Age | Colta.ru

The day after the anniversary celebration, Viktor Shklovsky (he was 80 then) met me with the words: “He looked today by Brockhaus and Efron for the word“ old age ”, and it says: see“ Death ”. Well, I didn’t look. ”

“I came up with well,” the thought flickered then. But he did not check the old man.

... his 88th birthday was remembered. I called to congratulate. He joked: "If you put both numbers on the side, you get two infinities." It was clear that he was thinking about what the famous creators of the encyclopedic dictionary hinted at him.

I saw how his habitat was empty around him and life was boring. Sometimes he called just like that. “I’m calling,” he said, “to make sure that it’s alive.”

***

A person, apparently, is an echo, like a mirror. Not for self -loving; For self -awareness. For self -power of your own personality.

“Another person” is a mirror more reliable than the mirror itself. Until a certain time, you are not aware of this. While climbing the mountain of your age.

You climb up and slide down. When you climb there, you need will, efforts, and down, from the mountain - skills and skills. Suddenly, at some point, you notice that it is not you move somewhere, but the platform left you and everything rushed past you: your birthdays are like layout pillars; The anniversaries of friends, the funeral and commemoration of loved ones are like suburban stations.

When do you start to feel age? Not with shortness of breath. When you see that the artists are alien to both sexes, whose vocation-youth, aging the same way as you. And there is no gloating in this - only resentment and regret. Moreover, if I correctly figured out my feelings, not for them and not to them, but first of all - resentment for myself and compassion for myself.

To see today an old woman Bardo to those who remember her Babetta, going to war, bitterly. And to understand Greta Garbo, who had left the public reality early, which ceased to act not only in the cinema, but also in the photo, is easy.

Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov in the documentary of his son-rusticer Nikita “Father” called two things that he cannot stand: a) children, b) old people.

The son was amused. In fact, it is ridiculous to hear this from the lips of a famous and very elderly children's writer.

What makes time with us, mere mortals, in the order of things. But they, the idols of the public,-Alena Delona, ​​Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sofia Lauren-why does it touch? We all, of course, are a little Doriana Gres. But they are in the first place. They are the golden gene pool of mankind. And it was they who have to resort to humiliating tricks - to conceal a birth certificate, to subject themselves to plastic.

Today, a person in years old is a Jew.

There is such a documentary movie “Hollywood knives”. This is about how aging movie stars with the help of plastic surgery desperately fight for their non -native appearance. As a result, we see that a somewhat flapping first lover or a strongly surrendered woman-vamps get up from the operating table three and a half years younger.

However, not a medical path in the struggle for their youth is possible - legal. A few years ago, one of the US vessels examined the lawsuit of Hollywood veterans against its managers. The latter was blamed for the fact that they discriminate against the honored artists of America on an age -related basis - they bypass their attention in the casting, prevent them from earn their millions. And what is curious: the plaintiffs were not pensioners, but those who barely exceeded 40.

In short, the conflict of generations in market America on market soil is evident. They have a road to young people everywhere. And the old people? ..

- old people - plastic, Viagra and diapers?

Of course, at some point, a person at some point begins to feel like a guest at this holiday of numerous presentations and party ceremonies. But inevitably, for some time is seduced to the expense that he is a welcome guest.

When the illusions are scattered, you involuntarily become a philosopher and console with the naturalness and logic of the world-dodgy cycle, which you do not fight with-you still need to come to terms.

I reconciled. As it seemed to me. In fact, not very.

***

Once at the end of the working day, the editor-in-chief of the publication in which I worked in his office invited me to his office. The first words of the boss were: "Tea, coffee, cognac?" - "Thank you, no." - "Yuri Alexandrovich, unfortunately, we must part with you."

It was possible to joke standardly: “How, really? Are you leaving? .. We will lack you like that. ” I did not joke. With understanding, I listened to the motives by which I had to leave the editor. I really wanted to see in this a "political component." At all times, she is so prestigious, so flattering pride ... but no. I was fired for two reasons: due to staff reduction and age. In Soviet times, when the institution had a need for its optimization, the first candidates “to go out with things” were employees without a party ticket in a pocket and a fifth point in the questionnaire.

In modern times, it seems that the fifth point became precisely the age. Today, a person in years old is a Jew. In addition, a non -partisan Jew.

***

Interocation relationships at all times were problematic. Both in a narrowly practical, family-living, and in a global-historical sense.

Frighting between fathers and children is ordinary. They are, as it were, in the nature of biological and social development. That is why they are worthy reflected in myths, legends and in literary classics. In Soviet times, Oedipov complex was transformed into Pavlikov Complex.

The boy Morozov had a forerunner in the Russian revolutionary democratic literature-a young man by the name of Vlasov, who, being Pavlik, also raised his hand to his father. True, it did not come to the personal plan.

It came to the revolution and civil war.

And subsequently, another was Pavlik-Great Martyr-Korchagin.

What a fatal name in Russia, if you recall the fate of Paul I ...

There is a joke in the line. The tour is brought into an exemplary boarding school. The director drives her along the floors. "Here we have obedient guys, on the second floor - undergoing, on the third - hooligans." - "And on the fourth?" - "And on the fourth - Pavliks."

“Pavliks” is an important resource of any large-scale socio-public turmoil. Another thing is that certainly the forefathers of terror, revolutions, riots and civil wars use it in their interests. Grandfather Budyonny, grandfather Lenin, grandfather Mao ...

Eisenstein, whom the party once presented a plot about Pavlik Morozov, who rebelled against the “Mirotas fathers”, barely plunged into it, discovered a moral (if you like, immoral) abyss. Hence the terribly tense expression of his "Luga Rogin". The party, as the footage saw, so immediately covered the picture and ordered to wash off Eisenstein Pavlik.

... The time of stable despotism and the population has lost to it is inevitably accompanied by the oppression from the fathers. Family traditions of Russian autocrats are indicative in this regard. There is a detailed - one on the other. Someone has bloody boys in their eyes. Someone in a dream are ruined parents.

In revolutionary eras, when the world becomes upside down, children are already terrorizing parents. And they teach them the mind. And the whole truth of life is on their side. And strength and security forces - even more so.

Soviet films about the young heroes of the Civil War (“Red Devils” and “Elusive Avengers”) are impressed precisely on the “Pavlik complex”. As, however, the whole cultural revolution in China.

Once I asked a friend of the Kitian: how did our social camp neighbors manage to make such a sharp jump into the market? Almost the next day after the death of Mao. The answer for me was somewhat unexpected: thanks to the generation of hunweibins, which was scored by the older generation of party bureaucrats with sticks.

On the other hand, what is unexpected in this? About the same manner of the peasant Sovdepa became an industrial power.

Apparently, every “big leap” is accompanied by a bloody exacerbation of relations between children and fathers. And one more thing: he will be accompanied by sacrifices from one side or the other - depending on where the wheel of history turns.

***

In stable times, everything does not look so frightening, except for the excesses when adults kill children, and children-skinheads score those who are suitable for their fathers to death.

Excesses scare, and processes are alarming.

We are inclined today by the generational problems to reduce to social: they say, how to provide an elderly class, worthy of old age and no less worthy funeral ...

... I remember how enthusiasm Andrei Malakhov in his author's program demonstrated 104-year-old Boris Efimov. The surviving caricaturist remembered Stalin, could talk loudly and even dance. He was applauded by the tribe of young, unfamiliar.

Recently, leafing through the pages of the Internet, now and then you come across videos, where elderly citizens are dancing young and Rock and Roll dance to young people. The most spectacular was the number where the old woman with a face extended with deep wrinkles, at some competition, was dazzled with a young man something acrobatic. The audience applauded standing.

Old age in the 21st century became an attraction? ..

If only by an attraction. And then, in other social and social conflicts, it serves as a resource of demagogic speculation. As, for example, in the case of a survey of citizens about the blockade of Leningrad. With the help of a limited but well -organized contingent of pensioners, the campaign of strangulation of the private television channel “Rain” began and continues.

Over the course of historical time, it turns out that not all “Pavliks” burn in the fire of revolutions and other social disasters. Others survive, live to gray hair and again become bargaining pawns. The map of aged “Pavliks” is often played in political games in the struggle for ratings and, therefore, for power.

***

Still, I looked at Brockhaus and Efron for the word "old age". There are several common phrases. At the end, it is attributed: “See. "death"".

Shklovsky died at the 91st year of his life. Before that, he managed to compose the “energy of error”, make a script for the multi-part “Don Quixote”, star in a television memoir film, consisting of two parts, “Once upon a time.” He also argued a lot with his followers - structuralists. In articles, of course. Dragged with his contemporaries. In private conversations. He was surprised at the posthumous glory of his younger contemporary - Mikhail Bulgakov. Patiently, without irritation and condescendingly, was waiting for the death of Soviet power. “I live,” he used to say, “out of curiosity.” And he loved to repeat: "In Russia we must live for a long time."

Mikhail Zhvanetsky, jealous in the posthumous glory of his friend Vysotsky, spoke out in the spirit that if he had not guessed the devil, Zhvanetsky, to die early, he would have to live for a long time.

Another thing is that in Russia, no matter how much live, the impression is that you are watching all horror films that sometimes mix. At a protest rally against the closure of hospitals and maternity hospitals, I saw a poster with the inscription: “Close old hospitals - open new cemeteries!”

Mikhal Mikhalych Zhvanetsky, on the way from the airport, to his cottage, noticed another poster: “Be patient. The inconvenience is temporary, and amenities are forever! ”