| The magazine review will have to wait. Vasily Aksenov’s novel “The Voltairians and the Voltairians” (beginning - “October” , No. 1) requires a separate discussion. The same is the case with the stories of Yevgeny Shklovsky , who was actively published last year, and has now published new collections in Friendship of Peoples (No. 1) and The New World (No. 2). Most of “Ural” (No. 1) is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Pavel Bazhov (1879-1950). So let's turn to other journals, remembering that this foreign word once denoted the phenomenon that we call a diary.
Finally, the publication of the Complete Works and Letters of V.A. continued. Zhukovsky (M., “Languages of Slavic culture”). More than three years separated the second volume (poems from 1815-1852) and the newly published thirteenth, which included the poet’s diaries for the years 1804-1833. The poet kept diaries throughout his life; their value as a historical source is as undoubted as the spiritual significance of many fragments. Along with quick daily notes, Zhukovsky left remarkably interesting experiments in self-reflection; confessional diaries-letters addressed to the poet’s beloved, Masha Protasova, can easily be classified as masterpieces of psychological prose. A special place in Zhukovsky’s legacy is occupied by works that grew from the diary mass and molded into brilliant essays (“Raphael’s Madonna”) or conceptual journalism (a letter written under the first impression to A.I. Turgenev about December 14; an exculpatory note about Nicholas submitted to the sovereign in 1827 Turgenev). I.A. already complained about the difficulties of reading clumsy cursive writing (often in pencil). Bychkov, who worked with Zhukovsky’s papers at the very beginning of the 20th century, there are a great many obscurities both in the notes he wrote for himself and in his carefully finished but deeply intimate opuses. Preparing for publication and commenting on the complete set of Zhukovsky’s diaries (their second part will form the 14th volume of PSSiP) is, without exaggeration, a titanic work, and it is clear that the group of philologists from Tomsk University who accomplished this feat (the editor-in-chief of the Collection is Alexander Yanushkevich) has already earned sincere gratitude from more than one generation of readers and researchers.
But the matter, unfortunately, does not come down to the gratitude of everyone who values our literature and history, or to individual adjustments to research decisions (they, of course, will appear). Much more important is the completion of the work, a fair part of which has already been completed , but cannot take on a “material form” due to financial difficulties. If for the publication of each new volume it is necessary to beg for a new grant, if many years of selfless work risks remaining on the research desks, if the humanitarian community does not know how to appreciate the work of colleagues and effectively help (not them, but themselves and Russian culture - precisely the Tomsk literary scholars who have read and those who commented on everything about Zhukovsky need his PSSiP least of all!), then the language asking for words is not at all parliamentary expressions. Let us hold on, hoping that we will see not only the second volume of diaries, but also volumes of ballads, epics, prose, and epistolaries sooner than in three years.
The subtitle of the collection of articles by Vera Milchina is “Russia and France. Diplomats. Writers. Spies" (St. Petersburg, "Hyperion", "Philological Library" series) puts you in an "adventurous" mood, which, in turn, makes the skeptic suspect a publishing deception. The skeptic will be put to shame: Milchin’s diplomats, writers and spies (often successfully combining these fascinating activities) are quite “novelistic” characters, although the researcher is occupied not so much by their fates and adventures as by the whimsical games of political history, zigzags of ideology, and ancient myths (like “ “Russian mirage” of French legitimists of the 1830s-1840s) and demystification of persistent errors (for example, the rehabilitation of Nicholas I, who more than once warned Charles X against reckless political moves that ultimately provoked the revolution of 1830). In the preface, the author clearly outlines his range of interests (and methodological preferences): “Research into everyday life is popular now, but everyday life is most often understood in the material aspect: what they ate and drank, how they dressed and how they rested. Meanwhile, rumors and rumors, political intrigues and diplomatic forecasts, newspaper articles and forgotten brochures are also everyday life.” But deciphering and interpreting the facts of “ideological everyday life” (whether they are revealed in private letters, diplomatic reports or commissioned journal articles) requires not only a scrupulous account of political realities, but also a broad view of the larger culture. It is clear how Milchina’s “microhistorical” experiments were influenced by her experience as a commentator on the masterpieces of French memoirs (“Grave Notes” by Chateaubriand, “Ten Years in Exile” by Madame de Staël) and the infamous book by Custine. No less important is another experience - translations and interpretations of French aesthetics of the early 19th century, which is always closely connected not only with philosophy, but also with practical politics.
In Milchina's works, two themes are almost always noticeable - the mutual reflection (often with a distorting effect) of French and Russian cultures and the experience of modernity as happening before the eyes of history. It is no coincidence that Milchina’s favorite hero is Alexander Turgenev, a writer with extraordinary skills as a professional historian, whose life’s work was the “historicization of modernity” (Russian and French), revealed in friendly correspondence (by the way, precisely to his closest friend Turgenev, as if infected with his style of thinking, Zhukovsky reported on the riot on Senate Street), sometimes turning into magazine texts (“Chronicle of a Russian in Paris,” published in Pushkin’s Sovremennik). At the recent Lotman readings (they were devoted to the problem of commentary), Milchina even called Turgenev’s epistolary her scientific reference point. Of course, joking, but there is not much truth in this joke.
From the century before last, let's move into the past. In the series “My 20th Century” “Vagrius” released “Notes of an Onlooker” by Viktor Nekrasov . In addition to the title work of a deliberately indeterminate genre (memoirs, of course, but not completely, and not only in the revival of the past is the beauty and dignity of “Notes...”), the book includes the equally eluding definitions “A Look into Something,” “Saperlipopet,” short stories. That Nekrasov has been published again is pleasant in itself. (After the “return” of his prose at the turn of the 80s and 90s, it was not published very abundantly, and is hardly familiar to young readers - which is a pity.) In our context, it should be noted that Nekrasov’s free and charming narratives, it would seem not at all fixated on “hard facts”, with captivating expressiveness they convey the air of that very history, which relatively recently was “historicizing modernity”, and has now become simply history. (Now we need to comment on Nekrasov too.) Well, the Russian-French theme plays in Nekrasov’s prose no less expressively than in the letters of Alexander Turgenev. If Turgenev or Vyazemsky had a chance to read “Notes of an Onlooker” (one of those miracles with which Nekrasov loved to amuse the reader), I think they would have liked it. They would sense their own - a living, warm, sudden imprint of thoughts, feelings, impressions, city news, boulevard, academic, salon movements... (Vyazemsky about the “Chronicle of the Russian..."). Andrey NEMZER
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