The development of proper speech

How the real problems of Russian culture differ from the problems that the newly created society of Russian literature is going to solve

Let's talk about good. In the column hall of the House of Unions, the first congress of the Society of Russian Literature was held at the highest level, with the Patriarch by the helm and Putin on the rostrum, and no matter how much we are used to ironicizing any initiative of the current government - this is really good news. A public organization that will facilitate the study of the Russian language, monitor the teaching of philological disciplines, engage in support and promotion of Russian literature around the world-as Goethe Institute or the Servantes Institute do-well, is it not fine. The cases of teaching are really bad, a couple of years ago I had to underestimate a minimum rating on the exam in Russian, reading the younger generation is not that it is torn, everything that the state can do on this topic is a ridiculous advertising campaign “to read fashionable”; But, perhaps, if you fall into the whole Russian world, it is still possible to preserve the language as a living organism and return the child (and at the same time some adults) to the book. In the end, this is the revival of a long -standing tradition: a society of lovers of Russian literature at the University of Moscow arose more than two hundred years ago, his chairmen were Khomyakov, Aksakov and Bunin, already in the post -Soviet time he was tried to reanimate by academician Likhachev, but the participation of the president and the patriarch was a more significant guarantee that the case will go. It is interesting that one word fell from the name of the organization, and if Bunin and Aksakov were listed only to “lovers of literature”, then Zhirinovsky, sitting on the front row of the current congress, can safely declare: “Russian literature - c'est moi”.

 ** Paragraphs about the need to revive Russian literature - and near the news about how the premises of the Dante library are transmitted to the Investigative Committee **

I read the speech of the Patriarch at the congress of society and do not resolutely find anything that I could argue with. It is necessary to raise the prestige of the teacher's profession. No need to be afraid of the variability of school programs. Culture is not a warehouse of information, but a flexible and complex organized mechanism of cognition (this is a quote from Lotman). The greatness of Russian literature is that it is able to invest in the hearts of truth, goodness and love reading the light. No, though any reasonable person is ready to subscribe to this. But the words, no matter how weighty they endow their speaker's status, create a somewhat simplified picture, I would like to add another dimension to it. For example, the thesis about the prestige of the teacher’s profession is the numbers next to it: how much literature is received somewhere in Transbaikalia, what is the share of expenses for education in the budgets of recent years and how they are struggling under the articles that each of the listeners of the Patriarch’s speech, starting with Zhirinovsky in the front row, in order to change this situation in this room, then they had it). Or more: “The prestige of teachers should be compared with the prestige of scientists, astronauts, athletes”-and a nearby rating of influence, how much these three professions are comparable in present-day Russia in respect, income and capabilities for career growth. “Culture is a flexible and complex organized mechanism of cognition” - and a number of quotes from a variety of Mincitum colleges about the need to create a single literature textbook, approving the only right view of this canon and introduce responsibility for the improper interpretation of the classics. Paragraphs about the need to revive Russian literature - and next to the news about how the premises of the Dante library are transmitted to the Investigative Committee, how the writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya doused pseudopatriotic activists, how they increase the rents of bookstores, how budget money for patriotic film adaptations is distributed - and as the only successful film adaptation of Russian classics becomes the years The series by Tolstoy’s novel, shot by the BBC Corporation. The fall in the prestige of Russian literature also lies in the fact that even the most beautiful words cease to mean anything: if people who perceive literature as the ideological department of the police department, who have proved their lives, have been signed under them that they choose between Peter and Leo Tolstoy, without hesitation, who build their own public performances for a mixture of thieves' jargon and the Soviet novoy-let them not be of noble aspirations. Believe. And the loss of one word from the name of the organization does not look very random: as you want, but this is not love.

Photo: Anna Zsakova/Press Service of the State Duma of the Russian Federation/TASS