From under the wrong side of their own eyelids

“And now I’m sitting in thought,” the author writes in a preface to the book, “over the already boundless pile of densely scribbled sheets and notebooks: what should I do with them? Or not to do anything? Still, it is a pity if it disappears completely, as it is sorry for any without a trace of life.”

A feeling that is too familiar to every zealous diary. As if life, having left with traces, is not a pity, m-yes.

And yet, something in me, an omnivorous reader, stubbornly resists the understanding of how and for what people risk publishing their own, for themselves the only written diaries in their own lives. Why it is interesting to read-it’s just very clear: because you see in this way, but in a sense you live, another life from the inside-not processed, as in fiction, but in a more or less wild, close to the present form (although this is also, of course, the diary processing of life has its powerful traditions). But - publish? To alienate your own, really lived, the only life, to give it to someone else's consideration? Dare to such a public vulnerability? Wow the cultural form.

In the case of Mark Kharitonov, the question "why" is even more acute than the ordinary, because his diary has been written for many years and to this day is written precisely for himself. Even graphic: stenographic icons, so that no one else reads. And suddenly the author decides to take on the work of deciphering all this personal graphic muttering. Well, not all in a row - he left completely personal notes for himself, so we still do not talk about public vulnerability in this case. Nevertheless: the fair part of the recorded deciphens and gives it not just to read to someone, but to print. Moreover, for the second time in his life (the previous "stenography" - "end of the century" (1975-1999) - went out in the same publishing house ten years ago).

This should have some special tasks. Even in addition to before cultural (to inform the world, for example, about the literary, art, historical and other events experienced by you). It is in relation to one’s own life, in terms of responsibility to it, that is, existential.

To take the universal in his individual appearance - in another it does not happen - and try to consider it as if from the outside. To see from the universal side-to make a little impossible: to emerge from under the inside of your own age and see where you usually do not look from.

He shows personal, no matter how the author shows himself and for himself and for us - and even quite vulnerable. For example, a painful chronicle of how his mother was dying (all the more painful, which is served with the ultimate restraint, factogographically scoopo). Not so difficult, but also quite vulnerable, already because of the very internal: dreams are a person’s special unrowning before the world in dreams ("... they call my name, I squeeze through the crowd to the rostrum, (the rostrum is a huge, strange look), I find that I forgot about whom I should talk about) ..."

No, the analysis of the resident, including the greatest culture, is also in the Khariton stenography. The story of feelings is a change of relations to myself and to the world: "I am now calmer in the ski, if they overtake me. I used to run even faster." Studying age: “A person with age approaches an increasingly important, significant, high understanding. It seems to be more close, but there is less and less time and the forces are weakening. What is the point, if he lives a dozen more, another, as many years, and the strength will be more difficult to convey more and less?” The development of loneliness is the topics inevitable for a person, even very closely woven into macro- and micro-social ties: "Loneliness as the experience of concentration and access to fullness, height, freedom (after decay, dispersion, disaster- through its overcoming)." About the literature: “Does the literature have a future?” “Do many read, know by heart Pushkin and Mandelstam?” “Joyce would probably be impossible now.“ About the time: “We got into an uncomfortable, turning point and is unlikely to live to the best. But the past was even worse.”

However, no less here, if not even more - everyday details: what I read (by the way, individual cast from the time, from a great culture), with whom and what I spoke about, from whom I received letters, what kind of music I listened to, what I recalled, how I reacted to current political incidents ... - In a word, microbiography. And the details are completely everyday. What kind of bird feeder I saw in the forest. What picture the grandson painted. What enchanting wildness spam came according to the latest means of communication for that time (beginning of the 2000s)-ICQ, "something like a pager on the Internet." "... I bought vodka, and we gloriously drank under potatoes with salty mushrooms ...". "Ski boots finally broke, you need to buy new ones ..." "Black dying snow." In a word, such things that, it would seem, really mean nothing but themselves. Which are doomed to stay within their own framework and disappear with them.

And for some reason it seems to me that this is all - even more important than thoughts. Perhaps precisely because-negligible, doomed. Thought-how, however, the feeling, nevertheless, has its own supply of stability: it lasts in time, after time (I even want to say that thoughts and feelings are a kind of antidote against time). And the event, especially small, domestic, will blink - and there is no it. But after all, disappearing, the flesh of life consists of.

(By the way, also cultural work - no, even deeper - care for being: the salvation of disappearing from disappearance. It itself cannot take care of itself. We have to.)

Still, in every human experience there is something universal. Each of us, in any of our momentary, is at the same time, the same gesture, which indulges in personal quirks and facilities, the same movement, which, it would seem, dissipates in its daily details - the whole person.

That is why reading other people's diaries (and by the way, probably own-from the outside)-this is a powerful experience of universal humanity. Reading, however, and in general, in principle. But this is especially.