Urbanistic

Lately we have often heard that the protest of people who came out to Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue is not political in essence, but civil. No, I agree with that, I’m talking about something else. This phrase gives reason once again to think about the mysterious ways of words. The fact is that the words politician and citizen are of similar origin. The first is associated with the Greek polis - city (hence the metro, and the police, and -pol in the names of cities), and the second - with the Church Slavonic grad - also a city. Actually, this is not a coincidental similarity: the Russian word was in this meaning a tracing-paper from the Greek.

Moreover, in the Russian language there is also the word meshchanin, which comes from the word place in the old meaning of “city” (in Polish city and now miasto - and by the way, let’s remember the Russian words shtetlka, shtetl), as well as the word burgher (understandable case, from a German burg, i.e. city); it is, in fact, only in the French version - the word bourgeois. Not to mention the word city dweller, which, however, will be discussed later. I will not go beyond the Russian language, but the reader has undoubtedly already thought that the words citizen or citoyen (citizen) suspiciously evoke the combination Sex and the City. And if we are already talking about cinema, then the word citadel, don’t mention Mikhalkov.

Well, let's leave politics alone: ​​the ancient Greek city-states were city-states, and in the derivatives of this word the idea of ​​a city and the idea of ​​a state diverged long before it entered the Russian language. But how strikingly different are the completely similar Russian words city dweller, citizen and tradesman! A city dweller is simply a resident of the city and nothing more. Citizen is a word with a very turbulent history. Even in the time of Paul I, the Highest ordered not to use the word citizen . And here is a quote from the story of N.S. Leskov “Cadet Monastery”: “The book of general history, I don’t know who compiled it, was almost twenty pages long and on its wrapper it was marked: “for soldiers and for residents.” Previously, it was inscribed: “for soldiers and for citizens,” as its skillful compiler inscribed, “but this was recognized by someone as inconvenient and instead of “for citizens” it was put “for residents.” Throughout the 19th century, the word citizen retained its revolutionary-democratic connotation and was successfully vulgarized in the Soviet language: citizen in a hat; Citizen, let's go! This word was, of course, greatly compromised by the fact that it became, so to speak, a second-class treatment: the first thing a person who fell into the clutches of the law enforcement system lost was the right to address other people as “comrade” (he immediately received in response : “The Tambov wolf is your comrade”). And they began to address him as “citizen,” and he had to say: “citizen investigator, citizen judge.” And now the word citizen has become incredibly active - this may be the key word of the current moment. There is not only talk about the awakening of civil society, but also the projects “Citizen Observer” and “Citizen Poet”. With the latter, by the way, here’s what’s interesting. If you read this title, then, of course, first of all, Nekrasov’s “The Poet and the Citizen” comes to mind with the maxim You may not be a poet, / But you must be a citizen (in fact, this is a reference to the famous formula of the Decembrist poet Ryleev from his dedication to the poem “Voinarovsky ": I am not a Poet, but a Citizen), However, if you listen to the announcement of the project, there is a distinct intonation of address, and a very familiar one, with emphasis on the word citizen. I won’t go into linguistic subtleties now, but intonation researchers teach us that precisely this emphasis on the first word of two-word addresses (DOCTOR PETROV!, IVAN Ivanovich!) in informal communication is a specific feature of Russian intonation. Well, for example: CITIZEN poet, what are you allowing yourself to do?

And about the word tradesman we can talk endlessly and its history. It has an old class meaning, in which it indicates an urban inhabitant. Well, of course, there is what we remember from school: “Chekhov’s denunciation of vulgarity and philistinism,” “the mug of a philistine came out from behind the back of the USSR” - this, of course, is Mayakovsky, who called for breaking the necks of canaries in the name of the triumph of communism. A bourgeois in this sense is a person focused on material wealth, incapable of flight and spiritual quest, and at the same time attaching great importance to external decency and to the fact that everything is “like people” and “beautiful.” The Russian word meshchanin in this regard is very similar to the German der Bürger. In the same way, the first, old meaning is neutral, while in the second it expresses romantic contempt for vulgar ordinary people. In Russian literature, the type of German burgher is described with furious disgust in Tsvetaev’s “The Pied Piper.” In general, the conflict of the fight against vulgarity and philistinism in Russian culture, of course, goes back to German romanticism. The running theme not only of romanticism, but of all German literature of modern times is the confrontation between the poet and the burgher, or, as Hoffmann put it, the enthusiast and the philistine. In Thomas Mann's novella Tonio Kröger, the hero positions himself as an artist who is above the crowd, but he is secretly attracted to the simple, blond and blue-eyed. He is struggling with burghership, but he himself receives the accusation that he is nothing more than a confused burgher.

It should be noted, however, that from time to time there are attempts to rehabilitate the word bourgeois, presenting the bourgeoisie as a private person, a custodian of simple human values. The brightest, perhaps, is presented in one of Kibirov’s poems, where the call to be bourgeois is understood in the sense of opposition to two “romanticisms” - lumpen and intelligentsia. Kibirov suggests fermenting cabbage, making jam, skimming the delicious foam from it (hello to Rozanov), understanding the metaphysics of wet cleaning - in general, loving the living matter of life and not allowing yourself to be carried away by various chimeras. However, with all the charm of the image of a private person with a volume of Pushkin behind cream curtains, for whom the civic position is to be personally decent and protect his loved ones, the word bourgeois in Russian remains unattractive and is not at all associated with the Bulgakov-Rozanov tradition.

So the words city dweller, citizen and tradesman diverged quite radically, and the last two became almost antonyms.

But sometimes, as Pushkin noted, strange connections occur. Surkov gave us a farewell mo: a party of angry townspeople - clearly wanting to emphasize the moderate burgher attitude of the Protestants. However, this is where it is appropriate to recall the history of words: a city dweller becomes not only a tradesman, but also a citizen.

Irina Levontina