Sergey Kostyrko. Simple Reading (11)

Simple Reading (11)
Marginalia S.K.

Sergey Kostyrko

Publication date: November 18, 2003

"... He fell head on the table, and it was as if he had burst into tears. He sobbed, covering the back of his head with his hands. These were not the drunken tears of a man weakened by wine, not the bitter tears of loss, undeserved insult. These were male tears of a guilty person without guilt,"

- a man sobbing violently is Alexander Fadeev in the documentary story by Grigory Fuks “ Two in a Drum ” (“Star”, # 9).

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I , as a reader, am supposed to sympathize with the drama of an extraordinary artist and man.

But for me, for example, memories of Fadeev , which have already formed into a certain special genre of our memoir literature, are generally a mysterious genre. He assumes with sorrow and compassion the image of a pure - intelligent, talented, kind - person written, who put his life and talent into serving an idea, serving Stalin, and thereby “offended himself to death.” "Until death" - literally.

I have no right to doubt the sincerity of contemporaries who remember Fadeev in a similar tone. There were, therefore, some personal impressions, conversations, meetings, friendships.

But what should I do, for example, and, I suspect, millions of people like me who did not know the writer personally, but have only his legacy at their disposal?

How should I treat a man who (none of his contemporaries tries to refute this) most of all in life, more than literature itself, loved power. He was ready to do anything for her, that is, for the right to live the way he lived - the general secretary of the Writers' Union, the Stalinist mentor of writers (commissar), a lifetime classic, and simply - a man who “loved to live” (an impressive man, a crusher of women’s hearts who valued the feast, the opportunity to travel abroad, etc.). memoirs Many years ago, as a schoolboy, reading in Ehrenburg’s (this passage, by the way, is also quoted by Fuchs) about how, having mocked Pasternak at the next writers’ meeting, Fadeev dragged Ehrenburg into a pub and, snorting cognac, read him his favorite poems - Pasternak, of course. I didn’t understand the memoirist’s sympathy.

I still don’t understand it now, reading Fuchs’s story.

It seems that his main character is one of the most ambiguous figures in the history of Russian literature.

A writer who could write in his suicide note about himself: “Created for great creativity in the name of communism, from the age of sixteen associated with the party - with the workers and peasants, endowed by God with extraordinary talent...”; or: I am the one “of whom our wonderful people would have the right to be proud due to the authenticity and modesty of my inner, deeply communist talent.”

Where is this talent?

Yes, " Destruction " is a good book. So what? As if Zamyatin wrote worse then, or Vsevolod Ivanov , or Zazubrin , I don’t remember Platonov , Zoshchenko or Babel here . But this is the only work by Fadeev that claims to be present in literature proper. His official masterpiece “ The Young Guard ” from the very beginning was in the department of agitprop - heavy, strained, frankly epigone (like Tolstoy), with a bad melodramatic pathos. (I remember how in my adolescence I was embarrassed by myself for the fact that I could not master “The Young Guard”. I liked the cinema, but the novel did not work at all. Despite the fact that there was a pure reader’s delight in Kataev’s prose in “ Sail ” and “Khutorka in steppes".)

Where is he, writer Fadeev?

Don't know.

Fuchs cites a terrible letter from a stupid bureaucrat explaining why it is not necessary to stage “Destruction” in the theater: you know, the ideological packaging of this work will look very dubious at the historical moment the country is going through. Signature under the letter: Fadeev. Here is the “master’s” later assessment of his only artistic success.

A subtle, vulnerable, failed artist who sincerely loves Russian literature?

Yes, Fadeev knew by heart and, apparently, loved many wonderful Russian poets. Tolstoy , presumably, knew him almost by heart. And at the same time I convinced myself all my life that white is black, and black is white. With a hot iron he burned out everything that at least somehow resembled poetry and literature.

Got into the "stripping drum" of the revolution? He was blinded by the light of the idea, writes Fuchs. And the idea, personified before him in the figure of Stalin, ground Fadeev?

That is, as they said before, “the environment is stuck.”

What is the environment? That is, the external environment, the society in which Fadeev lived and on which he internally depended? Who shaped this environment? Yes, he himself formed it. He. General Secretary.

The drama of the situation with Fadeev according to Fuchs: a subjectively honest, decent person objectively becomes a monster. The question is, is he responsible for this?

It is generally accepted that no, it does not. This, you know, is the treachery of history! Diktat of society.

No, there are, of course, honest people who sincerely want the best, but at the same time they are very stupid people. I understand it. But everyone says in unison about Fadeev that he was an intelligent, insightful man.

Well then: what in Fadeev’s fate was accidental or truly forced, as, say, in the situation with Stalin’s poems by Akhmatova , who begged Stalin for the life of her son - she later recalled this with a shudder: “I threw myself at the feet of the executioner. ..". Why should I consider it a coincidence that it was Fadeev, and not Platonov or Mandelstam, who rose to the podium of writers’ meetings to teach fellow writers about life and craft ? Yes, there is nothing accidental here - it turns out that in fact this is what Fadeev valued most in his life as a writer.

I can sympathize with those writers whose talent was bled dry by the “disease of partisanship” (Sokurov’s expression), attempts to adapt literature to solve certain extra-literary problems. broke themselves We see how Gorky, Olesha , Mayakovsky , and the same Zarubin . But why did Fadeev break himself?

Why, for example, when assessing the role of Fadeev in Russian literature, should I also keep in mind the fact that he himself suffered greatly from the need to do what he did; that a wonderful writer died in it? I only know that the same hand, which, for some reason, Fadeev believed was intended for writing highly artistic prose, sketched out notes of reports about the harm that the writings of literary scumbags Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were causing to Russian culture. And why should I consider the authentic Fadeev, who never appeared in Russian literature, and not the one who actually determined its course?

Fuchs's story is called "Two in a Drum." The author pairs Joseph Vissarionovich himself with Fadeev . A tyrant, of course, but also a “dramatic” character in his own way: a stoic philosopher in life, mournfully accepting the weight of his historical mission, aware of the inevitability of an aggravation of the class struggle and punitive sanitary measures. And in general - a subtle, sensitive nature, with spiritual insight, who discerned, for example, the secret corners of the soul of the same Fadeev, where the shadow of Mechik from "Destruction" nestled. In the story, Stalin vents his soul in secret reading of Bulgakov's novel " The Master and Margarita " and is very upset that he does not have the opportunity to publish it. Yes, the novel is indeed talented, especially in terms of all this devilry, the ability to change minuses into pluses in the depiction of Satan or the head of the secret police of Judea Afranius, in whose appearance the flattered Stalin could, according to Fuchs, recognize himself.

No, of course, in the first chapters of the story dedicated to Stalin, there is a certain irony. Apparently, the narrative was supposed to depict a certain process in the mind of Fadeev, creating a god for himself from a murderer, whose paranoid fear for his own power cost the lives of not only hundreds of comrades, but millions of fellow citizens who had nothing to do with the Kremlin games. However, the author’s conceptual attitude - to take seriously and with confidence the situation when a subjectively honest and intelligent person can become objectively evil for history and at the same time not see any guilt behind him - mutes this irony. The author's attitude towards Fadeev is partly transferred to Stalin in the story. And Fuchs’s Stalinist chapters, in the minds of today’s ordinary reader, are quite on a par with the works of the newest Stalinist writers who are coming into fashion.

(" Stalin re-read the message of Ivan IV to Andrei Kurbsky: “The Apostle said: be merciful to some, distinguishing them, but save others with fear, casting them out of the fire.” The thought of saving by fear was remembered. Do not destroy, but save by fear. That was the essence" ; "Comrade Stalin hoped for a better fate and the gratitude of his descendants. He was never surprised by anything, did not throw up his hands. He knew in advance. His confidence convinced millions. A short elderly man with a kind peasant face slowly climbed to the podium and illuminated the path for the masses with the magic lantern of reason. " )

Here he is, the god of Fadeev. This failed classic laid down his life (and if only his own).

...There is, however, in our literature another commentary on the situation with Fadeev. Indirect. Allegorical poem by Ilya Ehrenburg . The poems are not God knows what, but as a historical commentary they are very valuable, their author was a man from those times and situations - and a really smart person:

“Don’t talk about those of little faith. /But those who were dry, gnawed, short-lived, /did not live - hid in caves, /in the mud, in the blood, among slimy rats. /Bedraggled lions tore them down, /whacked everyone who didn’t laziness, /And on a thin ration of sadness /They whispered every day, /robbed, stripped, /trying to lead a convoy, /that he would come from Nazareth, /although crucified, but alive. /They came - in Christmas tinsel, / strewn with rubies cross. /Here is a cardinal on a cardinal, /and they quarreled over places. /They censed, anointed with oil, /shaked the divine purse, /and poured more than one into the jubilant fools.

So the parable turned into a fable.
If you can't sing, drink silently.
Of course, you can be more unhappy
but you can’t imagine anything more stupid.”