PARIS HANDMADE

DATE

“Crossing the Luxembourg Gardens, Hemingway sometimes passed Ferou Street, where Athos lived, the noble and gloomy Comte de La Fere ...”. In Mikhail German’s book about Paris (Mikhail German. In Search of Paris, or Eternal Return. - St. .

“Crossing the Luxembourg Gardens, Hemingway sometimes passed the Rue Ferou, where Athos lived, the noble and gloomy Comte de La Fere…”.

In Mikhail German's book about Paris (Mikhail German. In Search of Paris, or the Eternal Return. - St. Petersburg: Art, 2005.), they finally met.

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Mikhail Yuryevich GERMAN - Doctor of Arts, Academician of the Academy of Humanities, employee of the Russian Museum, member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Author of 40 books. Among them - "Daumier", "Antwerp. Gent. Bruges", "William Hogarth and his time", "Antoine Watteau", "1910-1930. Painting”, “Oscar Rabin”, “Marc Chagall”, “Vasily Kandinsky”, “Mikhail Vrubel”, “Difficult Past”, “Paris School”, “Modernism”, “Impressionists”.

Lyceum students live on equal terms with Watteau, Zola, Modigliani, Brassans in Herman's Paris, a street artist - a Senegalese prince, a visitor to the De Mago cafe - a fragment of the 1960s, the manager of a street ball on Rue Muftard (they are still alive, balls from Rene's films Claire!). And also the "snobbery", the drivers of the "Montmartrebus", which takes off through the steep streets like "a cross between a climber, an acrobat and a clown"; a musician rolling a piano into the Rue Gay-Lussac...

This book is about zinc cafe counters as a great "school of everyday democracy." About a seventeen-year-old biker in leather armor who puts a liter of red to two old men. About the habitual smile and habitual restraint of the Parisians, about the cultural memory of Saint-Lazare station and the immigrant quarter "Golden Drop". About the vitamins that post-Soviet people are looking for here. About what spiritual work you need to do in order to squeeze out of yourself drop by drop this is: “How they don’t like us there!”.

The book can also be read. Like a special course, or something.

Mikhail German wrote about Daumier, Watteau, Hogarth, Memling, the cities of Flanders, Chagall, Kandinsky, Juan Gris, Brancusi, Kisling, Fujita, Duchamp, Man Ray and Baudelaire's art criticism. Forty books in forty-five years of work is a non-Soviet figure. Even less Soviet was his "prose about painting".

As if the curvilinear Russian time has grown together - and at the Academy of Arts of the early 1950s, the author of "Watto" and "Paris School" studied with Pavel Muratov.

Herman wrote about the real "artistic Leningrad" in the book "The Complicated Past" (2000). This is not a memoir: a documentary novel about

1930-1990s. Self-analysis of a Petersburger of the 20th century: correct and merciless to himself more than to time. Notes of a Russian traveler about the road from the Inner Soviet. (We know that the border of the USSR lies within us.)

We talked in March, during the days of the "Russian" Book Salon, in a cafe opposite the gates of the Luxembourg. "Signal" "Paris" lay on the table.

And now the book has been published in St. Petersburg. The circulation, of course, is 2,000.

We talked about Paris. But in the highest degree in Russian ...

- Through your pictures of the city, as through an old glass negative, the “price of Europe” for a Soviet person shines through. How important it is that this experience is described: it is already almost forgotten, but it has not yet been comprehended at all.

And he is not superfluous at all in this bright book, the experience of the 1960s.

– I wrote the first two books on French painting not only without seeing Paris, but without hoping for it either.

And then ... yes, Paris for a Soviet person was a very capacious image. The image included a lot of bad things.

I have never been a communist, but in 1965 I could not get rid of the vile feeling of gratitude to the authorities: “Let me go!”. And upon returning, another feeling stirred: I was in Paris, I am better than others ... It is just as unpleasant to remember him. It has the same roots.

And there was always a feeling when leaving: “I will never come back here…”. The impossibility of exchanging the fee for the St. Petersburg book for francs. And ovirov's fears, and slavish obedience to fate. And the characteristics: "I had no comments on the trip." And if a person was divorced, there was a phrase: "The reasons for the divorce are known to the party committee." It's hard to believe now...

- At the first reading - the text of a professional contemplator. Braziers on the terraces, December parks, April and August light, a hundred shades of water and stone. But there is also the theme of "two different lives."

Here is the piece about the old people on the bus...

“In this country, life lasts as long as a person lives, he does not turn into his miserable likeness.

How many ancient and obviously not rich old men I have seen in shoes, though not new, but well-groomed and obviously from a good store, in velvet jackets of not dull shades at all, with coquettish foulards around their necks, carefully shaved, ready to smile, although they have almost lost the ability to move. otherwise than ... holding the hand of his decrepit friend.

Oh, these French old women, these coccinelles (ladybugs) - how these words do not suit them. They are not just adorable or cute, they are beautiful. Femininity, energy, taste, willingness to live without giving up until the very end. <…>

They are the most beautiful and elegant ladies of Paris.

They retained a passion for the harmony of colors, shades, textures ... a golden brown blouse, an ash-rusty tweed jacket, an old turquoise-colored skirt, chestnut leather shoes to match the bag - mariage des couleurs (marriage of colors).

... An exchange of courtesies with such a lady is a school of taste, cheerful politeness and good taste, and there is no passenger who does not admire her.

- You read - you are ready to howl, like a Behemoth cat in Torgsin: “And ours, then? What is ours, citizens? But you write about two counter processes.

Yes, the pensions of these couples differ from Russian ones in such a way that it is sickening to count. But the smile, the energy, the willingness to live without giving up, come from the people themselves. And from local rules of decency...

- I made a reservation in the book: there are a lot of bad things in Paris. As an everywhere. But there are so many good things in this city! That which is expensive everywhere, but here it costs nothing! Smile, cheerful wine, amazing democratism of relations.

Turn around: here are two workers who clean the streets, sewers, in general, exchange a word at the counter with respectable gentlemen.

What is precious here: lightness and love of life. Simplicity, smile, ability to work in order to live. Early in the morning a man walks through Paris - his eyes are burning: "I can work, I have a job."

... In the late 1980s, in our romantic and hungry times, I kept wondering: why is it impossible to give guards to peasants with good potatoes, the same riot police, so that people would bring goods to St. Petersburg to the market? And he said: be patient, we will have our own ryu Muftar! It didn't work out.

And here, a farmer who conjures his cheeses and brings them to sell on the same Muftar street, enjoys the deepest respect.

- It is joyful - this market street. The texture of cheeses, the splendor of fruit baskets, the harlequinade of a candied fruit cake open like a children's book. I remember I couldn't open the plastic bag for lemons there. There was a queue, I got busy. The black cashier opened the package herself. Even two. The second one instantly puffed up, squeezed, it came out quite a jazz swing ... How not to smile?

— And there are bakeries in Paris where there is a line in the mornings… because it is hand-made bread. By the way, the state prohibits raising the price of bread. But he still is! Because on this a person's respect for himself rests - on the quality of what he has done.

They say: "In a cafe they pay for the steps of a garcon." The fact that this coffee is brought, smiled, put on the table is also handmade. This plasma of doing manual deeds... it envelops Paris. And it keeps you warm.

“We have been rushing into the world for 70 years. When the "Iron Curtain" opened, it seemed that a tribe of "Russian Europeans" would quickly form. Did it work out?

- I'm afraid not. After the first intoxication of the meeting with Europe and America, even some swagger appeared: “Moscow is better, Moscow is more fun, Moscow is richer ... What do they have that we don’t have?”

I hear this kind of talk all the time.

A waiter once complained to me and my wife Natasha in a restaurant: “When the Russians come, they behave so strangely! They act like we're lackeys. But we are not lackeys ... ".

It has long been in the blood of everyone here: it is good to be rich. But it's indecent to show it. And with us ... either you are a lackey or a gentleman.

And the layer of the enchanted became thinner. Many worthy people, upon meeting reality, were changed by love for Europe and understanding of its codes.

…It is hard to explain. There is even something of resentment in this.

What do you think of these twenty years of freedom?

- We must realize that the intelligentsia lost. We've been given freedom. They gave it from above. The intellectuals have accomplished what we will always admire. They will be rewarded in this and this world. But they didn't finish...

And we played and lost interest. To freedom. To work. To Europe.

In the early 1990s, I published jubilant articles in St. Petersburg newspapers, I defended the time that everyone condemned, I said that happiness is not in sausage ...

- You wrote "The Complicated Past" in the 1990s. 750 pages without a publishing agreement, "on the table". For our time - a feat. But it turned out, perhaps, the main of your forty books.

— Petersburg archivist Alexander Valerievich Kobak helped me a lot. I showed him the sketches of my memories and asked: “Maybe we should throw it all away?” And he replied: “No! Never! Please add."

And we concluded a ridiculous domestic agreement: by such and such a date I will hand over the manuscript to Alexander Valerievich. I wrote and was happy as ever! as a young author. He wrote without leaving the service in the Russian Museum, lectures, other books, it was necessary to earn ...

A publisher was found later. And pretty fast.

- The circulation of "The Difficult Past" is 3 thousand. It's been sold out for a long time. Did the fee justify two years of work?

- Of course not. But, if there were forces, time and a publisher, I would write about the 1980-1990s. Eight sheets. What was modernity, about which I could not write, has already become history. Now they say: "August 19 was staged, it was a farce." Damn you! We were then people, and this is the main thing!

In the 1990s, I repeated to younger colleagues: “No one needs culture now. But if we don’t pedal, the bike will fall…”.

… But still, what didn’t we do then, so as not to think so intensely now: what didn’t we do?

- Can you name the works on Russian art of the 20th century that are necessary, but not written?

- There was an attempt to squeeze this plot into the rogue bed of postmodernism. In my opinion, a failed attempt. And the only one.

I think that the history of Russian art of the twentieth century has not been written. The person who should write it ... he does not exist not only as a person, but even as a model! He should not be old or young, not right or left, he should understand his topic as a historian and thinker, and not as an engaged seeker of a sensational perspective.

If real monographs about major figures of the 20th century appeared, it would be wonderful. About such personalities as the sculptor Mukhina or Alexander Gerasimov, who was talented in his own way. If they were written by a person who has the scale of Dmitry Sarabyanov's professional thinking and a look at the life of Yuri Trifonov! But... I don't see individuals of that magnitude.

- Will people grow or will the criteria decrease?

- Well, the criteria are lowered. Somehow, in front of my eyes, the director was reproached for the kitsch display of a great book. He replied: "Now they shoot like that." Now they write like that, now they research it like that, now they evaluate it like that.

They were never afraid of poverty... people began to be afraid of poverty. And psychologically it is very difficult to climb out onto the roof alone and think about eternity.

When my young colleagues enthusiastically describe a poor installation, I am reminded of an obscene story. I asked a French friend how young gigolos can meet the desires of deep old women. “Are they taking any stimulants?”

"No! replied the Frenchman. “They think about money and get excited.”

But I do not want to call our time timelessness. It has a lot of good stuff.

Nobody forces us to look at these installations instead of the Hermitage.

No one bothers us to sit in this old cafe ...

Behind the glass lay the first twilight, bright as the stone of these facades. The hall turned out to be packed full of students: Mikhail Yuryevich, Natasha German, and I sat over coffee for almost three hours. And this room was very similar to the page of the "signal" that lay in front of us.

“An echo of coffee, wine and beer aromas rises above the counter, an echo barely perceptible: a rag in the hands of a patron or Madame de comptoir wipes the bar almost continuously. A coffee machine hisses like a train, hot rectangular sandwiches with ham, cheese, eggs are fried in special ovens ...

All this can hardly surprise a New Yorker or, in modern times, a Muscovite. Everywhere there is everything, and cities that have recently tasted European delights, especially zealously flaunt the redundancy of the assortment and the splendor of the names.

And here, in Paris, all these pastis, grenadines, burgundy, croissants and even hard-boiled eggs in metal baskets are at home ... This is another property of Paris - to make everything your own, homemade. People here, like nowhere else, at home.

- "Complicated Past" and "Paris": what did you want to keep? And what to get rid of?

- When I wrote "Paris", it was as if I became the owner of it. Now the city is playing my play. But he plays in the style of commedia dell'arte, supplementing, refuting, throwing up lines, introducing new episodic characters ...

That lady in the corner of the cafe - how can we forget her?

... A very old lady, leaning a black shabby stick against the sofa, put her gouty leg on a pouf (a velvet bench, an earthenware jug of "homemade red", the waiter brought her water with ice and an ashtray without asking).

From a cloth bag (old as her stick and black orthopedic shoe) the lady took out 400 pages of proofreading.

And, taking a sip of wine, she began to check the five-story formulas.

Left Coast! There are four universities within a seven-minute walk.

However, the professor with the wand must have been driving.