The man of the book

About the legacy of the translator, critic, poet and sociologist Boris Dubin

Borges translator, researcher of Soviet man, hero of literary work Boris Dubin and his heritage. The collection “ On People and Books ” edited by Anton Dubin .

“I have not read Russian literature”: as a boy from an ordinary family became the best translator in Russia. Dubin as an analyst of the form and political semantics of the text. Project of the theory of culture Boris Dubin: create a non -existent one. Central Europe and Latin America as images of meanings for Russia.

“Ticket price” and ways of the life of an intellectual: the multiplicity of times and places or their absence. Participation in institutions and avoiding them.

Discuss the poet, translator Alexander Skidan ; literary critic, translator Sergei Zenkin ; Culturologist Julia Leaderman , literary critic Mark Lipovetsky .

Elena Fanailova is running

Elena Fanailova: Boris Dubin was a grandiose sociologist who, together with Yuri Levada and Leo Gudkov, actually predicted the development of the mass psychology of the post -Soviet man, which we now have in the form of reactions to ideological stuffing, and that caused some criticism of younger colleagues 10 years ago. But today I would like to talk about the great translator and great cultural figure Boris Dubin. His book “About People and Books” was published - through the efforts of his son Anton, who was its editor. It consists of a club, he did not have time to complete this book. I would like us to talk today about the club-literature, a club-cultural, a club-a big thinker who tried to instill a European tradition here. I propose to see a fragment from the speech of Boris Dubin in the program "Freedom in Clubs", which was dedicated to the image of reading. Dubin actually repeats the story with which this book begins, this is a story about growing up through a book, about how a boy from a very simple family becomes a passionate book.

Boris Dubin: Relations with the book, and relations with the library - this is life. Mom brought me to the district library when I was five years old, and since then I have not left the library throughout my life. And in this, as it seems to me now, there was some drama. In a sense, I was a man without cultural ancestors, my parents are employees, people born in the village and came to the city. Accordingly, their task was to adapt, and culture issues arise later. In cultural terms, I myself am my ancestor. In a sense, the book, the library became my ancestors. Further 15 years of work in the Lenin Library, then three more years of work in the Book Chamber, and then the sociology of reading already in VTIME and the Levada Center. As for reading itself, since there were no cultural ancestors, there was no circle that could advise and indicate something myself, and then the path was rather crooked. Parents loved solid publications. And what was more solid than the Great Soviet Encyclopedia? And I rummaged in all this, and there were mank words: a decadent, decadent moods, fell into mysticism ... And that’s it, I immediately took it on a pencil and in huge barn notebooks wrote down a list of world literature, where there were decadents. What definitely was not there, and what I did not read until the moment when I had to enter the philological faculty - except for the school, I did not read Russian literature at all. I believed that it is never necessary to read it and there is no need. The first book in the Lenin Library was read at 12 years old, there was a children's hall, then there was a youth hall, and then the common hall. By that time, lists of world literature were already compiled. I arrived there with a 12-year-old boy with my friend in the classroom, he asked there, or something, Walter Scott , and I was an escort . The young man, who served us, tensed a little and says: "What?" - "For example," Cleaned Prometheus "... And this was the first book read in the Lenin Library.

Elena Fanailova: Here is such a living club with his inimitable humor, the wonderful manner of the story. And in the book "On People and Books" is there anything that showed his features in a new way? What of his manner of cultural policy manifested itself in this book?

Alexander Skidan

Alexander Skidan: For me, two texts were a surprise - about Vadim Kozov , this is the greatest translator and poet. And in them - a projection of himself on a close, senior colleague, also underestimated as a poet who quit poetry, who then returned to her, who did a huge translation work, who first presented the Russian reader Rene Shara , for whom there was no context in Russia at all. It seems to me that the club in these two texts is one, as it were, a collective necrologist, and the second-the preceding publication in Memoriam in a “new review”, pronounces tragic things when what you do does not coincide with time, is ahead of or falls somewhere else, and one, two, three generations are required to realize this work as primary and heroic in their own way. Kozlova managed to make a lot of important before his departure to France ... Say, Tom about the art of Valerie , prepared by him, more than half translated, this is a colossal event in the 70s, this is a table book of several generations of humanities, poets and translators. At the same time, after leaving for France, the goat, as it were, disappears from the cultural landscape of Russia. And now he returns with great difficulty. Although his books were published in the UFO and in other publishers, the location was still lost. And in these two texts, Dubin tries this fate of the sacrifice of himself, as the author, by a messenger mission of self -abuse and dissolution in the one you translate. This tragic note, it seems to me, is cornerstone in this book.

Elena Fanailova: She is characteristic of most of his texts, he looks at what is happening with the French poets of the twentieth century, with his beloved Latin American. And almost every time he repeats that there is no context, there is no context, there is little context, the book is poorly read in Russia. And he himself creates the context.

Sergey Zenkin

Sergey Zenkin: For me, this collection of articles of the club is a very personal reading, and not only because I am mentioned there, but because there is a large and very meticulous review of the club for one of my books, and because in other texts I see traces of a less obvious dialogue between us. Say, from the newly mentioned article about the goat I learned the words "work for the context" and made them a title of my review of this book. The article on the literary critic of Samaria Velikovsky , one of the best in Soviet times, specialists in French literature. This text, at least in the first part, is overheating, re -prompts the problems that I set in my article about Velikovsky, and Dubin mentions this, he read it, of course. This is a kind of counterpoint of two texts. Not to mention the fact that Velikovsky himself was an involuntary intermediary of our acquaintance. In the early 80s, when I worked in the publishing house "Fiction", I was introduced to me there with a man named Boris Dubin, who was then engaged in the editing of translations for the anthology "Poetry of France. XIX-XX centuries", compiled by Velikovsky. Our dialogue, partly oral, friendly, partly printed, demonstrated two different positions of the intellectual, intellectual in modern Russian history. I always thought of myself as a systemic person working in existing institutions, and Dubin felt the incomplete affiliation that he spoke of. And today, a few years after the death of the club, in the era of the mass decomposition of official system institutions, I feel, if not a losing, then losing. Today, the problem of rebooting, reformatting the Russian intelligentsia is again, and whether it will turn out is unknown.

It changed radically from hobby for hobby, from a reading circle to a reading circle

Julia Leaderman: I was a student of Dubina and Gudkova. They worked with a small group at the Institute of European Cultures, led the subject "Sociology of Culture", and there was a familiarization of us, students, to a rather risky behavior, to risky thinking. If we talk about this book and in general about the figure of Boris Vladimirovich, then I waited very much to her exit. Boris Vladimirovich was printed a lot, talked a lot, performed a lot. A lot was said about the club as an intellectual with wide erudition, he all knew what others did not know, and introduced him to this. But I see this process completely different, and in this book it is also clearly visible. He did not know, he recognized. And this is so dramatic from what people usually do. Because he could not know yesterday, but today to speak about it.

Alexander Skidan: Yes, and it was a challenge for him. And this willingness to respond, openness to this challenge is an amazing feature.

Elena Fanailova: He, of course, was a member of the literary corporation. He was a member of the editorial board of the magazine "Foreign Literature", which publishes a selection of this book. He was a member of the jury of prizes, including Bely award , this is a prize working on modern letters of writing, these are modernist practices.

Julia Leaderman

Julia Leaderman: When I began to watch how he writes in this book about people, it turned out that he would concentrate on those qualities that he does not have. This is always both recognition and increment. My thesis lies in the fact that Dubin is not alone. There were a lot of clubs, he constantly cheated on himself, even his habits. It changed radically from a passion for hobby, from a circle of reading to a reading circle. At some point, he began to listen to certain music, and this became his structure of thinking.

Elena Fanailova: Yes, he became interested in modern music largely thanks to her son.

Julia Leaderman: When there was poetry, it was a completely different circle, and before that sociology. He increased himself that he learned what was not in him, from other people.

Elena Fanailova: I propose to see a small fragment from the performance of Mark Lipovetsky, literary critic and philologist. He talks about the critical method of the club.

Mark Lipovetsky

Mark Lipovetsky: Dubin was striking: when his flair to the literary word, nevertheless he is a poet and a magnificent translator, a person who feels literature as a real professional, he knew how to very subtly, very individually (this is a method that, unfortunately, cannot be repetition) to combine the analysis of the form with penetration into its political semantics. This is not about direct political content in the text, not about the thematization of politics, we are talking about form policy. In this sense, he turned out to be ahead of so many colleagues working on the field of criticism, literary criticism, culturalists and so on. And I now understand that this is the vector that can serve as the point of unification of different cultural forces. Because I hear conversations, read the texts that go in this direction, and they appear from different camps. Yes, everyone complains that we have a politicized life, a sharp politicization has occurred, and this, of course, is a stick about the two -edges. But politicization suggests not only that we are thinking about politics, telling dreams about politics, and that it is necessary to combine literary creativity, cinema creation, in general any creativity with politics precisely at the level of form. Form is a way of thinking.

Alexander Skidan: Form policy is the theme of the POSE , Walter Benjamin , Roland Bart . The choice of form, technology, architectonics, the choice of generally modality of the statement is a political choice for the writer, for critic, for the translator. Here, the club for me appears precisely as a modern politician who is not just trying to instill in what was not, but a programmatic, political way, as a strategist, builds a line in translations and in his ideas of these translations. Partly fills the gap in the Russian literary, poetic context, partly imposes on this context its modernist agenda. This is a policy. The authors he represents are authors with a certain policy of form. Modernism calls into question the condition for the production of a literary, poetic statement, that is, itself, including the institutional framework and foundations of such a statement. And this is that in Russia, for historical reasons, it was chopped off. Yes, we have magnificent literary examples of modernism, but reflection did not grown to their understanding, to theoretization.

Sergey Zenkin: The book of the club is called "About people and books", and for me the question of the form here is more associated not with the artistic form, but with the form of life of people, writers, intellectuals, which, as the form of artistic behavior, is only partly chosen by the author himself, the person himself. In addition to this initial, basic disagreement of the intellectual time with the time of current history, there are also factors of the history of the twentieth century, which too contributed to this discrepancy, too much defeated the life of people. And this acquired the most terrible, ugly forms, for example, the temporality of life in a concentration camp, which is mentioned in several articles of the club. A time that is bothering into a meaningless, blind death. A more prosperous, but still a very sad option is the time of an emigrant whose life is broken between his crossings.

Elena Fanailova: And these are also the heroes of the club - emigrants, wanderers, people who have lost their homeland.

This is a special case of a general discrepancy in time between a writing person and reality

Sergey Zenkin: And even people who live a more or less prosperous life in their country still do not feel the inclusion of surrounding institutions, social structures, he also experiences this brokenness of time. I think that the constant pessimistic experience of Dubin of historical time, when he repeats that Russia profiled its chance to become different, lost the opportunity to change in the 90s, this is a special case of a general divergence in time between writing and reality, for which, unfortunately, our history gives an additional reason.

Elena Fanailova: This is Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov that in Russia, at least four times, the first of which begins under Ivan the Terrible , and the latter ends at the end of the 21st century.

Julia Leaderman: In general, there are no articles written about formalists, they do not appear here as heroes.

Elena Fanailova : Mark and says that this is a way that cannot be repeated, he does it in some other way.

Julia Leaderman: I had another metaphor to connect people and books. Boris Vladimirovich talked a lot about asceticism. In general, he really did not like asceticism, spoke out against asceticism precisely in the anti -Soviet way, what was imposed, proletarian revolutionary asceticism, understood as an endless simplification of life. At the same time, Dubin himself was an ascetic. He limited his life to his text, that is, he reads and writes.

Elena Fanailova: For our happiness, he also talked a lot.

Alexander Skidan: By the way, in the book there is a section of oral speeches, for which I must say many thanks to Anton and remove the hat that he deciphered them. And these oral speeches, improvised, but prepared, separate genre, where Dubin was a virtuoso.

We recorded Anton Dubin , to whom we all pay tribute to the editor and worker, who collected this book from the father’s frame and supplemented with notes, archives, decodings ...

Anton Dubin: Of course, I am close to not one or two people, there are still slightly more of them. First of all, this, of course, is Sergey Morozov , about which in this book there is a text called "Trace". Sergey Morozov is a wonderful poet, my father’s closest friend ... Except Morozov himself, this, of course, is Choran , like a total pessimistic person, and at the same time frantic in his words. My father, as soft in communication, albeit a fundamental and firm person in his views, sometimes translated such harsh things as Choran. I am not risking to interpret the life and work of my father, for me this is a rather complicated genre, but I think that this was overcoming myself. This was done in such a way that this book was as follows. For me, this book is a continuation of a conversation with my father.

Elena Fanailova: Another with a capital letter, as a philosophical category, was an extremely important point for a club, a constant idea.

Sergey Zenkin: Another is the main guarantee of any vitality of culture, a living dialogue. "Dialogue with another" is the name of the first autobiographical text of the book. And in the absence of a direct dialogue, the fact that one of the articles of this book says, which says that a deceased person goes into an impersonal area of culture, into the field of heritage, with which the dialogue is already truly impossible, you can only imagine it, reconstruct in memory. The task of cultural, research, cultural discourse, which was engaged in Boris Dubin, was precisely in constantly supporting this dialogue. Given this otherness of the other, its irrespective to his own ideas about it, a living culture is supported.

Elena Fanailova: Another for him is also a dead, dead, with whom the dialogue in the space of culture continues. And this is also one of his constant thoughts about how this dialogue can be continued. These are his articles about Latin American authors whom he translated, where the cult of death is an extremely important part of culture, return through death. And he had an interest in the culture of a conversation about the Holocaust, about Shoa, which he also tried to show here.

Julia Leaderman: This conversation began for me in 2005, in connection with watching Lancman's film "Shoa" . Then there were translations, and Dubin repeated that the conversation about Shoa, this event itself is not a historical event, not an event of Jewish history, not even an event of European history, but this is the philosophy of modernity.

Elena Fanailova: I would say, not the philosophy of Art Nouveau itself, but the result of the philosophy of modern - the ideological conflict brought to the absurdity associated with the reorganization of the world. I understood the interpretation of the club.

Sergey Zenkin: A special type of human experience, especially terrible, maybe especially unacceptable, but at the same time instructive, this is not a tragic existence experience. He mentions, it seems, somewhere, retelling to Georgio Agamben that the death of a person in a concentration camp is cannot be martyrdom. We are used to perceiving people who die for a violent death as martyrs. It turns out that there is the possibility of mass death of people who are not tragic, in which there is no pathos, and any pathos will be a betrayal in relation to their real experience. Dubin never wrote about fighters, about warriors who die with a tragic death. This is a special, modern type of public experience, existential experience, which is not accompanied by a pathetic experience of the tragedy.

This remains a challenge for the current Russian intelligentsia - will we be able to not forget the club

Alexander Skidan: I prepared in the New Poetry series a book of poems in the prose of Alexander Ulanov , they are tied to visual experience, there are three cycles - a description of his audience experience of looking at the paintings of artists. And I thought: who can write a preface to this book in order to present this experience not as marginal, but as being built into the modernist paradigm? After all, poems in prose are an even more marginal genre than, for example, 25 years ago Verlibr. And I immediately thought about the club. But Dubin never wrote about poems in prose. I thought he would refuse, but suggested, and he instantly simply said: "Yes, I am interested!"

Boris Dubin (from the archive): They chose modernism. And the echoes of modernism in large literature, which included the American one, there are echoes of this in East European literature. As Britanish , who translated the Americans and Poles, or Solonovich , who translated the Italians and a little Greeks. And this thing worked, and this hurt us, then readers who begin to write something, translate something, and such a complex line was still part of the culture. It’s not indifferent to me that this was connected with the translation, since I started with the fact that I did not read Russian literature, and was doomed, apparently, to become a translator. This was part of the culture, and it seems to me that some difficult game of different forces is that we went through the Blv , at the same time this modernism, which our older brothers introduced, went inside this. To try-maybe Eliot will be able, at least one poem, at least some ... Pound at least insert a piece of ... which also had a rather peculiar attitude to the classic, it was such a modernism that was not anti-Classics, but which puts into question and is all the time in a conversation. This is a classic line, this is a modernist line ... And now I am what is being done in the West, and partly what is being done in Eastern Europe, even more interesting is the third line - I would call it a line of some new barbarism. These are people who have come from completely different places and cultures and now either continue to work in their own language, or work in two languages, as in Germany, in German and Greek, in German and Turkish, in German and Serbian, or go to German, but use it not like the Germans themselves. They came from countries where most often there is no literature at all, and if it is, then there is no classics in it. And this is an amazingly interesting experience - to make literature that is not designed for school, for teaching, for classics, for comments, but to do a completely different thing. And the connection of these three things, the tension between them is just working here.

Sergey Zenkin: The club has a good statement in relation to the intelligentsia: "I do not completely reject it, and it does not quite reject me." I think this remains a challenge for the current Russian intelligentsia - will we be able to not forget the club.

Alexander Skidan: When you read these texts in a row, the accuracy of choosing nodal moments from this book or from the fate that we are talking about amazes. Say, the decoded oral speech about my book “Summe of Poetics”-there are three sections, different topics, Dubin chooses three or four nodal topics and ties them on political issues-about the position of the intellectual in general, about our attitude to the modernist tradition. This is a very subtle optics, not on the fact that Boris himself is interested in, but what goes in the book with a red thread, sometimes implicitly. He was, of course, a master of close reading.

Julia Leaderman: We are dealing with a book in which there is a draft theory of culture, I would say, but I don’t like the word “project”, I rather like the word “worker” from Kobrin’s preface, because today the word “work” is not in honor or occupied by another political agenda. I think work is very clearly visible here. In general, the idea of such intellectual work is extremely occupied by me. There is an example of an employee, there is an example of constant translations, openness, dialogue, all these forms, oral, written-it was work on some great theory of modern culture in Russian. And the question is how not to forget, turn on as much as possible and do something.

Elena Fanailova: When I was preparing this conversation, I thought that we would talk about the hero of labor, about the worker of Modern, about the person who makes his culture project, about my beloved Boris Vladimirovich Dubin, who for many years was a partner of the Freedom in Clubs, and not just a great sociologist and great cultural citizen. And the most unexpected for me in this conversation was that he was a man who was not afraid of anyone and change anything. He went into new fields for himself, he opened them for himself, and he changed endlessly. And this quality is amazing for a person, it is akin to the curiosity of the genius, which Jean Coctele said: "The main quality of genius is curiosity."