real poems.) All that is needed is pain, the world seen through the eyes of others, and the person who sees this world , - they have. There is a spasm. And since it is impossible to quote everything, it is completely by chance, from the ugly horse who wrote this poem, the red Porsche, three chocolates and Lady Godiva (as well as a cat with a flea collar, red hair, furnished rooms, Jane with a beer belly, "France , I wrote this for you", summer young ladies and many others), quite by chance I choose:

" - about a hundred
“I was joking,” she says.

“That’s it,” I say, “so what time?”
Will this work for me?

she lights my cigarette
lighter and looking at me
through the flames.

it's all written in her eyes.

“Listen,” I say, “hardly.”
will I ever be able to
pay that price again.

she crosses her legs
takes a drag from a cigarette

blows smoke, smiles
and says:
- you can, you can."