Colleagues

There is a stack of April magazines on the table. Appeals to the remnants of conscience. Requires review. “October” is especially urgent (here I am still No. 3 in debtors). Well, magazines are not without their merits. In the March “October,” in addition to Anatoly Naiman’s novel “On Statues and People,” which annoyed me, there are two nice collections of stories - by Alexander Khurgin and Nina Gorlanova with Vyacheslav Bucur, and Nikolai Klimontovich’s book “The Last Edifications.” In the April issue there is a novel by the long-silent Pyotr Aleshkovsky “Fish” and a story by Mark Kharitonov “Pigeons and Swifts”. In “New World” (No. 4) “narration in stories” by Boris Ekimov “Parents’ Saturday”. Another “story within stories” - “The Waters of Lethea” by Alexander Basmanov - in “Banner” (No. 4). Probably, Alexey Slapovsky could have put the same label on the cycle “Like Emelyanov...”, equipped, however, with a more sophisticated subtitle - “biography in stories with an indispensable moral.” However, genre definitions are a delicate matter: 13 pages of Elena Dolgopyat (“Ruler of the World”) are a story; 18 pages by Natalia Smirnova (“Flower Girl”) - story. In “Friendship of Peoples” (No. 4) the beginning of Mikhail Kuraev’s “sentimental journey” “Caution - Kukuev” (for three issues, apparently, it will last) and Georgy Gratt’s small opus “Tul a - Tul e . A holiday that is always without you .” And not bad with poetry: Yuliy Gugolev - in “Znamya”, Alexey Tsvetkov - in “New World”, Gennady Rusakov - in “Friendship of Peoples”. And journalism takes place (in “Znamya” Nikolai Rabotnov about nuclear weapons - “Farewell to the Goliath mentality” and Boris Dubin about “Russia and others”; in “New World” Vasily Golovanov about “Total geography of the Caspian Sea”). And memoirs are not fading (Mikhail Aizenberg about Konstantin Sergienko, the “Cult Author” of the truly wonderful story “Goodbye, Ravine” - “Banner”). In general, what we don’t have! And why not write about these works (true word, “notable”, one way or another testifying to the state of our fine literature)? I do not mean myself, but two born critics, whose books will be discussed further.

Almost two decades ago, Sergei Chuprinin called the essay about Yevgeny Sidorov “Healthy Nobility” included in the book “Criticism is Critics” (1988). Already at that time, Sidorov, the rector of the Literary Institute, wrote much less than before. The Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation (1992-1997), and then the Ambassador to UNESCO (1998-2002), did not have time to publicly express his opinions about the latest literature. Meanwhile, Sidorov did not lose interest in the literature that is being born here and now even in those years - a guarantee of this are several fragments of the section “Notes from Undercover”, which was included in the book “The Necessity of Poetry” (M., “Geleos”). Sidorov sums up “preliminary results.” That’s why the collection includes both old works (for example, “Pasternak and His Critic” with a devastatingly precise sentence: “Pasternak and Peredreev - an unequal battle,” 1968), and articles that were once killed by censorship (“Shooting at random” - about an ominous novel Kochetov “What Do You Want”, 1969), and theater reviews, and memoir essays (for example, a very recent one about Natalya Krymova), and reflections on the classics, and even experiments on sports topics. The lyrical “Notes from Undercover” (about life, about politics, about oneself, about literature, about morals) connect the first “critical” part of the book with the second, which is called “In the genre of a minister.” Here, along with interviews, there are official speeches (for example, at hearings in the Federal Assembly) and an analytical note that the minister presented to the president and head of the government of the Russian Federation (1996).

Probably, the “ministerial” block of materials will arouse greater reader interest than the old and new (for example, about Evgeny Rein or Andrei Turkov) works of the critic. It’s interesting what it was like for the writer-intellectual in the Kremlin-Belodom office corridors. (What’s even more interesting is about the corridors themselves.) But I want to talk about something else. Firstly, about the internal cohesion of the “literary-critical” plot and the history of Sidorov’s rise to power. And here we must repeat Chuprinin’s formulation, remembering that “sound nobility” does not insure against failure and does not guarantee the always cleanliness of vestments. Not only in politics, but also in literary struggle. “Sound nobility” is not quixoticism (quite often ostentatious, fused with narcissism), but responsibility, awareness of the reality of aesthetic and ethical criteria, a sense of context, sometimes requiring self-restraint. Secondly, I confess: after reading “The Inevitability of Poetry,” I acutely felt how Sidorov’s voice has been missing for the last decade and a half. Not at all because all the judgments of my senior colleague are close to me. What is not there is not. There are plenty of discrepancies, and if Sidorov had written about current literature, there would probably have been even more. Only many authors, including those who were published in April 2006 magazines, would feel differently. And literary reviewers (myself included) would work differently too.

Alexander Arkhangelsky has not yet been a minister. Although the likelihood of his ascension to one or another strong administrative position seemed quite high not so long ago. Now Arkhangelsky is known primarily as a political commentator (Izvestia, Profile) and the host of the weekly program “Meanwhile” on the Kultura TV channel. (The program, we note, is “cultural,” but clearly oriented towards politics.) I would like, however, to remind you: at the turn of the 80s and 90s, Arkhangelsky was the most prominent, active and promising critic of the “new call.” (Only Alexander Ageev stood on a par with him, now also increasingly drifting towards journalism. Not without reservations, one can also name, perhaps, “then” Pavel Basinsky, Mikhail Zolotonosov and Boris Kuzminsky.) Perhaps choose “Friendship of Peoples” at the end of 1992 Arkhangelsky editor-in-chief, his fate, the fate of this magazine, and very much else in our literary space would have turned out differently. It didn't come true. Which, by the way, Arkhangelsky remembers - an attentive reader will catch this motif in the book “Basic Values: Instructions for Use” (St. Petersburg, “Amphora”), which actually says almost nothing about literature. Perhaps about the scandal surrounding Sorokin’s libretto. And so it’s all politics - the Khodorkovsky affair, the “orange revolution” in Ukraine, the Kyoto Protocol, the 2008 problem and other “United Russia”... What happened, what is, what will happen. Than the heart will not calm down.

This is understandable. The second part of the book consisted of “profile” columns, published from October 2004 to February 2006. They are constructed as a dialogue between Arkhangelsky the intellectual and Arkhangelsky the intellectual. It’s funny that, deciphering these roles in the preface, the author classifies the work of a literary critic as his “intellectual” - i.e. rational and Westernizing component. It seemed to me that it should be the other way around. But this is a trifle: the “characters” of the debaters are not very convincing - it is more important for the author to offer antithetical (but both are not dumbed down in advance!) versions of the events taking place than to outline the types of public reactions to political life. In other words, he reads ongoing history like a fresh book. Remembering the “basic values” (the first part, where there is no split personality), but consciously making different interpretive moves. The experience of a literary critic is more important here than the experience of a historian who has written a profound monograph on Alexander I.

It is gratifying, of course, that critics can be administrators, political analysts, and, probably, sports commentators. It is stupid to tell a talented person what field to cultivate. And it’s not that there was no one to talk about today’s poetry and prose... But it’s still a great pity that what was lost. And this is no less important than the content of the books by Evgeny Sidorov and Alexander Arkhangelsky.

Andrey NEMZER