"St. John's wort" - the love novel Ksenia Burzhskaya, who was supposed to save the reputation of the genre

Good attempt, but there is a serious drawback

Literary critic Galina Yuzefovich tells about the novel by journalist and writer Ksenia Burghskaya “St. John's wort”. In the center of the plot is the relationship of two women and one man. At first glance, it seems that “St. John's wort” is a salvation for the genre of love prose, which in Russia, in fact, does not exist. However, what remains outside the love triangle is not very convincing in the Bourgeo novel.

Ksenia Bourge. St. John's wort. M.: Inspiria, 2022

The language of Russian prose of the last two, if not three decades, is poorly adapted for talking about love - all the literature, which has a reputation as a “big” and “serious”, is cautiously bypassing this topic. It is no coincidence that the concept of “love novel” has recently been glued with the offensive term “female (or, worse, sentimental) prose” and with it moved somewhere to the periphery that a “decent person” can be read without damage to health, honor and reputation.

In this context, the novels of the journalist Ksenia Burzhskaya (the first, “my white” came out last year) - definitely love, but at the same time, in the author’s idea, not reduced to a purely romantic component - are a rare and already because of this valuable exception.

In the “white” in the focus there was a decaying, but not completely outlining mutual affection for a couple of girls, new partners of both heroines, their common teenage daughter and her first romantic interest. In St. John's wort, the author again at different angles considers a complex love conflict.

The twenty -five -year -old Maryana is a deadly, painful and inexhaustible love loves his forty -year -old boss Olga. Olga first loves her husband, then a lover, then a personal driver, but Maryana also seems to love a little-in any case, he doesn’t let go, he keeps closer, then, then, from time to time, pulling the leash, hinting at something, but never specifying the hints. A good guy Demyan also loves Maryan and believes that, using the words of a famous performer, his great love will have two with his head. But once, tired of eternal disabilities, from his inescapable second -rate in marriage with Maryana, decides to look for comfort in relations on the side - the same asymmetric and ridiculous.

All this shaky and explosive hazardous, seemingly completely unrealizable design, it turns out, contrary to expectations, amazingly stable-the heroes for many years get stuck in their internal dramas, shake their nerves and each other, multiply mutual grievances, hoped for something, look for a way out, but find only new inputs in the same infinite labyrinth. And only the sudden death of the father of Maryana, an eccentric and an endomologist who called the daughter of a trot and gave her the strangest, most important memories of childhood and adolescence, catalyzes the pattern, it would seem, the situation, forcing all three to leave the zone of familiar discomfort and finally make some important decisions.

The main advantage of Ksenia Burghskaya as the author is that, telling about subtle shifts of feelings, she manages not to slide into cloying sweetness, nor in abstract praise, or frank falsehood. Her language is poetic, plastic and figurative (Bourgger debuted precisely as a poet), at the same time retains absolute clarity and unambigence. And the emotions that the author writes about, with some of their hypertrophics, remain understandable, natural, genuine. Yes, so you really can feel, love, talk about your feelings. Yes, it's me, this is about me (about my friend, friend, about me in my youth).

In a word, it will not be an exaggeration to say that like Bourge’s, no one writes about love in all its complexity and diversity in Russian today-and this is already a huge victory in itself. But fixation on one key topic has a flip side. Masterly describing everything related to the sensory sphere, Bourgeois donates to all those lying outside it. Volumetric, lively, filled and recognizable in regard to their love stories, in other relationships and Maryana, Olga, and Demyan look flat and approximately.

Who do Olga and Maryana work there? Yes, some journalists, it seems. And where do they live? And they write about what? There is no answer. Maryana and Demyan have two daughters-and what are they, what do we know about them? Do their parents love, in the end? Well, they probably love, they are still people, but actually a book about something else. Demyan, it seems, teaches something at the university-and what exactly and why exactly? It is unknown, and what's the difference. Is he a good teacher or bad? Rather, good, but this is not for sure.

The same can be said about the heroes of the second or third plan, scheduled to be so sparingly that sometimes it is difficult to remember them even by functionality, not something that is by name. The same claim can be made to the previous Burghskaya novel, all the heroes of which seemed to exist only in order to love, be jealous, suffer or burn, and the rest of the time they were some kind of unchanged “doctors”, “artists”, “musicians”, unknown what are busy and not adapted to anything else.

Everything that is not illuminated by the power of a love feeling, in the prose of Bourge’s not just lies in the shade - it does not exist. And, going abroad of this dazzling-bright patch, its heroes, just so warm and voluminous, turn into an inanimate planar scan.

Is it possible to consider such a concentration on one thing to the detriment of everything else with such a serious drawback? No matter how sorry to admit, rather yes. A truly great literature cannot be arranged on the principle of “it works here is not working here”, but everything that is not “about love”, for Bourge’s either does not work at all, or does not work in full force. And this returns us to the original thesis: love and literature in our cultural tradition - in divorce. And even such talented and extraordinary texts as those that Ksenia Burghskaya writes, so far it is not possible to throw a reliable bridge from one to another.

Galina Yuzefovich