Black-Bagolian butterfly of the heart

Military doctor, emigrant, Russian poet: says Israeli Mikhail Gendelev (1998)

Archival project "Radio Liberty this week 20 years ago." The most interesting and significant from the Archive of the Radio Freedom of twenty years ago. Incomplete story. Still living hopes. Could Russia go the other way?

The conversation in the Prague Studio of Radio Liberty with one of the founders of Israeli literature in Russian. The author and presenter Ivan Tolstoy. For the first time on the air of March 14, 1998.

Ivan Tolstoy : Our program will begin with a conversation with the guest of Prague Mikhail Gendeleev, a former Leningrad, and now - the Jerusalem poet, who has been living and printing in Israel for twenty years.

Mikhail Gendeleev :

On such days
at the bottom of which
Darkness

Already not
metaphor
akin

These days
giggle with the mind
Write "Works and Days"

look
Like black
to the light

Flying
and white on the dark
Moths

to learn silence by ear
which is not
Here on Earth

But
There is
At the end of the line

About us
Ada of the voice
Already audible

And us
They are already called
by names

But to death
We do not remember
Our dreams

And sleeping to death
already
We do not believe in dreams.

Ivan Tolstoy : Mikhail Samuilovich, the first question is biographical: how many years have you already lived in Israel?

Mikhail Gendeleev : 21 years.

Ivan Tolstoy : So you emigrated to ...?

Mikhail Gendeleev : I repatriated on May 19, 1977.

Ivan Tolstoy : That is, soon almost 21 years.

Mikhail Gendeleev : Yes, and this is very curious, because, as I suddenly understood, more than half of my conscious life, because I believe that a person’s conscious life begins at 17 years old, passed outside of Russia, let’s say so.

Ivan Tolstoy : Mikhail Samuilovich, did you leave the poet?

Mikhail Gendeleev : By self -awareness or by teasing from friends?

Ivan Tolstoy : By self -awareness, of course.

Mikhail Gendeleev : I suppose, yes, but probably I left such a Leningrad poet, but I was not quite.

Ivan Tolstoy : And who was your literary, poetic environment in his youth, in Leningrad in the 1970s?

Mikhail Gendeleev : This is such a second call of the Leningrad school, let's say, Shirali, Krivulin, all this Shpana Leningradskaya, this was my environment. But I see them now quite often when I come to St. Petersburg.

Ivan Tolstoy : Can I ask you to restore the picture of literary Jerusalem, because you were in Jerusalem, as I understand it, 1977?

Mikhail Gendelev on "Aksenov-Fest-2007"

Mikhail Gendeleev : On the one hand, it is quite dull, if we talk about quantitative circumstances, on the other hand, it was a curious period. In Russian, many also wrote quite talented people who later left Israel. Israel turned out to be for most writers of my wave of repatriation to the place, to put it mildly, not coming to creativity. These were persons. In Israel, Henri Volokhonsky lived at that time, in Israel was written by Leonid Girshovich, a wonderful prose writer, now living in Germany, in Israel, Miloslavsky wrote. Nevertheless, it was the second variety of writers in relation to those who went to exile. Israel did not attract high-class writers, let's say so.

"... the Russian writer, from my point of view, has nothing to do in Israel."

Ivan Tolstoy : is it understandable now? Now is it understandable from our days?

Mikhail Gendeleev : Question - in what language are you writing? Who do you think yourself? For whom do you write? And not only the issue of the topic. This is a whole complex, including certain ethics, a certain moral, a certain set of priorities. And, as a result, the following thing arises: the Russian writer, from my point of view, has nothing to do in Israel. The Russian writer with the reflexes of the Russian writer, the Russian writer writing for the Russian audience, for Russians who write on relevant topics for Russia, breathing Russian culture as a culture of the only and universal. Israel is not a place for a Russian writer. From my point of view, the Russian writer is a person who writes in Russian, writes for a Russian reader, for Russia, writes on the topics of Russia, on topics that are understandable and relevant in Russia, and calls himself a Russian writer.

Ivan Tolstoy : Let’s agree that this will be the definition of a Russian writer expressed by Mikhail Gendeleev. I wanted to ask about your own literary path. Now, if we take almost twenty years spent in Jerusalem, what are the main milestones for you, how did your self -awareness change as a poet, as a writer?

Mikhail Gendeleev : I arrived at the young Leningrad poet. And so he understood himself. Then a certain ethical inconvenience arose. It is quite difficult in Jerusalem, in the city in which there are so many sky and so few people, write poetry in Russian and understand himself in this language. I once even wrote a poem that ends with the words "our Lord does not know in Russian/and does not remember the Russians." Later, I somehow suddenly discovered that in the literature there are no main managers of some literature, and generally senior comrades, and you are your own master. Once the writer Zinik wrote a very good essay, the most remarkable in which was the name-"emigration as a stylistic technique" or something like that. I would say that the ideal form of the writer’s existence as such, in absolute value, in the module, that is, without definition, Russian-not Russian, this is just the situation of the foreign environment, that is, to be in the aquarium of another language. And, secondly, one on one with some very simple things-with heaven, with God, with war, with death, with love, with such anthological things. This is in abundance in Israel. Things such as, say, war, and I had to visit the quality of a military doctor during a military operation in Lebanon, not a month, not two or three I spent such an experiences as a military doctor as a military doctor, and not very toy war, as if to tell you, they did not pass for nothing. In general, I would say, Jerusalem experiences, one-on-one experiences with the Lord God, and the experiences of genuine loneliness, and loneliness is a serious thing, and some idea of itself as a non-Russian writer, for example, because I never believed that even some kind of general cultural platform would arise and did not unfold in this direction for almost 15 years, so that all these are essential things. And since those in literature - once, two and expected - love, war, death and enough - then the experience of Jerusalem for me personally precious. Israel somehow supplies topics. The situation is “nothing to write” in Israel is excluded.

Ivan Tolstoy : Do you, interestingly, feel like a Russian poet, a Russian -speaking poet or poet of Israel?

Mikhail Gendeleev : The question is, no matter how ridiculous, almost fundamental. I do not consider myself a Russian poet, I consider myself an Israeli poet writing in Russian. I believe that this is a little incomprehensible to a person for whom Russia is a universe, but still I do not consider myself a Russian poet, because I do not write for Russia, I do not write about Russia and I don’t consider myself Russians, I think, probably, not as Russian.

Ivan Tolstoy : Mikhail Samuilovich, but is your own sensation of two language elements for your own creativity interesting? Could you show what breaks, what pressure, what is the tension of the word, the poetic line ....

Mikhail Gendelev : Hebrew?

Ivan Tolstoy : Hebrew - as a particular. In general, the foreign language surrounding your Russian universe inside, the Russian verbal universe?

Mikhail Gendeleev : It is more likely that other speech becomes a white noise behind the walls of consciousness. And for considerations of certain hygiene it is impossible to live in bilingual, especially to the poet. This grace of a different speech, the dynamics of a different speech, entering, conflicting and dancing with the Russian, I would not call it a positive for the writer - to let out a different speech if you sculpt from the language or consciousness associated with the language. I would say that if you perceive a different language as a silence - then yes.

Ivan Tolstoy : How do you perceive it?

Mikhail Gendeleev : I perceive it as silence until you have to use this language in everyday life or even think on it sometimes, as it happens if you enter into some cultural or simply household interactions. But it is impossible to exist in the house of another language.

"... The experience of Jerusalem is personally precious to me. Israel somehow supplies topics. The situation" has nothing to write "in Israel" excluded "

Ivan Tolstoy : Mikhail Samuilovich, this is such a question. 20 years have passed that you are in Israel. What is happening now, in 1998, in the spring? Is it easier to publish books, is it more interesting to publish them? How has the quality of literary life in Jerusalem changed?

Mikhail Gendeleev : The quality of literary life in Jerusalem has changed fundamentally with the advent of the second wave of repatriation, repatriation of the 90s. Here I can almost say the word "emigration", which very successfully overwhelmed the wave of Russian-speaking repatriations of the 70s and absorbed it. Now in Israel, almost a million people speak Russian. Agree, the figure is monstrous. Secondly, with completely different dominants of behavior, completely different habits, completely different reflexes, completely different priorities. And what could be understood in due time as a kind of cultural phenomenon, subculture, Russian-speaking literature of Israel to date simply ceased to exist, because in a certain sense we have become a branch of Russia, in a cultural sense, its colony. That is, this is the interaction of a colony and metropolis. Judge, three television channels broadcast in Russian, all three are Moscow. Somewhere about thirty newspapers are in Russian in a common circulation, I'm afraid that already approaching Hebrew-language. Russian theaters do not crawl out of Israel, tours are continuous. In the Federation of Israeli writers, 500-600 people write in Russian. People who call themselves simply Russian writers, Russian-speaking writers or simply writers, wholesale, head, with graphomaniacs, I think, five or six thousand. The circulation of books in Russian is completely Russian.

Ivan Tolstoy : Well, it would seem, the luxury, it would seem, is the situation that, like air, was not enough during the years of your youth?

Mikhail Gendeleev : I would not call this situation luxurious. You see, I also had some habits and ideas about how I should live in twenty -one years. I am not enthusiastic about the emergence of another form of Russian existence, Russian mentality or simply Russian existence in Israel.

Ivan Tolstoy : Mikhail Samuilovich, are you complaining, are you grumbling?

Mikhail Gendeleev : I do not welcome it with hymns, singing and scattering bread ears. I just don't like it. I’m not a fan of this style of behavior in culture, I’m not a fan of a certain kind, say, aesthetics that are brought up, I am not enthusiastic about the criteria and the quality of the same “culture” or the very literature that exists in Israel, I do not like it.

Ivan Tolstoy : What do you like in Russian literature?

Mikhail Gendeleev : In Russian literature, I like the acoustics of the Russian language. In Russian literature, I like the opportunity in this language to fix some things that are generally non -fixed in the world. In the literature, I like refunds to very simple topics and do not like it when these topics with the child fly out somewhere. Therefore, the system of postmodernism itself depresses, in which most of my colleagues are drilling, where it is simply forgotten, in fact, why a person takes a pen and why he writes. And it seems that we live all forever, which, unfortunately, is not true. As for the fact that Israel is good in the same Israel, Israel is good to write in it. Write in general. Secondly, Israel is good in the weather. Thirdly, I believe that, in principle, this is one of those situations that are useful to a somewhat amorphous consciousness among the Russian writer or Russian poet. Israel is useful as a certain metaphysical school of loneliness.

"... it seems that we live all forever, which, unfortunately, does not correspond to reality"

Ivan Tolstoy : And, in conclusion of the conversation, verses in the author's reading.

Mikhail Gendeleev : September 1982.

I

Our Lord does not look at Earth
Not
Interesting to him
How
Greens slowly writhe
in colorless smoke in the sun
And the tanks are leisurely
go down in the thrust of stupid
In a calm measured rhythm of prayer
To the bay
like on
Watering

II

Our Lord is likely
He
Blind-and-Glupo
dumb
Dandelion landing in the wind
draws into the sky home
Blows is drawn
From even
Earth
crazy
the land of our lunar battal landscapes
Especially if from the hill

III

God
What do you dream
As long as
Coal by hand
I
Fill in the page
All butterflies and moths
And all about love and immortality
A
Not about death and death
and black-bug butterfly
Tmmers is ready to fly

IV
Not
The page will turn over
A
It will break out with meat
"Oh!"
In an instant battle on the border
White day in my eyes
with a squint by all the more narrow
The more closely directed
Our Lord
Our Lord does not know in Russian
And Russians do not remember names.