Translated material
Summer is over after all
Philosophy of childhood in science fiction writers
In 1991, Viktor Pelevin published a short story, “ The Ontology of Childhood ,” in his first collection, “The Blue Lantern.” It’s not really a story at all, but rather a kind of quasi-philosophical essay — there’s no action in it, just “Plato’s cave” revealed to a young prisoner. “Ontology” is somewhat reminiscent of Alexander Pyatigorsky’s “novel, The Philosophy of One Alley” (1989), also written from the perspective of a “grown-up” philosophizing boy. In the preface to it, Pyatigorsky himself rightly warns the reader that he is not a writer at all, but a philosopher (“a bad philosopher, but still a philosopher,” the author immediately stipulates, apparently avoiding the reproach of immodesty). In essence, any truly interesting text often turns out to be, in some sense, exploitation and a little disingenuous - and any truly interesting writer (or philosopher) is inevitably accused of some kind of "defect" by numerous ill-wishers - and this is a common place, because everything in literature is initially born in one way or another at the junction of different realities and meanings and thanks to some risky experiment, for many "bordering on vulgarity". And so the creator of philosophizing chickens, sheds, werewolves, game characters, butterflies and children has finally and logically established himself as the most fashionable Russian postmodernist writer – having only slightly gone to meet the publishers and the most mass reader requests… But if in his newly created novels Pelevin enthusiastically dives into the thoughts of “almost real” blondes, then in “The Ontology of Childhood” his feat was outwardly not so impressive – after all, almost each of us believes that we have the power to “remember our childhood”.
Since behind all the international cultural somersaults and masks (from antiquity to web chats) in Pelevin the "harsh East" invariably breaks through, then our whole life, naturally, and in that early story is immersed in a kind of uncontested samsara (in this case, an immortal stinking barracks filled with "nasty adults"). However, childhood is at least some chance to make a temporary escape from the eternal stench, while remaining physically attached to this place - to get a reprieve from the sentence and a more lenient regime for the "guilty without guilt": " There is a norm of happiness due to a person in life, and no matter what happens, this happiness cannot be taken away ... No matter what national change of underwear awaits ahead, no one can take away from the past what someone saw (the former you, if that means anything) ."
Oddly enough, the same key opens the “door behind the canvas” in the books of Vladislav Krapivin (1938–2020). (See the selection of responses to the writer’s death on page 16. — Ed .) Almost all adults are terribly slow-witted and vain; childhood ends one way or another, and with it, a full, vibrant life. All that’s left for an adult to do is console themselves with memories of this period and help those who haven’t lived their summer yet 1 .
" If possible... Let this summer last longer! Let it be long-long! Is it possible?.. Seventh-grader Shurka Polushkin died a few days before his birthday. When autumn finally came. He died suddenly, as if from an injection to the heart. Maybe it really was an injection. Or maybe an attack of irresistible nocturnal melancholy. After all, there was no longer a saving summer... " ("Summer Will Not End Soon", 1995). Here Vladislav Petrovich, of course, prophesied for himself...
Krapivin has more than a hundred novels and stories, and almost all of them are about childhood, and the events in the overwhelming majority of cases take place in the summer (although the assertions that it is always summer for him and that there are no girls among the main characters are, of course, incorrect).
Of course, neither Krapivin's heroes nor the author himself feel so "bruised" by the "wheel of samsara" that, like Pelevin, they sometimes perceive childhood itself as an illusion: " You are happy in childhood because you think so, remembering it. In general, happiness is a memory ." However, Pelevin is an anti-child writer, which is probably why he never discovered the secret of Korczak and Saint-Exupéry: to see in today's children a reflection of the happiness that he himself is deprived of (no matter how illusory it may be, again). However, as we know, even the gods are deprived of unconditional happiness: " By the way, it is interesting how those who are serving their time in heaven see the world ."
There are interesting parallels between the explanations that Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) gave for his famous Dandelion Wine (1957) and Pelevin’s seemingly antipodal story.
“ I was amused and somewhat puzzled by a literary critic who wrote a few years ago an analytical review of Dandelion Wine… in which he wondered how it was that I, born and raised in Waukegan, which I renamed Greentown for my novel, had failed to notice its ugly harbor and, on its outskirts, the depressing coal port and railroad depot.
Of course, I noticed them and, being a born sorcerer, I was captivated by their beauty. Can trains and freight cars, the smell of coal and fire be ugly in the eyes of a child? We encounter ugliness at a later age and begin to avoid it in every possible way. Counting freight cars is the first occupation for boys. It is adults who go crazy and hoot at the sight of a train that blocks their way, while boys enthusiastically count the cars that have rolled up from afar and call out their names .
Let's compare: " It all started with the sunniest and happiest place on earth, where people live who are a little funny in their attachment to tarpaulin boots and black quilted jackets - funny and even more so dear, it started with joyful green corridors, with the cheerful play of the sun on the peeling wire mesh, with the desperate twittering of swallows that made a nest for themselves under the roof of a tin shop, with the festive roar of tanks crawling to the parade... ", " you manage to live a whole little life, completely hidden from those sitting in the neighboring toilets ."
It seems that for one reason or another, Pelevin, Krapivin and Bradbury abandoned the idea of building their own special Happiness Machine (although each of them had some instructive episode of such senseless construction in their books more than once - the last was Pelevin, whose "Invincible Sun" (2020) naturally turns into either a machine of universal pain and destruction, or an executor of the will of a not too smart blonde, who wished that everything would be almost as before and "everyone would be fine" (and let no one leave offended)). But Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, as the greatest rationalists, cherished the dream of implementing some kind of "reorganization of samsara" project to the very end. Of course, we are not talking about the Golden Ball, but about the Theory of Education, which was the subject of long debates in an offline interview with Boris Strugatsky 2 . However, BNS always emphasized that this was just a dream, and he never conducted “real developments”, although he was convinced of the correctness of the direction itself: “ I still believe that only the Great Theory of Education is capable of radically changing human history, interrupting the chain of times and the fatal sequence of repetitions of “fathers in children”. But I know nothing about any developments on this matter. Apparently, teachers have other things to do now .”
" Adults are very understandable, but there is almost nothing to say about them. It is often nasty from their close attention to your life. It seems that they do not demand anything: for a second they let go of the invisible log that they have been carrying all their lives, in order to bend down to you with a smile, and then, straightening up, take it up again and carry it further - but this is only at first glance. In fact, they want you to become like them, they need to pass their log to someone before they die. It was not in vain that they carried it " ("Ontology of Childhood"). Is there such a big difference, "creative" adults or those with "negative life experience" determine our fate, if the result is still the same adult samsara?
It is characteristic that the very real (and, in all likelihood, very talented, if not brilliant) teacher Krapivin did not even come close to inventing any such theories (and hardly approved of the organization of even the most wonderful boarding schools - as opposed to the life of children with their parents), although, of course, he had his own wonderful method, captivating the pioneers with things that were interesting to them 3 . However, both the Strugatskys, and Krapivin, and even Pelevin grew up in the families of teachers (which, by the way, cannot be said about Bradbury), so they certainly had an idea of the work of a teacher. " Even my modest experience suggests to me several names of teachers who combined the ability to teach a subject and to educate a little savage ," writes Boris Strugatsky, and repeatedly lets it slip: of course, he considers children in general to be something like a blank or little animals - if not universally dangerous, then unpredictable: " It is clear that the object of this theory should be the human personality, as well as the process of transition from the state of tabula rasa to the state that we called (conditionally) the Educated Man ." Speaking about VTV, they recall the episode with the Anyudinskaya school (the story "The Intruders", 1962) from the story "Noon. XXII Century" (when such a theory was not yet discussed, however) and "Burdened by Evil" (1988), where among the characters there are two brilliant Teachers. A little special is "Ugly Swans" with wet teachers from a distorted future. And there is essentially only one novel by the Strugatskys that centers on a child character (and even then, he is half-alien and hardly in need of education) - "The Kid". "Roadside Picnic" (where Monkey is), "The Beetle in the Anthill" and "The Waves Extinguish the Wind" sometimes present the same paranoid attitude towards children as in Bradbury's most horrific "horror stories", where children are not just savages and aliens, but also residents of hostile civilizations, traitors to the human race. Or, at the very least, cruel creatures, capable of plunging both peers and parents into despair through ignorance and indifference 4 .
However, in the discussions around the "theory of education", two sound ideas seem to crystallize. The first is that the abilities of the Teacher are akin to art, and no algorithms with a guaranteed result will ever appear there. People (and children) are too different for this. And thank God. Otherwise (with a guaranteed result of influencing someone's brain), even more dangers would arise, and it is somehow undesirable to make the fate of all mankind dependent on the accuracy of the plans of the "developers" (how is this more reliable than a "planned economy" and less harmful than interference in human DNA?). Second: if the BNS itself did not insist on strict isolation of children in boarding schools, so to speak, total deprivation, if there are no obstacles to free communication with parents and no restrictions on the will of the students themselves, then perhaps the very concept of remote boarding schools is not necessary. After all, children can also disappear for a long time and "hang out" (with overnight stays) in some everyday clubs, studios, sections, hikes (a la Krapivin's "Caravel") and even while staying at home maintain constant contact with friends and teachers via a virtual network. Isn't there scope here for the application of "the most advanced pedagogical methods" or even the most precise and correct theories of education?
Maxim Borisov
1 The leader of "Espada" Oleg from "The Boy with the Sword", Cornelius Glas from the story "Geese-geese, ha-ha-ha", Valentin from "Tales of Fishermen and Fish", Volodya from "Kashka's Squire", Yar from "The Dovecote on the Yellow Meadow"... ( kroog2.ru/ru/news/news-126 )
3 " Teenagers are initially... more honest, more decent, more selfless than adults... this is an objective not only social, but even biological truth. Children are truly born unspoiled, sincere creatures; in many ways they are purer than adults. The only trouble is that at the same time they are more helpless and inexperienced than their parents and mentors. Then, gradually, the adult world remakes them according to its own laws - some earlier, others later. The clash of childhood selflessness and adult pragmatism is a drama of many generations " (Krapivin V. Pioneer-Gothic novel, teenagers and "discouraging repetitions" // "Uralsky Sledopyt" No. 8 for 1994).
4 “All Summer in a Day”, “The Veldt”, “The Hours”, “Dandelion Wine”… lenta.ru/articles/2005/08/18/bradbury