Mikhail Edelshtein. Bukeriada, or Running in Place

Bukeriada, or Running in Place
Mikhail Edelshtein

Date of publication: October 6, 2003

Recently , the Booker jury announced the shortlist . The six contenders for the award for the best Russian novel of 2002 included: Natalya Galkina (“Villa Reno”), Ruben David Gonzalez Gallego (“White on Black”), Leonid Zorin (“Jupiter”), Afanasy Mamedov (“Frau Scar”) , Elena Chizhova (“Lavra”) and Leonid Yuzefovich (“Kazarosa”).

Let's say right away that the jury apparently made the most of a long list. Nikolai Alexandrov , who stated that the shortlist gives an adequate idea of ​​the average level of the modern Russian novel, was undoubtedly right. Outside the short list, there are practically no works left that are more interesting or significant than those that made it to the finals. With one exception, about which at the end.

However, the shortlisting of almost any of these items can be easily challenged. Which again testifies not to the lack of professionalism of the judges, but to the current state of our prose. They don’t have any other writers for us, and this is not the fault of the jury, but our common misfortune.

However, first about the confusion. It’s hard for me to understand what Leonid Yuzefovich’s novel “Cazarosa” - a radically revised version of his old work “Espero Club” - is doing on the shortlist. A famously twisted retro detective story with a clever trick, of course, can also be read as a parody of an intellectual novel, since all the information it provides about Esperanto does not bring us one step closer to the solution, but such an operation still requires too much effort of the imagination. In fact, Yuzefovich does not try to disguise his detective story as something more, being quite content with the niche of a stylish fiction writer that he has long and rightfully occupied. There are special awards for this kind of literature, and I don't understand why Casarosa should be listed as a candidate for the best novel of the year award.

The expediency of the presence of two St. Petersburg women on the shortlist of novels - Natalya Galkina and Elena Chizhova - is questionable. They are clearly included in the short list for completeness and compliance with the rules of the game: six is ​​six. However, there is nothing in common, except for the place of residence of the authors and the artistic level, between “Villa Reno” and “Lavra”.

Mikhail Gasparov’s book “Records and Extracts” mentions a play by some Soviet drama model, where Stalin, Zhukov, Guderian, mermaids, devils and all other small evil spirits are listed among the characters. Natalya Galkina’s novel is constructed exactly according to the same scheme. Documentary fragments - the diaries of Ivan Pavlov, the notes of Karl Mannerheim, the letters of Pavel Florensky, memories of Bishop Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky) - coexist with some unimaginable mystical-fantasy cocktail. Here is a talking stream carrying objects against the flow, and the ghosts of Pavlov’s dogs guarding the academician’s former dacha, and the appearance of John of Kronstadt, and Daniil-Andreev’s nonsense, and H.G. Wells, whom the author forces to predict the appearance of Milorad Pavich. All this is written quite easily, but it is not very clear why.

The plot of Galkina's novel is quite simple. A film about Academician Pavlov is being filmed in a holiday village on the Karelian Isthmus. The story about the filming is interspersed with pictures from the pre- and post-revolutionary life of the guests of Villa Reno, a boarding house where the great physiologist once visited. First, various coinciding details in two time plans are emphasized, then the past begins to emerge more and more insistently through the present, Kellomäki displaces Komarovo. They are connected by a magical stream and a local girl nicknamed Catriona, who acts as the genius of the place.

Some fragments of the novel are not bad, and the description of the paintings of the classic of Soviet literature Stepan Eremeevich, who also enjoys painting, is simply good. The main problem of "Villa Reno" is the complete lack of artistic logic. This is especially true for unrealistic additives. All fantastic assumptions are absolutely random, all mysticism is dumped without much meaning and in an arbitrary order. It seems that “ Rose of the World ” turned up on the shelf at the right moment, and Steiner was not at hand. Therefore, shadanakar and egregors are present in the novel, but there was no use for anthroposophical equipment. And the very idea of ​​combining documentary material and science fiction into one novel can hardly be considered successful.

"Lavra" by Elena Chizhova caused controversy. And this is the most amazing and mysterious of all that could happen to her novel. Because there is absolutely nothing to argue about there. “There were three of us, gathered in His name in one outlying house” - after such a beginning, any normal reader will close the book so as never to remember it. And rightly so: the entire text of the huge novel is as tasteless and pretentious as this evangelical allusion in the first phrase. “A light that had no power poured from my eyes”; “I was like a butterfly flying into an open fire”; “His... cold eyes converged on me, and with a voice thinning to the point of hatred, he spoke quietly and fearfully” - one must have considerable courage in order to take on a novel with such stylistic skills. Critics have discovered autobiographical features in Lavra. I suspect that they had in mind the fragment when the heroine hears from her lover: “You have never had impeccable taste.”

But Konstantin Azadovsky writes an enthusiastic review of Chizhova’s book; Irina Rodnyanskaya , who objects to Azadovsky, finding numerous shortcomings in the novel, nevertheless makes a reservation about the “seriousness of the event”; in the November 2003 book "Stars" Grigory Pomerantz speaks about the "spiritual meaning" of the "Lavra" ... In my opinion, one paragraph by Evgenia Shcheglova in the "continental" bibliographic review was quite enough. It was there that the only thing that needs to be said about Lavra was first said: “obvious bad taste.” A brief but comprehensive description of the content was also given there: “throwing around a half-crazed fool.”

The action of "Lavra" takes place in the 1970s. The nameless heroine, the wife of a teacher at the Leningrad Theological Academy, is trying to join the Church, but too much in the Church remains alien to her. The novel is a patchwork of discussions about how and what needs to be rebuilt in the Church (country, world), and pictures from the heroine’s spiritual experience. The heroine knows practically nothing about the Church - she has no idea what original sin is, the “lord” turns to the abbot of the monastery and demands that he marry her to her husband (weddings are not performed in the monastery), she confuses, as Irina Rodnyanskaya notes, Meat Week with cheesecake, etc. At the same time, she never tires of denouncing the church structure and telling how it should all be. Her lover gives her a book about the “Living Church”-renovationists for a few days - immediately after reading it, the heroine has a ready-made concept of Russian church history. During the liturgy, the priest takes out particles from the prosphora for all those commemorated - the heroine is shocked: how is it possible, because there are murderers among them. Here another historical concept is built, suspiciously reminiscent both in level and content of Govorukhin’s “Russia that we lost.”

The heroine’s reflections are complemented by a rather amateurish and clumsy attempt to reproduce the church structure of the 70s (in “church topics, to be honest, I was not strong,” she admits). However, this part of the novel is interesting in its own way, at least as a series of sketches of prominent church figures, many of whom still determine the policy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Nikodim acts here under his own name, in Bishop Nicholas it is easy to recognize the future Metropolitan Kirill, and behind Bishop Anthony (“his appearance is noble, though with obvious elements of degeneration”) one can discern the current patriarch.

In addition to trying to reform the Russian Church, the heroine sees a different reality, hears voices, communicates with demons, plays femme fatale, tries to seduce a priest, etc. The problem is that the novel, built on the reproduction of the heroine’s spiritual quest, assumes the significance of her inner world. Alas. “I called his judgments school-like,” the heroine says about her husband. “I... needed university ones.” So, there is not a single “university” judgment in “Lavra”; the heroine’s thought goes in circles, constantly returning to the same general places. Her entire Orthodoxy is typically feminine, hysterical, starting with spitting at her own reflection in the mirror and ending with the desire to push her confessor “off the pier - down” so that he would not tell “anyone and never” about what he heard in confession.

In general, psychology in the novel is replaced by pathology. One of the reviewers blames Chizhova for the fact that the word “hate” is constantly heard in Lavra. In fact, there is one more word that appears there at least as often. This is madness". "You're crazy?" - the heroine backs away from Gleb’s father; “Shut up. You’re sick,” the heroine’s husband shouts; “You need to be treated for voices... this requires medical intervention,” her lover tells her. The permanent neophyte hysteria that fills the novel from the very beginning actually acquires some very clinical shade towards the end. It is no coincidence that the heroine ends up attempting suicide.

Apparently “Lavra” was shortlisted for a “serious,” ideological novel. In this case, " Jupiter " by Leonid Zorin is represented there as a social novel.

Compared to the other inhabitants of the short list, “Jupiter” stands out, first of all, for its volume and clarity of meaning. Leonid Zorin wrote not a novel, not even a story, but rather a long short story. The action in "Jupiter" is single track, no side lines, no digressions.

The famous actor Donat Vorokhov is offered to play the main role, the role of Stalin, in the play “Jupiter” by a certain Claudius Poltorak. Vorokhov is a convinced anti-Stalinist, but in the process of working on the image he gets used to it, imbued with the rightness of his hero, turns into a little Stalin himself, loses his family, drives away his mistress, leaves the theater and ultimately dies. The actor breaks out of the role for a while only before death, but the attempt to renounce all “games with the devil” was late. He is pulled back into chaos, into an “endless tunnel.”

The novel (we will follow the author and the Booker jury in calling it that) by Zorina has all the advantages and disadvantages of a well-told story. He is not boring to read, but he initially refuses to claim artistic primogeniture. The novel Stalin is not stupid, but rather banal, and it is not very clear how he gains such power over Vorokhov. However, the explanation for this can be the Freudian subtext palpable in the novel: the hero was conceived in the spring of 1953 by a prisoner released from the camp, who never fell in love with his son, and Stalin thus becomes a substitute father for him. The coincidence of the time of Vorokhov's conception and Stalin's death in "Jupiter" is clearly endowed with a symbolic meaning - a device that is obviously alien to the general laws of construction of Zorin's novel.

“The play is like a play. No worse than the others,” his friend tells Vorokhov, persuading him to agree to the role of Jupiter-Stalin in Poltorak’s work. The same can be said about Zorin’s own text. A novel is like a novel. No worse than others. Even, perhaps, a little better. Which, however, characterizes these others rather than “Jupiter” itself.

Many observers raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of the shortlisting of Ruben David Gonzalez Gallego's book. However, there are many who read “White on Black” as the main prize. Both of them have their own rights. No one doubts that González Gallego wrote an excellent piece: tough, scary, spiritual. The question is: can the Booker be awarded for non-fiction? There was a precedent: the case of Andrei Sergeev’s “Album for Stamps” is memorable to everyone. But even that decision seemed controversial to many.

Supporters of “White on Black” talk about the author’s undoubted stylistic skill and compare his minimalism with Shalamov’s. Gallego's book is truly wonderfully written. And yet, when I say these words: “wonderfully written,” I feel ashamed. Because that's not the point. It is impossible to discuss the undoubted literary merits of this thing, separated by commas, with an analysis of the exercise of Chizhova or detective Yuzefovich. It's better to write a separate review for it.

Therefore, I still think Afanasy Mamedov’s novel “ Frau Schram ” is the favorite of the current Booker. This is a quite skillfully made text, complexly constructed, well-fitted. To my taste, there are two shortcomings in it: excessive relevance and equally excessive literary quality. The Jewish theme, the collapse of the Union, interethnic conflicts, the murder of Alexander Men’s father, Karabakh, Orthodoxy, the August 1991 coup, the lack of demand for serious literature - there is no topical topic for the intellectual of the 90s that would not have been touched upon in one way or another or at least mentioned in Mamedov's novel.

It's the same with the design. Frau Schram is a very intentional novel. It consists of continuous roll calls: semantic, plot, phonetic. Every detail here rhymes with another: cities, destinies, names rhyme. This intentionality is especially noticeable at the end, when all the guns that had been hung up ahead of time begin to fire one by one and in volleys: the fallen boy is a symbol, the letter on the packaging box is also a symbol. Actually, the hero does not hide this. Like Vaginov’s Svistonov, he looks around at the people around him, discerning his future characters in them, trying them on for his unwritten text: “I thought, what if this story is inserted into a novel...” Even the narrator’s point of view is bifurcated: as the author of the novel, he looks at the captured reality as the past, and at the same time, from within the events described, he sees his yet unwritten novel.

In itself, this literary quality is neither good nor bad, but behind layers of symbolism the real plan of the narrative is often lost. It is not clear, for example, who was so annoyed by the hero in Baku that the local shady tycoon, who is also the lover of Ilya’s mother, orders him to immediately leave the city and return to Moscow. However, the East is a delicate matter.

The characters have no independent value and dissolve in the metaphorical structure of the novel. We will not understand why Irana becomes Frau Schram in the hero’s imagination, and then in his novel, if we do not comprehend the femme fatale as a symbol of Baku. We will wonder why the character of Nina, Ilya’s Moscow love, is so vaguely written until we look at her as the embodiment of Moscow - frivolous, unfaithful, partier. By the way, it’s still not worth talking about the heroine’s intelligence and impeccable taste and at the same time forcing her to write or even just sign essays like the one, parts of which are quoted in the novel.

"Frau Schram" is a fairly average novel. However, of all the finalists of the current Booker, Mamedov is the only one who is busy solving some actual literary problems. I don't really like the way he does it. But the rest are simply doing something else that has little to do with literature as such. Yuzefovich creates entertaining reading for intellectuals who do not want to stoop to Dontsova and Marinina; Zorin writes social pamphlets; Chizhova tells the city and the world about her depressing spiritual experience; Galkina shakes up an inedible eggnog from all the ingredients that accidentally came to hand...

Now about the main character. More precisely, faces. That is, about the jury. Which essentially deprived the current Booker of any intrigue, leaving the best novel of the year - " Spelling " by Dmitry Bykov - outside the short list. No one doubts the motivation for this decision, although many, including the Booker judges, still remember that grades for behavior are given in the next department, and therefore pretend that their complaints relate to Bykov’s novel , and not to the author’s personality , and are purely aesthetic in nature. Andrei Nemzer is certainly right in suggesting that the majority of the jury considered Bykov’s novel “surprisingly irresponsible.” If only a respected critic or one of the Booker judges accustomed to judging literature by the same criteria could tell us what an “irresponsible novel” is and how it differs from a responsible novel...

It does not give me much pleasure to repeat the obvious idea that encouraging the average at the expense of the outstanding hinders the development of literature. But our literary process has other helmsmen, and it was not me who turned all the available premium stories into endless running in place.