"This is modern poetry, baby!"

Separating himself from the crowd with dark round glasses in the style of Letov or Lennon, with a arrogant inscription on his T-shirt - “this is modern poetry, baby,” he begins to throw poetry into this crowd. Now furiously, now with irony, he puts boring political speeches into poetic form... And everyone begins to like it. The crowd gets excited because he invites them to hear what they want. About how he was tired of rhyming the word “Putin”, about the guy who voted for the gray government, about his conscience sold to the US State Department.

And then you get acquainted with his work and understand that there is no more of this “screaming square” than in the life of each of the dissatisfied citizens. Probably because life consists of other, much more important things.

The poet Ars-Pegasus, who with his “dog nonsense” breaks through the skeptical attitude towards modern poetry and the graphomania that reigns there, told why an artist can be against, for and outside the system, and that art is always a provocation.

photo from personal archive

Ars, you often speak at opposition rallies and rallies in support of political prisoners, so you can be called a protest poet?

In general, many epithets can be applied to me, protest is one of them. But if this is said in the context of a specific event, it does not bother me, but when they start to present me so one-sidedly, it is not very pleasant. Fortunately, this rarely happens. I'm far from just a protest poet. Rather, a poet with an active civic position, or rather.

What is protest for you? Is this just another platform for performance or a source for creativity?

Any platform is great, it brings new people and emotions. As for the speeches in support of political prisoners on May 6, what played a role for me, first of all, was the feeling of solidarity with all those guys who are now in prison. At an evening dedicated to them at the ArteFAQ cafe, I said that over the last year of protest activity I came to the rally as a journalist, a poet speaking on stage, and just a citizen. But it doesn’t matter in what way they appear there, because this is, first of all, a civic act of someone who could be in their place.

Quite a lot of your poems have an oppositional orientation. Were you influenced by the events of last winter or have you always been one of those artists who are dissatisfied with the current regime?

I'm the artist who cares what's going on around me . It recently dawned on me that the first mass rally “For Fair Elections” on December 5, 2011 on Chistye Prudy, where it all began, was opened by me with my poem “Country,” which was written back in 2008...

And big events always have an impact. Plus, during that period, I was offered to host the “Imprompt” program on Network Public Television, where I read poems on the topic of the day in the format of the well-known project “Citizen Poet” or the earlier “Total” with the truth-telling poet Igor Irtenyev. And from December to March I spoke in poetic form about what was happening in politics and society, then this television was closed, I hope, not through my fault (laughs). And in the month of April, I published a collection “Bullshit” with poems of the “protest winter” frozen in it, such as “State Department”, “Fines”, “Putin with a cart...”.

Many of your highly political poems were written a long time ago, but they have not lost their relevance. Isn't that bad?

Of course this is bad. Some of them will soon be a year old, some are already four years old, but they were all written as if they were yesterday.

In reality, little is changing in Russia. Suffice it to recall Peter I, who ordered the hanging of all bribe-takers, to which Prince Menshchikov told him that there were not enough ropes, or Karamzin’s famous phrase: “Wake me up in a hundred years and ask what is happening in Russia, I will answer - they drink and steal!” .

What is the function of art in political protest? Does he even need it?

It depends on what kind of protest we are talking about. In principle, art, or, as it is fashionable to say today, contemporary art, is always a provocation, a deviation from the norm, and of all biological species, it is exclusively practiced by humans.

This is an inherently irrational activity, because for many, protest exists only for the sake of protest and, therefore, it is also irrational. And there is a rational protest with specifically pursued goals, for example, against corruption or police brutality, where everything is logical and correct, but there is no longer any special need for art.

The title of one of your collections is “Ars-Pegasus Vs.” An artist should be against the system, and in general, what does this depend on?

Well, I already made a reservation, saying that the artist very often provokes, and it is easier to do this when in a position against. On this occasion, Heinrich Heine has wonderful lines: “One day the world cracked in half, and the crack passed through the poet’s heart.” This is about the fact that the artist is simultaneously both a provocateur, forcing us to pay attention to the problem, and a guide, helping to solve it.

But he can be “against”, “for” or even “out”. For example, did Balmont really stand for something specific, did he generally write about space, or Tyutchev with his cosmology... They wrote about the eternal, “flying outside all dimensions” - as my favorite poet Yegor Letov says.

Does art benefit from a repressive political regime? In the famous film “The Lives of Others,” several dissident writers fled to the democratic Federal Republic of Germany, where many of them could not come up with anything, because what was there to write about in a free and well-fed country...

This is some kind of snickering position, because a real creator always has something to write about. But real art always wins, even in the most ideal society there will still be its vices, flaws, and joys, love, damn it! People love each other in both free and unfree countries. Creativity should not be fueled solely by problems and anger. And I don’t think that tightening the screws will produce new Solzhenitsyns and Brodskys.

How do you feel about those representatives of the creative professions who are ready to support the authorities, receiving funding in return? On the one hand, they are sold, but on the other hand, they have the opportunity to create something that brings pleasure and benefit to people.

This is everyone's moral choice. History will show whether they did the right thing or not. Of course, I don’t like it when you can realize yourself only by adopting a color that pleases the authorities. The state should support representatives of culture, regardless of how they tick the election boxes, especially since many of them are truly brilliant and respected people. The same violinist Spivakov who supported Putin, but this in no way affects his talent.

Can you forgive for talent? Not immoral actions, but, say, civic weakness?

You really need to forgive. And it’s not an easy craft to be able to forgive, sincerely, and not because your mother said so or they taught you so at school. I may be speaking now like some kind of Christian preacher, but for me this is not a Christian truth, but a universal human quality.

Do you have political ambitions? And is it possible that you, as a representative of modern culture, would support one of the politicians whose views are close to you?

“I give all my sonorous power as a poet / to you, attacking class!” from Mayakovsky. No, I don’t see any of these leaders, even in relation to Navalny, I have a lot of malice: “Gaddafi is a real Russian man / sticks a bayonet into thieves and swindlers” (laughs).

There are no political ambitions either; all the poets who got into politics, as a rule, ended badly. Take the same, the aforementioned Mayakovsky.

But at the same time you were a member of the antifa movement. Tell us about it, how did it influence your creativity?

It affected me more as a person. I ended up in antifa at the age of 16-17 and went through all these street clashes, posting leaflets in the subway, spray-painting walls, and being taken to the police. One day, Center E employees came to my home with the question: “Did you set fire to Rashid Nurgaliev’s reception room?” (former Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation). Moreover, they seriously tried to sell me this crap, but on the day of the arson I had a poetic apartment at Vasya Klenov’s on Pervomaiskaya, where many photographs and videos were taken of me. So poetry saved me from a long and sticky trial.

Then the cops began to press me for information, asking for the names and phone numbers of those who could be involved in this. As a real anti-fascist, I gave them several numbers of ultra-right guys (laughs). And after a few years, all this youthful romance passed and I realized that I was capable of more, but in a different, poetic direction.

photo from personal archive

When did you start writing poetry?

In the early 2000s.

Do you remember this moment of transition from self-indulgence to something more serious?

The breaking point happened probably four years ago. My musical group “Immoral Saucer” had performances one after another. That summer of 2008, some kind of metaphysical well opened up and in literally two months I wrote 60 or 70 poems, many of which I consider really powerful.

Which poem best characterizes your work?

I have many layers of creativity. But, if there is something specific, then it is called “Simply”. Reads an excerpt: “I open my mouth, you open Hennessy / I’m a narcissistic freak with an inferiority complex.” Actually, my main collection “Ars-Pegasus vs.” begins with it and, I think, more than one future one will begin.

One of the missions of your work is to arouse interest in modern poetry among the general public. But poetry has always been an elitist art; isn’t this idea meaningless?

No, I want to show that in our time there are no shortage of poets, despite all this dominance of amateurism and graphomania.

And I do this not only by my own example, but also with the help of the “Literary Mondays at Ars-Pegasus” project, this is my pride. In November, “LitPon” turns three years old, and we will organize a big reporting LitPon No. 70 - November 5, at the art cafe “In the Morning”. During this time, whoever performed there as part of LitPonov - Dmitry Bykov, Sergei Letov, Andrei Dobrynin, Rada Polishchuk, Zakhar Mai, and many, many other poets and musicians. There are already hundreds of them, without exaggeration.

Which contemporary writers do you consider to be living classics?

The greatest poet of the present time and in general over the last few decades after Brodsky, Yevtushenko and Voznesensky is, of course, Dmitry Bykov. And not for the craft that he does in the “Citizen Poet” project, but for what he wrote from 90 to 2006. These are simply his most amazing poems and poems. I just started re-reading them and the sensations have not weakened, the same goosebumps.

And Victor Pelevin. He is many times more talented than Palahniuk, with whom he is often compared. Reading Pelevin, you see crazy fantasies, but in the form of a literary image, and reading Palahniuk, Welsh and other counter-cultural literature, you understand that their fantasies came onto the pages from the head of a sick person with a number of obvious psychological deviations. Literature should not be sick, throwing excrement of writer’s complexes and cynicism at you. Pelevin does this more gracefully, creating crazy heroes who, being in a crazy reality, are trying to understand themselves. True, the Pelevin language is not universal and it is difficult to translate. But I am convinced that he is head and shoulders above them all and will still receive worldwide recognition.

Why do few people read poetry, but almost everyone writes?

(laughs) As in the old joke: the Chukchi is not a reader, the Chukchi is a writer. Everything is quite simple, a person is a very narcissistic creature and speaking is much easier than listening, respectively, when you write something, the significance in your own eyes increases much more. The only exception is if he reads something completely ingenious and worthwhile.

If, for some reason, people stop liking your poems, will you stop writing them? How dependent do you depend on the reader's opinion?

Of course, I get addicted, but not to such an extent that I stop writing.

But do you write more for yourself or for the public?

50/50. I won’t lie when I say that I write only for people, but it’s also not true that I write only for myself. It doesn't happen that way.

What is your main inspiration?

I can be inspired by anything.

You talked about many epithets that apply to you, one of which is the capital’s poet. You have a lot of Moscow.

A lot of Moscow and the Moscow metro. Previously, I could disappear for hours in the Moscow metro and write poetry there. Now, of course, the rhythm of life does not allow me such liberties. But in some ways it’s for the better.