Alexander Sergeevich thought

Essay on a given topic

Fragment of the picture of Peter Konchalovsky "Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin", 1932

The New Times, the editorial office of me, asked me to briefly talk about how it was previously customary to publish those Pushkin works where the non -normative words are found, which recently the authorities of the Russian Federation decided to ban the public under pain of fines of varying degrees of ruin.

Thinking about this request, I walked around the city of Moscow. One could, I thought, to speculate about the relativity of the very concept of "abnormal vocabulary." The fact that, already during the life of Pushkin in the seal, to the joy of the public, his poem “The cart of life” fell, where two words (one - a short and very suffering communion, and the other - “mother”) were replaced by points.

Having descended into the winding metro, I thought that the other Pushkin’s poems (and one rather long ballad “Barkov’s Shadow”), filled with this very vocabulary, were not intended for Pushkin to print, since the forbidden words served there (unlike the “cart's cart”) not for expression, but for the image of the corresponding objects and processes.

Crossing from a branch to a branch, like a kind of bird from a fairy tale about King Nikita, I recalled how the authorities with Pushkin texts were later treated. In the best case, these authorities threw up separate words, replacing them with points or dash according to the number of letters in a word. The most promising representatives of the public could reconstruct the original (which is not always simple, because non -normative vocabulary is changing). In the worst case, whole lines were exhausted.

Yuri Lotman (not a fan of non -normative vocabulary) told us, students, about this: this is a struggle not against obscenities, but against Pushkin. Climbing the escalator and walking along the underground crossing, I reflected on the unthinkable banality of all these thoughts. Should representatives of the authorities regulate the verbal expressions of the public feelings? What does Pushkin have to do with it? What does I have to do with it? What does new times have to do with it, if nothing happens at all?

And I went out.

In front of me stood a green monument to a thoughtful elegant person.

Two young policemen walked past the monument, guards in performance - they were pink from the cold.

One representative of the authorities said to another:

- ** Your mother, these ***** ****** already at *** ******.

By the way, I do not know if he had in mind the public or other representatives of the authorities.

Photo: RIA Novosti